Guild Wars 2

Shadowbane had the greatest PvP system ever used in an MMO. It had a cap.
DAoC has zerg balls. It also has pain trains.
WoW didn’t have AE caps at release and this was nerfed quickly.

I’m still of the opinion that just increasing the harmful cap to 10 and leaving the beneficial cap at 5 would solve a lot of the problems people are having.

But no, simply removing the AE cap won’t resolve anything because we’ll assume it’s done to all AE’s. Blast a water field heals you and everyone in your zerg for 1.5k. 25 of the other 100ish people in your ball also blast the same ae healign for 1.5k to themselves and everyone else for 1.5k too. So what’s the solution to this? Only make harmful spells AE unlimited? What about confusion then? And even with a 5 per blast cap, do you think retaliation won’t be on the whole zerg within 5 seconds?

We can also see what area denial with siege weapons do right now with unlimited AE’s. Imagine players being able to do that? A single Ele could lock down an entire courtyard due to how many AE’s they have.

I understand completely why people want it done. I can only point you to DAoC where AE caps didn’t remove zergs, it just transformed them into highly mobile PBAoE trains, but at least DAoC had a solution to these by having long range AE lockdowns that could stop these things.

WoW had unlimited AE and Mages would destroy everything that moved in check points like hallways and gates (something this game has plenty of with no alternative approach available in many cases). WoW eventually put a cap and then offered DR over a 10 cap due to exploiting.

Shadowbane had much more AE than this game, but also had utility AE (AE snares, roots, vulns, etc) and one the greatest resist systems in any PvP mmo to date.

Now granted many of the above have zerg balls, but they weren’t the only strategy mostly because the world map offered players real oppurtunity to use the landscape to their advantage and offered much more diverse and complex classes. These are areas we should focus on because if we had a tiered WvW system where players actually had to do more than run around as a single group, things wouldn’t be this bad.

Ostricheggs.3742:

Atherakhia.4086:

Honestly, given the scope of PvE in this game, I don’t understand why there’s a disconnect between the systems. If true class balance was achieved, things should work themselves out if you bring one of something or 100 of something. It’s all supposed to be a giant game of rock paper scissors afterall!

The only time PvP and PvE overlap causes problems are in games with truly elaborate PvE systems. But considering most dungeons in this game are designed so you just run through all the trash and most bosses are niche based scripted encounters, why is it so hard to balance the game?

The only thing I could see being an issue is PvE damage across the board and this can be easily resolved with having a coefficient for use in PvE and a seperate one for PvP/WvW. At least this way you have skills work the same way every time and all classes have access to all skills in every stystem.

That all said though, GW2 isn’t your typical MMO where legitimate concerns of gross imbalance in PvE can be a result of fine tuning in PvP. PvE in this game just isn’t complex enough.

That has consistently been proven wrong time and again. There are legitimate differences between PvE and PvP that are large enough to cause even simple changes across the board to have unintended consequences.

Take for example, warriors. People have always said that warriors are ridiculously overpowered in PvE. In PvP they have consistently been the worst class in the game.

Who did the quickness nerf hurt the worst? Warriors. I don’t know how that effected PvE but in PvP I can honestly say that I haven’t seen a warrior on a team in over a week.

How they’ve been going about balancing is completely detrimental to all aspects of the game, especially PvP. There is honestly no excuse to not split it. It just doesn’t make sense.

The Warrior’s problems in PvP aren’t the least bit associated with their damage. PvE has no real conditions, roots, snares, and boons to worry about. There isn’t any overlap between the Warrior’s perceived status in PvE and its nerfed status in PvP.

And you honestly feel the quickness changed affected warriors the most? Warriors that mock other Warriors for still using GS? Not Rangers or Thieves huh?

And are you trying to imply that quickness was changed because of CoF 1 runs? You don’t think it had anything to do with Warrior’s bull charging, popping frenzy, and dropping noobs in half a second?

I’m not sure I’ve seen much PvE balancing done in this game at all. It certainly has some overlap with PvE, but that’s because it should.

The only time PvP nerfs affect PvE is when damage is nerfed. This was the headache in WoW that people were talking about prior. And WoW was a PvE game first, second, and third. PvP game last. GW2 is the opposite.

So not to clutter the forums.

How do sigils with on hit effects work?

If I have fire on an off-hand for example, will it only proc on skills 4 and 5? Or auto attacks too?

And what if you have fire on one and air on the other?

Lets just call it a day guys. The math has spoken and you want both.

You want 14k hp, you want 2.5k armor. You want power as the primary stat because it is always best. You want crit damage over crit chance once you can break 50% via fury.

The question now is how do you do this? Full Valk, full cavalier accessories with precision jewels or full knights accessories with ruby. You want berserker weapons.

Sound about right? I’m an art major, I can’t follow the math, only the discussion. And the discussion has turned to [censored].

Allow to move while swinging?
Swing faster?
Change the stealth move to stab (3 with no offhand)?

I just find the burst ability for sword is WAY to low for the survivability of the class as a whole.

S/D was why I made a thief originally and when I found out how awful it was I shelved the thief again until recently (partner chose ranger as main so I wanted something that would compliment and not be a ranger).

balance issues tend to be made worse in wvw, not better. any spvp change to an ele would probably be warranted in wvw.

Jeknar.6184:

Atherakhia.4086:

considering FSU stood for Fergs Stand United I’d say it’s quite ironic

Perhaps now we’ll stand united on their corpses!

That’s necrophilia!

Maybe what you’re doing to them while the rest of us are standing on them is….

considering FSU stood for Fergs Stand United I’d say it’s quite ironic

Perhaps now we’ll stand united on their corpses!

Raven Paradox.1860:

I’d like to see WXP awared for reviving allies, be it players or NPCs, and building siege. Also if somehow we can get implemented where if we’re scouts or watchguards we’re rewarded.

When I play WvW with my smaller guild, we often have one objective and defend it, and I let the larger guilds know of the situation. The come in and roflstomp the enemy. Who is the hero in all this? Well, not to boast, but if someone wasn’t there to know of the situation, that objective could have been lost. It’d be nice to get some WXP somehow for doing such things, although I do understand how it can be incredibly difficult to implement something like that without people instantly finding ways to exploit it.

You’d think anything that gives xp would also give wxp.

But more important than WXP is badges. I really wish they’d just do away with them, move everything over to karma, and that way you can just up the karma reward and give karma along with wxp.

Badges are really important for people new to WvW because they’re often pestered to get PTV gear but it’s difficult for new or more casual players to just grab a full suit of gear and change specs on a whim.

I’m well on my way to 80 of each class. I think I’m settling down on my thief though. Warrior was fun, but I mostly duo roam with a ranger, and the Warrior doesn’t do a good job at keeping up (I can keep up, but risk everything on cooldown when I need it). I tried ranger, but holy [censored] is that class awful to play. thief compliments the ranger well, has similar mobility, and is fun in both zerg (sb with fire is a lot of damage) and roaming in small to medium g roups.

Any hopes that we’ll get WvW adjustments (maps and rulesets more than nerfs and buffs) to make zerging less of a big deal?

Something as simple as making sure you have all of your structures before taking control of an enemy structure would force zergs to split up more often and coordinating attacks key.

Honestly, I’d much rather a staff or scepter and focus and turn the thief into a mage assassin! 900 range spells with some water fields that chill, a ranged root, some insane single target ranged damage etc.

One of the funnest classes in any mmo I ever played was the Mage Assassin in Shadowbane. I’ve really missed it.

You should be playing the role of a thief on Jormag and stay out of site (afk) for all of phase 1 and only come out to hit the boss on phase 2 vulnerabilities

But yea, a real ranged build would be fun. I’d sooner make shortbow the longer range and have pistols stay at 900 and just make them more viable.

Darek.1836:

Because no one has said it aloud, the issue people from FC are complaining about is that Agg is paying for the Ferg guild FSU (ironically stands for Fergs Stand United) to move to ET. The FSU guild was formed around the most experienced commanders who use the TS, aka almost every decent or good commander we have is moving to ET. I think we’re going to have maybe 2-3 decent commanders for all times now.

Uh, lol.

You are GREATLY exagerating FSU’s abilities. Only 2 or 3 of them lead to any great success. The more vital issue at stake with them is they’re 10ish players that actually played on a consistent basis with the same group so they had their [censored] together. The other issue is that they commanded during a period of high player activity. But they hardly did it alone. Other guilds were running stuff in other BL’s with much less of the elitist edge that FSU developed over the past week.

This is something this server is missing as we don’t have a large guild (by large I would settle for just 10-20) that play as a guild at all, let alone on a regular basis. We have SS which barely have 5 of them on in the same place at one time, and we have WZ which are in the same boat with barely 5 of them on at the same time.

The ability to lead a zerg is not something of much actual effort as anyone who has seen it done can pull it off after a couple hours of trial an error. Just like FSU managed to do it after a couple hours of a 15min introduction to it from VK. I’m confident we’ll manage without them, but if people wnat to transfer to (or from) FC that’s great. We’re a very open server and welcome anyone who wants to have fun.

Look on the plus side, they’ve burned their bridges with their attitude over the past week and a half so now you can face off against them. I intend to have fun doing it. A new zerg commander will show up to take Pew Pew’s place. Would be fun to 5v5 them by the windmill.

Honestly, given the scope of PvE in this game, I don’t understand why there’s a disconnect between the systems. If true class balance was achieved, things should work themselves out if you bring one of something or 100 of something. It’s all supposed to be a giant game of rock paper scissors afterall!

The only time PvP and PvE overlap causes problems are in games with truly elaborate PvE systems. But considering most dungeons in this game are designed so you just run through all the trash and most bosses are niche based scripted encounters, why is it so hard to balance the game?

The only thing I could see being an issue is PvE damage across the board and this can be easily resolved with having a coefficient for use in PvE and a seperate one for PvP/WvW. At least this way you have skills work the same way every time and all classes have access to all skills in every stystem.

That all said though, GW2 isn’t your typical MMO where legitimate concerns of gross imbalance in PvE can be a result of fine tuning in PvP. PvE in this game just isn’t complex enough.

What is the best way to gear out a thief for WvW? I run with a zerg, and I’ll stay in it if it’s the right thing to do, but my ultimate goal isn’t to sit there spamming shortbow. I want to run in with the melee or pick people off.

But it’s difficult to get a handle on just what kind of gear to go for?

With the Karma vendors offering cavalier rings, trinkets, and back, it seems like that would be a good place to start. But where do you go from there?

I figure you’ll want 2.5k armor and 15-18k hp with 75%+ crit damage and 50%+ crit chance (with fury). But how do you obtain this? Is this the baseline to shoot for in WvW?

I don’t have much gold and the karma seems best used on the cavalier. I’ve got enough for one ascended amulet and will have the guild commendations this week for one ring in theory.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

By chance, is MERC the same MERC from Shadowbane?

Toggles.1783:

Burnfall.9573:

Here is Hard Evidence in supporting your claims OP.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCWywAXmVP4

Than again, who would “Dare” question them in needing nerfs?

I’m certain Yishis doesn’t need to play a thief to be able to ‘pwn’ hard.

Of course we could find the very same videos of engis, rangers, eles, mesmers and guardians doing this as well but let’s ignore it because hey, “we hate stealth” and we need to make thief pay for it!

Lets also not forget that well over half the people in the video he kills are upleveled.
Most of the remaining people are glass.
He himself is glass and no one responds properly to a stealthed rogue.

I can’t even count the number of times a thief backstabbed me on my warrior only to find out I have 3k armor, he hit like a wet noodle, and I turn around and rip his head off. In the slim chance he did stealth, I’ll just whirlwind through the refuge which is about the same size as the whirlwind AE and kill him anyway.

I can legitimately see the case if he were an engineer or necro to be upset against a thief. But the failings of these classes have less to do with the thief and more to do with their own class.

What classes are you having problems with thieves on? I’m honestly curious.

Why not get to 80 and get some toughness gear to start. that alone blunts the thieve’s ability to effectively kill you. if you still struggle, perhaps the issue is your or the class and less so the thief?

I’ve never lost to a thief on my Warrior unless jumped at low health (which is what the thief is designed to do so how can I legitimately complain about it?). My ranger can take on like 5 people at once because of the insane regen and bunker aspect of it. My ele will be 2 shot, but rarely can a thief string 2 shots together before I can get away.

I could imagine Necros having issues due to the stealth healing and condi removal. I can see engineers having problems because they lack real escapes. I could see other thieves having problems.

But mesmers, warriors, rangers, eles, guardians? Nah.

I hate to break it to you guys, but this whole game is casual. If you honestly think anything about this game could be considered hardcore you clearly haven’t played many other games (don’t even need to be mmo’s).

The idea is always to give players rewards. We see that the developers have found players are really interested in WvW because they’re now giving you the option to get gear that isn’t just WvW focused (berserkers gear can now be gotten via badges) and you can get things like pre-cursors from bags.

Now if the OP is tyring to imply that the sorry state WvW is in right now is somehow justified because the developers said it should be casual friendly, then that’s just stupid. Like anyone is going to go through the effort to make a game with the INTENTION of it failing. And that’s what WvW is doing right now… failing.

Is there a reason these discussions always have to focus on sPvP? Why can’t we discuss the issues plaguing the rest of the game? Things like how WvW is nothing but a ring-around-the-rosey zerg fest and the WvW map doesn’t lend itself to anything but this? What about how the game as a whole is still lacking in any real end-game options other than WvW and sPvP? Why not discuss where the other game modes are? What about how the problems with sPvP are now becoming prevelent in WvW where classes are limited in spec and option due to zerging being the only real option. What ever happened to the AE discussion? do the devs have any input on removing the AE cap vs just making the harmful cap 10 and the beneficial cap 5?

I mean class balance is great, but the last episode was a complete waste of time because the classes I paly (Warrior and Ranger) took up like 30 seconds between the 2 of them. Now that I have a thief added to the mix, will we have 5mins devoted to thief Q&A again? I certainly hope not.

I realize the people hosting this thing only sPvP, but that makes up such a small part of the game that so few people actually play. The only reason the non-sPvP players watch these things is insite on class changes, and we’ve been let down month after month in these videos because we only talk about 2 classes in detail.

I will have to admit that I’ve never seen any MMO leave the issues revolving around the Ele and Mesmer go on untouched for so long. Usually by now other MMO’s would have completely destroyed the class with insane nerfs in an attempt to rebuild them by unnerfing them little by little just to get balance back in the game. Instead they’ve taken the other approach where they nerf little by little and nothing changes forcing everyone and their mother to reroll into an Ele or Mesmer just to compete.

The problems with both classes seem obvious. Passive healing and heal abilities that aren’t even attached to the actual healing skill. Confusion being too powerful base let alone when stacked. Boons, holy [censored] [censored] boons!

I can’t imagine the Ele or Mesmer’s base damage being a legitimate issue as these classes to do real burst means they’ll be bursted down real quick. It’s the utility spells that are causing an issue and using a scalpel over the course of 6 months isn’t cutting it. Time to bust out the sledge hammer to these things and worry about buying super glue later.

WvW map redesigned so tactics and strategy could outperform zerg balls. We need real choke points other than keep doors, and we need a progression based sieging system where you can’t take SM until you have all other towers and keeps on your side.

Redone point tally system in WvW so servers that can’t get their [censored] together during the day but manage to take every point on all 4 maps for 8 hours while everyone’s sleeping and at work don’t some how manage to outscore those who actually fight for their borders.

Real class balance so not only are Warriors, Thieves, and Engineers wanted in s/tPvP, but the other classes that already have some use actually have options in how they want to spec and play. The same for PvE and WvW.

Something to occupy my time! I don’t care if it’s player housing, guild housing, a different and more involved WvW scene, or s/tPvP opened up to normal gear. Something to warrant me investing time and energy into my character instead of making a level 1 to s/tPvP and the hour or 2 a day to WvW before I want to vomit.

The game lacks a lot of depth.

If they had things like player/guild housing, actual guild vs guild, an enjoyable WvW map, balanced PvP systems and classes, and a s/tPvP system that wasn’t totally isolated things would have a little more player interaction. But the way things are right now, if you don’t like WvW you’ve got nothing to do all day.

Reborn.2934:

the problem in w3 map is that full upgrades means really NOTHING ….

you spend some gold and some hours to loose it in under of five minutes when you are gone for sleep :p

Not realistic in this game, but Shadowbane solved this problem by introducing siege stones. An attacker would drop a siege stone and the defenders had 6 hours to respond to an attack and they had to choose a time within a 12 hour window from when the stone was dropped. So if you dropped a stone at 6am, the defenders could choose any time between 6am and 6pm to choose when the castle was vulnerable to attack.

Now I think just giving points once a day based off the average of the 24 hourly tallies will solve a lot of the night time raiding issues because these servers often can’t get their act together during the day. But a scenario like the above where a tower can be taken and then retaken within a specified window, but if you don’t take it within that window, it can’t be retaken again until another window. This way keeps could effectively be on lockdown for the night crew in some fashion and they couldn’t retake it.

Say you lose a keep at midnight, but don’t take it back before 3 am because people actually defended it for a change. Now it’s on lockdown and immune to damage for 6 hours so it’s not vulnerable for attack again until 9am.

It’s a difficult thing to fix imo.

Hell, the last dev meeting said thieves aren’t slipery enough!

Some classes you aren’t going to do well against in a 1v1 situation. Thives are one of them. I’d argue it’s good strategy for a group to send a couple thieves to contest a couple towers so the enemy forces can’t tell which one is being attacked legitimately. We call this behavior strategy… and WvW has an alarming lack of it.

Slamz.5376:

I see lots of replies talking about classes that can 1v1 or potentially 1vX but that’s not what you need in a roamer, unless maybe you’re in T8 or something.

Roamers need to be able to walk around a corner, see 50 rednames coming and be able to get away. Thieves are #1 at this by a long shot. A ranger can chase a ranger but even a thief can’t catch a thief.

Well this is why you don’t roam alone and do it with 2 – 5 other people. A ranger and a thief for example is an insanely powerful combo. If for no other reason than blast finisher spam and healing well. But both have similar amounts of speed, buth can attack from range, and the ranger’s ranged abilities help compensate the thief for a relatively few number of snares and such. I’d probably put more money on a thief+ranger pair than a thief+thief pair.

I don’t understand why they don’t just tally the score once a day.

Take your reading every hour like you do now, but average those together at server reset and provide points accordingly. Many of the servers out there are awful with anything even remotely close to even numbers. They manage to win every week because of the population disparity at night and their ability to contest every point on the map for 6 hours at night while mainting 1/4th of it during the day. This behavior wouldn’t have such a large impact if the scores were averaged and perhaps the highest and lowest score for the day were thrown out.

Now as for the rest and the desire to make WvW an eSport? Not possible. I’d rather they just improve the maps so some level of strategy and tatics could be employed to counteract all the zerg on zerg action.

If the world map was tiered (see below) with real bottle necks, objectives, and a real need to defend, WvW wouldn’t be nearly as bad as it is right now. Add onto the terrible map design the awful class balance and lack of any real depth to the classes (nothing but DPS being a goal for every class? That’s not how you make a fun and engaging group pvp system!) and there’s no wonder WvW is the laughing stock it is right now.

Tiered PvP System:
Imagine if the map was Y shaped. Each part of the Y is a lane belonging to one server. At the tip of each lane is your spawn point. At the center is effectively a giant castle like SM. Between the 2 is a cluster of towers and a keep. So effectively your lane would look like this:

Spawn > tower + tower + tower > keep > tower + tower + tower > castle

The only way to capture the castle would be to have everything in your lane. If you have the castle, but don’t have everything in your lane, the walls and doors take 20% more damage per structure lost. The same is true for all structures. Say you don’t have the tower closest to your spawn. Every other tower and keep you own would now take 20% more damage from siege. And for the love of god, remove the ability for one keep/tower to siege the next keep/tower from inside the walls.

A map designed like the above alone would resolve much of the zerg issues because players couldn’t just run around as a giant clump and accomplish anything. They’d never be able to take a point because they wouldn’t have the structures in their lane. They wouldn’t be able to maintain a point because they don’t have the structures in their lanes.

Next thing you do is make it so siege equipment has no master. If you don’t destroy your siege when you take down an enemy structure, the enemy will just use it to get right back in.

Then if you remove the ability for players to attack gates so only siege items could hurt them you could introduce actual siege weapons (sledge hammers, burning arrows, crowbars, etc) that palyers would put on in exchange of their normal weapons. These weapons would do 10% of your normal damage to players but would do 50% of their normal damage to gates and 25% of their normal damage to walls.

While this is more damage players are currently doing with their melee weapons, you at least keep them on the defensive because if they get attacked by a counter-force while still wielding their siege weapons they’ll be of no use against the attackers. This way players are encouraged to use siege equipment more instead of just zerging in piles of 100 and auto attacking reinforced walls while balled up getting blast heals.

Then finally, when all of this is done, you can consider adding real defenders to keeps. Allow commanders to send out waves of 20 NPC guards to help push enemies back. Train elite guards to help push people off gates. Hire pilots to strafe the battle field. etc etc

Eles and Mesmers are off the hook. I’ve never seen such blatantly overpowered classes in any MMO last this long without having their legs cut off at the knees.

While I don’t consider thieves to be overpowered, chain stealth and the way it works right now is pretty kitten I acknowledge that without some way to get back in stealth the thief class would be pretty crap. But the way things work now is excessive.

The problem with ranger is how boring they are. While I’m overstating it a little, they really don’t do much but run around in circles auto attacking. They do have very strong escapes though so I don’t know what others are complaining about. Swoop alone is amazing, but ranged snares, traps, and knockback/evade are all great. Only class able to escape better than a ranger would be an ele or thief.

Rangers I just feel are too dependent on condition damage and bunker builds. Even if you went all glass and acknowledged you’d be 2 shot by everyone, they still don’t gain any real damage for doing it. Only option is like full apothecary regen bunker builds while running around auto-attacking.

I agree with the OP. If not for the badges I wouldn’t even loot the bags half the time. I certainly wouldn’t dive head first into a zerg when I have the outnumber buff simply to loot the bag and die!

Make the badges currency that are awarded on kills like karma and wxp. Or just up the karma rewards in WvW and remove badges entirely.

Building a flanking group with friends of mostly thieves and rangers. Insane AE with thief shortbow + fire runes. Piercing shots with bleeds. Large AE Snares. Insane burst healing. Lots of group utility with AE blinds, AE roots, AE DPS, AE stealth. Strong escapes in swoop, stealth, etc. Each has a very powerful bunker build. Everyone has passive 25% movement signet if needed. Each can solo camps effectively.

As someone above said though, all that matters ooc movement speed options and a viable escape skill. Can’t go wrong with Thief, Ele, Ranger as these are your typical roaming gankers.

Now if you want a roaming brawler who dives in never dies and forces others to run? Mesmer all the way.

Why use badges or gold? Now that we have WXP, why not just make it once a player gets rank 100 they get a badge that can be viewed on the map. Different badge and color depending on your rank. Players could squad join or ignore it completely if they wanted through a toggle in options.

The Warrior advantage is often overstated. While 100B spam isn’t the most ideal option in PvE, it’s the easiest to do and one of the easier methods to quantify. Someone on the hunter forum found that a ranger does 50% of the damage with their greatsword that a Warrior using greatsword does. Now while this may seem alarming to some, remember that the Ranger is actually designed intentionally to do 50% of the damage because the remaining 50% is supposedly coming from the pet.

So is it Warriors are overpowered, or is the fact that a lack of real damage statistics and glaring class disparity is more at fault? I’d argue there’s nothing wrong with Warriors in PvE and that it’s more an issue of other classes either not being equal or that other classes simply lack the attractive numbers that 100b throws on the screen.

If thieves could stay alive, they do similar damage.
Rangers do similar damage if pets legitimately lived up to what ANet says they should do.
Eles do similar, but less damage but bring infinitely more utility.
Necros do similar on longer boss type fights but don’t do well against trash or scripted stuff.

My 4x Warrior + 1 mesmer did CoF in 8.5 mins (a far cry from the 7.5 record, I know). My 3 Ranger, Guardian, and Necro group did CoF in 10mins.

Not a large enough gap to worry about. If players refuse anything but 4 warriors and a mesmer, then find another group because the other one already has 4 people who don’t know what they’re talking about.

TallDan.6350:

I find WvW amazing fun, I’m a skilled player and have met lots and lots of skilled players. I have good fights all night. All I can say to counter some of your points is; at first it’s confusing and you don’t know what to do but the more you play the more depth you find.

The big draw of WvW for many of the casual players is you don’t have to be skilled to have fun, it’s open and semi sandbox and you get from it what you want. I know that lots of people will read this and say yeah stupid unskilled players they suck etc. but fun is not the exclusive domain of hardcore gamers and not everyone can be the amazing gods of the PC that you guys are.

I have no idea what spvp is like because I got so hooked on WvW that I still haven’t got around to playing it. I’m not going to say anything about which is better because it’s like comparing apples with pears, so you may dislike WvW but don’t look for reasons to say it sucks, if you never took the time to find out why it doesn’t.

No, you’re right. But do you feel we needed 4 of the exact same thing on 2 different types of maps? Why couldn’t each borderland offer a different style of play? Why couldn’t one actually have real NPC’s that could be used to defend and you could send out a wave of NPC’s to help push enemy attackers back?

I remember when Alterac Valley first came out. You would sometimes have the same map open for days because of the constant back and forth due to the NPC’s helping push people out of choke points, or to help reinforce a big rush.

I feel WvW is very one-dimmensional and it really does lack any real lasting power in this game. And with sPvP really only offering the same thing on a handful of different maps, it isn’t much better.

Sounds like the real problem is how much of a failure WvW is moreso than how strict PvP is. If WvW had more to offer than 50+ man zergs playing ring around the rosey you’d probably find the kind of stuff you’re looking for.

Why not treat sPvP in the same way WvW is treated where you’re up leveled and can only use PvP gear? That way you could legitimately level a character doing 10 mans all day. Could maybe even get badges and karma and such. More overlap wouldn’t hurt.

What makes WvW suck the most I feel is the map design. It’s just a giant circle that zergs effectively play follow the leader until they finally catch up to one another.

What we need is a tiered map where you can’t take the next tower if you don’t have every tower before it. Imagine if Eternal Battleground’s general shape was a Y. At the tips of each line rest your starting garrison. Outside of your starting garrison was a keep. Further along was a cluster of 3 towers. Further along another keep. In the center a large castle. The only way to get the castle is to control everything in your lane before it. If you’re sieging the central castle and the enemy sneaks behind you and takes a tower, you can’t claim the central keep. If you don’t control your lane, defenders at the keep deal 50% damage and walls take 1.5x damage.

This way you force zergs to split not only into offense and defense, but to spread out along the whole lane because they have to keep an eye out for invaders that will take your tower to stop you from contesting something in another lane.

This is why WvW sucks so much. The maps themselves leave you no other way to play than in one giant ball. Roaming groups are ineffective due to horrible class balance and design. Sieging is horrible because you can lay siege in a tower and attack the next tower in a line removing any threat of enemy attack. And then lets talk about players attacking gates to rip them down…

With the shear number of players out there, some zergs don’t even bother with proper siege because they can rip a reinforced gate down in a minute or 2. Why don’t you do what other MMO’s did and make it so players can’t attack the gates and introduce siege weapons? these weapons do 10% damage to players but deal 50% damage to gates and 25% damage to walls. This way there’s real risk in players attacking the gate because if they’re caught before they had time to put on their regular weapons they’re no longer able to help repel attackers.

Fix the map so it requires some level of tactics and skill.
Introduce siege weapons so players run a risk of attacking without siege.
Increase the harmful AE cap to 10 so it can slightly outpace beneficial AEs.
Give every class a realistic AE option.
Introduce AE that is designed to disperse zergs (cast a tornado that knocks back 10 people every second. Remove heal on shadow refuge and change it to an AE blind that pulses 10 blinds every second. Etc).

I haven’t read this whole thread, but isn’t every single ascended item available via laurels also available somewhere else? Are we going to argue about the other items, because that’s not a legitimate concern.

So if they have gear that’s available multiple ways, and you don’t like doing the daily for laurels, then do it the other way?

Siphaed it’s been repeated a dozen times or more that is one of the main reasons people are against this change.

It’s been said that removing the AE cap won’t solve zerg balls because of things like retaliation and confusion.

It’s been said that removing the AE cap isn’t realistic so long as AE’s can so easily ignore the rules of LOS and barriers.

It’s been said that removing the AE ca kitten imply too powerful when you consider a select few AE’s and how they work and a blanket rule simply isn’t a realistic option.

This thread has been going in a circle for 5 pages now because these points are brought up and ignored by the people in favor of removing the AE cap even though it’s pretty obvious those who want it removed haven’t clearly thought it through, have no real understanding of the type and power of various AE’s in this game, how few classes have AE’s of any real value, and just how little room is available inside keeps and towers.

If you feel AE needs to be improved, then improve it. Simply increasing the cap on harmful AE spells (conditions and damage) over beneficial AE’s (boons, barriers and heals) so offense outweighs defense and AE’s aren’t nullified by zergballs would be enough and wouldn’t drastically change the balance of the game to favor a select few classes.

But the real reason zerg balls are so powerful here has more to do with poor class design and balance, poorly designed WvW maps, and a poorly implemeneted sieging system than it has to do with AE’s alone.

Puaru.9325:

Atherakhia

You keep saying Barrage snares, it doesn’t do that. It cripples, which is just a 50% movement speed for a whopping ONE second that is very easily rolled out of. A snare would be an immobilization or a pull, which it is neither.

Sigh… this is what I’m talking about. People haven’t a clue what kind of AE’s exist in this game or what they do.

A snare is a movement impairing effect. In this case, a 50% movement impairing effect which lasts one second. HOWEVER, that is 1 second per second which means so long as you’re under it, you’re snared.

The Rooster.2615:

Atherakhia.4086:

There’s nothing to discourage people from balling up.

Hey! You’re right! You know what would discourage people from balling up? Removing the AoE Cap.

Atherakhia.4086:

Introduce null fields to force people to actually move out of AE

You’ve lost me here. So you want to introduce a new mechanic that makes people move out of aoe as opposed to say, just making the aoe itself a reason to move out of the aoe…

Atherakhia.4086:

Can’t remove the AE cap until it will actually have a real impact on the game.

So that I understand this correctly, your points are this:

-Removing the AOE cap would result in certain classes having enormous power and would make AOE OP.

-Removing the AOE cap will have not have a real impact on the game and so it shouldn’t be done.

These points are mutually exclusive. You can’t logically argue both at the same time. Furthermore, if you’re honestly serious that removing the aoe cap would not have a real impact on the game, then why argue so vehemently against it? WvW is already a zerg fest. Say you’re right and the changes have no impact, it’s still a zerg fest. But if it works, then the game becomes much more interesting.

Atherakhia.4086:

Null Fields are things like the guardian wall would now block line of site through it so you can fire through it but the enemy can’t. Mesmers being able to drop their reflect orbs wherever they please removing LOS to the enemy. Introducing AE’s with AE knockback pulses. Remove the heal from shadow refuge and replace it with a pulsing blind.

The changes you suggest would be very interesting and add depth indeed. But even adding just one of those skills would take anet months of balancing to get right. Removing the aoe cap is a simple fix that can be done immediately.

Rooster… please see english comment above.

1.) I addressed how removing the AE cap won’t remove zergs.
2.) Because the AE cap won’t remove zergs, removing the cap won’t accomplish anything.
3.) I argue against it because unlike the majority of people in this thread, I’ve actually played more than WoW. I even played WoW when the AE cap didn’t exist. I know it doesn’t resolve anything from past experience. And those were real MMO’s with properly developed classes and real depth (tactics, strategy) that could be used.
4.) Removing the AE cap throws all balance out the window because we’ll have no one playing this game anymore but classes with real AE’s.

Like I’ve said….

Removing the AE cap can’t even be considered until we’ve ensured all of the classes can actually bring something to the AE table and they’ve fixed the numerous exploits AE’s can already do like ignore LOS and barriers. It’s probably quicker for ANet to add secondary effects to skills that already get no use than it would be for them to fix these issues.

Thz.7569:

DAoC, my favorite MMO, will be my quick reference point for my post.

Hard rupts, etc aside — DAoC had the right idea. When you want RvR (WvW), you have to give groups the ability to fight zergs, which means no AoE cap. To make this fair, the strongest aoe spells were very short range(pbaoe) while the long range aoe spells didn’t have much splash. It’s so simple, yet completely overlooked by the anet team. However, this game is what it is and either we like what’s put out there for us or we don’t. This isn’t something that will see change in its current state, at least not for a -very- long time.

And what did DAoC devolve into? Instead of zerg balls standing at max range firing salvos into each other they turned into trains where the zergs would have a class for group movement buff, a class for group invuln, and a billion eldritch to pbaoe and they would just run through the map never stopping running into everything. And how did they stop this? AE lockdowns with ranged AE.

End result? Still zerg on zerg combat. No one moved out of AE range or scattered.

Daecollo.9578:

Atherakhia.4086:

LordByron.8369:

Atherakhia.4086:

Everyone here knows how meteor shower works.
.

then tell me how people can be concerned of Meteor Shower (so many posts) if they remove cap…..
I read everywhere…MS would be OP.

Btw they should change caps on skills…some should have cap other should not or have more targets….

I’m concerned stacking 10 meteor showers on top of each other would be powerful without an AE cap, but I’m least concerned with that skill. I’m morce concerned with 10 Elementalists using RTL to dart into a zerg at the same time or rolling 10 norn ele’s to stealth into a zerg and fire grabbing. Or the oft mention ranger scenario.

Oh god, could you possible like… Move out of the way of the aoes?
Meteor Storm is SLOW AS HECK… and long too, and the caster has a precise animation when he starts it.

Its one of the easiest abilities in the game to avoid, and to be honest, the ability actually sucks, even with uncapped AEs.

English…. not your first language I presume?

The Rooster.2615:

Atherakhia.4086:

LordByron.8369:

you can stack 10 MS as well today….nobody does…
You have some innate hate for ele it seems….

RTL and firegrab? really .-.

I have an ele… And we stack every AE the Ele has today. I don’t know if you run with 10 eles though.

But think about what RTL does.

It makes you move at 200% speed up to 1200 yards and it hits for about 2k damage to everyone within 300 yards. Have all your Eles in your zerg do this to the enemy zerg and that’s a lot of damage that’s very difficult to anticipate, very difficult to stop, and even more difficult to avoid.

And firegrab I’m not sure why you scoff at. That thing crits for like 10k and is a cone attack. Since Ele elite skills are so awful (we all use greatsword for another escape option), Norn is the best race for them because of cat form. Zergs line up. Your eles cat form. Run into the enemy zerg undetected. Firegrab hitting everyone for 10k ecah.

I’m not sure how many different ways I can say this. That’s the point. Yes your RTL would do a ton of damage if you use it on a [B]ZERG[/B]. This would create large disadvantage to zerging which is exactly what we’re trying to accomplish. You’re basing all of your speculation on the idea that everyone would still clump up in a ball. We’re saying that removing the aoe cap would make it so clumping up in a ball is a terrible idea. That RTL isn’t nearly as powerful if it hits 2 people instead of 5. Or 3 people instead of 10. Makes it a good idea to spread out instead of clump up, don’t you think?

And as I’ve said…. repeatedly…

Removing the cap won’t have the effect you’re thinking it will. Have you played other MMO’s? Games without caps with far better AE options than this still have zerg on zerg. All it does is alienate classes that don’t provide AE (about half of them in this game) and create more specialized zergs (trains in DAoC). We’ve even discussed how things like retaliation would nullify the changes to AE and again, leave us with nothing but zergs.

Increase the cap to 10 on harmful spells.
Leave the cap at 5 for beneficial spells.
Make sure every class has a real spammable AE option.
Introduce null fields to force people to actually move out of AE.

Null Fields are things like the guardian wall would now block line of site through it so you can fire through it but the enemy can’t. Mesmers being able to drop their reflect orbs wherever they please removing LOS to the enemy. Introducing AE’s with AE knockback pulses. Remove the heal from shadow refuge and replace it with a pulsing blind.

Seeing a trend here? This game lacks any kind of real depth to the pvp environment. There’s nothing but damage, damage, and more damage. There’s nothing to discourage people from balling up. The maps are designed in a way to provide no real options but to ball up. There’s no strategy involved in conquering a map (why isn’t it a tiered tower system?!?!?!).

Can’t remove the AE cap until every class has equal power at the AE game.
Can’t remove the AE cap until AE actually follows the typical rules of LOS and barriers.
Can’t remove the AE cap until it will actually have a real impact on the game.

For those of us work blocked, which classes were covered? And are there other related videos to these covering other classes or highlighting some of the better aspects of s/tPvP?

Most of the videos I see are all WvW and they’re all giant seas of red and blue coliding into a giant mass of randomness that no one can follow.

Just remove the downed abilities. If you aren’t ressed in 5 seconds you have bleed to death and it’s over.

LordByron.8369:

you can stack 10 MS as well today….nobody does…
You have some innate hate for ele it seems….

RTL and firegrab? really .-.

I have an ele… And we stack every AE the Ele has today. I don’t know if you run with 10 eles though.

But think about what RTL does.

It makes you move at 200% speed up to 1200 yards and it hits for about 2k damage to everyone within 300 yards. Have all your Eles in your zerg do this to the enemy zerg and that’s a lot of damage that’s very difficult to anticipate, very difficult to stop, and even more difficult to avoid.

And firegrab I’m not sure why you scoff at. That thing crits for like 10k and is a cone attack. Since Ele elite skills are so awful (we all use greatsword for another escape option), Norn is the best race for them because of cat form. Zergs line up. Your eles cat form. Run into the enemy zerg undetected. Firegrab hitting everyone for 10k ecah.

LordByron.8369:

Atherakhia.4086:

Everyone here knows how meteor shower works.
.

then tell me how people can be concerned of Meteor Shower (so many posts) if they remove cap…..
I read everywhere…MS would be OP.

Btw they should change caps on skills…some should have cap other should not or have more targets….

I’m concerned stacking 10 meteor showers on top of each other would be powerful without an AE cap, but I’m least concerned with that skill. I’m morce concerned with 10 Elementalists using RTL to dart into a zerg at the same time or rolling 10 norn ele’s to stealth into a zerg and fire grabbing. Or the oft mention ranger scenario.

LordByron.8369:

@coldtart finally somone that understands how aoe works ._.
Notice how many players don t want aoe cap removal in fear of meteor shower….that displays quite a lack of knowledge….

Everyone here knows how meteor shower works.

It has a large radius where little meteors fall. Each of those little meteors has a very small radius that can AE and hit up to 5 targets for upwards of 2-5k a hit. So yes, the random nature of meteor shower blunts its overall value to the group. Barrage on the other hand (or any other AE in the game really) doesn’t have this.

The other poster mentions arrow carts providing area denial, which they do. But arrow carts do it amazingly well and only hit for 300-400. Barrage on a hunter hits for 1-2k and has the same size AE. And it snares. And it puts up bleed. And it has a 100% chance to crit.

And one must remember that games came out before WoW with AE in it. And even WoW had uncapped AE’s for a long time. Even they decided to cap them.

DAoC had uncapped AEs and they were easily abused with eldritch trains.
Shadowbane had 10 capped AEs and every class had AE’s and everyone was happy.
WoW had uncapped AE’s and Mages would rip through hundreds of people.
WoW capped their AE’s and everyone was happy.

I’m not opposed to raising the cap. Say raise the damaging AE cap to 10 and leave the beneficial AE cap at 5 that way you aren’t left with a stalemate. But removing the cap is a terrible idea.

There’s so much more involved in WvW in this game that is causing zergs to be the goto strategy than just AE’s having a 5 person cap. Some can be fixed (more AE options and more AE utility) and some likely can’t (redesign of the WvW map to have an actual tiered sieging system).

Plague.5329:

Most of the problem is that there’s very little utility in GW2. Everything is just DPS. So when someone does more DPS than you do, there’s no longer any point to using your own way of dealing DPS. Same with builds. Why use one build over another when they’re all just roads to DPS? Just use the one that deals the most.

Skills and overall design just needs to be less obsessed with numbers. Skills need to actively DO things, and those things need to matter far more than the amount of damage they’re dealing.

This is the ultimate problem with this game right here. There simply isn’t any real utility in this game. This is why I feel making boon hate a dispel instead of a passive damage increase is the best option. Even if the class itself isn’t viable, it will still be brought along for its utility. And it’s not just boon hate as he mentioned. There needs to be a lot more skills in this game that provide something other than just damage.

Every class has about 50% of their traits and 75% of their skills which are absolutely useless and are never used. Why not add some secondary effects that don’t play into damage, but rather group utility (either offense or defense) to add some real depth to the PvP system this game has?

Sometimes PvP in this game feels more like 3rd person team fortress than a real action RPG/MMO.

I’d love to hear what this ranger spec is because it’s probably just full clerics with traps and conditions. I simply don’t understand how you can say a class is overpowered when you’ve freely made the choice not to use the tools needed to kill them.

Yes we all realize you’re using other skills more useful for group play. Not a single person on your team can manage to do the same and bring along condition removal? No guardian? No second Mesmer? Nothing? Or do you have these things, but unlike you who are expected to support the group, they aren’t bringing group builds, utility, and support?

This is a problem you and your team need to fix, not Anet.

I don’t know how many different ways you want me to explain the same thing. AE’s don’t have a 5 yard radius. They have a 300 yard radius. Which means they have a 600 yard area to deal damage. In a keep’s courtyard, a single AE of that size can cover 75% of all open land. Fortunately, there’s a 5 player cap so not everyone will be hit running up the ramp to the lord’s room. Your change would make it so everyone under that rather large AE is now being hit by a move that ticks for 1k a second, snares you, applies bleeds, and has a 100% chance to crit. You then multiply by several Rangers and you’re left with an enormous amount of power provided to a relatively small number of people against odds they should have lost against without tactics or skill playing any part in it. All they did was stood on a ledge and targeted the ground.

If you can’t follow it that time then so be it.

Now these are the areas that an AE without a cap has:

1.) It provides enormous power to a very small number of classes because so few classes actually have any real AE option.

2.) It doesn’t resolve anything because zergs will still ball up regardless. All it does it shift balance from a specific set of classes to another.

3.) It opens up the game to even more abuse because some AE’s ignore LOS, others aren’t counterable (RTL), others provide too many side effects.

The issue right now is how the amount of boons, blast heals, and things of that nature nullify a lot of the effects of AE in this game. Why not propose something reasonable like increase the AE cap to 10 but leave the beneficial boons/blasts to 5? This way more weight is placed on the offensive side of things instead of equal weight on offense and defense?

Why not simply introduce more AE into the game? Why not AE that actually has a real impact on a zerg? Like give thieves a shadow field skill that pulses every second blinding up to 5 targets? Why not give Warriors a move that spawns a tornado that doesn’t move and pulses once a second knocking up to 5 targets 300 yards away? Why not make Mesmers reflect actually affect enemy AE so people under the AE can only cast AE’s in the circle of influence and if they cast, it actually hurts allies? Why can’t Rangers get an explosive collar and send their pets darting into the zerg to explode into a horrendou ball of blood and fur?

It just feels like the people who suggest removing the AE cap don’t have a real grasp on just how many different AE’s there are, how they can be used, and how few classes actually have them.