Guild Wars 2

Roaming or zerging?^^

Reflects (damage + defense) and Time Warp (more damage) are probably the 2 main reasons why people like Mesmers in dungeon groups. Signet of Inspiration is extremely useful and with a decent build the damage is really high as well.

I’m not sure what your asking for tbh since you don’t need anything but damage + reflects (and sometimes stealth which the Mesmer offers too) to run any dungeon in the game.

Run to the next tower, cap it, spam /laugh until Mesmer arrives. Repeat.

If you post your build and explain what usually happens during a fight it would be easier to give you proper advice.

madamred.1463:

Well I have my game a downloading. I have my thumbs a twiddling now what should I make? I have been struggling between Elementalist and Necromancer for awhile now and I just can’t pick. Are Elementalist good for those who have no idea how to play? Or is there a better class for those who have never attempted this sort of game before?

The elementalist is one of the most challenging professions in the game, if not the most challenging. If you like that go ahead and try it (you can always create a new char). Keep in mind that you need to press a lot of buttons compared to other professions to be effective.

I’m not a huge necro fan tbh since they feel very slow imo. It’s nice for some relaxed PvE or WvW though.

I would try both for like 1h and decide then.

We had a lot of those suggestion threads for months (even since release) but for some reason eles are never balanced. They’re either “OP” or “UP”, meta-defining or free loot. Balanced ele? Probably not in this game unless Anet decides to make some huge changes.

takatsu.9416:

Mass Invisibility is ten and Time Warp is only five, from what I recall of what I’ve read from official sources. If my memory is correct lol

^

Most AoEs hit up to 5 targets unless it’s stated otherwise in the tooltips or wiki (e.g. Mass Invisibility or Meteor Shower).

The bigger the fight, the worse is a Ranger compared to other professions.

If played well a Ranger can beat pretty much anything in a 1v1 (except for very few builds) but he is pretty useless in a zerg. Why pick a Ranger for a zerg when you can have an ele instead. They do all the things Rangers can and even more.

Don’t forget Radiation Field. It’s really good if placed properly.

Cufufalating.8479:

It is OP.

In 1v1 its fine, infact its pretty bad, because people can see and dodge attacks.
In small scale team fights its fine, because people can see and dodge attacks.

In zerg fights its insane, because all you need to do it spam more warriors to get perma-stun, huge damage, endless blast finishers, and that is pretty much all thats involved.

^
Although the damage nerf seems weird to me. The amount of CC is the bigger problem imo.

Dayra.7405:

There is definitely a strong rivalry between the german servers in EU. Relative Ranking between Elona, Kodash and Riverside is definite more important to each of them than absolute rank in EU, especially now that Elona lost the dominance it had for a year.

True. It’s even worse now since all 3 servers were about equally strong this season. Greetings from Riverside.

Nice video. Makes me want to play my Mesmer again.

I think I remember playing against you btw. If you ever happened to 1 shot a poor staff Ele (red/black Asura), that was probably me. xD

Keep up the good work and greetings from Riverside!

The winning world in each league will unlock a stack of supply dolyak finishers for their use in WvW and PvP. 1st place in the gold league will get a gold dolyak, 1st place in the silver league a silver dolyak, and 1st place in the bronze league a bronze dolyak.

The winning world in each league will unlock a stack of supply dolyak finishers for their use in WvW and PvP. 1st place in the gold league will get a gold dolyak, 1st place in the silver league a silver dolyak, and 1st place in the bronze league a bronze dolyak.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/welcome-to-world-vs-world-season-1/

I think it’s quite funny that people expected or demand a better reward now.

What about the title + minipet?

Yes, if most of them can be achieved by simply playing WvW instead of doing the same thing over and over again (aka farming).

They realized that the season was far from balanced and they don’t more players to stack on winning servers because of rewards would be my guess. But besides that, people also forget the rewards (bags + karma & gold for capping) they got for multiple weeks because they played on winning servers.

Don’t get me wrong, it probably was a lot of work to win but asking for more rewards because you won an unbalanced tournament is just a big f… you for smaller servers who had to play against you for the last few weeks.

Tbh I’m glad there were no big rewards.

Imagine season 2:
Even more people joining the biggest servers, dead bottom tier servers, more zerging, more 2v1s and so on. Giving out awesome rewards now is just a big f… you to small servers which are already in a bad spot because of the current system.

Once WvW is balanced there should be big rewards. Until then small ones is the best way to do it.

P.S. The Mini Dolyak is permanent. * Kappa *

Interesting ideas.

Should the res be disabled all the time or only in certain situations (e.g. if 20+ allies are within 1000 range) is also something which should be considered. And what about Rally? Would it stay unaffected?

Skynet.7201:

Blackhat.4016:

The question is:

Who is going to buy all those super awesome (and not totally overpriced) Instant Trait Resets then?

I was hoping it would be the same price as going to the retrainer, but with an on-the-go option.

Or… maybe a one-time payment to buy the retrait ability.

I don’t know, but retraiting is a pain. Maybe with some input from others, we could brainstorm a good and new way to do retraiting instead of waypointing around to the trainer.

I was only joking. People asked for this since release and AFAIK we never got an answer.

thefirstlazydude.2408:

The problem about this possible solution is that the more elitist servers will only allow their best guilds to fight during certain time zones. This will severely discourage PuGs and new players from playing WvW.

For example, if a server knows it is weak during SEA, then it will try to only allow best guilds in during that time because those guilds will be able to get more PPT then a militia at that time.

How will servers keep PuGs from playing?
For starters commanders won’t turn their tags on to allow PuGs to easily follow their group (already done by some elitist guilds). They might use server TS or other voice coms and only communicate with their guild. They could allow PuGs to die and grief them so they will stop playing WvW during those times. Many other ways that I probably don’t even know about.

Good point and to be honest, I can’t think of a solution for that problem if it would occur. It already somewhat happens right now which is just sad.

The question is:

Who is going to buy all those super awesome (and not totally overpriced) Instant Trait Resets then?

Hopefully those tweaks finally bring some balance to WvW (although I highly doubt it). The current situation is just a sad joke.

Latinkuro.9420 basically explained it. If you want to get better Youtube is a good choice. Otherwise ask commanders/guilds to help you. Always worked on my server.

If minor traits count as well: Zephyr’s Speed.
It literally does nothing since you have Swiftness all the time.

Weapons? Idk. They’re all somewhat useful in certain situations although some of them are pretty bad.

Easy ones imo:

Big Spender
Camp Crusher
Castles in the Air
Sapphire Leaper in the Mists
The Keep Is the Thing
Mists Invasion Defender
Advanced Mists Invasion Defender
World Ranker
Master of Ruins
No Tower Too High
Demolition Expert
Seasonal Mists Defense Restorer
Obsidian Leaper in the Mists
Emerald Leaper in the Mists
Garnet Leaper in the Mists

If you really play like a madman it should be possible. It’s easier during the weekend though.

Let’s hope they introduce some kind of balancing system before season 2 starts. It always sucks if you have to wait at least 1 week until you have a fair match again.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/WvW_Season_1_Reward_Chest_Key

WvW Season 1 Reward Chest Key
This key will unlock one WvW Season 1 Reward Chest containing rewards based on your server’s performance in the previous season.
WvW Season Reward Chests are awarded at the end of a WvW season to all players who achieved the meta-achievement for the season.

=> You won’t get any rewards

Don’t worry though, you can easily get the key within a few days (got mine within 2 days).

I play my ele in WvW all the time since you can do pretty much anything.

Roaming works although it’s difficult (but since you have a Mesmer for that it should be ok). Zerg frontline works if you build tanky but zerg backline is the most fun. Imo ele is probably the best zerg backline profession right now since you provide everything a zerg needs, CC, boons, most combo fields and high AoE damage.

If you like switching attunements ele is a good choice.

Johje Holan.4607:

MithranArkanere.8957:

For balanced matches, there’s PvP.

Everyone who says this clearly doesn’t get it. (I’m not picking on you specifically, lots of people have posted this sentiment on the forums.)

^

Berk.8561:

Blackhat.4016:

1. Check the amount of players every minute for each server (15 per tick)

I think the rolling average period needs to be longer than 15 minutes and should probably be in the 30 to 60 minute range. I also think the effective population count should be the greater of either the rolling average or the current population. The idea is that a server should not be able to get a benefit by either quickly dropping it’s population or by quickly increasing it. A longer rolling average period would reduce the benefit of quickly dropping in population and using the greater of the average or current population would eliminate the benefit of quickly increasing in population.

Good point. I didn’t think about increasing it to 30 or 60 mins.

Here are 2 more links which I think are interesting:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Collaborative-Development-World-Population/first
(sadly closed)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Keep-the-positive-momentum
(the “Server Populations” part)

Thanks everyone for all the feedback.

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

They don’t want WvWers spending money on the game. That’s why they disabled town clothes completely, because they hate selling things to WvW players.

And I thought because players would exploit those items. Silly me. And did they also disabled finishers yet? And what about Unlimited Gathering Tools, skins and items like the Flute?

For PvP and roaming in WvW I can see Clerics being very useful but other than that I would never use it. For zerging I use Celestial or Berserker’s and for PvE (including FotM 40+) only Berserker’s. Healing Power for zerging/PvE is not a good choice imo.

MasterMc.7543 already mentioned all the ideas I had.
+1 for all of them.

RiWiJo.7502:

Your idea might work if it is based on a 5 to15 minute tic, and if it is based on the total population currently in WvW for each server at each tic.

That’s exactly what I was trying to say. My first post simply wasn’t good enough to explain it.

My answers afterwards should make it more clear though:

“1 Tick = 15 mins
Check amount of players every minute, add up and divide by 15”

“The formula would be something like this:
For server 1
(server 1 + server 2 + server 3)/server 1 * camps * points”

I hope this is a better explanation.

Straegen.2938:

“Fixing” the score doesn’t solve the crappy fights. Most players want fights that are fun. The current score system is just an indicator to how out of balance the fighting is.

Simply put, I don’t care if I am ticking more points if I am getting run over by 3 to 4 times the number of players.

That’s indeed a good point but I think if the score is somewhat even players will stay and fight instead of ignoring WvW for the rest of the week. This is what usually happens on the other 2 servers if they have a bigger server playing against them:

Reset = All 3 servers are about equal
1 day = Server 1 is slightly ahead in points
2 day = Server 1 has a bigger advantage now
3 day = most people start ignoring WvW for the rest of the week

The system might prevent this since the fight would be closer after reset day. No more “the other server has more players” since you actually have a decent chance to win the match even if the enemy has more players.

I might be wrong but imo it’s worth a try.

Mireles Lore.5942:

Blackhat.4016:

Mireles Lore.5942:

Horrible idea, it does not even account for a 3 team system.

Lets entertain this idea like server population is WvW population, because there are very few servers that would not be able to fill WvW queues if they all participated at any given time.

So what happens when server 1 has 1000 players, server 2 has 500, and server 3, has 250?

They tick at 1x, 2x, and 4x? Do you not realize server 1 would have to own nearly all the map to keep even with server 3, not even accounting for server 2 being there as well? It just doesn’t work mathematically and is not in the interest of fairness when one team scores count more than the others. It pretty much requires big servers to control much much much more of the map than normal.

Putting servers that have guilds and leaders that put in the effort to make their server competitive to attract more people at a severe disadvantage is not “balancing” or “fixing”.

You are pretty much asking Anet to nanny small, low participation servers into competitiveness. Who is going to want to play in a highly fixed game where you are punished for the success of attracting people to your server?

If WvW is important to you, you need to move to a server where it is viewed as important. Not every server will be WvW competitive, its not realistic as not everyone participates and it is one area in a very big game.

The game rules need to stay the same for everyone, and need not to nanny servers that don’t participate. You have to play to win, if your server is not playing you wont win…. simple concept.

Why shouldn’t it work for a 3 team system? You just gave a good example of how it would work with 3 teams.

If 1 server has more players than the other 2 combined you probably already control the majority of the map. And this is where the system would help. Instead of punishing small servers (because they have less WvW players) it would help them to stay on a competitive level instead of both servers being completely stomped. Big servers would need to cap and defend more to stay ahead instead of steamrolling camps over and over again. The match would be more interesting and not one-sided anymore.

You call it unfair for big servers, I call it fair for both small and big. The rules would be the same for everyone. Currently there is only an advantage for the big servers which isn’t fair.

Btw I’m playing on a high participation server as well (Gold league EU) but even there it’s not balanced at all.

It isnt fair, because one server puts in more effort for a win than smaller servers…. IE if server 3 has 1/5th of the map server 1 must hold 4/5th while competently snubbing out two opponents JUST TO STAY TIED. That isnt balanced thats rigged.

To fit your definition of fairness lets just reward all servers with 1st place trophies and only make objectives able to be captured when its the servers turn to have them…. you know for fairness. Gawd forbid any server have any self created competitive edge over other servers, because you know, thats not fair.

Lets do the same thing to football… if one team is 0-5 and the other team is 5-0… the 0-5 teams touch downs should count for double… because you know to make it fair because the other team is obviously to good to be allowed to compete un-hindered.

Having more players doesn’t equal being better at the game which means your whole post doesn’t make any sense. If you consider having more players means you’re also better then you would be right.

It seems like you’re more interested in the actual formula though:

The formula would be something like this:
For server 1
(server 1 + server 2 + server 3)/server 1 * camps * points

Server 1 has ~58% of the total WvW population, server 2 ~28% and server 3 has ~14%.

=> 58/28 = ~2 which means server 1 needs 2x camps to stay tied with server 2
=> 58/14 = ~4 which means server 1 needs 4x camps to stay tied with server 3

14 camps in total (to keep it simple)
Server 1 needs 8 camps to stay tied
Server 2 needs 4 camps to stay tied
Server 3 needs 2 camp to stay tied

Considering server 1 has more than 50% of all WvW player this seems fair to me.

Mireles Lore.5942:

Horrible idea, it does not even account for a 3 team system.

Lets entertain this idea like server population is WvW population, because there are very few servers that would not be able to fill WvW queues if they all participated at any given time.

So what happens when server 1 has 1000 players, server 2 has 500, and server 3, has 250?

They tick at 1x, 2x, and 4x? Do you not realize server 1 would have to own nearly all the map to keep even with server 3, not even accounting for server 2 being there as well? It just doesn’t work mathematically and is not in the interest of fairness when one team scores count more than the others. It pretty much requires big servers to control much much much more of the map than normal.

Putting servers that have guilds and leaders that put in the effort to make their server competitive to attract more people at a severe disadvantage is not “balancing” or “fixing”.

You are pretty much asking Anet to nanny small, low participation servers into competitiveness. Who is going to want to play in a highly fixed game where you are punished for the success of attracting people to your server?

If WvW is important to you, you need to move to a server where it is viewed as important. Not every server will be WvW competitive, its not realistic as not everyone participates and it is one area in a very big game.

The game rules need to stay the same for everyone, and need not to nanny servers that don’t participate. You have to play to win, if your server is not playing you wont win…. simple concept.

Why shouldn’t it work for a 3 team system? You just gave a good example of how it would work with 3 teams.

If 1 server has more players than the other 2 combined you probably already control the majority of the map. And this is where the system would help. Instead of punishing small servers (because they have less WvW players) it would help them to stay on a competitive level instead of both servers being completely stomped. Big servers would need to cap and defend more to stay ahead instead of steamrolling camps over and over again. The match would be more interesting and not one-sided anymore.

You call it unfair for big servers, I call it fair for both small and big. The rules would be the same for everyone. Currently there is only an advantage for the big servers which isn’t fair.

Btw I’m playing on a high participation server as well (Gold league EU) but even there it’s not balanced at all.

@Svarty.8019
Forgot to mention that.
1 Tick = 15 mins
Check amount of players every minute, add up and divide by 15. If a big guild leaves at minute 14 they can only use 1 out of 15 minutes to their advantage which means it would be more effective to keep playing. I don’t see any overnight problems. They would still dominate during primetime (although the difference would be less) and would get some extra points during the night.

@foggy.2856
So far I couldn’t think of any huge exploits. If there is any way to get an advantage the system could be changed in the future. It’s definitely better than the current one imo.

First of all this is not supposed to be a QQ thread. Congratulations to all the winning servers. You played well and thus you deserve to win.

Anyway, I think most people will agree that this season was extremely unbalanced. Imo the main reason for this were high population servers playing against small servers.

Population imbalance usually means the bigger server has 2x your War score after a few days which means there is barely any reason to fight for the rest of the week. Small servers (which is the majority of servers) are frustrated, less players will play, bigger servers have no competition and are bored.

Coming from Gold league [EU] there were only 2 different situations after a few weeks:

• Our server stomping the other 2 because we have more players
  or
• Our server being stomped by a bigger server

Here is an easy solution though:

Make the points per tick dependent on the average amount of players per server.

Here is a short example:

Server 1:
100 players
10 camps
=> 50 points

Server 2:
50 players
10 camps
=> 100 points

Bigger servers will need to split their zergs to be more effective at capping while small servers still get enough points per tick to stay competitive for the whole week. Small group roaming might become more popular as well.

I think this solution would help WvW to be more balanced.

What do you think about this solution? Would you support it or do you think there might be some problems?

[Short edit for those who are interested in the implementation]

3 Servers
1 Tick = 15 mins

1. Check the amount of players every minute for each server (15 per tick)
2. Add up all those numbers
3. Divide by 15

Formula for server 1:

(server 1 + server 2 + server 3)/server 1 * camps * points

For server 2 and 3 you only need to change the numbers for the 2nd “server 1”. Formula can be extended for towers etc.

Daecollo.9578

I wonder what he’s doing now since he doesn’t post his daily amount of suggestions anymore…

volfie.3671:

Very nice videos, piece of good ele play
Thanks for sharing, it was very fun to watch them.

Im 30/30/0/10/0 with full zerk gear and got similar damage like you but…
my ele got lower hp than your’s and overall lower survivability. Thats why I’m also interested in your build and gear, if you dont mind.

Don’t forget he also has Applied Fortitude and Borderlands Bloodlust.

@Lasiurus.4067
Why do you use Signet of Earth? I use a similar build but I don’t really understand why you prefer this skill.

I really enjoyed the videos and playing against you btw! Greetings from Riverside!

Works for WvW too btw. Just stay in the back and watch the enemy zerg melt.

Mochann.5298:

Blackhat.4016:

20k Meteor Shower? Maybe against low level players without any armor but other than that I don’t think it’s possible. If you could post those videos/screenshots we might be able to help you.

Well here’s a video I saw in YouTube. I’m at work right now so I didn’t view the vid, but this is probably the same vid I saw before:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vx0G8L-VS3M

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&ved=0CD0QtwIwAg&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dvx0G8L-VS3M&ei=QJCXUrRgxZe0BvzvgLgD&usg=AFQjCNHSd3CRJnORWQa2PO42hTehyKdgeQ&bvm=bv.57155469,d.Yms

Someone also posted a screenshot here in this forum, can’t find it right now though. The Ele was fighting the COE P3 boss in the lava pit, was getting 7k Lava Font ticks.

Here is the build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQFAWhImIbmR5QlEAkCoEecABJIUYBElCxA-j0xAY/gQFCSyrIasF3ioxqrxUuER127ioVLFQELjA-w

VI, VII and XII for the fire traits should be slightly better though (5% less damage for -20% CD).

It’s the basic high DPS staff build. You hit hard but you also die fast.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Enduring_Damage_%28elementalist%29

You can’t use all those traits at the same time anyway. You would need 25 Fire, 30 Air, 25 Earth and 10 Water.

20k Meteor Shower? Maybe against low level players without any armor but other than that I don’t think it’s possible. If you could post those videos/screenshots we might be able to help you.

Although I think Vizunah deserves to be first (they always played well against my server) they should feel how it’s like to play against 2 servers at the same time. Give them a little taste of their own medicine.

Did you try P/P yet? It’s not the best weapon set for WvW but it’s easy to play and works fine in most cases.

If you like the weapons I’m sure people will be able to send a decent build.

Vizunah Square – Free bags day (French) and night (Canadian).

But seriously, even though I didn’t like how they cooperated with certain servers (even some guilds from my server) they were still pretty dominant and it was always fun fighting against them.

sofired.6071:

To emphasise how bad its got its pretty much peaktime in the EU, a handful of us left playing take a camp in EB nearest our wp, set up a ram, go to resup and theres already a zerg there waiting on the camp timer and then wipe out the tower attack. It’s crappy for us but it cant be much fun for the dominating server who are just feeding off scraps after the initial reset day frenzy.

And I thought the match up for my server was bad… This is just terrible.

You can’t really do anything against servers cooperating or guilds moving to bigger servers but some kind of balance for WvW would be nice. So far the biggest blob wins.

Just got an answer too. Hope to get my gems soon!

No answer from the support since 3 days. :/

Guess I will wait another week since I don’t have the time to play anyway.