Guild Wars 2

morrolan.9608:

(although how much of that is k training in dead timezones like YB used to do)

Considering that DK’s been back….

Trying to say it as simple as possible…

Condition builds generally require investment into only one stat, condition dmg, to be effective. Power builds require investment into three stats to be effective: power, precision, and ferocity. So a condition user can usually invest into more defensive stats that are easy counters for direct damage while the power user has to rely upon condition cleanses and dodges to counter condition damage (it ignores armor). That translates into power builds being of higher risk to play than condition builds. So condition builds are considered to be easier to win with than power builds.

Go ahead and play whatever you want though. Condition builds are usually found more amongst roaming and small man havoc rather than in large zergs because zergs usually have enough condi-cleanse to go around for everyone and make conditions ineffective (still effective on players squirreling off from their zerg). Play to be effective in what you’re doing.

WvW is already in PTR state.

CommonSense.4697:

well you can combat server stacking with the rewards being the same for 1st regardless of Tier?

No. It isn’t tier-dependent. The first place server in any tier typically has more population and coverage than the third place server. Look at T4 NA if you need an example.

rewards may encourage people who PvE to join WvW. lets face is you basically bleed gold in WvW and in PvE (im looking at you Auric Basin) you bath in it!

Auric Basin and the multi-map squads are a perfect example of the kind of organization players will do for increased rewards that we do not need in WvW. Rewards from killing other players was purposely made poor because increasing it meant players could simply organize for kill trading. The same goes for rewards from winning matches, players can simply stack on the winning server of a tier for profit. That was the whole point of adding reward tracks – to find a way to provide better rewards for players without having an oversized effect on the actual PvP.

CommonSense.4697:

What im suggesting is why doesnt ANET do some calculation and how you get rewarded base on participation why not do that for overall score.

Because players can simply transfer to the highest population server to get rewarded for coming in first. That’s why it isn’t done.

I was wondering that too. Thought volatility and deviation were going to be reset every time servers were relinked.

Navi.9308:

These types of changes could also bring back small groups that harass enemies and mess with supply distribution.

Sorry I misread.

Easing up defense would help, but I’m also not entirely convinced it would bring back small groups to do those kinds of things. Getting a small group together requires players willing to organize them. The incentives to do that aren’t really there and multiple things conspire against that. It is difficult to recruit for WvW. HoT guild upgrades hit smaller guilds hard. Small group combat in WvW is not in a good place. Etc.

“Keep defense needs to be returned”

Please no. Poor objective offense/defense balance is a big contributor to blobs. It used to be that a 5 man squad could work on taking a tower against 2 defenders reasonably. Then they buffed the damage on arrow carts. Then they added siege disablers. Then they added the desert bl and dragonbanners that could one-shot siege because everyone who defends cried about blobs and Anet tried to appease them. Now you need a 10 man squad who can carry more supply to take it against those 2 defenders. And then everyone wonders where all the smaller groups went…

Gavyne’s #4 nails it. Though I’ll add, he may say it is due to PvE-centric players, but I see a lot of WvW players too basically going casual. That’s a major reason why these guilds are “a shadow of their former selves”. It is far more attractive to transfer up and join a pug blob for casual play than it is to work on builds and synergy with a new group trying to fight those blobs. But who can blame us having played the same content for so long?

Hayate.1507:

Jeknar.6184:

Hayate.1507:

Serious question here…

3 weeks ago DB, BG and JQ in T1, DB wins, BG in second JQ in 3rd

2 weeks ago DB gets knocked from FIRST place in T1 into T2, BG, JQ stay T1 and TC moves up

Last week BG wins, JQ in second and TC in 3rd

But now, JQ has a score higher an TC but is in T2 with no pairing and TC(who has a pairing) is in T1 against DB and BG…

What exactly is going on with scoring? Are you guys just throwing darts at a board to figure out T1? Or is TC cozying up with the right people?

It really makes no sense to me what so ever and I would really appreciate an explanation.

It still early to call this week scores… The matches pretty much just reseted. Give it a day or two before jumping unto conclusion. I’m pretty sure TC still cannot compete with BG.

At no point did I say anything about this weeks scores, I’m wondering about the fact that TC consistently places low and their current ranking score according to the GW2 Leaderboards shows TC scored below JQ which earned them a paired server, yet they are in T1 instead of JQ.

Here. This link may help you to understand the current WvW match-making system and how a server’s glicko rating is different from its match-making rating and why a rank 1 server can roll a match into T2 despite “winning” the week:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/big-changes-coming-to-wvw-matchups/

Check out GW2BLTC.

The site suggests it will cost you ~100g more to buy the precursor over crafting it so you wouldn’t be saving a whole lot.

https://www.gw2bltc.com/en/item/29169-Dawn

YB will almost certainly be linked to another server. Anet seems to base links on population statistics. Considering that YB is still showing as Very High, I would assume they get linked with a server that has rather low population.

The problem with the laser event was how mandatory it felt because it was such a powerful mechanic. The old quaggans, bloodlust, and capping SMC never seemed to have the same “we need to do it” feel as the laser event.

Server relinks are supposed to happen tomorrow which “normally” includes a reset of glicko volatility and deviation.

Amaranth.2517:

Now Anet went the wrong way again. Community told that population imbalance and scoring (especcialy nigthcapping) are core issues that should be addressed as soon as possible, but Anet went to "do you want cosmetic updates?

I don’t know about you, but I voted on scoring issues with the understanding that it would take several months of development time, especially the big part about skirmishes time-sliced activity levels. And some of the low-hanging fruit that we voted on has already been implemented such as reducing the tick timer and adding points for capture. That’s in addition to other changes like PPK, changing the rally mechanic and double-downed state, reward tracks, etc. And don’t forget that the whole idea behind server links was a “do it now” attempt to help out with population issues.

X T D.6458:

The boonstacking is completely out of control and does need to be addressed by appropriate limiting of how many sources of each boon you can stack. Perma stacking of every boon just promotes a lot of passive gameplay which unfortunately seems to be anets pattern since hot. But expecting balance…well I wont hold my breath…power creep, ridiculous condi spam and disgusting siege wars that wvw has become. Maybe they will nerf swiftness or a rune that was bad for pvp esports and call it a day.

Balance in WvW isn’t a pie in the sky concept. Anet has been building up the core competency of the architecture, first with the separation of WvW and PvE values for retaliation and confusion, then with PvP and PvE skills. As a forward-looking company, Anet has been reaching out to fully leverage the existing customer base for the ideation process. Even with lots of moving parts, this crowdsourcing enables improved buy-in of future iterations, which facilitate more accurate sales projections.

So it is not unrealistic to cheer lead for balance of WvW skills. It may seem like boiling an ocean, which is why we start with concrete deliverables such as getting quickness stacking fixed.

About time this issue is aired out. I agree 100%. Here’s hoping Anet can make this a priority action item for the balance team. I’d like to see this cake get baked.

Kro,

OP is on DB. See his screenshot? He’s green.

DB had roughly a 54% chance to roll a match other than DB/BG/JQ. The days of glicko locking T1 are over.

Has nothing to do with rangers. It’s a general issue. You could be right next to something and can’t hit it.

Or another possibility is that some traps were pre-placed and didn’t get triggered before the cooldown on the skills was done so the guardian was able to overlay traps.

Reverence.6915:

Jon Olson.8439:

There is already a highlight around your own tile in the squad panel.

No.

Is this anything like your party being a lighter blue than the squad blue?

Sounds boring TBH.

It’s a bug introduced after they fixed the rendering issue on walls. Seen it too and the person it happened to had no idea what was going on at first.

anduriell.6280:

apharma.3741:

A mesmer does boonshare if you run that, portal or veil and then generally has poor options for getting lootbags. This ties to what I and others have said, classes with pet mechanics suffer from lower coefficients and do a lot less damage in zergs vs equivalent specs on other classes.

actually it’s not that bad with the chrono. Lately i’m seeing a lot of Well chronos reking zergs when they drop the elite and calamity at the same spot twice in a row. Chrono is the lowest dps but you only need 18k dps to instakill an average player.

And getting the commander to give you squad participation helps too.

apharma.3741:

Chaba.5410:

apharma.3741:

Chaba.5410:

Heh whut? No other class provides veil, portal, and alacrity. You don’t bring a mesmer to a group for their damage.

That’s the point everyone is making -.-

Also lol @ alacrity, no-one brings a mesmer for that even in PvE.

Oh really now? What PvE are you playing?

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Chronomancer_-_Utility_DPS_

Also, I feel like you really didn’t read what I originally wrote and are arguing against something someone else said.

I wrote that ranger becomes less effective the larger a group gets. Someone else pointed out that it is due to the damage being split between them and their pet. I agreed with that person. Then mesmer was brought up as also having damage split.

The point is that mesmer brings utilities to a large group that ranger can’t. Mesmer’s effectiveness is not measured by damage output alone. Ranger can’t compete in that regard.

I stand by the alacrity comment, the mesmer is there for quickness not alacrity, it’s a nice bonus but if it was worth having vs anything else there would be 2 to ensure 100% uptime of alacrity. In WvW alacrity is so hilariously pointless to keep up it’s a bad joke to even mention it as utility.

I agree Portal and veil (only using one because life sucks for the mesmer if running both) are unparalleled utilities in strength when used right and a massive own goal when used wrongly. That doesn’t mean druid is devoid of excellent aspect of its own nor does it forgive both classes being at the mercy of low coefficients and horrible pet mechanics. Druid/ranger also does far better than mesmer in actual combat when numbers scale up but neither is in a great spot for that.

Now you’re simply nit-picking for no apparent reason. Mesmer is the best class at providing quickness for a group too. Here’s the WvW meta build for mesmer, which also takes alacrity trait: http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Chronomancer_-_Boonshare

The fact remains that of the pet classes with lowered dmg coefficients, mesmer is favored over druid in the current WvW zerg group composition for their utility and that isn’t going to change for the foreseeable future.

apharma.3741:

Chaba.5410:

Heh whut? No other class provides veil, portal, and alacrity. You don’t bring a mesmer to a group for their damage.

That’s the point everyone is making -.-

Also lol @ alacrity, no-one brings a mesmer for that even in PvE.

Oh really now? What PvE are you playing?

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Chronomancer_-_Utility_DPS_

Also, I feel like you really didn’t read what I originally wrote and are arguing against something someone else said.

I wrote that ranger becomes less effective the larger a group gets. Someone else pointed out that it is due to the damage being split between them and their pet. I agreed with that person. Then mesmer was brought up as also having damage split.

The point is that mesmer brings utilities to a large group that ranger can’t. Mesmer’s effectiveness is not measured by damage output alone. Ranger can’t compete in that regard.

Heh whut? No other class provides veil, portal, and alacrity. You don’t bring a mesmer to a zerg for their damage, not since Confusion was nerfed ages ago. Ranger doesn’t have that kind of group utility to justify overlooking their pet issue.

Well, I can’t blame him for the frustration after playing WvW so much and building up all that WvW currency only to not be able to use it. The game mode gets stale. Imagine doing map completion 10×.

apharma.3741:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Jana.6831:

Jim Hunter.6821:

I’m sorry but you’re wrong. You seem to be under the impression a ranger has to run a longbow, our melee weapons cleave and our staff isn’t blocked by all the projectile hate.
If our weapons scaled properly and our pets received aoe damage/cc reduction we could run frontline melee and bring some decent support to the group.
Dropping 10k+ mauls on 5 players every 5 seconds while providing heals, condi clear, group stun break, and cc would be enough that rangers wouldn’t be shunned from zergs.

Ranger was my first main, I have at least an idea how the class works, never tried staff though, but every other set. LB and SB are more or less single target – your melee weapons aren’t and you would have traps. I don’t get how weapons don’t scale properly because of your pet – don’t they scale just the same no matter whether or not your pet is alive or dead? If you run melee and have some friendly guards, you’d do enough damage, have your pet always near and that should work – right now without any further buffs.

Rangers have lower power coefficients and base numbers on their power weapons to account for the pet. Even if we somehow miraculously keep them alive in a zerg fight we deal less damage because pets don’t cleave, they were never given the 10%ish more damage that everyone gets when they upgrade to ascended gear, they don’t receive the benefits of our food/utility buffs, they don’t even get boons like might unless we run nature magic.

So even if the pets live a skill like maul is doing half of the damage it should be because of the pet tax.

Mesmer phantasm problems too, at least they only tax you 30% instead of 50% like they do mesmers.

Mesmer is a group utility class in zergs. Always been like that for them too. Ranger doesn’t provide as much group utility.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Honestly the biggest issue more than anything else is rangers lack damage in zerg fights because we have a damage tax imposed on us because our pets are supposed to make up a percentage of it. Our pets don’t cleave, don’t share in our buffs (they can get our boons if we sacrifice an entire traitline but they still won’t get boosted stats from ascended gear or food/utility), and a ton of our traits are tied into our pets which spend the majority of the time dead in zerg fights.

Yep, that was one of my points…

“They may be right if they are complaining about numbers because ranger is not a zerging class. The more numbers there are, the less effective ranger becomes. Game has always been like that.”

Honestly, here’s the other thing about it… Joining a commander’s squad has been in the game since launch, but no one ever really joined because it wasn’t necessary. In a lot of ways it still isn’t necessary. Why are players getting upset if they are not in a squad? Squads are for group comps and party boon sharing priority, something that guilds have been asking for.

Attuning a ring isn’t really a grind. You just need to get the second fractals mastery then buy Agonized Essence for 24s. The other mats are bought from Miyani or TP.

A week ago I logged into one of my accounts and followed a guy leading pugs. His group was about 20-25 and there were no specific guild tags making up the core. It was purely pugs. I kept clicking on other players to see what class they were playing. No one was playing a ranger or druid. I found only one thief. Everyone was either a rev, necro, guardian, hammer/gs berserker, tempest, or boonshare mesmer. They were tearing through the opposing pug zerg.

The next day I tagged up myself in EBG on my other account. I invited pugs into my squad. There was an entire party full of thieves. A few players were on druid. We only had one guardian and one revenant, maybe one or two warriors, the rest were necros and tempests. We put up a fight but could never really push the opposing pug zerg and put the hurt them.

The difference in performance because of group composition is like night and day. Players want to blame numbers or they want to blame the commander’s driving, but they never seem to look at group composition. They may be right if they are complaining about numbers because ranger is not a zerging class. The more numbers there are, the less effective ranger becomes. Game has always been like that.

Last night in some blob on blob three-way SMC fights, I saw a dude on ranger who had gotten upset the night before that he was kicked out of another guild’s squad. The thing is, every time we ran through the lord’s room, I noticed the guy was dead on the floor. I don’t understand how being dead constantly can be fun if you are playing for fun.

People say play whatever you want, have fun, it is just a game. How is being dead constantly fun? It is a serious question. You have to respawn and run back to the fight constantly and you miss out on getting loot. Most players I know who are really good at ranger play it because they love playing the role ranger is suited for. They love roaming on a borderland and picking off other roamers and havocking and scouting and trying to solo tower lords.

ArchonWing.9480:

Out of curiosity, what happened to the W?

More like w now.

Jeknar.6184:

Chaba.5410:

I suggest you tag up in those situations.

But he said he don’t care.

They’ll probably care when WvW is dead because no one tags. They play for fun. Where is the fun then? I’m sure they’ll leave game because it will not be fun anymore.

HoneyBadger.5691:

Then don’t tag, I and many others could care less.

I think a lot of people do care. It is no fun to get on a map and there is no tag and your server starts losing people because there is no one to follow. Servers lose players that way and pug morale goes down. I suggest you tag up in those situations.

I don’t understand this event. Just ran around for 30 minutes killing moa on Snowden Drifts only to have the detector no longer show anything.

PPK is not KDR. The point of having PPK is to gain points from kills. The amount of deaths have no bearing on that. If your players are not getting kills, it is time to ask why. Since blobbing smaller groups is one of the ways to get kills, as is tagging or finishing downs made by another server, it means PPK can never be a measure of skill.

As for KDR, if players are getting chicken about fighting or not fighting unless they are blobbed together, it is from worry about the deaths stat, not kills. A guild may lose a few players and retreat from a fight so as to prevent deaths from occurring even though they basically lost the fight.

Servers that are first place in their match and do not have the highest KDR should look at the skill level of their players. Servers that are last in their match and have the lowest KDR clearly are getting blobbed.

I don’t know about that. We have the term “altaholic” for a reason.

And besides, my main/first class is Engineer, a jack of all trades, so I play the Engi meta game by learning and having all the professions available.

How does one exactly play a single class for 4+ years?

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Players who are complaining about unbalanced match-up but systematically join the bandwagon every time clearly miss the irony of their move.

Repeating something I wrote a long time ago on this forum…

One of the reasons bandwagons occur is due to a lack of transparency. People take a risk when they transfer. Transferring is a blind activity. They don’t have any visibility into how many other players are also transferring.

A whole minute is just too OP though because two people with enough supply can build an ac in 3 seconds. It would be absurd to try to balance a game mode meant for more than one player around a solo player.

Also, it really isn’t a problem for others that it needs one whole minute. You can find YouTube videos of how to place defensive siege that doesn’t get taken out by eles.

The real issue in my mind is that most players ignore what a good team composition is either out of ignorance or something else. Ranger can fulfill certain roles in a zerg as can a thief and engi. But more often than not it isn’t one or two guys playing those classes, but over half of the guys playing those classes. That is where the team really starts to hurt which is why commanders, especially if the zerg is losing fights, start to make demands of team comp. If your team composition is unbalanced, your team will struggle. You’re not going to win a fight if you are all healers and have no damage. You are not going to win a fight if you are all gank and have no melee train staying power. Etc. And you can be sure that your opponent is looking at their team comps the same way.

WvW is a team-oriented game mode. You find similar demands on team composition in PvE raids (where ranger is crucial to healing), fractals, and dungeons.

Reh.5986:

Pride.1734:

Balthazzarr.1349:

Johje Holan.4607:

Come to SBI. Half our zerg is Rangers.

lol, I was gonna say… make a zerg with all Rangers.. I bet they would kick royal butt!

Inb4 Wall of Refection

Hilarity ensues

Even better on a burn guardian.

You already can get a short invulnerable deployment.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World_Experience#WXP_upgrades

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

So, can’t ANet detect movements greater than is possible through normal means and restrict them? Or detect people moving up vertically? Or just standing in a place that should not be reachable unless through hacks?

Many of us have wondered the same thing. IIRC they did do something with regards to being under a map.

Rylen.2147:

I was actually there in game when the hacker was using Gaile’s account. Aside from the trolling and trading of her items, the hacker actually had good intentions for the game. The trims that were removed were trims that were bought and sold going against the ToS. He was deleting those trims because they were not genuinely made and were sold. Aside from getting rid of the fraudulent trims he was trying to ban/mute all of the bots spamming cities. If you didn’t know, GW1 has a massive issue with bots where they spam all cities and ruin player experience. The hacker couldn’t figure out how to ban people at first so he tried muting them all but simply leaving the map removes a mute so he gave up with that. Later he told us that he found the command to ban the bots but there was something wrong with the syntax so that didn’t work either. (And I was really sad about that because I wanted to see some Dhuum action! )

Yes, the hacker did a bad thing and should have never taken over Gaile’s account but he did things that the GW1 player base have been asking for years. Many people in map chat were saying that “the hacker has done more good for the game than anet has done in 4 years”.

OK but then he gave away Gaile’s stuff. Such a great guy. /sarcasm

Just finished catching up on this thread…

Very sorry to hear that Gaile lost stuff on her account and my wish is that it could be restored. As someone else pointed out, the hacker already “proved a point” by gaining access. Shooting the messenger was unnecessary.

oshilator.4681:

Chaba.5410:

oshilator.4681:

I used to do CS for a large banking company in my area. We would occasionally have somebody call in & attempt to fraudulently gain control of a customers account. After the first attempt, notations would be made on the account to give the next CS rep a heads up. After the second attempt, the account would be marked as “Transfer to Fraud Dept Immediately” if the hacker called again and the account would be locked down. The customer would also be notified.

Long story short – At what point was Gaile notified and what, if any, actions were taken by your CS team to secure the account before it was compromised?

If this is how your CS team handles situations like this, then we have a problem.

Probably a few thousand problems.

Game companies are not banks. There isn’t the same amount of risk involved. But the world is changing as is the nature of online gaming and your suggestion is a good one for them to consider.

I’m well aware that they aren’t the same thing nor same amount of risk. But thanks for being condescending.

My point was, as others have said, the security measures in place aren’t working if all it takes is one CS rep not following the rules to compromise an account.

How was I condescending? That wasn’t my intent at all! My writing style is for public consumption. You are not the only one reading posts here. I would expect you to be aware of the point, but not everyone reading this is.

sirsquishy.2619:

But keep on thinking that Game companies don’t need similar level of security that you find at banks in today era of Technology.

I didn’t say that. I said it was a good suggestion.