Guild Wars 2

Yeah, I just don’t agree. First, while neither of us have the numbers of total votes or votes from the same person with multiple accounts, my expectation is the total votes is high enough to dwarf the number of people trying to use multiple accounts. Second, I’ve been playing this game long enough to know that for every Wvw veteran with a good, rational idea, you have another with a totally irrational one. Same goes with new players, so no, I don’t personally buy the “experience argument”.

Anet also wouldn’t poll is about things like “strategic building placement”. They’re interested in long term viability and direction, and that means taxing the people who will our might play wvw, not just the crusty old kittens who’ve been playing long enough to argue about whether the quaggans should come back or not….

Or ranks earned via roaming vs blobbing… roaming ranks come with a lot more time in game than blobbing.

But let’s be real… The impact of people with multiple accounts, or the importance of focusing on just “experienced” players is almost nihl. The latter in particular, since it’s the people who will play that are important, not the people who did play.

Nokaru.7831:

I think what you want is more of this: Gerrymandering.

Pretty much, yeah. Watching all the contortions to justify excluding people from having a say is disheartening for sure.

And if you think Anet could do anything and not have angry villagers coming at them with pitchforks and torches, you’re kidding yourself.

Anet: “Just because we think you’re awesome, we’re giving you all 100g and the legendary item of your choice, account bound, of course”.

Villager 1: Why only 100 gold?! I’m worth more than that!
Villager 2: But I spent countless hours grinding for the legendary I just got. This isn’t faaaaaaiiiiirrrr!
Villager 3: Pfft… account bound. Figures!
Villager 4: But I’ve played since beta, surely I should get more than some filthy casual who just started!
Villager 5: This is going to tank my legendary business on the TP. Now I’ll never make my next 50,000 gold! “Thanks” Anet!

…and so on.

But yeah, I don’t want gliding in Wvw, personally. It’d be yet another way for people to run away from fights. I assume if they ever did bring gliders in they’d have the good sense to prevent them from circumventing walls.

Bigpapasmurf.5623:

Thanks Guys. He doesn’t have any runes that grant it so it must be something like a rangers LB3 that was reflected (although I didn’t know that was supposed to stealth the warrior/berserker)

Reflect effectively treats an attack as though it originated from the reflector, including damage plus all other effects associated with the attack. So reflecting ranger lb3 gives the reflector stealth, ranger lb4 will pushback the ranger, the third attack on a mesmer’s sceptre auto chain will create a clone of the reflector, etc.

The methodology they’re using is the best approach, so gj Anet, keep up the good work. And, yes, I’m on one of the smaller servers who lost some of its identity with the linking, it’s the only server I’ve been on since (just after) launch, and I still recognize and appreciate the methodology being used.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

shrek.1046:

The poll is open to all players but is only actively marketed to WvW players because only they receive an ingame mail about it when they rank up in WvW.

The underlying question would be “which player votes would accurately reflect WvW players”. I mean, I’ve gained only a handful of ranks in the past several months. I get a mail saying to vote, but should my vote really count if I’m not a dedicated WvWer?

As a dedicated wvw player for the past four(?) years without interruption, I say yes without equivocation. The principle audience is people who play wvw, no matter how much. The goal is to make wvw fun and appealing to the greatest number of people to keep it alive, not to cater to the few diehards like me who’ve stuck with it for unclear reasons.

The question you have to ask yourself is how much of an influence are these voters who don’t play wvw to the wvw surveys.

You’ve assumed they’re a significant majority when your say they’re drowning out wvw votes, but I honestly doubt that.

Look at this latest poll, whose result has prompted you to write your post. Your friends are upset with it, no doubt. But the vote to keep dbl had about twice the number of people voting to keep it than scrap it. Do you honestly think the population size of griefers plus people who just like to vote about stuff they know nothing about (and assuming they all vote in the same way) exceeds the number of wvw voters 2:1? That seems pretty unlikely to me.

The more likely scenario is that the number of people who hate dbl is lower than you and your friends thought, and enough of the people who prefer alpine and ebg felt it was reasonable to keep one map desert so the people who prefer it can still have fun.

I’m sorry you’re having such a frustrating time on your server, but, honestly, it may be time to take a break from the game for a while to think sine things through.

sephiroth.4217:

A legendary back piece is still cosmetic.

Finishers…. Cosmetic.
Legendary Backs… Cosmetic.
Badges… Cosmetic.

So is any armor or weapon skin, hairstyle, and player looks, what’s your point? Are you trying to argue that all of these things are cosmetic, therefore they should be treated equally? Yeah, that’s a fallacious argument (category mistake, if you’re wondering).

Was it ever fixed the first time? I haven’t been running axe so I haven’t been paying attention to it, but I don’t remember it mentioned in any patch notes.

He’s already ruled out runes, mesmers, and thieves (including smoke fields generally). They’d certainly be possibilities for the other warriors who aren’t his roaming partner though. Same with the rarely (but occasionally) used Norn skill.

Reflect is the most likely one left. I’d be really surprised if there was a stealth exploit for berserker… in that, not bloody likely.

I often get it by reflecting ranger lb3. Does he have shield mastery traited?

I prefer it stay drained and gimmick free, tbh.

Lol, did seriously just say that everyone who disagrees with you is a jealous scrub? Oh man, you’ll win over nobody with that kind of talk.

I regularly eat legendary badges for breakfast in wvw, and haven’t noticed a particularly strong correlation between having them and skill in a fight. I’m not particularly interested in wvw badges either

It becomes clear pretty quickly after a fight starts who’s actually good, no matter who ends up winning it. Nobody cares about your silly badge, and I suspect nobody wants to see it either.

Sweet Sanity.8593:

I am in the matchup “northern shiver peaks” is in right now and the reason this is happening is very simple. HoD lost guilds and 90% of the DH population transfered out. It has nothing to do with night capping. nevertheless we will all be losing our allies this time next week so things will change

No, he’s taking about Far Shiverspeaks (an EU server), not NSP in NA.

As per ThomasC, are you referring to the new wvw potions you get in your dailies? They just advance your reward track, not your wvw experience.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Potion_of_WvW_Rewards

Pahawe.4865:

My argument, Choppy, is that the poll is asking the wrong question. The one thing that no company should ever do is to ask it’s community whether or not it should outright delete content that some people enjoyed from the game entirely, just because it received a bashing from a vocal minority. A-net has those metrics, and the people in game, the vast majority who don’t even use these forums or the reddit threads, couldn’t care less about the storm in a bottle that is these forums.

So long as they get to play what they want to play, everyone is happy. What the poll should have said is ‘do you want us to work on x or y first’ or ‘do you want more of this kind of gameplay in DBL, or in Alpine’. That shows people that the A-net dev team are diligently working on improving the content we enjoy playing, and are trying to let us play it again ASAP.

In my opinion this poll isn’t so much a request for player feedback as it is a bare faced statement from the devs telling people that if enough people don’t like their content, they’re just picking the ball up, going home, and not even -bothering- to improve on it. You liked it as it was? Tough, now no-one can play with the new toy you loved. Go and play with that beaten up old ball that you’ve gotten sick of over the last four years, it’s what everyone else wants!

So yes, I will deride away, because in my view the question they asked was entirely the wrong one. There was a thriving DBL community. It was thriving even before the reintroduction of the old Alpine maps because it came in with the introduction of the reward tracks. The rewards and the actual fresh mechanics of the map are what brought people back. Now, it’s just the rewards that are keeping people around.

Also, Crazy, troll post? What? I was venting. Not trolling. Do I really give a kitten if a-net replies to this, if anyone upvotes it or even reads it? No. I just had to get it off my chest. And Johje, apologies for veering off topic during my OP, but my points turned into a rant. I only posted this thread here because the straw that broke the camel’s back for me was a WvW issue, and it seemed right to post it here.

The poll is what establishes that it was a vocal minority. And Anet already made changes to dbl in response to peoples’ concerns, and they were still hammered over it. They’re not saying they’ll “pick up their ball and go home”, they’re trying to figure out if they should invest anymore resources in that map or if they should do something else.

The reason people are wondering if you’re making troll posts is that they appear to be completely oblivious to the months and months of hand wringing going on over dbl, and even still being posted now. Seriously, I was just reading another thread about the poll that’s full of complaints that people aren’t voting to get rid of dbl “when it ruined wvw”. To say there was a “thriving dbl community” is also a stretch… most of the servers I interacted with had dbls that were ghost towns.

A poll is the most direct way for Anet to size up the strength of the desire to ditch the map.

RodOfDeath.5247:

I do it just to aggregate people.

Is that a shot against roamers?? “You shall not run around individually… I shall aggregate you into a blob. MWAH-HA-HA-HA!!!”

Pahawe.4865:

The result of the poll doesn’t really matter, Teon. I know the community will probably have enough sense to say they don’t want completed content removed from the game.

The whole point of my post was that Arenanet should never have even put this poll up. It makes them look like amateurs and it should never have made it past their PR department because it can only really do harm to the image of the developers, and the image of the game as a whole.

Are you not aware that people have been hammering Anet about the Desert Borderlands since they were introduced, claiming that they’re largely responsible for driving people away from wvw? Or that they were hammered by people over the last poll for not giving people the option to vote “no dbl” when asking about rotation?

Anet’s doing the right thing here. It shows them that most people would rather they keep the Desert Borderland around, and it shows the wvw player base too. It puts a nail in the coffin of that particular complaint so they can move onto the next one.

Also, sticking with the Desert Borderland if most of the players hated it, because Anet had sunk tonnes of time into it is called Sunk Costs Fallacy. In other words, it would be an irrational decision.

Anet should be commended for putting the question of the dbl to the test, not derided for it.

Crazy.6029:

I give this post like a 6.5 on the troll score, but not bad.

You might be right.

@emkelly
If the incoming damage is the same (e.g. 20k over 10s), and you live for the full 10s, what difference does it make to AH whether it’s condi or direct damage?

Sabtah.1704:

Which trait do you guys use with defender rune? Berserker or strength trait?

Neither one interacts with the rune in any way, so it really comes down to which if those lines you’d rather run regardless of the rune used.

Berserker gives you a burstier approach than Strength and a separate tankier approach that leverages Rousing Resilience in the Defense line.

I personally run vanilla strength. I do have a zerk set with Defender runes, but I only tested then for a few days before going back to Strength Runes.

Do we really need to waste the devs’ time on these sorts of things, or dealing with the rivers of salty tears that flow over relatively innocuous changes?

Anet, please just keep doing what you’ve been doing lately. Communicating your plans, sticking to those plans, and checking in with the player base semi-regularly to help guide your planning.

Caedmon.6798:

Thats a nice wall of text but i know from experience that adren hp does more good vs condi than it does vs power spikes.

Besides your power/condi scenario is all speculation and theory.A fight wont always go like that,and my post wasn;t based on 1on1 fights.

Lol, it’s simple math. As long as you’re talking about equal damage over the same period of time and a spike doesn’t kill you, then how you received that damage makes no difference to the effectiveness of Adrenal Health.

There’s also no need to get snippy about it.

Man, the salt runs deep here.

They really never had any value in wvw, so they are by definition visual clutter. It was a tiny bit of clutter though, so if they’d stayed, i can’t imagine anyone really caring anyway.

For people who made a point of getting the badge to show it off in wvw…. I mean, first, you’re not the one looking at it, and second, it brought you no prestige nor did it strike any fear into the hearts of your enemies.

A high rank maybe gave a sense of skill when they were first released, but now it’s just like a dragon finisher… something practically anyone could grind for if they actually wanted it..

Caedmon.6798:

Condi’s can be cleansed,regen will fight the ticks in the meanwhile.Like i said a 9k hit wont be regenerated as fast as a condi burst wich can be stopped with resistance aswell.

The point is, it doesn’t matter if you take 9k from a single hit or 9k from condi over a period of time. Unless the damage leads to your death, then AH is equally good at mitigating both. See for yourself….

Power Scenario:

• Warrior eats a 9k hit
• Defy Pain procs for 5s (due to Last Stand)
• Warrior dodges next attack, and uses Shield Stance
• Time elapsed: 10s
• Total AH mitigation: AH/sec * 10s

Condi Scenario:

• Warrior gets condi bombed, etc.
• Time elapsed: 10s
• Warrior ends up taking 9k over time period, after all condi mitigation, minus AH
• Total AH mitigation: AH/sec * 10s

You originally said something like, “unless the warrior kites, etc. in the case of direct damage”, which is similar to what I have in my power scenario above.

Except that makes no difference at all unless you’re actually claiming power builds are more lethal than condi builds. For example, if your take on the scenarios above has the warrior taking 25k in 10s with the power scenario and still only 9k in 10s with the condi scenario, then you’re comparing apples to oranges.

As I said originally, condi or power, it only makes a difference if the spike kills you outright. Sure, your health pool will drop down more with the spike, but it’ll come right back up by the end of the time period and end up exactly where the health pool would have been in the condi scenario using the same incoming damage numbers.

Caedmon.6798:

No..power builds doing 5 – 9k dmg on one hit vs a warri wont be regenerated fast.The adren hp buff favors fighting vs condi’s mostly wich is a good thing,vs a power build it only rly matters if the warri kites alot to regain,and in that case you’ve just been outplayed.

I would like to see some other things being changed to warri besides passive regen.we need more general sustain,more acces to boons aswell,like protection.

I disagree. AH is is clearly a buff to general sustain that works as well against power builds as it does condi builds, just like Healing Signet does.

Sure, it doesn’t save you from massive spike damage (including condi spike, btw), but use a block or dodge on that spike and you’re now better off than you are against the condi build who lands multiple condi hits on you. The longer the fight goes, the less the spike matters.

Broken a f doe.

Yeah, it was identified and discussed here back in the fall. Melee attacks still work, but projectiles don’t due to reflection.

Suffice to say, if unblockable defeats the reflect (it does), then the reflect should still count as a block for the purposes of the rune.

I wouldn’t drop axe for mace on a vanilla warrior, personally. The ol’ mace/gs build is reliant on cc, and stun breaks and stability are everywhere in this post-HoT world. Imo, you’re more of a threat with the axe.

But if you’re finding people are escaping or kiting you, I’d go for the sword. The mobility is nice, especially in wvw, the immob on Flurry can set up a burst almost as well as the mace (it’s still worse though, obviously), and Final Thrust can hit like a cleaving truck if you crit someone below 50%. I’m not gonna lie though, you don’t pressure nearly as hard as the axe, except against kiters.

You could also swap Signet of Might for Dolyaks or Balanced Stance (I’d favour Dolyaks over the Stance, even though you have Last Stand). It’s a hard call because Signet of Might is awesome, but if you need that extra stability with a stunbreak, Dolyaks is very good. The passive toughness doesn’t hurt either.

I suspect some of this is also down to learning how to fight Berserkers more effectively. You’re going to do more damage than them except when they’re in Primal state and they’re bursting the hell out of you. Headbutt can nail you for 5k, then you’re in a 4s stun unless you can break it, and that’s when the spam bursting will come. If you can kite or disable them during that period, you’ll do better.

You’re on Henge of Bae, aren’t you?

^^ Wow, that’s… awful. I had no idea there was so much toxicity there.

kash.9213:

I have to say it again, either it’s a play time perspective, or you’re just lying. I like to think the best of people so I’ll assume you’re on during some weird window of the day where that might be the case, but in general that’s precisely what I hear people on NSP openly complain about when trying to find DH to fight.

From about late afternoon straight through to late evening PST, particularly in your bl. Go check it out for yourself… the number of people that respond to a camp, how even a structure like a fortified Bay is “defended” against 1-6 people who’ve not put any siege down, with the full force of cannons, mortars, arrow carts, etc., and hardly anyone jumping down until there’s considerably more defenders (+ guards) than offenders. Even then, sticking incredibly close to the gate.

But, like I said, I’m not hating on that. Maybe those people are a little on the green side, or maybe that’s just the strategy they think works best, I don’t know. But I haven’t seen anything like it on other servers for a long time (SoR back in the day, maybe), hence why I brought it up in response to the “all servers are the same” comment.

Other examples I could have brought up are Yak’s being known as a server of siegeaphiles, or DH (and to a lesser extent, GoM) having a tremendously supportive dueling culture about a year or two ago. I just figured I’d keep it current.

Gellrock.4073:

I don’t know what time you play but this is not what I see when I’m on. We (NSP) think the exact same things about your server. We fight both servers but tend to focus the weakest one at the time to help with our ppt. It’s how you play WvW, no harm in it. Your acting like your server doesn’t do this crap too when in reality every server is basically the same.

All servers aren’t the same though. While it is true that there’s good and bad in both, NSP people seem way less likely to engage in a fight than DH at the moment, except maybe with far greater numbers.

That’s not NSP hate, mind you, just an observation from someone who’s been fighting both servers for a while now (mostly as a roamer).

I don’t know, seems to me a lot of the core (especially the really good roamers) began transferring out well before servers were linked. And DH has gone up and dropped down more than once over its history.

Again, it’s not just survivability, it’s the trade-off between defense and offense. The soldier warrior in your example, will have way lower damage output than your thief. A thief geared in soldier would also have way lower output than you would in your gear because, due to the nature of condi damage, you’ve had to sacrifice less damage to get your vitality and toughness than has the person in soldiers.

saerni.2584:

If the only examples of condition damage dire being comparatively better than soldiers come from the same two classes, then maybe it isn’t the armor that needs tuning.

Thieves, mesmers, necros, eles, and probably necros. Possibly (and probably) warriors too, but I haven’t noticed it yet. Run those with soldiers gear and compare them to dire.

saerni.2584:

Also, given how often I see complaints based on toughness “doing nothing” I seriously doubt one of the stats in dire is as important as is being implied.

By that rationale, nobody should be running dire over carrion. Power is undeniably useful, so people running dire would be irrational if toughness did “nothing”. You know this, it’s why you presumably run dire instead of carrion yourself.

saerni.2584:

I have yet to see condition damage DPS that comes even close to power DPS.

Maxed out with unreasonable buffs, most DPS charts I’ve seen show condition damage at most at 18k. What is power DPS at, 30-35k? These are in ideal circumstances but do give an indication that power DPS is, in fact, much higher than condition damage.

Your real issue is that conditions are designed with cleanse in mind. Also, by design, not all conditions are meant to be cleansed. Condition builds are designed to do damage via conditions…so naturally the cleanse rate will never be 100%. So DPS will always be unreasonably high if you have no cleanse. If you have average cleanse the DPS will be as expected, lower like soldier’s. If you have high cleanse or AoE group cleanse then the DPS falls to almost zero.

Soldier’s won’t do as much damage against high armor targets. Dire won’t do as much against high cleanse targets. Sure, you could remove cleanse from the game and decrease condition application/damage, but I have the feeling that wouldn’t solve the “problem.” People would still be in here talking about how half as much DPS, or even a quarter of DPS applied over time is OP.

Yeah, but you have to go to application. A huge amount of dps for direct damage builds are in highly telegraphed, high damage hits. Have a real person dodge a couple of those, and then compare that to a couple of dodges against a condi build.

And I’m not even a condi hater. Imo, it’s an interesting part of the game, but dire is clearly out of line with soldiers from a risk:reward perspective..

saerni.2584:

The more reasonable comparison is:

Berserker DPS vs. Hybrid DPS.

Solider DPS vs. Dire DPS.

These kinds of threads are generally the bunker meta vs zerker meta argument recast to blame the condition bunker variant on account of the kind of damage being done. I’ve seen plenty of power bunkers rip down zerkers because they have enough time to react/defend.

And, just to point out, don’t treat conditions as magical fairy dust that just appears on you by accident. I hit you. With my pistol. Dodge, reflect, blind, block, resistance, cleanse. All of those work. If you play zerker and I hit you with the power variant of my build…you are going to feel it just the same. Only you won’t be able to cleanse it.

The thread is already comparing dire vs soldier, and it’s calling out condi specifically because of the damage output relative to the stat investment. Sure, a power bunker could kill a zerker build in some cases (“rip down” is a stretch), but people don’t complain so much about that because it’s more or less seen as a reasonable damage:defense trade off.

Pyriall.1683:

Josh Davis.6015:

Furajir.3815:

Rushhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Time for attempt #4! I made some slight adjustments (anim speed, attack radius, increased travel velocity for the small leap at the end) to the skill that should (hopefully) make it land more consistently.

Why not copy the movement of bull’s charge?

Isn’t Bull’s Charge still buggy? Used to have major accuracy issues too.

Aeolus.3615:

Choppy.4183:

Eh, there is something to it, but you’re forgetting about condi clears. I’d personally like to see Dire deleted from the game though, because the risk:reward is way off.

That is what gw2 is about , why do you thing what is makign the game growing in popularity and more players?

Sarcasm, I presume. If not, how so?

Eh, there is something to it, but you’re forgetting about condi clears. I’d personally like to see Dire deleted from the game though, because the risk:reward is way off.

@Elegie
Nope, I’ve been hit with 16k AD since AH was changed and I saw AH in action, and weapon swaps were every 5s or so. So it had to be Def-Dis-Zerk.

@Loading
That’s my default build for roaming, and it works well. But both condi Berserker and power (gs/a+sh) Berserker are more powerful builds, so you’re almost certainly outplaying them. I did that to a power Berserker (who was no slouch) just yesterday by using mobility to limit the value of his primal state and invulns.

But the damage output on the power zerk build is greater than yours/mine, the zerk can deny your shield bash setup, and warrior sprint can deny your Flurry setup. You tearing through warriors running a+sh/gs, gs/h, and zerker condi is you playing better than them.

Ryou.2398:

Are warriors really simple to play or is that just because of stereotype?

Yes, the mechanics of it are simple. But it’s a double edged sword in that, while you don’t have to learn complicated combos, you also don’t have tonnes of things to hide behind and are more obvious as an opponent.

This makes things like proper positioning and movement, cancelling skills midcast, baiting out and counting dodges, stunbreaks, etc. more important than with some other classes, etc.

That being said, some of the new Berserker builds seem to be more forgiving and/or lethal than warrior has been for a long time, so the above isn’t quite as necessary as it has been. Then again, I think all of the elite specs have that sort of forgiveness/lethality thing going on to one degree or another.

Chances are your stability is being striped/stolen/corrupted. Each hard cc takes away one stack (no more than once every 0.5s), but it’s a boon, so necros, thieves, and mesmers can get lucky and take it off you completely using a boon steal skill (even if you had a million stacks of it).

emkelly.2371:

^lolz.

Seriously though, on a power build setting things on fire does not help with Full Zerker

Haha, true. But when they see they’re only taking 150 damage per tick from burning, they figure they can stand in the field… not realizing it also does the same direct damage as Arcing Slice in four installments.

XerMeLL.6042:

in wvw or in pve? in pve bow is a lot better – firefield+blast. in wvw 5 man – i use rifle in berserk mode – you could still pull 1 hit gun flame in light armor profession, in 10+ i use bow.

I’ve been using it roaming and small group in wvw. It has its pros and cons, but it’s certainly in regular use ever since they buffed the direct damage of the bow back up. You have to play it a bit differently than gs/a+sh, or even gs/r, but it honestly works well.

(GreatBow used to be a thing before they changed how burn worked, and the semi-recent buffs helped restore its value)

Sartharina.3542:

Bow is a condi/utility/support weapon. Rifle is direct power damage to single targets (though 3 and burst can handle small clusters).

If you want to use bow as a direct power damage weapon, you’re doing it wrong. And honestly – I’d hate for Warrior to go back to the days of Bow being better than rifle at absolutely everything.

I used to think so too, but it actually works very well with a power build. In fact I think the last video Obindo posted had him using a power (zerk gear) GreatBow build, and it showed just how well it works.

Bow is better up close due to the two reasonably big aoe hits, and it’s helpful that you can drop them behind you as you’re kiting around. Bow 2 is also stronger than most people realize when you’re up close because it pierces, does decent power damage, and and is on short cd. The guaranteed trait benefits from the Bow burst is nice too.

Rifle has bigger spike, but less utility. It’s also easier to foil a rifle up close by walking behind the rifle warrior as it interrupts rifle skills. The lack of aoe also makes it less useful against multiple opponents.

I generally see them as roughly equivalent weapons, suited for different purposes.

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

Rush has got to be the highest damage coefficient self trolling skill in the game.

Haha, truer words have never been posted here. That’d be signature worthy if signatures were a thing on this forum…..