Guild Wars 2

Nymph of Meliai.6739:

So you can explain why you were map hopping to the same maps, at the same times? We know you were fighting each other as well… we left mesmers inside forts who told us who eventually won but can you also explain why you were attacking us at the same time as viz instead of either taking an undefended viz tower or a different one of our towers?
Or even if it was a case of wanting to fight the viz zerg (which I can respect) then why were you attacking our opposite gate instead of coming in behind the viz zerg and fighting them. There was time when were defending Hills, the viz zerg and deso zerg met in the courtyard outside the keep – Deso had come in through the south gate and Viz from the North gate… we were expecting a great fight but instead Deso attacked the main keep gate and Viz went around the side to take the North keep gate. Come on guys… don’t try and deny it happened… you then had a fight with each other inside the keep after we all portalled out to take Deso Bay on their own borderlands. But why did you not fight each other in the court yard? Are you seriously that scared of us that you feel you need to double team us first before fighting each other?

So you can explain why we shouldn’t map hop to the same maps, at the same times? Stop them from taking our towers easily, follow them in to other towers/keeps where possible and so on.

I think I remember the one you’re talking about (memorable for BuLL turning up dressed as… bulls). If you’re looking for specific thinking behind the actions then you’d have to ask the commander at the time, but from this useless pug’s perspective we’d already been going for the south gate & had siege down, hence going for that gate again. Once at inner I’d say it was more sensible to siege & facerub the hell out of the main gate rather than attack the north one because they had higher ground & larger numbers, and it’s much better to try and meet them inside where it’s level and the thin passageways help negate the size of the blob. But maybe that’s just me.

If you want any more WvW basics explaining just send me a message, as I know they’re not very helpful on SFR.

Nymph of Meliai.6739:

The viz/deso ‘conspiracy theory’ – let me clear this up once and for all…

Last night it was blatantly obvious that you have two very large zergs – one is deso, the other is viz… and we had 15 organised players plus an unknown amount of pugs (as represented by teamspeak activity).

The two large zergs (plus unknown numbers of ‘pugs’) were the only really two large forces on the borderlands (not talking about EB here). When one zerg moved maps to attack SFR, the other zerg moved to the exact same map, at the exact same time, and attacked the opposite door.

Now this comes down to one of two things… either the commanders of each zerg are communicating with each other and coordinating… and/or we had spies in our teamspeak.

We later discovered that we DID have spies in our teamspeak who were reporting our movements to Deso, which is why we were getting wiped more than often when engaging them in a fight because our movements were being told to the Deso zerg.

Does this constitute an alliance? No and Yes… if Deso had any sense last night, when we were engaged fighting Viz… instead of attacking the opposite door, you could have been taking Viz Garrison or Viz Bay or Viz Hills. We have not had much in the way of T3 all week because you have been tagging each other all week. But by using your spying to focus on SFR, you have been helping Viz. So while, no formal alliance may exist (it may… I am not privy to that information), an informal alliance has been happening.

But my point stands… if you are on Deso last night (and I am not sure how many other times this week)… then you have to be embarrassed at having to use a spy against 15 organised people.

I was part of Deso’s blob last night till about 3am and lost count of the amount of times we had to scrap with Vizunah’s even bigger blob. We had had particularly fun defence of the Deso garrison against easily double the numbers, but they helpfully kept waiting for long enough between their surges for our blocking skills to cool down, then we farmed them for lootbags.

That counts as teamwork, I suppose?

Darkman.1257:

Mate from the beggining you’re beeing disrespectful towards me here in your “sarcastic tone” all I did is ask you to stop it. But considering this whole thread without any respect towards other players I will not blame you.

What I’ve been writing in both cases is not offensive. I was marely stating a fact that Deso are opportunists and there is no alliance between deso and viz. It’s not an offence to say a dead man is dead.

No no no no no, you need to keep up the Viz-Deso conspiracy theory. Obviously no-one is stupid enough to genuinely believe something like that exists, but giving yourselves such a bunker mentality is a great way to give your community some much-needed unity.

Darkman.1257:

Already organising pug trainings. I’m leading pugs as often as I can. Encourage them to join TS. My friends do the same thing. We need a bit more time to teach them.

Good. Now if you can just get everyone else to be more welcoming to pugs you’ll start catching up to other communities.

Darkman.1257:

Do you see me disrespecting pugs or Vizu or Deso ? No and it will not happen.

Yeah… about that…

Desolation has always been “survivors” their server can’t do anything alone so they use opportunities to backstab. They always focus the server that is currently at a disadvantage. Oportunists.

Darkman.1257:

You can leave your sarcastic “tone” while replying to me mr.

I know I’m a useless pug but could you please be a bit more respectful, thanks.

Darkman.1257:

If I’m going to be interested in 100man blobs I will ask for tips, thank you.

You say you want to integrate these people, it begins with steps like that. Get someone to gather them together and teach them how to move as a group. Your pugs want to play, they want to be useful. They’re always going to be there so use them effectively, don’t chastise them for their presence.

Not sure how long I’d have lasted on the community that’s “greater than any other”.

Darkman.1257:

Pugs are a part of our community, at some point we’ve all been pugs. It is true we’ve got a lot of new pugs who can’t play and die of heartattack before clashing with other raids. We will teach them, they will learn, integrate with us. We will fight back and we will win. Simple as that.

If you want some tips, just ask the guys from IRON. I’m sure they’ll be happy to help The Greatest Community©.

Darkman.1257:

Seafarer’s Rest’s community is greater than any other.

I’m jealous of how tight-knit and inclusive your community is… well, except for pugs, of course.

Can I just say that last night’s performance from Deso was terrible. Not once could we get some corpse jumping timed correctly.

omphin.1752:

Its becoming pretty clear that it would probably be better for some SFR guilds to transfer to Desolation if they want to beat the Vizunah beast. We dont have your crazy queue times and are a stable T1 server and dislike Vizunah for the same reasons you do. just throwing it out there.

I don’t look forward to being Blacktide 3

Pukknub.7368:

First of all, that is not a correct quote. I also did not complain about the skill lag, I simply discribed the situation from my point of view. Once again, what I was complaining about was the way Deso and Vizunah behaved.
Another important note that you edited out in your quote, that greatly contributed to the experience being awful was “Deso guarding entrance to let VZ capture.”.

Viz have a T3 garrison – Deso are in the lord’s room, we’re doing everything we can to stop more French contesting the circle, stop warriors rezzing the lord etc. Meanwhile you & 50 other SFR are in the garrison as well.

What do you want to do? Do you want to go in there, fighting Deso & Viz, all the while more Viz come streaming through the doors? Or do you wait for us to finish capping it so you can take a T1 garrison a few minutes later?

No matter which way around you swap the server names, I’d expect the same thing to happen each time because that’s the most sensible way.

Pukknub.7368:

SFR Garrison yesterday was just awful. 5-10 seconds of delay before we could use any spell other than #1. Deso guarding entrance to let VZ capture.

I can’t see how anyone think this is fun. But if you really do think this is fun, please keep blob-teaming up like this, a bit more often if possible. I want to drop down to t2 asap, at least until people either stop blobbing or ANet fixes skill lag.

Regarding guarding the entrance – yes, it’s great fun to watch Viz take the garrison only to steal it from them minutes later. It worked successfully a couple of nights ago, they obviously remembered last night when we tried again because they stuck around and we couldn’t get it.

Regarding the skill lag, it’s never fun – that’s why it makes more sense to pull away than engage in a 3-way fight, which is a guaranteed lagfest.

Aikanaro.2609:

Looks like VS weekly wednesday raid is now live: a huge blob (not less than 50-60) is tearing apart all the maps, focusing green points. I’m okay with that, but beeing outmanned at this time of day is sad thing.
But 2vs1 is more saddest. Like that
http://i.imgur.com/okge9AQ.jpg
poor VS guys can’t capture the tower alone, so brave and kind IRON helps them. Many times.

I’m quoting this particular screenshot because I took a couple myself during that fight –
http://i.imgur.com/IbCWkOe.jpg

Look at how much we’re helping Viz… by, er, taking them on ourselves and trying to take the tower… teamwork! Um…

http://i.imgur.com/pM536nX.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/TPAl8bG.jpg

Screenshot Wars 2 – proving anything with Print Screen

MagnusLL.8473:

DarkieDuck.9521:

MagnusLL.8473:

And the very instant SFR falters, Vizunah is back up…

Nice to see viz is back.
Hope we can meet you in full force next week

I’m not Viz, I’m Deso.

You know, for a change I’d like to have some 500-men asian WvW guild whose primetime is 8-12AM CET to join us. Oh the fun….

I wouldn’t be too enamoured with it. If they join quickly, they’ll leave quickly too – November/December wasn’t a fun time.

Draygo.9473:

you can get multiple defense awards during an assault. Attackers only get one assault award.

What’s the reward for sitting on the tower for an hour to guard it?

Sit there for ages doing nothing, no reward. Let people know it’s about to be attacked, everyone turns up and you all defend it, you get exactly the same reward as everyone else who’s been zerging everywhere for the past hour.

Absolutely ridiculous.

Manoa.5897:

D W.5179:

We’ve had groups zerg rush the enemy spawn before out of boredom, just to see who could make it the farthest in. Was pretty fun.

Always tons of fun. I’ve made it in alive every time, but never get much farther than the top of the steps. You get teleported out when you get too far in. :-/

EB maybe, but there’s videos of thieves getting into an enemy citadel in BL

Like this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNnGQBw5Ac0

pupu.8619:

Who would do such a thing? oO
If you do this you knowingly hurt the server… oh my god. Has this really happend?

A fair number of people have secondary accounts, because buying the game a second time is cheaper than buying gems for certain things. And if you’ve got one, then why not use it to join an enemy server? Report their movements, order useless upgrades etc.

Mizu.9387:

Can I urge all serious Guild from all servers to stop this blob madness.

….

Can’t do much about pugs, but I urge guilds to stop running together.

Can I urge all serious guilds from all servers to stop pretending that you’re all that matters and ordinary players aren’t?

These people aren’t part of some hardcore guild, they’ll probably play less in a week than you do in an evening. They paid for their game, they want to experience this content, they want to feel like they’re making some kind of a difference.

Poor Mr Pug is thinking he wants to play this game, but when he runs around on his own he gets smacked around by wandering thieves. But look, there goes a big group of my world’s companions! I’ll stick with them because safety in numbers, I’ll help them achieve objectives and we’ll all be happy because we’re all from the same world, right? Little does poor Mr Pug know that these people despise his existence because they don’t recognise his guild tag, if he has one at all. Poor Mr Pug thinks it’s called World vs World, that’s it’s the name “Seafarer’s Rest” that matters; how wrong he is, eh?

I’ve got infinitely more respect for poor Mr Pug than any of these server hopping guilds because he’s the one who wants to make a difference for SFR and he’ll be the one there picking up the pieces once they kitten off to the next flavour of the month server. Or, better yet, once Guild vs Guild gets introduced. Oh, how pleasant it will be for WvWers once the GvGers are gone, as people will be playing for the name of their server, not for the name of their guild. We’ll be rid of all the “it doesn’t count if 25 [1337PR0NINJAZ] got smashed by 50 Deso because they’re all pugs” whinging, and threads like this will be an awful lot smaller. You were top 34 in the world at Obscure Game 9 back in 1984, whoop-de-kittening-do. How many points has that earned for SFR this week?

For all the kitten given to IRON on here, it seems like they’re the only ones who understand World vs World. They’re the ones who actively encourage ordinary players to get involved, the ones who make them feel like they’re part of the game, the ones who use them to the best potential. I absolutely kitten myself laughing the other day when they split all of us useless little pugs into two groups and kept smashing groups of VS and SFR from two sides. I really, really hope it upset you all that these people walking over you had guild tags that you didn’t recognise.

So please – either follow their example and learn what the W’s in WvWvW mean, or you can stick to that empty little corner of borderlands and stay out of the way of poor Mr Pug who’s actually playing for Seafarer’s Rest.

Faux Sheaux.6179:

It’s obviously not for everyone’s playstyle, but I do like staying alive and being able to tag the red names in the enemy zerg. I just thought I’d share, because it’s a fun build.

Since you’re talking about zergs, I presume you’re using this most often in WvW in which case I’d say use of Healing Spring is even more important. A 15 second water field every 30 seconds makes a huge difference, especially on rams when you’re taking down a door.

ITT: People who don’t carry multiple weapon sets

akunadin.5017:

Moorta my favorite commander whiles my short stay on Deso

Offski’s better, we’d even jump off cliffs for him

Wot, no Vizblob yet?

Ignis.6195:

Great fights tonight (and yesterday) on SFR bl, especially the fights at garrison, despite all the bannering and skill lag. Culling removal has made wvw so much better.

One tick away from taking Garrison QQ

Nobody expects the double blob

Waraxx.4286:

when i play elementalsits i usually am 50-90% of the encounter in the fire mode because its AA is the only one that is good enough, sure earth weekness is ok but it isnt aoe. also fire 2 is realy nice dps wise and fire field. in some boss fights i never exit fire because they are so simple. i.e frostbite last boss fractal or AC bosses pre patch.

I love the Fire 1 too, but sometimes it’s better to stick with Water 1 because others are doing better damage up close and you’re more helpful if you’re helping heal them while they’re in melee range of the target. I wish more staff eles would do that when zerging in WvW as you’re really helping the frontline.

Dolan.3071:

If I could give you my like I would. A signet build on ANY profession is a recipe for disaster cough warrior cough

I don’t run that build, but I can see someone having lots of fun with it

Lillian Wandom Hale.7102:

And concerning your friend …I play his build and had touched Daggers for 3 hours tops in my whole gameplay.
Staff since beta, Staff today ….trust me, staying in fire is Optimal because nobody cares about broken skills and 2 second conditions ^^

This isn’t just an Ele thing, but something for all professions: There’s no reason not to carry multiple weapon sets and use them as & when they’re needed. For instance, I’m mainly staff but yesterday I spent ages hiding in the tunnels near an enemy keep in WvW and using my d/d to sneak up to a door, hit it so that their waypoint stayed contested, and get away as quickly as possible before getting smacked to death by a dozen guards. You don’t have that manoeuvrability with staff.

Just checked the scores… +275 for Deso at 10am! Since when did we have a morning crew?

Pushing Viz all afternoon on EB was fun. Well, it was up until they go back to the “by any means possible” mentality…

It was broken on my home server Desolation – the centaurs were constantly sieging Fort Salma, you had the markers above some of their heads, but the event wasn’t running. The only thing that ran was the centaur bridge event – no Wallwatcher Camp, no Lieutenants, no Overlord. I guested on Gandara and Underworld and it was the same.

However, with today’s patch it seems to have been fixed, and it ran the same as it used to today.

Just make it so that Personnel and Structural upgrades are completely separate, and can go on at the same time. But because they can run concurrently, slow down the production for each one.

Sorted.

salluks.6017:

Moorta definitely doesn’t get enough credits for his work,
he is by far the most important commander on desolation.

He’s the most entertaining, that’s for sure. He certainly does love Klovan! Last night showed how much of a difference it makes when us pugs get on teamspeak. You don’t need a mic, just listen in.

Another amusing thing on EB last night was when ER essentially walked into Vizunah’s keep, putting Viz on the backfoot from the start. It was a bit disappointing that they didn’t continue pushing them off the map though.

So the next time a load of bunny guilds to join a low-pop T9 server, rather than facing decent competition within two weeks or so they will instead have five weeks of easy matches & all the farming they like. Yep, great idea.

Some fairly intense stuff on Deso BL tonight!

The one on Laughing Gull Island. Has anyone managed to defeat this guy?

First of all,he’s Risen, so he runs around insanely fast; he has a pull with a low cooldown that interrupts and stuns you; and he regularly summons lots of mobs plus nearby ones respawn quickly anyway; and he’s in a small room so there’s hardly any space to manoeuvre.

I tried taking him on with a full party the other day. If you concentrate on him then all the nearby mobs will kill you in moments; if you kill the mobs then they respawn within seconds anyway. So I managed to pull him up on to the top deck a couple of times, but his pull devastated me, and I only survived so long because I’m levelling a toughness-oriented warrior. Frankly I’d much rather face the Priest of Balthazar or the Fire Elemental than take on this guy again.

Has anyone done it? If so, how?

I can see the lure of doing this.

Get a large guild on a bottom tier server, dominate maps for several weeks & reap all the rewards, including an easy run of jumping puzzles every day.

Using a shout immediately after activating another skill with an animation gets you stuck in that animation… so with SoR, it means you’ve got that cloud of angriness permanently stuck on you (until you use another skill, that is)

Daecollo.9578:

I believe the Vitality Tree needs a little work, especially the 5/15/25 abilities, they just seem crap compared to almost every other traits in the game, nobody needs help rezzing, rezzing is usually done once the fights over, and in the middle of battle, 10% faster rezzing isn’t going to matter much.

If you’re just going to run straight past downed players then I don’t think you’re going to be very popular.

I’d say there’s a bit of a question mark over Determined Revival, as it’s best to avoid rezzing whilst you’ve got some aggro, but sometimes it’s absolutely necessary and a free +150 toughness is very helpful.

If you asked a downed player if they’d want to be back on their feet 10% faster and they’d be very happy to.

The only thing I’m not that happy with is Reviver’s Might. A single stack of Might to nearby allies isn’t a great reward for such a heavy investment in that line – especially when you compare it to the fact I’m already giving everyone permanent 3xMight with FGJ.

Quentin Fields.1295:

Thanks to 4x Arborstone Thief hackers for killing our fun whole evening at Deso bls.

Did you get pics/video?

Lots of fun had tonight on Deso BL! Lost some fully upgraded keeps & towers because of a complete lack of organisation, then had to fight tooth & nail to get it back. Garrison flipped several times, and we had a pretty intense 3-way fight at the water gate for a good 5 or 10 minutes

holska.4127:

1. Close down free transfers.

No, I’d say close down free transfers to the most highly-populated servers.

Contrast this by giving some kind of reward a month after joining a low population server.

1. Bring back Orbs – but swap the benefits of Orbs and Outmanned. Outmanned should make you tougher, with Orbs giving more rewards.

2. I’d really like to be able to carry extra supplies. As a trade-off let them replace our weapon slots & slow us down. Having a small group of players running supplies, along with more players needed to protect them, would add a whole new aspect of gameplay.

3. Stop despawning siege. It’s incredibly frustrating. Having siege weapons there when you don’t need them, then vanish when you need them, is absolutely ridiculous. Cannons & mortars don’t vanish, so why should the ballista that I spent my own money on do so?

Daxter.4286:

Amazing fights at Arbor borderlands today! So much back and forth action against arborstone. I hope you guys liked our small strike team flipping your camps for hours on end.

I spend most of my time on Deso borderlands (I’ve got all the placenames memorised, going to other borders confuses me!) and the same thing was happening to us there. Groups of AS or BT would raid camps, stock up on supplies and attack somewhere.

I just want to say a big well-done to the commanders on there who’ve kept things organised and anticipated the attacks well. Aside from BT getting some golems inside outer Garrison (which was fun) everything was well-held when I was on.

Vukanigia.5496:

Blacktide is not the 50% of what it was 3 weeks ago. We lack some numbers but i hope borderlands will fill up soon.

The same thing happened with us (Deso) after a certain guild jumped ship. Now it seems a lot of people who had been put off WvW after that horrible couple of weeks are drifting back – I’m having to queue up to join a map a lot more often.

DarnDevil IV.2143:

I just don’t understand the idea as warriors are naturally good against direct damage and conditions are their weakness if not going for shout spec with soldier runes.

Or Mending & a warhorn with Quick Breathing. I worked out I can cure just under 15 conditions per minute (and 10 per minute for those around me)… the only time I can’t cope is when there’s multiple enemies repeatedly throwing conditions on me as soon as i cure them, but then which class can cope with that?

Oreoginal.1580:

By the time you get to the Mesmer, you’d have used the majority of your skills for them to easily kill you, or they’d run away with their multiple escape skills. How do you guys deal with Mesmers?

Look for the one that moves like it’s controlled by a human*. Do Fear Me when the clones are near you, then go after the human and use whatever you’d normally use.

‘* it always amuses me when a mesmer thinks they can just run away and I’ll stay fighting one of their clones.

Recently.1043:

Condition thief is by far the hardest to deal with. They don’t kill you fast, but they kite you around, bleed and cripple you and all the round make you feel silly (caltrops ugh). Only time i beat these reliably is when i’m using a condition build myself (thieves in general are weak to most condition builds)

I always run with a warhorn with Quick Breathing, along with Mending, so with that there’s rarely any problem getting rid of conditions (unless I’ve ended up solo against a group, and even then 50% of the time I survive long enough to get back to a group of teammates). I did have Shake It Off too but to be honest Endure Pain is more helpful when you’ve got lots of other condition removal.

Just wondering what people’s experiences with this are.

I tend to find that I’m waiting on swap CD between my rifle and sword/warhorn a lot, so getting it down to 5 seconds sounds great. Combine this with Sigil of Superior Battle and I reckon you can build up some insane stacks of Might

I would suggest the first 10 trait points in Arms to get Deep Strike, so you’ve got a massive boost to Precision in lower levels. Then 10 in Strength to get Berserker’s Power – you’ll often have your adrenaline at full and a 12% boost in damage is fantastic. After this I started investing in Defence just to get Adrenal Health (along with Embrace the Pain) for more health regeneration – with that and the healing signet you barely have to look at your health bar, unless you’ve got some nasty conditions on you.

With high Precision & a greatsword you’ll be walking through mobs. I keep a rifle on swap for kiting around champs – I tend to find I usually get their aggro so as long as I keep moving well & there’s another player doing damage then there’s little problem; can’t remember the last time I got downed by one.

I’ve been on Desolation for almost all my time on GW2 I’ve always felt most people on here mainly focus on competitive stuff, or dungeons. I recently did one zone and saw five other players the whole time.

I enjoy running around a map and doing events, so are there any others servers that are well-populated with lots of people doing PvE? I want to make new characters so I can learn each profession, but I want to learn the long, fun way.

Can I just say well done to IRON for still fighting a good fight. Especially Offski doing the pied piper role, putting the zerg to good use while the rest of IRON works elsewhere

Mod warning coming in 5… 4… 3…

There was something quite funny last night on VS borderlands. We (Deso) took the garrison, VS spent ages trebbing it from Sunny, a handful of us went on top of the tower ready to make a famous last stand, and… nothing. They knocked the wall down and then just left us there to gather more points. In the end someone put down a cauldron and we had an epic trick-or-treat fight.

It feels kinda weak in PvE as many mobs have slow attacks, making shield 5 feel a bit pointless.

But I use it all the time in WvW and it’s amazing. Shield 5 plus Endure Pain gives you plenty of time to run into an enemy group, taking their focus away from whatever they’re attacking, and then hit them with Stomp or Fear Me (or both)

Modifying one of OP’s suggestions a bit, I’d say that each team should have a constant amount of NPCs per map.

Let’s take a look at Eternal Battlegrounds. Say your team has 70 NPCs that can be spread around automatically – if you hold your own Keep, four Towers and 2 Supply Camps, you’ll have 10 NPCs per place (1 of whom would be a Champion – he goes to Stonemist if you capture it, otherwise he says in your Keep).

If you dominate the entire map, those 70 will be split between 22 places, or around 3 NPCs each, which makes Supply Camps particularly easy for small groups of enemies to re-take.

Conversely, if you’re getting dominated and you only have your own Keep left, it will be filled with 70 NPCs making it an extremely tough place for the dominating side to invade.

Should you then lose your Keep, those NPCs would respawn at your own spawn and make constant assaults on your local Keep. This would stop (or at least severely hinder) spawncamping, and even a handful of players would feel like they’ve got a small army on their side. If they re-take it, a group of NPCs can go and assault the nearest tower, and the amount changes depending on what you’ve re-taken. So if you only hold your Keep, 35 would stay behind and you’d get an assault force of 35 NPCs assaulting the nearest structure. Re-take a Keep and a Tower and around 47 NPCs defend, and the other 23 start a new assault somewhere else.

All of the above means that if you want to dominate a map, it’s a constant battle to do so. Conversely, if you’re heavily outnumbered by the opposition, at least you’ll have a small army on your side trying to restore some balance, and it should never get boring.

Scryar.2954:

Overseas guilds are destroying the whole balance of the european brackets. Every server has the chance to organize a competive nightshift, but not every servers has the possibility to recruit us oer canadian guilds.

Stop thinking about worlds as only being affiliated to one time zone. Each server is for everyone, worldwide – they’re only split between NA and EU because that’s where the servers are located.

And again, you’re thinking the wrong way; you’re seeing a problem where there’s actually a big opportunity. Rather than thinking about recruiting North Americans, why not think about switching to a NA server yourself?