Guild Wars 2

Nice fights on Gandara BL late tonight, special thanks to that JDGE warrior who seemed to like me.
Anyway it seems our numbers have dropped drastically as we’re usually pretty strong during the weekend, but despite some of the zerg-iness there’s been some great fights so far.
No matter if we lose this week, let’s bring some festive cheer into wvw.

Seasons Greetings guys, I’m coming back after a long break, so less QQ here and more fighting on the Battlefield!
I hope to see as little Bad Sportmanship as possible from our guys during this festive period, even as it turns out that one of our old allies transfered to Gandara recently.
Thanks to that DYE Necro for the fight near SM, I’ve only just started playing again so I’ll hve to be theory-crafting some builds again.

Update: That fight near umber this 15 mins ago was quite a fight!

To be honest if you look at it this way, it’s rewarding for those small ninja teams but when you’re badly outnumbered in particular at Night, it’s does you no good once they realize your outnumbered.

I don’t think Stat Buffs would be the best way to deal with things, they nerfed the Bloodlust to an extent that I don’t think it’s such a huge difference anymore.
Perhaps giving the out-numbered the ability to Carry more supply, or even increase the movement speed wouldn’t imbalance things too much.

I think Season One burned alot of people, personally I put in hours 24/7 towards helping my community Desolation, which saw alot of ups and downs throughout the year, it finally took it’s toll on me.

The Holidays are also coming up so it’s a good time for everyone to take a break, wvw will always be there for us once we’re done celebrating and relaxing, with family and friends.

While they’ve brought additions like the end of Culling, World Ranks, Bloodlust Buff and the new GvG arena, the meta-game haven’t changed much if at all.
From a PVP standpoint there’s a lack of balance and diversity towards wvw.
Even though you may have the choice of Roaming or Zerging, it’s just that you’ll likely be facing the same Builds/Professions while roaming, aswell as the same blobs and the Guild Groups that follow the typical meta.
The difference you’ll find is in coordination, communication and Skill-Level, but everyday wvw is overall is lacking in “variety” in it’s gameplay.

Even if you play for the PPT or not with these population imbalances, I’d be honestly surprised if it didn’t get a little stale.
After being given a lease of life (Short or Long) from the Leagues, we’ve only ended up with divisions between the wvw playerbase thanks to the queues and lag it brought.

Then there’s the flaming, trolling and bad Sportsmanship due to the “Fiery” competitiveness that the Leagues brought between certain Server communities over the “Competition”, it’s left a bit of a bitter taste for me.

So far from what I’ve read if they wanted to “maintain” our survivability, they should have kept AR as a Master Trait at least. I don’t think I’d trait so much into Acrobatics unless it’s for Feline Grace, the additional Vitality and perhaps Pain response. You would lose some Raw DPS or Points that could be used in the Trickery line – for Thrill of the Crime.

I haven’t played much; nor have I played since they “balanced” us, so I dread what to think my old S/D build would be like now.

When it comes to Survivability and Damage, Heavies can do both without much trouble.
I do not believe there are many other classes that has access to so many boons and share them, Crowd Control and the ability to mitigate alot of conditions/damage – all while doing a good amount of damage themselves; which is important for a zergs front-line.
That is where coordination and flanking comes in handy to reduce the opposing zergs numbers, or you could use the advantage of the High Ground – especially with a ranged Group.

I haven’t played much in a long while nor have I Commanded much recently. I’m not here to brag about how I capable I am commanding on my thief, but as long as you have a balanced Composition of classes that stacks and stays compact, you will survive on the frontlines with the right build – with an amount of skill involved.

The same thing goes for Organized Guild groups who can wipe bigger and less organized pug groups; which are often composed of variable builds (zerkers) and professions, compared to most organized Guild Groups who will usually run with heavies, eles, a few mesmers/ necros and a few other random professions especially thieves who have one of the best Blast finishers.

As it stand the main Boon stripping Professions are: light armored ranged units that need to stay a good distance away from the Melee Train.
You may see a good amount of mesmers and necros who will spam Nullfields and Wells, which as mentioned isn’t quite as effective as you would think.

Apart from that there isn’t much diversity to what each profession can do in wvw, no matter the build or as skilled as you may be, cause Anet balances things mainly for sPvp.

In terms of wvw:

Lyssa for the Precision, Boons and Condition cleanse
Divinity for the the Crit and Stats
Eagle for the Crit, Precision and extra Damage.
Scholar for the Crit, Power and extra Damage.
Traveler for the Crit, Stats and Movement speed. (a good All-rounder)

I’m glad this is finally happening, but at the same time it’s interesting that Desolation is less likely to face a Server like Baruch and has no chance of SFR or Viz. Yet we have a good chance of someone like Jade Sea and Elona, like Gandara this past week.

It’s not that fun being steamrolled and constantly outnumbered at night, although you do get used to the challenge. There’s also the chance fighting different Servers with different Philosophies and guilds, no matter if there are blowouts.

Remember even if the scores look one sided, you can still earn rating points against higher ranked servers, which leads to a good chance you’ll face those kind of servers more frequently.

I don’t understand the argument against why wvw should not be more rewarding than it currently is, even though we all know wvw is not well balanced and as such it’s not really a Fair Competitive game type.

They brought in World ranks for a reason: To entice players into wvw and reward those who play wvw regularly, just like the Leagues.
The only problem is that it only encouraged people to play the Karma Train and Zerg meta, as you earn alot more WXP from all that. (no offence to my Leeching Friends..)

You see these queues and stacked Servers due to the influx of players from PVE is what they wanted to achieve, it’s also thanks to those Mass transfers that only forced Guilds and players off their own Server, just to be able to play wvw with who they want.

I don’t play for the reward either, I play for my community, the challenge and for the fun. I didn’t even complete my wvw Achievements, which were poorly thought out anyway.
I just think that the Rewards for finishing in the top 3 of the Leagues could’ve been a little better or at least related to wvw, if they were serious about the whole competition.

People put in different amounts of effort, those who put in alot of effort for their community will have gotten recognition, but don’t they deserve a bit more reward after 7 weeks?
Even if many of the Leagues and scheduled Matchups became very one-sided affairs, due to population imbalance and coverage disparities, I think they do.

It’s hard to define a hardcore wvwer but the way I see it is as you mentioned is:

Those who put in the time and effort; Commanding and Supporting their community, day and night.
Those skilled players look for the fights; whether it’s roaming or Guild vs Guild.

Many wvwers brag and play for the loot, they zerg cause that’s how the game is outside of closed Guild Raids.

With the PPT and the whole Rating system, even the Leagues weren’t a fair competition.
I for one am not bothered about the reward because all it’s done is this:

Dreadforce.6980:

All the rewards for the season have done is further divide the games community.

Although the rewards should of been more related towards wvw..

I really like some the ideas I’ve read, although I’m not sure I agree that you should be able to mass invite players into your squad, unless the commander pin(s) are made to only be visible to those who join the squad.

I don’t believe that Guild Gating for commanders would be fair either and while seeing each squad member would be a nice addition, I don’t think it’s necessary if so many are in the Squad(s).
Separate PVE/wvw tags should have been done a long while time, now it’s just difficult to distinguish who’s a good commander, although I guess there’ll be more chance of seeing proper wvw commanders around now.

I’d like a way for us commanders to gain reputation, but at the same time I’d expect something like a Voting system would be easily manipulated at times, I feel that even if you were to implement a Rank system, that it would be fairly easy to gain ranks. (i.e Karma Trains)

A commanders job is hard work especially if you’re leading the Pugs, I’d like more tools at our disposal but at the same time I hope the UI doesn’t get too cluttered.

We commanders will still need to rely on TS or any other Voice Comms we choose to use, so I believe you have to be careful with what you add, you will need to make it so it’s Functional and Flexible enough for everyone.
I also hope that the assigned sub-commanders will have enough tools to support the commander, even during a Guild raid it’s hard to keep track of everything as Raid Leader.

I don’t believe we need anymore /chats either, most of the time I still can’t tell the difference with Map or Team chat!
Less chat suppression would also be much appreciated especially for us scouts, if we’re able to be assigned to these sub-roles in the future!

I’ve dragged myself out of bed, looking forward to this week once I’m rested for sure.

Blobbing and Double teaming is to be expected in wvw, are we still going to argue over that especially during reset?

I haven’t picked up my Silver Dolyak yet, sure sounds like it was worth all that QQ. (sorry couldn’t help it)
Here’s to some great fights this week, and less about the score the better.

I’m glad it’s over, I didn’t get to play much apart from the 1st Two weeks to be honest, but the queues and lag then were as you imagine: BAD.
My Home Server is Desolation, so we got a big influx of PVE’ers who were achievement hunters and headless chickens, on the positive side there were plenty who found an interested in wvw.

Many people stuck around to help win the Silver League, though I’m not sure how much they learned or whether they’ll be still playing wvw in the future , since that Season One has ended.

It’s been good and bad for Desolation: it’s been bad because our image and reputation got hit due to the reliance on our PVE population, which gave us that Advantage of having the numbers to help cover the off peak.
During Prime Time we usually struggled, it was mainly due to our handful of Guilds and veterans having no control over the player population on the map. this is especially during those times when the queues were 1+ hour long.
I don’t wish to demean our entire PVE population though, cause I’m sure there are plenty that will stick around and will continue to contribute positively towards our wvw community now.

Anyway, I guess it doesn’t matter anymore since we’ve all found that the rewards are underwhelming., no matter where you finished.
All the QQ that filled the Matchup threads over those Dolyak finishers and competition over places, was a waste of time in the end.

There seems to be much hostility from the Leagues among certain communities towards these bandwagoners and PVE’ers.
We should ALL have been trying to have fun in wvw, instead of arguing on the forums or worrying about the scores, but I suppose things like queues and clueless pugs can frustrate us veterans unless your on the winning side.

Still why can’t everyone get along?
Is it that wvw has such a steep learning curve, is it that so many matchups and Leagues end up so one sided or were the queues so bad.
Why does so many wvw veterans feel such entitlement, that they must throw such vitriol and look down on their own Pugs?
WvW can be as casual and hardcore as you want. Everything else is Anet’s fault for not addressing these FLAWS, that continue to hamper people’s enjoyment of wvw.

I’m glad that normal matchups are back, although I did have fun when I did get to play, especially during that first week even with the queues..
Now I’m looking forward to playing wvw again without “artificial” Competition., not that the old system was any good.

I didn’t even complete my Achievements, so no. xD

Well, I guess everyone didn’t get the memo.
Why did they have that “Preseason Sale” before Season One?

Maybe “duped” is the wrong word to describe things, but they “enticed” people to transfer.
Naturally there were people that moved to the servers with the greater chance of those higher ranked rewards, the wise moved to the other servers due to the queue times, or for another challenge.

Wait till we Desolation, get reunited with you guys, you know it’s inevitable!

^^I use a similar build, but I think we’ll have to wait and see.
It might just be the case that we’ll need to be more careful.

Seriously, I kinda expected this.
Well done to Anet for Duping people into spending gems to stack on servers, and getting people to put in all that effort to win that season “reward”.

Once bitten, twice shy?

TheFiendishFiend.4057:

I approve of this idea.
I do not approve of a commander tag on a Ranger :P

Nothin’ wrong with Ranger commanders, I’ve seen one who’s quite suicidal but he knows what he’s doing compared to most.
Plus he can use his Bear Pet, or whatever Pet he wishes as a Decoy: “Ha got you now Mr Ranger commander, oh it’s Yogi.. sorry!”

I don’t approve by the way, commander tags are way too easy to obtain as it is.
They should just seperate PVE/wvw commander tags, as what’s being discussed in the CDI.

Use that mobility to your advantage, especially if you use Sword mainhand.
Signet of Malice, and Sigil’s like Restoration and Stamina for example; for the heals and extra evades.
Switch to Shortbow to blast Waterfields and for those active heals from SoM.
Use PVT Armor and Trinkets, or a mix with Crit and Toughness/Vitality.

I’ve been thinking of ways while I’m on a break from GW2, but it’s difficult to find an fair solution for everyone. Simply put, I don’t think active population balancing is the right way to try and balance things, by punishing those who want and can play during certain hours; whether it’s prime time or not.

During Prime Time when it’s usually balanced in terms of players on each map, you usually see your Home Borderlands under pressure from opposing servers.
Then by the late evening, unless at least one of the other servers can sustain the same number of players as the other other servers, even if you’ve lost a key structure like Garrison you can just cap it later and the whole map usually for the PPT.

I think one of the fundamental issues may be down to the fact that: There is not enough incentive towards Defending and Scouting, apart from Pride.

It’s far too forgiving when you can just cap stuff especially wooden, with superior numbers using mass amounts of offensive siege like an Army of golems and ram users with mastery.
Never-mind defending against numbers, there is so much AOE that you can’t even stand to man defensive siege, unless placed carefully.
It’s also the fact there’s that 30s contest timer, which makes alot of difference to whether you successfully defend a structure.

Of course this all comes down to Match-Ups which end up being blowouts, no wonder it ends up being One Big Karma Train.

Population balancing is such a delicate issue.
It is easy enough to transfer and stack on a server, I don’t know how you can make it worth transferring to a lower pop server to balance out the wvw population, especially with National Servers.

I think it is something that perhaps should have been discussed during the beta, especially the way World Transfers are handled.
WvW has ended up so popular, as it’s so unique and as an end-game of sorts, people bandwagon alot and Guilds move around alot causing these imbalances.

With Season One they’ve tried to bring some competition to lure players in, but in the end it’s just given a short-lived boost to many a servers wvw population, leading to longer queue times.

The fair way to address things is perhaps by slowing down the wvw metagame, make it so outnumbered isn’t such a deterrant, and maybe there should be a restructure to how Points are gained from Camps, Dolyaks, Keeps, Sentries and Towers.

wvw is such a game-type where momentum is important, whether you are wiping opposing zergs on a map or leading a matchup by a healthy lead, Server populations are Dependant on that kind of positive momentum and community pride.

Hopefully they gathered enough data to make those “tweaks” that will see more “balanced” matchups instead of 1,6,10 or along those lines.
I’ll just dig the sort of matchup we had before the Leagues started: http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/16/112

It isn’t the end of the world though, you don’t need to look at the scoreboard.
It would be nice to face some servers, that are not only have such gulf in rating points but also with big imbalances in terms of wvw population.

Things should normalize as Season One comes to a close, and with the Holidays in a couple of weeks!

Yeah, I was one of those hoping for Season One to bring back some competition, it did in a way but what we we got is a badly implemented “e-sport”.
In the end we got so many uncompetitive matchups due to population imbalance in the EU silver League; as usual coverage wins the day and the PPT becomes irrelevant for most of the day.
We expected Vizunah to do everything within their powers to win the Gold League, they allowed a “transfer period” with discounted gem Prices, that did not help many wvw Communities either.

I guess the good thing is that Anet should have an idea of the peak populations for most servers, while the hype and momentum was at it’s peak for each server.
You might aswell remove the scoreboard really!

^^ Hopefully we all had a fun Reset, I missed yet another reset cause I feel like I’ve been up all night fighting off Gold League servers, er sorry!

Cya guys on the battlefield this week, hopefully more than in this thread!

Server: Desolation
League: Silver
Yay or Nay for S2?: Nay

At First I jumped on the hype bandwagon that Anet started, the 1st week started with the “juggernauts” of the Silver League facing each other.
What we got is long queues and mass amounts of lag from what we called “Achievement Hunters”.

We won the first week, then the week after that and from then on we had the “momentum” to win consecutive weeks up to that point.
That is due to having the superior coverage thanks to that boost in population, from the hype of playing for a potential reward.

It’s great to see new players want to get involved in wvw these days, but you have to question the motive behind it once the Leagues end and we all receive our reward.
I don’t mean to be harsh but the reality is: We’ve had an easy ride during this Season, due to Population Imbalance and differences in Server Philosophy.

It’s led to misinformation about our Community wanting to drop on purpose to dominate the Silver League, which has led to many Toxic Matchup threads.

We lost alot of Guilds before hand due to an unstable Community, some may have left partly because they wanted to compete in the “big” Gold League, or the NA ladder which has tons more coverage from different timezones.

That has led to us gaining a bad image and reputation, because we are heavily reliant on our PUGS; who have stuck around but there is still many who are drilled into the “skewed” PPT game.
Many still do not know what is required in terms of Builds and outside of Zerging, IMO this is mainly due to so many blowouts in most of our matchups, that has let people be complacent.

Once the Leagues finish I worry about the effect it’ll do to the population of each server, there are people that have put in alot of effort to win that Dolyak Finisher and the reward, so they will be feeling burned out. (yeah I know it’s hard to imagine)
Facing stronger servers may well do damage to our community, unless we manage to get more Guilds in; which is near impossible while the cost is 1800 gems.

Leagues may have brought about a Schedule that everyone knows, aswell as some competitiveness back to wvw, but the competitive side of gaining Points in wvw is just not working right, when there are so many blowouts due it turning into: Coverage Wars.

However it’s best to ignore the PPT and score when there’s these blowouts occurring so often, to just have fun until Anet can worked out a solution to make Match-ups more competitive.

TL;DR I don’t think there should be a Second Season; Not for a long while. Sorry for the length.

Well, see you Gandarans at reset or during the forthcoming week, I imagine you guys are rubbing your hands together in anticipation for the next matchup thread. (sorry couldn’t help it :x)

Seriously though it should be a good week for me to get back in some more wvw after a long on and off hiatus, so I’m looking forward to some good fights and less QQ.

Once Season One comes to a close, it’s going to be quite interesting to see where Desolation stands. I wouldn’t be a surprise if we have to fight our old buddies Viz at least once, before the end of the year..

Calm down and take a deep breath, wvw has been this way for a long while; the matchups are dominated by coverage.
We have that atm over everyone else and you can’t stop people playing when they can or want to.

We would love to have seen closer matchups, the first couple of days of this current one actually brought about alot of excitement among many of us, but it seems that the enthusiasm to compete for places in the Leagues hasn’t been worth it for many other servers, as it has been for ours throughout Season One.

Admittedly our philosophy is different to others; we mostly play for the PPT and we may not be much of a challenge on the open field, especially since we DO rely on our PVE/PUG population which has stuck with us to help win that Silver Dolyak thing.

Our handful of Guilds do not raid everyday, most of our Guilds run tagged and tagless raids, EXG as you know also does GvG and Roams.

Honestly you have to question the PPT system when there are so many blowouts especially after a few days of a matchup, it’s a problem that Anet has to find a solution so matchups are closer, for a longer period of time at least.
Until they work out actually address these imbalances, I hope they postpone Season 2 for the foreseeable future, especially to avoid QQ like this in the Silver Leagues where a Community has been vilified for the wrong reasons.

Let’s at least have some fun during prime time tonight, we probably won’t see you Gals/Guys from FSP for a long while but we’ll be seeing Gandara once again for another week..

Just play the class you want to play, and who you’re most skilled with, besides every class can be useful in some way, despite the how some classes are able to do stuff alot easier.
Stop worrying about the Meta which as true as it is, until they bring some real balance and diversity in mind for wvw, we’ve just got to play as they intend it to be.

As a Thief I don’t know what they have in mind aboutfor our class as they keep moving the goalposts (Mobility, Evasion, Stealth, Support), but I’ll keep playing my Thief as long as I find it a challenge and fun.

Actually that is the great thing about wvw catering for different play-styles depending on how you want to play, the only thing that’s wrong is how it’s balanced towards zergs and that you can’t really control the number of players in each group, that it often ends up an uneven fight but it’s also good thing not knowing what your up against rather than the GvG meta.

Anyway chill out gals/guys let’s enjoy the rest of the matchup in whatever way we can, the Season is almost over so less stressing over that, let take the fighting in-game rather than going round in circles here.

Seriously guys how many times does it need to be explained?
I was one of the many guys who didn’t like the idea of dropping, DVG left, then many other guilds left after them, it was looking bleak for us.

We were not entirely sure we would integrate these Pugs anymore, apart from the Night/Vampire crew we decided to kickstart.
Did those Guilds who left know something we didn’t know?

Who knows, but back when DVG was around they rallied the pugs like no one else could apart from a few other individuals, this was until as I’ve mentioned before that Pavilion and Scarlet patch arrived, or just before when they lost their ability to draw an army of pugs; who usually got wiped by more organized Guild Groups, aswell as us being matched up against well populated and organized Servers.

At the moment our community is determined to win the Silver Dolyak with the momentum we have, I’m sure many of our commanders are tired and maybe they’ve overdone it a little in recent weeks but that is their choice.

So really it’s been powers out of our control that we’ve received so much more players, that helps us covers so many more hours but we still may not look as organized as Guild heavy servers., we expected a bit more closer match-ups though.
Our score has given some people little incentive to take their own initiative to improve themselves as wvwers among our community; to find and join a Guild in other words or try to follow take your own initiative, apart from following the Trains and Zergs.

I think most of us don’t expect many Guilds to join once the leagues end due to the transfer cost, so hopefully this force we’ve receive will stick around even if we face much more stronger servers in the future. Even if we get steamrolled and end up holed inside our keep, over and over again, at least we won’t be the victim of so much flaming and trolling, and I would like to think we won’t be complaining as much ourselves.

What I say is probably not going to be enough, but I can sympathize with you guys after going through what you guys have to go through; for months we’ve had to defend our structures with less manpower, sometimes we’ve been successful though and it feels more rewarding than the average Karma Train at night.

This is the state of the game though and has been for a long while, to get things done quickly and efficiently with an added fun factor for the Assaulting zerg, is to use Omega’s at 74s a piece from the TP.

WvW is far too fast paced right now, less rewarding for the defensive side and there are things that need balancing, these needed to be addressed well before Season One and these new maps.. but every server has every right to take advantage of these imbalances right now.

You shouldn’t be too demoralized IMO, I hope you guys keep plugging away and keep pushing us till reset, after-all we are scheduled to face each other for another week.

Well you’re just 9k behind right now, who knows how much it’ll be by the morning but it’s as close as you can get, I think it’s good that we’re being kept on our toes this week.
It was nice to meet you crazy Crow guys again tonight, it’s been a long while.

I don’t know what you guys are on about above but it sounds like you got into our keep and failed? :P
I know you reset our Garri and then SoD claimed it, so fair play.

Well excuse us for not being that much fun, we’ll try to give you a challenge most of the time, even if we have to blob up we’ll do so.
With pugs as you imagine it’s not easy, once you split them up they’re mostly like lost sheep.

Most of us play for the community and the PPT , but our Guilds and Roamers will put up as good as a fight as anyone, sorry if we don’t have as many organized wvw Guilds as you want.

I also look forward to facing Vizunah whenever , it’s been a while since we’ve fought our old friends, we’ll get steamrolled for sure but we won’t complain like some of what we see against us these days.

Well I see not much has changed since I last checked!
As rangerjrd says be glad that we’ve got a fight on our hands compared to the past couple of weeks, relish the challenge either way if we win or lose the matchup.
It’ll all be irrelevant soon as it’s almost over, we’ll soon earn whatever reward we’ve been arguing and fighting over. (I haven’t even done my AP’s..)

In the past we also had well organized wvw Guilds like Coin and FG, aswell as smaller but well known Guilds like AFTL who could always put up a good fight, these days we have CS, EXG, GoD, INVI, TEQ and TLA but these days we often have to tag up, so we may get mixed rep for obvious reasons. Bragging about loot bags seems so March 2013, it’s about WXP Chests!

Gold League or Silver League there will be Guilds, Groups and Individuals putting in hard work for their community.
There is nothing like DVG these days which was mentioned; they covered for most of our coverage when we were in the higher tiers which was alot of work itself, so these guys who do their bit for day and night deserve a break now and again, to enjoy the game or other stuff.
We also have to cover for the lack of wvw knowledge that our pugs have; one day they’ll learn or reroll tetris.

EB looked like a mess when I got on this evening, but double teaming is to be expected and with offensive Siege as it is it’s pretty much hard to defend without numbers, organization and proper scouting.
I saw those Golems walk towards our keep, good thing I wasn’t too fussed cause that wasn’t the most coordinated Golem rush I’ve ever seen, but those Omega’s seem to be trendy.

Later today we’ll likely get hit hard by the patch, I don’ know if it’ll hit you two as hard but we just have to deal with it the best we can, we’ve seen it all before so it means more work for our morning/night crew and more chance for you Gandara.

So yeah with this matchup being so close: less forum wars and accusation throwing at Desolation as usual , go get that ppt, let’s see more epic in-game fights and, may the best server win this week and that Silver Dolyak.

@Immolator
The Truth is, there was a time where part of the community decided that it would be best to drop intentionally, but not all of us agreed with it.
At one point we lost so many PVE’ers to that Pavilion and Scarlet thing, we had many of a our few guilds leave one after another in the space of 2-3 weeks for “greener pastures” and then our community TS was DDOS’d for about 1-2 weeks.
So naturally we suddenly had a lack of commanders; it was almost always the same commanders who would eventually burn out, it was inevitable that we would drop, since our servers morale was at a low point.

As it turns out though we’ve had to mostly rely on our PVE/Pug population, we’ve had a couple of new commanders and the usual commanders that try to rally the troops everyday and night.
So far its worked for us even if it doesn’t always show on the Battlefield, so if you win this week then you deserve credit for beating us.

I’m sure we’ll be trying our best to win this week though, especially since this week looks much more competitive than previous weeks, I just hope people are up for the fight but at the same time without burning out themselves like I did. xD

The Leagues haven’t been all bad though, it may have brought about botched up Scheduled matchups and it’s made the flaws of wvw more apparent, yet I still have respect for other servers, Rangers (:p) and any Guilds we’ve fought, and there’s been many friendly people about who are fair folk with a sense of good sportsmanship. So please stop the Tankalation talk..

Seriously I’ll repeat this: We did not drop on purpose, we spent months getting steamrolled by Gold League servers like Vizunah and we lost rating points BECAUSE of the rating system, yet there were people working hard to prepare ourselves for the Leagues – even through the drama of Guilds leaving us.

We lost a whole lot of wvw Guilds who left for their own reason, but we only half expected a big PVE influx which has stuck around as we’ve had the momentum; those who want to win the Silver Dolyak and whatever crap you get for winning your League.
Credit has to go out to our commanders for putting up with some of our pugs and taking up the mundane task of night capping/PvD, cause I wouldn’t be able to do it.

There are people who will never have it easier though, once we go back to normal match-ups against “Gold” servers and once there is no AP or rewards to play for, we’ll probably deserve to be a “Silver League” server or one of those servers struggling at the bottom of the Gold, so we’d be a “Golver” League Server (or something..)

We were a truly a strong server back when we were fighting SFR and Vizunah all those months ago, now we just rely on our PUG population to keep up their motivation or for us to find an incentive to get them to learn to play outside the comfort zone, cause which Guilds in their right mind would transfer to us for 1800 gems and with our queues?

The state of wvw doesn’t allow that and the state of our matchups hasn’t allowed that either, because PPT is a flawed system; you can understand why there’s so many Servers that don’t bother playing for it, cause of the need in coverage that skews the score.

During prime time, it’s led to some poor organization and queues, against servers with the luxury of having much more Guilds and no queues to fill a map!

It’s all about the Leagues though which has only brought about more heated debate among communities, who’s fault is it at the end of the day? ArenaNet’s for poorly implementing Season One, while wvw is still imbalanced.

Also what on earth are these Toxic PVE things doing in wvw? Seriously?

Fox.3469:

Spend all of last night upgrading FSP garri, it had WP and was almost finished being fortified when i had to leave, with tons of siege inside to be able to defend it. Wake up in the morning, it’s deso green…

I just wonder why i’m even trying to upgrade stuff anymore. No offense but if you can nightcap a keep that should be defendable with about 10 people or less, unless there are 40+ enemy peeps at night, you shouldn’t be in silver…

That’s the problem with wvw, why defend when you can cap stuff for more PPT and reward? One Zerg with Omega’s at the price they are at on the TP can melt a gate, along with RAMS with mastery, it’s perceived as fun for the server taking the keep and who outnumbers the other servers on the map, but those few who defend, scout and upgrade are left wondering why bother.
We’ve been through it ourselves especially me, still it doesn’t excuse how badly balanced this game is.

IDK if we targeted FSP BL for a reason i.e. The so called alliance, but I suppose you can help dictate who wins this week without an alliance.

I’m already preparing to adapt, as bemused as I am by some of the changes they’ve proposed.

There won’t be another League for a while, thankfully.
As for this Alliance thing I doubt it’ll last, I think everyone will end up wanting to fight whatever has a red name tag, at the end of the day who really cares about the PPT?
I do if it’s a close matchup with all 3 servers on even terms; like during prime time, not with these in-game alliances that are bound to fail, it’s almost always 2vs1 on each of our Home BL’s anyway!
I remember when we attempted an alliance twice with SFR and both times it fell apart.

Meh, I hope most of us just care about finding the good fights and chill out for the rest of the week, even though so far it’s looking close for once.
It’s better than QQ’ing over something so petty because of how much Paranoia the Leagues has created, thanks to Anet.

Sad to see you guys quit the game.
I’ve been on Desolation since October last year, so I’ve seen lots of Guilds come and go, it was pleasure to fight alongside you guys!

It didn’t take long for this thread to derail, I’m feeling like crap atm but come on, if you want to QQ then fine but it’s like a broken record.
I hope Gandara do put up a fight on all fronts, as Ins said we like to fight players and not just PvD, as it’s been most of the weeks we’ve had since the leagues started but not down to our own fault.

Anyway to my surprise I saw quite a few S/D Thieves last night and of course, “The Pistol/daagger Thief” who i’ll be hunting for the rest of the week..

I can only simply say it hasn’t lived up to the Hype:

There are big discrepancies between each servers coverage and population, servers became overstacked whether it’s down to Guilds or the PVE influx; It forced many Guilds to transfer away from their server even if they were attached to their community before or during the Leagues, this is because of increased queue times and the lack of a proper queue system.

Due to the reduced transfer costs before Season One started – it gave people the chance to transfer to Servers that they believed could compete best in their League, this has only made matters worse and broken communities.

The positives you can find is that: There has been good small to big scale fights to be found especially against many Guilds in the EU Silver Leagues, this has been a nice challenge to face despite the imbalanced matchups.

Although my own server has been able to be complacent due to our superior coverage, during prime time we’ve often been caught disorganized because it’ sbeen a struggle to organize ourselves and the pugs unless they know what they’re doing, or they are willing to learn due to the lack of wvw Guilds we have.
It’s only ended up with alot of needless flaming and QQ against us, this is all because of Anet’s lack of care to address the wvw metagame.

Thanks for the couple of fights tonight, I haven’t played in a long while but there was a good mixture of fights, I didn’t even mind the ganking.

To be honest I got so frustrated with the metagame and the queues so much that I needed a break, (thanks to a certain person who put up with my walls of text :>) the same issues remain but I’ll give Anet the benefit of doubt for now.
We’ll probably win this week unless Gandara can keep this up thanks to our coverage which is a subject that has gotten old, let’s make the most of this week and have some good fights.

I won’t be quite at my best this week cause of certain stuff, but please don’t go easy on me; I’m a Sword/Dagger Thief who will be running with a EXG or SoRo tag.
Especially you TDA guys, I’ve still not forgotten that I have a score to settle with one of your thieves.

You can imagine the reaction from many of my fellow Desolationers especially from our Pug population, once they realize that we have to face Vizunah once again this year…

Yeah I don’t think it’s not a good idea to have a Season 2 anytime soon, not until Anet can find some sort of solution that would help balance the populations and the PPT, while making it accessible to those who want to play when or when they can, aswell as actually improving the current metagame.

They should take into account the more rational solutions from their own playerbase, I don’t mean just the stuff we’ll be testing in the edge of the mists (if there is any queues).

I hope when regular matchups start up again there will be a much closer RNG range, rather than ridiculously imbalanced matchups before the Leagues started.

^^ Exactly, I mean this new GvG arena appeases those who wanted it but they still haven’t address many of the problems with the wvw Metagame, infact this could cause conflict of interests among communities.
To be honest the Thread was cluttered with alot of replies and solutions, with not as much discussion or feedback from the devs.

Wahey, now Anet can use this as a excuse for not dealing with the glaring issues with wvw itself for a little while longer and their so called build/class balance., until they actually get some competition from another game

Can’t you make Cluster Bomb a 1200 Range attack again for PVE/wvw alone? I don’t think it’s too much of a game changer, same with the Vigorous Recovery change, that should be PVP only or it shouldn’t be nerfed to 5s for PVE/wvw.

Gates should at least be fortified along with the Fortification upgrade IMO, they’ve sped it up far too much with the WXP traits to siege, zerg vs door, and also the price of golems.