Guild Wars 2

Or we could still just do what is essentially the simplest fix ever: Apply the common siege controls that’s already on trebs and catas to arrowcarts. Physical projectiles, 1/3 to rotate and 2 to hold/fire. Simple and effective. No more 360 noscope arrowcarting. Give the ballista the same treatment while you’re at it.

Ha, this thread is such a clickbait for an Anet dev to come and post something like “oh so you want more PvE to affect WvW? Cool!”.

No but seriously, I think the idea is silly. Supply draining should always be even the most modest of player interactions. Yes, as much as we hate 20 defenders building 10 arrowcarts to defend against 5 people on 1 cata and that stupid kid that doesnt know what 0% means, its still an interaction between players.

Sviel.7493:

@Dawdler
I wanted to give them the option to bunker in their keeps while increasing the opportunity cost (no Research from towers) and giving their enemies a way to deal with it. Since the PPT is concentrated in the keeps, they’ll have to fight for them rather than just running around capping whatever happens to be near.

Fighting for them assumes there is someone to fight. It might work for a short while due to the novelty of it.

How do think people will enjoy WvW when all it consists of in primetime is bunkering up in T3 keeps waiting for… no one. Because they wont flip such a defended keep. No, they will wait a couple of hours until people go to bed, then nightcap it and have it T3 by the morning so that the cycle of not bothering to flip it repeats.

Without the ability to apply real pressure to a keep – ie multiple towers within cata/treb distance – you got nothing that will start the WvW engine on either the defensive or offensive side.

Since this is apparently the only engie you have ever fought (why else post a special thread about it, people fight tons of condi and power engies every day), I recommend simply fighting them some more. Eventually you’ll learn.

FogLeg.9354:

Glicko is the system designed to match opponents with similar strenght. Randomly throwing every server into any match means most matches end up with one server totally dominating or being completely overrun. Not only would it mean there are not interesting matches but also there would not be any reason to win them.

What do you mean, we all know that Vabbi would completely own Kodash if matched against them. Look at the score, Vabbi #1 PPT king!

kitten glicko, we dont need that kitten!!!

Gremix.2514:

Gendou.9620:

Before this topic goes any further, I think it needs to be said that Pay-to-win ONLY is attributed with a microtransaction that allow you to gain an advantage over others due to people pouring in large sums of money that they have(iOS cash cow games that let you progress quickly or gain power quickly for example). Pay-to-win does NOT apply just because you have to pay for a game.

Not everything is P2W in GW2, but I feel there’s quite a bit and appears that there’s always more opening up:

It all starts with Cash->Gems->Gold, then:

• Buy runs in dungeons to get top-end Ascended rings for use in PvE or WvW (which is PvP-based)
• Buy dungeon achievements
• Buy numerous other achievements where paths exists to buy them (e.g. Exotic Hunter for Karmic Converter is one that immediately comes to mind)
• Buy HoT for Elite specs for them being them slightly overpowered in PvP and WvW
• Use crafting to almost immediately level your character to level 80
• Buy SAB runs for top-end Ascended weapons, achievements, and infusions (which also give +5 power bonus)
• Buy raid parties for “The Eternal” title achievement, +161 -> +166 Mastery Points, Insights to obtain legendary armor, etc.
• Buy old legendary weapons (which have top-end stats)

Love it or hate it, that kind of makes these things have a pay-to-win path in my mind. I’m sure there’s endless more but these are the ones that immediately come to mind. Even by your definition, you can progress quickly (craft your way to level 80) and by HoT elite specs, and gain advantages in PvP and WvW.

I’ll go with “The majority of GW2 can be P2W if you choose that path.” I’m not saying avoid GW2 or that it’s not worth the money. It’s just that P2W exists in the game, in my opinion.

That does not make it pay to win at all.

The only thing one could argue is HoT, but that’s not really p2w in the microtransaction sense. If Anet had released a HoT style expansion every 3rd month that rendered previous specs obsolete I’d agree with you, but they dont. You cant go to the BL store and buy a pot that give you 100% HP and endurance on a 3s cooldown… and you can use it in sPvP. The game is is 4 years old and everyone that plays GW2 seriously will already have HoT.

But if you ignore HoT, does any of that give you an advantage in sPvP? Nope, not at all because none of that matter, sPvP stats are unique to sPvP.

Does any of that give you an advantage in WvW? Tiny and marginal at best, any real WvW player will completely own you without even breaking a sweat if you’ve bought your ~5% better stats by doing PvE.

It seems pretty well thought out but I fear that a more upgrade based keep focused PPT design will only slow the overall pace and make servers bunker in their keeps. This type of design will IMO require completely different maps with lots more towers within siege distance, in order to encourage the defenders of a keep to always be on their toes and spread out across a larger portion of the map in order to secure that keep and have a clear resource flow.

Ironically, the design would have to be more like EB and alpine than desert.

Oh so that’s where the WvW update went?

A p2w game is designed around the developers creating gameplay related problems while putting the solution exclusivly in a cashshop. GW2 was designed as a b2p game with additional QoL put in a cashshop you could use with ingame money as well as cash. Any boons you can get are temporary and minimal. Any skins and such exist in addition to tons of ingame content.

If you want to see how p2w can be done in a b2p game, look at BDO. They have specifically designed aspects of the game to heavily encourage the use of cashshop items (with no option for ingame currency, loyalty is not the same) such as loot being on a short timer and competetive pick up (oh hey, lets make a pet that picks it up in the cashshop!) or there being an incredibly limited outfit variation (oh hey, lets sell costumes for $30!) or ganking being the best way to kill someone (oh hey, lets sell a suit that hide your name! And then sell the pet that expose hidden players!). Of course, the reason for that is because its still designed as a f2p game at its core.

$60 GW2 + HoT + Exp2
$50 HoT+ Exp2 (requires GW2)
$35 Exp2 (requires GW2 + HoT)
$0 GW2 F2P

But nope, you can bet your kitten Anet will come up with some other convoluted pricing scheme.

Uber.7623:

I have no idea about World vs World or Open-map massive scale PvP really works, but…

It sounds like the main reasons for people to hate DL is the same reason why they would hate vanilla Planetside 2 or some other open-map massive scale PvP. If the fighting doesn’t happen instantly, it’s boring.

Planetside 2 was actually, in a sense, far more like Desert Borderlands than Alpine. But the game designers actually changed it around a lot so it became a lot more like Alpine. All the smaller things like transporting your troops across the map through ground and air transportation got replaced with instantly re-spawning on the same area and getting back into the fight immediately. If I remember right, their way of implementing securing and escorting supply routes (like the dolyaks) was highly unpopular. Planetside 2’s World PvP design transitioned from a few massive scale fights and mostly smaller scale fights in many parts of the map to how Alpine Borderlands sounds like now: Big fights all the time in one place.

It seems many of the people I knew and on the game’s forums, they all quit because all the cool stuff that made “realistic” or “interesting war pvp” were gone. However, many people still play it, most likely for the awesome fights you get in large scales. The only thing that stayed at all and always did was the environment. They got wide open plains to choke points to lower or higher elevation, with each different map being massive AND having differences to the other when it comes to terrain.

What I wonder now is that is there a really “wrong” or “right” way to this? I think both sides apply to different preferences of the consumers. Indeed, the way vanilla Planetside 2 and Desert Borderlands is delays or prevents massive fights from happening all the time, but people do seem enjoy having mechanical and environmental variables to consider when it comes to capturing and winning objectives. On the other hand, many people will hate this because they just want to get straight to the massive fighting, and having many mechanical and environmental variables will only delay that.

By the looks of it, it seems many people prefer the latter far more than the foremost as Planetside 2 changed drastically to appeal to the consumers who just want to get straight to large fights, and it looks the same for Guild Wars 2’s WvWvW. Is it wrong or right? That all depends on your preference. But according to the mass, it seems World PvP similar to the Alpine Borderlands is the most favorite kind of World PvP.

Its not quite comparable, because the reason this particular kind of hate is on dbl is that GW2 had both your aspects.

You had the big square battleground and the smaller more instant skirmish focused rectangular borders.

Now, we have the big square battleground and the even bigger square border where people dont get the more focused skirmish they seek.

So to answer your question on whether it is “wrong” or “right” to have such a design?

It was right.
Now its wrong.
It does not depend on our preferences because GW2 balanced it.

AFAIK it was already changed a long time ago (because of complaints) so its only supposed to notify you if you are near. Dont know how near that is though.

babazhook.6805:

The value of a roamer is higher the lower the tier of server you are on. As you get up into the servers that can fill maps and can afford to camp out out supply camps or flip the same with teams of ten on a regular basis there less value to that lone wolf.

If servers indeed merged the solo roamers role will once more diminish.

If you tie a roamers value to just solo flipping then you pretty much saying that a roamer only have value doing PvE. Thats easy mode. Roaming is so much more and its not always solo. The role may be more valuable when put against PPT in lower tiers, but the importance of the role does not diminish as it goes up. Quite the contrary, the ability to suppress the enemy by contesting/backcapping and tying down or identifying larger forces become far more important.

TorquedSoul.8097:

Yes however those with the lag with be a much smaller population. But we see people with bad pings now because they are playing out of their region or are living on some far away island. So we already experience the ‘bad’ gameplay to a small degree.

Much smaller? EU pop in US primetime perhaps, but EU primetime would be during the day/afternoon in the US, where I am guessing a sizeable amount plays, especially during weekends.

I think this would fit an EoTM style matchup instead where you can freely move between instances after joining (specify if the instance is native to EU or US, with respective players ending up in their area by default). At least then if the lag sucks you can just go try another instance.

TorquedSoul.8097:

Puck.9612:

TorquedSoul.8097:

The should just merge NA and EU permanently. It would help with the 24 hour coverage imbalances.

And who’s servers should they use? Who gets stuck with the lag?

Although I don’t know if it is technically feasible (probably is) but I suggested that during NA hours they use NA servers and during EU they use EU servers. This would require a short reset a couple times a day to switch back and forth.

That way the only people hurt by latency issues are people playing in off hours in their time zones. There is no perfect solution so there is always someone that is going to experience degraded gameplay.

It wouldnt change the lag. Either you would be playing as someone with 300 ping or you would playing against someone with 300 ping. Either way, you got laggy gameplay.

I am not entirely against it, but its just going to be an awfull experience.

Anari.2137:

OP (overpowered) abilities are ones that defy the aspect of the target livability rates of a class. If all classes are targeted to have between 20-30 seconds in battle before death, then any class (or abilities) killing faster then that is to strong, and anyone killing lower then that is to fast.

There are “target livability rates” in GW2 now?

In the GW2 game I play, two skilled people can duel for 5 minutes and both walk away because no one is going to win that fight. Any time-to-kill argument break down due to the way the dodge combat system is designed so I fail to see the point.

PabbyGaul.9682:

Commanders are leaders, goir job is to motivate, rally, and succeed. People are naturally lazy, mon commital, easily demoralizes, and happy to sit in the background.

Which would be the whole reason why people are getting tired across the spectrum. So many WvWers have a fixed view on what people should be. They put commanders on a high piedestal and pugs somewhere between a wet towel and last nights moldy sandwich. This leads to more casual commanders getting scared away and it makes the more independent players annoyed because all they will hear is get on the commander stack stack stack if you dont stack you are an idiot.

And before you say “omg organized guilds is the answer you noob!” that’s like saying pfff who needs a body when everybody knows that the real cool things are going on in the head? Of course a guild is great to be part of and I would highly recommend anyone that hasnt at least tried to be part of one to give it a go, but the game need to maintain everyone.

But I digress. WvW hasnt destroyed me yet, I’m just feeling a little tired.

Not only CC, but AoE damage has gone through the roof as well. Having just more CC would only have been annoying.

The build stats, condi dmg and ferocity changes has really messed it up.

I only have an issue with lb 5 (ie culling is broken).

I could argue that dh burn roamers are OP but tbh I am pretty evenly matched against them on my condi hybrid scrapper assuming they are equally skilled, so it would be unfair. Meeting zerg specced guards is like kicking around a baby turtle while laughing maniacally.

Berelious.3290:

NCSoft is the publisher and parent company of ArenaNet. That being said, they have pretty much allowed ANet free reign over the development of their games, even going so far as to buy back their shares from Nexon in order to avoid outside influence.

Afaik NCSoft let go of the publisher role for GW2. Its fully in Anets hands now. Still parent company though.

Sirendor.1394:

Kasteros.9847:

DeceiverX.8361:

Warcry.1596:

Where was it even announced that one was happening at all? I missed that

Yea, I keep hearing this but nobody has said it’s been confirmed which leads me to believe it’s just speculation.

Merged servers is frankly be the worst possible way to handle the WvW population issue as it only solves symptoms and not the actual underlying problems.

Some “fake” patch notes are leaked – http://pastebin.com/BsKpc7HY

How do you know these are fake? I know it’s not that probable they would leak it, but it’s happened before.

They must be fake because the very first change listed is one I have posted about a couple of times.

I am never right.

I mean of course I am right, but it never makes it ingame. You get what I mean.

Bandini.6185:

Dawdler.8521:

Bandini.6185:

I really doubt servers merge could be done on a beta test, so I think they have planned something else for April update regarding population.

It could, because its really nothing more complicated than rerouting server X WvW to server Y WvW for a week or two.

I was not speaking on the technical, but human, point of view. Merging servers would mean merging people and communities.

Does say T7-9 honestly have such sizable communities that they would cry out in horror over being absorbed into T4-6?

Look its real simple:
- Announce officially and far ahead of time that tier X will be removed. Lets say 2-4 weeks.
- Specify that server Y will be automaticly transfered to server Z at that point, giving any possible community leaders a chance to sit down together and organize things.
- After the merge, all transfered players have a grace period where they get one free transfer to a server of choice within the tiers that was initialy available for all servers.

If this simple idea of concentrating the communities really isnt agreeable, the WvW server and competetive system need to be remade from scratch because it wont hold in the long run. Eventually servers will thin out and die. Players will leave the game. Players that higher tiers could have used, but that Anet in their glorious wisdom decided to hide behind a transfer paywall.

At some point, WvW will only be able to sustain a single tier anyway, leaving us with the inevitable WvW megaserver even if Anet doesnt even program it, lol.

Puck.9612:

I’m wondering if they could do something with stun breaks…. maybe add a 2 sec invuln to CC after using them, and change several of the stun breaks to aoe for up to 5 people.

I could see this letting organized groups be able to push and retreat without being cc’d to death, but they wouldn’t be able to flat out ignore stuns.

This is an kitten backwards way of trying to solve it. Stability is supposed to be a proactive boon you pop before/when the enemy attempt to CC you. By changing stunbreak to cc immunity, you would just promote players and zergs faceplanting into CC in order to pop stunbreaks and then stab through.

Silverstone.4539:

NO, the old would be no better than what we have now. the old way was changed because it had its own problems.

The real question is this:

Was the old fixable?
Is the new fixable?

The answer is yes and yes I think, but the old would be much easier to fix – just cap the time stacking, much like what was done to cripple mesmer curtain. The new requires something completely different. If you do a simple increase on stacks, small scale will get OP stability while zergs will be crippled like normal because guilds will only bring more CC. If you do a technical solution like a 1s icd on stack removal, you need to rebalance everything and it might add lag. Basicly, the new stab is an arms race that you cant win.

Bandini.6185:

I really doubt servers merge could be done on a beta test, so I think they have planned something else for April update regarding population.

It could, because its really nothing more complicated than rerouting server X WvW to server Y WvW for a week or two.

We know from previous… lets say “mistake”… that regular WvW is already interconnected. Anyone can join any server in WvW.

How would they secretely “fix” population issues? Murder people in their sleep?

Because I seriously doubt someone would go “hm, why am I on Sea of Sorrows today when I was on Yaks Bend yesterday? Well, guess its just a visual bug that happen to everyone, np”.

Yes it was a problem, this change is probably the best change to happen to WvW in a couple of years (or 4).

In this particular case… You really shouldnt die on these puny mobs to begin with :p

Sviel.7493:

I think the borderlands are more active in T2/T3 than T1, if everyone in this thread is to be believed.

If everyone is to be believed, T9 is more active than T1.

Yep, its completely normal.

You’d think it was overkill to have a buff last over a month but nope. Its just Anet.

I mean why not 1 day? 5 days? 10 days? 10 years? The options are so many, but they went incredibly specific. Not even 1 month.

It gives you stab on activation (not trigger), it will daze on trigger and give superspeed. I have a hybrid build and do about 2-4K damage depending on how soft the target is, guessing full zerkers can do ~6K damage. Tooltip in the build editor is wrong.

As a note, final salvo is only really worth it if you use 3 or more gyros (preferably 5 gyros) and have rapid regen.

jessiestiles.9437:

Played a premade today and one of my team dc’d at the start then came back after midfight saying “loading” held them up. We lost by 50 points. I was suspicious so I asked them if they knew the premade. They didn’t respond then logged out. I was 1 win from going up a tier too.

And you where only 1 day from retirement too?

If people are willing to spend money and people are willing to accept it… things like this happen. There is no fix.

Zeivu.3615:

We need armor that makes a statement and says, “Yes, I the dead are my playthings and I dabble in the dark arts”.

Today, that means a school uniform and glasses.

They already moved them after community pressure (was supposed to be on the border towers, completely pointless). I dont think they have any intentions to fix it further. Instead they bugfixed (ie broke) them with the removal of the contest interval.

You know that saying “one step forward, two steps back”? It doesnt apply to Anet. They take one step forward, spins around randomly, take three drunken steps to the right, trips over their own legs, jump two steps back and somehow still manages to end up head down in a ditch 20 steps to the left.

Warcry.1596:

Why should I be able to max Scrapper while playing nothing but Necromancer, despite not ever really playing Engineer at all?

Same reason you can level a character you never played from 1-80 in a minute or two.

That said, I honestly fail to see the point. Not even the most hardcore WvWer will die from spending a couple hours in PvE, which is all it take to max an elite. At least I dont think so. Well, maybe a few of them.

Yeah world completion combined with megaservers I think have made a big impact. I mean there must be a ton of people in the game that hasnt even been to WvW because they never had a reason to go there – people that could get hooked and populate it. Its not like Anet even advertise WvW, no seasons, nothing on the page to promote it… Just a little icon that few notice.

Imagine if the loading screens was changed to display the status of WvW, lol?

Beldin.5498:

I still think that network traffic is one of the main problems .. the more player that
are involved in a fight the traffic grows exponential .. and it simply would be a
problem to send players already new frames when they don’t have the updated
data of the hitpoints of enemies. Ok .. you can do it .. but that would lead to
other complains.

That would result in lag, not frame drops. In terms of GW2, you see it when the skill queue chokes or when the game start rubberbanding all over the place. Not so visible in PvE, but often in WvW 3-ways with 80v80v80 peeps.

Exciton.8942:

Straegen.2938:

We cannot even get a visible Hunter’s Ward… circles… unlikely. Don’t even get me started that the Guardian somehow managed to get a CC that cannot be stun-breaked or dodged/blocked out of. The only way to not get hit by the invisible fence is to use the force and then pray you have a teleport capability.

And if there happens to be a test of faith trap around, you could easily eat a 5k damage by teleporting out of it.

5K?

Pfff. One of them hit me for 8K yesterday (and he was a mile away). I have 1800 toughness on the char that was hit.

Has been complained about since HoT release. Once the game starts culling effects, using longbow 5 is pretty much an exploit/abuse. Guess it maybe will be fixed sometime this year if we are lucky.

But… isnt “skill” 5 letters? :/

GW2 becoming faster just by slapping DX11 on it is a complete fabrication. DirectX isnt magic.

The game is crippled by its own main thread, which need to be recoded. Simple as that.

From personal experience, the game particle effects are also bugged and a major performance hog for no apparent reason. I havent tested it in a looooong time so I dont know if its fixed now, but it’s been particularly visible on shaman – your game will run at 20 fps with 60+ peeps bashing shaman, then suddenly and without any apparent visual change, performance will skyrocket to buttery smooth 60+ fps for about 5 seconds, then plummet to 20 fps again.

EoTM is WvW in the same sense sPvP would be WvW if there was a third side.

This is all a moot point because of two reasons:

- Scouts have abandoned Desert because of convoluted keep/tower layout and zergs dont like to port to garri and run a gauntlet/maze to defend, so you dont get warnings or reinforcements in time.

- Alpine keeps where under constant siege threat from nearby towers/camps but with Citadel home base (garri+nw/ne tower+n camp) being so easily defensible, defensive zergs where encouraged to stay on their toes in an area about 20% the size you need to do it in Desert border (ie well below garri vs everything below spawn). Its the same reason EB “home” defense works good (keep+3 towers+2 camps).

Sviel.7493:

Why is keep positioning so important to roamers? Why does increasing the distance between them deal some fatal blow to a roaming party? After all, the camps/towers aren’t further apart, so your statement hinges on some insurmountable obstacle that stems from keep positioning. Saying they’re ‘huge layouts,’ ‘unfriendly,’ and ’don’t work’ doesn’t cut it.

Sigh…

Roaming by definition is the ability to pick a map and start running. When that means running through a kittening maze where you dont have clear sight on your next objective, people dont seem to like it. Roamers are not playing a different WvW just because they call themselves “roamers”. No, its the same WvW. A WvW that has the same core design philosophy throughout Alpine and EB with the same basic keep/tower/camp positioning and layouts. Desert broke with that common WvW design. So yes, it cut it. Because its the simple truth.

Whether some people like this different type of design is another matter. Some people like EoTM too. But its still not the same WvW as EB and Alpine.

Angel Heart.6739:

that being said there are also open spot on the map where you can fight without anything being in the way?

sw camp (sandy plain to north)
sm camp (plateau)
se camp (highground)
nw corner map (between tower and hero point)
ne corner map (between tower and hero point)
middle map (on the oasis location)

Its not that simple.

None of these areas form a natural frontline, no forces will meet there when contesting an objective from another objective (especially not NE/NW towers against the hero points, lol. Only roamers that want to bypass the barricades go there).

To give Alpine examples, open fields with natural frontlines are things like the field between SW tower and bay, the island between the two southern towers, the bridge between SE tower and hills, the open field between hills and garri, the open field between NE tower and garri, the open field between NW tower and garri and the open field between bay and garri.

An example that’s not a natural frontline is the central area. While zergs can (and did) clash here, it happened by chance, not in defense or offense. Another is the wide open fields north of the NW/NE towers all the way to north camp. All of them open fields, but not where you’d generally meet.

Back to DBL, I can point out a few natural frontlines that can also qualify as open fields. Like… uh… gimme a sec… well, between palace and NE tower. That is all. No seriously, its the only place I can think of. The distance between garri and the open field is descent (assuming teleporter travel) and the field is enough distance away from palace while being within view distance of the tower, hence an easily scouted location. Undercroft north you say? No. NW tower is way too far away and hidden behind hills while garri is equally hidden behind a maze. Its an open field right outside the gates yes but a poor frontline.

(on that note, the area between palace and NE tower is actually the only area on DBL that I think has descent design. It sort of remind me of SE tower-camp-hills on Alpine. If the field had been open all the way toward garri and the tower somewhat more to the left, it would have been kitten near perfect as an overlook between two keeps).

GW2 had 8v8 sPvP once. They removed it because reasons.

Puck.9612:

That’s the problem with your tests, everything on the map was a roaming objective. If you were a lone roamer trying to avoid the enemy zerg on the alpine, you could criss cross the map almost anywhere. You weren’t stuck running along a funneled path or forced to take the long way around which will triple the distance.

Indeed.

You are getting funneled along paths which means that anyone you meet is less likely to have an escape route. That’s good and bad at the same time. You could argue it help small scale, but it really hinder them as well. You have a tendancy to get rolled by zergs.

Not to mention all the other kittenty things that HoT added that crippled small scale, such as T3 walls/doors and barricades.

But by far the biggest hurdle remain the position of the keeps/towers/camps and their huge layouts. This is unfixable by Anet, short of making a new map. They are simply unfriendly to small parties and scouts. It doesnt work.

Sviel.7493:

With the current data, the only significant increase in travel time is from SWC to Firekeep which clocks in at about 60s, or twice as long as SWC to Bay. This isn’t a roaming objective, but I figured I’d mention it.

Fun fact:

Stand on the west wall of SW tower and pretend you are standing in the SW tower on alpine. Look toward the west. See the sentry/little hut? Thats where Alpine south bay door and walls would be.

Sure you can nitpick and say that “oh but undercroft to garri is the same distance as bay to garri, ergo its the same!” but If you consider the whole border and relative distances, the difference is massive. Even if bay-garri would be the same, spawn-camp/tower-bay-camp/tower-garri add up to alot of difference in time.

MSFone.3026:

Scrapper gets my vote, that’s all they seem to do is knickknack/pull people and do zero dmg and never die.

Not even close. Scrappers cant outrun you.

In terms of troll builds, there are four kings:
Permastealth tanky Thief as above mentioned.
Stealth/reflect oriented tanky Chronomancer.
Tankyandhealingasallkitten Tempest.
Evasion/disengage based Druid.

I would include Nike Warrior but after HoT it just doesnt match other trollers.

You wont be able to kill any of these if they know what they are doing because even if you get them low they will just run away.

The problem is that no matter how you work it… the pistol will be far more powerfull. With the sheild you got that extra voulnerability sure… but with pistol you got 1K+ burn dps. In my experience, pistol/shield simply doesnt bring enough damage to actually down skilled people. Then again I havent tried this specific build.

I would use bulwark instead of purge though.

Sviel.7493:

There are 4 breakable walls and 3 gates on Undercroft. Running straight from the south gate to the north gate, you can check all of the walls and 2 of the gates without detour, plus the inner walls/gates. In the unlikely event that enemies are using the east gate (I’ve seen this happen exactly once), you barely have to detour from the straight path to check it. It doesn’t take even as long as running the full crescent around Bay to check all the outers, not to mention the inners

Uhm…

There are 5 gates and 8 breakable walls (walls counted off the top of my head, more or less) on undercroft.

If you run straight south from the north gate, you will not see the lord room, you have to run to the east gate to actually see it, you wont see one of the walls and you have to run all the way down to see the actual gate.

You really cant get past the fact its a maze. It doesnt even matter how many gates and wall it has – bay had 6 gates and 6ish breakable walls (again, off the top of my head). Its the layout of the keep that matter.

Palace is definetly not a straight line – if you run straight from south to north, you wont see the west gate (stuff in the way), you wont see lords, you wont see south inner, you wont see north inner and again you have to go all the way up to the north outer gate to see it. Hell you wont even see SW cata spot, because its hidden behind a hillside.

If you want an entire border layout comparison btw, I made it long ago: