Guild Wars 2

coglin.1867:

Dawdler.8521:

Sviel.7493:

Every other day I meet someone who’s in WvW for the first time. I party them and we go on a havoc field trip flipping camps/sentries/towers and defending w/e needs defending. Without fail, they’ve been totally smitten with WvW.

So, we might lose some people who poo-poo the new map, but there’ll be fresh blood to replace them. Unfortunate, but fine by me.

And then once they discover that most people dislike borders and queue EB or EoTM instead, they will also queue EB or EoTM so that they can play together with other players. There will be no fresh blood to replace anyone.

I feel that is a poor assumption. Many people do not blindly dislike something purely because they discover others dislike it. Many people try things for themselves and make thier own discussions.

Assuming new players will love playing on a mostly empty border that WvW players generally dislike is an equally poor assumption, so it balances out.

Problem with the build above is that it rely on voulnerabilty for crit and hit like a wet noodle outside RS.

By going with lower power, chilling victory and a base precision of 30ish percent you will find its much more balanced. But thats just an IMO.

GROMIT.7829:

Ele scepter dragon tooth used to do this and to be honest it was a bad thing, as an Ele player myself it was a game breaker.

This rev skill sounds very similar and hopefulyl will be fixed/tweaked in the future. most people are ok with large random hitting AOE such as meteor shower coz there’s no garuntee it’ll hitthe siege in the first place and has a long cooldown, dragons tooth on the other hand was spammable and targeted.

Dragon tooth is nothing compared to this. At least that you can dodge out of. For this, there is no escape. Its constant autoattacks.

Sviel.7493:

Every other day I meet someone who’s in WvW for the first time. I party them and we go on a havoc field trip flipping camps/sentries/towers and defending w/e needs defending. Without fail, they’ve been totally smitten with WvW.

So, we might lose some people who poo-poo the new map, but there’ll be fresh blood to replace them. Unfortunate, but fine by me.

And then once they discover that most people dislike borders and queue EB or EoTM instead, they will also queue EB or EoTM so that they can play together with other players. There will be no fresh blood to replace anyone.

Its pretty much impossible to even try to defend keeps against a superior force due to this issue.

I was alone vs 10 peeps banging on a door, I could have delayed or at least disturbed them but nope – complete area denial, I couldnt be on any wall nearby because they kept doing a ton of damage with ranged straight through the walls. Had to back far away and just watch them.

Fun fun.

The bog standard zerker build will always perform.

Personally I prefer a much, much beefier melee build for my reaper in open world. 30K HP, 1900 toughness or so and still permacrit in RS. When buffed against bosses or 5+mobs I hit around 2.5-5K on auto-attacks and not a single berserker piece. Sentinel weapons, soldier armor and celestial trinkets.

coglin.1867:

And why does the photo you provided show some od the supply camps and spawn areas cropped our, while not doing the same for the new maps? That sure appears shady and dishonest in my opinion.

Then make one yourself and post it. You will find that its just as compact when comparing keep and tower positions. I said the main combat area. Where 95% of traffic is. When you spawn on alpine, how often did you go to north camp and then follow the side paths down when you wanted to south? Unless there was an actual zerg on the way there, most people port to citadel and run east/west to get out. Same thing with the south camp. Its off the main track, the island. The south camp on desert isnt very interesting either.

But hey I listen to critisicm and have cropped it in the same way. Unlike on alpine, I cant crop much north – You need to get out of spawn, thus you have to go through the northern area some way or another. I cant crop the sides since that’s where the hills/bay keeps lords are and nw camp. I cropped the south camp but cant go up further because that’s the south gate of the SW tower. I also extended alpine to the W/E path out of citadel, plus that take into account the often fought over cata field north of NW tower.

Happy now? All fair?

Did it make all the difference in the world?

Funny thing is…

PvErs kitten and moan about elites taking 400 skillpoints, Anet nerf it by almost half (!) within days to please them.

WvWers kitten and moan about the new map being broken, autoupgrades ruin player involvement and cause severe score unbalance and guild upgrades cost thousands upon thousands of gold and literally ages to grind for… and Anet nerf gathering nodes.

Obvious bias is obvious.

coglin.1867:

The maps are equivalent size.

You keep saying that but it doesnt make it true.
If you put the main combat area (ie below citadel) of alpine on top of desert border, you will see just how much narrower and more compact alpine is.

Jski.6180:

Should it be so easy for small groups to put down sieges?

Well… yes.

Because that’s how you get a border going. Its when you start to put limitations on this, like 4 people required to built guild siege against the no doubt fortified keep that’s been ticking all night, that WvW grind to a complete halt. The very strong buff to champion NPCs, removal of siegerazer and door/wall hp is another similar issue (ironically, the shrines are dead simple to cap, I have no idea why they arent all veterans at least), it acts a buffer against small groups doing things.

Do you have a 5 man squad ready and waiting for you when you join WvW? No? Then gtfo. That’s pretty much what the new WvW tell you. That’s absolutely horrible. I have always bragged about how GW2 WvW scale well from 1-25+ players, especially compared to for example ESO where you needed a full 20 man raid waiting for you just to cap the eqvivalent of a lousy camp. You could easily join a border and get the ball rolling. All things considered, they pretty much ruined that.

tluv.5821:

The problem really isn’t the map. Giving players a new map when they wanted new things for WvW, wasn’t really going to help the situation.

In other words, the problem is the map. If they had given us a map that was as good as alpine for focusing fights and in the same spirit of alpine (ffs name keeps hills, bay, garrison) we wouldnt be complaining much about the map itself, we would just be complaining about the autoupgrades and buffed NPCs.

Ra Ra.9423:

The problem is that when our server owns a south tower on our own BL, the wp is not available, and it should be.

No it should not. Waypoints are only available when respective side owns their border keep.

Its stupid sure and should never have been changed, but thats how Anet designed it. Its working as intended.

My Necro tank has 31K HP and 2K toughness or somewhere around there. A Dragonhunter that locks me in the trap will kill me in about 2-3 seconds.

Sounds fine by me.

Bugfix ETA sometime 2016 or whenever.

Genocide.1524:

In short, stop “WvW’in” in EoTM and boycott EBG for a few weeks and play the BL’s. Get use to them, learn them, and you will love them.

Except it doesnt work like that. The design of the border is fundamentally flawed and makes people not want to play there. You cant force that on people by just saying “omg just go there and play!”. Even if a border is fully topped up and queued on all sides it will still have the exact same flaws. It doesnt get any better than it already is by dumping more players on it.

Offair.2563:

Fluffball.8307:

Aenaos.8160:

It’s normal that you feel confused and not accustomed to the layout.
Play this map for 3 years and it will look as simple and normal as the
old one.

It’s not so much the layout I (and I think a lot of others) don’t like. It’s the mechanics.

Exactly. To me the auto upgrade system is what sucks the fun out of it, not so much the terrain. Its rather easy to get used to it which im doing now.

Terrain is… workable… but the position and layout of keeps is all backwards and the autoupgrade is a gameplay failure.

But granted, fixing the autoupgrades will probably have a huge impact and at least restore EB.

Jayne.9251:

The problem is, there’s some very vocal regulars (myself included, you too), who ask for changes — in fact, there are some guilds who band together to spam a topic nonstop in order to garner attention to a change/fix/suggestion. Social engineering for change

I actually rarely post threads, I mostly comment on how completely unrealistic ideas is and suggest something far simpler, lol.

But yes, there are vocal regulars. Its a forum, its supposed to buzz. Anet isnt meant to take everything and throw it haphazardly into WvW, but as I said they are supposed to make it better overall. Pretty much everyone agree that its not. Some neat additions, many more awful design choices.

It would be nice to at least see some kind of action plan, no matter how small. Throw us a bone. Give us hope. Look through the road ahead for 2015 and do a search for “WvW”. Guess what you find? One single instance. And its not even about WvW!

Joxer.6024:

Dawdler, so can you post what exactly(?) you are running atm? And is it for PVE and in the jungle or more PVP and WvW?

Its the exact build as posted above, just with wurm runes on soldier armor. Trinkets are still cavalier (already had so many various trinkets) as is weapons.

Its excellent for PvE, WvW I am as I said still a little iffy about. Good zerger, mediocre PvP roamer though its easy to cap T3 camps, need it on the new border lol. Got to remember to test axe/focus instead of greatsword.

Zephyra.4709:

Maybe the devs are hiding from the WvW forums due to the intense backlash, verbally abusive, extreme saltiness and nasty, unhelpful, non-constructive feedback players seem to be giving them.

Which would be mostly due to the game-breaking destruction of the gameplay mode we all love and unhelpful, non-constructive silence of developer neglect.

People will always complain about how something isnt perfect according to them, but at least developers should strive to always improve their game overall. WvW is not better now than it was a month ago. Quite the opposite. The new map is broken, the autoupgrades is a failure and the cost for guild upgrades in WvW is absolutely ridiculous.

Scott Lockharte.3412:

Oh jeez, don’t do this, the stat loss is a lot lot higher than the skewed numbers you’re using, And exuberance runes would be a better choice anyway, however i’ve already tried both of these setups extensively over the past year, The only three runes worth using are Pack, Surging, and Scrapper,
and soldier is definitely a loss in damage/defense since it negates a lot of the point of using conversions so extensively to get as close as possible or higher than berserker damage with a defensive build, Whatever you do don’t do this.

The exakt raw stat dfference by doing what I suggested is:
2449->2380 power
2622->2368 toughness
1000->1490 vitality
231%->222% ferocity

Plus the 7% less damage loss but that is mostly absorbed by the added vitality, what really hurt you is often at further range anyway. I was wrong though, it was a 200ish loss of toughness.

Point was that this is a fair kitteneaper than cavalier/scrapper (the runes being the big cost and soldier gear you can easily get) while maintaining most stats, not min/maxed or optimal. A variant.

In regards to the build itself, I’ve tried it and is not so sure about it. Stellar when boss fighting due to so much voulnerability and maintaning RS or when being able to roll over enemy zergs in RS, not so great fighting equal or larger zergs that require damage both in and out of RS due to the time the fight lasts. But its decent as a deep penetration frontliner, would have been perfect if it only had a teleport with the effiency of Judge Intervention.

Zioba.6182:

Dude… That map was NEVER meant to be a easy map to level or ktrain… Do you remember what EOTM was MADE for?

Yeah it was made as a PvE map for the living story, but they decided to test WvW instancing while they where at it.

Chaba.5410:

There’s no breakout siegerazer guy anymore, is there?

Not as far as I know and if you are so lucky to get EoTM supplies so you can take on a keep… think again, it probably belong to the enemy and is just in your spawn to tease you.

The way Anet botched this map is really quite unbelievable.

The concept is good. The home border is part of server pride, something that bring battles. You wanted to hold garrison, bay and hills on your home border as they where considered “yours”, while enemy borders where considered hostile territory even if you had them capped. Pretty basic psychology at work here.

The passive PPT tick from safe/uncontested keeps that snowball server points at low population times has always been a problem and there have been many, many different ideas on how to solve that.

In this case though, I dont really see an issue. Yes, the points from a home border is more than the points from your corner of EB. That’s sort of the point. The home border is supposed to be the rough average where all servers are equal, while EB is the battlefield where taking SM is supposed to make the difference. That said I really wouldnt mind if border PPT was reduced.

Marxx.5748:

If it were the 200g and done, id be fine. But seruously, 5-10g for an upgrade to a camp that will likely get flipped soon and the upgrade lost anyhow is silly.

I thought it was 200g and then done?

As I understood it, you pay for the upgrade schematics (ie 200g), then after that it cost guild currency which is generated automatically (ie “free”). Its a hidous cost to begin with for something that previously only required guild currency, but still. When it comes to WvW Anet never does anything good without screwing you over somewhere else.

MoonT.6845:

I wish it was that simple Dawdler, EB is just a quarter of the points total. The majority of points are statistically scored on the borders off peak, and when players do wake up or get in from work / school to recapture stuff I is all T3 due to auto upgrade. The current environment seems to be an off peak heaven, cap, move on and wait for everything to fortify and be virtually impossible for small groups to retake.

… that was exactly what I said. Cap and move on in borders, then dominate EB for the win. People will always go EB first, find they are being dominated by the enemies. Instead of then joining borders to try and balance the points from a weak EB, people simply leave.

Its really quite simple now – EB determine the score.

Whoever dominate EB wins. The 3 deserted borders is something you can just go in quick, cap and then dont care about it because there will be few if any to cap it back. By dominating EB, people loose the will to fight there and they dont fall back to borders, they simply leave WvW. Servers that previously had a strong border presence now find it is quickly boring and leave.

Basicly, to win a matchup all you have to do is bring you A team to EB on reset.

Diru.4531:

Just cap the amount of wvw rewards an account can receive to some (PVE equivalent) amount over a 3 hour period. After reaching the cap only allow a 10% chance to receive the full reward. After 3 hours the cycle starts again. Is it truly that hard?

If they capped it to PvE eqvivalent rewards, we would have 10x better rewards in WvW in worst case scenario. I like that idea.

Firelysm.4967:

Dawdler.8521:

Firelysm.4967:

• REDUCE NEW MAPS FOR 40%, AND REMOVE UNDERGROUND LEVEL. I would only keep the crentral area, all the rivers and side paths removed, gone, deleted please, ty.

Lol you know you could have just summed that up and saved alot of words:

*Delete the map

You cant scale down the map as every single object of the map would be out of place, out of scale and no longer fit together with the terrain. You cant just remove entire parts of it and pretend like that’s going to make it any better (in this case, it would remove bay).

TL;DR
The map cant be fixed without making it a new map.

If they use bad programming practice yes, but if they use advanced stuff they can easily adjust terrain by width and height, and objects will stay in shape while collision will stay on spot.

What “advanced” stuff would they use? AFAIK GW2 is using pretty much the same system as every other game – a terrain heightmap with a ton of objects at XYZ coordinates. All objects would be scaled at their transform points even if you account for scaled positioning on the flat plane. Meaning the walls will disconnect and the hills will fly.

Plus, all the objects and areas that are proper scale now – even if the map is big – would be too small in scale in turn. Shrine and camp cap points would become cramped, canyons too small, doorways you have to crawl through, stairs you have to go up sideways to not fall down, etc.

But yeah. Sure. Magic will fix it.

There will always be a max level no matter how many points there is. The removal of the guard stacks was needed. Not replacing them with anything else was disappointing.

IMO the points just just stop at max level and start a recurring award track, more loot chests or silver for every rank or whatever (ranks would still be earned, but not points). That way Anet could add new masteries without everyone being able to unlock it since 1 year back. Like max today is 1000 points, but oh look max in 6 months its 1400 points with 400 points in new abilities – everyone start at 1000 points or less.

Firelysm.4967:

• REDUCE NEW MAPS FOR 40%, AND REMOVE UNDERGROUND LEVEL. I would only keep the crentral area, all the rivers and side paths removed, gone, deleted please, ty.

Lol you know you could have just summed that up and saved alot of words:

*Delete the map

You cant scale down the map as every single object of the map would be out of place, out of scale and no longer fit together with the terrain. You cant just remove entire parts of it and pretend like that’s going to make it any better (in this case, it would remove bay).

TL;DR
The map cant be fixed without making it a new map.

Jski.6180:

I think gliding would fit for EotM but not for eb and the bl wvw. Now i do feel that there needs to be a mastery system for wvw becuse there a lot of pointless exp in wvw atm there got to be something to use it for.

You know WvW had a mastery system before PvE had it, lol.

I also fail to see why EoTM would be fit for gliding, its much flatter than desert border. It would also give SW a considerable advantage in getting out of their keep while SE is completely kittened being on low ground and north cant even use it around their keep.

Its just another step to make WvW casual for everyone, making it so that upscales can hide in zergs without being scoffed at. This is what Anet want WvW to become.

And yes, its stupid. Zerg commanders depend on the ability to judge how much they can push. Upscales are alot weaker than full 80.

Straegen.2938:

They also didn’t sell HoT then right behind sell two DLC to make HoT playable. ANet has problems but not EA sized problems.

Except that technically they did something even worse, they sold an expansion without even providing a character slot – something that required you to pay 800 gems to play the new class you just paid €45 for. Sure they backtracked on that due to player backlash, something EA wouldnt have done. But that was the plan they where originally going with. So you’re wrong.

DrMORO.4627:

Hey there! Sorry I didn’t recognize the ‘he’ part. :P
And thank you very much for updated build as well.
VERY interesting indeed!
I think your build is quite close to what I was thinking about.
I will see if I can get closer to something like yours.

Thanks!

If you want something close but cheaper, try changing to soldier armor with wurm runes. You loose 100ish toughness or so and about 8% ferocity, but you also gain 500 vitality.

jdallen.5179:

Dawdler.8521:

Cirrion.8951:

DA/Trickery/Daredevil D/D Thief. With max defensive guard stacks (+50 endurance on guard kill) it’s constant evade frames. Add in the AoE condition damage options (Caltrops, caltrops on dodge, double needle traps, AoE condi sigils and Krait runes) and upgraded camps melt fast.

That is assuming you dont have the reaction time of an arthritic sloth like me.

Last time I played daredevil, I died to a single level 70 fire imp.

True story.

No, I really mean it, it is a true story

Right there with ya, Dawdler; I need classes and configurations that limit button mashing if I want to have fun.

To that end, I’ve had good luck with a trap configured Dragon Hunter. Takes me a couple of kites to pull out 2-4 at a time into my traps; more than that can be A Problem. Each kite fight is about 30-45 seconds, and then quick clean up after I’ve downed the supervisor. Major pain is the ranged scouts that I have to duel down. I configure mace/shield in my second weapon set and sometimes close to melee, as it gets me more healing from the mace, is very tanky and does a surprising amount of damage. I may experiment with either Hammer (for quick symbols and CC) or GS (for raw melee DPS).

I’ve tried my 80 warr configured using the Beserker elite spec; sadly, he doesn’t have either the DPS or sustain to pull it off quickly solo; still tinkering with that meta. It may be the build needs more of the button mashing we both have trouble with in order to work properly.

You can always try the Reaper if you find the kiting taking too long. Its ridiculously simple and I have bound by Fx ability to Q, so pretty much no major movements on the keyboard. When I cap a fully upgraded camp, I rush straight in, pop rise, go into shroud, pop stability, move towards the nearest cluster of scouts, wait a few secs until all the guards is upon you… then just spin for the win. 5, 4, 2, autoattacks mop up whatever is left. If you lost any HP at all or needed to dodge while 10 guards are upon you, you are using the wrong build.

Its just too bad that the class itself is too easily kited by other roaming builds.

Cirrion.8951:

DA/Trickery/Daredevil D/D Thief. With max defensive guard stacks (+50 endurance on guard kill) it’s constant evade frames. Add in the AoE condition damage options (Caltrops, caltrops on dodge, double needle traps, AoE condi sigils and Krait runes) and upgraded camps melt fast.

That is assuming you dont have the reaction time of an arthritic sloth like me.

Last time I played daredevil, I died to a single level 70 fire imp.

True story.

No, I really mean it, it is a true story

You got it all backwards.

Its WvW that has outlived its usefulness.

Everything in GW2 has been moving toward having no servers, just instancing. Its cheaper to manage because you can power down everything you dont need, unlike constantly running instances that need to be there all the time. Its a matter of having a world system that is hands off no maintenance. One that run itself as effective as possible. We’ve already seen the clear indication that Anet no longer want to have anything to do with such trivial things like WvW resets.

We may not like it – I sure dont – but I have no doubt that’s the way its heading.

Been using the 64bit client since yesterday, no problems so far. Makes you wonder why they even released it as 32bit to begin with. 32bit only desktop CPUs stopped being produced like 10 years ago. Windows Vista should IMO have been the last 32bit operating system.

Yes, it would be an excellent indication, except Anet has zero transparency and do not disclose population cap modifications or WvW changes. Thats why servers suddenly go full and Anet can say “look at all these players coming back for HoT, full servers are more popular than ever!”. In reality, they just lowered the cap.

Wolfric.9380:

Suggestion:

Top realm gets desert map
Second gets alpine
Last gets greyed out so no home map.

Two diffrent maps to select more players on one map …

That doesnt make any sense whatsoever. You are giving the bettet ranked server an easily defended border no enemies will bother contesting because they dont want to play there, while the last ranked server get no points because they have no home to hold.

I still say middle ranked get desert, other two alpine. Its the only fair option with 1 desert in the mix.

Drekor.5217:

Zerker + Rise! makes things super easy

Super easy is relative though. My near zerk reaper went head to head with an itzl champ hero point in tangled depths yesterday, killed 4 or so respawning veteran frogs and probably 50+ normal mobs that respawn around the hero point… Still only got the champ down to 10% before the 10 minute timer ran out. Fml.

That said, its so far beyond regular necro when it comes to PvE its pretty much p2w.

Not going to happen unless they design the map with gliding in mind. Plus its so easy to create ledges so that going down a hillside is possible. It would add the potential to bypass combat areas as well. Consider the NW tower on alpine. Imagine if you had gliders. You could literally glide all the way to bay, bypassing the chokepoints, the camp, everything. If there was an enemy zerg there well gg you just avoided combat. I am not familiar enough with desert to compare with it.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Wolfric.9380:

What about this?

No more home map. Two maps (alpine + desert) with three starting points each.
So ist not 3 Maps per Server its two and these are diffrent.

Both maps exist. A small redesign seting a new start point at the top, one less selection bar and off we go. Ranking deside start positions on the two maps.

Effect more players on one map, both maps used.

That would require completely redesigning both maps. It took 3 years to get the numbers tweaked on WvW achievements, how long do you think it would take to redesign 2 maps?

That’s why I suggested this game mode should be a 2 way fight instead of 3 way. Start the teams in the southern corners and no one ends up with the home field advantage. No redesign required.

No redesign required, except well, you know, the entire code base for WvW, the matchup system and it would also rebalance all WvW maps from scratch including EoTM.

Anet has several ways forward but I seriously doubt they would ever consider such an option. Then again they have a tendancy to throw curveballs at us. Wouldnt surprise me the slightest if they announce the complete closure of WvW next week, EoTM and desert will run alternating 3 hour 3 way instanced matchups from now on.

Algonda Friedenbaum.2930:

I also noted some Wyverns in the northeast corner, but personally, I just am not particularly keen to tackle them solo (yeah, a bit of a yellow streak there) for some strange reason. At least the old ‘daily’ veterans could be soloed.

Last I checked, the wyverns where a fairly easy kill, although with annoying CC. Killed one that was standing on the hero point some time ago (dunno if its been nerfed to a channel as it was that the last time I ran by, maybe someone had killed it just before, cant remember).

Jim Hunter.6821:

That’s why I suggested the flexible player cap

GW2 lag apart with current caps. Theres no way the engine will ever support more unless they replace it.

albotelho.2931:

No more population inbalance, nightcappting would be more balanced too… and we would have 24 hours of action. At least it is my first impression did not thought a lot of possible drawbacks.

Haha no. None of your ideas would work. There is no way entire EU or NA would fit on 4 maps. It would also do nothing against nightcapping. Instead of a server being stacked, a color will be stacked – which already happen in EOTM where certain servers dominate coverage.

They can easily achieve this by just stopping the clock. Comment it out. Problem solved, lol. Every dolly subtracts time from the frozen countdown.

Simple :p

vespers.1759:

Name a source of money that has been buffes. Go ahead, i’ll wait.

Ironically, WvW. Loot drop chances is considerably higher now than the early times. Also, nodes themself is a major buff over low tier mats on alpine even if they nerfed it, lol.

Still find it stupid that this is their priority, given how farmable PvE areas are.

Catalin.5341:

So saying that WvW is dead because there are a lot of complains here, on the same note you could say that sPvP and PVE is dead too.

Which would be even worse, since no one would be playing the game. I dont know about sPvP, but no, PvE is not dead. Join any zone and its packed with people, no matter how much they complain. Now join desert border and tell me its packed with people despite us complaining.

Halcyon.5340:

With that said, the real issue here is still the rewards for defending an objective.

That is an issue, But I do not consider it the real issue.

The question is, why bother defending when no one lifted a finger to upgrade it? When autoupgrades just ticked through? The emotional question goes unanswered and that IMO is the real issue. There is no social aspect to this. You dont help build up every keep sure, but when you visit a T3 Garrison you are supposed to think someone built this, players on my server worked hard to get this to T3 and now I am here… I want to defend it. Because its ours.

Getting loot for defending is a boon, but it doesnt answer the why. The social and emotional reward – gj defending garri we worked so hard on! – is what fuels our passion for WvW.