I on the other hand have been surprised on how few players you have online. Last time i remember fighting against deso you had much more players.
We also tend to have more people online if we “have a chance” in the matchup or if it’s a close one. Better fights if one side isn’t completely stomping the other.
Desolation has recently lost many guilds and gained only few. Believe me or not, we are very often outnumbered (the “buff”) and now when prime time is starting, no queue to any map. This is radical difference to 1 month ago when we had big queues on all maps at prime time.
If Desolation wouldn’t fight now so hard for points, we would definitely sink down in ranks.
We definitely need more good roamers and the action is here 24h7. Constant pressure and chances to ninja cap anything. If you want easier times and not be double focused by enemy servers in 90% of the match ups, I suggest other servers.
(edited by Deniara Devious.3948)
Please don't release between april 8 and 22
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Deniara Devious.3948
I don’t think they will release it that early. They still need more time to polish the content or there will be a lot of bugs.
My guess is that HoT will be released eventually in August – September 2015. This is just my personal guess. I have no insider information.
I think the selection is purely random. I will be sadly at work on Wednesday, but I should be able to attend Tuesday, 24 March from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Closed Beta Stress Test. Two hours is very short time to test so many new features and so much new content, so sadly I will be able to just scratch the surface.
My main interest lies in these:
- revenant (new profession)
- Stronghold (new pvp mode)
- new WvWvW borderland map (I am not sure if this is in the test?)
- new weapons and masteries for each profession
I plan to make many screen shots.
Or just nerf the ridiculously strong +-40% condi duration foods…
Exactly! The condition duration foods should be capped to max +/- 15%. Now food alone is stronger than traits.
Almost every person and his uncle is running -40/36% condition duration food, except small scale roamers, which might use the opposite food, giving +40% condition duration. I am myself using them as well, still I am asking Arenanet to nerf them.
Piken is going up in the ranks and you might end up in higher tiers again.
Indeed. Piken’s current rank is 6 and predicted rating is going up. Piken is mostly likely going to be matched up with EU rank 1-10 in next match ups. The rating differences in EU are so small that all this match ups are probable.
As an enemy, I haven’t seen much roamers on Piken, but more like something which can be classified as zone blob (30-50+ Piken in one blob). Despite Desolation’s higher rank, I have been enjoying the outnumbered “buff” more than half of the time, still flipping more than our share of the map. I am not complaining, just stating an observed fact. But each player can have different experience, depending on map and time played.
(edited by Deniara Devious.3948)
Just wanted to say to all the “GOOD” spvp players who got invited to the beta:
Make sure you give feedback about stronghold, don’t let the wvw kids who never play spvp give all the feedback.I would do it if I was invited but I wasn’t
I am sure that if stronghold delivers and is in separate queue than many Spvp veterans will become active again.
Please no elitism. My limited experience with the solo queue in spvp says that the overall level of the players there are much weaker than found among the WvWvW roamers in top tiers of EU. Builds of course matter a lot and the amount of damage and duration of the conditions is completely out of the control in WvWvW. (the offensive power in spvp is clearly less).
The closed beta is very limited so far, allowing only to scratch the surface of the new features. I am personally most curious of the WvWvW changes, Stronghold and Revenant profession. It is great that Arenanet is doing beta testing like this!
Looks really boring. Luckily here in EU the meta is still more varied.
Some of our enemy servers are using a lot of guardians + staff elementalists + necros aka pirate ship meta, but warriors are still also in the meta. The amount of lines of wardings + wells + meteor showers from 40+ man blob is amazing.
Unlike some predicted here in the forums that rangers and engineers would be much more popular. The increase of the rangers happened already with the longbow buffs, but engineers are almost as rare as they used to.
Define what is good roaming!
If good roaming means a lot of small roaming teams on your side, but enemy is mostly big blobs, then avoid the so called “good roaming” servers, as you will rarely have equal fights. You will be blobbed to death. If I am a commander and I see enemy havoc/ganking teams sniping my fellow Desolators, I try to make their life as close to hell as possible.
If roaming means playing the supply wars (capturing camps, sniping dolyaks, draining camps, upgrading them, supply trapping), providing intel, capturing big objectives (like keep) with 1-3 players in prime time under the nose of your enemy, then any top server will do. I admit, I am a Points-per-Tick (PPT) oriented roamer myself. And Desolation needs more players like this.
Wut? Im having lots of fun on our ‘lower’ placed server Gunnars Hold. I dont need or want to be on a major que server like sfr or fsp.
I wouldn’t be so sure that those servers have major queues, besides queue to EB. I don’t have any secondary accounts on other servers, so all I can trust is some screenshots by the players of those servers. At least few weeks ago FSP didn’t have queues outside EB, but after that FSP has gained more players. Perhaps players of those servers can comment this?
Desolation has recently lost of a lot of guilds, but also gained a few and few old legends and guilds are back, which means a lot, at least point wise. Currently we can fill 1-3 of the 4 maps in prime time and outside prime time there aren’t usually queues.
I would still argue that EU top tiers have the most epic battles and also some crazy roaming. I have both succeeded and failed capturing enemy keeps with just 1-2 guys and yes, I do that in prime time as well. The biggest advantage of TOP3 EU is that there is always lots of action, no matter what time of the day you play.
I think the only way to revive silver and bronze leagues is to:
- offer better rewards for playing WvWvW (more achievement points, better loot from the chests, unique skins, salvageable WvWvW gear etc)
- cheaper transfer costs to lower ranked servers
Unless both of these are implemented, I don’t see any major revival for silver and bronze.
Even if a lot of players transfer from top servers to lower ranked servers, these servers eventually rise up towards the top and bandwagoning has destructive effects to the server (increased drama etc).
(edited by Deniara Devious.3948)
Every day i seen minimum 1 thief who exploited this. Le thief standing, trying to burst you down and if he not success within 2 sec just stepped to a point where i (or anyone else) couldnt follow
Exactly. Finally this bug was fixed. In fact one could argue that shadow stepping skills were buffed thanks to the new changes to the camera.
(edited by Deniara Devious.3948)
Gear bought with badges should be salvageable without the use of super expensive extractor. Arenanet, please change this.
(edited by Deniara Devious.3948)
If you want to solo, then you’re in the wrong game mode, my friend. There are plenty of NPC mobs and outside events for a solo player to participate in (see Hylick camp in EB, Centaurs in Borderlands, etc.). But by no means should the active WvW objectives, the ones that are relevant to PvP interaction for defense and offense, should not be soloable by individual players. That makes for a weak gameplay that becomes a boring faceroll for those that are in a larger group as well as equally making it frustrating for those that do upgrades to make it more defensive.
In fact, even with current integration it’s rather annoying that a group of no more than 2 player can take a fully upgraded camp in less than a few minutes. This is a camp that a team wastes some 500 supply + 1g and nearly 1/2hr to upgrade. Does that seem right that all that work and effort be so easily overthrown by so little? No, it does not! It is wrong and should be tweaked so that a fully upgraded camp can only be taken with a minimum effort of 5 or more players.
Great game design is inclusive, not exclusive.
Centaurs and Skritt in the borderland maps have always been useless events. Nobody comes there. Thus they are the most boring game-play in those maps. You cannot be serious to suggest me go and play them!
Now if the camps would get upgraded like you suggest, what to do when the entire map has just 1-2 players on your side? Not everybody plays all the time on the busy hours and I can imagine this is a very common problem on the lowest tiers. Just ask those people who play on Blacktide.
If the NPCs are greatly strengthened (and NOT scaled to the amount of enemies) the coverage problems are becoming even worse. The server with the best coverage will simply flip all the maps and then when the other server players wake up, they have an almost impossible uphill battle.
And trust me, I have spent tons of gold and time to upgrade camps and other objectives and seen it lost fast to just 3 enemy roamers. Still I am strongly against your idea.
(edited by Deniara Devious.3948)
I fail to understand WHY Arenanet developers are doing this, unless they think every player and his uncle enjoys trolling. We already have EotM which has excessive amount of ledges to launch off other players (perfect for trolling), abundant amount of choke points (horrible for solo roamers to move around the map unnoticed), powerful NPCs, automatic turrets and so on. So instead of having EotM, we seem to get “EotM 2.0” in the form of the new desert borderlands. Not to be completely negative, I think it will be better than the current EotM, which is so bad in so many ways, I don’t want to repeat myself.
My logic is:
Those people who like EotM map design, can always go to EotM. Thus that map caters those who like such. There is no need for more of the similar. And there is absolutely no reason to turn WvWvW into more pve alike experience, as this game as pve content for those who want that. There is even a pve desert alike map at the Dry Top with tons of annoying ledges to fall and jumping puzzle alike mechanics, which distract the core game play heavily (plus that map zone seems to be mostly vacant from players as well, should be a hint, majority players don’t like it).
Developers should be more transparent and honest. Everybody makes sometimes mistakes. Smart people learn from their mistakes and admit them publicly. Now it is dead obvious that the earlier borderland changes with the bloodlust and replacing lake with ruins were a fail. That area has extremely few human players (even less than the lake had), all the most interesting fights happen outside the ruins area. Such map design simply doesn’t work well for WvWvW. Even the guild vs guilds (gvg) audience and dueling (1 vs 1) people choose to fight somewhere else.
Now let’s see when the map is, when it is actually released as I understood it is still being worked on and HotT will be released much later this year, maybe in summer 2015.
(edited by Deniara Devious.3948)
“The Desert Borderlands Map will be replacing the old Borderlands map (Alpine Borderlands) when the expansion releases and we might reintroduce the old map in a rotation or tournament.”
This is indeed bad news, but I was expecting it already. Excessive amount of choke points and places to fall to your doom (or fear/launch etc your enemies) is nothing to cheer about. Nor the addition of gimmick mechanics.
It seems Eternal Battlegrounds will be the last good WvWvW map in this game. And the lag on that map, sighs…
This is a serious issue. I have crafted 3 full ascended armor sets, but none of them are light armor, which is by far the most expensive.
Either the requirements for damask should be altered or the drop rate of the items should be adjusted.
It is essential that a solo player is able to capture a normal camp. Outside the busy prime the number of players per map can be very low even in the top tiers of EU. Now imagine if are the lonely guy on the map and the objectives are upgraded like the original poster suggests, you cannot get anything done! Solo roaming should not be punished. A great game mode caters many different gaming styles.
Most players have trouble soloing a fully upgraded camp, unless they use a build like this (which is made for this role):
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Thief_-_Solo_Camp_Flipper
And I am sure majority of the players never solo a tower or a keep. The time window to do this in top tiers is usually very small. You have to be able to kill all the NPCs in less than 1 minute. I have often failed to capture a tower with 1-3 players, because the enemy forces have come there.
I don’t think you will find so many threads in this forum about solo roaming being too powerful in this game mode, but almost everybody agree that zerging is too prevalent. We often have massive blobs which mow over any objective, defended or not. A blob of 50+ players can very quickly flip the entire map and if the defenders have much less players, they can just use some siege disablers and supply traps, drain supplies etc. to slow them a bit, but in about 20 minutes is gone. This is highly irritating especially if you spent many gold pieces to upgrade and siege these locations. And of course players do this as it is the most rewarding way to play WvWvW (I don’t count EotM as WvWvW). Currently WvWvW is often border hopping flipping as much as possible in one map and then hopping to another to gain maximum of points.
I have suggested:
Capture camp/tower/keep/castle events are scaled to the amount of enemy players just like the pve events are. Extra archers will spawn to defend the objectives if a very large enemy force comes there (the very large could be 5+ for a camp, 10+ for a tower, 30+ for a keep and 50+ for Stonemist. The extra NPCs do not drop any loot and vanish if the location is still not captured after 3 minutes. This is to avoid EotM style of farming. The camp/tower/keep lord could be scaled in amount of hit points to make it harder to kill by a large enemy force. This would balance the population imbalance issues and make off-time (aka “night” capping) more time consuming and difficult.
There is just one thing which I would want to see a bit harder for a solo player:
killing a dolyak
A dolyak with guards should be either completely immune damage or take just 1/3 damage (thus you need to kill the guard and scout escorting it first). Because in its current state, the NPC guards are completely useless. You just spam damage to the dolyak and both of these guards vanish as well.
(edited by Deniara Devious.3948)
I guess you don’t play WvW much if you are under the delusion cheese builds are only found in conquest, prepare to be disappointed if you think stronghold is going to be a cheese free zone.
Indeed, but the lack of gear choices, consumables and WvWvW related buffs (like borderland bloodlust, guard leech, applied fortitude, Power of the Mists) makes things more balanced. I still have no idea why WvWvW needs to have any of these, especially the bloodlust and Power of the Mists can just skew the balance even more to the favor of the higher population winning server. They should be removed asap.
My prediction that many of the builds, which are now meta in WvWvW roaming and are possible to emulate in pvp, will also be popular in Stronghold. This includes:
- D/P shadow arts thief, P/D condi thief, solo camp flipper S/P+SB thief (should be able to solo the lord + guards easily)
- GS mobility warrior (hammer/GS, GS/LB and GS/axe+sh), shoutbow warrior
- celestial D/D elementalist
- meditation guardian (GW/Sw+Fo or Sc+Th/Sw/Fo)
- RtW LB ranger, condi Sw+Th, Axe+dagger, shout heal ranger
- shatter and condi shatter mesmer, PU/mantra mesmer
- condi multikit engineer rifle or P/Sh
- condi terror necro
Several of the above are also considered meta builds in the current conquest mode. Did I forget any common WvWvW roaming builds?
The transfer fee should be obviously linked to the server’s rank. The highest rated servers having the highest cost.
I would not call Desolation as the heaven of bandwagoning anymore. Surely we have gotten more than our fair share of new players and old guilds & ex-Desolators coming back (hi to vE and Ins), but we also lost some key players and guilds to other servers. I would argue that FSP is now the #1 server to migrate. FSP has a lot of players from SFR, which used to have a massive WvWvW player base (enough to fill 2 servers). Soon FSP and SFR will be married together in future match ups. Millenium org predicts them to be rank #1 and rank #2 in next reset:
http://mos.millenium.org/eu/matchups/
If you want to help a WvWvW server, please help Blacktide. They have been stuck to the bottom for many months in a row.
Agree that the video doesn’t show enough for us to make an accurate assessment, BUT judging from what we’ve seen so far and Anet’s comments about the map, it does seem like the map focuses too much on vertical drops and choke points.
This is the completely WRONG way to design a WvW map. I hope Anet takes the overwhelmingly negative feedback against EotM/Skyhammer map design into serious consideration before releasing this new map.
There is no turning back now, Anet has a bad reputation for making these types of bad decisions. They have repeatedly shoved “new content” out for wvw that goes against what the majority wants of likes, they are completely out of touch with the wvw population.
Developers seem to listen to the player base, but just a certain part of the player base, mostly ignoring those who literally spent thousands of hours in WvWvW and really rally the entire server. In worst case the good ideas in these forums are ignored and when somebody suggests something really dumb, they grab that idea and make it real. Of course I understand that some ideas are technically very difficult to implement, but things like a different scoring, which would lead to more even match ups, are not. Arenanet also has code (used in pve) to scale events for the number of players. Why this is not used in WvWvW? Now big blobs can just stream roll over most content unless a large number of human players defend it, as few NPC guards is nothing for a zerg. Adding pve encourages the karma train. We still haven’t seen a single WvWvW specific skill balance change, even though the meta has been more or less the same since Autumn 2012. Competitive players want a sense of fairness and balance, not more gimmicks and imbalance.
To fix this problem Arenanet should have more developers whose main task is WvWvW gameplay, and really play the game mode, at least 20+ h every single week (1000+ h/year).
(edited by Deniara Devious.3948)
I will play on the existing borderland maps as much as I can. When this update goes live, I will probably spend much less time with this game as the queues and lag on EB is just too high.
I very much dislike maps, which are full of gimmicks and have too much verticality and choke points. I hate jumping puzzles and forcing them on the player base and maps where there is the constant fear to fall down. It should be obvious that such map design encourages players to use troll builds, like fear necro. Also the map looks horrible for roamers and solo roaming is what I do. EotM, Skyhammer and Dry Top are the worst maps of this game.
Now we can just cross our fingers and hope Stronghold gets a separate queue.
(edited by Deniara Devious.3948)
Honestly I don’t even see many posts that highlight the core issue that ranger builds face in high level PvP. There are people that are hitting the nail on the head, but to state/restate the problems ranger builds face:
- An utter lack of effective AoE damage.
…
- Lack of enemy boon removal.
…
- Lack of Mobility.
…
- Escapes.
I agree with most of this analysis. But to be fair: Each profession has some strong points and weaknesses. Ranger is supposed to be the master of ranged single-target damage. And it really is that with a fully traited longbow.
Only two professions do the boon removal effectively: mesmer and necromancer. Engineer throw mine/mine field is rarely used and doesn’t fit any meta build.
Ranger’s lack of AoE damage I can still still understand as an intended design choice. Mesmer and thief are also mostly single damage, while the elementalist really shines on AoE damage.
You forgot one thing: Ranger lacks group support. Water field from healing springs is not much. This is important in big fights. Guardians, Warriors and Elementalists are the best in group support, thus part of the GWEN wvwvw meta. Necromancers are needed for boon removal and burst AoE damage via wells. Mesmer is needed for its utilities and boon removal. Thieves are most common roamers. Engineers and rangers still lack a role, but still rangers are at least 2-3 times more common than engineers in WvWvW. I suggested to add a blast finisher to GS#2 maul to give ranger more group support. Ranger could also get a lighting field, perhaps added to a skill which suits it well, like lighting reflexes or juvenile river drake’s lightning breath.
The lack of mobility and escapes is seriously hurting ranger’s on high level play. I am expecting ranger to have same level of mobility which a thief or warrior has, but a little more would be good.
Movement impairing conditions, especially immobilize, is a death sentence to ranger. I use that to kill enemy rangers (works 99% of the time) and in my WvWvW solo roaming as ranger myself, the times I die are almost almost related to being rooted. Ranger is usually the 1st target by the enemy players. When I play my ranger often the all the enemies focus their fire on me. If I switch to playing some other profession, I get much less focus fire.
That is why I suggested to give a little bit more mobility the ranger: change the signet of the hunt active to a leap and make lightning reflexes also cleanse cripple and chilled.
I don’t get why everyone complains about gearshield being to powerful when rangers get the 3s block on GS for just a 15 sec cd, 12 if traited…
gearshield is fine where it is.
Well, there are few reasons for this:
1. Rangers are not part of the tpvp meta
2. GS#4, counter attack, turns into the attack into a kick if there is a target in melee range. After just 1 block any enemy within melee range makes GS#4 stop blocking. While you can keep blocking full 3 s with the gear shield
If you don’t understand why there is no QQ in the net about ranger GS, just try playing with it as your main weapon for 100+ h. I have done that with my ranger. The ranger GS is not bad and the evasion as part of auto attack chain is great, but the it still lacks a blast finisher (GS#2 maul would be logical) and GS#5 (hilt bash) is weak for its long 25 s cool down. All GS skills (maul, swoop especially) are exceptionally well telegraphed, something which I would want to see more on several other weapons on other professions.
But let’s keep the topic on the tool kit. I think it is one of the best engineer kits and part of the pvp meta.
(edited by Deniara Devious.3948)
So here are the FACTS:
-Before April 2014 : same traits + different amulet = Ele is considered UP
-After April 2014 : same traits + CELESTIAL = Ele is considered OP
It is NOT just the amulet, but also the runes and sigil changes done at same time.
See my previous post in this thread. I gave good suggestions what should be done to a large number of different runes, sigils and might stacking. Before the changes almost nobody was using Strength or Hoelbrak runes in this game. The patch made their price skyrocket and they are still very expensive, because they are too good in both pve/WvWvW and spvp/tpvp.
We have 50+ sigils and 50+ runes in this game. Yet only less than 10 of them are actually used by the viable and common builds. Why is that? Don’t you see any problem that almost everybody uses the exactly same sigils and runes, not just the amulet?
There was also considerable changes in the April 2014 patch for all professions affecting both skills and traits:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/April_2014
(edited by Deniara Devious.3948)
I agree with the suggestion, thwack should cleave 3 or even 5 enemies and hit a bit faster. At the same time the tool kit gear shield skill is a bit too powerful, allowing too long lasting block at so long cooldown. Most other short cooldown blocking skills end from the 1st melee hit.
(edited by Deniara Devious.3948)
I am mostly a solo roamer myself, but I do understand that many WvWvW players find big epic fights the best part of this game. Thus blobbing should not be punished too hard.
Here is my suggestion:
Enemy groups, which are larger than certain size (let’s say 20), always appear on map.
This would encourage servers to split up their forces to avoid telling their location to the enemy. This would not hamper the epic keep/SM fights, in fact make them more likely (instead of the quick golem rush tactic).
Capture camp/tower/keep/castle events are scaled to the amount of enemy players just like the pve events are. Extra archers will spawn to defend the objectives if a very large enemy force comes there (the very large could be 5+ for a camp, 10+ for a tower, 30+ for a keep and 50+ for Stonemist. All these can be soloed, except I have never soloed SM). The extra NPCs do not drop any loot and vanish if the location is still not captured after 3 minutes. The camp/tower/keep lord could be scaled in amount of hit points to make it harder to kill by a large enemy force. This would balance the population imbalance issues and make off-time (aka “night” capping) more time consuming and difficult.
I have also been thinking borrowing the players from high population servers, but this idea simply doesn’t work well anymore as the player base is smaller.
I play on a very high population EU rank #2 server and most of the time we don’t have any queues besides a queue to EB. And outside the 1st two hours of reset, there is either at least one borderland without any queue or the queue lasts just 1-5 minutes. Majority of players are willing to wait few minutes and play with their friends, than go play with strangers.
The only thing which will bring more players to WvWvW is better rewards. Rewards should not be just tied to loot and WXP. Several of these should be implemented:
WvWvW should be a good source of Achievement Points
Currently the WvWvW tied achievements are more or less impossible to achieve. Escorting half a million dolyaks to get Ultimate Chaperone title and mere 25 achievement points. The pve side of this game gives 10 achievement points by just visiting and talking to a NPC or going to place X! The amounts required for the WvWvW titles should be put to a realistic level e.g. 5000 dolyak kills to gain the Yakslapper title (instead of 1 million kills). Ideally the titles would be made into a ladder like the pvp conqueror titles are. And instead of being able to gain just 800 achievement points from wvwvw.
Rewards for defense and upgrades
Currently upgrading keeps, towers and camps is a huge money sink and you can easily lose everything as enemy loves to run as massive blobs and golem rush everything and you often just don’t have enough people to scout and defend everything. And why to defend as capturing stuff and big open fights are rewarded better? I have spent a lot of gold in just 2 days doing that, without counting the money spent on siege. If an objective is attacked, yet successfully defended, the person who did the upgrades should be rewarded 50% of the costs spent on the upgrade. In most cases, the supply camps are taken (they are difficult to defend, unless you have numbers).
More gear available with badges and gear made salvageable
Players should be able to salvage gear bought with badges normally. Now many players sit on their badges and don’t want to put expensive runes or sigils on them, as they know that they only way to get them off is the super expensive extractor.
Give players to way to purchase more varied gear with badges + gold + laurels: superior siege, ascended back piece, ascended weapons and armor, sigils and runes. The cost can be high e.g. 5000 badges + 30 laurels for a backpiece or ascended armor piece/weapon.
General Rewards
Rewards from WXP chests should be increased so that the likely hood to gain good items (ascended weapon/armor/trinket, rare/exotic items) is increased. Currently most chests give 2 green items, which is a bad joke. At least 1 rare item should be guaranteed. It is more work to get 1 WXP level, than do one guild mission or world event (both which give 1-3 rare items).
The rewards from player kills should not be dramatically increased as most the kills happen in zerg fights and this would just encourage players to band wagon to the most highly populated servers as a bigger blob is likely to win over a smaller one. This could also be exploited using dual accounts on opposing servers. So the rewards must be tied to something else (like I suggested above).
And more unique skins which you can only obtain by playing WvWvW.
(edited by Deniara Devious.3948)
In recent 5 months I have spent more time on my ranger than any other of my 8 characters. Here are few things I would like to see improved.
The Pet
By far the biggest problem with the ranger profession.
Current situation: Even the sturdiest pets, like the ursine, tend to die very fast in AoE heavy situations, like WvWvW zerging. Many ranger traits require the pet to be alive. Thus rangers are not part of the WvWvW zerg meta. I would love to see more rangers also dive inside the melee train instead of being pewpew long bow snipers from the flanks.
Solution: Allow the pet to be put to spirit mode. In spirit mode the ranger pet does no active effects and doesn’t attack, but it is invulnerable to damage. Pet which is in spirit mode cannot revive (lick wounds won’t function)
I would also like to see the pet follow ranger and her targets more closely. Now even pressing “Return to me” (F3) button the pet is often too far from the ranger and just stands in the AoE damage.
Putting the pet to Avoid combat mode should immediately cause it to return to the ranger.
Maul http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Maul_
- blast finisher
- increase cooldown to 8 s (to compensate the addition of blast finisher, for comparison guardian hammer #2, mighty blow, has 5/4 s cooldown, which I consider overpowered)
Hilt Bash http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hilt_Bash
- Either increase the damage multiplier to 1.5x (from 0.5x) or make it always stun
- Currently weak skill considering it’s 25 s cooldown and in 1 vs 1 difficult to get behind enemy to land the blow
Lighting Reflexes http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lightning_Reflexes
- Removes also chilled and cripple (just like engi rocket boots and similar skills)
- becomes a leap finisher
Signet of the Hunt http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_the_hunt
- Combination of 25% speed buff (passive) +150% damage buff (active) is a bit weird, I would like to see more utility in terms closing in targets or disengaging
- redesign: active gives 600 s leap, cures immobilize/chill/cripple
Entangle http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Entangle
- Should be unblockable like the skill description says
Here are some traits which would need love:
Nature’s Protection http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Nature%27s_Protection
Reduce cooldown to 20 s, would give ranger a bit more survivability if traited
Two-Handed Training http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Two-Handed_Training
Increase fury duration to 6 s (current 3 s fury is very short)
There are working celestial builds for some professions, but not for all. I haven’t for example figured out any good celestial build for the necromancer (and trust me I spent so many hours trying to do it).
Celestial became “overpowered” with the sigil and rune changes, which are the core problem.
I don’t know any viable celestial build, which isn’t using at least one of the following runes or sigils and might stacking from fire fields.
Without might stacking celestial would be mediocre damage at best.
Might stacking was already nerfed, but I still feel it allows too much stat increase with ease. For example celestial shoutbow warrior can easily keep 14 might stacks in combat. That is 14*30*2 = 840 additional stat points in total.
Using a finisher on fire field should give 3 stacks of might for 10 seconds instead of 20 s.
If almost every profession and build uses certain Sigils and Rune Sets, this should tell we have a problem of them being too good.
I am now talking about the following and here are my suggestions to fix them:
Superior Rune of the Hoelbrak
- reduce might duration to 10% (from 30%), the -20% condition duration is extremely strong itself, making Melandru runes almost redudant
Superior Rune of the Strength
- reduce might duration to 30% (from 45%)
Superior Rune of the Krait
- remove torment and poison from 6th rune effect (activating elite)
Superior Rune of the Perplexity (missing from pvp, but extremely common and abused in WvWvW roaming)
- change 4th effect, next attack causes 3 stacks of confusion for 5 seconds, when using a heal skill, cooldown 30 s
- change 6th effect, gives only 3 stacks of confusion for 5 seconds when interrupting
Superior Sigil of Fire
- cannot trigger same time with other crit proc sigils, like sigil of air
- combined with sigil of air allows fairly durable builds hit extremely kitten crits
Superior Sigil of Air
- cannot trigger same time with other crit proc sigils, like sigil of fire
- combined with sigil of fire allows fairly durable builds hit extremely kitten crits
Superior Sigil of Doom
- give 4 second of poison (instead of 6)
- allows too long lasting poison
Superior Sigil of Energy
- give back 33% of endurance (instead of 50%)
- allows extra dodge on too low cooldown
Superior Sigil of Geomancy
- give 2 stacks of bleeding for 8 s (instead of 3 stacks for 10 s)
- current version allows too large AoE condition spam for very little
Superior Sigil of Intelligence
- gain fury on weapon swap for 5 s (cooldown 10), the current version allows 100% crit chance with zero investment to precision, which allows tanky builds to hit too hard
Some other sigils and runes, which are currently too weak, should be buffed slightly.
Examples of underused runes: Rune of the Citadel (drop bomb is useless, replace with something fitting to name of the rune, like -15% condi duration), Rune of the Speed (traveler and pack runes are better), Rune of the Rage (fury alone too weak)
Examples of underused sigils: sigil of nullification (increase to 100% chance),
sigil of incapacitation (increase to 100% chance)
I could go on and I probably forgot many.
I predict we will see similar builds seen in WvWvW small scale roaming, only that many of those WvWvW builds are not possible, because the gear (e.g. Perplexity runes) are not available in spvp/tpvp.
Thieves have always been extremely common in WvWvW, D/P perma stealth and P/D condi making huge chunk of them. In my estimate they make 1/3 of the roaming population, sometimes more than a half. Mesmers are currently the 2nd most common roamers and have several valid builds as well (shatter, PU etc). 3rd place probably goes to meditation guardians or greatsword mobility warriors, followed by longbow power and condition rangers, celestial D/D eles and condition semi-bunker engineers. It is very common to see multiple thieves and mesmers bursting down the same target. Engineer is a good counter to D/P thieves, but not that good against P/D due lack of condition removal. Yet the number of engis in WvWvW roaming is probably 5-10 times less than the number of thieves (this should tell game devs something!).
Stealth has always been broken in WvWvW: Cloak and Dagger from enemy structures (walls, gates, siege) and forest animals. The upcoming Stronghold mode looks like it is a mini version of WvWvW. For some weird reason revealed is only 3 seconds in WvWvW (stealth is clearly more powerful in WvWvW, yet revealed is shorter!!). Stealth + high mobility (shadowsteps) allows the player to reset any fight it wants. This pretty much defeats almost all the other berserker builds from the game, thus limiting the meta. Besides the occasional full berserker pewpew ranger and mesmer, you don’t see any other berserker builds (than thieves) in the game for a good reason.
I see only few reasonable solutions to this:
- limit the maximum duration of stealth, e.g. limit it to 8 seconds
- making stealthed players gradually visible to opponents, in other words after some time in stealth they would be rendered semi-transparent = just like they are rendered to their allies. This would still not allow targeting them, but would remove the guess game. If the game area is large, hitting them with AoE is a guess game.
- redesign some of the problematic runes and sigils e.g. fire and air sigil should not trigger at same time (this allows high 2.9k armor builds, which can still do extremely high critical damage)
Removing stealth is really not on option as stealth is such an integral part of thief profession that it would mean complete redesign of the profession.
(edited by Deniara Devious.3948)
I’m most concerned with a blob being able to melt 2 doors of a T3 structure in about 2 mins flat. They are simply going down too fast. Even if the keep is fully sieged, it can’t be saved.
Servers seem to have taken different strategies with this change. One strategy is to turn wvw into one big pvd flipping game. Get one huge zerg and just reset everything. Result? Server with highest numbers wins every single time. The defence game becomes completely pointless. The alternative strategy is to break into smaller groups and try multiple objectives at once, but what’s the point if it’s all destined to be paper forever? No need to worry about dolyaks at all, cos the only place to get supply is freshly flipped camps.. ^yawn^
This has already happened a long time ago in the TOP tiers of EU. The recent change just made it worse. Now almost nobody scouts as it offers no rewards and zone wide blob flips everything in 1 map, then ports to another map does the same and so on.
In other words, this ill-planned change, turned WvWvW into more blobby and more into player vs door (PvD).
I don’t think a permanent removal of white swords is a good idea, because even if the defending gets some increased rewards, they would still be way below the rewards of playing EotM, latest pve farm or joining the pvd zerg. Outside the prime time, even some of the top servers have just 1-3 players on the entire map. In other words there are not enough to scout the objectives outside the busiest hours.
The white swords served an important purpose by giving away information about enemy information. I would have went further into this direction and make any enemy group, which is larger than 15/20 players always appear as moving swords in the map. This would encourage enemy blob to split up, not to reveal their movements to enemy.
Bad. It encourages karma train and makes the defense impossible for the seriously outnumbered side. If you have just a few players on the entire map, how can you afford to have 2-3 scouts per keep? The more numerous side just needs to create a zerg big enough so it can very quickly build 3-4 superior rams or catapults and sneak capture anything in just matters of minutes. In other words we will see even more lopsided matches.
The current system doesn’t reward scouting. How do the Arenanet developers expect the players just sit and scout the keeps?
The most profitable to play WvWvW is to blob and Arenanet keeps doing these unwise changes to make the blobbing even more prevalent. It is as if they really want that there is just one “proper” way to play their game.
(edited by Deniara Devious.3948)
It depends what you want. If you want to win by points, then moving to rank #1 makes all the sense. But outside the seasons you gain personally nothing when your server wins the match up. Being #1 doesn’t mean you will be winning most of the fights in prime time, when most of the players are on, but it means mostly rather boring player vs door (pvd), capturing undefended objectives at night time or morning.
If you want lots of loot bags, you should consider transferring to a server which has good guilds and is often matched up against the top servers. Like Hvaran.6327 explained, the top server tends to be #1 destination bandwagoners. This will eventually mean that the old hard core players will move to other servers and the overall quality will go down as those remain are more interested in playing whatever way to gain easy win by Points per Tick (PpT). Currently the easiest way is to play when other servers are sleeping and having zone wide blob to flip everything. Lots of big blobs means lots of loot bags for the enemy servers. Currently SFR and FSP have the biggest blobs. But if loot is your main motivation, then pve is even better choice.
If you want challenge, then playing on an underdog is the way go. On the lowest ranked servers, every player really counts, but be prepared to be often alone.
EU tier 1 & 2 zerg/gvg meta:
shout warrior (hammer/sw+wh, sometimes hammer+gs, Melandru/Hoelbrak/Trooper runes)
shout guardian (staff / hammer or gs)
staff + wells necromancer
staff elementalist
In addition to this most good GvG teams use mesmers for utility (veil, portal) & flank the rears and thieves to snipe enemy stragglers and flanks. Sometimes LB rangers can also been sniping.
EU t1 & t2 roaming meta (in order of frequency):
D/P “perma” stealth thief
P/D condi thief (often perplexity)
shatter burst GS mesmer
meditation guardian
D/D celestial might stacking elementalist
read the wind LB ranger
mobility GS warrior
bomb or grenade kit pistol/shield engineer (usually semi condi bunker)
In addition these you might run into condi/regen rangers and condi mesmers.
This is a serious issue in WvWvW, especially on the borderland maps. I have died countless of times from full health (over 25k). The typical locations are the zigzag near the North West towers of the borderlands. Doing tiny bit of jumping seems to be more likely to trigger this bug, but sometimes you just walk down the slope and you die in few seconds.
(edited by Deniara Devious.3948)
Desolation (current EU rank 3) needs off-time commanders and players (our prime time is already very strong).. The sleepless enemy (EU rank 1) is always there, so you have something to fight and conquer.
I think everybody agrees that gadget skills are underused. Here are some suggestions:
Rocket boots
The final part of the animation is often bugged and often either freezes the engi or goes backwards, basically working against the engineer who wants to disengage. It should evade.
Rocket kick
Instead of being a DPS skill it could be more utility and mobility. Make it a leap skill of 600 range and stun break, reduce burn to 4 seconds, increase CD to 30 sSlick shoes
reduce cooldown to 35 s (rather weak with current cooldown)
Super speed
Give stability for 5 s in addition to the increased speed (which in most situations same speed as swiftness, thus not very useful)Utility Goggles
reduce cooldown to 35 s (same)Launch Personal Battering Ram
2xDaze instead of cripple (daze when going forth, then 2nd daze when the ram goes back)Not bad ideas, but don’t underestimate Slick Shoes as it is currently. It was just buffed fairly significantly. Rocket Boots, Ram, and Utility Goggles are very undertuned at the moment though. Also Launch Personal Battering Ram only hits once, not twice.
I know personal battering ram hits only once, but redesigning the animation and making it hit twice within and double daze would make it cooler. Rocket boots and utility goggles are still weak, agreed. That is why I wanted to add a stun break to rocket kick and turn it into 600 leap (maybe also a finisher). This would allow more mobility, which engineer sorely lacks as a medium armor profession and mid range fighter (I feel that engi is excels at mid range combat, at longer distance LB ranger clearly wins and melee range you have a lot of other good options). At the same time I wanted to tone down its damage and increase it’s cooldown, not to make it overpowered.
I think everybody agrees that gadget skills are underused. Here are some suggestions:
Rocket boots
The final part of the animation is often bugged and often either freezes the engi or goes backwards, basically working against the engineer who wants to disengage. It should evade.
Rocket kick
Instead of being a DPS skill it could be more utility and mobility. Make it a leap skill of 600 range and stun break, reduce burn to 4 seconds, increase CD to 30 s
Slick shoes
reduce cooldown to 35 s (rather weak with current cooldown)
Super speed
Give stability for 5 s in addition to the increased speed (which in most situations same speed as swiftness, thus not very useful)
Utility Goggles
reduce cooldown to 35 s (same)
Launch Personal Battering Ram
2xDaze instead of cripple (daze when going forth, then 2nd daze when the ram goes back)
Still 2-3 months ago you were recruiting more players:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/recruitment/Seafarer-s-Rest-look-for-WvW-Guilds-Players/first#post4377846
Desolation is far from being full, but I actually enjoy the no/low queue situation and being the underdog. I hope we will soon have better balance of power. Good luck with this!
I assume you’re talking WvW?
Conditions are nigh-useless in WvW. Unlike sPvP where frequently people rely on their own condition cleansing, WvW allows to freely stack group cleansing together, allowing for very rapid and very reliable removal of any condition.You can only use them against skirmishers, but then, what’s the point? You’re not going to make a large difference that way and any Warr/Engi able to utilize them well is needed on the frontline.
And if you roam, as always, you should instead start playing to win, not playing to lose. Roaming is equivalent to intentionally losing as someone else can just bring superior numbers, kill you, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Doesn’t matter how classes, runes, skills or sigils are balanced, if you play roaming you shouldn’t care. That’s not what decides your fights.
This is a typical moot argument. You are right that conditions aren’t very effective in a typical zerg fight, but the rest of your message is misinformation.
I play on EU tier 1 server and solo roam a lot and do a lot of other small scale. It matters a LOT even during the busy prime time. In fact sometimes all the objectives we held on the map are solo capped by me. Outside the prime time, the objectives are often undefended or defended only by very small group, then the small scale matters even more.
Adding more and more imbalance just makes the competitive players want to leave WvWvW. A really good player doesn’t get much any pleasure winning the fight knowing she had an advantage because of the build or imbalanced circumstances. I know solo roaming is often 1 vs many, but adding brain dead runes to the games will not encourage more people to solo roam, but does the opposite. I pledge for more diversity instead of pushing everybody to be a zergling or troll using the latest gimmick build in roaming. Developers, please listen to the core WvWvW players, reduce the amount of imbalance there is in WvWvW and shake the WvWvW meta.
Several sigils and runes need to be toned down. This list includes Strength, Hoelbrak, Pack and Perplexity runes. And sigils of battle, air, fire, doom and energy. Yes, I know they are probably the most used sigils in the game and they should also be toned down for pvp.
I feel everyone should swarm this/these server.. literally everyone from all lower tier servers..
break the servers, break the game.
Can you imagine the QQ’s we will get about empty borderlands.. a 650 tick 10 minutes after reset.
Actually usually EU rank 2 or rank 3 tick more during the reset than EU rank 1. But it is all different in the morning. EU rank #1 is winning because of the off-prime time coverage. Similarly EU rank 2 or rank 3 win against rank 4-9 because of better coverage.
Too much burst is too much. No matter how you “explain” it.
I was several times addressing that leadership EU rank #1 should think about balance of power. All my advice went to deaf ears. They kept on recruiting.
I stopped recruitment for many months, because I personally dislike queues and I enjoy even match ups, which are now sadly far gone in EU tier 1. And anybody who ends up against t1 servers gets the short straw and all TOP3 stomp the weaker servers. The situation is even worse than in the glory days of certain French language server. Over stacking is no longer a big queue problem as players can always go to EotM. WvWvW is becoming more and more dead outside the reset night, few busy hours of prime time, unless you really enjoy spamming #1 skill in a big blob and fighting doors or playing the solo (like me). The over stacking turned WvWvW into Player vs Door fest. And the new upcoming changes of giving points from any kill (reason to avoid fights, especially if enemy has a much bigger blob) and removal of white swords will probably just make matters worse.
It seems every single change Arenanet has done to WvWvW in 2 years just rewards blobbing more and more and punishes solo/small scale roaming. They probably do not do this on purpose, but the lack of understanding this game mode is obvious as stated by some of the leading WvWvW players, like Sacrx. The only way to gain understanding is to play a lot and analyze, this means several thousand hours of work, which I am sure most full-time game developers simply cannot afford, especially if it is not their main job. I am not saying blobbing should be removed as I also enjoy epic defenses of keeps and big battles, but surely there should be more diversity than the current situation. Instead of catering diversity and skill, Arenanet steers this game mode towards the “casual gamers”, making it more like pve champion trains, but the problem is the regular WvWvW maps are far from being the most profitable champion train and casuals go where the rewards are. We had a great opportunity to have a unique large scale competitive game mode, but alas it seems now all lost, as the developers or management did not understand their true hard core customer base and generally just listened to the top pvp players. All skill balance is still based on pvp, there are no “WvWvW only” skill balance changes and same WvWvW meta since the launch!. Tpvp was never popular.
You won’t like this, but there are just 3 reasonable choices to problem:
1. Players from rank #1 voluntarily migrate to lower rank (yet active) servers
- this might actually happen, but it will be just max few guilds and players
- in general the player migration has been: bronze->silver->gold->top3 of gold
2. Arenanet changes scoring, outnumbered “buff” and removes most of the imbalancing factors and gives better rewards from regular WvWvW (to bring the casuals back)
- currently EU rank 1 wins because it has the best overall coverage. It doesn’t matter if the other servers can tick a bit higher during few hours of prime time or some other hour, the total 24/7 score counts
3. Two other top servers recruit more and will get as over stacked and spread their forces over all hours 24h7 to match the coverage
- I see this highly unlikely to happen (I cannot go into details here, but you can contact me in game)
- obviously this would make situation even worse for other servers (match up against t1 server would be even more single-sided)
(edited by Deniara Devious.3948)
2. Warrior
- celestial sw/sw+LB + shout healI think I’m gonna be sick.
Have you tried that build?
Many warrior builds now have a problem keeping up the adrenaline in pve solo (adre depletes very fast outside combat), but the above build can keep up the adre and build it very fast. It has very good survivability, giving player room for error. About 3k armor + 25k health is probably excessive in pve, but it also means you won’t necessarily be one shot if you miss 1-2 dodges and 14-20 might stacks in combat give good DPS. Condition removal will not be a problem.
Sure you can kill things faster going full zerker GS/axe+mace, but that was not the point. For most players pve solo play is not about optimizing DSP, but finding a build which is very easy to play and still getting things done. None of these builds are for dungeon speed clears. Any case if you care about speed clearing dungeons, why go solo!?!?
My TOP3 choices would be:
1. Ranger
- GS/LB with right stats you can solo most level 80 champs and group events AFK, it is not the DPS but the superb ease at survival
2. Warrior
- celestial sw/sw+LB + shout heal
3. Engineer
- 3 kit + rifle power celestial hybrid might stacking, requires more key presses than almost other build
Neither of these are optimal for a group setting, but the question was SOLO pve class, so I assumed mostly soloing open world content.
(edited by Deniara Devious.3948)
It is too late. Gold league is getting empty as well, besides 1-2 over stacked servers.
The WvWvW meta needs to be changed, refreshed as it has been the same since Autumn 2012. WvWvW needs better rewards. At least here in EU tier 1 (gold league), we are far from full. Generally outnumbered buff on prime time, not to mention outside prime, when even less players. Spreading the players around more servers means that there would be roughly 1-2 guys on each map.
Same thing happened here in EU tier 1. Just replace BG with SFR. Here at Desolation we have been constantly outnumbered already for many months in a row. Often whole evening (so called “busy” prime time) outnumbered “buff” on our border + 1 other border, outside prime time often 3/4 maps. Amazingly the rating different between us and rank #1 is still less than 100, telling that in EU the rank differences are smaller.
Sadly this game mode is dying. It seems that also many of the over stacked enemy server players stopped playing. Us having just 10-15 players on the entire map isn’t giving much loot bags or fights. I do not blame enemy for blobbing, but it is quite obvious that the enemy zone wide blob will just cause the outnumbered opponents go hiding. Arenanet has made pve (especially special events like the labyrinth during Halloween) way too profitable compared to WvWvW. And most players flock where the rewards are.
(edited by Deniara Devious.3948)
I agree that Desolation should improve it’s defense if we want to win point wise. But no defensive siege? At some times we have had as much siege as Vizunah Square on it’s glory days. I counted 18 trebs on our EB keep + other defensive siege… oh and all those omega golems. But that was several months ago. The match ups have been decided already for many months, so many Desolation players don’t care for the points. Players earns better if you just let the objectives flip and then flip again and again. Unlike SFR players, most Desolation players do not enjoy EotM (those rare moments in EotM I have always seen more SFR there). And you gotta farm your money somewhere. Why not do in the WvWvW?
About losing a commander to SFR. Well, you lost a good commander (Gabriel) to Desolation around the same times. So 1-1. I don’t think the game is that different on the other side of the fence. The biggest difference is the numbers and coverage. SFR’s small night crew sounds like it is doing pvd = pve. Nothing wrong about it. I don’t play at night, so I cannot comment about the quality of the opposition. Pvd is what we Desolators do morning, noon and those afternoon and evening hours when we are outnumbered. The biggest difference is that I am capturing SFR held keeps and towers either alone or just having 1-2 players with me (and outnumbered buff on us, so you got more players). So surely SFR’s defense has big holes as well. This game doesn’t reward defense well. So every server slacks on it.
Arenanet could of course change that. E.g. give small rewards when refreshing siege, which is about to expire. And reward the players who spent money on upgrading camps, towers + keeps if they successfully defend it. By reward I mean real rewards like some chests, not just some small WXP.
(edited by Deniara Devious.3948)
EU’s Seafarer’s Rest won out, a server consistent in all PvP aspects, high population, and high tier;
Hmm. What PVP aspects? SFR has only 3 players in TOP50 of pvp rankings. Many consider EotM as a pve karma/champion train and no doubt SFR is the #1 EotM server. Some also consider Player vs Door (PvD) in WvWvW as pve. So the big question: Has Desolation lost it’s #1 pve crown to SFR? I mean the number of “pve” players must be higher now!
When Desolation can fill the maps, which happens very rarely usually for a short moment in prime time, then we usually tick higher than any other server.. When my buddy was on SFR I could check their queues. Yes, SFR had longer queues to pretty much every map, every single prime time and often queues when Deso had no queues to any maps. SFR wins the match ups because it has superior off-prime time coverage and higher number of WvWvW players. There is a striking difference, especially in the mornings, noon and often also on afternoon. We often have outnumbered buff on 3/4 maps, meaning our opposing servers clearly have superior numbers. Kodash, Jade etc. also outnumber us. Realizing this has caused many players stopping playing.
Desolation is still in slack mode and I am quite sure SFR is doing the same as there simply isn’t much enemies for SFR players to fight against outside the prime. The likelihood of another SFR vs XXX vs Deso = 2 vs 1 match up grows lower each week. I am still in China, which means a new disconnect every 5-15 minutes = pretty impossible to play WvWvW. It is a miracle my Chinese hotel room ISP managed to load this web page.
Desolation will make a comeback. Just be patient! And in the meanwhile enjoy the loot. Flip as many objectives and kill as many enemies as possible = profit. When I was in EU I was still making 100-200 g profit/week from WvWvW. Now in China I make just 1 g profit/week. Oh, the salary differences…
> Remove AOE Cap (most important of all – stop dat blobbing)
This cannot be removed due server performance issues. There are in fact much better ways to disencourage blobbing, while keeping it still viable. A better game would reward solo roaming, small scale, zerging and blobbing equally. My suggestion: every enemy group of certain size, let’s say 10-20 players, is always shown on the map. This would make enemy movements extremely easy to predict, unless they split to smaller groups.
> Remove Siegerazer
I think he is fine. I often joke him to be the best enemy commander as it takes so long time to solo kill him. Siegerazer should have at least 45 min internal cool down
> Remove delayed white swords
30 s is good.
> Unbuff Siege weapons (and nerf them further if needed)
I agree. Now some siege weapons are way too powerful with the WXP traits e.g. fully traited superior AC (I have gotten so many loot bags just sitting on superior AC) or trebuchet (the cow ammo drains supplies way too fast and the poison field lasts so long time).
> Remove Siege Disablers & Supply Traps
I find nice tactical use for both and these are one of the rare tools which allow a solo guy to hamper a zerg. Siege disabler is however currently too good and could use some shaving e.g. reduce it’s duration by 33%.
> Bring back swirling winds and other projectile blockers
Blocking a treb, ballista or catapult shot just doesn’t sound convincing. Keep them like they are now.
> Bring back matchup threads
YES! They are vital for the WvWvW community. Arenanet’s suggestion to use 3rd party web sites hasn’t worked well. Their WvWvW match up discussion threads are often short and pale in comparison what we used to have here. Arenanet should do all in it’s power to support WvWvW communities.
> Orange Swords at 10 again
Yes, but see my suggestion above. The big enemy zergs should always be visible on their enemy maps and minimaps, even when they don’t attack anybody.
> Remove WvW stack buffs (guard masteries)
Yes. Another reason for imbalance. The Power of the ruins and vitality and healing power bonus from Power of the Mists should also be removed.
The power of the ruins is the biggest offender since it is server wide and requires zero effort from you (for guard leech and applied fortitude, you must at least 5 guards and then not die). Superior bloodlust gives +60 on all stats = massive imbalance!! (it is like having an 5x superior runes of divinity in addition to your current runes)
> Remove Ruins and bring back the lake
Yes. Lake was fun, made the map feel diverse, than yet another circle to contest and no reward ruins.