Guild Wars 2

runeblade.7514:

Deniara Devious.3948:

Better solution:
1. Nerf warrior mobility (40 s cooldown to GS #5 and 12 s with GS#3, to be in line with RtL note with forceful greatsword trait these would be still reduced 20%, 10 s to sword #2)

Their mobility are effected by cripple/chill and immobilize. Unlike thieves, mesmer and ele, cripple/chill and immobilize does not effect how far they escape. Their teleport can teleport to the second level while ignoring the stairs while warriors have to actually take the stairs. You can stun them. If they use stability, then you can cripple them. If they have zerker stance, they have no utility then. Their only choice is to escape. Without range weapons, they are useless. If they stay and fight, then you just need to be defensive until stability/zerker stance is gone. Then you will win the fight.

Warrior loses a lot by going full mobility. They lose their strong condi removal, Cleansing Ire, short cooldown stuns, and their right to be threatening. It is a troll build and nothing about the build is serious. Nothing about the build is threatening except to your ego that you must kill all things.

This is not a good reason to cripple GS mobility. As GS isn’t a great PvP weapon.

Every other profession’s mobility is affected by cripple, chill and immobilize. For comparison try to play a ranger and see what enemy immobilize does to you when you roam in WvWvW!

You are trying to make warriors look bad, but the fact is that in recent weeks I have seen more warriors as roamers than thieves or mesmers. And warriors and guardians have always been the most numerous professions in a WvWvW zergs. If warrior is so bad as you claim it to be, then why warrior has become the most common profession in roaming as well? It is really bad when one professions tops the list in every role. They are sniping the dolyaks, flipping the supply camps and killing enemy roamers, while having little risk of getting killed themselves.

Fact is: Warrior has the best land speed and incredibly good condition removal and resiliency towards movement impairing conditions. Being able to reset fights is very important in roaming.

Melandru armor set + dogged march + lemongrass poultry soup = -98% condition duration against chilled/cripple/immobilize and -25% stun duration

Mobile strikes trait removes immobilize using any movement skill. Warhorn charge removes all movement impairing conditions, but really isn’t needed in most mobility builds.

Realistically you cannot stop a mobility warrior from running away in an open field WvWvW setting. And the same build can still have good damage, CC, good sustainability, relatively high health pool and armor and condition cleansing. E.g. greatsword + longbow + fast hands makes the use of cleansing ire a piece of cake, unlike you claim. Signet of stamina is a full condition cleanse. And if you don’t take melandru armor set, signet of rage + 6xLyssa gives all the boons + full condition cleanse.

The fact remains: Arenanet buffed warrior too far. I am not against warrior having the highest health, best armor, massive amount of CC, good damage, good sustain, amazing condition removal and the best land speed, but to able to able to have almost
all of that in one just build is too much.

Warrior’s greatsword is an example of a badly designed weapon. It offers very high dps (if you get rooted or stunned and eat 100 blades, then you are toast) and the best mobility in the game and has a lackluster burst, which almost nobody uses. Either range of the mobility skills and/or their cooldown needs to be altered and put in line with other professions and weapons offer.

Obviously many servers have lost a lot guilds and I know some guilds completely stopped playing Guild Wars 2 or are in the verge of doing that. I know for example that Piken Square has lost guilds. And if you read this announcement from Arenanet, it doesn’t make a genius to understand that from March 18th to March 27th will see some very large transfers:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/get-ready-for-wvw-spring-tournament-2014/

People naturally want to stack on that servers, which they will think will have good chances to win. But prediction isn’t always that easy as fair-weather players can vanish if the server gets an unlucky loss at the start. My theory is that great & active PuG commanders and huge PuG population and good coverage is much more important for the win than having lots of hard core WvWvW guilds, who can win in open field and steamroll most of the PuGs.

In Season 1 – Gold League Seafarer’s Rest (SFR) was holding rank #1 and predicted to win it, but of course that didn’t happen, but Vizunah to took the top spot with a very large margin. Similar our server, Desolation, wasn’t speculated to win, but you know what happened. Desolation won every single match up, just like Vizunah. And both are PuG servers.

Luckily our server, Desolation, is doing well, despite the relatively high transfer costs. If the same story will repeat, we can get a huge influx of people from our massive pve population (probably biggest in EU and we have also some non-EU coverage).

I think players and guilds should think wisely where to transfer. Those servers which look strong on paper, might not be the winners.

WvWvW zerg fights have been hammer fest since Autumn 2012 here in EU, pretty much every single tier. The majority of any organized zerg is hammer warriors and staff + shout guardians, supported by staff elementalists and staff + well necromancers. 1-2 mesmers are needed for portals and veils + 1-2 thieves for eating the flanks + doing stealth stomping. But the class imbalance is glaring.

Instead of nerfing earthshaker (2 second AoE stun with under 10 s cooldown and no diminishing returns or drawback, like self-kd), Arenanet keeps buffing warrior and guardian in every single update. Earthshaker should have its radius reduced to 120 (instead of 240, which is way too large) and stun duration reduced to 1 s. Or this game needs to have diminishing returns to hard CC e.g. 1-2 s of immunity after being subjected to hard CC. Some of the support skills and combo field effects should also be seriously looked up by the developers as now every single smart team runs a tightly packed melee train to abuse the 5-man AoE limit and everybody in the melee bubble is buffed with boons and has massive condition removal. There is not enough boon stripping and most condition specs are more or less useless against he melee train as the conditions will be cleansed in a second.

Meta has been stale and boring. Yesterday I heard yet another very good guild (one of the top EU gvg guilds) is quitting GW2 entirely. So sad. :-(

PS. Note to the the developers (if any of you read these threads), I am open for in game or message communication about balancing the WvWvW meta and I can call in several EU top players for that (who are much better players than myself). Each profession should have several viable roles and we should not see any single skill, like earthshaker, dominate the meta. So many variables affect the balance e.g. map design.

This is really bad suggestion as it would give even more power to the warriors, which are already the most common profession in WvWvW. It would also be a significant buff to thieves, who are the most common profession in roaming besides the wariror.

Greatsword offers 2 mobility skills in one weapon, one offering 1200 range without any swiftness on a mere 16/20 s cooldown, which is plain ridiculous. Main-hand sword offers a 600 leap with 8 s cooldown. Bull’s charge offers 600 leap. Now swiftness of course increases their range by 33%, but most other professions, besides shortbow (#5) and main dagger (#2) thief, do not have access to such low cooldown movement skills from their weapon set.

Better solution:
1. Nerf warrior mobility (40 s cooldown to GS #5 and 12 s with GS#3, to be in line with RtL note with forceful greatsword trait these would be still reduced 20%, 10 s to sword #2)
2. Reduce the duration of swiftness granted from lightning field (ele staff skill static field) to stack to max 25 seconds.

The latter would affect the zerg speed.

DevonCarver.5370:

Edge of the Mists has a whole host of differences from the WvW maps that we built before launch. One of those differences is the number of waypoints. Not only does each side only have 1 waypoint, but they can’t even capture and use the waypoints at enemy keeps. Do you think that the amount of travel that you have to put in makes the maps feel better? Does it feel like there is a consequence for dying and that you can whittle down an opposing force?

I’m curious what your thoughts are and if you think it would make the fighting better or worse in the borderlands and EB.

It would definitely make things worse for roamers. Currently if you don’t play a stealth profession EotM is a really nightmare map for solo roamers or those who like to roam with a very small group (1-3 players). They will sooner or later meet with the 70+ man enemy zerg and there is no way to go around. On the other hand a huge zerg can revive their dead members easily. Why to make zerging even more feasible?!

That is one main reasons why I am promoting more open maps with less choke points and hindering terrain for movement, better visibility and some water instead of infinite void where you can drop (or be knocked off). These type of maps would also be much better for open-scale battles. Here in EU a lot of servers and big guilds really want more open-field battles, not to fight against NPCs/doors or spend a lot of time just moving around.

Currently the TOP3 roaming professions are (in order of appearance):
1. Thief (lots of popular builds e.g. D/P, P/D, S/P and S/D)
2. Warrior (using some mobility build, usually equipped with greatsword)
3. Mesmer (usually Prismatic understanding)

On some servers warrior has probably already surpassed thief as most popular profession in roaming (and in everything else).

To increase variety the new map designs should not heavily favor these already popular choices.

Please don’t take my classifications or invented names too seriously. If you cannot handle humor, do not read any line further.

Seafarer’s Rest aka Stacker’s Rest = official superstacked server of EU. Queue most of the time. Lots of Russians!
Vizunah Square aka Zombieland = They never sleep. They never fully die. They always hunger for you. A typical VS roaming team is 25 players.
Riverside aka Rivercart = Official arrowcart server of EU.
Elona Reach aka Heavy Reach = official server of heavy armored warriors and guardians. Loves siege. I think all German’s do!
Jade Sea aka Zombie Sea = Another French zombie horde. Similar to Vizunah in many ways.
Kodash aka Blob or Roam = Either massive blob with golems + siege or small roaming team, never anything between. Loves siege.
Baruch Bay aka Elementalist Bay = Spanish server famous in the old time for abusing tons of D/D eles synced and portal bombed. I haven’t fought against them recently, so this is an old comment
Piken Square aka Guild Square = guild-heavy role-playing server, not famous for PuG action. Loves open field combat more than anything
Desolation aka Tankalation = Unofficial pve and pvp capital of EU. Almost always outnumbered, thus the name. Ex tier 1 server, seriously lacking players. Plays for points/win more seriously than other medium rank servers
Drakkar Lake aka Blobbing lake = Yet another blobbing server
Abaddon’s Mouth aka Blobbadon’s Mouth = official EU server for massive server wide blobs. Average size for roaming party is 30.
Gandara aka Gank-ara = official gankers’ server in EU. A typical Gandara player and his buddies can wait 20 minutes near a flipped sentry to ambush a solo enemy player. Most Gandara players run a gank build, besides few guilds. Could be in TOP8 if they would play for the points.
Gunnar’s Hold aka Golem’s Hold or Ganker’s Hold = Official golem rush server. A wannabe copycat of Gandara when it comes to ganking.

Any more from others?

Moon.6371:

Maybe I misunderstand your post Prysin, but I disagree with almost all of your points being brought up. There`s a reason a lotta top tpvp team go with 1 better 2 hambow warriors. There`s a reason that all you meet is GS warriors roaming in wvw (and PU mesmers).

Synergy of GS, melandru, – condi buffood, cleansing ire, dogged march and healing signet is just the complete all-in-one defensive package in wvw, while being incredibly mobile and dishing out good damage due to power creep – theres no trade off anymore. Add incredibly powerful passives (auto-endure pain, auto healing, auto-stability,…) and immunities (2 endure pain, berserker stance,…) to that package, almost forgot about that. Did you honestly compare that to a shout/spirit ranger in wvw?

You should know that I am definitely not best buddies with BUKA. While we are bitter enemies in the game, I must fully agree with the Moon’s analysis.

Prysin is using moot arguments “oh but the warrior is all alone, not providing any group support”. The number of points the roamers can give to their server often underestimated. It is not just the supply camps or sentries, mercenary NPCs and denying enemy of the supply it needs. It is also the stomping points, which can be around 1/3 of the total server points. Roaming warriors are right now crazily popular and there is many valid roaming builds for warrior. Today in WvWvW I saw more roaming warriors than thieves.

Low risk and high reward. The staple of a broken build. You can reset any fight as you can outrun anybody, usually even other mobility warriors since the mobility warriors are almost immune to CC thanks to melandru armor, lemongrass poultry soup, dogged march, cleansing ire and mobile strikes traits. Now every movement skill removes chilled, cripples and immobilized, which have -98% duration reduction. If you take the warhorn, you get even more movement impairing condition cleanse. Generally it is not needed and mobility warriors usually take longbow or other offhand weapon like shield for blocks. And while having better land speed than any other profession, the mobility warrior can have good amount of CC, high damage, relatively high health and armor, great amount of condition cleanse and good healing. I am not saying warrior should not have any of these, but when you can have all of these at the same time in the same build, we have a huge problem. There should be some trade off. You can choose two things among A, B, C and D, but not have A, B, C and D all at the same time like warrior can now do.

The problem is that this game is solely balanced from spvp/tpvp point of view. And even there warrior gets 1-2 slots in the top teams (20-40% share out of all 8 professions is a LOT). Mobility and stealth are much more effective in WvWvW than in pvp.

phaeris.7604:

Warriors were always fine in WvW.

The buffs just made them grossly overpowered compared to everyone else.

This ^^

Warriors are #1 in zerg fights. Hammer offers more CC than other weapon in the game and its burst has very generous area: two second 240 radius AoE. I know it can be dodged, but there number of dodges is limited, lag and all the effects flying in a huge combat can make anybody’s dodges fail. Stability would help, but guess what profession has the best access to stability?

Warriors are #1 manning the siege under enemy fire.

Warriors are #1 when the giga lag hits. Healing signet will still heal, when other profession’s healing skills don’t work.

Warriors have soon replaced thief as the most common roaming profession. Mobility warriors are currently 2nd most common roamers after thieves, followed by PU mesmers.

(continued from above message)

I seriously do NOT think that nerfing is the reason why people are leaving the game. It has nothing to do with it. People stay if the game is good and they still enjoy it, even if some skill gets nerfed. But people leave the game or stop playing it for a while if they get bored.

But let’s face it: most of this game is a grind and the sad inclusion of ascended gear just included more gear especially for those with lots of characters. It is mostly a very simple repetitive grin. In pve world events players smash their auto attack. In the lag-ridden Eternal Battlegrounds and massive blobby fights in EotM, players auto attack the boss or the enemy blob as no other skill works. The real strategy for the win is to be in a bigger blob. Spam 1 for the win… gee, this must be the best game design invention ever and will lead to long-term success and glory.

This game hasn’t had any expansions. No significant set of new skills (most of the new healing skills are a joke). No new permanent dungeons besides the Fractals, no new permanent pve areas since the launch. Some players enjoy the Living Story. Those who don’t, are most likely either already really bored by this game or soon coming bored.

WvWvW is the true end game in GW2, but sadly it hasn’t had the right resources to develop it properly. The communication has been bad between the player base and developers. Players complained already in Autumn 2012 that Arrow Carts are broken and can shoot to places they should not be able to shoot. How does Anet fix this: it buffs AC damage and adds trait, which significantly increase the range, radius and damage (/facepalm). The glaring population indifferences (coverage wars) etc. haven’t been dealt at all. In fact stacking to the winning servers is further encouraged, while it is guaranteed to ruin many communities and servers. The community side of this game is weak and needs serious attention now, not any second later.

We need real Guild Wars, not Grind Wars!

I know the OP, but I disagree strongly on this matter.

Right now we need both nerfing and buffing. Guild Wars 2 is just 1.5 years old and we have already experienced massive amount of power creep in this game. The amount of buffs and introduction to new powerful mechanisms has pushed the power creep to crazy levels.

While in most cases small adjustments are enough, in some rare cases the nerfs needs to be stronger than 20%. Arenanet simply went too by buffing certain skills and I think majority of the people admit it deep inside or are themselves using the overpowered skill. E.g. healing signet got its passive heal almost doubled. A mere 8% or 20% nerf won’t be enough. I would say it needs 25% shaving for passive and at the same time 33% buff to its active to make it viable. Pin down is getting an added animation, but before that it got 6 stacks of bleeding in addition 3 seconds ranged immobilize. That is simply too much as the bleeds cover the immobilize (which can last 5 seconds easily in WvWvW because of the rune + consumable + trait line buffs).

Thief can spam sword #2 and #3 multiple times in a row, either getting shadowstepping, condition removal, stun (pistol whip) or boon stealing (larcenous strike) and evade frames and good damage at same time. How is this promoting skilled play?

I could go on for more examples for many other professions, but I just mentioned few glaring skills, which need nerfing.

It is a bit funny that you mention elementalist and then complain about lack of damage in pve. I think it is quite widely known that ele has the highest dps build in the game using lighting hammer. And fiery greatsword has one of the best bursts in the game. Staff elementalists are the staple of any zerg in WvWvW. Have been and continue to be so: for example rangers and engineers are much less useful in same situation. What elementalist lacks right now is survivability. Anet went overboard by nerfing some of the cantrips. But buffing ele survivability needs to be done with wisdom, giving too much at same time, while not shaving any of the damage, could easily push elementalist to become grossly overpowered.

Right now the most overpowered profession in the game is warrior. Best land mobility, highest health, massive amount of condition cleansing, immunities, good damage. Basically almost no weaknesses. Warrior has good builds for any sort of role and hammer warrior been always dominating WvWvW meta. Hammer warrior was already too good in Autumn 2012. 600 leap, 240 radius 2 second AoE stun with less 10 second cooldown! Condition warrior is very strong and the upcoming sigil changes are just going to make it stronger (2 sigils on 2 handed weapons, warrior can trait quick hands to get 5 s weapon swap, in other words fast access to 4 sigils).

Guardian comes a good second. Guardians have always been the 2nd most common profession in WvWvW if not the #1. Guardians have always been part of tpvp teams. Always the meta. And yet they have also been buffed.

At the same time every profession has really lackluster traits and utility skills, which see very little use in any game mode. These skills and traits could use buffing. The easiest is to reduce the cooldowns, which are often excessive. Some of the so called “elite” skills are feel to be really weak, not worthy of the elite slot, but most players would rather choose a normal utility skill instead if they just could equip that.

(continued in next message)

Chokepoints

Examples of well-designed choke points:
Archway leading Lowlands supply camp (Lower right hand side of each BL map)
Bridge leading to Southern most supply camp in BL maps (Victor’s/Hero’s lodge, Champion’s Demense)
The hallway corridors leading into inner Stone Mist castle

They all provide easy alternative ways to get from A to B. At lowlands you can climb over the archway and have some fights there or go around it, or enter the small pond of water. The bridges in the original BL map all have water underneath them, making them feel very natural and instead of using the water one can always swim.

Examples of badly designed choke points:
Bridges in EotM
(Which are either extremely narrow or lacking side railings so those who lack stability are a huge risk being launched, knocked off from the bridge)

Qualities of a Good Choke Point
Map design provides alternate ways to reach the same destination (generally the alternate way should be very close, but the alternative might require more travel time)
Not too narrow
Not too long
Feels natural, not forced
Doesn’t overly favor some professions

Very Important Things to Consider

Because of many factors choke points are not effective in holding a large group, but it can be deadly towards small groups and solo roamers, especially if there is no alternative way to the destination the introduction of many choke points can often lead to situations of 1 vs 30+. If Arenanet’s purpose is to make all solo roamers run either as a thief, PU mesmer and warrior (= the TOP3 most abundant solo roamers), then adding more such choke points will sure achieve this goal, but the sake of versatility in this game, this would be a horrible decision.

Large organized groups are mainly inaffected by chokepoints, because of the 5-man AoE limit and most large groups are melee trains consisting mainly of hammer warriors and shout guardians. They have access to incredible amount of condition removal, area healing (blast finishers on water fields mostly from Staff eles) and lots of stability. Lines of warding, knockback, launch etc, soft and hard CC like cripple and immobilize are not gonna stop them much as they move as a group. For many roamers the same choke point is a death trap.

Warriors and guardians are already by the two most common professions in WvWvW. They both have good access to stability and weapon skills to push enemy off the cliff, bridge etc. With stability on there is no risk of falling down. They are also heavy armor. Warrior has the highest hit point pool and guardian has access to protection and lots of healing, so that they are both naturally less squishy than most professions. By adding more narrow, long choke points without any alternatives would just even further deviate the class balance in favor of these TOP professions in WvWvW.

Many of the same points apply to added verticality. Example of good verticality:
current Stonemist castle and the cliffs next to Garrison. Stonemist feels natural and very spacious thanks to its huge halls in both ground floor and 1st floor and the view from the top is magnificent. The cliffs near Garrison provide ledges where you can jump down without dying. Most of the cliffs near the BL top towers (closest towers to Garrison) are a bit excessively steep. In general combining choke points + verticality is not a good idea, because it once again skews the balance (those with stability vs those who don’t have it).

I am for more versatility and balance in this game. Sadly all the WvWvW changes implemented in 2013, added siege powers with WXP traits etc, were all just skewing the balance even more towards large groups, zergs. Buffed superior arrow carts kill a small group’s effort trying to take back a tower, but do nothing to stop a massive blob with golems. The BL changes really seriously hurt solo roaming, especially for those who are not thieves. EotM is an extremely zergy map. I really hope the pendulum swings to the other direction someday.

The map should some a few choke points and vertical elements, but not excessive amount of them. The original BL maps already have a good amount of both. I don’t see how adding them would make the BL maps any better. But I think there are many ways to improve BL maps: Give some important function to Skritt and Tamili areas (currently they are useless), maybe some added supply camp? And give us the lake back. Any specific reason why water is missing from EotM?

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

Didn’t like it from the start, still don’t. This was probably the biggest single reason why I stopped playing on the borderlands, and why I stopped claiming stuff there too. I liked the quaagan weather nodes and there were plenty of small scale fights that went on underwater. Defending your quaggan node was a part of defending your keep.

I feel you. Some of the underwater fights were just amazing. I know that not everybody likes underwater, but why to delete it, because it was always optional. Luckily Bay still has some water left and sometimes… like once per month, one can have there some underwater fights.

I used to be a BL map player. Usually on own BL and commanding PuGs there often as well. After 17th of September 2013 changed I haven’t been actively commanding in WvWvW anymore. Now I am forced to roam in EB as that is the only decently designed map left, but oh that dreadful lag in EB, where NONE of the skills work or there is 1-30 second delay in activating skills.

The new designs (ruins in BL and EotM) are too crammed. Too much of things clumped into a spot, too much chokepoints, stairs, bridges, verticality, feeling very unnatural.

The old WvWvW map designs might have a simple look, but they had and still have superior play value and feel more natural.

In fact if you look at the best and most popular multi-player maps for any game, most of them are rather dull looking and don’t have much any gimmicks in them e.g. look at the most popular maps for FPS games. Arenanet now seems to think the opposite is better: More gimmicks, more powerful NPCs, no small nooks and crooks, as if that would ever make a good multi-player map?

Ragnar.4257:

I’ve seen merging servers mentioned a few times. Is this actually workable? Maybe it’s different in NA, but in EU even lower tier T4-7 servers are capable of regularly having queues during primetime, and some higher tier T1-3 servers have no queues in primetime. The difference is really in the off-peak times. Would merging lower ranked servers not simply result in massive primetime queues?

Your statement might hold true for most mid-to-lower EU servers, but not Desolation.

Desolation has no queue to any map even at prime time or during reset. This is very good when LA is under attack. You can do all your crafting at stuff at your BL at any time you want. As good as the flying thing, which costs gems. Almost permanent outnumbered “buff” gives even more WXP. Gotta be positive. I am just amazed how our opposing servers cannot pull a bigger point lead even when they clearly have the number advantage. This has been going on for so many weeks.

I am pretty sure the lowest 3 servers: Vabbi, Fissure and Woe and Whiteside Ridge are not having any queues at the his moment. Can anybody confirm?

EU doesn’t need 27 servers, so merging the servers so that we have just 24 servers like NA has, would make sense. I would give the players of the deleted servers free transfer tickets to transfer to any medium to low tier server they want (to avoid overstacking to the top servers).

Baels.3469:

Make changes, don’t sit and deliberate whether it fits this ‘vision’ or that ‘vision’. Whilst I’m 1000% appreciative of the iteration process as a designer, you’ve got a digital canvas to work with.

If a change is received negatively, it can be reverted. If everything is left to hypothetical scenarios and what-ifs, nothing will ever get done to improve this game. A little bit of trial and error never hurt. Additionally, testing things in-game gives the players a sense of involvement and contribution, something that we sort of get in these threads… but not really.

This ^^

I must also address the speed of changes should be faster. For example when perplexity runes were added to the game, there was immediately lots of relevant threads in the WvWvW discussion forums of them being overpowered (easily putting over 20 stacks of confusion on target and confusion lasting over 15 seconds!), but it took many months until anything happened. Players really hate to wait 3+ months to get simple things fixed, because really the required fix was nothing but added cooldowns. Similarly if some consumable, siege weapon etc. is brokenly good in the game, it should be fixed within 1 week of time.

Reverting changes back to the original state should also be relatively easy compared to making something totally new. History of computer & video games is one of my special expertise and I don’t know about any game, which has died because of reverting back an ill-fated design choice, but I think everybody knows several games which have died because of really slow development speed or bad game design choices never got reverted and the communication between the core players and devs has been bad.

Right now it is obvious that the borderlands ruins and bloodlust buffs were not a success. There is a separate thread about it, so I won’t go in deeper:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Ruins-Bloodlust-5-months-on/

I know all developers love their own “babies” and killing them is difficult. I would like to see EotM as a test ground, a test bed for new ideas. In the real world 90% ideas are bad, 9% are unrefined and neither should never see daylight outside the company doors. I hope similar strict discipline, good taste and experience & wisdom is used to when selecting what features to copy from EotM to other WvWvW areas. If something like 50% of the EotM new ideas will be copied to WvWvW, it is going to lead to massive mess and lots of hard core gamers quitting WvWvW part of this game. Hard core gamers don’t seem to be that important from first glance to such “casual” game mode as WvWvW, but some WvWvW players really take this more seriously than pvp and their number is many times larger than all active tpvp players combined. The core players is what holds some servers at their position even when the situation gets grim. If the core goes away, there is really nothing to stop the downward spiral. Seeing communities crashed is always sad.

This following is a generalization: but I would claim EotM currently caters more the casual needs (non-stop 24h7 karma train), but the old WvWvW maps are more for the hard core gamers.

EotM is currently still popular, but I really doubt its long-term appeal. Will it be still interesting 1.5 years from now?

I did my Master’s thesis about the history and computer video games (over 200 pages in English). Basically no game survives in the long-term without a very vibrant community, but the game necessarily doesn’t need any new rules, mechanisms or contest to remain popular (assuming the original design choices were incredibly well made). If you look at the biggest successes in game history, they are all done with pretty simple, yet perfected game design e.g. Tetris, Angry Birds. Adding more stuff (new mechanisms, gimmicks, mini games) doesn’t make a better game. Why people still play Counterstrike, despite it was launched in 1999? It doesn’t have that many maps and the weapon set is generally very non-exciting? And graphically the game is outdated.

Pve is another story, because there people really need sooner or later some new content. But pvp is about fighting against other humans. Right now wvwvw seems more and more about fighting doors and fighting powerful NPCs in EotM. Humans are unpredictable and well-designed game doesn’t get boring against other human opponents if it offers almost unlimited set of viable strategies. The real reason why WvWvW got boring for many is not because of the old maps, but because the meta has been the same (hammer train since Autumn 2012) and several classes and few very simple strategies (blobbing/zerging, golem rushing etc) dominate. The same kind of fights where people flip the towers and keeps continue month after month with same results.

Well, almost everybody agrees that it is not worthy to pursue the BL, yet it significantly affects the server scoring (easily 1/3 of the server points come from stomping!).

The problem of making BL matter even more is that seriously outnumbered servers are gonna be screwed even worse. We should really avoid design choices to make this game almost impossible uphill battle. The downward spiral happens very easily. E.g. yesterday I was playing in Eternal Battlegrounds. We were outnumbered all the time (having that rather useless outnumbered “buff” on us). At one point our numbers dropped to as low as about 7. We saw Gunnar’s Hold run in a blob of 30 something, which is not that big, but impossible to win in an open battle with less than 10. Then we saw GH having built multiple golems. Simply nothing to do as the TS channels were empty (no reinforcements). I decided to have some snack. We lost everything from the map. Somebody turned on the commander tag and a few more people joined in. Next the other server, Augury Rock comes to stomp over our small group. I managed to flee and eventually got killed in a different part of the map, trying to alone defend our last spot on the map (supply camp). I didn’t rage quit, but our commander did and lots of others just left the map. I cannot blame them. We got things back normal when our very good Russian guild came to the map.

If anet insists to keep the ruins, I think they should only serve as a method for that particular borderland to provide NPC related defensive bonuses and structural bonuses (stronger doors, walls, siege equipment etc). These bonuses should ONLY affect that particular server’s own borderland and ONLY when it is outnumbered. Thus if it is server A borderland, only server A can get this bonus, but enemy can try to deny it by preventing them to hold these bonuses. Thus server B and C can never get any BL benefits on enemy BLs.

The BL bonuses should NOT be stretched over other maps. The reasoning behind my suggestion is that: it would allow the outnumbered defenders to significantly delay the outnumbering opposing forces. E.g. let’s say holding each circle would give +20% more health to NPC and structures (siege equipment, walls, doors). Holding all 5 points would double 5x +20% = +100%, which is a significant increase. Doors would still melt fast with 4-6 omega/guild golems (like my small story above illustrates), but this another sad issue, which needs addressing.

These bonuses should NOT be active when the server doesn’t have an outnumbered buff on it, since it would once again make the game almost mission impossible for the outnumbered side on the map.

Note: I was suggesting only vitality buffs to NPCs and structures and only on the outnumbered side. Player based bonuses are way too easily abused (imagine a full berserker thief with +100% buff = double health… them running in pairs on the side having these buffs and ganking those who they want with extremely little risk). Adding offensive bonuses is a really bad idea and just adds to the power creep.

Big problem: NO matter how you design these bonuses (even my suggestion), the side with higher numbers vs very low numbers has a superior advantage. E.g. imagine you have just 1 player + 2 upleveled allies. I have been commanding in such situation. The level 2 guardian is not that bad. He dies to almost anything and some other commanders might call him a rallybot, but I rather have even level 2 character on my side, because he can still carry supplies and the rams, ACs and catapults get built faster. Any 3 people is better than just one or two if you want to capture towers and keeps faster! But if you have so few people and even if you 10 people on the map (typical situation!!), it doesn’t make any sense to split them and send them all over the map to cap these bonuses.

Thus the final conclusion: the whole 5 point capping idea simply does not work for WvWvW. It will always end up favoring the side with bigger numbers and the one with very low number of players isn’t able to benefit from them.

1. Stats

At least on my server the bloodlust buffs are not evenly distributed. In our current match up one side generally holds all of the buffs (and that is not our side). +50 to all stats is nothing small, like an extra ascended amulet:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Triforge_Pendant_

All sorts of map/server wide stats should be removed as they really skew the match up and make it feel unfair. We already have serious coverage differences and crazily outnumbered fights, so why to make the uphill battle even harder?! I remember when our server has been having all the three BL bloodbuffs and I have had full guardleech + applied fortitude + hefty vitality bonus from Power of the Mists. The combination makes the game very forgiving. One can play WvWvW for so many hours and not die a single time and collect gazillion loot bags, until one finally needs to grab something to eat or go to sleep.

2. Aesthetics

Aesthetically the ruins is mess. Spvp/tpvp map dropped in the middle of a map, replacing the lake. The transition from other parts of the WvWvW map just feels very weird, breaking immersion. Like a different artist had created a new painting in the middle of a master piece. I am not telling that ruins is 100% bad. Surely some trees, small nook etc. there are nicely placed and it has some nice details like the sunken amphitheater (part of Battle’s Hollow), but in general it looks like a bloated expansion of the Southern middle island, which is also called ruins.

I like scenery which looks like real nature and actually big part of original WvWvW maps and original pve zones fit that description (never mind the exaggerated elevations). In my own works I very often use the classic rules, like golden ratio, and the classic stuff is sadly missing here as well.

3. Lake

Deleting of the lake was a bad idea, because:
- it robbed the only large water area from entire pvp part of the game. This was a good test bed for large to small scale underwater combat and place for those who actually enjoy the underwater side. Now where to play test underwater combat? Bay? The tiny ditch in Raid of the Capricorn?
- water is siege free area
- nobody was forcing anybody to enter the lake, one could always go around it, thus underwater was optional for those who hate it
- It’s removal made solo roaming harder (water is the ultimate escape place for those professions who don’t rely on stealth)

The unfortunately changes decreased the variety in this game, steering even more players towards either of these two play styles: zerging or ganking.

I wish all the borderland changes would be reverted back. At least until something better is invented.

A long time ago I suggested that the lake would actually have its own tiny keep/tower, having perhaps some special purpose and much smaller area above the water than even some towers have, but be partially submerged underneath the water. Like a tower which is partially sunk under the water, but not as cramped as you might first visualize in your head, not some tight labyrinth (would hate that personally), but more like a giant stone octopus. This would once again offer more variety to the game as most siege doesn’t work underwater, making attacking and defense require different tactics.

I know that not everybody will like this idea, but once again it would increase variety in a large-scale player-vs-player manner. Having the current, contest yet another node, isn’t more variety, but just copy & paste from spvp.

Heezdedjim.8902:

“Server pride” is only a thing because servers are what we have. Other games with single-server universes have just as strong — if anything far stronger — communities. But they’re formed around other anchors like factions or player-made alliances, not an arbitrary set of load-balancing bins (which, after all, only serve to divide, not unite players).

“Servers” are not an integral or even a helpful feature for developing communities. Some sort of stable anchor for identity that will let players form lasting groups is. There could be other mechanics like global factions that would allow that, and that also would decouple the community anchoring elements from the underlying WvW population balancing elements.

As others have pointed out — and SoR’s recent failscade proves — given a choice between “server pride” and just bolting to a server with higher population and better coverage, to avoid the pointy end of the stacking + coverage meta, it is abundantly clear which thing is actually most important to most active WvW players.

It is certainly true that randomly tossing players on the fly into Red v. Blue bins does and would obstruct attempts to maintain stable communities in WvW. It is certainly false that “servers” and “server pride” are the only, the best, or even a very good alternative.

I didn’t mean that server price and guild pride are the only community building aspects. I think what everybody here agrees that a thriving community is essential and this is a crucial thing in the long-term success of this game and probably the most important thing discussed here. Like many others also wrote, EotM is missing the community aspect of the game and it would be very difficult to build in EU due so many languages in any 3-way division. We have much more than 3 major languages here, so 3-way split won’t work that well. Even currently we have: French, German, Spanish and International servers. Russians are so large group, so I think they should need their own language group.

The cultivate communities GW2 should have:
1. As much support from Anet as possible to enable communication between and inside the communities and tools to build your own communities
Shutting down the WvWvW matchup related forums was unfortunate. I wish Arenanet would hire moderator resources to bring them back.

Guild Wars 1 had a guild hall. This was a common meeting ground for all guild members and different guilds have different looks and stats in their guild halls. In GW2 guild is more like just a roster and you can be member of up to 5 guilds at same time. Ability to maintain and hold their own permanent structures in a game world would be a HUGE thing and a superb money sink (wink to Anet: great way to make cash ).

2. Guild vs Guild
Simple map with 1 tower on each side, only few NPCs, mainly the NPC tower lord, room in between for open field battle and couple of alternative routes to enemy tower. Similar to popular GW1 guild-vs-guild mode.

3. Alliances
Ability to form alliances between guilds. Yet another feature borrowed from GW1. Now this could work in EotM as well if the players wouldn’t be just randomly tossed between 3 sides, but based on alliances. I think alliances should be able to exist between guilds on different servers. Alliances could have their own subforums and TeamSpeak/Mumble servers.

Side note (partly offtopic and be removed by moderator):
Server pride can be strong on servers and weak on others. I have been on Blacktide when it was on its glory and had many of the best guilds in EU/world. But Blacktide crushed and burned. After losing its main WvWvW guilds, it could never come back. In fact no server in EU has ever made a major come back without guilds returning to it or getting new guilds from other servers.

As side results of many unfortunate events Desolation has most likely lost more hard core WvWvW players and guilds than other servers in EU. After multiple mass exodus, Desolation is still standing surprisingly strong, despite the fact we are outnumbered on regular basis. Those who stayed are though as nail. Instead of getting outside help, we have tapped to our huge pve base to train new WvWvW players. I remember when my guild had only 4-5 commanders who had been doing commanding in actual WvWvW. Now I think we have around 20 of them and new guilds have spawned. We got several old original guilds which have D in their name e.g. GoD (Gatekeepers of Desolation), GODS (Gods of Desolation). If this is not server pride, what is?

DevonCarver.5370:

Would it make Stonemist feel too difficult to capture if the assaulting team had to capture and hold 3 capture points? Here are some of the problems I see with it.

1) It would encourage everyone defending to just blob up on one point and hold out as a group.
2) It could be so difficult to actually accomplish that it becomes nearly impossible to flip Stonemist.

However, I think it would be an improvement to the current rush the middle of the room scenario.

Do any of you think this version of Stonemist would be an improvement or does it not really make any positive changes in your mind?

I think adding more capture points to Stonemist or any other part of WvWvW is just going to make more boring and tedius and would make things even more difficult for the outnumbered side. I have been on EB with just few guys and we have capped almost all of the map, so it is possible. My fondest WvWvW moments are big epic fights or alone defending or attacking something big. Yes, I have been assaulting SM many times alone, in prime time. Few PuGs join in and we got the castle back… that always feels good.

Actually the optimal way to defend SM is not just one blob. One should have men on the inner staircase to the 1st floor manning multiple superior arrow carts (around 15 superior ACs in a approximate circle formation), couple of ballistas on the lord’s room and at least 1-2 players harassing the enemy zerg at all time. If they split their zerg to kill the harasser, all the better. Points tick for the win. And split zerg is easier to kill than a monozerg. A patient commander waits with his team in the lords room and when enemy finally runs in, veil and annihilate: ALL superior AC fire on one spot. Job well done, collect your loot bags!

Currently GW2 has three major game modes, which appeal to different audience and should be kept different, instead of trying to transform the mutant child, aka WvWvW, into one of the other brothers:

pve: emphasis on fighting against NPCs, bosses, events, jumping puzzles and traps (e.g. on fractals), generally short term
spvp/tpvp: emphasis on small scale player-vs-player, capturing and defending nodes, short term
WvWvW: emphasis on large scale player-vs-player, long-term strategy

The more WvWvW is turned into pve and spvp/tpvp, the more is just going to alienate the WvWvW core players, besides if pve is the main appeal, there is already plenty of content for them.

Radical suggestion: Imagine a WvWvW map without any siege at all or NPCs, natural looking scenery with hills, rivers, open fields. Player armies vs player armies.

Shadow refuge is one of the most powerful party support skills in the game.

Venom sharing can also be useful:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Venomous_Aura

Cluster bomb is the only blast finisher in the game without any cooldown.

If you are fighting against trash mobs in pve using backstab, you are doing something wrong. Use caltrops (uncatchable trait), shortbow and sword.

Menzies The Heretic.3415:

People that have not experienced the problems of an underpopulated wvw server would rather close their eyes instead of bringing in idea’s to fix this problem. Some even state the problem does not exist.

I know very well how it feels to be outnumbered side. You think our server doesn’t “enjoy” that “buff”. Want a recent screen shot? I remember long time ago situations where enemy controlled all of own borderland, we didn’t even have a sentry on that map. Everyone else rage quitted or left to other maps. It was just me and 2 upleveled characters on the map. It is an uphill battle. First take some supply camps, then tower or two, then a keep and so on. And constantly afraid of enemy blob who might come to wipe you. I also know how “nice” it feels to be spawn camped. Have enemy zerg (or two) wait just outside your spawn point and farm if you if you happen to come out.

Forcing people to do jumping puzzles is adding more pve events is not a solution. Most of the hard core WvWvW players here in EU really dislike the increased pve elements in WvWvW. Majority wants more even fights against other human players. We don’t want Living story or more powerful NPCs or scaling NPCs or added events for WvWvW. There is already a game mode, which has them all and that is called pve.

Everybody knows that differences in coverage are among the top problems of WvWvW. Arenanet should give player incentives to transfer to low ranking servers. First of all the server transfer costs should be relative to its WvWvW rating/rank. The higher the rank, the higher the transfer cost. The bottom 3rd of servers should have free transfers. The world population numbers in pve should not affect transfer costs as you can always guest for pve.

DevonCarver.5370:

I’d say there is a pretty strong sentiment against the idea of collapsing all of WvW into 3 colors, rather than the current world set up. Which I agree with. I think world pride and association is an important part of the way that WvW works currently.

Here’s a possible version of shorter matchups that wouldn’t necessarily sacrifice the long term fight of a WvW matchup currently and wouldn’t involve merging everyone into one of three teams.

Matches last 8 hours, there are 21 matches in a week with the same 3 worlds, the winner of the week is the world that wins the most matches over the course of that time.

This solves some of the problems we see currently, namely the issues that can arise as matches get out of hand towards the end of the week.

Merging all servers to colors might function sort of okay in NA, but here in EU it won’t work well, because we have so many different languages. I am glad that Arenanet developers understand that server pride (but also guild pride) are important aspects of this game. I hope to see more actions from the devs to strengthen the community side of the game, which is sadly completely lacking from EotM.

Actually the proposed 8 hour system would not solve any of the problems and would in many cases lead to the situation at the last matches are completely irrelevant to all servers!

Here is a realistic example:
6 days behind in a weekly matchup, 1 day remaining
Server A has 10 wins out of the 8-hour matches
Server B has 6 wins
Server C has 2 wins
Now the last 3 matches (3 × 8 = 24 hours) don’t matter at all. Even if A would completely stop playing it would still win and C cannot even end up 2nd no matter what. With current system it is still possible to turn the tide even if the point difference is 30k points before the last day and every server point counts.

I think 8 hour match up and scoring based on how many such 8 h strips you win during the week would be worse than the current scoring system. It would just further complicate the system and alleviate the coverage differences. Assume one server would have slightly better coverage at one of those 8 hour slots (let’s say night time), it would consistently give it wins, because 7 points out of the potential 3*7 = 21 points is a lot. And if you already leading by lots of points during your 8 h matchup, why to play more points if just few hours remain, you already won that.

8 hour match up would lead to unnecessary amount of resets and WvWvW downtime. Upgrading keeps takes a long time and it is also costly. With 8 hour match ups there would be much less sense to upgrade anything. This would even further push WvWvW into a game of flipping stuff, instead of defending and planning long-term.

*We could however experiment 24 hour reset time, but this should be experimented for a week or two before the leagues. *

I see one major advantage in faster 24h reset time: imagine if the colors are always rotated e.g. clockwise: red—> blue —> green --> red again, then players who are aiming for 100% world completion have less time to wait to get the different colors. EotM and EB map design are not symmetric and it has been argued that some colors are better than others. Now with the clockwise color rotation every server would play roughly equal amount time each color, making it more fair. Every server would play roughly 10 times green, blue and red every month. What do you think of the faster color rotation?

Arius.7031:

Well engi can definitely apply a lot of condis if rng is kind, especially with grenades (grenade skill 2, if traited properly, can apply 9 bleeds if all grenades hit with grenadier) but I don’t really see how they can apply more condis than a phantasm pu mesmer.

This was a good one. I assume you mean these 2 traits:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shrapnel
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sharpshooter
with:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shrapnel_Grenade

Assuming relatively high precision and 50% critical chance rate, the likelihood of getting 9 bleeds out of one shrapnel grenade with these two traits is:
0.15*0.15*0.15*0.3*0.3*0.3*0.5*0.5*0.5 = 0.000011 = 0.0011%
That is roughly 1 in 100000s. And the bleeds from Sharpshooter trait last mere 3 seconds!

But back to the topic:
The problem with PU mesmers are the following:

1. Ability to cause damage without getting revealed via illusions
- If any illusion attack which would hit would also caused revealed this would be a significant nerf towards PU
- would greatly increase the skill floor needed to play PU mesmer, because now just one small attack from any clone or phantasm would trigger revealed

2. High access to damage mitigation
- Swapping places with clones is already powerful damage mitigation in small scale situations, but PU has 33% chance for protection and 33% chance for regeneration, which can trigger Illusionary Membrane trait (15 s cooldown), which gives also protection.
- most PU mesmers have high uptime of protection and high toughness, giving them high survivability against any direct damage
- reduce protection uptime and PU will no longer feel overpowered

3. Requires little skill to play effectively and still faceroll 1 vs 1-3 encounters
- this is debatable, but I think almost everybody agrees that fighting against PU mesmers isn’t fun, but you can generally just run away from these fights and do something more useful

I don’t think PU mesmer is a good build for tpvp, because you cannot contest points while being stealthed. It obviously isn’t a good build for WvWvW zerging, but in small scale it seems to be overpowered. I have seen enemy PU mesmer troll 2-4 allies from my server without getting killed. These solo or duo roaming PU mesmers can flip supply camps with very low risk of getting killed on the way. And obviously snipe all the dollies and sentries. And harass small groups and solo roamers.

I do quite a lot of solo roaming in WvWvW myself and I see these 3 professions over represented as solo roamers:
- thieves (which obviously rely on stealth, no surprise here)
- mesmers (most use PU)
- warrior (most use greatsword for superior mobility)

Stealth and mobility are the key things here. I think stealth in GW2 is implemented in a bad way. This game has no “see invisibility” skills. Besides the ranger Sic’ ’em, there is no way to reveal stealthed opponents (nobody uses the stealth trap and it is not practical in small scale combat at all). In WvWvW stealth gives an extremely easy way to reset a fight gone wrong (leading to low risk, high reward builds) and also allows stealth stomping, getting back into your tower/keep surrounded by hostile forces. My suggestion is:

Stealthed opponents should be rendered semi transparent to their enemies as well, just like they appear to their allies. This would require minimal code changes as the code is already there. Stealthed opponents could still not be targeted by skills which require a target, but this would remove the guess work where the stealthed opponent is. Currently trying to hit the stealthed opponent with AoE is more or less random if the stealthed opponent is playing smartly.

Any other way to change stealth would require complete overhaul of the thief profession kitten many thief traits and even autoattack skills (e.g. backstab) rely on stealth.

kubetz.3058:

Having #1 “just hit” would be very strong without any skill shot element. Problem is that you would be able to outrange somebody at 1500 distance and do a lot of damage (Incendiary Ammo, Incendiary Powder, Shrapnel, Sharpshooter, etc). No other range weapon has properties of grenade kit (being AoE + 1500 distance) and therefore you cannot just do 1:1 comparison.

Actually some skills in this game hit considerably further away than skill description says. For example elementalist fire staff #1, fireball, has a listed range of 1200 and it is 120 AoE (180 if traited). I made a test in WvWvW with my guild mate, fireball hits further away (>1500) AoE attack than grenadier GM traited grenades. It seems that ranger long bow with eagle eyes trait can hit roughly 1800 range.

But back to topic: I do NOT want grenade kit to have an auto attack, it would significantly make it worse in many situations (note it takes a long time for grenades to travel to >1000 distance, meaning grenade kit auto attack would constantly hit where the enemy was and instead where you predicted it to be).

NO

Arenanet should have poured the resources to solve the actual problems instead of making this new map.

1. scaling creatures, new and more difficult NPCs and unique bosses at each objective
- No need. This is NOT pve. You already have too much of this in Living Story. Please don’t make WvWvW more into pve-like experience.

2. Increased emphasis on verticality
Please no. This was one of the big design mistakes of the EotM map and Skyhammer, which is the least favorite spvp map.

3. More chokepoints
While every map needs a good balance of open places, some hills, cliffs, water and chokepoints, EotM has way too many chokepoints. Please use current Eternal Battlegrounds as your standard of map design, not EotM.

4. A much shorter match time
This could be considered, but I feel that EotM completely lacks the community aspect of the game and rapidly changing opponents make guild rivalries from opposing servers more difficult. EotM is nothing but just a big karma train and eventually it will get very boring, just like the ruins of power first had players, because of the achievements attached to it. When the novelty runs out, what then? WvWvW should be designed better to cater guilds and EotM is simple going to the wrong direction with that.

5. Destructible terrain
Doesn’t seem to add much.

Few things to add: I think the added new game mechanisms (player based buffs) and traps, turrets etc were BAD in EotM and I wish to see none of them outside that map. Rule of design: Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS), but keep refining the existing rules to perfection. A chess wouldn’t become a better game by adding more pieces and chokepoints to the board.

Excellent post. I hope you will not be banned for speaking the truth.

Swagg.9236:

EVEN SO, one of the biggest issues with [Grenade Kit] in general is how all of the skills are just barely, barely skill shots. With the ability to throw them at one’s feet combined with their generous radius and the fact that there are 3 grenades makes aiming them a very minor issue in most fights. Another point is their lack of red circles, making it worse for opponent’s when in close range to an Engineer.

The entire kit invites players to use every skill and doesn’t necessarily punish the player for doing so given the fact that every skill has a short cast-time and all of the skills have short recharges considering that the Engineer can have multiple weapon sets at a time.

How do you even define burst?

Moreover, you’re clearly talking PvE here if you’re mentioning [Lightning Hammer]. Nobody uses [Lightning Hammer] in PvP and that’s where balance should be focused; rather than making balances from a PvE perspective—especially in a game like GW2.

…
That is hiiiighly debatable. You get a 20% up-time on IMMOBILIZE without traits, a no-cue LAUNCH on a base 15-second cool-down and a leap (which can be used to also combine with a water field).

Balancing the game based on game mode (spvp/tpvp), which roughly 1% of the player base is actively playing is one of the biggest mistakes the Arenanet designers have done. This has been a slap on the face towards the 99% (the rest). I agree that engineers are pretty strong in pvp, but can you seriously argue that engineers were ever strong in WvWvW or among the top professions in pve?

Spamming the skills is not just an engineer specific problem. Because this game has no concept of energy/mana and thieves have no cooldown on their weapon skills, every profession is spamming the skills. Staff necromancers are also gonna spam all its staff skills on cooldown, except for staff #4 (putrid mark) and staff #5 (reaper’s mark) and in a hectic fight one simple does not see the difference of the marks on the floor. How is the engineer spam worse than dagger thief spamming 222 and sword thief spamming 333?

If I could change the grenade kit, I would do it so that:
blind grenade would do no damage (only blind, thus spamming it for damage wouldn’t make any sense)
freeze grenade would have its damage halved
poison grenade would have its damage halved
grenade kit #1 is slighty buffed to compensate the damage lost (less than 10% buff would be enough! Probably around 4%, too tired to do the math)

At some point Arenanet changed the spread of the grenades, which was a mistake. I think this happened somewhere in the first half of 2013. The higher spread makes it easier to hit an enemy with at least 1 grenade at long distance and things more random and also gives larger effective AoE at shorter distance and promotes the use of grenades at very short distance.

I would very slightly reduce the grenade spread, so that it would actually be more of a skill shot. This would actually be a NERF to WvWvW, which mostly about tagging as many opponents as you can if you want loot bags. The underwater grenade spread also needs to be reduced as currently only 1-2 grenades hit from distance and grenade barrage is useless underwater (it might have all its 7 nades miss the target at point blank distance).

Rifle is a single target control and burst weapon. It is a significant reduction in survivability compared to pistol/shield when engineer is faced by multiple opponents at same time.

When I talk about burst I mean very rapid succession of attacks which take down the enemy from full health. If you compare the time it takes to kill the opponent using just grenade kit or rifle, you will see that the engineer burst is significantly slower than e.g. thief dagger burst or warrior axe burst. Many thieves are running berserker gear, because they have the tools to get out of the combat if things go awry. How many berserker engineers you see in top tpvp? In my observation almost all the WvWvW roaming engineers there are still condi semi-bunkers and same probably holds true for top tpvp (decap engineers rule in hot join spvp, not top tpvp).

The problem with Swagg’s proposals is that he is suggesting too many changes to all professions and even to those professions, which are relatively weak outside pvp. If I would want to nerf the engineer in couple of ways I would look at the following problematic traits (this forum has great suggestions how to fix them):
incendiary powder (too easy access to burning besides all those other conditions <— this is what makes bunker/semi-bunker engis so strong)
automated response (all traits giving total condition immunity are just dumb)

I agree with most of the suggested changes, except for:
- decreasing the delay of bombs (bomb kit is already very good)
- adding 25% damage to twack (this would increase its damage multiplier to 2.19x, which is a bit too strong, for comparison backstab is 2.4x and eviscerate is 2-3x)

I would also very hesitant to buff healing turret. It is a already the most popular of engineer healing skills. Here are some ideas how to make the other healing skills more viable:
1. Remove swiftness from Elixir H (random chance between protection and regeneration) and remove vigor from toss Elixir H (protection or regeneration to allies, increase radius to 180). This would make elixir H viable in non-elixir builds and offer a bit more reliable group support as too much randomness is bad.
2. Make medkit #4, drop antidote, remove one condition upon activation and another condition when you walk over it. Immobilize is common in WvWvW and can easily last 5+ seconds with the food buffs, making it a death sentence.

I did not like the proposed to change to elixir gun #3, furnigate. I think we could keep furnigate as it is, but reduce its team condition cleansing in favor of it removing one condition from the user upon activation. Realistically it rarely ever removes more than one condition from allies as the cone is so short and narrow. I am happy that furnigate would remove just one condition from each ally, if it would remove one condition from the engineer when activate. To wait 2.25 seconds to have one condition cleansed from yourself is just too weak and risky (most people run shout guardians and warriors in WvWvW, which are able to remove conditions with instant-cast shouts in addition to plenty other condition cleansing and they remove the conditions from their allies and e.g. shake it off has 600 radius and can be traited to heal ).

I agree with hydeaut.1758 analysis. Engineers are strong in decapping and contesting nodes, but to “balance” this game based on a game mode, which is actively played by 1% of player base, is insulting to the rest (99%) and bad game design. Engineers have never been popular in WvWvW nor strong there.

This suggested changes would be a step towards the right direction, but I don’t think they would still make engineers part of the WvWvW meta. If we think about the following roles in WvWvW, here is my analysis:

Pro guild zergs
Top professions and builds are:
hammer warrior, staff guardian, staff elementalist and staff necromancer (warriors and guardians being the most popular)

Each pro guild group needs 1-2 mesmers for veiling, portaling, time stop etc. The medium armor professions are optional. Some groups use thieves and rangers to harass the flanks and snipe enemy soft armors, but there is really no sweet spot for the engineer. Hammer warrior is simply too strong and needs nerfing to make this meta even remotely fair. Earthshaker is 2 second, 240 radius AoE stun with under 10 s cooldown, which is just ridiculously overpowered in group fights. In every group fight I can hear the commanders and players telling “hammer stun”, “water fields on commander” on TeamSpeak. Engineer can do the same effect using supply crate with 180 s cooldown and 1200 range (the turrets get destroyed <1 second, so the only actual effect is the AoE stun and few bandages). And this requires an elite skill slot, not just using a weapon burst skill. Elementalist static field has 40 s cooldown and it is unblockable and gives lightning field (for area swiftness using blast finishers).

Siege
Grenade spam is quite effective on players on the walls, but staff + well necromancers and staff elementalists are much more effective at destroying enemy siege weapons from the walls. Any smart enemy will place them far enough from the wall so that the grenades cannot hit them. Elementalist can fight without much risk on the walls. If it gets pulled down it can always vapor form/mist form and return back into the safety. Healing signet warrior is superior at using siege weapons under enemy fire.

Solo roaming
TOP3: Thief, warrior, mesmer (thief being most common)

All the top3 solo roaming professions have better ways to reset a fight (= most important ability for a solo roamer). Warrior has superior land speed with greatsword (+ sword/warhorn). Thief and mesmer have shadowstepping/teleports and stealth. A good thief should always be able to reset a fight, thus very little risk of dying even when caught outmanned.

Small scale

Any profession works here. Engineer fits here well. But WvWvW is not about fair fights and thus a fair 5 vs 5 is extremely unlikely. Most likely it is going to be a 1-2 vs 5 or more. Thus the solo roaming classes rule. Thief’s shadow refuge is more powerful for small scale than anything engineer can offer.

Please NO!

There are a lot of players (besides me), who utterly hate:
- jumping puzzles
- Edge of the Mists

EotM is a good idea on paper (I love the idea of the overflows), but currently the implementation is bad (nightmare map design for roaming, incredibly boring zergy fights with no point, too many powerful NPCs, added totally unnecessary buffs and new mechanisms), so please do NOT force your players to play it.

In fact, I once again propose reverting the Borderland changes (September 17th, 2013). By now it is obvious that the ruins of power (which replaced the BL lake) are a failure. Very few players spend time there and the changes actually DECREASED the popularity of BL maps. I used to dislike EB due its blobby nature and huge lag. Now I am forced to play EB, because it is only decent WvWvW map remaining. The borderland bloodlust buffs have received almost unanimous negative feedback from the player base. Instead of removing them, Arenanet shaved their effectiveness.

There was a lot of good user feedback how to redesign the BL maps, including:
- doing something to the Northern East and West parts, let’s face it the Skritt and Tamili are superfluous
- no map wide bonuses to stats, but more objectives to hold, defend and contest, which also give players rewards
- restore the lake, but make it have a small partially underwater keep in the center. The central location of the lake keep would make it a good location for epic battles, I also like the idea that the you cannot play most siege in the water, thus attacking that lake keep wouldn’t require different strategy

Desolation

No queues, except on prime time at EB if some popular PuG commander is leading or on one out of the three BLs, which has several guilds raiding at same map. Usually those queues are short. Outside those situations we are often enjoying the outnumbered “buff” (especially if no commander on map).

Desolation is the only silver league server, which has a night time crew worth mentioning (just look at our income data at http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/15/ and you will see that Desolation generally scores more points than opposing servers from 4 am to 10 am).

Desolation won all its match ups in Silver league and then we had we had queues. We are very much international and use server wide TeamSpeak to co-ordinate efforts between 4 different maps (thus we can summon reinforcements from other maps).

Desolation is the #1 pve server in EU and also has more highly rated pvp players than any other server ( http://mos.millenium.org/pvp_rankings/index/eu ). We often have overflows for pve maps if there is some event going on (Tequatl, Wurm etc) because players from other EU servers come to guest to Desolation.

style.6173:

In the meantime, retaliation is the best counterplay to aoe. It is the only thing now that makes aoe attackers think before using their skills.

In other words, we still need one of the following:
1. A nerf to AOE
2. An increase to retaliation damage

So in other words you think it is fair that if an attacker gets potentially punished by up to 10k damage from retaliation using a single skill, while the skill inflicts only around <1k damage on the enemy? (example engi grenade barrage). Semi-passive defenses should never be this strong.

I think it is time to get rid of the incredibly brainless meta where the pro guilds stack with 20+ characters standing so close to each other that their character models are inside each other. Obviously if enemy would fire arrows there, cast a meteor shower or throw some grenades, the pro guild should be punished.

Utter’s suggestion would not hurt small scale play. Retaliation could still trigger twice per second and punish mindless spamming.

Uttar.2341’s 1.1 suggestion is good. It would have minimal effect on small scale and fix retaliation for large scale.

It is common to see organized guild groups having nearly 100% permanent retaliation uptime. There is not enough boon stripping to remove this, because retaliation can be so easily re-applied e.g. light field from the guardian hammer auto attack chain and then hammer #2 or any other blast finisher. Thus pretty much everybody in the zerg has retaliation. This makes fast-attacking skills, which can hit multiple targets extremely hazardous. Even with the current “spvp” amount retaliation , each attack can trigger around 300 damage. Engineer grenade barrage toolbelt skill can theoretically hit up to 7*5 = 35 targets , which is over 10000 just using one skill, which has long projectile travel time and cannot be canceled. In worst case the enemy group didn’t have retaliation on when the engineer threw the ‘nades, but when they actually lands it triggers massive damage on the poor engi. Staff elementalists (meteor shower. static field etc), longbow rangers (barrage), flamethrower engineer’s and greatsword guardians (whirling wrath) suffer from similar problem.

I don’t think altering the attacking skills is a good idea, because this would require so much balancing work.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Just wanted to pop in here and mention that one of the ways for us to access a build’s strength is to get in and play it ourselves. Grouch playing decap doesn’t correlate with the balance team thinking this build is in a good place in sPvP. You’d be surprised how some of us feel about it in reality.

I thought you guys should know I’m writing an e-mail to the team as we speak about its prevalence and perception in the game. You guys have done a great job messaging out against the build, it’s gotten our attention. No promises on things changing about this build in the near future but you might see some things get better/worse with the secret changes coming in for the feature build that will potentially address this.

-Tyler

Thanks for the reply, Tyler. This is my interpretation, reading between the lines (I might be correct or wrong):

The new secret changes will bring new spvp/tpvp game modes, possibly long-awaited team death match etc. Decap engi would be a bad build for other game modes. Decap engi also doesn’t make any sense in pve or WvWvW.

If the new map is anything like the Edge of the Mists map or the new redesigned Borderlands, I really do NOT want any new maps at all. Currently Eternal Battlegrounds is the only WvWvW map, which has decent design (it could still benefit from balancing the different colors).

Instead of new maps and new overpowered features, please give us:
- more balanced match ups
- improved commander UI
- less lag and disconnects

I don’t see anything wrong about it. I am a member of an engineer only guild. And I could see myself joining a guild called “Old Farts”, which is limited to those who are over 30. The guild leaders are able to decide who is the member. Nobody is forcing you to join DAS. And if you play on the wrong server and see an enemy DAS tag, you can just run away!

Desolation has a wonderful community, strongest pve and tpvp in EU. As current EU rank 10 we are very well set to dominate and win the upcoming silver league, like we did in Autumn 2013. And unlike many of our opposing servers we rarely have any queues in WvWvW.

Warbanner should not work on any NPCs, including keep and Stone Mist lord. Or at least it should NOT revive them to full health.

This won’t be fixed unless the reward structure or scoring is changed.

Logically it would make more sense to transfer to the server, which is most likely to win the silver (or bronze) league. If the rewards are similar level compared to before, winning the silver league will give better rewards than ending up 2nd or 3rd in the gold.

At least here in the EU majority of the best Guild v Guilds (GvG) guilds are now residing on servers, which have ranks from 8 to 18. Thus you get the best quality opponents and witness the most devious strategies and amazing PuG commanders as well.

Previous league wasn’t exciting: Vizunah Square won all its match ups and so did Desolation. The winner was more or less clear after few weeks.

I just hope the leagues won’t bring massive queues again. Right now we haven’t had any queues for over a month, besides some short temporary on one map if there is guild raids going on or a similar thing. I like the fact that you can enter WvWvW without any waiting (and I hate EotM). Nobody likes being outnumbered (happens to us, even at reset) and well that is the downside, but luckily my server is once again in the right position to be in the silver league and then dominate it. ;-)

The trait is really weak for 20 point trait. But every profession has such completely lackluster traits. Engineer rifle related traits are scattered all over the place. 4 traits in total, none of them overpowered, some are okay:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Go_for_the_Eyes
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hair_Trigger
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rifle_Mod
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rifled_Barrels

Hair Trigger and rifle mod are okay. Rifled barrels provides quite modest gain in range, compared to other range increasing traits like eagle eye, which also gives 5% damage increase and increases the range of longbow and harpoon gun skills by 300 (which is much more than the rifled barrels does). Eagle eye however is a 20 point trait, so it still sounds fair:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Eagle_Eye

I would delete “go for the eyes” trait or merge with another one or completely redesign it e.g. make it proc with any weapon or kit.

Many good ideas here.

I think the defiance idea could be used in pvp, or at least in WvWvW. Being chain CCed is a big problem in WvWvW. Melee train lead by hammer warriors has been the meta since Autumn 2012. A typical WvWvW zerg battle has lots of people telling “Hammer stun” and “static field on the choke” just a highlight how extremely important and powerful area stun is. I do NOT want this meta to be nerfed to the ground, but it would be refreshing to have it less overpowered. Now everytime a character gets hard CCed (stunned, knocked, launched etc), he will gain defiance, which lasts 2 seconds. This would give a needed opportunity to escape. I am not sure about the 2 second duration, maybe make it just 1 second or 1.5 seconds or maybe even 3 seconds. This needs testing.

Many on one is also a good idea, but will once again require testing.

Currently the strong NPCs of this game hit way too hard, but way too rarely. Dungeon bosses can one-shot characters. You dodge the right time or you die. This makes the armor rating and toughness kinda irrelevant and that is why berserker gear prevails as the best defense is to kill the boss as quickly as possibly. If the attack rate would be considerably higher, but the hits would also be weaker, this would give players more reason to have stronger armor. The DPS of the monsters could be adjusted to that it remains roughly the same.

The difference between the light and heavy armor isn’t that much especially if both have invested over 1000 points in toughness. So I don’t think would favor too much the heavy armor professions (which are right now in very good position for all game modes).

The suggested changes to the elixir gun are worth considering. I feel that EG #1 is good as it is. It has a low direct damage multiplier (0.4x) and the 4 s bleed is not powerful unless you have a lot of condition duration and enemy doesn’t cleanse the conditions. For comparison: warrior’s rifle #1 does 6 s bleed with similar attack speed and higher range (1200), but does no weakness, but crack shot trait causes ALL the warrior rifle and harpoon gun skills to pierce up to 5 targets and reduces cooldown of the skills by 20%, making it extremely powerful 10 point trait. EG #3 could be used to cleanse ONE condition from the engineer (removing more than one condition would make it overpowered). I agree with Swagg here, because engineers are currently weak at condition removal, unless they take multiple elixirs and the related traits or a healing turret. Even then their condition removal pales badly in comparison with the warrior. Medkit users are very susceptible to immobilize. Thus almost all the engineers using the healing turret and this limits build versatility. I think EG#4 is good as it is, situational skill, but no need to add evade there, even though it could be sort of logical.

The suggested changes to Elixir R make sense and would make it viable again. I think it really should break stun and the 1 second cast time caused me to scrap the skill.

Elixir C should NOT be turned into some semi-attacking skill. It should be all about cleansing and I think engineers really need a skill which cleanses all the conditions. Keep it as it is, but think about the toss elixir C skill, which is weak at the moment considering its cooldown. I would bet elixir C is currently very underused skill.

What is the logic to add cast time to supply crate as its net turret is going to get nerfed in the next patch? I have been the target of enemy supply crate countless of times. I am old and I have slow reflexes but that is one of the easiest skills 1 s skills to dodge due unique clear animation (dropping crate) and even if you don’t dodge it, it does 2 second stun and then you dodge roll away. I have died against enemy engineers, but I have never ever died to an engineer while being hit with the supply crate and following burst. In fact if enemy engineer used his supply crate I have almost always won the fight pretty soon after.

The biggest problem of the engineer is the turrets:
Massive hit box (nearby AoE, which doesn’t even visibly hit the turret damages them), very low amount of health, being immobile and having no real AI and all those bugs, makes turrets seriously lackluster. Fixing the turret AI is not gonna happen any time soon, so all we can do is suggesting something else:

It will be very difficult to make turrets viable for WvWvW or for many pve events. Even giving them 10x health pool and durability would still mean that in a zerg fight or pve group events with massive enemy mobs they would be destroyed in seconds. But adding so much health to turrets could make them overpowered for 1vs1 situations in spvp.

I think the turrets will need to have their hit box seriously reduced and health increased to 1/3 of what ranger pets have e.g. ranger ursine pet has over 50k health. Why not to give around 15-17k health to a turret?

I appreciate that Swagg has done a massive job at thinking class balance changes for all the professions.

Many of the suggested changes are drastic indeed. Implementing so many drastic changes would need a lot of game testing before putting live. People of course are first reacting with anger, because the proposed changes would indeed:
A) completely change the way they play the engineer
B) would cause a nerf to the DPS (and DPS is all what counts in pve, where engineers were never the top dog)

Making the grenade kit auto attack and most other grenade skills channeling skills is a really bad idea. No other profession has their auto attacks channeling. This game is about being mobile and being able to dodge. Now I have noticed Swagg has changed his original suggestion completely and he is no longer suggesting that.

Grenade kit lacks burst besides the toolbelt skill, barrage. It offers no utility and no blast finishers. The kit is all about DPS and triggering some traits. Instead of the dictating how the kit should be, I would like to hear some reasons why the kit it overpowered compared to the DPS options of the other professions and who would want to use the grenade kit if the real life DPS is significantly reduced. Engineer has no fully cleaning melee auto attack (toolkit #1, twack doesn’t cleave). Basically if you want to play a high dps engineer you are forced to use either the bomb kit or the grenade kit. And even their dps output pales compared to elementalist’s lightning hammer (correct if I am wrong, but I think elementalist has right now the highest DPS in the game?).

Bomb kit having no real auto attack and making it ranged doesn’t make sense. Engineer is already a bit like elementalist. You need to rotate your kits and weapon very fast, like elementalist needs to swap attunements to be efficient. Now this would even further push engis into this and making it less beginner friendly. Just ask any player, engis feel lackluster, compared to let’s say warrior in the first 1-60 levels. I think all professions should have some easy access to DPS and currently bomb kit sits in a very good position, having a very high damage multiplier (1.25x) on its auto attack.

Swagg was originally also suggesting to nerf the engineer rifle auto attack. This is interesting as the skill is in line with the dps of what the other professions can inflict at similar range using their auto attack. Just look at the damage multiplier and real firing rate (roughly once per second). Yet at the same time he is suggesting in another thread to buff the damage of guardian’s whirling wrath, which is one of the most highest hitting damage skills in the entire game. Guardians have always been part of top tpvp teams and together with warrior the most common profession in WvWvW and extremely popular profession in pve, while engineers are among the least played professions in pve and WvWvW. Do we have a bias here? Or is this balancing just all about hot join spvp?

Now let’s compare engi rifle #4 with ranger’s longbow #4, point blank shot. Many complain that ranger’s LB is a weak weapon, but after Swagg’s proposal rifle #4 would be in most cases clearly weaker. And ranger has at same time access to his pet, which can also inflict damage or give utility like condition removal or stealth (ranger’s weapons need to be balanced taking into account also the DPS from the pet). Point blank shot has same CD as the suggested overcharged shot, but much longer range (900/1200 vs 400!) and no penalty (no self-knockback).

I admit that rifle #4 is almost instant cast (however the projectile doesn’t hit instantly) and this makes it problematic. I am for adding a short animation to it (1/2 s), if its range gets increased slightly (e.g. 450 range untraited, 650 range with rifled barrels trait).

Almost all the top engineers haven’t been using the rifle, but most opt for pistol/shield, because the shield offers blocking and a blast finisher, both lacking from the rifle. Rifle is all about control and burst. You sacrifice survivability if you equip the rifle. In all my hundreds of hours of roaming in WvWvW I have rarely ever met a rifle enemy engineer. Rifle engis there are rare as hen’s teeth, but I have seen tons of pistol engineers as part of roaming teams. This just tells that the rifle is in a vulnerable position. Nerf it strongly: nobody will use it outside pve.

(continuing in the the next post)

Nova Stiker.8396:

No one knew how to build engineer at the time (and mostly still don’t) and apparently ArenaNet doesn’t pay much attention to high end PvP.

It’s only a matter of time the Engineer spike build gets out, I was on my Elementalist and it dealt 17k damage with Grenade Barrage, 3 tool kit skills and blowing up a rifle turret. All in just seconds. I managed to survive and killed the engineer because it was hotjoin so he was done for once his spike went on recharge.
If it wasn’t hotjoin, the engineer would have gotten all the help he needed to finish me off.
___________________________________________________________
Against organized and skilled teams, having 2-3 engineers is a must.
1 Guardian Bunker.
1 Roaming BS thief
2 Engineers spamming high damage, condition spamming, powerful AoE
1 Debunk engineer
____________________________________________________________
Focus the squishy Engineers? Gear Shield! 16 second recharge, 3 seconds of invulnerability, you’ll always have a get out of damage free card every 13 seconds.
It puts the Warriors shield block to utter shame.

Engineer builds which have very high burst also have low survivability. Engineer can be made into a bunker or a decapper, but neither of those builds have any burst. You were hit by a static discharge engineer, which has been out there for ages, but generally NOT part of the top tournament meta and SD engis die very easily. They either kill their solo target fast or waste their toolbelt skills and die. And you killed him. So where is the problem?

All the professions have some very high hitting skills. E.g. look at elementalist:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dragon%27s_Tooth
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Churning_Earth

Actually engineer doesn’t have any single skill, which can do as much damage as churning earth. I know it has a long cast time, but it can be precast. And elementalist’s lightning hammer has the highest auto attack in the entire game:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Conjure_Lightning_Hammer

Are you seriously claiming that ALL the top tpvp teams are now running 2-3 engineers or they lose? I have seen more warriors on the streams, but that is just me.

Instead of posting wild claims that engineers are the “godmode” in pvp, please post constructive criticism. Telling that gear shield is too good is a fair comment, but you should then actually compare it with what the other professions have. Gear shield actually has 20 s cooldown without the power wrench master level trait. E.g. look at warrior’s riposte, 15 s cooldown, blocks all ranged attacks. The melee attack breaks the block and counter attacks with massive amount of bleed. On a condi build cover that with torment, cripple, immobilize and burning and GG, unless victim has tons of condition cleanse:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Riposte

And mesmer’s blurred frenzy: massive damage, 2.5 s evade with mere 12 / 9.6 s cooldown ( the shorter cd using blade training adept trait) :
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blurred_Frenzy

Traited mesmer mainhand sword offers over 25% evade uptime, just using one weapon skill.

I have a theory: The disconnects are more frequent when the server gets overloaded.

We do not know if the GW2 servers are running on a threaded, forked or asynchronous event loop model. The first two are very susceptible to problems under high amount of simultaneous users. Rewriting the server code into asynchronous event based model would be quite a task and require some extensive testing before going live. The server code might also have trouble handling delayed network packages (yes, those players who have a really slow connection towards the server are gonna pose a big problem to the entire server). This is NOT an easy problem to solve, so I am actually not going to blame Arenanet programmers.

Aurora Glade was running two large guilds groups together (Vcy + Doom), at least in Desolation border this reset. Then Kodash joins with their huge blob. We had easily 100+ players from 3 servers inside Garrison and also tons of people on many other fights. This puts the server under extreme load. I can imagine EB was doing even worse.

I would assume the WvWvW maps are run on different servers than the pve maps, but when a lot of people disconnect from WvWvW at same time, the problem might propagate to other servers.

Any developer comment would of course be appreciated. Thank you!

What a horrible list of suggested changes. Power rifle has never been a popular build tpvp and the suggested changes would hit it incredibly hard. It is already a challenging / risky build in WvWvW and you want to me make it completely unviable.

After the suggested the changes I would really want to use what kind of builds engineers would be using in pve? E.g. dungeon speed runs as the suggested changes would completely wrack the DPS.

Reading this sad thread makes me very happy that I am playing EU. It seems here in EU tactics, strategy and open field combat plays a much bigger role. I know very well how it feels to be seriously outnumbered: have just 2-3 guys on the map when enemy runs in a blob. And I have been spawn camped and been spawn camping enemies.

But taking objectives shouldn’t be impossible even if you have few people on the map:

Timing is everything
- use map chat / scouts to know enemy movements
- orange swords, towers etc. flipping etc. usually tell where the enemy zergs are moving
- when the enemy is busy somewhere else then it is time and a good commander can anticipate this

It feels twice as a good to capture a fully upgraded enemy keep or tower in prime time using just few people (4 man team can do it quick, assuming all carry full supplies and are traited).

Any case here in Desolation we have had now very good moments in WvWvW. Tons of loot bags. The reset evening was amazing and thanks for INVI for the leading.

Greatsword is already the most popular mesmer weapon, at least in WvWvW and pve, so buffing the most popular weapon doesn’t make sense. Blast finisher seems a bit illogical in scepter or focus and I think mesmer sword is fine as it is.

But I think we all agree: the mantras need to be reworked. Currently almost nobody uses them due the very long cast time of the mantra. Yet, they offer instant cast skills, which are by itself very powerful mechanism.

I think adding lots instant cast skills or powerful passive features to any profession isn’t smart, as it offers very little counter play. This is not mesmer specific, but true about every professions. Shouts are examples of instant-cast skills which can be used while channeling other skills. I do not think prestige (which is fine as it is) should be turned into a shout / instant cast while channeling others. Healing signet is a good example of overpowered passive feature. And traits like guardian’s purity also have no counter-play.

My idea isn’t fully fleshed out:

Mantra of Recovery
1 second cast, 18 s cooldown
The next 2 skills you activate heal you for 2620 points (+0.4*healing power).

Mantra of Pain
1 second cast, 20 s cooldown
The next 2 attacking weapon skills you activate deal 407 (1.250x multiplier) damage, 240 radius.

Mantra of Concentration
1 second cast, 25 s cooldown
Next two skills become stun breaks and give 2 s stability to nearby allies in 240 radius.

and so on…

But I think you get the idea. The damage multipliers or heals cannot be very strong as this would allow extreme bursts with the right skill combos. With my idea mesmer could add AoE to any skill she desires using mantra of pain. Just preload it 1 second and then unleash any two attacking skills and they have 240 radius AoE.

The healing by Mantra of recovery sounds small, but you have to take into consideration that with mantra mastery the cooldown becomes mere 14.4 s. Over the time it would heal more than ether feast. Combined with harmonius mantras GM trait it would heal much more than any other mesmer skill, but the heal would come in small doses and would allow more active counter play (each skill can still be interrupted and thus heal wasted), making it a bit more like engineer’s medkit, which allows has tons of total healing power, but the healing comes in small doses.

Some mantra related traits would probably need to be reworked as well.

Offtopic:
“warhorn #5 of warrior gives vigor to allies, weakness to enemies, is a blast finisher and converts conditions into boons when traited +20% short cd. That’s on a 20s base cooldown. I don’t see how mind stab is op compared to that.”

I am not the only person who thinks that warrior has too much mobility and almost every single warrior in WvWvW is using the sword/warhorn + hammer/greatsword. The biggest problem is that GS#5 gives 1200 mobility skill with 16/20 s cooldown and GS#3 is another 600 mobility skill. And warhorn with the quick breathing trait is way overpowered in any large scale combat. Warhorn #4 has just 12/15 s cooldown, converting conditions into boons and cures immobilized, crippled and chilled from yourself and up to 9 allies. This basically makes those conditions almost irrelevant against a controlled zerg (Not to mention the condition removal from all those shout warriors and guardians). Melee trains have way too much power and I am against any game balance changes which further deviate the balance in their favor.

Overall I think mesmer isn’t in such bad state as most people complain. Despite warrior is brokenly good at the moment, I would say a decent mesmer should win 1 vs 1 against a warrior. Mesmer lacks AoE and the thief (which is a bit overpowered) performs the roaming role better. But if thieves get toned down a bit, I think mesmers would be back in top game.

Simply NO.

Commander tag has its uses in pve as well. Just come to Desolation to see how complex events like wurm or Tequatl are run.

The general problem is not that we have too many people with their commander tag on, but almost nobody wants to tag up in a WvWvW match where the opponent outnumbers you. 10k badges or not, this won’t change the thing. There is no extra reward for being a commander. There is no useful commander UI. Being a commander is hard work without any pay, besides the praise if you succeed.

I like the idea of mesmer getting a new blast finisher (besides the prestige), but adding it to greatsword #3 isn’t a good idea. GS #3 already does so many things considering its low 12 s cooldown (9.6 s traited). It is bad game design to create skills which do multiple powerful things in a short cooldown.

However some rarely used mesmer utility skills, like the mantras, could really use some love. What if the mantras would be blast finishers? Mantra of resolve would then be a blast finisher on a mere 20/16 s cooldown.

Turrets are currently seriously underpowered in pve and WvWvW. You can kill the trash mobs using other skills much more efficiently (it makes much more sense to equip a kit).

The turret hit box is huge (even nearby AoE damage, which is NOT hitting the turret damages the turret!) and health is pitifully low, thus turrets get destroyed in a second.

Instead of nerfing the turrets, Arenanet should make them viable for pve and WvWvW. For comparison the ranger ursine pet, e.g. bear, has over 50k health, has mobility and can heal itself, but turret has around 5-7k health and doesn’t move. Now every time I see some other engineer use a turret, I feel pity for him.

In my WvWvW roaming I have of course fought against a lot of enemy engineers as well. I have never died on a supply crate dropped on me and followed by the enemy engineer burst. Just couple of nades (if you run a power build like I do) and all the turrets from the supply crate are gone, plus it is pretty easy skill to dodge. I have however died against enemy engi + 4 of his allies all attacking me (5 vs 1 = you lose any case).

PS. Remove immobilize stacking from this game. I am myself using immobilize against enemies, but I feel it is really cheesy that it stacks!

The decap engi is made for very specific purpose, like its name implies. It has very low damage. The decap engi build would not make any sense in pve or WvWvW and I doubt it will be that overpowered in top tournament play as well. So I really hope Arenanet doesn’t (once again) nerf engineers in all game modes, just based on such very niche type of build. Similarly the planned nerf for net turret doesn’t make any sense whatsoever outside spvp/tpvp. Since when was the net turret overpowered in WvWvW or pve?! The turret usually gets destroyed less than a second and hits the wrong target.

The healing numbers Razac mentioned were calculated with about 1750 in healing power, which is quite a lot indeed. A bunker guardian with similar amount of healing power and the right build would heal more and have better access for condition cleansing and stability + very good access to protection. Of course the guardian won’t be as efficient in decapping though due not having that many knocking skills, but killing the guardian quickly in 1 vs 1 would also be difficult.

I fully agree that the Automated Response trait needs to be reworked. And same for all traits which offer completely immunity to conditions (this includes ele’s diamond skill). I do not like Malthias’ idea of AR reflecting back the conditions as this could make it potentially overpowered for those who play condition spammer engis. Engi needs now more variety and not more condition spammers. I think AR should be reworked as followed:

“When your health reaches 25% all conditions are cleansed. Cooldown 25 seconds”

Now this would be a complete condition cleanse which cannot be interrupted, fitting the name of the trait and spirit of the trait trait tree. And it would not be completely overpowered. I am not 100% sure if 25 s is the right cooldown, but of course it needs a rather long CD. Condition removal is currently probably the biggest weakness of engineer. Condi necro is a hard counter towards non-AR condi engis (assuming even remotely similar level of skill, I would say necro would win).