Guild Wars 2

Very nice build and superb explanation. I can see it can be amazing in many dungeon settings and replacing some guardians. The area healing of your build via the combo fields is surely one of the best in the game. And the build still does decent damage with conditions.

I think the health is a bit too low for many WvWvW situations. Note: My WvWvW experience is mostly from EU tier #1 and tier #2, full of huge zergs. I am a PuG commander and I often run through enemy melee trains and I need to sometimes stand in enemy siege fire (superior ACs etc). I got less armor, but 22k health and I think my health pool is still bit too low, despite I have 4 dodges in a row with Elixir R.

In WvWvW a backstab can hit 10k damage (using full berserker ascended gear + scholar runes) against 3k armor, so the C&D+steal+backstab combo can take the entire health bar in 1.5 s.

Sevenn.3085:

I’m not sure on composition for other guilds on SFR but option seems to run with up to 8 guardian in a 25 man squad.

For sure steam rolling isn’t fun but I think 25 ish people should be the amount a wvw guild is looking to field. Individual skill is still important with that amount whilst being enough to beat the larger but less organised groups.

Its a tough place for the 10-15 man squads, I usually see smaller groups of 5 or the full 25+ groups. So you opportunity for skilled equal number encounters is much lower than other size groups, maybe even less opportunity than the solo roamer.

Ultimately I think these 10-15 man groups should look to recruit/merge and come fight the 25+ guilds

Sounds reasonable. I think I have encountered SFR guilds who run less guardians than what you reported, maybe 1/4 of the group is guardians e.g. 6 guardians in 24. I think the Deso pain trains at EB Ins has been running are doing the same: run a lot of warriors and guardians as that is the meta.

Ironically I find guardians the easiest profession to beat in 1-vs-1, despite they are so strong in groups. It is probably because most WvWvW guardiands aren’t specced for solo fight and long range combat is guardian’s Achilles’ heel. A full zerker guardian who knows how to play could be dangerous against any single roamer (except maybe underwater, underwater guardians are just… low tier).

I agree that running in a 10-15 group is really difficult now. We have tried that with TLA. The best we could muster was around a dozen players and we are an alliance of Finnish guilds. We didn’t have the best co-ordination, but we simply lost due we didn’t have the numbers to fight against twice as big enemy groups. Solo roaming is easier despite there is very good likelihood to run into 2-5 man enemy roaming team.

I have a question for SFR players:
You have a lot of big WvWvW guilds. And you know Desolation has only one hard core WvWvW guild left: Eternal Invictus. And I wouldn’t call INVI big.

Aren’t you bored that there isn’t a force to counter you?

We can sometimes collect quite a lot of PuGs in one place, but outside EB there is max 7 people on TeamSpeak, usually none, so our only coordination is map chat and most of our players are not from English-speaking countries. I think it is fair to say that under these circumstances we are doing a good job.

I am afraid how long time our players will endure this imbalanced match up. I can guess a lot of our commanders are having a burn out e.g. today our own BL was once again without any commander more than half of the time. I was commanding 2.5 h in row, but I simply don’t have more energy in this heat (It is really hot both outside and in my computer room and we got thunderstorm + heavy rain afternoon).

Repuran.1859:

Deso is best in PvP rankings because of TP and I’ve seen 4 of them in the last week on SFR Borderlands. They really do pack a punch and have killed me numerous times, would be really great if more Paragon members came to WvW for Desolation. I do think you’d target SFR more than Kodash if you had the numbers though :P.

Team Paradigm is no doubt very good, but we got several other good pvp oriented guilds.

Speaking of individual skills: my kudos to that SFR mesmer who was defending Redwater supply camp against me and a thief (I think that thief player from our side was very good). You held up nice in 2 vs 1 (but got of course some help from those NPCs). We finally decided to disengage based on my command. Very nicely fought.

My hats are also off to that SFR bronze invader who has the guts to play solo roaming as a warrior. I have seen you several times but killed only once, since you always run away. I usually play an engineer in WvWvW and I know warrior vs engi is not fair 1-vs-1 (despite my build is not made for 1-vs-1).

How about organizing a meeting of solo roamers from all 3 servers? I mean on a friendly basis. No rude actions, no hate talk, we can even join party and chat.

I could organize that on Deso BL and communicate with the other commanders so that we won’t be interfered. The North beach side of the ruins North of Hero’s Lodge or behind the mill South of Hero’s Lodge would be a good meeting place or that are near Tamili tribe North of the Foghaven supply camp. If you want to have duels it would be good to have at least 1 alive player from each server, so we can revive the downed ones.

Please no flaming, I know there is a game mode called tpvp, but I am talking about a once in a life time opportunity to meet lots of solo WvWvW roamers from all 3 servers and have a friendly meeting.

Repuran.1859:

Courageous Mithos.8745:

Getting tired of constantly being double teamed by SFR and Kodash in EB…

Mainly SFR that is just constantly bashing on Deso. There’s no dynamics of a 3 vs 3 fight in this tier.

I agree with you and I’m from SFR but ask yourself this, if Desolation had the upper hand with numbers like SFR atm would Desolation be doing the same thing?

I think so simply cos of the history the two servers have.

I cannot of course speak for the entire server (nobody can!), but I think the answer is NO.

It is more of a cultural thing.

Many Desolation players are individualistic players, who actually like small scale. In all our zerg fights I can often hear our players complain (“too many, too much lag, I go to switch to more empty map…”). We are still by far the best tpvp server and many of our WvWvW players are also active in pvp:
https://leaderboards.guildwars2.com/en/eu/pvp

It really seems the other top servers care more about the points than we do. Most of our players just want a fight and some of our players still lack 100% world completion so they are playing to get the last points of interests and vistas and I am happy to help them with that. I know I am going to get flamed for this: SFR players write here that Deso is master of siege and they are themselves so bad in using siege. But so far as a PuG commander at Deso BL I have witnessed almost completely opposite story. If it just possible SFR players will rather sit all day next to a superior arrow cart and farm foolish Deso players who get in range. And there is nothing wrong about it. People are entitled to enjoy different play style and it was Arenanet, who made ACs way too overpowered. Note that I mostly play at Deso BL and I cannot see what is happening in other maps!

Already in tier #1 we were often ganged by the two servers. The outmanned “buff” should never be visible to enemies as it really seems to act like an encouragement for the enemies: “oh here is a weak one, I can punish easily”. Just like school bullies they team up to make their victory even easier. 2 vs 1 has been reality for a long time.

If we would have superior numbers compared to the other 2 servers, I think the following would happen: We would attack both, play really aggressively and totally wipe the others, even when it would sometimes mean losing objectives like a tower or a keep, just for the fun of having sweet revenge and killing tons of enemy players. The lack of resistance would soon however make it boring and people would go back to pve or spvp/tpvp, or whatever they enjoy more.

Mighty Ice Arrow.9268:

Last night time once again Deso fought for hours near SM door in a complete adverse situation, and you complain about outmanned. Didn’t you feel the damage from our siege? How can you come here crying about numbers, go to EB and see your numbers there. You don’t have numbers in BL’s because all the people are in EB doing stupid fights.

Why do you need to call your enemy stupid in almost every single message? So SFR is the only server with smart players, sitting all day next to your siege and avoiding open field fights unless you got bigger numbers, while enemy is ignorant fools dying to totally overpowered AC fire?

I don’t disagree that Deso has put biggest push to EB and ignoring all other BLs besides Deso. We simply don’t have enough people for all the maps.

But maybe today was a bit different?

I took command of Deso BL and we captured 90% of the map. Unlike the players from certain other server, I have the guts and honesty to admit that we won the fights because we had bigger numbers. A rare occasion for Deso. Our PuGs were following me a bit too good, because it is not good to have everybody in the same group and no intel or guarding stuff. I try to encourage our players to use split team tactics when it is useful. I guess our players go stomach full from this, since once I took my tag off we started to lose stuff fast.

A bit more honesty to these messages: Winning is based almost solely on numbers and coverage. And Desolation obviously wants and needs to drop down tiers, so we definitely don’t want too many points from this week.

Terrahero.9358:

ahem EVERYTHING I DO, EVERY WEAPON, EVERY BUILD, IS AOE. I LITTERALY DO NOT HAVE A SINGLE-TARGET WEAPON OR BUILD

This is not true. Engineer has a single target weapon called rifle. Its auto attack pierces, so using it against tightly packed zerg is a risk, but you can use Net shot (rifle #2). It is single target, flies slow as molasses and doesn’t do any damage (just immobilize).

Blunderbuss is good, it does max. damage at 100 range (smaller than melee range), when you traited it with rifled barrels trait. It is very easy to land those full damage blunderbuss hits in a laggy zerg battle.

And overcharged shot (rifle #4) will knock you down and also knock back one enemy if the enemy is close enough. Being knocked down in the middle of enemy zerg is good for your health.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rifle

Or you can use the auto attack from elixir gun, tranquilizer dart, it does HUGE damage!! (= same dmg as thief’s pistol, but slower firing rate. Thieves pistol #1 is so super dmg weapon, I heard it critting more than backstab ).

Problem solved! Retaliation is not overpowered and engineer rocks in zerg battles full of retaliation!!

/sarcasm

Excellent summary and answer by Nokaru.7831. I voted it.

To put it short: keeping up retaliation in a zerg is easy and currently it is overpowered in such situations, hurting certain builds very hard (e.g. grenadier engineer, flamethrower engineer, barrage ranger). Boon removal is not the answer.

I don’t understand why retaliation still does full damage in Borderlands. I used it once again today to kill opponents using light combo fields. Even after reducing retaliation to same level as in Eternal Battlegrounds and spvp/tpvp, it would still be too powerful, but why full damage on borderlands?

Relation is fine in 1-vs-1, but becomes overpowered in big fights when multiple opponents all have retaliation.

I am going to comment several posts in one:

@laquito.5269
A zerg won’t hunt you, small groups do.

While this is usually true and general rule, it isn’t always the case. A small group has bigger likelyhood to chase you for an extended period of time (> 2 minutes). Pity my old computer is probably too slow to handle fraps + GW2 at same time, but sometimes an entire enemy zerg (= more than 20 players) has been chasing me across the map. I can rarely get away from them so long time due so much CC and enemy having lots of gap closers and teleports, but once in a blue moon miracles do happen.

I remember running away from our 15 man group in 90 degree angle after alone initiating attack at the enemy zerg (using ranged AoE). I also started retreat, but nobody else from our side went to my direction. The entire enemy zerg followed me, despite I didn’t have commander tag, but someone in our main group was a commander. As result I died and our entire group was saved. These kind of situations tell a lot about the psychology of the game: sometimes a 20 man enemy force rather picks a fight against 1 than a fight against 15, because in latter case they might lose.

The ability to draw in a lot of enemies is actually very useful. My character’s death means nothing, especially if I know it saved my group or gave them a better opportunity to wipe the enemy e.g. by luring the enemy onto a strategically worse terrain location and making their tight blob spread a bit so their flanks could be eaten.

@laquito.5269
Anyway, sucks to be a roamer these days. :P

It is harder. Especially if you play a profession, which doesn’t have stealth, no gap closers or teleports and on a busy full map. You will get “owned” by a larger group sooner or later. The larger group might be just 3 to 5, but no matter what is your spvp skill level, that bigger group of course has an advantage. Personally I am not afraid of those 1.6 silver repair costs. And Desolation is outmanned so often = no armor repair.

@Wolfheart.1938
As an SPvP player I have found that only a small percentage of WvWers know how to handle small scale combat without rolling over and dying an humiliating death.

Fully agreed.

I have noticed that the WXP ranks don’t correlate much with 1-vs-1 playing skills. I have encountered some very high ranked enemy players with ranks like bronze invader and winning them in 1-vs-1 has been surprisingly easy. I thought I was bad at timing my dodges, but to see an enemy, who doesn’t even try to dodge anything. Oh well…

@colesy.8490
god what is it with deso players ganking roamers? i’ve been 4v1’d twice and 5v1’d twice today, and then when I was on kodash that didn’t happen at all.

Well, if it happens to you gazillion times, isn’t it fair to let your enemy to taste the same recipe.

Desolation has been in imbalanced match ups already for 4 months in a row. Our coverage and numbers are not good enough for tier 1 nor tier 2. We get rolled over by big enemy groups all the time. Outmanned is the most common “boon” you see on our players. Surely our players want some revenge, even when it is just one man, 1vs4 like you described.

Axle.5182:

laquito.5269:

Haven’t seen a SINGLE solo roamer on SFR or Deso’s side within a week. So annoying to see all this blobbing and group play everywhere.

To do such a thing would compare those individuals to those who live in jumping puzzles, they contribute very little if anything to the server effort.

I have to disagree with you about the solo roaming part. A solo roamer can kill enemy dolyaks, capture supply camps, do any of the NPC objectives alone (Hylek, Ogre, Dredge, Quaggans etc) and provide a lot of useful intel. These are all useful for your server.

Even though killing and claiming one sentry gives your server just 1 point, each small point counts as well. Two supply camps gives equal points (10) to your server as one tower. So if your solo roamer can capture 2 supply camps in 10 minutes and your guild group spends half an hour taking a tower, which is more efficient giving points to your server? Now imagine 10 such solo roamers taking different objectives at the same time. If the enemy runs in 2 big blobs, they will not be able to stop all such solo roamers. In ideal situation we would have big organized guild groups taking and defending bigger objectives like keeps or the Stonemist Castle. PuG groups taking and defending towers. And roamers making sure all the NPCs are on your side and enemy has no supplies at all. Note that this split doesn’t need to be static. A solo roamer can join a camp roaming group or even summon the main zerg using map chat or teamspeak. A single player can split from a zerg just to finish that capture e.g. if the camp lord is still buffed. It doesn’t make any sense to park your zerg there from many minutes if the lord is buffed.

The biggest reason why most people don’t solo roam is FEAR, unless they play some easy escape profession e.g. thief or mesmer. Fear of being overrun by a larger enemy group or being instagibbed by enemy’s duo thief (or thief+ something else) team. People are afraid to die and hate to start again from the way point. Being with a group gives you the feeling of security.

Desolation has lost so many WvWvW players in past months. I want to give a message to all our remaining solo roamers: If you know what you are doing, you are doing a useful job. If you see enemy movements, please report them to your commander. You can never have too much intel. We also need more players to follow the commander tag and drop down a tier or two, so please have patience with this totally imbalanced setup.

laquito.5269:

Haven’t seen a SINGLE solo roamer on SFR or Deso’s side within a week. So annoying to see all this blobbing and group play everywhere.

I do solo roaming as often as I can, which is currently only 0.5-1 h/day to do my daily. And I don’t play a thief nor mesmer in WvWvW, so I pretty sure my character is visible. Any every time I see only enemy groups. Kodash and SFR move in 3-40 man groups. The only place you can actually see a single solo roamer is the central lake or somebody who just died and is running back to his zerg or goes to defend their tower / keep. Even if you attack them using your weakest damage skill, they are generally running away (disclaimer: I am just stating my observations, others can have a different experience and I can very well understand why many people need to run away).

Currently the temperature meter is showing + 28 C and at noon it was hotter. In fact we have had record temperatures for over a week. I am rather by my swimming pool, trampoline and just go to have some shade + cool drinks at the terrace.

Guild Wars 2 is just a game. Relax, chill. Let’s enjoy the superb weather outside, while it lasts!

Phineas Poe.3018:

Well, that’s a choice you’re actively making. This thread is about the state of the Engineer in PvE anyway, not WvW. Slotting the Bomb Kit gives you a relatively spammable Fire field to stack Might. If you guys choose to go without it that’s your call—but don’t complain about things other classes have if you’re not going to play the Engineer to its strengths, or claim that we don’t offer anything unique to groups.

Napalm has a 10 second duration to its Fire field. At a 30 second cooldown, it’s arguably the best Fire field in the game.

Also, I play on Sanctum of Rall, FWIW.

Sorry for going a bit off-topic. I am more of a WvWvW player myself. Your server SoR has a very big guild, Iron Triangle [IRON], who moved from Desolation to SoR.

I know very well that those fire fields are used for stacking might. I have been observing how Iron guys play.

I would still argue that Lava Font is the best fire field in the game. 1200 range, mere 1/4 activation time, 4 s duration and 6 s cooldown. You can trait its radius to 180.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lava_Font

But a guardian doesn’t need fire fields to give 12 stacks of mights to its allies:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Empower
Besides giving 12 stacks of might it also does very good healing when combined with Altruistic healing if you have 5 allies near you.

I would argue that using a skill like that is easier for most beginning players than using a combo fields. I am not claiming that engineer is a useless profession when it comes to pve or WvWvW, but it does have accessibility problems. Skill floor is clearly higher than e.g. playing a warrior, guardian or thief.

Elsewhere in this thread you claimed that engineer can maintain permanent burn using grenade kit alone. Well, how?
Incendiary power was changed to give 4 s burning on a single target with critical hit with 10 s internal cooldown.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Incendiary_Powder

+30% condition duration from 30 points in explosives trait line
+40% duration rare veggie pizza
2x rune of flame legion ( + 15% burning duration)
2x rune of balthazar ( + 15% burning duration)
2x rune of baelfire ( + 15% burning duration)

Even with +115% burning duration it still won’t be 100% burn uptime. Did I miss something?

I haven’t experimented it, but I think with a similar rune, trait + consumable setup a guardian could keep up permanent burning with Zealot’s flame (note it gives considerably longer burn that the tooltip claims)
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zealot%27s_Flame

Maintaining permanent poison with grenade kit alone would be pretty kitten hard as well. Yes, I know you can swap to pistol, bomb kit and flamethrower to achieve that 100% uptime in pve.

Chopps.5047:

Very nice analysis; I would like to see a stun break on signet of the hunt. What do you think?

I think adding stun break to it would make it too powerful. It is already a very good skill, which most rangers equip it anycase and it has only 30 s cooldown, plus signet mastery trait would lower that even more.

Since Signet of renewal is already a signet and a stun break, I think it would be a good idea to spread ranger’s stun breaks to other types of more rarely used skills:
“Protect Me”
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/%22Protect_Me%22
“Sic Em”
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/%22Sic_%27Em%22

I feel both of these skills are under used, but making them into a stun break, would add some needed viability to them.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Guardian doesn’t have anywhere near as spammable Fire fields as the Engineer does, has zero Water fields, and has to specialize in several traits to get their Light fields to do what Super Elixir does for us.

AHEM Guardians definitely don’t do as much damage as Grenade Kit Engineers. They don’t even do as much as an FT Engineer, and I will furthermore state that my FT/EG Engineer is way more consistent in removing conditions on allies than a PoV/Soldier rune Guardian will, even with Save Yourselves. Super Elixir and Healing Turret alone remove more than 10 conditions a minute on allies in range. I think it’s substantial enough in saying that Cleansing Formula 409 is now completely optional in even the most difficult dungeons.

What spammable fire field the engineer has besides the fire bomb (from the bomb kit) ? Not that many WvWvW engineers are running with the bomb kit for obvious reasons, at least if you play in top tier with massive melee trains.

It is true that the guardian completely lacks water fields and probably for a good reason. E.g. that mighty blow is a spammable blast finisher
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mighty_Blow

And that is something the engineers lack. Engineers have a lot of finishers, but generally they are put to useless skills (e.g. turrets or elixir X) and have longer cooldown e.g. supply crate is 180 s cooldown blast finisher, which almost never ends up being used as the blast finisher.

Every single guardian weapon gives light fields, besides the focus. This gives guardian access to almost unlimited retaliation, plus also a lot of cleansing bolts using whirl finishers.

It is true that an elixir gun+ healing turret engineer can cure more conditions from his allies than a guardian can, but guardian can provide his allies a lot more boons (protection, aegis, regeneration, retaliation, might, swiftness). These abundant boons are one of the main reasons why guardians are so wanted in any party. And let’s not forget guardian has access to stability, which is perhaps the most valuable boon in WvWvW.

Guardian and warrior are the two most popular pve professions (at least if you count the actively played level 80s), so I seriously doubt they will be nerfed. In fact I predict that the warrior will be buffed again in the next skill balance update. Guardian has also been buffed in recent updates. Even though neither need buffs for pve or WvWvW.

Instead of nerfing those super popular and powerful profession, I would rather see the other professions brought up to same levels.

Many guardian weapons have a very high damage multiplier. The difference is not that drastic. In the ball park of 10-15% actually, but at the same time many of the guardian weapon skills bring a lot of protective / healing utility. So lots of power packed into just one skill. Why not bring at least the auto attack of the engineer weapons to the same level? Guardians also have very easy access to combo fields + finishers using the same weapon e.g. Symbol of protection (hammer #1) and mighty blow (hammer #2). Mighty blow does really large damage and is a combo blast finisher and has a mere 5 s cooldown. I know engineers can do the same e.g. elixir gun #5 + #4, but the note how little damage the engineer’s equivalent is doing (almost none) and how much longer cool down it has.
Engineer weapon skills also often have utility, but it is often one target crowd control with some penalty e.g. overcharged shot (rifle #4). Single target skills with limited range aren’t really that powerful in dungeons or huge WvWvW fights, so this contributes to the feeling that engineer is weak.

The difference comes from these small things. Guardian can spec a lot into defense and still do good damage. If engineer goes full bunker, his damage is going to be small (besides conditions). Altruistic Healing (AH) and many other guardian traits are really powerful and synergize well with weapon skills.

The gadgets definitely need some love and reducing their cooldown by 33% would be an obvious choice.

Elixir gun’s toolbelt skill, healing mist, feels underpowered considering it has 40 s cooldown and gives roughly 1300 point heal via 10 s regeneration. It should at least be a stun break or remove one condition. Now most engineers are forced to use elixir C or multiple elixirs and cleaning formula 409 master trait to get rid of multiple conditions or overcharged healing turret and this is pigeon holing engineers towards few builds.

Engineer has the highest skill floor of all the professions and I think tiny bit added damage, reduced cool downs + some group utility (combo fields / finishers) added into the kits or weapons could be that tiny bit extra what the engineer needs to become a more accessible profession. Maybe also adjust some of the passive traits e.g. make back bag regenerator scale with healing power (would make sense).

I don’t want too much either, so that engineers would be overpowered. For tpvp engineer probably doesn’t need that many tweaks.

But it is obvious that engineers are not in the top tier in pve, nor in WvWvW, unless you count small scale roaming in a fairly empty map. In huge zerg fights and dungeons, engineers could use some love.

Zenith.7301:

Marksman is a garbage tree until 30 major trait, Skirmishing is only good up to 20, WS is pretty bad at 10 but starts getting great at 15+, and NM is only good for bunkers with 20 points at most.

Huh? Of course the viability of the traits depends on the game mode and many other things, but in my opinion Eagle Eye is a really good 20 points Markmanship trait:
It increases longbow and harpoon gun range to 1500 (longest range in the game besides engineer’s grenadier 30 points trait!) and also increases longbow and harpoon gun damage by 5%. For comparison many other professions give only 5% dmg increase with a 20 point trait at a similar tree (e.g. dual wielding master trait in Strength line for warriors).

Wilderness Survival can give your ranger amazing survivability. Natural Vigor is probably the best 5 point trait in the game. Engineer needs 30 points, adrenal implant, to get exactly the same effect. There is no difference between those 5 and 30 point traits.

So compared to many other professions, many of the ranger trait trees, which you were claiming to be bad, are actually better than average.

Ranger has some weaknesses e.g. lacking AoE (besides barrage), stun breaks (shared anquish trait helps a lot), but to call all ranger traits just crap is not a fair analysis.

Ranger pets require some adjusting, because ranger can make himself into a full bunker and still do good damage using pet. If most other professions go full bunker, their damage is really low as well.

Ranger underwater should also be looked upon, because currently lick wounds is too good.

I hope the next patch will give more stun breaks to ranger, because 3 stun breaks to choose from is little:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stun_break

Karast.1927:

@ Deniara

I’ve been working on that a while and to be honest the only things I have really come up with is a limited amount of water field usage off the healing turret, stacking multiple blast finishers with thumper, and general group support with cleansing / light fields from elixir gun.

Combined with a bit of rifle dps.

But in organized play we are really in a bad spot balance wise, and to be honest we are a weak link with retaliation as is it.

Retaliation shuts down grenade, FT, and PP in any serious fight. You can’t take incoming aoe, ontop of 5-12k froms your own skills. Bomb kit is to situational, tool kit is to ST focus with 1/3.

So that’s about it. I am not saying it’s absolutely horrible, but your guild gets much more out of another warrior, guardian, ele, or theif in your spot. So your more for fringe and flavour than anything else.

But being able to drop 2-4 blast finishers on demand gives you someone of a niche role as a burst healer.

I fully agree with you on everything you wrote. I am also using rifle, as it suits those big group fights better, especially as a commander. Good enemy teams have lots of condition removal, thus pistol wouldn’t be that effective. And some are using lemongrass + melandru runes (-65% condition duration), which pretty much kills the condition builds with a simple passive solution.

Retaliation does still full damage on the borderlands. And even at Eternal Battlegrounds retaliation can still do huge damage if you throw grenade at tightly packed enemy melee train. Without any internal cooldown or anything, retaliation is simply too strong passive defense against fast repeating attacks and attacks which can hit more lots of people e.g. flame jet and barrage. I can know that retaliation is good because I am using it all the time from combo fields myself e.g. elixir gun #5 + rifle #5 and elixir gun #4. Two combo retaliations in a row. And I have seen enemies die to this.

But as a blast finisher, I think thief is superior. Engineer needs a certain weapon set and lots of kits or turrets to have those 4 blast finishers. Thief can just shortbow #2 (cluster bomb). Take quick recovery (master trait) and infiltrator’s signet and you can spam those cluster bombs almost non-stop. Cluster bomb also does huge area damage, much better than those engineer blast finishers which have a low cool down e.g. acid bomb (elixir gun #4).

I am not saying that engineer is totally bad, but it definitely isn’t among top WvWvW or pve professions. Engineers are strong holding points in tpvp, but that’s not the case in WvWvW. I hope Arenanet would at some point buff engineers for pve and WvWvW. So far been they have been buffing warrior so much it no longer makes any sense for pve. Warrior has been always very good in pve, why keep buffing it for pve? But I guess they want to avoid the pvp/WvWvW/pve split as much as possible.

I feel that Elixir S should be reverted back for pve and WvWvW, no longer disabling all skills.

I have been doing solo roaming as an engineer in EU tier #1 (now in EU tier #2) and here are my couple of cents:

Speedy kits is good. Blocking is good. Using your supply crate and CCs (like freeze grenade thrown backwards) to stall enemy is good. Using the terrain as advantage is good. However none of them will save you from an enemy zerg if they really want to catch you, unless you get lucky.

Despite I constantly keep an eye on the big map, trying to anticipate where the enemy zergs are moving, it is very likely to run into a 5-40 man enemy group. Getting away from 5 is somewhat possible, but a big zerg usually has permanent swiftness + so many players with tons of gap closers and CC. Tossing elixir R at the right moment might save you from being stomped by a small enemy group, but it won’t help you against an enemy zerg. Lack of stability and gap closers are one of the weak points of the engineer.

On a fairly empty map engineer is a very good choice for roaming. As jacks of all trades we can handle a lot of situations. Condition heavy engineer builds (like HGH) are very strong in 1-vs-1 or even 1-vs-2. But things change when the huge skill lag kicks in and the map is full. I am talking about such lag which prevents you to activate your skills or your dodges come 1 second later. You just have to accept the fact that you are gonna get killed quite often if you solo roam as an engineer in a busy / full WvWvW map. Some other professions e.g. thief, mesmer or ranger are better suited for roaming.

Guardians and warriors are the back bone of the melee train. That melee train also needs mesmers (veil, portal etc), necromancers (boon stripping, enemy mass blinding etc) and elementalists (heals, condition removal, big AoE) and thieves (stealth stomp, blast finishers, killing the flank of the enemy tail).

Now the good question is what is the specific role in WvWvW which engineer is filling: Which other professions cannot do well?

Making your structures fully upgraded is a valid point and getting to know your enemy guilds for months upon months is also a good argument, however I will raise couple valid points:

For many months Desolation was in tier #1. The imbalance of the game and lag made us lose most of our WvWvW guilds. Despite having a huge player exodus, we still stayed in tier 1, when it didn’t make any sense. Our coverage isn’t good enough even for tier 2. For many weeks we wanted to drop tiers, which finally happened.

Upgrading keeps didn’t make much sense as every single morning enemy controlled 95-100% of the map. In EU only few servers have a night time coverage worth mentioning. Most EU players live with 4 time zones: British Standard Time (GMT), Central European time (GMT+1), Eastern European time (GMT+2), Moscow Time (GMT +3, but they have no summer time).

WvWvW matches have been so imbalanced for months upon months that the match winner has already been decided after couple of days, half of the week no longer mattering. This is obviously bad game design: winner shouldn’t be decided until the very end to keep things exciting.

Now it seems, thanks to this “lucky” roll, this madness will continue for many weeks, probably months. Some other European servers, like Vabbi, are even in worse situation. Enemy has been facerolling them whole year.

We need some game mechanisms to give the outmanned side a real buff. 1 day, 2 days, 3 days… we should really also experiment with shorter reset times.

Since the new random match up system is in place, why not to also make the match up last just 24 hours? In other words I mean reset everyday, at same time as it happens on Fridays. This way the ladder would balance itself faster, assuming Arenanet’s theory would work.

Now those servers who got a “lucky” roll and ended up in a too high tier, wouldn’t need to spend several weeks being facerolled, but would at least have a good chance to get a new fresh match up everyday.

Having reset every night would probably bring more people to WvWvW, at least to check what the new opponents will be.

Wemil.7052:

im gonna create the biggest blob and cap all your towers then im gonna dance naked in your spawn

Shows real sportsmanship. Gonna toast for that

This evening was one of the weirdest in WvWvW. So many glitches and bugs.

Welcome to Bug Wars 2.

Xirin.8593:

Deniara Devious.3948:

There has been a lot of suggestions how to fix the stale match ups …Yet never any comment from a developer.

I…I don’t even know where to begin. Are you unaware of everything that has transpired on this forum the past few days?

If you would have at least read those threads you would have seen me even comment those threads about the new match making system.

Mighty Ice Arrow.9268:

Come on, Deso as a commander that cals 10 men a Zerg, and we are the ignorants?
Deso problem are SFR achievments, you are to far from us.

Can we please stop the personal insults?

I can handle the insults like a man, but constantly referring to this same comment by me for many days is just… stupid.

I don’t care if you think that I am ignorant. You probably define things differently:
roaming team = 10-20
zerg = 30/40+ or more
blob = entire server in one blob

That raises an interesting question: What should you then call a group of just 3 people?

When I put on my commander tag, the situation is often that we have very few people on that BL map and we hold no objectives at all. Enemy has 100% of map and all you can see is 1-2 other players on your side and they might have the cute green up arrow. I often start commanding when the situation is already what most people would call utterly hopeless or desperate. I know that the odds are not the best when I have seen that 20+ man enemy group roams around the map and I know that enemy zerg will wipe us if they catch us, until I manage to get our numbers grow. I usually stop commanding when we control at least 1/3 of the map.

I don’t claim to be a great commander, but anybody who has been our situation knows that desperate situations also need somebody to lead your side out from the darkness to a temporary moment in light. And it is not an easy task, unlike to lead your 40+ man to a win over a smaller force. We have several other commanders who are doing the same and I have my utmost respect for most of our Deso commanders. Without people like them, most Deso players would have stopped WvWvW.

I agree with the OP.

I am not claiming this game is a total failure. GW2 has superb visuals, audio, some very good introduction stories, quite large pve content for a game which has been out for less than 1 year. WvWvW could have been the crown jewel of this game.

It seems as if somebody in Arenanet, who is in high in power, has certain vision about the game and wants to force spoon fed to its entire player base. It is important that a game developer has a vision, but completely ignore the player base is also dumb. Game balancing is most solely done based on tpvp, even though majority of GW2 players never played tpvp. They keep nerfing and buff skills based on an unpopular game mode and as result e.g. end up buffing those professions e.g. warriors, who are already very powerful in pve, just because warrior is not that good in tpvp. Many build have been utterly destroyed by Arenanet’s “balancing” crew e.g. engineer’s 100 nades.

There has been countless of good suggestions to fix the zerging / blobbing meta and do something about the population and coverage imbalanced. There has been a lot of suggestions how to fix the stale imbalanced match ups and the useless “outmanned” buff. Yet never any comment from a developer.

Nobody on these forums was asking for those Arrow Carts buffs. Arenanet’s official philosophy was “small changes”. Yet without any warning they increased the AC damage by 80% and at same time introduced totally overpowered WXP traits, which further gave AC much more power. E.g. compare the AC traits with those traits giving + 1 % / + 2 % etc. more damage against mercenaries. A child can see that the traits are not balanced compared to each other at all.

The thief, or actually the stealth issue has generated literally hundreds of complaints just in these forums. It has been the most popular complaint in these forums since the introduction of this game. Yet not a single official reply from a developer. Anybody understands that stealth is more powerful in WvWvW than in tpvp. And mobility is also more important in a big open map than in a game mode where big time is spent just contesting and defending a point, which you cannot even contest while being stealthed. Yet for some reason revealed lasts longer time in tpvp than in WvWvW. Never ever developers explained their totally illogical decision.

This really smells that the developers have notion how they would like to play the game. E.g. sitting by the AC and killing lots of enemies, huge zerg running around the map facerolling the outmanned side and stealth is “fun”. I am not suggesting to ban zerging or completely removing stealth and I don’t want to repeat what I have written in numerous other threads (how to fix those issues), but it is obvious that many people in the community would want to see more variety.

Let the conversation begin…

Even though Visunah Square has been our “dear” enemy for many months in tier #1, I very much respect the hard work Troma has done. His message speaks wise words. We definitely need much better communication with the WvWvW plaeyr base. I have several times suggested State of the Game (SotG) for WvWvW here in these forums. WvWvW has much larger player base than pvp, still you manage to find time for those tpvp interviews.

Big changes (e.g. the Arrowcart changes, free transfers) should be discussed with the players before putting them in action.

Hebril Amolebin.9817:

Honestly I am kitten ed of your post you wipe us every time ok! I challenge you then, get your people on sfr bl tonight on the reset I will lead sfr group there to see how many times you wipe me ok ? I will count how many times I wipe you. You agree on this ? And Wemil will be probably in Eb so you have to maps to choose to show us how you wipe SFR. Do you have the balls to do this mate?

I am replying this from a work trip.

First of all I am a PuG commander at Deso BL, usually just 0.5-2.5 h per day. I rarely play at other borderlands or EB. WvWvW is a group effort. Despite I run with PuGs, I know many of them and they know me. To have success I need those trusted people from different guilds. In other words, it is not gonna work on other BLs or EB.

Secondly, I mentioned already earlier in this thread: I am gonna be busy this week (and unfortunately also big part of next week as well). Due family and work reasons I cannot tell any exact hour when I am gonna be online and playing.

I don’t understand the raging on these forums. Anybody gets wiped sometimes. We get wiped, enemy gets wiped. Nobody wins all the fights. And obviously people usually brag their successes on these forums, instead of reporting their losses. Many SFR and Kodash groups have been willing to fight roughly evenly numbered fights in the open and this has been a breath of fresh air for us. I once again thank the enemy for all these fights (even when we lost them). I learned a lot about Kodash strategies in these few days and I think I can now predict their actions. The even numbered fights are not that common, because we are outmanned usually on those hours when I start playing.

EU seems to have 4 stacked servers: VS, ER, JS and SFR. I know SFR doesn’t want to go back to tier #1, but it still doesn’t change the reality that SFR has bigger numbers and more large WvWvW guilds than Deso or Kodash. Despite we don’t have much dedicated WvWvW guilds left, I think it is fair to say that Desolation has still many skilled players. Our coverage and numbers outside peak hours is bad (except for last weekend when couple of our players really played 24h7).

At the moment controlled dropping to tier #3 would be better for us.

Let’s see what the new match up system will bring. We might face each other again.

I have no hard feelings about any enemy. So just relax and have a nice summer in any case.

Mighty Ice Arrow.9268:

You spent 100g and you dont have a clue of the game you are playing, thats sad.

Well, once again this clueless commander and his happy PuGs totally walked over one of your guild blobs several times in a row. And we clearly did NOT have more players and we were fighting in the open field. I am not claiming Deso is master of everything. We are not that great in siege, but we are better in open field if numbers are equal.

I am very well aware that enemy hates me and kudos to those enemy thieves who failed their heartseeking missions or those hammer warriors who failed 3 stomps in a row.

Our side have only positive comments in the chat about my leading “once in while it feels Deso is powerful”.

Thanks for those who fought with me at Deso BL this afternoon. We started with 0% map control and being outmanned. And that is right moment for me to take command. We wiped OSC (from SFR) multiple times and Kodash got to feel our wrath as well (after that morning 4xsiege golem train from Kodash). We got garrison as well. Nice battles there at both Sunnyhill + Cragtop + Garrison. Fair fights from all.

I don’t blame SFR for blobbing, makes them much easier targets for all those ’nades.

While I agree staff elementalist is not that viable in tpvp, but staff eles are very common and good in WvWvW.

I really Arenanet wouldn’t buff staff elementalists so that the changes would also affect WvWvW, since this would make them overpowered in WvWvW.

So far almost every skill “balance” decision has been made based on tpvp, even though anybody can see that WvWvW and spvp/tpvp are completely different game modes. Tpvp is mostly about holding and contesting points, while WvWvW has much larger scale battles, much more big open field fights, groups of tightly packed enemies (perfect for large AoE tagging), siege war and moving around a bigger map. So far there has been very little split between WvWvW and tpvp.

Zelulose.8695:

Underwater combat would feel smoother if we could dodge while under water.

Dodging has always worked underwater, simply double tapping direction key or pressing V. It amazes me why many enemy players don’t dodge in underwater combat or generally don’t move range or movement to avoid being hit.

Tshik.7204:

btw, dear A.net, this weapon siege bug, fixed the game, it’s more fun, please don’t fix it !

I wouldn’t mind having ACs removed from the game while they are so overpowered, but not being able to build any catapults and rams severely punishes small teams (I am talking about groups of less than 10). Taking down one reinforced door or wall without any siege takes way too long time. Enough time for that huge SFR blob to arrive.

Thus this is the perfect patch to favor those who have larger numbers. Yes, I know that golems work, but if you have just 2-3 players on your side and enemy has 20-30, golems are not that realistic option either.

Basically much more players = guaranteed win.

Hebril Amolebin.9817:

guys you understand we have big guilds, our smaller wvw guilds can drop 20 people on a map? if we speak for Con Zds,Rise numbers go to 30-40+ Osc can drop 30+ too we run separately only pugs are in one big group. I tell you this as comander. All sfr know me as The angry Bulgarian. So as I said we dont blob but if codash come with 80+ what i can do with 40 pugs I call the guild on the map coordinate and defend.. We dont have night guilds only our russian army in the morning. So stop the whining and ect. We have big dedicated guilds they run alone but you say 20-30 is blob? so we dont have to run as a guild even ?

Of course you are allowed to run as a guild and even blob as much as you want. Everybody is allowed to play the style they want as long as it considered legal by Arenanet!

We also run as a guild few days a week e.g. this evening at Kodash BL. Our original plan was to go to Deso BL, but since there was queue, we went to Kodash instead. We had at best 12 people from our guild [TLA]. I turned off my tag, so I wouldn’t attract too many pugs. But surely you realize we cannot counter a 20-30 man enemy force in open field battle with 10-12 of us. And we often saw two such enemy forces: fighting against two blobs both at least twice bigger than us is just a recipe for disaster, so you probably saw us running away.

Before somebody blames me for a hack: During the rush to Garrison, I somehow went through the gate before it was broken while building a ram. Enemy was as dumb struck as me. For half a minute both just stared at each other for an eerie moment. Luckily our team broke down the doors before enemy invaders had fully killed me. We wiped enemy several times, but more and more SFR came there, one wave after another. Legit win for SFR using superior numbers. Good work by commander Sintarta + INVI, but we simple lacked numbers (as usual).

There seems to be some other glitches going around. Placing siege failed multiple times, making reinforced door breaking a chore.

Mighty Ice Arrow.9268:

Blob =10 or more.
OMG and you are a commander.

So because I am a commander, I am not entitled to have a differing opinion?

scanz.4536:

^^ This. Why does a group of people chase 1 player miles across the map? Last night I had about 6-8 SFR chasing me all the way from the sentry outside Vale and Bay to Longview and for what? They caught up with me once and failed to kill me.

It has happened to me as well. Me alone and enemy group chasing me for minutes upon minutes, sometimes over 5 mins and across BL map or all around the central lake. And funnily some of those guys who chase me have champion or legend WXP titles. Gee, chasing just one guy must be a really efficient way to farm those titles and badges. To make things even more funny, I get away in 75% of cases without having any stealth, gap closers or teleportation.

This is also a very efficient strategy to lead an enemy group into their death. E.g. I might type to map chat that I am gonna lead the enemy group to us and probably commit suicide while doing it. What does my 1.6 s armor repair matter when I know that the entire enemy zerg will be annihilated and I get several badges and loot bags as well. One man sacrifices himself so that his group gets the win. So far baiting has never failed. This tells about the level of tactical thinking involved in WvWvW. There is almost none.

1. Solo roamer (which is very dangerous at heavily crowded EU tier #1 and #2). Capping supply camps, Quaggans and other NPC objectives alone.
2. PuG commander, when the map needs it.

I sometimes roam in small groups as well. We often have 3 engineers, but I have been also roaming with other professions and I can tell you that 1 engineer + 1 thief is better than 2 engineers. Engi can CC+ poison the target and thief can down him in a second.

Grenadier is great at siege situations, but overall in big zergs engineer is not that effective because retaliation still has been doing full damage at the borderlands (reported bug) and throwing a grenade barrage at an enemy blob is recipe for suicide Even over 15k relaliation damage from one grenade barrage is possible when enemy has a tighly packed melee train consisting of warriors and guardians. Flame jet would be equally bad idea. The mega lag associated with zerg clashes hurts engineer more than many other professions.

DaveVN.5987:

just drop this, we in SFR allready told you we do blob up at times but mostly avoiding it special on borderlands..

Can you please tell me which special borderlands SFR is NOT blobbing? ;-)

I was this evening playing couple of hours in Deso BL. I couldn’t see much anything else than SFR blobs. Just avoid confusion:
blob = 10 or more
Most of the SFR blobs I saw today had roughly 20-30, some had more, but it is difficult to count past 30 in a hectic fight.

Anycase my prediction was that SFR will win this week, Deso will be #2 and Kodash will be #3, seems to become reality. Let’s now start predicting what opponents you will get after the reset and new random system. I hope Desolation will face Kodash and Piken Square in next match up, which is possible, but also it might be so that SFR + Kodash + Deso will stay in same tier.

Xirin.8593:

Deniara Devious.3948:

Out of all the 8 professions I have played thief probably has the best survivability (together with mesmer). And let me explain why:

All WvW guilds: please replace your bunker Guardians with Thieves. Your success is guaranteed (disclaimer: success not guaranteed).

In my terminology survivability = not dying.
I am not claiming that thief can soak up as much damage as a bunker guardian, but getting out of the harms way e.g. using shadowstep, evades and stealth = surviving.

If a fight goes bad, which happens often, guardian has much weaker chances of getting out alive if his entire team gets wiped.

Xirin.8593:

Warrior: Enure Pain, Defy Pain and Shield Stance, only class in Heavy Armor+High HP categories
Guardian: Renewed Focus, multiple sources of Protection
Ranger: Protect Me, multiple sources of Protection
Engineer: Gear Shield, multiple sources of Protection
Ele: Mist Form, multiple sources of Protection
Necro: don’t even have to specify durability here
Mesmer: distortion, clone spawning, multiple sources of Protection

Feel free to verify that Thief has essentially zero access to either of these categories:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Invulnerability
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Protection

Out of all the 8 professions I have played thief probably has the best survivability (together with mesmer). And let me explain why:

Thieves have superb access to stealth, evade and dodge. In many cases they are 100% damage mitigation. Protection is 1/3 damage reduction of direct damage, but condition damage is still in full effect thus condition pressure wins over most bunkers.
But if you dodge or evade an attack you get 0 damage. Evade is built into many thief weapon skills e.g. flanking strike, disabling shot and death blossom.

E.g. take the following acrobatics traits: vigorous recovery (III), quick recovery (IX) and quick pockets (XII). And use two sets of weapons with sup. sigil of energy and use Withdraw as your healing skill. You will get very good heal every 15 s, evade, almost permanent vigor and all movement related conditions get cleansed as well. Feline grace recovers you 15% endurance and each weapon swap gives you 50% endurance back + 3 initiative. That build gives you so much initiative that you can spam your weapon skills non-stop and dodge like no tomorrow. Even better you can take uncatchable trait from the trickery line, to leave caltrops every time you dodge, for very good non-stop bleed+cripple spam. There are also some very easy to play thief builds to give you good healing, condition removal and constant spammable stealth.

One final note. Every single profession has access to protection, e.g. taking
4x runes of Lyssa (random chance, but seems to happen quite often, I have played many hundreds ours using Lyssa build!)
4x runes of the grove
4x runes of the Earth
or 6x runes of the Forge.

Thief can also steal boons using larcenous strike.

But like I wrote:
stealth/dodge/evade > protection > armor+toughness

So basically guardian is in general more durable than warrior. They have same base armor. Guardian has as low base health as thief, but protection + aegis wins over warrior’s higher health pool. But non-stop dodging + evade can win over what guardians have. Just looks at this video thieves vs guardians:
http://www.twitch.tv/soacgaming/c/2281957

Kolly.9872:

The problem here is Always the same, it’s people like you that are no skilled at all, WvW is all about who has the bigger blob now. Just Learn to split a bit man, and you won’t see all 50 men dieing by 1 shot.

My typical WvWvW experience in current months (EU tier 1, now finally tier 2):
I come our own borderlands and see that enemy controls 100% or almost all of the map. People are depressed, because enemy has night capped everything and upgraded their towers and keeps and built a lot of protective siege and runs around in a 20+ man blob.

We are badly outmanned and I see only couple of players near me, some might be upleveled. I put on my commander tag and start leading the PuGs, usually having just 1-2 guys with me in the beginning. We get couple of supply camps, NPCs, towers, then keep. The PuG train grows, but I advice people on the map chat to cap different supply camps at same time and request intel.

And then we have people like Kolly who tells me that people like me ruined the WvWvW, because I have no skill!!!

You are completely missing my point: the suggested siege + siege changes would bring only more imbalance. Be realistic and fair. You are not gonna build anything with the above suggested changes if you are on the smaller side. Enemy is gonna treb down your ACs or catapults from their tier #3 castle or keep. And with just 1-3 guys it would take forever for you to build a counter siege (would be blasted to bits in a second).

cuge.5398:

@Deniara
Night capping is a problem that exists since launch, and i think its something that cannot be solved in any way, but tiers reduce it naturally. If a server dont have enough coverage it will go down till he stops in a tier where its coverage is similar to its one.

About the 50ppl killing blow by a treb, jeez, i’d love to see that….

I am sorry, but I have zero sympathy for you now and I do hope some game glitch will transfer you to play on Vabbi and then you will finally understand what I mean:
http://mos.millenium.org/eu/matchups/map/710

What you are suggesting would turn the game into a nightmare for a big number of EU servers. It would completely kill WvWvW for many players and servers, since not everybody can afford the gem transfer cost. If enemy already build siege all the map and controls 100% of the map, your few players are unable to do anything, absolutely nothing after your “balance” changes. And all for… just for such “fun” that somebody can kill 50 guys with a single Treb shot and get gazillion badges and loot bags for being so “skilled”.

Your suggestion is to ruin the game for more than half of the EU players. Most players here want that siege weapons would do less damage e.g. tone down the WXP AC and ballista traits to similar level to other traits e.g. + 1 / + 2 / + 3%… damage against mercanaries = minor buff. And revert the AC damage back to where it was.

iCryptik.1496:

Currently, the only people that I have seen have issues with thieves are:

A. People that don’t play a thief and/or understand their mechanics.
B. People who are specc’d in a way that does not optimally gear them for roaming, so they die easily to a thief that is.
C. People that want something to complain about.

I play nothing but WvW, every day, as much as i can. I have 7 80’s, all geared, with different armor sets to go with different builds.

I have no doubt that you are above average player and that you know about the game, BUT you are completely missing my point and the original point of this discussion, which was stealth + teleportation.

A. I do also play a thief and I have tried many of the most popular builds (yes, I also went to Heart of Mists to do experiments). And contrary to the common lies spread on these forums: Not all thieves are squishy. If make your character a complete glass cannon, that is your choice, but it shouldn’t be used as an argument to defend stuff in a totally illogical way: “Stealth is balanced because they are so squishy”. Any profession geared up full berserker can inflict huge damage, but generally dies easily as well. Thieves still have the superb advantage to reset the fight. Get away without any need to start from the way point and pay the armor repair bill. That is unfair.

B. I rarely ever die to a single thief. In fact single thieves attacking me usually very soon run away. But thieves generally run in pairs or groups of 3. They might be mixed burst and condition damage pressure. Most professions don’t have that easy access to stun breaks (compared to e.g. thieves ;-) ). So if you already used on stun break e.g. to escape basilisk venom burst, you are pretty much dead meat while that stun break is on cooldown for 60 s.

C. The point was that stealth and teleportation/shadowstep are both completely broken and overpowered game mechanisms, which both lack a hard counter.

cuge.5398:

*
The main idea is to amplify all: cost, damage, resistance, but also their importance once they are built.
This is why we would to suggest for example:

Arrow carts: 60 supply, double damage, halved fire rate.
Ballista: 180 supply, 12k – 20k dmg, single target but piercing hit, fire rate: 10s
Catapult: 240 supply, 8k – 14k dmg, on a 240 area, knockback for 300, fire rate: 12s
Treb: 700 supply, 25k – 35k dmg, on a 360 area, knowckback for 450, fire rate: 18s
Golem: 900 supply, higher damage than now and way way harder to kill (atm you can 1v1 a golem easily =.=)

A very big NO to your suggestion. Please do NOT turn this game into Siege Wars 2.

Your suggestion would be the ultimate night time capping pro patch. In EU very few servers have a night time coverage. Now imagine that during night when the other servers sleep, one server captures everything and then build those totally overpowered siege weapons. How are those few people who wake up and play in the morning and noon are gonna do anything?

Increasing siege damage = worst idea ever. Almost ALL people in EU I know would actually want more focus in skirmishing and open field fights, instead of just sitting next to siege. There are already a WXP traits (which my main character has), which increase ballista damage by 25% and spread shot which hits multiple foes and piercing, making it already a bit too good to be true.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spread_Shot

After your suggestion ballista would insta kill most players.* And in your suggestion a treb hit would kill up to 50 people (= everybody in the area). Absolutely totally overpowered.

Increasing supply required to make siege to astronomical levels = another bad idea. How would then those servers who can summon just 2-3 man groups gonna build anything?

The biggest problem is the population and coverage imbalances and you are just suggesting stuff which makes this problem much worse than it is. More power to the winning side. Let everybody on the losing side pay gems to Arenanet to change servers.

Axle.5182:

Will be hilarious to see SFR back fighting viz again too if the new system works the way im guessing, tier will not dictate who your matched with but merely your rank and im guessing all current tier 1 and 2 are fair game for a mix and match

There is an interesting thread
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Statistics-of-the-new-ranking-system/first

Mathematical analysis / simulation using the new matching system. It seems it is so random that it will allow mixing between far away tiers, although that is not likely.
So e.g. it is possible to have a server from tier #1 matched up with a server from tier #4.

Friday reset is definitely going to be interesting. You never know what you are gonna get. The big irony would be to have a VS, SFR and Desolation in same match up.

It seems SFR is playing with more force today. 2/3 of map domination at prime time
http://mos.millenium.org/eu/matchups/map/703

I guess they want to increase their odds going against top tier servers.

I am personally gonna make that a bit easier. I was only playing short time this morning and I won’t have time to play much any WvWvW this week due work-related reasons.

IndigoSundown.5419:

1. Gear is very important. If you are running around at level with gear that is 10-15 levels down from yourself and the mobs you’re fighting, you may struggle

I have soloed Orr with 3 different professions using mostly level 65-80 green gear. In fact I think pretty much all the pve content of this game can be soloed using masterwork gear (except for high level fractals where you need Agony resistance). But if you have some money get a full rare set (weapons + armor + trinkets) from the trading post. It costs few gold pieces in total. And if you have karma to burn it costs slightly over 240k karma to buy a full level 80 exotic armor set from the Orr temples.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Karma_exotic_armor

But skill > gear.

Yes. Orr can be irritating, but I think it was worse in the early days of Guild Wars 2. Then the mobs were bigger and respawned back very fast. Still I managed to solo all the three Orr maps with several characters. Doing many of those temple elements alone was far more difficult than doing any dungeon so far.

If you need help completing those maps and you are on EU server, why don’t you come guesting to Desolation? We often have many of the temples open (non-contested) and there are friendly people to help you around.

If you have a friend who can provide stealth, that would be invaluable e.g. shadow refuge and then commune the skill points. Note I soloed the map with warrior, elementalist and engineer, without using any stealth, so it is possible as well.

Bringing some blocking skill if you can
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Block
dodging and using some traits, which give you more endurange (vigor) is highly useful as well:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dodge

You will want to have condition removal:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition_removal#Skills_that_remove_conditions

Sjaakie.1470:

Difference is that there are server who blob accosionaly and there are blobserver who do it constantly, like Deso atm.

Let me just tell you how things appear from my point of view. I can only see what happens on my screen:

This morning we once again had no commander on Deso BL, so I put on my tag. I am a pure PuG commander. I didn’t even have anybody in a party. We had max 6 guys following me. In fact only 1-2 guys most of the time, since we needed also some intel around the map. When we were fighting roughly evenly numbered open field matches we kept winning all the time (thanks to HOVI and PATO for fairly numbered even open fights!). But then that particular server whose name begins with letter S comes up with a bigger force (roughly 10) and wipes us. We have 3-4 guys together against 10. Well, you can guess who wins. This was actually much better odds than last night when that S server build the treb + ballista and had about 20 guys spawn camping Titanpaw and we had like 4-5 guys in total (outmanned “buff”).

The fact remains: I have been fighting majority of my WvWvW life outmanned. This is 100% proof that enemy has more forces on the map. In most cases the enemy also has bigger blobs.

And to blame Desolation for using Arrowcarts. Gee. Every server is doing it. Rather blame Anet for making ACs + their WXP traits overpowered. Do you want me to start posting screen shots of certain server S using superior ACs and not coming out of their keeps unless they have bigger number or they are eles (mist form + vapor form back into safety) or thieves (stealth)? When our objectives were contested and I was defending them did I start similar defense? NO. I march into open fight or capture other objectives while enemy blob is facerubbing the gates.

At the moment Desolation is dominating Eternal Battlegrounds. If you are an enemy player and don’t want to turn into a loot bag, just don’t play there. Fair game. ;-)

Aberrant.6749:

@ whoever about the d/p… the first hs out will not cause revealed if it hits. That’s because the stealth occurs after the leap is finished. After that first hs when they are stealthed it will cause revealed if they hit you with a subsequent hs. So if they are trying to chain stealth you can stand in the bp and cause revealed.

Thief mechanics 101… learn it.

Yes. True. Dagger/Pistol is a superbly easy way (if properly traited + right utilities) for repeated stealth:

1. Pistol #5 (blackpowder)
2. Dagger #2 (heartseeker)
3. Then position yourself to flank your enemy while stealthed (or flee if you need )
4. Dagger #1 (backstab)
5. Rinse and repeat #1-#4 again

And if you see an enemy trying to activate a skill, which should be interrupted, just press #4 (headshot) for a daze.

Alternatively you can use shortbow #2 (clusterbomb) at that smoke field to give area stealth. And even better if you have two thieves. Then you can chain stealth easily.

Master of Timespace.2548:

I’m fine with that if they give my mesmer two hard counters from gw1:

empathy – target foe loses 10% health whenever that foe uses an attack skill, lasts 10 seconds, 10 sec cool down.
Backfire – target foe loses 25% health whenever that foe uses a spell, lasts 10 seconds, 20 second cool down.

Those are needed as currently, after confusion nerf, there is really no hard counter against spamming.

GW1 had better game design. It had hard counters for everything, except for shadowstep, which had 3/4 s after cast delay. I think GW2 should have a similar aftercast delay after using any teleportation skill.

GW1 had a thing called hex removal. GW2 doesn’t have them, so introducing hexes like backfire and empathy would be completely overpowered. Besides 25% health per spell casting. To my memory backfire did 133 dmg with 14 points in domination magic. 4×133 = 532 <— that is pretty kitten low full health for a GW1 pvp character. Backfire was also notoriously slow skill to activate and GW1 had much more interrupts than GW2. So what you are suggesting is hopefully just a joke, since it would be totally imbalanced in GW2.

Pain.3756:

I really hope the new “ranking” system fixes population balance issues. This is not fun:

http://i.imgur.com/w7fPv64.jpg

-grumpy

Hmm. What was so bad about that map image?

I mean this is NOT a joke question.

Here at Desolation we were used for months to have enemy control 95%-100% of all Borderlands and Eternal Battlegrounds maps every single morning. Sometimes just one server (Visunah Square) took over all the maps. And this continued for weeks. We of course complained about this to Arenanet and suggested changes to the outmanned buff. We never got any reply from the developers.

Situation is even worse at EU tier 9. When I look at the live map, I can see Blacktide controlling roughly 95% of all maps.
http://mos.millenium.org/eu/matchups/map/710

Hebril Amolebin.9817:

And I have to give it to kodash they really have some small guilds/teams of 3-5 runing arround fliping camps,but never seen this from Deso.

That is true. Kodash is very good at this and SFR does it as well. We rarely have supply camp teams.

We are used to fight with much smaller numbers. In fact I have been doing the supply camps alone countless of times and I know several others on our server are doing the same. We can cap a camp just with 1 guy. We don’t need 3-5 man team for that. Nor to use stealth or other overpowered broken game mechanisms to do that.

Now let’s begin a new thread: We hate Desolation because they do NPCs and supply camps with 1-man, we want more blobbing from them.

iCryptik.1496:

That’s a pretty bad comparison. Whenever you stealth, the mobs would train on to your friend, an at that level without the right gear and utilities, it’s a lot hard to sustain multiple mobkittenting you.

I was doing well ALONE as well at Bloodtide Coast, so it is a good comparison. No trouble handling monsters who are 5+ levels higher than me when there was no other human players nearby, despite my thief’s attacks were doing just glancing blows. And my gear wasn’t even optimal.

I also went later alone with my level 43 thief to Southsun Cove. That place is very much soloable with a thief.

It really seems there forums are full of people who are bad at playing thief, but good at defending broken mechanisms like stealth.