Guild Wars 2

In EU only SFR and Riverside are full. The rest are now open. I don’t expect mass transfers, because new server linking will once again change the situation, but at least people can now move to servers where their friends are playing.

I am curious about the queues in NA side?

Here in EU, Desolation & Vabbi, we usually have queue just to one map in prime time and that queue isn’t that long. We have been rank #1 already for many weeks, so I would have expected even more bandwagoning, but it didn’t happen.

gebrechen.5643:

I still wonder why someone complains about warriors without even mentioning Scrapper or Revenant.

If you look at my post history, you can see I have frequently stated that scrapper hammer has too much goodies in it. Blocking + big damage at same time is just stupid and leads to players mashing buttons with possibly good outcome on their side. Nevertheless I feel scrappers are now a bit weaker than they were in Season 2.

Revenant has some underpowered abilities, but overall it is one of the top dog professions, in TOP3 if you ask me. But my experience in playing revenant myself is so limited, so I am not qualified to give good suggestions to nerf it.

Elementalist still has crazy sustain if you spec for it and some ranger pets are overpowered, but let’s now stick to topic.

Warrior doesn’t need huge changes. I still stand behind my suggestions in this thread above. Warrior has several condition weapons: sword (hybrid), longbow (hybrid) and torch (condition). Mace primal burst has a bit too much going on, but otherwise mace
doesn’t need to be nerfed. The offhand weapons, including offhand mace, axe and warhorn still need some addressing as I feel that they are a bit underpowered. I know wh can now remove 2 conditions at once, but still how often you see mace/warhorn, axe/warhorn? mace/mace and axe/axe kinda sucks compared to axe/shield or mace/shield.

The poll was flawed. I voted for alternating between the two borderlands, despite NOT wanting to see Desert BL again. I think giving different home borderlands is even worse, because it gives significant advantage to one side.

The majority (but not all) wants just Alpine. Why wasn’t that an option in the poll?

I am afraid Arenanet will do the same mistake again and lose players.

Warrior is a decent spot now. It lacks evades, boons and enemies can still kite it.

I think warrior still needs a few adjustments:

1. Adrenal health should be heal 33 % less with zero healing power and scale much better with healing power (currently it doesn’t scale much at all)
2. Skull grind (mace primal burst skill) inflicts way too many conditions + daze. Tone down by removing 2 out of the 4 conditions e.g. remove bleed + cripple
3. Warrior needs better alternatives to healing signet, a burst heal, otherwise we will see more and more passive condi bunker builds. Please reduce “To the Limit!” activation time to 1/2 seconds and it’s untraited cooldown to 25 seconds, but also at the same time reduce its base heal by 20 %. This would mean roughly same amount of healing like it does now. This would also allow more frequent adrenaline control
4. LB burst shouldn’t remove 6 conditions (bug)
5. Warhorn now removes 2 conditions traited, but the effects itself are weak. Increase warhorn #4 swiftness duration to 12 s and make warhorn #5 also inflict 2 s chill on 600 radius. Both would enable warrior to better stick on target.

I have full celestial ascended set for my warrior. No problem in solo pve and it gives pretty good general purpose stats for WvWvW as well, around 3240 armor, 30k+ health, with all the usual wvwvw buffs + food (not including keep/tower buffs).

Celestial is not optimal for any of the above, but it gives very good sustain if you use a build where healing power + condi + direct power is not wasted. E.g. take 4 shouts, heal a LOT. Longbow and sword both are good hybrid weapon choices.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Hey guys, below is a list of upcoming polls you are likely to see, in roughly the order you are likely to see them.

• Mixed Borderlands – Do you want a mix of Alpine/Desert Borderlands maps?
• World Linking Schedule – How often should we relink worlds?
• Deployable Mortars – Do you want to be able to buy and deploy Mortars?
• Deployable Cannons – Do you want to be able to buy and deploy Cannons?
• Repair Hammer – Do you want to be able to spend supply to repair siege?

Special Mention

• WvW Priorities – What do you want the WvW team to prioritize next?
  • We’ll run this poll after completing major milestones with whatever feature last won the Prioritization vote. So in this case: Scoring Improvements.

1. Do you want a mix of Alpine/Desert Borderlands maps? Keep Alpine as the only borderland or you lose players. Remake Desert BL into a pve map.

2. How often should we relink worlds? 2-3 months

3. Do you want to be able to buy and deploy Mortars? No

4. Do you want to be able to buy and deploy Cannons? No (way too overpowered)

5. Do you want to be able to spend supply to repair siege? Yes/no, but I see this problematic, because the side who is already winning might be winning even easier, making comebacks more difficult

6. What do you want the WvW team to prioritize next?
- tone down the power creep, especially the elite specifications
- better rewards (still way behind pve rewards, too few reward tracks and they still progress slower than in WvWvW, way too few ways to get ascended items, not enough meaningful ways to spend wvwvw related currencies, level 75 consumables and exotic gear just doesn’t cut it, we need ascended backpiece, weapon, armor, crafting materials)
- remove ruins of power from the Alpine border and work it into something else
lake + big island with a keep would be great!
- reduce lag and bugs

Thank you!

MURKATRON.8425:

Spying is just a joke right now. I’m on piken, Desolation knows when a com tags up instantly and moves to that map. The other day, our commander Dc’d, and 10 seconds later the Deso com whispered him saying “I heard you DC’d”.
This makes organising suprise attacks on objectives impossible, and that is the only way we can take anything due to 24/7 deso map blobs. They have 500 tick all night every night due to vabbi bandwagoning giving them practically double the player pool that we have. We were formerly number 1 server until the linking now we are just facerolled constantly outside of prime time. When the number 1 server/s win easily by hundreds of thousands of points every matchup without even trying you know your system is unfair and easily exploitable

Spying other servers is another topic. Let’s not mix it here. I am sure all servers are doing the same, using alt accounts or even logged to other server’s TeamSpeak. I don’t have accounts on other servers, so don’t look here.

Debbi (Deso + Vabbi) is still often outnumbered on many maps. I can provide screenshots as proof if you doubt me.

You have to remember that Desolation has been tier 1 server much longer than Piken has. Many Desolation players left to others servers, including Piken, so I guess this was one driving force causing Piken to reach #1 position. We dropped low because our numbers hit really low, we had almost constant outnumbered “buff” on 3-4 maps 24h7, except for the few hours of night capping. Without night capping Desolation would have dropped to rank 15-17.. Before the big WvWvW “renaissance” changes Desolation often had just 1-3 players per map. We got a lot of our numbers back, because of multiple factors:
- server linking
- rewards
- Alpine borderland back

The core of the players and most commanders are still from Desolation, but we got some very high quality refugees from FSP, such as TT/Ravya.

I don’t think Debbi’s dominance will continue much longer. I already see a bit too much elitism. Players get constantly kicked out of squads because of no explanation and somebody might tell them in map chat to leave the map (the latter is just stupid). I am not offended by that, because I rarely get on TS (due family reasons, I must really hear other things) and I am really bad sticking to the tag, but despite that I am often getting full stack (250) of heavy loot bags, so much loot is good for finances, if only the reward tracks would progress as fast as in spvp.

You must admit that Debbi is often fighting open field, not just sitting by the ACs. Anyways see on the battle field and keep it fair!

Sorel.4870:

After further testing, I’ve found the following. When you have Alchemical Tinctures (later, AT) traited:

- Acid Bomb never removes a condition (which is a shame, if you want my opinion, since it works with HGH), and naturally the tooltip shows nothing special.

- Healing Mist and Elixir Shell remove a condition in both pvp and wvw, and the tooltips are correct.

- Super Elixir removes 2 condis (one baseline, one with AT) in both wvw and pvp, but the tooltip in wvw is wrong and doesn’t show the AT condition removal.

For more coherence, I think it would be better if ALL elixir skills worked with AT. One more condi cleanse on a 12s CD is far from OP, and it would be a lot less confusing.

I agree that all elixirs should work alchemical tinctures. And your findings correlate with my game experience.

cryokro.6270:

I want to play my engi, without getting insulted because I play a class that cant “zerg”. Well, I can zerg as engi, as I happen to know how to position myself.

I have included a screenshot of reset on Friday. This is shortly before we dropped to a tick of 55. We had a queue on 2 maps(80+ on eb) but we can’t defend (or capture) towers/keeps . Our keep in EB had more holes than Swiss cheese. Glad Gandara wiped Piken and backed off, because we wouldnt have been able to defend it ourselves. Note the tag at the other side of the map. He clearly had no clue what was going on.

Currently we are “winning” this matchup and the previous 3 MU since the linking due to the deso nightcrew carrying us hard. Thanks Anet for looking at that, but I think the beta linking should be prio before adding something new.

It is true that Deso night crew and strong off prime time presence is giving Desolation the point lead it has. Before the pairing and without our night crew we would have probably been a silver league server. The problem has existed far before the serer pairing!

I am obviously from Desolation and I have been there for years. Majority of the players in the map chat like the current pairing. There is constant action from early morning till late at night. So much big fights and so much loot. Of course players want to transfer to a server combination, which allows that!

Desolation has always been weak at reset. Nothing new. Some of our commanders only care for fights. They even insist not to build any siege, even if enemy has 60+ blob vs 30 of us. And of course if enemy is organized and has roughly equal skill, we wipe and lose objectives. Some Deso commanders know defense and then we can hold keep which is full holes for hours.

I play an engineer (not a scrapper, but core engi) as my main and I have never heard of being not wanted in zerg. In fact our zerg often has trouble making the first few kills, but when I appear on the place the kills happen. Engi is not ideal profession for front line and it doesn’t have the support shout guardian can give, but it is far from being useless in zergs. You select the weakest link of the enemy and blast it to pieces. I use 4 kits + rifle, so I got plenty of utility + ranged DPS + CC alone. Play aggressive, but know when to retreat.

PS. Feel free to discuss online.

BeepBoopBop.5403:

Just remove rune of perplexity and tone down mesmer condition application. Simple fixes that would improve the health of small scale combat SO much, and not affect large scale combat.

I don’t recommend removing ANY rune from the game, but Superior Rune of Perplexity is brokenly overpowered. 4th effect is particularly troubling as it requires no active role from its user:
“(4): 25% chance when struck to inflict 3 stacks of confusion for 5 seconds. (Cooldown: 25 Seconds)”
And #6 effect has way too powerful effect for such a low cooldown. Interrupting a foe is easy, because if any CC like daze counts and if you stop doing anything, you will not do any damage:
“+20% confusion duration; when you interrupt a foe, cause 5 stacks of confusion for 8 seconds. (Cooldown: 15s)”

Both of these effects need serious rework or toning down for WvWvW. It is not fun to fight these as activating just few skills leads to suicide and if you don’t use any skills, you are not doing any damage. Condition should be so strong shut down and not all professions have good access to condition cleanse. There is a good reason why this rune set doesn’t exist in spvp. Condition duration food + toxic stone will increase condition duration by 30 %, which also doesn’t exist in spvp.

I would hope any developer feedback on this topic as this needs to be fixed. In my experience this is not a rare problem. Most enemy roamers seem to run some of condition build and perplexity runes are a common place.

esotericSurgery.1072:

Ty Anet! The numbers don’t lie.

^^ This ^^

Now the queues to borderlands can actually be longer than the queue to EB.

Short answer: YES!

(I really hope the Desert BL will not be back anytime soon, because then we will once again see a population drop)

Fun is back!!! Last we had some epic Garrison defenses on Desolation Garrison. No supplies to build siege or repair the damages fully, but finally enemy zerg one by one if needed. Roaming is also better on the Alpine.

I was hoping Alpine would be back the lake instead of the ugly ruins of power (badly designed power creep system added to them), but this is far better Desert BL. The Alpine map layout facilitates much faster paced action and towers make tactical sense. Simpler is better than more complex.

Thank you!! (And really don’t hurry ever bringing Desert back to WvWvW)

Please don’t bring Desert BL back anytime soon! I haven’t seen all 4 maps queued for ages, but now it happened on Deso + Vabbi. So numbers are clearly up from Desert BL. The majority of players cast their true vote: they want to play on Alpine instead of Desert BL.

I had much more fun on Alpine borderland in just 1 evening than 7 months combined with Desert borderland. I hope we will not remove Alpine borderland anytime soon. Desert borderland is tactically so badly made map and it often takes too long time to get back into action. Alpine borderland is hectic.

For couple of months before the Spring Quarterly update Desolation was outnumbered in 3-4 maps almost 24h7, besides the few night hours when our night team was on. Our off-peak volume kept Desolation higher ranked than it should have been. In fact the statistics show that Desolation had lower capture volume and prime time activity than many silver league servers. Having way too little players lead to burn out and frustration. Several players left Desolation to greener pastures, mainly to Piken.

Now several things happened:
1. The new changes to WvWvW are good and this brought back some players (keep up this work, Arenanet! We really expect the Alpine back soon)
2. We got joined with Vabbi

Finally we had chances to fight with more even numbers feels good to me. I feel that there aren’t actually that many Vabbi players, so the core is Deso players. And we are still often outnumbered outside EBG. And those who like roaming can still do that. But if you want to capture camps vs zero enemies and pvd without any resistance, then I think any top tier server in EU is not a good for you.

Good analysis by OP. Most elite specs are still much above the core spec and this limits build diversity. Less build diversity leads to faster boredom. I hope Arenanet seriously understands this or the participation rates will be down.

Continuing to use both PIP + MMR is going to be yet another epic fail, leading to countless of pointless blowout matches + MMR hell for some. You should either use random selection within PIP range or MMR only for balanced matches. The player base is way too small to make anything else work. Also the current scoring which rewards 499-500 and 0-500 loss the same amount of PIPs is a fail, because it leads to many players quit after just 100-150 point loss at start. Season 1 had problems, but had way better scoring system.

Thank you for the reply, Evan Leash! Goodbye and I wish you luck the decisions you made!

Yes, I still dislike DBL. You can check my post history for the numerous issues that map still has. I believe DBL is beyond repair. It would need complete redesign of the towers and keeps to make them smaller and change also their location, reduce the gimmicks, choke points. Just too much work to make that map work.

I used to be Alpine borderland player. Almost always defending home borderland. I was never a big fan of EBG as the entire map has lag issues when there is a huge fight in SMC and there is a bit too much zerging. But recently EBG has offered more fun as roaming than DBL. So even EBG is much better than DBL. But the original Alpine border would be highly preferred.

Season 2 was full of imbalanced match ups e.g. 80-500 win or loss. Very few people want to watch such lopsided games. If there is no professional streamers, then we cannot talk about esports.

If Arenanet wants to make this game more Twitch streaming friendly, they need to:
1. Change match making to provide more even games
2. Tone down particle effects, AoE spam, CC spam, passive effects and give almost all powerful skills a unique easy to see animation, so that the audience can see what is happening
3. Have better game balance and more varied builds
4. Consider introducing 5vs5 team elimination mode as conquest is like observing football with 2-3 balls (camera can just follow 1, thus we miss the rest of the action)

I am not advocating Arenanet to carbon copy League of Legends or CS:GO, which are the most streamed games, but learn some useful things from them and keep GW2 unique and fun for as large population as possible. Currently GW2 caters too much to a small minority.

Grayclay.4579:

How sweet would it be if each server duo had their own themed borderland? Alpine, Jungle, Desert, and they rotated to each server duo over the weeks, so everyone could be happy!

Big firm NO!

Jungle sounds like a nightmare map for WvWvW. We already got two lousy WvWvW maps: Edge of the Mists (EotM) and Desert Borderland (DBL). Both of these maps are full of gimmicks, edges to fall to your death, choke points, vision blocking particle effects and long distances to travel.* Gameplay in EotM is more or less pve train and since most players avoid DBL it is also more or less plays like a pve map. These maps might be pleasant to look at for some, but that effect wears out quick after you notice they just suck when it comes to game play, unless you happen to enjoy pve and pvd only. I used to “live” in Alpine border, especially when it still had the lake. Lake provided underwater combat and the tiny mid island had some very interesting small scale fights. Having the large element of water meant more diversity in the game. The removal of it meant less diversity (only large water remained in Bay). Also the Quaggans felt much better balanced (= not too powerful), unlike the mid oasis event + cannon, which were luckily finally removed.

Unlike many players constantly claim here, the hatred towards DBL is simply not a “learn to play issue”. The keeps and towers are simply way too large. It still takes much longer time to travel from earth keep inner to fire keep inner than it took from Garrison inner to Bay inner. The extra seconds are crucial as they decide whether you can defend it or not. The towers serve no tactical purpose. The tower lords + keep lords are not balanced at all. E.g. it is easy to solo the earth keep lord, but air keep lord is much harder opponent. Necro tower lord generally takes longer time to solo kill than most other tower lords. The amount of obstacles + long choke points is much higher on DBL compared to Alpine. DBL is so badly designed map for WvWvW style of play, it is simply beyond repair. Please remake it into pve dungeon, but never introduce it back to WvWvW again.

When Arenanet removed the lake and replaced with the abomination they call “Ruins of Power”, I stopped WvWvW for couple of months. I tried my best at the Ruins area, but it was so often just void of players (unless some doing their daily) and almost never provided any fun fights, just messy area to navigate through. Emphasis on messy vs areas where you can actually use auto-run. I still detest the ruins area as it simply does NOT fit the rest of the map, just an ugly copy & paste of spvp conquest alike map on top of supposedly WvWvW map.

I want the original maps back and I am NOT asking for any new maps, period. I do NOT want the original maps to be contaminated with any of the HoT stuff, except for: smarter sentries, faster dolyaks and possibly synthesizer nodes. All tactivators, all shrines, ruins of power etc. all that power creep, which creates more imbalance in the game, should just be gone for good. Arenanet can reimburse those guilds who wasted their resources for the guild upgrades.

The Isz.2346:

does not want desert.
does not want ruins of power.

wants pre sept 17th 2013 patch.

Bring back the quaggans so we can build weather nodes.

^^ This! ^^

Ruins of Power was yet another power creep and looked liked an ugly spvp map copy & pasted over the original lake.

I agree. Cloaking waters should be removed. Invisible zergs don’t make a fun game play.

EFWinters.5421:

Since nobody wants to play desert borderlands EB ends up with a crazy queue while the other maps are empty or full of semi-afk players waiting for their EB queue.

ArenaNet needs to quickly roll out the alpine borderlands. It would alleviate many of the concerns on this forum right now.

^^ Exactly! ^^

I hope some developer would comment about the schedule. When we can see the original Alpine borderland back?

etienne.1039:

Obviously they want to get rid of WVW in this game. The waiting time to enter is since this week absurd. Waiting a few minutes is ok, waiting all evening is unacceptable. I’m in Europe, its morning here and even at this hour of the day you have to wait to enter. In one hour i have moved up 15 places or so. Still 20 to go…

Which server are you on? IF the answer is Piken Square or SFR, I can imagine it easily, you have been band wagoning destination #1 and #2 for some time already.

Here on Desolation we had no queue to any map in the morning, even though Desolation has one of the strongest morning teams in EU and we just were paired with Vabbi. We had roughly 20 players on tag on EBG, not enough to make orange swords.

Well, from my point of view this change was good. Desolation used to be outnumbered of 3-4 maps at same time already for several months. Having just 2-5 players on map at prime time hardly would classify as a very high/full population server. Now we can fight with more equal numbers.

I invite Vabbi players to join the fights!

The change has been good for Desolation + Vabbi pair as well. Before the April patch Desolation was generally outnumbered on 3-4 maps at same time, except for the night time. Now we hit 70+ queue during the reset, but no queues to borders. Actually the majority of the new players are not from Vabbi, but seem to be pve players who come for the reward tracks.

Anyways it feels good to fight on roughly equal numbers, not like 2-5 vs 30, but 20 vs 30. Prime time at EBG is of course blobbing.

The Desert borderlands still suck after the changes. That map is beyond repair. The time to travel from Earth keep inner to Fire keep inner is almost twice as long compared to Garrison inner to Bay inner. Spending way too much time just traveling, less time fighting and having way too large towers + keeps and over designed complex map full of gimmicks (powers related to shrines) is NO fun.

Bring back the original maps as quickly as possible!

Reward Tracks are great. I had myself suggested this idea countless of times here and finally it is here. Of course I am happy! Thank you! I wish we have had them before.

The reward track progression is way too slow at the moment, like 4-6x too slow. In spvp the reward track progresses much faster and I feel it is unfair that WvWvW players must spend more time grinding. WvWvW of course offers other rewards as well, but most of the other “rewards” from wvwvw are very weak: I often get tons of green items, broken chips and fangs + few hundred badges + only 0.5-1 gold from hours of WvWvW. Pve rewards e.g. doing world bosses or silverwastes chest farm is far more profitable than wvwvw.

I feel that the reward tracks give out way too many tomes of knowledge. I already have several stack of the tomes. What should I do with them!?! All my characters are of course level 80 and I got several thousands of unused spirit shards. So either reduce the tomes of knowledge or give us some useful things we could buy with them. Currently the tomes are just junk to fill the inventory.

Of course it would be nice to have more reward tracks, but even more important it would be to have more useful items you can purchase using WvWvW currencies. Here are some examples (and possible pricing):
- ascended back piece (5000 badges + 40 laurels + 50 gold)
- ascended armor piece (4000 badges + 10 laurels + 40 gold)
- ascended 1-handed weapon (3000 badges + 10 laurels + 30 gold)
- ascended 2-handed weapon (5000 badges + 20 laurels + 50 gold)

The high badge count is intentional to make it easier for most players to get those ascended items from pve. Exotic items are not that interesting, unless they offer unique skins. And what about a WvWvW specific legendary back item/armor/weapon? The WvWvW specific legendary item might require:
- 200 laurels
- 10000 badges
- 500 proofs of heroics
- 500 memoirs of battle
- 500 g worth of materials

Of course it is possible to implement these also via reward tracks as well e.g. the legendary precursor requires lots of different components, which are each obtained by completing a different wvwvw specific reward track.

*The scrapper nerfs were all completely justiable and I am happy that they didn’t touch the core engineer, but is this enough to shift people away from scrapper. I don’t think so. I was actually waiting for more nerfs across the board (why Arenanet didn’t nerf tempest or chronomancer is beyond me!). The main problem of scrapper is the hammer, which offers just too much without a sacrifice. Who uses rifle anymore? And I haven’t seen anybody use pistol/shield either!

The fact remains: Hammer is still brokenly good. The minor shave to hammer #3 was a is not enough. I guess it is the pet weapon of some Arenanet developer and that is the reason why they refuse to nerf it properly to the level of other weapons. It has very good DPS, utility, defense etc. all in one package. The cooldown for both evade and block (which both do damage as well!) is crazily low. It has no high risk/reward skills like overcharged shot (rifle #4), which does self-CC as well. Now the might stacking of hammer autoattack got better so I guess their “balance” idea was that it would better compete with pistol/pistol in pve and make sure nobody would use rifle anymore as hammer has slightly better DPS and now also offers reliable might stacking.

My question is: Why to choose rifle in spvp over hammer?

I have suggested some rifle buffs in another thread:
1. make blunderbuss (rifle #3) a blast finisher (more utility and would fit the skill very well)
2. make jump shot (rifle #5) operate much quicker
50% faster speed for rifle #5 (jump shot) is better than evade frames as it would allow that skill to be used as a gap closer, especially when moving a bit uphill. The animation must be made fast enough for the rifle user to travel faster than merely running with swiftness on. It would also keep rifle as high risk/high reward weapon, getting immobilized while at air is still not fun.

The recent balance changes will probably not shake the meta much for engineer. I predict most engineers will continue to be scrappers, use hammer, healing turret, elixir gun, elixir x/sneak gyro, other gyros like bulwark gyro will also be popular. Elixir based builds (S, B, R, C, X, H) will also be more popular and I guess toolkit might see some use. So I guess we will also see pistol/pistol elixir condi builds more.

The minor buffs to some gadgets were a half-baked attempt from Arenanet. Do they really think that a mere 33% buff and 2 s CD reduction to rocket kick damage will make most engineers pick rocket boots over a kit or an elixir!? I have gazillion times suggested reasonable changes to gadgets to make them viable. Rocket kick should as a gap closer (600 leap) or alternative increase it’s CD and make it into a stun break. Gadgets need more utility, not mere some % of damage to make them more viable. Buffing damage was the wrong way to make gadgets viable. Significant reduction of cooldowns for both the active and toolkit might help.

Medkit is still in sore state: it has a lot of usability problems as the throw animation speed is way too slow and it is very easy to miss the vial in the heat of large scale battles. The activation time and the fact you must throw vials is killing medkit #2-5. These should be turned into 1/4 s cast skills or blast around the engi. Currently you must spend way too much time to use the kit effectively, and while you do that you do no damage. Medkit #1 is probably the worst skill in the game as it doesn’t heal the engineer himself, provides no damage and has a narrow cone, which rarely affects more than just 1-2 allies, unless you are in the middle of a zerg and even then there are better group heals. I do not understand why Arenanet doesn’t fix the medkit, do they really think that skill is okay in its current state?

coro.3176:

Exactly. It was fine, back when there was less stability, reflect, block, invuln, etc. etc. running around. Now, it’s too much risk to deal the same damage and is much less likely to apply its control effects.

Deniara is correct about Jump Shot. It needs to be faster or have some evade frames.

I mean, why risk self-cc with Overcharged Shot when there’s a >50% chance it’ll be blocked or reflected. Why use Jump Shot and risk being killed/cc’d when you could just use Hammer and deal the same damage at the same range while blocking or reflecting or evading?

50% faster speed for rifle #5 (jump shot) is better than evade frames as it would allow that skill to be used as a gap closer, especially when moving a bit uphill. The animation must be made fast enough for the rifle user to travel faster than merely running with swiftness on. It would also keep rifle as high risk/high reward weapon, getting immobilized while at air is still not fun.

Hammer is still brokenly good. The minor shave to hammer #3 was a joke balance attempt. I guess it is the pet weapon of some Arenanet developer and that is the reason why they refuse to nerf it properly to the level of other weapons. It has very good DPS, utility, defense etc. all in one package. Now the might stacking got better so I guess their “balance” idea was that it would better compete with pistol/pistol and make sure nobody would use rifle anymore as hammer has slightly better DPS and now also offers reliable might stacking.

The recent balance changes will probably not shake the meta much for engineer. I predict most engineers will continue to be scrappers, use hammer, healing turret, elixir gun, elixir x/sneak gyro, other gyros like bulwark gyros will also be popular. Elixir based builds (B, C, R) will also be more popular and I guess toolkit might see some use.

The minor buffs to some gadgets were a really bad joke from Arenanet. Do they really think that a mere 33% buff to rocket kick damage will make most engineers pick rocket boots over a kit!? I have gazillion times suggested reasonable changes to gadgets to make them viable. Rocket kick should as a gap closer (600 leap) or alternative increase it’s CD and make it into a stun break. Gadgets need more utility, not mere some % of damage to make them more viable.

baylock.1703:

I think anet made a lot of improvements from season 1 to season 2 it was much better balance and matchmaking. And more pleasant experience good job anet and I hope season 3 will be even better.

Are you trolling?!?

Season 2 had much worse match making, leading to lots of completely unfair/pointless matches. If I look at my last 10 ranked matches every single one of them was at least 200-300 point difference win or loss, except one which was 375-500. There was NOT a single evenly scored match e.g. 450-500 or 500-450. Where is the fun of having 15-500 losses or wins?

The match making algorithm is so EPIC fail that Arenanet should really address a big public apology and offer some compensation for time lost.

ixon.2496:

This sums up this season for me, logically both teams here should be of equal skill/knowledge to be able to reach diamond. So how could a blowout of >!!!600!!!< point difference be possible.

Competitive? what was remotely fair about this match?
It wasnt fun for me to win, it was painful for the losing team.
This just should not happen.

Fully agreed. Wins/losses by over 600 points are never the fault of just one player. It is the fault of the completely broken match making system.

Also the changes to the pip scoring between Season 1 and Season 2 were bad. Now the game treats 0-500 and 499-500 loss the same way, you lose 1 pip and that is it. That gives most players no incentive try to limit their losses when the game goes bad after start. Many players throw in the towel and in worst case just intentionally die as fast as possible or AFK after their team is losing by 100-150 points, even though comeback at such point would still be possible if they played their best and enemy makes a mistake. The previous system where you could even gain a pip with a loss if you were matched up against a higher MMR rank team and managed to score a quite narrow loss, was tons better. Give players always motivation to play the game to the bitter end!!

Please bring that old system back!

The season was mostly a disappointment:

A) Horrible match making algorithm leading to a lot of pointless games.

I don’t see what is the fun of winning 50-500 or losing 500-50. The amount of unbalanced games is way too high, while the amount of even games e.g. 470-500 is very low. I know some players have enjoyed very long win runs, but those who experienced the opposite, probably feel extremely frustrated and upset and probably quit the game. Less players is loss for everyone. No game should rig the match making so that it leads to endless win or loss runs. Season 1 match making had its problems, but it was better.

B) Meta is different from Season 1, but it isn’t any better

In some ways the meta is better, in some ways it is worse. So kinda draw for me. There is less less bunkers and characters you cannot kill. Still killing a bunker tempest or druid in 1 vs 1 is really difficult and time consuming. I feel there is too much burst, condition stacking and CC. Too much burst often leads to snowballing. And the problem is made worse by having a lot of powerful passives in the game (triggered by certain conditions e.g. health limit, internal cooldown). This makes sometimes counter play frustrating or more or less a random game.

C) Removal of amulets did NOT lead to more builds.

It just lead to a slightly different meta. I would want to see the removed amulets back, even if it means slight shaving of them. Celestial was never meta for several professions. I still haven’t found any decent cele build for guardian or thief. Revenants, corruptionmancers, scrapper engineers, most warriors etc. would also not choose celestial as there is more attractive amulet choices. So basically it is NOT the amulet, but certain builds like D/D and D/F elementalist, which benefit from it immensely.

I hope the developers will next mostly do nerfs to the elite specifications as the power creep has gone way too far. The elite specs should be alternatives, not mandatory trait lines. How often you see a base engineer outside pve anymore? They all run with hammer + gyros as that gives so much more bang for buck. Almost every single guardian is Dragonhunter, all revenants are heralds and so on. I would want to see more versatility, not less.

Warrior needs serious help with sustain, but at the same time I would slightly tone down the burst, especially gunflame. In the current state of the game warhorn nerfs etc. are completely unjustifiable.

sinject.4607:

wrong. wrong. wrong. hammer is literally THE thing making scrapper already the most overpowered build in the game alongside power herald. NOTHING about it makes sense except the auto chain. you don’t even mention Slick Shoes or Sneak Gyro which just about everyone agrees needs to be changed too. then there’s perfectly weighted…

an extra 2-3 seconds of protection or regen is not carrying scrapper, it’s the ridiculous weapon they were given alongside three really cheap mechanics that need nerfing (3x leap through healing turret, sneak gyro having no cast time = free stunbreak, slick shoes being way too domineering). it’s that simple.

^^^ This ^^^

I am an engineer main. Hammer and sneak gyro are the biggest reasons why scrapper is so powerful. Hammer needs multiple nerfs (#3 triple leap into 1, #4 should only block, no dmg, 20% damage reduction, as it has so much utility) and sneak gyro needs a cast time (0.5-1.5 s).

The core engineer is NOT overpowered, in fact I rarely ever see core engineers outside pve. Gutting the core engineer traits would be a really unwise thing to do as it would push even more engineers to scrapper spec. We need more build diversity, not forcing all to take the same set to be competitive. Now almost all engineers are taking hammer, healing turret, elixir gun, slick shoes and sneak gyro or elixir X. The build diversity is really weak!

Engineer has a lot of lack luster traits (just look at explosives line e.g. even with siege rounds mortar #1 rarely triggers the combo fields due so small radius, give it 60+ radius as well to increase the chance). Medkit has multiple usability issues and useless #1 skill (engi does zero dmg while using it and it doesn’t even self heal). The other gadgets besides slick shoes are niche at best. Pistol/shield is rare as hen’s teeth.

Ashivan.5216:

The HOT difficulty is exacerbated by the difficult navigation and useless 2d minimap for the 3d environment. Also the waypoints are few and really far from each other.

^^ This ^^

I have died only few times in total to any mob or boss at the HoT maps. The mobs and hero points are soloable with a decent build. I don’t think they should be made easier.

The real difficulty of the new maps is navigation. I had most of deaths falling down e.g. gliding ends or just my own mistake or that annoying poison. The waypoints are way too few and many of them are almost constantly contested. Add few waypoints and make them so that they are not contested. I really also hate the concept of time gating pve content behind map meta events. The old Tyria maps were much better because you could always solo 100 % of them no matter what was the meta timer.

I hope next expansions will give us less complex maps, where there is significantly less verticality and gimmicks. The emphasis should be fighting the opponents, not the map.

FogLeg.9354:

We will see soon enough how good the Alpine maps really were.

How soon? To my knowledge Arenanet still hasn’t given any date when the Alpine borderlands would be back. The next big update will bring us “improved” Desert borderland and many other changes, but not the Alpine border. Correct me if I am wrong.

I think Arenanet has gotten their priorities wrong and players like you are really not helping. I know a LOT players who used to play WvWvW crazy hours every day and pretty much vanished from WvWvW after the HoT fiasco or come back once in a blue moon to check how things are but leave soon. I know it is not just the new map, it was combination of many things, crazy power creep with the new elite specs + revenant, new upgrade system, annoying gimmicks (tactivators, air ship at SMC etc), grindy guild upgrade system etc. All that together killed WvWvW. Activity levels are low all over.

Arenanet should have instead immediately acknowledged their mistakes and revert back to the original situation. New map should have never been a top priority and trying to “fix” the crazily overdesign messy map called Desert BL is just like trying to apply a plaster to a mortal wound. They should have instead of focused on:
1. Better rewards (equal to pve Silverwastes/world boss/seasonal farm + WvWvW specific unique weapon, armor and glider skins)
2. Better balance (balance the professions and skills, number of players between servers)
3. Fix glitches, bugs and get rid of lag and disconnects (everybody wants this)

The more time we wait for those 3, the more players just leave. No matter what is the map, but the map also matters.

I have couple thousand hours as rifle engineer. Net shot is fine. It maybe needs a slightly increase in projectile speed, but at least it has counter play (strafing) like many here already commented. It is a skill shot, which are becoming rarity in this game.

Blunderbuss (rifle #3) needs to be a blast finisher, because it would both fit the skill and some utility to rifle kit. I would also be happy if jump shot (rifle #5) animation would be quickened, because then it could be used as a gap closer and spend less time in the air, which is very risky vs skilled opponents. Currently on an even ground running with swiftness vs jump shot leads to almost identical travel speed. Jump shot offers minor advantage only when there is elevation upwards (going uphill or going up stairs is slightly faster with jump shot). Biggest advantage of jump shot is probably in jumping puzzles.

However the biggest balancing problem is that hammer is so much better weapon in spvp. It has very good dps, tons of utility, block, evade, AoE stun, lightning field, triple lead finisher, might stacking. Even with my suggested changes I think the vast majority would choose hammer over rifle or pistol/x.

Yes. It has been suggested before. It would be a niece Quality of Life improvement, since now I need to shuffle blueprints with all my WvWvW characters.

Marles.3086:

Condi burst engi wrecks tempests

Probably yes, but condi burst engi has no place in meta. Hammer scrapper engi is superior for almost any other situation.

Tempest is one of the strongest 1 vs 1 specs, despite having a lot of team support. To my rather limited experience my group support general purpose reaper necro build cannot win tempest alone, but at least I can survive vs it 2+ minutes, allowing me to escape. Similarly my berserker warrior cannot kill a tempest alone, but on the other hand tempest has trouble killing my berserker warrior alone. D/F tempest actually doesn’t deal that much damage unless you stand close range to it eating up all that damage.

Yes, tempest probably has a bit too much sustain with all those passive auras and protection/regeneration/vigor which comes with them, but at the same time it is a low DPS spec, basically it cannot kill you fast, unless you allow it to do so.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

No.

We aren’t changing anything regarding the layout of the map.

Does this mean that original map with the lake is back (= yippee!!!) or does it mean we get the ugly ruins back with the ill-thought-out ruins of power (creep) mechanism back?

I am all for getting the original classic map, the ruins always felt like they were glued on top the area where the lake used to be and the number of good fights there was far lower than the underwater combat I had. Since the underwater can also be avoided (player choice), this would increase versatility, instead of decreasing it.

Good news! Finally!

Except this suggestion is not going to work. Arenanet is probably going to do some minor nerfs there and there to elite specs and revenant e.g. reduce precision strike (rev sw#2) by 20% or add 5 seconds to the CD of shock shield (scrapper hammer #4) or reduce deathly chill damage by 15% (reaper trait). Do you think such minor nerfs alone will make warrior competitive again? Or make the players choose the elite spec over the core? Do you think the current warrior sustain will be a good match vs other professions, which have plenty of access to protection and/or evades? Guess again…

I have written long articles how to balance the warrior by not just buffing, but also toning down some skills and traits. And yes, I fully agree, the elite specs + revenant must be toned down. The power creep went too far. I know there will be cries in the forum. I just hope the right targets will be nerfed e.g. wrong action would be to gut the core specs just because some elite spec of the same profession is too good.

The the forum admins: All these warrior related threads should be merged and I hope the feedback is sent to the developers. I spent really many hours trying to think how to balance warrior without making it overpowered.

Warrior should not get 25-33 % base speed without investing into it, but it should get it with relatively small investment. Now the easiest and most common way is to take warrior’s sprint trait, but it requires the warrior to take discipline trait tree, which most are taking any case because of fast hands. Now if you take also the berserker/strength/arms tree, you are left with just 1 defensive tree: tactics or defense, but you cannot take both. And warrior really needs to both of those defensive trees to have any sort of decent sustain.

Like I argued above warhorn should provide the warrior (+ its allies) permanent swiftness if traited, currently it doesn’t. Melee warrior needs mobility to be able to stick target. Warrior can be specced to be quite immune for immobilize/cripple/chill and this is indeed very powerful thing. You just take Hoelbrak runes + undogged march + warrior’s sprint and any weapon with leap skill, like 1-hand sword.

I agree that the untraited warrior DPS is really bad, but some of the warrior damage oriented traits are really powerful: forceful greatsword + berserker’s power easily increase the realistic damage output of GS by over 30 % (the real numbers depend how many might stacks you get). It works great in pve, but in order to enjoy the same in spvp, you need to forget one defensive tree.

My suggestion: is to slightly tone down some of the damage oriented traits and at the same time buff the base damage of the affected weapons. Thus the pve DPS would remain exactly the same, but in spvp/WvWvW the warrior could omit the DPS traits and go for more defense, yet dish out a bit more damage. The main culprit is still the lack of sustain, not the DPS or burst and warrior definitely has access to tons of CC Mace/shield+hammer combo alone has so much CC that enemies would be begging for more stun breaks/stability, yet I know things like blind spam and kiting/evading enemies will kill this build.

Also not all weapons need to be DPS, for example I think hammer is good as it: it is relatively slow and has low DPS, but it has more CC than any other weapon in the game, thus I think warrior’s hammer is balanced.

My thoughts about warrior role:
I don’t think warrior should be made into long range hit & run sniper, which Arenanet seems to be trying to make lately with the rifle buffs.

Warrior should be able to last a long time in fight, but it should not be the top dog when it comes to DPS. I think relatively squishy professions, like elementalist should always be able to be better than warrior in terms of pure DPS. That it is how it is most other games as well.

I think warrior should be able to sturdy and able to contest and fight other melee characters with relative ease e.g. warrior vs reaper warrior should win, currently warrior struggles vs reaper because reaper can apply so much condition spam (chill, blind, poison, bleeds, corrupt boons etc) + has relatively good access to stability + even mobility. Warrior should also beat melee thieves and have at least equal chances melee revenants, but I am fine if warrior has few weakness e.g. weak towards long range bruisers e.g. vs LB ranger or rifle engineer (well the ridiculous scrapper hammer made those extinct anyways).

I support the proposal. Bring celestial back, but shave it down a bit. More versatility is better than less. Now the build options are getting way too limited. Almost every profession requires you to pick up the elite spec to be competitive, thus you can “select” only between 2 trait trees and most of the runes are garbage, thus the amount of real competitive choices is actually surprisingly narrow.

Previously one big fun was to invent and test new builds, now that fun is almost all gone.

lil devils x.6071:

That said, You can expect NOT to have a return of players if you are bringing in HoT into Alpine and consider it a pretty much waste of time to do so. The entire reason the majority of players wanted Alpine back was to go back to Pre HoT WvW while reversing course on WVW plans to make it Less " Tactivator" focused and more on player skill.

This might turn to be true.

What Arenanet doesn’t seem to understand that a lot of players want the OLD WvWvW back. This means the original borderlands (I would prefer to have the lake back, but honestly players are divided on this, some liked the ruins). Revert the HoT revenant + elite spec power creep, balance changes and get rid of the HoT stuff like tactivators, banners, auto upgrades. Let’s call this WvWvW classic.

I know several prominent players, great commanders, who are now playing other games. They occasionally check GW2 and unless the ill-thought-out changes are reverted, most of them are not coming back.

I know the likelihood of this happening is very small. The developers would need to swallow down their own pride and scrap stuff they spent months making. And I actually like some of the HoT changes: the faster dolyaks, smart sentries and synthesizer nodes were all good changes. So I would keep those three.

kdaddy.5431:

I have to argue a few points, in your own post you talk about how warrior could do alot better with a minor sustain buff and other classes getting nerfed.

Thats alot to happen

You also mentioned certain weapons needing nerfed and damage reduction. I posted about warrior DPS and my complaints about it. Do you realize that that guardian DH bow skill 2, rev sword skill 2 and enchanting daggers and staff 5 and etc etc etc, a number of other skills does more damage then warrior beserk great sword skill F1?

I posted about how i did less then 2k damage and everyone said warrior dps is fine. Cute, when other classes do more damage and dont have to set it up its a problem.

Gun flame does a ton of damage but do you realize what you are shooting into? Eles magnetic aura from a shout-overload-warhorn 4 and a personal from focus. Not including mesmer reflects by trait, engy has a ton and its crap, warriors shield.

Im seriously tired of people posting ohhh ive had success but yes there is problems. This class has the worst sustain in the game and even when fully geared out in either condi or damage gear/runes/sigils it still does less damage then other classes.

Thanks for constructive comments. I think we are on the same page. I fully agree that the lack of sustain is the biggest problem of the warrior. The sustain is scattered all over into so many trait trees that if you spec all into sustain, your DPS will be really laughable and your sustain is still going to be worse off compared to top meta specs. On the other hand if you take all the offensive traits of the warrior + DPS weapons + DPS/burst sigils/runes, the DPS is actually pretty good, but not the best, but the sustain is just horrible. You will die against better teams for sure. I feel this is so wrong, warrior should be da man, able to last in combat, instead of being a hit and run profession. That role is mainly for thief and I don’t want warrior made into 2nd thief.

I forgot to include one buff to warrior sustain: increase the base heal of shouts by 200. It might not sound much, but if you make a full shout spec and the “To the Limit!” get its CD reduced to 25 (20 s traited), then we could get once again a bit more sustain, about 34 hp/s more. “On My Mark!” and “Fear Me!” could be have their CD lowered slightly e.g. from 30->25 s and 60->50 s (traited CDs would be 20 s and 40 s).

If you look at my post history, I have also asked Arenanet to nerf Dragonhunter longbow #2 damage. It is simply way too high for a piercing 4 s CD skill. Dragonhunter traps, at least the elite, should also be made more visible. Dozens or more DHs stacking traps in WvWvW makes the combat not fun at all. Revenant has multiple problems, but since my experience on playing that profession is so small, I don’t want to comment it too much.

Even I have spent most of my time playing an engineer and I currently play a scrapper engi in spvp, I agree that engineer hammer needs to be nerfed. A simple 20% CD increase for skills #2-5 won’t be enough as it would still be selected over rifle or pistol/shield. I don’t understand whey they gave engi hammer skills like #4, shock shield, which does good damage and blocks at same time. It should do either, but not both. The sneak gyro elite is also too powerful and needs to have an activation time, instead of being instant cast. At the same time I really hope Arenanet doesn’t nerf the core engineer. Core engineer isn’t really all that powerful compared to the rest of the meta or scrapper. And engi has skills, which would need some love (medkit and and most the gadgets outside slick shoes, which is powerful).

I am for Arenanet nerfing/toning down all the other elite specs. If they don’t do this, I am afraid even all of my suggestions won’t bring warrior back to meta.

I know I will be flamed for this, but I think the most commonly used warrior weapons should not be buffed. In fact I would argue that Forceful greatsword trait is simply too good trait at the moment. It provides very good might stacking, 20 % CD reduction for spear/GS and also flat out 10 % dmg buff. The damage buff should be removed and it would still be better than many GM traits, while it is a master trait. GS has been the most popular warrior weapon for ages and GS/rifle and GS/hammer warriors are still pretty common combination in spvp. In WvWvW and pve GS is probably the most commonly used warrior weapon.

Gunflame damage is too high for its short cooldown and reasonably fast activation time. Tone down the gunflame damage by 20%, but don’t nerf any other rifle skills. Rifle will be in a good spot if warrior sustain is slightly buffed and other elite specs are toned down.

Warhorn needs helps as offhand shield + torch is clearly better for most circumstances. Condition mace/shield + sword/torch warrior is a fairly strong condition spec, albeit being selfish. Nobody is using mace/warhorn or axe/warhorn. And sword/warhorn is mainly used in pve for running together with GS. I don’t think anybody in their right mind would Sw/Wh+GS combo in spvp.

Here are some ideas to buff warhorn:
1a. Revert the quick breathing nerf and make it convert a condition into a boon instead of merely removing the condition
1b. Or alternatively make warhorn skills remove 2 conditions with quick breathing.
2a. Charge (warhorn #4) needs to have the swiftness duration increased to full 12-15 s, so warrior could have permanent swiftness without any additional investments. A melee warrior needs to be able to stick to its target or it is dead weight. Now so many professions have very high mobility, lots of teleport, stealth etc. This is all making melee warrior’s life more difficult.
2b. Call to Arms (warhorn #5) is too weak for 20 s skill. Merely giving 10 s vigor (after the vigor nerfs) + 6 s weakness is way too weak. It is mainly used as a blast finisher and cover condition. But what if warhorn #5 could be given a bit more offensive role e.g. also causing 2 seconds of 600 range AoE chill (max 5 targets). That could be used to mess up enemy heals and slow down fleeing enemies, but also defensively when warrior needs to flee.

Nerfing the shoutbow warrior was a bad move from Arenanet, because they basically killed the only valid spvp support build for the profession. Warrior can still dish out huge DPS, but all those builds are selfish or simply weaker than playing a D/F auramancer, druid, revenant, reaper or scrapper.

I would also do the following sustain changes to warrior/berserker:
1. “To the Limit” activation time reduced to 0.5 s and untraited CD reduced to 25 s. The total healing amount should be reduced by 20 % to compensate these changes and not make this heal overpowered. Now too many warriors run healing signet, but after these changes “To the Limit” should be viable in competitive settings and not be interrupted all the time.
2. Inspiring presence (tactics GM minor) also gives +20 % boon duration besides the current weak effect
3. Dead or Alive (berserker master trait) should activate even if the warrior is not in berserker mode and trigger berserker mode if it is not in cooldown.
4. Eternal champion (berserker GM trait) should give 1 stack of stability per 1 second or 3 stacks of stability per 3 seconds, because the current 1 stack per 3 seconds is just too little.

Warrior can be semi effective in low sapphire, but I bet any build (even pre-HoT) can work there. Here is my latest track record and it was only possible because I got lucky to get team mates, who knew how to rotate and enemy fell to my trolling at far (yes, I went to far and didn’t die there).

Ansau plays on Baruch Bay, which is probably the most stacked server in EU. Currently BB and SFR are the only “very high” status servers in EU. Both in EU and NA most servers are so called “medium” population, meaning that their WvWvW population is actually really low.

I am sure the experience would be different if the number of players per border is 1/10th of BB has. For example we have already been for many weeks being outnumbered on 3-4 maps pretty much all the time, except circa 5 hours at night when the Deso night crew is on. Having just 1-2 players on the entire map means you simply cannot afford to have scouts, but 1-2 players is enough to flip all the keeps and towers if those objectives are undefended by human players. This also assumes that those 1-2 players are running good builds, especially air keep lord can be tricky with all the CC. Side note: I find that the earth keep is the easiest to solo, you can take both the inner and outer wall down with just 1 catapult and the earth lord is easiest to kill with just 1-2 players. This is probably just bad design as I think the earth keep should not be the easiest.

Side note: You could flip all the keeps in the Alpine border with 1-2 players. I don’t have timings, but I am sure it took shorter time to flip a fully upgraded keep in the old border. I used to do sneak captures in the prime time, just me and some random Desolation player or two, while our zerg was keeping enemy “busy” and back then there wasn’t the power creep from HoT, so the pre-HoT did less DPS. Now there is usually no zerg, so it is just those few players on the map. And the new map just suck when you have so few players. The new maps are designed for much larger number of players than most servers can now muster. And calling that “a learn to play issue” and telling that most players are too lazy or dumb to learn the new mechanisms is just plain dishonesty.

Scouting is dead for many reasons. One main reason is that scouting is now so boring with too little things to do. Upgrades run now automatically, while before HoT they required human interaction. And enemy comes to attack once in a blue moon, so you are just wasting your time and getting no rewards, no action, no fun. Arenanet should increase the rewards for successful defense and in general make WvWvW give as good rewards as world/map meta events in pve.

The fact is that numbers still matter in defending. I haven’t seen any small numbers, like 1-3 players, being able to defend vs much higher enemy force, like 20+ for a significant amount of time. I consider many of the German servers really pro with Arrow Carts and other siege. Yet a good commander can take a keep defended by them if the attacker has larger numbers. Can you prove me with wrong with some video footage and where the attacker, which is outnumbering the defenders, is using solid tactics?

I remember just one occasion where I was alone able to defend fire keep vs 5 enemies. I managed to kill 3 of them solo couple of times in a row, because I was playing a reaper and enemy wasn’t smart enough. I was constantly using the the terrain to my advantage to avoid being focused fired by many and retreating through portals.

If Arenanet strategy was to make the BLs to make enemy split the zergs, they failed miserably. Now the borderlands are empty besides 1-2 border hopping zergs, which flip everything vs not much any defense. If majority of the players don’t want to play on the new borders, Arenanet should draw the conclusions and bring the old borderland back as quickly as possibly. By forcing the players to adjust to something they don’t like is a recipe for making the game dead!

Please NO. I wish they would be removed from Eternal Battlegrounds as well.

Many banners create balancing issues and the air strike at Stone Mist Castle is simply overpowered. Most players want to fight each other, not against the environment. Also please remove the invisibility fountain from SMC.

Thank you!

Ogre.3124:

Now playing Greatsword/sword(shield) warrior whenever I use my three escape skills the other class just catch up to me anyways. Anet needs to make warrior escape skills quicker, longer distance, and/or on a drastically lower cooldown in compensation for other classes’ mobility buffs for fun builds to be viable.

I disagree. I think Arenanet should bring warrior closer to the original vision, being a melee fighter which can stick to combat aka “be a man”, instead of being a cowardly hit and run profession. High mobility suits many other professions much better e.g. thief and ranger. The times when warrior could outrun pretty much anything with GS+sw/wh combo are luckily gone, that just plain dead ridicilous in WvWvW and lead to many cheap tactics.

Warrior needs to have it’s sustain to improved (and I mean real sustain, not running away), but at the same time Arenanet must slightly tone down warrior’s burst e.g. gunflame, or warrior could easily become as overpowered as the current meta builds (which should ALL be brought down).