Guild Wars 2

Banzie.5248:

Arius.7031:

Detharos.3157:

Flappybob.1950:

Hey FC,
We heard you like to take paper maps, so we figured we would give you one to take! Too bad you didn’t remove us from the map with your 30 people earlier, now you just have to suffer the humiliation of losing your completely upgraded T3 map to 20 MEND…during NA prime time.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Alright, I understand everyone has their trolls and forum warriors and its not really worth it to reply and I acknowledge that this fellow doesn’t speak for all of IoJ, but regardless:

First of all, Assuming you made your post immediately after your “accomplishments” which would be fitting a boastful individual as yourself, that puts your feat cross-referenced from post time to around 11:40 PM on a Sunday. That’s not “NA primetime”, buddy. People log off at that time to get shut eye for Monday’s work schedule, in case you didn’t know.

Secondly, I don’t know why inhabitants of a previously Silver League server would see there being any merit boasting over besting a 4th in Bronze server, in any timezone. Regardless of what you want to believe, there’s a clearly large numbers disparity between you and us/Darkhaven many levels, especially in timezone coverage.

Thirdly @ the roamer comment from earlier: That’s what happens when you PvDoor us 12:00 AM-4:00 AM, of course you won’t encounter any decent roamers. I was roaming all day in NA time and the exceptional IoJ’s I’ve encountered were elite roamers who transferred from GoM who from what I see haven’t changed much with the passing of time, which is more a testament to just how awesome Gates of Madness was back in the day than to your server.

IoJ seems to think our servers are close in coverage/numbers. This is patently false. You’re doing to us what all of silver did to you, it’s not close, and it’s not worth boasting about. FC and Dh are close in numbers, IoJ is waaayyyy above both. FC defends dutifully, and the fact that they couldn’t stop you at 11 should tell you why you took their stuff.

It wasnt 11 when we papered most things in their BL. We papered FC bay around that time so okay that may not have been included, but the rest of FCs map was papered in NA prime time. At dawns the first zerg we met was at like 80. Wiped to them obviously after a couple of minutes of back and forth on the bridge choke point with our 25. Next they came hills, couldnt get in and left. Next time we found a zerg was about 50 , Managed to kill them with admittedly AC support. After that it was 30 people that we just killed like two-three times open field and never saw anyone again all night.

HOWEVER As DH BL was consistently blue. FC did have WP on their garri and didnt even show up to defend it. Let alone their hills at the beginning of the night.

What we’re trying to say is, FC was within 10-15k (Easy gap to close) of us yesterday. If they hadnt spent their time sitting in DH BL all night they may have been able to sustain a decent PPT all NA prime and through Ocx with their upgraded keeps and towers there instead of having to deal with Ocx going against easy paper stuff.

We’re under no impression that we’re close numbers with you. We ALL understand that this is what happened to us in leagues (Except those servers field 80+ 24/7) and we ALL understand the best match up we could get is definitely IoJ/NSP/HoD. With CD dieing they could even be thrown into the mix after a few guilds leave.

EDIT: For everyone that seems to think that NA Prime time is conclusive of only the Eastern USA. I laugh at you. NA prime time Runs from about 3 PM Server Time- 11 PM Server Time. For those of you that dont know how to Convert that is 6 PM EST-2 AM EST. You forget that people do live in central and west cost.

FC’s NA “Prime time” isn’t a 8 hour period dude, it’s the brief period when the majority of the NA timezones overlap allowing the greatest NA number output. To my understanding in EST that’s classically between 7-11PM tops. It’s pretty much only ever during that period you see these world-famous “50-man FC zergballs” a.k.a. the “Zerguson’s Crossing/The Ferg Zerg/Fergball/Ferg train” movement of people trying to get inside Micbooboo’s(and other “hot-shot” commander’s; pants. (No offense Bobo, love ya.) Convert that to whatever timezone however you please, for FC that is typically our strong period, even on the weekends.

Darek.1836:

Spicyhash.7605:

gotta say, fc has some of the worst roamers i’ve ever fought. zerg on.

haha what

He probably mistook an unguarded Dolyaks as our roamers, because they were the only thing “roaming” on FC borderlands during their prime time.

Flappybob.1950:

Hey FC,
We heard you like to take paper maps, so we figured we would give you one to take! Too bad you didn’t remove us from the map with your 30 people earlier, now you just have to suffer the humiliation of losing your completely upgraded T3 map to 20 MEND…during NA prime time.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Alright, I understand everyone has their trolls and forum warriors and its not really worth it to reply and I acknowledge that this fellow doesn’t speak for all of IoJ, but regardless:

First of all, Assuming you made your post immediately after your “accomplishments” which would be fitting a boastful individual as yourself, that puts your feat cross-referenced from post time to around 11:40 PM on a Sunday. That’s not “NA primetime”, buddy. People log off at that time to get shut eye for Monday’s work schedule, in case you didn’t know.

Secondly, I don’t know why inhabitants of a previously Silver League server would see there being any merit boasting over besting a 4th in Bronze server, in any timezone. Regardless of what you want to believe, there’s a clearly large numbers disparity between you and us/Darkhaven many levels, especially in timezone coverage. So EVEN IF you did best us in “NA primetime”, that’s what supposed to happen. Servers that made silver league had the capability to queue 4 maps at some points from what I am told. At the height of its greatest numbers, FC was only able to queue two maps. I understand you may have lost some guilds recently and delude yourself that you’re suddenly on our number/coverage level and beating us with something that has a semblance of “skill and tactics”. Yet take a look at your score gains and you’ll see the majority of IoJ’s edge over us comes from when North America is in slumber. Besides this all, you make it sound like you have some cross-server grudge against us, but FC and IoJ have never had any real issues with each other. If there would be any room for a grudge, it would be between FC and Darkhaven, and we’re actually getting along and complimenting each other much of the time.

Thirdly @ the roamer comment from earlier: That’s what happens when you PvDoor us 12:00 AM-4:00 AM, of course you won’t encounter any decent roamers. I was roaming all day in NA time and the only truly exceptional IoJ’s I’ve encountered were elite roamers who transferred from GoM who from what I see haven’t changed much with the passing of time, which is more a testament to just how awesome Gates of Madness was back in the day than to your server’s roaming prowess.

And ironically despite the crap talk, I still respect IoJ as I remember your server’s attitudes towards us when we got mismatched in the past when we were still tier 8/tier 7, which was overall a positive one, even going so far to ignore us to focus on your enemies of old.

Dear ArenaNet:

Please let us rangers control the ratio of character to pet stats or character to pet damage. Ie. If the setup is currently 60-75% ranger damage to 25-40% pet damage, I want to create a ratio for myself more along the lines of 95% ranger damage to 5% pet damage and utilize the pet for its stun or heal utilities instead. I think it’s time that both the developer’s ideas of the pet being something the ranger always has, and the ranger’s reality of the pet’s massive inefficiencies at hitting moving targets in competitive player vs player environments need to meet in the middle somewhere.

Why would these be a good change? Well, here’s from my experience, as a highly skilled solo roaming melee ranger who’s practiced his art for approximately 4-5 months:

Out of all rangers, I am probably one of the very, very few % who has a build that synergizes very well with the pet, utilizing guard shouts to buff it with permanent protection and regen and stealth every 12 seconds, boosting its regen further with signet of the wild, sharing all my buffs with it and providing it with retaliation with my axe number 5 among other wonderful perks including a full melee setup with dual hydromancy sigils almost always used in melee range to further debilitate my foes, pulling them into it with number 4, good stun timing. Because I’m melee (gs/sa) I have an advantage with both melee and ranged pets that many ranger’s don’t; minimal travel time between pet and ranger and pet and enemy, since these are often at the same location. What else of my portfolio? I’ve built up my skill and timings in reactions and combination of techniques to a level where they are instinctual, and not something I have to literally count out in my head. My use of pet stealth with guard frequently aiming the f2s to fire from behind my opponents back while they are busy with me in the front is attested by many of my foes to be on a different level of pet control from any ranger they’ve faced. I’m not going to say I am THE best, but I believe I am very good. In these past months, I’ve only lost to one GoM ranger in one on one combat(there have been some draws) because I understand the weaknesses of the class so very well.

So what’s the issue? That despite all the above, it is still more often than not the pet holding me back with its low ratio of landing hits against strafing and kiting targets. It never ceases to amaze me how chilled, crippled targets still manage to side-step so many of its attacks and so few of my ranger’s attacks in high-skill duels. And if it holds me back, I guarantee you it holds back more ranger builds and players than you can imagine. Just read through the pages of ranger complaints about the pet in the ranger forums to see just how viciously this issue has been pointed out over the past months.

So, please do yourselves a favor and listen to your ranger community. Don’t just answer with a “speed up the pet f2”. “We’ll fix the pet’s ability to hit its enemy’s… in about a year.” The pet should SUPPORT the ranger as much as the ranger supports the pet. Currently, my ranger only supports the pet and it rarely supports me. So, I want a damage ratio reflective of that fact. It can be strategically utilized in engaging multiple foes and single enemies with useful skills like “guard”. I’d like to keep my pet, because having a companion is nice and the f2 utilities can be useful. I daresay it’d be more useful if you not only changed it this ranger to pet relationship to what I’ve suggested but gave rangers the option of having full control of their pet’s other 2 skills and when they use them. (Leave the auto attack on pet AI so it can contribute in its own, small ways.) I’m not asking you to get rid of the pet, but we’re asking you to put the control of the course of our fights completely back in the hands of the inherently intelligent player (the ranger) and out of the hands of the unsatisfactory, incompetent AI. (pet). It’d be nothing revolutionary or game breaking. Bears could still be used as meatshields, cats could still be used as squishy high damage AI wannabe-assassins.

You wouldn’t break beast mastery builds either as you could enable them to reach even higher ratios of pet reliance with different stat distributions being able to be chosen by the ranger. For all I care someone could go with a 25% ranger damage to 75% pet damage ratio build. It would certainly at more variety and make killing some ranger’s pets more critical.

So, you would infact enable new and currently unexisting builds where healing power could pooled into pets to turn them into larger healing asset, or high-crit drake burst builds for new AoE builds, and countless other things.

So please, just give it a try.

I’d love to see what fights would be like if when I fought a warrior for example, I could single out and break their arm and for 40-60 seconds(depending on how they were forced to invest traits to compensate) make them suffer a 25%-40% damage debuff and all f1-f4 utilities disabled for that time. To make it more fun, their arms (or legs) could have a different hp from their character’s body and be unable to evade AoE and attacks when their body evades.

No, even better.. that same warrior arm could be under the control of a terribly incompetent AI and attack on its own at mostly uncontrollable intervals that disable 3-4 attacks from being used in unison with stuns properly. To avoid making it OP, the attacks of the independent AI operated arm can only land when the warrior and his target are standing still, and the arm would automatically script to attack from the maximum range possible.

Then, to compensate for the difficulties that could(No way!) arise from that, make the warriors have full control over their f2. But their arm can randomly change directions in respect to the target if they move causing many misfires if used at any other than the perfect timing, and give that f2 a 1.5-4 second cast time in addition to the arm f2 ability occasionally going into a 5-10 second cool down period upon skill cancels which frequently occur as a result of the AI clashing with the commands the player sends to their arm.

And suddenly, balance!

The fact remains however that we did not have these 50 man zergs running each and every map and i was on our own borderland maps many times wherein we were getting that outnumbered flag.

The single most obvious example is that Golem rush your own server achieved. If we had these zergs on every map we would not have lost an upgraded hills, Bay, and Garrison before we managed to stop it. Those people came from other borderlands.

Hence why I said they were somewhat rare circumstances. :P

To be sure HoD has a good volume of skilled players and some rather impressive tactics and division of its numbers at certain times.

To argue HoD won the league with sheer average player skill and tactics alone however is madness to the utmost, I hate to say. If it was only ever cases of one large zergball warping from wp to wp creating illusions of multi-zerg, then FC probably would of pulled second and you’d hear the same reports about us 24/7 since we’re apparently pros at mega zerg ball stacking and leaving for greener Karma filled waters.

Fact is, when you shift TS channels and hear reports of Henge zergs numbering upwards of 50 people in three different map channels in the span of 2 minutes, it’s not mere smoke being blown from a jealous server. Granted these are somewhat rare occasions, and getting your points hit from lack of coverage is also a factor.

As for the “tanking” thing, I’m surprised anyone holds that against HoD. It’s not like we’d of done much better against any other potential Bronze winning contender from the silver league.

It’s disappointing however that the rewards amounted to so little, especially when you still have to go through the hell of leveling crafting and acquiring a large amount of ascended mats to make an ascended weapon. In the very least, it would of been nice to see more mats in the chest.

Yo Ferg dawgs, we heard you like HoD. So we put some HoD in your HoD.

You’re welcome.

Canines have a similar rule of thumb when it comes to issues hitting targets albeit some incredibly useful F2 AoEs. When timed right they are a godsend, but it’s still inconvenient given the cast time and easily interrupted or avoided by a skilled player with high apm and enough interrupts, evades, and teleport to location and other escape skills unless chain stunned. They may be extremely useful to some ranger builds (perhaps spirit rangers with the sheer amount of allied units you put out on the field) but the majority of builds that they are actually thought clasically as compliment best fail to get their “bang for their buck” out of them due to missed stuns and attacks; namely the classic power bow builds. I’ve fought plenty of power bow rangers who thought they were really good at chain stunning with wolf and drake hound/hyena and every single one of them died at my feet with doing less than half my hp bar even with the very best of them so I guarantee you are probably less good at chain stunning with canines, longbow 4, greatsword five or axe pull than you think. (Which very few rangers even roll with an axe off-hand.) Consequently that makes spiders are far superior option for power bow builds and is why most of the better power bow builds roll with spiders. As I will mention later, they have a much higher hit ratio from not needing to chase the majority of their targets nearly as much.

Just my 2 cents on the current state of melee pets.

As for ranged pets, I never criticized them outside lack of damage. They are incredibly adept at hitting their targets in comparison to their melee counter-parts. The spider is invaluable to high damage-slightless tanky ranger builds(Although I don’t know why the poison field duration is so short, its nearly impossible to use it at times). The devourer on the other hand: hit or miss; you roll with them for their damage and condi output however 10% poison on auto attack is just relying on low end poison procs in a prolonged fight in a battlefield saturated with condi and consequently condi removal, the evade on it is actually useless; a complete waste of a skill slot even if someone were to go after it which very, very rarely ever happens if the ranger and devourer positions are different(If you think otherwise you’re fooling yourself, be honest. It’s evade is extremely slow so you lose damage every time it does that, the whole point of having one to begin with.) The F2s are less than spectacular outside the one with the poison volley. Because the lashtail’s has a massive cast time and despite the theoretically good combination of physical damage to bleed, the bleed more than often not will get chance purged due to the amount of people running high on condi removal. That often leaves you with about 2k phys damage at best if your foe lacks toughness to reduce it, assuming they don’t dodge part of it which vastly lacks compared to the potential 5ks of a full river drake f2. As for the poison field devourer, that’kitten or miss unfortunately.

At any rate, keep in mind this is all from the perspective of a ranger that has perma swiftness, protection and regen on him and his pet, no matter the distance between him and his pet. Those rangers out those perks may find different realities and that’s fine. Furthermore let me clarify that I am not trying to shoot down anyone’s builds; just merely sharing what I’ve observed in personal experience and extensive practice and testing. To add a final note, I’m talking specifically of fight other players. WvW, SPvP fighting skilled, intelligent sapient beings who are moving targets, not predictable stationary PvE mobs following the same script with maybe a tiny bit of RNG combinations of attack patterns thrown in. Against powerful and skilled players who constantly move in combat, the pets will function on a different level; a diffferent level of usefulness, or a different level of uselessness, depending on your build and pet setup. So if we’re talking fighting other players you must consider very carefully what pet you use and how you fight with it but furthermore, synergize with it if you want to fight with the best of players using the best builds of the other classes. If you’re trying to take everything out of your pet and put it into the ranger, you will lose to the best on other classes atm. If you do the opposite and power up the pet too much but kitten the ranger, the same fate awaits you. Forget ArenaNet’s “unparalleled archer” statement, its untrue right now in terms of damage and AoE, frequency and utility. Right now for a ranger to fight at the best a ranger can fight against other players, he MUST find good ways of harmonizing with his pet and creating a “The two fight as one” scenario/build. VERY little ranger builds are doing that at the moment, and that’s unfortunately because VERY FEW ranger builds can.

Granted pets being situational is obvious, and my build is very specified to synergize well with the pet and just happens to work best with the drakes. However, I’ve extensively tested cats, canines, moas, drakes with perma-swiftness, regen and protection. And in terms of building a melee pet build that IMO has the least amount of counter-builds to worry about and the greatest potential to go toe to toe with a higher number of just about any build of any other class and hit closest to parity. (As in entering a fight with similar gear and having an equal chance to see victory when used skillfully) I’m convinced its one using drakes, but that’s just me.

I know there are other pets that work better for other builds, what I’m trying to say is that, for its function and design, the drake is currently best in line with its purpose. Cats sure hit hard, but when singled out by the enemy (most skilled players I’ve fought will do this) even with permanent protection, swiftness, regeneration+signet healing and a cautious and very skilled ranger pulling it back and even trying to use that predictability to his edge.. its extremely easy to kill jaguars and other cats, and the time spent waiting for pet cooldowns will hurt your dps drastically if it occurs, which in a fight between two equally and very skilled players will happen far more than most rangers rolling cats are willing to admit. Canines it’s a little less often, especially when the stuns do land. But the fact that it’s the pet controlling when it stuns outside the predictability that it will use it almost immediately when its off-cooldown/swapped still makes it very inconsistent.

Admittedly I have not worked with birds much, but since I have aoe permanent swiftness at hand I certainly don’t need to rely on its swiftness skill for that, which would make that a wasted skill for me. The rest of the skills on birds, even including the blind of the raven and frequent bleeds of the other ones and chill of the snow owl.. still don’t quite cut it. And again, they are even more easily killed when singled out by a skilled player.

If course, if you roll with guard you might think you have some shock and awe value with the two stealths on the jaguar which is of some truth to be sure, however since it cannot open with a ranged attack from stealth the players will know the pattern by instinct if they’re battle hardened enough that it’s either waiting beside the ranger on passive for them to go in for the rush, or barreling down on them to land hits. Even if they can’t see it, they know it’s there and merely need to swerve left to right (especially with swiftness) to avoid the majority of its attacks. In turn, attack the air with aoe and sword sweeps will be sufficient if its a real problem.

Actually with the right build drakes are by far currently the best of all melee pets IMO. If you go with a close range or full melee build and use an axe offhand you can frequently pull your target straight into a tail sweep and open many opportunities to land f2 (although I still think it could use improvements and some bug fixes). If you have the nature trait that shares your buffs with the pet, when you pop axe off-hand number 5 you will share retalitation with your pet, which can potentially mean throwing double retaliation ticks against the sweeping attacks of of warriors, which only the drake and bear are probably tanky enough to pull off to begin with. (Although you need high tankiness levels on your ranger for that combo as well.) At any rate, because their attacks (to my understanding even the auto attack) have a sweeping motion rather than a fully linear one like the cats, it is more complicated to side step drake hits for a chilled/crippled target, especially with stuns in the mix than it is for the former.

Above all the drakes of all melee pets have by far the best ratio of damage to survivability and with the right build, especially a shout w/ nature’s voice build with reduced cooldown guard giving them effective perma regen, protection(if you have roll protection) and occasional stealth. Unfortunately there are still some AoE’s that in albeit kind of rare circumstances can overly easily kill them in a 2-3 hits, like a high damage warrior build’s bow AoE but I don’t mind this given that the classes yielding such damage atm are supposedly getting some nerfs, and the unmatched value that pulling off a timing-attack with pet swaps can offer in potentially landing consecutive tail sweeps with maul combos.

So sadly, canines, felines still lagg behind drakes from everything I’ve experienced for the same old problems: Vitality is far too low, and their attacks are too short range and linear-based design, the cripple and stun available(on the canines) fail to make contact too often. These two desperately need a skill rebuild, and once again raised vitality. If you ask me, the drakes should be used to set a precedent as the minimum survivability required for melee pets, and the cats and canines given near equal levels of vitality to reflect this reality. (Which as I recall of the top of my head is 3.5k-ish.) If they were to receive attention.

Jeknar.6184:

Mooncow.6847:

Detharos.3157:

Oh, the bitter sweet irony…

personally I prefer quick repeated /cry over /laugh

/shrug

I’d do /comfort or /hug or /nosepick but they didn’t include such emotes.

So now that we’re nearing season’s end, anyone getting curious what might await in that chest? Perhaps ascended items or mats? (A godsend for me if so as I still lagg behind in that area.) 1 gold, 2-3 junky rares and a bunch of salvage? New fangled never before seen weapon skins? Minis? A dozen stacks of a usable multi-target bouncing stun inducing cog like the old days before they removed it, only a version that does 25, 000 damage crits and breaks the game?

Only time will tell, but I guess we can probably expect to be disappointed.

JahRo.6432:

Detharos.3157:

Oh, the bitter sweet irony…

I know! A ranger taking WvW seriously!

Can’t tell if criticism or compliment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPpzJAzdpTU

Oh, the bitter sweet irony…

Shirk.6421:

Detharos.3157:

I’m not arrogant but confident to happily myself say I have no l2p issues having taken the hard path for rangers, and yet having found great success in it.

Welcome to the club.

No, honestly, mastering the ranger is (imo next to the ele) the hardest work with a lot of effort. I wouldn’t say I mastered him, but 50 win streaks in the colosseum should speak for itself. The biggest issue I have with the ranger is – as you said – the poor pet AI, I always try to time my hard hitting skills in a way that my pet actually provides help, with immobilizes for example. I kinda know when my dog’s or wolf’s knock-down is ready, pay attention and try to time my attacks. But the stupidity of the pet and the F2 ability just grinds my gears. The other thing is the design of some wapons, not only speaking about the sword’s rooting. The axe for example: It’s a ranged hybrid weapon. Doesn’t deal decent damage at all when facing a single enemy and, as a condition weapon, – despite the fact that it’s a ranged weapon – only works fine when you go into melee. You try to let him eat a point-blank splitblade but then the moving enemy just side-steps out of the cone. I often find myself staying at melee range just to make sure that my pet hits… that’s kinda sad for a class with so much potential. Same goes for the shortbow, not only it’s poison fan but also if it’s a power or condition weapon. It has better dps than the longbow in kinda close combat, but is our one and only two-handed condition weapon. But then you try to get some bleed stacks on your target in PvP or WvW but because every class can just facehug you, you have no chance (except for bleeds on crits) to apply the bleeds, again poor designed imo. I don’t even want to start about decent power builds or condition cleansing again…

Yeah, part of what also made me roll melee was the idea that my pet’kitten ratio would go up, for both ranged and melee pets. Surely enough it did.. VERY SLIGHTLY, so when I still see it suffering from high miss ratios.. it’s like.. it hurts my heart. I’ve pushed the “Two as One” idea pretty far, but as you’ve seen yourself there’s no way for it to go the distance it needs to.

In a brief overview, the issues of this class that NEED attention and need to be considered as the problems they really are, by all classes and not looked past:

1) Melee pets inability to hit moving targets; Cripple, stun, chilling every 9 seconds, pulling and even pets with cripple and CC like the dogs will still miss upwards of 75% of their auto attacks on a moving target. AIS cannot compete with players. Players think “Where you will be”, “How to intercept them”, pets do not. They only attack where you are which in high skill fights will always be where you WERE.

Ranged pets don’t have enough damage to be viable. Devourer is terrible compared to spider and lacks the damage to be a viable choice over it in ranged pets. Ranged pets need to have damage options similar to melee pets, Ie. the Lashtail Devourer F2 needs to hit damage levels more reflective of the Drake F2, and at least with similar cast times to be relevant.

2) Healing: I’m sure some will disagree with my because of regen rangers, but nonetheless I feel ranger default heals are lacking severely. Not all of us have 3 regen procs and a healing spirit. Heal as one needs more perks or a 5 second lower cooldown. Reducing the raw healing we can get off of healing spring by means of combos was a bad idea. You should of increased the condi remove pulses AND kept the original field duration. By sacrificing the latter for the former, all you did was make it lean toward condi removal while not offering the ranger any decent chance to survive against high physical damage builds.

3) Condition removal: INSUFFICIENT AND TREACHEROUS. Healing Spring Cooldown is too long to be viable outside group fights(30 seconds) and even without. Too many skills and traits just pass conditions to the pet, killing it. WE NEED TO PURGE CONDITIONS COMPLETELY AND SIMULTANEOUSLY REMOVE THEM FROM OUR PET. Empathetic bond should be changed to something that removes 3 conditions from both the Ranger AND the pet with no cost, because currently it literally takes that much for us to survive and keep our pet alive for (A LITTLE) longer. (It will probably still die overly frequently.)

4) Class does not synergize with it’s pet well. Help the pet survive but kill the ranger, or help the ranger survive but guarantee the pet dies are choices we always have to make, and they hold us back. It’s been made clear to us that the current ideal for the ranger is “The Two fight as one”. This is untrue. Our pet is a burden on us, and our condi removal utilities and Protect me burden the pet. We do not fight in harmony and synchronicity. The pet holds back the ranger damage, and the ranger holds back the pet survivability, and the pets that are supposed to offer survivability like the moa have massive AI problems.

5) Extremely low build variability is available with the ranger, and every class, but annoyingly so with the ranger.

Hi I’m Dathaul. Those from my server and the people I’ve fought might recognize me as that awkward melee ranger who you frequently see rolling with drakes. I spend A LOT of time complaining about unique weaknesses that the ranger class suffers from and find myself often taking flak from people who in my opinion, in ignorance, think the ranger class is actually at parity with other classes in a fight. (Of course they are usually spvp players.) I’m the first to admit, I’m beating against the stream rolling melee as a ranger, when the class is made so dependent on range. I happily accept that weakness and disadvantage for a play style that I like and the difficulties of using a melee ranger are not my complaint at all at this time. Let me say to my credit, I have spent months (probably about 4-5 months now) building a melee ranger of incredible competence and fighting in solo roaming in WvW vs. anywhere from 1, to multiple opponents. (4 to 5). Against those that lacked skill I often found myself dropping upwards of 2-4 fully exotic geared level 80s going all out and using terrain to advantage, fighting smart.. and hard. Mind you, they are always HARD, exhausting fights. I myself possess NO ascended gear at this time, so I don’t rely on supposedly op stat differences to defeat my foes at this time. I’ve probably explored the depths of the ranger’s strengths and weaknesses more than the vast majority of the ranger community and in greater detail, and it shows from the fact that I have no other character over level 23, and no ascended gear at this time. (Though I am FINALLY working on it.) I have put painful hours into designing a ranger capable of fighting well against every single type of opponent and build, and capable of besting every other ranger in battle using skill and timing, and at the same time different from the cookie cutter builds. Maximum mobility, high levels of tankiness, a 30-some odd second stunbreak and damage/damage reduction. The keys to success as a melee character with no stealth capability.

Despite my efforts, I’m sure there are other rangers who could say very similar things. And most of these rangers, I am sure will share the same complaints as I. I’d even love to test it out more in spvp against other rangers if not for the fact that the stat distributions of vitality-tougness-healing power-power are completely unavailable in SPvP, thereby breaking mine(and many other good builds) when thrown into that environment. I talk as a very experienced WvW solo player. And while its certainly true that WvW players on average have far less skill, there are some solo roamer’s I’ve fought out there who I believe could throw down with the best of SPvP players and win, without needing Perplexity runes and torment sigils or ascended gear. So let’s not delude ourselves as if there were no skilled players or elitists in WvW and use that as an excuse to claim the ranger class does not suffer from broken and bad mechanics but rather from L2P issues. I’m not arrogant but confident to happily myself say I have no l2p issues having taken the hard path for rangers, and yet having found great success in it.

At this point, the only things I can complain about are BROKEN MECHANICS that weaken the class. I’m happily open to counter-builds, class weaknesses and the like. I get excited when I see someone targeting my pet specifically and trying new things. It’s great. I do not like it however, that so many necessary functions available to other classes are broken by poor design and made EASILY exploitable to defeat every single ranger in skilled combat with minimal effort, no matter what build someone with high skill level on other classes rolls.

So again.. as a bit of an elitist, and one who would hold himself as being at the pinnacle as a melee ranger I find it disheartening how many people think the ranger class needs at best “band aid” solutions to be at par with the other classes. So here I will spell out many of the classes major weaknesses that will get it burned in a pro-level fight 99% of the time. (We’re not talking about meeting up with counter-builds here, literal class weaknesses.) Introduction over. On to the good stuff, or rather the bad stuff.

To be continued…

As one of the very, very few successful full melee rangers out there running with both sword and greatsword.. JonPeters, please if you take the evade out of gs chain and put it into sweep, give the basic gs attack chain some other perk besides just damage. Namely, cripple. Especially cripple. It would also enable melee range fighters to prevent enemy escapes and simultaneously to slap some cripples on melee foes before escaping with number 3 when the immo drops increasing the odds of getting away. It wouldn’t be op at all, since just like any cripple it can be removed.

Edit: Actually I take back everything I said. The pets need just a few small things: Melee pets need to be able to attack while moving simultaneously and every one of them from drake to dog to cat needs a massive speed charge w/ cripple to close the distances skilled players with high mobility create.

Ranged pets need damage buffs, especially the devourers need a rebuild. There’s literally almost no benefit to rolling devourer when compared to spider. Both have a higher hit ratio than melee pets atm due to having 900 range attacks, but neither have the damage to drop targets on non-berserkerish bursty builds. (I’m not talking full tank builds to be clear here, but our half-and-half builds meet far less success because of poor pet AI than other classes in tankiness-damage ratios, that cannot be denied.) We just don’t get that ideal balance that so many other classes can enjoy.

Moas need to heal properly. It’s kitten y atm and ruined by bad AI.

Pigs need to give you an item instantly with forage.

Just about every f2 needs to cast faster as well. There’s still very little ability for the ranger and the pet to synchronize their attacks well. Ever tried landing a drake f2 on a skilled player who’s assessed it as a threat? Virtually impossible as they merely need to break your stun and run behind it before it’s cast time finishes. Don’t even need to waste endurance dodging it. >_>

Avatar of Belle.9623:

WTF is this fictitious conversation supposed to mean?

Someone has been dipping into the egg nog a bit too much it seems.

Cufufalating.8479:

We’ve brought up the signet issue so many times, and this (along with many ideas) have already been suggested.

But its always worth supporting again ^^

Ah, I figured as much given all the ranger suggestions and complaints and the topics they tend to revolve around.

From the perspective of a ranger who spends the majority of his time in WvW:

I’m sure this has probably been suggested before, but it for some reason only just occurred to me.. why not just reverse the idea of the Signet of the Beastmaster? Have signets affect the ranger FIRST by default., and then be specialized through the trait to affect the pet. To begin with, the trait itself is far too hardlined to be viable to a majority of ranger builds. A change like this would greatly open up build variability across the board by making single and dual signet skill setups more viable.

Signet of the Wild: Pets are bound by attack scripts that take too long to load with newly swapped pets and horrible AI that is simply incapable of dealing with strafing players even when you’re constantly throwing on cripples and chills. This change would put the power boost of the active signet in the hands of the players, who unlike pets are actually capable of accounting for will their moving adversary WILL BE rather than where they are/were( which is an issue when just about every pro player is almost constantly moving/strafing), rolling through areas of effect while simultaneously closing distance, and have far more ability to land their attacks accurately both with ranged and melee attacks. This change would give every ranger rolling with this signet more bang for their buck.

Signet of Stone: No comment needed. The only pet that really benefits drastically from being invulnerable for 6 seconds most of the time are squishy pets like cats that often times are not even worth the upkeep. Outside that in the hands of skilled rangers most pets don’t need the extra survivability to begin with. ( Having the active affect the pet seems like a “candy on top of your cake” type thing that should be traited for, rather than the basic functionality of protecting the ranger. After all, the only real appeal in the active is usually for the rangers who want to use it on themselves.

Signet of the Hunt: Exact same deal outside those rolling drakes/cats relying on landing a hefty tail swipe/attack that will most likely miss. A ranger can do a lot more with an attack of opportunity buff on himself rather than on his pet as pre-battle preparations.

Hey, if you ask me we did a great job of sieging up the bay in Kain BL and holding it for an extended amount of time under the command of Paw Mackenzie.

limonovich.4971:

“Warriors by nature have a lot of survivability, and we need them to make a choice between heavy control and heavy damage.”

my sides are in outer space, i’m done with this game

TBH, if you fought against warriors using a class other than warriors, be it 1 v 1, 1 v x, or warriors specced for team synergy in team battle settings, or against zerg-busting highly trained guild warrior heavy 10-15 man groups you wouldn’t be saying those things. (Outside a few builds that are extremely limited in function and group value.)

Right now, out of every class its warriors alone that are able to enjoy this “perfect combination” of durability, stun breaks, stun spam and absurd damage. Many other classes rolling 50-50 tank to damage ratios haven’t even been able to outdamage the passive healing signet regen of the warriors they encounter or are just barely able to(a moot point when they pop the heal itself when the damage amouns to anything), yet don’t have anywhere near enough stun breaks and rolls to counter the incredible amount of stuns you can throw out and have enough endurance leftover to avoid the incredibly high burst damage that comes in when we fail to dodge a single hammer stun because of its overly high damage which will immediately be followed with another high damage attack. In other words, most classes have to choose between “their cake” or “eating it”.. warriors are the only class as of late “having their cake and eating it too”.

Nevertheless I’m sure the changes won’t be perfect, some things may go overboard. Give ArenaNet time and they will begin to bring a semblance of balance. If warriors end up too hard strung to make a good build, they will come in with some power-ups. Unfortunately its a slow process for all classes.. and in terms of build diversity problems.. that’s a problem for every class out there right now and probably more so for thieves. (Ironic considering how hated they are by the untalented masses of players out there.)

At any rate, for those of you who thought those instances where you were comfortably soloing three-four man groups of full 80s and exotics and only taking upwards of half your life bar in damage was the norm and based purely skill alone and not more so the result of an overpowered character combined with skill(I’m not going to deny there are some very talented warriors) this patch should be a wake up call and put you more on the level of the other classes who outside running away tend to have extreme difficulty taking on 2-3 equally geared opponents even when they outskill them drastically and are forced to make tough choices like risking survival to go for a burst/down of even one of those opponents. (And by skill I’m referring to fighting instinct, reaction times, stun, stunbreak and burst timing and the whole sha-bang.)

Friendly duels starting now at Ferg BL windmill

Anyone up for some late night duels at ET windmill?

It’s a shame that this back-and-forth chest thumping always happens, but I suppose that’s just the nature of the game. Realistically, no server is going to have precisely matched numbers and off-peak times no matter what eye candy rewards ArenaNet offers as enticement. There’s always going to be winners and consequently losers as well, and its a given with the league system that just about every server out there is putting in enough effort to be “deserving” a win; the end result of that is hard feelings when that win is not attained or appears unobtainable. (For FC this probably further fueled by that narrow loss to DH the other week.)

While SF does have some insane numbers, they appear to have toned it down quite a bit in the weekdays.. at least enough to allow me some room to solo. I’m grateful for that. And personally, I’m just pleased to have seen most of my opponents being respectful when they run me down and not dancing and laughing like raging madmen.

I fought a powerful SF warrior (vox guild I think?) the other day. You had me stuck on the defensive every time we fought and grasping at straws just to stay alive. Most formidable. You made me also realize I have a lot more room for improvement in timing my blocks. Hats off to you.

As for DR, its always a pleasure to tango with you folks. (Which is most often the case as I usually roll in your BL to avoid the 50-man zergs in certain other bls.) I always find the majority of DR players I encounter to be respectful and worthy opponents on the battlefield, always open to a challenge.

P.S.: TBH, maybe I’m just a masochist, but some times I really do miss those good ol’ Glicko Ghetto/Post ghetto tier 8 days. I’m glad they put in new rewards and achievements and such, but that feeling of pressure they create was absent in those days. Back then we fought SF and ET (for a while at least) with just as much a fierce desire to win with no eye candy fancy achievements and reward placements or whatever being dangled on a fishing rod in front of us. Just a simple desire to win fueled by intense rivalries and an always-present desire to escape the gravity of the black hole that was the tier 8 Glicko ratings. Even when we knew our efforts would amount to nothing in that system, we still fought like beasts. (Well aside from that one two-weekish period when our morale and spirit was genuinely broken by the intensity of the grind.. which also happened to SF and ET at some points.)

While I agree some bitterness being expressed so early on might be in poor taste, I’m sure at least some of you SF can understand the frustration that naturally comes when even your solo players trying to flip the odd dolyak or sentry get hunted down by 5-15 people SF hunter kill squads(Believe me last night it was 15 more often than it was a mere 5), the 5-man roamers get hunted down by 25+ after they make enough chaos.. and you get the rest. And this is no exaggeration. Out of 13-ish dolyaks I tried to take down last night, only 2 were successful due what I described, which made me opt out for the night. Even the hardcore WvW players like myself do want to at least work on some of the achievements, or at least feel like they are accomplishing something even if its small and this massive multi-map saturation does make it rather difficult to do just that. But perhaps its just the weekend rush and things may calm down during the weekday, and maybe the unusual dolyak protection was just for the initial wave of keep and tower upgrades SF is doing across the board.

Nevertheless the numbers you folks yielded were dumbfounding, even in comparison to the old tier 8 glicko ghetto weekends.

It’s so strange.. after a week of experimenting non-stop, when I finally start feeling like I’m perfecting my build suddenly all these strong rangers appear.

To the charr ranger with the twilight and that female human ranger I fought tonight: Great fights, that was fun.

I always felt that the biggest problem with the ranger was its inability to “Have its cake AND eat it too” in comparison to other classes when it comes to trait effectiveness. More than any other class, with rangers you will find yourself compromising a major strength of your character in order to justify something else within it. This thread highlights the issue well.

That and the pet’s shameful inability to attack while simultaneously moving/lack of high speed charge-and-stun target lockdown skills on DPS viable pets.

I’m sure the other experienced rangers out there know what I’m talking about. For those that do not know, its that tree creating item that offers regeneration, condi removal and a water field that thieves get from rangers with the “steal” skill.

I feel like the above item should be swapped with an “egg” or “plasma” or something in general that doesn’t offer thieves equipped with the steal skill a water field every 35 seconds or less. The sheer amount of healing they can get out of that with leap combos seems to outheal people in shaman gear (Vit, healing power, condi) and we’re talking about berserker thieves here.

Since it seems we’ll always be at a loss when it comes to pet’s constant problems with hitting strafing targets, at least cut us some slack by not making arguably one of the top 2 most dangerous classes get mass healing when we’re on field. Or alternatively, you could make leaps get diminishing returns when popping water field heals and apply it to all classes.

Adlanaa.6172:

Detharos.3157:

moutzaheadin.4029:

Dear Fc ,

being a former fergusons crossing soldier , I was happy to see we got you guys in a match. If anything else it was to see who was still playing there and have some trips down memory lane.

After 2 short sittings of playing ive found very few of the ole school guys left. What replaced them is even more disturbing. Seems like the whole Olympic track team of runners transferred in. Not only do most run for even fights. They run from outnumbered fights in there favor..

I normally make a video or two with some music that fits the mood. But.. wow all I have clips of is people running from me.

What’s going on here ?

I even keep an eye out for this |HP| guild as they show screenshots of slaughtering people 12v2.. I find a few of them.. they run too… Wtf?!

Please .. don’t let the week end like it has started people of Fc. I would hate to have my last memory of my former server as chickenkitten pvpers.

I don’t even know if I put up my Obs song of the day video.. chasing people into towers and into the water isn’t a fun watch..

That is all.

Ty

I ran solo from 4-5 angry XOXO members 2 days back and lived. I hope that didn’t contribute to any of this frustration. . I just wanted to admire the.. assets.. of that mesmer you had running around in a bikini top, but you folks wouldn’t stand for it.
Anyways no offense with my running, but I just hate watching 4-5 people or more melt away a single target helplessly with a bunch of brainless CC spam as if it were skill of any kind.

So anyways…. the bikini XOXO mesmer. And Oh, and that adorable asura warrior. Had the pleasure of fighting the two of them mano a mano. Talented players right there. Especially the mesmer. Next time I will be more careful with my movements so I don’t get caught with my pants down when you pop those clones on me though.

Bikini top? Was it orange and black, or was this perhaps the day that I decided to run around without gear on?

Just so there isn’t confusion about this, when we roam in a group it’s not because we’re angry, we just all have fun playing together, and ultimately we’re out to have fun. Well, at least I like playing with them because they’re fun. They probably just hang out with me because boobs + someone to make fun of easily.

Orange I think? Not sure.

As for the roaming thing, I meant no disrespect. It’s not like I think everyone should run solo.. that would be very awkward. Being chased with death at my tail is actually rather fun. If you have a cool group with lots of fun and craziness in TS, you SHOULD run with them.

Anyways, much love for you folks. Sorry for the late reply, but I’ve been too busy with work lately.

And as for the ranger comments by others.. ouch, just ouch.

moutzaheadin.4029:

Dear Fc ,

being a former fergusons crossing soldier , I was happy to see we got you guys in a match. If anything else it was to see who was still playing there and have some trips down memory lane.

After 2 short sittings of playing ive found very few of the ole school guys left. What replaced them is even more disturbing. Seems like the whole Olympic track team of runners transferred in. Not only do most run for even fights. They run from outnumbered fights in there favor..

I normally make a video or two with some music that fits the mood. But.. wow all I have clips of is people running from me.

What’s going on here ?

I even keep an eye out for this |HP| guild as they show screenshots of slaughtering people 12v2.. I find a few of them.. they run too… Wtf?!

Please .. don’t let the week end like it has started people of Fc. I would hate to have my last memory of my former server as chickenkitten pvpers.

I don’t even know if I put up my Obs song of the day video.. chasing people into towers and into the water isn’t a fun watch..

That is all.

Ty

I ran solo from 4-5 angry XOXO members 2 days back and lived. I hope that didn’t contribute to any of this frustration. . I just wanted to admire the.. assets.. of that mesmer you had running around in a bikini top, but you folks wouldn’t stand for it.
Anyways no offense with my running, but I just hate watching 4-5 people or more melt away a single target helplessly with a bunch of brainless CC spam as if it were skill of any kind.

So anyways…. the bikini XOXO mesmer. And Oh, and that adorable asura warrior. Had the pleasure of fighting the two of them mano a mano. Talented players right there. Especially the mesmer. Next time I will be more careful with my movements so I don’t get caught with my pants down when you pop those clones on me though.

Not to bump an old thread, but I totally agree with any notion of Jeknar joining us.

It should happen.

It’s been too long, ET! Posting kind of late but whatever. You folks do seem to have really improved in all fronts. The few roaming experiences I had(very few since I’m not on much lately) were spectacular fights to the death.

I will always remember those brutal days of Sorrow’s Furnace domination and the positive relationships all three of our servers built through that tough period. Cheers to all the members who do still remember that time with a smile. Despite the hardship I consider it a proud chapter in the history of both our servers.

As for Devona’s Rest, it’s always a pleasure to cross swords with you swell folks as well. The skill and persistence of many of your players I met in the battlefield could put a smile on anyone’s face.

All… the feels. Love you folks. Cheers and good luck to everyone!

:D

Avatar of Belle.9623:

Invading your thread to ask, did y’all have fun this week?

Disclaimer: Read none of the other posts.

Didn’t play too much this week but when I did I had quite a few great duels, helped a few great battles(albeit small ones). Wasn’t on much, but when I was and found active fights, it was a lot of fun. Enjoyable week.

As for the forums, same old, same old. Some guild boasts, a few people rage and next thing you know everyone’s firing their ten-thousand word post launchers in order to cover every conceivable angle of the same exhausted topic.

It’s more fun somehow when its HoD causing the kittenstorms.

gotem.5284:

Detharos.3157:

Had a fun time solo roaming(running my kitten off ) in AR BL tonight. Was a pretty hectic time until I was lucky enough to run into Silent being his awesome self in his usual place.

There was a pretty crazy strong DR ele scout I fought at some point, he didn’t spike me. Dunno who you are, but you sir earned your self a new fan with that absurdly good balance of damage/tankability. Certainly one of the most imposing eles I’ve fought so far.

What is your spec? Pretty new to Ranger and I’ve been messing around with roaming specs and from your SS haven’t tried yours (judging by utility skills you’re using). I’m pretty bored of running traps and spirit builds.

In a nutshell its a full melee 0/0/0/30/20/20 build with full exotic shaman gear. (Vitality/condition/healing power). Weaps are GS/SD with hydromancy sigils (the spare on the s/d is optional, I put bleed duration on it) and sanctuary runes on the armor. (Well, I’m still 2 runes short of the full set >_<).

The premise was to maximize tankiness, escape capability and accentuate the usefulness and damage output of the pet. Of course when they nerfed the pet swap quickness it took a big hit to damage, but overall its a fun build. It does have its weaknesses though, and over the last 3 months I’ve run into at least 5-10 people I feel I have 0% chance of winning against no matter how hard I fight.

Had a fun time solo roaming(running my kitten off ) in AR BL tonight. Was a pretty hectic time until I was lucky enough to run into Silent being his awesome self in his usual place.

There was a pretty crazy strong DR ele scout I fought at some point, he didn’t spike me. Dunno who you are, but you sir earned your self a new fan with that absurdly good balance of damage/tankability. Certainly one of the most imposing eles I’ve fought so far.

Funny to be reading jabs and anger directed at FC in this thread about double teaming or whatever. It’s a tier 8 server, there’s an overall massive difference in coverage and numbers consistency between FC and tier 6/5 servers. When FC members complained constantly in the glicko ghetto days, many from the higher tiers and servers such as yours frequently suggested that we team up with ET to survive SF (which we did at times and still it was never enough). When such servers roll over lower ranked servers they complain how its a mismatch and there’s no challenge in it. Yet, when the 2 vs 1 tactic with two “inferior” servers teaming up actually provide the challenge you so desperately long for you will call foul? Again this is FC we’re talking about, one of the three weakest servers of all of North America.

I think the anger is mostly stemming from the fact that Darkhaven is running with a projected rating loss of -98.908 this week. While the frustration is understandable, I feel Ferguson’s Crossing and Isle of Janthir are the wrong targets of your anger. In that case, your issue is with the Glicko2 projecting a level of domination that is unrealistic in the circumstance. That and the roll, which was bad for us as well.

I wonder what level AR will stabilize when the free-fall fluctuations are past and the player-base presumably re-motivates and re-organizes. (Again I haven’t had much chance to get on this week so I’m going by pure assumption that it hasn’t yet due to the volatile nature of free-fall and its effect on morale and all that.)

Sororita.3465:

Detharos.3157:

Yeah, but with how well things were going the past weeks I thought FC and GoM were nearing the stage where we were ready to start doing Cyb0rZ. It’d be a shame to suffer a set-back!

NO! WE WILL NEVER BE THAT!

You have big bro and twin bro and we HAVE NSP AND BIRD MIST! WE SHALL NEVER BE SEPARATED!

We can make this work. The more the merrier, they do say!

Sororita.3465:

Detharos.3157

Its just easier to say FC when responding, i wouldn’t take offense to it, which it seems you dont! so have a nice day! =D

Yeah, but with how well things were going the past weeks I thought FC and GoM were nearing the stage where we were ready to start doing Cyb0rZ. It’d be a shame to suffer a set-back!

Unfortunately I haven’t had any real opportunity to get on this week and see first hand the dynamics of this match-up for any length of time. However, I want to remind GoM thakittens not like 1-2 forum voices represent all of FC. With those dropping “QQ more FC”/“U mad FC” style posts I point out to you that when the majority of complaints are coming from the same 2-3 forum names, its not like all of Ferguson’s Crossing is whining that you need to throw in the entire server with them.

The same FC members I see complaining in this thread about arrow carts and numbers whine about it and virtually every match-up thread we’ve had for the past 2 months. I’d of assumed you despite being from an opponent server would of recognized their forum names by now, and learned not to take them too seriously.

If we’re all honest, I’m sure we can admit that it’s actually rather impressive however how well FC, the 23 ranked server is doing against a soon to be rank 18 server and an experienced player base like Anvil Rock (despite their recent loss in numbers).

ET has also been proving itself very competent in all of its match-ups too, so kudos to them as well.

Time zone, numbers and arrow carts aren’t everything. The vigor and zeal a server brings to its match ups and every single battle has to be worthy of some note.

Besides, GoM is beastly strong.

GoM, I’ve gotta object to how quiet the thread was last week. So this week..

MORE GIFS! MORE GIFS! MORE GIFS!

Whoever isn’t using gifs gets a 50 rating minus, because you didn’t know what the kitten to do!

Had fun at the fight night. Went maybe 50/50 or close to it for wins and losses, but the losses are more valuable for learning than the wins anyways.

Always a pleasure to see the talent those [EDGE] folks bring to the table. Everyone was phenomenal, but they stood out in particular in terms of opponents tonight.

I would like to keep our current server a secret as to not spread rumors as to what our guild is and reasons for leaving our EU server. Will all be made clear once we join an NA server!

For some reason I got a mental image like this:

A salesman looking to pick up some funding walks into an Investor’s meeting between all the major Investing corporations(BG/SoR/JQ/TC, etc) and blows everyone’s socks off with this story of how they have this revolutionary cleaning robot that can be cheaply mass produced that’s gonna explode all over North America. This is a serious investment opportunity!

“Every home will want this product! It’s gonna pull revenue in the hundred billions! You can fund this massive wave today! We are looking for a mere $200, 000 loan to establish production facilities!”

The big wigs in black suits from the corporations all smile with excitement. They are almost sold on this revolutionary new product. Just as they’re getting ready to bid for percentages of the company, one asks:

“Can you show us this robot vacuum?”

And the salesman says: “I left in the workshop. It’s not here.”

Being from tier 8 I may not have much place in this thread, but I’m glad I hit it up. Lanimal’s post on page 2 was pure gold. Pretty sure he(or she) hit the nail on the head with it.

Regarding ratings specifically, (and I namely address this to those who have been saying things like “Consider yourself winning if you are gaining +20-40 rating, even if you are losing in PPT and score”) I ask: What benefit is there to gaining ratings for a weaker server? How is that a win? (I ask this because some have been actually equating rating gains to winning now) What benefit does a server like Ferguson’s Crossing or Eredon Terrace gain from going up to an eventual 950-ish points peak (or higher if possible)? Doesn’t more rating actually increase the odds that they will enter a matchup with a server more than a tier above them like IoJ, Darkhaven etc, and in that case actually become detrimental? Fight for more rating so you have the greater probability of being matched with servers that can spawn camp you in multiple maps? That makes sense. >_>

And what motivation is there in rating points for those who spend most time in-game? What about the people who don’t hit mos millennium every 20 minutes? People in game don’t see rating points, they see score, PPT, objectives held. But even if they did see ratings, is there even a real reason for weak servers to push for higher ratings anyways?

DeadlySynz.3471:

There is a way they could balance it long term but it would take ending WvW as we know it.

Basically turn it into faction based. There are 3 factions in the game, there are also already 3 borderlands so the numbers work. Players log on, decide they want to do some FvF, see the different maps, see the amount of players on each map from each faction, and choose accordingly. If one map fills up, players can create an additional tier for that particular map.. rinse and repeat.

Basically it will almost always be balanced, because players will in fact be able to see how many are sided with each faction at any time on any given map.

You’d eliminate the ques, and more than likely eliminate skill lag, unless you knowingly jump into a map that’s maxed out. Then in that case it’s the players own fault lol.

New rewards system could be put in place, different structures and/or siege could be implemented to reflect each faction. As I said, WvW would end as we know it, though the actual game play would remain the same.

I could see that working. I said its only the current system that’s impossible to balance, however a completely new system would be a different story. Faction vs Faction vs Faction sounds alright.

I also think a system overhaul would be great if it were accompanied alongside an whole array of improvements, namely an entire content expansion, and while that would naturally mean new PvE content it could include maybe a new WvWvW map, or changes to current maps. (Wouldn’t it be cool if Red/Green/Blue all had different border maps with different themes/environments?) , new gem store options (especially lots of new fashion items for customization purposes.)

[ ** The reason for my mentioning this, is overall I worry for the lifespan of Guild Wars 2. New content will be necessary at some point to attract new players(and consequently revenue to fund new changes). ArenaNet would do well to consider the the potential of the gem shop. If you look at a lot of free to play games, the one that didn’t completely suck, they could pull in a lot of $ for the company just by putting some stat-less fashion to overlap their gear into their cash shops, while simultaneously satisfying the players. (Many of which in the battle to be unique were willing to purchase such things. I feel that would cause focus ArenaNet’s marketing focus shift from the necessity of “one time customers” more to “continued customers”. Overall that guarantees better customer service, consistent revenue and consequently as a result new content since every bit of new content does mean there are wages to be paid. ]

So my thoughts are that the players choice of server actually means too much, and that’s why we have such fluctuations and imbalances. When you have a PvP system like WvWvW (Yes, let’s get past the SPvP thing, players killing players in any environment regardless of objective or AI mob presence is a player vs player system, WvWvW is one also.) With the current system producing balanced match-ups is neigh impossible.

There are other factors to consider as well.

1)Ever decreasing WvW population. Let’s be honest, there’s gonna be less and less “new blood” available to work with. The boom this coming Christmas is gonna be smaller than the last and so-on. Servers that don’t already have tier 1 numbers are NEVER EVER going to grow to numbers to challenge those servers even if those tier 1 servers are “full”.

2) Most of us players actually have no interest in true balance. Think about it. WvWvW players will continue to stack servers: We saw this when free transfers were opened to the bottom servers. 99% of transfers to ET and FC were just temporary; the vast majority if not all of the permanent, dedicated players; the ones that really make a difference; transferred instead to the tier 7+ servers that were available for free during that period. This tells us that for whatever reasons (Most likely wanting to avoid coverage gaps and guarantee more consistently good matchups) players when given the choice will choose to move to a stronger server rather than a weaker server(especially where strength is determined above all by numbers and hourly coverage), and this is observed almost 100% of the time. The moment a large amount of slots open up in one of the top-tier servers, the “new blood” of hard core WvW players, if there are any are simply going to head there. Suppose we had 1000 dedicated WvWvW players looking to move, and free transfers were opened once again, right now to ALL servers. What percentage do you honestly think will move to servers tier 4 and below? My guess is maybe 10% tops.

The reality is, where players often go into WvWvW craving things like large numbers of kills, massive battles, not having to work hard to deal with some coverage weakness, recognition and pride purposes(Both individually and on the team/commander/guild level), and all that.. 90% of that leads people instinctively straight to tier 3+.