Guild Wars 2

So I bought a cheap non-berserker sword and dagger just to test this out more physically(planning to berserker exotic sword and dagger by the end of tonight.), and tweaked some things with the build to raise a little extra survivability. (Namely I added the trait where you stealth when stunned/knocked down/etc.)

I started rolling with siamoth and jaguar. If I saw a person/group coming, I’d use the siamoths f2 and hopefully get a feather (Plasma is still extremely good also) and swap to the jaguar before combat. With the feathers, I’d have both my jaguar and myself stealth and typically insta-kill an unlucky target much in a manner like thieves do.

I did this a few times to a group of 5+, and here was where I really got to put the evasion spam to the test, and I must say for those 5 vs 1 situations when you do find yourself in them, the sword dagger is a godsend. Often times when played right, even with full 80s you have a good chance to take one or two down with you, or to take one out and escape easily but even if you don’t you can buy insane amounts of time as you have 4 nearly spammable weapon evasive attacks between the s/d and the shortbow, throw in your basic rolls with the protection on roll trait and I found that often times it would take 5-7+ people upwards of 3-4 minutes to kill me, and that’s with no toughness or vitality in my build at all, pure berserker armor and trinkets.

To be honest, I’m a long way from mastering it and I require more practice with this set up and testing in general with different pets as well but this has lead me to believe that the ranger has untapped potential in this weapon set up. The hard thing about the s/d is that it seems you have to disable auto attack otherwise its auto attack sequences that seem to not allow movement during attack motion will deny a lot of your rolls. With it disabled you should get full control though.

The other thing to keep in mind is changing the “target next” key and at least assigning and using a “target nearest” key, and disabling the option for skills to automatically pick up targets. (Ie. when you press the 1 key and a target is selected and attack is launched simultaneously.)

The reason for this setting is that, when you use hornet sting to leap backwards, you can hit the esc key and very quickly reverse your ranger’s direction and then use the forward leap in the direction OPPOSITE your enemies to create an even larger distance, and then proceed to swap the the short bow and take advantage of your ranged attacks/heal quickly while you are out of their range, etc.

This sounds complicated, and it still feels weird trying to pull it off, but it is indeed very executable in the middle of a fight with a good fps rate(something I tend to lack having maybe 15-20 on min graphics) and practice.

The end result is that you can use hornet sting and its combo leap to send you in a single direction with what I think are even greater distances that that created by lightning reflexes. Or of course you can use the second leap to head straight into the enemies if that’s your thing. Between the number 2, number 3, and number 4 you can time your evades right and avoid a whole lot of major attacks if you know your enemy classes well, and timing it right you can find yourself creating enough distance to break combat even (ESPECIALLY if you include lightning reflexes and do the sword number 2- target remove-face opposite direction leap) or to at least buy enough time to have a timely pet swap, do it right with the siamoth and you can possibly get another plasma/feather to aid in escape/return to fight your opponents.

Of course the other thing to keep in mind is to pick your targets, and be aware of your surroundings. If you notice your foes are too distracted and for some reason not healing their allies, pick a weak target and beat them to within an inch of a loot bag and leave them in low downed state so that while you fight the other targets, you can rally off them if need be. Likewise when out in WvW, you can purposefully pull the PvE mobs into your fight depending on where it takes place and use them to rally I think also.

On another note, Every so often you encounter a mesmer or thief out there who has stat builds and skills builds based entirely on not acquiring kills, but wasting time and distracting zergs, those people with tanky gear set ups spamming as much stealth and evasion/temporary invulnerable attacks who can make entire groups of 10-15+ takes 5 minutes chasing them all over the place. I’m going to theorize that using this weapon set up on the ranger with all the maximum possible evasion/stunbreak utilities (Ie. Signet of the hunt for speed, and signet of renewal + lightning reflexes) with a tanky built ranger you MAY be able to accomplish very similar things. Especially if you include that one trait to grant vigor on enemy crits for the extra protection-providing rolls.

TheRatofFilth.3528:

DO MY EYES DECEIVE ME? Did I really spend 60$ to get back on here after my temp ban….YES I DID. But now I have a toon on ET as well. Just want to thank all those that that made this possible can’t wait to see my fellow ET’rs in WvW..and hope our secrets don’t slip. (even though ban was for 1 day I just couldn’t wait)

TheRatofFilth.3528:

Never Underestimate ET we will come for you SF

We’re back, and looking fly baby!

T’was an awesome reset night as usual. We of [WZ] returned full force tonight and with our friends and fellows of the newly formed Ferguson Alliance in toe we had a great time battling it out with SF and ET tonight and wiping whatever dared step foot in our borderlands during prime time. Shout-out for CoSA; the fights we had between the bay and respective camp in SF BL were particularly fun.

Apologies for poor quality screenshots, lagg was so super-mega bad today for some reason that I even opted to go into subsample to boost fps. :/

Wishing the Fergs night crew best of luck with the trials that await you while we all catch some z’s.

Lopsang.2763:

I recently just finished my ranger, he’s currently:

• Full exotic berserker armor
• Full exotic berserker trinkets
• 6/6 Runes of the Scholar
• 30 marks, 30 skirm, 10 survival
• Exotic berserker longbow w/ superior sigil of accuracy
• Exotic berserker shortbow w/ superior sigil of strength

So far I’m really digging this setup. Yes a stiff wind will kill you, but your long range domination is ridiculous. Just last night my auto attack on the longbow crit for 4500 (and that was without the 10% crit damage food). I think it was vs an upleveled player, but even still I was pretty impressed. Rapid fire routinely hits for 9k-12k. I played with the shortbow a bit as well, and combined with the sigil of strength I hit 25 stacks of might extremely fast. I’m still feeling the class out but it’s been a lot of fun thus far.

I’m using the signet of renewal + of the hunt, quickening zephyr, and rampage as one

All my builds in the past were very similar to yours same with the full bersker exotics, although with superior runes of the ranger. I can say it worked amazingly well for me as just rolling as a part of the group in WvW. Quite a while ago my guild leader made me go commander and I found myself getting focused on a lot more than previously and found it more beneficial to die less often due to the leading, hence the desire to put a little more survivability and escape capability in my build to deal with the extra attention. That said, I think as you alluded to builds with longbow and shortbow are great, especially when you’re in rank with a good force. From my pre-commander experiences I think you will find it all together enjoyable and effective.

I’ve gotta say on an off-topic tangent though, its a shame the changes they applied to the “guard” skill. While I agree that pets shouldn’t be climbing walls, organized ranger groups were an amazing defense utility when 5+ rangers would use “Guard” to send their jaguars from a wall to the ground below and sending a stealth pet bomb on catas in those situations where a big zerg will just build up catas on a tower or keep and plop a 30-50 person meatwall to protect them. IMO, rangers were one of the few classes that could break those sieges from an outmanned team with little risk to themselves, and pets not being stuck at an altitude made a lot of sense as what would there be to stop them from jumping off a wall and attacking a foe when commanded? A real shame that we won’t be able to pull that off now. :/

neverborne.4736:

Signet of the hunt + 30% pet speed buff is largely redundant as far as I can tell.

Ah, they don’t stack? I’ll remove it in that case.

Here’s a link of roughly what I’m planning, might change some here and there. Of course I’m open to critique and suggestions.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQBYgopgTWi9wQHiRPFxS9A

Hey folks, I’m curious as to what builds other glass cannon rangers out there are rolling with. This is for the hectic environment that is WvWvW specifically.

After considering closely a lack of evasion/elusiveness to justify a high damage build with a longbow/shortbow combo lately I’ve been planning on dropping the longbow completely outside times where they AoE is needed and opting for a shortbow/sword-dagger set-up to enable much more evasive/escape techniques to accommodate for the need of glass cannon builds to be “harder to grasp” for our foes. (The sword-dagger would give access to 3 extra evades when timed properly, bringing the total of weapon evades available to 4 with the shortbow thrown in.)

Traditionally I had rolled with 30 Marks, 30 Skirmishing/ 10 survival trait builds in the past, but now I’m gunning more for a 30 skirmishing/20 Wilderness Survival/20 beast mastery trait build, I’ll include a trait calculator link in a bit for the more fine details.

Gear: Naturally as I already highlighted in the thread name, the gear I use and plan to continue using is full berserker exotic. Right now for runes I have full superior runes of the ranger. As for sigils, I have a life leech on the shortbow. Unfortunately at this time I don’t have an exotic sword or dagger, gotta get to work on that. Not sure what sigils I will put on them yet, but I’m thinking about the might on crit sigil, as well life stealing, fire and air sigils.

Pets: The 30% increased pet speed and 30% more pet damage on critical traits will be active. Obviously what pets are used is a very situational thing since I always have moas out when I’m on static defense on a wall, etc. But in general on foot in the field, I roll with Lynx/Jaguar, Dual canines of various types for knockdown lock, namely Hyena and wolf or hyena/Drakehound. Occasionally I use combinations of feline and canine. I also often carry around a siamoth, at least briefly for the plasma buffs and the 2/3 chance of getting a stealth pick up. Also have considered rolling more with spiders for the immobilize spam.

Skills: I’ve almost always rolled with Signet of the Hunt (Increased Speed passive), Signet of Renewal for condition removal and stun break, and Quickening Zephyr. (Brought down to a 48 second cooldown from traits.) I’ve thought of fitting in lightning reflexes, I’m well aware of how good it is but have traditionally had trouble doing so due to not investing in the traits to send conditions to my pet.

Does anybody else there have experience with similar builds, particular those including sword-dagger/shortbow and more specifically some videos to accompany it of competent, skillful ranger gameplay with the builds especially where timing in the sword-dagger-roll evades are concerned. (Would be extra nice with footage of battles with every other class contained, especially with some against very skilled mesmers/thieves rolling max stealth/evasion builds and how to counter them effectively where possible.)

Isaac.6041:

This has been done already. Look what happened to Kaineng.

Not necessarily. Eredon Terrace and Ferguson’s Crossing are tier 8 servers with currently, tier 8 WvW populations.

Kaineng had a tier 5 population before WM and all those transfers jumped to it, and was dominating even harder than Sorrow’s Furnace does, and would of eventually advanced to tier 5 to meet DR again. (Kain and DR throughout history were always closely matched like that.)

In other words, all those transfers to Kain did was reinforce a tier 5 server to even higher levels and accelerate its ascension from the tier 8 gap. The difference with FC and ET is, we’re not stuck in this hole with tier 5 populations. Both FC and ET have tier 8 populations at the moment in WvW, while Sorrow’s Furnace gravitates between being a tier 7 or tier 6 server depending on how well its doing, whether its bored or not, presence of PvE content hurting its showings, etc. So basically, an influx of transfers to FC or ET is not likely to drastically break tier 8, or cause a tier breaking ascension to tier 5+ like what happened with some other servers that already possessed populations surpassing the tier 8 standard. You can make a difference by transferring here without ruining it for everyone else in the server’s way, and that’s the difference from the other servers that ascended out of tier 8.

The big difference with true tier 8 servers that servers in tier 6 and up don’t really share (And make no mistake Kaineng and Devona’s Rest were NOT tier 8 populations, they were stuck in the rating gap here for months with tier 5 showings.) our numbers and time zone coverage are comparatively smaller to tier 6 and up servers. (I don’t believe for a minute that there is a drastic difference between true tier 7 servers when our morale is high though I daresay when DR and Kain were still here, FC had consistent tier 7 numbers showing up in WvW, and some extremely competent commanders who have since left the servers due to the ratings problem.)

Now, as for the transfer topic, both ET and FC are great destinations despite the rating problems. They have consistent WvW showings, only dropping significantly in times of broken morale, and usually recover from those phases within one-two weeks. Neither server even needs wins to sustain its population and keep them from transferring, something which can’t be said for many of the higher tiered servers. Despite the current disparity ET and FC will probably continue with the same effort for months on end, but of course we desire a more balanced, evenly split match-up with three servers of a similar WvW population and coverage. The problem with SF is that in its prime high-morale periods it yields arguably tier 6 numbers and timezone coverage, although its numbers have admittedly been dropping now that people there are coming to understand the rating problem they bare with Glicko2.

With some transfers, it may be possible for FC and ET to start pushing and even rival SF if the numbers are right. Namely with A LOT more coverage in that 12:00 PM-3:30 AM EST period where SF tends to cap a lot of undefended/poorly defended structures due to our lack of coverage. There were times where FC was able to go mano-a-mano with SF during NA prime time, but with some decreases in that period since due to one major guild abandoning and a few people transferring for other tiers due to the Glicko2 problems being less prevalent higher up, we could use some more NA coverage as well. I’m sure similar things can be said of ET.

Remember, tiers don’t matter in the long run, balanced match-ups do. There’s no shame in being in tier 8 we’re not as rich in WvW showings as some other servers, however we are NOT PvE carebears either. What we do desire closer, more exciting matches in this tier like those seen in tier 6 in previous weeks. And if transfers is a good means to that end, then so be it. However, people have to be willing to transfer to red and blue team servers, whatever the tier, if they truly want to claim that they prefer balanced match-ups. Have some guts and transfer to ET or FC, or servers like them in higher tiers. If people really want to enjoy a balanced match-up, so much so that they even whine in forums when they are bored of dominating, then why is it so commonly a first impulse of these same people to transfer to a green-team consistently winning rising star the moment their server meets a challenge?

Make the right choice. If anyone REALLY DOES want hardcore fights, no queues making for boring wait times, constant WvW action during server prime times, then give FC or ET a hit and stop riding the coattails of servers where you’re a non-factor to begin with. Make an investment somewhere you had not thought to look!

That was a fun change of pace. We decided to have some kill farming fun with SF in ET BL and followed it up with some typical [WZ] craziness in the form of a tonic parade.

Fun times, although its shocking how many people think its ok to have baby quaggan on the menu! [TFoR] was to be expected, but The Hungry Council of Canada! Quaggan poaching is supposed to be outlawed here! Shame on you my countrymen!

Cheers to all the SF and ET who had fun with our little quaggan parade, although we probably had more fun with it than you guys did somewhere between everyone on teamspeak making squeaky high-pitched voices and saying: “Quaggan, FooOOOooo!” and getting knocked flying by the box o’ fun.

Next time we’ll try to bring 30 baby quaggans. Safety in numbers!

CHIPS.6018:

Detharos.3157:

CHIPS.6018:

Detharos.3157:

Mayoken.9851:

Define bandwagoners.

Everything that selected “Kaineng” in home server list and clicked the “Transfer” button during and after its final two weeks in tier 8.

Kaineng was tier 5 material due to the efforts of tons of individuals and of major guilds like SoS, CnB, KAIN I think also, and others I can’t remember.

I daresay Kain would of comfortably advanced to tier 5 long before War Machine overshown its original denizens efforts, considering that the screenshot below is what things looked like BEFORE the bandwagon jumped.

Not to sound like a jerkward, but I’m gonna say this because I like Kaineng’s members who stuck it out through DR. See that screenshot below? Can you point out the [WM], or [Re] or whatever tags came to be in the periods after that?

Kain was destined to move up long before those goofballs all hopped to it, yet all the credit was given to War Machine. Once again, just going to say the entire time taking Devona’s Rests zergs on head on, Kaineng was tier 5 material and would of ended up there eventually. That credit for its moving out of tier 8 was given to War Machine disgusts me.

As a member of Ferguson’s Crossing, I remember some great things of Kaineng long before that period of transfers. The only thing in particular I remember about War Machine was how they liked to constantly cap the bay by blinking mesmers through the underwater wall in Bay, and at times failed miserably and got caught doing it. (See second screenshot.) The portal bombing tactics they brought with them was nothing new and epic for tier 8 either, I’m pretty sure I remember [PRO] and some other Devona’s Rest groups beginning to use them while they were still here.

In other words, anyone who thinks that Kaineng moved out of tier 8 only because of [WM] is seriously overrating War Machine. Kaineng would of crushed tier 7 and tier 6 regardless the moment it broke the messed up rating gap that plagued the tier.

Many other servers got transfers. JQ, SoR, BG, Mag, FA. All of them got tons of transfers. Transfers are fair game. If you view bandwagons as a sin of wvw, well too bad that’s part of the game. Other servers got better PR skills than your server. Other servers are willing to pay people to come over. etc. Diplomacy is part of wvw. It is what it is.

The next section are pure toxic and poison that tries to get our guilds to hate each other. I LOL at your attempt. Sorry but at the moment the guilds of Kaineng loves each other and are working on further improving coordination.

I don’t view it as a sin, my complaint is how little credit old Kaineng gets for its massive efforts it put in week through week before all those guilds and individuals transferred to it in its last two weeks of tier 8 domination.

I’m not even from Kaineng, but even I can’t help be frustrated when every other server hails War Machine as if it were some heroic messiah who brought Kaineng out of the tier 8 pit into a great match up in tier 2. Because the reality is, War Machine made little difference in that Kaineng would of advanced without it and eventually found balanced, competitive match ups somewhere between tier 6 and 5 depending on how often tier 4 servers fall into 5. In the very least it would of had a grand rematch with Devona’s Rest.

You are getting it all wrong. No guild is taking credit for anything. In fact we are emphasising on how important PUGs are to our wvw efforts. We are doing everything we can to train and encourage PUGs to stay and fight, no matter how tough things get.

What I was trying to indicate was not that transfers were “taking credit”, rather that they were “getting credit”. In other words, those adversaries in tier 7, 6 and 5 who witnessed the awesome power and only were left saying: “Lol War Machine carried them.” did an injustice to Kain, even if it couldn’t be helped that they would think that.

In the very least, I had to give a shout-out for those old timers of Kain who we had the pleasure of fighting against.

CHIPS.6018:

Detharos.3157:

Mayoken.9851:

Define bandwagoners.

Everything that selected “Kaineng” in home server list and clicked the “Transfer” button during and after its final two weeks in tier 8.

Kaineng was tier 5 material due to the efforts of tons of individuals and of major guilds like SoS, CnB, KAIN I think also, and others I can’t remember.

I daresay Kain would of comfortably advanced to tier 5 long before War Machine overshown its original denizens efforts, considering that the screenshot below is what things looked like BEFORE the bandwagon jumped.

Not to sound like a jerkward, but I’m gonna say this because I like Kaineng’s members who stuck it out through DR. See that screenshot below? Can you point out the [WM], or [Re] or whatever tags came to be in the periods after that?

Kain was destined to move up long before those goofballs all hopped to it, yet all the credit was given to War Machine. Once again, just going to say the entire time taking Devona’s Rests zergs on head on, Kaineng was tier 5 material and would of ended up there eventually. That credit for its moving out of tier 8 was given to War Machine disgusts me.

As a member of Ferguson’s Crossing, I remember some great things of Kaineng long before that period of transfers. The only thing in particular I remember about War Machine was how they liked to constantly cap the bay by blinking mesmers through the underwater wall in Bay, and at times failed miserably and got caught doing it. (See second screenshot.) The portal bombing tactics they brought with them was nothing new and epic for tier 8 either, I’m pretty sure I remember [PRO] and some other Devona’s Rest groups beginning to use them while they were still here.

In other words, anyone who thinks that Kaineng moved out of tier 8 only because of [WM] is seriously overrating War Machine. Kaineng would of crushed tier 7 and tier 6 regardless the moment it broke the messed up rating gap that plagued the tier.

Many other servers got transfers. JQ, SoR, BG, Mag, FA. All of them got tons of transfers. Transfers are fair game. If you view bandwagons as a sin of wvw, well too bad that’s part of the game. Other servers got better PR skills than your server. Other servers are willing to pay people to come over. etc. Diplomacy is part of wvw. It is what it is.

The next section are pure toxic and poison that tries to get our guilds to hate each other. I LOL at your attempt. Sorry but at the moment the guilds of Kaineng loves each other and are working on further improving coordination.

I don’t view it as a sin, my complaint is how little credit old Kaineng gets for its massive efforts it put in week through week before all those guilds and individuals transferred to it in its last two weeks of tier 8 domination.

I’m not even from Kaineng, but even I can’t help be frustrated when every other server hails War Machine as if it were some heroic messiah who brought Kaineng out of the tier 8 pit into a great match up in tier 2. Because the reality is, War Machine made little difference in that Kaineng would of advanced without it and eventually found balanced, competitive match ups somewhere between tier 6 and 5 depending on how often tier 4 servers fall into 5. In the very least it would of had a grand rematch with Devona’s Rest. I’m sorry if I gave the wrong impression, I’m not saying [SoS], [KAIN], [CnB] and the countless guilds and individuals who made it infamous here in tier 8 should start calling WM and the others that moved scumbags. I’m saying that it should be publicly acknowledged that while these guilds helped provide “muscles”, the incredibly strong skeletal structure already in play was what made it a great server, and those people deserve more of a pat on the back than they got.

By all means, get along well and dance with ponies and flowers, or whatever. But more people should pay due respect to those old legends of Kaineng who made it a viable WvW home before 1500 + transferred to it within the span of two weeks, and just how hard they fought down in tier 8.

Mayoken.9851:

Define bandwagoners.

Everything that selected “Kaineng” in home server list and clicked the “Transfer” button during and after its final two weeks in tier 8.

Kaineng was tier 5 material due to the efforts of tons of individuals and of major guilds like SoS, CnB, KAIN I think also, and others I can’t remember.

I daresay Kain would of comfortably advanced to tier 5 long before War Machine overshown its original denizens efforts, considering that the screenshot below is what things looked like BEFORE the bandwagon jumped.

Not to sound like a jerkward, but I’m gonna say this because I like Kaineng’s members who stuck it out through DR. See that screenshot below? Can you point out the [WM], or [Re] or whatever tags came to be in the periods after that?

Kain was destined to move up long before those goofballs all hopped to it, yet all the credit was given to War Machine. Once again, just going to say the entire time taking Devona’s Rests zergs on head on, Kaineng was tier 5 material and would of ended up there eventually. That credit for its moving out of tier 8 was given to War Machine disgusts me.

As a member of Ferguson’s Crossing, I remember some great things of Kaineng long before that period of transfers. The only thing in particular I remember about War Machine was how they liked to constantly cap the bay by blinking mesmers through the underwater wall in Bay, and at times failed miserably and got caught doing it. (See second screenshot.) The portal bombing tactics they brought with them was nothing new and epic for tier 8 either, I’m pretty sure I remember [PRO] and some other Devona’s Rest groups beginning to use them while they were still here.

In other words, anyone who thinks that Kaineng moved out of tier 8 only because of [WM] is seriously overrating War Machine. Kaineng would of crushed tier 7 and tier 6 regardless the moment it broke the messed up rating gap that plagued the tier.

Also as a final note, from now on when I post a giant text wall, I’m going to do my best to add in a TLDR version, indicated by bold for a quick summary of what follows.

Also, if you want an example of a great Eredon Terrace political figure, take SniffyCube. He has not only fought for Eredon Terrace but Ferguson’s Crossing and Sorrow’s Furnace as well. Despite the fact that some on his server may not like him for apparently taking a break or whatever it was, he was fighting to balance things in the best way possible: on the forums taking it to ArenaNet himself. He’s tried constantly to make our concerns heard, he’s even proposed having our WvW communities merge into one of the two servers to make a more viable force, something I would love to do were it possible without losing people. He’s just in general a great and reasonable guy, and when have you ever seen him make a post like Darxio’s or that other fellow? I even find my own character lacking in comparison to his, and admire his efforts.

If anyone on Eredon Terrace is looking for a good role model of positive and valuable leadership, take SniffyCube’s example, and not Darxio’s. THAT is the high ground.

TLDR VERSION of below: FC has been in a uniquely stressful situation that would’ve brought down almost any server stuck in those circumstances, SF has tier 6+ numbers at their best, FC hardcore WvW’ers finally running low on energy, etc.

Also members of Eredon Terrace, with this “Atleast our morale is not low here” comment (also made by Darxio), I hope that you won’t look down on Ferguson’s Crossing as if we’re anything less than you for giving up. The huge difference is, your server fell in ranks. Ours didn’t fall, it started low and got sucked into the tier 8 void in ages past and has been locked in ever since.

This was not because we were weak. We’ve yielded high tier 7 numbers in the past, even having brief moments of causing queues in two maps. There were some balanced matchups, and then there was the reality of being stuck in tier 8 with Kaineng and Devona’s Rest who quickly both became tier 5 level in numbers and coverage while still stuck in tier 8. You can imagine what happened next, as an at best tier 7 server Fergs did what it had to do just to stay on the score board. Yes we played sides, played dirty while Kain and DR were at war, we were no match for Kain or DR. Why would we form direct alliance with either of them just to earn the wrath of either of them?

We fought tooth and nail for ages trying to escape this pit and reach the tier that we were best suited for, tier 7 while both Devona’s Rest and Kaineng got to step over us for months before moving out. We tried so hard, because we believed that was where we would find our most balanced match ups. The vast majority of our zeal was used in that period.

Then you had the time where Sorrow’s Fell down, and we had two weeks of good matches. There was a glimmer of hope, but it was quickly taken away from us. Quickly we realized, that we were in a situation where despite what flithyrat and Monoa claim, SF began to yield what I believe to be tier 6 numbers and coverage, and we yielded probably low tier 7 numbers, and ET was yielding even lower numbers, a situation where we’ll never get those exciting three-way races like tier 6 has had. SF had the numbers to dominate us and ET combined, and we had the numbers to significantly put ET down but do nothing to harm Sorrow’s Furnace. This became what is the third time for us knowing we will have to face the same opponent who is no longer properly tiered, for MONTHS more than we should. Despite that many of us put in job-levels of dedication into trying to make something work that deep down we know couldn’t work at all, and that’s not even our own fault.

As for Sorrow’s Furnace, not dominating us with 400k+ doesn’t mean you weren’t yielding tier 6 numbers. Think about it. If what I said about DR and Kain was true, then we of Ferguson’s had MONTHS of experience fighting tier 5+ level servers in various scenarios. When I say your numbers were tier 6+ when you first started pushing 300-350k+, its not some number I’ve pulled out of my rear. The reason you couldn’t pull 400k+ victories on us is not because I’m lying in saying you had tier 6+ numbers, its because we’ve garnered months of experience in being outnumbered so as to know pretty kitten well how to fight against superior servers and maintain a respectable score on the board. I think the same can be said for Eredon Terrace in its fall to this tier also. If you think HoD falling down would of been the same result, I beg to differ. And that’s the problem here in tier 8, whether or not you get a balanced match-up is all roll of the dice. People can only roll the dice and lose so many times before they quit gambling, and transfer or quit the game entirely.

Alright, let me address Ungood:

TLDR version: I actually like and respect ET a lot, there’s no need for this propaganda crap. In general the server with greater numbers, coverage will rank higher and that’s the shift that is happening. There’s no need for the poor sportsmanship seen in Darxio’s posts.

Text wall version: (Knowing Ungood he will probably read it, which is one of the reasons I respect him and what I’ve seen from him in the forums so much.)

As you can tell, I do have an air of frustration against certain attitudes this week. My issue is NOT against Eredon Terrace as a whole, so I apologize for using the name “Eredon Terrace” interchangeably with Darxio and whoever else thinks like him. I admit that was a mistake of mine. Now, take a look at Darxio’s posts and you’ll see exactly why I’m bothered by certain mentalities. I couldn’t care less what tactics ET uses, because more often than not there is a counter to any given attack movement However, I don’t have patience for someone who’s going on about how apparently we’re a server full of backstabbers and attacking our server’s collective character.

Some members of Eredon Terrace can play victim all the want, but long before this little treaty was formed Eredon Terrace was attacking us pretty much daily while SF was attacking us simultaneously, and we simply didn’t have the resources to defend both attacks. That caused us to lose a lot of points to ET as we prioritized defense against SF, and frustration too but we didn’t whine and moan about Eredon Terrace like some soap opera star over here in the forums. If we complained, it was always about Sorrow’s Furnace being over-qualified for tier 8 and the need for ArenaNet to fix their system.

I hate to say it but facts are facts, every previous week Ferguson’s Crossing was blue team because we were as a server, significantly more powerful than Eredon Terrace. We had greater numbers and coverage than ET, so much so that we maintained those 20k leads while SF had 90% of its focus on us rather than ET. If the situation were reversed at the time, ET would of been even further behind in scores. Again, this sounds arrogant, but I saw the numbers differences first hand. So really, that treaty wasn’t even to Ferguson’s Crossing’s benefit at all, that some guilds agreed to it was a miracle in itself.

This is what the REALITY is: Now at this time we’re not as powerful as we used to be, which is the only reason why ET is now blue. That’s all there should be to it, sometimes a server is weaker, sometimes its stronger, and the strong will naturally take their place in the food chain/rankings regardless of strategies and shady attempts at forging alliances and pacts. Due to various factors, we are now weaker and ET is stronger than us at this time. This is not due to a change in Eredon Terrace’s strategies, nor is it due to some false-heroic propaganda crap like Darxio spits out of no longer abiding evil and overcoming it, after all ET was attacking our keeps and towers while SF hit us EVEN MORE OFTEN before it became blue team. This is simply the result of what happens when almost half of Ferguson’s hardcore WvW community gets sick and tired of putting job-hours just to maintain our little map control in an expensive and unrewarding environment and takes a break from seriously trying to recover our sanity.

Stronger, weaker, more numbers and coverage, less numbers and coverage. That’s all there is to it. Darxio’s attempts to invigorate ET morale by painting Ferguson’s Crossing as a villain as if we were some backstabbing server with a messed up agenda of making people’s WvW experience miserable are in a words, appalling. Despite the fact that ET has done this just as much to us as we have to them, I respect and love speaking to members of ET. The poor sportsmanship found in comments like Darxio’s are completely unwarranted, and I really hope they aren’t effecting ET perspectives of what Ferguson commanders and players are like. I don’t understand why people like him feel the need to make things so personal when we’re all trying to achieve the same thing, and that is to enjoy this portion of Guild Wars 2 as best we can. It’s already spectacularly difficult with the poor match-ups that this system is trying to stabilize, so let’s keep the cross-server drama out of it as best we can and save that zeal for requesting a fix to more pressing matters.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

The key element I never notice being discussed when this topic comes up is…. would being matched with any server other than SF actually be.. better?

Ignoring flaws in how the ratings function, wouldn’t any other match-up be arguably much worse for ET/FC?

Otaur.9268:

Sad thing is our prime forces are like 10 – 15 players… and 1 – 3 guilds. At one point tonight we had 0 supply 0 towers in all BL. We just get Zerged from both sides. And we start week strong and always end up about 100,000 behind due to no late night presence and zerg vs 15 – 20 of us.

Heck, just now Darkhaven’s zerg split into 4 groups and they’re smallest zerg group had more than we had in entire zone.

No offense to HoD, and this is just one player so I’m sure its not the full story. And even if it were, it would be a matter of populations going inactive during hard periods, just like we’re suffering at this time.

Nevertheless according to the numbers presented in this post, HoD sounds even weaker than FC and ET, and by a very large margin.

I daresay from the numbers you’ve thrown out that your server may be a better fit for tier 8 than tier 7, although even FC and ET frequently field 30+ in two maps simultaneously or 15 in one and 30 in another depending on the time, and that’s with a significant portion of both our WvW numbers on break/transferring due to boredom of the constant match-up with SF. I’d say a little less than half our optimal capacity (since there were times when we could queue a single map) when things really get going, although the same probably applies to your server as well.

Darkhaven is moving up as I understand also, which will allot you a new member in your tier and possibly more balance. Eventually SF too may manage to move up which in its prime when its not bored, probably won’t be too different from the situation you suffered with Darkhaven.

You could purposely drop to tier 8 if you want, although such things are hard to coordinate, and even doing it purposely takes a long time, and you will be stuck with the same partners for A VERY LONG time if you choose to do so, so that’s also something to be aware of. Worth it if it creates a more balanced match-up imo.

Runamok.9638:

Always a pleasure rolling with you Ungood.

ET seems to have recently acquired a serious Golem fetish. We must have all the rich kids on the block partying on ET these days.

I wish ET could energize its Friday reset player base for an entire week. This would be a far more interesting match-up.

Keep it classy CoSA.

I am noticing a pattern in the battles the last few weeks. If at first you don’t succeed, bring more bodies. And when you hit troubled waters again, bring even more bodies with the same exact tactics. Rinse, repeat. Eventually realize you cannot accomplish objective and hide to build golems. And then when you pull through, act like you accomplished a great feat.

Ferg I like you guys. Just wish you could do your own thing once in a while, opportunists. Thanks for tanking last week to provide some variety to the match-up. The change in scenery was much needed.

Please leave the afro-mentalist alone. I’m just trying to bring happiness, sunshine, and magical unicorns to your drab party to liven it up a little bit.

I like how the guy calls Fergs opportunists when ET has been on our rear 24/7 since last week and times 90% of its major keep attacks to come in just after SF is already mass zerging one of our other keeps in the same map for an easy flip. Hypocrite much?

Not to complain though, fighting ET is always a pleasure and a fun break from the constant grind against SF.

Been enjoying some great battles from [TAC], [Mend], and others.

Hope to see [KWBH] back in force soon too.

At any rate, I just noticed there are two [CoSA] guilds? A scarlet alliance and a sapphire one? Pretty nifty.

Le score update. Nice job with SM Team Bean!

Next server to get sucked into the tier 8 vacuum gets this guy as its representative:

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvjocnVUks1qbqczto1_500.jpg

Tier 8 can’t handle a true tier 7 server huh? Funny thing when tier 8 yielded HIGHER scores against Devona’s Rest, and then HIGHER SCORES against Kaineng than tier 7 did.

This is how we did against DR in its final week here, with numbers that were far smaller than what we had yielded in previous weeks due to the boredom:

http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/12#NA

Here’s how tier 7 did against the same opponent:

http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/13#NA

Here’s how tier 8 did against the Hurri-Kain:

http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/15#NA

Here’s how tier 7 did against the Hurri-Kain:

http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/16#NA

In both cases tier 8 did better, so either tier 8 was in both cases a stronger tier, or maybe tier 7 just has a history of having no balls.

Also, let’s correct something here. Ferguson’s Crossing, and Eredon’s Terrace easily yield 30+ zergs when we want to. My guild alone has yielded a pure 50+ [WZ] zerg on its own in its prime, notwithstanding the presence here of other large guilds like [KRAK], formerly [TTA], and countless other mid-large guilds participating.

The difference is Sorrow’s Furnace’s ability to, when it has enough interest, yield 40-50+ in three maps simultaneously with seemingly zero coordination or organizing it, its ability to in its prime, assault you on upwards of three fronts simultaneously without need of cross-guild agreements or organization or multi-guild voice chat, just random people rallying on a blue hat. Then you throw in the organized guild zergs they do have who can shift maps at a moments notice when they are in trouble else where, and a 40+ Latino/South American/whatever night-capping squad wiping your borderlands and destroying all the upgrades while you sleep, and that’s the Sorrow’s Furnace we’ve been fighting up until last week where it seems they finally have been getting bored of WvW. And that’s not even its reset night showings.

Again, tier 7 servers crushing tier 8? This is what a tier 7 server in tier 8 looks like:

http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/16#NA
http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/17#NA

Everything AFTER this Sorrow’s Furnace yielded tier 6 + numbers (And don’t bother challenging me on this, because I’ve seen Devona’s Rest tier 5 numbers first hand, as well as Kaineng’s tier 5 pre-transfer maximum yield numbers before War Machine and 1000+ transferred there).

In the next week half way through Sorrow’s Furnace jumped to tier 6 numbers, and increased steadily til it capped at the end of the week that proceeded that one possibly higher. How Sorrow’s Furnace did against us in the following weeks is not how a true tier 7 server will do, I daresay.

Seriously though, for the last time, when we complain about numbers, its not about the zerg you field in one map, even ET and FC can do that and when they put their mind to it, shove SF out of a single map. Its about the numbers fielded in multiple maps, not about one zerg but about 3+ major zergs spread across WvW, as well as timezone coverage and how long and how often these zergs can be fielded.

Action packed reset night as usual. Good job everyone.

The reason that this Glicko2 function of lowering rating increases when a server doesn’t improve at the rate it projects is much larger problem for tier 8 than any other tier is that, in other tiers by the time a server winning with 350k+ gets its weekly rating increases decreased dramatically, they’ve already acquired enough rating to advance within a week or two in most cases. In tier 8, by the time this comes in to play, the winning server has only won half the race, and maybe gotten its rating from the 600 region to 900. Then it STILL has to get it from 900 to 1023+ yet its weekly rating drops from +54 to +14, to +5 and so on because of Glicko 2. And that 900 to 1023 period unless the other servers hand in the towel, could take upwards of a quarter year going with the reduced rating numbers Glicko2 hands out to the winning server.

So there’s two separate factors going into the problem of tier 8- tier 7 advancement, the first factor is the grotesquely low ratings, the second is that Glicko 2 reduces the ratings of the winning server far too quickly in tier 8, and they function in synergy to make this a much harder gap to bridge than that of any other tier. Because of how much more steep the rating gap is here, the “ratings punishment” comes in to the winning server far too quickly, when they’re only half way out at most.

This is unacceptable for servers in any tier, and a simple fix that works for everyone in every tier without ruining the balance that is present, a solution that works for everyone, be it in putting a cap on rating falls so that there would be a floor to reach, tweaking this Glicko2 improvement prediction function so that it doesn’t treat tier 8 as if we had the same rating gap other tiers do, or whatever would be in mind. A solution that works for everyone should be easily achievable, but people have to be willing to admit that there is a problem there. It may even be present in other tiers to a degree, but its exaggerated like mad down here. Looking at the EU tier 9 rankings also reveals the same problem. There’s more than enough evidence, historical and current to conclude that the Glicko2 system is poorly managing bottom tiers, and some say the top tier gap also. To be able to manage this, if you’re not gonna remove it ArenaNet, please at least give it some tweaks so we’re treated the same as every other tier. A floor to ratings, new algorithms, tweaking how Glicko2 reduces the rating increases of servers that are having blowout victories, its one thing to keep a balanced match-up maintained as long as possible, but Glicko2 has to first produce that balanced match up and yet its extremely poorly equipped to produce that balanced match up in a timely fashion in its current state, and especially so for tier 8 NA and tier 9 EU. It may be a good system, but there are things its just not made to handle, and it needs assistance to get these things right, more assistance than simply posting “Give it time” because a quarter year is too much kitten time.

I’m gonna say, the suggestions I really like are the ones of giving the tier 8 ratings a floor, or those of doing just more balancing in general in terms of the rating gaps between tiers. There are people from other tiers even with less than half the rating gap between tiers that tier 8 to tier 7 suffers, and even they complain now and then about shifts taking too long.

I agree that at least there should not necessarily be a change every single week, but why not every second or third week? Anything more than two weeks of 300k+ domination is too much if you ask me, and we’d at least love a shot at different tier 7 servers falling into tier 8 now and then. This process should not take 2 months like it does.

I agree with providing stable balanced match ups, but there’s a definite problem when Glicko2 is going out of its way to stabilize imbalanced match ups like what is happening in tier 8. Entire servers just can’t be treated as single entities with an equal chance to win when there’s such number and time zone coverage disparities between so many servers.

As it stands in almost all cases, a winning server has that factor determined by numbers and coverage, not high tier strategy and skill. And unfortunately, its a lot more demoralizing to a group of players to be consistently matched against numbers they already know at the beginning of the week that they will lose to, and to proceed with it for months on end before seeing any variation. Who’s to say for example we wouldn’t have a better shot against HoD or GoM? No offense, but that’s something you can only test practically, but the rating system makes such things take so grotesquely long that by the time a server moves up from tier 8, people are tired out and already thinking of moving servers to tiers where that phenomena does not occur.

Heck, look at DR and Kaineng and how tier 8 and 7 compared in the match history. Tier 8 in both cases actually maintained significantly higher scores against Devona’s Rest and Kaineng than tier 7 did. Sorrow’s Furnace IMO fell down with tier 7 numbers, and we still had a great match up for two weeks. Then their numbers boomed to imo tier 6+ numbers/coverage and the match up after that? Not so great. At the point where the numbers boomed, week by week victory was already determined, it shouldn’t take them any more than two weeks to advance at that point. We already know the results will be the same for months at the current trend, so there’s no need to play them for months. Just because they can pull this off, doesn’t mean HoD or GoM necessarily could, or that they couldn’t.. but that’s something that can only be truly said for certain if one of them drops to face us and physically tested. Instead of asking what if one of them drops and its more of the same, what if one of them drops and we do much better, seeing that our biggest weakness against SF is its night-cap crew if either of these servers in tier 7 are more NA focused and less present at night like SF is, we may actually do A LOT better against them.

But the point is, these things we would like to see and test physically, we never get the chance to because of this rating gap. Lots of people come in here saying its working as intended, why can’t they explain to me how it is that tier 8 servers held out BETTER SCORES against Devona’s Rest and Kaineng than tier 7 did in both cases, on a consistent week by week basis at that?

So please, spare me the old misconceptions of tier 8 being some funnel of weaklings, unless you think Devona’s Rest and Kaineng were “weak servers” for being stuck in here for weeks longer than any other tier they faced until they reached equal numbers.

We’re not even asking for FC and ET to be bumped up to tier 7, where not even necessarily asking for HoD or GoM to be bumped down, we’re asking for this process to happen at the same average pace HERE as it does in others. Because as it stands, domination advancement literally takes twice-three times as long here as it does in other tiers, especially when Glicko2 starts making improvement projections for the winning server’s score and punishes their weekly rating increase for not living up to it.

Looking back, maybe I’ve been too pessimistic. Somewhere along the lines, the attitude changed around where Ferguson’s Crossing became the blue server, greater feelings of responsibility to deliver and higher expectations started to cut at the fun WvW had always provided for me up to that point, and I think for others too. That combined with the increasing amount of inter-guild bickering (especially between us and Krak, I think we finally worked that out for the most part now) which at least has finally died down in recent times. I think I’m done forum venting now, the time to rebuild is already here.

I believe that the people who are trying to get server-wide voice chat up and running have the right idea, and I’m going to try to offer them my full support from now on and contact some other commanders and major guild leaders/officers that I know and see what we can agree on. I know we’ve had implementations of this in the past, Vanguard and what not but I think the reason they never grew was due to the overly serious atmosphere that has been attached at times. People in WvW want to be mobile when is necessary or desirable, and not going in with the expectation that some super-commander is gonna be like: “Ok, you’re X, you’re Y, you’re Z. X head to hills, Y to be, and Z will head our movement in EB!” so I think when they see a voice chat broken down into teams and all that, they get worried or intimidated, so the server wide voice chat I have in mind would be something a little different, something more simple and laid back, and advertised with a less “professional” but rather more friendly “Let’s enjoy WvW together” slogan so as to not scare off the less hardcore as has happened commonly in the past.

I think we can work things out and return to that sense of togetherness and community that kept us so strong when we fought against Devona’s Rest and Kaineng. It has admittedly decayed for all of us when we realized this was all gonna go down for the third time in a row. But if we want to guarantee that it won’t occur a fourth and fifth time, then now is the time to act.

Watch out Sheen, Weird Al might soon awaken from his slumber. You know the threat he poses with his fingers that move so fast, they set the keyboard ablaze.

I still think the Glicko2 system is broken in regards to tier 8 though, but that’s a story and complaint for another thread that hangs out in the suggestion forums now.

Mira.4906:

Detharos.3157:

The history of the tier 8 match-up problems, and possibility of a balanced match-up in the near future:

It seems there’s people constantly coming in here telling us there will never be balance, that there will never be a third server with numbers and coverage similar to ET and FC in here again. I ask you all, do you really think that’s true?

Look at our past opponents, and the situations of their battles. Devona’s Rest, former tier 8 server, where is it now? Tier 5. Kaineng, former tier 8 server, where is now? Tier 2. And before people make the transfer case for Kaineng, in the week BEFORE War Machine jumped ship to Kaineng and 1000+ transfers followed, in the week for the first time in months Kaineng as it was in the weeks before got to focus on FC without DR constantly assaulting it, what happened? That’s right, we got dominated. And its numbers at that time were near identical to the tier-5 level Devona’s Rest.

So basically, you had this situation. You had, be it via transfers or whatever, an at the time now long past in tier 8, a high Tier 5- level Devona’s Rest(Just short of pushing into tier 4 if you watched their ascension), a mid Tier 5-level Kaineng, and IMO a tier 7-level Ferguson’s Crossing all thrown into the mix at the time.

What happened next was the natural, DR and Kaineng were very well matched and with FC no being present/strong enough to stop it from becoming a direct war between two servers stress built up on these two in particular, Devona’s Rest and Kaineng. They were CONSTANTLY fighting each other, ALL THE TIME. If either of them took the time to have some change and worry about Ferguson’s Crossing, the other would be marching in their lands PvDooring everything. So between these two big players, the one who’s morale broke first lost, so DR started to extend its lead over Kaineng and FC once Kaineng finally got sick of dealing with DR every week after weeks of very close scores.

Eventually Devona’s Rest broke out of tier 8 (Very slowly due to the ratings sink hole that Glicko2 creates here), and EASILY ascended to tier 5 (it dominated tier 5 also) and made a shot at tier 4. We then got to analyze its strength, that all along Devona’s Rest was one of those servers that were just a few guild transfers short of being capable of holding their own in tier 4, so they lost in there yet had the numbers to dominate tier 5. Those guilds that had no interest in that jumped ship somewhere else, and they’ve been tier 5-level ever since.

Kaineng, with the same numbers it had fielded against Devona’s Rest in direct combat for weeks proved it was on a tier 5-like level also and put us down almost as heavily as Devona’s Rest did in its first week. Kaineng had always had a history of being a close match for Devona’s Rest. So you see, Kaineng at this point before transfer hell was already bound to eventually make it to the exact same tier Devona’s Rest was in and would of dominated us for weeks. Then in the second week, they got the addition of War Machine, a highly organized tier 3+ guild, and along with it a whole legion of high tier players, and by the third week had amassed over 1000-1500+ new bodies for regular WvW attendance spread throughout its various timezone coverages. At this point it was now tier 3+ level, and dominated us even more drastically for those next weeks til it got out, and EASILY ascended upwards, probably picking up some more transfers on the way and comfortably landed in tier 2 eventually.

I nomrally dont comment on other matches threads but there is a little misinformation that no one seems to correct in this discussion. Devona’s Rest never made it above tier 5 and haven’t won a match since tier 6 so to say that they dominated tier 5 is a little incorrect. At their best they were strong T6 weak T5 as their average weekly loss was above 150k points in T5. Kaineng was a little different as they had a very stong overnite presence that all servers between T8 and T4 lack so it is very easy to win matches when you get +695 during that time.

With that being said looking forward facing SF again at some point in time.

You are 100% correct, I was just looking back at that myself and was about to edit my post when you quoted me :/. Rather, it seems they faced down a tier 4 level server and lost horribly, namely Maguuma and then supposedly a significant amount of people transferred off to the next “Winning team” right around here:

http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/17#NA
And they have been tier 5 ever since.

My memory with Devona’s Rest was a little fuzzy, and I didn’t track much of their fights after they reached tier 5. My point still stands though, namely that being in tier 8 doesn’t mean a server can’t hold its own against a former tier 7 server, history has shown otherwise.

Thanks for the corrections though, its appreciated.

Medazolam.3058:

hopefully SF will move on within a month, then T8 can get back to what we were before SF got the mass infusion of players.

see you out there tonight!

Thanks, I hope likewise and that SF will find the higher tiers fun and more enjoyable than the fights here currently when it moves up eventually.

That and that supposed patch coming adding more WvW incentive should be interesting.

FilthyRat.4652:

I disagree that we have T5-6 numbers and talk to people that are on those servers that have queues in multiple maps in prime time…I have only seen a que on one map during this time and was a couple of weeks ago. Have plenty of screen shots that show people come out from all servers every friday night and when they feel like it.

Feel free, and I disagree with a TON of factual backing while I do so as you should already have seen everywhere from mos millennium match-up history to personal experience with tier 5-tier 3+ servers locked in our tier as well as the testimonies of others both from our tier and former members of it that my statements of them being tier 5+ level the whole time were indeed true, and that in light of all this, that there simply is no such thing as a “Tier 7 wall” separating tier 8 and 7. This is also notwithstanding whether or not there may be servers currently stuck in tier 7 that may be yielding tier 6 numbers or greater. I’ve spoken with people in tier 5 namely from Devona’s Rest who stated that the majority of their queue times are during reset, and even FC can queue a single map during reset, and also that they are usually centered on a single-two maps tops when they are there, and that the queues are also very short when present. (2-5 minutes.) and present for short periods of times, not the entirety of the prime time.

Also, the presence of a queue is weak evidence. If queues trigger when X people are in a map from one server, what if you’re consistently just 5-10 people short of triggering that queue all the time? That doesn’t make a server a lot weaker than one that does trigger it. And again, you bring me a Devona’s Rest or IoJ fellow who can tell me, and provide screenshot evidence that they are constantly queue’d in certain maps for hours of prime time and I may agree with the sentiment.

Actually if I wanted to troll, I could say that if there was a “tier 7” wall or a significant difference between tier 8 and tier 7 coverage every server that advanced from tier 8 would of met opposition from tier 7 or at least greater opposition than they did in tier 8, yet every former tier 8 server has stomped tier 7 and kicked it aside like chaff in the wind and much easier than they did with tier 8. Heck, the colossal mega-Kaineng’s lead in tier 7 was 40, 000+ higher than its lead in tier 8 was, it had an easier time stomping GoM and HoD than it did us in tier 8. Actually, hah! Even Devona’s Rest. It was cake compared to the Kaineng that moved up, and yet it stomped both SF and HoD like they were nothing, SF and HoD both scored lower against them than any one of Ferguson’s Crossing weeks dealing with Devona’s Rest.

Every time a tier 8 server moved up to tier 7 it had an easier time stomping their sorry hides than it actually did suppressing its tier 8 pals. So either tier 7 is incredibly overrated, or the servers their have some accursed habit of ducking their heads into the sand when any amount of challenge comes by, unlike tier 8.

Take a look for yourselves and compare:

Devona’s final moments in tier 8:
http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/12#NA

Devona stomps tier 7 EASIER than it did tier 8:
http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/13#NA

Kaineng’s final brutal week against FC and ET in tier 8:
http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/15#NA

Kaineng stomps tier 7 even easier than it did tier 8, our scores were 1/3 to almost double as high:
http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/16#NA

There is no tier 7 wall.

Medazolam.3058:

Still fight left in Ferg, match reset night proves that week after week.

Yes, when the night-capping team of Sorrow’s Furnace is not in play, or at least not for an extended amount of time we can actually push quite well. That’s what happens every reset night when we do push, where we start with the same number of keeps, towers and upgrade levels. We even had times where during SF NA primetime, we were able to push over them with upwards of 375+ ppt leads. One of the key things that makes SF hard to deal for us with is the damage their night crew does to upgrades. We can play push and shove with SF in the NA timezone decently enough when our keeps and towers all have similar upgrade levels for all servers, and similar dedications required to defend/or conquer them.

But when we start logging in after day 2-3 especially and everything is insufficiently upgraded if we have manged to retake it you get this situation where even if the numbers are not obscured too much, SF is pushing FC against poorly upgraded keeps and towers but if we push SF, everything is completely upgraded on their side, and it stems completely from the lack of time zone coverage. I don’t hate or blame SF for it, but I daresay if the night-crew that wipes our maps between 12:00-3:00 AM my time were to vanish from SF it would have much more trouble with us and Eredon Terrace than it has at this time. While that’s not all there is to it, it is one factor of a few that helps build the disparity.

Unfortunately, we have so short a period to get our upgrades rolled out, and its costly when even a fully fortified, waypoint-able cannon filled keep will be lost while the server sleeps every night to a PvDoor squad, if you think about it when it costs upwards of 8 gold per single keep to get it that far, that’s a costly endeavor to go through every night losing 32 gold of keeps between BL and EB, and over another 20+ in tower upgrades, so nobody is going to rush to volunteer to upgrade something that simply can’t be held during a certain period. The fact that WvW costs so much for us to maintain a resistance against SF, more than it does for them to do so against us, is certainly tough to deal with. We did keep the upgrades rolling for a period regardless, an were able to hold very well during those times, but these upgrades become far too costly and when added to siege weapon costs and the fact that WvW drops yield so little gold/hour measurement when compared to PvE endeavors like Ascalonian Catacombs.

FilthyRat.4652:

Where did these numbers come from that say we have a T5-6 population?

From the fact that I was there when we were facing the same Devona’s Rest who EASILY reached tier 5, and can compare the screenshots of the numbers they yielded to crush us when Kaineng backed out of WvW for two weeks and easily say that in its prime, when Sorrow’s Furnace gets going it does infact yield numbers in specific maps and multiple map coverage that is EXTREMELY close to what Devona’s Rest yielded against us. I know this from first hand experience because I was there to see Devona’s Rest in all its might face to face. And Devona’s Rest has proven itself to be consistent tier 5 material, and in its mightiest it was even capable of dominating tier 5. (Fortunately it lost a fair amount of fairweather bandwagon guilds when it met the tier 4 wall.)

The big challenges that lay ahead for Sorrow’s Furnace is whether it can consistently yield its highest WvW numbers in both the NA timezone and its night cap crew(Its evident that in WvW boredom, its numbers have dropped A LOT the past two weeks, and especially this week, just as FC’s has.) without dropping the moment they have a loss/trouble. (Because eventually the zerg tactics won’t work as they have here when SF comes across similar numbers to their own. The fights will be longer and more intensive and down to far more specific details rather than matters of inevitability.), whether they can consistently pull together and yield high tier-communication between their major guilds working together and those guild commanders communicating between the public players present in their maps to use those additional resources efficiently, at least when they come across the servers who do that well. If they do all that, they will be a force to be reckoned with.

Now, consider Sorrow’s Furnace. In our first two weeks, FC beat them once, ET was also close behind, and the second week they won but it was also a brilliant match-up. Assuming there was no significant fluctuation from their time in tier 7, that means any server who was closely matched with them in tier 7 would logically also provide a great match-up here also, namely Henge of Denravi had close scores to SF. Take a look at the match-up history in mos millennium for yourselves and that’s what you will see.

Half way through the third week Sorrow’s Furnace numbers shot up to eventually reach what in my opinion is tier 6-tier 5 level numbers and night-cap coverage combo. The exact source of this is unknown to me, some SF say transfers, others say it was a largely dormant portion returning from the combination of the ending of Wintersday festival and a bunch of major SF figures yelling in Lion’s Arch map chat that they need s00per backup in WvW to win more. I say probably both, masses returning from PvE and then that domination and score increase it caused probably encouraged at least some transfers and one or two major guilds from other servers(maybe some even in our own servers) looking for a stable, win-capable server to select as a permanent home since they would of been in a time-crunch. (The time crunch to transfer was on as free transfers were going to end within a week or two when SF started winning with a 250k-ish lead.) In the end result you have a Sorrow’s Furnace that in my opinion will be competent at least up to tier 6, and possibly in to tier 5 now stuck with us until they advance. Sorrow’s Furnace are in my opinion NOT a “Tier 7 level” server dominating us and somehow proving there to be a massive gap between tier 8 and 7 but rather a tier 6-5 server dominating us just like the historical trend. They are not the same Sorrow’s Furnace who were closely matched with Henge of Denravi. It’s true that there will always be some former tier 7 server falling in here at points, that DOES NOT mean that the tier 7 server will always dominate, because we see consistently that these servers are not made equal.

And that brings me to the topic of the possibility of a new member replacing Sorrow’s Furnace in this tier. If HoD’s numbers haven’t increased from the time they had those close matches with pre-boom SF, then they just might be a great match for this tier if they get bumped down. I think its worth it to wait and put it to the test before concluding that its over for FC and ET competitive WvW, because IF HoD is on the same level they were back then, then logically we would end up with matches closely resembling the first two weeks we had with Sorrow’s Furnace, which were GREAT matches.

The history of the tier 8 match-up problems, and possibility of a balanced match-up in the near future:

It seems there’s people constantly coming in here telling us there will never be balance, that there will never be a third server with numbers and coverage similar to ET and FC in here again. I ask you all, do you really think that’s true?

Look at our past opponents, and the situations of their battles. Devona’s Rest, former tier 8 server, where is it now? Tier 5. Kaineng, former tier 8 server, where is now? Tier 2. And before people make the transfer case for Kaineng, in the week BEFORE War Machine jumped ship to Kaineng and 1000+ transfers followed, in the week for the first time in months Kaineng as it was in the weeks before got to focus on FC without DR constantly assaulting it, what happened? That’s right, we got dominated. And its numbers at that time were near identical to the tier-5 level Devona’s Rest.

So basically, you had this situation. You had, be it via transfers or whatever, an at the time now long past in tier 8, a high Tier 5- level Devona’s Rest(Just short of pushing into tier 4 if you watched their ascension), a mid Tier 5-level Kaineng, and IMO a tier 7-level Ferguson’s Crossing all thrown into the mix at the time.

What happened next was the natural, DR and Kaineng were very well matched and with FC no being present/strong enough to stop it from becoming a direct war between two servers stress built up on these two in particular, Devona’s Rest and Kaineng. They were CONSTANTLY fighting each other, ALL THE TIME. If either of them took the time to have some change and worry about Ferguson’s Crossing, the other would be marching in their lands PvDooring everything. So between these two big players, the one who’s morale broke first lost, so DR started to extend its lead over Kaineng and FC once Kaineng finally got sick of dealing with DR every week after weeks of very close scores.

Eventually Devona’s Rest broke out of tier 8 (Very slowly due to the ratings sink hole that Glicko2 creates here), and EASILY ascended to tier 5 (it won significantly in tier 6 also, but by a smaller margin than previous wins) and made a shot at fighting a tier 4 server in its battles against Maguuma, and got crushed by that tier 4 wall in a sense. We then got to analyze its strength, that all along Devona’s Rest was comfortably tier 5 level.

Kaineng, with the same numbers it had fielded against Devona’s Rest in direct combat for weeks proved it was on a tier 5-like level also and put us down almost as heavily as Devona’s Rest did in its first week. Kaineng had always had a history of being a close match for Devona’s Rest. So you see, Kaineng at this point before transfer hell was already bound to eventually make it to the exact same tier Devona’s Rest was in and would of dominated us for weeks. Then in the second week, they got the addition of War Machine, a highly organized tier 3+ guild, and along with it a whole legion of high tier players, and by the third week had amassed over 1000-1500+ new bodies for regular WvW attendance spread throughout its various timezone coverages. At this point it was now tier 3+ level, and dominated us even more drastically for those next weeks til it got out, and EASILY ascended upwards, probably picking up some more transfers on the way and comfortably landed in tier 2 eventually.

It actually makes me kind of happy to see these offers from higher tier servers, rather than upset. Ignorant people from higher tiers have constantly regarded us as if we were some skill deprived, incompetent PvE carebears, and used that as a base hypothesis as to the reason we lose as we do and to constantly defend the broken Glicko2 system when we complain, and wrongly so. Now they come in this thread, and they see that not only are we so hardcore about WvW, we’re maybe even too kitten hardcore about it, constantly looking for way to make it possible to defeat impossible odds, and they suddenly come to realize that we actually have a great and lively WvW community down here, such that they would love it if we joined them as they realize it could make a difference in frozen scores.

So, I take it as a compliment and a legitimate offer and appreciate it.

That said, as per our monday officer’s meeting we of [WZ] can say we don’t have any plans to move at this time, and in general want to wait it out until a new server drops down and then we’ll see how things play out from there. We still do lead and attend WvW from time to time, but in general we’re trying to be more relaxed at it as people burn out quickly at the rate we were pushing against impossible odds in the past week. We want to give both the server and our people a chance to relax, maybe get some of the PvE/gearing up they needed done accomplished and not break their spirits by constantly marching them as if this were a real war, because in all honesty its a game and if people aren’t enjoying it, or if it gets too emotional… they won’t feel inclined to continue playing it.

I’m not gonna say that anyone or any guild leader that has tired out from the grind of WvW should feel chained here either. I bear no ill will or feelings towards the members of TTA that left for what in all regards has been a brilliant match up in tier 6. Having shared a teamspeak with TTA for the past month or so, I can say they are great people, fun to play with, fun to talk with; competent and lively in all regards and I really hope that they have found/find a place that they can enjoy and once again call their own.

That said if any guild is considering a move, I’d recommend talking with Sniffy because as he says and vouches for, if the Ferg and ET WvW forces joined into one server, it would be a force to be reckoned with, and could break the lock down of the tier without separating familiar established communities as consistently as tier shift transfers can cause. If you are however, bent on moving up I seriously recommend viewing match-up history in the respective tier and joining the side that’s been red team the most consistently, assuming it isn’t by too drastic a margin that you’d be jumping into the same situation all over again. In general blue team and green team positions can end up more burdensome in unexpected ways especially with all the drama bombs that fly when a server starts ascending and everyone starts to hate on the people who transferred over and accusing them of breaking the balance. On a red team server, you’d be less likely to cause a server to reach a higher tier level while in a lower tier, red team tends to be more fun anyways as it usually gets focus fired a lot less by its two tier partners, being the underdog team also normally allows you a lot more opportunities to do score-shifting map wipes while Blue team and green team go at each other’s throats. If anyone remembers Ferguson’s Crossing in the era where we were paired with DR and Kain, and both of them possessed tier 6+ numbers and coverage, and could handle us quite brutally and yet were more often than not busy fighting each other.. the sheer things we got to pull off in those opportunities and unexpected 3 way battles we got to create were some of the most fun times in our history as I remember it. The “losing team” position is underrated if you ask me.

And really, transferring to an already consistent green team in general is a recipe for drama, and I know 70% of players here probably don’t enjoy drama or soap operas, so yeah.

To be honest, I think our server needs to lose more brutally to get a wake up call. I imagine Eredon’s Terrace has some of the same problem, so I’ll touch on it for both of us cause I know some of us are getting sick of it.

This increasing amount of infighting/bickering of “What if we tried XYZ”, “What if we use ABC”. “We need more organization, we need better use of our commanders”, “more of this”, “more of that” and proceeding to list every possible reason for our losses EXCEPT the obvious, numbers and time zone coverage.

NEWSFLASH. If you took 30+ tier 1 players, with 5 of them being commanders in tier 1, the best of the best of their tier with most comprehensive siege placements, teamwork, and all that jazz and replaced 25 of our players and 5 of our commanders for either our server, OR Eredon’s Terrace.. what would happen?

Nothing. Literally, it would be almost no difference.

People need to come to grip the facts. We’re not losing to poor communication, we’re not losing to lack of high level strategy. We had both of these things in play up until about a week and a half ago at most. We’re losing to NUMBERS and COVERAGE. If you wanna match SF, you need more of that, or you could just wait for them to get out and hope that you get a server with less numbers and timezone coverage than they have in their place. I wanna be really clear, I don’t hate SF for it, if you got it flaunt it by all means. But for all of us bickering amongst ourselves, or for the occasional indignant response in the forums of people who think we’re disorganized and all that, not really. This is a sheer numbers game, and the inevitability produced by the difference in numbers and timezone attacks is the core of all problems here.

Now, do we have bad communication at the moment? Sure. Do we have a lack of commanders, and a lack of teamwork from commanders from different guilds? Sure. Would it make a difference at the moment? No. See that’s the problem, while having more of these would be great, the inevitability of losing whatever you cap in the night hours, and constantly fighting outnumbered has made all these a moot points We need enough numbers and enough coverage to make that work first. So for goodness sakes, especially all of us Ferguson’s Crossing players, stop pointing fingers, arguing over endless chases and realize the fact that unless you produce MORE NUMBERS, and MORE TIMEZONE COVERAGE, you won’t have a chance to get back to developing better teamwork and strategies, let alone put them into play.

Also for those wondering why so many commanders took a break in FC, what would you do when you have to put 8+ hours of gameplay in everyday to make any noticeable difference?

Let me also say there was a time when I know for a fact Ferguson’s Crossing yielded tier 7 numbers and would of been capable of handling its own in that tier, just some short months ago. This rating black hole that glicko2 creates is very real and not just some myth.

Now, does the situation suck? Yes. Let’s just deal with it and stop stressing out for a bit. The matchup has a server with tier 6 numbers and coverage paired up with two tier 8 levels, the result was inevitable, and on the Glicko2 argument side the rating system for tier 8 is completely broken and even a tier 1 server if it fell in would take a month to climb out, and that’s all there is to it. And with no visible fix in the near future, we might as well put up. You can wait and hope that we get a server with at least same time zone coverage if not similar numbers when SF moves up (No offense to SF, but their leads would be far less exaggerated without the night crew presence), transfer servers if you don’t like it, or have one of the WvW communities of either Ferguson or Eredon’s Terrace merge with the other to form a single, viable WvW combat force.

But as it stands, all this arguing about communication and strategy is useless. Let’s stop putting more heartache and stress into this than there needs to be.

Also, for people on Sorrow’s Furnace who might be bickering with each other and other server’s poking at them, zergy, uncoordinated tactics are the norm and very hard to prevent when you’re in a situation like there’s. Say SF moves up, and fights servers with numbers and coverage equal to theirs and loses, it would make clear to them the need for improvement, and they will go through that trouble to improve on their own inevitably. So let’s all stop trying to offer eachother “Pro tips” on how to WvW as well, cause at this point I think all of us know what we’re doing quite well. Any server will develop high tier strategy and communication in WvW when it becomes necessity (Assuming its possible, Ie. you’re up against numbers you have a chance against.) so just because SF plays like a mindless zerg against us doesn’t mean they’re going to be a bunch of helpless noobs the moment they face a server that can best them.

insanemaniac.2456:

Detharos.3157:

5) Have fun. WvW shouldn’t feel like a job. Even the most hardcore players need breaks sometimes, so we should all cut the commanders/major guilds some slack when they take some time off from WvW.

this is the single most important point, and the reason i tend not to turn on my commander tag. the majority of the time, it becomes unfun because i just dont like the stress and expectations.

I find myself doing this more often lately also, the tag itself is full of burdens. And often times, its a coordinated group of just 4 people ninja’ing walls and gates that can drastically shift the tide of a server’s battles. Not that the zerg isn’t great or of infinite value all its own, but 30 + zergs and 4-man saboteur/covert-op/camp skirmisher teams are like hammers and wrenches. They both have their place of importance in the scheme of things.

But for me, lately I find a small group is just so much more mobile, harder for the enemy to scout/read with more easily maintained morale levels and generally consistent levels of competency, and is thus to me preferable at this time than leading zergs.

Also, taking several breaks the past week from leading/co-leading major strikes has relieved a lot of WvW stress. I still think the rating system is horribly broken, but even if ArenaNet takes no action there should be some way to level the playing field, be it the dedicated WvW communities of FC and ET merging into one of the servers, transfers to elsewhere, finding some magical group of large PvE guilds I never knew existed and convincing them to help out, or waiting on the natural growth of the server from new players creating characters here to balance out numbers more. Something has gotta go right, sooner or later.

The only worry I have at this moment is whether or not we’ve lost too many players/guilds during this phase to maintain a fight at the level we did during the first two weeks of Sorrow’s Furnace presence in our tier. If we have a showing again like that when SF finally does move up, we might just find ourselves in a healthy balanced match-up considering the score history between pre-week 3 Sorrow’s Furnace and HoD.

6) As a final add-on: TROLL POLICY. Simply put, don’t feed the trolls. There are gonna be people who bash commanders, players, guilds, servers, thread creators for the simple purpose of seeking to incite strife, frustration and anger for their own personal entertainment. At times they may even go so far as to construct huge comprehensive multi-paragraph posts backing a mentality or way of thinking that they may not even subscribe to personally, simply to incite a hasty negative/inflammatory response from their target/victim. Excessive socratic questioning and ad hominem use can sometimes hint to such people’s true intentions. Best thing you can do is, ignore them or taking it even further, be humble. When someone is constantly spamming “Wow, you’re terrible.” on map chat or whatever, a response like “You’re right, I definitely have a lot of room for improvement” can often times diffuse things before they spark. And keep in mind, 90% of trolls be they forum trolls, in-game server community trolls, or what have you lack the long-term dedication to haunt a community for more than a couple of days consecutively when nobody takes their bait. A few back to back days of nobody getting upset from their comments will often cause trolls to opt out and self-destruct.

3) SUPPORT YOUR COMMANDERS. Leading is not an easy thing. And granted, there are some out there who just buy the tag to play popularity contest. But when your commanders are actually trying (And you will usually be able to tell this quite easily) to make a difference for your server and positively influence the flow of its scores/battles, try not to mock, flame and belittle them on map chat when an attack they were leading fails once, multiple times or in any such situation really. Support them, encourage them and help them to become the leader they are trying to be, because it really isn’t easy. Too often someone will barrage map chat with a comment like this: “All the commanders here are so incompetent, if it were me or XYZ guy I know leading our position would be far better, too bad we can’t afford a commander tag!”. These messages really do no good for anyone, and don’t even invoke any sympathy for the one dropping the message. Being a leader, even in an online game is often times a costly (Most active commanders LOSE money in WvW due to purchasing more siege/producing superior siege than standard players), time demanding, and almost always emotionally stressful.

ANYONE who arrogantly or pretentiously takes leading lightly and thinks to themselves “Hey how hard can it be to lead a couple of people, lol?” should try playing The Walking Dead video game(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walking_Dead_%282012_video_game%29). That game accurately reflects the tough reality that when leading, you make both friends and enemies even when you try to do the right thing. The situations here in may not be as extreme as that, but the fact is leaders and commanders WILL have to make decisions that may please some of their fellow server mates, but WILL also make them enemies/cause receiving of mocking, map chat and private chat harassment from others. Sometimes you can be hated for doing the right thing, and the majority isn’t always right either, and vice versa. Making calls on behalf of your server is no easy task, so people should do their best not to be drama queens or mockers and make things any more difficult for those making major decisions in WvW. Always remember coupled with this, you win some and you lose some. Sometimes you win a lot consecutively and sometimes you lose a lot consecutively, and that isn’t always the fault of the commander/commanders contrary to popular belief.

4) Encourage good sportsmanship. Let’s be honest, for all server communities, it doesn’t matter if you’re Sorrow’s Furnace, Eredon’s Terrace, Ferguson’s Crossing or any server in any other tier; The very same people who t-bag, dance and laugh on your opponent’s corpses are far too often the exact same individuals who bail out on you when you’re outnumbered or outplayed and desperately need all the manpower you can get. There’s no point defending these people, because let’s be honest, they won’t defend you when it matters. All server communities that desire a higher level of play should actively discourage such behavior. Doing these things is poor sportsmanship. We all know it takes a hell of a lot of good sportsmanship to survive multiple losses to a server/servers one-sidedly dominating in WvW, and let’s be honest if your not already in tier 1 level chances are you will experience that at some point in your WvW time. Encouraging good sportsmanship goes hand in hand with encouraging people to tough it out when the times are rough, so from the perspective of the sheer net benefit it should be carried out. Note that not everyone doing such things are “bad apples” though. Sometimes people do these things just because they witnessed others and thought it was the norm, as strange as that can sound. Privately message them, and explain to them why mocking your opponents(and/or teammates if that should somehow come to pass though I’ve never seen one of my allies t-bag a friendly corpse) is poor sportsmanship and unproductive to healthy WvW behavior. You might just successfully convert someone from being a corpse sitter/dance to someone who bows in the face of adversity and simply shrugs it off when a 10 person gank squad kills them off and attempts to humiliate them with laugh spam. Such people can stick it out through some of the toughest of situations in WvW, and individuals with that mentality/dedication are useful for any server.

5) Have fun. WvW shouldn’t feel like a job. Even the most hardcore players need breaks sometimes, so we should all cut the commanders/major guilds some slack when they take some time off from WvW.

Elementalist Owner.7802:

IT’S STORY TIME! (Should be interesting for all of you. — It’s about SF coordination)

My buddy and I decided we wanted to ninja Hills in FC borderlands from ET. I threw two catas down at west outer wall, and we both ran supply to get them up. It was time-consuming, but we really wanted to ninja this place because it was upgraded and seiged well, thus serving to be a difficult place to cap with a zerg.

We then began hitting outer wall, which was reinforced. It went down after several minutes, and then we started hitting the inner wall as well. Now, all this time, we had been updating /t chat with wall percentages and such, and we had warned them that we would need a bunch of them to help us kill lord room. So we get the inner wall down and tell everybody that we need reinforcements to help us cap the lord room.

One person showed up.

It was many, many minutes before ET showed up and destroyed our catas, killing us and repairing the walls in the process. It was baffling, considering all of that time I had been essentially spamming /t chat with “Please come help us at west Hills outer wall, we have inner wall down and just need to cap the lord room”

So yes, we failed. I brushed it off and thought that perhaps nobody showed up because there wasn’t many on this map. But then, just a few minutes after, I went to the 6 o’clock camp and saw our zerg capping it. I thought, where were all of these guys when I needed them?!

That is the people of Sorrow’s Furnace for you. You give them a golden platter full of experience, karma, and a shiny new keep that could really help us out, and nobody cares. It was so uncoordinated that it looked like bots, seeing red or blue on the map and savagely rushing toward it without any type of strategy.

Even as an SF I could realize that the real winners of this match are ET and FC. This is not treachery, this is simply a call to action. We seriously need to improve our coordination.

I had a practically typed up a booklet in response to this, but unfortunately lost it somehow between copy pastes when I got the message about exceeding 5001 characters. I’ll try again, and try to keep things more brief this time. Anyways, if you’re looking to improve your server’s WvW competency the best places to start first are probably:

1) Build relationships. Unfortunately, people rarely listen to you when they haven’t first built up a respect for you. That applies on all levels, individual, guild or entire server-wide. To build respect, you must build relationships. (Ie. good communication and becoming friends.) Apply this as much on the individual relationship level as well as the group one. Major guilds that have disagreements/arguments/constant bickering and mocking/bashing in map chat should apologize to each other, put the past behind them and agree to work together for the better of the server. Continue to aggressively pursue WvW-strengthening utilities such as multiple-guild alliances and joint multi-guild voice chat channels, promote information sharing and co-operative attack and defense both in strategy and in practical application. On the individual level, just keep talking with people, keep things positive, and always keep your eyes on the goals you or your server community set in place. Often times, its the small things that make a difference. Do your best to inspire/and teach those individuals in WvW who haven’t yet grasped the basics, don’t give up on them and hopefully they in turn won’t give up on you.

2) Resist the urge to slander, call-out and bash on ALL FRONTS in WvW. Be you the commander trying to convince your zerg that the ram rush they so instinctively desire is simply not gonna work when your enemy has 5+ unreachable superior arrow carts, full supply and a formidable amount of defenders in a tower, or having more personal disagreements with someone, or as a member of the zerg following your commander. The moment things like: “XYZ ruined this”, “You guys are idiots. Don’t listen to the commander at all, don’t understand basic tactics, don’t listen on any level. What a waste.”, “Everybody call XYZ player an ***hole because he grabbed supply from the camp we wanted to upgrade to double supply!” is almost always the precursor to every single good attack or defense effort failing due to getting lost in a needless crap storm.

So it seems Weird Al has just about thrown in the towel at this point. Meanwhile, Bean cruises around in his British Leyland Mini enjoying the free space while Sheenster makes his move for world domination.

PREPARE YOURSELVES.

Will Sheen’s dreams become reality? Stay tuned.

This situation is rapidly decaying into yet another case of it taking a combination of Eredon’s Terrace and Ferguson’s Crossing throwing in the towel and going on vacation from WvW for a couple weeks paired with some miraculous drop in the next highest server’s rating to get the big dog of this tier to advance.

The ascent is miserably slow, extremely demoralizing for those on these servers who love WvW, and no matter how hard we try arguments seem to break out of no where in the forums because we’re all getting frustrated with these painfully slow weeks of domination. With the frustrations increasing its coupled with this feeling that you have to keep a tight lid on everything you type else face the risk of increasingly common forum infractions. (Which in my opinion are handed out far too readily whenever “Arena Net” is typed in a paragraph in a non-positive light.)

Take a look for yourselves, with near identical scores in the past weeks Sorrow’s Furnace got 50+ rating increases every time. Yet last week despite a rather unchanged ending score, the rating was a mere 14+, and will likely continue to decrease unless 600+ ppt starts to be achieved. Yet the more we throw in the towel, simply the more it encourages hardcore WvW players of Eredon’s Terrace and Ferguson’s Crossing to transfer to a different server as the trend is that WvW match-ups never work out well down here. Something that this whole “new era” of transfer fees was supposed to be discouraging, not encouraging as it is.

silverfire.2547:

Detharos.3157:

And just add to the pain, SF’s rating got hosed last week by this crazed system. No doubt it will drop to as low as 7- this week if the score’s remain similar.

Our rating actually went up by about 14 points last week.

If the current trend continues, we should be winning by an even larger margin than last week since it was still fairly even this time last week. This week not so much.

I’m well aware that it went up last week. You are aware that 14 points is nothing in comparison to the 50+ rating Sorrow’s Furnace was gaining for near identical point leads in the past weeks? That’s right, its exactly as people have already explained to you in past threads. Glicko2 is making a projection of improvement for your server, and because it isn’t living up to the expectations, it is already punishing your ratings. Compare that to the previous weeks of 50+ rating and your weekly rating increase has dropped by well over 50% in a single week.

In other words, your weekly rating has already decreased in a sense. Depending on the trend, it could keep SF here for weeks-months more than it should be. Let’s face it, unless we and Eredon’s Terrace hand over victory to you on a platter or our numbers continue to drop from demoralizing victories, you will continue to ring in 350k-370k victories week in and out. And if that continues, Glicko2 is just going to keep chopping the weekly rating increases of Sorrow’s Furnace down, and possibly into then negatives before long.

I’m not blaming Sorrow’s Furnace for its numbers nor its massive victories, but the fact that it is no longer suited to this tier has long been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. So does it really come as a surprise/bother you when people like me make the occasional complaint about the system that shackles your server here for so many more weeks than necessary? I’ve gone to a lengths to remove any ill-feelings I might have towards your server from my posts. Am I also expected to start holding up the Glicko2 system to an altar of praise when a few manual adjustments could of provided much better match ups, much faster?

I wonder if you were a hardcore WvW player, a commander and officer of a hardcore WvW guild, and rolled on a server that’s been continually dominated for 3 months+ and tried to keep people’s morale up in a WvW situation where there is literally next to zero incentive/purpose to continuing (Whether we try or not at this point makes absolutely little difference to the overall score. And all efforts in the end amount to nothing more than a server-wide lackluster buff that doesn’t do anything to turn the tide in WvW, just like the outmanned buff.).. if after all that you’d be singing the same tune you have been?

Let’s face it, Eredon’s Terrace and Ferguson’s Crossing don’t have some massive nonparticipating PvE population that you seem to think we do. Even if we had, nobody’s gonna try to convince them to jump in on a one-sided, costly , boring match-up. Some of us already tried that with some folks however; many of them reported that they lost interest when the first time they ever tried WvW was walking into a situation in certain maps where all three spawn exits had multiple ballistas set up with squadrons of SF guarding them.

If our servers show up listed a having the same population, I daresay its likely from accounts of individuals who’ve long since quit the game keeping a phantom number count.

TBH, I’ve long lost the ability to understand where all these indignant responses come from, perhaps its from the fact that up until now we’ve always yielded a resistance in the face of adversity. That itself is a testament to the very fact that our servers are NOT “carebear” servers by any means. Lord forbid someone get’s angry over people who play the game for WvW stepping out and doing what they like to do, with a complaint about server imbalance here and there.

Hmmm I can’t see any of the posts in this thread for some reason now..

Edit: Oh there we go, fixed!

And just add to the pain, SF’s rating got hosed last week by this crazed system. No doubt it will drop to as low as 7- this week if the score’s remain similar.

In these dark times, we need the light of that legendary engineer commander, Mr. Fuzzles If he returns, Ferguson’s Crossing will no doubt be invigorated with the power to overcome the odds!

FilthyRat.4652:

Detharos.3157:

This morning’s score update brought to you by the adorable baby Quaggan!

Love it…. but please find a better picture for Charlie. Didn’t even read the caption for everyone at first have to give that a +1

Is this one better? I think the SF hat was a nice touch, along with the parody of all our back and forth forum banter.

Jayne.9251:

Dear Tier 8,

Congratulations on snagging Commander Charlie Sheen. Brilliant move. We should have thought of it. You wouldn’t trade a used Gary Busey for him would you? He only wanders off occasionally and typically can be found sitting naked with the centaurs.

Love,

TC

Indeed, a good tactician knows when to make the first strike!

We may consider this offer, however I fear that Gary Busey will be incapable of adequately representing the people of Sorrow’s Furnace as The Sheen does. However, offer a pristine John Travolta, and possibly throw in a used Heath Ledger and we might have ourselves a deal!

Seriously though, tier 2 seems to be a breeding ground for amazing ideas. I’ve been tracking your thread closely, and the combination of celebrity endorsement, dolyak parades and mature, friendly discussion you folks engage in is most inspiring! Huzzah! Nay, a thousand huzzahs for you tier 2 peoples! Much love from your tier 8 fans!

Also, I’m dropping a shout-out for all you old-timer members of Kain who battled it out with FC and DR in the old days; SoS, KAIN, CnB and various others. Nice to see your server finally achieved a great match-up after its advancement, glad to see you are all having fun up there.

I added 3 screenshots taken during your rise to power for old time’s sakes.

This morning’s score update brought to you by the adorable baby Quaggan!

I’d be surprised to see any ranger that doesn’t at least have a short bow in their inventory. It’s like the multi-tool of the ranger class. An effective, high dps auto-attack, a number 2 poison to nerf enemy heals, a number 3 evade w/ a speed buff during active combat for evasiveness/escaping foes, a number 4 to cripple foes so that you can kite them and stay away from melee threats for much longer, a number 5 stun that can interrupt most conventional attack threats when timed correctly.

The short bow is a great utility for any ranger assuming you have the right trait build, and especially for berserker gear rangers who are looking to increase their survivability.

I admit to having tried this against some Sorrow’s Furnace players. Wiped a group of 7ish full 80s by a camp with them solo, and proceeded to pressure the frontal part of 15+ people in EB later a day or two ago.

Having used them I can say first hand that these things need to go, perma stun lock bouncing sounds hilarious in theory, but I can’t imagine how frustrated the people helplessly killed by these overpowered consumables in droves must feel.

And while we’re at it, I don’t see why every PvE purchasable consumable can’t simply be removed from WvW, with the exception of all tonics.

If Anet wishes to keep any of them in, they could evaluate and test them on a case by case basis to keep the less game breaking ones, but removing the ones that cause trouble shouldn’t be too hard for them at all.

For a second I thought all of SF somehow managed to save up enough gold to transfer and form “Sorrow’s Terrace” to nuke us until we are forced to submit and form “Fergeradace’s Sorrow” the next tier 3 server.

No of course not. I never said I 100% agree with Winner moves up and loser moves down, albeit I think it would be interesting to meet other servers just for the sheer sake of witnessing unseen strategies and cool and effective major wvw guilds from other servers in action. There would be a lot to be learned at least and some might even find themselves making new friends if such a change is applied. However that said, I find the thought of strong servers, especially in higher tiers bumping down and up between the same two tiers as might happen a rather disturbing thought at the same time, so its on shaky ground for me personally.

But the fact is, the Glicko2 system is being applied to situations that are kind of out of its bounds. It’s trying to predict trends that it is not designed to, and in some cases literally can’t because unfortunately, Glicko2 is not a sentient/sapient being to know that World vs. World vs. World. in Guild wars 2 /=/ A bunch of 1 vs. 1 tiered chess matches or whatever else it was created for.

But what really needs to happen above all else is that ArenaNet needs to break the silence and admit that there are some massive, not small, massive problems with this system. Probably the greatest frustration of those of us in Ferguson’s Crossing and Eredon’s Terrace is not the imbalanced matchup itself, nor its not having any promise of an end withing months as SF’s rating drops despite dominating; No our greatest frustration surely is hearing “Working as intended.” all the time and being ignored, played off or having our concerns, questions and complaints dodged.

I know tier 8 isn’t the only one stuck in a situation like this, and having only 4 weeks of balanced matches here and there amidst 4 weeks of one-sided domination of costly, unrewarding depressing WvW is a MASSIVE, not a small problem. Just because the majority of the population is located perhaps in balanced tiers, doesn’t mean those who rolled on a lower server and befriended people and formed communities yet share no less a zeal for WvW should have to suffer the large population’s whims in this broken system.

I’m sure we all can agree SOMETHING must be done. And it must be done SOON. No more waiting for weeks. No more “It will fix itself in time.” No more procrastination, no more defending the system on the basis that it works for only the most important match ups, we’re all customers here and deserve to be treated with the same respect as anyone in any tier. But above all, even if ArenaNet has zero solutions in mind, and none in the foreseeable future, it should take the time to inform the community that it is having problems making WvW work for everyone. In the very least that contact would give people the confidence and faith that they are AWARE of the problem, and trying to solve it. As it stands, it seemed that ArenaNet was aware when they announced the ratings reset, which while not an ideal solution on anyone’s books, the way they announced its cancellation sounded like a whole lot of “Shut up, its working as intended be patient and you may all get a good matchup in a couple months.” just worded with more sugar coating.

katz.8376:

how many times do we have to say it before you manage to wrap your head around it. THERE IS NO ALLIANCE there is a loose agreement that we won’t actively seek to beat on each other.

meh. whatever

Not to mention a loose agreement that is only even known of by certain guilds and individuals. I haven’t even gotten around to bringing it up with my guild yet as we had something else major to focus on last night.

There could be any number of small 10-man guild teams on the maps that may not even know this agreement exists at all, or simply not care, and on both sides of the agreement; still attacking the other servers’ borderlands and camps/towers without a care in the world.

I as an individual am willing to honor it, but other members and squad leaders of my guild may or may not be, we haven’t even discussed it yet and most don’t even realize anything like this exists atm.

And current week, week 6:
http://mos.millenium.org/matchups#NA

Week 06 and continuing its clear its just gonna be another approximate repeat of the previous week albeit perhaps some SLIGHT score shift from a non-aggression pact formed between ET and FC. Because of Glicko2 Predictions functionality, it begins to punish Sorrow’s Furnace ratings for not meeting the growth rate it projects. Hopefully the rating will be in the positive by the end of the week, but if not we could be stuck fighting them for MONTHS.

Now, since we did almost equally as well as Henge of Denravi did against Sorrow’s Furnace for TWO WEEKS (Long enough to prove that population shifts at the time were stable and the numbers HoD and us were facing from SF were near identical) and only begun to lose when their population shot through the roof, to numbers many long time Sorrow’s Furnace players are saying would of had them rolling straight back up tier 6 if they saw while they were in tier 7 against GoM and HoD, how is it that you, some random guy from Tier 3 with no apparent experience with any of these servers in recent time seem to perceive there being a massive difference between Henge of Denravi and Ferguson’s Crossing and Eredon’s Terrace?

Notwithstanding the possibility of Henge of Denravi having received transfers or unexpected population booms (Mass transfers extremely unlikely, almost nobody ever changes to a blue or red team like they’ve been.), something that you a member of tier 3 have no apparent way of knowing and isn’t really suggested by the scores. It seems that Darkhaven was on par with Gate Of Madness and its being thrown in there acted as a buffer to keep Henge on the scoreboard, from the points perspective and history of points trends in the tier.

In other words there is no real evidence present with which to believe that Henge of Denravi wouldn’t give FC and ET a great match-up like it had with Sorrow’s Furnace in its first week, nor have you provided any guarantee that SF in its current state might even be capable of stomping servers like DH or GoM with 250k leads, or at least competing with them very closely. So how is it that you babble this nonsense when you defend the system from the complaints of people in our tier? Henge of Denravi might very well be tier 8 material, and PROBABLY is a better fit for tier 8 by far than Sorrow’s Furnace currently is.

EnRohbi.2187:

JaironKalach.4938:

EnRohbi.2187:

katz.8376:

it’s not that you insulted me. but come on. it’s already been over a month that SF has been sitting on us, and no end in sight. “no quick fix” is all well and good, but every person reaches the end of their patience at some point, and right now, there IS no light at the end of the tunnel. at all.

People will join in if they see you actually trying. Most people would quit and walk out of wvw when they enter a map and don’t see anyone at all. Your server’s morale has a lot of bearing on how many people will show up for wvw (Dragonbrand suffered a massive guild loss some months ago and has since rebuilt, I have seen every part of the morale-spectrum in my own server and can speak here from experience). Motivating the players on your server to participate even in a losing battle is a huge factor in how your server is going to fare in wvw.

My biggest concern is that for a server like FC or ET, this is an unsustainable proposition. It’s certainly a significant uphill battle. It’s probably a topic for a different thread, but I don’t think that the psychology of the situation will allow for the balance we are looking for to come through natural attrition/growth. It is too punishing for a new player on a server such as ET to stick it out, with little incentive. I would advocate that ANet introduce something to help manage this, but… It’s not really clear to me what they would be able to effectively do.

And this is the problem.
Everyone wants a solution to what everyone knows is a problem,
But there might not be one,
Short of merging servers or waiting for natural growth to happen.

Which tier 7 server would you rather take SF’s place?
Is there any other server in the whole game who you think would be a fair fight against FC and ET?

Darkhaven would almost certainly rock you more than SF is doing currently, so let’s rule them out.
If both HoD and GoM are at the same level of competition that SF is at (Which I would say is likely to be true), then there are exactly zero combinations of servers in tier 8 that would give you a balanced match, and nothing Anet does to the ratings system or ratings themselves will create a third server on par with ET and FC.

This is why I suggest that you try to increase wvw participation on your respective servers before calling for a change to the math (EDIT: I’d like to point out again, right here, that I do think a change in the math is required. But changing the math now would be likely to make the problems worse than they already are).

Right now there just aren’t enough servers at similar levels of play to have balanced matchups in every tier, regardless of how those tiers are calculated.

Alright how about this, can you present to me some evidence that Sorrow’s Furnace would not roll up Henge of Denravi and smoke it just as badly? Can you present evidence that it would not surpass even GoM or DH, let alone Henge of Denravi?

Think about it, Sorrow’s Furnace had some great matchups, close matchups with Henge of Denravi.

http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/13#NA
Week 50, desepite having a tier5/ near tier 4 server in their midst, we see Henge of Denravi and Sorrow’s Furnace with very close scores with SF winning.

Week 51, Sorrow’s Furnace Defeats Henge of Denravi in an awesome close match
http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/14#NA

Week 52, Sorrow’s Furnace loses to Henge of Denravi in a another awesome close match

Week 01, the same Sorrow’s Furnace that rivaled Henge of Denravi comfortably falls to tier 8 and is defeated by Ferguson’s Crossing in an awesome and close matchup
http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/15#NA

Week 02, Sorrow’s Furnace defeats Ferguson’s Crossing in another awesome and very close matchup. The relationship already represents the Henge of Denravi. Vs. Sorrow’s Furnace matchups to a tee.

Week 03, Sorrow’s Furnace starts seeing major population booms in WvW.
http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/18#NA
Despite this unexpected WvW population increase it is still a relatively great matchup in comparison today. FC and ET could deal with this without too much stress.

Week 04, Sorrow’s Furnace has its population boom met with yet more increases. It’s NA population in WvW grows drastically, as well as a few more in other time zones. The beginning of the week resembled the previous one, but as Tuesday-Friday played out massive growth in those days was seen and we lost our foothold, both us and Eredon’s Terrace.
http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/19#NA

Week 05, Sorrow’s Furnace’s booming population had reached its peak and it begins to set the score trend for every future match up we will have with them.
http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/20#NA