Guild Wars 2

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Game-Update-Notes-December-14-2012

^ last post

But what in the op is anet not doing?

They are fixing fractals, invaliding that concern in its entirty (adding in rejoin on disconnect, and the ability to play to the highest level fractal of the party)
They are slowly nerfing thieves. (which is smart, wild swings with nerfbats crit player populations for huge damage)
They are adding more level 80 content.

Its just not coming fast enough I guess?

Which if this is the case, put the game down and come back in a month or two.

In this thread there is a screenshot posted where a player asked a developer if this was considered an exploit. His reply from Evan Lesh is no, that it is not.

Here is evan lesh: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/members/Evan-Lesh-3295
He is in fact a developer. Assuming his image wasnt edited i’m assuming that this is anets official stance.

Siege is soulbound to prevent you from mailing someone in the field needed siege blueprints, that you are intended to run the siege from wherever you get it, to where you deploy it, so as you cant buy siege as you need it.

I do think anet should make it account bound, so you can transfer between characters easily.

No problem! (I wasn’t there though )

Ron please point out where I said thieves shouldn’t be nerfed or their damage was acceptable.

People tend to post things in forums that are an exaggeration of the truth. Usually its not just damage from steal + BS but its steal + BS + HS + HS +HS, steath quickness finisher, which I agree its a bit too strong. But anet cant nerf it that hard if they want it to be viable. A glass thief caught in a stun is a dead thief. I think the thief needs a better drawback to its quickness, for example it should pull them out of stealth and prevent them from restealthing for the duration. Personally I am no fan of stealth.

Regardless of where its now you should be able to live through steal+bs+hs, and then stun him. Currently there is sufficient counterplay. Problem is that random people cant be expected to utilize it.

If your guild moved on, then the real reason is that your friends are no longer playing.

The backstab build for thief is actually one of the weaker wvw builds. Thieves would be just fine if anet nerfed it into oblivion.

the pvp toymakers bag can only be equipped in spvp and is only visible in spvp.

My engineer loves thieves

Supply drop is OP. And if that thief has no defensive stats, ill down him before he breaks the stun/immobilize chain.

I do think the thieves powercurve needs to be adjusted a bit. Its far to simple to go glass cannon thief, they should have to sacrifice even more defensively or longer cooldowns to play one, and i’m not against anet nerfing their damage a bit. But right now the engineer has strong counterplay options against the thief, and a competently built engineer shouldn’t lose to a glass thief (but there are other kinds of thief builds that can beat strong engineer builds). You also shouldn’t take a 13k backstab. The thieves I know get them because: its an upleveled player or a level 80 with masterwork or underleveled armor. or the person doesn’t have enough invested in toughness.

When you see a thief run at you, then stealth, you should be prepping a defensive ability right away, such as a block, protection, or gtaoe stun at your own feet.

You didn’t answer the question.

How are you taking 20k damage from a thief? My impression is that you are level 80. Thieves don’t kill me, or anyone in my guild in 2 hits.

I’m not saying thieves don’t have balance issues, especially with culling and render lag, but I seriously haven’t taken a 13k hit from a thief after the signet was nerfed.

Seriously how the hell are you taking 20k damage from a thief, as an engineer? It boggles my mind.

Engineers actually have very strong counterplay against thieves. Invun options, supply drop (stun), immobilize, lots of gtaoe abilities to spam when a thief is invisible, kd, projectile blocking…

They are fixing your concerns about Fotm in January, adding in reconnect and the ability to play to the highest fractal level of the group.

I also haven’t seen a 13k backstab in like forever. I suspect some L2P issues here, sure theifs are annoying, and can be strong in specific situations against specific builds. engineers are a medium armor class and with a proper build are not going to die at all to a glass cannon thief. If you are taking 20k damage in 2 hits, you need to rethink your build.

Also Frostgorge Sound and Malchors Leap have content in them for 80’s, and they will be adding more level 80 pve content in January. In addition all explorable paths for the dungeons have value. So if I were you, take a break from the game for a while, come back in a month so its new and fresh.

Incoming protip:

For those with multiple computers, update one computer, then copy gw2.dat from that computers installation folder to other computers in the house and replace gw2.dat in their installation folders to save bandwidth/time updating multiple clients.

Back to your regularly scheduled thread.

you would, but upgrading serves to refresh the HP of the siege.

Whats better: 1 almost dead snowman and 1 full health one or one full health upgraded one?

I think the latter is better.

It doesnt really matter, because as long as you are smashing things and using the materials as fast as you can, you practically cant lose.

Translation: they fixed one of the exploit methods to get into the keep, the other one is still open.

Thanks all, keep this up there. I am aware they made the achievement much easier now that you only need 1 dolyak to survive, so with the things listed in the op its a 100% sure fire win if you just spam that siege everywhere.

Thank you, making sure this gets up there so more people can see it and grab the achievement.

Yep there is supposed to be a major WvW patch in feb.

They probably didnt talk about everything they are going to do for febs update, because not everything is finalized.

But if the size of the updates weve gotten each month is any indicator I think it will be bigger than any of the people here expect.

and the whole ‘anet doesnt care about wvw’ thing is getting on my nerves because I really see no evidence of that.

kanikani.2430:

I would just like to add a point about new maps. You didn’t seem to take that long to make the ‘Lost Shores’ map. How often is that used? Didn’t seem to have issues making all the holiday instances either, or the fractals dungeons.

If WvW is a small populations (which it is) do you think there are more people in BL maps at any given time then the ‘Lost Shores’? Why do you as devs have time/resources to create some dumb zone that no one uses, but none for a place that people actually inhabit 24/7?

On the other side I do want to thank Colin for posting this, I am glad to know the true intentions/what is coming for WvW. More information is better, even if it is bad news, because I can make informed choices now (like looking at other games). And I do appreciate the staff for doing the interview so at least I can know what your doing/thinking.

Are you seriously equating the time it takes to make a pve map as equivilant to a pvp map.

There is a LOT more that goes into a WvW map than just blotting a bunch of stuff around.

You have to have a carful consideration of balance, you must make sure your siege design for the map pans out (do you think that all those treb locations weve been using are all entirely organic?) They might be able to spit out a map in two months time, but it wont be nearly balanced. It will take them quite a bit of time with iteration as they figure out all the correct distances and make those time consuming corrections until the map is just right.

Its not like a pve map where you dont have balance concerns to consider. On top of this Lost Shores is not a big map, I would say its roughly 1/6th the size of EB.

So far the above issues arnt mechanics issues as well. Anet is patching our issues one at a time, I think its probably not as fast as a lot of you would like. If you need to take a break from the game do so, doesnt cost you a cent. You can come back in feburary and check out the changes.

Makes sense we miss you guys though, hopefully you guys pick a server that we have a chance of meeting you guys again.

I dont think you will ever find a truely balanced tier, outside of maybe T1. Every tier has its ebb and flow.

Glad to hear that Irate, maybe ill step back into your BL again Just to spice things up.

@amber I got exactly what he said and it makes complete sense. My guild doesnt always include other guilds into what we are doing, so I dont expect him to include me, we do what we are capable of. If ive only got 3 online we go harrass supply camps, if ive got 5, we harrass towers, sometimes even attempt ninja operations with 5 people. If ive got more than that we play with bigger moves. What chaster is saying is that our PuG’s shouldnt be just following the zerg around but better utilizing themselves to give us a bigger impact. There are always dolyaks/supply camps that need harrassing. Towers that need proper defensive siege, and teams responsible to respond to them falling under attack.

Honestly when I get in with the zerg I dont feel like i’m doing much of anything. When i’m out with my guild I feel i have a huge impact on whats happening by what we take, and what we choose to defend. What is important to me is that I’m having fun. Otherwise its burnout street and weve already seen several guilds go that route.

You dont take a zerg to go chase 5 people around the map, you dont take a zerg to harrass dolyaks, you hit major objectives, ones you can take.

Only if you put one of them on each of the spawn points.

Also walls arnt pug friendly.

Pixel, in your opinion are the mechanics of WvW broken right now?

Note I am talking mechanics, which has nothing to do with culling, server transfers etc.

I think the mechanics of the format are solid. And what needs work on are the things that arnt mechanics, like culling, server transfers, perhaps scoring adjustments to make PvD less valueable.

My question is, if its really about HoD and ET being smaller than FC..

Why didnt you wait until kaineng left into T7, why now? FC is defineatly an underdog right now compared to Kaineng…

I get where your going, but the timing of this doesnt quite match up, unless you were using this week to find a server to transfer to that will give you a solid challenge week in and week out.

I dont see anywhere in that interview that anet said we wernt important, you are just infering that, probably falsely.

It takes over 6 months to make a WvW map, why would we expect a new map anytime soon.

WvW in its current state works, yes it needs tweaks around the edges, culling fixes, and the patching of a few exploits, but overall the mechanics of WvW are very solid right now.

It needs better rewards, maybe some progression, and feb would be about right for that.

While we would like to have everything NOW, devlopment takes time.

I saw a few catapults that didnt fire yes, most did though and they do a huge amount of AOE damage.

Ballista shots tend to get blocked by walls/objects/things and the ballista doesnt know any better when this happens and just keeps shooting into the blockage.

Nothing better when something spawns it just immediately dies because 7-8 snowballs land on them from catapults.

I did it first try, and didnt even communicate…

It was really easy. A single person just spamming snowmen and catalputs everywhere (not on the dolyaks, where the kits spawn, thats it) seems to do the trick just fine.

I would like to note that this method is very pug friendly, as it really takes just one person doing this to win the match. Most pugs join in after they see how it works, and how simple it is.

There is no complicated anti pug method of ‘not killing something’, or ‘kiting something into a corner’. Just spam snowmen and catapults and watch everything die, including toxx.

I think building snowmen and catapults everywhere is much easier, doesnt require team coordination (pug friendly) and works much better than the above.

Step 1, grab candy cane
Step 2, smash everything
Step 3, build anything that drops right next to where you pick it up
Step 4, build only snowmen and catapult, litter the map with them. Walls and ballista are pretty much worthless.
Step 5, dont upgrade siege till wave 3

What happens is the toys ‘aggro’ the snowmen and catapults and the catapults and snowmen kill them really quickly, when toxx spawns she will run between all your placed siege and ignore the dolyaks.

As such toypocalypse is actually really really easy and you will likely get the achievement after 1-2 trys. When you stack your siege by dolyaks the toys aggro your siege there and damage the dolyaks in aoe, if you spread it out it spreads the aggro out and the toys die well before they reach the dolyaks.

The tricky part is the first wave, if you dont have a dolyak die in the first wave you will pretty much get the achievement 100% of the time as long as you follow the first 4 steps.

Even if you are the ONLY person doing this you can shut down an entire side by yourself, and you would hope 4 people could hold the other side, even if they do a poor job of building anything.

Skarloc.2569:

Do you even realize that FC is in much better shape than in previous weeks, and that it actually has a much higher WvW population than ET and some of the other falling servers? The real reason we’re leaving is that FC is about to be on the other side of population imbalance, and this time for the better.

Thing is, i went to FBL borderland last night… it was a bit late but there wasnt any real resistance. About 6-7 fergie showed up to defend against 15-25 Kaineng. Without NP or ENVY floating around its a huge coverage issue right now. A few days ago I did the same attack and NP and ENVY plus a few others were there and they fought us and made it real hard to even take a tower. The second time we got the door down we got portal bombed by your guys.

Now its just sad. We took briar, built a bunch of defense and no one came to attack it… so we startted trebbing bay and catapulting bay, and a few fergie defended. We then hit hills and about 1-2 fergie showed up.

A stunning difference from just 2 days ago. Maybe they really do have the population like you say, and the majority are ignoring wvw right now. But I feel ET is fielding better numbers than Fergie is. On top of that ET has push out a stunning level of organization when a few of their major guilds operate and I can only give them props. Attacking fergie doesnt feel right at all right now, so Ill be ignoring your BL hopefully the morale on that server will improve soon.

^ or the jackalope can just pull the BOMB out and then Storm would be the one running.

This thread has the potential to become awfuly ironic if DR doesnt make T6.

Its only a <10 point rating gap, and its been flipping back and forth all week who will stay/leave in T6.

DR spawn camped Ferg and Kain quite a bit…

We didnt mind. It was just an oppertunity for us to lure the DR folk into champion guards over and over. Fighting is more fun when its just a short walk away

Oh there also seems to be a bug with the event. If the commander is there asking for reinforcements and you take a different tower before activating him.

You can still activate him.

SolarWind has been on DR from the beginning. He was one of my first contacts on that server when we were getting steamrolled by release day servers after release day servers fighting over cliffside and dawns. :P

I find defending with a handful of people and some properly placed siege all you need to do to stall even the largest of forces.

With 5 people, I can make you build trebs. I find 6-7 people ideal for zerg stalling in towers. Problem is most people in WvW have no idea how to place and operate siege with the goal of stalling an attacking force. (effective stall is preventing ram placement, then having something to counter range siege options like catapults with your own catapult).

It seems like fergs morale is at an all time low. I feel for you guys, i really do. Hang in there we will jump up to T7 in about two weeks at this rate (and the rate HoD is falling).

There is a timing to the theifs attack, theives do not appear out of nowhere. Then run to you, stealth 2-3 seconds out, then hit their attacks. If you force them to miss their lead ins, and they burn their initiative you are going to get some counterplay in. Focus on CCing them first.

I do recommend you roll up a thief in sPvP and learn the class. There is a lot you probably dont intrinsicly understand about how to shut down a thief, and make him badgefood.

I play these classes in WvW now: Warrior, Elementalist, Mesmer. All three of them dont get 3 shotted by even the most glassy of cannon thieves, and 2 of them arnt even level 80. (my thief is only level 14, rarely played, and before you go but you have a thief! I have one of each class, and the lowest level is 14).

I do think stealth needs to be addressed, both in culling and ‘render lag’. I do think a lot of the issues will be fixed when that is addressed.

They got out of T8.

In reality all the T8 servers last week have bigger populations than ET, HoD, and maybe SF, so when DR hopped into T7, which consisted of one almost completely decimated server (HoD) and SF, they outpopped both of them combined. It is likely that DR might jump into T6 where the population advantages wont be so severe.

thenoobler.7540:

Draygo.9473:

You did abandon Kaineng. Unless your using some wierd definition of abandon. You left, that is abandoning. After all the words you gave about sticking it out for the long haul, recruiting a lot of your members from our PvE zones, you took that back to dragonbrand.

I dont nessisarily disagree with your decision, you have to do whats best for your guild. Stop sugarcoating it and pretending you didnt abandon us.

Oh delarme…. we left… becuase we were the ones abandoned. No sugar coating there.

Good to see you all having fun again tho, and happy to see Kaineng will be in tier 7 soon, hats off to you all.

fun again?

I dont remember not having fun. ; )

Anet has been very clear that WvW uses PvE stats and gear…

and their idle animation where they sit down is

so

(squee)

Taikanaru.5746:

I’ve been looking forward to the day when we can finally play music. And it’s finally here.

Just one problem, I will probably never get the unbreakable choir bell as it is very rare and the TP cost is way out of my league. So I fear all this fun will be over once this Wintersday ends, at least for a while. I’m hoping this is just the tip of the iceberg for what is to come.

I tried a one-time choir bell which disappeared on me way too soon. Seems it also lacked some polish as it was making unwanted sound effects coming from the player’s mouth and hand movements.

Switching between octaves is still a bit clunky. Maybe give instruments their own set of hotkeys, so the entire keyboard is available for notes, this way switching octaves wouldn’t even be necessary. Alternatively use F1-4 for switching octaves and possibly give an option for triggering octave for when the button is held down.

Alternative: buy 1,000 temp bells (they are cheap).
I kinda doubt you will be able to burn through 1,000 bells in a year.

I just think they need to be tweaked.

Dont give free supply out to the attackers, instead have the champion fully build siege instead of players having to ‘finish’ the build. the 100 free supply into the tower is good though, the potential of an attacker of getting 2-3 trebs or 2-3 golems off the bat isnt so good.

You did abandon Kaineng. Unless your using some wierd definition of abandon. You left, that is abandoning. After all the words you gave about sticking it out for the long haul, recruiting a lot of your members from our PvE zones, you took that back to dragonbrand.

I dont nessisarily disagree with your decision, you have to do whats best for your guild. Stop sugarcoating it and pretending you didnt abandon us.

The entire design of the mesmer in GW1 was to give enemies 2 false choices.

A few of my favorites:
Wastrel’s Worry: If enemy does not cast a skill in 5 seconds, they take X damage (which could be up to 1/5th of your total health)
This gave the enemy the choice of casting a spell now, which usually cost them energy instead of at a better time, or take the damage. Not to bad really, but when you combine that with Backfire
Backfire – If an enemy casts a spell they take X damage (again around 1/5th of your healthbar). So a common mesmer combination would be to cast backfire, then cover that hex with Wastrel’s Worry. (covers are ususally short cast spells that cost little energy that prevent the bigger hex from being removed).

So that gave a false choice to anyone with nothing but spells on their bar. You cast any spell you take damage, but remove WW. You dont cast a spell you take damage from WW. But that false choice had a fair amount of counterplay, for example you can better design your build so you arnt entirely built around spells, such as taking a signet or glyph.

Confusion has the same amount of counterplay availible. You get the condition you can remove it, dodge around a bit till it wears off, or use channel abilities to lower the damage it does to you, while you are maximizing the damage you do to enemies. For example using the warrior skill 100 blades potentially doing 5k damage to an enemy while you take a single hit of 500 damage from confusion. Or using Kill shot as a rifle warrior. Necro’s, ele’s, rangers all have these channel abilities on their skillbars. So when you fight amesmer dont go burning that channel early forcing you to wait its cooldown when you get confusion stacked.

Mesmers create false choices that is the IDEA of their class, but there is sufficient counterplay in the system.

The instanced areas get 3 hours to reboot.

Problem is in wvw you cant have 2 instances of wvw running at the same time.

The fix for this is coming soonish, it just didnt make the patch on the 14th.

In this game, the spawn camped camp you.

(stay away from enemy spawns, what is wrong with you).

Again, people not noticing the thread is a necro from before karma jugs were introduced.

I am 100% sure anet isnt going to ban you if you report an action that you know is against the rules. Even if you report the same person day by day.

They might take action if you spam right click report over and over within seconds of each other, but a day? no.

The ban rule is just a threat to keep people sane with the reporting system. To help avoid people getting reported for spamming while they are just having a casual conversation, just because some individual doesnt like what the conversation is about.

I am not aware of anyone banned or even suspended because they abused the report button.

^ actually there is, its called scouting or watch. For example a single person in charge of the area around briar tower can easily make sure no enemies are running into the supply camp.

Upgrades at that point are to stall enemy forces long enough for your forces to respond to their movements.

Why would you leave 2+ people standing around when you can do the job with 1, and that one can watch multiple objectives or crucial choke points. The rest just need to be able to respond.