Guild Wars 2

Saradon WarChild.2034:

What I really don’t understand is Dragonband’s NNK guild. I mean, DB is a solid tier 3 server and as such there’s likely never going to be much coverage from any of the other servers in NNK’s time zone. Doesn’t it get boring having nobody at all to fight? Is there something about PVD I’m missing? I guess I’d get it if it made a difference, but score wise it really doesn’t. What’s the deal?

You still have points,
If it was PvDoor and we had “nobody at all to fight” we would be +695,

It’s not like we just took 60% of the map and then said “Nah, we’ll stop here for today”.

EasymodeX.4062:

Well, I wouldn’t advocate shorter matches based on that rationale.

The Tues-Friday downtime for players allows them to back off from the game and relax more freely. Take some time off and watch LoL LCS, or whatever.

E.g. there’s life beyond GW2.

Week-long still allows for the conclusion of close matches when they occur. Note that “close” doesn’t have to be all 3 servers. Even if two of the 3 are close, it can be an interesting matchup.

That isn’t the bulk of the rationale I would argue for shorter matches on :P
As I said, this thread isn’t the place for it, or my post would have been three times longer (To explain the rest) and have little to do with the actual topic.

But to be as concise as possible,
I think that with weeklong matches, servers are pretty locked into their fate with scores by Monday or Tuesday. At least if the matches were 2-3 days long, servers could really rally together for a shorter period of time and win a match or two that they would have otherwise lost because they don’t have the population or stamina to compete for a whole week.

Tricare.2946:

EnRohbi.2187:

Tiglie.5834:

The lack of understanding from so many so called pros in this thread is amazing. Let me break it down to you.

There are two severe lacks of “normal” mmo abilities in this game healing and CC. As a small group you have zero way to outplay other groups, because of the dumbed down gameplay this game promotes. It leaves you pretty much three options, extending, outpositioning, or poking. The outpositioning is nullified to a great point by the aoe cap, so you are left with extending and poking gameplay. This is the reason mobility burst classes that can either unload while essentially invulnerable, or classes that can run and reset rule the small group scene.

Why am I explaining this…..because you people who zergball around obviously don’t understand how 1 single confusion mesmer can absolutely destroy you. In a game with literally zero crowd control, confusion is a pseudo CC. It essentially makes you stop all movement, unable to use a heal, and penalizes you for doing anything. That’s understandable, a neat backhanded idea for CC. The problem lies in the insane scaling. It should not penalize you with 4k+ ticks for using 1 ability. Anything who thinks that is fair needs to have their head checked.

Yes you can clear it, yes you can not move. But in a game where mobility rules, one tiny mistep by any member of your group spells death, you cannot afford the even 2 seconds waiting on a cleanse or clear from timer, you are dead. It would be understandable if there were other abilities that punished as hard, but as it stands…..NOTHING even comes close to the realm of how hard of a shutdown confusion is with the current levels of dmg it is capable of outputting. It is a CC, immobilize, dodge block, heal block, skill lock…………that should properly penalize you and have you eat some damage………just not the absurd numbers you see now when you get people food buffed, carrion stacked pushing 1500+ condition damage.

You claim to know more than the self proclaimed pros, but you just called Confusion an Immobilise.

There’s only about a 1-2 second window where confusion is ever stacked high enough to actually make you unable to heal. So that point is moot.

If your zergs are dying to ONE confusion mesmer,
Your zergs suck, and every single participant of them needs to l2p.

It is baffling how many bads there are in this game who refuse to adapt.

I’ll reply for Tiglie.

He said “confusion is a pseudo CC” meaning that once you have a large amount of confusion on you, all you can do is run away, nothing else. Taking any other action will kill you, not only from yourself, but from the dd that you are being hit with. In turn, you might as well just stand still or auto run with your hands away from the keyboard.

Agreed,
But “running away” is quite the opposite of “Immobilized”

Also, as I said,
Large stacks of confusion /do/ hurt a lot, but even then primarily only when you use many skills. And the duration they’re up for isn’t very long. If you wait 2-3 seconds (I don’t care how many people say if you stop button mashing for even a fraction of a second you’ll die; it’s not true.), you will be able to heal / cleanse condition / gtfo with lesser confusion on you.

Yeah, mesmers can build to keep some amount of confusion on your nearly permanently, but it’ll be like 3 stacks at a time.

This is completely ignoring the fact that if you’re in a zerg facing a glamour mesmer, all you really have to do is have your group drop a couple Null Fields for your group and… Oh kitten, persistent aoe complete condition removal. There are enough mesmers in wvw that your zerg should always be equipped with a few Null Fields.

There is so much aoe condition removal in this game that there is really no excuse to be zerging around and not have it in abundance.

Unfortunately,
The difference IS that big between server’s wvw population in most tiers.

There’s no real practical solution to this, unless Anet starts merging servers or forcibly relocating people (The latter option isn’t going to happen, I’m not advocating it and I’m sure Anet wouldn’t even consider it)

In most tiers you know who’s going to win as soon as you know who your opponents are. And if you’re not the server that’s going to win, half your wvw population won’t bother playing past Monday.

I’m honestly growing bored with week long matches, I think there is an argument to be made for shortening match lengths significantly,
But I don’t think this thread is the place to do it.

Tiglie.5834:

The lack of understanding from so many so called pros in this thread is amazing. Let me break it down to you.

There are two severe lacks of “normal” mmo abilities in this game healing and CC. As a small group you have zero way to outplay other groups, because of the dumbed down gameplay this game promotes. It leaves you pretty much three options, extending, outpositioning, or poking. The outpositioning is nullified to a great point by the aoe cap, so you are left with extending and poking gameplay. This is the reason mobility burst classes that can either unload while essentially invulnerable, or classes that can run and reset rule the small group scene.

Why am I explaining this…..because you people who zergball around obviously don’t understand how 1 single confusion mesmer can absolutely destroy you. In a game with literally zero crowd control, confusion is a pseudo CC. It essentially makes you stop all movement, unable to use a heal, and penalizes you for doing anything. That’s understandable, a neat backhanded idea for CC. The problem lies in the insane scaling. It should not penalize you with 4k+ ticks for using 1 ability. Anything who thinks that is fair needs to have their head checked.

Yes you can clear it, yes you can not move. But in a game where mobility rules, one tiny mistep by any member of your group spells death, you cannot afford the even 2 seconds waiting on a cleanse or clear from timer, you are dead. It would be understandable if there were other abilities that punished as hard, but as it stands…..NOTHING even comes close to the realm of how hard of a shutdown confusion is with the current levels of dmg it is capable of outputting. It is a CC, immobilize, dodge block, heal block, skill lock…………that should properly penalize you and have you eat some damage………just not the absurd numbers you see now when you get people food buffed, carrion stacked pushing 1500+ condition damage.

You claim to know more than the self proclaimed pros, but you just called Confusion an Immobilise.

There’s only about a 1-2 second window where confusion is ever stacked high enough to actually make you unable to heal. So that point is moot.

If your zergs are dying to ONE confusion mesmer,
Your zergs suck, and every single participant of them needs to l2p.

It is baffling how many bads there are in this game who refuse to adapt.

Tool.3749:

Aytrix.4059:

John Widdin.9618:

Your name is oddly fitting.

What started all this ruckus? A few bad encounters with BT?

I think he’s mad because he wasn’t mentioned as a worthy opponent. So like a small child who doesn’t get what he wants, he is throwing a tantrum…. on the internet.

I think im mad because a zerger called zergs unskilled? I have been defending the unskilled zerg all day here!

As I tried to point out before, but it seemed to get lost on people because I didn’t spell it out exactly: There is a difference between a zerg and a large organized group of players.

Zergs are unskilled.

Bunzy.8674:

EnRohbi.2187:

Bunzy.8674:

EnRohbi.2187:

Bunzy.8674:

kfarb.6732:

Sometimes large groups will kill people, yes.

They can blow everyone up in under 1 second.

You use all your condition removals in under one second?

I think you’re just mashing buttons and not paying attention

I don’t think you understand the concept of time.
The fight can last 30 seconds and they can still blow you up in under 1 second.

You’ve got countless people here telling you to l2p,
And told you the same thing last time.

Why don’t you spend some of the time you spend QQing on the forums and whining to big daddy Anet to nerf the competition for you, and go learn how to play the game

All the people who are saying L2P are mesmers… isn’t it ironic don’t you think?

I’m a shatter mesmer, my condition damage is next to nil.
They could remove confusion from the game entirely and I’d be largely unaffected.

But I do find it amusing that eventually everyone whining for a Confusion nerf has no argument left to fall back on other than “It’s only mesmers defending it”

Bunzy.8674:

EnRohbi.2187:

Bunzy.8674:

kfarb.6732:

Sometimes large groups will kill people, yes.

They can blow everyone up in under 1 second.

You use all your condition removals in under one second?

I think you’re just mashing buttons and not paying attention

I don’t think you understand the concept of time.
The fight can last 30 seconds and they can still blow you up in under 1 second.

You’ve got countless people here telling you to l2p,
And told you the same thing last time.

Why don’t you spend some of the time you spend QQing on the forums and whining to big daddy Anet to nerf the competition for you, and go learn how to play the game

Bunzy.8674:

kfarb.6732:

Sometimes large groups will kill people, yes.

They can blow everyone up in under 1 second.

You use all your condition removals in under one second?

I think you’re just mashing buttons and not paying attention

Azure Prower.8701:

I think the mesmer shatter build needs looking at more than any thing. I’ve seen a mesmer solo 5 people with that build because people are either forced to chase (get shattered) or die. The only thing you can do against a shatter mesmer (the good ones) is run until you got a 10+ zerg to be able to kill just one mesmer.

…
Anyone good at their class can solo 5 bads.
Especially if they’re upleveled, which I’m sure you’ll claim they weren’t in your case.

I assure you that no shatter mesmer is soloing five people if they have /any/ idea what they’re doing.

Evalana.5480:

Is it bad that I actually LIKE BT? o.O

I got nothing against BT either.

Zoel.9154:

EnRohbi.2187:

Tool.3749:

EnRohbi.2187:

Tool.3749:

Mister Mustard.7203:

Tool.3749:

You’re not the first to do this, you’re just red guard copy cats.

I’m willing to bet that just because you dropped that name, you have watched videos and read things to make yourself a better player.

I’m willing to bet you have used some of the information others who play this game have posted online to tune your build and improve your game.

So, why would you debase yourself in an attempt to degrade your opponents for using … tactics? If they’re as you say, Red Guard copycats, why aren’t you countering their ‘highly predictable’ tactics with some brilliant maneuvers of your own?

To summarize, I don’t think it’s right to suggest that learning from others is a bad thing.

I probably read the same forums that guild does. Wow, here we both are on the same forums. I never called BT unskilled, I did call them copy cats and they are. I have played against them several times now. In the past match up’s they played allmost nothing but thiefs, they ran a pack of them who would sit in camps and insta gank. This was the OPed tactic of that time in the game, or so it was believed. Now there is a better tactic that has been found, by another guild, and they’re doing that.

Now one of that guild called everyone other then the few guilds he wants to jump ship to his server in this match, “unskilled zerg”. “Unskilled zerg” coming from a copy cat, irony. A few of them are now kitten because I have pointed that fact out.

If they dont want people questioning thier posts, then I would say stop posting like they are doing something that hasn’t already been done, by someone else and use a tactic that Anet hasn’t already acknowledged as being an issue that will be nerfed in the upcoming patch.

I don’t understand,
You seem to be under the assumption that as soon as one guild develops a tactic for wvw, no other group of players in the game is allowed to use that same tactic?

There is no GW2 patent system for battle tactics.
Calling them copycats is completely ridiculous.

As ridiculous as calling people “unskilled zerg”? if they dont like the title, then dont title others, right?

But that’s what zergs are… Unskilled.
That’s why they’re called Zergs, and not Armies, or Large Groups of Players.
But Zergs.
Because they rely on number in lieu of skill.

At most, calling someone an Unskilled Zerg is redundant.

1. How dare you say that about stephano, whose sponsor kindly hosts the score tracker.

2. WvW is about comps, working as a group, and using builds that compliment a group rather than a 1v1 setup. If this isn’t your thing, you might want to reconsider your time investment in WvW.

3. Talk to AoN for ideas about how to deal with groups larger than your own. They’re on your server and stuff, and they might be the best WvW guild in the world at picking the right engagements.

Uhm,
I think you missed something very significant in my post, or greatly misinterpreted my tone,
I have no idea what you’re talking about on all three points, they don’t seem to relate at all to anything I said.

Tool.3749:

EnRohbi.2187:

Tool.3749:

Mister Mustard.7203:

Tool.3749:

You’re not the first to do this, you’re just red guard copy cats.

I’m willing to bet that just because you dropped that name, you have watched videos and read things to make yourself a better player.

I’m willing to bet you have used some of the information others who play this game have posted online to tune your build and improve your game.

So, why would you debase yourself in an attempt to degrade your opponents for using … tactics? If they’re as you say, Red Guard copycats, why aren’t you countering their ‘highly predictable’ tactics with some brilliant maneuvers of your own?

To summarize, I don’t think it’s right to suggest that learning from others is a bad thing.

I probably read the same forums that guild does. Wow, here we both are on the same forums. I never called BT unskilled, I did call them copy cats and they are. I have played against them several times now. In the past match up’s they played allmost nothing but thiefs, they ran a pack of them who would sit in camps and insta gank. This was the OPed tactic of that time in the game, or so it was believed. Now there is a better tactic that has been found, by another guild, and they’re doing that.

Now one of that guild called everyone other then the few guilds he wants to jump ship to his server in this match, “unskilled zerg”. “Unskilled zerg” coming from a copy cat, irony. A few of them are now kitten because I have pointed that fact out.

If they dont want people questioning thier posts, then I would say stop posting like they are doing something that hasn’t already been done, by someone else and use a tactic that Anet hasn’t already acknowledged as being an issue that will be nerfed in the upcoming patch.

I don’t understand,
You seem to be under the assumption that as soon as one guild develops a tactic for wvw, no other group of players in the game is allowed to use that same tactic?

There is no GW2 patent system for battle tactics.
Calling them copycats is completely ridiculous.

As ridiculous as calling people “unskilled zerg”? if they dont like the title, then dont title others, right?

But that’s what zergs are… Unskilled.
That’s why they’re called Zergs, and not Armies, or Large Groups of Players.
But Zergs.
Because they rely on number in lieu of skill.

At most, calling someone an Unskilled Zerg is redundant.

Tool.3749:

Mister Mustard.7203:

Tool.3749:

You’re not the first to do this, you’re just red guard copy cats.

I’m willing to bet that just because you dropped that name, you have watched videos and read things to make yourself a better player.

I’m willing to bet you have used some of the information others who play this game have posted online to tune your build and improve your game.

So, why would you debase yourself in an attempt to degrade your opponents for using … tactics? If they’re as you say, Red Guard copycats, why aren’t you countering their ‘highly predictable’ tactics with some brilliant maneuvers of your own?

To summarize, I don’t think it’s right to suggest that learning from others is a bad thing.

I probably read the same forums that guild does. Wow, here we both are on the same forums. I never called BT unskilled, I did call them copy cats and they are. I have played against them several times now. In the past match up’s they played allmost nothing but thiefs, they ran a pack of them who would sit in camps and insta gank. This was the OPed tactic of that time in the game, or so it was believed. Now there is a better tactic that has been found, by another guild, and they’re doing that.

Now one of that guild called everyone other then the few guilds he wants to jump ship to his server in this match, “unskilled zerg”. “Unskilled zerg” coming from a copy cat, irony. A few of them are now kitten because I have pointed that fact out.

If they dont want people questioning thier posts, then I would say stop posting like they are doing something that hasn’t already been done, by someone else and use a tactic that Anet hasn’t already acknowledged as being an issue that will be nerfed in the upcoming patch.

I don’t understand,
You seem to be under the assumption that as soon as one guild develops a tactic for wvw, no other group of players in the game is allowed to use that same tactic?

There is no GW2 patent system for battle tactics.
Calling them copycats is completely ridiculous.

Brendar.3548:

Ross Biddle.2367:

You know what I’d do if I were stuck in the OP, or any of these other scrubs shoes?

Create a guild. Gather up all the PvE map completion seekers (there are a lot of them), grab anyone else I could find, make some aliances, then go out and siege my way to all the map completion I wanted.

Honestly, for all of you who are actually WvW’rs, you know how easy it is 5 man ninja a keep. Get 10 players together, or a zerg, and if you want something you can cap it no matter what. The WvW battlefield is constantly evolving, and even Tier 1 mass zerg servers can’t be everywhere at once.

If all pve’rs on a server did this just even for one match, they’d have them all.

Expecting teamwork on an MMO is clearly too much to ask.

Oglaf.1074:

Chaba.5410:

I really hope anet doesnt go around nerfing everything based on every little complaint when it is only a matter of developing counter tactics. Oil is quite effective against a golem rush and scouting is proactive.

The oil won’t kill the golems in the few seconds window they need to bust down even a reinforced gate.

So what happened those times I watched a pot of Oil burn down 10+ golems before the reinforced gate got smashed?

Your theories don’t seem to line up, at all, to the hard first hand experiences I have witnessed in the field. Those being that golem rushes are not difficult to deal with, given you prepare. And if you don’t prepare, you really have no business keeping territory.

ganeshori.6309:

actually he was joking….in all honesty….we been tellin the two other servers to team up….ya’ll dont seem to be good at that tho

We’ve tasted the higher tiers….this tier is perfect…. very few want to be stuck at the top….Its played sooo much more different.

I was hoping after a few weeks together, people realized most of my posts are joking too >:

Every week FA suggests that their opponents merge with them >:

Oglaf.1074:

Teleporting in a couple of Golems and Timewarping down the gate in a matter of seconds just leaves the defenders without any chance at all.

I must have hallucinated all those failed Golem rushes I’ve seen then…

Nuka Cola.8520:

EnRohbi.2187:

Nuka Cola.8520:

ODB.6891:

Nuka Cola.8520:

Yes. I don’t want another power based weapon tho, make it so the weapon is useful on condi builds. Skill 3 Chaos Bullet: Inflicts Burning 1sec, Poison 2sec, Chill 3sec, one stack of Confusion 4sec, 1 stack of bleeding 5sec and 15sec CD on the skill. Boom that’s ‘chaos’ stuff, not give 1 stack of useless vulnerability cough WoC cough.

What you are asking for is a buff to scepter then, since it already applies confusion with scepter #3. Scepter is already the 1h condition ranged weapon for mesmer. It makes no sense to add a second ranged 1h condition weapon for mesmer instead of adding a ranged 1h power weapon…when there is no ranged 1h power weapon and there already is a ranged 1h condition weapon.

For me to care about scepter they need to change all three skills it has and that won’t happen. What i really want for mesmer is some kind of spammable skill with poison/burning, this is what i want. I want these two conditions on one skill. We have way too many power weapon on mesmer and not a single real condi wep (staff isn’t one). Scepter deals much more damage in a power build that in a full rabid set. Sword in main and offhand is for power builds. GS is for power builds. Staff is a defensive weapon than anything else (if vulnerability is removed from WOC it could become a great condi wep). Pistol is okay for condi builds but then you have no main hand. Focus is a Swiftness weapon lolz. Torch is laughable for any builds so yeaaaah.

Just because you had not had success using weapons does not mean they can be disregarded.
The fact you consider Focus to be a swiftness weapon is demonstrative of this, as the pull on Temporal Curtain is one of the most useful CC skills in the entire game, especially traited. The phantasm is less useful but still has a purpose if you pay enough attention and position yourself and it accordingly.

I have also had success using the torch in a stealth/confusion heavy build.

We won’t even discuss whether the Staff is a condition weapon or not. It’s certainly defensive, yes, but all 5 skills are condition oriented. (With the arguable exception of Phase Retreat, which still spawns a clone for more WoC which many condition mesmers use)

Would you run focus over pistol in spvp? I won’t… When you’ve played on mez for over 1.5k hours i think you go over the ‘did not have success with X weapon’ with all this time i tried them enough to know what it can and can’t do (in pve/spvp/wvw). Focus is good in wvw because 1. Swiftness and 2. Pulling people off walls but that doesn’t mean i will ever run focus over a pistol during a roam and i spotted another player to 1v1. iWarden isn’t ‘that useful’ but completely worthless. Not only not able to follow target is lol but look at its CD… About staff. A mesmer relies mainly on illusions to spread condis. When your auto’s have a chance of applying useless 1 stack of vulnerability 1/3 of the times this kills a so called condi wep. No point of using torch in any kind of builds. When both of your skills have 1 week CD and most importantly far from being powerful there’s no point of taking it over pistol with its useful stun and Duelist which rocks for condi or power builds. Not to mention iDuelist doesn’t take half a century to CD like iWarden does so if you’re spamming shatter its much better illusion generation.

I actually do run focus in roaming and combat situation.
The Pull gives you an absurd amount of control over where your enemy is (If there’s any terrain abnormality in sight, you can make great use of it), and I greatly prefer it to the Pistol’ stun for CC. If you happen to be fighting opponents on a cliff in wvw, the pull is virtually an iWin button if it lands.

The only thing about Warden is that it’s useless for doing Damage unless the opponent is really bad. It does have applications, however, when you make use of it’s projectiles absorption (Or reflection when traited) and don’t just use it as a “Drop and forget” source of damage like most other phantasms.

And as I touched on briefly,
When traited for reflection the focus becomes even more useful, though sparing traits for 20 in Inspiration isn’t always viable to a build.

Anyway,
If we disagree on the viability of a Focus, that is fine by me.
I have kind of enjoyed the focus being a niche weapon in combat

And just to remain ontopic in this thread:
Again, yes main hand pistol.

And someone was silly enough to think that Maguuma wouldn’t be posting in this thread~

Vizier.3164:

In any case, im happy we wont have to deal with the mag forum trolls for a week

Don’t be too excited,
They’ll post anyway, they have before

Probably the same people who thought wvw was going to be a casual game type

Straegen.2938:

Pendragon.8735:

Meh, last time we went up to T3 it was predicted slaughter, and we hung around for a few weeks and did a credit to ourselves despite not really having the 24/7 coverage necessary to end up close at the end of the week.

T3 is a lot different than it was a few weeks ago. The FA/IoJ merger has made them T2 competitive and very strong in T3. DB had a nice influx as well and has a very strong overnight presence. DB also has queues in NA prime unlike CD and I presume EBay.

Ultimately I don’t think YB stands much of a chance since they will not dominate NA prime, are not used to getting pushed 24×7 and struggled to keep even CD’s EU/oceanic presence in check. DB is A LOT stronger than CD and FA NA prime is excellent.

Just my opinion having played on both DB and CD for several weeks each.

Yak’s Bend knows mostly what to expect from DB, we’ve had a few matches with them.
We’ve gotten a few more guilds since the last match with them though, so I would presume we will undoubtedly be worse for them than last time. But they still know what it’s like to wake up in the morning and check the scores during DB primetime

Yo, PYRO dudes from Mag
Were just doing some duels with you guys by Mag’s spawn in DB BL
Solid show

Honestly,
FA tends to gain their largin margin of winning over the weekend, through the week the matches have been much more balanced.

If we can stop FA from gaining a 30-50k lead before Monday morning, this could be a much closer match.

Pyroatheist.9031:

EnRohbi.2187:

Nuka Cola.8520:

ODB.6891:

Nuka Cola.8520:

Yes. I don’t want another power based weapon tho, make it so the weapon is useful on condi builds. Skill 3 Chaos Bullet: Inflicts Burning 1sec, Poison 2sec, Chill 3sec, one stack of Confusion 4sec, 1 stack of bleeding 5sec and 15sec CD on the skill. Boom that’s ‘chaos’ stuff, not give 1 stack of useless vulnerability cough WoC cough.

What you are asking for is a buff to scepter then, since it already applies confusion with scepter #3. Scepter is already the 1h condition ranged weapon for mesmer. It makes no sense to add a second ranged 1h condition weapon for mesmer instead of adding a ranged 1h power weapon…when there is no ranged 1h power weapon and there already is a ranged 1h condition weapon.

For me to care about scepter they need to change all three skills it has and that won’t happen. What i really want for mesmer is some kind of spammable skill with poison/burning, this is what i want. I want these two conditions on one skill. We have way too many power weapon on mesmer and not a single real condi wep (staff isn’t one). Scepter deals much more damage in a power build that in a full rabid set. Sword in main and offhand is for power builds. GS is for power builds. Staff is a defensive weapon than anything else (if vulnerability is removed from WOC it could become a great condi wep). Pistol is okay for condi builds but then you have no main hand. Focus is a Swiftness weapon lolz. Torch is laughable for any builds so yeaaaah.

Just because you had not had success using weapons does not mean they can be disregarded.
The fact you consider Focus to be a swiftness weapon is demonstrative of this, as the pull on Temporal Curtain is one of the most useful CC skills in the entire game, especially traited. The phantasm is less useful but still has a purpose if you pay enough attention and position yourself and it accordingly.

I have also had success using the torch in a stealth/confusion heavy build.

We won’t even discuss whether the Staff is a condition weapon or not. It’s certainly defensive, yes, but all 5 skills are condition oriented. (With the arguable exception of Phase Retreat, which still spawns a clone for more WoC which many condition mesmers use)

All 5 skills are most certainly not condition oriented. 4 are, sure, but not the warlock. There is a massive difference between scaling with number of unique conditions on the target and scaling through condition damage. The warlock is a power/crit scaling skill, and that isn’t really up for discussion. The other problem with the staff as a condition weapon is that WoC has vulnerability on it. If it didn’t have vuln, then the staff would be far better at condition damage. As is, 30% of your attacks will do practically 0 damage in a condition damage build.

As far as scepter goes, it USED to be a viable condition damage weapon, back when the autoattack applied confusion. However, only 1 out of its 3 skill apply a damaging condition, and even confusing images scales quite well with power. Unfortunately, the auto-attack chain the scepter is so mind-numbingly slow that it is highly ineffective as a power weapon, and since it only has the 1 attack of questionable utility that applies a condition, it is ineffective as a condition damage weapon. We need a main-hand pistol to actually be a power weapon, and we need scepter at least partially retooled to be a condition, or at the very least, a confusion weapon.

I’ll give you your argument about Warlock.
But it’s very obvious that, whether offensively or defensively oriented, the Staff is more geared towards Conditions than direct damage.

And to be clear,
I do not disagree with the Main Hand Pistol idea.
In fact, I very, very, very strongly support it and have wanted it myself long before I noticed the stream of threads on the subject here.

I also do not disagree that the scepter needs to be reworked.
In fact, as far as the topic of the thread goes, I think we agree on all points.

Porky.5021:

Beyondthelol.9504:

I swear that every person who defends the thiefs blatant overpoweredness does so because they themselves play a thief.

How about we have a new rule – if you play a thief you are not allowed to comment on if they are OP or not

That’s not quite true from what I’ve seen. In my experience:

Really good players who play thieves will admit they are overpowered. The type of player who could pick up any class and be good with it in a short amount of time.

Average players or bad players who have thieves and are suddenly good players tend to defend the thief a bit more staunchly. They don’t want to acknowledge that the reason they are suddenly doing so well is due more to mechanics than it is to their ability.

That’s just what I’ve found, anyways. I’ve seen this same basic thing happen in other games as well when it comes to imbalanced classes at times.

I do not play a thief, and have in truth, never raised a thief above level 10~15.
I don’t think much of their class is particularly overpowered.
Some tweaking could be done to high-stealth thieves, but they don’t need their entire profession gutted like some people seem to think.

The only time GC Gank Thieves should really be a problem is when you’re fighting someone else and one just pops into the battle to do 20,000 damage to you. (I’ll admit that sucks, but I could do the same thing to other people as a mesmer or a warrior).

Stealth abusing thieves are certainly more annoying,
But not impossible to take out.
And in fact, the only times I find myself completely unable to neutralize a thief it is because it’s actually being played by a good player.

Bad players are bad players, not even the thief class mechanics protect them from that, it just makes it so they can kill other bad players and sometimes get the jump on a good one.

If your problem is that you feel like you’re pressing too many buttons for the same results other classes get, Mesmer may not help you.

There are builds that require less than others,
But if your goal is to damage at range, it will require some quick buttoning.

The burst damage of a GC mesmer can just about rival that of a thief, except you have to line up twice as many skills to all connect at roughly the same time.

Nuka Cola.8520:

ODB.6891:

Nuka Cola.8520:

Yes. I don’t want another power based weapon tho, make it so the weapon is useful on condi builds. Skill 3 Chaos Bullet: Inflicts Burning 1sec, Poison 2sec, Chill 3sec, one stack of Confusion 4sec, 1 stack of bleeding 5sec and 15sec CD on the skill. Boom that’s ‘chaos’ stuff, not give 1 stack of useless vulnerability cough WoC cough.

What you are asking for is a buff to scepter then, since it already applies confusion with scepter #3. Scepter is already the 1h condition ranged weapon for mesmer. It makes no sense to add a second ranged 1h condition weapon for mesmer instead of adding a ranged 1h power weapon…when there is no ranged 1h power weapon and there already is a ranged 1h condition weapon.

For me to care about scepter they need to change all three skills it has and that won’t happen. What i really want for mesmer is some kind of spammable skill with poison/burning, this is what i want. I want these two conditions on one skill. We have way too many power weapon on mesmer and not a single real condi wep (staff isn’t one). Scepter deals much more damage in a power build that in a full rabid set. Sword in main and offhand is for power builds. GS is for power builds. Staff is a defensive weapon than anything else (if vulnerability is removed from WOC it could become a great condi wep). Pistol is okay for condi builds but then you have no main hand. Focus is a Swiftness weapon lolz. Torch is laughable for any builds so yeaaaah.

Just because you had not had success using weapons does not mean they can be disregarded.
The fact you consider Focus to be a swiftness weapon is demonstrative of this, as the pull on Temporal Curtain is one of the most useful CC skills in the entire game, especially traited. The phantasm is less useful but still has a purpose if you pay enough attention and position yourself and it accordingly.

I have also had success using the torch in a stealth/confusion heavy build.

We won’t even discuss whether the Staff is a condition weapon or not. It’s certainly defensive, yes, but all 5 skills are condition oriented. (With the arguable exception of Phase Retreat, which still spawns a clone for more WoC which many condition mesmers use)

Delvoire.8930:

Good match guys. It was fun Destroying Mag and DB. You guys put up a good fight…………………………………………………………………

yeah that last part was sarcasm.

Good match, guys. It was fun fighting opponents as honourable and goodsportsmanlike as Mag and FA.

Yeah, that entire post was sarcasm. o;

insanemaniac.2456:

titanlectro.5029:

EnRohbi.2187:

Okay,
I’m sorry to burst your bubble here,
But I think tier 8 needs a reality check.

The servers in tier 8 probably comprise something like 1-5% of the game’s total wvw population.

WvW is not, and never will be, balanced for tier 8.

You might be right about the T8 reality check (although personally I would not belittle their problems), but this is not just a T8 problem. It will definitely a T7 problem, and I’ve heard T6 say the same thing.

So we are talking about 9+ servers. Anet would not ban night capping, to show equal concern for the minority. I hope they show the same type of concern for the lower tiers.

An easy solution would be to base swords on percentage of active players. Swords would then scale for time of day, and server tier, automatically.

Example: Orange Swords are active if both conditions are true
1) > 20% of active players attacking
2) > 5 players attacking

i like this a lot too.

just having a flat threshold simply isnt adequate for each server. any form of scaling so that people know where the major forces on the map are is completely necessary. and if youre in the major force you need to be careful about what you attack if you dont want to alert the enemies.

and to those arguing that anet should basically just shut down the lower tiers because their population is too small:
thank you for your bumps. anet can even out wvw populations across all servers by tracking man hours spent in wvw and incentivizing transfers into servers with smaller amounts of time put in. the rankings will then become a measure of skill instead of population, and suddenly the higher tiers will ACTUALLY have some kitten to lord over low tier fodder. until then (or until anet merges servers without looking for real solutions), please refrain from coming in here to say “haha t8 should transfer out”.

Just be clear,
Never said tier 8 should transfer out.

Just that it is unrealistic to expect Anet to put any significant amount of effort (IE: Any new feature) into fixing tier 8.

Haldunius.7864:

etrigan.4213:

nalenb.1425:

ower.9143:

I’d take DB over Magoobers any day. They at least understand how WvW works and don’t cry on the forums about how every fight isn’t 5v5 and call anything over 7 ppl a zergball.

Except we stink at forum warfare. I bet 90% of the thread posts are Mag and FA.

Step your game up noobs. Get your NNK dudes on here, there’s bunches of them lol.

In all honesty FA + DB = Greatest WvW server evar. The coverage would be almost perfect.

Shame we can’t make a marriage happen.

Does anyone on DB ever think of this or is it just a pipedream of FA’s?

Frankly,
I like our server name better than yours,
So you’d all have to come here.

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

EnRohbi.2187:

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

EnRohbi.2187:

Acelerion.6820:

Its funny how people can’t even wrap their heads around the concept of not caring about the score

It’s funny how the server in last place always brings that up o;

You are the last place NA primetime server in this match up though.

@Acelerion
Well,
Let me clarify that I was making a bit of a joke,
I event went back and editted the o; onto the end of the sentence so it didn’t seem so serious. So I’m not sure what point you think I made for you
Points are not particularly important to me either.

@xxxzavulonxxx
I don’t consider NA primetime to be any more important than other times of day.
Scores accumulate 24/7 and, if you hadn’t notice, DB tends to lead the ppt pretty much from the early morning until the very moment that NA primetime begins at like 5pm.

I personally consider a good match to be one where every server has their turn in the lead for ppt at various points during the day. I don’t know about you.

It should hold some relevance. You are on a NA server. Oceanic and Asian presences pretty much are freerolling against little resistance. During those hours match ups aren’t even competitive unless you are on a higher tier. The fun on this server is during the NA primetime. I am not even sure how amassing a huge zerg to face no one is even fun for the people on DB. It’s a shame there’s no Asian/Oceanic servers for those players to get real competition.

FA always has people on the map, I assure you if there was as little resistance as you imply we would hit +695 every morning like we did in tier 4, but we usually peak at about +600 here and even that is only later in the week and rarely.

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

EnRohbi.2187:

Acelerion.6820:

Its funny how people can’t even wrap their heads around the concept of not caring about the score

It’s funny how the server in last place always brings that up o;

You are the last place NA primetime server in this match up though.

@Acelerion
Well,
Let me clarify that I was making a bit of a joke,
I event went back and editted the o; onto the end of the sentence so it didn’t seem so serious. So I’m not sure what point you think I made for you
Points are not particularly important to me either.

@xxxzavulonxxx
I don’t consider NA primetime to be any more important than other times of day.
Scores accumulate 24/7 and, if you hadn’t notice, DB tends to lead the ppt pretty much from the early morning until the very moment that NA primetime begins at like 5pm.

I personally consider a good match to be one where every server has their turn in the lead for ppt at various points during the day. I don’t know about you.

EDIT: Let me also clarify, as there may be confusion based on how I’ve worded things. I don’t care about accumulated points, they make little difference on the current battles going on. The PPT, however, does indicate the way the current situation is at a given time of day.

Okay,
I’m sorry to burst your bubble here,
But I think tier 8 needs a reality check.

The servers in tier 8 probably comprise something like 1-5% of the game’s total wvw population.

WvW is not, and never will be, balanced for tier 8.

Acelerion.6820:

Its funny how people can’t even wrap their heads around the concept of not caring about the score

It’s funny how the server in last place always brings that up o;

Mehrdad.9074:

Oh what about shadow mesmer ?!!!

Walk me through this… Shadow Mesmer o;

saiyr.3071:

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

Fact is DB and Mag have equally been awfully shy about going into FA’s BL….

Probably we don’t have enough people to venture into FA very much. Every time I hear someone in my guild talking about playing in FA it involves a giant defensive zerg running over your face if you kill too many of their yaks. With frequent pressure from FA and DB stepping in at very inopportune times, it makes it difficult to mount offensives on other borderlands. And the statement about spawn advantage is just saying that they have an easier foothold into FA than we do.

This, I think, is the reason.
FA defends their fully capped BL more effectively than Mag or DB do. They have more people to spare for defense.

So it’s just far easier for Mag and DB to go into each other’s territory where they meet less resistance.

Pyroatheist.9031:

GuardianOMS.8067:

EnRohbi.2187:

GuardianOMS.8067:

Edit: I’m not trying to sound mean but a mesmer surviving against any amount of people just isn’t a news break or something to gloat about. Been there, done that.

Well, if that’s the argument you want to make,
I would propose that none of the 1vX stories are anything to gloat about. o;
(I would agree with myself too)

Because really,
We’ve all heard far too many of them

We weren’t talking about any other “1vX stories”. We were talking about yours. There are 1vX stories that are funny, entertaining, impressive, and/or insightful. Yours was “I’m a mesmer in the water and I survived for x amount of time against x people. I am so good, they are so bad.” The most stereotypical story you can get.

You’re talking to the wrong person. Just thought I’d let you know.

Indeed,
I was just offering my opinion that the stories in general are too common.
I often skim through those posts without really reading them, as soon as I realize it’s a “There was only one/two of us and they had to send a whole zerg to kill us” post.

And to reinforce that, I don’t generally tell 1vX stories of my own travels anywhere outside of my guild chat.

Thiefz.3695:

I would ask, what was your opinion about the breakout events? They are a part of the balancing solution and gave players impenetrable siege. That’s quite a benefit.

Breakout events aren’t particularly that much of a benefit.
They mostly do what they were designed to do,
Though there are still many problems surrounding when servers get the opportunity to start them.

As far as the actual combat benefit goes,
More often than not when breakout events are used the way they’re intended (IE: A force of 10~15 people trying to regain a foothold in a map), they are fairly easy to counter. I have seen them fail far more often than succeed.
The success rate is far higher, however, when they are activated by a zerg of 40+ Invaders that really wouldn’t have needed the breakout event to take a tower to begin with.

Gamadorn.2659:

Someone complaining about 1v1 in W3 is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen…..

If you want 1v1 go to sPvP, that’s where you belong.

Someone thinking that 1v1s don’t happen in normal wvw is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen.

Clearly you’ve never defended a camp. ;D

GuardianOMS.8067:

Edit: I’m not trying to sound mean but a mesmer surviving against any amount of people just isn’t a news break or something to gloat about. Been there, done that.

Well, if that’s the argument you want to make,
I would propose that none of the 1vX stories are anything to gloat about. o;
(I would agree with myself too)

Because really,
We’ve all heard far too many of them

Huge.5891:

Ill gladly 1v1 anyone that wants to show me how terrible clicking is

I don’t think clicking is necessarily terrible.
But it is definitely less efficient than the keyboard, and I can’t think of any argument that can be made for it.

If you just look at the skill rotations some classes use,
Like a regular Mind Wrack rotation for a Mesmer:
Dodge-Roll-Clone → Mirror Images → Mind Wrack are generally all performed in under a second. I know when I do it I move between Mirror Images and Mind Wrack as fast as my fingers can move, which is significantly faster than you’re ever going to be able to even move the cursor accurately between both skill buttons.

Clicking for skills is perfectly playable, I know people who perform quite well with it.
But you would perform better making use of the keybindings for just about 99.9999% of skill uses. ((There are very, very isolated cases where I find it more convenient to click certain skills, but I could count the number of times I’ve had that situation on one hand since August))

Okay,
People calling for resets for more varied matches need to wake up.

Matches are stale and stagnant because servers are so different in their abilities during wvw that there just aren’t enough different combinations of fair matches.

Stagnant matches are the tradeoff you get for stacking the top 6 servers in the game.
If you shake up the matches and get new opponents, you’re either going to faceroll over them or get facerolled yourself.

If 95% of the wvw population in this game wasn’t so focused on being on the “best” servers, we would have some amount of balance between tiers that would allow servers to move more often.

But if you’re asking us to trade the closest thing to balance that we can achieve, just so that you get to see new nameplates above your opponents next week, you are clearly very out of touch with what’s going on in this game.

rivx.3267:

Huge.5891:

FA trying to backcap Mags @ DB keep in eternal tonight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZTxpiL51ig

wow do you really play by clicking the icons with your mouse?

I know some Clickers too,
Never been able to understand why they’d do that to themselves.

Many, many cons
And zero pros

Teamkiller.4315:

I seem to be one of the only people in this game that just got their 100% world completion without transferring >:

Dragonbrand typically does extremely extremely well during their peak hours, where they tend to take the vast majority of the map (I’ve seen 500+ ppt many mornings I wake up, eastern time btw)

I know.
We usually get close to or above +600 at least one or two mornings a week.

But I had to sludge through my 100% in wvw back before our Asians kicked in when we had the same kinda timezone coverage as everyone else

Kumu Honua.2751:

Can’t wvwvw on a guested server if I recall correctly.

You recall correctly

It is, then, a good thing that I grew up next to a farm, and have a below average sense of smell to begin with.

Do your worst ;D

Invalid.8765:

I would love to hear from Dragonbrand to find if this is isolated to our server

Cannot speak for anyone on Dragonbrand except myself.
I’ve not personally witnessed spying/sabotaging, or anything that was obviously so.

But I can say that, unlike exploits, I don’t consider spying to be unfair play. There is a lot of potential in wvw for social gameplay too that I see go largely underutilized. So if spying is happening, I don’t condemn any server for it.

Sabotaging is a little different in the vast majority of cases, in my opinion, but my post would quickly get very long if I attempted to provide adequate details.