Guild Wars 2

It’s definitely me haha I shall be adding you in game for friendly banter!

Who is the Choo Human Elementalist Commander? We keep seeing each other on the field and bowing/pointing/saluting and it’s pretty funny. They recognize me on sight, apparently, because they knew it was me even with no commander tag! Anyway, good fun to be had

Let’s not defame ND here. They made a move that best suited their guild. It is my understanding that they were very much unappreciated on SoR because of the assertion that the NA towed the line there. I personally don’t care what the conditions were on SoR prior to their move, I am just glad to have them. Our goal as a server is to win Tier 1. In order to get there, we have to take little steps along the way. If no one had the courage to put their faith in something and take the first step, there would be no change in WvW. ND and many other guilds have decided that Blackgate is where they want to be. They are a guild of their own and no server can claim ownership of them, it is up to them to choose what server they want to call home. So let’s cool it with the hate messages. When DA went to SoS, we said nothing negative to them, nor when DiE or Agg jumped ship to them either when we dropped from tier 1. Have some class. Please.

I don’t like increasing siege damage to the point where it kills people instantly (getting chopped in your mid-section with a giant sword should kill you too). Superior siege is there for superior damage. Buffing normal siege would comparatively require a buff to superior siege or make it less worthwhile. Superior Arrow Carts can mow down a force, making them a worthwhile upgrade and investment. Sup catas and trebs do substantial damage as well, I worry that a buff to normal siege would make superior siege uneconomical or too powerful. The AoE limit on siege is ludicrous, however, especially non arrowcarts with a slower fire rate.

The weather conditions sound awesome, I’d really like to see that implemented. I also like the map variety. EBG is fine as is, but the borderlands need to all be different, not just different weather. I think we could do away with orange swords, but possibly have NPCs use global chat for certain things or leave the white swords for something being contested while it doesn’t give away size or direction of the force, on keeps especially. Sentries are worthless, maybe it should say that a sentry is being attacked, buff them a bit, and then give the sentry’s location (N, S, E, W, etc.).

Small groups and organized guild groups can also be very effective without being a “zerg”. Tactics still play a larger role in this game than many like to recognize or admit. Take a zerg pug group of 30-35 against a fine tuned guild group of 15-20, you will get rolled almost every time, guaranteed. Just because not many people have put in the time and effort to figure that out yet does not mean zergs are OP. It’s a young game, the meta has a long way to shift still.

Finally, I support removing the AoE cap, but the radius of the AoE or the damage that it deals would need to be reduced. I think the most fair way is a radius reduction because the skill becomes worthless if it’s hitting a single person if you reduce the damage. This would make the skill rely on placement to get max damage rather than making the erroneous assumption that a player is hitting many players with their AoE so their damage needs to be hurt. A fair amount of countering this would be to make heals not obey the cap either and, possibly, reduce their radius as well, although that is debatable. Healing needs to be buffed to the point where stacking Healing Power actually MATTERS to scale well with healing skills instead of giving worthless amounts of extra health. The only reason turtles were successful is you could stack unlimited heals on everyone while the AoE could not stack unlimited damage. If you remove the AoE caps, Healing needs to get buffed.

Not to mention logistics and troop allocation is a HUGE part of winning. On BG, we have less NA players on average than our opponents during much of NA primetime because most of our players are West Coast based, but we manage to keep the score even or with us in the lead most of the time. What you are insinuating is that if no one from one server is in a map, no one can log in. I don’t know about others, but I don’t want a handicap given to my server during some times just like I don’t want one given to other servers during our strongest times. Obviously this is a sensationalist view, but it is an open world pvp gametype; there is nothing fair about it. If you bring 70 people to face against 5, you deserve to win, not be playing with a handicap. It’s like running a relay and having to wait for the other teams to get within 15 feet before you can start your next leg. Please, tell me how fun that would be for the people that bought the game.

If you love the concept of WvW but don’t have the stones to stick it out against poor odds, then you are likely not that married to your server anyway. People who want to WvW and their current situation doesn’t please them generally do a thing called transferring to a server that meets their needs as a player, not returning the game.

Let’s be honest here, everyone uses Dragon’s tooth. I think the most upsetting thing about it is that they set the standard with Mesmer berserker and then left this one alone. However, if the skill is in the game, using an interaction of such is therefore working as intended until ANet actually changes it. BG used to use a lot of turtle tactics and did it quite well, and because of that everyone cried exploit and cheats.

Dragon’s Tooth will be nerfed just as every other tactic gets nerfed: because people complain about it non stop. I’ve lost track of how many “thieves are OP” threads I’ve seen. On that topic, thieves are largely useless for anything other than single target dps or small scale fights so I think they are pretty balanced considering their diminished role in anything larger scale. I think that ANet should give a giant middle finger to people who whine and complain and stop nerfing kittens because those are the people who are really ruining the game, not thieves or any other tactic that is effective. They make the community look like a bunch of whiny kittens.

TC BL last night (1-4am PST) was pretty awesome TC. We each had only about 20 players on the whole map so it made for a very fun back and forth between SW Garrison and NE Bay, not to mention more than a few skirmishes outside of Greenvale

You can change the opponents colors now so that it shows their actual armor dye and not their team color. Makes it easier to spot Indo Who am I kidding, Asura are never easy to spot haha.

To be honest, Silk, I watch the map like a hawk when I’m commanding, especially when I can’t AoE the walls and I’m not on a ram or actively sieging, so when I see white swords go up on a structure, we immediately call for it to be scouted in VoIP and get an answer and put out the word shortly. I’ve been the commander all day and we’ve gotten no information from anything other than scouts on our own side. Oh…and the security cameras we set up on the outer walls…forgot to mention those…

I have gotten 2 named exotic armor pieces in the last 3 weeks. I had never gotten an exotic drop before in WvW with 700+ hours on this character(or the rest of the game for that matter). I have also gotten multiple rares; some days I get 3-4, others none. It is still RNG, but the loot table has almost certainly been improved lately.

Let’s have an end to the trolling and flaming. I’m tired of it and I think that everyone that doesn’t engage in it is tired of it. I’d rather play the game than the forums

GekoHayate and the person he quoted are right. Let’s have some civility here.

We had good fights at Blackgate’s garrison last night. Choo, TW, TWL, LUN, I was flattered that you all came to the party, it was a bloodbath for certain. I only saw myself get killed once in the video I was on the catapult in the back left corner during the 2nd clip I believe.

Well done

/15chars

Sinfullysweet.4517:

Jayne.9251:

Update of score .. still not used to red:

You ain’t the only one. I am so used to green, that I keep forgetting we are the red team now. ;_;

When we dropped from Tier 1, I tried to run into a red tower more than a few times that first week

Mikitten058:

BG call your members back to your server. Seriously this is the 2nd match now.

Honestly, he was probably just trying to get map completion. Seriously, if someone was spying, do you really think that they would leave their guild tag on?

And stop the kitten talking SoR. You’re in 3rd place during your “best” NA time. You are in no place to talk trash when you are at +190 in what is supposed to be your best time zone. Shut the kitten up.

Forgive my ignorance as I’m not from this tier, but SF was obliterating HoD and ET very recently and going for a record for score and now they are barely ahead of that same HoD in points while getting killed by DR? Can someone enlighten me with what happened or if DR suddenly got ridiculous transfers? The score is nothing short of surprising and I’m just wondering if something happened to SF.

Can we stop this? I’ve hardly played this match since the weekend. It’s Christmastime and Wintersday and a lot of us earned the W this weekend with long hours of play and we have been on cruise control since.

We weren’t going to make it to Tier 1 this week even if we won by 100k, so driving up the score really didn’t matter because we would just have to win by more the next week to gain anything. Realistically, sandbagging and having an artificially low rating is the best way to gain a lot of rating to leapfrog into a tier, or by playing a server with an artificially higher rating like SoR has after this week because we haven’t played as hard. If tier 1 was really at stake, we wouldn’t let up, so stop condescending us.

As reset draws nearer, I can hardly contain how hyped I am for this match. Let’s have some fun!

Disclaimer: Blackgate is not a bandwagon destination and has not been a bandwagon destination for some time at this point in the game. Bandwagons are a thing of the past. If guilds transfer at this point, it is because they feel a server is better aligned with their interests, not because they think going to that server will let them win. If you think we are pouring over with queues and have absurd numbers around the clock, you would be sorely mistaken. Blackgate does what it does and does it well, that is why we are successful. Yes, we are blessed with outstanding guilds around the clock, but that only tells part of the story. Don’t believe anything you read about massive Blackgate zergs because I think I’d know about them if they existed.

Cake.4920:

Are you sure its not overflow? Remember that overflows are cross server

I was thinking the same thing.

Success! Now to get Foostivoo, Unbreakable Choir Bell, and Bolt!

Diashame, I can’t speak for other guilds, but I can assure you that many of us are more mature communities. I think my guild has only a handful of people that are younger than 20, most of us being in the mid-20s to late-30s range. We, as a server, never defended exploiting, simply rebuked the negative things that were being said. Even you have to admit that the slander was over the top. As far as how many of those individuals we have compared to others, we just don’t blow up the forums when it happens to us because it isn’t that big of a deal. Yes, there are those young players that run their mouths more than others, but it isn’t like we can control them; our server should not be painted as being “young” because of the comments of a few others same as we shouldn’t be labeled as the “exploit” server because it is more vocalized when it is players from BG that do it. Most players, especially the older ones from my experience, tend to avoid the forums as thread closings like last week are purely indicative of what happens.

Needless to say, I am sad to see IoJ go, they have several good guilds that I enjoyed chatting to and a lot of potential with their new alliance. I am happy to see TC getting their shot in Tier 2 and, win or lose, they’ve accomplished something by just getting here. It will be a fun match, I don’t have much of a book on TC so it will be interesting to see what tactics we are greeted with. I hope everyone has a safe holiday and don’t let any occurrences in game get you down

Edit: It appears you’ve already addressed my concerns about your statement on the maturity of the community. Thank you for being level headed and balanced

For those interested, it’s pronounced “Beastgate”, and it is most definitely a thing. Blackgate has been to Tier 4 and we still showed up to play then. We’ve come back from 40k deficits on a Wednesday night. We’ve taken our bumps and bruises in Tier 1, and, more recently, we’ve come back from a 25k deficit on Wednesday. Our server has a resilience that you can’t fake. My guild could have easily transferred off when the mass exodus occurred during our fall, but we did not. Sure, our server is just a name, but we call it home. I’d appreciate it if people would stop trolling with statements that were first made about our server when we were still in Tier 3, and let’s not forget our Tier 2 match was against 2 ghost towns so there was no actual representation of how good we were or weren’t. Blackgate was never stacked; if anything, every time we got transfers or large guilds, it was just the precursor to bleeding players. I believe a leader on SBI characterized it best as a fire separating the straw from the steel and the players on this server are what you have left. ICoa is a transfer guild too. We appreciate their answer to our call, but the guilds that have been on Blackgate since launch are few and far between these days. The game is young, but so many have forgotten the roots from which our community was born. We took a beating from HoD for 1 week straight during 1 day matches, then we proceeded to get killed by NSP in their glory days. Our server has been knocked down and kicked repeatedly, yet we are still here. That is why we were named Beastgate by the leader of TA and that is why we are a server that guilds want to transfer to. It isn’t a bandwagon, it is an attitude and a mindset.

SoR and IoJ, I have nothing but the utmost respect for both of you. I don’t care that we won and some of you will probably think I’m condescending and only having fun since we are winning, but it just isn’t the case. I appreciate the fights and I’ve enjoyed our skirmishes with every guild we have come in contact with. It appears as though some servers might be shifting and in the event it happens, I wish you all the best. Winning or losing, this has been the most competitive WvW I’ve had the privilege of experiencing, and I would gladly fight both of your servers again if the bracket gods decide to make it so. You won’t find any more trash talk from me, all it does is tear us apart as a community that loves WvW. We should stand strong together asking for the reason we play the game to get the attention that it deserves, not bicker with each other.

Cheers, SoR and IoJ, and happy holidays!

EnoLive.2367:

REMOVE THE EVENT IT’S KILLED WvWvW and all we hold dear to it.
The time between events is way to short, and has just become another way to farm Karma.
This even makes a mockery of the whole aspect of WvWvW and forces players of lesser numbers to hand the larger zerg servers free karma, badges and kills.
The idea was nice but to me it has fully ruined any form of tactical play.
Sorry Anet but you’ve made this player very unhappy indeed

It only serves to augment your forces. If you want to go take a different tower or camp, nothing is stopping you. The intent is to help you get a foothold in the map and the rest is on you. If you choose to be tactical and not use the event at your tower, once again, there is nothing stopping you.

When getting locked out of your foothold tower is basically what holds you out of a map strategically, I like it, and I’ve had more experience with it against us thus far than participating in it. It helps you get a foothold in the map while also being challenging for the opponents to defend against, it seems like a win-win to me.

Every server has its holes in coverage. We are aware of this, but we don’t bring it up. It would be really nice if you didn’t bring out the laundry list of excuses on account of the fact you didn’t win. Honestly, it’s pretty immature. Fights have been competitive and I don’t know why you’d try to discount that by bringing up the “coverage wars”. For the record, Blackgate has regularly been performing on par or better than SoR during NA time the past several days so it really isn’t a fair claim that your NA is of “higher quality”, especially when we have more West Coast and you have more East Coast so the earlier and later NA times swing the opposite ways.

And in the event a certain timezone is playing PvDoor, they would have less kills seeing as they aren’t fighting against players to kill… So really, the coverage has nothing to do with who has the most kills and, if anything, playing against less coverage means less kills. A target rich environment with full maps is really the best chance for kills, so the more often you face opposition, the more often you would theoretically get kills. Fray was talking about Alice, a player from Urge who has the highest that I’ve seen at what I believe is 51k. I haven’t heard of a higher amount either so that was what his claim was. I realize that the intent was to compare, but a commander who gets a lot of kills isn’t necessarily a good commander. I have 10k kills and 1.5k deaths in a LOT of hours in WvW. I’m a Warrior. My job is to be in the front and take damage. I don’t do incredible DPS, but it’s decent. Profession and build dictates kills a lot more than skill does.

Finally, ICoa has received a lot of unnecessary flak the last few weeks. The original kitten was dealt with and the fact that people keep stirring it up is just ignorant. Stop trying to troll.

We’re in Week 5 now. Things are the way they are and this tier is a hell of a lot more competitive than most others. Stop with the bullkitten and just get used to this being the state of the game until February.

rchu.8945:

I hope there is change in tier 2, giving all we got on SoR and the biggest enemy is time zone / population coverage. I rather we drop a tier and fight on equal footing with servers that have the same prime time population, at least the loss is within our control. I dont know how many students actually play on SoR, but not all of us working folks can decide to play until 4 AM and still go to work the next day…

To be fair, SoR would kill in any lower server. Just because you haven’t won in Tier 2 doesn’t mean you don’t belong here. You are a very good, competitive server, but you would kill in Tier 3 and get killed in Tier 1. For better or for worse, this is the matchup of the foreseeable future.

For the record, KnT has some college students and most of the guild is in their mid 20s to their early 40s. We just burn the midnight oil because we’re all insomniacs it seems. I’m finishing my last year of college, personally, and then it is off to the real world.

Pinkus.2860:

Such a great week so far On a bit of a side note… Has anyone else noticed an increased loot table in WvW? Last night we had a lot of members getting rares and a couple even got named exotics from killing players and keep lords / supervisors.

I got 2 named exotic armor pieces in the past week. In 650 hours on that character, I had never gotten an exotic drop before, anywhere. I also got 3 rares within 30 minutes yesterday so I’d say they ninja fixed drops a bit more. These drops were off of players and random guards.

In the current state, the top and bottom are polarized. If you think of the rating distributions as those of a normal curve, the highest and lowest ratings are relative outliers and are therefore harder to reach. The ones that fall under the center of the curve (Tier 3-6) are within about 1 Standard Deviation from the center of the curve, approximately 1500 rating. Unless there is absolute parity, which is next to impossible because of servers being “official” this and “official” that compounded with free transfers, there is no upward or downward movement with any degree of swiftness other than those servers in the middle or those who receive a large amount of WvW centric transfers.

The Glicko 2 system is creating the best matches possible for WvW at the moment. If Tarnished Coast went up to Tier 2, they would get blown out. If Blackgate, my server, went up to Tier 1, the same would likely occur. This is evidence at the top end of the spectrum. The same would likely hold true in Tier 7-8. If you are in the middle tiers, getting to the next tier isn’t nearly as impossible, but the higher or lower you go in the tiers, it gets progressively harder to rise or drop depending on which side of the curve you are on from the center. Ultimately, you hit a wall where your server fluctuates within its own standard curve and has its ultimate high point and ultimate low point restricting it to its current seeding +/- 1. Potentially the biggest flaw is that you can lose rating by winning a match, this is likely the largest contributing factor for stagnant matches, but it also saves a server where there is a large rating disparity from getting bumped to a tier where they will get killed or bumped down to a tier that they would dominate.

Currently, the same people are playing week after week in the same matchups for the most part. It is difficult to judge a system where it is working as intended, but the game type lacks retention values that is necessary for an effective endgame or the dynamic qualities that will not only keep players, but bring more players in. The upcoming WvW patch should give a much better indication of the health of this aspect of the game, but I can assure you server stagnation is not a negative thing, rather, just the current state of WvW.

Pretty much just WvW. A lot of WvW. The last time I PvE’d was over a month ago when we already had sealed up our match and I needed some gold.

After 28 hours of play in 2 days I finally had to take a break for real life, finals, and papers. It’s been one hell of a week and I have to say I don’t think I have ever been more challenged in WvW.

This week is still not over, but win or lose no one should sell themselves short. SoR, you knocked us squarely on our kitten out of the weekend and we had to muster a hell of a lot of people to stage a comeback. IoJ, you all don’t know the meaning of the word quit. I’ve had more fun this week than I have in a long time and I’m glad that, in an environment of WvW with no real returns, that we can still have this sort of a turnout and competitive spirit (just wait til February!). We had 48 hours of an all call in KnT playing anywhere from 12pm Pacific until 4am just to make up the difference. What you saw was our server going the extra mile. That resilience is what makes us Blackgate.

I am going to refrain from the mandatory kittentalking here, but I hope this dispels some of the nonsense that has been spewed on these forums over the past 2 weeks, especially concerning my guild. I’ve tried my best to stay out of the forum wars and be cordial in my posts. Our policy has become one of killing with class on the forums and steel in the fields [TW], we love to hate you and I think you took your share of licks from us just as we took ours. The only PvE we do is when we are farming badges. [HIRE], I can see a budding rivalry and I’m excited to fight you more in the future. Tier 2 isn’t changing for a while yet, so we might as well get comfortable.

Great fights, great match, finish strong Blackgate!

Liquid.9672:

IoJ Oceanics made a run last night and spiked above 400 PPT for awhile. Then BG Oceanics + EU cut into that and flipped it to about +360 at the peak. Now we’re moving into SoR’s prime time that will peak in about an hour or so.

I’m glad to see the chest thumping in this thread has stopped. A close match with a lot of back and forth tends to do that. This is still anyone’s match to win and we haven’t seen it this close since week 2 of our trio matchup.

Too busy playing to post. Must. Kill.

BlackeHawke.9025:

HIRE, ND, and AVTR are ripping things up as usual

Dear God there are just so many of you

Been playing for almost 12 hours with a couple breaks. Bed time for me. Good fighting tonight. Was an uphill battle for sure.

Well, I’m back from my mandatory “forum vacation”. Guess SoR decided to give us a little surprise this week. Time for some crazy shifts.

Indo.8629:

Don’t get so defensive.

Breathe and take it easy.

I think I really did strike a nerve with this one.

Oh, I get it now. You get to post blatant lies, but when someone exposes you for openly lying, you pretend like you’re the bigger man.

I’m done with you and your guild. I would like nothing more than your Asuran CoF head delivered to me on a silver platter.

spartanx.1364:

I rather BG than SoS personally. I really feel like killing them and competing against them. Not saying that IoJ is not competitive, far from it. It just feels like IoJ is that dagger in my side that I cant remove. No doubt the other servers feel the same way.

Basically I love to hate BG, I just hate IoJ.

I feel like this is what the attitude of SoR should be. Indo doesn’t do you all any justice. He reminds me of one CharliePrince…

Personally, I’ve really enjoyed fighting IoJ the last 2 weeks. [ND] and [HIRE] show up every day even when IoJ is being trashed. I tip my hat to them.

Week 4 or not, we are fortunate to have an actually competitive matchup where players still show up every day. Many other servers can’t say that.

Because moving my guild to a map where our server owned nothing is definitely taking everyone to IoJ BL, but I guess it’s cool to misquote and misrepresent. Using your logic, this is nowhere close to the 70 SoR in Garrison that could barely hold off 30 BG players, and almost wiping on many occasions because they are so bad at PvP. In contrast to us moving to a map where we had no presence and thus had the greatest challenge, you are saying, “Hey guys, let’s get our entire server and fill 1 map then pretend like Blackgate’s guilds are of lower quality.” Your abysmal performance on the other maps is pretty evident of that. This game is played for points across 4 maps and our server seems to understand that while yours does not. Who gives a kitten if you dominate 1 by sacrificing the other 3?

Narcosis.3812:

Esoteric.5490:

Well, Indo, you are going to continue to see whatever it is you want to see. Not sure if we’ve ever had an engagement with your guild where there are even numbers. When you’re rolling with 50+ it’s pretty easy to talk kitten about how awesome you are. Go troll someone else.

We’re in IoJ BL and we’ll kick your kitten if you come within a square mile of our corner.

So you can’t beat us on YOUR BL, so you go to IoJ’s……BAWHAHAHAHAHAHA

BG BL had a queue so we went somewhere that didn’t. IoJ BL points are just as good as BG BL points. It’s called cross-map pressure, and it’s a thing.

Well, Indo, you are going to continue to see whatever it is you want to see. Not sure if we’ve ever had an engagement with your guild where there are even numbers. When you’re rolling with 50+ it’s pretty easy to talk kitten about how awesome you are. Go troll someone else.

We’re in IoJ BL and we’ll kick your kitten if you come within a square mile of our corner.

Indo, I too love GvG. If you haven’t seen KnT around from our “talking a big game” it was because we pulled a 13 hour shift in IoJ BL yesterday while your guild was having fun in BG BL. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t defame guilds on Blackgate because the guilds on this server are, pound for pound, the best PvP players I have ever had the privilege to fight alongside. Raven was expressing that we wiped forces from [ND], [HIRE], and [GSCH] yesterday. There were a few [TW] tags in there which, most likely, influenced his claims. I’d appreciate it if you could be a bit more mature on these boards. I’d love there to be GvG and it is likely in development. It is disappointing that this game was released without a full spectrum of needed content. Regardless, I know what my guild has done and how well we’ve played. Comparatively, I know that your guild has also played exceptionally well. The difference is that I don’t wave rampant immaturity around on the forums. The concept of mutual respect exists even if you can’t look your opponent in the eye. I suggest that you consider giving your guild a better reputation because, at the end of the day, if you are disrespectful to others as their leader, people with hold your guild in poor regard no matter what you do on the field.

Sent you a PM

What, then, is the issue? If there are 50 people, they don’t need to portal just like a mesmer doesn’t need to drop a Time Warp or a warrior doesn’t have to use his Warbanner. Yes it is comical, yes it might be a bit of a troll move to do it, no the game is not broken because of it.

Running a thief with a mesmer so that they can stealth each other is becoming more common. These classes excel at stealth and deception. These classes are simply doing what they were designed to excel at. A mesmer can’t tank the same way a warrior or a guardian can, should we nerf heavy armor or the base health on a warrior? Similarly, a warrior can’t stealth, should they get a stealth skill? All classes in this game, to a degree, are some sort of hybrid, but each class excels at a certain aspect of the game. Mesmers happen to be good at illusion and part of that is using a portal. Yes, cliche as it may be, better sweeps are necessary if you don’t want to have a mesmer portal an army into your keep. If the portal size was limited to 10, the mesmer would just portal up the 4 other mesmers in their party and the same thing would happen, an army would be portaled into a keep. This is just like if a group of 10 thieves permastealthed each other and then built 2 superior rams on the inner gate and ninja’d the keep, would that be OP?

Every class is good at something. Mesmers happen to be good at portals and those are the fotm currently. There are plenty of counters to a portal; sometimes they will work, sometimes they will fail. Regardless, it is what a mesmer is good at. There are many things that mesmers can’t do meaning other classes need to fill those voids. There is a niche for every class and what they are good at. Mesmers play a strong tactical role for positioning, but their contributions are just a small portion of what successfully portaling somewhere actually entails, especially during a fight. It is the composition of the group that uses the portal and what skills and builds they have created to synergize with the portal that makes the difference. The mesmer simply lays the portal down and it is everyone else that makes or breaks the strategy.

Thundar.3910:

To Esoteric: Were you part of the 50+ BG zerg that portal bombed 7 people in Danelon last night…..twice in less than 20 seconds. At that point the only explanation for using a portal bomb twice……against 7 people is to abuse the culling issue. Or to be massive trolls. In both cases completely destroys the “MASSIVE COORDINATION” defense.

Portaling as an idea is good, it adds a layer of tactics to WvW, portaling in its current state devalues the game far more than it should. Currently good on paper, poor in practice.

I was in IoJ BL most of last night with the rest of my guild. Don’t think I was in EBG all day. It is likely that was [ICoa], I am pretty sure they were running the map at the time. Sometimes portals can be excessive for a battle, but they also prevent your numbers having to be shown in a certain area running to a location. If they portaled there, it is likely a strategy to remain low-profile rather than trying so hard to wipe 7 people. With that sort of a mismatch, it seems as though the 7 would have wiped anyway. If you wanted to discuss the concept of overkill, then 50 people taking 1 camps is certainly that. Regardless, I wasn’t there, but I wouldn’t portal to wipe 7 people, I’d portal to not give away my numbers, it is possible they didn’t even realize the 7 were there or they might have not wanted to run into siege if there was any set up. I can’t say for sure.

Overall, portaling can be decisive, but you still need coordination. It is most often decisive in a battle of equal size, when you are outnumbered, or when it is used to circumvent a choke point. It can be considered overkill whenever you outnumber a force to the point that you can overwhelm them. Is 8 rams overkill on a door to an undefended tower? Sure. But you don’t see people complain about that since it isn’t a portal. Had those 50 people strolled into Danelon, you would have met the same fate.

Dear Hunter.8365:

So they portal bombed in front of your siege and not behind your group or on the siege? lol. I don’t believe you when you claim 15 to 50. Did you use the broken down gate as a chokepoint? Everything about your reply screams hyperbole. Portals in their current state are making WvWvW more stale everyday. It is the most efficient method to flank enemies and therefore the only method used. I use portal bombs all the time and I get portal bombed all the time. I see nothing challenging about using the portal or getting people to use them. I have a blue badge and just turn it on and say stack. It needs to be limited to 10 people. It would actually require skill because you would have to make sure that only 10 people are stacked on each portal not to mention that all of your mesmers make it to the enemies flank. It would be less mindless than it currently is. I don’t care about portal’ing into keeps at all. I would prefer longing sieges by having to think of strategies to get inside the outer wall forcing our way through the chokepoint or creating a distraction but it seems most people do not want the ability to port into a keep taken away.

There is no exaggeration. There is a screenshot posted somewhere in the match thread for us. We built arrow carts and ballistas and we used the stairs as a choke point. They tried to portal and it didn’t work because we countered it by using the chokepoint to ensure the mesmer didn’t get through. If everyone is standing at range, it is easy for someone to walk through a gap. When there are a couple guardians standing in the way, it is a different story. Of course a successful portal should be placed on the siege and behind enemy lines, not in front of them so that they can mow you down, but our strategy was a success so that didn’t happen. We set up a defense, made a chokepoint, and anticipated the portal. Our counter worked and we wiped them. Portals are useful for far more than just jumping into a keep. I prefer them in the open field, honestly. They increase tactics for getting into a keep. The strategy of portaling itself has evolved. Dropping multiple portals, decoy portals, using them to move an army quickly, rolling portals so the army can get from one point to another. This holds a lot of parallels with Blizkrieg or “lightning war”. Quick assaults and the element of surprise are more important than anything.

If an army portals into a keep and you are all standing in there, there is a high probability that you can wipe them because you have siege and walls and they have no supply lines and no way to get back into the keep since no gates/walls are down. The reason everyone hates “keep portals” is because people weren’t observant enough. You can ninja a keep too without a mesmer by only using rams so orange swords don’t show up making observance and scouts still essential. If the enemy isn’t there when it happens, it is called surprise, not being OP. That is the reason portals into a keep are so effective: BECAUSE YOU DON’T KNOW THEY ARE COMING. Ignorance is bliss, I suppose, but there are many more factors at play than the fact that a portal exists. It is a strategy that requires an equal and effective strategy for a response. If they enemy doesn’t respond with a good counter, they die; if they do, they win. It is absolutely that simple.

The nerf bat is not the answer. If people want to talk about how stale the game is because of portals, it is because of the unwillingness to innovate in order to counter, not because portal exists. There are responses to a portal and it is easy to win against it. Coordination is game breaking, not individual skills. Players in this thread want to take the easy way out and “nerf it!” because it is effective. If your attitude is to nerf first and counter later, you are doomed to fail. ANet sees this pattern and I trust they won’t touch portal or capitulate to the baseless crying.

While I’ll admit it is very clever, it is also very preventable. Corpses can be just as kitten as a live mesmer or thief in your tower. Anything that can relay information, even if it is a corpse, is dangerous to your operations. This is a war we are playing in, military intelligence is actually a factor. Even if they don’t get rezzed, they can still see your golem army running through the gate or your whole force moving South. You should babysit them even if they can’t be rezzed through a door. Don’t forget that thieves can permastealth inside a keep or tower and rez the mesmer without abusing the range through a door. There is no good reason to not camp the body. It’s a tactic that is built into the game. I wouldn’t use it, but you have to defend against it, just like a cata round splashing through doors/walls.

A lot of people seem to be slanting what side the coordination is on during a portal bomb. Defending Greenbriar last night, IoJ portal bombed us with 50+ people to our 15 or so. We knew they were going to try it so we set up siege, made a choke point, and dropped CC and AoE on the exit portal while bombarding it with siege. We wiped their entire force without losing more than 1-2 people in the battle. If people don’t know that a portal is coming, it works the exact same way as a flank. The enemy defeated you with surprise and not culling. If you know a portal is coming, the enemy is walking right into a massacre. Coordination works both ways. Portal is a tactic that isn’t “faceroll” any more. You need to be careful when and where you place it and you need to come out of the portal using the proper abilities. If you are defending against a portal, you set up your siege, you get your guardians up front, you activate your AoE, you use your siege, and you collect your badges.

Does anyone see the common factor here? COORDINATION. That’s right, a guild in VoIP has a marked advantage over a force that is not a single guild or not communicating at the same level. So what is the solution here? Nerf voice chat? I don’t think so. Portal is only as effective as the group that is using it. Portal in no way means that you will win an engagement or even that you have a better chance to. It is another layer to tactics and assault options that the game provides. Sure, it is the flavor of the month right now, but as long as everyone keeps screaming that it is OP instead of coordinating to counter it, groups will keep using them against you. I really hate using this phrase, but it is honestly a learn to play issue. I can’t wait until Ring of Warding is regarded as OP or we go back to Hundred Blades being too good or whatever the next fotm is for WvW that people don’t want to bother learning to counter. It seems they’d much rather come here and cry about things being challenging instead.

/truth

Ratbastrd.6358:

Lots of good ideas in this thread. Didn’t see it mentioned yet, so I will: tower/camp upgrades should not cost gold. Make them cost karma, or add another WvW-centric currency akin to karma (or even make honor badges more accessible and use those). Anyway, /signed for positive changes to WvW.

Building off of this, I have mentioned before that a guild that has claimed a territory should have the option to use guild influence to upgrade the territory. BoH or Karma would be good as well, but wouldn’t fix it as much as improving the role of a guild in the gametype.

Making more recognition for a guild holding a fortification such as giving the NPCs your guild tag would also help. Notifications that a territory held by your guild is being attacked in such and such map when you are not zoned in would also increase both guild pride, add importance to claiming territories, increase participation, and overall immerse players more in the game.

I also think that you should be able to run supply to a tower and deposit it. Yaks would still drop off more, but I think it would make sense that you could run supply yourself as you would in any actual war. I really think they need to increase the scope and influence of guilds in a game mode that is a war with other servers in a game called Guild Wars. This is especially true since guilds largely make or break a map in WvW.

There are many things that this game needs to improve. Before jumping to conclusions, I assert that we need to give ANet a chance to actually fix the problems. Some things are coding issues or involve a LOT of content creation in order to give the community something worthy of our set standards. This game is incredible and I love it. I was a huge GW1 fan and I am disappointed that certain things have been left out of GW2 that there were already excellent systems for (see: Guild Halls, GvG, HA, Capes, Ladder Rankings, Individual Ranks). The addition of those things would put this game over the top. They have done right by me in creating a product that we can all get enjoy, it would be even better if they took the good systems they had in GW1 and applied them here. I respect your opinion, General. ANet has kept the community largely in the dark. If they told us what to expect or what they were working on, I think many of our minds would be put at ease. This is a young game. Let it have an opportunity to grow.

^ better reserve it now that the cat is out of the bag.

I’d love to play a Kodan, but as an original GW veteran, I have made nothing but humans. With the expansion, I would like to make a Female Norn with whatever new soldier class they give us. Their Tier 3 armor is just too good on a female.

Thank you, Natsu. It appears it only changes the color of the cloth and the plate won’t get any less silver. I really wish there was a dye that could make the metal more white looking.

Most servers with decent participation have a lot of smaller groups that roam around. Predictably, I’d tell you to come to Blackgate and join my guild and that you’d love it here, which I am sure you would. However, my guild is rather large so we typically are fighting it out in the trenches less so than roaming.

There are multiple guilds on BG that have dedicated themselves to running a small force and my guild frequently runs a separate “ninja” group itself. We’re a great community and would love to have someone who is clearly a team player as yourself. Feel free to add me in game if you have more questions, I’m on basically every night. IoJ, SoR, and JQ all have small havoc squads as well. Pick the one that you think has the coolest name