Guild Wars 2

I see a lot of people explaining how to counter a thief. Anticipate the Steal, anticipate the stealth, place AoE, dodge, etc… essentially you can’t make any mistakes. You have to play on a whole different level to “counter thieves” which is ridiculous and not balanced at all.

People say “well, there is stealth debuff, ’zerk them down then”. I have maybe enough time to use one or two skills, between seeing the thief, retargeting, pressing the skill, waiting for the skill to cast, and hoping the thief doesn’t dodge a couple times waiting for the debuff to cool, stealth again, regen, and hammering you all over again while your CC’s are all on CD from the first fight.

Reintroduce the 4s stealth debuff, don’t drop target when a thief stealths, or something that doesn’t require me to see into the future to beat a thief.

Low(er) armor and health doesn’t really mean much when you are already a Medium class armor and you can do hit and run attacks until your target is worn down. And if you mess up, you can C&D or Shadow Refuge and heal up and try again.

Congrats to those that say to L2P, you are the 1%.

I felt 5m was too short too and was glad to see the 10m timer.

Sure 5m is fine if you are running back and forth, but if you get pulled into a small skirmish to save a camp (or a tower), I’m sure the other players won’t care if say ‘brb, have to finish siege before it despawns’.

Thanks Devon!

I’m okay with greens at lower ranks and hope as I increase in ranks I get better items more frequently (e.g. 40% rare @ r25 vs. 70% rare @ r225).

For those who are saying they are easy to deal, people should adapt (like they have), l2p, etc… provide the how and the snarky response. That would be more beneficial.

Talk about a lucky break Riverside, Anet swooped in to save you from being wiped from EBG.

It’s better, but can place maybe a quarter of what we normally could, unless that’s by design now.

The laurels are by necessity, you realize. If they just made them acquirable via badges, people would just do jumping puzzles and not bother with dailies. Or they’ll do dailies and get other items that can be sold for profit.

If you want to think of it negatively, Anet has forced themselves into a corner with the original release of them. Fractals take time to get, laurels take time to get, and while badges do take time to get it’s nowhere near as long as the first two. So they have to keep it balanced with laurels or ecto otherwise PvE would call foul, saying we can get ours with no effort.

Some evidence of this, is the fact additional WvW dailies were added to make it easier for WvW players to achieve dailies and get their laurels.

Yeah it sucks. And it probably won’t change.

KinkyWarrior.1879:

Your top floor Stonemist will be ours once more! Not the bottom, only the top!

I enjoyed storming SM from the balcony down

We did cap it later while on Azradel’s loot farming tsunami.

Did tkittenG JP for the first time, last night, since it become its own instance, and everyone seemed nicer. Less fighting. Perhaps it was just coincidence, but I saw more king of the castle type activities and less all out fight-to-the-death occurrences.

A shout out to the ’zerker thief from AM who accepted our party invite and hung out and chatted with us for a bit.

morrolan.9608:

Except they have stated that they are adding more WvW achievements.

My point exactly. It sounds like it’s getting easier to get laurels, not more grindy.

Timelord.8190:

Nope, i don’t get laurels by only doing wvw stuff most of the time. And you only get one each day, which makes the game super-grindy. This is terrible game design. No-one enjoys it and no-one finds it fun. It’s just a chore.

And ascended are also soubound which even makes it more terrible for those who got multiple chars.

If you can only get one laurel a day, and ten for the monthly, there is no added grind. You simply cannot get more. So like I said, less grindy. What you probably mean, is that it forces you at Anet’s pace, not your own.

Ascended drops in Fractals are account bound. Laurels, WvW badges, (and Guild Commendations) are account bound. Buying from Ascended vendors can be accomplished with any character. So yes, once equipped, items are soul-bound, just like Uncommon/Rare/Exotic/Legendary items (barring a few backpiece exceptions). Yes, getting all your chars geared to Ascended is at a forced pace, but what’s the rush?

Those complaining about laurels forget the WvW focus dailies we get. If you play a lot of WvW, you’ll get them without any extra effort.

Even though people don’t like it, Laurels is still a pseudo-gating tactic and encourages you to do activities beyond what you’d normally do. Need your last item… oh, a JP, I’ll go do that.

A contribution system has a far greater chance in sharing the cost of upgrades. Asking for contributions is often met with ridicule (“it’s just X silver”), telling whoever claimed the tower to pay, or not trusting a person to spend silver for the upgrades.

The upgrade system forces the burden of paying for them on a few, simply because people expect others to do it, don’t want to, or just too cheap.

I still play, but not quite as heavily as I used to. My main two reasons for playing WvW less and less:

I have stacks and stacks of badges with no use. I’m not buying siege, I get them from chests. The Invader armor is not really that special. The weapons skins are mediocre at best. Though rumor has it Ascended items will be added soon, but it’s a bit late for that.

The WvW achievements are a joke and insult to WvW players. Only the most serious players will have a title to show in any appreciable time. sPvP / tPvP have titles that can be acquired in a far more realistic title acquisition timeframe. PvE players have plenty of easily achievable titles. Player analysis has shown that some titles will take over 3 years of 24/7 gameplay to acquire! Devs have stated ‘we are looking into it’, but some basic calculations from the start would have shown the hilarity of trying to get any of the titles.

We are told that WvW titles are the “ultimate” title. Sense of entitlement aside, if I ever get one the WvW titles, I better have a gold aura and a dragon mount when I have it shown, otherwise it won’t be worth the effort. Anet, at least let us show our title progression.

Sure, you can play for fun, but let’s be realistic… most players like showing off their achievements, whether titles or bling, and you know this Anet, otherwise Legendaries wouldn’t be in the game.

D/D eles actually have to risk their lives in a fight now.

Rozbuska.5263:

Upgraded version havent different skin or effects its a bit shame I expect something glowing like capacitor tier 3

The Fractal Capacitor glowing effects is an upgrade beyond the Ascended version, but no new stats.

While the Beta Capacitor (Ascended) does look a bit different (rotating cube in center and ribbons), but not that different, but does give you the Ascended stats.

Perhaps the tentacle backpiece will have another upgrade beyond the Ascended version in the future, or is already there, but not found yet.

Either way, the skin is already pretty crazy, not sure what more you want.

Every tier feels the pain of having a zerg destroying the work of individuals and small groups that takes hours and gold to create, yet seconds to destroy.

You either accept that any hard work or effort in WvW is like building a sand-castle in the way of the rising tide, or forever be frustrated. You can only shore up your defenses so much before the eventual dissolution of your work.

I agree that AC’s are too strong against siege. An enemy zerg will build one right up at a tower gate and destroy any AC’s or catapults within range, inside.

You already have Sigils that do +X% damage to target types. Apply that concept to AC’s… instead – X% vs Structures / Siege. Ballistas already have that implemented with skill #3.

Failing to WP… double click to travel, appear briefly at location, then bounced back to original location.

Lag. Truly game breaking. There is irony in the fact that WvW can’t handle high player concentration battles, which is one of the core aspects of its game type!

FSP, you guys just won’t let us have Anzalias!!!

We thought we could take it while you were busy taking SMC from Miller’s, but you took it faster than we expected. If you had taken a minute longer, it would have been ours.

Either way, great job in saving it. The gate had only a dusting of red left on its bar before you rushed in and repaired it.

We will have it though. Anzalias will be ours. It’s just a matter of time.

Chaosx.2471:

It’s not that it’s difficult, it’s more that it’s iconvenient. The fact that the ability exists in all other aspects of the game other then WvWvW just does not make sense.

If they do fix it, I hope it fixes the bug that doesn’t show all of my party (happens most in LA). Same deal, you can log or map to fix, but still inconvenient.

Reform the party. Yes, it sucks, but you don’t need to leave the area to remove a player. Leave party, right click join, and you party should be reformed in less than 10s… easily accomplished while moving to your next target.

If you are with guild mates or friends, educate them to leave the party before they leave the map.

I can see why it’s not a big ticket item for Anet to address when it is easily worked around by the players.

With the added range from Rank points and damage buff, a team sieging a tower can effectively lock down defending players from retaliating from the walls with a couple Arrow Carts.

Anet must have their history on medieval siege confused. Defenders on the walls had the advantage when it came to ranged weapons, not the other way around, as it is in WvW.

All I see on tower walls now are a dozen large red circles doing 1200 damage per second per circle.

I don’t have an issue with the gold accumulation, I have fun, and that’s more important to me than increased rewards. But, on the flip side, I would love to have a use more my Badges of Honor. I have the weapons and armor I need.

We were told we’d be able to get Ascended items with badges, but that hasn’t happened. Ectos, laurels, pristine relics, commendations, and gold can be used to get Ascended gear, but my badges gather dust.

I usually reserve such antics for thieves who try for an easy kill, fail, attempt to run away, then die. After a failed gank & spank, you deserve the corpse jumping.

Was on long enough today to catch a nice capture of Bravost on EBG through a nicely executed battle plan from our commander BlueBlooded (close enough):

Took Danelon while attacking a heavily defended QL, deciding to switch to Bravost after swinging by the Keep to tag it. Had three rams up and made everyone stop attacking the gate to prevent the orange combat X to appear. Kept the main force between Bravost and the Keep, preventing reinforcements and taking out cannon/mortar on the walls. Took it right as the BB zerg showed up.

I don’t know who the BB ele commander was, trying to get into Bravost, but I haven’t seen a player go down as fast as he did. Kind of surprising.

You could limit rams to an area around the outside part of the gate. I know of no strategic value of placing flame rams anywhere else. And if you are griefed in the inner keep/castle at least the rams will absorb some AoE and any other siege built by supply depot might be ‘somewhat’ useful.

3-way fight in SMC on Gandara / Baruch Bay/ Aurora Glade for over an hour tonight.

It might actually still be going on.

After dying again to skill lag, because I couldn’t heal or use any skills to help escape auto-attacks, while trying to tag a Keep (not in SMC)…

… I quit.

Didn’t care to deal with an issue that’s been around since launch and never addressed. Don’t tell us the same story of how the lag is tied to the core of the game engine, needing to rewrite, lots of testing, etc… etc… please focus on an issue that when it happens, affects not just WvW, but PvE too.

Shout out to corpse dancing [GEA] guild on BB for camping the JP on EBG, stay classy guys.

The current WXP abilities aren’t that pronounced that they sway the tide of battle.

I’ve yet to use my rank points, feeling the current abilities are sub-par and I am taking a wait-and-see approach.

Also, for people who’ve invested hundreds of hours in WvW, they’ve earned those abilities.

In its current state, it’s far from unbalanced to new players. Just look at the upscale mechanism, it gives player a boost to help bridge the gap, but fully geared and traited players will always have the advantage in a equal skilled battle. By your logic, we should send them a full exo-gear set as soon as they enter WvW.

Since culling was fixed, I’ve noticed far less gank thieves in WvW. I see more using stealth to run away as opposed to getting a better backstab angle and regen’ing.

selan.8354:

agreed.smc shouldnt be that easy to reach.and why on earth it the castle lord on the bottom and not on the top floor?

He used to be on the middle floor, but enemies would just setup Arrow Carts underneath him.

Oh, I thought the Mesmer’s Greatsword auto had been fixed to actually be able to hit the huge pot of oil without it saying “Obstructed”.

They’ll only camp as long as you feed them loot bags. Either wait and /dance in view or take a different exit out.

But, let’s be honest, most players don’t really think all that much and just keep throwing their bodies at the enemy.

I remember a video where a thief perma-stealthed into BL’s main spawn setting off fireworks. The ‘teleporting back out’ must have been added in later.

I would love to do a zerg rush against the spawn point, sounds fun

Forget nodes, let’s talk Keep defense.

Blue side is clearly OP, they have guards at each of their gates!!!

Green has not just one, but two water gates with the pathetic excuse of sharks as guards. Those sharks could barely hit something if their target stood still. I can go for a casual swim and bump the gate and no one is the wiser!

Clearly Green needs a buff.

BB, I’m honored that you felt like you needed 5 Superior Catapults to take down a tier 2 Klovan with your 50+ blob.

Lol.

How many Aurora Glade does it take to camp the Jumping Puzzle entrance in EBG? At least 20. Keep up the class guys. I do the JP for fun, not the blueprints… I get plenty of loot from AG squishies

The devs told us that culling and lag were separate problems. Now that culling has been removed, I imagine the lag issue will start seeing some attention. And yes, the lag is server side, but people with less powerful machines see the effects more readily as large fights test the limits of their computers, trying to draw all the players and particle effects that server tells it to, and thus bogging down their machine, coupling server lag with processor lag.

The lag only occurs when large numbers of players congregate in a small spot, aka zerg wars. It was neigh unplayable the first couple days after the patch, but I feel like it’s improved or people are blobbing less. Now it seems to be lag only strikes during a SMC Lord Room fight and occasionally and in less severity in massive battles that occur away from SMC.

I think the fact that most ranged weapons can’t hit enemies from behind the Tower/Keep wall ledge is more annoying. The Rangers and Veteran Archers have no problem hitting from behind the ledge, but apparently all my Scepter/Staff/Greatsword projectiles fire from below my waist and get “Obstructed”. XD

Rant aside, if you are stupid enough to jump up on the ledge to wand me, without Stability, I will pull you off that ledge to meet the wrath of the Zerg Blob.

DevonCarver.5370:

I can’t speak to what has or has not been done in the past, but I have just started to improve WvW and I hope you can all provide me the benefit of the doubt. For at least one build, then you can return to the gnashing of teeth as usual.

Deal.

Also, I can understand the trickiness of titles like these. You don’t want them accomplished too quickly, as then it would be too easy and you don’t want to make them to take forever to achieve because, well, we would complain a lot more than we already do.

Though I know there have been plenty of suggestions, if the plan is to have a title take years to accomplish, I would love to see a WvW buff attached to it, i.e. Yakslapper: You know how to kill Dolyaks. You now do +10% damage vs. Dolyaks.

DevonCarver.5370:

What I meant was that there is the possibility of making the titles visually distinct from one another. That has nothing to do with them displaying only in one area of the game.

Ah, thanks for the clarification.

Sunspots.9861:

Think of it this way, in 6 years it will be as if there is some new WvW update as everyone finally starts getting their Yakslapping title.

Only 6 years?

Using OP’s picture as a reference, and the fact that it’s from a relatively dedicated player.

7% in 6 months —> 14% in a year --> 98% in seven years —> 100% in a seven years and a few months
--—-

Realm Avenger: 7+ years for a semi-hardcore WvW and that’s the fastest title.

The rest of those at 1% in six months and 2% in a year, would equal 50 years! That is literally a lifetime achievement.

Casual WvW’ers might as well kiss any title good-bye at its current rate.

The math and its posts for titles has been done numerous times, pointing out the ludicrous time for even hardcore players to show a title.

PvE players have quite a few titles to show off already.
sPvP even has titles that can be seen.
WvW players have nothing. Not even WXP titles are seen outside of WvW.

Considering how long the current title system takes, they should allow us to show off our intermediary titles.

And this is old news. When someone tells me ‘they plan on looking into it’ that means to me there is going to be a long long wait.

And what does this:

DevonCarver.5370:

I think there is certainly the possibility of distinguishing WvW titles from PvE titles. But it will require investigation.

even mean? As far as I know, there is no association to begin with. Does it mean that I can show my WvW title only when I am in WvW? That would be a bummer.

PinCushion.7390:

Most people seriously don’t build tanky for WvW? Seriously? I don’t even know what to think.

There are two extremes you’ll usually see, the Beserker and the Bunker; the former’s goal is to DPS you down before you can get many hits in, and the latter is to be as unkillable as possible (though they can’t kill you either).

I’d say 60-70% of players focus on Power/Damage in WvW, i.e. the former.

Vi Au.8341:

r40
squire…………..

At that rank Ballista Mastery… is there a noticeable difference? And why Ballista Mastery?

Dagger Storm is damage over time, where as a 5x Earthquake spike with next to no warning will down players in one shot, letting the rest of the group clean up.

Most zergs stop when taking on towers/keeps/castle. If that’s when you are wrecked, spread out, make yourself less of a target.

Also, T1 (and occasionally T2) play on a whole different level. Us T3’ers and below aren’t as tactical, except for guild groups. So even a moving zerg blob can get wrecked by a ele Earthquake spike.

EBG was hopping today. Had a new commander roll with us for the better part of the day, who kept us more organized than we usually are on EBG. I’d like to think we kept AG and BB on the defensive… even if it was our blob doing the scaring and not our skills.

Ravvik was commanding in the morning, who dealt with a pretty rough crowd, and got caught in some unfortunate battles. Hope it didn’t discourage him too much, and we see him again on EBG.

multivira.7925:

Use this to your advantage and go full out tank spec. You’ll be able to get some insane HP with some of the gear and while they start wondering why on earth they couldn’t kill you your teammates will have an easy time killing them.

Fortunately most don’t do that. So when a team puts them in the middle as bait or they are killed first, the sight of downed players really affects morale, and can easily sway the direction of battle, scaring off the cowards., and making that house of cards fall

I agree with OP, no reason for the enemy to see it.

With that said, I love the green arrow… tells me who to aim for in big groups.

Though, even if it were removed, you can often tell the low levels still by their armor; not as fancy.

The higher tiers are the ones more likely to have strike groups and not one super mob, as the latter will guarantee you a loss if maintained for too long.

Dolyak escorts used to give XP / Gold / Karma, but PvEr’s (and bots) would come in and farm the escort mission, taking up all the player slots on the server. You’d have 20+ players standing next to the Dolyak, way back in friendly territory.

Anet removed the rewards, and now just gives you a gold medal that credits towards the Escort title/achievement.

If they added WXP to Dolyak escorts, people would use that to farm ranks unfortunately.

Players will find the easiest way to get their reward and abuse it until it’s removed. R.I.P. Dolyak escort rewards.

Kronyx.2570:

What if defending unupgraded towers gave more WXP than upgraded? It would add a nice risk vs reward element into the game

I think you’d get servers where groups wouldn’t bother to upgrade and use a T1 location as a honey trap to farm unsuspecting groups when a larger group is hiding inside, out of view. Farm the players, then net a nice chunk of WXP for defending.