Guild Wars 2

It needs to be clear that the problem isn’t green winning most of the time. The green server is the highest ranked server in each tier, so they are more likely to win.

The problem is that, despite green winning the vast majority of matchups, the following week’s matchups are largely unchanged.

DeathenShada.6397:

Lastly DO NOT BUY YOU EXOTIC GEARS!!!! I made that mistake you will hate the skins and end up farming dungeons for nice skins. Trust me save your money and buy a set of rares and farm dungeons.

Yes! This person speaks truth!

Rares are pretty good and most people won’t know you’re doing 15% or so less than your potential. Yet they are SO much cheaper. Save for the trinkets you need, because other than ascended (need to run higher level fractals, practically speaking) and karma (only three stat sets), you need to craft the exotic versions.

Personally I’d like to see commanders split up their zerg to cover taking of smaller objectives, deception, and defense. Something like managing squads. On DB the only thing I see commanders do is say “follow me” and “please grab supply”, then aim their zerg-ball at the next objective.

What really bugs me is when a commander says “we need more at location X” hoping to take an objective by shear numbers despite enemy entrenchment. 60 minutes having 50 people taking one well defended tower…such a waste.

ArenaNet, do you want more money? Please just add this. It can’t be difficult. My stupid level 80 necro has a misspelling of a real word in its name. I didn’t realize it until level 60 or so. It’s embarrassing.

My 2800+ armor engineer lost 18k from a Mug, a C&D, and a Backstab in a 1v1. I had retaliation on, so he split. I did not see a flicker nor hear a whiff. Culling still exists in 1v1s.

I ran across 5 bots farming Jotun in one of the mid-level Shiverpeaks maps yesterday. I reported them. A few days prior I saw a few bots in a similar but lower-level area.

The really weird one was last week. A dude with no armor on popped up INSIDE an ore node, did his thing, then disappeared. A few seconds later, he popped up in another node that was way too far away to be explained by lag and conventional travel, even with teleports and swiftness. He promptly disappeared after gathering. So bots now seem to be using a teleport hack. Terrific, huh? He was never around long enough for me to select and report him.

@Sostronk the other issue with bots is that they support the gold-selling trade. And while that’s just capitalism and I’m not a terms of use policeman, I would like the game to be as free from that garbage as possible.

Seetoo.9316:

With plans to go to fractal 20 (possibly higher) I compared FT 1 to rifle1 to see how much more damage I was doing in melee with the FT. I found out I was doing less.

I assume your numbers also factor in the burn at the end? And they also factor in more burns from Incindiary Ammo? That would be interesting.

With the changes to Air Blast, it seems to me AN wants the FT to be a power/precision/condition damage hybrid, not one of just power or conditions.

Can you clarify please…are you saying that the NPC continues to face you even if you circle around it while stealthed?

The other day I was in a dungeon with another engineer who was donning the flamethrower. That thing was shooting out flames to the 900+ range! You can’t really get that sense of range from a behind-your-character perspective. Of course, it wouldn’t hit that far out, and it really shouldn’t.

But to address that concern, consider their options:
1) Make the flamethrower kit targets out to 900 or so range…that isn’t going to happen.
2) Make the flame animation smaller/stop shorter…that takes away the cool factor.

I agree FT is not for min-maxing, and I guess nobody thinks it is viable in sPvP (I rarely play it). But it’s got a cool factor, and that matters to some people.

Rfreak.6591:

@Eviator.9746

Dude we are complaining about not being able to use more than one kit in our skillbar, who actually cares about 100-nades if you can’t play anything else?

My understanding of the nerf is evolving, so I appreciate the information. Obviously this isn’t a nerf of multi-kit builds, it’s a nerf of multi-kit builds that make tactical use of kit refinement.

Other than magnet + grenade barrage, what other combos were there that made use of the lack of a global cooldown on kit refinement? Two reason for this question: 1) if there are other very powerful combos, it would explain the general nerf to the trait, 2) if there are not other good combos, why is there such an uproar?

Heh, I didn’t even know this existed. Never paid much attention to food buffs in WvW. I wonder if this has ever contributed to my hundreds of deaths…

Out of curiousity, is there a 1-shot kill skill combo that make’s use of the elementalist’s attunement swapping trait?

Independent of that, it was easy to anticipate a nerf to 100-nades, which is really what people are mad about, don’t kid yourselves. Would any nerf not produce the outrage we are seeing on the forums? I contend YES!

Ow, I didn’t even think about the gold/time investment side of this. Though now that I think about it, perhaps the saying “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is” might apply. Making an expensive build based upon a single very powerful mechanic is asking for trouble, IMHO.

I don’t see this as 100 nades being gone. I see it as 100 nades being more difficult to pull off, i.e. more skill is required.

What!?! Thanks for letting us know, Jon! It probably would have gone unnoticed for a while.

I have to say I love seeing the thread with every content patch. Then again, I’d REALLY love to NOT see it after one of these patches.

Dhampyr.2104:

Didn’t we write post after post condemning volatility before free transfers ended? And now we’re going to ask for it, demand it, and QQ because we don’t have it?

As soon as that volatility comes back, we’ll start seeing people back on the “we need stability!!!” bandwagon.

Fickle, unsure of what we want (especially after we GET what we wanted in the first place)… No wonder we get completely disregarded by ANet. /eyeroll

If they disregard our feedback it’s because of non-constructive responses like yours. We are demostrating a problem with factual data, presenting possible solutions. If you disagree with our conclusions, please post why instead of blowing a gasket.

Another week, 7 of 8 tiers with green winning. The eighth, green is barely behind. And once again, very little shake up in the predicted matches for next week. GOOOOO GREEEEEEEEN!

Lebannen.8325:

We can go back and forth with the theorycraft battle situations to the cow comes home. You must be that unique snowflake engineer that makes everyone else look bead because you dont lose in any 1v1 fight over hours and hours of play. We should all just adjust and play just like you and for the help you have ‘bestowed’ on us, we should just join your youtube channel and give you money and fame.

Riiiiight. There are several thieves on DR and IoJ not to mention SoR/JQ/SoS that would love to say hello to you.

Please don’t read more into my comment than what I wrote. My 1v1s rarely end in ANY death until someone else comes along. I am a rather unskilled player, and the tankcat build keeps me out and about instead of downed and defeated. I’d bet most people would find a build that simply endures to be rather boring. But this thread is about tankcat, and I wanted to share some amusing stories that show that the build is not total crap.

The thief is in fact my greatest foe simply because he does a lot of damage to me, and I can’t do much damage to him. And even if I could he always gets away. It’s hard for me to believe that with 2800 armor/toughness a fully geared GC thief can do 18k of damage in one second using three attacks while remaining stealthed (thank you culling). I never knew what hit me. My GC thief in rares does half that damage to clothies, and that makes me jealous. My build alone kept me alive. But it also kept the thief alive. With the tankcat build, everybody lives!

Well what about the racial ability toolbelt skills?

Lebannen.8325:

Entertaining read but the name “tank cat” is asinine Theorycraft all you want to, this build and 100’ nades of stupidity build has so many flaws and only works against less than intelligent players which flood WvWvW.

High Condition builds will make you regret life and the money speccing and gearing. My engineer has 2000+ condi damage. I eat stupid Tankcats who stick around, and don’t know when they are outgunned for breakfast, even two of you playing smart with overlapping Mag pull and two prybars. Elixir x >>melee.

Guardian anything (especially Norn) will embarrass you. For additional insult, Become the Bear/Leopard can and will make you rage.

Oh, look at that lone thief taking on 3-5 players. Let me walk over there and try to use prybar. Here is how that fight goes against an average thief and Ill give you the advantage of a sneak attack:

Engi: Mag Pull
Thief : Stealth
Engi: “Ill pop elixir B and counter the burst”
Thief: predictable noob, ill just wait.
Engi: He scared of me" /g Hey guize, this thief fears teh tankcat
Thief: <watching icon>constantly finding way to keep stealth up
Engi: Hes gone.
Thief:< retaliation is done>
Thief: <burst>
Engi: Hidden Flask
Thief: I forgot about the auto-elixir B, Ow, my daggers hurt, stealth
Engi: <what the heck just happened>

Entire fight takes 28 seconds. Engineer looks to prybar more faces, and the thief goes off in search of easier kills.

I fixed your post for you.

Okay, maybe I’m just fighting in a tier full of noobs (tier 3) , but I haven’t died in what is now hours and hours of aggressive solo, small group, and zerg WvW play. The thief scenario I fixed for you…that JUST happened to me yesterday. Even with 2800 armor, I got hit by a 4k steal, a 6k C&D, and an 8k backstab. That put me down to 40% health. No idea what the thief was at but he stealthed away to rethink his life. I suck at this game because it took me a couple seconds to even consider pulling out my gear shield.

A smart player picks his fights. How does your 2000+ condition damage do against a condition consuming/transfering necro? I moved away from my engi condi build because of such a scenario.

One day I was running from a zerg in rares and was followed by a guardian in exotics for 30-seconds until we were well alone. A fight ensued for about 2 minutes, with neither of us really in any danger of dying. He took many prybars to the face. He stepped back, /no’d, and then turned back around to find his zerg-ball.

I don’t think a tankcat is designed to win 1v1s. He’s designed to frustrate, distract, and divide. He hardly ever gets badges. But he’s a ton of fun to play, and heck, it’s a game, right?

Lebannen.8325:

He was a very bad d/d ele.

On second thought, I don’t think he was d/d. I think he was burst.

A D/D elementalist tried to gank me in WvW. He got many prybars to the face. My exotic-equiped tankcat never got below 60% health while the ele confused himself to death. His final attempt to escape was his undoing. He was so shocked to be schooled by an engi that he couldn’t gather his wits to mist form away. I tiny-dunked him…

I guess the people who log in once every few days don’t care about ascended items, and are happy with their exotics.

That’s so funny…fraps is now a verb whose definition is not a direct reference to the noun fraps.

I paid for fraps a couple years ago, and it’s still pretty good. The other one I tried was dxtory with lagarith, which has several cool features that fraps doesn’t have. One day, if I feel fraps isn’t meeting my needs, I’ll try that first. Oh, and it’s not free.

A well played thief cannot be beat because it can just get away. The best way to play against a thief is to play a bunker, and run toward good guys. Eventually the thief will find easier kills.

gkaare, the bug I reported with the elixir gun’s weakness not getting condition duration benefits…it’s not a bug. Only today did I learn about Unshakable’s effect on weakness. So on the one hand, that’s one potential bug you can scratch off the list. On the other hand, now my dungeon support build which focuses on stacking weakness no longer makes sense.

Advent.6193:

We can agree on volatility. As for population issues, a big issue for us in FC (and to a large degree, ET’s guys as well) is that SF’s only the latest in a series of servers steamrolling through. Months of eating dirt, no matter how hard you scrap, will demoralize anyone. This then shrinks the Wv3 population, which just continues
the downward spiral. And, I’d be willing to bet this can happen to any server.
It just takes a longer time for larger population servers to be noticeably effected.

So perhaps with more volatility, an opponent different from SF could rekindle interest in WvW on ET and FC? Just might work.

The tier 8 case is a very special case. No matter who FC and ET play, it’s unlikely their WvW population will ever recover to a point where they can win. It’s actually SF who is getting screwed in that matchup, because as you say it will be weeks maybe months before they can move into tier 7. Volatility, that’s what this ranking system needs.

Gimme a E. Gimme a N. GOOOOOOOOOO GREEEEEEEEEN!!!

As of the time this post is being written, all 8 NA matchups are being won by green. Makes sense, the green server has the highest ranking in each tier. But there’s a problem: given the current scores there will be no change in the matchups next week!

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

In my case, it will be the same matchup my tier has had since Kaineng made it past my tier. This seems to be related to weighting in the ranking system. Perhaps that should be tweaked to shake things up a bit, make it more volatile.

Only constructive comments please, or this will get closed.

Faelaan.4681:

What is the big deal what color the server is? Green just means they won the most points the week before. I’ve seen Blue servers own entire maps. I’ve seen Red servers own entire maps. What is the problem? If your server is getting owned then you have a few choices… #1 – Get more people involved in WvW on your server. #2 Get a few guilds to move to your server. #3 Move yourself to another server. It’s a competition… WvW is about competition and having fun.

It doesn’t actually work this way. Green is the server that has the highest rating, and is thus the strongest, in that tier. A green server could lose a week but have enough rating points to stay green the next week. So it’s not anti-green sentiment, we’re just saying that the green server has, by far, the best chance of winning the tier every week, and unless you are on a green server, you are likely to lose several weeks in a row.

Sometimes the blue or red team pulls it together for a week and wins. Before Jan 28th it usually coincided with large guild transfers.

Faelaan.4681:

If they stopped giving Badges of Honor in the Chests of the jumping puzzles that are located in WvW maps, you would have more people involved in the REAL WvW. Thus giving you a better chance to compete. Make people BATTLE for the Gift of Battle because that is all a lot of them are there for. A piece needed for their Legendary.

Wouldn’t that also be true for the green server?

Yep, the Diving into zergs or Tankcat builds work well with a thief. But be prepared to get far fewer badges because, though you are an integral part of the duo, you will not do enough damage to get the loots.

Maskaganda’s build…I honestly don’t understand how it’s even effective. I think it works for Mask because he is a great player who would be good using ANY build. You might try it, but I suggest you don’t invest a lot of gold in the gear for it until you get some success.

At one point I assumed each server in each tier had a 33% chance of winning. I now see that was a flawed assumption. My server is likely to lose about 5 matches in a row, move down to tier 4, dominate that for one week, then move back into tier 3, and repeat ad nausium. Bummer.

On the other hand, here in tier 3 there are enough players, even during an obvious loss, to at least have fun. Maybe we won’t hardly ever win a week, but there’s always something to do, always a battle to be fought and won.

The OP has a point. As of the last score update I have seen, 6 of the 8 winning servers are green. Of the remaining 2 green servers, they are very close to the lead.

I know very little about ele, but I can tell you that fighting against a D/D ele is very predictable. I’m not good enough to kill one, but D/D ele’s never seem to be able to kill me either. Certain skills are easily dodgeable, and I know that as soon as I get close to downing one, it will go away, and then as soon as I actually down him, he goes away again. All the eles I see now are D/D eles, and I think their…let’s say consistent…playstyle is probably making them less effective. I prefer a profession with a little variety, I guess.

Yes, thank you.

I’m sorry I have not put together a video yet. I have not run any dungeons in many weeks, and that’s the only place I noticed the bug. Assuming I do in fact run dungeons for this month’s monthly, I WILL record it. I appreciate that you have tested it, so I’m perfectly alright with you cleaning up those posts from this thread and assuming the bug doesn’t exist until I can demonstrate it. Cheers!

For what it’s worth I’ve spent several hours in WvWvW this week on DB and have not once seen anyone say in chat “don’t kill X defenders/invaders so we can take down Y.” I think the current scores accurately reflect the number of players in each world, not any kind of cross world coordination.

Conditions were more fun. But I wasn’t getting many badges in small groups to zergs until I switced to powermancer.

Another impressive movie. Thanks!

I have not played an ele beyond level 15, but I’ve seen a bunch of D/D ele videos and they all play the same. No build or gameplay variety. Our forum seems to have a larger influx of potential builds recently, and one could argue build variety is one alternate definition of versatility.

YES, but only once, and only to get ascended items in line with exotics stat-wise in order to reduce the grind.

Until guesting was enabled, many zones in many worlds were so empty that some event chains wouldn’t initiate, many group events remained unresolved, and meta-events would go weeks without being played. With guesting we can change that! What servers should be the unofficial PvE guesting servers for NA and EU?

MikeT.9428:

I’m going with TANKCAT invulnerability length of time nerf and 100Nade build nerf.

Seconded. Both gear sheild and static shield will only work when standing still, and gear shield duration will be shortened by a second.

For 100n, they will mess with Kit Refinement, either the damage or spread the grenade barrage out and make the grenades explode on ground impact, not enemy player impact so they only get hit by a few.

Psychatog.8246:

This is correct, Protocol [PRO] from DR is transfering to DB. Still waiting for the server to open up again so we can get the other half of our guild here though. >.<

Protocol, originally from Gate of Madness. After they left the server was in ruins, and had to start from scratch.

From the very beginning AN has said that the end of free server transfers will come when guesting is implemented. I suppose not everyone is as informed as those of us who have played since the BWEs. Your characterization of this as shady is unrealistic…you just don’t know the history of the whole thing.

I’ve been thinking along similar lines myself. Perhaps the vision is that AoE specs are good at fighting groups and bad at single target, while single target specs are good at single target and bad at groups. This means hybrid specs would be okay at both, but not good, which sure feels engineerish to me. Maybe the whole point in all this is to modify meta so that people are required to be picky about their fights. For example in dungeons people would really have to change skills and traits to meet the challenges of the upcoming fight, instead of running the same setup the whole time.

Eh, this is all conjecture. I’m curious to see where it ends up. At this point a lot of people are established in their expectations. Remember the change to tiered traits between BWEs and the uproar that ensued? It turned a lot of people away. This could be that times 10.

This topic title is misleading. Girls don’t play games…that’s a myth.

On topic: nearly every profession forum has posts that think this is a bad thing. AN wants to reduce the use of AoE against single targets. That means changing loadouts based upon the upcoming encounter (can’t just run grenades or bombs the whole dungeon). Supposedly this will reduce zergs in WvW. I still struggle to understand the logic behind that one.

Sirevanac.3178:

I love how people make mass hysteria with just the tip of something that could or could not affect them.

You mean something like “We need to do something with gun control.” The fact is we don’t know where it will lead and it could be much worse than you expect. People are just preparing themselves for what may be coming. Nothing wrong with being prepared.

Yep power build with wells is my WvW spec. Looks like I’ll need to re-evaluate that.

Faeyd.5094:

Hmmm my ranger is stunningly better at PvE than my thief. Both level 80.

frans.8092:

I did and I found that my Necro alt kills a lot easier in PvE then my thief she and rarely dies.

The OP is clearly talking about big scrolling white numbers and short time to kill, not “better” or “easier”, which factors in utility, survivability, group size, and other factors. Thief clearly wins here…either that or it’s a l2p issue.