Guild Wars 2

My goodness. TC is this your normal WvW turnout? If so T2 isn’t as balanced as previously thought!

Arkanfel.8403:

I don’t really see what the problem is, honestly. All that’s been said is that we need to buckle down and get on the same page. These things are being discussed in more detail behind closed doors, but I don’t see anything wrong with expressing a little self-awareness here. I know it’s important to keep morale up, but not everyone reads the server forums, and I think they deserve to know that people are aware of the problem and are trying to fix it. Painting too rosy a picture (“we’re doing just great guys!! keep it up!!”) can have its consequences too, and some of them were manifest on Kaineng.

I don’t think there is a problem. The only people who mentioned potential drama on DB are TC folks. Drama is “not the DB way”. I value CO’s input on the matter, and anything they can do to keep us competitive in T2, I’m open to listening to.

Arkanfel.8403:

Dhampyr.2104:

The competition is really making WvW fun for me right now, and I sure hope things don’t get gooned up with this upcoming change to WvW.

This is why I’m hoping DB’s WvW core shows up pronto. If we think TC is fielding huge numbers now, we’ll poop our pants when we see it after the changes come. The boost they got after the culling patch was one of the nails in Kaineng’s coffin.

Well DB’s SEA presence is our WvW core! NA and EU has always been about fighting greater numbers while trying to retain whatever PPT we can. The influx of guilds was supposed to shore up that gap, but I dont’ think it’s to the level we thought it would be at this point. That’s not to say our other original guilds (EA, BP, etc.) aren’t awesome, it’s just that they aren’t the group that gives us winning chances.

Arkanfel.8403:

DB really needs to pace itself. This “work hard for 2-3 days then coast” crap just isn’t going to cut it; SEA will burn out very quickly if they have to carry the PPT burden. If DB can’t consistently tick 300 or close during NA prime, she will have some serious problems against both of these servers. It is my understanding that our entire WvW crew hasn’t materialized yet, but I hope it does soon.

Well it’s always been that way for DB. SEA does most of the PPT work, and we do our best during the rest of the day to hold what we can. Maybe the influx of guilds (RE, rB, FIRE, Agg, CO, etc.) was supposed to alleviate that, but I’m not sure whether it’s enough in T2.

It’s a sad state that DBBL is queued for DB, but our zergs cannot coordinate at all. We outnumbered the TC zerg ball outside garrison a fair amount, and we got to watch them fend us off as a well coordinated group. Meanwhile most DB folks were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. We didn’t stack, and when the commander pushed 80% of DB hung back and watched them get slaughtered. Frustrating! We aren’t getting beat by the enemy, we are beating ourselves!

I always run in to PiNK during NA times. Is that TC?

Combined with the number of hits we can do against a zerg per unit of time in many of our builds, you might be right.

Yeah, but all that is retaliation working as intended. Sucks, but doesn’t indicate retaliation is broken.

Asudementio.8526:

Aeonblade.8709:

Eviator.9746:

I think the problem is some bad apples on DB were chest thumping in the first couple weeks of T2, and that hurt a lot of people’s feelings, and now it’s payback time.

I seriously doubt we hurt FA and TC’s feelings. Well maybe TC’s.

Dunno about the chest thumping thing, never saw much myself.

I refer you to Mayoken and RawNoodles

I was not referring to anyone specific when I said “bad apples”. In fact all the posts I saw from Raw Noodles were quite diplomatic. However I did see a couple posts in the T1 forums (I can’t remember who or when) that said something to the effect of “watch out DB is coming for you”, which is still rather tame, but a little premature and inflamatory. I didn’t really think it was appropriate, and apparently neither did some of the T1 folks, nor the T2 folks who would have to keep losing badly for DB to move up.

I think the problem is some bad apples on DB were chest thumping in the first couple weeks of T2, both on the T2 forum and in the T1 forum, and that hurt a lot of people’s feelings. Now T1 and our T2 competitors are getting payback as our results come back down to earth. As a member of DB pre-transfers, it is disappointing to be getting this kind of negative attention, because it’s drama we haven’t had to deal with much in the past.

I remember in my childhood a dispute between me and my brother. Names have changed to protect the “innocent”.

Me: “Mom, his piece of cake is bigger than mine!”

So mom, after acknowleging that his piece was indeed bigger, got me some more cake. Really she was just trying to shut me up. But my brother wasn’t satisfied. “That’s not fair, now he has more cake!” She gave us both “the look”. We knew what that look meant, so we both dropped it. But my brother, not to be outdone, says “Well it doesn’t matter anyway. My cake has more frosting, and I know how you LOVE frosting!”

Big sis comes along. “Johnny’s right Eviator, mom may have given you more cake, but his cake is better because it has more frosting.” She just loved to egg us on. I sneered at them both and my brother and I got into a little fight. Mom broke it up and guess what: none of us got to eat our cake.

Twenty years later and guess what I see in this forum. A bunch of siblings complaining “QQ he got more transfers”, “QQ I got more skill”, and here’s big sis (T1) egging us on. It’s very disturbing, sickening, and sad. Just go play the game, and let us all eat the kitten cake!

I’m about ready for us (DB) to move down to T3. Yeah we had some forum warriors who have obviously trolled FA, TC, and apparently SoR. And now that DB has backed off to what is closer to “normal” numbers considering the hype of T2 has worn off, and we aren’t winning, those trollees are now the trollers. I miss the days pre-RE when the core was competitive in T3. Even though Mag forum warriors were better at it, at least the core of DB stayed classy, for the most part. Don’t get me wrong, the new guilds have been a positive force for us…I just can’t take the atmosphere that has come along with envy of our fortune.

I was truly astounded this morning (about 10 hours ago) when there were maybe 8 total active people on DB BL combined between all three servers! Is this T2 or what? TC and FA had outmanned because there were about 10 DB loitering at home base.

It was fun to watch. Well done!

Whew, lots of ruffled feathers on this thief issue. I really don’t like the reaction on this post. You may feel like you are offering constructive criticism, but it sounds more like whinning. Keep it up and ANet are apt to stop communicating with us altogether.

Now it’s true that a necro isn’t going to keep a small group chasing him around the map. But that’s not what necros are for. If you want to run in small groups the thief turns out to be an annoyance, like a bee. If you are the unlucky person who the thief picks off, it sucks, however if you look at it at a macro level (looking beyond just you), it’s not unbalanced in WvW. A thief can keep a small group occupied for a long time…if the group allows that to happen. I believe that is what Mr. Cartwright was trying to say.

FYI, my main is an engie, and I’ve been killed by my fair share of thieves.

Swapping in-and-out of kits is fun. Plopping down elixirs works. Now let’s improve gadgets (lower cooldowns? more utility?), and improve the survivability of turrets (even if their damage needs to be toned down). Then we should have a lot more build variety!

Since burns and poison stack duration, whichever of you has less condition damage will be hit kinda hard, damage-wise.

Personally I think Mask’s build, though recently nerfed, has decent enough survivability to support duo’ing with a craftier profession, like thief or mesmer. Your friend can keep them occupied while you burst em down and create a lot of mahem.
Or you’ll be better with a bleed-stacking profession, or better yet, you would go power. Or heck, Mask even runs with a tanky guardian (norn) to keep the bad guys occupied while he does the damage, so that’s an option.

Kamahl.3621:

EDIT: Eviator, you can drastically increase your testing speed with a flamethrower. Just turn off the auto attack function, set your game message screen to the right height so only 10 results show up for damage recording, and it’s all very quick from there. I tested about 500 hits within the span of 10 minutes back when I was testing another method of Scope’s implementation.

Good thinking.

My theory is just a theory, and only supported by a couple 1000-hit tests, so other theories might win out. Either way, scope sucks.

Nick, that stinks. I don’t want to be partially responsible for wasting anyone else’s gold :P I’m out.

Out of curiousity, are you basing this upon your combat log, or the profession forums, or have you played level 80 of each profession for many many hours and have hands-on experience with all of them?

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

You’re saying armor and weapons affect the “base” calculation rate but not any skills. Is this not completely ridiculous in concept?

“base crit” is ambiguous I guess. As far as I can tell everything that is “static” (traits bonuses, gear, runes, sigils) is part of scope calculation, and anything that is dynamic (skill use, fury, maybe food, maybe traits that are conditional, e.g. “Target the Weak”) is not. It’s pretty time-consuming to test, and I’m not interested in trying, since it’s at most a 1-2% crit difference, and I’m never going to use Scope.

I just finished a 50-round test with the following conditions:

• Heart of the Mists against 1 golem
• Steady Rifle
• Base crit – 70% (runes, sigils, and traits)
• Give myself 90% crit with Med-kit 5 + Elixir B
• Keep shooting until Fury wears off.

All rounds are recorded. The golems never got near 50% health to trigger “Target the Weak”. The only other crit-adding trait was Scope.

Expected Results:

• If scope is working and additive, I should get 100% crits
• If scope is not working, I should get 90% crits

Actual Results:
I got 32 non-crits in 1023 hits. That’s 96.87% crit rate.

My new theory:
Scope works, but is multiplicative and applied to the base crit before fury. So that’s
Crit rate = 0.70 base + (0.70 * 0.10) Scope + 0.20 Fury = 97%. This is actually CrunkMagnet’s theory in the other thread (did someone come up with this before CrunkMagnet?), and my numbers validate his theory.

A test of 1000 hits isn’t definitive. If the theory is correct, you would need 91% base crit to achieve 100% crit rate with no fury. If you can get 73% base crit, you can achieve 100% crit rate with fury. Unfortunately I don’t know of a way to get to 73% or 91% base crit rate in the mists. Maybe it’s possible in PvE/WvW, but I don’t have the gold to test that.

Based upon the results of this experiment, I’m not going to continue my 10,000 hits at 4% crit experiment, because the expected results according to the above theory is that I would get 4.4% crit rate, and 0.4% in 10,000 hits (40 extra crits) is very likely within the margin of error with the RNG.

I want to give credit where credit is due. Assuming the above theory is correct, you have to give the ANet devs kudos for sticking to their guns despite the vast majority of the engineer community saying that Scope is broken.

Last comment: Scope still sucks, and in fact sucks even more than I originally thought it did. I’ll still never equip it because mobility is more important than a few extra % crit in nearly every situation.

AsmallChicken.9634:

I wasn’t paying attention to the exact statistics when using Aim for the Weak with 89% crit chance (99% when the trait activates) as I was just looking to see if Scope would push me up to 100% (which it didn’t).

When I bumped my crit to 90%, Aim for the Weak and shooting at a >50% golem a couple hundred times, I definitely got all crits. So I can safely say Aim for the Weak is working as intended. Scope is however not.

Thanks for the clarification. That does seem like the optimal test as it dispells experimental bias concerning the difference between Scope being additive and multiplicative.

AsmallChicken.9634:

Scope dosn’t work even if it was multiplicative. As noted before I got my crit chance up to 89% chance. I then had the trait Aim for the Weak which gives 10% crit if the target is below 50% health. If Scope truly worked in any fashion, I should have above 100% crit chance against a target if it is below 50% health. However I was still getting no crits on a Golem when he was below 50% (I only started keeping track when the golem was under 25% to be extra sure it was truly under 50%).

I urge you to clarify exactly what you’re saying here. If you got your crit chance up to 89% then got the additional 10% for “Aim for the Weak” that would give you 99% crit chance for targets below 50% health, without scope turned on. Are you saying that in your tests you were getting 99% crits? Or are you saying you were well below even that?

Crunkmagnet.3908:

I’d call it a matter of priority more than principal. The game had and has bigger problems than the Scope trait.

While you make a great point, I think about it a different way. First off, I don’t care about the Scope trait in the least. I will personally never use it because 10% more crit chance doesn’t overcome the downsides of standing still, even in PvE. If it’s a bug, it’s not a game-breaking bug or even an important bug even if the bug shows up in different forms like other traits, boons, runes, or whatever you can imagine.

But, if ANet seems so sure that Scope is working fine despite all evidence to the contrary, and sticks to its guns come what may, it shows a lack of discipline in their efforts, a lack of pride in their work, and a lack of respect for their player-base, some of whom can be considered super-fans. In that case I’m willing to pursue a personal crusade on a matter of principle, in all honesty probably as a selfish attempt to boost my own ego when ANet says “oops my bad, I guess you were all right all along.” In my line of work if someone reports a bug, I do my due diligence to try to reproduce it and fix it. I don’t take a cursory look at my code and say “this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about, the code looks like it should work just fine!” The code that contributes to the 10% increase in crit chance is far more complex than a “script” because it involves several different aspects of the game. The script might look fine, but what if the code is never invoking that script because of a bug elsewhere?!?

Now, I’m also willing to admit that I haven’t seen any ANet post that specifically states that Scope is definitively working as intended. All posts says “it looks fine at first glance” and “we need to take a deeper look at this and all other traits.” Closing the 245-days thread was a statement in itself, but perhaps not one as harsh as some of us would like to imagine. I believe ANet devs are leaving themselves room for plausible denyability if it turns out Scope is broken after all.

Crunkmagnet.3908:

From the tests I just ran it appears to be working but is poorly worded.

What you’re saying in geek terms is that you think this trait is applying the bonus in a multiplicative fashion instead of an additive fashion. That is certainly possible given the ambiguity of the wording. Before I’m willing to fully accept the possibility, which would imply that all testing of Scope function must be done at high critical strike change levels. I’d like to know what other traits exist in the game that are multiplicative. As far as I know, none are.

Zenguy.6421:

That’s some serious work Eviator. Suggest you post these results over on the SPvP forum where ANet are far more likely to notice them.

Thanks. I intend to spend a lot of time polishing my results so that it cannot be disputed, and then spreading those results where I can.

Advent Leader.1083:

Once identified, is it broken as well? I believe the bug here stems with the fact that the trait may not trigger properly due to the movement detection script being bugged. Just my two cents.

I also suspect something like this. Something not directly tied to the 10% or the application of the 10%, but instead involved with character mechanics.

Four more runs, and after posting this I’m off to bed. On vacation until next week, so the rest will have to wait.

Run 5: 12 crits in 233 shots
Run 6: 9 crits in 235 shots
Run 7: 10 crits in 234 shots
Run 8: 6 crits in 237 shots

Running total: 75 crits in 1877 shots = 4.00%

I’m still working my way to 10,000 shots, but I changed my method a little. I’m still at 4% crit, but I’m using steady rifle so that I get more consistent shots to kill golems. Plus it’s easier to see the crits for 97 when non-crits are all 57.

Results so far:

Run 1: 7 crits in 236 shots
Run 2: 11 crits in 234 shots
Run 3: 10 crits in 234 shots
Run 4: 10 crits in 234 shots

Total: 38 crits in 938 shots = 4.05%

Not looking good.

The other thread a few people posted their results indicating scope still wasn’t working. 100 tries isn’t enough. Apparently neither is 1000 or even 2000. I did some testing tonight with 4% base against golems in the mists. My results so far:

52 crits in 768 shots = 6.7%

I intend to FRAPS 10,000 shots total, merge it all together in a video tallying them up. If scope is working, I should expect around 1400 crits. If it’s not, I should be closer to 400. AN can’t explain 1000 fewer crits by RNG, can they?

I’ve gone back to tankcat. But I’ve also relegated my duties to being a meat shield for other professions, so…

AsmallChicken.9634:

Ok I just did another test to be extra double sure.

Out of 2000 shots fired using base crit, i got 84 crits. That is a 4.15% chance to crit. We should be getting closer to 14% if scope actually works as advertised.

I’m sorry, but you guys arn’t helping the perception that the devs don’t care about Engineers. We have been reporting this non functioning trait since beta and all it takes is a simple test to show it. Instead you tell us that it is working even though our testing has been showing otherwise for months.

I was going to do a test this evening with base crit and thousands of shots. Now looks like I don’t have to, though I still may.

Perhaps we should be asking a different question. Is there anyone that has conclusive evidence that scope is actually working?

I’m still unsure about the arrow carts. On the one hand it changes the WvW strategy a little bit (distant catapults might now be necessary, instead of just 2 rams) which is interesting. On the other hand, defending against the break-out event and pretty much any zerg was…a little too easy.

I personally think the jury is still out on the new Healing Turret…actually it depends upon how you use it. In WvW I’m always on the move, so I’m curious if it will work. Let’s say I am running for my life in combat with swiftness. If I plop down my healing turret, overcharge it and detonate it, will I still be in the radius to get all the heals and the condition removal?

Okay now consider a scenario in a less mobile fight. Plop down the healing turret, overcharge as needed. With 1 second left on the overcharge cooldown it gets destroyed, going on a 20 second cooldown. So for those 34 seconds your healing consists exclusively of whatever’s left of your regeneration, regenerating mist, plus whatever heals you manage to get by blast finishing the water field. Seems like a fairly large penalty if you can’t keep your turret alive.

Now assume the perfect scenario where you can keep your turret up indefinitely. Is the continuous regen + overcharge heal over 15 seconds equivalent or at least close to what you’d get on the normal cooldown for medkit F1 or elixir H?

If anyone has actual in-game experience with this, please share.

As for Elixir S, yeah it’s a nerf. In WvW I got killed a couple times because of the 0.5 (to 1.5 seconds with lag) it took to switch to tool-kit for gear shield after unshrinking. I wouldn’t say it makes S unusable, just means I have to be smarter with how I use it.

Let me ask a question about Cloaking Device. Several times today I was immobilized and made invisible, but I re-appeared within a second or so. Is retaliation kicking me out of stealth?

I’ve been playing more HGH P/P in WvW lately. I think ima go back to tankcat for a while. No more solo roaming, I guess.

I heard the “Dun Dun Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuun!” sound play in my head.

Thanks for the clarification.

urak.4863:

Scout: DB is sieging up ruins!
Commander: Are they moving towards South Camp?
Scout: Not really..

time passes

Group walks to bay and exit through South to resup at SW Camp

Commander: I had no idea he meant this when he said sieging up ruins..

!http://i.picasion.com/pic68/312304b5b986435dae14e0fc7d1aa7d9.gif!

Sorry for the bad gif. Wanted to re-take but most of it had been destroyed

Gist of it: Some DB dude dropped siege all the way from Sentry near SW camp all the way to Sentry near NW camp, all the way through ruins.

Thanks for the laugh xD

Funny if it’s a joke. Not funny if someone is trying to seige cap DB.

You’ll have to excuse me. I’ve developed a deep seeded dislike for the Maguuma forum warriors. As for the rest of the Maguuma WvW players, /respect.

ghtchill.7613:

Haha. Stickin’ my head in. How goes the drama?

This thread is always so chatty. We are only on page 3 of ours, but I think everyone, when on, are busy fighting. To be honest it’s been very calm….very…

It’s only cause Maguuma isn’t Maguuma’ing your forum. I think DB demoralized them, and now KN is continuing the pain.

People are loudest when their best things are taken away. Engineer has no best things left to take away, only okay things. That leaves, for the most part, only the tried and true Engi-lovers left on the forums, those that don’t care as much about ability as they do about playstyle.

Upcoming changes hurt our condition+confusion builds, and we all know eventually they’re going to revisit grenades. If we were smart we would all be talking about how OP turrets are, that way AN would focus on nerfing them instead.

nibbles.2408:

I was referring to their introduction post on our website, where they stated their initial reason for leaving DB to transfer to ET.

I’m sure you’re just begging for someone to ask “why did they do it?” Feel important? For anyone who cares, and I’m sure few do, the stated reason is “queue times”. Nothing special.

The two WvW builds I like to play, tankcat and HGH with TK, are hurt by the confusion changes pretty hard. Heck even any changes to retaliation are gonna hurt because it’s a defense against being bursted down. I think I read something about unblockable stuns…that hurts pretty bad. With the HGH build I probably won more 1v1s and survived being outnumbered more times than makes sense for my skill level, in large part due to confusion. With tankcat I can’t kill anyone, but at least I don’t die unless focused by more than 5 people…usually more.

My concern is that I actually found the above builds to be rather fun, and do the upcoming changes make those builds less fun? The nerfs look like they’re going to hurt survivability a little, damage a little more. I don’t like the idea of dying more often and killing fewer people. A person of my mediocre skill level has enough trouble as it is. Does that mean I need to roll a profession that takes less skill? Maybe, but I’ve tried them all and I keep coming back to engi, which I mained since BWE 1, because I find the playstyle most fun. I have no enthusiasm for any other professions, and I’m worried I’ll be losing enthusiam for engineer soon too.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all doom and gloom for me. I’m not gonna quit because my favorite builds aren’t as good as they used to be. Perhaps my feelings about the changes we see coming so far can be expressed by the word “lackidaisical”. They certainly don’t make me feel like I’m going to want to play this game more.

DELETED. Nevermind. No use worrying about it until we see patch notes.

For the GvG I’m curious what is meant by “agreed upon times”. Does that mean the fight starts a X o’clock server time?

If so, in the GvG video, it is clear the BP guild started early. They started the first fight at 5:39 and 55 seconds, and the second fight at 5:48 and 50 seconds. Unless these were the agreed upon times (much more likely 5:40 and 5:50), there is the evidence BP started early. That would give BP an advantage because iLL wouldn’t have been able to fully buff up. Now is that enough of an advantage to be the deciding factor in the decimation of iLL in 90 seconds?

Also I’m on DB, so I’m not taking iLL’s side, just trying to be objective.

Lastly, all our guilds are awesome, even those that have only one or two active WvWers in them. That’s what makes DB special

How could this possibly work? Apparently everyone will run HGH engineers and none of them will ever die…

GuardianOMS.8067:

Could have fooled me, posting like a regular champ up in here!

Indeed, very Maguuma-esque

Well 10 of the last 19 posts have been you, so yeah you get recognized when you’re the loudest person in the room.

Someone ate their Wheaties this morning! But I’m curious, doesn’t your work speak for itself? Or is this just to supplement your self esteem?

Well DB’s community is pretty good. But it makes me think of what happened to Colorado. It was a great state 6 to 8 years ago until all the Californians started moving here and tried to change it to CA2.0, and now the state is headed toward the landfill. Hopefully those moving to DB come with a DB mindset, and don’t intent to change DB into JQ2.0. I would rather stay in T3 than have all that drama.