And that is how AR defends Mendons even after EBay punched a hole in the wall. We learned a little tactic from you EBay; position ACs so you can shoot them where the keep lord hangs out. Everybody runs straight ahead and got mowed down while fighting. That was fun.
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
Initiative only affects weapon skills. Chill will affect speed and utilities.
Initiative has it’s own drawbacks, namely that you can’t swap to another weapon set for fresh CDs, as you’re still at the mercy of your ini regen. Assuming you’re chilling at the right time, you’ve robbed them of Shadow Step or Refuge, and getting that Infiltrator’s Strike or CnD to clear Chill could be that much harder.
Ah. Thank you kindly.
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
Dear ANET,
EBay is to OP, please nerf. I suggest the following skill changes for non-EBay players.
Skill 1: Mental Troll – Causes half of all EBay players in field of view to attack other EBay players. After efect wears off, the player finds the highest cliff and jumps off.
Skill 2: Uber Victory – Kill all EBay players in field of view.
Skill 3: Nuclear Alchemy – Detonate all EBay players in a specific BL. Causes burning and poison for 10 seconds then death.
Skill 4: Turns all EBay players in a battle ground into dolyak mounts. Any player can ride them but movement speed is reduced by 25%.
Skill 5: Sabotage – All EBay built siege units explode when used. Causes burning for 5 seconds, knock-back, blindness and periodontal disease.
Special skill 1: Salt in the Wound – When an EBay players is stomped a dumpster falls on their head.
Special skill 2: Mecha Kalkz – summon a platoon of player operated MadCats.
These changes will help bring balance to T5. Honest.
Thank you,
Expiatus
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
The point of chilling an opponent is to decrease movement spreed and increase skill cooldown time.
Movement piece aside, how does chill affect thieves? Initiative allows them to rapid fire skills with no worry for cool downs, so no effect there. Does it slow down initiative regeneration?
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
How long did it take you all to organize and consistently execute above maneuvers? I imagine there is a core group that is good at this and the pugs just follow them.
Do the guilds accomplish “training” runs for new WvW players?
How do you convince someone to dolyak-sit or stay behind and defend?
In the beginning it took a lot of time, but with practice it comes naturally. I can only speak for my guild, but we run training exercises regularly on all of the above and more.
As far as training pugs, we will to the point that they will join us in TS and/or will follow us on the map and execute with us. The best way to train a pug, honestly, is to recruit them. I said this to one of BP’s members in a PM a while ago: This game supports multiple guild memberships, there’s no reason someone can’t have a WvW guild even on a temporary basis because they don’t lose their other memberships and their other friends. In my mind, BP’s biggest problem isn’t population, it’s that they haven’t organized that population properly. There isn’t a really valid reason that the largest number of players on a map should be unaffiliated to any WvW guild. It’s a problem every server has, including us at times, but we work very hard to solve it instead of letting it perpetuate itself.
Guild structure goes a long way towards organization, especially in larger structures. Our guild is structured as follows:
Blood Squad: all new members go here automatically, but it’s not considered a second class squad, we consider them our backbone, which makes training them extremely important. It has 2 squad commanders that organize and lead, train them in basic tactics and get their feet wet in our execution of WvW. Blood squad is our ‘zerg’ so to speak and could be comprised of a large group of WvW rookies or seasoned vets at any given time.
Shadow Squad: Focused on ‘guerilla warfare’ type smaller group tactics. We run training events, usually multiple times a week but we’ve been slacking lately, focusing on things like siege placement, map control, feign tactics, troop formations etc. We require that our members be able to do things like solo supply camps and understand the most direct routes as well as the best routes to take to stay undiscovered so that we can execute tactics to change the face of a map quickly with very few numbers.
Reaper Squad: Focus on map domination, zerg busting and higher plane large group tactics. They also run weekly class training events to educate both how to run various builds, how they interact with other classes, and gain understanding of the class in order to defeat it, as well as other super useful knowledge transfer type sessions with the other squads.
Magistrates: Our guild leaders and ambassadors who handle all of the administrative work of running a large guild including running our website and keeping us all in line when we get lippy.
As far as escorting dolys and scouting duty, captains won’t ask anyone else to do something they won’t do themselves. I will personally turn my tag off and run dolys for 2 hours if that’s what my team needs and never complain. My team knows that, so when I ask one of them to do it they are willing. I also find the task somewhat exciting if you can stay focused. You never know when people are going to ambush you, and when it happens your preparation for them is very rewarding.
Having said that, we try to cycle duties like this very often to keep people fresh. If someone runs dolys or refreshes siege for 20-30 mins, then they need a break and someone else takes over. Rotation keeps everyone sharp, stay rewarded and stay focused.
Does that help?
Thank you for the explanation. You got some good military style organization going on there.
Again much appreciated.
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
having guardians coordinate their walls and rings to keep enemies out of a choke point
having rangers coordinate mass entangles
having d/d eles scatter enemies before moving a group in
having roamers assigned to snipe dolyaks and contest keeps
other established and relatively basic group tactics
These are all just basic maneuvers that I can think of off the top of my head. Super simple ones that require only a minimal amount of coordination and strategic thought.
How long did it take you all to organize and consistently execute above maneuvers? I imagine there is a core group that is good at this and the pugs just follow them.
Do the guilds accomplish “training” runs for new WvW players?
How do you convince someone to dolyak-sit or stay behind and defend?
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
Hey BP, we took all 3 of your fully upgraded keeps last night in 8 minutes during peak time
I have to admit that was a well executed plan. I like how you huddled all golems together and then cycled guardian and memser shields on them to prevent direct and indirect fire. Good things to learn from.
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
Too many times we look at a weapon and focus on the damage number. Maybe its because WoW and its clones have tainted weapon perception too much. In those games no matter what weapon the players uses they keep the same abilities/skills resulting in weapons simply being “stat sticks.” Max DPS = this weapon+this tier gear and that was that.
In this game, we should be looking at the effects that weapons bring and how we can use it to impact a fight. In WvW, running a condition based bunker BM build, I use axe to throw bleeds, chill and some damage. Paired up with a torch and then a sword/dagger and I have a very effective condition build. Granted I could choose other weapons like short bow or great sword for conditions but that is based on my preferences and play-style. I’m effective with that build. Do I punch out zerk level damage, no. Why? I don’t want to. Instead I choose the build and weapons needed to support how I like to play.
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
Don’t forget the UGLY hyena. I know its not an F2 skill but knockdown is the first skill they execute. I usually enter a fight and the first hyena knocks down. I hit F2, then the second hyena will knock down soon after the opponent got up. You can get some great back to back CC on targets with the hyena.
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
AR has a TS. We just have to use it more effectively.
Well, I know what I’m downloading tonight.
Also a big thank you to everyone who explained the TS set up, guild reqs, etc. It just goes to show you, in spite of our interserver needling, the community is pretty amazing and helps us all improve.
See you all on the battle field.
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
Suggestion to AR, get yourselves a Teamspeak, Vent, something so you can coordinate regardless of the map you’re on in WvW. Ebay does this, and because of that our response times get pretty fast.
Ryu how do you control that many people on TS, Vent etc? Is there a hierarchy? Only commanders in this room, sub-commanders/guild leaders in this room, everybody else use what ever?
It works for EBay but I’m interested in how you order it to prevent all the potential chaos TS can turn into.
I’d be more than happy to explain the effort and detail that goes into it. We’ve put a lot of time into keeping it organized/up-to-date, and we’ve even got a “staff” of dedicated individuals that are equally devoted to its maintenance. It’s been kind of a constant work-in-progress since then as we only had about 80 people online at the time, and now it’s about 4x that size. How do we manage 300+ players on it at one time while getting every guild/group the permissions and freedom they desire? Pretty kitten well I’d say.
Ryu explained the basic gist of it, but there’s a lot more that goes into the server and channel groups. I feel that we’ve got a pretty efficient system in place now though. Again, I’d be more than happy to discuss the finer details with anyone who’s interested. Just message me.
PS: Go you, BP. I’m glad to see your TS finally getting some activity.
You all can field +300 people in WvW?! Or is that just the total number of folks on TS at any given time?
It’s not all WvW, but on reset nights when it hits those numbers, it mostly is. Like I said a few times in this thread, we can field some pretty good numbers, but the only times everyone is really in WvW is on Friday. Otherwise, there’s a lot of people just hanging out waiting for us to bother them with a message “GET HERE NAO”. Usually it’s more in the range of ~200 on a regular night. Still, that’s the reason behind our response time.
People can call us unskilled all they want in this thread and laugh/kittenol/whatever, but it won’t change the fact that we have awesome communication. We can have 20-30 people in a borderland channel from an arrangement of all guilds and pugs alike (at any given time), and they may not even be in the same borderland. A lot of the time, we are just keeping eachother updated on events in other maps while talking about cats or Game of Thrones or why British accents are mmmmm sekzy. When it’s confirmed that something is happening, we just make a shout over all the jokes or whatever the hell people are talking about at the time. People get serious, and we go do whatever it is we need to do.
So no, outside of reset night, we can’t field those numbers. However, we do have them all on call if need be. One of the silent agreements these guilds make by joining our TS is that we can bug them to help out if help is needed. I take advantage of that unspoken arrangement as often as I can, and I know plenty of others do as well.
I understand all to well the ability to move troops from one area to another with clear commands is essential to combat effectiveness. Hats off to you guys. It requires skill, training and perseverance for your server to work together in that fashion.
AR really needs to do this. How much is TS?
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
Suggestion to AR, get yourselves a Teamspeak, Vent, something so you can coordinate regardless of the map you’re on in WvW. Ebay does this, and because of that our response times get pretty fast.
Ryu how do you control that many people on TS, Vent etc? Is there a hierarchy? Only commanders in this room, sub-commanders/guild leaders in this room, everybody else use what ever?
It works for EBay but I’m interested in how you order it to prevent all the potential chaos TS can turn into.
I’d be more than happy to explain the effort and detail that goes into it. We’ve put a lot of time into keeping it organized/up-to-date, and we’ve even got a “staff” of dedicated individuals that are equally devoted to its maintenance. It’s been kind of a constant work-in-progress since then as we only had about 80 people online at the time, and now it’s about 4x that size. How do we manage 300+ players on it at one time while getting every guild/group the permissions and freedom they desire? Pretty kitten well I’d say.
Ryu explained the basic gist of it, but there’s a lot more that goes into the server and channel groups. I feel that we’ve got a pretty efficient system in place now though. Again, I’d be more than happy to discuss the finer details with anyone who’s interested. Just message me.
PS: Go you, BP. I’m glad to see your TS finally getting some activity.
You all can field +300 people in WvW?! Or is that just the total number of folks on TS at any given time?
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
I would go Ash, Iron, Blood, in that order. Ash’s story line is really enjoyable and well written. I made another charr just so I could play through that story line.
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
Suggestion to AR, get yourselves a Teamspeak, Vent, something so you can coordinate regardless of the map you’re on in WvW. Ebay does this, and because of that our response times get pretty fast.
Ryu how do you control that many people on TS, Vent etc? Is there a hierarchy? Only commanders in this room, sub-commanders/guild leaders in this room, everybody else use what ever?
It works for EBay but I’m interested in how you order it to prevent all the potential chaos TS can turn into.
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I bring a quick break from the chest thumping, trolling, flaming, lazr flashing and all around horrors of WvW. Enjoy “The Karma Express” by Jack McDaniel
This build makes cc on you pretty meaningless while giving you access to plenty of swiftness and snares to at least stand a chance at heading for safety. Staff is always gonna be kinda slow though.
This is pretty close to what I’m looking for. It’ll take a bit of regearing. I notice you use PVT gear. Would this build function at all with Cleric’s? I’ve grown accustomed to the increased healing and regen, and PVT gear is a bit of a hassle to get.
I’d never played an elementalist in WvW before so my friend let me try his out. I respec’d it to Jester’s build and had a blast. I always stayed with a team and whether we were on offensive or defensive you can lay down loads of AOE. I liked staying toward the middle to see where the enemy push would come from and then disrupt it with earth cripples, the shock circle (what is it staff #5 on air), meteor shower, etc. You can also lay down water fields to heal up fellow teammates.
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
Just wanted to post scenes from last night EBays assault on Anza before resets. Great battle. Anvil Rock held for a long while stopping wave after wave. Gotta be proud of AR, we are a stubborn lot who likes to go down fighting. Eventually it became arrow cart wars and we lost it from there.
Apologize for the low screen resolution. I tune it down to keep the fps up in the 30s.
Attachments:
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
Pancakes…noobs all of you.
Pancake builds are one dimensional. You need spam traits to make them interesting!
Real pros run a 30/0/0/10/20 waffle build. Plenty of CC.
You run an upscale pancake build?
Yep. The belgium bunker.
Oh my goodness, I nearly just died laughing
Though we may have our differences on pancake traiting, I think we can all agree that a pancake in Carrion is just plain wrong. You should always spec at least a little toughness, otherwise they get too squishy.
True. I find that Dolyak Bacon really helps. Adds a lot of vigor.
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
Pancakes…noobs all of you.
Pancake builds are one dimensional. You need spam traits to make them interesting!
Real pros run a 30/0/0/10/20 waffle build. Plenty of CC.
You run an upscale pancake build?
Yep. The belgium bunker.
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
Pancakes…noobs all of you.
Pancake builds are one dimensional. You need spam traits to make them interesting!
Real pros run a 30/0/0/10/20 waffle build. Plenty of CC.
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
I’ve pretty much leveled my ranger in WvW, (PvE was just too easy on a ranger I guess). I’ve run with zergs, soloed, small teamed, escorted dolyaks, and defended keeps/towers. I would say rangers contribute alot, but how much will depend on you as a player more than profession X vs Y.
My favorite thing to do is flank. I love breaking out from the zerg and hitting the sides of an enemy with two hyenas and me. I love dropping mud on them, trapping or throwing conditions all around. Flanking pulls players from the main effort and I have plenty of evades, regen, and two pets to lay down problems, back-out if needed and jump back in to harass.
But like I said, how good you will be or how much you will contribute is dependent on you.
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
The term OP has become OP. Pls Anet nerf it now or I will quit your game, for realz.
Possible suggestions:
Remove caps i.e. op. (takes the edge off I feel)
Change meaning to On Par (as in on par for the course, meaning to be expected)
Remove the O and P keys from everyone’s keyboards (a logistical nightmare)
Whatever the solution I want it fixed yesterday so you best be getting a move on or there will be consequences!
/shakes fist angrily
Your ability to post clever OP threads is OP. It’s not fair that others cannot think of humorous ways to express their discontent or point out glaring examples of whinny posts.
ANet please make every one in game and on forums the same. I’m pretty sure it could be done by typing a few lines of code.
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
I wonder how come he didn’t get a job at a.net :P Or at least an internship.
P.S. I know he’s playing the sequel but don’t know how he feels about it or what does he plan to do regarding GW2 videos. This is his only GW2 as far as I know: Karma Express
Cheers everybody
Man those are some amazing machinima. I really hope ANet is working toward opening the doors to machinima makers. It would add a great amount of word-of-mouth advertisement but more importantly would make for some amazing community videos.
TY for links.
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
I’ve read this entire post. I can tell that most of you look at spirits and banners through a vacuum and not at how effective they can be outside of just damage.
2 – Ability to die
Banners CANNOT die. Spirits CAN. To many of you, this automatically makes banners better in that department right? Not necessarily. Spirits can be killed…but that also means they can take dmg (body block) for you as well. In pve, this is mildly beneficial. In pvp, however, this is a HUGE plus. Four spirits + pet + ranger = 6 targets. Thats 1 more than the aoe limit. As a warrior, ranger pets already are annoying as they sometimes take the eviscerate meant for the ranger and my killshot is almost guaranteed never to hit even without dodging as the pet is always in my face. Add in 4 more targets and the ranger than is Bulls charged HB’ed is probably not even gonna take that much damage as the spirits take the brunt of the force. Is this ideal for pvp? heck no…but neither are banners.
This is something I noticed yesterday in EB. EBay was attacking Anza with a large group. I was the westward side flanking the EBay mass. I noticed a ranger with three spirits out, all moving together. I zeroed in on him but as I attacked with Axe/Torch, S/D the spirits were getting in the way of splitblade or absorbing a ricochet. Granted I was trying to kill the lil buggers but to a small extent they acted like a mini shield. Granted they can take only a few hits but that maybe what prevents the ranger from being killed before they can retreat and heal up/reset fight.
Just sharing something I observed.
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
Yeah, you don’t see a lot of quit from AR. Stubborn server with stubborn players. Even vs. the transfer monster that was Kaineng, there was AR with 15 balistas holding the N supply camp in our BL, because they were NOT taking everything. AR doesn’t play for a place, these folks like to fight. Would we prefer an even match up, sure sometimes, but then again, where is the fun in that?
And this is why I play on AR.
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
I don’t play an elementalist, I usually run around on my ranger or mesmer but my friend let me play his Ele in WvW last night. I didn’t want to try D/D so we switched it to your build. Dude, this build was amazing fun. I sat in the middle of a massive wave trying to get inside the north wall of SM. I don’t know how much damage I was doing but with the storm glyph and all the normal AOE fields staff brings it greatly help to slow numerous enemy pushes. I like how you can take a few hits as long as you play smartly. I was using the mistform skill to bug-out, heal, then get back into the fight.
Lots of fun, lots of loot and first time I really enjoyed playing an ele. I might create one now.
Question: The crit rate is real low so why pick renewing stamina? Granted we only had clerics armor and a level 62 ele but just wondering if elemental attunement would be of greater use for the boons.
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
AR was getting mauled last night. I got into EB and my son asked, “Where’s red?” I replied, “What do you mean?” I looked at the map and…ouch. We had our waypoint and that was it. Man, what a long few hours that was trying to get anything back.
We’d fight a large Ebay group then turn around and BP was on our rearguard. It felt like those cartoon characters that get run over by a group of people again and again and again.
Funniest part of the night was a 20 or so BP group chasing us down but didn’t realize they were in Legendary Defender range. Half that group dropped like flies on moments. The rest figured out what they had done and retreated pretty quickly.
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
You can also fast stack by putting your “On kill stack” sigil of choice in a main hand and off-hand weapon. By doing this you stack twice as fast since both sigils receive credit for the kill. Instead of killing 25 creatures you only need 13. You can even start fighting in one weapon set, say a bow, and just before they die weapon swap to the weapons with the sigils and you’ll get the credit.
I think they have to be the weapons you want to use though. If you change out weapon sets you ’ll lose the buff if memory serves me correct.
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
For all of us at work who’d rather be in WvW instead of pushing paper just remember, even Rytlock gets stuck behind the desk every now and then.
See you on the battle field this evening!
You make that picture Expiatus? It’s pretty good, and I suddenly imagine this being Rytlock’s thoughts there:
“Filling out paperwork…could be impaling Flame Legion right now.”
RyuDragnier – Unfortunately my drawings are not that good when it comes to fur and creatures. Mecha seem just so much easier. I found that picture on the internet and it was just perfect. Any military guy who has been stuck in staff work understands Rytlock’s expression.
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
I love situational irony. Those two probably thought you were both easy targets. The next thing they know, your working together and they are taking a dirt nap.
Anvil Rock – Out manned, out gunned and no repair costs, so Leeroy up and dive in.
See you in Tyria.
