Guild Wars 2

Eggyokeo.9705:

very fun round, that i think i won.

I don’t know how you would be confused since you stomped me.

If you get another shot at me, I’m going 2-0 again though. /drops mic.

Chrispy.5641:

so, does that make the one who typed the word invulnerability uninformed too?

I probably don’t help threads with my phrasing. I interchangeably use invulnerability for SoS and PM, neither of which do, I refer to stun-breaking out of immobilizes, and so on for days. I am more of a big picture guy in my vocab, which doesn’t work at all if someone doesn’t understand the actual mechanics and self-translate in their own head.

I should make an effort to stop saying those things. I will no longer stun-break out of entangle.

Prysin.8542:

Protect Me is a stun breaker, while Signet of Stone can be used WHILE stunned. Sure SoS does not allow you to break stun and MOVE, but it negates all damage.

this is basic ranger knowledge.

Yes, like I said, IMO they’re both about equal. For a LB ranger I would prefer PM, for a melee ranger I would prefer SoS. SoS on a LB ranger is not going to stop an engi from easily killing you in those 6 seconds.

Prysin.8542:

Lets settle this tonight. I’ll personally make a stream, from WvW, where i will explain how ranger, and most importantly its signets and weapons work in conjunction with builds.
There is simply too many wildly uninformed or inexperienced comments and opinions flying around.

Twitch.tv/prysin

Stream goes live 11pm GMT +1 or roughly 5pm EST.

Had you on in the background a bit. I don’t think you gave PM a fair review. PM vs SoS, both have secondary effects. I would argue breaking stun is a better secondary for a glass LB ranger than extra toughness, because the entire goal is to not be getting hit, not to be tanking hits. And on that note, PM lets you get out of the situation where as SoS does not, so the invulnerability is equal and your pet won’t die. Your pet eats a big hit you didn’t want and then you’re out of there. Finally, PM is on a 25% shorter CD, which is just massive.

I am not saying one or the other is better, but PM is a solid skill.

Holland.9351:

Protect Me is only a stun breaker and makes the pet inactive and takes health from the pet (which means it often won’t reach it’s full duration).

Oh does it not absorb CC? I haven’t used it in like 6 months (not because I don’t like it, it’s really good.)

SB/GS celestial beastmaster if I had to guess.

SotW is relatively weak at the moment, taking away the stability would make it completely mostly unusable for anything other than PvE. I could see it having some use in a regen beastmaster build or something like that. Moment of Clarity GS offhand axe build as well.

PM and SoS are very well balanced against each other in my opinion. If you gave PM insta-stability I think it would blow SoS completely out of the water.

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NA KING
Fluffball.8307
And, build.

1) Fluffball vs Belarorn.9062 Sept. 25, 2-0
2) Fluffball vs Eggyokeo.9705 Sept. 26, 2-0
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I broke the rules here just to get another challenger in since I’m not sure how much I’ll be on this weekend. I think we should have challengers in this thread state whether they care if in-game challengers preceed them or if they specifically want to fight the stated King/Queen. Also mad props to Eggyokeo for an awesome and lengthy for-fun third fight where we self rezzed ourselves like 3 times each.

You can’t just make something up and then assume Anet is working on it. That’s not how reality works.

I would argue maul and path of scars are still the only two burst skills we have. You can supplement them with SotW and QZ for PvE (utility bar is just too full to use those skills in WvW or PvP for the most part.) RF is like… half bursty? with its 2.5 second channel.

Pet autoattacks are not particularly high. We’re talking 2k every 3 seconds or so? I am just guessing.

The overwhelming bulk of our damage still comes from pressure, but we at least have some options to finally get the kill instead of watching people get low on health and then use their heal!

Also I disagree that LB autoattack is low, in a PvP environment.

Chris.3290:

so we’ll be focusing FA instead to allow YB to beat FA

SoS is not capable of focusing FA. FA annihilates SoS during our primetime when you have no one on, and you guys annihilate us during your primetime when no one is on (although for some reason your OX crew has been slacking lately, did you lose some guilds or something?)

Chris.3290:

and hopefully we can have FA swap with CD and have a good ol’ time in T2 without fairweathers and complainers.

FA — the 2-year-long beaten stepchild of T2 — fairweathers and complainers? That’s a new one.

Silly comments aside, I actually think Mag is going to settle nicely in to T4 or possibly even the bottom of T3. I thought they were completely dead, but occasionally they put out a sizable force. I think the bulk of their militia is just tired of being in gold league and stopped regularly playing until they drop.

Looks good to me, I like it.

You might want TU instead of HS, but it’s sort of personal preference. They both have their advantages. Make sure you use swoop in your water field pretty much on recharge if you go that route.

If you find yourself wanting more damage, even non-traited traps are super easy to lure people over, so you can swap MT for flame trap. I’m a MT fan myself, so just tossing that out there.

By the way, if you do wind up swapping your SB, mainhand axe is looking really good these days, especially for celestial.

Edit: Also that’s a surprisingly well thought out build for not having played for 2 years!

Can we all just agree to stop posting in this stupid “nerf ranger” threads so the same 3 people that keep whining in them will stop?

Is this for roaming? Mobility is probably the single most important thing about roaming, so you might want to find a way to get a bunch of that.

For zerg fights, not sure how great condis will be. I’m not a condi-person myself, but a couple years ago when I made a condi mesmer she had a horrible time tagging anything at all in zerg fights. Zerg fights are usually just cleaving whatever is in front of you as you roll forward like a bowling ball, there isn’t much grace to the damage, the grace is in staying alive.

Oh jeez, I just noticed Belarorn challenged me in this thread, so the whole discussion of in-game vs thread challenges was based on a mistake anyway! I’m an idiot.

Challengers would have to volunteer their own builds in separate posts.

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NA KING
Fluffball.8307
And, build.

1) Fluffball vs Belarorn.9062 Sept. 25, 2-0
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And GFs to Belarorn, we actually did a third just for fun and he almost killed me all 3 times.

solrik.6028:

I think challenges in this thread should be first priority and challenges in game should be second. Mainly because anyone can check here and guess around when the duel will be.

Makes sense, I’ll update the original post.

I added:

• Challenges are accepted in this thread first, in-game second. So if someone challenges you for tomorrow in this thread, and someone challenges you in-game today, you can’t accept the in-game challenge yet. If the challenge in this thread is an unreasonable amount of time (example, 4 days) you may reject it for in-game challenges first.

solrik.6028:

EU KING
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNAQRBHRxG2IjKNs2xiLLUtGwSoa3ABwo+8GaVnR7DcxVHVB-TZRHwAQLDQ4MAM4BAA4gAEa/BA
_________________________________
First challenger defeated: nagymbear.5280
First fight was quick.
Second fight I almost kitten my pants. Was late with the stomp and nagymbear rallied. I have short CD’s so that saved my butt. Match ended 2-0. Nice to see another charr ranger!
No change to build

That’s awesome he rallied! Love the ranger downstate. By the way are we making new throne posts like this? I just updated my original. Your way might be easier to follow.

ItIsFinished.9462:

@Fluffball, has anyone challenged you yet? I tried to PM you last night but you were offline.

Nope, you’re the challenger.

Edit: Ok we need a group decision here. Belaron challenged me in game, before ItIsFinished could get on. My thought was it doesn’t really matter was king, and I beat him so nothing has changed. However, do people think we should have a line? For example if I had lost, and ItIsFinished had a build he specifically thought would beat my king build is that unfair?

Be sure both parties want to be recorded. Losing 2 in a row is not at all shameful on paper, and we don’t want people being scared off of the challenge by having their horrible playing abilities analyzed by hundreds of people.

I’m also guessing we only average like 2 or 3 duels a week, so recording might be awkward. Hopefully I’m proven wrong!

I made a results thread where I listed the rules, but we can always edit them if people want something changed.

nagymbear.5280:

Few more things we should agree on I think. Should the challanger post their build? When can the King change their build? I think challangers should post their build (since they can look at the King’s build too). And King can make changes after challanger posts theirs.

I was trying to picture this as a big one off event only now it’s spread over eternity. So bystanders would see the build of the current King as he dueled someone, and possibly change something on their build to counter it, but the King would have no idea what he faces, just taking on whoever is next in line. If that makes any sense.

solrik.6028:

(will removed this when answered)

What do you mean with no immediate rematches? Why?

And is the challenger allowed to change build between the 2 (or 3) fights?

No one said anything about it in the other thread and it seemed sort of logical that you couldn’t immediately reclaim your throne just by changing your build. But if immediate rematches are a popular idea I’m open to changing it. I think both parties should stick with their build through the challenge just so we don’t have a constant tweaking and counterplay on the fly.

NA KING

Edit: Search down, we’re making new king posts after every fight now.

Parameters:

• The current King/Queen will have a post listing their build in this thread. This build cannot be changed until defeating someone, upon which they may pick 2 points from the below list to alter:
  - change 2 sigil’s worth of weapons
  - reallocate 2 trait points
  - change 2 major traits
  - change 2 utilities
  - change 1 pet
  Each victory will allow the above choice again. You are not required to change your build.
• Anyone may participate at any time by finding the most recent post labeled either NA King (or Queen) of the Hill or EU King (or Queen) of the Hill and challenging that player to Mortal Kombat 1 vs 1 combat.
• The duels are the best 2 out of 3, and there are no immediate rematches.
• Each round is only over when one player is defeated, not downed. Self-rezzing is acceptable if you can pull it off, including via Spirit of Nature.
• There are no build limits. Nothing is cheesey or bad manners. Use any build or equipment allowed by game in sPvP. However you must (hopefully obviously) be using a ranger, and you must use the same build for all 3 duels.
• Duels will take place as soon as you contact the current King/Queen in game and they agree you have called next in line and now is a good time.
• Challenges are accepted in this thread first, in-game second. So if someone challenges you for tomorrow in this thread, and someone challenges you in-game today, you can’t accept the in-game challenge yet. If the challenge in this thread is an unreasonable amount of time (example, 4 days) you may reject it for in-game challenges first.
• Duels will take place in sPvP on either 1) public duel servers or 2) a custom arena if one of the contestants has access. The exact location is up to the contestants, but it is recommended to be a large open area where Line-of-Sight can’t be used extremely extensively. Some good examples would be in front of the bases on Legacy of the Foefire or on the beach between bases on Forest of Niflhel. An example of a bad location is the Henge on Forest of Niflhel. (Be sure both participants are clear about potential “out of bounds”.)
• Rounds will start after both opponents bow.
• Upon the results of the duel, the winner will make a new King/Queen post marking the score and result of the duel as a win OR the new King/Queen will make a post marking themselves as the new King/Queen and posting their build. The thread will self govern in this manner. Follow the established format of bolding the title and adding some dots above and below the text, so it is easier to find among the other posts.
• If you hold the hill for 8 opponents, after the eight opponent and every opponent after, you must select one of the following to handicap yourself with.
  - No Armor
  - No Sigils
  - One Weaponset
  - Subtract 2 Trait points – this can be chosen multiple times
  - Subtract 1 Utility – this can be chosen multiple times
  - No Elite

This is a for fun, on-going challenge for any rangers. Weird or experimental builds are welcome, and the idea is not necessarily to hog the hill for the rest of GW2s life.

The idea is to have one thread containing both an NA and an EU king, so anyone can challenge their respective king at any time.

Nope. Go to EotM for that. Camps are already critically important and no one wants to waste time doing PvE events.

People still like to get their dailies done in WvW for the laurels and money though. With a couple exceptions like jumping puzzles, every other daily is something you get by just normally playing WvW. I personally like the idea. Maybe not the warg which people don’t really do, but perhaps ogres/dredge/hylek could be considered level 79 events. Maybe sentries too (and let’s be honest, taking a sentry is the equivalent of like a level 65 event.)

Whatever map you want I think is fine. Courtyard probably needs a custom arena, which is fine for some duels. The advantage of a public server is that this thread can manage itself and every random ranger that finds the thread can challenge a king build without bugging the custom arena owner.

I would vote ‘no’ just to get some more turnover, and even force people to come up on the spot solutions (“no stun breaker, I better keep an eye on that wolf.”) But we’ll see if anyone else has thoughts.

Hamster.4861:

l2 get your PvE population into WvW like Yaks Bend does and you’ll do just fine.

SoS has like 400 times the WvW population of YB.

nagymbear.5280:

Not that I would be king of the hill or anything, but I think we won’t need a spreadsheet (I work with spreadsheets all day). How about this instead. Original post will include a link to the build of the king in this thread. King’s post will include a list of names with strikethrough who were defeated.

But let’s make it a bit more interesting. The king can make some changes to his/her build each time he/she is challanged.

Pick 2 from the below list:
- change 2 sigil’s worth of weapons
- reallocate 2 trait points
- change 2 major traits
- change 2 utilities
- change 1 pet

Then a king’s post would look like this:

My build. Come get some!

and a list of the previous fights

1. Petit moi vs that other dude
2. Petit moi vs some other dude
3. Petit moi vs yawn another one of them dudes.

I think this sounds good.

Rules:

- I suggest we join a public duel server and just go to a fairly neutral location. I usually go to the Foefire map, and in front of one of the bases would be a nice quiet spot that doesn’t have a ton of LoS. The beach in Niflhel is also a good spot. Whoever wins 2 out of 3 either updates the king post or makes the next post with the new king.

- I also suggest we play for the stomp. Rangers have one of, it not the most interesting downstates of all professions, as well as an elite than can self-rez. It would also eliminate the pretty common occurrence of a tie where both parties go down.

-Edit: No immediate rematches.

If no one objects to nagymbear’s format and build changing idea, or my proposed 3 rules, I’ll start a new thread sometime today/tomorrow. I’ll make the first post NA and put myself on the top of the hill with a nice softball, full glass LB build. The second post would either be someone defeating me or EU king, which I nominate as Rym since I believe he was the first EU person to respond he was in.

LR and SoR are non-negotiable for a non-SotF LB ranger. SotW doesn’t deserve that important third spot IMO.

I see a lot of people with relatively high level WvW ranks going for map completion. It’s something they do because they happen to be ganking people outside my keep and need the vista on that character (for example.) Red is dead.

On the other hand if it’s an assaulter rank or something trying to hop to a vista, I’ll probably ignore them. Maybe kill them after the vista just so they don’t do any scouting.

solrik.6028:

I wonder what FluffBall and the bunch will say ’bout this

Haha why is my name on the post?

I can’t really speak too much about the suggestion; I don’t feel RF needs a nerf just because I haven’t been getting hurt by it playing as various other ranger builds, or even my own glass LB build. It’s still a really long channel with a visual that can be spotted from across the map. Couple that with the overwhelming derision the WvW, PvP, and other profession forums have for people who can’t deal with it, and I think it’s in a good place.

Other than that I can’t speak too much about balance. I have all the classes at level 80 but I mostly only understand them as far as what they do to hurt me. For example I’m aware warriors are immune to cripple from movement skills because I need to know that to fight them, but I have no idea what build they run to get that. I don’t play the other professions enough to remember all the details.

The one profession I know that just gets absolutely shredded by LB rangers is necro, and it was like that since day 1. On the other hand, LB rangers are mutilated by condis, so it’s just whoever gets the drop on the other. I’m fine with that.

Atherakhia.4086:

SotW is undeniably overbudget.

Eh, the more damage-only LB users go, the less dangerous they are. SotW has the stability, but I think that’s pretty minor since t’s not CC that kills LB rangers but just any sort of pressure.

server st anne.8750:

Then you been playing the wrong servers fuffy.

I guess competent servers, since they aren’t silly enough to die to a single person on an AC.

TC is outnumbering us about 30 to 1 this week, so I should be able to recreate your scenario and slaughter an entire zerg by myself. I have max AC mastery, so this should be easy! I’ll let you know how it goes.

Edit: Oh forgot I need to kill 6 golems too, before they take out my lonesome arrow cart. Can I assume they have to be omegas?

NiloyBardhan.9170:

server st anne.8750:

Oooookay, its easy to see the usual B.S. people post to explain why they lose. It can’t be theirs of course. I do know that playing smart will beat mindless. I read some guy insist that a 5 man sieged equiped keep can’t be held against 70 zerg. Maybe, maybe not. I can testify that one of my guildies in YB held off a 30+ zerg w/ 6 golems BY HERSELF. Yepper, she had an AC and a treb. They died. (you wanna say I lie? I will give your name to her. She will chew you a new one) YB wins cause we play smart. We learn and teach what we learn to the rest of our server. I will not say a high pop isn’t an advantage. Even then you can make them bleed. and get bags at your feet while using a siege engine. In other words guys learn to use the weapons you have and NEVER give up anything without a fight! Good Luck on your season.

That’s crazy! O.o
I’d to know her name preferably by PM.

What actually happened: Someone disconnected, the zerg left to respond to a call for help, his guildie got 1 bag.

Ain’t nobody died to a single arrow cart since 1982.

Do you have bizarrely low achievement points? Are you joining groups that are specifically asking for something you’re not? Are you using some weird weapon combo like axe/torch with a pet pig?

I wasn’t getting kicked at all even before the LB update, let alone 2 or 3 times a day.

Quells.2498:

then use the parameter of total number of players for a server throughout all BL’s.

Fluffball.8307:

Get up early on points and then stop playing WvW for a week so no one can play on all 3 servers

Anyway you look at it, letting one server dictate the population of other servers is a bad idea.

It would look a lot like we have now. Gimmicks aren’t a good plan for fun WvW.

Quells.2498:

All of that is a long and complicated process. Why not set limits on population based on the lowest population server on each BL? So if “Server C” has 50 people on a BL then “Server A” and “Server B” can only have 50 people on that BL and so on for each BL.

In this scenario it will truly come down to nothing but skill as theoretically a lowest tier server could still fight a higher tier server. This will also force populations to new servers since coverage won’t matter anymore if you can’t get the people in.

It’s been covered, you can’t let 1 server manipulate the population of another. I.e. take an entire BL and then abandon it so that only a handful of opposition is available to take 3 keeps and multiple other objectives. Get up early on points and then stop playing WvW for a week so no one can play on all 3 servers?

TheBandicoot.5294:

Map Caps hurt the high population servers too much, because the target should not to not let people play.

I’m not advocating map caps, but that’s exactly the idea. Over stacked servers need to be dispersed so that we have a lot of viable servers to compete against each other instead of 1 or 2 that just destroy everything else based on population.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Of course they are both a total joke in a 1v1 fight.

I ran solo LB for ages before the buff (or was “they” referring to baby rangers?)

It’s probably a lot harder to get away with now. Before the latest update many people didn’t know: 1) we had a short CD stealth on LB, 2) what RF even did, 3) were only vaguely aware of what PBS did, 4) thought LB didn’t hit hard, 5) weren’t aware we could chain a whole lot of CC to keep LB hitting hard from range, 6) we had lots of defensive options up close.

I swear 99% of my kills on my WvW panel are from people not even knowing that rangers were allowed to play GW2. Now we change a single skill and everyone is studying every nuance of how to kill rangers. I’ve even seen posts by people going on about how dangerous barrage is, when a few weeks ago barrage apparently didn’t do any damage at all.

Hot join is useless for everything, don’t base anything off hot join.

Pinkamena Diane Pie.8054:

3) Allow free transfer for a set amount of players to go from and inactive server to an active server. Or from a server with long queues to a server without queues and lower activity.

This sounds like something Anet would try assuming people want to voluntarily unstack or leave their home server. Which they don’t. There needs to be any incentive for people to take either one of those actions.

Maja.6372:

Not sure how this would work out but my idea is to remove servers but keep it three sided in wvw completely like in pve and introduce a queue system like the one from pvp so you sign up your roster for wvw if you are missing one player you get add a random player who signs up on its own
and to keep the communities together the megaserver system kicks in so
that all from your guild and your old server start on the same side as long as there is enough place

It would work out just like EotM and everyone would hate it. Permanent teams are critical or everyone just stops caring.

Hamster.4861:

Theftwind.8976:

Tie any rewards for WvW, including Karma, coin and loot drops to the server population balance at any given moment, a modifier to multiply your chances. To maximize reward you will want to play during non-peak times or against a force larger then yours. Once the large, highly populated servers realize that they get more bang for the buck on the lower populated servers they will move. Over time it will all balance out. No need to change population caps.

Now that’s a decent idea

I agree rewarding people for dispersing across servers is better than punishing people for overstacking (at first. Some might require “punishment”.) However I don’t think people are playing WvW for karma or loot. I think people are overstacking so they can… how to say… ‘feel like they’re winning’ for lack of a nicer way to put it. Give the average player 10x as much loot as normal and he’s not going to accept that if he gets mutilated by better players every time he steps out the door.

TexZero.7910:

Delete EoTM. Increase WvW rewards / gold gains etc.

Pretty sure that solves your population problems.

It’s not a population problem so much as a population density problem. There are plenty of WvW players, they just all want to be on the same couple of servers.

azizul.8469:

easy…. remove EotM for now….

EotM was introduced because of the queue problem. Nowadays queue only exist during weekend reset day. The rest of the week, you can always find borderland with no queue at.

If people from the stacked server says, hey, where should we go if we can’t get onto WvW because of queue ? non-stacked server that way —-——>

Do any “real” WvW players actually make use of EotM to get the WvW fix though? (I honestly don’t know, I never go there.)

At any rate, we’ve seen in the past before EotM existed that people are willing to put up with queue times in order to overstack a server.

The Pied Piper.9827:

The thing about lowering the map population cap is that there are big guilds that will go into WvW. If the server population is to low they will just lock down the whole map and no one else can get in.

Or the map gets full of randoms and servers can not get their commanders in to lead. You have to make the cap big enough to allow guilds, randoms, scouts and commandors to be able to join in.

Lowering map populations takes away the best thing about WvW (basically all those things you listed in the last sentence, and huge fights.) IMO the discussion should be on leveling active WvW playerbases.

Maps in megaservers do it by first rewarding you to go to a new map and then finally at the bitter end just booting you off the map.