Guild Wars 2

Great match so far everyone! Unfortunately with the way the scoring system works.. one of our servers is likely going to switch places with Ehmry Bay next week. /sadface

Happy Holidays~

Our NA primetime crew is shorthanded, but you can rest assured that we’ll hold the line well enough to stay competitive for the whole week.

Drede.4701:

While I certainly don’t condone these actions, at least we know it is a hacker guild that happens to be on Maguuma at the moment and not the main force of the server. Whoever these folks on DB are, I calmly would like to remind everyone 4-5 people does not a server make. Let’s keep it clean everyone. Yak’s is still in the lead and, yes I realize week is long ways from over, but the Asps are getting it handed to them this week so if it ended now we would be back in tier 3. Keep up the good fight my fellow Yaks and good fighting by all on both the other servers as well. Well all except the hacking minority…

^ This

Please don’t call out an entire server for hacking or exploiting when it’s just a very small minority. These are the type of people who also like to hop from server to server specifically for trolling purposes (a la redt). Please DO take screenshots and send them over to exploits@arena.net.

Great fight so far everyone! We missed you guys on Maguuma.. it’s been too long.

Thanks for the great match this week, BP and DH! I’m sure we’ll meet again soon.

Dragonbrand went up against Ehmry Bay not long ago (during the Halloween event) and got our butts kicked. I highly recommend that you both try to hold back EB’s Friday night zerg, because if they get a stranglehold on the maps and damage your morale for the week.. it’s game over.

I recall Ehmry Bay having a lot of roaming kill squads (mostly thieves), so watch out for that. If you’re trying to move around the map as a solo player you’re going to have a tough time.

Stealth combined with player culling has always been a serious problem.. portals just make the culling worse. Fortunately mesmers can’t self-invis for very long. And if you’re holding a choke point properly a mesmer shouldn’t be able to break the line even if they’re invis.

Kalizaar.4729:

If WvW requires one specific ability from one specific class then ANet is doing something wrong. I think portal is a really cool idea but in a system that is designed to make people want to play all classes and be able to play all classes to roughly the same effectiveness, requiring one class means something isn’t quite right.

They wanted to get rid of the holy trinity so that people didn’t have to have a tank, and have to have a healer, and have to have a DPS in a team. Well they managed that, but now you still have to have a Mesmer. That one ability is creating a scenario that they designed their entire class and combat system to avoid.

I have a hard time disagreeing with this post, but I still think 20 is a good number for portal without rendering it useless.

Also, you could make a similar argument for a lot of classes..

-Elementalists are needed to destroy siege with meteor shower and block incoming siege with swirling winds (extremely important).

-Guardians are amazing at maintaining control in zerg vs. zerg battles with skills such as Santuary, Wall of Reflection, Hallowed Ground, etc. They’re also great at disrupting enemy zergs and delaying point capture.

-Thief is the best roaming class for taking out dolyak, delaying enemy troops, etc. Their high damage output can be a blessing in larger group scenarios as well

-Warrior has similar utility as the Guardian with more damage output on average in addition to the ability to keep swiftness on people permanently when roaming.

-Ranger and Engineer can both fill a lot of different roles, but now that grenades have been nerfed they need something to set them apart in my opinion.

-Necromancer is one of the best classes for attacking or defending towers. By coordinating marks they can effectively take out an entire zerg. Pet necromancers serve to absorb a lot of damage (5 target AoE cap), and to make groups appear much larger than they actually are.

Mesmers are still one of the most useful classes on the battlefield, but there are a lot of things they just can’t do.

Sounds more like 2 or 3 people from BP like to troll (not the mention spy). DB always has been one of the most legitimate servers in WvW, so rest assured that we’re going to beat you fair and square.

Sorry to hear about the happenings on DH. I encourage people to stick around and continue to grow the server.. guilds leaving is in no way a death sentence for your world. Dragonbrand once lost in excess of 1000 people to Sea of Sorrows, but since then we’ve started to bounce back.

Everything before the weeklong matches was essentially a qualifier to get into the proper tier, in my opinion. 24-hour and 3-day matches don’t count.

Weighting points based on the number of players active in WvW isn’t a terrible idea, but any discussions that relate to halting point-gain or even closing WvW at night are just silly.

PredatoR.5247:

Does Darkhaven/Dragonbrand/Borlis Pass have a community website?
if yes what is it?

DB hasn’t had a unified community website since over 1000 people transferred off the server in the same week (including the creators of said website) a couple months ago.

We do have an unlimited seat mumble server and commanders communicate with different forms of voice chat regularly.

nytehex.3267:

to be fair? When I say in the middle of a siege, I mean that the guild that I am in has placed at least 2-4 guild in siege to bomb a wall or door, not to mention the repair costs to our armor trying to get the supply camps, etc etc etc. on sunday night, we were literally going on hour 4 to get into a bay and BOOM, no more. They are killing WvW with all these little petty updates.

Being on the other side of that siege, I can tell you with certainty that your server took the keep immediately after the reset anyway. Nothing really changed, as sudden resets almost always effect your opponents in an equally damaging way.

In any case, it still needs to stop. We already spend a ridiculous amount of money on siege weapons. No need to salt the wound by making it disappear into thin air.

The best way to deal with comments like that is to ignore them. Don’t want to get this thread locked like so many others.

This match is far from over.. DB is relentless, but BP won’t give up first place so easily. Meanwhile DH is putting up an excellent fight and keeping us on our toes.

The new rating, evolution and next match-up are all based off current score. If you really want to predict the next match you have to pay attention to the trends.. or wait until Friday when things are more set-in-stone.

It’s an accurate statement to say that TC is moving up while IoJ is moving down.

It’s a poor description, but still working as intended.

Sort of glad you censored the utility skills and buffs in this screenshot.

Kill shot is practically worthless against decent opponents in small fights.. Perfect for WvW zerging though.

A couple other things to note:

Most friendly abilities now have a max of 5 targets. This change we necessary to lessen the effectiveness of zerg “turtling”

Portals now have a max of 20 charges.

There’s something inherently wrong with a feature that helps the WINNING SERVER break-out into the losing server’s map. Good intentions, poor execution.

If a match is becoming a complete blowout where people are held in spawn, something is obviously wrong with the matching system. More specifically, something is wrong with the free transfer system… Which, arguably, already caused the downfall of WvW. No world should ever be held in their spawn unless there was a mass exodus or mass increase in population on one of the servers. Breakout events are intended to fix an issue that shouldn’t exist to begin with.

The mechanics haven’t changed in any noteworthy way, aside from the orbs being removed and some exploits being fixed.

The matches are a lot more balanced than they used to be.. so there’s a lot less PvDoor than you may have saw previously (unless there is disparity between server prime times).

Tactics have improved with experience. You’ll see a lot less people going after well-defended gates and far more trebuchets.

That’s true, but it’s mostly irrelevant to this discussion if it only takes one player a few minutes to solo a fully upgraded camp. That’s barely enough time for a defender to look at their map and notice that the camp is under attack (assuming it’s not Skritt or some other stupid mob) and rally to defend said camp. In a tier with higher average population, there will always be someone close-by to delay the attack on that same camp. Even if the average enemy force is larger, it can take longer for them to flip the point.

I don’t have a problem with the NPC strength – I only have a problem with the fact that the guards can be so easily pulled away from eachother.

I see that you’re from Stormbluff Isle, which means that you have a substantially higher WvW population than lower tier servers.

My server (DB) does okay at defending supply camps, but we’re sometimes lucky to field more than 10-30 players on the “non-action” maps. In which case, having people defend every camp and dolyak is impossible (and boring for those involved). I can’t imagine what it’s like in tier 7 or 8.

I agree that 1 or 2 people shouldn’t be able to capture a fully upgraded supply camp so easily. The leashing/linking on the guards isn’t set-up properly.

Non-upgraded camps have always been a joke.. a Guardian can just run in there and straight up tank all of the npcs at once. I do it all the time.

Score Update~

/15 charrrrrrr

Epic fights on DB borderlands all day long.. thank you to everyone who was there to help us maintain our hold on the map. Neither the Garrison nor Hills Keep were flipped during my 10+ hours in-game, but there were some close calls!

Luckily for all of us, neither DB or DH are the type to give up in a WvW match. The Wintersday event will effect all of us somewhat equally.. so that shouldn’t even be considered as a factor. I commend BP’s confidence, but the match is nowhere close to being decided yet.

No screenshot 4 u!

As of 11:45pm PST

BP: 14,100 (285)
DB: 6,258 (225)
DH: 5,969 (+210)

The jury is out on whether or not DB’s night crew will be able to make up the difference, or if BPs overwhelming presence will soften during the week.

Also, I don’t know why this forum chooses to underline random things.

Props to BP for showing up in force and giving us a good fight. I’m surprised to hear that a server in this tier has queues on all maps at some points in time.. haven’t seen that happen in a long while, lol. My player culling issues have either gotten worse this week or the zergs are just larger than normal.

Should be a fun match, though the Wintersday events are likely to reduce average WvW population a bit.

It would create a need for zergs to be formed “suddenly” in order to catch the enemy off-guard.. otherwise they would always see you coming.

While the possibilities are interesting, this just wouldn’t work. We already have enough problems with people gravitating toward orange swords on the map instead of communicating properly.

Xavi.6591:

You can still Alt-F4 out of any “auto-logout” option.

“Auto-logout” likely wasn’t the proper term.

To clarify again, even when someone Alt-F4s their character could be left in-game for 10-20 seconds so that the attacker has time to finish them off. This is how most MMOs work (intentional or not).

My initial reaction to this change was “Great, but wouldn’t an auto-logout timer have been a better option?” because there are indeed a good number of players who struggle with disconnects or crashes.

I get the feeling that A-net wasn’t able to find a way to keep your character in the game for a little while after crashing (and only have this apply to WvW), which is why they went with the insta-kill fix.

It’s a slight bummer for some people.. but that’s about it.

After participating in the Mad King event my camera angle would often be locked in “wide” mode, so that I could zoom out nearly twice as far as normal. It only reset when I completely closed the game and logged back in. I imagine this 3rd-party tool is essentially allowing for the same type of thing, which is very advantageous in WvW – not just for arrow carts.

Mass server transfers is how “Tier 1” servers were created, and it’s also what threw the whole ranking system into turmoil. Though it might be cool to build the ultimate WvW server, I don’t think that’s an idea that any of us want to entertain at this point.

Those of us on this forum who respect our opponents (surprisingly, the majority of us) need to learn to ignore some of the more disgraceful comments in these threads. Having fun in WvW and then coming here to communicate with eachother is great, except when unnecessary trash-talk gets in the way.

I look forward to facing DH again next week, and NSP again when they bounce back up to tier 5 (which is sure to happen). From looking at scores throughout the week it seems like Borlis Pass may have a decent off-peak presence, so this next T5 match should be pretty interesting.

The amount of complaining and trash talking in this thread is pretty absurd. But I guess that’s how forums usually are.. most people only up when they have something negative to say.

Luckily 99% of the players on our servers practice good sportsmanship and always fight the good fight. The last two weeks have been a pleasure, though I’m looking forward to mixing it up a little with Borlis Pass.

This bug has been around since launch, and was part of the reason that orbs had to be removed. Placing an orb in hills keep was often pointless because guards would spawn and break the altar..

There are more important issues to fix with WvW, but this one is still fairly major.

I can empathize with your situation in the jumping puzzle, but honestly I’m a supporter of players being automatically returned to a waypoint shortly after dieing in WvW. People use death as a way to spy while being completely “invulnerable”.

Unlike many folks, I actually saw noticeable improvement with this change. When an enemy zerg came up behind my allied zerg, I was able to render most (if not all) of them.

I have a fairly high-end rig, so that surely has something to do with it.

The trash-talking really needs to stop. It makes our whole bracket look bad, even though our servers are very keen on having more players join up for WvW.

Friendly competition is great, but let’s try to keep a positive tone. That applies to all future threads as well.

As the poster above me said, there may in fact be no good solution to this problem, short of organizing your own server community site and creating some sort of “upvote” system there.

The idea you propose has a major flaw.. the best Commanders aren’t always the ones leading a huge zerg to take as many points as possible. If you were only able to commend your commander when a point is captured, the ratings would be skewed and basically pointless when trying to measure their actual skill level and effectiveness. Plus, it’s not uncommon for 2 or 3 commanders to participate in a single capture. Would they all be commended for that? How do you know for sure who really did all the work? What if they warped out right as the gate fell in order defend a supply depot in the backfield, because a good commander doesn’t care about rewards? What if a commander spends 3 hours breaking down the walls of SM and exhausting enemy supply, and then a different commander sweeps in and takes credit for the actual capture?

Bonehead commanders are easy to spot.. remember their name and avoid grouping up with them. If you’re a WvW regular, it’s not hard to keep track of the good ones and the bad ones.

Before a string of mass server transfers Dragonbrand was a Tier 2/3 world, so many of us know exactly what we would be facing in Tier 4. And it’s an absolute fact that we aren’t ready for the likes of Crystal Desert, Yak’s Bend or Fort Aspenwood (which all belong in T3).

Wish I could be there to see the tail end of the current match.. looks like it’s going to come down to the wire. Unfortunately I’ll be stuck at work most of the day.

Just popping in here to remind people to keep it classy.. there’s no excuse for getting our thread locked. Every server in this match should be proud of their performance, and the fact that we are far more “legit” than higher tiers where sabotage, spying, exploiting, etc. is prevalent. I for one am very glad that we’ll be facing each-other again. Balanced matches like this are much more enjoyable than stomping the competition (or being stomped on). We better learn to love each-other, because we’re going to be seeing A LOT of one-another.

Dragonbrand may appear to have a strong advantage with “PvDoor” at certain times of the day (and I understand the frustration of DH and NSP), but I assure you that our advantage only applies in lower tiers. Without expanded coverage none of our servers can hope to hold a spot in T3 or T4, regardless of how committed our players may be. WvW runs 24/7… that’s just the way it is. Countering Dragonbrand’s night crew by annihilating our assets during NA primetime is exactly the right strategy.

It’s progress.. unfortunately most of us would prefer if all pets simply remained invisible (and un-revivable) in WvW.

As others have said, the only bots in WvW that actually participate in the war effort are those that are working a trebuchet.

Bots have absolutely no reason to run around as a zerg capping towers and such.. the rewards from PvE are far greater, and 99% of bots are controlled by RMT.

RockonHarder.7235:

SSnowman.3187:

Just now wvw reset, everyone was teleport to LA(overflow), from DB there is like only 30-40 ppl. So it’s these 30-40 ppl who fight for DB over 4 maps during NA prime time and make our score not ugly. If your guild is moving to DB, it means you guys will double the population of DB’s NA prime time coverage. (DB used to have a strong NA prime time population months ago which can compete with current T1 servers, but not anymore) In fact what DB need now is just some NA time guilds.

Already in the process of transferring our guild over. Having some issues finding a time DB isn’t “Full” but we’ve managed to maybe get a total of 20 over within a day during odd times. We’ll probably be doing really small groups and having fun, then expecting the majority of our 2 guilds to be over here by Reset on Friday giving us 40ish a night to work with.

Glad to have you guys!

As a side note to the first poster, you can’t measure WvW population by the number of people who appear in Lion’s Arch during a reset or maintenance.. LA always has multiple overflow servers.

I still have a lot of pride for Dragonbrand.. but that doesn’t mean I care greatly whether we win or lose. A feeling of pride comes from the solidarity of those involved and a “never give up” attitude.

A general lack of pride is what severely damaged WvW, in my opinion. Instead of building a community and sticking by it through thick and thin, people were given the option to take the “easy way out” and jump around to winning servers whenever they felt like it. We’re still feeling the repercussions of that.

My kill to badge ratio is currently at 1 badge per every 5.4 kills.

Keeping in mind that bags can often not be retrieved, that probably averages to around 1 in 4. This is with zero magic find gear.

It sounds like you’re extremely unlucky. The drop rate of badges isn’t horrible.. but the gear that can be bought with them is junk. I spend all of mine on siege weapons.

Dragonbrand has an organized primetime WvW force, but we’re typically outnumbered by others in our tier. We make up for that with a strong oceanic/asian presence in the off-hours. Queue times? Pretty much nonexistent, unless we’ve all consolidated onto a single map. In which case you have three others to choose from. Though at your mentioned time slots you may be running into our asian/oceanic crew, which may or may not have more regular queues.

New guilds are welcomed with open arms, as long as they have a good attitude. We aren’t the types to encourage server-hopping, so I hope you have a very good reason for it.

Dragonbrand has sometimes been called an “unofficial PvE server”, so we do have a lot of players that are focused on dungeons and such. The atmosphere tends to be casual. Fractals have had a significant impact on the amount of players in open-world PvE, but I think that holds true for all servers.

ShadowSoljer.6524:

Grit.9061:

General consensus was that they must be scared of DB in order to work together and try to wipe us off the map like that!

I’m pretty sure that happens not because anyone is scared, but because we both know you have a strong early morning presence, while both our servers have literally none. Meaning you control all the maps for 4-5 hours. Every server gets its turn being double teamed at some point in the day.

That’s certainly the case. Both NSP and DH wanted to push DB off the map(s) during prime-time, so that our strong night/early morning team didn’t have a foothold to work with. Double-teaming is a regular occurrence in WvW – I only brought it up because this case it seemed abnormally brutal and organized, with both servers almost entirely focused on us for at least 4 hours (when I logged off). I don’t think I saw an enemy tower change hands even once.

When servers move up and down tiers, it’s almost always because of a blowout on either end of the spectrum. Now that the tiers are starting to even-out, potential evolution from each match has decreased significantly and will continue to do so.. until nearly all tiers are stable.

Looking at tier 8 (NA) for example, the only way that match is ever going to change is if Eredon Terrace and Henge of Denravi continue to fall from grace. And once those two servers finally settle in the proper tier, then what happens? Are there any volatile worlds left to mix things up?

I’ll take the balanced matches over complete blowouts any day.. but fighting the same servers over and over again will definitely get stale after a while. Whether or not A-net can actually do something about that is questionable.

There are still some clueless people in WvW who will take supply from a keep or tower without thinking twice, but I’ve seen very tangible improvement in this area since launch. Usually it isn’t even an issue anymore.

I honestly don’t think that anything needs to be changed here.

Dragonbrand was getting double-teamed hard in Eternal Battlegrounds after the reset, but we managed to hold Overlook Keep even with NSP camping our spawn with siege and DH breaching the inner gate multiple times. Kudos to all of those involved.

General consensus was that they must be scared of DB in order to work together and try to wipe us off the map like that!

Keep it up Draggies. Scores as of 6am PST as follows:

DH: 18,900 (90)
NSP: 13,345 (150)
DB: 17,684 (+455)

And a big welcome back to Commander Phuriok!

Dragonbrand vs. Northern Shiverpeaks vs. Darkhaven

Last week was a ton of fun.. Let’s have another good match! Keep it classy, folks. We don’t want a second thread closed.