Guild Wars 2

Asuran mesmers with dragon helmets being launched from trebs and catapults is the future of WvW. We should all just accept it now! Though the best counter would be to allow ele’s to reflect treb shots again, to reflect the asuras being launched!

Snowreap.5174:

Zikory.6871:

I sure it would be a lot of data but have you posted your findings somewhere?

yes, they’re posted here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Server-Match-up-is-TERRIBLE/2203221

the program I use to do the calculations is posted here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/api/Simple-C-Example-Rating-Calculation/2154273

-ken

I also have my write up which has some visual representations on the probabilities of getting certain rank-spreads in the matches here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Statistics-of-the-new-ranking-system

(Mind you the deviations and ratings have changed since then)

Snowreap, have you redone your simulations for the new ratings/deviations? I’d be curious to see what you get!

I don’t like killing JP people as a mesmer. I sit on top of an objective, wait for them to get close (like crossing that vine!) and then yank them off So yes, I won’t kill you. Doesn’t mean you’ll still get your free badges.

If you’re such a good pvp’er…go get your badges doing Pvp. You don’t have to run in a big blog to get badges, at all, though it can get you them much faster.

Kerithlan.1659:

lunatuna.6823:

I still don’t understand why TC is showing so poorly this week. Yes, they are T2, not T1, but they have the population of a T1 server and have been at the top of T2 for weeks. Per Devon, “servers are matched up by proximity of rating”, and TC certainly qualifies without any RNG component (sorry SoS).

TC has a very slow WvW population growth. We’re mostly PvE due to being the RP server. We’re at the top of T2 mostly because the other T2 servers fell apart or moved up to T1 already. We’re slow and steady like the tortoise — although we’re bigger now than ever before, we’re still no where near the size of JQ, BG or SoR.

As a growing server, Dragonbrand has given us a run for our money. They’re doing just as well in T1 as we’d be doing, and we’re doing just as well in T2 as they’d be doing. Having SoS as almost a non-factor in our match-up means that it’s essentially a 1v1 with SoR vs TC. SoR has much greater numbers, thus SoR wins harder. Compare that to T1 where JQ and BG are both duking it out and where DB still has a chance of fighting back, and you see a much less one-sided match-up.

The fact that we’re also against SoS makes a huge impact on the match up. SoS is a great server from what I can tell and they fight very hard, but because of the population differences, TC is effectively in a 1v1 against SoR. If the match was like SoR v JQ v TC or SoR v BG or TC we probably wouldn’t be having as much as an issue. However, with so much of SoR’s population mostly focused on us, we just can’t bring out the numbers. I don’t blame SoS, they’re doing a great job, but the population imbalance makes it hard for them to make a move against SoR.

One of the other issues, is they keep saying they want the ratings to get closer and to stabilize so there aren’t huge gaps. The issue with this is that with their rating system is that unless the deviations change accordingly, there will be more and more blow out matches since the ratings will get closer. The devs REPEATEDLY tell us that they expect better things “in a few weeks”, but never show us proof, or show us what they’re expecting. When they did their release on the new system, they showed an example match up which they said was actually useless and wouldn’t happen (even though it did!), and responded saying they expected something else. However, they refuse to ever actually show us anything to give us confidence that they actually know what they’re doing besides the same generic statement of “we’ll wait a few weeks”.

The differences in tiers was mostly in populations, and the servers stay that way until they get lots of transfers, or people leaving. If you minimize the difference, while the population difference stays the same, there will be a higher chance of blowouts, not a lower.

Ross Biddle.2367:

OR

We play this out for a few weeks so, in the long run, we have a better game overall.

I remember when I was a kid I had to wait an entire year for my birthday. You kids these days expect your birthday to roll around every two weeks. Some things just take some time.

The issue is that for some servers, having week after week of having total blow outs for matches will make them leave. Your analogy and statement doesn’t fit here at all…. The problem is that while anet “waits” servers are having weeks of blow outs. If their “Several” more weeks is 3-4 weeks, then some servers, many in fact, will have over a MONTH of blow out matches. People who play WvW won’t want to log in every day to get farmed because the other server in the match up has many times their numbers 24/7.

Watches as this post is moved to the suggestions forum

DevonCarver.5370:

The concept of tiers has little meaning at this point and you should try to stop thinking of matchups in those terms. Servers are matched up by proximity of rating, not proximity of “tier”. If the tiers have ratings that are within the range of the random adjustment, they can end up fighting each other. This is going to result in blowouts, no doubt about it. However, we are not going to make changes to this after just 2 weeks of the system. There are things we can do. We will almost certainly end up adjusting the total added to each server rating to group the matchups a little more closely. First however, we need to let the ratings adjust by having more varied matchups like these. If you look at EU, which is using the exact same system, you can see matchups with numerous surprising results. The same will likely be true by the end of the NA matchup.

TL;DR: We are going to wait at least a couple more weeks before changing any of the math behind the new system, but it is very likely we’ll decrease the size of the variation at some point.

I’ve pointed it out several times that all of this griping would not happen if the random number range is between -0.5 and 0.5. Devs keep saying they’ll wait a few more weeks to change the math, but matches are bad NOW, servers are getting farmed NOW. For the servers that keep getting bad matches, being told “well we’ll wait a few more weeks to change it” will only make them stop playing for those few weeks, kill morale and hurt the WvW in the long run. The fix is so easy to make, and the math shows that the rank-difference in the matches will be much much better.

Is there any reason why it cant’ be change now until it stabilizes, giving better matches now, instead of people hoping for the “future” time when it’ll get changed or they’ll eventually get better matches?

I tried to point out this very problem before and it was solved with a very simple solution: instead of making the random rolls between -1 and 1, make them between -0.5 and 0.5. I showed that it is a fact that it makes for less stale matches, but also prevents the matches with rank spreads of 6+. However, I was told by devs that this kind of thing was actually rare, and that my results won’t apply and were useless. But, so far, they seem to be fairly correct. I was told that things would balance out “eventually”, and that they would lower the range “if they had to”. So, they came into the system knowing it would produce results like this, and still did it with the statement “we’ll fix it later if we have to”. The way to fix this system is so simple, and it would drastically improve the results. They kept telling people ’it’ll stabilize’, but they never discussed how long it would take, or it seems put into consideration the morale of the servers that got bad matches.

So, it’s really simple to fix (cut the random range in half, look at my thread to see why!), but it probably won’t be, sadly. For those in rough matches, just try to stick it out and try to have some fun

SoS, hosting that Dolyak parade was great! I love doing multi-server events like that! Very fun!

Just reading this thread reminds me so much of the older confusion threads, but kind of opposite. In the confusion threads, you had people saying “Nerf confusion, since the option not to attack is silly!”, and here you have people saying “If they have retal up, just don’t attack, it’s not OP”.

I think my 2 biggest issues with retal are: 1) It is a boon, so while people can more easily remove conditions from themselves, doing boon removal isn’t always easy (though for mesmers it is if they use null field..but then again the retal can just be reapplied fast enough), and 2) Retal works against reflection projectiles, which makes no sense. You put a wall of reflection up, the guy shoots into it with auto attack, and the person who put the wall of reflection up gets punished (sometimes more) than the person who shoots into it. (Now, some of you may say “Don’t use it against someone who has retal”, which is true in 1v1’s, or small fights, but in a ZvZ you rarely have time to check the boons of every guy charging to you!)

One thing I don’t understand is people saying they get hit for 20k damage by retal..I’m not sure how they can do that. If the retal damage is 350 per tick, that would require somehow hitting 57 people with 1 attack, ~28 with 2 attacks, etc…Even if you spread retal over an entire zerg, unless you’re just tabbing mindlessly with auto attack to get your tags in, it won’t get that much.

I see the retal problem almost the same as the confusion problem, and I think people would be griping less (like they do now with confusion) if anet did their jobs well and actually did the patch correctly.

slingblade.1437:

Yes, or something like it. And also at least double the timers for all siege inside keeps and towers. The timers are having a negative impact way beyond their stated intent. If Anet is concerned about server load caused by siege pieces sitting around the map, get rid of something else, such as jumping puzzles, skill points and other PVE stuff that surely also creates server load and is of little to no value to the WvW experience.

I think the biggest issue with timers being too long, especially in keeps and towers, is sometimes you want certain pieces of siege to expire. This is at times when 1) They’re placed awfully by someone, or 2) they’re almost down, and you want to replace it, but you’re capped. I know personally when I’ve commanded I’ve told people to not tick certain pieces of siege since they were at under 1/3rd health and siege capped.

Mattargul.9235:

1) Allow a guild to UN-claim a place. Right now you can only do that by claiming something else.
2) Actually show which guild has claimed a place, not just “pink turtle on green background with yellow stripey thingies”.

I definitely agree with those! Maybe not on the banner, but if you go and talk to the Claim NPC, he should tell you WHO has it.

As for the veto, I don’t so much agree, because I could see that getting easily abused. Larger guilds “vetoing” a smaller guild claim because they have 1 or 2 buffs less active, for instance, would, while you’re getting the extra buffs, make it so that smaller guild would have effectively wasted theirs.

I do like the idea of allowing others to buffs on it, though that might be odd to implement, and I have a feeling anet would break WvW in the process! I just think a better way would be that if a keep has no buffs for X amount of time, the keep automatically “unclaims”, or make it so you have to have at least one buff available in order to claim stuff. All in all, I feel like it is rarely a big issue. The few times I’ve experienced “issues” with it, we’ve figured out what guild has the objective, and gotten them to unclaim it so buffs could be put on it.

Taterz.1706:

I’ve been thinking about the better use of space on every BL for a while now, and have come up with a idea. Get rid of the water in the middle of the BL it’s not needed and entirely wasted space. Instead replace said area with ground and place a tower or mini SM in the middle.

This mini SM could then be attacked by any other tower/keep on the BL. The points on holding this mini SM would have to be high enough to warrant holding it. But would constantly be in a battle state. Plus having a 360 degree attack face means anyone could attack it.

The only thing is if a server has massive numbers. But hey i operate on a low tier server with not many active players

Just a idea??

Thanks

I’d rather they get rid of the dumb krait, and put the “island” underwater, and make something there more important so people will hold it. I think the potential of doing underwater fights would be great, I just think lots of people avoid fighting in the water because the stupid krait. The problem with putting anything too big though there is that garrison is right there, and so are the other keeps and towers, etc…so anything more “important” than a camp would really make the map too cluttered there!

As for the skritt stealing supplies, that’d be great if they were balanced in a decent way. It’d be really bad to have to have a squad of 5-10 people staying inside a keep to avoid near constant skritt waves. I think if you “capped” something and it gave off ONE wave of skritt to nearby keeps, or if you could pick a target, then it wouldn’t be so bad as long as it had a decent cooldown for the capping. But that being said, people already get way spread out in borderlands, especially since you have to defend 3 keeps, 2 of them being on opposite sides of the map (unlike EB where you only have 1 keep in your 3rd and the towers are pretty close), so doing anything which would spread people out more might just cause issues.

The BL’s are, in my mind, a different setting than EB all together. I like doing EB, but I really like doing the BL’s. You have to focus on holding 3 keeps, and it’s much harder to play defense and just have 1 big zerg, since you’ll lose stuff before you get there often. Scouts are much more important, since you do have to have such a heads up. If you’re at the NE tower and someone attacks your Bay, you have a long run if you have no WP there or at garrison! In EB, things are close enough that you can react much faster, from my experience there, and the focal point of the map is at the center. The BL’s don’t have a “focal” point ,except maybe garrison, but garrison is worth just as much as the other keeps, it’s just a good feeling though to own someone elses garrison!

What do you mean there is no reason to go north? You have half the map up north with 2 towers, a keep, and 3 camps. Are you talking about the relatively small space that the skritt, centaurs and orb NPCs take up? You don’t want TOO many objectives on the map, or have them be too crowded. I think putting anything important objective wise would cause a lot of clutter, and make the “2 camp/tower(or keep)” balance. The only place I think where COULD place an objective would be where the JP is if you got rid of that…but these spots are still relatively small portions of the map, and they are GREAT (the two corners) for alternative paths to those northern objectives.

TooBz.3065:

I think this is a bad idea.

Granting badges for the jumping puzzles enables players who don’t want to do PVP to still craft a legendary (which is definitely not a WvW exclusive item).

To answer the obvious counter argument about “playing all aspects of the game.” I think it’s bullkitten. I don’t understand why someone must ever suffer through something they hate in a game.

I hate to be the guy to say this, but, as a WvW’er: then why must I grind dungeons and grind for mats, etc to get a legendary instead of just WvW’ing. It’s a legendary, it’s purely cosmetic, and it’s supposed to show you’ve done “all aspects of the game”. It’s entirely optional, just like all the titles and many of the weapons. Oh, you want Immobulus, you gotta farm to get the eyes, or farm the money. Oh, you want a legendary, you gotta do ____. It’s a totally optional point of the game, but to get it, you have to really work for it.

lilcoffeebean.3149:

I fail to see why any WvW player would care if person X is getting badges from a jumping puzzle. Personally I’d rather have all the pve legendary farmers running the jp on their toons, rather than taking up space in WvW with their magic find gear.

Because in the BL’s they take up spots for people who are doing real WvW. At least when NPC’s give it to you when you’re killing guards, etc, you’re doing an objective. PvE people doing the JP for badges adds nothing to the team, it only takes away people. They should just get rid of the JP altogether, or give it some objective in there that we can take and hold for points and thus do WvW in that area. But they put the BL JP’s far in the corner, as if they were thinking “Well, we don’t PvP in here, so lets place as far away from any possible action as possible, and in fact add a jump to get in there”

But placing open field trebs would be almost useless for getting down (for instance) a T3 wall, since it can just be zerged and taken down really quickly. Even if you have a full zerg for yourself, they can continuously target only the treb and keep knocking it down. Allowing to treb from inside another fortified position isn’t then out of the question.

As for the food issue, nothing stops a player from buying food. If one player has it and another doesn’t, it’s more unfair than if one player has an exotic and the other a rare for some piece of armor. WvW isn’t meant to be fully balanced, and I think it would be really boring if it was all balanced out. The fact that it isn’t balanced, in my mind, makes how you build your character more important, and more interesting to play against since you have to put builds into account for strategy.

Maps do need to be fixed though..they don’t make sense, and the different “colors” have different play (especially on EB), but in the BL’s too. I remember playing in lotro the Pvp map there was pretty great in the sense that everything was spread out pretty far (in terms of keeps distances).

Rob.7624:

Sunflowers.1729:

Don’t compare Retaliation to Confusion – even though the two are similar they aren’t the same.

Both have consequences if the enemy attacks, however confusion is much more powerful:
-Works when the enemy attacks anyone, so they can’t just target someone without retaliation and carry on attacking
-Triggers on anything, including heals, stun breaks, some dodge rolls.etc
-Confusion is stackable
-Confusion doesn’t trigger multiple times for something like Barrage (although it does for Tornado/Dagger Storm, I think)

In other words, confusion punishes you for doing anything, but retaliation only punishes you for attacking someone.

While I do think the concept of retaliation is badly implemented (it should hit really hard, but have low duration), it’s hardly the same as confusion.

Edit: I keep missing words out

^Whatever this guy said
QFT

BUT that being said it takes more than 1 confusion to do the same amount of damage as retaliation :P Just stating it to be clear, though you are right. I don’t see what the huge deal with people against retal is…once they fix it so that it’s properly nerfed in the BL’s it won’t be an issue I think. Confusion was a decent counter to retal..if they spring a bunch of retal on you, you AoE confusion and both sides can’t do it, but with the confusion getting nerfed but not the retal, it makes retal seem much more powerful. I’m not sure how ANET derped it up, but they some how did (I swear they would mess up a PB&J somehow…). My only issue with retal is that it counts reflected attacks the same way as direct.

Devs, add this fast before this thread gets thrown in the dumpster known as the Suggestions frum! It’s a great one!

Drakh.3128:

Hebril Amolebin.9817:

Drakh.3128:

Better yet, try being a confusion mesmer. I hit them for 65 with confusion then get hit back for 375 from retaliation. Yeah, that’s fair…..

your build is wrong them having a mesmer with condition build and glamour set up I hit them easily 400+ so fix your build and play smart.

For one, 400+ for confusion is no longer possible post nerf. I also fail to see how this is a build issue for me as I’m not at all speced into condition damage. I’m not condition\confusion speced, I’m PVT with 0 condition damage. I proc confusion on enemies from my chaos armor. I’m just saying it’s kinda dumb how my chaos armor can give someone confusion for 65 damage while their retaliation comes right back at me for ~375. It seems a bit counter intuitive to negate the usefulness of a defensive skill turning it into suicide against a group running retaliation (light field + blast finisher.)

Plus, as someone who has ran a condition damage confusion build for a long time, you cannot SUSTAIN those levels of confusion stacks by yourself. People can sustain retaliation, and even spread it among their raid. Confusion doesn’t spread, and the only way to get confusion stacks high enough as a single mesmer to match the same retal damage is single target. So, you have a situation where a condition was nerfed because they were able to single target do ~400 damage per attack, not sustained, while a boon, which was supposed to be nerfed hasn’t and has yet to be fixed, can do >300 damage, can be spread to entire zergs, and can be sustained pretty well. To me, this never made sense in ANY way when people on the forums were in such a huff over confusion.

Plus, and I’ll say this again, reflected attacks should not be affected by retaliation, no more so than dodge skills being affected by confusion (something I totally agree with 100%).

skinnyb.5920:

iCryptik.1496:

And the even more wonderful thing is that the majority of groups tend to not have the coordination to blast in those fields,

Stop right there.

What I am trying to explain to you is that stacking retal requires NO coordination. The retal is spread from normal gameplay due to blast finishers being activated regularly in combat.

This is true, especially if you have more than a few guardians around. Blast finishers occur enough during normal game play that you don’t have to “stack and do blast finishers” like you would for might. The only reason you have to stack and blast fire fields for might is to get up to 25 might. Since retal is only one boon, you can sustain it in normal combat quite easily. It’s why, in my mind, retal is much more powerful in large fights than confusion. A group of 20+ can easily get semi-sustained retal with a few guardians or people sharing their boons around. And if you have that, well, you just cant stop fighting most of the time, so you just gotta suck it up and take the damage or throw out null fields like mad men!

The bridge is especially buggy when the keeps flip, as well as the towers and walls and stairs…

Drakh.3128:

Better yet, try being a confusion mesmer. I hit them for 65 with confusion then get hit back for 375 from retaliation. Yeah, that’s fair…..

But remember, the only way to counter confusion is to not attack, and the only way to truly counter retaliation is…oh wait…

Yeah, I do find it personally hilarious to see people supporting retaliation with things like “get more vit”, etc…but when confusion was on the chopping block, people were proclaiming the only thing that you could do is not attack, and therefore it must be nerfed. Confusion and retaliation, in my eyes, are the same type of idea..except one is a boon you put on yourself, and the other is condition you put on others.. I guess the only difference is you can stack the conditions, but I’ve seen people with near constant retaliation, or spreading it to entire zergs. I’ve been killed by a feedback from retaliation because someone in the raid will spread retaliation the moment it hits. It’s a great strategy though (though I don’t think reflects should be affected by retaliation, because I’m technically not “attacking” the person..they’re attacking themselves)

DevonCarver.5370:

The NA matchups won’t be available until the reset.

In the future will we have a bit more of a heads up, especially as to what color the server will be? I know on TC the guild leaders like to get together and decide what guilds are going on what maps so that not all the guilds go on the same map, and the color of the map decides if they’re bay side, hills side, etc.

Reikou.7068:

Commander Tags should be competed for IMO.

There should be a new rank-currency added to the game where players gain points by achieving objectives, and lose points by dying. Rank points are not shared amongst players, so taking a supply camp with 5 will yield far less than solo’ing a supply camp, etc.

Only the top 25 rank point players on a world get commander tags.

That just sounds absolutely silly! You’re saying that solo’ing a supply camp would yield more points for a commander tag than doing something with the group? How would that show they’re any better a commander? Also, dying removing points is also totally rediculous. It would cause any current commander to just run from a fight, to avoid losing their tag, and cause many support people to not do their job. To get a commander tag then you would essentially just have to be the guy at the back of the raid not doing much, or a solo thief ganking people and taking supply camps. I.e. cowardice+running away from fights to live+solo capping points != commander.

Who cares if there’s lots of commander tags? In general, people learn pretty fast who the bad commanders are and who the good ones are. The problem with doing a voting system is that then many smaller guilds might not get their own guild commander for WvW. Anything you do to make the commander tag based on points, currency, etc, means it can farmed just like it can be now. No matter what, it’s a farm, which doesn’t show how good of a commander you can be. The biggest issue is they don’t make a big deal about squads, since they’re still mostly useless, and the only way to know about them is 1) if someone tells you, or 2) you happen to right click on a commander tag.

McFribble.2349:

What, was OP expecting anything better than every other chest in the game?

WvW chests contain EXACTLY what people need for WvW; Badges and Blueprints. Anything else is just free $$$.

I think their big complaints is that, yes we get a new free chest, but 1) the devs talked it up a lot about lots of globs, good rewards, etc when so far it seems to be a standard JP level chest, and 2) that dedicated WvW people get left out in the dark when it comes to rewards. I’m not saying I agree, just summarizing. There is nothing wrong asking to be equally compensated for your work as someone else who spends the same time in the game. WvW people saying “we don’t want PvE’ers in our WvW playing for rewards!” is just silly.

Look at this new patch, when it comes to rewards:
PvE: southsun people can farm the mobs to get better rewards (at least ones they can sell for for more) than WvW people farming mobs (which you shouldn’t do anyways!). They got 2 chests they can farm every 5-10 minutes: the crab toss game, and the instigator. I’ve seen several bots in the crab toss game already farming it! And these are the same level of chests for the most part as the ones we get in WvW (mostly green).
WvW: Introduced a new chest that some people can only get once a day after lots of hard work, and get only a green and a siege (the badges I ignore since 5 badges isn’t too much).

So, you can see why people would feel bad. They’re not being selfish, they’re only asking the devs that if they put in equal time as PvE people, who bought the game same as them, to be rewarded equally. There are quite a few “hardcore” WvW people who do it more as an esport than as a casual fun thing to do. However, that is not everyone, and so coming on the threads when they ask for equal rewards for equal time telling them to get out of WvW is only making things worse. I can’t say I totally agree with the chest issue, but I can definitely understand the issue (especially after the dev’s said there’d be plenty of globs from the chest! His words, not theirs!) So, lets cut out the talk of “get out WvW you PvE’er!”!

I think besides them redoing the rankings so that low-pop servers are facing low-pop servers, there’s nothing much they can about real game play. There might be stuff they can do with ratings, but that won’t help your actual game play experience…people have tried suggesting buffs, but in my mind those only punish high-pop servers, and the people on that server originally can’t help it if people start coming to it. I hope that once the new system comes out, low-pop servers will be faced with low-pop servers mostly, that way there won’t be such an imbalance.

The bottom line is: if you’re enemy outnumbers you 2-1 or 3-1, there’s not much that can be done when it comes to holding and keeping your stuff that anet can do.

King Amadaeus.8619:

LilMcGinley.3890:

King Amadaeus.8619:

As someone who plays every class, and sometimes loses to thieves, I still will never understand why people are so kittening hung-up on stealth.

Thieves are one of the squishiest classes with one of the lowest HP pools, I have always seen stealth as the only thing that saves them as a class.

I do see what the OP is saying about the fatigue thing, that is an interesting idea as c/d and/or D/P thieves can be annoying…But I find 9 times out of 10 people are just unwilling to walk away from a fight, if I see a perma-stealth thief I try to kill it, then if I don’t I usually just walk away.

Every once in a while there is one holed up in a keep or tower, and that is a pain but not impossible to stop….People in general just need to stop coming on here trying to get every class nerfed to hell just because they don’t like countering them.

Learn to walk away from a fight every once in a while, and let the noob perma-stealth thieves do what they are good at (being useless in general). If you chase them for 20 minutes, then you have allowed them to troll you to hell.

OP isn’t talking bout fighting thieves, He is talking bout a group staying behind, stealth, after losing a tower, staying stealthed for 5 minutes and then reflipping it WITHOUT breaking down a wall/door. Completely different.

“It would also provide a fight time limit for Thieves that are hidden for the majority of the fight – if the thief spends more time invisible than visible, eventually the Fatigue will catch up.”

Sounds like he is talking about thieves in fights to me, at least in that regard.

Bravo to a well organized group of a thieves I would say, and for shame for not getting
together enough people to sweep the objective. My server has been guilty of shoddy sweep jobs, and we lost those objectives.

We have also stopped many mesmer/thief combos because during those times we were more than willing to devote 20+ people to sweeping them out. Granted it can be frustrating but just because you don’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t taking dmg.

If you zerg an objective with 30+ people and leave it to be swept by 2-5 randoms that stay behind you can rest assured you will lose it if there is a thief/mesmer combo, that can organize the enemy for the portal.

While I’ve been one of those mesmers that has abused the thief/mesmer combo, A LOT, I’ll say I think the big issue with this is that there are many things (besides walls) that you can stealth off of (heck there’s even the random outcropping bridge thing that does NOTHING in one of the spawn towers). The problem is they can stealth off of things which technically take no ‘damage’, which i think should be changed. I’ve seen thieves able to sit in stealth in a corner on a tiny breakable wall (I’m staring at you random tiny wall piece on south bay!), and then the moment they see someone coming, they just jump down to, for instance, the water gate walls in bay, etc. Since you don’t get knocked out of stealth if you take damage, they can easily move around. It’s not as much as an issue in keeps, where thieves mostly stay in the outer, and if there’s not mesmers, then they can’t do much. The issue I think is in towers, where unless you lay an AoE trap or something similar on every inch of wall, door, stair, etc, it’s very easy to miss a thief.

I personally think they should change it so you can only get stealth off of things you COULD damage as a thief. This wouldn’t affect the play on the field, it would only cut down on people stealthing off of walls, which is a really silly mechanic. People say “well if you chase a thief for 20 minutes, you’ve been trolled”, which is applicable in the field, but now think of that thief in your keep. You basically HAVE to chase him around. Even using my mesmer stealths I’ve kept 5 people in Bay chasing me for over 10 minutes until they brought a zerg on my head. (stealth, stealth, portal back somewhere, stealth, stealth, repeat), and I can’t even stealth off walls or gates or other people!

displacedTitan.6897:

Kyuzo.4675:

Hickeroar.9734:

ANet: “Here, have some free stuff for something you were going to do anyway.”

QQers: “Sorry, but that free stuff isn’t good enough. By the way, you guys suck for giving us sub-par free stuff.”

Seriously guys, do you READ what you post? GET OVER IT. We’d all be playing with or without these rankings and chests. You’re getting something for nothing and you have the audacity to complain about it.

Actually I have modified how I spend time in WvW to accommodate earning wvwxp. It means I’m spending time doing things I don’t really like but the promise of “ecto” from the rank chests convinced me it was worth the time and energy. It was not, lol.

I don’t really enjoy PVE much but it looks like it will be required to help fund WvW time. (Frost Ma takes 5 minutes and yields 2 rares. Stupid mindless and boring but it certainly pays well)

I am happy to get more gear options and occasional rank chests for WvW. But it would have been nice to have it scale a bit better with time spent vs rewards compared to PVE.

This sums of the crazy duality of all of these posts. You say that PvE is “mindless and boring but it pays well”, and that WvW is fun and doesn’t pay as well. To me that sounds like a fair bargain. If you don’t care about PvE then what does it matter how much gold you have anyway? Fancy skins dont kill people any faster in WvW.

The biggest money sink in WvW: upgrades upgrades upgrades. Repairs don’t really cost that much, though siege can if you’re not using badges. However, upgrading keeps can cost a lot, and a lot of people seem to not like to domate. I onetime asked in our home borderlands for donations for a fortify, and from a fully queued map I got 5 people…other times I get 50 people, so it all depends. But upgrades can really be a massive money sink to people if they’re constantly doing it out of their own pocket (which I wouldn’t recommend!) And while pretty skins/dyes don’t get people killed, that doesn’t mean we , as players, don’t want to have them (thats actually what I spend the most of my money on, but I rarely have money issues since I take the occassional PvE binge for a few days)

Beachead.4127:

Time sensitive in that I have to wait 24 hours for the next laurel. Where as I can dump a ton of time into fractals with out worry of a timer.

But you really have to wait 24 hours to get the next pristine fractal too. What you’re talking about is the farming constantly of fractals to try to get a RNG ascended ring. However, theres no guarantee thakittens the one you want…and from what people in my guild have experienced, you might have to farm for weeks to get the one that you like. So, I don’t see why you’re stuck on the 24 hours thing, when the pristine relics are the same way…

Plus, I don’t see why you’re so obsessed with getting the fractals piece. The stat increase isn’t that big…the only main purpose I’d see getting a WvW fractals piece is for the WvW infusion. Plus, the deal with fractals is ONLY for the rings..for the rest, they have the same waiting problem we have. Guild commendations will probably get you them the fastest for non-rings. Seriously, just wait it out, get them when you can…there’s no gear inspection or ANYTHING in this game, and its not like people can kick you out of WvW, or kick you off an AC, or kick you out of a keep if you don’t have full pink accessories.

shortcake.8659:

These boxes should have introduced a new currency, and this new currency should be what you use to buy WvW ascended items, not kittened laurels.

Without some form of currency wallet, we don’t need more piles of stuff taking up our inventory and bank slots!

I thought for fractals you only get pristines from the daily anyways? I haven’t done them much, but thats what I understood..so that’s still a daily. Fractals gets more rings to drop, but they’re not guaranteed to be the ones you want. The Laurels buy you the ascended piece of gear that you WANT, its not just a box containing a random ascended ring or something.

My biggest dispairty about the new laurel vendors for WvW is that they should offer some cool WvW-based non-ascended stuff. The PvE vendors have the infinite cat tonic..why not an infinite golem tonic (or infinite supply dolyak tonic!)? Not everyone cares about ascended, but would still love to be able to do different things with our badges!

In the end, all this bickering about ascended is silly, since a full raid in ascended isn’t going to beat a full raid in exotics just because they have ascended. The different in stats isn’t that much (I think it’d be something like replacing an exotic GS with a rare GS or so…), so if you have to wait, it’s not a huge thing. Just get them when you can…

I think what would have been interesting is to give these chests also a drop rate for WvW-exclusive skins. But, I too do question whether the rare drop rate is what they were intending. The dev plainly said that ecto’s wouldn’t be an issue for getting ascended gear, however if you’re getting say, ~4-5 chests a day and lucky to get 1 rare, you might get an ecto from it…though probably not.

That being said, I do like the chests At least it’s something..it’s not a lot, and PvE people do get more for their time in terms of gold (when I go a PvE binge I easily get much more gold, I farmed 100g in 6 days doing pure PvE) than people who spend their time in only WvW.

I don’t expect a free rare every day, or even a free rare at all. But I so far have yet to hear anyone get an exotic or an asceded, or even more than 1 rare per 5 or so chests (which is about the same drop rate for rares by spending 1 minute in the LA jumping puzzles).

DevonCarver.5370:

We included the laurel cost to prevent the economy from suddenly being blown out and to not invalidate the ways PvE players can get ascended items already. This system means that it is faster to get them in WvW, especially for players who already have badges, without being so much faster that everyone only gets them in this manner. As for the difficulty of acquiring laurels in WvW, we have taken steps to address that, including the fact that there will always be 3 daily achievements that are WvW specific. Speaking personally, I’ve been able to achieve my dailies in WvW even without that change, but this should make it even easier.

Well, that is if you discout the PvE’ers who sit and grind fractals constantly and are able to get 50-60 rings that they don’t want. The statement SHOULD be “This makes it faster for WvWer’s to be guaranteed the ascended gear that they want faster than PvE’ers.” However, there are plenty of people out there who grind fractals nonstop and get quite a few ascended gear, meanwhile, WvW really has NO way to get ascended from RNG in the same way. So, in fact, it might actually take a WvW person slower. That being said, I personally think Ascended is COMPLETELY over rated unless you do fractals, since the stat increase is marginal. A zerg wearing full ascended is really no different than a zerg wearing full exotic. But, the statement that it is faster to get them with laurels in WvW is silly, because it’d be “faster” to just grind fractals for a couple weeks (still under 25/30 days for laurels), you’re just not guaranteed to get the piece you want. That’s what the laurels give you, a guarantee ,nothing else.

Personally, I would have rather seen some new cosmetic stuff, that is WvW only. The new “skins” they gave us a while back in WvW were really just the same skins in PvE, so it didn’t add anything. I’d be awesome if WvW could have some exclusive skins for the hardcore WvW’ers (maybe include a little PvE to “make” or something, similar to how legendaries are MOSTLY PvE with a little WvW)

I rock the order of whispers set (without the helm), with a bright pink afro, with the Conjurer mantle (the one with the feathers). It gives me a kind of…ninja-Elton John look!

Another way to see how the quip looks on a mesmer is go on yours and preview it on the TP. I’ve seen it a few times on mesmers that do sword/pistol dps, and it looks pretty cool

Silver.9084:

I’ve been 1v1ing phantasm mesmers and finding it really hard to beat them outside a point, like in an open field 1v1.

What beats phantasm mesmer? And how?

The best thing I’ve found is actually a shatter confusion build, with using some stealth attacks and a clone factory. If you stealth and dodge (making a clone), the enemy phantasms don’t know which to attack, and if you stack up confusion, the phantasm mesmer has to choose to either take the hit to summon another, or wait until it goes way, during which you can attack. But they are tough! Sword/touch+sword/pistol dps mesmers do pretty well too!

I’ve also found that with certain graphic settings, the range of the portal is just when the trees start to deres. The reason, my guess, that there is no range indicator is because the range is so long, people would have a hard time knowing when they’ve hit that spot. The better thing to do would be to have the skill go grey when you’re out of range of your entrance portal so you cant hit it.

Also, people have told me in the past that the vertical direction doesn’t count towards the range. I tried this, and did a purely vertical portal from the top of RS to the bottom (not outside of rata, just jumping down the inside of it to the bottom), and it went out of range, while being right below the entrance portal. So, the vertical aspect must be included.

Thanks for the post snowreap! Very informative!

Well unless they manually change the ratings, the current ratings WILL be used for the first match. Then they will change accordingly, but it will take time. So, the current ratings will be correct for the first few matches, unless they manually change them.

And yes, I am a T2 player. But i have also been a T3, T4 and T1 player (I’ve stuck with TC since the beginning, so I’ve bounced around). I look at the current system and I see the issue with it: it can punish servers (mostly high ranked servers), for being randomly matched against a much lower server. The way glicko works is that if a high ranked server faces a low ranked server, the high ranked server can still lose rating, even if they win, so it can effectively be a lose-lose situation. There can easily be an environment, where for instance, a rank 5 server face a match with a rank 9 server, while the rank 6 server faces a rank 7. The Rank 5 server might actually lose rank if they win, if the rank 6 server wins by enough (with the absense of the rank 5 server), which is probably why T1/T2 players tend to see it with more of a negative light. The new system can be good for fixing stagnant matches, but, and this is something that people from lower tiers haven’t answered: how far out of your tier do you want to face? If you make the random range half of what it is, you will still not have stagnant matches, but you will only, for the most part, face opponents within a tier of you. There won’t be any silly rank 1 vs rank 8 matches. That is mostly what I am trying to propose. Not that the new system is totally bad, just that it needs to be tweaked. It will allow lower tier servers that “belong” higher ranked to move up at a more natural rate.

You talk about the point of view from the lower tier server, which is valid from their point of view. But think of it from a higher ranked. If we win, the higher tier server, if faced against a server over a tier below it, will probably still lose rating. So, for them, its just a fight to not lose as much, so there is less incentive. The issue is the bounds between the tiers are “definite”( i.e. a rank 6 server won’t face a rank 7 unless they both move up, or r6 moves to r7 and r7 moves to r8, etc). If you make the random range from -0.5 to 0.5, then there is still a good chance that they will face, even rank 5 to rank 7. The ONLY difference it makes is it makes it very rare for the match ups like rank 1 to rank 8, etc. That is what shouldn’t happen, in my opinion.

Dayra.7405:

We are now rank 1 since friday. We were stuck in T2 for 10 weeks, having crushed always the same other servers there for 10 weeks, till we finally managed to bridge the large boarder.
Just to have crushed T1 now two times. The old system was broken by design. Anything else will be better.

All servers will have the highest chance of getting similar rated servers, and the same change to get a weaker or a stronger, except the last 2, they are always crushed in EU no difference which server you place there as the third.

Actually, with the current parameters, there is a higher chance for a match to have a 3 rank different than a 2. In fact, a match up like there is now, with a rank different of 2 is only ~20%. That’s why I’ve been trying to point out. The new method CAN be better, IF they tweak the random number range. With the current system, it is more likely to have matches with a rank 1 vs a rank 4 than a rank 1 vs a rank 3. You’re right, the new system is definitely broken, and I’ve been part of many times where TC has jumped up a tier. It takes lots of work, and most of the time it relies on a server from above to fall apart in some way. It should be set so that a rank 4 server and rank 3 can swap places on times, not that a rank 1 and rank 4 should swap. While the rank 4 server might do well in the “higher” match up, the teams facing the rank 1 might not fare as well.

Dayra.7405:

NA-T4 and T5 are stuck with imbalanced matches now since 2 month.

With these new system you have the same chance to get a weaker opponent, than you have to get a stronger opponent.

Being trapped in an imbalanced match enforces blowouts, not have one from time to time.

But with the current statistics, in fact, theres a smaller chance of you getting a match “in tier”, than out. You’re right, a T4 server could equal probability of facing a T3 or T5 server, as well as a T2 or T6 server. So, the T4 server might finally get to have a win, but what about the other server? Or, how would the T4 server feel if they went against a T2 server? It might be a different person server, but it probably won’t be much happier for them. The current statistics make it acutally fairly likely for a match up to be a blow out, its just whether or not you’re the server dominating, or being dominated. Their new method actually, statistically, CAN work out well, with a better range ~-0.5->0.5. This would ensure that you can still fight outside your tier still.

You’re statement that "With these new system you have the same chance to get a weaker opponent, than you have to get a stronger opponent. " forgets one important thing: what about the weaker server? If people are concerned with blow outs, they have to look at the matches as a WHOLE, not just “what will my server get.” Yes, your server might be a lucky one, and be rank 8 and face a rank 12 server. SO, what about the rank 12 server? The matches must be looked at as a whole to determine the fairness, especially when using the glicko server. It would be drastically unfair for a rank 4 server to face a rank 8, by pure chance, and lose enough rating to drop to rank 5, even if they win. This however, is a possibility under the new system, with the current parameters. I repeat this again, a server should NEVER be punished, especially not be losing a rank, etc, for winning and doing well, ESPECIALLY when the matches are purely random, and out of their control. If they tweak their parameters, it should allow that the tiers already in constant blow outs face new people, but also make it so that the matches are still somewhat balanced (3rd place T4 verse 1st or 2nd place T5).

Bogey.5423:

Handin.4032:

AND let WvW’ers get legendaries and map completion (a WvW one) purely in WvW. Some of us are mostly pure WvW and don’t like doing much grinding in PvE for stuff, so its almost equally unfair to tell people who want to only WvW “You must grind hundreds of T6 mats, lots of dungeons, and get 94% of the map”, if you’re argument is “PvE’ers have to do 6% of the stuff they don’t like, but can then do all the other stuff they do like”.

Whenever this argument comes up, with a PvE’er saying stuff like “we don’t like how we cant get that last 6% by walking into the map”, and WvW’ers say “we don’t like how we have to get that last 94%, doing all those hearts, PoIs, SP’s, etc”, they almost always call us selfish…which is just silly. We’re not saying you’re wrong, we’re saying you’re right. You don’t want to do the 6%, we don’t want to do the 94%, so, they should fix that.

Just to clarify, since you quoted me, I’m full WvW player. I just feel that map completion achievement is really PvE thing, since it does require a lot of PvE to complete. I feel rather foolish when attack some PvEer that has no desire to do any PvP, but just need few locations for map completion. If I realize that it is a PvE ‘tourist’, then I back off and let them get their locations at peace. I rather fight (and maybe lose) with player that is prepared to fight in WvW. Call me old softie.

Server rotation might help PvEer to get that map completion, but it is still rather silly to have people that do not want to really do WvW wandering in maps and taking spots in WvW. PvEer that has done 94% of map completion will try to do rest of it too and if it takes a lot of waiting in spawn, they will do it and we wait in ques. Mostly it is just that if we are not getting some sparkly things, then others must suffer until we do and best if all suffer (PvEers and WvWer alike).

Oh no no, I was agreeing with you basically. they should be separate, however, I think the issue then becomes what do you do with legendaries? Would they become an only PvE thing (since if they get rid of map completion in WvW for them, people will keep whining about the 500 badges for them), or would they make 2 different versions…or?

Dayra.7405:

“If at that point our simulation is still generating bad match-ups we can absolutely look at lowering the range.”

So if the server come closer in rating, this can and likely will be countered lowering the range.

When Glicko-2 will actually work after a while the current artificial distances between ratings based on the tier boundaries will be replaced by a distance that is based on performance in the matches. An adequate range should therefore have it easier than currently to avoid blow-outs

Yup, read what I posted there. I have stated several times that the servers will take several match ups for this to happen. In the mean time, if they have too many bad matches, it will do more harm than good. They should start with a small range, then go larger. That will allow non-stagnant matches, allow the ratings to even out, but not have too many bad matches.

Dayra.7405:

@Handin Look at: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Statistics-of-the-new-ranking-system/2082624

I’ve seen it, its my thread :P what about it? If you’re talking about them saying that if the matches are still unstable, then they’ll reduce the range, then they should start with the reduced range FIRST. Knowing them, they’ll take several blow out matches to figure out their range is too high, which could kill a server WvW population easily. They should start with the smaller range, and if the matches are still too stagnant, then they should increase it. Not wait to see how bad it is, then fix it.

Bogey.5423:

Exclude WvW maps from map completion and make WvW map locations give WXP. Win-win. No annoyed PvErs that need few locations for map completion and WvWrs are not stuck with people that do not even wan’t to play WvW.

AND let WvW’ers get legendaries and map completion (a WvW one) purely in WvW. Some of us are mostly pure WvW and don’t like doing much grinding in PvE for stuff, so its almost equally unfair to tell people who want to only WvW “You must grind hundreds of T6 mats, lots of dungeons, and get 94% of the map”, if you’re argument is “PvE’ers have to do 6% of the stuff they don’t like, but can then do all the other stuff they do like”.

Whenever this argument comes up, with a PvE’er saying stuff like “we don’t like how we cant get that last 6% by walking into the map”, and WvW’ers say “we don’t like how we have to get that last 94%, doing all those hearts, PoIs, SP’s, etc”, they almost always call us selfish…which is just silly. We’re not saying you’re wrong, we’re saying you’re right. You don’t want to do the 6%, we don’t want to do the 94%, so, they should fix that.

Yes Khayoss, the evening of the ratings would normally be a good thing. HOWEVER, since the new match up system can do randomly, within say, 200 rating points, the closer the servers are in the rating, the much higher of a chance of a total blow out, and no one likes those. So, servers with drastically different populations will be closer in rating, meaning they can more often be matched together. The tiers will “still” exist, in some sense, matches just won’t be strictly in those tiers. The statistics you mentioned assume the CURRENT rating distribution. If the ratings get more even, which is what the devs hope for, then it will most likely become MORE probably for blow out matches, not less likely. However, NO dev has yet showed any reliable data to show to people what they actually expect, and to prove to us that they have actually thought this out. They show us the example on the press release, then tell us “But that example is totally worthless and not what we’re expecting. But, we won’t show you that, since you know, that’d be too overtly helpful!”

Maladon.5760:

The problem isn’t the first week of matchups. The problem will be a few weeks down the line when higher ranked servers have been bled of ratings points by being matched up with lower ranked servers. At that point it’s very possible for really ugly matches to occur.

That’s a very great point! As we all know, if a high ranked server faces a low ranked server, they will almost for sure lose ratings points, even if they win. The lower ranked team as well will probably GAIN points. This will effectively balance out the rating points, while the servers will still have the same population balance, and the rankings will probably stay fairly static, just the difference between the ranks in rating points will decrease. This means down the line there will be a much larger chance of blow out matches, unless they drastically decrease the rank for random numbers, or change the way the matches are scored.

Snowreap.5174:

the current ratings are not correct; this is one of the reasons this change is being made — in order to allow some matches to occur outside of your normal tier, so that the ratings can be corrected.

see this post, from page 2 of this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/New-matchup-system-official-info/2082413

-ken

Snowreap, thanks for showing those match ups! In my thread, where I showed similar statistics, I just showed the odds for matches with rank differences, so it was nice to see that, for a given server, what the exact odds for every server were (something I admit I was a bit lazy to do). If you want to add those to my thread so we can get all the statistics on one big page, that’d be amazing, and I’d be very very grateful!