Guild Wars 2

Rusha.4725:

I’m a Gandarian player for a long time and only playing WvW(mostly EB) nothing else. This is my evaluation about the server.
It’s not about great fights or superb guilds, its about habbits.

-If there is no commander log out or switch to a BL with an online active commander.
-If we can gather enough zerg power to destroy anything, it turns out a loot bag hunting session instead of capturing or defending.
-There is an endless discussion about SM if it’s important or not.
-Nearly no one cares about dolyaks or upgrading camps. They are there for experience and karma.
-%90 of golem attacks from our side occur at late night-early morning just to troll enemy. If we capture an enemy keep, thats because someone bored and throwed some golems at 5am. It has never been a tactic. Golems = Trolling machines.
-There is always at least 10 commanders in EB without activating their blue icons just because their high esteem may get hurt or its tiresome. Because of that there is no active commanders in EB %70 of the time.
-If we have outmanned buff no one cares about losing a fully upgraded t3 tower with lots of siege on it. It’s normal to lose it because we were outmaned even if it’s defendable by 5 people.
-Gandara borderlands and EB are our first priorities, second is JP, third is daily, fourth leveling another alt, fifth petting the cat and maybe sixth one is the other borderlands. Never attack other borderlands before ours is fully safe.
-Our first supply sources are unfinished upgrading towers.
-If 3 trebs attacking, repair the wall but never build anti siege.
-It is impossible for us to put 2 rams infront of a gate. The first one comes instantly and if someone ask for a second, people will throw five and none of them are going to get complete.

I can see you play EB quite a lot, although some of your points are definitely valid!
Personally I’ve seen more coordination happening this week than any other, which is encouraging.
Although we have a few great commanders, we do need a few more of similar quality to guide the smaller guilds and pugs that Gandara is infamous for.

Victory.2879:

Sadly the major flaw in the Wexp system is that instead of taking the approach that 30 people tagged each player in the opposing zerg and should therefore get 1/30th Wexp each, Anet went for the simple solution of ‘one kill, get eg 50Wexp’, meaning the highest ranks come fastest for those who can tag the most.

It should not be possible to get 1k Wexp in one battle lasting seconds or a minute- how will escorting dolyaks ever compete with that?

Now the cat is out the bag it’s too late to fix it, and even if they do the rank 100+ (read 1000+ by time by fixes come in) will keep their ‘rank’ and wvw advantages over those that didn’t join the zerg/karma train Wexp express.

Isn’t that always the case?

But progress is progress. Don’t hold it back for the sake of what was.
There won’t be any turning back of the clock. I think it’s a case of being thankful for what you get.
That said, I see encouragement in the fact that Anet now realise that 30% of the people who log on, queue for WvW.
I just hope there’s a change in the resources they apply to this part of the game.

The deck needs a shuffle anyways.
The top tiers only stay there because they’re the top tiers.
It’s about time the kitten hit the fan.

Please have the foresight NOT to reward for taking supplies from Keep or Tower… just saying

To those arguing that this is a great defense against zerg tactics, it’s also a great defense against a smaller group, to the extent that a smaller group wouldn’t stand a chance.

This can only promote zerg tactics even further.

jaker.3256:

hope you like
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB-QcZTahGQ

I wouldn’t use that as a “promo”.
So many short clips, with the wipes edited out.

Tribio.8531:

Jacklo.4230:

Tribio.8531:

Jacklo.4230:

If Thief is so easy, why does it not dominate the leaderboards?

Probably because when in stealth you aren’t capping anything..

Well ok, valid point, but look at the makeup of the teams competing in tournaments.
Are they overrun with thieves? Not at all, they are still a minority.

If they were so OP, other classes wouldn’t be capping anything because they’d be dead right?

Do remember that this forum is about WvW, and not PvP.. Stealth in WvW is a real pain in the kitten.. You roam around solo, checking your surroundings constantly.. While all of a sudden you get hit from something with 5k dmg and it disappears again..

Also, as was mentioned: In PvP the ranks are dominated by Guardians (heavy armor + healing) and Ele (bunker builds?), so they can outlast a simple thief..

So it comes down to the build then?
Play WvW, kitten your toughness and vitality and you’ll suffer to high burst damage. Simples.

Tribio.8531:

Jacklo.4230:

If Thief is so easy, why does it not dominate the leaderboards?

Probably because when in stealth you aren’t capping anything..

Well ok, valid point, but look at the makeup of the teams competing in tournaments.
Are they overrun with thieves? Not at all, they are still a minority.

If they were so OP, other classes wouldn’t be capping anything because they’d be dead right?

Waffler.1257:

Gab Superstar.4059:

Waffler.1257:

After reading this post I decided to go mess around in sPvP with a thief again to see if they were really as bad as the OP says. Haven’t played a thief in 2-3 months and after a couple of games was still able to kill everyone in a couple of seconds and stealth my way out of any mess no matter how much I screwed up. Had the highest scores in the games I played by a large margin and even got someone to whisper me “l2p” after killing him multiple times effortlessly. Thieves have nothing to complain about.

Edit: Also tested out the perma-stealth build and it still works quite fine.

Typical empirical proof in these kinds of discussions: Someone can kill someone with something so that thing must obviously be OP.

Please point out where I said thieves were OP.

The whole post “suggested” Thief is OP and was obviously the point you were trying to make.

Tell me though, why is it that the sPvP leaderboards are mostly Guardians and Elementalists?

If Thief is so easy, why does it not dominate the leaderboards?

Waffler.1257:

After reading this post I decided to go mess around in sPvP with a thief again to see if they were really as bad as the OP says. Haven’t played a thief in 2-3 months and after a couple of games was still able to kill everyone in a couple of seconds and stealth my way out of any mess no matter how much I screwed up. Had the highest scores in the games I played by a large margin and even got someone to whisper me “l2p” after killing him multiple times effortlessly. Thieves have nothing to complain about.

Edit: Also tested out the perma-stealth build and it still works quite fine.

Of course you did. Now prove it.

JaeKeun.5680:

Downed state needs to be there, but it also needs to be a lot less unbalanced. Eles and thieves, and to a certain extent mesmers have extremely strong downed states.

It doesn’t help that those are the strongest professions for WvW overall either…

Don’t tar all thieves with the same label.
I’m a tanky thief and often one of the last to go down. My down state does nothing for me when there’s nobody around to rez.

Dudses.3267:

the update was great
I though it helped in wvw

It helped WvW short term – and people have enjoyed the experience of no culling.

Now we have a new feature called “skill lag” to replace culling. I fear if that’s not fixed pretty darn quick, the last patch will be for naught.

NinjaYoshi.3429:

That was changed in, I think, the January patch, if not the February patch, in an effort to nerf Stealth, and make it so you can’t skip dungeon content. Now NPCs don’t lose aggro if you go stealth unless you manage to break combat.

Thanks for that, I only recently returned to the game so missed that one.

@ Rezzing surprisingly quickly vs Slowly…
It depends how much damage they have taken after being downed. Some you can rez in a second or 2, others… well you’d be foolish to try on your own in the thick of a fight.

I’ve noticed recently in WvW, that when I use stealth to lose a NPC, it doesn’t have the same effect as it used to do. The same is true of my downed skill that stealths me (I’m a thief).

Previously if an NPC was attacking, I would stealth and the NPC would return to it’s spot pretty much immediately. Now they hang around – and in some cases carry on attacking even while stealthed? I’m not 100% sure on that last one, it was a close call but I’m sure I popped Refuge a second or two before I died, but the NPC carried on hitting me.

Anyone else noticed this?

I would like to see an increase in the party size, particularly in WvW.
Currently it’s difficult to coordinate anything other than a camp cap. Increasing party size to 10 or more would improve things considerably.

It might even have the positive side effect of reducing the zerging (and therefore skill lag) that currently happens when everyone sticks around a commander because they have no clue where anyone else is located.

It does appear to be a server problem, but I think there’s more to it than that.
I play in a small guild on T4 and have experienced skill lag. I’ve noticed it even when in a small group far away from any zergs.
However, the reason I say “there’s more to it” is because in Teamspeak, some of my friends are complaining of severe skill lag at times, when my game and others is playing perfectly well and we’re in the same location. In this case it can’t be JUST server lag or I would be affected too.

I would encourage everyone to send a ticket and do the tests as Anet suggested.

thayes.4851:

Jacklo.4230:

Mizhas.8536:

Its funny to read that we, Baruch, always outnumber you 4:1.
Hovewer i keep looking at those KISS blobs and wonder if you guys are playing the same game.

Btw i,m one of the [CS] and yeah, i lol when i read about fighting 4:1 when both KISS and FURY came several times to the south garrison gate to wipe 10 of us with all your numbers.

Gl guys, i won,t feed the troll any longer.

The best I’ve seen BB play all week, was near reset at the north camp of GB. They occupied the interest of several (drunk/tired/eager) Gandarians, with a small force at the east entrance. It worked!

When we left the vicinity to chase them down, another 20-30 arrived from the west.
By the time we got back to defend, all was almost lost, but we managed it – true with some help of being close to spawn.
But seriously, I’ve seen very little skill from BB the last week, often getting beaten by much smaller forces.

What BB lack in skill, they make up in numbers and that is a legitimate tatic. Let’s not make this another blob thread. If BB can only fight by overwhelming in numbers then so be it. It seems to work for them.

Only they don’t make for it in numbers. We have pwned their kittens with half the numbers all week.
In no way was I suggesting that particular fight was a blob. Just that they surprised us, for once.

Mizhas.8536:

Its funny to read that we, Baruch, always outnumber you 4:1.
Hovewer i keep looking at those KISS blobs and wonder if you guys are playing the same game.

Btw i,m one of the [CS] and yeah, i lol when i read about fighting 4:1 when both KISS and FURY came several times to the south garrison gate to wipe 10 of us with all your numbers.

Gl guys, i won,t feed the troll any longer.

The best I’ve seen BB play all week, was near reset at the north camp of GB. They occupied the interest of several (drunk/tired/eager) Gandarians, with a small force at the east entrance. It worked!

When we left the vicinity to chase them down, another 20-30 arrived from the west.
By the time we got back to defend, all was almost lost, but we managed it – true with some help of being close to spawn.
But seriously, I’ve seen very little skill from BB the last week, often getting beaten by much smaller forces.

Azure Prower.8701:

It happens when the person’s location is out of sync with the server. The server is saying they’re in one spot while on their client it says they’re at another.

So why can a NPC rez them at the same spot?
That’s why I put that in there. There’s obviously more to it than lag/rubber banding, and I’ve spiraled outwards, upwards of 50m from their position, and still nothing.

Jacklo.4230:

As usual, Gandara had a bad reset, but I’m sure we’ll pull things together again later in the week.

What is it though?
We have a large population of (UK) residents, where others seem to consist of more eastern (as in beyond the North Sea) residents.
Do we go to bed earlier, drink more, are more relaxed?
I would have thought we had an advantage being the most western of Europe with regards timezones.

Jeez, (UK) without the brackets appears as (okitten) on the forums. That’s a bit biased ANet!

As usual, Gandara had a bad reset, but I’m sure we’ll pull things together again later in the week.

What is it though?
We have a large population of (UK) residents, where others seem to consist of more eastern (as in beyond the North Sea) residents.
Do we go to bed earlier, drink more, are more relaxed?
I would have thought we had an advantage being the most western of Europe with regards timezones.

Jayne.9251:

I’ve seen some players with a partial bug like that. You try to rev and it stops the process. Spamming the F button seems to be a work around.

Spamming the “F” button has worked on some occasions, but not many.

ErlendR.6107:

Is that, a bug ><

I would guess so when you can rez everyone around them, but nobody can rez a certain individual.

What is this weird bug where you can’t rez people at times, yet the NPCs can, in the exact same spot?

Why do we have to do SO MUCH PvE to do world completion?
Surely for the honored title of World Completion, you should be familiar with all areas of the game?

Well I’m sorry if I don’t agree on all counts. Swap colours, I don’t care, but for the sake of world completion, kitten!
I’ve been playing since launch and I’m only 50% (ish) towards completion because I don’t PvE.
Hey lets make it even easier for PvE players, while WvWers are shown the shoulder once again.
If you participate on a regular basis, you will visit all areas of WvW. If not, suck it up like we have to.

DevonCarver.5370:

naphack.9346:

What’s up today?
Did someone die?
Someone got possessed?
So much red in the forums!

Coffee?

That’s where you’ve been going wrong guys.
You should have been sending coffee, not cookies!

I’ve seen that too and when I have gotten loot from them, it’s been junk.

Convenant.7092:

Jacklo.4230:

Great idea OP and before tonight I would have agreed.
Except, for the last 2 days, all 3 sides in WvW have been operating huge zergs.
Tonight was different, we all decided to break up the zergs and go as much smaller groups – to experience the worst lag I have ever experienced in game, in areas far away from major activity. This was T4 on Gandara.

Back to the drawing board, it’s obvious the server load is too high and their architecture can’t support the number of players right now, regardless of location.

I’ve had the contrary experience actually… even more so than actually breaking the zerg down, spreading the action throughout the zones is very viable tactical wise, and is also healthy for lag.

Well it wasn’t just me, everyone on TS spoke of it from different parts of Europe and even USA.
I hope that it was some coincidence that our server was suffering severe lag and it wasn’t an overall experience.

Great idea OP and before tonight I would have agreed.
Except, for the last 2 days, all 3 sides in WvW have been operating huge zergs.
Tonight was different, we all decided to break up the zergs and go as much smaller groups – to experience the worst lag I have ever experienced in game, in areas far away from major activity. This was T4 on Gandara.

Back to the drawing board, it’s obvious the server load is too high and their architecture can’t support the number of players right now, regardless of location.

Sequoia Mint.4803:

drongas.4189:

long live YOLO!!!

Indeed. The Bigger the Blob the sweeter the loot bags. Yo Yolo Next time you run into a tower all willy nilly you better make sure theres less than 10 inside defending against your 50+. Sorry about Wiping you at the stairs of Red Lake. I was all like “Oops Did We do That?!” and Yolo was all like “We only Live Once!” The funniest part is that less than 20 held your blob in check on Your own BL for hours. I guess its true what they say….
More Blobby More Problems

Yeah, that was quite embarrassing. My thief managed to get to the Lords room and fought for a few minutes alone behind your siege, expecting more of us to push through at any moment. It didn’t happen lol.
In fact, had even 5 people pushed through at that point, I think we could have taken it.
To be fair, it was a pretty mindless attack and nobody was playing too seriously. Just having fun.

Yeah, but he already said the damage against players was fine. It’s the targets such as Rams and Golems that the OP was pointing out. Plus the defense against siege is only 5% compared to 25% more damage.

Do WvWers really care about skins so much?
Personally I’m looking to squeeze every extra FPS I can get for the zergs.
I can’t even tell what colour your armour is, that’s if I can see anything but your nameplate of course.

Valik Shin.9027:

Portal weren’t as big an issues as mass invis. The enemy portal at least showed up on the ground even if the enemy didn’t

It’s good that you could see the portal, but you had no idea how many would come through it, or that sometimes you couldn’t get a skill off when they did.
I found myself running from portals with 3 players at times. It’s like “it’s spitting, everyone inside” (you might have to be from the UK to understand that).

Serophous.9085:

Jacklo.4230:

Serophous.9085:

Well, you see, there are these instances where people run in less thakittenerg, and sometimes in groups of just 5-10. And usually when we run into a group of equal or slightly greater size, me running up and behind, causing confusion and panic, usually works, as when a player goes down before my haste buff even ends and I can stealth away, their friends usually have 1 or 2 people rezzing that person, thus, 2-3 people arent fighting.

So that’s great, you just described the focus of the kind of groups that get decimated by a skilled thief.

its not that hard, hence it being lawl worthy. And thats what i was talking about. you’re the one that had ‘zergs’ on the brain. But i accept your apology

To be fair, I’m not that type of thief. I’m specced for group play and zergs are all I seem to encounter. However, anyone who stops to rez in a sticky situation is a baddy in my book. You WILL die to a thief or any other high dps class when you do that.

Serophous.9085:

Well, you see, there are these instances where people run in less thakittenerg, and sometimes in groups of just 5-10. And usually when we run into a group of equal or slightly greater size, me running up and behind, causing confusion and panic, usually works, as when a player goes down before my haste buff even ends and I can stealth away, their friends usually have 1 or 2 people rezzing that person, thus, 2-3 people arent fighting.

So that’s great, you just described the focus of the kind of groups that get decimated by a skilled thief.

Serophous.9085:

Jacklo.4230:

Yeah a thief can simply sneak behind the zerg and take them out one by one!!!
Are you playing Tier 8? Seriously!
I tried that tactic tonight and got nowhere but dead very quickly. Perhaps I’m bad, or perhaps I’m playing against people who know what they’re doing? I dunno.
Either way, thief isn’t a ticket to glory, except against a player who isn’t built to handle one.
Tell me, how unbalanced are they in sPvP?

I’m sorry, I reread my post and looking for when I saw ‘zerg’, or where i said I ‘killed a player’.

Now this is getting silly. If you’re really going down the route of semantics, what does this mean… “Oh the lawls i was having going behind people’s groups” or “and i still kept downing them or weakening their forces. It was so stupid”?

Diabolus Anur Kaya.8379:

I bow to your greatness you win… I just made of that up and so did Serophous…. And I refuse to get into a flame war with you, so you win. Go out and celebrate!!! You’ve earned it.

Well ok, take the easy way out. Someone said it and it must be true.
Where do you see the sPvP players moaning about thieves? It doesn’t happen and you don’t see sPvP teams with nothing but thieves. It doesn’t work.
If you play a class with a build that leaves you vulnerable, or are not at the top of your game, some thieves are going to make you look inferior.
Lord knows I’ve learned this the hard way in every game I’ve played. And guess what… as in Rift and other games, if they can’t beat you 1 vs 1, they’ll team up and beat you 2 vs 1. It’s their mentality.
For clarity, I do play thief, but not the builds you’re discussing.

Diabolus Anur Kaya.8379:

Serophous.9085:

Diabolus Anur Kaya.8379:

I am just looking forward to the end of the “perma stealth” aspect of the thief that has been abused in wvwvw.

To better understand it I got my thief up to level 80 and took her into wvw and was amazed at how easy it was to hit and vanish on a consistent basis, and yes thieves do hit hard.
When it became apparent that with just a little bit of tweaking and even less experience that playing a thief this way enabled even someone without any real pvp skill, like myself, to effectively tie up and slowly pick off groups of 7-8 people or less without any real danger to myself I had to put her away. It wasn’t even amusing it was actually pitiful.

This being said I still really hope that the developers have come up with a way to even the playing field where the thief is buffed in a way to not have them go the way of the dinosaur.

I did the same thing, figuring if i knew how it was played, i could counter it. Oh the lawls i was having going behind people’s groups when my group went head on into them. They focused more on aoeing or trying to stop me than the group before them, and i still kept downing them or weakening their forces. It was so stupid.

And at least anet fixed the ‘never gonna cap this supply post’ abuse.

Haha too funny that’s exactly the same reason I did that for..

As far as Jacklo (post above) goes that’s even funnier because I know more than a few people who did the same and had identical if not exactly the same results…

So in perspective, how many thieves do you actually see pull this stunt off, against decent players I might add?
Yeah, you’ll see a few videos here and there but they’re mostly laughable where the targets have no clue.
Show me a single video of a well known party/guild/squad who go down to a single thief. You won’t find one because it’s a myth brought about by baddies. You’ll find plenty of pugs getting decimated however. Go figure.

Yeah a thief can simply sneak behind the zerg and take them out one by one!!!
Are you playing Tier 8? Seriously!
I tried that tactic tonight and got nowhere but dead very quickly. Perhaps I’m bad, or perhaps I’m playing against people who know what they’re doing? I dunno.
Either way, thief isn’t a ticket to glory, except against a player who isn’t built to handle one.
Tell me, how unbalanced are they in sPvP?

The biggest abusers of culling were the zerg portals. A thief can’t help the fact that culling existed, although some no doubt benefited from it. What would you have them do… wait for 5 seconds after each attack so you can kill them?
Portals where used to actively exploit this however.
What will be funny is that the same people complaining about thieves, will be the same people who still get their kitten handed to them from the same thieves.

I could have missed this, but I can’t find any recent info on the March update yet.

We’re almost 2 thirds the way into March now, does anyone know what we are to expect with relation to WvW?

I’m sad to say that the drop rate appears to be a global change.
I’d go so far as to say that WvW drop rates are just a by-product of this global change rather than specifically implemented to give us a break.

I’m seeing reports of drop rates increased throughout the game.
I suppose I’m happy that I can actually earn money now in WvW, but relative to PvEers, I’m no better off.

Gorrok.3187:

Greetings to the guardian from Gandara fighting me in the south-east camp (sorry, don’t know what it’s called in english :P) of kodash-borderland at 4:30 a.m.
fighted for minutes until we noticed we couldn’t kill each other
so we “bowed” in the end and moved apart

Respect!

Didn’t you notice our borderlands almost belonged to AR before that time?
We were managing a zerg fest in BL. Later we had our share of EB.
Not a bad effort for our first week in T3.

From what I’ve seen so far, it hasn’t changed zerging so much. Now most of the group just hold back with a few (upto 25) attacking. Once an entrance is established, bam.
In many ways it makes zerging easier.

This could backfire into a stupid decision, or maybe things will change?

Nabrok.9023:

Jacklo.4230:

I love how people say “do the math, there’s not much difference”… and then go ahead and compare Ascended with Exotic.

For WvWers, who don’t PvE, try comparing Ascended against Invaders for the real truth of how this gear affects WvW-only players.

I don’t PvE at all and I’m sickened at the thought of waiting until March or whenever it might be, before I can even think of catching up.

You buy the rare invaders with karma, but you can also buy more powerful exotic versions with badges. I apologize if you’re aware of this, but it’s not clear from your post.

I’d feel the same way if there were ascended items for every slot, but there aren’t. It’s 3 slots at the most … and even then most of the other primarily WvW people won’t have them either.

If I can compete with an upscaled level 15 alt, you can compete having 3 slots that don’t quite have the best stats in the game.

I have bought all my rare Invaders with Karma as you said.
I am aware I can buy better with badges but really? I haven’t bought anything with badges yet and still only have around 400, despite constant WvW for 4 hours or more pretty much every night, for months.

Took a break this last week because I feel I’m being forced to PvE in order to see any further progress with my character.

Rift made the same mistake of catering only to the PvE crowd. I waited 6 months in the hopes of improvements to Rift openworld PvP, but it wasn’t forthcoming and I moved on.

I fear GW2 is heading in the same direction.

Christos de Soufre.3802:

Invader’s is exotic. If you’re using rares despite doing nothing but WvW, that’s your own fault. I make a lot of money doing nothing but WvW all day. I bought my first set of exotics with a lot of the money I made in WvW.

Well I have roughly the same amount of gold now as I did 2 months ago and it doesn’t go up because anyone who cares about WvW spends it on upgrades and siege equipment.

I chose to buy into GW2 specifically because of WvW. I’m totally burnt out on PvE after playing MMO’s for over 10 years. Yes it’s my choice, but I thought that was what GW2 was all about.

I love how people say “do the math, there’s not much difference”… and then go ahead and compare Ascended with Exotic.

For WvWers, who don’t PvE, try comparing Ascended against Invaders for the real truth of how this gear affects WvW-only players.

I don’t PvE at all and I’m sickened at the thought of waiting until March or whenever it might be, before I can even think of catching up.