Guild Wars 2

Luvpie.8350:

well hopefully some form of population balancing will fix the 5v15 situation for most timezones.

That’s just throwing people at the problems.
I have been around when 5 vs 15 in a tower was still possible – so I know that it works in theory and it would be great to get some of that back.

Rauderi.8706:

mrauls.6519:

Lanaeris.3845:

mrauls.6519:

So, does this include class balancing?

Class balancing is a PvP issue. I do not believe this idea deserves any dev time because most of us would like to see content instead.

You’re only speaking for yourself, though. I want to see more content added too. Class balancing is a big issue in PvP, and it should be addressed soon.

Balance team also has nothing to do with content generators. No reason not to have class balance and content.

Unfortunately the balance is really off as it has been neglected for too long – I guess a lot of people are needed to fix it. We have been bashing each other’s heads in on the Thief forums since before June – all of us have different playstyles, favourite game modes, use different builds and different weapons. Even the 20+ of us lamenting about one single class couldn’t really come to any conclusions.
And this is the general forums, so you guys think that most players want content – it looks the other way around though if you look at that the pvp, wvw and all class forums.

Dusty Moon.4382:

But if a keep is T3, you can’t PvD any more as the gates are invulnerable to PvD. AC’s deserve the nerf or removal because so many are used where you can’t see them (eg. 3rd floor of SMC) it is ridiculous.

Also, A.Net should fix the camera issue with AC’s.

Build ballis, catas or trebs to get either the acs out or take on the walls.
I am usually one of those on the third floor defending SM – getting rams out with an AC takes ages and if it’s a full blown blob I can’t get their health down (and in most cases someone is also using an AC next or behind the gate – so even 2 ACs can’t do significant damage to a blob and the rams) – I can do all of that a lot faster with a mortar or better even cannon (because mortar needs the enemies to be a bit away) – I don’t know if you get my point: ACs are the weakest of all sieges be it against enemy siege or enemy players. They are however not in set places and have got a smaller range than the rest – still in most cases it’s really easy to get them out. Solution for an AC on the top of SM would be to build a cata a bit away from the gate – but not too far, otherwise my mortar would hit them – you can however build a lot of catas on the outer wall and have capable people on them, so you can bubble everything – you could also build shields for your people and rams (we did this – it works). I’d like to keep it this way and not make everything faceroll easy.

ETA. And yes, Anet should just revert all changes made to the cameras since last year – I guess no one is using first person view or action camera anyway. They could however make 3 different modes which have got different settings – that would be fine too.

BeepBoopBop.5403:

TBF, bringing a thief can be appropriate vs a necro heavy team. Me in a yolo-Q game in Diamond https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJlvYb8fmV0. Most situations though, the enemy team having a DH or good Power Rev will shut a Thief down.

Source: Thief main for 2 years that was forced to side-main 3 other classes when Thief became kitten several months back. June 23 patch brought SO many nerfs at once.

Use your necro stolen skill when they’re downed – I know it takes cast time, but it’s worth it.

Mike O Brien.4613:

Instead we’ll launch the quarterly update with improvements to Desert, use that as an opportunity to get the community’s feedback on those changes, then we’ll swap to Alpine when it’s ready.

I could bet that the WPs are one of those changes.

I’m pretty bad at remembering names or people and usually don’t read post histories – also there’s a lot of people with a similar name around.

My point still stands though. As long as other classes aren’t nerfed significantly there’s no reason to claim that thieves shouldn’t be able to 1 vs 1 – with the mobility they currently have.

Also: Kageseigi and you meant different kinds of mobility, I think.
Mobility in combat is being hampered with chill and slow (although I’m not sure that many classes can apply it) – so there is already counterplay and for my taste it’s too much counterplay actually. It’s not as if thieves or anyone can really move around like they want to (in combat). When it comes to travelling distances mobility isn’t really a combat skill, with that Kageseigi was right. And, like I said: Other classes can do that as well.

ETA: So maybe: We can’t really say what a thief should and shouldn’t have until we know what is going to happen with the other classes.

ETA²: I only remember Fat Disgrace because his char has got really skimpy clothes and I need to interfere with one of his duels because I got the blame for it while I didn’t do anything – so I’m haunting him (lie).
Carved your names into my desk and filled them with red ink, yo!

You really should bring this discussion to the pvp forums – a bunch of people will tell you that revenants are more mobile that thieves (debateable, I guess), that mesmers hit harder, can outstealth thieves and also have their portals, that scrappers can easily stealth and are incredibly tanky.
Your arguments as to why thieves shouldn’t be able to defend themselves are outdated since at least HoT.

Crossing fingers for everybody that the April update will be a huge step into the right direction and that all of us (anet and players alike) get some breathing room with that.
but it might well be that it will take quite a few patches to make pvp and wvw “good” again – I actually think wvw will need a lot of attention.
I get that a lot of PvE players are disappointed, but to me the core is more important than new stuff.

The main reason that made upgrades really difficult was supply. You had to spend supply on every upgrade. So: We come to EB, all our stuff has been taken, the enemy zerg is still around, we’re maybe 5. We cap a camp, a tower, one of the 5 should stay at the camp to wait for enough supply to upgrade, then go to the tower and order an upgrade: It’s just 4 who can go on capping the next stuff. That’s the main problem I had with the old upgrades. Also that people were often ordering upgrades while we were defending. Or no upgrades at all, because someone else should do it and then everything is paper the entire time.
I suggested that the upgrades should be tied to the outnumbered buff: those servers who have it get auto upgrades.
But in the end the whole thing is a lot more complex: If it were possible to defend paper or reinforced with some acs 5 vs 15, then auto upgrades wouldn’t be neccessary – but since 5 vs 15 always means that those 5 will lose, auto upgrades are kind of nice.
I get the problem that everything is upgrading for everybody equally.
Maybe the return of the ABLs means that we can give better feedback on all the other stuff and probably get back to a state of wvw that makes sense once again.

Sviel.7493:

I’m not a mind reader and you’re very stingy with details. I figured that when you said ‘fights’ you meant the same thing that everyone else was using the word for. Now, I’m not really sure what you mean at all.

I assumed that you knew the ABLs when you commented on them, I’m sorry, you obviously never experienced typical ABL fights around Hills and Bay – everybody else knows what I mean with it when I say it.
Other than that you’re not fun to talk with – so just leave it at that =)

Sviel.7493:

Jana.6831:

You’re wrong on this.
We had hour long fights around objectives, sometimes even for days because everything could be countered. Bay couldn’t counter Briar though – that was the only case.
The ABLS were a lot more strategical than DBL not only when it comes to siege, also camps.

Listen to yourself. Carefully.

We had fights = We fought with siege, we ran up to the enemies with siege, without siege, we called in reinforcements, we capped their BLs so they would leave ours and so on – do you now know what I mean with fights or do I have to listen to myself very carefully again?

ETA: And well, I guess I can’t convice you that your memories are wrong – but there’s good news for that: The ABLS are coming back and then you can see yourself that you can counter almost everything with siege and don’t have to run out of anything if you don’t want to. If you have people who know that on your server that is.
Btw: If you dislike the strategic aspect that much: EBG still is like it – you can counter most stuff from other objectives – and hey it works.

Sviel.7493:

Hills was a nightmare to defend. So was Bay. So were all of the towers. Garrison was alright in terms of inner, though outer was a lost cause.

Also, there was 0 creativity in siege spots. You either trebbed from inside a tower or abused the double (outer+inner) cata spots. If you were at Hills, you cata’d with impunity by hitting the rocks on the southern switchback or just went to the one wall and took it and inner down before anyone could stop you. It took less time to get on the map and break outer at a side keep than it did to run from Garri WP (or worse, spawn) to the keep.

The result was that defending a keep was only possible through repeated lord’s room fights. It worked well enough during prime time but was brutal if there was ever a brief mismatch in coverage. I don’t know how you remember it differently but I’m super interested in finding out.

You’re wrong on this.
We had hour long fights around objectives, sometimes even for days because everything could be countered. Bay couldn’t counter Briar though – that was the only case.
The ABLS were a lot more strategical than DBL not only when it comes to siege, also camps.

All other siege hits harder than ACs. Even if it’s ACs in a bunch. So after ACs get nerfed you guys cry about everything else until all there’s left is indistructable catas and rams and PvD.

Since when can’t you bubble against acs? I never really paid attention to it as one AC alone doesn’t kill me (70% zerker) but I was pretty certain they do protect against projectiles.

@JaKal: You can get ACs in inner out with either ACs outside – mortars, trebs or ballistas. That was always the case back in the day when you couldn’t get any siege on the walls out with your weaponskills AoE. You had to think to get into that tower – something people have unlearned.
And yes, they’re mostly the only possibilities to destroy catas and rams outside from inside – otherwise it would be pure Karma Train – so sorry but I don’t get your problem – I’m serious with that.

Kageseigi.2150:

Coronit.9432:

“I’m usually spamming choking gas to weaken the enemies which works really good. "
So in 900 range spamming choking gas and hoping they still are where you shot your blast-finisher to?

You shouldn’t need a Blast Finisher in order to weaken enemies if you are traited with Lotus Poison, correct?

EDIT: This makes me think… having never played DareDevil before, could it be effective to just stay with Shortbow the whole time and apply permanent Weakness the with a combination of Weakening Strikes and Lotus Poison + Bound?

You weaken enemies with poison no matter what – and I didn’t mean blasting my own poison fields – everyone who’s ever been in zergs knows there’s a lot of stuff on the ground – but alas – I know nothing

Every blasted field is a win – but there was something with necro fields – I forgot what it was though. It was incredibly important to blast them.

Edit: spelling

ETA: Yay, my signature is back woohoo.
On topic – I think I didn’t get your drift and answered another question than the one you had – I didn’t see that this guy thought I wanted to blast my own poison fields. No, I’m not chuckling right now – I’m really dead serious and stuff.
Btw: Poison is more useful against zergs and classes/buils you know have little condi clear. I think I tried it on some druids to no avail – I killed a heal druid the other day and have honestly no idea how. I think even blasting your poison fields against a daredevil would have little effect. Too much of a hassle to be really worth it.

Coronit.9432:

Entering the enemy with daggerstorm and steal? Seriously? If you play with SA you don´t do much damage, at least not enough to make a real difference

Did you read the cripple part? I’m slowing them down so my melee party can get to them.

Coronit.9432:

, the whirl end isn´t much help either and any halfway decent player gonna love you spining around him, instacleave and you are dead or have to waste another cd – shadowstep.

Umm, so what am I doing for now 2 years? Try it before you start your theorycrafting, alright? A dancing thief in the chaos of a zergfight is often missed and last night I was hit by a thief who daggerstormed along for ~3k. The whirl helps a lot – again: try it. The cripple helps a lot – try it. And I’m not using shadowstep, actually.

Coronit.9432:

50sec cd stunbreak, 20sec cd steal and 90sec elite daggerstorm for a bit of damage.

70 or 75 seconds – I’m using trickster.
And it’s a lot more than a bit of damage – try it?

Coronit.9432:

Sry, but that sounds to much like my old times at the beginning when I ran around in melee with D/D unicorn-build and thinking I actually acomplish something. A D/P normal gank-squad build is much more effectiv than that. Thanks to DrD you sruvive a kitten long time, too.

20 kills within 1 minute don’t sound too bad, do they? It’s hard to tell who is or isn’t accomplishing “the most” in a zergfight. Ganking single enemies is pretty much impossible since June – so good luck with your “single target focus”.

Coronit.9432:

The bigger the blobb-fight gets, the more redundat you become. Any other class would propably be more effective. And thats what I want – to be effective.

Yes, and no – that goes for everybody in a zerg/blob.

Coronit.9432:

And you don´t need full zerker, add a little bit of marauder and you get a lot of suvivability in tradeoff for a bit of power. Far better than using SA insead of DA, trickery or DrD.

My main is valk zerker – if you comment on something at least read it (I have 5 thieves in different gear/sometimes different builds and can do the same on all of them as the deciding factor is me – I don’t survive long in full zerker though = 2 of my thieves are full zerker but I rarely use them in blob/zergfights).
Marauder isn’t anything like my valk/zerker mix – I wish you people would finally look the stats up and don’t compare valk/zerker with it – it’s actually a valk/zerker/assassin’s mix.

I think my signature was banned.. now I’m sad..
Or amused – I’m uncertain.

ETA: Picture: A pretty typical situation of me in wvw – the commander is really fast though, that’s why he’s that far in front – he loves his guardian leap. And if you actually understand how daggerstorm works you know how to make the most of it. And now I expect it to be nerfed because someone said it’s good.

I know that everybody thinks I’m always offtopic, but actually I’m not.
I survived that fight contrahery to that other thief because I’m used to zergs and now even blobs. I started out as a zerg thief on one of the best servers that might have ever been, then turned roamer after the ferocity patch and when I came to EU, I started to run with zergs/blobs again.
So the (topic) bow goes the following: OP says thief is dead. Lexander says he has got the ultimate build with which thieves aren’t bad. I try to explain to him that all possible builds have already been tried, even his mystery build (I accidently came up with the meta build (not invented by me) when I was a noob ranger because the traits made the most sense – and we had a greater build diversity back then) and that the reason why he’s doing good is that his enemies are worse than him or that his teams are really good.
I can run with any of my thieves (5) in a zerg and have the nearly same outcome – a few of them run DA instead of CS, all have different armor – but it’s me who’s the factor (I don’t survive long in full zerker’s though).
Thieves have very much become unicorns – most people don’t really know what a good or bad thief is as most long time thief players have quit – so complimenting someone’s fairytale build “I have never seen anything like this” isn’t extraordinary.

And I can tell you guys what I’m doing in blobs:
Enemy melee party is undecided/tries to run away: Daggerstorm and steal to cripple them.
~5-10 Enemies on a spot are halflife: Daggerstorm to down them – even better with friendly AoE under me – the power of combos.
Pressure from the enemies is too high, I can’t really get frontline: I’m staying behind my melee party and daggerstorm through light and waterfields to heal them.
I can also blast waterfields, but it’s really hard to make them out – I do blast static fields while we’re running though, or the backliner’s waterfields if I’m close and see they’re low. I should more randomly spam blast though as it’s the best finisher in game – although whirl is nice too.
I’m usually spamming choking gas to weaken the enemies which works really good. Would be more effective if there were still warriors around as their banner doesn’t work in poison.
My SB autoattack hits 3 people at a range beyond 900.
If someone is downed I can rez and stealth them if I can get to them (which isn’t rare).
If someone is downed and being rezzed by someone else but I can’t get to them, they get my SR = heal and distraction.

Most of this probably wouldn’t work in pvp, but it’s kind of weird to say thieves have got no place in a blob – although I do know that I’m a special snowflake.

Lexander.4579:

you have written down all of my statements correctly, kudos to you, thief belongs at small scale pvp and roaming

Learn to play thief

Dirtyrascal.1023:

I lose on Thief with unfair odds against me – feels kitten
I win on Engi with unfair odds in my favour – feels kitten

I passively killed a thief on my engi today – Was node farming in wvw and he tried to BS me thrice but I seem to have some protection trait (don’t know actually) – I pressed blast gyro once and the thief was dead. It feels really weird. It was that fast that I couldn’t even think if I wanted to – but I hadn’t to.

But – don’t forget that there should be a patch in april – maybe things will become better then. I still have hope, like with every patch – but I somehow guess that it’s better to have none.

Lexander.4579:

people can use those vanilla or whatever buzzwords as they like, afterall usually those words have certain meanings forced upon them by people who dont have much clue and then it catches on and everybody else starts misusing them as well

Yes, and it makes perfectly sense that you know that and still answer a serious question about builds with that – cause you know better, right?

Lexander.4579:

you are bringing up some awkward example: some random thief died in the aoe chaos and you didnt, well good job, i suppose, but that sounds even more silly than boasting beating a random thief in a sapphire sPvP match

How is it you people never get the point?
The point is that you’re boasting about your perfect build and forget that there are hundred of smart thieves out there who tried the exact same build you feel successful and unique with.

Lexander.4579:

thief in blobs works, everything works in this game, including healer thief and tank thief since this game is just a silly casual game, but it still will be suboptimal with nearly or literally every other class outperforming thief in the said roles or situations

You do know that you don’t make much sense right now, yes?
1) You claim you have found the perfect build.
2) You claim thief is fine
3) You say thieves don’t belong in blobs
4) You say everything works
5) .. and this game is just brainless..

Btw: Valk/Zerker D/D thief, CS, SA, T – I’m still running mostly frontline, depending on the situation.

Lexander.4579:

as for pro playurs, well, since this game is having growth issues pro playurs arent really much of authority here, since they dont have a reason to spend 24/7 playing the game and as a result they are not likely going to be much better than your average legend player who just copy pasted his rev build from meta battle and progresses the tiers by having 50%+ win rate

And why do you have authority if the rest of us haven’t?

Lexander.4579:

d/d thief was the vanilla build which has been used for several months after gw2 launch,

Alright, so you’re using vanilla differently than everybody else – ok.

Lexander.4579:

as for wvw blobs thief is simply not the right class to do that, sorry, you bring the squishiest class with the lowest range in game and zero AoE to the place where people trade their numbers and anyone who comes closer than 1.5k range is getting sniped down with prejudice and that have happened before HoT and will happen after HoT

Zero AoE.. alright then hides shortbow and daggerstorm
But question is: Why did I survive and the enemy thief died in the same situation?

BTW: I’m doing good – I die maybe 2 times a night and in most cases it’s because I tried to rez someone. For me a thief in blobs still works – although all of it could be better. What I tried to say though is: If 98% of all players say that thief is UP you can believe them. If you think you found the “right build and stuff” then you’re likely better than your enemies or being carried by your team(s). Or you just have very good teams and everybody carries themselves – but you can be very sure that there have been enough thieves around who tried every build possible and still say “thief is kitten” – they have a point – otherwise we would see them in Espurtz.

Lexander.4579:

true if you still try to stick to the old glory of 5-2 d/p overlords you are going to get rekt

but if you adapt and change your thief build and playstyle significantly you can expect great results

Not sure if I trust someone who claims that D/D is the pvp vanilla thief..

ETA: I mean yesterday (in wvw, yes sorry) – I was with my blob in Durios, the other blob was in lords and came down – the whole area was plastered with red rings which I tried to avoid – There was only one tiny spot left without AoE and while I got there an enemy DrD staff thief (right next to me) tried to avoid our AoE and died instantly – so what does this mean? That thief is still good or bad?

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

I think, surprisingly, one of my best memories was when I was on IoJ during one of it’s exodus’s.

We were against FA at the time, I believe in T3 or 4 maybe? And while I hated how sorely outnumbered we were at the time, I look back at how much fun I had being one of the few on the map fighting an army.

We actually had a lot of people transferring to us as we ranked up 6 or 7 ranks within 2 months – we have always been outnumbered. We just made it to rank 9 then and I was really proud of what we have achieved. Unfortunately all fairweathers left during that week. And afterwards season 2 was up in which the whole silver league was steamrolled by HoD which led to a mass exodus as people were really disappointed, I guess. The time before that was one of the best times I had in wvw.
I have 4 favourite commanders, 3 of them were on IoJ during that time – they were bad-kitten and I’ve never again seen someone like my absolute favourite commander.
Here’s for the nostalgy:

X T D.6458:

Well regardless, zerg fights are a large part of wvw.

Yes, and zergs are made out of players who can spam traps, who can hurt you with their OP hammer skills, who can insta down you from a 1200 range.

X T D.6458:

But I understand the point you are trying to make, but take into account anets attitude towards pvp, they want it to be fast paced and heavily based on reaction time, which is fine. However when you allow skills that can do 10-20k damage go unchecked, because there is no split in balance between pvp and wvw, it just makes the situation worse when it comes to balance.

And that’s the point – the damage in wvw is immensely higher since June as since then the damage in pvp is scaled completely differently – there’s no correlation between those two game mode anymore. In wvw my backstab is still one of the top 5 dmg skills, in pvp it’s not even top 10. So, what seems ok in pvp is completely OP in wvw.

Yeah, lets have a minute of silence for the poor rangers and guardians.

X T D.6458:

@Jana, while PvP is structured differently with its amulet and upgrade system, anet has been balancing the game around it, in a few ways its understandable, aoe cap has 5 targets, pve teams have 5 members (aside from raids) etc, but it just doesnt work to well for wvw, particularily when it comes to large scale fights. A one size fits all approach is just not going to work forever for 3 evolving gamemodes, and anet has to adapt. Apparantly they are working on some wvw specific balancing for the future update so who knows.

I didn’t really mean zergfight – I’m not that concerned about zerg balance as we’re fighting no matter what anet throws at us. It could be better, yes, but I think class balance right now is more important.
But since pvp has got different rules than the rest of the game – the class balance made in pvp won’t have the same effects in wvw. That was my point.

X T D.6458:

Its basically because they decided not to split skill balance for the 3 gamemodes, which is partly understandable, but its not like they would have to do this for every skill, trait etc. They pretty much ignored wvw, when it came to balance, stab changes were centered around pvp, condi changes were centered around pve. Guild changes, just promoted endless grind, which seems to be the theme of HoT…godkitten ed disaster of an “expansion”.

Yes and no – as far as I have understood pvp now really is separate from the rest of the game modes – the stats scale differently, they don’t have certain runes (perplexity f.e.), the last “balance patch” was just rune shaving.
Anet just needs to realize that the game mode they use to balance everything doesn’t have the rules of the other two anymore – I’m not so sure they know.

What’s this outrage today? Did anything happen? Did I miss it?
Everything but D/P is dead for now nearly a year and you guys just realize it?

Getting a high rank in wvw takes a lot of effort, even if you’re just running with the zerg. A high rank usually means something – or better meant as all of this became meaningless with EotM.

just saying – I don’t really need or want badges – and in the end, EotM spoiled it anyway – everybody who would see my rank would assume I did this in EotM anyway – so..

JaKal.4538:

If the ACs are so easy to counter and then they are so useless like you intend, what should be the problem to remove such a useless thing from the game?

ACs are only useful when at least 2 or when you have other siege or other players (zerg) supporting your efforts of destroying/killing something. There are basically no safe spots for ACs or any siege left, so you can kill them easily with some AoE. I’d agree to tone them down when it comes to players (although not really, maybe they should scale = 1 AC in an area does “500” dmg, 2 do together 600 and not 1000) if they can withhold more damage or get a shield or anything, right now the situation is pretty bad. But then again; I’ve been around back when they still made sense.

STIHL.2489:

Umm I feel that there was a misunderstanding with what my hope was with the weekly box. My intention was not for it to be a Reward Track, it was just meant to be a Weekly Participation Trophy

To this effect, Sviel.7493 made a solid point, and that really is exactly what I am trying to do here. They got started into WvW just to get a Daily, and that’s the idea, the goal is to get people to show up Today and Tomorrow

If I put in something like “Weekly Goal: Flip 20 Camps” people could get that done on reset night and we would never see them again for the rest of the week, and that is exactly what I am trying to prevent here. I want people to log into WvW daily.

Now, if you have an idea how to achieve that, without working on the Daily System, I am open to alternate suggestions, but the idea needs to be enticing to the PvE player to want to get involved in WvW, It needs to be Rewarding to the Existing WvW player, and it needs to entice them both to want to log in and play WvW daily.

People new to wvw can’t flip 20 camps on reset night – and I think I’ve never flipped that many camps in a zerg in one night – alone I did.
We’ve had quite a nasty AP – list during one spring tourament – that was a bit too much because half of our population was PvE players who had no idea what to do.
But I don’t really get the trophy thing now – why would I want to have a trophy? Ah alright, you want this to be like the pvp tracks? I haven’t been in pvp for a year now and even before that I just had some random reward track I wasn’t really interested in – it gave me no motivation to play pvp.

I know that most of you (server) would have problems with speaking English.
And you failed to get my point and think that humans are in fact busses – maybe one day you’ll get it, but I somehow doubt it.

I don’t think you paid to be on MS.
I have been on MS and that very stubborness and entitlement was the reason why I left.
And I know that about 75% of you wouldn’t be happy on an international server – you are however free to transfer to any server you like; it’s about ~200 gold to most, I think.

You have one point: Anet should’ve cared for rewards, balance and so on. They failed to do so but that’s about it, the rest is the community for that the players are responsible.

Btw: Gunnars lost about 1/3 to 1/2 of their wvw population about 3 months ago – we’re recovering – it is possible with dedication.

Torolan.5816:

I am not in T9, but I can tell you why I did not change my T6 server despite either steamrolling or getting steamrolled every week depending if we#re hovering in bottom silver or top bronze:
1) I am a cheapskate
2) By principle, I don´t want to spend any money for a server change because it is not my fault Anet failed to keep players interested in wvw.

At this point, I am very much for the disbanding of Bronze Tier. When we have a strong Zerg here, we are talking about 20 persons lately. Drakkar and Gunnar, our opponents this week, can easily field twice our number at every time of the day.

Oh, so you’re a Millers – hey (Gunnar’s here).
Anet can’t force people to stay and play and free transfers rarely did any good in the past – they just led to more servers dying (as everybody was transferring to the same server making that server extremely powerful and crushing all others).
Another problem: You’re a German server, and I don’t think you would be happy to be on a French or International server and likewise. So the only servers you can be merged with are the German servers. If you were to be merged with Drakkar Lake the resulting server would become extremely powerful and have an advantage over all other servers that tier. I guess you get what I mean. Only possibility would be if people transferred individually to all other German servers and MS were disbanded – and actually – you can already do that and it would be better for the game than forced merges or even alliances.
And to be honest, If I were that stubborn that I wouldn’t want to transfer because “it’s anets duty that I have fun” – I would quit the game altogether.

ETA: Not sure if you get my point: Wvw is a game made by players, we’re not NPCs – anet doesn’t have control over us and therefore “your fun” – it’s up to you to make your server fun for yourself or to transfer. And right now you can still transfer to almost any server as a bigger group: the chances that you can continue to play with your friends are better than if server merges or alliances are brought into the game.

STIHL.2489:

I thought about some kind of system to base the rewards upon, and after some false starts, I finally settled on using the existing dailies as a metric for the very reason you listed, other kinds of things might make it harder for various people to get their rewards, and dailies seemed to be accessible across the spectrum of players. The last thing I would ever want to do with a reward plan, would be to make it harder for the existing players to enjoy it.

The idea is always to be inclusive, if I set the bar too high, people who have minimal play time but enjoy WvW, will suddenly feel left out and become even less inclined to log in and contribute, and is that really what you want? To drive away some of the people already out there?

It’s a reward track for a week, and I guess most dedicated wvw players do more than what would be a few dailies a week (well and if I can’t the one or other week I wouldn’t feel left out) – the idea is to reward people for whatever they’re doing in wvw but not to set the bar that low that pve players only need to kill a few sentries to get the same reward. And I guess that is what is going to come anyway, I think the fractal weekly rewards are similar (didn’t really look at them). So if you set the bronze relatively high, PvE players would have to become wvw players and wvw players likely wouldn’t have bigger problems to get it, but those who stick to their contribution would easily get gold = means “bigger is better” doesn’t apply here – otherwise people might transfer up again to get the rewards (happend multiple times before).

@STIHL Lets see, what folks do we have in wvw? There’s roamers who repair, flip camps and kill single enemies, scouts who repair, escort dollies, small scale, small scale havoc groups who flip camps and towers (or even whole borderlands), zergs who fight and flip camps, towers, keeps, blobs who do the same.
How about making this like dailies, so per week you have “cap 20 camps”, “kill 100 players”, “use 500 supply on repairs”, “escort 40 yaks” and so on. You can probably do that rather smart so that everybody will be rewarded, although it will likely be pretty hard to reward roamers and scouts – but maybe someone can come up with a good idea.
I think with this you can set the bar for the rewards higher and it might actually bring new people to try wvw. And actually: Bronze should be fairly high while gold should be rather low, so that people have to do quite a bit to get a reward but if they already showed their dedication they will be rewarded more (I hope that made sense).

briggah.7910:

I didn’t say it was a fact but looks like I’m not the only person who thinks this. This problem has been complained about in the lower tiers for a long time now.. It is time to stop ignoring problems because they are not problems for everyone.

By merging every server , or servers of your liking you will create problems for everybody – there will always be low (er) populated servers, even if you merge them as I predict that the next mass quitting will be when alliances or forced merges are brought into this.

briggah.7910:

You must have missed where I said not to MERGE every server with others but remove a few at the bottom.

I don’t know what I missed because my only point directed to you was that I and others won’t play EotM <— that is my point.

briggah.7910:

I’m not going to get into the other point that you missed because it went way over your head and you just can’t get anything people say because you seem to only CARE ABOUT WHAT YOU THINK and nobody else and just are looking for arguments.

Interestingly that’s the opinion I have of you.

briggah.7910:

this isn’t the first time you have done this either.. I dropped it because I don’t want to go back and forth with you and get no where so please just drop it as well..

You’re just doing it – I commented on one point you made and you accused me of missing a point – makes no sense, sorry. But thanks for the free psychoanalysis.

ETA: I don’t have to read and comment on all stuff you write as I don’t care about it – but with your perception what people in queues are going to do you’re plain wrong – and yes, I’m 100% certain of that. I don’t care about the rest of this discussion – I only commented on stuff two of you wrongly assumed – so it’s you who goes back and forth.
I will do so in the future – I won’t comment on every word you say but if I see false assumptions I will pick them out and call them out – deal with it.

Yo, guys, the OP wants to play open world PvE

If I personally wanted to be overly successful in wvw I wouldn’t run a power D/D thief – I wrote why I linked my wvw build – you just need to read it to get why it’s in this thread :P

I know and I would’ve transferred from that a long time ago – question is why didn’t those who still remain.

briggah.7910:

This thread was created by someone in EU so its the same problems that so many in NA in the bottom have complained about in the past..

The bottom 2 servers (out of 27), yes – so? I do feel for them, but that doesn’t mean that merging the rest would solve anything.

briggah.7910:

I don’t know a perfect fix either but I think we have too many servers than we need.

That’s your perception, not a fact. Also: if you look at the EU ranks – which servers would you merge? Or doesn’t matter as long as everybody has got an hour long queue so they can play EotM?

Btw: What was the point I missed?

I’d rather see some fix to PPT, DBL, NA glicko, combat-balance and rewards before server merge/alliances (for EU) is even being considered. I’ve seen so many low ranks lately that I do think wvw might recover (if handeled with care).

No, I never used EotM as a waiting room.
I seem to miss the point.. alright, which point did I miss this time – you said “when servers are merged and have queues people will finally use EotM as it was intended to” didn’t you? So, what did I miss?
Queues are no fun, btw. EotM is no fun either (EotM players and WvW players are different crowds who usually don’t mix).

FogLeg.9354:

FoW is not a lot larger… Anyway, if there is going to be any mergers, EU servers could be easily reduced to half and there would still be no queues. I mean last 12 servers together, from 16-27, and you would still barely end up with 1 server about same size as servers in top tier.

Rank 17 here and we do have queues.
So, better let anet look at their data instead of guessing that rank 16-27 EU are deserted.

briggah.7910:

Also if they did merge some servers EoTM would be used for what it was made for in the first place and that is a waiting room for your war map queue to pop. That was the sole purpose of why that map was created and it isn’t used for that one bit.

I quit playing EotM for good about a year ago – I have faced a lot of queues since, but never went to EotM nor will I in the future.

D/D is pretty fine for open world and dungeons.
You can take valk armor (not the rest) and/or SA as trainingwheels but your endgoal should be to be full zerkers with DA, CS and T or DrD, others might know better if taking DrD over DA or CS would be better (I’m not running DrD anymore, so I don’t know too much about that line).
And for PvE (except raids probably and in a lot of fractals) it is still meta =)

Give me a sec, I’m giving you my builds

I added the wvw build for SA – but tinker a bit with the last 2 slots – I insist on having Cloaked in Shadows even though Shadow Rejuvenation might be a bit better suited for a beginner. And maybe you can make Hidden thief work.

D/D power thief here – come again?
I can’t fight classes/builds that have too many blocks, like I said, that’s why I said that maybe working on a counter to that would be the way to go.

Sviel.7493:

Solo roaming on the BLs is pretty much all I do. Judging by the number of enemy solo roamers I run into, it’s very much alive.

I rarely meet solo roamers if I’m on the new BLs – So yes, even though I have always been mostly on EB (except for camp capping marathons which I miss actually), the DBLs just have too much stuff that annoys me, like the barricades, like the shrines on 3 layers and around the corner and the weird camps that don’t make too much sense.

I just wanted to say that I killed a chrono (gold rank) (three times) yesterday and a condi reaper (silver rank) on an ac in a camp (took a while) – guess he was really mad. Makes me actually wonder if I think thief is that bad or.. don’t know. I guess that what I have the most trouble with are blocks – the mesmer fortunately didn’t use the traits that make him passively block everything (yes, I still don’t know what traits that are) and well necros don’t have blocks.
I hit Guards/DHs for 8-9k in wvw – that’s why I said you’d give them no chance to recover with your idea. Problem: They have a lot of blocks.

STIHL.2489:

2-B: WvW Contribution Rewards.

There is should a reward for how well you placed at the end of any given week.

1st Place – Reward Box (Bronze/Silver/Gold)
2nd Place – Reward Box (Bronze/Silver/Gold)
3rd Place – Reward Box (Bronze/Silver/Gold)

But this needs to be reserved for people that Contribute, not just log in one day at reset and never again for the rest of the week. The Way this would work, Bronze/Silver/Gold would be contingent upon how many WvW Dailies you did in a given week. A player would need to do at least 7 WvW dailies just to be eligible to receive the weekly award box at all.

So the Breakdown would be like this:
7 -13 WvW Dailies Done – gets you a Bronze.
14- 20 WvW Dailies Done gets you a Silver,
21 + WvW Dailies Done gets you a Gold Participation

I’m against tying this to dailies. Granted, most PvE players seem to have stopped to do them since HoT – or I just don’t see them anymore, but doing dailies is in most cases really easy and doesn’t really contribute: Big Spender, Veteran Creature Slayer, Land claimer – it’s easy to get at least 7 a week and you won’t help your team at all. Before you argue that dailies should be made harder – I like them as it is as in some MU you’re that hopelessly outnumbered that you can’t really do much – and sometimes it takes hours to get a tower – I usually never get the “keep capturer”. So people who are in a bad MU or have little time can still do their dailies.
You can however tie your weekly contribution to events – but then again it would still be “the more karma train a server can do, the better their rewards”.

Serious: That would be OP – the enemy would become a sitting duck, unable to recover.
You can apply weakness, poison and chill and that would be what you’re looking for.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

might have to lower the amount of words for this tool lip.

Kageseigi.2150:

Easy Pickings

OP

How about this?
And: Can you make the lone assassin carve a J into the chest of the fearsome warrior – has always been my dream.

ETA: Which then fills with poison making it glowing green… Although blood and red would be ok too.
ETA²: Pros call this: Brutal Cheese.