Guild Wars 2

Hule.8794:

Well you just get on TS with wrong people.
This is not possible without TS because commander cannot stop in middle of fight and write “double dodge” or “push”

What makes you think people are unable to double dodge or push without TS? Double dodging is a matter of common sense; pushing is a matter of following the blue tag. It’s not hard.

Anyone know who built the WP in JQ BL Hills? I find that very impressive, committing to hold the Keep and actually defending it long enough to upgrade it all the way to T3.

Otherwise though is it just me or is JQ losing fights against BG even though both zergs are of roughly similar size?

Mireles Lore.5942:

Jeydra.4386:

No. It is possible to play well without TS, if:

It is also possible to play with your feet, that doesn’t mean you are at the same skill and communication level as you would be with your hands.

Undoubtedly, but the impact on performance by playing with one’s feet is far larger than playing without TS.

Reverence.6915:

There are commands the commander says in TS that you won’t get in mapchat. Stuff that will keep you alive and get you bags, or stuff that will help you win the fight, or stuff that will help the whole server in general.

As an example, in TS, a commander gets a call to push X server’s keep because they are pushing on another map. In this map, you’re outnumbered, but you know that if the other map is successful, your PPT will spike sharply. So you start pushing, fully expecting to lose engagements. As a commander though, you want to keep most of your people alive, so you will move around the engagement very quickly. If you’re not in TS, you’ll miss most of that and either 1. become rallybait or 2. fall behind the main force and miss out on your bags.

Basically, my view is that anyone not in TS is rallybait and not worth trying to keep alive. If they can’t make the effort to help the server, then I’m not going to make the effort to help them get wxp, bags, karma etc.

No. It is possible to play well without TS, if:

1) You are willing to concentrate;
2) You understand game mechanics;
3) You have some experience of what is commonly said on TS (or you watch lots of streams, etc);
4) There are already other people on TS.

Here’s how these things fix the examples you and other people have given. If the commander calls to push X instead of Y, you simply follow the commander tag. You don’t need TS to do that. If the commander calls to stack for group push, and there are already people on TS (#4 above), you’ll see everyone stick together and applying fire fields, etc. So you stick next to the commander, and move when he does. During the fights themselves, the commander will typically say things like “go left, double dodge, drop all your AoEs on my tag”, etc. All these things you can emulate if you know what the commander is likely to be saying (#3), by applying common sense, and sticking close to the commander (#1 – it takes concentration to mimic his movements while using all your other skills). Then there are things like the commander calling for Veils, Time Warps, Null Fields, etc. All these things an alert player can emulate with common sense if he understands game mechanics (#2).

Does this mean that not being on TS is not a disadvantage? No, because #4 still requires some people to be on TS, because sometimes the commander may say things like “do we have any mesmers?” and there’s nobody else playing that profession that has a microphone, and because there are a few (rare) cases when the call is not obvious yet there is no margin for error. An example of the last was a situation I was in a few days ago. BG were sieging Wildcreek with 4 catapults, and JQ were defending. Then SoR shows up on the other side, sandwiching BG. After some skirmishes the commander decides to break out and run to Rogue’s. In this case the decision to break out is not obvious (since there were skirmishes earlier, and all the time the main zerg fell back to the catapults), and TS matters. Finally if you are not with the main zerg, scouting reports can be communicated much faster with TS than not, and in some cases every second matters.

I find the beneficial effects of TS to often be exaggerated. In particular the idea that TS helps prevent you from dying is ludicrous. I played a Mesmer from level 2 to 80 solely from WvW. She still doesn’t have max exotic equipment, no Toughness or Vitality mods, etc, and yet if I do die in zerg vs. zerg the allied zerg typically dies shortly afterwards. Sure the commander gets stuff like Water fields on him, so it’s preferable to stay close to him, but you don’t need to be on TS to stay close to him (although it takes concentration #1). Comparatively I’m much likelier to die when roaming, when the lack of max equipment has a more pronounced effect. The idea that a person not on TS may fail to get bags is even more ludicrous. He just has to move with the zerg.

I’ve played with and without TS a lot, and I’ll say that there generally isn’t much difference. When the situation demands it, or if lack of organization is clearly showing (i.e. there aren’t enough people on TS, #4), I’ll log on to TS, but otherwise I generally prefer to listen to music.

I’ve heard there’s a way to un-soulbind legendary items. Try searching.

With optimal rotation I hit 18s with S/D, no food, no Warrior. There was one anomalous run in which I hit 14s. I used the same 30/30/10/0/0 build that you used with D/F. As I’ve said before my Elementalist is lacking ascended weapons, ascended backpiece (only have masterwork) and Power infusions. Everything else was full zerk. Times were recorded using the FGS cooldown as a timer, so should be much more accurate than using the stopwatch.

I heavily dislike that 30/30/10/0/0 build since it’s ridiculously glassy. There was even one time when I got downed fighting that Veteran Risen Giant. The problem’s only going to be worse with D/F, which has no good immediate heal (unlike Staff #3 and #5, Scepter #3, Dagger #5 and the quintessential Healing Ripple). Why did you pick this particular build for D/F?

How do you beat these two builds in sPvP?

1) Mesmer using Sword / Torch + Sword / Pistol. He runs 20/20/30/0/0 with Prismatic Understanding and a bunch of condition-on-death traits for illusions, then runs circles while spamming illusions + stealth.
2) Warriors in general. These guys seem to take no damage, but deal a lot of damage in return, and it’s only a matter of time before I run out of defensive tools and they either kill me or force me off the point. Even if I catch them in a 2v1 they just disengage and run away as well, and I can’t catch up with them to kill them …

Lol I got comparable (actually slightly faster) times with S/D compared to the S/F build you used, without using food.

I’m quite surprised at how fast the D/F build killed the Giant, but it is 30/30/10/0/0, which cannot get glassier. Maybe I’ll repeat the test with S/D and the same spec, see how it goes.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

My criticism to that is, if you are voluntarily choosing to be suboptimal by running inferior team compositions (can’t stack Might and Vuln to cap, dont have banners covered, dont have perma-Fury) or choosing to disregard food buffs because they are too expensive, then you have already thrown optimization out the window and you are well into anything-goes-play-how-you-want land.

Long story short, if optimizing for major dps boosts isn’t worth your time I am somewhat perplexed about handwringing over dps tests that have very little outcome differences. It seems penny-wise and pound-foolish.

I optimize everything that only needs to be optimized once. I don’t try to optimize what other people do. I’ve also already said that I’m not going to participate in tests with buffs included. What you choose to do or how you choose to play the game is up to you, and no business of mine.

Last post I’ll make dealing with this question.

I mean things like 5v4 games in hotjoin. I appreciate that there’s an autobalance option to balance 5v3 games, but 5v4 games are still extremely imbalanced in favour of the team with five players. At the moment it’s clear that there are other players playing, but not joining the game – for whatever reason, if the 5v4 game becomes 5v5, very quickly afterwards it becomes 6v5 too. Which doesn’t fix the problem.

I suggest queues be made such that solo queueing players balance out 5v4 or other similarly imbalanced games first before being placed in a new one, and a 5v5 game be imbalanced by another player only if there’s no other game available.

Because of the below quote.

Zelyhn.8069:

1) This is not a thread talking about speedrunning.
I understand that you wish to attract attention to your thread talking about “meta” builds for speedruns, I encourage you to develop it, but this is off-topic here.
The title mentions “advanced” PvE and I talk about “challenging content”. This may come as a shock to many but in my opinion the only thing challenging in a speedrun with an optimal team is skipping the mobs correctly. The fights last 30 seconds at most. Anyone interested in this boring type of gameplay can easily go on the Dungeon subforums and get all information they need (including my detailed talks about LH and staff).
Players wishing to do speedruns in optimal set ups are a minority and they are not my target audience.

There’s also the pragmatic reason that I don’t have a Warrior buddy or want to spend money on Strength boosters / consumables or whatever.

If you choose to do tests with all buffs up, that’s fine; it just comes under a different domain (and appeals to a different audience) from what I had in mind.

Oghier.7419:

The rewards for winning exacerbate the problem, encouraging people to flee low-pop servers (or any server without a strong overnight presence). Edge of the Mists will make it even worse. That takes the sting out of queues on high-pop servers.

If we want real competition and good fights, underdogs must be rewarded. People need a good reason to stick on the Isle of Janthir, etc, and show up to fight. Right now, they are better off transferring before S2 to ensure they will win, get heaps of karma, complete whatever the meta is with ease etc.

Agreeing with this. Haven’t given much thought to possible solutions, butperhaps one could calculate an ELO rating for every server, using that to predict the result of a matchup. If a server exceeds expectations, then they gain ELO as well as get extra rewards.

One of my stalkers is WvW’ing on an uplevelled Necro and he’s got the gall to trashtalk me while acting like a serious and dedicated BG player lol! The irony has got to be one of the most hilarious things I’ve seen all week.

DEKeyzToChaos.7381:

How did you measure that 21s? I measure kill time from the start of the cast of the first skill that hits the target to the experience gain popup. Do you know for sure that you kept your scholar’s buff up for close to 100% of the trial? How many times did you dodge, and was that more or less consistent across trials? Did you keep boons/conditions up as necessary to benefit from trait multipliers? If you’d like to record and edit videos, MSI Afterburner is free recording software, and Windows Movie Maker is free video editing software.

I measured it using a stopwatch. Since I only have two hands and both are needed to play the game, it’s of course not very accurate. I have no idea how often the Scholar’s buff was up for, or how many times I dodged, how often boons were up, etc.

I’d make a video of myself playing for more accuracy, but since you’re insisting on having banners etc up (which I still don’t agree with) I don’t see a reason to. Good luck if you carry on with the tests assuming buffs up, but count me out.

Well you can’t be including +5% damage from Strength Boosters, 25 bloodlust + accuracy stacks, 25 Might / Fury / Vulnerability stacks inflicted by your teammates, etc, can you? One has to draw the line somewhere, and I prefer that line to be no buffs to start with. This makes the test easier to replicate for different players as well. The variance due to critical hits can be compensated for by repeating the test multiple times. Lack of vulnerability is actually OK in this case since you can replace with the +10% while health >90% trait, then sit in Fire Attunement for another +10% damage, although in against this particular foe it’s better to use the Ice Bow.

I tried it earlier today with my Elementalist (missing Power infusions, ascended backpiece [only have masterwork] and ascended weapons; otherwise full zerk) and got about 21s using S/D. Didn’t record a video, so it’s not very precise.

Buffs including food and boosters and all that … repeating these trials should be easy, at most involving a respec. Unless the buffs affect different builds differently, leaving them out should not change the results.

Most people don’t seem to care about PPT O_o

This isn’t a good place to discuss it since it’s Zelyhn’s thread … perhaps you could start a new one?

Also can you repeat without the buffs (I don’t have easy access to them)?

Jabberwock.9014:

I think scepter is horrible for open world because it’s terrible at hitting multiple foes consistently. D/D you’ll never not be hitting everything in the immediate area.

Not really. Dragon’s Tooth and Phoenix are both AoE, offhand Dagger offers yet more AoE skills, Arcane Wave is also AoE, Sigil of Fire adds yet more AoE, and finally you can ball mobs up before bursting.

If you’re running overland solo I would simply use S/D. The burst is strong enough to kill any trash mob in one go, and there are enough burst skills (with Arcane Blast and Arcane Wave) to burst a second mob immediately after. It’s even possible to burst Veteran mobs from 100% to 0. Comparatively D/F kills stuff more slowly and doesn’t have the mobility of offhand Dagger to boot.

It’s when sustained damage is needed that mainhand Dagger can conceivably be better than Scepter. Those situations aren’t that common overland, but if it does happen, just equip the Lightning Hammer before engaging.

On a side note I think Fresh Air is rather subpar with S/D. Since I find S/D is better than D/F for overland play (and even in general – S/F can be useful however) I would simply choose a different build. If you insist on using Fresh Air, mainhand Dagger is probably best, since the autoattack is good and you can sit in Air Attunement while waiting for the skills in your other attunements to recharge.

Some people play for PPT, others play for fights, yet others dislike big zergs and prefer roaming or running in havoc squads. What do you play for in WvW?

Sounds like you did everything right (or at least didn’t do anything wrong). If you do find you need to split up (because red is pushing WC / Aldon’s while you’re pushing blue) then you could ask for some people to do just that on map chat. Depending on how many people red have you would still have e.g. 60 people to push blue with, which is still a strong force. I certainly would not split up into many groups and try to play offensively with all of them; that, as you put it, loses power and momentum.

Otherwise at some point in WvW there are no clear “best moves”, but there are plenty of “good moves”. You could choose to siege up QL and hold it for as long as possible, you could choose to pressure Lang, you could choose to assault Valley, you could choose to be happy with breaking a fully fortified QL and instead raid the red third of the map. All of these would be valid choices and lead to different games. It comes down to your choice as a commander and whatever grand strategy you choose, based on your personal preferences and style.

Quite the atypical week so far …

1) BG hasn’t been fully queued, even during the weekend. Really surprising.
2) There appears to be fewer JQ playing than what I remember two weeks ago, not to mention during the first week of league. There definitely are fewer SoR playing too. In fact at some points it appears SoR have no people on some maps.
3) BG came out of the weekend leading. The past few weeks BG usually finished the weekend in 2nd or even 3rd place, then took over the lead during the week.
4) I’ve actually witnessed BG taking two T3 keeps with waypoints without meeting much resistance … admittedly there weren’t many JQ players on the map at the time, but it’s still surprising.
5) There are now three people stalking me instead of just one! Now I have to appear offline more often.

Only thing that hasn’t changed is complaints about how BG bought guilds. 7 weeks and 7 matchup threads in, surely there is something else to discuss. WTB more posts like hints’ … anyone?

Take your 80-man force and go cap everything on the map. Of course you’ll still need scouts to report on enemy movement (although chances are the enemy zerg if there is one will have to respond to what you’re doing, since you have 80 people), or to do things that is impractical for a zerg to do (like cap bloodlust), but with 80+ people on a map usually some people will already be doing all that.

Not sure what there is to discuss really … if you’re wondering what commanders say in open field combat vs. another zerg, perhaps the best thing to do would be to listen to what the T1 commanders say in such fights. I haven’t actually seen them, but chances are there are TS recordings or streams or something that will be able to give you an idea.

Fishball Asuna is the best SoS commander I played with. There are a few others who are good too, such as Luvpie.

On Blackgate the best commander I’ve played with is Jang Gun. I’ve only joined his zerg once, but that one run was incredible. We spend 5 minutes running around the map doing nothing, and then suddenly we drop on and annihilate the JQ zerg. He manages this again and again and again; no matter where JQ zerg goes they just keep dying. Incredible. I’ve no idea how he does it.

haviz.1340:

Jeydra.4386:

I’m not arguing for going all-in into the build with the highest DPS. I completely agree with Vanillea that people should be free to choose whatever profession they want to play, or whatever spec they want (so long as it’s not clearly stupid, such as the afore-mentioned no weapons no armour “build”). In particular I’m a huge fan of at least 15 points into Water and hence Cleansing Wave + Healing Ripple, as well as Elemental Attunement. I just think that a general guide on Elementalists should include all the possibilities. There are cases when you want to use Staff, cases when S/D is better, etc … Lightning Hammer as well is an important option that should definitely be included or at least mentioned.

Both 15 in water and staff are completely not needed in pve.

Neither are weapons and armour.

Zelyhn’s right that this is after all his guide. I’m very busy right now, but perhaps someday I’ll write my own guide, covering all aspects of PvE.

The problem with questions like that is that they’re vague … I suspect many dungeons can be done with a party of four, which means you can go into a dungeon with no weapons and no armour and still complete it. That in turn means that there are few “musts”. A S/D build can just sit in Earth attunement using only the autoattack if it doesn’t mind being suboptimal.

I’m not arguing for going all-in into the build with the highest DPS. I completely agree with Vanillea that people should be free to choose whatever profession they want to play, or whatever spec they want (so long as it’s not clearly stupid, such as the afore-mentioned no weapons no armour “build”). In particular I’m a huge fan of at least 15 points into Water and hence Cleansing Wave + Healing Ripple, as well as Elemental Attunement. I just think that a general guide on Elementalists should include all the possibilities. There are cases when you want to use Staff, cases when S/D is better, etc … Lightning Hammer as well is an important option that should definitely be included or at least mentioned.

1) You can’t in general burst down someone before you die. If you do die your #2 skill will generally bring you back safely (you can still be e.g. immobilized before you get away, so it’s not foolproof), but what’s the point, and why risk it? You are better off either getting onto the commander if there is one to stack up and do a group push, or running supply to build arrow carts.

2) I don’t understand the question here. You’ll need to rephrase. If you mean in open field combat with massive AoE trades between two zergs, now would be a good time to switch off D/D and go to Staff.

3) Nothing much you can do really if you don’t have a second stunbreaker. You can try attuning to Earth (if you have Elemental Attunement) or to Water (if you have Cleansing Wave + Healing Ripple).

4) Staff lets you maintain permanent Swiftness: Air #4 gives 10s, Glyph of Elemental Harmony gives another 10s, and using Arcane Wave in Air #5 gives you the last 10s. Fire #4 also lets you move quickly (just turn around first). So no excuses for getting left behind, especially if you also have Lightning Flash.

5) Staff is bad with Signet of Restoration. I’d generally use the Glyph, although you may prefer Ether Renewal. No idea about Healing Power.

6) Which build you choose should depend on what you want to do. If you’re running with zergs, then you should choose the Staff. If you roam a lot, then D/D would be better. Check out intothemists.com for example builds.

Have fun!

Zelyhn no offense but the reasons you give for not including LH builds are pretty bad.

LH doesn’t have to be for speedruns. It can simply be a way to patch up your DPS when your big damage skills (i.e. Scepter mainhand) are on cooldown, or even as a way to improve mobility. By neglecting to mention it, of course you come to overlook Scepter. Note as well that LH is not the only useful Conjure out there, and as you wrote, you are supposed to adapt, i.e. change your utilities depending on the situation. If the situation demands you use LH, that’s what you should do.

I’ll also point out that you cannot claim Fresh Air builds are versatile and therefore “better” than speedrun builds because Fresh Air is awful with Staff, and there are occasions on which you will want to use Staff (example: against foes with large hit boxes). Furthermore, if versatility matters, then the fact that D/F is weak overland is a strike against it, as is the fact that you’re recommending full zerker gear with very little extra defense on a light armour character with minimal HP (no Rock Barrier, no auto-heal + condition removal on attuning to Water, no healing skills, etc). You may say that your team will compensate, and perhaps they will, but then you restrict your audience to organized dungeon groups … which isn’t that far from speedruns, is it? Plus, how many people are there that run with organized dungeon groups, or even do dungeons often in the first place? If you criticize speedrun builds because the community that does speeduns is small, then it seems awfully like you’re indirectly criticizing your own build as well.

Finally you may say that you want to play an Elementalist, not a Warrior imitation, but it doesn’t matter: if you’re writing a guide that purports to be a general one (like this guide) it is only responsible to include the other viable builds, especially if they are superior up to aesthetic factors. That’s why when I wrote my GW1 Elementalist guides, I recommended AP caller even though that bar plays fairly similarly to other professions. If a GW1 Ele wants to play Ele like what Eles are “supposed” to be (and different players have different interpretations of what Eles are supposed to be) then there were other builds given, but I indicated that they will often be subpar.

I don’t belong to the speedrun community, but I think Anierna’s criticism is justified.

SoPP.7034:

Hey Jeydra,

While the ‘block’ feature in GW2 has a lot to be desired ANet are quite strong on enforcing appropriate behaviour in GW2.

If someone is following you and saying unwanted things make sure you record it all and inform support that it’s not wanted and that it hasn’t been encouraged.

This won’t stop the blocking issue, but in the long run will help you to enjoy the game away from the less balanced people in this world.

Regards

I tried that and this is the response I got …

Hello [Jeydra],

Thank you for the update.

At the moment you can block the player in order to avoid contact between yourself and him. You could change servers in order to avoid him completely but other than this there is not much more you can do at this point.

For any further issue we will be glad to assist.

Regards,

GM T-Bone
Guild Wars 2 Support Team
http://support.guildwars2.com/
—-

Sad case

Chris.3290:

nerovergil.5408:

While half of the JQs transferring to Maguma to force Beastgate 2nd place or 3rd place. SoR should defeat JQs once and for all so we can help you force JQs get bronze dolyak finisher this season in week 7.

Is this idiocy? All of JQ could xfer to Maguuma and they wouldn’t beat BG since BG beat all of JQ. (FTR I haven’t seen any JQ on Mag yet).
Not to mention that this isn’t reflected in the scores and that both SoS and Mags would have to beat BG for JQ just to pull even.

This is the least intelligent post I’ve seen.

BG beat SoR, BG beat JQ. Therefore if the whole of SoR transfers to JQ, BG will still win because they beat each half of the new super-JQ individually.

-_-?

Cirus.5748:

Blackgate, Jade Quarry and Sanctum of Rall are over stacked in comparison to tier 2 servers.

Tarnished Coast is over stacked in comparison to Sea of Sorrows and Maguuma

Sea of Sorrows is over stacked in comparison to tier 3 servers.

Blackgate is not over stacked compared to Jade Quarry, or Sanctum of Rall when league started. Everyone tipped Jade Quarry to win, Sanctum of Rall second and Blackgate third.

Jade Quarry had the coverage to match, but they were out played and stopped showing up to fight. Turning the end result into an avalanche.

Are you able to grasp this simple concept? Mr Blackgate player who transferred 2 weeks ago from Sea of Sorrows (your actions are a little hypocritical to your argument?)

You are correct that BG / SoR / JQ are overstacked relative to TC, TC is overstacked relative to SoS and Maguuma, etc. But it is impossible for any server to be more overstacked than BG, and therefore BG is the most overstacked of overstacked servers. BG may not have been overstacked relative to SoR and JQ when league started, which doesn’t change the fact that BG is overstacked relative to SoR and JQ now.

Also JQ did not have the coverage to match. The WP in Bay on JQ BL was built when JQ did not have enough players on the map to attack it. JQ clearly has a coverage weakness; BG does not.

Did you really think I transferred in order to make BG even more overstacked? Your name-calling does not make your argument any better.

Tajz.9826

Bottom line in term of shear wvw guild numbers: [Not counting NA’s overtime/morale factor/PUGs]
Oceanic – JQ>BG, SoR=>BG (When MERC/TKG/SUPR left)
SEA – JQ>BG, BG>SoR
EU – BG>JQ, BG=SoR (When IRON still operate)
I’m not talk about NA because it’s the main timezone of the game so every server get almost equal ground.

… and? WvW is not made only of WvW guilds.

Also I happen to play SEA timezone. Are you claiming that SEA timezone is not nearly always queued when there is something to fight for? That runs completely contrary to my experience. There are days when we are only queued on two of the four maps because there’s nothing happening on the other two maps (it’s fully owned by BG, there is no enemy zerg to fight, it is more favourable to let the other team cap stuff on the map because we have nothing else to do, etc). You say that you know the numbers on TS, but not everyone who plays WvW logs on to TS. The fact is the maps in which things are happening (JQ BL / EB in this case) are queued. That means there is that certain number of players on it. The fact that there aren’t that many players on TS does not matter.

JQ were also queued during SEA timezone because SEA timezone obviously wasn’t their weak timezone. They stopped playing after the weak timezone caused the strong timezones to lose morale. That’s what I wrote earlier in the thread. Did you read it?

Two things.

1) BG not being overstacked on purpose doesn’t change the fact that BG is overstacked.
2) I’m not blaming anyone that BG is overstacked.

No idea why you guys keep writing such long posts with paragraph after paragraph of irrelevant information. MERC leaving, IRON commander getting hospitalized, JQ having 6 WvW guilds to BG’s 4 during SEA time, what do all these things matter? We are still fully queued almost all the time. Hence we are still overstacked. No, JQ doesn’t outnumber BG during SEA timezone because we are nearly always fully queued, and hence JQ are at best on equal terms with BG. If we weren’t fully queued during SEA timezone we would have a coverage weakness and conceivably may not be overstacked, but we are fully queued during SEA timezone.

Can’t believe it’s so hard to grasp this simple concept.

Zikory.6871:

With all that, is Blackgate truly at fault for attempting to reach this cap? The game mode is setup to push for this type of coverage. So I would say other servers are under populated.

No, Blackgate is not at fault for attempting to reach this cap. Therefore the word ‘overstacked’ has no negative connotation, at least not in the way I’m using it. It’s incredible how people seem to react to that word, though.

As you wish.

I may still give it a try someday, and post the numbers.

ballymun.3986:

If you’re not trash talking the server then explain why nearly every single post from you talks rubbish about overstacked, stackgate, blah blah ?

If you were here for longer than you were you’d know well that that talk is and has been just trolling trash talk from other servers.

BG actually lost a ton of guilds before Seasons, along with a couple during seasons and during our OCX, SEA and EU TZ’s we had NO queues whatsoever on any map, apart from EB sometimes which had a few minutes queue.
We are not have not been overstacked, if anything our servers organisers have properly managed the coverage.
ZDs coming here was a surprise to most people and we’re glad they did as it finally gave us and helped us combat the huge impact that the likes of JQ’s very good SEA guilds have had.
People claiming overstacked, stackgate etc., are trolls, hell, even some Merc moved to JQ because BG didn’t have coverage, at least that was one of the reasons given.

You were also calling out and trash talking ZDs in a previous thread, for NO REASON.
If for any reason you have a problem with any guild on BG, take it to our server forums and your opinion, like anyone else’s no matter anyone’s opinion you think they have of you, will be given proper attention. Trash talking your own server and guilds on a public forum gains you little respect, so any you think you’ve lost, you brought upon yourself.

I still get in on any map during EU time (apart from EB which is always filled with tons of pugs and uplevels) without any hassle, 5 min queue at most, same with SeA and OCX timezones, in seasons, in our most important week of seasons. Overstacked, sure thing…

Ever stop to think for a minute that a lot of our NA guilds especially have taken in a lot of normally PVE players to train up, skill up and get them interested in WvW. I know KnT has for one and KnT were running commanders on every single map at the same time during certain timezones.

Some of my comments also were general, not directed at you either. I’m neither angry nor annoyed, I’m calling you out on saying we’re overstacked, which you seem to do at every opportunity and which is simply not true. We just have good coverage which has been organised very well by the servers council of guilds.

Also, I’m not saying JQ has no organisation, I know they do, I played there. I’m just saying it needs to be improved. As much as I like beating JQ, I still really enjoy their competition they put up, all of us do and we want to see that continue.

Maybe BG might dip into our massive gold war chest and buy a Russian guild for JQ next time…

1) If you think every post of mine is about how overstacked Blackgate is, you’ve not been reading enough of my posts. Also you can call my posts rubbish, but it doesn’t make them so.
2) What happened before the season is irrelevant to what’s happening during the season. It is my experience that we have (nearly) always been queued, at least when there is something to fight for.
3) I don’t see why it is so difficult for you to comprehend the idea that we are overstacked. As I wrote it is my experience that we have (nearly) always been queued, at least when there is something to fight for. SoR and JQ have not. Therefore relative to JQ and SoR we are overstacked. Since it’s impossible for anyone to be more stacked than us (since we are nearly always queued) we can drop the “relative to JQ and SoR” line and simply say we are overstacked. If you do not think we are overstacked then you are also essentially saying that it is impossible for any server to be overstacked, since it is impossible to be more stacked than us. What ZDs, MERC, or whatever guild say or think or do has no impact on this.
4) 5 minutes queue is still a queue.
5) The fact that KnT have been running training programmes or having commanders on every map or whatever they’ve been doing does not change the fact that we are still nearly always queued and therefore overstacked.
6) The reasons I called out ZDs on the other thread are given in that post. I do not think it is “no reason”. If you do I conclude you are not reading my posts. I did also try to talk to them using map chat. Their responses are given in my posts.
7) I don’t care what the Blackgate WvW community thinks of me. You are not be the first person to dislike me and you won’t be the last, although you are among the few people who dislike me but still added me to friend’s.

If you don’t want me to WvW for Blackgate feel free to contribute to the get-Jeydra-out-of-Blackgate fund, which in spite of some people who pledged to “pay fully” for me to transfer and my stated willingness to leave the server, currently has a grand total of 0 copper.

See you on the battlefield.

To be honest I’m a proponent of in-game testing over any kind of mathematics. I’d suggest choosing something in the game and then test sustained D/F DPS against it. If you want to do S/D or Staff DPS against it that’s fine too, but if not I’ll be happy to bring my Ele for that. For reference my Ele has full zerk gear but isn’t fully kitted out – missing ascended weapons, ascended backpiece, and infusions.

If you have no preference I’d suggest the champion cave troll in the area north of Twilight Arbor. Reasons to pick this guy: he’s usually there, he’s tanky, usually nobody else is attacking him, and I think he mimics general PvE quite well. We try it, and record the time taken to kill the troll solo. If you prefer another champion, I’m OK with that too.

ballymun.3986:

Who are you ? You’re only on BG what, 2 weeks ?

Only reason we have queues at all is because of the pve rubbish/achievements in wvw, same as any big server.

Simple facts of the matter, JQ have the players, they have the coverage – what they’ve lacked is the organisation, same as SoR.
I’m not going into details on a public forums here but BG have extremely good organisation and many NA guilds pulled serious overtime and extending themselves before and after their normal timezone, to give ourselves the coverage required to win and support our OCX/SEA and EU.

People can make all the excuses they want, doesn’t help to bury your head in the sand and deny you failed to organise your servers’ guilds.

There were many times before leagues our EU were seriously outnumbered by JQ, not to mention our SEA and OCX. One guilds transferring here did not change that, they only roll on one map anyway. Old boring trolling excuses.

Jeydra, your only reason being on BG is to trash talk us, seriously, you’ve made no effort to come on TS, no effort to be part of the community, no effort even to join the servers forums and input. It’s childish and pathetic.

1) I’ve been on Blackgate much longer than 2 weeks.
2) There may be a lot of reasons why we have queues. Doesn’t change the fact that we do have queues.
3) No idea how the things you wrote about organizing guilds is relevant to my post.
4) I’ve written about the reasons I transferred to BG in another post. Just look through my post history. No, I’m not on BG to trash talk you or the server. In fact the post I made wasn’t even trash talking you (or the server). It seems to me that you’re just taking offense because you don’t want to believe that we have a population advantage over JQ / SoR. Or perhaps you don’t like the word ‘stacked’, even though I’m using that to mean that we have lots of (too many) players without negative connotation.
5) I’ve been on TS quite a bit. I’ve also used my voice, and some people have even come to recognize it (hence they asked me why I was typing instead of talking at one point). I’m naturally averse to registering on new forums because reading each new forum is a big time commitment. Given how welcoming the community has been of me, is it a wonder why I’ve not made an exception?

You’re free to call me childish and pathetic. Still, considering how many of the accusations you’ve made of me are factually wrong, I’ll say the same of you.

I must say I find your points quite unconvincing and even a bit biased.

Staff
Water provides AoE heals and condition removal, which admittedly you might not need. Air provides AoE speedboost, which helps with running.

Scepter
Fire #2 hits for big damage on quite low cooldown. Fire #3 isn’t low damage either, although Fire #1 is a terrible autoattack. Air #2 is instant cast and easy to spam with Fresh Air. On its own the damage isn’t high but it adds up. The damage may be spiky, but as long as the overall damage is similar it’s not too bad a thing; you can also blow all the high-damage skills and then spawn Lightning Hammer. Earth #2 also provides extra Toughness if you need it, similar to what you wrote about Focus’s defensive abilities.

OH Dagger
If you say the heal is weak then you are also saying getting 20 points Water for Cleansing Ripple + Healing Wave is weak. Might stacking is perfectly OK if you run with Persisting Flames (you have enough time to hit all four blast finishers in seven seconds). Mobility matters when you are running past mobs, e.g. in CoF p1 bridge.

It’s also worth pointing out that if you do other things than dungeons and high level fractals, such as running world bosses, D/F is significantly weaker than the other options (Staff vs. SB, for example). While it is true that world bosses are very easy anyway, Staff / OH Dagger still gives you the mobility to get to the world bosses before they die. Scepter #2 even gives you the ability to tag the world boss at long range before it dies, if necessary.

Personally of all the weaponsets possible I find D/F one of the weaker ones and definitely inferior to D/D, S/D and Staff, but it might be my playstyle.

Jeydra.4386:

Kiff.8157:

Jeydra wasn’t even on BG before the league. He clearly has no clue what is the main factor of players influx in wvw after the league started.
I don’t care if he helped to build sieges or whatever, most of us know how to do that. I want to see him get out of BG to some server which is not stacked and I will pay fully for him. A small dose of toxin might not rot the community but the side effect is unpleasant and disgusting.

Great. You know my ID (Jeydra.4386). I have 319 gems at the moment. Send me the balance and I’ll immediately transfer off.

Well? Are you sending me the balance or not?

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

Tarkus.4109:

Great, another chestbeating thread from BG. Not every server has 24 hour queues all week on all maps and when there is legitimately less people on other respective servers. Even though fighting bgs zone blobs on all maps the with the same 25 people on 3maps, at least we’re getting fights – it would’ve been horribly boring to stay on an overstacked server with no competition.

Edit; comment is in reference to oc and Euro

2 of our maps have no que right now…. so… 24 hour ques all week must mean something else, I must have misunderstood you….

Be honest. While it’s technically true that two of our maps have no queue at the time you posted, it’s because there’s nobody to fight on those two maps, or at least because those two maps we have like a 3-to-1 numbers advantage when it’s not very fun (I’m certain the two maps are BG BL / SoS BL). The maps in which there is someone to fight are practically always queued.

BG is obviously overstacked and the effect is eating into JQ (and SoR before that). In the weak coverage timezone (EU), with BG still running at full gear, JQ / SoR lose many of the T3 towers and keeps the previous timezone (SEA / OCX) worked hard to get. The new timezome people (NA) are stuck with paper towers and keeps, still against a BG that’s running at full gear. Of course this is a disadvantage and they can’t do all that much. When the next day rolls around the SEA / OCX people see they’ve worked so hard for nothing, and it’s easy to lose motivation and just stop playing. This vicious cycle happened to SoR and it’s happening to JQ, hence the fact that JQ isn’t fully queued even though they certainly have enough players to be fully queued. During the weekend when JQ and SoR could field full zergs, BG were nowhere near as unstoppable. In fact in the SoR / BG / TC matchup a while ago, BG were even last at one point.

That said I give JQ credit for playing. The situation as the moment is definitely bad for morale, yet they continue to play (at least on EBG + JQ BL), They’re doing something SoR just gave up on. While JQ can’t hold off BG throughout the day on every map, they’re at least holding off BG on two maps, and even ticking higher than BG at some points. This is a testament to the commitment and skill of JQ, and they should be commended for it. BG may win the league, but JQ should be proud for playing well.

Kiff.8157:

Jeydra wasn’t even on BG before the league. He clearly has no clue what is the main factor of players influx in wvw after the league started.
I don’t care if he helped to build sieges or whatever, most of us know how to do that. I want to see him get out of BG to some server which is not stacked and I will pay fully for him. A small dose of toxin might not rot the community but the side effect is unpleasant and disgusting.

Great. You know my ID (Jeydra.4386). I have 319 gems at the moment. Send me the balance and I’ll immediately transfer off.

UnrepentantProcrastinator.7420:

Dude, Jeydra, just transfer already. By your own admission you’re not going to get any sense of satisfaction from being on BG. And the fact that you actually proposed people leave, instead of just leaving yourself, puts you in the troll category.

Can’t believe you don’t seem to know why I haven’t transferred out of BG. It’s the same reason why it took me so long to transfer out of SoS.

Send me the transfer fee and I’ll transfer out of BG today.

PS: I didn’t say I’m not going to get any sense of satisfaction from being on BG.

Kysin.6349:

You act as though you can never be happy about winning anything, because if you won then you must have had some unfair advantage. There will never be even numbers in every time zone on any server all the time. The BG WvW community has put a lot of work and thought into how to best use our available militia, especially in this match-up (which has been a fantastic week by the way). It seems to me like you are playing completely the wrong game mode, tpvp offers a level playing field with even numbers at all times.

As I’ve said before, I want to win, but I also want to win because I played better, not because I had some kind of unfair advantage. The ideal case for me right now would be a match between three servers, all three of which could field full queues on every map 24/7. Actually make that even better: nobody goes AFK, there are no spies, nobody uses glitches or hacks or anything like that, everyone has an infinite amount of superior siege blueprints + gold to upgrade stuff, etc. THAT would be WvW at its best and something awesome to participate in.

I know some people have been on BG for a very long time. I was on BG too a very very very long time ago when WM still played for SBI, although I understood little to nothing about WvW back then. It’s certainly an achievement that BG are now the undisputed #1 of NA WvW. But to not acknowledge that we are overstacked and the 24/7 queues are having an effect on the matchup is just unethical and insulting to the tremendous amount of effort that our opponents have put in. With all due credit to BG’s hardcore WvW’ers, I think we’re winning in large part because we have more players, not because we are playing better than the opposition.

inb4 someone yells at me for “undermining” their efforts or spewing negativity or “if you don’t like it, why don’t you transfer?” again.

ReverendChan.8467:

JQ won’t give up, but it is obvious they’re daytimes are going to be some rough uphill fights. I’ve never known SG, SF, DA, NS, MERC, etc… to be quiters.

If everything that you spend hours fighting for just goes up in smoke when you’re not playing though, it’s very discouraging. The signs are ominous. BG are making some serious progress across every map, and the progress has generally come at JQ’s cost. I’m not on EB but I can see Klovan is taken; on JQ BL we took Cliffside too. I know Cliffside was a maximally upgraded T3 tower, and Klovan probably was, too.

If WvW were like sPvP in the sense that when you log on you are on an equal playing field, then it’s easier to stay motivated. But WvW isn’t like sPvP. If you log on to a barren map with every single one of the other team’s towers + keeps sieged and upgraded, you can play for hours yet make little progress. Even if the towers and keeps aren’t sieged and upgraded, if there’s a comparable enemy zerg around (and BG is certainly fielding zergs every timezone on every map) then you might not make much progress. When JQ NA start playing, if the most they can hope for are paper keeps and towers, they may not even want to upgrade them since the next day they’ll have to start from scratch again anyway, and from there it’s a short step towards not playing at all.

If this keeps up, perhaps it’s for the better that some BG players transfer to other servers.

ReverendChan.8467:

I’m not here to insult you because I don’t know you. I just figured you should know not to be shocked when some people start trolling you on a repeat basis that are from your own server because you are kinda bringing it on yourself.

Well like I said, I don’t give a kitten .

PS: That wasn’t meant as a “jab” either.

I hope JQ continues to play … in the week SoR vs. TC vs. BG, there was a point when BG was last, yet shortly afterwards SoR stopped showing up to play. It’s discouraging to log on and find that everything you achieved the day prior is now gone, but still: I hope JQ isn’t doing the same thing. No queue on JQ EB is a bad sign, though.

@JaredKincade – it doesn’t matter … unless our PvE population are all off doing something like jump puzzles or crafting, they’re on the map and playing. If that means that collectively SoR are playing better than BG then that is exactly that: SoR are playing better than BG. If BG’s PvE population is off doing stupid things, then that is exactly that: BG are playing badly.

WvW is a team game. You as an individual don’t have to be playing badly for the other team to be playing better than your team. The concept’s not hard. Can’t see why it’s so difficult to grasp this.

ReverendChan.8467:

Again, if you feel the way the server performs in WvW can be done better that is something you need to mention on the BG community forums or TS. It is very hard to believe you have a community agenda when you say something about JQ that is nice/deserved, but instantly jab your own server in the same sentence (like saying they played awful so that is why JQ got a lead. FYI that also doesn’t do much to help JQ).

Tell me which part of my post made you think that I “feel the way the server performs in WvW can be done better”, or qualifies as a “jab”. Note I didn’t say we played awful, and note that I can only see what’s happening in one out of four maps.

Also if you don’t want to be seen as boasting, then man up and say Blackgate is overstacked relative to JQ / SoR. The idea that SoR can field zergs that are far larger than what Blackgate does and therefore SoR are QQ’ing is (no offense) silly, because we both have the same map cap. If SoR is fielding zergs that are far larger than what Blackgate has, yet Blackgate is queued, then SoR are simply playing better (up to roaming / havoc squads etc – you know what I mean). Again, you should man up and admit it.

Finally FYI I’ve spent 5+ hours over the past two days running supply from Hero’s / Foghaven / Redwater to Lake / Hills on JQ BL. When we didn’t hold those camps I’ve even ran supply from Vale or Bay. I’ve built something like 20 superior ACs solo by now, and I’ve continued to run supply even though we’ve not managed to hold Lake / Hills. I don’t care what you or the server or Chris.3290 think about me. I’m playing for PPT and I’m playing to win.

See you on the battlefield.

ReverendChan.8467:

On the contrary I don’t think you will find a lot of people undermining JQ outside of just pure egging them on to fight. Most people here have a great deal of respect for JQ as they have the longest standing history and the guilds/people that are representative have been genuinely good people (from JQ of course).

The egging is more or less just coaxing them into giving great fights which compared to the past 3 weeks vs SoR have been way closer by comparison. I for one know the Jedians won’t give up till the week is over.

At this point you are just feeding the trolls (primarily SoR as I already recognize a few of them have posted here) to assist them in their efforts of undermining this weeks matchup/thread. Also in general based on your post history thus far you have sent very mixed responses in your messages. A lot of the times it is trying to point fingers at your fellow servermates instead of supporting them. It isn’t a matter of yay/nay to BG pride when you are trying to call out others openly for mistakes they made in combat on a forum when you can easily utilize the community TS or other routes to voice your concerns. Your name has also been popping up around the community from what I’ve heard for causing drama since you have arrived. I don’t know you so I’m not going to judge, but others may have already thrown their hat in that ring so maybe tone down some of the mixed anti-BG messages/complaints. We are a community and we are suppose to be supporters of that not detractors from it.

I’ve already said I’m not going to complain anymore about my servermates’ performance or mistakes. At least I did in the previous thread before it got canned.

I will say though that a big part of the reason we’re leading JQ and steamrolled SoR is because we have a numbers advantage. The fact is we have queues on all four maps almost all the time. We are so often queued that people often feel that “no queue for this map” is worth reporting. Try playing for a server like SoS where “no outnumbered buff” is worth reporting, then you’ll know just how stacked Blackgate is.

Because of our population advantage, if we win this matchup it’s not something worth boasting about. In fact I’d say boasting – or, worse, to claim that we don’t have a numbers advantage (i.e. we are not stacked) – is insulting to our opponents, who are doing a great job considering the disadvantage they’re fighting against. It’s not just JQ as well; SoS are doing great too. Before I transferred to BG I played for SoS, and in the SoS / FA / JQ matchup not long ago we couldn’t even get our keep in Overlook upgraded. Yet this week Overlook is T3 and has been defended successfully against two T1 servers running on full queues. With their current population SoS will not be able to compete with JQ or BG, but they’re still doing great in their own way.

Finally note that in spite of Blackgate’s population advantage, JQ still managed yesterday to claw back the BG’s lead and even build up a few thousand points of its own lead. Considering that we were still queued all the time, the only way this could have happened was because JQ played very well. By extension this means that Blackgate could’ve played better (or for the less diplomatic SoR forum trolls, Blackgate played badly, but I’m not going to go there). We should realize this, because acknowledging that our own play isn’t the best is the first step towards getting better.

You can say what I wrote is negative and is undermining BG’s efforts, but I think SoR’s complaints about how stacked Blackgate is have a point.

By the way thanks to JQ for actually showing up and playing, and playing hard. This match has been very intense and fun so far. Even if BG eventually wins this, I give you guys credit for doing as well as you have against the numbers advantage.