Guild Wars 2

Changing the damage ratio would be an excellent start. I’d even start it higher than 90/10, with the scale sliding towards 50/50 with more trait points spent in BM line. That would allow us to basically abandon our pet in WvW where it is useless, but be the beastmaster some want to be in sPvP/PvE where the AI isn’t crippling.

Fixing longbow is the other major on my list. The flight time is far too slow and easily dodged, and also has no arc on it causing unreasonable amounts of ‘obstructed’ misses. And I also think it makes absolutely no sense that a longbow’s max range is exactly the same as a short bow without traits. Am I the only one that thinks that defies reason? Longbow should be 1300-1500 traitless, especially if it is going to have a minimum range imposed on effectiveness.

If stealth was something akin to a boon it would probably solve a lot of people’s issues with it… having the ability to rip it off with null fields etc. Having said that though, making it a boon along with all of the boon buffing gear and traits would give thieves even more access to stealth time.

I personally have no problem with how long a thief can hide and how many ways they have to hide – especially since culling removal makes them appear in a more timely manner. I just don’t see the sense in making it so that it can’t be stripped off. That’s the part of stealth that I find “OP” for lack of a better term. If I know you are there, doing some damage isn’t enough, I should be able to reveal you I think… But that’s just me.

Flinch.8061:

Had more fun working with the rest of the server rather then actual fun wiping over and over for a fight we knew we weren’t there to win.

Anyways, map pic from right after hills fell, and we had backed off to take the last few locations we needed(and just secured north camp). We came right back to hills and flipped it to end the night’s goals right after this pic was taken.

Good stuff man, training nights like that pay big down the line. Hopefully we see the fruits of this AR coordination effort in EBay at some point next week. Just don’t tell us if/when it’s coming. We like to test our reaction time.

Pestilence.3184:

You guys got 2nd cause of EBAY dont forget that, everytime we come for you ebay come for us and AR just waits for ebay to hit us so they in turn can do the same, you havent won 2nd because of skill or overwhelming numbers or even brains….. its plain and simple EBAY GOT YOU 2nd

i dont even see why peeps are giving you the gz!! what for being a lap dog?? if thats something to give you guys gz for then ill give you GZ “slow clap”

Ive lost ALL respect for AR… yeah you can come give me some sarcastic replys and troll me but the FACT of the matter is YOU GUYS KNOW ITS THE TRUTH.

AR is the smallest server in this tier, they performed effectively with this handicap by playing to the strategy you describe and maximized point gain for the force they are able to field. That’s a strategically sound move. I’m not sure what you would rather they do… team up with you to fight EBay head on so that you finish second instead of taking the points that are there to be had.

If placing higher than AR is important to you and your server collectively in coming weeks, and AR’s propensity to be opportunistic really truly bothers you, perhaps I could suggest you not overextend yourself attacking one enemy and thus opening an undefended front? Or be quicker to mobilize defense, being willing to abandon the gain of new territory in favor of defending territory you currently own. Both are viable strategies that would rebuff AR and likely earn the 2nd place finish.

As much as I would love feed the EBay ego for AR’s rise, AR has to stand up and take the opportunities that are presented. So in the end, AR still had to earn the points they got, which this week happened to be more than BP by a very small margin.

Rashagal.5867:

Evilzara.6378:

I’d like to congratulate AR on winning second place again this week. You guys fought hard and it was rewarding.

I’d like to also congratulate Ehmry Bay on gaining some rating points. This is the first step into your long term goal. Keep it up.

I’m going to assume you’re being sincere. There’s still a few hours left till reset aren’t there? This was a very close match between BP and AR. Cheers guys. Here hoping next week is just as close, and without the trolling. Always a good fight with you BP boys and girls.

AR has essentially sealed 2nd already. With 3 hours to go BP would have to tick 140 points higher than AR on every tick until reset. Not impossible, but they would have to do something like cap AR’s BL in the next 5 minutes or so and hold it until reset.

Looking forward to next week guys, lets have some epic battles shal we?

taow.6892:

Expiatus.4210:

Figures. The one night I take a break from WvW you all go off and have an epic, hour long, three way battle. Please tell me someone took some video footage.

I sure did, and I am glad I did.

Mad Props to Rekz and Pk, they were absolutely determined to take that keep despite being wiped a couple times. While they were running back, AR would take their turn. In the end, EBay was able to bait some of our guys to the North Inner gate and wiped half of em.

It was literally a non-stop, hour long fight right in front of the Lord Room. Although, I did manage to cut out some boring auto-attacking and some fast forwarding to get it down to 20 mins. Thanks to everyone involved in that fight, was epic fun.

http://youtu.be/XfjF4eSdmdQ

AMAZING! Thanks so much for posting that. I imagine that this is exactly what ANet had in mind when designing WvW. Battles like these are too few and far between, but even just seeing it reminds me why I barely remember what PvE is…

I bet footage like that makes people in some other tiers jealous, if that gets too many hits we should all brace for transfers incoming of people wanting to join the fun. :p

Great job all 3 servers on that battle and thanks again for the video!

Let me preface my post by saying that I am a WvW junky. I PvE occasionally to afford tower upgrades, I’ve run 4 dungeons total, am at roughly FoTM lvl 5 and haven’t set foot in sPvP since November. So, nothing I say can be taken in any context other than how it works in WvW.

1v1 and small skirmish debates don’t interest me, and honestly tanky ranger builds do nothing for me either. WvW is about epic sieges, executing intricately timed tactics and armies clashing, and in that kind of warfare ranged experts can turn the tide. Playing this role is what I do, and 1500 range + piercing arrows is my idea of a good time. We are set up to have that role, but because of the pet there isn’t the follow through that rangers like me crave.

What I personally find frustrating is the fact that a pet that I have very little control over is supposed to account for so much of my DPS. If I am penalized in my skills and abilities because of my access to a companion, I want full control over what that companion is able to do and options for that companion that support the abilities we have been given.

When you are in battle with 10+ on each side, pets do next to nothing. They have to be breathing down an unmoving targets neck to do the damage that they are supposed to be doing for us, and in these situations pets under any build melt in the AoE’s – without even needing to be targeted – often faster than they can even reach their target. Pets also have access to all these wonderful utility skills that only get cast in combat and thus can do nothing to help my allies or myself when they are off in the distance or dead.

I could use my pet as a personal protector, having it on standby and not rushing into the fray, but then what is the point of sacrificing what the rangers sacrifice to have the pet? If the troops I have positioned in front of me die, my pet isn’t going to save me from the angry hoard.

I’ve recently switched to using only devourer pets for their ranged abilities which does help… they can get to the front lines and fight without burying themselves in the enemy lines, but the range is so short that they are still right in the thick of the heaviest damage anyways. When I am running with smaller 3-5 man parties though, devourer at least can be relied upon to always hit. I am saddened that I am reduced to my least favorite choice among all companion options simply because it’s the only one that works consistently.

When attacking or defending structures, we have no pet that is capable of attacking a person on a wall (because birds can’t fly higher than 8 feet in this world apparently?) or down from a wall. And when you are under fire you just have to let your pet sit there and die, because inexplicably I am only able to send them to sit somewhere else would cost me a utility skill (I’m feeling a little less like a ‘beastmaster’ if I can’t even get a dog to stay…?)

I guess what I am saying in TL;DR terms is that if I am by definition supposed to rely on my companion for part of my usefulness, then I should be provided with control of my companion in such a way that I can benefit from it’s abilities, or provided with an option that supports the playstyle that the traits I have chosen allow me to play.

As for longbows, they need help. Please help longbows. Obstruction and out of range messages on shots that clearly should hit make me go crazy.

Thanks for reading

Hey, can I get a score update? Just finished a 5 hour drive, sitting in lineup waiting to take a 2hr ferry ride to visit the in laws. Long time still till I can log,in.

Gorefiend.9675:

I really don’t think you realize how much CD has changed over the last few months. They are nowhere close to the powerhouse (being able to beat maguuma) they used to be. The last time we faced CD we utterly demolished their NA presence. The only thing that kept them in the game was their Sea presence keeping them ticking at 695 PPT. Had, lets say, IoJ been in the tier instead of Yaks, we would have won that matchup by a very healthy margin.

http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/44/24

You will notice that we were beating CD until Tuesday where their sea managed to wipe every map and pull near 695 PPT. CD has since lost that sea presence so they are basically a near dead server now when compared to Ehmry.

edit: I honestly think both AR and BP will beat CD when they drop down to this tier.

QFT. If CD has lost any SEA presence at all BP would wipe the floor with them. Its tough to really explain what happened to us in T4 to someone who wasn’t there because it sounds like chest thumping, but we were literally apologetic to CD for how badly we would smash their NA presence. Their SEA presence was godly though, Yaks had no answer for it either. If you combined Yaks or Mags with CDs SEAs you’d likely be looking at kaineng level server.

The server I want to face really is SBI. I feel like they are probably us almost exactly. It would be a real even fight coverage and manpower wise.

Speaking of godly though, anyone see scores earlier where Yaks and Mags held exactly 3 supply camps between them at about 1 in the afternoon? How scary is DB, really! If they don’t belong in T2 then I don’t know what to say…

I mentioned this before somewhere, but would it be possible to just ditch the server vs server mechanism completely and make 8-9 tiered brackets? Guilds could join alliances with other guilds, and those alliances would join a bracket for the week to face off against another 2 sets of guild alliances, and each guild in an alliance can get a rating based on how they do in their bracket.

Over time you’d have guild alliances that would rise to whatever tiers they belong in, and there would be possible movement in the tiers as alliances are broken, changed and made. You wouldn’t have to worry about servers that are population heavy with PvE or sPvP only players dwelling in the basement because the WvW population of any given tier could be determined on a tier/alliance level instead of the server level.

Obviously it’s not a simple change, there’s a lot of details that would have to be thought out, but the name of the game is GUILD wars, is it not?

I don’t think a reset is the solution, but some kind of rework of the formula should be in the cards. As Jeda said above me from Kain, T4/3 servers won’t just magically stack up against T2/1 servers. T8/7 servers won’t do well in T5/4.

Being from EBay myself, I can see the flaws in the ranking system fairly well. We feel like we have a chance in T4 and we yearn to move up again and test our skills – especially now that Yaks and Mags are up a tier. As it stands in our tier we can essentially impose our will upon either server, but we don’t quite have the coverage to dominate them both together to the extent that it would take to move up. Our tier feels stale, we don’t feel challenged and thus don’t bring our A game to the extent that we should/need to. We win the tier by reasonably large margins each week, but net losses in rank points… what’s the point of winning again?

But when you can only steal points from the 2 servers you match up against, the only 2 things that can happen in the present state: that the rankings will even themselves out naturally over time regardless of who wins, or one server will absolutely dominate the other two to move on, which is no fun for anyone.

Not a put down to either of our opponents, they both have great WvW guilds and can put up some really good fights. We just simply have more dedicated WvW guilds than they do to cover the bases.

The system needs to be tweaked to allow for more upwards movement. If a server moves up and gets blown out, so be it. Throw them back down. But it shouldn’t be that the server has to reduce it’s opponents to a mutilated pile of unrecognizable pulp week in and week out in order to slowly claw it’s way up to the next tier. That’s not fun for anyone.

Dinas Dragonbane.2978:

Then why the heck is there such a focus on Borlis if we’re the worst ones here? Still the attention is nice, if a bit overbearing at times.

Ebay wins by a little, loses points, spends a week listening to BP dog us for losing rank points.

Ebay wins by a lot, but only breaks even on points, then spends a week listening to BP dog us for still not winning by enough to make a significant gain in rank points.

Rinse repeat, rinse repeat. CHAR was a distraction, getting at sekz made EBays blood boil, but ANets action seems to have more or less appeased the offended. At the end of the day, we only have so much manpower to go around, choices have to be made…
Right or wrong, AR keeps saying you won in lower tiers by having a weaker opponent to tee off on. If that’s true then you are well acquainted with the strategy of point gain. If its false then AR clearly has a large axe to grind about something and its not really reasonable to assume they would come to your defense. It does them no good in the grand scheme of things to help you if they don’t like you. From their perspective, better off to ride the wave and find themselves in a new matchup at some point.

For the ones who aren’t forum warriors, I’m sorry you feel slighted. You drew the short straw at reset, and stuff like this happens to everyone at some point. Shake it off and keep trying. In the end, its a long week and we are only 1/6 of the way through it. Things can change.

Wow, that’s quite the argument I started. Not my intention, I apologize for starting a crap storm.

Honestly I just felt like AR plays at a very similar level to BP, there doesn’t seem to be a huge skill gap between you, and yet recent history shows BP winning over and over. I was just confused. It doesn’t really matter what EBay is doing to who, I’m just looking at what I see in individual battles and from overall standpoint watching tactics of the two groups. AR either was getting shafted in lower tiers, or they found new strength in this one. If it was the latter I was curious as to what the exact source was. My thinking was my own server might do with a dose of the same type of motivation if it could be mustered.

Edit: To add though, based on what came out of the door on reset, maybe we’ve finally found our motivation as a group again?

Aeros.2046:

since you guys have been consistently losing ratings for the last 3 weeks, while BP and AR have been gaining.

That’s pretty much all that can happen based on the WvW ranking mechanism. Servers matched up against each other can only ever steal points from each other, meaning nothing short of complete and utter domination can result in movement. You understand that we have to beat you by a margin in the order of 60-70k on the week just to stay even in rankings, right? That’s not exactly a hollow victory, and yet it’s not enough to do anything other than lose points to you.

I couldn’t care less if it’s BP or that AR falls, to be honest it would be just nice to have some fresh challenges. And by the appearances of how DH is doing in T6 they aren’t exactly going to be a pushover coming up here.

Anyway, the question was pointed at AR, and it was an honest one. We’ve fought you both, we’ve fought BP independently of AR too and what I’ve personally seen from the 2 servers doesn’t add up… you two should have been much more back and forth in previous matches if this is what you are capable of. BP has grown leaps and bounds tactically since first facing us. They also had more lead time to learn and adjust to the matchup, and yet I find AR more capable of strategic unpredictability and more able to keep an enemy off balance. This isn’t to say I think AR is the clear cut better server, I’m just saying that what I see in match history doesn’t jive with what I see on the battlefield. What gives?

If matchups were shortened from 7 days down to 3, or maybe 4, do you think there would be some benefit to the game? I have been really down on the ranking system for quite some time because it doesn’t seem to really be able to reward victory properly. But absent a better suggestion on how to actually score the outcome, I was wondering if shortening the matches would be a possibility?

Do you think it would result in more movement in the rankings and promote higher focus for some if servers only had to sustain their effort for a shorter period of time?

If you look at the score fluctuations 3-4 days into the matchup they are usually greater than at the 7th day because there is a higher relative difference between scores with the lower totals. might keep matches a bit fresher? Also, not playing against the same opponent (potentially) for the entire week would change the pace of the game in matchup coverages a bit.

Thoughts?

Question. Looking back at the historical matches, BP had only lost to AR once prior to the EB/BP/AR matchup in tier 5. And while a couple of those victories were close, BP also blew the doors off of them a couple times as well. But since entering T5 with us, AR seems much more organized and gritty than BP. What changed for you guys?

New pop influx? Thrill of rising a tier? New enemy? Learned new tactics from new enemies since separating from BP?

What is weird about this (to me) is that it lets defending players build siege in these locations without problems, it’s just the attackers that have issue. If you’ve ever been defending a wall and manning an arrow cart you have experienced the odd sensation of standing in mid air while you and your arrow cart float where a wall use to be. :|

I don’t understand why it lets one side plant siege but eats it when the other side does, seems like it’s trying to give you an error message but then doing something else instead.

BaconCatTheGreasy.9542:

I have to say, if ANet does ban people for this, I will be very disappointed. It’s not greifing, it;s not an exploit and it’s not cheating.

From the Guild Wars 2 rules of conduct that you agree to when signing up to play the game:

While participating in Plaver-vs-Player (PvP) gameplay, you will not participate in any form of match manipulation. Match manipulation is defined as any action taken to fix or manipulate the outcome of a match or alter or manipulate the rankings or ratings of the ladder. This also includes disrupting other people’s game experience by not actively participating in matches in good faith, a.k.a leeching.

Burning thousands of supply by building siege weapons that are not removable in order to make it impossible for a server to defend high value capture points is in fact griefing, cheating, and goes against both the letter and spirit of the agreement signed. When done consistently it has a direct effect on WvW point totals and thus match outcomes – this is both a form of match manipulation AND disruptive to other people’s game experience.

I find it disturbing that there are people like you that don’t see this.

That was a fun read Aidget. Wish I was there, almost felt like I could have been.

Edit: Don’t suppose anyone had FRAPS running? This would make for a good video… would love to see it from any of the 3 sides.

Strippling.3524:

Just stopping by to say hey Ehmry Bay. Miss fighting you guys/gals, hope your havin a good time in t5. Hopefully will get to see you guys on the battlefield in the future, looking forward to seeing [GF] and [Sekz]… both guilds were very impressive when we fought last!

How are the battles in T5?

We miss you too! Yaks is tons of fun even if we get our kitten handed to us. I miss commander meetings figuring out just how exactly we were going to try to beat you. T5 is boring, we just run around ram rushing stuff and waiting for reset. Seems like we might have to break out of our funk if we are going to make it back to T4 in less than a month….

How’s T3?

Kalkz.5297:

You saying Maguuma wont cap Your stuff at night ? I have been in Maguuma and in a sick guild called ( WaR ) We used to Cap all of our enemy BL at night, Please when you move up a tier dont Cry about that, LEARN how to deal with it, because maguuma wont leave you untouched at night teach your commanders how to leave eternal and watch your BL at night, no offence, just giving you an advice

We’ve fought Maguuma in T4 already, we know what they can do. Maguuma actually has crap all of a night crew though. You want to talk about night capping you should see CD. Maguuma and Yaks both kneel in fear to CD night crew. CD night crew is the one and only reason we are down here fighting you, because 4 mornings out of every week we would wake up to them ticking 600+ on a completely blue map.

We know full well what we are saying when we say we want to get back into that fight.

I don’t see why we don’t just have “Guild Wars” instead of server matchups anyways. Make a weekly matchup roster, have guild leaders assign their guilds to a matchup for the week and see how it plays out. Rank the guilds based on performance and points gained during their matchup – much like influence is gained – and then only allow them to sign up for matches against like-ranked guilds as time goes on.

Kardiamond.6952

PK is another zerg. I have yet to fight them in a small group. Just yesterday, they actually stopped, stacked then charged 20 of there player just to kill me and a warrior. I doubt you needed to stack for that, or maybe we were just at the bad place at the wrong time.

That sounds like a training exercise. You will see a lot of stopping, organizing and then moving as a unit to take small or insignificant objectives when we run training events – like control points or small groups.

PK is extremely diverse. It’s split into squads that have very different purposes and are led by different people who employ very different strategies. We have a zerg element that we all participate in from time to time, most often you will find it running mid afternoon and in primetimes. So, I guess it all depends on what your definition of a zerg is and what time you are expecting to encounter us.

Kalkz.5297:

I was enjoying the fight against FTF and PK, 1 – 2 Hours of 40+ zergs in bp bl, ended up winning it and it was enjoyable, until PK did it again, Wait in spawn for 10 mins and wait for the enemy zerg to leave then go and cap a keep, no offence to you guys but i cannot think of any other cheap way for a guild to cap a thing, i want to leave this tier

I am out of town and haven’t been on since reset, so I can’t say whether that’s how it went down or not. I just wanted to put this out there though… Often after a big victory or a major wipe PK will gather at spawn, call a 5 min bio/food break, figure out our next moves and then move out again. I doubt we are unique in this as i see many guilds gather and take a break from time to time mid raid. We haven’t ever actually said ‘Guys, lets hide and wait them out’ that i remember while I’ve been online, although it is clearly an effective strategy and I wouldn’t fault anyone for using it. If you don’t leave scouts until you are sure then its no ones fault but your own when you lose something. We’ve lost enough to poor scouting over the last 3 weeks to understand that.

Merkenary.9860:

To the GF guys who were all ghostie last night you are scary enough without being ghosts! My guildie was laughing when he saw that followed immediately by cussing when you burst on him. Hope you had fun at vale.

AR and BP are both very unfriendly to costumed players Over the weekend 3 of us tried walking over to AR’s Bay tossing roses in the air and got steamrolled by an AR group of about 10 people without even a moments hesitation to appreciate our efforts to beautify that area of your map.

BP and AR both also unceremoniously killed Santa and over 10 reindeer that went to say hi to them on Saturday night. It was a brutal display of unprovoked violence, and I think that all involved should not be surprised if their wishes do not come true this coming December.

We were told that there were to be improvements to the commander functionality in this WvW patch, my guild practices joining squad and it has many good uses… but as stated before in this thread, most PUGs don’t know anything about squads, and don’t know how to join them.

If Squads/Commanders had further benefit to the team than a dedicated chat channel and a way for the commander to check supply, there would be more incentive to actively get people to join the squads, thus partially addressing the issue at hand. I’m eagerly awaiting what will land for this tomorrow…

santi.7516:

It would be so funny if mysteriously BP and AR focused only EBay, send them to 3rd place and then BP and AR fights for the 1st place lol.

Ehmry Bay vs. The Dudley Boys?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=gBJBZPP3mnM

So you did! Week of Jan 12-19th, you faced the “new” Maguuma it seems. 2 weeks prior we had actually beaten Mags in T4. That was the last time we faced them. You can only imagine the trash that was talked leading up to our last T4 matchup against Mags, so eager to layeth the smacketh down once more. Boy were we wrong lol.

JaironKalach.4938

Mag hasn’t significantly changed since January. Pretty sure Yaks is more or less the same as well. Major difference right now is that SoS is working on dropping, suddenly making DB the big bully in that tier. The net result for Mag and Yaks is that since Mag was down in T4, Yaks is getting to have the fun in T3, beating on SoS… This is stagnating the rankings a bit, depending on how SoS hangs on over the course of this week. In any event, Mag/Yaks are still the same 3.5, SoS is ?, and DB is true 3 because of their amazing Oceanic coverage… for now at least.

Ya, it was in January that you guys transformed into what you are now-ish. Going back to December we traded places a couple times in T4/5 kicking each other in the nuts on a by-weekly basis. The last time you leapfrogged us you did it with a crazy display of power in T5 that you had not previously displayed. The very next week is when we faced off with Kaineng on their way up, and when we faced you in T4 a couple weeks ago you were NOT the same server we traded places with last year. You were probably exactly who you were in January, but at that time we weren’t facing each other directly to know. From our side of the fence, you grew like crazy because we hadn’t yet faced the new you. From yours, you had been that way for so long it was normal because you’ve been the same since the Kain rise.

Maybe you are right… I’m just looking at it from a different angle I guess. I just think that guilds like ours – GH, PK and a couple others – it doesn’t matter what the score is. Whether we were losing by 100k to Mags or 300k to Kain, you guys were out there 40 deep putting in the hard time just like us. And if we put out the call to PUNK or IMTL or whoever and said “Guys, we gotta make this more respectable”, they would cuss us out (or at least me, for my PK tag) and then come bleed right alongside us – and vice versa if they called. That’s how I feel like we should measure a WvW population.

Because from my point of view, the PvE guilds that field 10 people in WvW when the score is close don’t count towards what we can really do when push comes to shove. They are a valuable resource, but they can’t be counted on day in and day out like your guys can be. BP, from what I see, fields a large force of smaller guilds. And at least a good number of the people playing I think are probably those same type of people that were fighting hard for us when we were close/ahead of CD in T4 but aren’t really here now that we are facing DR/BP in T5. I could be wrong, but it seems unlikely that a server can have that many sub 100 man guilds that are truly dedicated to WvW.

At least from my point of view, the term “Guild Wars” really comes into play. Those guilds are the backbone of a server’s ability to operate, so if you look at the big ones and pit them head to head, that gives you an idea of who’s gonna field the bigger army down the stretch.

But I could be off base, I dunno… like you said, we have no numbers so all we can do is speculate.

Gorefiend.9675:

BP has the NA population of a t4/5 server. If AR has a similar population then you also have the population of a t4/5 server. Also, I am not saying BP is a t4/5 server. They do not have the skill as a server to pull that off. I am not sure of DR’s actual NA strength seeing as how they do not have their fairweathers out. But they don’t have enough population for t5 though.

I don’t think this is completely accurate. EBay doesn’t, in actuality, have the population of a T4 server. In T4 we are completely overwhelmed by Yaks in their primetime, by Mags at any time, and by CD in their primetime. BP couldn’t touch any of those servers with a 10 foot pole (no offence BP guys, but Mags honestly makes us look like a farmer and his family being overwhelmed by a giant swarm of tactically superior locusts… double your population and you still don’t want any part of them, and CD would make your entire population of ‘fairweathers’ tap out in less than 48 hours of SEA raiding). We did incredibly well in T4, and were probably 1 week away of improving to a 2nd place finish… but we were doing it with less than what we faced.

From what I have observed in WvW, BP may be equal numbers at some parts of the day, but we have a longer primetime period where we sustain numbers they can’t, and the ability to call for reinforcements that they don’t appear to be able to match. Trying to compare anything based on last weeks matchup is a futile endeavour because it’s not a reflection of the population we normally field. Even this week I am seeing less numbers in WvW than normal for my guild…

Here’s an easy way to tell though. EBay has 2 WvW focused guilds (plus a 3rd that is at least close to that) of over 400 members – each of which could field a force of roughly 40-50 on any given night regardless of score or matchup. We also have a core of roughly 5 smaller WvW focused guilds that are key contributors to the effort. These are the ones that lead and coordinate the entire WvW effort for our server.

Does BP equal WvW guilds of that size?

- If yes, then BP is in our population range.

- If no then BP is not, because even if you have a ton of pugs that are on all the time, they will never match the ability to coordinate and call reinforcements and thus never field an equal population.

On to other business:

The late night PK attempted ninja of BP garrison last night was fun. Terrible timing on our part and awesome response on yours. We knew SM was under attack. We did not count on you losing it just before we broke Lords. Seeing all of you WP into view as we engaged Lord sent waves of “oh crap” laughter through our TS. Good on you for responding that fast after a major defeat. Showed heart.

Major props to DR for their defense of Overlook last night between midnight and 1am server time too. You guys showed all the skill in proper siege placement and alertness I had grown to respect from your server from last time we faced you in T5. You play well outmanned and displayed a level of knowledge in defensive tactics of a server higher tier than yours. If you do drop to T6, may the gods have mercy on their attackers.

KStudios.2850:

Out of curiosity though, doesn’t WvW always dress, or otherwise assign a rather generic avatar, to your opponents?

Check your graphic options. Team colors for: Everyone, Enemies, No One (or something to that effect… Going by memory). Choose the no one option to see everyone as they made their character. I think its more resource intensive though, and I generally play with enemies in team colors so that I know who to target first in 3 way battles, but sometimes its fun to see what your enemies really look like.

Aeros.2046:

has Ebay given up? Its 6 PM on the East Coast, and this is what is going on atm.

Still at work. PK raid doesn’t start for another 2.5ish hours. Dunno about GH, FTF, or the others…

*edit – although I think we do have an alt leveling event going on somewhere, so you might see some lowbie PKers capping supply camps.

This thread is so weird… I haven’t seen so many trolls and angry responses about inconsequential things from EBay or it’s enemy since we faced Maguuma before their rise in ranks.

Maybe it would help BP understand the whining if I gave some background. Last week my guild opened the vaults and spent like gold was going out of style upgrading and buying siege, our commanders stayed on longer than they ever do and stayed more focused than normal – all to make a real charge at taking 2nd in T4, only to have it all repeatedly ripped away by the nightly pain train when we had no one left to defend. We weren’t the only ones to dedicate the effort last week either, but because our guild is large and well funded it didn’t hurt as badly as it would have to smaller guilds. What you are seeing is likely the frustration boiling over after already facing that same tactic 3 weeks in a row. If you are fortunate enough to rise up to T4, it wouldn’t be shocking to see your servers members posting the same things almost word for word in the eventual Mag/CD/BP thread.

Not that I am condoning the posts, they are still pointless, but if you see the reason behind the frustration maybe you will save yourself the trouble of getting defensive and lashing back out at them.

I had forgotten about Spring Break too… I’ll hold out hope that this is the reason we seem to be having trouble doing anything at all, but I guess only time will tell.

Evilzara.6378

I heard Ebay has 24/7 map coverage. That scared us here in BP..

I lol’ed when I read that… where on earth did you get that piece of info?

If we had 24/7 coverage we’d be bouncing between T4 and T3 ala Yaks and Mags right now. The only reason you are seeing us here in T5 is because we would wake up to a completely blue CD map with a “So long and thanks for all the empty keeps” message from CD’s [TOFU] pinned to our home spawn point door 3 out of 5 weekdays. Twice I woke up to EBay ticking 0 points last week.

I can’t say for sure because I don’t stay up all night that often, but as far as I know we don’t have a SEA timezone WvW guild.

Borlis Pass server is absolutely not the same server we faced last time we were in T5. And I mean that as the highest compliment. I’ve actually learned 2 new tricks in siege placement in this matchup from your guys so far. I greatly appreciate the elevated levels of competition.

Fraeg.9837:

Thanks for finally taking that so we can all go to sleep.

Cheers

Thanks for going to sleep so that I can finally go to sleep! :p

Reading this thread so far should be an object lesson to some here on EBay. This is what it sounds like to complain to Yaks and Mags about their players having no skill and simply overwhelming everyone all the time with their guilds of only thieves and mesmers. It’s blanket statement exaggeration and in poor sport.

This time we’re on the other side of it… being the larger server. Our “groups” probably look like faceless skill-less masses of whirling button mashing roflnoobs to a server with a lower population, the same as Mags and Yaks looks to us though un-objective eyes. We know what we are, and we know what we normally face from a higher population server up a tier. So remember that and keep classy while we are in this matchup, the next, and so on.

It is good to have the option, I had it off for a while. I ended up turning it back on to help targeting in 3 way battles. It’s sometimes better to be able to focus on a specific group first instead of indiscriminate killing.

What I wish you could do is change the nameplate colors to be server specific… that would make my life easier than armor color. If Blue server had blue names floating above their heads, Green had green and Red was something not so mob-like and had that color name that would be a huge help.

Ruufio.1496:

Thanks Yak’s Bend, for double teaming us, constantly, all the time, while Crystal Desert’s borderlands almost always remained untouched. I guess taking stuff from a server that can’t challenge you is fun. We had second place for a while, but even a server as skilled as ours can’t hold off 100x the amount of players we have.

Next time, attack Crystal Desert more.
~No respect.

Peace.
Cya again soon. LOL

Oh relax. When we realized we were going down to T5 even with a 2nd place finish I think a lot of us just decided to do something else for the day/evening. I got on at just after 11 last night and we only had 6 people left online. Thursday is PK drunk night (usually our best work :p ) which is usually a better turnout than reset. If the same averages held true in the other big guilds Yaks and CD could have facerolled EBay with 3 parties.

See you guys in a week. Enjoy SBI, but don’t let them get too comfortable, we want our spot back.

Lothar.8241

We, we being [Awe], stay because of our loyalty to CD. At least that’s the case for my guild, can’t say the same for the others. The core of the guild have been in CD since day one, and we’ve seen many guilds come and go. Could we have left? Sure, but who really wants to fight it out at T1 where it’s nothing but a lagfest filled with so much hate and trolls.

In any case, we don’t choose to PvD, it just so happens that our guild plays at a time when most NAs are asleep, we do try and find zergs or guilds to fight and to practice our open ground fighting, but as I mentioned, there’s just little to no resistance. You could again argue that we could transfer, but I’ve already explained why that isn’t an option. Besides, we recently accepted quite a large number of people into the guild, and they do mostly PvE. Would be unfair to ask them to transfer with us anyway.

I understand the loyalty. It would be hard to uproot especially a PvE presence. It’s curious that you (and others) chose an NA server as home to begin with though. That’s the part that I can’t really wrap my mind around I guess. From a PvE perspective it makes sense if you want to have quiet gen-pop zones to play in, but from a WvW perspective it seems like an odd choice unless you are specifically wanting to push a server up to higher tiers.

Anyway, it’s not my server so my opinion counts for absolutely nothing. Looking at it from the outside though, I have a ton of respect for your NA players. They fight like rabid dogs during the day, they are almost always outnumbered, they can be unpredictable and they make for a fun matchup. Ultimately though, they are completely outgunned and I think that can be disheartening even for the best of players.

From an outside perspective, I could see them really enjoying a matchup against a server like Davona’s Rest, who doesn’t have anywhere near the numbers to jump to T4 but have shown some serious heart in battle when we have faced them. It seems to me that in the NA timezones it would make for a good matchup for your server and allow the NA players to test their metal against a force that doesn’t overwhelm them for a change.

Anyway, just an observation. Like I said, counts for nothing… just thought I’d share.

santi.7516:

Sovereign.1093:

Transfer to CD and be our NA krewe. T.T

Better transfer to YB and be our Night Crew, so we can have a flawless victory at tier 3 and reach tier 2 .

This makes too much sense to ever actually happen. CD night crew is a real enigma to me. I don’t understand the appeal of being able to flip an entire map every night against little to no resistance. I was sick a week or so back and actually played a whole night with the outmanned buff against CD, I just don’t see how they have fun every evening. Id’a quit long ago.

Yaks on the other hand appears to me to be an eastern time zone heavy group. We face heavy attack from them in the late afternoon… I’m usually running into extremely large Yaks forces if I get a chance to play from work later in the day. By the time our main raids come online, we seem to only be squaring off against Yaks main force for a couple of hours before they don’t have the will or ability to really withstand our attacks. When I go to bed at anywhere from midnight to 3am PST, Yaks is in rough shape and CD is just waking up.

If CD night crew joined you guys you could make a real fight of T3 instead of floating back down here looking like a bruised kitten every 2nd week.

Honestly I don’t know how Yaks and Mags do T4. When EBay goes to T5 my guild starts running training exercises to keep interested, our leaders start asking questions like “how do you interact with onion patches and what do they do for you?”, getting other people to teach them what PvE is and all sorts of weird stuff. It’s a very odd experience. I’d imagine a lot of T4 is the same for you.

I think that the 3 colors are very close to balanced, but there are just a couple of things that skew it.

1. Overlook and SM should not be in trebbing range of eachother. This puts the 3rd place server at a distinct disadvantage to a higher powered server for a trade-off that in most cases it cannot take advantage of.

1. Lowlands keep covers too much area. You can fit one and a half of the Valley keeps within the outer walls of Lowlands. It gives the server controlling it too much dominance over it’s portion of the map. The extended outer wall sections should be in line with Overlook and Valley in that there are walled town/ruins areas that are not enclosed within the keep and accessible without sieging the tower itself.

1. Green area supply camps have shorter runs to supply the green keep, and the supply line itself is more defensible than either blue or red.

1. Blue’s spawn point is the only one that provides a natural choke point to cut off the main artery of reinforcements to the keep. The keep itself is very defensible, but a large invading force can more easily block the flow of people coming to defend it than any other point and I think that is it’s main disadvantage.

*edit, I don’t know why the numbers are all showing as 1…? In my post they are 1,2,3,4. :|

Toegra.2056:

[IMG]http://i50.tinypic.com/o74nd4.jpg[/IMG]
Fully upgraded, now ours… twice.. Wasted all your supply to build golems and take yak’s bay and hills.
[IMG]http://i50.tinypic.com/2lwrr88.jpg[/IMG]
Oh… and we harlem shaked in all three =D
[IMG]http://i46.tinypic.com/11bs1u1.jpg[/IMG]

*Special Thanks to Vessel Of Hate

Hey, there’s me calling the shots! :O
Zomg im famous on teh interwebs!1!

Facet.5914:

Which EB guilds are you so proud of? GH, FTF, pk are easy wipes in the open. Hell, our pugs can do that half the time.

I’m curious, were any of your main guilds in EBG last night? Or the night before? If so, then you might want to rethink the above statement. If not, then I suggest some of you show up tonight because you pugs aren’t having a very good time.

santi.7516:

Rumors says that [pk] guildmembers are bandwagoning to FA, and they’re not the only ones.

We lost 6 members, some of whom went to FA. There might have been others from other guilds who went with them, I am not sure, but we have since gained more than that just on last nights raid. Don’t take that to mean that Ebay as a whole is going to suffer.

Yaks, gotta tip my hat for that big battle for our Bay. Lots of fun. We were riled up when you made it to lords only to be pushed out. And to counter my own teammates, I’m sorry but we were not outmanned. In the beginning we were, but by the time we pushed them out of lords we actually had a queue in EBay BL – first time I’ve seen that I think ever outside of a reset night here or there.

I don’t brag for pushing Yaks off too much though because we got a taste of our own medicine last night twice. PK raided CD land in EB, after multiple hit and runs on Valley we finally stopped moving and pushed. Also made it to lords room only to get pushed out. Props for your lords room grinder setup, and to the CD thief essentially using the lord to spike people – well played.

After our raid petered out I led a small band of 4 brave soldiers to Yaks where we took a tower and tried to ninja Hills. Again “THISCLOSE”. Got inner down to 15% before being discovered, ended up dying in lords room and not being able to get back in. You crushed the hopes and laughter of a few minutes of TS cackling about how funny it would be if we actually got in.

Good times though, lots of fun this week on this matchup. I am thoroughly enjoying it!

But, because a post in this thread generally shouldn’t end without some kind of banter, I feel compelled to say “Man, you guys are lucky we didn’t have a Mesmer online or Hills woulda been ours!!1!11!”

Fomby.4295:

Anybody else get the feeling that a mag/yak/db matchup would be pretty balanced?

Yes, I think that would be a great matchup. It seems to me like there are some mismatches in the T3-T5 range that won’t even out unless some other servers below us come up the ranks to fill it out.

Kaineng coming up the ranks kind of screwed everything up. Without them we’d have TC in T2, that exact matchup in T3 and CD, EB and SBI would be T4, which would be a lot more even for CD and us over at EB by the appearances of it.

There’s either one too many of near equal power at the top, or 2 too few because that 1900 club needs more or less competition on its level for the rest of us to balance.

neomccoy.2657:

Shout out to [pK] from Ebay that always gives a great fight! They have that turtle 15 man zerg going on and they are a pain to kill! Please don’t stop the great fights and efforts that you put up!

Thank you! It’s your fault actually, the competition your server brings to the table has forced pK to really work on it’s communication and strategy and I think we are a lot better for it. We’re kind of treating our raid nights in this encounter as a live training exercise and I can see a lot of improvement from our members for it. We have a lot of respect for the tactical guilds that lead your charge and wish you the best going forward. With some luck and growth we hope to see you again one day.