Guild Wars 2

My commander tag is probably the only reason I’ll keep playing ranger after this patch. I’m not normally one to look at patch notes and write it off without trying, but after reading this set Im just really, really disappointed. I don’t know what to say…

And another +1 to that unparalleled archers comment

15% speed is really nice actually, I was just hoping for more adjustments to the function of the longbow itself. Call me crazy but I actually half expected the LB to get a slight range boost to differentiate it from the SB, not the SB getting sliced to crap. :|

Personally, I am extremely unhappy with this patch. I have 4 lvl 80 classes, but I rarely have played anything but Ranger in the last 6 months. I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do. I might try to rebuild around the longbow, but I could also quit the class. I was expecting a lot more to be done to actually help us. Nerfing pet damage doesn’t even register on my radar because the point still stands that a dead pet is completely worthless, and with the AI and lack of control we have over the pets it all just seems pointless. 50% increase or decrease of 0 still equals 0. Why would I keep battling a mechanic that takes so much of my damage and usefulness out of my hands?

I am very much hoping these leaked notes are full of crap.

These changes do nothing to address any of the concerns that are raised about the class and takes into consideration exactly zero suggestions/input from the community. It also makes absolutely no new viable builds and basically does nothing to change existing builds. In summary, if this is it then they may as well have not bothered spending the time.

Edit: I also thought sPvP stuff could be altered independently of any other part of the game. If pets/traits need power adjustments, they don’t have to have any effect on other game types… right?

Sweet! Two servers I don’t recall playing before in one go! DB maybe?

Hope everyone enjoys the fresh faces this week. Had fun in home BL this evening against both of you. DB, you seem very attached to our Hills. That was pretty funny when we were banging the paper door down only to have it reinforce with about 5-10% to go. We laughed at the timing, sure you did too.

Not knowing DB, who is Agg, out of curiosity? Always sad to miss an opportunity to observe a new guild operate. Maybe we will get lucky one of these days and draw JQ.

Uplevels shouldn’t get any flack for running with the zerg, defending and doing any kind of normal and helpful activities. As stated above though, uplevels shouldn’t be surprised if they aren’t welcomed with open arms when guilds are running organized raids – especially of the zergbusting nature, because uplevels are extremely easy to rally off of, which makes said groups objective much harder to achieve. I’ve leveled multiple characters in W3, its the most fun way to level. My guild holds karma train style alt leveling events almost daily. Lots of fun! There’s just some specific times where sub-80s shouldn’t be following along.

For Ehmry Bay:

Ideally anyone ranked 6-11. In order of preference:
SoS + Mags – haven’t seen SoS yet, love fighting Mags.
CD + Kain – see just how far our coverage has come as they both test our weaknesses.
Yaks + Mags – for old times sake:)

I had really wanted to fight SBI, but seeing as how some of their boys were concerned about ARs off hours coverage in their first match, and BP appears to be controlling that match fairly well, I’m not sure it would be a good fight for either of us… So hopefully the RNG holds off on that until they have found their equilibrium again.

Gotta say, this week vs Yaks and Kain is the closest match we’ve had in forever. Defeat could be snatched from the jaws of victory on the last day… So I would love a rematch of that too.

Rangers can do this for sure. As stated above, entangle is key, especially if you can line them up properly. Condi rangers may have other strategies, but I don’t play a full condi or regen beast master so I’m not sure how they would approach it. With entangle, piercing arrows, signets and practice in lining up your targets it’s relatively easy.

Frosch.7809:

I think just now Kaineng demonstrates what they are capable of in their prime time of the day – YB had their early day Zergs for weeks. But you guys from Ebay just go ahead and win this week, so you get a nice promotion to a higher “tier”, just like CD.

Its unfortunate that your primetime doesn’t align with anyone else populated playtimes. We will never know what you are actually capable of. I’d love to have pk online in force to see how the kaineng zerg handles it… But that isn’t possible.

Nozzie.2067:

Now, I’m just one of the plebs that follows the blue dorito, but I was hoping for some clarification on the grand strategy for this week. Are we sticking with the ‘Kain & Yaks bash each other while ignoring the third servers borderland’ approach? The only reason I’m asking is that it didn’t seem to be all that effective in our two previous matches against CD.

Just because you see keep staying the same color in EBay BL doesn’t mean they aren’t being attacked.

Maybe Mags and AR should get together and commiserate…. AR was stuck getting smacked in the mouth for 10-12 weeks in a row until they finally tapped out. I don’t mean to sound unsympathetic, I am, it sucks that you have had to face all the tough opponents, but recognize that you aren’t the only server to face hardship, and the old system was a lot harder on the in-between servers than this one.

I’m gonna pop some Yaks
Only got 20 golems in my pocket
I’m huntin’
Lookin for some Kaineng
This is kittening awesome

Anything done to handicap a superior force couldn’t be done on a match by match basis, it would have to be a dynamic system. There were many times in the week where FC, Mag and EBay faced each other where the numbers on maps were fairly even and the fights were excellent – NA primetime specifically. I would have hated to be fighting a handicapped opponent because they had more people at a different time.

The only real way to solve it though is to figure out how to encourage populations to even out. Even if you penalize the crap out of the larger number, it doesn’t help a server with 20-30 people online spread across 4 maps from 3am to 7am face one with several guilds each of equal or greater numbers.

Kopipoki.3542:

1up 1down is still a lot better than what we have now with T1s fighting T4s and such or what we had before where the matchups were always the same.

Answer quote with quote. Any system that involves winner automatically moving up and loser moving down is not a viable solution. We already have those matches in RNG and people complained about it too:

Snowreap.5174:

clearly you haven’t thought this through.

let’s go back to week 21, just before the new matchup system went into place.

JQ lost in tier 1, and TC won in tier 2, so JQ would go down and TC would go up. likewise, swap DB/Mag, YB/SoS, SBI/EB, AR/DH, IoJ/GoM and NSP/HoD. so we’d have these matches:
SoR / BG / TC
JQ / FA / Mag
DB / Kain / SoS
YB / CD / EB
SBI / BP / DH
AR / SF / GoM
IoJ / DR / HoD
NSP / FC / ET

what do you think the outcomes would have been? let’s look at T1. SoR is beating TC by a ton this week. you’re actually complaining that SoR vs TC is a bad matchup, yet that is exactly what Winner Up Loser Down would have given you last week. do you really think that taking SoS out of the match and putting BG in their place would have helped TC do better? no, they’d be doing even worse because they’d be up against 2 tough opponents instead of 1 easy and 1 hard.

how about T2? FA is beating Mag this week by a ton. yet WULD would have put them together. even worse, it would have thrown JQ in there to pile on Mag as well.

the other tiers would mostly be similar (except YB/CD/EB would probably have been a good matchup).

so, what would happen the following week? TC would lose against SoR and BG and drop down. JQ would win against FA and Mag and come up. you would end up with SoR BG and JQ again, which is exactly the same matchup you started with. likewise with the other tiers — servers would mostly settle in the same positions they had the week before.

and the matches you consider “good” this week? not a single one of them would have happened under WULD (except maybe CD/YB/Kain, but only after several weeks and only if exactly the right wins and losses happened in exactly the right order).

-ken

Honestly, the only viable alternative to RNG would be manual matchmaking. Someone with access to population by BL by time type data, looking at the point spread and having their finger on the pulse of the gossip column of each server to be informed of guild movements and fractures. Unless the populations of the top 6 servers move on and allow WvW populations to be more evenly spread down the chain, that’s the only thing that is going to work.

Even then, there still has to be blowouts, probably 2-3 every week, because not everyone has suitable opponents.

I hope a few guilds transfer down to ET and FC from the top 1/3’d too Ynot. The only server from 13 down that I would consider to be overpowered for some of their opponents is BP. If ET and FC were to grow just a bit we’d have something close to complete balance for a full half of the servers in the NA chain! That would result in some truly spectacular matchmaking.

Fenrir.6183:

No, they don’t. Gameplay is too fast for fields to make a big impact in wvw’s big fights. Oh sure, if you play like 10 vs 10, it might change the result, but in a 50 vs 50 fight, it won’t do much. Movement, staying alive and dodging the aoes, healing yourself while damaging the most opponents is what matters. You can’t coordinate the attacks and have someone put a field when you need it or something, it just comes down to players knowing their class and gameplay trying to do it right.

What server are you on? I look forward to facing this 50 man team that doesn’t see value in coordinated combo fields.

I agree with OP about the sword mechanic. I also find it a frustrating weapon. Unhinged from auto target makes auto attack better, but the choreographed moves on 2 & 3 are detrimental to many situations and really isolated in usefulness to 1v1.

I was theory crafting with a guildy last night about rangers in zergbusting and we both said the same thing, another main hand option would help a lot. Offhand weapons we have are very attractive, and axe is ok, but sword just doesn’t do it…

T8 will always be a blowout. Same as T9 EU. There just isn’t a 3rd server that matches with the bottom two.

The T5 match under the old system took 13 weeks of fights where 2 servers allied couldn’t stand up to the 3rd to finally move SBI to that spot though, and the new system not only allows that match but any other combo of 13-21 (maybe 22 in lots of cases) which are all good and reasonably even matchups. Saying ‘ya, but the old system would have done that anyway’ overlooks one of the old systems greatest failings. The journey of course correction was extremely long and overly painful. This system moves servers to their appropriate spot very quickly by comparing them to a wider variety of opponent.

Kaineng guild United Korea, you guys belong on EBay… Just saying. :P

They were T3 with Yaks and Mag before the randomness. They have an extremely weak NA population – even less numbers than CD ever had in NA – but the nighttime pop of a much larger server. United,Korea is still there for SEA time zone. One of the most coordinated guilds eBay has ever faced with the added bonus that they play in our weakest time zone. This is going to be a long week. It might come down to who goes to bed last.

BP, looking good in your SBI match! Love that Azr is #2 too. Shows how out of whack the rankings really were before random.

I would love for BP and EBay to face a T2 together. We could pull a Borliss Rock imitation and give them everything they could handle…

Sunspots.9861:

I get tired of reading responses like this. No one who had any sort of clue thought this was a good solution any more than the win up, lose down system. They are both solutions to a made up problem: stagnation.

We count on people in charge to filter out the idiots, even when they are vocal, because not doing so makes them idiots too. “Stagnation”. Is another word for saying “balanced,” and in a game where the only contributing factors for success are population and covarage, servers must be balanced by those factors.

Stagnation does not equal balance. Posts like this generally come from people in the top 2 NA tiers… I’m assuming that’s where you are from. If I’m wrong I apologize. Just because you had consistent and reasonably balanced matchups does not mean that everyone else was matched up in similar situations. People complaining about stagnation were not complaining about simply having to face the same servers every week, they were complaining because people were stuck in unbalanced matches – very much like the unbalanced ones from the last 2 weeks – against the same opponents, for months on end. It wasn’t fun for the winners, as many now know from being the ones blowing out underpowered servers, and it wasn’t fun for the losers, because losing for one week in this fashion is bearable but losing in this fashion for 10+ weeks in a row is not. The system artificially created rating gaps where there should have been none and stagnated improperly matched opponents.

And yet, in all the time that these matches were stuck, the people affected complained less than the upper tiers do now about their short stints in similar matchups have over the past couple of weeks. You upper tier servers even now seem not to care that there was a problem. You would be perfectly happy to go back to that as long as it doesn’t affect you. Why don’t you suck it up and live through a few crappy matches so that the rest of us can get some good fights?

There are simply too few evenly matched servers to maintain set power brackets all the way down the board. Until the population issues can be solved, someone has to suffer a bad match every week because there is just not enough servers of equal power to have it any other way. Why not accept the system that allows that pain to be distributed among many for shorter periods of time rather than push for the system that forces the same ones to suffer continuously? Are you really not willing to put up with a bad match here or there to help your fellow gamer enjoy the game they want to enjoy too?

Kronyx.2570:

Kind of a rough start for us. Due to some confusion with some guilds, we were outmanned for the first 30 min in Yaks BL, while EBay just took everything lol

That’s the really big downside to this random system for me. We put lots of prep work into,organizing our guild assignments. Now we don’t know who’s doing what until we step through the portal. Oh well, tonight it worked out great PEKZ got homeland by fluke just picking green. Was a rockin’ fun time the first hour while I could be on.

Great to see you Yaks again! And Kain, looking forward to seeing who you guys have left from our last go around.

This weeks NA matchups look really good to me. The only server that got really screwed is CD…

Haha, that’s what happens when you win by a lot and control large portions of the map. Who knows, maybe you’ll gain some great new WvWers out of it. We won over a couple of PvE guilds in our stint in T5, and now they are as much a part of our planning as any other core WvW guild!

Was great seeing some new faces and some new siege, defensive and open field tactics this week guys. I learned a couple new things that I am filing into my playbook. I really hope we get to see both of you again in the near future – maybe at separate times though for variety sakes.

Good luck in your next match today.

You need to stop thinking in terms of tiers too… they don’t exist in this format. You are what your rating and rank # says you are. Dropping to the next ‘tier’ doesn’t mean anything anymore. You lose rank points or gain rank points, and are then matched with appropriate (a term we use loosely for the time being) opponents.

Can we not make this about the RNG system? Simple question… can we do something to start the matches, but not let people enter the BL’s for just a couple minutes at reset?

I’m not asking to know in advance who I’m fighting, I’m just asking if we can let the process run its course, but freeze entry for a brief time. And if needed we compensated by stopping the previous match a couple minutes early – then people would be playing by the same time they normally would anyways.

Looking specifically for a dev response on this question. Would it be possible to do something that would allow us to see who we are facing before we enter the game? The random matches are messing with our pre-reset prep work a bit. It’s not like we need a ton of time, we would just appreciate 1 or 2 minutes to make sure our guilds can properly fulfil their assignments.

We like to make sure we have an appropriate combination of guilds entering our homeland to form a defense, and if we have to wait until the matches post and are open to enter then we run the risk of not being able to field the right combo.

Could we do something like closing the matches 5 minutes early (5:55 server time instead of 6:00pm), then calculating as normal, posting matches when they are calculated, and then actually opening the matches at the same time they would normally be opened – 5 minutes later? That way we just have that couple minutes to know what color home is for defensive assignments, and where to send the attack squads, before we all queue the wrong BL’s and then can’t swap.

Just wanted to say that how FA took overlook last night was fairly impressive display of might. Without a waypoint, effectively separating reinforcements from the back door like that was a good way to flex muscles.

I don’t know how many times I died running through that army, but I did make it into the keep 3 times. And coincidentally each time I made it in I downed someone from the walls that dropped a rare. Was the most profitable 30-40 minutes of GW I think I have ever had in WvW!

uberkingkong.8041:

Your theory only works if the servers are always constant and never changing. That is not the case with GW2 servers have issues and change often. SoS went from T1 to T3, JQ went from #1 to #3. You never know a bunch of guilds might move to ET and ET could become T1 #1 server. Like SoR but in less dramatic change. BG was #1 because a guild went there, now SoR is #1 because they have IRON that moved there. Things change, and it will never always be r3 T1 server moves to T2 and always wins, that will not ALWAYS happen.

If things never changed yes my theory would be bad, but GW2 is an ever changing game, you will always have interesting matchups if matched correctly.

Do you know how many servers have ever fought in T1? Six. From November until now (discounting October when the initial rankings were settling properly), only 6 servers have ever placed #1, #2, or #3. And each server that has been in the top 3 held its spot for significant amount of time – Jade Quarry has placed in all 3 spots, but never dropped to #4.

Servers like Kaineng who rise from the ashes because of mass transfers are few and far between. Yes, landscapes change, but not on a weekly or even monthly basis. Your idea of ever changing worlds resulting in interesting matchups is a warped sense of reality.

I’ve opened about 30 chests since patch and gotten 2 yellows. First one netted 2 ectos, second got none. Everything else has been green.

morrolan.9608:

Don’t see how its worse than what we’ve currently got, the matchups would be more even.

They would be less even on a more consistent basis.

@Chris, I find myself agreeing with most of your post. I still don’t think that the random system has run its course though. Some of the gap variations have been fixed, but it’s still not quite there. Also, the accurately depicted chasm that separates the middle of the pack servers would still be unbridgeable for any who rise in ranks without some form of random component that allows a server to be tested against a higher or lower ranked server. After a couple more weeks the deviation can probably be tightened up, but if you get rid of it altogether then 2-3 months from now we are sitting in the same or worse position than we were in before randomness started. Tiers have only one outcome: inaccurate separation of tiers due to repeatedly facing the same opponents.

Also, we’ve learned that there are a wide variety of viable matchups in the back half of the ranked servers. Why would we take that away?

Someone did suggest manual match making. I can’t argue with that suggestion. I don’t know how hard it would be to implement or how time consuming it would be for someone to do the work every week, but that’s the one idea that I could be on board with if randomness was done away with.

uberkingkong.8041:

Well they shouldn’t be playing with rank 6 team. The system should work like this, YOU WIN you move up, YOU LOSE you move down, you don’t win or lose YOU STAY.

That is the worst possible system. It guarantees that every other week a T1 server is fighting a T3 server (#3 vs #7, best case scenario, #1 vs #9 in a perfect storm), and the like repeated in every tier – which is exactly what you are complaining about happening here randomly and only for one week at a time.

Did you even give 1 minutes thought to this before you complained?

uberkingkong.8041:

Goto http://mos.millenium.org/na look at the scores, Blackgate dominating Jade Quarry by 100k points, and Dragonbrand by 150k points. I’ve never been disgusted by the scores like this before, and its only Wednesday. Theres only 3 matchups of WvW that are going good right now out of 8 total. 5 matchups of 8 are a TOTAL blowout BAD MATCHMAKING.

Seriously you guys need to get some expert advice in matchmaking because not only does WvW matchmaking worse than before the tPvP matchmaking is just as bad as well.

People at anet need expert advice on matchmaking obviously they are doing it wrong over at anet headquarters. Because 5 matchups that are currently with 1 server winning by 100-200k lead is WAY WAY off of whakittens suppose to be and that’s 63% of being WAY WAY out of what your suppose to be and that’s just SAD.

Two things. First, Jade Quarry is the #3 server. If their inability to stack up against the #2 server disgusts you then I’m not really sure what could possibly make you happy…? SoR beat BG by over 90k week 20, and JQ by over 60k in week 21. That’s a fairly good beating in both cases if you ask me. How is this really that different? JQ gets to see how it matches with BG without SoR’s presence, that’s valuable information for both of them if you ask me.

Second, not all of the blowout matchups are “bad”. FA/Mag/EBay is fairly competitive despite the score, and a lot of fun, so please don’t speak for us. Also, blowouts happened on a weekly basis in nearly as many matchups in the tiered system, except every week had the same servers being blown out and the rating points necessary to fix this weren’t changing hands. Now that servers that aren’t use to being blown out are seeing for a single week what others have been experiencing for months, all of a sudden it’s unacceptable? That’s kind of sad.

Funny how quickly the dominos fell in order as soon as your main guilds embraced the public TS and started pushing the crap out of it eh? Good on you guys for getting it in order. Maybe we can have the pleasure of another matchup with a higher tiered 3rd server at some point in the near future. We’ll see who can talk circles around whom. :p

No idea what EBay’s all time high is, but pk had 100 online for reset, with over 70 in TS. That was a pretty active reset because we had all 4 BL’s queued.

In the mean time, I really don’t see what the big deal is if a server who was a powerhouse of one tier has to take a beating at the hands of a server from a higher tier. EBay would gladly face FA again, or any other T2 server for multiple weeks. We were on the giving end of far too many blowouts under the old system and it never resulted in anything positive for anyone. It’s our turn to take some lumps, and in the process move to a more suitable bracket of opponents… the way I see it, the system is working perfectly.

The ratings are starting to reflect reality too… there is a definite gap somewhere around the 12th server and those below it. It’s a fairly sizable gap and it’s going to take some serious growth by any server below that mark to contend with those above it. The server that is most likely going to be stuck in no-mans-land is Borliss Pass. They are too heavy to be a fair match for a lot of the servers from 13 down, but they likely can’t go toe to toe with the ones from 12 up. It’ll be interesting to see if, in time, they grow to move up or shrink to move down. Luckily, with random match making, if someone does grow enough to bridge the gap it won’t take months for them to cross over into better matchups – as it would have in the old system.

Drigan.7382:

We haven’t been out there in force this match up, but here’s a video I just put together from the past couple months in Tier 2 (for anyone interested).

Cool video, looks like fun times.

Contiguous.1345:

I’m still waiting for 0.005% increased damage against ‘blobs’. (Outnumbered 10:1 or more)

Hmm. How about “Zerg Killer” each point spent in the tree allows 1 additional AoE target in any battle where the orange swords are present. Same price as the supply tree.

Ulion.5476:

Khayoss.2019:

I still bought the 1st level of AC mastery. I re-invested the rest into extra supply though. I’ll go and get AC mastery again next. They aren’t useless by any stretch.

1 extra supply for 20wxp points is not worthwhile. That supply capicity should be the last thing you level 300wp for 5 extra supply.

every 5 people carrying 12 supply = 1 extra person. Its 2 pieces of siege speed built instead of one. Cumulative value my friend. It all comes down to how you run your squad.

it also can save the day on build sites that get hit during construction. For precisely planned operations a 2 supply buffer could mean success or failure.

C’mon EBay! I’ve been defending these forums all day. Get to building that PPT so my efforts aren’t worthless!

I still bought the 1st level of AC mastery. I re-invested the rest into extra supply though. I’ll go and get AC mastery again next. They aren’t useless by any stretch.

Chris.3290:

You can also save your crocodile tears for SBI. They and BP are going to be routinely rofl stomping the bottom-half of servers. When they are regularly matched against IoJ, SF and GoM; no one is going to be having fun.

I just wanted to point out that SBI is currently losing to AR (#15), and that IoJ is only 16k behind, which isn’t an insurmountable difference. Before this, Darkhaven was routinely beating IoJ, and SF was routinely pushing Darkhaven. GoM did ok against Darkhaven last week… so they can’t be too far off of IoJ either.

I’d say that the lower half has more to worry about from BP than SBI, and that any match SBI gets put in from ranks 11 all the way down to at least 20, maybe 21, is going to be a fun fight. If SBI and CD were a close bout, then there’s a few servers down there that could make for a fun fight with CD too.

I dunno what would happen in a fight between BP and CD, but I’d love to find out – and my money would be on BP. 330 people in TS on reset night? I feel like a proud papa! BP learned well and is finally arming itself to reach it’s potential!

Wow, zombiethread! This is something I find completely crazy though, so I am going to go ahead and comment anyways.

Here’s a screenshot from EverQuest 2, a game released 9 years ago.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v729/stivan/EQ2_000334.jpg
Notice how there’s windows identifying groups, a way of seeing who the leader of each group is, and even a way of seeing who the raid leader is? And this isn’t even the oldest one. A similarly helpful (more helpful than GW2’s) system already existed in EQ1 farther back than that. Couldn’t find a clear enough image on a quick search.

How hard could it possibly be to replicate a decade old system? And if you wanted to make it really useful, allow the commander to re-organize the parties him/herself, invite and kick people from the parties, and see where everyone is on the map. Add different icons to the commander tag too, and give the commander the ability to assign rally points to specific parties.

Also, why does joining a squad shield you from seeing other icons on the map? That is crazy talk. My guild often organizes to control multiple objectives on a map. No one joins squads because it cuts the flow of information on your map. And finally, having to type /squadinfo to get that info from my squad is insane. That should be on the GUI somewhere for me to see – like right next to the names and HP bars of everyone in my squad so that I can see who the idiot is that didn’t supply up when we had the chance, or if a supply camp has left us short before we roll to the next objective. Make the tool useful for goodness sakes… It cost enough!

I’ll buy Xbox One. They had me at ’watch NFL games and see your fantasy scores on the same screen". :p Xbox One will be my new HTPC that I game on sometimes. Kind of like my Xbox 360, but more capable than just running Netflix and streaming stuff from my computer in the office.

Kodiack.2783:

SBI runs in one massive zerg from fight to fight. no small groups. no 2nd commander on the map, just 1 massive zerg. Can’t even fight them as each encounter turns into Stonemist level lag slideshow fight.

-K

That should make them incredibly easy to beat. If you guys are sending out 3-4 groups of 15 when they are running as a group of 45, you’ll cap objectives almost as fast as they can in more sections of the map. It’ll cripple their force quite quickly because all they can do at that point is back-cap.

Then layer in an element of timing so that you own the objectives you are spreading to cover with less than 5 minutes to tally and there is nothing they will ever be able to do…. I am rooting hard for AR in that match. You guys should walk away winners.

I don’t know where you are getting that we are crying about being night capped though… maybe a couple people are somewhere? For the most part, we don’t care. We knew what was up as soon as we walked through the portal on Friday. Give us DB and Kaineng next week, and TC and SoS the week after, we will keep on trucking through their 80 mans all the way.

I just want to say again that this matchup is so much fun. Mags, FA, “I love you man!”

This morning was fun in EBG. Tonight’s gonna be fun when I get home from work. Nothing but fun, fun, fun. I am sorry to your Oceanic/SEA populations if we don’t have the coverage you are use to and they get bored this week, but I hope you guys are enjoying this match too despite the point difference.

I strongly believe we are not facing FA’s A game. Any time we have doubled an opponents score, all of the PvE’ers come out of the woodwork to do map completion. On reset night though, EBay was able to keep pace with FA and Mags for as long as populations held out. It may have been a small window, but at one point we even held a lead of like 5 points over both servers. There’s nothing that has shown me that FA has a higher level of coordination or skill in running an army than we can handle.

Are we going to win the match? No. Oceanic+SEA coverage had this match decided the second the dice were rolled. If anything I feel bad for FA’s population in those two timezones because fighting mostly empty maps isn’t that challenging, and I wish we could give them a better game.

But ask FA. Are we squishy and uncoordinated oafs that can’t hang with them when our main force is online? Do they see a bunch of pug zergs running around not knowing how to respond to them? I doubt it, but they would have to answer that for themselves.

All I can say with certainty is that FA has been the first great fight that we have had in over 3 months and I have deep respect for their coordination levels. But I respectfully keep my stance that their small group, roaming, zerging and overall server skill and coordination levels are not some mythical T2 only godlike level that we can’t compete with. We are learning from them, for sure. But not as much as everyone who is looking down on the other tiers below them seems to think we should be.

The tiers displayed coverage. That’s it. Skill has nothing to do with it.

Hickeroar.9734:

Khayoss.2019:

Hickeroar.9734:

There is a clear and distinct difference between a T3 skill level and a T2 skill level. It’s like night and day, when you put a new T3 server against experienced T2 servers.

Yes, population has a ton to do with winning, obviously, but 30 people can wipe 60 people if they are “skilled” about how they do it.

ELLE OH ELLE

Funniest post I’ve seen on these forums. Thank you.

Are you really serious? Like…really?

Anyone who has been through the high-tier promotion process will back up what I’ve said. T3->T2 is especially jarring. T2->T1 is more of just a numbers game. If anything the tactics are LESS aggressive in T1 than T2.

You sound like a noob when all you can do is laugh, without presenting why you think I’m wrong.

Ok, where you are wrong is the “clear and distinct difference in skill”. What you say about population and coverage is bang on, that is the difference between the 1-3 servers and 4-6, and then again between 7 and a lot of stuff below it. If the T2 servers had such a high discrepancy of skill over a T3 server, then any 25 man guild from a T5 server should absolutely, positively, and unequivocally never be able to do this to said higher population and higher skill server, because they haven’t gone through that progression so there’s no way they could ever match said skill.

edit: dunno what I’m doing with the formatting… have to follow link, sorry.

Hickeroar.9734:

There is a clear and distinct difference between a T3 skill level and a T2 skill level. It’s like night and day, when you put a new T3 server against experienced T2 servers.

Yes, population has a ton to do with winning, obviously, but 30 people can wipe 60 people if they are “skilled” about how they do it.

ELLE OH ELLE

Funniest post I’ve seen on these forums. Thank you.

Ceres.4569:

We’re NA that leans heavily toward our main coverage being west coast primetime. I’ve logged on at 6pm EST after work to no commanders on our BL even though we were holding just garrison.

Just got home from the gym… Been thinking about what you said. I think SBI and EBay might be a really fun match. We also lean more heavily to CST & PST. I hope we match up together soon… Under the old system that was also a match that never could have happened because you and I could only really have ever swapped places at the edge of the two tiers.

Having faced AR 9 or 10 times in a row (can’t remember when they came up now) I can tell you that they have a medium and fairly even NA population that is slightly heavier in EST and have virtually no oceanic presence to speak of. We have one single oceanic guild which is actually a tag we formed a few weeks ago just to give quick communication and visibility to the few Oceanic players spread across our main guilds and we had the superior show of force with just that. Your battle likely boils down to who goes to bed last. But the point was that the gap between 15 and 12 isn’t as clear cut as 3 and 4, and the same falls down through most of the rest of the chain.

I have confidence BP at 14 would win vs SBI at 12, and stand a fighting chance against CD at 11 too.