Guild Wars 2

The proposed nerf to AoE abilities makes absolutely no sense from a PvP/WvW balance standpoint. It makes you wonder if they really know what’s going on. As outlined in the video, it will render certain builds and playstyle no longer viable, staff elementalist among them. Don’t do it.

Cempa.5619:

Moonrabbit.1543:

I cannot fathom why ANet is targeting AoE and, by virtue of this, the elementalist and engineer, which are underpowered in PVE. I hope that they restrict their nerfs to PvP, though I suspect that the changes will affect all areas of game play. Why is it that they keep implementing dramatic nerfs for caster classes in this game? I do not want to play a warrior, guardian, or thief, yet these are apparently ANet’s favored professions. Are they not aware of the capabilities of a thief relative to an elementalist (let alone an engineer)? Why am I being incentivized to play classes that I never want to play in any MMO?

I understand you want to know why Anet is targeting AE, well lets look at this clip shall we:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-919RMwyfnk

These players are on voice, communicate well, pick the ideal location to fight, and make good use of combo fields, cc, and cleansing one another. The fight lasts for over 3 minutes, looks like a complete riot for both sides, and almost resulted in members of ‘the 4’ getting downed at multiple points, which probably would have been a wipe for them.

You take 4 random pugs and put them against ‘30’ in that same scenario and watch them get melted 1000 times out of 1000.

An example of teamwork > sheer numbers. What exactly is the problem here again?

Gaudrath.6725:

Lol, where is my standard issue Picard facepalm….

No wonder everyone is panicking, it does sound like they want thieves to “stand out a little bit more”… XD

Ah well, we will see if their actual balancing decisions are better than their PR talks. I am still hoping that they realize most of their classes are based around AoE. The only class I can think of that is almost exclusively single target is Thief. Everyone else… elementalists, engineers, necros, mesmers with their shatters, even guardian skills are over 50% AoE. Warriors have AoE too.

So they better know what they’re doing or the forum rage will truly be of epic proportions.

Agree 100%. It just a strange thing to go after in a game like this. Here’s to hoping they don’t royally screw it up.

Gaudrath.6725:

That’s not a transcript. That’s just a bunch of bullet points someone unofficial wrote. I wouldn’t be surprised if the “single target classes stand out more” was just added on top of what was actually said.

Then I recommend that you actually watch the video, because it’s basically verbatim what was said about 12:40 in.

“The AoE skills themselves, the damage ratios we feel like can be tweaked a little bit to get more play, such that they’re not as strong when juxtaposed with the single target damage skills. We feel like right now AoE, in World v World as well as in PvP, it probably is a little bit too strong across the board. So we’ll be doing a major update to all the AoE skills to kind of bring them back in line a little bit, which then lets those classes who are really strong at killing a single target, they kind of stand out a little bit more …”

Still think this is going to be some grand redesign of class abilities?

EDIT: For extra hilarity, watch the part right before what I quoted, where one of the designers asks the other for an example of an AoE ability. The response: “Fireball. Fire Blast. Things that actually do … that type of damage.” You can’t make this stuff up folks.

Gaudrath.6725:

2. I have seen videos of ele teams absolutely melting entire groups of people with Flash + Dagger Earth #5 synced up.

Yeah, you’re talking about churn bombs. I happen to think Churning Earth is poorly designed and in need of a change. In theory it’s balanced out by the ridiculously long cast time and self-root, but in reality having stability and lightning flash makes those a lot less of an issue. I don’t take it as an indication that AoE in general needs a nerf.

Gaudrath.6725:

I have seen concentrated AoE used as killing fields when defending gates or when enemy players are ressing mates, making it impossible for players to actually do anything about it. Good luck dodging when your actual goal is in the killing field and you don’t have invuln. skills to rely on. Just because YOU don’t have any bad experiences with AoE, doesn’t mean anything. Statistics say otherwise.

That’s sort of the point, to give bad experiences to the people with red names. Is it your belief that AoE should be ineffective at holding chokes, or preventing rezzes?

Gaudrath.6725:

And also, AoE requires far less skill and player coordination than single target skills. AoE is a shotgun. Just point in the general direction and squeeze the trigger. You’ll hit someone. You don’t have to think about who you are attacking, who is the greatest priority… just drop an AoE on them all and pray for the best.

This certainly isn’t true of staff ele. Given how long it takes for staff abilities to actually deal damage, there’s a lot more to playing staff ele than just “spray and pray”, and it mostly comes down to finding ways to keep people in your fields as long as possible.

Gaudrath.6725:

The driving force is probably that overabundant AoE skills that do comparable single target damage as single target skills push the game into spammage territory.

The ONLY problem is that some classes currently are too dependent on AoE skills and just doing a blanket damage reduction would ruin them utterly, while leaving other classes that much more powerful in comparison.

This does not mean that the upcoming change will be a blanket damage nerf. It more than likely means that skills will be reshuffled so that there are fewer AoE ones. I expect upping of main target damage, reduction in splash and area radius and individual buffs of single target damage skills depending on class.

It may not be a blanket damage nerf, but I think “reducing the effectiveness of AoE” is a pretty clear indication of what kind of changes to expect. I would love to think that the changes will be more rework than nerf, but there’s literally nothing in what was said to support this idea.

I think we can both agree that taking what was said at face value would mean that staff builds would be “ruined” — we just differ on whether or not this is a possible outcome. You seem to think they can’t possibly be this stupid, I’m not so sure (don’t forget that we are talking about the same people who are only just now 5 months in closing off free server transfers).

As for single target damage and ‘spammage’, it isn’t like I can run around gibbing people with Ice Spike / Eruption spam, but from the kind of discussion I see on the forums (and from the devs) that’s exactly how they make it sound. Guess what? I still use staff autos a lot, even though they mostly suck. Know why? Because it’s possible to put all AoE damaging abilities on cooldown. If staff users were actually overperforming in 1v1, then I’d say OK, it’s fair to look at their single target damage, but that just isn’t the case.

The whole “AoE shouldn’t hit harder than single target” thing only holds true when you talk about all abilities across all classes. There is nothing wrong with having a class / weapon set which is relatively weak at single target compared to its AoE potential, and it’s troubling that ArenaNet seems to maybe not understand this.

This is the first (proposed) change that left me wondering if ArenaNet really knows what they are doing with their game. Or if they are even playing the same game I am.

I am really not looking forward to seeing what this means for staff. The staff single target spells are so lackluster, if the AoE’s get nerfed down to the point where the single target spells are higher damage, it won’t be a viable weapon anymore.

The only issue I have with AoE in this game is that in WvW it is far too easy to clear the siege off of enemy keep/tower walls with AoE spam, but this is more an issue of the design of the structures themselves than with AoE in general. And it doesn’t sound like this is the driving force behind the changes anyway.

nasfieldjohn.2416:

All those posts IOJers made about being proud of their server,
ND left to instant win SoS and all start abandoning ship

Oh well,
if in the case that FA went up a tier to T2,
all the former IoJers will be happy to fight against [Hel] which is now in SoR

bandwagoning at its finest

They ride in battle hardened bandwagons!

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

So today, FA received news of transfers to our server.

In celebration of our new allies, we decided to take it to CD BL. We didn’t have a chance of pushing to take first this week with the reset tomorrow, but we wanted to send a very CLEAR message to CD.

Next week you’re in trouble.
FA is on the warpath.

Edit: PS. Your borderland is not a result of the transfers. Every keep fell in CD BL tonight. HOPE, RET and GODS wanted to show our new oceanic partners what their new NA presence can do.

Good. The truth is, this matchup has gotten boring, and fighting FA and IoJ was not giving us the kind of challenge needed to get ready for T2. If it takes a frankenserver to fix all that — bring it.

As a player, skipping mobs is just fine and dandy, and just as good a way to get through the dungeon as any other.

As a designer, if people want to skip large amounts of content that you made, you have to look at it and say — why? Probably because it isn’t fun or time-effective, which means it could have been designed better.

FA always puts up a good fight, and have proven that they can stay in T3 and compete, even if they are the underdog.

StormWolf.7645:

Draygo.9473:

Or just 100 damage in a single hit will contest the door.

That will make it so no player can contest it and you have to use a siege weapon of some kind.

While this may sound ridiculous: This would then allow someone to take down a Gate(or Wall w/ a Ballista) un-contested. Much worse with Zergs that can take gates down as fast as Rams.

That’s the best part. Why should the map scout for us (as it currently does)? Ideally, the only structures that should ever show contested / uncontested state would be those containing waypoints (because it’s a necessity to show whether or not you can use the waypoint).

Kerithlan.1659:

I like the anonymous name stuff. It means that only people that play against me often or see me posting on the forums will recognize me.

I don’t want to be a celebrity or to be a target. I just want to be some faceless soldier fighting for my world against other faceless soldiers fighting for their own worlds.

Splitting it up so that I’m only recognizable by a small handful of people means that I can’t be as easily read and that I’ll have better chances of success while attacking or defending.

I dunno, I just don’t see the need to have my name displayed unless I’m looking for notoriety or something. Notoriety sort of seems as though it’s counter to WvW’s goal.

Which is fine, but not everybody feels the same way, and I don’t really see any good design reason why people shouldn’t be able to display their names, and see those of others, if they would like to do so.

Also, regarding waypoints and the contested mechanic, why not just make it so that in order to contest a waypoint, you must deal damage to the structure with a siege weapon?

All your siege are belong to Blue Dorito Man

Close matchups are more important than new matchups. There is some value in facing different opponents, but given the choice between a close match against last week’s teams, or a blowout against new teams, the vast majority of people would choose #1.

Also, Bullfrog’s random color assignment suggestion is a very good one.

Blrrgh.6908:

Kintari.4172:

junglizm.5843:

I looked at the population tonight. IOJ was full, CD and FA were very high. I guess my server is just tired of upper tiers so only our WvW core fights now. I see less and less random tags out everyday. There are no excuses. IOJ was always just lucky to have a good core WvW community that carried it in T2 for so long. Our militia players have always been a disorganized, inattentive and generally disappointing. Enjoy the morale boost while you can, T2 and T1 servers will not as easy going as you guys have had it this weekend.

IoJ talked a big game about being a bunch of diehards, but the past few weeks tell a different story. It’s too bad really.

FA, while not exactly a powerhouse in this tier, clearly has the intestinal fortitude to keep coming back for more.

What is the story? Is it anything new or is it the same population problem we have been dealing with for months? The dedicated very small WvW community on IoJ is still doing the same stuff we always have. We asked for people to transfer to us when we went to T1 to help our WvW population, T2, etc etc. Nobody came. I still see the same 30-40 names trying to hold down 4 maps most of the time. Been like this since we went to T1. As far as guts are concerned, I am pretty sure no one in this game or any other really has to worry about “intestinal fortitude” …. saying that just makes you look foolish and makes a mockery of what that means in reality.

IoJ is still looking for WvW guilds and players, no ques, team players welcome!

Good for those of you still trying to get it done. I hope you guys find the players you seek, because right now it looks like there is a rather large fair-weather contingent there.

Also, remember to drink lots of water and eat lots of fiber.

You should start advertising yak escorting, player ressing, or supply running services. Ha, that would really get their knickers in a twist.

It’s your siege, do what you want with it. If somebody else chooses to go broke ‘for the cause’, good for them, but not everybody will do the same, nor should they be expected to.

junglizm.5843:

I looked at the population tonight. IOJ was full, CD and FA were very high. I guess my server is just tired of upper tiers so only our WvW core fights now. I see less and less random tags out everyday. There are no excuses. IOJ was always just lucky to have a good core WvW community that carried it in T2 for so long. Our militia players have always been a disorganized, inattentive and generally disappointing. Enjoy the morale boost while you can, T2 and T1 servers will not as easy going as you guys have had it this weekend.

IoJ talked a big game about being a bunch of diehards, but the past few weeks tell a different story. It’s too bad really.

FA, while not exactly a powerhouse in this tier, clearly has the intestinal fortitude to keep coming back for more.

Epidemiology.8496:

Kintari.4172:

Folk.2093:

I just want to clear something up here. So throughout the beginning of GW2, servers have risen and dropped due to several factors, Population rise due to players quitting, guilds quitting, people/guilds transferring, etc. Now we’ve all seen this time and time again so its no secret. In fact it’s one of the main reasons people are clamoring for paid transfers; to gain a sense of stability in server populations/matches.

Anyway with all that said CD is apparently the exception to this rule, they did not gain a specific amount of transfers which would give them an edge over their competition whether it be people or guilds from any other servers whatsoever thereby increasing their overall population (which lets not kid ourselves higher population servers have a greater probability of having more people doing everything the game has to offer including WvW, the one exception ever for a short time was Eredon terrace due to a WvW alliance moving there but we all see what happened after they left). CD just got “Better” and “organized” enough to go from third place during the TC vs FA vs CD rounds to first place. Is my assumption correct?

Finally, someone gets it!

Also, IoJ and FA are getting worse.

See you in the field.

WHOOOOOOSH
Edit: On second thought… that may have been sarcasm to counteract sarcasm, which would mean I’d been whoosh’d…

I approve of this post

Catisa.6507:

Kintari.4172:

Has there ever been an official reason given for why enemies appear as ‘Server-name Invader’? Does this reflect a deliberate gameplay design decision, or a technical constraint?

You mean versus actually providing the player name? I would suggest its to remove some of the childish name calling crap other pvp games are filled with. Anonymity means its much harder to target specific people and bully them.

It’s an interesting thought. I’m not sure that’s the case, and it would be nice to know one way or the other. If it is what you say it is, it would be better if you as a player could choose whether or not you wish to be anonymous.

Desterion.6407:

Ioj and FA aren’t getting worse, we’re just not bothering to go out anymore. Any time we go anywhere with our groups on IOJ we get met by a CD zerg 2-3x as big, every single time. Thats only one of the CD zergs too. The number of players participating in wvw is dropping daily because what’s the point? Numbers are what wins fights for CD, nothing else. CD has the numbers to defend SM and zerg both FA and IOJ at the same time, nearly pushing them back to their portal keeps all at once. There is no skill involved just pure overwhelming numbers.

To-mae-to, To-mah-to

Has there ever been an official reason given for why enemies appear as ‘Server-name Invader’? Does this reflect a deliberate gameplay design decision, or a technical constraint?

Folk.2093:

I just want to clear something up here. So throughout the beginning of GW2, servers have risen and dropped due to several factors, Population rise due to players quitting, guilds quitting, people/guilds transferring, etc. Now we’ve all seen this time and time again so its no secret. In fact it’s one of the main reasons people are clamoring for paid transfers; to gain a sense of stability in server populations/matches.

Anyway with all that said CD is apparently the exception to this rule, they did not gain a specific amount of transfers which would give them an edge over their competition whether it be people or guilds from any other servers whatsoever thereby increasing their overall population (which lets not kid ourselves higher population servers have a greater probability of having more people doing everything the game has to offer including WvW, the one exception ever for a short time was Eredon terrace due to a WvW alliance moving there but we all see what happened after they left). CD just got “Better” and “organized” enough to go from third place during the TC vs FA vs CD rounds to first place. Is my assumption correct?

Finally, someone gets it!

Also, IoJ and FA are getting worse.

See you in the field.

pmnt.4067:

Sabull.5670:

it is probably because Frost Aura and Fire Aura can be done with Combo Fields (fire aura can’t be comboed to be aoe).
So if frost aura has Shock aura durations it would be way too powerful to aoe blast for your group. But I don’t think Shock aura should have shorter durations with the ~10s base.

Interesting… by that logic Magnetic Aura sould also have the long swiftness duration. Can anyone test it?

I tested it, it gives the short duration swiftness

Deathdom.8250:

Desterion.6407:

For those saying CD’s numbers aren’t the cause of it winning. IOJ has outmanned buff in every single border right now. Including EB. Of course aspenwood is too afraid to fight CD, so they’re double teaming the outmanned janthir lol.

FA has an obsession with attacking whoever is blue in EB. In the past, that was us CD. Now it is IOJ. I recommend you guys to watch Durios as that is FA’s #1 target.

Lol so true. Flipping durios and wiping at bravost are their 2 favorite activities.

Liquid.9672:

Kintari.4172:

The build you linked is high damage on paper, but low survivability and over-reliant on staying in fire attunement.

Go 0/10/0/30/30 with a couple of traits swapped in (notably Bolt to the Heart and Blasting Staff), grab a superior sigil of battle for your staff, and rune for boon duration and might duration.

You will have better damage, better support ability, better boon uptime, and most importantly, you will actually benefit from swapping attunements instead of being ‘penalized’ by it, so you will be able to execute the full range of AE damage + control combos that exist.

Give it a try and see what you think. In my opinion it outshines a Fire XII build in every way, even including raw damage output, since you are better at keeping people in AE damage areas, and can stay in longer due to more survivability. Give the Fire XII build a try too, just don’t dump a lot of gold gearing for it because you may very well be disappointed.

Thanks for the input on the build. I’ve considered a build similar to what you listed, specifically along the lines of a 10/10/0/30/20 staff build, but decided to try this route first and see how I like it.

I also heavily considered going this route: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6AqOVsaizY&list=UUSg9n14zRvCIgGrXynP5eWQ&index=4

… but it’s just too support based for where I want to play my Ele for the time being. In time I’m sure I’ll find my sweet spot.

EDIT – Oh I forgot to ask you. Would you still keep the Berserker’s stats for the staff and accessories for the build you suggested or would you use something else, assuming I keep the 6/6 P/V/T set?

Also, thanks for the comments on Runes thus far. I didn’t realize that Divinity runes are basically 50g for the set so that’s out, and Scholar ain’t cheap either. Strength is reasonably priced though. Maybe it’s best to focus on Boon/Might duration like you suggested. I could keep 2 Monk runes from the AC set, add 2x Sup Rune of Water and 2x of the cheapest Might duration rune.

Yeah a lot of people go 10 fire for the might on cantrips trait. I tend to keep cantrips in reserve for defensive use, so the thought of burning them for a few stacks of might does not appeal to me, but it’s a solid trait and a lot of people use it.

I feel like it’s hard to go wrong with boon and might duration runes. You can use them with a fire might-stacking build just fine if that’s what you want to do, and you can use them with an arcane attunement-swapping build. Plus as you noted they are much more affordable than the other popular choices.

P/V/T armor + berserker’s accessories and weapons is a good starting point if that’s what you have already or are working towards. I use mostly knight’s with a mix of berserker and valk accessories, but am in the process of trading out some of that crit for more power.

Another reason why I like staff builds closer to the prevailing d/d builds is that it gives you the versatility to retrait on the fly depending on whether you will be zerg busting or roaming. Staff’s major weakness is 1v1 so it’s really nice to be able to just get out your daggers, swap a few major traits, and roam solo. But see what works for you.

The build you linked is high damage on paper, but low survivability and over-reliant on staying in fire attunement.

Go 0/10/0/30/30 with a couple of traits swapped in (notably Bolt to the Heart and Blasting Staff), grab a superior sigil of battle for your staff, and rune for boon duration and might duration.

You will have better damage, better support ability, better boon uptime, and most importantly, you will actually benefit from swapping attunements instead of being ‘penalized’ by it, so you will be able to execute the full range of AE damage + control combos that exist.

Give it a try and see what you think. In my opinion it outshines a Fire XII build in every way, even including raw damage output, since you are better at keeping people in AE damage areas, and can stay in longer due to more survivability. Give the Fire XII build a try too, just don’t dump a lot of gold gearing for it because you may very well be disappointed.

@OBEY: Might want to tell the lowbie ranger in EB right now to turn the speed hack off.

I still see portals being used just as much, and to great effect. Despite all the changes and trials, the busted culling behavior remains one of the most powerful ‘features’ of portal tactics.

Also, the suggestion of prioritizing squad members sounds great at first, but then when you think about it, it’s actually completely half-baked. You could conceivably make it so that no pugs could go through the portal until all of your squad members do, but this creates more problems than it solves, and gets hilariously complicated when you start to think about how this logic would work in the case of multiple simultaneous portals.

Habib,

Appreciate the detailed response, but it seems like it doesn’t address some important questions.

1) Why is there a 2-4 second delay between destealth and rendering in WvW, even under optimal circumstances (i.e. 1v1 out in the middle of nowhere, no other players present) This shouldn’t be ‘model loading’, because I’m talking about repeated stealth/destealth cycles in the same fight, when presumably all the assets for both characters are resident already. I’m playing on a high-end machine and I get this, and so does everybody I talk to. How do the changes you outline address this behavior?

2) Why is enemy player culling vastly less well-behaved in large fights than friendly player culling?

3) Can you say with a reasonable degree of confidence that the culling / visibility system is currently free of major bugs? Because it seems to me like it isn’t. I can be more specific, but it really looks to me like the model loading gets delayed or ‘stuck’ in some cases, and sometimes gets unstuck due to user input such as changing the view direction. This kind of behavior, combined with the seemingly random selection of enemies I see popping in and out during large fights, strongly suggests to me that the system is currently bugged. Are you doing anything to make sure the system really works the way it is supposed to work?

Thanks for looking at it, and here’s to hoping it gets fixed.

I commend FA for crashing the dolyak parade. True PvP is not about badges, numbers, gear, ranks, or recognition; it’s about denying the other guy the opportunity to do his stuff, about kicking his sand castle down. You understand this. Well played.

Went from ridiculous to just good for backstab builds, and from ‘meh’ to ‘might actually use now’ for a lot of other builds. Good change IMO.

The way to discourage zerging is by beating it. It isn’t the only tactic, nor is it even the best.

If the overall populations in a given WvW zone are reasonably matched, zerging isn’t a problem. If they are not reasonably matched, population imbalance is the problem, not ‘zerging’.

“Until you cap the number of players possible at a given objective, the solution is almost always throw more people at it.”

I’m not sure if you’re actually suggesting capping numbers at an objective or not, but it is such a mind-blowingly bad suggestion that I feel compelled to respond. Just … no.

50+ steamrolls 6-7 at a very non-defensible position. Sounds about right. What was the rest of your team doing on the map while this was taking place?

The whole premise of this thread is false. The zerg does not always win. Organization can overcome a numbers disadvantage, at least up to a (rather large) point.

That being said, I am in favor of upping the AoE caps for stuff.

I have an i7-2600k overclocked to 4.5GHz, 16GB of RAM, 2×570s in SLI, and the game running off a Corsair SSD. Everything is set up properly, with up-to-date drivers, and every other game I play runs like a champ. I still have issues with invisible zergs, thieves and mesmers not appearing until long after their stealth really ends, etc. So no, it isn’t fixed, and it’s not a ‘get a new computer issue’, stop saying it is.

Of course the issues will be fixed eventually, the only question is, how much damage will be done to the game by that point?

So, you must think free transfers on 24 hour CD has a positive (or zero) impact on the state of WvW?

Reizak.2583:

Nothing wrong with the system as far as I can tell.

In just about every battle in the last 4,000 years, the side with the larger force nearly always wins. The only time this isn’t true is when technology/resources plays an important role.

Well, if you want to go all history scholar on us, in just about every battle in the last 4,000 years, I’m pretty sure dead people stayed dead.

Reizak.2583:

As mentioned above, the only reason I wouldn’t expect the zerg to walk it against a smaller group would be if they had technological (in this case golems or arrow carts) on their side. Keeps and castles have always (historically) been capture-able with a large enough force (in this case a ‘zerg’). Tactics and skill play a role, but the majority of time in real life, as well as in computer games, it’s a case of simple numbers. You have more, you’re more likely to win, exponentially.

So given that the side with numbers is already ‘exponentially’ more likely to win due to numbers alone, does it make sense for the game overall to have a mechanic which favors them even more?

Also, this is a game, it is not RL, nor is it meant to be an accurate simulation of RL. The whole ‘X is true in RL therefore X should necessarily be true in gaming’ argument is completely false … I can go into why but I think most people understand why already.

Reizak.2583:

EDIT: Just as an aside, as the game has no dedicated healers, then as someone else said; this isn’t really any different to playing WoW and having three druids constantly healing their seven warrior buddies. They’re just as invincible (if not more so). People are always going to QQ about things they don’t like when it rubs them the wrong way.

… So the game has no dedicated healers (by design), then you say this particular mechanic is like having dedicated healers (lol), which is like WoW, which makes it OK. Can you spot the flaw(s) in this reasoning?

For WvW, I run a mix of crafted berserker’s and the power/vit/toughness karma gear from Orr temples. I recommend.

1) Rendering issue primarily in wvw causing thieves to appear later than intended (though still targetable)
2) CnD -> Steal -> Signet -> Backstab combo hitting for lolomgwtf

Everything else is OK

I have tried crit/power and condition builds for Shortbow, and in my view crit/power works a lot better.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Everyone-went-invisible-during-WvW-including-NPC-s/page/2

Jason King.2647:

Thank you for your understanding and patience, everyone! We have a build coming up soon with a potential fix for this issue. Stay tuned!

Player culling and background loading of character model assets are both necessary evils, but the current implementation of it is so horrendously bad that it’s probably just buggy. Give them time to work it out, it will get fixed. I believe they can probably get it to a much better place without having to make some drastically user-experience altering changes, but time will tell. Hopefully not too much time, though. I don’t believe that any of what we are seeing currently is “a step in the right direction” though … lol

Raap.9065:

Kintari.4172:

Please stop perpetuating the idea that ANet will wait until the 22nd to release a fix for this. It is 100% false information based on a quote from another thread taken completely out of context. The “next content patch” has nothing to do with when a hotfix will be deployed for a major gamebreaking issue like this.

They will patch this issue as soon as they have a working, tested fix for it; spreading rumors to the contrary is just pouring gasoline on the fire.

I can say the same for your opinion. We don’t know if they will hotfix this or not, we don’t know if a fix will be ready before the 22th. All we know is that ‘a patch’ will come the 22th, and several other big issues have never been ‘hotfixed’ before either.

I said “they will not wait”. Whether or not they have something soonish is anybody’s guess, but to think that they’ll just sit on a fix because, “hey, we’ve got a content patch coming soon!” — is completely baseless.

Why would you want to make people believe that ANet will take longer to fix this than is absolutely necessary?

Please stop perpetuating the idea that ANet will wait until the 22nd to release a fix for this. It is 100% false information based on a quote from another thread taken completely out of context. The “next content patch” has nothing to do with when a hotfix will be deployed for a major gamebreaking issue like this.

They will patch this issue as soon as they have a working, tested fix for it; spreading rumors to the contrary is just pouring gasoline on the fire.

fatboy.5016:

Just as the title says. My server used to have a pop size 3 times bigger then sanctum of ralls, equal to fort aspens 4 weeks ago. But now cuz of transfers, We have lost roughly 90% of our WvW pop. We have max 8-12 people on at night time. We need YOU!. We need Loyal folks who no matter win or lose will stick with our server to help us crawl our way back to where we was and mb even higher. We all help each other out, Its a great community over here, our morale is extremly low, So this is my plea for help, This extends to all Servers. Help my server get its pop back. Show us wat fun is again. If your guild is lookin for a change, come on over. This seems like beggin , well it is. Dont see much other options atm.

lol fatboyy your sales pitch needs some work

Vorpal.4683:

No class should be killing another in two seconds. Quite a few classes currently do way too much damage. The thief is the worst offender, but not by as much as you’d think.

What makes thieves truly overpowered are the rendering issues in wuvwuv.

Pretty much sums it up. In the meantime, the guy who explained the dancing dagger mechanics gave some really good advice. Any skill that bounces is going to hurt you twice as badly when you’ve got exactly 1 other friendly beside you. I do this to rangers all the time with trick shot.

And yes, the really scary combo is the CnD -> Mug -> Signet + Backstab, that’s the one that is capable of dropping people 100-0 before they know they’re being attacked lol.

A rollback at this point presents a lot of challenges for them. Because of the amount of features and other fixes that went into the Oct. 7 patch, it isn’t realistic for them to just roll back the entire thing.

So to roll back just part, they’d have to first identify the changes that are likely causing this new behavior, which sounds easy but isn’t always easy, then they’d have to roll those back and thoroughly test the whole thing to verify that (a) the problem really is gone, and (b) they didn’t introduce new problems, which can happen when you’re talking about using bits of code / assets from different times. This all assumes that none of the new features / changes depend on the actual changes being rolled back.

In cases like this it’s often easier to just plow forward and fix the problem than it is to frankenstein up a new build. It’s not a good situation to be in though, and this is why it’s common to make separate patches for features & improvements versus performance / under-the-hood type changes.

It’s also why potentially high-risk changes are best patched in their own patch, so that you can just revert the entire thing back to a known and tested build if something does go horribly wrong. This of course assumes that there is a process in place that can reliably assess the risk of changes being made.

Note that I am not trying to make excuses for ANet on this one, it should never have gone out this busted and now it’s taking too long to address.

I’d like to join you all in this magical land where developers only ever create perfectly balanced content, and therefore all feedback can be dismissed as bads just being bad.

I’ve seen some pretty ridiculously unbalanced stuff across a lot of games, and every single time these things were defended with “lol ppl jus ned 2 l2p”

Granted there is a ton of noise on forums and a lot of it is just hyperbole, and people call for nerfs far more frequently than things actually need to be nerfed. And sometimes devs nerf stuff that’s better left alone, no question. But I think you get my point.

On a side note, I can’t be the only one amused by the “thief is fine because 100b” line of reasoning that keeps coming up everywhere … lol

Of course pistol whip + haste is still wrecking people. That’s exactly why this was the wrong change to make lol.

unhasted PW → blah
PW + quickness → stronk!

100b → meh
100b + quickness → rilly stronk!

lol do you see what I see?