Guild Wars 2

rice.5376:

Nice life story, bro.

Oh, and I bought a house today.

~ Kovu

Pinko.2076:

Is EA willing to fight guilds yet, or do you still pride yourself on siege usage?

[EA] is Dragonbrand’s smallest “primary” wvw guild, a DB guild from the start, specializing in a couple of key wvw elements not directly associated with open field combat. First off, in coordinated and continued point defense. Our guild will put a waypoint on anything anywhere given time unless we’re severely outnumbered. You can attribute the waypoints we put on your keeps on reset to that, as once we have the keep and siege up most of our help leaves to assist on other maps. Usually about 20~30 of us (on reset, 15~20 other nights) can hold 40~45 points (1 keep, 1 tower, 1~2 camps) on an enemy borderlands against 2 full zergs (assuming no long term 2v1s) freeing up room for DB’s other guilds to take greater portions of other maps.

Our other key strength lies in our ability to capture (ninja) key points without being detected (not so much on reset night). Such as the keep on an enemy’s borderlands far from our spawn. We really enjoy it, too. Since we run as a smaller group than most of the other guilds we can do this sort of thing more easily. Again, we have excellent communication.

We don’t claim to be great open fielders, and openly admit that that’s something we’re working on. [EA]‘s spent a fair amount of time practicing our stacking, communication and boon stacking + timing. One thing we rarely do, however, is run away from a fairly even fight. Moreover, we don’t force ourselves to play certain classes with certain builds— instead doing our best to synergize with what everyone wants to play. For instance, I’m a condition ranger, (bleed focused). Limited utility in zerg combat. But I do my best. The fact is, our focus and interest isn’t in that particular element of the game.

We’re not hardcore. We enjoy all assets of the game, and contribute in ways that many other guilds and people would rather not. The fact is, yes, we’ll continue to hide behind walls when it’s convenient. Yes, we’ll continue to use siege as part of our strategy in wvw. If you want to bash us on our perceived weakness, that’s your business.

~ Kovu

The sheer numbers in a Maguuma zergball is rather impressive.
I’m surprised they can keep all of their pugs on a leash.

~ Kovu

DB’s fairweather guilds are back in full force this week.
Welcome back. =D

~ Kovu

HEY GUYS IM HOME FROM WORK ARE WE WINNING YET???

edit- lol Crystal Desert. Anet hates you guys. Best of luck!

lani.7431:

Syktek.7912:

lani.7431:

Syktek.7912:

itohead.2749:

tiramisu.8706:

I don’t understand why people would continue to suicide to protect a supply camp. In 40 minutes, I made almost a stack of badges and it wasn’t even satisfying. No strategy, no skill, just suiciding with numbers as a safety cushion. It’s a supply camp.

Holographic wings, Jade weapon ticket…maybe precursor next?

How about repair bills? At this rate they’re going to have the sell that precourser to keep up with those bills.

Outmanned.

You didn’t that the entire time.

I died one death without outmanned. A small penny to keep a fully upgraded camp. They are important.

Not just fully upgraded, but with the supply buff. Not to mention we had people at NE camp escorting yaks to Hills, and were waiting on SoS to take Bay (okay, so they somehow managed to fail at that). If we let you have that camp, there wouldn’t currently be a waypoint at Hills.

Enjoy your loot bags. It’s no loss in my book. Only cost me about 4 silver.
Personally I enjoy grinding loot bags like that. Had I been in the reversed role, I’d still be at that camp. With my magic find gear. On an upscale.

~ Kovu

That rekz guild from Ehmry Bay is more dangerous than anything we ever ran into during our stay on T1.

~ Kovu

Evalana.5480:

Kovu.7560:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxoUmh2FCX4

LOL !!!

Soo trolly – I miss Arrow (and you)!!

We’ll still chillin’ in Dragonbrand sippin’ mojitos if you ever decide to come back.
Or even guest for pve stuff. o.o

And yeah, the first time he was in their it took a group of them about a half an hour to finally snag him (I think a stealth trap coupled with a quaggan lightning stun is what finally did him in). And that was after we had successfully capped and they merely zerged it back. The second time their entire zerg was there to stop 5 of us from ninjaing— and it still took them all about 10 minutes of running around inner Hills to finally get him.

It’s great. Az Rah hid inside for like an hour before porting us in. We hit N inner and were seen as we were about to break gate with a superior ram. We got in and started chewing down the lord, but their zerg (who were nearby having just taken SE from Mags) came and slaughtered us— except Bye. Zerg left, Bye revived us, we tried to take lord again. But they came back and we had no such luck the second time— half of their map hung around to see Bye killed.

Then I afk’d for 45 minutes and had about 7 of them (including a commander) camp my corpse.

No seriously, this is what I miss about T5~6. Less zergs running around, easier to ninja stuff. EA’s roots.

~ Kovu

Hypocrisy akittens finest. Wayyy too much Maguuma hate going on in here, and that’s from someone who has to deal with their pvf-ers every second week.
I’m quick to point out that Maguuma isn’t a bad server skill wise. Their tactics seems a little off sometimes, to each their own, but that doesn’t reflect skill. In 1v1s I lose to them a lot more often than I lost to either of the T1 servers I faced last week. They simply don’t have the coverage to handle T2 servers which is why they’re currently losing this match up.

The fact is, matchups are random. If you want to discuss your dislike of the system, feel free, but don’t take it out on Maguuma. They’re victims, as much as my server was a victim last week. Eventually the random mechanic will land them in a T4 matchup, and they’ll realize that steamrolling their opponents isn’t as fun as it sounds. A lot of DB has been going easy this week.

~ Kovu

Give the players of the 3rd place server in each matchup 50g. Then watch the entire meta of the game flip on it’s head.

… also, I’m not seriously suggesting that.

~ Kovu

katniss.6735:

Dragonbrand is only good when other players aren’t online.

I see what you’re implying there. =O

Ouch. ;_;

Sorry. That post could’ve been way longer, when I try to elaborate on one thing there are like four other things I feel I need to explain. I feel if something is incomplete it will be misunderstood and misconstrued.

Fact is— you didn’t ask for it— but others did. A lot of people wanted variety, so that’s what Anet’s trying to do. It kills balance under the current system. Personally, I was fine with FA and TC. But the T1 servers (in particular) wanted a change from the status quo. Not everyone will be satisfied.

Just.. try to have fun with the matchup as best as you can. This is a game, we’re supposed to be trying to have fun. We can’t pin this all on Anet.

~ Kovu

Christos de Soufre.3802:

I have a response for this, but someone would inevitably find a way to twist my words to make it sound like a hostile remark, so… I’m sorry that DB had it so hard last week.

It ain’t T1’s fault. Just like it isn’t our fault that we’re rolling over T3 servers. WvW -is- a coverage game, and when one server has more people the other will eventually wear out.

~ Kovu

edit- And TC only beat us as well as they did because we had FA knocking at our back door. I await a matchup against TC and a non-factor.

I’d like to boldly point out that TC and FA would have the same issues with T1 servers that DB does.
Except that they’d get stomped ever so slightly less during NA and even more so during Oceanic/SEA.

Go bother some EU servers. >.>

~ Kovu

BG stomped us into the ground entirely and then went to cap JQ’s Garri day after day, last week. JQ didn’t -need- to double team us after the weekend, DB was basically a non factor.

Yet BG steamrolled JQ as well. Is this what usually happens in tier 1?

~ Kovu

“The problem”, as you’ve pointed out, depends on who you ask. Some people want variety, some want balance. Before it was balanced, now it has variety, it would be insanely difficult to do both. They’d have to do more with the [Outmanned] buff (as I noted in an edit in my above post) such as providing higher stats, reducing siege supply cost, perhaps even giving a 10% speed boost, or quickness on siege to encourage quick capping. But then if you make it -too- good people will -want- to be outmanned, which defeats the purpose. Then there’s the matter of the [Outmanned] buff itself. There are times where our map is clearly outmanned and the buff doesn’t appear. It’s a hard system to balance, and I’d like to think that Anet is running simulations behind the scenes that might address some of this.

Either way, we’ve got to deal with what we have now. This whole discussion is a can of worms I refuse to open at this hour. It’s all just speculation.

And for the record, I’m entirely against more NPCs being added to this pvp environment. Give boosts, don’t take the player out of the game. I hate siegerazer.

~ Kovu

edit- Oh, and the [Outmanned] buff would have to be more sensitive, too. Perhaps different degrees of being outmanned. Moreover, when tallying people for that purpose it should only count those outside of the safe zone.

doubleedit- Moreover, on this scale anything they would do would be trial and error. They can simulate our numbers but they cannot simulate our tactics. The fact is, mistakes will be made before the system is “perfect”. (Which, by the way will never be the case because SOMEONE will have SOMETHING to whine about.)

Ugh. Everyone cries outnumbered.
Fact is, 2/3rds of the time there’s often going to be more of the enemy somewhere nearby trying to find the holes in your defense.

And violentlycar, that is why Anet can’t simply bend to the whim of a bunch of forum kids at every turn. We all have differing opinions and many of us will cry when our particular ideals aren’t met or agreed with.

No, I don’t have a solution. I don’t believe this variety system is it. Agreed, WvW in its current state is not optimal. But I’m having fun. Even last week. If people can’t learn to make the most out of the situation then they can find something else to do. The game won’t change just because they want it to.

That’s the nature of pvp.

Personally I felt the orbs should’ve been retained as a means of giving what the current [Outmanned] buff gives. [Outmanned] today should’t give magic find and extra wxp— that doesn’t help you when you’re outmanned— it should have provided the statistical boost to compensate for being outnumbered. That’s how I personally felt back in 2012 and I still feel that way. Giving more/better stats to the winning server was not the way to go.

~ Kovu

violentlycar.5267:

Kovu.7560:

For the record, FA and Mag are currently gaining rating while DB is dropping.
We’re balanced to the rating system, you should set your goal to keeping us from gaining rating.

We got murdered last week by two T1 servers, but we didn’t drop that much over all. In fact thanks to T2 last week we managed to pass TC to go from 5->4 despite being murdered. Why? It was expected that we’d be outmatched in T1. Likewise, DB will have to win by a pretty fair margin to gain rating in T3.

~ Kovu

Rating is not the same as fun. Given that ANet actually plays their game, I’d hope they recognize this and are taking steps to improve it.

And yet a few weeks ago people were complaining about the stagnant never changing matches that we settled into after server transfers stopped being free and thus more common. All servers were relatively well matched, all having their moments to shine.

Then people whine on the forums about how boring it is to face the same servers week in and week out so they introduce this system.

And now everyone’s whining about T1 servers steam rolling T2 servers, and T2 servers rolling T3 servers. From what I’ve seen, the luckiest server in the game is Henge of Denravi— look at how they’ve been placed the past few weeks.

The fact is, we can’t have the cake and eat it too. We won’t have balanced matches if the tiers are all scrambled— even to within a degree of 1 tier.

There is no way to fix this unless they reduced the number of people able to play wvw, or forced people to transfer to balance tiers.

DB spent half of their last matchup without their own Garrison. Do you think we enjoyed it? We dealt with it. All the BG and JQ (JQ in particular) running around meant a lot of loot bags— and all of the stuff we didn’t own meant a lot of potential stuff we could take.

It’s hypocritical to ask Anet to randomize the matches and then demand balance. It’s not going to happen. Deal with the fact that we’re going to kick your kitten this week.

~ Kovu

For the record, FA and Mag are currently gaining rating while DB is dropping.
We’re balanced to the rating system, you should set your goal to keeping us from gaining rating.

We got murdered last week by two T1 servers, but we didn’t drop that much over all. In fact thanks to T2 last week we managed to pass TC to go from 5->4 despite being murdered. Why? It was expected that we’d be outmatched in T1. Likewise, DB will have to win by a pretty fair margin to gain rating in T3.

~ Kovu

Sucks to be Maguuma. Doesn’t it?
It’s not like any of the other servers have been in matchups unfavorable to them.
Keep sending your entire kitten map to take SE camp on your borders, then leave without so much as attempting the tower or keep. Obviously you guys have nothing better to do. That’s some great “tactics and skill”.

~ Kovu

Topic – +1

~ Kovu

Sophtspoken.9062:

Just wish the T1s would stop double teaming a T2 I mean really come on, then again even after your double teaming we still managed to grab SM 3 in a few hours time so I guess you have to double team to break a dragon. Took Fa and Tc 3 weeks to figure that out.

Look at it this way. I’ve managed more loot bags and possibly wxp in the 10~12 hours I’ve put into this matchup than the entirety of the SBI/Mag matchup we had last week. SBI rarely came out to play and Mags only pushed during NA.

On reset night in BG BL it was endless lootbags. Whether it was at the lords room of Hills or in the SE camp, we’d wipe them over and over, and more would come. In the lower tiers, you wipe them once and that’d be game. In T1 it’s an endless cycle. There are SO MANY of them that it’s great for grinding.

Doesn’t help ppt, I guess. But DB’s not ready for a legitimate T1 matchup anyway. We lack cross map cohesion, and still have too many fairweathers causing our numbers to dwindle. It’s not that we don’t have the help, it’s that they don’t want to come out and play.

Dragonbrand’s best matchup is against FA and TC. In T3 we’ll win the ppt and easily take any objective we want. In T1 we’ll lose the ppt but grind tons of loot and wxp off of the endless waves of T1 zergvers. In that sense, it’s a win-win. So chin up. It’s just a game. =)

(Also, still looking at it at Tiers. I know it’s a bad habit. Don’t care.)

~ Kovu

We’re not doing too poorly in our bl tonight. JQ gave us the night off. =D

~ Kovu

chern.8569:

DB is a server like JQ,
with good Sea presence, lots of pugs, and most importantly, it seems DB has more organized wvw guilds than JQ.
Both server do have lots of similarities.
To be honest, they do have the number to compete with T1 server(well, people will show up less when they are losing), but they are kind of inexperienced,
so all DB needed is more experience or maybe a good T1 WvW guild to lead them, once they have that, they could turn into a real dragon.

My rl friend from BG points out that while his server had queues in all four maps early last night, DB only had a queue in EB (barely). No no presence at all in BG BL.
We still lack all around numbers compared to the T1 servers and roll with too many farewathers. It kind of sucks.

~ Kovu

DB’s original core will never let down. PPT mostly refers to coverage, less skill or strategy.
Call us bandwagoners all you want— DB’s original guilds fought for months from T6 to T3 outnumbered heavily for about 14-18 hours of the day— this is nothing new to us.

Even without the newer guilds, we’re top of Tier 3 at worst. Or at least that’s how it was a couple months ago. Honestly I can’t keep up with all of the hopping guilds. How can people afford this stuff. .__.

~ Kovu

edit-Lol @ the ending of that video. My guild told me about it when I logged on, but I missed it because of work. >>

MagiKarp.8201:

http://mos.millenium.org/na

Mos disagrees my friend.

DB #1.

We’re #1? Sweet. hangs coat Time to retire.

~ Kovu

David.4821:

Kovu.7560:

This is going to be a looong week.

~ Kovu

I made 60+ badges off of that moment from DB and JQ. I was one of the guys on the AC just raining hell. It was crazy.

I’m sure you enjoyed it. We were just trying to claw our way through JQ to get to our tower before you guys could cap it. We failed. >.<

~ Kovu

This is going to be a looong week.

~ Kovu

osnap Tier 1!

~ Kovu

A quick shoutout to Maguuma and Stormbluff Isle.
DB has the coverage game, but during NA prime there was some great 3-way battles. =)
Fun match up!

~ Kovu

We need yellow guild commander tags assigned/provided by guild officers. These would only be viewable by the guild.
Map-wide blue doritos need to be free, and attainable through wxp compilation. It wouldn’t be a perfect system, but there’s no way to entirely root out the idiots. Emphases on guild commander tags.

Joining a squad should also merely transparentize other commander icons so that squads can still see what’s going on elsewhere on the map.

~ Kovu

I wasn’t aware this was a thing.
As far as I’m concerned, tagging someone should be good enough. Supporters are important, too.

~ Kovu

They should be resettable in general, for a small cost. Much like trait points.
In wvw it’s just an extension of your character’s abilities.

~ Kovu

If it’s something that can logistically be implemented, it gets my approval.
Worth a topic bump, anyway. =)

~ Kovu

Disagreed with the hate on coverage.
Agreed with increasing the focus on defending.

~ Kovu

I would like a shot at BG and JQ, but in the long run I liked the T2 matchup with TC and FA.

~ Kovu

I was beginning to feel bad for Maguum and SBI in particular— being thrown into this situation is not that fun for anyone— however all of the kittening and DB hate on this page alone has dulled my senses. Are we really that bad?

~ Kovu

I miss Tier 2. All of the DB fare-weathers are out to play and I can’t get into the maps. ;_;

~ Kovu

ParaldaWind.4523:

Kovu.7560:

Maguuma, GIVE US YOUR HILLS.
… I need somewhere to akitten all night.

Also, SBI? Hello server I’ve never even heard of before. Best of luck this week. =)

~ Kovu

You guys did cap it earlier in the night. We even gave you time to build up 200ish supply, build 10+ superior arrow carts, get comfortable, and then we took it from you 20 minutes later.

Is 20 minutes EA’s worst time? Because [PYRO] would love to hold that title.

I have no idea what’s happening right now, though, as I’m going to bed. When I logged, we still had all of our BL and eternal, so pretty good reset night.

I was told about that, but got off of work late. At the time I logged on you guys were +300~ PPT and passing us in overall score. =O
I don’t know how we managed to lose Hills, I didn’t ask. But yeah, 20 minutes is pretty terrible. FA and TC couldn’t take it from us once we got entrenched. Their best bet was to ninja it (or wait for EA to go to bed) and hold onto it with a number of arrow carts similar to those you had in lords room while we were trying to retake.

~ Kovu

Maguuma, GIVE US YOUR HILLS.
… I need somewhere to akitten all night.

Also, SBI? Hello server I’ve never even heard of before. Best of luck this week. =)

~ Kovu

Victory.2879:

Whoever thought that loot bags should despawn so quickly needs shooting (by a ranger, so that would be miss miss blocked dodged blocked miss miss).

As a ranger, this made my day. Because it’s so true. =)

~ Kovu

Aurust.8961:

Jayne.9251:

Aurust.8961:

Pichu.5348:

TC and FA really need to end their truce already, it’s getting very old.

I was thinking the same thing! Are TC and FA constantly double teaming DB? When DB first came in they were winning easily, but now they can barely keep up with FA…. Or is the DB community falling apart?

Aurust dear, go back to your tier 1 thread. Stop trolling here.

You might get infracted for this post since ur not allowed to call someone the T word

OT: I am curious as to whats going on that,s all, since SOR may be facing you guys in the future.

It’s not so much server drama. Fact is, only about 1/4th of our wvw population uses TS. Coordination can be painful and we’re an easy server to ninja against. There has been some guild drama, but nothing grand scale. Some people are burnt out, I know that the guild I am in has been on rough times. Ever since we lost our wvw numbers in October diluting our pvp numbers the server as a whole has been mostly flooded with pve-ers. We’re a pve server with a dedicated core of wvw-ers (some of whom) are beginning to tire. Even the pugs are the same people, everyday.

Allow me to be bold in suggesting that without at least one “Legendary x” blue dorito running around we’d be T3 naturally. The 2v1 is a factor, but it’s part of the game. Capitalizing on opportunities is kind of the point, and as a server it’s something we need to work on. When TC or FA hit each other, we need to back cap. This is a thing we don’t do.

It’s costing us.

~ Kovu

Watch the “random” system pit us up against each other again, anyway.
I’d be amused. Personally I enjoy fighting TC and FA.

~ Kovu

This time last week we were ticking at +60. Now we’re ticking at +500.
… I don’t know when we’re supposed to be strong, anymore.

~ Kovu

Niim.9260:

Arkanfel.8403:

Well if you look closely, I wasn’t actually talking to you at first. I was responding to a post that implied DB deserved no respect because the server was “bankrolling” its guilds. That’s not exactly what is going on, no one is actually being paid to come here.

‘Getting more people’ is never going to be a strategy folks will respect. Doesn’t matter if you are paying them or not and any success a server has after getting a bunch of transfers is tainted.

For the record we went from T6 to T3 with relatively few transfers. It’s just now that everyone’s starting to like us. =D

~ Kovu

http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/35/#history
It’s a shame, Dragonbrand hasn’t actually gone down in position since late last year. Guess we’re overdue for a bump in the road!

~ Kovu

My god.

~ Kovu

I’m still kitten having woken up last thursday to find TC Hills gone.
We need to go put a wp up at FA Hills. =D

~ Kovu

Evalana.5480:

Kovu.7560:

TC can’t break through n gate Hills with this defense!

~ Kovu

Wow, Nail! That screen is so squished! Do you play on a laptop??

I don’t know why it’s squished like that anytime I post an image. I actually use my T.V. as my monitor, and in-game is nothing like that. I imagine if I played on a smaller monitor my resolution would be different.

~ Kovu