Guild Wars 2

Who gives a F. Engi is the kitten Profession of GW2. Just reroll.

Caldric.1685:

I have played MMOs and MuDs since the 1990’s and I have never seen a class gutted like Engineers were.

Yup. I’m done. I figured this professions would see buffs. Nope, other way around. Too bad … this was my favorite class in WvW. I may just hang it up after what I experienced tonight. It’s not worth it.

Lol Choo just portaled an entire zerg on top of one guy standing on a rock in IoJ BL. Nice work guys. I hope my bag was fun.

Eff it. I’m going to finish leveling up my Thief. I may give an Elementalist a try too as I enjoy AoEs in WvW.

Sigh. I had such high hopes for this patch. 30%. Give me a break.

30%? What the heck were they thinking? I’m about done with this profession. Maybe the game. Meh. I’m really disappointed right now.

Hey I use turrets! OHHHHHH you meant DROP turrets. No sorry I don’t do that. I only use the the toolbelt skill so I can trigger Static Discharge every 8 seconds. =)

Actually, the rating system is working as intended. It’s grouping servers that are as close to the same strength and coverage as possible. The real problem is the small playing field. There are simply not enough servers for some variety of opponents of similar capability (coverage and participation).

Obsidian.1328:

^ Why did you repost that here?

I guess because it’s related to the current match. Pretty funny. Someone needs to look up how Cloak and Dagger and Thief initiative and traits works. Cooldown resets? Funny.

Greyskies.2815:

What’s the score update?

The score was updated an hour ago at http://mos.millenium.org/matchups#NA so you can probably go with that.

rchu.8945:

I hope there is change in tier 2, giving all we got on SoR and the biggest enemy is time zone / population coverage. I rather we drop a tier and fight on equal footing with servers that have the same prime time population, at least the loss is within our control. I dont know how many students actually play on SoR, but not all of us working folks can decide to play until 4 AM and still go to work the next day…

SoR belongs in T2. If they didn’t the score wouldn’t be so close every week. If SoR dropped to T3 they’d likely crush the other two servers. Is winning by a mile in T3 better than taking 2nd or a close 3rd in T2? The fact is BG, SoR and IoJ all have coverage holes when the opposing servers have stronger participation. This is why the game scores have been so close the past month. It’s just that BG has smaller holes that allows them a little breathing room to take breaks, play alts, enjoy other content, then make a push for the win if it matters enough.

I think the most important thing to focus on is if there’s fun to be had during the hours you’re able to enjoy the game. Are there a lot of fights to get involved in and keeps to siege and defend during your play times? If so, then you’re already a winner. Focus more on that and less on the score of the match, which is mostly outside of your control, and you’ll be a happier player overall. Winning feels good and is nice when it happens, but it’s basically meaningless and the shine of it wears off pretty fast.

I’m no statistician, but I feel the way they use the modified Glikko rating system could benefit from a modification.

The attached picture highlights the issue …

This week in tiers 1-3, all green servers are in the lead and will likely win the match, yet all three are losing rating on the week. Why? Because the the score differential is too close, and Anet’s implementation of the Glikko rating system uses scoring rather than win/lose/draw.

While this is great in practice, as it means the system has worked and grouped the servers according to their scoring ability, it can also lead to the content getting stale due to facing the same opponents week after week. Unless there is a shock to the makeup of the WvW population on a server (such as a mass exodus ala HoD and ET), the more time that goes on the less likely we will see movement up and down tiers, especially in the top 3 and bottom 3 tiers.

In a nutshell, it seems to me that it is too difficult for green servers to move up a tier, and red servers to drop down a tier. To remedy this and potentially add a bit more spice to the WvW weekly matchups without creating total blowouts, would be to augment the rating system to include bonus rating for winning a match, no bonus for 2nd place, and negative rating for 3rd place. This would have to be a ratio rather than a fixed number so the amount of increase or decrease is relative to the current rating of a server.

Something along these lines anyways. I far prefer seeing the same servers every week if it means I’m more likely to experience a close competitive match, but I also think a little more server movement up and down tiers at this point could help keep things from getting boring.

mischwoof.9785:

sPvP video released! enjoy :>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CN5TmGOBOjI

OMG! R-R-R-R-R-R AGEQUIT!

Seriously dude. Your PvP videos are the best ever. Loved it.

Mikitten058:

Warlord.9074:

SoR here guys, SoR keep pushing hard. We get a lead hold the lead. Don’t give up when you see we are winning. The rest of us can’t pick up the slack.

No one gives up. Same people in WVW day in, day out, including nights. Heck some skipping sleep. :P

Indeed. SoR isn’t giving up. BG is making a move.

amiable.4823:

The second dev post in our forum in a week! Huzzah!

I don’t want to make too much of that, but it leads me to believe they’re taking a good hard look at the Engineer profession right now.

IoJ Oceanics made a run last night and spiked above 400 PPT for awhile. Then BG Oceanics + EU cut into that and flipped it to about +360 at the peak. Now we’re moving into SoR’s prime time that will peak in about an hour or so.

I’m glad to see the chest thumping in this thread has stopped. A close match with a lot of back and forth tends to do that. This is still anyone’s match to win and we haven’t seen it this close since week 2 of our trio matchup.

tkalamba.2541:

Anyone with a score update?

11:00am PST (GMT -8)

SoR: 120,414 +115
BG: 109,930 +385
IoJ: 103,613 +195

See you guys when you get tired of the game that I can’t mention here and Anet makes some sweet updates to WvW! So Februaryish? It’s a date! =)

Edit – Oh cool! You quoted me in the video! Yeah … I’m still walking a bit funny. =)

Edit 2 – Quoted twice! I guess I gave you some good material on both forums lol!

Good luck to you guys. It was fun.

Artaz.3819:

In other news:

IoJ has recently acquired Ascension Alliance (what remains of them) including Team Legacy. That definitely adds to the talent pool for IoJ during NA primetime. And it’s good to see some old allies now as my enemy

With SoS in T1 losing a major guild and alliance and coverage of at least one BL to a Euro server, there is a very good chance in a few weeks that one of us in T2 will be moving up (or back) to T1; but the movement will be because of the WvW formula and not because of great competition.

Huh? Team Legacy has been on IoJ for almost 2 months, and AA had already spread out back then, including LotD, Thai, Resonance and maybe another going to Blackgate. What AA guilds were left?

Dolemite.9823:

Thanks Liquid.

What is the Cleric Armor called your talking about and were can it be bought? This is the roll I play in my group.

Well, it’s crafted, so that’s the easiest way to get it. You can also get it with dungeon tokens. The Cleric’s stat is Power/Healing/Toughness. You can also obtain Healing gear from the Orr Karma vendors that is Precision/Vitality/Healing.

Here’s a summary of the Orr karma vendor sets: http://dulfy.net/2012/09/08/gw2-templegod-karma-armor-sets/

So you could mix the two to have a good balance of Toughness and Vitality. You could use the 5 Karma armor pieces and Cleric’s jewelry for example. 5 pieces will cost you 210k karma though so it requires a good amount of farming.

It depends on what you’re doing, your build, and role you’re playing. I have a full Berserker’s (Power/Prec/Crit) exotic set that I use for farming gold and karma in PvE, and when I run my glass cannon Grenades build in WvW. I also have a full set of Orr karma Soldier’s gear (Power/Tough/Vit) that I filled in with rare (yellow) Soldier’s accessories and WvW pants. I use this when I want to play a tanky build. I’m also planning on putting together a Clerics set for support/healing.

I mostly play WvW these days, and I find the full glass cannon spec to be the most fun and rewarding. Yes you’ll get owned in small group encounters sometimes, but most of the time in WvW, when you’re going to die you’re going to die and no amount for defense or HPs is going to change that.

Well now I know what it’s like to 1v1 another defensive spec with this build. I dueled a Mesmer last night in WvW. The fight went on for about 10 minutes before another member from my server came along and finished him off. We were both low health many times over the course of the fight, and it looked like I was gaining on him towards the end, but it felt more like we were dancing than trying to kill each other. The fight may have gone on forever if another didn’t come along.

I love the survivability of the build, but the damage output just isn’t there for me. Thanks for the build though Nisha. I did have a lot of fun messing with people with it and now that I have the gear together I can run it when I get tired of lobbing Grenades.

Yes it’s terrible. The cooldown on our knockback being longer than the time it takes to get spiked is ridiculous. Unless I know there is a player nearby that is low health and I might be able to rally off of by throwing rocks, I usually just sit there with the map open ready to click a waypoint.

So I finally got the gear and runes together to run this in WvW last night, and while it was a fairly major culture shock, I did have some fun with it. Here are my comments and thoughts so far …

So I decided to run a slightly different build, with Bomb Kit instead of Elixir S. My though here was to have more close quarters damage output as well as yet another way to add Confusion stacks via the #3 Concussion Bomb. Here is how I set the build …

(copy and paste into a browser window) http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqel0pSXH5ynF1LJxIFdW0hUgfDLSRlh8nCyF

One of my first encounters was against an Elementalist. The fight went on for awhile, and ended in the Ele running away from me. My second encounter was a Thief (mwhahaha). The player running away from me happened a lot faster this time, but the result was the same. No loot bag, the Thief not as his waypoint and me standing there alone and lonely.

I found this to be common in 1v1 situations. Players running away from me and my having a hard time killing them before they could get away. I guess I need to get better at using my Magnet and Cripple skills. Still, my biggest frustration with the build was the lack of damage output, even with the Bomb kit.

Also, now I know how a Guardian feels during a tower siege. Actually, a Guardian is more useful. I dropped my own Flame Ram just so I could guarantee that I could control it and contribute in some way. I did manage to Magnet a Ranger off the wall though.

I think I need more time with the build and playstyle before I can say if it’s for me or not. But I think the lack of damage unless I’m being focused could be the deal breaker for me. It’s also possible that I’m simply not good enough at PvP to run this build effectively hehe.

Laserbolt.6731:

I play sPvP.

Changed my engineer to this build to try it out.

The prybar confusion does not seem all that powerful in sPvP for me. I pop Elixir B and have my retaliation and hit with the prybar and wait for them to destroy themselves, as you say. But it does not seem to happen.

I see warriors hitting themselves for 215 points with my confusion. Takes a lot of those to whittle away 28000 hit points.

FOUND THE PROBLEM

From the Guild Wars Wiki:

“Confusion deals different damage in PvE/WvWvW than in sPvP.

In PvE and WvWvW, its damage is given by:

10 + (1.5 * Level) + (0.15 * Condition Damage) per stack per skill use

In sPvP, its damage is half as much, or:

65 + (0.075 * Condition Damage) per stack per skill use"

This explains why the build felt pretty lackluster when I played it in sPvP last night, in addition to my being not very good at playing it yet. I bought the Soldiers rares off the TP last night, and I just need to craft a pistol and buy a shield now, in addition to the runes. I think I’m gonna go with Earth. Man runes are so darn expensive!

jkctmc.8754:

I love the outmanned buff, it has allowed me to level 4 80s, and a level 32 in WvW.

There’s nothing wrong with the buff, it just shouldn’t show on your portrait when enemies target you for reasons stated in the OP.

KirinDave.6451:

Great video!

I’m not sure how much actual impact on a WvW game this build can really have though. It really relies on you being focused. If there was room for the bomb kit, then we could see some real havoc.

Well, you could conceivably replace Elixir S/U with Bomb kit. Sure there’s a trade off but it could add a fun dynamic to the build. In fact, I may give this a go in a sPvP hot join match this week.

Flaunz.5273:

Dear Jon Peters,
you just made my day!

Make that two of us. Excuse me while I pick my jaw up from the floor. This is awesome news.

I can’t wait to see a group PVP video that includes Elixir U and a few TURBODUNKs. That’s going to happen RIGHT NISHA?

=)

urzen.7096:

got bored. made a chart

I commend the effort, but http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/33

Daximus.8547:

I think they need to get rid of the anonymity of opponents in WvW…creating rivalries and knowing your opponents helps add to server pride. Nameless enemies are hurting the game IMO.

As well as greatly reducing individual griefing. No player names is a necessary evil in my opinion, and being able to see guild tags is enough to create the required rivalry.

I’ve been on Blackgate since the head start, and been there for all the ups and downs in WvW. Yes, I do still have server pride. It’s my home team, and I do anything I can to help make the server better and win.

zugly.9035:

Thanks Dust,
This is indeed one nice video of a PVP engineer.
I am really curious to know what stats he’s using.

He’s using full Soldiers, which is Power/Vitality/Toughness. It’s not all the viable for leveling though, as this stat combo is only available via WvW and at the end game (Orr karma vendors and the pieces cost 42k karma a piece).

The bottom line is, Engineers are fairly squishy early on, but that improves later in the game if you choose to add Toughness and Vitality to your gear.

Cat Amiss.9463:

BG still has a ton of presence during our NA strong time though, it’s not like we are daycapping or anything by any means

I never said anything about day capping. I’m simply stating the fact that for about 3 hours after EU goes to bed and before the bulk of BG’s NA players log on, there is a deep hole in coverage that SoR has the numbers to capitalize on. 3 hours later at 6:40pm PST SoR is +275 and BG is +245 and has SM again. 3 hours from now BG will likely be back in the high 300s.

I’m not trying to belittle SoR or anything. You guys are awesome. I’m simply laying out what I’ve observed in coverage changes over the past couple of weeks and how it relates to scoring.

Edit – Just after I posted this SoR took SM back hehe. =)

Pretty similar circumstances last Tuesday after the ahem stuff that happened. I logged on at about 9pm PST expecting a lot of work to do and BG already had a slight PPT lead again and hit about +420 until about 1am PST when IoJ’s [ND] and [HIRE] logged in and started cutting into it.

SoR’s strongest time period is 2pm to 7pm PST, which peaks at about 4pm PST. BG and IoJ numbers are very weak during this time slot.

As of 4:39pm West Coast time (PST / GMT -8)

SoR primetime yo!

Kid Taylor.5479:

Pardon my ignorance, but where are you getting this information from?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Game-Update-Notes-December-3-2012

I don’t believe the exact value is published anywhere, but I’ve read that you have to do somewhere around 5-10% of the total damage to an enemy to get loot in PvE, and I’d imagine it works the same way with player kills in WvW.

Sounds Ike an Elementalist or Engineer with a power grenade build would be up your ally.

OMG. That video was awesome. Favorite part …

TINY D … ohhh

You’re one funny cat.

Great week all, bad stuff aside. Next week starts fresh tonight! Hopefully no more funny business and we can have some good clean fun. Any of the three servers in T2 can win in any given week. Population balance ebbs and flows, and could tip in favor of one server and against another server at any time. IoJ proved to any doubters this week that they still belong solidly in T2. Well done guys. I tip my cap to SoR as well. Hopefully you guys get a little more Oceanic coverage so your NA guys can get some sleep once in awhile. =)

Cheers!

Indo.8629:

It’s better to be in one of these type of tiers than the ones where the match is over early in the week.

No doubt about that. If you look across this week’s matches though, there was only one blow out which was somewhat expected anyways. Every other match could have, and in some cases did, become anyone’s game after the weekend. The lead in the DHvNSPvDB match changed hands four separate times since the weekend ended. We had come from behind wins in both T1 and T2, and the battle for 2nd place in T3 has been rolling all week.

The tiers have become fairly balanced which is pretty cool.

So for a good while now I’ve been running the classic Grenades glass cannon spec, with Static Discharge, Tool Kit (for Throw Wrench mostly) and Slick Shoes, with almost full Beserkers (I have Soldiers in a couple slots). I’ve enjoyed the damage and playstyle, but lately I’ve been feeling like I want to be more durable in smaller encounters.

For the time being I mostly run WvW solo, either following a zerg, hitting/defending Yaks, siege/defend keeps and towers with Grenade support and general roaming about trying to support the map where it’s needed. I do enjoy Grenades in WvW so I want them part of any build I run.

So last night I switched to a full Soldier set (except legs which are Knights) and Knights for the Jewelry slots and Rifle. I also moved my build to this …

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcEQFAUl0piYX3ShF17IyIFfWnJSRlpffeQftFEC

The idea was to capitalize on the extra Super Elixir with Kit Refinement from the swapping to the EG, and add a couple traits that help when being focused (auto Elixir S and Protection).

I played it for a couple hours last night and I found it a bit underwhelming. Maybe I just need more time with the build and learn how to play it right, but I felt like I gave up more damage than I gained in additional durability, and in the end it seemed like I died just as much as I did with my glass cannon spec.

Any thoughts and/or suggestions from your experience would be appreciated.

Honestly, if you’re not killing more people in WvW than being killed, you’re doing something wrong. I’m pretty bad and die a lot and even I have a 5 to 1 kill to death ratio (which is really bad). Even with those deaths, I always come out with more coin in my pocket than I went in with after repairs.

Cake.4920:

BG’s rep is not fine, when a commander from a large BG guild purposely abuses an exploit.

What does one person, or even a small handful of people, have anything to do with the rep of an entire server? I killed a bunny in WvW last night. Does this mean the entire Blackgate server should be considered bunny killers? Also, what does it matter that it was a large guild? Would it have been okay if it was a small guild?

See where I’m going with this? As intelligent players from all three servers have been posting repeatedly throughout this thread, blame the player, not the server.

Christos de Soufre.3802:

Score update, please? On the way back from school.

As of 6:52 PM EST (GMT -5):

BG 190,460 +190
SoR 176,123 +320
IoJ 165,015 +185

tkalamba.2541:

You seem pretty much dead on based on my observations. We do have quite alot of people from the Eastern Timezone, and some for Central. I think our weakest is still EU and Oceanic timezone though. Having them would round us out quite well.

Interestingly, IoJ is a big part of why this match is as close as it is. IoJ keeps BG from being able to go 600+ PPT overnight and running away with the match. This keeps BG’s PPT potential lower allowing SoR too keep it close and make up ground during their NA heavy time zone.

If SoR did pick up more Oceanic coverage, while it would certainly be a good thing, it would probably end up only flattening our the scoring differential a bit without having a huge impact on the overall score. In T2 anyways.

lettucemode.3789:

I don’t think that’s correct. There aren’t any skill points in the puzzles, nor vistas, and I’m pretty sure there aren’t any points of interest, though I’m not sure about that. I know there aren’t any waypoints.

Can anyone else confirm one way or the other? I’m at work, but maybe someone could post a link to the wiki, get a map of the W3 zones.

You are correct. There are no map exploration points at all in any of the jumping puzzles.

@ Preech and maybe others that are wondering about score flow this week.

BG’s weakest time period against most competition is after our EU guys go to bed and before our PST time zone contingent comes online. In other words, BG is pretty short handed during a good chunk of the prime time East coast time zone. Last night SoR capitalized on this with a great turnout and ran a 400+ PPT for awhile, getting within a few hundred points of the lead.

But then your EST guys went to bed. I logged on at about 9pm PST, and went to bed around 12:30 PST. This is a strong time zone for BG, and about an hour before I went to bed, BG hit about 420 PPT. Then IoJ’s Oceanics logged in and started to eat into that, before URGE and our Oceanics got online.

This is it man. No magic. No trickery. SOR has a very strong NA crew that appears to be heavily weighted to the EST time zone. However you are out covered over night, which allows BG to gain ground again.

Drago.1634:

Could not have said it better.

I agree. But I think Anet knows this, thus the WvW content patch and new rewards they’ve hinted at. Once this patch is in, I predict A LOT of players will come back to WvW, at least to check it out. If the changes are really good we should see WvW participation increase and hopefully stabilize.

It’s kind of funny. It wasn’t all that long ago that some JQ guilds moved to SoR due to the queues (just using this as one example), and now servers that have sort of "been there done that yawn " are struggling for consistent coverage.

zastari.1730:

I’ve been hopping around servers to get a feel for how each bracket plays (Mag last week, Ferguson’s Crossing this week). I’m looking to check out a T2 server next week, which one needs euro primetime coverage the most, and has good commanders that are representative of the server playstyle during this window?

Blackgate is the only T2 server that has any EU coverage to speak of. IoJ may have a little still, but I don’t think SoR has any at all. The Blackgate EU slot is usually run by Smokee of [HB] and the DEYS Alliance, who is an EU Alliance. So if you’re looking for more people playing during that time period, BG would be it. On the flip side, IoJ and SoR could use more help in that slot. Depends on what you’re looking for I guess.