Guild Wars 2

How can you really report someone? You don’t know their name. Try and take a screenshot, but what is that going to do when the exploit involves a thief?

The dumbest tactic right now in WvW zergs is for everyone to stack on each other so AOE can’t damage the same 5 people. With AOE reduced, I don’t see why that would happen more. I really don’t want WvW to be reduced to stack A attack stack B.

Be funny if you could use that item to dress up like them and run to the keep. When someone attacks you, your group uncovers and ganks them.

Eventually servers will get smaller. Most people want to log into WvW and find instant even battles. When that doesn’t happen, they stop playing. Look at SoR or BG for example. SoR was getting hammered last week by BG. They barely could fill 1 Borderland. This week during primetime, there are queues. It isn’t server transfer, it is because people just don’t play when it isn’t fun. This week it is BGs turn. They were full last week and now there pop is down. It isn’t server transfer, it is people do other things.

Now fast forward a couple of months from now. You were on a great WvW server that had a lot of fun doing your thing. People got bored and quit for whatever reason. It just isn’t the same as it use to be. Now when you play you always have out-manned buffs. Are you going to wait till you fall to the bottom tier? Are you going to be happy there when a few months ago, you were fighting 100 vs 100 vs 100 at any time of the day. Now at the bottom tier it is 10 vs 10 vs 20 during primetime? Doubtful.

Will people pay to transfer? Some will, but I believe most will just quit the game and not look back. That will make the problem even worse.

Yeah, it sucks when a guild transfer to another server, but overall the game doesn’t lose. When that same guild just quits the game all together, the game suffers.

I think if you re-acquire target and you could see if you hit them while stealthed, thieves in their current state would be balanced. I really don’t see why I wouldn’t know if I was hitting something in the dark.

Well, if you were behind it, it makes sense it gave you the same damage as it did to the ballista. That would be a coding error. I guess I now know not to stand behind a seige Also, I bet the width of the area affected is larger than the graphic of the bolt. That is why it hit the the siege next to you.

You got to remember a couple of things. First of all, DAOC wasn’t all that. You are remembering mostly the good because it was probably your first MMO and you had tons of fun because you didn’t know anything else. If DAOC got released now days, it would have flopped with all the balance issues, CC issues it had a release, xp loss for dying, and repair costs it had at release. I mean it had 1 minute 45 second mezz and 26 second stuns that could be chained. You imagine that now days? No way anyone would put of with that. I think they eventually added a purge skills but if the timer was up, you were screwed. It came down to who could get off their mez first.

Like others have said, you need to learn WvW more. What if it was easy when you first started playing? You wouldn’t be playing it a week from now. Also consider all the servers and match-ups aren’t the same. You might be in one where the enemy is blowing everyone away and your side isn’t even playing WvW. I would try to find an even match tier. When you have 3 evenly matched servers fighting each other, it is fun as heck.

I never seen damage that high. Without all the information, I won’t say it was a hack.

Most likely some sort of weird bug that does the same damage it did to the ballista to everything in the AOE area. If you done programming, you know about If then statements.

I think there is a shot that does double or triple damage to other siege weapons with a ballista. I forget which number it is and if it is double or triple damage. Most likely the if/then statement calculates the damage by checking what the ballista hit. If it was another siege weapon it does double or triple damage like it is suppose to. Then for some reason, it applied the same damage to the AOE instead of doing a check to see if the other targets in the AOE area were siege or players.

Maybe it does do that but in order to reduce server lag they did a short-cut. Rather than check everything in the area, it only checks one other target. You should have been the next closest target and it should have calculated the damage for you. However, you said there was an arrow cart near you. It might be possible it detected the arrow cart as the next target. Then it doesn’t do another check because the programmers felt that would slow down the server to have to check everybody and everything in the same AOE area. Just think how slow combat would get if the server checked 100 vs 100 persons all stacked up. So instead, the programmers did a short cut and said it will do two checks and apply the lowest damage to the remaining targets.

I guess what they would need to do to fix it is figure out how many siege weapons can be in the same area and then that number of checks plus one to make sure it gets a human player.

Also, you might have had a weird angle that caused your shot to hit the cliff while his hit the cliff but was close enough to cause damage. I think the number 2 shot on ballista will hit for damage when you don’t have LOS while number 1 or 3 won’t.

That is my best guess.

From what I heard, the person using the seige equipment’s stats affect how much damage it does. I typically hit for around 7K with a defensive warrior on a regular ballista. So I guess it would be entirely possible a glass cannon build on superior to hit for that much especially against a glass cannon with frenzy up.

Rifle is better for slow and steady damage while keeping them at range or large scale where people won’t see you kneel. If you want quick, neither range weapon is really good, which is the way it should be. Use the rifle to slow them down so you can switch to melee or use it to keep a melee guy off you while you damage him. These people complaining rifle sucks are nuts, if rifle did Greatsword type damage, the balance in this game would be pretty wack.

A lot of small scale battles involve position and striking when the opportunity is right. You never know when or where more people will show. In order to be successful, you to be able to out-run people when those things happen. With stealth and traits, a thief as no problem for the most part.

However, a warrior will if he does not spec right. He could have the best and baddest spec but if he can’t get away from eight people when you only have two, he is going to die a lot. He will probably get frustrated and decide the class sucks.

Sword/warhorn and great-sword is probably the fast combo in the game. With signet of rage, he will have 100% swiftness and 3 gap closers (4 with bull-charge). That is a lot of distance. He can pop in and out of combat in a matter of seconds.

Sword/warhorn with rifle is also good. Not as fast or does it have the damage burst, but it has range. Combined with leg specialist, he can run down people and immobilize them in order for you to get into melee range. The range is good for fighting some classes. D/D elementalist, greatsword warriors, mezmers, and other thieves are far easier to deal with when you have a rifle and leg specialist.

Or he could try a banner to get the swiftness a gap closer. It would allow him to use other weapons besides sword/warhorn but it isn’t as good, especially if more people show.

Once you have a combo put together, focus on your teamwork. Start off ganking just solo people. Then move to a group of 2-3. Figure out what combo’s of classes are easy for you, and which aren’t so easy. The ones that aren’t, go ahead and run from till you get better. Never be afraid to run. Until you get better and know your limits, look for every excuse to run. You burnt all your cool-downs, you know the enemy has all theirs and they just used an elite that gives them an advantage. Re-position and buy some time. It actually messes with the enemy. They will burn cool-downs and skills they could of used for escaping. I do it all the time fighting a thief. Run and make them burn some initiative, then turn around pop flurry and endure pain and watch as they melt.

I wouldn’t be so quick to claim realm ranks would save WvW. Most people are going to find the fastest way to level realm ranks. Period. Let’s face it, integrity in MMO’s is declining at an accelerated rate since the days of DAOC.

Realm ranks could totally destroy WvW as we know it if extreme care isn’t taken to find the right system.

For example, if you use damage as your gauge. People are just going to do more glass cannon builds than they are now. There would be no support characters. They will probably stop taking objectives. Some guilds would organize trading sessions. That is just a few I can think off, I am sure there are more.

It is easier to get kills in a zerg vs zerg fight.

The commander icon should be re-done. Giving it for gold, kills, or any other thing that can be earned in-game won’t solve anything. It needs to require you at least have people following you for you to be a commander. Base it off a warband or raid type grouping system. You have a certain number of players in your war-band, you have the option of turning on your icon to allow others to see you. Of course if you are in the war-band, there is no group requirement, you will always see the leader’s icon. Make it a red color or something.

Eventually you could even take it a set further and allow those people that have been successful leaders to have a special icon, title, and some other rewards. Special commander armor skins would be cool or some mini-pet that doesn’t do any damage but looks like a flag barrier carrier their guild banner. When you see that icon or commander on the battle-field, you actually know he earned it because people followed him. I would also give those that earn titles access to cheaper siege weapons. Maybe even different styles.

Being a real commander in WvW is a pain in the butt. I think those that do it right and earn the respect of their server should be rewarded.

With server hopping, it should be easy to organize a duel.

I like Karma.

You got to be careful when joining a guild. MMO players are nerds that when given a little power will turn into nerd hulks. I think it is the worse boss in any MMO.

Hackers don’t use the ALT F4 anyways. They use the heck where you can’t finish them off. Come on ANET, you are 4 months behind the current hacks.

Right now thieves have great mobility, high burst dps, and great survivability with stealth. When it is all combined together it is even worse. Your dps lets you take out most targets, if not you just stealth and run away.

If Anet wants them to be mobile and have stealth. Their dps needs to be lowered. I would even give them more stealth if their dps were lowered.

If Anet wants them to keep high dps, they either need to reduce the stealth, mobility or a little of both.

Sounds like they want them to be fast and hard to kill. I got no problem with that but having the highest dps also is to much. I just do not understand how every MMO company that has ever had stealth has made the same exact mistakes with the class.

I just don’t get it. WvW was one of the unique features of GW2. It hasn’t been done since DAOC and tons of people were excited about it. After release, it gets totally ignored. It was your bread and butter. I do not understand why they focus on PVE…if we cared about that, we would play WoW. sPvP is the same thing. I just cannot understand why MMO companies over the last 10 years self-destruct. Is there something in the kool-aid you drink?

I am surprised I haven’t seen many multi-boxing in GW2. WoW had a bunch and that had a $15 dollar a month subscription. Think I remember a few in Warhammer also. In a zerg vs zerg battle, 5 people hitting the exact same targets at the exact same time would be pretty powerful.

It is pretty disappointing that WvW is dying. It is so much fun when there are people to do it.

Armor and weapons are very cheap. You can get upgrades from 1-70 for about 3 silver a piece. I usually upgrade about every 5 levels because it is so cheap. I focus purely on defensive stats. Lets face it, you aren’t going to kill a level 80 anyways. Going offense is just gonna make you die faster. Defense makes a huge difference. I was playing an elementalist and catapults were almost one-shotting me. I almost quit playing the class because of how squishy they were. It is one of the hardest newbie classes to play. After I bought the defense gear, it became a lot more manageable to WvW.

If you are going to roam in a small group or by yourself you need to make sure you have a couple of things. 100% swiftness is a must. Some sort of gap closer for running away or chasing (leap, bullcharge), and then some common sense. Zergs run from objective to objective. If you are roaming around, don’t take the main path. Stay off to the side, use terrain to observe movements, get behind the zerg. Once you are in the rear, ganking is plentiful.

Sadly, if this game does turn into gear grinding, I will not play.

Sounds like you might have the coverage now to beat SBI. SBI really doesn’t have that big of a population. Queues are 30 minutes at most in prime-time. Out-man buffs are common during the day. If you can take advantage of that time period, you should do well.

Little problems can add up over time and you can lose customers as a result. This problem is an easy fix and should be address. Harder to fix stuff like bugs should be the little problems, not poor management decisions.

The extra toughness plus the health per second you get from a free heal far out-weights any hit points you would gain, especially when combined with healing signet. You pretty much do not need to worry about clicking on a heal. You can focus on other things, like line-of-sight, position, and watching the enemies animations for special attacks. When you do a condition rifle build, you don’t even need to worry about pressing any other keys but auto-attack and knock-back. Its great when you are sick of playing a button mashing D/D elementalist.

Its because you are on BG. If you were on JQ, it would feel like SBI and BG were ganging. These maps at really small and there really aren’t that many objectives. It is always going to seem like it 1 vs 2 unless you are fighting a server like ET that lost a ton of people.

I always thought MMO meant you played with and against a ton of other people. Somehow it morphed into a few people trying to kill a computer boss. Glad GW2 came about. Just wish WvW was even bigger.

Part of the master plan, get BG to win so they can have a 4th week of the same match-up…..mmuuuhaahhahaha

T1 population is actually down overall. I think fighting the same server has a lot to do with it. SBI routinely has an out-manned buff during the day. They are just good at holding what they got till population increases.

Yeah, but those bleeds last 9 seconds with an easy to get trait. That is pretty huge. The bleeding rifle is a different style of play. It is slow, but very effective. I rather they not change it. Direct damage glass cannon builds are a dime a dozen.

That is pretty funny. Got to try that.

I use it at keep and tower defense. I will pop out and unload all my AOEs. Since I am only level 25, I die in 2 hits. I vapor into my gate and heal up to repeat.

Transfer aren’t as kittenome of you think. Tier I servers are full for the most part all the time. You can’t transfer then. The only time I saw them high were on Halloween. By then the match was pretty much decided.

-1 for removing it. I have seen smaller groups take out larger forces simply because they were better at reviving their side than the other was.

It would make thieves even more power than they already are. A group of 4-5 thieves could perma-stealth and wipe out any entire army of 100 people because they would never have to risk deathblowing someone. They just all attack the same person, that person dies, repeat on the next.

With badges, they don’t cost a dime.

Something I do not see a lot of people doing in WvW. If you do not die a lot because you have a tanky build, you can get a cheap alternate weapon, put a sigil that builds power or condition damage on it, and go kill wolves. Once you get to 25 charges, switch to your main. This allows me the freedom to run a different sigil on my main weapon.

I pretty much get an extra 250 condition damage that way. Since I do not die much, it isn’t that bad to get the 25 charges. I have to do it only a few times a night which I don’t mind. The junk I get from mobs gives me some extra silver. Note: you can only have charges for one stat. I already tried to get power, condition, and healing

Looks like I need to work on my cooking also. Some of those look pretty good. Sure beats the +20 viltality bread I been using.

P.S. I decided to roll an elementalist. It is fun flying around but trying to get past the lower levels is rough. Nothing like being downed by a catapult in one shot. It is starting to get better though as I get my water traits.

Has to be on a server with an even match up. You aren’t going to get much if your side is being camped at spawn.

I can say Friday SoR just played better. Both sides had even numbers and queues were filled. Most of the SoR guilds are old DAOC and Warhammer ones that know how to maximize large scale combat. They been doing it for 10+ years. They have a good mix of classes combined with knowing how to use mez portals, AOE blasting, stunning, flanking, etc. They are very fast at moving as a large group in a tight formation. If you want to see how large scale combat is suppose to be, watch how fast some of their groups form-up and move out. That is 90% of the battle right there.

We deserved to lose this week, we got out-played. No big deal. The thing I do like about TC though, is a lot of people don’t quit, they learn, and keep fighting. If this beat down happened on some other servers, WvW would be a ghost town across all the maps. The core TC WvWers seems to like to be the under-dog. Nothing funner than defending a tower from wave after wave of enemies. Who cares about the score when you are killing people. Another positive, I see the commanders and individual players are learning from SoR. I am starting to see them employ similar large scale tactics. People are getting better at forming up on the commander icon for quick strikes. We still got some learning to do and could be faster, but I think we will get there as people grow. I really like the core server community and think it has a lot of potential.

I can’t remember all that stuff. Click it for the win.

I was that pink norn warrior in your video that kept dodging and knocking you back. To be honest, I really had no idea what you were doing. I just knew if you got close to me, I should dodge

Looks like D/D elementalist are a perfect counter to my condition rifle build. I can’t do enough direct damage to really hurt you and you have to much condition removal. Going to try changing my build a little to get some more direct damage. I can pull off 20% more if I give up spiked armor. I just love spiked armor though.

That night was probably one of the funnest pvp nights of the week. I like fighting people that are better than me, it forces me to get better. That night I fought you, your friend and some thief that were all definitively more skilled when you consider I had a 3 orb advantage.

The crappy thing is, TC and ET will probably be paired in the same tier next week as the both drop. Most likely the third server will be a smaller one and it will be a two way fight between TC and the smaller server. In other words, another boring week.

You already bought the game so it is free. Free is worth it to me.

Every other class on Black Gate is a thief. That brings a lot of hate. When they stealth hack on the last day of fighting, that brings more.

It is the game Anet created. They said they will not do anything about nightcapping so guilds that could not find people to join their server are moving to ones that have strong populations during the times they do not play. Eventually those server will move up the ladder and they will fight the other servers that have 24/7 coverage.

Plus they just want to kick the crap out of the french. Why should the Germans be the only ones that can do that?

Just for that, I might transfer to SBI.

I don’t mind that it happens, but when nightcappers get the same amount of points for beating on an undefended door as 50 people do for fighting tooth and nail against 50 other people, it doesn’t make sense.

People don’t switch servers as much as they just don’t play when there is a bad match-up. The root of the problem is server populations and how the differences at certain times effect the match-up. One side is able to gain a score advantage and significant increase in power with orbs and upgrades based solely on the fact that they have players on at a certain time of the day. If you used queue’s as a measure of whether people like this structure or not, you see a majority of the people do not like it when it happens to them.

Until they balance it toward a majority of the playerbase rather than the minority, this problem will always exist. People just aren’t going to play if it isn’t fair. It happens in every MMO. In other MMOs, it is gear and levels. This one is server population.

It is ignorant to say WvW is not pvp. I could say the same thing about Tpvp. All it is a small controlled environment. It is basically a football game. The goal isn’t to kill the other side, it is to score more points. You can do that by controlling 2 out 3 objectives.

At least WvW, you have randomness and have to be prepared for anything. I find that more of a challenge. I have done both. In my mind, which you will never change, WvW is pvp and tpvp is just a rehash of the same old trash that other MMOs called pvp.

Thieves go down like wet paper sacks. Spiked armor, endure pain, and flurry really mess them up. Condition thieves seem to damage me a little more than the direct damage ones, but it is like my damage. It takes a few seconds. I got 30K hp’s with 3 condition removals, they have 14K and barely any condition removal.

Elementalist aren’t a problem. I got beat by one in beta, but that is the last time. I would almost say they are easier than thieves, but thieves are just so squishy and there aren’t enough elementalist to get a good sample.

Mesmer can be annoying but I beat them routinely. Most I just need to kite clones and phantoms while hitting them from range. A good one takes a little more. You bleed and damage till you are at 50%, leap out of combat, heal up, re-engage. You see in 9 seconds, you can heal full out of combat, they are stuck in combat because of bleeds and cannot. There was one that was very annoying, he would distract a lot, but his damage wasn’t enough to kill me. He came close, but again a warrior has superior mobility so I was able to leap and bullcharge out of combat to heal up. It ended in a tie. I do not think solo I would have killed him because he was so defensive, but he had no chance of killing me. Eventually my side came and he didn’t have the speed to run. We wiped him.

Defensive guardians don’t have the range to compete. I got way to much passive heals. I will eventually get him down with direct damage and bleeds or it will end because others showed up or he ditched. I won’t get below 95% against one and for the most part, I usually do eventually get them. Offensive ones aren’t usually a problem. I fought a decent offensive one last night, got me to 60% in a few seconds. I kinda wasn’t expecting it because most guardians do suck. I leaped away, healed up and started over. I was in the process of beating him. I was at 90% and he was below 40% with tons of bleeds ticking. Some people on my side showed up. He got mad and disconnected. That made me giggle. What a chump.

A defensive condition engineer is trouble for my build. I fought one a few weeks ago. It was hard to get damage because of the confusion and reflect from range. He seemed to have more removal than I did. At close range he would have destroyed me because of his elite so I didn’t try. I ended up kiting him all around the map and tried different things. I really wanted to figure something out. Nothing was really working at the time. Eventually some guardian or warrior on his side showed up when I was on leap and bull-charge cool-downs. They ended up whipping me. That was one engineer out of the hundreds that play in WvW. I think I will take that any day of the week. In hind-sight, I know just to avoid that match-up or position myself to where I have an escape route. I get kitteny sometimes because I truly believe warriors are kinda OP.

So what I am trying to say, I usually kill people in 1 vs 1 in WvW or it ends with one of us having to disengage. Other class builds lack either mobility, offense, or defense to take me down. Yeah, you may have tons of dps, but you have no defense. I just need to play it slow. When people complain that warriors suck, I have to disagree. Maybe it doesn’t work for in a mini-game, but it works in an open pvp environment where you aren’t limited on time and objectives. You can disengage and re-engage at will. By now, most people are level 80 with exotics. After 6700+ fights, I think I had some equal match-ups vs every class. I have yet to say to myself, “ kitten my class sucks and that guy just WTF owned me.” It is usually the opposite, “How did that crappy rifle sword warrior beat me so easily?”