Guild Wars 2

BUTTERBLUME.3217:

If you have the DPS you can get her in 2 rotations after the 4-1 easily.

People have to change up their builds a little bit if it is not working, why is that such a big deal?

Because to have the DPS “changing up your build a little bit” is not going to work, you need 5 people all in full glass cannon spec with full glass cannon gear, preferably of the right classes too. And even then you still need lucky spark runs.

Not to mention that the 4+1 is likely a bug and not intended, and shouldn’t be required to kill the boss.

Well tried today again for 3 hours. Different group, this time apart from me everyone else had already killed her previously. Composition was guardian (me), warrior, 2 mesmers, necro. I respecced to max sustained dps, would have even used berserker armor except I don’t have it.

The only significant difference was that today the 4+1 trick worked. Using it, during our best try we brought her to approx. 20-25%. In the end I offered to be replaced for someone with higher dps, an elementalist came, they made a few tries, brought her to 20% then gave up.

Sorry but this fight is broken, there is no way in hell it is supposed to work like this. Is it completely and utterly impossible? No, with me having a berserker set available and two more lucky spark runs on our best try we’d have done it. But the chance of pulling it off even with optimized party composition is abysmal, essentially you need to have an absurd amount of dumb luck with the sparks behaving correctly for at least 5-6 times in a row and that’s using the 4+1 trick.

This has to be fixed.

Shuguard.7125:

But i would say whoever she aggro’s to cannot be a runner, so a back-up runner might be needed. Personally it is easier if you have someone as a designated cleanser(tear thrower) on voice communication to un-stun you. I love the difficulty, but it’s a little more broken than difficult.

Oh trust me we tried that too. You can try lots and lots of things in 3 hours… we had 2 dedicated ranged dpsers as runners, while the other 3 were on her at all times, me tanking her, another dedicated unstunner and a third in melee range. Still no cigar. Oh well…

Shuguard.7125:

Note this isn’t really a dps race fight it’s just a very difficult mechanic fight, you can do damage while she is invisible and possibly poison and slow the healing, but it all comes down to the runners.

You can’t anymore, she goes invulnerable now whenever she’s stealthing. In fact all the “invulnerable” notices popping up are your clue that she’s about to disappear.

Anyway we tried this one too, almost exactly how you describe it (a million tears stacked up on the left wall, 2 designated runners) but it led us nowhere. Most of the time I would be stunned (as the one on which she fixated her aggro I was nearly perma stunned, and btw this part of the fight is absurdly annoying, whoever the hell thought that stunning players continuously and at extremely brief intervals is good design should be fired, plenty of times I would get unstunned by someone else only to get stunned again a fraction of a second later) and at least one of the sparks would aggro me. It’s easy on paper but in practice all you need is a missed unstun ONCE and she’s back to 90%.

haviz.1340:

KimRasmussen.4128:

But i still think alot of the sucess was the spark running and tear throwing

You won’t convience people that running sparks is reliable way to get it done. They got into’s their heads that you have to do 4-1 tactic and then dps as fast as possible to kill her in one sweep. And for that you need specific party composition. Yes, you need pretty good dps to kill her (so 5 bunkers will probably have some issues) but you don’t have to try the route that most pugs do and fail.

Sorry but it’s not a matter of having 5 bunkers. My group yesterday was pretty decent (for 3 out of 5 of us it was the first time in Arah 4, for me personally the first time ever in Arah at all, despite that we managed to kill Giganticus Lupicus, that alone tells you the group wasn’t bad); my guardian was the only “tanky” build and it’s not even a full tank build (I use Cof GS with sigil of accuracy and berserker accessories, at least those I managed to get so far, right now I’m sitting at 30% crit chance) and despite that, we never even stood a chance.
Doing the spark quickly and correctly is certainly fundamental but if you don’t have EXTREME amounts of dps it’s not going to help you, especially with the sparks’ penchant for sitting half a millimeter away from their circle and not slotting in; sooner or later you’re bound to have a cycle in which you lose 3-5 more seconds as one of them doesn’t slot it and at that point you either have the dps to overcome the regen or you’re back to square one.

For me personally, Giganticus Lupicus was annoying in phase 2 but at least you could see how to kill him and in the end we managed to do so; this fight we were nowhere near beating it for 3 hours straight with no progress possible at all, despite reading this thread, the tactic on the wiki and on reddit, and checking the youtube videos.
In hindsight the only possibility was changing party composition and this situation shouldn’t ever arise unless you go in with 5 bunker guardians or something equally ridiculous. As far as I’m concerned, it’s clearly overtuned.

Just spent 6 or 7 hours (lost track of time, cannot remember anymore…) on Arah path 4. Last 3 hours or so on Dwayna, for our group it was utterly and completely impossible to ever bring her below 50%. Maybe once or twice we managed 45%, not sure.

Tried the 4+1 sparks, didn’t work, whenever she regens to full health all sparks disappear. Tried everything suggested here (apart from specific classes/builds obviously, since those weren’t available). Essentially you need extreme amounts of dps AND doing the sparks consistently in under 7-8 seconds or she will outheal whatever damage you’re doing. I don’t think it’s currently doable except by bringing a party specifically specced for it.

Wolbryne.4037:

I was there, reading chat and I was talking to kaargoth both in whispers and on TS when you got booted so don’t try to lie to me buddy
The people telling you to stop whining etc didn’t do it because they wanted to belittle you or anything like that. they did so to get you to stfu since you were cluttering up the guild chat with your non stop crying.
And when you told Perky to F off, you got asked to de-guild or be kicked.
Saying that you left and didn’t get kicked is only true in the sense that you clicked the button yourself.

Nope, I was asked to shut up or leave the guild. Which I promptly did, as I regard the possibility to speak my mind a bit more important than any guild…
Regardless, I don’t see how this detail changes things, in fact you just essentially confirmed everything I said. Thanks, I guess.

Wolbryne.4037:

magnus you didn’t get kicked because you critizised the game or anet. you got kicked because you told another member that he should F off in guild chat. it was totally uncalled for and we don’t want that type of crap in /g

First of all, I wasn’t kicked, I left. Second, that was after said member (and a couple others, to be sure) tried to belittle me six or seven times (“stop whining”, “stop crying”, “lol idiots” etc.) in guild chat while I was having a perfectly fine discussion with someone else. I’m a patient guy, that’s why I let the first several times go. But you can’t expect to keep provoking me forever and not get the reply you so richly deserve, sooner or later.
Funny thing is, Kargoth felt it was perfectly fine for the others to keep having pot shots at me (and the other guys who were agreeing with me) but as soon as I dared reply he came down on me like a ton of bricks. Either he was playing favorites, or he simply had an agenda. Considering he kept behaving that same way on forums, deleting posts which were… let’s say “too critic” of Arenanet and the game, it isn’t really hard to guess which option is the correct one. I’m sorry but if you can’t see that in IRON you’re expected to toe the “Arenanet can do no wrong” line (or you were anyway, can’t speak for how it is now) then there isn’t much else to discuss.

Anyway, I doubt this is of interest to whoever is reading the thread so I won’t keep discussing this. In fact I probably shouldn’t have brought it up in the first place, but whatever… I just couldn’t keep myself to set the record straight.

Wrex.6798:

Considering how much we in IRON hate PVE and the geargrind I have no idea what you are talking about, probablt a misunderstanding, or something similar. If you had stayed more than a few days you’d have a different opinion i’m sure since free thinking is at the top of every other members list.

//Wrex

Nice, now go tell that to Kargoth, he even perma-banned me from your forums because I dared write a goodbye post (in which I said absolutely nothing bad about anyone and just wished good luck to everyone in the guild, btw). And he (or some other officer) also deleted a few negative posts about that very same topic (ascended crap) on another thread btw.

Oh and you were online that day too, during that episode. Along with a few other officers.

Regardless, it’s not really important. I just got peeved at that sentence about free thinking when my experience has been diametrically opposite. I still wish you all the best but I repeat my warning, stop thinking exclusively about Arenanet and GW2 and start thinking about your community if you want it to survive.

Wrex.6798:

We do allow free thinking

Ok, I don’t really care about the whole discussion but on this point I really have to speak.

I was in IRON for a few days, tried to contribute to my best during that brief period, then during a discussion in guild chat I dared to express strong criticism of the game and of ArenaNet (specifically related to the introduction of the ridiculous PvE gear grindmill which obviously also impacts WvW) and got immediately offered the option of either shutting up or leaving the guild. Wasn’t really a hard choice for me. So, no, sorry, allowing free thinking to its members is most certainly not one of IRON’s strong points.

A small tip from me: if you want to build a strong community, make sure it survives the eventual death of whatever game it’s born on. Behaving like the official Arenanet’s cheerleaders is not going to do you any favors in the long run.

NetherDiver.6079:

Why would they do that though? Just to make us feel like the game is fuller than it is? Would a large amount of players suddenly stop playing if they see that a server’s at Medium capacity than Full? Seems like a stretch.

Might seem like it but as I said, there’s already a known example out there, so taking those displays at face value might be… not the wisest of choices.
Also, do not underestimate the power of word of mouth: if the “fact” that a MMO is dying spreads around, more often than not it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. The perceived value of a MMO experience, for most of its users, is directly proportional to the number of other people participating in it, so it’s in a company best interest to make the game appear as populated as possible. No one likes playing in ghost towns, otherwise we’d all be playing single player RPG/FPS which can afford to have (on average) much better stories.

NetherDiver.6079:

MagnusLL.8473:

I’d just like to point out that the server status display is under Arenanet’s control.

Anyone remembers what happened to AoC server status display?

How do you know that?

How do I know what? If you’re talking about Arenanet controlling it, well duh… it’s their code which shows server status so they can change it whenever and however they want.

If you’re talking about AoC: almost immediately after launch the server display was altered to permanently show “medium load” on all their servers, which is still true to this day. You don’t need to believe me, just check for yourself and/or ask anyone who ever played the game.

I’d just like to point out that the server status display is under Arenanet’s control.

Anyone remembers what happened to AoC server status display?

I have to give it to them, they prepared the PR exercise slightly better than I expected. Then again, I hadn’t high expectations to begin with.

Oh well. I got 2 and a half months out of it so I guess I can say I did get some value out of my money.

Akacia.1583:

Honestly everyone who bought this game is because they read somewhere they were promised no grind? gear or not the entire game is a grind in one way or another it’s just a different type of grind which I personally could care less what it is I am grinding as long as it is enjoyable type of grind.

not a chance on better than blizzard but better is different for everyone and why I asked what people like simply because I am just curious where people are coming from is all

Can’t speak for everyone, however I can tell you why this patch killed the game for me.

GW2 is not the only MMO I’m playing. I’m currently guild and raid leader in another MMO (not WoW) which does the whole “grind PvE dungeons for better gear stats” miles better than GW2.

After over 4 years of that I’m pretty burned out on the whole “grind stuff for +X” thing so I came here looking for a MMO with a mass PvP subsystem promising an experience where the smartest player would win as opposed to:

- the player with better twitch skills (any FPS)
- the player bringing more friends (any zerg-based PvP system)

As it turned out, the WvW system is rather poor. It has the potential to be extremely good but unfortunately there are plenty of major structural design flaws which make it fall very short of that potential.

This was already a pretty big bummer, but I started to take a “low-intensity”, relaxed “wait and see” approach to the whole thing. After all, not paying any sub and not being in any danger of becoming outclassed, I could simply afford to play a few hours of WvW here, a couple dungeons there, and wait the (likely very long) time needed to fix this mess praying that sooner or later they would manage to actually fix it.

After the latest patch, I’d need to play a high intensity, mindnumbingly boring PvE dungeon grind just to keep one of my toon up to date on the off chance that several months (or years) down the line they can actually fix WvW.

…yeah.

So to the OP, a simple question for you.

With their brilliant move, Arenanet has alienated the customer segment who bought the game because they were promised a grindless MMO. Now they find themselves with an MMO which is the usual WoW-clone, vertical progression-based gear treadmill.

Do you honestly think Arenanet can do WoW better than Blizzard?

I would have WvWed, if I could have been bothered to grind in the first place :P

My dream MMO is one which lets me instantly create any number of max-level, max gear toons at the click of a button so I can actually focus on the fun part of the experience.

Razarei.2809:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/A-message-from-our-Studio-Design-Director-Chris-Whiteside

Regarding the actual items:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Endless_Quiver
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Endless_Quiver_%28Infused%29

I think it says everything which needs to be said about both the power of these items and the grind necessary to get them, and this is without even taking into account infusions (both those currently available and the new levels which will no doubt soon be released).

About the news item you linked:

http://venturebeat.com/2012/05/21/guild-wars-2-interview-monetization/#s:guildwars2-16

In particular:

O’Brien: Before even answering this question, I want to point out that in Guild Wars 2, being competitive isn’t all about having the best gear. It’s not like you’re going to go into world-versus-world and get smoked because someone else has a godly weapon that you can’t hope to acquire. We’ve always been against that kind of thing.

Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.

Given the 180 change in what was supposed to be a basic tenet of GW2 design, anything they say now has to automatically be assumed to be a barefaced lie to minimize PR damage.

Cresll.2406:

Another one for our personal blacklist, EA, Funcom, NCsoft, Mythic/Bioware.

Lol, this looks exactly like my personal “never again” list. Except I also have anything in which The Perfect World is even remotely involved on that list too. And yes, ArenaNet is now the newest entry.

Sucks to be us, eh?

Razarei.2809:

What’s stopping you from getting the gear? PvE players will get it for PvE and WvW, WvW players will have to do the same. I get what you’re saying, but all I’m reading is laziness and no will to explore outside of WvW.

I find it extremely boring having to redo the same dungeon over and over and over, dozens of times, to fetch some trinket which I need to stay on equal footing with other players, and which will become useless a few months down the line anyway when the next tier surfaces, restarting the vicious cycle. It’s completely possible to actually end up having to spend more time “getting competitive” than the time you’re spending having fun once you’ve reached the max level.

GW2 was explicitly sold as a game which did away with this concept, and now they have introduced it back and associated to a massive grind to boot. It simply does not interest me, as if I wanted a gear grind, there are lots and lots of better options on the
market, starting from WoW whose developers have greatly refined this concept in the several years they have been doing it. If you like the pve grind good for you, but it shouldn’t really be difficult to understand why people who can’t be bothered are rather annoyed at this blatant u-turn which is diametrically opposite to everything arenanet kept saying up until release.

Razarei.2809:

How ascended gear creates a problem for you guys as well is beyond me. The sole purpose of that gear is for agony resistance which is a condition only available in upcoming dungeons

Unfortunately this is false.
First, ascended gear has inbuilt base statistics which are already higher than exotics + slotted gems, so they are already best in class without infusions.
Second, infusions have already surfaced which do not only have agony resistance but also give a bonus to another stat. And they are only blue level infusions.

It doesn’t really take a prophet to foresee what happens after you get masterwork, rare, exotic, and ascended-level infusions to be slotted into your ascended level armor and weapon slots.
The end result is that pve gear grinders will have a massive combat advantage.

The bottom line is that while you cannot draw a direct correlation between forum complaints and what the majority of your current game population thinks, things like a 125k views thread still represent a significant indication which would be totally foolish to ignore.

I’d say they ought to have people qualified to do serious market analysis and should ask them to sift through the data… if only I didn’t believe that they actually do not have them and/or whoever they have is not able to do it properly.

This exact same “observation”, in all its infinite variations, was put forth by a lot (A LOT) of people on SW:ToR forums, less than a year ago.

I guess we all know how that turned out.

Charmide.4891:

Get some optimism in there.

You are way better than anyone if you know how Anet will maintain their game when we are so close to its release.

So far, I’m disappointed in how much W3 content they added/patched, and I’m not the only one, but I’m willing to wait a little more to see what they will do when they decide to focus on it.

Uh-uh.
As I said, this patch had to be in production from before release – you cannot create a new area and a new dungeon type + new itemization from scratch in 3 months. So they knew they were selling a lie.

Also:
The new dungeon is abbreviated as “FOTM”.
The NPC nearby is called “Blingg”.
One of the new jumping puzzles is called “Under New Management”.

Connect the dots

Don’t sweat it too much, WvW is dead along the rest of the game. It already had plenty of critical flaws (culling, biggest zerg with biggest time coverage wins etc.) but now that they’ve gone and obliterated the only really good thing they had going for them (MMO with no grind) it’s over for good.

This direction was already planned before launch; you can’t put out such an expansion in the space of 3 months.
GW2 is a WoW-like PVE gear threadmill, nothing interesting to see anymore, move along. You will wait a LOOOONG time if you’re looking for WvW fixes.

DegoLocc.5976:

Once again, I’m not even 80 yet, I’m 73 and been playing since launch, and that’s just how I feel.

All well and good, but you’re forgetting two things:

A) gear threadmill MMOs are dime-a-dozen. It never helps them to not fail whenever they’re bad. It’s not so surprising for people to ask for at least ONE who doesn’t devolve into the same old crap.
B) GW2 was explicitly sold as such a “departure” MMO, and not 3 months after launch you get a complete 180 u-turn. Although nowadays this is pretty much standard mmo developer company behavior, you really can’t fault people for being pissed off.

Brooke.9741:

So… The only way to beat Blacktide now, is for others servers to match your coverage by attracting guilds to combat you, in time this may happen but atm seems no wants to.

It will never happen unless some NA/Oceanic/Asian guilds come to the EU bracket. The only significant offpeak force playing on this side right now is Russians, and 90% of them are on Blacktide already so there’s simply no pool from which to recruit players to counter them.

TBH I don’t understand why WvW-centric guilds on low tier NA servers aren’t doing this already. Would be best for them and best for the game. If you can’t form multiple servers with real 24/7 coverage in a bracket, that bracket is dead.
Looks like atm the NA side is faring much better than the EU on this regard, but then, it was always going to be easier on that side due to the natural propension of Oceanics to go there. EU doesn’t have any “natural expansion” so any offpeak force has to be “stolen” from the other side.

Game over at Saturday morning. BT clocking in at 660/20/15.

Funny fact: for all the talk about how Ruin-based Deso would break balance, it looks like Ru-based BT with its all european composition is far more destructive to the EU bracket, but no one complains. Oh well.

All this does is to slightly nerf turtles and give one more reason (in addition to stability) to set them up in groups having a guardian in each one.

Courageous Mithos.8745:

It’s not cheap talk, it’s true. Yes, often the borderlands you are outnumbered, but on EB, you aren’t 9 out of 10 times. Your players should only spend half as much time and effort in capturing and defending points as they do in camping the jumping puzzle.

Many of the hardcore WvW guilds on Deso don’t go in EB. First, it’s harder to get everyone on that map due to longer queues. Second, it’s the less interesting map from a tactical point of view due to the symmetric starting position.

[edit] And also, the sad truth is we never have enough hardcore WvW players to cover all 4 maps.

Courageous Mithos.8745:

Still way to many posts flaming Guilds and what they do in my opinion.

If I look at the tactics that most players from Vizu en Deso keep to, it does not surprise me that Blacktide leading with such a great score. The constant backstabbing and rushing surely is annoying for us, but it is not getting any points or advantage. I’m not saying Blacktides tactics are always good, but overall a lot better than of the other two servers. Seriously, it seems that they just point to a spot blindfolded and decide to go there.

There is no tactics which will help you when you’re outnumbered 2:1 or worse 18 hours out of 24.
Smack talk is always easy when you’ve triple everyone’s else numbers. Let’s wait until a server with similar or better coverage comes, then you will have a more interesting fight on your hand.
Honestly, it’s a bit of a bad taste considering all the transfers to BT concentrating the biggest WvW alliances of 3 servers into one. It’s cheap to talk NOW…

Differenttan.7049:

Rumour has it that IRON is on the verge of imploding, due to Cyanide being caught with their hand in the cookie jar……Wrex is trying to hold it together but not quite succeeding.

You shouldn’t believe every rumour you hear.

Ianervan.3415:

Cunnart.6519:

If you are implying that our points at night are coming from ruin you are incorrect.

RUIN didn’t even transfer yet and BT is already having that many points at night due to RUIN. Just the rumor of RUIN switching over scared our foes

Or, more simply, if Ruin switches Deso has no night presence anymore and BT and VS night forces are free to do whatever they want.

Ins.7139:

The difference is the majority of guilds transferred here to strengthen the server, not whilst we were winning. The first week CIR, THUN etc came over we lost that tier to Deso. The next week afew more came over and we stayed in T2 for another week with Elona taking a huge victory. After that week RG etc joined to strengthen us, again we had just lost that tier fight.

Once RG and afew others came over that’s when we steam rolled T2 and moved into T1 and now we’re here. So i’d hardly say it’s anything like RUIN jumping servers to get on the winning bandwagon

All true, however you really cannot say you chose BT because it was weak. On the
contrary, you chose it because you knew it had a strong russian presence providing excellent off peak coverage. And this is regarding the guilds originating from GH. The latest batch from FS knew even better how strong the server already was.

Also, the first loss to Deso was in not small part due to a 60k advantage we got during the weekend before the GH group had transferred.

I have no clue whether Ruin transferring is true or not, and obviously I won’t be particularly happy if this turns out to be true.
However: might I point out that 2/3 of current BT WvW guilds transferred too? There’s a bit of double standards going on here…

Intigo.1653:

I didn’t expect IRON to also run with ‘the stack’ strategy like many others. I think you limit the potential you have as a guild group by utilizing these things – there’s only so much you can do in regards to strategy when you are all standing in one place

With the numbers being what they are right now in Desolation, it’s impossible to split anything. There is nothing you can do strategically if every time you try to take a point you get hit by a zerg twice or thrice your size; and this is the reality of this matchup outside of a few hours during prime time.

Ianervan.3415:

Hey Magnus, another thing came to my mind. Do you know why exactly are numbers so important and defining in WvW?

Because hardly any group uses tactics.

So it all ends down to zerg clashes where you have some skilled people on one side, some skilled on another, some low lvls on one side, some low lvls on another, all with mixed random professions. But there is no group organization. What is considered tactic is attacking tower A instead of tower B, but let’s call that strategy; I meant combat tactic.

While this is generally true, the main reason numbers are so important is because several game design decisions are absurdly zerg-friendly, so it’s no surprise that almost everything devolves into zerg vs zerg.

The most obvious example is the rez mechanic which makes it impossible for a smaller group to fight a bigger one through a war of attrition. Either you manage to kill all the enemies in one go or you lose.

Another problem is that maps are small and travel is fast, so you can afford to have your main force on a map deployed in 1-2 zergs and you will still have plenty of time to respond to any threat which might materialize on any part of the map.

Or the way a bigger zerg can carry more supplies and thus build more siege wherever they go. Or the inefficiency of siege weapons against big zergs unless you build dozens of them, and how fragile and easily destroyed by AoE they are. Or the fact that the bigger your empire is, the easier it becomes to manage its logistic and keep everything supplied instead of the other way around.
Far, far too many zerg-friendly systems in the game right now for it to be anything else than a numbers’ game, unfortunately.

Also, let’s be honest here: the main “tactic” I see used (and this includes us btw, at least the groups formed by our best WvW guilds) is the turtle ball, which isn’t really a tactic but rather an exploit of absurd weaknesses of the game engine. I understand why everyone uses it since it’s too powerful to pass up but it’s pretty lame to fight mostly static fights against invisible enemies.

Anyway: yes, a smaller group using good tactics can win an engagement against a larger group if the numeric difference isn’t too big. However, in terms of map positions, this seldom changes anything. You can buy yourself a few minutes until the enemy reorganizes, but after they respawn and move back to you, you’re back to square one.
You need manpower to attack and defend and if you don’t have it, yeah you might be able to win a few engagements, or even many of them, but you won’t be able to hold control points. At a bare minimum you need scouts + constant defense of supply lines + manned siege weapons just to hold “your” tower for any period of time on a borderland map where you are outnumbered and start with nothing, and the enemy can simply bring its bigger main zerg on your tower/supply camp whenever he feels like it. Good luck expanding in such a situation.

(This is another example of absurd design btw: it’s impossible to strategically flank an enemy. You have to always attack from the same direction because there’s only one spawn point. Sure you can try to flip a tower/keep other than those closer to your spawn by surprise, but it will be impossible holding it for any decent amount of time anyway. So if you want to expand, the direction of expansion is fixed, which means the enemy outnumbering you knows all too well on which points he has to prioritize defense. And which tactic is ever going to help you if you are 20 vs 40 and all their 40 are on top of your first tower, fully upgraded to T3, filled with supply and a dozen assorted siege weapons?).

Let’s be honest here, we’re playing an alpha version, not even a beta. Hopefully they can fix some of this stuff but I doubt it’s going to be quick.

Cyferwolf.1089:

Ok… going back to revise my posts. thank you for pointing this out, it may be that this is not the problem I felt it was, though that’s obviously based on assumptions.

Unfortunately, we don’t know yet if Ascended items come only in MF flavor or in ALL flavors.

If the latter is true, then the non-customization becomes irrelevant. If you want e.g. Berserker stats on the ring + slot, you just need to find the Berserker (main stats) + Berserker (slot stats) version of the Ascended item and off you go.

In fact, it could make for some truly horrid grind; just think about how many possible combinations there are, and how infinitesimally small is the chance of getting the combination you want on any one drop. TP might help, but God help you if the combination you’re after is the most popular one…

Ianervan.3415:

PS: Easy way to refute what you said is being online at server reset. All servers have maxed capacity in WvW (full maps). If your theory was true, every server would have the same amount of points every hour, for as long as all maps are full. This is never the case.

Uhmmm….

http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/15

Essentially identical points until 5AM CET when people went to sleep.

From those graphs you can also easily check when servers are gaining most points on the others.

Simple truth of the matter is: playing better than the other servers with full maps will indeed give you a score advantage, but that advantage is insignificant compared to the advantage you get when you’re capping all 4 maps unopposed due to having higher numbers.

Would BT still be winning this matchup without unopposed capping? Probably yes (although it’s hard to tell due to the fact that BT comes into prime time with a previous advantage from the morning capping and the morale boost of the general situation), but it would be with a much smaller margin. On the other hand, if either VS or Desolation (or anyone else for that matter) had 666 players available during the 8-12AM period, they’d be crushing BT regardless of how well organized the server is.

This is not belittling anyone; I explicitly stated you know how to make very good use of your superior numbers. But denying them is ridiculous IMO. Apart from the obvious fact that the “new” BT is essentially three WvW servers rolled into one (“old” BT + GH + FSP), do you honestly believe any server can get to 450+ points/tick in a situation of equal numbers?

From the looks of it, the Ascended loot has inherently slightly better statistics than current exotics, regardless of whatever infusion is going to do.

Pvpers being the competitive bunch they are, this means yes, PvE loot grind is back in GW2 too.

Also, WvW badges are now completely and utterly useless as the only game mechanic advantage they were giving out (pow/vit/tou jewerly) is going to be replaced with better Ascended items. And they are starting to introduce this new tier of loot with rings…

Radamanth.9048:

but lets face it: without ruin we are no tier 1 material.

And without morning Russians BT is no T1 material. And without their own nightforce VS is no T1 material. There’s no shame in that.

Let me repeat one more time: with the way the current system is setup, final scoring is directly proportional to the number of man hours a server can put into the match.

During prime time, the amount of man hours is capped at 666/hour so no server can gain an advantage over the others in this regard.
What does this leave as the only possibility to gain a significant score advantage?

RomWar.8075:

you seems to be surprised but there is only 3 server and no one else can claim if BT and DESO get tired. no need to be a hundred to PvW !

I was there at 2AM tonight. VS had enough to outnumber the part of Iron force still playing on BT borderland, while also having enough to own more than 1/3 of the EB map and completely cap the other 2 borderlands.

You have far more than 30 players who can play every night Or at least that has been my experience every time I could afford to play with VS during the wee hours.

Radamanth.9048:

so

deso dead server concerning W3 now?

no morning, no early afternoon, no night coverage …

No morning and no early afternoon have always been there, so that’s nothing new.
No night coverage depends on if and when Ruin comes back in force.

You do, however, realize the irony of calling a T1 server “dead server concerning W3”.

kranz.9546:

Vizunah and Desolation, please stop your cooperation against Blacktide. This is your last warning.

Or else? You keep crushing us like you’re already doing anyway? :p

Snort.3698:

I dont get all the criticisms.

I have found the fights but interesting an fun.

I would argue that both other teams are very good and Blacktide just has the edge in organisation.

In numbers. Please let’s recognize the game for what it is.
Don’t get me wrong, you can certainly get the most out of those numbers, but so could VS or Deso if those numbers were there in the first place.

Speaking of which…. interesting to see how as soon as Ruin and BT nightshift take a break VS instantly becomes king of nightcap again. Still claiming there’s only 30 players at night from VS?

Genev.2450:

Or until VS stops focusing on you and you guys shape up and it turns into a proper game

No. BT would still win easily.
Even if e.g. Deso and VS do a perfect 2 vs 1 during 6 hours of prime time (let’s say 18-24) and push BT to zero points, they still gain only approx. 350 points/tick against BT (assuming the maps are evenly splitted 50/50 between them). Come the morning, BT is clocking at 550 points against the 50 of Deso and VS, so after approx. 4 hours you’ve already gained back the deficit and after that the lead you still have in the afternoon brings you to victory.

What such a tactic would do, however, is to keep the scores much closer, which would in turn keep the ratings of all 3 servers much closer. Right now T1 is the most unbalanced EU matchup save for the last tier.

[Edit] corrected the initial math which was off.

BobbybigBalls.3196:

2 teams attacking 2 different towers at the same time… it happens
3 trebs from sm hitting 1 tower while 2 hit the other.. yeah sure that happens also
BT take our tower and the 3 VS trebs stop attacking…. does this happen????

Vizunah is focusing us, they admitted as much in this very thread. They think they will save their T1 position while not realizing they are hurting their own rating. It’s a legitimate, if misguided, tactic, so it’s of no use complaining about it.

Nothing either VS or Deso can do is going to significantly change things anyway in this week’s matchup. BT is the one in charge and will keep being it until some other server comes with equal or better coverage (or until BT loses a significant part of its current WvW population).

Nimraphel.7819:

More than anything, Desolation needs to bridge the gap between the hardcore and the casual community. And as unfair as it may seem to the hardcore, they’re the ones who can facilitate such cohesion.

The small groups only need ONE player on the big guild’s TS to start this. Believe me, the hardcore guilds would be ecstatic to hear someone log on TS and stating “hey guys I’m from guild XYZ with a small group of 10 people, do you have any suitable task for us?”

The 2 big problems are that A, most small groups want nothing to do with a guild’s TS for whatever reason, and this makes communication exponentially harder. B, not all “tasks” are created equal. Having a group of 10 reliable scouts on 10 different control points would be huge, but scouting is

• boring
• totally unrewarding in terms of karma/gold/xp

so you’d actually need to find something interesting and rewarding to do for the small group which doesn’t want to follow the big zerg. But there’s only a limited amount of those available; it’s not like you can have 5 different groups of supply camp raiders.

Slashpaf.9250:

No, believe me, I’m in T1 since the beginning, and you’re not
It’s not only about numbers, it’s about doing the right things, using your forces the best you can to earn some points here and there, even when you’re outnumbered.

• If this is true, why complaining that Ruin brought bigger numbers?
• How often since the start of one week matches has Vizunah actually been outnumbered?
• Do you honestly think if there were, say, 3 servers like Blacktide currently is, you could still use some tactic to stay in T1? If yes, for how long could you sustain it?

Superior tactics may help you even the odds in case of a VERY SMALL population/coverage difference. Everything above that is a lost cause.

Also, people clearly have a poor understanding of how the rating system is working. You have two matches going, one against each of the other servers. The rating differential depends on the scoring differential, not on who comes 1st, 2nd or 3rd. If you win or lose to another server by a small amount, your rating will go up/down by a small amount, as the system (correctly) assumes the two servers are more or less equivalent. Big changes in rating only happen due to big differences in scoring. If you put all your efforts to overcome server A by a small margin, and lose by a huge margin to server B as a result, your rating will end up being worse for it.
If you’re worried about your rating, the only rational approach is trying to maximize your final score in the matchup, irrelevant of whichever server you must attack to achieve it.

Tygra.4570:

MagnusLL.8473:

You (and the other strategical genius posting immediately after you)

Strategical geniuses are staying in T1 since week 1. What did you do ?
You are making a fool of yourself with such a poor speech.

Lack of numbers on Desolation prime time ?
Tired of last week ?

Ain’t getting better than that.
Cheers.

Maybe but I don’t feel the overriding need of insulting others.
Also, I just explained how staying in T1 is a function of numbers, not tactics. So try again, you might find an actual point.