Guild Wars 2

Hi.

A few weeks ago we had a dev do some amazing work reducing the lag in wvw and being completely honest with us about when/what was being done about it.

That was great, because skill lag really decreased in wvw. I was in SM fights with probably 40 players per side with minimal lag, but now it’s back. Did the same thing happen? Is it new problems?

Is this the same BetterHappy.2517 that made the infamous AMA on reddit that one time?

As a slightly dissenting voice to the above comments:

I did not experience any lag, so I’d imagine that it was the result of player computers not the servers.

Downloading the client wasn’t an issue. I put it on overnight and it was no big deal.

Queues will not be an issue when the game is actually implemented. If you look at things now when the streams aren’t ongoing, there is no queue or maybe a small queue.

The rest of the complaints are entirely speculative. Some bits feel like they’re too easy to defend with a few arrow carts (but this would make the map easier to fight on if outnumbered), but we won’t really know until they’re implemented. The actual size of the map is probably not entirely different from EBG except for the fact that you actually have to make use of more of the map…

We had a great time with Tyler today. Who was he?

I’ve noticed in the past few weeks that sometimes when I’m mid-burst on a target, they’ll be untargeted for me.

Yes, I know this happens when someone goes into stealth, but this is in like 1v1 situations or pvp situations where the enemy has literally no access to stealth (eg: playing against a pvp team of no thieves or mesmers or anything that could give them stealth) and the target is still there on my screen, but my game untargets them and my burst which requires targets fails.

I’d love to see a fix… I’m sure I’m not the only one this is happening to, but if I am, I suppose I could record footage and find the bug again. It’s really quite annoying.

It’s a bit insane when you’ve got groups of thieves with the damage boost fully downing you.

And Anet’s going to pretend it didn’t happen. Classy.

Since the revenant weekend, have any of the rest of you noticed severe amounts of lag in wvw. My guildies are getting it on all maps, but it seems to be the worst on EBG during NA prime.

Are the non-t2 servers experiencing the same? Is it just confined to my guildies (maybe 30 people)? Does Anet know? Does Anet care? Will this problem persist in the new wvw map (hint: the answer is ’I’m pretty sure it will’)? Will wvw get the kind of love it needs? Specifically, will the servers stop being lag-fests?

About an hour ago, it seems like everyone experienced some really bad lag in PvP. Not sure about other aspects of the game, but both my team and the enemy team had multiple people disconnect and those that didn’t disconnect had ping at anything between 500 and 2500. We kind of stopped playing and asked each other in map what our game was playing like.

For some of my friends it’s returned to normal but my game continues to lag.

Dlaxer.1428:

I don’t think it matters very much, Engi’s aren’t taken in very many GvG’s regardless, and if you do notice Engi’s in the match you should adapt by burning 3-4 blasts on a Guardian symbol (or any Light Field) to gain tons of Retal. Engineers will then kill themselves almost instantly if they use grenades at all, let alone the Grenade Barrage.

A friend of mine did the math (idk if he’s right) but he said that hitting a zerg of people with retal will give the engi over 20k damage to himself in only retal. Pretty funny to watch.

CptCuddles.8912:

Fnix.5608:

And another kittening mesmer nerf!! >< Arenanet please!

Can we please step back and be realistic here. This trait was not functioning appropriately. Their fix actually buffed the trait under some situations. The rampant crying needs to stop.

Could you take a step further back and see that from the last patch, mesmer has gotten the most attention and actually broken things are ignored… like engineer grenades. Healing prism was kind of a buff (and a 10 second icd isn’t that big of a deal, let’s be real), which is nice, but it’s not nearly as big a concern as grenades 1 shotting people.

Yea, without actually being in the gvg or having better vantage points (like those in sPvP) it’ll be a bit hard for you to really know what’s going on. That, and announcers being able to really go back into the plays that happened and demonstrate what happened. A lot of the time GvGs turn in split second acts that can easily be missed, I think.

I know Equinox was making some videos about what necros and eles should do, but I don’t think he’s doing more classes than that. He might have done guardians and warriors, as well.

You actually participated in the gvgs?

Also: I’d be really interested to see what you think of GvGs, good or bad. Logistically you probably won’t give an opinion because of some of the catty folks around here that can’t take some negative criticism of the game-mode, but I’d still like to hear it (as a gvger myself)

Still no word on a fix?

Shockwave.1230:

Melanion.4892:

Josh Davis.6015:

I don’t think this is intended, but I’ll need to follow-up with the skills team in the morning to be sure. Either way, I started an email chain about this. Thanks for the reports.

I dont understand how you can’t know for certain whether this is a bug… Either it’s a nerf or it’s a bug. Either way I won’t be playing my mesmer until it’s fixed. It’s not even stealth ending resulting in a reveal. That would be one thing, but you can’t even stack stealth or properly use refuge.

It’s still absolutely ridiculous that a dev response is “I don’t know if this MAJOR bug is a bug or a nerf” with something this major.

Nah it makes perfect sense that Josh wouldn’t know if it’s intentional. He’s not part of the balance team for one, and the company is reworking a lot of things in the game so there’s uncertainty until things are finalized. Josh simply doesn’t know if the potential stealth changes have been finalized or not.

Based on the behavior of stealth stacking, I think we all know it’s a bug (Josh might not have realized the behavior of stealth stacking before responding), but Josh just popped in to assure us they have this as priority conversation topic to discuss in the morning.

I don’t appreciate when our devs get chewed out for communicating with us after hours with the intent of making sure we know they know, so please choose different rhetoric to communicate through.

Ok, so first: I’m not chewing him out. I’m merely pointing out that everything he actually said was “I don’t know.” It’s great that at least he knows he doesn’t know, but that’s all he can give us.

Now, if we’re to talk about rhetoric, let’s consider what Josh did say: “I don’t think this is intended.” Rhetorically this suggests that there is a possibility that this isn’t a bug, that the game devs intended to make this change to stealth and that the devs chose to make this change without announcing it formally. These are all suggestions from the rhetoric he uses. I don’t think he means any of this, and like you said, it’s after hours, so thanks Josh for the response. However, we cannot know that this isn’t intentional. It’s impossible with such a vague answer. If we had received a “this was intentional, more on this tomorrow” or “this is a bug, we’ll work on a fix asap,” there is certainty there. Instead, we get uncertainty. I’m sure he intended to simply let us know that they’re aware. That’s great. That’s not what has been done, though.

Yes, we are all fairly certain that this is a bug. However, we don’t know. If you want to talk about rhetoric, talk about that.

Josh Davis.6015:

I don’t think this is intended, but I’ll need to follow-up with the skills team in the morning to be sure. Either way, I started an email chain about this. Thanks for the reports.

I dont understand how you can’t know for certain whether this is a bug… Either it’s a nerf or it’s a bug. Either way I won’t be playing my mesmer until it’s fixed. It’s not even stealth ending resulting in a reveal. That would be one thing, but you can’t even stack stealth or properly use refuge.

It’s still absolutely ridiculous that a dev response is “I don’t know if this MAJOR bug is a bug or a nerf” with something this major.

Can confirmed. bugged in wvw. Refuge doesnt work anymore lol. GOOD GAME ANET.

Xerox.6851:

The idea of gvgs or rPvP or however it may be called is merely to be team deathmatch. We prefer an open, unobstructed place that can fit the size of the party while allowing room for casters and gank parties to move along the outside of the fight without being pushed against a wall if the enemy didn’t force them there.

Most of us fight in this style of match because we are not interested in objective based fighting. Gvgs are meant to be multiple groups of fairly short rounds (best of 7 currently). Ideally, when someone goes hard down then they might be transitioned to a spectator view, but currently in the scene the player just stays dead until the round is over (30 seconds to a couple minutes later).

No, actually. We don’t prefer anything. The current GvG scene is deathmatch pvp because there’s no other option to be had. Deathmatch became the GvG scene because we do not have the resources to implement anything else. This is why we fight in this style, and realistically, this is the only way that we can have a sustainable ~10-20v10-20.

As I said, do NOT include anything which is too reliant on objectives. If you look at GW1 gvgs (not suggesting we have them, exactly), but they included large scale fights AND objectives which could give your team a boost if you split properly and capped them. This is far more sustainable and more watchable than a series of 1-2 minute rounds where everyone tries to fight each other. Sure, it’s enjoyable to play our current style of pvp, but I thought the purpose of this thread was to suggest that anet allow for more options to fight more than 5v5 or zergvzerg in wvw.

I’m trying to be practical. It’s incredibly unlikely that Anet will implement a deathmatch in the style that we currently have. I’m trying to provide options which are similar enough to our original wish of larger-scale fights without being something which Anet will immediately overlook. We have to be flexible if we want this kind of thing implemented and like I said, you’re foolish if you think we can get what we want from Anet without conceding on a few points. We can’t immediately hate any idea that involves objectives so long as those objectives don’t become the sole purpose of the match.

I’m thinking of something like a 10v10 or 15v15 in which you have side-objectives that provide slight amounts of help, maybe a buff, maybe a small amounts of points that will contribute to the final score, but will not decide the match. It would be risky to go for these buffs, but it could turn the tides of the match. Other than those side buffs which assist in the win of a tactical team instead of one zerg-blob, the match would be the rest of the team (probably 80% of the team, maybe more, so 8-13 people) fighting over a large cap-point (larger than the middle one in Foefire) where teams could both stand, out of range of each other, or at least the melee could stand there. Casters are free to roam outside this circle and the advantage comes when a team fully wipes in the center and the other can cap. If one team loses a person, if they hold out before that person can respawn (maybe 15-30 seconds later) and runs back, then it’s as if nothing happened. Otherwise, the team which got the kill can try to capitalize on that kill and snowball that into a win. It’s not quite dissimilar to GW1 gvg, but it’s different enough. And it’s similar enough to our current understanding of GvG that if you want, you could spend the day fighting over the center point. Simple as that.

It doesnt solve the desire for multiple matches, and I’m not sure exactly how to prevent one team wipe in the center from meaning you’re going to lose, no matter what. But I’m sure a game mode could be made that’s 10-15 minutes long with a series of fights.

It removes a lot of what is annoying about gvgs… Prebuffing will not be a thing anymore. You won’t be able to blow all your cooldowns unless you know that you’ll be good without them for the next 2-3 minutes.

tldr: We have to be flexible if we want this kind of thing implemented and like I said, you’re foolish if you think we can get what we want from Anet without conceding on a few points.

Equinox.4195:

Thanks for re-opening the thread, moderators.

Also, I’d like to point out that GvGs don’t need to be 20v20. 20v20 creates a pretty large barrier-to-entry for a lot of guilds, not only in recruiting enough people to have a reasonable composition on any given night, but also recruiting enough GOOD players to put into that roster or trying to train a large group of people to all be able to compete. The skillcap in GvGs has definitely risen dramatically over the past year with the meta shifts and being a decent player doesn’t always cut it, and I believe this is especially prevalent in a 20v20 GvG.

One of the main reasons I feel like guilds still do 20v20’s is because they’re still following in the footsteps of old guilds and as guilds continue to make the demand of “we won’t do less than 20’s,” it’s only continuing to force this mindset that 20v20 is the only size that matters for GvG.

Plus, with the average player skill increasing over the years and the mindsets of players changing from spamming AoEs to focusing single targets, the concentration of damage with 20 players compared to something the size of 15 is a big difference.

I think a 20v20 option is fine, and there are valid reasons to prefer it to 15v15 and especially 10v10. Playstyles are very different between the three roster sizes, and preferring one to another is alright.

That said, I think everyone should be open-minded about smaller roster sizes, possibly even 8v8 or 12v12 to give other examples, if you are going to expect a positive response, or possibly even a response to this at all.

That’s my two cents. Getting support for the gamemode is more important to me than the size of it, so whether it’s 20v20, 12v12, 15v15, or whatever isn’t as important to me as just HAVING the official support, and I encourage everyone to approach this with a similar mindset.

I agree with a lot of what you said, but the 8v8 and 12v12 might get a bit awkward because the game bases a lot of combat around 5s and 10s (buffs go to 5 party members. Mass invis goes to 10), so I dont know how anything other than multiples of 5 would work. Sure, you could have 5, 5 and 2 or 4, 4 and 4, but I’m not sure if that’s something that I can see Anet doing. They’ll probably have multiple parties in something, anyways, so 10s or 15s… despite eles and gank generally running in separate parties from the rest of the stab-users.

But yes, 10v10 and 15v15 is much more logical for people to field. I’m not sure how you guys (EP and the GvG scene collectively) feels about objectives to make it a little more than death match. Hopefully not too focused on that, but I wouldn’t mind 10v10s or 15v15s where the main group was approximately 80% of the comp and then a few others might have to run around and do things, gank a lord or try to cap a flag. Something to add a bit more flavor if you’re losing and because (realistically) they’re not going to implement a system of death matches. I don’t think they would, anyways. However, they’d support longer fights of approximately 10-15 mins where a loss of one person doesn’t mean a full loss, just a loss until they can respawn and regroup while the other team gains a slight advantage if they push properly.

I probably don’t speak for most of the community. I never do.

I’m fairly certain we know that the GvGs that are currently happening are not going to be the same as whatever Anet implements. I’m not sure about a lot of the rest of us, but I’d be satisfied with some kind of larger-scale combat, perhaps with objectives, although not overly focused on those objectives.

A lot of GvGers were excited about stronghold because it offered some hope, but finding out that it would be 5v5, mixed in with the other tPvP maps and easy to win if you abuse CCs, we lost a lot of hope.

Some others have suggested simply implementing a way for guilds to decide how many people vs how many people. That’s cool. I’d even be happy with 10v10. It’s going to be different than the 20v20 tdm that we currently have going. THAT’S FINE, we can keep diddling ourselves in the OS with those. But maybe give pvp some opportunity to have structured 10v10s and 15v15s. I understand that it would be insane to implement many rounds of a tbm that sometimes is over in seconds, but we want larger scale fights.

Conquest and Stronghold were good ideas. However, Anet has been so focused on forcing them into a 5v5 situation that we don’t have the chance to explore 10v10 and 15v15 (and 20v20, which is a long shot because few guilds can field that). In GW1, the go-to for gw2 gvg naysayers, it was 8v8 and there were no points to cap and hold aside from a few buffs at the center. That’s cool. We’re cool with that. GW2 combat is based off of 5s and 10s, so give us 10s and maybe 15s. Give us a map large enough actually use tactics AND large scale fights. We don’t need to be facing each other from 2500 range and ramming into each other like sweaty teenagers after prom. Some of us want that, some of us just want something more than 5v5. I enjoy the current gvgs, I enjoy current pvp (although i want more variety than having to bunker points and/or cc-lock people in stronghold). I want more options.

Or do what Aldix (Ferguson.numbers) said and allow us to challenge other guilds to an instanced OS. I know a lot of people that would return to the game/play the game more because of these options. Even 10v10. Please.

I actually disagree. The new stronghold map that is going to be integrated into regular 5v5 sPvP is completely satisfactory, has no bugs or innate flaws in its game mode, and it will definitely draw a host of new players into the game to pvp.

Lol. Sarcasm is fun.

Anet’s not going to do anything about this. For them, PvP is zergs or 5v5. Nothing else matters. The best way to show them how wrong they are is not to buy the expansion and stop playing their game. You buy an expansion for new content that you will actually want to play. This will not come from HotS, so don’t bother with it. Simple as that.

Any word on when/if the server caps will be raised once again?

Electro.4173:

Melanion.4892:

Could you clarify what you mean by skill timing? Is this the 1-5 second lag that we’ve been experiencing in wvw for the past week consistently?

I would imagine its referring to stuff like Ranger traps, Vapor blade, ect. which are now taking twice as long or more to cast than they should be.

Ok, so it’s not a fix to the lag.

Thanks for the info.

Anet plz fix the lag, too.

Could you clarify what you mean by skill timing? Is this the 1-5 second lag that we’ve been experiencing in wvw for the past week consistently?

Seera.5916:

Melanion.4892:

GM Talon.8726:

We’ve recently updated our Knowledge Base with an article specifically for helping to address latency issues. You can find that article here

If you have tried the solutions provided in the article and you’re still experiencing latency issues, please submit a ticket to us. From the drop-down menu on this page, please choose Technical Issue. From here, please include the following in the description of the issue:

- Your ISP
- Which data center you’re connecting to (North American or European)
- Your OS (including if you’re running on 32 bit or 64 bit)
- Whether the lag is intermittent or consistent (include times with time zones that you notice it’s worse, if applicable)
- Where you’re located (state/province)

We may request additional information about your computer after this, such as a “Game Advisor”: report. To speed up our investigation time, I recommend generating a report from the Game Advisor and sending it as an attachment once you have received our auto-reply confirming that we have received your ticket. Doing this in advance will save us a communication step with you so that we may begin troubleshooting the issue with you sooner.

I think you misunderstand. Essentially every player in WvW has been experiencing an unplayable increase in lag during NA prime since the stability including patch. It’s not an issue of individual connections or computers that are incapable of dealing with the lag (unless literally everyone I speak to in WvW is experiencing the same internet and computer problems at the same time and you want to claim that it’s not a server-side lag.

What I think we were looking for was an acknowledgement that you know that this is not confined to individual experiences, computers and connections. This is an issue on Anet’s side of things, although it is only in WvW. You guys even had a ready-up today about WvW and you didn’t mention it at all. So thanks for your canned (was it canned? it seems like it’s not really addressing the issue being presented. If it wasn’t I’m sorry, but you still missed the issue) response, but please give us another response.

But they need to rule out the players that just had an issue coincidentally crop up on the day of the patch.

You do notice that he then went on to say: if that doesn’t work, then send in a ticket with as many details as you can from the following list.

That’s just the thing. Everyone I play gw2 with and even those that I just know casually is having the same problem in WvW and not in any other section of the game (incredibly unlikely). It’s not just individual players, it’s the game mode. I have experienced no lag, ping problems or fps drops in pve or pvp. I have in WvW. Same with all of the people I speak to in the game.

What I’m saying is that Anet’s response to this kind of thing (which has happened before after major patches) is to question literally every report of increased lag in wvw and I’m suggesting that they move past that arbitrary step and realize that it is incredibly unlikely to experience the lag we’re experiencing in wvw ONLY in wvw and not also in pvp or wvw. I did Tequatl today where there were undoubtedly close to 60 people in one spot attacking the same target and nothing dropped in terms of FPS or ping. Head to WvW and you get groups of 5 fighting each other and unable to do more than simply 1 spam, if that.

Maybe I have troubles understanding the internet, but when many people from vastly different sides of the country (or even separate countries) are experiencing the same thing, I tend to assume that there’s no reason to consider anything is wrong on our side of things. On the nights that it’s super laggy on the borderlands, we head to the OS and we’re all fine to fight other guilds and whatnot. Hence: I’m assuming it’s not my connection “issues”.

GM Talon.8726:

We’ve recently updated our Knowledge Base with an article specifically for helping to address latency issues. You can find that article here

If you have tried the solutions provided in the article and you’re still experiencing latency issues, please submit a ticket to us. From the drop-down menu on this page, please choose Technical Issue. From here, please include the following in the description of the issue:

- Your ISP
- Which data center you’re connecting to (North American or European)
- Your OS (including if you’re running on 32 bit or 64 bit)
- Whether the lag is intermittent or consistent (include times with time zones that you notice it’s worse, if applicable)
- Where you’re located (state/province)

We may request additional information about your computer after this, such as a “Game Advisor”: report. To speed up our investigation time, I recommend generating a report from the Game Advisor and sending it as an attachment once you have received our auto-reply confirming that we have received your ticket. Doing this in advance will save us a communication step with you so that we may begin troubleshooting the issue with you sooner.

I think you misunderstand. Essentially every player in WvW has been experiencing an unplayable increase in lag during NA prime since the stability including patch. It’s not an issue of individual connections or computers that are incapable of dealing with the lag (unless literally everyone I speak to in WvW is experiencing the same internet and computer problems at the same time and you want to claim that it’s not a server-side lag.

What I think we were looking for was an acknowledgement that you know that this is not confined to individual experiences, computers and connections. This is an issue on Anet’s side of things, although it is only in WvW. You guys even had a ready-up today about WvW and you didn’t mention it at all. So thanks for your canned (was it canned? it seems like it’s not really addressing the issue being presented. If it wasn’t I’m sorry, but you still missed the issue) response, but please give us another response.

It got worse, guys.

It’s not just tier 1. It’s every tier with more than 20 people on it.

Oh boy, Jskip. You really are taking things incredibly seriously with this.

If you must know, it’s likely that pirate ship battles are a remnant of the group of wvwers that took a short trip to aa (different game, we don’t need to talk about it) where there was an element of fighting from pirate ships, especially with rangers. The emphasis on ranged in that game was then found in gw2 wvw, which meant people started jokingly calling it pirate ship battles. At least that’s how the term started being used in my circles. I doubt many people were referring to pirate ship battles before ~nov/dec 2014.

We’re not literally attempting to be pirates, and we’re not literally on ships. And by the way, if you are going to get incredibly literal with things, I would point out that we wouldn’t call them naval battles because we’re not actually on ships. (to reiterate, I don’t care what we call them, I’m just making a point ^.^)

The best way to report speedhackers or wall-hackers is still to report them as bots, right? I think I’ve reported the same mesmer 3 times in the past week, but I still see him around. Is this the right way to report or should I choose a different option?

Baldrick.8967:

Coincides with a pvp tournament, when they pull some of the power to ensure smoother running of the pvp servers. Sorry wvw players, you don’t count.

If that’s the case, that’s pretty BM of Anet. I get that they want to make the game esports, but not at the expense of an entire other section of the game…

What are people using as shoes, specifically for human females?

My friends and I just went through all of the options out there and there are so few shoes out there for female humans that don’t either make the character look like she has disproportionately bulky legs (which wouldn’t be as much of a problem to me if the rest of the character were equally bulky). Some shoes look great at the lower portion, but they require a long dress to cover the bulky top portion of the shoe. I like my character to wear pants, though, so that limits my shoe choices.

Anyways, yea. What do other people run as their shoes? Seems like the consensus for human females would be winged boots and embroidered sandals. I don’t even like those two, I just dislike them less…

(and on another note, when are we getting an outfit that for females that is conservative without feeling like I’m wearing a potato? Some outfits and wardrobe pieces have volume but are revealing. Others are skin tight and revealing. Others are nicely conservative, but they’re so boring…)

Today at about 6pm PST, my game started to disconnect me from wvw every ~30 minutes. My internet itself still works, and I wasn’t disconnected from teamspeak or anything like that. I simply got a white screen that said something about having trouble connecting to the server.

It’s been about 4 times in 3 hours, I think, and a few of the times I’ve had friends who disconnected at about the same time.

In the meantime, is there some specific way you’d like us to report these people? It’s not exactly covered in any of your report options, and from my experience, when I report people they’re still roaming around the game with no reasonable lack of playtime. I’ve been crashed by it a few times, but I remember who sent them to me. Slowly my block list is getting longer, but I’d rather not have to cautiously move my mouse across the chat box to the name and report/block it that way.

500 to ~200
9:46 pm pacific time
Legacy
NA

Dondagora.9645:

Melanion.4892:

SobeSoul.6910:

PvP builds are not selfish. Warriors, eles, and eles all heal teams. And all can condi clear allies. Guardians too depending on spec. Mesmers and thieves provide boon ripping and other utility to teams. That leaves only two classes on the selfish side. Necros and rangers.

On the other hand there’s nothing really wrong with having a selfish oriented build in a team if the other four members are providing team oriented utility. It would be the same as the focus parties in gvg. Like Zoose playing fresh air scepter over d/d for DoD in tournies.

I know some gvg guilds have PU mesmers and SA thieves. Those builds are as selfish as anything in spvp.

Most gvg players who enter spvp have little understanding of strategies and end up losing games they shouldn’t. I know the gvg tags. There’s some gvgers who can do both well, as they’re plenty of spvpers who go into wvw and do fine.

You seem to have missed the point. What I’m saying is that the playstyle is more selfish, not the builds. Often the builds are very similar, actually (for mesmers and thieves, at least).

I’ll give you an example: thieves and mesmers that excel at pvp are generally not as good at larger group play because that’s how they’re used to playing. They make excellent roamers in wvw, for the most part, but IN GENERAL they don’t have as much awareness of the trains in a gvg or larger scale fight. When I say selfish, I mean that they use their escapes more selfishly. I have played with some thieves who are really good at 1v1s and roaming and pvp, but you put them in a 20v20 and it’s a whole different story.

There are some guilds that are really good at pvp who have tried to get really competitive at gvg, and they get pretty good, but then they hit a ceiling. Maybe it’s because of the mentalities of each player, maybe it’s the playstyle, but that’s just the case. They do not to as well in larger fights. Maybe it’s too minimal for most people to see the difference, but that’s just the way things are.

Another example would be 1v1 skill. To pvp, you don’t need to be able to 1v1 very well at all. Of course, you need to have a build that can survive long enough that your team can rotate to you or you need to know when to pull out of a fight. The same goes for gvgs (as we call them in the wvw community). You can be great at a 1v1 or in pvp, but you need to know how things operate in gvgs. Some of the “best” gvg guilds out there arguably don’t have the best players, but they don’t need them. I’ve heard that gvg players (I think it was even in a link posted here). You don’t need to be the best individually skilled players when it comes to larger fights, but you need builds and synergy to overcome that deficit.

I hope that’s clear… although I thought my last post was fairly clear and here we are…

Well, I just want to correct you on one of your points: the example you used of mesmers and thieves is quite biased in a sense. As the game was balanced for smaller battles, so too were these two classes specifically. Mesmer illusions melt in the mass AoE of large fights like WvW GvG, and thief itself can’t well survive being caught in 3-10 different AoE at once at all times. At best, these guys can learn to run around the back and attack enemies from behind. While possible, I’d like to point out: isn’t that unfair? It’s unfair that these classes aren’t given the option to play to their advantages while all others are. That’s a point where GvG TDM falls short and where Stronghold might cover.

Just my opinion, of course, but correct me where I’m wrong.

I gvg. I’m a mesmer in those gvgs. It’s not at all unfair, or anything like that. You mention gank teams. That’s where mesmers and thieves do well, or in the tanky [PYRO] kind of mesmer/thieves. Most GvG teams currently have them. I don’t understand where you’re getting the idea that TDM GvG falls short by its use of mesmers and thieves. After the enemy thieves and mesmers die, the winning gank team can literally have a field day with the other team’s casters. It’s a trade-off, sure, and you’re wagering that your gank is going to have the upper hand and then assist in your killing of everyone else, but that’s just the tactic people have chosen. I’ve also seen some gvgs (like PYRO) that run tankier utility mesmers, and other guilds that forego gank altogether.

SobeSoul.6910:

PvP builds are not selfish. Warriors, eles, and eles all heal teams. And all can condi clear allies. Guardians too depending on spec. Mesmers and thieves provide boon ripping and other utility to teams. That leaves only two classes on the selfish side. Necros and rangers.

On the other hand there’s nothing really wrong with having a selfish oriented build in a team if the other four members are providing team oriented utility. It would be the same as the focus parties in gvg. Like Zoose playing fresh air scepter over d/d for DoD in tournies.

I know some gvg guilds have PU mesmers and SA thieves. Those builds are as selfish as anything in spvp.

Most gvg players who enter spvp have little understanding of strategies and end up losing games they shouldn’t. I know the gvg tags. There’s some gvgers who can do both well, as they’re plenty of spvpers who go into wvw and do fine.

You seem to have missed the point. What I’m saying is that the playstyle is more selfish, not the builds. Often the builds are very similar, actually (for mesmers and thieves, at least).

I’ll give you an example: thieves and mesmers that excel at pvp are generally not as good at larger group play because that’s how they’re used to playing. They make excellent roamers in wvw, for the most part, but IN GENERAL they don’t have as much awareness of the trains in a gvg or larger scale fight. When I say selfish, I mean that they use their escapes more selfishly. I have played with some thieves who are really good at 1v1s and roaming and pvp, but you put them in a 20v20 and it’s a whole different story.

There are some guilds that are really good at pvp who have tried to get really competitive at gvg, and they get pretty good, but then they hit a ceiling. Maybe it’s because of the mentalities of each player, maybe it’s the playstyle, but that’s just the case. They do not to as well in larger fights. Maybe it’s too minimal for most people to see the difference, but that’s just the way things are.

Another example would be 1v1 skill. To pvp, you don’t need to be able to 1v1 very well at all. Of course, you need to have a build that can survive long enough that your team can rotate to you or you need to know when to pull out of a fight. The same goes for gvgs (as we call them in the wvw community). You can be great at a 1v1 or in pvp, but you need to know how things operate in gvgs. Some of the “best” gvg guilds out there arguably don’t have the best players, but they don’t need them. I’ve heard that gvg players (I think it was even in a link posted here). You don’t need to be the best individually skilled players when it comes to larger fights, but you need builds and synergy to overcome that deficit.

I hope that’s clear… although I thought my last post was fairly clear and here we are…

Indie.4129:

I think i know where our disconnect is. Anyone playing the current gvg doesn’t care what it’s called, I would be fine with calling it competitive baguette jousting, but that doesn’t change the actual description of what it is. People would be happy with even a red/green/blue OS as long as there was a chance to face a wider variety of people.

+1 for competitive baguette jousting. I’d pay to see that.

And anyone who considers what the wvw community considers “gvg” anything less skilled has another thing coming to them. Sure, 20v20 deathmatches push the limits of what we define as a blob, but one of those blobs is better than the other blob, there are tactics, there are build differences, there are group compositions that differ. If you honestly think it’s facemashing, you’ve got another thing coming to you. There are groups in this game of anywhere from 10 to 20 people who consistently sync their skills and their damage to do more than I’d wager most pvp players can think of. PvP in this game heavily favors builds and player individual skill. What we consider gvg also takes a lot of the same thing, but in a different way.

I know a lot of pvp players that have tried to bridge the gap between pvp and wvw and they get absolutely demolished (some don’t, but the majority that I know get demolished). From PvP they learn to be much more selfish in their builds and their play, and a lot of their egos get in the way. It’s not as if the skill sets are entirely different in either game mode, but the way it’s done is entirely different and until you’ve done both, you won’t know that.

Just a little rant… You may proceed

I know it’s a bit too early to expect any finite answers about any of this stuff, but I’d just like to preemptively register my disappointment if each class only gets one new weapon to use. Some get a 2 handed weapon and some get a 1 handed weapon, so far as we can tell (necros get a gs, mesmers getting a shield).

I’d much prefer either a new two-handed weapon to use on a class or 2 one-handed weapons, not simple 1 one-handed weapon. Again, it’s too early to be certain, but as a mesmer, seeing the shield is exciting because of a new weapon, but at the same time I’m afraid that this is the only weapon we’ll be able to use, meaning I get a total of 2 new skills to use, whereas a necro would get 5.

I’m hoping that Anet sees the potential slap in the face here and is giving at MINIMUM each class 5 new weapon skills, whether that’s in the form of a two-handed weapon or 2 one-handed weapons (pls pistol mainhand, but anyways).

I’m sure Anet knows what they’re going to do, but this is the current fear that I have. The rest of it looks great.

How is this meant to bring anything into line? Engi didn’t get touched in any way it should have been. Ele got nerfs that won’t fix anything.

Fix cele and then see what happens and what needs a nerf/buff. Not this half-thought-out nerfing of individual classes. Who even uses cele? Engis and Eles and Warriors, really. Three classes that are completely dominating the meta at the moment and they will continue to do so until cele is nerfed or at least brought into line.

GET YOUR PRIORITIES STRAIGHT, ANET

It always makes me smile when my team has 3 mesmers and the other team has 1 or 0 mesmers. I queued twice today, both times I got annoyed and stopped pvping altogether. I’d gladly have swapped professions in either case, but I don’t want an automatic loss.

No, two is not a great sample size, but should that matter? I won one and I lost one, I really don’t care all that much about that, (and my loss was against a 3-man queued group plus pugs), but I thought we were fixing the profession distribution, especially considering my inability to swap professions.

I’m done with ranked queues for a while if this is how teams are going to be distributed.

Can we implement dishonor soon? Both in ranked and unranked. In ranked, there is some sort of punishment for swapping classes in that you don’t get any credit for a win (even before the match starts), but in unranked, there is no such issue.

I just came from a game where another team voted for skyhammer and all swapped to decap engis. Somehow, my team won, so this isn’t quite a q.q thread, but if people are going to be able to vote on maps like that, should we not at least discourage swapping classes?

Yes, I know, this is unranked so why care, but until trolly maps like skyhammer, courtyard and spirit watch which can be easily abused with certain professions are removed from rotation, swapping professions is problematic. (not that I don’t love courtyard, I just don’t think all classes/builds are as useful in it, prompting the switch)

I understand the intention here is to encourage people to pvp on other classes and expand their horizons, but I think this daily needs some reworking.

The entire concept of encouraging people to play other classes is fine, but profession balancing seems a bit off for it. I know that there is some room within the profession reworking for close to a +/- 2 difference, but this gets problematic. The influx of thieves and engis means that every match now has a far smaller chance of getting an even distribution of builds and professions.

I don’t know, it just seems like a lazy and problematic daily encouragement for people to do something they’re bad at and everyone else has to deal with it.

I think the reason for the implementation of the sneak attack thing was to test what effect it would have on WvW as a whole.

I don’t think you’ve given it enough time to truly appreciate what can and will happen as a result. Personally, I couldn’t be bothered. Assaulting towers isn’t something I generally do, and most diligent commanders can watch the map to expect where an enemy zerg is going. If a sentry is flipped or killed, it means something is coming in that direction and you send a scout. White swords already popped up 30 seconds after the beginning of an assault, which is about as much warning as watching sentries would give :/ At the moment, I think most commanders and map watchers haven’t figured that out.

On the other hand, points per kill is amazing. Punish the bad zergs that get rolled over and over. Maybe consider removing orange swords altogether to see what happens ^.^

Race: Sylvari
Sex: Both
Armor: Light Armor Tier 2 Cultural (specifically the shoulders)

I’m not going to take a screenshot because there is nothing to screenshot.

When you’re wearing the chest piece for sylvari male and female light tier 2 cultural, you cannot view shoulders whatsoever. I’d like to use my scarf with it, but that’s simply not possible.

It happened again.

So… bump?

My party queued for pvp and we all got the prompt to accept being queued, but they (2 of them) were given a prompt to go to a game, while I’m stuck in the heart of the mists…

What…

I don’t think the question in the PvP forums was asking whether they qualified for a llama, but why they hadn’t received a llama yet (as in: did you send the llamas out yet or no?)

My friend made it into the top 100 and he doesn’t have his llama yet, so I’m assuming you just haven’t sent them out yet.

Was there some stealth update? My guildies figured we would queue 5 man team in ranked pvp, but we are being told that we have too many people in our party to queue.

Did Anet take out the ability to 5 man queue in ranked?

Last night my friend and I queued, accepted our queue and were immediately sent to our match, as usual. However, right after we were put into our match, we got another queue during the wait before the queue, and we were forced to take it. I feel pretty bad for the team my partner and I were forced away from, but there was nothing to do about it.

Hi. Please stop complaining so quickly. You will be ignored quite fast. Perhaps instead of continuing to complain in a separate post, combine all your thoughts into one and add it to the millions of other threads that will pop up about pvp concerns. Anet has a few kinks to work out. The class distribution thing they’ve already talked about and they admitted that they’re testing out the match scores and map popularities.

At the moment, people are voting for courtyard to be trolls or because it’s the new thing to do. I personally asked my team how many voted for courtyard in a solo q group and one person said they did. That meant that 4/5 of the opposing team did as well, yet they lost terribly. I don’t think they knew what the map was really going to be about. They weren’t prepared. They should be prepared next time. Give it a week or two.