Guild Wars 2

we’re suffering a bit in wvw ZvZ, but hopefully the next patch will give us some more options…

Sylosis.7125:

Nice fights tonight, respect to YAK……nice movement and melee train.

Much respect to INVI and TLA, nice fights tonight in GBL!
Hope to fight you again during the week (maybe with less pugs on us… we split our raid later to get more balanced fights)

Sadly, UW has seen many guilds leaving so it’s a bit under-populated atm… UW had a good community before, hope to see you guys on the battlefield again!

thanks for sharing, I did some testing in LA and the damage increase on my sample was negligible

I’ll repeat some that have been mentioned because these are important:

• Fix iLeap pathing
• Fix retaliation (see my post about it ) that affects in an unbalanced way many of our skills
• Fix temporal curtain’s speed stacking
• Fix iWarden attack range
• Add a portal range indicator
• Fix scepter clones making them cast the full autoattack chain (like the sword clones do)
• Fix the random teleports on Feedback use (they are still there)

Suggestions (not small fixes):

• Remove the rooting on Mind Stab and/or increase the radius
• Reduce the scepter autoattack direct damage and add a condition component (bleed or confusion) to make a proper condition weapon instead of the hybrid it is currently
• Reduce null field duration to 3s, but make it remove 2 cond/boon per pulse
• Prioritize null field boon and condition stripping:

boon: aegis > stability > protection > might > regen > retaliation > swiftness > vigor > fury
conditions: immobilize|fear > bleed|burning|poison|torment > chill > cripple > weakness > confusion > blind > vulnerability

Sawnic.6795:

It’s perfectly fair how it is. You hit more times, you get hit more times back.

You are just saying that the current implementation works the way is meant to work, but it’s not “fair” if some classes/abilities are punished in an unbalanced amount considering the damage dealt.

One hammer stun (or backstab, etc): inflicts 3k damage, receives 300 damage from retaliation.

One blurred frenzy (or unload, etc): inflicts 3k damage, receives 300*8 damage from retaliation.

Even considering the multiple hits have a higher chance to proc on-crit sigils (that then go on cooldown, so on the mid term it evens out), it’s not fair

Was a fun week, thanks everyone for the fights (and bags)
GL everyone for reset!

We had some a-m-a-z-i-n-g fights yesterday on VZ border (I’m sad that I didn’t record the one on north camp: at the end I had to refresh my food buffs!).

Today we had few YaKs on Gandara border, but we had many fellow Gandarans join us on TS and we did good against VZ zergs and guilds, and managed to get back most of the borderland.
Gandara is really getting in shape for the season, good job everyone!

Shoutout to ELY guild, you got some serious skill and coordination!

Welcome to the purple/pink side

All choices seem sensible to me for the population of a lower tier server.
I would change the runes to either hoelbrak (more dps) or melandru (more tanky) and the food to the -condition duration, because the heal on crit was nerfed iirc, and as a mesmer you’ll always have problems with conditions anyway.

I have a preference for the +power stacking sigil instead of the +precision one, but I rarely get sharper images and with that trait the precision could make more sense.

My ranger is only lv 29
I checked the wiki and yes, barrage sounds awful for retaliation damage.

One thing that strikes me about retaliation is that punishes skills that generate a lot of small, quick repeating, attacks far more than single big strikes: mesmer’s blurred frenzy, engineers flamethrower and grenades, thieves unload, warrior’s offhand axe, etc.

The original design of the skill was “reflect a percentage of the damage back to the enemy”, but with the current implementation (flat damage on hit, based on player power) the punishment seems unfair for those skills, considering that one blurred frenzy or unload can output similar damage to a warrior hammer stun and get punished 6-8 times more.

Applying the skill damage multiplier (per hit) to the retaliation damage would be more in line with the “reflect a percentage of the damage” design goal, could create a more level playing field for all classes and allow for more build variety.

I’m late to the party, but I wanted to throw down some ideas.

With no details on which kind of commander are you going to be (commanding pugs in EB? A guild group?) I’ll stay on the safe side and make a build that is the tankiest and the most solid you can be (except maybe some power pvt+knights builds):

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgUQNAsdWlwzSpHSTsGa9IhpHkitten1juf9vXqAvB-j0CB4iBCrBkWAkmGg+AKTqIaslRFRjVJjIqWdDzgO1W0DRTKAmkGB-w

With about 3k armor, 22k hp (24.5k with guard defense buff) and anti-stun and condition removal you are on the safe side for tanking. Blurred Frenzy and Distortion still apply for emergencies. Also, you’ll get vigor on crits, protection from Illusionary Membrane whenever you have regen on you and a lot of random boons from interrupts (via focus pull, chaos storm and diversion).

Your damage comes from sword swings (a bit weak due to the condition build), reflects and shatters (all of them applying confusion): you can combo with iLeap from very short range and Swap: it’s only a 1 clone shatter, but it works almost everytime and you have Illusionary Persona.

This is not the most efficient damage dealing build: it’s meant to give you a high chance of survival and assumes you’re commanding an unorganized group, so you can’t count much on external condition removal.

If you want to discuss the build or a different one feel free to pm me in game or reply to the thread

In Game Name: Caos Danzante
Server: Gandara (EU)

Playing WvW with my guild (20-25+ and GvG) most of the time, so I’m interested in WvW and theorycrafting about WvW. When I’m not in the borderlands, I’m open to testing in open world/WvW/sPVP and to teach new mesmers some tricks to survive the leveling

skcamow.3527:

Good stuff. Another idea would be to make a vid of pushing/pulling opponents off cliffs/ledges in skyhammer. Good times.

On Skyhammer the immobilize on interrupt combined with the focus pull is deadly

We had a decent reset in Gandara borderland, lots of enemies to fight and good skill level. VZ had a lot of people, and very good coordination, we did what we could to fight them wave after wave

Let’s hope they wont bunker in T3 towers and keeps later during the week!
Cya on the battlefield!

how does it make the rank being per character even worse? the notes say the item is account bound, you can use it to rank up your alt…

Check gw2stuff.com and go Shatterer, Golem mark II and Fire Shaman… Note that you can loot the chest containing the dragonite multiple times with different characters during the same day (you get the addictional chest only once per event per day, tough).

Daendur.2357:

It will be a mysterious chest, you will be holding your breath while opening it and then you’ll find … suspence …. 2 greens, 1 drop of liquid karma and 2.34silver.

TWO greens ?!
/faint

I guess that’s the new content for WvWers…

I think someone suggested the option for players in queue to act as “mercenaries” guesting on other servers, but this solution seems far more interesting and viable.

You don’t see many mesmers (or rangers, engineers, thieves) in GvG teams because the current meta favors melee trains and ground targeted aoe damage (necros, eles) and requires a lot of condition removal

Maskaganda.2043:

multivira.7925:

Lets hope gandaras numbers dwindle during the week… this is awful in the morning

indeed. wth happened, did they all get bored with tequatl?

if anyone as bored as I am, whisper me for duels.

PVErs consider the matchup “easy” and they join wvw for farming karma/wxp/exp and completing their map exploration, resulting in long queues in every borderland and blobs

Since I’m here… Yaks had a few nice fights in AR border tonight, then some crazy zerg diving in EB till the lag disconnected half our (already smaller than usual) group

cya on the battlefield! o/

SagePoete.3216:

Gandara FlyHack – 00:05 – Map AR – Sunnyhill

I doubt it’s a hack for one reason: that gate is bugged since longtime, there’s also a screen of a dev “hacking” trough it somewhere in the forums… hope they’ll fix it soon.

Troopa.6179:

@deathcon: your link wasn’t that much helpful since the first table is incorrect i believe. you do with 50% crit dmg more damage than with 200%?! this table doesn’t make sense at all but if it does would be nice to explain it. I can’t see through.

horizontal axys: crit damage. The base crit damage is 50%, so for your build you should check the column below 150% (50 + 96)
vertical axys: crit chance. You have 76%, so you should check the value on that line.

Value at 150% crit dmg and 75% crit chance: 2975.
If your power is more than that (hard to imagine, I don’t think you can get to that number even with 25 might and 25 bloodlust), then gaining more crit chance (precision) gives better returns, otherwise, gaining power gives you better returns.

This doesn’t factor in increased bleeding procs from clones/phantasms from sharper images (I’m not sure if anyone did the math for that), but you say you’re interested in raw direct damage and in that perspective, berserker gear is superior to assassin’s gear.

Unless the terrain is really smooth and even, I use illusionary leap only from very short distance to get the immobilize off

We could definitely use some ground-casted AoE for WvW, but I’d rather gain it with new/revamped weapon skills, since our utility slots are already taken (stun breaker, null field, veil/portal)

Pulling people Into the void.

Kinshiro.1472:

Yep this is utterly stupid. Anet said that this stuff will “courage smaller dedicated groups to cap and hold these points” which sure as **** ain’t true. How would smaller group fight against 20-40 man zergs that sit on these points

I played WvW every night (EU primetime) since the patch. I’m on Gandara and we faced Baruch Bay and Fort Ranik first and Millers Sound and Augury Rock next. I never seen any zerg on the ruins or even groups bigger than 10-15. Most of the fights were in the range of 2 to 5 people per side.

Ricky.4706:

one possible idea to fix this would be what I’d like to coin – a balance of powers mechanism – the total dps and health of the server you are fighting – gets spread out to the opposing server ….. so if server A has 500 people that can do, 1 million dps total – and server B only has 10 people ….the game balances the power by giving those 10 people – 100k dps each along with the the equivalent health – then it would be fun to fight the odds and be underdog. I’d love nothing more than to get swarmed and zap out 10 people at a time with 1 shot. THAT would be FUN and Justice.

WoW did something like that in the “pvp zone” added in WoTLK.
It wasn’t fun.

Looking forward to this week, nice reset everyone

(those hammer trains, VoTF!!)

Welcome to the world of WvW/ZvZ mesmers…

keenlam.4753:

L5% is really underwhelming for a grandmaster minor. Sigil of Impact alone gives 10% to stunned or knocked down foes. /sad face

Yes, it’s quite poor for a grand master minor.

Weapon: hammer (or one of the others mentioned)
Signet: something defensive that gives toughness on passive and evasion on active
Manipulation: love your idea of place swapping!
Glamour 1: bubbles! Create 10-12 ethereal bubbles that drop from the sky and follow the terrain. Every foe that gets hit is knocked down for 1 second.
Glamour 2: dark portal. In the shape of temporal curtain/veil, you drop an exit portal and the skill changes allowing you to drop an entry portal. Enemies that enter the entry portal zone get ported to the exit portal (and can’t come back).
Mantra: Mantra of Confusion, apply 2 stacks of confusion
Heal: heal more for each boon on you
Elite: displacement. You and the allies around you (radius 900) appear in a different position (range 600? 900?) for 5 seconds.

Me Games Ma.8426:

I just created a build that allows me to jump into the enemyzerg and shatter with all I’ve got^^

also works fine in zerg v zerg ^^ massdmg through confusion and you’re invulnerable the whole time

Works for tagging, but the damage with a power build is much better (spike kills people)

Wastrel’s Punishment

I think “inactive” means dazed/stunned/knocked down/etc.

Did you try dazing your friend?

I can think of 2 possible behaviors: either it gives 5% more damage on dazed than the 5% less damage on players casting (zeroing out the bonus/malus) or it gives 5% more damage than the normal damage, leaving us with the mistery of the reduced damage on players casting a skill

Wow, that’s a cool bug
(is it already on the bug forum?)

Uther Deathhand.1570:

Sarrs.4831:

Dynnen.6405:

A road map if you would sir! We’re in the woods with no direction and no answers! =*(

With leagues coming up and orbs about to be introduced, yeah, we really could use a good long discussion about the state and the future of WvW.

Well for the near future they are taking a break from working on wvw. They said that during the league season there will be NO significant changes to wvw so the field stays even….. pretty good excuse if you ask me. Gives them a good amount of time to really make some good changes with out people asking for things right away because they already covered their kitten with the league.
Also as many of the devs including Colin and Devon have said they will not be giving us specific information about their plans for future things because than if for some reason it doesn’t happen or they want to do something different they wouldn’t get grief for it. Ignorance is bliss i guess.
Edit: Here is the quote by Devon: To further incentivize spending your points we will not be introducing any new ability lines during the season, nor shall we be making any other changes to WvW, with the exception of bug fixes, until the season concludes. This is to ensure that the playing field is as level as it can be at the start and the finish of the season.

To be fair, it makes perfect sense.
You don’t want the rules to change during the match, it would be stupid and unfair.
And, at the same time, ANet will be able to focus on big changes (that everyone is asking) for 7 weeks.

Radiology.3597:

I can list even more but whats the point right? What does this all say to me? That there is no reason to WvW and they don’t care if there is no reason to play WvW

Do you realize that GW2 is a game and the only “reason” to play it should be to have fun?
I play WvW because I love massive, confusing battles between dozens of players.

It could be better (and I concur with some of the points you mentioned), but as long as it will be fun, I’ll play WvW.

Zoel.9154:

bla bla rant bla bla

you forgot the foodbuffs

maeggle.6021:

Dawdler.8521:

You have to do razor sharp cuts into the melee train to reduce their strength

Most guild groups get bored quickly / give up and try to find easier targets. The Kodash PUG Cloud™ does that since head start.

Look at that aweful ele’s stuff.

Well, your best bet as a guild group is to switch out the guardians’ hammers with great swords and use sth else than skill #1 and #2 sometimes hint, hint.

Fun stuff aside, I really hope there will someday be some viable alternative to the 2/3 melee train for (somewhat) organized raid groups. It really hurts variety in WvW, this being the easiest to play and strongest composition for groups of ~20+.

Yep, Kodash pugs were really good at spreading and focusing fire.
Hope to face them again in silver league!

WvW is not about fairness, it’s war.

Confusion had high damage because it was a condition meant to punish the player for using skills. The real problem was that it was really easy to get lots of stacks on zergs that were mindlessly spamming their autoattack and destroy them.

So they made a double “fix” that destroyed confusion builds: they put a cooldown on the trait that applied confusion on enter/exit ethereal fields AND they cut the damage in half. In this way we cannot apply large stacks of confusion to large groups and even if we manage to do it (with interrupts and perplexity runes for example) the damage is so low that there’s no point in doing it.

I tested the perplexity runes… the best confusion damage I’ve seen in the WvW group setting I play usually was about 1.5k. That’s IF the enemy uses one skill. It’s less than damage I can get from a non-crit mindwrack… so where’s the point?

Once you get the crafting to 500, is not much expensive to craft all the weapons. The problem is that we need artificer for scepter, focus and staff, weaponsmith for gs and sword, huntsman for torch and pistol…

Nuka Cola.8520:

if it was me i’d delete all mantras and mantra related traits and give mesmers something for better mobility and aoe damage. i do not care or want to see mantras on mesmers. mesmers are supposed to confuse people so give them something like so instead of crappy mantras.

Mantra of concentration is the best stun breaker we have for group WvW and restorative mantras is quite nice for support.

They can be better, for example I wouldn’t mind if mantra of pain was an AoE and if the charge cast was shortened to 2s…

skcamow.3527:

While all these are good points, I think it’s important to remember the various ways to “counter” interrupting our mantra charges.

Also, consider range (blink) and line of sight or more situational things like standing inside the iWarden bubble against ranged opponents.

I got a second mesmer to troll (alongside another fellow mesmer) my guild leader that says he doesn’t see us around him while we roam in WvW (I’m a small Sylvari, my friend is an Asura, the guild leader is a big Norn).

So, we made two huge norn mesmers and we log them from time to time only “to be seen” :°)

Retraiting and getting more gear is the easiest way to accomplish what you want

As a proud Bolt owner, I can recommend it. All the lightning!11

The Yaks had some fun on Gandara border tonight defending (!) Hills for hours against hordes of Fort Ranik and some groups from BB.
One of the best resets since a long time, keep the fights coming!

If you have space to move around, spreading out is a decent counter to melee trains.