Guild Wars 2

This post is part of a series I made for the 4th birthday of the game. You can find links to the other posts in the overview

Trebuchets

Trebuchets are the ultimate long-range weapon for siegeing objectives that are too fortified and they are very good for cleaning up siege inside said objectives, too. Trebs have been used for defending gates from the inside: that wasn’t originally intended and one of the changes we plan to apply is to fix the damage going through the gates. We’re confident that the changes to cannons and oil should be enough to cover the defense of gates, so this won’t feel like a loss.
Trebs are also the most massive siege we have in game, and since they are very long range, most of the time when using them you end up with a few guys “working” and everyone else sitting there watching. As we said, we wanted to change that, so now normal trebs can be used by up to 5 players and superior trebs up to 10.

• as with other projectile-based siege, trebuchets now have a limited amount of charges (I’d say 60, but numbers as usual can be tweaked), then they need to be refilled spending 10 supplies.
• the skills are now ground-targeted and the “power bar” mechanic handles the amount of damage dealt, making the catapults easier to use. Only the first player using the catapult can use the targeting circle.
• a new camera angle has been added when using trebuchets to allow players to better target at long range.
• a new mechanic has been introduced: a cursor moves around a Power Bar and the player needs to activate the “special action” button at the right time to stop the cursor inside the highlighted area (by default 1% of the bar width) to get the best possible Power Score. This is used to calculate the damage increase for the hit.
• normal trebuchets can be used by up to 5 players, the damage will be increased by up to 10% per additional player (based on how accurate their Power Score)
• superior trebuchets can be used by up to 10 players with the same mechanic.
• when using the Fire Explosive Shot skill, if the trebuchet is fully manned (5 people for normal trebs and 10 people for superior trebs) and all players get a perfect Power Score, it will initiate a Wrecking Attack, dealing 100% increased damage in an area 50% wider than usual and launching away enemies in the area. This skill has a 30 seconds internal cooldown. Each player participating in the Wrecking Attack is rewarded a Proof of Heroics.
• using any skill puts the trebuchet on cooldown for 5 seconds
• Fire Explosive Shot, Fire Rotting Cow and Healing Oasis are now ground targeted skills.
• Fire Explosive Shot uses one charge.
• Fire Rotting Cow uses one charge.
• Healing Oasis uses 5 charges.
• Trebuchet mastery rank 1: increases the damage of trebuchet skills
• Trebuchet mastery rank 2: Rotting Cow now drains supply from enemy players
• Trebuchet mastery rank 3: increases the radius of trebuchet skills
• Trebuchet mastery rank 4: new skill, Healing Oasis, creates a water field that heals allies
• Trebuchet mastery rank 5: when Explosive Shot hits an enemy supply depot, it will now destroy 10 of the objective’s supplies. Wrecking attacks hitting an enemy supply depot will destroy 50 supplies.
• Trebuchet mastery rank 6 (new): the trebuchet rotates 25% faster
• Trebuchet mastery rank 7 (new): the pushback from Explosive Shot is now a 360 units launch effect

Shield generators

Shield generators are a strong defensive option that perfectly embodies the “slow your opponents down without killing them” role we want for siege. It can be used to defend walls from catapults, for example, but also to split enemy groups so a smaller force can take on chunks of the enemy blob at a time. Since the introduction of the Shield Generator changed the roles for various siege, we removed the defensive bubble from catapults and we moved Iron Will from the Flame Ram to the Shield Generator to keep the focus of each siege on a specific role.

• as with other projectile-based siege, shield generators now have a limited amount of charges (I’d say 50, but numbers as usual can be tweaked), then they need to be refilled spending 10 supplies.
• Force Ball target limit reduced to 10 allies and 10 enemies for normal shield generators and 25 (allies and enemies) for superiors. Uses one charge.
• Force Wall uses 8 charges.
• Force Dome uses 5 charges.
• New skill, Iron Will, applies Iron Hide (50% damage reduction) to up to 50 allies in the selected area (radius untraited 450, traited 600) for 10 seconds. 50s cooldown. Uses 10 charges.
• Shield Generator mastery rank 1: Force Ball grants aegis to allies on impact
• Shield Generator mastery rank 2: Force Dome grants twice as much stability per pulse
• Shield Generator mastery rank 3: increases the radius for all shield generator skills
• Shield Generator mastery rank 4: increases the duration of Force Wall, Force Dome and Iron Hide and increases the average number of Force Ball bounces
• Shield Generator mastery rank 5: prevents damage from arrow cart fire to allies inside Force Dome

Mortars

Mortars are a strong defensive weapon, able to hit offensive siege even at longer distances, and their burn and CC can be very effective against players, too. We’ll update them to bring them in line with the changes made to other siege and revise the cooldowns a bit to keep things in check.

• as with other projectile-based siege, mortars now have a limited amount of charges (I’d say 30, but numbers as usual can be tweaked), then they need to be refilled spending 10 supplies
• Fire Exploding Shells and Fire Incendiary Shells are now two different skills and are ground targeted
• a new camera angle has been added to allow players to better target at long range
• when any skill is used, the mortar is put on a 10s cooldown (reduced to 8s with the mastery)
• Fire Exploding Shells range has been slighly reduced and the blast radius has been slighly increased. The target limit for this skill is now 25. The damage to siege has been increased by 20% to account for the increased cooldown. The skill uses 1 charge.
• Fire Incendiary Shells range has been reduced by 50%, but the skill now launches a barrage of 5 projectiles, each creating the familiar fire field around the targeted area. Uses 5 charges.
• Mortar Barrage now fires 7 projectiles, each dealing damage and CC to a maximum of 10 players. The damage to players has been reduced by 50% and the cooldown increased to 30s. This skill uses 7 charges.
• Mortar mastery rank 1: increase blast radius on all mortar skills
• Mortar mastery rank 2 (new): increase the range for a perfect Power Score to 3% of the full bar
• Mortar mastery rank 3 (modified): reduce the cooldown period after using a mortar skill to 8s
• Mortar mastery rank 4: increase damage on all mortar skills by 25%
• Mortar mastery rank 5: new skill, Mortar Barrage, launches a barrage of rounds that pushes back foes where they land
• Mortar mastery rank 6 (new): the mortar rotates 25% faster
• Mortar mastery rank 7 (new): Incendiary Shells fire fields now also inflict Cripple for 1 second
• Mortar mastery rank 8 (new): increases the range for a perfect Power Score to 5% of the full bar

Golems

Golems are pretty balanced: they are expensive, both the blueprint and as supply cost, enough not to be overly used, very strong but with obvious vulnerabilities and require a well coordinated group – or no defenders – to work properly.

• as with other projectile-based siege, Omega Golems now have a limited amount of charges (I’d say a generous amount since they are already costly… 100? 150? numbers, as usual, can be tweaked), then they need to be refilled spending 10 supplies.

Flame Rams

Flame rams are the siege of choice for most attacks: cheap and reliable, they are vulnerable to most of the defensive siege, requiring a well coordinated group for a successful run at a well defended gate. Building on that foundation, with the implementation of multi-user siege, we wanted for rams to be the most affected by the changes, requiring more coordination for a greater reward in efficiency at damaging enemy gates.

• a new mechanic has been introduced: a cursor moves around a Power Bar and the player needs to activate the “special action” button at the right time to stop the cursor inside the highlighted area (by default 1% of the bar width) to get the best possible Power Score. This is used to calculate the damage increase for the hit.
• normal rams can be used by up to 3 players, the damage will be increased by up to 10% per additional player (based on their Power Score)
• superior rams can be used by up to 5 players with the same mechanic.
• if at maximum capacity (3 people for normal rams and 5 people for superior rams) all players get a perfect Power Score, the ram will initiate a Wrecking Attack, dealing 100% increased damage and launching away enemies that are behind the gate. This skill has a 20 seconds internal cooldown. Each player participating in the Wrecking Attack is rewarded a Proof of Heroics.
• all other flame ram skills have been removed, Iron Will/Iron Hide have been moved to shield generators
• Flame Ram Mastery Rank 1 (new): the player gains 3s of protection every 3s when is using a Flame Ram
• Flame Ram Mastery Rank 2 (new): automatically applies the Flame Blast burning and fear on every hit (it only applies if the “main” character using the ram has the mastery)
• Flame Ram Mastery Rank 3 (modified): the main attack can be used more often (20% cooldown reduction, it only applies if the “main” character using the ram has the mastery)
• Flame Ram Mastery Rank 4 (new): unlocks the ability to initiate “wrecking attacks” (it only applies if the “main” character using the ram has the mastery)
• Flame Ram Mastery Rank 5 (new): increases the area for a “perfect” power score to 3% of the full bar
• Flame Ram Mastery Rank 6 (new): increases the area for a “perfect” power score to 5% of the full bar

Catapults

Catapults are the staple of most attacks aimed at walls and are often used defensively, too, so we’re happy with them at the moment. We’ve made a few changes to accomodate the new multiple-user mechanics and swapped the defensive bubble mastery with something new, since with the introduction of the Shield Generator, the bubble has been made redundant.

• as with other projectile-based siege, catapults now have a limited amount of charges (I’d say 40, but numbers as usual can be tweaked), then they need to be refilled spending 10 supplies.
• the main attack is now ground-targeted and the “power bar” mechanic handles the amount of damage dealt, making the catapults easier to use – only the first player using the catapult can use the targeting circle.
• normal catapults can be used by up to 2 players, the damage will be increased by up to 10% per additional player (based on their Power Score)
• superior catapults can be used by up to 4 players with the same mechanic as the normal catapults.
• Catapult mastery rank 1: increases damage done to walls by 20%
• Catapult mastery rank 2: Gravel Shot now applies bleeding
• Catapult mastery rank 3: increases radius of all catapult skills
• Catapult mastery rank 4: increases catapult damage by 25%
• Catapult mastery rank 5: reduces the gravel and boulder cooldown by 20%
• Catapult mastery rank 6 (new): the catapult rotates 25% faster
• Catapult mastery rank 7 (new): new skill, Explosive Barrel, allows to shoot an explosive barrel that deals 100% more damage damage to walls, 200% more damage to siege and inflicts burning in a wide area (radius 600), but disables the catapult for 10 seconds.
• Catapult mastery rank 8 (new): the catapult rotates 25% faster (stacks with rank 6)

Cannons

Cannons are in a good spot at the moment, but they still suffer from being often destroyed even before being used and for being a “trap” for the players using them.

• as with other projectile-based siege, cannons now have a limited amount of charges (I’d say 50, but numbers as usual can be tweaked), then they need to be refilled spending 10 supplies.
• each cannon skill puts the cannon on cooldown for 8 seconds: use them wisely!
• increased the damage inflicted to siege by 125% to balance the increased cooldown, maintaining the same amount of DPS against siege
• fixed a bug that made the chill effect hit outside the displayed ring when traited
• Cannon mastery rank 1 (new): the player gains 3s of Protection every 3s and 3 stacks of Stability for 3s every 3s when using a cannon.
• Cannon mastery rank 2: increases damage on the normal cannon attack by 33%
• Cannon mastery rank 3: Grapeshot now inflicts 10 stacks of bleeding instead of 5
• Cannon mastery rank 4: increases the radius of all cannon skills
• Cannon mastery rank 5: the normal attacks remove 3 boons from all targets
• Cannon mastery rank 6 (new): the cannon rotates 50% faster
• Cannon mastery rank 7 (new): changes the pushback from the normal attack into a 300 unit launch

Burning oil

The big pot of burning oil is – on paper – one of the best defensive sieges available: lots of damage where it hurts, directly above the gate. But in reality, it suffers the same problem as cannons, since it’s often destroyed before even being used. The oil area of attack is limited and sitting on it puts the operator in one of the worse spots possible when it comes to being slaughtered by an angry zerg.

• increased Burning Oil HP by 100%
• changed how the main attack, Pour Oil, works: it is now a fixed area, as wide as the gate and extending outward from the gate for 360 units in length, with a 10 seconds cooldown. This attack does enough damage to bring a normal flame ram to 50% HP in 6 seconds. Deals about 2000 damage to players and inflicts 3 stacks of burning for 3 seconds per tick.
• the skill Pour Tar works the same way, except the area is longer (480 units), so it can hit further away from the gate
• Burning oil mastery rank 1: increases Pour Oil and Pour Tar area by 25%
• Burning oil mastery rank 2 (new): increases Pour Oil damage to siege by 30% and to players by 15%
• Burning oil mastery rank 3 (modified): reduces the damage received by the oil pot and the player who is using it by 90%
• Burning oil mastery rank 4: Pour Oil also burns one supply from the targets affected
• Burning oil mastery rank 5 (modified): when the player is using the oil, a fiery dome that reflects projectiles surrounds both (always up, not a skill: the oil can still be damaged by ground-targeted AoE, siege, well aimed siege disablers, etc)

Ballistas

Ballistas have suffered from several limitations since the start of the game. The need for a clear line of sight, the slow projectiles and limited range makes them rarely useful to clear enemy siege and to counter enemy groups. The changes are intended to make the ballista a better tool overall.

• as with other projectile-based siege, ballistas now have a limited amount of charges (I’d say 20, but numbers as usual can be tweaked), then they need to be refilled spending 10 supplies.
• changed the AoE size for ballista bolts to 120, but there’s no limit to the number of targets a ballista projectile can pierce.
• the default bolt speed has been increased (now fast as Swift Bolt was before)
• reduced the damage to players by 50%
• increased range to 4000
• Fire Shattering Bolt has been changed into Fire Explosive Bolt that deals damage on a large area (radius 400) and inflicts burning. This skill has a target limit of 50, cooldown 20s and uses 3 charges. Deals the same damage as a cannon (untraited) attack and plus inflicts 3 stacks of burning for 3 seconds. This skill does massive amount of damage to siege all siege in the blast area.
• Fire Reinforced Shot cooldown has been decreased to 20s. This attack uses 2 charges.
• Ballista mastery rank 1: new skill, Spread Shot — Fires 5 projectiles in a cone pattern. Uses 5 charges.
• Ballista mastery rank 2: increases ballista damage by 25%
• Ballista mastery rank 3: increases ballista range by 500
• Ballista mastery rank 4: increases ballista bolt AoE size to 180
• Ballista mastery rank 5: all ballista shots pierce unlimited targets
• Ballista mastery rank 6 (new): the ballista now rotates 50% faster
• Ballista mastery rank 7 (new): Spread Shot now fires 7 projectiles and uses 7 charges.
• Ballista mastery rank 8 (new): players hit by the ballista are also pushed back a little (120 units).

Arrow carts

Arrow carts are the most used defensive siege. We want them to be useful to slow down enemies, but we don’t want for them to “automatically win” the fights for the defensive force, so we reduced the damage dealt but increased the amount and quality of conditions applied and we made changes to how they affect enemy siege.

• damage and conditions have been normalized and are not influenced by players’ stats
• as with other projectile-based siege, arrow carts now have a limited amount of charges (I’d say 50, but numbers as usual can be tweaked), then they need to be refilled spending 10 supplies.
• all arrow cart attacks disrupt the use of the “power bar” on the enemy siege, making the cursor movement erratic and by consequence, limiting the damage from the siege.
• damage to players decreased by 50% and to siege decreased by 80%
• decreased maximum number of targets for normal AC to 15 and for superior AC to 25
• Arrow cart mastery rank 1: increases range on all arrow cart skills by 300
• Arrow cart mastery rank 2 (new): arrow cart skills apply the chill effect on enemy siege, slowing down the recharge for siege skills (and/or increasing the cooldown period after using a skill)
• Arrow cart mastery rank 3 (new): arrow cart Fire skill applies 1s of slow to enemies and siege; stacks in duration up to 5 times
• Arrow cart mastery rank 4: increases radius on all arrow cart skills by 180
• Arrow cart mastery rank 5: new skill, Toxic Unveiling Volley, removes stealth and applies poison to targets

Let’s admit it: having 20 (or 50) people sitting on the side watching 3 people flinging rocks to a wall is NOT a lot of fun. At the same time, being under the focused fire of a few superior arrowcarts and cannons is definitely not fun as you’ll probably die in seconds.

WvW is a Player vs Player game mode, siege primary role should be to get rid of the enemy’s siege and hinder the enemy players, not kill them. It feels wrong to me that a tiny force is able to scatter a huge blob only because they have a lot of superior arrowcarts. They should not to kill the blob, but they should be able to slow down the attackers for long enough for reinforces to arrive.

If you want to defend an objective against a blob, Bring Your Own Blob!

These are the changes I would make to siege.

Changes to siege

• Reduced the maximum target limit across all siege, with the exception of ballistas and cannons
• Normalized the damage so that is not affected by player stats
• Siege disablers have a larger radius, but can only disable one siege at a time and only cost 5 supplies to use.
• Reworked Flame Rams, Catapults and Trebuchets so they can be used by multiple players, increasing the damage dealt.
• Streamlined the skills on Rams, Catapults and Trebuchets to make them easier to use and better reflect their role.
• A new mechanic has been introduced: the Power Bar is used by Flame Rams and additional players on Catapults and Trebuchets. A cursor moves around the bar and the player needs to activate the “special action” button at the right time to stop the cursor inside the highlighted area (by default 1% of the bar width) to get the best possible Power Score. This is used to calculate the damage increase for the hit.
• All projectile-based siege now has a limited amount of charges and can be refilled with supplies.
• A new “Siege Refill” mastery line has been introduced to make the refilling of various siege more efficient (uses less supplies, increases number of charges gained per supply, etc)
• Inactive, friendly siege located inside an objective that is not under attack will be automatically refilled by workers using spare supplies from the objective’s supply depot. Killing the workers prevents the automatic refill from happening.

This post is part of a series I made for the 4th birthday of the game. You can find links to the other posts in the overview

The guild upgrades system for WvW is one of the most unnecessarily convoluted and unfunny systems I’ve ever seen in any game.

Let’s take a look on how you got hold of a Guild Catapult with the old system:

• Play with your guildmates to gain Guild Influence
• Upgrade your guild with Influence
• Queue up catapults spending Influence

I honestly don’t remember if you even needed Guild Missions to unlock access to the Guild Catapults upgrade, but I’m pretty sure you didn’t. And if you did, it was only a few missions.

Now with the new system you first need to unlock the Guild Catapult scribing schematic recipe by upgrading your guild, then you need to level up Scribing to 300 to be able to craft said schematic.
Let’s see the details, shall we?

Note: every upgrade requires materials (some only obtainable from PvE, some even time-gated), Valor gained by playing guild missions and Aetherium that is time gated. The gold cost I reported here only includes materials that can be bought at the trading post.

To unlock the Guild Catapult schematic, you’ll need:

• A guild hall (100g + pve event)
• Tavern Restoration 1 (about 78g in materials)
• Mine Excavation 1 (about 29g)
• Aetherium Capacity 1 (about 16g)
• Workshop Restoration 1 (about 105g)
• War Room Restoration 1 (about 100g)
• WvW Guild Claiming: Camps (about 45g)
• Enough guild upgrades to reach Guild Level 10 (cheapest/most useful options are about 550g)
• Aetherium Capacity 2 (about 75g)
• WvW Guild Claiming: Towers (about 90g)
• Enough guild upgrades to reach level 19 (cheapest/useful options are about 1200g)
• Scribing: Guild Catapult (about 30g)

At this point you need to level up Scribing to 300 on some player in your guild. Ideally you want it on a Guild Leader or some trusted Officer, because Scribing is a player profession and if the player leaves the guild you lose access to the ability to craft those catapults you worked so hard to get.

The cheapest way to level scribing to 300 requires more guild upgrades (I didn’t waste time calculating the prices, but it’s probably a few hundreds more gold, altho you can join another guild to use their recipes to level up Scribing):

• Enough upgrades to reach level 23 and unlock guild banquet
• Unlock the Gathering Bonus Banner
• Unlock the Gold from Kills Banner
• Unlock the Guild Ballista
• Unlock the Centaur Banner

And, of course, leveling Scribing has it’s own costs. Leveling to 300 is about 200g at the moment, using the upgrades mentioned.

Once you have Scribing to 300 and the Guild Catapult upgrade unlocked, you can finally craft schematics that are then to be queued in the Assembly Device in your Guild Hall and after a short time the desired upgrade (the legendary Guild Catapult) will be available in your guild’s Storage.

Can we say that whoever designed this lost sight of what is fun in a game somewhere along the road? Because this doesn’t feel like fun. At all. And worse, upgrading a guild to provide bonuses in WvW is – mostly – completely disconnected from playing WvW.

Being able to claim a keep doesn’t say anything about your guild’s ability to defend said keep, for example. And the same goes for everything else.
The process of unlocking these upgrades doesn’t say anything about your guild’s proficiency in WvW. They are completely disconnected from your “WvW track record”: how many hours have your players spent in WvW on average this week? How many kills? And deaths? How many objectives did they capture and defend? How much siege they built or refreshed?
What about the “totals”, instead? How many hours did your players spend in total in WvW? How many total kills they have? We’re talking long term here, to determine how “veteran” on average the players in the guild are.
Those are just a few examples of sensible metrics you could tie the access to upgrades to.
And you know what? You could make some of it even dynamic. For example, you could unlock the claiming of keeps and Stonemist only for dedicated WvW guilds that have defended keeps the week before. Or, as another example, you could tie access to Guild siege based on how many objectives the guild captured.
Make it feel like improving your playstyle and putting effort in WvW is rewarding.
And give us a reason to boast about our dedication!

This post is part of a series I made for the 4th birthday of the game. You can find links to the other posts in the overview

Server linking is a temporary solution to a very messy problem: WvW population.

For WvW players, there’s two main constraints to consider: faction and server. Faction (“color”) is a hard constraint: during a match you shouldn’t be able to join the other factions to spy, grief and what else. The Server is a “soft” constraint, as server linking clearly shows: players from two or more servers can easily fight for the same faction in the same matchup.

The problem is: how to spread out players to different factions in a way that is as balanced as possible during day and night and during the course of the week-long match? And how we keep guilds or servers “together” when we split the factions around? And how we maintain a healthy number of players in every map as long as possible?

In PvE it’s easy: everyone is on the same side, just create more copies of the same map and put them all in different copies. But for WvW we have the factions to consider, and possibly even the “server pride” that kept many communities together.

Getting rid of “servers”, consolidating the population in 3 different factions and having multiple copies of the same map(s) for each faction would open many options, for example there could be (player driven or ANet enforced) maps dedicated to different group sizes and playstyles: sometimes you are looking for small scale fights and there’s only blobs everywhere. Some other times you would rather relax and follow the blue dorito for some blobfest.

Maybe squads could be a good way of splitting the population. The commander picks a faction at the start of the matchup and who joins his squad is asked if he wants to lock with that particular faction for that matchup. Squads are big enough for a blob, but not enough to saturate a map, allowing for more people to join the same overflow (roamers, maybe one or two small guilds).

How to balance things up for the long term then? If everyone can pick his faction every week, we’ll soon end up with everyone trying to play for the same color and that wouldn’t be very funny.

Maybe there could be a system to spread out WvW guilds (but what if a player is in more than one WvW guild?) and public commanders (more questions: how do you define a “WvW guild” and a “public commander”?) between the factions, and players unaffiliated with either are assigned to the lowest population faction the first time they join WvW during a matchup, to balance things up.

I don’t know.
I gave this topic a lot of thought but I couldn’t find any solution that would completely satisfy me, so my “constructive contribution” here is limited to pointing out what I think the problems are and a few ideas I had about how to solve them.

This post is part of a series I made for the 4th birthday of the game. You can find links to the other posts in the overview

Defending objectives always felt pretty useless. Yes, you might lose the upgrades, but in the end the objective will be easy to cap back once flipped. You lose maybe a few ticks of PPT and the effort required to upgrade it again (that happens automatically if you hold your camps).

What we need is a complete overhaul. Remove Points-Per-Tick completely: factions will gain points by killing enemies and capturing or defending objectives.

Capture and Defense bonus points are to be calculated based on a sensible balance with the PPK score.

Having the scores based on combat and capture will automatically give a more balanced result that reflects the level of activity thorough the day AND night without any need for complicated systems to calculate the population or force servers to have a predetermined “prime time”: only active play matters, from every player in any timezone.

This will also greatly reduce the influence of “nightcapping”: once the objective is captured, it won’t bring in any more points, unless there’s someone attacking it and the nightcappers defend it.

Capturing objectives will reward points based on the objective type (camp, tower, etc) and the upgrade level. Capturing a fully upgraded Stonemist will finally feel rewarding!

“Under attack” and white swords

Camps are considered “under attack” when any of the guards is in combat.
Towers, Keeps and Stonemist Castle are considered “under attack” when any gate or wall receives siege damage or falls below 95% health: this should prevent most griefing/exploiting by tagging objectives with bots.

When the objective is under attack, white swords appear instantly, for better reaction times in defense.

Defense events

When a Tower, Keep or Stonemist Castle are under attack a new event spawns for the defending server: they have a “defensive window” of N minutes (2 minutes seems like a decent value to start with, could scale with the upgrade level since it takes longer to break into upgraded objectives) to kill or chase away the attackers and/or destroy or disable their siege. The conditions to win the event may vary, I’m not sure how the event engine works internally and what statistics can it hook to, so that’ll need more research.

If the defenders win the event, they gain a fixed amount of wvw score based on what objective is being defended.
This bonus doesn’t scale with the objective upgrade level for a simple reason: while it is more important to defend an upgraded objective (because you’re denying a bigger chunk of points to the enemy), it is also easier. Keeping the defense bonus equal at all upgrade levels should be an incentive to defend non-upgraded objectives, even if it’s harder.

Camps would not give bonus points for defense, because having the supplies delivered to upgrade objectives should already be incentive enough for defending them (strategic value).

The objectives are not considered under attack anymore when they are captured or there’s no damage to guards, gates, walls or stationary defensive siege (cannons, mortars, etc) for two “defensive windows” in a row.

New mechanic: “Desperate Defense”. When an objective is being captured (“ring up”), defenders gain rewards for each second they can stall (account bound currency – proof of heroics? – capped hourly or daily to prevent exploiting). Bonuses could be applied for specific situations, for example there could be increased rewards for upgraded objectives, or for strategic objectives like the shrine of a keep that is under attack.

New mechanic: “Multiple objective bonus”. When multiple objectives are conquered by the same faction in a short timespan (let’s say, less than the “Defensive Window” duration), the faction receives bonus points for the feat: rewarding attacking multiple objectives at the same time, we give incentive to split the blobs in smaller groups and make fights better for everyone.

This post is part of a series I made for the 4th birthday of the game. You can find links to the other posts in the overview

ArenaNet seems to be trying to balance the whole game around the “competitive” pvp mode because that’s where people care the most about balance. But sPVP is a closed environment with very specific constraints: first of all, it’s a Conquest game mode that forces people to fight on points. Maps are designed with lots of Line-of-sight breaks and are small. The pvp choice of amulets, runes and sigils offers a very strict and controlled environment. And the population is limited to 5 players per side.

WvW is nothing of that and balance should acknowledge it.

• being able to customize your gear is great, but the availability of certain stat combinations and runes in WvW make for some builds that are not fun to play against, like perma stealth Dire condi trapper thieves/daredevils, druids or dragonhunters, or PU mesmers or necro/reapers with perplexity runes and Dire gear or fully tanky/healing druids, tempests, revenants or guardians.
• thanks to gear customization and availability of ascended gear and food buffs, the power levels and damage output in WvW can be extremely higher, leading to builds and classes that can nearly instakill their enemies. Instakills are not fun for either side.
• same goes for the amount of tank on some builds (especially healers and condition builds): fighting a seemingly immortal enemy is not fun.
• the power creep started being intolerable when the traitlines were revamped and the stats moved from the traits to the gear and it became even worse with the release of HoT, since the new gear has even more stat points.
• some thought must be put on the skills that affect multiple opponents because fights aren’t limited to 1-5 opponents in WvW.
• “passive immortality” is a horrible thing. Right now, Warriors, Engineers and Necros are particularly bad, with traits that automatically save them. Guardian has a lot of those traits too. It seems like these passive traits are necessary because the class active play is insufficient to their survival and that means that there’s a balancing problem somewhere: either the burst damage is too high in general or the class doesn’t have enough active defense mechanics.
• fixing the fact that is impossible for players to use their own ranged skills from the top of the walls would go a long way in making a nerf to arrow carts possible and make the game mode more about players and less about siege.

Countering the current meta

The current WvW meta (at least in the EU) for organized groups in WvW is heavily influenced by PvE raids: you can see groups buffing up before the fights and end up with dozens of seconds of Resistance and Quickness for example.

There’s a few ways to balance this. The first that comes to mind is to revise the boon duration across all classes and the boon share on mesmers, but that would probably affect PvE raids a lot and unlock another can of worms.

Another option is to make AoE boonstripping more widespread or more efficient, for example rework Null Field .

A third option would be to add new mechanics specifically tailored against boon sharing in PvP, like for example a new condition that works the opposite of Resistance, “disabling” the boons for a target for a very limited time.

Nevhie.6079:

2Boon and 2Condis/ sec plzz

Should good to remove enemy stab then counter it with Gravity well for 3s total CC in WvW Zerging.

Yeah I’ve been asking for that since ages, but I think this other idea is even better!

“best looking” is really a personal choice ^^

I have one for each race and personally like the Sylvari and Charr the most, but the Asura is cute and the Norn is preposterous. Only the Human feels a bit “meh” to me.

For the builds, I believe those on metabattle are updated.

What if Null Field instead of pulsing and stripping boons and conditions, was an area where conditions on (up to 5) allies are ignored (like if the allies inside the area had Resistance) and boons on (up to 5) enemies are ignored?

I would probably limit the duration to 3s, but it could be extremely interesting in WvW with the current obscene boonsharing meta. Not sure about PvP.

Thoughts?

I wish they would change it so that your next 3 attacks are unblockable, steal a boon and transfer a condition. I would love an utility like that.

remember that day or two when the only siege you could build was rams and alpha golems? that was fun

sooo… did this pass? poll is not running anymore…

Puck.9612:

TheGrimm.5624:

Sungtaro.6493:

Unless we were defending home bl, EB always queued first. And even then, if it was Tuesday or later in the week, EB always queued first.

kitten, EB always queued first, don’t let people try and say otherwise.

….do they not have the same population limit? The same number of objectives? Even though the DBL is substantially larger the alpine still has more open space around objectives for fighting. Only thing the DBL has is a lot more wasted space.

Please, define “wasted space”. Because maybe you forgot how Alpine Borderlands are shaped and how much space is wasted on that map.

Avit.3165:

To all who defend DBL, let me ask you something, why there is 100+ man queue for EBG and no queue for DBL, even after the changes?

I don’t “defend” DBL, I posted about the problems the BL had since the second Stress Test. But to reply to your question, I believe there’s 2 main reasons for this:

1) even if you are in a borderland, you usually keep the queue for EB up in case the fights start to dwindle after prime time. That way you’ll be already in a good position to join the eternal fights in EB

2) some people (like you) decided they don’t ever want to play in DBL. They just dislike the map and prefer EB (or maybe Alpine when it’ll be back, we’ll see). I don’t think anything can change that, if they have made up their mind there’s not even point in trying to convince them otherwise.

Personally, my guild and I had amazing fights in the “old” DBL and the changes look like we can possibly have even better fights in the “new” DBL.

Gaile Gray.6029:

What? You have purple. That’s all you need!

Ok, I really don’t know if there’s an option to add colors or a plan to do so. But just in case, what would be on the wish list? Keep in mind the tag should be visible on the mini and world/overhead map, so it might be best to suggest bold, non-metallic, non-transparent-ish colors.

Let us use our guild emblem as tag! <3 <3 <3

Niadon.9270:

Hi there,

it’s 2 years and half that I didn’t play GW2. I’m playing since two weeks.
There are 138 players in queue spread around. I didn’t see this since I was on Tier 1 and I’m playing on a server ranked 14th.

Please, before end the beta keep in mind that the contribution of new players, should be WISE as I wanna play, that’s why I’m on a middle server.

Queues on borderlands weren’t that long, I spent maybe 5 minutes in EOTM while waiting for the queue for FSP border to pop.

valheru.7891:

Menaka.5092:

The thing is, with an organized group you usually want to focus on a small subset of the bigger group, trap them, kill them, reset (heal/empower, etc) and go on again. In that, the target limit to 10 is not that bad.

When you fighting bigger numbers you can use statics to divide the groop. If 40 people run into the static and 10 don’t have stability. You already achieved something. The first 30 need to go further and have the initial clash without those 10 people. Or those some of those people will uss a stun break. Or the whole groop needs to wait for the cc to be over wich gives you the advantage to outmaneuvre your enemy. Now probably the first 10 hits of a static will be absorbed by the mellee train with stability. then the backline can do without it.

If the melee pop stability to go through one Static Field, you can usually outmanuver them and wait for the first stability to expire, then land the CC again and force them to use the second stability. At that point they are at a huge disadvantage for the fight since you still have 2 stabs to burn and you can pressure them when they need to regroup.

Dawdler.8521:

Menaka.5092:

If I understand correctly you mean more patrols going on around the various paths leading to the keeps so it would be easier to spot enemies moving in the zones around the tower…?

Sentries rather than patrols to extend the “view distance” when holding a tower. Nothing worse than going whoops swords in the lord room byebye T3 garri. I am not overly fond of sentries myself but they do their work on a large map and still allow for some counterplay rather than mindless zerging.

yeah I meant something like this, it wouldn’t give a direct bonus to defense, but facilitate defense in a wider sense because it allows you to scout enemy movements even if you don’t have many players online (or they are not sharing intel in map chat)

Daemonne.5018:

Make it apply to a servers own DBL only? Home court advantage?

mmm, could make sense to lower the bonuses for the attackers, or even swap them around a bit (for example, the south tower on their spawn side gives better boosts to the keep on their side, to promote holding and consolidating their presence on that side of the map)

Daemonne.5018:

Instead of having them protect the keeps, make them protect the Garrison.
Add in something of value for holding the keeps as well to help protect Garrison?
[…]
Garrison should be the ultimate prize in a DBL and very difficult to take without weakening it’s defenses by taking surrounding property.

this is a variation that could make sense!

Hey. My guild and I posted a video series on Youtube some time ago. Some of the stuff is outdated, but overall I think it still gives a good introduction to the combat in WvW. I hope you’ll enjoy it

Mezmere.3241:

IMO there isn’t anything wrong with new BLs. I actually really enjoy them. The south of fire is AMAZING, same with air. East and West of garri is awesome and open. its easier to navigate, just will take time getting used to again

Agreed. I think they did a good job. The only thing I feel it’s left out is to make the towers more strategically important.

How do you feel overall about reward tracks?

It’s a welcome addition that helps reward the long-term commitment of players to the game mode.

What are your thoughts on the rate at which you gain participation?

It’s a bit slow, but most importantly confusing: why have the participation bar “tiered”? It would make more sense if 0% was 0 participation and 100% was 550 track points per tick. The first time I saw the participation bar reset to 0% I was extremely confused.

How do you feel about the rate you earn reward track points?

It feels very slow compared to PvP.

Overall, what are your impressions about the types of reward tracks we have?

They are ok, for now, but I would like to see more WvW related tracks.

Are there any other reward tracks you would really like to see?

It would be nice, for example, to have repeatable reward tracks for level 80 characters that swap out tomes for (superior) siege, transmutation charges, T6 mats or lodestones.
Or allow us to trade in tomes for useful stuff (mats, siege, bags, etc).

It would be amazing to have a long-term, once per account, reward track for the commander tag, with siege and food feasts as intermediate rewards (maybe tiered reward tracks up to the commander tag? similar to how Maguuma tracks work that you need to unlock a previous one first to start the next).

It would be nice to have a shiny WvW-specific ascended (we don’t dare ask for legendary yet) back piece with his own reward track.

And what about a track tied to the Black Lion Trading Company? At the current rate, a ticket scrap at the end of a reward track and maybe a key as midterm goal would mean to be able to farm a shiny skin every 100 hours (or faster if you are lucky!) in WvW. A lot slower than just farm the gold and buy it, but it would feel rewarding to slowly work towards it. And you can have WXP boosters, dye sets, transmutation charges, etc as secondary rewards…

valheru.7891:

When you fighting bigger numbers you can use statics to divide the groop. If 40 people run into the static and 10 don’t have stability. You already achieved something. The first 30 need to go further and have the initial clash without those 10 people. Or those some of those people will uss a stun break. Or the whole groop needs to wait for the cc to be over wich gives you the advantage to outmaneuvre your enemy. Now probably the first 10 hits of a static will be absorbed by the mellee train with stability. then the backline can do without it.

I get what you are saying. What I’m saying is that you need to place your CC better now: if you want to catch the squishies on the back, place the CC around them instead of generally in front of the opposing group. To me, this is what playing organized means…

Angel Heart.6739:

In real warfare you take the total damage which is a fact as well you don’t set the parameters to suit your own needs?

in “real warfare” the damage from a bomb is not limited to 5 targets
there’s little point in using these arguments in this discussion

Korgov.7645:

I liked how things were in Alpine borderland: you could use towers to attack nearby keep.

yep, ideally I would change the map layout to allow that again, but that seems like a major rework and I don’t think it’s planned… this idea was intended to make towers relevant “on the cheap” so to say

Korgov.7645:

The northern DBL towers block supply routes from NW and NE camps to the earth keep today. That’s a lot of points when you hold the towers.

I don’t think holding a tower for points is good enough of a reason to cap it. Sure on the long term it’s useful, but there should be a “strategic” reason to cap it, IMHO.

Dawdler.8521:

I would honestly prefer towers just be advance staging posts that secure the land toward garri. IE holding them spawn a couple new sentries/guards or something to keep a closer look at the paths, that would be enough. This wouldnt really limit capture in any way, just provide a boon to holding them.

One of the guild upgrades does something similar, although it’s range is limited.

If I understand correctly you mean more patrols going on around the various paths leading to the keeps so it would be easier to spot enemies moving in the zones around the tower…?

Brandon.6194:

What I think needs to change is the cc cap at 10 players. Its a lot harder for a small group to fight a big group when the cc can hit only hit 12.5% of the group with cc. What I was noticing tonight was that these big groups that we were having good fights against before the patch, were rolling over us because we had no way of holding them back. We fight as 20 and we can usually take out 35+ groups and if we had ways of getting separation before they push we could do a lot better but if they pop stability they have at least a full 8 seconds to push. If we had 2 lines from staff 5 on DH we still can only hold back 20 players and only if they don’t have stab. If another a big group was to use the same effect on us we would have our entire team blocked. This change has made it a lot harder for small groups.

I somewhat agree, but this problem existed even before: bigger groups always had an advantage because they can drop more CC (so it was a no brainer to strip Stability stacks).

The thing is, with an organized group you usually want to focus on a small subset of the bigger group, trap them, kill them, reset (heal/empower, etc) and go on again. In that, the target limit to 10 is not that bad.

Cerby.1069:

At first I was against the OP as well but upon reflection I think its good for the DBL. I do not think it belongs in EBG though, infact I would be very vocal AGAINST introduction of such a thing in EBG.

Absolutely, I would hate this system in EB. But EB towers are fine like they are, all of them are in trebuchet range from/to SM and the keeps, they don’t need changes, IMHO.

Changes to Desert Borderlands: Good!
I think ANet did a good job overall, the map is a lot easier to navigate – especially in the parts where it was more problematic before. There’s also a lot of space for open field combat that holds the promise for epic battles.
Some of the new parts remind me a bit of the ruins in Alpine Border: a lot of platforms that allow for nice tricks with teleports and such.
The only concern remains with the northern towers: too far away from any other objectives to be “strategically relevant” (but I posted an idea on how to solve that ).

WvW Reward Tracks: not hype-level material, but a nice addiction.
The progress is very slow compared to the PvP tracks, although we must admit we have other sources of income at the same time while PvPers don’t. The exclusive armor set is a nice addiction and helps giving WvW the status/bragging rights it deserves. The question is: why did this take so long?

Squads can have dedicated scouts: Excellent!
This was a serious problem and I think the adopted solution is very elegant. Well done!

Portable Siege Vendor: Good (but can be improved)!
Not sure if anyone ever asked for this, but it’s actually very useful. Pretty much everyone noted that it doesn’t sell superior siege (maybe for the heroics tokens?) and level 80 food buffs, so that’s something we look forward to see added to it.

Autoloot in WvW: Excellent!
One of the most requested features since… forever.

Balance changes: a step in the right direction.
We are still very far from what I would love for WvW (at least 2 or 3 viable builds/roles for each class), but the fixes to Stability and CC are – on paper – definitely a step in the right direction.
I don’t understand how ANet managed to leave Coalescence of Ruin out when addressing the ranged spike damage, tho.
The power creep is still rampant. As a counter, there’s an overabundance of blocks and invulnerabilities. As a counter-counter there’s a lot of unblockable stuff. Toning down the overall damage would go a long way to better fights and easier balance, in my opinion.

Server Linking: make it or break it.
I think this is the feature that will decide if the changes will manage to resurrect WvW or not. The borderlands only really “work” if there’s people fighting over the objectives: nobody cares about running around for half an hour to find a fight. If there will be fights to be had and fighting will be fun, WvW will probably survive. If not, this will be the end of the game mode.

What’s left out? Well. A lot of stuff.

• Scoring / Nightcapping.
• Access to different stats, ascended gear, sigils and runes without the need of grinding PVE
• Large scale fights skill lag
• Rewards: ANet addressed personal rewards, but there’s no reason to struggle and win a match-up.
• Siege wars still need addressing.

Sviel.7493:

This makes capping towers first the only choice, not just the best choice. It won’t lead to diversity in strategy. I like the goal, but I can’t support this method of achieving it.

You could have different groups attack different towers at the same time and then converge on the “downgraded” keep. Seems a step up in strategy to me, compared to “let’s blob this objective and then move to the next one”.

Again, the numbers are there only as an example. I realize 80% damage reduction (after a few hours of defending the towers, tho) is a lot.

Each tower provides a buff to nearby keeps that reduces the damage taken by gates and walls.
The damage reduction increases with the upgrade tier of the tower.
All towers contribute to the damage reduction of central (Earth) Keep.

NE tower T0/T1/T2/T3:

• Air Keep walls and gates take 10/15/20/40 percent less damage
• Earth Keep walls and gates take 5/10/20/30 percent less damage

NW tower T0/T1/T2/T3:

• Fire Keep walls and gates take 10/15/20/40 percent less damage
• Earth Keep walls and gates take 5/10/20/30 percent less damage

SW tower T0/T1/T2/T3:

• Fire Keep walls and gates take 10/15/20/40 percent less damage
• Earth Keep walls and gates take 1/3/5/10 percent less damage

SE tower T0/T1/T2/T3:

• Air Keep walls and gates take 10/15/20/40 percent less damage
• Earth Keep walls and gates take 1/3/5/10 percent less damage

South towers have less effect on Earth Keep since they are far away.

Owning all 4 towers to Tier 3 grants 80% damage reduction on keeps walls and gates. Who didn’t love a good golem rush? This would make it a lot harder and make capping and defending towers relevant and generally “slow down” the pace of flipping borderlands, giving the defenders time to organize.

If every attacker on the borderland focuses on owning his side of the map, this change could focus the battles around the northern towers where the “rubberband effect” (people coming back from spawn) is in favor of the defending team.

This would also provide a more meaningful progression for defenders capping back the whole borderland after losing everything to a zerg (focus on north towers first, etc).

This would favor consolidating your positions (upgrading towers) and defending secondary objectives.

Numbers will require tweaking.

Looking forward to see what you guys think about this

A lot of hard work and some very good ideas!

A few notes:

GS: I really like the idea of “forcing players to play against their own interest”, I think it’s very “mesmery”. They can either put themselves at risk or put the whole group at risk.

Staff: what kind of field is it on Staff 5? Ethereal?

Sword: 900 seems way too much for a mesmer dash, 600 seems more in line with our playstyle.

Healing Prism: instead of healing power, gain outgoing healing % for each illusion (5%?).

Temporal Enchanter: I love how you changed it, but it should have a 2s ICD per target, else people would abuse it to stack Resistance

Compounding Power: the condi damage gain should scale in % as the power does.

I really don’t like having to pick between Shattered Concentration and Persistence of Memory in Illusions Master tier

Mesmer is clearly OP. Proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhyhUm2VEA0

Alex Shatter.7956:

All they did was fix bugs for most professions. Rev and druid got a nerf

Not sure how the damage from Pistol Whip was before in PvP, but that sounds like a buff to me.

Anomaly.7612:

So I’ve never been too into WvW, but I’ve been getting more into it recently now that I’m in a guild that enjoys it, but I keep seeing people talking about how it’s now bad? I think I’m missing something as I’m not sure what they’re referring to.

So…What’s going on? Honestly curious to see what people have to say.

What went wrong?

For a long time, the amazing combat system kept WvW players happy, even with all the flaws the game mode had (lag, skill/build unbalance, power creep, the “rallybot” mechanic, the completely unfair matchups, nightcapping, etc).

Heart of Thorns struck when WvW was in a very bad situation. After years of staleness, the changes to Stability and then to the Professions had destroyed the old meta and brought “pirateship” in our lives.

That’s when many WvW veterans started not enjoying the fights anymore: the only thing that kept WvW alive for so many years.

Then they changed the Borderlads map. The new map really only “works” if there’s actually three sides constantly fighting for all the objectives, splitting the zergs in smaller groups with less damage going around and the option of playing many different builds. But, as we said, the WvW population was already shrinking, and for the first week or two after the expansion launch a lot of the population was busy in PvE farming their masteries and hero points to unlock their elite specs because it was nearly impossible to get them in WvW.

Launching this new map – requiring a healthy population – in a scenario where we had a terrible combat meta and a very low population was a bad move.

The map felt… empty. Sure, most people needed to learn how to move around, the best routes, but it happened to go around the borderlands for half an hour without finding a fight, so the long paths felt even longer and WvW felt like a long and boring stroll while searching for a fight.

This made the WvW population shrink even more, to the point where finding a single fight in the new, harder to navigate, borderland, was a matter of running around for half an hour.

On top of this came the “revenant meta”, based on insane power creep and unbalanced skills, the new profession, Revenant, literally demolished any chance of fun fights, leaving the game mode in a state of “who strikes first and with the most revenants, wins”.

Another huge point of pain was that while the new borderlands could have worked a lot better using some of the new Guild Upgrades (for example, towers acting as sentries on a huge area, uncontestable waypoints in every tower or keep), those upgrades have been gated behind huge money and time sinks, Guild Halls and Scribing.

When they realized it, many WvW guilds stopped raiding, making the population problems even worse (negative feedback loop). Stragglers congregated around a few pug commanders, making the game even more blobby and the meta even more pirateship, forcing the remaining guilds to run even bigger numbers or to “hand-hold” to tackle bigger groups, making the game even less enjoyable for everyone.

The few guilds that managed to get the upgrades and scribes, are now “abusing” items that were already marked as OP since the Desert Borderland Stress Test, making the fights even more unbalanced and not fun, and ultimately helping to kill the game mode.

1. Make large scale fights fun again: this will require a huge rebalancing of the game to sort the power creep and make sure that every profession has a few viable builds for this game mode.
2. Empty maps are bad: a dynamic system is required so that players don’t need to sit in a queue for hours and at the same time are not forced to play in empty maps where there’s nothing to fight.
3. Give players a reason to defend objectives: defending can be fun, but right now it isn’t. And it isn’t perceived as rewarding, either, so there’s only a few players that actually care about that. Making defense more important and more fun is key for a healthier game mode.
4. Give WvW his own identity: the game mode needs exclusive rewards and powerful “bragging rights” incentives for both guilds and players. Veterans need to be rewarded for their persistence and new players should realize that this game has an amazing large scale pvp system and could be attracted to the game for it.
5. Get rid of gold sinks and PVE farming for WvW upgrades: WvW should only be tied to WvW. PvE players are not forced to farm WvW objectives to upgrade the Workshop or the Market, why do WvW players need to farm PvE to upgrade the War Room? Why are they tied to level up Scribing to access their upgrades? This is broken and needs fixing.