What are you trying to do? What gear do you have? What level are you? There are dozens of threads on this subject…we can’t tell what’s different about your situation.
When most people think of a WvW build, they look for a small team of good players trying to fight the zerg.
The rules are what they are. If you’re playing a heavy support build, it’s more fun in a group anyway.
As you point out, many things are account bound or not bound as all. If I were truly farming ad nauseum, I’d use another class.
The theory is that if you’re doing heavy support – buff / cc / heal – you need to be in a group.
I use the staff. I mostly do support. I wish it were different but that’s the state of the game. If I want to tag mobs I play ele / ranger.
You’re not doing enough damage to tag kills. Class can do damage but it’s hard to beat people out without a build / gear that really highlights condition damage.
Join a group.
Use direct damage – GS / Sword
Get better gear
1) You tag kills better in a group. Beg people to join a party.
2) The best tagging classes do big AoE, with range, and just enough damage. I’m happy with ele and ranger.
The only thing we get screwed out of us our loot bags!!
That’s actually not true. What melee hits, it hits pretty hard and will tag. It’s the classes / playstyles that do big AoE condition/CC that have a hard time with the loot bags. Necro marks & wells, mesmer glamours, certain ele skills like heals or static field.
In general though, buy siege equipment. Most squishier classes actually have a really hard time manning this stuff as splash damage chunks through their HP.
If you’re running away from the zerg, you actually do a lot of PvE. Taking supply camps, killing flags or dolyaks, flipping NPC factions. My tanky guardian is much better at doing this than the ranged glass cannons.
I do feel the frustration though.
I can confirm that both my ele and my mesmer had extremely low map completion at 80. And even then it was a bee line from one personal story point to the next. Contrast with ranger and guardian who ran around to nearly every zone looking for stuff to hit.
Basically it was 10 levels crafting and a lot of dead dolyaks.
Yes, mob (or player) tagging playing a very support oriented build is bad when you’re solo. It’s much better in a group. I dont have the actual numbers but lets say 10% damage tags the mob. But if someone in your group tags it, you can get credit doing 2% damage. This allows for necros dropping marks or mesmers using chaos storm / glamours to tag in groups but not solo. It really only comes into play when you’re running with a huge zerg, not in a group, and focusing on cc/conditions rather than direct damage.
That’s unthinkable to me on any class. Grats to you. The only way I’m going to “solo” a supply camp is to follow a pack of vet frogs.
In PvE, you’d generally prefer a phantasm to the clone, based on dps. I’ve really never done sPvP, but I assume that there are advantages to a clone over a phantasm due to your enemy not being sure which one is the real mesmer. So it’s not always true that a phantasm is strictly “better”. Clones are meant to “tank” mobs as well with the cripple.
I suppose if you really wanted to play with the PvE threat mechanics, you could slightly boost the threat caused be clones to make it play more like PvP…but there are probably much bigger things to worry about.
I suggest everyone learn to love the sword for PvE. It’s a great weapon. I’m sure there’s a good place for it in sPvP as well. I think it would be brutal to wvw with this as a main choice though.
I’d choose the staff as a swap weapon because it’s really got the best collection of defensive tools.
I absolutely despise the jumping puzzles. I have do idea why they’re in an MMO to begin with, let an important part of the game. The only zone I’ve ever completed is queensdale and I probably spent an hour trying to do the various “vistas”. I had to send a friend my login info to get past the priory story quest where you needed to do a jump puzzle while the wind blows and knocks you off.
Thanks for posting the glamour builds. Very interested in seeing how it works out for you. It’s what I want to run. I’m just terrified of giving up clone on dodge roll. I don’t care about smashing people 1v1 but I don’t always want to be the weak one getting picked off. I want to be able to kill dolyaks or the vet guarding the flag or a few krait to tag the events while solo.
My gear is compleatly wrong atm but I’m 400 tailor / jewelry so that can be fixed with some farming.
Corpse dancing, jumping and other humilation tactics -- When are they acceptable?
in WvW
Posted by: NatashaK.9418
You’re only really lying there while you’re downed. And then you can throw stuff back at them. If you’re fully dead, I’m not sure why you’re not zoomed out to map and tapping.
It works like this is every faction vs. faction game. Organized guilds would rather join the underdog side because they don’t really have queues, can flip stuff (because the other faction owns everything), they dont have to deal with the zerg, and can win some great fights being outnumbered by bad players. (And in this game they even get the out-manned buff).
It should be noted that you level very fast crafting and it’s not all that expensive. There are many guides floating around.
Power leveling through these awkward levels will also leave you with a full set of whatever gear you’re building for. Jewelry makes a huge difference because what you can craft is so much better than what drops.
You’re forced into a 1h weapon to use the focus.
In a condition build, esp for wvw where range is king, I’d choose scepter over sword. If you’re in PvE and you’re not yet 80 so you likely have mismashed gear and traits the sword is probably better.
Tagging mobs as a mesmer is hard. GS / crit builds are better than condition. Join a group.
If I were to DE farm, I’d use my ranger or ele. They’re both great at tagging mobs. Some classes will just be better than others.
You get a kill for everything you tag, so it’s not really kb/d ratio. Kill credit in a party, with a zerg with a good ranged + AoE class will tilt this significantly.
Kills is also by account while deaths is by character.
It’s really all about progression. I didn’t play DAoC. Warhammer progression was overpowered. I dont need this kind of advantage. Vanilla WoW gave a cosmetic title and you knew when you’d just killed someone of a certain rank because of the visuals. I want to see “Red Sergeant [xxx]” and get the visual feed back that I just killed a player of that rank. Aion was similar but it had the goofy issue of spending away your rank, which makes no sense.
This should unlock gear tiers of skins (and dyes or whatever). Let people cash out to crafting mats. Let people get different stat combinations than basic crafting ones (e.g. the ones available in sPvP or even others).
Show player cumulative and weekly accomplishments. Show guild ones with some reasonable scaling to avoid zerg guilds (e.g. only count the top 20 players).
Turn on Friendly Fire. Problem solved!
Yes, this has been mentioned from the earliest of betas. But it’s a little late to retrofit.
My guild basically lost enthusiasm due to lack of progression. I really have no idea why they put something in place for sPvP but not WvW.
I have both at 80.
Mesmer is much more defensive.
Ele had amazing speed and damage. (Mesmer is simply awful at tagging / getting loot bags.)
I’m going to shatter every time I have 3 clones or once the phantasms are off c/d.
Once you’ve played an ele for a few level you really get a feel for the fact that nothing is going to tank for you. You’re always strafing and dodging because you may die in a single hit. Going back to mesmer and you’ll realize just how much survivability mesmers have.
In many pet classes, it’s better to hold threat yourself and think of the pet as a DoT rather than a tank. Mesmer is one of those classes.
Ya, It’s a must for WvW.
But even PvE, you can just stand and kill every mob. You’ll train through a few then the ones that stick you’ll LoS pull and AoE. The slower you are, the more mobs you end up having to fight. Unless I’m in an instance, I’m using all the run speed I can on any class.
It’s much harder if you’re stacking condition damage. If you’re stacking power/crit anyway, i dont know why you woundn’t craft a set of yellow mf gear.
You need to hit f1 or f2 to shatter the clones to do real damage. Depending on your weapon, some clones to a little better than others with auto-attacks.
It’s a bit cruel to stick people with the scepter as the first weapon as it’s one of the more challenging weapons to master. Staff, sword, and GS are all easier to work with.
This idea will always go around in circles. People have different time zones and then effectively work very different shifts. Picking one time it hard. Picking a time based on population leads the the “best defense is to leave the zone” problem warhammer experienced.
I’m generally OK with system where you get double ticks for an hour of two toward the end of prime time or bigger ticks when you actually have to defend. But if the rewards are too big, they can all be exploited in some way.
I just don’t see server transfers as a problem. Maybe it’s too short a relative time (1 day transfer with a 1 week match).
But ultimately the zerg of PUGs wants to transfer to the winning side (where there are smart commanders who know what they’re doing) and the organized guilds want to transfer to the losing sides (there’s lots of stuff to take, shorter queues to get everyone in, etc.) This isn’t just GW2, basically every faction vs. faction PvP game has players wanting to move in opposite directions.
I sympathize. I’m never going to get one of those stars (because I can’t do the jumping vistas) so I know how it feels to have progress blocked due to something you think is stupid and shouldn’t be part of the game anyway.
I’ve always felt there their should be some encouragement for playing all aspects of the game, rather than a few though. A slightly cooler skin, 1% more damage, a dye, a faster grind because there are 3 kinds of dailies, etc. There should be some balance between encouraging people to get out of their comfort zone and explore and forcing people to grind something they hate.
Best way to counter a zerg is to back cap.
It’s kind of the whole point. You’re supposed to have the keeps be able to defend and attack each other so that losing something key is a big deal. Otherwise everything is just a pointless trophy.
I hear it talked about all the time. But I’ve never seen it work, let alone do it myself. It seems like it would require an impossible about of timing and coordination.
If mesmers are really walking through keep walls and magically summoning a zerg of golums, there should either be some really good counters or it shouldn’t be allowed.
I’d happily trade the skill for a glamour that was actually useful.
I remember the people rushing up the levels in the class before me were saying that the class was pure dps vs other classes that were more support oriented. I found this hard to believe as to me it was clearly a class focused on AoE buffs / debuffs.
The fact is, there’s a lot of ways to play any class. Warriors can use banners, rangers can use warhorn and spirits, etc.
A mesmer build around staff / condition / glamours is constantly buffing allies while debuffing and reflecting enemies. But you can also focus on GS or shatters and build into just doing direct damage.
I have 4 80s. In basically the same gear. I’ll only comment on them.
1) Ranger. The top 1% will complain about the low skill cap and people will complain the it doesn’t bring unique skills to the table but it is amazing well rounded and balanced. You can pretty much do anything. Long range, support buffs, mass tagging, killing NPCs. Good at everything.
2) Ele. You are so fast. You rain fire from the sky. Top damage, top support, so many skills with combo fields. Excellent range, AoE, tagging machine.
3) Mesmer. One of the best PvZerg classes with glamours (reflects, mass cleanse / cancel, mass confusion) . Cannot actually kill anything in a spec that’s good for 1200 range / PvZerg.
4) Guardian. I get frustrated with melee as well. It’s extreamly gear dependent. But melee (guardian / warrior / thief) absolutely destroy people in the open fiend. If you’re sitting there range gatehopping or sitting on the walls of a keep, either build arrow carts or hit another target. again, these are absolutely top classes but you need to play to their strengths and not just sit on top or a wall waiting for the door to come down.
I’m glad WvW is a priority. But none of this matters. If you dont figure out a way to keep achievers in WvW, they’ll leave the game. (There’s no way to produce an unlimited amount of PvE content unless you crowdsource that.)
Without PvP levels, titles, rankings for players and guilds, people will keep leaving the game.
I don’t buy it. A server that wins this week will lose next week. A few pugs make no difference, wvw is about organized guilds. The only advantage to joining the “winning side” is to get a slightly better crafting bonus on Thursday/Friday.
You can’t get more karma transferring to the winning side. You only get a chance to flip if the loser flips something first. And they’re getting the outmaned bonus.
Everyone keeps saying free transfers kill WvW. But I dont buy it. If you have a guild or 10+ people ready to WvW, you’ll reap vastly more rewards on a losing server than a winning one even on the week you’re getting your face rolled. There’s always something to take. You dont have to worry about your zerg taking something. You get out manned bonus. You’ll dominate the lower tier next week.
(I’m one CD as well.)
One day a dolyak will PM me that I couldn’t dent its HP, mashing everything I could from the supply camp to the tower. If I’ve made someone qq on my mesmer, I was manning an arrow cart.
It happens in many games, they’ve done a lot to make it difficult. If it really is a problem, then I agree, changes are needed.
There’s four maps. With three exits each. It seems unlikely that once faction could block all of these (and those of the third faction) with a superior force and not just get bored.
1) Focusing on server rankings and achievements (vs guild and player) was a huge tactical error. Warhammer / Aion were fine in this regard…while the master push was faction vs faction, rankings and scorings were about individual and guild achievements. The “gw2” section on my guild forums is over two years old…but it only took a couple of months after launch for everyone to quit because there was nothing left to achieve.
2) While I get frustrated with the current state of WvW, I acknowledge because I’m left basicly left pugging it. If I had a guild of 20 people ready to wvw, I’d see being down 500-0 as an opportunity rather than a reason to go craft something.
If you’re focusing on the greatsword, I’d stack crit power over condition damage. And I’d use a sword. The scepter is an awful weapon in general and I’d only reccomend it if your main focus is clones and confusion.
Yes, people certainly do this. For me the remote chance of getting that many kills without dying isn’t worth planning for.
The staff is a great all around weapon, but the GS might have more synergy. GS would stack the same stats as sword and excels when you get out of sword range.
That some what the idea of the ranger class but there never dieing pets that something they have got to fix badly. Having an endless safe way of harassment that a ranges has with there pets is comply wrong in most fights. There needs to be a TRUE death for a pet and a recast time for the ranger. On top of that a death of a range’s pet should give exp much like the other pets from the other classes.
Play one. There’s a short c/d on pet swap if your pet doesn’t die but a very long one if it does. In a 1v1, a skilled ranger should be able to swap low health pets a few times. In WvW, the pet will die as soon as it’s summoned to AoEs leaving you without a pet for 45s-1min.
I have 4 80s:
Ranger – the best all around. Can solo things. Fast. Survivable. Long range. Good tagging.
Ele – So fast. Tagging machine. Good range. Good damage. Might die to an angry deer.
Mesmer – Lots of big flashy skills. The satisfaction of annoying my enemies. Defense through deception. Slow. Cannot tag players. Cannot kill a dolyak.
Guardian – awesome class when everyone is pushing. Can be very frustrating due to lack of range. Very good at killing NPCs.
Agreed. You can’t give something to winning servers. Servers already want to win. The problem is that after say Saturday, if your server isn’t on top everyone just stops playing.
None of this would be an issue it there were and incentive system for players and guilds. There’s always a place 5-10 people can go and take a supply camp. But it wont happen in a demoralized PUG.
It gets better. You will die less with better gear.
It’s a lag issue. The servers already have problems not rendering heavy concentration of enemies. Reporting the position of every player to every other client is just a lot more stress on the system.
I agree that it would be nice to have more tools to see where the action is. Showing every dot could be a problem with spies.
It’s too bad you can’t get armor with condition, toughness, and vitality.
I assume the glamour cookie cutter build is 20/0/0/20/30. This build has no real benefit to precision so I assume you’d use carrion. I don’t love vit for survivability but I’m sure power > precision in build with 0 points in dueling.
What I’m not sure about it if it’s really worth it to go 30 points into illusions for the blind + extra confusion stack. I’m running 20/20/0/20/10 now because I just think all the extra clones from the dodge rolls will give me more survivability than a larger HP pool and more confusion potential off shatters than the 20 points in illusions would have given me. Plus it should give a lot more damage for say killing dolyaks. This build does get value from crit.
I’m fresh 80, running around in explorers atm though. I’ve tried a lot of things in the mist but I just can’t tell other than seeing numbers go up and down.