Guild Wars 2

timidobserver.7925:

The only people that aren’t looking forward to it are those that are heavily into GvG and those on really low ranked servers that are going to have everyone jump ship.

I do not GvG and I think the league is a huge waste of resources. The matches are decided by population and coverage, not skill, so why have a league at all? The only people that are looking forward to it are those stupid enough to think PPT matters or means something.

Jinks.2057:

As for stacking up to kill zergs….that won’t be changing. Hammer trains will also stay prevalent due to them including tankier classes. Remember your going balls deep against 4-1 odds

The only reason stacking up to kill zergs works is because you are a zerg yourself.

Boonprot.6274:

The reason why groups stack is to reach the AoE cap and reduce damage. It’s also important to do mid-fight to “reset” the fight. What I mean by this, is that the regrouping allows everyone to heal up to full HP via water field blasts and gain almost full stacks of might via empower. In a sense, it returns your party to the condition it was in before the fight even started.

Regardless of it’s many benefits, stacking makes for boring meta, it is greatly over used, often at the expense of momentum and positioning, and in my opinion is used more as a crutch for bad positioning and movement, than its tactical advantages.

Lastly, people need to understand that there is a very big difference between a hammer train and a balanced comp. The fact that 4 warriors use hammers in a 15-man comp doesn’t make it a hammer train. Not even close, to be honest.

So over 26% of the group is using hammers, but that isn’t a hammer train? Where is the magical cut off, 80%? You are taking the term too literally anyway, it is more about the heavy defense ball formation with hammers, at 4 I would argue the number of hammers is irrelevant as far as the label goes.

dreztina.4820:

I can’t even begin to understand how someone would consider that fun.

Cut the community some slack, a few months ago everyone was excited that they could stack and blast. Look how far they have come in a year of WvW fighting evolution:

- wow we are running in the same direction
- check out this stack
- look we can blast while stacking
- yay for PVT armor
- hammers are fun
- if all of our other crutches fail we have warbanner!

I think it is interesting to speculate where it will go next. If they didn’t all use the target system so they could follow each other I would guess we might see something crazy like target calling and assist trains. Maybe folks will figure out that stacking is not worth the loss in momentum or positioning.

Crazy times!

DevonCarver.5370:

insanemaniac.2456:

why we wont see a useful outnumbered buff:

scenario — player enters map where his server has outnumbered. server loses outnumbered. other players harass him to leave so server can be stronger.

Correct. The idea behind the buff is to incentivize you to show up even if you are outnumbered by pulling out some of the disincentive for losing a lot, but if we put anything too good on it, it will cause serious problems between players. We don’t want it to be something that people fight over, harass each other over, or generally cause a worse play experience because someone takes away the buff because it is our goal for the maps to be full and for no one to have the buff.

Do you guys do any kind of research before making such statements?

First, if you actually cared about this, explain the fact that rally exists in WvW? I see more rage directed at walking rally points then anything else in the game, people telling others to stop following them, telling uplevels to leave WvW, people following on purpose to troll them, etc, etc. This is ok, but outnumbered buff rage would be horrible?

Second, Warhammer had a desired out numbered buff, you just switched maps when you lost it on one map and found a fight elsewhere, you didn’t start frothing at the mouth and yelling at someone for entering the zone.

I see enough PvE rage in LA to make WvW look downright civilized.

Lord Kuru.3685:

I’m seeing more and more roamers with Guard Leech and/or Applied Fortitude.

For those of you who dislike Bloodlust because it makes fights unfair… what do you think about these two Abilities?

They’re fair in a way that Bloodlust isn’t because Bloodlust can’t be controlled by the individual player. Any player can choose those two lines of Abilities if he has the points available.

They’re unfair in a way because if you’re a newer player, play alts, have less time to play, or are on a less dominating server, you are at a disadvantage in terms of earning WXP

Thoughts?

Earning WXP is much easier and faster for casual zerglets doing their pvdoor train then for roamers, so I fail to see the complaint.

Thrashbarg.9820:

It’s strange to me that the sPvP team listens quite intently to what the “top” PvP players have to say, yet the WvW team does exactly the opposite. There are official PvP tournaments with high ranked teams picked for their skill level equality, and in WvW we get “leagues” where every match is practically guaranteed to be a blowout before it even starts.

It is my view that ANET views WvW as a place for the casual, non-competitive players to play and as such the entire system is catered to them. They want the more competitive people to play sPvP and as such work against them being in WvW.

DevonCarver.5370:

No. That is not a possibility at this time. The point of the buff is to affect the WvW game mode as a whole disabling it on your character would lessen the value of the buff to a server and completely invalidate the whole point.

I must say, of all the things Devon has posted, this is the most kitten of them all.

We can choose to play a naked level two, running around as rally bait, but if someone turns off a buff you are lessening the value for your entire server and invalidating the whole point? WTF are you talking about.

King Amadaeus.8619:

So a skill that is meant to make you temper your skill usage is making you do that and you want it nerfed?

I believe others might say working as intended, is it OP? Well it has been nerfed once, I suppose it could be again.

Retal promotes face rolling zergballs, AoE damage does not. You are countering what already takes a good bit of setup, like ele AoE, with a faceroll use of abilities. Retal makes for boring meta and thus boring WvW.

CptWheezy.6439:

Fair – an example of ‘real’ playing – good – use your own word. The point is – stop boohooing (or laughing about how pathetic it is). You are obviously better at small group tactics – if that’s all you’re saying – then just say it without all the bravado. If I kept getting my kitten handed to me by one group – I’d use any tactic I could – and to expect them not to is simply ridiculous.

You know how people get better at small group tactics? Like everything else, practice. This is a game, you lose absolutely nothing, unlike say in WII or the Alamo, so there really is no need to be so quick to give up and use ACs as fast as we are seeing.

I personally think folks are getting too bent out of shape about the league, the effect in game to me should be minimal. Coverage issues makes me not care about PPT before, why would any of that change in regards to league? I plan to go out and kill people every night just like I always do, league doesn’t change that. We already have messed up matches, so league wont change that. The whole ‘we wont be doing anything till league is over’ is an obvious cop-out and excuse to do more living story kitten instead of fixing WvW, but realistically I cant think of the last patch I cared about anyways.

Do I think it is stupid that ANET is creating a ‘the server with the best coverage and most people’ award, yes of course. A huge waste of resources that could be better spent on areas of WvW that would help everyone. Does it show that ANET has profound lack of understanding about WvW in general, yes of course. Overall though, I didnt care about PPT before and nothing has changed to make me care now.

Kincaidia.3192:

I don’t macro period, and if I’m sitting on a treb, I’m listening in teamspeak and calling out swords on the map.

Just because you assume someone going to take the lazy route because you would doesn’t mean that they do.

Wow, calling out swords and listening, that’s some epic level of effort.

I wouldnt be on the treb to start with, but my assumption is based on the number of times I watch people, clearly afk, trebbing friendly targets long after it was captured.

The entire karma/wxp train exists because it is easy and lazy way to earn lots of points, it is not a stretch to assume that if you get points and fragments for trebbing a tower all day, folks will do it.

Stability and stun breaks are not a magic solution given the amount of immobilize that is thrown into ability spamming, not to mention null fields and other boon stripping. Many of the CC abilities are on a shorter cool down then the stability skills, so the more drawn out the fight the more holes in your stability coverage you get.

covenn.7165:

Niim.9260:

Nothing in his posts indicates he is fighting even numbers to the point that DPS wouldn’t matter. We fight 5 vs 25 all the time, DPS matters.

Retal implementation is just another zerg friendly, no coordination required, face-roll play style that makes this game the boring PVT hammer train that it is.

Agreed on the last part.

Regarding the first part, I don’t do havoc much any more and generally don’t run staff when I do because i find it isn’t optimal for me. Regardless, you are still 100% correct.

Sorry, I meant ‘we’ as in the havoc squad I run with. The experience with aoe damage on our ele is the same as what you describe to the point that we often just do not bother any more, to much setup work to counter a silly mechanic. In my opinion people that call for an AoE cap increase without talking about Retal are just out of touch with how the game works.

King Amadaeus.8619:

I mean we are 1-year in and retal has already been nerfed and it is still a mechanic issue? Doubtful. But think what you want.

What does time since release and the fact that it received a nerf have to do with if it is still poorly implemented mechanic?

Do we work around it? Sure, every night, but that does not change that we are forced to limit our damage output, some times give up fight momentum, etc because of a zerg friendly, face-roll mechanic that contributes to the stale zergball meta.

King Amadaeus.8619:

Probably a moot point to someone like you, but you realize in the large-scale type fights you seem to be referencing that DPS is not that useful?

Nothing in his posts indicates he is fighting even numbers to the point that DPS wouldn’t matter. We fight 5 vs 25 all the time, DPS matters.

Retal implementation is just another zerg friendly, no coordination required, face-roll play style that makes this game the boring PVT hammer train that it is.

I wish folks would stop saying ANET removed the trinity. The roles are still there and your group is often more effective for utilizing those roles.

The change ANET made was to reduce the reliance on specific classes by allowing all classes the ability to play all the roles to varying degrees, which in turn made for more hybrid roles, and they also made it so you could run in ‘everyone take care of themselves’ mode. These are great changes, imo.

Perhaps if the game had more challenging content folks would be forced into re-learning how to play as a group/team instead of just running around in ‘everyone for themselves’ mode while pretending that the game doesn’t have decent group synergy options.

Kincaidia.3192:

It’s just hard to be well rounded when certain aspects go almost completely unrewarded

Those certain aspects being ones that are without risk, that you can macro while watching TV?

covenn.7165:

timidobserver.7925:

Retal has already been nerfed enough. Stop running berserker if you are dying from it.

Full soldiers gear gives me 20-24k health depending on stacks/food.

1 meteor shower on a blob stack, an AoE I cant reasonable stop once its started, can take me from 24k health so low to the point I am forced to mist form to keep from dying from it.

Not use an ability I have that does reasonable damage in the exact situation it was designed for? I suppose I could drop staff, but it is pretty much the only thing a Ele has left to play the game for open world outside of a single gimmicky scepter build.

This. The issue is how it scales in my opinion. I have no issues with retal itself, I just think there should be a cap on how many times you can hit by retal per second.

Kincaidia.3192:

Niim, “siege monkey”?!? I take actual offense at that. You think it’s fun taking down SMC walls with a treb? No, but I’m sure you enjoy waltzing in after someone does the work.

Godkitten selfish kittens.

No on says you have to set up a treb in an untouchable location and spam #1 until something is destroyed. You could, crazy as this is, set up catapults near the wall and get fights and fun while using the catapults, or maybe even ram the door. In these cases it is 1) not boring 2) close to the fight and thus you will not lose out on credit.

Yes sometimes a treb in these locations makes the most sense given the defense or map strategy, but I fail to see why someone on a treb so far away they cannot get credit, should be rewarded for watching TV while a macro fires a treb for him.

The game needs way less siege monkeys and more fighting, imo.

CptWheezy.6439:

Texans to the Mexican Army – Battle of the Alamo: Stop it – stop it. No fair – you’re using cannons and guns and stuff. That’s no fair. If you can’t fight in the open field, naked and with only knives – you suck.

Germans to the Allies – WWII: Stop it – stop it. No fair – you’re using bombers and grenades and stuff. That’s no fair. If you can’t fight in the open field with only a stick in your right hand and butter knife in your left hand with no body armor and only in the daylight hours – you suck.

Silly – isn’t it?

Stop boohooing you elitest kittens. If it’s in the game – it’s fair.

Either figure out how to deal with it or hop back onto Super Mario Brothers – either way – stop the QQ. You’re making the server look bad.

Yes because this is exactly like the Alamo and WWII? I am sure you can come up with a better set of examples if you try. I doubt anyone questions if it is fair, or is crying, the comments are more a laugh about how pathetic it is.

Ebay is without question the largest users of siege per capita in the game.

Mushin Tips.1623:

all i have to say is the bigger the zerg the more bags i get. the guild im in only runs a 30 man raid and we just farm the 60+ enemy zergs all night.

30 man is a zerg.

TheAmpca.1753:

Niim.9260:

TheAmpca.1753:

Personally, I LOVE large battle “Zerg” fights because of the focus of team coordination and team effort.

Team coordination, where? Unless you think stacking and blasting is something to be excited about, I fail to see what you are talking about.

Zergs are important in any open world pvp game because they provide an entry point for new or casual players and they provide the raw numbers sometimes needed for large objective battles.

In GW2 however zergs are not just this entry point, they have become the only point. The game caters to zerg play in every aspect and as such there is nothing encouraging the zerg to play better, to get better, for meta to evolve at a slower then snail pace.

We are a year into the game and the current pinnacle of achievement is the GvG crowd that thinks running in a big PVT hammer train smashing the biggest clump of red names is coordination. I think GvG’s have done a lot to progress the quality of fighting in the game, but seriously that is pretty weak progression for a year since release.

So to answer your question, the problem with zergs in GW2 is that they play poorly, create a boring WvW environment, greatly reduce the overall skill cap, and are rewarded for it.

So what I am understanding from your post is that you have not experienced coordinated team play seeing as you say it doesn’t exist and how you fail to bring up points showing how the game rewards mindless fighting. However, you have to realize just because you have not experienced high quality coordination does not mean it doesn’t exist. GW2 offers quite a bit in the way of coordination. From CC timing to positioning to healing timing to combo fields to veil coordination, you can do quite a bit in the game. However, if the player base fails to use it for team coordination that’s a different story and there is no problem with the game.

I never said it doesn’t exist, your topic is talking about the ‘zerg’ in general. Not a specific zerg, a specific guild or a specific group and thus my response was about the zerg in general. To be clear as well we are talking about coordinated team play in zergs.

The fact that it can exist doesn’t make it the norm, and the reason it will not be the norm is because the game systems do not encourage people to take that next step in being that organized. The solution to every problem in GW2 is more people and the game rewards them for it.

The vast majority of the zergs in the game are closer to what I described then what you described, and that is the problem with zergs.

I think a better question is who gives a kitten?

PPT is broken because coverage and population is broken. League play being introduced before those aspects are addressed is just outright idiotic and thus caring at all about league play is idiotic.

I stopped caring about PPT when I realized coverage > all else, introducing a league into that environment will not change how little I value PPT.

TheAmpca.1753:

Personally, I LOVE large battle “Zerg” fights because of the focus of team coordination and team effort.

Team coordination, where? Unless you think stacking and blasting is something to be excited about, I fail to see what you are talking about.

Zergs are important in any open world pvp game because they provide an entry point for new or casual players and they provide the raw numbers sometimes needed for large objective battles.

In GW2 however zergs are not just this entry point, they have become the only point. The game caters to zerg play in every aspect and as such there is nothing encouraging the zerg to play better, to get better, for meta to evolve at a slower then snail pace.

We are a year into the game and the current pinnacle of achievement is the GvG crowd that thinks running in a big PVT hammer train smashing the biggest clump of red names is coordination. I think GvG’s have done a lot to progress the quality of fighting in the game, but seriously that is pretty weak progression for a year since release.

So to answer your question, the problem with zergs in GW2 is that they play poorly, create a boring WvW environment, greatly reduce the overall skill cap, and are rewarded for it.

What is most played will change patch to patch based on changes to the game and people shifting to fill the needs of new meta.

aIJay.8125:

It’s a weapon. Weapons are OFFENSIVE – therefore offensive infusions. See was that so hard to understand?

Please thank me now for this awesome leap of logic.

I can’t wait for Ascended armor to come out and see all the QQ’ng that their armor which is DEFENSIVE only comes with defensive slots.

Oh joy.

Sorry if we do not all have huge faith in how ANET releases gear to just assume that armor will have all defensive slots. If that is the case, what is the harm in asking for clarification?

Keep in mind that most of the defensive stat combination were left out of the game when Ascended first came out. Even now in order to get a cleric’s back piece I have to make a magic find one in the MF, for a lot more gold, then convert it to cleric.

If ANET is going to make armor all defensive slots then I would like to hear that rather then wait six months for it to be released and find out it was just another oversight.

Reikou.7068:

but it IS balanced. You can get defensive infusions on your offensive weapon slotted Weapons if you absolutely wanted to.

It is not balanced because if my preference was offensive stats I can do it for 10 laurels. If my preference is defensive stats it costs me 130 gold. Rings and Accessories were balanced in this regard. Neck and back, you have both options. Weapons are not balanced on their own so unless they come out and state that armor will be all defensive slots.

colesy.8490:

I repeat, you do not need to run defensive gear to support your team.

I can do it naked with white weapons, I just prefer not to.

Reikou.7068:

Niim.9260:

Reikou.7068:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Versatile_Vital_Infusion
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Versatile_Resilient_Infusion
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Versatile_Healing_Infusion

you’re welcome.

So I should have to spend 65 more gold an infusion slot because I want to support stat? So for my four weapons that comes out to 390 gold… seems like a great approach.

The option is there. You just choose not to use it. This is not the game’s fault. This is your fault.

I want it to be balanced. With rings and accessories it is balanced for both offense and defense. We both had access to one offense and one defense, we could choose to spend the money and use a versatility infusion for the second one. I have no complaints of that kind of setup.

With weapons it is just offense and thus an issue as it stands now. As you will see in my first post I suggested adding defensive to shields and making all two handed one of each, this balances the options between offense and defense.

Unless armor will be all defense slots, there is no balance by having only offense slots for weapons.

Reikou.7068:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Versatile_Vital_Infusion
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Versatile_Resilient_Infusion
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Versatile_Healing_Infusion

you’re welcome.

So I should have to spend 65 more gold an infusion slot because I want a support stat? So for my four weapons that comes out to 390 gold… seems like a great approach.

colesy.8490:

Firstly, infusions offer pitiful stat boosts of like +5 power (or +5 agony resist of course) so it’s hardly relevant.

Secondly, you don’t need defensive stats to offer support to your team.

By that definition ascended is hardly relevant as well, so why add them to the game? Two slots of +healing for example is +10 power, on a two handed weapon. The entire difference in healing of an ascended weapon vs a non-ascended is only 9.

Gear type is a choice, we all get to make that choice for ourselves and ANET should provide equal opportunity for all.

Why is it that every, and I mean every time, ANET puts more gear in the game they short change people playing with one set of gear or another? Why is it so hard to just provide opportunities for everyone?

Ascended weapons, as far as I can tell, only have offensive infusion slots. Why? Why not a choice? Or have it so shields have defensive, two handed weapons have one of each, one handed have offensive, etc.

Can we expect armor to only have defensive infusion slots when you get around to adding it to the game?

I play a support role for my group, offensive infusions do nothing for me and reduce the effectiveness of an ascended vs non-ascended weapon.

lunyboy.8672:

If only you had some condition cleanse in it, though, maybe you wouldn’t be so upset about these runes on what, less than 5% of the wvw population?

Why do people keep repeating this same tired garbage. The runes allow you to stack confusion far more then can be cleansed because of the lack of ICD, thus the need for ICD.

Had some fun fights tonight.

Boulderbolg.3460:

My guild cannot wait for this new WvW update. We are a small roaming group who likes to skirmish. The problem is that we are in T1, and everyone else wants to zerg. For once, our small team can make a difference in WvW and have some good fights doing it.

Cheers to you, Anet, I am cancelling my FF14 sub!

Thank you,
BB

I think you are being overly optimistic to be honest. ANET’s track record with WvW is not all that great. While I hope you are right, I am expecting some new zerg friendly pile of kitten.

eithinan.9841:

Weren’t they the ones who had the stupid line for duels months ago at a fight club they hosted? They had EVERYONE line up in lines to “organize” the fight club until Mags just wiped everyone after an hour and only 2 duels happened? It was a clusterbomb.

I think it was RE. That was a funny night. It was in the TC era of ‘if you behave we will grace you with duels’ attitude and RE was still on Kaineng. Instead of just showing up for duels it had to be this big event and then it was a cluster kitten with line ups. I remember after an hour one of our mesmers got so bored he started pulling the enemy line up to see if he could get the order all mixed up

I thought PPT was all that mattered?

Perhaps this will encourage fewer siege monkeys?

Good players.

Jhawk.1360:

Niim.9260:

Jhawk.1360:

our nightly 15-25 is a zerg? ok I know we have the skill of 60 no need to flatter us I remember last weeks 80 man TC blob but apparently u consider 25 a zerg xD I can post screen shots of our guilds roster numbers if you’d like next time!

Yes because when your running around only your guild is with you. Whenever I see you, you are a zerg. By my standard 25 is a zerg and I fail to see why 80 man blobs would effect my view of zerg size.

This comment……. No need really for me to comment back, but for your sake I will. In the picture you can see we had 26 (by my green dot count) and there’s 3 guilded TC groups around 20 each 3 X 20= 60 (not including the RE hitting garrion). Also APS runs tagless and don’t get militia following us. As far as the fact that we’re "hiding"in the tower, well ya 26 v.s. 60? Not very reasonable, If it was only 2 of those guild groups or 40 TC we would have fought you. When you guys breached garrison APS did attack the RE and ESP group.

Zerglet I am not from TC.

Why even have a league to start with? Waste of resources better spent fixing the increasing number of WvW issues. Do we really need a league to reward the over populated servers? Just give them all a free whatever and lets move on with resources spent in a way that helps all players on all servers.

Seems like the simplest solution to skill lag is stop rewarding people for balling up into giant lag producing blobs. You could, crazy as this sounds, reward people for being more strategic, tactical and skillful.

ANET created packed server issues by ignoring the obvious impact coverage had on PPT, then they went out of their way to do everything they can to reward blobbing in every aspect of WvW.

Surprise, we have skill lag!

Not only will nothing be done, Devon the Clueless, has already posted that you will get credit based on your starting server. So now you can start league on your server, then switch to the enemy server. Sabotage the entire time and get credit as if you stayed on your server.

shoufer.2917:

I have read many of the forums on leagues. It is not going to go away, it will happen.
What I don’t want is people to get rewards for just being on a server.
If a person does not participate in WVW allot they should not get the rewards that come with it. MAKE IT SO THAT YOU HAVE TO COMPLETE A WVW WEEKLY OR MONTHLY DURING EACH SEASON TO GET THE REWARD. This would prevent the PVE’rs from getting something they don’t deserve, and also if the rewards are nice make more PVE’rs start to WvW to get those rewards. Bring on the league system but do it right

It is impossible to do it right. The matches are about population and coverage, until that is addressed then any form of competition is just rewarding population and coverage and ignoring the big fail of a system that PPT is.

The league will reward a whole lot of people that do not deserve it, why care if PvE’ers also get those rewards.

Wintuo.1356:

A lot of the fights this week that I’ve been in, that TC has lost were due to falling for bait-trap-choke point nukes… blah blah blah

Paragraphs are your friend.

Jhawk.1360:

our nightly 15-25 is a zerg? ok I know we have the skill of 60 no need to flatter us I remember last weeks 80 man TC blob but apparently u consider 25 a zerg xD I can post screen shots of our guilds roster numbers if you’d like next time!

Yes because when your running around only your guild is with you. Whenever I see you, you are a zerg. By my standard 25 is a zerg and I fail to see why 80 man blobs would effect my view of zerg size.

Jhawk.1360:

Takes 3 guilds to kill APS I guess! We must be a pretty good guild! Then again TC is bad, just numbers, have to blob for tier one yo.

There should be a forum rule that zerg guilds cant comment on other people zerging.

They are too busy setting up league play for wvw to work on functionality that should have been in the game on release.

Nope. The introduction of WvW leagues shows a profound lack of understanding of WvW, the people that enjoy WvW, and the failings of their rank system. I wont put a dime towards the game until Carver is replaced with an inanimate object.

DevonCarver.5370:

At no point did I, or would I have, said “Fair competition” WvW is not intended to be “fair”. There are servers with more people.

So what is the point in pretending its competitive in the first place then? I fail to see the point of league play if the teams are known to be unbalanced from the start?