Guild Wars 2

This is the official response by ArenaNet to this issue:

Matt Witter

“Our answer is that WvW was developed as a never ending continuous battle. We feel that everyone should have the ability to contribute no matter what time of the day it is. How we’ve came to this conclusion is that no player’s time is more valuable than another. Everyone has different off peak hours for whatever reason. Players should not be punished or unable to experience and view the same content as everyone else because they play at a different time. They too are paying customers. This is not saying that we are against any adjustment to scoring, or against developing another mechanic to improve the capping system. This is simply saying that we will not be changing WvW based on some players’ idea of off time hours.”

There’s no such thing as nightcapping because your night is someone else’s day.

Using Cloak and Dagger is really difficult, okay?

Or manually swap to a weapon in your inventory.

sostronk.8167:

Don’t worry, as soon as Blackgates sister server drops out of Tier 1 things will be much more fun.

DON’T PUSH SOR

They were your sister last week. (Source)

shortcake.8659:

what a surprise, FIRE reviving mesmers through gates again.

He released once he saw 3 Superior Arrow Carts pointed at his dead body. A wise choice.

If you swap to a weapon from your inventory, you become unglitched.

Spurnshadow.3678:

This thread just proves to me how bad the people complaining are. Boon stripping should be one of the first attacks your group opens with and continues with throughout the fight, along with your condi removals, heals, etc. This isn’t sPvP.

You do know zergs have more boons than just Retaliation right? Maybe you don’t realize there are other types of Boons. Here is some helpful information from the wiki for your convenience.

Boons

Many Boons are also provided by Combos; in fact, many area of effect Boons are as well. There is no combo that removes Boons, so Boon removal simply cannot keep up with the amount of Boons applied; this included Retaliation. It’s simple math.

The people defending Retaliation simply want to be rewarded for being standing there mindlessly being hit by AoE instead of moving out of it!

Spurnshadow.3678:

It seems that a lot of the people here complaining are engineers,  Do you realize you have one of the most powerful boon stripping skills in the game?  Throw mines.  It strips 25 boons.

P.S. – Throw Mine doesn’t remove 25 Boons. Maybe you didn’t know this, but this game has an AoE cap of 5, and not 25. I hope this information has been very informative for you since you seem confused.

wish.1027:

So basically, you want to be able to mindlessly throw AOEs and not care at all? That sounds incredibly boring and stupid. No thanks.

If I’m able to get in a good position where a zerg doesn’t see me, such as when they are mindlessly PvDooring, I should have a great opportunity to do damage. But I don’t, because when I attempt to hurt them I get a huge backlash of Retaliation. Pretty amazing design when they are able to damage you yet are completely oblivious to your existence.

I always see defenders of Retaliation say, “You want to mindlessly AoE!” The most mindless thing in this whole argument is the free damage gained from simply having that Boon up. I’m glad that they added a graphic for Retaliation so that general awareness is raised about how poorly designed this skill is.

Sororita.3465:

Zergs? NP! SUPA ACs!

Don’t you wish you could fire all 5 of those at once yourself?

graverr.6473:

Sorry but that is not how it works at all .You are really confused or disinformed.Retal hits for 300 per hit per target for a maximum of 5 targets.Lets say you have 30 k hp .If you can hit anyone 100 times in very few seconds to kill yourself than it is something really wrong with your class.

Le Sigh. You are so confused.

Let’s say you cast Feedback on a zerg in WvW. This should be a good thing, right?

Uh oh! They have Retaliation! So what happens?

Let’s pretend that zerg has an Engineer which throw their Grenades, because Grenades are awesome. Now, each Grenade toss throws 3 Grenades, each which hit 5 targets each. That’s one players casting 1 spell, and causing a backlash of up to 15 units of damage. But wait a second – Feedback makes those Grenades belong to the Mesmer now… So all of that Retaliation damage goes to the Mesmer – instantly!

Woah! Now Imagine if there were three Engineers who did that in that Feedback. Uh oh! Now that’s 45 units of damage! Oh my gooses, if Retaliation did 300 damage a hit, that’s a potential 13,000 damage! But wait, what if there are other random projectiles bouncing back, like from Thieves, or Rangers, or – I don’t know – Anything!? Wow! It seems like that one spell just caused a lot of Retaliation damage instantly!

Feedback isn’t the only issue. Grenade Barrage throws 6 grenades, each which can hit up to 5 targets each. Meteor Shower also has the same issues.

I hope this clears things up for you finally.

Bananasmile.4126:

First of all, if you’re getting Retaliation damage, rest assured you are dealing much more damage to the Guardian

Total raw damage doesn’t really matter. If I did 30,000 damage but it was split evenly among 50 players, a few ticks of Regeneration nullifies this. However, if I even take 1/3rd of that damage, the average health of a player is cut in half. This forces you to burn your self-heal and back off, whereas the players you dealt “more damage” to did not even notice it.

Because there is a 5-target AoE cap, it spreads out the damage among the zerg, but all of the damage of Retaliation is focused on one player. Engineer Grenade Kit, Grenade Barrage, Flamethrower, Elementalist Meteor Shower, and Feedback are a few examples of multiple potential units of damage spread out over an area.

Very simply put: Until Retaliation gets an ICD, it will never be balanced.

Popular argument against ICD: “Use your brain, don’t attack someone with Retaliation.” Against a blob, should you always assume they have Retaliation? Are you supposed to target every single player before you AoE? The players benefiting from Retaliation don’t need to “use their brain” but the players attacking do?

The definition of “overpowered” is something that is easy to do but highly effective. Sounds like Retaliation to me.

Cosmic.6047:

You hitting more than one target and paying the price for it.
Don’t push mindless buttons and watch the buffs and/or debuffs on you.
They added them for a reason !

Yes, I fired one AoE on zerg that was completely oblivious to my existence but manage to do half my health in damage from Retaliation “just cause.” Good luck picking out who does and doesn’t have Retaliation against an army of 40+.

When you cast Feedback on an enemy zerg, it should be detrimental to them. It barely matters to them though, and most of the time I notice the Mesmer just lose half of their health due to that boon. You can’t strip it reliably either because Boon removal doesn’t nearly keep up with how frequently Retaliation can be applied.

Retaliation will never be balanced in WvW until it gets an internal cooldown. 5-target limit favors the zerg, and limitless damage potential on Retaliation also supports it.

You’re now noticing how often Retaliation backlashes you with the UI changes. Pre-patch, Retaliation did 33% more damage; you just didn’t know because the combat log is terrible.

Retaliation needs an internal cooldown to normalize it versus every Profession. It doesn’t make any sense why some Professions absolutely destroy themselves vs. it (Engineers using Grenade Barrage) while others aren’t affected as much.

Kryyg.8576:

Whoever wins any match, only thing it proves is that they can play more than the other teams.

Fixed it for you. Welcome to WvW.

Nakoor.1980:

It was almost sad seeing them melt so fast.

Those Golems still killed the Reinforced Gate in under 15 seconds, even with the inner Cannon shooting the Gate nonstop along with every Superior Arrow Cart. If we hadn’t scouted the rush 5 minutes before it happened, we would have lost Hills for sure.

zastari.1730:

How wide is the AoE radius on an AC? How wide is it after traited?

It doesn’t reach.

The maximum range of the Arrow Cart circle is just short of the ability to “click on” someone or something. The maximum range of a Catapult is well outside that range.

zastari.1730:

if they build a cata it’s in traited AC range. If they build a treb it can be counter-trebbed because guess who has the height advantage (hint: the person inside the tower).

Catapult is 4,000 range.
Traited Arrow Cart is 3,500 range.

zastari.1730:

Please tell me more about your T7 tactics.

Heh!

The bug is from standing on the edge of a wall. It thinks you’re falling.

shortcake.8659:

Seriously it’s not hard just don’t stand in the red circles and you’ll be fine

Exactly!

Two words: Rally bait.

Gadzooks.4687:

They did add the rank system in ONE recent patch, after MONTHS of nothing at all. And many would debate the rank system being positive or negative.

Yeah! I bet the WvW Team was just laying around in their office for months doing nothing. They had this Magical Wand of Fixing Culling they could have waved at any time but they were too lazy to get up to use it until now.

Dragon’s Tooth has no line of sight requirement. If they can target it, they can kill it. It’s a bug, just like Phantasmal Berserker was. Be patient! One by one, the exploits are being fixed.

Every team has access to Hills. I don’t see why you need to nerf it, if you all benefit from it. Once you break the Outer Gate, it’s actually quite easy to break the Inner if you use its height advantage against itself.

I’m no WvW expert here, but you seem to have 79 unspent points. You should invest those into Mercenary’s Bane asap.

Dontcare Aboutnames.9284:

So this is the highest rank I’ve seen someone so far. Congrats to whoever that is already hitting Legend I’m not even close to r120 haha, need to stop using alts!

That Engineer looks familiar…

Have you ever seen veteran speedrunners in other video games? They skip as much as they possibly can.

Wethospu.6437:

Kholer: Scorpion Wire, Dagger Storm, Heartseeker, Serpent’s Strike (Leap), Serpent’s Strike (Evade), Hornet Sting, Monarch’s Leap, Flanking Strike, Flanking Stab, spawns Silver-Ghosts.

His only noteworthy abilities are his AoE Scorpion Wire, Dagger Storm, and his add summoning. You can lump together the rest of his attacks as single-target aggro-based abilities, because you deal with all of them the same way.

skinnyb.5920:

Stacking is a gimmick used as a sort of safety net for groups with poor communication and teamwork. The only time I ever stack is in phase 1 of the Lupicus fight just so we can focus the grubs.

Being closer to your team is always better and more beneficial than being off by yourself.

It’s not like they accidentally set Agony at level 50 Jade Maw 1172% of your HP per second. They don’t want you to progressing past 50. It’s incredibly lazy design, but that’s what we have to deal with: A boss designed to be impossible. For the record, you need upwards of 920 extra Agony Resistance using their current formula in order to survive it. It won’t be possible to live until they remove those “1s” from that value.

Lexandro.1456:

For YOUR kit selection (zerker) you are less effective to a value in your estimation of up to 40% less damage. Well first off Thats for YOUR kit, not everyones. And only if you wear a LOT of MF gear instead of zerker. Players can mix/match stats so that MF is not as much of a reduction in damage as you claim.

What if I do only 10% less damage, or even 5%? Where does the cuttoff begin?

And that right there is why inspect is a bad thing. Teams become a game of “Arbitrary numbers based on anecdotal evidence, backed up by faulty logic” dancing.

It’s not a claim, it’s simple math. My point is this: If someone joined your party and said: “Hey guys, I’m going to wear full MF. I hope you know that this will result in a significant damage reduction on my part, but it’s so that I can get more loot.” Would you want him in your group? As it is now, you can never make an informed decision unless the player is being incredibly honest.

Lexandro.1456:

So what if they are wearing MF? It doesnt stop them from attacking/supporting the team. They might not be as effective, but it doesnt stop them being useful.

By wearing Magic Find, I do about 35-40% less damage than if I wore my normal Berserker’s gear. I slow the party’s overall speed down by about 15%, and this speed reduction is the price they pay for me gaining approximately 60% more loot. The lack of an Inspect feature, and the benefits of Magic Find, are what facilitate this “playstyle.”

I hope they don’t bring in inspection. I carry around a full set of Berserker gear for when people ask me to “Ping” my stats, but I am always wearing my full Magic Find set because I want more money.

Why Ash Legion Spy Kit was used: Because it was overpowered.

The Dredge Fractal does not summon an “endless” wave of creatures. It summons one wave every 20% of the door’s health in damage, so you can just do it slower and kill them in smaller and more manageable groups.

You’re being Dynamically Aggro’ed™.

In all seriousness, their aggro system is in dire need of rework to make it actually more dynamic.

Fire Fields are just a way to provide Might. The bottom line is, Warriors do more damage than Elementalists and they bring more Damage for the group which is providing Might, Fury, and Vulnerability.

You might want to back your stopwatch up with a frapse, by the way! Just saying!

Dub.1273:

A good elementalist in a well experianced party increases the overall damage output about 4 times as much as a warrior.

Let’s assume for a moment that Elementalists and Warriors do the same damage with Berserker Gear. (They don’t; Warriors do more)

One Warrior can provide his group with permanent Fury using “For Great Justice!” and using the #2 on Banner of Discipline. This is +20% more Critical Hit Chance. Warriors on average also provide 3-7 stacks of Might for their group permanently. Finally, Warriors can provide 3-5 stacks of Vulnerability using Greatsword spec, or 9-10 using Axe/Mace.

So unless your Elementalist is bringing 100% more Critical Hit Chance and 12-25 stacks of permanent Might to the whole group by itself, (the entire time, not 20% of the time), and 25 stacks of Vulnerability 100% of the time, your statement is a gross exaggeration at best.

JJBigs.8456:

i dont think the poster is asking for tips. hes pointing out the current mechanics and the problems with them. ofc its “Do-able” And its why he posted dont post l2p, similar to giving him baby guide of tips. He knows what to do, hes saying the way to implement and do all that stuff is not proper

When someone say things like, “it is impossible to do this!” on a boss that PUGs down with ease quite regularly, how do you not expect someone to say it is a L2P issue?

Here is a video detailing this stuff by Wethospu!

Subject Alpha Abilities: All Paths:

• Stacking in Melee Range: Subject Alpha has no melee attacks at all, so there is no drawback to being in melee range, except for taking the Flame Burst damage on Paths 1 and Path 2. However, if you have any incidental Condition Removal, such as Light Field + Projectile Finishers going off, the Burning will not be an issue and players will only take about 1,500-2,000 damage per Flame Burst. The “Shatterstone” Teeth of Jormag will hurt players, and do moderate damage. However, this is all easy enough to self-heal and Revive through if all of you cannot Dodge it. It also allows you to kill all of the Crystal Prisons easily through incidental AoE or a quick target switch.

There is not much for a hardcore PvE’er to do in this game. By “hardcore”, I mean that there are players who have learned their Profession very well, and are working out the best builds for themselves and their static groups in order to optimize. However, there is nothing in the game that requires this level of skill in PvE.

Fluffy Ferocious.9807:

The coordination of the wisp running in under 30 seconds without the use of a team voice channel is almost impossible.

I’ve PUGed this Fractal many times. Whenever I did it above Difficulty Scale 20, it was incredibly quick and easy.

What exactly do you need “voice channel” for? There are 3 players running the Wisps. Once they are all ready, they type “r” in chat. Then a fourth player (not running the Wisps) counts down “3”, “2”, “1”, “go” for them.

It sounds like the groups you are in do not understand the mechanics very well. This is one of the few dungeons where you will fail until the majoity does learn it, but you will always succeed once you do. Learning is not synonymous with difficulty.

“Elitist” is synonymous for “People I don’t agree with” for most people in these threads.

In every single game, players skip as much as they can to get the content done quicker. The only way to force people to not do it is to make the end boss immune to damage unless all trash has been slain.

Hermit.1574:

I love how people jump to comparing this game to WoW instantly, who here played WoW when it first launched?
There were no raids, two PvP maps, and just about nothing to do at max level.

Sounds like you’re the one who didn’t play WoW when it first launched! Molten Core and Onyxia were both available at launch. (You zoned into Molten Core via Blackrock Depths, and you needed the Drakefire Amulet for Onyxia) Players had to farm quite a bit for Fire Resistance. There were also no PvP maps. (Hillsbrad Foothills doesn’t count) Battlegrounds came in a later patch.

If you’re standing at max range, it doesn’t hit you. Even if it does, it should be so infrequent your team can revive you right away with little consequences. Save anti-projectile stuff for the adds, and you’ll be fine. It also helps to chill the boss right before it phase changes, so it moves extremely slow while trying to reach the captives.

If you rapidly strafe left and right while fighting him, his arrows will never be able to hit you.

Shear Force.9154:

You mean, you’d need extra 950 AR for lvl 80?

No, you need it to live through the current damage of Level 50 Jade Maw.

Kaon.7192:

Healing Springs + 4 Cluster bomb spam = 6k AoE heal per second.

Fields have a cap on how many times they can combo, as far as I know. I think the number is 5.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Each new piece of AR gear is meant to allow you to progress to further fractal levels, which have increasingly better rewards compounding with higher scaling difficulty.

My only criticism is that the Agony on Jade Maw increased to a ridiculous level, when it could have continued to increase at its current pace. Even if it doubled from 72% to 144% and still would have been impossible to complete. Why was it set to something completely unrealistic, 1172%?

Note: ((AR : DR)) formula ((Agony Resistance : Damage Reduction)) formula is currently set at a ((5 : 6%)) ratio. If you have 35 current AR, you reduce Agony by 40%. In order to reduce level 50 Jade Maw’s damage to 30% a tick, you need an additional 950 AR. I somehow doubt our remaining 9 slots of gear are going to provide on average 110 AR each, since it would completely invalidate Fractals 1-49.

And nothing of value was lost.

The problem is, people want to have their cake and eat it too. Dungeons are readily and often exploited, or they are easy to begin with. This somewhat justifies how terrible the loot is.