Guild Wars 2

Can anyone say for certain whether or not Magic Find affects the Drop Rate of Coffers from the Holograms? Or from anything else, for that matter? I know most people will say that it should affect the Drop Rate, but does anyone KNOW whether or not Magic Find helps?

Is this going to be another “Final Rest” situation, where it’s “definitely on the loot tables” but never drops for even a single person, until suddenly one day there’s a patch and the recipes start dropping from every chest?

Savoy.6824:

Also they dont need more heart power. They need to do what they did with the holloween event and have several waves come out. If they had more heart power then they would be killing champions like the stupid dolls from the wintersday event. Why Anet nailed it on the head with hollween and then tried to fix something that wasnt broken is beyond me.

Actually this guy said it much better than I did, I don’t know why I didn’t say “Bring back Halloween spawns!”

But if anyone from Anet is reading this, the Halloween event was awesome… let’s do that again, please!

Ah, I’ll go check those areas out then, thank you. I would normally say that Anet should have either listed those areas in the Patch Notes OR they should not have listed any areas at all, but in this case I might be glad that they left a few maps out of the Patch Notes, no matter how weird it is, since it might mean less competition.

“The explorable areas leading up to Lion’s Arch (Queensdale, Kessex Hills, Brisbane Wildlands, Caledon Forest, Metrica Province, Plains of Asford, Diessa Plateau, Wayfarer Foothills, Snowden Drifts and Gendarran Fields) has been seeded with mini hologram projectors that will create hologram minions to bash. In addition to normal loot drops, these minions have a greater chance of dropping Dragon Coffers and candy.”

Do you mean Snowden Drifts? Because I’m having the same problem there.

With there being 11 pages om the “Dragon Bash” subforum already, I don’t know if this has been directly addressed yet or not, but these holograms NEED MORE HEALTH. I realize that they are in lowbie zones, but I can’t even farm these with a group of guildies, because my most basic AoE skill kills EVERY hologram WITH THE FIRST HIT! It’s basically just a foot race on every map to see who can reach the hologram node first, as the first person to drop an AoE basically gets all 4 holograms.

I’ve already tried laying down a Poison Field right before activating the Holograms & it doesn’t seem to work, as dropping Poison only gives me no tag credits. I’ve also tried switching to a Level 1, plain white Shortbow (on Thief), and the basic #2 skill still melts everything in 1 shot. This really needs to be addressed somehow.

Enocka.7421:

there are some fantastic ac users that can fire around corners and walls

You’re describing everyone who ever uses an ArrowCart there. The only Line of Sight that matters on an AC is yours, not the AC’s, so if you can lay a circle down somewhere, the AC will gladly shoot arrows through rooftops, walls, rocks, trees, mountains, cliffsides, or anything else that might get in the way, and drop the full attack’s worth of arrows on the everything inside the circle you laid down.

IF you are talking about people who shoot ArrowCarts WAY out into places where you know they shouldn’t have any Line of Sight or be able to even lay down a circle, that’s a bug, hack, or exploit, depending on who you’re talking to, but it just involves putting the game in windowed mode and changing the aspect ratio to something totally different from the screen you’re using, allowing you to see things that you normally couldn’t. This can also be achieved by simply using multiple screens, which as far as I know is working as intended, and will allow you to shoot an ArrowCart over the wall of a Keep, hitting people inside the Keep whom you normally wouldn’t be able to see at all. This has been complained about many times on the forums, and will probably be fixed at some point, though I have no idea how.

phfresno.1230:

Any developers take on something like this? I think it would be something for the community to compete for, and make a yearly event like this would probably get a lot of attention in the gaming community as a whole. Any developers want to share their perspective on something like this?

I would be very surprised if there was any sort of statement on this, since there have already been at least a dozen threads suggesting seasonal tournaments very similar to this, going all the way back to last October. No one from Anet has ever acknowledged having seen them on the forums or in interviews, and I’ve never seen even a hint of this being discussed in any way by anyone working on GW2.

hyjaxxx.1584:

what if during the tourney there was a population ( one in,one out system) that capped the population to the team with the lowest numbers. Ie Ferg has 200 players on all maps, so the server they are fighting is only allowed the same.

I know it creates a queue that people dont want..but then the battles come down to the players ability and not being swamped by over pop

I know that we like to think that most people play this game for fun, but there really are servers with large sections of the population who play to win, and only to win, and it’s been that way basically since week long matches started. So I wouldn’t be too surprised to see a server find a way to use this to their advantage; for instance, by having a server-wide meeting in which they agree to have guilds take turns, with only 1 guild per map each night, and simply handing off to the next guild at an agreed time, to keep the WvW cap low and only have good, organized players on their maps. It would take a lot of daily advertising in Lions Arch, and some pugs would probably still get in, but if the opposing servers didn’t know that this was happening, big zerg servers could get hit pretty hard by a meta-strategy like this when they try to jump in WvW and find that only 40 people can get on each map, all mixed groups, possibly no Commanders, facing against an organized, WvW-focused force. It would be a good counter to “Stacking Servers”, I guess.

Wow, no one’s listed a soundtrack for Blackgate’s WvW yet? Well, here goes…

Pop pop!

If you’re talking about the “bug” where you see a Yak right next to you, but can’t hit it with melee, then switch to ranged weapons and suddenly you’re hitting it, but 50 feet in front of where it appears to be, this is a lag issue. Dolyaks can get completely lagged out, so that where you see them, and where they appear to be on the mini map, is actually pretty far away from where the game thinks they are, so you can only hit them with ranged weapons unless you get really lucky and strike the “invisible” Yak up ahead of you, then manage to walk with it at the same pace, hitting it until it dies. It’s VERY annoying…

Raeyne.5086:

Or… Friendly fire damage.

Anyone who did any research at all or played beta for even an hour knew that friendly fire wouldn’t be part of GW2 anywhere before they bought it. Darkfall already has this covered, so if you want to turn to your guildie and suddenly bash him down (and steal all his stuff!) that game already exists.

The Goat.1940:

WvW is meant for large scale fights, bottom line once you get that it’s obvious the large group isn’t going anywhere.

I know tons of people hate zerging, and believe that it has essentially caused the slow death of WvW and so on, but there is lot of right in this statement. If you go back and look at all the ad materials for GW2, especially anything related to WvWvW, they all promised “Epic, large-scale 50v50v50 battles in Stonemist Castle!” and things like that, and those ads were what had a lot of people excited about GW2 before release! Skill lag has been a big thing that has made people hate zergs, and when culling was an issue, that was another problem. But GW2 is a game that is meant to be accessible to newcomers and first-time gamers alike, so for pvp purposes, the game is essentially on easy-mode all the time compared to many hardore, pvp-only or pvp-focused games. Those games don’t have nearly the number of people playing them that GW2 has, either.

But yeah, the big issue seems to be that most servers have at least 1 or more guilds that can either run a 50+ zerg, or can at least “rally” enough people for it. However, guilds that run in these kind of numbers are becoming increasingly rare (there were tons of guilds last year that ran 20-30+ in WvW nightly that simply don’t exist in the game today.) So people are constantly looking for something to do with their 5-10 man group of regular guildies, or sometimes even solo. The obvious answer is flipping camps and/or killing yaks, or even trying to ninja a tower. The problem here is that lots of people step into WvW for the purpose of fighting other players, not to take small objectives away from a group of NPC’s (there’s a whole, huge PvE world already set up for that.) And while some groups relish the chance to wipe 2-3 times their numbers in a zerg-busting effort (this works, but rarely, and almost never against a truly organized force), most groups are looking for a relatively even fight, 5-10 vs 5-10, and are often disappointed, since these fights are rare and difficult to find on many servers unless you set them up ahead of time somehow.

Unfortunately, I don’t have an easy solution to this problem that would make everyone happy.

On s/tPvP: A lot of people who are in favor of zergs, or promote them as the way WvW was meant to be run, will simply say “Go play sPvP, idiot!” I just want to say that repeating that over and over is not helpful at all. It’s like if someone said “I’ve only got 6 people, but I’d like to set up and a small 6 on 6 game of soccer. Anyone want to play us?” and the very next guy to post says “Only 6 people? Go play basketball, you idiot!” They are very different games, and it’s sad that you would be forced to play a different game simply because of the number of people in your guild.

Fuzzion.2504:

Anyone knows if there is /stuck function like in DAOC ?

You mean, like in every other game in the world, practically? Sadly no, I don’t think /stuck helps you out in this game… if you’re in WvW, you have to hope you’re out of Combat and port. If you’re in PvE, and not in a city, then it’s gonna cost you silver. For some reason, Malchor’s Leap has 100’s of possible spots where you can get stuck and have port out.

Liu.4751:

My first one would be get rid of outman buff, of course it’s fun but it’s useless more or less, I’m not sure of the ratio it comes on but it just makes the pushing team with the … large army)zerg) ush more and the loosing time just now their outmanned and don’t stand a hell alot of chance winning a capture or a defence.

Nope, just make the Outmanned Buff invisible to opposing servers. This has been suggested AT LEAST 1,000 on these forums, so far no progress on this as far as we know.

Liu.4751:

Now my ideas are quite new, Bring in army soldiers, yeah, NPCs what can fight along players and follow make them vets or even better some kind of champions this would stop a large unbalanced zerg from rushing and these npc commanders… would only follow into open battle. Bases are elft to player teams and the already exsitant NPC vets.

YES!!! I would wake up @ 3am and happily follow the zerg from map to map for hours if I knew that there would be an army of Veterans and Champions to farm for easy wxp & badges!

1. New Maps
2. Bigger Maps
3. Better Maps

Honestly, 1-10 are all on this same basic theme, so I’ll skip down to number 11.

11. Fix the Commander Icon.
You should be able to set it so that when someone joins your squad, your Icon changes color. You should also be able to make it visible to ONLY your squad members, if you don’t feel like leading every PUG on the map, or if there are 10 Commanders on the map already, or whatever. Also, make it Account Bound. I know that Anet said it has to be Soul Bound because they want people to identify 1 person (by name, apparently) as the Commander, and not have the same person’s Icon pop up under a different name every time. This is pretty easy to fix, just make it so that any time you turn on the Command Icon, your name displays as the name of the original character you opened the Commander’s Compendium with.

12. Fix skill lag.
Or if you can’t fix it, make it 100 times worse than it is so that no one will want to run in huge zerg-blobs anymore. Either way, I don’t really care at this point.

Contiguous.1345:

I mostly run with my guild, looking for open field combat with other guilds.
We rarely will attack a position, mostly when asked by the field commander.
On the rare occasions we set down siege , it’s in the hope of drawing out a sortie. More often than not we abandon it unused.

By the sound of it, the AC points are voted best but I honestly can’t remember the last time I used one.

Is there any chance that Anet might add more options?

Well, if you’re looking for something like “+5% damage to Players from Enemy Servers” I can say that it’s 99.9999999% likely that will never happen, since it directly affects balance, even if it is eventually available to everyone. I know that maxing out the Rank abilities affects balance now, if you use siege, but something where 1 person can with essentially the same build, gear, & level as you can run up to you and do 5% more damage to you simply because they’ve played WvW longer will probably never enter the game. This is probably a good thing. Arenanet still views WvW as a casual PvP environment, where anyone can purchase the game, log in for the first time, run around their starter area for 30 minutes and then jump right into WvW and start having fun. This is how it was described to us all way back in very early beta and right up until launch. The “hardcore WvW” community kind of ruined this idea within the first week of release, and there are still lots of people who are “playing to win”, not just for open-field combat or just for fun or whatever. So if you’re talking about something that will allow you to just straight up do more damage to your enemies than they do to you, or have extended condition durations, or anything like that, it’s highly, highly unlikely to ever enter the game.

Spicyhash.7605:

Laying on the ground after you’re dead and spying:

Shouldn’t even be possible. Fade the screen to black/blur after so many seconds/minutes to disable this. An argument can be made that they are actually screwing their team over because they’re just laying there dead, but, in this game, one person missing from a zerg of 30-40 (even 20) players, does not make any difference whatsoever.

People have been posting on these forums about this since last September. Honestly, with the Downed mechanic and the way zergs can rez and even “insta-rez” people with Warbanners, there should be at least SOME penalty for dying. I don’t mean a 15-minutes timeout or whatever, but I think that when you die you should be automatically teleported to your original spawn point (Citadel, etc) after 15 seconds or so, not able to simply choose from any of the waypoints your server currently owns. I know this is only a minor inconvenience, since you could then waypoint anywhere you want once you’re up, but it would solve the “Corpse Spy” problems, and a minor inconvenience is more of a penalty than we have in WvW now, since the only problem we have with dying is that you might get a repair bill of 1 silver or so.

Spicyhash.7605:

inexperienced/gold-buying commanders ruining groups:
there are commanders who simply bought gems convert to gold and bought a commander tag without spending hours and hours in game earning that gold. the commander tag being reliant on an item that can be spawned (gold) was a bad design choice from the beginning. it should have been based on wvw experience (kills, plots taken, etc) + badges. this is too late to fix and is really not even worth complaining about anymore.

This is a problem that most of us saw coming back in beta, having the Gold be the only barrier to getting a Commander Icon. A lot of people thought that the “100 Gold Commander” idea would be a temporary thing at the beginning of the game, to allow large, organized guilds to pool their money together quickly to buy 1 Command Icon for the leader of their group (my guild, for instance, had 1 Icon less than a week after release.) But once the Trading Post finally started working, it became clear to most people that it was only a matter of time before everyone in the game would have nearly 100 gold at some point during their time in GW2, which is the situation we’re in now. On some servers it would be pretty easy to fill the entire que for a map with nothing but Commanders. And yes, many of them are quite bad, and some of them are PvE’ers who bought the Icon FIRST, then decided to check out WvW (this is still unusual on my server, though.)

The barrier for getting an Icon really should be something other than pure gold, but it does need to be something that allows a guild to pool their resources together to elect their own Commander. It seems like a very complicated issue to get right, and as we’ve seen, a very easy one to get wrong.

Well, the OP is sort of right about the stats that have been left out; namely, the Valkyrie stats. The Ascended Tier of gear almost feels like a nerf on the “Hidden Killer” Thief builds, forcing them to go Berserker with just a tiny bit of Vitality sprinkled in.

Unless someone has spotted full Valkyrie stats at one of the Ascended vendors…

Well, the best deal in the entire Rank system seems to be the very first Tier 1 in Arrow Cart Mastery, which increases your Range for only 5 wxp. Start there, even if you rarely use Arrow Carts. extended range makes a bigger difference than 1% damage to/from anything, whether it’s siege or guards. The Tier 2 of most Siege Mastery ranks, +25% Damage, is kind of ridiculous, and likely to be rolled back a bit at some point, but if you have the points for it I suggest you enjoy those while they last.

What’s kind of funny is that, basically since week long matches first started, people have been saying “We need to see NA Tier 1 vs EU Tier 1!” That match would be kind of fun probably, but I really think everyone would be better served if we could somehow have NA Tier 9 vs EU Tier 9! Send Eredon’s Terrace to take on FoW & Vabbi, and let Ring of Fire come over to NA and play against Sorrow’s Furnace and HoD!

Disclaimer: Yes, I know there are technical difficulties that prevent NA vs EU, I was just pointing out a fun idea. (^_^)

WvW players all wonder how it’s possible that there are PvE’ers out there with over 1,000 Gold! But yeah, it’s not so uncommon to meet someone in WvW who has 5,000 or even 10,000 Badges stashed in the bank (I know people who’ve bought extra bank slots JUST to make room for the stacks of Badges they were saving), and a large part of that comes from the fact that people have been playing WvW obsessively since launch, but until recently, there was very little that most people felt was worth spending their badges on! Sure, people spend badges on siege, but for people who play a lot of WvW it’s been pretty easy to store up Badges.

And like someone said earlier, Badges usually do drop MUCH faster than you’re reporting for regular WvW’ers. You do have to remember to go back after a large scale battle and pick up all your bags (something people complain about on these forums almost daily) and you need to be hitting a lot of people, and those people need to die shortly afterwards. You can get Badges from NPC’s in WvW, but there really aren’t that many, and general “Badge Farming” strategies involve putting together a group of 40 or more people to roam a map, sometimes attacking a Keep or Garrison in order to draw out more players to kill.

And as many people mentioned, it does depend a little bit on how active your WvW “Tier” is during your timezone (Tier’s 1 & 2, as has been pointed out, usually have some action going on at all hours.)

Anyway, keep at it. Maybe join a WvW guild just for your WvW adventures, or form a group from your current guild to roam WvW. Get to know the Commanders on your server, and you’ll start to see which ones will lead you to more & more Badges. Considering it was your first time really running WvW, and you’re complaining about Badge drops and not “I stepped out of spawn and some invisible guy 1-shot, so I respawned and it happened again!”, I’d say you’re doing pretty well (^_^).

Tuluum.9638:

Burl.9567:

Otokomae.9356:

Yeah, if you play WvW on a server with even a medium population, you can pretty much remove every key from your keyboard except the “1” key, since that’s the only one that works in battle right now.

Your “1” key works still? Consider yourself lucky. I can’t do anything any longer.

Oto is -OBVIOUSLY- OP. Nerf!!!

This is true. The April patch attempted to “balance” this issue by making all “Bakuon” characters count as 30 people on the map for que purposes.

Yeah, if you play WvW on a server with even a medium population, you can pretty much remove every key from your keyboard except the “1” key, since that’s the only one that works in battle right now.

lordkrall.7241:

Nuvo.5014:

Fanboy!!!. Any normal mmo when they find a problem like this (Siege is basic for wvw) they just tunr off the area, map, etc… till they fix it, and normally they fix it in a few hour no a few days. This is just the lack of respect that anet has toward the wvw community.

And funnily enough I would actually think that people would whine even more if they turned off WvW. WvW is still very much playable, it just focuses more on open fighting than taking towers.

Different games have different code-structure, and also different issues and therefore takes different kind of time to fix. Quite logical.
Personally I have seen quite a few other MMOs where issues that made certain content in the game completely unplayable have been left into the game until the next big update.

Seriously, how many alts does Gaile Gray have?

It’s happening in NA too. It could be because siege is no longer working, so massive armies are just running straight at each other now, or zergs are hitting Keeps with every person they have on the map. But yeah, whatever the cause, LAG has doubled since the patch went live yesterday.

As a 24-hour bug, right before the end of the Tier system, I have to admit that the “no siege” thing is kinda fun (^_^).

That said, WvW is 100% broken until this gets back to a “Working as Intended” state.

If you’re getting fewer Crystalline Dusts in Cursed Shore than any other T6 mat, that just sounds like really bad luck. I’m still getting at least twice as many Crystalline Dusts as any other T6 mat when I farm Cursed Shore, unless I specifically farm spiders for Venoms, or something like that. Try the Pentinent/Shelter/JoFast loop.

You can also try crunching T5 Dusts into T6 ones in the Mystic Forge, but make sure to check the price of T5 vs T6 to make sure it works out.

Haru Kane.4623:

thiagoperne.7340:

Thiefs are already balanced both WvW and spvp. Stop this thief spam threads, getting old and boring.

You got 7k and 11k, what are you? A mosquito?

If they are balanced then why isn’t every thief in spvp running 25-0-0-30-15 ( the build that thief and most 1 shot wonder thieves run)

This is actually not a common WvW build. 0-30-30-0-0, with the last 10 points dropped anywhere you like, is the more common “Hidden Killer” build. It is very, VERY likely that the Thief that killed you with those massive backstabs was using the “Hidden Killer” trait, which wouldn’t be possible in the build you listed. The really big difference between this build in sPvP and WvW is that Valkyrie stat gear, as we know it throughout the rest of the game, simply doesn’t exist in sPvP. Neither do food buffs, which can add up to +200 Power & +10% Crit Damage at the same time, for D/D Burst Thieves.

Haru Kane.4623:

I run the exact build in spvp that I do in wvw.

So the real complaint here is “I can get away with running a glass-cannon cloth build in 5v5 sPvP matches that only last a few minutes, why can’t I get away with it in week long WvW battles, where there may be hundreds of players on the map?!?”

12:25am where?
If you’re in North America, you’ll find large nighttime populations on Sea of Sorrows server, as well as Tarnished Coast often times, and Blackgate and Dragonbrand will also be active during NA late nights. If you’re Oceanic/Asia based, plenty of servers will be active during your nighttime hours, however since you’re Guesting Tarnished Coast specifically is known as a very active PvE server.

If you are based in the EU and on an EU server, I actually have no idea where you would want to Guest to.

How about a new Guild Missions category, where you have level 1-4 Missions:
Level 1 – Take and hold a Supply Camp for 1 hour, with 2 upgrades
Level 2 – Take and hold a Tower for 1 hour, with 3 upgrades
Level 3 – Take and hold a Keep for 1 hour, with 3 upgrades
Level 4 – Take and hold a Castle for 1 hour, with 3 upgrades

It would be a good way for WvWers to get Guild Commendations, and would lessen the pressure on Anet to put “Ascended gear for Badges” vendors in WvW ASAP, as guilded WvWers could buy their Ascended gear through both Badges and Commendations at the same time. As it is now, many WvW guilds rarely or never run Guild Missions, because they spend all of their influence on WvW buffs.

Midnight Ice is probably a better looking black dye than Abyss, and though it is getting more expensive, it’s generally much cheaper than Abyss.

Maroon, Heirloom, and Black Cherry are also very good looking red dyes, and usually cheaper than the Blood dye.

Blue Ice is considered by many to be the best looking white dye, and it’s usually very, very cheap compared to the rare white dyes.

Illumination is a very good looking substitute for gold or yellow dyes.

You can also buy level 80 Exotics in WvW with Badges, and Ascended Gear hits WvW tomorrow.

Yeah, if you want to make a profit off of crafting, Food and Jewelry are generally the way to go. As a Weaponsmith, you will sometimes be able to make a profit of off certain Sigil Recipes, but there usually isn’t too much profit to be had from the actual weapons (same with Armorsmith and Runes).

Yeah, like several people here have said, buy Bank Slots first, Character Inventory Slots next, and after that if Black Lion Chest Keys are still on sale, you could stock up on those and try to save them for the next time some kind of rare, limited time only thing (like the Fused Skins) is dropped in the chests again. They put stuff in those chests for lots of different events, and the price of gold-to-gems always skyrockets, so if you get keys through leveling or the store sale it’s a good idea to save them. The Eternal Picks and Limited Time skins are kinda nice too. Almost everyone will suggest staying away from the Southsun Supply Crates, btw, since the drop rates on the weapon skins are insane, and the non-skin items from the Black Lion Chests are often better.

The Hidden Killer Thief build is good or sPvP and WvW, as well as dungeons/fractals, especially if dungeons/fractals are not your main focus. Warriors are generally very good in dungeons/fractals, not bad in WvW (there are a lot of different builds for this, Hammer, Greatsword, and Sword/Warhorn are all popular), and notoriously weak in sPvP.

If you’re interested in the Hidden Killer Thief build, it looks basically like this:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.0|8.1p.h19.8.1g.h2|5.1p.h2|1p.7l.1p.7l.1p.7l.1p.7l.1p.7l.1p.7l|2t.e13.2t.e13.3t.e17.2t.e13.3t.e17.2s.e13|0.u69c.u45b.a1.0|69.1|57.5a.5b.5h.5w|e

Mesmer is also a very strong choice for every facet of the game, and can be very good when built for damage rather than tankiness.

1800 gems = roughly 57 Gold as of 05/26

Are you looking for a North American server or a European one?

Wayfarer Hills and Queensdale (Norn & Human) always have lots of people there if you want to join a party, and each has a lot of events that will help you level up faster, if that is one of your goals. The other starting areas are also good, however, just often less populated. I personally like the Charr starting area, but that’s just a preference, and probably because my first character started there.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Is-TC-ever-not-full/first#post2086356

Here is a thread of people trying to help others get into Tarnished Coast, and through the “FULL” status that it usually has:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Is-TC-ever-not-full/first#post2086356

Mooodster.3470:

you know those pesky thief’s what everyone hates cause they cant been seen…get them on ts and use them to fallow the enemy zerg…there you go you have you intelligence

All of the serious WvW groups already do this, but the problem is that the Thief can’t follow them everywhere; the enemy zerg can simply port across the map any time they want if they’re not in combat, and the Thief can’t follow. They may also have more than 1 Waypoint to go to, and can even split up their force that way, making it very difficult to track them.

Soon.5240:

1. When an enemy group size exceeds 10, the group appears on the map — and it’s movement can be dynamically tracked.

If anything like this went into the game, I think the cap should be a lot higher than 10, but low enough that “super-zergs” are at a small disadvantage. I would suggest some more like 29 players; any more in a certain radius and orange swords or something like that pop up. The radius would need to be small enough that 2 completely separate groups running past each other, barely within sight, don’t just set off the marker all the time.

Soon.5240:

2. Keep waypoints accessible during battles for under populated servers, when the imbalance exceeds 25%.

THIS is one of the best ideas I’ve seen in a long time; make this the Outmanned Buff! When a server is Outmanned, Waypoints simply can’t be contested! I don’t know how it would work out in actual gameplay, but right now it sounds like a good idea to me.

In addition to the removal of culling, the meta-game for WvW has changed quite a bit. You used to see QQ posts on the forums because one server or another was “zerging” all over the map with a group of 35 people all bunched up together; that group has now ballooned to 60-80 people! At one time, this was mainly a Tier 1 problem, but since this strategy is the easy-button way to take over a map, it has trickled down through all of the servers with enough population to handle it. And that seems to be the main reason why you’re seeing more lag, more often over the last few months (there was always lag, but it used to be a Friday-night problem, or an Eternal Battlegrounds problem, and many servers didn’t even notice it.) And the part that really gets to many people is that you don’t have to be in the big 80v80 battle yourself, anyone on the same map as that battle is going to be wearing out the “1” button on their keyboard until it ends.

Again, Anet is aware of the problem and says they’re working on it, and many of us are hopeful of a solution. I would actually be pleasantly impressed if they can really eliminate lag, as it seems to be something you run into somewhere in almost any popular MMO. It is particularly annoying in WvW, though.

^thank you for this (^_^)

It’s not happening on your end. Anytime there is a very large scale battle anywhere on the map (50v50, etc) everyone on the map gets a sudden lag spike until the battle is over.

My current specs are:
Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge OC @ 4.4ghz
AMD Radeon 6870 @ 950
8gb ddr3 ram @ 1600 9/9/9/28

And I’m getting the same lag you’re experiencing, as is everyone in my guild and reportedly everyone on my server. Your computer is doing all it can, the lag is happening on Anet’s end, though the Dev’s here on the forums have assured us that they’re fixing, and considering how they fixed culling, I think most people are willing to wait and see how it turns out.

Are you looking to move to an NA or EU server?

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Just curious, I remember SBI being nr1 america server, what made them drop? This is by no means offence, just curious how it happened.

It has been interesting reading the history lessons provided here on this subject. As someone who was on SoS during their entire rise from Tier 4 up to #1 in Tier 1, I can say that SBI was a very tough PvP server to go against, with good coverage and plenty of people on the field, though I’ve been told many times that SBI’s numbers were starting to dwindle at that time due to boredom after winning several matchups in the wake of HoD/Titan Alliance’s breakup. I can also say, however, that while SBI had lots of well-coordinated guilds, it was not an extremely organized server. SBI was also behind on the meta-game at that time, and slow to adapt (it was largely the difference between SBI and JQ, who adapted to the new meta rather quickly.) War Machine (who’s last remnants recently joined many of the old SoS guilds on Blackgate) blamed the free transfers, to large degree, for ruining the game, and after a bit of trolling by at least 1 GM from a large SoS WvW guild, transferred themselves to Kaineng, in what turned out to be a failed experiment that ended with them transferring again in order to get back to Tier 1 (http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/78151-from-war-machine/ , to read it in WM’s own words.) That seemed to be the beginning of the end of SBI’s time in Tier 1, as we heard almost daily about SBI guilds moving to this server or that after WM’s move to Kaineng. JQ, on the other hand, understood where the meta was headed and started an arms race that’s still going on now, stacking up guilds right before the end of Free Transfers. So, while there were a number of things that contributed to SBI’s downfall from Rank 1, SoS was certainly one of them.

I think SBI’s reaction to the new meta that SoS brought to Tier 1 was best summed up by an [SF] officer at that time named Kelo:

from the old SBI forums

Kelo[SF] (SBI Victim):

“The problem I have with all this is that we can fight to have fun and all but the @^$&*s on servers like SoS (and I assume the old HoD) do actively go out of their way to ruin your day and make any type of fun not possible. They do not just want to win with the highest overall score at the end of the week they want to win by soo much that everyone quits and there is no resistance the following weeks. I assume this is how HoD maintained #1 while guilds like PRX and similar were there.

Last night [SF] saw this first hand. We tried to cap supply camps…they sent 50+ player zergs to cut us off and camp us no matter where we went on the map. We tried to change maps, they had 50+ player zergs on all 4 maps spawn camping all 3 exits from spawn and had roaming scouts at all camps and major road intersections that would have the 50+ player zerg ontop of us within minutes. There was no fun allowed no playing allowed if you wanted to WvW you were punched in the face and told “NO YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO LEAVE YOUR SPAWN!”.

Against a server like this fun is going to become not an option anymore as they will make sure you cannot even play WvW anymore they will force you back into PvE and sPvP. The only way to fight this is to have all 4 maps full with a queue as zerg vs zerg we will win, we have much better strait up fighters than they do. Without their rigid organization and tactics they have NOTHING. When not enough of us show up and they can outnumber us 3:1 or worse the game just becomes not-fun no matter what you try and do.

Sea of Tryhards will not be satisfied till they have 100% map ownership and have siege setup at all 3 exits of both us and JQ’s spawns on all 4 maps."

A lot of us miss those days in WvW…

Wow, this thread really got derailed quite a bit. SBI and SoS have a lot of history and bitterness, and it looks like the fact that SoS has followed them all the way down to Tier 4 just to curbstomp them again week after like the old Tier 1 days is just adding to that.

SabinMightyFist.4129:

So for stormbuff isle is the wvw scene actually good? I’d imagine all the organized guilds and commanders are on the tier 1 servers, but is the lower tier servers still fun to play on?

To get to your question, it really depends on what your idea of “fun” is in WvW. For a lot of people, “fun” means winning, or reaching Tier 1, or being the best in their Tier, or whatever. That’s why there’s currently an arms race in Tier 1 that has gotten completely out of control, because people want to win, or they want to be on the #1 server in the game at least once. In all honesty, after taking 1st place and holding it for a few weeks, a LOT of people quit the game, or significantly cut back on their time. It happened to SBI, it happened to SoS, it sort of happened to HoD, & it might be happening to JQ even now (though not to the degree of these other examples.)

If by “fun” you mean you’ll be able to come home after school or work, log in to GW2, and hop right into WvW with little or no wait, then you will probably enjoy SBI. If you mean you’ll have plenty of people to fight against, again, you’ll enjoy SBI. SBI these days is not the most organized, advanced-meta server in the game, of course, but there are still people there from the Tier 1 days to learn the game from and to run with (though most of them seem to be on JQ now.) If you’re worried about the fact that SBI has dropped in ratings quite a it, that sort of thing happens to nearly everyone eventually. You may want to check out another Thread on these forums in which people are discussing “The Most Stable Servers”.

Seriously? Is no one going to suggest the Medicat Engi build?

This build is, honestly, infuriating to play against.

Why does this thread automatically skip to a blank “Page 2” whenever I click on it?

EDIT: Problem solved, apparently! For some reason, this thread was automatically going straight to Page 2 earlier, despite not having ANY posts on Page 2 yet.
lol

Poxheart.2845:

Speaking from experience, do not try running a Necro heavy group in WvW.

I see a lot of warnings about Necro groups in WvW in this thread and in several others. You guys clearly haven’t run into one of those “Epidemic Squads” that were popular for zerg-busting a few months ago (back when “zerg” usually meant 30 people, not the 60-80 you usually see now.) Anyway, I don’t have the group build in front of me, but if anyone wants to roam with a havoc-causing Necro group, the basic theory behind it is to put together a group that can throw out every (or nearly every) condition in the game, preferably with as close to +100% Condition Duration as possible. Then have this group drop every condition they have on a single target (choose one that can survive for more than 3 seconds) and have one Necro hit the “Epidemic” button, spreading that series of conditions to EVERY ENEMY WITHIN A 1200 RADIUS!

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Epidemic

<ins>Disclaimer:</ins> I will say that I haven’t seen these groups much lately, and I’ve been told that Epidemic has been nerfed into the ground recently, making it blockable, dodgeable, etc. Wiki still lists it as unblockable, but someone who runs an Epidemic build will know better than I. I know that the “Epidemic Button” used to leave every enemy within range completely helpless, with no choice but to run away the second they recognized the animation or stand there and melt.