Guild Wars 2

John Widdin.9618:

5 hours. It took us 5 hours to take this from Yaks, It cost them their BL but kitten did it give us a good time trying to take it.

Fun sieges like that are a good reason not to run off and chase down some PvDoor team elsewhere even if they are stealing easier points from you. Especially considering we know what happens every night in this matchup and the end result will be the same regardless.

insanemaniac.2456:

dont waste laurels on 4 stat infusions
ever
ever

4 stat infusion costs 5 laurels. An ascended ring costs 30 and only gives you 21 stats over exotic. Seems the infusion is the better buy actually. Sure the gold and magic find is worth more budget wise, but some people don’t need more gold.

WvW has its flaws, but structured is stale repetition. I did some last month for laurels and could barely stand it by the 3rd straight match of that ice map. Tourney style or hotjoin, both suffer the same repetition of similar style fights over the same boring small circles over and over. Really limits your build that you basically have to stay engaged on that circle.

The terrain and logistics involved in WvW just make for so much more variety in the type of fights you get into. Everything from 1v1, to small group, to zergs, to sieges at structures. WvW is only boring zergs clashing if that is all you seek to do.

Mechanics should never cede way to fluff or ‘Making sense’ logically.

You can blind, poison, and bleed trees, skeletons and machines in this game, as well as stuff like rock and fire elementals. It doesn’t make any less sense to bleed a door, which is made from the same stuff as a veteran oakheart.

Just developer silly thinking that makes our class weaker that our abilities don’t damage these structures.

It’s early on but so far, as I hoped, this tier is a lot more healthy now.

Bhawb.7408:

WvW wouldn’t be a big issue, if you are really trying to force a gate down quickly, you aren’t doing it with auto attacks, you are doing it with siege.

Gates no, but every other piece of siege, yes its a problem. When you have to destroy arrow carts on walls, cannons, catapults or ballista left over in the field, opponent rams still sitting at gates, etc, it is a major annoyance. And comes up a lot.

It’s basically wait for the ele to come around and kill it 10x as fast as you. The only time a condi Necro can do structural damage fast is if its up against a wall and your flesh golem can ram up against it repeatedly with his charge.

Hopefully engineering a way to give less points for PvDoor is being bandied about.

Caliburn.1845:

The lack of waypoints for all three servers on any borderlands map, during much of NA primetime, suggests that all three servers are karma training for that WXP. And really who can blame them? The patch last week incentivized attacking even more, and devalued defending.

This is the way the game is played in T3 with our current WvW population numbers. It isn’t just DB picking up easy undefended points, all three servers are doing it. Heck, when I just logged off moments ago SoS held most of YB’s bl, and YB held most of SoS’s bl.

Right, well my hope is that with Mag more or less matching YB in time slot, that will keep people home on both those two borderlands for at least the high pop times of those two servers. DB should as well at least be able to defend their own somewhat. And if there are cross attacks it won’t be either servers entire forces like we kinda have now due to all 3 teams being mismatched in strongest times of day.

NA overnight won’t really change but our players there are used to dealing with the long odds.

When you have three actual teams fielding decent numbers, then WvW works a lot more like its intended, usually you run into someone somewhere, and its less like a big circle run, one following the other recapping the same stuff over and over.

Possible WXP has just caused a karma train mentality all around, that would be hard to understand, I don’t find the rank rewards very appealing at all.

Ghedoriah.4290:

However, where they may now struggle in their endeavours is with Maguuma coming back into the tier. The possibility is there that Maguuma are going to be much stronger than Yak’s and at that point, where does Yak’s go with that strategy? Playing for second like that only works if you have a weaker opponent to pick on.

Stronger or weaker doesn’t matter, Mag should help balance the tier way better, because the fighting will be more consistent across maps at similar times. Right now we (YB) actually lose structures to PvDoor, not only NA overnight, but because people just get bored defending an empty BL, and leave, even during our high pop times, for often an hour or two. Then DB waits till this happens and map hops and grabs a few things, YB forces come back, DB hops off to another map. Not enough fighting. Chasing tails around.

Would like to see an option to turn off ambient creatures nameplates in the distance.

They can be distracting when you are looking for players, and in the middle of big zergs, you’ll see 10-20 rabbits or moa names across your horizon.

If you are getting bursted down before you can activate defenses, or get away, I would add Vitality, perhaps even without losing toughness.

If you are in a lot of long fights where you survive a long time, toughness is going to save you more life in the long run. Personally, I like toughness more, because with death shroud we can eat burst so that our life doesn’t have to. Toughess also makes healing and life steal better.

I can’t stand the range on geomancy, 240 radius, its like a mark placed at your feet. As a conditionmancer I rarely want to be that close to my target, and in something like sieges, its just never going to hit anything. I don’t run a lot of dungeons but can imagine that there are a lot of equally dangerous situations you don’t want to be in melee range for.

It would be helpful if people keep posting how many tries it took them to get (or not get) a ticket, so those on the fence, or aren’t that far in yet, can start getting an idea what the odds really are.

Reading the posts so far, sounds like less than 5% for sure, maybe 1 or 2%.

Hasn’t this been fixed now? Some said you could get a second daily laurel from PVP if you had already done the standard one before the patch, tried it, did not get a second laurel late last night. So maybe the monthly won’t double reward you either anymore.

I mentioned this the other day, and Lich runes got the same nerf, if you want to call it that.

I find these sets very uncompetitive now, and those to be very weak 4pc bonuses. 6% duration for 4 pieces? Compare to Mad King or Lyssa you get 10% right off the bat at 2 pieces. No idea what Anet was thinking making these, I had hoped it was just a tooltip error originally and always meant to be 20%.

Nemesis.8593:

I find my point still valid, average players should not expect to do honorable 1v1s in WvW, therefor shouldn’t be focusing on finding a very good 1v1 build. You can go for a team play build that works well 1v1, in zerg and at sieges… or you can go for an infiltrator build which relies very heavily on mobility and escape (tankish dagger wielding power build with max mobility + 1 minion + Lich Form for handling 1v1s) but that would be too much information for the average player in one video.

For the average player that just wants to find the big zerg, or some big team group and get into large battles and standard tower/keep sieging all the time, yes, you don’t need to build for 1v1 at all.

Still even for those players, it sits uncomfortable with me that we should tell them, better hope you never get into a 1v1 because you are dead meat.

Also players should remember they can freely swap out utilities, and possibly even switch out traits they have access to, depending what situation they are in. For instance if I was 20 into death magic, in a group I would trait Staff Mastery, but alone I would change to Reaper’s Protection.

Lucas.9162:

I’m also assuming that the sigil of Agony on my Staff is still in affect even though I’m using my Scepter. Can someone clarify this for me?

When you swap weapons, sigils on the other set become inactive.

If a lot of your damage is bleeding, and/or you have high crit, you should consider Sigil of Earth.

You can absolutely accomplish things by yourself in WvW. If you are just looking for 1v1s, yes that can be hard to find. But achieving things solo? No. You can flip camps solo, that the opposing team then takes multiple defenders, or even a whole team, to take back. This is a huge manpower advantage for your team.

You can destroy and capture Quaggan nodes. You can capture Quaggan island. You can contest keeps to distract defenders. You can contest waypoints to help your team make an attack so the enemy zerg can’t port there. You can scout enemy zerg movements. You can cut off lone runners running back from a fight. Sometimes you are the one running back from a fight and are forced to be alone. You can capture NPC scouts. You can destroy dolyak caravans. You can do jump puzzles for siege. Many of these things are optimal to do alone, and not waste time organizing a group for – if you can succeed at them.

All those things above you can also defend from happening from a solo perspective. If another lone player is trying to kill one of your Yaks, or solo your camp, you should have every chance to stop them 1v1 if you play well and not have to go call a team just because they are one profession and you are a necromancer.

Reality is your build and effectiveness matters a ton more being solo, or in 1v1 situations than in zerg situations. In zerg situations, any build can help and contribute. Even if you aren’t that good, you can live just by being smart and staying in the back ranks. You can always fire a siege weapon, or carry supply and help build things. But being helpful just by being there doesn’t work if you are alone. That requires balanced professions for even footing.

Now just because you yourself are solo does not mean you will run into other solo opponents. This is true. However this is where mobility and escape mechanisms come in.

Solo play happens a lot in lower tiers, when there are many times of the day, off peak, where there might be less than 25 attackers or defenders on an entire map. I have defended a tower from 15 players by myself with proper siege placement. But often you have to get into the tower first, by getting past them solo.

All these actions and scenarios above are possible and should be viable for any player that wants to do them. Not just ‘play a thief or elementalist’ if you want to do anything other than zerg 24/7.

Biggest problem with the video, the player engages losing situations, seemingly on purpose to prove a point. The #1 important thing in running solo in WvW is awareness and picking your fights. Never letting superior numbers close distance to you if you don’t have a good chance to kill them. Purposely running into 2-4 players because you think you can kill them is simply not smart and does not represent an effective solo playstyle, nor does it negate that you can have success doing it.

Excepting one Necro trait I know of, duration is capped at +100%. So you can’t get over double length. It’s a very risky way to go because most conditions don’t run their course in PVP because of removal, and you lose a lot of DPS.

Most Staffs and Scepters are weak looking to me. They seem to love making melee weapons far more.

Early on I spent a lot of effort to craft a corrupted staff, only to find it has a weak particle effect only on the very tip of it, and the rest just looks like dull dirty ice. You look at the corrupted swords, when you pull them out frost radiates off the entire thing. So much nicer.

The fused staff is pretty nice but its kind of short in length and the end could be more opulent and expansive.

Caliburn.1845:

But now the karma train is even more incentivised. Defending/roaming is de-incentivised. And a lot of players in WvW are experienced(or jaded) enough to realize that their server ‘winning’ a match-up gives them no rewards, but being in the karma/wxp train does reward them.

Eh what rewards are they really getting though, if they don’t intend to ever fight the other team anyway. Doing more damage with siege? There is no use of siege when zergs are bypassing each other trading objectives. More damage on guards? Guards are a speed bump to a zerg and no importance when no one defends anything where they are.

+1. I don’t care if you did 20 jump puzzles, or found a secret coin buried in some lake.

Welcome to Warhammer Part II, musical keep trading.

I really hope this doesn’t keep up too long, and once most regulars get their crappy bonuses we can go back to actually fighting once in a while.

Or they put some new shinies in PVE so the grinders go back over there.

Bas.7406:

Has that 4 been tested? I heard it was tested and it was still 5.

I’m going by other thread where someone said they tested and got 4 not counting the target, who of course suffers no damage or conditions from us anyway. But I can check it.

Edit: Ok I tested it, and thankfully, you were right, it is still 5 other creatures around the target. Phew, because that would have been probably even worse than the LoS change.

Thing is this patch is more a nerf for us than a buff, as Epidemic is probably our strongest skill and took a hit, especially the stealth nerf of it only hitting 4 people now. That is a 20% effectiveness reduction! Lame. Then we still have Ele’s running around as kings of whatever they want to do, barely getting tinkered with on the edges at best.

I was really expecting they would make some moves toward solving what are commonly discussed as our bigger weaknesses. They appear to think we are fine, or finished.

They also changed two duration rune sets, nightmare and lich, reducing their 4 pc bonus to 10% from 20%. I see this as yet another nerf to Necro’s, as I don’t know of other profs that make use of these commonly.

I think they are very cognizant of opinion actually, as they have stated many times they don’t want to balance in that ‘whack-a-mole’ fashion as in some past games, that caused community uproar. If one build is a 10 and the common playing field is a 7, they’d rather move that 10 down by .5 every patch than move it down to the playing field in one fell swoop.

CHIPS.6018:

As for the patch, really loving the new DS. I also love that they fixed the scythe on my Final Rest.

Epidemic is now “useless” in tower siege and tower defence. Epidemic’s major selling point there was that it doesn’t need a line of sight. Now it will miss all the time. Specially for tower defence, where your line of sight would “randomly” gets blocked by your own wall.

Yes, there is a strong argument to not even take epidemic to sieges anymore, as there won’t be any open field fighting there outside guards. If you are on defense you can still jump on the wall and try to quickfire one off, but will risk being pulled into a zerg and instant death.

Bhawb.7408:

Lets assume here for a second that necromancers have the largest number of viable builds in the game (because I’m not going to go through the impossible attempt to prove it), and that most other classes just have 1-2 really great builds. What is easier, nerfing a few abilities across those other classes so that their other builds are now more viable, and their “OP” builds are now in line, or buffing every single non-OP build in every single class until they are on par with the OP builds? The reality is it is easier for them to trim back on a relatively small number of builds to bring them in line with the rest of the game, instead of buffing the entire game around those few builds.

True, but nerfing a few OP builds (that a majority are playing) makes people mad. Buffing other professions, many won’t even notice their opponents got stronger, as long as their own class isn’t nerfed they are content.

They seem more onboard with moving stuff up than moving stuff down.

Unfortunately balancing in this way looks like it will take years. And its not like they are even buffing all our viable builds, but lately more things on the periphery, that no one is using anyway.

It’s a good choice I think. I took this, the V/T/CD amulet, because vitality is very hard to get in other places without also taking power, which is near useless to a condi build.

When most of your damage is over time, condition based, there comes a point where trying to build more spikiness is self defeating imo, and to boot vitality becomes better and better with high toughness, which you should have if you have rabid gear elsewhere.

Have to also consider as other professions are also gearing up on Ascended stuff, many of them are taking glass cannon gear, improving their burst more and more, you want to be able to survive that first rush from a thief, warrior, etc.

What happened to Anet nerfing AoE across the board? We got an epidemic nerf but don’t see Ele or other profs getting hit with any of these AoE reductions.

Condition duration runes are working again, as well as all duration updates on your character panel.

However, Lich and Nightmare 4 pieces now gives in total 10% as stated on the tooltip (4+6%), instead of the previous 20%.

sas.6483:

… so, no more casting Epidemic on wall defenders I guess. It’s a bad change, but I could live with it if our cast times / projectile speeds got sped up 25-50%. Maybe next patch…

The problem is this was one of the areas where the Necro was really viable in WvW as a preferable class, in sieges, both offensive and defensive, this severely nerfs our ability to contribute to area control in those situations. It was already bad enough that we sucked hard at damaging siege, but at least we could drive players back off from walls.

Just like old times in here, but there is work to be done ppl!

Vena.8436:

PvErs will miss out on WvW related things like:

• Ranks + Passives
• Rank Titles.

Irrelevant as those things that are entirely worthless in other parts of the game! It’s like saying PVE players miss out on ramming a door if they don’t WvW, thats kind of the whole point. They aren’t going to want those things in the first place.

But WvW players do want gear that is either only available in PVE, or at least partially you have to spend time there.

People should realize that this game is divided into 3 vastly different sections, especially at end game. There are competitive sPVP players that do no PVE, and their mode is fine with that. There are PVE players that play no WvW, and their mode is fine with that. There are also people that only play WvW as an endgame, but their mode is not fine, they are forced to go do other stuff for best in slot gear.

If I didn’t have to do events and kill bosses for gold to fund WvW, I would probably hardly ever do PVE in this game anymore. It was decent enough up through 80 but I’ve spent more than enough time on PVE in past games, don’t need to be forced to do it here when its not enjoyable.

Monoman.2068:

If the necromancer had some synergy between his weapons and killing potential outside of auto attacks and CD heavy skills (looking at you wells), you could almost ignore the problems with utilities, traits, and class mechanics (or atleast I could).

An attrition class should most of all never had to rely on long cooldown skills, that if they miss or the opponent simply dodges at the right time, your offensive punch just went down the drain. It’s just counter to the design.

Yet many of our utilities are on long cooldowns, not just the wells either. But most of our signets and even spectral skills, spectral armor at 90 seconds is just ridiculous for its short lasting time span.

Plague lasting 30 seconds is also a head scratcher to me. Would be far more useful at 15 seconds and half the cooldown. At least for PVE and WvW, can’t think when you ever need to be in plague that long. Then again, probably yet another area where sPVP was the driving force in making the skill, and it translates to hurting us or being less good everywhere else. It doesn’t really matter so much if you get immobilized with it in sPVP as your are already where you want to be bunkering in the circle. In other modes though its used as a getaway or get out of dodge mechanic and immobilize negates it, vs a blink or invulnerable.

It’s not about how much time it takes in other modes, some people don’t want to do those things and should not have to.

Anet clearly understands this PoV from a PVE perspective, noting how painstaking they are to point out that PVE players won’t have to come into WvW or risk missing something – not even for 15 minutes a week. PVE to PVP at max capability is bad design regardless of how low a threshold you find acceptable.

Vena.8436:

John Widdin.9618:

Badge cost + Required World level. Best of WvW.

Possible, and this may be why its delayed. To see how quickly ranks are gained before applying Ascended. If its too easy, above problem persists.

The opposite problem, unfairness of acquisition, inequality across modes, also remains if they introduce a new currency or ‘one per day’ type gated acquisition for ascended in the future of WvW, because we are already months behind what PVE players have already been able to acquire.

It’s no longer good enough just for them to introduce what would amount to a equal system to laurels for WvW, when PVE players have their slots are already filled or very much partially filled from working toward this stuff for months.

WvW players have been playing their mode just as diligently for those months, acquiring badges, just they can’t buy anything worthwhile with them. It would not hurt a thing if they at least allowed one slot, say rings or earrings, to be purchased straight away with badges (a high number of course). As that would just let WvW gain a little back on ‘catching up’ with what they have already missed out on.

playandchill.3908:

I think they dont want it. Because they dont want PVE players to be forced to play WvW (or they QQ+quit).

Sometimes the design decisions in this game make me scratch my head.

What they should have done is made the base stats on ascended same as exoctic, and then make the infusion slots be a lot more. PVE players would choose agony for the infusion, which would be helpful in PVE and would not give a big bonus in WvW. And then WvW players would have chosen a bigger stat infusion, which would not have helped them compete more in dungeons over the agony.

Or just have ascended not have better stats at all and just have agony only slot. But cats out of the bag now, so they need to equalize the means of acquisition.

Churchill.8714:

They said Karma, so assume it will be armor sets that anyone who does WvW can already easily acquire because WvW gives Karma.

That would hardly be worth mentioning, as the temples are usually open a lot nowadays anyway.

How about some new stat combos then? My wish.

V/T/CD
V/T/Prec

Sovereign.1093:

And my observation says YB is stronger. But to confirm it, again, like I posted before will be known next week when the actual fight becomes a reality.

That is actually not a reality yet. I’ve done my best to encourage it, but points are not won on the forums.

I already spent gold and karma on the racial and cultural stuff I wanted, hoping to see new WvW only armors and weapons.

Also, Ascended, that stuff doesn’t even have skins, its just text boxes with more stats. Don’t tell me that couldn’t easily be put on a vendor. Funny they say nothing being added in WvW will make players of other parts of the game miss out, but meanwhile we are still missing out on the best gear.

Updated T3 scores, for any interested. Still looking like a photo finish on next week.

Strategy we’ve been doing lately is just leave him alive, so they can’t respawn him. If you can get the players defeated around him before he knocks the door down, he becomes a lot less problem once he can’t spawn any more siege or free supply. Just have to kite him out of the way of your yaks or he’ll kill them, but will otherwise sit and twiddle his thumbs outside the keep if no one attacks him.

This shows a problem with the mechanic (that he spawns again too fast namely) if this is the best strategy, but it seems to be.

Biggest thing I don’t like about Giver’s is the 10% on staff. If you are using duration to extend your fears to a certain percent, then you probably want the same duration while both weapons sets are out. And it’s such a waste to take it on staff, and you get 10% less than your other set, so you are unbalanced.

It’s more OP the lower down the tiers you go. Trying to hold the breakout keeps with less than 10 people is a nightmare. Because the roidrazer will march right into your keep up to your lord area, with the attackers hiding under his skirts, making them extremely difficult to kill.

I’ve been in battles where the entire enemy team has been wiped, even multiple times, but managed to take the tower by running back over and over, while siegerazor runs around gibbing people because he takes so long to kill with only a few people.

Taldek.6105:

Pendragon.8735:

I wouldn’t make this assumption yet. It depends how much that offloading the ‘solution’ onto performance of the players pc’s is actually going to work. If the majority can’t handle rendering all those players, then fps lag might end up just as bad as the culling.

I think it’s a safe assumption most rigs can handle rendering name tags but who knows.

I’m sure they can, but if you have 50 name tags jumping all around, mixed in with maybe 20 solid player models, I’m not sure that is gonna make for much clarity in a battle.

I wouldn’t make this assumption yet. It depends how much that offloading the ‘solution’ onto performance of the players pc’s is actually going to work. If the majority can’t handle rendering all those players, then fps lag might end up just as bad as the culling.

Bah, Kaineng is boring now. The excitement is out of the chase now that the choo choo has stopped.

ParaldaWind.4523:

Sovereign.1093:

Pinko.2076:

Sovereign.1093:

saiyr.3071:

Have you ever fought anything outside of our night crew? If not, I’m not surprised you would come to that conclusion. But yeah, even the T3 thread just pointed out that the CL guild is basically free loot bags.

Yes, I don’t base this on Nightcrew. Yak’s bend Nightcrew is a little bit weaker than your guys. But their NA crew is strong/consistent. Just saying after having fought you guys for some time now.

:3

Strong at what? You do know Mag has fought yaks way more than you have, right?

Strong over all.

You’ve fought them, I’ve fought them. And I’ve fought you guys. Your point being?

http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/history/18#NA

Wow Kaineng used to be so awesome.