^True, but for tenacious defense you tenacious defenders. It’s not like Yaks went all offensive zerg hitting other borderlands, and then leaving paper doors like a lot of servers playstyle, we didn’t have many attacking or defending. This week, things much more back to normal.
I don’t know why you guys are discussing last week as if it was indicative of future match ups, or as if there is something to learn from it.
I was discussing more the general state of the game than any particular week, not sure what they are going on about.
Not much to learn definitely it was a holiday and Yaks didn’t show up. Being told about being outnumbered strategy is pretty funny to us since we were outnumbered pretty much the entire trip from T6 or 7 up to T3.
And it’s absolutely not true that we didn’t fortify last week. I said as a general point, players are likely to want to do that less when it gets repeatedly tore down, in describing the ill effects of mismatched servers, not that we did it.
(edited by Pendragon.8735)
It DOES matter how much you fortify. This is one of the reasons why YB lost the last match.
That really depends on what forces you have available. I’m not sure our numbers vs DB maybe they withered away under the pressure, but if you are too low, then no it really doesn’t matter. I remember playing IoJ and being on those off peak times several nights, trying to defend 30+ zergs with 5 or so people. Not going to happen, 4 rams on a door or a handful of golems, its going to melt fully fortified or not. Yeah a reinforced door might last 2 minutes instead of 30 seconds, but when their peak play time is about 4-6 hours, its not a big difference in the grand scheme of things.
I still think eventually if population dwindles in this game, or continues to, they will have to think about merging servers. Too many servers below tier 2 or so have huge gaps of weak play period. Yaks has one in NA AM times before noon, to where you can hear crickets chirping in map chat. And I don’t say that as a whine, because I know all our opponents around T4 have similar, but its not really ideal for the game mode.
We played SoR and NS and it was a war every night in primetime, and was a blast. The match ebbed a little overnight, but it was not the prime thing to plan around, thankfully.
(edited by Pendragon.8735)
We like playing the opposite timezone game because theres a different level of strategy involved. Time is very important. You are faced with situations during the day where you cannot win and so must lose as slowly as possible to shrink the points deficit. You have to look at the historical point gain data from Dragonbrand to see when they start logging in and taking stuff and you have to play so that by that time, your borderland is the most upgraded and the hardest looking target to hit.
Eh the best matches we have had have been similar time zones between all 3 servers. At least then things get decided when the majority of players are on the map. Otherwise, its more of a shell game, and I guess you can call that strategy, but its still PVDoor as the main determining factor.
If you don’t have presence at proper times doesn’t matter how much you fortify, your siege will vanish and you won’t have enough people to man it anyway. This leads to day players being less wining to upgrade, knowing it won’t last and weakening you further.
The original versions of SoR and Blackgate, before both were dog-piled on by transfers. SoR because they were super competitive and even with us at YB, and Blackgate because they were an example of how to be good without being arrogant.
More recently TC were fun opponents though the scores weren’t super close against them.
One of two things will happen. You will incur the righteous and holy wrath of the ram…or we will build more. Either way, it oughtta be a lot of fun.
TC worship a golem god, it seems a bit more impressive than a ram one. :P
Did DB have this much of a issue with people from your server exploiting last week or is this a new thing?
The last few pages of their last matchup was rife with such talk. People should have looked that over before giving EB the boot down so fast.
Even though that is the same thing they were focused on for, it wasn’t nearly to the level we’ve seen this week.
In my experience breakout events only succeed when its PvDoor or there is 10 defenders or less in the tower. If the zerg wants to stop a breakout event they will, even with protective bubbles etc. I saw a breakout event fail 5 times in a row because the 60 person zerg just farmed us when we got there.
I would hope 60 people could stop it. But in any match that isn’t being dominated by one side via population imbalance, a single tower is not worth dedicating 60 people to defending against breakout. Not to say you need that many, but you do need a fairly large force as well as plenty of siege pre-prepared. Most teams decide its not just not worth it and let the enemy grab the tower for what is usually 1 tick or less, then just take it back. Endless cycle.
The whole thing is pretty much just a PVE event. Go do your breakout out on opposing BL, then everyone leaves, go do it on the other BL, meanwhile your opponents are doing it to you. And all the while not much real quality WvW fighting going on. This is far from ideal way to help teams in a bad spot.
Until they figure out how to fix them, they need to balance around the bugs. If minions are 50% less effective due to pathing / poor AI then beef their abilities and/or damage up by 50% (or whatever fitting amount) to offset the screwy programming.
I’d be happy if they just consistently attacked. I run with the Flesh Golem most of the time and he is decent when he works, good knockdown and solid damage per hit, problem is he just stands around utterly confused about half the time. And that can make all the difference in the world when you are in a close 1v1 and need that extra direct damage which is hard to get in a condition build.
Tiers are somewhat illusory in terms of real server strength, they rely so much on past performance. I think there are about 4-7 teams between Tier 3 and 5 that would all be pretty competitive within any arrangement.
Protective bubble… lol, there shouldn’t even be a protective bubble! Isn’t it enough you are getting free siege, supply, and a champion to lead the attack.
Breakouts also need to be more rare. They almost give you a tower for free unless the entire forces of the enemy are there. So once you get your free objective, it should be up to that team on its own to hold that place for several hours. And if they can’t another breakout shouldn’t be eligible for at least an hour or two. The breakout targets right now are just back and forth karma farms, that actually prevent head to head fighting.
Dragonbrand feels like the new IoJ, but what I don’t see is if they can run up so many points during off peak, how they were that far down in the rankings. Did they get new transfers?
The fact that Mag and YB are both strong in normal peak times helps cancel out for DB that they are weaker in that time period. Because Mag/YB end up fighting over the easier takes, and neither can gain points as rapidly as DB in their strong period.
If a server has one real dominant play period, its definitely best for your points if neither of your opponents are very active at the same time.
A big problem with the system is it never forgets what a server did in the past, despite that a server can change drastically over a month. When HoD broke apart, it took weeks and weeks for the rating system to understand how weak they had become, not sure if its caught up yet.
If instead, the system started dropping off ratings from say over a month back, and only factored the last 4 matches into a server’s ranking, it would probably much more rapidly fit competitive matches together.
Only Yak’s Bend is affected by holidays, huh?
Holidays and PVE events seem to hit us pretty big. Yaks players average age I would bet anything skews older than most servers. If you know the guilds that are here that is not surprising. And older people tend to have more responsibilities than those younger, and kids who just see these times as a chance to play even more.
So far, Yak’s is still being Yak’s. Same behavior as the last two weeks. Pretty much zero roamers, and if I find one, and win but let them live, they come back with multiples to try to kill me. Haven’t seen much from DB. Not sure if they just only roam in numbers high enough that I tend to avoid them, or if I’ve just missed their active hours. Seems like it’s a very polar server.
Should be obvious by now that people that wanted to be a solo Rambo, or WvW equivalent of the A-Team, probably didn’t look at the server list and pick a server named “Yaks Bend” to go be leet loners on. Like I said above, Yaks drew a more mature base, and while they may not prefer an outcast from sPVP style, they tend to be good at organizing and large scale teamwork.
I understand the reason for siege despawning, it would become too powerful if every keep/tower had 20 siege items permanently there, but 30 minutes is really too short.
Can’t count how many times I’ve placed siege at a recently taken objective, only to return a short time later when its attacked, and its gone. In the same play session, not like the next day. You can be defending a structure, run off to do one thing, like retake a camp, get diverted into a few skirmishes, and by the time you get back your siege is gone.
The timer despawn should be at minimum an hour, so you don’t have to sit your butt glued to a wall afraid stuff will disappear if you leave.
Yeah the conditions are too short on the signet. It’s more of a psychological trick to maybe scare people into backing off if the front of a zerg see a bunch of conditions on them, but really doesn’t do a lot. Maybe if you had duration up to 200% it could pack more of a punch. The cooldown on spite is also ridiculously long.
Better move can often be corrupt boon then epidemic for the builds that really stack them up.
I do have to say how excited I am to finally move up into Tier 2. Our brothers and sisters on Yaks Bend, I hope to see you guys up here soon!
YB is pulling for you. Slay the bandwagon duo.
TC is leading in T2… whoa! Nice job. We in YB miss the class of TC.
The Breakouts were not a bad idea, but they happen too quickly. So much so that the first towers just get flipped back and forth a silly amount, like a mere camp. Once a server does a breakout, there should be something like a 2 hour timer for a reset, and in that time its up to the players to actually defend and hold the tower.
They should also tone down the NPC’s they should serve more as a rallying point, rather than winning the fight for you. Providing supply and siege is fine, but let the players do the fighting.
Right now you need to keep 20+ stationed in those south towers to defense properly against a breakout, and most servers don’t have enough dedicated defenders that just want to sit there and wait for it to happen. Obviously it can be a bore. But if you don’t have people there its pretty much an auto loss of the tower as the NPC’s and siege knock the gates out in ridiculously short time.
Well this one only made 5 pages before its heading for a lock with the personal attacks. Maybe next week we won’t even get a thread. Or perhaps DB can bring in some less bitter opponents.
They both play Ele’s mainly, big surprise. WvW gonna be just Thieves, Ele’s, and Mesmer’s soon.
If Anet actually listen to people like you then no wonder they make alot of mistakes in the developemtn of wvw.
Have you even played wvw?
Have you? If you did, it would be obvious what I said is true. Because that’s all I play, and an abundance of these professions, more every day vs release when you actually saw variety, is contaminating it. If you are implying these professions aren’t especially great for a lot of WvW, I would agree, yet why is there so many. Because everyone wants in on what they see as individually superior. If there were none seen that way, it wouldn’t happen. When Anet realizes they should balance for the whole game, not just sPVP, this game will improve.
(edited by Pendragon.8735)
They both play Ele’s mainly, big surprise. WvW gonna be just Thieves, Ele’s, and Mesmer’s soon.
Continuity issues aside (doors don’t bleed), there are zero real reasons for destructables not to take condition damage. Just hide the status effect icons but leave the damage intact so condition classes aren’t completely useless against doors/siege/quest objects.
Yes, undead take bleeding damage, as well as plants, elementals, and other things that don’t make sense to be bleeding, so why not objects.
I cannot stand that our marks do not hit downed players or siege equipment.
If this is intended, I wish they would first say that, and then second, realize what a poor position in puts us in, and change it.
I can’t tell how many fights I’ve won (or should have) only to have an opponent make a comeback from downed, since one of my two weapons (staff) is pretty much worthless against downed players, putting a big hit on our DPS.
(edited by Pendragon.8735)
My biggest beef with DS – and there are many – is that I think is at odds with condition builds, which are almost the way Necro’s are expected to play.
Attrition playstyle means you need to survive and live a long time, and death shroud is to help that, but in doing so you also have to keep pressure up on your conditions, and death shroud does not let you do that. You have access to a bleed and a chill on pretty long cooldowns and have to trait to get more conditions but those are trait slots needed for your normal form in a condition spec.
As mentioned you also can’t heal in DS. If you have siphoning skills you don’t get anything from them in DS, your normal health pool is locked in place.
One change they could make, is let you still use your utilities in Death Shroud. It would offer it some of the versatility that it desperately lacks with the 4 built in abilities. Considering they are planning to change it so you can see your UI in DS, this would probably be simple to do alongside it.
Could comment on a lot more, but just want to say I think wells are too much balanced around sPVP (like the whole game really) where there they can be good, because you are expected to fight on a small circle not much bigger than a well. In PVE they can also be good because mobs are dumb and come right at you. But in WvW the opens areas make these just not that appealing. Yeah you can blast them in the middle of a zerg, but you really don’t want to be there either too much.
I would like to see the cooldowns come down on these by about 25% at least.
Spectral Walk – The jaunt window is too short. Not only can enemies see where you are going back to, but much of the time you can’t even get out of LoS to ditch someone. A mesmer can put a portal entrance down and it last 60 seconds! The Necro should be able to return to his starting point at any time during the swiftness boon, now that would make it a tactical weapon. Though might have to diminish that bright green trail some then.
(edited by Pendragon.8735)
Definitely something weird going on with the new bonus damage. Usually I use food to reach 100% fear duration, and I didn’t have it on in the mists, but my Terror’s were still ticking twice on damage as long as I had a condition already on. Was only at +70% fear duration. Then I untraited the 50% fear duration and it was still doing the second tick. (Though I don’t think the Fear’s were actually lasting 2 seconds, just the 2 damage ticks).
This could open up some more versatile builds while still taking Terror, and not needing the extra second, though I still prefer it, just because you can unload a lot of other damage in that extra time.
(edited by Pendragon.8735)
The two handed ones, like Staff, are doubly a rip off, since you only get 10% duration for a loss of 180 condition damage or whatever stat. Where as with a two weapon setup you could get 20% duration for the same 180 condition damage (losing 90 on main and off hand).
Still not very good.
“Hey Yaks Bend, please stop playing WvW like it is meant to be played, being successful and winning.”
The lips on the walls are definitely the biggest issue to me. You can either stand behind them, and be incredibly limited in range (why not have a defensive buff like protection for staying behind them?) or jump up on them so you can actually have a fair exchange with those on the ground, only to be yanked into a zerg. Not sure why there are so many pulls in this game, but it really puts defenders at a disadvantage.
I don’t like that it forces a pet on you for going down the trait line. That should be a choice. Make the reanimator trait one of the selectable ones, and just give us some other passive benefit that only affects your character for the 5 point passive.
The trouble with the event is its just being used for farming. Hey, breakout is up on the other BL, let’s go do it. Then everyone leaves, the winning team takes back the tower, then the cycle repeats.
It doesn’t seem to be really helping the losing team push into the map. Because once the tower is taken and NPCs disappear the odds are similarly long against them. If the objective is just to let a losing side capture something fairly consistently to make them feel good, or do a very small artificial tightening of a score, I guess it does that, but its pretty lackluster overall.
This is the whole point. Its to prevent a side from being completely spawn camped.
Even if they map hop for a tower, its at least something, its better then not being able to leave the spawn (even though you can capture the supply camps… just to be zerged later on).
That’s ok, but it restarts too soon. It makes trying to hold the tower against breakout an absolute joke. As in, pretty much pointless. Might as well just make that tower the enemies home spawn point then.
The other day we retook one of these towers, started setting up some seige, and before anything but one arrow cart was built, and people had made one trip to a camp, the NPC warband was already on the move approaching the tower again. You should not need to dedicate 20 or so defenders to this tower 24/7 to hold it against the breakout.
I mean its not really PVP, its almost entirely a PVE event. Because you can’t go out there into the field in front of the tower, the NPC’s are way too strong.
I would have preferred them do something different, like make the outmanned buff strengthen individual players, via buffs, like the orbs used to do.
(edited by Pendragon.8735)
The fact that AOE only hits 5 people adds a randomness to who is getting hit that really diminishes these cluster bomb style strategies I think.
Also, in order to prevent stacks from being removed so easily, I think the key would be to spam lots of other conditions as well as just bleeds, so some of the removals are getting stuff like blind or poison, instead of the bleeds, which you want to stay on.
Undead probably the best for pure condition. Though you’ll want to get some duration via other areas, hemo/scepter traits, food, or lastly, spite.
The trouble with the event is its just being used for farming. Hey, breakout is up on the other BL, let’s go do it. Then everyone leaves, the winning team takes back the tower, then the cycle repeats.
It doesn’t seem to be really helping the losing team push into the map. Because once the tower is taken and NPCs disappear the odds are similarly long against them. If the objective is just to let a losing side capture something fairly consistently to make them feel good, or do a very small artificial tightening of a score, I guess it does that, but its pretty lackluster overall.
I’m not sure it needs to be removed, but the downed states do need to get balanced between all professions.
Some are just way better, and especially in large fights, its so much more valuable to be able to delay being finished off by even several seconds, tying up a bunch of attackers.
Hey, you guys are the ones needing to be the center of attention in this thread, dumping all over it with a playstyle irrelevant to the mode. If you are out there killing zergs with 5 people I think you need to be the one giving evidence. Go post some videos in their own threads or something, but stop cluttering up this thread. The scoreboard as well as what I’ve seen during these two weeks, show no impact of your team.
This event is terribad. It needs a delay of at least an hour before restarting itself.
What it has done is the turn the first tower on the map essentially into a big camp, that just gets flipped back and forth endlessly.
It’s hardly even worth holding or taking this tower as the opposing (non home) team, because the numbers you need to maintain (and siege amount) to hold off the breakout is ridiculous, and that manpower would be better spent elsewhere.
Worse, the event restarts so soon, you don’t even have time to get up appropriate defenses before the goofy boss Dolyak is glitching through your door.
Most guild groups don’t lose to equal numbers very often, because most groups out there are not guild groups. I’ve saw OG only one time in two weeks. Hiding near their spawn area when we held most of the map. There was a skirmish going on of roughly equal numbers, and a few of us joined it. Could have been no more than 5 v 7 at that point (our side just randoms, not sure 3-5 OG) and we killed several of them, as they tried to kite back toward their spawn. At that point there was no strategic point to the fight and the couple guys I was with left. The OG guys were respawning coming back to their friends and I think then probably ganked a few of the remaining few guys that foolishly hung around, like always happens when you try to pin a team near their spawn too much.
There was nothing special about the fight whatsoever except for seemed like a lot theives and eles. Certainly no one beating three times their numbers.
Fights likes these are nearly irrelevant in the grand scheme of the match because nothing worth anything is being fought over. Even if 5 people kill the same 5 people over and over, without dying once, its still 5 players on both sides being tied up for an equal amount of time not helping their team with objectives. Kills don’t count for points on the scoreboard.
Reality is the downed state punishes small groups effectiveness relative to other games, which makes fighting over objectives so much more valuable than attempts at area denial.
(edited by Pendragon.8735)
You guys did lose points in the ratings last week…
We could lose more this week. YB is pretty big on PVE, the Halloween week hit us pretty hard in WvW. I think our numbers are well suited for this tier actually outside a couple of off peak hours. But looks like EB just got majorly reinforced so maybe that will be switched around now.
But YB went from around 8th tier up to 3rd with virtually no transfers. Certainly not big guild ones. More than not, our opponents have had big mid-week transfers. Fighting a ‘surge’ force seems typical for us. We actually lost perhaps our biggest WvW guild early after moving to T3, so that might account for some of the setback.
(edited by Pendragon.8735)
I would hate to be on a server where a player can come into WvW see 5 other teammates and think he has found others to work with only to be told, ‘Get lost, we don’t want interference, we’re doing our own thing’. That’s just not what this mode is all about.
These folks can always petition Anet to give them a deathmatch mode, or to be able to join hotjoin as a team with others are like minded and just agree not to contest points but just fight. Or really they just need to add sPVP modes beyond Conquest because clearly we have ducks out of water. Whatever the case such deviations don’t really belong here. So many posts amounting to: Look at me me me me me me.
It’s kind of easy to see in this tier why the scores are the way they are. Which team works together as a server and which are disorganized uncaring for their fellow teammatess. To the extent WvW is about numbers, the way you get numbers out into the field is via having a good server community. Then maybe your server could compete with the whole idea of the thing and you wouldn’t need to think up alternative playstyles to have fun.
YB just lost in tier 3, and now is having a much easier time in tier 4. Yet YB wants to get back up into tier 3 where it was much harder (despite the superior numbers of TC) and try to improve, think about that for a moment, and understanding WvW might be easier. YB as a server punches above its weight in numbers, and even our enemies acknowledged this in T3 where we were competitive despite having the crutch of less numbers to complain about. So you see it is possible to offset larger numbers. But doing that takes getting everyone to coordinate not just a few people that don’t care about anyone outside their group.
(edited by Pendragon.8735)
The breakout events seem especially fitting for this matchup. Lots of one color borderlands last week. Hopefully they can promote some deeper pushes and fights into other maps beside just EB.
Well good luck. Always fun to get a rematch at a team that bested you.
Actually, might be Mag that falls, if score rates stay the same.
Snowballs should just melt in our hand.
It’s pretty meh.
With Gluttony: 31 shots to fill bar from 0 with Staff #1 (note 5% more LF)
W/O Gluttony: 34 shots to fill bar from 0 with Staff #1
If you consider Staff 1 is giving you 3% the numbers look to be doing what they should, 10% gain, it just isn’t a very impactful trait.
Life Force drains at 4% per tick, so over however long it takes you to fill your entire bar, gluttony is giving you like 2 more seconds of death shroud, probably less since damage is going to eat it up too.
But it takes a long time to fill the bar up, certainly more than a few fights, unless a zerg is dying rapidly around you or you are picking off critters.
(edited by Pendragon.8735)
What Anet failed to understand in their holy grail quest for E-sport is that it has to develop from the ground up, from a massive casual fan base that supports and maintains interest in the higher levels, not from the top down.
Your entire foundation for interest in the game on such a high platform is all the people that just do it to have fun, and they have to feel that they are being listened to and that the game is being made with them in mind, and then you have room and space for your elite tier to develop.
Right now it feels Anet balances professions around the top few percent, and they don’t care if this screws things up below, and if they keep this up, its going to ruin not only tPVP, but also WvW and PVE, which have actually been relative successes.
On top of that, Conquest only is just dreadfully redundant and samey.
(edited by Pendragon.8735)