But you should be aware, the vast majority don’t spvp.
Care to wager a guess as to what might keep people from wanting to participate in competitive PvP?
I expected to like tPVP primarily in this game but wound up not liking it, finding it utterly redundant and samey, disassociated from the rest of the game, and most of all, being at odds with my profession.
Being a Necro, I don’t feel we get an even shake vs other professions unless we have full Life Force (or close). You can’t be assured of that in tPVP, and that reminds me far too much of that other game where I played a class where you had to go farm a certain resource before going into PVP to be at your most effective, or ‘balanced’ against other classes. But in GW2 you cant’ even do that, since the tPVP maps chain together.
Giving potential damages for all modes should be fine in this forum, as long as people are clear what buffs and such are affecting the results.
My personal thoughts, if a server can’t hold their own, they can’t hold their own, they shouldn’t get handicap help. This isn’t a child’s game.
I don’t think the event has really changed much of anything. On my server it always seemed a detriment to hold the whole map anyway because everyone just left it, leaving the first tower very easy to take with a coordinated strike force even without NPC’s.
So with or without this event, the key to holding your territory still remains having lots of players willing to suffer boredom and stay down in a keep, or general map area where nothing is going on for sometimes hours on end.
It seems all this is really accomplishing is in effect, moving a losing team’s starting base from the spawn point to the first tower, for a brief temporary time until the tower is captured. Then it all repeats all over. But I guess Anet thinks its much more encouraging for a dominated side to fight out of an actual holding than just a demeaning invulnerable zone where the feeling of being farmed is much greater since you have to be the attacker running out into the open, while the breakout event lets you begin as the defender if you successfully pull it off.
Yes, there is delay on the big hit just like there is for a bleed to start.
I can’t tell you the exact damage calculation, its around here, 300 something base plus a fair portion of condition percent.
With 1581 condition (some reason it keeps food/crystals on in the mists) Terror is procing for 1255 damage for me with a condition already on.
You have to watch for the tick that comes after the initial hit, that is the big one.
Would be nice if they actually made a video of this class of what they want this class to be.
By their comments, mastery of Death Shroud is the secret to being leet sauce. But I just don’t get how.
Death Shroud dancing is really only possible with the 5s cooldown, a heavy investment, and then you can’t get stability, which is the thing you need to stop being CC’d in DS and bursted. And the 10 second cooldown is just too long for DS to always be the answer, you can easily get chain bursted within those 10 seconds.
I tried a 5s cooldown build, while already having high crit chance, and using going instantly in/out of DS to try and keep Fury up permanently in order to proc more bleeds. The class just becomes a micro managing nightmare in this style though, you often forget to pop up every 5s or are just doing something else that prevents keeping it up. The extra crit chance didn’t feel like it really upped my damage much anyway, since the high crit means your power is so low you don’t hit crits hard, and the 2s internal cooldown on bleed procs limits the amount that you can pile in consecutive attacks anyway.
Beyond that it simply wasn’t fun managing the timing, on top of our natural dependency to be constantly aware of every condition on us, and on our enemies, and be aware what skills they were using and trying to react to that. Complexity is one thing, but you shouldn’t have to do the equivalent of typing 100+ words a minute to stay competitive.
So like you, I really don’t understand what they expect mastering this class to put it on even footing with others is supposed to entail ideally.
^ Well in PVE/WVW you can equip Nigthmare runes for the 20% Fear (what I use) or Mad King, and this allows you to ignore Spite, which isn’t all that great for condition.
But in tPVP it kind of all breaks down trying to get a complete package.
Here’s the problem with the Necro form of attrition, its not sustainable. And it needs to be IF the profession is designed not to get mobility to escape, nor great ways to keep opponents in the fight.
Right now by comparison the Ele bunker has sustainable attrition, meaning he does not have a huge health pool or toughness, at least by default, but he endlessly reinvigorates himself throughout a fight.
Imagine an Ele bunker like a sink half full of water with the plug open, but the faucet running. The water runs down the drain, but gets filled back up equally (or almost as equally) as it is running down by the water coming in. This lets you last a loooong time in a fight.
Now the Necromancer is more like a sink full of water with the plug open as well, but the faucet off. He has more water to begin with (regular health + LF) but once it starts draining (when a fight begins) his lifespan is finite, it drains to a zero point with little refill – while other attrition builds (including thief and guardian ones), can refill during the fight, either by direct healing / cleansing or escaping or stealthing to stop taking the damage.
The Necro would function properly as an attrition class if either Life Force could be built fast enough in battle to use our heal many times over, or if health stealing abilities were good enough to negate at least some respectable portion of the life we lose in a long fight. But life draining skills and traits are utterly gimp, a drop of water in that sink against burst damage, and Life Force has too few skills that give it or buff it. And to even invest in those skills means you have sacrificed a great amount of offense (either stronger conditions, longer fears) or sacrificed the defensive traits that make us survivable in the first place (meaning slower draining Life Force, a bigger pool, things like stability, improved wells, etc).
The Necro can be attrition in damage, or to some lesser extent, survivability, but he can not be great at attrition in both, and he can never be great in mobility or locking down an opponent close to him. Other professions simply have far less tradeoffs to make, even in the same playstyle, and they get to have multiple strengths in these categories, while we must choose but one, and in fact are almost limited to one, offensive attrition via conditions.
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Terror is a tough trade off of more survivability or other strengths, but probably worth it – if – the fears land and stay for their duration. In that case you make up for the lost damage while the enemy is running. But if the fears miss or are removed, then you are definitely at a loss.
I like the 2s Terrors but am having a difficult time making the leap to get Reaper’s Protection, as 90s seems an awfully long time in between oh crap situations. And will also mean I have to sacrifice virtually all of my life force generating in combat.
Which case it kind of feels like you are a complete package only for a one shot engagement, but severely exposed while waiting for that trait to come up again, due to how much you’ve given to get it.
Problem is other profs/builds do attrition even better than we do while also
‘boasting escape and damage reduction capabilities’, that we don’t and aren’t intended to have.
Our lack of easy stability, difficulty in safe stomping, and poor downed skills sit on top of the mess of bugs and inability of the profession to fully live up to its written intent.
Read the elementalist ‘philosophy’ for instance and it almost read like an excuse or justification of why they can do everything, but its ok, since ‘exceptionally high skill ceiling’. Reads like a line of bull, as if a necro is cinch to play. You have to work twice as hard to accomplish what more simpler classes with a few basic rotations or button mashes can do. In late beta, the Necro was claimed to be one of the hardest classes to master as per the devs. Not sure what happened to that, or why we no longer have a justification to be exceptional even with exceptional play.
Expected a bit more out of this patch considering all the red text leading up to it. Sure, a philosophy of baby steps is less likely to create sudden balance collapse, but it also means it could be months before a lot of our issues are up to par.
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WvW is definitely the red headed step child in terms of variety of both skins and stat assortments. Even though I pretty much only do WvW anymore, had to go into PVE to get the armor stats and looks I wanted. Now with ascended out in PVE, WvW is left even further behind, with only a promise but no idea when we’ll catch up.
As Anet described designing WvW to appeal to a wide casual base, its negligent to not realize that those players especially want these kind of things. That doesn’t mean gear treadmill in a power sense, but certainly cosmetic upgrades, or titles w/e, to progress and show advancement or achievement.
^ Well there are degrees of mobility from decent to awesome, it doesn’t have to be the latter. Obviously you need some. But if you are using a weapon that is built for close range, then that is the range you have chosen to fight at. It should not be a one way option to close distance and then leave simply at whim, short of a whole mob of players hammering on you with cc. Granted the players in the video should have been able to do this with so many of them, but what about just 1 or 2 opponents? I’m not sure they could do anything but be at the mercy of the ele in that case.
The player is obviously very skilled, and I talked to him after I got sick of seeing a helpless mob chase him around and went to help and we finally downed him. (after I had first tried to get them to just stop engaging). What I gathered its clear he was just there to have fun, drag out as many people (victims) as he could and have them be props for his videos.
That’s fine, but the topic should really be about what the title suggests. Should a build be able to do this, no matter how good the player? I really don’t care for these bunker and endless escape specs coming into WvW just disrupting the natural design, for no other reason than that such things like the video are possible, and its more fun to run around like a demi-god than just be a grunt in the army.
A build should be able to be either very survivable OR have great mobility and escape, not both things together. As a Necro I can build to be very survivable, but I can never build to have great mobility. This was the tradeoff designed on purpose as explained by Jon Peters. What is the trade-off here in this video? You don’t have to make one. Can say maybe that they hit like a wet noodle, but obviously you can still get kills as in the video and are virtually assured to eventually win any 1v1 if you are pretty good.
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These builds being impactful in WvW relies mostly on the stupidity of the opponents to chase them, and allow themselves to get trolled essentially.
Against most, you can run halfway across the map before they would kill you.
In larger fights it gets more complicated, but you still want to ignore them till last.
The reality is that if culling can’t be fixed adequately they will have to balance around it. Meaning reduce stealth times, maybe give the thief more survivability outside of it. In order to not hurt them in PVE, dungeons, etc.
Speaking of Daoc, they should put in some kind of dungeon area to fight in. That has winding twisting paths, and smaller avenues, such that it is not productive to be taking 50 man zergs through them.
There are actually some ideal dredge tunnels and other cave like systems already in the normal game world, but they didn’t really put any in WvW, other than a few underground gates and pass through areas.
Well how about simply adding in a new map for WvW, that is far more open, doesn’t have all these big forts and keeps, but still has some objective to fight over and counts as points for the overall team.
I’m thinking like a skirmish map. Where you have stuff similar to camps, open areas to fight around, and hold, but no structures. This would be a great place where all these little teams who just want to fight or do deathmatch style, could go and still be part of the war effort, and not be detracting from what needs to be getting done in the regular, more siege warfare existing maps?
How about 2v2? That would be interesting.
I think it would be great, and actually easier to balance than 1v1 or 1v1v1 too.
You would also to get to both fight against, and with, all the other servers over time, greatly increasing variety, and preventing staleness setting in.
As servers get transfers or get stronger or weaker, sometimes you get imbalance in a team’s rating. But by having 2 teams on each side, this would diminish the effect of such changes to a matchup.
^That style has been implemented in many games but its never as popular as straght PVE, and most games based around it solely have short shelf lives. Why? Because most people go to PVE to PVE, while there is a small subset that like to kill others while doing PVE. This is your wolves vs sheep scenario, but soon you run out of sheep and you have dead servers.
The truly competitive PVPers though don’t want easy kills or just to jump people, they want a contest of skill. sPVP doesn’t always offer that if you don’t like squatting on conquest points over and over. WvW could theoretically deliver that at a macro level if only all servers were more balanced population wise. And the objectives add a meaning to it all, and reason to coordinate at levels beyond yourself or just your one little group. PVP gets old if it is just throwaway engagements over and over.
I think there is at least 3 to 4 different PVP niches actually. Some simply have way more broad ranging appeal than others.
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By open world do you just mean like WvW, but without all the big objectives, walls and doors and stuff everywhere?
Problem with that is then there is no focus driving people to split up or achieve different things. You don’t want just an empty giant deathmatch sandbox, would be too zergy and simple.
Or do you mean open world PVE with PVP flags on? That isn’t real PVP either (meaning not competitive), just people ganking each other while someone is doing a quest or fighting a mob.
Not related to thief only, but can certainly apply to them. The Necro is supposed to be the king of attrition class (maybe guardian too), but it’s just disturbing that so many other professions and builds can be made to out attrition us.
I think the reason that the Necro doesn’t get stronger as a fight gets longer (and hence not beat top thieves) is conditions are just too easy to remove.
We really need some kind of counter ability, or trait, that makes opponents suffer for removing our conditions. Because it can be too easy to find yourself 30 seconds into a fight and have an enemy basically reset the fight with no lingering effects on them, while their burst is now off cooldown and you have to start all over ramping up. Unfortunately, the fight isn’t going to last that much longer for it to pay off for you.
If life steal abilities worked like they should, that would also be another avenue for the Necro to persist like he should be able to against certain specs.
I do find though if you are specced into longer fears you can get most thieves to disengage you, as you can drag the fight a fair distance to somewhere that will be to your advantage. Either to allies, or a friendly camp / objective (talking WvW). This isn’t an answer to defeat a good thief (you can’t anyway they just run) but at least give them enough of a fight where they begin to think its not worth the hassle to keep pursuing you.
One way that can sometimes work to actually finish thieves is to play a dangerous game where you let them think you are near death as well, while having an ace in the pocket, like lots of life force, or a fear ready to finish them off. If a player thinks they are about to win they will often take extreme risks with their own health to get you. But this is of course very risky.
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Ever since the Halloween patch, I’ve been getting occasional freezes in WvW when using waypoints. Necessitating a hard close. This is the only instance where it will be inconvenient if it kills me, reading that as an Alt+F4. But I would assume it won’t damage armor then if its a non combat death.
Hiding in the invuln areas is dumb, but its even dumber to chase someone back there. You can’t do anything from those spots except wait anyway. Might as well just be part of the spawn area, except its at the bottom of the hill instead of top.
Speaking of low behavior, I’ve seen a lot of AltF4ers getting the most out of it that they can before that little practice is put to bed here tomorrow. And notice its always the roamers that do it.
I’d be totally fine if it was only 500 per ring.
500 per ring would be a dream for me, but I highly doubt they will make it this easy to obtain. If this were the case there would be an uproar of PvE players complaining about how they hate to PvP and how the PvP players have it so easy to obtain ascended gear without having to grind for hours and hours.
Wait a minute, why would they complain about grinding for hours and hours in PVE, if they are doing it because they love it?
And if all time is simply grind, then getting 500 badges would certainly count as a grind. But at least you acquire them in the game mode you prefer. Nothing would force PVE players to PVP, they would have their way to obtain it and WvW players would have theirs. If you do both things, then maybe get one item each way.
I think the opposite. It’s the PvP gear that should be removed. You work hard to get the exact look and stats you want, but you can’t use that in PvP?.
They could certainly do it now. The reason they didn’t was for their wild goose chase dream of making a mmorpg into an E-Sport, and probably seeing dollar signs in that direction. But it looks like that is pretty much a dead duck at this point, so I don’t see why they need to keep the gear split separate.
It was definitely a turn-off for to me realizing you had to earn your stuff all over separately in sPVP, and nothing you did or accomplished there really affected or mattered in any other part of the game.
So you would prefer permanent thief keeps on CC you while he is in stealth?
Neither. Assuming the thief profession won’t get totally remade now, I would just reduce their stealth dependency by about 50% and make them more durable while visible.
It should be something you use very situationally and tactically, not on/off for half or more of a fight. Maybe use it to run between an open visible area to scout somewhere. Use it in battle when your are in trouble, or to wipe some conditions, or set up a big killer move that could turn a fight. But not in and out ten or twenty times, dragging a battle out forever. That is just silly.
Other bunker builds carried over from the sPVP meta into WvW are similarly disrupting. Combat should be fast and decisive not some kind of chasing the road runner cartoon.
It isn’t even about whether they are counterable. It’s just not a fun mechanic to play against, even if you know their skills up and down and regularly defeat stealth characters.
Past MMO’s and GW2 figured out that long CC is not fun for players, because no one likes not having control of their character for long portions of a fight. As such GW2 doesn’t have CC remotely as punishing as some other games. Unfortunately fighting half a battle against something you can’t see is equally as frustrating as long CC and not very fun. Gee, I’ll swing at the air over here until this guy pops up visible again…
3 Way PvP as a balancing intent has failed in GW2. That simple.
In all the weeks WvW, my server has been in only one truly great 3 way match. All the other weeks would have been improved, and more competitive, simply by having a head to head between the most closely matched 2 servers.
I think having 4 teams would be an awesome alternative, with 2 allied on each side. Tiers would not get stale with the same matchups and same winners every week like has been happening a lot. Each week you would get a random ally server, and it could be a strong one or a weak one, as long as the combined ranks of both sides came out about the same. This way you would get to experience facing servers both way above you and below you over time. The way it is now, most servers are in a small group, where they will only see the same few opponents over and over, maybe occasionally going up or down a tier. It gets stale
I thought early on they proclaimed they did not want stealth at all. But almost every company caves in to the demand of the assassin/solo rambo player base that just has to have such a class. In the process almost always producing a balance nightmare.
Worst thing, they put in the stealth, but forgot to put in the counter-measures. You never have stealth with no counters. And by counters, I mean things that can detect and reveal them by an opponents action, not spamming AOE around where you last saw someone stealth.
To bring things back a bit, there has been some great small skirmish battles in this matchup so far, even with all 3 teams involved. It can be a lot of fun no doubt. I’ve saw OG and Larp both, impressed with Larp’s unwillingness to leave a man behind when we ran them out of a camp. But winning them in the service of a larger goal, server wide, to actually control territory on the map, makes it a lot more rewarding than just for the heck of it.
PVP for its own sake usually develops when the larger realm vs realm dynamic is dysfunctional or unsatisfying in a game. But Anet has mostly done a good job making it work, and make sense here. If only there were enough players around all the time. So I’m not sure why efforts can’t be put forth in advance of the map goals. There is plenty of room for that to go hand in hand with small group play.
ISo in other words, when you roam solo you get destroyed, and you just figure it’s because of class and build and nothing else.
Have you ever actually done spvp? You seem to have some incorrect notions about what you find there. I did play spvp before switching to wvw, and I got the highest score almost every game and have a fairly high win ratio on my ele. Spvp isn’t some competitive mecca filled with amazing players. It’s the same as in wvw; most of the people are bad, and a few are good.
I win more than my share of lone engagements, like I said, most players are bad just copying a spec they saw. Unfortunately, most soloers though just run away or ALT4 when they are beat, as they are running builds that allow escape more than anything else. Something you can’t get away with in sPVP. Most of these players aren’t all that helpful to the point of WvW, and I just don’t understand the draw of it.
Anyhow, as was said, players can play anyway they like. But not sure why anyone would expect others to care about it in this thread, or not give them grief when you are talking about an altnernative playstyle near to irrelevant to the point of WvW. But carry on if you want, just don’t get the topic locked.
Well the thing is, you’d have to actually try roaming pvp to understand the difficultly level. Sadly, sitting in your zerg doesn’t give you a good concept of competitive pvp. Run around solo a while, and you might be surprised what you run into.
I do at times out of necessity, and I am surprised how poor many players are wanting to rely just on a profession choice and build to win. But I don’t solo to ‘duel’ people, but to further the WvW objectives. And I do it in a profession that is not flavor or build of the month, because I want to actually contribute in larger groups who are focused on accomplishing what the game mode is all about. You should try that, as that is where the real challenge lies, not running with a group of meta builds, and basically trying to find easy win engagements, and then running away if it goes bad. That is what I would find not at all challenging.
Now if you have a team tearing things up and taking over the map in the process, that is what gets respected and noticed in World vs World. Not killing a few people off in a corner while your server has lost 75% of the map.
If you posted this type of stuff on the sPVP board you would be absolutely laughed off. Anet doesn’t even make balancing changes in sPVP carry over to WvW.
It seems like this would be ridiculously easy to implement. Unless they are going to make new skins for WvW ascended, but even that shouldn’t take too long.
Nothing can match the excitement of roaming PVP? Really, why, there is little challenge. You are fighting people lost from their zerg, or specced for large engagements. Half the people in WvW seem like they are lowbies leveling up. Most groups are randoms thrown together, as any organized team is actually doing something productive like capturing an objective, not looking for random skirmishes. So I would hope that an organized group can kill a bunch of random pugs. But to boast about it is kind of embarrassing. Should just be honest and say WvW is the place where some team PvPers go who can’t hack real sPVP. Everyone else is there for a realm vs realm contest and the strategy and coordination that it entails.
These professions account for some of the worst WvW players actually. They may be good for 1v1, but that doesn’t really contribute much to WvW, taking objectives or winning a match.
Other professions with group/team specs are often helping the objective of gamemode far more than many thieves, mesmers and tank eles, who just want to screw around looking for 1v1s.
I disagree, I think that any profession has its use in WvW: Thieves are great scouts and dolyaks killers, Mesmers have some of the best group utilities of the game (not only portal) and D/D Elementalists are great at “pushing” in an open field battle while still contributing to sieges thanks to staff and the use of a focus to defend friendly sieges.
It’s the person behind that character which makes the difference between being “useless” and contributing to your server’s victory.
I agree, I’m not saying its the professions themselves that are worth less, but only the players who play them with mindset to just be a roamer because they are good (or OP take your pick) in 1v1 engagements.
Not that sole players can’t have a purpose, killing Yaks, soloing camps, or scouting. I do these things as a Necro even, but for people who just wander around busy byways looking for duels, its not accomplishing much for the team. And they have a mode for that called sPvP.
These professions account for some of the worst WvW players actually. They may be good for 1v1, but that doesn’t really contribute much to WvW, taking objectives or winning a match.
Other professions with group/team specs are often helping the objective of gamemode far more than many thieves, mesmers and tank eles, who just want to screw around looking for 1v1s.
Sick of getting night capped?Wait for the new update.
The devs said themself they find every player’s time as valuable as another.
Ironic, since the ’nightcapper’s’ time is immensely more valuable than any other player’s as far as winning a match.
Without mutual acceptance from every factor of both parties it’s absurd to think servers 2 and 3 will work cohesively to attack first place. Although it was Anet’s plan to have WvW function that way, the established mechanics and lack of incentive don’t allow for it to happen unfortunately.
I’m reading what looks like a repeat of the last 3 weeks in this tier. I wish we (YB) could have just played FA straight up the last 3 weeks, and now this week it looks like FA and CD are pretty even, but TC is the odd duck, too good for T3 maybe not ready for T2.
Doesn’t mean there aren’t still fun fights, but the overall competition for winning leaves a lot to be desired in their 3 way mechanic.
So is it fun in that matchup Yaks, or do you miss t3?
Three weeks of the same dynamic was enough for a break. It looks like CD is doing a fine job impersonating YB in T3 anyway. Saw the scoreboard screen and its TC with a fairly comfortably lead and FA/CD virtually (and possibly artificially via TC) tied for second.
Actually is not that much difference between the tiers if you play during fairly populated hours, there are numerous good battles around. It’s just the level of imbalance in off peak times that really changes.
Guys, this is the last day we get to be together. Huggles all around!
Don’t tell them, but we’ll be coming back in a week or two.
The complaints people are typing are already happening. If one out of 3 servers has the strongest Oceanic, then they just cap both other servers stuff. It’s still PvDoor half the time. Except now you get 3 servers worth of points for doing it.
Few people ever articulately elaborate why 3 is so great other than they once had fun in some old game that used the mechanic. But maybe it wasn’t the mechanic that made it fun, maybe that was just incidental, or maybe it did work DAoC, but GW2 is not that game, and here it is not working. This is the biggest fallacy in MMO player logic, they wrongly want everything from their first love MMO. In GW2 3 servers actually decrease competition, and the top server is actually benefited by having one other team that almost always works alongside them to strengthen their win, rather than contest it. This is not creating good matches or balance.
I have been playing WvW since the week the game released, and it all that time, only one time, one time, has a 3 way match been so competitive and fun that it would not have been improved by simply picking the more closely matched two servers, and having them head to head.
As an afterhtought, if Anet really likes the idea of more than 2 sides in a fight, they should have got truly creative and done 4 servers, but only two teams, with alliances rotating based on score. How fun would it be to get a random allinace server each week? Share chat, no damage betweeen allied servers, etc. It would also be so much more easy to balance 2 v 2, than 1v1v1. Few wars are 3 sides fighting. Most are two sides, with multiple parties on each. Think the Axis vs Allies.
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I think the only thing that was nerfed was certain positive or healing effects, which used to affect everyone. And that is what was unbalanced, because the opposite side, damage, never affected more than 5 people.
So the previous system actually encouraged you to stack even more than now, and made portal bombs even more effective than they already are.
Right now many tiers are still not that competitive, or two servers are competitive and the other determines the outcome (this is the case in tier 3 for 3 weeks now). Many servers are not good enough for the tier above, but too good for the one they are in.
The problem is the rating system has a hard time pairing up 3 servers that are all even with each other. And honestly the idea (myth I dare say) that the 2 weak servers would gang up on the third, has been an utter failure.
I think it would be so much easier to find pairings of just two servers, head to head, that are close to even with each other and have many more competitive matches in every tier. It would also increase rivalry and purity in the direction of who you are supposed to be focused on, and this would likely drive more players to get out into WvW for their server, instead of just relying on the whims of a 3rd wheel server to balance everything out. It just hasn’t happened.
Redesigining the system for head to head would require alternations to the maps, but it is something they should seriously consider for the WVW changes in February or beyond.
The common complaint of this would be that population size is too dominant. But that is why GW2 has a rating system in the first place. Factions aren’t just matched up with random numbers like say in Warhammer. You would get pairings with close to even populations, and hopefully even similar times of strength and weakness (such as oceanic strength).
The fact that there would be 3 different maps to PvP (EB and 2 BLS) would also add a layer of complexity and strategy to even a head to head match, so that its not just about clashing two zergs into each other and the biggest wins. Since most servers cannot full coverage 3 maps, who wins would much more come down to who is distributing their forces best over these 3 maps.
I think the purity of strategy and reward for winning in a head to head would just be so much greater than the current matches, which are often just rolls of the dice with who wins (or perhaps more, who is 2nd) being random based on who a 3rd team decides to attack more that week on a whim.
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Somewhat relatedly, building siege is so often wasted because the despawn is too quick. I have built 3-5 siege items at a tower, then been called away to retake a camp, which might evolve into helping somewhere else, and then you get back to the tower and its all gone.
Especially on servers in the mid and lower tiers where there are large population gap periods, it just so often ends up a waste to upgrade OR to build defense.
The siege items should last at minimum an hour. Which actually gives you time to go do something else and not just sit twiddling your thumbs at a position because you are too scared your invested coin is going to disappear.
Right now, it looks like Yak’s might end up in T4. In any case, it is going to come down to the wire like last week’s very small difference between FA & Yak’s scores.
I’m actually more interested in what’s going on between YB and FA than I am my own server right now becuase it’s just so close! I love those nail-biting finishes!
TC dictates who finishes 2nd….it will be as close as they want to keep it.
Yup. Early in the week TC saw FA as the bigger threat, Yaks pulled out to a fair lead for 2nd. Then last few days TC shifted to YB, while FA held blue in their own map most of that time, suddenly FA has leaped into 2nd. Just look where the green dots are on the update maps.
It is why this tier has gotten kind of stale, unless you are happy just to find some good fights. Likely it will be the exact same dynamic next week when CD moves up.
YB has the tactics and organization for 3rd tier but manpower that belongs in the 4th tier. Unfortunately, the other t4 servers can’t match our discipline and we will likely roll them.
Anyways had a lot of fun in FAbl and TCbl the other night, Yaks were no where to be found on either borderland at NA EST timezone, I’m guessing they don’t have the coverage to be on during those times.
The more I think about it, the more I feel that WvW needs some sort of equalizer to make it more competitive. Sure locking transfers could be part of the solution, but thats not going to fix the fact that there’s usually one server facerolling two other servers….
Yaks definitely have very big down times. Early morning NA one zerg can pretty much cap our whole BL with minimal resistance. Just now we held off multiple attacks of two or three times our number at one spot, only to have a zerg run over and 3 ram down something else before any defenders could get there. Tier 3 that shouldn’t be happening. Or just throw out points altogether, because it can have a demoralizing effect on getting people out week after week when the matches are lost mostly when no one is on. Though with no points the sense of permanency would also be gone, and there is less of a feeling that you need to be out there every day. Many would probably play a lot less.
I think WvW server merging might be the only possible solution, but then you are still stuck with long queue times during primetime and still uneven numbers probably in off peak times.
Many people suggested obvious fixes for number imbalance the first weeks the game was out. I.e. Simply scoring points on sliding scale based on number advantage. If you have 50% more people on you should earn less per tick, maybe not 50% less, but something noticeable, maybe 33%. It fell on deaf ears from Anet, even though the problem is only going to exacerbate as time goes on.
TC complains about our defense, but after fending them off in their home borderlands for 3-4 hours and upgrading a keep in the process, what happens at night you log in and go there and us FA have the outmanned buff. Defense is tough when outmanned 4 to 1 regardless of what server you are.
I think TC’s numbers have obviously inflated some since the first week of this matchup. Maybe in combo with the other 2 having less participation.
In week 1, or even last week, they did not have the strength to hold the majority of EB and be pushing deep into 2 enemy BLs at once. Like the last few days.
One thing I’ve noticed, its almost always the solo players that log out or quit. Obviously they have the most sensitive egos.
I think this is matchup is starting to become a bad one. It’s not 2v1 so much as FA vs YB for second and TC just gets a free pass in their BL because neither other server thinks they can win, or thinks they can risk focusing on TC for fear of being backstabbed by the other. FA goes to YB Bordlerland and vice versa. When in reality, the bottom 2 working together is probably the only thing that would now produce an actual competitive 3 way match.
If FA pugs aren’t getting it done, the organized people need to bring them along.
In fighting FA, my impression is always that 3 or 4 guilds do everything. But you are going to be spread too thin, and have a ceiling on how far you can go having a split community like that.