Obviously they are going to go with a ‘wait and see’ approach and hope with some time put it in, minds will change. Not just say, “We screwed up, we’ll change it.” A few hours into it.
But I really don’t see it. The negative issues were foreseeable and are coming out rather in the most obvious way expected, so I expect this din to continue, if not rising to further anger, and perhaps even negative mutiny responses, if Anet begins to show they simply don’t care about what the majority of their players do.
The more serious players are going to have these buffs
anyways so it balances out.
But the one they can’t guarantee or simply build their character to have through sustained effort, is the Bloodlust. And it is bigger than all the other ones put together once you get 2 or 3 ahead. Yet, if you are in a lopsided matchup (which will be common in league play) it will likely be quite common to be down 2 Bloodlusts, maybe even 3.
And even a 2 Bloodlust advantage is 500 more raw stats, 600 if you value healing power evenly. That’s a ton. That’s like pre-patch one guy having both WXP Guard Buffs, Leech and Fort, and running Food vs someone who isn’t and has neither buff.
I agree that it may not be determinative to most random fights, Joe-Bob zerger running back to his blob, you’re probably still going to kill him and his zergy build if you are built for roaming around, but among the fights that actually matter, both people playing for the same purpose, or in GvG, it is absolutely likely to be highly impactful if not outright determinitive.
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Well….. I sort of agree with OP. The new map areas are pretty to look at. However, they don’t make a lot of coherent sense. Most of the other ruin-y places across the world look like you’d expect ruins to look like. The new stuff, though, looks more like some kid upended their Lego box on the floor. Stuff is all pretty, it just doesn’t connect well.
I rather agree, that while the terrains are nice looking in ways, they really don’t fit the map, and seem like they were just ‘dumped’ in there in the way of an amusement park, or like the totally contrived sections of the Queen’s Pavillion.
There are suddenly just these big walls and plateau’s rising up out of the ground then a lush forest a few hundred yards away but tightly contained. Obviously they want some variety and interesting fight locations, but I think it could have been tamed down or to flow together a bit more, so it didn’t look quite so much like entirely separate and different conquest mode maps all dropped in next to each other.
Many didn’t like the big lake in the middle of the map, and I would agree there was room to improve upon removing it, but at least the old map did somewhat resemble a believable stretch of natural terrain or nature. Now that controversial mmo word, immersion, is very much upended by somewhat stage prop areas.
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One of the few redeeming strategies to being undermanned in WvW, is that because there are 4 maps, undermanned servers can, and usually do, pool their resources into just 1 or 2 maps.
Often you will see an undermanned team fighting heavily only in their own BL and/or EBG. They can maintain a much closer to fair fighting stance this way due to the max player amounts per map.
Sure they might be outmanned 60 to 10 on the other 2 maps, but it doesn’t affect them (well PPT, but not their in map fighting) because they are ceding that territory, and their play experience thus isn’t being crushed over and over.
In this new mechanic however, being undermanned in such a way, on other maps, is actually going to impact you greatly on the maps you are able to man a fair fighting force on. This is a pretty big blow to already underdog forces.
You can of course send strike teams into those other maps you can’t fully man, but it is likely to be even less effective than existing temporary camp strikes, because you need three ruins to secure the buff, and the superior opposing forces will have time to respond and stop you before that happens.
This cross map impact would be akin to if all camp supply from other maps flowed together, giving huge supply advantages to a higher pop side even on maps where both sides were fighting at full queue.
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We got tunnel-vision earlier while having too many people in the ruins, and lost our Bay to a few TC and an Omega Golem… we were on the west side of the ruins, and got to in-between the outer and inner walls as it flipped, so we got an eye-full of the very few people who did it.
That’s right. Small-group captures of keeps, in Tier 2. It happens in Tier 1. It’s been happening all along.
GW2 Forum Warriors: Complain about “zergs” moar, pls.
You admitted it was your own fault, simply dumb play. If you let your zerg remain camping the ruins while objectives are taken, then duh, they will fall.
But under actual attentive command, the new buffs and the ruins are more favorable to the existing stronger or winning team in the matchup, and make things even easier for them.
Especially in lower tiers where many servers can’t man decent sizes forces across more than 1 or 2 maps. They have little hope but to be down 2 buffs the majority of the time.
Zerging is exactly the wrong way to be capping ruins, and I would be less concerned about how stupid you think bloodlust is and rather how stupid the opposing server is for attempting to do this.
It’s a waste of manpower, but actually not the easy to take advantage of. Because while the counter to this would be to go hit some valuable structures of the zerg, taking Tower and Keeps still takes significantly long enough that the zerg can easily abandon their ruins diversions and go wipe any counter attacking force, and then simply resume zerging over the ruins.
People also draw the wrong conclusion that the vastly better coverage and population servers are always the bigger zerg servers. Not necessarily, as having vastly more people means you also have vastly more to expend into small groups to patrol the ruins. The undermanned side is likely to be outmanned in the ruins to an equal degree that they are in the larger fights.
The stat bonuses from Bloodlust are comically too large and imbalanced. 250 stats for one bonus! That’s well beyond even the difference of one player having a handful of ascended vs the other simply having rares.
It’s like we are playing WoW here were gear is too determinative, but instead, its buffs.
If you are in a perfect balance matchup where everyone can hold one Bloodlust, no big deal, but most aren’t and most won’t be when league play starts. Any gap advantage of 2 buffs or larger risk making small skirmish combat down to solo fights, very unrewarding and too dependent on thoughtless math advantages instead of play ability.
It might be ok if each Bloodlust gave like 20 to all stats. It would still be amazingly good. Right now who wants to go into a fight with an opponent who has the equivalent of 5k extra HP.
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Went with Staff. Even though I use Scepter probably more, the Staff is giving twice the numerical bonus as an upgrade. And extra condition damage while holding staff is still going to boost existing ticking dots put on from the scepter / dagger.
The actual damage range upgrade on staff is doing more for you too as all those marks multiply in damage per target hit (and for DS). Scepter being the condi weapon not that important its base damage range.
^
This matchup is favorable to Kain actually as far as a lopsided match like this can be. Due to that DBs all around strong presence depresses when YB would usually gain big on KN, while KN has a strong period opposite Yaks where they can gain ground. KN might be able to sneak a 2nd this week by playing the coverage. With leagues upcoming though, not sure its a good thing to be gaining lots of server rank right now.
^ I think they just don’t understand how to make defending interesting. So they’ve just given up even trying, and are happy to make a game all about zering around. Unfortunate.
The changes they made to the swords alerts certainly didn’t help and went the exact wrong way. As most people are never going to be interested to sit and ‘babysit’ or do sentry duty in a quiet tower or keep for hours, to make legit defense possible, you simply must have structures able to withstand an attack for a while, as well as letting the defenders know what is under attack so they have a reasonable chance to get there, instead of just thinking, “Too late, we can’t save X, so instead lets just go try and hit our opponents own undefended stuff.”
Mechanics that actually discourage PVP and players fighting each other, in lieu of the best rewards for simply PVDoor. Hard to get much more backward than that.
If you’re the biggest server then logic says you’d swarm cap the buff on all three BLs and then keep a small ninja team active spoiling any attempts to capture it back.
No doubt, the buff is well worth having and the bigger pop side will want it and will defend it. To think otherwise is ludicrous.
Much of the time a vastly outnumbering server just wants people to kill, and considering they will get a message as soon as their control of the ruins is threatened, you can bet they will be sending a force there.
Any idea that this a mechanic to help the underdog is cocamamie.
Couldn’t agree more with this post.
However, I also feel like it hurts open field fighting outside of GvG. Most of the active WvW guilds do raids and focus primarily on open field combat. This new buff really hurts a large segment of the WvW population by destroying any sense of fairness these fights might’ve had.
It hurts any fighting in WvW, not just open field, but anything from a solo roamer to a small group, all the way up to large zergs or GvG. As well and including fights inside keeps, or anywhere on the map.
Once you get in a bad matchup with vast over-population on one side, one of the few remaining things you can do to maintain interest is avoid the opposing zergs and travel in a small team or even by yourself and see what kind of fights you can drum up, while dodging the big stupid zergs. But now that the over populated – and already winning easily – side, is likely to have every one of their players at +150 to all stats, even these forms of entertaining yourself in a lopsided match just get way more difficult.
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Looks like they didn’t give any thought to that it is way easier to stomp for some classes than others. Particularly if you have stealth and easy stability access.
Pretty disappointing in how this mechanic will just even more reinforce dividing lines about what classes are good in specific aspects of WvW play styles.
Would be far better to have had all deaths count toward the score, but perhaps at a lesser level, like 1/3 a point or so.
This is a potential solution or perhaps there is another, but as it stands, Anet is no doubt heading for disaster with 2 NA leagues only.
Right now in NA you have 6 teams, the top 6, that will pretty much crush the next 6 any time they are matched up. This thoughtless season they are projecting has every possibility to make ghost towns out of numerous servers.
Just look at the 3rd tier in NA right now for proof of this reality. Dragonband, currently #6, is basically going to run 450+ for this whole week every day except for maybe a couple hours of primtime, where their lower league 1 opponents might crack 150 if lucky in those few hours, then go back to holding maybe 3 or 4 structures over all maps.
Devon Carver claimed that WvW was never meant to be ‘fair’. That’s fine, I don’t think anyone is expecting every match come down to the last day. But there is big a difference between ‘fair’ and at least ‘competitive’. Some base level of real competition is needed to keep people interested in the game. And right now a match like this is not competitive at all, and makes the whole week mostly a joke other than for some zerging around to try and wxp or karma train for a while, with no intention of holding anything more than 5 minutes.
This is a sad state for the game mode to get in and its only going to get worse when you throw top 3 servers up against the bottom 9 or so, at least in the top league. I don’t know if the bottom will be as badly imbalanced, but I suspect it won’t be great either.
Until we do – have better rewards for defending, to actually encourage more to do it – WvW will never work as successfully as they initially envisioned.
Because simply playing WvW as a ‘Wxp/Karma/Exp/Gold’ train, like most do now, going in never ending circles capping each other’s stuff back and forth, largely unopposed, is utterly vapid and dull and makes for a broken mode.
The unfortunate thing is that Anet has made comments that suggest they like that most people just want to attack, under the guise of ‘excitement’ it brings. Ugh.
While most sane people stopped caring about the score a year ago, some still cling to the notion that WvW is a competitive game type with PPT being the indicator of success or failure. You’ve seen them, the crazy people who want to hold a tower “for the tick,” as if matters. Those are the types who don’t like GvG.
Seems a similar disillusion to cling to the notion that WvW is a balanced ground or mode for even tests of GvG skill. The balance is borked in WvW far more than sPVP even because they simply don’t care about it.
What GvG people should be asking for is separate arenas, where they have max capped stats – but hopefully with more options than amulets – and that Anet actually cares about constantly tweaking to keep things in line for various classes, skills, etc.
So that winning can actually become more about true skill or teamwork than simply finding and abusing the most imbalanced mechanics at any given time.
I proposed such a system a long time ago. Or even an alternation to make matchups be 2v2 with rotating allies and enemy teams to create variety. It would be sooo much easier to balance matchups if you could add 2 teams together on both sides, to equalize out things like coverage and population.
But as 2 v 2 would require map redesign, this idea of simply adding together two servers to contribute toward the same team (color) in each matchup is even easier.
A lot of talk about ‘fair’ fights. Lol, how is WvW in any way currently ‘fair’? Unless every player is max decked out in BiS Ascended, Exotic, max food and consumable buffs, and maxed out on WvW ranks for the life and damage wxp buffs?
And even if you do get a situation where somehow two players, or two guilds are evenly matched in all those things – pretty rare – WvW still isn’t balanced per class, because class balance is matched for sPVP, and they don’t really care about skills or powers that become imbalanced or overpowered at the individual – or team fight – level in WvW. Which is pretty much already just ‘buff wars’.
This is the fun casual mode as much as people try to bury their head and pretend it isn’t. There aren’t fair fights here. There might be fun fights, and you can try and show your skill the best possible as you can, but it is far far far from a level playing field or balanced as is. Orbs and Bloodlust buffs are just more of whats already in the mode.
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Well Yaks started off slow last weekend too, which was a surprise because we usually start out hot and cool off. But than again we weren’t playing against a T2 server. Sure can’t wait to go up against a T1 server during league play!
Think we actually have a bit different makeup than in the past. A lot of weekend warrior players transferred off.
With everyone pushing to craft their Ascended, and Keeps, Towers and Lords dropping the necessary materials to facilitate that, WvW has just gained yet another unhealthy push of the balance to favor attacking over defending.
At least with WXP, you could still get it defending.
The developers are really going to have to come up with improved or unique rewards to get people to defend their stuff more, so the core of the gameplay gains meaning, and so that it tends less toward lots of musical keep trading.
Does this exist now? Supposedly the old Magic Find gear was going to change into one of Assassin/Hunter/Dire stat combo, but Dire is not a choice for selection to change over your old Magic Find Gear.
I see Dire stats on the ‘Errol’ Medium Armor set at 80 but nothing for Light or Heavy. There are also lots of Dire weapons which were converted from traveler, but will there also be armor?
One less bleed in the rotation isn’t nothing. It’s anywhere from 500 damage, if cleansed reasonably quickly, to 700+ base, then multiply by number of targets hit. If we had gained that much damage, a random AoE bleed on some ability, people would be legitimately happy. Luckily they were wise enough to keep it to sPVP though.
They already have this in ascended gear (although the ascended has some precision, too) and it is amazing for wvw. If this becomes a whole set I’ll be ecstatic. And tanky.
Definitely. Agree, and I believe this stat combo is the most efficient return a Condi Necro can get. It’s just a matter of how much do you want, as taking a full set would make you very indestructible, but there does come a point where your DPS gets so low have to wonder if its worth taking back some offense even if it isn’t strictly as good as the vit/tougness you give up. Especially since those two stats reinforce each other and only make each other better and better.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending how you prefer to play, you can still be very effective while being extremely tanky, simply due to how often opponent strategy in group fights boil down to ‘target the Necro’. And at least in WvW most players are too dumb to switch off of you even as they are doing weak damage and are being killed largely by your teammates. Not to mention, without proper condition clear, even having condi as your only offensive stat, you can still kill suprisingly fast.
I would still probably on the whole prefer the Necro got balanced a little more in the way of quick escape / total damage mitigation techniques so we could more freely build offensively with more clean conscience that we weren’t doing something sub-optimal.
The only discord with this combo is versus the Dhumfire condi build, as since you get all that power going down Spite, it really does lend itself for you to going Carrion and actually having access to powerful wells, hard hitting Life Blasts, and big Feast’s of Corruption when you want that, all while still having great condition damage. Too much Dire would really weaken those options.
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I believe even the devs have admitted that several weapon sets still lack strong enough LF generation, and Scepter is definitely one.
However, putting LF on the auto-attack would probably be a bit too easy and lazy. Maybe if only the 3rd attack, Putrid Curse, added some LF, 3-5% or so, it would be a solution, as it would require you to finish the chain and make a little more effort to get it.
Is it just me or is there like a million hammer warriors in WvW in the last month or two? I feel like a hipster. Man I was doin that hammer crap back in February! You wish you were as cool as me.
All I see is the new ‘run away’ warrior builds. They charge you and if you don’t go down and actually punish them back, they race off like they have jet packs on their rears. They should all just roll a thief, getting away is so much easier.
WoW 2.0
Grind PvE so you can PvP
Which would be an utter failure of Anet’s original manifesto and advertised design philosophy.
I can’t tell any difference in texture or size when previewing both items next to each other in the Mists, at least as a human. The Devout hood seems to shade a bit lighter with whatever color you have chosen, but otherwise I can’t tell a difference. Maybe something weird with Asura.
I’m not talking about sheathe/unsheathe, as using that will simply put you in a combat stance, but your character will put the weapons away again after about 20 seconds if not fighting anything.
I figured it was probably a bug or trick involved to it, but I’m not sure if Anet considers it anything seriously worthy of fixing.
Devout amror. Karma vendors in Diessa Plateau.
I notice people standing around in their idle animations but with their weapons remaining out. My character will always auto-sheathe the weapons after a few seconds out of combat. Is there a special way to keep them out?
Do you only get one chance on your first try?
I replayed this without dying or getting downed and did not get the achievement.
What we need is a new game mode and new maps for this actually. Just like they split solo tourneys in sPVP. And just like they split the jumping puzzles into their own maps.
Because why do GvG on maps that have towers, castles, supplies, etc, that have nothing to do with the GvG and are irrelevant to it. It’s just team deathmatch and nearly everything they created in WvW does not serve that purpose or relate to it in any way.
Making some small GvG maps would not be nearly so hard as making either sPVP or new WvW maps. All you need is mostly flat open ground, maybe some interesting scenery on the sides, and there you go. GvG players get their own space to do their thing without being interfered by zergs or people bugging them to ‘help the team’ and the those actually playing WvW as intended dont get hurt by 40 WvW slots being occupied by people just standing around contributing nothing for the length of the GvG battles.
There will never be peaceful coexistence on servers with regard to this issue unless they do this. Because a GvG is not just like a few people dueling behind a camp, that has little to no impact on the match. But when you have 20 people fighting, 20 more watching, that could be a third or more of your whole on map force.
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I don’t think they care about balance in WvW tbh. Many of the class changes they make for balance reasons remain strictly on the sPVP side. Doesn’t mean people can’t have fun doing it, but I doubt we’ll ever see changes made based on say GvG meta that are unique to only WvW.
If you’re a WvW player, why are you in the pavilion instead of in WvW? No one is forcing you to do anything. You are making the conscious choice all on your own.
Brings to mind a good point. Many are there because WvW is an incredibly expensive mode (siege) and you don’t earn a tenth of what you do there as you do in PVE. So you have to finance one game mode via another. Another oversight.
Some people should really ask for clarification before writing mini wall of nothings.
It can be soloed in 15 minutes at most.
Sorry, but then this is the fault of Anet, because there is nothing to indicate this. When you go up to the portal you get the dungeon interface where it is basically asking you to come in with your 5 person party.
How is a solo player supposed to assume they can solo it, or whether its 15 minutes or an hour? By entering every dungeon in the game randomly and seeing if they massacred or not? Come on. I will change the complaint to poor explanation in the quest then.
Putting re-access to the Pavilion and Gauntlet behind a dungeon quest is very bad design. Some people do not like running dungeons, don’t have a regular group, and don’t enjoy looking for one.
I mostly PVP and WvW in GW2, but do enjoy dabbling in some of the open world events and PVE stuff occasionally, but now the Pavilion is off limits to me for its final 2 weeks because I don’t care to complete all the Living World and Playhouse stuff.
Imagine the stink PVE players would raise if they had to go into WvW and capture a keep or something like that in order to enter a certain otherwise public area of the game.
The content creators need to be a little more considerate of ‘play your own way’ and of the different playstyles people in the game prefer.
Alternate rotation. I have a typical Burning/MoT build, but with some tankier gear and also very doable opening up with a golem charge, popping spectral armor after your blind, he usually dies without me even getting downed. If your golem dies, 10-15 sec extra wait though.
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I don’t get it, it’s ok for Necro to be uniquely disadvantaged in a fight like Liandri, but in something that favors us, like this, nerf immediately. Typical. And I’m sure the alternate will also now get nerfed.
This is the fist Living World release I’ve really liked. Glad to finally see some combat heavy and difficult challenge fighting content. All the jumping around stuff in the past is too light hearted and wears thin quickly I think, it should be relegated to tag-along or side event stuff, never the main thing.
I hope this team gets highlighted to do more things soon.
In the future though we need to see less reliance on the crutch of one shot mechanics as a stand in for difficulty. Let’s make more use of the variety of skills that all classes have.
The one shot kill mechanics are so lame in this game and show a severe lack of creative talent, or perhaps to be more forgiving, weakness in the combat mechanics of the game overall.
This event is really cool except for these cheesy ‘dodge or be killed’ bosses. It’s the same thing over and over from dungeons now to this when they want something that is a challenge. Is this really all that can be come up with?
What is the point of all the CC, debuffs, and interesting skills in the game, if none of them matter except excessive vigor for dodging and timing your complete damage mitigation skills, of which a class like Necro gets none?
Advertising this game Anet heralded the death of the Holy Trinity system in order to create something much more varied, where each profession can ‘play any role’. Except it never materialized. Bosses that one shot you over and over is worse than the simple Tank and Spank of the Holy Trinity actually. It’s just not interesting or fun. Have to do better.
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They definitely share, or used to last time I ran both. I used to run a Battle Sigil on my staff opposite two Earth Sigils and at first wondered why I only got the might on swap like 50% of the time. It’s because the Earth Sigils fired off so much the 2 sec cooldown was still going when I swapped, and thus no on swap effect.
Staff’s have gotten disgraceful treatment so far in this game. They are plain looking, uninspired and typically given a fraction of the animation and special effects of blades.
A Staff is a 2 handed weapon, like a greatsword, they should be similarly impressive and ornate.
Only tried it a few times so far.
Lame mechanics fight, sad too because the Gauntlet was pretty fun and interesting to this point. One shot kill mechanics I don’t find as very skillful, as most combat abilities and options just become irrelevant. Just becomes all about simply dodging and/or invulnerable defenses, which of course we don’t have. Probably why I don’t care for the dungeons in this game.
Got up to Liadri with only a few deaths, but haven’t got her yet, tried 3 times so far.
Hot air balloon rides between waypoints for reduced cost please.
Outside of sPVP where unfortunately you are forced to choose, I would definitely recommend the golden ratio which Necro’s start with. 1:1 increases of both. Or Armor x10 should equal health. I have tried both full Rabid and full Carrion and neither is as balanced as a mix. I’m sitting at around 1500 Vit and Toughness usually and I’m very tanky with neither of the drawbacks of going all the way with one or the other.
More Toughness makes Vitality better, and more Vitality make Toughness better. Imo, either one is more valuable to a Necro than any single offensive stat, due to how our defense is almost entirely face-tanking, and we get two health bars. Other classes get one health bar, and rely on other defensive mechanics like dodges, boons, mobility and invulnerability stuff. Defensive stats are worth twice as much to us.
Yeah my question is – how to use DS that nobody knows. How to use it in PvE, WvW, sPvP so that will change the meta
I don’t think you can it’s a big fake out. Not like people haven’t tried all DS builds before.
Yes there are a lot of traits that you can take for DS, but as was stated above, some encourage you to ‘flash’ DS while others make you want to stay in. It’s not really coherent design.
Even if you take all the DS traits and synergy, and can pop in every 7 seconds, you still don’t feel that powerful. Your DPS has probably taken a hit to get all that stuff and you still don’t have the sustain of some of the top sustaining bunker or healing builds.
I think the Devs were kind of peddling excuses with that ‘need to master DS’ line, or as a stalling mechanic to get us off their back while they slowly try to shore up the class. Maybe in beta there were ways to use DS to make it super powerful but they nerfed all those into the ground. Now its just a lot of smoke and mirrors.
Overall duration I find much better than bleed specific. If you notice most of our bleeds are really long by default, 8 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds, etc.
If you then have overall duration on top of it such as from Spite, Food, or Runes, it starts becoming counter productive to take bleed specific stuff like Hemophilia, because rarely will your bleeds be running that long (except in PVE) before being cleansed to gain the additional time. Even in PVE, most common stuff is dead long before those bleeds run out.
I dislike Lingering Curses for a similar reason. It’s only effecting 3 skills, and with my condi already at 70% in WvW, my grasping dead going from 12 to 15 seconds and weakness from 8 to 10 isn’t really doing that much. The extra poison time on Scepter 3 is a bit better but you don’t get it off that many times in a fight.
Sort of interesting underwater you can self trigger Fear if you have Reaper’s Protection. Geomancy Sigil on your spear immediately followed by Spear #5.