Oh yea I totally forgot about scepter with Dragon’s Tooth. It looks like if I back away from an AC that’s up top, I can see it and target it. Once it’s targeted I can run up to it and spam out Dragon’s Tooth, making sure that I’m traited for reducing recharge. Much of the damage is burning unfortunately, which will only work for the user but the other half (direct damage) works for the AC. If I spam that skill out on its 4.75 second recharge with something like Carrion gear, would that be better at stopping an AC/someone on an AC than a staff ele build?
Transfer to Kaineng if you are on NA servers and Vabbi otherwise.
And there you have it! You’ll be red every week and you can log into EoTM and join all of the other servers that are losing their WvW matchup so their players will be pouring into EoTM and you’ll have way more numbers than both the other sides.
Now I know what you’re thinking! Since when did Badlands win every time? Didn’t overgrowth used to win every time? And my answer to that: yes that’s true but it all changed overnight when OG went from red to green and BL went from blue to red!
Now, if you want a slightly more serious post. The above was not really sarcastic but a slight exaggeration since red ‘only’ wins 85% of the time and not 100% of the time. There’s two ways red can lose:
1) no one on red tags up
2) one or both of the other sides has a large guild group party up to port people in, causing them to have more people than you and the guild group stays in there for a majority of the match.
I have never had 1) happen to me because I’ll just tag up on red (or any color but I switched to Kaineng and haven’t lost since). Soon 2) will happen to me and I’ll get my first loss as red. I’ve had plenty of guild groups compete against my color but never for anything longer than than 2 hours.
Title says it all. Just thinking that since we are red, we have the biggest advantage in EoTM so to play with a guild group would be even cooler.
There’s always the issue of either constantly battling servers close to you for closer matches or having more randomization and battling servers further away and having blowouts. It’d be ideal if servers were closer together in coverage. The worst scenario is what OP described is when servers right next to each other have the ability to blow out another server. It looks like anet is trying to balance the coverage a little more with the server transfers to make a small adjustment to this area but I dunno how much it’ll do.
I didn’t like season 1 and played very little of it. In fact, I haven’t like the seasons yet but I think that for different times they could have done the season, this one is ok. My reason being is that EoTM came out not too long ago and has caused a decline in WvW population so this could be one thing to put more focus back onto WvW.
isnt there some warrior build that makes you unkillable? I know our warrior commander never dies unless its like 60 v 20.
Yep, I run this build: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fIMQNAR8ejkOtwxQqQMRCE0DN8K2CTheQVAPSKEjBE-jEyAorITMCE5AO7VEN2yYR0Y1LY6SioaPeR0qjBgJ-w
I run that and charge into the enemy zerg and draw as much people on me as possible to get them all focusing me while I pop my stances and negate all of their damage. This is great for my teammates (especially the squishies) because it reduces aggro on them and allows them to cast under less pressure. If I have zerglings that are balled up, I don’t have to worry about them getting AoE’d as much too if that AoE is being used on me (can’t always count on it).
That’s why I love warrior in very large scale combat. When my stances are up, it doesn’t really matter if there’s 20 enemies on me or 60. Now once they end…different story.
I’ve always felt that for Guardian vs Warrior commanding, larger scale favors warrior more and smaller scale favors Guardian. This is because of Warrior’s self survivability and mobility is good in big groups and then in small groups, the Guardian’s support skills play a big role (not to be forgotten in large groups, but remember that you may get focused in large groups and you don’t want to be taking a death). My warrior pretty much does poop damage but it’s made up for by the amount of damage I absorb so if it’s a small group, then I’m not as useful.
I command on both and personally prefer warrior commander because of its mobility, speed, and self survivability. I get focused a lot by enemy zergs so self survivability is extremely important. It does depend on the size of your group and what you intend to do as a commander, though. You may want to wait until the Tuesday update to see what happens there first.
Please keep posts relevant to the topic.
I am finally blue now after being red for the past two weeks and we just can’t get the numbers that red does. I’ll tag up at the very start and already outnumbered right from the start. Red seems to be able to get orange swords effortlessly while we are well under that. I am sure that during beta or first two weeks of release, the different sides on EoTM had similar win percentages. It’d be interesting if anet is able to have the win percentages of each side in EoTM. Red has pretty much won 85% of the time when I’ve been on red the past two weeks as well as this week as I’m on blue. I’m still thinking there needs to be some sort of different match making algorithm like sPvP that balances the side because when one side has twice as many players as the other, there’s no way to win. There’s only two ways I can ever remember losing on red:
1) no one on red tags up
2) a guild group on blue or green parties up to repeatedly to send in a large amount of players
Selfish. Servers are only NA or EU and many different people from timezones much different from those play this game. It’s not fair for people of a different timezone to be forced to have a limited playing experience.
3rd week in a row of mag/sos/fa. SoS was green the first one and won but then was moved down to blue. They won the second match up and moved up to green but FA, who was green and beat us (mag) move down to red. Ranking and matchup system is weird.
I am uncertain about the way the game works with the dolyaks and the game not being capable of rewarding players for escorting them.
1. If dolyak escorting only gave rewards to people who were “close to the dolyak upon entering the structure,” then why were all of the bots walking with them instead of just standing still at the structure?
2. If Sentry Turrets in EoTM can light up any player within 1200 range, why can’t the game system be able to tell if any people escorting it are within 1200 range and just reward them depending on what % of the trip they stayed within 1200 range?
IMO the yaks need to go. Escorting dolyaks is the most boring thing and there’s not even a reward. Instead of escorting dolyaks, make it just like EoTM and if people desperately want supply to get through, they’ll defend the camp. This would make for much more fun fights too! That’ll be much more fun than walking a 10 minute path with a dolyak that moves 4.5 times slower than your character. Also, put another objective out there that can be solo’d in order for roamers to still have stuff to do in response to removing the dolyaks. Roamers can still solo a supply camp too and of course it’d be tough if defended.
Update
It appears that this was changed.
There was a brief period of time (starting about a week or two ago) in which AC’s required LoS to hit that was unannounced by ArenaNet and probably unintended. After testing just now, AC’s do not require LoS anymore just like they used to. As for the period of time in which they all of a sudden required LoS, I’m guessing that was a glitch that has now been fixed.
I’m confused on the functionality of the new AC LoS. It initially looked like it took a nerf, now requiring LoS for anything you want to hit. I have noticed that if there’s a pillar or something like that between me and my target, it won’t let me hit because of no line of site (doesn’t matter if I can turn my camera around to see). That first seemed understandable to me and it appeared that LoS functions just like anything else now. What confused me is that I got on an AC on a tower placed up top and towards the back (to make it harder to hit). I thought that the LoS nerf would make it no longer able to hit right in front of the gate because of how far back it was and the fact I didn’t really have line of sight since I really had to do some camera angle changing to see it. It still let me hit just like it did before the LoS “nerf” which was unexpected and felt inconsistent with the other situation with the pillar. I then got off the AC but stood right on top of it to see if I could place my fire field in front of the gate and in fact it said “No line of site” from the exact same spot my AC could still hit. I had to move very far forward for my fire field to actually be able to be dropped in front of the gate.
I know anet didn’t really say anything about the LoS and it kind of randomly just changed. I’m confused if this is glitched or somehow in any possible way working as intended.
Is this in the borderlands or EBG? If you are wanting to upgrade a single location, it really has to be one of the keeps in your own borderlands. It’s very important to have scouts there telling people what’s going on. If there’s just a small group at the tower, you can repel them with an AC or cannon. If a zerg gets there, you have to call for help on map chat and see if a commander can come to the rescue.
Your other option for checking upgrades would be on your EBG side cycling among towers and your keep or SM checking on their progress and seeing if there’s any resistance but that would be more than one structure you are interested in. It wouldn’t really be worth it just to stay in one structure on EBG unless it’s SM.
As a commander, you don’t want to be taking a death. A dead commander is a useless commander. If you are commanding a bunch of clueless pugs, they will become even more useless when you are dead. Enemy zergs will see your commander tag and focus you, which is one reason why I’m full defense.
- If a Commander is relying on full soldier for survival, your positioning is poor and that needs improving rather than being more tanky.
- Dead commander useless commander? That’s like the old “dead dps = no dps” argument.
- Enemy zergs won’t see your commander tag. Only a couple of players who actually have accidentally targetted you may notice your buff – they can’t actually see the dorito over your head.
Like I said, I like to take full aggro and get as much people on me as possible so that they focus me while I pop my defense skills and allow my teammates in my zerg to not be getting hit as much which is one reason I have full PTV. Of course a dead commander is a useless commander, especially when commanding pugs. The commander is the one dropping siege and telling people where to go so if you die, you might as well ask for another zergling to tag up while trying to shout directions and hope that people do what you say. Also, I have definitely noticed commanders are more likely to get hit in zerg vs zerg. Every zerg has players that tab around specifically to find the commander and then try to kill the commander since he/she is considered the most useful person in the zerg. Of course they can’t see the blue tag over my head but it’s extremely easy to tab over to find the commander when the commander is in front (like me) and just targeting the nearest person usually gets me too. In an average zerg vs zerg it takes me 7 seconds of tabbing to find the commander.
I guess it depends on what you are planning on doing and the size of zergs you are wanting to command. The build isn’t that terrible but Merciless hammer and Cleansing Ire are pretty mandatory for a hammer build. If you want my build, I use GS+S/Shield like this:
While full soldier is bad in many places, it’s actually not bad for a commander build. It turns out that the diminishing returns is actually still worth it to take. As a commander, you don’t want to be taking a death. A dead commander is a useless commander. If you are commanding a bunch of clueless pugs, they will become even more useless when you are dead. Enemy zergs will see your commander tag and focus you, which is one reason why I’m full defense. I pretty much just charge in front and try to get as many of the enemy zerg on me as possible to negate damage from my teammates while I pop my invulnerability. This build can also banner a champ by popping all 3 of the stances and it will work every time. You just swap banner in before you need it while ooc. It’s also a fast moving build and can escape when needed. Hammer is probably the best zerg vs zerg weapon for warrior because of it’s CC but I don’t use it for my commanding set up since I want to be as fast as possible.
I’ve been red for the last two weeks in EoTM and we’ve had a win percentage of about 85%, most of which were matches not even close where we’ve gotten at least 80% of the PPT multiple times in the match. There’s even been multiple matches where we’ve got 100% PPT. We have even had pathetic PvE commanders commanding who drop catapults at gates of stuff that isn’t even being defended (at least drop it at the wall?) and have no clue how siege works and still win in blowout fashion. The red side definitely gets the most players on average, I’m thinking because many are losing in WvW and want to go here. Not only that, the map design favors red. Green has two useless structures(shrine and bell tower) and one good one (forge). Blue has wurm tunnel which is good but airport is bad and then workshop causes their keep to flip about 10x easier than either of the other keeps. Yes, workshop also makes the keep easier to get back but many people rage quit after losing a keep. Red also has the toughest keep to take followed by green and then blue. Red’s keep boss is the toughest, plus the gate design makes it easy to defend the gates. Red’s Altar is amazing for zerglings being able to catch up to their commander after spawning in which is probably why red maintains its huge numbers. Enemy servers capping altar have much less use for it too since they have to wait to build it and it’s not as useful using it there as it is for red people using it. Observatory is also amazing because the turrets can be placed in the keep or both obs/altar gate to watch for inc. It also flips way slower so if a zerg gets there, it gives more time. Statuary is not that great, though. Green also has that gate glitch which single-handedly screws over the whole side but I won’t say much about it since it’s not intended. The map design also appears to have blue and green stalemate against each other just north of needle tower which gives red more opportunity to hit either side (or at the least blue and green stalemate against each other more than either with red on average). Some say that red is intended to be slightly better because it’s the losing servers. I don’t know what Anet’s intention is or not about that. I personally think they should be equally balanced but it is very clear that red is overwhelmingly better than the other sides which decreases the competitiveness.
This topic is not intended to complain but rather just give my opinion on the current balance. Others can feel very welcome to state their opinion on the current balance regardless of whether or not it is similar or totally different than what I think of it.
(edited by Radian.2478)
Thanks guys! I am thinking I’ll swap out signet of air for the conjure frost bow and then put in Tornado for my elite. My intention for Persisting Flames was to make lava font last longer when AoE’ing AC’s but maybe it’s not as important if I’ve now got more skills to use to take out the AC than I thought. I was unsure how important precision/crit is given that it doesn’t do any bonus damage to siege but I’m thinking from the replies it’s pretty important for taking out the siege user. I am open to the idea of running zerker gear but I just hope that I don’t get killed too often starting out u know?
Btw do you guys ever use the water attunement skill 2 on staff? It has good radius but not necessarily as good damage.
Lastly, do you guys get into any sort of skill rotation? I’m guessing something like
MS→Tornado→Frost Bow skill 4 → Lava Font in that order or something
I’m thinking of switching my runes to strength, armor to zerker, and sigil to bloodlust if that’s more ideal.
Hi all.
I am seeking an ele build that will be used for offensive zerging and AoE’ing AC’s up top in tough places as well as good AoE damage for zerg v zerg. I was thinking along the lines of PTV since zerker will be nerfed shortly and I want to be able to survive as I AoE the siege. How does something like this look?
It feels as if large EoTM guilds can log in an overflow and win every time if they want.
Define winning
If your guild is large enough, your side would win the PPT battle everytime if you are in the match for long enough. Imagine if an (un)official EoTM guild was made and tons of people on that server joined and then tons of people from other servers joined. It could get gigtantic and do EoTM 24/7 with whatever portion of the members are online. They ferry all teammates into the same overflow by partying up and leaving party once they get in. Theoretically, they could have a karma train of more than 100 players at all time. Maybe there’s a website that has the guild info to make it look official and forums for organizing. Then it’d have names of players so people not in the guild (if their server is same color that week) could party up and join in. Then they would karma train the whole map repeatedly while letting stuff flip (no defense) and constant back capping. Many PvE’ers who want money or easy karma/wxp/badges/exp would probably consider it. It’d probably be boring though. But stuff like this likely won’t happen to this scale but smaller scale could still have an overwhelmingly high chance of winning in EoTM and make it unfair to opposition due to EoTM not having a player limit.
I’m not sure if this is exactly right but it appears that large guilds can join in an EoTM overflow and there’s no cap for the number of players. Not even really guilds but say one person getting 50 people in to the map by having them join that player’s party to get in and then leaving.
Is there a cap to the number of people that can be in an overflow? I know that there’s multiple overflows and it’ll start to redirect randoms to other overflows but does it always let you join someone’s overflow if they’re in the same party regardless of whether or not the map already is flooded with people?
I’ve had some matches against servers that hard large guilds and it feels like they have over 100 people on the map (50-60+guild group). It feels as if large EoTM guilds can log in an overflow and win every time if they want.
Firstly, I’d like to apologize for being out of this thread for so long, I’ve been reading your posts and think there are a lot of good points in here and just a lot of thoughtfulness in general. I do feel like the thread has kind of wound down, so I’d like to ask one more question and see if that brings up any more ideas.
Edge of the Mists has a whole host of differences from the WvW maps that we built before launch. One of those differences is the number of waypoints. Not only does each side only have 1 waypoint, but they can’t even capture and use the waypoints at enemy keeps. Do you think that the amount of travel that you have to put in makes the maps feel better? Does it feel like there is a consequence for dying and that you can whittle down an opposing force?
I’m curious what your thoughts are and if you think it would make the fighting better or worse in the borderlands and EB.
I’m not sure how to interpret this post because it is wrong and/or grammatically flawed.
In EoTM, you can capture enemy keeps and use their waypoint unless you were referring to WvW (not the last subject before the sentence though…).
EoTM I also feel like has reduced run time compared to the borderlands. When I command, I take optimized routes to maximize captures and it doesn’t feel like there’s much running. I personally don’t like running to stuff because it’s boring. After a certain amount of time, there’s no more just admiring the scenery. I want as much action as possible and to get in it as quick as possible which includes trying to take/defend stuff constantly rather than just running around.
Player vs door and spam capping undefended structures gives the most rewards which is why people do it. It gives better rewards than zerg busting and is easier to do.
Typically it’s best to roam enemy borderlands and starting with the two supply camps nearest to your spawn and then working your way north. You can also roam the north side of your own borderland if much of it is captured by an enemy server. I would not roam EoTM or EBG because you are going to get zerged there more often.
Also, the LoS nerf to AC’s also makes AC’s up top have to be closer in if they are going to hit the rams. That just means they’re easier than ever to AoE. They could already be AoE’d down when placed up top in most places harder to reach, now any profession ought to be able to AoE AC’s up top easy. AC’s in east keep south outer and garrison outer watergate are a little tougher to take down but those aren’t even mandatory attack points. Any AC placed behind a gate on the ground cannot be AoE’d but 600 range rams will be well out of AC range there.
So sad that PvD’ers every one in a while experience a little bit of resistance…
It’s surprising this was made AFTER the AC LoS was nerfed. If you are getting killed by AC’s, you can always build omegas to take them out and have them range dps the gate OR you can always catapult or treb down a wall out of AC range. You can even have multiple different classes that have the ability to AoE an Akittenil it goes down.
It’s not much harder or maybe even about the same difficulty if you pull the silvers away from the champion. If you get them spread out, they die faster. Most players still don’t have the hang of how to capture red keep and do so with a bad strategy.
EoTM is not really a good place to roam. There’s zergs everywhere and you will almost never get a fair 1v1 if you are looking for one. If you still want to roam, it’s more important than ever that you are on thief so that if a zerg gets on you, you can shadow refuge and run away. Any other profession and you’d likely be getting zerged too much and have to spend too much time running around than capturing objectives. You can stick around the center of the map and flip the three supply camps there (the ones that send supply to the towers) and then also flip the three sentries that are below that area. If you are roaming in a group and not solo, I’d recommend running multiple thieves in your roaming group and just do what I listed above but then follow your zerg into an enemy base if they go in. You can then split up from your zerg, just make sure you got through the gate. Then, you guys can go hit the enemy 30 point structures and then stealth and run away any time that they send a zerg after you. You then run to another 30 point structure in their base and keep doing that to annoy the team.
I’ve been doing a good amount of commanding for EoTM now and have found myself getting the best PPT when just karma training. Running routes specifically to maximize captures and minimize zerg v zerg confrontations has appeared to get us a ton of PPT while getting the best possible rewards. I’ve found it not worth it to defend on many occasions, particularly if I’d have to go out of my way. It also helps keep my side’s population high when we are getting good rewards too. Maximizing PvD and minimizing zerg v zerg confrontations also makes it more likely the other two servers hit each other which gives my side an opening. A few key differences I’ve noticed in EoTM different from WvW:
1) nothing can be upgraded so losing something is not as big of a deal
2) if a 30 pt structure is being attacked, there’s typically no good way to defend it that gives you an overwhelming advantage (unlike towers and keeps)
3) if you decide to waypoint back to save something, the group in EoTM doesn’t follow waypoints near as well as players in WvW
Typically when I’m leading my karma train and I see something on my side is being attacked, I find it much more effective to just continue on my path and flip something else, with the trading mentality. I always get accused of not defending enough though I dunno if that’s really a problem. Typically, if some 30 point structure is already being hit, I don’t have enough time to waypoint back and save it (that means they’re already on champ and all sides have one 30 point structure that doesn’t take a gate to get to). I’ll always waypoint back to defend our keep (extremely important) but I give less significance to 30 point structures. I’m tons more willing to defend towers too because those have gates so I can get on siege in the tower.
One exception I can think of is being on blue side and defending workshop so our keep doesn’t flip instantly.
Thoughts?
I like the idea of buffs in SM for each capture point because it’ll increase the incentive to split up.
Even better, I like the idea of having a day off type of thing. I’m not sure about the appropriate adjustment and if three two day matches, two three day matches, or six one day matches would go better with implementing the day off but it’s got huge potential.
I’m envisioning the day off every week to be totally random or at least unexpected as far as what will happen. It would be kind of like how in Guild Wars 1 there was different permanent buffs every month to mix things up but this would still be a very different concept.
For the day off: PPT would still display and you would be in competition with the opposing side. However, different things would be implemented, not only for fun and a different experience but also for testing. One (but not the main) intention of EoTM is to test stuff there and possibly put it in WvW but it’s so different from WvW that it would not server as near as good of a testing area as the day off could serve. One day off could have you competing for your server while another would be for a color (like EoTM) and allow different randomization match population balancing algorithms to be tested.
I think that one way or another, SM should be made harder to take, given that it’s worth the most points and is a lot easier to take than any EBG keep or a borderland’s Garrison. It could be kinda like observatory with putting a champion on each floor. I think it’d be even cooler if there was an underground floor to be a fourth capture point that only opens after the other three are capped which someone suggested previously.
I’m also curious why there’s been a good number of people suggesting more choke points. I’ve always had tons of fun AC’ing a choke point but the worst thing ever is when there’s a stalemate. This happens to me a lot in Danelon where one group is inside and the other is outside and both groups are kinda stuck in a stalemate where it is not in their best interest to run through the choke. This then gives the advantage to the third server that is not involved in that an advantage to decide what happens next.
Edit: It’d maybe be nice if each Garrison was worth more points too and maybe the Garrison’s have a unique (but all Garrisons the same) design or way to cap it that the other keeps don’t have.
(edited by Radian.2478)
Well, I have found that with my warrior, it typically takes two AC’s to get me off the ram. I’ve got tons of natural health regeneration and also PTV gear. On my guardian I can’t survive quite as well on the ram. There’s always the option of going for the wall if it’s AC’d so I dunno that defense can yet be considered OP.
Even though it was weird that arrow carts didn’t previously need line of site and felt inconsistent with other siege, it was still more balanced that way. This makes it impossible to place arrow carts in most towers and many keeps that can’t be AoE’d. More commonly people are going to have to resort to firing their AC at their own gate which doesn’t even hit the rams if they are placed at 600 range.
I think it is clear the developers want more PvD because a majority of WvW updates have just buffed offense and nerfed defense. Many people think PvD and karma training is the biggest problem in WvW and the most recent WvW updates have only made those issues worse. Catapults don’t do damage to siege when firing through the gate anymore which many people don’t know, though that was added many months ago.
Green side:
Bell Tower-allows you to ring bells at shrines to summon some bronze NPC that will do next to nothing and always be skipped (terrible)
Forge-makes you pay 25 badge of honors for some hammer (likely not worth it but I have never tried it) but more importantly, you can interact with the fire behind the champ and get a 10% damage reduction buff until you die.
Shrine-standing on 3 points summons a champ that gives enemy karma trains another champion loot bag, not that useful
Blue side:
Wurm tunnel- gives 3 different tunnels you can use to travel across the map. One is right by the champion wurm and takes you north near the north west tower (15 second walk to tower upon taking it). The second most used tunnel is if you take the southern exit towards the south tower-you can take the tunnel which is a little bit before south tower (if walking from left to right out of blue territory) and it takes you east around 12,000 units closer to the gate/wall of green’s forge. The least common wurm tunnel is just south of observatory and can take you just south of north east tower. Wurm tunnel is very good.
Airport-allows you to purchase an airstrike that costs 25 badge of honors. I’ve heard it’s good but I’ve never tried it since I don’t want to spend those.
Workshop-way overpowered. Allows you to get in a siege devourer form when interacting with the champion and you can move a little faster than a golem and do 1800 range attacks that can damage walls and gates. It’s around 5000 damage per hit to a gate and 4000’ish to a wall depending on your power. It has a 2 second casting time and no recharge but a 1 second aftercast. Better dps than a catapult and around the same dps as most flame rams depending on if the rams are traited or superior etc. You can have your zerg all get in the form and melt a gate or wal in 10 seconds. This gives blue a good advantage to take down gates/walls. You can even waypoint in the devourer. They are terrible in combat, though so you have to be quick. One downside with this for blue is that if another side captures it, they can get in the form and very quickly melt blue’s keep.
Red Side
Altar-you can get a 3 minute form where you are invulnerable and move 50% faster but can’t do damage or stand in capture points (must give stuff to champion first).
Statuary-has some cannons, not that useful. The champion there is glitched to where he doesn’t have righteous indignation so he can flip very often.
Observatory-has sentry turrets that cost 25 badge of honors that reveal location of enemy players when they get in range. This is the only 30 point structure that has 3 different capture points you have to do so it takes by far the longest, though that’s 3 champion loot bags.
Other stuff:
Red and green keep don’t have any walls but blue keep does. Blue keep is by far the hardest to defend since workshop is right next to it and other players can easily get in devouerer form if they cap it and melt the gate/wall of the keep. Red and green keep are extremely easy to defend. Also, all walls and gates of all structures are reinforced even though they don’t say it.
Towers don’t give anything special but more PPT.
The aethers on the center area are good for loot farming. The area below has 3 sentries but is not traveled that often because it’s worth it to stay up top and continue on to a reactor or statuary or something for faster wxp/karma/rewards.
Something needs to be done. I had an EoTM match yesterday and I was on green with around 50 players while red and blue had around 10 or less players. We capped blue keep with blue only having two people defending and then went straight to red keep which only had one person defending. We capped everything in the map (not at the same time) in less than an hour and then 30 minutes later we finally had the map 100%‘d as in not a sliver of PPT for red or green. I stayed the entire 4 hour match up commanding and the only siege I dropped after the first hour was around 3 or 4 arrow carts and 2 ballistas to spawn kill red since we ran out of stuff to cap and stuff to do. *We didn’t even do anything special, we were winning purely off our number advantage and the other servers couldn’t do anything because of it.* Neither side recapped their keep or any tower for the rest of the match up. Workshop and Observatory flipped maybe 4 times and then Wurm Tunnel and Altar maybe half of that. It got boring and it was very far from competitive purely due to the number difference and not our level of play so I think something must be done to fix this. Having some algorithm that makes it easier to balance matches would likely be accepted by most people since the number one best thing that could be done would be to make the match ups more competitive. Even if it is an unconvential or weird algorithm compared to the other game modes, EoTM is not as PPT-based and is not as serious as WvW so as long as the algorithm works I don’t think many people would complain.
Proposal Overview
Remove WvW dolyaks and put in instant supply transfer just like EoTM.
Goal of Proposal
Extinguishing of escorting dolyaks boredom and more balanced supply distribution on the maps (example: Pangloss Rise in EBG gives more than double the supply per minute that Speldan Clearcut gives due to shorter routes, Ogrewatch Tower gets supply twice as fast as Mendon’s, northern towers in borderlands currently only give 3 and 4 supply per minute if the dolyak makes it every time). I am a believer that extremely boring tasks like escorting a dolyak should not be advantageous to winning. Countless times I’ve been flamed for commanding because of not being willing to escort dolyaks. I don’t see how anyone escorting a dolyak could even think that it is fun. It’s really just not necessary to have in the game.
Proposal Functionality
The new supply camps put in WvW would look almost exactly the same as they already do except there would be no dolyaks and the supply transfer would be instant, like in EoTM (except these supply camps still send supply to the same places so it wouldn’t be one supply camp per structure like EoTM). The upgrades for the supply camps should remain the same except since there can’t be an upgrade for protecting the dolyak, there should be a 1.5 times supply boost as the first upgrade and then a 2 times supply boost for the second tier. Supply camps in the borderlands would give 10 supply every 2 minutes to keeps and 5 supply every 2 minutes to towers. Meanwhile, supply camps in EBG will give double that. The reason for EBG giving double the supply that the borderlands gets is because they already give around double the supply per minute than the borderlands (on average) because the dolyak routes in EBG are considerably shorter and the outer dolyaks actually run back at 3.5 times the speed that they run towards the tower so they have fast routes.
Alternative: game developers can calculate the average supply per minute each structure gets based on how often the dolyaks survive and length of route (I’ve already got the length of all routes and speed of dolyak which I used to calculate supply per minute and guess at a balance above but the devs would have it too) and then try to get a more accurate prediction at the appropriate supply per minute each supply camp should give to keep it like it was.
Associated Risks
Structures are now guaranteed (at least some) supply upon capturing a supply camp so trying to deny supply to a structure won’t work quite as well if you are wanting to keep it exactly at 0. Yakslapper achievement will have to be done away with but hey it’s not attainable at the moment anyway. This will cause less targets for small scale roamers though they can still take supply camps and sentries.
EoTM (just like WvW) has so much to do with the number of players. I just can’t remember any situations where the winning server had less number of players than the others. The game, to me, is most fun when there’s a fair balance of players because then skill is more important. I believe EoTM would be better if joining it was partially randomized. Maybe have something like making the game put you on the side that has the least number of players upon logging on. If sides have equal players, then use a random number generator. If you want to play with a buddy, it should just put you on the same side as them if you are partied up. It could also make guilds have the same side too. It’d balance out anyway because of the algorithm.
Depends on what you want to do in WvW. sPvP will help you mostly with small scale combat, though you have to recognize that you wouldn’t be running the same build. General combat skills will translate, though (for small scale). For larger scale WvW combat, the sPvP skills you acquire will still transfer a little but but not quite as much. In terms of WvW tactics and paths to go and other things to do, sPvP would not translate in any way. I’d suggest just sticking to WvW unless you already have a very good feel for WvW overall at which point it’d be okay to try some more sPvP to improve your combat skills.
I don’t know if it’s just me but I feel like red’s territory is farther from all of the other territories, though red is the only color I haven’t been as a server yet. It looks like if you compare the distance between Bell Tower, Airport, and Statuary, the Statuary is further from both by quite a bit actually. I’ve had a lot of fights between blue and green in that region slightly north of the south tower (Inferno’s Needle). These usually end up in stalemates because the one side can always back up into the tower if they are losing and the tower is actually very hard to take if sieged up because there’s no walls or good ways to take out inside siege. Meanwhile, I haven’t been able to have as many fights against red.
IMO they way it should be is all sides being equidistant from the center and each other. It should be just as likely to have a zerg v zerg in the territory between blue and red, blue and green, and green and red. The territory that is between red and the other two servers (supposed to be the equivalent of the territory between blue and green where there’s always fights) is much less traveled and rarely has fights there.
Also, I don’t get why going from any color to red I typically have to go through the annoying Aetherblades (or go a different path) where as going from blue to green or vise versa I almost never have to go after them. It’d be cool if they were just removed and there was a large center for fights (but actually having it equidistiant) or having a capp-able structure or something.
(edited by Radian.2478)
Terrible CDI topic for WvW but I’m not really upset because the previous CDI topics accomplished nothing because they looked like they were taking the approach “we already have our mind made up but lets try to make it look like we care for a little bit.” This topic is bad for two reasons. One being that EoTM just came out and it’s too early. The other being that this is far less important and relevant of a topic in WvW than many other subjects.
Guardian is typically better in groups but imo it’s going to be garbage solo. Guardian is best for its group support so it becomes less useful solo because its solo capabilities are very limited. It’s fine to use guardian in a group of 4 but I think anything smaller would be too small for Guardian to use. I guess it also depends on which professions your teammates are that you are roaming with because you may slow down your group if you are on Guardian and the rest are on something fast. Warrior can run what is arguably the fastest moving build in the game (imo it’s just faster than thief when the 20% recharge reduction GS trait is up) and with that build can actually solo a supply camp in as fast as 7 seconds (that’s my record at least) from first hit to last hit. It can thus flip as much as 6 supply camps in a 10 minute time period but I dunno how much you are looking to solo supply camps vs duel. Here’s the build I use for roaming on warrior:
It’s also best WxP in the game but unfortunately bad at duels.
It makes sense to try to stop players from just jumping off when they are about to lose a zerg vs zerg battle. Imo it should be changed to where you can’t get out of combat while in the air. However, they should change it to where falling while out of combat does no armor damage. That way you only take armor damage from falling off a cliff if you were in combat prior to falling.
The way to get the most gold from WvW is karma training. Get a large zerg and just try to karma train undefended structures. Run a fast moving build so you don’t get separated from the zerg and then all defense so you are most likely to survive when capturing a defended structure.
^That build is pretty good.
I run a very close variant with slightly more self survivability.
As recent as EoTM just came out, it’s not surprising that the WvW population has been significantly lessened for the time being. I think you will need to give it another month or two before it will be possible to see an accurate representation of EoTM’s effect on the WvW population.
I run the same extremely selfish build for both WvW and EoTM and pop my tag on with it sometimes depending on if a commander is needed. It moves very fast and has insane survivability so it makes mes more likely to survive zerg vs zerg confrontations and it also makes it a lot easier to survive during tough contested captures to still get credit. It’s not extremely useful to my team, however, in zerg vs zeg I like to run in font and tank a lot of damage for my team which is really the only use and maybe not a bad one.
I’ve commanded a lot, and on only warrior and guardian. I have so far found Warrior to be better. This is because of movement speed and self survivability. When tying to save a structure and hold the circle on Guardian, I have to ask someone in my zerg to try to run in front of me to try to save it. On warrior, I don’t have to rely on a teammate for that which is good since I may not have a teammate that is fast enough or with good enough reaction time and awareness. The self survivability of warrior is also very important because you don’t want to be taking a death as a commander because then you are now useless and it’s up to your zerg to know what to do or someone else to take over for you. In zerg vs zerg when I’m commanding on warrior, I like to lead the way for my team and then draw all of the aggro to me while I pop my 10’ish seconds of invulnerability (berserker stance, balanced stance, endure pain, shield skill, traited endure pain). You are more likely to get focused when you have your commander tag up which is why I like warrior for its tankiness. Guardian is probably better for smaller groups where your team support becomes more important than just your self survivability.