You can’t choose which order to upgrade until you figure out your style of play and build. I’d suggest actually not spending any of the ranks for maybe 15 levels. If you plan on roaming, then you definitely want the defense against guards followed by guard killer. If you are zerging, you actually want something more like:
Build Master R2
Ram Mastery R3
Supply Mastery T4
Catapult Mastery T1
Arrow Cart Mastery T2
Trebuchet Mastery T1
Repair Mastery T2
Arrow Cart Mastery T4
Catapult Mastery T4
However, it definitely depends on which siege you prefer to use. Ram mastery is WAY OP and ramming is way more common than any other siege so I’m very surprised that it was neglected by some posts above. It also depends on the build you use too, though. For a zerker set up, you will be less likely to sit on siege and may prefer the defense against guards and guard killer route. I have 30k hp on my warrior and got defense against guards but don’t really notice a difference at this hp. It makes a big difference for people who already have low vitality armor and a low health pool. Warrior has the highest health pool.
Both builds above are very good and very similar to what I run which is here:
The fall trait is just personal preference but I find it is worth it for me. I use the GS instead of hammer because of the mobility and speed. It helps me move around faster and even helps me escape losing zerg fights or pull back after 15’ish seconds of being focused. The GS is not as useful as hammer to your team in zerg vs zerg but increases your chance of survivability due to the mobility which makes it pretty selfish as you requested. I have gone multiple days without dying with this build, even when tanking in front in zerg vs zerg fights. I’m always able to escape a losing zerg vs zerg, even when I am in the front.
lol the lower amount of people in WvW as result of EoTM coming out a day ago is very far from unexpected. More people will get back into WvW each day from now on after they decide they don’t want to play EoTM anymore. Some will stay. Either way I think the WvW population will be lessened but I dunno if we’d be able to guess how much until about a month or two from now.
I think it’s fun. I think that it is possible that this could reduce zerging in WvW a tad. If it turns out that zerging in EoTM is better rewards than zerging in WvW (some people probably already know the answer to this), then some people wanting to zerg may just go into EoTM and forget about WvW. I’m pretty confident this would reduce zerging in WvW but I dunno how much exactly it’ll reduce it by.
Get in voice communication software that your server uses to help learn from other players.
It’s typically easy to start off by getting in a zerg because it takes minimal skill. You just need to follow the commander tag. The more defense you have, like Power Toughness Vitality armor or Condition Toughness Vitality, the easier it is to survive (doesn’t punish you as much for your mistakes) so you are more likely to get rewards.
After capturing a structure, you want to drain supply from it if it’s not a structure your server wants to hold. These structures are more commonly any structure in an enemy borderlands or a structure on the enemies side of the map in EBG. Do not drain supply from an upgrading structure unless there’s an emergency. Supply camps are typically better to take supply from than towers. Keep is fine if your keep is fully upgraded and getting fast supply.
Do some roaming to balance out your zerg play and get a feel for small scale vs large scale contribution. Group play is fine, solo is ok if you just want to learn your way around. As you get more experienced, solo roaming will become much more effective.
Do not buy upgrades for structures or place siege unless you know what you are doing. Try to look at where commanders are placing siege to learn good siege placement. Also, try to observe the commanders and others use siege before you hop on it.
I’ve always thought Golem Mastery would be cool but that for it to happen, Golem effectiveness would have to be reduced 10-20% so that they aren’t too overpowered once the golem mastery traits are put in use. This would probably not make some people happy because the update would feel useless by both nerfing and giving it mastery in the same update. This is the only logical solution to me because golems are strong enough as it is already and WvW doesn’t need to be a battle of who has more money (because golems are much more expensive).
I would like to see the golem mastery give more damage and health to the golem and maybe one more skill. My golem actually moves pretty fast with Traveler’s runes but I dunno if they intend to keep that in the game so whether or not Golem Mastery should affect movement speed depends on if they fix Traveler’s runes. Lastly, I dunno if many people would agree but I’d like to see the golem slightly decreased in damage and health when/if golem mastery is released in order to not make them too over powered.
I only see people supporting another Ranger I saw by the name of Max Range Leecher. Plus you can’t look at one 25 second recharge skill (when traited) to say the profession is good. As for the comment for mesmer pulls not being useful…they can pull people off siege and if your group has CC then it’s even better because you can kill people you pull that way, including commanders because yes there’s a lot of commanders that are that bad.
If you are just going to max range enemies to avoid being hit, you have to be doing something else to make up for it and I don’t think the damage ranger does is enough to be useful. And to the same guy that laughed at my comments, rangers do have a piercing trait….I’ve been using it on my ranger ever since I unlocked it.
Not only do wvw guilds hate rangers, most commanders and wvw players don’t like them either. Some people who only play ranger may disagree but that’s only because of having a bias of being on that profession. There’s a reason that my ranger was my last of 8 characters (each a different profession) to level to 80 and as I leveled it in wvw, my thoughts of the profession never improved. It just doesn’t really have anything it does all that much better than any other profession.
Warrior-extremely fast, can solo supply camp in 7 seconds, insane survivability
Guardian-great team support
Mesmer-can pull off walls, port golems, timewarp golems
Elementalist-good AoE damage and support, terrific for killing arrow carts
Necromancer-great CC with Plague, death shroud skill 4 to AoE arrow carts, good AoE
Thief-good solo roaming, can stealth kill dolyaks, fast moving
Engineer-1500 range grenades good for hard to reach places, terrific condition damage, supply crate good for defending
Ranger-can’t do anything
Ranger has healing spring but it’s not better support than Guardian or Ele. It has barrage but it’s aoe is no where near as good as Ele or Necro or even a SB Thief. It’s kinda decent 1v1 but PU mesmer would still be better. It’s survivability isn’t great either.
I do a bit of solo roaming in enemy borderlands. I don’t recommend ebg because structures on each side are closer together so you are more likely to run into people and get repelled when trying to solo enemy supply camps and stuff.
Just wondering if anyone else thinks that this is too many points or if this is balanced. Supply camps give 5 points every tick but killing both the dolyaks in the camp gives 6 and they also respawn after 5 mins of dying so they can theoretically give a server more than double the points per tick than the actual camp would give if capped. Sentries give just 1 point and are killed a lot less often than a dolyak.
I’ve been trying to think if there’s any situation in which flipping an enemy supply camp actually hurts your server. Perhaps an enemy borderland that defends their borderland well and has all of their keeps waypointed could possibly be one example. I’m thinking situations in which the server doesn’t need supply. When you cap a supply camp in an enemy BL that your server doesn’t really have anything in, the dolyaks that spawn will just sit there so they’ll definitely be killed when the other server takes it back to give them 6 points. If they are even able to reclaim it before the tick which is pretty common depending on when you flipped, it’s even worse. Meanwhile, you didn’t necessarily kill a dolyak in route to taking the supply camp because those dolyaks would be walking to the nearby structure and likely not at the camp (you can run out of your way to kill them if desired).
I’m kinda surprised there’s not more d/p stealth thieves killing dolyaks as often as possible.
Thoughts?
This is the build I use and it’s about as tanky as a build can get. It’s possibly got the best survivability of any other build for any profession in the game. It does poop damage so if you want to help your team in zerg vs zerg, you have to be right up in the front absorbing damage. The best thing about this build is if you need wxp/karma, it’s very good at surviving a tough capture. It makes it more likely that you are able to survive until the capture circle goes up and survive in the capture circle to capture it.
I guess it depends on what you want to do. If you want to flip supply camps solo you can use a zerker build like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTJslA5I9zE (link to build in description of video)
That build will give as much as 3 world ranks per hour and can flip up to 6 supply camps in 10 minutes. It’s garbage 1v1 though.
I’ve never used a guild bank before (because I’ve been concerned about safety etc). I have noticed that even after buying a lot of bank tabs, I’m still having trouble with bank space. Will it work if I just make a guild for myself only and then build the guild bank over time? Is there any concern about doing this? I would not represent my solo guild at any time except for when I am taking stuff from my guild bank or buying the influence/upgrades. I believe I heard a long time ago that this is dangerous and something about losing what’s in the guild bank if no one represents…dunno if I heard correct. Any thoughts on this idea?
^^ Inner gates can always be tapped by a treb
IMO waypoints/structures should have to take a certain percentage of damage to be contested. Structures currently get the 3 minute “Repel the Attackers” message immediately after being tapped and then 30 seconds later are contested. I believe that structures should get a 30 seconds “Repel the Attackers” message immediately after being tapped and then once those 30 seconds are up, the structure becomes contested if more than 5% of the gate hp OR 2.5% of wall hp has been depleted in that 30 second period. If a structure goes down slowly and was never contested because dmg never exceeded the threshold, then your server just didn’t scout properly. As far as waypoints, I don’t think that you should be able to spam click a waypoint that is about to uncontest. When the 3 minute contest is about to end, it should just auto recontest if the structure is still taking damage over the threshold. Of course, it appears to intentionally still be in the game so I am guessing the developers like having it.
Supply camps contest the instant the supervisor is aggro’d (dmg to or from the supervisor doesn’t matter). That is kinda weird but probably fine since the camps are already so easy to take.
Pretty much, though as often as commanders on my server drop basic siege (even ones that have legendaries and a lot of money), I don’t see guild catapults dropped often for the cost though a few commanders are willing to do it on my server.
My server’s minionmancer train: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMApRwhh1kE
Anyway, it’s tough to compare different professions across all of the different things they can do. Maybe your professions can be considered as useful as their single greatest use. Or, you could try to look at their overall contribution, though if your profession has one extremely good use, then the rest don’t matter if you just use the useful strategy. So perhaps looking at the professions with the single best PPT build in the game is one way of looking at it.
For example, thief is #6 or so on OP’s list but it actually in my mind has the #1 PPT build in the game. Running p/d d/p carrion armor and using p/d for yak killing in ebg and d/p for stealth will do your server well. Killing yaks gives 3 points which is kinda OP since killing both the supply camp yaks gives 1 more point than an actual supply camp and can be done something like 2.5 times per tick. Not only will running this thief build force the enemy team to start escorting yaks but you can still kill an escorted yak many times unless they put 5+ people escorting it. When you have the enemy server bringing back their zerg for you or spend tons of players escorting a yak, you have already won, even if you don’t kill yaks because of it. That’s because you are just one person and you are cancelling out many other players from doing other things.
Warrior may have the #2 PPT build in the game because it has a zerker build that can kill everything in a supply camp in as fast as 7 seconds from first hit to last and it happens to also use the fastest moving build in the game (GS + S/WH, sig of rage, bulls charge, 20% GS recharge trait, though S/WH is swapped out for LB right before the supply camp solo is started). It can flip up to 6 supply camps in 10 minutes solo as a result.
Dire gear is pretty good for tanky dps. Something like this would have great survivability, especially in zergs like in WvW.
(edited by Radian.2478)
Under the rare assumption that all catapult users have the rank 4 mastery:
For 60-99 supply, 120-149 supply, and 180-199 supply, it’s better damage per supply to superior catapult than to superior ram.
60-99 supply isn’t enough to ram, 120-149 gives just enough for 2 catapults and not allowing a 3rd ram, and 180-199 is where you get the 3rd catapult but not the 4th ram. For all supply counts above or not in that range, ramming is faster.
edit: While catapult mastery only needs one more rank than ram mastery to max out dps, it is much less prioritized and much less common to be ranked than ram mastery but yea it’s possible and fair to at least look at the comparison.
There’s four specific ways I’ve seen commanders try to take east and west keep in the BL’s (excluding golems and trebbing) that I want to bring up:
1) Ramming both outer and inner
2) Catapulting both outer and inner with the same catapults, using all supply (ninja spot they call it)
3) Catapult outer with most of the supply, build more catapults on inner and catapult the inner with both your inner and outer catapults
4) Catapult the outer, catapult + ram the inner gate
Countless commanders have called me stupid for saying that 1) is quicker per supply than 2) when comparing superior catapults to superior rams.
Most will say “It is better to just catapult the walls because you can place the catapults in a spot where it can hit both outer and inner walls so it is more supply efficient for the damage it does.” All of them saying this without actually knowing the dps that the siege does and how much hp the gate/walls have.
When comparing superior rams with ram mastery to superior catapults with the r1 mastery that gives 20% more damage to walls (most common rank among catapult users): superior rams beat out superior catapults for all accounts. For 100 supply and up where you can ram both outer and inner, it is quicker to just ram. This wasn’t true before ram mastery but with ram mastery now, it’s faster to ram.
1 sup ram outer and 1 sup ram inner: 3.3 mins in total for both gates to go down
2 sup catapults that hit both outer and inner: 3.78 mins in total (1.35 outer, 2.43 inner)
As you can see, rams are much faster and that’s comparing 100 supply to 120 supply.
3 sup ram outer then 2 sup ram inner: 1.36 mins (250 supply)
5 sup catapults that hit both outer and inner: 1.51 mins (300 supply)
Still better.
I calculated 3) and 4) too. For 3), it’s pretty close to 2) for a lot of supply counts and very slightly faster at 300 supply but still not worth it due to time to build (because it’s only around 3 seconds better at that supply).
4) is a little close to 2) for low supply but is never actually faster per supply.
For 3) and 4), there is of course controversy as to how many siege to build on outer and inner. I calculated the optimal siege through just playing around with numbers which go up until 600 supply.
IMPORTANT:
Guild catapulting both walls is better dps per supply than ramming on all accounts. This comparison was comparing superior rams to superior catapults. Many commanders still believe that superior catapulting is better dps per supply than ramming which is wrong.
NOTE:
Double catapulting the walls is generally safer than ramming in regards to avoiding enemy siege, especially if the enemy has siege on inner and behind gates instead of the area where you want to catapult from. Thus, it’s perfectly fine for a commander to double catapult with superior catapults, particularly if the enemy server is trying to defend the keep. If you believe that the enemy server is not defending the keep you are after and has no siege, I’d highly recommend ramming.
tl;dr ramming EK/WK is faster dps per supply than double catapulting outer + inner, double catapulting should only be done in response/fear of enemy siege and not because you think it’s faster (because it’s not)
That would not work because tons of people in WvW use voice communication software like vent/ts/mumble. It would just encourage more elitism and requiring all players to use voice communication.
They just need to increase the reward for defenses.
There’s already kinda diminishing returns for placing excessive siege in that placing more siege reduces the amount of time it takes to break down the gate/wall by less each time. For example, if you have one ram up, placing another ram will make the gate go down twice as fast as it otherwise would (ignoring auto attack dps from players). Now, if you place a third ram, it doesn’t speed it up twice as fast like it does when you already have one ram up. At some point, you are just blowing money.
With a 40 omega rush, that costs 6,000 supply and 40 gold so it’s not like it should be easy to stop a rush that’s that expensive. Besides, you can already waypoint to contested keeps if you spam out the waypoint when the timer is going to reset and you can also instant rez the lord to reset the capture circle each time. Now imagine a zerg trying to defend a waypointed keep and all qualified players equip revive skills for the champion lord.
The only reason why offensive siege seems too overpowered is because the rewards are better for capturing than defending so more players are willing to try to capture than to defend.
All you have to do to stop the PvD problem is to increase the reward for defense since it only gives 1/3 of the reward that capturing gives even though you get offense successes more often than defense successes (just not percentage-wise).
^ agreed
Karma is already account bound and I don’t see any of the liquid boosters as redundant or any more/less useful than they were prior to the account bound change. I don’t see how account bound wxp would make liquid wxp redundant in any way.
We had a zerg of 40 sweeping EK and there was one enemy left on the bridge. Our whole zerg went to that bridge and our commander, who was a warrior, used a leap skill on the remaining enemy who jumped off the bridge at the same time that the leap skill was used. This caused our commander to leap off the ledge and die. 75% of the zerg also leaped off the bridge because the commander did it and they all also died since the fall damage was far greater than what a fall trait would reduce.
So in that regard, running a thief as p/d d/p carrion or something (p/d to kill yaks and sentries, swap to d/p when running around in stealth) and spam killing yaks and sentries on one side in ebg while contesting towers/keep in between running back and forth between supply camps could be the #1 PPT build in the game. Kinda unbalanced that yak kills give 3 points (sentries give 1) since killing both yaks gives more points than a supply camp for that tick.
I think one thing to take away from this (despite the fact that OP exaggerated on his WxP gain) is that solo roaming can sometimes give better rewards than zerging. While probably no one would agree with me, I believe that solo roaming on one warrior build actually gives better karma than karma training, more badges than being in a zerg trying to zerg bust, and better WxP than a zerg trying to PvD, on average. Probably not true for T1 servers though….
That will solo everything in a supply camp in as fast as 7 seconds and it is also the fastest moving build in the game (except for the fact it doesn’t have 20% recharge reduction on bulls charge but meh) and I do play thief a lot and it’s much faster than any thief build I could make.
I was soloing a supply camp and was in the capture circle when a Ranger walked in and saved it with one tick left. We were 1v1’ing and 6 or so seconds later he used a stealth skill and it gave me the cap and then he immediately died to the supervisor. Today I was capping a keep with a tiny group and a group of 4 came in to save it in the capture circle, which was also 95% full when one of the people in their group was a thief that put his whole team with shadow refuge, giving us the cap.
It greatly depends on what you want to do in WvW. Necromancer gives the best loot in the game in zerg v zerg with staff + scepter/dagger and wells. Warrior is much quicker and has WAY more mobility than necromancer. Warrior gives by far the best wxp solo roaming since you can kill everything in a supply camp in as fast as 7 seconds with zerker GS + LB and then you move around quickly by swapping the LB out for S/WH. Necromancer is good for AoE and then fearing people off walls has good use. Death shroud skill 4 is useful for taking out enemy siege on walls too.
I have one too. I made one. You enter the type of gate/wall and the number of each siege you have. The most recent version I made is optimized to be quicker such that it takes less than 2 seconds to enter in your input. I also have a calculator where you can enter how much supply you have after typing /supplyinfo and it says what you can build with that supply and how long it’ll take to take down the gate/wall.
Haha nice! Yea I have been trying to calculate the repair information for the exact same reason. Using your supply numbers with my gate/wall hp numbers: a superior ram on a basic gate drains 7.26 supply per hit. Each treb hit with a superior treb with mastery on a fortified wall would drain 4.9 supply per hit. If a basic wall requires 220 supply to repair just like a basic gate (likely not true but probably close), then a superior treb with mastery would drain 8.9 supply per hit.
You likely know how to do all of that stuff but that’s another cool way to look at it. You can also look at the recharges on siege skills and calculate supply drained per minute etc. This becomes really good when your trebber is able to hit two walls at once which is most commonly done on stonemist and then I believe some other keeps. I think supply drain for keeps is most useful only when you plan on attacking it shortly after. Or it is good for stalling upgrades. I dunno if you have seen my supply distribution video but it mentions all sorts of stuff like Garrison, for example, can gain up to 72 supply per minute if NN, NWC, and NEC have the double deliveries upgrade and the yaks make it every time (no swiftness). You would want people killing adjacent yaks or taking adjacent supply camps if you are attempting to supply-starve a structure as you know.
Edit: I believe that the reinforce door upgrade repairs both gates and walls, same with reinforce wall upgrades etc (can someone pls confirm)? Lately I’ve been just requesting my server patch up the gates/walls instead of fully repairing for situations in which the upgrade progress is 85% or so (unless I’m expecting an immediate follow-up attack). Demon, are you thinking about draining supply of fully upgraded keeps or keeps that still need upgrade? I’m thinking there’s two big concerns of trying to attack a keep for the purpose of supply drain: a keep just letting the upgrade repair the walls to save supply (if the upgrade is almost complete) or if it’s already waypointed, people could always shuttle supply to the gates/walls from other keeps or even borderlands quickly. My server has an uncommon tactic where we open up the outer wall/gate of a keep only with the intention of clearing siege (much more common for taking out trebs that are hitting your stuff but we even do this without this reason). That may go well with your tactic too since taking out siege, to some degree, drains supply also.
(edited by Radian.2478)
If your goal is to gain wxp, you’re better off finding a good karma train commander and being a zergling. Equip a ranged weapon and speed buffs so you can tag every yak you see.
Honestly that sounds like a waste of a birthday booster. Go champ farm in frostgorge or run elitist dungeons or whatever living story of the week is.
I’ve done solo roaming on warrior and karma training under top commanders and solo roaming gave me more WXP on average. I average two WvW ranks every hour solo. For being a zergling, two WvW ranks in an hour is about the fastest possible WXP and the average is of course lower.
As for OP, you have to have an extremely negligible opposition when soloing stuff on your server to get 5 ranks per hour with the birthday bonus. Two scouts plus guard gives 20*3 = 60 WxP, supervisor gives, say 70 wxp on average, and lets say on average there’s one dolyak which is 50 WxP so that comes out to 180 WxP, adding that with 200 WxP for capture is 380 WxP per supply camp on average. Being outnumbered and having birthday bonus gives 125% bonus to WxP so 1.25*380 + 380 = 855 WxP on average per supply camp with birthday bonus and outnumbered. 5000/855 = 9.4 supply camps captured to raise a WxP rank and if you are getting 5 per hour as you say, that’s 9.4*5 = 47 supply camps taken in an hour. Of course, you likely take out warg/harpy/wurm along the way and maybe sentries but I still don’t see that being possible on guardian. You can get pretty good WxP solo roaming if you are flipping camps quick but I don’t see you getting 5 ranks per hour.
I previously recorded myself with hypercam 2 repairing an un-upgraded gate from ~30% to max by myself. I was then able to look at the video and take a screen shot of how much health it started off with and put it on paint and count the number of pixels for the whole meter and the number of pixels for what was filled to calculate approximately what percentage was already filled. I then watched the video and added up the total amount of supply I spent. I came up with a very good estimate of un-upgraded gates requiring 200 supply to repair.
My best approximation so far for a reinforced gate was when I recorded myself putting 15 supply into a reinforced gate and putting on paint to calculate the percentage it filled. It’s almost certainly a terrible approximation but it came out to roughly double the supply to repair a reinforced gate.
Lastly, I recorded myself solo repairing an un-upgraded wall from 0hp to patching it up (after that, other players came in to repair so I had to stop recording). I calculated that you have to repair the wall to 10% hp to patch it up (very likely the same for the rest).
Also, gate hp = 410k, wall hp = 450k, reinforced gate = 610k, reinforced wall = 676k, fortified wall = 833k. Numbers were calculated by me recording myself (entirely solo) taking down the different gates/walls with siege. It’s important to note that the upgraded stuff comes with damage reduction too or else it’d be bad with those hp. Reinforced gates take 2.5 times longer to ram than non-upgraded gates. Reinforced walls take 2.25 times longer to take down by both treb and catapult than non-upgraded. Fortified walls take 1.64 times longer to take down than reinforced.
That last paragraph was somewhat extra info, hope it helped.
Honestly, typing out stuff for captures can be just as good as voice communication. I can’t tell you how many times the commander says “take a sharp left after entering to avoid the AC fire” on the voice communication software and then 70% of the group that isn’t on the voice communication software goes straight and dies. If you are commanding pugs which it appears OP is doing, it is better to be able to type out stuff than to use the voice communication software because everyone on your team will see the stuff you type out. Obviously the best commanders use both but it can be redundant. It makes a lot more sense to use voice communication for organize groups because they will benefit from it more in that they will all be on it and may be organized to accommodate the commander calling for fields and blast finishers. That type of stuff doesn’t go as well when commanding pugs. IMO anyone giving you a hard time for not being in teamspeak is trying to take the game too seriously and does not understand the definition of pug players. I am on Maguuma and I am on our voice communication software about 2/3 of the time that I command but I have never once heard someone complain when I wasn’t on it. In fact, many times they ask if I’m on Mumble and I just say “no” and they respond with something like “k” every time. I don’t typically command in prime time but I have a few times and still no trouble with me not being on mumble.
I don’t see how writing code for account bound world experience would be even a tenth as hard as some of the code they have had to write for other stuff in this game. They have mentioned they want testing and stuff but I think that for the moment they have other issues that they believe are of higher priority than account bound world experience.
I have commanded on my server without using voice communication software. It may just be your server because my server uses voice communication but doesn’t give people a hard time that don’t use it. I’ve noticed that dead hours or at least non-prime-time hours are times where you are more likely to be able to command without your teammates wanting you on a voice communication software. I am on the voice communication sometimes and I really don’t notice that it helps all that much for commanding. It feels like more of a convenience than a necessity.
+1
Both food should be tweaked to around +15% and -15% condition duration. Food that increases duration of a specific condition maybe upped to 25%? Clearly the +40% condition duration food is overwhelmingly better than any other offensive food. The defensive foods look more game changing on average than most offensive foods but are of course very situational.
Meh. Escorting dolyaks is one of the most boring things you can do. At the end of the day, it’s just a game and I don’t really believe escorting dolyaks is really something that should be encouraged.
I have builds that can both roam and zerg but I typically find it much better to just run either a pure roam or pure zerg build rather than a hybrid. I can keep a second armor set in my inventory and just reset traits when I need to switch.
As far as running away from fights, I don’t see anything wrong with it. When you run away, you give up the territory you ran from. If it causes you to lose a supply camp because you didn’t defend it, well then that’s your mistake. You will see a lot of people with zerg builds and wanting to catch up to the commander who are not very wanting to 1v1 someone if they run across someone. If you want to zerg, then I see no reason why you would be expected to 1v1 that person as opposed to catching up to the commander. If your build is not a 1v1 build and that person’s build is, then it’s build wars. I don’t see an issue of build wars causing someone to flee. The bottom line is, you should just be having fun. Or if you are outnumbered by an enemy, I see no reason why you would be expected to fight them. I don’t consider running away from a 4v16 to be dishonorable.
You can still perma-stealth without any utilities. It’s going to require traits that give you back more initiative and the one that makes stealth skills 1 second longer. Just do that and then use HS 4 times through BP and repeat each time your initiative regenerates. Your initiative regeneration will be just enough to permanently keep doing this without running out.
Start off by tagging up only when your server has people on the map but no one commanding. Don’t count guild groups as people on the map because they are already organized and don’t count as people who need to be commanded. Tagging up in these situations where your server needs a commander but no one is commanding will be the best for your server since it’s a situation in which you are minimizing the chance of harming your server because a mediocre commander is better than no commander in many situations. If people on the map understand that you are tagging up because no one else is, they won’t be as angry at a mistake you make since you are kinda serving as a temporary commander to keep people from leaving the map until a main commander returns. It’s easiest to generate numbers in Eternal Battlegrounds because the enemy borderlands have a lower population and people will be less likely to follow you if you don’t have name recognition. Of course, you want to build up that name recognition. A safe way to do so is to be in your own borderland and defend keeps and stuff. You can keep your tag off and watch over a keep and a zerg is coming to the keep you can pop your tag on (even when another commander is on) and say “zerg of 35 (server name) right on my tag.” Then keep your tag on throughout the whole defense and that is a safe way to build name recognition since you don’t really have to do anything or take credit for a loss that way.
Edit: it’s also better to start off commanding on reset day (before reset) since no one typically cares what happens if anything goes wrong. It’s also probably better to command when your stuff is not upgraded, that way if you lose it, people aren’t as bothered.
(edited by Radian.2478)
Mag vs TC vs FA 3 times in a row now, dunno about other servers. Sad.
I am new to thief but I’m level 80 at this point in time and have been wanting to kill enemy yaks to halt supply upgrades in EBG. I am looking for a build that is good for killing yaks that are being escorted. I’ve been using D/P full zerker and just backstabbing the yak to death through usage of BP + HS but was just wondering if there is a better build out there for this. I am thinking maybe P/D with some sort of condition spec could work better? I’m thinking of trying P/D D/P where I use D/P for running around the place with stealth in enemy territory and then swap to the P/D when I get to the yak. Then I would swap back to D/P immediately after the yak is dead and stealth to get out though I’d have shadowstep and shadow refuge on my bar too just incase. What particular condition gear is good for P/D yak killing? I was thinking maybe Dire or Carrion but I dunno how much of my damage would come from conditions and how much would come from regular attacks since I’d probably get into a rotation between CnD and skill 1 on pistol.
Edit: here is the build I came up with:
Any thoughts?
(edited by Radian.2478)
It’s pretty much the same with siege and I don’t see people complaining about that. When no enemies are at a tower and you pre-place defensive siege, it’s the exact same concept as buying an upgrade. That is, one person paying for siege and it benefits the server as a whole, just like buying upgrades. You can kind of see this with offensive siege too, for example, a commander spending 10g on an omega golem rush or 6g on a guild catapult rush where the commander is the one that pays and the whole group benefits.
I have looked at the supply distributions for the borderlands and EBG and it appears that hiring a second worker is almost totally worthless for towers. NWT and NET in the borderlands get 3 and 4 supply per minute if the yaks make it every time (with no double delivery upgrade). SWT and SET each get about 9 supply per minute if the yaks make it every time (with no double delivery). The yaks in SWT and SET will not make it that often (especially SS yaks) and each time a yak is killed, that adds 5 minutes will be added to the respawn time. One worker drains 20 supply per minute to the tower. Hiring a second worker will cause 40 supply to be drained per minute. This means that every tower in the borderlands will still lose supply quicker than they will replenish it with one worker, even in the impossible scenario you have every supply camp captured, all double deliveries, and all yaks making it every time. Therefore, adding a second worker can’t be worth it when trying to speed up the upgrade. I buy second worker but only after all of the structural upgrades are done. This defeats the purpose of second worker since second worker only helps structural upgrades but I buy it so I can continue the later tier upgrades in that path etc (not because the second worker actually does anything). A few EBG towers gain supply a little quicker but still not even close to second worker being worth it.
Buying a second worker in a keep or stonemist at least makes sense because they get double supply each time the yak dumps off supply (compared to towers) so they regenerate supply faster, in fact garrison regenerates 37 supply per minute if all yaks make their route every time (with no double deliveries) so it makes sense to buy it for garrison and possibly west keep and east keep too.
tldr: towers don’t gain supply fast enough from yaks for second worker to be worth buying
It depends on what you want out of your build and whether or not it is solo or in a group. Thief can solo supply camps pretty quick and with the stealth will typically either win a 1v1 or run away, especially with D/P and utility stealth. Warrior probably takes supply camps the fastest solo including the time it takes to travel and then to take the camp. If the supply camp has no dolyaks, I can kill every npc on my warrior in about 8 seconds at the fastest from my first hit to my last hit. With two dolyaks I can sometimes get it in 12 or 13 seconds at the fastest. I’m a strong believer that if you are to run a solo roaming build, it has to be a build that can pull every single npc at once, run around the corner to ball them up, and then kill them all with some sort of aoe without dying or having to start running/dodging to extend your survival. If your build /profession cannot do that, then I don’t think soloing a supply camp is worth your time.
That build has just about the best survivability that you can get but if you want a little more damage you can go with Dire gear which gives Condition Toughness Vitality and run Sword Sword + Longbow or something. Rifle works too for condition damage.
Typically full PVT with Meldanru’s runes is good. I like to use that with the greatsword and sword/shield though I’ll swap the shield out for a warhorn when running between towers and stuff (but put shield back in before combat). For utilities I’d go with balanced stance, endure pain, and berserker stance. Traits would be something like 10 strength for the fall trait, 30 defense for defy pain, shield master, and dogged march, and 30 tactics with shrug it off, empower allies, leg specialist. The tactic traits for this build are kinda garbage but the boon duration you get is very important. You could drop empower allies for quick breathing if you want to use the warhorn sometimes.
Trebuchet’s cost a lot of supply. A superior trebuchet is almost 4 superior AC’s. I don’t see how it is overpowered or broken for the supply cost. It won’t be able to hit an omega golem firing from 1500 range and it can usually be taken down by a well placed AC too if the treb isn’t manned immediately. Alternatively, they can switch to the wall and if are at the right distance, the treb won’t be able to hit it because it’ll be just out of blast radius from the wall but if the treb shoots over the wall, it goes too far. If there was no defending, then everyone would just run around ramming and it would just be endless repetition with zero strategy because everything is an uncontested capture. I don’t see how that would make the game any more fun. If you go hours without taking anything, you or your group is likely bad. Plus, almost all of the recent updates to siege (especially ram mastery) have made stuff easier to take so I don’t see why someone would feel that it has to be made even easier. More people are asking for more improvements to defense, especially now that one superior ram can ram down a gate in 1 min 38 seconds.