Guild Wars 2

Zaleta.1567:

I get it that gvg is the big thing right now but what about the rest of us who want to play as usual, my feeling is that the gvg guilds only care about themselves and no one else and if and when they become bored they just disband and quit the game without sharing any of their knowledge on wvw,most of us don’t wanna be tied dwn to 24/7 365 days to a guild learning their ways/builds, etc I play wvw for fun regardless of winning, losing, but recently I haven’t played wvw due to the gvg and spent most of my time in eotm or in gw1 which has been a lot more fun for me, maybe ill get back into wvw wghen the gvg is completely dead and a stake drove through its heart

I’m curious: what specifically is your complaint?

That certain guilds aren’t training and teaching every single person they encounter?

That guilds have too high attendance requirements?

Yeah, alot of guilds are like that, but there are also usually plenty of guilds on a server who are welcoming to beginners and to people who only play 1-2 days a week. Maybe you should try harder to find these on your server.

In what way specifically is gvg negatively impacting you? Because you didn’t say. You say you want to play as usual; what is stopping you?

It just sounds like you applied to the first guild you saw, they said they’re a hardcore gvg guild who don’t want to take on a casual gamer, and then rather than trying to find a guild more suited to your playstyle, you came here to vent instead.

Are you complaining that elite guilds aren’t willing to carry other players who aren’t prepared to make the same effort? Now who’s being selfish?

41 PvE puzzles
4 PvP puzzles

WAAAAAA NOT FAIR, SHOULE BE 45 PvE and 0 PvP

Green attacks Blue’s keep, Blue defends.

Red attacks Blue → OMG 2v1!

Red attacks Green → OMG helping Blue, 2v1!

Unless everyone agrees to karma-train in a circle (EoTM), WvW is always a 2v1.

The best thing you can do is just resign yourself to the status-quo. Nothing is going to happen, so spare yourself the stress of worrying.

selan.8354:

quercus.9261:

I hit them with my hammer, they hit me back with their hammer, everyone is a heavy wailing away with a hammer. Every time I die it is six guys with hammers and maybe a meteor shower. It has been weeks since I got hit with a mind wrack or even a backstab. I see a blurred frenzy or hip shot on my log and I get all nostalgic.

I am playing a shout heals hammer warrior because you are either on the hammer train or under it.

yep same in tier 2. war, guard, glass ele meta…. u wont see much blurred frenzy as it only needs 1-2 mes for a zerg if u want veil. mes is not viable otherwise(no stability, no aoe), ranger is not viable, necro is being pushed out of meta too( war condi cleanse, ele condi cleanse, no stability, bad combat mobility), engi wouldnt be that bad, but then again what can an engi do better than a warrior?(nothing), there are thieves and they mainly gank and use blinds and pulls, but thats it.
u see where balance fails if u put 30 war vs 30 mes or 30 war vs 30 rangers, the outcome is pretty clear.
war is incredibly easy to play, all your cc is on low cd’s, cc has no dimishing returns, your victim cant even get up or use a block and then super tankiness combined with healing signet and power is just too much.
u wont see man mesmers unless mes gets some form of non ai aoe…shatters wont even hit a zerg if u arent traited with ip.
wvw used to be much better balanced when wvw and spvp balance was split. at least u saw every class represented.
even necros that have aoe skills are slowly dissappearing and i mean its not fun if u are forced to play a war,guard or ele in order to be viable in your favorite game mode. rangers arent even accepted in a lot of guilds….o.0

Are you NA? Because necromancers aren’t going anywhere in EU. Infact, quite the opposite, the current meta is heavily necro-focused.

Its true that hammer-tank warrior is very easy for a beginner to pick up quickly and start being useful, whereas classes like necro, ele, mes and engi take alot longer to become proficient with. But a good team of Necromancers and Eles who know how to position themselves can and will wreck a hammer-train.

By the way, Necromancers with Foot In The Grave have higher stability-uptime than guardians, and aren’t far behind warriors. Mesmers and Eles with the right traits and utilities also have plenty of access to stability. Just because you refuse to optimise yourself to counter CC, doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

Infact, amongst high-end WvW guilds in EU, the meta is moving away from hammer-CC, because by now most people have figured out how to deal with it. These days, if you use an Earthshaker on a decent enemy, all you’ll get is 5 red “Immune” or ’"Miss".

GrandmaFunk.3052:

repeat after me: your time is not more valuable than mine, and my time is not more valuable than yours.

Currently off-peak players time IS more valuable than prime time players.
10 decent players in the early hours of the morning can completely alter a matchup.
10 decent players during primetime make almost no discernable difference.

You say nobody’s time should be more valuable. Then make it so. Don’t be a hypocrite.

Not that I agree with this specific suggestion, but something needs to change regarding population/coverage for WvW points to ever have any meaning.

Everyone always sees the advantages the enemy has, and are always blind to the advantages they have themselves. You see the 20 red names running at you, and manage not to see the 20 green ones behind you. You get mad when the enemy karma-trains your entire BL, but don’t feel an equivalent amount of guilt when you do it to someone else.

Every single server thinks they are facing unique problems; pugs leaving to PvE, not enough commanders, guilds not co-ordinating with others, nobody scouting/upgrading, weak spots in coverage etc etc. Everyone always thinks the other side has some master-plan or is playing dirty or doesn’t face the same issues.

Having played on 5 different servers across tiers 1-6, I can safely say its the exact same stuff wherever you go; a case of “the grass is always greener”. Wherever you go, there’ll be a sprinkling of decent roamers, 3-4 decent pug commanders, 1-2 blob guilds, 5-6 roaming guilds, and a mountain of PvErs who disappear on patch day. On every single server. But everyone would rather believe they have it harder on their server.

Thats what I’ve learned.

Distaste.4801:

Meglobob.8620:

Meix.3710:

why would an exotic weapon cost 50% more than an ascended accessory?

Could we get a dev confirmation?

For the unique skin.

Cosmetic skins are how you are rewarded in GW2 and viewed as tier 1 loot.

Of course it will depend on how the majority of GW2 players view the skins appearance. Also remember each weapon type will have a unique WvW mistform forged skin I believe.

Cosmetic skins as T1 loot went out the window when Ascended was stupidly added. Now it goes Precursor > Ascended > Cool skin > Exotic = Rare mat > Bad skin >everything else.

Ghastly Grinning Shield and Mjolnir would like a word with you.

I’ve seen merging servers mentioned a few times. Is this actually workable? Maybe it’s different in NA, but in EU even lower tier T4-7 servers are capable of regularly having queues during primetime, and some higher tier T1-3 servers have no queues in primetime. The difference is really in the off-peak times. Would merging lower ranked servers not simply result in massive primetime queues?

IMO splitting matchups into chunks, whether 8 hours, 24 hours, or 72 hours, is a more workable solution.

Now that the initial excitement/disgust from this addition to WvW has long since passed, what do people now think of the Ruins area in the centre of the borderlands, and the associated Bloodlust buff?

It was highly controversial when it was introduced. Alot of people were dismayed at the Bloodlust buff creating further imbalance, but many others were glad to see a previously empty part of the map become a playground of sorts for roamers, with more complex terrain than other areas of the map.
Then, during Season 1, it became an achievement farm, with PvE trains running around it in circles.

My impression now, is that the area is almost completely ignored once again. Guild raids and public zergs only ever go there as a shortcut between keeps. Occasionally “Ego’s Ascent” is used as an easily defended point for trebs/catas to hit Lake tower. But mostly the area is ignored by the larger groups.

My impression now is that even roamers are deserting this area. There are still a few determined souls trying to help their server by capping the buff, but most roamers prefer either the area south of the ruins, between the two spawn towers, for skirmishes, or are now going to EoTM. They only dive into the ruins area as an escape when they run into a zerg.

And what about the Bloodlust buff itself? 90% of the time it seems to be evenly split 3-ways (minor for everyone). I do see some servers making a dedicated effort to hold all 3 buffs on reset nights, but most of the time nobody seems to be making a serious effort to hold it. Occasionally someone gets Major, but 90% of the time it seems to be Minor. Superior I almost never see. Infact, rather than being as overpowered and gamebreaking as many feared, it appears to have very little impact.

Does this mean that the Ruins and Bloodlust are a waste of real estate? Could they be put to a better use? Or is my experience of it, in EU T2-T4 not reflected in other tiers/regions?

The trouble is, the only real counter to a zerg, is to zerg yourself.

Yes yes, before you even say it, of course a highly skilled group can take on skill-less groups 2, 3, 4 even 5 times their own size. But what if the zerg itself is skilled? Some zergs are more skilled than others, some zergs cannot be taken down by you playing better, because they are also playing better. What are you going to do when RG, VII and BuLL form a 100-man blob? Probably the only thing you could do is form Scnd, GD and VoTF into a counter-blob.

So you see, all other things being equal, the only counter to a zerg is another zerg, and that’s what makes them boring. You say “if you don’t want to zerg, you don’t have to”. Well, I’m afraid you do have to when they are taking all your T3 keeps or camping your spawn. You may not want to fight the zerg, but the zerg wants to fight you.

However, this isn’t the main problem. The real problem is when one side has a zerg and the other side doesn’t even have half the number of people neccesary to fight it, whether that be by forming a counter-zerg, or by splitting up and capping stuff faster than the zerg can respond. If it’s 100 vs 10, it really doesn’t matter what you do, you’re going to lose.

Which brings me to my final point. Again, you said “if you don’t want to zerg, you don’t have to”. Okay, so I want to roam, or I want to fight other guilds. Except the only enemy on the map is a zerg. There are no roamers or guilds to fight. Now what, smarty?

The best thing to do is find some people who you can play regularly with and who can give advice, both allies and opponents. Whether this is in WvW or sPvP really doesn’t matter, the important thing is to be able to get feedback, and to be able to watch closely what your allies/opponents do to succeed. sPvP is probably easier to set this up in, but if you can make some good contacts on another server to get sparring matches with then doing that will be far better than random matches in hotjoin.

Almost nobody in GW2 learnt what they know just from looking at the traits and thinking really hard. 99% of what everyone knows comes from looking at what their allies do, what their opponents do, seeing what works, seeing what doesn’t work.

Another very important thing is to try playing other classes. If you don’t know what tricks your opponent might have up their sleeve, then you can’t know what the right thing to do is.

I would also add that if you have the capability to record your gameplay to watch it again later, that is by far the best way to improve. Often you lose a fight and think “wtf just happened, I don’t even know what…..”, but then you watch it back and it’s quite obvious what happened and what you did wrong.

Why is it so hard to understand that some people just want to play with their friends, and don’t want to play with people they don’t know?

Do you go into a restaurant and randomly join a group of people you don’t know? No. They have gone to the restaurant to have a meal and conversation with their friends. You may be a wonderful person, full of hilarious and interesting conversation, but none the less if you just go and insert yourself into a group’s meal, they’re going to look at you funny.

And when they look at you funny and ask what you’re doing, do you go “But we’re all here to eat! We’re all doing the same thing! Who are you to say I can’t sit and eat with you??”

Yes, you have just as much of a right to be in the restaurant. But that doesn’t mean you’re suddenly best friends with everyone there.

If you’re going on a walk through the countryside, or a tour round a city, with your friends/family, would you not find it annoying if someone decided to follow you around all day? Playing football in the park, going to the cinema, having a chat in a coffeeshop, squishing blobs in WvW; sometimes people just want to be left alone with their friends.

Markus.9084:

Again, you need 3/5 players to chase one opponent for about 5 minutes, which isn’t normal imo when your are in YOUR structure.

Most of the skills listed above require a target (toolkit pull, Moa, scorpion wire for example) or have long Cd (tornado, supply crate..).

Which is why you use them after you’ve forced them to break stealth with the other stuff ^^
The point is to lock them down before they can escape again.

And I thought we were talking about a team of several thieves/mes. If it’s only 1, then it only requires 1 or 2 players to track them down. Again, if you’re not prepared to make the same effort as the enemy….

If they are prepared to dedicate 3-5 people to hide and wait in the keep, while your side aren’t prepared to clear them out, then yes they deserve to recap the keep easily.

It really doesn’t take much effort to clear them out. If your full pug-zerg or guild-blob were to dedicate themselves to it, it would only take a matter of seconds, but most people can’t be bothered with “sweeping” any more. I can’t actually remember the last time I heard a commander order “full mesmer sweep”, while a year ago it used to be pretty standard. I guess that’s because a year ago alot more people played the PPT game, while now everyone knows it’s a waste of time.

Even if you can’t persuade your commander/zerg to help sweep a keep, a party of 3-5 should have no problems getting it done. It just might take a few minutes rather than seconds, and you may have to adjust your builds a bit to do it effectively. All you need is heavy CC to break up their perma-stealth combos. To maintain perma-stealth a thief has to manage his initiative very carefully and make every point count, so if you can make him waste even a few initiative he’ll have to break stealth, and then it’s easy. Knock him out of Shadow Refuge, CC him before he can Heartseeker through Black Powder, or interrupt his Cloak and Dagger, and he’s in big trouble.

And, contrary to your post above, all classes have skills which are useful in hunting down a thief in a keep.
Warrior -> Nearly everything they do is CC.
Guardian -> Ring/Line of warding, immobilise on sceptre and hammer, Banish, Shield knockback
Ranger -> Traps, Sic ’Em, Rapid Fire tracks enemies in stealth
Thiekittencorpion Wire + Basilisk Venom will ruin their day
Engi -> Shield knockback/stun, Toolkit pull, heavy condi pressure from bombs/grenades, Supply Crate
Ele -> Very heavy AoE damage and CC. Tornado.
Necro -> Fear is amazing against them (Mark, Wall and Deathshroud). Very heavy AoE condition pressure.
Mesmer -> Not much direct AoE damage, but knockback on GS and pull on Focus are very useful, and Moa Morph = game over.

A team of 3 using any of the stuff above should have no trouble tracking down a thief/mes pain. If you aren’t prepared to put the effort in to counter them, then yes they deserve to run rings around you.

Fenrir.6183:

I play a warrior, dude… shout build with hammer/sword warhorn. I know the class, and it’s true i didn’t mention the warhorn skill because it truly isn’t always available whereas the slot skills are whatever weapon you’re using. So yeah, they could end up removing them all, it still does not mean they will do it INSTANTLY. In fact, they don’t. They have to see it, there’s no way to prevent immobilization before seeing it. Rangers also have 2 pets and both can apply immobilize or chill for instance. Sure, that’s nowhere near as reliable as the utility skills but still factors in.

Also, usually those skills are used when the opponents have already used their stability.

I guess that in optimal dream theory, the warriors would remove them right away and it would have no effect. However, i have found that those skills greatly help and effectively cuts enemy tails / prevents enemies from getting to a point easily.
Are we talking about the game or just theorycrafting ? I’m talking about game experience on wvw in a T1 server here, not just throwing ideas around. I’ve played on that server since day one and mostly do wvw.
I have a 80 warrior, 80 ranger and 80 thief which i all played in wvw and i’m also leveling a guardian and a necromancer right now. I do agree i don’t know 100% of every class…but then again, not a lot of people do. I, however, know the ranger very well.

Look, I’m not saying Rangers can’t contribute anything. Obviously, dropping traps to split an enemy group is useful.

The point is whether it is more useful than what other classes bring. With 2 traps, and if you can keep your pets alive, then yes you can match the CC of other classes. However, pets are not reliable, and giving up 2 utility slots for those traps means you are now at a significant disadvantage compared to other classes when it comes to survival and group-support.

Again, the point is not whether Rangers can ever do anything useful. The point is whether they can match the utility of other classes.

As to the second half of your post….. nobody cares. T1 server proves nothing at all, the fact that you even mention it raises questions. You have 3 level 80s in WvW? That’s great, I have 9. What of it?

Fenrir.6183:

So ? Is that your only answer ? lol…
I didn’t know charge was an automatically cast skill that was used when a ranger applied cripple. You dismissed most of my point being that you want to make them lose time so they get cut from their group. Way to go, internet troll !

Your point was that the warriors can’t cleanse all the immob/cripple because shouts only remove 1 or 2 conditions, and there will naturally be more conditions flying around than that.

MY point is that this is not true, because Charge specifically targets immob/cripple/chill conditions, meaning your point about “condition overload” is void.

Warriors also have reduced cooldown on weapon swap. Just saying.

As you say, “Way to go”.

Fenrir.6183:

warriorjrd.8695:

Warlord.9074:

I love how people keep saying hammer warrior is there for CC. When most CC is done by other professions through ranged aoe. I have almost 3000 hours on a warrior and can tell you that Ranger Front trap, Spike Trap with ground targeting and entagle are way more effective at CC an enemy zerg than anything warrior has.

Further more Static field, frozen ground on an Ele way better than what the hammer does.

Gurdian Walls anyone Spectral wall much better.

People who think warrior CC is best at CCing enemy zergs are just simply don’t know about what other professions can do.

It’s not just earthshaker that is CC. Warriors have hammer F1, 3, 4, 5 as well as flurry on sword and cripple on 2. All are a mix of hard and soft CC. Also having played a trap ranger in zergs, I can assure you without max condi duration, the soft CC you get from traps really doesn’t do much, especially when you have a melee train running minus condi duration food, with warrior’s warhorn cleansing soft CC, it just doesn’t work. That’s the main reason I ditched traps, without maximum condi duration soft CC isn’t effective.

The food is only minus 40%. With my current build, i get 50%, if i add the + 40% food to negate the minus food it means it’s still 50%. Which means 3s of cripple/immobilize. And yeah, there are warriors shouting. That removes 1 to 2 conditions… Traps / muddy terrain / entangle apply 2 (immobilize + cripple, bleeding for spike). So each warrior which usually only has 2 shouts (to still retain stability+stun break) can’t remove the condi put up by a ranger. It’s simple… 1 vs 1. You can’t consider a whole zerg against ONE ranger. If you have several rangers running my build, your warriors won’t be able to remove all those conditions. Also, if they do, they’ll still have the necros/other classes conditions such as bleeding, poison, burning, torment, confusion, etc.
What’s even more important is the time your opponents lose by being immobilized. Even if it’s a second or less, they’ll lose valuable time where their commander still runs and end up being a bit late => means they can be killed more easily.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Charge_

It just sounds like you haven’t actually experienced any other class, which of course means you can’t compare objectively.

Are you intending to roam around WvW with your guild/party in groups of 2-10, taking camps, sniping dolyaks and ninja-ing towers, or are you and your friends intending to take part in the larger actions of WvW, storming keeps and clashing with zergs of 30+ ?

I ask because this has a bearing on what to recommend.

If you want to roam, then all classes are perfectly good choices. If you want to fill a desirable “niche” that not many others play, I’d say decent roaming guardians are the hardest to find. Warriors are absolutely everywhere, Ele’s are pretty common, Necros are a bit rarer but still easy to find. But a proper roaming guardian, not just a pvt-staff who got cut off from the zerg, is not something you see every day.

If you want in on the larger action, again all three of the classes you listed are valid choices, but I’d say decent Necros are harder to find than decent Guards/Eles, so if you want to fill an empty niche then that’s the way to go.

Fenrir.6183:

Ragnar.4257:

You mean this build?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAR3XjEVJ2xVOWo2Bi1DCt/B1UwJLxUwfHdytaUL-jECBofERzEEwEIBK1sIaslhFRjVrETDjIq2cuIa1yAwsAA-w

Zero stun-breakers, zero invulns, long-duration blocks, evades, or other survival tools necessary for hard-pushes through chokes or for “panic” moments.

If you’re too noob, you can switch the trap for signet of stone which gives you 6 sec invul to attacks or any of our stunbreakers(we do have 4 of them). GS #1 => evade and GS#4 => 4 seconds of blocking. You also have a leap to get through chokes.

Its not a question of noob or not noob. There WILL be situations where you can’t tank the damage and have to use blink/invuln. When a 100-man blob is sitting above a gate with 10 ACs and you have to push through the dozen lines of warding, chill fields, static fields, and the DPS/cripples of all those ACs and players, and most likely your stability will get stripped. Dodging won’t always suffice.

Good positioning is a skill, but sometimes there simply is no good position to be in, and a good player has a back up plan for when kitten hits the fan.

You suggest signet of stone? Okay. Which utility slot is that going to take up then? Your stability signet slot? Or one of your “great” CC traps?

If there is anyone in melee range of you, suddenly your block isn’t 4 seconds is it? Instead it “helpfully” roots you in place. Very useful.

The leap, I’ll grant, is a useful skill. But it’s nothing that other melee classes don’t already have.

I said THIS BUILD has no stunbreaks. Not that rangers don’t have any stunbreakers. THIS BUILD. The one you quoted. Jeez.

Not at all, it does very good damage… GS #1 does good damage and has an evade.

You need to compare to some other class’ weapons. This damage is below average. A typical hammer attack hits for ~800 (on the toolbar in the builder, not actual damage), while your auto-attacks aren’t even reaching 500.

-snip-

2 ? Funny cause i see 3. Entangle, trap, muddy terrain. That’s 3 dude. And it WILL cut the tails, warriors can’t do it effectively, they have to get inside the enemies to do it. We just have to be somewhat behind. That’s a range issue, warriors and guardians just can’t do it.
Also…path of scars is used to pull enemies to your zerg, hilt bash can stun / daze and winter’s bite chills. If you’re gonna talk about other classes weapon skills, look at the ranger’s weapon skills as well…

Guardians can immobilise from range, so shows what you know.

Path of Scars, yes, isn’t bad. You can have that one.

Hilt bash and Winter’s bite…… single target skills. How useful! I didn’t even include them in my original post for precisely that reason; that single target is meaningless.

Again, if your pet dies too fast, you’re a noob…No one told you to take a crap pet with 2 hp…The polar bear has 30k hp and does’nt die that fast…he can also chill (-66% speed and cooldown reduction).

Again, this just leads me to believe you’ve never actually been in a serious fight and have just been pug zerg PvDing in EB. When a 100-man blob is defending the bridge at inner Hills, covering every inch of it in dozens of red circles, that pet is dead.

Aside from Healing Spring, no support for the group.

+150 precision, best waterfield in game, i carry a torch and warhorn for fire field and blast when buffing up.

+150 precision, wauw. +150 precision and a water field! You’re right! That’s incredible support! Wauw.

I did say “aside from healing spring”, but sure, just ignore that. And it isn’t best, seeing as it has to be placed in melee range rather than from a distance.

Fire field…… it’s not like Ele doesn’t already have that covered, on a shorter cooldown, with better damage, that can be placed at range.

And if you’re going to start allowing yourself 3rd and 4th weapons, then you’ll have to be prepared to compare yourself to guardians that have hammer, staff, GS and mace/shield. Sound fair?

-snip-

Yes, it is. It can save people, it is very good at CC and you’re quite the noob if you wouldn’t take this over a thief lol.

Again, “very good at CC” ?!?!?! Nothing in that build compares to Earthshaker, Line/Ring of Warding or Static Field. You can insist it is good all you want, but there are cold hard facts here. Your hard-CC’s are single-target, your axe-chill is single-target, and your immobilises aren’t anything that other classes can’t do already, and without having to give up utility slots or rely on pets.

As to the name-calling, I could respond, but not without shameless chest-thumping.

Fenrir.6183:

Ragnar.4257:

Fenrir.6183:

-snip-

What is this magical 30/30/30/30/30 ranger build, that can have 10 pets, 20 utilities and 5 different weapons?

Rangers are great for 1v1 through to 5v5, but their usefulness rapidly decreases in larger fights. Nearly everything in your post is about conditions, and conditions plain suck when facing 20 warriors blowing traited warhorns and 20 guardians with pure-of-voice shouts. Nevermind the fact that pets and spirits will melt within seconds.

So if you’re talking about roaming, then yeah, rangers are good. But I think this topic is more focused on 20+ guild groups, where rangers are definitely not good enough.

Yep they are. Read my post again. They’re not guardians, they’re not warriors, they’re rangers. They require good mobility and can do a great amount of CC through skills AND pets. Check the build i just posted and come back again to discuss.

You mean this build?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAR3XjEVJ2xVOWo2Bi1DCt/B1UwJLxUwfHdytaUL-jECBofERzEEwEIBK1sIaslhFRjVrETDjIq2cuIa1yAwsAA-w

Zero stun-breakers, zero invulns, long-duration blocks, evades, or other survival tools necessary for hard-pushes through chokes or for “panic” moments.

Lack-luster damage. The only attacks that match GWEN damage are Maul and Path of Scars.

You have 2 immobilise skills on 20-second cooldowns, when warriors (Flurry) and guardians (Hammer-3) can do the same with much lower cooldowns, and they don’t have to give up any utility slots to get them. And then they have Earthshaker and Ling/Ring of warding on top of that. Is this the “great CC” you were talking about? The sort of “greatness” that requires you to give up 2 utility slots and doesn’t even provide half the CC of other classes?

Entangle is a gamble. Sometimes it can wreck people, but alot of the time they can teleport or cleanse their way out of it. And in the middle of a train-clash the roots will simply melt after only applying immob once.

Bleeds are irrelevant in large groups.

Pets are irrelevant after the first 10 seconds of large fights.

Aside from Healing Spring, no support for the group.

I’m sure you can survive and tag alot on this build. But it’s not actually doing very much for the team. If I were building a team with a fixed number of slots, there is no way, absolutely none, that this build would be chosen over a decent guardian, warrior, ele, necro, or even thief or engi.

Fenrir.6183:

-snip-

What is this magical 30/30/30/30/30 ranger build, that can have 10 pets, 20 utilities and 5 different weapons?

Rangers are great for 1v1 through to 5v5, but their usefulness rapidly decreases in larger fights. Nearly everything in your post is about conditions, and conditions plain suck when facing 20 warriors blowing traited warhorns and 20 guardians with pure-of-voice shouts. Nevermind the fact that pets and spirits will melt within seconds.

So if you’re talking about roaming, then yeah, rangers are good. But I think this topic is more focused on 20+ guild groups, where rangers are definitely not good enough.

IMO the main problem with rangers is everything good about them, and everything useful they bring, is tied to their utility slots. Their weapon-skills are mostly useless. Their utility skills and traits actually compare pretty favourably with GWEN, the difference is GWEN also bring useful weapon and profession skills.

Dalent.9358:

How are WvW players forced into PvE? And the game does address PvE and PvP players. That’s why PvP is different altogether.

Are you serious?

How about the Gift you can only get from dungeon runs?

How about nearly every weapon/armour skin in the game that isn’t crafted?

How many times does it need to be said?

No

A

O

E

.

I’m pretty sure 90% of the people who seriously play for PPT are relatively new to WvW. I used to be a dedicated PPT player during the first 3-4 months of the game, but eventually it just grinds you down. Once you’ve played a dozen matchups against servers both much stronger and much weaker than your own, you come to realize that it’s almost entirely about coverage and that smart play and strategy can be completely trumped by a 5am karma train.

Playing “for bags” is mis-leading too, because playing WvW for rewards is a waste of time. You’ll get 10x more gold for your time in PvE. Generally when people say bags, they mean fights.

People like to polarize these things, to make it “us” against “them”, “ppt” against “fights”. But, tbh, most people will do both if they can. I’ve spent the last year with guilds who prioritise open-field fights, which means we don’t disengage from a fun fight if swords appear on a friendly structure. But that doesn’t mean we don’t defend stuff, and it doesn’t mean we don’t take objectives either. Often the only way to get a decent fight is to bang on a reinforced door.

“Fights” guilds take a lot of flak from pugs for “not helping the server”, when the reality is they’re better at getting ppt than anyone else on the map. So many times we’ve had crap thrown at us for staying at a fun spawn-tower fight rather than coming to defend a wooden keep, but the people complaining conveniently forget that an hour ago that keep was fully-upgraded in enemy hands, and the only reason you now have it at all is because a guild group took it for you.
They also conveniently forget all those times they would undoubtedly have lost a T3 keep if it hadn’t been for a fighting-guild coming to the rescue.

I would actually quite like to take part in a challenging “ppt war”, my favourite games are all RTS, but the fact is that WvW is not a strategy game. It’s a coverage game.

It’s like asking why Hollywood keeps spending 100s of millions on making crappy Transformers films over and over. The answer is that there are alot of people out there who lap that stuff up, so if they can make 10x more money pandering to the lowest common denominator, then that’s what they’ll do.

If you only play WvW, it’s easy to forget just how many people there are getting absurdly excited about the LS plot. Anyone remember the PAX Dev Stream in the summer? There was like an hour of discussion about “character development” BS, then Devon had about 30 seconds to announce WvW Leagues, and the entire audience looked uninterested, they were like “Yeah, thats great, thanks Devon. Now back for another hour of talking about the lore behind the different Charr legions”.

People are stupid, and that’s not ANets fault.

http://mos.millenium.org/na/matchups

There is a reason servers often end up having the same opponents. It doesn’t take a great deal of intelligence to work out what that is…..

style.6173:

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

So i was thinking, Outmanned, terrible “Buff” but what if the servers that out number you are given the same “buff” but that gives:

-33% XP
-20% Magic Find
-33% World XP
Double cost of armor death

Also thought about things like lower Karma and such as well. Could this be a change that would stop the servers from just throwing HUGE zergs onto maps if they know they are going to get Less XP, worse Magic Find, Less Karma and such?

Horrible idea. You don’t want to punish people for playing. You want to give an incentive to get more people to play. In other words, there needs to be better buffs for outmanned.

ANET would never go for your idea.

Can you explain the difference between punishing big numbers and rewarding small numbers?

This has the exact same effect as adding an extra 20% MF to the existing Outmanned Buff, but when you phrase it like that suddenly it isn’t a “punishment”.

It comes to the same thing, the smaller group has the advantage (in terms of this type of “incentive” anyway).

Or, you could regard the Outmanned Buff as “punishing people for playing” because when more people play, you lose it.

As to the suggestion: it won’t change anything. People don’t zerg in WvW for loot, they zerg because it’s easy-mode. I dislike blobs, but even I will occasionally tag along because I can’t be bothered to put the effort into something more difficult. Nothing to do with rewards, just the ability to put brain on standby.

It’s not just the base toughness/armour that makes “Heavies” the preferred choice for frontline. They have many other defensive abilites built into the class that make them better suited for it than medium/light classes; in particular lots of access to stability, blocks, and invulnerability, on top of very good regen/healing.

Sure, you can build an engi with huge healing, but you have to sacrifice alot of DPS to achieve it. You can build an engi with lots of blocks/invulns, but again you gotta sacrifice either some healing or some DPS. You can build an engi for strong cleansing, but then you sacrifice something else. Your stability is never going to compare, and neither is your (physical damage) AoE DPS. But “Heavies” can have decent healing, lots of stability/blocks/invulns, decent cleansing, and still have decent (direct damage) AoE DPS.

I’m not saying it’s not possible to make Engi work in large fights, I’ve seen people do it. But you are starting from a disadvantage. And, IMO, the stability access is a real deal-breaker.

What to do about those servers that can’t compete, though? “Someone’s always going to win, someone’s always going to lose,” Johanson shrugged, “but we want to do things to help ensure you have a really fun play. Even if you’re losing, you have moments and rewards and things you’re playing for that they’re compelling right down to the last minute.”

Looks like the World Population Collaborative Development has filled them with fervent zeal to fix the imbalance eh?

Definitely not sticking to the tired “It’s not supposed to be fair” mantra.

warriorjrd.8695:

Ragnar.4257:

Prysin.8542:

-snip-

Your analysis is bad. You are not considering cooldowns. You are imagining that the warrior drops all his immobilise, and then doesn’t re-apply any ever again.

(With max condi duration) Flurry is an 8.75 sec immobilise on a 8.25 second cooldown (with 20 points in Discipline). Add in Bolas, Leg Specialist and Pin Down, and a warrior can easily, easily, maintain 100% uptime on immobilise.

Over a 120-second period, a warrior can apply 14x Flurry (8.75s), 20x Leg Specialist (2.25s), 7x Bolas (8.75s), 6x Pin Down (6s), for a total of 264.75 seconds of immobilise.

In that same 120-second period, your ranger can apply 7x Intimidating Howl (5.5s), 2x Quicksand (4.5s), 6x Muddy Terrain (4.5s), 1x Entangle (14x 2.25s), 3x Paralyzing Venom (8.25s), 6x Entangling Web (8.25s), for a total of 180.25s

Even if we say that the warrior can only drop the level-1-adrenaline Flurry each time it’s off cooldown, instead of the level-3, the warrior still beats the ranger with 205.25s total.

Finally, consider that sword/sword + longbow condition damage/duration warrior is a perfectly viable build, while your ranger looks like it would seriously struggle to survive with no defensive utility.

It’s touching that you’re so attached to your class, and I’d agree that rangers are often under-appreciated.

But you’re still wrong about this.

You’re thinking you will have 3 bars of adrenaline permanently, which you wont. Also the ranger would be able to keep perma immob too if the skills were cycled properly.

I addressed this point. Good job on reading.

Prysin.8542:

-snip-

Your analysis is bad. You are not considering cooldowns. You are imagining that the warrior drops all his immobilise, and then doesn’t re-apply any ever again.

(With max condi duration) Flurry is an 8.75 sec immobilise on a 8.25 second cooldown (with 20 points in Discipline). Add in Bolas, Leg Specialist and Pin Down, and a warrior can easily, easily, maintain 100% uptime on immobilise.

Over a 120-second period, a warrior can apply 14x Flurry (8.75s), 20x Leg Specialist (2.25s), 7x Bolas (8.75s), 6x Pin Down (6s), for a total of 264.75 seconds of immobilise.

In that same 120-second period, your ranger can apply 7x Intimidating Howl (5.5s), 2x Quicksand (4.5s), 6x Muddy Terrain (4.5s), 1x Entangle (14x 2.25s), 3x Paralyzing Venom (8.25s), 6x Entangling Web (8.25s), for a total of 180.25s

Even if we say that the warrior can only drop the level-1-adrenaline Flurry each time it’s off cooldown, instead of the level-3, the warrior still beats the ranger with 205.25s total.

Finally, consider that sword/sword + longbow condition damage/duration warrior is a perfectly viable build, while your ranger looks like it would seriously struggle to survive with no defensive utility.

It’s touching that you’re so attached to your class, and I’d agree that rangers are often under-appreciated.

But you’re still wrong about this.

Prysin.8542:

Covis.6037:

Every other class does things better.

Actually, that is wrong. No profession comes close to as much Immobilize as rangers, even if the other profession specs for it. And only thief can apply as much poison, as often, as easily. Only the Warrior can match the passive regeneration. Only a guardian can actually bunker as well as a ranger.

Rangers can apply 250% more fear then necromancers are able to.

Even these dubious advantages, aren’t actually true. Warrior can apply more immobilize than a ranger, and Necro can apply far, far more fear.

Dovgan.8605:

Vaxx.3178:

Dovgan.8605:

8 second fire field, 10 second water field both on reasonable cd’s. 2 second immobilize per 16 seconds(if specced for it) easy swap to fear group buffs etc. AoE vigor, good source of regen. Honestly I don’t think a lot of the “rangers” know what rangers can do. I was talking to another player the other day, an experienced WvWer that had no idea rangers had as much access as they do to these things.

Problem generally stems from PvE players trying to cross their PvE style/build into WvW.

8 second fire field. – And? Ele and engineer both do fire fields better, just for the fact they do more AoE damage, and can escape better.

10 second water field. – Point blank water field you mean. So you want the Ranger to roll with the heavy melee train, right? Sure build them tanky and watch them hit like a wet noodle, or build them dps style and watch them melt with weak coni clear, looong cooldown stability, and med armor. Again Ele can do it better at range, and more than one, and provide damage that trumps Rangers.

Regen. - Engi does regen better for a group, so does Guard, and is much better all around for a group.

AoE Vigor – Warrior warhorn 5 skill says hello.

Nothing you point out makes the Ranger class better, sorry. You can be in denial and try hard to come up with “reasons” for a Ranger to be picked over another class, aside from single roaming, and you will always come up short. Where are the good WvW guilds that have this class in their setups? Show me please.

Face it, Anet dropped the ball with the class, and seems to not have a clue how to get it on track.

So you are saying all you need are 3 separate classes to do the same thing 1 class can do? Got it..

That sounds clever….. if you completely ignore all the other stuff those 3 classes can do.

I can technically fire a gun, and I can also speak some French.

If you were invading France (with 2 people, should be easy), would you choose to take 2 of me, or would you take a trained soldier and a professional translator?

But I can do both!! Why you take 2 people, one who can’t speak french and the other who can’t fire a gun, when you could just take me?? WHY YOU NO WANT ME??

The problem is it’s a “one size fits all” approach.

Not all conditions are the same, not all are as dangerous.

+40% duration on blind really doesn’t matter. Nobody would complain about even +100% duration on blind.

+40% duration on bleeds is useful, but not gamebreaking. I’d say it’s comparable to other foods.

+40% on freeze/immobilise/fear is absurdly powerful, and is far stronger than any other food buff.

Incidentally, treating all conditions as the same is what means they can’t balance conditions for large scale fights. Freeze, immob, cripple, blind, weakness, poison, are all still very useful in large-scale, because they only need to stick for a few seconds to have an impact. Whereas bleeds are completely useless in large scale, because they need to stick for 10+ seconds to be effective.

This means they can’t just reduce AoE-cleansing across the board to make conditions viable in large scale, because then immob/freeze/weakness spam would become brokenly powerful. But if they leave things as they are, then bleeds remain worthless.

TLDR: Conditions can’t be balanced as long as they’re all treated the same.

The only way retaliation can kill you is if you are not paying attention.

You don’t even need to watch their boons closely, you just have to watch your own health bar. Is it going down? Then pop a heal (Ele has by far the best heal in the game). Heal on CD? Then swap water attunement. No heal and no water attunement, and your health is already so low that retal might down you? Then maybe you shouldn’t have dropped a massive AoE.

Retal can easily be managed as a full zerker Ele, let alone as a full soldiers/celestial Ele. The only way it can down you is if you don’t pay attention or make a seriously bad mistake.

nikitnq.7143:

Ragnar.4257:

Are you sure those words mean what you think they mean?

Yes.

I note you still haven’t answered the question.

nikitnq.7143:

Something needs changed, true. But not by punishing people based on geographical location and/or playing habits.

Pushing people into time slices will only segregate the player base. Some of these suggestions has been floating around since beta. They know. Extensive and complex tick calculations could be viable but cannot be implemented wholesale and linear like 50% for non-prime for example.

Scoring by participants or opposing force has been struck off over and over and I’m beginning to sound like a broken record. It’s too easy to exploit by an organized server. What is stopping a server from taking a healthy lead and simply pull their forces from a BL? This applies to any limit and/or multipliers applied on scoring based on population.

Some people don’t think things through. I’m not pointing at the OP. I’m talking about people who has played this game long enough but only see things from a single perspective (like the guy on the ivory tower somewhere above this post :P).

Hai there!

I note you still haven’t answered the question. Did you threaten to over-rule…. I mean… where does OP say he wants to punish offpeaks?

You keep saying that. Are you sure those words mean what you think they mean?

nikitnq.7143:

Ragnar.4257:

nikitnq.7143:

Ragnar.4257:

nikitnq.7143:

Ragnar.4257:

nikitnq.7143:

Jaxs.5830:

nikitnq.7143:

No thanks, I like it the way it is.

Before you accuse me of <insert nasties for night-cappers here>…

• Sieged up assets, checked.
• Run dollies, checked.
• Pay for upgrades, checked.
• Died contesting cap from a zerg, checked.

Also,

• Lost fully upgraded camp, checked.
• Lost T3 sieged tower, checked.
• Lost sieged keep with WP, checked.

It’s WVW. An eternal 24/7 battleground. Keep it that way.

The current system makes WvW an entirely uncompetitive environment. It makes PPT a meaningless measuring stick of success. It makes for boring, stale meta that will not sustain itself in the long run. Glad you are enjoying it.

Sorry you feel that way but to me this is a game. Not an Olympic sport.

I do not need to have other people be deprived of certain things so I can have a larger slice of cake.

TYVM.

Who is being deprived of what, exactly?

Can you actually point to a sentence, can you quote it?

Or are you just making stuff up in your head?

Read the OP.

So you can’t find a quote.

Got it.

Maybe you should read it too.

Right. So the onus is not on the party demanding change to cover all angles.

Got it too.

I sure am glad none of these people are game designers for A-Net.

You said OP is trying to penalize off peak players.

I call you out on that, saying he infact isn’t asking for that. I ask you to show me where he does ask for that.

You then decide not to persue that, not to show me it. Because you can’t.

Then you go off on some tangent

---

You, sir, have lost.

Lol.

I don’t have to. I’m confident people at A-Net aren’t ignorant. Hence, I can safely assume they can see the glaring flaws of what is proposed here and simply ignore these “suggestions”.

nikitnq.7143:

Ragnar.4257:

nikitnq.7143:

Ragnar.4257:

nikitnq.7143:

Jaxs.5830:

nikitnq.7143:

No thanks, I like it the way it is.

Before you accuse me of <insert nasties for night-cappers here>…

• Sieged up assets, checked.
• Run dollies, checked.
• Pay for upgrades, checked.
• Died contesting cap from a zerg, checked.

Also,

• Lost fully upgraded camp, checked.
• Lost T3 sieged tower, checked.
• Lost sieged keep with WP, checked.

It’s WVW. An eternal 24/7 battleground. Keep it that way.

The current system makes WvW an entirely uncompetitive environment. It makes PPT a meaningless measuring stick of success. It makes for boring, stale meta that will not sustain itself in the long run. Glad you are enjoying it.

Sorry you feel that way but to me this is a game. Not an Olympic sport.

I do not need to have other people be deprived of certain things so I can have a larger slice of cake.

TYVM.

Who is being deprived of what, exactly?

Can you actually point to a sentence, can you quote it?

Or are you just making stuff up in your head?

Read the OP.

So you can’t find a quote.

Got it.

Maybe you should read it too.

Right. So the onus is not on the party demanding change to cover all angles.

Got it too.

I sure am glad none of these people are game designers for A-Net.

You said OP is trying to penalize off peak players.

I call you out on that, saying he infact isn’t asking for that. I ask you to show me where he does ask for that.

You then decide not to persue that, not to show me it. Because you can’t.

Then you go off on some tangent

You, sir, have lost.

nikitnq.7143:

Ragnar.4257:

nikitnq.7143:

Jaxs.5830:

nikitnq.7143:

No thanks, I like it the way it is.

Before you accuse me of <insert nasties for night-cappers here>…

• Sieged up assets, checked.
• Run dollies, checked.
• Pay for upgrades, checked.
• Died contesting cap from a zerg, checked.

Also,

• Lost fully upgraded camp, checked.
• Lost T3 sieged tower, checked.
• Lost sieged keep with WP, checked.

It’s WVW. An eternal 24/7 battleground. Keep it that way.

The current system makes WvW an entirely uncompetitive environment. It makes PPT a meaningless measuring stick of success. It makes for boring, stale meta that will not sustain itself in the long run. Glad you are enjoying it.

Sorry you feel that way but to me this is a game. Not an Olympic sport.

I do not need to have other people be deprived of certain things so I can have a larger slice of cake.

TYVM.

Who is being deprived of what, exactly?

Can you actually point to a sentence, can you quote it?

Or are you just making stuff up in your head?

Read the OP.

So you can’t find a quote.

Got it.

Maybe you should read it too.

Chris.3290:

Why should a player in Austrailia or in Europe make less of an impact on an NA server than other members?

Good question; they shouldn’t of course.

Now answer this question: Why should they have more of an impact than others?

Because they currently do.

nikitnq.7143:

Jaxs.5830:

nikitnq.7143:

No thanks, I like it the way it is.

Before you accuse me of <insert nasties for night-cappers here>…

• Sieged up assets, checked.
• Run dollies, checked.
• Pay for upgrades, checked.
• Died contesting cap from a zerg, checked.

Also,

• Lost fully upgraded camp, checked.
• Lost T3 sieged tower, checked.
• Lost sieged keep with WP, checked.

It’s WVW. An eternal 24/7 battleground. Keep it that way.

The current system makes WvW an entirely uncompetitive environment. It makes PPT a meaningless measuring stick of success. It makes for boring, stale meta that will not sustain itself in the long run. Glad you are enjoying it.

Sorry you feel that way but to me this is a game. Not an Olympic sport.

I do not need to have other people be deprived of certain things so I can have a larger slice of cake.

TYVM.

Who is being deprived of what, exactly?

Can you actually point to a sentence, can you quote it?

Or are you just making stuff up in your head?

VOLKON.1290:

Dayra.7405:

We are currently second in EU-coverage. Still I find a game nonsense where
the presence/absence of 50 off-time people decide a match and the quality of 1000 prime-time people has no influence on match-outcome.

I want that both player have a similar influence on the out-come. This does not punish off-time people, but of course it reduces their current imbalanced over-poweredness.

You know… for those 50 people it’s not “off time”, it’s their time to play. How is their time less important than yours?

You know… for those 1000 people during prime time, it’s their time to play. Why is their time less important than those 50?

Because currently it is.

You say nobody’s time is more important than anyone else’s, and you’re right. But right now, that is not the case. Off-peak are more important.

frans.8092:

Ancient Ranger.3276:

To reset a fight you either have to be out of combat for X amount of time or move X distance away from contact. The problem with that is a warrior can move X distant faster than anyone else so they can reset their health alone with the other person still in combat doesn’t have their health reset and then they rush back in and try to fight again with them now having the advantage….

I don’t know if it works like that, I assumed both players would ‘reset’, go out-of-combat simultaneously. That would be obvious, and fair. Well, mostly at least.

That is assuming no other players, and no NPC creatures, involved. Thieves are a their most annoying when adding to fights that are already under way. Alone in a 1v1 they’re much more manageable.

It’s adorable that you think your server put in more effort than servers in silver/bronze league. Performance is based almost entirely upon population, and SFR has a significantly higher WvW population than any silver league server. Just because there are more of you, does not mean you are more deserving of a reward.

The entire point of a stun attack is that once its happened you can’t do anything. That’s its purpose.

You don’t counter stuns after they have happened, you counter before they happen by preventing them with block/blind/evade/stability or simply by kiting and keeping them away with chill/cripple.

If you’ve already been stunned, then it’s too late to start thinking of counter-play.

There’s a reason Engi and Necro don’t have many stun-breaks, and that’s that they both have excellent access to blind, chill and cripple.

I would like to see waypoints altered, even totally removed.

However, before that can happen, there need to be some serious improvements to defence. As long as a zerg can melt through gates in seconds, and cap a T3 keep within less than 3 minutes of the threat being scouted, then waypoints are the only currently viable defence.

Personally, I’d like to see wooden gates boosted to have the HP of reinforced, reinforced gates replaced with “Fortified Gates”, and the Waypoint upgrade replaced with “Automatic Scanners” that show friendly/hostile dots near the keep to everyone on the map.

This isn’t something unique to BG/JQ/SoR. It’s the same on every server, in every tier, in both NA and EU.

For some reason roughly only 1 in 5 players have respect for a fair fight, while 4 in 5 just can’t stop themselves from chasing after 1 guy with 20 others. I’ve been chased from one side of the map to the other by zergs from tiers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. It’s the same everywhere.

There are just some very bored and frustrated people out there.

selan.8354:

Moon.6371:

The king of oneliners is back! You were missed. I fail myself into top200 teamQ within a few games whenever I`ll give it a shot, but you`re right, wvw ganking is best!

omg i just realized that u are from eu. sry. i know in eu servers things are little different and i dont mean that as an insult. ive noticed that during beta testing eotm map. my necro kept 2 shotting d/d eles and other glass cannons when i figured out that u guys were all eu.
well on na servers meta is hammertrain and if you are glass, you’re toast! simple. i run with a zergbusting guild and with our 15-18 players we take down zergs 35-kitten we are no 111 spammers. yes casters will kite the zerg, but none is allowed to run glass as it is considered a rallybot.
try to glass cannon in this (15 vs 2 zergs attacking at the same time)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmjL_jbN1jw

NA such amaze, much wauw, very PVT

Teach us more about how DPS doesn’t work