Guild Wars 2

Earth Shield:

Add condition damage to the stats buffs. I’ll be adding bleeds to this weapon because earth is about bleeds AND defense. This lacks bleeds and even the vestiges of damage.

Skill #1 – Shield Smack: Add 2 seconds of bleeding and 2 seconds of weakness. Lower the direct damage slightly but leave the overall damage higher than it is by a good bit. This skill needs some serious help. It’s slower and lower damage than all of the others with no saving grace. It’s melee range to boot. The bleed helps the damage and provides a use for condition builds. The weakness fits with the defensive nature and must be spammed to be effective so it’s not OP.

Skill #2 – Crippling Shield: Add 4 seconds of bleeding. This adds a bit of damage, helps make an earth weapon useful for condition builds, and gives you a reason to use it outside of the cripple.

Skill #3 – Magnetic Surge: Add 3 seconds of reflection. This is intended to be a gap close that disables and positions you for your PBAOE pull in skill. As is it’s definitely lackluster with low damage and range to achieve a daze. Adding reflection keeps in theme with magnetic powers reflecting projectiles and gives you a little bit of help survive closing the gap you desperately need to close to make use of this conjured weapon.

Skill #4 – Magnetic Shield: Fine as is. Alternatively you can give the reflection to this skill instead of Magnetic surge, but I felt staggering them was a bit better.

Skill #5 – Fortify: – Add 1 second of bleed damage every time someone attempts to strike you. This is a nice little invulnerability but it forces you to be immobile and channel it. Even considering the synergy with the other skills this is underwhelming. Considering the limitations a damage return wouldn’t be horrendous and would again make this an EARTH weapon which synergizes with condition damage.

As you can see shield is in desperate need of help to be a viable weapon. Hopefully all or at least most of these changes will be considered.

Fiery Greatsword:

Skill #2 – Fiery Eruption – This should gain a short lived (2 second) fire combo field. It only makes sense for this skill and it would allow a little synergy including using Fiery Whirl on it.

Fiery Greatsword is in a good place, the Fiery Eruption fire combo field is more of a small thematic touch than anything. My change to the burning fire trait would also leave condition damage users slightly less hosed on this compared to power damage users as well.

Well that’s it. Some fairly significant overall changes, minor tweaks to each weapon, and major help for Earth Shield. I feel like conjured weapons are close to being viable and this would accomplish that. Let me know what you think.

Right now I think Conjured weapons still need a little help so I’ve come up with a few changes. Most of the big changes are overall issues with conjured weapons but there are a few weapon specific tweaks as well.

Overall Changes:

Increase the baseline charges on conjured weapons to 20. This means 30 charges with trait. The current amount of charges is a bit too limiting and certainly cannot be spammed by any means. This makes it clunkier and less reliable in combat. Especially considering cast and pickup time.

Switch the http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Conjurer and http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Burning_Fire trait order This makes Conjurer a 10 point trait and Burning Fire a 20 point trait. Conjured weapons have a variety of uses and they shouldn’t be hidden deep into the might line JUST so you can get more frost bow, lightning hammer, and earth shield charges.

Modify the Burning fire to give 1 second of burning on all Lava Axe and Greatsword attacks that currently don’t cause burning For multi-hit attacks this only procs on the first hit for balance purposes. This also helps condition builds use them viably.

Fix the bug on the recent buff adding stats to conjured weapons. Make sure that the second weapon you pick up also gives you the bonus stats. This stats addition was a great big step in the right direction but now we need it reliable.

Make sure that any channels conjured weapons use apply http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Obsidian_Focus trait Currently I believe there are a smattering of channels not benefiting and I believe conjured channels are among these.

+Remove ground targeting.* Make conjured weapons placed at your feet. This is an impediment that slows down their quick use that stacks with the cast time. Elementalist are mobile and can place weapons near allies themselves if needed.

Weapon Specific:

Lava Axe

Skill #1 – Lava Axe: Give this skill a projectile finisher. It begs for it and it only makes sense.

No other changes, Lava axe is useful if a bit underwhelming. Still a solid all arounder with good combo field potential. The mentioned changes to burning fire and the projectile finisher on Lava Axe is all this weapon needs to be viable.

This would also make the fire line a bit more synergistic with having conjured weapons traits as well as Persisting Flames.

Ice Bow

Skill #1 – Water Arrow: This skill needs to heal in a 180 radius. This shares the same issue as staff water blast. The radius is too small and often you can melee an enemy without being inside the heal radius. This should be a reliable heal for people in melee range of the mob.

No other changes, Frost Bow is viable and it’s only real issue is the too small heal radius on Water Arrow.

Lightning Hammer:

Skill #4 – Lightning Storm: This skill needs a bit of a boost. It needs higher damage, a bigger radius, an added blind, etc. SOMETHING. Right now there isn’t much reason to use this skill at all instead of the auto attack.

No other changes, Lightning Hammer is viable and give a reason to actually use Lightning Storm it should be in a good place.

zastari.1730:

Mirage.2597:

give it a rest we aint going get destroyed , we took it to maguuma opening night only reason they came back and won was we lacked 3 hours of early morning players , and we have some now , but that being said any early morning guild that wants to play a large roll in seeing Ebay to the top , welcome

Ahahahahahaahahahahhahah

Oh man I’m going to have to save this post for after the CD vs Mag vs Ebay matchup. You have no idea how badly EBay is about to get slaughtered in that matchup purely by the numbers game.

By the way, your morning crew guild, KISS, transferred back to Gunner’s Hold. Oops.

Oh yeah, we will likely be crushed hahaha. But at least the next matchup will be fun. Camping in dominated BL’s is boring. I’ve been playing Borderlands 2, watching anime, and even played a game of DOTA 2. My Guild Wars 2 time spent is like half of what it was, and most of that PVE atm.

Slamz.5376:

Ralathar.7236:

Honestly this game hasn’t been out long enough for anyone to have a valid opinion on what their focus or concerns are.

I have played roughly 80% of all MMORPGs ever made (and several non-RPG MMOs as well).

You should change that to 80% of the mainstream MMORPG’s. There are actually an inordinate amount of them of various pay models and quality levels. This also suggests that you are not very detailed in your playtime and understandings because you cannot be sinking much time into a single MMORPG. In short you are a fairly fair-weather MMORPG player and difficult to please. That seems a fair enough assessment.

I can’t think of a single example of where a company switched focus. Once a company goes down the PvE road, all you’ll ever get for PvP is occasional tweaks. In every single case, there are many people like you who state “you need to be patient” and in every single case, they have been wrong, as 6-12 months later the game is a ghost town and PvP concerns were never fully addressed.

In fact, the only game I would say came closest to a focus switch is WOW. WOW launched 100% PvE (they didn’t even launch with battlegrounds) and over time they’ve gradually moved towards more and more PvP attention. They are still a PvE game but not as much as they launched with.

Arenanet seems to be going the opposite direction and they’ll end up like all the other PvE games.

This is very simple why PVE focused games do not switch focus. Gear. Simple as that. The vast majority of PVE games make gear such an influence on your character that it cannot be overcome with any amount of skill if you are a fresh max level vs a fully kitted out max level. Furthermore even bettering your fresh gear takes incredible amounts of time for each rung up.

Guild Wars 2 is actually fortunate in that regard. The max level gear is easy to get by comparison and makes far less of a difference by comparison. Thus even as a level 30 rolling around in WvW you can make a significant difference. Even better there is always a good mix of gear and levels so things stay varied and competitive on a player power basis.

Also sPVP will never have to worry about gear.

This is a major advantage of Guild Wars 2 in this area. Combined with the fact they have already shown a few balance changes that affected PVE and PVP separately this gives Guild Wars 2 the POTENTIAL to succeed where others have failed.

I’m not saying Yes or No. I’m merely saying this is far too early to judge and we should wait and see.

Nut.4713:

Yeah, sensationalism and hyperbole. Come on, we have no idea what they choose to focus on. It’s not as if we have patch notes to tell us. Stupid Americans.

If you are familiar with any type of product design or refinement then you are aware that they set both long term and short term goals. We barely have enough to scrape together ideas on short term goals, there is no way we have the information to make any decision about their long term goals.

Patch notes are helpful indicators when taken in context over a long period of time. But they can be misleading when cherry picked from individual times. For instance a class could receive plentiful nerfs one patch and then after they data mine their metrics be buffed up in a subsequent patch in such a way that benefits the class as a whole instead of merely specific specs. Say when a class is based around a gimmck that is detrimental to it’s overall balance and the gimmick gets nerfed so the class can be buffed.

The ideas and reasons behind the changes are usually copious, detailed, nuanced, and both short and long term. Insinuating that you understand them at this point in time would be the height of hubris.

By the by I am American myself, Texan to be precise. But undoubtedly the entitlement and willful ignorance runs high in my country as we are taught and indoctrinated into it intentionally. Also to be wrong is the gravest sin in America, second only to not having a specific yes or no opinion. Because apparently you MUST choose a side, informed or not.

FormulaX.8901:

Both sides have mesmers…

WvW isnt won by mesmers and theives, it’s won by participation, organization, and siege…

To be fair “both sides have it” has nothing to do with game balance. Your speaking parity there. Something can be game breathtakingly horribly overpowered and be possessed by both sides. It doesn’t mean that fixing such things, if warranted, should not be done.

Storm Eagle.9320:

Dragonbrand, that was a really fantastic (and honestly scary) push for your garrison in the Borderlands on Sunday night. Ehmry seemed to be pretty quiet for the most part, nobody was in map chat, but that was a spirited little defense we put up against your really impressive swarm of people. I had a lot of fun sneaking out of there under your noses, and I’m glad I made it out in one piece because that was one frightening sea of red.

Henge, I really wish you folks the best. I haven’t seen much presence, but I’ve had a lot of fun skirmishing here and there.

Honestly, WvW is better when it’s a close game, but I think with the combination of our loss last week and the Lost Shores event, things got thrown off.

Best of luck to everyone!

HoD also zerged their garrison tonight. For awhile it was a small group of players against like 40 HoG but we held on and ran supplies from other places to repair the gate, they couldn’t keep the few pieces of siege they built up. I might have played some role in that. Nothing like an insane elementalist willing to suicide sneak siege with armor of earth and arcane shield for a 5 aoe combo.

Impressive showing though. If you guys had zerged the surrounding area first we would have been toast. But you didn’t cut off garrison supplies or our reinforcements.

Sensationalism and hyperbole. How utterly American.

Try being a bit more critical and less entitled to be right. You are obviously too caught up in your own point of view to be objective. Honestly this game hasn’t been out long enough for anyone to have a valid opinion on what their focus or concerns are.

YumeBaka.3428:

Ralathar, the reason we say that is because our DPS is considerably lower than all the other classes. We rely on Phantasms and closes for max DPS which all take time to bring out.. by the time we are able to maximize our DPS we are either dead, about dead or already running for our lives. also our Phantasms are usually 1-3 hits dead which kills our DPS, We use portals to either escape or bring more people in with us. It isn’t My fault some people abuse this and port a whole zerg, which by the way… YOU CAN SEE BOTH SIDES IF YOU LOOK. The range isn’t incredibly far you can literally see the group the mesmer is porting and the range is very touchy and easily made broken by range. I suggest for everyone crying about portals to do a test in Lions arch on the bridge. get 3-4 mesmers that can set their portals at MAX range (may take a few tries) with people on both sides. and see for yourself. you can spot the large group easily (at least on my computer I can) before they can get the portal off. if you don’t have people looking, it’s your fault not ours.

I play with some good Mesmers and I roll a Mesmer myself, albeit lower level atm. I’ve faced a precious few good Mesmers in the field.

You’re doing it wrong.

eCheese.8240:

Have been observing the match and this thread and I have to say EBay is true to form. There are a few good guys who dearly want their server to be respectable and with the showing they have on opening night they almost have it but then the balance of the population open their mouths here and you see the servers true character.

Even another reference to Maguuma here… still sore from last week’s lovins?

Sorry dragonbrand and hod I wish you guys didn’t have to deal with the temper tantrum of revenge.

Okay I’ve had my fun swipe at eBay. Its only fun because they crai so hard.

“There are a few good guys who dearly want their server to be respectable” are likely going to be the bulk of Ehmry Bay population after the end of the next matchup. Our mouthier and crueler members are mostly joins from the winning weeks we had.

I’ve been on Ehmry Bay since the beginning. I’ve seen them all come and go since the first exodus. I’ve seen those who stay behind while we get whipped badly.

All respect to DB and HoD for continuing to fight. Don’t give up guys. This is a rough match for you but don’t play for this match. Play for fun and play to build a strong core WvW community.

Raven.6287:

TxJBxT.9370:

Really guys? Come one ANET this isn’t funny or fair.

You forgot to add the 4 arrow carts, 3 balista around our spawn point. We also encountered some players with lets say extended skill ranges. What I witnessed today was a case of EB being bullies, seriously guys you have the whole map, why sink this low using these tactics. You think its funny, do you get a real laugh out of this behavior. Now dont get me wrong, I dont mind being out manned 50 – 1 and still managing to take stuff away from you guys, but I draw the line at the childish attitudes we have to deal with.

Play the game in the spirit it is intended to be played in and cut out the childish rubbish.

I apologize on their behalf. Most of the Ehmry Bay I know fights with honor. However we have had an influx of players from the match before last and then another bit at the last match. To be honest you guys are suffering from thier frustration at thier loss to Maguuma and all the “valid tactics” Maguuma likes to employ.

It doesn’t excuse any of this though. This sort of stuff is expected vs a server that you know will break through and give you a hard battle eventually. But there is no excuse using it vs servers that are completely outclassed in population. (An ironic position for Ehmry Bay)

Again I apologize on their behalf. BUT, keep in mind these are not true Ehmry Bay players. When the next match comes around and we get catapulted up a tier or two we will get utterly whipped and these players will be nowhere to be found.

Isaac.6041:

You guys are pretty funny. Spawn camping with siege happens all the time in the higher tiers. Better learn to deal with it if you want to move up in the tiers.

Or you could come transfer to Crystal Desert and get out of that hell hole.

Spawn camping is fine in higher tiers against enemies well capable of breaking the spawn camp and giving you a competitive match. It’s not cool against people without the population to stand a chance.

As far as the transfers? No. You can be a lame fairweather drifter but don’t encourage others. It wasn’t too long ago that Ehmry Bay was in that same state and it’s because of stubborn players like them that Ehmry has rebuilt. Fairweather players like you will move on and Ehmry Bay will still have a much stronger core WvW crowd than it used to. Because we worked hard to build that crowd.

I can’t wait till the end of free transfers so people with your mentality will no longer be on our server giving us a bad name before you hop somewhere else.

I feel bad for you guys. You just don’t have the numbers to compete and we really do have some very organized opening nights.

Have some heart though, one of our current problems is that the organization tends to flag after the weekend and night capping seems to kill Ehmry Bay morale. You might organize a few alarm clock raids to give yourself more of a fighting chance if you can.

I’ll be rooting for you even as I defend our realm.

You guys really need to learn some patience. As someone who has been playing MMORPG’s for over a decade you need to wait until February minimum to make any real judgements on half of the things you are making knee-jerk reactions too.

I know some of this stuff is not to your liking now, but give constructive threads and avoid whining as much as possible. Do your best to help them build the game better. Games generally do improve and get better. This one started out pretty dang good and you wouldn’t be upset at all if they hadn’t done such a good job to start. Being upset requires that you care.

To me all the people saying that Mesmer’s could not stand competitively on thier own without portals in WvW shows me exactly how much of a crutch portals are. Mesmers would still be quite strong in WvW even without the portal skill existing.

One of my greatest specialties as a player is finding and eliminating siege. Either through my own efforts or those around me.

To the best of my knowledge there are only a few things in the game that cannot either be killed or avoided and still take what they are guarding. One of these is inside catapults, another is an exceedingly well placed garrison treb.

Everything else can be AOE’d and sieged down by those with skill. Even impenetrable fortresses lined with siege. A well built and protected cata/treb can whipe most keep siege out by itself , but requires babysitting.

Turtling was mainly used as a refuge for the weak. Adapt or fall to Darwinism.

Slamz.5376:

“The WvW players are pretty happy but the PvE players aren’t. We need to focus on PvE.”

Every company says exactly this.
Eventually the WvW (PvP) players become unhappy due to lack of updates while the PvE players are NEVER, EVER going to be satisfied.

Eventually the game collapses because the PvP content is all old and stale and while the PvE players got 15 big updates, it’s never enough to keep them going and there goes Rift, Aion, Warhammer and basically every other MMORPG.

Your point does have some merit BUT you obviously have no idea what really killed all of those games. It wasn’t the PVE focus.

This thread is not completely without merit. I rolled a thief to better understand them and I agree that they will receive more nerfing and that stealth will be one of those thing.

My toughness/vitality thief is far more survivable than any other profession built for survival, can rez allies in the middle of hordes of people, can keep people indefinitely in combat with poison cloud, etc. I can also ditch pretty much every condition and juke ridiculous distances with Infiltrators strike. I’m also more mobile than any other profession. This is all at level 23.

I can’t do permastealth without relying on CND, uptime is only like 60% without it. However I could easily switch offhand dagger for offhand pistol and remedy that.

Rhyis.7058:

quote madness

If you really think player spec and skill levels are the same thing you are wwwwaaaayyyyy off and are not familiar with Mass PVP at all.

I’ll toss you a hint though. Alot of people running 1v1 specs in WvW at level 80 are the lowest denomination of player. Because for every person who is actually good at that there are 5 that just want easy kills and are pretty terrible as a player. It’s these kind of people that flock to thieves currently so they can abuse the CND>>>Mug>>>etc opener followed by stealth/culling.

Rhyis.7058:

There was literally nothing negative towards any server within my post at all. I recommend actually reading it.

Chain of events here.

1. I congratulate Maguuma on their coordination and tactics, stating that they overcome our superior individual player skills. This is teamwork skill vs player skill. WvW is largely won based on Teamwork, hence one of the large reasons you are winning. At that point it’s a statement slightly detrimental to Ebay.

2. You state that it has nothing to do with individual skill, thus attempting to invalidate the only positive thing about Ebay in that comment.

3. You furthermore state that Ebay has alot more glass cannon and 1 v 1 builds, which are the worst builds for WvW in general. Adding a sidewise insult.

4. You then state that Maguuma has alot more supportive and teamplay builds, further strengthening your own compliment.

With these things together you not only invalidate the only positive statement said about Ebay but indeed call them poor WvW players in general. Albeit in a slantwise manner. Perhaps you didn’t intend to do so, but that’s what happened.

The biggest reason mesmer portal is going to be nerfed has nothing to do with balance. It’s simply not fun gameplay to sweep a keep for 10 minutes and still miss a mesmer because he had a thief buddy with him to maintain stealth. Or because you only checked 99 of the possible 100 tiny little hiding spots in a keep.

This doesn’t even touch balance or hackers/exploits or culling or etc.

Rhyis.7058:

Ralathar.7236:

Speaking of skill I want to congratulate Maguuma. The individual player skill of our good guilds might be higher, but you guys have better organization and tactics overall.

I just wanted to comment this quickly. I think what you’re trying to say is that EBay seems to win the small scale fights more often, while Mag wins the larger scale fights more often. And I believe there’s another reason that could be happening and it has nothing to do with individual skill at all. Most EBay players seem to spec pure glass cannon and various specs based around 1v1 and small scale fights. EBay has a lot of thieves and warriors that seem to pretty much only walk around looking for the gank. More then any other server I’ve ever fought. Which is strong on the small scale, but doesn’t offer much on the large scale.

On the flip side, a lot of Mag players are walking around in 100% supportive specs that really don’t offer a whole lot on the small scale side, but can turn the tide in a major way with a larger group. My guardian, for instance, is a pure walking bubble/heal bot (and this spec is very popular on Mag). He offers no damage whatsoever, but to a large group he can sustain a large chunk of healing. This kind of spec isn’t ideal on the small scale, as the number of people you’re able to heal is much lower than what you’re capable of putting out. He’ll also never win a 1v1 fight, haha. This doesn’t make the people able to 1v1 my guardian down better than me, their spec is just more suited to the task.

I think what you’re describing is actually the perfect way to show the different and opposing mentalities of our servers.

Way to go, you took a post complimenting 2 separate servers on their individual strengths and turned it into totally kittening all over one and painting the other out as far superior. Even better you disregarded logic by using red herring to do so.

Real classy.

Posting again without a small piece because apparently some out there are not mature enough to deal with a situation as honestly as I am dealing with some of the things we need to fix.

Speaking of skill I want to congratulate Maguuma. The individual player skill of our good guilds might be higher, but you guys have better organization and tactics overall. I have paid attention ankittenaking steps to rectify some of our failings in that area. The strategy of take and hold until you have a nearly insurmountable advantage might come across as a bit cheesy or cowardly, but it is wise. We need to hold and fortify more.

However what IS a bit cheesy is the reliance on some of the gimmicks that currently infect high level play. Things like glass cannon thief builds melting people while, turtling (even though yall don’t do it properly lol), and loads of mesmer abuse.

I agree these things are effective, and currently legit, but it certainly doesn’t mean they are properly balanced atm. I do thank you though for finally putting me up against a few dual dagger elementalists that know how to play, they were enjoyable to face.

Speaking of skill I want to congratulate Maguuma. The individual player skill of our good guilds might be higher, but you guys have better organization and tactics overall. I have paid attention ankittenaking steps to rectify some of our failings in that area. The strategy of take and hold until you have a nearly insurmountable advantage might come across as a bit cheesy or cowardly, but it is wise. We need to hold and fortify more.

However what IS a bit cheesy is the reliance on some of the gimmicks that currently infect high level play. Things like glass cannon thief builds melting people while, turtling (even though yall don’t do it properly lol), and loads of mesmer abuse.

I agree these things are effective, and currently legit, but it certainly doesn’t mean they are properly balanced atm. I do thank you though for finally putting me up against a few dual dagger elementalists that know how to play, they were enjoyable to face.

[Edit]

Halo.8976:

Archer.1658:

Got to love Maguumas immense kittenyness. Let me know when you step outside your fully fortified keeps/towers and I’ll glady accept free badges.

For free badges you can do some jumps.
Main purpose of WvW – gain and defend your territory, jeez.

I’m starting to miss Darkhavens…

I’ll admit it’s a bit frustrating because we don’t have the population to stop it. The counter to such tactics is to bleed them dry and take them slowly. Problem is we do not have the time due to our population.

You guys take everything early morning and run virtually unopposed until after our folks get off of work. Then we have to scrabble back things a piece at a time against a fair amount of opposition. I’ll give you credit that your turtle force is actively responding and switching to which maps are being hit.

Don’t get me wrong, we have you outnumbered at times during this, but outnumbered by 50% defending is nothing like outnumbered 4:1 defending. This is the primary reason we have lost this match-up so far and will likely continue to lose it. We’ll continue fighting, but it’s likely out of our reach do to nothing relating to skill unfortunately.

Make a thread about imbalances = 500 replies.

Make a thread about properly rewarding the people actually winning you maps = completely ignored lol.

It’s definitely not just my imagination, the population of thieves is steadily rising. I’m hoping the next big patch will help with that in some way since the culling fix is effective for SPVP only at current time.

Also, one last thing boys. I’ve been busy taking care of a little thing called life. But now I’m joining the fight again and I WILL make a difference.

Every Ehmry Bay player reading this: don’t give up. We’ve faced night capping before and beat it. We can do so now as well if you stick together and make it happen with your own 2 weapons.

Despite the fact I respect them, Maguuma will only win over my dead body.

ParaldaWind.4523:

I’m really impressed by Ehmry Bay this week, but I’m extremely surprised by their night team not existing.

Generally Maguuma gets destroyed at Oceanic times, does decent during primetime, and destroys during European primetime (11 AM – 6 PM EST). It’s 6 now, which is when our European players start go to to bed, but we’re stilling winning by quite a large margin.

It will be interesting to see what happens tonight at primetime. Glhf all.

Yeah, we on Ehmry Bay are pretty notorious for our low nighttime presence. Back when we faced NSP and Darkhaven we were actually fielding only like 6-10 people in Eternal Battleground during late night. It’s a bit better now but it’s still ugly vs any server that has ANY night pop.

LordWyktin.5209:

Since ET is getting absolutely destroyed this week, with what appears to be a Ebay v Mag match anyway, any guilds on ET that want to ally with a few of us on Maguuma against Ebay, feel free to contact me in-game. Be glad to stand together and help purge Ebay from your borderlands and against them together.

Maguuma: Standin’ up for the little guy.

(If nothing else, Materia [MATE] is always accepting transfers TO Maguuma, and you’re welcome to come on over and join us in the fight!)

1. Yes use any leverage you can get to purge all invaders from your borderlands. Remember to use the right tool for the right job. Some days that tool is your own server, some days that tool is another server. But always remember if you use one server to purge the other to choose wisely, because then it’s just you vs them.

2. I find it sickening for people to attempt to recruit people from servers that are already hurting. I don’t care which side is doing it and last match I had to call out both bigger servers for it, one of them being us.

Prove yourself on the battlefield and if they wish to switch sides they will, but leave the vulturing to scavengers.

lil baby anime.6834:

Yeah it kinda sucks how badly you got screwed by server transfers. Being massively outnumbered for several weeks straight as the system slowly drops you down to the level you’ll eventually settle at has to be pretty kitten annoying.

Ehmry Bay just went through that, you end up stronger overall in the long run. Just hang in there.

Bunzy.8674:

You can run with whatever comp as long as you know what you are doing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npQFOrc4Gxg

HAHA looks like you mopped up some of our zerg surfers. Good job on that hehe, but don’t expect that to work on our core groups should we be in a match-up again.

Still, all the respect in the world for you going out there outnumbered as you guys were and bloodying some noses.

Besetment.9187:

Our last matchup was really friendly and we learned alot. We are learning alot from Ehmry Bay right now – particularly from your use of supply denial using teams of thieves. I’m proud to be fighting you guys because you actually make me think and adapt.

I don’t understand why you have to be this way. Enough with the hostility already. Also GOON and SFD hardly play anymore and they both have no active commanders. What you are fighting is predominately an organization of small guilds with no affiliation to SA. It is not the same server you fought a month ago. You are also clearly not the same server we fought a month ago.

Can we stop trashing this thread please?

This this this a million times this. There are core people left in each server of course but the server makeups have changed a good amount in number and organization since last time.

Lets have a good fight and judge each other fairly, then make judgements about this match-up. Old match-ups are completely irrelevant.

……..can we just have a good match? I mean sheesh things are barely underway and folks are already scrambling for excuses and accusations.

I don’t care if both sides roasted kittens in their last match and then danced to Justin Beiber in only their underwear while slathered in chocolate pudding. Just get out there and fight and lets make THIS MATCH good and clean.

saiyr.3071:

Can we please not go down this road again. We managed to not get any threads locked with last week’s match and we all had a great time. Don’t ruin it for this week.

Agreed, you got something to say to them about things like that? Say it on the battlefield with the tip of your sword. Bring ballistas with you 24/7 and say “Not in my house”.

As far as thieves go? Don’t get this thread locked over them. They will get their comeuppance soon enough, you can bet on that.

Osicat.4139:

Dont understand how ppl can mention mesmers in this but not portals, nothing so strong for a group as the ability to be chased by a zerg, jump down a cliff, the zerg folows and the portal up behind it.

The number of uses is unlimited.

Because you don’t need portals when you are a thief lol.

Ninein.4782:

I hear Ebay had an influx of transfers since last time we fought. Is that true?

We’ve gotten a few more players and it helps and shows. The biggest difference however is the amount of coordination and commitment that those who have always been here have started showing.

Guilds and people that were always here show up more and for longer now than they used to for sure. Guilds have started actually working together. The server formed it’s own forums and voice chat server and has been slowly adopting it,

I won’t pretend we didn’t get some players, but the biggest improvements are definitely from within. Because in all honesty, most of the transfers we did get are terrible lol. Not all mind you, but most.

As other people have already said in this thread though the advantages you had last time caused an even lower population than normal to turn out. It’s no fun to actually do everything you need to capture something and it be impossible to capture due to a big. Incredibly demoralizing. Especially something as pivotal as a garrison. That’s a large mobility and siege advantage as well as a strong defensive foothold.

Essentially I want to reward those people that sit and guard points as well as give them something to do and engage them in patrolling. Right now there is little incentive. As we know however it can’t be too farmable or it will be abused.

Thus I came up with an event chain that will give small bonuses to helping defend the camp/tower/keep as well. Intended primarily to give an edge to smaller groups of people but not be game-breaking in any way.

Supply Camps:

Event 1: Camp is damaged, repair camp

The camp was damaged by a recent battle. It needs your help to get back up to snuff. Run around and repair the damaged buildings and clear rubble. Standard house cleaning event keeping you at the camp.

Reward: 1/2 Dolyak kill rewards. Guards get +40 vitality that stacks with other buffs.

Event 2: Eliminate nearby hostile creatures

The enemy baited some local monsters to damage the camp earlier, go and thin out their ranks a bit. This sends you out to kill a few of the mobs outside the camp.

Reward: 1/2 Dolyak kill rewards. Guards get +40 Toughness that stacks with other buffs.

Event 3: Establish forward scout positions.

You escort 2-3 Sentries to locations near the camp located on the common entry routes to the camp. Once each Scout is placed it will become camouflaged and invulnerable. Upon aggroing an enemy it fires off a extremely large radius PBAOE (3,000 or something HUGE like that) that does nothing but check for hostile targets and runs back to game at max game movement speed, reporting the number of hostiles when it arrives. It then destealths and helps defend the camp, however it is only a normal NPC, it is not a veteran. Having both T2 upgrades bumps it’s status up to Veteran level.

Each scout triggers independently to prevent adding too much NPC power to a fight. If they are still seen as too helpful they can just be “runner” citizens who run to the camp, give information, and then leave.

Reward: 1/2 Dolyak kill rewards + the obvious reward of the heads up scout warning.

Event 4: Patrol

You are sent on a patrol past the forward scouts with a small detachment of Non-Veteran NPC guards that meet you on the road. Fails if nobody arrives within a set time. This patrol covers a small area around the camp and goes through the nearby sentry/sentries. After you reach all patrol points, capture all sentries if not owned, and return to the camp you are rewarded. If entire patrol detachment is killed, event is failed. Guards can be revived within a short window of time.

Optional side Event: “One of Us”

This is an option you can choose at the start of the patrol quest that comes with it’s own bonus. You can choose to become either type of guard and gain associated skills as well as a “return to normal” skill. If you participate in the patrol event while in this form you will also gain credit for the “One of Us” event.

One additional wrinkle. You get an extra skill to use called “Warn the Others!”. This skill gives you swiftness, stability, protection, and regen for 10 seconds also removing all conditions. Much like Mist Form or Elixir S you cannot attack while this is active. Recharge is 30 seconds. This is intended to give you a chance to get back to camp and defend if jumped out in the open while in Guard form.

Reward: 1/2 Dolyak kill rewards for the Patrol event +
+1/2 Dolyak kill for the “One of Us” event.

Enemy Reward for killing NPC patrol: Equal to Sentry take rewards.

The Patrol event and the “One of Us” event resets 5 minutes from when they are completed. If the Patrol event has not been started within 15 minutes of the last one the event chain resets. The “Repel Invaders” event being triggered resets this timer.

1/2 a Dolyak kill isn’t that much of a reward for a gold but it’ll keep people busy doing useful stuff and it comes with it’s own small rewards that help you defend the camp and own the surrounding area with a small force. Yet it still wouldn’t be more than a speed bump for 2-3 people unless fully upgraded as per normal.

Similar style events could be implemented for towers and keeps.

Dolyak Running:

To prevent abuse an “easy” fix for running Dolyaks is have the Dolyak use a pbaoe stacking buff as it walks every X seconds. This would be instant cast and invisible. To receive credit for the escort you need to accrue X stacks before it reaches it’s destination. Buff duration is up in the air but it should be long enough to allow you to peel off and kill mobs or players for short bits of time and still easily get credit if you are constantly escorting it.

Raific.4652:

It was a fun week. Kudos to SF for stepping up even with both other teams out numbering them. EBay, good job on your win and GL on the next weeks match.

To those that believe Ebay, NSP and SF have relatively the same WVW population; you may want to wake up and kick the denial for your own benefit. Keep thinking that way and the following weeks are going to be a real eye opener. Embrace your strengths and weaknesses and try to work on them. Do not pretend it was all skill and leadership and the ones below you simply had less.

And to anyone that thinks they are immune to World Abandoners/hoppers; don’t be ignorant.

I think the next week is going to be a great week for NSP. SF, I am looking forward to meeting you guys in the field again! We had some fun battles this week. Great fights to all, regardless of rank placement!

I’ve been here on Ehmry Bay the entire time and I’m very cognizant of numbers. It’s something I always pay close attention to because most people are simply unable to be objective about them.

Yes everyone gets joiners and leavers. But this is not random and the core population numbers still vary. This excuse will fall away as free transfers get completely locked down little by little.

Fact is that NSP lost some of it’s player base from it’s losses before our match-up and Ehmry Bay gained it during it’s wins before this match-up. We started at roughly equal levels. Sorrows Furnace I am not sure of because alot of their WvW crowd is pretty fickle, no offense.

Ehmry Bay coordinated a strike on both SF and NSP borderlands when the match opened. It actually failed at first but we adjusted strategy and kept our eyes on our original objective while doing other things. When the door opened we took our respective keeps and got a foothold.

Over the course of the weekend there was a fierce struggle and we were actually vying for 2nd and third place at times. Ultimately by the end of the weekend we gained first though.

It wasn’t a by a large margin or anything, but that was enough. At the mere fact we ended up being 1st at the end of the weekend some NSP players stopped playing and their prime time hours shrunk , SF virtually disappeared. We got some transfers from this, tis true, but nowhere near the amount that disappeared from both sides.

Transfers suck, they do, they mess up world PVP balance right now. But this was never a landslide victory match and alot of those that stopped playing WvW were not people that transferred.

Perhaps most telling: lets say they were all transfers. Who wins? Nobody. That invalidates alot of your former victories every bit as much as ours. In that case they were never NSP, SF, or Ebay players and as such nobody is to blame but them.

Keep working hard and build up your server, transfer shenanigans will be over soon enough. When the dust clears each losing side in turn will have new excuses for losses, including us :P.

Miu Xie.5872:

Jamaz.9837:

Miu Xie.5872:

Congratulations to you! They left.

Then let me extend an invitation to Meow from Ehmry. Our five main guilds have never left, will never leave, and are probably the strongest backbone of any medium WvW server. Honestly, Meow is the only reason NSP is staying at its current ranking. I’m not sure if you guys are appreciated or not over there, but we have a lot of respect for you and the amount of work you put in for your server.

Meow is not leaving. I’m representing Meow, now, since FINE has left (but was in both guilds for a while). I’m also trying to work out some ways to get more people to WvW, since I’m honestly getting tired of seeing ghost towns in team chat in the borderland maps.

Good on ya. I’m personally not fond of vulturing other server’s guilds. If they want to leave to another server they know who they faced and where they wish to go.

I hope you have some success and we meet NSP another match-up one day where you give us kitten.

Keiel.7489:

Ralathar.7236:

Long message here.

I really don’t know why people keep saying NSP population is huge, it really isn’t. We might outnumber you guys from time to time, but even on Friday night’s reset we can fill EB and have a que for it 3 or so hours after. After that, it starts to drop off. Borderlands (ours) might be full for an hour or so, then it drops. During the normal week we might get an hour or two where there is a que for EB. The attrition rate of NSP has been pretty high ever since the fight with YB and SOR, and it’s only gotten worse since our match up the first time.

You pretty much describe our que situation during a winning match-up. Meaning your losing que is our winning que. That is what I am saying.

You guys really do have the people, I’ve seen them and fought them across all 3 borderlands. It’s not T1 population, no, but it’s enough to deal with us for sure. But for that to happen people need to step up and one guild can’t do it.

PK, GH, and FTF stepped up for Ehmry Bay and we have some others like RLH starting to be seen more as well. That is the reason we are where we are. Those guilds give the pugs leadership, hope, and successes where there would be failures. There will always be a little bickering about who is better or who doesn’t like who, but ultimately we all join together for WvW and that’s what counts.

It’s a numbers problem. We don’t have enough dedicated WvW players to stick it out during our off time, which tends to be half of the day. At night, we start losing territory to both NSP and EB. In the morning, NSP has conquered just about everything because they do have the numbers. In the day, EB has retaken NSP’s conquests and we might, just might have half of our borderland and a third of eternal and making a push for SM during the evening. Then the cycle repeats.

We had the same problem and clawed our way out of that one person at a time.

earendil.1290:

Someone from our server made this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iIxV9O8yJaU

On SBI we were initially surpised by the turtle system. We learned to fight them. We are grateful for BG fro bringing new challenges to a rather monotonous gameplay.

Looks like a bunch of pitched battles to me. IE within range of keep siege damage, hitting them from behind when they are not really stacked, outnumbering them by a large amount, etc.

Each turtle is also of a varying strength depending on how many many of the needed classes there are. For example there is a big difference between a full stability rotation and only having enough stability to keep it up half the time.

I mean the formation is not invincible but it is very very very strong. Game breakingly strong considering how easy it is.

zastari.1730:

What shouts in particular don’t have an AoE cap?

Most of the buffing shouts, blast finishers (heals, armors, retaliations, etc), some heals but not others, etc. There are actually a fair amount of things without the AOE cap. Then you have the chaining of abilities like feedback and sanctuary that are not specifically targetted abilities that protect a set amount of ground.

It gets pretty ugly really. When done properly people inside are saturated with buffs, constantly being healed, protected from outside projectiles and sometimes in areas melee cannot enter (sanctuary), and even have permanent stability. Then you have self healing on top of all of that.

Keiel.7489:

arminius.5270:

NSP is putting up a good fight, but EB is once again proving good leadership > zerg

You guys are the zerg…

Not long ago Ehmry Bay lost horribly to both NSP and Darkhaven. We had a small fraction of your forces then. BUT, we had at least a couple committed WvW guilds and at least 1 good commander that would not give up while many others disappeared from WvW that week.

Next match-up came and all the other guilds that disappeared from WvW showed up again. Despite the fickle nature of some of these guilds (and some infighting between them) however, we managed to get them all to work together from the very start of the match-up and started off strong. Thus even with ques from all sides we controlled the initial weekend and kept that control for the match.

Now Ehmry Bay has a bit better population thanks to these guilds putting aside their differences and working together. A core group of us didn’t roll over and die simply because we were over-matched and because of that we built ourselves back up.

Now we face NSP once more. NSP still manages to field competitive numbers or sometimes even more vs us even on losing weeks. Think about that for a minute. When we had our losing weeks we had a fraction to work with of what NSP has now. You guys have a higher overall WvW population than us. Because while I cross fingers that certain guilds prove to be a little more resilient next time things get tough, I fully expect certain guilds to disappear again.

I’m gonna be totally honest here. I want NSP to get better and more organized. Because to date most of the fighting I do vs NSP is Ehmry Bay vs the Zerg. Forget numbers for a minute, I’m talking about extremely large groups of people with little to no organization.

I am flat out tired of the fight from DB to Garrison while I look at the rest of the map and wonder why DB keeps getting attacked and the rest of the map remains untouched. I want to face a NSP that is more adaptable and dynamic, a NSP that keeps me on my toes, not a NSP where I enter zone and automatically head to DB/garrison because 90% of the time that’s where the action is.

I mean I know we have ninja’d it several time with golems, but we wouldn’t have near the capacity to do that if you actually pressured us elsewhere and a manned meatgrinder totally destroys that tactic if you just keep half an eye on water gate and quaggans.

On the subject of turtling specifically? It’s an exploit that will be fixed. Simple as that. Turtling ultimately depends on people abusing shouts and other things that do not have a AOE cap atm. They will gain one due to people’s abuse most likely.

All the arguments in the world can be made against this, but considering the overall game design turtling plainly does not fit. On the bright side there is the chance the skills being nerfed might be improved somewhat to compensate for their shiny new AOE caps. Assuming of course them not having one currently was intentional design and not an oversight.

Oh, and as a final note, I doubt the devs of this game want the epitome of thier WvW fighting being 2 balls of players stacked on each other slowly chipping away at each other either. That just seems like rather unappealing and unexciting gameplay, especially for someone looking from an outside perspective.

People referencing Dark Age of Camelot in defense of AOE caps are either using selective memory or do not know what they are talking about. Let me break it down for you.

Pro:

1. Casters had as high of damage as the high damage classes in this game, not higher.
2, There was no AOE cap.

Cons:

1. Every pure caster was as easy to kill as a glass cannon elementalist.
2. There were extremely limited resources used in casting. Power ran out quick.
3. This resource regenerated very slowly, and even slower in combat.
4. When you were out of power you were a guy with a stick wearing a dress.
5. Any possible way you had to heal yourself required power you’d need to AOE.
6.. Most did not have a way to heal themselves at all.
7. You think running back here is bad after dying? Bwa ha ha ha ha!!
8. Even if you got a rez you were rez’d with a small fraction of power and had significantly reduced stats.
9. Even with all these limits ground targeted AOE’s were distinctly weaker than other AOE’s.

Some people look back with rose colored glasses. Some people never played but have just heard things. Fact is that while DAOC had no AOE caps, the game was much more hardcore and you had alot harsher limits as a caster to pay for the power you wielded. As well the power you wielded was given strong limits on how much you could spam it.

As well this was a game where you could be rez’d from a distance with a spell. So if you got killed to AOE it was much easier to pick you up. There were even instant rez spells so this could be almost impossible to prevent.

Before people go popping off about how X worked with Y they really should consider that the entire landscape of the game was different and that maybe, just maybe, that is why it worked out from a balance standpoint. I’ve pointed out only a small fraction of things, but hopefully I’ve given you some idea.

Balance is built around the entire game’s design, not 3-4 concepts you cherry picked.

chronometria.3708:

It is often a source of server identity and that is a double edged sword, with so called “zombie servers” whose guilds have abandoned them and that are doomed to slide down the rankings.

WvW can effectively wipe out a server population and yet arenanet is frustratingly slow to accept its importance. We remain the most loyal of the players and perhaps the least demanding as we can use the same maps over and over, without getting tired as dungeon runners do when they exhaust content.

As a member of Ehmry Bay I vehemently disagree on your zombie server comment. We had our WvW guilds leave Ehmry Bay in a max exodus after several poor WvW matchups. But we persevered and we fought hard even in following match-ups where we had no chance.

Population has returned to Ehmry Bay in a large measure because of this. There will always be drifters moving between servers looking for easy wins. Even after pay to transfer. However the core of a server’s success is the committed guilds that the server has. Ehmry Bay has at least 1 committed guild with a committed commander that went out and made things happen despite the odds during the dark times and so we gained followers.

Do not blame server pops on anyone but the servers themselves. Each server makes it’s own fate in that regard. It’s a reputation game. Reputation is hard won and easily lost, but the committed guilds will always push the server further up.

Besides, population will continue to be less and less spikey as they continue to limit transfers. It’ll still be down to the committed guilds of each server to win followers though.

gidorah.4960:

someone made a guild specifically for wvw theives so they can do what you are saying

http://theassassinclan.enjin.com/home

That will be scary when they become experienced with working together and more master the ins and outs of the thief class.

Katsumoto.9452:

Ralathar.7236:

Katsumoto.9452:

To be fair any large group of a single class could be really nasty.

Imagine a large Guardian squad at pangloss? Staff 5 all day long.

Cool, you can bunker up in pangalos with a large amount of guardians and be immovable. Meanwhile half the amount of thieves could control every supply camp and dolyak on the map.

Tough guardians may be but they are not zerg proof even with siege. Also matches are not won by holding a single point. They are won by shutting down enemy supply. Without supply every fortification on the map will eventually fall unless the enemy has overwhelming odds.

Rule #1 of WvW: You cannot hold anything without supply. Supply is the lifeblood of your towers and keeps.

Rule #2: Fortify every new acquisition you plan on keeping immediately or you will not keeping. Rule #2 relies on Rule #1.

Rule number 1 of reading: Never make assumptions when you have literally no ground for making them.
Rule number 2 of reading: Never read something, make assumptions about it and then talk about it entirely based on those assumptions, disregarding the point which was quite clearly stated.

The point was any single class team can do things highly effectively. No kitten are Guardians not going to be more mobile than Thieves.

You would have a point if your comment wasn’t out of context, less effective, and requiring more players. The point of this thread is that less than 2 full groups of thieves can shut down WvW supply, which is one of the most important aspects of WvW.

The same amount of guardians have different strengths tis true, but they can make nowhere near the same impact on the entire map. Thus even if you put everything else aside they are on completely different levels.

Also, no. It would take an incredibly stupid enemy server to let half the amount of Guardians it takes to hold Pangloss, take the whole maps supply if that number were Thieves. Eventually people actually take said camps back, and eventually after that they defend them.

Yes people would take the supply camps back, and they would be recaptured by thieves shortly afterwards. No dolyaks would make it through at all without rediculous amounts of escorts for a small amount of people. Likewise cmaps could not be successfully defended without assigning alot of people to defend the individual camps.

Remember that the thieves are mobile. If you place 8 people to defend a supply camp they can easily gather up all 8 thieves and still take that supply camp. With that many thieves around you’d be hard pressed to pick out a single one for killing.

They also have the option of helping to attack towers and keeps. Because if you are forced to leave soldiers behind to guard your supply lines then your presence on defenses will be much lessened unless you are already losing. Should those supply camp defenders rejoin the fight the thieves could easily slip away from the battle and retake the camp in short order again.

Incidentally OP. Assuming you couldn’t stop it (which obviously isn’t true), then you’d simply commit some of your own Thieves to do the same to them. That way your numbers are no more spread than theirs.

Needing to counter something with the exact same thing is the ultimate sign of something that is broken. It means nothing else is effective enough to stop it and thus you would have to do it as well to stand a chance.

Right now this hasn’t been much of an issue because it requires coordination and because other broken issues are currently ruling WvW. Turtling and portal bombs currently rule WvW and minimalize the need for a long range strategy like thieves cutting off supply completely. Why take X long to do it when you can use Y and do it faster.

However turtling and portal bombing will ultimately be tweaked and balanced out. At that time tactics like this will see much more use. The tactic itself is sound and fine. The fact that thieves doing it are so effective and nigh unstoppable however is not. THAT is a fact that hurts both profession and WvW balance.

(FYI alot of things that get nerfed well into a game’s life span are things that were always present but not highly abused until easier abuses got fixed or nerfed. Dark Age of Camelot was actually a pretty good example of some of this)

Enemies should be able to take 2c out of your funds and put them on your eyes, thus turning your screen into a close-up of Tyrian copper coins. This should take a short channel and have it’s own animation.

You are effectively blinded in a nice thematic way.

Katsumoto.9452:

To be fair any large group of a single class could be really nasty.

Imagine a large Guardian squad at pangloss? Staff 5 all day long.

Cool, you can bunker up in pangalos with a large amount of guardians and be immovable. Meanwhile half the amount of thieves could control every supply camp and dolyak on the map.

Tough guardians may be but they are not zerg proof even with siege. Also matches are not won by holding a single point. They are won by shutting down enemy supply. Without supply every fortification on the map will eventually fall unless the enemy has overwhelming odds.

Rule #1 of WvW: You cannot hold anything without supply. Supply is the lifeblood of your towers and keeps.

Rule #2: Fortify every new acquisition you plan on keeping immediately or you will not keeping. Rule #2 relies on Rule #1.

emoleas.4309:

As an engineer. I used to regularly take part in supply capping and yak assassination groups (back before I got commander title).

My group generally consisted of 1 engineer + 1 thief (with upwards to 1 engineer + 3 thieves). Engineer works just as well as thief does. Engineer burst damage is just as high as thief, and could be sustained after the initial mega burst. As 1 engi+ 1 thief, we could kill yaks that were guarded by up to 5 players and live through it. We were able to reliably suicide kill yaks guarded by up to ~8-10 players.

That was 2 players keeping 5+ players occupied per yak/supply camp (total of 10-15 players). When we bumped our crew up to 1 engi + 3 thief, we were taking out yaks that were guarded by 15+

Fun times, I miss those guys… they stopped playing :[

Agreed that your damage is just as high, but you lose in every other respect for the needs of the situation. Thief is more mobile than you (even with speedy kits perma swiftness), is extremely difficult to zerg down (movement speed, infiltrators arrow, stealth, etc.), can pick and choose their fights easier (same as last), and can deal damage while invisible. The thief is also harder to kill than you are if you are burst build because their glassiness is offset by aforementioned stealth and mobility.

2 Thieves should be able to run in, kill the yak, and have a very high chance of escaping alive. There should be no suicide run. Having thieves guild or dagger storm to use based on situation is also a huge advantage in this.

I like engineer, and they are good and versatile, but they in no way compete with a thief in this department. Not even close.