Guild Wars 2

Forzani.2584:

Ralathar.7236:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Straegen.2938:

Like to see them face off against a solid T3 server and see how well that bravado holds up.

We’d welcome it. The thing Ebay wants more than anything is a challenge, and while this double team is providing a bit of one, it’s not enough for us. We’re masochists, you have to grind us into the ground and make us lose horribly to give us what we want.

Initially we’d be all RAWR and we got this and fighting our hearts out. But then after half a week of being nightcapped and rough battles during the day our pugs would stop playing and we’d go from losing pretty badly to losing terribly badly and things would get significantly less competitive and thus a bit less fun.

You’d have stalwarts like me who’d still be there mixing it up, just like I did In the old days when most of our pugs gave up on us, but it’d be ugly.

Skimming your comment I was anticipating it being written by a BP or AR player talking about the current matchup. So apparently it isn’t a unique occurence for the losing servers fair weather players to pack it in and make the matchup even more lopsided.

Did EB have to also face all the trash talking from the green server about being baddies and L2P ?

Oh yes, definitely. Back in the day NSP were the zergers and Maguuma was the server we hated. I think alot of us still bear a grudge against Maguuma lol. Admittedly I have a small grudge against them myself (Ok it’s a hungry flame not a small grudge lol). But I’m not looking to go into that, lets just say that we lost a few rounds and some other stuff happened too which made for many locked threads.

We’ve also been glutted before (alot more players than we have now, queing 3-4 BL’s on reset night), been completely abanadoned before (being outmanned for awhile till we built back up, and were much more terrible at coordination, teamwork, and even overall player quality back in the day.

Those of us that have been here since beta have gone through quite a ride and the smacktalking has gone every which way, not just both ways.

Faux Sheaux.6179:

Ralathar.7236:

Faux Sheaux.6179:

Ralathar.7236:

Faux Sheaux.6179:

I love people calling other people stuff then turning around literally a sentence later and doing the same thing. So much hypocrisy in this thread lol.

There are precious few in this thread that can claim any level of objectivity.

If I wanted to be objective, I wouldn’t bother posting on the forums. There are few things that make someone look more a conceited kitten than playing the white knight with every post.

I’m just a guy. I post what I believe to be right and if anything I’m a Grey Knight since there are sides involved here so White/Black is perspective based and I’m not saving anyone.

Also, I do believe you managed to rustle your own jimmies.

I try not to make my server buddies look bad on the official forums in order to make myself look better. Bumping myself up at a teammate’s expense leaves a bad taste in my mouth. From your posts regularly apologizing for them or calling them out (unfortunately those posts aren’t even confined to this thread), it’s clear that we don’t share this mentality.

By all means, don’t let a tad bit of humility towards your comrades stop you from saying more of what you feel to be right.

By comparison I try not to care what server someone is on, which is why we are at odds.

Jinks.2057:

The only queue i’ve experienced during the week is the night of the WXP patch.

But since you said it it must be true…..

I personally don’t sit in many ques. I’m very active in WvW when I have time to play so I’m normally in there before things que. Most of the ques I know about are via teamspeak or guild chat and tend to happen in the peak of prime-time outside of specific reasons.

I also want to do a general PSA to all 3 sides because I don’t really think any of the 3 sides really practice this:

It doesn’t matter what you take and hold, what matters is what you take and hold vs what you give up to achieve this. I’ve seen countless posts of people bragging about taking X, Y, or Z while forfeiting alot of points elsewhere. For example if you take someone’s tower, bay, and a few supply camps while losing a couple towers and some supply camps in your own BL because you left it you have in reality achieved a net of nearly nothing. Possibly a significant loss if the towers were upgraded and the bay was not.

Things are not as simple as taking and holding things. It’s always relative to what you are keeping and losing as well.

Khayoss.2019:

That’s not entirely true… Yes, we have been getting big ticks during those hours, but that’s not because we cap stuff during those hours and then give them away. Reset night is a prime example. A bunch of people posted full map domination at around 2:20am, but we already had 500+ before midnight. Saturday and Sunday, even when you guys were ticking 200 points more than us, we minimized the impact of the point ticks to our lead by employing precisely timed small group tactics that never let you get the full benefit of what you were taking and letting us walk away without losing our lead.

Fast forward to Tuesday when we took AR Hills. We held it all day. We also capped all of AR by around 11:30am/2:30pm. We took BP BL with that epic 3 guild strike during a heavy playtime period – as you can tell by the last shot in the video of the “late” BP zerg. It wasn’t that it was nightcapped, it was because no one was left to scout, and BP wasn’t quick enough to respond. We held that BL until something like 2AM when BP took it back, all the while we continued to hold AR’s keeps right up until some point today.

That’s a far cry from a 4 hour window of nightcapping to quickly build a lead on ARBP. I’m not the kind of guy that needs to brag or needs recognition for accomplishments, but I believe that credit is due where credit is due. These points span something like a 36-40 hour period… so exclaiming ‘numbers, coverage’ isn’t really fair to us, and is denying yourself the opportunity to learn and better yourself from what you saw.

To be fair we DO plainly get most of our points when their population is down way way further than ours and people typically sleep for more than 4 hours. Also when people come back things are typically upgraded so until they amass enough people to actually start taking them back it’s difficult to start accumulating points again.

Ebay has been in this exact situation before. It’s incredibly frustrating to do well during the day, stay up late fighting, then go to sleep and see the point score jump up a crazy amount over night. Then during the day trying to close that gap is far harder because you are earning points at roughly half the rate it’s possible to overnight.

People pretty much give up hope after a few days of this. You can see both the night spikes and the slow giving up of hope and loss of pugs pretty clearly in that site that was linked: http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/44/. This matches my experience. I’m actually surprised they have fought as hard as they have for this long.

If they had the man-power to do more than que EBG and defend their own bordlerlands we would have been in serious trouble. I can verify for a fact during this weekend we had EBG qued for most of the weekend and our BL qued many times during the weekend. On top of this we had at least 20-30 in each of their BL’s.

Faux Sheaux.6179:

Ralathar.7236:

Faux Sheaux.6179:

I love people calling other people stuff then turning around literally a sentence later and doing the same thing. So much hypocrisy in this thread lol.

There are precious few in this thread that can claim any level of objectivity.

If I wanted to be objective, I wouldn’t bother posting on the forums. There are few things that make someone look more a conceited kitten than playing the white knight with every post.

I’m just a guy. I post what I believe to be right and if anything I’m a Grey Knight since there are sides involved here so White/Black is perspective based and I’m not saving anyone.

Also, I do believe you managed to rustle your own jimmies.

Jinks.2057:

Ebay doesn’t have queues during the week either…….

We’re not some server that is busting at the seams w/ people believe it or not

On reset night EBG is always qued and it ques during the week intermittently, it’s certainly not uncommon to see EBG que on a weekday. Our home BL also ques on reset night and during the week it’ll que if it starts looking bad. Other than that we only tend to get ques on other BL’s if we actively have one of our big guilds doing something there, because once we get something going typically another big guild or pugs realize it and suddenly switch over to help.

This is all during prime-time of course. We don’t que much ever outside of primetime unless out primetime crew is staying up really late. But Ebay certainly does que during the week fairly regularly during primetime even if it’s not consistent, mostly focused on EBG, and for generally short amounts of time.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Straegen.2938:

Like to see them face off against a solid T3 server and see how well that bravado holds up.

We’d welcome it. The thing Ebay wants more than anything is a challenge, and while this double team is providing a bit of one, it’s not enough for us. We’re masochists, you have to grind us into the ground and make us lose horribly to give us what we want.

Initially we’d be all RAWR and we got this and fighting our hearts out. But then after half a week of being nightcapped and rough battles during the day our pugs would stop playing and we’d go from losing pretty badly to losing terribly badly and things would get significantly less competitive and thus a bit less fun.

You’d have stalwarts like me who’d still be there mixing it up, just like I did In the old days when most of our pugs gave up on us, but it’d be ugly.

Expiatus.4210:

How long did it take you all to organize and consistently execute above maneuvers?

Our current level took months of slowly building upon the bad and mostly PUG server we were left with. I wasn’t just a single guild, but a collective effort of several guilds and the better PUG commanders. TS helps alot to speed that along.

I imagine there is a core group that is good at this and the pugs just follow them.

While this is true, over time that core group gets bigger as you recruit and train up more pugs.

Do the guilds accomplish “training” runs for new WvW players?

We definitely do training runs on various things as well as a class of the week type information/play session. Many times this is in WvW, sometimes we might dip into sPVP so they can play with builds and stuff they don’t have yet.

How do you convince someone to dolyak-sit or stay behind and defend?

Tactically minded people like myself do this naturally. It’s actually the reason I got invited into PK because that night I ran dolyaks and upgraded Quentin for over an hour straight easily. I had been studying the supply game and was convinced a strong base of operations and secure supply lines were necessary for overall success against a competitive opponent. PK’s guild leader noticed my contribution (especially when things turned sour and the momentum change came from the successful defense of Quentin :P) and invited me that night.

Other people however must be convinced into it and sometimes promised shinies or rotated out. Not everyone is a tactical player and while you can improve people you must also work with what you have the best you can. That means knowing the limits and mentalities of your players and changing tactics accordingly.

Getting people to defend is incredibly important but just as difficult as convincing them to dolyak sit unless the action is positively never-ending. They are always ready to farm. It’s slightly selfish, but people play for fun. It’s to be expected.

If you can get people into the habit though, it becomes easier to keep them doing it over time. But it can still be incredibly frustrating and every bit like herding cats sometimes as everyone goes "OOOoooOOO SHINEY and tries to do everything but what they should be doing.

Faux Sheaux.6179:

I love people calling other people stuff then turning around literally a sentence later and doing the same thing. So much hypocrisy in this thread lol.

There are precious few in this thread that can claim any level of objectivity.

Just so people don’t get the wrong idea:

Ebayer’s are trying to break up the alliance because it’s a legitimate threat. Alot of Ebayers out there got boo boos and ouchies from the big bad Borlis Rock and want to go back to rolling over both sides easily.

Of course the sensible parts of the server not trying to compensate for their own inadequacies online enjoy the elevated level of challenge that your alliance has so graciously provided us with.

Think of it this way. Continue to team up and let Ebay have it and the bad Ebayers will just cry and whine and attempt to sabotage more while the respectable ones will be happy with good fights. You hurt the baddies and please the honest players.

A Win-Win I’d say.

LAD Infinitum.1675:

I do have a question though … do you (EBay) think that the current effort level that you are putting out is sustainable? I know that for a number of these weeks you’ve probably been playing with the “safety on,” lacking any real challenge. Is this a glimpse of your true power unfolded? If so, I’ll say what I’ve said before … if/when Glicko gets fixed, Tier 4:

Ebay has likely been running at 80% most of this week honestly. The big guilds kicked it into overdrive to compensate for some people being gone (alot of people dislike the Arrow Cart situation atm) when you guys really let us have it, but your offensives actually drew those very people back into WvW for the most part.

Ebay likely has the potential for T4, but we would not sustain the level of tactics necessary nor do we have the population to really compete. We are outclassed at night just as badly as you guys are right now. Between that and the “lets get a new paper shiny and forget to defend the T3 shiney” that all of Ebay, even the big guilds, seem to suffer from regularly we would get destroyed.

In short, we can sustain the level of effort we put out now but you’re seeing select coordinated efforts and our failures are in the long term efforts and decisions. We can siege and take things with coordination just fine. Don’t get too impressed of a view from the showey acts when we regularly neglect the foundation.

If we were as good at all the other stuff as we were at taking things when we put our minds to it then we might could hack T4, barely. This exact trait is why Ebay is generally known for strong opening nights, but we taper off after that.

Tranto.6084:

In all fact they did not wipe us off the map once while i was on there.

Must not have played much of the weekend. They wiped Ebay back to the spawn on Saturday and Sunday both. Though most of Sunday Lowlands keep held with all walls and doors down thanks to the power of massed arrow carts.

Chaosky.5276:

The removal of the AoE ca kitten omething a lot of people agree on, it’s not just a staff ele thing. As it is, a small group will have their damage artificially lowered against a large group due to the AoE cap, while the large group suffers far less; the removal of the cap would force zergs to spread out and maneuver intelligently rather than run straight into danger.
I’d worry more about stacking Kill Shot warriors than staff eles, even if the staff’s attacks become harder to avoid.

However, I believe a dev has commented that the AoE cap is in place due to technical limitations, so there’s that.

• “Cap <is> something” is censored. Wow.

My experience is different. What you describe already happens IMO. If me and my guild hit a group twice as large we automatically roll around to avoid AOE damage. We do not spread out because that limits our ability to support each other and results in people being picked off 1 by 1. But we do intentionally move collectively to avoid as much AOE as possible and even retreat temporarily if needed.

Groups we face that do not do the same get mercilessly destroyed up until the break point of numbers. Once groups get to be about 3 times as many as us it becomes difficult to wipe them unless they are disorganized.

While the element of surprise and coordination can be used to justify killing groups larger than 3 times your own size, I believe this is a good limitation for game play reasons. It rewards good play but still allows people to fight back.

Much as we would like to cater to only “pros” a game is for everyone and if skilled people can ruthlessly destroy everyone else with impunity we would soon find a very unpopular game populated only by a much smaller amount of hardcore people.

Some people would still like that idea, but it would be much less profitable and likely kill the game. So some balance between skill and numbers is needed to let the average person play and have fun even vs “pros”.

Game design is by necessity providing fun for everyone. Rewarding skill and allowing everyone to still play and have fun is a constant balance and tiers cannot do all the work alone.

Hughie Wellington.2516:

are BP/AR teaming us? , well maybe they took a night off!

I’ll take a moment to brag about this guy. He’s dedicated and always looking after our borderlands. He also tends to watch and learn all sorts of sneaky stuffs. I have no doubt he had a hand in creating the current point spread (possibly with a side helping of rage).

But yeah, BP and AR have been looking pretty shabby compared to this weekend. I know yall can do better. Wassup guys? Yall burn out just because the event is over? I much preferred yall giving us all sorts of kitten.

Drezdan.3685:

I have no rage I play this game to have fun, yes I will say im sick of this matchup but at the same time I love all the bags I get when I log on. If you think me calling Kalkz “Cupkalkz” is raging I find it quite funny. Our night crew of what 30 players carrying us is quite funny. On the other hand I have seen you crying week after week about how AR never hits Ebay til you finally made your lil pact. Which like I said all this does it make it so we don’t have to wait for you to get off ur siege and stop eating ur burgers to come out and play.

To be fair this weekend I saw a good deal of [PK] alone during night and early morning hours. Assuming the 3 other larger guilds could field even half that number (which TS numbers and map presence seemed to support) and add in the pugs and you already have larger than the numbers I saw BP and AR combined fielding during the night and early morning.

I was one of those members and the resistance across the board certainly did not match our numbers past 10PM-2AM central (BP and AR seem to lose most of their forces all at once between those times. A guildie even called that out as reliable).

PaLeRiDeR.5908:

You do make a good point……expect on the whole useage of lapdogs thing. If you are independent and focus on fights and BP calls you a lapdog, they lack the mental capacity to use the term (lapdog being the opposite of what I described above). But if you obey their commands for their benefit only then you are a lapdog. Thats what the term means, that you blindly obey. I for one out old fashioned pride would tell BP what they can do with themselves if they offered my an alliance, especially one that only gave any tangible gain to them. Oh wait, this did happen and all the commanders that were approached on this refused. If you guys are happy with the arrangement then so be it but we just dont see it in the same light as you.

Edit: Just be clear because I know I tend to be sarcastic here, this was an honest view point and I can not deny that we have been claiming bordem. You have made this a more interesting match up on the field.

It’s in AR’s best interest entertainment-wise to pursue the alliance. Fighting a more or less equal server while having a much bigger server come in and randomly punch them in the face is not as much fun as an equal fight that rages back and forth.

Rashagal.5867:

Reinforcments.5713:

The alliance is a false sense of equalization.

Those 3 servers are not going to remain in the same place forever.
And if AR and BP have to team up to fight EB, they do not belong in their tier, period.

Unless you’re trying to keep those servers forever in a twilight zone.

That’s precisely the point, though. T5 is the transitional tier between coverage and primetime play. T4 is where you need coverage and numbers to survive. AR and BP simply don’t have the coverage to match Ebay outside of primetime. We are the biggest of the casual WvW servers, and they are the smallest of the serious WvW servers. You can’t really square that circle with out tampering with the server demographics/populations. As it stands the ranking system won’t allow for any of these 3 servers to move out of the tier, because BP and AR are too well matched, and Ebay can’t perform well enough to push out because they get hit by a 3rd place server that is doing just as well as the 2nd place server.

This is pretty spot on. BP and AR have demonstrated the ability to be just as organized and play just as well, but there is just really no point outside of the recent bout where both focused Ebay. Being on equal skill footing but lesser numbers still results in a loss.

The fact that Ehmry could even hang on while focused by both shows very very clearly the population/coverage difference as Ehmry would have the lowest or at best a middling potentials during the day, yet would achieve top potentials by a good margin at night. If it was skills there would not be such a pointed difference.

Incurafy.6329:

Ralathar.7236:

Well, if nothing else the thief community might learn the ways to play thief that do not rely on stealth, and I don’t just mean flanking strike spam lol.

While I think that the kittenfest that the Thief forum has turned into is pathetic, it’s posts like yours that prove that people like you don’t even play a Thief and trying to argue with you would be completely futile.

I mean really, Thieves will need to learn to play without stealth? Oh, so I suppose Eles will go without attunement swapping then? You know, because that’s their central class mechanic and everything and obviously they need to just learn to play without it.

Honestly man… lol…

I love my support thief and just to test how viable it would be I have run multiple different non-stealth builds and succeeded. Both ranged and melee.

Then again my main is a sheer glass staff ele so I’m used to surviving without stealth and without the high level of mobility thief has. I have more CC though and some extra range. Irony of ironies one of my banes is a glass cannon theif, but perhaps more ironic they can down me midfight but because my guild uses team work they die or run and I do not die. No help for poor target selection against by choosing to tr for someone with good positioning skills haha.

Still, pretty much any flanking attack, portal, ambush, etc is hitting me first so I have to be ready to evade countless amount of “you die stupid ele” on a regular basis. Not to mention that I’m visible 100% of the time and carrying a staff so people naturally try to kill me knowing I’m squishy while I light neon signs saying “I’M OVER HERE!!” by casting repeatedly with a staff.

Only a WvW player knows that the thief and elementalist boards are the two worst boards on the forum, with people complaining about being underpowered at some of the very WvW roles they are the professions best at.

I won’t even be responding to you two further because there is no point. You are self-defeating. Go out and learn how to play instead of asking the system to cater to your lack of understanding. That’s the best advice I can give yall.

zalcs.9701:

bursty aoe ele builds dosen’t work, they just die, espcially with mist form and rtl nerf. engi does it better, mesmer does it better (and they both have more survivability and utility.) full bunker deals no damage. half bunker half glass dd deals acceptable damage, but nothing to write home about, plus they die way easier now (high risk medium reward as mentioned above somewhere)

Bottom line, ele, as it currently is… is crap. i’d rather see them remove the whole class tbh

The only glass cannon roaming class that is viable atm in WvW is thief. Everything else will get destroyed if it runs into a balanced class that knows it’s business. Glass cannon has been bad at open world PVP for many many years and continues to be. The only thing glass cannon roaming is good for is ganking and that assumes that you basically catch someone off guard and kill them before they can properly fight you.

This is why those gimmick Warrior builds are very nice at doing something very very specific, but when you learn how to dodge 100b or stop their run before they break ranged fire distance they evaporate.

Gimmicks are gimmicks, don’t come to WvW expecting to survive on gimmicks as they are based more on the situation and your opponent being bad than any skill.

I would also say that there is no such thing in as a class with no damage in these game. Everyone in the game can significantly hurt you and kill you. The difference in 5 seconds and 15 seconds isn’t no damage, it’s less damage. Burst damage rules contrived situations but fails skilled warfare because it comes at the cost of being able to survive if you miss.

Chaosky.5276:

Can’t agree with you there. The advantage to a chill build like that is frequent application to a large number of targets; you aren’t going to survive if you dive into a zerg if the players have any idea of what they’re doing, and in small engagements you’d be better off running a more standard build.

Depends on your team composition. With a core of front line heavies not onlt can the staff eles do their job properly (which would be alot more difficult without the heavies mind you), but you can get in there and survive very well as any tanky built ele, even without all the boons. Especially if the foes targeting you are regularly chilled and if focus offhand you will be especially resilient to projectiles.

Though honestly if my ele is built tanky I’ve never had any issue surviving. I leveled my auramancer in WvW and I was actually incredibly surprised at how tanky I was even at level 30 with heartiness gear and no protection spam. I main a sheer glass staff ele after all, you really have to know your active defense and positioning to survive so that only increases the difficulty of killing my tankier ele.

Thing is, Burning doesn’t stack in intensity, so you’ll always lose a ton of damage when switching from the Earth attunement. You can get burning out of skills like Signet of Fire, anyway.

While this is true D/D and D/F does alot of AOE burning and when they fix scepter fire so will it. D/D earth is bursty condition damage and S/D is single target primarily in earth. Additionally you have utility skills and runes that can apply burning in AOE, but only a single sigil can apply AOE bleeding.

Burning’s real weakness isn’t that it lacks intensity stacking, it’s real weakness is that is scales worse than bleeding. But by the same token losing a little bit of condition damage to make sure you are survivable hurts alot less so you can still maintain those 500+ burn ticks and be pretty tanky.

Well, if nothing else the thief community might learn the ways to play thief that do not rely on stealth, and I don’t just mean flanking strike spam lol.

So yeah, at this point we know that anti-stealth traps can totally kitten over a stealth thief, but they are fairly expensive to use on a regular basis. Sure you can afford the badges and karma, but it’s low gain and it eats the badges you would use for siege.

Lets call that a big loss to prevent any arguing.

HOWEVER, you can also totally ruin a zergs day with supply draining traps from stealth. So on 1 hand you will sometimes hit a bad situation and very potentially death because of an anti-stealth trap. On the other you can remove 5 supply from an entire zerg.

Overall I say this is a nerf for selfish types who just want to “pown baddies” and an incredible buff for thieves with an idea of teamplay.

Of course there is no way they will allow traps to remain as currently without making it break stealth, that would be silly.

It is expensive and not spammable, any supply and badges spent on this is not siege. Thus this is only efficient for select situation.

Those situations, in my mind, are things like perma-stealth thieves attacking your trebs when you are sieging bay for example. If you leave them alone they will eventually kill the trebs, but the amount of people and time it will take to actually stop them will leave you at a severe disadvantage vs the enemy zerg.

Now if enemy thieves try to perma-camp a key location with perm-stealth there is finally a counter.

For highly mobile battles and situation where people could quite easily run over the trap and waste it this is simply not worth it at all and IMO it will not stop the veil ambush tactics at all.

Kodiack.2783:

Expiatus.4210:

AR really needs to do this. How much is TS?

AR has had a TS for months. Right now i’ counting 22 in the WvW , with another 30 in their own guild channels.

-K

It’ll take time to spread the word and get people in there. Ebay didn’t start out with the mass of people we have in there now. We built that up very slowly over time. As said some of the bigger guilds have even made it a requirement.

stale.9785:

Ralathar, you’re welcome to disagree – the moment that any of the other classes telegraphs every skill the way ele does, I’ll be on board with you. As it is, there’s no excuse to be hit by anything from a staff ele, other than fire 3 and air 1. Our AoE is slow enough you can walk out of them, not dodge. Our projectiles suffer from the same issue lonbgow 1 has – you can avoid them ALL by tapping a-d-a-d (except for air 1, which at least homes.)

In a large group vs group encounter this is not an option with properly placed AOE’s. Like I said depending on situation you group them up or spread them out. I can cover a huge swath of land with copious amounts of death hitting 5 people at a time. The initial opener Frozen Ground/Static Field + other thing keeps people there for my teams damage and already AOE denies and/or limits their ability to avoid my stuff.

Dumb groups melt ridiculously fast. Smart groups still eat plenty of damage because I don’t pile all my AOE’s in one area and I actively predict and lead and block with my AOE’s.

If you are talking small scale S/D, D/D, or D/F is better.

As for the whole “ranged damage has to suck”, well, that’s fair enough if you roll a warrior, or a guardian. Even theives. What I’m tired of is being the softest class in the whole game, and being told to bunker or not play.

That might apply to sPVP, sPVP shuns most builds not just yours. It flat out does not apply to WvW or PVE.

I have 0 problem being beaten down because I’m squishy and someone managed to close the gap and wail on me. What I do have a problem with is the fact that you cannot, on your own, kill someone, nor even keep them away, with the staff.

If you are regularly getting beat down during large group vs group confrontations early then your positioning skills need work. I’m almost always one of the last of my group alive even in wipes and I’m built full glass rampagers.

If I wanted to play pure support, I’d roll the bunker spec, and drag a staff around, watching as I heal 5 people at a shot. Yippee. I want to kill. I want to see blood and guts and gore and veins in my teeth.

You are DPS/Support. Most weapons/builds for most professions are. Alot of people forget the support aspect and lose effectiveness. If you are not leveraging both roles you are doing it wrong.

If this was meant to be melee wars, then they may as well delete the ele class, and force us to all roll warriors.

This is far from melee wars. Melee is very important in group vs group confrontations as they take the front line and initial engagement which takes pressure off of the backline which does alot more damage overall.

EDIT: The rotation you suggest, well. 1 dodge roll, and the targets are ALL safe. I’m not sure if you’re the guy earlier who suggested we always hit for 10k per hit, but we don’t. Staff damage is pitiful when compared to our other sets. Hell, it’s pitiful when compared to our bunker spec.

Again don’t stack them all in one spot if people are moving, spread them out. Predict, lead, block, cut off. Learn to be a better player instead of complaining about a quite capable weapon set.

Though again, if you are talking small scale staff is not built for that and if you are talking sPVP countless builds are left in the cold.

The five man cap, as it stands, means your AoE can hit (absolute max, with duration and the way things ping) 20 targets in a zerg. Meteor storm has a slight advantage, because every meteor counts separately. You do realise the safest thing for people to do when confronted with AoE is to bunch up, right? If you gathered the whole zerg into the AoE field, you may hit 20 people for 1/5th their hp. Removing the AoE cap would change that.

If 20 people bunch up and let me AOE them I will down a minimum of 5 and heavily injure the rest.

But lets look at your scenario, you think that a single player doing 1/5th of the hp of 20 is BAD? WTF? That means 5 would utterly wipe 20. The problem of no AOE caps is apparent in your very example, because no AOE caps would lower that number to 1-2 people to wipe 20.

dukevonart.2691:

@Ralathar

In regards to Frozen Ground and Unsteady Ground as changed in this version, the condition applied would only occur the first time a player walked through the field and could not be re-applied until the original condition wore off. This would function similar to the necromancer’s Spectral Wall in regards to the protection it grants. (if i understand correctly)

16 seconds of chill/cripple upon touching it once still does not provide counter-play with proper placement.

Chaosky.5276:

How do I put this… I’d actually forgotten about the staff when I typed that, and was thinking of some kinda dagger/focus chill build. Despite referring to the staff in the next sentence. Uh, so, yeah, you can just ignore that.

You can do either because once you start looking into it Ele has a remarkable amount of AOE chill including Glyph of Elemental power, glyph of storms, any arcane spells with Elemental Surge, and if you are human reaper of Grenth. Frost Bow is also an option.

It was something I kind of laughed at initially and then went “holy crap, there is a build or two here”. Either way you always carry a staff for sieges. Real weakness however of this build is the need to go into fire for condition duration and fire traits suck. Though I think they will eventually fix the fire line right now it’s yuck.

What purpose does a condition ele serve, though? They have less AoE, and they actually need to struggle against the class mechanic to play a condition build (switch to water to heal, you’ve got about 9 seconds at best, probably more like 13, until you can really start dealing damage again).

Both Earth and Fire have condition options. Admittedly though for scepter fire is bad and needs buffs, hopefully they will do that one day.

Also, what role would you fulfill if not using the staff in WvW? With the reduction in mobility, there’s not much reason to choose an ele over a thief or ranger for roaming (inb4 Fiery Greatsword). I mean, I have fun with a glassy scepter/dagger build, but it’s not particularly good at anything in any game mode.

S/D is good at small scale, D/D or D/F can be almost as useful at staff in larger battles. Obviously Staff trumps everything for zerg vs zerg though. Which is one reason I scoff at everyone trying to buff staff.

But honestly maybe people don’t want to play only X, Y, Z build every time they log on. Maybe they are 10%-20% less effective overall but we also play the game for fun. Someone that doesn’t even want to play because they will have to play the exact same thing every single time is 100% less effective. Otherwise you’d have nothing but staff ele’s, guardians, hammer/sword/horn/shout warriors, etc in WvW.

Speaking of those warriors, the hammer/sword/horn/shout warrior is actually the biggest argument against playing anything condition based in WvW at all. Until they get nerfed condition builds will be completely kittened vs any organized group as 50% of their dps is removed or turned into a boon.

Rashagal.5867:

Ralathar.7236:

A very tactful and sportsmanlike statement. Bonus points for standing up to his own server and calling for civility and mutual respect.

Cheers, Ralathar. A well put post and a refreshing change from the chest thumping. Here’s to hoping that all 3 servers take note of your words and tone down the vitriol.

Happy Hunting.

Thanks. I like to be a respectful competitor. But also on the selfish side of things if you lose touch with the reality of the situation you set yourself up for future failure. Pride and arrogance are exploitable weaknesses.

Gorefiend.9675:

Also Ralathar, you are delusional if you think the population of two servers does not even match the third. Especially with the fact that all three can queue up a map at prime time. Just curious, but are you even on the TS let alone play WvW?

They match us or more during the day, but even both of them do not match our population during the night. The difference in resistance they are able to provide late night and early morning was, pardon the pun, a night and day difference between the resistance we could provide during the day.

I am always in TS and I am one of the ones that drags my guild into TS when they are not. When things started going ugly on Saturday I switched out of EBG (so as not to waste a que spot) and literally stopped what I was doing and got in touch with my guild and later guild leader so that we could do our best to stem the tide. Tried to warn the people in EBG but they laughed and then 2-3 hours later lost everything in EBG.

The time I can commit varies considerably sometimes, but my commitment to WvW is pretty large and when I can I spend entirely too much time on this game primarily in WvW.

LAD Infinitum.1675:

Rest assured, your ongoing insistence on the efficacy of a server-wide commitment to one VoIP has not fallen on deaf ears. The previous attempt on Borlis to unite the server in one TS bogged down in a quagmire of petty drama, but the latest attempt headed up by Varlen/Deltona finally seems to be catching on. We’re all very excited to see where it takes us as we continue to promote usage.

And yes, I think most of us know that you EBay’ers are not bad people. All of my personal interactions with you have been nothing but a pleasure. Sometimes you can be a little rough around the edges on the forums, but every server has that

Just hang in there. Ehmry Bay had it’s own share of drama at one time, as did PK. Eventually we resolved the issues and trimmed out some trouble makers who could not tone it down. Keep working at it and you’ll get there.

<3 my PK hehe. Good to see my guild representing itself maturely in this thread.

tiramisu.8706:

Please stop. Every server is guilty of it. Check out old BP / AR / NSP threads. It’s just a thread.

Whether or not other people do it does not make something either better or worse. A relative difference is not an absolute difference. Being a kitten is being a kitten regardless of whether 5 people do it or 50.

It also says something about a person and their insecurities. troddles off…FOO!!

I apologize for the attitude of my fellow Ebay players. Ebay has indeed come a long way since the old days and is much more organized than it was. Skill and organization does indeed play part of the reason we do well.

HOWEVER, it is also true that we easily have more population than either BP or AR and possibly as much as both combined. We CERTAINLY have more night coverage and have proved it many times.

Alot of Ebay is insulting and dismissive towards BP and AR right now. Alot of Ebay says that we are just more organized, have faster response times, are more skilled. Keep in mind that these are the same small % of Ebay players who are actively trolling, bragging, and thumping their chest. As such they are not very credible.

I thank Borlis Rock for your united opposition as it has made the game fun and you have proved that you can regularly beat us in our prime time when working together. You have also proven that you do not have the numbers that we have at night doubly so.

Shame on the Ebay who are here trolling and thumping chest when we gained 90% of our lead with BP and AR asleep and unable to match our numbers. That is not a satisfying victory.

Chaosky.5276:

Chill build? Condition build? You’d be of more use to your team by just doing jumping puzzles all day to get siege. In WvW elementalists are no longer effective in any role beyond support with a staff, and in sPvP there’s not much point in taking a non-bunker ele.

I can make a scepter/dagger condition build work, but it’ll be far from effective, especially in WvW. I’ve made Berserker’s staff work against decent players in sPvP, but that doesn’t mean anyone in their right mind would want me on their team.

Yes, you can apply chill to entire groups of people for long duration quite easily and you have many skills to choose from. Choosing to pursue that also leaves your stats open to be quite tanky. Mobility is key in WvW which is why Frozen Ground is so powerful from staff. By going tanky and focusing on chilling the enemy (You can literally have chill on more utilities than you can even equip by far) you give up alot of damage but you increase the damage of your zerg. I understand most people don’t understand that interrelation as it doesn’t give you any direct feedback that you helped, but it’s there. It also buffs the cripples, burns, bleeds, immobilizes, etc you have available as you are getting max condition duration.

Elementalists also have more than just scepter as an option for condition. D/D can apply significant condition damage. As can D/F as a tankier alternative. Both can cause severe disruption and still be pretty tanky too.

I agree that staff is still more effective in many cases. But the other options are definitely effective as well. You don’t throw everything else out just because one might be a little better in general.

stale.9785:

Guys, I know you’re having a great time debating whether or not staff should be 1v1 viable or not, but could I please get you to start that discussion in another thread, so this one doesn’t get “moderated” (moderation = lock and deletion here, which would suck.)

Fair enough, I heavily disagree with most of your changes.

Fire: All the fire skills are fine and work well, they do not need a buff. They are powerful and easy to land used correctly. Damage should be avoidable just like 95% of ranged damage in the game. That is how the game is designed, I am sorry.

Water:

Water Blast: Could use a bigger radius on the heal to make it reliably hitting melee, no need to heal more than it does. This is supplemental healing to everything else you get.

Ice Spike: This is a good skill, a lesser delay would need a damage nerf. I regularly hit 2-3K in full rampager’s. I would hit harder with a straight power build. The ridiculously low cooldown on this skill makes it spammable.

Frozen Ground: LOL this skill is already GOLDEN. Lets not horrendously overpower it please. 2 seconds per second in the larger field is 4 seconds with condition duration. By asking for 8 seconds you open up the door to 16 seconds of chill per second applied 5 times. It’s already good as is, especially if you play smart and cripple or immobilize people in it.

Air:

Chain Lightning: Full Rampager’s it’s hitting from 700 to 1,300+ regularly. With bounces this means 2,100 to 3,900 from a single autoattack. I’m not even built for pure power damage. This is great for small scale and much more difficult to dodge than fireball. Don’t ask for instant’s when this game is built around being able to avoid nearly all damage.

Lightning Surge: It does 2k-3k+ with a Rampagers build to people in a small AOE with a short cast time and it blinds. Radius is buffed by blasting staff. I wouldn’t cry about a shorter cast time but it certainly does not need it to be a pretty good skill. Nothing below 1 second for any reason though. That would be way too short.

Static Field: First Frozen Ground and then Static Field? You want to buff two of the best crowd control skills in the game? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. In fairnes it’s not like a small amount of damage would make people use it for any other reason, but it’s not needed and the skill is already extremely powerful.

Earth:

Stoning: Projectile speed seems to match the feel of the spell pretty well. Honestly if I was to buff this anywhere it’d be in the damage and the effect because there isn’t much reason to use stoning in general when Fireball and Chain Lightning are better. The weakness is nice but doesn’t feel like it’s enough to make this consistently usable when you will be using so many better skills.

Eruption: Does good damage when it lands, works as good area denial and dodge burning when it doesn’t. Works very well in combination with the other earth skills to force dodges or land.

Unsteady Ground: I wouldn’t mind a 3 or 4 second cripple, but 8 is completely overkill. This is a thin line so it would be harder to abuse than frozen ground so it has a little room to be buffed, but being able to apply 16 seconds of cripple for 1 hit on somebody would be broken. Condition duration yo.

Also you want to remove the 5 person limit? WTF lol. Don’t be bad. With a single salvo I can down an entire mass of people. I don’t know what you are doing wrong but if you cannot do the same you might work on your rotation. Let me give you a start rotation to help.

Staff AOE damage rotation: Meteor Shower > Flame Burst (optional) > Glyph of Storms (Optional: also Fire or Earth depending on situation) > Eruption/magnetic aura (instant cast while casting eruption) > Shockwave (Optional: use if able to hit multiple people), Static Field (Optional: depends on need for utility vs dps), Ice Spike > Frozen Ground (Optional: use if able to hit multiple people). Ice bow’s Ice Storm can also be added to the rotation for a large amount of additional damage.

You’ll notice I end with Water attunement. I will stay in this attunement using my supportive abilities until I judge that meteor storm is available again. Ice Spike is an extremely low CD AOE move allowing you to keep AOE DPS/area denial going and you can gain the benefits of soothing mist for your group as well as the other supportive abilities.

Of course in zerg vs zerg situations most of the time the CC takes priority so you would open with Static Field or Frozen Ground and possibly throw shock-wave/unsteady ground in. For added defense Glyph of Storms can be thrown in while in earth attunement

Rotation dynamically adjust to the situation so it’s never the same, but this gives you a base idea of chaining together multiple aoe’s quickly. Also depending on situation you cluster or spread the AOE effects.

Also I laugh every time someone complains that an auramancer build can’t solo X or Y build. Auramancer is a supportive build. The aura’s and such are balanced around their ability to be shared out. If it could solo and not be eaten by some other things out there it would be highly imbalanced.

I mean seriously guys?

I’ve played a vast variety of Ele builds and quite simply they work in WvW. Not all work as roamer of course, but I have viable and important roles as each spec used correctly. This cannot be said of most professions to anywhere near the same degree.

I am assuming you are smart. You said yourself DD bunker barely got touched by the nerfs but then say they are justified. If bunkers were barely touched then who got hit? That’s right almost all other types of build.

RTL was always way too good and that is the main nerf bunkers received. It affects other too yes, but it was almost as effective of an escape for other builds too as RTL relied on escaping, not damage mitigation. It can still do that, just not to the same crazy degree. I do agree however it should get a 20 second cooldown as long as it is used on a target that it is in range of regardless of whether it hits or not. To keep with the spirit of it’s usage.

Mist Form nerf was more of a bug fix in my eyes. I never saw why it was a viable option to heal like that and they nerfed that across the board so it’s certainly not ele specific.

Then whatever class you were on you were doing it wrong. Any good warrior theif or mesmer should be able to shut down the basic DD build. The mesmer might have the hardest time staying in melee but has all the tools to keep the DD ele in combat. Thief and Warrior can simply outrun and DPS the ele til down. Ranger has the capability to keep up but requires the pet to properly engage the ele though dogs should be a nice compliment to countering ele by forcing stun breaks.

So you are saying specific specs can kill you if they can chase you down? Why is that a problem? Are you supposed to be unkillable or something? If that’s a problem to you that is not a style of thinking that means balance as those same spec’s also have their theoretical counters.

Even still though the range you have to run to safety is immense, and you can juke two of those in the water. Mesmer relies on charge lines for water mobility, that can be used against them. Warriors won’t have the same movement advantages you have in water, or the amount of CC. Used properly both can be handled in water so as to escape. Especially with proper use/timing of the air attunement teleport bubble, the stun, and chill.

Jinks.2057:

Our organized guilds smash thier organized guilds….so your theory means nothing.

Either way my statement rings true

Just like theirs smash ours sometimes. Though we like to forget that happened and instead concentrate on the times we wipe them instead.

BlackBeard.2873:

Ralathar.7236:

Example: Your statement of WvW. Bunkers are alive and well in WvW and still incredibly effective there when used well. The nerfs barely affected WvW and now bunkers can be caught occasionally instead of almost never.

Reason: You are focused on sPVP and pretend to have considerable knowledge beyond your area of expertise because you let your personal bias interfere.

Actually, I do WvW WAY more than sPVP, to the point that WvW is more of my specialty area. I only keep a tab on the sPvP world so that I know what future nerfs are coming

I actually do play the D/D bunker in WvW, and my play-style was to roam solo, taking yaks, guards, and solo-ing camps. I am not super-pro or anything, but I am ok. This play-style was SEVERELY hampered by both the mist-form and RtL change. I agree with the mistform change, as it allowed me to react with my “oh-crap” much later and heal up then peace-out. I strongly disagree with the RtL change b/c I can rarely run at all when odds swing against me now, and they often do b/c my damage is just o.k. (meaning longer fights). When a couple people show up (usually thief + X), 1 immobilize and I am toast. I inevitably end up eating some burst before MF, but then they are on top of me. Good luck outrunning that thief now :-).

Of course anything can work in a zerg or big group, but that isn’t what the gripe was about. Try solo-roaming as a bunker/aurashare ele and you will understand why we upset. Warriors, thiefs, and rangers catch us with ease, and any kind of immobilize is deadly. Perhaps I need to go full-on bunker (0/0/20/20/30 with 2 runs of melandru and condition duration food to go with geomancer’s freedom) to have a chance to escape, but I can’t stand being a turtle.

Prior to the nerf, its not like D/D bunkers were owning people all over wvw. You had a few people who could troll small groups of up-levels (not downing them, just distracting), but it wasn’t nearly meta-changing power (for that see thief: the reason you need to PVT or gtfo). The only time I feel effective is playing the support role or running inside the safety of a larger group where I won’t get focused so quickly. My solo-capabilities bit the dust. It is for that reason I am growing up a ranger and thief, that way I will always have an option for solo-roaming that can actually get away (and boy are they fast in comparison).

You must be doing it wrong, I’ve faced quite a few bunkers post patch that had no problem shrugging off countless attempts at CC and immob, dealing damage, and still being able to escape the vast majority of the time.

These bunkers that evidently have the build and know how to play pretty much require chain immobilize or boon ripping to kill.

Chaosky.5276:

True enough, but doesn’t such a limitation seem like a poor design choice when the goal for the Elementalist class is versatility? I’d much rather have the option to make a half support and half solo build.

There is a difference between viable 1 vs 1 and top tier competitive 1 vs 1. Staff is viable, it is not competitive. You can’t have everything. No class does even with versatility.

I’m utterly baffled as to what advantages we have over other classes other than healing. It’s certainly not damage, nor mobility. …Engineers and necromancers have comparable AoE damage, guardians possess comparable CC and survivability, and possibly superior support capability…

Condition damage is easily mitigated and countered with cleansing, this is actually a critical weakness of necro in WvW. Otherwise they have to be a much riskier well bombing build to achieve AOE. Engineers die horribly to retal even worse than ele’s do, without the option to avoid it via AOE selection like we have.

As well to beat us in some specific areas both of those classes have to give up more support and CC, meaning we now have a significant advantage over them. Don’t be too narrow in your focus, you must consider the entire situation and all counters.

Ralathar.7236:

The problem isn’t that staff cannot be made to be better at 1 vs 1 mind you. The problem is that if staff becomes good at 1 vs 1 without giving anything up staff will undeniably become overpowered. If you nerf other aspects to give it 1 vs 1 power you have just screwed over countless people for your own personal desires and that is quite frankly selfish and hypocritical. They matter as much as you after all.

I have a difficult time imagining that the changes to the staff in the OP would suddenly make it a great solo weapon. Nonetheless, this is a fair point, and I would hardly be the first to suggest a trait a bit like Blasting Staff that would weaken the staff’s AoE capability in exchange for more effectiveness against single targets.

Such a trait would be fair, balanced, and provide the ability to satisfy both sides if implemented correctly.

Leo G.4501:

Which is sort of how I use them too, although depending on the situation, I might hang onto the weapon and wait out the cooldown and fling a few auto attacks…they could probably make all the auto-attacks on all the conjures a bit better by adding an extra effect…but a 1sec burn on Lava axe auto, give earth shield a 3-chain auto with weakness on the first 2 and bleed on the 3rd etc.

And that’s kinda sort of also why I suggested giving the act of dropping a conjured weapon some play…like putting them down breaks stun or buffs you and your group or creates a combo field…that is if they wouldn’t give the skills the functionality of being able to put them down and pick them up again.

…but yeah, I would definitely see the use of Frost bow on my scepter build if dropping the bow while it had charges created an ice field. 2 ice fields on a 60sec cooldown not including their other skills when you wield them? Seems like a perfect and easy add to me.

I’ve toyed with the idea of effects on dropping, but ultimately felt that such thematic effects might be a little much. It would be a nice addition after addressing some of the bigger problems if conjures were still seen as lacking, but I wouldn’t add it into the first wave of changes by any means.

Jinks.2057:

KAOS tag

Anyway I must say that Ebay is holding off both servers at the same time….and its not because of population

We are just better.

Being part of an organized guild colors your view. As organized guilds we smash through pugs with regularity and in many cases even other organized guilds. However this is true of all sides. Naturally this is most of what we see of Ebay and we assume that the pugs are niche or the overwhelming minority. Sometimes we even assume this of other guilds.

This is merely a piece of the entire whole though and is not indicative of how good or bad a server is. Also, like it or not the pugs and lesser guilds set us up for a lot of the things that we do as organized guilds. We notice frequently when they are inept and fail, but we rarely acknowledge when they do well or provide us with opportunities to leverage the might of our own personal guilds.

Noice.8730:

Hrolfr.6285:

Noice.8730:

A coordination between FTF, GH and pK.

took 3 fully fortified keeps in 15 minutes

Taking AR’s keeps…must have been all that talent and not the population difference I have heard so much about. Not really something to brag about when there are 25 ppl defending a border land ^shrug^…good job??

Admit it, you didn’t have the time and coordination to move your zerg back to your home

How can you lose all 3 within 15 minutes while you have a decent sized zerg at another server’s home borderlands and eternal battlegrounds?

I’d wager it’s the vast majority of their forces. AR has shown in the past that it has difficulty maintaining that zerg while still having appreciable population basically anywhere else during non-peak hours and sometimes even during peak hours.

It was a tactical mistake mind you to abandon their BL to go and hit things with such a large % of their people, but it’s also a mistake Ebay makes all the time. AR just has less cushion room to make that mistake because they have less people overall and zerging objectives quickly takes alot of people.

This is a weakness of AR we have taken advantage of many many times. Kind of sucks for them honestly because they are stuck between defending, which can be boring, and attacking. They don’t have the people to do both in current tier. With the Borlis Rock alliance we experienced the same situation during the day and prime time most of the weekend and we too lost things we shouldn’t have.

Archer.1658:

Ok, let’s break it down once again. How exactly are your observations backed up btw, better start posting the proofs, where as my proof of people putting in extra hours is there. In fact I could name a few right off the top of my head right now. Obviously new commanders will create disorganization, but it is not intentional or purposeful disorganization to the point where it is detrimental. In fact, its good that they are putting themselves out there and learning, you can call it “disorganization” if you like.

Define performing up to our capibilities? I will tell you again and again, our population difference is not so significant to the point where we would be holding 300+ ppt all day. You seem to be living in the past. Yes I admit we do have a population difference, but to soley put blame on that is making an excuse however you spin it.

I would go into that, but it would be pointless. Viewing it objectively you believe your view and I believe mine. Also viewing it objectively you make statement like “people putting in the extra hours” as a Ebay advantage when in reality we all know all sides did or “it’s not disorganization but it’s disorganization” lol.

Viewing your post history merely confirms what others are suggesting in relation to trolling and objectivity on your part.

So I will leave you to your own devices instead. Yes, you won, yes I couldn’t back up what I said, yes my silence means I have nothing to back up my stuff with, yes jmmies were rustled. All comments of that nature that you might make are expected. After all the last word means you are right……right? (ironic because you won’t be able to help yourself and will “rebut” this post)

Also, I want to give one last Good Job to Borlis Rock. I hope you guys keep up most of the working together even if we will win with our superior population. I know you guys can’t match us capping you at night like now, but you can give us kitten during the daytime and have more fun fights.

I give yall full credit for being an equal match or better while working together during the day and even during our prime time when you can actually match our population.

Score update:

EB: +430
BP: +160
AR: +105

EB: 114,910
BP: 90,408
AR: 85,513

bradderzh.2378:

My request was a simple one. Turn off the trolling and remember you are playing a game with real people no matter what server they are on. A little respect and sportsmanship goes a long way.

I never claimed you to be bads, or that you need to do anything. I actually like what you do as a guild.

Unfortunately people today don’t like to respect their enemies or indeed even their allies. They are instead focused on their own E-peeens. I’ve enjoyed playing with everyone from all servers this week so far, it’s been a blast. I hope all servers continue and keep learning and upping their game so it can continue to be so.

Ignore the baddies from other servers, let people self police and they will eventually get tired of their lack of effectiveness trolling other servers and harassment from their own servers. As well as their general loss of credibility. Believe it or not all 3 servers seem to have a good core or good players who just want to play a good game and have fun. But we also each have some trolls.

I say baddies not as a relation to skill, but as a relation to personality btw.

Archer.1658:

Explain to me how my argument is a fallacy please. I know people who normally wouldn’t put in extra hours, putting in extra hours, does that mean everyone has? No, but it certainly contributes to my overall point. Do I think we have a larger population? Yes, but is it a significant population difference? Maybe, maybe not. As for BP and AR “kicking up their game”. Are you serious? 20-25 BP [WAR] players + pugs couldn’t even take lake yesterday, AR failed to take briar on numerous occasions as well. Furthermore, new commanders have been practicing in Eternal in order to learn, that doesn’t mean we are disorganized. Your argument that population = winning doesn’t hold either, considering servers such as Maguuma who overcame population and won many matches and are now a powerhouse in t3 (that’s not to say their population hasn’t grown since going there). Then there are servers like Jade Quarry, who had a huge population and are now getting decimated by equally populated if not less. In the end, I don’t care about their alliance, because it actually benefits me because more loot. But for you to come out here and say that our server isn’t doing well against 2v1, get out man.

tl;dr version of your post:

If I make a series of vague and subjective statements combined with a few very narrow and select examples I can make any situation sound as I wish without really saying anything of provable worth.

My reply:
I mean seriously. My observations are backed up by what is consistently happening over the last months as well as now. You are just throwing unsupported statements out there, of which some do not even make sense. Example: New commanders don’t know what they are doing but we are not disorganized. You are giving a reason for the disorganization but also denying it lol.

Also please don’t tell me what I’m saying. Overall Ehmry Bay is doing well vs this 2 vs 1. I never said/meant we were not. Are we performing up to our capabilities? Definitely not. Are we doing pretty well overall? Yes. You can give all the excuses you want of why we are not performing as well as we could be, but we definitely did not take the threat of both servers seriously and it bit us in the kitten. That hurt us more than any disorganization or anything else and magnified all our other issues.

It’s a fact that if we didn’t have the population advantage we have, regardless of how much you want to quantify it at, we would be in a terrible situation right now. Anyone that’s been on Ehmry for a long time knows how thin of a red line it is between challenging match-up and PUGs abandoning WvW leaving us terribly outmanned. If not the next time we are the underdogs they will see that in action. (We are not currently the underdogs even now, BP and AR still are)

I really don’t know why people see Ice Bow as bad for any reason. It’s a stronger AOE than Glyph of Storms with some utility skills on around the same cooldown. Even if you use a few skills and drop it you’ve gained a greater effect than the Glyph of Storms.

Lava Axe I can see as it’s an all arounder weapon of moderate power, Lightning Hammer I understand why people don’t appreciate due to it’s niche uses, and Earth Shield is terrible. But the Bow is great for a utility skill lol.