Guild Wars 2

Josh Davis.6015:

Very apt timing for this thread to appear as I’ve recently been enlisted by the WvW team.

What does this mean for you guys? I’ll be working closely with Devon and crew to act as the liaison between our development team and you – raising community concerns with the team, finding answers, being the good/bad guy, and whatever else!

For those wondering, I play engineer, I prefer to roam, I’m currently on JQ, and yes, I take bribes in the form of cookies.

We’re not interested in bribing you, just bathing in your characters blood while your mangled corpse lies under the cow finisher (man that one gets me heated) one of my guild mates just dropped on your head.

So, welcome Josh, glad to have you aboard and looking forward to working with you. If you ever switch to NSP I’ll redact that cow finisher bloody corpse part by the way.

(And here’s some cookies, hook me up with some WXP flasks bro)

If you have a KB that will go off without a target you can also use that to knock the reviver off the downed player, if you knock the thief out of his refuge you can reveal him. The benefit is most enemies will be right where they were when they go into stealth. Drop a KB, stun, or interrupt right where the downed player was to stop the rezzing. If you don’t have those do your best to DPS the area as hard as you can, most thieves tend to be glassy, good pressure will often drive them off the rez.

If you’re outnumbered and doing these prevent the stomp then switch focus the second they start the stealth rez. Think of it as taking two players out of the fight for a few seconds by just downing one. Be ready for the down and have your next target in your head ready to switch to right away. They likely won’t be ready for it and you’ll have the upper hand on them initially.

I always try to think of how to adapt myself to how things work, that’s something we can change easily. Trying to get the game changed takes a lot more work then adjusting our strategies and tactics.

Well, we do have a Dev, Devon Carter. While it seems he never really posted as much in the WvW section as the Dev’s for PvE or sPvP did in their sections, I’ve not seen a post from him in some time, feels like a month or two now (probably an exaggeration but it feels quite rare). I know that PvP tends to have a lower rate of Dev interaction communication wise (PvP players seem to be the most passionate of players and thus most likely to have extreme reactions, often negative) but it’s disheartening that we seemto have no interaction here. At the very least it doesn’t seem to be helping, even if you’re not giving info, come in and interact with us, comment on threads, talk about how you like fighting in EB, or BL’s. Or how you tried to solo a camp and totally kitten ed it trying to face tank a claimer with RI. Or some epic battle you were in. Maybe some player you saw with the most horrific looking armor on in WvW. Anything really, just let us know you’re here, that at least someone cares about WvW and the players who love it. I know that ANet cares about all the aspects of its game, but actions speak louder than words.

I love how varied it is, coming from SW:TOR before GW2 and only really having 5v5 war Zones as the only real form of PvP. In WvW you get small battles, 1v1’s, massive zerg fights, fights where you’re hopelessly outnumbered and are just trying to escape to a tower or keep, or those times you’re just trying to squish a bunch of enemies as they try to escape you. Want to defend a tower? You can, want to roam for duels? You can. Zerg a BL, go for it. Hold off a force with 5-10x your numbers hitting your tower or keep while you talk to an ally guild who’s about to come up behind them, it’s a blast. We like to run out 10-15 seconds before the guild shows up and start dancing/beckoning, as they rush down with far superior numbers to our 1 or 2 groups thinking “this will be a slaughter” 6-8 groups come in behind them and just smash ‘em. It’s such a joy to just go around spiking people from that enemy zerg who just minutes ago severely outnumbered you and thought that it would be an easy take on your tower.

I also like how things can change so rapidly, one hour you’re owning the enemy BL, the next they’ve called in reinforcements and you’re barely holding a tower and camp. The strategy involved, try to hold part of an enemy BL, or give it up to retake yours, is it worthdedicating such a large force to ddistraction? Or just leave a group or two to havoc and hope they can keep the attention of enough enemies to relieve pressure in your home BL and EB.

In short I enjoy almost all of it.

I have 3 guildies who made Asura Mesmers together, and went down to the point of moving the sliders as closely as possible, they wear the same armor, same dye, the whole nine yards. It’s terrible watching them go after people, hilarious, but you almost feel bad for the poor enemies.

Geiir.7603:

They definitely need to make it more important to defend. As it is now you just don’t care. You just come back in a few minutes with your zerg and melt the keep/tower… Zergs should be severely slowed down and towers, keeps, camps, sentries should scale WAY more than they do now. It should require some serious skill and tactic from the zerg to cap a fully upgraded camp, tower, keep etc that’s guarded by some players…

Hmmm, I would say that towers and keeps are exactly what you use to slow down a zerg. I don’t think camps should be too hard to take, maybe make it so a player can make it more difficult (camp mastery, grants all guards in the camp with you toughness) but not ridiculously hard, a camp isn’t supposed to be a hardened defense point.

As for towers and keeps, yes a 40 man zerg is going to roll through your paper tower or keep, but holding a keep or tower is about being ready. Upgrades need to be running from the moment you cap, siege going up right away. If you have no upgrades or siege when the zerg arrives you lost that fight well before it ever started. The problem is like you said though, so many players would rather just return in 5 mins and recap than spend time staying at a tower or keep after it’s capped upgrading it and sieging it so when the zerg shows up it can stand long enough for your force to show up and help.

As for rewards, you’re right there, you get more WXP and bags just following the zerg, but you’ll hold a higher PPT upgrading and defending, the key is to find players willing to do the less rewarding work of upgrading, sieging and escorting Yaks. Then rotate them out to keep people fresh, share the load. I personally would like to see those rewards increased (as what I’m talking about is something my guild tries to focus on) but even if they’re not it makes doing it no less vital to your servers success.

Now, as I mentioned, I say this as someone who spends a lot of his WvW time doing this, and I’ve seen it work. The trick is, again, being ready, call out that incoming the second you see it, have your siege going right away and hold out long enough for your force to show up to drive the enemy force off. Most zergs break rank real fast when AC’s and cows are dropping on them from one side and a sea of red rushes them from the other, once theyve broken rank they’re easy picking for your force and siefe. My guild does this regularly with other guilds on our server and while you’ll never win them all, we’ve seen our success skyrocket as a result of doing these things.

It got closed, ANet felt it was becoming to toxic, they are suggesting you go to http://www.gw2wvw.net/ it’s a user created site to host match up threads now. They’ll be by any moment to lock this thread and let you know.

I’m from NSP (as my signature says), I wouldn’t say WvW is dying on my server. While it has never been the healthiest, our WvW population in comparison to our PvE population is quite low, I’d say we’re still doing ok. We have some guilds that are very dedicated to WvW and they are still going strong and able to field 40+ groups of just guild members. I think we did see a drop off after the season, but that is to be expected I think. I’m not worried about my server, I think we’re doing ok.

Well, while you were the only commander on when he came in, he came in with his own group, which you then commandeered. You, instead of trying to work with him, simply told him to tag down ( I think EB needs more than just one commander running, but to each their own) and to be honest your post came across kind of arrogant. That leads me to believe maybe you didn’t ask quite as nicely as you could have. What he did was wrong, hurt your team, and just plain dumb. Had you worked with him though, he may have helped, rather than harmed. I’d say use this as a lesson why you should work with someone on your team, not simply dismiss them.

One thing to think about is the situation you are in with them? Are you in a 1v1 situation? Many WvW players run builds that are designed to be effective in large group play, and while deadly to large groups of players while with their allies, they are helpless when you catch them alone. Most are aware of this and have sacrificed viability in a 1v1 for more usefulness in zerg play. Unlike sPvP, 1v1 or small group play is all you find, WvW has multiple kinds of conflicts, from 1v1, to small group, all the way up to zerg play, you pick what to be effective at, as it’s not common for one build to really excel at both, there’s more to WvW than just killing 1 enemy. Because of that many players aren’t as skilled at 1v1 encounters or small group encounters, they just don’t have the experience with it that a sPvP player does, it’s practically all you do in sPvP, where as it’s one of many things you do in WvW.

That being said, I don’t doubt you run into more players with a lower skill level in WvW, more allies in WvW gives a less skilled player more of a cushion to learn, it’s greater number of objectives to complete appeals to a broader range of players, and the fact you can play with the character you already have and use the gear you already have makes for a lower barrier for entry.

In short there’s more to WvW than your skill against one player, this is shown in its population.

I will say that I have enjoyed the match ups NSP has had since the season ended much more than the ones we had during seasons. They have been much closer and even. Now, we were at the bottom of silver league so that makes a big difference on our experience, but I don’t mind fighting a smaller selection of servers so long as they are closer matches. Most of (if not all) the matches we were in during leagues ended in total blow outs. Not the end of the world, but it’s more exciting in close matches, for me at least.

K U T M.4539:

Psh.

Koi Cakes.

—

OT: That food should be nerfed hard. I like my 70% condition duration, but nobody should be able to get it this easily.

Yeah, I don’t actually use the Pizza, I use the Koi Cakes, but same difference for the purpose of the OP’s point.

Interesting, I, personally, really enjoy the function of the downed state, as well as the stomp mechanic. I think it adds a level of strategy, and challenge to combat in both 1v1’s, small group, and zerging. You need to change how you approach a stomp in all of those situations based off your current surroundings, allies you may or may not have with you, as well as the class you’re trying to stomp. Sometimes your best bet is to go straight for the stomp yourself, sometimes you need to let someone else do it. Sometimes you should simply move on to another target (say you just downed an ele by a tower or keep door, don’t waste your time), other times you have your necro team mate put a fear down to drive enemy rezzers off so you can get the stomp off. Then maybe your in a zerg group, and if you try to stomp 12 red circles will pop up on you half way through and wipe you before you get the stomp off. Maybe then you should send your mesmer in to use distortion for the stomp while surviving the AoE’s, maybe that key kill rallies a few team mates who turn the tide. Well, you get the idea, its a mechanic that can reward strategy and tactics, it also can punish a lack of thought if you’re not careful. Some classes are better for it, while other classes strength lies elsewhere. Personally I try to focus on making sure I maximize my advantages through strategy and tactics rather than worry about getting things changed to suit what I want, or get rid of what I dont like, but then again, I’m no game designer and maybe things are bad and need changing.

While I use, and quite like the +40% duration, I would be OK with them changing the +40% so long as the change the -40% to match. I only run the +40% because if someone has the -40% I’m completely crippled on a lot of the damage my build produces.

You are right though, it’s such a drastic difference from other foods.

Edit: crippled, used a different word that got changed to kitten.

I’m running a 20/20/30/0/0 build with sc/t and sw/sw and up until just a day or two ago I was using retaliatory shield. I have the rune of the guardian set, like was mentioned, from the zergmower build. I found that I tend to dodge out of a blocked attack or blurred frenzy, maybe even use the prestige after blocking just out of habit, and I was negating a lot of that retaliation. So, at that point I said I’m probably better off with blade training for the reduced CD’s anyway. I’m also not a pure power build, so retail wasn’t amazing for me. I’m sure to keep tinkering though, I’ll check back again if I change it and let ya know why.

Darek.1836:

BirdSong.2541:

kaco.9856:

BirdSong.2541:

Song to other servers; Tis the season to be with family Tralalalalaaa laa laa la Nope.

Too much crying, we ain’t even trying, achieve points be flying, WvW iss dyyyiiinnggg

-Rob 1991-2098
#Timetravel #yolo #terminatorwuzreal #sellallappleshares

Lol we can see what you mean when you wont touch FC I can only assume because they match you in numbers and you cant win with what you plan tonight which is why both FC and NSP will zerg us again.

Well they’ve been outnumbering us at times badly and have wiped the main zerg more than once. But the majority of their players are still tactless and awful, more so than usual server pugs. If you get them on their own or in small groups its pretty easy loot bag time.
Although NSP will always be a small player base strong skill set server.

from our point of view we’ve found that Os has no skilled players and have been told they don’t gvg.. (which is ok). however, don’t say NSP has a strong skill set server just because you have (had) a few good players from guilds like tM and formally XOXO

ZING!!! Wait, you’re making fun of me… Well, uhhh, uhhh, even if we’re not skilled we can make up for it with numbers, siege, and cheese builds! So there! Ha! Take that!

I feel better now, I really showed them.

On a serious note, some fun times last night. I had to get off earlier than I wanted but some good fights and a lot of pressure on us in GoM’s BL to retake Bay once we got it. I don’t think I stopped running from north to south gate once after we had it for like 5 mins. I also liked the catapult on the boat trick, that was neat. Was a bunch of you in there when you guys took it back, never a dishonor to go down fighting against those odds. Keep up the fight GoM, I’ll try to get us to start pushing on FC next (as I’ll advised as it may be. :P)

rhapsody.3615:

styx.7294:

So this is just a repeat of last week for Northern Shiverpeaks?

They seem to have more numbers this week that I remember seeing last week. Last night, we all seemed to have even numbers. The fight in GoM’s bay was fun, as well as NSP’s hills. Keep coming out guys, it’s a fun week!

Yeah, we definitely dropped off quite a bit during the holiday season, didn’t seem like there was much zeal for WvW during that time. I know my guild has had less determination during the last few weeks, but we’re planning to start pushing harder again now. I’m sure it’s been kind of like that across all servers recently. Hopefully this is where things start pucking up again. You should see a good showing tonight from us, we’ve got some plans.

kaco.9856:

NSPs prime time is our off time every server knows our off time and the big ones seem to only take stuff then. Good luck with your new finisher just be sure that you outnumber us at least 3 to 1 so you have a chance to use it.

Should I bring golems too? Just to be safe.

XOXO split and the remaining members left the server from what I can gather. Others, I dunno.

kaco.9856:

Lol so NSP needed 100 ppl and golems to take our garrison. Hope you guys are proud that you need so many people and golems. Why don’t you try this in the evenings when we at least have half your numbers? Why dont you do this to FC who has your numbers?

Not just your garrison, but bay and hills too. If they’re not ours already I’d head there now. I’m not even at home and I can tell ya what’s going on. When prime time rolls around tonight and your keeps are all paper you’ll realize why we’re doing what we’re doing. It’s nothing personal man, but we want to grind you to dust beneath our heel, I’d assume the feeling is mutual, right?

Any who, beware the golem rush, you never know when we’ll roll it through again. But if Ihad to bet, II’d say shortly after you retake all your keeps, just in time to stop those upgrades.

Maybe I’ll even get to show you my new finisher I bought tonight. I got it just for you guys, I’m pretty sure you’ll like it. See you(r dead corpse) on the battlefield.

BirdSong.2541:

So I hurd u lyk zerging

I’m in that picture! Yay for me! I port golems good!

I, personally enjoy sieging, upgrading, and watching keeps/towers/camps. It’s something my guild kind of specializes in on certain nights. When we do it though we are on our servers TS and using channel commander to talk with our larger groups when we need help from them and it’s incredibly effective. I actually find after about 30 mins of running Yaks and upgrading I start attracting a lot of roamers trying to cut off our supply lines and I get a lot of fights. Plus I find it thrilling holding off a force 4-10x my size until our large force shows up and absolutely crushes them from behind.

That’s not to say sometimes I don’t dislike it though, and when we want a change we’ll just join up with the guild running the zerg buster force in the other TS channel. It’s really about keeping things fresh I think. Rotating out your tower/keep/camp teams so they don’t burn out, because if you care about PPT at all (which some people don’t, and that’s OK if it’s not your thing) is absolutely necessary.

It’s all about what you enjoy I guess, and make sure to do what you enjoy, that’s the pointof gaming after all. Maybe if your server doesn’t quite do it the way you enjoy check out a couple other servers and see if their play style fits your better.

I was running the latest TA path with my guild when it came out. We had wiped on the last boss a few times when someone suddenly asked the ranger in our group why he wasn’t wearing pants. His long trench coat had hidden it from him being able to see they had broke. We decided at that point he’d been in the dungeon a bit too long. Needless to say I took pictures. :P

Thanks for the video, I liked your “I usually lose 2v1 but I try anyway” comment. You got a smile from me on that one. I like the damage you put out with that set up, I’m a pretty tank build and I’m looking to add some damage, thanks for the insight.

Clones also don’t have food buffs, nor do they strafe. Scepter and staff clones will not move very often, so if you haven’t broken LoS and you see the person moving around a bunch with a ranged weapon it’s likely the player.

Another suggestion would be to build a PU style mesmer and play with the skills that make them go invis to help you understand which ability the may have just used and when to expect them to pop back up.

Some builds are certainly easier than others, some are tougher to play but reward a higher skill level with a much more powerful character, while others are quite powerful, while being less complicated to play well.

I say play what you like, have fun man, it’s a game and that’s what it’s about. If they bother you ignore them, if they’re abusive report them like others have said. You can troll them back I guess (people who say those kinds of things are usually quite susceptible to being trolled in those moments) but it makes you no better than them in most cases. Mesmers are kind of the target for the nerf calls right now because of some builds so you’ll probably catch more flak playing one right now, just let it roll off your back if you’rehaving fun .

As others have said mikal, definitely check what you have set tab for. My tab is only set target enemies, I can’t target ambient creatures without clicking on them.

Ahhh, in that case I’ll consider myself happily trolled (albeit not on purpose).

I may try and give the build a shot later on, though I don’t enjoy phantasm builds in WvW as much, it sounds like a nice build to be able to adapt to different situations. I’ll try to give it a shot.

I liked the part where you went ahead and slammed a whole group of players who use a trait, by far my favorite.

I think you’ve got a nice idea going here but my whole outlook on your post soured as I read your summary. Kind of a sad way to end a well thought out and constructed post, maybe an edit on the end there to make it more friendly?

Any who, I wish you luck with the build, just not too much this week, as I’m NSP. :-P

Another thing to do is go out into the lowbie area’s and practice your CQ combat there. The mobs there are much less punishing and give you more room for error when learning.

I did the same thing as you in regards to leveling and beginning 80 play, I was GS/Staff for the longest time and it took me a while to get used fighting up close and personal. Learning how to time dodges, blocks, and blurred frenzy is the key to survival and took me some time to do effectively after switching to a melee style of play. Start in some easy areas and work your way up as you become comfortable with each area. You’ll be good to go in no time.

Dogs say “Woof”, cows say “Moo”, MMO players say “PvP is unbalanced”.

Honestly Warriors don’t bother me all that much, I just dislike when the front line of a zerg hammers me like 6 times and I can’t do anything but die. But then again I probably would have died anyway in most of the cases I get upset about, as I am usually quite outnumbered. So I usually just rub my bruised ego and bottom till they feel better and move on. As others have said you are built to beat some classes while others are your Achilles heel, its the way of the MMO.

Agreed, but they are more worried about spammers I guess. Best thing to do is have a couple volunteers to type for them when this happens, its not too bad if you’re on TS/Vent/Mumble with them.

FranzM.1298:

Razamatazz.9628:

I really like a punishment style of play. I run a build with a decent amount of blocks via scepter/torch and sword/sword, the blocks either apply damage or conditions along with1 second of burning due to my guardian rune set. Mimic works great with this set up (thank you for the heads up Zerg Mower build) as well, you just have to make sure you absorb a projectile to activate the block portion (the torch phantasms projectile will do this for you). Mix that with the confusion from scepter 2 and retaliation on block (from the dueling line, I forget which trait number it is) it has that kind of punish people for their actions just as much as the damage you put out.

but the consistency isn’t good enough in my opinion because of useless this is in PVE. In PVE monsters do not spam attacks which is why they need to fix it and give us more variety in that aspect.

Very true, I only had WvW in mind, I switch builds completely for PvE. I think conditions are weaker across the board in PvE.

I really like a punishment style of play. I run a build with a decent amount of blocks via scepter/torch and sword/sword, the blocks either apply damage or conditions along with1 second of burning due to my guardian rune set. Mimic works great with this set up (thank you for the heads up Zerg Mower build) as well, you just have to make sure you absorb a projectile to activate the block portion (the torch phantasms projectile will do this for you). Mix that with the confusion from scepter 2 and retaliation on block (from the dueling line, I forget which trait number it is) it has that kind of punish people for their actions just as much as the damage you put out.

Tricare.2946:

Really, the best fix imo, remove #2 and #3 downed skills.

This way some classes don’t have cheap downed skills that stop all interrupts, while some are just laughable.

People saying, oh I’ll just stability stomp them, try that on a ele, mesmser, theif. Also, some of the classes downed abilities are just jokes.

With the two skills removed, it still allows skillful play around reviving your downed team mates and also weather or not to go for the stomp, because you know that the downed person can’t stop you.

I would say that stomping on a mesmer isn’t that bad actually. You can shatter for distortion for an invulnerable stomp, mass invis stomp if there’s no other players trying to stomp, the prestige from the torch can also allow an invis stomp. If you use a MH sword go in with blurred frenzy to bait them into their KB’s and then stomp. If that fails, and you get KB’d you can use blink to get back to them quickly to get the stomp off. While the Mesmer certainly isn’t the best class for stomping I’ve found quite a few ways to be competent at it.

The others I can’t speak for as I only really enjoy my Mesmer. As for downed state, I like both the opportunity it provides to survive and keep fighting as well as the challenge to really finish a player off.

Yeah, the first thing I thought is when the thieves in my guild want to roam with my Mesmer. I run a condition build with lots of vit and toughness that pumps out clones, blocks a lot, and uses stealth when the blocks run out. It’s really not fair, by the time you figure out there’s a thief there it’s often too late. Nasty combination to deal with.

I tinkered with the runes of the guardian today in a build I have that is like the OP’s. I use Sc/Torch and Sw/Sw. The build already blocked a good amount as it was via Scepter 3 and Sword 4 along with the dueling trait that grants retaliation upon blocking. This is a nice icing on the cake, I liked it a bunch.

Another note, Torch 5 also proc’s mimic, you can summon the phantasm and then start mimic for quite a few blocks, it’s quite nice to be sure.

Just keep running them into [Os], [TFG]‘s or [ZoS]’s groups this week. Every time they get curb stomped by an equal or smaller group of those guys explain to them it’s because those groups are listening to the commander on TS and able to react and buff themselves faster and better because of it. They’ll probably either get on TS to gain a competitive edge, or leave the map because they keep getting pounded. Best way to show them how effective it is is by putting them on the business end of it.

Eventually you realize that it isn’t about the score, or about the bags, or the achievements. It’s about the person beside you. It’s about your server mate standing in the keep beside you, about the guild mate upgrading and sieging the tower with you, it’s about you’re friends, the ones that log on each night to slay the evil invaders that throw golem after golem at you. The ones who will spend hours running and defending Dolyaks so when the enemy zerg arrives your keep can stand long enough for the reinforcements to come and save you.

We fight for each other. No matter how many come, know that I’ll stand beside you and do whatever it takes to give you the best chance for victory against all odds.

NSP Pride.

When you have a 1v1 match the side with a lower population gets focused the same way that the servers who have been 2v1’d recently. It’s tough enough now for lower population servers in a 1v1v1 situation. Imagine if there wasn’t another team for the dominant server to go after and give the losing team some breathing room. The second you faced a stronger server you would be pushed into your spawn and camped endlessly. In a 3 way match the third team eventually comes in and makes the the campers have to change focus thus allowing the weaker team to get a foothold and gain some breathing room. Two faction fights tend to stagnate significantly quicker than 3 way fights.

I was actually quite surprised when looking at it and it said “death”. But it makes sense that they drop when downed, just like all other stacks do.

In regards to them being useless because of that, I use a superior sigil of corruption. Until I switched to a sturdier build I was considering getting rid of it as well, for the same reason as you, I could never stay alive long enough build many stacks. Now that I run a condition damage/vitality/toughness build I don’t die very often at all. I know it’s tough as an elementalist, much more so than a mesmer, and feel where you’re coming from (I have a guildy who runs a glass cannon ele and I credit him for a large chunk of my combat healer title). It may be time to reconsider your build a bit if you can’t keep stacks up to the point where you feel that what is arguably the best WXP point investment useless. I would guess that if you have the ranks to get those stacks you know what you’re doing from the time you’ve spent in WvW, and thus your build is lacking the survivability your play style needs.

I guess when I play it’s with a focus on PPT, but the biggest reason is running with my guild. I love the coordination and working together, whether its wiping enemy zergs, taking enemy camps/towers/keeps, or upgrading structures and even running Yak’s. Knowing the guild is helping the server is just a blast.

The Scepter gets good in certain builds, and more so at higher levels. When you start traiting conditions on clone deaths the clones from the auto attack become much more valuable. And the torment from the block, as mentioned, gets brutal when you build for condition damage, which is what you’re shooting for with the conditions on clone kills. The confusion from #3 gets good damage out on players, but isn’t as strong on mobs, much like condition damage.

All in all Scepter feels like a more PvP (WvW for me) oriented weapon. I don’t really use it much in PvE, but love it in PvP situations.

Edit: Had this in mind the whole time I was typing but never said it. Condition builds aren’t as powerful as a strong direct damage build in PvE, and thus the scepter isn’t as strong there, where as conditions in PvP combined with a good fit and toughness are quite powerful. And as I mentioned the scepter is a very effective ranged weapon in PvP due to its synergy with our condition builds.

What Pyro said about Phantasm mesmers is true. If I end up with an I duelist and iZerker on me my life gets pretty hard. If you have any companions you can pull out, like a thief, or hounds of Balthazar, and get them on the real mesmer they will track the mesmer in and out of that stealth for ya.

Wow, while the numbers themselves may need tweaking from a practical point, I must say your idea behind this is great. I really like how it gives a team that is behind a chance to get back in the fight. Maybe even incentivize the second and third place teams with even more bonus points for stomping or taking the objectives of the first place team if they get too far ahead.

Overall a good idea that can help the problem without tackling the basically impossible to solve population issues.

Watch for retaliation after the block as well, I’ve traited that. The scepter block will put 5 stacks of torment on ya, so watch the running around after a scepter block, mine does around 5.6k if you move around the whole time. The sword block does around 1k also, stack those with the retaliation I’ve got after that block and, well, you get the idea.

If it makes you feel any better hammer warriors drive me crazy. Almost as much as the “I only come out of stealth long enough to backstab→heart seeker spam you” thieves =P. Though usually its the 5 guys behind the warrior who curb stomp me while I’m stunned that really get me. Man I hate being chain stunned or hammer punted 3 times in a row, I get so frustrated not being able to figure out how to counter it.

sephiroth.4217:

After those golem rushes I feel like a tsunami is about to hit IOJ from every side

Also nice work NSP on gathering that many people to defend that quickly

I believe NSP has actually gotten stronger as a result of these matches. It has brought together a group of guilds who have begun working with each other for the benefit of the server as a whole and started a community. As a result we have seen an increase in defense, such as upgrading what we have, and because of this our larger forces are able to and more willing than ever, to respond to enemy zerg attacks on our Garrison, Keeps and Towers.

It has been encouraging to see something good come from the adversity we’ve faced over these past weeks.

For some Mesmer builds killing the clones accounts for a lot of the Mesmer’s damage. Never targeting the clones when using tab would cause those traits to be almost all but useless. In addition, the Mesmer is all about misdirection and confusion and using your clones to hide yourself is a big part of playing a mesmer, we have light armor, we use the clones to mitigate damage to compensate for that squishy armor. Again, removing clones from tab target would give everyone a simple way to bypass so much of our defense. It’s a defense that takes some effort to use too, you have to act like your clones or you’ll be easy to pick out.

Now, that’s not to say the tab targeting in this game can be quirky at times, if that’s more your concern, that sometimes it simply won’t target someone, and keeps skipping over them, then I agree with you. If you’ve found the Mesmer, and some quirk with tab targetting is picking clones on the outskirts of your FoV or off your screen, that needs to be looked at.

I would suggest something along the lines of what Xavi said. I actually have two full sets of gear, in PvE I run a much more glassy build, where as in WvW I switch to a much tanker condition based build. At 3 silver per trait relearn it’s only a one time investment on 2 sets of gear and you can run optimally in two area’s of game play.

As for which weapon, in PvE I would go sword, in WvW I actually run Scepter/Torch and Sword/Sword, so I can only say both there.

Thieves are the only class I can’t seem to beat on my mesmer. Any time I get them low they simply reset and come back again. Everything else I either win or lose depending on the skill of the other player. I guess necro’s can give me trouble too if I don’t pay close enough attention and end up stacked 50 conditions deep, but that’s my own darn fault.