Guild Wars 2

You know, it’s really unseemly when you brag about outnumbering your opponent in a particular time zone… You guys should recruit more NA/EU/OCE and try compete with T2 servers and see how your SEA stacks up against them.

Chris.3290:

I have no idea how SoR compares to T2 (how is their non-NA prime?) but they can probably still beat TC and SoS; even if it would probably be close.

BG’s EU would completely demolish any T2 (ticking over +500 at times) and both JQ and BG outnumber any T2 NA. Add in a crushing advantage in SEA….nah, it would be a bad joke.

There’s no population advantage during NA between T1 and T2 right now. Was a bit different back in leagues, but it is really really different now. Especially with a focus on smaller groups from both JQ and BG so instead of seeing 70-80 man blobs, you’d see 2-3x 20-30 man groups on different parts of the map, most of whom are looking for fights. Also, we can’t queue all 4 maps during NA prime anymore, so there’s that… we usually just have 20-30 people on each map now with a 30~ish group floating. At least BG does.

SoR could beat T2 servers, but it would be pretty close I think. They no longer have any EU and their Oceanic is pretty small now since most of them moved to JQ.

BG’s EU is 50 people max on TS. I’m not quite sure how that will “demolish” any T2 server. Sure, if we face 2 T2 servers, we’ll probably tick 400~, but it certainly won’t be “demolishment”. Same with JQ. During Oceanic, T2 servers would outnumber BG’s Oceanic believe it or not, but that’s only in a 3-5 hour period. Throw another T1 server into the mix and BG would be ticking what we normally tick during Oceanic these days – 150~200.

You would be correct in that any T1 SEA population would destroy T2 servers at the moment though. Outside of T1, perhaps only Darkhaven could put up some fight. Maybe. From my experience, on a good day, we can queue 3 maps and have a 20-30 man team on the 4th map (usually EBG cause kitten EBG) during early SEA, and have an 80 man float team during late SEA and into early EU. The only server that can compare with that is JQ.

BG and JQ during early SEA is like South Koreans vs Taiwanese/Chinese haha

Anyway, tl;dr, several time zones between T1 and T2 would be fairly even with a slight advantage to T1. Only during SEA would see T1 come out on a huge lead. If T2/3 servers can get some decent SEA coverage, we could have 6~8 servers that are fairly balanced. GET RECRUITING!

Wait what?

That is really sad to hear. My thoughts go out to his friends and family.

Also, IRON, get back to SoR. We like fighting you guys and honestly, we miss you

Well, from a BG perspective, our most recent success has largely been due to our SEA and EU since our Oceanic kind of fell apart. With SEA and EU, our guilds aren’t willing to move off as far as I know, cause we enjoy each other’s company. Hell, HB, our main EU guild, has been one of the backbones of BG’s success for a long time.

In all honesty, from what I’ve seen recently, T2 can make a decent fight of a T1 server. T1 no longer is stacked to the hilt. I know BG’s been having float teams during early-NA to NA prime and that is a really recent phenomenon. Just shows that we can no longer fill the maps like we used to. JQ seems the same way.

Basically, the only difference between T1 and T2 is Oceanic-EU coverage. JQ and BG both have a big Asian community, JQ being more Chinese based and BG being more Korean based.

Right now, I’m 100% sure that SoS, TC and FA have a larger Oceanic than BG, though that’s only 1 timezone, so it wouldn’t really make a huge difference overall. JQ’s Oceanic is pretty big though so I’m not sure there. The next steps are to somehow get more Asian players/guilds to T2 servers and they would be pretty kitten balanced against T1 servers.

Even now, I’m pretty sure that T1 won’t steamroll T2 like we used to. Won’t know until this kitten T1 matchup is over though. Maybe 2 more weeks of SoR tanking score?

Ele has to make extreme risk/reward choices in terms of dps/survivability, something other classes don’t have to do (Dire/Carrion stats in WvW).

Instead of buffing ele, just make every other class have the same risk/reward system eles do. Though tbh, our trait lines need a huge rework. They’re just not synergised.

Seigfried.5938:

So i hear TW is moving to TC and choo might be following. Good bye, balance.

That would only push TC up to T1 wouldn’kitten So TW and Choo would get farmed again by BG and JQ? Makes no sense whatsoever

There’s a specific guy in BG that does this all the time, even after being reported many many times.

A certain Asuran Mesmer…

If ANet could ban that guy, would be nice

Keeping it simple

3 Likes:
1. Large scale server vs server competition
2. Awesome battles
3. The community it creates

3 Dislikes:
1. 80 man blobbing. I don’t like it when we do it, I don’t like it when other servers do it.
2. Rubberbanding and latency issues (doesn’t really affect PvE in anyway, but in WvW…)
3. Lack of incentive to actually fight and PvP rather than hide behind structures.

I have more dislikes, but generally speaking, they’re more to do with players than game mechanics. What I like about the game mode outweighs most of my dislikes.

FrozenStarRo.7240:

I’m not happy. They catered to the veterans who have been stockpiling high amounts since day 1, with no regards to the effects this would have over players that were or are starting out. I came into the game in August, had short of 300k karma when the nerf hit a month later and I blew it all on the rare/exo recipes while leveling professions. Now I’m a week away from finishing my stack of t6 mats for legendary, and at 72k karma and 6 shards in my collectibles, I’m probably looking at another month if not more of wait for getting the final shards to complete my Gift of Mastery. And considering the other 500k+ karma I already put into clovers, it’s pretty unreasonable.

I came back in October after taking a 10 month break from the game. Had 300k karma on me then. I now have 1.3mil karma and regularly buying Orrian boxes.

Hell, I get nearly 500k karma a month. All my level 80s geared up with exotics, crafting recipes all maxed out with karma, spent nearly 100 obi shards with ascended crafting.

I still feel Karma is too easy to get tbh.

Seems like there’s a general consensus that the staff A/As are really poor except for the Guardian’s. Hopefully ANet can take a look at this issue. As it is right now, AAs on the staff are a placeholder skill while we wait for our cooldowns.

What I would really wish for is for one of Ele’s staff A/As to be melee. That would go such a long way to fixing Ele’s weaknesses in my opinion. I honestly have no problem with the attack speed per sey. The problem is more in the fact that their targeting is really really bad and rarely hits their intended target. I get so many “Out of range” or “Obstructed” when they’re clearly not out of range or obstructed…

Also, Air attunement A/A and Mesmer staff A/A I believe should hit 5 targets. Regular melee cleaves hit up to 5 targets, why can we only hit 3? Makes sense much?

Godmoney.2048:

Comparing classes straight across? Do i really need to explain why this is so incredibly flawed way to view things?

Comparing classes straight across is not only incredibly unbalanced way to view things it’s also entirely illogical.

Maybe we should just get rid of all classes and just have a single class with identical abilities?

If you actually read the post, you’d know your statement is completely false. Nearly the entire post was about autoattacks on the staff weapon.

eleshazar.6902:

As a note I have all of the staff bearing characters at 80 and play them quite frequently.

My only comment here (since I think a lot of the suggestion the OP has are pretty flawed and will never actually happen, no offense but you are asking for way too much here) is to have the staff 2 detonate orb on guard be a blast finisher. At that point I think the guard staff would be fine. It isn’t meant as a dps (or an ally healing) weapon. (If you think the main benefit of empower is to heal allies you are sorely mistaken/don’t play guard much).

As for your changes, you are asking for them to be buffed too much and in ways that a lot of people won’t want.

Nothing will change about terrible AAs on staves unless we ask for it. Necro, mesmer and ele A/As on the staff are just terrible as they are slow attacking and rarely even hit their intended target. Guardian A/A damage is really weak as it is since it’s a support weapon (if you read my post more clearly, I did refer to guardian staff specifically as a support weapon – Skill 2 heals, Skill 3 stacks swiftness (and light field to boot), Skill 4 buffs for 12 stacks of might, Skill 5 is a CC), so why not drop the DPS a bit further to bring more support to it?

The only time I asked for a buff is on the ele A/A, where they are just plain awful. In fact, for most of the time, they’re unusable.

danielrjones.8759:

Reverence, not trying to troll, if you have not checked the numbers to max you may want to. 128% is less than 10% of the amount needed to max. Base at 226%-227% is the half way mark on amount of points needed to max base.

Base mf at 218% and on, requires 30k luck per point.
I kept track on 3k greens salvaged, its was approximately 30k points of luck per 1000 salvages. Or approximately 82,000 greens salvaged to go from 218% to 300%
I cannot say how many blues or rares it would require. I do not know.
Of course others may have been more successful with the amount of luck received from salvages, those are just the numbers I dealt with when working mf.

I agree, it was easier to get than I thought. But far more time consuming than I had imagined as well.

My point was that it doesn’t take effort to raise MF. If I started playing the TP, it would take all of 1 month to get to max MF (ok, this is an exaggeration, but you get the idea).

Tongku.5326:

-snip-

I never said change guardian staff A/A, just a slight nerf on damage and introduce some healing effect to it. It’s used only to tag players/mobs right now as it is, why not bring some more support utility to it?

lunacrous.6751:

-snip-

This is true, however, it still doesn’t make it a decent autoattack, especially when projectile finishers are so rarely used. In conjunction with fire or water field, they’re basically useless compared to their blast/leap counterparts.

Kelthien.8593:

-snip-

How would this affect mesmer dps? I’ve tried in general to not mess with dps in my suggestions, so if this raised a mesmer’s dps even more than it is currently, it wouldn’t be very desirable.

zapv.8051:

-snip-

Agreed. Currently, in WvW, a decent necro will lay down marks and switch to their other weapon set (whatever it may be, I use scepter/dagger personally). The long cooldowns and poor A/A make it not a good weapon of choice for most of the time. Having a better A/A will go a long way to making this a better weapon choice for the necro.

Carighan.6758:

-snip-

Learn to read.

fellyn.5083:

Once you cap luck you just sell all your loot. That’s kind of how they intended it to work. But they put a super high ceiling on luck so most regular players will probably never get anywhere near the cap.

Considering the drop rate for salvage gear, most people will get cap MF within 6 months of playing. If they’re purely WvW players, a bit longer. Either way, it is ridiculously easy to get 300% MF. I’m currently sitting at 128% and I rarely do PvE stuff. In WvW, I do a lot of scouting and stuff that don’t earn you rewards. Way too easy to get.

Remember that with the mats you get from salvaging, you can level up alts via crafting and salvage those crafted items for even more EoL. That’s how I’ve gotten most of my luck I think

I don’t think too many PvE players will care to help in WvW tbh (tried asking before, got a lot of negative responses, some were outright… unrepeatable on this forum, only a few were sympathetic, but still unwilling). WvW players should already be in your server’s VOIP so you can ask there.

I think ANet needs to do more to get people into WvW to be honest. Perhaps removing badges from achievement chests and raising the requirement to get Gift of Battle to 5000 badges.

Rangers can be really good for zerg fights if they spec properly. As it is, not many rangers do.

A barrage can do so much damage…

This post will mainly focus on ele and guardian, but mesmer and necro will be mentioned as well.

Ele
Ele is arguably the primary staff user of any class in GW2. It does a fair amount of damage through its aoe skills while also providing decent heals through its Water 3/5 skills.

The problem I have with staff skills on the elementalist is mainly to do with the autoattack (A/A). While we have a fair balance of skills across our attunements, all our autoattack skills on our staff are hopeless. The only one that is even slightly useful is on the fire attunement, while the other 3 attunements lack both utility and damage. They are slow in casting and hopeless with any form of utility compared to other classes (Warrior sword bleed, Guardian greatsword might stacks, Mesmer staff random boons/condis etc.). Earth attunement’s short amount of the Weaken condition just doesn’t do enough to make it worthwhile to stay in earth attunement.

My suggestion is to make 2 of the 4 attunements (Fire and Earth) forward AoE skills similar to guardian’s (but with less width in AoE and a longer range) and with Water’s A/A buffed for at least double the current damage to make it even half way viable since the heal from that skill is so weak (to put it in perspective, a guardian dodge roll will heal 10x the amount, empower will heal so much more as well). Air attunement’s A/A should bounce up to 5 targets to put it in line with other skills.

What this will do is to give eles a lot more freedom in movement while using staff. Especially in melee range, where eles are currently hopeless at, even with a d/d weapon set, due to previous nerfs. It’ll also put eles in line with other classes in terms of melee/range balance, since we’re currently pigeon holed into being ranged or melee with no chance to switch weapons other than when we’re out of combat.

Guardians
The staff weapon on guardians is currently guardian’s primary support weapon (secondary being the Hammer for CCs). The problem here is the unreliable heal on Staff 2 skill, and empower being a 2.5 second channeling skill, so heals from a guardian’s staff is quite low and could, in my opinion, be higher. Especially with such low DPS.

My thoughts on the matter is to nerf the A/A skill by around 20-25% damage and add a heal effect to 5 allies in the region, with a base 50 heal. This won’t affect PvE much since guardians only use staffs to stack might and for swiftness stacking. This will affect WvW a lot more since many (bad) guardians use staves in zergs, and this will give them a lot more utility with less damage, forcing them to either swap weapons for DPS, or stay in staff in a supportive role.

Guardian’s “Orb of Light” skill is currently also not a reliable skill for healing allies. My suggestion would be to make it a ground casting AoE light field healing any allies standing in the area for a base 100 heal/pulse as well as damaging any enemies in the area for a base 200 damage/pulse. Considering how rare it is outside of WvW for people to combo finish water fields for healing, this will allow for parties with no water fields to continue to heal themselves. I feel it also synergises with the theme of guardian’s staff skills around support and AoE damage.

Mesmer
I haven’t really played much mesmer, but in keeping with the general theme of staff skills, I feel that mesmer’s staff weapons should have more AoE casting. Mesmer currently lacks a lot of AoE damage compared to other classes so despite its huge supportive capabilities, it lacks the ability to contribute damage in the way of large mob fights in PvE (like in certain temple events or boss encounters such as marionette) and lacks the ability to gain loot in WvW due to lack of tagging.

Again, due to the fact that I haven’t played much mesmer, I wouldn’t really know the best way to bring this about. Perhaps someone with more experience with mesmers can give their insight.

Necromancer
Necromancer staff skills are at a really weird spot right now. They are “on trigger”, mainly condition damage, meaning that they’re basically useless in PvE. In PvP and WvW, unless specced for condi, also does little damage compared to their other AoE skills with their scepter and off-hand dagger. This is with the exception of “Putrid Mark” that does a decent amount of damage.

The current use for marks is to drop them on a stack of mobs/players, so their “on trigger” mechanic is often not used at all since if you dodge roll over them, it both triggers it, and removes it, basically nullifying your skill. My suggestion is to have them active as soon as they are placed and pulse for a certain amount of time. This brings it more in line with other AoE skills.

I also feel that necro’s staff A/A could be a little easier to use if it bounced off targets. I feel the damage is in a good place, but rarely is there a good opportunity outside PvE to actually use the A/A.

Thoughts and criticisms appreciated.

Verification is absolutely required for VOIP programs. It’s not even just for GW2. A vast majority of private TS servers out there require verification. It’s to prevent bots, spammers, trolls and other undesirables.

Anyway, TS verification is incredibly easy to get on an active server. I’m usually temp-verifying 5-10 people a day when I’m spamming the details of BG’s teamspeak.

SoS is in a really strong position right now in terms of guilds, so I’m sure roamers would be much appreciated.

Watching SoS rise up in ranks has been pretty awesome. They were a great fight during leagues.

Seera.5916:

That’s the thing. You limit it to once a week and what do people do if at launch their friends had to end up on another server and can’t afford to switch? Do you doom those friends to only be able to play together once a week? Just because of a few events that scale poorly if there aren’t 80+ people around?

There’s a thing called server transfer. If you can’t guest to be with your friends, transfer servers. It doesn’t cost much. Maybe 2 weeks max of doing dungeons to convert gold to gems.

Seera.5916:

The solution is NOT to mess with guesting. The solution is to make these events scale better for when there aren’t a bunch of people there. Those that guest to do the events hate the fact that they have to go sit in the map for an hour or longer to ensure their spot just as much as the non-guest. But when you only have a few hours to play and want to do the large events and succeed, you have no choice but to go to a server that has the best chances of having the population needed to succeed. Because if you don’t have the minimum population present, no amount of coordinatin will let you win.

Every single server has the population for these events. No matter how small your population is. It doesn’t take that many people (150) to hardcap a map. Your server has to be willing to coordinate on its own rather than piggyback on another server/guild’s coordination.

These events aren’t for everyone. If you’re not willing to be in Teamspeak/Ventrillo/Mumble etc., the way I see it, you shouldn’t be on the instance where the group is trying to complete the boss fight. It’s really easy to get 20 people in an overflow to decapitate 1 wurm or complete 1 marionette path and get the basic rewards. If you want to actually complete it, you’ll need to put effort in.

Desolation getting close! Blackgate just epicfailed on the last attempt due to a weird burn phase XD

It’s undesirable indeed for high pop servers since it makes it really difficult getting our guildies and friends into the main instance. Hardcap for Bloodtide Coast appears to be around 150 and we usually get 100-120~ into our teamspeak, so the margin of error can be quite high due to the people not in teamspeak, despite spamming the details in mapchat every 10 seconds.

I’ve had 3 failed attempts on wurm so far due to a failure on communication (people not on teamspeak). Few fail attempts were simply down to not-perfect execution, and even then, can be attributed to the people not on teamspeak (not switching targets, staying behind etc.)

I would rather daily guesting be removed altogether and make it a once-a-week option. Especially on NA servers, where all servers have a decent population, but most guest to Jade Quarry, Blackgate, Sanctum of Rall or Tarnished Coast to do PvE content. It would help bump the native populations up again for sure, I think.

I’m pretty sure all servers can muster up a group of 150 for a daily or weekly event for these kind of bosses. And especially if its within your own server, you’ll more likely be able to get participation within your VOIP of choice and thus have a higher chance at victory.

Mbelch.9028:

Silent Shino.7239:

go ahead, there isn’t any poll like that on the community forums at the moment^^

Thought Grouch meant to post it on our forums. I’m not making an account on that cesspool. My bad for misunderstanding.

It’s hardly a cesspool. It’s actually a better place than the matchup forums used to be here. It’s community moderated so people are less likely to “fight the power” so to speak.

http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/33/117 – second week of leagues

If that doesn’t show how bad SoR gave up, I don’t even know… I still don’t know how we went from a 17k deficit to nearly 100k point lead.

http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/33/123 – fifth week of leagues

Also shows JQ effectively giving up

Remember that all 3 servers had queue issues, so it wasn’t a lack of population. It was how we dealt with them.

All 3 tier 1 servers are still feeling the repercussions of leagues. SoR losing guilds after their internal dramas, JQ losing ATM due to Waha quitting (their players ended up in WvW so it doesn’t make much diff in the end) and recently gaining a few SoR guilds, BG trying to fill the void MERC and TKG left when they transferred to JQ.

CoRtex.2157:

bwillb.2165:

CoRtex.2157:

you could always make a program that increases your FOV distance,, better for the eyes and anet doesn’t have to spend time on fixing the problem Learn, c++ or c# together with some ASM & memory address knowledge (Just following “how to give good feedback” that anet posted) oh you might want to make an address signature scanner so it doesn’t break when the game updates.

Off topic, Anet your “how to give good feedback” says “no-one knows best”, so anet doesn’t either… so how can anet define what’s good feedback? hmmm

That program already existed and ArenaNet refused to specify whether it was against TOS or not but hinted that it was.

Well it’s not, if you read the TOS, it doesn’t say anything about memory editing. So it’s legal, as long as it doesn’t automate stuff for you. Anet is not above their own TOS. If they bann you for something that is allowed by the TOS, you can sue them.

Nope. ToS isn’t a legal document. The case would be thrown out of court on the basis that there is no legal ground for sueing. ANet is legally allowed to ban whoever the hell they want from the game.

morrolan.9608:

I’m not complaining about being outmanned or talking about whats happened on SOR internally. I’m simply pointing out where you’re wrong about SOR’s population and that your comments about BG’s population do not match my experience.

Fair enough. I see plenty of SoR in their map blobs though. Your viewpoint on SoR’s population does not match my experience.

morrolan.9608:

Given that T1 is currently not a contest at all and hasn’t been since the second week of the league the comments about not being overstacked relative to other servers ring hollow.

False. That was SoR and JQ effectively giving up, while BG wanted the win. How was it that SoR had a near 20k PPT lead in the second week of leagues before they stopped showing up? How was it that JQ got round the clock queues for the first 4 weeks (against T2) until they got matched with BG? No one’s fault but their own.

Chris.3290:

50-80 being considered a dead-zone, then you point out that there is a lack of fights from the other servers at this time.

Not saying that BG does not still have it’s challenges. I’m sure if KnT or AoI, or other large guilds took a week off that you would see a large dip in points; but your weakest time zone has 50-80 (hold your corner of EB, your BL, and havoc on enemy BL’s?) and the other two don’t have much more in numbers.

Look at today. When I first responded to Siegfried, JQ was slightly ahead and BG was at +250. In the last 4 hours BG dipped as low as +150 but are now at +360 going into early NA. If the best the 2nd place server can do is 4 hours of dominance over you, I think it’s game over in Tier 1.

Consider that JQ easily has 100+ in that time zone with their new oceanic guilds, and SoR can bring at least 100 as well as they got a couple new oceanic guilds the past few weeks. The numbers tilt in our favour when our PvX guilds log on though (in the perfect situation when all of them log in). Like I said, it shows in the very unstable PPT gains. One day we’re ticking 300 during Oceanic, the next we’re ticking 100. One day we’re ticking 300 in EU, next we’re ticking 100.

You’re correct that if any single one of our core WvW guilds takes a break, BG will see a huge dip in numbers. That’s simply because JQ and SoR have similar numbers to us right now.

morrolan.9608:

Reverence.6915:

morrolan.9608:

I think we must be playing in different games and you’re just not where the BG blob is.

Dat 25 man militia blob during OCE. Sure. If your guild can’t handle a militia zerg, then I really don’t know what to say. Of course, based on my counters of your guild the past couple of days, I can clearly say that you can’t handle militia zergs. Your guild can’t even run in the same direction.

Resorting to personal insults now? Pity.

Pot, meet Kettle. Look at your previous two posts in this thread. Also, it wasn’t personal. It was directed at your guild.

I’m tired of (ex)SoR’s whining over coverage and population when they continually state they play for fights. Don’t complain about getting outmanned when you keep insulting your pugs and kick/banning visitors out of your teamspeak.

I’m sick of people badmouthing (ugh… forum censoring… can’t use the term I want to use) BG when we’ve worked hard to get where we are today. As a server. As a community. This constant barrage of claiming we buy guilds (when every tier 1 server has done the same), of being overstacked (no more so than JQ or SoR), or other such comments.

The worst is seeing such comments from people who haven’t been in BG and who haven’t matched up against BG. kitten you all.

morrolan.9608:

I think we must be playing in different games and you’re just not where the BG blob is.

Dat 25 man militia blob during OCE. Sure. If your guild can’t handle a militia zerg, then I really don’t know what to say. Of course, based on my counters of your guild the past couple of days, I can clearly say that you can’t handle militia zergs. Your guild can’t even run in the same direction.

I think that staff autoattacks in general need a rework. The targeting on staff autoattacks are terrible.

Basically, our autoattack should be something similar to the guardian staff autoattack. make it kind of melee. It’ll give us a lot more survivability than you think. Damage doesn’t even need to be raised. I feel that a staff ele’s damage is at a very good place right now, but with poor targeting on our autoattacks, it makes it hard to apply any kind of pressure once we’ve casted our main dps skills.

The only reason we use autoattacks on staff is because our AoE skills are on cooldown and we’re waiting for our cooldowns for the next rotation. That’s how useless the autoattacks are. I don’t even target anything anymore with the autoattacks. I just wait until Lava Font is off cooldown while in earth attunement so I can keep might stacks up.

Darek.1836:

No I never play for PPT. But its nice to know everyone is making a difference. Fights suck btw, transfer to NSP, Belle, we get matched with them every week!

Wait, you don’t play for PPT, but fights suck?

Anyway, the best is to play a hybrid of both PPT and fights. You can get good fights by hitting structures and luring your enemy server out to play. Or you can force fights by bashing down gates/walls and force them to defend, or on the other side, defending a structure is a hell of a fight as well.

Chris.3290:

Reverence.6915:

Chris.3290:

What I’m stating, born out by the facts: is that if you compared the numbers/coverage of the WvW dedicated (meaning folks that WvW more than 75% of the time) population of all three T2 servers (TC, FA, and SoS) put them on a theoretical empty server and put them into T1; that BG would STILL outnumber/outcoverage that server overall.

I doubt it. A lot of BG is PvX, rather than dedicated WvW. It’s when our PvXers come into WvW in force that our PPT shoots up, and drops away again when they’re not (e.g. Living story update). I personally probably spend 60% of my time in WvW at best, but I consider myself to be fairly WvW focused. It’s also how we tend to avoid burnout, because there’s a fairly steady rotation of players in WvW. There’s a few dedicated WvW guilds during NA and SEA, but none in EU (early EST and late SEA covers that) and Oceanic (late PST and early SEA covers that).

That’s not to say we don’t have players in those time zones, so let me make this quite clear. We don’t have the guilds in those time zones. In fact, I’m pretty sure SoS has a larger Oceanic WvW population than BG. We would still out PPT a SoS/FA/TC mix though, I’m sure, because of our strong SEA coverage, which can go toe to toe with JQ’s SEA.

Overall population, but I’m only counting WvW dedicated groups. You’d never know it from the T2 forum chatter, but our WvW focused population in OCX is actually smaller than our NA focused population.
Our casual and PvX bump is completely massive however and really helps out.

BG dominates SEA, EU, holds it’s own in NA; and seems to outperform in OCX (whenever I have checked) despite being “lacking” in this zone. Whether or not this is due to extra effort by NA and SEA is unknown by me, but there does not appear to be any appreciable gap (JQ was anemic in OCX before some of MERC came over) and SoR is so on the outs that it’s impossible to tell what times work for them anymore.

I can say that our teamspeak during Oceanic (1-5am~ish) is 40% NA, 30% Aus/NZ, 30% SEA early on, becoming something like 20% NA, 20% Aus/NZ and 60% SEA as it gets late. Consider that we have a total of around 50-80 people in all WvW maps put together during oceanic (remembering that we have a lot of PvE players playing in EBG, same as any other server), and you can see how small our Oceanic WvW population is, not counting PvX (which makes up the majority of our coverage and the reason for inconsistent PPT).

Plus, I think a big reason why so few from BG are online in that time is cause the Oceanic time zone in general is a dead zone. There’s very few fights. If there are, you’re facing a giant blob of 50+ SoR or JQ made up of NA staying up and SEA logging on early, combined with whatever Oceanic guilds they have online. It gets old pretty quick. Most of our Oceanic players play either NA or SEA these days and just avoid OCE in general.

I find zerg fights fun. I disagree it’s mindless – especially for the backline. An organised group of 50 vs another organised group of 50 can be an intense and drawn out battle.

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

To those that are saying: buy a new PC:

Minimum specs for GW2 are:
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, Core i3, AMD Athlon™64 X2 or better
NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800, ATI Radeon™ X1800, Intel HD 3000 or better
(256MB of video RAM and shader model 3.0 or better)

It should be playable (ok, not at the highest settings) with those specs. Right now, it apparently isn’t.

In small print underneath that, it says:
Due to potential changes, system requirements may change over time, and you may be required to upgrade your current system (or obtain a new system) to continue to play the game.

Always read the small print

goldenwing.8473:

Pardon me for sounding idiotic: am I playing WvW wrong?

My 4-man swat team can take keeps and towers and positively impact PPT on an on-going basis, even with a outmanned buff on.

4 of us can defend a tower/keep from a small-medium zerg. 4 of us can cut off supply. 4 of us can divert zergs to defend. 4 of us can engage another 4-5 man havoc team. 4 of us with 2-4 more players together can take SM under the right circumstances.

Nothing to do with stack, “skill”, or even severTS (because we aren’t on it.) Just awaremess of opportunities on the map and a willingness to fail a lot trying.

I guess we should not take advantage of the huge zergs that are busy elsewhere on the map looking for fights to grab PPT?

-Noob

According to them, the only thing BG ever does is blob, so no, you can’t take advantage of it. In fact, how dare you try take structures and gain PPT with only 4 people. Blasphemy.

Did I just walk into an English/Literature class…?

I actually got an ascended armor box from my 110th rank on my guardian.

Have yet to get one on my elementalist after 350 ranks though…

I don’t mind not having great loot in WvW. I’d prefer it though, that upgrades used Karma instead of Gold, and that there were no repair fees in WvW, balanced with no loot drops from either players or NPCs. It’s actually not that hard to get all your ascended crafting materials purely from WvW these days because of how much trash loot you get to salvage.

Hey, some people like playing for score/PPT. Different idea of fun. Seems like OP finds that PPT is his thing?

I’ll never understand why people play purely for PPT. It’s nice to see your server is ticking high, but it’s nicer to farm bags or have intense, closely fought battles.

morrolan.9608:

Reverence.6915:

Fine, I’ll bite and answer your question. BG is no more stacked than JQ or SoR. I’ve kinda been saying the same thing for the past 5 pages of this thread.

So…….. according to you: “Now, SoR treated their pugs really badly and lost most of their population (and still are feeling the effects today). That is their problem and their’s alone.” Yet BG is no more stacked than SOR.

Sorry no-ones buying it.

SoR has some of the biggest WvW guilds of any NA server (WvW in JQ and ND and KnT in BG can compare). The fact that they can get rid of nearly all their pugs and still have such a strong presence in WvW is pretty evident that their population is still there. It just means that there’s less people there to help the server retain PPT while those guilds go off looking for fights (I’m looking at you Choo and TW).

Rune of the Flame Legion I think will be a serious contender. We’ll see.

wongdong.9162:

Reverence.6915:

Have you tried out the two PvP modes yet?

I quit GW2 because of boring PvE. Came back 10 months later because there were no other good MMOs at the time, tried out WvW and am absolutely having a blast nowadays.

I have not done WvWvW yet, even though Shadowbane taught me to love open world PvP. sPvP, to me, was rather boring and the announcer very annoying. While i should probably try WvW sometime soon, I feel I would continue to get frustrated with the character mechanics and limited options of playing a toon.

I love the engine and the world and the lore of this game, but it does not deserve the Guild Wars name. The whole concept of “play your way” was lost to me when the devs limited our choices in build diversity and weapon choice. They say they wanted to do this for easier balancing, yet the balance is atrocious.

In WvW, there are several ways to play your toon

1. Zergling – general idea is to get tanky gear and follow the tag
2. Zerg busting – you need to be in a good guild to do this, with good PvP awareness and good knowledge of your skills. Gearing would be up to your guild comp, same with what class you play. Very regimented.
3. Havocing – Play what you want. Basically PvE. Run around enemy backlines to cut off supply and reinforcements. Requires a good party with DPS focused gear and at least 1 support type character, usually a guardian. Any class can havoc though.
4. Roaming – Solo play. You’re pretty limited in what you can do while roaming in a high tier server. It’s easier on a lower tier server since there’s less enemy encounters. It’s like playing sPvP except with a far bigger map, and a chance to get run down by a zerg.

Gives you a lot more options in how you want to play the game. Gives you a lot more gearing and trait build options. There’s also a lot more cooperation between players. Like actual cooperation. Especially in zerg busting groups, where cooperation is key to fighting a force far greater to your own.

There’s still a few builds that don’t work, however, since at the end of the day, WvW play is centred around party and team support. If you play a “selfish” build, then you’re more suited to solo roaming, since it’ll let your party down in close fights(in this situation, you can help your server by scouting and such).

wongdong.9162:

CoRtex.2157:

The bots didn’t get fixed though, it was just not profitable enough anymore for the companies, they had enough gold, but players stopped playing the game, so they couldn’t sell much over the past year. no reason to keep them bots running.

Seriously??? That’s funny. I’m not being sarcastic, I thought ANet actually fixed the bot plague. I didn’t know it was because the bots fixed themselves by running off the population. So, is the only thing from stopping them from coming back the lack of GW2 gamers playing?

You can exchange gems for gold. There’s absolutely no reason to buy gold from gold sellers, where there’s a high chance of scamming and phishing involved.

George Steel.1804:

Harper.4173:

Mochann.5298:

Hekdragoon.1972:

Guardians everywhere, since they can more or less do the 3 roles

Having Trinity officially in the game would force a total revamp of the entire system, so Guardian as we know it today would be different.

I think having “no trinity” is the stupidest design choice Anet made among many bad choices, but that’s just me.

And your opinion is just that – an opinion.
Why would they make their game exactly like all the trinity games out there?!

Because well, one famous trinity-based game has been around for like 10 years – with more players SUBSCRIBED then have only PURCHASED GW2. It’s a model that works in the long run.

GW2 was great. But now that we’re in the aging process of the game, the system in place just isn’t cutting it. I’m bored..

WoW at the age GW2 is currently at was a complete wreck of a game too. Botters, hackers, private servers, scammers, account selling, bugs, glitches, poor raid systems, poor pvp, limited pve etc etc. Put some perspective on it.

The timer makes the Wurm ridiculously difficult. It’s definitely possible though. Several attempts have been pretty close.

Marionette on the other hand… is just a massive zergfest. 20~ish people in each lane, have them not all be complete incompetent failures, and you’re sure to complete it.

Chris.3290:

What I’m stating, born out by the facts: is that if you compared the numbers/coverage of the WvW dedicated (meaning folks that WvW more than 75% of the time) population of all three T2 servers (TC, FA, and SoS) put them on a theoretical empty server and put them into T1; that BG would STILL outnumber/outcoverage that server overall.

I doubt it. A lot of BG is PvX, rather than dedicated WvW. It’s when our PvXers come into WvW in force that our PPT shoots up, and drops away again when they’re not (e.g. Living story update). I personally probably spend 60% of my time in WvW at best, but I consider myself to be fairly WvW focused. It’s also how we tend to avoid burnout, because there’s a fairly steady rotation of players in WvW. There’s a few dedicated WvW guilds during NA and SEA, but none in EU (early EST and late SEA covers that) and Oceanic (late PST and early SEA covers that).

That’s not to say we don’t have players in those time zones, so let me make this quite clear. We don’t have the guilds in those time zones. In fact, I’m pretty sure SoS has a larger Oceanic WvW population than BG. We would still out PPT a SoS/FA/TC mix though, I’m sure, because of our strong SEA coverage, which can go toe to toe with JQ’s SEA.

They both spawn alternatively on the hour. e.g. Wurm at 12, puppet at 1, wurm at 2, puppet at 3 etc.

Have you tried out the two PvP modes yet?

I quit GW2 because of boring PvE. Came back 10 months later because there were no other good MMOs at the time, tried out WvW and am absolutely having a blast nowadays.

Step 1. Create a dummy guild
Step 2. Invite friend to said guild
Step 3. Give friend access to withdraw from the guild bank
Step 4. Deposit money into guild bank
Step 5. Friend withdraws from bank
Step 6. ???
Step 7. Profit!!!

mattastrophic.8201:

When I click the button to guest into another North American server, they all show up as having the same level of population. I can only guest into two different servers in a day, so it’s not really feasible to just choose blindly until I land on a good one.

Is there a list anywhere of high-population servers, for those of us who aren’t in the know?

-Matt

Look up the WvW rankings. They are a very good indicator of actual population.

Blackgate, Jade Quarry, Sanctum of Rall and Tarnished Coast are all good options.

Burl.9567:

Reverence.6915:

Burl.9567:

Reverence.6915:

dwahvel.7356:

Burl.9567:

Seigfried.5938:

skyz.7321:

Seigfried.5938:

Chris.3290:

Seigfried.5938:

Oh look, Chris is back to trash BG. He seems to be one of the few here who care about PPT.

On another note, please consider SoR and JQ too. Winning doesn’t mean as much these days because of BG’s clear dominance. This week could be our …………… 14th straight win?

I said BG had skilled guilds and Siggy here says I’m trashing them. Your world is an odd, sad little place.

Saying our guilds are skilled wasn’t the point you were making. Your main point was, we have no right to say we aren’t stacked. But we don’t claim to be ‘not stacked’. Please quote someone here from BG saying that?

Try reading page 1. Page 2/3 are most likely the same.

BG is a joke.

The people who think forum posters represent a server are a joke. Could you please quote someone from BG saying we are not stacked? I can’t be bothered to read all that rubbish.

So Seigfried….I will ask you the question. Is BG a stacked server? If the answer to your question is ‘yes’, then why do you continue to recruit guilds and pay them such as the three EU guilds that have transferred over in the last week?

I’m sure they told the EU guilds that there is soooooo many jq/sor EU guilds to fight!

Sor to ZD – Sorry we don’t need anymore EU guilds there won’t be much competition.
BG to ZD – Yes please come, there is TONS of guilds/ppl to fight!
^ season 1 gold league. And we all know how that turned out. (yay blowouts)

Not really a good example, considering the first week of leagues had all 3 servers clogged up with 24/7 queues, making the impact another guild has really really small.

Now, SoR treated their pugs really badly and lost most of their population (and still are feeling the effects today). That is their problem and their’s alone.

JQ had 24/7 queues until they matched up against BG. Again, that is their problem and not BG’s.

We spammed map chat to high heaven our teamspeak details, while spamming recruitment messages for WvW guilds. Our WvW guilds grew and our WvW player base grew (the effects of which you can see in post-leagues results and Blackgate’s dominance). Same couldn’t be said of the other two servers at that time.

JQ still remains competitive because they are a server welcoming of new players and guilds. SoR continues to languish at the bottom of Tier 1 as their server is trying to reestablish themselves and redefine their server culture, even as their guilds are leaving the server due to various reasons.

SoR still isn’t accepting of players outside their server as evidenced by mass bans on their teamspeak during wurm fights. That kind of culture and attitude will get them nowhere.

People want to transfer to JQ and BG because we have a more pug friendly culture.

Please continue to make posts about things you know nothing about. Still waiting for my question to get answered.

Your red herring question has no bearing on the topic at hand. My post was addressing the thread topic question.

TLDR – I plead the 5th.

Fine, I’ll bite and answer your question. BG is no more stacked than JQ or SoR. I’ve kinda been saying the same thing for the past 5 pages of this thread.

I wish it did. It would make WvW worth playing to get siege skills up at the very least. Probably would be somewhat useful for lesser populated servers? Maybe?