Guild Wars 2

If this is the case, why not just merge all servers into 9 new brand new ones?

I think that there have been many threads so far pointing out that auto-upgrading will only hurt lower tier servers favoring whichever one has a higher population during off hours. Tough keep lords will prevent small havoc groups from capping. Yadda, yadda, yadda, just check out the many threads.

Here’s a link to an old thread of mine explaining in great detail the rational and an example of how server mergers might work.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Here-s-how-to-fix-WvW/first#post4141404

I feel that you can’t make maps and a game mode that can appeal to all the tiers. T1 and T2 are very different from the lower tiers. Make WvW seperate from the server system that was created to just accommodate all players of GW2 at launch.

phys.7689:

Spurnshadow.3678:

phys.7689:

selan.8354:

if this was another eotm like map i wouldnt mind it so much, but this pve map is replacing our borderlands….please make eb bigger and increase the map cap cause once this map is forced upon us every true wvw guild will queue for eb. we hated eotm we wont like this map.

to be honest, the main problem with the eotm map is that it isnt wvw. Its not server based, the score doesnt matter.

i think people will enjoy playing with their groups and servers in new maps. The npcs, and buffs wont stop people from playing.

Yes, it will. I know a lot of people and a guild that has already stated that they will play the shiny and new map, just to experience it, but won’t stay. It’s easy to predict the strategies of the new map. Just go to the WvW forums and read all the threads about auto-upgrading.

I myself love this game, but this map is kinda like a bigkittento the WvW community. The op has this down pat.

auto upgrading and the new map arent really related.

So what your saying is what the WvW community wants is just one big square so they can fight without having to consider terrain, no objectives that effect anything? Just large open plains where players can clash for no reason?

well i guess it has an appeal for some, if thats really what the whole WvW community wants, maybe the next map will be tailored with that gamestyle in mind.

You are being insulting. Just because someone has real, valid concerns in the game doesn’t mean they want a big open square.

Solori.6025:

The new map is a lot more in-depth than you think, whether you want to believe it or not.

Yes and no. But really no. Eventually we’ll find the paths of least resistance to kill enemies or take objectives.

Solori.6025:

The meta is changing, more classes are goin to have access to stability and/or group stability ( you would know this if you kept up with the changes presented)

False. I keep up with the changes. The only thing I see so far is the Mesmer elite skill. No big deal as Mesmers have never had an issue with stability if they play a mantra build. Thing is, they almost never do, so still an issue. Necros will still have huge stability issues. It hasn’t been released yet, but thieves have huge issues with stability. So, yeah. Just flat out not true.

Solori.6025:

The new WvW map is a lot larger, and you wont be able to wp keeps like you have been able to with the new expansion.
Defenders,scouts,havoc, and zergs are all going to play a new role in the new wvw.

This is a poorly constructed sentence. You really aren’t saying anything here. “New” things are “new” and we’re going to need to do “new” things. I think I understand what you’re trying to say, though.

Go to the WvW forums and read many of the threads about auto-updating structures. A lot of strategy is being thrown out the window. Havoc will have a smaller impact due to ai. The new map encourages and promotes zerging. Large groups will run off an API clock centered around auto-updating.

Solori.6025:

Keeping important objectives is going to be important

Actually thinking about where to hit and defend, is going to be important.

Common man. Really?

Solori.6025:

So as a WvW player to another.
Get ready to change or quit. Don’t speak for other people.
You don’t like the changes, you ( through misinformation ) think they are adding unavoidable jumping puzzles (LOL go watch the readyup) or making the lords hard ( cause 10 v 1npc is going to be difficult all of a sudden).

Honestly, the problem seems to be that you have made an assumption about the new map with no FACTUAL information at all.

No, we have tons of facts. We’re able to predict strategies because we can form a better sentence than “Keeping important objectives is going to be important” and put a period at the end of said sentence.

phys.7689:

to be honest, the main problem with the eotm map is that it isnt wvw. Its not server based, the score doesnt matter.

i think people will enjoy playing with their groups and servers in new maps. The npcs, and buffs wont stop people from playing.

Yes, it will. I know a lot of people and a guild that has already stated that they will play the shiny and new map, just to experience it, but won’t stay. It’s easy to predict the strategies of the new map. I quit about 9 months ago over the transmutation stone debacle that still hasn’t been fixed (how many of you have WvW or Karma gear with valuable runes/sigils in them still hoping they’re gonna fix that). I recently came back in anticipation of HoT, but I don’t see myself staying.

Just go to the WvW forums and read all the threads about auto-upgrading.

I myself love this game, but this map is kinda like a bigkittento the WvW community. The op has this down pat.

Ultimaistanza.4793:

briggah.7910:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Then during the no-white-swords debacle, it was said that new features would be tested in WvW for short amounts of time. The result: no-white-swords ended up being the one and only such test.

Maybe it is because so many people complained about the TEST event even before it happened. Some players even said they were quitting because of this test event. I’m starting to see why anet doesn’t post much in this section. No matter what they try to do people will not be happy.

Oh look.. People were not happy with the test event and you are not happy because we don’t have any other test events..

That’s a complete joke. "No matter what they try to do people will not be happy. ", this goes for EVERY single area of the game. People were mad when they introduced Aetherpath and took out forward up, people were mad when introduced matchmaking, people are mad now with the LA changes. There will always be at least some people mad about changes in an MMO.

Besides that though, people were actually more happy about ANet testing stuff than they have been. Sure there was pessimistic views (like if if this theme of testing would merely be something ANet once then never does again and if this was actual testing or just making people comfortable with something that is going to happen regardless), but people DID, and still do, like ANet showing attention to WvWers. If you don’t believe me then look at the response to Stephen Clarke-Willson when he spent weeks there working actively with WvWers on the forums to fix lag issues.

Yes, there will always be some people not happy about change.

The thing with Stephen was a fluke. Nothing in WvW has ever gotten that much consistent attention from a dev. He was working kitten the issue, and giving us lots of feedback on lag very soon after the problem. But how long did it take for them to finally remove 99% of lag from the game? A year and a half? Oh, and the lag from the mid-March patch IS STILL AN ISSUE. Amazing how short our memories are.

I think the thing that kittenes a lot of people off is the fact that they make this stuff and put it out there for testing. But that testing is for the features that already exist to check for bugs and server issues. I highly doubt they will actually add or remove the features they’ve already programmed into HoT WvW. Right now, I think the vast majority of WvWers hate the proposition of automatic upgrades and a PvE style event in the middle every 3 hours. I’m willing to bet $1,000. that those will still be there at launch.

What I never understood about GW2 is why they don’t approach WvW players with their ideas and see what the community feedback is. They sort of did this with CDI, but these changes were never discussed specifically. Maybe keep things in a private forum where only WvW guild members would have access.

Whatever. Too late now.

Yup. I started a thread with this in it. But people aren’t going to guard yaks anymore if it’s gonna upgrade automatically anyway.

One thing that I see happening all the time is people confusing Venom Wells with Entangle. When you’re in large fights, the entangle roots are invisible, so it seems like a venom share thief.

Xanoris.2379:

I like this update to the upgrades. Makes the game more enjoyable without taking anything strategic away.

Takes a ton of strategy out of the game. There are lots of threads on this; just read the rest of the forums to see how. I don’t want to re-hash it.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Like WvW isn’t a Karma Train now. I mean people just flip things and move on. No defending, no nothing, very few open battles, most zerg’s now just run away. WvW maps just feel like EotM now.

I think this change could be for the better.

You, and all of the others that say WvW is a karma train need to move to a higher tier server.

Currently, in T1, it’s only a K train on Thursday/Friday if the match is a run away. Also, if we’re trying hard to PPT, then the OCX, SEA, EU times might K-train a bit just to try to keep the dominant PPT, but they will always run into enemies and have fights along the way. If not, they just look for the fights and worry about the “K-train” if the PPT gets a bit too low. That’s kitten

is similar from what I understand, but it has to be a majority of K train for lower servers, so please stop assuming WvW is a K-train.

briggah.7910:

Everyone is forgetting that camps = points. Everyone is forgetting that to win a match you must win the PPT game.. Feel free to not roam and not capture enemy camps. If you want to just give the other server points, stop roaming.

Yes, this is true, but it is more efficient for a server to focus on keeps and towers. A roaming group can get a good 10-15 ppt if they play right. But this argument is that the auto-upgrade takes a lot of strategy out of the game and gives less for roamers to do or know that they can have a significant impact on the match and the upgrades on larger structures are a big part of that.

darkwarder.3645:

Just to be fair, aren’t roamers typically the guys that spawn camp and pick off stragglers 5 to 1? That’ll still be in the game.

There’s no such thing as spawn camping. Every spawn has 3 exits.

Lunacy Solacio.6514:

Trajan.4953:

Easy…
Just introduce a reward track like spvp. Problem solved.

yay… encourage WvW blobbing and ktraining even more than these changes do….

Then we smash their faces in and tell them to go to EotM

Please keep this and other topics like it relevant in the threads.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Ultimaistanza.4793:

GreyWraith.8394:

Supply is still critical for both offense and defense. Yaks are still critical for upgrade speed. I don’t foresee as big an impact as the doom callers are predicting.

Supply is critical, Yaks are not. Upgrade speed boost doesn’t mean anything when you know that as long as you bunkers a structure it doesn’t matter if Yaks get in or not, you’ll still get those upgrades in to repair everything eventually.

Yaks will speed up the upgrades. What this means is you need to ACTIVELY defend and patrol. No more just going out an zerging for the sake of it.

Also, people keep forgetting we will get the NEW WvW maps with this change, we won’t have the old maps.

Sorry, but I can’t believe you are a regular WvW player. If commanders, guilds, and regular roamers know anything, they won’t give a kitten the speed to which something upgrades if they know it will upgrade eventually. They will not bunker; they will not give a crap about yaks and camps; yes, they will need supply, but they will take it form a camps, whatever may be left in a structure, or take it from enemy structures. Guild catas are only 25 supply. They will try to get fights or flip enemy objectives. That’s it.

With yaks and camps having a very minor impact and the elimination of bloodlust, roamers and small parties will have nothing better to do than just stay with the zerg or not play at all.

I’ve outlined most of my points in this post. I have a more relevant statement about it a few replies later. However, I didn’t want to get off topic of that post, so I sarted a new one.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Great-Solution-to-Auto-Upgrade-Dilemma/first#post5093516

To sum up the points in that post, since yaks and camps play a much lesser role, there will be less roamers. The central laser event will be the opposite of what Anet intends as the higher population server will camp it and spare only smaller groups to defend a T3 structure being attacked.

Something I didn’t add is that bloodlust is gone. While some people love it, hate it, or just don’t care about it, it is something that adds another layer to WvW by adding a small stat buff, but more importantly, grants points per stop. No matter what your feelings on bloodlust are, it is another thing that small parties, or roamers can do that have a large impact for their server.

I know it will most likely not change. The maps have been made and the mechanics have been programmed. I’m very concerned here, not only for myself, but for WvW in general. I’m really not just focusing on the negative. I’ve had positive things to say about HoT. If past behavior is any predictor of future change, then Anet will do nothing about this, but I hope they read my rational posts, and many like it, and think about this more.

So, In thinking about this whole thing more, I realized another, very big and bad consequence. I eluded to it in my op, but just wanted to flat out state it.

The current Hot change will promote zerging.

On this topic, since yaks/camps have less of an impact, more players will roll with the zerg. To stray from the topic: Anet’s counter to a map being fully upgraded is the central laser event. They’ve stated that this is something that smaller groups can do to help their server. However, this is just going to be a zergfest as well. If a dominating server has most structures fully upgraded, they are going to want to do whatever it takes to prevent the central event. The underdog server is going to want to complete the central event to open all the doors.

While this can be considered a good thing as it gets people out of structures, I forsee it not being anything like what Anet wants. Dominating servers will just camp the central event and have a smaller group respond to any minor havoc group that may be trying to take adantage of the enemy being out of position. If the dominating server structures are fully upgraded, odds are slim that the havoc team will be successful.

This would also be worse than spawn camping as a spawn has 3 exits. A disadvantaged population server will be forced to go to one place to gain a large advantage: the central laser.

Of course, all the above is a bit of too be determined as we haven’t seen the actual mechanics of the central event, but theoretically, its a fail in my eyes due to oversimplifying WvW by elimitating the importance of yaks, camps, and auto-upgrading.

Xillllix.3485:

I wish you guys would bring back the ORB mechanic in the borderlands map. The CTF style of play was really intense and since it’s gone the borderland maps have never been as fun. Back then some players were hacking but you probably have fixed that by now. In a forum post you guys said it would be back.

The Ruins area should do something else than give a stat bonus, right now everyone ignores. Also the “capture 3 points” objective is just not fun.

Speak for yourself. My server, heck all of T1 pays close attention to bloodlust. You get a ton of PPT from stomps, often times more than the structural PPT. Sometimes I don’t like zerging and want to roam. This gives me something else to do other than mindlessly killing yak, camp, yak yak, camp. I often times will run into an enemy roamer trying to cap as well, and 1/1 fights ensue.

Bloodlust has been a great enhancement to the game.

Keeping this alive.

Bumping……………..

Dawdler.8521:

Spurnshadow.3678:

Dawdler.8521:

Spurnshadow.3678:

That whole scenario, and many like it will probably go away.

Thats because they never existed. People are massively overhyping current dollys. Escorted by 20 players, lol… Probably 99% of all T3 upgrades exist because of nightcapping and are lost in primetime. Your “scenario” would still be the same with passive upgrades.

Sorry, but this happens a lot when a keep or garrison is under siege. If it is a hair away from upgrading and your structure is Swiss Cheese, then getting that last dolyak in is of utmost importance if you’re working on a structural upgrade as everything will repair. The risk is leaving the lord less defended.

Here’s another example: your keep isn’t under siege; the map has a lot of activity; you’re about to get a WP; some thief keeps killing yaks; a havoc group of 10 keeps flipping the camp. You bet that at least 20 will escort that last yak. This means that they aren’t attacking something, giving an opportunity for other defenders to secure their position or go after a different structure because you force is occupied.

The HoT system would take that scenario, and others like it, out of the picture. It would mean people are just attacking or defending structures as there is much less reason to worry about supply.

Which would just make a similar scenario with the changed system.

Its 10 minutes left to upgrade to full T3, your keep is swiss cheese and under heavy attack because the enemy want it before the upgrade. You have no idea if you can hold it for 10 minutes – you probably cant. Maybe 5 minutes at most.

A dolly is inbound, 20 go there to protect it. Just at the 5 minute mark when the enemy victory is certain… Dolly arrives with an army.

Keep is upgraded in the nick of time.

If you had failed to bring the dolly, you would have 5 more minutes to defend the keep, which increase the stakes for the defending side to pour everything they got into those 5 minutes.

How is this much different from getting that vital last dolly into your 99% upgraded keep scenario? The enemy could completely deny you that upgraded keep if they wanted. With the new system, defenders in this situation have a slim chance.

If you could hold the keep for 5 minutes, but not 10, you will loose it regardless of the yak situation. That’s just a matter of you are weaker then them. The upgrade won’t matter. This would be especially true if you send a part of your team off to guard a yak to a tower that will automatically upgrade anyway. Better to have them in the lords room and hold for another 5 minutes.

GROMIT.7829:

Good because by removing this and hopefully the stacking sigils you create a more level playing field, this in turn creates a much more healthy competetive enviroment.

Running around killing NPC’s to be more powerful than someone on a fully capped border without access to the guard stacks is unfair, stacking sigils have the same problem especially in condition builds where condi damage can reach 2.2k in some cases and sometimes more.

Each class has more than enough stats in it’s kit to not warrant guard stacks and stacking sigils. next i hope they get rid of food in WvW and leave only the most basic of stones, oils and crystals.

Please, god no!

If that’s what you want, go PvP where there’s no choice to your build and no subtlety. Please, dont’ advocate that sort of crap for WvW.

Dawdler.8521:

Spurnshadow.3678:

That whole scenario, and many like it will probably go away.

Thats because they never existed. People are massively overhyping current dollys. Escorted by 20 players, lol… Probably 99% of all T3 upgrades exist because of nightcapping and are lost in primetime. Your “scenario” would still be the same with passive upgrades.

Sorry, but this happens a lot when a keep or garrison is under siege. If it is a hair away from upgrading and your structure is Swiss Cheese, then getting that last dolyak in is of utmost importance if you’re working on a structural upgrade as everything will repair. The risk is leaving the lord less defended.

Here’s another example: your keep isn’t under siege; the map has a lot of activity; you’re about to get a WP; some thief keeps killing yaks; a havoc group of 10 keeps flipping the camp. You bet that at least 20 will escort that last yak. This means that they aren’t attacking something, giving an opportunity for other defenders to secure their position or go after a different structure because you force is occupied.

The HoT system would take that scenario, and others like it, out of the picture. It would mean people are just attacking or defending structures as there is much less reason to worry about supply.

Short answer:

Have 2 types of supply. One would be the supply as it currently exists, the other, new type would be just for workers and only usable by workers to upgrade structures.

Long answer:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/upgrading-world-vs-world-upgrades/

Anet recently showed us some of the changes to WvW that will come with HoT. They came up with some simple solutions to upgrade trolling, and eliminating the costs of upgrades. Bravo.

One of the changes is to have structures auto-upgrade. Yaks would not deliver supply, but rather time, making the structure upgrade faster. Either way, regardless of supply camps or yaks, the structure will upgrade. I am assuming this is to eliminate the supply trolls who try to waste supply in order to keep a structure upgrading. While it is a solution, I believe, and many others who’ve already expressed their doubts, and I’m sure, many more to come, think this is a mistake.

This change would take a large part of WvW strategy out of the game. This is a shame.

Some examples: if a keep is being sieged, defenders need to make hard decisions: do we use supply to repair the wall; do we use supply to build siege; do we keep it in the depot to try to get the structural upgrade; do we spare forces to try to escort a yak or flip a camp to start a yak?

Similarly, an API will most likely follow upgrade progress, so attackers will now just go after what structure is furthest away form upgrading and skip whatever is close to upgrading. Knowing this, defenders will be able to concentrate their forces on structures that are in the middle of their progress and be able to predict, to a reasonable extent, which structures are most vulnerable to attack.

Also, what about the workers? I guess there are no unions in Tyria. I’m sure they’re going to be thankfull that they are no longer the target of attackers, but they’re out of a job.

A very common problem that has already been stated many times is that for lower tier servers that have a dominating server, they will have easy, fully upgraded maps, while the other two servers will now have a harder as any effort to prevent that from happening by keeping camps flipped and killing yaks would be meaningless.

Having yaks not actually carrying supply and having supply camps not actually creating supply for yaks, and thereby structures, and rather delivering time just doesn’t make sense in the logical realm. But then again, it’s a fantasy game.

So, the proposed changes go to far. All this due to supply trolls (I’m assuming).

Solution:

Just dial it back a bit. Having yaks deliver actual supply is a good thing. But how do we eliminate supply trolls? Easy. Create two types of supply. One is the type that we all know and use to build siege and repair stuff. We would get these from the existing supply caches and the mechanics of yaks and camps works as it does now.

In addition, yaks would deliver a second type of supply that would just be for workers. This would make them a relevant part of the game again, much to their chagrin. Plus the supply piles could be an atmospheric part of the upgrade process. There could be piles of stone by the walls that would decrease in size as the upgrade is underway. Heavier timber piles for doors, and sheet metal piles for fortified walls. These supplies are untouchable by players, although it would remain to be seen whether the treb mastery would destroy them, as that hasn’t been addressed by Anet yet.

I think this is a simple, easy solution that would make everyone happy.

What are your thoughts to my idea?

Lots of interesting points. There’s also the matter of siege timing. Kinda takes some strategy out of the game.

“Oh, that keeps about to upgrade, eh, don’t bother with the camps or yaks. Just let it go and we’ll get back to it later.”

As opposed to the current: “Kill that yak! Don’t let it get in or it will upgrade!”
“We can’kittens being escourted by 20 guys.”
“kitten! The walls just re-enforced.”
“We’re trapped!”

That whole scenario, and many like it will probably go away.

Hopefully the beta-testers will provide valuable feedback and Anet will listen.

I replied to another post about making them a currency, like skill points. Be able to buy superior siege, get mystic forge stuff with them, whatever.

I love the idea about being able to unlock the other WvW skins this way. I wish I could spam +1 for this.

Xillllix.3485:

Applied fortitude and Applied Strength are the only WvW masteries that actually did something. This is another massive fail to remove the only things that were slightly rewarding for playing WvW a long time.

You should at least unlock for us unique WvW armor skins at each rank tiers (Silver/Gold/Platinum) to compensate the fact that WvW players make 50 times less gold than PvE players.

And this:

I want refund for the gold I spent buying wxp booster plz.

Wow, you nuts? Just about every siege mastery has a couple new skills added to siege. I’ll take those things over extra power/health any day. You can’t adjust your armor or food to send a supply drain cow into a mob.

Hexalot.8194:

No one will really miss applied strength (100 power isn’t a game changer), but losing applied fortitude is a BIG hit to all the glass builds out there. :-(

Good. I don’t think they intended (like most things in WvW) to exist in the first place. The whole system seemed like something cooked up over a drunken weekend.
This will bring the whole of WvW back to a balance that existed before my glass thief could have 17K health.

Yes, Anet knows better. There are no public test forums. They just release stuff and force us to deal with it. Remember the AC debacle and how fast it destroyed siege? Then they made siege stronger; then they gave us defense against siege; now everyone has all the same traits because we’re all maxed out on War Points. But no one ever asked for ACs to be that much stronger in the first place except for the complainers on the forums who didn’t want to upgrade to superior ACs.

They didn’t listen to the vast majority of feedback on EotM, because the map was already made and they wanted to get it out there. Look at all the serious feedback they’ve gotten on the forums. How much of that has been implemented? How long did it take to get something simple like different colored tags?

This is the first time where there will be a large beta that will hopefully have enough time before launch to take some constructive criticism seriously, but considering they’ve already released and hyped a ton of info and features of the new map, the beta will most likely be just Q & A.

What was released recently about changes to guard stacks and taking gold out of the equation for upgrades is amazing to me. The latter is something that has been complained about for years and a big thanks to Anet for coming up with a solution. But what will be the unintended consequences? For example, will it now be too easy to upgrade to T3? Just set it and forget it? I’m thinking of the lower tier servers who have almost no one on overnight except one. They may wake up to every map being fully upgraded. If that’s the case, will they still release it as is, or change the system in some way despite the fact that they’ve already presented it to us?

Well see.

Because it’s fun.

Why not just make it a currency that you can buy WvW stuff with?

We already have that with skill points. We can use them for all kinds of stuff. War Points are essentially the same thing. Use them to buy superior siege, or special mystic forge items to craft special WvW weapons or armor. Pretty much limitless possibilities if they’re made into a currency.

I sure don’t want more MF. We already get a ton of that from salvaging and ranking up our achievement points.

Illusion der Nebel.5860:

I agree, venom share is pretty strong for just clicking skills 6-10 in a row.

But at the other hand I really like the kind it works.
You are giving enchantments of your class to other classes that can use it more effectively.
In my opinion there should be more skills and mechanics like that, e.g. giving distortion (with reflect trait ) to your leader, or make projectiles of the necro bounce while giving him an enchantment…. Idk

At the moment I see only combo fields and boons as possibility for playing more effective together. And of corse the timing of dmg/conditions/cc.

That’s really oversimplifying venom share. If you just spam 6-10, you’ll most likely be dead in 15 seconds and aren’t contributing much to the group.

I agree with the second part, but there’s already a lot of that in the game.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Spurnshadow.3678:

We’ve been asking for this ad nausium since the wardrobe patch. Threads had hundreds of replies. There were no dev responses on this subject then, and I doubt there will be any now.

Yeah, actually there were multiple dev replies on this when it was pushed at the topic. I am not entirely sure what your motive is here, but your dishonesty is not appreciated.

I don’t appreciate that.

There were thousands (I’m not exaggerating) of posts complaining about the wardrobe changes. The fact that we could no longer salvage our stuff got lost in the quagmire. I tried to keep this alive back in the day by creating multiple topics on the subject, and no, devs did not respond. I think is was the final straw to me quitting the game 8 months ago. I’m coming back now awaiting the expansion.

Ha! I use sigil of water on my guardian’s staff.

Hoelbrak gives -20% condi duration. You must be saying when combined with food. It doesn’t give you more stacks of might when empowering, just duration, and might is the first boon stripped. The point is Hoelbrak is for dps front line meta. However, if you are getting chilled and immobilized all the time, maybe you should change things up. Sacrifice getting some might stacks in combat for mobility and survivability through trooper runes.

And I don’t advocate every guardian run this. I find having a mix of shout and concecration for purging flames, and other consecrations a good mix. I’ve had many people come back at me saying “Trooper Runes are dumb,” “I’d never run trooper runes,” “What are Trooper Runes?” If everyone in frontline is running dps then kitten about being chilled and imob all the time.

I just hate people who think everyone should run one thing when a variety is better and usually help the group more. It really boils down to group comp. And if you’re running with a lot of pugs, they usually need more support as pugs generally run selfish, higher-dps builds.

Sorry, OP. But just about every WvW player has their skills maxed. Just keep playing and you’ll get there before you know it.

It’s been said many times so far there are many counters to venom wells. I get angry at people who kitten about them. Like many others have said, there are many other attacks that are just as bad. Blah, blah, blah, etc.

One of the things that amazes me: The other day I’m running with a commander who kittenes a ton about this. I was in his party, and asked if the other guardians/warriors run Runes of the Tooper (previously Soldier), which condi clear on shout. My guardian runs 3 shouts, and I swap to Pure of Voice when fighting larger groups so I cleanse 2 condis with each shout.

I was rebuked and laughed at stating that is an old meta (man, i hate that term), and the new meta is Runes of Hoelbrak. ??? Seriously? So, you want to have more dps and offer nothing to the group as a frontline. Then I never want to hear you kitten again about being chilled and immobilized.

Change your builds, change your gear, change your group comp to deal with your enemy.

We’ve been asking for this ad nausium since the wardrobe patch. Threads had hundreds of replies. There were no dev responses on this subject then, and I doubt there will be any now.

I read the new posts about the mesmer today. The new specialization skills sound awesome. Really. I can’t wait to play with it.

However, again, there is a lot of dependence upon shatter skills. I re-iterate my original question: why can’t illusions be invulnerable upon use of a shatter skill. In WvW and large scale PvE content, illusions die instantly and don’t connect to the target, thereby negating any shatter effects. This makes a lot of these new, awesome changes, as well as the old style dps, useless. The following is a thread I created in the mesmer forum. I love the profession and just want to try to bring awareness to this problem.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Make-illusions-invuln-upon-shatter-skill/first#post5022520

Please consider this. Thank you.

I read the new posts about the mesmer today. The new specialization skills sound awesome. Really. I can’t wait to play with it.

However, again, there is a lot of dependence upon shatter skills. I re-iterate my original question: why can’t illusions be invulnerable upon use of a shatter skill. In WvW and large scale PvE content, illusions die instantly and don’t connect to the target, thereby negating any shatter effects. This makes a lot of these new, awesome changes, as well as the old style dps, useless.

Please consider this.

There are a ton of changes. Some professions gain from this slightly. Guardian comes to mind, while others are hit hard. Mesmers are being nerfed into the ground in WvW (large group play, not roaming) taking a big dps hit, and large scale PvE. I’ll just put up a link to a thread I made about that:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Make-illusions-invuln-upon-shatter-skill/first#post5007686

But, don’t be fooled; diversity is limited. We will only have 10 options of trait lines, for, as it currently stands, trait lines are all or nothing and we can only choose 3 out of 5. There are a bunch of traits that are still useless and others that are just so much better.

Also, as others have pointed out, some are mutually exclusive, so we can’t complement our play style by choosing both things that existed before. We are being forced into cookie cutter builds that don’t complement our play style.

Yeah, I completely don’t understand why they are limiting us to 3 trait lines. Makes no sense.

Many of you might thing this is overpowered, but hear me out.

As it stands, mesmers are fine for roaming, pvp, or small group combat. I come from a WvW background and mesmers are probably the lowest dps. One aspect of our poor dps is illusions die instantly. In order for a shatter skill to work, it needs to connect with the target, except for distortion. This can also be the case among large scale PvE content. We are usually relegated to portals and veils, and hey, if we can do a little dps along the way, great.

We have no decent aoe damage. Our hardest hitting ability is iZerker. We can’t come even close to compete to the aoes and dps output of elementalist, necros, engineers, and thieves. Every class has guarenteed damage. You target an enemy or the ground, hit a skill, and it connects, unless they are using a defensive ability. Mesmers, however, are highly dependent on our illusions surviving in order to connect to the enemy.

While we have always had sub par dps due to this mechanic, it will be made even worse by getting rid of the on death traits proposed with HoT as well as the higher dependence on interrupts for damage which puts more importance on Diversion and the increase in on shatter procs.

A very simple, and in my opinion, elegant solution would be to make illusions invulnerable when using a shatter skill. This means that my intentions, and dps will be almost guaranteed. One could still kite the illusions. Another implementation of this is if I use a skill that creates a new illusion, then it would replace an illusion that is trying to get to its target and shatter. This means I would have to be disciplined not to do this or make a tough choice to sacrifice my illusion going to its target in favor of an evade or to keep myself from spamming buttons. Another reason why this wouldn’t be overpowered is that I’m still limited to shatter cool downs, and only one shatter skill actually does good dps. At least this way, I know my dps will hit.

I strongly believe this would be an excellent change to the mesmer system as in WvW and large PvE content, I can contribute more to large group play.

Nate.3927:

people need to realize that 1000 possible unique builds, 980 of which are complete rubbish is worse than let say (random number) 50 possible builds, all of which are viable.

Realistically speaking, how many people do you think currently run something like 4/4/2/2/2 or 5/5/2/1/1 or anything weird like that? I’m willing to bet less than 0.01% of players do that.

That’s a pretty silly assumption. Almost all of my builds use adept or even just one minor in a line. My traits are usually spread across 4 trait lines. For example, My ele is 0,2,2,6,4. My guardian is 0,2,6,4,2. My warrior is 1,0,4,6,3. Many of these builds are common among my fellow players and are guild builds.

Yeah. This is super disappointing.

We are being severely limited in our build diversity. While they are taking some of the feedback from the community and getting rid of useless traits, combining traits so we can actually specialize in builds. However, limiting us to 3 trait lines is terrible. I’m going to be forced to choose something I have no interest in. My play style may favor having just the minor in 2 other trait lines. Or maybe, in WvW, having just the adept in 2 trait lines would be more complementary for the group.

I’ve been playing this game since launch and I still hear people discussing builds. This is a great thing. Please, correct me if I’m wrong, but, being limited to 3 out of 5 lines would mean we only have 10 possible builds. How is that better?

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

I am at a stage where I want facts, I’m frustrated, I’m wondering:

I think it is good you will be removing stats from trait lines, but:
I build armors and gear SPECIFICALLY with trait line stats in mind
I bought rings and trinkets WITH these stats in mind.
My builds which were balanced after 3 years of experimenting will be TRASH!

1. Will I get 2+ years worth of laurels for new trinkets?
2. Am I allowed to change to new trinkets so I can rebuilt when you are done?
3. Will you add the missing stats?
4. Will I get to change all my ascneded armor/weapon pieces?
5. Will I get to change all my 30 exotic armors? and the 100+ weapons?
6. Can I rechoose my runes?
7. If there are big shifts, will I be able to correct these initial changes?

• Don’t go changing everything without decent feedback . I remember a NPE, a Trait change which was FUBAR, and now you are gonna shove this right through our holes?
• WILL YOU MAKE A ROLLBACK TO THE ORIGINAL SYSTEM IF YOU FUBAR IT AGAIN?
• Do we need to wait for 2 years again for traits function?
• Why am I worrying? Do I have a reason for it?
  *

This is my biggest concern. So many hours, mats, gold, skill points, etc. spent farming stuff to make my character balanced just right. It reminds me when they nerfed confusion on the Mesmer by 50%. My condition set build was useless, so I had to start over. But now, this threatens every single class and every build. Now, I have ascended armor, weapons, and trinkets for my characters. 8 characters I regularly play with. I’m very nervous.

They said in one of their posts that they will be buffing the stats of armor a lot, and that should make up for a large amount of lost stats, but that is total bull. The stats in my armor compliment the stats in my traits. If you get rid of the stats in my traits, then I will need to re-adjust my armor, trinkets, and weapons appropriately.

Don’t get me wrong, I always hated the idea that stats coincided with triats, and this will free up builds. Someone mentions implementing a reset where all your armors, weapons, and trinkets would have a drop down menu allowing you to choose new stats. I think that would be absolutely necessary. How to implement that with pieces that have sigils, runes, or agony things in them, hopefully, that could just be dumped into our inventory to sell or re-use.

This doesn’t even address the outrageous cost of extracting runes from ascended armor or weapons. Will I have to just take a loss on that as well if I have to put new ones in them? This is not whining, it is a very large, real concern.

I have personally struggled with this subject quite a lot over the years.

Plenty of people have already posted about the practical aspects. One of my biggest issues is that the private raids were in their own TS. Finally, our server implemented a system where guild leaders could easily create their own private group in our servers TS. This enabled them to hear commander chat and co-ordinate with the other commanders across maps.

So, it boils down to everything that has been said so far. However, there’s another issue: This is a social game. I personally admire one guild on my server and always want to run with them. Am I entitled to do so? Sure. It’s a free country. Are they entitled to run alone? Sure they are. So, how do we resolve this? There is no resolution.

But being a social game, you are making choices that have repercussions. If you disrespect the guild group asking you to go away, then you will kitten them off and if you ever want to join their guild in the future, then you may not be able to because they remember you as the guy who disrespected their wishes.

Of course, the same goes for the guild. If they continue to only run privately, and be elitist kittens, then they will be un-liked, have a hard time getting co-operation from other guilds or pugs, and have a hard time recruiting if they need to. This is especially true if they are the only organized team on all the maps.

Either way, there’s more to consider than “why can’t I run with you now.”

Filovirus.6258:

And pretending it was “perfect” before, let me laugh, even on T7/8 there was regular occurences of massive lag spikes leading to random disconnects, whole borderland that were naught unplayable for whole match ups, and so on and so on, regularily for the past year or more……

You know, it’s funny to hear this because they’ve been working on bettering the server lag for a long time, making smaller and smaller improvements. I don’t know exactly when it was, maybe about 9 months ago, but they did some major release where they acknowledged that they did a major lag imporvement, and I didn’t have any server lag issues since then. I’ve since uped my graphics settings to maximum on everything except a couple things and my game’s been working great. This was the same experience with many other players.

However, some fellow guildies at the time were still experiencing the same lag issues they had before that patch a long time ago. They had excellent systems as well. I never did figure out what it could be, but there is definitely some kind of disparity between people.

Unless everyone is experiencing the same thing at the same exact time, then it’s something to do on your end with your computer, router, isp, or some router/isp between your service provider and anet servers.

This is, however, wandering off the thread topic, which is the server lag introduced in the mid-March patch.

First off, thanks a ton, Stephen, for taking the time to communicate so much.

Even though the primary issue has not been resolved, it’s great to see that you are working on it and keeping up the communication. Over the last couple days, I think you’ve posted about as much as we’ve had over a year. No joke.

To everyone else, I know Stephen doesn’t want to say it, but latency, which is ISP related, can be seen as server lag. When you jump around, or when everyone else jumps around, that’s latency. You may even have a very slight skill lag which could still be ISP related latency.

Latency related issues can even be experienced by more than one person, because people in a similar region may be sharing an ISP or going through a router that is having an issue. For example, when us NA players are up late with our Aussie pals.

It’s only when everyone on the entire map is having the same issue and at the same time when it’s server lag. This can be compounded if you are having poor latency. This thread, and the problem that will hopefully be resolved soon is definately server lag, because everyone on the map and across the servers (we communicate with our enemies) are experiencing the same skill lag at the same time.

Sure, most of us already know this, but I just wanted to say it for the people who don’t.

Please stop with the cut and paste responses, Devs. Every person experiences the same lag spikes from different areas of the country at exactly the same time: when there are big fights. Over the years, you guys have done a great job in reducing lag. For me, it’s been almost non-existent even in the largest fights (I’m in T1 btw). But then, that mid March patch hit and everyone is complaining.

Everyone’s graphics cards do not need updating. Everyone does not need to run tracer pings. Everyones ISP around the world is not failing at exactly the same time. This is not our issue when every single player is experiencing the same thing. This is with the patch. Acknowledge that this is a fault with the patch, because, frankly, getting those cut and paste responses infuriates people. This is your issue, and it needs to be addressed.

Lets not take 2 years to bring it to where it was before the patch.

Thank you. Concerned WvW player.

Sigh.

Golems are only as good as the poeple piloting them and the people defending. Here’s a video of one of my favorite fails. Pay attention to the chat window. Priceless.

This is one of many examples. Just do a search for golem fail GW2. There’s another one I love where one guy with a cannon destroys 40 golems. That’s it.

It doesn’t matter how much dps a golem does. The same effect can be done with 6 rams. So nerf rams? No.

If you don’t have the population to scout, man defensive siege, and respond to a golem threat, that is the issue, not the golem.