Guild Wars 2

First off, I’d like to say that Arena Net has done an amazing job at releasing new content on a consistant basis. I don’t want to go on complimenting everything you’ve done, just know that, for me, it has been recognized and appreciated.

After reading the release notes, I’m very concerned with Trebuchet Mastery. I fear this could be incredibly overpowered regarding 2 skills: the poison removing supply, but more troubling, increased radius.

Your maps are very carefully made regarding siege placement. One example where this would be overpowered would be on a boarderlands map. The trebuchet position to hit the NE bay wall from garrison is now further back. I assume that arrow carts and definately ballistae would no longer be able to damage the trebuchet from the ground. This now restricts defenders to having the only counter siege be the counter treb from outside the NW garrison wall. This is a tricky thing to pull off as it is so close to enemy spawn and is in range of mortars, trebs and catapaults form the NW tower and garrison. Besides this one counter siege position, we are now left with the only option of actually breaking into garrison. My fear is that this will create an incredible disadvantage for whoever owns bay on that map as they will surely have the outer wall down most of the time.

This is only one example. I’m sure I can think of others off the top of my head, and more will probably be discovered over time.

It has been shown that you don’t fully test your patches, especially regarding WvW. Please, don’t let this turn into the arrow cart fiasco and turn away many players from WvW by breaking it with this one ability.

Thank you for all your hard work.

That’s it. All said in the title. Fix asap please. You guys broke it in the last patch.

So, I think you guys have been doing an overall good job in updating WvW as of late. Whether they are good or bad is a matter of a different thread and opinion. The AC fiasco is one that is very bad. You guys upped AC damage, probably because people were being cheap and not upgrading their siege to superior. Now, sup ACs are insane. Fixing culling was a huge step forward, something long overdue, but finally done and actually working. Thanks for that.

One thing that was a very nice surprise is the chest rewards for gaining rankings. This is a nice little bonus, and encourages WvW play. You implemented a way to get ascended items, however, probably not in the way that a lot of people wanted or were looking for.

There are a couple things in this last patch that are serious issues, however. I just didn’t want to make a thread with only negative criticism and wanted your people to understand that I see you guys putting an effort forward. So, anyway, the serious issues: obviously, you must fix this siege limit immediately. I find it amazing that you guys can come out with fixes about a dungeon or some other PvE thing within a day after an update, but it’s been 2 days now, and this isn’t fixed. I hope you can see why your WvW community feels neglected. Also, the layering of the commander tag on the mini map needs to be fixed as well as bringing back party member dots to blue, no matter what the proximity is to other party members.

Please let things settle down with your new updates and put forth effort into fixing the things that have been broken or bothering us since launch, like the culling fix. You added the feature for a commander’s pings and map drawing are made visible to squad mates, but still haven’t implemented different color dots for the squad, like yellow. We still don’t have a drop down menu for offline or offmap people (which would enable us to kick them), and mesmer speed buff still doesn’t stack with anything unless it is the first speed buff. Those are just a few.

You folks are making steps forward, and that’s great, it just feels that a few of the steps forward have resulted in a few steps back.

Yes, this is a huge problem. The commander icon is layered below the green dots. What’s worse is that the commander’s green dot for the commander is on top of his own commander tag (no, he’s not in my party).

I think the chests are fantastic! Great job Anet. To anyone who is complaining: are you friggin serious? Ranking is easier than before. You never got chests before, so this is new. You get money, siege, and a chance at awesome drops. They actually took the time to make this retroactive too! How on earth can you complain about this? It’s a great little perk and only incentivizes WvW play even more.

A nice example of zoom hacking.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Zoom-Hack-Example/first#post2092803

Ah, I was getting the characters mixed up. Thought you guys were talking about the one who’s back was facing us.

The gloves and pants are invaders armor. The shoulders look very similar to invaders armor. It is heavy for female. Go to WvW sometime.

The trap idea sounds cool, but after thinking about it for 2 minutes now just sounds like an inconvenience. I just see one guy, probably the commander, cause they’re always in the lead, just running around a gate and triggering all the traps. Everyone else has supply. No big deal.

“Any chance to place a big glade somewhere in the new map, aside from main route to JP, just to allow unofficial duelling between people from the servers? Or even something like an arena/collosseum. Just a place, without any additional mechanics involved.”

“PvP has arenas…. go there.”

Besides what other people have said, the gear choices are very limited in sPvP

My second post on how baddies are just gonna be bad.

I’m hardly seeing any posts on boon stripping. It seems that a lot of the people here complaining are engineers, Do you realize you have one of the most powerful boon stripping skills in the game? Throw mines. It strips 25 boons. A couple of you do that to a zerg, they will have nothing left. Mesmers? Null field, mind stab, if specced, shattering, sword auto attack, arcane thievery. Necros, corrupt boons, well of corruption. I’m sure I’m missing all kinds of stuff.

This thread just proves to me how bad the people complaining are. Boon stripping should be one of the first attacks your group opens with and continues with throughout the fight, along with your condi removals, heals, etc. This isn’t sPvP. You are running with a group. If your group is all offensive, then you deserve to die. Seems to me like you guys just want to try to do as much damage as possible thinking that wins fights. The game has been dumbed down enough. Start thinking about what your doing.

I’m so tired of all the baddies coming on the forums. The main issue is that Anet seems to listen to them. Retaliation has had a couple of nerfs over time: damage reduction and stacking duration reduction. And still, people are complaining.

My main was a mesmer, and now, because all the baddies who just wanted to spam buttons, not think, or were rolling with a bad group who had no clenses, qqed the class to death. Portals are op, nerf the CD, portals are still op, limit it to some stupid arbitrary number, no more portals. In WvW, the confusion, galmor mesmer was the only viable build unless you were doing small skirmishes, and even there, confusion was very important. “Whaaa, I’m a DD ele cycling my rotations like a mindless idiot, and I’m dying. I’m not supposed to die! I’ve got the bunker build.” “Whaaa, I’m a DD thief heartseeking over and over again, and I’m dead. This usually works.” But no. No more. Mesmers got shafted, and already, I’ve seen almost no glamor fields, no clones, no mesmers. Confusion was only a problem for the idiots who kept attacking. The whole point of confusion was to nullify the enemy or do damage. Bleeds do way more damage with the same amount of condition damage. There are still a few of them around, and like I said, still good in yak killing, small camp flipping parties, but for the most part, shelved class.

Now, you guys are still kittening about retaliation. It is one of the guardian’s main offensive boons. They have medium melee damage, so they depend on retaliation to make up for it. Now, with boon hating (although, it is still pointless to trait for it) and thief steal, guardians are more vulnerable.

Pay attention to boons and conditions. Jeez.

It’s obvious that there are a lot of sPvPers and people who don’t understand aspects of WvW. Glamor mesmers played an hugely important role. They could do massive damage by doing lots of little damage to a lot of people. Most of the enemy would only get 2-4 ticks of confusion on them for a few seconds. that would average out to lets say 1000K a tick. This really isn’t that much damage all by itself. Any good team would have lots of clenses. It wasn’t reliable, because the enemy has to use their skills, unlike poison, bleed, and fire, which always tics for x amount of damage. A nicely specced necro should get ticks of bleed around 150-180. That’s a lot more deadly.

My point, however, is that if this is reduced 50%, then a team will just focus on classes that do aoe damage better. This is why you hardly see some classes in WvW, like rangers, because another class just does nearly the same thing, but better. Why should a team run a mesmer when that same player can run a necro and do more damage? To anyone who thinks shatter build is viable in WvW, you are wrong, unless you are fighting in small skirmishes. Clones die before you can press an F key. If you’re specced for that much burst damage, you’re glass and will die very quickly. Is anyone gonna play a mesmer just for veil and maybe a rare portal? I doubt it. I sure don’t. It just ruins the class diversity of WvW. Right now, it seems that WvW is turning into warriors, guardians, necros, else. Engineers are great, but rarely played. I can see thieves making a comeback.

Can the OP or anyone post something official on this? I still haven’t seen a link and this has riled up a lot of players, myself included.

Conncept.7638:

Aneu.1748:

Darek.1836:

Well it was OP… sorry.

Its one of the easiest conditions to counter! Imob is op, confusion is just misunderstood by so many people who have 1 on auto-loop.

Great job Arenanet, turn this game into even more of a casual mess.

This must be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard, confusion is the hardest condition to deal with. You either don’t attack, or you use a condition clear.

Not attacking just makes the battle last until the mesmer runs away or pinpricks you to death, and any condition can be taken off by a condition clear, the only difference being that with confusion you TAKE DAMAGE when you clear it.

I don’t like this nerf, don’t think it’s necessary or that it’s going to help much at all, but your post was just too ridiculous to leave unaddressed.

Well, If I don’t attack while I have 10 stacks of bleed on me and burning, I die. If I don’t attack while I have 10 stacks of confusion, I’m fine. What’s so hard to understand about that?

Thanks Anet for once again listening to all the QQers. If you look back on my posts, I’ve said time and again not to listen to thread after thread of bad players complaining. Apparently, you still do.

WvW is a team game. Shout heal warriors with runes of the soldier, guardians with runes of the soldier specced into convert condi>boon, eles, engies, necros, mesmers, all have group clenses. No one is expecting you to be clensing all of your own conditions. If you do, you are not running with a good group.

Confusion mostly affects bad players/teams!

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve held a choke. Thrown a glamor field on an enemy, run around a wall with my team. We are safe. We are not hitting them. They can’t hit us; but I still see tons of purple numbers.

I can’t tell you how many times and enemy has been turtled up, I’ve thrown a feedback bubble on them, and they don’t move. Forget about the confusion, there’s tons of white numbers from all the reflection.

I’ve been playing mesmer for months. It is my main. I used to run a PTV build, because I laid portals. That got nerfed, so my damage sucks. I created glamor build. I didn’t read it in a guide. I just figured it out. Abyssal scepter, 50 lurals on my ammy, 2 ascended rings, 1 ascended trinket, and now the bulk of my damage is cut in half.

Explative Anet

Syn.3459:

your build shouldn’t be based solely around confusion/1 condition skill

It’s the only condition a mesmer has. Why don’t you people get this. We have some with the staff auto attack, but that is dependent on clones for damage, which are insta killed.

http://youtu.be/rRELIxP0os8

A collection of fights from a couple weeks ago. Enjoy.

I understand that there are different teams for everything. 8 core people and a handfull of others on the side seems like a lot to me compared to the people I’ve heard are in charge of other things. And, duh, the SAB people are not going to be in charge of bug fixes or game improvement. But it is more a reflection on management as far as where they want to put their human resources to work.

I thought the idea was cute at first, but then I started seeing 8 bit mini pets and back packs and fireworks, etc. While I tried the SAB, and thought it was boring and just not fun, that’s one thing. But now, all this has crept into the pristine, high res world of Guild Wars. The weapon skins have high res animations and detail, but all the other stuff is, imo, ugly, blocky, and low res. This ruins the immersion of the game, and clashed greatly with the rest of the art and detail of GW2.

The other thing that I find sad about this is that there is a huge amount of content in SAB. That seems like it required a great amount of work. While they did put forth a great effort to fix culling and introduced more rewards for badges of honor, things I really do appreciate the time and effort to get done, there are still a number of things that can be fixed with the existing game. These range from big things like skill lag to small things, like fixing mesmer speed buff so it stacks with other speed buffs, or being able to kick party members who log out or leave WvW.

I do appreciate and commend Anet for consistently introducing new content to keep the game fresh. I just disagree with the type of content with SAB and wish they’d focus a bit more on the bugs and little annoyances that seem like it might be easy to fix that have existed since launch.

A video I made with a bunch of fights since culling was fixed. Enjoy!

http://youtu.be/rRELIxP0os8

I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for the culling fix. It is fantastic. It’s amazing how I can see all of the enemy and we can finally use our old tactics to our greatest advantage.

Myself, and many others, were very worried that the skill lag would be terrible, but I find it is better for some reason. When fighting 2 full servers at once, I still can’t fire off some utilities, heal, weapon skills, but that was the same as before. When fighting very large numbers, there is almost no skill lag, whereas before, there was quite a lot. Maybe it’s about the same, but it sure isn’t any worse.

The OP’s assessment is wrong. “Karma training” or pvdooring does not net you nearly the same amount of world xp as just killing the enemy. This encourages zerg mentality. However, it also depends on your enemy. If they are ikittenerg, then you need a zerg to fight them (most of the time) With the new patch, there has been a huge influx of players, so the vast majority of the zerg are pugs. So, they just follow the commander. We don’t have control over this. Only if our commanders go for the objectives do we do so, so it also depends on what your commanders value. I know Anet has stated many times that they are trying to discourage zerg behavior, but the world xp only encourages it. The funny thing is, if you are better than your enemy, even if their zerg has more numbers, your enemy is only feeding you world xp. If we can kill 100 players with 50, then thank you very much. So, if you’re ikittenerg, and find yourself still getting wiped most of the time, keep in mind you are giving your enemy lots of world xp. Maybe you should try something different. Then maybe your enemy will change and we can get back to concerning ourselves with PPT and score.

I already made a post earlier saying that I sympathies with JQ. I am very disappointed, however, that there are many ignorant players on this forum that are cheapening our hard work and potentially at this point, our fist win in T1. We kittened a little on the forums, but we mainly took the responsibility on ourselves to keep an eye out, report the person, get him/her kicked out of their guild, and constantly raise awareness on the matter. I don’t think this was a spy, but a troll. We’ve had our share. We were siege capped for weeks in our last stint in T2. We had to use golems many times to take objectives. These are just people who get off on screwing things up. I’ve taken screenshots but I’ve cleared out my files. I did, however, find one that I passed over.

KnT – Blackgate

Amori.7598:

Great fights this week…. but I feel sorry for both JQ and Blackgate. Neither server can claim a honest victoy after the griefers actions. JQ was literally siege locked for 2 days, and the EB Keep was being constantly drained of supply from this individual. The biggest effect was in the fact that we could not counter treb for hours nor could we take anything but supply camps without Golems. It was very disheartening….

Hopefully the griefers actions will be addressed by anet, and we can get back to a real fight this next week.

For those who do not understand…. here is a small amount of what the player did…..

Happened to us for weeks when we were in T2. I feel ya. Could only use Golems. People just like to be jerks. Got inside the keep in EB and it was seriously screwed up. We didn’t have it that bad, though.

-KnT Blackgate

Score Update. Gonna be close.

Here’s a quote from Habib in another thread:

“I should clarify here again that the culling fix will have minimal impact on skill lag. Skill lag happens because the server too busy to process everything that’s happening (e.g. it’s at 100% CPU). The removal of culling addresses issues experienced by the client but those changes don’t really impact the skill lag situation. They are fundamentally different problems that will need different solutions.”

OP here.

Wow, really? Transfer to another server? That’s your answer?

I’ve been on Blackgate since launch. I’m not moving.

This is a problem that Anet must fix and is a problem with their technology. I appreciate all the hard work that they are doing to fix culling, one of the biggest game breaking issues, I’m just asking and hoping that skill lag be addressed as well.

As of now, I try to not play during prime time hours. As a previous poster pointed out, if there is a major fight anywhere on the map, I get skill lag no matter where I am. I’m sure most of you have experienced this if there was ever a 3 way fight in SMC and you respawned and couldn’t fire off you swiftness skill trying to get back into the fight. That has nothing to to with my graphics card or processor and I can download over 1 MB/sec on a fast server or torrents, so it’s not my internet either. It isn’t me. Everyone has this. People with awesome systems (not me, but people in my TS) can get 30 fps in big 3 way fights, but still can’t fire off their skills.

I’m sure there are probably a million posts on this topic, but it is just so ridiculous that whenever there is a 3 way fight, or 2 large forces clashing, we can’t get off most of our skills. How is this fun? There is so much inconsistency as well. For example, my instant cast feedback can not be cast for the life of me, but mantra of pain, a channeled skill with aoe healing works right away as well as it’s instant cast portion. Weapon skills usually don’t work either. It’s bad enough that all my settings are the lowest and I still get between 3-7 fps in large scale fights. I could live with that if I could get off some attacks.

I really hope this is fixed in the March update, otherwise, I’m just not sure how much longer I’ll be playing this game.

bumping to see if there is still any interest to my topic.

I’m very much against the “boon hate” idea. Not all classes can generate boons. The classes that do generate boons do so for a reason, to make up for their lack of dps or health or low toughness in most cases. The game already has classes that can ruin your day if you have a lot of boons. Necros, for example can corrupt boons which can kill you very quickly. Mesmers can do nearly the same with arcane thievery. I believe that it has been mentioned that warriors will be the prime candidate for the boon hate attribute. They already do plenty of damage and elementalists, who rely on their boons for survival would only face more adversity.

Some classes can not help but receive boons as they are in the minor trait line, like a mesmer receiving vigor, regeneration, or protection if they spec 20 into the chaos line. This means that many mesmers will no longer use the staff as it will be seen as a detriment.

There is no class that can easily kill anything, and there shouldn’t be. I feel that the “boon hate” mechanic is a terrible idea and would only make warriors even more powerful and lessen the usefulness of boons, no matter what the damage increase might be.

Thanks so much for providing so much information and openness about what you guys are doing with the game and what to expect in the future. I think this aspect of your company makes a great player base and keeps us interested in the game.

I understand that this interview was mostly sPvP centric (it was obvious when a couple of the guys said that they are pigeon holed in their utilities and trait lines with mesmers and warriors, etc.), but there are a few things that I heard that gives me great concern. The largest is the nerfing of AoE. While you did mention that you have to be very careful with this as it will effect all of the game, I feel that the 5 player limit was a huge, and somewhat necessary nerf. To take this even further may be too much.

Basically, don’t pay so much attention to your sPvP community when making huge changes. I’m sure you don’t already, but as someone who is primarily a WvWer, this sometimes seems like the case. Lessening AoE would drastically change many classes who already have a rough time in WvW.

Also, I have great concern with the idea of doing more damage to people who have boons. I feel that this is primarily with regards to DD eles, but again, sometimes it seems you listen to all the qqers. DD eles may sometimes be a problem to kill, it just takes longer or maybe just your build just can’t do it. Players need to understand that there isn’t one build that exits that can kill everything. Fore example, my condition mesmer can kill a DD ele in maybe 10 seconds if they’re stupid, my raw damage mesmer may have a rougher time of it, but perhaps a bunker guardian may never be able to. I personally have a very hard time, with a few classes, killing a guardian with a certain type of build, but I have never, ever gone onto the forums to complain about it or ask that it be nerfed.

A lot of play is also about skill. I’ve seen a lot of qqers complain about things when the keys to success are timing your abilities just right, knowing when to counter, knowing when to dodge, knowing when to apply a boon or condition. I’ve seen many people enter a fight just doing the exact same thing. It may have succeeded with that guy, but it won’t against this guy, and then they go on the forums and complain that this needs to be nerfed or this needs to be buffed.

I think the vast majority of players don’t come to the forums and complain. We’d rather just play the game, or are completely un-aware of what might be coming in the future. I’m a bit in-between. But as an example of your track record, I know from experience that you guys did lots of changes with portals. First increasing the cooldown, then limiting them to 20 players. I think these changes were from all the people kittening about portals on the forums when they just didn’t know how to counter them, no matter how many people came through. (one of my characters is a mesmer, so I’m still hoping you guys increase it to 25 (the number of a squad) and prioritize squad members. That only makes sense, right? More than an arbitrary number of 20) I don’t know if you guys noticed, but there are almost never portals used in WvW anymore except in specific or extreme circumstances, like to transport golems, or to run a suicide mission onto siege. I also play an elementalist. It’s damage is good, but not game breaking awesome. Remember that AoE damage can be completely avoided with just a dodge, or simply change directions of where you are running if you see a red aoe circle ahead of you.

Perhaps there are things I haven’t thought about regarding aoe because I’m not in your shoes and don’t understand very legitimate concerns and issues that truly are not fair. Just, please hear me when I ask, please don’t listen so much to unskilled players and people who don’t try to play their class to their best ability and cry on the forums wanting you to change the game to fit their playstyle. I think it’s great that you guys do listen to the players in the forums, I just feel that there are many players, perhaps most players, who just don’t take the time to come here and complain about something, or say, this is working great, don’t change it, or this skill is awesome, I love it!

Along that line, you guys have listened to some very legitimate complaints about WvW that were nearly game breaking, like removing the PvE consumable items, like peg legs, sprockets, scale venom, etc. from WvW. Thank you for finally getting around to that.

If you respond to this tread, please don’t turn this into a discussion of DD eles, portals, I’m dumb, your dumb. There are already tons of thread about how AoE needs to be nerfed. The topic of this thread would be on how much Anet listens to the complainers on the forums, or if you insist on digressing, make it a topic of something new.

Keep up the great work Anet

OMG.

It’s amazing how threads turn into a qq fest or how people criticize other peoples play calling them stupid for not using this ability or don’t do this and then turn around and call the other guy stupid for calling me stupid.

The OP and this tread is all about how there is a barrier on a wall that is designed to protect you from A SINGLE PULL, but due to poor programming, the collision detection does not work and is pulled off a wall as if the barrier is not there. We’re not talking about a ramp that has no barrier. We’re not talking about a section of the wall that has no barrier, like the western part of the northern inner bay gate. That’s it.

This should not turn into a discussion about the pull skill itself. Please, try to stay on topic. Start a new topic on “co-ordinated mesmer pulls are overpowered.” or something if that’s what you want to talk about.

The one thing that makes me angry after reading this, and is a little off topic but still relevant, is how people just have no idea just how much of a gold sink WvW is. We are constantly buying siege. Rams are 6s a pop, trebuchets 24s. Want to make them superior, double that, add a skill point, and some mithril and elder wood. We constantly upgrade camps, towers, keeps. 1.5 G to get reinforced walls or a waypoint at a keep. Forget about SM. We do that every day because these structures are usually flipped by the enemy. Constant repair bills. PvEers don’t have any of this. They break their armor far less frequently than we do, and all of their activity generates gold.

A video from early in the morning. KnT et al. defending SM against JQ. This is the 4th breach into inner. The 3rd was much more fun, some very close calls, the lord was down like 3 times, but I wasn’t recording that one. There was a 5th breach that was pushed back, then I had to go to bed at 5:30 in the morning.

Enjoy

http://youtu.be/O-iYn_N1W4M

BTW, I just finished editing my post earlier. I made a mistake in my math. To anyone who has read or quoted me, the numbers are actually half of what I stated before editing. Please keep this in mind if you are quoting someone who has already quoted my unedited post. If possible, please don’t quote someone who has already quoted my post with the incorrect information. Thank you.

Well, I haven’t seen any specific numbers with regards to all the monies raised for transfers, so here are the facts. I’m a very defensive person and I’ll probably get a lot of crap from my guild leader about saying anything, as we usually try to stay off the forum drama, but I just can’t help it.

So, all of the NA guilds that transferred here have paid for themselves. The Oceanics, needed a little help. All of the WvW players, that are part of the BG War Council, which is pretty much the vast majority of us, donated some gold freely of their own accord. What we have raised and spent is enough to transfer @20-25 people over, give or take depending on that days gem price. If you look at a guild the size of MERC, for example, which i think has about 400-500 members, that is helping @5% of them transfer.

That’s it.

That’s all.

Even the guilds that needed help farmed their kitten off to help out their own guld mates. There has not been thousands of gold spent/bought/gifts/bribes. This has all been done out of the spirit of generosity to help some of the poorer members out so they could be with their fellow guildies.

KnT, Blackgate

I hope the devs are still reading this thread.

Please don’t screw up anything by listening to all the QQers. The problem that I encounter all the time is ignorant people complaining. I feel you guys made a serious mistake with the mesmer portal (I’ve advocated increasing the cap to 25 and prioritizing your squad. That just makes sense. Now, they are hardly ever used.) There was the fiasco over WvW rankings reset. Please, think things through carefully.

I don’t think any change you do will affect PvE much. I’m a big WvWer and never PvP, so maybe most of this is coming from that community. They are vastly different, and please don’t forget how serious your changes affect us WvWers. The problem is that there is a counter to everything, but others don’t understand that. I can kill a DD ele very fast with my confusion mesmer. Necros kill my DD ele very fast by turning my 6 or 7 or 8 boons to conditions. When fighting a large zerg, I don’t care how many cleanses I have, I can’t cleanse fast enough, and if I do clense, I’m not damaging. But it seems that people want their one build to do everything. That doesn’t exist, and it shouldn’t. It keeps the game interesting.

DD eles have great survivability, but that comes at the cost of DPS, so who really cares that you can’t kill them fast? Well, the people who want their build to kill everything. Again, that doesn’t exist and it shouldn’t.

My other fear is that I run a variation of the DD ele that is great for me and my team, but if you nerf the DD bunker ele, how is my variation going to get screwed up? Can I still switch to the staff and provide better healing support for my team? Is it going to be viable anymore? Probably not based on your past nerfs, but I have hope.

If you nerf this badly, then the community will just start QQing about something else, like “wahh, I can’t kill a guardian! He needs to get nerfed!” Then, necros condition damage is too high. When will it end?

Wow, I can’t believe how many people think the new system is worse. Far from my experience. When running into an enemy zerg of 30-60 players, I can actually see them! Sure, my commander or some of my allies might cull, so what? I can actually see where the enemy is. We can actually use field tactics. Yeah, I have a bit of a frame rate drop, but when I hit a skill, it gets used. How is that not better?

BG has already been in T1 a couple of times and failed to keep its position there. BG has placed 3rd in T1 every week it has been there except for maybe 1 week a long time ago. I’d say the system is working as intended.[/quote]

The only reason we dropped to T2 was because we wanted to in anticipation of the reset. We were actually slated to be second last week before we started to tank it.

Last night, we were on FA BL (FA, BG, TC). We had about 50 people on the map total, but there were still ques. Some guys were in que for an hour + before they got in. Yeah, there’s a problem.

Well, this was originally a thread for Anet, but I’m waiting to start my day drinking some coffee and smoking a cig. So, I’ll take a little time to explain.

I regularly run with 2 guilds. One of which used to use “portal tactics.” The importance of me running with my guild is, hopefully, not lost on better players. We have developed a group synergy to maximize each class and support eachother. The roll of the mesmer was, amongst other things, the portal. What we would do is portal multiple times around a battlefield. Every 10-15 seconds, our whole group would be in a different spot. This is the power of portals. Everyone in the guild would get through supporting eachother properly. This is something that has been obviously lost on many of the responders to my thread because this tactic can no longer work. If pugs take the portal, then everyone will die, because the important people, the ones in the guild, most likely won’t get through if there is a group following that would put us over 20 players. If we are using 2-3 mesmers to transport a group into battle, our portals are on CD and we can’t portal again, so it is a one time use only in a battle. Might as well just rush in. This is why I asked for it to be increased to 25 and prioritize your squad. At lease that way, we could keep our guild synergy.

The only use for portal now is to transport golems (this is still a pain in the kitten because pugs still screw this up) or to use your “one time only” portal with other mesmers to get through a heavily defended choke point in a lord room or to do a quick siege destruction outside of a structure with a return portal (god forbid more than 20 people come through so it’s still highly risky).

I am a very experienced mesmer. I just see no reason to run with portal, blink, decoy on my utility bar just incase a portal is needed. I used to do that, because we would use portals extensively, but no more. BTW, I’m not only speaking for myself and my experience with the people I run with, but I’ve also noticed and extensive drop in enemies using portals. This is a fact and please don’t say I don’t know what I’m doing. Hopefully now, you understand why portals are dead.

With all that being said, this has taken away a small aspect of the game, one that is very dynamic and fun, but now, a little less so. My fear is that over the long run, the dynamicism and fun will keep getting chipped away. Stop now, and bring back portalling, please.

Portals are dead.

Since you nerfed it to 20 people. I have hardly ever used portals now. And I often run with a guild that deploys portal tactics and my guild was getting better at it. We used portals for a couple reasons: 1, keeps us grouped together, 2, keeps the enemy guessing. The fact that there was culling was not a primary reason for it. As a matter of fact, the culling got better over time. Then they implemented the new culling fix trial a couple weeks ago and decided to roll it back. It seems to me that they rolled it back to something at launch, because for me, it is worse than ever.

Why are we hardly ever using portals? Because it takes 2 good mesmers. Now, it’s just easier to simply run into someone as a group. BTW, there is still culling issues with this. Why? You made it a necessity. We can not risk pugs taking the place of someone in the guild. Yet, often times, I still need to spec for portals and keep the utilities needed on my bar: portal, blink, possibly decoy.

First, you increased the CD, so I have to spend 10 points to get the 20% faster glamor CD. Now you limit it to 20. On top of this, I can’t do anything to anyone on top of a wall with any illusions. I can’t destroy any siege on top of a wall. The only exception is if they are right on the edge. (why you couldn’t have just fixed it so I can’t attack thing s through a gate is beyond me) Your really nerfing the heck out of my class.

OK, so now for my plea. I really miss portal tactics, so as a compromise, if you insist, and i mean insist on keeping this arbitrary, skill breaking policy of 20, then here’s an idea: increase the number to 25 and prioritize whoever is in the same squad as you. That way, you’d be sure to have the right people go through the portal.

Portals are an interesting and dynamic aspect to WvW. Please make them viable again. They can be easy to counter by an organized, good guild. I know I’m whining now, but stop listening to the whiners so much and use your best judgment on what is right and makes the game great.

-Violet Sorrows BG

Well, there seems to be differing opinions as to why there is culling.

I, for one, find the new/old culling to be six of one, half dozen of another. It is just as important to see your enemy as your allies. How is one supposed to know where to lay heals/boons/cleanses if you can’t see your allies?

One of the things beyond me is why we can’t see the nameplates.

If it is an artwork issue, why can’t every detail about an enemy be loaded into memory when they zone into a map? But we don’t really know what’s happening on the programming side, so it’s silly to speculate on possible solutions.

I am strictly not in favor of any kind of dumbing down of character models. It is very important for me to use the visual ques of what’s going on. I can differentiate what’s happening in a large fight. Character models provides me with crucial information many times.

I think that if there’s a tier where one server wins 3 weeks in a row, and the server above them looses those same 3 weeks, then the wining server from below and the loosing server from above automatically switch, regardless of their rating.

I’m glad to see some discussion on the topic. I would like to make some counterpoints.

@ Ilyset

Incorrect. Almost every tier is getting an increasing point gap.

I keep hearing that the system is working as intended. That the Gliko system is about expectations. I understand this, but I think that something in the math is broken. I’m on Blackgate. We’ve won our matches against IoJ and SoR every week, yet every week, we go down in rating. It looks like now, we are going to be playing them for a 5th week, and because of the rating system, probably the week after that and the week after that. For arguments sake, let’s just say we win every week, SoR places 2nd, and IoJ places 3rd. (this is just for argument sake. I’m following the trend. With the exception of 1 week, where IoJ made a comeback for a very close 2nd, this is my example) Let’s also assume that we all play about the same way we have been. What will happen is BG will continue to loose rating and IoJ will coninue to gain rating.

At a certain point, however, the “expectation” of how much we should win by will meet our actual resuts. This means that we will reach a point where we will not loose rating. Then, I assume, that we will reach a point where we will actually gain rating. However, I foresee this rating gain to be minimal because we probably won’t beat SoR by a large enough margin. Also, at this point, the gap between tier 1 and 2 will be so large that we probably will never (or at least a few months down the road) be able to get up to tier 1.

So, why is BG not rewarded for placing 1st? Shouldn’t they get a shot at the next tier? What if BG places 1st 8 weeks in a row against the same servers, but the rating system has made it so that the 3rd place finisher in tier 3 is 100 points above? How is the 1st place finisher below ever going to get the rating points to that level?

An even better, real life example other than mine, is TC in tier 3. If you look at the ratings as of this writing, TC is first by almost 70K points, but they are loosing 5 points in ratings. If i remember correctly, they have won every match for the last 4 weeks, by a better margin than my bracket, yet because IoJ has gained points ever match, the gap between TC and IoJ is about 55 points. It seems thier shot at getting into tier 2 is just as bad as ours getting into tier 1. When will this end?

It seems that the only way for a 1st place finisher to gain rating is to completely smash the competition by about double the 2nd place score. This is unrealistic now that things seemed to have settled down somewhat.

So, in WvW, am I gonna face the same servers for the rest of the game? Keep in mind that I’m not saying that I want to play SoS and SBI. I think these last few weeks have been great, but I can see them getting stale soon. The other thing this system creates is the lack of incentive for trying if we won’t be awarded for placing 1st, except for the knowledge that we did so.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Week after week, I’ve seen the 3rd place finisher gain in rating and the 1st place finisher drop in rating. Again, it seems like the system will not be satisfied until everyone in a tier is all about the same rank, meaning it will be very difficult for one to move up or down because the same thing happens in the tiers above and below you, meaning the point gap between tiers increases.

Now that I ran across this thread I think I understand what’s been happening. While I appreciate the efforts of Anet and trying to do something about the issue, one drawback is that my allies are retreating a lot more. This leaves me in the front lines more often than I care to be. While I can survive quite a lot, I think that everyone thinks their allies have died or retreat, therefore, they retreat. Also, I’ve found myself yelling quite often in VoiP, “Where the heck is everyone? Get over here!” type of thing. I wonder how many times they actually did flank/retreat compared to them just not rendering.

dohktug.8397:

Raven Paradox.1860:

Your in Tempest Wolves right? We’ve seen your guild multiple times the past 3 days and have beaten you guys (while outmanned) every time. I have footage as proof and will be uploading it as well.

While you wait for OP’s upload, here is some of the fighting from last night on BG BL.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1juwjhdptYE

Nice video, really. I have mixed feelings about some of this. I can see why Indo, or whatever his name is (I just don’t want to try to find a previous post) has an over inflated sense of himself. I didn’t see any fights against some of our best guilds in there (BG), and that was some really horrible descisions placing a treb outside with 4 ballistas that you guys wiped twice. I really don’t want to start a we’re better than you fight, he just comes across like a jerk in every post. BTW, I play a thief sometimes and find it difficult. I’m a mezmer that you guys might find very hard to kill. Besides stacking a bunch of vit gear, which I don’t think you do, because you have a lot of condition damage, maybe you trait into the precision 5% vit as well, you have a huge health pool as a thief. I’ll have to try to figure that out. GJ