Guild Wars 2

The scoring system is a symptom not a problem. The population imbalance issues and the reward system being completely divorced from scoring are the primary reasons WvW has been shedding users faster than it should.

Prior to HoT, neglect clearly played a significant role as well but I still believe it has more to do with the population and reward systems that are still broken.

Outside of mobility, on a condi build the SB is marginal. On a power build, the SB is near worthless.

I ran into a buzzsaw of a D/D, Staff, Acro build. They basically used D/D as an up close killer, Staff for mobility/AoE damage and used CnD on guaranteed stealths. Worked really well but the skill requirement is clearly high.

kiwituatara.6053:

I think channel attacks don’t track if the user is using action camera. I haven’t tested it out, but a few people in the ranger community have complained about it before.

It does not track if Action Camera and Auto Target is turned on which is most of the time when Action Camera is used.

1. You already figured it out. The SB is almost completely useless to a power build beyond mobility.

2. Staff for the AoE or P/P for the ranged attacks.

3. I use Shadow Step, Bandit’s Defense and SoA for general use. Sometimes when I am just navigating a higher level map, I will switch BD and SoA for Refuge and Blinding Powder.

gebrechen.5643:

Because no one likes “running from everyone to hide behind siege” aka YB

Every server that has fewer numbers on a map “hides behind siege”. The difference with YB was (is?) that it kept that siege refreshed, encouraged scouting and is comprised mostly of PUGs.

YB’s diligence compliments skilled fighting guilds very well and coupled with the right server has the best chance to beat BG IMO.

Roaming in T1 centers around gank squads and extremely high mobility builds designed to dodge zergs. Small scale fights outside of duels typically revolve around which side gets more +1 thieves in the mix.

T2/T3 has a handful of solid fighters and most fights don’t get +1’d into a numbers game. The general problem is that experienced players have been leaving and replaced with less experienced players so some of the fights for good experienced players are a little too easy. I don’t even balk about jumping into a 4v1 situation these days.

I know nothing of T4.

I only played SoS for a few weeks but my experience is that they had a lot of seemingly newer players running sub-optimal builds. This actually seems to be the case for a lot of servers these days. Many of the old hard core players have left the game to be replaced with fewer less experienced players.

tym.3791:

Maybe YB will be fun once again, there for some time, it was just a unfriendly place to be, and found myself hating to even run with the zerg. Hope we someday rebuild, and it becomes more friendly and more fun. Until then, I will just play something else. Transferring it pointless. With the linking system, who knows what is around the corner.

For the months that I was there, YB was one of the most cordial and friendly servers I have been on. Negative map chat was actively frowned on and fairly brief when it happened.

Kaiser.9873:

There is no “implosion”. We lost the alliance to TC, which I kinda think most people figured would happen sooner rather than later.

YB lost several of the “Alliance” guilds weeks before BG became dominant. As you said BG just had a massive influx of players which drove their blobbing over the top.

Not sure why YB wouldn’t be on the list. They are one of the more dominant servers when paired with equal numbers.

A serious problem is that the vast majority of WvW players are fair weather. When their server is doing well, they pour in and blob down the other side. When locked in cage match like T1, it grinds down even the die hard players to the point they just stop engaging or leave the game completely.

This is a fundamental flaw with these style systems and exists in almost every game that has a mode similar to this.

DeceiverX.8361:

It’s tough. On one side of the fence putting in more revealed shuts down the core thief pretty much entirely, since the core profession gets its cleanses, heals, mitigation, initiative, and overall deception and viability from stealth

I think the Acro line with the recent changes are meant as an alternative. The Acro line still needs tweaking but it is under-rated. That said the vanilla thief is very limited due to the bunker and boon spam meta.

The burst mobility on a roaming Dare Devil is able to move nearly 10k on one full rotation with Speed up all the time. Nothing catches that in WvW.

Stealth, thief is best single target. Mesmer with PU is easily the second best. Engi is 3rd or 4th depending since the Gyro doesn’t fully stealth them.

Dare Devil with D/P and shortbow is probably the most prolific roaming builds in the game. While, Mesmers are one of the strongest roaming fighters in the game. Everything else is pretty much secondary to those classes roaming IMO.

I have a few thousand so to me it seems to be a bit too fast but I play more than your average bear.

Shinjiko.1352:

then a quick sic em and he literally panicked as I saw him trying to HS into the BP over and over trying to stealth. I only wish sic em was an aoe reveal like the scrapper one as that would have made it even funnier.

It should be. More abilities should proc a forced reveal. Stealth in the game isn’t broken but the general lack of counter play is. Fortunately ANet seems to be adding a bit more here and there. Hopefully they add a bit more.

HantuDuppy.8562:

What is the real difference between wvw and pvp beyond servers? PvP is a fair fight where skill and teamwork wins the day. WvW is where noobs can feel like winners by gathering together to vastly outnumber their opponents.

PvP and WvW revolve around flavor of the month builds often unique to each game mode. Both rely on relative luck of getting players around you that actually know what to do in a fight. The only exception is noted with a numbers advantage.

HantuDuppy.8562:

Are pvp builds just as effective for world vs world?
PvP has controlled builds for balance. There is no balance in WvW, so they don’t even bother to try. Who outnumbers whom is the only thing that determines the outcome of a battle in WvW.

Basically a handful of PvE, WvW and PvP builds will be similar but ultimately changes will be made here and there to support the different play styles. WvW has a much larger base of armor/weapon stats to choose from. WvW also supports food which PvP does not. Some WvW meta builds simply cannot be built in PvP and many meta PvP builds do not perform well in WvW.

HantuDuppy.8562:

Do you start at level 80 on pvp and if not is it something you can level in?

In PvE, you use your characters level. In PvP, you and everyone else are always 80 with the same stats and ability access. In WvW if you are below 80, you are upscaled but upscaled players are at a huge disadvantage as they are generally using lessor gear and missing abilities.

HantuDuppy.8562:

Is it usually every man for himself or can you do well as a support build to help teammates?

Three basic styles of play in WvW: Large scale (zergs) prefer builds that support each other or do direct damage. Skirmish is mostly about team synergy which these days revolve around boon sharing. Roaming is typically about escape which is generally mobility or stealth coupled with spike damage or condition sustain.

HantuDuppy.8562:

What are fun and viable builds you might recommend for an elementalist?

In large scale play, staff elementalist is a cornerstone build. In skirmish and roaming, bunker tempest is king.

HantuDuppy.8562:

And what kind of rewards do you earn?
PvP and WvW both use ‘reward tracks’ for typical random stuff.

Less than PvP and certainly less than PvE but recent changes in WvW have helped up the rewards. With reward tracks, players get access to dungeon armor/weapons as well as a specific WvW armorset. Other than that it is mostly trash loot for money.

Dawdler.8521:

A trapper thief will permaimmobilize you

It cannot perma-immobilize even if it reveals. It has two stealthed immobilizes and they have to burn their heal to get that. If a player has any immobilize clear (which is most these days), a thief has no hope of keeping them immobilized. I should know I run a P/P build that has a spammable immobilize.

Dawdler.8521:

and down you in about 3s and he will never be seen once or have anything show in your combat log.

Wrong and VERY wrong. No condi class can kill a player in 3s unless they apply a massive amount of confusion and the player kills themselves. Ghost Thief builds have very limited confusion capability. This assumes the build they are attacking has zero condi clear as well. As for not showing in the combat log, all condi damage is logged.

Dawdler.8521:

Best case scenario, he pop up 10s later to put a treb on you because he’s so 1337. GG if you meet two or more of them working together.

I have and they are easy kills.

Dawdler.8521:

There is no counter. Even reveal is has a tiny range, by the time you enter the invisible traps the thief will be far away and only return in a second if you actually die.

If you want to duel and find out just how much this build sucks, PM me in game. I can melt one with several of my dueling builds. On my evasion thief, I can take on 2+ since their traps get sprung without ever applying condi all the while my build is applying condi. There are relatively spammable abilities that hit stealthed players.

legenduu.4372:

i dont understand how rangers have best mobility over thiefs shadowsteps and movespeed on dodge.

They don’t. Nothing catches a thief with a Shortbow, Shadow Step and Unhindered Combatant. Add on Signet of Agility as well as Steal and the thief is halfway across the map while other classes are just getting out of the blocks. Then there is faster movement in stealth on some builds in addition to no movement hindering conditions effecting a Dare Devil.

Even better all those skills are viable on a combat roaming build not just some skill added for some extra mobility. If we want to get crazy Shadow Trap and Acro make a thief stupid fast.

Seems reasonable that they locked top tier servers while they try and figure out the balance for relinking. If the populations start moving around anticipating the link, it could screw up their balance.

This issue happened last time when several T1 guilds moved around just before the link happened.

Players blobbed just as much before the Squad UI.

ANet built a game mode that rewards capturing objectives and added a giant “go here” arrow to collect said rewards. Players see very little reward from leaving a tag. Players see very few rewards upgrading or defending.

If anyone wonders why blobbing is so prevalent, this is why in my opinion. Even worse the rewards for capturing an easy objective are the same for a difficult one. IMO this is why PvD has been prevalent for so long as well.

I expect voice chat BUT every guild I have tried has either been far too juvenile or far too regimented for my taste. If I could find a guild of old timers that casually play roaming or havoc when I do, I would join up but I just haven’t found it.

For now, I solo roam or play with a group of friends I mostly know in person for over 25 years. We play all sorts of games together not just GW2 and when I solo roam we all sit in Discord yammering on about whatever.

Agreed. Templates should have made the jump long ago. It is a fairly time consuming chore for those that run one build in PvE and a different on in WvW.

Stand The Wall.6987:

its not so bad now i guess. they have separated builds between pve/pvp/wvw so when you join one or the other your build changes with it. better then nothing.

Except it only applies to traits and not weapons, armor, etc in WvW and PvE. sPvP mostly handles this but not fully.

tym.3791:

I am shocked at the advice. Guardian is the best commander??? Please.

Outside of commandering skill and talking about best professions in general, Guardians are nearly a universal commander class. They are one of the most group friendly classes with a legendary amount of survivability. They also have the honor of being relatively untouched since release so much so that FotM builds from release years ago are still solid with a few small adjustments. They don’t even need their elite spec to be awesome in large scale fights. Mix in Durability with Nomads makes them one of the toughest builds to bring down in the game while elevating everyone around them significantly.

I can think of no other profession that even comes close to dominating the front lines like Guardians have. Every other profession might be suitable and even dominant for a time, but Guardians have ruled since pre-release and continue to do so.

Skill is still the deciding factor but a good commander in a less optimal class can be a great commander in an optimal Guardian.

If Durability isn’t possible, Scrapper is a decent alternative rune. Not as group friendly but works for a bunker engi.

Trajan.4953:

If you are going to pin up and command it has to be either Guardian or Revenant. You need the sustain to be able to live past bombs, statics, pin-snipes, etc etc etc

The Engi can Invuln/Block nearly as much as any other class (able to block 33% of a fight, potentially invuln another 7s just shy of a minute). The scrapper line also has some great options for being very durable. The class even comes with a fairly rare water field. The fundamental problem is it isn’t as group friendly. I think it can command but it will rely on other players for most boon buffing.

The log completely misses some attacks and heals. It also rolls multiple attacks from a single source into one attack.

The lack of a reliable combat log that saves to file is egregious in a AAA MMO. We should be able to record effects from sources otherwise it indicates the game itself is covering for bugs since players lack the tools to prove some skill might be performing incorrectly.

Don’t roam on a necro… it gets kited to death and cannot escape anything. Vanilla mesmer and maybe warrior or ranger for roaming. Everything else really needs the elite spec to maximize escape from the large groups and remain highly effective for roaming. Otherwise you will start most 1vX fights with one foot already in the grave.

Now in zergs and skirmish, vanilla necro, ele, guardian, warrior, mesmer are all good. You can probably make some other classes “work” if you are highly skilled but as noted you will be at a disadvantage in most fights.

In the next update, Proofs will be able to buy HoT vendor content including the dreaded Durability Runes, Mussle Soup recipes, Interrupt sigils, etc.

babazhook.6805:

I am not sure where you get the immense heal if you try and hit them. If the thief evades an attack he gets about 450 healing. Thats hardly immense. You just have to fight them at range and learn what part of the evade frame is vulnerable (On the DB) from practice. This will ensure you get an attack off everytime. about 50 percent of the evade animation is an evade and the rest they are vulnerable. There then a delay when they hit the ground where they can not evade again right away that you can time for.

I think he is talking about my specific build (literally as I think he ran into this buzzsaw and we talked about it in game). My version doesn’t run heal on evade since it doesn’t need it but is still OP. That said, hardly anybody else runs it (thankfully) instead they try to get something like Ghost Thief or D/D condi to work which IMO are crap compared to the build he is referencing and Mesmer clone spam.

In fairness, the build does not scale up with other friendlies and is strictly a solo affair. The Mesmer clone spam build is a great skirmish and solo build unlike the evade thief.

babazhook.6805:

Again , against power Dire can provide enough defense to take an extra attack or two without being downed . It does not make one invulnerable to damage. There a reason people are claiming toughness adds little in survival in todays meta due to all of the high damage attacks available .

Current power meta is way down from the first two years in WvW. Thieves used to be able to spike ridiculous amounts of damage. If I see a big shot today I know they are basically full glass and relatively easy kills. When ANet removed stats from the trait lines they took a big ole nerf hammer to most power crit builds.

Toughness directly mitigates power. Toughness also scales with healing. The longer a fight goes, the more toughness outshines Vitality. Mix that in with Stealth, Evasion, Blocks and high mobility and suddenly a class goes from getting downed by a big shot or good play to being able to easily reset or run.

Dire on an optimized build is basically mitigation for power and a buffer condi while not effecting DPS much. Without Dire, my Mesmer suddenly becomes much more brittle to headhunters like Backstab D/P or Pistol Whip S/P.

Kaiser.9873:

Meh, this is the same as steroids in baseball. If everyone has them it’s back to skill determining who is best rather than gear. I’d rather they be more available than nerfed.

Durability runes are the exact opposite of skill. The skill portion of the runes is basically standing next to another bunker. They have no active ability and are completely passive.

Seriously… 170 toughness, 125 vitality, 20% boon duration and GROUP Protection, Resistance, Regen applied every 20s. That is strong enough solo but get 2+ of these bunkers next to each other and they effectively run permanent Protection and Regen with a huge up time on Resistance.

SilentKill.9586:

Complain all you want about blocks, invulns, or evades. Until you get rid of condi trash who never learned to play a class at all I’m going to block, invuln, and evade you till you learn to play a class right.

IMO chain block/invulns effect power builds far more than condi builds. Condi damage continues through an enemy block/invuln. I actually switched back to condi because of this meta change. I watch my power based friends sit around effectively useless against a variety of bunker heavy builds now.

Engi, Scrapper and Herald have direct reveal counters. Dragon Hunters and Rangers also have a limited counter ability. The Thief Tripwire and Ranger Spike Trap also work quite well.

In addition, the “Ghost Thief” build can only kill a player if they stay in the area and have crap condi mitigation. The build is a troll build and laughably easy to beat most of the time.

I would add that I believe trap damage should proc a reveal but I also think traps cooldown should start after it is sprung.

People QQing and threatening to leave over a relatively minor change to a feature they didn’t even have a few months ago.

Imagine if you are the fellow that voted 4 or 6 months. 8.5 weeks is a big jump from 21.

babazhook.6805:

There more then one way to mitigate.

Add the mititgation up and my condi application lands faster than most builds can mitigate. Basically the only time I have concern is when I am fighting 2+ or a very skilled dueller. In either case I can generally exit the fight at will or draw them into an advantage for me. My Dire builds have time, power builds don’t.

babazhook.6805:

To confusion , that is not an issue with dire armor in any way shape or form. It an issue specific to Confusion which can be applied by a Condition user using any number of armor types to the same degree. Removing dire armor will not change the fact your mesmer can get those 15 stacks of confusion on at the beginning of a fight.

At the start of a fight sure, but Dire allows me to mitigate direct damage allowing me to apply continual condi particularly when running Plex. Interrupts often require waiting out a players blocks, invulns, evasions, stability, etc. Without Dire, that task becomes much more difficult. I basically have the same DPS as a crit build over time with all the defense of a Soldier build.

Lets also keep something in mind. Many of these builds are AoE spamming condi builds. I can roll into 2, 3 or even 4 players, load them up and get range to see the effect. I can afford to be patient. On my Mesmer, application also removes conditions and heals. I even have some solid stealth options for escape or reset.

The only drawback to dire is that it isn’t particularly effective in zergs.

Swagger.1459:

The goal of linking was to achieve better population balance. The more frequently linking occurs the faster we get to those balanced populations.

I believe they should have tried 1 month, 2 month and 3 month over the last few months to see what the players liked better.

I think it is too early to ask players what they think because we don’t really know all the effects such as breaking up communities that have grown together or guilds that have formed over multiple servers. Is that more important to the player base than balance… we still don’t know.

morrolan.9608:

So use them yourself. If everyone has access to them there can be no complaints.

Durability is a somewhat broke set of runes. The only thing that counter balanced their effect in WvW is that it was a bit of a grind to get them. My hope is that with or before this change goes into effect, ANet nerfs those runes. They are OP in skirmish/zerg fights… IMO.

If you haven’t run into a skirmish crew running bunkers with these, just wait. Our bunker tempest is at a 3v1 level right now. Add in a second bunker and it can easily take 8+ to bring them down.

SkyShroud.2865:

Isn’t two months same as “every other month” which is 15.9% of the vote? The 38.1% didn’t vote for that! Why are you forcing 15.9%’s opinion onto 38.1%?

If they went with one month, 62% of voters in this opinion poll would “lose”. By going with two months, 54% of players “win”.

They basically compromised the re-link interval to make the most players as happy as they can. Like most compromises though some just get kittened they didn’t get their exact way even though they basically “won”.

Diku.2546:

Does Overwatch allow for a Serious Long Term Community player base & Ecosystem like how WvW used to be…if not…I’m not interested…this was the single unique thing about WvW that kept it out of the same genre of other MMORGPs.

No. If you don’t like WvW in GW2 any longer but want a community RvR style game your choices are extremely limited. ESO might be a fit but is less populated and more troublesome than WvW IMO. Maybe Lineage 2 which is open world PvP and a total grind fest. BDO… also a grind fest that is super buggy.

Basically GW2 does RvR or WvW better than anyone right now… by a long shot.

Your vote counted otherwise the poll could have easily swayed Anet to a 3 month cycle. Two or less months just barely won that poll with 54%. Had a few more voted for 3 or more months it could have been 3 months not 2 based on the results.

If they redid the poll with 1, 2 or 3 months… 3 months would currently win. Keep in mind 62% of players wanted more than one month. Anet actually sided with a majority of voters in the poll.

Majority is the greatest number of votes with at least 50%. Plurality is the greatest number of votes with less than 50% which is also known as a Simple Majority. As ANet didn’t specify the rules for this “election” nobody except them can interpret the results as it pertains to actual game changes.

To recap, 62% of the players voting in the poll wanted more than 1 month which means the majority of voters wanted more than one month. The majority of voters also wanted less than three months but just barely with 54%. See what I did there… I used math to count votes in an opinion poll. Anet came to the same conclusion which is very obvious.

To further the point, the median is two months and the mean is 9-ish weeks.

My guess is the next poll will have a giant disclaimer on it explaining that this is an opinion poll and any game changes remain at ANet’s descretion.

Easy, log out and roll a G-U-A-R-D-I-A-N. Equip Durability runes and call it a day.

If you are dead set on commanding from an engi, run something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASlUUhSuY9VwdLQ+FLTGl4zUABw4HUBRA9fn37NA-TFTAABacBAUSJ2/7PQyBCoFdEwZihH1f6QJIDHQguUe4xDAAATQBAQA4m38ohUALJ0C-w

Very defensive and very difficult to kill.

not trying to steal any thunder but doesn’t the WvW Matchup website already do this in a user friendly format:

http://wvwmatchups.azurewebsites.net/

Swagger.1459:

this was supposed to be a majority vote, not a vote on averages…

First, where did you get the idea this was an election and not just a poll? Second, as I pointed out the majority (more than half) voted for 2 months or less not one month. The plurality voted for one month. Big difference. All of this assumes this was an election with rules posted somewhere and not just a poll to help ANet decide when they should reset links.

Learn to compromise… especially when the other 62% didn’t want one month.

Swagger.1459:

This was supposed to be a majority vote and the majority spoke to get populations balanced sooner than later.

If 38% of the people want 1 month and 46% of the people want three or more months… be glad the compromise was at 2 months. Two months or less only got 54% which is hardly a decisive “majority” vote.

Based on the numbers the average comes out to around every 9 weeks (actually closer 10 based on the question format).

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

In the next release, a 6th pip is being added to the provision master ability line that allows you to buy HoT recipes, sigils, and runes from the heroics notary vendor.

Durability is going to be even more of a scourge along with Mussel Soup. Even the interrupt sigils may become more than a nuisance.

babazhook.6805:

Incorrect. My P/P thief has 2800+ armor , a 42 percent base crit rate 18k vitality and a crit of over 200 percent base. This is marginally less then a thief in dire and he pumps out way more damage than that thief in dire. Those 10K unloads happen in WvW.

I see what you are trying to say but a Trailblazer/Dire build can easily have 3300+ armor, 2k condi, 50% condi duration. More importantly once it is on, the only way to mitigate the damage is cleanse which will often kill a player just trying to get rid of it. My plex mesmer often stacks 15+ stacks of confusion on a player right as the fight begins then loads up a bunch of cover condi. A full unload from a glass build will only do slightly higher than base damage because its toughness is higher than the attackers power.

Remember a power build has to cut through toughness. A condi build doesn’t care how much armor you have… in fact the more toughness the better.

RodOfDeath.5247:

Don’t forget the condi cancer guys who can stealth when they start losing and run away

To my knowledge there is only one effective build that does this and it belongs to the mesmer which recently saw a substantial nerf to PU. The block/invuln issue runs across several classes/builds.

There is a giant assumption here… that the polls they are conducting will direct design and development.

These polls are most likely a way from them to prioritize already existing design elements as well as getting feedback before development starts. They serve a secondary purpose in that they help the community to feel more engaged in the future design of WvW. It isn’t a perfect system but it is better than most.

Think of these polls as a conversation not as a dictation.

Teon.5168:

I think 2 months is a good compromise.

The poll seems to reflect this. The median would be every two months. The mean average is roughly around 9 weeks. The math gets a bit sketchy since there is no option for less than one month and no option for more than 6 months.

Players get rewarded for taking objectives and scored for holding them. The difficulty of taking an objective isn’t factored into the reward either. This clearly encourages an efficient method of capturing objectives.

What is WvW… mostly a group of people roaming around the map flipping the easiest objectives and actively wanting those objectives to flip back so they can repeat the process. They occasionally take a break to fight each other in the rare case that a fight is actually somewhat balanced numbers wise.

Until defending is meaningful from a reward standpoint, WvW will always be a flip fest.

In my opinion blocking has become too prolific and easy to chain on some builds. I believe this style of play has in some ways helped give rise to condi builds since power builds are a great disadvantage trying to cut through toughness and chained blocks/invulns.

As a suggestion, blocks should stack like boons rather than exist as state. Aegis already works sort of like this. For balance most if not all “unblockable” skills would become blockable.

This is mainly a reaction to fights where players chain blocks/invulns for a large percentage of a fight. Who hasn’t seen this:

Block…Block…Block…Evade…Evade…Invuln…Invuln…Invuln…Block…Block…Block…Invuln…Invuln…Invuln…Evade…Evade…Block…Block…Block…