Guild Wars 2

RNG strikes again! Wow promoting YB and DR makes it almost impossible for CD to gain any points while leaving Mag in T2. I suppose there is still some ridiculously small chance Mag drops.

Chaba.5410:

Rewards are weekly this season.

The reward duration is weekly but the amount is determined by placement which as I stated causes players to stack on “winning” servers.

By artificially keeping the population on each server at Very High, they can charge more for transfers. That is the prevailing forum sentiment anyhow.

John.4879:

To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of the women

First Conan quote… you sir win the coveted Eye of the Serpent ruby!

SonOfJacob.7396:

I’m surprised Anet doesn’t divide up the rewards based on weekly performance. Whoever takes first place that week of the three get’s a first place reward. At the end, the server with the most first places/most points gets additional rewards. The reward system COULD be set up so that lower tiered servers have just as much a chance as the lowered tiered ones. Not sure if this is the right direction.

I am not a huge fan of participation rewards but in the tournament system they really should move to that model. Since servers have no fixed team player limit and tend to win via population/coverage, essentially players are enticed to stack onto servers for better rewards. If the rewards came from play regardless of server (the more play the more rewards), players would be more inclined to stay put and show up. Essentially the current system doubles down and exacerbates a significantly fundamental flaw in the competitive WvW system.

nekretaal.6485:

Yes.

Yaks Bend, just as a example, gets a whole torrent of fair weathers who only show up for tournaments.

Having fought two seasons of YB a few things became clear. One, they know how to rally their PvE populations into WvW and use them effectively. Two, they siege the hell out of everything around them. Couple those together and the YB during seasons is far more dangerous than outside of it.

Berk.8561:

I do think WvW needs handicapping but it needs to be revolve around the points, rewards, information (e.g., eliminating the delay before swords appear), and/or NPC strength and not the combat abilities of the players.

We can fix the score all day long but that doesn’t make the fights any better. For example, we can add 200 points per tick to Mags score but the 5v1 fighting is still going to keep people from logging in.

Handicapping will also keep a server artificially higher up than it should be.

The current system is akin to a high school team playing a college team playing a pro team in many matchups. We can spot the high school team a ton of points but the game itself is still going to suck for them.

What if guilds could sign up to be “serverless” effectively making them mercenaries? 3rd place servers in a matchup would receive a fixed amount of mercenary reinforcements from this pool of guilds to help even out population and coverage. As the PPT gap closes, the number of mercenary slots would drop.

Thoughts?

Stand The Wall.6987:

kitten s will cry. both power and condi have animation tells.

Many condi builds actually apply quite a bit of condition damage passively. Even active condi application is difficult to pin down on some builds. PU Mesmers apply condis by clone and from stealth. Condi necros in their forms have zero tells and many thief builds continually strike from a stealth position.

Beyond all that we have to contend with the smallest asuran builds using equipment that masks their skill usage.

When dealing with condi builds, I actually work off of patterns rather than counters.

Look you got colored commander tags and ANet WvW devs are surely exhausted from such a lengthy change. I think they would appreciate it if you would please back off the requests for a while.

EotM is the last tolerable place to level in this game for a lot of players. That said, I am all for trying something new which is easy to say since I have done all the leveling I need to do.

They made it worse by handing them out like candy on Halloween in EotM. Now the largest badge holders are PvE players.

ykyk.2740:

Winning in WvW is having the highest total score at the end of the matchup. This isn’t up for debate, it’s the only visible score for a reason.

Only server winning is defined that way. Individual victory can be achieved any number of ways. Winning to many is defined as being successful in ones endeavor.

Apples and Oranges as everyone is pointing out. Roaming in WvW revolves around avoiding getting significantly out numbered. I compromise the dueling aspect of my builds to gain this ability so it is no magical wonder when up against a dedicated sPvP build built to hold an area I am going to be at a disadvantage. Course I probably die a lot less over time since I can actually avoid/run from a zerg. This is why WvW dueling builds and roaming builds are very different.

I think this system would be confusing and difficult to implement. It would probably make for better fights but there are several other suggestions which would do as well and be more straight forward.

SonOfJacob.7396:

First, I’d like to see players not be able to enter a WvW map unless they are level 80 with at least exotic armor/trinkets/weapons and all of their trait points used. No more of this up-level silliness and people that don’t know what they’re doing.

Even less people in WvW… really bad idea. Far better to remove the conditions that make having uplevels around a poor choice, namely rallying. Eliminate rally from player downed and uplevels would be welcome.

SonOfJacob.7396:

Second, calculate the maximum damage potential of each of the three servers. Someone on the dev team has GOT to be able to figure out how to do that (ie, the factors involved, what level of impact they have, etc). Then, do a weighted average to balance the maximum damage potential of the other servers on the map to within something like 10%. That way, the server with more people still has more potential, but it’s going to make them work for the advantage rather than just steam-rolling over the other servers.

Another bad idea. I would be a roaming god if they did this. Simply log in when out manned and proceed to stomp the crap out of every enemy I see. I could 4+v1 effectively in this system and be nigh unkillable.

xev.9476:

I don’t know what necros you’ve been playing with, but I’m certainly not waiting on CDs in a zerg fight. Most people run some variant of zerker with staff and axe/whatever. In addition to all the marks, two of which are on short CDs, you also have at least 2 wells, DS 4, 5 (and 1 if you trait it to pierce – amazing dmg), axe 3 (which does 2k dmg to 5 targets, boon strips, and cripples), and of course your elite. I’ve never been out of things to cast or resorted to auto attacking (unless I’m in DS) as a necro. They certainly don’t need any buffs to be as powerful as heavies either – they hit like a truck and decimate hammer trains.

I was referencing escape/survival cooldowns. I was not counting the numerous weapon cool downs which all classes generally have up. When a hammer train focuses the back line, useful GWEN model necros drop so fast it isn’t funny. The ones that don’t, have limited damage/utility output. Contrast that to the heavies which offer both great survivability and utility/DPS. Even GWEN Eles have better large group fight survival skills on tap. As I pointed out Necros are necessary, useful and powerful in large group fights but their lack of mobility and survival skills makes them often the first of the GWENs to be focused and the first GWENs to go down.

vincecontix.1264:

Thief was in dire gear, the ele burst was just insane. Toughness after a certain amount has diminishing returns.

Ele was running no significant boons that amplified damage, the thief had no significant conditioning. If the thief was in dire based gear they should have been near 2800 armor. That means air hits should be doing about 2k a pop max. That thief lost around 8k on two hits. That is insane ele damage while in air which means either the ele found some way to crack 4k power or the thief had closer to 2k toughness. I can also see this thief is not running blind on stealth (a near must against power builds IMO) and probably has no control. Add those two in and take another run. The fight should be less painful to watch.

My point however still stands. That a P/D thief would not lose this fight as they would simply leave that target alone after an ineffective condi pass. This being a duel meant the thief was going to stay to the bitter end. A more likely open world tactic would have the thief trailing this player until they got into it with another opponent then pressure from a distance for an easy “win”.

vincecontix.1264:

Then why so many necro asking for more sustain with in group play. In my experience they seem to be in a decent spot.

Necros are kind of a sweet spot class. They are fantastic in skirmish/havoc where they mitigate limited damage well, buff allies and keep pressure on the enemy. Once we move outside that arena things get very one sided for most necros.

In roaming they lack escape so skilled opponents simply kite/nag them into the ground. In zerg play they are necessary for boon striping/corrupting/condi-pressure/etc but they tend to sit on cooldown for much of the fight. Add in their limited combat mobility and they often get rolled over by the hammer train. They are still vital for the GWEN model but it is easy to see why they either need more escape or better up-time in large group play to be as powerful as the heavies.

Chris.3290:

I love people who are self-appointed experts on our off-hours coverage. I’m pretty sure that SoS has not had a queue outside of NA prime since Season 2 when everyone would stack on one map to follow Eldsvada around in a massive blob, while every other map had outnumbered buff. Likewise, we didn’t have any even in our T1 glory days.

Drop down a tier or two and finding 20 people across all maps outside NA prime on a server is difficult (DB and CD are probably the only two). For better or worse SoS simply has better coverage than any server below it. They don’t need a queue to dominate with numbers and they have little problem popping orange swords at any time during the day.

I have been fighting the SoS off NA Prime groups for a few months but don’t take my word for it just look at the map history. Either SoS is ticking north of 400 points or FA/SoS are splitting the points as FA does have some NA mid-day presence. I suppose it could be raw skill that is winning the day but NOBODY with any sense believes that.

Video aside point stands… necro is a fantastic anchor for a skirmish/havoc group.

Yes…. yes they are.

Chaba.5410:

In all likelihood, T2 populations won’t stabilize until Mag drops. There’s just no way to stabilize in 3-way matches with only 2 servers.

I disagree. If T2 remains locked the way it is, skilled players looking for fights will migrate from SoS. As much as it sucks being on Mag right now for many on SoS it isn’t much better as the number of fights has dropped significantly. Even if a T3 server moves up, it will breath life into the tier for a week or two until they are rolled over and sent back down.

style.6173:

All exotic gear is perfectly fine. You do not need ascended to be effective.

Skill does beat stats but when fighting nearly equal skill those stat differences are massive. Beating me when I have full stacks, ascended everything generally requires a very skilled player AND a rock to my scissors build if they aren’t equally equipped. The difference is a solid 20 percent or more. This is particularly true when facing bunker builds.

Chris.3290:

The chances of Mag facing BG are just 2% less than dropping to T3. Let’s all hope the RNG is kind to them.

Doesn’t really matter. Whoever lands in this spot will get hammered. SoS is significantly more populated and have vastly better coverage. Mag can still queue a map (as it did this week) but that doesn’t matter much when SoS can load up a map 24×7. Even FA which is stronger than any T3 doesn’t hold on outside of NA Prime.

The idea that any T3 server wants to move up is either naive, stupid or a glutton for punishment. T2 populations need some rebalancing and that will take time. Until then avoid being 6th or really even 5th in Gold as you will be ice skating up a hill in a snowstorm.

Prysin.8542:

sorry mate, but it seems you just face too many unskilled opponents of your own in whatever tier you are in.
P/D beating a condi mancer in condi play….. sure, if it could do some burning yes, but it cannot. So…. wont happen

Condi-mancer is strong if you don’t kite it/reset the fight. Problem with a condimancer is it has extremely limited mobility which is why it is generally a poor roamer. P/D thief just waits them out or moves along. Even on my warrior I just wait for them to blow their cool downs and pound them in the dirt. Reset fight if needed. Same with virtually any class fighting a necro. Only chance a condi-necro has to win a fair roamer fight is find a less skilled opponent not used to their condi-overload. Now condi-mancer anchoring a skirmish team is deadly… scary good.

I have been in T2 for a few months now. I don’t think “unskilled” is the word I would use about this tier. IME, the number of skilled roamers are stronger than any tier I have been in which includes T2-T6.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

This is a strawman… Nobody say it is fun to be wrecked. I sure as hell didn’t even implied it. Heck, I was on Mag until a few days ago so I sure know a little about it…

There are two reasons to avoid being the “bottom” of Gold. The first is the rewards are less, but more importantly IMO is that whichever server lands here will experience a prison train for a month.

My comments speak to the later and are not a straw man argument. What I am saying really is the current state of T2 and a clear statement as to why all T3 servers should avoid moving up. Simply put, there is absolutely no advantage or even a decent reason to move up until T2 populations stabilize.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

I’m actually excited for the changes that are happening to Mesmer because it’s going to be hilarious watching them panic when I throw all their torment back in their face then stack some of my own torment on top :P.

PU Mesmers will rejoice over the torment on the base scepter attack. So good they already had to tone it down before they released it. The ANet crew must not roam in this game if they think this is “balanced”.

By far the two most annoying (and OP) roaming builds is PU Mesmer and P/D thief. One gets torment on an auto attack and the other gets a bump to the range of their base weapon.

Prysin.8542:

Yes they can lose. Was roaming with a condi mancer few days ago, thief didnt last long when all his condies was nearly instantly flung back at him. Call it a bad thief, but like any thief build, 1-2 seconds loss of focus and you’re dead.

Poor play on his part. One heal and all of the damaging condis that can kill him are gone.

Again a decently played P/D will not outright lose a fight unless they make a significant mistake. They may “draw” a fight by running away since they cannot win but they only die if they over play their hand. Our guilds P/D thief goes days without dying and has entire guilds that simply won’t fight him any longer. It isn’t his tremendous skill at play here it is simply a gimmick build. Oh and yes a give him endless crap for being total cheese.

We are talking around in circles. ANet can buy a 3rd party license which uses 3rd party resources. Someone mentioned Vivox which is a great example.

AAA modern online games should have it baked in especially since the entire “server” concept should die. Tracking in that outdated poor design decision was clearly a mistake they are working to fix which means 3rd party voice comms will be pretty ineffective outside of guilds. Just look at EotM…. 3rd party voice comm is effectively useless there.

Berk.8561:

The problem is that I think most people care about whether they win matches or not, not whether their server ranking goes up or down. They need a handicap system that allows a server punching above it’s weight to win the weekly match-up, not come in third but improve their rank.

The problem is that players don’t want to face 2x or more their numbers every night. Good fights = Good scores.

As I have said before the score IS NOT THE PROBLEM. It is a symptom of the problem. Trying to “fix” the scoring is like putting a bandaid on a gushing wound.

Who doesn’t like to have their keeps T3/WP’d by the enemy for those extra long runs? Who doesn’t like to fight 2v1 under a mountain of enemy siege at their sides keep? Who doesn’t want to spend a month trying to find a 4v1 that isn’t under siege because that is the closest to a fair fight as you will find?

I know I will miss when 10+ guys run me down and then jump on my body like it is some sort of accomplishment (which happened over a dozen times last night). Welcome to the bottom of T2… call me when you get here and we can swap stores about honorable play and not tanking to avoid this situation.

What makes it sad for me is the contrast to GW1. GW1 had expansion packs out with new classes, weapons, skills and permanent PvE content in the same time frame.

Xillllix.3485:

12 good level 80 can wipe out a zerg of 50 pugs easily. WvW is the law of the jungle, if your tired of losing then start fighting back, bring a good guild and clean the place.

Why would a server want to send their best fighters into PvE? I know some zerg busting groups go there to practice but otherwise it is a giant waste of WvW resource for servers that are generally strapped for numbers. Green servers are really the only servers with numbers to spare and it shows.

Baron Oakley.1539:

Even if Anet were to license technology from TS3 etc. the problem is community voice comms would still have the advantage of being player-moderated instead of Anet moderated. (It’s nice to be able to control who can listen as well as speak.)

Big advantage of baked in comms include the ability to essentially eliminate cross server spying and significantly better accessibility by players. They could also setup squad/guild channel moderation allowing primaries (commander) to have priority speaking automatically. Add in the ability to boot players from a squad by the commander and we have an easy to moderate system.

I do know the downside which to me is moderating foul/abusive language in open channels but many other games already have methods of handling this.

Thief was way too glassy for any kind of condi stacking against that ele. If they added a bit of dire, switched the hut off for a knockdown and kept the blinds up they could have won that fight.

P/D thieves when played properly cannot lose unless they screw up. They might run away but that is the worst that can happen.

Xillllix.3485:

If you want to beat green stop running level 5 upscales.

and somehow materialize 2-3x the number of players in Blue/Red.

How do you define winning in WvW? Is it PPT, kill/death ratio, achievements, something else?

For me personally, it is when I get guild groups to try and run down our small group of guild members on site. You know you are doing something right when a sea of red diverts from their objectives to chase you across a map.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Nec*roam*ancer.

Just always fight near a large cliff and keep spec walk on cooldown.

Good way to kill scrubs maybe. I just pop stability and punt them off the side. When running on my thief it is even easier: CnD/long range Steal, use stolen fear. Happens so fast most go right over before they know what happened with no time for stability, condi-removal or spectral walk.

ykyk.2740:

T2 is dead. There’s no saving it outside of a chunk of SoS moving up to T1 out of boredom. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened yet, you would think anyone remotely interested in actually playing WvW on that server would have left it by now.

From the outside SoS is a pretty zerg driven server so I am not surprised they have avoided redistributing their population. Zergs like to roll over smaller groups and PvDoor. There are obviously several SoS skill groups and roamers looking for fights but FA and even Mag on reset often put up a strong fight. Heck FA was winning for part of this weeks match.

I am guessing FA has no shortage of fights during that time. Course you may have the opposite problem… too many enemies.

Correction… the game is just over 2 years old. Still two years without significant WvW system changes, no new classes, very few new traits/skills, no new weapons, etc is a long time for an MMO to go with mostly seasonal content.

Mag cannot tank even if it wants to. 20 out of 24 hours it doesn’t matter as SoS dominates. Look at FA getting rolled over which always had better coverage than Mag. Even if Mag mustered all of its forces during NA prime it isn’t enough to move the PPT significantly.

The RNG will be the deciding factor. It is likely that Mag needs an RNG move to T3 this upcoming week to avoid being locked in Gold. If the same T2 match goes next week, Mag will likely remain in T2 for the tournament.

TheGrimm.5624:

The server rankings should be locked into place at the time that the new tournament is announced. Transfers should also be locked at that point. If people wanted to switch, they should have done so before the announcement versus to stack a server just for a tournament. Good hunting!

This makes the assumption that players will continue to play if they cannot move. Removing player choice is far worse than the current system where players can transfer if they aren’t having fun.

For players locked into a T2 dog pile for a month, they are likely to find other pastures. Oh and before everyone in a comfy tier starts yelling good riddance we already have enough problems keeping the servers populated. Losing players today means less kills tomorrow.

Blix.8021:

Map-wide voice chat integrated into the game would be terrible. Private voip servers offer much more in the way of features and control than any in-game system ever would.

You are making the assumption that a game like GW2 would roll their own. ANet certainly has the resources to license the technology from a company such as TeamSpeak itself.

yanniell.1236:

why everybodys assume that the voip servers needs to run on the same servers that the “worlds” run?

Exactly.

Gamgee.8612:

Cleansing Ire is allready a tough sell yes, but as it is now you can just switch weapons and try again. That will go lost. One try is all you get.

The rest I really can’t see what you’re trying to say. Not an english speaker, might be why. Sorry.

The Warrior GS picks up a massive improvement to Arcing Slice which will do nearly 2/3rd of a full HB on up to 5 targets with less than 50% HP and generates fury in one shot. The warrior gives up a bit of overall GS DPS and loses adrenal on misses but GS might warriors are getting a substantial improvement even with the adrenal changes.

Gamgee.8612:

The simple fact is that this patch will nerf Warriors’ sustain, passive regen and condition removal to a degree that will be noticable but favour a skillful play and fase out the mindless noobs. GS and Hammer will still be popular, Longbow will become more mandatory. It will also force people to actually consider adrenaline gain when making a build. You have also failed to see that after the patch Warriors will loose their adrenaline as soon as they get out of combat. Which makes that tactic a much worse than it is now. Reconsider your opinion.

Don’t think so. Sure there is a slight loss of general GS DPS but Cleansing Ire was already a tough sell against evasive condi opponents where it is needed most.

The big hole in the warrior builds has always been that burst was a problem outside of the axe, the EXTREMELY slow rifle and the channeled HB. Now when fighting a GS/Hammer warrior and wounded, enemies will have to pay attention. Dropping an 8k hit in one shot, that hole will be filled.

Crius.5487:

I would much rather stick to using TS3. If there was only a single voice channel per WvW map than trying to run multiple groups would be a pain. It’s not uncommon to see two different groups running hammer/anvil on the same map.

Just like GW2 messaging a decent system would have commander, guild and party chat options.

Crius.5487:

On another note, there’s enough lag when two full map blobs are fighting to add VoIP traffic to the same network.

Lag is generally a component of performance not bandwidth. Besides these types of systems can be run from a different hosting environment.

Wait until the tiers are finalized (i.e. don’t transfer to Mag, CD, DB, etc) until you know they are in T3. Day before reset is probably best.

Berk.8561:

It’s not useless. It let’s low-population servers know when an enemy zerg has arrived on the map and what kind of attacks to prepare for.

In T2, lag spikes are what key us off to an immanent attack. Server response slows down time to defend.