Guild Wars 2

I went 900 before my first ascended piece. Oddly I have gone 400 without an exotic. I have never seen a pre-cursor despite 3k+ hours of very active play. IMO they have a bug in their RNG for some players and their loot system is garbage.

Meta has changed with the nerfing of power builds and the rise of condi-bunker builds.

Your choices are to generate alpha strike builds designed to unload a ton of damage quickly, go condi-bunker or go support bunker. Unfortunately you have two level 80s that are not very flexible in terms of options.

Pre-Patch: Roamers are 60% thieves and mesmers, 20% warriors, and 20% everything else.

Prediction Post-Patch: Exactly the same. Kiting/Stealth builds are ridiculously powerful in small WvW fights and that won’t change with this patch. The only reason the warrior is in the mix is that it has very fast burst speed and is extremely durable.

SYPHA.9283:

LMFAO …buy a legendary? Do you work for one of the Goldspammer websites? what moron spends money on a weapon you can earn in game???? for that matte,r what moron spends money period, in game where you can convert gold to currency usable in the store.

After 3k hours, 2k WvW levels, 90k+ kills, 15k influence, several map completions, all classes maxed I have seen exactly 0 pre-cursors. At some point, buying a pre-cursor and/or legendary is the ONLY way I will see one. Same goes for everyone in my small guild. Buying is really the only option for some players thanks to a really poorly designed treasure system. IMO faster to just gold farm.

The biggest changes are probably conditioning and the nerf to power builds (they nerfed critical damage while renaming it to Ferocity). Be prepared to get conditioned into the dirt upon your return and watch any alpha strike builds lose a significant amount of upfront DPS. Beyond that, same game as you left just with a lot fewer people.

Reverence.6915:

Watching the tanking going on right now is sad

Not sure why this is sad. Practically no server wants to fight for weeks against a vastly more numerous foe. Being backed up to the legendaries EVERY DAY might seem like fun looking down from BG but trust me it sucks. There is no challenge or competition in T2 any longer and it sucks for everyone in it including SoS.

Strongest Roamer is a tie between thief and mesmer

Most numerous buffs: Ranger, but still a kitten class in WvW

Best buff: Mesmer. Stacking Torment on the scepter auto attack is ridiculously good

Server identity is some nebulous concept created solely because of hardware limitations. Guild identity is far more important. Had the game been based around player formed guild alliances rather essentially random selection, GW2’s WvW system would be significantly better with improved balance, less stagnation and would likely come with a lot of external politics for those that like that sort of thing. Eve is a blueprint on how to do guilds (corporations) properly in an MMO.

I would probably move to T1 if they weren’t always listed as Full. I used to love mid-tier fights but I play out of NA prime frequently making for some empty or overrun maps.

Swamurabi.7890:

It’s more likely that Mag will continue to lose over 50 points the next two weeks and drop to 9th-10th ranked server regardless of what the T3 servers do. If Mag does happen to get paired with a T3 server the week before tournament they will lose even more points.

The greater the points difference between servers the lower the point drop will be. This is why a server can continually dominant lower servers and not move up. The inverse is also true. The greater the point difference between SoS the harder it will be for us to lose points to them. Its not just about how badly you lose… it is just as important if not more so who you lose to. We could drop into T3 for the tournament but it is still too far out to predict reliably IMO.

Swamurabi.7890:

SoR imploded before last season losing 260 points in just three weeks, but SoR did fall from a higher rank. You can expect less and less Mag players in the next two weeks before the tournament starts as they transfer or take a break.

SoR got beat by lower ranked servers or did poorly against similarly scored servers to get the big drops.

Chris.3290:

The only way they can get stuck is if DR moves to T3 and wins by a very slim margin.

Glicko and the RNG can easily throw curves in here. Keep in mind that the further apart the scores of the higher ranked servers become the fewer points we will lose. The best shot Mag has it to get beat by a lower ranked server which would drop our score significantly. Doesn’t mean it won’t happen but best I can tell it is a 50/50 shot at this moment.

Drennon.7190:

FA must also be trying to tank.

FA isn’t tanking but without a counterbalancing 3rd server SoS can basically focus FA with numbers. Only so much you can do when every night you log in and have to start from the legendaries and the aggressor has T3’d most structures, has similar or larger numbers and there is no 3rd party to help balance it out.

T2 is a mess right now… penance for months of awesomeness.

Blodlyrisk.2801:

You don’t say?

Once Mag lost most of its larger guilds, there has been an active acknowledgement by some on the server that getting locked into Gold would be a very bad thing. IMO it wouldn’t matter if the server wanted to PPT because Mag simply doesn’t have the numbers to drive the score up significantly. SoS can effectively keep the maps locked down 20 hours everyday.

Stop caring about PPT and fixed objectives is the easiest solution.

In general, lag has gotten better over the past year but there are still times servers slow to almost unbearable levels with big fights on a map. I believe the improvement has come from fewer total people playing which means more server resources in general. When the tournament starts and players flood into WvW, long lag spikes we all know well will likely resume.

It is an exploit just like players standing in odd invuln areas and attacking, asuran jumping into inner SM, CnD off of walls/siege, etc. There are dozens of these in the game and until ANet fixes them we can dislike them but they aren’t cheating.

Unaligned guilds/players could be considered mercenaries and slotted into matchups based on balancing needs. I personally don’t care who I fight for or against so long as it is a good fight.

Chris.3290:

Someone in T3 better grow some and be ready to move up because even if it doesn’t happen in season it will happen immediately afterwards.
Mag is dropping down, that’s a real thing; not a temporary thing that’s just happening for the Season.

There is no guarantee that Mag is dropping before seasons and looking at the current scores a decent chance they will stay T2 for the tournament. If Mag doesn’t drop, all the current T3 servers will be able to stay put until mid-October.

Everyone is making the assumption that Mag can and will drop but it will probably take a lucky match up roll in the next two weeks. Even then Mag may very well be a T5 or lower server before the bloodletting is done.

geekanerd.4123:

But my point is that the fall can be a lot longer and harder than people might initially think. It wouldn’t surprise me if Mag ends up in T5 or T6.

It is a distinct possibility. However Mag is a somewhat unusual server even now. Unlike most servers there never were central guilds driving PPT so even though several GvG groups left and took a lot of the zerg busters with them, the Mag militia when rallied can still open field SoS and FA groups which bodes well for T3. We haven’t been able to keep up with the overnight capping but there are signs that Mag’s fall will not be as steep or quick as SoR, HoD, etc.

There are also some guilds taking initiative to structure Mag more like a traditional server with more active commander tags during NA Prime than when I got here. The fate of Mag may well be building from the bottom but I am not convinced just yet that it will have to.

style.6173:

You need to understand the reason for tournaments from ANET’s perspective. WvW typically doesn’t make ANET much money. Think about it, how many people really buy wxp boosters? The whole point of tournaments is to get as many people as possible to transfer in order to get better rewards. More transfers = more gems = more revenue for ANET.

I truly believe that ANet started these tournaments to drive PvE players into the WvW game mode in order to keep fresh blood entering the scene. Given the massive population explosion in WvW during tournaments I am sure their stats are showing them to be an overwhelming success.

I would also point out that before paid transfers the forums almost unanimously wanted to remove them and make players pay for them. We can actually look at paid transfers as a “feature request”.

If there was a clearly better alternative, most players would have left by now. ANet’s failure to expand the game in some meaningful way has let down a lot of ANet belivers. This point in GW1’s development we had several new classes, skills and weapons added to the game. We have exactly zip on that front in GW2.

Tribio.8531:

retsuya.4708:

kidding aside, people play wvw not because of the achievement points/titles.

This ^^

We do WvW for the fun of it, not for the insane amounts of gold you earn with it.. Any precursors that drop from my rankup chests are immediately salvaged..

I would like to point out that we can only speak for ourselves. I am sure there are lots of players that keep plugging away to get XYZ achievement. Case in point is Diamond Legend and Ultimate Dominator. If the other achievements were reasonably attainable, there would likely be many players going after them.

For those servers that were on the bubble of Gold it really didn’t matter in Season 2. Move up to gold got smashed. Stayed in silver got smashed worse.

Even though this was done on EotM via PvE it is still an impressive feat. That said this particular method of getting a WvW title should come with an asterisk. I dub thee Diamond Legend*

Dramen Maidria.1034:

The only way to stop it would to be to not announce anything until the tiers are already locked. I am on DB and frankly we did not belong in Gold, and were only there because other servers intentionally tanked their rating. We came in last every single week (maybe took second once, can’t quite remember), we often got spawn camped, and were outmanned for an appalling amount of time.

I would like to point out that being top of Silver probably would not have been better in Season 2. HoD was a beast and heavily populated probably more so than the servers you fought. It was not uncommon to see 3 maps queued on that server.

FA got hammered for the first half of the tournament and only saw relief when HoD locked Gold. HoD even sent them to T4 for a week. DB would have been run over either way particularly with a weak NA Prime.

Usagi.4835:

Maybe with each future balance patch, we’ll see the meta slowly shift from GWEN to just GW… Yeah, sounds about right!

That is the old style (Hammer Train) prior to GWEN. Ranged pressure is the new meta and nerfs/tweaks aren’t going to change it much.

retsuya.4708:

There will be a feature pack update that you’ll have to unlock achievements for 1000 gems each.

kidding aside, people play wvw not because of the achievement points/titles.

When the season achievement points come in, LOTS of players show up in WvW for those. There are probably several times more achievement hunters in GW2 than the entire WvW population.

Looking back on it Free Transfers to all servers was better than this system. It had its problems but I will take a Kaineng situation over a general declining population any day.

No new classes, no new weapons, very few new skills/traits, same game play as release and mostly minor class balance changes. The only reason WvW is still around is because there aren’t any better alternatives out there.

At the very least they should have made the poor performing skills/traits more viable. Instead we still look at nearly half the skills/traits in the game as competitively pointless.

urieldhynne.2743:

Totally agree. You are paying a possible skin for like 250g… You can buy an uncommon skin for that amount of gold. WvW skins aren’t uncommon. Everyone can get it after this tournament, and some ppl already has 2.

Transferring for many players is about far more than tickets. Getting stuck in a tier against a behemoth for weeks on end sucks. Granted Season 3 is short but in Season 2, I would not want to be on the receiving end of HoD hordes.

The current meta has zerg leaders getting hammered with corrupts. I doubt that will change with upcoming patch.

Sube Dai.8496:

All I know is that FA is ranked #5 and its a ghost town…so I’d say the population has dropped significantly.

FA has lost some strength but it isn’t a ghost town just yet. You guys can still form large groups on multiple maps. It just looks small compared to SoS hordes which seem to have gotten an influx these last few weeks.

style.6173:

I’m just impressed if you are on mag and aren’t looking to bandwagon another server.

Don’t be too impressed. Our small guild wants to stay in T2 so a transfer at this point is likely. It won’t be to SoS though so I guess it isn’t really bandwagoning as much as abandoning.

Valik Shin.9027:

It is possible to catch all 12 yaks on a map once u have killed them to set the in order. There a method to it also ur math is wrong. There r 8736 hrs in a year. So if ur one of those people who spend 16hrs a day playing gw2 it’s posible

That is making A LOT of assumptions:

• All camps on a map are flippable which is rarely the case
• No resistance is encountered
• A single player is the only one hunting said yaks
• Yaks never get bugged
• A map never has a queue
• The player doesn’t have some other life obligations
• The game will still be here years from now
  
  Blah, Blah, Blah… it is theoretically possible just not realistic. Nobody will ever get that title in its current state.

Johje Holan.4607:

Nah, there’s plenty of action in T3/T4. We’re having a grand ole time with 5 relatively even servers.

Not buying it. I am sure it is fine and all as I spent over 1.5 years in T3-T6 but after playing in T2 these last few months no way could I go back to the relative wasteland of T3 or lower.

Been in since release… likely not going to be fixed.

Been this way since release, devs discussed addressing it over a year ago and the answer is clear… likely not going to be fixed.

I finally had the gumption to finish the Trahearne Story since I started it during Pre-Release… the GW2 gods do not want me to finish this boring kitten story line I guess.

King Amadaeus.8619:

New “for the fights server” will be YB after the ninja xfers are finished, try to keep it on the downlow though. There is a movement to make YB the next Maguuma, while using their siegemonkeys to carry us with PPT.

This would have been an odd pairing but probably highly successful during peak hours. Without a solid OCX/SEA, won’t matter though.

Transfer if you can afford it. I was resistant to transfers early on but now I see zero point in staying on a server with a relatively inactive WvW or one stuck in a free fall. We all have a limited amount of play time so I suggest maximizing it. Now if you enjoy server building, that is a different story.

You will meet new people on another server and decent players can always find a home in numerous guilds no matter where you go.

Truearrow.3527:

Unless/until we get a couple of consistent militia commanders we are reliant on the 2 or 3 guilds that remain.

I have only been on Mag for a few months but I LOVED the fact that nobody was up in players grills about getting on the tag all the time. Nobody cared if a player wanted to skirmish, roam or pile into a blob. Guess this is the downside.

Mag is still kicking but FA and SoS are putting the screws to us this week and probably next so not sure how many players will stay through that. If we can drop down a tier, we might see some life return to the maps.

If the door closes and Mag gets stuck in Gold for a month… ouch! Not that the 6th place Gold server is going to have any shot of winning a week.

So JQ, DR and NSP?

NiloyBardhan.9170:

I have a bad feeling that Mag will troll us and we will get pushed to Gold
We will get destroyed in T2 (FA is already getting hammered by SoS, which is full btw).

You are not getting trolled by Mag. Mag’s population is a third or lower than what it was 3 weeks ago. Enjoy the SoS blobs for they are many and 24 hour (on the plus side SoS and FA have quite a fewer roamers and skirmishers)!

Same problem here.

My suggestion, go to T1 or FA. T1 is an obvious choice for a variety of reasons but FA is an equally good second choice IMO. They withstood the Season 2 wall-to-wall HoD zergs (13 weeks of them) and have given a good accounting of themselves in T2 against a much broader SoS coverage. Not many servers stay together under relentless pressure and FA has proven they have a stable population even under said pressure.

During NA prime, FA is a strong T2 server. During SEA they hold up against a strong SoS population. It isn’t until OCX where things get a bit ugly. Also when Mag falls some other server is going to move up to T2 and they will get mowed over as SoS and FA are looking for new blood.

BTW I am on Mag currently, HoD for Season 2 and BP for 1.5 years so my FA recommendation was earned the hard way by them.

sminkiottone.6972:

What would stop a guild from chosing the most likely to win server ? A guild could also chose the servers they are against in order to sabotage them wasting supplys and spying.

Each server would have a limited number of active player slots based on the competition that week. For example say 1000 active players sign up for BG, 2000 for JQ and 800 for TC. The system would create that matchup with 800 players on each side. Those guilds requesting to be on JQ that didn’t get it that week would be shuffled to their second pick. Guilds that have been on JQ the longest would get priority from being bumped.

Not a perfect system by any measure but would balance things far more than they are today. It would also allow a guild to try another server for a week or two for some variety.

They could even get fancy and track a guild into NA, OCX, and SEA time zones to better match coverage as well.

Silk.8302:

Remember when ….

People understood the worth of a 60 dollar game that didn’t charge for DLC every 6 months.

Pepperidge Farm Does!

The problem with this is that we haven’t seen any new weapons, classes, races or significant changes to game play. We have also seen very few new skills/traits since release.

Compare that to GW1 which had massive expansions in the first two years with new weapons, classes, skills, etc. I am not saying we need to see DLC every other month but one expansion every year or two with truly new content would breath new life into GW2.

thiagoperne.7340:

Kinda hard to try to fix something that’s not broken.

This… or in other words: Sorry the AC slowed down the PvDoor train. Learn to counter siege.

I think this is punishing players that want to zerg. While zerging isn’t my favorite play style, I wouldn’t remove it from WvW since WvW is meant to be about large scale combat even if the GW engine doesn’t always handle it well.

Allowing each guild to slot the server they want to represent before each match could potentially balance out tiers somewhat. Servers would have a limited number of active player slots to keep a better balance. Guilds would pick 2 or 3 servers by preference and could change their preferences at any time to take effect the upcoming matchup.

Guilds with long server representation to a server would get priority for that server each week. For example, say XYZ guild has played 80 weeks on YB server they would have a better chance to be on YB than other guilds with less time on the server. This way guilds that want to maintain their server identity could do so.

This could be a deceptively simple solution to WvW coverage/balance problems. It would also allow guilds to switch up who they fight creating more matchup variety.