Those kinds of thieves do poorly against a staff ele – control, damage, control, damage, control, damage, wait until body expires in stealth to collect bag.
I don’t suggest bringing a roaming staff ele to T2 or higher. They are fantastic in zergs but the decent thieves in these tiers tear apart staff eles.
This saddens me to hear DB is falling. My guild just transferred to DB and it makes me feel like we made a mistake when I read these posts along with the comments I read in map chat. We have been loving the increased action but I feel like if we were to take our entire guild somewhere it should have been to a server on the rise, not the fall.
Falling servers tend to have a lot of negativity as they face ever increasing tough matches with more and more people departing. Most stabilize but some drop all the way to the bottom. While I am sure some players don’t mind that ride, most prefer to be either on a stable server or one that is moving up.
IMO life is too short to have less than optimal enjoyment from a game because a player or guild is on a server they aren’t happy with. I suggest moving if you are not enjoying the play there for whatever reason(s).
If water doesn’t stop fire, why do we have all those pve events where we throw water from buckets to put out fires? A little consistency would be nice, Anet….
Different kinds of fire. Structural fires have a different oxidizer. Clearly people in the GW2 universe are combustible and contain a strong oxidizer allowing fire to continue to burn underwater. Water in the GW2 universe may also be a much poorer heat sink allowing fire to burn more easily underwater.
If magic doesn’t explain it for you, think of it this way… this is an alien world to our own. We don’t even know the composition of the “air” or “water”. On this world, fire clearly can burn underwater.
This could even be in an entirely different universe with different laws of physics.
This problem will solve itself eventually… players will continue to move up until everything below T2 (maybe even T1) is a wasteland barren of all WvW players.
As for me, back to Divinity Original Sin.
Based on my observations/conclusions each Season drives more players out of WvW. This could be simple attrition but the pre-Season numbers and post-Season numbers seem to indicate that seasons drives players out of WvW.
As someone pointed out… it could simply be magical fire.
You have two options it seems… live with it or leave it. Just like a bad relationship, your partner isn’t going to change their spots no matter how many times they say they will.
In this case, ANet doesn’t seem to think anything is wrong and by staying we are essentially saying the same thing.
The answer is simple, play sPvP.
I agree we should have an Amnesty day for PvE players to complete their map completion…. and then pull a “Red Wedding”.
It has been months since a dev openly posted in this forum. The China release is likely pulling every available resource they have into that effort. By the time they circle back on WvW, most players will have either left or just not care any more. If GW2 WvW had any real competition in this space, it would be empty.
Good god I think we were all off last night. I kept trying to get your group to fight outside of cannon range… if the people had gotten off the cannons we would have had an even numbered fight, instead you have a couple cowards on the cannons and 4 people outside unwilling to fight 6 opponents for good reason. It was an alright fight though, I was with a complete pug group (no parties) so it was frustrating trying to get a stomp.
I was there for a while two nights ago and more than willing to fight under cannon fire ;p. At the time of night I was playing, some of the EB pugs are pretty weak. As I run solo that time of night, I am not allergic to fighting with an advantage at least until I know how good the players are around me.
Back OT, as you can see there is a lot happening in T2/T3 roamer wise. Lots of duels, roaming on all maps and plenty of roaming opposition. I cannot state enough just how fun roaming/skirmishing has been since moving to Maguuma. I would say it has been months since I have found so many roaming fights as you can find here.
You won’t find a decent roaming group running a warrior, they are bad.
Leaving out the group condi removal, group buffs, group healing, AoE control spam, super tanky, easy to play aspect… you are right warriors suck skirmishing. Even the condi warrior is a solid skirmish build. Maybe not optimal but serviceable. Your comment borders on a troll post.
In a Guardian/Thief/? line up, the thief IMO is the weak link. Thieves are great roamers but they have almost no group buffs outside of venom share which is kinda meh with a guardian. Sure they can burst someone down, but if this group runs into a condi-bunker-bomb the thief will melt too fast to matter and even if they survive the condi load the bunker aspect mitigates most thief direct damage. Condi thieves are solid and more durable but they take time to melt their opponents which leaves the guardian being heavily focused.
GW1 had the solution… Guild Halls with a Guild Battle section.
I swear we’ve gone over this a billion times. The thing that adds to the enjoyment of WvW is that when you go there, you know what you’re working with. You see the same guild tags, you know what guilds excel at what, you have friends in those guilds. This is why people continue to reject any EotM type pairing for WvW. Not to mention, if you get paired with these alliances randomly, voice comm between guilds is near impossible, so now you have almost no coordination on top of all that.
This system is EXACTLY that. If your guild is allied with 10 other guilds, they would be put together each match. The only randomization would be which guilds your alliance would be facing each week. The match making system would have a preference for guilds your alliance is warring with. Unaligned guilds/players would float around to fill in the coverage/population gaps. The politics of this system are insanely fun.
Switching weapons or typing /dance fixes it but I agree it is annoying and should have been fixed long ago.
but straegen, i main ele. No weap swap for me.
Re-read my post. /dance also fixes it. The bug sucks but those are the only two fixes I know for a stuck player due to siege building or terrain/movement.
Well the votes are in and we picked SoS, so thanks a lot for the input everyone!
I missed the guild handle… post it so we Mag players can welcome you in the traditional fashion.
Hammer warrior is an obvious choice (and would be my choice). It brings a ridiculous amount of control to your group. It also gives the thief a big set of targets to work around. It can also share some of the incoming damage with the guardian and can sit right on top of the guardian even during heavy incoming fire.
Mesmer is an interesting choice. The big advantage is that it can invis your guardian when it needs to escape or take pressure off. The problem is your group would be very light on AoE damage as the best mesmers are more single target with a bit of splash. The other problem is that if you go with a typical PU mesmer that is going to put a ton of pressure on the guardian as the thief and mesmer are kiting classes leaving the guardian shouldering most focused fire.
A 2nd guardian is also an interesting choice. Two guardians can be ridiculously difficult to bring down and if the thief is particularly glassy that would bring the offensive power. This combo lacks an AoE punch.
The ele is maybe the best choice. D/D eles are really watered down these days but still powerful and most importantly bring a lot of fields and utility to the group. The firesword elite is great for the guardian that needs to get away. The downside of the ele is the steep learning curve to make it effective.
Both the necro and engi would be fine and possibly preferred because this group as listed is going to be very light on condi pressure but I left them out since you didn’t list them in your current character list.
As noted, I would start with a hammer warrior and see how it plays. Going to be light on the conditions but may not need it.
(edited by Straegen.2938)
Thief and Warrior are probably the easiest roamers because they can escape just about any situation and reset just about any fight.
Mesmers are powerful but slow. They can be slippery but once they burn out of their 3 or so escape skills they are dead in the water against a superior force. Necros can also be great solo fighters when played well but lack any form of escape.
Eles were once the greatest of roamers but numerous nerfs have left them in limbo. To be bunker, they have to give up a lot of damage. To get damage they have to give up most of their bunker. To be fast they have to give up a little of both.
Guardians, Rangers can make OK roamers but fall off my list for a variety of factors.
What makes mag somewhat unique is that it is a skill group driven server. If you have a guild that likes to run tag-less, Mag is probably one of the best places to go. Guild groups, skirmishers and roamers are left alone to do what they want to do and in general nobody is scolded for it.
If you want a challenge in NA prime, go to SoS as they are light during NA prime. If you want to be one of the herd in NA Prime, go to FA.
Maguuma. Enough said.
Players on this server seem to migrate to open field fights regardless of a commander on the map or not. It feels completely disorganized but in an awesome sort of way… unless you like to defend then be prepared to pull your hair out because getting any sizable force to give a crap about a T3 tower is difficult.
I am mainly a roam/skirmish but I do zerg as a change of pace. I even defend and siege up objectives for the same reason. At the end of the day, there is something enjoyable about being surrounded in a sea of red enemies with some fellow server mates.
The short answer, because it is easy. There really isn’t much guidance in WvW aside from “follow the dorito” so a lot of players just follow everyone else.
Guild Alliance warfare could indeed make WvW a MUCH better experience. The main reason is that it could balance out populations and coverage on a weekly basis.
Guilds could ally themselves and declare war on other guilds. Each week all guilds big and small would be thrown in a pot. Based on a fairly simple set of criteria they system would create an alliance of several guilds that face off against two other generated alliances. Un-aligned players/guilds would be used to fill out the coverage/population in those alliances. WvW play would remain intact and be far more balanced. They could even expand and contract the number of matches based on player activity.
This wouldn’t solve all the WvW woes but it could remedy its biggest problem.
Guild transfer costs are high and many servers are “buying” guilds to keep their WvW population active. There is nothing wrong with it and if anything shows how committed that server is to WvW play.
Switching weapons or typing /dance fixes it but I agree it is annoying and should have been fixed long ago.
A kitten by any other name… changing the name doesn’t change anything.
I am a believer that Guild Alliances should be the mechanism that aligns WvW fights but there should be no pre-fabricated “worlds”. Guilds that are allied should be pitted against guilds they are at war with along with some other factors to help balance out the match.
Some zerging is actually beneficial to roaming. It seems counter-intuitive but tags keep other tags busy. When there is no tag, often players just stop showing up which makes the situation worse. Zergs are also fertile hunting grounds for solo fighters… I routinely fight around large battles picking off players headed to tags.
You just posted in another thread that roaming is dying and you can flip a whole map’s worth of camps without seeing someone. That’s exactly what Wildchild is talking about, that T2 right now is mostly just zerging. Can be 50 enemies on the map and no one to really fight because they are all together.
That is why I moved to T2 out of T4/T5. Roaming in the mid brackets was virtually empty during off peak NA hours with a few exceptions. T2 (T3 this week) is pretty hot for roaming and as I have stated before similar to where T4/T5 was a year ago.
Congrats on several YB and SBI roamers for tearing me up tonight. I got p’wned this evening by a good number of roamers… certainly having an off night.
Where is this “lecture?” Nowhere am I telling you how to play the game, was merely making an observation about how difficult it was to bring you down. Please don’t take this as a personal slight.
We had a lot on last night though, I think it may have actually reached 10 for once. Perhaps your EP was just off cooldown and you happened to be that low on health, it would not be an insult if you ran two anyway. On occasion, my warrior runs both, because I suck at it.
I mis-interpreted your reply… my apologies. I made the mistake early on of pouncing on one of your crew and was met with a metric ton of damage and stuns. Most groups spam it all at once so I can usually speed away with one stun break. Not so with my first Abys encounter. As soon as I took a step, bam a stun/immobilize would land. Only so many stun breakers on a bar… well played.
Every server you listed has virtually no queue times. I would bet even T1 has pretty low queue times these days.
Of the ones listed, I would only consider FA. I haven’t been on that server so not sure of their general attitude but they are a solid server. Dragonbrand is a heavy off NA peak server. The others are too low and lack a significant population based on my experience. I am sure they are all fine servers but I would want to be in some place with a decent amount of players which is Tier1/Tier2 and maybe some T3 servers.
TC is probably the most friendly server based on reputation but T1 and not on your list. I would NOT come to Maguuma. It is a great place for veterans and established guild groups but doesn’t seem to be particularly friendly.
Reroll your build to be more bunker and have a lot more escape. Almost every class has a run-away almost impossible to kill if they don’t want to fight build.
With the exception of POIs behind enemy walls, virtually every POI in WvW is easy to get solo. Worst case, you have to log in during non-peak hours.
“Roamers” in T1 are small havoc teams running around. They are quite good at using synergies between classes.
Lower tiers are 1 or 2 people running around looking for fights.
Despite what the OP stated, based on my experience roaming in T2 is REALLY good. Some of the best I have experienced. In lower tiers I could go more than an hour during non-peak times and not see a soul. Even during peak hours there are loads of 1v1 or 2v2 fights to be had. I generally cannot flip a camp without someone showing up and usually it is a smaller scale fight.
Also zergs in T2 tend to avoid “chasing rabbits” unless they are directly in the zerg path. I can often shadow one and pick off stragglers without bringing the wrath of a few dozen players down.
CDIs only work if ANet plans on using the information to develop content in the mid-term. As of now the CDI has been mostly pointless.
That was the ruins but Anet missed the boat on rewards. Now that area is about as barren as when it was underwater.
It was a good week. Shame the randomizer moved Mag down to T3 which does not have the population to handle Mag or FA. Seems about half of Mag has checked out this week and Mag is still dominating which gives an idea of population drop off between T2 and T3.
About 2.5k hours, 3k deaths (summed across all characters) and 70k kills.
And Straegen, after all, I finally figured out why you never died when we were together on HoD- you are the warrior running two endure pains after all, rolling with the zerg :P
But back to my point, roaming is going to be fine in the upper tiers, you just have to dodge the zergs. Back in HoD’s days in T8 it was just empty, I hope it’s different these days, but I am enjoying the larger crop of people to fight.
I roam WAY more than I go in a zerg. Last night your 10+ group killed me twice roaming. You guys are good fighters but in this case I don’t think a medium sized guild group should be lecturing me and my five man guild about roaming. Also odd is that I play several WvW classes and most of my kills have come on my D/D thief. At the very least I have resisted running my condi-bunkers as they are easy mode.
PS my warrior runs one Endure Pain and does not trait it.
(edited by Straegen.2938)
Roaming on lower tier servers (over a year old and still funny):
Having played extensively in T3-T6 for the first year and a half in GW2, I do not think dropping below T2 with the current population levels is going to bring better roaming fights. T2 seems to have about the same roaming density as T5 a year ago.
AR have plenty of Dragons and they are on T8…
AR at least a few months ago was known for a strong sPvP population. There were not many servers around it that shared that attribute when I was in those lower ranked servers.
No nerf, ACs fine.
ANet has never built a decent loot engine. GW1 was really bad and GW2 while better is still horrible.
It boils down to less crap loot and better drops over time. Most players want to feel like every kill could generate an item they will actually use. With few exceptions every toon I have is geared with items I bought from a vendor… and I have every class at 80 fully geared some with full ascended.
If you play in off hours, stay where you are at. Off hours roaming in T3-T5 is generally horrible unless you like to flip camps without anyone showing up.
During NA peak, most silver servers are going to have some decent roaming but the competition is going to be pretty weak overall. Our small guild group dominated fights in T4. After switching to Maguuma we are finding much stronger roamers and skirmish play. I routinely see dragon finishers popping for and against in T2 something that is fairly rare in other tiers I have played in.
I was on BP for 1.5 years and roaming was pretty active there and at the time had a great WvW atmosphere. I haven’t been there in a few months though.
Our small guild is all but dead. Only three of us play and we do so pretty sparingly. I still manage to log in to do my dailies but rarely stay more than is necessary to put 10 enemies in a pine box.
Stale game play, no new significant features in a while, virtually unchanged game play since release and a slew of minor issues that have not been addressed. I got my monies worth out of the game and then some. Now I have moved onto LFD2, Payday 2 and a few other co-op games.
(edited by Straegen.2938)
As a former BP player, that server is or at least was a pretty solid choice for roamers. If you play in off NA hours, almost any server below T3 is going to be pretty empty though. I moved to T2 and the roaming fights have been about as good as they were a year ago in T5.
I think the sharp decline in the player base is killing roaming in the lower tiers. Even in T2/T3 some late nights often bring out maybe a dozen total players across all maps. I can flip an entire maps camps and never see a soul some evenings in T2.
As has been said before, no build should excel in damage AND bunker. Its not that these condi-bunkers can alpha strike a player in seconds but that those heavy damaging attacks come attached to an extremely fortified target.
If direct damage had a combined crit chance and crit multiplier rather than two separate stats, then there would be some parity in skirmish fights.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
That is my vote.
Mags is a top PvP server. As others have pointed out DB has a large off hour NA population making most of their points against vacant maps. Doesn’t mean DB doesn’t have some fine WvW fighters just that DB has never been a top transfer spot for the hardcore.
Less quantity, better quality. I spend an inordinate amount of time inventory managing in this game thanks to the trash loot system in place.
I’d agree with Maskaganda about 2 guardians and one warrior, but disagree that engi doesn’t have place in such setup. Cleric ele fits, mesmer as well, another warrior or engi – all of them fit to fill 2 places left.
This setup was extremely powerful prior to the explosion of condi bunkers in skirmish fighting. Now heavies in skirmish are still hard to kill but either lack the alpha strike condis bring or are brittle by comparison.
We used to run a similar setup but have switched almost entirely to conditioning with the exception of a hammer warrior. Load up condis and watch it all melt. If they do manage to clear it, repeat the process. Epidemic being up every 15s with call targeting is so good it feels like cheating. Everyone on the team is heavy bunker AND outputs great damage. Getting near our anchor applies enough passive conditions from the group to drop most players. We pull back when we are on cool down to reset fights when necessary. Only the necro needs cover fire for the reset.
Try it and tell me I am wrong.
Short term… Gauntlet!
Warrior needs food badly!
Sure its not an MMORPG but come on… it is GAUNTLET!
@Straegen.2938:
You contradict yourself. On one hand you say, that you can not provide or have access to sufficient statistical data and can only speak from your experience. On the other hand you claim that a certain build or damage type dominates the meta. What is it?
It is the difference between statistical evidence and anecdotal experience. NOBODY has the stats on these forums except maybe the devs so we can toss that out right now. What we do have is a bunch of anecdotal evidence. As I play more than an average player, I roam more than most players, I have been in WvW since the start and I haven’t missed a day of playing in almost a year and a half I do have some expertise on this subject.
The vast majority of competent or better roamers are condi based. The hardest to fight are condi based. My strongest classes/builds while roaming are condi based and yes I do have all classes at 80 and fully geared with ascended weapons and rings (in some cases fully ascended). The only roamer I play right now that isn’t condi based, a warrior with a ridiculous amount of condi cleanse.
Either you provide sufficient data or you argue your position. Claiming “facts” out of the air is not a proper bases for a discussion.
Pot meet kettle. Neither of us can claim “fact” since neither of us can present enough data to prove our points. All we can do is debate the larger point of whether condis are OP in the current WvW small fight setting. My experience says yes it is. Condi particularly condi bunkers are currently stronger than their direct damage counterparts by a good margin with few exceptions. This thread and several like back that up to some extent.
Not affiliated with ArenaNet or NCSOFT. No support is provided.
All assets, page layout, visual style belong to ArenaNet and are used solely to replicate the original design and preserve the original look and feel.
Contact /u/e-scrape-artist on reddit if you encounter a bug.