A good commander isn’t defined by their build or class but if we are talking all things being equal a guardian is phenomenal and the premier class for group play. Even more so now that party priority is in full effect. Not having a guardian in your party is like coming to a gun fight with a nerf bat.
Only one class is ridiculously tough in groups, buffs the hell out of everything near it, heals like a machine, removes conditions, has lots of control and AoE tags like crazy. Even during heavy lag they are still good.
The light and medium armor classes have a tough time leading from the front since so much of their defense comes from evasive abilities rather than reduction/healing. Most bunker guardians are reliant on 3+ players around them to be awesomely powerful.
Best advice, sit still as little as possible. Boredom kills zergs. Oh and form parties that optimize damage/stability/healing.
As for classes, as someone mentioned just put two guardians and three warriors in each party. Charge to the back line, stack, charge again, collect loot. Necros, mesmers and eles are nice to have but unnecessary with bunker guardians and hammer/banner warriors.
I can understand that getting a lot of stacks of confusion can hurt, specially when it can be reapplied within short time, but I have seen bleed stacking exist and do quite a lot of damage as well as being able to be reapplied fast. Spamming burning for a long time does a lot of damage, and it doesn’t even wait for you to use a skill to take damage, it ticks by itself monstrously if the caster of the burning has good condition damage and a way to spam it all the time to increase the duration or reapply it if you remove it. Chilling can be a pain to meet often, specially if it is traited to occur every time you blind someone, and this can easily be reapplied in many ways, even by chilling with sigils.
The thing about these runes is they have no cool down so they are limited only by a players number of interrupts which in some builds is ridiculously high. Also interrupts are already powerful these runes make already potent skills even more so. Lastly the speed at which these can be applied by many builds greatly outstrips many other classes ability to strip them. While I agree confusion itself isn’t a problem getting interrupted 5 times and landing on 25 stacks of confusion is devastating. Even the act of purging that many stacks can kill a player. Once the player stops using skills to mitigate the damage, they are essentially toast.
I cannot think of another offensively powerful runeset that works on so many defensive based skills. Traditionally going bunker meant giving up DPS. These runes turn that on its ear.
What top tier server are you from??? I know at least on TC we try to help new players in WvW.
I have moved around (including fighting in everything from T2 to T7). So the question is have you experienced a variety of tiers?
In my experience many hard core players do not like to educate new players whenever the queues grow long. Some become openly hostile towards rookies when they are trying to form their skill group on a map that is queued.
Maybe TC is different now but a few months ago reset night had hour plus long queues on all maps prompting us to abandon that server as a candidate of transfer. They also have relatively poor coverage which can make it difficult for non-NA Prime rookies to enjoy WvW. T5/T6 is pretty gentle by comparison which is why I recommend players start there to get their footing since a variety of play can be experienced in a very low pressure environment.
Course that is just my opinion.
I’d say this thing is still viable: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAoY4YlUmaOXcS4E/JFx2je6Ti6VAsaKoZL7KcVA-jkyAY/BRjtQIIIkoATFiYyrIasF3ioxqrxUuER127ioVLFQELjA-w
Basilisk->Dodge Twice->Activate all Signets->Dodge twice->Precast Cloack & Dagger->Steal (Mug)->Backstab->Heartseeker x4.
Anything that is not a tank and that didn’t see you will get killed in a second.
Way too gimicky to be reliable. If they block, dodge, stun or any number of other moves the thief is going to be out of chain and left vulnerable.
Plus taking mug makes escaping from a fight all the more difficult since stealing away puts the thief in combat and breaks stealth for nominal damage and minor heal.
D/P thieves do not handle control well. Use a stun or immobilize to deal with them. They will probably SS away but it takes pressure off, burns some of their initiative and makes them consume their condi removal/last ditch escape mechanism. Half the time they freak out because their chain is broken and it makes them easy prey.
If playing in NA Prime (7pm-11pm EST), my suggestion is to avoid top tier servers on your first experience. A lot of hard core guys get irritated by newbies particularly ones clogging up the queues on reset night. I would recommend a nice T5 server for NA prime. They will have a nice mix of zerg, skirmish and roaming without being too overwhelming. They also are generally a lot more appreciative and patient with new players.
If playing primarily outside of NA Prime, a T1 is not a bad place to start. TC and EBay are both weak during those hours so you might find yourself thrown in against superior numbers.
IMO, make sure your server has a global TeamSpeak and it is actively used. Check and see what guilds are friendly to new players before transferring.
Gut the server system and replace it with a guild alliance system. Guilds would be grouped together based on alliances, typical play time, average play duration, overall ranking and some randomness to keep the matches fresh. Basically each match up would be reformulated each week to optimize and balance populations. Instead of fighting for XYZ server you would be fighting for your guild and its alliances that week. Everything else would stay the same.
This would mostly even out population and coverage as well as create fresh matches every week. The WvW scoreboard would become a Guild scoreboard for bragging rights. Rewards would be based on how well a guild alliance does in a match up.
If someone can pluck a hole in that system (aside from the work necessary to do it), I would like to hear it.
We have been green for quite a while. Hadn’t occurred to me that we might be stuck in green for the duration of the league. Could be worse though, we could be blue…
Oddly the Ranger has a fantastic burst but doing so makes it brittle in WvW. It can shock some people though.
Thief IMO is the best overall because its burst is more frequent than the warrior. It is also a vastly superior roaming class because of stealth. The warrior is still formidable and worthy in this scenario as well as being significantly superior in other styles of WvW play.
Guardian is the best by a mile. Warrior is OK and Mesmer is a maybe.
Never has been account wide, it’s per toon and that particular toons experience in WvW.
I hope they do not change it – it should be per toon that actually plays WvW.
He was referring to achievements including WvW achievements which have always been account wide. I think his surprise is why achievements are account wide and WxP isn’t.
Either way, I agree. WxP should be account wide or easier to level by a factor of 10 or more. Capping a player takes about 80 hours. Capping masteries takes more than 1500+ hours and capping WvW levels takes 10k+ hours barring a wunderkind. Ridiculous to believe someone will do that with two characters much less three or more.
You are still doing good on ptt during NA prime, and that’s why the bigger server focus on you during the low coverage oceanic hour trying to keep a good lead in ptt in case they lose more in NA time. They will follow you everywhere to suppress and demorale you to gain more ptt difference. So abandon your bl but going for the 3rd bl has no use ‘cause they are always on your tail the moment you cap something. If I were on the bigger server, that’s what I would do to the 2nd and ignore the non-resisted 3rd. Put pressure on the resisted force.
I don’t think you understand my points. It isn’t about getting pressured or losing as we were stuck in a tier with a much stronger server that nearly doubled our score for 13 straight weeks a while back. It is about being stuck in queue for hours behind dozens of PvE players. Guilds cannot run together because they cannot all get into the same map. When we are getting hit by a skill group on a map, organized guilds cannot transfer to that map to counter. Even if you get on the map a half dozen hats are running uncoordinated and most refuse to use TS. Then there is the added lag from so many players which doesn’t help. The first week and half has been the worst WvW since I started playing last year.
The good news is fewer PvE players are coming in so the queues at least weekdays has been somewhat back to normal. I want new players and fresh blood to enjoy WvW but they opened the flood gates and what has poured in has been frustrating to many.
No doubt the warrior is probably the best WvW class right now: high mobility, big HP pool, high armor, tons of control, banner rezzing and excels in every type of play.
The question to me is do they get a nerf or does ANet boost other classes to match them?
The only class that doesn’t seem to have the ability for insane burst is the Ranger. At least I don’t know any Ranger burst builds. On the other hand they have builds that allow them to win by simply spamming auto-shot.
I agree with most of your post but even the Ranger has an impressive burst when built for it. It isn’t really WvW practical but with the right signets and traits they can dish out high 5 figure numbers with one attack against a medium toughness player.
At this point in WvW, virtually no class has a build without a crazy amount of burst in it. That said, dropping a seasoned player in an opening salvo is very rare. When it does happen they are usually zerg built, wounded, up leveled or glassy.
The sad part is, Anet really does look at things in these terms. WvW numbers are up because achievement point hunters have arrived. They must absolutely love character progression too, or they wouldn’t be there! Right?
Funny thing… achievements are… wait for it… ACCOUNT BOUND… boom.
Unlike character progression which is measured in hours, WxP levels are measured in days if not months. No way am I ever going to pour another 1.5k hours or more into a character to get maxed masteries.
While WvW makes any fight fair game, ANet continually pushing WvW players into jumping puzzles is highly annoying. My vote in this circumstance is to just let players be.
The only reason to be in the jumping puzzles is to do an event completion or be an kitten. Don’t be your servers kitten.
I can only speak for myself on a mid tier server. Leagues are killing a lot of the hardcore players on BP.
Long queues, the inability to coordinate attacks due to the queue, guilds are struggling to run together on NA Prime, far to many wall warriors, dozens of PvE commanders who refuse to coordinate, overall skill of the average player has been really poor and relatively few good skill group fights. Some of our better commanders have logged out of frustration and sometimes stop running their hats when they are on.
BP used to be a lot of fun but lately a lot of frustration has seeped in even more so than when we were stuck in a tier with a dominate server and no way to escape.
Hmmm… more ways for players to enjoy a game… doesn’t seem like a long term poor strategy to have options.
before today, look at the logs at who has flipped ebays stuff, it’s been 99% BP
Yak’s and Ebay haven’t attacked each other than the token camp/free tower.you get the points, but you needed an alliance to do it, you both know who will win 1v1 when these leagues are over and you can’t get an alliance.
Y-Bay enjoy your win knowing you needed a lot of help from another server to do it.
Yaks would beat us 1v1 right now. They have significantly more manpower and great coverage. They are also much stronger at defense as they don’t let their keeps sit idle. BP is better at open field fights but that comes from months of getting hammered by large skill groups and isn’t as useful in league points.
As for the EBay/YB alliance… don’t think it exists. I do think YB is playing the game by allowing a less dangerous server to come in second. If this is what is happening, it is a smart play.
If some of you BP players are complaining THIS much about YB’s zergs, I hate to see how much you guys will when you go up against SBI and FA….
We have seen SBI several times and somewhat recently. YB is rolling with a lot of manpower and I would say they have far more than SBI did when we fought them last. If YB maintains these numbers and coverage, SBI and FA are in for a tough fight. Almost every map is out manned outside of NA Prime and they manage to keep zergs on every map during NA Prime.
BP may not be the heaviest server in silver but we aren’t a pushover either… YB just got A LOT stronger in the last few weeks.
I am a condi Engi, zerker warriors just melt. :p
Also if that guy is running in a zerg he is more a liability than boon to them when they run in to opposition.
A zerg warrior comes to the party with a big chunk of armor and HP already. They are essentially half bunker without dropping a single point into vit/toughness. If you are melting them and by them I mean skilled warriors not scrubs, then you are frying everything that isn’t a bunker. While I won’t question your skill level, my guess in a duel with a decent zerk warrior we won’t see any melting.
2.5k armor is squishy very squishy.
Any light or medium class is probably going to top out around 2.5k armor and that assumes they dedicate one of their stats to toughness which many do not. Squishy is not defined by toughness as any condi class will tell you. Some builds that focus around vit walk around with 30k HP and 2k toughness… nothing squishy about that.
(edited by Straegen.2938)
1. Population/Coverage as it relates to Matchup balance
2. Alt un-friendly architecture
3. WvW Rewards that generate 99.999% trash
Engineer has more utility since it has a stealth and a great solo elite but the warrior is faster which counts for a lot in roaming. Also the warrior is more useful in skirmish/zerg.
If thief is on the list, that is the premier roamer class. It may not fit everyone’s play style but the high mobility, evasive nature and excellent DPS allows the class to freely roam far away from a spawn point with little worry.
It would be great to be able to buy 250 or more additional items in a stack for the crafting section of the Vault. I don’t know what it should cost but I would probably pay it even if it were somewhat expensive.
Given that more recipes are being created that need inordinate amounts crafting items (looking at you ascended items) it would be great if I didn’t have to clog my main vault or alts with multiple stacks of crafting supplies.
Hopefully your programmers didn’t make stacks a one byte integer.
What annoys me is the fact, that before we received a fixed ammount of silver and badges, and then some greens and/or siege blueprints.
There was no need to mess around with the fixed things! It’s ok to spice up things for the other two items, but the rest should stay.
Still amazed ANet does not seem to get it. We don’t want more loot. We want better loot. I would welcome cutting the loot drops in half and bumping the ones we do get by a factor of 3 in value.
Opening a pouch in a game should not be a chore of inventory management where we spend 10 minutes selling. It should feel like pulling the handle on a slot machine hoping for that big payout.
From the outside looking in, dominating T2 getting dominated in T1. So for the most part exactly where you left it.
Mid tiers in my experience house some of the most skilled solo/skirmish players. I think this is because there is a group of players that like smaller fights but don’t like being zerged into the ground. Go to low and the fights are to infrequent. Climb to high and queued maps with big blobs take over. Around T4/T5 seems to be the sweet spot for smaller scale fighting.
That said the average player is just that… average. Take someone who has poured 2k+ hours in WvW and they will likely be dangerous in any tier.
Anyone who doesn’t think large groups don’t have “skill” are sadly mistaken. There are plenty of groups with 20+ that routinely mow down twice there number because of build design and coordinated play.
Complaining about this is akin to griping about poor gas mileage from a Bugatti.
AoE is still incredibly powerful so much so that most zerg builds focus almost exclusively AoE abilities. At this point you should be happy they don’t balance it against targeted attacks.
Flip a coin… like to do damage more (warrior) or support the group more (guardian)? Both have become “necessary” to the modern zerg.
We have seen quite a few transfers this week. Despite looking ugly for my server (BP) when there were two NA league divisions, looks like we stand to do very well in Silver now that there are three.
I reckon FA has a good chance to overtake Mags and SBI. Rating difference between FA and Mags is less than 8 points at the moment with FA currently ticking +630 ppt.
Unlikely at this point. Closing a 5k gap will require FA to keep ticking around 400+. FA will likely have to come near Mags weekly score to keep from dropping to 7 or 8. This also assumes SBI cannot dig out any more points.
Right now, too close to call between SBI and Mag so one server is likely to crush it will the other is likely going to get crushed.
(edited by Straegen.2938)
Killshot can and will hit that hard against any number of targets that have modest toughness:
((1256 * 3.25 * 3500) * 2.5) / 2000 = 17.8k
It does have a monstrously long wind up and it does have to be setup so I don’t think it is OP, but the fact that 25% or more of the population now run with a Warrior is somewhat telling as to how powerful the class as a whole is.
that guy is probably extremely squishy.
Practically no warrior is squishy. They can go full zerk and still have 20k+ HP and easily sit on 2.5k armor.
While I agree that Dire armor is an excellent set of armor for a condi-bunker and to some extent a thief, going full condition on a thief is problematic given the heavy condition removal baked into most builds today.
power damage is really only worth it when you put significant amounts of stats into each multiplier (power, prec, crit%). condi damage is balanced around only 2 multipliers (damage, duration), 1 of which you can get more than enough of from just food, so.. well… just stack damage and get whatever other stats you want. surviving is good for sustained damage builds. too good. but this thread isnt about how imbalanced dire as a stat set is is it.
Power is on a linear scale so it needs no other stats to be useful. There is actually an inverse to sustained DPS when power is shifted towards crit (somewhere around 50% crit and 100 magnitude) course that depends on a number of factors. Unlike condi damage every point spent in power equals more DPS. Unless a thief can drop multiple types and stacks, condi damage and duration are less useful.
I can say with a great amount of certainty that if a thief hits like a wet noodle by over amping condi damage, they are going to be in for a very rough fight against any kind of skilled player.
Two greens – all the time.
Two greens.
Yep. I am clocking over 50 in the new chests and have seen one yellow, no exotics. Course I am on a two week string with no exotics despite running a B-Day presents with a modified MF of 225. That is in excess of 125 ranks and 5k+ kills with zip on the good loot scale.
Opened over 20 chests last night… crap in all of them and no badges.
I am really getting tired of ANET nurfing good stuff because X amount of players complain.
Every time they make a change to WvW or anyone tries to have a normal discussion about game mode balance, the population qq starts.
Couple flaws in this at the start. Anet probably doesn’t change anything solely based on forum complaints. It may alert them to an issue but it is very likely they run the numbers and see if a change would be effective. This is why we see all those “need more data” replies from the dev.
The second issue is that forum users are a minority so complaints here are likely a minor input to upcoming changes.
No WvW HP boost in the patch notes. Minions got a PvE boost though.
A few months ago when the server match ups were rank based with no randomness, BP/AR/Ebay had been in a fairly protracted fight. EBay at the time was considerably stronger than BP. Eventually the major BP and AR guilds agreed to not take each other’s keeps and focus on EBay. It didn’t have a tremendous effect of the scoring but it was certainly more fun that week than previous ones.
Oddly the design is setup so that alts have plenty to do. The problem is the pushed the bar so far out there nobody wants (or really can) do it twice.
Duel… ask around on your server about dueling guilds. Then you will quickly be thrown in with some pretty spectacular builds that will push your skills. Dueling builds aren’t exactly like roaming builds but they are far closer than sPvP builds. A few nights of that will likely have you laying smack down on most other roamers.
While this would be better than the current system, this still relies on some nebulous affiliation (red, green, blue) which most players won’t give two poops about. if they overhaul the system I think the guild approach is better.
IMO, guilds should be able to create alliances with other guilds and declare war on other guilds. At reset guild alliances, guild war declarations, typical guild play times, typical guild play hours and other factors would be mixed together to create X number of WvW match ups that are as balanced as possible. The system would never repeat the same guild match ups and would never put warring guilds on the same side. This allows for a nice variety every week. All rewards and points would be guild based and would be reflected on a scoreboard both weekly and all time.
This system solves most balance issues, creates variety in the system and allows guilds to strut their collective stuff against all other guilds in the world.
I don’t think it hurts to remind the devs of this problem. Bringing it up also exposes new players to the issue so they won’t think there is something wrong with their play. Clearly the original math was horribly flawed and while I do believe the issue is more difficult to resolve than it would appear from the outside looking in, it has taken an inordinate amount of time to correct a relatively simple scale.
If picking solely on classs, Warrior. Best across the board class in the game right now. They roam, skirmish and WvW effectively and are also highly desired in dungeon runs.
That said play style has more to do with it. I have several 80s a couple of which I am pretty decent with but I still prefer my thief (non D/P) even though the shine of the class has worn a bit because I find it more fun to play.
I have never died to an up arrow at least not one that wasn’t surrounded by several non-up levels. I get what you are saying but the lack of an elite, fewer stat gear and lower WvW ranks makes any up level too squishy to be particularly dangerous to a decently skilled player.
Duels will quick reveal just how under powered even a big stat bonus will have. Show me a video popping someone from a skill guild and I will be impressed.
Rangers are awesome roamers and scouts. You trait like you would for SPvP and you become an outrunner and scout for zergs/groups.
You should be on the outside rings of a large fight, using barrage and other AoE; while using your focused fire on down enemies.
Throw down traps, spirits, and springs for support; but don’t try to be part of the zerg.
My 2 cents worth.
Bringing sPvP builds into WvW is asking for trouble in many instances. WvW has no soft cap on Power/Crit which is what makes thieves and warriors so dangerous solo compared to their brethren in sPvP.
Can they make good scouts sure but several classes can do this. Are they awesome at roaming… not really at least not my style of roaming (killing other roamers, following zergs and calling out position and flipping camps). They can do it and builds do exist (mostly condi-bunkers) that can be tough. However the thief, speed warrior and condi-engi are all more dangerous, frequently every bit as fast or faster and scale much better in WvW.
Not knocking the ranger players just the class needs more development work for WvW. IMO make the pets work like mobile banners so they can no longer be damaged or passively attack. Then increase damage to the ranger skills to compensate.
Ranger doesn’t need any buffs, well except something to help a pet survive in a large scale battle. Don’t need no more power creep.
They are not usually welcome in skill groups and nobody is afraid of them when roaming. The only time a ranger is really useful is when a zerg has to stand still and wants to bask in healing spring. The other 99% of the time healing spring is a liability compared to the other heals.
I love my ranger, but I am under no delusion after playing numerous other 80s that is a gymped class that offers little in the way of cross class synergy. That doesn’t mean a good player cannot be dangerous but that same player in a warrior is twice as deadly.
With the changes to the masteries and easy access to superior siege, it is time to overhaul the door and wall HP.
My suggestion: Each tier raises both the door strength and the wall strength. No need to change the graphics since Tier1, Tier2 and Tier3 upgrades are already visibly distinct. So a T1 upgrade would increase door HP as well as walls. Same for T2 and T3.
Hopefully a change like this would be easy on the devs since they wouldn’t need to change any graphics and they could leave the same cost structure. If we are lucky it would be a simple modification to the tables already in place and nothing else.
Transfer to BP… the fights the last few weeks have been epic on all fronts. I haven’t seen such good roaming, skirmishing and open field fights in… well… ever. It may just be luck of the draw but it seems T3/T4 have shaped into a place of fantastic fights no matter what style of play you prefer.
Heck my entire small guild which left for a while have all come back and they are loving it.
I get being frustrated by either a game bug or a hack, but this is a pretty minor thing especially for such big statements.
They have already said Bloodlust is going to get nerfed soon and they are looking at a new long term system for a better incentive. In a sense, a person should have more hope since they are quickly backing away from a somewhat unpopular feature and already redesigning it.
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