Guild Wars 2

Hickeroar.9734:

1x Guardian, tanky but still able to deal damage. (knights/valkyrie mix is good)

We have tried just about every style of guardian in our mix but full on support guardians are by far the most potent for elevating the group. The problem with the guardian is that it cannot drop target and doesn’t have good in combat mobility so less tanky versions get focused heavily in high mobility groups. Try a full on support version and watch the kills rack up… not as fun for the guardian to play though.

Nikkinella.8254:

There’s something to be said about a 5 man group of thieves. Its scary for anyone you run into.

Thief groups melt to equally skilled mixed groups. Without stability or group heal they are almost always going to fall apart as soon as the element of surprise is gone against a skill group.

Manuelito.6081:

@Straegen: it makes sense, mate. Have you considered Superior Runes of Altruism for the Guardian? Since we will not probably have an Elementalist and aura sharing.

Those aren’t as useful for us since we already run with full might stacks and fury from shouts/elementalist. I cannot stress enough how powerful a D/D elementalist is in our group. Course he is our best player by a mile.

Both are viable and both are powerful in their own way. The guardian is typically more support oriented and the warrior more front line fighter. Depends on what you like to play.

None of the above is a bad WvW class. They are each powerful in their own ways and can all be very effective. It boils down to what YOU like to play.

Mattargul.9235:

Direct siege damage does show up in the logs. Park yourself in an arrow cart rain and you’ll see it.

Not sure all siege shows up. I have been hit by a treb numerous times and never seen anything in the combat log.

I would add context menus being fixed as well. These bugs/oversights really have sat too long.

Sadly targetting is a holdover from MMOs of yore. I hope the next set of MMOs leaves this relic behind.

Mouse is the most precise, tab is probably the fastest and call targeting (when available is the best). Combat mod is a nice middle ground but it could get a player banned. I doubt Anet would on using Combat Mod alone but still worth considering.

IMO, go play a different game for a while. Take a break, let a few patches role in and then consider returning. The changes put into the game while you are away will likely make it feel renewed.

In these scenarios Anet should lock players into a drum circle and force us to talk those feelings of hostility out.

I say remove them. If a group of people want to take a keep, castle, tower they should have to do so by attacking it in force not setting up a couple trebs behind a wall that prevents the trebs from being attacked directly. Worse yet, a treb that cannot be hit and manned by a player that is macroing.

Yes. That is all.

Anet has already said the AoE limit is in there for performance reasons, it won’t be removed and IMO it should be in there for balance reasons. WvW is already mostly an AoE war that requires very little situation awareness. Lastly, removing the cap won’t change anything with the makeup of zergs except remove any build that doesn’t AoE.

Forcing a portal after player death in WvW is a good idea IMO. I am also on board with removing Rally. I like the downed state concept but it has a lot of down sides in its current state.

I would also add in map objectives each tick rather than all locations on a map be open for points gathering. Creating 4 or so objectives every 15 minutes that players must hold to get points would add another layer of coordination since a zerg simply couldn’t move from one objective to another and keep the points up.

Lake is horrible… krait are even worse. Dump both!

Manuelito.6081:

@Straegen: thank you for the feedback; any particular advice on build/gear for that set-up?

I think both the d/d ele and hammer/staff guardian run boon duration runes (2 monk, 2 sup water, 2 major water). This keeps them with swiftness up full time between fights and boons running longer in fights. The guardian goes with energy sigils on the weapons since every dodge is a heal.

The thief goes with divinity runes and a mix of knight/zerker since it is a healing thief build (0/30/30/10/0). We tried higher DPS versions of the thief but we found that DPS builds have a tough time standing in with better opponents as they use heavy AoE or burst really well. With bloodlust, might stacks, fields and auras high DPS is already a given on this class.

The other two player slots are sort of whatever someone wants to play. All of our builds are focused around solo/skirmish though. All the builds are heavy in toughness. Toughness beats out vitality in a medium duration fight and is significantly better in a long duration fight. The key is that nobody is glassy since glass players will raise opponents from the downed state and generally speaking do not handle being out numbered well. Survival and overlapping skills is our design and it works very well.

Mumble (or other voice chat) and call targeting are probably the two strongest pieces of kit we use.

Below is our mix. The first two are important because they keep fields, stability, healing and full might stacks up in a fight:

• 1 D/D elementalist for the fields, buffs (auras are amazing), condition removal
• 1 guardian for the buffs, stability, tank (shouts and heals are ridiculous with 3+ players)

The thief rounds out our trinity as a DPS’r:

• 1 thief for the DPS/Blast finishers (built to burst down anything under 50% and stealth to keep the targeting dropped… needs decent toughness to handle AoE fights)

The last two slots are kinda optional but this is preferred:

• 1 control class. Any class/build that has several stuns, dazes, etc
• I would finish out with a mesmer or necro here. Neither are required but both bring a lot of diversity to a fight. Mesmer clones make a fast moving team bigger, necros make standing still difficult and have that big HP pool

Mixing is the important part as no one class has it all. Fields, stability, might and healing are the big parts. Focus heavy solo DPS, that team will get ripped apart by this one as combo fields and group might stacks make the DPS much higher than a single pack of thieves. Focus heavy tank, takes to long to dispatch players and can get over run.

Lets not forget about tab, caps, shift, ctrl on the left side of the keyboard. Give that pinky something to do. I also use macro function in the mouse to program the mouse wheel. Scroll down to switch weapons, scroll up is Utility 3. Auto Hotkey can also do it for free with any mouse. Function keys I remap to Z X C V.

I use the CM Storm Inferno mouse which adds a few extra buttons to the mouse (not a fan of the 2 dozen button mice… some day they will push out a nice 4 or so thumb button mouse with nice big buttons).

lordkrall.7241:

And this couldn’t go into one of the 50 other threads about the exact same topic?

Yep…

I will add this in though, by estimate the WvW population is still a minor one in GW2. While it deserves some attention it is probably getting a fairly accurate percentage of development in comparison to the percentage of WvW players in GW2. PvE is way more popular at least in the first 12 months.

Thesilentflute.8761:

There is no such thing as a perma stealth thief anymore that was an exploit in which a thief could use a keep wall to stealth it has since been fixed.

D/P builds are effectively perma-stealth and they undid (by accident is my guess) the bug that allowed thieves to stealth on doors/siege.

Axe warriors can spike a ridiculous amount of damage but the setup for that damage is a bit wonky compared to other builds. Course people are always pushing into unused skills/traits and changing the WvW landscape. Pretty amazing to me the depth both on an individual and group level that GW2 has in it. Many powerful builds arise not from a patch but someone simply applying skills/traits in a rarely seen before way.

wads.5730:

the problem with zerg busting with multiple duel ax warriors is you die to retaliation damage instantly. life leech food isnt enough to offset it.

Also missing a lot of other counters. One good fear and pop goes that bust.

Oddly having a weekend and a weekday cycle might be interesting. It could help keep players interested in WvW during blowouts. Often a server is matched up against a clearly superior server and people just don’t log in for a week because they don’t like getting constantly run over.

Xsorus.2507:

…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiZk2lnkJgY

This was taken in 2012

when the zergs were considerably smaller then they use to be.

The video does a nice job in showcasing how much simpler combat systems are in older games. Skill use by number games are certainly a step up from the old *nix MUDs but feel just as antiquated to me. It is much easier to resolve a stack without combo fields, trait/armor/weapon triggers, bouncing weapons, heavy pet resolution, dodge, block, condition stacks, boon stacks, etc but those are reasons GW2 combat is more fun at least to me.

Ralathar.7236:

This game was not designed for WvW, WvW was far more popular than they ever anticipated. It’s as simple as that really.
…

Well said.

gaspara.4079:

I’m pretty sure when they designed the system they were going for one that could handle as wide an array of technical specs as possible and as such designed it to do a lot processing that is normally done on the client to be done on the server instead. However this greatly increases the server workload and bandwidth usage, which does create the possibility of limiting factors among those two places.

I think doing combat resolution on the server is a fundamental requirement of any competitive MMO. Anything that is offloaded to the client for resolution is easily hacked.

King Amadaeus.8619:

So my point is, and always will be: Why not design a game that is 100% functional, instead of one that is 90% and has all this untapped potential that we can never see?

Why make a game that promised open world massive pvp, and then throttle it to where it essentially is 5v5 10 times over in a 50 on 50 fight?

For the same reasons I stated earlier. Anet wanted to create a dynamic and somewhat deep combat system. The cost of adding this level of complexity is fewer players in the same area at the same time without skill lag compared to some other games. They could have simplified combat but at the expense of PvE/sPvP which is vastly more popular. They could further limit the number of players on a map which would likely be less popular than skill lag. Any number of things could remove skill lag or even the AoE cap but sacrifices have to be made somewhere to achieve that. Right now they have a decent balance with a reasonable AoE cap and minor skill lag in most tiers.

Lets cut to the chase, does anyone think this is not one of the more powerful, relatively cheap and easy to use combos in all of WvW? Can you name another that is more powerful with similar convenience?

My guild has about 5 semi-active players in it and we have a blast whenever everyone is on.

The real answer to your question though is it depends. The higher the tier the harder it is to roam/skirmish. T5 and lower has some great skirmishing. Above T5 particularly during prime time avoiding a zerg can be difficult but still doable.

The thing that makes WvW in GW2 so fun is how dynamic the combat is. 5 players call targeting with complimentary builds to each other can decimate 2x, 3x or more their numbers. I have seen 10 man teams push back big zergs and 20 man teams outright destroy four times their number. Teamwork in this game is more important than any other MMO I have tried. Even in the zergs, strategy of a player may not be as important but leader strategy certainly is.

I love WvW as much as the next person but a break from it can be a good thing. Can we just be somewhat happy they are putting new stuff in the game that is actually fun to do? Most of the living story stuff so far has been pretty boring, but they did this one well. The fights are decently tough, they are easy to join in on and the pacing (even the escort quests) is spot on.

Nikola.3841:

Once they make Warhammer F2P, I’m going back…hell, if they do it with DAOC, I’ll go back there…only thing keeping me here is because its free

I think you will be waiting a LONG time before either goes truly F2P (War is F2P at T1). Even still the combat in GW2 is far superior IMO than either War/DAoC but that is highly subjective. Sadly the PvE in all of them is boring course I have played too much Borderlands (1 and 2) which skews that perception.

The Game Slayer.7632:

You state there are “roles” and such, but really you’re completely wrong. A-net stated themselves that you should be able to play the game however you feel, without any types of “roles”. You are the one missing the point.

I believe Anet was referencing the holy MMO trinity (tank, healer, DPS) when they were talking about non-specific class roles. I also believe they were purposeful in the design of classes to be more effective in specific roles in WvW.

Plainview.7029:

Sure I can use a rock to open a can of beans, but a can-opener is better suited to the task. Very constructive reply though.

I agree. Every class can pretty much do any objective some are clearly more suited and effective at filling those objectives such as a necro in a zerg versus a thief roaming. Both can contribute in either role but when specialized they are clearly more efficient at one style of play over another.

Once I get passed Defense Against Guards (250 vit) and Guard Killer (100 power, +100 cond dmg)… oh and at least one level of Ballista (the siege killer) and a couple in AC mastery (the player killer)… maybe.

King Amadaeus.8619:

Or maybe people who think it is successful just have low expectations. That is the problem with opinions, everyone thinks theirs is right.

Do thousands of players log tens of thousands of hours playing a failed game? No. The fact you are here on some level has you agreeing that the game isn’t a failure. SWToR mass PvP was a failure as in they had to remove it from the game. Arguably Warhammer Online is a failure as well.

King Amadaeus.8619:

Lets say you engineer a new sportscar, the thing has so much power it cannot keep tires on the rims. Sure you have successfully engineered a marvel, but to make it functional you have to throttle it back just have it operate properly? So why did you spend the time engineering “10” when you knew it would realistically only perform at a “8” level.

When a sportscar is on the open road, the user can open it up and it runs like a beast. As soon as it gets into traffic, lag hits and the car cannot go akittens fastest. The focus should not be on the car but the traffic. Its like saying traffic lights are a failure because cars can go faster without them.

King Amadaeus.8619:

My point was merely why not make a game that can be 100% functional/operational while losing some of the “bells and whistles”, rather than this awesome game that has to be throttled back (again just to what extent is based on opinion) just to be “functional”.

ALL MMOs have limits… both physical and functional. The best games out there limit their player counts on maps, simplify their combat, etc. Limiting AoE was one design decision to help with skill lag (and I would argue class balance). They could remove stacked conditions, fields, etc and it would probably solve the skill lag problem but won’t make the game better.

King Amadaeus.8619:

Sorry but I am not sure of your sentiment, but no one can defend the fact that something was designed in such a manner that it cannot be fully implemented to its full capability.

Capability and capacity is a moving target for all systems with limited resources which includes all MMOs. Sure they could scale back the number of players on a map, reduce the AoE cap even further or implement any number of simple mechanisms to limit message stack resolution but WvW mostly works without lag now. The bouts of lag we do have in T3 and lower are relatively short in their duration. Clearly they want to improve capacity but the low hanging fruit has likely been picked. The changes left are likely tough to implement or limit players in some way. The old adage you cannot have your cake (fluid, complex, dynamic combat with few limits) and eat it to (no lag) applies here.

King Amadaeus.8619:

TL/DR: A person does not have to know why something is failing, to understand that it is indeed failing.

I think for someone to believe WvW in GW2 as a failure has unrealistic expectations of a game in this genre. I would recommend trying a competitor game that probably doesn’t have this level of complexity but can host more players. The total number of AAA titles still going that might fall into this category are in VERY short supply.

hoschi.8693:

Dear ANet.

Rock is Overpowered.
Paper is fine

signed,
Scissors

This really should be a pinned post.

King Amadaeus.8619:

It is really hilarious when you think about the fact that the game is designed behind combo-fields, stacking buffs, and stacking conditions, etc….All of which go into the pile of things that “bog down the servers” more than likely as it has to track these, and perform said calculations.

I don’t think it is funny, I actually think that is why combat in GW2 is A LOT more fun than in the old style use skill, get rooted, watch timers on skill bar. The trade off is that combat in massive groups has limits but all MMOs with massive player combat have limits somewhere.

People keep bringing up games that have relatively static combat or essentially FPS as an example of large scale combat for comparison. Also most don’t understand multi-threaded programming and thread synchronization which often have little to do with processing power or number of servers. I can say this, if it was a relatively easy fix they would have done it long ago.

EvilSardine.9635:

I love the cute “just stand in the black power circle to stop the thief from stealthing” comments. The heartseeker puts him into stealth while hitting you and does NOT apply reveal. Yes, you heard that correct.

This is correct. I could have sworn the leap finisher didn’t work if they didn’t exit the circle but it does and they still stealth. In fact running into the circle is about the worst thing a player can do as it blinds the player, frequently they get a HS and if not careful will find a BS hitting in short order.

EvilSardine.9635:

I have a thief and so do most of my guildies and every single one of them agree that this blackpowder + heartseeker needs to be taken out.

Agreed. The original complaint about this being too powerful at least for such a spamable combo is on point. The rest of the whiners talking about thieves in general are really not contributing to this thread.

Wow a stack is 2.85 gold and they can be sold to any vendor who buys.

Holy crap… I have a few thousand of those things… where is the vendor?

How someone chooses to play a game is their business so long as they aren’t cheating or adversely effecting other players. GvG’rs may use a handful of player slots on a map but they aren’t really adversely effecting other players since the other team will usually have a similar number offsetting them. If it is that bad, supporting an extra map is a decent option and certainly better than complaining about it.

Xsorus.2507:

A. the zergs in DAOC were massive, and completely blow this game away in size…To give you an idea… Whenever we did an ML raid on Midgard Merlin, we had to run 2 Battlegroups, that’s 500 Players, all in one area… stuck together… That’s one Faction… When Frontiers were attacked, the zergs that poured out were massive….Now what kept most of the massive zerg battles in check though was the fact that an 8man could run by and blow an entire zerg up in seconds.

DAoC solved their problems by implementing heavy crowd control so if a fight of 500 people broke out about 450 of them were turned completely off. I won’t argue that DAoC did more players in an area but their condition/boon system was simpler, it was far less action based (no kind of dodge mechanic) and the run times were yawn worthy… even dying had a nice lag on it if you missed the 5 minute window.

Xsorus.2507:

B. Warhammer Online, Is also comparable to this game, When did it lag? Not during open field or running around, The Major Complaint when it lagged was when you stacked the entire server in a small area that was comparable to EB Center Keep. That’s why they introduced the cap, Because the game couldn’t handle that many players (Neither could GW2, hence why you have a cap on the Maps)

You cannot possibly be serious with this one. They had to remove Frontier Wars because it was completely unplayable once 100 people showed up. The lag in this game was far worse than GW2, the bugs were horrible and the class balance atrocious.

lunoh.1963:

just so you know, the 250k kills achievement has been done like month an a half ago? even longer?… Also Anet wants to give credit to people who will be playing the game for several years, what wrong with that?

Achievements aren’t meant to take years to do and no part of PvE has achievements of this scale. As for credit, they already implemented that in GW with the Hall of Monuments and are on their way with the Achievement points in GW2.

While 250k kills was made it was also the easiest by far to make. Yak Slapper is probably not even possible within 10 years due to the limited yaks, run time between camps, etc. This also assumes a player plays every day for 10+ years almost exclusively killing yaks. Most are simply unreachable even by the most hard core players. How many players are going to put in more than 10 years and thousands of hours into GW2 killing yaks? I am willing to bet nobody.

I think they should allow all players to see around walls when on an AC but code in overhead obstruction. That may be a huge undertaking but if it isn’t a better system IMO.

aspirine.6852:

But the limit of 5 seems odd, I would not be able to sleep if I am a programmer and could not figure this out while other mmo’s already have it :/

I think the point here is that very few MMOs have really figured out how to implement heavy action inside a skill based system. Most implement a player cap, simplify the combat system or have some other limitation to get more players into one area. In GW2’s case it is an AoE cap.

As for the “DAoC could do it” line my original points still stand: It did have lag, the combat was slower, the runs between fights were much longer, players spent much of a big fight chain stunned doing nothing, dodging wasn’t even part of the game, condition/boons were simpler and their devs certainly managed to F that game up. Even more to the point people can still play it and if it were that good, they wouldn’t be here.

timidobserver.7925:

I wouldn’t want to be stuck with the same WxP traits across each characters.

I like AC on my Guardian, but I don’t want it on my Necro.

If they merged the points onto the account, it would take the exact same amount of points and time to have AC on your guardian and XYZ on your Necro as it does today. Ex: AC mastery costs 75 for your Guardian and say you want Build Mastery which is 51 for the Necro. Currently it would cost 126… account based it would cost the same 126 but you could earn those levels on either or both characters. Even better as you attain them they would be accessible on both characters.

Given that 126 levels is probably close to 125 hours or more for an average player, that is pretty reasonable for nice-to-have abilities IMO.

Fishbait.6723:

Spectral walk & horn make necro more then fast enough.

The cooldown is too high on Spectral Walk and its animation makes it REALLY obvious what they are doing. Most of the better roaming classes already run permanent swiftness or near it. The better roaming classes have multiple gap closers on tap, generally several abilities that create a lot of distance and some way to reset/escape a fight.

I am not debating necros being capable of roaming in the right hands. I am debating them being great at it. They can be kited too easily and have effectively zero ways to reset a fight. They are IMO the opposite of being great at it which by my definition is must be at least top 3 to qualify for a great adjective.

A somewhat common way is to chain pull from a couple or more mesmers. I occasionally use the rarely seen and frequently temperamental scorpion wire when a player is getting a bit courageous.

timidobserver.7925:

I can’t really think of a good way to make it account bound after the fact. I guess they could make it account bound, and increase the requirements to max out each tier by say 50%?

Really? How about refund all WxP across all players into a single account pool and then let them put it back in using the same progression they have today. It takes hundreds (possibly thousands) of hours to max out several masteries already. They don’t need to up the difficulty. Most players will probably see a handful of completed masteries across all characters during their entire play time in GW2.

Svarty.8019:

There is UNANIMOUS consensus that they are massively over the top and require a lot of attention from Mr Peters and co.

timidobserver.7925:

You are on the verge of having an entire bank tab dedicated to badges.

or you have maxed out the bank tabs and bought an extra alt account for storage.

Only direct damage from a player seems to be logged. Siege, condition and several other ways a player can be damaged is not logged.

It is possible you got hit with a big siege hit during the lag but I wouldn’t be surprised if the lag caused you to take falling damage and then rubber-banded you back into place without your client ever seeing it.

Up levels are fodder for any decent player and I am not sure there is a fix for it. Gear puts them a tremendous stat disadvantage and many are newbies who don’t know how to effectively fight with their own class (yet). I 2-3 shot most up arrows and usually leave them in the downed state because they came to a gun fight with a spoon.

If they are on my own team during skirmish, I run away from them because they are an enemy rez waiting to happen.

when you try to dodge roll out of a meeting at work.

I do agree the latest builds of warriors are super fast in combat which makes them a tough fight given their HP pool. However I have been enjoying the challenge.

Most so far have been getting players to chase them then stunning followed by a huge damage spike. More coordinated teams use them to gas players out chasing the warrior who is leading those soon to be gassed out players to a team slaughter. IMO effective and a nice change of pace for skirmishing.