Guild Wars 2

MojoGroove.8253:

You never mentioned fighting.

You mentioned exploring.

Is that better for a roamer?

Is walking 25 minutes accross the too large map better for a roamer?

If it takes you 25 minutes to cross the map you have larger problems, my friend.

People have to get their guild halls set up and then upgraded to the point that they can put that in. It’ll be back, just give it a few days.

I know I, who am usually 100% WvW, have been in PvE most of the week. This, even though I really enjoy the new map.

The shrine buffs give a +40% speed boost for 5 minutes. As a necro, I’m in heaven~

I’m finding it way easier to scout than before. Even if response times are low, the enemy has to kill cannons/oil first or I’ll do mean things to them. I have a very tough to bring down build so I can and will 1v10 people if I’m on a cannon. With oil, I get damage reduction…so usually they just go for a wall instead.

Then, if they get through the gates, the lord takes them several minutes to bring down and is much more dangerous. This means my back-up has longer to arrive and better odds of success upon doing so.

Fighting at structures is far, far more fun than before. There are still some issues like catas that are right next to a wall being nigh impossible to hit/disable, but on the whole it’s much better. I’ve found that I get around as quickly as on the old map so the size doesn’t bother me. I also am constantly seeing players…no matter the size of the maps, they all tend to gravitate towards objectives sooner or later.

They slow people down and and thus make it harder to havoc the northern part of the map when neither northern tower is held. Thus, attacks are funneled to the northern towers.

Basically, it provides an incentive to control a structure in order to traverse the map more quickly while hindering your opponents. The same design philosophy can be seen with team specific elevators.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Sviel.7493:

As a scout/roamer, I would orbit Hills or Bay and run upgrades there. I’d retake/defend camps and escort Dolyaks while also repairing and building siege. If we lost the keep I was scouting, I’d usually switch to yak sniping to ensure the enemy couldn’t upgrade. When I got a chance, I’d do as much damage to w/e wall I could get at. Usually, I was alone for this, but sometimes I had support from other scouts/roamers.
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See, this is what’s missing.
Supply camps and dolyaks were the life blood of keeps and the majority of roaming fights revolved around controlling them.

Now they no longer matter. Structures will be fully upgraded unless they are constantly being flipped (not attacked to drain supply but fully flipped).

As I stated later on in that post, yaks have become more important to me. It’s true that objectives will eventually upgrade on their own, but holding them long enough for that to happen is much, much easier with a steady supply of yak love. Combined with the kit that lets me speed boost them (something I couldn’t do well on my necro/thief), I’m spending a lot more time with my now furless friends.

The initial upgrade timer that puts cannons/oils up is like 30 minutes, no? The next is a couple of hours. Nothing sits uncontested that long in T2 unless you’re the blob server that has more people than the other two combined.

• Describe a typical hour for you in the Alpine Borderlands in the past. For example, What size of group were you running in? What kind of tasks did you run? What activities did you do?

As a scout/roamer, I would orbit Hills or Bay and run upgrades there. I’d retake/defend camps and escort Dolyaks while also repairing and building siege. If we lost the keep I was scouting, I’d usually switch to yak sniping to ensure the enemy couldn’t upgrade. When I got a chance, I’d do as much damage to w/e wall I could get at. Usually, I was alone for this, but sometimes I had support from other scouts/roamers.

• Compare your experience described above with a typical hour spent in Eternal Battlegrounds, if you went there at all. Does your style of play change between the 2 maps?

On EBG I tended to scout towers or take enemy camps and mercenaries. Usually I only popped over if things were bad, so I’d also cap my teams corner by solo ramming towers until folks showed up to help.

• Compare your experiences described above with an hour spent in the new borderlands.

After the first bit of running around, I settled into my old borderland role. Though, now, I get my cannons/oil up much faster and without having to sacrifice defense. I also added shrines to my defendables list alongside camps. And, with the new first aid kits, I’m much more effective at escorting yaks so I spend more time doing that too. Meanwhile, since supply isn’t used for upgrades, things like building siege and repairing go much faster—I used to have to run supply from w/e camp we owned.

• Describe the nature of combat in the borderlands in the past. How have the new borderlands impacted this paradigm for you? What style or build changes might it cause? For example, knocking people off cliffs or into lava might play a more important role.

I’ve only seen a few big battles, but they weren’t too different. I think the new lords will be more of a factor in a fight, but as for now we’ve been mostly outnumbered 10 to 1.

As for roaming battles, they tend to center around yaks moreso than before, in my experience. That might be because I tend to center more around yaks, though. Love me some yaks.

• In your experience, compare the time it takes take a structure or objective here, then it did in the past.

Before the first upgrade, it seems to be the same amount of time. After that, it takes longer to go through gates if defended and still the same time to go through a wall. Once it becomes fully upgraded, it takes much longer, defended or not. This is largely because the lords scale better now. I really appreciate this change.

• How is the loot and wxp for you compared to in the past? Will it be able to sustain whatever you are doing? Did it take a hit, or was it improved? If you are planning to unlock an elite specialization, do you think you were helped or hurt in these regards? Do you think you could pursue any other in-game goals just by playing WvW?

The wexp from repairing seems bugged, but the rest is alright, I think. There’s still very little opportunity to gain wexp from scouting activities, though. I can’t imagine trying to pursue other in-game goals (crafting ascended, elite specs) just through WvW because I do not rank up quickly enough. It is not uncommon to get only 1-1.5 ranks a day even when no-lifing for 6+ hours. That said, I do feel more rewarded on ranking up than I did previously…just need a way to make it happen more often.

• How will the map change impact the long sessions (multiple hours) you spend in WvW?

I’ve been kicking various work projects around so that I can shamelessly ignore my life in pursuit of getting intimate with the new borderlands for a week. So far, no plans to change that.

• In 100 words or less, describe how the new BLs could be improved.

Could still use wexp for escorting yaks and such. Perhaps greater exp for flipping sentries. Guards (like in camps) could use a call-for-help thing so that they don’t sit and watch their friends die.

• In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a new WvW player.
  The mini-map, with all of the neatly marked elevators, should be a godsend.

• In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a veteran WvW player that is new to the maps.

While there are more cliffs, it is much clearer which ones will kill me now. They tend to be either very safe, or very much obviously deadly.

• Which map am I most likely to find you currently, if you’re on Gw2?

At the moment, Verdant Brink so that I can get masteries to aid in getting our guild hall so that we can upgrade things. After that, I’ll be back to the borderlands permanently save for the occasional PvE run for money/crafting supplies.

It makes sense to me that, as full time WvW players, we should also have to pitch in for all the new stuff we’re getting.

At first, it was tough to get around. After about 10 minutes, I was getting places at the same speed as Alpine or faster. Granted, you have to own structures (and therefore elevators) to do it, but it works. We also can’t discount the free WP on garri for cutting the map basically in half. There are also WPs on the south towers.

I was worried by what everyone was saying pre-release, but now I’m just concerned that they were seriously slowed and confused for several days of beta testing. Like, how?

Yuffi.2430:

I can’t see Anet changing the maps (unless they bring the Alpine maps back sooner than anticipated)so what can they tweak to help us? Reduce the PvE style mobs perhaps? Or a long term speed boost like you can get in cities?

The shrines, of which there are 9, give a 5m, 40% speed boost. It’s great~

That SM case sounds bad, but I think the timing on tower upgrades is pretty good, at least. It’s faster, but I think that’s better…it beats no one bothering to upgrade the tower because nothing will finish before the enemies return.

The lords are more fun, and stronger, but I was able to take one down with just one other person helping (Stoic Rampart lord) so I’m inclined to say they aren’t crazy hard. In our case, we had one person in the lord’s face with tons of defense and the other person doing ranged DPS and hiding behind the walls to avoid the brunt of the lord’s attacks.

The maps are bigger, but there are also myriad shortcuts. Between the elevators and the speed boost from the shrines, I found myself getting around more or less at the same pace. Actually, it was probably a bit faster while I had the shrine buff.

As for PvE…I saw plenty of mobs, but I didn’t actually fight any of them save for shrine guards. It didn’t feel any different from the Alpine version.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Sviel.7493:

Oh I love this, actually. Sorry roamers and smallscalers.

Uhm what is the problem? You just do more supply runs? I have often first flip a camp alone and then build a flaming ram or a catapult alone. I have successfully take many objective alone, if it is not defended. Sometimes 1-2 defenders won’t stop me.
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Guild catapult used to be too good. Now the resources needed to build is balanced per the power it gives.

I wasn’t being sarcastic. I really do love this change.

Also, I’m in the crowd that solo builds siege and knocks walls down w/e possible, though I’m not cool enough to then solo the lord.

In WvW, a player with fully upgraded Repair Master who patches 10 supply into a Fortified Gate gets only one tick of 5 WvW exp. Prior to the patch, I remember it being much higher.

Oh I love this, actually. Sorry roamers and smallscalers.

Though, I would have expected 40 sup, not 50.

Seems reasonable to me.

Also, do you know for certain that the two are counted as one thing? That seems like a rather silly oversight.

The ideal solution would require separating WvW Commander tags from PvE tags.

What I’m gathering from this is that Mesmers are the root of all evil.

It definitely solves the problem of servers claiming large scores when they have few people on, but that is not the biggest problem in WvW and this sacrifices too much to address it.

Even with an hour-long timer, it’s hard to make a case for taking a break from normal activities to stand in a circle. It makes owning objectives a pain in the butt, albeit one that can be managed, it’s still annoying.

It would be better to fix the root of the problem: population imbalance. While harder, it will lead to a much cleaner solution.

I appreciate seeing the reason behind the change. It goes a long way towards being able to take it as a move in good faith, even if I don’t particularly agree with it.

It seems that it’s being relegated to the ’we’re going to take a look at WvW after HoT launches’ basket, which is fine…but that means that we really, really need some tangible communication about this infamous WvW dev focus. If weeks go by with nothing, people will give up hope.

Perhaps it’s to encourage large pushes at the end of the week as well as the start?

I dunno…not really a fan of it either way.

I love the idea of server mascots~

Dibs on the Quaggan

I remember someone saying the new maps still have them when this concern was raised earlier. I believe they cited a video clip from some stream or the other, but I did not watch much of the streams so I don’t know.

Menaka.5092:

WvW has many scenarios.

PU Condi mesmer was (is?) very good in a very specific part of WvW is, but saying that condi mesmers are very good in WvW is just flat out ridicolous. Any organized group has enough condi removal to counter even the most extreme condi pressure – and mesmer condi application against groups is just abysmal.

I said they were very, very annoying, not very good in WvW everywhere.

In a group, they were a non-issue, but alone they were a no-win situation. Essentially, either life sucked for them or for me. I consider that to be a bad place to inhabit in terms of design.

apharma.3741:

I think for most people fighting a condi PU mesmer it’s the confusion that really gets them. They feel they can’t cleanse or else they get hit with even more damage and so it feels very oppressive. Condi builds also really really hurt zerkers because of the low health pool on some and the way it keeps ticking. Fortunately I’m running inspiration which makes conditions a breeze.

I really do hope the WvW forum doesn’t see this thread -.-

As a WvW player, I’m fully aware that condi mesmers are not god mode or even good outside of WvW. However, they are really, really annoying within it.

I’m fine with them being strong if they can do so in a way that doesn’t make them so insanely powerful in WvW environments, but that seems hard to pull off given the nature of conditions (and condi gear) and the very quick reapplication rate. It’s truly unfortunate that they’re based around stealth and conditions…two things that are far, far more powerful in WvW than PvE or PvP.*

*Stealth is stronger in open spaces and without pressure to cap. Conditions are stronger as there is less time pressure.

Maybe…maybe it was for science?

I don’t expect too many daredevils…stealth is too strong of a mechanic for any relatively stealthless build to gain much popularity.

Tempest requires staying attuned to one element for a while, quartering the elementalist’s skills. Again, the trade-off seems wrong considering how important cycling through elements is for them.

Reapers…well I’ll be playing one in WvW, maybe, but I’m not sure they’ll take off. Chill is a great condition to have since it bypasses Stab, but I’m not sure it will be enough.

Dragonhunter…I actually think they’ll be quite useful. In a large fight, they’re going to be immobilizing two targets on every shot; no cooldown. That alone is good enough since they’re not sacrificing any durability. The plentiful knockback and the reveal are just icing on the cake.

Chronomancers seem too conditional…the coordination required may make them not worth the trouble. There’s some cool stuff, yes, but I really can’t be bothered with it.

Scrappers have stealth so they’ll be everywhere.

Druids…it really depends on how much they heal. Walls are nice, but most of the damage in a large fight comes from AoE, ground target abilities. Walls won’t do much there. It might work if they’re bunker builds, but I’m not sure.

Berserkers will be great because warrior in general are always safe to include. Also, burning is crazy good right now and that seems to be their thing.

This makes a lot of sense to me. Anyone building a structure knows that the gates are the weak points…so they’d focus their defense there. You cannot have people roll up to your gate and ram it down while you get bursted by AoE wall spam.

The fact that people are using catas/trebs from distances greater than point blank is amaaaaazing. It’s like an actual siege instead of just shoving that inconvenient wall out of the way so you can get your karma. The best part is it means fighting to save a keep will mean coming out of the keep and fighting instead of sitting inside and flinging spells from on high.

This doesn’t make me like mesmers any more.

WvW is not simply PvP. Granted, there’s many who use it as a surrogate for GvG, but that is not what it was meant for.

Players can already solo keeps…what is the purpose of weakening NPCs further? Shouldn’t we be pushing it to a team-oriented place rather than solo capping?

So, you want to take rewards out of WvW to discourage people from playing it? Does anyone actually come to WvW to farm loot or AP? Is there a positive reason to narrow the interest base?

Wanderer.3248:

I almost never see people using titles in WvW. Not even ones gained from WvW.

I think there is a perception than players using titles are new, or casual.

I think this is because no one has any WvW related titles because they’re impossibly grindy and no one has any PvE titles because they’re WvW players.

Considering how T1 was rigged for so long, this seems tame and…not unexpected.

I was eating dinner D:

The spaghetti was not worth missing this, not at all D:

Where can I watch it? Can someone summarize?

Glad to see these going over well, mostly. I tried not to put anything too crazy out there

dancingmonkey.4902:

No thinks. This idea that we need to buff PvE mobs is absurd to me. We do not need more PvE in WvW thank you.

WvW is not GvG. It should not be thought of as simply a mass PvP server. That is one aspect, but as the focus should be PPT, there is no harm buffing guards that are only interacted with when taking PPT objectives. It’s not like I’m advocating for hiring an army of NPCs to fight your enemies.

There is no evidence of what is or was intended, that is an assumption you have made.

I think it’s fair to assume that catapults were intended to be used chiefly at range, which slows them down considerably. Thus, I contend that they are doing damage faster than intended. If you disagree, that’s fine.

Your second point here though, strikes me as problematic though. That is literally what karma training is. I do not support suggestions that specifically promote a karma train situation.

Perhaps there’s a misunderstanding? My point is that right now it is more attractive to take objectives instead of spending time defending objectives. I say this because I advocate a change with the intent of discouraging karma training.

Why? It gives EotM value. If you do not want your supply from EotM to go to another team, then stop it yourself. You have a reoccurring theme here of wanting the game changed to suit things that make you work. Do the work to stop things from happening instead of wanting them handed to you or removed.

I’m not referring to the supply drops in citadel. Rather, I’m talking about someone porting into EotM, grabbing supply from a structure or generator, then porting into WvW with said supply. That sort of crossover is problematic, not the supply drops that are earned. At least, those aren’t problematic in this way.

No thank you to a stat buff around commanders. I am a regular commander and dislike this idea immensely. Again your asking for artificial benefits for doing what already works.

Big NO on your squad caps. Why do you want to punish me or anyone else because we have over 30 guildies on at once?

The idea is to give an incentive to do the thing that is within the game itself. It should help with steering players towards a set of generally positive behavior.

The squad caps won’t punish anyone, they will just benefit a certain amount of people and no more. The idea is to avoid making a blob strategy the only strategy. If you want to run more people, nothing’s stopping you. Additionally, I’m not married to the number 30. Is there another that you might suggest?

Define “regular WvW players”? This is a casual game by design. A player shouldn’t be required to play as often as you personally demand, for them to be counted as a regular WvW player.

You’ll have to ask Anet about that. I was told that they now calculate server size by the number of people that regularly play WvW. I don’t know their specific algorithm.

At any rate, the idea is that servers with big PvE populations aren’t marked as full when they can’t field nearly as many people as non-full servers that are more WvW focused. I think it was a good call on their part.

You have some inaccurate statements here. Conditions are less valuable in WvW then anywhere else. Group cleanses make certain of that. The only time that is not true is in 1v1, 1v2, 2v2. Once full groups are involved, your conditions lose value fast.

It sounds like your WvW experience is mostly running in a sizeable guild group. Ask anyone who runs alone or in small groups and you’ll find that there are many abuse cases that tend to center on condi builds. I’m not saying that condi builds are the new OP, just that there are too many abuse cases to ignore.

When I say they are less effective in PvP, I’m referring to their inability to cap and fight at the same time due to stealth and their decreased ability to disengage due to more cramped fighting spaces.

In higher tiers, several of those four maps get queued at once. It would be a good idea to have low tier, low pop servers in a one map WvW, but it should not be applied universally.

Tongku.5326:

Outpressuring your opponents has been done since betas and is actually still more effective on power builds in large scale groups due to overall average skill lag where conditions completely fail to apply or calculate properly (get 1 tick instead of 3 etc.).

the only nice thing about condi bombs is that they are really effective on restacks / refresh cycles as you can use them to negate all the empowers and / or scatter your opponents so they dont receive full benefits.

Its always been a part of WvW and I dont see that changing. As far as the whole dodging thing goes, the biggest change here was the stability change, not condi change. You know how incredibly fast stab gets stripped now right ? I think that is what you are missing, the ability to have a chance to some sort of active response instead of being insta CCed and insta killed. But your perception is misguided and so your conclusions are flawed. As I said in another thread, if you had just 1 second of unremovable stab, it would allow you to hit your “o kitten !” button if you are quick and good enough, vs unable to do anything whatsoever in the current state. That would promote more action and tactics to great extent. Not condi change.

if you want more active gameplay vs multiple CC fields, you need to rebalance / rework stab, not condis. There is in fact a thread about that on same page as this one. See it.

Sorry, I was talking about small scale fights, mostly 1v1. I don’t disagree with what you’re saying, but I didn’t say half the things you pulled out of my statement.

I suppose I should have specified, this being a WvW forum.

The reason we see power builds favored over condi is because the former leads to fights that are engaging throughout as dodging any attack is useful. The latter relies on making the opponent run out of condi clears, at which point they have little choice but to die. Thus, with condi, the fight is even more blatantly decided by who’s specced what at the outset instead of the decisions that get made in the fight.

It would be a poor idea to promote condi right now. It needs a re-pass so that it doesn’t lead to such binary fights before it can really be spotlighted.

Sorry, what is a GWEN class?

You make a good point there. Stealth is so inherently powerful as a mechanic that it can make an otherwise lackluster class look too strong. Thus, thieves are nerfed to compensate for stealth (but it’s not the stealth parts that get nerfed!) and, as a result, they can no longer function without stealth.

Straegen.2938:

It is a bit odd that GW2 is the only MMO I can think of where players that stealth don’ t lose significant movement speed and mobility. I am sure others exist but the vast majority make stealth slow and after an opening attack very difficult to reapply.

I think it’s because stealth cannot be used to cap points and is therefore regarded as a double-edged sword by a balancing team that has tunnel vision for PvP. In that arena, it works out very well, and since I assume that they know what they’re doing, I conclude that balancing there is their goal.

I know it’s been a while, but the new WvW borderland gives me hope that they plan to cease their streak of neglecting it. Perhaps they didn’t anticipate that it would really take off and thus kind of kitten it the first time around, then decided to go back to the drawing board instead of trying to patch up what existed. Hopefully, that means we get some answers to things like Ghost thieves.

I really appreciate the fact that time was spent on the WvW gamemode. It can often feel like no one cares. However, it feels like no one cares because there are so many problems that go unaddressed…and many of those problems are not going away. The effect is like breaking your leg in a car wreck and being given a new car…you’re still not walking anywhere.

That said, there are some parts of this update that really resonate with common WvW complaints.

-I would love to buy a cheeseburger for whoever suggested that Cannons/Oils/Mortars should be invulnerable to player attacks.
-Making guild buffs permanent is another stellar idea.
-Removing the gold cost on upgrades is a godsend.
-Shaving Dolyaks makes them less adorable, but giving them a defense buff when chaperoned is a good call.
-The new scouting function of Sentries and Towers is wonderful.

And here are a few things that were not solved. I tried to restrict these to relatively simple things; stuff for which there is precedent elsewhere in the game.

-Guards have not been updated to deal with new levels of player equipment and higher damage levels. They are, at best, a joke.
——-Guards should have higher Vitality as it is useful against both power and condi.
——-Guards should have some anti-stealth measures so that thieves/mesmers don’t make them look so dumb.
——-Guards should do some condi damage so that bunker builds don’t counter the whole camp/tower/keep.
——-Guards should grow stronger as the structure is upgraded.

-Catapults are best used at point-blank range.
——-This results in them taking down walls much faster than intended.
——-LoS changes mean it is difficult to defend against them when against a wall.
——-The way AoE maps onto wall tops also provides questionable cover.

-Wall siege is non-repairable.
——-Taking it down to a sliver of hp in preparation for a later attack leaves the defenders with no ability to respond.
——-Since the prompt for it is ‘Use’ rather than ‘Repair’ like walls, allow players to obtain a siege repair hammer from supply stations that they can use to repair siege.

-Chaperoning Dolyaks is as unrewarding as raising children IRL.
——-On EB, the occasional BEAR attack nets 40 wexp, but on Borderlands there is literally no way to get wexp from walking yaks.
——-To incentivize this critical part of WvW, successfully escorting a yak should give wexp for every location that it reaches (in case the final destination is hostile).
——-A new WvW spec should allow for boosting Dolyak speed when near and perhaps their defense/toughness.

-Defending structures is not as useful as rampaging.
——-The only incentive to defend is to retain upgrades, which then make it easier to defend. The wexp equates roughly to four player kills and seems to trigger only randomly.
——-In the time it takes to defend a good siege, a group could go take a bunch of stuff instead. This should be an attractive option in very few situations, not most of them. It is part of the reason that EotM is a karma train.
——-Upgraded structures should have a higher PPT value and should reward wexp proportional to what hostiles would gain upon taking it. Defending a keep should be incentivized more than defending a camp.

-When rampaging, there is a high incentive to cannibalize the weakest server.
——-Taking a Fortified tower gives no more points than taking a paper tower, so the optimal strategy is to just run over the least populous server again and again.
——-Upgraded structures should give bonus points on capture proportional to the bonus PPT they were granting their owners. Thus, while upgraded structures means your enemy gets more points on taking them, you still get more points out of them first so long as they don’t flip immediately after upgrading.
——-Upgraded structures should also reward more wexp on flip. It may not be a poor idea to reduce the base wexp amount to limit the effectiveness of kicking the underdog.

-Scouting structures should be incentivized.
——-It leads to more fights and less uncontested (boring) caps.
——-To avoid encouraging AFKers, increase the rewards for such scouting activities as repairing walls (and siege, when that is possible) and for building wall siege.
——-Add a WvW spec that buffs workers speed and supply capacity when an ally with a Supervisor’s Banner (available at supply stations) is nearby. To compensate, slow the base pace of upgrades a bit. With the banner and no spec, it should be a little faster than before. Fully specced, it should take half as long as before. This should reward wexp/exp as it replaces time that could be spent rampaging.
——-Add a WvW spec that shows a ping on the wall or gate being attacked within a certain distance.
——-Add a WvW spec that increases the power of a camp’s guards when the player is in range.
——-Add a WvW spec that reveals stealthed enemies when out of combat and within the walls of a keep or tower. A team should not have to spend tens of supply and silver to have a chance at successfully sweeping a structure for a mesmer.

-Golem rushes negate substantial player time and effort.
——-Golems should function as a high investment, high return siege unit, but currently they are slowly stockpiled and then flung at an objective in such numbers that there is hardly a counter.
——-Players should not be able to Waypoint while piloting a golem. Mesmer portals should be able to transfer a maximum of 1-2 golems, as they are way larger than people. This should leave their effectiveness intact while removing some workarounds to their drawbacks.

-Edge of the Mist supply can foil a carefully executed supply starvation strategy.
——-EotM supply and WvW supply should be two different entities. This is not aimed at the supply drops, but the actual supply one gets when going to the EotM map.

-Excess WvW levels have no function
——-Allow them to be redeemed for badges or siege or some other WvW related thing.

-The Commander system is underutilized.
——-Add a WvW spec that gives allies minor stat increases when near a Commander. This should not stack and should require ~10+ squad members to activate.
——-Add a spec that gives the Commander increased stats for each member in their squad. These guys are the heroes among heroes, after all. They should stand out on the battlefield.
——-Cap the number of squad members. 30 is likely a good number.
——-Add special elite skills that the Commander can use to buff squad members to incentivize following a tag and make it obvious that there are benefits.
——-Allow a Commander tag to be obtained with WvW badges or excess levels.
——-If a Commander takes an objective, announce their name and guild when announcing the capture.
——-Increase the reward on event completion if the Commander and squad member are in the same guild.

-Roaming should be incentivized as it is a distinct flavor of WvW, but give it better ties to the overall goal structure.
——-Add mob spawns or gathering nodes that drop items that can be given to a keep or tower to boost its supply slightly or give it a boost to its sentry ability, defenses, etc. If a player is killed while carrying one of these, it drops and is available for the killer to cart off.

-Normalize server populations.
——-Divorce WvW servers from literal servers so that there’s no need to have the same number.
——-Calculating how full a server is based on regular WvW players is a good first step, but with the expansion (and effective WvW renewal) allow discounted or free transfers from a full server to a sparsely populated server.
——-Have different population caps for different groups of WvW servers. Some can have a max of ~20 people for a map, others a max of ~50 and so on. That way players can choose just how large-scale they want their experience to be and do not have to contend with fighting huge blobs if their server cannot field the same. If there is more demand for servers of a certain size (ie: massive queue times across the board) then adjustments can be made.

-Consider how balance changes affect WvW.
——-In PvP/PvE, stealth and condi are far less effective than in WvW. A serious impediment to getting new blood on the field (in a non-literal way) is the droves of cheese-build roamers picking off those that don’t yet know their way around. It’s one thing to suddenly have to fight an enemy, it’s another to suddenly get wrecked by an enemy whose build wins 1v1 in an overwhelming number of non-mirror situations. If it’s banned in PvP, it should probably not be in mass PvP either.

I’m sure I missed some things, and I’m sure people will let me know too.

coglin.1867:

Sviel.7493:

What if classes that are chiefly frontline (guard/war) had access to much more personal stability? It should be high stacks but low duration so that people could still play around it, but the frontline would have a window to act before getting pinballed.

There is no such thing as a “frontline class”. It doesn’t seem reasonable to me to make stability changes to professions you perceive as front line professions, while ignoring all the other professions.

Classes with chiefly melee weapons like guard and war would be considered frontline. Or we could say that heavy armor classes are frontline. Basically, the people that have to dodge/wade through CC to be effective are frontline.

Obviously, it would be dumb to give such a skill to a thief or mesmer.

Yeah, this is a pretty serious problem…trebs make it impossible to ram northen towers and make it a cinch to retake several places on EB too.

What if classes that are chiefly frontline (guard/war) had access to much more personal stability? It should be high stacks but low duration so that people could still play around it, but the frontline would have a window to act before getting pinballed.

If you’re looking for an entry level class, warrior is as basic as it gets. You won’t be the hero of the battlefield, but you can get things done with no previous game knowledge and you have enough safety buttons that you can bungle things a bit.

If a class is so powerful at entry that it has a huge impact on the meta, then it’s a problem. The idea is that new players can be useful, not the line by which everything else is measured.

As a defense oriented WvW player, I loooove these changes. Now, besieging a keep or tower will mean actually besieging it…not just blobbing up at your gate of choice and yelling like the Israelites at Jericho until the walls come down. If you want to get in, send small teams to flash-build ballistas and take out cannons, then converge on the gate. Or, attack from long range even if it means building an open field treb…which you then fight to defend. Attackers still have an advantage, but now they have to explore their options instead of having an inevitable victory.

Also, roaming seems way more important now. You need people watching every corner of the map and you can’t accomplish that with the current zerg meta. I hope this means we see more fights due to the advent of open-field trebs/catas and the lowered likelihood of losing an objective because your zerg was on the other side of the map. Now, there should be a fight at every cap.

I prefer scouting, but that generally means I’m running around in the corner of some borderland by myself, upgrading stuff and keeping the yaks happy. In addition, I have several roamer buddies that go around alone and do all manner of helpful things.

This is T2, btw, so fairly high population. Solo roaming is alive (and greatly appreciated by scouts!) here.