Guild Wars 2

I think even with a SoS/FA alliance there isn’t enough people to 2v1 more than one map.

For those of you that don’t remember, one up one down is what season 2 became. It was the worst tournament for NA except for T1 where JQ and TC teamed up to beat BG.

Season 3 was only less bad because it was shorter.

Until the NA populations even out, there is no reason for a season 4 and I think that is why we haven’t had a season 4.

News flash

FA is now VERY HIGH
SoS is now HIGH

I expect two weeks from now FA will be HIGH and SoS will be MEDIUM

Yes, but it’s beyond their control to change the inevitable.

YB’s overstacking will eventually affect T1 through T3 and possibly T4

Dusty Moon.4382:

Michelangelo.1742:

ArenaNet, if they are at all reading this, they NEED to put Yak’s Bend up to T1 next week and once they have been satisfied, put Fort Aspenwood into T3 for the week after that. As someone in SoS, I am not very confident either FA or SoS can handle the T3 servers at the moment. That is how bad it is… FA and SoS really need something fresh so we know where we stand. ArenaNet knows very well that they can change the matchups, and why they are not taking an active role in it is just flat out bad customer service. Don’t tell us your “working on HoT”, this is one of your CORE game modes and needs someone to actively manage it to keep it balanced. If there is someone in that job position right now, they are not doing their job, and proper steps need to be taken to remedy this situation.

YB – would be decimated by ANY T1 match period. They cannot compete. The Guilds that went to YB from BG and/or JQ were the crap k-train blob mentality ones. Unfortunately, they didn’t take the rest of them with them.

Right now in T1, the only server that wants to fight is TC. BG has some great guilds (and will fight open field except when in a blob) and they have seemed to get it together. Also, since school season is upon us, BG and JQ will see a decrease in their amount of players on, etc. It will all balance out in the end.

In the end, we will have to wait for the A.Net changes in WvW to really see what will happen.

The real problem is that if YB eventually goes to T1, the only thing that the T1 server that YB replaces can do is PPT as hard as they can to try and not lose glicko.

Even if YB gets smashed in T1, just by getting points their glicko score should rise. T1 will be unbalanced, T2 will be unbalanced and so will T3 as FA drops.

Only when enough players destack off of one of the top four servers will we see balance return to NA WvW.

It is past time for Anet to own their game.

The two things that T3 can’t prevent, is a SoR type freefall by a T2 server, which will pull up a T3 server out of their happy place.

The other thing that will happen is when one of the four overstacked servers collapses, they will all land on one of the VERY HIGH servers and we’ll get a repeat of the YB disaster. I don’t think that the new population calculation mechanic will prevent this.

NA WvW doesn’t learn from history and we’re doomed to repeat it.

We can come up with all the ideas on how to fix WvW but Anet has said in the past they don’t want to punish players by lowering map cap or adjusting stats of the outmanned.

Now they will finally limit transfers, but that will take a long time to even out the players because some FULL servers are more full than others. There’s no mechanic that will motivate a player or a guild to transfer off a server that’s dominating. The only reason to leave an overstacked server are boredom, server politics, or quitting GW2.

Anet already acknowledges the snowball effect of night capping, supply and upgraded vs paper keeps and towers, but nothing’s been done other than siegerazer, and that only helps with one tower.

What really needs to happen is Anet has to take over their game.

Balance the population.
Balance the coverage. (No idea how they’d fix this one.)
Free transfers to lower tier servers.

And if this doesn’t work, add a map cap on servers that are overstacked.

These things alone would keep each servers glicko ratings close enough that you’d get the variation in matches that EU sees.

sephiroth.4217:

Just leave T2, let it rot and let YB PvD and 50 v 5 all they like.

Everyone I know that has left so far hasn’t looked back

And when either FA or SoS drops into T3, getting replaced by another VERY HIGH server that can’t compete with YB, you’ll tell them to transfer too?

Once a T3 server jumps up into T2 and finds out how bad the game play is you’ll see the entire T3 players change how they play just so they DON’T go up into T2.

I’m reading that they’re using a moving average that’s at least greater than 7 days (matchup), maybe a 15 or 30 day moving average.

This would mean that fluctuations in server population over a timezone will not have much affect on the population level of the server. It would also smooth out spikes in server population.

What it doesn’t mean is that if you are on a server that needs SEA players that the next player that transfers to your server will be from SEA prime.

Chaba.5410:

Swamurabi.7890:

WvW NA will eventually resemble a lava lamp

Since the new algorithm has been described as smoothing out “time artifacts” such as timezones, my guess is that EU prime times are going to end up the place to be for the large scale WvW battles that long time players are used to compared with NA prime times. What I mean is that NA prime on NA servers now has a higher competition with OCX and SEA primes for “WvW activity” than EU prime does on EU servers. Did what I describe make sense?

You’ll have to find where it was said that the algorithm will smooth out timezones, because what I read from Samual Loretan was

The goal of this change is to make the population spread out better, which will in turn make the ratings get closer, which will result in both more interesting matchups, and more variability as well. This will take some time to happen.

I don’t equate spreading out the population with balancing the population in each timezone. I think the WvW players are reading more into what was said.

I’m curious the relation between the VERY HIGH to FULL threshold and how that equates to players per map.

It seems that FA is getting closer to VERY HIGH and yet is not even close to getting queues on any map, usually only having players on two maps.

WvW NA will eventually resemble a lava lamp

There is a block of four overstacked servers that even a FULL server has no chance of competing with. Servers which are #5 and #6 are going to have morale problems as the #4 server, whichever of JQ/TC/BG/YB it is, plays the PPT game and pushes everyone off the map. Either the players from the losing servers will transfer, or sit out until their glicko rating drops, which could take weeks.

This will continue to unbalance T2 and T3 for some time because the only way the block of four lose players is by attrition, which could take years, maybe longer than it takes to get the yakslapper title.

In order to prevent even more overstacking by players returning with the release of HoT, I’d suggest to Anet that any returning player who has been inactive in WvW for more than 6 months be forced to choose a new server if their old server is FULL.

morrolan.9608:

style.6173:

Actually the ANET program is doing exactly what was intended. It is pushing people to lower tiers. As people want to move, they have to go to T3 or lower since T1 and T2 are full. It hurts short term, but longer term, it is a good move for the game. The issue with Yak’s bend was created before ANET implemented the new system.

There is some movement down yes but it has also caused guilds and players to leave the game which can’t be a desirable result.

I don’t think that the program is working, after all, T1 is balanced and FULL, T2 has YB and FA at full and YB is rolling. There is nothing that the program does to entice players to leave overstacked servers.

Why would you want to leave T1 or YB, knowing that you’d have to fall below FA population level to hit very high. The program is only preventing T1 and YB from getting new players, but they are all happy where they are.

Now if Anet instituted an overstacked tax where your map cap is lowered a percentage based upon how far above FULL your server is, you might see some more movement.

I also wonder if players in the queue are considered as “active” and count towards a servers total population.

Chaba.5410:

An answer would be nice, but I also want Anet to review their new algorithm in light of the player exodus from T2. Or at least I want be assured that Anet is revisiting it.

These are players who left completely, meaning they have absolutely no potential to add more hours to WvW activity and no one will replace their hours. IMHO their hours should be immediately averaged into the servers they transferred to and removed from the FA average. Both YB and SoS also lost a lot of players so there should be plenty of data.

A more problematic result of the slow reaction of FA bleeding players and still retaining it’s FULL status is that there will also be a slow reaction of a server receiving players and could be VERY HIGH for longer than it should.

A situation like what happened with YB could happen again. The highest VERY HIGH server is SoS and could get a spike of coordinated transfers before it becomes full. You could see the two servers that end up hopping between T1 and T2 combining and transferring to SoS to become a dominate T1 server.

Chaba.5410:

Estimating about 170 players who played an estimated 2-3 hours daily no longer log into WvW on FA because they are no longer on the server. Are they still included in the population count?

Estimating those players raided 5 days a week, that’s 2500 player-hours lost by FA.

Since the Population Calculation uses “active WvW players”, is an active WvW player measured in hours/day, hours/week, WvW map entries, or player-hours.

Really, the metric that should be used is player-hours and nothing else. Filter out the AFK players, although maybe you should also not count time spent in spawn so those that are spawn camped won’t be counted, since they’re really not active.

Seems like once again the players have reacted quicker than what was anticipated by the devs.

Remember the chaos before…

End of free transfers.
WvW tournament season 1
WvW tournament season 2 (with free transfers)
WvW tournament season 3
Change in population calculation

Looks like the “Change is coming to World Populations” mechanic is causing a balanced overstacked T1, a heavily unbalanced T2, but a balanced T3 as guilds move away from T2.

At this point I wonder what’s going to happen first.

In the order I think they will happen:

YB moving up into T1 and ruining T1 balance…
FA and/or SoS dropping from T2 ruining T3 balance…
HoD pushing up into T3 and ruining T3 balance…
FA dropping it’s full status and getting transfers

Since the three T3 servers have very close glicko scores and are far enough from T2 and T4, I wonder if they’ll go the glicko manipulating path that T1 has used to keep their tier intact.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Another reason for T8 is that if you go anywhere else and a server below you gets bandwagoned (which happens a lot, particularly around T3, T4, T5), you may have a hard time preventing them from rising up to your tier and bumping one of your servers out.

Also, if you’re thinking of making the move anytime soon (within the next few months):

That day when YB RNGs into a T1 matchup is coming soon (20% chance this past friday already), and when it happens, I suspect a server will implode. As that server falls, it’s going to be hard to keep it from disrupting your tier unless you’re down below T4/T5.
I suspect there’s going to be chaos in the higher tiers the moment YB hits the RNG jackpot and gets into a T1 matchup (there was already 20% chance it would happen this past friday already). I wouldn’t be surprised if one server implodes, making it hard to keep your tier together

I seriously doubt that if YB does happen to jump into a T1 match that the unlucky T1 server that drops to T2 will suddenly break apart. Since there already seems to be a T1 lovefest between JQ/TC/BG, that will probably lead to a T1 double team of YB. After all, it was former T1 guilds that decided to not join in the “all for one and one for all” attitude that has been NA T1 for almost two years. Since the players on the T1 server that drops can’t jump ship to the new T1 server like what happened with SoR, there is an even greater motivation for them to come together against YB/FA/SoS.

You can also expect a T2 spawn camp push week from the unlucky T1 server that drops down, just to avoid losing precious glicko rating. The same thing happened to T3 when there were four T2 servers.

Spartacus.3192:

Swamurabi.7890:

If you have more than 5 downed enemy players at one time and are still losing you probably should lose.

Have you ever played on a T1 server with the megablobs?

Have you ever had pug uplevels tag along while you are fighting and because they are probably level <20 walk right into the middle of a pile of red circles?

There are plenty of downed players on both sides.

God forbid T1 becomes the model for WvW, NA T1 mentality has done more to ruin WvW then any change Anet has come up with.

Maybe you should focus the downed better?

About the only thing that FA is looking forward to is when Anet’s new population calculator will change FA from full, since so many guilds have dropped to better(lower) tiers.

If you have more than 5 downed enemy players at one time and are still losing you probably should lose.

Instead of transferring, just get another account when GW2 has one of it’s sales. It will be cheaper than the cost of gems. Create your own personal guild. Level your new account to 80 in EotM. Have both accounts join your personal guild. You can swap items/resources as well as protection if you ever hit “leave guild” by mistake.

If you find the roaming not to your liking, delete the character on your secondary account, transfer for free, level new character to 80 in EotM………

FA not top T2 anymore? Looks like I’ll have to jump back into WvW. Never really liked it when FA was a top of tier server anyway.

If only conquest was as simple as 5v5.

Marthkus.4615:

Nekster.2657:

Does anet even read what people say and suggest about necro changes ? I see so many awesome things on forums that can fix this class and anet is just ignoring that. They keep nerfing it to the ground.
It seems like every patch they do, they try to target necro (in a bad way ).

Devs to necro forums: L2P

Necros to Marthkus and Anet Devs:

It’s been 3 years, you would have thought we would have L2P’d by now and would be recognized by PvP and PvE for our group contributions so why are Necros still not on 5 out of every 8 PvP tournament teams and why are Necros kicked from PvE dungeon runs because they’re Necros.

So is it OK when you are the worst player on a team but not OK when you are the best player on a team?

What do you do when you are on a team of players that need coaching?

Brokensunday.4098:

this is what any developer will tell you. Death Shroud

I thought it was because Necros want to get hit.

@Kotte.2460;

Why do you only have a forum posting history of less than one month?

Marthkus.4615:

danlarusso.2790:

1v1 is meaningless and abused by stealth and tailored 1v1 builds. In Teamfights Necro should always be first target to focus down, because he has no escapes, no stability and is therefor easily shut down. You can still play successfully if you and your team knows this and you play accordingly. Downstate is also the most useless of all classes.

Please do this. While your team is wasting your time, my team will have long since wiped the group silly enough to focus down the tanky-est class in the game.

Teach the Necro community how it’s supposed to be done. After all, three years should be enough time for some in the Necro community to finally get good with the class.

You and OP should stream your tournament matches so we can all learn how it should be done.

MidoriMarch.8067:

Just because tournament team doesnt run necro doesnt mean its bottom tier trash profession lol the logic. It’s true that necro are in good place right now thats why so many people in spvp/wvw runs it so stop crying just because necroes doesnt have everything. stability/mobility isnt mean to be necro’s

Actually, having tournament teams consistently, for most of three years now, not run with a Necro is a reason why it’s considered bottom tier.

While Necro has been in WvW meta for some time, the game isn’t balanced around WvW.

I had two builds, one I ran in WvW with ground targeted wells and a fear build in EotM that I’d sometimes swap in wells that didn’t have ground targeting.

I had to get used to not having ground targeting, it took some time to adjust to the fact that it would drop at your feet, but eventually it became something I didn’t think about.

Now that it’s baseline I have to adjust again but at least I don’t have to get in melee range to drop the well anymore.

The devs do care about necro. How else are you going to learn PvP without a tutorial class?

Look at it, Necro has no blocks, evades, extra dodges, invulnerabilities or reflects.
It has poor in combat mobility so it won’t get away from you.

But you say “Necro has two health bars” and that’s somewhat correct.
It’s obvious that the Necro has high health and access to the “second” health bar only to prolong the fight so you can learn to use your blocks, evades, extra dodges, invulnerabilities and reflects.

But you say that a Necro can transfer condis better than anyone else.
Yes that’s true, but how else are you going to learn when to use your own condi clears?
Throw a few condis on a Necro, you’ll either get them back and you can learn when to cleanse or you won’t get them back and you will win a quick fight.

Also with well telegraphed long cast time skills you get to practice interrupting. It also helps that Necros have long cooldowns so you don’t have to worry about not being ready when it’s time to practice again.

The wells teach you to stay out of the red circles.

And which class will you want to practice your teams CC burst rotations on? You guessed it, a Necro.

Just look at how much thought the devs put into designing the Necro class

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Swamurabi.7890:

What OP meant to say is….After a balance change everyone is in a l2p phase. When things settle down, if you post on the forums that a certain class needs a nerf you really should look at the data available.

For PvP, which classes/builds are used on tournament teams.

For PvE, which classes/builds are used on speed run tournaments.

For WvW you can ask which classes/builds are used in GvG’s, but that’s only part of the WvW story.

If you complain about a class in a game mode, and it’s not used very much in that game mode, then you need to l2p.

while I am not disagreeing that observing tournament choices is a far cry from what I am about to suggest or not useful in obtaining accurate results, I think that nerfs should actually be called only after extensible observance about how a class performs in multiple game modes in standard scenarios (2v1, 1v1, 1ve, team, zerg, etc) and versus standard class builds. If they consistently overperform then players can look at what gives them the sizeable edge.

unless this is done already. I’m just getting a vibe of “ooh tourney players use it, it must be op pls nerf” from lots of the [insert example of why X is op] threads.

I think the biggest mistake in looking at how classes perform in 1v1, 2v2 and 3v3 tournaments and making the case that it should be good in a 5v5 is that the encounter never changes in a 1v1, 2v2 or 3v3.

A big part of what makes a successful tournament team is picking players and classes that reduce or limit the unfavorable situations for the team. Granted there are some players that are just better than others at a specific profession, but class nerfs shouldn’t happen because of the extraordinary play of one player.

If you have a 1v1, there’s at least four possible strategies in going for a 1v1.

You want to win the 1v1.
You want to delay the 1v1, contesting as long as possible but still lose.
You want to hold on for a +1
You want to force them to +1 you

Also conributing to the discussion is how you get into the 1v1 in the first place. A 1v1 at home is different than at far. Which class could break off mid the best? Who would you want to go from spawn to far? None of these are considered in a 1v1 tournament.

If you look at 2v2, it just gets more complicated and 3v3 even more.

That’s why I say you should look at tournament teams as a starting point and then start asking the why questions before you post about how a class is OP, or UP.

What OP meant to say is….After a balance change everyone is in a l2p phase. When things settle down, if you post on the forums that a certain class needs a nerf you really should look at the data available.

For PvP, which classes/builds are used on tournament teams.

For PvE, which classes/builds are used on speed run tournaments.

For WvW you can ask which classes/builds are used in GvG’s, but that’s only part of the WvW story.

If you complain about a class in a game mode, and it’s not used very much in that game mode, then you need to l2p.

Condi transfers got much better this patch for Necros.

Don’t throw conditions on a Necro you can’t handle yourself, you’ll get them back.

I wouldn’t be so quick to claim anything. Everyone is trying out new builds so it’s more like Necros in lower ranked PvP pre-patch where players haven’t learned how to beat a necro.

As builds get tried and tossed, eventually there will be a few team comps that will be adopted which will push out a class or two. We haven’t even got to that stage yet. Plus Anet will be doing balance patches which will also change who is in the new meta.

The best thing you can do for the Necro class is figue out a team comp, PvP and PvE, where a Necro build is required. If you can’t, there’s always HoT or the next major balance patch one year from now.

Yes, Condi Necro not powerful, however, Condi Transfer Necro OP.
Nerf condi and you hurt condi necro even more. Sounds like Necro will get another Dhuumfire treatment soon.

@Larealey: Don’t you think after 3 years that every class has been thouroghly played and tested by the top PvP players and teams? How many years need to pass before you see that the reason why some classes aren’t on teams isn’t because the players are bad it’s because the profession is bad.

Flumek.9043:

An honorable sepoku.

In keeping with the theme, shouldn’t we be using Belinda’s Greatsword?

Could you quicken the act by cancel casting a might giving signet?

Is there any place where this record can be kept?

Flimzy.1837:

They then chose poison/bleed for the heal because they already did vuln and those are the second best fits for the inverse to healing. My understanding is that they used transfers like plague signet as justification for your heal doing this to you, and would probably explain themselves by saying it adds counterplay or whathaveyou.

Necro: So OP they counterplay themselves.

Necro: GW2 version of Hard Mode

You can also play without armor and trinkets, which could be considered viable, it doesn’t mean you should

ronpierce.2760:

I think I’d prefer something like this, and feel free to tell me if this is a bad idea:

- Put CC back to 25 seconds cd.
- Remove all self harm from corruptions.
- Rework Master of corruptions to:

-Reduce the cooldown of Corruption spells by 20%. Corruption spells grant 2 seconds of Resistance on use apply a powerful condition to the corruptor.

- Conditions would be longer and more potent before, but have the resistance to pad you giving you time to transfer it without harming yourself too much.

Kinda feel like this could cater to both realms. Still allows that powerful corruptionist feel with the need to transfer, while leaving baseline spells a bit more… Idk, viable, and doesn’t force the self-hate play style on anyone.

How about adding a tool tip to Master of Corruptions:

Your next attack after using a Corruption skill transfers one condition, two if it’s a critical hit.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

nekretaal.6485:

A mixed bag of news

1. Doesn’t happen until specialization patch, aka HoT, aka August 30 if we are lucky
2. Intensity stacking for chill and cripple and immobilize and fear is a big nerf
3. They are keeping the 25 stack limit or vulnerability which means that vulnerability stacking weapons, aka axe, are still pointless

1. Not true, this is coming much sooner. Next patch, in fact. Keep up with the news.
2. Chill, Cripple, Fear, and Immobilize will still stack duration. They only said it was the damaging conditions that stack intensity now. The bigger nerf is that Cripple and Chill can’t reduce leap distance anymore.
3. Axe is pointless anyway, since it stacks too slowly. Plus, increasing Vulnerability cap would break balance so hard.

So what’s the Necro counterplay for leaps?

If we can’t get a live dev posting here, can we at least get an undead dev to post?

Necro starts PvP with 0 LF, but necro wants to get hit.
Necro sees opponent, pops skill that provides bonus when hit, because necro wants to get hit.
Opponent counters by NOT hitting Necro, waits until skill is over, even though necro wants to get hit.
Opponent hits necro when necro doesn’t get bonus for getting hit, cause you know, necro wants to get hit.
Necro dies quickly.

How about a trait that would add pulls to wells?
Or add pull to staff marks.
Or add pull to AoE weapon skills.
Or add pull to plague form.

Or a trait that replaces fears with pulls?

Zoso.8279:

Expand more on DS add a disengage or more mobility skills. Thats all I’d suggest. Necros need more mobility!

Problem is that the Necro isn’t supposed to be mobile, which should translate into the ability to keep others from disengaging, but doesn’t.

The other problem with lack of mobility is the simple fact that in sPvP, rotating is one of the keys to winning. To quote a Civil War officer, “get there firstest with the mostest” but if you are slowest, you have to be able to bring something else, which Necros don’t.

A pretty cool PvP trait would be when you hit someone while wurm is out the enemy switches places with the wurm.

Or even if you hit someone while in Spectal Walk the enemy ports to where you started SW.

spoj.9672:

flow.6043:

It’s a really nice article btw.
The only things I disagree with are that according to the author some DS skills are unusable by certain builds. That’s not true, Tainted Shackles is a really good skill for any kind of build, and even Life Blast and Transfer have some value for conditions builds.
Also, instead of being able to use regular utility skills in Death Shroud, I’d rather get new DS skills that actually provide more utility and scaling defense than the regular skills we already have.

Agreed. I mentioned the tainted shackles thing in the comments. Didnt bother with other niche uses though as they are less obvious.

Either way it doesnt really matter. The purpose of the article gets its point across. And those slight inaccuracies actually do us a favour by shining a light on the kind of limited niche use for most DS skills and how they dont work so great on every build. And how they arent obvious to most players.

Yes, but is anybody listening?

Any feedback from Anet on the article Lewis?
We won’t see a red post here.

Roe.3679:

Pretty sure the article mentions that alacrity is Mesmer only.

It said that the Mesmer was the only Specialization that gets Alacrity.

Here’s hoping Alacrity becomes a base Necro ability.