Guild Wars 2

Decided to link these two lovely things with you guys since you may or may not be aware on the subject.

Word of mouth and some testing have provided me information that Quick Breathing will mechanically remove/convert the most damaging condition on you to a boon. This damaging condition has to be actively ticking you down moreso than the others, so a strong double-digit bleed will get cleansed over a poison. Lovely on paper, makes sense right? Also the direct warhorn skill ‘Charge’ will alleviate the movement conditions before the condition conversion, as it should be.

Well…I wouldn’t make a post simply to state the benefits of Quick Breathing if I did not see an overwhelming problem of one of the more painful conditions we Warriors get struck with.

Confusion.

Confusion is not an active condition, it only hurts you when you act. Meaning its direct damage to you over time is technically none. …I think you can see what I am driving at.

If you have 20+ stacks of confusion while having a minor poison or torment on you, Quick Breathing will prioritize Confusion LAST always.

Confusion is the very last condition Quick Breathing will cleanse, even under cripple if you decide to use Call to Arms. As in, my Call to Arms decided to prioritize the couple seconds of cripple over the 10 stacks of confusion, and I took a resulting damage hit.

Go ahead and test this! Knock yourselves out with the disappointment.

So I heard poison is a thing…

Some thoughts:

- Horizontial progression can and should be the biggest focus of this game. The entire system of coloring armor, various armor sets and inter-mixing with transmutation stones and not being forced into ‘sets’ for bonuses and instead utilizing runes is a huge plus.

- With that said, as was talked about in the Vertical progression where Ascended gear should take some measure of time to gain in however manner you want to get it, Horizontial progression can entail the grind / effort to get what you really want to look ‘good’. Legendary weapons are already a perfect example of horizontial progression across the board by doing everything you can in GW2.

- Specific Horizontial progression paths (Dungeons for dungeon tokens for specific armor sets) are fine, but is there a possibility for doing group events in the same zone as the dungeon for minor payouts of the same tokens? For instance killing the dredge commisour in Dredgehaunt cliffs can grant just a few Sorrow’s Embrace tokens like its dungeon counterpart as a daily?

- For the investment into the Fractal dungeon I am surprised there hasn’t already been consideration into making a Fractal Armor set…or is there? I like surprises so if I am onto something don’t tell me!

- The flamekissed incident did open a possibility for enhanced cultural armor. Maybe construct a manner to have each race embellish their cultural armor with effects, through mystic forging, tokens, etc.

This just means we have to get a bit more creative before the entire sub-forum is gone.

Wonder if there is a way to be sarcastic and mean-spirited while not directly being insulting?

Hmmm….

Public Announcement from Yak’s Bend to all interested parties:

We have no secret plan.

We do however have bacon. Bacon for our opposing servers….

Sweet delicious bacon you can only get if you decide to get a full night’s sleep to wake up early the next morning for your NA Prime-time crews. In fact, if you leave WvW now during the NA prime-time one might think that…perhaps you might find…eggs with your bacon?

Think about it…

sirflamesword.3896:

I feel sorry for SBi.

Tbf, if there was a server that substantially grew in power over the course of the week I too would probably focus them down hard.

Though I think this week YB is taking off, really not liking all the outmanned buffs I been seeing. Oh well. That just means more time for me to do some testing in the new map!

…By the way, pro-tip for anyone else who is in on that as well, be very careful where you utilize your movement skills. People apparently have a thing for gravity and testing it.

I hear the more people insult one another, the more they really love one another.

Is this true?

And the first thing everyone sees is a new build!

Sweet, perfect time A-Net!

Jaxs.5830:

Sykper.6583:

since you seem adamant that you have not gotten good fights. You are just baiting for responses, and I am humoring you because it is funny to me.

I am not baiting for a response, in fact I strongly encourage you to not respond to anything I or anyone from Mag posts.

I did not get any good fights from YB this week and I look forward to fighting someone else. Now that I have said that I am sure we will be bored by YB’s presence for the next 5 weeks straight

Don’t worry, the feeling’s mutual. If Mag is just going to keep chilling outside and fail at holding anything they have, then Yak’s Bend is just going to keep enjoying seeing you guys lose.

Though, I do not think anything is more satisfying than seeing SBI fall, I hope their fairweathers adapt quickly.

Archtos.8523:

Sykper.6583:

Jaxs.5830:

Sykper.6583:

Jaxs.5830:

Sykper.6583:

Jaxs.5830:

Sykper.6583:

Jaxs.5830:

Sykper.6583:

For good fights!

YB does not provide good fights.

Sure we do!

You just aren’t on at the right place or time!

Very true because I play NA prime.

Well you got the right time.

Oh, well I return to my earlier assessment in that you do not provide good fights then.

But you never actually answered my question, so I can make assumptions too. Like, you would not know what a good fight is, or you are pathetically trying to salvage whatever you can by taking this clearly biased stance.

But that would be silly and immature. Please feel free to continue as you were.

Yes because asking if I am logged into WvW is not a silly or immature question?

I never said it wasn’t. I was merely sinking to your level since you seem adamant that you have not gotten good fights. You are just baiting for responses, and I am humoring you because it is funny to me.

The more you think Yak’s Bend did not fight the good fights to win this week, the more I laugh.

How about this idea:

It was not Yak’s Bend who did not give good fights, it was you.

Here’s a handy checklist.

Present at the fight, my server:
[ ]Had Arrowcarts
[ ]Had Ballistas
[ ]Had Cannons
[ ]Was hiding behind a wall and waypointed when the gate broke
[ ]Was killing a karma train with equal or greater numbers.
[ ]Was killing groups in open-field ‘estimating equal or more’ but in reality less numbers than your own.

If you checked any of the above, you probably shouldn’t be calling it a good fight.

Added an additional listing for reality. Applies to all servers, and every WvW guild.

Let me be clear about one thing. Magumma has a tremondous NA presence, quite capable of, if pulling it off right, fighting tooth and nail and decimating our NA. No question about it, but right now you guys are still in the mind-set of the gold league…where you had to effectively go large and tight to at least fight the atrociously stacked servers that lay wait up there.

I do not want to ask about how much…let’s say ‘moisturizer’ you needed to at least survive, but it has definitely changed Magumma as a whole. You guys are far different than before, in good and bad ways.

As far as I am concerned, making the ‘excuse’ of not fighting good fights is not quite as low as ‘OMG 2v1’ but fairly bad nevertheless. If anything, we could say ‘Well Magumma kind of sucked at going for objectives, like I have seen bronze league do better’ but us and you guys have known each other a long, long time.

Be better than this.

Jaxs.5830:

Sykper.6583:

Jaxs.5830:

Sykper.6583:

Jaxs.5830:

Sykper.6583:

Jaxs.5830:

Sykper.6583:

For good fights!

YB does not provide good fights.

Sure we do!

You just aren’t on at the right place or time!

Very true because I play NA prime.

Well you got the right time.

Oh, well I return to my earlier assessment in that you do not provide good fights then.

But you never actually answered my question, so I can make assumptions too. Like, you would not know what a good fight is, or you are pathetically trying to salvage whatever you can by taking this clearly biased stance.

But that would be silly and immature. Please feel free to continue as you were.

Yes because asking if I am logged into WvW is not a silly or immature question?

I never said it wasn’t. I was merely sinking to your level since you seem adamant that you have not gotten good fights. You are just baiting for responses, and I am humoring you because it is funny to me.

The more you think Yak’s Bend did not fight the good fights to win this week, the more I laugh.

How about this idea:

It was not Yak’s Bend who did not give good fights, it was you.

Jaxs.5830:

Sykper.6583:

Jaxs.5830:

Sykper.6583:

Jaxs.5830:

Sykper.6583:

For good fights!

YB does not provide good fights.

Sure we do!

You just aren’t on at the right place or time!

Very true because I play NA prime.

Well you got the right time.

Oh, well I return to my earlier assessment in that you do not provide good fights then.

But you never actually answered my question, so I can make assumptions too. Like, you would not know what a good fight is, or you are pathetically trying to salvage whatever you can by taking this clearly biased stance.

But that would be silly and immature. Please feel free to continue as you were.

Jaxs.5830:

Sykper.6583:

Jaxs.5830:

Sykper.6583:

For good fights!

YB does not provide good fights.

Sure we do!

You just aren’t on at the right place or time!

Very true because I play NA prime.

Well you got the right time.

Wait….

Are you logged into WvW?

It’s important that you are. Very.

Jaxs.5830:

Sykper.6583:

For good fights!

YB does not provide good fights.

Sure we do!

You just aren’t on at the right place or time!

Chris.3290:

What changed on YB that you guys are ticking +400 during the day?
We understand that SBI is out to lunch, morale-wise; but Mags is a different matter.

We got a raging clue when we saw SBI and Mag in the same match-up.

…Also I am willing to bet Mag does indeed have fairweathers, just not as many as servers of this tier.

Rest assured, I am certain we will all meet again likely for weeks to come.

For good fights!

Arya Whitefire.8423:

Kcrook.3945:

Lol, what are you winning? I’m sure the way I play (not for ppt) is far more fulfilling than yours!

Oh, you mean the game where you cut and paste the current FOTM OP builds, play with friends coordinated on voice comms against people that probably aren’t even using the in game text messaging, and then call yourselves “skilled” after downing your 3rd bad build warrior of the day? :P

I thought to fix the argument there a bit.

Dear god there are just some awful builds I have been seeing, it makes me sad.

Also laughing at the recent strain of cond warriors, you can’t just take what you see in SPvP and expect it to be successful in WvW!

Pro-tip: Any necro will own that build! ANY.

But Mag is right. There is little skill involved with mere tapping of siege and pressing a few buttons for instawins.

But mags, if you were really about open-field fights, couldn’t you just sit your groups on roads non-stop in-between keeps? Actually I am surprised you just don’t chill at the spawn points for SBI and Yaks on your BL…after clearing up WPs.

And why do some Mags actually say they play for PPT? Isn’t that against your religion?

Somehow I feel like you need to go on a holy wars or something.

HellCommander.4301:

poor mag… double team

This guy is funny. Bona’fide comedian.

After doing some testing in WvW I can say that if you couple a few other huge defense abilities to rotate like Shield Stance and Endure Pain (or Berserker Stance for those condition builds), my success has been fairly entertaining.

For starters, there is nothing more satisfying than seeing the ‘less-informed’ as it were continue to attack while you have it up. Interestingly enough I find the best times to use Defiant Stance are definitely from internal knowledge of the enemy’s profession and build. Openers from strong burst classes are pretty much obsolete if you pull it off, and this heal skill is definitely a harder heal TO pull off.

It is also funny to see how Defiant Stance reacts to conditions, though I am having problems testing if the healing version of poison prevents itself and other conditions from healing me. It’s an awkward sort of thing to think about.

Overall, I feel you need to run a very specific build, runes and utilities to pull it off. But I do see a bit of potential.

Oh Wow.

This is getting good.

You know…

I feel like with the holidays coming up, the League being over, and lots of lovely content like the EotM testing going on…

I think we can totally have a fresh start. I propose that Mag-YB-SBI become BFFs.

Totally.

…Or we can keep having instances like whenever we try to solo south camp, get the bar down to the last tick, a yak spawns and a five man roaming group procedes to not even take you out to dinner before stomping you hard. Inevitably leading to this kind of reaction:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVsknoivy1Q

…It’s a funny cycle when you think about it.

So I have done some talking with a few friends, who contrary to what I have spoken about, have said that it is rather difficult to run a Hammer Train in the higher coverage servers than what I have first said. Of course their definition of a hammer train is deviated from mine.

So I have to ask:

- Specifically to let’s say the top 10 servers, do you see the abundant trains as much as I say, or do you actually see more necros and AoE stacking conditions?
- What do you consider a hammer train, 90%-95% hammer to a 5%-10% backline? 75%-85% hammer to 15%-25% backline? Is there a real difference?

Just some inquiries I wish to post.

Draygo.9473:

The meta isn’t imbalanced because everyone is capable of doing the exact same things.

Which is the definition of balanced.

What you are talking about is level of fun. Is the meta fun?

Hmm.

You got a point, indeed I am probably projecting that I consider the meta ‘unfun’.

I have seen the meta of many different games, and at the very latest the meta changes every few months or so due to a new mechanic.

Ironically, GW2 has had new things come into WvW like Torment and new runes, but the meta really has not changed at all. Things have slightly deviated, but not in a good enough way.

I do not want the prevailing thought of ‘Orange Swords at NE camp’ followed by an inquiry of numbers and tag, knowing full well that if the number of the same tag is 25+, there is a high chance they are running a hammer train. Why not more questions, like ‘Oh its <so-so>? Hmm, they running glassy or tank heavy, who do we got to send over there?’.

I would love to hear about a server’s newest strong guild being a zerg-busting condition with an engineer front-line. I would love to hear about some amazing new strat involving a five-man of thieves creating poison fields on 50+ people while a 20 man runs them over while they can’t heal.

I think there is a lot of potential…this condition cleanse issue needs to be addressed.

Omnitek.3876:

By large scale condi, you mean necros? Because there isn’t another class who can actually do it large scale with more than 1 condi. I’ll pass. Take away aoe cleanse and you have everyone running melandru and -% condi food. Which makes condi pointless again.

Wait for edge of the mists. I think wvw is going to get less blob centric and you may see a shift into more condi specs.

To make condi stronger in larger groups, you will make them stronger in smaller groups, were they are already powerful. It is a crap shoot of a balance act. I dont think it can be done tbh.

Necros are definitely the biggest ones to gain from this kind of change, but I would also take a gander that the other classes with a specific condition like Thieves with Poison and Mesmers with Confusion will see their conditions actually function better than now. Melandru is a likely scenario to call forth, but once you start shuffling around runes, everything starts changing. And food buffs are even more volatile, since there is condition duration increase foods among other kinds…

Edges of the Mists I feel you might be giving too much credit for. Although I think it might appeal especially to top coverage servers with insane stacking, I see it as a gimmick borderland that specifically does not help the PPT at all. It might be good for a month or so, but servers who cannot queue up their maps will have no reason not to try to go for PPT and blob up a map anyways.

Conditions are not seen in large groups simply because there is so much condition cleansing from other sources. Only when condition cleansing is weakened can the true power of conditions be seen on the large scale fights. If certain conditions are breaking on both large and small scale fights, then it might be time to see such conditions nerfed on a numerical level. Personally, as long as self-condition cleanse is increased a bit, small-scale conditions can be pretty much balanced. There just is not enough condition cleanse on a single person to deal with the reapplication of the same condition over and over again.

DeadlySynz.3471:

Anything that promotes more damage and less tanky, healing, cleansing builds is good for the game. Right now, the game heavily favours stacking, armor, healing, and condition cleansing. IMO, it just leads to long boring drawn out battles where it’s absolutely essential to travel in large zergs.

This is what Anet should do: Cut the effectiveness of toughness in half, cut healing in half and double all cool-downs, double all cool-downs on condition cleanses and make AoE condition cleanse elite skills with a horrible cool down.

Now that should make fights just a tad more interesting.

I think it would break the game even more, as coordinated guild groups would not be capable of zerg-busting if they aren’t tough enough or able to heal up during the long uphill battle. Ultimately making each fight decided more conclusively by who has the larger number (if that was not hard enough already).

Toughness is fine, healing can be debatable since it’s counter is limited to a few professions. Really the only thing that is breaking is how easily condition cleansing causes so many other issues. Without as much condition cleansing things like Poison and Confusion would hit large groups much more easily. We would see an entirely different sort of battlefield, and not one resolved in seconds as lop-sided as a veteren thief preying on an unsuspecting uplevel engineer.

Dasenthal.6520:

Ok… That was a lot, so I skimmed and hopefully got the gist of it.
Personally I haven’t really seen a lot of hammer trains, but I avoid the big fights so, I suppose that would be why.
Reducing the AoE cleanses would definitely solve some of the problem for Condi-builds, but it might also bring about a new meta of Necro’s and other heavy Condi professions (Not really familiar with what heavy condi means to most people, personally I was just happy solo stacking 25 bleeds with my ele). Which could be just as scary to people without solo cleanses. Plus giving groups the ability to opt for AoE cleanses allow groups/individual people within the groups to focus on dps rather than always having to watch their own survivability {older games where you have tanks and healers, tanks don’t have to stare at their health bar all the time} means you have more reliance on your group.
Now, ending the mindless zergs is a good thing. However only if it doesn’t kill the coordinated groups as well.
Tbh: I like my crit damage, and I would hate to see anything happen to it, however if it would help to cut down zergs and uncoordinated groups then I’ll take one for the team any day.

I am not saying get rid of every single AoE cleanse, there is however a huge synergy coming out of hammer trains to literally ignore conditions on a huge scale. Getting nailed with every condition at once, normally would stop a person in their tracks. The current amount of AoE cleanse is rather breaking, so instead why not turn some of that AoE cleanse to increased Self-Cleanse?

It makes large-scale condition builds more viable and nerfs the very strong small-scale condition builds, who have to do a bit more to defeat other builds they normally would roflstomp.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Group condition cleanse is an obvious one. It’s sad it needs a 3 post thread just to say it.

Good news is, Mesmers are about to bust open more self/group condi cleansing next patch! On goes the meta!

Which does not help the large-scale.

If A-Net is focused on improving condition cleanse, there needs to be a compromise to help condition classes work better in zerg comps.

Another thought that crossed my mind was something rather interesting, but mechanically difficult to implement.

- Offer condition classes traits that grant a sort of cleanse immunity or resistance. Perhaps when the specific condition gets cleansed it loses stacks instead and not the whole condition.

As an example.

Holy crap that was a lot, but TL;DR

- Hammer trains strong due to condition cleanse stacking and access to strong levels of crit damage on top of the strong control.
- Small Scale fights favor strong condition builds and extreme crit damage stacking. Survival is based upon skill and profession-based abilities.
- Giving Crit Damage a Curve, and making Group based Condition Cleanses more self-based would put all these issues at rest.
- Self-Based condition cleanse encourages more skill in Large Scale Fights and opens the door for more condition-stacking professions as opposed to pure rampart hammer trains.
- Crit Damage is taken advantage of across the board, creating a curve reduces the abundant strength of hammer trains while at the same time only giving power to those purely stacking crit damage to reach similar power levels they had before. Since self-condition cleanse is buffed as per my suggestion, crit damage stacking in small scale is not entirely nerfed to the ground and brought in line.

Holy crap I typed a lot. I don’t think I can continue at this time to talk about Siege. I think I gave you guys enough to bite on, go ahead!

Thus, the following are the imbalances at this time:

- Many Damaging conditions are negated in large-scale combat thanks to high amounts of condition cleanse, encouraging the hammer train meta which is also quite strong (Emphasis on raw base damage and tankiness are high).
- Conditions are just about king in small-scale, with extreme raw damage with no tankiness to match as well. Tanky specs are hit or miss based on the situation.

Thanks to the above imbalances, WvW starts to become binary across many levels.

So what’s the solution?

Well, after some consideration I came up with some culprits. I can’t tell if you are going to hate me after this but…luckily you can discuss your disfavor for me after.

- Crit Damage is a problem.
- Group Condition Cleanse is a problem.

…How many of you are downvoting me? I can feel the bad vibes from here-

ANYWAYS, so I probably have you hating me right now, but let me explain. First, Crit Damage at this point in time is extremely strong. It is one thing if the defensive stats like Toughness or even Vitality could affect critical damage in some manner, but unlike Crit Damage, Toughness has a curve on its damage reduction. Crit damage only gets better at higher amounts whereas Toughness gets worse per point, this is why you see threads about toughness guardians going ‘WTF’ when they get bursted down by Berserker-strong Professions. This crit damage is also prevalent not just in small-scale but large scale as well, as an easy damage stat for the tanky hammer trains to get a hold of.

Sooooo….

Change Crit Damage to have diminishing returns.

At this point in time without any extra crit damage the base line for critical damage is at 150%. I do not want to do all the numbers at this point in time, but I imagine having the curve start bending at about 50% might be barely enough to reduce the overall damage of a zerg impact if stacking PVT. …Oh right traits, those should affect the curve as well. The numbers I am thinking about are about a 20% extra crit damage from a typical PVT Soldier Warrior with cava/berserker/valk trinkets. Plus whatever percent from traits. Looking anywhere from a 15-20% hit in the crit damage department for those pesky hammers.

Whereas for classes running full berserker would have a very hard time hitting 100% extra. Actually that might still be a bit too high, just because health pools for the majority of classes are really low. But that’s my personal opinion, there just needs to be some sort of nerf to put crit damage in line with every other stat.

Group condition cleanse makes the many instances of conditions being tossed out useless, a competent hammer train can ignore the vast majority of conditions. Between the rune sets and the group utilities, conditions really need help in large scale combat. But they are pretty kitten good in small-scale…hmmm…

Change some group condition cleanses to stronger self cleanses.

I do not want to completely diminish hammer trains, but I do want the playing field even for many more builds and possibilities. Between hitting crit damage and encouraging self-skill based condition cleanse in large scale fights WvWers will see a greater depth of skill from coordinating large scale fights since everyone will also have to deal with their own conditions themselves, and even favor bringing in different professions.

I think I did miss another key problem with stability, but considering the scale of change if these two solutions I came up with were to pass, the imbalance might be shifted enough so that rather than stability becoming a problem, it becomes just a benefit of running a hammer train in a stronger condition based WvW meta.

AND, encouraging stronger self-cleanses can help deal with the problematic dominance of conditions in the small-scale, though having an extra condition cured or something along those lines does not save you from having a lack of skill…

Message Body Lengths OP, read TL;DR down below.

Sup.

So, according to the title I bet many of you are assuming I might make a long winded post about various observations with concern to the WvW meta, or what has become the ‘next big thing’ in WvW. For those not informed, the meta is everything from ‘Hammer Trains’ to ‘Golem Rushes’…just the general perceived notions everyone acknowledges in WvW.

Right now, everyone can agree that there is an imbalance. Everything from Profession viability, common builds, from small scale to large scale fights, and so forth. There is just a lot of imbalance that goes on it is hard to put it all into one thread. So effectively your first assumption that my opening post would be long is correct. Luckily, I am a nice guy, so I know of a few ways to make you not want to read a wall of text. I will have TL;DRs or short summaries of my observations and solutions at the end of each segment. So commence cheering now.

Better yet, I will make this even simpler:

If you do not think the current WvW meta is imbalanced, feel free to skip most everything I have to say, and post why you think so! Terrific, I saved you time. Your welcome.

For those curious enough…here goes. I would get some chips, this is going to take a lot to digest.

WvW Meta Concept 1: Large Group Fights Versus Small Group Fights, Condition Damage versus Raw Damage

So I lumped two different conversations together because there is a large relationship between the two. Sweet.

So the current meta stands that at this point in time, ‘Hammer Trains’ have taken the large-group fights by storm. ….Yes there are some large groups that stack a lot of necromancers and elementalists to do incredible AoE and Well stacking but it seems a various amount of guilds that zerg-bust or plain out zerg abuse Guardian/Warrior stacking with the hammers. Oh the hammers, so many hammers. Hammers as a weapon set have an amazing amount of control and base damage (with a slow swing) on their own right, and control in a large group fight is pretty much the key to winning any engagement. You yourself might be skilled enough to see that front line rush you with leaps and smacks, to dodge effectively and avoid the impact. But over the context of just hammering into dozens of people, the hammer train quickly gains the ‘rally advantage’. (Rally Advantage is the tide of the battle where one side has a better state of getting rallies off the enemy. Where the other side just cannot quite finish people off, thus losing the fight overall. I won’t talk about Rally and its pros and cons here, I feel there are plenty of threads that dive into it.)

The power of the many hammers is also coupled with the innate tankiness of the classes abusing it, where they have enough utilities and just enough other professions to keep the train rolling. It’s not difficult to be able to run such a successful meta train, the problem lies in the fact there is not enough of a counter to handle such a thing. Some of the necro-stacking zerg-bust guilds made their comps around dealing with such trains, but the hammer train is too effective in large scale fights.

…Which is funny when you considering small scale. Fights where orange swords are not drawn, the inverse occurs. Normally in a large scale fight, the hammer trains or really any organized 20+ man guild equips itself with plenty of condition cleanse. Condition cleanse is extremely powerful in large zerg fights, and facilitates the need for running hammer trains to zerg bust with.

In small-scale combat though, there is not enough condition cleansing going on for the vast majority of fights. In duels or skirmishes, as the numbers fighting goes down, the demand of having an intense amount of conditions with survivability or the most extreme case of raw output to literally one-shot an enemy is high. ‘Middle-Man’ zerg-busting builds in Large-Scale combat pale in comparison, and often fail. We get unique roaming builds that absolutely dominate this end of WvW, and even some SPvP builds that have migrated over with similar if not greater stats than before.

In a way, one could make the argument that having conditions excel in small quarters combat while raw sustained damage and tankiness in large scale means that there is a balance going on. When you think about it carefully though, and I mean really think about it…there is no balance. Certain professions (…I might as well say Rangers as the main one) are completely screwed by this meta, and other professions excel at everything. This meta stymies growth, it needs to change.

Continued next Post

Wait…

You can have Commanders in SEA?

Evalana.5480:

Sykper.6583:

So, I feel like right now we all have this sense of entertaining fights going on.

Almost like there should be something that just kitten es off everyone-

Oh…Oh no.

I found this…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVCzdpagXOQ

I-I’m sorry….

Why……………

Nooooo….. WHYYYYY?!

I don’t know!

My week is done, game over man game over!

So, I feel like right now we all have this sense of entertaining fights going on.

Almost like there should be something that just kitten es off everyone-

Oh…Oh no.

I found this…

I-I’m sorry….

Snafu.7412:

Sykper.6583:

Hmm…

Magumma PPT really low…

Unusual considering their gold material server, I wonder-

NO…! It cannot be?!

But there is no explanation!

….YB and SBI must be having an alliance!

Accusations are spreading across all other threads as well but to think this could happen to #magswag.

Still clinging to PPT… But there is no explanation!

Must be Devon Carver.

Wait a minute…

Devon Carver…Post-League Complaints…good match-ups….no explanation….

What if this is a WvWvW within a WvWvW?

Hmm…

Magumma PPT really low…

Unusual considering their gold material server, I wonder-

NO…! It cannot be?!

But there is no explanation!

….YB and SBI must be having an alliance!

Accusations are spreading across all other threads as well but to think this could happen to #magswag.

logs.1493:

Not so tough without your Ehmry bay buddies huh YB?

You sound mad.

It’s unhealthy you know!

You know.

I can’t even be mad this week.

I just find it stupidly funny that one of the best match-ups WvW could have right now is just after the League finished.

….

Wait, we are supposed to be PvFing right?

Oh my…

Oh my…

…calling 50 pages right now.

nikkistar.1409:

Sykper.6583:

I use it as a paper-weight!

Or toss it at some dog to fetch with.

/shrug

But, what if the dog doesn’t bring it back, and it buries it in the backyard instead!?

Then I assume in about a couple hundred years after I am dead, some guy will dig it up and it will turn legendary.

[Chewed Ancient Sword]

Mmm…

Flytrap.8075:

Black Scoutsman.5830:

Mek.2947:

Why are Yak’s talking smack in this thread? I mean…it’s not like anyone takes you seriously. You can’t handle a challenging match-up without putting on the Pampers and getting help from another server.

Because you keep reminding us of how sore you were when we derailed your ktrain server. We do so love the taste of tears.

Enjoy your awesome 2nd place rewards

We’re so jelly over here of your extra green.

I use it as a paper-weight!

Or toss it at some dog to fetch with.

/shrug

Radioactive.1248:

12. Yak’s Bend Stable community that hasn’t really seen any guilds come or go (from my understanding). They have pretty reasonable coverage for this tier at all hours, but not enough in any one area to be serious competitors for the top spots in the league. With some transfer love they may be able to make a push late, but as they stand now they don’t have the firepower to compete with the upper echelon of the silver league.

I will always chuckle at this.

Always.

Thank you Silver League!

Oh the flames of forum war are still quite hot.

However its still far too little….

Can this thread hit 20 pages?

I am totally staying tuned…

W-What the….

Wow. I am severely disappointed FA.

Here I was expecting easily a dozen or more pages by tuesday, but it seems I had overestimated your PvF Warriors.

‘sniff’ I looked up to you guys. I am sad now…

….

Welp, guess this means that Yak’s Bend will take the PvF title of the Silver League!

YESSSSSS!!!

We did it guys! Bravo!!!

Man, this is greater than anything I thought imaginable!

This will be one for the GW2 ages!

Glorious…

….

Hmm…mathing a bit here, HA!

SBI, buddy, you know what you should do?

Team up with DB and make FA 3rd!

Clearly the only solution to get back at us Yak’s Benders!

Gudradain.3892:

If you liked this match up, don’t forget to join For Balanced Match up

Of course!

How can we all be so blind!

The match was fixed from before anything else, we were all played for fools!

:O

Oh my god…

I think folks we are approaching critical mass.

LET’kitten 30 pages!

We can do it guys!

Xsorus.2507:

soulblazer.3807:

if your game time is anywhere near your forum time i will be blown away.

My game time doesn’t compete…See when I’m tired, I actually sub in a little Chinese kid to post for me……

I’m actually surprised you don’t do the same

How’d you kno-

Nevermind, forget I say anything. No one will know…

Runehand.9368:

Scarlett’s new evil alliance: Ebay and YB.

Twisted Watchwork Ehmry Yak!

I wonder if people realize the utter lack of fairness that WvWvW represents. People are acting like every single server has the same population and chances to win a match-up when there is already such a disparity between populations there is very little point.

Here’s the thing.

Nearly every single matchup has some server being kitten. Match-ups before leagues had no semblence of fairness, seeing a gold, silver and bronze server in the same match-up in a week was common. Guess which of those servers would get focused?

If the match-up turned out to be something like gold, silver and silver with the two silvers being tightly contested, the gold server would ultimately decide the fate of the match-up. There is some sort of twisted unspoken rule that dictates this, and frankly has caused months of crying on the WvW forums about unbalanced servers, sounds familiar right?

But something happened this match, something mindblowing. Whether it be due to similar interests or some sort of ceasefire, but the ‘strongest server’ was seen as a viable target for the lesser servers, seeing the potential to overcome the higher-placed server in the league, and the entire paradigm we were all accustomed to was tossed out a window.

They can call it an alliance, a ceasefire, an agreement it mattered not because it seems EB and YB saw SBI as a viable target to focus down. For YB, they had to focus SBI knowing it was the stronger competition. EB likely saw SBI in a bad light, at least moreso than Yak’s Bend. This situation could have easily been reversed with SBI and EB focusing Yak’s Bend, but the only difference is that seems to follow the standard which you all seem to believe in.

I no longer believe in the standard, in fact what this shows is that the standard is pretty kittening wrong. I have read the SBI love for the good fights, the most dedicated SBI who enjoy the lack of queues, the constant fights everywhere, LOVE this match-up. There should be MORE of this kind of situation, MORE potential 2v1s to the disfavor of the strongest server in the matchup.

Everyone came into this matchup assuming SBI would dominate another week. This kind of match-up shows another possibility.

A new kind of WvWvW has appeared, it is quite amusing.

Ladies and Gentlemen…

Twenty Pages, We did it! WE ALL DID IT GUYS!

Sniff I-I would like to thank Yak’s Bend, Stormbluff Isle, and Ehmry Bay. Special shout out to Fort Aspenwood for those special extras, as well as all our fans. Never would have made it without you guys!

I would also like to thank various food products for keeping the forum guys awake and going, never would have had a chance without food and drinks!

You are all so good!

I think it might be beneficial for SBI to really reflect on this match-up.

Many of the posts from informed SBI guilds here have already said what I am about to say, but it is definitely needed to emphasize that one should not simply take the high horse in any close match-up.

Never underestimate a match-up where the three servers are within the same ranks as one another, I don’t know whether it was perhaps a feeling of superiority that SBI came into this match-up not giving their all. Though, it is clear that those who have and still are persisting to fight really truly represent the SBI WvW that they are proud of, and you guys fight hard. Well played fights all around.

However…

Whatever the reasons may have been, I feel like those complaining on SBI should take this match-up as a growing experience. In a match-up where it is a three-way competition, the fight almost never goes equal terms because unfortunately servers don’t hold the same population across the board. Either the weakest server is annilated for points, granting the stronger in terms of coverage free points and an effective win. Or, as the dominant server though not by much, the lesser servers could do something akin to a ceasefire…or something like that to bring the larger server down to their level if not make that dominant server the weakest of all. I feel like this critical match-up turned into the latter, and based on the feedback across the board it has been one of the best match-ups of the league!

Both instances hold some sort of alliance in one way or another, it’s how you manage the instance where you might be the focused server that will make or break you. It’s unfortunate that there isn’t such a thing as a one to one or an ACTUAL World versus World to tell the differences between servers, but in reality every server should be aware that the third server is the king-maker, the wild-card.

For now, the fight for 1st place in this match-up might be over, but I definitely encourage the fighting to keep going, because I know SBI is aware of this but they really should not drop to 3rd if they can afford it.

Don’t stop fighting! Good fights!