Guild Wars 2

For the more exotic type, check your TP. For example, Hyperbeam Alpha looks very flashy and cool.

I personally use the Bandit’s Rifle (origin name Makeshift Rifle). It has a tinkered look to it.

But really i can only give you one good tip. Go to heart of the mists, when you enter immediatly turn right and go to the PvP lockers. Scroll down to Rifles and use the preview function to see what look you really like. Then just look up what its called ingame (google works fine).

I have 8 slots, 1 for each profession. Yet, it displays 7, meaning i need to tab to the left and right.

I play on a big monitor on 1920×1080. I have a ton of space at the bottom of my character selection screen. I’d like to be able to see more then 7 slots, frankly atleast 8 (8 professions afterall) and possibly more.

Its something new. Sadly this loading screen in particular is sensitive to the “endless loading screen”-bug.
I get it typically after playing for a while, fairly high chance it happens and im better off waiting for a res then porting to the spawn. Just to avoid the loading screen.

Because if it bugs out, only one thing left to do, alt+F4. And then when you log in again, poof, back of the queu.

Legendaries were designed with certain professions in mind. Predator is obviously designed for Warriors, who actually aim down sights so it looks like they use the scope. And actually use their Rifle as a long-range weapon, fitting for a Sniper Rifle. Their adrenaline ability is even a carefully aimed shot from a crouching position that deals massive damage.

Then the Engineer, who shoots from the hip and never looks down the scope. And doesnt use the Rifle as a ranged weapon, but as a shotgun. The closer to the target the better.
A sniper rifle is completely counter intuitive and immersion breaking on an Engineer because of the way they use it.

Only two classes use Rifle, and the Legendary clearly fits one and not the other.

Downed state plays a big part of game balance. It somewhat slows down zerg glasscannon builds, because they need to stomp to really kill you. That gives your team a chance to get you back on your feet, otherwise you’d see even more glasscannon builds running around killing people in under a second. Actually stomping you takes longer.

But, downed state isnt balanced. Some professions are kitten near worthless when downed (Engineer and Elementalist come to mind) that deal very low damage and have very limited survival mechanics.
Then there are classes that deal insane damage (Thief and Mesmer), and can crit upwards to 1k+ on their spam ability. And Mesmers can pop out a Illusionairy Rogue that can crit upwards to 6k! From a downed state! While Thief isnt specially hard to actually finish off when downed, a Mesmer also zips around all over the place and spawns more clones and illusions.And imo Warrior is underestimated.

Atm for PvP they should give all professions the same downed abilities untill they can actually balance them out somewhat, because right now downed state is completely unbalanced.

Teleport has no place in WvW. Infact devs have even debated if it has a place in sPvP.

Its a very cool ability. But even if the rendering bugs were fixed, and people didnt abuse cheats to bypass defenses. There is still room to abuse Teleport.

SM castle is a prime example. Its very easy for 2 mesmers to hide if they lose the castle, that place is huge and mesmers are kitten near uncatchable.
SM is also dead in the centre of the map, and quickly under attack. If you take SM be prepared to be in the breach to defend it. There is no time to run all over SM trying to purge all possible Mesmers. Again, those guys are very hard to catch.

Then these 2 mesmers can completely and easily portal their whole server right into the Lords room. From outer wall to Lord in less then 30sec with a full zerg. Bypassing ALL defenses.

And even Keeps can be a pain to clear all Mesmers. Takes just 1 to mess up your day. Name one profession that can do something of a magnitude like this.

@kreit
“I wish you to have wonderful “useful” elite skill Tornado. Or whirlpool after nerf.”

Thanks, but we actually already have Tornado and Whirlpool so i know exactly what it does. Courtesy of Elixir X. And it works even worst for us then it is for you (double cast time, easy to interupt costing the whole elite to go on cooldown for nothing), random effect so unreliable, and still Elixir X is a better elite then Mortar.

I’d happily take Tornado over Mortar or elixir X. Its more usefull then Mortar and more reliable then Elixir X.

“Mortar is one of the best elite skills in WvW”

Sorry, but its not that reliable to pull that off. And basic utility skills from other classes (mesmer’s Vortex and thief’s Scorpion Wire) accomplish the same thing but are much more reliable, lower cooldown (because no way mortar will be alive long enough for a 2nd shot) and it only takes a regular utility slot.
Heck, even Engineer has a better solution in Toolkits Magnet Pull.

Well depends on your idea of the Engineer. Its sort of the mixed result of several sort of types. The tinkerer with the gadgets and gizmo’s. An Alchemist, with the elixirs and all. A typical Engineer, with turrets and toolkit. A grenadier/demolitionist with the bombs, grenades and mines.

The Demolistionist and Alchemist seem to work. Tinkerer blends in a bit with either of these two since its not that fleshed out to begin with.
But the arch typical engineer (wrench and tools as weapon + building drones and turrets) just doesnt work. Turrets are bad due to a range of problems and reason and the toolkit isnt great either and in general the Engineer isnt a profession that can handle wading into the thick of battle, not with turrets + toolkit atleast.

Id change FT quite a bit honestly, a lot of issues with that kit.

ability 1: Slightly longer range, more damage, doesnt trigger Retaliation.
More range so you dont knock enemies out of your own abilities range…
The damage on this thing is to weak, its a 2second channel and does a little more damage then a 3/4sec Hip Shot. But not anywhere close to warrent such a slow castrate.
Retaliation against this is pretty much a suicide for the Engineer. It procs 10 instances of Retaliation. You actually deal more damage to yourself then to the enemy you hit. And since its an aoe weapon, ho boy if you use it in a crowd buffed with Retaliation.
But, 1 is our only constant reliable damage ability so not using it is simply not an option because then we basicly have no damage left.

ability 2: Easy fix: Add a detonate function.
Slightly more effort fix: Shoot at a target, impact on target causing explosion and creating a burning field.

ability 3: Its fine. Only good and reliable ability on the FT.

ability 4: Its horrible. Difficult to use, the game displays the angle it takes wrong half the time and the napalm doesnt go the way you wanted it. The damage on it is pitiful, 1 tick of burning (thats ~500dmg in a condition build, much less if you dont stack cond.dmg)
This ability doesnt scare anyone off, and its just a long cooldown fire-combofield. Thats it, horrible design. Buff the damage drastically to punish people for getting hit or going through it and add a second condition. Blind and/or cripple come to mind.

ability 5: Id much rather see Backdraft back. It was a great ability that gave a skilled player a ton of uses out of it.
But if we must stick with the aoe (yawn) blind. Then atleast make it worthwhile. Slash the cooldown, create a smoke field for 3seconds that blinds and counts as a combofield.

Obviously, fix all the bugs. And presto, its now a good weaponkit without neccesarily changing all the skills around. Currently, its just awefull.

I prefer the Rifle. I dont need a trait to get atleast 1000range on Hip Shot, which is still a nice ability since grenades over long-range are hard to hit a single target with. 1200 with trait. Good for finishing weak enemies who are moving around a lot/running away.

You also get Netshot, altough pitifully inaccurate and fails often over any half-decent range. In mid/close range is reliable enough, and immobilizing a target basicly lets you freely hit them with the full fury of your Grenade Barrage and if time is left, a Blunderbus/Jumpshot.

This immobilize can be chained into a lovely knockback with Overchargeshot. You get up faster then he does, and it basicly gives you a bit more time to freely hit your target. Generally it gets about 1 grenade throw to hit (i prefer Frost grenade, kitten near guarenteed hit on that is great)
And by now you have controlled your opponent for about 7seconds, while unloading a bunch of damage and applying conditions that seriously hamper his fight or flight.

Dual-pistol is the worst setup. Limited range, Explosiveshot sucks, PDV misses a lot aswell over range. And your only real control is Static Shot, which is just one blind. Glueshot is easily dodged, and not amazing control, its basicly just a cripple.
Blowtorch is also bad since its only effective if someone is already in your face, i’d much rather CC the guy breathing down my neck then deal condition damage.

pistol/shield is also a good combo to be honest. Its more defensive, lets you apply some conditions aswell if thats your fancy. The shield gives a stun if attacked and a knockback. Doubling as a ranged projectile reflector and ranged daze. Pretty decent CC and defense.

So basicly, go Rifle or Pistol/Shield. Depending on if you like conditiondamage+more defense. Or if you prefer more damage and more CC.

Wouldnt be the first time they ninja’d a change in that didnt exactly benefited us. aka, stealthnerf.

I see little use in the grenadekit underwater anymore since the grenades dont home in at all, anything that moves automatically dodges everything unless they are in your face or moving in a straigth line towards you.

Rump Buffalo.2594:

While mortar could use longer range…

worst skill in the game? Have you seen elementalists?

Are you kidding? Elementalist have their issues, but your Elites are usefull to you and benefit you. An Engineer effectively NERFS himself trying to use Mortar in all but very few, very niché situations. And then its almost always “yah but i used knockback barrage and it was k”

The entire Mortar skill could be replaced with a knockback barrage and no one would miss it. Infact it would be a much better Elite.

No one should be able to do the kind of damage pulled of by burst builds. And Thieves are on the high-end of the spectrum, even if Stealth worked the way it should without the rendering bug it would still be a retarted mechanic.

A Warrior comming at you with bullcharge + 100b can be spotted a mile away, and dodged. A Thief on the other hand, can get in your neck instantly and invisibly, you dont know that he’s there untill after he started unloading his burst. There is no question which of these is worst.

But again, i think burst builds in general need to a hefty nerfhammer. Starting with Quickness which is just a completely ludicrous ability. Really?! You’re going to give someone +100% dps!? Maybe if people died after an extented fight, maybe. But even without Quickness people can already be dropped pretty fast.

Player: Nerf Thief, he bursted me down in seconds and i couldnt even see him cause of stealth.

Thief: Thats your fault, stack Toughness.

Player: Done, i still die in the blink of an eye.

Thief: no no, you need to stack Toughness AND Vitality. Or it wont work.

Player: Okay, got that. But i still die near instantly. Time for a nerf?

Thief: Never, Thief is fine. You should pick defensive skills.

Player: I am now using defensive skills, i still die really really fast.

Thief: Look, its your own fault for not playing a Bunker-build

Player: Hey thanks, im now playing full Bunker and i dont die in a flash anymore.

Thief: ZOMFG bunkerbuilds are ruining pvp! NERF!

Upgrading a Supplycamp is a complete waste. The best you can do is that buff for the champion guarding it, just to delay someone. But even that can be zerged through or bypassed with the application of Weakness.

Upgrading Stonemist is damnnear impossible. Its outer walls can be breached so easily, and SM changes hands quite often unless one server completely destroys the other two.
Why throw money at something you know you wont keep for long?

Keeps are a worthwhile investment, and towers can be aswell if they are close to your spawn and defendable.

But if one server is playing the nightcapping game, then upgrading for the other two servers is wasted money because its lost overnight anyway.

I love how Healing Turret got “fixed” and no longer gets the cooldown reduced when picked up. Or how Rune of the Adventurer got nerfed.

Yet a bug that works in our disadvantage goes on the pile and remains there for months. Yah im annoyed.

They have a temporary fix where they put a second loading screen in WvW that freezes half the time. Forcing you to alt+F4 out of Gw2 and going back into the queue. This resets the invisible enemies and then you can play again, once you get in that is.

/sarcasm

Hard to choose between Mesmer and Thief.

Thieves pop out of nowhere and kill you before they even become visible, while at the same time being incredibly hard to actually catch. If a Thief wants to escape and he is half decent, he will escape. Blinks, speedboosts, stealth.
At the same time, its also kitten near impossible to escape from a Thief.

And then there is the Memser. Even harder to catch then a Thief with the gazilion illusions, blinks and invisibilities. They can also go quite high-damage builds without losing in their hard to kill department.
And Teleport is just gamebreaking. It can induce the rendering bug to make a whole zerg invisible. And it can also bypass defenses, especially in SM castle its incredibly easy for a Mesmer to hide because its so big and a Mesmer is impossible to catch.
SM is typically under attack rather fast, so then the Mesmer can Teleport his whole zerg passed the walls. Only takes 2 hiding around to get their whole server into the Lords room in under 30seconds, bypassing ALL defenses and the concept of siege warfare.

And with rampant cheating going on in WvW, a single mesmer can use cheats to get inside a keep and use Teleport to get their whole server in to claim it. They probably dont even know that Mesmer cheated, or care.

Both of these professions also take copious advantage of the rendering bug after stealth, extending their invisibilities by a good 2seconds at times. And stealth imo is an aweful mechanic.

Well this is really a tough one now isnt it.

You see, whenever someone speaks up about getting killed in 2seconds or less by someone the general reply from the people that play that profession is “l2stack vitality/toughness/go defensive”

So, people did. Bunkers are the only ones that dont die in a split second to a Thieves insane burst that you never saw comming due to stealth+shadowstep/steal. Or other high-burst builds that you may have seen comming, but still kittened you up in a single moment. Leaving you sitting there wondering just what in the kitten just happend.

If Glasscannons can bring down Bunkers aswell, then there is no reason why anyone would be anything but a high-burst build.
And then this game might aswell be called Stealth Wars 2. Because getting on someone without them even noticing you untill you start unloading damage will win every single fight.
Whats harder to deal with. The Warrior you see jogging in your direction, and doing the bullcharge animation that you can dodge. Or, a Thief you never saw that instantly blinks to you and losing half your health instantly is the sign that you are now in a fight.

I hate bunkers as much as i hate glasscannons (in particular thieves/mesmers because they appear out of nowhere and are impossible to catch) But taking down Bunkers a notch cannot be done unless you bring down all glasscannons a notch aswell.

Imo thye should take a bunch of points from your list, but also completely redo Elixir X. Its still a random crapshoot and nothing but a cheap uninspired knock-off.

Transform us into a mutated abomination, with its own skills and effects. Reliable, unique and in line with the idea of mad alchemist using crazy concoctions.

Odaman.8359:

I don’t know how you’re having issues with one of the easiest down states to deal with. What happens when the mesmer gets you down? Thief and necro can do more damage, ranger and guardian heal while attacking, ranger and engi can rez themselves almost instantly (spirit elite and elixir R), and warrior can get back up to stomp so really the only thing that should die to a downed mesmer is a bad engineer and an ele.

Side note… Rally is terrible.

Are you even playing this game? My god “one of the easiest”.

So teleporting around, stealth, decoys, keeping your fantasms and being able to summon a fantasm that hits for 5k+ dmg is easy?

I dont have a problem finished guardians, they can AoE interupt once then they get stomped. By now the Mesmer is porting all over the place and dealing way more dmg. And i have never seen a Ranger or Engineer self-ress, mostly because they rarely take the required utility skill and actually benefitting from it (dropping it mere moments before you are downed) is incredibly hard.
And other then that, what do they have? Rangers do decent damage, Engineers do pretty much no damage and just wait for you to stomp them. Might even lend you the courtesy and pull you in to end it all faster.

Ele is a complete joke to finish off. Warriors are predictable, underestimated, but still predictable. Thieves can be a pain, but no where near as bad.

Mesmer is without a doubt the hardest profession to actually finish off.

Damage is completely over the top across the board. I hate thieves a little more because they are kitten invisible when they do it, atleast everyone else you see comming for you.
But they are by no means the only ones at fault.

Which leads to the Bunker builds being popular because they are the only ones that dont drop dead in the blink of an eye and actually have a fighting chance.
So, either you go full-on glasscannon burst-mode or you Bunker down, there is no middle ground.

Yes. mobs stop at the edge and dont actually fall down. Players can actually be knocked over terrain and down edges.

I think first we need to fix Stealth. I still believe it might be a problem after, because catching a Thief or Mesmer that doesnt want to be caught is kitten near impossible.

But considering it takes 2seconds for the Thief or Mesmer (infact, this likely applies to all as a general stealth bug) to actually show up and become targetable is a problem. Thats initial burst + 2seconds of free hitting before you can effectively fight back. And then they restealth, and it starts again.
The time you actually spend fighting back is minimal. And this compounds horribly with glasscannon builds + Quickness. You die before you even see who or what is hitting you. And they can get close to you without you seeing them comming.

A Warrior Bullcharging + 100b’ing me hurts like hell aswell. But atleast i see him jogging my way, and when he does the bullcharge i am already aware of him and i can dodge before he gets to me.
A Thief, impossible. He can get on you without you knowing it. And when it takes less time for him to smack you for half your health then is humanly possible to react, thats a problem.

And randomly throwing around AoE is just a random crapshoot. Hope you hit him when you dont really have any idea where he went. And AoE isnt generally a big hitter anyway. Its unreliable and cannot compare to the crapload of damage you just took or are about to take.
So something has to be done, but first fix the Stealth bug.

I wouldnt say stuff is to hard to defend. Infact a few people with some proper placement of AC, Balista and perhaps a treb to deal with cata/trebs can hold most stuff for a long time against a huge zerg.

If it became to hard then small groups could never do anything, and since attacking would be to hard you’d never try it anymore and everyone just sits in their tower/keep.
The only people that WOULD still cap stuff are the nightcappers, since they run unopposed anyway. And then they hold the whole map by morning with everything upgraded. But now the other two servers can never take anything because its to hard to cap stuff that the other server has spend all night upgrading and reinforcing.

And nightcapping is the reason why upgrading stuff now is pointless (if you are facing nightcappers that is) because why sink a ton of gold and resources into upgrading stuff that you WILL lose overnight?

Whenever people talk about the uses of Mortar to them its usually one of two things

1) It lets me put it down for someone else who lacks long-range in WvW (Thief/Guardian)
2) Its knockback saved my kitten

Well 1#, its OUR elite. It should be usefull to US. Its benefit shouldnt rely on a highly situational situation where its merely convenient to someone else.
And 2#, that is about the only great thing about Mortar. So why not change the racial to “Artillery Barrage; Fire a barrage of high explosives from a mobile mortar at the target location. Applying Bleed, Cripple and knocking back enemies” Animation could be your Engineer whipping out the mortar to channel a barrage over X seconds. With a much faster projectile speed over a large area perhaps akin to Rangers Longbow 5-thingy or Ele’s Meteor Shower.

THAT would be a usefull Elite.

I pity the Engineer that worked hard to get the legendary rifle, Predator, only to realize his Engineer would look rediculous shooting a weapon like that from the hip like a shotgun.

Im sick of this 2-pop game aswell. PvP is all about either being a glasscannon and blowing people up in 2seconds (hell, less then a second is even possible).
Or playing a bunker build, just so you can not get blown up in 2seconds and counter glasscannons.

And some profession are just more rediculous then others. Lets not pretend it isnt. I just ate over 9000 damage from a Thief, and got stomped by that thief before he even came out of stealth.

Im done with PvP in this game, its not skillfull at all. Its a matter of rolling your professions Glasscannon build, pop quickness and blow ppl up with 2 buttons. Yah, real fun.

Rifle:
-Netshot: This thing fails all the time. Getting obstructed left and right, even in open terrain. And its relative slow projectile speed also makes it incredibly easy to avoid by just walking to the side slightly.
Its not even reliable on enemies that stand still.

At this point it might even not exist, thats how usefull i find it.

It would already help greatly if i could just turn around atleast. Getting chain immobilized is a simple matter of someone standing behind you. And it might aswell be a stun for all intents and purpose. Only, a stun would be better since its actually easier to break.

There are some various different “styles” of combat.

Direct-damage melee
Direct-damage ranged
Condition-damage melee
Condition-damage ranged
Supportive
Defensive/Control

And then there is even a matter of AoE, GTAoE and Single-target.

We simply do not have direct-damage ranged. I dont consider the Grenadekit a viable ranged direct damage due to it being GTAoE. Goodluck hitting anything over a distance.
Rifle is more melee then anything. And Elixirgun is hardly damage to begin with.

Infact, all our “ranged” weapons/kits are designed in such a way they are much stronger if they are infact used in close range. There is no ranged weapon/kit that is not penalized for actually being used at range.

Pistol/Pistol: PDVolley will miss 3 or even 4 darts quite often if used even at 900. Bumped to 1000+ with a trait and its woefully inefficient. Blowtorch requieres mid-range to even hit, and Blowtorch is 300% more effective when used in <200range (effectively melee)
Rifle: Blunderbuss is your secondhardest hitting ability. It has an untraited range of just 400 (500 with traits). So its hardly even ranged to begin with. Its damage is ~220% higher when used in <100range (lower then MELEE range!) then at max range.
Jump Shot’s jump alone is good for 1/3ths of the total damage it does, something you only get if you are in melee range.
Elixirgun: Hardly any damage on this thing, but Fumigate is fairly shortranged. Using this over a long-distance means lower damage then in close range simply by the lack of Fumigate.
Grenadekit: This is a no-brainer. It takes 4sec from cast to impact at max range. Goodluck hitting ANYTHING with this that doesnt want to be hit.

We dont have a single weapon or kit that is designed purely for actual ranged combat, without some contrived mechanic that motivates (or downright forces) you into close-range or even melee.

To fix WvW they should start with all the things that ruin it.

-Nightcapping. Most people hate this, because their daytime play is pointless, it all comes down to whoever is active the most at night. That realm will win, no exceptions.
The nightcapper is by far the most important element to succeed and descides the outcome of WvW. Talk about not making one persons time worth more then anothers…

-Snowballing, made worst by nightcapping. You are outmanned, outgunned, and just for kitten and giggles, lets give the dominant side that has an active nightteam the luxery of 15% health, 150 to all stats and the time/resources to reinforce freakin everything.
Goodluck bashing on a fully upgraded tower with a bazilion arrowcarts, trebs and balistas right out of your spawn every. single. morning.

-Realm tranfers are STILL up. Everyone just flies all over the place, server ranking list is completely redundant because it doesnt reflect reality in even the slightest.

-Hacking, hacking everywhere. For the love of god disable Orbs already.

-Culling issues. Nothing spells “kitten you” like getting downed in 0.2seconds by an invisible zerg.

-Mesmers. Yes, freaking mesmers. In particular Teleport. Not only is it used to instigate the culling bug to make an entire army invisible. But the idea of having to hunt the most evasive profession inside an area of SM, while also being immediatly sieged, is rediculous. SM is freaking huge, and a decent Mesmer doesnt let himself get caught, ever.
But if you dont get that last Mesmer, he’ll portal all his friends right into your Lords bedroom. Name one profession that can get an entire army to completely bypass the act of sieging, and skip straigth to killing the Lord.

After that we can talk about ways to improve WvW.

Is this going to be reset when realm transfers are locked and the real rotations begin? All this list is good for now is to illustrate how certain realms are completely forsaken by WvWers.

Desolation 4th, i laughed. We’re currently getting our kitten kicked by the nr10 on the list, badly.
Desolation has had to deal with so much nightcapping crap that so many people who cared about WvW simply left. Logged in this morning, a saterday morning, 11:30am outmanned on all Borderland maps.
But since Desolation ranked so high initially, itll take weeks before it drops down to the bracket is now belongs.

And im hardpressed myself to also leave and find a server where there is a better matchup. Im not looking forward to being outmanned and unable to hold even a simple tower next to our spawn for another month or so.

Its a bad mechanic in general, but only Thieves take it to the extreme and absurd. Every other professions you see comming, and Warriors/Engineers get serious drawbacks from its use. Rangers to a lesser extend.

But a Thief can get close without you noticing it, and use stealth to bypass its inability to dodge. Its already a burst heavy profession, but before you even see him appear you’ve eaten a ton of damage.
After you go down you either eat a hasted finisher or the thief quickly vanishes for a stealth stomp.

When pvp comes down to building your character just to counter one specific ability/profession, thats the cue that stuff is out of whack.

I dont know what kind of mental jumps you made to get to the conclusion that i want Legendary kits for Engineer.

Predator is a Legendary rifle that is designed to look awesome for Warriors and stupid on Engineers.
Why i dont understand because the Engineer has the least available legendaries of all professions to begin with.

I’ll be blunt, i find the design of predator cool but also very thoughtless to Engineers. Warriors aim down sights and crouch+aim down sights when they shoot, a scoped rifle makes sense for them.
They have a baseline 1200range, and inflict pain from a distance with carefully aimed shots. With their adrenaline-move being a carefully aimed, long range, single hardhitting shot.

Engineers, shoot their rifle from the hip, and dont ever aim down sights. A scoped weapon doesnt make sense. It just looks silly and immersion breaking to run around with a fine long-range precision weapon and use it like a shotgun without even aiming.
Thats what Engineer use their Rifle for. Or even more silly, with Jump shot i can see no possible scenario where the long barrel wouldnt clip all over the place with the ground.

Its aestethic design is tailored specifically for only 1 profession. Sucks for Engineer seeing as theyve already got a very very limited assortment of Legendaries and hardly see them due to kits.

Havent seen a close matchup since BWE3. Since then its all been one server steamrolling the other two, almost always due to nightcapping.

And shortly after that, usually when the other servers are about 100k points behind (so, day 3 or 4) they simply say “kitten it” and stop playing till the next matchup.

Going two week match-ups now would kill WvW. No one is going to actually try for two weeks when after just 1 night its clear that theyll just get pulverized.
Atm, Desolation a high/full pop server, has no queues for WvW and outmanned on all maps.
Augery Rock is atleast trying to put up a fight, but for me this match up is dead and i can do nothing but wait for the next round. And if those rounds are to far between, i dont see myself caring at all anymore. Play a few days, then wait 1.5 week to play again for a few days. No thanks.

Id much rather see 1 day rotations. Atleast then people try, theyll still lose to the nightcappers, but its not as demoralizing as staring at a 150k point disadvantage + 3 orbs + completely capped maps + reinforced walls everywhere.
Sure no one would bother to upgrade anything anymore, but they dont bother now either because at night it gets capped and the upgrades are lost anyway.

Flamethrower clearly has issues.

As Smack said, Flamejet is a bad ability. Mechanically it has a lot of issues and downsides, with only one upside that you get to hit multiple people with it. But that doesnt justify the disproportionate weakness to Retaliation, the rather mediocre damage and the hitbox issues.

Flameblast is bugged aswell, no doubt about it. It happens particularly often after using 3. Almost as if the weapon points down when you fire and fire into the ground. It also obstructs with minor terrain clutter (little pebbles for instances) and when it connects with terrain it doesnt explode or anything. It just disspates.
Its only worthwhile damage if you get the target hit by the explosion, personally id vote to see it completely reworked. Shoot a ball of magma at your target, it explodes on impact creating a pool of burning magma. That damage/burnes anyone in it.

Napalm isnt special either. Its usefull as a combofield, but applying 1tick of Burning to anyone who walks through it (about 600dmg in cond build) isnt much of a deterent or area control. And easy to avoid. Why such a cooldown for a rather weak ability?

AoE blind isnt halfbad, prefer the pull tbh. But it can be used pretty much in any circumstance. Which is nice. But its range is small, and the cooldown is long. Not especially powerfull either.
Would much rather see it make a Smoke combofield and linger for a bit. To give Engineers with Flamethrowers a bit more of a substainablity considering how close they must get to their enemies, relative to the quite squishy nature.

“I know this may sound like a lot of damage, but you have to build up to it, and its not instant, takes a bit to use. "

Or you press your instant-full-Adrenaline button.

I always chuckle when people jump to the defense of nightcappers, saying theyd dominate aswell during the day.
Please stop this nonsense excuse. You get more from nightcapping then just a ton of easy points.
How about 3 orbs for 15% more health and 150 extra stats is not nothing. And those upgraded keeps and towers, stuffed with siege equipment sure helps aswell.

You not only start the day with a headstart, but with an advantage aswell. And whatever is lost, is just wood without proper siege cover. Much easier to reclaim again. With the more available attackers since a properly equiped tower/keep needs less people to actually defend it.

Because just like PvE you earn money, gather materials and get loot. As such, you get penalized with moneysinks aswell. Be glad its just repair, if you take the PvE route you also pay a kittenon on teleport costs.

It becomes hard to get positive cashflow if you are stuck zergbashing a keep or tower unsuccesfully for 3 hours. Then you just wasted 3h and got NO REWARDS other then whatever dropped from the few playerkills you may have made.

As such, prolonged siegebattles are completely unbeneficial to the attacker. But extremely beneficial to the defender, who gets a “Repel the Invader”-event reward every 3minutes.
So, you got nothing for 3h. The defenders got full karma/gold/experience reward about 60x, for just tossing some AoEs from the walls.

If you have other options to attack or defend, then take them rather then getting stuck in long drawn out Sieges. Unless you are defending, then by all means get into drawn out sieges.

Im already finding little to no joy logging into a WvW match. More often then not the fight is already descided after the first night.
Love getting into a brawl with realms that dont nightcap. We usually win, but not with rediculous numbers. Giving all sides a shot, and everyone fights to their fullest.

With nightcapping, one realm takes everything at night. Builds up a headstart, and an advantage by upgrading everything (and destroying all enemy upgrades) aswell as taking 3 orbs.
Then the rest of the day its just a matter of stand your ground, theyll lose some towers and keeps. But they usually end up with the biggest score because certain stuff is almost impossible to take due to how fortified it has become overnight. While you’re also busy defending your unupgraded kitten against counter-attacks.

To compound on the utter lack of a sense of accomplishment or reward for my effort, WvW has inherently a big package of issues. Rendering issues which cause for invisible enemies, immunity bugs, hacking, connections issues (great paired with massive queues) and more.
I just think to myself, why even bother? Beating down on the same Reinforced, armed to the teeth tower for 3h before you eventually take it is boring. And the reward does not anywhere near reflect the effort. Not in gold, experience, karma or points.

So WvW, atm, is just not fun for me due to balance issues, bugs and exploits. It disproportionally rewards nightcapping. While the real effort and action goes largely unrewarded in gold, experience, karma or points.

And about fun? Well, as i said. After staring up to some stone walls for 3h, it gets pretty boring to move on to yet the next heavily fortified position. Where the defenders are laughing all the way to the bank with their rediculous “repel invader”-reward every 3minutes. Cashing in on gold and karma rewards, based on an advantage gained at night.

There will not be a system that is perfect. Still, the nightcapping has to atleast be looked into.

The idea that a full day of fighting is completely rewardless defeats the purpose of scoring. Simply bashing down some gates at night with no opposition is where the wars are won. And the realms that are notorious for being able to do this, are coincidentally also the realms that are all at the top.

A more action focussed scoring system could help this a bit aswell, altough ive seen plenty of workable suggestions.
Whatever it may be, something has to be done. After one night there is already an almost insurmountable advantage to the realm with the nightcappers. Who not only gained tens of thousands of points. But also had the luxury of upgrading everything and picking up the 3 orbs of power for the boosts. Giving them an edge during the day aswell.
At the same time it makes upgrading anything for the regular time players pointless, because at night itll get capped anyway and then your upgrades are gone.

This leads the other two realms into desperation and eventually just an “F it” attitude where they simply dont bother to properly put up any opposition during the day either.
As i said, expensive upgrades are pointless since they are gone the following moring, and bashing on reinforced everything while also fighting off an enemy that has a considerable stat boost just isnt worth the hassle. And this also saps the fun from playing during the day.

Something just has to be done, and perhaps scores and bonusses will just have to be removed. And Arenanet just keeps an internal scoring system, one not available to the public, to calculate match up. And people then just play, purely for the fun of it.
You cannot argue that the current system is competitive when all but a few servers are capable of using an IWIN-strategy.
And telling us all our time is equally valueable is just a cruel joke. I work 2h to finally bring down a tower. I feel good about myself, but it wasnt always fun to do. My gold/exp/karma reward is minor at best. And whatever points we get out of it are meaningless because at night its gone. And tommorrow we can try again against these reinforced gates, walls and 47 arrowcarts.

Well, Arenanet said WvW is war. Things like nightcapping is perfectly okay.

Then it becomes difficult, where do you draw the line? They are not technically breaking any rules are they? They are using the transfers to the freedom and rules that applied to it.
Also, there is no rule that says wasting supply is a punishable offense. They arent making use of any bugs or third party software or hacking or anything of the sorts.

Its not good sportsmanship, and i dont agree with it. Im curious where Arenanet draws the line. Best way to solve this is just close the transfers between rival servers completely.

I agree. Gw2 still seems to dislike me and sometimes boots me to character selection screen, this only happens in WvW for some weird reason.

Sucks spending time waiting in a queue and poof, out you go. There are still plenty of people who experience small issues with connection. Either at the fault of Gw2s servers or their own system/connection. But whatever it may be, this could make WvW completely unplayable to them.
Thats a pretty big aspect of the whole game that just drops out.

Yah its reaching preposterous levels where i am standing less then 1500range away from a wall and i see projectiles just, magically appear in the middle of the air. I assumed there were players behind those, but their models simply never rendered.

This is an issue with the server and the coding, not with the user or the system. And it should be a pretty kitten high priority to get this fixed, because its sapping the fun out of WvW when enemies are simply not visible to you (but you are visible to them, yah… goodluck).
And people have started abusing the servers ineptitude to deal with this to the point where Mesmers can generate this issue with portals. Making whole armies invisible to their enemies. Totally legit when you just drop dead after seeing a bunch of numbers pop up out of nowhere.

The problem with such builds as the Backstab build is, it may be countered in higher levels of skill and organized play.
But in lower brackets and/or more unorganized play, such builds flourish. They require much less effort or skill to pull off similar or greater reward.

And the argument l2p is nonsense. The player could very well be on equal skill or even better, but that profession/build is just to good at this point.
Requiring someone to vastly outskill someone else or bring highly specialized skills in order to stand a chance is not the way to balance a game.

Such builds should not even be viable to begin with. They are ineffective at highly competitive pvp, and serve no other purpose but to ez-mode through lower brackets and frustrate the hell out of a majority of the playerbase.

Things that are perceived as overpowered might actually be overpowered in their current context.
A fresh player that descides to play sPvP for the first time, gets Bull Charged and 100bladed to death in litterally 2.1seconds flat by a Warrior will perceive this as very overpowered.

I think most stuff has an adequate counter. The balance issues as far as i can tell lie more in how much easier some profession can accomplish certain things.
Again the Warrior example, unlikely its viable on a high skill level. But in entry level PvP you can destroy people with just 2 buttons. Same goes for Thieves.
Certain professions have an higher potential in the hands of lesser skilled players, allowing less skill to gain the same or more reward untill a certain ceiling is reached.

And Mesmers are incredibly illusive and hard to fight untill you get the experience needed to tell the real one from the clones. It might be fine at the 1% that plays at top level, but at lower skill brackets it can make or break the gameplay experience.

Even with coated bullets its still a poor ability. Unlike Explosive Shot it doesnt seem to get the widened range in which something counts as a hit.
Hitting multiple targets with Hip Shots is harder then with Explosive Shot + Coated Bullets.

PDV isnt a great ability, its not even a hard hitting ability. Blunderbuss hurts for much more with a nifty stack of Bleeds on top. And its easier to land a solid Blunderbuss.

When even just mid-range already causes a 20-40% drop in damage on an ability that should work at 900 range. Thats just sad, especially since its the only ability that seems to hit for more then a wet towel when using a Pistol.

But once again you need to either use a loophole or hug your opponent to get any decent damage out of it. And then its still NOTHING like other professions dish out. Even with the full Poison on it it cannot even stand in the shadow of an ability like 100blades, its not allowed due to lack of awesome.

Which makes no sense balance wise either. If you balance around having all shots hit, then the damage is underpowered when you get 1-4 misses. If you design it around say 2 misses, the damage is overpowered when you get all hits. How do you balance an ability with such a wide scale from good to bad?