Guild Wars 2

I just GvG’d my pants.

But seriously, just play the game.

I don’t see GvG events anymore on any map. Normally there is the “We are GvG’ing here please don’t interrupt” over team/map chat as a warning. I’m going to throw out that the issue with GvG is trust. It’s 1.) hard to get the times right when you are talking about Guilds over 20+. 2.) difficult to be respectful to each other since most people run to the forums about score 3.) discouraging when it’s interrupted. 4.) The horrible queue for T1 in primetime.

USA on SoR is smaller and NERF is spread out so for me, GVG is just not an option but I would assume that’s the problem these days.

It took a few weeks but welcome back GvG arguments!

The issue with HGH is it’s might stacking. Most builds have to sacrifice power or condition damage and if you don’t then you sacrifice toughness/vitality. So there is a give. With HGH you can add 800 more power/condition damage easily if spec’d right which allows you to lower your cond/power and add more tough/vit. You are balanced.

The second issue that has been posted is that Engineers have the most access to weapon skills that benefit from power and condition. We have tons of burn options, we have tons of bleeding. You add in lots of power for burst + DoT then you are a bit too powerful.

However, that being said, running the build takes skill and concentration. I fooled around with it yesterday and I have to constantly run my tool belt skills and potions to keep might stacked. So in order to nuke HGH you would have to change boon duration sigils and might duration. If you did that for all classes then HGH would take a hit.

I agree with Burl. I played WvW on BG Borderlands for like 5 hours and the score was just about equal between all the servers. You can’t say “learn how to be better, we’re in first place” when the reason you are in first place is due to coverage not tactics. From 6 p.m. EST NA to 11:00 p.m. EST NA the scores show that all three servers are competitive. That’s when I play and it’s ALWAYS like that.

Skill lag is also being seen on any dragon event with lots of players. It’s not just a WvW issue.

Engineer number 1 pistol is an AOE without limit when traited with coated bullets.

Three weeks ago it was BG saying that SoR needs to fall and KN needs to come up. This weeks it’s SoR saying BG will implode. Plus the last 2 weeks of 2v1 nonsense.

At the end of the day, BG and SoR forum warriors will continue to attack each other so long as they are in the same tier. The forum for these score updates is like entertainment weekly. Half of it is made up gossip/drama and half of it has fact. The only fact is the score btw.

Now, someone go feed the drama llama elsewhere and get us a score!

From one engineer to another, nice outfit bro.

That’s what I needed to know or that I missed Kard, condition damage doesn’t increase with vuln just straight damage. I appreciate the follow up guys!

I don’t run grenades because I’m lazy. I normally PVP on a laptop so I don’t use a mouse. It’s more of maximizing my playstyle. I don’t believe it’s the most efficient for everyone but it is for me.

Hello! My name is Sanctum of Rall! You killed my PPT! Prepare to lose some of it around NA times give or take whenever NA time really is since we can’t decide on it.

I guess I didn’t get the Vuln issue. There is no cool down for the vuln so you can keep triggering it so long as you are hitting the crit. I was able to hit it continuously when I had fury up to about 6 stacks of vulnerability. If I could keep fury up, which I added goggles to do so, I was able to increase that to about 16 stacks until the effect of the goggles winded down. So where does one see the most benefit from vulnerability? Just pure damage output?

As for the poison dart, my tests showed that poison dart hit the vuln crit and the flame crit which basically added 4 conditions on hit (bleed is always constantly up). It was nice but I’m not sure how optimal in normal pvp.

EDIT: So this is what I get if you have the trait and you have the sigil of frailty plus about 60% crit, you have vuln up all the time. Because pistol 1 is a bleed and you get a chance on crit, you always have bleed up. So on average you have 2-3 stacks of bleed and vuln up at all time. Even when cleansed, you can build it up on the next hit.

" You fools! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never to get involved in a flame war on a forum. And only slightly less well known is this: never say your server is best at something when no reward is on the line! HAHAHHA HAHAHAH"

(it’s a quote from a movie. 2 points to Hufflepuff if you know where it’s from)

Here’s my build

Temple armor for CD/PRE/T. Runes of undead. I have knights orch earings for T/P/Pre. Carrion rings and amulet. Knight pistol and PVT shield.
I’m running about 1500 power, 1700 tough, 1600 vit, 1100 cond with 40% crit chance.
I run the 5% tough to power and cd, 5% vit to cd. Swift crit, vigor on swift, vuln on crit, piercing bullets. 90 tough with shield.

I do ok, just trying to refine it. What I found out is that the magnetic inversion crits. So you can reflect additional damage if it hits the crit. I just don’t know if it comes from you or the source.

EDIT: I use tool kit, elixir S and B with supply crate.

I’m doing this for a potential wvw roaming. I’m about to make my exotic shield and pistol so I’m trying to work out the best build. I run a condition primary with prec/tough/vitality/power sub. I find that the pistol’s rate of fire keeps the stacks from vuln and bleed when using a sigil of frailty and I paired that with a sigil of strength for might stacks. Since you crit fast, I can build 4 stacks of might. I just am not seeing anything great from the rifle AT ALL. I’m also not seeing too much from burn, I get a 733 tick of kitten seems.

EDIT: Sigils of fire and air run fairly expensive on TP.

With a sigil of frailty in the mists, I was able to keep a constant vuln and bleed stack on all the golems for the entire health bar with just pistol 1. My max stack was 6vuln and 6 bleed. I was also able to keep swiftness and vigor up the entire time as well. I guess the question is, what is the best amount of stacking?

So I was looking at the linking between critical hits and engineer traits. We have a traits that do:

Burn (33%)
Bleeding (30%)
Vuln (50%)
Blindness (50% /rifle /10s CD)
Swiftness ( 50%/ 5s CD) -> Trait to gain Vigor as well on Crit

Could you trigger a critical hit enough to get this to stack? The last three are possible with the rifle but not with pistol since you want to pierce. The trait line would be 10/30/0/10/0 so you would have 20 left over to spend. I might go 20/30/0/20.

Thoughts?

Looks like BG just wiped out that 5k they were down. Will SoR meet the challenge? Will they be able to maintain second place or will Beastgate overwhelm them in the race to the finish? The answers to these questions will be found on Friday. Excelsior true believers!

I will agree that the GvG is a GUILD issue and not a server wide issue. People organize and participate knowing the risks of life and the interference of invaders/defenders. This is about the three servers and the current weekly fight. I would suggest creating a thread about that and bumping it as needed.

As for the weekly forum thread. I said from the first that this thread should be put to fire and I have yet to see why it remains. SoR rested last week and is up past normal sleep patterns this week. WvWvW is what it is. It’s not perfect because we can’t fight even odds and we don’t have even coverage. We take what we get. People either play for the fights or the PPT. Just enjoy the battles.

In the meantime, would you like me to add a whine about having to defend supply camps from mesmer/guardian/thief teams with my engineer? Well i won’t. I’ll suck it up and rain crates and shields.

4 is good, no doubt. Add some burning runes to up the burn duration. You could easily switch the reinforced shield with power shoes for a bit of extra speed. The other option is to put 10 in explosives to have your burns last longer if you like 4 a bit better.

I think people underestimate shield throw. So you use glue shot for an area but it’s 1s long and only longer IF they remain in the area. Shield throw is a 1s daze when you send it out and a 1s daze on the way back. If you line up your shot you get two hits off the daze plus damage.

You could replace precise sights and infused precision with sitting duck and knee shot. This would increase your cripple duration while adding vulnerability on who ever was in the area when the glue shot landed.

It’s the week day. All the SoR weekend warriors are now at work.

I found another NERF on SoR for like 5 min. I’ve been doing some PvE instead of WvW. Do you guys ever do some big ol zerg bombing?

Here’s my advice.

Put as much as you can into firearms since you are using pistols. Use infused precision to get swiftness on critical hit. Put at least 10 into alchemy which will get you Invigorating speed. This will get you vigor on swiftness. This means on each critical hit you are getting 2 boons that help your dodging and kiting. Instead of traiting for hair trigger like most do, I went precise shots so that I could cause vulnerability since this is a very critical hit based build.

If I want to survive, I go P/S instead of P/P. The 4th option for shield is a knockback AND a missile defense. The 5th option is a block ( and you can get multiple blocks on it plus a stun) which will help you negate attacks. I also added toughness to assist with the damage I was getting. Then I complimented that with energized armor and reinforced shield. That’s the inventions line. Those convert toughness into power(5% of tough becomes power) and adds 90 toughness while you wear a shield.

If you focus on precision/toughness/power you should be doing some good damage. At 80 I switched out power for condition damage to compliment the pistol conditions. I then complimented that with Blood injection from Alchemy which converted 5% of vitality to condition damage plus superior runes of undead add another 5% toughness to condition damage. So with my 1700 tough and 1300 vitality, I’m getting about 150 extra condition damage putting me at 1200 cd.

For kits, I use grenades for ranged attacks but tool kit is also useful since it adds more blocking ( gear shield ) and confusion ( crowbar )

My traits are 0/30/20/20/0

Good luck.

Kill it! KILL IT WITH FIRE!

I think that there is a lot of spam on the WvW thread and I’d love to see the server discussions about Glicko talked about in a more balanced/general sense than just based on a tier perspective. Not that they are not valid but it tends to drown out some of the other discussion. I think the WvW forum should be focused more on say the Patches or Mechanics ( looking at you breakout). I will state specifically that server specific forums should stay OFF the Anet forums so that servers can talk about specific strategy or guild organization in a private area however people like to smack talk a bit and discuss their Tier issues and this is a valid place to put them. Just not out for all of us to have to sort through to get to the good stuff.

I think Zikory has been pretty open about his point. The last two pages have basically been a realization that what JQ and BG are saying about KN is different than what SoR is reading. I really respect Zikory’s responses as a member of the BG community. We all agree individually that balance is what is needed but human nature is not going to provide us with that based on the competition factor. Anyway, I hope I don’t get one shotted by Zik’s thief in WvW anytime soon.

Keep it classy T1.

I think Zikory has said it twice now and that we need to step back and realize that when JQ and BG mean competition they mean between each other and stop thinking that competition means a 3 way since we all agree that’s not happening.

I agree with Thundar that this was created due to gamer’s wanting the win rather than balance BUT what I will say is that the move to BG showed people still will move when they feel it’s in their best interest.

I won’t lose all hope in a balanced T1 but I will say that change won’t happen in days or weeks but probably in months.

So I’m putting this out there since I see a lot of the point threads and discussions on Guild Vs Guild organization. Wouldn’t having sub forums for each tier help with:

1. Tier discussion ( points )
2. GvG Organization ( so that posts don’t fall off the first page)
3. Server Recruitment ( different than guild recruitment)

Thoughts?

I was saying that the BG night time coverage is not as good as the JQ coverage which is what I was eluding to that KN which has good night coverage would mitigate. If you are saying BG has night time coverage on par with JQ then I didn’t realize since I only play NA primetime.

Here’s what I read and you can correct me where I miss things

BG and JQ want KN here because their NA night coverage would mitigate the poor NA coverage that SoR and BG have now while the ensuring that BG and JQ’s NA primetime remains competitive. This only solidifies a competitive 1v1 T1 environment between the First and Second servers. Everyone agrees that KN would NOT pose a threat to the current battle between First and Second.

Currently SoR’s mindset is that based on ELO and the points we can get, we can field a competitive NA primetime and remain competitive for 12 hours but without burning out we can’t keep a full 3 way battle so why burn ourselves out trying. Let’s be competitive when we can. However that messes with the First and Second server’s competition since JQ has better coverage.

What this argument proves however is that T1 is not WvWvW but 1v1 with a third server to provide balance. This whole SoR vs KN is only a discussion about 1v1 balance and not the entire tier’s balance. If we wanted TRUE WvWvW then SoR NA primetime needs to merge with a SEA guild to provide mitigation of nights gap and allow for a closer PPT.

So you could complain about coverage mitigating that or you could play the game and be competitive with what you have. If SEA guilds want to play in T1 then they have two options BG or SoR because SoR really isn’t going to fall soon.

I think that people forget that this is a game and the points don’t matter. Really, you don’t get anything for being in T1 other than forum cred. I’ve been playing WvWvW since November and I’ve had a great time with Rottenhood and Caramon as commanders just running in to tear stuff up. I’ve had fun with my guild on U.S.A just playing pick-up PvP as we run to hold points or take supply. What I have noticed though is that SoR has never had the “edge” to win that BG or JQ have now. We are a group of people who like to play the game and be competitive on our own time and we have learned to let slide the times that we can’t be competitive. We have had to because you can’t win in T1 without coverage ( a fact KN will come to learn first hand). We have had times of high momentum where we bring our A game and other times where we go work on other alts and that’s to be expected. Burn out will happen for T1 servers that don’t have good coverage and a large well to drawn on as people want to take a break.

SoR’s population has not dropped nor transferred out in large masses. Taking a break for a time is not equal to losing guilds. This is not SoR’s last gasp. What I would say is that when SoR fields, we play hard and we play to win that time we are online. However to the OP’s request, I would say that I will take time from working on my necro to jump back on my Engineer to crowbar some BG and JQ in the face after reset.

Play hard when you log and don’t sweat the rest.

The problem I have with Mortar is that when I’m in a tower, let’s say I’m in EB at QL. I have to get up on the small lip of the wall or my mortar rounds will explode on the wall and NOT on the ground. That leaves me MORE exposed for AOE damage or ranged shots. The way they did the firing on it is bugged.

So I’m running P/S in WvW because of 5 and Toolkit 4 which allows for some great blocking. P/S is pretty much the best option with the way people Zerg in T1. You can sit on the edge and run while doing far more AoE damage with coated bullets. I found that when I switched to this partial build my Power went from 1800 to 1500 and my Condition Damage went from 770 to 1200.

I have yet to get back into WvW to see what the damage decrease will be. For traits I went 0/30/20/20/0. I took off static discharge and added more health plus the 5% of vitality becomes condition damage. Right now I’m at 21000 health and 1700 toughness. I’m running a Knights pistol and a P/V/T shield. Base Critical Chance is still around 40% so it’s lower than I want. Even with Fury it will only get up to 60%. I’m going to do some testing tonight to see how it is since reset nights are always busy.

EDIT: For keeps I switch out tool kit for grenades.
So to sum: Armor : All Temple CD/Pre/Tough with Runes of Undead
Trinkets: Mix of Carrion, PVT, and Knight
Weapon: Knight Pistol with PVT shield slotted with Sigil of Force and Earth.
Working on more Precision.

I was thinking that with runes of undead and 10 in alchemy you could add 200 more condition damage. With more toughness you could add power.

So I was looking over a cheap way to respec my gear ( The price of ecto’s is difficult to regear). So the temple gear is condition/precision/toughness. Is there any merit to going with this stat offset or would full Rampager or Full Carrion be a better set?

Right now I have 3 pieces of zerker, 3 pieces of Rampager, Adventurer runes and carrion trinkets. Switching to this would be an addition to Tough and Condition that I don’t have.

I just wanted to say thanks for the invite. I only see 3 others on SoR so I won’t be rolling with the guild it seems however guild chat is great. If more engineers join NERF on SoR we could have ourselves some supply crate dropping fun. I think that people should join this guild if not as a primary than at least a secondary just for the wealth of knowledge. Everyone on chat is great and helpful. Just wanted to throw a shout out in support.

So I’m going to throw this out as just a question to the three servers. Where do people think they find the best small group fights? For me, I had some great fights on Blackgate Borderlands between JQ and SoR spawn. It seems to happen on the BL’s more frequently than on EB. I think we focus too much on the PvD zerg.

Thoughts?

I would ask, what was your opinion about the breakout events? They are a part of the balancing solution and gave players impenetrable siege. That’s quite a benefit.

Would love an invite. I only play with my engineer and would love to talk about builds with other engineers online. I am on SoR.

Nice fight last night on SoR BL between 8-9 EST. We lost our Garrison but we were able to push in and reclaim. Poor Carammon was ticked to lose a fully upgraded garrison but the group pvp that we had from DE to Garr was the most fun I’ve had in awhile.

Oh and the group of SF that were camping Spirit. Don’t kill people too close to the orb vets or they will rez and let me come back to cap you

Don’t modify stats but you can:
1. Increase the regen time of stamina so you can dodge a bit more
2. Increase the speed of swiftness
3. Increase the amount of supply you can carry.

The question about outmanned in my opinion shouldn’t let you pwn the zerg easier but to make you faster and harder to catch while also helping you hold your current towers. If you are farming supply at depots to repair your walls being hit by a treb and you have less people then let players carry more supply to offset that. Being faster and allowing you to dodge makes the difference when trying to get across a map to get into a tower and defend it since you have less people to defend.

None of the above makes someone over powered in pvp but allows one person to offset the lack of other players when it comes to siege repair and deployment.

Any members of this guild on SoR?

I think Cactus is pretty spot on with the weakness of server population. My suggestion was only a shot in the dark that perhaps if things were switched up people might have less of those full out blowouts. I’m surprised though that no one called me out on my horrible math since it’s 3 servers per bout instead of 2.

I agree that maps should be changed and an addition of more choke points. There are very few places where having the “high” ground means little more than being able to treb SM. The only other option is to change how the game is played rather than who you play against. I think perhaps developing “trap” points that allow you to lay traps for other players and create mines and such that are 1 use only siege might help break things up.

EDIT: On the point of PvP. I like PvP and I think coordinated PvP is fun in a group. Sadly on the team channel and within my current guild there is little coordination for small roaming pvp. I’m forced to either roam alone or go with the zerg. You either use teamspeak or the team channel. Few people group up like for a dungeon raid to just pvp.

In the last month there has been a lot of discussion in WvW about the role that transfers have played but also on the burnout that people suffered trying to fill coverage gaps and facing the same opponent all the time.

Right now the ebb and flow of WvW rankings is based one thing, server population/coverage. As people join one server or cease to play on a server the performance increases or decreases. Coverage can be mitigated if people are dedicated to 12 hour+ marathon sessions but then they crash. Burn out can also be a factor when you face the same opponent day in and day out for weeks on end. To mitigate the burnout you can either quit or transfer to another server. I do not think Anet wanted WvW to be a place where people burn out or become bored with the challenges.

What have we seen that motivates WvW? In terms of SoR and BG the promise of a new opponent increased interest and participation in WvW. When something is new or changes then it gets people interested. Also, when you face a new opponent you have to learn new strategies to compensate. What I think everyone would agree with is that different opponents on a regular basis is better. The downside to this is that not every server has a high population to compete with each other equally.

There are 24 servers and about 30 days in a month. My question would be, what would happen if you did a match up system where you played a different server every day and the rankings were based on points per month instead of weekly? We would have to sacrifice the lower tiers for the betterment of all the servers but it’s a thought. My other thought would be to redesign the Borderlands to each be unique instead of the cut and paste that was done.

I just do not see the current format scheme lasting without a change. Throwing WvWers titles and bonuses doesn’t fix the underlying issue with the format. Professional sports rotate between teams (the good and the bad ones regardless) and I think that perhaps we need a similar view.

I would say that if you want to give people a handicap, let the outmanned buff increase the amount of people you hit with AoE. That would potentially increase the damage output of the smaller servers.

Just a thought.

As a member of SoR, I just want to commend the fight TC has put up in the face of overwhelming forces. Peak NA time is really a nice place to play right now. TC has learned how to retake keeps very well and how to keep the zerg at bay long enough to take towers. Even if a tower is flipped, that’s still a loss of all upgrades to the defending team.

Some people would say that the battles would be boring due to the score and it can be demoralizing but I think every keep retake and every tower retake, no matter how short lived, is a victory because you are taking on a larger force. I remember that from when BG was in T2. Your strategies are coming together and I think it will help you for who ever you fight from now on.

Have fun guys. You are doing great and for the next 24 hours, I will enjoy our fights and wish you the best in taking us on.

Add range to Mortar by 200-300 and it would be much more useful. It’s already my preferred siege defense because of 5 and 4. The problem I have with grenades and mortar is that most of the time, there’s a lip or small wall on the battlements and if the enemies are too close, it won’t hit. I would love to have a siege engineer on battlements with a glass cannon rifle warrior near by.

I suppose my point was that structured pvp where the odds are more balanced is the only way to get around the zerg effect that happens in WvW. You do get points in sPvP per kill which helps get to the 500 point goal. In that realm, a PK is actually worth something to the team where in WvW a badge doesn’t help the server.

There have been many points as to how a roaming group can be an assistance to the team but at the end of the day, WvW was meant to cater to ALL players not just the PvP group which means that not everyone will find what they want in the game. Nature of the beast.

WvW is not PvP. PvP is PvP.

WvW was meant to give tasks to everyone on a server from PvP to PvE which is why it is included in the map completion. They wanted people in WvW. Supply may be PvE but at the same time you need the supply to fortify towers and build Siege so supplies are a required component of WvW. The main objective of WvW is to gain points by capturing towers/camps/keeps. If you are saying you don’t want to do Camps (which helps the server) or defend towers with siege ( the most effective against zergs ) then what you are really saying is “WvW” is not for me, I like PvP. In WvW you get badges for kills but that doesn’t equate to helping your server which is capping and holding territory.

People who work in small man groups need to take yaks, sentries, and camps to deny the supply of the other teams. It’s pretty much a must. TC did well yesterday keeping SoR from upgrading the TC keep. That has a huge impact so they couldn’t upgrade long range weapons.

You don’t like that then small groups need to scout and call out zergs. It also needs to deny the zerg supply. Zergs don’t form as a mass, it pulls in trailing players as they rally. If you camp between respawn and zerg ball you can kill the zerg supply as it’s moving. For example, when SoR zerg was being denied at QL or Durios, players were returning from SM. It would be very easy to cap them as they were running back. I would hate to see TC spec’d with glass cannon rifle warriors sniper shooting people leaving SM.

Lastly small groups NEED to hold smaller towers as it’s own forces take others. It may deny you your skills but it’s the most effective means of keeping a tower. Points matter, towers matter.

WvW is fine for small guilds however what I am reading is “I want to Player kill against moderately sized forces with my 5 man team.” That’s not WvW because that is what PvP was meant to be.

There are 2 engineer modes for WvW that I use. Anti zerg and Control.

1. Anti-Zerg
Anti-zerg consists of Pistols, grenades, and mortar for siege. Put 30 in firearms for coated bullets. Explosive shot (Pistol 1) is a spamable AoE. Also Explosive shot works through gates so when there is a zerg banging down a gate you just stand on the other side and spam it. Static shock and blowtorch are good for AoE and work through gates as well. I use them rather than grenades because I need to be mobile and they hit people without aiming where to throw. If you add the grenade kit then you get grenade barrage which is good for area damage on the fly. When I am up on walls, I use grenades and mortar. Mortar is nice for Concussion which is an area knock down. If you can put an enemy in a choke point then mortar shines.

2. Control
I switch out to rifle when I’m running around since net shot and overcharged are good for keeping people down. I normally set net turret for the additional net. Rifle is much better at yak killing than pistols. When I’m running, I will switch out mortar for supply crate. I use elixir b for the quickness when running around.

I’m sure there are other people better at WvW than me but thats what I use.

Only a WvW player would spend 10’s of silver on upgrades that have nothing to do with their own equipment.

Only a WvW player would see “Portals up in JP” and drop everything they were doing.