Guild Wars 2

AOE zerg only works due to culling and lack of awareness/scouts/use of TS.

Here’s what happens: 30 people all staring at door, maybe one looking behind as they autoattack door, no scouts to either side. 10-15 enemies bunch up just out of visual range, buff up, boons up, stealth up, charge in and wipe them using every skill they have. Due to culling issues they will fail to render before half the players are downed (at least).

Here’s what should happen: scout on right spots 10-15 milling around to the right, communicates this to the server TS. As soon as the enemies disappear, TS is told, guardian bubbles or puts down the ‘you shall not pass’ skill, mesmer throws down temporal curtain and everyone focuses on the incoming direction, negating the attack which relies on surprise and co ordination to win.

Next time it happens to you, click on the boons and boosts all the enemies have in their co ordinated attack then check out your own zerg’s lack thereof as most people run solo builds and don’t think to use group buffs etc.

Nerfing aoe damage won’t affect zerg behaviour, it will only make it worse.

Oh and I’ve yet to see any melee class that can land a series of hits on a dagger storming thief whilst taking enormous damage and tracking the running spinning thief. As a mainly LB/SB user, it’s a little difficult to switch to a melee weapon in combat just so I can go die trying to hit a spinning moving target that is dishing out enormous numbers.

shagworth shows exactly why JP needs removing from wvw (a group event).

‘camp the mesmer body’? So you want someone to stand in one spot staring at a dead body for 15 minutes on the off chance the thief is so inept that he doesn’t catch you asleep and insta kills you?

‘if you catch a thief he is lower in dmg and stats’? Since when? Did I miss nerf to thiefs so steal/mug/one attack/cnd/backstab no longer can kill in under one second?

Note I wasn’t talking about a perma stealth thief, noob instawin thief builds can run around Hills for ages- you might see him every now and then but he can easily outdistance you.

Net him? Wait, every class now has a net skill? must have missed that update too. HE’S INVISIBLE I can’t even target him much less snare him.

AOE the circle, ahh yes, i have infinite aoe’s to waste hitting a spot he is no longer in.

‘easy to spot where he’s going’ he’s faster than us, so yes, there he goes blink ah he’s invisible again.

I’m glad you can kill thiefs on characters half the level of ‘those thieves’. Personally I find it either very boring and tedious or a complete waste of my time to have to chase something that moves way faster than me and is invisible most of the time, whether it be a perma-stealth thief or noob thief. And of course decent thiefs will catch you off guard at some point in this endless chase and instakill your uplevelled classes. Not sure what tier you play in or the standard of play, I’ve seen a thief and mesmer keep 10-15 people occupied in Hills for a long time abusing stealth – 2/3 guarding mesmer body and every now and again the thief would wonder over and casually instakill one of the guards before anyone could react.

Tactics doesn’t solve all problems when the problem is thiefs. Properly thought out game mechanics would.

They should really remove JP from wvw altogether, so that people stop either camping it or doing it and taking up valuable fighters space for the real wvw going on outside the JP.

Make it it’s own instance of all 4 of the puzzles and let people score points in a completely separate event called ‘Jump Puzzle Wars’ which rewards badges of honour in the same way that wvw does- by killing enemies and capturing the chest area. Chest would no longer drop anything.

Quote: you effectively get perma stealth but its easy to counter

Rubbish. If it was ‘easy to counter’ then the OP would be countering it.

You cannot counter what you cannot see, if you cannot see it how are you supposed to know it’s there?

Try spending 15 minutes running around Hills trying to track down something that is invisible and can move faster than you then come back and tell us how much you enjoyed it.

Even a backstabbing noob thief can hide effectively inside the keep as their mobility allows them to escape even when seen.

Players shouldn’t have to be forever throwing aoe all over the place just on the off chance it actually hits the thief (in any situation).

Until they fix stealth so that it slows you down (you know, STEALTHY instead of completely invisible at mach 10) thiefs will continue to be completely OP and broken in wvw.

The only issues with D/d eles is their ability to escape even when downed, and the fact that boons trigger on attunement swop, coupled with massive healing (go read the d/d guide for how it’s done).

D/D ele can go from 1hp to full in the time it takes for him to run away and turn around- it’s almost as annoying as thiefs being able to reset a fight and re appear a few seconds later at full HP while your heal is still 10-15 seconds away from being off cooldown.

There is nothing wrong with ele’s aoe- if anything staff ele skills need a small buff and the 5 target cap needs REMOVING on all aoe skills.

There only other aoe ability that needs a nerf is the thief spin, they need to be able to be hit by arrows during it- but then thiefs aren’t going to get any real nerfs….

Anything that might hurt a thief is getting nerfed- I thought that was obvious by now.

Best way to stop zerg behaviour: make so many people play thiefs that the zergs can never see each other!

SFR is very strong DESPITE the VS late night/morning cap spree and the fact SFR are not good at organising cap teams for the camps that are so important in the overall score and for supplies, etc.

Imagine what they would be like if the major guilds get their act together, recruit a decent NA guild to battle the VS early morning shift AND learn to make at least two 5 man raiding parties of their guildies instead of leaving it to pugs to wonder aimlessly around the map being stomped by 20+ VS that are on camp duties.

Logged on for a bit last night to see how things were going.

Usual thing from SFR- no one camp capping, commanders focused purely on keep, no raiding party, VS turning up at any contested camp in a mob of 20-30, except for me, a guy from VoTF and a random, when we not only took the camp but held it against quite a few until the blob arrived and finally got us down. That was fun!

VS are MUCH better at the points game, capping camps and timing holds on them for the ticker. When I checked the score things were pretty even, except VS held 11 camps to our 4 (yes, 4 in TOTAL across all borders). That’s 35 points, or a 70 point swing in the score if you reverse it. All borderlands were full at that time, so it wasn’t a lack of numbers on our part.

Now VS can dominate in the numbers game in very late night/early morning we’re back to ‘VS is the best’ posts and I expect them to win easily this week unless our organisation can do a better job of clocking points when we have the numbers, which would mean commanders actually assigning a few people as raiding parties rather than just hoping someone will go and do it.

I’m not a fan of bunker builds or melee rangers in wvw as i find them less than useful in almost every situation I encounter during my wvw play time. Pets are too easily disabled to be relied upon to hit your target consistently unless they don’t know want they are up against- as soon as you see pet and GS/any melee weapon you know what you are facing and should be able to destroy them before they even reach you. 1v1 I have lost to exactly one 30BM built ranger in wvw, and that was because I was on the phone at the time and mistimed a skill.
Watching rangers using healing spring in an open field battle even 1v1 is just as amusing, although it can be useful in bigger groups and depending on your play style.

I have actually REDUCED my toughness in my wvw build as I have found that running the extra was pointless as in most cases where I die the amount of armor I have on isn’t relevant. Currently running at about 1500 toughness.

Unless they are specifically looking at nerfing dagger storm so that they can actually be damaged during that long spin by arrows AND stop them stealthing for 10 seconds afterwards then any other changes can be binned too. THAT is the most OP aoe in the game, luckily most thiefs are too scared to try using it or the forums would be full of complaints about it too (as well as backstabbers).

AOE more than single target damage? Let’s see: 8k steal/mug, 6k skill, 6k cnD (oh look I’m invisible again and your downed), not even using backstab, all in under a second.

Give me an aoe that does that sort of single target damage, takes less less one second to cast, etc and THEN think of nerfing it.

Any nerfs to most aoe’s (except dagger storm, which makes the thief INVINCIBLE against rangers for the duration) should be confined to sPVP only. A lot of aoe’s need buffing not nerfing if you ever want to move away from the zerg mentality.

I wonder what class the OP is.

Never had a problem with the downed state itself, but a couple of classes downed skills need changing- thief should NOT be allowed to move and stealth while downed, eles should not be able to whizz off while downed.

Quote: Im curious to see how SFR will fare during week-nights without PRX, will deso have a chance there?

Nope, unless you got 40+ zerg running around at 4-10am, which is what gets VS a cushion for when the rest of the players get on. With PRX around that advantage was negated and VS lost. Now they are gone I expect VS’s nightcrew to get them the win this week during the week unless we get some other group in to cover that period.

A lot depends on the commander as to which side they will target- but any time you see an outmanned buff on the opposition then you are going to focus on them to try and grab as much as possible – that’s the way things work.

Taking a bit of a back seat this week whilst we work out where we might transfer to now that the queues for prime time in SFR have got soooo long due to server hoppers in before the lock down, and RL stuff to do!

AH! Just looked at the scores and we are back to VZ taking over the scoring overnight as we lost PRX so don’t have the numbers later night/early morning to counter VS’s night crew.

Awaits incoming ‘we are the greatest’ comments from VS based solely on an ability to grab points in the small hours when you outnumber everyone. Prime time when all the servers have max numbers is when it shows which server is better.

I wonder if they could design a points system that is weighted so that when numbers are even you score equal points for say a tower, and then the points are lowered when you have say 2:1 in your favour and you hold that tower.

Would certainly make more sense than the current ‘who can cap the most when no one else is around’ which currently decides matches.

@I run a balanced build so 5k a hit on meteor shower seems like a lot for something that covers such a large area.

Don’t stand in it then, learn to move around and counter the casting of the eles, or better yet jump down there with some friends and 3 shot them if they are class cannons. Or roll a thief and 2 shot them then run back in without ever being seen.

How do you get ‘caught’ in a meteor shower- after the first tick you are either through the other side of it or you have dodged out of it, or if your near a decent group you’re ignoring it as it’s not hurting anyway.

Invisible burst class is much more annoying and drives people away from the game, but they won’t address that (CnD, 6 second recharge really?), nor the fact that one thief can run rings around 5-6 aoe’rs if the thief has even half the skill level of the other players and murder dolyaks at will.

No way of detecting an invisible player, able to stomp in stealth, pets lose the target etc and they decide to look at aoe..I’m convinced the head of development’s son plays backstab glass cannon thief and moans to his father every time aoe kills him which is why they are now looking at this whole thing backwards.

Currently, some players causing the AoE are able to do more damage to one person while also controlling a portion of the field, compared to a player with single target damage. ONLY IF THEY ARE DUMB ENOUGH TO STAND IN IT FOR THE FULL DURATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Even then they would struggle to do a fraction of what a thief can do to you in less than a second whilst you can’t see them.

I read this as saying ‘thiefs can’t aoe effectively and might actually die to it if 5 or more players spam aoe everywhere, so we’re going to nerf aoe.’

One person’s aoe controls nothing. One thief can occupy 4-5 players and if good enough can kill each of them in turn- downed= dead as thief can stomp FROM STEALTH. Yet they decide to nerf aoe….

While your looking at aoe’s , boost barrage, cut the recharge time, make it castable whilst moving and cut the cast time so ranger’s ONE aoe skill actually makes them feel like they can contribute in a fight.

I’m betting money that thief’s spinning elite skill gets no nerf and ends up getting a boost ‘to counter other classes aoe’.

So many problems with the game and wvw in general and they decide aoe needs to be looked at. Even d/d eles don’t do that much aoe damage- the problem with them is caused by boons and boon durations and boon on attunement swap, which is what you should look at along with thiefs in general.

Never heard anyone complain about aoe doing too much damage since the unnecessary 5 target nerf (which encouraged the build up of bigger zergs), and most decent teams can counter or move out of sustained aoe attacks. Burst single target damage is much more likely to annoy people as can be seem by the large number of threads complaining about your beloved thief class.

As of now we are left in limbo, the fact you were thinking of making changes should never have been made public until everything had been tested and then you could run a public test period of a week or so and get our feedback before tweaking changes.

Any changes to aoe need to be balanced by changes in other areas for all classes, and you really need to break the link between pve farmers exploits and wvw – just design pvp versions of the skills like happened in GW1 and you will have a much happier customer base.

As it is now, you are alienating people.

Skale venom is so weak it’s not really an issue at all.

Consumables are there to be used, so use them.

If you don’t that’s your problem. They don’t cost the earth, you can farm the materials to make them or farm to make the money to buy them.

The real issue is why so many people run around WITHOUT them on, weakening their server as a result.

Besides which, the boosts they give aren’t game breaking either way.

Basing the prestige system purely or mainly on damage done will be terrible. ‘quality kills’ – by this do you mean thiefs will get no credit for their ‘steal/mug, one skill, cnd you’re downed and thief used a macro to do it in under 1 second’ type kills? Killing people with aoe without dying yourself takes a lot more ‘skill’ than instakills while not being able to even SEE what killed you then stomping whilst in stealth…

Base it on damage dealt and you will make all support classes disappear and everyone will run glass cannon to maximise their chances of gaining ‘prestige’. Add that to an aoe nerf and you’ll see piles of thiefs and d/d eles running around and not much else.

They need to have thought out very carefully the Prestige system so that it includes defensive actions, support classes, etc and not just ‘burst single target class wins’.

Throw down a fast ballista, or superior arrow cart if you’re afraid of getting a repair bill if your so kitten scared of getting in there.

Any size zerg on a higher tier server should just roll straight over them without even slowing down- it’s only when you get a lot of solo built pve ‘rs with no useful group skills (and not on the server ts) that this sort of thing can happen. If your zerg isn’t covered in boons and heals then people aren’t doing their jobs properly.

I remember holding off the entire VS zerg with one bally and a cart and 4 of us at Danelon as it seemed the zerg was convinced there was more of us hiding just around the corner, right up until our zerg came around from behind them and trapped them nicely between us and them.

Ele aoe is kitten weak and doesn’t move, so even walking through meteor shower you get hit maybe twice and that’s only if your number comes up with the 5 man hit restriction on aoe’s.

If you were having problems then switching servers was the way to do it- this option will be denied to you after 28th, so if you hurry you will be able to get back in time!

Sadly almost all of my guild work for a living, have families, etc so doing ‘nightshifts’ isn’t possible, and the only time we can put together a raid is during ‘primetime’.

The problem that needs solving is the removal of Jp from the wvw system, as it has no place in the scheme of things other an being an annoyance at peak times when some pve guild decides to bring in 30 players and camp the JP ‘for a laugh’ while all your week’s worth of hard work and fully upgraded keeps goes up in smoke. Badges of HONOUR should not be a JP reward, they should be earned on the battlefield by completing tasks for your server (including defending and escorting dolyaks).

Disabling mesmer portal skill in the JP would be a great first step while you figure out where to get rid of the JP to.

Queue times on SFR have gone crazy this week since the announcement of the end of free transfers soon, and also because we are winning a lot more pve players are logging to take a look at what is going on.

Sadly with the loss of our main night crew it’s going to be a lot tougher in the coming week where we will have long queues at prime time and outmanned buff during the small hours where VS will score heavily, then the pve’re will look at the score and not log in and VS will stack points late night and into the morning.

Good luck with your pets when you run into stealthed culled thief TEAMS- at which point your wonderful pet is completely useless as it loses the target then wonders around aimlessly while the team thiefs burst you done in about a second.

Nerfing aoe will lead to even bigger zergs and even more thiefs and d/d eles than there is now.

Don’t generally have a problem against thief on necro- their burst isn’t going to take down my near 25k hp, near 1800 toughness build before they are suffering with all sorts, even if they catch me with my running weapon set on. If they are dumb enough to put their house up and stealth it, 3 wells and 5 marks later they are downed when they come out of stealth. Not to mention spectral, life steal, etc.

Guardians are a tough fight if they are decent player, rangers are a bit of a joke, especially melee ones who use healing spring- after 15 seconds their choice is run or die, and running is a little hard through marks. Boons are a bad idea to use when their is a necro around:-)

Mesmers are not hard either, just eat up those clones as fast as you can and be ready to dodge the burst. Most mesmers can’t handle conditions well and if you slow or cripple them they will be struggling.

Running flesh golem might seem strange as an elite, but once you have charged a couple enemies with it you will see how useful it can be when you are caught out in the open field against 1,2,3 enemies. remember to switch it for something else if you are running zerg fights!

Necro is very good 1v1 against almost anything if played well in wvw, as you naturally have around 50k’s worth of HP, decent damage output and the ability to use spectral can negate almost any burst.

Causic: Because in zergs you can place boons and heals, and if you nerf aoe then the zerg becomes unstoppable, hence you will see MORE zergs. Nerfing aoes will mean a zerg becomes an even better tactic.

Nerf aoes and defenders will be able to bunch up on top of wall and ignore aoes- not that it will do them much good unless they are planning a portal bomb or a stealth rush…

Stacked elementalist AOE’s are not what affect zergs anyway unless they are of the ‘back up there is some enemies’ variety of pug who are not organised and not on TS. The only thing that needs a nerf on d/d eles is the boon generation.

It’s single target burst damage that needs addressing, not scratching annoying aoe that only kills you if you are dumb enough to stand in it for it’s full duration without anyone capable of throwing a heal around.

It’s already hard enough to kill a well organised ball- nerf aoe any more and it will become impossible. Imagine a ball of 20 players all with some sort of aoe heal ability- hell I might even start using healing spring if they nerf aoe any more than they already did, 3-4 of them running side by side and with a couple of guardians, ele running water and a necro using healing well and skills all moving as a bunch and we can turtle all the way across the map and your aoe’s wouldn’t scratch us. Throw in 30 pugs tagging along and we’ll waltz across the map and you will find it impossible to stop.

Fantastic! Finally we see where ANet are taking the game- THIEF WARS 2, with JUMP PUZZLE 2 for afters. The devs obviously play thief. Anything that can affect a thief will be nerfed.

Nerfing aoe damage whilst leaving thiefs able to burst down players in under a second will lead to two things: a lot more thiefs running around, and even BIGGER zergs.

The only thing that slows down zergs atm is aoe, nerf that and how does it then become anything other than who can ball up and out heal damage better.

Picture the scene post nerf: 10 of us run up to your gate (you can’t hit us with any meaningful siege- arrow carts just make people laugh), plant a couple of rams and the other 8 all use their healing skills, boons etc to keep each other alive. Quick! AOE them! Sorry, we nerfed it. Twenty people on walls, all throwing down as much aoe as they can, and 8 of us will be laughing at you. Break down gate, turtle our way to lord room, area deny you and capture keep/tower.

40-50 man zerg would literally be impossible to stop out on the open field, so it then becomes a game of ‘who can go around capping the most towers’ in a big merry go round.

ANet, you need a PLAYER from each class sitting down with your dev team before they come up with any more stupid ideas and drive away the rest of the population.

Oh well, back to waking up to a VS map as they PvD overnight and build up a 30k lead, and back to hearing them say ‘we are the greatest’ unless SFR gets some large replacement night coverage. Interesting that the weeks when VS can’t dominate in the small hours of the morning they end up second or third.

SFR lf night capping guild to counter the 30+ VS pvD specialists!

Elementalist’s damage doesn’t need a nerf- just tone down boon gaining on weapon swaps and make them a bit easier to take down. Nerf their ability to get back up from downed so they can sit on the floor with the rest of us with their hand up- tired of having them run out of a tower, burst their d/d skills, downed, up and back in tower, or downed on walls, up, away, ressed.

As a main ranger, nerfing aoe would mean the one aoe skill we have would be (even more) useless.

Here’s what would happen if you nerf aoe- there would be even more thieves running around than their are now, forcing everyone to run around in zergs of thiefs. You can tell the devs play thief, one of them must have been killed by aoe and now wants to nerf it.

If they want to break up zergs in wvw, BUFF aoe by removing the 5 man limit- then there would be a penalty for all bunching up in a big group.

It’s about time they started making pvp only skills – keep the 5 man nerf for pve, release it for pvp.

Necro is great fun if played well in wvw. Mine runs quite a lot of vit and toughness, mainly use staff and x/x, and have 3 wells and flesh golem equipped, obviously greater marks and staff traits and targetable wells. I can literally throw down marks in front of an incoming zerg, throw the wells down on me then switch out to spectral, eat, fear, drop out, heal up on a target with piles of conditions and walk off still breathing.
The well that converts conditions to boons and boons to conditions stuff is just awesome in ruining co ordinated boon runners.

As I’m throwing mainly conditions around I don’t get many badges but after collecting so many on my other toons that’s not my aim any more- supporting the server and achieving objectives is. Avoiding dieing isn’t the main aim, but it takes a LOT of damage to take me down and my heal is awesome.

Great thing about necro if you are running around on your own- most thiefs are sensible enough to avoid you, and the ones that don’t soon learn the error of their ways – 5 marks and switch to off set, cripple them and lifesteal, wait for them to tent and then throw the wells on that spot, when they come out of stealth they are either downed or dead. sometimes you might even have to spectral:-). And watching the damage a flesh golem charge does to a thief is just worth it. Try it, makes me laugh every time.

Bad prime time last night from where I was sitting, but then when you have full BL but no one capping camps (I ask, but no one cares that we either had 5 or 6 of 6 camps on our own BL owned by the enemy most of the time, and I cba trying to rally up a pug squad that falls apart after they hit opposition or die, tired of trying to solo them then being run over by 2-3 enemies just before claiming guy goes down)) it starts to get tedious.

On the plus side, no matter how badly we play the points game from now to the end of the week, we should knock up a win! Next week will be a different matter and we will need to up our game I feel.

Having said all that, had some epic fights against the invisible le zerg (stealthed and culling, always a laugh) when we were badly outnumbered – 11 of us, 30-40 of them, and we actually won once! Maybe those camp guards were just too tough… good to see AoA’s organisation is starting to pay off, although we have a long way to go before we are as good as some others. Good thing is, le zerg is getting so predictable that with a bit more practice we will time all our skills right and all we will see as you render are your dead bodies;-)

Keep up the good work all, best week in wvw as far as facing two good servers is concerned.

Have posted elsewhere about the huge influx of new players and the problems the impending paid server transfer caused during prime time last night.

Here’s what happening already since they announced it- Tier 1 servers are getting a flood of new players which is making the queues at prime time a lot longer. They aren’t on the server wide TS and a lot of them aren’t even running lvl80 toons, not following commanders and generally it has become a mess. VERY noticable on SFR last night and it had a huge impact on the score.

My guild is actually thinking of moving OFF SFR as we foresee the main problem being not being able to get any of our raid team on to the wvw servers at prime time due to the influx of ‘pugs’ prior to the cut off date.

People who transfer to tier 1 after the cut off are going to be disappointed when they find 30 mins to an hour queues for all BL.

Nothing wrong with posting farm spots if you think you have found one and want to share it with the community.

There seems to be two types of people- those that want to try and help other people in the game and then there are those that post:

Why would you ruin the game and my farm spot by doing this.

Which shows they don’t care about anyone else they are just out for themselves and anyone revealing anything remotely helpful that might affect them should be treated as an act of high treason.

Welcome to real life types of people in an MMO.

Yep, my asura toons seem to jump a lot better than my charr…

Just make them all tradeable, then the problem doesn’t exist any more- buy the ones you want, sell the ones you don’t.

Completed all JP’s ? Title should be ‘console platform player’ or’Jump Puzzle 2 member’.

Maybe someone that completes all their jump puzzles should be mailed a platform game to play on their DS so they don’t miss all that jumping…

No. No. No. The LAST thing wvw needs is any more pve elements. It’s bad enough that we get them in doing their jump puzzles and ruining numbers that are needed to defend towers, keeps etc and ruining the server’s chances of winning a match up (which by the way pve’rs, is what it is about), but adding more pve content? Great way to lose the real wvw’rs..it’s annoying enough to have to wait in a queue seeing your server’s score dropping then to finally get logged in to find that due to 20-30 JP’ers you have lost all your upgraded towers and keeps and you’re now badly outnumbered.

wvw is for pvp. Map completion has nothing to do with having more pve in wvw- just get in, tag all the points that are owned by your server and get out, wait a week until your server moves position and grab some more- in 3 weeks you will finish the maps with a bit of luck. And a word to the wise- if all you want to do is grab poi’s etc then do it at a quiet time for your server and on a day when it isn’t crucial to your server to have full BL’s with everyone joining in the fighting.

Once you see it a few times you will get used to it- and there are several very effective counters to it, guardian skill springs to mind as well as mesmer temporal curtain, etc.

Of course effective communication helps too- get most people on your server ts or vent and it becomes much less of a problem as you know which guilds tend to run it and can just call it and be ready to counter. If they back off , bunch up and suddenly disappear it’s quite a large clue!

This is not a platform game, nor is it called Jump Puzzle 2. The one thing we don’t need is yet more jumping puzzles.

ANet should release a separate game for all you lovers of jump puzzles, so you can leave GW2 and stop asking for more.

The lightning strikes detoriate your siege within the keep, etc so eventually they will be broken if you let the enemy hold them long enough.

It’s been a refreshing change over the last couple of weeks not to wake up to seeing VS on 400+ points from their night crew and our small lead turning into 30k points deficit overnight. Glad we finally got night coverage to slow theirs down or compete with them.

What we see in prime time is that Deso are up for the fight and are matching us for points, whilst VS seem to be unable to change tactics from ‘hide in keep’ or ‘run in 50 man zerg’, although there was some evidence last night that they developed some 10-20 man camp capping teams.

Our commanders still don’t get the camp capping points game and focus on the big prizes to the detriment of supplies and camps, meaning we frequently lose out on a 40-50 point turnaround on ticker. So far it’s working out ok but I’ve noticed Deso have noticed and are taking advantage of it whenever possible.

Favourite parts of last night- taking upgraded camps off VS on our own BL, should never have got to be upgraded…some decent small fights and a lot of running around on my ranger. Standing watching deso and VS small teams fight over a camp, one deso emerged victorious as I stood and watched having waved earlier- and then he came and attacked me! Bah! He had to die, was a good fight though and he knew how to play his toon, so hats off.

This week has been a lot of fun and I have gained a lot of respect for a lot of Deso players. Not seen much of VS players except either huge zergs or double thief (and necro or mes) teams.

Most of the battles I am involved in in wvw involve guild actions against other guilds where being inside all the stuff we lay down is the only way to survive- your pet will go merrily off outside the area and instantly die. And if it isn’t on attack mode then it’s fairly useless anyway (apart from long cast time F2 skills…).

Yes pets survive in disorganised pug zerg fights where everyone stands at max distance spread out all over the place and pets then are quite effective- but most people will just back out of range or lose the pet (which will miss most of the time anyway on a moving target).

I’m told higher level fractals pets are completely useless as they have no agony resistance.

Most dungeons bosses do huge aoe effects and unless you micro manage your pet (and it responds in time- recall doesn’t really work that well) it ends up dead fast.

And I play ranger most of the time, I must be a masochist!

Conclusion: if you are lucky, and you see them coming (which means spending half your time turning around 360’s whilst trying to run somewhere….), then you have a chance of surviving their 8k steal/mug, 6k skill, 6k cnd all done in less than a second IF you are superman and can react INSTANTLY after that steal. A good thief will rip any of the above suggestions to shreds, and if he doesn’t then he will wonder off leaving you swinging at thin air and running in patterns while he is half way across the map.

Backstab thiefs are easy kills most of the time- as soon as you see the house pop up hit charr racial slot skill, qz, barrage on it and by the time they realise it’s not a normal barrage they will be lying around downed when their house stealth comes off.

P/D thief played well will rip you to shreds and there isn’t a lot you can do about it, I only wish rangers had a skill that hit as fast as unload…

Yes, you can. Just don’t expect to get into most end game parties where your BM build is next to useless as pets die instantly. Not much better in wvw where most of the time if you try and attack anyone in a zerg your pet will be coming back within seconds having died.

Sadly the ‘main mechanic’ doesn’t function very well in end game situations unless you like solo.

It’s all part of the mechanics of the game- your one decent aoe skill can be dodged, reflected, miss, blocked, obstructed and retaliated, and to top it off your two main damage skills either require you to stand in one spot while the long animation occurs or takes so long to fire any decent class can avoid 50-90% of the damage.

Oh almost forgot, only hits a maximum of 5 people (and those 5 targets will change all the time as the arrows fall).

Welcome to the ranger class.

It’s because it’s broken that I play it- playing a ranger in wvw is a lesson in trying to make a broken class work for you. There are so many things wrong with ranger it actually makes it fun and a challenge to play well in wvw.

If you wanted no challenge go roll a thief.

Make them all tradeable, problem solved. You might want to spend all your time in FoTM, I don’t want to spend any, there could be a decent market if ANet wanted it.

Mention of ‘community’ all the time not one mention of the solo players and those that prefer to do things solo or have to because of RL commitments. These solo players are in guilds etc but either can’t or don’t want to ruin squads by joining and then going afk half way through, ruining the whole run for the majority.

Looks like it’s going to be ‘join a group to do it’ or you are going to miss out.

Would like to read what they are doing for this large section of the community- whether it’s dungeons (no dungeon gear, you can’t trade the tokens), FoTM (no ascended gear, can’t trade tokens), basically been left behind, and the major problem with the new fractals system is that big break point at level 10 agony- a player lvl1 joining a level 11 fractal will spend 90% of the time on the floor, and it would be even worse at higher levels, so it isn’t really a solution to lfg lvl1 fractals, may have to disappear after first run (so not gaining any benefit from that run and still stuck at lvl1 and 4 more disgruntled players).

Thief will get a new rank based skill (after 100 kills): instakill, 30 second cooldown, just target the chosen player and they will be instantly dead and loot will appear next to you, which will save them the bother of having to move to the player before killing them in under 3 second with 3 skills.

They will need to be very careful in any new skills based on ranks, and indeed on how you go about achieving those ranks and titles, as if it is based on say, number of kills, then certain classes will have massive advantages other others and it would also mean even less people will be interested in defending dolyaks, towers, etc.

Leaderboards will also be terrible, it is will encourage players to do whatever it is that will push them up that leaderboard.

Nice build. Try rolling a charr and replacing lightning reflexes with the racial skill (fury and might, yummy) and you’ll enjoy it even more. Good for one vs one and turtles.

I’m still not into melee builds on my ranger in wvw or healing spring (unless we are turtling and likely to stay in that spot for a while), mesmer null field is quite good too, I find being able to kite around and time rolls/dodges and knock backs on LB/SB build more effective for my style of play. I just can’t put away my LB, I find 3,2 very useful after qzing and charr racial skill barrage which hits at the same time without me having to stand next to a pile of enemies who will wipe a sword wielding ranger in seconds.