Guild Wars 2

trailofsalt.6571:

Is that the idea? Throw more rewards and shiny things at new and veteran players so hopefully nobody notices how this mode still has zero balance? How can you have a competitive game mode with the current state of balance? Rewards are great, but the power creep has gotten absurd. You do realize that there are many who have quit over the past year because the skill floor in the game has gotten to absolute zero right?

Failure to address the horrible balancing in the game mode will render the good will of trying to breathe new life into the game mode pointless. The short term excitement will revert back to the same old drab story about how awful it is to PvP in this game. I commend your efforts for trying to make WvW desirable. However, you have got to start balancing this mode. A start would be designating WvW as a separate balancing over the other modes.

I left about three months ago and as exciting as it is to see this new patch, I will not even bother coming back to the same old cheesy, low skill, low risk high reward combat that you have turned PvP into. I will be watching to see if balancing is addressed into the future.

Sugar coating is a nice way of putting it.

Many of us are playing this game and no other and watching as it is destroyed from inside.

mistsim.2748:

back after 1.5 year hiatus, and honestly I’m not exactly sure what’s going on. back in the power meta, we had viable midliners, frontliners, backliners, and focus squad specs. even when you got caught out of position, you still had a chance to react. maybe you’d get spiked for 11k when making a mistake, but at least you had ONE chance to blow your CD’s and regroup with your squad. now it seems one mistake = 50 stacks of bleeds and instant death, unless youre spamming multiple condi clears preemptively. I’ll argue that condis dont really matter now, whereas they mattered before. cripple, poison, immob, chill soft cc’s plus status effects like daze and stun – it was a decent amount of condis to deal with and they all mattered. now you have to deal with these PLUS the unending spam of burns and bleeds.

so I’m wondering if I’m just mistaken. I’m really digging the WvW love with the recent patch, and the rewards finally seem decent. but now the gameplay is utter kittene. is it me, or does the community feel this way as well?

The lack of skills to mitigate the massive gains in condition damage has become a true ‘lack of care’ issue on Anet’s part.

Arzen Solorit.3591:

This has probably already been put out there before, but I’ll say it again since we don’t have this option. Please give us this option since not all of your jump puzzles have the “no fly zone” feature. For example, accidentally gliding while doing the Troll’s Revenge jumping puzzle makes me never want to try the jumping puzzle again because if you fall off at any point, it’s a reset. Again, this would be an amazing quality of life feature that would save the player base a headache.

P.S.: I understand how holding the space bar causes the gliding and I should only tap the button, but sometime when making a jump, I’m moreover focused on the spot where I’m landing rather than the space bar.

I agree and we’ve been saying this since the beginning.

Most keyboards can’t be ‘adjusted’ in how long they are going to stay in a ‘pushed down’ state and JUMPING can’t be done when this happens and it’s most of the time.

Give us the ability to control flying abilities as we asked for the month flying was released.

Jumping for some of us is almost impossible with bad camera angles, bad keyboards and connections to the servers which are not in sync, so with flying added to that mix, you are telling us we are not allowed to even try to jump.

DanAlcedo.3281:

Hi guys!

Because there is an Ex Pack on the horizon , i thought " Lets make some money for it"

Everybody is talking about the Afk Farms ( Doric turret farm and Bittefrost Nec Farm) but nobody could really tell me how much g/h you make there.

So i gave it a try and this are the results. (see pic below)
I also took a pic from a normal silverwaste run to compare.

Note: I did not kill anything myself at the Doric Farm. Only Turret kills.

So basically you upscale the events without participation and reap benefits from cheating.

Wow.

zinkz.7045:

I am sure the hordes who have left WvW will come flooding back with this change, oh wait, the lag is still is worse than ever, the meta is still worse than ever, the combat still more tedious than ever, the population balance is still non-existent, match-ups are still competitively a completely worthless joke, class balance is still non-existent, the guild arenas are still too small/uses PvE rules,the game mode still so poorly designed that PvDoor and avoiding fights in a mass scale PvP mode is the thing for PPT, etc, so maybe not…

Really it is just the PvP rewards all over again, rather than addressing the actual issues, all it will largely achieve is a temporary boost in numbers from “players” after shiny things not really interested in the game mode, that will end once those shiny things have been acquired.

Just another Anet band-aid.

+1 x 17 million characters

“yak won T1 because jade and black gate gave up on tuesday.”

This is very true.

Linking is a joke in any case – the “beta” test of linking needs to end.

Princess.7584:

atheria.2837:

Yak’s Bend has nowhere near the population that BG is fielding 24/7 right now and has for many weeks so I am not sure how your statement makes any logical sense.

Being locked right now, before the next update is a horrid thing to do.

Undo the Beta linkings – let the servers “play their way” again.

Come play on all three servers and then tell me that YB should be locked.

Didnt you just win your last match? Not as outnumbered as you think you are.
In case its lost upon you, there are meant to be red dots to fight.

Do you know we’re linked?

Links are bad. Links destroy WvW.

Sarika.3756:

I would rather just see GM’s in the borderlands to deal with the trolls and flames. A little bit of enforced civility wouldn’t hurt the game.

We have been asking for this since the beginning of the game.

The vileness of some people’s gossip and lies spread like wildfire – players who aren’t known by anyone can be destroyed in a matter of minutes and for all time on that server.

Trolls rule much of the time and many of them wear tags.

Anet ignores them.

So Anet is telling us if we bought a tag for 300 gold we can’t use our tags unless we have five people to group with us?

Or did I misread that little tidbit?

300 gold… I can imagine refunds will be the next thing players are going to ask for since that would be incredibly unfair on so many empty maps – and I mean empty.

How are people just logging in going to find anyone if a person who CAN tag up must spam the map or team continually to find four more players…?

Adzekul.3104:

Admin edit: Adding link to today’s full blog post. (Thank you Adzekul.)

“If you’ve been playing on the same world for at least three weeks”

Respect

Hope this has a positive impact on the game mode. My feelings on the other 4 points are mixed, but the weekly reset idea might simply overrule those concerns. Let’s see how it works.

Legendary back item from WvW. Looks good in principle, but will wait until full details of all tiers are posted. Some bright spark in team chat said you had to be in Tier 1 to get it, but I see no evidence for this.

The pressure to win skirmishes might be a problem, though. Will wait for more details before I decide if I like or dislike this aspect.

An update that we could have rejoiced for would have the following in it:

The return of tournaments

Unlinking all servers

Not destroying present rewards for ‘new’ rewards

Announcing that all employees who work on GW2 will be _playing GW2 with us

These changes have been asked for since their removal or inceptions.

I am sure many could add to the list but these seem to be the most ‘wanted’ by those who remember WvW ‘back in the day’ when we felt like we were part of something good, not forced into links that don’t do a thing for any of the servers other than keeping people from knowing one another well.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Here’s the full blog post: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/updates-to-world-vs-world-skirmishing-and-rewards/

Enjoy!

Not being warned in game email that transfers will be stopped (locked all of a sudden) and that we will be penalized for moving this close to any update is not very sporting or forward thinking.

If you are going to make such big changes, how about warning us?

It doesn’t take any more time to craft an email to all player than it does to answer here in the forums – where most players almost never use.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Yak’s Bend is among the highest worlds in terms of play hours and ranks gained, which is the primary metric we use to determine which worlds we lock each week.

Yak’s Bend has nowhere near the population that BG is fielding 24/7 right now and has for many weeks so I am not sure how your statement makes any logical sense.

Being locked right now, before the next update is a horrid thing to do.

Undo the Beta linkings – let the servers “play their way” again.

Come play on all three servers and then tell me that YB should be locked.

AFK Farmers in Silverwastes.

AFK by the score in WvW.

AFK in many other maps, but since I do Silverwastes and see them all the time, and they do scale the events, I think it’s time for the powers that be to put a timer down to two minutes.

I can’t think of a single player who is ‘active’ who will not ‘move’ in two minutes.

anduriell.6280:

that’s not correct, you pointed out just the buffs, now lets see the nerfs

• Sb ranger reduced to 900
• spirits lost mobility, thus nerf to spirits
• sword dps nerfed due slower 3rd attack
• trait empathic bond moved to WS traitline destroying any build variety
• nerf after nerf for the dps of the only 2 pets that can be used for pvp.
• nerf in Axe4 making that skill completely unreliable to hit moving targets
• nerf to rangers main condition source sharpened edges in a 66%.

Druid

• nerf to druid healing, nerf to druids seed of life, lunar impact.
• nerf to druid access to CA, thus healing.
• nerf to trait lingering light.
• nerf to grace of the land, Now you do 5% less dps with 5 stacks.

And those are the ones i can remember.

Also the new trait light on your feet is a complete trash. How it is written in the description is how it should work, that is fun removes the unwanted flanking mechanic in a ranged weapon in a game that uses autotarget and autofacing and is a reason to get into the trait line severely nerfed because sharpened edges, and they can remove the condition modifier when dodge which is useless, who in their sane mind would be wasting dodges just for the 10% extra damage in bleeds.

New Strider defense is crap or bugged right now. That trait should work with any weapon and not just with sword\axe. You have to evade attacks for God’s shake.

Nerfs to torch, benchmarks shows the lost dps is around 1k. Standard Condi Druid can pull easily 35k in raids.

SotP should had it’s CD reduced to 60 after the nerf or even less. It is really easy to corrupt or remove the boon and you wasted 75 seconds skill.

That people at anet don’t seem to have any clue what they are doing… Just changes for the lol.

Time to change the name of the game to “Nerf Wars”.

Nafets.1238:

Original Version (game release)

Rampage with your pet, gaining stability, fury, and swiftness. You and your pet also grant might to each other when you attack.

Stability (20s): Cannot be knocked down, pushed back, pulled, launched, stunned, dazed, floated, sunk, feared or taunted.
Fury (20s): 20% Critical Chance
Swiftness (20s): 33% Movement Speed
Duration: 20s

After a couple iterations it used to pulse boons every 3 seconds and now, with yesterdays patch it’s again a one time cast?

I don’t get this balance.

I don’t think any Ranger or Druid who isn’t using condi ‘gets’ this patch.

I am tired of my pet being dead before I can get a heal off many times.

Why? Because he is traited to take damage for me, but in doing so dies so quickly that he’s not a factor in many 1v1’s in WvW (and 1v2+ is usually a dead druid).

Why are pets given less than half the health in WvW? Why not allow them to be the same and give us a chance to use them in the largest and best part of GW2.

15k health for pets in WvW when my PvE pet of the same name has 27+k health isn’t fair, never has been.

Give us our pets in full and allow them to ‘grow up’ no matter what that means for achievements or whatever.

WvW should not be a Ranger penalization zone and it is with nerfed pets every time we enter.

ZhouX.8742:

It’s gotten to the point that I don’t even necessarily look at what ranger got in terms of buffs / nerfs now as I know most of it is a nerf.

It’s that I now look at all of the other classes and based on the nerfs or buffs they received, I then know if my ranger is more or less viable without even needing to look at our patch notes to make an assessment , this is how bad our balance patches have gotten.

—

I think for PvE condi roles, it helps a lot of course.. Shortbow still will not be anything in WvW / PvP and it seems that is what they’re trying to do but it’s not bad for PvE and I like using my ranger in PvE.

—

Smokescale has been nerfed so much with not one buff compensation on other pets in regards to actual skill play. I don’t mind it being nerfed when I say that, but I do mind getting nothing of value out of the other pets for those nerfs to actually mean something. It would be different if it was a scenario of ‘We nerfed X but made Y , Z more viable to perform in light of X that was performing well over the others’ but no , it’s just a flat nerf with no compensation to bring other pets up to par.

I think overall, it’s not too bad given that a lot of other classes got shaved and they’re slowly trying to reduce the burst / passive skill gameplay but just feel , like always, they are not approaching ranger balance the right way in terms of PvP.

It has so much potential to be a higher skill cap class with the weapon ideas and pet abilities , but they just keep it locked down so much and very 1-dimensional.

Smokescale had little chance of living in WvW as it was, with the nerf it becomes a ‘never use in WvW ever again’, pet.

AEFA.9035:

in regards to that im more interested about

Light on Your Feet: This trait now enhances flanking/behind aspects for short bow skills.

anyone care to test this out? how enhance is this trait? or can someone explain the difference now?

and LOL at ANet buffing sword, already dominating with this weapon already, thank you ANet.

All they did was return the skills to their previous state…

anduriell.6280:

Durzlla.6295:

Crapgame.6519:

HotHit.6783:

Crapgame.6519:

Obtena.7952:

For instance, has it ever occurred to you that Druid has ‘awful’ damage for a reason? Perhaps that’s intended?

I have no dog in this fight but I do have to question what reason could that be or intent?

I guess it depends on the format of play but I do not see a reason for “awful” damage say in WvW. Just one example. Maybe that isn’t fair because, well, I think most of us know that format is broke…

How does the Druid’s sustain compare to other classes? Is balance there all things being equal, if possible, outside the player skill?

Put simply, game balance. Every playstyle should have a weakness in a game like GW2. If a build is too mobile, damaging, survivable and supportive all at once then there is no reason to play any other build. This doesn’t mean that every build should be able to compare itself to another, trading off a point of damage for a point in survivability and the like at a one to one rate.

The druid traitline focuses on healing and amplifying allies, as an elite spec, that should make the traitline definitive of what your build is supposed to do. As an elite spec, the goal is to dedicate yourself to support, by the nature of having more healing abilities you are more survivable so that means you have to pay in mobility or damage. Since rangers have good mobility and it’s difficult and more against theme to reduce that with Druid, damage has to the part that suffers.

It’s not that your damage is reduced for being a druid either, but that you miss out on damage options by taking Druid, are encouraged to take healing options over damage or active defence options for better astral force gain and results in basically no damage output in celestial avatar form. Damage output seems like it was always intended to be the weakness of a druid.

Interesting take, not that I disagree but I guess my point is that other classes have more sustain. Warrior and Ele come to mind. Be that has it may I don’t see much balance regardless of class.

Just my opinion anyway. No big

The thing with those two classes is it’s self sustain, where a Druid has group or team sustain, and also is extremely supportive. Think of going Druid like going bunker Guardian back in the day, you trade away your damage potential for ridiculous sustain for you and your allies. However, Druid doesn’t have quite as much self sustain as they because they also have a lot more mobility, and group sustain/support.

Right you don’t mean water ele, Right?

i’m tired of seen the immortal bunker ele in clerics that magically swap to air and the amount of damage is astounding. When not in water healing the zerg how the druid is supposed to do.

Hey let’s not forget Ventari revenant which can heal for a lot more than the druid. And then swap to whatever instance and begin the song of the mad output DPS.

Yeh sure lotta balance this game has.

Totally agree with you, this ‘balance patch’ is an insult and a slap in the face to all Rangers and Druids who don’t want to use condi and DO want to use healing and power.

Kenshi Maru.5489:

THIS IS NOT HOW YOU DO CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK

It was very constructive and honest.

PLEASE START DOING WHAT’S BEST FOR THE END USERS, not what’s easier for the team to do. You all have the capability to make gw2 have some of the best class and combat systems around, so just bunker down and do it. Stop being cheap with class development.

I’m sure I can come up with more, but yet again with out of touch updates that do not tackle the real problems that have been well known. Yes, there were a few improvements, but how many more community posts and CDIs will it take to fix up this profession? When does anet, a professional game company, actually make a real effort to fix and improve and revamp… professions? They are the most important aspects of the game so do something!

Research this and please get familiar with a balanced and fun and diverse class and skill system that was way ahead of its time, created by development team that cared about the main user experience… Also, please start moving away from all these wacky profession designs, mechanics, and useless skills you are attempting to balance, and start focusing on making the classes and combat in gW2 the best of any other mmo.

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page

MY PETS CAN’T KEEP UP WITH ME

This doesn’t bother me in PvE but in WvW, are you kidding? My pet MUST be swapped close to my enemy because my OTHER pet is a mile behind me and cna’t keep up with me even when I do switch.

MY PETS RARELY HIT THE ENEMY

Pets are supposed to be half or close to it, but even if it was one third of my damage, my pet zips past most enemies then returns to some gosh-awful path and then tries again by that time it’s long past when it should have hit anything and I am close to dead or dead or it is dead.

NERFS FOR RANGERS BUFFS FOR ALL OTHERS

Who uses a shortbow? MOST players don’t and looking at the skills in the nerf list three of them I use every single day were blasted down while Shortbow of all things gets ‘buffed’ but not really, it was just returned to a pre-nerf state from a previous nerf, no gains for anyone else.

Nerf to power. again.

HEALING NERFED AGAIN

Troll Unguent is a LONG cooldown compared to many heals, but you now limit it to eight seconds out of the shortest time, twenty seconds, do you even get how little healing we are getting in WvW in eight seconds when we are being hit and how long that twenty seconds can be when you are two shotted by many who have shorter cooldowns, no, no you don’t.

OK, nerf us to the ground, many of us will shelve our Rangers for WvW and PvP until some real balance is brought to the table where Druids and Rangers are concerned.

I don’t want to play Condi, but you took away the Power option and my healing is a joke compared to many, if not all others.

I agree on the trait changes, it does nothing for us since it didn’t up my power past what little I had before, a net loss of power and healing all the way around.

Third time in a year I have had to get ready for change my ascended stats, and Anet knows how expensive it can be, but here we are again.

The ‘buffs’, several of them, are actually just returning skills you took from us in previous nerfs.

Condi, condi, condi, condi.

But you don’t get that you didn’t update the mitigation of Conditions when you upped the ante on Condi, so in places like PvP and WvW where it’s a human and not an NPC, anyone not running Condi and killing fast is very dead, very fast.

Balance was Power and Condi – our choice.

But Power now takes a huge backseat to Condi in every single way and the Druid staff, if you didn’t notice, is not a Condi weapon, it’s a power-based weapon without an innate condi, a single boon if done in combo, but no condi.

Healing druids are now less effective when they use a staff, which is their main healing tool so I am very confused as to why even make a druid when you keep taking our bread and butter out of our hands and telling us we can’t play our way, not with the condi-creep and lack of adequate mitigation of the ever increasing stacking of condi.

I want my staff, it’s a great weapon but you just took another step in destroying any hope of using it in WvW and PvP – makes absolutely no sense at all, but does show that condi is going to rule, where once we almost had a balance between power and condi.

The sheer cost of retooling ascended gear (which I have had to do at least three times this year) isn’t exactly cheap and no, I can’t do raiding so legendary armor is out.

I can’t imagine why you decided to take even more from the staff when it is the best weapon that ever happened to a Ranger/Druid.

Zalavaaris.5329:

It’s possible you’re looking for the big events when they aren’t going on. Keep the wiki open with the event timers. Sometimes I even set alarms to be to an event area and in a squad 20 minutes prior.

Sorry but some times of the day (speaking for the NA side) when NO map has any groups on them and no LFG going at all for hours at a time.

The issue isn’t just timers, it’s players.

Trakarg.2095:

There are tons that I simply can’t get because HoT maps are DEAD. There’s no one doing the events. How the heck am I supposed to get event-related masteries?

Not only are HoT maps mostly dead (Like most WvW maps during many times of every single day even up to ‘tier 1), but the worst part about masteries? We can’t reset them.

When they first came out, just like our WvW skills, we needed experience to know which were important and which ‘could wait’ until later, if ever.

We need to reset the masteries since Anet is making it so darn hard to get all of them for filling out masteries some had a year ago but we can’t get for dead maps and confusing achievement ‘directions’.

I don’t want to have to look up a guide or find a guide that is four years old and useless, but that is exactly what most of us have to do, and by this there is no immersion and absolutely no fun.

Empty maps are no fun, Anet. Really.

You should have noticed by now the many going back to GW1 because they are so frustrated with the direction and management of GW2

mantisboxer.9608:

I love playing wvw and especially enjoy zerging, my problem is that my peak play time is 0700-1200 eastern time, as many of you know that is a time when most servers are dead. My question is would I benefit from a transfer a server such as Maguuma, JQ, or BG (provided they are open)? I am currently in SBI and I love the people and the guilds, but a rarely get to play at that servers peak time.

JQ is a bit trolly with a lot of good players who don’t communicate. That last part is a move buster.

Odokuro.5049:

Sorry for my last post, wasn’t thinking before typing.

Alright, so, and this is just me and my thoughts, WvW is about PvP on a larger scale, capturing objectives, defending your lands and its structures from invaders, and ensuring this by eliminating any threats along the way, such as enemy players. Does WvW need a source to get Legendary Armor to do these things? I wouldn’t say so, being able to swap stats, is what attracts most to getting it, but beyond added pretty pixels, LArmor, is not required to do this. Just like Ascended armor is not required outside of high-tier fractals.

What it boils down to is flexibility, both sides WvW/PvE are deserving of this, and LArmor provides just that, do I feel LArmor being tied to only PvE content(Raids) as fair? No, but it doesn’t make it impossible for people who aren’t used to the content or abhor it like the plague.

If you want it, you will work for it, whatever it takes, getting out of ones comfort zone is the hard part of this, and tying it to one source doesn’t automatically say, “Anet is ignoring us, PANIC!!!”

Have a good day.

Apparently you aren’t in YB WvW when there are no more than four to six players for over six hours.

You must be an NA player who never sees any other time and their absolutely empty maps.

This ‘beta’ test, not even a year old, has failed miserably.

I have pages and pages of WvW contacts who no longer play.

Jacion.6302:

Looks like you mercs are our lesser in the linking. Do not expect any db to transfer you out of dh at delinking.

DB has spent it’s last dollar on mercs and are promoting server loyalty

Yours truly,

GODS

Merc suck for everyone. You can’t count on them and they flake out at any attempt at organization.

Gideon.6742:

I still really enjoy the game mode. I wish there were some new changes but there will always be a meta and some people won’t like it no matter what. Some people won’t like a new map no matter what. Some won’t be happy no matter how often Anet puts out messages. People are going to be unhappy no matter what. The game is getting older and older so the flare of many wvwer’s will die out, but it’s not totally due to lack of changes.

That is a terrible block of text op. Reads like a river of tears too.

Truth is either ignored, dismissed or acknowledged.

People are leaving WvW and the game… Anyone with a contact list over two years old knows this.

SniffyCube.6107:

First off, I really don’t intend this as a troll post of any kind. I’m not trying to demean or shame anyone, but I just wanted to address a few things I’ve seen or heard being tossed around by various commanders across many, many servers.
 
Is your guild struggling? Participation down? Commanders burnt out?
 
Well you really aren’t alone. Since coming back to this game, I’ve seen a dozen guilds collapse. Guilds that once ran 20+, gvg’d, or even ran havoc are all vanishing.
 
First let me start by saying this, the guild I am in is not immune. I returned to this game around six to eight months ago. I had about 6 players who actually knew what they were doing. The rest were from other games and a maybe half of those had never touched guild wars 2 in their lives. I had just bought HoT 15 minutes into playing Gw2 again and had no idea what a rev or resistance was. We got run the kitten over. A lot.
 
Now, being a guy that is pretty prideful, I was bent out of shape. I don’t like losing, and I sure as hell losing that badly, but it happened… multiple times. What did I do? Two things.
 
First, I found out who was at the top of their game… for open field WvW, GvG (they’re different), etc… and I tried to pick their brains and comps. I also relied on some of the players I had just recruited as well as some of the ex guildies I was in contact with (which were in those top guilds or were now guild leaders themselves).

Many of you are past that step. You at least know how this game works, but here is arguably the most important advice I can give those of you that have declining rosters. Do something about it.
 
Don’t sit on your kitten and hope that people are going to show up. Don’t “call raids” because you don’t have enough people. Time constraints are understandable, but you have to make sure you proactively figure out what is going on and how to fix it, or even how to work around your schedules. Get a back up driver. Coordinate with other guilds on your off days. You can’t fix anything if you’re sitting around whining about it. It takes you, as a driver, tagging up constantly to recruit. EBG is a great place and if you see a tag, just ask if you can tag up instead. There are many servers where the main commanders will let you try your hand. Be vocal, be patient, and get to know those around you. I didn’t judge pugs when I came back. I only tried to point a few things out, and I pulled quite a few SBIers and later TCers into a channel to talk to them about gameplay.
 
So, my roster started growing. Slowly at first, and with people who were pretty new to WvW (I even recruited a few from sPvP). It wasn’t, by any means, a home run, but I kept wvwing every chance I got (which isn’t much sometimes because of school). I also made sure to have a back up driver. Most of these little guilds… No one knows you. Don’t be afraid to wipe as long as you learn something from it. I can’t stress that enough. There is zero burden on your shoulders. Swallow your pride and just keep going out there. The recruits will come.

“But Cid, I run a lot and don’t get any recruits.” Do you try? Are you filling a niche? Is it fun for the people around you? I’ve seen a lot of newer commanders and guilds run into brick walls over and over. I see the same group, week after week and they haven’t changed a single thing. You’re just bags. That’s not fun for anyone. Ask established guilds for builds and see what works. I’m not saying to go full GvG kitten meta, but you need to know what’s going on and the basics. You can’t win unless you try, and if trying isn’t working then use the losses as guidance.
 
There are people out there that are similar to you. They can be taught, and if none of these things work. You should, as a last ditch effort, move servers. Remember there are many special snowflakes out there that can fill your rosters.

Anyway, if you gain anything from this, it’s that you should tag up and try your hand at commanding. If your guild is decaying, you need to do something about it (same concepts for guilds who are starting out). If there is an established commander running and you want to tag up and take the pugs, just whisper him or her. More often than not, they will let you try your hand. There’s a few exceptions, but most of those commanders aren’t very good and will probably log off after they get killed a few times so just be patient.

Cheers

Commanders “taking a break”

Commanders without experience

No Commanders on any map for 5-8 hours

Choose your poison, WvW is hurting for leadership and players.

Pets having half the health in WvW is becoming a thing that keeps us from being valued by our ‘groups’.

Pets not being able to keep up with us, forcing us to switch and forcing a cooldown far too close to any enemy.

Advantage enemy.

It’s time pets grew up. Juveniles no longer after almost five years as companions.

It’s time for the UI to be reworked so pets can stay with their owners.

Nihevil.8024:

atheria.2837:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Removed from the game. As to why, your guess is as good as ours.

I’ve seen Spirits following people after the change as recently as a few days ago, so something is amiss here.

Why are you lying? They’re not moving, even with the spirit trait.

It was in Lake Doric and yes, the Spirit WAS moving with the Druid.

Willkilliam.5012:

WvW you may like it you may not but who cares if you do or not. This post is merely to bring attention to the situation under going a “neglected” portion of the player base. WvW to me is the main reason I play GW2, the combat system is nice and fun and it emodies the Games name “Guild Wars” a place were Guild actually fight. So what about WvW? Well this game is going into its fifth year soon (congrats Anet), and PVE content has dramatically expanded in so many ways that made the game much more fun. WvW on the other hand has been left in the Dust. Yes there was a new map (Desert Borderland which is everyone’s least favorite) Yes we get the benefits of the new Elite Specs, but that is it(yes bug patches and tweaks to the Shrines but nothing Major) Where is the new content? If you ever play any competitive game then you know how important it is for there to be something new in the mix to shake up the player bases skills and knowledge. The only thing for WvW we have to learn is that we cant break certain walls anymore in the game because “PHYSICS” and new Build Metas (Separation of WvW Meta should be different from PVE). Don’t bring up PvP because pvp is a failed mess(its fun but its not good enough for esports Sorry.) For my main and Final point. What is the WvW player base doing right now, we are currently holding on too whatever morality we have left to play (There is a good number of Guild that don’t play the PVE content which is ok). I know Guild that have disbanded because they don’t find it fun to do the same thing in the same ways 4 years straight. I have seen players leave and Guilds leave to other Games that offer a similar experience (ESO, has a system like WvW that is very fun btw). Soon enough the player base will die out in WvW. What can be done to help? Talk with us more, we want to hear from the WvW team often (yes there is a negative view against Devs but its with reason) But if we get feedback and more communication from the team showing us a reason to stay thats all we need. But as of right now we have nothing to look forward too and most of us won’t wait in hopes the next expansion will bring something new.
TL -DR, Anet talk to WvW player base more before we leave

Powers that be, won’t listen.

zhonnika.1784:

We had a lot of people (and awesome commanders) on AR and SoR. We’ve been closed for quite a while, so the only numbers coming in were via the links. When the links were removed, we reverted back to pre-Feb numbers when we were in T2. It’s really not that surprising if you think about it logically.

Baloney.

Throw in some ham, turkey and potted meat.

WvW servers being ‘open’ in the first tier when any other server is closed (which has happened for months at a time) is just wrong.

No Tier 1 should have links, period.

Glass Hand.7306:

This seems likely to perpetuate what is already a serious balance issue.

I totally agree, but we’re still not getting any WvW expertise/balance/comments from Anet.

FirstInfantry.2795:

Recently came back to the game, met some new friends who started and started a new guild.
There is no structured group composition in this guild right now, the aim of the guild is to run about 5 people.
At the moment we are average 2-5 people depending on the timezone.

However for the past 3 weeks since coming back I have not been having fun when roaming in WvW. I will simply outline the reasons why I think Roaming in WvW is a piece of (insert the word you like).

1. Condi pressure: It feels like there is no variety in the fights when it comes to roaming, it is a constant cycle of condition based thieves, and condition based mesmers. Admittedly, there are occasional Power Warriors.

When fighting in small scale group fights (5 or less), it is a constant cycle of condition based classes and condition based group compositions, notably epidemic spam from necromancers.

As a new guild with players still learning the game as well, this is not very fun to fight, we literally walk up to find a fight of relatively even numbers and the whole group is suddenly dumbfounded with conditions which we do not have enough cleanses for. This continues to be the case even when running a shout guardian with trooper runes.

2. Blast finishers do not benefit roaming: There are not enough beneficial skills that also happen to be blast finishers for roaming builds, as such we cannot take advantage of the light field blast finisher combo.

3. Thieves have way too much mobility, when they have low health they are able to run all the way till they are out of combat and then run all the way back in the fight when many of us still have cooldowns, this just seems unfair.

They are possible to kill with conditions but it is a nightmare to deal with when running power builds for many classes.

4. Warriors have way too much everything, its not like they are impossible to kill but after cycling through their high burst, defensive stances and crowd control, then they finally start running as if they Usain Bolt.

5. Mesmers and Usain Bolt Comparision: Speaking of which mesmers have the same thing combine blink with continuum split and they become Usain Bolt.

6. Druids also play like Thieves: I feel like there is way too much stealth on a class that already has access to range and mobility.

These encounters become problematic, because they become irritating to deal with especially when trying to develop a new roaming guild for a server that constantly has to deal with being outnumbered by higher tier servers. It is hard to keep players motivated when you get into a fight and its not even fun, hell sometimes the fight either does not last 10seconds due to the amount of conditions or it lasts like 10minutes due to the amount of mobility and stealth.

Yes there is always the option of ignoring those players but as soon as the opponent notices a new or inexperienced player in the guild they relentlessly chase after that player forcing them into combat. It is very stressful exhaustive and quite frankly not very fun to play. It actually makes me want to zerg or quit playing instead.

The ‘skills’ we were given for cleanses weren’t meant for the amout of conditions that were buffed per toon.

Ergo, there is no help for many groups who find that they are dead in less than half a second without a single way to mitigate anything into a fair fight even with even numbers or better.

It’s unfair for the cleanses to be half or less than what the buffs were raised TO.

There is no ‘balance’ in WvW where pets are half health of pve, created conditions outstrip all skills that mitigate, and the phrase ‘play your way’ is a long past joke of a promise that someone forgot. long ago.

Ni In.6578:

No, that’s not an issue at all. That Level3 is a router is simply ignoring ICMP traffic. As long as the packet makes it to the final destination with a reasonable latency (64.25.40.114 in this case), you’re almost certainly fine (*see asymmetric paths below).

ICMP is very low priority (and usually rate-limited) for most routers and handled by a rather slow CPU, rather than the ASICs that handle your bog standard network traffic. Don’t expect a low latency or reliable ping to any specific network device. Again, as long as your final destination is reliable with acceptable latency, you’re good to go.

https://www.nanog.org/sites/default/files/tuesday_steenbergen_troublshootingtraceroute_62.49.pdf

Look at pages 33 through 36. It’s also important to note page 38, but there’s nothing you can do about the return path — it would be up to NCSoft to traceroute to you.

That said, if you contact ANet support, they’ll have you run WinMTR. They’ll base conclusions about latency and “packet loss” on unrelated network devices, e.g. Level3 equipment, but this is just a misunderstanding of the results traceroute/WinMTR is showing us. Again, as long as the final destination packet loss/latency is fine, you’re golden (again as long as that asymmetric path is a non-issue).

Anet as a whole needs to understand that having Level 3 in their networking path is a death knell for all gamers.

Period.

Shuai Liu.5631:

Hi guys,
We are looking into this issue. If you are still affected, please send us some info that will help us debugging.
1. Your location and ISP
2. open a command prompt and run “tracert cligate-dfw.101.ncplatform.net” if you are on a NA server, run “tracert cligate-fra.101.ncplatform.net” if you are on an EU server. 3. 3. Include the output from step 2 in your reply.

Thank you!

I am located in Olympia, WA
ISP is Comcast

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.14393]
© 2016 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\Z>tracert cligate-dfw.101.ncplatform.net

Tracing route to cligate-dfw.101.ncplatform.net [64.25.40.110]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 9 ms 8 ms 8 ms et-5-4-rur02.tumwater.wa.seattle.comcast.net [68.86.97.177]
4 12 ms 12 ms 11 ms be-44-ar01.seattle.wa.seattle.comcast.net [69.139.164.22]
5 12 ms 13 ms 12 ms lag-16.ear2.Seattle1.Level3.net [4.68.71.73]
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 50 ms 52 ms 52 ms 4.59.197.34
8 50 ms 53 ms 51 ms 64.25.32-9.ncsoft.com [64.25.32.9]
9 51 ms 55 ms 62 ms 64.25.32-26.ncsoft.com [64.25.32.26]
10 54 ms 51 ms 50 ms 64.25.32-82.ncsoft.com [64.25.32.82]
11 50 ms 53 ms 59 ms 64.25.40-110.ncsoft.com [64.25.40.110]

This has been reported to GMs over and over. I don’t know why we can’t report this fact.

Testing doesn’t change the fact that most traceroutes can’t complete to GW2 servers.

ZerotheFang.5890:

so i recently needed a ring for an alt and i go to bloodstone fen cause i was tired of doing tracks for spvp and i can hardly find any that will drop any rubies i see way more mithril and even with alts that can go there its well they hardly get any heck highest i got was 10 on 1 character. i have also notice a lack in other characters finding nodes like there is only a set random amount or something and even then its hardly a chance to find the darn rubies.

did they nerf this zone or something cause this would be a reason its kinda dead. also i know there is another zone with another ring but i can’t find the stange rock thing for ember bay and i got the one from the quaggan.

Best things to do for Bloodstone Fen, Bitterfrost and Lake Doric:

1. Buy a node for your home instance – harvest it daily.

2. Take the WvW track and go into WvW when it’s very busy.

3. Run boosts from guilds and potions to up the ‘chance’ of rubies and other materials.

Can’t change from one bl to another.

Can’t change one map to another.

Can’t change one instance to another.

All of of them ‘break’ the game.

Loading screens between maps are forcing drops of the connection.

Can’t get in once I try to move and then have to start the game over again for minutes to over an hour so far.

Tekoneiric.6817:

Has anyone noticed frame rate drops since the updates a couple of days ago? When I log in the frame rates are somewhat normal then about 10 minutes into the game the frame rates drop to single digits. Other people were commenting about low frame rates in the game yesterday.

I doubt it’s my system because I run an AMD FX 8150 (8 core 3.6Ghz) liquid cooled with 24GB of ram, NVidia GeForce GTX 1060 w/6GB and a 100Mbps connection.

I haven’t changed anything, my connection is solid, like your’s, and my framerate as well as connection to the game is all over the place or can’t login.

Can’t login at all now.

Eltruism.6581:

It seems this is a widespread issue.

I am looking for a fix.

I play, then randomly, it seems, the screen goes black. As it goes black, I get a chirp/completion sound. The GW cursor stays, the music seems to stay but it remains black.

I have a i7-4770k, and updated drivers with an gtx 970.

I can play for an hour or somethimes only a few minutes then it goes black.

I have to ALT-F4 and restart.
I’ve read about somethign about DDOS protection on routers, or some stuff like that.

Anyone have a bypass/fix?

Some say run in windowed mode via command line commands. Is this mode full-screen windowed or non full screen windowed?

Any help is appreciated.

It is breaking my immersion and fun.

If all of your drivers are up to date.

If all of your connections are solid to any other website, application or game.

If your ISP isn’t having issues.

It’s not you. It’s not.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

This isn’t really a widespread issue, but … it’s something with your computer. I’d guess most likely some sort of hardware related issue, possibly temperature triggered, from the “play for a while, then it fails” description.

I’d start my investigation with that, and you should hopefully be able to clear it up.

It’s a widespread issue and has zero to do with our computers.

Communication has to come from the server cleanly or we drop to a black, white or other screen.

Khorthall.1682:

I don’t know if this was a bug or not but I blocked a player on the game and they have resulted in spamming invites at me that I reject constantly. I even tried going in ‘invisible’ mode and I still received invites.

Can someone explained to me why blocked players can still do this?

It’s time to make blocking two way, not one way.

Sarpan.9074:

atheria.2837:

Paintedawg.3740:

Been losing connection to the client when I change areas(going to a different map/going to pvp, etc.) Check with a guild mate and they’re having the same issues. Restarting the client seems to fixes it but it keeps happening every few minutes. My internet connection is fine.

Anyone else having the same issue?

Many of us are reporting not being able to login.

We’ve told them in twitter.

We’ve told them in ‘downdetector’.

We’ve told them in facebook.

The website wasn’t even available for over 30 minutes.

The networking end of GW2 is really in heinous shape. And that’s not even counting the massive DDOS going on nationwide right now, today.

I’ve attached two pictures but they aren’t showing here in Chrome and they aren’t showing in IE when I open another browser. addendum * It took OVER five minutes for the website to post the pictures and any editing*

The website and its structure need help as much as the game does.

This is what I came here to find out—whether it was just me.

Funny, though, with so many experiencing the problem, this post is the only one I’ve found on the forums here to address it today.

Many won’t post any longer because they are ‘used to’ the outages that plague GW2 now.

They sigh, tell others in TS and DISCORD that they are going to other games. Many won’t put up with or even report any errors after a long history of being ignored as players and customers.

Most of a guild, over 15 players, lost connection not seven minutes ago.

It’s not over and the problem is not across the board, it’s regional and backbone oriented.

I was just dropped from the game for the sixth time.

Sixth time, Anet.

Nothing else is ‘broken’. All websites work for me, all programs work and don’t have any issues.

GW2 on the other hand has had connection issues since the last WvW reset time for NA.

Caliburn.1845:

All the arguments for getting rid of DBL can just as easily be used to justify getting rid of Alpine BL as well.

Much less active than EBG? Check. Much more PVD? Check. Much more running around to get anywhere? Check.

We should clearly get rid of all the BLs, get rid of EotM, and just have EBG by this argument. Which would just be silly. We need maps that are different, even maps that are less popular. Nothing would be more boring than having four identical maps to play on.

I hate EOTM.

I love the Desert BL.

Getting one more map that is totally different wouldn’t hurt.

The Alpine map is good for one server, the Desert for one, but we really need a third that is ‘different’ to round out what needs to be a sense of strategy, not just pretty pictures and even non-named vista points…

Caliburn.1845:

As WvW population drops holes in coverage and population imbalance grow creating more lopsided matches.

And until Anet takes a more proactive stance on balancing population it is only going to get worse.

I agree and will add;

When servers are also forced out of their “Tiers” it causes many not to play that week at all.

Links need to be completely dropped and the servers allowed to fall where they will.

Any server without a link is just a target of opportunity for any who do have a link.

Enough of the linking – it failed. Now bring back WvW before it’s completely destroyed.