Showing Posts For awesomesauce.5980:
1 2
I’m sure hearing anyone from SoS moaning about lack of coverage and being outnumbered anytime is sweet sweet music to the entire Gw2 community. It is to me most assuredly.
I have been critical of coverage winning over skilled gameplay as soon as I became aware of it. In the night capping thread I posted about my belief (playing on a server that would full cap maps) that night capping, while fair (people all over the world play the game) it certainly wasn’t fun – for either side. I’ve also claimed for a long time that one of the biggest reasons SoS was able to win first and maintain first place for so long was because they had the strongest Oceanic presence in the game, in fact most SoS players posting on the forums (in spite of doubts from their opposition) that SoS would remain tier one without a certain guild that left because of their solid coverage and that the guild that left was a drop in the bucket compared all the things the server still had. I never said it was their right to win, or that they worked harder for the win, or that they won because of superior organisation or because their players were outright better. When you can have more people that can play across more time zones than your opponent, you are going to win.
So if you think the discussion about the importance of coverage and numbers, the impacts of player distribution amongst servers and the consequential imbalance it causes in the match and the overall health of tier one, if you think any of that is new, or that I have suddenly adopted a new stance or am saying new things now that JQ is the strongest server, you haven’t been paying enough attention in the forums.
(edited by awesomesauce.5980)
@ hex
The hyperbole is strong in your post. You think SoS had a clear 2 to 1 advantage? Maybe during Oceanic hours, maybe against SBI on it’s last legs, but no, it was never that bad.
I understand it’s a slang word and definitions might be a little lose, but I don’t think you understand what a beat down is. The score for the time SoS has been in tier one (aside from one week where JQ smashed it home and one week where SoS did well – New Years week and the week before Christmas) has been very close. The match ended with first and second place usually within 10-30k points apart, and most weeks third place was decently close to second place.
Most of my post was in response to someone boasting that JQ’s stability (and longevity as a competitive server) comes from some kind of immunity to fluctuating morale and because they love to play. This carries with it the implication that servers that have imploded (SBI and HoD included amongst those) do not have these magical things that make JQ stable. I see that as an insult to the players of servers which did “implode”. I am proposing that JQ has been blessed by not losing core guilds (such as War Machine and subsequent losses did to SBI) causing them to under perform and get pulled under in the competition, truly challenging their morale, dramatically altering the landscape and experience in the game and causing their inevitable spiral down the tiers away from what many tier one players consider the most competitive tier to play in that generally offers the best WvW experience that GW2 has to offer. They enjoy a great privilege that other servers weren’t so lucky to have. The server is fortunate. Coming second (usually) or third place in the NA rankings is hardly comparable to being on a sinking ship and watching people you enjoy playing with leave, logging in to WvW only to be outmanned and get crushed by the enemy zerg every time you try to kill a raptor outside your spawn. I don’t believe you can claim to have your server loyalty tested the same as others have until you’ve been in the same challenging situations they have been in.
I am sure there are JQ players who were there on day one and will never abandon ship, even if the server was pushed down to the bottom tier. I am certain of that. I’m also certain there are JQ players who have never set foot in WvW. Am I certain that most guilds and players would have stayed regardless of their WvW performance or if their friends were abandoning ship? I’m highly sceptical of that.
You think SBI players left their server (of which many of them were fiercely proud of before it was a sinking ship) and joined JQ (the new power server, also in tier 1 where SBI players wanted to be) because JQ met with them are they thought you were all such nice people? They had many weeks of meeting you before their server was knocked out of tier one. They only transferred once they knew they would be stuck where they went to and once they knew the server they chose was the favourite to dominate. They might like your guilds, but if your guilds were on Eredon Terrace in last place and they knew even if they transferred they would remain there, I seriously doubt they would have come over.
Not that any of this matters now. The server is not what it once was, JQ is a new server with a new face. A lot of the shout outs I’m reading on the forums are to guilds that weren’t on JQ three weeks ago. A lot of the individuals on the forum are actually former SoS players (bandwagoners) who moved over to enjoy the wins.
Unless I’m wrong, in five months server transfers will still cost money, so servers will still have increased stability (for better or worse) because leaving isn’t as simple as deciding you want to be elsewhere. You don’t need to be loyal, you just need to be poor.
Finally, I don’t think there many posters that are saying JQ is full of bad people and they should stop playing because they are all to blame for the server being as strong as it is. Most people are trying to establish, (to the bleating opposition of a handful of posters) what seems obvious to many, that JQ got in a more transfers than the other top tier servers in the last three weeks and that despite the numbers being very close before this, they are strongly in favour of JQ now that transfers are closed. A lot of people are trying establish that in the discussion and grow more zelous when they are faced with denials and gloating, most are not trying to blame a server for recruiting.
Map caps don’t mean a kitten thing when you can’t get 10 people for a break out event, never mind the 30 you would need to reasonably contest the 100 man zerg that’s waiting around the corner to stomp you.
(edited by awesomesauce.5980)
This is so obvious yet it’s actually quite helpful to a lot of people who don’t want to feel pressured to log in each day (or for people who can’t). Now that dailies don’t feel optional any more (laurels are just too valuable to ignore them) it’s going to suck to miss out on them for whatever reason. A weekly would allow people to work at their own pace and earn their laurels without worrying about losing out because they couldn’t make it every day.
I think ArenaNet might be concerned about people not logging in every day. I think they want the game to have people logging in and doing stuff every day, not just flying trough it in the first place. That’s why they are calendar gating content now, without unnecessary restrictions players complete content and earn rewards faster than ArenaNet can create stuff. To solve that perceived problem, ArenaNet locked content behind dailies and RNG to ensure to was no reliable method of obtaining rewards outside of the calendar gating method.
The laurel daily is just to herd people to the laurel vendor so they know it exists and to have people look at what you can buy. This will encourage people to farm their dailies and consider them worthwhile because they will know what kinds of things they can buy with laurels.
Because the ladies can’t possible carry a great sword. They’re just too wittle and weak to do such a thing :p
The moderators are infracting people for being “sexist”. Common sense and a sense of humour are apparently not allowed on this forum.
Can you imagine 105% more gold from CoF or AC speed runs?
For Heralds, there is a surprising lack of voice acting going on.
Isn’t healing power kind of a waste? Unlike Guardians or Eles that have multiple healing sources, you only get a regen on 75% HP trait and that’s it, the scaling is very poor with TU, wouldn’t those stats better be spent elsewhere?
Healing power helps both the ranger and it’s pet. Every other stat only helps the ranger. This build needs the pet to stay alive, especially seeing as it uses a glass cannon pet.
I like it. Run something similar with Sword/dagger and shortbow in WvW… just curious why you went into Nature Magic instead of taking Pet’s prowess from 10 points in Skirmishing and then going the full 30 points in BM since your main DPS is from a cat.
I agree with this but only because the build makes poor use of Fortifying Bond. I ran a beast mastery build which focused on Healing Spring (regen for the pet, usually up on tower walls), Beast Master’s Bond (Fury and Might when pet’s health reaches 50% – the pet gets this with Fortifying Bond) and a few other boons. It was an awkward kind of build, and as much as I wanted to make it work, I always felt like ArenaNet should make Fortifying Bond work both ways (boons applied to pets also get applied to the ranger). When you look at the crazy boon stacks other professions can get, I doubt it would break rangers to make that trait more powerful.
It’s amazing how many people came to the forums to ask for their 10 laurels for January in spite of ANet’s clear declaration that January wouldn’t award laurels regardless of whether players completed it before or after the patch.
I read ArenaNet saying that but even thinking about it now, I have no idea where I read it. Are you really amazed that people weren’t aware of some obscure piece of information that wasn’t communicated in the game didn’t get through to people? Most people don’t read the forums or the website updates, they hear about laurels in the game, see they didn’t get them, believe it’s a bug (with GW2, unfortunately that’s the most likely scenario) and post about it on the forums. There’s nothing unbelievable about this to me.
1)Do every fractal twice
With the RNG nature of FotM I can see that easily making people homicidal.
The unicorn Bow is probably the second most popular legendary in terms of looks, right behind Twilight. They seem to know what the majority of players want in terms of flying unicorns.
It’s a troll weapon with a troll design. This update took it too far. If I ever see rainbow unicorns coming out of a bow from a nearby player, I’m leaving the area immediately. I will not party with someone with this bow, this graphic is far too immersion breaking for me. I understand the desire to make legendaries special to make them appealing and justify their exorbitant cost, but the design and presence of this weapon directly takes away from my experience in the game.
They went to far and at some point the designed need to recognise that you can cross a line where a legendary item will detract from the experience of people around them. I believe this weapon (especially compared with the other legendaries) clearly crosses that line.
I’d love the option to turn this off.
Not everything has to be dark, spikey, and bad kitten for it to be end game gear.
I think most people are accepting of Kudzu and it’s covered in flowers and leaves floral footprints. They don’t seem to be bothered by a bow which represents some kind of powerful bond with nature. What does the brony bow represent? GW2 hipsters and bronies, people who like things because they are ironic and trollish. There are no unicorns in Tyria as far as I know, the bow itself looks like a 6 year old girl’s cheap plastic toy (no other legendary looks like that) and there is nothing else in Tyria that makes me think there is any way that this weapon thematically fits in with any lore or power that I can think of. The entire concept seems to be intended to appeal to people who want a troll item that draws attention and break immersion as much as possible. To me, no item should do that.
(edited by awesomesauce.5980)
Well it seems this is a UI bug and not an actual stealth nerf. Personally I suspect it’s a fragment of an upcoming nerf that slipped through to the live build. They are probably testing a nerf to remove the ability to reset the cooldown on swapping the pet and while they took the functional part of the code out of the build (or they never finished it) the UI part of the code slipped through.
Don’t worry SoS, Blackgate had 10 in BGBL and 12 in EBG for over 2 hours so it appears we fell asleep at the wheel too
This is what a blow out looks like. It’s really bad for the health of WvW and the morale and participation of the other servers. It doesn’t normally happen in tier 1 (it never should) but the power difference in coverage (for whatever reasons, they won’t be clear for a few more weeks) is incredibly obvious this week (it was obvious last week as well, and it only got stronger when server caps were lifted for the final days, potential transfers could see the rise in power on the score board and the forums).
It’s possible JQ just got too many transfers in (they were formerly close in power level to SoS, just with weaker coverage, that’s changed), it’s possible issues affecting Oceanic players (holiday weekend, floods and tornadoes) pulled a load bearing Jenga block out of the server this week, but next week it will perform better. It’s also possible that fighting against a superior number of players is not something SoS is used to and adjusting to that environment will take time. Finally, I’m sure the blow out and falling behind had an snowball effect. It happens to every server, the score most weeks is made up by players fighting harder and pulling longer shifts. Players have less incentive to do that when they are losing (and the burn out rate it much higher when you are fighting hard during a blow out) so a lot of them took the week to take a break. They saw the loss, accepted it and saved their candles to burn bright next week.
If you don’t yet understand why we need the ratings reset (and how dramatically the server transfers changed WvW) look at the match ups in the top four tiers. Three of them are blow outs (I count tier one as a blow out but not tier three because compared to weeks in the past, this score is highly unusual). We’re in for a chaotic couple of months, especially with the WvW changes coming in the middle of all of this.
(edited by awesomesauce.5980)
Jade Quarry has been in T1 for as long as I can remember, so I’m sure you’ve won plenty of matches. Careful though, the #1 server tends to implode the fastest over time compared to the lower ranking servers. Just like NSP, HoD, SBI, and apparently SoS seeing how kittenty they have been playing this week. It gets lonely at the top especially when the servers in your tier don’t offer much of a challenge.
I think we’ve placed first 3 times in T1.
I’m pretty sure we’ll have plenty of challenges.
We don’t implode because we don’t have a fluctuating Morale. We all enjoy WvW and each other, win or lose.
We’ve been in T1 this long because we love to play.
Thanks for the ‘advice’ but we’ll manage just fine.
Well, for people to abandon your server now they will literally have to pay. So being one of the strongest (if not the strongest) servers at the end of the free transfer cut off is a great luxury to have.
Most, if not all, servers are safe from imploding (or at least far more resilient) now that you can’t just walk away.
I can’t predict the future (especially with the unknown strength of some transferred servers and a full force SoS server – this week is not indicative of their strength in comparison to the new JQ, but I do expect JQ to be considerably stronger than SoS ever was regardless of what SoS does next week) but I can read the current score board and the posts about transfers that went to JQ at the end of the free transfers. I can also see the minimum of 1,000 gems to transfer NA servers (1,800 for a high population one – expect Kaineng to be this soon, there are currently no 500 gem servers). It’s possible we will see big migrations even with paid transfers, but it’s undeniable that JQ’s current position enjoys a privileged stability that no-one else was given prior to the 28th. I think we would still see SBI in tier one (or at least two) had WM been forced to either pay or stay.
Do you think SBI, or any other server which was destroyed by free transfers, loved WvW less than you? Almost all transfers are done for WvW reasons, everyone bandwagons does so to play WvW. Was JQ server loyalty ever tested by being in a low tier for an extended period of time? Loyalty is only tested when things go poorly for you for the foreseeable future, I don’t remember that ever happening to JQ. Nothing like SBI faced after WM left.
Maybe the servers will even out in a couple of months, but I think JQ won the lotto by being the last bandwagon server before the gates closed.
Wow tier one is so hostile right now. It’s a really unpleasant place to be if you read the forums or you see the impact these discussions have on the wider community in the “game”.
I guess this is what happens when a server dominates (because of coverage) for so long – everyone else just wants to see them fall (again, JQ beat SoS recently without the power of their new transfers, JQ was always a threat and the balance of power was never far apart, can we say that now?). It might be nice for some people to finally be on the winning side with the greatest coverage (or for certain guild to continue to cherry pick the servers with the strongest coverage based on the gaps they fill and transfers that go with them, prioritising winning the week over healthy competition), but is it the people who have been coming second for weeks that are posting this or is it all the bandwagon transfers that are bringing this attitude over to the forums?
JQ guilds have a lot to prove this week. There is a big carrot for winning tier 1 for them (one that no longer exists for SoS), a lot of those guilds are new to the server (some new to NA) and they are fighting to be top. SoS has been top for many weeks (because of coverage, partly a natural play base in Oceanic/SEA time zones and partly because dedicated WvW guilds/players would go the extra mile and play longer than they wanted to to keep the coverage going, a lot of times I think that’s the difference between first and second), they’ve faced new servers, they’ve faced early week point leads from servers that threatened to (and in one week without any outside help, did) push them to second. There is no prize for first place. There is no bonus for your server, no big loot chest you get to pray to the RNG gods over, you just seem to build up the resentment of others and begin to have guilds push themselves just as hard or harder the next week to do it all over again. As much as beating the new JQ means, it’s just another win, for JQ, it will be one of their second win in a long time (the first on the server for all the new transfers). Ultimately first place comes down to coverage, who has it and who is going to burn out trying to maintain it.
In tier one WvW it often looks like it’s less about winning the battles at the time of the day you are playing and more about winning the entire week (although I heard that’s something the WvW team is working atm, I look forward to seeing how that changes the meta, if at all), and the closer you are to first place, the more true that becomes. Owning your part of the map isn’t enough, owning a few of their points isn’t enough, even if you are in the lead there will be pressure to have the PPT even greater than it currently is, to relieve pressure on other time zones, pressure enemy morale on other servers (the fair weather players are on every server and it’s very common to see dramatic differences in WvW participation based on whether you are winning or losing .. Owning points becomes less about strategically controlling the map and more about strategically controlling the score board. Playing the game becomes more about playing the score board.
Like all of us, I don’t know what WvW will look like in the coming weeks and months. Free server transfers have defined the landscape since launch and with the announcement of removing them, it seems they have caused a massive upheaval and shift in the WvW lanscape for many servers. Some of them were left in the dust and will have to wait for free transfers to low population to pick up the pieces, or maybe their WvW will evolve to a different play style more about smaller 1v1 guild battles rather than massive zergs fighting over weekly tallys – we might actually see the most competitive guilds in lower tiers rather than tier one which is focused on competitive servers. Maybe the new JQ will dominate for the foreseeable future. With no free transfers to create another server with their coverage we might not see serious competition for first place, JQ and SoS could hold the best coverage, one edging out the other and even with new transfers, the lower tier servers might fail to compete seriously for first. It’s hard to see where WvW is going or how the landscape stands now that transfers are over (or how much damage was done by this final blow). The guilds that care the most about their server winning are all in tier one and two (and Kaineng), the guilds and players that care about competitive fighting might not be.
Regardless of what happens in the aftermath of the server transfer exodus and influx, I really hope tier one becomes a less hostile place between players. There’s always petty accusations and kitten talking, but if the open hostility and poor sportsmanship we are seeing from posters this week (and last) is what’s in the future for tier one, I’d rather be on Eredon Terrace.
Haaa didn’t know this thread existed…..pretty amusing response was 3 months ago and nothing has come to light since. Anywho….they sometimes drop unbound if that adds anything to the discussion, but they are still vendor quality as they sell for vendor prices on the tp.
I’ve never seen an unbound one and I looked but I can’t find any on the trading post either. Are you sure you’re not confusing the dungeon specific runes with other runes?
It’s definitely not the Warrior’s issue. This player dodges like a boss, and I am confident that an Elementalist, for example, could also solo this path given a talented enough player.
I understand where Rob’s coming from. You put a lot of effort designing content for a full party, and then find someone comes along and beasts your whole system by soloing everything. It’s both impressive and in a way disappointing.
Robert specifically mentioned the library event. The player uses no specific trick or crazy stunts, he dodges well sure, but the sole reason he able to pull it off (like most of his videos) is the crazy high DPS of the warrior. He obliterates the first two burrows quicker than I’ve seen up to three people focusing on a burrow, because the his damage is so high (and other classes, such as ones which are balanced on conditions, have terrible DPS on burrows).
The way this encounter works, as I understand it, is that two burrows spawn. One at the entrance and one to the right as you exit the stair case. Killing the one on the right spawns another near it, repeat and a third burrow will spawn next to the one at the stair case. Once you destroy the third burrow, no new burrows will spawn, allowing you to clear up the mobs in the room before taking out the stair case burrow. Obviously, the longer any of the first three burrows are up, the more gravelings you have to deal with, so in many ways, this is a DPS check (something a great sword warrior won’t have trouble with). The faster you destroy the burrows, the easier it is. Once you take out the third burrow and clear the gravelings, only a single burrow will be active at any point in time, so from that point on it’s much easier. Also, the graveling spawns from the burrows seems to be random. Sometimes the first mob that comes out is a silver bored one (bad luck), sometimes it takes a little longer (good luck). Sometimes you can destroy a burrow before any silver mobs come out (luck/DPS). Between his rallys and his high DPS keeping the first three burrows in check quickly (something I doubt you could do on a ranger or necro as an example) the encounter is completed.
Managing to solo this particular encounter is about DPS and the warrior is given that with minimal sacrifices compared to other classes. My ranger never sees numbers like the ones I see in this video, no matter what build or gear I wear. Combine that with the utility and survivability you see here and it’s hard to see how the class isn’t unbalanced compared to some others. At the end of the library event he drags two gravelings onto Hodgins because he knows he can take out the burrow before they will kill him. You wouldn’t dream of doing that on a ranger. Without long cooldowns, without huge sacrifices the great sword warrior is able to pull out very high DPS, something other classes and weapons have to work very hard for.
Aside from the burrows, the rest of the stuff he does should be able to be done by most (if not all) classes, although a lot of them would struggle with DPS/survivability/utility balance compared to a great sword warrior. The final boss isn’t that hard and, if you’re good at dodging, neither is the spider.
Another note on why DPS is so important. When dodge rolls, heals, utility cool downs, etc are limited, the shorter the fight, the more favourable it is for you. A weak DPS character might be able to dodge most of the attacks, block something at a key moment but every time you are dodging, blocking, strafing etc you are not attacking. That prolongs the fight and puts more pressure on all your damage mitigation/avoidance resources. The more DPS you do between dodges etc, the less pressure on your resources and the easier it is to complete the encounter.
I read on youtube he thinks he can solo AC in about 35 minutes or less (I don’t remember exactly) without skipping. I’ve had many pug groups that take close to that. When a single class is not only able to complete the content designed for five people, but it’s also able to do it in time comparable to a PuG that skips content (although this highlights how little time is saved by skipping), there is probably something out of balance with that classes DPS. Even if he is able to stay alive, he shouldn’t be killing and completing content quickly.
Then again this is all wasted text. I don’t think AC is too easy and I believe the greatsword warrior DPS and survivability is out of balance with other classes. Posting in this forum is pointless because the balance guys probably don’t even read it (not that they’d nerf warriors or buff other classes in any reasonable amount of time anyway, most classes are still full of bugs). This isn’t a dungeon design fail, it’s a class balance fail.
thats some list of excuses there even if you did bury them a little.
Sure SBI are suffering at present however they have a 50 man zerg running around their BL at present so I don’t think they are dead and buried yet and I hope they keep the faith and stay in T1. Any server that makes the points deserves to be in T1, rather arrogant of you to suggest otherwise. Love to know which guild you represent on SoS. If BG want another shot they need to earn it. Good luck to them.
Oh and I should add, congratulations, you have completed the 2nd part of my bet this week. Was a bit worried no one from SoS would cough up that rather obtuse excuse but you have supplied it. Many thanks
I don’t care that SoS lost this/last week, it’s unfortunate you can’t see past your own server bias to critically look at how a weak tier one server negatively impacts on the competition. It’s not arrogant to suggest we could have a better tiering system, it’s how a critical mind approaches a competitive match up and what’s best for that competition to stay as healthy as possible. Just because you did well five weeks ago doesn’t mean you are the top server (or even one of the top three servers) today. The current rating system lets your server become bloated and hold their position for multiple weeks without performing as strongly as your rating suggests. Each week becomes about maintaining rating and not about competing for first place, this impacts on how servers compete with each other and there are several scenarios where a server is able to boost their rating despite not having the presence or coverage to be truly competitive.
I’ve always maintained (and publicly) that SoS wins because of coverage not because of superior 1 vs 1 guilds or players. That’s one of the biggest flaws in GW2 PvP – it’s either sPvP or a a coverage war which largely doesn’t care too much about skill, there is nothing like old school FA here, but that’s the game we play, WvW is a coverage and zerg war. It’s discussed every week that servers are sick of tier one, many SBI people themselves want to move down – one of their biggest guilds and a huge part of their coverage was WM, even with them they were the weakest of the tier 1 guilds, without them they are slowly fading away, and we all have to play in a gimped tier because of it.
I think most competitive WvW players would agree, the best situation for WvW to be in would be to have three strong and active servers with the motivation and coverage to shoot for a first place win, we are seeing posts on the forums from SBI players saying they want to hold onto tier one for as long as possible. These people aren’t saying they want to win tier one, they just want to remain there. That’s a sad state for your competition to be in (though they don’t represent everyone). From what I’ve seen from the server as a whole, this is how their performance in WvW translates, trying to hold onto tier one, not gunning for first.
I don’t think SBI is dead. I don’t think any of the servers in tier 2 are dead, to imply leaving tier 1 is something you only do when you are dead is an insult to every other server in all the lower tiers. I strongly believe that it’s easily possible one of the three servers in tier 2 could be as competitive or more competitive than all three tier one servers, that first place in tier 1 could go to a tier 2 server. I just think the competition and coverage SBI is bringing out at the moment isn’t competitive enough for tier 1. You know what? The score tends to agree, especially now that WM is gone and people are coming back from holidays. If SoS dropped to third place this week as a result of placing last in the tier, I would still strongly support swapping with first place of tier 2.
I want to see a new guild in tier one every week. Real consequences for placing third and a real reward for placing first. This gives people the drive to actively compete for points and positions rather than holding onto tier one even if it means accepting third. This prevents servers from settling into the stale dynamic we’ve had for weeks.
Admitedly changes could result in servers fighting over second and third place instead of first place (which still happens with ratings), I’d still rather see a more dynamic change happen in the tiers and less emphasis placed on rating bloat.
SBI has almost no presence in WvW atm. They should have dropped from tier one weeks ago. Right now we have an unhealthy competition where JQ is able to fight off SoS without having to worry about SBI because SBI is simply not competitive any more. It would be a shame if SBI didn’t drop to tier 2 next week, the competition would be better in tier 1 as a result, every week they linger up there is another week the competition becomes stagnant and stale. We are seeing SoS full cap SBI maps with no meaningful resistance. At the moment SBI is mostly just a source of points for whoever wants it (or is willing to pull off pressure from the actual competition to take it), whereas in previous weeks the competition was a three way battle and anyone in the lead had to earn it and they had to fight for every map.
I’ve enjoyed playing against SBI for several weeks and there were (and still are) some very competitive guilds on the server, but they just don’t have the coverage to be a tier one guild any more. The competition suffers when one of the three servers has been defanged.
SoS tried to make a push to get SBI out of tier one early this week, relieving pressure on JQ, it backfired and it looks as though SBI will remain tier one for another week and JQ will take the first place win (mostly unrelated to trying to push SBI out). I truly believe the swap between third place of the higher tier and first place of the lower tier needs to happen. Ratings are too forgiving of ways to build up your rating to a level you can’t sustain: holiday gains, end of the week capping, PvDoor at night. This helps you to retain a position you can no longer hold due to decreased interest, server transfers or guilds disbanding. The result is lopsided matches like this weeks, where one server is still competing in tier one despite not having the presence or competitive coverage to give a challenging or threatening WvW experience.
Look at how JQ has been revitalised by the prospect of winning and moving into first place once again? It has brought out the militia and the guild transfers to make them more competitive than they have been in a while (it’s hard to compare this week to previous ones, it’s still holidays and WvW participation has been down across all servers). A new server in tier one would further revitalise the competition and give people something to compete for. Currently the rating system is just a slow agonising death that everyone has to sit through.
Spiritus you don’t understand the OP or the issue at all. It’s not as simple as one person being unable to AoE a zerg themselves, entire zergs are unable to penetrate a turtled zerg because they are taking advantage of a design oversight.
AoE is walled by the cap preventing it from taking advantage of the enemy team’s poor positioning, but the enemy team is able to heal, combo and buff in the one location while resing anyone downed which means they gain a very high degree of efficiency and near invulnerability for stacking in one location while the opposition’s DPS becomes significantly less useful as a result (because the whole zerg is buffing, healing and protecting each other, a single AoE can only hit five people who are being protected by an entire zerg, the balance is completely lopsided because of a design oversight).
OK I just saw this tactic being used a lot tonight and although we both had equal sized numbers, their zerg had a stack and ours didn’t. We had several commanders and guilds all in Teamspeak co-ordinating our efforts so it wasn’t a mindless zerg going on.
One of the things I was disappointed with was all of our CC seemed to be completely thrown by the way side. We weren’t able to fear, knockback etc. All of it. An entire zerg of people that are completely immune to over half of normal gameplay, player bars and builds. Second to that was they weren’t dodging, avoiding or anything like that. They were standing in one location not worrying at all about active and dynamic combat. One of the core design decisions of GW2 combat was not to stand in one place. This strategy rebuffs all the tools we were given to play that way and rewards people for going against a core combat design decision.
We had mild success with arrow carts. It was a lot to ask to have them built up mid zerg (especially with culling and portal bombs) and people were able to break off and destroy them pretty quickly. When they were already set up and couldn’t be taken down it worked well (like defending a tower), at other times it didn’t work so well. There did seem to be a degree of success on their side in making themselves immune to ballista and arrow cart damage at times. We were barely denting their turtle zerg when we straight up hit them, which seems like it should never, ever be the case.
Players should be encouraged to move, they shouldn’t be rewarded for stacking in one location. That’s not how GW2 combat was built. The path of least resistance should be core combat mechanics, not sudden siege deployment. We aren’t talking about using WvW lay out or design well, we are talking about exploiting a design oversight.
I agree with the people saying this can be countered by siege but removing the AoE cap will break the game. If siege already ignores the AoE cap, why aren’t people automatically winning every encounter at a choke point with five arrow carts? If focused AoE is so broken, yet it exists in the game right now in the form of siege, why isn’t it the dominant meta? There are too many ways to get through AoE at a choke point for it to be a truly broken mechanic (everyone can dodge, mesmers can blink, guardians can bubble the choke, thieves can shadow step etc). A handful of people can’t stop that many skilled players bypassing their AoE wall and then assassinating them.
I could have joined their zerg as a glass cannon ele and nuked the opposing team without anything but fireball spam. I wouldn’t need to worry about dodging or positioning – as long as I’m in the turtle I’m immune to CC and practically immune to being defeated. All I had to do was stand in one spot. That’s a problem in my eyes. Stacking in one spot shouldn’t work anything like this. Remove the AoE damage cap after a few seconds. Players should never be rewarded for standing in the one spot. They should be punished.
Hey PRX, 10PM in New York is midday in Australia. We aren’t out chasing candy corn – we have jobs.
A lot of the SoS players have become demoralised by the constant hacking, cheating and exploiting. Thieves which are soloing fully upgraded towers with a player inside it (tell me they legitimately perma-stealthed until the tower finished all upgrades) is incredibly disappointing, especially when you chose to fortify your defences (specifically the tower) instead of pushing. You work hard to hold it and build it up (against the zerg) and you lose it to a cheater. Taking an orb is a mammoth task many times, to see them get hacked and not only lose the lead you earned, but now have to go up against someone else’s, it becomes very difficult to return to WvW and find the same fight inside yourself to work towards the win.
What’s the point in sieging for hours and taking orbs if they are going to be hacked? What’s the point in taking and building up towers if they are going to be hacked? I’ve seen people pull long shifts in WvW to try and get the community rolling, build up some momentum, a base server skill set and some good synergy between the NA and Oceanic guilds. Imagine how disappointed those people would be to see their hard work destroyed by a handful of hackers.
Halloween probably wouldn’t have been as big of a pull on the server population if they had more incentive to WvW. All the cheating and exploiting going on is really turning people off of this match-up.
1 2