Guild Wars 2

I used Flamethrower when I led WvW NA T1 map blobs’ melee trains.
I’ll still do it from time to time in EotM. I once filled my 60+slot bag just in one fight.

I’m currently running a full Dire armor set with a mix of Carrion, Rabid, and Soldiers trinkets. I’ve found the traits and kits to be far more important for leading groups, and for WvW roaming.

Wupwup once I gather all the silk to make a full set. I like having a versatile or all around play style so Celestial fits perfectly. It also gives me the most optimal build, too. I plan to command with that set.

It depends highly on what role you want to play in terms of combat and what your group’s composition is.

Are you planning to lead a large 40+ person melee train or more of a ranged combat with smaller groups?

Generally, Ascended is best, but remember that kits replace your weapon and have their own internal stats. Exotic is a great choice and are must haves.

• Soldiers is a good go to stat type if you prefer larger and more consistent damage
• Dire armor with a mix of soldiers, carrion, and rabid trinkets are another good choice if you prefer Damage Over Time
• Sentinels is another good choice (based on calculations done on Excel but untested in actual WvW)
• Celestial is a good way for getting a well balanced build, although with a bit less survivability than the above types. Easiest way of getting to the numbers stated below:

Numbers:

• About 375-550 in both Toughness and Vitality including all bonuses from equipment and traits
• Range of about 2.6k-2.9k Armor
• Range of about 21k- 24k HP

However way you get to those values is up to you.

Explanation:
Based on calculations done on Excel using for a control of 1*950*950 to get the Numerator, and using various inputs for toughness in the denominator (range of minimum base medium armor rating with full exotic set up to a full major toughness set). With further calculations done with regards to health pool and hit damage.

The graph looks like a parabola.

It depends.

I use Dire Armor with Syzygy and +20% MF, with a mix of Carrion, Soldiers, and Rabid trinkets with Soldiers seals for my main build. I would like it more if I can find Dire trinkets on the TP. . .

My set up is relatively weaker with raw damage output but I prefer doing damage over time.
The Dire helps with my survivability and I’ve found that I can tank things. I’ve lead and participated in NA T1 melee trains with it before. It helps with soloing camps and doing dungeons and small group play in PvE.

I’m currently building a full Celestial equipment set to retire my current equipment set.

Last I checked (in December of 2013), the weapon kit completely replaces your weapons’ stats while you are using a kit. Thus the stats on your weapons do not matter at all while using a kit. But your armor and trinkets matter.

Glad to see you guys around!

These guys are fun and friendly to play with.

I want to personally invite you to consider looking into the Sanctum of Rall as a possible new home realm for you both. Its named after prospective player Roger “Oldroar” Rall who passed away before the game launched. I encourage you to visit that website to learn more about Roger Rall, the community, and its events. The website provides so much more information than I could give you.

The community’s leaders, founders, and members are committed towards rebuilding its WvW reputation and population such that it’ll be more welcoming and inviting for both Hardcore and Casual players. It will likely stabilize towards the bottom of NA servers. It’s hard to say where it will land for now.

Since you suggested that you may delete a character, I suggest that you consider joining a guild that will help you get the gold to pay for a transfer.

I use two primary builds, and multiple utilities and traits when I command. From my time of commanding NA T1 pug map blobs, I used a Power/Vitality/Toughness equipment build. Since I mostly used flamethrower and grenade kits, my primary weapon type did not matter much. I use a modified version of Juggernaut for leading a large melee train or blob. I use all of the best survival traits in place of extra might/ and damage potential. But while leading smaller and under 15 man groups, I use a more damage over time (I prefer doing DoT vs Raw DPS) focused build with the best grenadier traits but following rules stated below:

My Rules of Thumb:

• 30 points in both Inventions and Alchemy trait lines
• “Automated Response”- its a vital part of any Commander Build
• 10 points into “Tools” to get “Speedy Kits”
  Its another vital piece of any commander build- provided you use kit(s)
• Remove in increments of 10 from the Inventions trait line if there’s gaps/ something unwanted.
• Put those points ^^ into the other trait lines to make things that you like using more effective.
• As a last resort replace 1 piece of equipment at a time if you feel a glaring gap in your build after following the above rules

Goal of your equipment build is to optimize your survivability:

• Soldiers is a good go to stat type if you prefer larger and more consistent damage
• Dire armor with soldiers trinkets are another good choice if you prefer Damage Over Time.
• Sentinels is another good choice (based on calculations done on Excel but untested in actual WvW)
• Celestial is a good way for getting a well balanced build, although with a bit less survivability than the above types

Nevertheless that high survival build can be modified. The Chest Piece gives the most stats over all trinkets and armor pieces, with the Amulet in 2nd, and legs and rings about equal to each other, with the other pieces mattering less. Celestial can be a good replacement for specific pieces, or an entire build’s basis.

Finally, the engineer is highly versatile such that it can bring many different tools to the battlefield and help fill in gaps in the team. For example, I find Healing Turret to be extremely valuable because of the huge water field. I use Tool Kit when I need to pull enemies down from Walls. I like to use Elixir Gun and Grenades when skirmishing. No matter what build you use, your teammates are so much more important. I suggest that you change your build (utility skills and major traits) to help fill glaring gaps while commanding.

Ultimately, your best build is the one that you like using the best.

T1 provides the optimal benefits in the shortest amount of time for some people.

Lol TATAA boxes…

I know what you guys are going through! You just have to wait it out until your server finds new relative equilibrium in the match-ups.
Try to have fun in the mean time.

As a Sanctum of Rall Commander, please go to Sanctum of Rall’s Community’s Website for more information about the affairs.

The overarching reason was the hardcore guilds and players could no longer sustain the coverage to remain competitive in NA T1. Secondarily to that main factor, the community had a massive split mainly between the hardcore players and the non-hardcore players. It has since been resolved mainly by the guilds leaving. Thirdly, the game mode has experienced fundamental change with EotM and the population has had to adapt.

According to a couple of the primary hardcore leaders on the website I listed, the overall game’s population’s recruiting pool has became very poor, so in order to maintain interest in playing the game, they decided that it was best that they transfer to servers that could provide the population and coverage necessary to be competitive in T1. They concluded it was impossible to recruit people to the server and play in WvW. It requires a very large amount of numbers, time, and energy required to maintain hardcore competitiveness in T1 and WvW, and probably unsustainable in the long term- unless the game mode fundamentally changes to mitigate these factors. I hope the game mode changes for the better relatively soon. Therefore it’s much, much easier to go to somewhere else that is rising in the ranks when a server is no longer competitive or when the atmosphere seems toxic.

I do not blame them at all for leaving and wish them best of luck in their endeavors. My brother and I had a blast running with them, and will miss the fun times we had and could have had playing with them.

Ultimately, its absurd to play a game if you’re not having fun or otherwise enjoying it.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

. The integrity of our live servers is very important to us.

Makes me very happy to know.

johnnymiller.5968:

Sad Tas.2509:

I cannot speak for EU but matchups in NA should not be decided by ocx/sea/eu coverage.

Is this because they are stacked on one or two servers?

Generally yes. For the NA region: It seems like the very hardcore players are mostly in the Top Tiers of WvW in NA, and the more casual and less intense players are in the lower servers and EotM. The population favors more relatively balanced match-ups as the fall of former T1 servers suggests. T1 provides the best opportunity and perception of relative balance.

Anyways, this is a complex problem and solutions require thinking in new ways than what was used in the initial design.

Goal:
Make the Maps more complex and interactive like Edge of the Mists and Labyrinthine Cliffs.

Objective:

• The Great things about EotM is that is has multiple levels, choke points, and more thought into its design.
• The defensive postures of it are relatively more realistic than the older maps. I suggest making the Keeps in WvW resemble real Castles such that there are defensive ditches and destructible bridges that are used as defenses.
• EotM generally provides for more diverse, complex, and relatively balanced gameplay.

Greater Complexity of Design is vital because it can actually provide more niches for people to exploit while playing. Essentially it’ll give people more things to do and experience.

Risks:

More complexity can make the game harder to learn and play, but the less complexity makes the game mode less stable and more stale and un-immersive similar to what it is now. Over time I think it should become gradually more complex up to a threshold.

Goal:
More perceived randomness in the maps and game-play.

Objective:

More randomness in general will slow down the perception that the game is stale.

• This can be accomplished through NPC control algorithms, and aspects of the maps that change regularly but in a random fashion.

• Accomplished by adding more intractable things into the maps that fundamentally change gameplay

• Scoring system changes

Risks:

Too much randomness will make the game mode too unpredictable. As of right now, the PvP factor is the only real random factor in the game mode, and this makes it feel stale and un-immersive.

The Match Making System is great IF the servers are relatively equal to each other in coverage, but bad when they’re not. This is great to maintain the stability of EotM as the servers are randomly placed into the teams and they intermingle with each other and change. However it is currently bad at placing some servers into relatively balanced matches. This however, is a population problem.

Goal:
More perceived relatively balanced match-ups

Problem:
How to solve the conundrum and problem that politics and coverage dominate who wins each match-up?

Possible Solution:

1. Scoring and Match-Making System Changes
2. New Maps that are based around smaller populations, and larger ones too.
   -There’s populations that generally favor larger battles and those that favor smaller battles.
3. Remove or Revamp old maps to reflect new primary goals of design
4. Guild System Updates that allow for Alliances and Guild to Guild communication
5. Commander and Party System Updates

Risks:

The benefits for trying to solve this problem greatly outweigh the possible negative consequences. However, small, consistent, and gradual changes allow the population adapt overtime.

Sanctum of Rall
- All Time Zones
- Commanders needed the most

Please Visit: http://www.sanctumofrall.com to learn more about the community and the memory of Roger “Oldroar” Rall.

I encourage you to consider looking into the Sanctum of Rall as a possible new home realm. The server community is committed to living up to its namesake’s dreams. Its likely to drop down many tiers where smaller fights are commonplace. There are several completely newly formed guilds made up of the people who stayed from the guilds that left. They are reforming and could likely use your help. All you have to do is ask around near the Vigil Keep.

The community in general wants to provide a more welcoming, friendly, and supportive environment for both Hardcore and Casual players.

Visit http://www.sanctumofrall.com as it provides much more information about the community and its rebuilding efforts.

I encourage you to consider looking into the Sanctum of Rall as a possible new home realm. The server community is committed to living up to its namesake’s dreams and aspirations for the game and community.

The community in general wants to rebuild with the intent of providing a more welcoming, friendly, and supportive environment for both Hardcore players and Casuals.

Visit http://www.sanctumofrall.com as it provides much more information about the community and its rebuilding efforts.

I want to personally invite you and your partner to consider looking into the Sanctum of Rall as a possible new home realm for you both. Its named after prospective player Roger “Oldroar” Rall who passed away before the game launched. I encourage you to visit www.sanctumofrall.com to learn more about Roger Rall and the community. The website provides so much more information than I could give you.

The community’s leaders, founders, and members are committed towards rebuilding its WvW reputation and population such that it’ll be more welcoming and inviting for both Hardcore and Casual players. It will likely stabilize towards the bottom of NA servers.

Good luck to you guys in T1!

As of Right Now, ABSOLUTELY NOT.

For me, regular World versus World is in a relatively unplayable state due to the reason coverage and inter and intra-server politics determines who wins the match ups. As of right now, I will not log into the non-EotM WvW maps often because of the coverage and politics problems.

For the WvW EotM CDI I will make a list of the critically important things that are important to implement in the old wvw maps. 200 words may be a bit limiting as to what we can elaborate on. Explanations are of critical importance. 500 words would be a more realistic limit if there’s a limit, especially if we’re explaining why or the how to implement things. In general scientific abstracts are 200 words, and 500 words are about a page long.

Anyways, thanks for engaging in a discussion with us!

However, I think a great reward system would include three parts:

1. Server Rating at the End (gives incentive to transfer up and spend gems)
2. Individual Participation (Completing the Meta Achievement)
3. Bonus Rewards
   a. Awarded if you transferred to a server ranked lower than your
   previous server (gives incentive to transfer down and spend gems)
   b. Complete certain non-meta achievements/ other things.

Each part would allow the player to, at the very minimum select 1 of the “BEST” rewards. At the very minimum, each player should by the end of the Tournament, be able to select at least 1 of the best rewards no matter how their world scored in the tournament. This would make staying loyal to the losing servers somewhat worth while. Otherwise there’s no real point to participating in the tournament, unless you are on a server that has a very realistic chance at winning the entire tournament.

When it comes down to it, better coverage and inter and intra-server politics reigns supreme, and thereby dilutes individual skill when determining who wins a match up. Thus the reward system can somewhat mitigate these effects by providing incentive to a majority of the players.

Moopy.7908:

. . .
However generally I am of the opinion that the best build is what works for you. Player skill and knowledge in their build is a majority factor in survival.

Totally agree ^^

From my experience, the engineer is a hard class to master, but once mastered can be incredibly useful in many situations because of the shear amount of abilities they can access. Although they seem to be generally under-rated when compared to certain professions’ certain builds.

Answer 1: Positioning is vital to using the engineer in attacking and defense because of their medium armor rating and medium base health pool. Arcing the grenades over walls makes the engineer one of the best professions for defending walled fortifications, once mastered. It takes practice to learn how best to use them. When commanding offensive forces, I use Flamethrower OR Grenade Kit depending on my group’s composition and needs. Several previous posters have great suggestions, too.

Answer 2: Look for the f-interact icon to light up when repairing a gate/wall. Usually the icon lights up when near the middle of the object. Some walls have to be fixed from the stairs. It takes about 20-30 supply to seal a breached wall/gate.

I once spent 8 hours guesting on BG to attempt the tri wurm only to fail the event every time it occured. For about 4 days in a row, I guested to BG and waited about 2-3 hours. Anyways, I’ve participated in killing all 3 of the epic bodies, but have not earned the title because the heads are always invulnerable. I’m tired of doing it after countless tries.

I’m probably not going to attempt Triple Trouble again until it scales such that 20-30 people have at least a similar chance for success as 150 people.

nirvana.8245:

Wait until you have that happen every minute of every day for two weeks straight on all 4 maps whilst you continue throwing yourself into inevitable death the entire time. Its happened twice in T1 NA that I can think of and its real rough.

I know how you’re feeling.

WvW and Spvp are similar and different to each other. Because they are similar, practicing in Spvp or WvW will in general make you better at general pvp and pve combat. However strategies and type of combat (especially in terms of group size and between servers) varies more in WvW than in Spvp. Although very basically every objective is a capture point in both game modes. So when it comes down to it, knowing how to use a build and profession is ultimately more important in overall combat for determining relative success.

The most important thing is: Practice Makes Perfect.

Play around and practice with builds until you find a set up that fits your play style. Its much easier to test out builds in spvp, but not everything is the same in wvw/pve.

Don’t get discouraged if you find that you die allot. We all have died while playing at some time.

I agree that its important to make friends for wvw- it will go a long way to making the game more fun.

No more content where success depends on 100+ people participating, and any group with significantly less people will fail!

I’m burnt out of attempting content that requires more than 100 people to have a small chance for successful completion. I’m tired of the Triple Trouble event until it scales so that 20-30 people have a similar chance for successful completion as 150 people currently have.

Please scale all the content of the game, most especially new content, so that at the very least 20 people can complete them with a similar success rate as 100 people! This will make the game as a whole and new content so much better, and many things in the game would probably see more people attempt them again.

To the OP: I’m afraid that you may be right, but hopes we’ll both be proven wrong.

1. Engineer
- None of the build combinations I have used are really great. Most builds are not as good as other professions if they specialize in a role. The only really good build is using a full Condition Damage major stat set and using elixirs H and C, and Grenade Kit, with 30 points in Explosives for the Grenadier Grand Master Trait. Turret Builds are very underwhelming and are among the worst archetypal builds of all professions. From my experience with the Marionette, using only Asura racial skills as utilities with my engineer was better than fully traiting for using turrets and bunkering down.

2. Elementalist
-Most all around builds are generally lackluster when compared to other classes, and most specialized builds are extremely high risk/ high reward. They can generally do 1 or 2 things- damage or healing- REALLY well if built and played perfectly.

3. Ranger
-Pet and minion AI needs a major overhaul. The reasons why they are shunned in WvW should be considered.

Most Important Overhauls:

All professions need new Grandmaster (or new higher tier) traits that fundamentally alter how the profession plays. The current traits do not really fundamentally alter profession game-play.

Ultimately, new traits that truly alter profession game play will allow for more build diversity; more diversity allows for more niches for professions to exploit. Thus allowing game-play to emerge, become more complex, and expand.

Disclosure:
I am biased towards the engineer and elementalist. Thus a need for an explanation to give the developers and the community an insight with my choices. There are reasons why many NA T1 commanders mainly use certain professions in WvW to command with, and this should be considered when making balance changes.

titanlectro.5029:

. . .
However, there is one MAJOR area of problem in season 1 that was not addressed: Incentive to play on losing servers.

That said, I think there is still time to change that, and give season 2 an even better chance at succeeding. Here are my suggestions:

• Make it so most of the reward comes from just completing the meta. This way the underdog doesn’t feel like they are getting really shafted on the rewards.
  e.g. The server worst server gets 20 tickets, and the best server gets 30 tickets.
• Give the underdog servers other goals to work towards. That way we can say, “Yes we are going to lose, but if we push hard we could still earn XYZ thing.”
  e.g. 3 tickets for the underdog server which kills the most dolyaks.
  . . .

I wholeheartedly agree. No amount of rewards will encourage playing on losing servers and more so when your annihilation is assured.

Epsilon Atreides.3816:

Honestly, I don’t even know what to say. The ignorance of this decision goes beyond making me angry at this point. I just think we need to study it……for science.

. . . .for science!!! YES!!!

As Albert Einstein said in a manner of words for solving our problems, “We must use a different way of thinking than what was used to create our problems.”

I think this concept can, but not necessarily should, be applied to GW2’s WvW, such that the courtyard between the inside walls and outer keep walls (middle area of a keep, castle, and areas where siegerazer needs to maintain control of outside of towers) gets a capture point. Whereby attackers must control and maintain control of in order to capture the inner cap point and subsequently take the objective. Either point would start to uncap once half of the capturing team within the overall ‘Assualt ABC’ event range leaves the capture point. Defenders would only have to maintain control of one area to retain control of the objective. In essence, defenders and other opposing forces should have to be annihilated in order for the primary attackers to capture an objective. Any defender that enters the points would start to uncap the point. It would be similar to how the ruins uncap but modified to heavily favor the defenders.

Additionally, the War Score could possibly be used to determine the threshold at which the additional cap point mechanic is used. Let’s say, since the first place server is 10k points or more above the 2nd place server, then they’d have this mechanic applied to them when they attack objectives. The losing servers would still have the current capping system applied to them when they attack objectives.

The Origins of Madness’ Twisted Marionette battle allows the use of Barricades as defensive structures in several of the lanes, most notably the northernmost lane with the cave. They are extremely useful for directing the path that champs take as they run up the lane, and this concept could be applied towards directing large and small groups of players in WvW.

The addition of this type of siege into WvW would greatly improve tactics and help players create choke points. In essence it would add to the defensive capabilities of out manned forces, and well placed barricades could turn the tides of battle. Most importantly it would help break up large groups of players. Overall, I think scaling them out to be useful in WvW would be a good addition to the game.

To help get a discussion started:

1. What are some pros and cons of the usage of barricades in WvW?
2. What new tactics would emerge as a result?
3. How would barricades change defense and offense in WvW?
4. Would you want to see barricades in WvW, and why?

The problem is that these events seem designed to be completed by more than 100 players, thereby nullifying the things that individual players bring with them to the fights when numbers are significantly lower or higher.

Therefore, the dynamic event system that scales the difficulty of events based on the number of people nearby can solve this core problem. Ultimately, player skills, builds, optimal professions, and coordination do not matter much when fighting a battle against an enemy that necessitates large forces to beat it. Therefore, better scaling of these events based on present population will allow the things that players bring with them to matter much more, and rendering larger numbers useless in the determination of successful completion.

I’ve been on overflows that had anywhere from 20-80 people doing the 2 new events and we failed every time, even on an extremely well coordinated overflow population. Essentially 10 Champions should not be spawning together when less than 20 people are fighting within 5k units of a wurm’s head after the escort is completed by 15 people. Defending and taking Home Garrison while being out-manned by 3.x to 1 is more fun and less draining.

This is how I would attempt to solve this problem through scaling:

20 random players should be able to defeat the bosses, beat ANY World Event (including Balthazar chains), and proceed further into a zone with about a 75% (or whatever XX% is optimal) perceived average success rate. This should be the base line for the events. Additionally make them scale up or down at intervals of 5-10 people starting at 15 random people for an average success rate of about 55-65%. The success rate would be growing logistically and capping at about 80% (or optimal YY%) for 100+ people . The average success rate would be higher for well coordinated non-random groups using optimal builds, formations, professions, tactics, and individual skills. Those are examples of numbers I would use to make the game better but determined through testing and research of player culture.

That would be the best way to solve this problem and avoid stagnation of the player base’s skill level.

Astralporing.1957:

The problem will always persist, regardless of overflow mechanics chosen, as long as those encounters will be designed with the assumption that the whole zone will be doing it.
Basically, if the event is designed around the numbers close to the zone cap, there’s no way of avoiding the problem of people not getting in (or people who have no idea what’s going on/with poor skills/doing something completely different in the same zone taking valuable player slots and thus decreasing the chance of winning).
. . . Marionette event does not scale down well in the game, even if in theory it was supposed to (and Wurm event is much much worse, with it’s hard requirements of 20 people here, 20 there, time restrictions and champion/elite/uber veteran spawn hordes).

My biggest criticism of the new stuff is that most-if not all- of the new bosses, Spider champ in Kessex Hills, and new maps, except the Labyrinthine Cliffs during the Bazaar of Four Winds, do not scale down at all- at least they seem that way. I can no longer count how many times I’ve attempted the newer bosses, and maps with less than 20 people. We failed every time, and could not proceed further in the zones. During the tower of Nightmares, I parked my main toon at the top for a couple weeks just so that I could complete the final boss several times.

One of the game’s best systems is its dynamic event system that scales the difficulty of events based on the number of people near the events. Most importantly, scaling these events based on present population can solve many of the problems with them. This could potentially get more people to complete them more often

I have to agree with several previous posters, that by giving the players greater flexibility in stat choice would make it easier to make balance changes. The population would find a relative balance faster by using the optimum stat combinations for certain uses and counters. More-so, the absence of most of the theoretically maximum possible stat combinations is effectively limiting many different possible play styles of the professions. This could be made possible through a drop-down menu for the major stat slot and each minor stat slot similar to the drop down menu for legendaries. Certain stats could be absent or removed from the drop-down menu if needed to preserve a general balance.

I think a happy middle ground could be allowing us to select the major stat and preset duos of minor stats for the amulet and the jewels within a few restrictions. For example, I cannot place a major power boost with a minor power boost together.

I agree that the Mortar is currently in a bad situation and that it needs an overhaul.

The Lost Witch.7601:

I would like to see the mortar deliver something unique.

Perhaps it could be a combo enabler.

• Add a projectile finisher to skill #1
• Add a blast finisher to skill #2
• Add a water field to skill #3
• Add an ice field to skill #4
• Add a blast finisher to skill #5

I think that should offer some interesting team-play options.

The following change could make the Mortar a soft zerg buster in WvW and much more useful via a new Grandmaster trait created for this specific game play-changing purpose:

Carighan.6758:

. . . in fact change the fifth to be a channeled 25 shot barrage over 5-7 seconds. But, all skills would land randomly in an area twice the radius. They’d be amazing for saturating an area, but useless against single or few targets. A specialized weapon for zerg or boss fights.

• Crits. Come on.
• The healing shell needs to show it’s healing numbers.
• The healing shell needs to heal significantly more.

Additionally:

• Allow the elite icon while using the mortar to create something similar to ‘shield of absorption’ around the mortar to be used on a 45 second cool down, allowable through major traits or general usage.

At a minimum:

• Change the shells’ trajectory such that they can be used inside domes- but not tightly enclosed spaces like tunnels.
  —> Allow it to be able to hit World Boss’ heads reliably

• Increase the base maximum range to at least 1500 units, and allow it to be increased to at least 2000 units through traits; make it more synergistic with existing traits, too.
  —> Making it more synergistic with traits would allow people to build specifically towards the Mortar.

• Increase base damage of skill #1 to at least 1.5 times; increase effective durations of other skills to at least 1.25 as long, while retaining current cool downs. OR make the shells fly significantly faster.

• Dodge roll becomes possible while using the mortar

• Remove or greatly reduce the minimum distance of the skills, and most especially for skills #5 and #3

• Increase base Health Pool and Armor value of the mortar by 15% or more

Possibly:

• Slightly change the camera angle while using the mortar

Ultimately, the Engineer and all professions could use new mechanics that allow them to have at least 1 new interesting role in groups. The Mortar is a great avenue to make the Engineer have more diversity in combat and be able to more reliably counter zergs in WvW, and complement parties and small groups in s/tPvP and PvE.

I like the ideas about changing the staff skill; especially to the Earth and Air skill trees. Furthermore, Blackhat’s post has great improvements to the Air Attunement skills.

The Lava Font skill can probably be reworked to deal a high amount of damage on the first tick and then exponentially decay with more ticks such that the total damage does not change if the enemy stays in the field for the entire duration. That way the damage hits the enemy first and deals lower damage with consecutive ticks.

I agree that the Earth attunement’s Stoning skill needs a rework such that it deals vulnerability more consistently. As it stands right now, it barely hits players at a distance, and its vulnerability is too low. It needs to become faster to cast and fly, or have a small chance to daze, weaken, or apply another condition on the target upon a critical hit. Another possible change, is to make a new Master, Grandmaster, or higher Major Trait, that causes Eruption to push or pull enemies into or away from it. This could effectively change the way the Staff plays for an elementalist. Maybe even make a new utility that does this.

The water tree is in a relatively great situation right now.

Ultimately the staff needs new major traits, skill reworks, and new arcane utilities that make it more synergistic to use in a wider variety of situations, or for specific purposes if geared and traited appropriately.

Chris.3290:

The last thing we need is two super-servers at the top and a revolving door of sacrificial lambs going in and out of T1.

Well said.

I’m thinking that’s what the guilds and players that are considering transferring servers are going to unintentionally create in the very near term future:

One Hegemonic mega-server, a super server, and the multiple other severs near the top will be ‘lambs to the slaughter’ because they are not going to match the hegemonic server’s coverage and population which will likely be too overpowering for all the others to surpass in order to compete with the hegemon and the super server.

My advice is if you get stuck, have questions while in game, or want to join a guild go to Lion’s Arch and ask a question in map chat (use /m).

How to get to Lion’s Arch (LA):
It depends on starting zone, but the general idea is to go to your starting city and go to the purple circle on the map to transport there. The green star on your map will get you back to your starting zone or you can look for the NPC’s (computer controlled characters) near the gates that are the same race as your character.

The official wiki has been extremely helpful to me, too.

Yes, dodging is a crucial part of surviving in combat.
Watching your surroundings is important, too.
The combat is generally more about avoidance and location than about taking the hits.

Edit: feel free to pm me on the forums if you have questions

I agree that support should become more altuistic in nature. I want to add that there should be a more well defined trait trees in terms of Damage, Control, Support, Survival, and Profession. In addition, armor and weapon major and minor stats should gain more variety that benefits support and control builds. Last I checked, there were 21 possible combinations of armor and weapon stats, and about 10 revolve around ‘raw’ Damage→ increase raw Power or Precision. I can only find 1 weapon type that is based on Condition Duration, and only 1 armor type that increases Boon Duration.

I think making more combinations of stats on weapons and armor could go a long way to increasing build variety and helping with balancing issues.

I think that the most important thing the LS needs is a system where ALL players can view cut scenes and other relevant information from ALL the past LS updates regardless of whether they participated when the updates were live. It should be similar to watching the news and reading a newspaper from the Hero menu similar to the Personal Story UI or something unique. At the very least the Heralds should talk about (summarize) what has happened in the world so far since Launch.

I think it will be a good addition to WvW and it will be interesting to see how the new mechanics play out. However, there needs to be at least one way to counter it against a server that holds one or more bloodlusts other than getting the bloodlust through capping the points.

I agree that there needs to be cap points to earn the bloodlust near the skill points at the top of the maps, OR at the very least, one of the points should be moved to the orb’s default location at the very top of the map. This would effectively give home-field advantage to the owner of the borderland and could split zergs a bit more. Ultimately this should give a tactical advantage for the home-team.

I suggest changing the bloodlust to give a certain stat bonus for each borderland in addition to the stomp bonus:

Example:
Red BL would give +50 to power and precision
Blue BL would give +50 to toughness and vitality
Green BL would give +50 to healing and condition damage

This still provides a buff incentive to get the bloodlust, but should make it less overpowered. Also it gives players a way to create counter strategies during combat.

I’ve noticed that in the Heart of Mists, several practice profession npcs in the Fallen Halls of Glory have dodged several of my attacks. Giving this dodge mechanic to other monsters, and especially in dungeons, can help give many seasoned players more of a challenge. Thus monsters can be scaled to change their level of challenge that depends upon the number of players fighting them in dungeons and in the open world.

For example, dungeons can be given different ‘modes’ like medium mode where specific monsters are able to dodge x number of attacks, and hard mode where they are able to dodge 2x number of attacks (or another number of dodges). I think giving more monsters the ability to dodge like those npcs in HoM can greatly enhance the level of challenge when fighting monsters almost anywhere monsters are found in the game.

Solomon Darkfury.3729:

To me, it appears that ANET has found an INGENIOUS way to slowly introduce new major content such as large scale map expansion.

Think of it carefully…

What better way to build up a mythos about a previously uncharted area of Tyria other than to slowly trickle in storyline surrounding a chain of events that would lead to the opening of said area?

We, through no fault of our own, have inadvertantly, invaded Sea of Sorrows. We did this as a place to find a home for Refugees whose lands had been destroyed by the Molten Alliance.

At first the Aetherblades (Which logically should be from Sea of Sorrows, given the fact that an airship invasion from any other direction would have been noticed) and Inquest took a wait and see approach in regards to Southsun.

Now, Southsun has been left in total disarray and the island is chaos. Due to like minded interests the Inquest and Aetherblades have joined forces to strike back, starting with assasination attempts on the LA Council.

Aetherblades want us out of there territory and the Inquest just do not want us discovering their experiments in Orr.

I tell you friends… ANET is using Living Story as a platform for launching large scale expansion…

I’d LOVE to hear what you all think about my theory?

I agree! Its an awesome way to build up towards really making Tyria a world that constantly emerges in the “Eternal Alchemy.”

Logically, it makes sense to make the Living World a spring board towards making Tyria a truly emergent world. Its like the LW builds up to a climax, where the climax is a large change in the story or future of Tyria.

Introducing the Sea of Sorrows will be the climax that the recent LW events are building towards.

I suggest asking in map chat ( use /m ) and ask if there are any events up. It’s what I usually do when I go into a map. Someone may respond with: champ up [insert name of way point] click on that and it will ask you if you want to travel there, provided you have discovered it.

There are lots of dynamic events (DE) that pop up in the world, too. Each one that you participate in will give you x percent of exp, karma, coins depending upon tier of reward (gold, silver, bronze). Exploring the zones will give you x percent of experience needed to level up as you discover the map, likr viewing vistas, unlocking way points, points of interest, skill challenges, etc.

I’m quite sure that my Asura Engineer reflects my personality quite well.

I ended up choosing personal story events that reflect how I view the real world.

ie: I chose the college of synergetics based on its description and line in the story, “all things are connected.” It just so happens to be that I love learning about ecology.

Anyways, the Asura race appealed to me because they love the eternal alchemy and seem to be the intellectual type who understand how individuals are just a small part of it.

I love the engineer profession because they are the innovators that seem to try to make progress in Tyria. I chose it for my first character because of their innovative turrets and fascinating gameplay that is unlike any other. The class likes to create and use innovative tools, and I like doing that in rl, too.

Another possible solution [that likely has been said before by others in prior posts] could be to add rewards to the existing current dynamic events that say ‘Defend or Control ______ (insert name of keep, courtyard of SMC, tower, sentry point, dolyaks, supply camps, etc)’ that pop up when the player enters the area nearby their home world’s owned objectives. These events should start rewarding players bronze, silver, or gold rewards for event participation like similar dynamic events in PvX. Where upon reward, the players get a certain amount of wxp for each tier of reward. This can become a Daily Achievement, and maybe a World Skill that gives boosts to defenders, too. Hence this could give more of an incentive for people to do things other than attack objectives and give lower level players a chance to help their world in wvw while earning rewards.

An idea of how to keep track of event progress is to have a bar fill up as more time is spent actively watching (moving around or doing something productive) while at the objective.