Guild Wars 2

Coinin.2590:

Elano.2014:

Equinox.4195:

Beyondthelol.9504:

This is what TG is trying to do, we know we cant (and dont want to) compete with your 100 man mega zergs, so we do our best to kite, maneuver and parry our way to victory

We definitely don’t have 100 people. It’s just a l2play issue.

DB is in the lead at the moment. Apparently, I guess it’s you who need to l2p. :O

Anyone who wants to think that reset night alone makes really any difference hasn’t spent much time in T2 clearly, since the matches don’t really break away until monday or tuesday

I will apologize in advance for some of the over confidence you may encounter from my DB brethren. I believe we did that break away thing well before Monday last week and it seems some of us are still swimming in the celebratory aftermath of that.

On the other side of that coin the L2p comment deserves the sarcastic retort. DB just got here; it would be nice to have at least a day or two to get acclimated to the tier before the l2p comments surface.

There were some very tight and surprisingly well organized zergs out there tonight. Many people were commenting on it and certainly we have to figure out how to deal with it. Some of those groups were quite a bit larger than what we have faced in the past few weeks, and in my opinion more talented.

Please try not to take the number comment as entirely as a negative. Most of us just see it as a challenge and believe me, we will l2p you.

Ordibble.3092:

Suralin.3947:

When people play for points, that’s when it becomes a problem. When people play for fights, then you’ll find enjoyment in that. I know the fairweather players will just give up, but entire guilds giving up is no excuse, imo. I know [TG] will try to find even fights and engage the best we can. I know that we try to challenge ourselves with Alamos and play Tom & Jerry when we’re outmanned. There is fun to be had in WvW, even when you’re outnumbered. T2 will be great for our SEA. I don’t think it’ll be great for our smaller guilds.

The responsibility for this does not just lie with the losing server. I was on the other night when DB SEA turned the last keep green then proceeded to spawn camp the four remaining players with siege. Guess what? We all logged off and they then had no one to fight. So were those players playing for points or for fights?

Just before that I thought I would have some fun “even when [I was] outnumbered”. So I walked up to some DB players outside spawn and danced. A DB player started hitting me so I /cried and went /no without fighting back but he kept on until I was down – then another came up to stomp me like he was desperate to get a piece of the action.

You can’t Alamo with 4 people against 40 and when those 40 are so impersonal and humourless there is no fun to be had, especially when it has been going on for weeks.

I am not saying that I was any of those people but I can see players dance, but emotes are off.

There are far too many obnoxious players in the overall community for me to filter through that stuff in order to find the few that are not jerks and just having fun.

I also have a sizable list of blocked players as well. I don’t really care for extremely insensitive conversations and insulting chat trolls. I imagine there are multiple players, perhaps even commanders that must feel some amount of frustration that I just do not see their comments and commands.

I also do not spawn kill players aside from the tactical use of it while attempting to take an enemy keep. Once we have secured the structure I will go do something else. There is no real fun or honor in killing a handful of players right at their spawn over and over again.

Your choice to leave was the perfect solution. Deny them any reward whatsoever and the perverse pleasure immediately ends.

Kudos for that.

As I have said before, I can and have traited my warrior to apply confusion which can only be done with interrupts.

I can toss 3 utilities that when timed right add confusion along with I believe 2 hammer skills than can interrupt as well. If I pick up a rock to throw and it interrupts it will add confusion and I think, but not completely sure as yet that I can offer this up while using a catapult as well if it interrupts. This build really works best when the group is well organized and supporting one another though, without the support the condition wears off quickly and most players know well enough to not attack.

What can happen though is with multiple classes using this skill in bunches, and I am seeing much more of it recently as I see many more mesmers in WvW in general it feels like you are getting spammed with it even though it is just coming from multiple sources. This is more noticeable because it is much harder to just fight through it like many of us do with other conditions.

Mesmers seem to have become the new thieves, and confusion seems to be the favored trait because it renders the most powerful enemies useless for a few seconds at least and in some cases forces them to exit the fight.

I don’t think people would think it was OP, which it really isn’t, if it was not creating some difficulties in taking down the more organized guilds/zergs.

Running into several mesmers, an engineer, a couple of guardians and some necros all working to put up confusion, barriers/wards, and wells can very quickly make for a very powerful and frustrating group to fight against.

That mixture can make all those hunters, thieves, and casters in your zerg become useless fast.

Recently we ran into just such a group on our server. The commander at the time just could not find an effective way for us to deal with it. This does not mean to say it would be impossible, I believe that our whole pug would have to respec and change entirely in order to handle it, but that is not something a group can do on the fly.

My conclusion is that there is nothing wrong with the skill but allow people to dodge, or as the OP originally stated; allow us to select it as a primary condition to remove, especially when you have that plus several other conditions heaped on you during a sizable clash, which seems to happen quite often in WvW these days.

Lambent.6375:

5 man dungeons = community? Seems that quote is better fitting to people having to interact to open up temples, and complete certain meta events.

This is where I think Anet had the right idea with the dynamic events and the open world style team content.

I do not do dungeons. I do not like doing them, if I could explore them on my own and finish them without a group I would do them now and then and be happy. This does not mean that I want to play a singer player game. I like to see people doing their own thing it adds vibrancy and life to an otherwise scripted universe.

I participate in events quite often in the open world. I heal people that are downed. I jump in to kill a mob that is troubling someone or pass along information if I see someone struggling. In WvW I have given players gold for escorting Dolyaks while everyone else is out zerging down enemies.

I don’t have an issue with being a part of a community overall or being in an informal group. I don’t like seeking out a party to complete some part of the game, standing around for long periods of time waiting for people to get their stuff together, answer a phone, eat, or do any of the millions of little things they have to do before we can embark on a dungeon.

I don’t like to skip mobs for speed runs, I like to do things at my pace. I like to figure out the puzzles and tricks on my own, not find out how someone else has been doing it and copy their method because it is thirty seconds faster or because you can cheat the instance.

I don’t like that any type of progression or gear is gated behind the idea I have to group up with a set number of people and put myself in an uncomfortable position and potentially endure ridicule, abuse, or frustration in order to amass tokens or specific types of gear for my characters.

I like solo content because it suits my play style. I like to explore and take my time doing things. I like to kill every single trash mob and pick up every item. I like to stop and look at things and get to know every nuance of the area I am playing in. Groups hate players like me. I don’t care how long my run takes or if I am putting out the highest possible DPS. As long as we get it done that is all that matters in the end.

I understand that many people do enjoy this type of content. If the same gear and items were available in other ways, perhaps even more labor intensive I would be happy to use that method and it would in no way prevent the dungeon masters from having their cake as well.

A virtual world just like the real world is made up of many different types of people. I don’t expect the game to be changed to suit my wants and needs but I do like to be able to get some pretty cool gear without having to play a facet of the game I do not like even if it means paying for it instead of running the dungeons.

Usually I get one ecto using master salvage kits, been as high as 3 yesterday. I might get a bad RNG streak and not get one after 3 or 4 salvages, but that is fairly rare.

I don’t usually do my salvages in bulk though. I prefer to open bags and chests in small batches and with some time between them. It might be a little ritual/obsessive of me but I don’t get quite as frustrated at poor results because they are not compounded by seeing it all at once either.

I have played a game in the past with a three faction, and a four faction pvp scenario.

The first version did not allow for any type of formal truce which was the three faction version while the second did have a formal truce option.

There were some advantages to having the option but it also created an imbalance because the factions under the truce had the higher numbers overall and as new players joined the game they also opted to be on the winning side more often than not.

Now and then the truce would be broken and the inevitable lopsided war carried on with one side being largely out numbered yet again.

This type of structure in pvp will never ever be perfectly balanced especially when you have 24/7 world wide coverage available.

Buffs, boosts, and fixes of this nature will not improve the very simple problem at hand. You have a low population and fewer players enjoy playing at a disadvantage let alone on a losing team.

A possible solution would be to limit the number of enemy players onto a map while the other two sides are fewer than say ten players. This would lead to the larger, third server eventually losing people as well during their peak times and effectively punish them for having players. In my mind this seems counter productive.

A formal truce feature might work, but I doubt that Anet would re-code the WvW system in order to do this and while it might solve the immediate problem of imbalance, it would most likely open up a new can of worms.

Trust me on this one, the server or faction that is formally under a two versus one attack does not enjoy this feature at all unless they are very equal in numbers or still have the greater number of bodies.

If I was that unhappy about how my server’s situation as far as WvW goes, I would transfer to someplace that better suits my needs.

I understand the loyalty factor and the community ties but in some cases you have to weigh the options and choose the path that gets you back to having fun and enjoyment.

I don’t think Anet is going to have a quick fix in the near future that will ensure those low tiered and low numbered servers can give the players what they need. In the end I suspect a couple of server merges will be the final solution as it would be much easier to accomplish and likely much cheaper as well.

Most people in this thread are looking at confusion from a one on one situation for the most part.

One on one, confusion is just something to deal with. In large zerg wars confusion along with everything else going is can be a death trap. The main reason is quite simple. More and more I am seeing mesmers going for this spec because it effectively keeps the enemy from advancing too far especially at a choke point when you can’t run around or avoid it without giving up your entire position.

I personally do not have an issue with confusion per se. It is simply another thing to deal with just like invisible thieves, mobile elementalists, and righteous indignation.

I play 5 different characters in WvW and respect them frequently to deal with the various situations that arise.

Conditions cleansing is just like choosing to use a speed signet on your utility bar. If you have it it is useful, but you are giving up a great deal to do that. I like to have a cleanse on my Warrior as well but I also have to give up some very useful things to do that especially because the elite skills on a Warrior are not very well balanced in my opinion.

I am in agreement with what several others have already stated here; dodge skills should be immune to confusion effects entirely. Some classes do not have very many escapes to choose from while others have several. Dodge is the one mechanic that this game was build around as an equal for all classes. It should remain that way unless the player chooses to burn it on a skill or simply dodge.

In all fairness many of the players in WvW are casual players that do not always follow the meta/theory crafting/hardcore pvp trends. They just go out to have some fun and kill stuff mostly in a group. The might understand the individual skills at the level of the tool tip information but not how everything works together.

Some of these players might only play a couple of characters and maybe even only one. I learned how to kill thieves by playing one, same with necros, and guardians. Learning what they can do and how they do it is not always easy from inside the zerg point of view. Many players learn the counters from experience and often not until long after they have died to them many times.

The reason why tactics change over time is because sooner or later the player base learns to counter the latest game plans but the casual players are usually the last to adapt and the last to spec into the style because it takes them longer to put the pieces of the puzzle together without direct information.

I feel sorry for the commanders trying to keep the WvW pug trains running. The limitations of trying to communicate to a large group of players running very random builds and characters going up against a well organized guild running with Confusion/lines of warding/necro wells and walls is an extremely difficult task on the best of days.

These groups do not understand how to support one another very well because most of the time they are built to be individual players while playing in a group. I have been in a couple of guilds that are like this as well. Individually they are often great pvper, but as a group they are still a late stage Jenga tower and just one or two move away from toppling because there is a lack of unified support.

Confusion exploits those players. Anet will adjust it before risking a big piece of the player base from making an exodus from the big bad hardcore players pulling their wings off.

Maniac.5163:

Who’s taking second this week – so close! I’m hoping you guys stop DB from taking blue position in T2.. they are uncomfortably close to jumping over us (like 1.3 rating pts)
Looking forward to fresh new faces in T2 Dragonbrand – you guys have always been fun to fight and I hope when you join the match it will reinvigorate our server participation a bit..

YB and Mag are still putting up some great fights but I don’t think they are fielding the full force, or focused anywhere near as much on the scoreboard at this point.

I think they are using the time to farm some loot and practice tactics.

The current score is not reflective of either server’s true capabilities in my opinion.

I just hope most people do not let the score go to their heads. I expect next week to be a sharp contrast to the last two weeks we have had.

This is an effective strategy against a much larger zerg that is going to Aoe the walls and take out the siege you have up there.

Logically it seems silly to aim the arrow cart or catapult at your gate from the inside, but at the very least this will still give you a chance to buy time for additional defenders to arrive.

The sad part is all too often the additional defenders arrive and try to use their hand held weapons first rather than the strategically placed siege.

I would love to see Anet address the canon fixtures however. The way they sit on the walls limits their use a great deal, and the one at Wild Creek tower in EB is all but useless. They need to be raised up on some sort of turret so they can be a bit more effective.

I just follow reliable commanders.

The tag does not indicate anything more than someone spent 100 to get it.

Sometimes I prefer the more quiet commanders to the people basically yelling about everything all the time. I understand passionate and competitive play, but the abuse of uppercase characters and name calling has the opposite affect on me. I will eventually block someone that yells, rages, and calls everyone names because people are not listening.

Think about it commanders. When fewer and fewer people seem to respond to you and don’t do what you ask or demand from them, maybe the collective is just slowly, over time adding you to that blocked list.

I will add that this is the number one reason why I do not have a commander’s tag. I am one of those people with a low patience threshold and would most likely upset more people than the opposite.

I offer this observation as constructive criticism only; beware of your map chat habits as they could be the cause for poor support at times.

Blood lust is one of my personal favorites.

I get more disappointed losing my 25 stacks than I do from death, especially when the commander orders us to stack somewhere, I just know we are going to get run over by that giant zerg ball over there and my mind is screaming we really should get out of there and try a different approach.

BOOM!

Those 25 stacks I had for the last two hours gone swirling. Shame.

Confusion is the condition of the month right now.

There are times where I feel like the enemy is made up of mesmers and all I see are clones.

This is life. Not too long ago thieves were favorite WvW class but the numbers seem to have dropped in our tier for the most part.

I have specced my warrior to add confusion on interrupt and I am enjoying the results for the most part. I don’t see many warriors run with kick, bulls charge, and stomp. I have been using them more often lately to break up the zerg balls from the middle and it works. I just wish the other members of the zerg would recognize the tactic and learn to get out of the path of the zerg ball commander and break them from the “neck down” so to speak.

In a one on one, or small group situation, this style of play has worked well for me. Most enemies expect a warrior to burst and run out of gas, but they rarely expect to have 3 or 6 stacks of confusion from me and consequently either damage themselves down to the wire, or just stop attacking which obviously favors a warrior on cool down waiting for those burst skills.

I have run this with the Hammer as well but find it works much better when in a larger group that is somewhat balanced with fewer “selfish” skills and more “group” friendly play. The Hammer is a bit too slow and allows enemies to recover too quickly at times without the support. The interrupts is done properly can quickly make a mess of people that just do not expect it though, the Hammer can give a whole pile of interrupts if the timing is right.

My philosophy is to build my characters in a unique way that the enemy does not expect. They usually have fewer counters available for the unexpected, and no one expects a Confusion Warrior….yet.

I hope Anet does not nerf the siege.

These devices are supposed to be deadly and powerful. Too often damage is all ready mitigated by the stacking concept alone with fairly long cool downs on the skills.

It would be nice if they could “crit” for a one hit just to keep those pesky roamers from taking so many liberties while moving around the maps. They might be a great deal more cautious when they get an instant death while trying to cap that control point, or taunt us from our tower knowing the first hit is no danger at all.

The spread shot is great in melee range but pointless outside of that.

I would like to see canons get some love as well. They are decent for damage but do very little to stop a zerg on approach without plenty of support. A few might get downed from a cannon, and a one might die if he is full glass, but they can take out that cannon super fast without much resistance after the first couple of shots.

There are very subtle advantages for an invading force that frustrate me regarding structure defense.

1) A little ledge on top of the the walls (not even knee high) prevents my characters with a bow from being able to hit a large number of the attackers.

2) Several casting classes have massively powerful aoe skills that can not only make that wall the least safe place to be, but also destroy siege within seconds unless it is placed in some awkward and almost useless place.

3) People are cheap. How many times have you been at a tower defending and see seven or eight people firing away with a staff or a bow? Why didn’t they build an arrow cart or two? Naive might be the answer but the more probable explanation is they don’t carry siege and never buy any. They might lovingly donate their JP siege to a commander but rarely do they keep a few on hand for making a stand.

4) T1 towers and keeps are way too easy for 30 people to overrun unless there is an equal number of defenders. Three catapults or three rams can drop gates and walls of those places before most defenders can get there. Therefore most people don’t see the point of defending the structure.

5) The ability for guilds to claim a structure is a very cool but not fully realized concept. Most guilds will not burn guild buffs on a tower that could be flipped in a couple minutes while unattended. If this system was revamped and designed to make it lucrative for guilds to defend the structures they claim, and moreover if they wanted to claim the structure for a very rewarding purpose, defense in WvW would become a priority. As it stands now claiming anything outside of SM and the keeps is more of a vanity feature.

I could do a whole feature piece on #5 and have elaborated on this feature in another thread that was moved and will most likely go unnoticed by most people forever.

Guild transfers can be a great help to a server, they can also be unnoticeable and even a hindrance on occasion.

It will take some time for the new members to get settled as well as ease themselves into the already existing structure of commanders and guild based coverages.

I can somewhat understand a bit of resentment from the YB, and Mag players that are obviously frustrated with how this match up is playing out. I can sympathize with the discouragement felt when your previous days hard work is almost certainly going to be undone while you are sleeping or at work/school etc.

If DB intends to make a run at T2 the infusion of NA players, and more specifically NA guilds was going to be necessary.

As stated above, the causal nature of the community is present and that will most likely be a leading cause for us to yo yo between T2 and T3.

I can honestly say I don’t much enjoy the WvW pvp I see after we have a substantial point lead either. Suddenly people start getting too comfortable and begin to play foolishly instead of sharpening the tactics.

I hope that T2 is competitive and humbling for us to the extent that people tighten up their overall play keep finding ways to adapt and learn. Failure to recognize being outplayed is far worse than being beaten in my opinion.

Peace.

I have both a necro and warrior along with a thief, guardian, and I am working on an ele.

That said, I can’t stick to just one character for WvW pvp.

I used to use my warrior primarily for pvp but in recent months the zerg dynamics are changing. I see more mesmers, guardians, and eles in the groups than ever before and even necros seem to be rounding out the field in some cases depending on the group.

This makes my warrior much less fun to play if the zerg I am running with does not provide the supporting qualities I need to survive all the conditions and fields that are inevitably up front in melee range.

Recently I find I am running my guardian and necro more often to compensate for the survivability that is sometimes missing. If the group dynamic is suitable, sometimes I really like to use my thief above all as I have more options for avoiding damage and can distract some enemies from their objective or focus.

This week alone I have re-speced my warrior to entirely different builds utilizing the longbow more often than anything else. The main reason for this is because so many of our battles are taking place at choke points and without the extra range for the bow, I end up attacking clones and pets 90% of the time unless I want to stand in all those condition ripe puddles of annoyance.

Solo play is for my thief, roaming with a small group is necro all the way.

I just feel like my warrior is very hit or miss with situational play lately. I see far more GS sporting guardians than warriors in WvW, at least that is how it seems.

I don’t think I have missed a daily since launch.

I did not get the monthlies done until the new format was created because I just do not run dungeons.

I always thought Anet might someday create a currency or gate system using the achievement points and therefore give them a reasonable amount of attention.

Those new dyes, and the mining picks probably were the leading cause for the sudden jump in the gold to gem rate.

I was thinking about buying the mining pick, but at 25 gold or more it seems very pricey.

Sure glad I am not planning to transfer to another server right either, that is a harsh price to move.

I can get off my wallet and spend the $10 dollars or so for gems, but in all honesty money is pretty tight around the homestead these days. I would rather eat than spend it on pixels.

digiowl.9620:

Wolfheart.1938:

While there’s definitely classes that have poor choices as far as elites go ( Engi ) the situation is not as bad as some posters seem to think. Plague Form useless? LOLWHAT

While not useless, plague is very situational. It is nice in PVE where the mobs are dumb enough to stay within range so you can keep them blinded and poisoned. But in PVP anyone with a bit of sense will immobilize you and get out of range.

One aspect the development team overlooked with plague is the fact that you become a cloud/mist form. In my opinion players should not be able to actively target a cloud/mist form. This does not make one impervious to damage as aoe and normal contact should do damage, but in my humble opinion this transformation should not be able to be targeted allowing the necro to actually infect people with the plague and move around a bit more freely. I do believe you gain additional HP in this form, but it drops fast while under a barrage of cc while people get out of your path or stack up to mitigate the effects.

As it is plague feels like the slowest moving cloud of death in the history of anything. Given the large size of the aoe cloud, plague still only will apply conditions on 5 people at max makes this skill a highly specialized elite.

Plague would have been so much better as a normal aoe skill given the design and parameters with which it is useful in WvW.

Running into static fields and puddles of confusion along with barriers makes plague seem like its the dark sheep of the utility family. You would not want to use it up front of your zerg either because that first burst of damage when big groups collide will eat you up like a finger food at fat camp.

Along with this lich form robs you of a healing skill. Now that you are the biggest target in the zerg and obviously about to lay down some serious damage you get focus fire like mad with this so called elite skill.

Lich form is a great deal of fun when your enemies are fleeing though. That slightly spamable #1 skill has pretty decent range and power. The little people just look like insects scurrying away all the while boom, boom, boom goes the reaper.

I run pent/shelter a couple times a day in between other tasks and projects. I never run dungeons because I just don’t like that kind of game play any longer.

I can’t compare which is more profitable but I can speculate that if your server is busy at the time you normally play and/or more specifically if the pent/shelter area is full of people you will make a great deal less profit.

There are sometimes too many people killing the trash mobs, and the larger group attracts more Champions which are far too long to kill and reduce the overall drop rate by having mobs gated by time.

A less than ideal solution is to guest to a more quiet server for the cursed shore farming, but not everyone sees this as a non invasive move thanks to overflow and world boss issues.

Yes I find the game fun.

I don’t really care if I have to “grind” for some things.

My first MMO took me 368 days of an average of 6 to 8 hours a day to “grind” in order to reach Max level. Then you had to build your gear.

Most of that “grind” was killing the same mobs over and over again for days, sometimes weeks even.

When you died from a mob attack you lost 5% of your experience as a penalty. Many areas were open world pvp.

GW2 is a cake walk by comparison.

I do not fully understand how the outmanned buff is calculated either or if it includes people in the JP.

Forgive me this, I don’t do the JP and have zero desire to ever do it and therefore do not wish to get slammed with forum trash talk due to basic ignorance.

I will add that I like the new outmanned buff much better than the old. The only thing I don’t like is that it can go off and on almost instantly without any notice, which means I don’t really know when I am taking that risk of paid repairs or not unless I watch my buffs like a hawk.

An audio indication of some type would be a nice option to stay on top of the situation. Especially when you might have no way of knowing a guild party just jumped into the map until you have already reached the point of no return.

As for God mode….no thanks.

The big bad thief was “outmanned griefing” me threads would break the internet.

This for me is easily one of the most annoying aspects to WvW.

I don’t really mind back tracking to retrieve my loot and I can live with missing some now and then without sleep deprivation or OCD related blackouts.

What annoys me is that the zerg often just rolls on as the commander has a goal in mind, and the all caps emerge along with some insults and bitter commands about stacking and listening and all that fun stuff.

I follow these people through all manor of crazy war, off cliffs, into death over and over every day. The very least they could do is lay off the angry birds long enough for people to pick up their rewards and group.

For this reason alone I would prefer having the loot picked up automatically in some way, shape, or form. I imagine many commanders might agree with this as well as it might lead to fewer verbal outbursts after certain encounters.

I also realize that there is a hardcore community that would not care whatsoever about those missed bags way back there, and that outside of organized GW2 pvp there is nothing. I hear you folks banging on those keys already. Please stay calm. This will not wound your game play, it might even improve it slightly.

Thanks.

I would like to see keys drop more often than they currently do. On par with an exotic drop would not offend me perhaps only obtainable in open world type content to reduce the insane farmers from running dungeons night and day for them.

I have not had one drop in a really long time outside of map completion and I am not really bothered by this except I get the chests so often they annoy me taking up space in my inventory until I have a stack worthwhile listing on the TP.

If the chests were in fact much more rare as a drop and had a chance to drop some very good items like a precursor, or “unique” item that you could have pride in getting I might spend the gems on the keys.

I have had hundreds of chests drop since launch and there is no way I would ever buy keys for all of them at that rate and price.

Am I cheap?

Perhaps, but I also don’t have any use for the tonics or most of the boosters either. There are some items I can use but if I need them badly enough I can get them, like the karma boosters I require now and then using gems anyway and no gambling.

The recently added skins are a step in the right direction in appealing to my taste but the variety and unique quality of them is already dropping as I have seen plenty of people flashing their wares already.

Much like the legendary weapons flying around. They are no long very rare or unique. I think it is more trendy to not have lipstick shaped great sword, or a bow that shoots unicorns, or to plop spots and rainbows, but that is just me.

The legendary weapons are just not my taste though. Unique skins might be, if they were rare enough, unique enough, and enough variety that my character would be distinguishable from others rather than just like the rest of the server.

I am people not sheeple. ; b

Even before the recent Wxp changes I noticed that the player base was developing indifference towards defense and the need to upgrade most things that do not require a WP unless there was a giant zerg rolling around.

My first two months in WvW was a team effort in most aspects; defense, offense, cost, supplies, and siege. When someone looked at a camp people would come to fight and defend the area. Now it just seems like everyone just waits to slide by with zerg unless the chance to catch the “bad guys” might lead to a big ego thrusting wipe, in which case a fight might ensue in defense of a place.

When this attitude started to grow, my investment in upgrades started to shrink. I can’t afford to fund my server if they don’t think it is a priority to defend my investment.

…I still do upgrades and lay down siege now and then, but I don’t do every single one I come by any longer. It is not worth it.

I didn’t do any pvp in the game until about 3 or 4 months after release. I was enjoying the leveling process of my character and didn’t want to get side tracked. I had this vision of the WvW maps being more detailed and tactical based on the terrain than what they are.

I know that latency would be a big issue with having super detailed maps but I did expect to see more than just basic tundra, forest, water, snow, and the minor variations we currently have.

I look at a map like Caledon Forest as an example and wish we had open world pvp instead of WvW. Pvp in places like that would be an adventure and every battle would be vastly different due to the terrain alone.

You can get up into tree and root systems, you have high hills and low lands and plenty of places to choke large groups effectively and areas of potential open combat. There are some very interesting maps in the open world that would add to the adventure rather than take from it.

There are some areas in our current WvW maps that offer a glimpse of this, mostly in the BL map corners, but fights are rare in these places unless a spawn is nearby an invading group trying to breakout.

I would gladly deal with fewer numbers allowed in a map if some really interesting maps were created to make this happen.

As an example, the ruins outside the blue keep in EB is one of the best overall areas for fighting in WvW as far as design and complexity goes for tactics. The obvious downside is that it is right at the foot of a keep and the fights here are usually quick as the blue keep defenders disappear into their fortress to man siege rather than bounce around those walls and paths.

Just my thoughts. Expand, add, flame away if you must. : )

Last night in T3 we had a 3 way battle in SM that was unplayable due to the massive skill lag.

At one point I died and was back at our keep trying to get my buffs up for quickness in order to get back in the fight; it took at least a full minute before any of my skills to activate.

I was running back to the castle and happened upon an enemy hunter trying to cap the control point en route. It was the most awkward fight I have ever been in. I don’t know how he/she felt about it, but my skills were so delayed that it must have looked like I was attacking invisible people all around them.

He/she went one way and I continued on to die several more times in that mess at the castle as neither one of us seemed to be able to hit one another in any significant way.

The lag continued until well after the battle at SM was decided although it was nowhere near as bad but there was still action delays even in all aspects of the game outside of combat. I was repairing a gate in a tower and the delay between the animation, the information on my screen, and what was happening pretty much forced me to log out and take a break from the game.

I have faith that this issue will receive the attention it deserves. This situation sadly makes culling seem like something bearable.

Siege towers. I would like to see them in the game but only as a rare drop like an exotic perhaps.

They would require a fair bit of supply to build like trebs with a bit more investment and be mobile but only at say the same speed that we walk at.

They would not be able to be placed just anywhere either. If the walls are surrounded by water or if there is not a realistic amount of land for it to occupy then it can’t be placed/built.

This would add a new dynamic to the game and cause some very interesting surprises for an enemy now and then.

I could see it as a “voluntary” server thing, but if this were to happen as it stands now, the top servers being matched up with the bottom servers could be one of the most demoralizing contests possible.

I imagine the top servers might not field a really competitive team for the week or just mess around while the lowest servers might not do much after the first night or two of barely getting off the spawn or out of their keep.

I might be exaggerating the picture a bit in my mind. I have played in T1, T2, and T3. I have never been in T8 but judging by their rating and the forum conversations I don’t think my vision is entirely out of the question.

I have seen it happen all too often; players just want to golem rush a keep for the laughs or worst have a surplus of them from the JP and decide to splurge at a very inappropriate time.

My old guild got into the weird habit of trying to use them for almost every capture but just did not have the basic co-ordination of portals down.

I got to the point where just the mention of golem rush would make me log out for the time being or go do something else far far away.

Upgrade costs are very high for some extremely basic things when you add them up throughout the play time.

If you are one of those players that guards camps and escorts Dolyaks as a very unrewarding service for your server, you could blow through far more gold than you will make when the enemy zerg rolls by and flips that camp very 10 to 12 minutes.

The upgrades are worth having but they can be rendered useless in seconds and therefore are rarely queued during the busiest time on the map.

Keeps are generally very tough to get into unless your enemy is not on the map or just has very low numbers due to the ability to lay out plenty of siege and keep it in places a zerg can’t reach unless they breach the walls. On towers there are not really very many practical and safe places to lay out your siege.

Tower costs are rather high to upgrade when most zergs can drop the gates in minutes with gollums or superior rams if they desire. I have watched a zerg arrive at a tower and melt gates in a mere couple of minutes if they are willing to use enough siege.

This brings about a fundamental flaw I think we have with both the structures and the siege equipment. The towers, especially early in the upgrade stage are far too soft and the siege prior to being upgraded is very powerful for invasion but weak as far as defense goes.

The difference between using regular siege and superior siege should be enough that we prefer to use the upgraded items rather than view them as luxuries that the more serious guilds use.

Three or four regular rams can take down most doors really fast and unless the enemy has stacked several arrow carts or invested in superior arrow carts and is standing right in that tower to defend the zerg is most likely getting into a tower at will. Most tower flipping failures happen when a smaller force is stopped by a bigger zerg and rarely the other way around unless there is a well prepared group already inside the tower manning heavy siege.

Running with a zerg pays pretty well if they are able to keep taking lands and flipping camps. When the action slows down, or the map has few places to conquer there is little to no incentive for the players to defend and upgrade much more than a keep, or garrison as no one expects to keep any of the towers they took.

The ability for guilds to claim a tower, keep, and castle seems to be a shell of what the true intent was meant to be. I believe when the concept was designed guilds were expected to take pride in their new “home” and defend it. The reward for doing so is nowhere near enough to encourage such a thing. This one aspect alone could help to break up zergs and place far more emphasis on defense if Guilds had something significant to win and lose when they lay claim to something.

If the incentive was big enough, they would come and defend from just about anywhere in the game. I would suggest that a claimed tower generate some bonus gold during its capture for the guild that owns it and a mercenary reward when allies defend it with appropriate awards.

As an example, if my tower made my guild one gold an hour, or produced suitable rewards for my guild’s occupancy but gave out a debuff, and or penalty that prevented us from claiming anything else for a time period, guilds would defend that with a enthusiasm. Zergs would get broken up quickly when a profit loss was at stake or multiple profit losses were at stake.

The mercenary concept could be expanded upon as well. For smaller guilds laying claim to a tower they would certainly want allies to defend it and help defend it granting an opportunity for roamers and small groups to get some decent rewards and money for fighting an enemy at the gates.

With this concept in mind I think we would see groups spread out scouting and fighting more often as well as defending due to the risk versus reward at play. Perhaps instead of having BL maps with 200 people massed at a keep pounding on each other we would see more tactical play and 200 people spread around the map keeping their eyes open for opportunities and dangers.

Basically if defending a tower or keep paid better than capturing them, and further if one could make more money by conquering and defending them, zergs would be more of a tactic for enemies that have nothing much to defend rather than the reverse.

I don’t believe that this idea is without flaws of course, but I do think it would give WvWvW a great deal more purpose and would appeal to most players wants and needs.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Tell necros that vigor doesn’t matter.

I’m still not sold on ‘boon hate’. What I do know is that too many professions have access to cheap condition removal, and some professions have cheap access to boon production. This makes conditions somewhat weak, and boons extremely strong.

I like the idea of ‘boon hate’ only if its implemented in a fashion similar to the Necromancer focus 5 ability, where the base damage is low, but increases sharply based upon the number of boons.

I agree with this premiss entirely.

Boons are a gift for classes most of the time the player does not even have to key them to create such a powerful mechanic, yet getting a condition involves timing, keying, and luck to be truly useful unless your zerg is bigger.

I play several different classes including Necro, Thief, Warrior, Guardian, and Ele. When you play them you certainly see that boons are gifted while conditions are hard earned in pvp at least.

I love this game.

I don’t require goals, treadmills, or any other type of “mechanic” to stimulate my game play.

For those that do require such things, they can be found in many other places. There is not need to reconstruct this game to suit your selfish needs.