Guild Wars 2

I love Wv3, it is quite possibly the most fun mass pvp I ever had. However, in just one week HoD went from a bustling Wv3 crew to none at all since most the diehard Wv3ers have vacated the server.

Still think that if TA was still around as whole, JQ would still be beating us but only by a small margin. It would most likely been one heck of a fun fight. Now it’s a no contest.

Isn’t that awsome? INDEED!

Anyways, as said I love Wv3 but having no chance what so ever leaves me with really only 3 options.

1) Stay on HoD and pray it gets better. But this won’t, HoD’s image has been tarnish and no one in their right mind would come here to Wv3. We are now being utterly destroyed in total points so that won’t lure anyone either.
2) Find a new server, leave my guild of 7+ years, and start new. I really don’t want to do that but only reason why I even log in is to play Wv3. PvE in GW2 sucks.
3) Quit the game entirely and play something else.

W/e. Last time I was in WvWvW, JQ owned everything. HoD had no spots in any map and were pushed into our respawn. At this point, there is no point in even trying since we have no supply and more importantly no players. Yea, sitting on those steps inside the invunerably area…being the only HoD there…starring out at a teeming mass of JQ who have a crap load of siege setup for the old killing field kinda makes me not want to even bother no more.

2-8 hour ques to 0 in a week. I am sure JQ is laughing on whole saying I deserve it for sticking it out and hoping. But day by day, that hope has been depleted and now there is none at all.

So now, I will just consider my 3 options while I run around a once good server turned to kitten. Who here would enjoy that? I mean really?

Rodarin.6058:

Unless HoD truly has been evacuated then they might drop but JQ is the new Hod so no difference I suppose. One server will always have too many people and the next 3 or 4 below them wont have enough.

Will congradulate SBI on an assured #2 this week.

Gratz!

HoD has been gutted of all dedicated WvWvWers. At this point, I think Kaineng could beat HoD easy.

Head on over to JQ if you can. This is the new and improved HoD.

Has all the major DAoC guilds + hangers on. Win win.

Maybe it was a fluke but I did indeed rally after dying from the fall. One moment I wuz dead, then 8 JQ went splat beside me and up I went. Suprised the heck out of me.

They assumed (wrongly) that players would naturally want to even up the servers and make fun, fair matches.

In a perfect world, that might happen. But it won’t since majority of players want to win at any cost so team stacking is the norm. Free transfers for the lose.

Voting for commander on HoD called Noble Baby.

The ultimate karma farmer ever. I really really hope he moves JQ so they can see just how awsome he truely is.

Have to agree with OP. Let’s remove the trinity and put in a downed state instead!

Lame.

W/e, on positive note: I love downed enemies since I can drop a crap load of AoEs on them knowing that all their dudes will be waddling over to revive them. Then again, my AoE as an ele simply tickles them and generally does nothing useful if there is over 5 people there.

On the down side, ele down state is utterly worthless. Thanks Anet for that, btw.

SBI is in one heck of a suprise this week. JQ has gained a kitten load of players compared to last time they met. Good luck beating JQ now; mission impossible.

Like to give a shout out to the third level of SM as being totally OP.

Last week I managed to get up there (as JQ slaughtered our zerg) and had around 20 JQ hot on my heels. So knowing I was going to be utterly pwned, I leaped off the balcony to my death. To my suprise, at least 8 of them followed me and since I had tagged a few of them: the moment I hit the ground dead, I rallied when they all fell down and died right after I did. Plop!

Then I ran through 50+ of them and escaped with 20 life left.

Nerf gravity too imo. This should not be!

All I want is to be able to jump and cast. You can cast then jump but not the other way around. Almost every single MMO I have played (more than I could list) allowed you to do this, but not so in GW2.

Still can’t stop myself from jumping like a loon…8+ years of doing it in many other MMOs is hard to repress. All in all it makes combat feel a lot more clunky. I can’t dive off a wall and shoot for instance, you have have feet planted firmly on the ground….

Suppose there’s pros and cons. Many don’t like bunny hopping/jump shotting, but I do.

edit. had few friends actually agree with me that this is one of the most annoying things about GW2 combat compared to other graphical MMOs of it’s type.

When I first started readin about WvWvW and their take on transfers prior to launch….it was supposed to be done like this (or so they bodly claimed):

1) Transfers cost $$ and not a trivial amount to help stop bandwagoners and promote server communties/pride.
2) Guesting was the way to find your friends and to look over other servers; as guest you can’t WvWvW on realms that are not your home server.
3) There would be a 2 week CD after transfer that would not allow you to gain WvWvW bonuses and can’t participate until that period was done.

As of now, they threw all that out the window and now we have this band wagon, FotM approach to WvWvW which has led to some down right disgustingly lopsided battles that might have actually been even if those 3 things were in game like they intially stated.

Fastest way at this time to grind Karma is exactly how the OP just stated and this leads to losing real real bad if everyone is doing it. Really think they need to remove the karma/exp/silver gain aspect or at the very least scale it down to below the PvE rewards. WvWvW should NOT be the optimal farming place?

Badges of Honor are automatically awarded upon killing an enemy and is then placed right beside the karma pool in the inventory screen. Keep the RNG part where it may or may not give X amount.

Last thing on my mind while PvPing is trying to loot bags in the middle of combat. Fairly certain I have missed hundreds of them by now which is annoying me to no end.

Try an ele, imo. Only one mention about that here, I believe, and that’s just cus we can only really just drop lots of AoE that even a crippled, one armed blind man could get out of. Don’t even have to do anything fancy like dodging, just move left or right; you got 5 secs before the dmg even starts after all.

Tyrr.3841:

Fixit
Do you know how short that mesmer portal range is? you better start running than waiting to form 50+ people which will take you 10x more time.

Did it with a total pug last week, ported around 100 people right into SM with ONE mesmer. Infact we had to do it 3 times since we kept getting wiped in the lords room. No teamspeak either. Commander said in map chat: follow me and click on the glowy thing on the ground. Easy sauce.

edit. as an ele, all my skills and boons will only target 5 things max. Nothing goes over that limit. So if mesmers can have unlimited targets, can I have that too?

Air.6452:

I can definitely see how thieves are worse.

Forgot to mention that mesmer porting zergs also = perma invisible armies thanks to last patch as well which is infinitely worse than getting insto killed by a thief pressing three buttons. You get whacked by a thief, no biggie…just respond. Well used Mesmer ports on the other hand takes objectives and wins WvWvW.

Thieves, they get perma stealth due to this last patch along with their simply ridiculous dmg.

Second would be mesmers, all their builds destroy. From their clones climbing walls and killing siege (and taking 3/4 my HPs off in one hit with 2k toughness), to infinite number of players ports, and last but not least: being able to pull me over walls that I would have to jump over to get down from and in some cases dragging me right through solid objects.

Ah well, last comment for me here (i think )

Off to shop for a new server for me.

Prolly JQ I guess. wink

ROFL!

Must be super exciting for JQ not having anyone to fight.

What lag? I never saw much lag at all prior to the last patch and this is on HoD too.

Then again, since people are leaving HoD in droves…the lag is of course totally going away now.

No, they need to fix the mem leak and look into upgrading their servers instead of tryin to bandaid it with ‘culling’.

WoW never had this problem really, participated in 200+ player battles many times over the course of 7 year. It sure as heck lagged like a kitten but at least I could see everyone.

Personally, I’d rather lag and have chunky FPS than not seeing anyone at all.

I pray we see a patch soon for this and not weeks from now.

So you pushed the underdog back in to their spawn. They can’t get out or get insto killed by 4+ x their numbers.

You can’t build seige in the spawn area. The people in that spawn also has no supply to even make them.

So essentially, you want the invunerable area pushed back to the point you can stand there and spawn camp them as they load it. Gotcha.

Here’s a pro tip. Back off and let them out and then slaughter them with your pro zerg; even if they run back to the spawn they are accomplishing NOTHING useful other than annoying spawn camp lovers like the OP.

@arenta: hello coat tail rider, obviously new to JQ who does not know that they have been doing this for weeks, camping the JP with gank crews.

But keep on trash talking, buddy.

p.s. telling us night crew to go to ET is insulting. How about you go to ET and help them then and even up the servers? Hahaha, as if.

Water gate was FINE. No way I am going to bother wasting my time to prove it to the JQ forum warriors; screen shots will prove nothing. Only a full out fraps vid will do that, but I didn’t have it up. Me and a few others on HoD do know they had to cheat to kill a couple crappy siege weapons which is pretty pathetic imo.

Any rate, HoD is done.

Wish to thank the two guardians from JQ who thought it would be cool too exploit their way to destroy our siege in a fully walled/doored lowland keep this evening. Bravo!

Btw, this was at least 30 mins before JQ actually took it if anyone is going say.

We watched these dudes, one from [DC] and another from [ML] who magically got up from the water and onto the wall many many times. Did infact kill them a few times but they kept coming back.

Was to busy fighting them off to even get chance to report or get their account names, sadly. Have a screen shot but that is of little use. Hopefulley someone else got their account names….probably not though since there was only around 10 of HoD left in EB at that point. Sigh.

All it takes is one commander to stand on the port location and say in map chat: gather on me and click. Zerg commanders will always have a ton of players near them so that is super easy to do. Then you can insto port 50+ players with ONE mesmer. If that’s not totally OP, not sure what is.

And the best part about all this is that with the invisible bug lovingly introduced last patch; the opposing team can’t even counter it since we don’t even see the mesmer, the port, nor the zerg that went through it.

Whatever it is, just fix it. Or simply roll back the changes they did last patch.

I can grudgingly accept that culling will never go away but I cannot accept what is happening now. It is near unplayable and even effects PvE too.

This is really really impacting WvWvW on a whole. Zerg servers are fully exploiting it to gain ground knowing full well that no one can see them. It also is making people not even que.

My only thought is this is a two part problem: there is a mem leak for sure (restarting client to clear it proves this) and bandwith/servers are not up to par to handle larger amounts of players….

@Zierk; I could have transfered to JQ this morning so please stop saying it’s not possible.

You can get on to JQ easy if you go at the right time.

However, something inside stopped me from doing it though.

CURSE MY CONCIENCE!

But after reading that statement, I am inclined to prove you wrong and move over just to show you it can be done….

Most anything AoE related are 5 targets max. Mesmer ports is an exception and has no cap at all; infinite.

This needs explaining, imo, why one skill is excluded from the 5 target rule.

Bring the player, not the class.

Or in GW2 terms: bring the mesmer FTW.

Do not go to SoS if you are NA.

You have been warned.

Oh there is times you can transfer. I personally know of at least 4 people who went over to JQ this week from HoD.

Last week your night crew was struggling. This week, you have doubled our night crew’s numbers. Happy coincidence? I think not.

arenta.2953:

agreed.
if you want an example go look at tier 1 battle ground eternal battle ground puzzle. 3 ballista, 2 ac. and 30 people.

Now you call for siege nerfs in the puzzle when JQ has been doing for far longer and you are suprised we are not putting up with it no more?

LOL!

Brb, moving to JQ.

Radiodread.8469:

Define killing HoD and JQ? No more 2-5 hour queues? Not quite as untouchable to the peasant servers? The goal of the open transfers is to lessen the disparity between the top servers and the rest and to decrease the queues on said top servers.

What has happened is that people are now moving over from HoD to JQ.

JQ had low que times, now they have super Q times. HoD went from 2+ hour ques to zero. HoD went from full to high in a few days. This is all due to server transfers as people migrate to the new FoTM server which is now JQ.

Yea, HoD was dominating but JQ was really snapping on our heels. Bet my hat that if TA and others stayed; this weeks battle would have been super close and really fun but now it’s a landslide victory with next to no opposition.

JQ is now the new HoD.

Nothings really changed but the server name people flock to.

Who can deny that free, no punishment transfers does not promote server hopping to winning teams?

@arenta you simply have zero right to point fingers at HoD over jump puzzle camping. JQ has done it every week, also setting up mass siege since release without fail. It is clear you are one of the server hoppers just from that post since you wouldn’t know this.

W/e. I am stopping queing for WvWvW like everyone else.

I hate being on a team that has been gutted, may as well join people I know that moved to JQ right?

I have fought along side SYN and a few others left here on HoD; proud to fight with you guys. For those in that were in TA that didn’t bail on us: /salute.

Anyways…..they need to kill free transfers soon because this server hopping is getting out of hand.

Funny, when I went to bed this morning we had narrowed JQs lead to around 2k. I now see a screen shot where they are up over 10k…

W/e. Tired of spending 3-5g a day for HoD and spending my time SOLO building siege. Then seeing commanders getting all the props for the walls me and a couple others took down. Then seeing a karma farmer with a commander tag make us lose stuff since most seem only interested in farming. But who cares, right?

I will still fight but I am through paying gold and running supplies with the handful of others who do as well, total waste of time and money on my part. A totally thankless job. Amusingly enough it seems other guilds/players know this too after I am seeing tags that were on HoD are now on JQ. Good stuff. Free transfers = win win win!

To the JQ bandwagon!

Personally, don’t do any sPvP atm since I prefer staff and WvWvW.

My only real complaints with staff ele is:

1) 5 target cap on AoE is kind of crippling for a class that I think is supposed to be the AoE king.

2) The projectile speed of many of our spells like say Fireball can be simply avoided by STRAFING. You don’t even have to dodge; just move to the left or right.

Now #1 here is debatable and may break game if increased but #2 needs consideration; slightly increasing the velocity speed of these spells would go a long way in helping at least the staff using ele imo.

Not ingame, nor want to risk going to a talent site builder. Just give brief overview of my current Staff based WvWvW/PvE build.

20 Fire: 10% dmg since fire is my main dps stance and then 20% cast reduction

10 Lightning: the one that gives you up to 25% swiftness…invaluable must have for me since running away or getting somewhere fast is needed for how I play.

10 Earth: earth sheild at 50% life. I like to live a bit longer…heh.

10 Water: I swap between remove dot and 20% cd reduction as needed.

20 Arcane: boons to you and others on ele swap/increase staff radius. Note: swap staff radius increase to 25% shield if using D/D or S/D.

As to 2nd bar skills…

Arcane Shield: more protection and it does AoE boom when it breaks. Also handy for blast combos.

Sigil of Water: auto remove dot every 10 secs because dots suck plus the slow on use is also nice. I will swap this for the other dot remove skill if needed but usually stick to this most the time b/c I am lazy. /wink

Teleport: I can’t live without teleport; it don’t matter what build I will try but tele stays on my bar forever! Ok, maybe it’s not that great but I love this ability way to much since it is super good for advancing, retreating, and breaking stuns.

Elite Skill: Tornado all the way. Drop into earth, hit shield, then stage dive into a zerg. Most time I get owned, but some times…some times this ploy can really mess large enemy groups up really good.

Gears: Jewlery and 4 pieces of armor is power/prec/toughness. Chest/hat is Power/vit/toughness. Upgrades on these are all power/prec/toughness gems since none of the 6 piece set runes seem attractive to me over stacking these particular stats. Still trying to decide on that so sticking with this setup for the time being since it’s also cheaper in cost.

Weapons: main staff is power/prec/toughness with Sup Sigil of Energy. Second staff is Power/prec/crit with 10 power per kill. Third staff is power/toughness/+heal with chance to heal others. Also carry 2x daggers (sigils: energy/vunerability) and a scepter (sigil: energy) for situational small scale fights not suited for staff. Plus you can switch between staff and dagger to have a lot of movement speed increase abilities when you are not in combat. But usually I am wielding a staff most of the time…

Play style; Basically, all I do is drop lots and lots of AoE on zergs, run away, then go back in to lay more. I cycle elements a ton and my cast rotation is usually mixed depending on the scenario. One major down side is I rely on others to combo, but I can still do it personally if I am quick enough at the keys.

Simple! Maybe…

Anyways I think I do ok DPS generally, escape some pretty insane situations, with so-so…not die in 2 seconds survivability, and I can provide some support for my fellow zerglings. Really nothing too complicated nor revolutionary, I am sure. Debatable if this is the most effective way to play but I have fun. I guess.

note: I would go heavier into arcane or water but I really don’t want to drop 200 power and 20% cast reduction for fire since Meteor and the #2 staff skill are my bread n butter dmg spells; faster they are off CD the better. Might tinker a bit more, we shall see.

I will admit, 1v1 I really don’t do so hot but in large scale battles I can do some decent amounts of dmg at times. Biggest problem is that everyone, and I mean everyone avoids AoE spots like the plague which is not good, however; one must consider that area denial goes a long way in massive zerg v zerg fun.

Anyways, just my current build. Prolly try a more tankier build later, kinda poor so I can’t quite manage another set of gear yet.

Might be bug with culling, perhaps they did some adjustments. I mean I was playing fine up until we were having a massive 3 way battle inside SM keep where there was at least a 100 or more players. I did a suicide tornado through an entire zerg of 50+ people for the full duration which leads me to believe they didnt see me either until the end of it lmao.

Actually played 12 hours before this bug hit me. Then everything turned invisible, including myself (on my screen). Only things I could see was projectiles and pets. AoE, players, and NPCs = totally invisible. This is not culling, only started happening after last patch.

On high pop servers, relogging means a que sometimes.

Wtb hotfix pls. Ty!

Vaius.4376:

Why are you guys surprised about HoD having spies? Thought it was obvious.

JQ uses blatant spies: one is even named “Jade Quarry Spy”, continues to taunt us in map chat. No need for subtley, right?

Now most will X-fer to JQ, SBI, and possibly ET. Nothings will really change other than server names. Oh and major que times for the new FotM server set. Heh.

I guess on plus side: my que tonight was instant at prime time on HoD.

Anti farm code will stop them…oh wait; it only effects real players while has no effect on bots since they simply teleport around and run 24/7. Sigh.

I think one the first things that should be done other than have buncha GMs go around and start banning on the spot is to find out how the heck they are ‘teleporting’ and immedietly close that exploit. This effects everything since even ‘legit’ players are now using them in PvE and worse; PvP.

Endgame to me is having stuff to do, playing with guildies, and progressing. However, GW2 does not really deliver that very well. In the end this game is pure PvP when it comes to endgame. Dungeons are really not that hard and limited to to a small party; once you do them a few times it’s all the same.

Then there’s doing open world stuff, but since rewards don’t scale; not much point going back to early zones so you end up in Bot Coast which is the only true lvl 80 zone.

As to gear…I opted to sell all my materials I had accumulated, bought full set of exotics super cheap, and made a large profit to boot in only a few days after hitting 80. This sort of things usually takes months to do in other MMOs, not a few hours. Guess thats cool for people with not a lot of time to invest since they can get top gear with almost zero effort. But for more hardcore gamers, perhaps not so neat…

I know people will say just play alts, but SWToR also went that route and we all know how that went.

Don’t get me wrong; GW2 is a kitten fine game and I more than got my monies worth.

However, “endgame” here just feels like a zergy mess with almost no real group based PvE content I (and my guild) can sink our teeth into. Sure WvWvW could be the place for that, but with long que times…the odds that you actually get a full crew in all at once in under a few hours is super slim.

Also the no trinity deal is a great twist, but being a player who totally enjoys playing healer/support; I can’t get that here and never will so I will have to look elsewhere.

W/e, GW2 has no sub fee so I won’t feel bad if I have to go to other MMOs to get my healing/raiding fix. There is pros and cons to both.

I still think GW2 rocks but it’s more of a casual game, mostly focused on PvP. I knew that when I bought it so I am not disappointed. I had hoped, however, that endgame would be a bit more meaty in the PvE department but that is not the case. Ah well.

Guardians, Warriors, Thieves are extremely popular currently and make up the majority of players I see: all due to them being much stronger than other classes in most areas of the game….

Something could be said about me being the only active high level elementalist in my 90+ player guild. They are all Guards, thieves, and wars lol.

Spot on review, always respect Charle Onyet. Seems to like the same stuff I do.

That being said, you can initially review an MMO but unlike most other gaming genres: it is not set in stone. Stuff can change, even drastically over the course of time. Really think that for sure release an initial review for an MMO but over time go BACK after a while to see if patches changed much and address (or ignore) issues the reviewers had.

Meteor shower.

When specced with increased radius in Arcane line: the area will increase but so will the misses meaning that it’s counter productive to have increased radius. Other radius spells work fine, though. Just MS.

ie. I AoE using MS on a group of 20+ mobs in an event and most the time it won’t even hit any of them with AoE radius trait. If I take it off, the meteors hit more effectively.

Ability for staff in fire attune that makes you roll back leaving a firey trail also suffers from same problems the OP listed for ride the lightning.

Swapped to 20/10/10/10/20 build last night for PvE. I use a staff and gear stated for power/prec/toughness. Pretty durable so far. But DPS is so very low, but I guess living a bit longer is more prefereable.

Problem is that you really just can’t have one set but it’s terribly expensive to make/buy new ones. Next goal is a cleric set then Valkrie one which is at least 70 golds worth to put together. Mats needed are so hyper rare and the anti farmer code makes gather mats even more slow.

Ah well, back to the grind; have to save up 20g+ to buy/sigil up a set of main/offhand weapons now before I even think of making new armor sets. Zug zug…

Another suggestion:

During large scale events; reviving, healing, and generally supporting should count towards bronze/silver/gold rewards. Plus maybe it will also tag mobs for loots. Like last event I was in where I spent majority of the time reviving downed players and cycling support abilities. Ended event with bronze and next to no lewt since I spent most of the time helping other players. Right now, it’s better just to DPS than stop and revive people. DPS = more rewards and loot. Support = no rewards or loot. So why play support? You will notice many cannot be bothered to help others due to this. I can see this can be perhaps exploited but perhaps not if this can be re-worked a bit.