Guild Wars 2

Posted this elsewhere but will post it here as well, since this thread got the initial Anet’s response.

This is quite strange, a year ago I posted a video I uploaded about skill lag. And it was almost exactly a year ago (March 30, 2014). Here’s the video:

Anet actually fixed the skill lag issue within a few weeks after that post.

So I uploaded a new vid showing the skill lag, hopefully they can fix the issues this time as well.

Fingers crossed. The issue seems to happen whenever 3 servers are in close vicinity, even if 1 server stands off to the side while 2 others engaged each other. I love WvW but I dread any 3-way battles right now. Please fix Anet, thank you.

This is quite strange, a year ago I posted a video I uploaded about skill lag. And it was almost exactly a year ago (March 30, 2014). Here’s the video:

Anet actually fixed the skill lag issue within a few weeks after that post.

So I uploaded a new vid showing the skill lag, hopefully they can fix the issues this time as well.

Fingers crossed. The issue seems to happen whenever 3 servers are in close vicinity, even if 1 server stands off to the side while 2 others engaged each other. I love WvW but I dread any 3-way battles right now. Please fix Anet, thank you.

I’d say most people in WvW on active servers are in it for the fights, to win for the server, and the loot bags. Nobody really cares about exp or karma unless you’re an uplevel yourself. By the way, are you an uplevel?

On each given server, you have commanders that lead fighting groups, and you have commanders who’s objectives (jobs) is to take real estate and gain ppt for the server. Don’t judge a server, or the whole game for that matter, based on you coming back after being gone for 2 years and following a pugmander.

Try getting to know your server better, get to know which commanders lead the GvG and open field fights. I can tell you on many servers (Jade Quarry for an example), no commander runs the karma train for the sake of getting exp and karma. People go to EOTM for that kind of stuff, as all uplevels are encouraged to stay out of WvW and play in EOTM instead. You may find a pugmander who’s goal is to flip keeps & towers so the server ticks good ppt. But that pugmander isn’t out for exp & karma hunting.

Also note the DAY of the week. This is Thursday, reset day is tomorrow. Overwhelming majority of the servers stop pushing & fighting by today. Why? Because the points are likely already set, they can’t make much of a difference within 1 day before the reset. So Thursday night & Fridays are when you see most of karma training unless you have 2 servers very close in points and want to edge out another. This is also the day people relax and chill a bit, many guilds would run something funky like an all warrior raid, or a pirate ship raid or something different just for fun.

So, I agree with coglin above, don’t come back after being gone for 2 years, then pretend to know your server or the game playing just once following one commander. If you get to know your server, you should be able to find some guilds and commanders that don’t care to work ppt but focus more on fights. Also the server you are on matters. If you’re on a server with less WvW activity, then they may be running karma trains because there’s really no action during that timezone. Some servers are more active during a certain timezones only.

Anyways, there’s plenty of battles to be had. Don’t be discouraged by one pugmander experience.

Necro bombs are still very much a thing in the current meta, both pre-stab and post-stab changes. Any decent guilds or pugzergs run at least 5-10 necros in WvW.

The stability changes don’t affect necros that much in WvW to be honest. As long as you are playing to your strength using well bombs properly and watching your positions, you should do fine unless your raid gets run over (in which case you’re going to do die anyway).

The thing that kills necros in large scale WvW is and will always be immob spam. Stability won’t save you from that.

Pre-stab changes, the melee train was the focal point, ranged simply assisted & supported the melee train. Where melees went, ranged bombed. Melee train had time to flip stab on, go kittens deep, and had just enough to draw back out.

Post-stab changes, the melee train isn’t the focal point, ranged sometimes have to bomb outside the melee train because the melee train can’t just stand there forever while you bombed anymore. Because stability is more precious, the commander has to make the call whether to go kittens deep, or to draw. You can’t have both. You have enough stability to go all the way in still, but you won’t have stab to go all the way out. So when you commit, you commit.

In my opinion, the current meta makes melees & especially Commanders think more. You no longer flip a switch and roll in deep, break some faces, then roll out. You have to decide whether you want to draw early, or you go all the way in deep. It’s a big decision because the wrong decision often means a wipe.

Also the melee train actually has more responsibility to protect ranged now. Since without your ranged, you’re as good as dead in this meta. So melee train has a bigger role, and the commanders actually have to call shots by watching enemy movements in relations to his/her ranged positions. Melees in a way support the ranged more now to allow the ranged to bomb properly.

When you watch 2 zergs go at it together, the zerg that’s going to win is the one where melees have done their roles, and that their ranged are free casting, playing an aggressive game. The side that loses are where their melee train can’t hold the lines, and their ranged are broken up, busy running and repositioning.

Honestly I don’t think the stab changes are all that bad. Many commanders in T1 have already adjusted and are running their raids differently. I see more multi-groups now than before. Where as before you could roll 1 blob and win GW2. Now I see 2-3 smaller groups capable of countering blobs. I can understand why many melees don’t like the new stab changes. But if you just think a bit differently, and change the way you view the a battlefield, you’ll find that you are even more precious and have even more responsibilities than before. Stability is now more precious than ever, you have to really know when to use it.

Some think it’s the recent patches, where Anet’s servers are bogged down having to track more data due to the new stability changes. Entirely possible. Whatever it is, I hope they can figure it out.

If you do WvW, people will LOVE you as a power necro. If you run PvE with guild groups, you can be a necro and people shouldn’t complain. It’s only an issue if you try to get into speed groups or run with elitist min/maxers. sPvP, well necros have their issues there, we aren’t a powerhouse class that’s for sure.

As much as people dog on necros, take things with the right perspectives. Where thieves are very good at sPvP and PvE, they are considered 100% useless in WvW zerg/group combat. Any large scale WvW guilds will tell you to bring a different class. Rangers have the same issues with large scale WvW not appreciating them, same with engi & mesmers where guilds really only need 1 or 2 in the whole raid.

So, are necros bad in PvE when compared to other classes? Yes. But are many other classes bad in large scale WvW when compared to necros? Yes. Just as your commanders & guild leaders will tell you to bring a GWEN to guild WvW raids, you should probably expect to make a class more viable in PvE when you do the PvE side of things.

Bottom line is, no class is perfect in all playstyles (PvE, WvW, sPvP), except maybe Guardians. Don’t be afraid to have different classes for different aspects of the game. You should most definitely play the class you enjoy the most. But you should keep in mind the strength & weakness of said classes in PvE, WvW, and sPvP.

blakdoxa.7520:

So your unorganized blob was hit by an organized guild. What’s the issue here?

If if was blob vs blob, you all would just be running through each other. This sort of head vs head smashing isn’t fun or interesting at all. People want there blobs to be organized but that’s not going to be even remotely possible with no in-game utilities for commanders or even with voice comms.

You either quoted the wrong post or misunderstood my post.

A solid melee train is still important to any successful zerg. Just don’t expect to run through red circles and lines on the ground in one push. You may need to make several pushes, many fake pushes to burn cooldowns. Splitting into two heads are harder to deal with for ranged as they tend to concentrate cc & bombing on one spot. Two spots force them into making mistakes and split their concentration.

Oh and use stability wisely. It’s still a very important part of the game, even ranged are begging for it now.

Instead of WvW tournaments, I’d rather they do something like a push week. Like once a month, a random week will be chosen as the push week and you get rewarded extra for winning that week or something. Make it random so people can’t plan it, this way people would have to wait until reset night to see if that particular week is push week.

What was said above is true, WvW tournaments do/did bring out the worst out of people. It also got so many people burned out that we ended up losing a lot of good people, many great commanders that pulled overtime during tournaments for an example are no longer playing. It’s just a shame. I’d rather not see that happen again where guilds break up due to tournaments, and commanders quit the game due to it.

Weekly pushes are doable and I think most people can handle that, once a week out of a month or two.

I’m fine with an eotm v2 map, I enjoyed eotm. But there are annoying things from eotm that I really hate to see in the new map…turrets is one of them. Turrets is just not needed, it’s super annoying and it fires way too much, too often, and its radius way too large.

Also we need more large fields for some good ‘ol fashioned open field battles. And this field must be clear of turrets for crying out loud. Yes, I think I’ve said it before that I had turrets, but I really do.

I’m totally fine with side games, events, fluff, bosses, etc.. But turrets is like shoving arrow carts down our throats and trying to make us like it. Except it’s now cannons that are pre-built and automated. wth Anet, do you play your games?

I can’t say whether I prefer pre-stability changes or post-stability changes. But what I’ll say is that changes like these make the game interesting by forcing players to adapt, make changes to their spec, and likely play some other classes. People have cried about the lack of changes in WvW for a very long time. Here we get a change that forces people to look at battles a bit differently. We’re getting what we asked for, even if we didn’t ask specifically for changes to stability.

So, I like changes, I’ve embraced it. The commanders I see having issues are the ones still going “ok we’re rushing, 3, 2, 1….omg this hurts I need stability!@#” What many don’t realize is that stability changes affect everybody. So while you think guardians & warriors have it worse now upon initial charge, try being ranged and getting run over by a well flanked melee train on them. They’ll get rekt now more than ever, talk about being bounced and tossed about.

I’ve seen commanders that have adapted change their driving styles, and run more creative tactics than just “ok stack, and we push all the way 3, 2, 1”.

This is how it is with non-instanced RvR system. It is what it is, changing it would make it more instance-like and I’m pretty sure WvW/RvR enthusiasts want to avoid instancing altogether. There are too many instanced PvP games already. Embrace GW2 for delivering what most MMO’s shy away from since DAOC.

You have to kind of take the good with the bad. This is one of the very few downsides to this live, organic, WvW/RvR system. It sure beats boring “read, set, go” type of instanced PvP.

This is win/win for players of both sides. For PvE players, obviously WvW is where they dread going to because it’s not what they enjoy. For WvW players, often we can’t get into a BL (usually home BL) because the map is filled with PvE players doing map completion. The queue can get ridiculous sometimes, often a guild can’t respond to garrison attacks properly because of this. This change will get PvE players out so more WvW players can enjoy the content they want to play.

It’s win/win, a good change. Obviously as a WvW player I’d rather they take PvE requirement out for me so I can enjoy WvW more and not get dragged into PvE. But I’ll take this for now, and keep hoping they’ll do more for WvW.

This is great news honestly. If you’re an active WvW player, you should know this alleviates the amount of map queues filled by PvE map completion players. We all know how these affect servers, especially T1 servers where guilds are sometimes unable to get into home BL that needs help because it’s filled by PvE players doing map completion.

We’ve seen a BL with 50+ queue but only 25 people on the commander pin. It gets ridiculous sometimes. So this is indeed a good change. And while I wish they would remove PvE requirement for those of us that are only interested in WvW, I’d rather they do just this for now than not doing this at all. Removing PvE players from WvW zones will immediately help with the situations many servers are facing with queues. In other words, doing something is better than nothing. And this will help WvW be more of a place for WvW players & guilds.

I think it’s cool GM’s are doing their jobs. But there needs a better way to report these, and quicker action needs to be taken based on what some have said above.

Holy trinity would make GW2 not GW2, it’d be just like another MMO out there. This genre needs more GW2, not less. While I thoroughly enjoy holy trinity, dating from EQ, to DAOC, to WoW, I find that I appreciate GW2 more because it is NOT holy trinity setup.

There are pros and cons of both, it’s best there are MMO’s that support both styles. I enjoy GW2 for what it is. It can use improvements without turning holy trinity though.

+1, nothing have been more annoying in GW2.

Bristingr.5034:

I won’t even mention the constant double-teamming from both of you servers. That kitten gets old fast.

Everybody feels they get double teamed on their home BL. This is a fact, but that’s also how home BL’s are designed. You always have to defend against 2 servers trying to take your things.

As someone who plays on JQ, I can tell you some commanders do talk with commanders from other servers. But they sometimes talk to TC commanders as well, such as the other night when JQ owned left half of BG’s borderland, while TC owned right half, with BG having only their garrison in their own color. The commander at the time said to not attack TC owned hill, because it was the day we decided to push BG.

Then yesterday, the whole JQ zerg was holed into Bay while TC & BG both tried to take it. We were stuck defending Bay, that we lost everything else as a result. Yeah, talk about double teaming yes? But again, that was our home BL, so it’s expected. You both had your map blobs there.

On T1 servers where population is quite large, and WvW activity is very busy during primetime hours, you’re always going to get hit hard in your home BL should the other server’s map blobs decide to go there. So please, stop with the whole double teaming crap. It’s rubbish and you know it. I’ve lost count how many times we’ve taken BG’s keep in EBG last few days. We honestly did it so often that their keep stayed paper throughout the night & day.

Your problem is partly due to you, and partly due to the server you play on. Warriors need to stick with the commander & the melee train. If you are running around trying to get extra swings in, and dying before the commander wipes, then something’s wrong with how you’re playing or how you have built your warrior.

The other part of the problem is your server, TC. TC lacks leadership, even those that play on TC admits so. It’s quite possible you are following commanders that lead to your death. If that’s the case, start learning who’s a good commander and who isn’t. There are smart commanders that know when to withdraw, when to run, and they make the right calls on where to attack and where to leap in. This is something you’ll have to watch yourself, and hooking up with a good, active WvW guild will really help.

Pugging is always sort of “play at your own risk” kind of thing. You can’t expect people to have your back, you can’t expect to have ele drop the water where you need it, and people certainly aren’t going to peel for you. Being in a guild or running with a good commander will help with all of that.

As for whether you should server transfer, hard to say. Going from T1 server to others, you’ll find less blobbing, a bit less action especially during non-primetime hours. This likely also means if you don’t hook up with a guild, you’ll likely get ganked even more because there would be more smaller roaming groups running around ganking. So think hard before you transfer there, and see if you should convince your friend to transfer to TC instead.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

gavyne.6847:

I feel bad for those that PvE as a necro. But necros have always had issues in PvE in MMORPG’s. Ever since the dawn of MMO’s, starting with Everquest, necros have always been solo gods but difficult to be a part of groups, especially groups that enjoyed fast killing.

Except in GW1 where Necros were gods in PvE. Nigh infinite energy, powerful group and boss clearing skills, etc. Heck, 3 Necro heroes was actually a meta team comp for a while in PvE.

That’s a rare breed my friend I’m comparing necros to almost all MMORPG’s since Everquest. It just seems it’s a common complaint with necromancers, the way they’re styled to play. Always seem to be built as gods of soloing, pretty good in PvP, but fall short in group PvE content.

Not saying it shouldn’t change, by all means I do hope they come up with a solution. But like I pointed out above, like the Thieves, it’s hard for Anet to make a boost to a profession without making them completely utterly ridiculously overpowered in other context.

Being tanky is ok, but I too have doubts about a power necro spec being that tanky while sacrificing power and raw damage boosting traits. I think the spec can probably work decent for solo roaming. But you likely don’t pump out enough dps to help out any large scale or GvG situations.

Remember in the GWEN WvW meta, necros are useful for their high raw spike aoe damage and boon stripping. You lose that high spike damage, you are simply not as useful as what you’re wanted for.

Their issue is it’s hard for Anet to boost necros in PvE without making them severely overpowered in PvP/WvW. Thus is life in a game that supports both modes. Necros are in the current WvW meta called GWEN (Guardians, Warriors, Eles, Necros), they are absolutely essential to the success of any large scale or GvG groups. Necros are the reasons why melee heavy trains can be countered. In other words, necros own the spike aoe damage & aoe boon stripping department. To boost their usefulness in single target situations, it’d make them downright scary.

I do hope they can somehow make necros better, don’t get me wrong as a necro I support that. But just wanting to give my opinions as to why it’s hard for Anet to buff necros due to how useful they are in larger scale combat in WvW. About the only way I can see it happen is for them to retweak the traits so necros have to be pigeonholed into picking a specific trait lines for aoe damage vs single target damage, while giving up survivability as a result. It’d effectively make necros…not necros.

To put it in a different way, imagine you’re a Thief and told you are useless in large scale WvW combat. But we all know how good Thieves are in any 1 vs 1 or single target situations. It’s kind of like that, but in reverse for necros. At least for rangers they’ve got the range to show for it, but they suck for any aoe large scale situations as well.

I feel bad for those that PvE as a necro. But necros have always had issues in PvE in MMORPG’s. Ever since the dawn of MMO’s, starting with Everquest, necros have always been solo gods but difficult to be a part of groups, especially groups that enjoyed fast killing.

I think the feeling is mutual. PvPers don’t want PvE players filling up the borderlands, especially during reset nights and weekends. PvE players in WvW directly affects those that want to do PvP because of queues. Where as PvP players in PvE zones don’t affect anybody negatively.

As someone who plays only WvW, I’d much rather have achievements and completion to do within WvW, and not be forced to do PvE. While I support PvE players’ plea to remove WvW from their completion achievements. These things really should be separated. Anet devs should know the two are completely different beasts and people often prefer one over the other.

Cool wings, disappointed at the lack of color choices though. Color & texture, come on, some choices would at least make the crowd look a bit different. Reminds me of back when tempered spinal blades came out, everybody wore the same thing, boring. Until the color choices came in, that was when it became cool.

timetopat.7921:

So im a little confused by WvW. I remember when GW2 launched it seemed like there were battles everywhere. Now I log into any of the borderlands around 7pm EST and they seem dead. If they are not dead there is only one blob of about 40 people who runs around border land to border land. It doesn’t seem like there are massive battles or defenses. I had a fond memory of defending stone mist castle near the launch. There were about 14 waves of attacks before they left. Now it seems like we just hand it over and flip flop owner ship. I currently play on Tarnished Coast. Why does it seem like a lot less people play world vs. world? Or is it like warhammer online where you have musical bases so everyone gets points but never fights? Or is prime time different on Tarnished Coast? I understand that a lot of people have complaints about WvW, did that hemorrhage players?

Thanks

I play on JQ, so I’m speaking as someone who fights against TC. I can tell you TC is plenty alive, and they can summon some blobs like no tomorrow. TC appears to be able to summon a large blob earlier in the day, like in the afternoon American time. JQ is often under heavy attack from both TC & BG early in the day. If you played earlier, you would see this.

However, some TC guilds do the PvDoor only. Meaning, they go from tower to tower, map to map, avoiding open field combat. If we try to engage, they pull off, despite even numbers or sometimes greater numbers. They’ll stealth hit garrisons, golem zerg bay & hills. So what you are seeing may be this. There are plenty of other TC guilds that don’t do that, but some specific guilds do.

My suggestion is to look for an active guild that suits you. If you like PvDoor or play the ppt game, there are guilds you can join that do that on a regular basis. If you enjoy open field combat or defense, there are plenty to choose from as well on the TC side. But joining the right guilds will help you enjoy the game better. And being on comms used by your server will allow you to know what’s going on better as well.

Good luck!

Dawdler.8521:

Problem is, its still the best game in its genre despite its flaws and its still very much alive 3 years on. Maybe your guildies left, but the population is still thriving. Enough people to go around which makes WvW awesome. I am also on FSP and we had epic battles yesterday.

I had really hoped that some games could top GW2 by bringing much needed features like the more complex ESO WvW or physics galore Archeage but nope, they ultimately suck at being fun. Most next gen MMORPG games are 1 year away. Hell the only game to top GW2 looks to be GW3 lol.

+1, people can complain, they can quit. But GW2 is one of the best MMO’s left in the market that deliver large scale PvP on a multi-server basis, with good siege combat, season tournaments, server scores, weekly match makings, etc.. ESO was fun for a bit, but ultimately I came back to GW2 because it’s simply more fun. This fighting for the server thing isn’t seen elsewhere since DAOC days, and I think it helps make GW2 fun.

For people that quit to go to other games, chances are those individuals prefer running instanced battlegrounds over and over for quick & easy rewards & gear. That’s not what WvW is about, never was, and I’m glad for that. Plus a lot of people are really PvE players that dabble in PvP/WvW, and they ultimately go back to PvE games. Just look at the amount of people that play in EOTM for karma trains, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

There are plenty of people that play WvW, some quit but often they do so for personal reasons. Many come back, and many new players are still just getting into the game for the first time. That spells success really, for a game to be 3 years old and it’s still going strong. Where as many other newer MMO’s released in the past 3-5 years don’t get to live that long.

I only play WvW so I’ll just say I’d want necros for well bombs. Necros have some of the best aoe spike damage and boon stripping. Yes yes, rangers can out damage us pew pewing but it’s single target damage. Necros go for the aoe boombs. Rangers should always focus backliners and soft targets, where necros bomb the melee trains. They have totally different roles.

When you run in a zerg/blob or guild groups, and have at least 5+ necros, the well bombs will stop a melee train cold in its tracks. Nothing like watching you down 5-10 players at once upon a charge. That in itself would tip the battles in your favor all in a few seconds.

There’s plenty of roaming action in T1, but a lot depends on the timezone you play in. If you happen to play during NA prime, then there’s no escaping it, you’ll bump into a lot of people. Although I do still see plenty of solo/duo action around bloodlust. You may want to try that.

EBG is also a good place to find more scattered action, mainly because it’s more of a place people kitten around a lot. Lots of random pugs just running all over the place. A lot of stragglers. Easy for you to avoid the blobs because they blob together, so just avoid where oj swords are on the map.

But if you really want less action, then I suppose transferring out of T1/T2 should give you that kind of gameplay.

Believe it or not, a lot of people play GW2 to blob. If they wanted smaller scale battles, they would’ve been playing other games with instanced & timed BG’s and arenas. You take the blobs away, there will be a lot less people playing GW2. As is, there are plenty of havoc groups and small fights in WvW outside of the blobs. If your server doesn’t have havoc groups working to take supply bases and towers, the your server isn’t doing it right.

Remember back during DAOC days, without AOE cc limit, you had plenty of roaming gank groups. But still majority of the time there was at least a blob or two (back then we call them zergs). It is what it is, majority of the gamers like to follow, that’s why they like to blob with the commanders. They want to be lead, and they love the massiveness of battles they see in GW2. They didn’t come to GW2’s WvW to play in small groups.

Games don’t dictate how players play the games, players do. You can see how when there isn’t a commander pin up on a particular map, less people stick around on it. When there’s a pin up, people show up. You can’t take blob away and expect WvWvW to do well in GW2.

On the flip side, rather than complaining about blobs, how satisfying is it to know your enemies outnumber you 2 to 1 or 3 to 1, but you still could pull out a victory in open field combat. It happens all the time in T1.

I agree with the OP, the new skins have been a hit. Everybody on comms have said great things about them. I hope Anet sees this as an opportunity, and realize they could jazz up WvW without actually changing the gameplay itself.

Fluff matters, it’s cool lil things like these that get people to go oooh ahh’s over a game. Since it’s cosmetic, it could be a source of revenue as well. Seeing how Anet caters to PvE more because PvE players spend more money, they may change their minds if they start seeing revenue from WvW side…which would lead to more WvW development. Win/win all around really.

If you enjoy WvW in this game, and want quality action around the clock, transfer to a T1 or even a T2 server already. It’ll be the best money you’ve spent, worth hours upon hours of enjoyment playing with and against lots of people. It’s worth the price, you won’t regret it. Leave lower pop servers to PvE & EoTM. Join a T1 or T2 server for real good action with lots of guilds to choose from.

Just pay for the transfer. The transfer cost is what you would have to pay to get back into most other games worth playing anyway. A year ago I wasn’t happy with how things were in WvW on another server. Contemplated on quitting but decided to give transfer to a T1 server a shot. Honestly it was the best money I’ve spent, worth hours upon hours of fun.

This game is cheap as heck to play, and one of a handful of MMO’s out there worth playing if you enjoy PvP/RvRing. You could throw a fit and go out spend $50-$60 on another game, maybe even go to a rare subscription game out there for a month or two. But point is if you like what you see in GW2, then spend the money and just start having fun already. Because you would have to spend a lot more otherwise to play something else, and you aren’t even sure if you’ll stick around in another game for long.