Guild Wars 2

In the current meta, numbers > gear/build > skills. Zerg busting is dead. While we all hated pirateship meta, zerg busting was at least possible during the pirateship meta if you were bold enough. But those days are over.

With the new stab changes, most melee can run right through cc’s. With introduction of resistance via HoT, you can’t even slow them down anymore, soft cc’s and condi’s do nothing. Now when a zerg knows they outnumber the other, they simply zombie push. All you need is to have a rev in each group and enough melees. Once you cross that threshold where you outnumber the other groups/zergs by at least 10+, you’re going to win unless you are very very kitten

omeone mentioned above, some zergs are indeed very very bad from tier 3 and below. They give you the illusion you’re zerg busting but you are really just fighting very bad zergs.

No I’m not advocating for pirateship meta, or for stab changes to be reversed. But with every balance changes from Anet, they come with consequences. These days there are maybe a handful of guilds that still roll 30+ of their own tags. Most other guilds can only rally 10-20 anymore. Wouldn’t be so bad except those that roll 30+ consistently have pubs on them and they tagteam with other guilds. So really you’re looking at facing omni blobs more often than fighting guild groups of similar size most everywhere you go.

All these things, along with WvW changes or lack of updates, are reasons why WvW is so dead these days outside of reset nights and some weekends.

I don’t see how you do well against condi builds to be honest.

Chain daze shouldn’t be a thing, the lack of diminishing returns on cc effects is one of the reasons why GW2 PvP will never hit that next level. There’s just nothing fun about fighting a DD that interrupt pretty much everything meaningful you’re trying to cast while working you down slowly, disengage whenever they want to, and toy with you. This is what separates good thieves from bad, good thieves don’t die, bad thieves just smash buttons and face tank you.

As for reapers yeah, whenever I’m in a fierce battle be it 1v1 or 1v2+, whenever I see a reaper +1 I just sigh and know the fight’s about to be over. Power reapers are doable since it takes a reaper to know a reaper, you stay away when they try to shroud/gs/dagger you. But condi reaper, I do hate seeing a condi reaper +1 whenever I’m out roaming lol. They ruin fights, but now I know how others feel when I +1 a fight lol.

Ayrilana.1396:

I’m on a server that isn’t linked and there’s more people playing. Besides, HoT at launch hardly did anything for WvW so you couldn’t really call it a killer. It more the lack of attention until recently that hurt it.

If your server isn’t linked, it means you have the population but mostly due to people transferring off dead servers in an attempt to find some fun in WvW. You need to look at WvW as a whole, the entire NA & EU, not just the server you are on. The fact that they are having to link servers together so people can find action in WvW means they acknowledge WvW lost a lot of players.

HoT at launch forced players to play on Desert Borderlands, that’s pretty big something, I wouldn’t call that nothing. Desert Borderland was a total mess, from map design itself, to PvE gimmicks, to broken walls/doors/keep lords, to overpowered guild upgrades and banners, and lastly forced mechanics such as oasis laser event that caused zonewide skill lag that was never, ever, fixed by the way. Imagine if Auric Basin meta caused a zone-wide 5-10 second skill lag everytime meta event starts up, would people say that’s not a big deal? lol no, there would be riot on the street.

These desert borderlands replaced alpine, so people had no choice but to play in them (that or quit, which many did). EBG, well people voiced concerns over airstrikes, invis fountains, overpowered banners, chilling fog, etc well ahead of launch but they forced everybody to play them anyways.

And not just that, but initially we had to grind pretty hardcore just to unlock elite specs. So those who jumped into WvW without elite specs unlocked were getting wtpwned left & right due to all the overpowered elite specs that came out with HoT. Broken abilities such as CoR ruled WvW for a very long time until they finally nerfed/fixed it. The T1 server I played on went from Full to High, as I watched servers across the board drop in population.

You know what Anet had to do to fix their HoT implementation for WvW? They literally had to undo 80-90% of what they added, they had to disable oasis laser event completely because they couldn’t fix the lag it created. They had to strip desert borderlands out completely and replace with alpine because people really just didn’t like them. They had to nerf banners, guild upgrades, airstrikes, pretty much everything they implemented in HoT had to be either nerfed, completely revamped, or stripped out totally.

When a company does that, it tells you even they (Anet) acknowledge they effed up bad and did their customers wrong. So while I applaud their willingness to change and fix these things, and many things did eventually get fixed and they’re at least opening dialogues with the WvW playerbase for the first time. You really shouldn’t come and act like HoT didn’t ruin WvW and other parts of the game.

Ayrilana.1396:

So HoT killed WvW? Why is it that when I go into WvW that it’s more populated than it was before HoT launched?

It’s not more populated than pre-HoT. Only reason you are seeing more people now is because they are linking multiple servers together.

Deathmatch & Capture the Flag are two PvP modes I’d love to see and play in. Warsong Gulch was my all-time fav WoW BG, always fast paced, always heart pounding, and even with 1 cap down you could make a heroic comeback. This was fun before people started farming for honor points btw.

Conquest can be fun, but to me Conquest is best played with 10-15 players, not just 5. When you have a 5 player conquest gamemode, you are pigeonholed into playing it a specific way. This limits build diversity and you hardly find any moves from any teams you haven’t seen before. Yes it rewards good teamwork & good rotation, but that’s just boring to watch, and boring to participate in when you’re pugging most of the time.

NekoNoKoi.9137:

Not really. Reaper vs a Daredevil on the same skill level is a fight the Reaper shouldn’t be winning. Reaper vs Berserker, also a tough matchup imo. The one thing Reaper used to have that stood out like a Daredevil’s mobility or Berkserker’s damage was chill dealing damage, and that is now gone.

+1, there are counters to Reapers, just as there are counters to most classes & builds. A good thief will wreck a good reaper especially out in the open roaming world. A good thief won’t die and will kite away to reset fights while you struggle to recover hp. This isn’t to mention one of reaper’s worse enemies is reapers themselves. The same can’t be said for other classes, like scrapper vs scrapper is a fight that’ll never end, or ele vs ele a fight that’ll last forever. But when it comes to reaper vs reaper, someone is guaranteed to die, and there’s a 30-50% chance both will go downstate once before 1 doubles.

OP did great kiting, A+, props to him. I enjoyed the vid as well. Reason I don’t load kiting & juking skills when I roam is because it only takes 1 good thief or 1 decent reaper to ruin your hopes of kiting. Worse if it’s a condi reaper. And I must be cursed because I keep bumping into good thieves and decent reapers.

If you PvP & WvW, the short answer is yes, you’re at a disadvantage if you don’t buy HoT. The new elite spec classes are everything. They totally and completely outclass original classes.

Without a doubt HoT hurt the game in many ways. While there were some good stuff that came out of HoT, notably gliding which tops my list, too many bad stuff also came from HoT.

In PvE, the game became more exclusive when raids and harder to solo content were implemented. Agree or not, most can acknowledge that the strength of GW2 PvE was always this casual approach with an inclusive design where everybody could join in on fights to get loot. GW2 PvE always pride itself for not leaving anybody behind. That changed with HoT. And for many, HoT PvE felt like one huge grind after another, from masteries, to specializations, to grinding for crafting/legendary materials. There was a time when people picked the achievements they wanted to do and shoot for. In HoT it felt like you were pressured and forced to do achievements in order to play the content that came out of HoT, if you know what I mean.

In WvW, HoT expansion devastated the WvW community. Desert borderlands were terribly designed, keep/tower placements had no strategic values, maps were too large and filled with too many PvE gimmicks such as rock walls, invis fog, lava, air turrets, etc.. It also wasn’t properly beta tested as Anet only invited select few to test them pre-launch, many of them were just twitch streamers. Many changes did not improve WvW, changes such as guild upgrades and new PvE gimmicks such as air strikes, chilling fog, over the top siege, iron hide, banners, the oasis laser event, I can go on and on. We lost so many players in WvW since HoT launch, it’s not even funny.

The fact that they disabled laser event due to it being broken and unfixed 5+ months into launch, and the fact that they stripped Desert borderlands out and replaced them with Alpine, proves everything I said above is true. They’re not subject for debate, Anet’s actions tell you they knew they messed up.

As for sPvP, twitch views for pro tournaments haven’t increased. Playing ranked PvP ingame, you often are matched with the same people over and over, and that tells you the playerbase is small. PvP balance went out of whack with HoT, Revs were introduced into the game and immediately replaced several classes & builds (surprise surprise). They’ve been at the core of all teams throughout PvP seasons since HoT launched. This isn’t to mention how elite specs totally replaced OG classes across the board. So…bottom line is they dumped $400k into esports and viewership isn’t increasing, ingame playerbase isn’t increasing (just how it feels).

Argue whether HoT ruined GW2 all you want. Without a doubt HoT hurt GW2, it pushed many players away.

1. I can’t choose who to follow, the casters and whoever controls the cams tend to move to a spot I don’t care about. Often I just want to watch a 1v1 or 2v2 fight, but the cams always blink around and move away right before something good happens. If I can’t enjoy a fight from start to finish, it’s pointless to watch them. Since GW2 PvP is conquest based, and revolves around 3 circles and such, it’s hard to follow what really is going on when things are going on all over the place.

2. Blowouts are not fun to watch, too many blowouts even at pro tourney level. While super comebacks are possible, they are still too rare.

3. For a 5v5 setting, conquest just isn’t as fun to watch nor to play in (my opinion). 5v5 is best played in deathmatch or capture the flag modes. Both of these modes would make the game more exciting, faster paced, more easy to follow for viewers, and there are focal points to these gamemodes to allow better casting & cam movement. I’ve always preferred conquest game modes with more than 5 players.

4. Conquest game mode requires you to play the game a certain way, thus limiting build variety. This is where staleness sits in. No matter what team you’re watching, or which match up you’re following, you’re watching essentially the same classes, same builds, and similar playstyles.

Play what you want to play. But deep down inside you know you’ll eventually get all 3 anyway, and play them all.

I just would like to ask, when is Anet going to adopt Blizzard’s strategy & raid design? Meaning, a functional LFR system that’s easy to use, accessible by all, and easy for people to hop in, get raiding, collect loot, and get out. People get to enjoy the lore, story, cinematics, and complete class sets all at the same time. Everything doable without min/maxing or being in a raid guild.

Until you do that, GW2 playerbase will continue to fight against raid content. You’re supposed to design a harder version of these raids for the 1%-2% hardcore raiders. While leave an accessible version for 95%+ of your playerbase that would play them.

Running LFR in that other game is part of expansion content and continued story content, something people have accustomed to doing. If GW2 wants to add raids as part of expansion content and continued story telling, then you need to make sure it’s accessible and playable by majority of your playerbase.

You can not…can not, attempt to create raid content that pleases both your casual and hardcores. By lowering difficulties of these raids, you’ll just tick off the segment of your playerbase that want more challenge. And they’ll call you on it as you promised them raids were for the challenge minded. By making these raids more difficult you’ll alienate majority of your playerbase, and you’ll be called on it once again for moving the game away from its original vision, the vision that made this game what it is today.

Don’t reinvent the wheels, look at what your competitors are doing, especially the one that’s got the most player population. By the way I’m posting this as someone who’s not interested in raiding, so I have no vested interest here. I’m not a wealthy raid guild that run raids and make bank selling raid runs, nor am I someone casual wanting to experience and get raid loot.

Personally I think raids are a mistake to implement at this point in time for GW2 because people are right, Anet isn’t Blizzard. Raids take a lot of resources to create and right now the game is lacking content, people aren’t exactly happy with content releases & development for all 3 game modes (PvE/PvP/WvW). Raids distract the game from other content no matter how much you want to say raids don’t affect other areas of the game. Blizzard has unlimited resources, Anet does not. Blizzard is printing money in Irvine, Anet is complaining about lackluster HoT expansion sales.

But, if you must do raids, then do it right. WoW has it right, make raids accessible, then make a hardcore version for those that enjoy them. The one size fits all approach doesn’t work.

I’ve always thought 5 player conquest to be inadequate and boring. In my opinion best gamemode for 5 players is deathmatch or capture the flag. Conquest just feels it’s best played with 10-15 players really.

It’s the same way in FPS games, in Battlefield, Conquest is more fun when the server is packed. The less people you have the more boring Conquest mode gets. While Deathmatch can be played with half the player cap and still be fun.

Looking at Spirit Watch I don’t feel Anet fully understands how to create a capture the flag game mode. You don’t force a 5v5 game to play both ctf & conquest at the same time. You make a proper ctf map, like warsong gulch, and let your players focus on the flag. In doing so, I can guarantee more build variety than what we see today. And the gameplay pace would be faster and much more exciting.

I just feel this fighting over lil circles conquest mode with 5v5 have grown stale. It limits build viability because you have to play conquest a certain way. It’s boring for viewers, it’s downright confusing for non-GW2 players to watch, and it’s hard for esports casters to call a game of conquest with things happening on 3 different spots.

WTB new game modes, and not PvE stronghold please, I hate anything involving trebs and doors.

Expect it “end of summer”.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/LS3-release-schedule-interview

Link down? Did they publish this info too early? lol I could see if so, because the published content pretty much stated there’s no new content going into the game until the end of summer. Not exactly something you want to tell your players at beginning of summer time.

Now that HoT zones are for the most part empty outside of primetime hours, I find it difficult to get the hero points I need to unlock my elite spec on a new account. Even in WvW (and I play in T2) there’s no action outside of the few NA primetime hours. So having to unlock elite specs now is a pain in my rear.

Note I’m a seasoned vet, already done it on my main account, maxed masteries and all elite specs unlocked. But for fun I started a new account just to see what a brand new player sees and feels. With no masteries other than basic gliding unlocked, and HoT zones mostly empty, it’s really quite frustrating unlocking elite specs now.

So I think for the sake of player retention and to make sure players who just purchased HoT won’t quit out of frustration, I think Anet needs to do more to help people get their elite specs unlocked. It’s just how I feel now that I started over on a new account in an attempt to unlock an elite spec. I’m finding myself just logging out when I see empty HoT zones and a non-active WvW outside of primetime hours.

If people die to a reaper using Greatsword in sPvP, then it’s a player problem. It shows you the lack of knowledge of opponents you’re fighting more than anything.

The power necro build that saw good usage pre-HoT was the signet build with dagger/warhorn. Post-HoT, you’ll be a liability without going condi reaper. Would it be fun or “viable” in lower tier pvp or in unranked? Sure. But your team will expect you to be condi, and everybody will laugh when they see you wielding a GS.

There are classes/builds you won’t be able to handle effectively using a power build. This isn’t counting condi reapers that’ll eat you alive when you encounter them. They’ll shame you back to your hole and make you switch build very very fast. I’ve been there.

Squads improved the game in more ways than you can imagine. There were always omni blobs long before squads were made available. Only difference now is guilds are so thin these days, you have less guild vs guild fights. Many guilds are struggling to field even 15 of their tags.

Also in the current meta, numbers > skill/gear/builds, so when one side out-zerg the other, everybody mass up and follow in order to compete. You just end up with blob vs blob fights because it’s the only way you have a chance at winning in the current meta. This meta is whack, it encourages blobbing.

I’d say it’s on a low, not dying. I’ve seen MMO’s die, some slowly, some quickly. GW2’s got quite a lot going for it still. But there’s no doubt this game is at its low at the moment.

-The HoT expansion hype is long gone. There isn’t much to play for unless you really want to grind for Legendaries, and majority of the gamers that play GW2 won’t bother with it. And let’s face it, GW2 endgame PvE isn’t exactly its strength.

-sPvP is still as unpopular as ever, pro tourney esports viewership still low. There’s just no excitement to PvP, no new maps, no new game modes, conquest have and will always be stale and boring compared to deathmatch & capture the flag.

-WvW saw resurgence when Alpine made its comeback. Though the hype died down a bit, we’re back to cramming into EBG leaving Alpine fairly queue-less outside of reset nights and weekends. Guilds are still hurting, it’s still hard to recruit good players to fill their ranks and thus many guilds have already decided to move on to other games. Anet decided long ago they weren’t going to cater to GvG, forgetting that guilds are the backbone to longevity of PvP game modes.

With WoW Legion coming out in a couple of months, ESO/BDO launching with expansions/content, Battlefield 1 (fps genre I know but it’ll take my time away), Anet has limited time to keep people interested in GW2.

This isn’t to say people won’t leave and come back. GW2 is F2P so it’ll always be a game people can fall back to. But whenever people leave for other games or stop playing, they aren’t spending money here, and that’s what affects Anet more than anything else. When people don’t spend as much money, it’ll affect Anet’s development cycles and quality of content getting developed.

Known this for quite awhile, it only corrupts your main target, and aoe blinds. Whether this is a bug or error in skill description, I think only a dev could clarify. You may want to submit it as a bug and see if it gets anywhere.

Reaper Shroud gives you so much better mobility, personal stab, much harder melee cleaves, more combo finishers, and heck even a nice hard cc. The real question is why wouldn’t you use Reaper in WvW. This is the build I run for WvW ZvZ, it’s a mid-line hard trucking, highly mobile build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQJAWRnc0Albi10Au0Ac4gFcBDqNFAaBxVxvYZkKN0GeWA-TVSBAB6pLIiLAwiKBtU9HAOEA/v/wCPAAsU+dxRAgUADMGA-w

I do make a few changes according to situations. So if I’m not in a guild group or I see our comp’s lacking perma swiftness & might, I’ll swap to an armor set with strength runes, and I’ll swap out Greatsword with Dagger/Warhorn.

If I need better sustain for those 3-way smc omni blob battles where your skills are often lagged, I swap to an armor set with strength runes and change traits to use Blighter’s Boon & Chilling Victory for added sustain.

I do chuckle whenever I see OG necros trying to blast me with lifeblast. Lifeblast tickles, it’s slow, it’s outdated, and you are an immobile slow crawling class that’s just asking to get rolled over in this new post-HoT meta where mobility is king. OG necros are my fav targets to single out, you just RS 2 leap in, pop personal stab (RS 3), soul spiral cleave it up while spreading poison and whirl blasting, pop fear, then finish the poor necro off with RS 5. It’s almost not fair. The whole death shroud 5 -> 4 rotation is so outdated, and single target fear is outmatched by Reaper Shroud’s aoe fear and hard stun.

Your mileage will vary. Just know that it doesn’t matter the builds people link to you. You have to be able to play that build. So this build I linked, if you aren’t good at knowing when to leap in, cleave it up, and leap out before things get too hot, then you’ll have a difficult time running this build. If you don’t know when to drop shroud to Gravedigger cleave for 12-15k, then you’ll have a hard time and likely get caught out of shroud often and bombed down. If you follow a pin that never pushes and always pirateships, then you’ll probably find this build lackluster.

This build excels when run with a commander or guild raid that will push and make hits. You should be in a group with a rev that’ll give you perma might, protection, fury, swiftness, and resistance during combat.

Happy necroing, good luck.

Edit: Wanting to add this real quick. Necros were never a ranged bomb class. We’ve always been an under 900 range class because that’s the range of our well bombs. When it comes to shroud, all shroud attacks work best at under 600 range, this includes death shroud. So in this post-HoT meta, anything 900 range and beyond belongs to Revs. Revs have much harder ranged bombs than we do. Their Hammer 1, 2, and 5 are formidable at 1200 range. Their hammer 3 can pop our marks without ever being in danger, so our marks are for the most part useless. So when it comes to truly ranged bombs, ranged pressure, and finishing ranged downies, revs often do a much better job at range than necros can ever dream of.

Why be a sub optimal class and play OG Necro? When you could play Reaper and be one of the hardest melee cleaving class that excels at sub-600 range. Just saying

Oh and before anybody asks, since OP is talking about ZvZ, I’m also only responding about ZvZ. WvW ZvZ and roaming/havoc grouping are two completely different beasts.

This is a game wide bug that affects multiple game modes, it really should be fixed. I’ve died too many times to the immob bug. For an action combat game like GW2, this shouldn’t be a thing.

The immob bug sucks, kills the flow of action combat. Just feels like it’s happening more and more lately.

I want notifications go so it stops blocking my view. Pretty please.

Hornet.6357:

It’s funny; People are trying to judge this trait based upon their old builds, gear, and rotations. This trait is far more reaching than limiting yourself to old Scepter/Dagger + Warhorn for Condi. Has anyone considered that Greatsword does chill on it’s autoattack, 4 (if traited), and 5. Reaper Shroud 5 then a RS4 inside a boss is about 8 stacks of bleed on paper . Also you can run Might/Chill (in nighttime scenarios) food to proc the trait also.

This is a huge buff to condi reaper as it stands.

I think people who are happy about the changes are mostly PvE players that raid and such. Where as for people that PvP or WvW, these changes are crap, and bleed is very unreliable as a condi because it requires long ramp up time.

Chill damage gave us spike condi ticks. Bleed is just meh, I’ve tried it extensively, it only really works on braindead players, target dummies, and PvE mobs. I’m willing to give 2 stacks of bleed a try if we can somehow convince the devs that their balance swings went too far (again).

Along with the RS 3 nerf which was huge, necros aren’t in such a good spot outside of PvE right now. As for Greatsword…yeah that’s how I know you’re a PvE player

I think most expected a chill duration nerf and a slight damage nerf. But chill duration nerf, zero out chill damage completely, and at the same time strip our stab uptime? Bad balance decisions are just bad.

Stab changes are good. But target cap on Spectral Wall & Statics were over the top. As is right now, numbers mean everything. If you have a larger melee train vs another zerg, you have a very high probability of winning due to the way things are right now. It’ll not be skill or organization, everything comes down to numbers right now.

Pre-patch, a +/- 10 was nothing, you could still outplay the other group. Even +/-15 was doable. Now it’s just nearly impossible unless the other group consist of uplevels and new players.

Also look into the era of boon spam. This became a real big problem with HoT due to introduction of Revs and some elite specs. There’s not nearly enough boon strip & corrupt boons to deal with the boon spam (you devs see this in spvp as well, except in larger scale WvW it’s even worse). People are running around with perm protection and resistance, it’s getting a bit ridiculous.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

gavyne.6847:

I must be living on a different planet than those that see the chill nerfs as “buffs”.

Chill applying bleed is indeed a buff in PvE, less so in WvW and PvP I’d argue

Right, obviously we’re talking about PvP/WvW here.

I must be living on a different planet than those that see the chill nerfs as “buffs”.

With improved stab they really should just revert the 10 target limit bs. I hope Anet devs go out and play test these changes (yeah right). Right now the melee trains are rolling through everything, there’s no stopping them really. Spectral wall feels very inadequate when we’re seeing 30-40 player melee train zergs since the patch.

Everybody knows Anet balance classes based mainly on sPvP, they can deny it, but we aren’t stupid. This is why I can never fully support Anet’s push for esports. Class balance have been absolute whack ever since they started to balance the game based on PvP only, screwing WvW & PvE players. And Anet’s way of “balancing” is by swinging from one extreme to another, rarely small tweaks and in the middle fixes.

Also I don’t believe this change was done by our savior Robert Gee. The Reaper we were supposed to receive was the Reaper we got during beta weekends and at launch. The man designed a wonderful elite spec to compliment the necromancer class. But we have found out later that PvP team has final say on class balance changes so these nerfs/changes likely came from the PvP team. Robert sold us a great elite spec that was fun, engaging, and competitive. But the PvP team butchered us.

That’s how Anet does things though, given their history. They always swing from one extreme to another. Yes, chill needed a nerf. I think most of us would’ve been fine with both chill damage & duration nerfs. But to gut the trait & design completely? That spells lazy balance, it spells ArenaNet balance.

In other words you’re happy condi got nerfed, wait not nerfed, but gutted. All because you missed your old power signet build? Wow, I mean I played the signet build before as well, because it was the only build that kind of worked but not really at high tier. Still I’m not so selfish as to cheer on nonsensical changes.

flow.6043:

And let’s be honest, the strongest part about chilled wasn’t the damage anyway. It’s the movement impairment and the tripled cooldowns, which still works the same.

Eh necros had access to chill before, but it was never feared because chill by itself isn’t too detrimental. It was only when damage over time was tagged onto chill that people started dying and complaining about chill.

So I’d say this was a very big nerf, along with stability uptime nerf and reduction in chill all around.

Power necros weren’t able to compete pre-condi meta. Don’t get excited just because condi got nerfed. Wait no, nerfed usually means toned down. I mean utterly completely gutted.

Back to the bottom of the barrel we go.

It’s funny the class changes were down low on the patch notes. For awhile there I was kind of happy reading the WvW & PvP changes. But then I read necro section… First thing came to my mind was W T F.

I was expecting our chill damage to be nerfed, I wasn’t expecting chill damage to be REMOVED completely. While doing so, they also nerfed chill application, as if chill without damage means anything at all?!

Above all these over the top changes, they nerfed our stability uptime. Seriously, we lack stab, infusing terror was a nice & welcoming addition to necros. Why nerf something we already severely lacked?

Fearwall getting nerfed, this one stings for WvW because it’s mostly viable in large scale situations where now it no longer applies to “large scale” anymore.

No boost to Greatsword to make it viable in PvP. No boost to power or condi damage to compensate for these changes. Oh boost to Wells of Who-gives-a-crap that nobody uses by reducing their cd, but not changing functionalities of these outdated wells.

I really don’t think I can enjoy Reapers after this patch.

Reducing damage would make too much sense, but that’s not how Anet does things. Anet swings from one extreme to another. Erasing chill damage while at the same time also gutting chill application and reducing our stability uptime. G frigging G.

Nice token gesture, just a bit late I have no characters that still even need this. It’s funny we get all so happy when Anet is simply giving us back what we had before they took it away.

Agreed, seems GW2’s got a bit of identity crisis going on. It knew what it wanted to be when it launched. Halfway through things started changing a bit, a shift was made. Changes to how combat works messed with a whole game mode (WvW), one which they never addressed or fixed. WvW then got put on the backburner and ignored. We saw a shift to Anet dumping resources & money into pushing for e-sports despite the small viewership. We saw Anet allowed dungeons to die off and shift to work on raids instead.

Then with the expansion many more things changed. GW2 plays, feels, and looks different now. On some levels some changes were good and welcomed. On many aspects players weren’t too thrilled about, and many are not happy with where Anet’s priorities are or have been. Bottom line is upgrades now take longer to obtain and are more expensive, which directly affects the general masses.

Maybe it’s a bit of over reaching? Or miscalculation on their market research? A bad call from the management meetings? Who knows. All I know is everybody I’ve talked to who either have quit, or is taking an extended break from GW2, all say this game’s potentials are wasted. It’s such a great game, built on a great engine, with smooth animations & graphics. It should be better managed than this.

Be honest, did the decision to release raid content hurt the development of legendary weapons and the amount of general content that the overwhelming majority of GW2 playerbase want to see?

-More players by reducing amount of server choices and/or alliance/battlegroup system.
-Siege’s effectiveness on players greatly reduced, but siege on siege should still do full damage.
-Greatly reduce the usage of ppt as means to scoring.
-Make capping empty towers and keeps less rewarding to reduce players avoiding fighting & “musical keeps” like they used to call it in Warhammer Online. Backcapping is lame.
-Disable guild upgrades such as chilling fog, airstrike, iron hide, stealth fountain, etc..
-Removal of annoying elements that interfere with player vs player interaction, such as rock walls, cripple fields, invis fog, barricades, etc..
-Make waypoints something you work for again, and waypoints on your own home BL’s should be accessible by home defenders like it was with Alpine. The way waypoints work on fire/air keeps don’t make any sense.
-Reduce effectiveness of guild banners unless you are outnumbered, the game should be smart enough to scale banners properly based on whether players using banners need the extra help or not.
-Make towers strategic caps again like it was on Alpine (assuming we’re keeping Desert).
-Change up servers you are fighting against on a much more regular basis to keep things fresh. It’s boring to fight the same guilds/players every day, every month, and in some cases all throughout the year. Of course if alliance/battlegroup system goes in, this won’t be an issue.
-Add reward tracks in WvW much like the one implemented for sPvP. WvW players are willing to spend money also, so more unique skins for WvW players such as siege, armor, weapons, keep/tower upgrades, etc..
-For crying out loud, auto loot please. You know in BDO they have pets you can buy in cash shop that’ll loot for you. I don’t care if I have to buy something in the marketplace, I would buy it just so I no longer have to spam the loot button while attempting to engage in player vs player combat.

Darknicrofia.2604:

gavyne.6847:

As-is in pro leagues, teams are not stacking any classes, definitely not necros. If you want to talk about op, think in the past when teams stacked mes, eles, or in recent memory revs. So while yes it’s annoying to see so many reapers in unranked/ranked. Truth is they aren’t too strong to stack them, otherwise pro league teams would be stacking them.

they’re not stacking classes because for season 2 you’re not allowed to stack any classes…

While that’s true, in the finals the only class stacked was revs. Just stating that necros were not stacked when they were able to be stacked.

And I should’ve clarified I wasn’t talking just about pro league tournament, but also higher tier ranked. You’ll find pro league teams and pre-mades not stacking necros.

As-is in pro leagues, teams are not stacking any classes, definitely not necros. If you want to talk about op, think in the past when teams stacked mes, eles, or in recent memory revs. So while yes it’s annoying to see so many reapers in unranked/ranked. Truth is they aren’t too strong to stack them, otherwise pro league teams would be stacking them.

Lots of conspiracy theories. It amazes me some people still believe there are many guilds left caring about pushing servers up/down or organizing some sort of super secret alliances.

Truth is JQ lost at least 3-5 guilds to BDO, they’re fairly large guilds. No, they didn’t leave JQ to play on TC, they went to a different game altogether. Some people went to TC mostly to find more fights, sure. T1 is in a sad state right now, you can get some better fights in T2 on some nights here and there. To play and compete in T1, you have to out do YB in ppt game, and not many people want to do that right now. It’s just not fun at all at this time when the game mode is so dead, population is down across all servers, and so many have left for other games. The last thing people want to login to is to hardcore siege and play ppt/pvd for hours. But I can tell you there’s no secret alliance or plans to push TC up.

If anything you should be trying to find out what BG is doing. BG right now is an extremely dead server in T1, they are only active during the 2-3 hours NA prime, that’s it. I don’t know the guilds there so maybe they moved to other tiers, or maybe they moved to another game as well, someone else will have to fill you in.

There’s more “guild wars” in Black Desert Online than there is in GW2. Which probably explains why so many guilds that used to WvW/GvG in GW2 are playing BDO now. It’s really too bad, GvG could’ve been a hit in GW2 if Anet didn’t shy away from it.

The guild hall arena is a disgrace seeing how small it is, how limited it is, how it uses PvE ruleset (retal hits harder for an example), and how much of that were all gated behind tons of PvE. Missed opportunities in my opinion. GvG would’ve kept more players in GW2 than their blind push for 5v5 esports.

WvW & GvG could’ve coexisted also, but they created brand new desert borderlands that are filled with PvE gimmicks, narrow canyons, choke points, rock walls, lava, and bad guild upgrades such as chilling fog, airstrike, etc.. all things that guilds hate to have to deal with in WvW. They are really the last things people want to have to deal with when fighting another guild or another zerg.

GW2’s system is still solid and sound, just the system isn’t being run by the right people making decisions imo.

Krysard.1364:

The problem with this trait has been and keeps being the fact that doesnt heal through Shroud, so we have a sustain trait that doesnt work on our “sustain stance”.

+1, biggest downside to this trait. Lots of potential heals wasted because once you pop shroud, the trait becomes 100% useless. It works better in a zerg environment like someone mentioned above. In solo or 5v5’s it doesn’t heal you enough out of shroud, and it’s completely useless in shroud.

Adding a few more comments because we’re supposed to speak now or forever hold our peace.

1. The design in which a single player could keep a waypoint contested forever is outdated. It makes no sense. There are classes & builds that could do this forever and never get caught, never die, they’re absolutely not at risk “tapping” the keeps. Even if you do kill whoever’s tapping the keeps, they can get back to the keep before the waypoint opens up again. Remember WvW (as with all other game modes) is supposed to be fun. Making you constantly run the extra mile isn’t fun when the keep is not at risk and not under siege.

The waypoint should only be contested if the keep itself is contested. I feel you should be required to setup siege, and the keep door/wall should be damaged by 5% before you could contest a keep’s waypoint. This way the waypoint doesn’t stay contested forever and cause grief to everybody attempting to have fun. People doing it are just trolling anyway, they aren’t exactly doing it for the greater good most of the time.

As for what if the walls are open and doors are down? Well then that’s a true contested keep, then the waypoint should by all means be contested. At which time an emergency waypoint should be the only thing that gets popped when cooldown is ready. All is fine there as designed.

2. Siege warfare is a bit over the top these days, and that’s to put it lightly. They were bad before, but they got worse with HoT expansion and the new Desert BL’s. I think everybody accepts siege as part of the WvW game mode. And players are also fine with siege on siege, when you use siege to kill/destroy other siege. But when it comes to siege on players, that’s when it gets really annoying. Everything gets amplified when you have a map blob sitting inside a fully fortified, siege-capped keep, raining siege on you for hours. It’s cancerous, they kill fights and what little fun there is left in WvW.

I don’t know if the tech is available but the game should be smart enough to scale the damage siege do on players. Meaning, if you have over a certain number of players, that’s fairly equal to the enemies, then your siege should do less damage to players. They should remain powerful against other siege, but they should do less damage and cause less disruption to players when you have equal numbers or outnumber the opponents.

On the flip side, the game should be smart enough to know when you are outnumbered, sometimes greatly outnumbered. At which time siege should do a bit more damage to players to give you a fighting chance. The reason people are so tired of siege warfare these days is because you have large map queues & blobs hugging siege for hours. They create an environment in which it’s impossible to take a keep. This didn’t used to be the case pre-HoT.

Laying siege on waypointed & fortified Alpine Garrison/Bay/Hills used to be hard. But they were not impossible. If you had the stomach and organization you could do it, it would take a long time, but you could do it. These days, with the introduction of guild upgrades, banners, chilling fog, airstrike, iron hide, shield generators, etc.. add on top of the choke point design of Desert BL’s, it can create an impossible scenario where an equal or larger force sits inside fully sieged up keeps and don’t have to fear losing at all. So the only time you could crack that keep open is during offhours when they have no coverage.

Nobody likes to do this, nobody takes pride in cracking fortified keeps during offhours. But the game has made it so you have to do it this way because you sure aren’t going to do it during primetime. This is just not fun. If all the siege, guild upgrades, etc.. are to remain in the game, you need to develop tech to properly scale them. I know you likely won’t take all these things out because you have already coded them all in. So to compromise, there needs to be tech developed to scale the damage and effectiveness of siege & guild upgrades.

So for an example, if you have a queued EBG, and you hold a fully fortified smc that’s siege capped, the airstrike should do much less damage and have longer cooldowns. Chilling fog should also have longer cooldowns. Arrowcarts should do less damage. Banners should do much less damage & hit less targets. Iron hide should only reduce damage by 10% if you outnumber the attackers.

On the other hand, if you have the outnumbered buff on a map, and you’re trying to hold onto your keep, siege should do more damage to attackers.

Nobody is asking for taking keeps to be made simple. Taking fortified and defended alpine keeps were not simple or easy. But they were at least doable, and you could get enjoyment out of a long siege as long as there was plenty of action on the map. Sieging alpine garrison, bay, or hills often gave you a mix of siege vs siege and open field battles. These days looking at a blob sitting inside a fortified, siege capped keep, you just want to barf and logoff. Fun is what will draw players back into this game mode. Right now it’s not fun, and the downward spiral in WvW activities and population across all servers is proof of that.

And before anybody tells you things are fine, siege is fine, Desert BL’s are wonderful, guild upgrades are fantastic, banners are the next best things ever, etc etc etc… I’d just answer with the above. The downward spiral of activities and population across all WvW servers is proof that things are not fine, that HoT additions are not fine. If the game mode is fun, people would be playing it, it’s that simple. The equation isn’t complicated. Fun = more people playing, population goes up across the board. Not fun = less people playing, population nose dive across the board.

Alpine wasn’t perfect, and yes pre-HoT things grew stale. This largely had to do with Anet promising us big changes were coming to WvW with HoT expansion along with new wonderful maps. So players waited and waited for that big patch. Now, I don’t think anybody expected to see things get worse, but sadly things did get worse. No one expected Desert BL’s be so terribly designed for combat & movement. No one knew that the design team would forget the importance of battle flow and strategic assets such as towers. The new gimmicks, guild upgrades, banners, etc.. proved to be extremely disruptive to player vs player action. All these new things introduced with HoT just made WvW not fun to play in. There are pockets of good action. But you just don’t see the epic battles we used to get with Bay, Hills, and Garrison.

I’m sorry but you’re in a minority that like desert bl’s. The guild I run with tried to like desert bl’s, we raided almost exclusively there for awhile, so we really tried. But we watched raid attendance drop over time. People voiced their opinions and stated they simply weren’t having fun fighting gimmicks, chokes, and siege infested keeps. People go in WvW to fight players in a large scale combat. It’s not fun getting your fights disrupted and bothered by cripple fields, rock walls, lava, invis fog, over-tuned & annoying lords, and for the longest time oasis event which now disabled because Anet finally admit they failed us. Point is it was a ridiculous notion for us players to have to endure it for so long.

Everywhere you run it’s canyons & cliffs made smaller by rock walls, chokes at every turn inside keeps where you get rained on by siege and slowed down by chilling fog. Towers have no strategic values and they are so far away, it’s impossible to defend them. Keep lords are so annoying to kill, they’re made even more annoying with iron hide upgrade.

There’s no good flow to how things are designed. Sure the keeps are huge, but there are very little ways for you to maneuver inside them. They’re filled with chokes, lava, cliffs, there aren’t even many good places to put down siege as attackers, and even less good places to have good zerg vs zerg battles. Unlike good ‘ol Bay & Garrison where you had lots of room to regroup, setup siege, de-siege, run flanking attacks, etc.. Or the Hills last stand battle on the bridge and lord room, tons of epic battles happened there. None of those kinds of epic battles were seen in Desert BL’s. We’ve had big fights in fire/air keeps & garrison but none of them compare to the kind of back & forth battles we used to have in bay, hills, and alpine garrison.

The poster above is right in that the desert BL’s are so bad, it would take a lot of work to fix them up. Remember they already gave up on fixing the Oasis event so we have a big huge wasted area in the middle doing absolutely nothing. That’s why it’s probably easier to replace desert with alpine, because alpine’s setup, flow, and design were all sound. The towers had strategic values for both defenders & attackers. Keeps had strategic values and they were fun to fight in, with large courtyards for large battles. You could respond to tower attacks in alpine, you can’t with desert. And there are lots of great open fields for zergs to clash without all the pve gimmicks and things that annoy players.

They would need to revamp the Desert BL’s almost completely to make them fun to play in. And you want them introduce gliding at this point in time when the game mode is in dire condition and needs rescued? Gliding would bring in whole new balance issues and they would need to change a lot of things to prevent exploits and bugs. It’s not something they should even touch right now because it would just add to more issues that’ll need to get fixed later.

Supreme.3164:

They first need to solve server population differences so that mega servers don’t camp SM for all week with nothing smaller servers can do….at least the airship gives a valid fighting chance , was exhilarating to finally kick Seafarer rest in the teeths

And what are you going to do against large mega servers with full map blobs in a fully sieged up and fortified smc, while using airship, chilling fog, iron hide, and invis fountains against smaller servers? OH right, they make things much much worse.

No these things don’t help smaller servers, they give you the illusion they do. But in reality, they help the larger servers more than anything else. Because it’ll be the larger servers with coverage that’ll hold smc more than smaller servers do. What they’ll do though, is to turn what was once a hard long siege, into impossible siege.

Same thing with banners, they help larger zergs more than anything because it’s the larger servers with coverage that’ll hold more assets, and have access to more banners.

+1, they should be removed, these gimmicks don’t add anything to player vs player combat. Nothing worse than a fully fortified, siege capped smc, defended by a map blob who have access to these cheese.

These annoying gimmicks have pushed a lot of players away from WvW because they make large scaled player vs player combat not fun. They represent all that’s wrong with what HoT expansion did to WvW, along with the horribly designed Desert Borderlands & the failed Oasis event.