Guild Wars 2

Mike O Brien.4613:

1. Stability & skill balance
2. Fix or revert DBL
3. Rewards
4. Population balance
5. Scoring

Yes, we will take the feedback and make stability, general skill balance, and fixing/reverting DBL our top priorities. We’re not currently working on scoring and that has to be a longer-term project.

Karl is working specifically on WvW-focused skill balance. He’s looking for the wins for WvW that don’t screw the rest of the game.

We’re investigating whether to fix or revert DBL. They’re both a lot of work. These next couple days will be your last chance to give feedback before we make a decision, so speak now or forever hold your peace.

Thanks for the post. A few comments to help you understand what players want out of those points you listed.

1. Stability & skill balance, this largely have to do with how stale pirateship meta has become post-stability changes. While some guilds have been trying to break the meta by going nomad frontline (this is boring as well), there’s still too much cc’s and ranged bombing. We see less melee characters being played because people don’t want to be free loot bags. There are way too many cc’s and skills that strip stability for melees to have fun. Skills you should look into tweaking:

-Hunter’s Ward – This skill is a 6 second jail trap that strips ungodly amount of stability. It’s invisible so you can’t see it, so you have no idea if you’re trapped in it until you try to move and get knocked back. Every time you run into it, your stab is gone, and you get knocked down, causing your skills to go on cooldown…which often leads to deaths. This skill needs to be visible so we know when it’s up and when it’s down, and it should not strip stab the way it does right now.

-Banners – there are enough cc’s, aoe’s, and knockbacks in the game. We really didn’t need more knockbacks that again, further strips stability. Every guild claiming banners have some sort of aoe knockback/knockdown. Plus banners are just not needed, they throw any and all balance out of whack. Even more so when you are facing enemies with greater numbers using 3-5x more banners, making the fights go from hard to impossible.

-Shield Generators – did these things really need that aoe knockback (Force Ball)? Again, over the top. Shield generators should’ve been used to shield players & siege assets from projectiles. It did not need the knockback that again messes with stability.

-Chilling fog, one of the most annoying ideas ever implemented. Iron Hide, over the top, not needed when Lords are already ridiculously scaled up, especially given Desert BL Lords have super annoying abilities (more knockbacks, knockdowns, aoe fear, unlimited target Hunter’s Ward, etc). Airstrikes that bomb you for lots of damage while knocking you around? Over…the…top.

2. Alpine vs Desert BL’s. Alpine BL’s had a flow to its design, from camps, to towers, to keeps. Desert BL’s just seem mashed together, no rhyme and reason for how or why things are. Going back to Alpine is likely the easier route for you, because Desert BL’s are just that bad. Read below for why.

-Alpine BL towers provided strategic values. Taking NE/NW towers meant you could treb the garrison, or setup camp for a long endurance siege. Taking SW tower meant you could treb Bay. Defending the towers meant one less place your attackers could retreat into, and one less place your attackers could treb from. People attacked & defended towers because they gave strategic advantages. They were also great at drawing fights.

-Desert BL towers do nothing, they mean nothing. Not only are they too far for defenders to defend, they are not worth defending because they give no strategic importance. Towers are just farmed by ktrainers anymore.

-Alpine BL keeps gave you plenty of room to fight once you break through outer. The courtyards inside are large, plenty of room for you to maneuver and have some great battles. The garrison was multi-layered, but in a sensible manner. It allowed attackers & defenders room to move around, reset fights, regroup, setup siege, de-siege, etc.. There were some really epic battles in Bay, Hills, and Garrison…battles that have not been seen since HoT expansion.

-Desert BL keeps are too much about chokes, every corner you turn is a choke point. Not much room for fights, such a waste of space really. Not only do you have to worry about gimmicks like lava, cliffs, rock walls, or overpowered lords, you have to stand in siege infested chokes…all the while trying to maneuver with chilling fog on you. Does that even sound like fun to anybody?

-Alpine BL, building a waypoint meant something. It took time, took effort from players to defend and supply up. When you had a waypoint, you knew fights were coming. Especially so if you could waypoint an enemy Bay/Hills, then the fights became epic. Sometimes a commander logs in with a goal to break a waypoint because it’d be achieving something strategically, since letting your enemies have a waypoint on your BL meant they could setup Garrison siege easier. Plus it was always action packed & fun to fight over a waypoint.

-Desert BL, what’s the point of giving enemy waypoints on a freshly capped air/fire keep? Having waypoints up all the time means nobody give a crap, so no guaranteed fights. Some things just make no sense on the Desert BL’s.

-Alpine terrain, lots of flat areas for people to fight for both fun and strategic importance. The flat areas between NE/NW towers and Garrison have seen tons of battles. People often took the towers to taunt defenders, and they fought hours there just for fun. But not only that, they fought there because winners likely get to have an advantage. If defenders win, they probably could recap the NE/NW tower. If attackers win, they likely could setup siege on the Garrison. There was a flow and reason for fighting and winning every spot on the Alpine map. The flat areas around Bay? Winning that spot as defenders mean you likely got the supply camp and spawn tower. Losing means the enemy gets the supply camp and have the supplies to setup siege on Bay.

-Desert BL terrain, chokes, cliffs, canyons, lava, roads that are filled with rock walls that serve absolutely no purpose other than take up space and annoying players. Cripple fields and invis fog are all just gimmicks that disrupt player vs player combat. There aren’t many good spots to fight zerg vs zerg. And while yes there are some flat desert dunes you could fight on, they serve no strategic purpose. It’s why people don’t bother fighting over those open areas. You can’t just design a flat area out in middle of nowhere and say “there, that’s what you asked for, go fight there”. It doesn’t work that way.

3. Rewards, something similar to PvP reward tracks would do just fine. One difference is in WvW we use siege, lots of it. Players would love more WvW exclusive skins for siege, armor, weapons, guild related items, etc.. Guild & Server pride is a big thing in WvW, so use your imaginations to what players may like.

4. Population balance is bad and will only get worse. You can’t trust players to “balance” things out because gamers are fickle. Majority of the gamers will choose the easy way out and get rewarded, rather than pick the hard road and chance at not getting rewarded. This is why server stacking occurs, and why the servers doing well usually continue to do well, while other servers fade away slowly. An alliance/battlegroup system is needed in the near future so guilds stop breaking up, as many guilds right now have no player pool to recruit from. It also is extremely stale to fight the same server every single week for months and months. WoW has a decent battlegroup system, where your server name still displays on your name tag, but you fight in a battlegroup with other servers. Battlegroups will allow you easier balancing as you can swap servers around to balance things out if one side becomes too populated, have too much coverage, or win too much.

Population is not ever going to get back up to what it was a year or two ago. So moving forward, an alliance/battlegroup system is needed no matter how much people want to fight it. The situation is dire at the moment. And population balance has everything to do with the scoring system.

5. Scoring, ppt has to go, or its effect needs to be greatly diminished. PPT is the reason for coverage issues, the cause for server stacking. The need to ppt is also one of the main causes for server drama, it’s responsible for breaking up tons of guilds over the past years. Lastly ppt creates boring ktrains and pvdoors, it makes some people avoid fights. It’s not a healthy design, it can’t be sustained. PPT alone is responsible for some servers giving up on a whole week by Monday because one server in their match up is already too far ahead.

If ppt must continue to be used, there needs to be a system where the leading server gains less ppt than the losing server. You could also place a cap on the amount of ppt you can gain each hour. So even if you dominate 3 maps, you could only gain so much ppt. After awhile you still have to go out and fight player vs player battles to win ppk. The core of the WvW gameplay needs to be player vs player combat. You can’t sustain this game mode by making people ktrain & backcap. Most people come out to WvW because they want large scale player vs player combat. People are not doing WvW just so they could be challenged by PvE lords, gates, and walls.

A lot of things won’t get better unless you change scoring and ppt. So this isn’t as low on the list as you may think. But bottom line is, everything listed is important. It kind of shows you how bad the state of WvW is at the moment. It’s hard to just focus on one thing because you really need to do them all. WvW needed a revamp, players thought they were getting that with HoT expansion, but WvW got worse with HoT.

Absurdo.8309:

I think you may be overestimating the amount of developer resources put towards raids. In a somewhat recent reddit post, the developers stated that the raid team consisted of 4-5 people. Granted, I don’t know if that includes art and assets. But one wing every 3 months is a pretty good raid development cycle.

They mentioned 5 devs, but it takes more than 5 designers to create the raids you see. They were smart in not mentioning the involvement of art, graphics, animation, lore, programming, QA, etc.. resources. But if you watched their most recent Guild chat, you see the guy mentioning “the collaboration” of teams and hard work multiple times throughout the live stream. So you know it’s more than just 5 people that created the raids in GW2. This isn’t to mention the amount of resources they’re pouring into creating Legendary armor, which would be exclusive to raiders only.

Raids generally suck a lot of resources for the little amount of actual content they provide…content in which will be played by a small % of the playerbase. This is the case with all other MMORPG’s, no reason it would be any different here. I normally don’t mind seeing raids given adequate resources & smart resource allocation. But I see the dire situation WvW is in, and now PvE players demanding more content because they’re tired of grinding the same 4 maps since HoT was a short expansion in the first place.

Even if they make HoT more accessible and less grindy in the April patch, if no new content is added, then we’re in trouble. People are going to leave for other games or do rl things. This is always what you chance running into when you are already tight on resources, but chose to use your very limited resources on content a small % of your playerbase will play as opposed to content that an overwhelming majority of your playerbase prefer playing.

I find the gimmicks annoying with Skyhammer. When I play PvP, I like the actual “player vs player” combat part of PvP, it’s what PvP should be about. It shouldn’t be about running trebs, gimmicky explosions & knockbacks, death traps, npc’s, etc.. Please consider designing a capture the flag map a la Warsong Gulch, or Deathmatch. Bring the fun into GW2 PvP and let players fight it out.

Less PvE gimmicks, more player vs player combat.

Anet has equally neglected WvW, so that’s not your answer either. Because WvW is a dying game mode, it’s why sPvP is seeing a bit more participation (albeit low)…mainly because people are just looking for something to do ingame that’s PvP related.

But yeah, PvP isn’t built with fun in mind. You have a lot (and I do mean a lot) of people playing in PvP right now only because of the reward tracks & the wings. They grind just enough to get what they are shooting for. But they aren’t exactly having fun playing PvP. To build a good playerbase & foundation, the game mode must be built with fun in mind. This is one of the main reasons why esports isn’t going anywhere in GW2.

Save your transfer money, this is happening everywhere, even in T1. We’ve lost many guilds and players in the recent months. The game mode is just in a very bad state, and the population balance only makes things worse for those still sticking around trying to have fun somehow.

We’ve seen guilds transfer from one server to another, multiple times within the past few months. BDO also have taken a toll on a lot of guilds, we lost a couple of large guilds in multiple time zones because of that game. You can’t blame players really, Anet is dragging their feet with WvW fixes, changes, and revamps. Population and WvW activities are at an all time low right now. Just look at the server pop screen, zero Full servers, many “Very High” pop servers fallen to “High”. Several “High” fallen to “Medium” and we all know Medium really means Low or “Dead”.

You can’t blame players for jumping ship in an attempt to find fun in a neglected game mode. Things won’t get better until Anet decides to put work into WvW. So my suggestion is to stop transferring and stop giving them money until they do something about this game mode. Things won’t get much better for you no matter where you transfer off to. 6 months ago I would’ve suggested to transfer, now I’m saying to not bother with it.

As long as there’s moa (among other things), GW2 pro leagues will never be taken seriously. Free kills don’t belong in competitive esports. Everybody I know who came from a different game laugh at the fact that there’s such thing as moa in PvP. The game as a whole would be healthier and less of a joke if moa is removed, and mesmer be given a few more useful, game-changing skills to compensate. Skills that have proper counters and don’t render you useless for such a long time.

Most didn’t like when you moved reset to Saturday, I don’t think you need to ask whether ppl want reset back on Friday. Just do it please. Oh and 7pm pst is too late, try 5-6pm pst.

The audience is too small, and they’re behind on adding PvE, WvW, and PvP content. I’d say yes, they’ve made a mistake going the raiding route. I used to be a raider, so I’m not just some casual talking out of my rear. But I know what it takes to create raids, and the sacrifices gaming companies have to make in order to create these raids.

Raids are never viewed as “content” by the masses, and we’re talking about 95% of your gaming playerbase that’ll never ever touch raids. Raids are also never enough, meaning your hardcore raiders will churn through them within a couple of weeks and they’re on farm mode, begging for more. No matter what you do short of putting a time gate on them, they are never enough, and raiders are never fully satisfied.

So just as I think dropping $400k to promote spvp pro leagues was a bad waste of resources given the small sPvP playerbase, I think spending dev time on raids while the game currently is lacking behind on content for PvE, WvW, and PvP is just a bad call. By dev time, people mistaken the handful of designers as all it took to create raids. It takes more than a handful of designers to create the raids you see in GW2, these include and not limited to art/graphic/animation assets, sound/music, story/lore, environment design, creation of legendary armors, and programming for new mechanics and abilities. All these resources put into raids to please the 2-5% of the player population that’ll try raids. Even less of them will play raids more than once or twice.

This coming at a time when PvE players are asking for more content because they’re through HoT and are getting bored farming the same 4 maps, many weren’t happy with HoT in the first place and the lack of Legendary weapon choices that they were promised. This coming at a time when WvW can’t be in a worse shape, WvW activities are way down, population balance is still bad, borderlands are a mess, and people just aren’t having fun. WvW needed a whole revamp, which would require resources. This coming at a time when sPvP could use new maps, new game modes/design, participation is still low despite an ongoing season, matchmaking still a mess, balance still whacky, etc..

If GW2 always had raids, I would’ve said fine, it’s a niche feature catered to a niche crowd. But it seems Anet thought spending resources on raids right now is a good idea, mainly to attract players from other MMO’s. You can really see the content they’ve sacrificed as a result. You see how short and incomplete HoT expansion is. You see how WvW didn’t even have a dedicated team working on it, it truly is a mess, so many have left the game due to neglect. I just don’t think right now is a good time to add raids when the game could use resources pretty much everywhere else. Anet is essentially gambling 95% of the player population in hopes to please the 2-5%. Anet isn’t Blizzard, when your resources are extremely limited, you need to put them to good use.

Caliburn.1845:

These numbers are not accurate. The API data is still not entirely fixed.

Before the PPK went in and borked the API data T1 was averaging between 30-50% more kills per week than T2.

Or do you really believe that T1 is only as active as T3-T4?

A month ago, I would’ve said I doubt the data. But now? Um, T1 is really truly kinda dead. JQ lost a couple of large EU & NA guilds to BDO. BG these days are only active during the few hours NA. YB is the only server in T1 ppting hardcore throughout multiple timezones, and the other 2 servers have pretty much said screw it not worth the effort.

If you try to login to either JQ or BG during EU, early NA, late NA, and SEA, you’ll find most of your assets taken by YB. Most people these days aren’t interested in running around pvding or run into siege-capped, fully fortified, heavily camped keeps. So when they login to see that, they log right back out.

I don’t blame any server, player, commander, or guilds. This is all on Anet and how out of touch they have been for the past 3 years with regards to WvW needs, and how to keep WvW healthy and active. I don’t doubt the data about T1 vs T2, there has been a downward trend for quite awhile. Remember all T1 servers were Full not long ago? Now they’re marked Very High, and I expect to see at least one T1 server fall to High soon. Remember T2 servers were “Very High” and even one hit “Full” not long ago? Yeah, they’re all just “High” now. Population & activities are down all around on all NA servers.

GG Anet really, GG. Why don’t you just talk some more about raids, because that’s really what the majority of your PvE & WvW players want to hear about.

Guild Arena should use WvW rules, not PvE. PvE retaliation is too strong for testing purposes. It’s quite pointless to have player vs player combat while using player vs environment rules & build setup.

This isn’t to mention how annoying it is to try to taxi another guild in for GvG, and you keep having to reload the map 3-4 times because a new version of the map became available, kicking everybody out, delaying the play.

Just instance the arena, make it easier to get people in so they get to stay in. Utilize WvW rules so retal is reduced by 33.33%. Chances are your WvW guilds will use the arena more than PvE guilds would. But PvE folks can still use it just fine, it’ll just be less ridiculous when it comes to player vs player combat.

On this subject I think it should give you the option of toggling it between rulesets. Allow you to choose whether you want to enable PvP, WvW, or PvE ruleset. I know this is possible if they instance the arena.

Just adding that auto loot is waaay up high on my list, but I didn’t mention it in my previous post because auto loot would be pointless if WvW mode dies. But please do listen to your players, having to spam loot buttons while attempting to have engaging player vs player battles is just bad. Really, it’s not needed, it’s tedious, it’s annoying, it’s the last thing I want to do while trying to survive a 40 vs 40 heated battle.

Auto loot needs to be a thing, please.

Core of the issue is people don’t like condi’s. While it’s true other classes could cancer it up, you could always cancer back. But with necros, condi’s don’t work on us, because we just send them right back. It’s a double whammy issue with necros, so people hate us x2.

On top of that, we corrupt boons, and people hate having their boons corrupted. Because again, core of the issue is people don’t like condi’s.

This issue dates back to Everquest/WoW days, the same anti condi sentiments were seen with EQ’s necromancers and WoW’s warlocks. People just dislike condi/dots in general, and condi gameplay was always viewed as “no skill” type of gameplay where you lay dots and kite away.

This is why when power/signet necros were the preferred build, nobody complained much about necros. But now that condi is the preferred build and you’re actually gimping yourself for not running condi/scepter, the outrage is inevitable.

I personally prefer power gameplay, condi is kind of lame and I’m not proud kiting around while spreading cancer. But I’m 100% onboard now with reaper condi builds because Anet made it that way. They’ve made it so if you don’t play condi, you are hurting yourself and your teammates. Let’s not forget power reaper vs condi reaper, the condi reaper is going to have an advantage any day. Nobody likes to die to their own class.

This is why I’ve always said, I don’t mind if they nerf condi reapers. But they sure as heck better buff power reaper builds because power builds don’t compete well right now. Especially so with how inadequate GS is in PvP.

1. Either bring back alpine maps, or if you can’t or must stay with desert, changes will have to be made. And changes will have to be made soon before this game mode dies completely.

-Towers used to be important. In Alpine losing NE/NW towers meant your garrison was going to get trebbed. Losing SW tower/supply camp meant your bay was going to get knocked open. In Desert BL towers don’t mean much, they don’t give you any strategic values, and they are very hard to defend because they’re so far away. The positioning and strategic values of towers in Desert BL’s need to be improved if you want people to play there. Right now in Desert BL’s, there is no strategy, no rhyme and reason for how things are, or why.

-There’s too much emphasis on chokes and siege in Desert BL. Everywhere you go inside the air, fire, and garrison keeps are chokes for you to get rained on by siege. Small areas, blocked by lava, rock walls, cliffs, PvE mobs, and over-tuned lords made even more ridiculous with annoying abilities & iron hide buff. You know why people like fighting over smc? Because you can siege it from all around, the courtyards are large inside for you to maneuver, you can get some pretty darn good fights in the courtyards. There are no annoying PvE gimmicks such as rock walls, cripple fields, lava, or high cliffs. Same with alpine keeps, large keeps, able to siege all around, large courtyards for fights, etc.. Just because you’ve designed Desert BL keeps to be grand and impressive, doesn’t mean they are fun to fight in.

There used to be tons of fights outside of Bay/Hills. There used to be very fun back & forth never ending zerg fights between garrison and NE/NW towers. There’s just no such fights in Desert BL’s because the terrain sucks. Nobody likes to fall into lava while fighting. Nobody wants to get crippled and stuck by rock walls that are super annoying and do nothing for either defending or attacking teams. There isn’t even good fighting ground near the air keep, all uneven terrain, large cliffs, choke points, etc..

How about the good ‘ol garrison fights? You could circle all around in the garrison, multiple levels, both inner and outer have large areas for fights. The garrison fights now happen at roughly 2 points, the areas just inside inner gates, and the top level where the lord is with annoying rock walls. The new garrison is not fun to fight in for either defending or attacking side. There’s no strategy, no sustain, no pulling back and regroup, no circling around, it’s just go and hope you outnumber them and roll them over while getting annoyed by moving rock walls everywhere.

When designing these keeps for your players, sometimes less is better. People go into WvW wanting to fight other players. They don’t login to WvW and say, “hey I want to be challenged by a lord that does aoe fear, knockback, warp around, and have super DH LB 5 traps with no target limit”. Nobody logs into WvW wanting to get crippled running from point A to point B, and get stuck in rock walls while trying to fight enemies. Less gimmicks, give us large areas to fight in, less annoying stuff, that’s what people want when they go into WvW.

I know some devs/desginers are going to say, but there are large flat areas you can fight in if you want to. True, I can think of some large open areas to fight in without npc’s and gimmicks in the Desert BL’s. But there’s no reason to fight over those areas. You know in Alpine maps, the flat area between Bay and sw supply camp. People fought there because whoever wins likely have the supply camp and advantage over Bay or spawn tower. You know the large flat area between NE/NW towers and Garrison? People fought over those large areas because again, you are fighting over the towers and garrison. That large flat area between Garrison and Hills? You fought over them and winner likely have the supply camp and Hills. You can’t just toss random flat areas at random places in Desert BL and say, “there, that’s what you asked for, go there”. We used to fight over land not just for fun (and they were great fun btw), but we did so for strategic reasons. We did it for supply camps, towers, keeps, etc.. on top of the fact that fights are fun and they give you a break from siege.

2. The emphasis on siege/gimmicks against players are overboard these days. Chilling fog, not needed. They annoying players, they waste time, and they don’t really do a whole lot. It’s just a very annoying feature that have nothing to do with player vs player combat. New shield generators, I would’ve been fine if they were designed to protect players/siege assets from projectiles. But they are being over used against players for mass knockbacks and impassable walls. Again, annoying things that make players rage, and they have nothing to do with player vs player combat. Cripple fields, invis fog, rock walls, none of these things add anything but annoyance in WvW. Rock walls especially since they c’block you when you’re trying to make pushes or retreats, and they negatively affect your combat gameplay for both attackers and defenders. You know without the rock walls, land mass is much bigger, making it better for fights. Just saying, that is what people want, less chokes and annoying gimmicks that negatively affect player vs player combat.

Arrow carts, they were annoying before, they are still annoying now. More so because of the amount of chokes in Desert BL’s. Ever tried to siege a heavily defended, fortified, and siege capped keep? You’ll get chain knocked back, knocked down, crippled, chilled, burned, it just makes you sick to your looking at the amount of siege used on players. These things turn players off, they don’t encourage players, especially new players, to jump into WvW. They are not fun, and fun is what will get players into WvW. You want to reinvigorate WvW, you do away with these annoying gimmicks.

I’m not proposing to get rid of siege, nobody is. I think most are ok with siege being a part of WvW gameplay. Back in DAOC where they invented RvR, siege was used primarily to open a keep wall/door. But the main focus of the gameplay was always player vs player combat. Siege merely enables more player vs player combat. DAOC’s lord room last stand defense was all player vs player combat, no siege, no arrow carts, just players duking it out for the rights to a keep/tower. I’m proposing you limit where players can build siege, such as siege inside lord room shouldn’t be a thing, and attackers also shouldn’t be able to build siege and rain ac’s, trebs, cata’s, bals at players holed inside the lord room either. You want the keep? You fight for it.

I’m also proposing that siege get a reduction on its effects on players. Use siege against siege, I’m all for. But siege shouldn’t do this much damage on players, and players shouldn’t get chain knocked down without diminishing returns and resistance to it. People that use siege to chain cripple/chill players, the effects should get diminishing returns, so you become immune to its effects for a few mins after being hit for awhile.

Airship bombs should do less damage unless you are outnumbered. The game should be smart enough to scale the damage these gimmicks do. I know it’s unlikely you’ll take out airship, so let’s compromise, make it do less damage if you have a map blob defending smc.

3. PPT is an outdated concept. PPT creates drama for servers, most servers do not have what it takes to grind ppt every day without players rage quitting. Either remove ppt and revamp scoring, or if you must keep ppt, put a cap on the amount of ppt a server can gain during each hour. This way no one server could do nothing but ppt to gain great advantage over other servers. And in order to gain the kind of scores you are gaining now, you must fight players for it. Reduce ppt dependencies is what I’m proposing.

There are some servers that already get a great lead by Monday morning, thus it leads to a boring week because other servers give up playing or trying because they know they can’t catch up. You want to reduce this from happening. You want people to feel they have a chance so they will continue playing this game, spend money, and keep WvW active. An active WvW is a healthy WvW. You can even reduce the ppt gains by the leading server, so the more they lead, the less they can gain compared to the servers behind. Ultimately fun and engaging player vs player combat is what will bring players back into WvW. I can guarantee you it isn’t PvE, PvDoor, or backcap ppt tryhards. To have a healthy WvW ppt dependency needs to be lowered or removed.

4. Server vs Server vs Server is really an outdated concept. It’s why mega servers were invented in the first place. WoW for an example have been doing battlegroups for their BG’s and world PvP since forever. I’m huge on DAOC when it invented RvR. But even back then I saw the flaw of the concept of 3 realms. The idea was an utopian idea where you hope the 2 lesser realms would band temporary alliances to go against the leading realm. But what happened more often than not was that the 2 lesser realms tear each other’s throats out for 2nd place, while the leading realm simply push both enough to keep themselves in 1st place.

This is what is happening today in GW2’s WvWvW. You would hope 2 servers losing the week would go up against the 1st place server, but what ends up happening is the 2 servers fight over 2nd, so the 1st place server is always 1st place uncontested. And just like back in DAOC days, people transfer to the winning server more than the 2nd or 3rd place server in each tier. The problem just gets worse and worse. Yes it’s another utopian idea to expect players to join the losing server to have something to fight for. But in reality, gamers more often than not take the easy way out, that’s why winning servers get higher in population and activities, while things get worse for the other servers.

It’s time for the alliance/battlegroup idea. You can still keep server tags if you worry about server pride. But the idea is simply you match servers together by their activities and winning percentages, and try to create better competition & better match ups. So you don’t end up with always the same server winning, or the same servers losing, or the same servers greatly outnumbered and not able to compete. There are too many servers with too little WvW participation. This is needed now if you want to save this game mode.

5. I would like to see unique WvW skins for armor, weapons, and siege models. Would like to see more customization to display guild pride in WvW. DAOC was all about guild pride, you knew which guild claimed a keep from the distance. You also could tell which guild was coming at you before you clash. We could use more skins, fluff, rewards, and customization for guilds. Since this game isn’t about gear grind (and I’m happy about that), give us rewards tracks for skin grind.

I’ve always wondered why they don’t give you an option to select for hacking. We’re told to pick “botting” for literally everything. Someone wasting supplies & building troll siege? Select botting. Someone using warp hacks? Select botting. Someone exploiting a broken mechanic ingame, report as botting.

Doesn’t really instill confidence anything would be done when you can’t even report people properly.

qbalrog.8017:

For instance, to do fractals, I need agony resistance which pretty much means I’d need to stick with one toon for fractals. While I’m not completely opposed to that, when faced with the choice of building a dedicated fractal toon or hopping around on toons in spvp or wvw, the latter has so far always appealed. And that’s true even though all I need to finish Mawdrey II are a few fractals.

I hate fractals for that by the way, the need to stick to one class, one build, just to be able to get deeper into fractals. Whoever at Anet thought up of that idea, great job at creating content that alienates more players than raids ever have.

I’ve died too many times from not able to consume conditions, I’m not making that mistake again. Yes the shout heal is very good, lifeforce, short cd, yada yada yada. I would love to use it. But the ability to consume all the cancer on you at once is just hard to let go.

I don’t believe the raid team consist of only 5 Anet employees. Perhaps 5 devs that design and test the raid encounter itself. But they are not counting the art assets/resources used to create legendary armor and the raid zones/npc’s. They are definitely not counting the programming resources/time used to implement new mechanics for raids. All these assets and resources were tied up for raids that few access, more are being tied up for the upcoming raid content which are coming well before WvW revamps, Living Story, and more dungeon content.

You know why they mentioned 5 devs used to create raids? Because they know darn well that players will question their resource allocation given how HoT has turned out (with their admission of general poor sales, and how WvW has all but become a barren place). They’ve lost a lot of players to other games or rl, and this shouldn’t have happened when we’re only 4 months into a new expansion launch.

Players hear them say WvW was going to be the focus post HoT launch, yet more raids are coming first while WvW continue to bleed players. Majority of the players in PvE who enjoy open world content are demanding for more content, yet again, raids are coming out first, something overwhelming majority of PvE players will not access. PvP pro league that they spent $400k on to promote isn’t gaining more viewership, yet here we are raids are the upcoming attraction in the April patch. Nope, not new PvP maps, not new competitive PvP mechanics/mode, but raids & legendary armors are coming! PvE players have demanded more dungeons and better rewards, but now we know there isn’t even a single Anet employee working on dungeons.

The reason they even bothered to comment on the “5 devs working on raids” is because they know they messed up on their priorities and resource allocation. I’ve said before, I’m not against raids. Raids have been a part of MMORPG’s since the beginning of MMO’s. But raids have always traditionally sucked resources dry while companies sacrifice other parts of their game just to cater to the 2% that even play those content. This isn’t a problem for giant companies like Blizzard with their unlimited resources. This however, is a problem for a company like Anet who are stretched thin on resources.

Main problem with raids is that it takes so much dev resources to create, yet it’s usually played by the smallest percentage of the actual player population. For a game like WoW, they don’t need to worry about this because Blizzard has unlimited resources with how much money they’re making with the game. But for a game like GW2, resources are very much limited, we see the results of Anet allocating large amount of resources to raids, and the things they have to sacrifice due to it. By resources I mean both manpower and money, Anet has continuously cited the lack of resources as a reason for how things are.

Living world getting pushed back because they want to release more raids first as an example. Lack of a true WvW dev team has all but killed this game mode. Lack of resources to separate PvE, PvP, and WvW class balance, so they do it the lazy way of trying to mash them all together and hope they could balance classes with a single stroke. Dungeons being left behind because again, by their admission recently, they don’t even have a team for dungeons. Lack of programming resources is cited as the reason they can’t bring Alpine maps back for WvW, because their programming resources are tied to creating new raid mechanics.

Raids are resource killers, but yet raids are not played by the large majority of the players. Large majority of the players are still out in the open world, they prefer open world bosses and zone meta’s. While many have tried raids initially due to the hype, many aren’t bothering with it now. So yes, raids belong in a MMO, they’ve always been in MMO’s since Everquest created this genre. But they’ve always sucked dev resources dry and made companies sacrifice certain aspects of their games just to create raids. And raids are traditionally always played by the smallest percentage of playerbase, this was the case in EQ, it’s likely the case today in GW2.

Good or bad, the real question is, what are you willing to give up to have raids. Because right now we’re giving up a lot just so GW2 could see more raid content. Also as a side note, raids tend to be exclusive in nature. Where as Guild Wars 2 have always been a more inclusive game. For good or bad, raids did change the attitude of the game and its players a bit.

Necros being powerful is needed to keep scrappers in check. Count the number of counters scrappers have, you won’t need to use too many fingers. And as powerful as reapers are, at higher tier PvP and pro leagues, the only class currently being stacked is revs. Nope, not necros, you will find most higher level teams stack 2 revs if they stack any class at all. Stacking necros is pointless due to being too immobile and too easily trained.

Like the current meta or not, it is the way Anet has it at the moment. You can nerf necros, but you will also need to nerf scrapper and revs. Revs & scrappers are c’blocking warriors, thieves, and DH from being played at higher end. No need to utilize any of these 3 classes because revs & scrappers can do everything they can do, but better.

Druids are another story altogether. If they weren’t easily trained down, they would likely get a secure meta spot. They have what it takes to be a good class, and are quite clutch at revives. But most teams focus them down first even over reapers. If they had the sustain of scrappers when being focused, they would be up there. A druid vs reaper 1v1 is one of those long fights that usually could go either way.

So yeah, it kinda sucks to see so many reapers in the ranked right now. They kinda give us long time necros a bad name. But reaper stacking isn’t that big of an issue at higher tiers because they become not optimal to stack later on. Pro league players and higher tier players will spank any 3-4 reaper team with one eye closed. They’ll use a combination of eles, revs, scrappers, and maybe bring 1 reaper along. Winning against a reaper stacked team is really not an issue at all.

For the record, I don’t like how Anet pushed necros into the condi role. I’ve always preferred power builds & gameplay. But I’m now playing condi because it’s required if you want to do well and you don’t want to disappoint your team. Funny I mentioned power, because power reapers get spanked pretty hard these days. That’s another thing, if they want to nerf reapers, they better boost power builds.

Truth is you need both of these classes in WvW ZvZ for your raid to function well. Typically you bring along 2-3 chronos in a given 20-30 player WvW raid. They’re used for veils, portals, and gravity wells for cc bombs.

On the other hand, reapers are utilized to enhance the dps of the raid, and you typically want at least 3-5 in each raid. Wells are still being used regardless of the build you are running, be it power frontline or power midline (difference is really just the amount of armor you’re sporting, and that frontline builds carry more shouts).

Condi builds shine when the size get smaller than 20, they’re great for solo/small group roaming. But condi builds lose effectiveness when opponent’s size is greater than 20. In which case, a power reaper using Well of Suffer and Corruption are still very much needed in the raids.

You pretty much use Chronos for cc bombs and utilities such as veil & portals, while you use Reapers for direct damage bombs. As for which to play, I’d recommend trying both and see which works out for you better. Both are useful, although I would say if the raid/guild you tag along with consistently have more than 2-3 chronos, then reapers become more useful then.

True about ac’s and siege in general. In DAOC people used siege to open up keep walls & doors. But the core of the RvR gameplay was always player vs player combat. Siege was just a tool to enable player vs player combat.

WvW right now is too much about siege, too much about fighting siege or siege capped keeps. Siege shouldn’t be the focal point of WvW combat. Siege should never do this much damage and disruption to players. I’m all for siege on siege, but right now siege are used against players more than anything else. A look at a siege capped keep these days will turn people’s stomach upside down, and make them want to logout rather than attempt to open it.

We do need changes and updates to WvW now rather than later. Never thought the 2 new games released would cause population issues, but I can confirm bns & especially bdo both have taken quite a big chunk out of WvW player population. We’ve lost majority of some guilds on a T1 server lately due to it. And the funny thing is that it isn’t the new games are so much better, it’s just that Anet’s vision of WvW is so bad, and the lack of attention to fix & update WvW have ruined it for most of the core players.

There are things that really annoy players, and most of them are things implemented with HoT expansion.

1. Oasis event on the BL’s still cause major lag, nobody likes to do it, everybody dread it when the timer countdown begins for it. This event needs to be disabled because it’s not getting fixed. 4-5 months is way too long to force your players to wait for a fix to this problem. Imagine this kind of lag happening during Tarir meta event, or DS meta, would it have lasted this long without a fix?

2. The cripple fields annoy players, the rock walls make people rage. Nobody likes them, not even for defending team where these rock walls are supposed to help. They make you get stuck, they ruin your pushes & retreat, they are not needed when players just want player vs player combat. I didn’t think Anet could think up of worse things to implement in WvW than ac’s…but the rock walls have got to be one of the worst ideas ever, next to chilling fog.

3. New BL’s are too big, takes too long to find action, and it’s near impossible to save towers. Old BL’s you could respond to scouting calls, new BL’s, well nobody gives a crap because you can’t do anything about it.

4. Keep designs are terrible for sieging. People crowd to EBG because smc is the right design for keeps, it’s large, you can siege from all around the keep, and the courtyards inside are large enough for you to maneuver and get some good fights out of it once you crack the walls/doors open. The new keep designs force you into tiny chokes and areas where you are constantly rained on by ac’s and siege. I get the original idea was to design keeps so smaller groups could fend off larger zergs. But did devs ever run the scenario where a map queue sits inside a fully fortified and siege capped keep, to see just how impossible it is for the attacking teams?

5. Emergency waypoints are fine, because you can time it and know when it’s up and when it’s down. But chill fog, air strike, iron hide, etc.. all should go. Again, annoying gimmicks that have nothing to do with player vs player combat. Iron Hide was a decent concept to give smaller groups a chance to defend a keep vs a larger zerg. But again Anet failed to run the scenario where a map blob is defending a keep how impossible it is to take the lord down with the iron hide buff on it. These PvE gimmicks are annoying players too much, people just aren’t having fun anymore.

6. ppt is an outdated concept. The need to ppt creates issues for many servers in all tiers. It also deter fights, forcing people to knock on doors and spend excessive boring time doing PvE. This also leads to where a server gets too far ahead by Monday, and then there’s a serious lack of action as other servers give up playing for the week. My suggestion is to cap the amount of ppt you can gain per hour, so no server can do nothing but ppt. There’s too much emphasis on ppt right now when majority of players really don’t care for it. Make it so if you want to gain the scores like you are now, you have to kill players for it once you’ve hit your hourly cap.

Something has to be done soon. I would say it’s already too late, but I know there are people waiting to come back to play the game once these annoying things are gone, lag is fixed, and WvW becomes fun again. Server activity pop keep going down, NA now have no Full servers, and one of the Very High just went down to High. I’m sure Anet sees these activity changes with their internal monitoring and stats collection. But the question is, will they do the right things? Do they are?

GW2 is currently one of the better options in the MMO genre at the moment. Best, no, but a good option, yes. It could be a lot better if the game is managed better. There are game modes being neglected (WvW), game modes seemingly unbalanced (PvP), and game mode where ppl are unhappy about the grind and expense to play in (PvE – specifically HoT).

It could be so much better. Other MMO’s struggle with providing an active combat gameplay and smooth animations, GW2’s got it all there. Other MMO’s struggle to provide large scale RvR/WvW, GW2 has it here, but it’s a game mode not well taken care of by management. Other MMO’s make you grind for gear as primary objectives, gear isn’t that big of a deal in this game, you kind of grind for looks, which most people are ok with.

GW2 isn’t the best, but it has a lot going for it. Unfortunately it could be better and could be more popular than it is today.

I was totally expecting balance updates today due to a new season starting. I mean balance patch update on or before a new season starts make more sense than a balance patch towards the end of a season.

I also play WvW side of things and was expecting to see changes there, and fixes to oasis lag issues. Nope, nothing there either.

It makes you wonder what in the world they’re doing with all the time they’ve had this past month.

You can’t vs a competent reaper. Only way is if the reaper messes up.

Lopez.7369:

I genuinely do not get the responses in this thread.

Greatsword is comparable to dagger in PvE. But that only means dagger needs PvE buffs, too.

We’re not supposed to be comparing necromancer weapons to each other. We’re supposed to be comparing necromancer to other classes. That’s how groups and raids decide whether they should take a necromancer.

As it stands — and this is just basic math — greatsword does roughly 19,000 DPS on a target below 50 percent health in an optimal environment.

For comparison, other classes — elementalist, engineer, thief, revenant, guardian — can do at least 25,000 DPS in an optimal environment no matter the target’s health. So we’re talking about a fairly huge gap.

Dagger, by the way, does about 14,000 to 15,000 DPS — about the same greatsword does on a target above 50 percent health. (Although you should be using both in an ideal rotation on a target above 50 percent health.)

So I really don’t understand the responses in this thread. That greatsword is about as good as dagger on targets above 50 percent health is a testament to just how bad it is.

But since greatsword is never used in PvP while dagger sometimes is, I do think the argument for greatsword buffs is a bit stronger.

Good response, few times I’ve actually seen someone on this forum respond with #‘s. I think too many reapers get caught up on the big #’s that pop up on their screen, that they don’t realize power reaper isn’t really high up on the dps chain. I mean I knew GS is clunky and too slow to be viable to use in PvP. But it wasn’t until I talked to some PvE buddies ingame, from those that raid and such, that I realized power reaper really isn’t that good dps wise.

Here I was all this time thinking GS was all great and wonderful for PvE. Apparently people prefer condi reapers for PvE as well from what I’ve been told. If this is all true, then I really don’t get why people think GS is “fine”. It was already not viable in PvP due to clunky unreliable skills such as GS 2 & 5. It was already not viable due to slow GS auto and lackluster GS 3, or a GS 4 that all reapers pop by instinct but really honestly don’t do a whole lot. Now that I’m hearing GS isn’t all that in PvE either, it boggles me really.

A lot of ideas have been suggested since HoT beta, but Robert Gee seem set on the way GS operates, including the unreliable GS 5. We’ve been citing all the issues with GS and how it’s just not a good viable weapon in PvP vs skilled players. My feeling is that Gravedigger cleave is what’s holding it back. It’s abused so hard in PvE and they’re afraid to change GS to make it better because of it. Sad really, Gravedigger is just too slow and too easily interrupted. You know the few seconds someone’s invuln when they first go downstate, swinging Gravedigger then should not put the skill on cooldown. Also a block, knockback, etc.. all put Gravedigger on cooldown, making it a really niche skill to use.

There couldn’t have been a better time to separate balancing between game modes, something people have been asking repeatedly for a long time. I’m all for tossing ideas out, but the GS 3 forward leap was something I had suggested during beta. There are no shortage of ideas. Problem is what’s Anet going to do with these ideas? Anything? Or are they happy to let GS be a niche PvE weapon while they continue to force Reapers into a condi/corrupt role in PvP?

With that said, haven’t heard from Robert Gee in awhile. Would be nice to get some dev interaction again. I know they did them during HoT beta to sell the expansion. But it would be nice to continue these dev balance talks now after HoT.

This is the first game I’ve played where blocking someone nets you more information about the individual. I agree with the OP, blocklist isn’t what it should be in this game.

In WvW, blocking an enemy gives me the means to find their ID, send whispers, and track what maps they’re on.

Also Anet tells you to block someone in order to find their ID if you need to report them. Why on earth wouldn’t you just allow us to right click someone’s name and give us more reporting options? Why do I need to block someone in order to get more info about someone just to report someone?

The whole system is butt backwards.

If you’re power build, you’ll likely want to use Reaper’s Onslaught. It shines in any situation where you can get downs, so any group or zerg fights pretty much. I would use it in PvE & WvW group/zerg fights.

Blighter’s Boon is better for solo gameplay where it adds to sustain if you’re built to generate might/boons. Power builds are prone to get kited in 1v1’s so Blighter’s Boon help you with that sustain you may need to last longer.

It’s completely unacceptable that this event single handedly ruins the gameplay for everybody in the zone. It’s equally unacceptable to have this issue unfixed since HoT launched almost 4 months ago. Please disable this event until the lag issues are fixed. Either fix the extreme lag, or disable the event. Don’t just let something so broken run continuously and turn a blindeye on it.

Be a hero for once Anet, nobody will miss this event. I get that you folks spent a lot of time designing and developing it. And disabling it may seem like you’re admitting you did something wrong. But the lag is killing everybody’s enjoyment. It’s one of the top things cited when people talk about why they dislike desert borderlands and why they refuse to play on the new BL’s. Things like these are pushing people away.

Fix the lag, or disable the event in the meantime please.

The skill can remain as-is for all I care, just make sure the graphics show up for them. That way I know when the barrier’s are up, when they’re down, so I don’t keep running into them, get knocked back/down, having all my skills go on cooldown, and end up getting killed as a result.

Often I get trapped, I have to guess if the barrier’s still up or not. I start casting my heal or whatever it is I want to cast, then start running, and bam I’m knocked down, my skills go on cooldown, and I end up dying. Frigging annoying.

I was told if you turn off effect LOD I can see them, but who in the world runs with effect LOD off? The particle effects are excessive when you disable effect LOD, creating whole new issues with visibility.

Just fix it so we can see when the arrows come down better, and if we’re trapped, make sure the trap circle show up around us so we know exactly who’s trapped and who isn’t, and when the trap goes down.

Yeah Anet dumped $400k into spvp, when they should’ve focused more on WvW & GvG. I find more enjoyment watching GvG fights than 5v5 conquest to be honest. It’s not surprising to me that there’s such a big viewership differences between sPvP and GvG/WvW.

They should’ve designed some arena’s for GvG guilds, where guilds could queue up and battle other guilds in 15v15 or 10v10. And no the tiny lil guildhall arena isn’kitten The mere fact that they created that thing and said “there that’s your GvG arena” tells you how out of touch they are. Same with the way they designed the new desert borderlands, it shows you they really didn’t have anybody on the design team that played WvW.

5v5 conquest is just a borefest anymore, especially so during the bunker meta. It still wouldn’t be all that interesting watching ppl fight over lil circles in the upcoming meta either, because it’s still the same things. People didn’t like watching it before, they still won’t like watching it after they killed the bunker meta.

But hey, handing a handful of groups of ppl $200k is supposedly good investment in Anet’s eyes. Where as GvG & WvW both have tons more active players playing, despite all the neglect from Anet.

Well of Suffering is still being used all around in PvE & WvW. But all the other wells have too high cd and they don’t bring enough to the table. As stated with Blood Magic, they make sense to use due to reduced cd, siphons, and prot. But most Reapers don’t take Blood Magic as you would sacrifice too much doing so.

Well of Corruption would be used more often in WvW if it doesn’t take 5 pulses for it to corrupt 5 boons. Nobody stands still for 5 seconds, and with the introduction of resistance, it’s harder to trap people in place these days. Mobility is a big thing now, even us necros gained mobility. Which is why Reapers often opt for 600 radius shouts rather than these stationary 240 radius wells with high cooldowns.

To me the wells have become more obsolete in non-PvE environment due to excessive boon sharing, mobility, and how tanky people are these days. I still use well of suffering as a reaper, but the damage from it isn’t what it used to be.

Has anyone found a reliable way to beat good DH & Druids post-Jan 26th patch? I’ve tried power & condi builds, having a very rough time with them. Oh and I’m mostly asking about WvW roaming, not sPvP. So keep in mind they still get to use the runes, sigils, and builds that were removed from sPvP.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

-The oasis event in desert borderlands still causes terrible zone-wide lag. Players continue to ask this event to be either fixed, or disabled. The lag from this event is one of the top reasons why guilds refused to play in the desert borderlands.

-Squad markers and Lt’s are an awesome feature addition. However, players would like to request a feature to allow individuals to enlarge the squad markers. Please give us a slider bar in options to allow individual adjustments to the size of these squad markers. We like to place one of the markers on the commander’s head, but they are too small and hard to see. Please allow us to adjust the size of the squad markers, then we’ll be very happy and will make good use of this feature.

There is however a bug with squad markers. Even when the commander clears all markers, and they do get cleared. But when he places a new marker, the old markers show up again on the map. So it would seem even after you run the clear all markers command, the game still remembers the old marker locations. This was tested in WvW.

I don’t mind Anet spending on esports really. But to drop $400k on such a small niche segment of the playerbase, with such a noncompetitive field of pro league teams, you have to question is it worth it? I can’t imagine this was a good investment spending that much when you already know it’s pretty much the same handful of teams that’ll make it to the top, and most could already call 1 or 2 teams that’ll win and they won’t be wrong.

$100k or even $50k would be enough for such a small playerbase with low competition and low viewership. The money part doesn’t make sense to me. On top of it, Anet’s refusal to separate balancing between PvE, PvP, and WvW. That part also doesn’t make sense to me, to have such large balance patch that changed classes 99% based on esports alone.

Again I don’t mind Anet wanting GW2 to be esports. But they’re honestly hurting their game making this push imo, because they’re spending too much for such a small segment of the playerbase, and they’re balancing classes based on 5v5 PvP.

Scepter auto didn’t need boon corrupt, everything else, good stuff. They’ve allowed us to pick traits that we maybe didn’t think about using before simply because they’ve added some synergy to boon corrupt on them. The builds I’m testing now are just whacked, things I wouldn’t use before, but now they look fairly good.

Dead.5829:

gavyne.6847:

Is leeching bolts working for anybody? I didn’t notice it healing me in shroud.

The healing doesn’t show up in the combat log, but it’s happening.

ahh you’re right, saw the green numbers pop up. I was looking for them in the combat log. Thanks for confirming.

Is leeching bolts working for anybody? I didn’t notice it healing me in shroud.

I don’t need it to be blind immune, just give me the stab from it regardless of whether it hits targets or not.

It’s the same, except everybody uses the new elite specs. So instead of Guardian, people run Dragonhunter. Instead of ele, people run tempest. Most necros have swapped to reaper as well for added mobility and personal stab. Mesmers run chronos, also there are a bit more scrappers out there than I remember seeing engies before.

The one big change is the addition of revs, they’re popular in the current WvW meta for boon stacking, resistance, and hammer skills.

Big balance patch is coming next Tuesday however, so things may change slightly. But for WvW it’s likely going to remain fairly the same with small changes here and there in builds.

We aren’t supposed to have nice things, remember we have skills and traits that hurt us for using them… lol.

I think necros will have a good chance to have a spot in the upcoming meta. However, keep in mind our counters will be daredevils, warriors, and druids. Expect teams to carry at least 1 or 2 of these classes in spvp, and honestly I’m not looking forward to it. If you’ve fought good dd’s you’ll know they’re already hard to deal with. Luckily for us this meta they aren’t as popular, next meta expect to see more of them.

I suppose changes are a good thing, as we’re all tired of the current bunker meta. We’ll see how it goes. I’m just not that excited until I see the full patch notes, because Anet has a history of nerfing something that really hurts us. For an example, the blighter’s boon nerf really hurt our group sustain in team fights, as we continue the “Kill that necro first” strategy.

Builds we’re supposed to counter will constantly whine about it on the forums, so yes I’m uneasy with this change because we’ll always have a target on our backs. Not to mention this pretty much makes scepter the meta, and pushes necros/reapers further into condi territory. And here I was hanging onto whatever there is left for power this current meta, because I really hate the condi gameplay where your primary objective is to stack condi’s until your opponents run out of cooldowns to cleanse them. Zzzzz

Our dagger, axe, GS, and staff really could use a boost & tweaks but devs boost scepter instead. GG

If lag goes away, I don’t mind this event staying. Only thing is I wish the damage the laser does should scale with population. So if your side is under populated, it should do more damage. If you are greatly outnumbering the others, laser should do very little damage.

Zone-wide skill lag is the #1 thing that makes people hate this event and map hop. A lot of the times we would be having a great fight somewhere else, and the event starts, it just ruin the fights. Fixing the lag issues will go a long way to allowing people to accept this feature.

Best one is keep lord at the fire keep spawn on top of lava, so it dies to lava repeatedly. It’s really amazing bugs like these have not been fixed 3 months into the expansion.

I thought when Anet introduced boss scaling, that it affected the casual friendly nature of GW2 gameplay. There was a time when the more the merrier, come one come all, it was an inclusive design where gathering up and killing things were the norm. People were happy you joined in the fight.

Now, people worry about scaling, so people actually want less players on each bosses, they’ll tell you to go away because you would scale the npc up too much. HoT has become more exclusive as a result, you are sometimes not welcome to join a fight. If you’re a casual player, this can get confusing, and harsh words exchange which creates drama. And remember, GW2 players are used to just join events without having to worry about grouping up, what guilds they were in, or how many people are already there.

On top of that, GW2 introduced raiding. I’m not against raiding at all, I used to be a raider awhile back in other games. But it’s a well known fact that raiding is a resource hog for the development team. They have to spend so much resources at creating, testing, and perfecting raid content and it is often utilized by a very small percentage of the playerbase. Due to time requirement and the min/max nature of raids, majority of the players will not raid. So you have the dev team spend so much time creating content for such a small % of the playerbase, they end up sacrificing content for the greater percentage.

When it comes to raiding, it also brings elitism, min/maxing, cliques, and drama. Players all of a sudden nitpicking about how you play and what you should do. People start to get left out, even in guilds where people used to be happy, I’ve seen people get upset because the guild is taking the same people to raids and leaving some behind. Raiding is the very definition of casual unfriendly.

Again, I’m not opposed GW2 having raids in the game. But I’m just speaking from experience what raiding brings to MMO’s, and what it costs. It does make one wonder, is it worth it? Is it worth having 1 less zone in HoT because devs spent a lot of time and resources (both design and coding, as well as art assets) to cater to the 1-5%? Is it worth neglecting WvW as a whole so the dev team could focus more on raiding? Is it worth having players feel left out and losing casual players as a result, or break guilds apart due to raid drama?

Only MMO I know of that provides casual raids is WoW. WoW’s raid finder and the way their raiding works, everybody can do, even casuals and new players. But that game is unique in its design and they know how to cater to casuals, and they have the resources to cater to everybody. Heck they’re literally printing money in Irvine due to the amount of revenue they make. It’s just a lot different when you have limited resources like Anet, where you have to sacrifice dev time & resources.

Speaking of WvW, the new desert borderland is definitely not casual friendly. It’s too large, too tedious to run through, too siege heavy, too many gimmicky things that disrupt player vs player gameplay such as cripple fields, lava, rocks that popup in front of your face randomly, barricades, etc.. WvW banners and tactivators are also very casual unfriendly.

Signets are powerful 1v1, especially so against certain builds such as dd eles & revs. Shouts excel in group combat, as the # of targets enhance what you get out of shouts, as well as the shout cooldown reduction.

Both are solid for WvW roaming, both have their uses, strengths, and weaknesses. You can even run a hybrid of both, which is what I tend to run.

There were threads like these before, most of the ideas posted have already been posted before. But Anet chose to ignore them. Instead they dumped $400k into esports with such a small spvp community. Can people really say esports is generating much revenue for them? Imagine what a fraction of that money could do for WvW if spent wisely.

What Anet’s doing isn’t unique to this company however. Neglect and doing the bare minimum have to do with lack of competition. There needs to be a game with really good RvR before Anet feels enough pressure to do more for WvW. All MMO’s do this. Competition really do drive companies to do better in order to keep customers.

As for what they could add that I would buy? I’ve already posted these before but here they are again:

1. Unique siege skins that are account bound, so once you’ve bought it, you can drop rams, catas, ac’s, etc with skins of your choosing. Kind of like choosing glider skins, you let people choose the skins they’ve bought. You can also have a random option like with finishers.

2. More guild/server pride skins and items. DAOC was all about guild & realm pride. Here? Aside from the tag next to your name, people mostly look the same. In DAOC when you run upon a tower/keep, you knew which guild claimed it because that frigging tower/keep was decked out in guild attire, color, etc..

3. More convenience items. Most people I know have already bought account share slots, I personally bought 5 the very first day. We need more than 5. See things like these that benefit everybody, not just PvE players, but WvW players also use these shared slots. More convenience items. I don’t care if I have to pay 500-1000 gems but I would spend that much to get a bot that loots my bags. I know the auto loot mastery doesn’t work in WvW, personally would rather buy an item in the gem store that auto loots than to grind PvE masteries.

4. More colors for commander tags, or special outfit sets that commanders can wear to make them stand out. I want to have the option to make commander tag easier to see, so I don’t have to waste focus target on their head and actually use focus target on players/things we need to kill.

We didn’t need a scepter boost. Problem with scepter auto corrupt boon is that it’ll make us constantly the target of complaints and potential nerfs. This means the devs are unlikely to boost us where we need it the most…power and defense. It’s our power weapons that need tweaks and buffs, such as GS, Axe, Staff, etc.. And we are and still will be after the balance patch the #1 focus target for an easy kill.

Also I’m so not looking forward to getting ganked and owned by thieves. Remember before the bunker meta, they were everywhere? They’ve only gone dormant recently due to the meta changes. With Anet completely destroying bunker meta, and buffing thieves at the same time, we’ll start to see thieves everywhere again. You can’t kill what you can’t hit, and that’s what it’s like trying to fight good daredevils, you can’t land hits and they don’t care about our chill either.

I really hope there are other buffs to our class on Jan 26th, because if this is all we’re getting, we’re going to be hurting. You could say oh but corrupt boon changes will buff us to meta level. Yeah, if you only look from the eyes of revs and builds that rely heavily on boons. But if a solo thieve & warrior can destroy us, I’m not so sure reapers will have that secured meta spot as some predict we’ll have.

It’s important to note the people complaining about corrupt boons right now are classes that rely on boons. Meanwhile thieves and warriors are just rubbing their hands, getting ready to unleash their pwnage, especially thieves. There’s some serious power creeping going on next balance patch, especially with the removal of defensive runes, sigils, and amulets (for those that pvp). In the meantime, our (lack of)defense stays the same. Not a good thing..

Well yeah, most of the balance changes are done based on sPvP. CoR is about the only change they’re doing for WvW. So expect to see more power creep in the game, all for the sake of PvP game mode.

And hooray unblockable venomshare, hooray more zerker rifle pew pew. Both of which are cancer in WvW, but do the balance devs care? Nope, those classes needed a buff for PvP so they’re buffing them not caring about WvW at all.

I really wish they would separate 3 game modes and balance them accordingly. There’s just no way to balance PvE, large scale WvW, and 5-player PvP using the same dataset.

I think it’s a bit over the top to nerf all and everything defensive all at once. It’s popular to say kill the bunkers, I think right most are sick of the bunker meta. But to remove defensive amulets, mess with energy sigils, and removing defensive runes, while at the same time nerfing some bunker class traits/mechanics. I think it’ll be a tad over the top, but that’s just my opinion.

Not to mention the power creep being added at the same time doing all of the above. Eh, I’m not so sure it’ll work out as pretty as they are hoping.