Guild Wars 2

Yup, and while you’re at it, please make our primers stop ticking down while in HoTM. I buy primers for WvW, but hate to waste them when doing PvP. I play both WvW & PvP, this game makes it hard to enjoy both for some strange reason. Hate seeing my food go poof just because I joined a PvP match, or see primers get wasted due to being forced to wait in HoTM.

Benjaminmaz.3495:

I’m tired of zerging and want to do some solo roaming. Any good classes that are good for roaming?

Good roaming classes haven’t changed much. Classes you’ll bump into while solo roaming are mostly classes that can choose engagements, and have the option to disengage when they want to. Needless to say you’ll bump into thieves/daredevils and mesmers/chronos the most.

You’ll also bump into scrappers a lot, they’re a good 1v1 elite spec and have ways to disengage & reset fights. And Dragonhunters are aplenty, they’re good at killing unsuspecting, newish players who aren’t familiar with traps.

There are plenty of other classes that roam, I try to roam on my reaper. Unfortunately without reliable ways to disengage, you’re prone to get +1 or +zerg so it’s hard to find good roaming 1v1 or 1v2’s.

Axe sucks, as a Reaper who uses Dagger/Warhorn I kill every single Axe wielding Reapers I’ve seen so far. This is PvP.

If you PvE, there’s even less of a reason to use Axe. You should be using GS & Dagger.

Oh wow so I’m not going crazy, I’ve been trying to figure out why my character gets stuck in place with no condi on me.

Yes, please fix.

Anybody that watched ESL tournaments saw how crazy the amount of boons people were getting from the new elite specs. It really wouldn’t hurt the game that necros get a boost in boon corruption. Someone has to do it because it’s just too much right now with full groups going perma max might, fury, swiftness, protection, regen, etc.. Necros have gotten weaker and weaker at corrupting boons especially during team fights.

I would support corrupting boons as the rune’s 6th.

Blighter’s Boon fixed this problem. Too bad they had to go and nerf it. Now it’s train & cc necros/reapers all over again.

While some people are right, gaining lifeforce isn’t exactly hard. It takes 1 hit or 1 round from most classes/builds now to knock a necro/reaper out of their shroud. Especially easy at start of engagements where there’s little lifeforce to stay in shroud in the first place. And on top of that lifeforce does tick down on its own when in shroud.

Fighting any given 1 v 1 you know how big of a difference it is to start with 0 lifeforce, vs 10%, 20%, or more. In team fights, most teams call out necros/reapers as targets right away. Without lifeforce it’s pretty much gg.

A common theme we see in these tournaments is necros/reapers burning all their cooldowns just to not get 1 rounded. Then they get enough lifeforce to shroud, and shoutcasters go “oooh he pops shroud!”, but deep inside you see the necro/reaper’s only got 10% hp left, and you know that shroud isn’t gonna last long before the necro is popped into downstate. It’s just all too common to see this happen over and over.

Like I said though, Blighter’s Boon helped with this starting lifeforce issue, and it helped Reapers with sustain. Post-nerf, it’s now back to kill the necro first because there’s nothing they can do about it.

Yeah that’s a battlegroup setup that other games use, similar to what EotM has as well. I honestly don’t know why Anet hasn’t gone forward with this. Many had thought they would’ve done it with HoT expansion because it’d be the perfect time to change things up. The only logical reason they haven’t done it is because they want to continue milking the transfer revenue.

Which is sad if true because they’re losing players and full guilds of people due to their lack of attention to WvW. I would argue people would continue to transfer servers just to join established guilds and roll with like minded people. And it’d be harder to game the system when you involve multiple servers. Right now with WvWvW people can game the system with blackouts and mass purchase of guilds. It’d be quite pointless to do blackouts & buy guilds when you have 3-4 servers in the same battlegroup.

I really don’t understand why Anet hasn’t gone forward with the battlegroup system. This system would allow them to move servers around based on weekly performance. It’s something Blizzard does as they monitor each battlegroup’s performance to see if one needs more help than the others. You would still have your server pride as your server name still shows up. All servers would open up for transfers so people can be with their friends and can join whichever guilds/servers they want to join.

The way things are done right now is so restrictive, it’s counter-productive, and the system can be gamed by players who continue to outsmart Anet programmer’s codes.

Edit: Spoke too soon, looks like we get to see a necro in EU’s ESL finally.

Sorry I’m not using the format in OP, just needed to get this out. Whether devs read it, it’s up to them.

The good:

-40% run speed for 5 mins via shrines, this should be a thing on all maps.
-Harvest nodes inside towers/keeps.
-Beautiful landscape and structures.

The not so good, things should be changed/tweaked/modified/removed:

-Cripple, knockback, knockdown, burn, etc… gimmicks that have more to do with PvE than PvP. Those things annoy the crap out of players when they’re trying to have a legitimate fight. Devs have placed so many of those things that even when groups try to drag each other out for open field combat, we are still having to deal with some of these annoying Player vs Environment aspect of the game.

-Vertical terrain, too many spots you can’t cross or jump down. This is great in PvE because HoT introduced gliding. But it’s as if devs forgot gliding isn’t available in WvW. Either enable gliding, or fix up terrain. It’s just yet another aspect that’s annoying to players. Some of these things are not l2p issues, they are simply annoying.

-Every corner of a keep is a choke point. Everywhere you go, choke points. I understand the design idea was to give players a chance to defend. But it has gone overboard with choke points. So now not only do people have to push through hot choke points while getting rained on by siege, they have to worry about getting knocked into lava, knocked down to their deaths, burned by more npc’s, etc.. It’s just a bit too much.

-It takes too long to find action. This is how you lose PvP enthusiasts. Even in FPS games, the most popular maps are always CQC maps where you can find action without spending too much time running around. People go into WvW wanting to fight other players, believe it or not. They don’t go into WvW and think, “hrmm, which npc’s do I want to farm today? Which monument do I want to go visit?”

-The laser event… please just turn it off. Like players asked you to turn off the golem event 1 day in and you didn’t listen, that golem event hurt WvW population for quite awhile. Please listen to the players, turn off the laser event. Not only does it not fit the spirit of World vs World, Player vs Player combat. It creates terrible lag where players warp around and skills wouldn’t fire off properly. This is what it looks like when the laser event starts: https://youtu.be/KCmoZNwlRdQ

==

Honestly I appreciate the devs wanting to change things up and try new things. Progress sometimes is a good thing. But some of the things we find in desert borderlands just don’t make much sense. I understand devs have these ideas about how players would play in the new borderlands. Sometimes us players theorycraft how things would work out as well with new builds and skill rotations and such. But a lot of the times things don’t work out the way we imagined in our heads when played out in real time.

I don’t care if devs make mistakes. I only care to hear how they’re going to fix their mistakes. You know in WoW’s WoD expansion, I went back to the game when WoD first launched because the devs sold us this “PvP heaven” called Ashran. Devs had this grand idea about how Ashran was going to play out, and how it was going to be like the old Alterac Valley. I’m sure some Anet devs follow other games and perhaps even play them. Ashran turned out to be a disaster. It was a glorified PvE raid zone where players avoided each other to farm for loot. Needless to say I came back to GW2 for true “large scale PvP & siege” experience. Blizz devs never admitted to their faults with regards to Ashran, please don’t be like them. Admit you’ve made mistakes and tell us how you’re going to fix them.

These maps are too large for the current WvW population. Merge some servers, or create a “battlegroup” type of setup where population of individual servers no longer matter. The imbalance issues have gone for far too long. No server should be transfer locked because natural attrition occurs to guilds. Unless you really want guilds to die off in a game called “Guild Wars”, you need to let people transfer to wherever they want to go to. This way guilds can replenish their ranks over time.

WvW players want to fight each other more than they want to bang on doors or have their fights disrupted by all sorts of PvE gimmicks. We also need new reward tracks & more coins. WxP means little to nothing anymore. Start considering giving us a way to convert WxP into mastery exp. Better yet we could use new WvW-specific abilities, titles, rewards, WvW specific armor skins, etc… We really need more coins because I’m always so poor since I don’t dungeon farm. WvW guilds would love ways to upgrade their guilds/guildhalls through activities in WvW. With HoT expansion you’ve given PvE & PvP players incentives to play those modes. You didn’t quite do the same for WvW.

All in all, people like this game, they want to like this game. This is one of the few games on the market that offers fairly good large scale RvR with siege gameplay. Don’t let that go to waste, you need to take care of this game mode. There’s no reason this game mode should be put on the back burner, no reason at all. Nor should you assume this mode can’t be profitable.

Yes WvW is dead, aside from EBG during NA prime, there’s just no queues anywhere else. Been to desert borderlands many times, you could barely find a guild group to fight. And when it was zerg vs zerg, the new mechanics and design of the map makes it very tedious and unfun to play in. This isn’t to mention the terrible warping/skill lag that happens everytime laser event is up.

I’m glad Anet admitted they didn’t treat WvW well this expansion. But we need more than that, we need to know what changes are coming and when. Not this next year crap.

Jocksy.3415:

I believe how they are doing it is good. It might take time, but eventually it will trickle down – just give it the needed time.

They say that crap in rl and it never works that way, rich gets richer. What they’re doing right now is slowly killing higher pop servers, while lower pop servers get more and more empty. Why? Because when people are bored, can’t find action, or find the gameplay boring/badly designed, people quit. They don’t trickle down, they quit and play something else, or play another mode completely. How Anet’s doing it is what got us here in the first place.

There are not enough new players coming in to WvW to replace those leaving. This is why lower pop servers are staying low pop. Not to mention they’ve locked many servers that could use more players because of their whacked population count system. So even if people want to join their friends or see what it’s like to mega blob, they can’t.

Bottom line is there are too many servers, not enough players, and Anet developers are not making the necessary changes to WvW to improve player experiences. Nor are they adding new incentives to draw people out there, not in the same way they’ve treated PvE and PvP. Combine it all together, you have what we see today. Some zerging during NA, lack of action most other timezones, lots of cat & mouse chase in these new large empty maps, and people growing more and more tired & bored of this game mode.

Something’s gotta change. And people gotta stop saying give it time. We were supposed to wait until HoT for all these crazy flood of returning players, but we just aren’t seeing them. Some people are coming back for PvE sure, but most that have read about the new desert borderlands are just laughing and staying away.

I get that some people are attached to their server. But it’s time for the greater good, there are things Anet needs to change in order to save this game mode…for the whole game.

There’s no if or buts about it, they’re going to have to go with these “alliance” or also known as “battlegroup” setup that other games utilize. There’s just not enough population to support all these servers for WvW, no matter the tier. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are already working on it in the background. Because they should see the decline in WvW over the years, and the continuous population imbalance issues.

It’s like having spvp tournaments play 5 v 3 or 5 v 1 every week, or in lower tier cases, 1 v 1 due to lack of WvW population. It just doesn’t work and can’t sustain.

I main Reaper because it’s fun. Have said it ever since I played them during beta weekends. The class is just fun to play, more fun than baseline necros.

I get the sense devs don’t really like fear and probably don’t want to add more fear into the game. So I doubt they’ll really give necros/reapers more fear.

Blighter’s Boon is bad now, doesn’t give enough sustain in any team fight scenarios. Tried using it in WvW ZvZ & GvG, just not worth it. Pre-nerf it was a no brainer to use BB in team fights, it gave necros something they lacked. Loving the Reaper but I don’t think I can forgive Anet for this nerf.

Pre-nerf BB, Reapers felt good in team fights. Post-nerf BB, some guilds are no longer wanting to run Reapers because there are other better sustain elite specs available.

Looks fun, what build did you use?

Often my character would charge in place, like there’s an invisible wall, rather than charge to the player’s face while they’re well within charge range. This is frustrating because I lose the gap closer.

When using Curses with Path of Corruption, I’ve noticed this issue affects whether it corrupts boons or not. Often I get no miss messages, but my character wouldn’t charge to the player properly, thus I miss out on corrupting 2 boons.

Death’s Charge is like GS 5, both needs to be made more reliable.

I like the notification, but please give us an option to disable it, or better yet, make it movable so we can move it elsewhere on the screen and perhaps resize it.

Yup using GS in PvP is high high risk. I find myself getting hit more because I’m faced with the decision of either dodging an attack and putting my already slow GS attacks on cooldown, or tank it and hope for the best so I can get that swing in. Honestly using GS has gotten me killed more than ever. Not surprisingly I’ve never had that issue since I switched back to Dagger/Warhorn.

GS is bad for the heart. Great weapon for PvE though, and doable as WvW frontline Reaper. Anything else, ugh.

Above all else, please fix the lag issues first. No matter how good of content you pump out, with the lag & disconnects players are experiencing in WvW right now, it won’t matter. Imagine if PvE players felt the same lag in PvE, this whole forum would’ve exploded. I mean literally.

So not only did WvW players get the shaft in terms of content in HoT expansion, we got the short end of the stick because the lag is terrible right now.

Sad to see no changes to GS in today’s balance patch, looks like we have to wait another week. Keep on pleading your cases.

Good buff. I even took this trait as a power reaper due to the under 50% damage ticks. But now that it’ll tick that way all the time, unless they buff Blighter’s Boon again, I’m sticking with Deathly Chill.

Lag WvW has gotten very bad since the launch of HoT. Before we would get skill lag when 3 servers clash. Now when just 2 servers are in close vicinity of each other, not even clashing, skill lag is already there.

Also lots of guildies are crashing now in WvW where they used to never crash. Of course you know when you crash, you’re back in the queue. That gets old very quickly and have made many people logoff as a result (or turtle in PvE skipping WvW completely).

Skill lag was bad before, now it’s just lag all the time when you’re fighting not even map blobs.

Tell me about it, they tried so hard to make GS5 pull work reliably and have failed so far. I don’t care about the animation I just want a pull that works and actually pulls the target to me.

You kinda know something’s wrong when they’re dropping big amount of money for a very small niche playerbase. Every other sentence is like PvP tournament this, PvP tournament that. Imagine if they had spent half the effort and resources/money into WvW, and actually played and cared about this game mode like they do with sPvP. We could’ve gotten good, fun, rewarding WvW gameplay with HoT launch.

Cogbyrn.7283:

GS #1 isn’t the only source of chill. GS #5 chills as well, as long as it hits (even if it doesn’t pull because of whatever bugness).

Was late when I posted, I didn’t mean GS1 is the only source of chill, I meant the only source of chill not on a long cooldown timer that misses all the time on moving targets. Because GS 5 is so unreliable and has such a long cd, devs advertised GS auto as our “reliable” source of chill.

In fact chill on GS auto was their reason for holding GS auto back. But yet rarely do you ever get to apply the chill because you just don’t connect with GS auto much at all. I think most people would rather GS auto either have faster attacks or longer range.

Also as I said in the BWE3 thread awhile back. The design philosophy of Reapers is to keep people near us, to pull people to us. So GS 5 pull has to be reliable, but at the moment it just isn’t. Even when the pull triggers, often players are pulled down rather than to you. Leaving you again in a distance disadvantage. They need to either make GS 5 reliable, or to compensate give us faster and/or longer GS auto attacks.

Funny today was the day I put away GS and put back on Dagger/WH. I’m only using GS for PvE now. Sadly my performance went up through the roof once I put away GS when it comes to PvP. We can only hope Mr. Gee hears our pains and find a way to boost GS in PvP without throwing it off balance in PvE.

Cogbyrn.7283:

I’m just trying to understand why you’re spamming autos on an advertised slow weapon.

Maybe because every other attack on GS has a long cooldown? Perhaps because auto is the only chill application on GS, which supposedly is a key aspect of Reapers? Maybe because GS 5 is extremely unreliable, and GS 3 has such short range, and GS 4 is so painfully obvious that nobody stands in it, and GS 2 don’t land on anybody with a pulse.

You can’t compare reasons for using GS auto to Dagger auto, because people use different weapons for different things. Dagger auto is also used for siphons, and it’s advertised as reliable, fast damage. Fast swings work in a fast action paced game with active dodges. Slow swings just don’t work well. We, are trying to beg Robert Gee to fix that so GS can be more viable in PvP.

I was all for GS over the beta weekends. But now it’s obvious other elite specs got buffed, people know how to play their new builds better, and people definitely have learned Reaper moves. Trying to land slow attacks such as GS1, 2, Reaper Shroud 5, etc.. are harder and harder to do. People also have learned not to stand in the growing circle field. I still love Reaper, but some thing’s gotta change if GS is to be made viable in PvP.

It’s not about disagreeing. If you somehow had a magical way to hit people with GS auto, and explained it, I could understand and consider it. But you along with others are simply telling Reapers to not use GS auto because it’s THAT BAD. And you see something wrong with others asking for GS auto improvements to make the weapon more viable?

Makes no sense.

While you may think it’s cool to talk down on other players and tell people “don’t use GS auto attack because x x x x”, you do realize we’re all necros/reapers and some of us are trying to get Greatsword to become better and more viable.

So next time you decide to be cool and post against the idea of increasing GS auto speed, please think twice before posting. Thanks. Just because you don’t use it for X reasons, it doesn’t mean GS shouldn’t be better for those that do want GS to become better.

spoj.9672:

So the only solution would be to reduce damage but improve speed. But i doubt the devs will do that.

That’s pretty much what we need in PvP. Otherwise you can put Godmode on the 3rd swing and insta death touch players, and it still won’t see usage. It’s just so hard to even connect just 1 hit at the current speed.

Aktium.9506:

I think the auto is one of the skills that needs a minor PvP/PvE split. For PvP it definitely needs a range increase or an attack speed increase. It simply doesn’t hit. Even in Reaper duels no one is hitting the other with GS apart from a stray swing here and there.

But buffing the auto for PvE means dagger loses its place completely. So that’s not ideal. I really wish Anet would stop being afraid of splitting skills. So many problems would be solved by split skills.

Yup, nothing is more sad to see 2 Reapers fighting, both swinging GS, and neither are connecting. You realize just how bad it is, given that Reapers lack the blocks, evades, teleports, invulns, etc.. that more and more classes have.

GS is definitely held back by PvE and how easy it is to face tank npc’s that come grouped up to you, all ready to be cleaved down and gravedigger spammed.

Zerker + Valk is better than full valk imo. Full zerker you are way too thin hp wise, and you have too much crit %, some go to waste. Full Valk I feel the crit % is too low and you would need to rely on Decimate Defense. Mixing Zerker + Valk, you can have best of both worlds. Same amount of power & ferocity as going either/or, while you have plenty of crit % to be critting pretty much all the time.

I run this in both PvE & WvW ZvZ, lots of big numbers, and always get a chuckle when I get a 20k gravedigger crit. Added valk pads the hp & lifeforce. Note that you’re very much paper going this route so know your place

Thanks for the tips and suggestions, appreciate it!

I admit Dragonhunters, of all classes/elite specs, is one I’m least familiar with. So at the moment I don’t quite know what to dodge, what moves they like to combo, and what their cooldowns are like. I just know the ones I fought had a lot of blocks rending some of my big moves useless. I had good chill uptime against the few I fought, but that didn’t bother them at all. And I was lifeforce starved, couldn’t stay in shroud for long before I’m popped into the usual defenseless necro mode.

It’s funny during beta weekends there were like zero Dragonhunters around. They must have received nice buffs post-BWE3 because they’re literally everywhere now. Oh well live and learn, thanks again.

Could we perhaps get a real block/invuln option to compensate perhaps? This BB nerf have all but killed any viability (if there was any to begin with) for Reapers to fight as frontline melee in WvW.

Without being able to get healed while in shroud via allies boons, Reaper sustain goes way down. Along with the fact that you’re missing all the water blasts because they also don’t affect you while in shroud. The situation is dire.

Eolh.5436:

Hello repers! I play mostly in wvw and pve, and i’m looking for a nice build to do both. What is now our role in wvw? Can we stay with the melee train? Full pvt spite/sr/reaper can be a solution?

WvW ZvZ, GvG, or roaming? There’s quite a big difference. If ZvZ, I’d suggest playing midline reaper, shouts build, pvt or valk+zerker. Reapers really can’t hang with frontline melees, with no block, invulns, real escapes, and the recent Blighter’s Boon nerfs, you’ll die way too much to be useful as frontline melee. Try to make sure you aren’t near well/cc bombs. It’s hilarious seeing 18-20k gravedigger cleaves with a valk+zerker build. Risky, but very rewarding. You can even load well of suffering for added aoe bomb along with shouts.

If roaming, any condi/sustain builds are strong. Just remember you can’t escape and you can’t choose engagement, so roaming can be a bit frustrating at times.

I would rather have faster hits and smaller damage, as opposed to slower hits, high damage, gimmicky chill on 3rd chain swing…and not hitting people at all. Remember if we don’t land GS auto, we’re starved of lifeforce. Which is often the case with GS Reapers.

PvE Unyielding Blast, mobs allow you to face tank and they don’t run away
PvP, I usually go Soul Marks for lifeforce regen and unblockable marks. Some prefer Unyielding Blast still, so I’d suggest you see if you become lifeforce starved.

Well they’re really tough, so many blocks is the main problem, can’t hit them properly. And when they burst on you, smart ones know to burst when you’re out of shroud. It’s a fight you’re just starved of lifeforce so you’re vulnerable majority of the fight.

If anybody finds a good build and good tactics against them, please share. Of all classes/builds, this one feels the most lopsided.

Xecil.2798:

Not everything in this game has to be fast. Keep the speed as it is and increase its damage.

This is PvP, players unlike npc’s, don’t stand and let you hit them like test dummies. Slow swings just don’t work in a game with fast paced, active dodge roll combat. It’s either players evade GS auto, or I’m forced to dodge/cast something else and end up interrupting my own swings.

Super annoying and it’s one major thing holding GS back.

What Reaper builds do well against Dragonhunters? They have so many blocks, they hit like a truck, and they’re tanky at the same time. Anybody have had success against them? Or are they a soft/hard counter to Reapers?

I feel GS auto is the biggest problem with GS. Auto attacks shouldn’t swing this slow, and the slower 3rd attack should have the same swing imer as the first 2 attacks. It’s hard enough to get 1 hit in, you simply can’t get a 3rd, slower hit in unless you’re fighting someone afk. Overall GS auto should either swing faster, have longer range, or hit harder. Any one of the 3 would be a welcome boost to make GS more viable.

The utilities part of GS 3, 4, and 5 are ok, they have their uses. GS 5 still needs to be more reliable. Thank you Robert Gee for giving it a longer range. But it still doesn’t connect often on moving targets, and when it does connect, it rarely pulls the target to you. It’s just a kiting nightmare when the one pull that’s supposed to make GS more viable to use does not function more consistently.

People have learned the animation of Gravedigger, it’s harder and harder to land now as compared to beta weekends. This is disheartening because we can only do damage with GS 1 and 2, and both of these attacks are slow, unreliable, and GS 2 goes on a cooldown when you miss so you’re left with lackluster GS auto.

Fixing GS auto and making GS 5 more reliable will go a long way to make GS viable in PvP.

Without Spite, I feel there’s a lack of pop with power reapers. I’ve tried it before, thought it would work, but you just don’t get the big #‘s or big procs that you’re used to as a power reaper. Of course I’m talking about Chill of Death procs and Close to Death, as well as Might stacking.

If you’re going for a sustain/tanky build then you don’t need the pop. But if you want that power feeling, I’d suggest taking Spite.

Welcome to the party

And yup Reaper changes how you play the necro class completely. They’re just so fun & engaging.

Let’s keep in mind the OP is talking about lower tier servers, they had population issues long before HoT expansion. So this whole “they’ll be back” doesn’t work for them, because they weren’t even there before to fill up the old borderland maps.

Pink Ninja Man.4375:

This is the truth though, and it’s not about the ‘new’ content just talking maps because yes WvW got new maps too. It’s more on people trying to get their elite specialization up. Just after the patch on Tuesday that made it cost significantly less to fill up your specialization I have seen an increase in numbers in WvW (T1). We had 2 maps with a ~5 man que around NA prime time. Despite many ‘WvWers’ on the form stating they only play WvW many WvWers play PvE and are enjoying the new PvE while WvW is not as populated. I would wait another week or two before you call doomsday, I think T1 will be ‘up and running’ by the reset this weekend.

Yeah I was there, but all we got was ktrain and random fights. And still more people preferred to stick around in EBG than the new desert borderland maps. Even then, it’s still mostly ktraining in EBG. Yup, people want to farm ranks to get hero points, but isn’t that part of the issue? The fact that Anet designed it so WvW players would have to stop fighting and playing the mode they enjoy, just so they could farm hero points and ktrain?

That’d be like forcing sPvP players to grind PvE before they could play in PvP. And the fact that ktraining and avoiding fights still get you better rewards is what’s wrong with EOTM, and I guess we’re now seeing that carried over to the new maps. It’s still a fail design all around no matter how you look at it.

I think they’re pretty, and I didn’t mind the vertical space usage. But Anet should’ve realized when they utilize vertical space, they almost doubled the size of old borderlands. With the current WvW population, even in T1 you can’t make these new desert borderlands feel “alive”. This is because you pretty much need map blobs from all 3 servers to begin to even feel like there’s a chance you might find action.

The potential for fights are there, but the PvE distractions are not attracting fights like they envisioned. I know the devs that designed these new borderland maps probably had thoughts in their mind about how people would play them. But right now as we see it, nothing is working out like they had imagined.

Devs thought it might be cool to cripple and knock players around like ragdolls. They thought players would go out of their way to disable these things in their mind, creating some sort of mini games among players. In reality, getting crippled while running from point A to B is just plain annoying. Getting knocked back and down over and over while trying to fight enemies is extremely annoying to a point of rage quitting. People get annoyed by these things and they start to avoid these maps completely. This is just one example of reality not matching up to what devs had in their minds.

Devs thought by creating some super laser in the middle that people would gravitate to that location and fight over it. In reality, WvW players really just don’t care to run around doing pve over a laser. I’ve watched guildies solo enable the laser without being challenged. Another example of reality not matching up to what the devs had envisioned.

There are just way too many things that make fighting not fun in these new desert borderland maps. There are way too many places to go for people to avoid fights, just like EOTM. WvW players warned them of that, they ignored, and now we’re seeing exactly what we said would happen.

It’s not un-salvageable. Some changes and tweaks here and there could make these borderlands fun. It’s like some small tweaks to hero points got people to play the game again and unlock their elite specs. Sometimes it doesn’t have to be big changes, Anet just has to find the right changes. These maps are beautiful, the potential is there, but the execution is exactly as how us WvW players had imagined.

Lastly, server population across the board are down for WvW. Unless changes are made to WvWvW, it’s time to merge the low pop servers. And pretty much most servers marked as “medium” are low pop. Not even T1 servers can make these new desert borderlands feel alive and action packed. They’ve doubled the amount of space by vertical usage, but WvW activities have gone down, so right now it’s just not working. I believe all servers should be opened up to allow transfers, no servers should be marked full, or what I would call it c’blocked. You need to give people ways to fill servers up, not more reasons to quit playing.

Now if WvW is changed to be some sort of a “battlegroup” style, like how EOTM is setup, or how WoW matches servers up in BG’s, you could easily match high pop servers with low pop servers in the same battlegroup. This way everybody gets to have more fun, and it wouldn’t matter if you’re on a high pop or low pop server. But this would require Anet to spend dev time and meeting time to sort out. Right now I’m not sure if Anet is willing to spend that much attention to WvW with how things are going. Still, one can only hope.

Unfortunately this isn’t just a lower tier issue. Even in the upper tiers, T1 and T2, these maps are empty as well. People like to use the excuse that hey, new expansion just launched, give it time. But don’t you think something’s wrong with the way things are designed if people aren’t utilizing new expansion content? And these new desert borderland maps are a part of that new expansion content?

Sadly without Anet talking to us about it, we have no idea if they have any plans or even acknowledge the issues we’re facing. At the moment I wouldn’t transfer just because I can tell you even in upper tiers, these new desert maps are for the most part empty. You bump into a group here and there, but it’s nothing like the massive epic world vs world vs world that we’re used to.

They most definitely need to merge lower pop servers, these are servers marked as “medium”, they’re all pretty light when it comes to WvW activities. But they needed to do this before HoT expansion. Before people kept saying NO no no wait for the expansion launch because thousands of people will come back and fill the borderland maps up! Yeah, how’s that working out?

Blighter’s Boon made losing Blood Magic tolerable. For most meta wellmancers / power necros, they had the standard Spite, Soul Reaping, Blood Magic (at least in WvW). When upgrading to Reaper, the natural spec to drop is Blood Magic for Reaper. Blighter’s Boon pretty much gave Reapers the sustain they had with Blood Magic, and it made them work better in a team based setting much like how Blood Magic did.

Now with this change it’s back to being starved of lifeforce under certain situations, and we lose a lot of sustain with this change. So it really isn’t worth it to take Blighter’s Boon now. Funny thing is Blighter’s Boon was the trait I automatically selected whenever I join a ZvZ or GvG group based combat. It just made sense. Now, not really anymore.

emendez.3705:

For those that think BG is abusing the population it’s not intentional.

You may not be in the know, but BG was in fact doing a blackout. It was done for 3-4 weeks prior to HoT launch, and they’ve successfully gamed the system once again. This is the server that a month ago capable of queuing all 4 maps on reset nights and 3 maps over weekends. Compared to the other servers in T1 only queuing 1-2 maps at best.

Let the stacking begin I suppose. Anet, you should never rely on programming to determine server activities. Because gamers are always smarter than your codes. If you guys would just have devs that play WvW on a regular basis then you would know the situation of these servers. Heck I was advocating for all servers to come off Full status when HoT launches so it’ll at least be fair to let people play wherever they want to play. Seeing how the new desert borderland maps are so huge it’ll take 3 map blobs to make these maps feel “alive”.