Guild Wars 2

NSP has unquestioned primetime domination, usually followed by long periods of fail. Let’s be honest, NSP primetime performance is the only reason we are still in this tier. BP and AR groups typically don’t stand a chance during this period, regardless of their size or guild affiliation (even when they massively outnumber NSP pug teams). At the end of primetime, NSP loses everything and comes back to AR/BP holding all of their stuff the next day.

NSP is a fair-weather server, and as soon as things start to go bad, everyone logs off and goes to farm PvE. A lot of our “best guilds” won’t even bother to take a tower or keep while they’re on. Sure, we get all the kills, but that doesn’t mean anything.

Meanwhile, I check the forums to see the score, and see posts from (insert guild here) saying how great their guild is and “What if we actually tried to earn points by taking stuff?”

Unless NSP gets more all-weather players willing to do boring jobs like run supply/upgrade/defend during off hours, we will continue to be the third place server. AR and BP win because they are better organized and have some form of real strategy beyond badge farming.

Doesn’t really matter though, I have a lot of fun in WvW regardless. (It would be nice to see less QQ in this forum though…)

I don’t attack other players in the JP by default. If someone is dumb enough to attack me, I kill them. If you’re even semi-skilled at WvW, it’s really easy to kill the trolls in the JP. They’re generally the people who weren’t good enough to get badges the old-fashioned way (straight-up combat). If there’s a group of them camping, party up with others who died to them and go wipe them. This isn’t rocket science.

Off-topic, but whenever I kill a JP camper or heartseeker thief, I /laugh and frolic around their body until they leave. Making these people feel bad about themselves is almost like doing a favor for the WvW community.

I’m going to bump this thread because I know that once 200+ replies get tacked on, Anet will read what we have to say.

I am totally in favor of seeing commander completely revamped. Right now on NSP there seems to be somewhat of a hierarchy where the most experienced commanders order the “buy-ins” to turn their tags off. I am much rather in favor of some arbitrary gold cut off for an initial rank (lieutenant) and then have it go up from their based on experience. The only issue I can see arising with an experience-based rank system is that defending locations/dropped siege/supply used needs to be required in addition to taking locations.

The most effective commanders are the ones who know how to defend a location. The rest are just zerg magnets.

Yeah, usually I’m too focused on living/playing to actually notice the bags dropping during combat. The only time I get to collect them is after everyone is dead. If I die, I don’t get to pick up my bags. There have been a few moments where I have literally committed suicide and run into an enemy zerg just to pick up my loot.

I’m fairly certain that I would have twice as many badges as I do now if there was an auto-loot.

Iavra.8510:

The problem is, to cleanse confusion you have to use a skill -> 4-5k damage in your face. That’s 1/4 of my total hp.

You do realize mesmers deal almost no damage (~1k) for 3-4 seconds while they apply confusion to you, right? They’re an easy kill during this time period. Also, I have never seen confusion reach 4-5k damage. If someone was actually able to do that, they deserve a medal.

Oozo.7856:

EnRohbi.2187:

If you don’t want to run condition removal, you don’t get to remove conditions.
I don’t… get what you aren’t understanding…

You don’t get to nerf conditions just so you can go on playing like they don’t exist.

I run passive condition removal via trait and passive condition removal via weapon crits. I have active condition removal from runes of lyssa. For my utilities I use Stand Your Ground, Judge’s Intervention, and Wall of Reflection. These utilities are necessary for me to function and do my job for my group. I use hammer and mace and shield or staff. These weapons are necessary for me to do my job for my group. They do not have any condition removal.

Give me a fourth utility slot and I’ll take Smite Condition. Heh.

If you don’t bring a skill that can remove confusion, you can’t remove confusion. You are crying because you don’t want to change your build to address it’s weaknesses. I don’t get it.

I bring condition removal on every character. Why? Going without it is literally asking to die in WvW.

Xsorus.2507:

My personal favorite is when you’re stomping on someone 1v1, and he starts running, and people from his guild show up and zerg ya down

Then he proceeds to /bow

If you were an AR thief and I was a NSP mesmer the other day in EB (fought for ~30-45 seconds), that may have been me. I’ve recently started to /bow or /salute whenever I have a good fight with someone and I’m still alive at the end.

It means you did a good job. If it wasn’t me, then they probably thought so too. I kinda wish more people would do the whole /bow thing after a decent 1v1. Keeps things classy.

This post sorta reads like a “GW2 missed connections” ad or something lol…

You know what would be fantastic? A kill count title. My opponents would target me and go “oh- they’ve got 1000+ kills, maybe I’ll leave them alone.”

It works both ways: you intimidate people with your kill count and they feel super pro if they manage to kill you. Everyone wins!

Right now the closest thing are the GW1 heritage titles or the “Been there. Done that.” title. Meh.

lol just found this thread (I always miss the awesome stuff it seems…). Post when and where if you’re going to do this again and I’ll try to join you (and then you have another mesmer).

Anvil Rock is a good server and we (NSP) have awesome matches with them. That said, they are the most “numbers-reliant” of the tier 6 servers and have real difficulty when faced with equal numbers of NSP and/or BP. ARs biggest strength is its ability to seriously contest many maps at once (the other tier 6 servers can usually only hold two maps), and they like the BL maps more than EB. [ALS] is probably the biggest WvW guild you’ll run into.

If you’re thinking of joining them, go for it. We have really, really awesome WvW matches, with the points evenly distributed between all three servers. Honestly, with matches like these, I don’t understand why people transfer to Tier 1/2/3.

On a completely separate note, I’m expecting BP/NSP/AR to all end up in Tier 6 again together after this “ratings reset” evens out.

I think this is a better system. Only issue is I get like 10x as many “out of memory” crashes.

My only issue with [Sekz] is that they do nothing but zerg v. zerg. If you’re doing anything that requires the slightest amount of patience (siegeing/defending/anything), expect them to ditch you and run off for badges.

That said, Tira does organize a good naked dance party every now and then.

Erinshaw.8035:

Crashing to desktop is also much more common.

That’s because the increase in placeholder models eats up more of your memory. The crashes to desktop occur when your computer maxes out its RAM (just open the crash log report details and it says “out of memory” right at the top). Upgrade your computer or decrease your graphics settings.

Also, there appears to have been NO CHANGE WHATSOEVER to the queue system. All of you people are convinced that there is some massive edit. What evidence do I have to back this up? My server (NSP- Tier 6) had an enormous increase in participation tonight. We had truly massive NSP zergs show up for the first time ever and proceeded to completely smash two servers who usually are an equal match in EB. Chances are, your servers are having the same increase in WvW participation.

Honestly though, the queue times kinda serve you right for abandoning your comrades and bandwagoning yourselves onto high population servers just because you wanted to be number 1. Otherwise (if you’re not a transfer), you have my sympathy.

Honestly, I wouldn’t mind seeing thieves get a damage buff if their mobility abilities were removed. Catching a thief once they’ve decided to run off is the only hard part about fighting them.

IMO, WvW should get its own balancing just like PvP. Some professions (Ranger/Engineer/Necro) could really use some WvW buffs. Right now, it’s just "Oh you play engineer? That’s adorable! … STOMP "

*small correction to above post: Moontrance is TFG.

But yeah, good showing by NSP tonight. We might be getting our PVE’rs involved finally. I noticed a few of the “WvW sucks” people show up tonight in EB. Kudos to all who were there.

Columba.9730:

well, 900 heal, 1800 tough, 2800 armor here, and I still die to thieves in a few seconds without ever seeing them. I dodge within 2 seconds of them stealthing, i use aoes, I have my pets protect me, I constantly move, I don’t knowingly expose my back to them. all to no avail.

easy to say it’s a l2p issue if you are a thief.

I play engineer and mesmer. Engineer is arguably the weakest class in WvW, and yet I kill thieves reliably. Playing mesmer is a complete glass-cannon roflstomp. Honestly, best solution against thieves is having stunbreaks and a “panic-button” skill that either completely disables them or makes you invulnerable somehow.

It honestly amazes me how many people don’t bring stunbreak skills to WvW. A 1 to 2 second stun is usually enough of an opening to completely destroy someone with your nastiest skills.

Also, level 80 characters with decent (rare or better) equipment and a good build will walk all over seriously upleveled (level-70 or below) characters. It’s an unfortunate fact of WvW. No way around it given the current game mechanics.

The amount of QQing on this thread is ridiculous. It seems like everyone is saying “I transferred to a Tier 1/2/3 server so I could be in Tier 1/2/3! Now I won’t be in Tier 1/2/3 anymore! WAHHHHH!!!”

I’m going to enjoy the matchup change. A lot. For reference, I’m Tier 6. We have great matches. Still, it’ll be good to face other servers. I swear, we’ve been playing BP/AR for so long that I almost know what our opponents are going to do just based on which guild tags show up.

Generally all you need to do is bring a stun/immobilize and a stunbreak/invunerability skill and you’re good to go. When thieves hit you, stunbreak, and then stun/immobilize the poor kitten. Dump whatever you can on them. If it’s a glass cannon, the thief will either die or start running EVERY TIME.

Once you break their initial combo and start dishing out the hurt, they go into “oh kitten” mode and try to get away from you as fast as possible. Also, your stun/immobilize is extremely useful for killing virtually anything in WvW.

If you’re still dying, it’s because you aren’t using any gear that increases survivability. Honestly, it seems like every new player runs a glass cannon build and wonders why they die all the time in 1v1s. Having equipment that gives +vitality or +toughness is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. This game isn’t just about DPS.

Altie.4571:

Heck we just held cragtop for almost 4 hours against special K, finally succumbed.

Hah. Special K… That is an awesome nickname.

I feel you on the defense thing though. When they fought NSP and AR, they took 4-7 hours on each of our garrisons. I would be a lot more impressed with the server if they had more tactics than simply brute force.

Ahem! There is a reason the Ascalonian and Orrian kindoms got stomped by us Charr.

It’s because we are superior.

The Norn are too dimwitted to pose a threat to our great and glorious empire. We build tanks while they commune with animals.

And the Sylvari? PAH! We have flamethrowers. Need I say more?

The Asura have lasers and robot infantry, though. We might have to work out a power sharing agreement with them sometime in the near future.

Yeah, I haven’t noticed much of a difference since Meow left.

I have to say this though: we punch well above our weight as a server. Five man NSP teams stomping 10-20 man zergs is not an uncommon occurrence. What we don’t have in numbers, we make up for in organization.

As for guilds, Os, Sekz, and TFG all have an extremely solid WvW presence (ROFL has been showing up more and more lately, too).

Best reason of all to join us: we have good, non-zergy matchups. The final score difference is usually around 2-3k. We have really, really fun matches.

You were in my borderland. I was forced to come and lend a hand. And there, in the distance, we saw each other.

Words failed me. I could only /beckon from afar. You noticed. I could almost feel pink butterflies flutter inside my chest as you shattered my illusions. Truly, you must have found me quite stunning to have been that immobilized. I had to have you then and there.

At first you were resistant. I thought I might win you over with fine swordplay and my oversized staff. I was right. Finally, as you lay there on the ground, I could see you reaching out to me. Come closer, you seemed to say. I could wait no longer. As I thrust my flagpole inside of you, you cried out as if you wanted me to have this experience.

After our first encounter, I was worried that I had come on too strong. But you came back! Over and over and over. Sometimes you would play “hard to get.” You even brought some friends to watch. As you came again and again, I could not help but think that we were meant for each other.

But you left. Please come back. You left a few discarded garments and a thick leather strap. I even have your badge. I want to salvage something from our relationship.

NSP here. The tier 5/6 matches with Devona’s Rest and/or Anvil Rock have been by far my favorite. You may not be as well organized as we are, but you have better participation and counterattack decisively. It ends up being an extremely close match every time (final score difference of maybe 2-3k points). If we lose to you, it’s still a really fun game. Plus, you’re not jerks. Honestly, I kinda hope you guys get stuck in our tier so we can continue to fight each other.

I have zero respect for Kaineng. If you’ve played them, you’ll find yourself playing against two teams: the native population and the transfers. The difference between them is like night and day. We’d cut through the native population like a hot knife through butter until WM showed up. WM would then simply zerg you off the map with a clump of 50-60 people and an infinite supply of siege. They would simply set up 4 catapults, get wiped, and repeat for the next 4-7 hours until your last keep fell. Then all of Kain would camp your spawn until your server left. Got really boring after awhile.

Not going to lie, in WvW I just throw down a bunch of AOE right before I die. Chances are that someone is going to kill a deer nearby (that you hit maybe once with your AOE) and then you revive. I managed to keep 30 person zerg occupied for a good 20-30s yesterday by AOEing some drakes right before I went down the first time. I must have rallied 4 or 5 times just facerolling the keyboard. The rest of my guild was able to safely slip away while the zerg was trying to kill me.

I feel like you should have to reach a threshold of at least 3-4k damage while downed before it counts for a rally. Otherwise you can just attack everything in sight and you’ll rally (if the other people aren’t careful).

Kudos to all the other NSPs in EB tonight. I still can’t believe we held out that long in Overlook and Veloka’s. I’m not even going to count the number of catapults and trebs we took out. I’m actually a little surprised the 50+ WM group had so much trouble against the 10-20 NSP defenders (our keep was out of supply the entire time).

Anyhow, thanks to all of NSP and Kain in EB tonight, that was a FANTASTIC match!

I’ve played through the story with a few characters now. What really breaks immersion for me is that when you are in a mission, you don’t have the same armor as the rest of the people in your organization (until lvl 80). When everyone else is wearing a uniform except you, it sorta makes you feel like you don’t belong to the organization.

I think it would really improve the gameplay experience if all players automatically equipped an “order armor” skin for every mission after they are initiated into the order (and give people an option to disable this). Usually by the time you can get order armor the questline is already done, which sorta defeats the purpose.

Alternatively you could just give players a low-level version of the armor upon joining. I thought Skyrim did this pretty well (upon joining Imperials or Stormcloaks they gave you a uniform).

Quartermasters and workers have a VERY HIGH chance to drop blueprints in my experience. Focus on these enemies when you break into a tower/keep if you want them.

The more you know, right?

I’m going to break with the majority here and say that I think thief should have a small damage/health buff and have a massive nerf to mobility. The reason this class is so frustrating is that no one can catch a thief once they’ve started running. Surviving a thief is easy. Catching them is an entirely different story.

Right now, thieves can run up to anyone, burst, and then run away with ZERO consequences (since no one can catch them). I’m in favor of changes that would increase the chance of them killing their target, but if they make a bad judgement on who to strike, there’s no easy escape.

I play mesmer and engineer, for the record. Engineers need some love, currently every class does what an engineer can, but better. Once my mesmer reaches 80 and gets gear, I’ll decide how OP it is.

Honestly, if they sped up the grenades and removed ground targeting, I doubt that too much would change gameplay-wise.

I use a rifle crit build that does fairly decent damage to single targets and has extremely high survivability. The grenade spam was hurting my hands after awhile so I had to stop using them lol… (I have no idea why they can’t autofire like every other weapon.)

Skills are: med kit, utility goggles, elixir c, elixir s, take root (sylvari racial that gives handy invulnerability + turrets, swap for supply drop otherwise)

Traits: 10, 30, 0, 0, 30. Exploit weakness, hair trigger, rifle mod, go for the eyes, speedy kits (for perma run), scope, armor mods.

Gear: Focus on critical chance/critical damage/power, but also add in some toughness/vitality gear to give survivability.

-The way to play is get in close and dish out tons of damage with the rifle skills. Blunderbuss/jumpshot criticals become extremely powerful with fury, make sure you land these.
-Use your med kit for health+fury.
-Use goggles for more fury and to inflict 10% vulnerability.
-Elixir C to get rid of conditions.
-Elixir S to run away/stomp people
-If you are sylvari like me, take root is an anti-burst button and makes turrets. Fun vs. thieves.
-If you’re not sylvari, use supply drop.

I find this build pretty useful for small groups in WvW. Generally pick a target, focus on them, and kill them as quickly as possible. You also run around the map with perma-swiftness, so you can easily be where you’re needed. I’m not super pro or anything, but I fair pretty decently vs. most other professions. I was surprised to see how many kills I started getting upon switching to this build. Expect to feel useless in a zerg though, there’s not much AOE you can do. Focus your efforts on taking out camps and skirmishes in the open where you excel.

Also, as a final word, you can run through a zerg using elixir S/elixir C/lots of dodging/swiftness. There’s usually not much they can do to stop you given the amount of stunbreaks you have. Really useful for reinforcing towers/keeps under siege.

Azure Prower.8701:

Why stealth when you cannot be caught due to mobility?

This is the problem with thieves right now. Once a thief decides to run away, there is no chance of catching them.

To those of you who play thieves, is there anyway to catch you once you’ve started stealthing/running? (I play engineer, if that’s important.)

I play engineer, and my biggest problem with fighting the stupid thieves is catching them once they’ve decided they can’t take me and run away. I think if the escape skills got a slight nerf, things would be more even. Right now it’s like thieves get a “get out of jail free” card if combat goes bad for them.

Thief, although not for the reasons people have listed on this thread.

Thieves are probably the most unforgiving class to go up against as a new player. I’ve seen groups of 5-10 new players go down to a skilled thief. If you’re not level 80/have a decent build, the thief wins almost every time. Maybe it’s me, but I have a really hard time killing thieves until I’m fully leveled up.

So for a good 79 levels or so, the thief is probably the most irritating thing you can run across in WvW. After that, the profession is balanced. It’s a shame really.

The “grasping vines” ability (I think that’s what it’s called anyways) is usually a game-ender for opponents in WvW. 7s of immobilize is not something to mess with. Also, if you’re being chased by one person, just use vines on them and continue running. They’ll never catch you.

The “take root” elite is amazing. It’s like a dedicated anti-thief skill. The invulnerability allows you to break thief combos while sending up turrets. They usually run off afterwards once they see how many turrets you send up.

Haha when I figured out what “kitten” meant, I laughed pretty hard… Turning @#!$ into kittens… brilliant.

@Orion

1. I’m impressed. You’re obviously a much better player than me.

2. True, but only because the GW1 missions made group participation almost mandatory (you seem to be the exception). The biggest problem with GW2 is that too many people are approaching the game as a purely single-player RPG. I’m saying that this is the wrong approach. If you look at GW2 as only a single-player RPG, it’s not that amazing of a game. The game’s strengths are in WvW, guilds, the ease of use of the combat system, and the fact that it can actually be played (for the most part) solo. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first MMO ever to be solo-able. Solo play is a feature, and is not the best way to play.

Granted, ANet probably should have expected people to only play single player and planned accordingly. My pet theory is that all story mode dungeons were mandatory for story progression at one point and were later changed to be optional with the exception of the final battle (the fact that the Destiny’s Edge characters have voice acting on-par with, or better than the main story characters supports this). It might have been easier to get players involved in group play by offering huge incentives instead of forcing the issue (as in give players signifcantly better loot when playing as a party or something…).

3. & 4. This doesn’t address my point. I agree with you on these. The majority of posts on this thread seem to be about how people simply don’t want to play with others online. To them I say, maybe if you tried it, you might actually like it.

To all you people whining about having to form a group:

In GW1, it was REQUIRED for you to have 6-8 people for every mission. (You could fill the party with NPC henchmen, but you’d fail high level missions miserably with them). If you couldn’t complete the missions, there was NO WAY to progress without paying a runner 3k+ to run you to Droknar’s Forge.

GW2 requires only 5 players for the last mission. This is less than the requirements at any point for the GW1 story, which was considerably more limiting (and bugged, in many cases). I don’t understand the griping. GW2 is a MASSIVE step forwards for the genre.

And finally, my server is filled with people like you (posting in this thread), who never participate or want to form groups for anything. (Understandably, we always lose in WvW…). All they care about is “completing their personal story” like this was a single-player game and then once they finish, they start playing a different RPG. GW2 is NOT an RPG. It is an MMORPG, which is an entirely separate genre.

You might actually learn to enjoy the game if you simply played WvW, did a dungeon, or chatted with the other gamers you’re with every time you log online (it’s pretty easy to make small talk about anything with random strangers). Try it, then come back to this thread.

/end rant

And although I have the workaround, I sorta disapprove of the whole “invulnerability” mechanic. Although it’s designed to prevent players from using the terrain against the enemy and pulling, it really diminishes the choices you have in engaging the enemy. Who cares if the npc can’t hit back? I feel pretty accomplished when I think of something clever, like using terrain to my advantage. It sorta takes the fun out of things when you don’t have options like that.

I have a workaround for all of you. Invulnerability seems to be triggered by two factors: either being on a piece of terrain that the enemy cannot reach (and therefore cannot hurt you) or when it is pulled a significant distance from its spawn.

Invulnerability auto-triggers all the time when I jump on a big rock or something that the enemy can’t reach (not underwater). This seems to be designed to prevent players from pulling high level monsters to favorable terrain and then killing them from where the player cannot be hurt.

When underwater, monsters trigger invulnerability in two cases. The most common is when the enemy is far from its spawn (especially in terms of the vertical z-axis). If you engage enemies at or near their spawns (preferably at the same height as the enemy), you can avoid triggering invulnerability.

If you engage enemies near the spawns/don’t go to places npcs can’t reach (they can’t jump), invulnerability will rarely/never trigger. It’s all about the terrain you engage them in. If some of you are doubtful, I’ve only had an enemy go “invulnerable” once during the last twenty hours of gameplay. This includes a fair amount of time spent underwater.

Thanks Jeff! I’m totally cool with that explanation.

Anyhow, for future reference, I think that more information = happier players.

Also, my money is on the patch being released on the 16th. That is the next content update.

Look at it this way, at least you haven’t been stuck on “The Hatchery” for the last two weeks…

I know this is an MMO, but I actually like the single-player-ish PVE stuff best. Without the missions, this game slowly turns into a grindfest (events get old fast). I like my current character and don’t feel like restarting (it’s a lot of work). So I’ve stopped playing until the fix comes up.

There’s probably a not-insignificant number of others out there who feel the same way as me. You will probably lose a few customers if they are still unable to play after the Nov. 5 update. If your players are physically unable to complete your game, then it is BY DEFINITION an incomplete game. Your QA people have had almost a month to solve this issue. If they wasted all of that time testing gimmicky Halloween content, there is a serious disconnect between your company and its player base.

The quest has been broken for almost a month now. You, me, and probably 35000 other people are stuck until ANet decides to patch it. There are no solutions or workarounds. If you want to do the story you can either wait until Nov 5th/15th or make a new character. (Alternatively, you can be like me and stop playing altogether until a fix is implemented.)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/The-hatchery-bugged/first

In the future, do a quick forum search before you post.

AGHHHHHH… this is extremely frustrating.

and Halloween is lame. This should really be a much higher priority.

I recently purchased GW2 and created a new account under a new email. Anyhow, I want to link it to my old GW1 account that’s on my old email. Is it possible to do this? I have all of the necessary passwords and can authenticate that both accounts belong to me.

My heart won’t be broken if it doesn’t work out, but it would be nice to see some carryover from the first game.