Guild Wars 2

@Rhino
Put on your bigboy pants (if you have any) and welcome to tier 1. You consider being in the lead during a few days when seasonal PvE events were occurring and hacks were rampant as “crushing” your opponents? You don’t realize that mid-week scores mean nothing. Grats on being in the lead for 2 days only to lose it all in the end.

I’m sorry that SBI and JQ don’t mindlessly start attacking each other in a total free-for-all of non-strategic idiocy like you are wanting. WvW is like a sea of sharks… when something is bleeding all of the sharks will home in the prey.

I think some of you guys never got a chance to fight against real adversity due to being and up and coming bandwagon server, so you didn’t get the necessary experience to handle T1. It’s easy to ride the zerg over outmanned lower tier servers and pound your chest, but you didn’t get much experience from it in the end.

Raven you realize you are making yourself and your server sound like a complete joke with accusations like that right especially after last week. And you’re a commander? If I didn’t know better I would think you were trolling.

Are you guys seriously going to start with the 2v1 crying again? JQ was constantly attacking us in EB last night, so your silly QQ is completely untrue. 2v1s are always going to happen at some point.

Yashino.5713:

to all trashtalkers:
one thing i would like to say
don’t get your hope up just because this week was basically “Halloween event” week, just because you won this week, doesn’t mean you’d do the same next week
a lot of people were devote themselves to running madking dungeons for exotics…
heck, the first day act 3 came out, couple hours later, BlackGate took over almost everything, and there were no queue at all on any wvw maps…

We didn’t start getting queues until last night on SBI, so don’t start making more lame excuses about being outmanned. I would say that none of the T1 WvW servers have more PvE players than SBI.

Gotta love people who waste precious WvW slots on griefing a jumping puzzle. They really need to remove all PvE content from WvW.

@Lorthos.4976

Seen SBI what? We don’t hack and we’re certainly not a bandwagon server. If you’re not a pot calling the kettle black(gate) I don’t know what is.

@Ferris Bewler.9706

Welcome to tier 1. I’m guessing most of you having had to deal with much strategy as you steamrolled your way up to the big leagues. It’s common sense what is going on, so you can stop with the accusations and fingerpointing.

JQ knows darn well that we’re going to be hitting BG as they are our biggest threat. They also know that while we are hitting one of your towers/keeps/etc that you will be tied up on one side of the map. It makes perfect strategic sense for them to also hit another one of your points on the other side of the map.

The new BG has not had to deal with any sort of pressure during it’s rise to T1. You guys have always crushed any offensive attempts made on you and never had strong competition on both sides that could actually hurt you. Now in T1 so many of you seem a bit shell-shocked and are looking to place blame on what is a perfectly normal occurrence in a healthy WvW match-up. 2v1s will always be happening to one side if all teams are relatively equal.

You also only notice the 2v1s when they are happening to you, but we sure as heck have had our fair share of it against us. JQ was hitting our towers and supply camps all night long (we lost towers several times in EB last night to JQ). If we had some type of unspoken agreement they would never touch something as big as a tower, especially not one that is upgraded.

@Solaris.4860
I’m familiar with the downed state glitch that can happen with mesmers (I’ve also had it happen to me). However this individual chose to stay in the walls for a good 30 minutes while continuing to attack anyone that he could reach. You can easily use a waypoint to get out, so yes this individual was exploiting.

Also, you guys used the portal bomb and turtle formation non-stop last night. I forget the name of that one EU guild, but they literally have a mesmer taxi service that moves them. I don’t think they even know how to use their movement keys anymore.

I was just joking at how we decided to take SM using that same tactic just to show how absurdly easy it is to negate damage while moving an entire group around. We were laughing over teamspeak as we were doing it at how cheesy and borderline cheating it is. It’s not something that we want to use and we’re hoping that everyone can agree that it needs to be fixed. Combat doesn’t not need to be dumbed-down and I’m sure A-Net didn’t intend it to be. As far as coordination and skill that it takes to pull off… it takes none. Anyone that knows how to read or listen can stack on a commander.

I’m also hoping that the BG mesmer that is inside the wall in SM at the moment is a glitch and not some sort of cheat. In any case he’s not leaving and choosing to stay there. He has been reported.

Bravo! This is definitely the right thing to do. No side should be receiving any external buff.

emoleas.4309:

Hi. I play with LoD on SBI. I am really isolated to my guild and do not have the map/team chats enabled the vast majority of the time that I play. I had no idea this much drama was surrounding our WvWs considering that it’s watered down PvP and we can’t even see other peoples names. I do know that we have way too many commanders on our server. Some of us were in a keep the other night regrouping and taking 5 and some kid named Cover Girl started barking orders at us. I found it really laughable that random pugs with no real following or guild think a 100g upgrade gives them any type of validity with other players. You don’t buy that, you earn it. I stay out of public chats anyway and prefer to only be around my own guild in WvW. I do know that Psylon and the other LoD do a great job and in some instances work with other guilds. They say that Jedbacca and Cohh are solid and that if LoD isn’t online it’s ok to follow their icons, but I still usually just wait for my guild to log on due to my comfort levels with them. I think that the commander icon needs to have guild status/size requirements for the people buying them. I use join squad anyway to get them off my map, but I know that they mislead newer players by making the wrong decisions and having a false sense of value because they either bought or farmed gold in PvE for a little blue dot. This is a very poor system that needs to be revised. I also wanted to throw out there that the BG stack strategy makes you come off like complete morons and is incredibly easy to counter with even remotely even #‘s. I’m not sure how you play like that and have any sense of dignity, especially after you get AOEd into the pavement for doing it and your server loses that week. I’d fire the guy who came up with it if I were you :p

I just lost all respect for LoD reading this post.

I followed you guys around for about 3 hours to see how you operate. I thought you guys were pretty good and organized; but also saw areas you could improve. I’ve seen PUGs run groups better than you. I’ve seen PUGs run groups worse than you. LoD is nothing special, and a post like this is just despicable.

Let’s take this to our server forums please.

@tufy
That is just the post of someone on our forums that is stating what he would like to see happen out of anger and general dislike for BG. No one on SBI is actually in contact with any JQ commanders. It’s not like SBI and JQ are friends. We’ve built up far too big a rivalry for something like that to ever fly.

Any 2v1 situations are of the normal variety that every server faces in a 3 server match. What you guys at BG are seeing is how SBI works as a coordinated team. Up until now BG has been able to sprint out to big leads over smaller servers and just continue to amass points. What we at SBI know as an experienced T1 server is that these matches are a marathon and not a sprint. We pace ourselves over the course of the week and then strike when the time is right.

Many people were just tired from the JQ match and also frustrated with the orb hacking business (along with the halloween event) and took a few days off to rest. You are now seeing our force coming back in full and rejuvenated. The BG chestpounders at the beginning of the week just didn’t understand this even though people on both JQ and SBI knew this to be the case.

wacko.7543:

you should all feel better now that guilds have transferred off BG again… so… enjoy

Wow, if that is the case it’s just sad. These bandwagon people have no pride and don’t give a crap what they do to a server or it’s reputation.

Seriously, don’t use the lame 2v1 excuse. Everyone gets 2v1’d in WvW. I don’t know what makes you think JQ isn’t attacking SBI in EB. We’re constantly running on both ends of the map to fight both of you off, and sometimes it will be BG, followed by JQ minutes later at the exact same spot (as happened on several occasions last night).

And honestly if we all meet up in the field why wouldn’t we attack BG over JQ? It makes sense doesn’t it that we would be targeting the server that is currently the biggest threat to our winning the match (points-wise of course). It’s called strategy. Heck if I were JQ I would be targeting you as well to try and shore up a second place position before coming after SBI for the first spot.

waeren.9743:

The crying in this thread is pretty funny. Just learn to counter it.

It’s not a point of whether it can be countered or not. Of course it can. But it is a risk vs reward scenario where the reward for turtling is way too high for the amount of lazy play and risk that it requires. It simply breaks AoE damage except for siege weapons. It also allows ridiculous amounts of buff stacking which further increase the strength of the turtle (you can’t knock or pull people out of it b/c they have near permanent stability).

Honestly there is nothing skillful at all about abusing this mechanic (and yes I consider it an abuse). It promotes lazy play and renders certain classes almost completely ineffective. People are supposed to actively react to AoEs and damage in general. Otherwise you could almost bot a zerg formation like this.

Thanks for the hard work WM! Let’s win this!

A-men Jed. Let’s bring this train on home!

Hey Raven why are you guys on the bottom in points right now? We’ve had the outmanned buff most of the night you still can’t take us. I guess when you can’t turtle your way through everything you aren’t sure what to do. I’m enjoying watching JQ eat away at your points while you stupidly try to take umber. Great strategy.

^ Raven, you’re like school on saturday… no class.

I saw a post earlier where one of your members said you were leaving WvW. I’m hoping that was just a bad translation b/c we certainly don’t want to lose you guys. I totally understand bowing out this week with all of the garbage that has been going on. I hope that is all that he meant.

Jorgamund.7803:

filc.7051:

Jorgamund.7803:

BlackGate players: the correct response to exploiters that benefit you is not a shrug and an “Oh well, hackers gonna hack” attitude. The correct response is to report your own players. All the generalized blame you are receiving right now is 100% justified.

lol

How do you want us to do this? Should we guard your orbs 24/7?

Story time:

20 minutes ago from the time of this writing, on the BG borderlands, the JQ TS suddenly noticed that SBI’s orb, held at Hills for several hours, was on the move towards our keep at Bay. Quaggans weren’t up, we weren’t near the east side of the map, and the scouts didn’t see any of us doing a sneak attack. So the assumption was that one of our JQ guys had hacked the orb.

This made everyone on the server’s TS furious. Everyone started talking over each other trying to find out who it was so we could report them. Half our zerg dropped their current attack and re-routed to find out the name. As soon as the name and guild tag was announced, everyone online was to report them. The order went out on chat and TS that no one was to heal, defend, or portal the person with the orb; if it dropped, no one was to pick it up.

That is the proper response to hacking and exploiting: the entire server turns on the culprit. If your server did this constantly from the beginning like JQ has, you would not have the reputation you do now, and you would have fewer hackers.

Speaking of which, it turns out we jumped to conclusions. Right before we caught up to the orb, a player from SBI hopped on our TS and explained what happened. Their altar at Hills had been destroyed via a hack from BG, and they had no altar to re-place it, so they were running it over to give to JQ for free rather than let BG profit from the hack.

Our commanders on the map didn’t really want the orb. Most of the players weren’t happy getting a “free” orb without having to fight for it. If we were on SBI BL, we would have let the orb reset to the north altar… but we were on BG BL, so if it was not placed within 15 minutes BG got the orb back thanks to the hack. So we reluctantly took the orb from the SBI carrier (sorry about the zerg who shot you, whoever you were!). We put it in Bay, and posted a guard to try and catch the expected BG hacker the next time he tried it.

We’re not buddies with SBI now; as I write this, our zerg is backstabbing SBI’s attack on BG’s garrison. (And I’m sure there are whiners in BG complaining about being double teamed, because they can’t read the battlefield and figure out who is fighting who in a 3 way melee.) The friendly player who hopped on to our TS to let us know what happened had his IP banned—spies are still spies, even if they help you once.

But this is why we have more respect for SBI, and why everyone calls BG a server that plays dirty, and what I mean when I say the entire server is responsible for dealing with hackers.

Thanks for sharing this Jorg. It’s obvious that many BG players are completely oblivious as to what is going on within their server or they simply do not care (or even support it). Any of you who come into these threads and call us whiners for wanting a clean match fall into one of the categories above.

Skin.3027:

im not sure what you are on, Charlie Sheen(sorry i mean Black Gate) has been in first since day one of this match up.

Uh you guys actually fell to second place for a good chunk of friday night and saturday morning. Miraculously that’s when the orb hacking started. I’m guessing you guys couldn’t stand being outplayed by legitimate means.

That’s an improvement. However I still think it should be once every 30 days. 7 days still allows guilds to hop to the winning server of the week.

pot.6805:

Friday night you were getting stomped. Stop making excuses for your being in third place. Just admit JQ crushed your will after they facestomped you into third place.

Friday night SBI was winning even with both JQ and BG trying their best to stomp us down. I don’t know what kool-aid you’re drinking.

We’ve already proven that we can smack down JQ. We took a few days off for halloween last week and made up a 20k deficit in a single day to beat you guys. In case you can’t tell, there are very few people still participating in the match this week (just a few hardcore guilds), so if beating a seriously outmanned squad gives you your kicks then more power to you. It hardly represents the true power of SBI though.

Xsorus.2507:

LOL, I’m laughing that this thread has people in it talking about how “If AOE didn’t have a limit, small groups could wipe out big groups with coordinated AOE” and my response would be, Welcome to DAOC for 10+ Years.

Small groups could easily destroy LARGER groups with ease..And that was balanced… Because you could counter it by not stacking up like the current tactic. You spread out and overwhelm them instead of stacking.

The second it becomes more viable to stack in an MMO to avoid AOE the second combat can no longer be taken seriously and the game itself is reduced to joke status.

Choke Points should be deadly to zergs…. That’s Why they’re Choke Points

AOE’s should be deadly to zergs… That’s why you spread out..

WARs problem were nothing related to the Bright Wizard AOEing being uncapped, It was related to the Mechanics of the Bright Wizard simply out dpsing everything else in the game with AOE’s…That they could spam.. constantly…

But yea.. this game is a joke till they fix he turtling.

Exactly. The current mechanics are counter-intuitive to anything that remotely makes sense. It takes more skill to avoid AoE and battle through chokepoints than it does to group up and stay cozy and safe.

Snow Aeth.1937:

@kidbs
So what exactly do you do when 40+ non stacked enemies come to your door?
You run into them and manage to kill them all?
You don’t use siege to shoot them?

40 non stacked enemies are much more mobile than a stack.

The fact that you fail at counter just means your group is less organized, there is no buts.
Your server attempted turtle tactic with your supposed strongest guild WM, and they got wiped.
Oh yes turtle tactic is so easy, yet when you do it you die?
And when we do it, we’r invincible?

Just stop fooling yourself already and learn to adapt like the groups that succeed in countering do.

And if you got no time/resources to set up siege, it means you’r either outmanned/outplayed.
That is not because the enemy stacked up, but because your side is lacking.

Ok I’ll bite for just a moment…. I’m guessing you’re one of the Trashgate players? WM isn’t the only organized guild on SBI. NoPe is another that had already figured out how to bust your turtling tactics. As far as the siege building, it’s difficult when you’re being double-teamed for 12 hours straight and you can’t get enough supply or time to build it. Even during that period we still managed to pull to first place. It wasn’t until you guys starting hacking orbs that people said screw it and left the match. You guys don’t “outplay” anyone.

Regardless, this thread is about turtling and not specific matches so keep your trash in the other BG kitten threads and not this one. There is no way A-Net intended to neuter AoE damage in this way. If they did, then it would apply to siege weapons as well. It’s clearly a bug that needs to be addressed.

Clever.7918:

Even if there was a hacker it doesnt account for 2 severs getting stomped by BG.

You guys weren’t stomping anyone for the first 12 hours or so. When one side stops playing it’s easy to focus them for points. As much hatred as SBI and JQ have had towards each other over the past weeks, I would rather see them win than BG.

Arani.9057:

RockonHarder.7235:

I’m not sure if anyone actually remembers a game called “Shadowbane” it was a MMO WvW enviroment. this game came out before WoW.

Any guild that was worth anything “stacked” we called out targets and dominated other guilds.

this isn’t a system thats new. it’s been getting done in any game that has allowed it. because it’s a tactic that works. The real issue is the culling problem.

people who have issues with the tactic of stacking are more then likely just frusterated by the fact they are not as organized. which is understandable. in the end to be truely effective you need to be in a group.

we really need to stop making multiple threads. its not “stacking” we are talking about we are talking about Buffs being unlimeted targets and a 40 man zerg with invulnerability and stability that can’t be hit in the first place let alone the 5 amn AoE restriction after that.

the culling and portal drama is just icing on the cake.

I didn’t see any other threads discussing the multiple mechanics around “stacking” or “turtling” when I started this one. I simply wanted to address some of the biggest issues (aside from orb and outmanned buffs and server transfers) that are affecting WvW.

Pretty much all of Friday and Saturday was JQ and BG only focusing SBI. The focus seems to have changed now since SBI has dropped back and lost a lot of people playing for the week.

Jest.9276:

Maniac.5163:

I don’t really understand why people thinking no aoe cap would just destroy entire armies. We would never get into lord rooms if that was the case – siege has no AOE cap and arrow carts have like a 4 second cooldown with more damage than the Ranger Barrage. Someone please clarify how 5 people could stop a whole army who knew what they were doing eg. invulnerability, portals, blocks, evades, feedback, retaliation etc.

5-6 arrow carts hitting the exact same spot at the exact same time should decimate the target. How often has this tactic been used though? I personally haven’t ever seen it happen or even saw it be attempted.. but I don’t play with an Organized WvW Guild on Vent/Mumble/Skype. By the same token, I’ve never ever seen the Turtle tactic used either.

Regardless, raising the cap on the AoE isn’t the solution. Limiting the heals and coding the engine to allow for different attacks to hit a different set of 5 targets would be a better fix (assuming all the extra calculations necessary wouldn’t bog down performance).

The problem is you don’t always have the time or resources to set up enough siege weapons to deal with a group. So relying on siege weapons isn’t the answer to the problem.

Arani.9057:

kidbs.8920:

Arani.9057:

kidbs.8920:

Why would they need to raise the AoE cap to fix this problem? Just make it so AoE spells can only hit 5 targets, but not limit it to only the same 5 people in a turtle.

if 5 people go (let alone die) down in a 40 man turtle, IF the vulnerability wore off by some chance, IF the unlimeted AoE heals didn’t keep them up, a 40 man zerg will insta rez.

Well now you’re talking about the shouts and buffs not having a limit which is another issue. Also collision detection is about the only thing that will fully prevent the problems. I for one wouldn’t mind having that in the game.

This is EXACTLY what this discussion topic (and about 4 others currently on forums) is about. The storm of AoE limit, Buff/Shout NON-limits then add in Portal mobility to boot in some cases.

I’m not disagreeing, I just think that fixing the AoE damage issue would eliminate a larger portion of the overall problem. Even with shouts hitting everyone, people can’t stay alive indefinitely if everyone is taking AoE damage. Right now that’s not the case so it’s easy to keep a few people alive and rez them because most people are taking no damage at all.

Snow Aeth.1937:

The problem with the guys whining about turtle is that the ones making the turtle are organized on voice communication, while the randoms are just getting wiped by them.

Then the randoms come and QQ on the forum about it.

While actual organized counter turtle teams have proven to do a great job against the turtle.
But only the ones that didn’t assume that the turtle is a bain/skilless bunch of players like these forum whiners accuse them to be, because the ones that did just died as easily as the randoms.

Generalize more. It’s much easier to form a successful turtle than it is to bust it up. The risk versus reward for using a turtling tactic is way high on the reward end of the scale. It takes less brains to turtle than it does to actually react to taking damage.

I am on a community teamspeak server that has a high amount of coordination and knows how to bust a turtle and I still recognize it for the problem that it creates and how it ruins intended gameplay.

Arani.9057:

kidbs.8920:

Why would they need to raise the AoE cap to fix this problem? Just make it so AoE spells can only hit 5 targets, but not limit it to only the same 5 people in a turtle.

if 5 people go (let alone die) down in a 40 man turtle, IF the vulnerability wore off by some chance, IF the unlimeted AoE heals didn’t keep them up, a 40 man zerg will insta rez.

Well now you’re talking about the shouts and buffs not having a limit which is another issue. Also collision detection is about the only thing that will fully prevent the problems. I for one wouldn’t mind having that in the game.

JQ you guys haven’t been hit by BGs exploits like SBI has (not yet at least). Also it seemed that most of the weekend you guys mostly focused SBI, to the point that you guys were pretty much ignoring each other when you were next to each other. It’s easy to maintain a decent score when both opponents are focused on one.

This is a good example of why I think matches should be 1v1 instead.

Why would they need to raise the AoE cap to fix this problem? Just make it so AoE spells can only hit 5 targets, but not limit it to only the same 5 people in a turtle.

@Raven

It’s not just a matter of who gets the benefit of the orb. It’s the hacking of it that causes the utter demoralization of the victimized server. Hacking it once has become commonplace during a match, but when it happens several times people just don’t want to deal with it anymore.

It’s always easier for a server that isn’t on the receiving end to say “pull yourselves up from your boostraps and fight on!”. And honestly it’s not just the hacking. It’s a lot of things that add up on top of it. Server lag when you fight in SM, culling issues, broken mechanics with turtling. Multiple hacks can be the straw on the camel’s back for a lot of people who are tired of dealing with the BS.

Veeshan.8451:

kidbs.8920:

Veeshan.8451:

^ and so can the hacker unfortunately and screw up someone else s servers, As a player from BG from release if i ever find somone hacking they are reported instantly cause hacking in a game is unacceptable imo. As for turtling there are ways to counter it and it needs server teamwork im not gonna tell you what skills to use because coming from Everquest as my first game i dont beleive anything should be given to you without any effort in a mmorpg.

Turtling is another issue (which I’ve started another thread about). There is no way that A-Net intended a simple group formation to completely render AoEs useless. I know we’re playing a fantasy game and all but let’s try to keep at least some realism here. You don’t see soldiers in a war all stacking up to prevent grenade or rocket damage.

There a reason that the aoe cap is there on ranged aoes, 20 elementalist would completly stop any size force pushing through a gap, say stairs upto a keep lord, through to SM castle keeplord room, through a broken gate or wall would all be imposible if you had 20 elementalist chaining aoes on the one spot. That is the reason it is there to begin with. As for turtling its a valid stratergy to the current game until they change it i welcome any intresting stratergy aslong as it in the parimeters of the game. Also as for soldiers dont stack up to prevent explosives dmg they do thats what concrete bunkers are, a refuge spot where they can advoid explosive fire and they put some big guns in there so they can fight back, kinda the same as in GW2 Its a stationary method that reduces the amount of aoe dmg, every bunker has its vunerable spot as so does a turtle in GW2 and again cause its in my nature not to give things away ill leave out where the vunerability are but ill tell you this with a bit of organisation even the stronger bunker can crumble.

You can’t equate a concrete bunker to a group of people stacked on top of each other. That’s what hiding in towers is for. Also there is already a limitation placed on AoEs (5 target limit) as well as distinctive markers placed on the ground so that you know to avoid them. How do you think all of the non-turtlers have been combating AoE up til now?

Again, there is no way that the current turtling strategy was ever intended by A-Net. It removes pretty much all need to worry about damage and AoE in particular which leads to lazy play. Those of you who are relying on this mechanic are going to be in for a rude awakening whenever they do finally address it.

Veeshan.8451:

^ and so can the hacker unfortunately and screw up someone else s servers, As a player from BG from release if i ever find somone hacking they are reported instantly cause hacking in a game is unacceptable imo. As for turtling there are ways to counter it and it needs server teamwork im not gonna tell you what skills to use because coming from Everquest as my first game i dont beleive anything should be given to you without any effort in a mmorpg.

Turtling is another issue (which I’ve started another thread about). There is no way that A-Net intended a simple group formation to completely render AoEs useless. I know we’re playing a fantasy game and all but let’s try to keep at least some realism here. You don’t see soldiers in a war all stacking up to prevent grenade or rocket damage.

waeren.9743:

Yes, why change. The current zerg and hope you see your opponents first meta is a lot more fun.

On a more serious note, some guilds from SBI are saying it’s already been countered., it might be worth checking with them. You can always organize a different non turtle defense if it doesn’t suit your playstyle.

If this game would be played in the same way all the time it would get old pretty fast. A bit of change from time to time is never bad.

There are some ways to semi-counter a turtle but it will never totally prevent it. Besides, there is no way on earth that A-Net could have intended for AoEs to be fully countered just by stacking people up on one another. That would be completely asinine.

So currently we have a few mechanics in the game which I believe are a serious detriment to the future of WvW in general.

Any server that has been involved in large fights has undoubtedly run into the problems associated with culling. You’re running along chasing a few people from the opposite faction and then out of no where you encounter a squad of 20+ people in your face. Or you’ve fought that thief that seems to stay invisible permanently and can tie up a supply camp singlehandedly so that it can never be capped. I know that Arena Net has acknowledged that this is an issue and have said that they are working on it so I’ll keep my fingers crossed that at least culling will be handled sometime in the future. Until then you can expect to see small havoc squads of thieves taking and holding supply camps while taking advantage of the culling bug.

Now we have some other issues that I think should be added to A-Net’s to-do list. One biggie is “turtling”. I’m sure a lot of servers aren’t familiar with what turtling is at least in the definition in WvW. There is currently a mechanic in place where most AoEs will only hit a maximum of 5 targets. Then there are some buffs such as warrior shouts which don’t suffer from this max target limitation. When used in combination it allows a group of 40 players to stand tightly on top of each other and take advantage of the shout buffs and heals while only having 5 people actually take AoE damage. On top of this, guardians can put up bubbles to protect the entire group from taking any damage.

Now at first you may be thinking “hey this is a pretty cool tactic”, but think again. Do you really think it’s intended that an entire 40+ man squad should be able to avoid most of the AoE damage that was clearly designed to handle such situations? I’ll go out on a limb here and say no it wasn’t.

The downside of grouping up into a turtle formation is that it lacks mobility. Well we have a solution to that problem. Enter the portal bomb! A portal bomb is when a large force or zerg uses a Mesmer portal to port in behind enemy defenses or to get into a more strategic location for an attack. Now portal bombing is nothing new and has been used since beta as a valid tactic to sneak around defenses. There is nothing wrong with that. The problem though is that portal bombing adds mobility to the turtle zerg. A well-coordinated group can stack up on a portal entrance and pop out on the other side in their nice little AoE-resistant turtle shell.

At the very least, the mechanic of turtling really needs to be addressed. I can’t believe that A-Net ever intended for AoEs to be rendered almost useless by a simple group formation. Whether mesmer portals need to be given a max cap or not I’ll leave for others to debate (I’m personally on the fence with that one).

These issues are pretty major and I believe it will cause the current meta of WvW warfare to change into something ugly and unintended by A-Net. I am hoping that someone from A-Net will address these problems and let us know what their position is on the matters.

waeren.9743:

kidbs.8920:

Osskil.1029:

I am not on any of these servers, but it sure does seem like a lot of excuses pop up in every single Wv3 thread when the server that everyone expects to lose starts dominating. “Transfers, hacks, exploits, mesmer bombs, Halloween,” – why not just pony up and fight back?

Every single server is guilty of having a few morons that will hack and ruin part of the match, but good commanders will respect the game and communicate to allow the others to have the hacked orb back.

PVE is not a good thing to blame. If you want to be in the top tiers, you need to make sure you are furnishing with Wv3 players at all times. All 3 of these servers are full, so you can’t really blame lack of numbers. A point deficit can be erased – but completely giving up is a bit silly.

It’s easy to say this as someone looking from the outside who doesn’t see the big picture. BG has hacked more in the past few nights than any other server that we have faced over the previous weeks combined. It’s hard to keep people motivated to play against that garbage. It ruins the spirit of the game and the fun when people resort to cheating. People get fed up and quit.

So I need to start generalizing SBI based on your posts as well? I can honestly understand your frustration but your posts are getting ridiculous.

Look, I am not generalizing when I am simply stating the facts of how many times we have been hacked in the past few days by BG. Of course not every player on BG is hacking and I never said they were. But the facts are the facts.

Osskil.1029:

I am not on any of these servers, but it sure does seem like a lot of excuses pop up in every single Wv3 thread when the server that everyone expects to lose starts dominating. “Transfers, hacks, exploits, mesmer bombs, Halloween,” – why not just pony up and fight back?

Every single server is guilty of having a few morons that will hack and ruin part of the match, but good commanders will respect the game and communicate to allow the others to have the hacked orb back.

PVE is not a good thing to blame. If you want to be in the top tiers, you need to make sure you are furnishing with Wv3 players at all times. All 3 of these servers are full, so you can’t really blame lack of numbers. A point deficit can be erased – but completely giving up is a bit silly.

It’s easy to say this as someone looking from the outside who doesn’t see the big picture. BG has hacked more in the past few nights than any other server that we have faced over the previous weeks combined. It’s hard to keep people motivated to play against that garbage. It ruins the spirit of the game and the fun when people resort to cheating. People get fed up and quit.

@Raven

Newsflash buddy, a huge portion of SBI has already quit playing for the week in protest. You’re winning b/c you have hardly any resistance. Notice how on Friday and early Saturday morning SBI managed to take the lead in spite of constant double-teaming from BG and JQ. We only dropped behind after the hacking BS started and people said F-it and quit.

Even with your amazing “strategy” we were managing to handle you guys just fine. Add in the hacking though and people just get tired of dealing with the crap. BG has some good people (most of whom were there before the bandwagon), but it also has a lot of losers as evident in the countless threads about them over the past few weeks.

You guys really had a chance to prove something in tier 1 this week, unfortunately you’ve only proven that a lot of you have no honor and aren’t worth the effort to play against.

Raven Paradox.1860:

Stormcycle.4208:

it was just a terrible analogy and a wall of text in the attempt to give credit to a tactic that is obviously abusing the AoE limit of 5 random people being hit at a time. By doing so they are making themselves invulnerable to almost all area effect attacks. Pair this with a mesmer or two who run ahead and drop port, and then the whole zerg ports and remains stacked, and you have an unbeatable strategy.

Clever yes, but it is an exploit in my book because I don’t think that they intended for the game to be played like that.

Yeah. Blackgate are the only ones that do this. I’ve never seen SBI or JQ or any server we’ve ever faced use these tactics. You guys whine about fair tactics, and all we do is laugh. Not at the thought, but it’s because you guys use every excuse in the book to satisfy your weak minds to think you’re only losing because of cheats. We’re winning because we’re better than you. End of story.

You’re winning at this point b/c of hacks and people tired of participating against that crap. I have yet to see any of the BG crew do anything that impresses me. In even number encounters you guys fold like a napkin. That’s why you guys resorted to hacking when you dropped out of the first spot on night one.

BG will never be respected no matter how many wins you have.

Tier 1 is a joke this week and I think a lot of people are just taking the rest of the week off in protest. Trashgate has no ones respect.

Beastmaster.5071:

Okay this may sound like a troll post, but I dont care. There are two things that I want to give my opinion on:

1) Mesmer portals – this is not a hack. If mesmers have this ability and if ANET is not nerfing it, then why the hell aren’t you complainers using this to your strategic advantage. WvWvW is meant to be a game of creativity, fun and awesome tactics. So stop complaining and come up with creative strategies that does not involve hack.

2) Orb hacks – don’t blame the entire server for one person’s action. If you see someone hacking, then get that person’s details down. Report to ANET using in-game features, which takes 10 seconds to do. Hell even tell others nearby to report that person to bolster the case. But DO NOT accuse the entire server as cheats, frauds or hackers. If the hacker is from a certain guild, report the hacker to the leader of that guild.

Now this topic is meant to be friendly and for score updates. Lets keep it that way.

It’s pretty difficult to report a hacker from another server when you don’t know their name or how to contact the leader of their guild (assuming the leader doesn’t already know and isn’t supporting it). When I refer to hacks I’m not talking about the portal cheese either.

I was talking to some BG players in the LA overflow today and they readily admitted that a number of your players hack. They even went on to name an entire guild that is completely shady and constantly uses exploits.

BG had a lot of good players before they turned into a bandwagon server. Now quite honestly you guys have lost a lot of respect. Wins mean nothing when they are tainted. BG is turning into the Lance Armstrong of WvW.

Blackgate = Bandwagongate. No offense to those of you who are original to BG.

@Yorkie Just curious how long have you been on the BG server?

Honestly I think the problem is more the fault of the spvp game designs. All of the maps are designed around holding points. So of course this encourages builds that can take a beating and just bunker down in a certain spot.

They need to start introducing new spvp mechanics that encourage other builds and comps. Maybe capture the flag and kill the other team’s lord type of fights.