Guild Wars 2

TheLargeUnit.2793:

Lol
THIS IS FOR AFTER THE PATCH AS THE TITLE OF THE THREAD MAY INDICATE.

I do have an invuln, 6 sec on a 60 sec cd.

I can be stealth 1/4 of the time. I can be invuln 1/6 of the time. I can evade around 1/3 of the time. I would call this an adequate defense.

You say I have no utility, then wtf is Sic Em???

I am not and have never said that rangers are viable as of now. I am also under the impression that neither of you have actually read the patch notes, which you would be wise to do so before making uninformed posts.

First of all, check your math. 6/60 is 1/10, not 1/6.

Secondly, like I already said, this just doesn’t compare to the defensive options other classes have. For example, mesmers have an insta-cast invulnerability on a 45 second cd (even shorter if you trait for shatter recharge at 50%). Similarly, you don’t have the same access to stealth, evades, stunbreaks, and blinks that thieves do.

Thirdly, sic ‘em isn’t really a group utility skill — good for bursting down thieves, but not much else. Certainly not like an aura sharing ele or a thief with shadow refuge to res on the periphery.

Lastly, I have no idea why you even posed a question in the original post. You “asked” whether other players thought rangers would be viable in a GvG periphery, but you respond to all the answers you don’t want to hear with insults and belligerence. Many posters have responded to you calmly and rationally, but it seems like your mind’s already made up.

Yes, it’s impossible to tell how the meta will evolve. However, from the current vantage point, even with the buffs rangers will receive after the patch, it still doesn’t seem like they’re are an optimal choice for periphery play.

TheLargeUnit.2793:

Rangers are going to offer the highest ranged single target damage in the game after the patch. And no, they don’t have to sacrifice offense for defensive / escape options. Evades from the sword and dagger and stealth from the longbow provide plenty. Not to mention signet of stone.

Offence? check, Defense? check, Utility options? check.

First, there really isn’t much utility here for your team, except the water field, which you probably want to reserve for a self-heal. So all in all, not much utility.

Defensively, no one says rangers don’t have any defensive options. The problem is that it’s not enough, especially when compared with mesmers and thieves. You have one stunbreak on a 60 sec cd, no blinks, one short stealth on a 12 sec cd, a few evades, no invulnerabilities, no consistent source of vigor, almost no condi cleanse, etc.

Compare this to mesmers and thieves, who stunbreak much more frequently, run multiple blinks, can stealth very frequently, and evade more often. Even with the defensive options that mesmers and thieves bring, a good group will still be able to train them down. Rangers would get trained down even faster. For this build in particular, if someone catches you without your stunbreak or hits you with an immobilize, you’ll be dead in a few seconds.

TheLargeUnit.2793:

Sounds pretty good to me. And if you guys are wondering, I do have extensive tpvp and GvG experience. I know how to dodge thiefs and mesmers, with this build it really isn’t that hard. You guys are forgetting that you are going to have a thief and/or a mesmer with you to give you mass invis and shadow refugee while the enemy is going after you.

You’re not just dodging thieves and mesmers on the periphery. You’re also dodging the enemy frontline. You just don’t have enough defensive options to do both effectively.

You also shouldn’t rely on shadow refuge and mass invis. Both are on a fairly long cd, and if a mesmer or thief has to use it on you, that means they can’t use on themselves, limiting their play. Groups would much rather take a periphery class who can self-sustain over one that will depend on other people for defensive options.

Being viable on the periphery doesn’t depend on damage alone. It depends on damage mitigation, which rangers are still going to do more poorly than thieves, mesmers, and d/d eles.

Rangers simply don’t have the same access to stealth, evades, and blinks that the other classes do. And on the periphery, you desperately need all of those, since you can’t rely on your train/backline to save you. Even if you do pack a punch, you’re going to be trained down very quickly. I highly doubt rangers are going to be “mandatory” after the patch.

To those who think rangers are currently viable in GvG’s/there just aren’t good ranger players, you’re very mistaken. Other classes can do what rangers do better — there’s no reason to slot a ranger over something else in the current meta.

Hard to predict where they’ll go with the patch. But unless they get better damage mitigation options, I don’t see rangers becoming a big deal in periphery play in GvG’s.

Man, this is a FWP if I’ve ever seen one.

Although it’s pretty funny watching d/p teefs with incinerator spam their 3 skill. It’s so much easier to see the flying incinerator than a normal dagger.

EoLtheCroW.9176:

nice video can you link your build bro ?

Looks like standard 20606 with mostly zerk and maybe some cav/knight?

alchemyst.2165:

Thread named “Dagger or sword for 1v1”

How did it turn into kiting? O.o

It matters because s/d is harder to kite than d/d. You have infiltrator’s strike on sword, and s/d often traits into trickery and acro, allowing you to gap close more frequently and maintain permaswiftness — both of which are invaluable in 1v1.

Geiir.7603:

The thing with p/d is that you doesn’t really need that much condition duration. You can apply bleeds and poison with short intervals (especially bleeds). Torment is also at hand with some cooldown. The reason is that this game has so much condition removal that your conditions are rarely going to tick for their full duration (rarely above 4 seconds really).

What I find is that Balthazar works great for me, since we don’t have any access to burning else. It is the most hard hitting condition in the game and work as a really nice burst right after your enemy has used their cleanse or heal. Smart use of burning, bleed and torment bursting can finish someone off pretty fast.

I agree straight up with everything here. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Geiir.7603:

D/D is also a good set, especially when fighting outnumbered. The AoE bleeds are crazy, easy access to poison from aa chain and heartseeker is a great escape tool.

Completely disagree here. D/D is a terrible set for a condi build. There was once a time idiots would stand in your death blossoms, but that time’s long gone. Nowadays, whenever I run into someone dumb enough to play condi on d/d, I just move out of the way of his death blossoms, watch him blow all his initiative, then laugh as he fails to do any damage to me as I walk away.

The problem is that death blossom is so easily avoided by anyone who doesn’t actively fight you back. And if they decide to run, even if you do catch them (which you won’t), you won’t do any damage with any of the hard hitting attacks (CnD, backstab, heartseeker).

Sir Vincent III.1286:

panicbutton.1053:

Stealth isn’t god-mode, and is predictable if you dont have any movement tricks off cooldown.

Anyways, I’m just throwing out an example.

The example is unlikely if not non-existence. Thieves are accused of running away from fight, but never as being kited. If you can’t close the gap then stealth, that’s very basic. Or if you’re really worried about movement impairment, you can always bring Withdraw.

Thieves, especially d/d thieves, get kited all the time. Necros drop marks at their feet, engis drop bombs/run to turrets, mesmers run in between clones, warriors gs 3/gs 5 around, etc.

“If you can’t close the gap then stealth”. How are you going to do that in a 1v1? If you can’t close the gap, you can’t CnD. Unless you want to waste a utility stealthing, you’re not going to be able to stealth.

The fact remains that d/d doesn’t really have a gap closer built into the weapon set. Heartseeker is terrible when you’re crippled or chilled, and the animation is way too long, IMO

Dear God. I watched this on 360p and was wondering which server would have that many people sitting on that many ballistas, with two omegas, and stealth/supply traps — all in a camp. But then the answer became obvious.

Otaur.9268:

mango.9267:

Wanze.8410:

Silent Shino.7239:

What bug was it? I can’t tell from the screenshot

If you watch closely you will see that the thief is not perma stealthed.

Lul, I c wut u did thar.

For obvious reasons, I’m not going to go into detail about the bug, but it was a fairly well-known exploit to get into Bay without breaking any gates/walls.

So you went to EXPLOIT it and found it fixed… Well done.

Or perhaps this exploit has been reported to me many times, and I happened to run by and see that the slope was fixed. Don’t believe me? Check gw2wvw.net. For the record, we already owned Bay on this map at the time.

Romek.4201:

lol

alot more people enjoy eotm than wvw – cause wvw is absolut boring how it is played

but the wvw people come here and ask to close eotm cause they have noone to play with^^

seriously

people dont left wvw for eotm – they left cause wvw is boring and they left it before eotm even was an option

That may be why you left, but the great majority of EotM players are there for the karma train. The rewards are ridiculous, and because there are no consequences to winning/losing, defending and fighting are pointless.

I’d imagine most people find EotM pretty boring. It’s basically the Queensdale champ train, but with the occasional enemy player.

Dude, honestly, who cares? It’s not like there are any consequences to winning/losing. And there are far greater imbalances to WvW than just that some servers are less affected by this DDoS than others. Coverage and population still determine the winner. Not like WvW was designed to be fair in the first place.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Here it is…was over in GD:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Currency-Exchange/first#post4202001

Ah, great. Question answered. Thanks!

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I think I read a post by someone that queried CS, and received the answer of 72 hours. Pretty sure the thread is here in Account Issues.

Good luck.

Ah, thanks. Shame it’s such a long wait. Do you know if that’s 72 hours play time or just 72 hours after account activation?

Hi, for brand new accounts, how much time do we have to play before currency exchange is enabled? Or is it by level? I really have no idea. Bought a second account and would like a bit more gold on it, but I can’t trade gems for gold yet.

Regarding bug #20, it doesn’t just happen in PvE. You get 5 stacks of confusion any time you’re interrupted by being turned to stone, which is quite frequently when you fight thieves who use basilisk venom. It also happens if you get interrupted by the box of fun paralysis effect.

Regarding bug #34, it’s not really a stunbreak. It operates in the same fashion as all instant cast skills that aren’t stunbreaks, such as phase retreat and steal. You get the blink, but you’re still stunned (as in, you still can’t use any skills) — just stunned in a different place.

xihorus.2804:

mango.9267:

Lastly, you get the krait conditions every 45 seconds, but with balthazar, you can apply burning every 10 seconds using tonics (let’s face it, if you’re going to play p/d dire, might as well go all the way here).

What do you mean by “using tonics”?

Use an endless quaggan tonic, or any tonic whose “end transformation” button is on 6. Hitting that button counts as a heal, so you proc the burn on balthazar, but you don’t use your actual heal. You can do this anywhere that allows tonics, in combat, out of combat, etc.

Alternatively, just use withdrawal. Learn to withdraw into your enemy — one of the staples of thief gameplay. 15 second cd.

xihorus.2804:

I tried both Sleight of Hand and Bewildering Ambush and I will agree the cooldown reduction alone makes Sleight of Hand a better trait. Ideally I do want to try Perplexity runes at some point – but does the extra burning condition from Balthazar really make then superior to Krait? If constant application of conditions is the goal, and I’m using Krait that is three conditions applied every 45 (assuming using Basilisk Venom) versus Balthazar which is one every 30 (assuming using Hide in Shadows). Also, Krait and Balthazar provide the same bonus to condition damage. Or am I missing something?

You already have access to poison, torment, and bleed, all of which can be applied very easily (sneak attack, vital shot, shadow strike/shot, choking gas, mug). Balthazar gives you access to a condition that you would otherwise be unable to apply, and burning is one of the most powerful conditions in the game.

Lastly, you get the krait conditions every 45 seconds, but with balthazar, you can apply burning every 10 seconds using tonics (let’s face it, if you’re going to play p/d dire, might as well go all the way here).

xihorus.2804:

Also, I’m not going for high condition duration… I’m using full Dire with the exception of one Giver’s weapon. Is the trade-off of 90 condition damage and 64 toughness really not worth the 10% condition duration increase?

On the margins like that, the tradeoffs are up to you. However, I assume you chose Krait runes for the bleed duration, and I’m trying to say that bleed duration isn’t that important, especially when bleed is (probably) the condition that’s most easily removed, and, for you, most easily reapplied.

xihorus.2804:

messiah.1908:

for 1v1 or 1vx the duration is important a bit as after the signet warrior which has 800 heal per second use is utilities u can tick 5 seconds and above . without it you wont be able to kill anyone with -40%-60% condi duration

This was my major incentive to boosting condition duration: enemies using food to reduce condition duration, or warriors traited to reduce it.

I appreciate all the responses and would love to hear some more thoughts.

You’re going to have trouble killing any warrior spec’d to deal with conditions, regardless of duration. However, the best option here isn’t to stack duration in rune or armor choices, but just to use 40% duration food, which is very cheap. They’ll still cleanse most of your conditions, so stacking more conditions than they can cleanse is a better strategy than stacking a few long conditions that they can. This is even more true in a group fight.

UrMom.4205:

DeathReign.7821:

UrMom.4205:

What if you take Phantasmal Fury?

Phantasmal Fury only affects phantasms. We only have 1 rapid hitting phantasm (iDuelist).

Majority of the bleed stacks from Sharper Images come from clones, not the phantasms.

oh makes sense, the more ya know. Thanks!

I find most of the bleeds come from phantasms and clone deaths, not clone autoattacks. Most condi builds don’t use greatsword, which is the only weapon set whose clones could reliably stack bleeds. All the other weapon sets attack too slowly or need to be in melee.

That said, gonna echo what everyone else said. If you play PU, stick with rabid. You have enough passive defense that you really don’t need the extra health.

Aim for ~40% crit chance. With phantasmal fury, your duelists will stack 5-6 bleeds every attack.

blitzkrieg.2451:

A. It’s not intended to be a stun break.
B. It’s not intended for you to be able to swap clones with a clone that has already been destroyed.

Like I said, all of those tooltip examples you just quoted are meaningless because they all are correct in what the skill function does, because the numbers were incorrect has no relation to the bug fix for iLeap.

I’m really confused by your entire post all together. You tried to relate skill facts being updated/fixed to what would have to be an entire skill re-working if they were to update the tooltip to fit what the bug was allowing them to do. Poor argument on your part all together.

A. It’s funny that you say it’s not intended to be a stunbreak because it still is a stunbreak. You can still swap while stunned, provided you have a clone up. If Anet wanted to nerf the stunbreak aspect of it, they’d add a cast time, like they did with Infiltrator’s Return on thieves. The problem isn’t the fact that it’s a stunbreak; it’s the fact that it now depends on having a clone up.

B. It’s tough to judge intent. Let’s not pretend Anet’s intentions are consistent, persistent, or well-communicated. At the very least, it’s clear that you and I aren’t the best judges of their intent (see part A., where you misjudged the “stunbreak” intent). Reading the ambiguous wording on the tooltip, it’s very possible Anet originally intended an unconditional swap, but now changed their minds.

C. Intent isn’t that important here. There are plenty of circumstances where Anet prioritized balance over original intent, whether that involved changing a skill completely or merely updating the tooltip. The fact is that, in this situation, Anet nerfed mesmers. The disagreement here is about whether or not “bug fix” is a legitimate justification. Many posters, myself included, don’t think that justification holds up simply because Anet has reworked so many other skills and completely changed their intent in the interest of balance, and this nerf was unwarranted.

Wanze.8410:

Silent Shino.7239:

What bug was it? I can’t tell from the screenshot

If you watch closely you will see that the thief is not perma stealthed.

Lul, I c wut u did thar.

For obvious reasons, I’m not going to go into detail about the bug, but it was a fairly well-known exploit to get into Bay without breaking any gates/walls.

Didn’t even notice this fix until tonight. Not sure when it went up, but I don’t think it was ever communicated. Gives me some hope that Anet is actually willing to address exploits in WvW.

Serious Thought.5394:

Current Thief Metas that I know of (in order, D/d then S/d then P/d)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAoYVlsMpzplPx7J8PNBNBt9wbQI4uGrYGaFAA-TZBEwAGOFAAOCAZLDQ4BA8b/BA

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsYVl0MpyplOx7J8PNBNh4d4vl1KQ3RL2E-TZBEwAGOFAp2fAwRAIbZACPAAA

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAqYVlsMp5p1NxpJsPNRMhw9uf98qr2NWEA-TJxCwALOFAAeCAC3fYbZAA

Neither the d/d nor the p/d build you listed is meta in any game mode, much less tPvP. Runes of Wurm? Shadow Arts? No way.

To my knowledge, the meta in tPvP is either 26006 or 20066, using strength runes, zerk amulet, sb and either d/p or s/d.

xihorus.2804:

Thanks everyone. I really appreciate the advice here.

I do not like to be dependent on food as part of my build (just my thing). So I do not factor in condition duration food into my stats. Given that, I was thinking of the following:

• Krait runes. Perplexity is definitely a nice choice, but more than I’m willing to spend for now. [adds 45% bleed duration]
• 2/0/6/0/6 build, using Bewildering Ambush grandmaster trait from the Trickery line, since I’m not using Perplexity runes. [2 in Deadly Arts adds 10% condition duration]
• Full Dire set, with the exception of one weapon which is Giver’s. [10% condition duration]
• Superior Sigil of Malice. [10% condition duration]

In total, this gives adds 75% bleed duration and 30% condition duration. For my other sigil I am considering using Superior Sigil of Corruption.

Thoughts?

Again, condi duration isn’t the way to go with p/d. Very rarely will all your conditions stick for the full (or even half) duration. The weapon set is about constant application of conditions, since sneak attack and shadow shot have no cooldowns, and you have mug on a 21-27 second cd.

I repeat, going for high condi duration is the wrong way to go, especially when you do so at the expense of better rune/sigil choices. Perplexity + sleight of hand is better than bewildering ambush, IMO. The cd reduction and daze on steal are game changers. Alternatively, balthazar is a good set too. Krait is fine if you can’t afford the other two, but don’t go for krait runes thinking they’re a better choice than perplexity or balthazar.

Your sigils are less important than your runes. Torment, doom, bursting, and energy are all solid choices.

I wouldn’t worry about bleed duration if I were you. Bleed is so easily removed, and so easily reapplied when you’re playing p/d. The weapon set is really about constant application of conditions, not long duration of conditions.

To that end, I think perplexity or balthazar would serve you better. Adds another damaging condition that your opponent will have to remove.

Also, stick with full dire. The benefit of carrion is negligible unless you invest in a lot of carrion. But then you give up a lot of toughness.

Backstab doesn’t really need a buff. Playing d/x teef isn’t just about landing backstabs. Dagger auto chain and heartseeker also do pretty good damage, and, coupled with a stronger backstab, would be a bit too OP.

You can’t just compare the damage of a teef to the damage of another class without taking both classes into account holistically. Stealth, evades, and shadow steps often make backstabbing a much lower risk maneuver than landing a mighty blow or a 100b. The damage is about right for the risk/reward, when compared to the damage from other classes.

Chaba.5410:

There’s also a bug where you get stuck in a wall or staircase if you are standing in the wrong place when the objective gets capped. Worst thing to happen in the middle of a fight too.

This bug is great because only half of the professions can get out of the wall. Makes me feel good laughing at a warrior stuck in there. If I’m feeling cruel, I’ll spam some aoe and keep him there indefinitely.

They already do something like this for ram mastery, where ram masters have a little buff on their bar when they’re using a ram. That’s how I check whether or not I need to kick someone off.

If they added a small number to indicate level of mastery and extended it to other types of siege, it’d be pretty useful, and I can’t imagine it being that difficult to implement.

Jeknar.6184:

EFWinters.5421:

Terrible. I’m sure lots of people will use it though.

Yeah, I’m eager to do it for my guardian. And I expect a lot of other suport focused players with guardians/elementalists/warriors to do the same.

I can see this on a full shout bunker warrior. Can’t really see it on anything else.

Guardians need the precision for vigor on crit, Empowering Might, and AH. Seems like you give up too much by taking vitality/toughness/healing power.

OP, your language suggests that you think there’s a direct (and strong) causal relationship between player-hours and score. Even if Anet did publish player-hours, at best, you can establish statistical significance, but you still won’t be able to measure the causal relation.

That’s just a more technical way of saying correlation doesn’t imply causation. What contributes to the number of player-hours logged is much more important than player-hours themselves: skill, organization, morale, etc.

You might think that normalizing score by player-hour lets you measure skill, but the reality is probably a lot more complicated than that. Playing well generally keeps people playing longer (how many people want to wipe repeatedly for 3 hours?) and builds morale/momentum. So a server may have more player-hours simply because it’s more skilled, and the normalized metric might lead you to think otherwise, especially since many skill groups don’t really PPT.

At best, your normalized metric tells you how efficient a server is at PPT (though, it probably doesn’t even do that). Let’s not pretend it’ll say much about a server’s skill or organization.

Seems like almost everyone in this thread missed the sarcastic tone. OP is clearly putting thieves down, probably because thieves frequently gank him.

It’s also painfully obvious he’s not a serious thief player. I mean, who refers to any kind of thief as “cnd thief”?

Hey all, my guardian just hit 80. I want to play him as a bunker/support guard in WvW for both small scale and zerg fights.

I crafted a build, but I have no idea if it’s any good:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-7;4NF-4093RG-90;9;69TT;43;019A589UBo6W;1UytbUytb40FB1-J5;3Y5Z5XaXaYaW58L0LV350o

I’m not sure if I should go for boon duration/virtues build like this over an AH build (also considering a ~35% crit chance build with Empowering Might and AH).

Any advice welcome.

How is this a shatter build? All I see is a PU build that’s running two shatter traits.

Esprit Dumort.3109:

At least with Mesmer’s they lack the amount of Evade and escapes available.

lol wat

This is so wrong. A mesmer has way more evades/escapes than a permastealth teef. Blurred frenzy, vigor on crit, phase retreat, chaos armor, blink, distortion, and more. A permastealth teef traits 6 into SA and (maybe, but unlikely) 2 into Acro.

I dunno. This idea might break the game mode. I mean, I once got a blue greatsword after wiping a zerg. Imagine if that were a regular occurrence — gg economy

Jeknar.6184:

The strongest 5man comp I’ve seen so far was 2 guardians, 2 mesmers and 1 ele from tM (NSP).

+1 to the tM/SPCA/Holy group. With the exception of the bunker guard, I don’t think any class or build is necessary to be an effective 5 man group — so long as you have different individuals play specific bunker and dps roles (as opposed to 5 hybrid builds). Individual skill and group synergy are much more important.

That said, roaming groups seem to frequently include Shadow Arts heavy thieves, PU mesmers, and nike warriors — basically, being able to disengage and reset a fight is important, however frustrating.

I don’t think this is a problem. Engineers can do something similar with rocket boots. I’ve seen mesmers recreate the same effect with blink and phase retreat, and god knows how OP spectral walk is in a golem.

Ben K.6238:

mango.9267:

but when red always goes to weakest

It doesn’t. It hasn’t for over a year.

It did during Season 2. The server with the fewest number of tournament points (or lowest Glicko if tied) was always red.

Facet.5914:

No it is not false. You are completely mis-attributing the source of the problems and misunderstanding the strategic situation in EBG. Based on your own descriptions, it seems that your point of view has been highly skewed by many encounters with Red teams that are unwilling or unable to fight back at all.

Maybe in your tier, this isn’t a problem, but I assure you in many tiers below you, it is. If my point of view is “skewed”, it’s because this is such a frequent problem. And it isn’t necessarily because red is unwilling or unable to fight back. It’s because of the inherent disadvantage of fighting a stronger server from red corner. To elaborate below, I think you’re misunderstanding me.

Facet.5914:

Unless Green and Blue are colluding, the SM owner cannot spend all his time babysitting this treb strategy. Meanwhile Red can spend all his time countering that strategy. If Red is only a slight underdog, the OL trebs are unassailable.

That’s precisely the point. strongest server doesn’t NEED to babysit the trebs. Red can take them out, but SM will get supply extremely quickly, and the trebs will be rebuilt in 10 minutes. If red is only a “slight underdog”, then I agree with you, and the corner isn’t a problem. Again, everything I’m addressing assumes red is too weak to be able to grab SM.

Facet.5914:

In a properly balanced tier in which people are actually tryharding for ppt, SM outer walls are always down in many places. The construction of any SM trebs at all is not feasible. SM almost never completes any upgrades. The red corner is never under treb pressure. If any of the above are false, the problem is either matchmaking, coverage, green/blue collusion, laziness, or a mixture of these.

I added emphasis to your quote. At this point, I think we’re talking past each other. I agree with you that if red is a slight underdog, the corner is fine. I agree with you that if the matchup was balanced, then this isn’t an issue. But the truth is that matchups are very rarely balanced, and when weakest server plays red in an imbalanced matchup, the treb pressure becomes a real issue.

Facet.5914:

I don’t know how many more times I’m going to have to repeat this. Red is the best underdog corner. Being red is an advantage so long as the red team actually has enough people to make the game resemble real and competitive WvW. If it does not, that is another problem entirely.

I don’t know how many more times I’m going to have to repeat this either. We’re talking in circles now. I agree that red is good if weakest server is still strong enough to be able to cap SM occasionally. However, it often is not.

When it’s not, it’s usually a problem of coverage/population. However, that does not preclude red corner from being a problem. Let me repeat that, in case you miss the point again. Weakest server is often too weak to cap SM. But that doesn’t mean red corner isn’t a problem for the weakest server.

Are population/coverage bigger problems? Obviously, yes. But that doesn’t mean red corner isn’t a problem too. In fact, when weakest server is this weak, red corner starts to work to the detriment of the server, for reasons I’ve outlined above.

Again, the attitude shouldn’t be “well, if they’re that weak, then it doesn’t matter what corner they play”. The attitude should be “if they’re that weak, we shouldn’t put them at even more of a disadvantage”. Giving them red corner does just that.

Facet.5914:

The game should not be balanced around trying to handicap the situation where one side is weak to the point of absurdity. The red corner is supposed to be given to a slight underdog.

Apparently Anet disagrees because during Season 2, they decided to give red to weakest server, mistakenly thinking it would help them. Red needn’t start out “weak to the point of absurdity”. Momentum plays a huge factor in gaining/losing population, and playing red generally prevents weakest server from gaining momentum. This compounds the population problem, as strongest server gains momentum quickly, and weakest server is stuck in their corner.

Facet.5914:

There is no treb pressure on the red corner because the SM north wall is always down from the OL trebs, so red can kill the SM trebs whenever it pleases.

This is just plain false. In theory, this is what should happen, but in practice, strongest server descends on OL trebs, takes them out, and easily caps half of red corner in retaliation. Red is often too afraid to treb for this reason. Even worse if SM is upgraded.

Because weakest server can’t treb SM, strongest server is free to cripple weakest server with constant treb pressure.

What you have in mind works well if red is weak, but not so weak that it has no shot of grabbing SM. However, very often, red is so weak that it can’t grab SM, even when red is playing in the proper tier. When this is the case, playing red cripples weakest server.

Facet.5914:

So the red corner allows the underdog to dig in and not get blown off the map, and shortly thereafter secure nearly it’s fair share of the map. What else could an underdog desire?

The underdog could desire a corner where it’s impossible to have SM trebs contest its waypoint and hit its inner towers. Blue offers this advantage over red. Lang/Dane/QL upgrade just as quickly as Vel/Pang/OW. Bravost can’t be treb’d from SM and is just as easily defended by keep trebs as OW. Lang is just as tough to crack as Veloka. Valley waypoint can’t be contested from SM. Blue offers the advantage of allowing weakest server to dig in without the disadvantage of the possibility of inane treb pressure.

Facet.5914:

The numbers situation had nothing to do with SM or OL. The issue is the coverage differential between IoJ and BP. OL is ~impossible to capture unless Red has basically nobody on the map, even if the outer wall starts down. In other words, so few people that it doesn’t matter which color they are. Capturing Valley or LL would not be “much more difficult.” Outer walls buy you what, a few minutes? This VAST color imbalance of which you speak will rarely even be the difference of a single tick.

I don’t think there’s a “VAST color imbalance” in theory, but when red always goes to weakest, they’re put at an inherent disadvantage. Yes, weakest is usually outnumbered by a fair margin (if they have no shot at SM, they’re usually fairly outnumbered). However, even if outnumbered like this, they shouldn’t be forced to play defense in their corner. The SM trebs magnify the numbers disadvantage by preventing the weakest server from pushing out. Eventually, this defensive posture crumbles and strongest server is able to roll through the corner with ease after wearing red down with SM trebs.

Like I said, strongest server would probably still dominate weakest server in another corner. However, without constant treb pressure on keep + inner tower, weakest server has a better chance of pushing out and building momentum. I think you underestimate the difference red makes in the hands of weakest server.

Facet.5914:

If Red is so weak that it can do literally nothing to stop the chain of events that you portend, the problem is that that server is in the wrong tier.

Even matchups with servers in the proper tier are grossly imbalanced, like the YB/IoJ/BP matchup. BP is too strong to be in T5, but is outnumbered in T4. That said, the attitude shouldn’t be “oh, they’re gonna lose anyway, who cares what corner they play”. Rather, the attitude should be “they have fewer people, so we shouldn’t give them another handicap”.

Straegen.2938:

Lowlands is easier to defend because the same siege can be used to defend multiple gates requiring fewer players and less supply. Players only need to build siege up in two spots in the keep to effectively cover every inner and outer gate. Jerri can also provide some of the best cover fire of any EB tower. Getting through the WG on lowlands is difficult compared to either Blue/Red keep.

I still can’t see how Lowlands is easier to defend. Lord’s room siege will hit north and south inner gates, but will not hit north outer gate. In Valley, lord’s room siege will hit north outer gate as well. Lowlands inner is much larger, requiring more siege to cover all assault angles. If a zerg were to break into Lowlands inner, they could run around on the perimeter, take out mortars, build a treb to destroy cannons/AC’s from a distance, and continue the assault. This isn’t possible in Valley.

Lightsbane.9012:

red in eternal battlegrounds has the best vantage point for taking SM as well, which is why it’s always treb’d. my server is absolutely crushing this week and we’re red. so i’m not sure if it’s intentional that the weakest server gets to be red. Personally i’d rather be red than any color, because when you are the weaker server(in eb anyway) you need to harass, that is your only chance.

I’ve addressed this point already. Weakest often has no shot of grabbing SM, so harassing just brings the wrath of the strongest server upon their corner faster. Being able to treb SM when you’re weakest server often does nothing for you, but allowing strongest server to treb red keep often cripples you.

Straegen.2938:

Green has the strongest keep setup and should be given to the weakest server. There is no choke point getting to its main keep from spawn, easy gates to defend, has the easiest recapture setup for its two weakest towers and short yak runs.

Lowlands is a bit harder to defend than OL or Valley because of the large open spaces on inner and the possibility of trebbing from outside of AC/cannon range on inner.

For this reason, I think blue should go to weakest server. Valley is a bit easier to defend than Lowlands, and the Lang/Dane/QL set up is just as strong, if not stronger than the Vel/Pang/OW set up.

Facet.5914:

mango.9267:

Facet.5914:

mango.9267:

Facet.5914:

mango.9267:

What I want to emphasize is that red corner is fine in theory, but red corner is TERRIBLE when it belongs to WEAKEST server.

The Overlook, Veloka, and Ogrewatch triangle is the strongest area of cross-covering siege in the game. If the weakest server can’t even hold that, what chance would they stand playing from another corner?

At this point, I feel like I’m repeating myself. To simplify my points even further, the problem with giving red to weakest server is that weakest usually has no shot of grabbing SM. SM completely dominates the red corner because the strongest server can treb both the keep and an inner tower. Because red has no shot of grabbing SM, red is in a perpetually defensive position in their corner, due to the SM trebs. This isn’t the case for blue or green.

In fact, weakest server would probably fare much better with blue. Valley can’t be constantly treb’d from SM, so if weakest plays blue, they can at least have an uncontested waypoint and not have to perpetually worry about SM trebs hitting their keep and inner tower.

Exactly how weak do you think Red usually is? It is completely impossible for Red to ever lose OL, OW, or Vel unless they are lazy, or Green/Blue conspire, or they are outnumbered by so many that they don’t even belong in the tier.

The problems I outlined above arise when red is too weak to have a shot at SM. This happens more often than not.

To give you a concrete example, last week, in the YB/IoJ/BP matchup, IoJ completely shut down BP’s corner in late NA/early OCX because BP had no shot of capping SM in that time slot. After the outer wall fell in OCX, IoJ would just waltz golems into OL and cap it.

If you capped OL, you outnumbered them by so many that you could have done the same to Valley or LL. The fact that the outer wall was down was of marginal significance.

But IoJ didn’t start off outnumbering them by such a large margin. Rather, the effects snowballed from the SM problem. With constant treb pressure on red corner, red has limited waypoint access and three weak towers.

If weakest were playing blue or green, at least strongest server couldn’t treb their inner towers, and if strongest server wanted to play for their keeps, they’d have to bring their zerg to take down two sets of walls/gates, as opposed to letting a couple of players treb while their main zerg does other stuff. Giving red to weakest server magnifies the outnumbered problem because the SM trebs are that much more devastating.

Would IoJ have probably cap’d BP keep, regardless of color? Yeah, probably. But it would have been much more difficult if BP had been blue or green. There’s no reason to give weakest server another handicap.

Facet.5914:

mango.9267:

Facet.5914:

mango.9267:

What I want to emphasize is that red corner is fine in theory, but red corner is TERRIBLE when it belongs to WEAKEST server.

The Overlook, Veloka, and Ogrewatch triangle is the strongest area of cross-covering siege in the game. If the weakest server can’t even hold that, what chance would they stand playing from another corner?

At this point, I feel like I’m repeating myself. To simplify my points even further, the problem with giving red to weakest server is that weakest usually has no shot of grabbing SM. SM completely dominates the red corner because the strongest server can treb both the keep and an inner tower. Because red has no shot of grabbing SM, red is in a perpetually defensive position in their corner, due to the SM trebs. This isn’t the case for blue or green.

In fact, weakest server would probably fare much better with blue. Valley can’t be constantly treb’d from SM, so if weakest plays blue, they can at least have an uncontested waypoint and not have to perpetually worry about SM trebs hitting their keep and inner tower.

Exactly how weak do you think Red usually is? It is completely impossible for Red to ever lose OL, OW, or Vel unless they are lazy, or Green/Blue conspire, or they are outnumbered by so many that they don’t even belong in the tier.

The problems I outlined above arise when red is too weak to have a shot at SM. This happens more often than not.

To give you a concrete example, last week, in the YB/IoJ/BP matchup, IoJ completely shut down BP’s corner in late NA/early OCX because BP had no shot of capping SM in that time slot. After the outer wall fell in OCX, IoJ would just waltz golems into OL and cap it.

Facet.5914:

mango.9267:

What I want to emphasize is that red corner is fine in theory, but red corner is TERRIBLE when it belongs to WEAKEST server.

The Overlook, Veloka, and Ogrewatch triangle is the strongest area of cross-covering siege in the game. If the weakest server can’t even hold that, what chance would they stand playing from another corner?

At this point, I feel like I’m repeating myself. To simplify my points even further, the problem with giving red to weakest server is that weakest usually has no shot of grabbing SM. SM completely dominates the red corner because the strongest server can treb both the keep and an inner tower. Because red has no shot of grabbing SM, red is in a perpetually defensive position in their corner, due to the SM trebs. This isn’t the case for blue or green.

In fact, weakest server would probably fare much better with blue. Valley can’t be constantly treb’d from SM, so if weakest plays blue, they can at least have an uncontested waypoint and not have to perpetually worry about SM trebs hitting their keep and inner tower.

@Steelo, I agree with you, but I think you miss the point. The point is that WEAKEST server is red. That means that weakest server will have a very tough time dealing with SM trebs. Strongest server will probably be constantly trebbing OW and OL.Red basically is forced to hang around their corner and continuously counter treb. Even if red takes out SM trebs, they’ll just be rebuilt in 5-10 minutes.

Steelo.4597

Ogrewatc has strong cover fire from Keep and can be reached in seconds (as an outer tower!).

OW should be treated as an inner tower. Keep trebs and mortars will defend OW gate. And OW trebs the inner of red keep. These are properties all inner towers share. Mendon’s, on the other hand, cannot be defended by keep trebs and cannot treb the inner of OL. The outer towers in red are Anz and Mend.

Steelo.4597

Red is the only color that can treb SM from their keep, giving them a huge advantage in ability to ninja SM.

In theory, yes, but in practice, because red belongs to WEAKEST server, they usually have no shot of taking SM. If red does decide to treb, strongest server usually descends on red corner and wreak havoc.

Steelo.4597

The downside is of course keep outer walls being trebbed from SM, but those SM trebs can be dispatched by counter treb.

This is precisely the problem. Red has to constantly be counter trebbing SM. Because red is weakest, they probably won’t be able to push into the strongest server’s territory to cut off enemy supply. SM will keep getting supply faster than red can counter treb. Each time red kills the SM trebs, strongest server just rebuilds them in 5-10 minutes, forcing red back into its corner. This cripples the weakest server.

Steelo.4597

So basically green and blue need to camp north of SM to do damage to the keep or ogrewatch which leaves their back open.

On the contrary, they just have a small group of players trebbing and rebuilding trebs while their zerg runs around either destroying red corner or hitting second strongest server. The trebs force weakest server to stay in red corner.

Steelo.4597

The inner red keep cannot be trebbed except from Veloka and Vista (which can be countertrebbed by a treb that cant be trebbed) and is easily sieged up to overkill because there is no room for the enemy to build anything.

This is wrong. OW can treb the inner of red keep. Hell, you can even treb the inner of red keep from the cliffs between SM and OW.

Steelo.4597

So the “triangle of power” how i call it (ogre, veloka, keep) give red a very strong fallback position.

I discussed this already, but OW is really vulnerable when in the hands of weakest server. It’ll be constantly treb’d from SM. This means that red’s “fallback” is only Pang, Vel, and OL. However, OL will be constantly treb’d, contesting the waypoint and eventually bringing down the outer wall

What I want to emphasize is that red corner is fine in theory, but red corner is TERRIBLE when it belongs to WEAKEST server.

Radian.2478:

Pangloss gives double that Speldan does so as long as you keep upgrading pangloss and scouting it more, your keep should upgrade faster than any other keep in ebg.

Your keep gets upgraded faster, but not fast enough to keep up with SM trebs. At some point, you have all the upgrades, and you’re just constantly getting treb’d to keep the waypoint contested.

Radian.2478:

Also didn’t mention that red is the only side that can treb SMC from their keep.

Yes, red can treb SM, but the problem is that WEAKEST server is red. This means that red usually has no chance of taking SM. In practice, what happens when red trebs SM is that the strongest server descends upon red corner, destroys the trebs, takes Pang/OW/Anz/Speld/Mend, and leaves red crippled for a tick or two. Red is often too afraid to treb SM for this reason.

Like I said, red corner is fine in theory for not-weakest server. However, the problem is that red always goes to weakest server, which has no way of dealing with SM trebs without being put in a perpetually defensive position.

Jeknar.6184:

I personally think Anet hate red, even tho it’s the colour of their logo. Arid Fortress in EotM is also the worst keep of the 3 colours…

Personally I’d give Overlook to Green, Valley to Red, and Lowlands to blue.

I think that Valley is a much easier keep to defend than Lowlands, and it can cover the back towers with quite ease.

While you have the advantage of holding the front towers from lowlands, if the enemy go straight for your keep, you’re likely to be in a huge trouble if you’re the weakest server (Outer lowlands is a pain to defend, as much as a contantly trebbed Overlook). I’d take being able to defend my keep over being able to hold 2 towers (Besides, QL can pretty much defend itself, so Durios is the only draw back from blue side).

Red isn’t so bad when it doesn’t belong to weakest server. However, when weakest server is always red, that puts them at a huge disadvantage. In order to make use of the full benefits of red corner, you have to be able to hold SM, or at least cap it to get rid of trebs. The biggest problem is that weakest server usually has no shot of taking SM.

Giving OL to green would be insanely OP. Then green would have a very easy to defend keep, along with a very easy to defend corner. If green got OL, green would have to belong to weakest server.

I understand why Anet would think red would be good for weakest server, but in practice, it’s really not.

The problems:

1) Anzalias, Speldan, and Mendon’s are all very tough to defend and upgrade. The yaks walk a LONG path. And because red is weakest, it’s likely that all three are going to flip constantly, depriving red of at least 25 PPT.

2) Anet thinks that Veloka, Pangloss, and Ogrewatch compensate for the Anzalias/Speldan/Mendon’s set up, but this isn’t true. The biggest problem is that OW should be considered an inner tower because an enemy can treb red keep inner from OW. However, because red is weakest, it’s unlikely red will hold SM. And OW can be constantly treb’d from SM. OW is the only inner tower that can be treb’d from SM. In practice, this means that the weakest server will have trouble holding Anz/Speld/Mend/OW, leaving the weakest server only Pang/Vel/OL. The costs far outweigh the benefits.

3) Overlook outer can be constantly treb’d from SM. Again, because weakest server is red, it’s unlikely that they’ll be able to hold SM for very long, if at all. On the flip side, the owner of SM can keep building trebs to treb outer wall of OL. This offers a number of disadvantages:

• First, OL waypoint is constantly contested.

• Second, if the wall falls, it’s much easier for the stronger server to waltz in, build 4 superior rams, and ninja the keep because they only really have to go through one set of walls/gates.

• Third, red will constantly have to build counter trebs or counter AC’s to deal with the SM trebs. And usually, SM gets supply faster than red can counter treb, so the stronger server can just keep rebuilding trebs to force weakest server into a perpetually defensive position. Not only is it difficult to hold Anz/Speld/Mend/OW, but weakest server will constantly be in their corner trying to take out SM trebs, which just keep getting rebuilt. This prevents the weakest server from pushing out of their corner, even if they wanted to.

To make things worse, Anet thinks it’s a good idea to give the strongest server green corner. The only real drawback to green corner is Lowlands, but that’s pretty much a non-issue because the strongest server usually doesn’t need to worry about enemies going for their EB keep anyway. However, green conveys a lot of advantages. Both outer towers in green corner can be defended by keep trebs and mortars. This means that enemy servers pretty much have to cata Klovan and Wildcreek, allowing green to upgrade their outer towers much easier. This makes it that much harder for red to disrupt the supply flow to SM, which usually belongs to green.

tl;dr: Anz/Speld/Mend/OW very difficult to hold for weakest server. OL constantly treb’d from SM. Strongest server rebuilds trebs faster than weakest server can take them out. Forces weakest server to stay in their corner.

Needs moar quadruple Ascalonian shatter mesmer roaming