How do you take that on? Either rush the healer fast enough to where he can’t react, or you can find a way to nullify the pets attack (coughprojectilecough) so you can focus more comfortably against the caster.
If the pet is dealing that much damage to you, focus on it, killing it will take it out of the fight for quite some time.
Even with Druid support a pet will die quickly under pressure from anyone with good damage.
If you’re not dealing enough damage due to being on the tanky side of things (in which case they really shouldn’t be a threat) then run, you are ill equiped for that encounter. You can’t have a build that can compete with every single other build out there.
With regard to the waypoint fee, I don’t think that’s a good idea.
It’s already difficult enough for WvW only players to keep their gold and it would be detrimental to players that waypoint often to buff up siege etc in keeps and use the waypoint to save time.
Sorry about the confusion. What I meant by not making WPs free was to not make them available as soon as a keep is captured. The WPs will still cost 0 gold to make, they will just be a part of the T3 upgrade (just like on SM). This will make waypointed keeps more meaningful, because if you lose the keep you will lose the waypoint until you recapture it and upgrade it again.
This is all about making people want to defend their home bl, rather than retaking it.
When there are people defending, the offensive groups have something to fight. When they have something to fight, they are more likely to play on that map. (This could be the case with roamers, small groups, or large zergs).
Ah, that’s fair. Yeah having the waypoints tied to a later upgrade would definitely sway people towards defending, more-so at the start of the capture.
Plus it seems to me that the big overhaul would involve overhauling the servers. Changing developers will only make stuff take even longer at this point. And it has been already taking too long.
Oh yeah, definitely don’t change devs on something like that, but other issues and overhauls could be worked on by newer devs.
I’d love for a PvE or PvP dev to work on the reward system for example, it only positively impacts the game mode without impacting the working of the game mode itself.
No rangers are more easier to survive than thief due to a good sustain and kiting , range etc
and thief is definitely harder to play than rangers.
I completely disagree, Thief has ample stealth, multiple teleporting abilities and multiple evade weapons skills and with Daredevil you can have 3 dodges and using the new heal can replenish 2/3rds of your endurance bars, essentially giving you 5 dodges.
Like I said, each class has builds that can be played with skill or can be a breeze to play. Thief is definitely not lacking in the survival side of things though.
With regard to the waypoint fee, I don’t think that’s a good idea.
It’s already difficult enough for WvW only players to keep their gold and it would be detrimental to players that waypoint often to buff up siege etc in keeps and use the waypoint to save time.
Check the video above and see how cheesy mode and lame playstyle that druid has.
all he does in the video just runs kite and massive heal repeat rotation and his pet doing all the work. And no, dont compare thief to a ranger because thief require skills at least to play effective and more likely d/p and s/d are the only competible weapon set.
and, Why not nerf those 2 pets (not the whole pets and the mechanics) and buff other ranger stuff because pet is just there to support u in combat but look at that video lol funny that pet > ranger. Half of the time in that video all he does as ranger = heals and run.
The video you linked might be a bad example… he has to continuously move and heal to stay alive (his health drops really low a lot), not exactly a lazy playstyle.
Bit rude about the comparison of Thief and Ranger, both classes have builds that require skill to play effectively and equally both have builds that require no effort (permaheal Druid and Condistealth Thief). I play both classes regularly in WvW and since the Daredevil came out, I think the Thief is considerably easier to survive with, though the buffs coming next week are sorely needed for their power weapons.
Really, in this case it’s not the pets that were overpowered, you seem to be more annoyed by the Druids healing and taking your anger out in the wrong direction.
I dunno, but there’s an update in a week. Some are PvE some PvP some WvW. We haven’t seen the full list of updates, just the major points.
They have different teams for these things. Surely you wouldn’t want PvE focussed developers change WvW. Though I guess some will say that even the WvW focussed developers are PvE developers, but at least they would be focussed on WvW.
The WvW updates next week are minimal. It’s mostly stuff we’ve had before, we’ve had PPK before, the change to upgrades is a mix of what we have now and what we used to have, catapult supply cost is being reduced after they’d increased it without warrant and the rally change, which to be fair, does sound nice.
I’d be surprised if they add anything else, hell, I’d be shocked.
Yeah, I’d want more developers involved in WvW regardless of their focus in the game, especially if it’d mean updating the game and potentially making it a great game mode. They can’t exactly make it much worse than it currently is. The current WvW devs have made some questionable calls before, maybe some fresh eyes would do them some good.
And still no comment from them despite the entire forum and reddit being in agreement that this overhaul being delayed constantly is demoralising for the community especially when we don’t know if this will benefit the game mode or not.
Release smaller overhauls gradually, focus on things that work then trickle things in over time.
Fixed some complaints with the new map? Release them.
Have an idea that could help balance the playerbase? Try it.
Want to test changes you’ve made to the Alpine maps? Test them live for a week.
Have a reward system in mind? Get it finished and release it.
Seriously, you have a playerbase that has had stale content, imbalanced combat and silly matchups for years. Having kitten beta events with livestreamers isn’t cutting it, test it live for a week (like the golem week but actually helpful) and listen to the feedback you get from the playerbase from it.
Honestly, I’d rather they buffed the original pets to do the same damage.
Running those pets with Beastmastery makes them feel like an actual contributing factor in my build rather than a utility.
Id like them to be about on the same level as the current Smokescale if I could. But in most cases improving there ability to stick to a target would go a long way. Which is one way that the smokescale is just so kitten superior.
Yup, Smokescale has been amazing. Having a pet that can actually hit a moving target is just too good compared to the old pets.
With the balance patch coming up soon, could we please consider changing the Sword […] autoattacks to condition based attacks?
No, not if the direct damage of sword gets nerfed in the process, which you seem to be fine with.
Not largely, a small nerf to compensate wouldn’t be awful as Sword autoattack definitely has damage to spare.
Ideally, in my mind, they wouldn’t change the power damage and just add the condi onto it. I’d probably want them to go with poison as the addition as it deals the lowest damage as a condition so damage-wise it’d only really benefit a condition build.
That would only be the case it if gets nerfed drastically on the power side, if it gets a small decrease in power damage, I don’t think it would prevent power users from using it with their OH weapons.
You are right about the Axe being terrible to use with power based builds so at least swapping that to condition based should be a no brainer.
Sword is not a condition weapon and never meant to be. Ppl take it because it offers short cd evades and a leap, just because it has poison application does not mean it has to get overhauled to be a condition weapon (poison is good regardless of your stats because of it’s effect).
Ranger has 4 condition based weapons: mh axe, shortbow, dagger, torch and 5 power weapons: sword, greatsword, longbow, oh axe, warhorn (ok this is a utility weapon but i am counting it as power because of hunter’s call).
Making sword more akin to hybrid builds would probably mean it gets nerfed in the power department (and anyway mh axe is suppose to be the hybrid weapon as evident by the axe trait).
I understand the need for a better hybrid main hand, but if anything it should be axe that gets buffed along side shortbow, and maybe staff be the one to get a overhaul to a hybrid set.
Whilst it was never meant to be, having Sword as a hybrid would make it much more desirable, allowing it to be used with Warhorn or any of the condition based offhands without drastically nerfing many builds. (since Greatsword already offers adequate power based attacks and a gap closer)
Also, as you said, it is mainly used as an evade spam but swapping would give condi builds a viable main hand damage dealer. Right now, power users have 2.
Though Staff would be alright as a condition option, my main issue was the lack of melee-ranged condition main hand weapons and Axe only being 2/3rds of a condition weapon and is drastically missing the main 3rd component. For two-handers we do have the Shortbow so I didn’t think we’d particularly need a second when we’re missing a one hand main condition weapon.
Edit: Thinking about one of your points, poison is useful to both power and condition builds and since it now stacks intensity, having it be the addition to the Sword autoattack could be a nice compromise.
With the balance patch coming up soon, could we please consider changing the Sword and Axe main hand autoattacks to condition based attacks?
Currently the only true main condition weapon we have is the Shortbow, however since our main condition damage dealer is an offhand weapon (Torch, not counting traps for this) then it feels odd to have only power based weapons to pair with it.
Both Sword and Axe have conditions tied to their alternate attacks but the autoattack hits like a wet noodle with no power stats.
We currently have Greatsword, Longbow, and Staff as power based main weapons so it wouldn’t be too much of a loss to the power side to swap them.
As for the pairing for Warhorn, perhaps making the Sword a dual-damage weapon similar to the Warriors Sword autoattack would be a good compromise as it deals decent power damage whilst applying bleeds.
This whole ordeal has utterly killed my enthusiasm to log in and play the game. I’ve went from playing 6+ hours a day pre-HoT to 3 or so post HoT to 30 minutes or less this week (some days I don’t even bother logging in, and that means a lot considering how meticulous I was about at least completing my dailies).
I doubt my play time per day will increase until they actually talk to us about this crap, and if it’s true that it’ll be that late in the year, I doubt I’ll bother even putting the effort in to stay interested.
Anet seem to think people will stop playing and then all swarm back when they update the game mode whenever they decide to… I don’t think many that leave will bother even logging in considering how badly this whole thing has been handled.
I’ve gone from playing for hours on end and never missing a daily in game to logging in every few days if you’re lucky because I’ve lost faith in Anets ability to fix this game mode or even act with any semblance of common decency.
So many delays on this overhaul and no information given, not even an acknowledgement of the worries the frustrated but loyal fans are voicing is just sad.
So much for WvW being their main focus after HoTs release.
That’s infuriating. We went from it supposed to be releasing with HoT to later this year? Not even a general date?
Fun fact Anet, your game is 3 and a half years old – you’re not going to get any large influx of permanent players at this point, you need to wake up and realise that if you don’t do everything you can to keep what players you have then you’re throwing away the future for the game.
Your WvW players, though not as large as the other game modes, are some of your most dedicated players. It’s just sad to see such a great game mode thrown on the back burner.
Release changes sooner and in smaller chunks and improve it throughout the year, don’t wait until the end and release it at once when you’re risking losing a portion of your player base.
This is a neat Wintersday skin that they clearly intended players to get in 29 days with some effort (or at least complete the festival-specific achievements). It is not a “prestige” item. It’s not “premium”. Those labels were added by players as a means of rationalizing the astounding quantity of holiday booze it called for, or for minimizing or outright dismissing the desires of other players to acquire it.
So, ten thousand drinks? That has to be a mistake.
PS to all the players that don’t like the new maps, if you spend the same amount of time playing the map as you cry about them than you will see how easy and fun they are.
Bit rude there.
For me, the new maps, whilst being nicely made, are considerably less fun than the old maps.
There’s too much focus on verticality and that mid event is a disaster. That’s my opinion, it differs from your own one, but it is equally valid.
Any comment here, both negative and positive, helps the devs create the ideal game mode – and if this thread is any indication, it could start getting much better from here on.
However, the no rez while in combat one should be tested on a large scale first to see how it works out, and we’d need to see specifics on that too (will getting hit while rezzing interrupt the rez for example?)
It sounds like you just simply wont have the option of ressing someone that is fully dead, you can however, pick up someone that is downed.
I don’t think too much testing needs done for this, it seems like it’ll solve the issue of having larger groups power ressing all of their downed enemies before their smaller sized opponents get a chance to fight back.
Changes look good, definitely needs implemented sooner rather than later!
I suggest swapping the waypoints for borderlands back to the original Alpine BL system. Defenders should have the luxury of traversing the map through keeps in order to better defend their positions.
We’ve noticed that you’ve had a few questions about Wintersday, and specifically about the Wintersday Presence Collection. We’d like to share the following info with you:
Wintersday is scheduled to end on January 12, 2016.
We will be leaving the Festive Imbiber achievement active throughout the year.
We will not be able to change the text that indicates it’s a Wintersday-only achievement, but you will be able to continue to imbide (in moderation, please – think of the dolyak children!) to gain that achievement.
Enjoy the festival and we’ll see you in the game!
Hey Gaile, is it possible that you guys can keep the Karma merchant available year round to exchange Karma for gifts in order to have this as a casual long term goal?
Where is this Karma merchant?
It’s in Divinity’s Reach, he’s just down the stairs where the Queens Gauntlet door is, next to the Tixx portal.
He trades Karma for Wintersday Gifts each day (or infinitely if you have Flawless Snowflakes and Karma)
We’ve noticed that you’ve had a few questions about Wintersday, and specifically about the Wintersday Presence Collection. We’d like to share the following info with you:
Wintersday is scheduled to end on January 12, 2016.
We will be leaving the Festive Imbiber achievement active throughout the year.
We will not be able to change the text that indicates it’s a Wintersday-only achievement, but you will be able to continue to imbide (in moderation, please – think of the dolyak children!) to gain that achievement.
Enjoy the festival and we’ll see you in the game!
Hey Gaile, is it possible that you guys can keep the Karma merchant available year round to exchange Karma for gifts in order to have this as a casual long term goal?
They’ve done this sort of thing for a long time now, dating back to Guild Wars 1. For whatever reason they want some holiday rewards to be out of the reach of most people and since its baked into their reward philosophy then asking for a change is wasting time.
Wintersday 2007: Mini Polar Bear. Drop rate chance from Wintersday Chest is 0.02%. Wintersday Grab Bag, maybe 0.2% (if I remember correctly you could get 2 Grab Bags per account per year)
By Mini Polar Bear standards of access, they are handing out these shoulders to everyone who wants one.
Thing is, if these were RNG based like the preserved bee etc then I think most people would be totally fine with it being “rare”.
But having it both tied to a festival meta achievement and collection makes it a bit much, especially considering how vastly disproportionate it is compared to every other achievement involved.
I just want to be able to play toypocalypse with my friends, not be placed with random players.
you can this year and its the best change anet ever did to any minigame ever :o
right click name/party icon -> join friend in pvp
if their instance is not full, you will join. if their instance is full, youll be dumped into a random instance. it isnt perfect,it isnt even great because of how many people there are doing these things and how hard it can be to actually get in the correct instance, but its there and it IS functional.
Anet getting their multiplayer ideas from Dark Souls.
You are all freaking out over 10k drinks? Wintersday started today and I have already drank 1000 without spending a cent on the Tp. 10 more days and I will have the 10k that is apparently impossible to reach. As with all collections, they would lose their value if everyone had them instantly. So if you are dedicated at getting them, I suggest you start opening gifts instead of wasting time complaining about it on the forums.
Tldr: there is nothing wrong with the 10k of you really want to work for it.
Because not everyone is willing or able to spend more than 3 hours a day farming presents?
To do the achievement I’d need to ignore WvW, Fractals, HoT stuff and focus solely on farming, that’s no fun.
I’ve spent hours playing the Wintersday events and gotten maybe 400, 500 if I’m lucky, from the gifts. I can’t imagine doing that every day – I’d burn out.
Man, what happened to just getting skins from completing the event meta achievement?
This is supposed to be a happy, fun event for everyone. What fun is there in farming for presents for several hours each day of the event or spending mad amounts of gold?
It’s a Christmas event, who cares if everyone gets the kitten skin! Make the game fun, not a grind.
Guys, stop calling this a “change.” It wasn’t a change – it was a fix.
Besides, did you guys really think that they’d do something nice for WvW? Ha. Ha ha ha.
A fix implies a positive change, it would feel disgusting calling this step backwards a fix.
Totally agree on your last point though, here’s hoping their new WvW content they’re working on is good – hard to gets my hopes up for it with changes like this happening.
It’s equal to getting 2 bonus chests, which is really nice! Easily get 6-8 per chest.
What isn’t nice is that I have to grind the Maguuma Jungle hero points for the 7th kitten time!
So little? Man that’s stupid. So I can get 3-4 times as many from doing Maguuma HPs than I could in the equivalent time I’d be spending karma training? (not to mention regular WvW play)
Having soul bound rewards from an account bound reward system is utterly nonsense.
I would stop playing GW2 completely if they did this. One of the better features of WvW is that players get to use gear that they earn. Those gear and food differences also allow a wider set of performance builds than sPvP.
Same here, though I would love it if they added a merchant that sold common level 80 food in exchange for badges of honor to make playing the game mode with stats in mind slightly less expensive.
Wait, I don’t think he’s saying that they remove the gates/walls from a Keep at a certain time. They just make it so siege is able to take down gates/walls for a particular period of time during the day. Players have to bring siege, players can still defend walls, and players ultimately have to take the tower/keep. No NPC armies would be involved.
At least that’s how I understood it. It still may not work, and may not be received well, that’s very true. But hey, if you make a peak capture last for a certain duration into the night, it reduces the effect of nightcapping, doesn’kitten And that’s something people have been clamoring about for a while. They would just need to balance the “siegeable” times so that players in other timezones can do something valuable (though a small population manage camps/yaks could be designed to be valuable while the keep is invulnerable, as well. Those off-hours folks just wouldn’t be able tot ake large objectives with a tiny group).
Ah, I see. I went the other way in thinking, that he meant an added vulnerability rather than the only way is to cap during set times. If that is the case, ignore my other posts and blame poor reading skills.
I feel like that would mean a huge overhaul of the current WvW system and potentially losing a portion of the playerbase that couldn’t cap keeps and towers as and when they could get on to play.
It could definitely get rid of zerging a little, but the risk of players losing interest could be too much.
EDIT: Isn’t like you can take a border in night too? I don’t see a difference.
To flip a border overnight you need to use siege (outside the terrible event at mid) and put the effort in to take keeps and towers, in which the opposing side can defend against it.
As I said in a comment a moment ago, without gates and walls a small defending force has no way to hold back a larger enemy force, even with siege.
I don’t think this idea should just be discarded without examining it.
As far as a server having an advantage because they are more active at a particular time, that’s kind of how it already is anyway. If one server has way more off-peak coverage than another, it has an enormous advantage, because they’ll tick during off-peak and potentially be fully fortified during peak.
I still think that it’ll be a case of whomever has the higher numbers during whichever time the gates and walls drop will take a huge advantage in the matchup.
Without gates and walls no small number of defenders can hold a zerg back, even with siege.
I’m not saying the idea should be dismissed, but my opinion is that it wouldn’t work well and wouldn’t be received well. I don’t think we need more AI controlled events in WvW that take the job of flipping T3 borderlands.
It’s only been just over 2 weeks since release so expecting results now would be a bit unreasonable.
However, I did expect some sort of communication in the forums with their general plan of action for this by now. Something like “in the next couple of months we’ll be looking at this, that and these other things but we’ll have a delay of a month to make sure the expansions release is running smoothly”.
I bet the motivation is to make capping more meaningful. When people know when something is going to happen, you are more likely to get defenders and attackers, resulting in PvP. Also, if you guarantee ownership of an objective for X hours, that’s big for PPT, too, instead of just trading.
I wouldn’t rule it out.
The problem is that many of the servers run at different time zones so they could set this to happen at 9am but 2/3 of the servers could be mostly offline during that time.
It wouldn’t particularly matter which time you made it, whichever server is most active during that time for whatever reason will have a distinct advantage in the matchup.
Besides, people don’t seem to like the PvE event at mid that does this in a similar fashion right now, but at least you can defend your keeps and towers by beating the other servers in the event.
It’s still possible to run in small groups, the towers and keeps can also be capped solo – it just takes considerably longer…and isn’t much fun (spending 5-10 minutes catapulting a wall is mind-numbing).
My main gripe is that they cut small guilds out from being able to claim positions, no more +5, no upgrades on keeps/towers (the buffs and triggered upgrades, not the walls etc).
That’s the problem. I already go to PvE enough. I don’t need more reasons to go to pve. I’m already annoyed enough the gatherer daily can never be done in wvw. I should have more reason to go to WvW. As long as WvW is dependent on PvE items, this will always be the case
And if a group is really that obsessed with gathering while Rome burns, that’s simply the fault of them for not having enough discipline or being able to place priorities properly— they’d probably be liabilities in a real fight anyways and are the same people that would stick behind to cap a sentry when a big fight is ahead.
I think it’s only half the problem, the other side definitely lies with Anet.
For one, we should be able to buy food and stones with Badges of Honour, I made a topic for that earlier today.
Secondly, the WvW stuff in the Guild Halls should be entirely build-able with WvW specific items – Badges of Honour, Memoires of Battle, basic siege.
Both of these would remove the need/greed of having to farm nodes (in WvW or PvE) for anything other than PvE upgrades, crafting or profit.
The second change would also allow smaller guilds to actively play a part in WvW again, letting them claim and upgrade camps, towers and keeps in WvW as they used to be able to do.
How about for paper towers/keeps the defense for keeping gliders from flying in would be players actively defending with ranged weapons and ballistas? The map is too automated right now, some active play would be nice.
For upgraded towers/keeps add an automated ballista that acts as an anti-air turret, allowing less active defending the longer you keep it. Say the AA-turret acts like the current ballista skill 2, an AoE bleed that could knock gliding enemies (and zergs since it’s AoE) out of the skies.
It’d add a high risk (falling, splat, dead) – high reward (skip gates/walls) play style to the map through gliding.
Since badges of honour are fairly abundant, could you perhaps add a merchant to the maps that sell the more common types of food used in WvW in exchange for say 20 badges?
So you trade 20 badges of honour and receive a 30 minute food that is account bound allowing players from riches to rags to be able to continually afford food for playing in WvW without haemorrhaging gold.
