Guild Wars 2

I would be interested to see how gameplay would change if the AoE limits were removed, or even raised to a higher cap.

There should be disincentive to stand in AoE circles, regardless of your numbers.

FWIW Cantur, Agg is actually pretty kitten impressive at times. They can hold out against a zerg regardless of numbers (or so it seemed last night). Unfortunately, they are limited in number, and having a small group of people hold them at QL last night, we ninja’d the rest of the ET structures before they had a chance to react and get out of their zergball in QL.

They are some tanky fiends, fun to fight.

Darek.1836:

You’ve probably noticed by now you wipe against FC zergs of equal size every single time and often wipe to FC zergs of less numbers, or at least half a tough time with them.

Also, lmao, this thread is full of funny today.

Runamok.9638:

And boom goes the dynamite!

I was one of the random dudes tagging along with FoE last night. There wasn’t even a Mesmer to provide a false inflation in the number of red tags. Do we have a Mesmer here? Nope. Do we have a Mesmer here? Nope. Do we have a Mesmer here? Nope. So don’t be trying to pull an ET on ET by claiming you fought a much bigger force than you actually did. We are wise to our own games you see!

This made me laugh out loud at work. This thread is now over, Runamok wins.

Is that … ? Is that a tail I see? A tail between your legs as you retreat back up to your safe haven of higher tiers?

Seriously though, there is enough hypocracy abound to make one choke this week in server-specific accusations.

He’s talking about spreadshot, which is one of the new abilities with the WvW rankings for the Ballista. It is incredibly strong if an enemy gets within close/melee range.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World_Experience#WXP_Upgrades

see Ballista Mastery.

Where you standing right in front it? A spreadshot fires many, if you get hit by all of them… yeah, it should insta kill you.

Imho, basic siege should be even stronger. It makes most people *shrug at it. For example, if a Treb explosion actually did damage to players it might make Ele’s think twice about standing in the blast while waiting for their Swirling Winds CD to go off.

The fact that siege is something you should look for is part of what adds the missing element to WvW.

I don’t think you understood the point. There is no incentive for the masses to go out of their way to improve. Yes, ideally it would be the perfect time. But when the masses drop siege and PvDoor because there is no resistance before you can work on a ‘new strat or tactic’ it rather invalidates it, doesn’t it?

The ‘path of least resistance’ is not exclusive to Sorrow’s Furnace.

Are you just being argumentative for the sake of? I already said it was situational many times over. If you see an opportunity where you can knock off a group, swap to Tornado and use it, if that doesn’t happen then don’t use it as a roamer.

Roaming is a situation, and Tornado is usually not appropriate for that situation, i.e. ‘situational’. That’s great that you don’t want to use it all the time, no said you had to. That doesn’t invalidate it.

(insert watchoutbadkitten meme here)

Seriously though, insulting builds and player skill because you can’t find a use for Tornado is just silly. And if any build can accomplish that many knockbacks while doing the supplemental AoE’s then please inform me, I would be glad to be proven wrong.

It takes a half second to swap an elite when you see an opportunity. If you’re crying because it’s not useful 100% of the time, then yeah, you’ll definitely want to use another class that fits your criteria.

Would I enjoy a buff to Tornado? Sure. Is it useless/underpowered in it’s current state? No, 3x Power and 2x Crit / 2x Vit is not something to shy away at; and that’s ignoring the simple utility of the skill itself.

Imho, the ‘bads’ are the ones that don’t know how to use a skill when it’s appropriate.

I cannot disagree with you more. All of the Ele elites are very useful, they are just situational. Firesword racks up a ton of damage on a damage build, Elemental when traited is nice supplemental damage and AoE mitigation on a short cooldown, and Tornado/Whirlpool is incredibly useful in a myriad of situations.

If I bring my elementalist into WvW, I always find an opportunity to use it and get some ledge kills. I don’t care that another class may be able to do it better in a different way. Knockbacks every 3 seconds for 15 seconds = 5 AoE knockbacks in a row while you have increased health. This is also supplemented by AoE blind, AoE chain lightning, or additional AoE knockbacks.

Hate all you want, your opinion however is not factual, nor does it deprive me of my enjoyment. It does however spread misinformation, so at least you have that I guess.

Fuzzion.2504:

Wrong sub-forum.

Anyway, everyone gave up on that elite skill ages ago. Only nooblets use em.

Eh, Tornado on a bridge or near a cliff (especially with a bunker build) is not only useful and incredibly powerful, but loads of fun to use.

There was an incident where we worked a zerg back up to a cliff, 3 ele’s using tornados simultaneously = most hilarious win ever, plus tons of bags. Noob or not, it was fun, and I play this game for fun.

No please, to the amulet jewel system. sPvP gets rid a LOT of variety and custom builds that I spent a lot of time on for WvW. I’d rather not see all that work gone or even trivialized.

As far as skill balances and damage, if you really think WvW is glass canon focused, you are wrong. Especially within higher tiers. Beyond this, WvW is seperate from sPvP because it contains PvE and PvP elements.

If you want purely PvP go into sPvP/tPvP, and ask for additions to accomodate what you think is missing there. Don’t screw up WvW for those that enjoy the structure as it is.

Haldunius.7864:

As a disinterested third party, let me add something to the skill v number discussion regarding SF/ET/FC.

First – Can we all admit SF has quite a large population? I haven’t been through tiers 7, 6, or 5 too recently, but back when FA was in T5….I think you guys have more people than us. Also, does SF just stay up late or do you guys have a significant overnight presence (NA centric overnght)?

Second – When you have the numbers, you dont’ need to worry about the skills and everything just kind of bleeds together – on both fronts. After FA had grown in population, we received similar critiques – you guys have no skills. You just zerg. So forth. I believe there are two things going on here:

(a) When you have that big of a population advantage (as we did) you don’t need to utilize complex strategies or skills and I’m sure after weeks of the same thing for SF….it’s pretty hard for them to be motivated to try new stuff (it’s like using superior blue prints when you know you can just PvDoor it real fast so why waste the money).

(b) On the flip side, with what I believe to be a large population advantage, it’s easy for the bads to get right in there with the goods and all blend in. On ET/FC, you guys have gotten pounded so long you probably consist of more hardcore individuals. On SF, their population permits the greenest PvEr to get out there and try to crack skulls and just stick to the zergs for safety. The bigger question is, will these people still show up when SF breaks out of T8?

If I were on SF, I’d be working on community development right now to make sure the population doesn’t turn fairweather after the first challenge. I don’t mean that as an insult to SF, but rather a comment on humanity. I have to say, I read the threads about SF and T8 before moving down, but I didn’t really anticipate this level of disparity.

I don’t mean any of this as a knock on SF, so please don’t take it that way. I hope you guys either find great competition in T8, or if you make it out, make it far up the tiers. I truly believe you have the raw materials to do it.

None of that was taken as a knock, in fact this is exactly the feedback I was asking for when you guys first came down. We’ve already taken quite a few steps that match your suggestions, and working further to cover other gaps that we are aware of.

And yes, I can almost predict with a certainty right now, that when we get hit harder, we are going to lose some of our WvW population, it happened when we started dropping from t6, I see no reason why it wouldn’t again. It would give us more incentive to improve on the areas we are already trying though.

That being said, thank you again for your feedback.

At the risk of getting yet another infraction for whatever reason, you sure had an awful lot of clones then, it would be hard to hit you with ballistas that weren’t constructed yet, (I already said we had pugs) and LH wasn’t with us.

Teamkiller.4315:

Lol wut? I sure hope for your sake you took some screenies.

Btw, most of the times we dont even have 20-30 people online in FC. You can ask the commander of Agg yesterday, we were having trouble actually getting 20 for the GvG.

Saying you wiped a VK group of 20-30 with 10 people is pretty ludicrous.

Sure I could post a bunch of screens, but all you’ll see is us fighting you, what would that prove?

And 10 against 20-30 is absolutely ludicrous, I agree, as I said, we had several pugs/randoms with us. The 30 number is what you grew to (with pugs/randoms) after we had worked you down south, when you were up at the northmost camp you probably had 20 (just [VK])with you running from Crag.

As for the dreaming, sure, you can call me out on that all you want, unfortunately, I can’t catch video 24/7 on my machine and short of video of you going stealth, dissappearing, and then magically appearing at the bottom of the map, well that’s up to your interpretation.

Your builds may be great for commonplace zergs that are geared and traited for ‘zergs’, and staying alive; but every time I’ve encountered [VK] the zerg ball is easy enough to get out of the path of, and focus you guys down one by one. Honestly, it comes off to me as not being used to fighting ‘glassy’ players that output a ton of damage when they aren’t taken down quickly.

ps: I say ‘you’ in assumption that you are a part of [VK], if you’re not then negate that and replace it with something generic directed at them.

Ohai.8346:

Only on reset night brotha, the other 6 nights we are between 10 and 20 like ginley said.

Reset night is the only time I directed the ‘zerg’ at FoE.

kuora.5402:

It really is not. Maybe you’re always there too late because they get wiped so easily when they’re actually challenged.

I really hope you are not indicative of ET commanders and their sentiment. At this point, you’re either trolling or just excessively bitter and ignoring factual evidence. Throwing blame on someone else, where improvement is needed, is pretty immature.

edit: Changed your signature after your post, are you not in fact a Commander for ET? Or are you just angry about transferring from t1?

kuora.5402:

…As opposed to 50+ man SF zerg that PvDoors all day.

Lol… I would love for ET and FC to hop onto our side for a week and see many numbers are actually fielded during the day. That ‘numbers argument’ is such a false scapegoat.

You do understand that 40 is a zerg to us down here in little old t8, right?

Even groups of 15 are referenced as a zerg at times, usually to call something out quickly as opposed to referring to numbers, but still. Manning 40 together from the same guild is not a small feat by any means down here.

Dark Omens.5768:

Wow…. I almost read that whole thing…. Close call guys lmao

*sigh. Feel brave now? I’m sure that was a very difficult thing to post, seeing as it contributed to the topic, and was very highly controversial.

Ah well, there ends my attempt at world peace (t8 peace) for the day, I shall go back to the slaughter of these ‘pro’ enemies.

Runamok.9638:

I would like to retract my last comment. It seems that our hope was both unfounded and fleeting. Sanctuary bubble = popped. The road toward recovery is long and arduous. Get better soon OK?

It’s that whole split personality thing, …I think, internal love/hate relationship something or other, let’s just go with the insanity plea and call it good then.

Removing my post before someone reports it as somehow offensive (quoted below if it doesn’t get changed), prefer not to receive yet another odd infraction for formatting or somthing.

I think it was more because it actually had a date. Could we just change the date on this topic instead?

Well congratulations, you took SM. It only a t2 guild from FA to take our outer wall on FC and 2 t4 guilds from Mag to breach a weakened inner gate with ET and push us out for good. I have to admit, I am a bit irritated, we going to lose a lot of rating this week.

Just please keep the challenge up, if it dies off again, like it has before, all our 3 months of work is going to be rather futile.

-150 points is ridiculous. ANet, what the hell.

…. and /endthread we have a winner. Though I was more looking for strategy, whether its group composition, siege placement, event handling, etc or a little of everything combined.

Maybe there isn’t much else different in higher tiers, it was worth an inquiry though.

The gears in my head have been turning recently ever since these free transfers to low pop servers came into place.

Ferguson’s Crossing and Eredon Terrace both have received some transfers from higher end WvW guilds in t2. The first encounter I had with one of these guilds was an entirely new experience, a massive group clustered up together on top of each more, plowing through our masses together utilizing combo fields and tanky builds.

It was something completely new and shiny and quite a few of us were fascinated by the tactic. We’ve come up with out own countermeasures since then, but I haven’t had that much ‘strategical’ fun in awhile. Coming up with new strategies, ploys, tactics, etc.

So my questions for all my fellow WvW’ers in higher tiers. Mind sharing some of your tactics and strategies you use in different encounters? Expose your secrets and give us on the lower end something to play around with, maybe post some video of strats that you are proud of.

The end goal here is to learn, I forgot much we had to change our strategies around when the game first came out, being in t8 for as long as we have has stagnated our battles. So… teach me.

Sidequestion: Hypothetically, if I were to temporarily transfer to learn some new WvW strats, what tiers/servers should I be looking for to see the most variety?

This makes me wonder if I am missing out on tons of experience by not being a t1/t2 matchup. I’ve been WvWing every second I can since the patch and I am only up to rank 7 -_-.

Where is everyone finding the majority of their WXP is coming from?

(are the lack of bodies to kill in t8 hurting us that much?)

roostapro.9827:

lots of unnecessary blogging

As I said, if you want a third party opinion that is not FC/ET I’m willing to provide that. The recruiter roostapro above is very proud of server, and that’s fine, unfortunately his bias ignores some pretty obvious factors.

Until the transfers began, ET had far superior numbers to FC. During Primetime for the 3-4 days before the patch ET manned 50+ man groups inside towers which matched the numbers of our zerg hitting their structures. If roosta is really going to deny the fact, I can post some snippits from our SF rushing them over the weekend sometime (hard to edit videos at work).

Since the transfers have begun, FC has received a some t2 transfers from the [RET] guild, about 30 of them iirc, currently going under the tag [VK]. They are fairly strong opponents, and have great coordination within their teams; however [VK] is leaving after a week of t8 and going back to FA afterwards, which means FC will be missing out what has become a core to their battles lately.

ET has received some transfers as well, most notably [FoE] and [Agg] from t2 as well. [Agg] seems to utilize the same tactics as [VK], but they do not have the numbers nor damage to push as hard, and [FoE] I briefly encountered a couple times last night, they seem to be on par with guilds like [TAC] on ET.

So, more strategy and tactical players have definitely been added to ET, will it compensate for the rest of the players that mobrush (which they still do frequently)? Only time will tell.

FC has had larger amounts of players come in as well (than in the past), and while the excess has borderline zerg tactics, the majority still fall into the category of being more strategic. Well placed siege, group composition, and knowing where to hit have done them well.

I will entirely admit that I have bias in opposition to ET because I don’t care for their tactics of the masses, and some complainy behavior on the forums about being outnumbered.

( ^ one example of their server attitude, read the chain that follows)

Ferguson’s Crossing knows their outmanned, and even when they lose structures right after they capture them, they keep chugging.

For those of us thinking about it, because I know some are. Wait for the dust to settle a bit, maybe a week or two. We’ve got the new WvW ‘enhancements’, and transfers to other servers that are giving everyone a jolt. And whether that will be temporary or not is something to be seen. Guilds like VK (that are leaving t8 after a while) are most likely going to upset our score next week, and we will probably drop, hopefully not by too much. It will probably set us back 2-3 weeks, but I don’t think it will last.

As much fun as I’ve had fighting these higher guilds, it really is unfortunate to how it is going to affect our score which we’ve worked hard to boost, especially because that end of the competition is not going to last.

Once their gone and the heavy PvE’ers get tired of WvW again, we should be able to regroup and push back to the point we have been the last few weeks.

And yes, thank you ANet for dragging us down unnecessarily, there were far better workarounds to WvW score and population gaps. /s

edit: as of this moment, we have lost our 30-35 point gain we were going to achieve this week before the patch and transfers and are now down to 13. It’s fairly guaranteed that if we keep getting pressed by these higher tier guilds we will lose rating next week.

Then you aren’t doing your job to well :P.

No, we noticed that actually. Every time my group ran up against VK we adjusted, and coordinated our pulls to after we spammed our boon cleansings skills (aka null fields). It worked really well to picking you guys apart until there was no one left.

Last night I also noticed a guild from ET that I’ve never seen before [Agg] Aggression. They were using the same tactics that VK used, it made me wonder if they transferred down from another tier as well. Huddled up, use lots of combo fields, run through masses groups together. They didn’t have the numbers that VK had so we began perfecting our cleanse/pull strategy on them, it was an awesome learning experience.

Back on topic though, we are a glassy server, that comes with the territory of being largely a PvE server. The same relatively goes for FC and ET as well, so we’ve obviously not noticed much a hindrance there. But it is fairly obvious when someone is built/geared and experienced in WvW though, regardless of the t8 server.

Jeknar.6184:

Score updates… I’m the one that get credit for it!

Hmm, this is acceptable. *places score update trophy in Jerknars lap.

And in comes Ungood, the bastion of omniscience and pillar of martyrdom. Anything you don’t take credit for?

And yes Loken, since you won’t be there, have your guild provide feedback on Friday/Saturday, that’s when the majority of us have our mass coordinated efforts, outside of Friday there really has been no reason to inspire SF to get coordinated, yet.

Loken, by the end of your visit, I’d like to hear you and your guild’s honest opinions of how you think SF fares as a server. Compliments, criticisms whatever… it’s hard to gauge/improve yourself when you’ve been in the same place for the last three months.

But back on topic, your videos are awesome to watch, you guys have great coordination. Thanks for posting ’em, and again, look forward to seeing you in battle.

edit: Been awhile since I’ve heard ATDI, good song choice.

That’s all t8 needs. More drama -_-.

20 game days? What does that even mean? Assuming you’re playing 4 hours a day (which is way above casual by the way), it would take you just over 4 months to get 500 hours.

Assuming you spend every second of those 500 hours in the most efficient zerg possible. It’s more realistic that it could take 700 on average as someone calculated above with the hour average that dev’s cited.

Now, that’s over 4 months, to max JUST the supply bonus, on ONE character. I’m sorry, but that’s just dumb. No other part of the game functions like this, it’s fine with goals that take years, make them vanity items and account bound, like sPvP does.

These ‘rewards’ are unnecessarily time consuming.

raenen.5807:

Tier 8 kept crying that they were tier 8 and anet was doing nothing to get you out of the bottomless hole you were in. Now they throw you guys a bone and you cry about it. So be careful what you wish for.

I’m not sure you understand the arguments being made. This isn’t tier 8 complaining, these are the higher EU tiers that were t1/t2 ranked but had medium populations, they now have a large influx of people wanting to be on ‘good’ servers and now have really long queues.

That’s the very definition of an ad hominem attack. You discredit the source instead of the content. In higher ‘edumacations’ critical thinking consists of making valid arguments and hypothesis. It also tries to avoid irrelevance and putting others down, and leads to creating a platform for communication and progression.

LFk.1408:

pulsecodesgnl.3470:

Instant gratification is a nice way to belittle the arguments, especially when you ignore them all, 500 hours per character is too much. I’m not quitting the game over this, I’m not stopping to play. The fact that it takes that long to get that high is disincentive to play my other characters, it is not how I enjoy the game. In the sense of progression, that incentive took how I played the game away from me.

It is irritating, it would be appreciated if it was looked into. Not everyone is a casual with a single character they play.

Really? You’re going to take the argument that because it isn’t max-able, thus you must keep playing one character until it’s maxed?

That’s not even an argument. That’s a personal choice. I don’t deal with that.

I try to view it as objectively as possible: you know that having them be Acc. Bound would be easier for me as well, right? I play 5 characters, and don’t actually have that much time on a given day.

Still, you’ll notice that I tried to observe which platform would leave the most flexibility for the overall design of the game, leaving the most potential for the future.

Actually they are maxable, that’s why the designers and dev’s left out the ability to respec (read the interviews and dev posts, its intentionally stated several times). The time investment for that is the point. It’s great that you don’t care about completing things, other people do. Everything else in this game can be completed in a practical manner. Even sPvP which takes a ridiculous amount of time to get up there, may even take years to get to the final tier, at least that is account bound.

Vv W.7821:

Things take longer in GW2, if you just want to grind things out you’re going to be sad. However if you play the game for a while you’ll eventually get it all.

You’re seriously arguing that 500 hours per character for those minimal rewards is practical? That goes against being alt-friendly in every other aspect of the game. Nothing else takes that long. Titles are earned across accounts, you could get a legendary with world completion on each character in less time.

What makes these rewards so much more valuable that they should disincentivize playing alternate characters? Beyond that, because of the time investment and like of respecing, you are making permanent choices that you have to live with this character through. If you really don’t change your playstyle and goals in that many hours, I’d be very impressed.

Vv W.7821:

pulsecodesgnl.3470:

Vv W.7821:

You’re not losing them though, they are passive abilities that you earned for another character. It’s exactly like the GW1 PvE titles that gave passive abilities to help in PvE.

You are losing them unless you play that character. If the time investment was more reasonable, it wouldn’t be an issue, but the combination of the time investment and the lack of rewards between characters is significant to many people.

My GW1 example still stands, this is how it worked before, it’s no surprise that it works this way now. The amount of time it takes is reasonable in the long term, it’s a bonus to people who stay around and play the game, not to people who just want to grind out more abilities.

Nothing in GW1 required 500 hours per character afaik. Please show me where I am wrong.

LFk.1408:

Having them be character bound is the way to go.

In the future, I hope they use this as a platform to introduce neat new personal statements like profession-specific finishers.

Balance permitting, they could even have profession specific boosts in WvW, which would make thieves even better roamers, Guardians apply small boosts to their allies, etc.

What then if these achievements are account bound? There could still be solutions, but all of them would be clumsier than having left WEXP character bound to start with.

The “there are no unique boosts, thus it should be account bound” view is very short sighted. I understand that instant gratification is the best kind of gratification for the player as an individual, but that sequestering the WEXP to separate characters creates the most flexible platform for future modification/improvement of the game as a whole.

From a game design perspective, closing off your opportunities for future improvement is senseless.

Leave WEXP Character bound.

Instant gratification is a nice way to belittle the arguments, especially when you ignore them all, 500 hours per character is too much. I’m not quitting the game over this, I’m not stopping to play. The fact that it takes that long to get that high is disincentive to play my other characters, it is not how I enjoy the game. In the sense of progression, that incentive took how I played the game away from me.

It is irritating, it would be appreciated if it was looked into. Not everyone is a casual with a single character they play.

Even with an excess of kills (which would be really hard to get since killing bodies in zergs becomes inefficient after a 5-10 min fight since the exp DR hits), that’s still a significant amount of time.

And past that, even if you did manage to get to 5 on 5 characters in 8 hours. thats 25 levels in 8 hours, as opposed to 5 every 8 hours if you keep that same WXP rate. So to get all 5 characters the first supply tier (one additional supply per char) you’d need 575 points, which would take roughly 920 additional hours past getting them to the initial level 5.

There’s the perspective you were pushing, just for clarification.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

nope, 2 sessions of about 4 hours each. no zerging required.

Take a char into red bl, cap all the camps and sentries,
go into green bl and do the same.
then spend some time defending keep and home towers in EB.

swap chars and repeat,

maybe I was especially lucky that BLs were quiet and that EB was packed. /shrug

12 × 38 = 456 (all sentries in both borderlands)
14 × 10 = 140 (all camps in both borderlands)
19 × 20 = 380 (assuming each camp had two dolyaks)

Without the defenses, that’s not even enough to get up to rank 2.

You would have had to have done 50-60~ tower defenses to make the rest of the experience needed to get to level 5.

edit: that’s each character as well … that seems like quite a bit more than two four hour sessions.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

pulsecodesgnl.3470:

You realize that the first five levels are equivalent of leveling from 5 to 6, right? Leveling to 5 is easy.

Never said it was hard, just wanted to put things in perspectives for those weeping over having to do it for each alt.

That’s not perspective though, that is misinformation. If leveling 1-5 takes as much time as 5-6 and every level until at least 27 that’s rather excessive. Especially when the first supply upgrade is 30 points.

Beyond that I find it hard to believe you have 5 at level 5 unless you have been constantly zerging for 20-30~ hours total since the patch, which is rather ridiculous considering it came out two days ago.

Vv W.7821:

You’re not losing them though, they are passive abilities that you earned for another character. It’s exactly like the GW1 PvE titles that gave passive abilities to help in PvE.

You are losing them unless you play that character. If the time investment was more reasonable, it wouldn’t be an issue, but the combination of the time investment and the lack of rewards between characters is significant to many people.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Btw: I have 5 level 80s chars and they already all have rank 5.

Took about 8 hours.

You realize that the first five levels are equivalent of leveling from 5 to 6, right? Leveling to 5 is easy.

Vv W.7821:

That wasteful feeling is quite literally all that is preventing you from playing your other characters. These ranks do not give a large enough bonus to one player that, if in an even fight, one would win only because of their ranks. In fact it does not give any bonus that would help in such a fight, unless it’s a ballista vs ballista fight.

The fight advantage isn’t what matters. What matters is losing what you have earned. Passive abilities, rank, and especially the enemy title associated with the rank. These weren’t introduced as something that would give players a huge advantage over, but something to reward time spent in WvW, these rewards are lost when you switch characters. It’s disillusioning, especially you play on multiple alts.

Diabien.6197:

cool, ET sounds like the place to be, more to kill

Hmm, maybe. I was implying FC was more desire-able though. At least, I would prefer tactics over zergballing.