Guild Wars 2

Excalibur.9748:

Phlogus.2371:

I say keep the WXP for repairs. Doing the grunt work that sets the conditions for success should be rewarded.

It sets the conditions for failure just as often. It should deduct WXP in that case?

Just leave it neutral and not give any WXP.

So too does over zerging, such as when a 50-man zerg goes to take a camp and a paper tower while leaving their T3 keep totally un-watched, with little or no defensive siege built (and maybe a gate un-repaired.) Should those in the zerg not get any WXP or have it deducted if the zerg pulls too many people from other valuable tasks, or fails due to its/their bad decisions or bad play?

I don’t see a trivial WXP reward for repairing as big a problem as I see the alienation of a class of players who do the thankless dirty work of repairing, siege building, supply-line control, scouting, etc., as opposed to riding the “karma” train. Sometimes you gotta throw the dog a frickin’ bone, yo.

Excalibur.9748:

Repairing gates/walls very often leads to the demise of keeps/castles/towers.

So too does not repairing them.

I fully understand that the timing of repairs is a tactical decision, but many times I have seen, even on top tier servers, where a commander will lead his/her karma train onward for more bags and wxp and excitement and leave the gates/walls to be repaired by others, if they’re repaired at all. I’ve even heard it said in voice comm “the pugs will take care of this.” I have seen Garrison with damage to multiple walls and gates which could be repaired in minutes by the zerg, left to be fixed by a few, or one, or none. The zerg doesn’t care. Thankfully there are those who care enough to do that work when others don’t. At least some of those folks get fed up with doing thankless, forgotten/ignored tasks. WXP is at least some form of compensation for their care and effort.

Educate those who repair at inappropriate times, and, when it does need to be done, everyone should lend a hand and knock out the work right away, rather than abandon it.

(sorry if I sound bitter, but I have seen the other side of this coin many times and it’s very frustrating)

Warhorn certainly isn’t earth shattering, but it’s viable imo if, as garethh said, you’re not a condi spec. IIRC if you have the trait that shares boons with your pet and it’s within the warhorn’s range when you use it, the pet will get at least 2 stacks of might. Also, by using CotW, RAO, CotW I can have between 50 and 60 seconds of constant Fury and Swiftness (plus a the few stacks of Might) on me and my pet.

DeadlySynz.3471:

They will obviously adjust it if need be. Their biggest clue will be is if they see the WvW population go down across the board. I noticed last night there were less people on the field, and there was also no que time.

I suspect last night was not business as usual for a lot of players. There were a lot of changes to research, digest, and test. Heck, it took me 15 minutes just to figure out that the Daily requirements for PvP had changed and another 30 minutes or so to complete them.

But yes, time will tell.

…and , we put out!

ehjhey.1894:

thefantasticg.3984:

I made a pet dodge macro. I recommend everyone who has the ability to make a macro: “F3 (wait 3 seconds) F1”

And no, my bears lasted about a minute longer than before against the bosses in AC and MF. All the rest died just as easy as before. All still fall very very easily to AoE.

That macro is actually a pretty good idea, o-o I’ll see if think I may try it with the razor Configurator…

I’m pretty sure macros are verboten.

As far a Guard, I’m not a PVE or dungeon guy, but it looks like those with high-healing power/BM builds could have a pretty amazing pet. Trait for Shout Master, Master’s Bond, 25 stacks of healing power bonus (from sigil), and equip Guard and Sig of Stone, maybe even healing power food. Also if Sic ’Em works with Guard…

Obsidian.1328:

Canguro.5768:

you can fully command your pet while downed, attack a specific target, retreat, heal you, F2, swap…

Where is the pet skill bar when downed? I use my mouse to activate my pet skills, my left hand fingers already have enough to do with movement and weapon skills.

I honestly never knew you could command your pet while downed, is this really true?

Yes. Use F1-F4, or get a mouse with more buttons you can hit with your thumb.

I hope they at least give it plenty of time to see if they solve more/bigger problems than they create.

I tend to think they will make the strong stronger and therefore the weak weaker though, i.e., the servers with guilds/leadership in place and good at taking care of siege building and refreshing, and controlling supply flow. These ACs are certainly more powerful than before, but the despawn timers are working, and aggressive (2 mins on dropped prints with no supply, 5 mins between supply drops, 30 mins between refresh). It’s going to take a lot more baby sitting to make sure supplies used on siege doesn’t go to waste due to despawning and that means discipline and communication.

Reslinal.2359:

The arguments here really demonstrate the difference between two play styles in wvw. People who prefer proper siege warfare like the change and people who like open field fights and only use objectives as focal points to find action hate this change.

Yes, and I think it goes even beyond two play styles. People have different experiences on different tiers and servers, in different time zones, and on different maps.

One person may nightly face enemies who make great use of siege, while another person may be up against servers who only build siege at the last minute, if they happen to have supply.

Exedore.6320:

If you’re doing hot-join, the daily should only take 33% longer than it did before. Honestly, I think that’s fine given how long on average it takes to do the PvE daily.

The main problem I have with the PvP daily is that it promotes bad playstyles. That’s also a reason why it’s hard to complete in tournaments. In particular, the “Nodes Captured” objective means multiple people sit on a point until it caps in order to get credit, especially at the start of a game, instead of moving to other parts of the map to be useful.

I would add the following that focus on better playstyles:
- Teammate revivals
- Nodes neutralized
- Nodes defended

I agree. I’m not too fond of the 20 kills requirement, either. I just play hotjoin and regularly solo engage groups of enemies knowing I’ll probably not get any kills and may likely die, just to neutralize an objective or stall them. Other times I’ll avoid combat just to get an easy cap. Last night I found myself making decisions that were not in the best interest of my team just so I could get my kills as quickly as possible since I’d already completed all the other requirements for the daily.

Rangers can certainly be good scouts. Greatsword Swoop, Sig of the Hunt, Warhorn, RAO. Plenty of mobility. BM Bunker, especially with high healing power, is quite useful in small skirmishes, though they generally don’t pack much damage and will be slow to kill.

Theftwind.8976:

As Devon mentioned there has always been a timer on dropped siege. If you do not place supply into it every 5 minutes until built, it despawns. That timer has existed as long as I have been in WvW with the only problem is sometimes it would work and other times it would not.

He didn’t really address the timer on siege which has been started but not completed. I’ve solo built probably between 300 and 400 pieces of siege and have very rarely been burned by a timer once I put supplies into the build site. I know many pieces have gone way longer than 5 minutes between times when supplies were added. I can’t recall a single time when an in-progress build timed out in less than 10 minutes. I’m not saying it never happenes, but if it does, it’s so infrequent as to be inconsequential.

That has now changed. Devon says it’s to 2, 5 and 30, and that it works. I’m hopeful they’ll see the error of their ways on this and quickly adjust all timers up. 10, 20 and 60 seems much more reasonable to me. In the mean time, I don’t expect to build much pre-battle siege anymore. I can’t afford to at the rate it’ll be disappearing, and this camel’s back was already near broken anyway with the way things already were, i.e., litte to no help building and maintaining siege.

I have not tested it, but I thought I read that Guard still sent pets down walls, just not up.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

slingblade.1437:

Are you saying you’ll let camps flip, lightening destroy a treb, ninja groups take towers, etc., so you can complete an arrow cart in your keep?

I dunno, are you saying that you are personally stopping all those things from happening on your own within a span of 5 minutes?

if so, running siege to blueprints is a huge waste of your immense talents, leave that task to less talented players.

If you want to build an arrow cart, you focus on that.
if you feel something else should take priority at the moment, you focus on that instead.

I’m sorry that you can no longer have your cake and eat it. adapt.

Answer my question first, beyond “I dunno,” then I’ll answer yours: What of those things I listed are you willing to turn a blind eye to to complete an arrow cart so that it doesn’t despawn?

Yes, two canines, especially if one is the wolf, and their knockdowns and F2 are ready, are great for downed.

I don’t drop 5 at once, but over the course of running supplies to build 5+ (one after the other), other things will happen that require my time. Are you saying you’ll let camps flip, lightening destroy a treb, ninja groups take towers, etc., so you can complete an arrow cart in your keep?

Perhaps is it not I who needs to re-prioritize ;-)

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Well Id say you’ll just have to re-prioritize, stopping mid supply run to go fight NPCs underwater seems completely ridiculous to me.

5 minutes is enough time to accomplish the task if you focus on it.

The power nodes are but one of several tasks I cited as examples. And yes, they are important. Running supply to build one piece of siege while lightening destroys another is counter productive.

And I’m not just talking about building one or two pieces of siege. Sure if your camp isn’t getting harassed you might be able to get small jobs done, but if you’re trying to build 5+ pieces of siege on a busy map, good luck not having some of your prints, along with whatever supplies you’ve already dumped in them, despawning when you have to take care of something else important. If you stay to defend your camp and you lose an AC build that had 30 supplies in it, that’s 3 more trips you’ll have to make later on. If you don’t defend your camp and it flips, you’ll likely lose the AC, too.

I’m sure it depends on the server/map/time zone you play in, but for me, five minutes will result in a lot of print/supply loss. Hence, I’ll have to be much more selective about when I choose to build and more inclined to take from a depot rather than a camp.

Seems like Drake + Guard + Sig of Stone would be a pretty dang durable, especially on a healing-power beastmaster. As I recall, you can still send pets down from walls in WvW using Guard. I could see a bunch of drakes being used to quickly take out enemy siege such as catapults now.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

At first glance I thought this change was a bit silly but after thinking about it, the 2/5/30 steps do make sense to me.. 5 minutes is long enough to make it to a camp and back, even with some detours.

Five minutes isn’t much time at all if you’re having to fend off attackers at a camp or troll the camp till help arrives, or wait in line for supplies when they’re at zero (or go to another camp), or go take take a power node in the lake, etc. Heck, I’ve had fights that lasted much longer than five minutes. I regularly take care of several other tasks that pop up while building siege, but now it looks like if I do build, at least some of the supply will have to come from the keep/tower depot.

As far as the 30 minute timers working, that’s just another incentive to not sink gold/badges + time to build significant defenses to begin with, unless you just like doing nothing but refreshing constantly.

Arpheus.6918:

There is more:
Signet of Stone offers my pet and me 180 toughness. I think before todays patch the ranger got a really small amount of toughness.

Is this confirmed?

I thought it would be 70 for the player (35 X 2) and 240 for the pet (120 X 2). That’s based on wiki numbers.

The 2-minute timer isn’t a big deal to me. I try to never throw down prints unless I can start the build.

The 5-minute timer is an absolute deal breaker though. No way I’m going to try to run supply from a camp, defend/retake the camp if necessary when I know my money is sitting on the floor in a keep, about to vanish.

Maybe the goal is to encourage teamwork in building siege, which I’m all for, but I’ve asked for help building siege many many times (on a top-tier server) and am usually lucky to get ONE person to help.

My excitement over the improvements to arrow carts has turned to severe disappointment in the overall handling of siege in this patch.

ETA Of course, this won’t hurt the trolls building siege using keep supplies. Just the hard workers who do the right thing and run it from camps.

If the 30 minute timers now really work, then most siege will have to be built at the last minute unless you have people refreshing and replacing siege round-the-clock. Once the zerg arrives it will be difficult to place siege on walls because enemies will be able to attack the build sites, and supplies will often be limited. ACs behind the gate will be greatly helpful, if you can get them built in time. It really depends on if the timers will really destroy siege after 30 minutes, and if there are enough players willing to build and refresh. Pre-patch, I would say heck no there are not enough willing to build and refresh, and I’m not all that optimistic that will change.

Also, the 30-second delay to the attack alert will play a factor. There will be times when nobody even knows a tower/keep is under attack until the gate is already as good as destroyed. There will be other times when scouting and pre-built, refreshed siege, quickly destroys rams and maybe even golems.

Aneu.1748:

Siege has always de-spawned after about 20-30min and refreshing siege has always been in the game.

In theory only. A lot stuff stayed for hours that was not being refreshed. It was unpredictable, other than for trebs and golems (as I understand it).

I was at first excited when I read the buffs to arrow carts because I’m a big believer in building siege well before the zerg comes, but if the timers are really working now, I don’t see continuing to throw down 20-30 pieces of siege in Garrison because I know I’ll get little to no help keeping them refreshed. It used to be they got destroyed by invading zergs because there weren’t enough people experienced enough to man them or there just wasn’t enough siege. Now they’ll get destroyed by, uh, termites, I guess….

If the stuff will really expire after 30 minutes, I expect most siege will still be placed at the last minute.

Some really major changes. I love the way Anet is trying to reward defensive preparation and scouting. It came just in the nick of time for me since I was fully fed up with the “let’s just zerg!” mentality.

My only concern now is that we’ll see people so giddy to place ACs there will be a lot of poor placement and wasted supply by the uneducated, but they’ll learn.

There’s still a lot of work to be done, but the Ranger is moving in the right direction. My biggest disappointment is no improvement to pet AI for pvp/wvw, but that’s a big challenge that’s going to take a lot of work to fix, I suspect.

WM is trying to outswim urine in a swimming pool. Wherever you go, eventually you’ll be back in it.

Tallis.5607:

Time for a score update…

The TC lead is more than expected: the 105k lead of TC over KN can mmaybe be explained by the guilds that left/leaving KN, but the 85k lead of TC over FA is a lot.

I’m not surprised by the big lead over FA. Kain is reeling right now and therefor TC can focus even harder on FA, I think.

I’m milita on Kaineng and have been too bummed to play much this week, and when I have it’s felt like a waste to bother spending money on upgrades or placing siege.

This whole thing is a kick in the kittens.

I knew there was a 50% chance or more this would happen to Kain when I left SBI after it capsized due to some of the same guilds abandoning ship from there. Not sure if I’ll stay on Kain (I do feel some loyalty and kinship towards the server) or rejoin the rest of my guild back on SBI, but I dang sure will not be following any of the leaving guilds to some new server. I’ve learned my lesson in that regard.

That being said, I don’t necessarily blame any guild leaders for announcing they’re leaving Kain. It’s really the members, in most cases I think, that drive those decisions. A leader who goes against the will of the majority of his/her guild won’t be a leader for long, or won’t have many members left to lead.

I wish the catapults could still hit through gates, or that we had something besides arrow carts to attack siege hitting gates. Gates, even reinforced ones, can be melted too easily as it is, especially with superior rams, golems and 50-man zergs. How can can you hold off or even slow that kind of attack at Garrison inner north or water gate with a few arrow carts (limit 5 siege per 1000 units) and 20-30 defenders? I’m all ears if someone has a solution.

Hematuria.4051:

Jacklo.4230:

Please have the foresight NOT to reward for taking supplies from Keep or Tower… just saying

If the Kee kitten itting at 1,700 out of 1,700 and has it’s supply up, how is it a bad thing to take some supply and run it to an empty tower? Those dolyaks show up and drop off nothing to a Keep full of supply.

This is very true. Some people have been brainwashed into thinking it’s never OK to take supply from a keep/tower unless it’s under attack or has just survived an attack, or a commander says to, but that’s just not the case. Supply management is a critical tactic that gets oversimplified by a lot of people. I’d rather have a Garrison with 1000 supplies and an intelligently and thoroughly sieged up inner than a Garrison with 1700 supplies and no siege or only token siege. Good luck getting much help running those 700 supplies from camps from your server mates.

Raven Paradox.1860:

Here is the two areas of skill in WvW.

- Being a great leader.
- Being a great follower.

You aren’t doing much if you aren’t either of those two.

There are a number of players who understand the nuances of wvw and don’t need to follow a blue icon around all of the time (if that’s what you mean by “be a great follower”) or be told what to do who still manage to make vital contributions in wvw. It’s the camp flippers and yak slappers/escorts that deny the enemy the supplies they need while insuring their server gets that which it needs. It’s the lone scouts that often undermine the intentions of 20 to 40 man zergs. It’s the siege builders and watchmen that thwart tower and keep attacks daily.

Good leaders and good followers are vital ingredients, but so too are those who provide intel, supply control, defensive preparation, and first response. Rough estimate, I would say every server needs 10-30% of its players doing things other than zerging most of the time, but that those players need to know when it’s time for most of them to come together for defensive or offensive efforts with the zerg.

ParaldaWind.4523:

I don’t understand punishing people for holding on to their badges. I worked hard to get my badges, same as people who get rings with relics.

Agreed. I’ve intentionally never spent even one badge, in anticipation they might someday be the only way, as a wvw-centric player, I could get some gear I really wanted. If they make it clear that day’s not coming, I can always spend them on siege.

There’s a lot to learn and a lot to do to become a really good WvW player, but to me it’s worth it. Getting your kitten handed to you is just part of it sometimes. The more you know and the better your gear, the less often it will happen, but you’re going up against people who have been perfecting their builds and gear and play style for months. You have to be patient and willing to work for your rewards, unless you just run with a zerg all the time. Even then, you’ll still take some arsewhoopins every now and then. Take comfort in the fact that you are not the only under-geared, inexperienced player out there and that one day it’s you who could be the experienced veteran crushing face.

Edited for clarity.

^^^ Good to hear Devon. If no badges or coin can be given, how about blueprints? I end up with less money in my account most nights than I started with because I spend most of my time building defensive siege (and securing camps to get the required supply).

Jeknar.6184:

Sometimes I do it myself, and with the tag on… It’s not cool to say “Repair wall/door at tower/keep” and just take the zerg elsewhere…

^^^THIS.

Sadly, what a zerg can accomplish in usually 5-15 minutes (repairs and siege building) is often left to a handful, or one, to do over the course of sometimes an hour or more. Trust me, some of those people get fed up with being taken for granted both by their server mates and ANet.

Chopps.5047:

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/news/1109-qa-with-jonathan-sharp-and-jon-peters/

Jonathan: …We want to make sure that that ranger is getting a lot of help to pets and spirits and utilities…

Great to hear. I hope these things near the very top of the priority list, and I hope the changes will be just as helpful to WvW as PvE.

Please accept my apologies if I kill you, but I probably will if you are anywhere near a place where you can potentially do any harm to my server’s efforts. I wish I could trust that a wave meant there was no chance of a red player doing harm, but the fact is there are people who will join your server or even your voice comms to undermine you, so it’s hard to trust anyone you encounter randomly. I have no doubt there are some players who only act like they mean no harm, when really they do, which is unfortunate for the rest of you.

I guess I’ve been pretty lucky both on SBI and Kaineng. I’ve seen some incredible patience from most of the commanders and I’ve seen some of them take flak from people in chat that would make a lot of people blow up, but they keep their cool and do their jobs. They might have to take a break when the frustration gets too high, but a few hours later they’re back again, working hard to accomplish goals sometimes against much larger numbers. I’m sure most servers have at least a few comms like that. If not, that’s too bad.

If they intended it to be casual they shouldn’t be keeping score.

Syeria.4812:

It would definitely promote wasting supply. There’s already way too much repairing that happens to (non-fortified) walls that are being trebbed, or when an upgrade is about to fix them. Adding another reward to it would likely make that even more prominent. I don’t think there’s a real issue with people not repairing walls when they should at the moment. So if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.

I regularly see walls and gates go unrepaired at times when they should be repaired to 100% simply because the commander/zerg doesn’t want to take the time to do it. Multiple requests in chat normally get you one person, if that, to help with the repairs, while the zerglings go off to try to flip the next objective.

Rewarding repair at the wrong time could make that problem worse, it’s true, but so too does rewarding killing enemies and flipping stuff when you should be repairing, building defensive siege, etc.

Maybe give the repairer’s blueprint drops and/or a temporary +2 or +5 supply-carry buff.

Any updates or further observations on this build? Also, the video link still doesn’t work

shagworth.5017:

When Im running to Cliff tower from citadel, I am always falling and dieing .

It’s easy to find the safe routes there, and most anywhere. I guess if you run a low HP build it can be more risky, but fragility comes with its risks.

I don’t have a problem with falling damage. You shouldn’t be able to jump off a 100ft high cliff to escape battle and not pay a heavy price, and, if you use the right skill at the right time to send someone off said cliff, you should at least get the satisfaction of knowing you killed them.

The only problem I have with falling damage is that it puts us in combat.

So, can anyone fill me in on how Kain managed to hang onto the Garrison in KBL last night? I was on until about 1AM CST (GMT -6). When I logged off, TC had Kain outnumbered enough to take a fully upgraded Bay while also taking and holding Dawn’s. The NE wall of Garrison had been trebbed down, zero supplies in Garri, and TC was also taking the NW tower and Kain held no camps. As usual, I didn’t want to leave, but it looked like it could grind on for hours.

Saving Private Ryan anyone? Hello, Upham? Hello?

;-)

It’s nice to know someone is listening and cares what we think.

Thanks!

Amphibious pets should retain the bond when moving from land to water or vise versa. It’s completely logical. If the pet doesn’t change, the bond should not drop.

As far as retaining it on pet swap, I’d much rather see them fix our pet’s problems with squishiness, aoe avoidance, and not being able to reliably hit targets first. I could see where they could be OP if they didn’t die so often, hit targets really well and maintained stacks after swap.

Of course who knows if/when they will ever fix pets.

Ranger is good for solo/small skirmishes, but many feel they aren’t good for much else. I have yet to get past lvl 3 on any other class because I’m just lazy when it comes to lvling up, but it’s my impression that Ranger is at or near the bottom when it comes to versatility. In other words, you could pick another class that would do a number of things quite well, rather than just a few.

This biggest problem with the Ranger is a substantial part if your damage is supposed to come from your pet, but it’s squishy (unless you put a lot of points into Beast Mastery) and stupid, and good players normally just avoid its damage.

Not trying to derail this into another Ranger qq thread, just stating what many others have already observed about the class, and my own experience.

Lots of people already give up with their server starts falling behind. Such a reset would give too many players a reason to not even try, to begin with.

I have a “pick your battles” attitude these days and I’m almost always on a mission to accomplish something such as get supply to build siege in a keep, defend a camp, check on a tower, etc., so I don’t feel bad about avoiding/fleeing fights I don’t think I can win., or just trolling a camp until more help arrives to prevent a flip. I also don’t feel too bad about getting killed myself while trying to kill an enemy yak, and long as the yak is slain. Sometimes I’ll even let myself get annihilated if I think the most important thing to do is provide quick intel in voice comm and chat, rather than fight a losing battle. So I guess my advice is to always keep the bigger picture in mind of helping your server.

I don’t mind someone being able to spy for a few minutes, but a forced respawn after a short time sounds pretty reasonable to me.

Esprit Dumort.3109:

You could limit rams to an area around the outside part of the gate. I know of no strategic value of placing flame rams anywhere else. And if you are griefed in the inner keep/castle at least the rams will absorb some AoE and any other siege built by supply depot might be ‘somewhat’ useful.

Discussion on that subject in this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Is-Anet-tracking-who-is-building-siege/first

Churchill.8714:

So why did people not want to defend prior to WXP?

Just badges? You mean the things that I have bank tabs full of and just spend on siege at this point?

I think WXP is just salt in the already-existing wound.