Guild Wars 2

Thrashbarg.9820:

Bandwagoning only happens on other servers.

When large groups join what they see as a successful team, it’s not just to win, it’s because of the excellent community and recruiting work. I doubt anyone goes “hey guild, let’s bandwagon to the winners!”.

No one plays a game to lose. Very organized disciplined guilds can still win a lot of fights even on a losing server, so they often stick it out. But if they were losing most of their fights, they would make a change also. You also have a good number of very small organized guilds that can do well in 5 man teams, and the occasional skilled solo player. But one way or another, these people are winning more then they are losing, or they find something else to do.

The more casual players, the ones you need to win as a server, will generally go by if the server is winning or not.

As for community, that’s another area where people tend to think their server is better, but generally speaking it isn’t that much different from other servers in the same tier. I know from first hand experience for example that Sor and BG have communities that are roughly equal. Both servers commanders work together well, they both have fairly active websites. Sor has a much better teamspeak setup I’ll give them that. But things that really stick out and say one is vastly different? No.

Disastro.4086:

What kind of builds are viable for zerg warfare in WvW for rangers?

Against your average zerg glass cannon does fairly well. The problem is that against organized guild zergs, your projectiles will kill you in a few seconds due to all the retaliation/reflection. You will die from a single barriage on a stacked zerg that knows what they are doing.

But there are a lot of unorganized zergs out there, and you can always pick people off around the edges with rapid fire, which does amazing damage with quickness.

Overall, rangers are not competitive in zerg warfare if that’s what your focus is. The top wvw guilds don’t recruit rangers, which kind of says it’s all right there.

Kincaidia.3192:

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

I like mine. I am a glass cannon, so I have to keep in mind to stay away from damage while dealing it…. and I do a fairly good job at it…

My theory is there is no reasonable reason to play a ranger in a manner that isn’t a glass cannon. Because other classes cover the other options you have as a ranger much better.

Ranger damage, even glass cannon spec’d, roughly matches the damage of a half-bunker spec’d ele in AE damage, of a toughness spec’d thief in single target melee damage, and in single target range damage probably close to a toughness spec’d warrior. And far less group utility than any spec guardian.

Hmm from my experience a glass cannon ranger in full berserkers has a lot more damage potential then any of those. The problem is it’s so situational. You do best against an unorganized zerg like the OP said, but let him try that on an organized guild zerg that’s stacking retaliation and reflect. He will kill himself in a few short seconds.

I tend to play with and against more organized zergs that use good tactics, and in that case ranger is pretty much worthless. I’ve tried all types of builds and gear, but still haven’t found something viable for large organized battles.

As someone who has 5 level 80’s and wvw’s a lot, I’d say rangers are sub par overall. You will have less of an impact in a medium/large battle then pretty much any other class.

That said, a full glass cannon ranger in berserkers can be fun if you play smart. They do amazing dps on large groups, you just have to be careful not to kill yourself on all the retaliation/confusion/reflection, and not get caught by a thief or hammer warrior…

A full healing or evasion tank build is just garbage for large scale wvw. You can heal ok, but your dps sucks, and you really have nothing else to contribute other then having Lol fun with guard.

Ben Mason.8641:

I can’t speak to CHOO’s full skill as i don’t really get to see them in NA prime. But outside of that window they do deserve your respect.
While other guilds are just dying to the bg zerg they are actually being more tactical, taking out the siege, taking supply camps defending their garrison. Its easy to be 50 strong and roll over 10-40 randoms, but having your backs against the wall being outnumbered and still holding out, with the use of some good tactics.
Whether i think they are the best or not does not matter but they are definitely a good guild.

I’ve been on a kind of extended vacation and have gotten to play in all time zones and see both Choo and HB in action. They are very much alike, pretty much dominating most other guilds until they get severely outnumbered. Too bad they can’t fight each other more, that would be fun.

Xsorus.2507:

It was changed in the November patch I believe to work like this…So either its bugged, or they wanted to give rangers the ability to use our pets during Siege Fights.

Mesmers can still hit you with Phantasms as well, They require LoS though…

It was an unintended side effect. As a game dev myself it’s not hard to see what happened. If you notice, when you send a pet on top of a wall/cliff, they are right on the vertice. That’s the fix that went in, they coded it so objects such as pets/illusions can only go to the vertice, which was probably the simplest way to ensure LOS.

I’m betting that the code path for the mesmer fix comes before whatever old code was used to control the guard ability. That’s why it just started doing this with that patch.

Diehard.1432:

Ross Biddle.2367:

Unintended game-play is unintended game-play and should be corrected.

The argument “This is the only thing we have to do in an assault/siege” is a non sequitor. Your conclusion that the broken mechanic should stay does not follow from your argument. The correct conclusion that should be drawn is that, hey, we have nothing legitimate to do in a siege, so we need to focus on getting something legit for us to do (assuming that’s true).

This is a no brainer.

How do you know its not intentional? I could be biased but I think thats how Anet wants us to maximize the utilities of the “guard”.

Really? Come on, it’s obviously broken. Not only do pets climb walls, they actually fly at times like up cliffsides.

This is just another version (technically) of the old mesmer illusion problem. Once you get your pet on the edge of the wall, he has LOS to siege and can go after it. Illusions didn’t have that kind of mobility.

You know the Northeast tower, the one that’s the biggest pain in the game to take, I took out 3 ballistas and a cata the other night that was clear on the top, sent my pet up the cliff. In garrison I sent my pet after a treb way out on the ledge where they treb bay from (I was on the outer wall). The operator got so frustrated he turned the treb on me! I’m having all kinds of fun with it, but it is absolutely broken and not intended to be this way.

Anyone trying to argue that being able to send pets into structures like this is isn’t being objective at all.

Handin.4032:

The badges are for killing people in WvW. The jumping puzzle is in the WvW environment, that means that the JP IS WvW! It’s something people never seem to grasp. The jumping puzzle isn’t meant for a PvE farm, or they wouldn’t have put it in a WvW environment, and it wouldn’t give WvW rewards.

This

I disagree, brackets and ratings can matter a lot depending on what kind of play you want. If you think the lower rated servers are just as good and offer the same variety, then I’m guessing you haven’t played recently in T1/T2. The fact is that T1/T2 attract the best pvp guilds, and that has an impact.

On T2/T1 servers you have highly organized, competitive guilds that simply do not exist on lower brackets. Guilds like HB from Blackgate for instance. That level of play you won’t find on lower tiers.

Aberrant.6749:

It obviously needs a nerf.

On an ele you don’t care if you get downed somewhat close to a keep/tower… you’re just able to mist form, go inside and be safe to heal/rally with no worries. Ele’s jump into the face of an attacking zerg knowing they’ll be able to mist form back inside.
There needs to be more of a consequence for an ele being put in the downed state.

It should just be made so eles aren’t able to cross inside those green keep/tower portals while in mist form. Being able to mist back to your team is fine… and still a very strong downed skill. At least people can still be chased and stomped in that situation.

Ya of all the things we want dev’s to spend time on, it’s this. Definitely this. It’s having such a huge impact on the game.

Kerithlan.1659:

Vagrant.1094:

Re Jaldy:

The longer one continues winning (and the easier those wins become), the more complacent (some) players become. The majority of icon commanders who have fielded easy wins over the past month or so will find themselves in dire straights up in tier 2.

Those of us who play for a challenge tend to play less when that challenge is lacking. This leads to your more casual players, and less experienced icons to ‘run’ maps. Not a bad thing, everyone needs to learn. And in tier 2, those who stick it out the entire week will hopefully learn!

As I said before, next week’s match won’t really be representative of any server’s prowess due to where it falls, but the lethargy that creeps into one’s tactics when faced with little threat (and all credit to FA, CD and YB, they all made EB an exciting place for me at times over the past 2 months) will lead to some swift re-evaluation of competence in tier 2.

~Nyari Cil, Queen of EB

Jaldy.6285:

~Nyari Cil, Queen of EB

Well said, but I don’t think complaceny is all to blame.

I guess we’ll see how it goes.

Every time I’ve logged into EB the past couple weeks the first thing I’ve done is checked on our entire third — siege, supply, upgrades, repairs, etc. On more than one occasion I’ve left Rogue’s Quarry only to have it flipped by the time I reach Klovan. To say that we’re complacent is an understatement.

Every single time I log in I spend a solid 30 minutes running supply, repairing walls/gates, replacing siege (even simple things like oil drums), and finishing upgrades. Our night crews don’t bother with maintenance and some of our commanders are oblivious as to what’s going on in our third. They log in and go straight into attacking things.

We might have good defensive habits during our prime time hours but our lower population hours are so sloppy that it hurts. I’m almost positive that this is because people don’t think about or consider defending unless we have a zerg running or are in active control of the map, as at that point we have so many people that people can “be lazy” and sit in camps chatting.

I had a conversation with someone a few days ago after defending Golanta from a CD raid. Jerrifer’s and Klovan were both low on supply and missing upgrades, so I asked a few members of our zerg to stay behind and help me get us back up to strength. The response was, “who cares, we’re winning” — this was from the commander. At that point the zerg left, no one stayed behind, and I spent an hour doing what five of us could have done in 10 minutes.

I’m excited to move up into Tier 2 because I know we’re going to get our kitten kicked. We’re going to get stomped and hopefully spawn camped, and it’s going to happen because people don’t want to stop that one mesmer from camping our dolyaks, or because people don’t double check to make sure everything is repaired, or because our commanders would rather know more about enemy tower supply than our own.

It will be glorious, and it will throw water on the server’s head. If that doesn’t pull us out of the stupor then we’re not fit for Tier 2 anyway. Now that we’re done riding the “winning Tier 3 forever” wave we’re probably going to lose some population when we start getting hammered, but I have confidence in our ability to continue to grow and improve.

(And re: maintenance: I am a PuG in WvW. My guild is small and doesn’t play with me often. For our major guilds to not catch stuff like that with superior communication, numbers, and coordination is shameful. Tarnished Coast, I’m one player. I cannot be the only one doing this if we’re to succeed. It might be a different story in our home borderland, but it sure as hell is a mess in EB.)

I think building defense is just boring to most, I understand it. But, if you left 3-4 people per tower, 5-6 people per keep, and had them upgrading, escorting yaks, putting in siege, running supply, and holding down the supply camps that the keep/tower depends on, that server would have a huge advantage over other servers of the same population.

A very small handful of guilds actually know how to defend that well. Every keep/tower is different, you have to learn where to put siege, what positions can hit you with counter siege, what to upgrade first, etc…

EBG might be a bit different strategy, I havent’ spent enough time defending there to really comment.

buki.3108:

Basically….

Glass cannon/low hp – you will get 1-shot by thieves. There is no counter. Stick to the back field and hope your allies manage to kill the noob thief.

Tanky – you survive the initial burst. Thief goes into ultra noob CnD spam mode. If you aren’t in a group, you will die. There is no counter.

The only defense is if you have a skill to block the CnD. Only a select few classes have an actual BLOCK ability though (which is on a CD unlike CnD -.-) Dodging DOES NOT WORK. You have 2 dodges, 2 seconds of blocking CnD. Every stealth skill has > 5s stealth thanks to culling.

There is no counter play to thief stealth. It is a broken mechanic and needs a re-work.

Thief is the noobtube of this game. Sadly I doubt they will fix this class because, well… noobtube encourages noobs to play more -.-

This is so much bs. Just because you don’t know how to counter them doesn’t mean anything. On a few classes thieves will win more often then not, but it’s not a given.

On my guard, I kill thieves all the time. Last time was a 1v2 against a warrior and thief. Trapped thief with my hammer, thief dead.

On my mes I kill thieves all the time. 8 stacks of confusion will tear up a thief, not too mention blurred frenzy.

Hammer warrior = dead thief a lot of the time.

And so on and so on.

Seriously, L2P.

People are really thin skinned I guess. Every game has it’s problems. If you rage quit over a single thing like this, well good luck on finding another game that doesn’t have issues like this.

To really enjoy wvw, definitely join one of the stronger guilds and get on comms. You will learn a lot, and there is actually quite a bit to learn.

As far as skills, your elite skills won’t make any difference really, it’s the level 80 gear that makes the difference. You can have fun leveling, but once you get your first 80 in exotics, you will see what a difference it really is.

You will be useful no matter what level you are, so don’t think you have to wait.

Morningstar.6208:

I believe golems are great tools for WvW and they should not be bought with money. Golems should be bought with badges. Also there should be an other tab in siege vendor to purchase siege items with karma. If you have too much money you can drop as many golem’s as you can which is not fair.

This makes no sense at all. Every server has people who can afford to drop as many golems as are needed, in fact you usually have people dropping a lot more then were asked for.

The situation where a server is winning because it can afford to drop golems and the other one can’t, doesn’t exist.

Thrashbarg.9820:

Mif.3471:

They could actually use a buff imo.

They were nerfed during beta, but that was due to the complaints when everyone was level 30ish. In the live game at 80 they barely tickle.

This ^

It’s pretty silly that players can simply stand in a rain of arrows without any danger unless there are several arrow carts hitting at once. They only work for area denial when there are enough people to just attack anyway.

Then use superiors. People don’t stand in those for long.

fivekiller.1432:

snacktime.1082:

While I understand it, it frustrating to see people do things that hurt the good fights.

- Tribal mentality about servers. Our server is better then yours. The game would be more balanced if guilds would actually transfer to even out a tier, and forget misplaced/illogical server loyalties.

- guilds moving to the winning server. This just makes no sense every way I look at it and is not good for server balance. If you want to play within a specific tier, pick the least competitive server and move there. If you really care about the health of wvw, that’s the best choice.

If you move to a server because you want to help it move up a tier, you are doing more harm then good. I know you didn’t mean to have this effect, but that’s how it works.

I couldn’t agree more.

The problem I see is the servers that are winning are allowed to go on winning far too long. We’re not going to stop people from being people and wanting to stack on a winning server so the only solution is to develop a system that is tolerant to people doing what people do.

Arenanet is currently failing at that and they are failing at noticing the problem and adapting their model to correct it.

Look at the top 4 brackets. The scores aren’t really extremely close there.

One of the problems is a winning server like Blackgate or Tarnished should not be allowed to sit here and win 6 weeks in a row with little to no chance of losing. That takes the issue here and exacerbates it far beyond what is necessary.

The math could either be tweaked to allow more volativity in the scores or any other number of changes could be implemented.

although, like the transfer problem, this is Arenanet’s failing and not our community. We can only do our best to enjoy the imperfect and slow to improve system we were given.

While I keep hoping the community will do something, it’s mainly because I have little faith in Anet to fix it. You are right it’s a systemic problem and it’s really something Anet should fix.

But until then, the community is all we have.

I think it’s population + coverage. Low pop servers are just boring. I’ve played in T7, T4, T3, and T2. I far prefer T2 because I can always find a variety of action from defending/taking keeps to 5 man roaming. Even on T3 this was not possible.

And I do know that some guilds move because they think they can bring a server into a new bracket. I’ve seen several guilds do this (and state so in public) over the several months I’ve been playing. It’s a misguided strategy.

While I understand it, it frustrating to see people do things that hurt the good fights.

- Tribal mentality about servers. Our server is better then yours. The game would be more balanced if guilds would actually transfer to even out a tier, and forget misplaced/illogical server loyalties.

- guilds moving to the winning server. This just makes no sense every way I look at it and is not good for server balance. If you want to play within a specific tier, pick the least competitive server and move there. If you really care about the health of wvw, that’s the best choice.

If you move to a server because you want to help it move up a tier, you are doing more harm then good. I know you didn’t mean to have this effect, but that’s how it works.

To follow up on the theme that it’s not so much the portal bomb itself.

A good group will stay close together. When they drop the bomb and attack they will all have protection, regen, and condition removal going, as well as aoe stability. Likewise they are applying all sorts of conditions on the zerg, and most definitely confusion and retaliation.

The average zerg dropping a portal bomb is completely different. Most of the time no stability, everyone doing their own thing and trying to be the hero rather then paying attention to what’s going on around them and working as a team.

The portal bomb does give a distinct advantage to organized teams over a zerg. No doubt about that. It plays to their strengths, which is why is seems overpowered to some.

Portal bombs themselves are not that hard to counter. Aoe, spread out, etc… What makes them deadly is when you have a well organized guild on voice comms portal bombing the average zerg.

Really, it’s not the portal bomb that’s killing you, you are just getting outplayed. Adapt or die.

Well organized guild groups will more often then not wipe portal bombs just as easily as they use them to wipe others. It really is the organization and teamwork that makes the difference.

I play a lot of wvw, and dd ele is by far one of the most survivable classes out there. Our survivability comes from how we can move around in the battle, apply cc, and good use of cantrips. The strategy is avoidance. Similar to a thief in concept, we just use different tools.

Half the time I’m running around in mostly berserkers, sometimes I’ll switch to healing gear. Depends on whether I’m fighting large zergs or doing 5 man roaming stuff.

I’m not really a fan of high vitality/toughness gear for a dd ele (outside of a few pieces, just not full sets). That’s not the base of our survivability, and by going that route you give up a lot of dps or healing.