Guild Wars 2

Condition specs are already great for roaming and will become even more popular.

@Devon,

My suggestion is to do this incrementally. Going from 1 match a week to 21 is too big of a change. I really don’t want to lose the feeling of a reset night. It is a very fun time and it brings everyone in the guild together. It is my favorite day of WvW of the week. We’d lose that with 21 matches.

I think it would be great to have 2 resets a week (Friday and Monday) and then reevaluate. Does it keep the same reset feeling? Does it keep up the excitement level? Does it minimize the number of uneven matchups?

Also keep in mind that reset night is typically the highest population in WvW which is a good thing.

@OP: great post.

The problem definitely arises from the balance methodology that ANET employs. It simply does not work. Here is their approach:

1. ANET wants to increase build diversity and so they buff or nerf a trait
2. ANET ends up overbuffing or overnerfing based on their original intention

Now here is where it gets interesting. Most people would say the next step should be to modify what they previously changed. Instead the ANET approach is:
3. Modify a ton of other skills to try to compensate for what they over or under nerfed.

Just not a good balance methodology.

Aza.2105:

Aedrion.6483:

I agree to most of the comments here, but if the passive on VoR is there just to offer something extra, then why does battle presence exist, and if you invest loads into healing power, why doesn’t it actually become a good heal that guardians can use or rely on?

Have you seen regen warriors? The healing power scales really well with HS to the point where breaking a regen warrior is not possible without either loads of conditions or multiple people.

Healing signet doesn’t scale well with healing power, its just that HS base healing is so high.

This is true

Jocksy.3415:

style.6173:

Now let’s just hope those leaked elites were fake too. Those were really bad.

Those were datamined, not leaked… doesn’t mean they will be implemented, as they are, just that they are a possibility….

Let’s still hope they aren’t implemented. The elites were possibly the worst work of ANET to date. They are even worse than those new heal skills

Atherakhia.4086:

This mechanic in GW2 would do nothing because the Thief would remain stealthed just ‘visible’, would still be able to backstab and use all their stealth mechanics (regen etc)?

If someone gets hit with a BACKstab while the thief is visible, that is more of an indicator that the person needs to work on their movement skills.

Overall, I think the idea is really good. Look at it this way…. would you rather have a thief use a stealth skill and you can still see them, or would you rather they wait a few seconds and then go invisible. This change will make it a lot easier to fight thieves.

I think that a league for solo players is a good idea. It would be fun.

The problem is with teams. It seems that teams can’t stay together for very long. What happens to a league when those teams break apart?

eleshazar.6902:

So their answer is to make necro unable to carry to orb anymore…. (since this is basically only a nerf against death shroud since no one else really transforms to carry the orb [ele tornado? really?]).

Another hats off to warrior change…. No nerf to the mobility advantage a warrior has. Just hit the necro and it is all good now.

I agree with you. That’s why I keep pushing for the orb carrier to lose the ability to use any skill. Yes, different amount of HP would be available, but its not that big of a deal.

It would add a lot more strategy to the map as well since it would take some teamwork to capture an orb.

DevonCarver.5370:

Topic Goal:

The Edge of the Mists features numerous changes to the standard WvW mechanics.The most notable changes are: Scoring on capture of objectives, scaling creatures, new and more difficult NPCs, unique bosses at each objective, increased emphasis on verticality, more chokepoints, a much shorter match time, and destructible terrain. Of the changes included, which would you like to see implemented in the standard WvW maps?

I would like to test having resets twice a week for a month or so. The reset days could be Friday and Monday at the same time as now. Reset day is the most exciting WvW of the week and twice a week would be great. Anything more frequent would take away from the excitement.

Heezdedjim.8902:

UltraHiDef.4809:

So many responses from Devon Carver, I can’t even count ’em anymore. Keep the good communication with your players, ANet!

It’s unrealistic to expect he would respond in turn to suggestions, and that was not the stated plan anyway. They’re “collecting” input now, and responses will come in a consolidated posting or Ready Up review once they have discussed and digested.

You are definitely incorrect. It is COLLABORATIVE. It’s only been a day though so hopefully we’ll see some ANET involvement soon.

Profanity.8016:

zhonnika.1784:

Proposal Overview
Eliminate ‘server vs server vs server’ and replace it with Green vs Blue vs Red, the same way EOTM works.

This ^ would be awesome

I could imagine there would be little need to ever transfer servers if that happened. Might kill a lot of revenue that Anet gets from gem sales involving server transfers.

It would also kill WvW. You have to remember that a lot of people play WvW with most of their game time. Communities are built and each server has its own culture. You start to see the same people every day and that makes you want to play more every day.

Your approach gives more even coverage (even though it seems to me that every time I go into eotm one side is totally dominating) but kills the community aspect. The quality of game play is also much lower, at least compared to where I am.

It would definitely be a big negative to implement your approach.

Renny.6571:

Current maps, but walls/doors don’t exist. Suddenly defending your objectives becomes way more important and now small groups are a lot more viable!

Zerglings will be zerglings.

I like the OP idea. It would be a good solution.

I hope at the same time, they add some new items to the glory vendor. If they are going to allow a cross-over between PvP and PvE skins, let me buy some dragonite.

Be careful what you wish for.

Kicast.1459:

style.6173:

Mesmer is the best 1v1 class in the game

… I heard this so many times.
But unfortunately it is not the case….and by far.
I would say that mesmer is one of the weakiest 1v1 class in the game with ele. They are indeed the only professions who have a hardcounter: thieves.
On the other hand it is not easy for them to manage other classes: necro / war / engies / ranger are far from being “piecies of cake”.

style.6173:

and can be a good point holder at anything other than the top levels of tPvP.

In other words, it is not good at hodling points.

What? Mesmer is best 1v1 class. That’s not even up for debate.

What a mesmer lacks is the ability to help a team. They are the biggest solo class at the moment.

PariahX.6970:

Deniara Devious.3948:

1. scaling creatures, new and more difficult NPCs and unique bosses at each objective
- No need. This is NOT pve. You already have too much of this in Living Story. Please don’t make WvWvW more into pve-like experience.

2. Increased emphasis on verticality
Please no. This was one of the big design mistakes of the EotM map and Skyhammer, which is the least favorite spvp map.

3. More chokepoints
While every map needs a good balance of open places, some hills, cliffs, water and chokepoints, EotM has way too many chokepoints. Please use current Eternal Battlegrounds as your standard of map design, not EotM.

4. A much shorter match time
This could be considered, but I feel that EotM completely lacks the community aspect of the game and rapidly changing opponents make guild rivalries from opposing servers more difficult. EotM is nothing but just a big karma train and eventually it will get very boring, just like the ruins of power first had players, because of the achievements attached to it. When the novelty runs out, what then? WvWvW should be designed better to cater guilds and EotM is simple going to the wrong direction with that.

5. Destructible terrain
Doesn’t seem to add much.

Few things to add: I think the added new game mechanisms (player based buffs) and traps, turrets etc were BAD in EotM and I wish to see none of them outside that map. Rule of design: Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS), but keep refining the existing rules to perfection. A chess wouldn’t become a better game by adding more pieces and chokepoints to the board.

I think Arenanet is concentrating on wrong aspects. The biggest problems of WvWvW are none of the above. Some of them are difficult to solve and some easy:

1. More balanced match ups and more fair scoring
Now coverage and numbers decide the winner. Some matches are very imbalanced, making them boring for both parties and really desperate to those who have just few players on a map vs enemy zergs which spawn camp them outside their spawn point. Rewards are based on who manages to tag the most amount of opponents who die by the karma train. If only one the killers would get a reward (decided randomly) this would make karma train much less feasible. Of course the individual loot bag rewards should be adjusted upwards accordingly.

2. Better class balance and balancing WXP abilities
Hammer melee train has been the meta since Autumn 2012 and it has been buffed multiple times in the “balance” updates, which are entirely based on spvp/tpvp. Look at the profession distribution of WvWvW. Surely you can see it is not balanced at all!
Some WXP traits were uncalled for and further make things more imbalanced (massive buffs to siege damage, area, skills, guard leech and applied fortitude). Add to this power of the mists and bloodlust border buffs, which should both also be removed.

3. Better commander UI
This has been asked since launch! We need an open to have the commander tag visible to your own guild members only. Ability to select different colored commander tags. Easier graphical user interface to check supply info.

I am just going to quote this one because I agree with every word said. I am surprised and frankly more than a bit concerned that so many people seem to think changing WvW into Red vs Green vs Blue is actually a good idea. . . You think the communities are messed up now? That would just put the final nail in the coffin for a lot of Realm Pride folks who are still hanging on and some of the communities we’ve managed to cobble together are actually quite lovely. I like having an identity to fight for.

Agreed completely. If you don’t listen to anyone else, the post above is right one.

#firstworldproblems

Dee Jay.2460:

People always say Eles are bad, and in sPvP I’ll admit they certainly don’t seem all that strong. They seem to either be very tanky but with no real DPS, or extremely glassy with high burst but kittenty survivability.

In WvW however they seem to be both at the same time. I don’t see how they can ever be considered underpowered there. The amount of damage they can put out despite having extreme survivability with constant boons is pretty ridiculous really.

It seems like two different worlds.

This is true. No one can complain about eles in WvW or PvE. In WvW, they are one of the 3 most important classes. In PvE, they do well. It is only in PvP where they struggle.

Liewec.2896:

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Hey guys, just wanted to pop in here and state that come the release of the feature build players will no longer be able to carry the orb while in a transform..

“finally! those Rampage warriors won’t be able to carry the orb!”
said noone ever. XD

i think what everyone wants is for ALL skills to be disable while orb carrying, so certain professions don’t get unfair advantages because they lucked out in the map rotation.

it should be up to the team to cover the carrier as they try to run the orb.
it shouldn’t simply be team A has a greatsword warrior, so they win.

Yes. This exactly.

@Tyler,

Thanks for the comments. I’d really like to see all skills removed when someone picks up the orb. That would then require a true team effort to get the orb back to a base. Essentially people would need to choose whether to defend a point or defend the orb. It would make for better strategy.

And yes, I understand that some classes have more HP than others. I think that is ok. Anyone with no skills available will need help.

Turtle, it seems like all your ideas are great for PvE. Take a step back and look what you wrote. It is basically how to make routine karma training more interesting.

The bigger question is should that be the direction of WvW?

I’ll make this very quick for PvP.

1. Buff short bow and long bow – This class is the RANGER. It is crazy that the best specs are melee.
2. Buff pets – Give more control over them, and make them respond to commands more effectively.
3. Nerf uncontrollable AI – Here’s looking at you spirit rangers.
4. Nerf melee weapon sets. These specs have the mosts evades of anyone. It isn’t applicable to a class named RANGER.

What I like about EOTM
1. Loot drops: Is it just me or are the drops way better in eotm? I’ve gotten more exotic/ascended drops there then I have in a year and a half of regular WvW. Improve the drop rates.
2. The newness of the map: It is nice to see something new even if it is not a good set up for competitive fights. The reasons are in #1 below.

What I dislike about EOTM
1. This map is a PvE karma train. Partly due to the rewards and partly due to the map design, people come here to farm. First, people naturally like to zerg. It happens a lot in eotm. The issue is that there are not a lot of places for larger groups to fight. That means most times people just run around taking objectives. No need for defense here.
2. Consolidating servers: I happen to like the culture on my server. It is nice seeing the same people every day and getting to know them. In eotm, it is a bunch of randoms. That makes the play quality much poorer than regular WvW.
3. Way too much running. It takes forever to get from the spawn location to any action. I tend to avoid the map just for that.

@ANET: I understand that you want to use some of these new items in WvW. Instead of forcing these types of changes on the community, why not spend time focusing on what people have requested? How about?
1. New commander functionality
2. New guild functionality
3. Make OS “guestable”
4. Give us new non-gimmicky WvW maps. Most of us want to fight players and defend against players on a large scale. Leave the PvE to that part of the game.

HS doesn’t really bother me much. Ban hambow, spirit rangers, mm necro, bunker/decap engis and then that will be exciting.

Well remember. These forums have given a lot of suggestions about how to improve WvW. ANET has publicly stated that the forum users do not represent the views of the majority of WvW players and ignored our comments.

gg anet

Until ANET allows guilds to fight across tiers, it is tough to have rankings.

Sevenn.3085:

More pve isnt a solution to wvw. Pls keep it in EoTM, people then have a clear choice as to the type or environment they wish to play in.

Coverage has always been important to server success, you have the option to move server if the night capping is too demotivating for you.

This ^^. eotm is for PvE. Keep that there.

Liewec.2896:

personally i love playing glass staff ele!
if you can get a nice position to rain death down on the point without getting noticed you WILL melt everything.

and the most hilarious times are when the enemy try to revive eachother and all end up going down too!

but yes, if you get targeted, you’re pretty much dead.

its high risk/high reward, which would seem so worth it if there wasn’t classes like warrior with low risk/high reward…

as has been said before, the problem isn’t ele being bad,
its other classes having everything far too easy.

I agree with this. Compare ele with say decap engi. Ele is incredibly hard to play in order to be good. Engi you can just run around spamming bombs/grenades and be good.

GC staff ele have the highest burst in the game. I literally saw a guardian get melted in about 3 seconds yesterday. Of course the flipside is that same ele died if someone looked at him.

Exedore.6320:

This is why capture the flag PvP never works in MMORPGs. Certain builds and certain professions always have abilities that break the intended gameplay. The only way to deal with it is to disable everything unique about each profession – the core of an RPG. And people hate it when you don’t let them play their profession.

Spirit Watch was an experiment to see if it could be done with some modified rules. It failed. The map is worse than Skyhammer.

I agree with this. The issue is that ANET already disabled certain skills from the orb carrier. That made things even more random. I’d like to see all abilities removed, or make this map hot join only. Right now it is not a good competitive map.

@OP:

First you need to specify which area of the game you are speaking about.

PvE? Not needed.
WvW? Already one of the 3 most important classes for team fights
PvP? Needs some help, but I think the changes outlined already need to be implemented and then we see how the class stands.

I agree that VoR should have a better tie with healing power. Actually skills in this game do not scale with stats well. It’s why you can see bunkers who still do good damage or GC with decent defense.

Mesmer is the best 1v1 class in the game, and can be a good point holder at anything other than the top levels of tPvP.

Just remove the water field from cleanse and healing turret would be fine

Sari.9836:

AI builds should never reach a high status of viability (and reward) and work only in lower or medium brackets of play. And that goes for Spirit Weapons too.

Agreed. I want to see all AI builds nerfed. It just promotes a skill less play. I think there needs to be one of two changes.

1. Double the cooldown of any AI
2. Nerf the damage to almost zero so that they are distractions, but not the main focus.

This map needs to be removed from solo queue or fixed. It is completely unbalanced right now. I saw a warrior run at double speed from orb pick up to cap this last match. Assuming this is legit and not some hack, we need the following changes:

1. When someone picks up an orb, they need to lose ability to use all skills. The only option should be to drop the orb.
2. The orb should be a big event. Make it happen 2 or 3 times a game and that is it.

I’ve posted these items in other threads before, but hopefully ANET starts listening.

Leaderboards are ok.

Team leaderboard shows people who are on good teams. That’s the intent and it works well.

Solo shows people who can either carry team, or people who play OP specs.

Excalibur.9748:

it’s good, zerk meta needs to die

You are completely wrong.

PvE: Yes, zerk is good
WvW: It is a bunker/condi meta
PvP: It is a bunker/condi meta

Now let’s just hope those leaked elites were fake too. Those were really bad.

pza.8024:

^this is wrong.

• retaliation also affects quick attacking single target players.
• retaliation is already more than strong and promotes blobbing and zerging.

nerfing aoe’s would promote zerging, blobbing and the need of arrow carts even more.

Wrong. It will have NO impact on zerging. The fact is, you could remove retaliation from the game completely and it wouldn’t impact zerging. People zerg because it is the easiest way to get rewards. That’s the bottom line.

and yes, it does impact single target, but only if you spam skills. If you want to do a spam skill burst on someone, just look to see if retal is there first.

AOE needs a big nerf.

@OP:

I don’t get your post. Are you talking about hot join? If so, who cares what happens there.

Are you talking about TEAM queue? If so everyone know that leaderboard is for TEAMS. Not sure the issue.

Deli.1302:

style.6173:

I recommend against JQ or BG. Yeah they have decent coverage. So does TC or any of the T2 servers. Personally, I’d prefer to see a few others go to TC so that T1 is a really good 3 way matchup.

You are so out of the loop lol

Do tell why it is so wrong.

save the cookie for when i am right

Yeah. Biggest question for me is around the glory boosters as well. Seems the fair thing to do would be to allow people to try them in for another boosters.

Ok, first this is not about the class overall. I’m just talking about top 500 ranked staff bunker eles.

Prediction: after ele buffs, this type of class is going to become insane. Right now, only good players can pull it off. As the class becomes easier to play, this will become a fotm in another 2 months. You heard it here first.

glicko is irrelevant. The reality is that 4-6 will soon be FA, baguuma, and SoS. 7 will likely end up SoR. 8-9 can’t compete with 4-7 right now. Look what SoS is doing in T3.

I recommend against JQ or BG. Yeah they have decent coverage. So does TC or any of the T2 servers. Personally, I’d prefer to see a few others go to TC so that T1 is a really good 3 way matchup.

Eotm is a good “in between” map. In other words, it is not WvW and not PvE, but a mix in the middle. It is basically a huge group of people running around killing NPCs (the PvE side) while occasionally fighting real people (the WvW side).

Personally, I’m not a huge fan of it since I prefer smaller group fights where CC doesn’t kill you . I also prefer the “personality” of my own server vs the mix of people in an eotm map.

The reason I say no skills is because it makes the map much more tactical. You are correct that the orb carrier would have minimal support from team mates. Most likely the orb carrier would need to drop the orb. Another person would need to pick it up.

If the orb itself only spawned twice a game, a group of two or 3 would need to decide whether to hold points or go for the orb. Think tranquility, but while moving.

Just adds a new element that would make the map exciting.

@OP:

I agree. Put it all in skyhammer and then eliminate it from solo queue.

Spirit watch is NOT a good map for solo queue currently. I’d make two changes to it.

1. The orb carrier should have no access to any skills/utilities when carrying the orb. Their only option should be to drop the orb
2. Make the orb a bigger deal… Increase the points, but have it only spawn twice a game. That will lead to a lot more increasing fights.