Guild Wars 2

zamalek.2154:

1. Put a “+” in team chat.
2. Find a party member. One will do.
3. Make sure both of you have a AOE knockback equipped.
4. Problem solved.

1. Put a “+” in team chat.
2. Find a party member. Make sure that party member has decent AOE (GS warriors come to mind).
3. AOE the area around your party member when they are getting stomped.
4. Thief is downed due to his own arrogance and false sense of security.
5. Problem solved.

You can solve ANY problem by just outmanning your opponent. So we dont need any balancing at all? Awesome.

Again: What makes stealth stomping far superior to stability/block stomping is thakittens repeatable every few seconds whereas Stability and Blocks have huge cooldowns, need utility slots and are usually needed for combat. You cannot waste those abilities exclusively for stomping whereas thieves can stealth stomp any time all day long.

Inverted.7439:

Stop raging and deal with it. Alot of classes are able to stability stomp which is basically the same thing.

The difference is both stability and block for most classes are on huge cooldowns while stealth is not. Thieves can easily stealth stomp multiple downed players in a row. No utility slot is needed.

Thieves are far beyond when it comes to stomping downed players.

But there’s no simple solution. Thieves dont have access to stability (besides Dagger Storm) or blocks, so Anet cannot just take away the ability to stomp during stealth.

The whole downed state + stomping mechanics should be looked at.

Tribio.8531:

teg.1340:

WXP for attacking or defending objects should just be granted to ANY ACTIVE PLAYER in the whole wvw zone (WXP for player or guard kills stays personal). That way you’re not forced to go with the zerg to maximize WXP gain.

1. Start up Guild Wars 2 in the morning
2. Get to WvW
3. Auto-cast your heal
4. Get to work
5. Come back home in the evening and collect rank up chests

Seriously?

Your definition of an active player is kinda dumb!

A player should be marked as active if he does one of the following in a certain period of time:

- attacks or get damaged by an enemy player or guard
- is reachable + near to an enemy player
- uses/ builds siege or repairs/ upgrades buildings

I played DAOC RVR for years and IMO GW2 WVW is the most solo friendly open world pvp I’ve ever played. There’s plenty to do solo or in small groups and to me its alot of fun.

But I have to agree thakittens not much rewarding in case of WXP gain.

My suggestion for Anet to address this issue:

WXP for attacking or defending objects should just be granted to ANY ACTIVE PLAYER in the whole wvw zone (WXP for player or guard kills stays personal). That way you’re not forced to go with the zerg to maximize WXP gain.

sostronk.8167:

Also, a keep is 800WXP. 2 towers are 800WXP. And every camp on the map equates to 1200WXP. That’s a total of 2800WXP, which is a lot less than a single level, let alone 4.

Actually its much more because you forgot to add WXP from Guards and Dolyaks.

I like the new WXP scaling, its much more “casual” friendly now. Not everyone plays 24/7.

Wow. Serious? You roam solo, sometimes? Lets meet ig for some duels.

sitdragon.2061:

high bracked server? augury?
no good 1v1 fights. everybody is running.

Same here. I’m on Drakkar Lake and rarely found anyone running solo at all. Most of them just ran away. WTF?

Those stereotypes about quality on high tier servers must be true. /shrug

I’m playing rifle warrior since headstart (mostly wvw). Some comments on your build:

- Personally I think going for 100% crit chance is a waste. I would drop Deep Strike for Furious Speed or Deep Cuts and Heightened Focus for Burst Mastery. IMO 70-75% crit chance is more than enough (dont forget its 10% with critical burst)
- I would never go out without a stun breaker and stability. Stability is also great for stomping. You could just switch Signet of Fury for Dolyak Signet (180 toughness dont hurt either).
- I would never waste both Shield Bash and Rifle Butt in one move unless I’m sure I can kill my target. Your target will just heal up after that and there’s nothing you can do about it because you just wasted all available interrupts.

This is the build I’m currently using for WvW: http://tinyurl.com/gw2riflebuild

It works extremely well for roaming around solo. I typically change the third utility slot frequently depending on the situation. Mostly I use:

- Frenzy to surprise opponents with a huge and fast burst
- FGJ for better group support
- Endure Pain if we are outmanned and things get really nasty
- Signet of Might for shooting guardians out of the enemy zerg
- Stomp for Lord Room defending
- Bulls Charge for the sake of fun

Another suggestion:

Let NPC guards use siege weapons (oil, canons, arrow carts) for defensive purposes when number of human defenders available is less than 5.

Stomp is awesome in some situations. In my current build I prefer other abilities which give benefits in any situation. So I rarely use Stomp, e.g. for lord room fights in WvW.

1h sword is more a power weapon than condition:

sword 1: direct damage; additional bleed damage for 2 of 3 hits
sword 2: direct damage
sword 3: direct damage

As you can see only 2/3 of the anytime chain benefits from condition damage, the rest is all power.

So, Sigil of Para only work on mainhand, not on offhand, it’s rounded up so it’s actually +1s stun and two sigils doesnt stack.

Right?

I’m using Sword/Shield with a power build (knights armor + berserker trinkets) and doing just fine. Final Thrust crits for up to 6k damage in WvW against non-upscaled players. Sword 1 crits for 1.4k average but hits really fast.

Either that or just track user activity + prevent any world xp when user is inactive for more than x minutes.

User activity should be one of:
- damages or get damaged by a guard or player
- is in range or reachable for an enemy guard or player
- upgrades objectives or repairs buildings or builds siege

Did I forgot something?

IMHO even a non-linear spread would result in flames about leeching.

I’m also not happy with the current solution, because you are forced to run with the largest zerg to get the most world xp.

Here is another solution:

World XP for capturing or defending objects should just be rewarded to ANY active player in the whole wvw zone! (World XP for killing players, guards or siege stays as is.)

That way it wouldn’t matter whether you actively help attacking that tower or instead scouting around, taking supply camps, hunting dolyaks or expand your own towers. Indeed it would be more rewarding to split your large zerg into smaller teams, so you can take multiple objectives at the same time.

Great news, bro! Thanks.

Sorry if this has asked before but I could not find any info on that.

I’m referring to the WvW ability stacks (Guard Killer, Defense against Guards):

Add 1 stack of Guard Leech on killing a guard, lord or supervisor

Can you have both, 5 stacks of Guard Leech and 25 stacks of Bloodlust active at one time? I’m curious because bloodlust doesnt stack with other On Kill sigil stacks.

Thanks in advance.

papaganoosh.7908:

You show your ignorance by putting 3.75.

Stuns round up to the nearest full second. It’s 4 seconds with sigil of para

This is ignorant also, because with Melandru Runes it’s again 3 seconds.

10 strikes in 7s can be easy in skirmishes, but it can be very hard in 1vs1 against decent opponents who know how to dodge and use the tools.

Don’t get me wrong, adrenaline gain sure is not a big deal. But it’s not that easy as a few pretend.

Even if you are at full adrenaline every time, you will likely not use Skull Crack -> 100b more frequently than every 10s, because at least you have to wait 5s after switching to mace. Thats 5s without actual damage + mobility.

And thats the unrealistic scenario where you never have to dodge or block or kite yourself. So either you’re fighting noobs or outnumber your opponents.

Cygnus.6903:

BM leaves you with 10 strikes after skullcrack, +9 from HB, +5 from weapon swap is 24 strikes without taking hits from Cleansing Ire or dishing them out yourself. No need for furious or adrenaline shouts at all.

Every half-decent player uses stun break to avoid at least the first 100b. So you end up at 15 strikes. WW can easily be dodged so you end up hitting your target with GS1 which is horrible for adrenaline gaining.

Cygnus.6903:

Have to disagree somewhat. I run cleansing ire only, not even furious, and I usually find myself being able to use skullcrack with full adrenaline every 7 3/4 seconds. Don’t forget the 5 free strikes when swapping back to mace due to Discipline adept minor. Along with a full HB, and Discipline XI, you’re back at 24 strikes immediately.

So, you need a target who doesnt use stun breaker, dodge, evade, block, blind, aegis, teleport or stealth, because for building adrenaline you have to actually hit a target. I dont use cleansing ire but I doubt cleansing ire alone is enough to build up the 2 bars of adrenaline in 7 secs.

If your opponent doesnt use any of those mentioned abilities, so you can easily build up adrenaline for another full skull crack in 7s, he must be a really bad player and deserves to die.

sinject.4607:

what are you talking about, you people are nuts. A 3.75 sec stun on a 7sec cd is in no world balanced; not only that but given the fact you have heavy armor, high hp, high damage output, and high mobility you shouldn’t be complaining at all. Warriors literally are the one of the most overpowered things in this game and if you don’t think so you’re lying to yourself big time.

People never get tired talking half-truth.

1.) Warrior is high armor + hp BUT no protection, blind, aegis, evade, pitiful regen and no special escape abilities like blinks, stealth and stuff like that. Warriors have to eat all that damage. Do you really think that 3k more hp + 7% more damage recude compensates for the lack of all those abilities? The past has shown not and Anet agrees as you can see in the latest patch notes.

2.) You obviously dont know the basic warriors mechanics. You need full adrenaline for the full stun duration on Skull Crack. So you dont have another 3s stun after cooldown unless you manage to build your adrenaline insanely fast. This is only achievable by other sacrificing utility slots (which makes the warrior weaker in other areas) or if you use another weapon set like axe (which doesnt match the cookie cutter M/Sh/GS build).

This is my last post on all those whine threads. People should just stop replying to those threads to not dump this nonsense to the top. Nobody cares about unanswered threads…

I play both ele and warrior. Even the lowest damage skill of my dd ele (water 1) does more damage per second than healing signets hps, and thats without even counting crits.

Its quite easy to burst through the healing of healing signet + adrenale health.

But… most eles pull back from fight to heal up when their health goes down to < 50% by either RTL or LF away. That tactic doesnt work anymore against warriors with healing signet because they regenerate in that time as well.

Hit and run doesnt work anymore. You have to do constant damage against the warrior. True story, bro!

Ambrecombe.4398:

The only difference comes from the fact you use Hamstring instead of Final Thrust, Severe Artery and Gash still have the same animation time. But again, was adrenaline generation ever a problem with the sword? Its traits were in the Arms line and you could get Furious to fully regenerate your adrenaline with a single Flurry on 3 targets.

I dont use Furious so yep, adrenaline gain indeed is a “problem”. I’ve played sword/horn/rifle warrior for months since headstart and Im pretty sure the Sword 1 chain is faster now, though I cant proof it.

Also you speak about the burst capability of Final Thrust, yeah indeed it can deal some serious damage but you could already deal 3,4K damage with critical strikes in its former combo sequence, making it great for sustained damage. That skill is now mostly situational and completely useless 50% of the fight.

You’re right that the old Final Thrust did some nice damage for being part of the anytimer chain. But speaking from a WvW perspective, having a massive spike skill is much more valuable than having some ok’ish sustained damage. The old final thrust critted for like 3.5k but was kitten slow. Now the last hit crits for 1.7k but its kitten fast.

Dont know about you but I find its quite easy to get your opponent from 100% – 50% hp, but its much harder to get him from 50% – 0%. I’ve killed many players at 40-50% hp just by using shield bash immidiately followed by a (lucky) final thrust crit. Doing massive spike damage in like no time often prevents the enemy to use his panic buttons.

And realy canceling a Flurry for a Final Thrust, do you believe it is a good design? Should we be forced to cancel our BURST skill to land another skill instead that only works on a target with low health?

You call 50% low health? Common… Flurry mainly is a condition skill, but Im running a power build. My bleeds doesnt tick for much damage. So yep, I dont have a problem using Flurry just for the 4s immobilize, followed by a final thrust or rifle volley which both hit like a truck.

Well you like it, that is your oppinion and I respect you for that. But I realy don’t understand why people didn’t like its former version while it did almost everything else better.

I’ve used the old version and the new version. The latter is much more effective to me.

People should really stop comparing single skills and utilities. You cannot say something is OP without counting everything into the equation.

Comparing Healing Signet with Thief Heals and ignoring stealth is ridiculous. Heal 6 is just one out of many skills to mitigate damage. Others are Protection, Regen, Aegis, Blind, Block, Stealth, Teleports, Evade, Dodge, …

Some professions have access to plenty of those other damage mitigating abilities, warriors don’t. Warriors are meant to eat all that damage, but the past has shown that just high armor and life isn’t enough. So logically Anet make warrior heals stronger.

Healing Signet is strong against steady average damage, but its weak against spike damage and with Poison it got a hard counter. Get used to it.

I’m running Sword/Shield + Rifle (knights armor, berserker trinkets) in WvW and really love the Sword revamp.

Sword 1 hits really fast now compared to before – great for adrenaline gain. Damage is ok for me (1.7k average crit + bleeds).
Sword 2 crits for up to 12k damage which is awesome. Its hard to land but at least it doesnt root you in place like 100b. Try this combo on a target <50% health: Savage Leap → Flurry → move backwards (cancels Flurry) → Final Thrust.

The easiest way to counter this build is to constantly doing damage from range.

The main weakness of this build is the lack of mobility when swapping to mace/shield. The warrior has to catch up to you with GS, then switch to mace, wait 5s then skull crack → 100b. So you have kitten timeframe to get some distance + kite. Add dodge/ block/ stability for another 7 3/4s timeframe. Rince/ Repeakittens

all about timing. Force him to switch to GS to catch up to you. Then get away from him when he switches to mace.

I fought many of those warriors with my sword/shield + rifle warrior in WvW. Often they didnt land a single skull crack on me. Maybe they were all noobs, I dont know. ^^

Steelo.4597:

and 30% from tactics :P so if it procs its 15 sec regen and moar regen from the other sources – ill round it up to half uptime. 20 hits are in quickly depending on your opponent.

Dwayna regen is on a 30s cooldown. So even with +50% regen duration, it’s far away from half uptime.

Or: "Morph into an invulnerable, vaporous punching ball for a brief time. "

Instead of blaming other opinions with long posts, you could just post a video of that build proofing thakittens viable.

Spike Armor over Defy Pain? No Block, no Endure Pain? No Fast Hands? Really?

I dont see you killing anyone at all with this build.

^ that. and unblockable skills help alot if the warrior lacks SoS / vigor.

You’re right, but for 1vs1 footage atm everything’s worthless besides Mace/Shield + GS.

For WvW rifle is really nice.

Your ideas sound interesting, but personally I’m totally fine with rifle as is. All skills have pros and cons but thats how its used to be.

Bleeding shot: Although rifle is a burst weapon, I’m totally fine with the bleeding effect. Even if you dont spec for condition damage, the bleeding damage is a nice addition when your target runs out of sight. And the synergy with 25 Arms Minor is much better than switching bleed with vulnerability. 10% more damage on bleeding targets is equal to 10x vulnerable, but harder to purge.

Aimed shot is ok for me. With Leg Specialist it prevents the opponent to dodge the first second of a Volley, which is quite nice. Or combined with Kill shot it reduces the chance for your opponent to run out of sight during the long casttime.

Brutal Shot: IMO the casttime should be reduced to 1/2s.

Rifle Butt: The only problem I have with rifle butt is that it misses too often. IMO the range could be increased to compensate for that.

Kill Shot: I love kill shot as it is. Huge damage and range, but hard to land. You have to use it wisely, e.g. when target is distracted or CCed or after target dodged twice. Its an integral part of the game, that the most dangerous abilities are telegraphed to the opponents, so they can react accordingly.

I’ve played rifle warrior in wvw since headstart and really love it. I had a break of a few month not playing at all. Before that time rifle warrior had a really hard time competing in 1vs1 because of the lack of sustain. It really shines in larger battles and small skirmishes.

With the latest patches this has changed. I’m playing Rifle + Sword/Shield which works really great even 1vs1 against most professions. You have to use both weapon sets carefully. Dont expect to just sit in the back using only volley + killshot. This works only against upscaled noobs with crap items. Guess what? Everything works against those.

My current build is 0/25/15/10/20 with knights armor + berserker trinkets. I also played ele in wvw for a long time, but currently I prefer to play my warrior. It’s so much fun to have both decent melee + range skills in wvw.

Many great ideas so far.

Here is another idea I’ve come around:

Why not just give ANYBODY in the whole map the WXP when an objective has been taken. So if team A takes a tower and team B takes a supply camp, all players get the WXP for both objectives. The only requirement is that you are actually participating in WvW warfare (to prevent AFK farming). This wont affect WXP from player kills, which is still calculated individually.

In this system you dont have to be terrified to miss something. You can split your army into many teams to get the most out of it.

What do you think?

DevonCarver.5370:

I think there is something we can do to solve the problem here without discouraging people from playing together, but we haven’t figured it out just yet.

Glad to hear you’re aware of the problem. Hopefully this is prioritized high enough.

I’ve resigned to login during primetime because those huge zergballs + skill lags took the fun out of WvW for me.

Any ETA on when to expect any changes addressing those issues?

Goorman.7916:

I dont think, that the problem is the WXP distribution.Most importantly because people do not generally play WvW to farm Wlevels, they play, because WvW is interesting.
However the problem is that a lot of WvW design decisions directly or indirectly support zerging.

I’m playing on the same T5 EU server since headstart. The introduction of WXP has indeed changed the way people WvW nowadays at least in my tier. Before the patch most of the time we had multiple “small” 20-40 man zergs roaming around. Now everyone runs around in one huge 60-100 man zerg.
So to me its obvious that the reason for this is WXP.

Let me get this right: This post isnt against zergs. Im totally fine with zergs in WvW. The problem is people running around in one huge 100 man zergball.

Genev.2450:

Technically, because of all the kills you get, taking a heavily defended tower Does give you more wxp

It depends who much time you need to kill all defenders and take the objective. Heavily defended towers can take a good amount of time. In the same time you could just take 3-4 less defended towers somewhere else.

I got your point. I just wanted to point out that a dynamic WXP system would in my opinion discourage heavy zerging and therefore reduce skill lags to a tolerable level (at least for lower tier servers).

In DAOC every player was worth a certain amount of RP (aka WXP), e.g. 1500 RP. So if kill someone solo you got 1500 RP. But if you zerg someone down you got like 50 RP.

I would love to see a similar system for WXP in GW2.

ATM WXP are flat bonuses. Take a tower and you’ll get 150 WXP. It doesnt matter if you take it with a group of 5 or 50 players. It doesnt matter if its defended or not.

The amount of WXP should scale with players involved!

Taking a tower with 5 players should be worth more WXP than taking a tower with 50 players.

Taking a heavy defended keep should be worth more WXP than taking an undefended keep.

Killing an opponent 1vs1 should be worth more WXP than in a 50vs1.

In the current system to get the most WXP/h you have to run in the largest zerg + taking undefended objectives. Its hilarious.

I’m on a T6 EU server since headstart. WvW was awesome until the WvW patch landed. Since that time its just UBER-BIG-ZERGBALLS running around, making the game unplayable due to permanent skill lag. Before this patch I never had any skill lags at all.

DAOC did this perfectly right 10 years ago. /sigh

5%? Really?

That means it doesnt make sense at all to spend any points unless you are on a high rank to actually get an ability to level 5.

I would like to know this for myself.

Any official answer on this?

Roaming is not only about avoiding zergs. Its also very important to kill + stomp your enemies fast enough. If your fights last forever you wont kill anyone most the the times. Because chances are good that more players engage your fight the longer it takes.

DD Ele is great for avoiding zergs, but he deals mediocre damage. You wont kill any decent enemy fast. So at the end you will just trolling around while achieving nothing.

Thieves are great both in avoiding zergs AND killing fast enough to go in and out.

Warriors also have decent mobility + deal massive damage, but they are not that good in 1vs2+ because of missing protection/ regen/ blinds/ stealth and stuff like that.

covenn.7165:

If you don’t understand how crippling, stunning, and freezing your enemies while doing heavy AE damage spikes can shape and dominate a large fight, then you missing some perspective.

Yep, controlling the battlefield via AOE CC is nice, but dont forget its all capped to hit a maximum of 5 enemies. So when the whole 40 man zerg walk right through your static field, 5 enemies are actually stunned while the rest is still chasing you.

Unfortunately all the AOE damage spells have casting delays, so its really simple to avoid for a half-decent player. Try to hit running targets with lava font – nearly impossible.

I would be extremely happy with Staff skills as is, if Anet would just remove the casting delays from all AOE spells. Due to the delay its super easy in PVP to avoid being hit by the red circles.

Staff has really nice utilities. The main problem to me is the casting delays. First you have to target the area, then it takes a certain amount of time until the spell effect (damage, cc, ..) applies to the area.
While this is ok for PVE, its a major issue in PVP. Any decent player moves around the whole time. Its far too easy to avoid the red circles.

graverr.6473:

If downed stated would be removed a good coordinated team of 20 could wipe a 80 man super blob finally.But becasue of downed state atm you can only kill as much until they ressurect themselves making a huge zerge like the t1 metas very appealing and sadly atm it’s the only way to go.Remove downed state and you will never need to remove aoe limit either.It is part of the game yes,but it only rewards and encourages super blobbing,that in the end don’t do anything for the game.
And what does a blob bring gw2 players anyway ?They create insane lag like in no other game ever before,reward no skill,no exploration and no creative gameplay.In the long run is one of the worst things in WvW but very few think about it.Curently it is impossible for the servers to handle these blob fights even with the 5 target aoe cap and that is the reason why it would never be possible to be removed,imagine 30 minutes skill lag in battles and afterwards instead of the current 20-30 seconds

Get rid of the downed state and you partially fix zerg.In 1v1 scenarios if you get downed you are a goner anyway and in 2v1 or classic outnumbered fight will always only reward numbers over skill.Anet should really get their heads into this since blobing is currently the main killer of gw2 amongst it’s fans.

I totally agree. Rallying and Rezzing in the current state favours the larger zerg. The more people you got you easier and faster it is to revive dead players. That makes it even harder as a 20 man zerg to fight a 30-40 man zerg.

Removing Downed State from WvW (only) would be one way to fix this issue. But I dont think this will happen.

I would be happy if Anet would introduce some real penalties to rallying/rezzing for WvW. Here are my suggestions:

Add a 1 minute debuff after rally / rezz which reduces all stats by 25%. While under the effect of the debuff you are unable to rezz/rally other players.

Additionally the amount of HP in downed state should be lowered so it becomes easier to actually kill a downed player. Let it scale with the equipment of the player (more HP, Toughness = more downed state HP). Squishies deserve to die faster even in downed state.

Reduce the number of concurrent rezzers to a maximum of 3 players.

Removing AOE cap wouldnt prevent or hurt zergs, but it would remove some of the privileges the larger zerg has against the smaller zerg.

And it would remove those stupid zergballs because people would have to spread out. This is common practice in any other RVR based MMO for decades now.

MrKnieves.4162:

AOE cap is there for a reason. With my elemental I can spam an area for a minute with hits ranging from 800 to 3K damage. With no AOE cap I could decimate a whole a zerg by myself, and no player should have that kind of power. Ever.

No. The consequence of removing the AOE cap would be that nobody runs in zergballs any more. You just have to spread out when combat begins to not give a target for AOEs. This is common practice in other RVR based games like DAOC and worked perfectly well.

Besides: Meteor Shower is one of the easiest skills to avoid. You only take damage inside the circle AND when you get hit by a meteor. And the skill has a pretty large delay. You can just walk out of the red circle in the beginning before any meteor actually hits the ground.

Sure, DAOC was far from perfect. Thus its even more absurd that 12 years later, there’s still no better RVR based MMO on the market.

IMO GW2 comes really close. But it’s sad to see some major flaws in GW2 WvW whereas DAOC RVR did those parts perfectly well.

Good beginning:

- remove AOE caps
- rework reviving (add penalties for revived players, decrease revive speed, …)

Make those changes WvW only to not harm any PVE content.