(edited by zen.6091)
300g is rather easy to get nowadays, especially when we no longer have repair costs, which basically means that the only thing that drains money in WvW is upgrades (since you can get siege with badges).
Well let’s see here there’s also….
-36/40% condi food if you play a power build and don’t want to be rolled over by condis. There goes at least 30s every hour you play.
The cost of structure upgrades as mentioned if you chip in with those.
The cost of sup siege if you don’t always use regular.
The cost of gearing / re-gearing alts if you have more than one character. Many of the sigils and runes alone have risen to 5-10g+ each since the patch for those. There’s no cheap meta upgrade component used in WvW power builds. Strength (rune), hoelbrak, traveler, melandru, bloodlust, battle, energy, etc. are all expensive.
The cost of ascended gear /crafting. Still technically optional, but you do lose 7-10% of your possible damage output, or whatever the total is. Personally I have only been able to afford to do two crafts since ascended was expanded to weapons and armor, and neither of them armor disciplines. That’s not even on my radar as something I will ever be able to afford.
WvW is on the very low end of gold per hour compared to PvE if you are a zergling that spends nothing, or only do large fights and get a large number of kills daily. If you need to do any or all of the above forget it, you’re spending pretty much everything you make.
Well, let’s break it down nice and easy if any devs actually read this and care.
1. WvW should not be pay-to-command in the first place. The commander icon should be something you eventually earn through playing WvW. Anymore on most servers, you are basically doing a public service for WvW to actually throw up a tag to drive pugs around.
2. The different colors and account bound aspect of the tag should have been features for the commander tag from day one. This is two years in now.
3. A guild tag that is visible to guild members only, hello?
4. The commander icon itself is still has woefully inadequate visibility in typical WvW fights. P.S. so does the cursor. Again, we’re two years in now.
5. The cost of the new tag is hysterical. Many WvW players that have been playing since day one have never even had 300g at any point in time, and they had to beg / scrape together 100g for one tag.
What universe are you guys operating in?
And 300g for a color is almost an insult for people who have been playing a game mode neglected for a year.
Almost? It’s waaay beyond that point. Let me be figurative here: It’s to the point where after years of ignoring us they suddenly come to us, start mocking us, then knock us out with a punch, start kicking us and at the moment they are urinating on us. That’s how it feels like.
And then poured sugar in your gas tank for good measure.
I am really starting to think there are team meetings where they discuss options for doing worse. There’s no other explanation for how these kinds of decisions are made and get stamped off by someone.
(edited by zen.6091)
Against all odds, the level of incompetence and inability to understand what features players actually want has gone up another notch.
So funny to see the majority pointing warrior as the easiest class to play WvW with group/zerg while it’s the hardest of all, unless your only job is hitting #4 and #5 off-hand warhorn..
Hardest of all? You’ve got to be kidding. I would certainly agree there is a huge different between a bad zerg warrior that doesn’t do much besides 1 spam and maybe cycle horn skills, and a good player that gets the most DPS and stuns out of the build, but there’s no way it’s harder than a necro or staff ele. The latter two have to ground target far more skills to maximize their damage, and have far more active use skills that require decision making on when, where, and how to use. Plus they have to make more decisions on individual positioning. and surviving gank focus when that’s a factor.
As for guardian vs. warrior in zerg difficulty, that’s hard to say. Guardians have a few more skills to actively use and longer cool downs on the x-factor skills like bind / ward, but they also can have 1 or 2 two panic buttons to block / invuln out of sticky situations, and have a laughable amount of personal sustain when traited to AH.
General rules of thumb.
1. You can never go wrong with more CPU in multiplayer games, most of all the really “big” ones like WvW, Battlefield, etc that can have a ton of players and player created action. On a very basic level, think about why you get FPS drop near a zerg, even before you system has a to render a single player or effect caused by the zerg battle.
2. More GPU is for the eye candy. Better texture quality, better shading, filtering, and higher levels of filtering. All this improves perceived image quality.
So to your answer question, you need a better GPU if you want to run higher graphic settings with acceptable performance. Your FPS on low settings is already not that bad (30+ in a 30v30v30 is pretty good for most players). The 750 is right at the bottom end of what would be considered a gaming card. If you want those things like better shading, good texture quality, anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, etc…a 770 or 280x is kinda the sweet spot now for performance and value for money.
I think you’re also leaving a little on the table with your CPU overclock. 4.5-4.6 should be fine with a decent heatsink and an adequate case setup. That little extra will make a difference in minimum FPS in blob battles. As for upgrading that too, it’s hard to say. I still use a 2500k @ 4.8 GHz and see no compelling reason to upgrade yet, at least from a value for money perspective.
Won’t the CPU be memory limited at that point rather than cycle time limited? (Meaning, isn’t the memory DIMM cycle count at the overclocked speed — a nontrivial thing to talk about — more important than how fast it can add two numbers?) Or do I not understand…
You would think so at some point, but system memory bandwidth isn’t really that important for gaming. In fact DDR3-1600 is still more than adequate. The companies that sell components marketed at gamers / enthusiast would have you think otherwise though. Memory bandwidth is very important for GPU performance though, and it’s one of the big differences between a low end part and medium / high end part. The higher end parts have faster, more expensive memory and more a wider, more complex bus.
There were other considerations with system memory speed that came up in the past with overclocking, but it’s not really applicable now with “overclocking” by changing the internal clock multiplier on an unlocked CPU.
General rules of thumb.
1. You can never go wrong with more CPU in multiplayer games, most of all the really “big” ones like WvW, Battlefield, etc that can have a ton of players and player created action. On a very basic level, think about why you get FPS drop near a zerg, even before you system has a to render a single player or effect caused by the zerg battle.
2. More GPU is for the eye candy. Better texture quality, better shading, filtering, and higher levels of filtering. All this improves perceived image quality.
So to your answer question, you need a better GPU if you want to run higher graphic settings with acceptable performance. Your FPS on low settings is already not that bad (30+ in a 30v30v30 is pretty good for most players). The 750 is right at the bottom end of what would be considered a gaming card. If you want those things like better shading, good texture quality, anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, etc…a 770 or 280x is kinda the sweet spot now for performance and value for money.
I think you’re also leaving a little on the table with your CPU overclock. 4.5-4.6 should be fine with a decent heatsink and an adequate case setup. That little extra will make a difference in minimum FPS in blob battles. As for upgrading that too, it’s hard to say. I still use a 2500k @ 4.8 GHz and see no compelling reason to upgrade yet, at least from a value for money perspective.
Well…think it out.
Problems with engis in zerg play:
1. More limited access to stability. Guardians have SyG and traited courage, warriors have balanced stance and / or doylak sig. Engis basically have elixir x, which isn’t actually a bad skill for zerging, but if you want to actually use the elixir form, it’s best in the mid / end phases of the battle when you can catch more players that don’t have stability. So basically you waste most of the effect to get stability in the opening. It also has a much longer cool down than the heavy skills.
2. Lack of stun breaks. Healing mist from elixir gun is basically the only non-suck one that is usable in zerg play.
3. More questionable traits. Heavies have great group traits for zerg combat…engis, not so much. They do have some great personal defense traits though, and traits to enhance the bomb kit in particular if you want to roll with the front line.
4. Harder to play than a heavy. This is largely a subjective comment, but it is harder to play a 2 or 3 kit engi in the thick of battle than a guardian for sure in my experience. You don’t have the panic buttons like shelter and RF to feign death when you’re otherwise screwed, or the massive personal sustain that AH provides.
Things engis have going for them:
1. Bomb 1 is actually a pretty strong spam 1 skill. Higher base damage and power scaling than heavy hammers, and twice the radius (traited). Big ol’ Bomb is also a whopper hit. Combined with a rifle and getting good hits with jump shots, it’s really good damage. All the other bomb skills are also useful.
2. Decent selection of support skills like fumigate, a small and micro water field., and multiple blast (up to 5 depending on the build).
So basically engis are a niche class that need the right party to be viable and effective. Most pug zergs don’t use them for that reason, but some guilds do use them in their raids, and they can be a very effective asset.
Are you kittening kidding me? P/D still can use shortbow as secondary weapon to chase you with infiltrator arrow, and you can use the shadowstep signet and shadowstep itself as utility…
I would also add that most condi thieves I know don’t need to go into the precision trait line allowing them to get a VERY long range steal (1500) that comes back ridiculously quickly. They also frequently have a higher init regen than their D/D brethren.
Also the best ones I know D/P as the second weapon for the cheap Shadow Shot movement/blind and occasional BP/HS combo.
Honestly that build is one of the cheapest builds in the game. Virtually unkillable unless they make a mistake, can close ridiculous distances making escape almost impossible, REALLY difficult to remove condis faster than they can apply them, can apply near permanent blindness, rarely get close to a target to deliver constant damage and they are also fairly durable. They suck in skirmish but solo one of the strongest class builds by far.
There are lots of counters to pd condi thief scepter/focus ele being one of the best hard counters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usMYNWy1cPw.
Yeah except most any thief using an offhand dagger will simply move to a spot where there’s PvE / ambient creatures to cloak off when they are being shut out, like the raptors in this particular video. It works really well with P/D since the stealth attack is ranged and cloak and dagger isn’t for damage anyway.
I don’t know what the talk off P/D being unable to close is about either. They usually have shadowstep and steal at least, plus a ranged imob and torment. It can’t mash runners to death like a power thief, but it’s certainly not a free run.
People play power builds because damage is damage. You can easily win most 1v1’s with condis and roll over disorganized groups, but organized groups generally design their composition to give the melee players a huge amount of -condi duration (up to -98% with food / runes / purging flames passive effect) and group purging. Or, they play mostly with ranged damage, which neutralizes much of the necro / engi condi pressure with better spacing and distance.
To address your question about solo camp flipping…it gets boring fast, but can be an a decent option if there’s literally nothing else to do, or you are doing it in a way to try to lure in players for 1v1 / 1v2 fights etc.
As for which is class is best, I’ll just give you my opinion on everything from most common to least common.
Thief
Everyone who roams has seen generic shadow arts D/P thieves 1,000+ times. It’s stupid, it’s boring to play, it’s boring to fight, but it can easily run away 98% of the time even if key skills are shut down or you make mistakes. The variation with no shadow arts and slight of hand is a little more risk / reward, but it’s also pretty annoying and boring.
Then there’s P/D perplexity thieves, which most players would agree is the #1 cheese build in the game, and no decent player will fight you. In fact, consider uninstalling.
There’s S/D evade builds that are pretty much the same as the sPvP build, but it’s weak to condi pressure in battles of medium length.
Lastly there’s still occasional D/D thieves, but they frequently use PvE creatures to cloak off, or fight 1vX feeding off random idiots standing around, which is stupid.
Warrior
The Nike warrior is the most common, whether it’s more burst with axe / shield / greatsword or more control with hammer / greatsword. Either way the idea is to either kill or whirlwind —> rush away to safety. In small group play a lot of warriors will also use this technique to break combat and come right back with full health. You can formulate your opinion about this.
Condi warriors are also pretty strong, but are susceptible to condi pressure, and lack the double escape of the above.
Mesmer
Most common is the condi PU mesmer, which is mostly a faceroll from left to right build. Can be very hard to kill, but it’s also easy to flee from. Even a necro can probably run away from you, which is really saying something.
Then you got hybrid and full power PU builds. Personally I like the full power version because you can still do shatter spikes and trait in some stuff like halting strike and bountiful interruption to reward better active play.
Lastly there’s the truly honorable full shatter builds. Pretty weak on personal sustain, but it’s still one of the biggest potential burst in the game.
Ele
Seems like D/D eles have to work about four times harder than anyone else to sometimes produce results that are slightly better….but they have also twice as many skills on paper to actively use when deviating from the usual damage and healing cycles. Plus you really don’t see much boon stripping in random roaming encounters aside from guild groups, and the one class that can really screw you over with boon stripping (necro) has no escapes, so not many solo roam with necros.
Players who solo roam with a staff ele have guts, but I’m not so sure most do it from an efficacy standpoint, but rather just to say they roam with a staff ele.
Engi
Whether it’s bombs, nades, perplexity, or some other condi runes, condi engis can be extremely devastating. They also have very little condi removal, and most builds don’t even have a stun breaker, but they can trait damage reduction and auto prot while stunned / disabled.
Power nades with rifle use to have a really incredible burst, but it’s been long been nerfed.
Necro
Necros are the kings of sustain, and full boat of punishing skills and traits, but also have zero mobility. Once in combat it’s a cage match usually, you are dying, the other player is dying, or they are running away…but you’re not running away.
Ranger
I say ranger in the sense of a good player playing a ranger and roaming with it. I don’t even know what to say. The condi regen shout build can be tough to take down in battles of attrition, and that’s about it usually. Glassy power rangers can be very annoying and dangerous, but they have almost no personal defense, and are always the first to be targeted in small groups.
Guardian
The meditations burst guardian use to be somewhat common, but I think it was one of those borderline builds before crit damage was nerfed. It can still be a good build, but for whatever reason, I hardly ever see it anymore.
Then there’s bunker guardians that are more or less guardians roaming with their zerg build. I don’t know why anyone would want to play this solo unless you find the idea of killing people with retal / spins / symbol ticks exciting somehow.
Having said all that, picking one probably isn’t any easier! If you want to do what most everyone does, pick a thief. If you want easy, play a D/P thief or warrior. If you want more of a learning curve with very active play, pick an ele or engi. If you are bold, pick a necro. If you are crazy, pick a guardian or ranger. If you want skills that consistently don’t work, pick a mesmer.
(edited by zen.6091)
Torch…the over all utility is just too good, even though the mage is a bit dubious in power builds.
- Instant PB blind for defensive use
- Setup GS combos in stealth that aren’t telegraphed in a 1 mile radius
- Blast finish / damage / burning in combos
- Mage is ok if you hit the i-leap imob after cast and get a double bounce hit for retal and 6x confusion stacks.
- Stealth stomps
- Synergy with PU
I like the sword and pistol too, but until another main hand weapon is added, which will probably never happen, they are kinda out of the picture for me. Focus is just garbage besides situational pulls in WvW.
Toughness…with guard stacks, no extra vitality is usually ok. If you’re not sustaining well against condis, the extra vitality is usually not going to do anything besides delay the inevitable for a few more seconds.
I still think of vitality with a GW1 mindset. You want enough to survive against damage spikes and not be spike bait after taking some pressure damage, and no more than that.
There definitely is less of the military-like organization as described by Deli in the lower tiers, but that can be good or bad, depending on your point of view. T1 servers have to keep feeding the beast to replace attrition and guilds that transfer out to maintain their position, and there can be drama with guilds that don’t want to be part of the program.
You have more freedom as a player or a guild do what you want and how you want in the lower tiers, but it can also be frustrating when the organization is lacking, guilds don’t work together, things are done incredibly inefficiently, and the weight of ppt defense so the server doesn’t tank falls on a few.
As for picking a non-T1 server that is super-organized, in the past Yak’s Bend was really organized for their size (for ppt defense), and so was EBay before they saw an exodus of players. I use the past tense for YB, for all I know they still are at legendary levels of superior arrows carts in keep.
I remember being so excited for EotM when it was announced. A format that would have the good elements of WvW, without the endless grind of ppt and coverage wars. Something you could actually sit down and play for the fights and the score like alliance battles in GW1. Try to win and use your brain a bit, but mostly fight players.
Kinda sad how poorly basically everything was executed, and how it’s become an awful cesspool of all the stereotypical MMO player behavior. Also keep in mind that this whole concept was dreamed up when there were lengthy queues on all maps in T1 much of the day, the next few tiers during NA, and most servers during reset night. EotM was supposed to be an overflow for WvW queues. Anet has does such a bang up job neglecting WvW that the original problem no longer exist.
Full zerk or zerk / knight mix. If you go with the mix, trinkets are the easiest piece of gear to tweak stats with. If you do the math on cavalier vs. knight, knight wins in raw dps post-crit nerf, plus you’ll also get slightly more bleeds from sharper images.
And yeah, don’t use the WvW gear because of the ridiculous salvage oversight.
Is this a roaming or zerg oriented build?
If roaming, use the normal 0/4/6/0/4 build with axe / shield + greatsword. Hoelbrak runes, poultry and leak soup, and as much beserker gear as you dare.
If you want to try something a little different for zerging besides the usual kitten hammer, use the normal 0/0/4/6/4 zerg build, but go with axe / warhorn + greatsword. Try to burst down low targets with evis , and players that are snared or disabled with hundred blades. It’s also good for finishing off running players when the enemy zerg is broken and scattering.
One thing I can tell you for sure with your build is that you’ll get destroyed by condis. Warriors, in fact most any non-condi build, is pretty much relegated to lemongrass or poultry soup minimum. For heavies, hoelbrak runes with strength sigils and high fury uptime has kinda settled in as the meta to further bump up condi resilience, while maximizing dps with might stacks.
Ice bow is an amazing skill to situationally drop a cantrip for. It’s really good for dual melee heavies, and yourself with D/D when extra pressure is needed on enemies camping a higher position, like a wall or tower lord’s room. In open field zerg combat, I would only use it if you’re completely comfortable with 1 less defensive skill and facing a really tight melee train, or in a situation where the zerg has to come through a choke, or is stacked up being stupid with PvD or the like.
(edited by zen.6091)
Mag going ppt mode? If this isn’t a sign of the apocalypse, I don’t know what is.
I dont play with a keyboard or mouse. I use a Joystick.
Joystick for roaming, steering wheel with pedals for commanding here.
Once I went to spectate a GvG match between 2 very popular guilds… Obsidian Sanctum was full and people had to queue to get in.
I think that illustrates the failed potential right there, when a massive amount of player is trying to participate or watch a game mode that is MISSING from the game. It is my opinion that Anet dropped the ball on GvG and made a huge mistake underestimating it’s importance and the expectations of Guild Wars players.
True. I never have understood why they have such a huge chip on their shoulder against GvG. Especially since such a huge portion of the WvW (and even some non-WvW population) want it.
There was a video awhile back with two of the PvP devs where GvG came up, and the reaction shot when the topic was even broached pretty much said it all. Immediate long face, uhhh, why are those idiots trying to do that look.
On the original topic though, every time you load into WvW you can feel the wasted potential. It is an extremely impressive game with mechanics and features that no other title can boast, but it’s been terribly mismanaged since day one.
I believe this is a larger problem with big dollar AAA titles. Cookie cutter series, increasingly shocking greed with cash shops, devs that seem more like corporate robots than gamers. Look to indie titles and devs like Epic that are taking a chance with different business models, and real community development with the people who are most passionate about their games.
How much time and coin I put into the home borderland depends on how the match is going and what time of day it is. A list of a bunch of factors and thoughts:
- If we are winning or close to winning, and holding keeps for 1+ days, I’ll keep upgrading them. It’s nice to have waypoints for no other reason than to hunt down PvCampers and move to other roaming action.
- If keeps are not being held for 1+ days, or there’s a huge coverage gap where the whole map gets papered, I only try to build waypoints for NA primetime and don’t do fortify or the minor upgrades.
- If we are being rolled over and no effort is being put into defense, I don’t spend anything.
- Usually only pre-place regular siege (namely gate trebs) during NA prime time, and only put it near waypoints and the paths out keeps where players might see it. Off hours I only pre-place siege when a guild that is known to try ninja keeping is on the map.
- Only throw sup siege on reset night, or when an attack is underway and there’s no choice but to siege hump.
- Only order oil pots and cannons on the north towers if I’m on the map and will run to the tower to actually use them.
- Only order oil pots on the south towers because they cost so little and it’s sometimes mildly amusing with mastery. The 5 player siegy being launched so often now though has made it faster for small groups to recap rather than spend any time trying to defend the towers though. Fights with players when siegy is active are always a messy affair too.
BL defense is what it is. You don’t have to go to the extreme and have keeps siege capped with people working in shifts around the clock to scout. On the other end of the spectrum, it sucks when the whole map is regularly a paper k-train playground. A few players that use the live map to intelligently play the havoc and anti-havoc game can have fun while upgrading things, and alert guilds looking for larger fights when they happen. Usually the best borderland roaming happens in the camp game or small fights over towers.
It would be nice to have some sort of material reward for doing this rather than losing gold for playing the game, but it seems anet has completely given up on rewarding players for anything other than LW content or mindlessly zerg farming something.
I’ve found it tricky since I still play FPS games and don’t want to use a 500 button MMO football size mouse. The G602 has a good number of buttons though.
Skill 1 – mouse
Skills 2-5 – Q, E, R, F
Utilities – Z, X, C, V
Heal – mouse
Profession 1-4 – mouse
Dodge – mouse
Swap – mouse
Jump – shift
Reverse – 2
Look behind – shift
Call target – 1
Take target – 3
Target nearest – ctrl
Use / autoloot – caps
Map zoom – middle mouse
Auto run – t
Open inventory – 4
Open hero – 5
Toggle chat box – ~
Alt – VoIP
Every button in easy reach that’s combat related or frequently in need of quick use (like inventory and map zoom) is utilized this way. The down side is that anything that replaces your skills, such as siege is a bit more awkward to use. Forget about instruments or anything like that.
Ain’t got time to be farming moas…time I could be playing the game. The drop rate should simply be increased to increase supply, lower the cost of the mats, and lower the cost of making the soups. It’s kinda outrageous that the -condi food cost 10x more than the +condi food…
I can hardly believe it’s come to this, but here I am in a forum, desperately asking for the poultry slab drop rate to be increased.
There’s so many problems and angles with the condi meta in WvW that many players have pretty much taken to running -40% or -36% condi food all the time. There’s already dozens of threads covering this issue in the WvW forum, so I won’t go into it.
The -40% condi food, bowl of lemongrass poultry soup, is extremely expensive because it uses the very rare lemongrass and 2x slabs of poultry meat. Fine, whatever, it’s a top tier food and expensive as such.
Normally the next step down 65 level foods are a much more economical option for poor players, which you are if all you do is play WvW. That’s not the case with the -36% condi food, bowl of poultry and leak soup, because it still uses 2x slabs of poultry meat, which has become a very expensive item for whatever reason. It would be even more expensive if players were still not crafting it at a loss or dumping excess items on the TP, but surely that will end someday, and it has been steadily getting more expensive.
tl;dr, increase the poultry slab drop rate so -condi food is less expensive and we can stop wasting most of the pathetic amount of gold earned in WvW on food.
(edited by zen.6091)
PU condi sucks for anything besides “you can’t kill me”. Staff in a condi build has almost no significant condi focus, warlock hits like a wet noodle, and chaos storm is annoying at best, more of a defensive skill as a combo initiator. The clones can be annoying and add up, but don’t focus. Scepter / Torch can be a little better for focusing confusion and of course has a powerful torment stack, but again, it’s almost more of a an annoyance.
Power PU with Greatsword and Sword / Torch is basically, let’s say 75% of a power shatter build. You trade 25% of your possible damage from higher shattering, might stacks, and decreased attack cooldowns for much, much improved survivability and easier stealth stomps when aegis ticks. It’s not an incredibly difficult build to play even with full / mostly beserker gear if you use your defensive skills quickly and wisely.
i am idea is: it uses savage leap (warrior sword 2) , we can swap with the clone as well, and the swap works like the portal, terrain doesnt affect the blink, means we could even use it in jumping puzzles to places wars usually go to!:o
This please.
Skill part 1 – Leap at your target like other sword leaps (e.g. savage leap), create a clone at location on hit for shatter options, and cripple on hit.
Skill part 2 – Return to your original location and immobilize adjacent foes. Whether this is a 0 activation quasi-stun break skill, or 1/4s activation skill like the nerfed infiltrator’s return should be where the balancing occurs.
Perhaps this is a little too good for MH sword if 3 was actually a good skill instead of a buggy PoS, but a couple thing happen here. One, no more BF spikes with imob when it hits right away unless you sacrifice the mobility options. Two, we get an actual gap closer for runners besides blink.
In the context of WvW at least, I feel this is balanced because if you play a power build with a MH sword, it’s already completely at your own peril in the current meta. We also have no options for runners in MH sword set besides blink because skill 3 is so buggy and unreliable for anything other than essentially melee range on flat terrain.
(edited by zen.6091)
It’s baffling the way they did this. It’s like they looked back at all their mistakes with the mesmer and thought, “Let’s see if we can do worse.”
Pretty much.
Unbelievable that they nerfed the “bug” while doing nothing to improve the intended functionality, which is still total garbage over anything but perfectly flat terrain. Nooo problem though, all the heavy leaps work just fine over any terrain, up stairs, over cliffs, you name it.
I really wish there was a better answer than transfer. It’s fun to be on a server that’s trending upwards (not bandwagoning) or at least stable. It’s not fun to be a server that is tanking or extremely weak during the times you play, unless you enjoy solo roaming or have some people to havoc attack with.
One thing I noticed about Kain before S2 began, when I was looking at all the free transfer servers, is that you guys don’t even seem to have a forum. Trying to get people organized and care a little about being part of the server is step one to climbing out of the gutter.
The nastiest setup I have seen is a leg specialist condi warrior that calls the targets and spikes, and there’s not a kitten thing most classes can do about it.
As for what you add to that, it depends on what you’re doing. If it’s just killing players, basically anything works, whether it’s a physical damage spike or condi load. If you’re doing havoc type stuff, mesmers are always good to have because of the things portal and mass invis enable the group to do (more on the fly than refuge). Add a cleric guardian to that for healing, boons for days, and condi purging. Finally add one more utility type player like a d/d ele, bomb engi, or DPS oriented guardian, and you have a well-rounded group.
I agree with the comment though that you should base the group on what the players you have are able to play best. There’s tons of players that have heavies, so that shouldn’t be a problem. Finding good non-thief anything else is usually the tricky part, usually engis, eles, and mesmers in particular.
(edited by zen.6091)
I unlocked all the bag slots for 4 characters and bought countless (old) transmutation stones when the conversion rate was 1.5-2g per 100 gems, and I’ve also spent real money to buy gems a few times.
At the current conversion rates, basically everyone besides hardcore farmers and TP masters have been priced out of the system. Particularly WvW players who are still making the same crummy amount of gold we always have.
I’d probably divide pugging WvW into three broad groups:
Group 1 – The serious / somewhat serious players. They generally run proven builds, know what they are doing, get on TS, and follow commanders that know what they are doing. Unfortunately this is usually the minority.
Group 2 – The gadflies. Can be any type of player from good to terrible, but they really only get on TS to laugh and socialize (probably the type of players you have having issues with).
Group 3 – The true pugs. Run terrible builds, don’t get on TS, rally bot, constantly have to be micro-manged, and quit when it’s anything more difficult than lightly defended PvD.
It’s tough though not being a celebrity pugmander. No one really appreciates the less prominent commanders that do the more menial task and don’t get to be the heroes leading a map zerg around blobbing through everything. Usually they get burnt out and quit fairly quickly, and then people wonder why the server is tanking if other commanders don’t replace them.
Having said all that though, you do have to make an effort to make it fun and encourage people do better, and slap people on the back when it is going well even if you don’t want to. Sacrx level screaming and raging is not the way to go, but neither is being silent most of the time. It’s a balancing act few do well.
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Do you really honestly believe that tier 6 or 7 servers would fare better against tc, bg, and jq than tier 2 servers do?….
The idea that lower tier servers are nearly on par in terms of population with tier 1 is just laughable.
When did I ever say that? Here’s the deal, and I’ll try to make it simple.
T1 has more 24/7 coverage. More players and guilds with a PPT mindset to attack and defend things with maximum PPT efficiency. In a nutshell, that means GWEN blobs, paper stuff is flipped with incredible speed, scouts actually scout, siege stays ticked, and when it’s time to push upgraded keeps when you have a coverage advantage, it’s a map zerg going all out. The old Waha zergs on JQ pretty much mastered the last part during SEA coverage, and I guess JQ is still doing that by the sound of the QQ in this thread.
If you like playing that way all the time, have yourself a merry time in T1.
In the the lower tiers, it’s much more of a sandbox of activity and doing whatever you want to do. That drives some players who have transferred down from T1 crazy, while others find it to be a welcome respite. It’s hard to explain the player numbers and what people are actually doing, but there are plenty of players.
You said quote
I am telling you after playing in T6/7 the past four months, after having played T1-3 since launch, there is actually more borderland activity in these tiers than there frequently is in the higher tiers.
Which is unequivocally false. There is not more activity on BLs in lower tiers than higher tiers.
Compare TC’s borderland focus this week.
http://www.gw2score.com/server/Tarnished-Coast
38.8% of their score came from EBG, 17.7% from BGBL, 19.5% from JQBL and 24% from TCBL.
Now look at Ferguson’s crossing boderland focus.
http://www.gw2score.com/server/Ferguson%27s-Crossing
51.3% came from FCBL. 34.1% from EBG. 9.5 and 5.1 from the other servers’ BLs.
Now maybe I extrapolated your comments too far, but the idea that there’s more happening in lower tiers is just plain false, especially weekdays. More is happening on more BLs in higher tiers.
There’s more to it than arm chair theory and statistics.
T1 servers have the coordination and coverage to hold corner keeps on enemy BLs, hence the increased score from enemy BLs, but that doesn’t necessarily mean activity. JQ can have a fortified weekend BL keep with a lone scout in it most of the time and a zerg to port in the moment it’s attacked, but I don’t consider that activity. The knowledge that a map zerg will port in for defense, plus having to wade though all the siege, and win a cap fight over all the bannering and WP resing on tick keeps it defended. And oh by the way, while you’re committed to that for an hour, another zerg will hit your stuff elsewhere. It’s just a big game of zerg whack-a-mole.
This falls into the max PPT mindset category. On the lower tiers, you may take and upgrade a corner keep a bit, maybe even get a WP on rare occasion, but not defend it for days on end. It’s usually struggle enough to hold your own WP’s during coverage gaps, let alone worry about holding one in enemy territory.
(edited by zen.6091)
Do you really honestly believe that tier 6 or 7 servers would fare better against tc, bg, and jq than tier 2 servers do?….
The idea that lower tier servers are nearly on par in terms of population with tier 1 is just laughable.
When did I ever say that? Here’s the deal, and I’ll try to make it simple.
T1 has more 24/7 coverage. More players and guilds with a PPT mindset to attack and defend things with maximum PPT efficiency. In a nutshell, that means GWEN blobs, paper stuff is flipped with incredible speed, scouts actually scout, siege stays ticked, and when it’s time to push upgraded keeps when you have a coverage advantage, it’s a map zerg going all out. The old Waha zergs on JQ pretty much mastered the last part during SEA coverage, and I guess JQ is still doing that by the sound of the QQ in this thread.
If you like playing that way all the time, have yourself a merry time in T1.
In the the lower tiers, it’s much more of a sandbox of activity and doing whatever you want to do. That drives some players who have transferred down from T1 crazy, while others find it to be a welcome respite. It’s hard to explain the player numbers and what people are actually doing, but there are plenty of players.
I am telling you after playing in T6/7 the past four months, after having played T1-3 since launch, there is actually more borderland activity in these tiers than there frequently is in the higher tiers.
Whenever a tier 2 server has the misfortune of facing a tier 1, it’s a massive stomp. And tier 2 is where the gvg guilds congregate, so it’s not for lack of skill that they are permanently pushed off their bl and into their corner of EBG.
Hell, if you check the scores this week, there are stomps in the lower tiers already forming.
You really think you can compare the activity level of a tier 6/7 server to tier 1? Lol, just lol.
T1 has more 24/7 coverage and far more hardcore PPT players.
The situation between T1 and T2 is, as you said, different because T2 is stacked with don’t care about PPT guilds that are there for the fights and GvG. So when they do face a T1 server, the guilds aren’t suddenly going to play PPT, and the pugs vanish because no one wants to play endless keep defense. Plus the T2 servers have no interest in gaining rating and moving to T1, so the tiers are effectively locked in besides the 5% out-of-order match roll, or whatever it is.
In the lower tiers you see much more 10-20 size pugmander and guild groups running on BL maps attacking, defending, and fighting, and feeling like they can actually do something without a map zerg porting in to deal with every situation.
The T1 for life crowd that seems to regularly come on here whining about not having three servers with full map queues 24/7 to fight “fair”, and making this preposterous argument about combining tiers needs to realize that life on the lower tiers is not dead. Players and guilds transfer to T1 all the time thinking that it’s the big show, and many of them leave when they realize it’s incredibly trashy, and a hollow game trying to win the PPT war 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
NA probably could safely trim off one tier (three servers) with a solution for the bottom tier dead zone, but combining everyone into two tiers is a ludicrous proposition. I am telling you after playing in T6/7 the past four months, after having played T1-3 since launch, there is actually more borderland activity in these tiers than there frequently is in the higher tiers. It’s just not always map zergs porting around playing hardcore PPT.
+ duration condi food is exponentially better than any other food for condi builds.
- duration condi food gives you a chance against heavy condi pressure and laughs at light / medium condi pressure.
95% of other foods are simple 1-up stat boost. Notable exceptions:
-Omnomberry Pie – Ridiculously OP before nerf, merely ok now.
-Truffle Steak Dinner – Still a good for power builds, but crit bonus was cut in half.
-Orian Meat Stew – Fallen out of use because most builds have high vigor uptime or don’t need it. Would be good for might stacking roaming warriors, but they pretty much need -condi food.
-Seaweed Salad – Underused food for backline zerg power builds that would benefit a lot from +10% damage and swiftness maintenance in combat (necros mainly), but expensive.
-Chocolate Omnomberry Cream – 20% boon duration is really good for some builds, and MF…I guess.
I picked 2 ascended trinkets and 3 infusions, because I dislike doing PvE and guild missions equally.
SR is one of those skills you have to play around in WvW. If you don’t have a player with the right control to clear the resing player(s) out (illusionary wave, banish, magnetic inversion, etc) all you can do is nuke the spot with big damage or melee cleaving. Examples:
100b – ridiculously good DPS
Whirlwind attack – DPS, quickly move to downed player
Binding blade – pull player away and off res channel
Whirling wrath – DPS
Mightly blow – DPS
Grenades – DPS + condis
Bombs – DPS (if in a power build) + condis
Big ol bomb – place it next to a downed player anticipating a refuge res, but not being able to spike
Pistol whip – DPS + stun to break res channel
Blurred frenzy – DPS + top with shatters if using IP
Eles in general – eles have many ground targeted and point blank attacks
Wells / marks / death shroud – DPS + condis
Any melee attack – Spam 1 if nothing else. Chain skills will also detect sure hits by cycling to next skill, so if they are downed, you can easily stand there cleaving them dead during the stealth duration.
One of things I really hate about the widespread use of crap condi builds in WvW is the reduced ability you have to push kills with in refuge resing situations, which is quite frequent in roaming play. All you have to do with power builds is react quickly and possibly bag 2+ birds with one stone. Condi builds, more times than not all you can do is twiddle your thumbs as both the downed player and the thief run off to safety.
Although YB is probably by and large taking their revenge on players that didn’t bandwagon, bandwagon servers generally are not treated very well on their fall from grace.
I’ve been in similar situations, and your best option is to start havoc teams on their BL that take camps, towers, and keep tapping their keeps. If you can get enough on to run two groups doing this, do havoc on their BL and your BL.
Of course the reality is that it’s way easier to not play when things are really difficult, and it is really difficult to take a sieged keep from YB, or obtain gems to transfer to a new server that’s face rolling in their tier. This is why bandwagon servers invariably fall apart.
Changes to +40% condi food, perplexity runes, or dire gear is pretty much crazy talk. It’s not going to happen. All you can really do is play around it.
-Use -condi food and / or melandru, hoelbrak runes
-Use your removal wisely to purge a bleed stack as it stacks back on top
-Don’t heal when poisoned, pay attention to the source
-Don’t take excessive damage from confusion
-Don’t spam 1 all the time to lower the chance of an needless attack being interrupted for perplex confusion
-Don’t bother with p/d perplex thieves if they have PvE or multiple players to cloak off and you don’t have a ton of cc
-Understand positioning from dangerous point blank condi application
On that last point, perplex bomb engis, condimancers, and to a lesser extent blackwater mesmers are really dangerous close in and in tight spaces. In the open and at range, the risk goes down a lot. Duel melee heavies will struggle against these builds no matter how well you play without support. Thieves can usually do their normal routine of backstabbing and kiting while revealed, or using sword burst to move in and out at will. Mesmers can spatial spam them down while keeping phantasms up and blinking for position. Eles have a mountain of condi removal without running crummy traits or slot skills, and a lot of raw healing.
There’s also no rule against changing your slot skills before getting into combat, and you should instantly recognize condi builds by the food and sigil stack. In most of my roaming type builds I consider the 3rd utility skill a sort of flexible slot that is changed depending on the situation. As for your healing skill, you’re probably going to want to change that too to the one that either has condi removal or has the most raw healing rather than a signet or defensive heal.
For example, let’s say you’re playing a generic warrior roaming with heal sig, FGJ, endure pain, and doylak sig on your bar. How much does your chance of beating a condi build go up if you quickly change heal sig to mending and endure pain to berseker stance? Heal sig is garbage if you’re poisoned quite a bit, while mending will usually purge poison before healing. Endure pain is almost useless against a condi build, while berseker stance will give you a good amount of free hits to DPS and build up adrenaline quickly. These are the types of things you have to think about and do if you want to be successful roaming against a full spectrum of builds.
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There’s problems with the structure of T1 and T2 that won’t be solved by anet, and can’t be solved by players.
If you’re unhappy with the situation, transfer to a lower tier where you can actually make a difference, and also have the opportunity to play against a variety of opponents because the random match roll chance is higher.
3. Arcane thievery. Roaming and small group action in WvW has become very warrior heavy. I love ripping off a huge might stack and long fury, while dumping my condis off on the class that is usually least equipped to handle them. With blink, it also makes manipulation cooldown a worthwhile trait in the last whatever slot with PU builds that don’t use a staff.
2. Blink. Shouldn’t really have to say much here.
1. Illusionary Wave. Gets the top spot not because it’s my favorite skill per se, but because it’s helped me end thousands of thieves.
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Most of the solo roaming builds are very boring to fight. P/D and D/D thieves that only fight where they can cloak off PvE, D/P thieves that can only be beat by heavy control, GS warriors that flee with whirlwind and rush, blackwater mesmers that really do nothing. The only builds I really like to face in a bout of skill are meditation guardians, D/D power eles, power mesmers, and the very rare power ranger that doesn’t suck.
The only thing I liked about roaming with my power mesmer for awhile was that one quick glance and it looks like the typical blackwater mesmer, and then suddenly you’re getting ripped up with a berserker and mind wracks while being spatial spammed trying to run. But now I’m in a tier where it’s easy to remember most of the roamers, and the roaming has dropped off quite a lot after the tournament. So all you get solo roaming are random idiots, thieves, and parties of 3-5 doing their own PvCamp that won’t be e responded to with even numbers. Very often those parties are also just zerg hammer warriors too, so it’s even more boring.
I suppose by this standard meteor shower should be nerfed too, because guilds that run heavy with staff eles can basically turn any wall into an instant death zone.
As other people have already mentioned, the focus is completely terrible for combat compared to the torch or pistol. If if you only swap in a focus for situations where a pull is needed, you still risk still being stuck in combat with it. That’s not so bad if it’s a pistol you replaced, but in some builds, the torch is your main condi removal and setup for other combos.
GoM papers everything with huge overnight zergs, but yesterday they lost two waypoints to four players during the afternoon, including one T3 keep with 1,700 supplies. Today they lost their entire map to around ten players during the same time period while they zerged around EBG, also including a T3 keep that was capped last.
I’d be quite happy to see them move up a tier, but they really seem too lazy to stick in a tier where their off hours coverage is expected to do anything besides blob up and circle cap.
If you gave the top tier the option to go to the bottom for free, how many would take that option?
So few you wouldn’t notice.
People don’t join hopelessly outnumbered teams, they join the winning teams, the ones with the numbers.
A lot of players took advantage of the free transfers to lower tiers before S2 started, although the majority did bandwagon on HoD.
If the bottom tier servers got a small number of of free transfers (read, not unlimited), I guarantee roamers, players looking for something different, or maybe a small guild would use them.
In lue of that, the cost of transferring could be more equitable by further stratifying the cost from top to bottom based on ladder rank rather than the fuzzy population metric.
Obviously it’s WvW related.
Hell….no. T6/7 NA has been the most fun I’ve had in WvW. Not dead, (usually) not ridiculously zergy.
For so long before S2 started, I believed the comments that low tier WvW is dead. I guess it’s dead if your definition of dead is not being able to load into any map and find a 50+ omniblob of morons on a dorito. The funny thing is though, I transferred here from SoS, and there’s more small scale borderland activity than there is in T2…
I don’t know about the very bottom tier in NA and EU though. That’s always been a tier for the recently tanked, and further punished by the crummy ratings system that makes it difficult to climb out.
Some snide comment about dubstep here.