Guild Wars 2

Forestnator.6298:

Why should hammer scrapper be absolut top tier in sPvP but rubish in WvW roaming?

Putting aside it wasn’t top tier even before the nerfs last patch and has been replaced by other classes in a number of teams, what happens in sPvP and roaming WvW are two different things, because one involves fighting on & around a point and contesting it, where a large part of the “win” condition is control of the point and not necessarily killing the other guy, where as in WvW you fight in open spaces and the only win condition is killing the other guy.

So whilst hammer engy is still tough to kill in WvW, it is actually pretty crap at killing anyone who plays cautiously, classes that can kite you to death and players who run if they think they will lose (which in WvW is a lot), because there is no useful damage dealing range kit in that scenario when players aren’t neatly stacked on a point, and the mobility of engy in WvW is one of the worst these days, so it’s often a struggle to finish off someone on say 30% HP who has decided to run, when even a DH with (f2, elite gives another f2, sword 2 or gs leap, Judges intervention & traveller runes) can outrun an engy, let’s not even go into thieves, gs/staff rangers, etc.

Saying that, ‘rubbish’ is too strong a word, but hammer engy is less effective roaming in WvW than it is fighting on a point in PvP.

BeepBoopBop.5403:

zinkz.7045:

Condi other than perplexity is fine (and it’s no more broken than durability runes), condi is no more imbaalnced than the insane direct damage you can do now or the perma boon spam, they nerfed the most obnoxious thing about condi which was the 40% food.

As someone mentioned a few posts above (one of the few who apparently has any idea of what balance is in a game and that it involves more than a direct one for one comparison) condi builds have defensive stats, but they lack in other areas such as mobility, and if you want to talk about imbalance then by far the most obnoxious imbalanced area of WvW (smallscale) is the vast difference in disengage which results in huge differences in a fundamental principles of PvP – risk vs reward, I wonder how many hypocrites we have who play d/p or s/d thief, mesmer, gs/staff ranger, etc..

s/d thief and shatter mesmer have low risks vs high reward? lol

Yeah unless you are terrible, because you can disengage most fights, choose your engagements at will, they are low risk classes for roaming, which is why over the course of this game those classes have been so popular and things like necro or guard have not, you must be new.

Condi other than perplexity is fine (and durability runes are just as broken), condi is no more imbalanced than the insane direct damage you can do now or the perma boon spam, they nerfed the most obnoxious thing about condi which was the 40% food.

As someone mentioned a few posts above (one of the few who apparently has any idea of what balance is in a game and that it involves more than a direct one for one comparison) condi builds have defensive stats, but they lack in other areas such as mobility, and if you want to talk about imbalance then by far the most obnoxious imbalanced area of WvW (smallscale) is the vast difference in disengage which results in huge differences in a fundamental principles of PvP – risk vs reward, I wonder how many hypocrites we have who play d/p or s/d thief, mesmer, gs/staff ranger, etc..

BeepBoopBop.5403:

No thanks, I like active play.

If you liked active play then you wouldn’t be playing a game that aims most of your skills for you (and what little you do aim barely requires any aim at all), is full of passives, has no meaningful resource management, is pretty undemanding in terms of mechanical ability and so on…

Erm pretty much everything in this game is auto-pilot to one extent or another, you are playing a game where most stuff is auto-targeted or where with one button press you break stun, clear condies of allies, hand out boons and heal yourself, all in a huge radius that requires no aim and with no cast time, again you think that is skilled “active” play because you press one button?

lil devils x.6071:

…and kill the zerglings trickling back in to the fight..

lil devils x.6071:

fun and challenging

Try and work out why when someone wants to roam / do small scale the second quote “fun and challenging” is directly contrary to the first quote, unless the player is a nab.

ResJudicator.7916:

For example, a thief is 100% helpless when he’s coming down on his vault animation (outside of mugging to interrupt). But it’s up to the thief’s opponent to be good enough to land skills during this animation.

If every class / build had instant / fast, ranged interrupts like mantra of distraction mes / f3 or steal / head shot then yeah it would be up to the opponent, but when classes / builds have interrupts with the same 3/4 of sec cast time as vault the idea of precision interrupting it at the right frames is laughable (and let’s not even talk about waiting for most AI to respond), just one more example of why “skill” in this game is so secondary.

Terrorsquad.4802:

in the context that it doesn’t require much skill to be very effective…

Which is no different from anything else in a low skill casual MMO like GW2 where there is no meaningful aiming required (most stuff is even auto-targeted), no meaningful resource management, passive stuff to play the game for you (even much of the active skills are very passive in nature) and where mouse control / reflexes are barely an issue when compared to games that actually take a lot of skill (well for video games).

If you want high, risk high reward, requiring plenty of skill then you are playing entirely the wrong game, and always have been.

TheGrimm.5624:

style.6173:

@OP: You have no clue what you are talking about. A vocal minority?

Forum posters are a minority of the players that actually play the game.

The phrase ‘vocal minority’ is simply a piece of empty rhetoric used with dishonest intentions by individuals (politicians are prime example) who wish to discredit a view they disagree with by implying ‘the silent majority’ have a different view, without any actual evidence or data.

Every view expressed on this forum is by a ‘vocal minority’, which is a total irrelevance, as some views are a minority view, whilst others represent the overwhelming majority of opinion.

What it certain is the population decreased since the introduction of the DBL maps and queueing patterns changed, you would have much larger queues on EB than previously, and far, far fewer queues on the borders, where as to take last night for example on Piken Square during primetime EB had the smallest queue, and even no queue at some points, all of which rather supports the “vocal minority”, rather than your empty claims about what “a lot” of people think.

Heimlich.3065:

The thing that stops them is that this, literally, only ever affects servers pushed back to their citadel, which is where your server had mine on Tuesday.

Wrong, it affects everyone, because certain servers also use the trebs in spawn to defend the towers, including servers that have way more players on than the opposition, it’s an exploit and should be removed.

Sich.7103:

Shinon.4513:

• The Oasis Event. I enjoyed some of the most exciting fights there

Don’t bring that kitten back ! This event is a big piece of kitten ! PVE event should not give so much advantage to one team !
At least quaggan was not OP and was easy to counter… But the best thing is no pve event at all.

It wasn’t a PvE event, there is no such thing as a PvE event in a PvP game mode, what it is just like the “PvE” in nearly every PvP game, like the Lord in Foefire, is an objective designed to attract fights, which it did.

Josh XT.6053:

zinkz.7045:

Josh XT.6053:

Usually fights with cheesy stealth engineers end in draws because they spend the whole fight running away from me instead of damaging me.

Because builds with huge sustain, running a stat that was deemed so broken OP it got removed from PvP, aren’t cheesy at all…

Keep in mind that it wasn’t just eles that were using celestial and living forever lol. Remember Cele necros, engineers and medi guardians were also a thing in PvP that were pretty strong.

Why do I need to keep those in mind, they are irrelevant to the point (and incidentally none other than engy compared, and engy build got removed when they changed the trait lines), you whine about “cheesy stealth engineers” yet seem oblivious to the reality you are playing one of the cheesiest builds the game has ever seen cele ele, that carried bads in PvP for ages and was eventually kicked out of PvP because it was so broken OP you had a team with 4 cele eles (& 1 thief) winning a tourney.

If you want people to fight you rather than thinking I’m not fighting this AIDS and withdrawing, then I suggest you play something less faceroll, less dull to fight and less forgiving.

You don’t seem to realise it, but when roaming in WvW (unlesss you are PPT monkey and are bothered about camps, etc) there is only one “win” condition and that is the other guy dead or downed on the floor, it isn’t PvP where disengaging has a cost like losing a point, or the time wasted contributing nothing to the score and moving on to the next the point, so if people see some dull forgiving build like cele ele, condi perma stealth thief, PU perplexity mes, etc, many simply move off, and if you’ve made a build that has focused on fighting ability, sustain, etc, over quick kills, mobility / being able to chase down, then that is your problem, you are roaming in wvw, not playing 1v1 duelling.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Interesting that people hate the desert BL so much they don’t mind a change to alpine right in the middle of a matchup.

Like it matters.

Zelulose.8695:

I would play it, but this thread is a poll and will probably get deleted. (I wish they wouldn’t remove the player-base’s voice but they do it on many occasions).

This thread and poll are not the voice of the “player-base”, it has 581 views and the poll has 95 votes, the poll & thread are also something of a self selecting sample, it is of much more interest and hence much more likely to get a response from those who would like to play deathmatch than anyone else, as the “voice of the player-base” it is basically worthless.

Renny.6571:

ding ding ding. Base engi is still semi-viable to roam with, and the sense of accomplishment when you kill ezcheesy HoT specs is unmatched.

Because none of the base specs are total cheese either…

FrownyClown.8402:

Lag is a result of your client unable to keep up with the servers updating information.

Wrong, lag may be down to the client, it may also be down to the servers being unable to process and send data fast enough, in WvW, the latter is generally the problem, which is why he may be fighting a 1v1 in some corner of the map, requiring minimal information sent for that fight, but be lagging, because there is a 3 way blob fight going on that the servers can not keep up with.

Varezenem.2813:

They used revs for 3 reasons:
1. They were used to it due to the previous meta
2. They work particularly well when combined with Auramancers
3. This was pre nerf.

They used it because they’ll play whatever OP crap they can in order to win, it is that simple, as for the nerf, it was minor, which is why in the link I gave which is based on 10 ESL players votes, it is still considered top tier (with condi mes).

Burtnik.5218:

Revenant is underpowered actually

Which is why none of the ESl teams use one, oh wait they pretty much all use one, and before the latest class stacking rule, of the four teams in the semi-finals of the pro-league there were 7 revs, your opinion does not seem to match the reality, here is some more reality for you – http://academygamingnet.com/guild-wars-2-class-tier-list-april-27th-2016/ .

Josh XT.6053:

Usually fights with cheesy stealth engineers end in draws because they spend the whole fight running away from me instead of damaging me.

Because builds with huge sustain, running a stat that was deemed so broken OP it got removed from PvP, aren’t cheesy at all…

Lettuce.2945:

I’ll just say this once. More than most, on average, the duelers will be far more superior mechanically to your zerglings and if there’s a small guild group standing around dueling outside ebg, gank them at your own risk. Especially if they’re my guild, I guaranteed if you try to train us, we will just peel back and then tail you and eventually pick apart your Zerg to the point where you lose communication and people start getting camped. So I’ll say this again, do so at your own risk. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve won multiple 2-3 vs 10-15’s. You would be better off focusing on the other zerg because they’re mindless as opposed to skilled and superior mechanically skilled players just humiliating you.

10/10 for comedy value.

mistsim.2748:

but you cant deny that they make good quality games, support them consistently…

True, on the other hand they very rarely come up with anything themselves, rather simply copying another game (or buying the company in the case of Diablo) and then with the exception of Starcraft (which is basically an online modern multiplayer version of an old game called Dune 2000) they dumb it down and make it casual friendly easy mode for the masses, like MOBAs -> HotS, Magic The Gathering -> Hearthstone, EQ,Ultima, etc -> WoW, and so on.

You are a playing a game aimed at casual players with barely any resource management, with a sort of faux action combat where the vast majority of skills are auto-aimed or require no real aim (melee) and with passives coming out of its kitten and with so many things designed in a way that requires no real thought or skill, to the point they seem designed in a way to assist not so good players, if you think any class in this game takes much in the way of skill, then well…

Novuake.2691:

You should try wvw roaming sometime, gives some perspective of what power mesmer can do without fearing conditions.

Roaming in WvW is irrelevant, pretty much everything is ridiculous, 14k backstabs, blowtorch on engy burning build that will do over 35k damage from one button press (nothing to fear there), etc…

Ghotistyx.6942:

Idk what’s so hard to understand…

You seem to be one having problems understanding, just because you press a button it doesn’t stop something from being a very passive sort of gameplay.

If AH had it’s own skill on a say 60 sec so your next f1 triggered it after that, then that what be more active, the player would have to make a very concious decision
when is the best time to use it, as it is players can just ignore it and it is just something that happens as part of your normal course of play, very passive gameplay which basically plays the game for you, which I guess may be “good design” in a casual MMO in that helps not so good players, but it is a fine example of why this game is not considered very skilled.

So you think nerfs were aimed for WvW zergs like rev sword 2 when revs use hammer / staff in zergs, or Riposting Shadows when revs normally don’t even use assassin legend for zergs, or that the nerf to slick shoes & sneak gyro were aimed at one of the least used classes in zergs / guilds, or perhaps your understanding of the game is so bad you think buffing engi pistol is aimed at WvW, etc, okay…

The patch had some stuff for WvW like limiting the number of targets to 10 on skills like static field, the stab change, DH bow 5, etc.

And here is the reality check, until raids, the vast majority of balance changes in this game were for PvP to the detriment of WvW / PvE, to the point overall game balance across all modes over the history of this game has been one of the worst I’ve ever played, e.g – necros spent 3 years at bottom of the barrel in PvE, engies/rangers were not even recruited by WvW guilds for years, and you throw your toys out of the pram because one patch actually considers WvW a bit, rather than 95%-100% focus on PvP like most patches, talk about entitlement, I guess objectivity is an unknown concept to you, pathetic…

And the laughable thing is, even with near 100% of the balance focus in this game PvP has very rarely got anywhere near decent balance.

Shylock.4653:

zinkz.7045:

Which is just an out of context stat lacking the info to have any meaning

If the matchmaking isn’t totally screwed it has some meaning.

The very fact that you can have solo players can be matched vs a 5 man with good comp + TS shows just how screwed matchmaking is.

Shylock.4653:

To be real, people who have bad matches come to the forum complaining,..

Not really, most people simply stop playing PvP or the game, which is why PvP is the huge success it is…

zinkz.7045:

What does that mean for everyone who lose against a non ESL premade?

Erm, I was taking an extreme example to show why a 50% stat by itself is meaningless, that the game could have an overall 50% win rate, but not have a single balanced match, or some guy at high MMRs could have a 80% loss rate in solo vs 5 man because he is facing good players (often better than he may have on his team) on TS, which is just being offset by some guy with a lowish MMR players getting a 80% win rate in solo vs nub PvE 5 mans, you need way more information for the 50% to mean anything.

Shylock.4653:

Premade vs non premade….is it fair?

It seems to be quite fair with a small advantage for the solo players, because according to anet the win rate of five solo players is above 50% against five-person premades.

Only 1% of all Ranked matches played in season one were a full five-person premade group vs. a group of five solo players, and even then, the win rate for those five solo player teams in those cases was consistently at or above 50% throughout the entire season.

Source:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/pvp-league-season-two-changes

Which is just an out of context stat lacking the info to have any meaning (which is why whatever snake-oil salesmen put them out, did so, for gullible people), you could have an overall 50% win rate of solos vs 5 mans, with 50% of the games being solo PvP players stomping vs inexperienced 5 man PvE groups, and the other 50% being 5 man ESL pre-mades on TS stomping solo PvP players, the overall figure might be 50%, but no one is getting good matches.

Come back when you have actual real stats with some meaning such as not just for 5v solo, but 4+1 v solo, 4+1 vs 2+1+1+1 and so on, viewable by MMR bands, by score ratio and by time people queued so we can see how people off-peak fare, but don’t hold your breath on getting those actual useful stats, take a guess why?

XxsdgxX.8109:

And you OP make it sound like Rev was a low skill class, lol I come from playing Guardian and Warrior and Revenant is in fact way more complex and much more entertaining for me, and even then it is barely better than those other two classes but as in a Jack of all Trades, master of none.

Their survivability comes from active defenses and feeding from the opponent’s mistakes., so yeah for sure more complex than having a Healing Signet healing for nearly 400 HP per sec and having a high HP pool.

Wow another comedian, “active defenses”, you mean like versed in stone, or 10% reduced damage whilst below 75% HP, or how about eye for an eye, I guess not, then surely you mean the trait that reduces damage from over 360 distance by 10%, I guess you don’t mean that either, maybe you mean those passive life syphons, or maybe not…

It’s funny you mention warrior, because whilst it also has some passive defences, in terms of offense it takes actual thought to land stuff (at least for melee weapons), you want to hit HB, eviscerate (ignoring current bug), etc you actually have to set it up, because you won’t hit anyone who isn’t a potato otherwise, rev on the hand you just roll your face across the keyboard because you have skills that play the game for you to apply your damage, like a 1200 range blink that also makes attacks unblockable on a 5 sec cooldown, or a 450 range multi blink that just sticks to your target for you on sword 3.

P.S – There is no such thing as a high skill class in GW2, they are all low skill.

Krysard.1364:

Having high skill floor actually is a well designed facet of revs I would say.

10/10 for comedy by using the phrase ‘high skill’ in GW2, grats.

DaVid Darksoul.4985:

Main problem seems to be the lack of enemy roamers… Most who complain about DBL appear to be large group players who don’t like to have difficulties winning.

So there is a lack of enemy roamers, yet you think only large group players dislike it, okay…

Galandil.9641:

…you’re both gimping your team not wanting to swap class.

Everyone that does not queue as a 5 man on TS with a complimentary composition, who does not have great internet connection, who is not using a good mouse, who is of an age where their reflexes / hand eye co-ordination is past their peak, who is a fat out of shape tub of lard and so on is “gimping their team”.

But guess what, it is a casual low skilled MMO, you are not playing a DOTA 2 tournament for a million dollars, so the purpose of playing is ‘fun’, now some people may only find a certain class fun, this is not unusual in an MMORPG, why should they play a class they don’t find fun just because you don’t like it, that was rhetorical by the way, because the answer is they shouldn’t.

There is an easy solution to your issue, go queue as a 4 or 5 man and you will never have to see double thief or any other comp you don’t like again, but I guess whining about some guy playing a certain class is easier than taking responsibility for yourself.

lLobo.7960:

I see a lot of roamers that get frustrated as they don’t feel like they influence the match-ups most, even more on higher tiers.

Really? You’ve played this game 3+ years and you still don’t get that most matchups over the life of this game have been foregone conclusions due to differences in off-peak coverage and poor game design, that most sane people gave up on “winning” or PPT a long time ago, because as a points scoring competition WvW is essentially a meaningless joke not worth bothering with, that is the same for roamers, zergs, whatever.

Hence there is nothing that can be done to make roaming or anything else “meaningful” whilst the design, lack of population/coverage balance makes the entire mode meaningless in respect to score.

kdaddy.5431:

If we are playing football/basketball/baseball and your best player gets injured and go on.

Not really, if a player gets injured in most team sports, then at an appropriate point (or immediately if the injury is clearly serious) the ref/umpire stops play and they get substituted for another player from the bench, in many sports if a player is clearly injured, especially if it looks serious even the opposition will stop play.

lmperdigao.2567:

It’s quite the opposite. The longer the season, the longer the time you have to be placed where you really belong to because you can play enough games for the system gather more data and place you in the right place.

Erm, no, if it was an actual real league system where there were limits to how many people could reach a division with promotion/demotion, then yeah, you would be right, but it isn’t.

So what happens is this, when the best players get to say diamond first (let’s just pretend this is case for the sake of simplicity), they then move to legend, but then they’ve moved out of diamond which makes it easier for the next tier of players who weren’t quite as good to then move out of diamond to legendary, and then when they’ve gone, the next tier down after that and so on.

Sirendor.1394:

Tbh, most roamers want to fight other roamers,…

Most roamers either stopped roaming, left the game or went to PvP long ago, for the simple reason WvW is absolute kitten for roaming…

The old stability was just as bad as the new stab, and if it came back with the current powercreep of durability runes, new boon food, sigil of concentration, commander/wanderer stats, heralds pumping out boons 24/7, resistance, etc it would take ‘broken’ to a new level.

Really they just need some way for stab to work that is in between the old system and the current system, so melee actually need to think and position themselves somewhat rather than brainlessly roll face over the keyboard immune to hard CC whenever it actually would matter as it was under the old system, and that hard CC is useful, but without being obnoxious in the way it is now.

Shadow.1345:

play and then turn around and tell people how to play to suit a thief on their team. This whole thread started with me talking about how stubborn and arrogant people who insist on always playing thief and pretty much every reply has proven my point.

You don’t have a point, firstly if you are that bothered about compositions then queue as a 5 man, but I guess taking responsibility is too much for you and you’d rather cry about other people than solve what is your problem, yourself.

Secondly you fail to grasp what should be a fairly basic concept, that people have different priorities when playing games, now you may think you are at The International playing DOTA 2 for a million dollars, so winning is all that matters, but the reality is you are playing GW2, which is a casual MMO, where many have the view that the PvP is considered a bit of a joke, and the league is considered a worthless joke, so if faced with the choice between what is optimum and what is fun (which means playing the class they enjoy), many go with what is fun, if you don’t like that, then tough, people are entitled to play what class they wish, you know how to solve your problem.

Shadow.1345:

The thing is it’s not the class itself that is bad, it’s the players and the bad ones tend to be really stubborn.

Why do you stubbornly refuse to take responsibility and queue as a 5 man which would solve your “thief hate”/composition issues?

Kicker.8203:

Well this thread is mainly about sPvP so yes balance is important.

LOL, if balance were important in this game, then you wouldn’t have a billion runes, sigils, stat options, traits, utility skills, weapon sets, etc, with classes that can perform multiple roles or multiple hybrids of roles, because that is impossible to balance.

As for sPvP specifically, it is a fine example of the mindless power creep in this game and how the game has become even more skilless (and let’s be honest it wasn’t exactly Starcraft to begin with), if you want more balance in PvP then classes need nerfs, not yet more powercreep with more buffs.

Kicker.8203:

zinkz.7045:

Kicker.8203:

• Traps: Tripwire and Needle Trap are really weak. I would add a good bunch of damage to them even though it would cause revealed.

No thanks, if you play with trapper runes these two are the best traps by far, putting damage on them would make them useless, the needle trap is already strong in a condi build – 3 sec immob (even more in WvW), thousands in bleeds/poison damage, long poison to reduce healing, unblockable, vuln & might with the trait, etc.

That’s just a troll build coz u are perma-stealthed and u can still harass people. Not good for any serious business.

You don’t have to be playing the permastealth condi trapper troll build to use trapper runes, there are other builds and there is no “serious business” in GW2, it is a super casual MMO with signifcant design flaws that make the idea of it being “serious business” a joke.

Virtually nothing needs buffs and pretty much everything to varying degrees needs nerfs to tone back the skilless powercreep and mindless spam of this game.

Kicker.8203:

• Traps: Tripwire and Needle Trap are really weak. I would add a good bunch of damage to them even though it would cause revealed.

No thanks, if you play with trapper runes these two are the best traps by far, putting damage on them would make them useless, the needle trap is already strong in a condi build – 3 sec immob (even more in WvW), thousands in bleeds/poison damage, long poison to reduce healing, unblockable, vuln & might with the trait, etc.

Dusty Moon.4382:

zinkz.7045:

Sviel.7493:

INITIAL RESULTS

With a good chunk of quantitative data in, I can say with confidence that the Desert BLs do not significantly increase travel times between roaming objectives. That is, camp-to-camp, spawn-to-camp/tower and camp-to-tower.

Which is pretty meaningless data, other than for camp flippers, for example when people used to do small group the “defenders” rarely went camp to camp, they used paths like garri to nw camp, which was much shorter on Alpine than it is on DBL.

Same thing for defending south camps, take the old SW camp by bay where there used to be lots of small group action, that it is 25% faster to get there from the SW spawn is irrelevant, that path is fast regardless, that isn’t what has killed fights at that camp, it is that it now takes much longer for defenders do get there (to the point it is simply not worth bothering) because there is no bay WP they can use, the path from garri to SW camp was much faster on the old Alpine map than the new DBL map and to top it off on Alpine people would use the camp area for siege to attack bay from, the result it went from a hotspot of small group action to a deadzone under DBL, whoever designed DBL simply has no clue at all.

No, sorry, wrong – There are paths that are the SAME amount of time from Gari to Bay or Hills on DBL’s. Obviously, people who are complaining really haven’t played them and just want to complain.

Do you even read what you reply to? I didn’t mention garri to bay or garri to hills…

Dusty Moon.4382:

As I said before, I think the DBL’s are great maps, if they didn’t have all the PvE and HoT Kitten stuff in them.

Think what you like, the reality says different, the maps are a poorly designed piece of kitten, which is why people avoid them.

Sviel.7493:

I would not expect an analysis of the borderlands with respect to roaming to directly map onto an analysis with respect to defending.

“Defending” is part of roaming, getting to the fights is half the equation, what you describe is camp flipping, not roaming/smallscale.

Sviel.7493:

INITIAL RESULTS

With a good chunk of quantitative data in, I can say with confidence that the Desert BLs do not significantly increase travel times between roaming objectives. That is, camp-to-camp, spawn-to-camp/tower and camp-to-tower.

Which is pretty meaningless data, other than for camp flippers, for example when people used to do small group the “defenders” rarely went camp to camp, they used paths like garri to nw camp, which was much shorter on Alpine than it is on DBL.

Same thing for defending south camps, take the old SW camp by bay where there used to be lots of small group action, that it is 25% faster to get there from the SW spawn is irrelevant, that path is fast regardless, that isn’t what has killed fights at that camp, it is that it now takes much longer for defenders do get there (to the point it is simply not worth bothering) because there is no bay WP they can use, the path from garri to SW camp was much faster on the old Alpine map than the new DBL map and to top it off on Alpine people would use the camp area for siege to attack bay from, the result it went from a hotspot of small group action to a deadzone under DBL, whoever designed DBL simply has no clue at all.

Dave.6819:

A class that requires to be focused and has 0 room for error. If an error occurs – Thief is punished by an instant death.

Which isn’t really true, sure sometimes you get obliterated on thief and there is nothing you can do about it, but the reality is much of the time you aren’t one shot and you can disengage, where as on many classes (especially pre-hot) even though they may not be one shot, it is still basically game over because they will not be able to disengage and are at too large deficit to do much other than die.

It reminds me of a comment someone made about a very good thief player in a tournament who was playing rev and died rather too much – “X still thinks he is playing thief and can disengage at will”.

Kirito.2195:

This thread seems to boil down to reverting wvw to how it was pre-2015 (stability included)…

No thanks, stability was just broken back then as getting all your stacks stripped by DH bow 5 is now, just in a different way, having stab up 70+% of the time was beyond ridiculous, you basically had it whenever you remotely needed it, and boon spam vastly outstripped boon removal, which is why under the old system hard CC was virtually useless and it was all about immobilize.

Now add that boon spam power creep has gone to new levels of absurd with durability runes that are considered too broken to even exist in PvP, wanderer / commander stats, the new boon duration food, Sigil of Concentration and heralds pumping out boons 24/7, plus yet another boon- resistance that negates immobilize, going back to the old system would be even more broken than it was when the game was so “balanced” we had 60 man melee trains running about.

What is actually required is some middle ground option for stability that lies somewhere between the two, so hard CC is useful without being obnoxious and that melee actually requries more than rolling your face across the keyboard as it was under the old stab.

Trajan.4953:

Alliances!
Just like WoW’s Battlegrounds! Meaningless time gated events like DS.

Jk, I am sure they are smarter than that, megaserver wvw would kill the game mode completely imo.

Depends how they do alliances, EVE Online uses alliances and has a far stronger, deeper community than WvW.

selan.8354:

balance wvw separately from spvp like it used to be.

It was never balanced separately, WvW is barely balanced at all, which is why the class balance in WvW has always been a total joke, balance for WvW has always been nothing more than an afterthought.

MomentofWeakness.1246:

1. Engineer, Ranger, Mes, and Thief do have a purpose in WvW fights, its called gank-team. …

LOL, most WvW guilds did not even recruit engies or rangers for most of the game that is how valued they were, whilst mes & thief had small niche roles (and that was in GvG/guilds, in blobs those niche roles were reduced even further), there were more guards in a blob or guild raid than those four classes put together, and that is still the case now, which puts your cries about “melee” into perspective, class balance in WvW has always been a total joke, so when people go on about the tragic state of melee being “second tier” it comes across as pure hypocrisy.

MomentofWeakness.1246:

2. Old stability wasn’t broken if you utilized boon strips and were organized enough to call out when the enemy didn’t have stability on their skill bar and dropped your hard CC’s when they were vulnerable to them. It required you to use boon strips and good communication but they weren’t rendered useless…In essence, old stability required good mechanics and communication to strip and then make plays off of while it was not actively on the enemy, what’s so bad about that?

Not really, boon strip was a joke, most of the boon stripping skills were useless in large scale (mes strip on shatter, steal, thief sword 3, etc), then you had things like well of corruption where stab was the last in order to be stripped, which is a joke when melee ran around with a row of boons permanently covering stab, and could reapply with instant skills, and with a couple of guards that rotating stab you could keep it up most of the time, which when you consider you have times when you back off, or standing off, or can tank a CC because of the position you are in, you basically had it whenever you would actually need it, and the chances of it getting stripped were tiny, which is why it was all about immobilize, because hard CC was pretty useless.

Old stab was skilless faceroll, which is exactly why some like it, but then this is a game mode so brainless that “melee” don’t even have to make any real decisions like positioning, other than the driver / commander, so I guess it is no surprise.

And the idea of going back to the old stab with the boon spam power creep, durability runes, frontline revs, commander stats, boon duration food, etc and now with resistance so even immobilize wouldn’t work is beyond hilarious.

MomentofWeakness.1246:

That was because many people left when Anet changed stability and essentially rendered melee a second tier group of classes in WvW behind casters who are still dominating the meta even now (i.e. pirate-ship meta).

LOL, yes “melee” classes are second tier, poor guardians how do they cope, the lack of objectivity and hypocrisy is amazing, for second (or rather third tier) take a look at how engy/ranger/mes & thief have fared in large scale WvW for the entire game, at best bit parts at worst non-existent, where were the cries about those, ah that’s right nowhere, that “melee” classes were totally overrepresented, totally OP, for much of the game (and guards still are) was just fine.

As for the old stability it was just as broken as the current system, which is why you had 60 man “melee” blobs rolling face across the keyboard with unstoppable amounts of stab that would not be stripped & that rendered supposed strong long cooldown hard CC skills useless, it says a lot about how bad the WvW playerbase is, how similar it is to the mindless drones in Silverwastes, that some think a system was “good” with a mechanic so broken that it rendered hard CC useless and made ‘positioning’ and pushing braindead easy.