Guild Wars 2

Reverence.6915:

jojojoon.8607:

Reverence.6915:

Yup, this is correct for any map that the float team isn’t on besides EBG. We usually have 2/4 maps outmanned during Oceanic. I’ll see if I can’t take screenshots tomorrow.

Here we go again with claims that BG is outnumbered in OCX. It’s been explained numerous times on this thread, so at this point, I am assuming you’re pretending to not understand it. There is a reason why people are poking fun at posts that like these that keep saying BG is outnumbered in multiple time zones.

If a map can hold 80 players and BG is able to queue or come close to queing at least 2 maps, it means they have around 160 players covering OCX. They can have one 80-man group defending while the other 80-man group float to different maps to cap things.

SOR, in OCX, typically queues 1 map. They have just 1 float group doing both defending and capping. This means that SOR is typically outnumbered by at least 2 times in OCX.

JQ typically is able to fill up 1 map and have around 15-25 on another map. In other words, BG typically outnumbers JQ by around 40-60 during OCX.

So, please stop claiming BG is outnumbered when BG has 1 or 2 maps that are outmanned during off peak hours when other servers have even less people and more maps outmanned. It makes it even ridiculous if you check the score history for the past 2 months in OCX when BG typically ticks over 300 pts and sometimes almost 400 pts in OCX. A server is not outnumbered in a timezone with those types of scores.

I can tell you why this is the case.

SoR going around early oceanic today with 50-60 man float team first led by Choo, then a mix zerg (led by HIRE?). JQ didn’t really have a presence outside of EBG, but they had around 20-30 in their zerg outside of EBG at best (probably less, first was Pro, then XPK). Our float team was 20-25 people led by OnS. We had 10-15 people on other maps to cap/defend. Any map we would leave would basically get outmanned immediately. Especially after our NA guilds KnT and iCoa tagged down around 1am server time.

Not our fault you don’t break up your zerg. We split up our forces to cap more structures in more maps, resulting in higher PPT. We also really don’t care about EBG, only coming onto the map when our side of the map is getting pushed, floating off almost straight away. I see JQ and SoR numbers in EBG that could form 2-3 float teams to cap other maps. But hey, who am I to tell you how to play. We have fun with our smaller forces regardless.

I’m actually getting tired of the habit Sor has gotten into of just having one large float team. We have become very efficient at it. Even though it’s comprised of a mix of guilds/militia, it operates like a 50 man guild group because we run it so often. Most of these people are from organized guilds also, and almost all are on TS. BG and JQ just don’t have an equivalent single force like this. And it’s not that they couldn’t, they just don’t due to a variety of reasons already stated.

Personally I would prefer to see us split up more, have more small scale fights that are actually challenging and fun, and then combine when we really need to.

Truth is that we do this on Sor for the same reason a lot of people move to BG. People like to win. Those on BG get to win via ppt. Sor has no chance of winning ppt, but found out that having the largest organized force allowed them to win a lot of fights.

I’ve played on both BG and Sor. Both servers think they are ‘winning’. On BG they put down Sor because of how dumb they are at handling PPT. And on Sor they put down BG for how bad they are at fighting. It’s quite comical to listen to these people.

Lightsbane.9012:

and necros; from what it looks like i’ll lose a large chunk of my damage.

how does the necro community think we’ll fair in this nightmare? of course ignoring all the incoming underhanded slaps in the face with the next balance patch.

What the dev’s actually said is that there will be an approximate 10% reduction for the best pve gear setups. People saw the 10% number and just stopped reading the rest of the post., If you read the balance forums you will see that this reduction will most likely hit celestial harder, and zerkers not as hard. The best math so far points to 7% reduction on zerkers.

In what world is that a ‘large chunk’ ?

Karolis.4261:

snacktime.1082:

Replacing a crit damage with a variable stat makes sense. It actually gives them the ability to tweak how it works over time, or in different situations (pve vs wvw). It makes min/maxers go mad because it’s more work to figure out exactly what it’s doing, but it makes sense from a balancing perspective.

Replacing crit damage on gear with variable stat does make sense. However choosing Ferocity – Crit damage conversion ratio that will decrease current cit damage numbers does not. If you want to tweak down critical damage in pve w/o shafting it in www u add crit damage ressistance to mobs.

As a developer, I would not choose that route as a long term solution. Long term if you keep down that path, you wind up with any number of hard coded modifiers that are not easily changed, and have unintended side effects. I think Ferocity is the right approach. Using it to apply a reduction is debatable.

Replacing a crit damage with a variable stat makes sense. It actually gives them the ability to tweak how it works over time, or in different situations (pve vs wvw). It makes min/maxers go mad because it’s more work to figure out exactly what it’s doing, but it makes sense from a balancing perspective.

Bendix.4568:

BirdSong.2541:

So yeh. Golems are fail train if you’ve got defenders, which is the point.
Stop being bad players and wanting things nerfed in the game, how about you lighten up and get things buffed to counter.
July 13th 2014, prepare yourself for round 2 (’Mega time)

Love that you have the gall to call us bad players when you and your noob army couldn’t take a keep with all those golems. We are here to put ideas out on how to make the strategy of using golems better for all servers, not to hear about your failures.

Actually it’s your failure for not knowing that having everyone in a golem is probably bound to fail. Too many golems is responsible for many a failed keep take attempt. The ideal number is somewhere less then 10. Getting the doors down quickly is only an advantage if you can do it before the enemy force shows up. In an even numbers fight with a large force (40+) and enough supply, inner is going to be breached eventually. It’s the fight for inner where it’s usually won or lost.

In a situation where the keep is scouted and you are spotted, having a lot of golems is usually a disadvantage. Every golem is another person not able to fight. If I have a 40 man zerg, I want 4-6 golems max depending on the keep. I don’t want 25% of my force in golems. I’d much rather be able to defend a small number of golems effectively, then have a lot of them that are all dead by the time they break inner because they were not defended.

Prysin.8542:

snacktime.1082:

The guild I am in consistently wipes T1 zergs and organized guilds using heavy ranged, high dps setups. We dont’ have a single hammer warrior. Rangers are OK with our strats, and if there was a strat where rangers should work well, it should be the way we play.

Overall, we probably do better with more ele’s or engineers then rangers. Both have better survivability and utility with glass builds, which most of our dps classes run.

My biggest complaint is survivability. A glass ele with mist form/lightning flash can get themselves out of tough spots, ditto for engi with rocket boots/elixir S. Ranger? Not so much.

What secondary weapon does your rangers use?
Why are you not using Lightning Reflexes?
If using signets, the Signet of Stone should provide you more then enough survivability.

Right now we are using GS secondary, and we do slot Lightning reflexes. GS is a great defensive weapon, it just takes more practice to use a defensive skill that you have to swap to effectively.

We are not using the signet traits with signet of stone because we would have to give up range or piercing for it, although that might change. One of our core strats is that we have a MA and we focus target. If you have good single target dps, and your aoe’s are on CD, then you are burning down the target not just some random person. This helps a lot with downing people consistently.

Sor is rebuilding and I think we have a chance to stay in T1 for a while as we lost a lot of our bad apples that drove new people out of wvw. We had commanders in mapchat saying things like “bad = don’t play”. We still have issues such as people constantly denigrating others for playing uplevels, etc.. Good commanders realize the game is supposed to be fun, and adapt accordingly and still win fights.

A lot of the bad attitudes stem from not winning PPT in so long. People start to look for alternative ways to ‘win’. The result was a turn toward hardcore play with only the most serious players being welcome. That wins fights, but it doesn’t result in a healthy community, you need to support all styles of play without denigrating those that choose to play differently.

Being a good commander on field is not enough, you need to be a good leader. The former can win battles, but it takes the latter to win the war.

The guild I am in consistently wipes T1 zergs and organized guilds using heavy ranged, high dps setups. We dont’ have a single hammer warrior. Rangers are OK with our strats, and if there was a strat where rangers should work well, it should be the way we play.

Overall, we probably do better with more ele’s or engineers then rangers. Both have better survivability and utility with glass builds, which most of our dps classes run.

My biggest complaint is survivability. A glass ele with mist form/lightning flash can get themselves out of tough spots, ditto for engi with rocket boots/elixir S. Ranger? Not so much.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Skull_Fear

I play venom share thief with dire armor and rabid trinkets. It’s very useful to the group, and you have good survivability. I’m often right there with the melee popping daggerstorm or just spamming SB #2. My offhand is P/D.

Our guild uses venom thieves as a primary class, we have one for each group. In larger fights venom share is pretty OP now with the right group comps. With the right timing, and using steal to reset venoms, it’s crazy how often you can keep them up and the damage over time you are contributing to the group is insane.

Rangers are hated because they don’t fit the popular meta in wvw very well.

But that’s doesn’t mean they are bad, just that most guilds have no imagination and have not deviated from the pain train meta that RG brought months back. I know the guild I am in uses rangers, and we have been beating some of the best pain trains in T1, without using a single hammer warrior.

frans.8092:

snacktime.1082:

Nuzt.7894:

Collision Detection is a nightmare, I’m assuming the majority of people that keep suggesting this have never expierenced just how bad it makes gameplay. Collision Detection would amplify lag alot, I for one would hate to see this implemented.

If done right it’s fine. Distributed architectures make it scalable server side with good performance, and it adds only minimal extra data that needs to be passed to the client, if any (depending on supported features).

No, you can’t. It’s not about server side performance but about the time it takes for a change of movement (direction or speed) by one client to be communicated to another – which would be in the order of .5 seconds.

I never said it was about performance, I said scalability, they are two different things.

I agree the amount of data sent is the hardest problem to solve, but it’s been solved in various degrees already by several projects, one of which I work on. Most of the advances in this area FYI have not come from the game industry, and the biggest market for it is not the game industry either.

Nuzt.7894:

Collision Detection is a nightmare, I’m assuming the majority of people that keep suggesting this have never expierenced just how bad it makes gameplay. Collision Detection would amplify lag alot, I for one would hate to see this implemented.

If done right it’s fine. Distributed architectures make it scalable server side with good performance, and it adds only minimal extra data that needs to be passed to the client, if any (depending on supported features).

If you judge it by what some games in the past have done, then yes that is how it would appear. There are frameworks out there now that can handle full 3d server side collision detection at massive scale, and are being used in production. I would expect to see more full collision detection being used in games coming out over the next couple of years. Given how long game development cycles are, it takes time for new tech to make it’s way in.

As far as gameplay, collision detection works fine with the right rulesets. Darkfall and Eve Online both have collision detection, and trolling related to it is not a big issue because you can kill the troll. They have other rules also which contribute to making it work that I won’t go into here.

Technically it’s a challenging problem, but doable. Historically game studios have had horrible server architectures and not a lot of talent that knew how to design systems that could handle things server side collision detection on a large scale. That’s slowly changing, so I expect to see better in future games.

The whole PPT system is just fundamentally poorly designed. It’s not fixable. It feels almost like an afterthought. The whole notion of server vs server stems from technical limitations that no longer exist. PPT was just slapped on top of that poor design.

Contrast this game to Eve Online. I’m not saying copy everything they do, but they have a system for large scale player driven conflict that was well designed, and has proven to have longevity. There is much a game like this would have done well to copy.

So basically, we just have to live with what we have and make the best of it. Anet is not going to make radical changes to wvw, it’s just not going to happen. Anet is most likely busy working on their next game, and their best and brightest are on that, not on gw2.

Sir Kaboomski.1508:

Axelwarrior.9084:

Even if they are channeled, she didn’t start the attack until 1 or 2 seconds after I went into stealth. Therefore, I was stealthed before she started channeling the attack, so it shouldn’t have been aimed at me.

I have posted about this before.. the fact that the channel attack can still lock on AFTER you are stealthed is my main gripe with this.. It’s BS, and needs to go away. Especially love how they can “track” you in full duration of stealth as they will turn to face you as long as the skill is still firing off.

Are you sure it’s not a lag issue? Lag can result in weird things like this, and if you consistently play with high latency, stuff like this can happen consistently.

This is because when you use a skill, like to stealth, your client immediately registers that you stealthed, before it actually happens on the server. This leaves a small window where you see yourself as stealthed, but really aren’t according to the server.

This happens all the time and most people just never notice it, because generally speaking any delay under 100ms is not noticable to most people. If latency starts to go over 100ms, then it starts to be noticable.

klemen.8439:

evilapprentice.6379:

There is no Perma-stealth anymore via BP and HS. I am unsure how you could be unaware of that while feeling you’re qualified to suggest changes to D/P, especially as a thief player.

Let bad thieves spam 2 – there are bad players of every class – the solution isn’t to fix what isn’t broke.

You can still perma-stealth but with combination of utilities and traits that you have to risk. Only thing you can’t do now is spam HS 4 times in an open field through one smoke field but you can still do it many times while facing a wall. The perma-stealth still remains WvW issue if used by a good thief.

And my point is not just saying that HS is somewhat OP. My main point I’m trying to get through is that Guild Wars should be about skill chains and diversity among weapons and utilities, not this monotone 99% bullkitten.

Actually, what you describe is a well known thing in game design, and sometimes intentional. You need to have some low skill builds that are effective, but not so effective that higher skilled players don’t have an easy time countering them.

New/inexperienced players will gravitate towards the low skill builds, and have fun with them because they get some wins over other low skilled players.

Highly skilled players who look down on those with less experience/skill, should take a step back and think about what they are saying. You really want the game to only be fun for your skill level? That’s happened before fyi, and those games die fast deaths.

Chuck Zitto.2367:

Would you guys like to see more counter stealth play. I personally liked the idea and think anet should add more options on different classes. Here are a few possible suggestions for classes im familiar with. Mostly changing utilites not used often.

Engi suggestions
1) Thumper or rifle turret replaced with Detector turret. Detector turret- X amount radius around the turret de stealths every x seconds. Overcharge ability- Everybody in the explosion radius is de stealthed and gets revealed condition for x seconds. Toolbelt skill- Single target reveal condition for x seconds just like sic em.
2)Utility goggles reworked- Single target reveal condtion for x seconds. Toolbelt skill fury for x seconds immunity to blindess for x seconds stun breaker.
3)Throw mine changed to throw detector mine- Works exactly like it does now except it adds a reveal condtion for x seconds. Can keep the knockback or lose it. Toolbelt skill stays the same or maybe 1 second reveal condtion per mine.

Ranger Suggestions
1) Vipers nest changed to Detector trap-Works just like vipers nest except each pulse gives reveal condition for x seconds instead of poison.
2)Search and rescue changed to search and reveal. Targeted x radius aoe reveal with or without a reveal condition applied.

Warrior Suggestions
1) On my mark reworked- Single target reveal condtion for x seconds.
2) Replace x banner with detector banner- De stealths anybody in the banner radius every x seconds no stat bonus from banner.

So like my ideas hate em have some of your own or just want to qq if you main a thief feel free to comment.

Easily available hard counters would be bad, especially if it was aoe.

No other class has a single mechanic that defines them as much as stealth does for a thief. An explicit, hard counter to stealth renders a thief pretty much worthless. Which is why very few hard counters exist. If they were common, the thief would literally not exist, there would be no point for them.

I’m also one of those players that remembers the days before it was expected that every class have a counter to every other class. I think that approach has just dumbed down the whole genre, and created a generation of gamers that expect to always be able to ‘win’. We need more classes like the thief that add danger and penalties for doing dumb things, not less.

just be careful with the naga to get the 2014 version (aka mmo gaming mouse), and not an older version which looks similar. The 2014 has several nice improvements, like mechanical buttons (if you use a mechanical keyboard you know how big a deal this is), and it fits most hands a lot better, the 2012 was really small.

Sanduskel.1850:

Monoman.2068:

I do agree that there needs to be more counter play to stealth, but I hope anet gives thieves a roll in this game independent of this cheesy gimmick first. Even stealth on mesmers is too much since you are forced to either use ranged channeled/aoe attacks to maintain pressure (if you can predict where he is properly) or sit amongst a bunch of terrible ai applying conditions on you while the mesmer repositions.

I play multiple thieves, and I admit that it’s horrifically op’d. Its a badly broken mechanic. Most thieves won’t admit it because they enjoy the ability to perma stealth on demand anytime a fight isn’t going their way. I recognize that this is inherently imbalanced. I strongly encourage those of you who agree with me to send persistant and respectful feedback on this badly broken mechanic. Most mmos don’t allow stealthing while in combat exactly because it imbalances games. Anet tried to be different. usually being different is good. not with regard to stealth though.

regard.

Sanduskel, proud owner of 5 thief alts.

I think the hate on stealth is more of an emotional one then based on sound logic. Yes every now and then you get killed by a thief, that you couldn’t see and you go down in 3-4 hits. People hate that mechanic, but it actually doesn’t happen like that all that often. Thieves go down really fast if they don’t manage their cd’s, but no one ever complained about a thief getting 3 shotted, because of course the stealthy kitten deserved it!

I have lvl 80’s of every class, all with multiple sets of gear and I play them all. Thieves are a lot of fun, but I probably die more on my thief then any other class. By no means does stealth give me an advantage in every situation, and I think it’s fairly well balanced.

Gwen.7619:

You know its just to easy to sit there and say do this do that, not one of you has shown us what to do with a video! showing that yourself has L2P to help and validate what you say in that it is easy to counter a thief, to me you just are know it all with no proof. If your that good then help us by showing how easy it is please. Otherwise I simply don’t believe you and your trolling to make yourself look king

Those video’s exist, should we teach you how to use google as well?

This is mostly an issue of learning how to counter. Anet has already dumbed down this game enough to the point where player skill doesn’t matter nearly as much as it should. If you can’t figure out how to avoid/counter a hammer train, you deserve to get smashed.

If you would have posted a thread asking how to counter it, instead of coming from the assumption that it cant’ possibly be you, but a broken mechanic, you would have received a lot more help.

Kalan.9705:

This isn’t a thread about how each person personally rates the importance of the many different advantages of the things obtainable outside of wvw.

Instead it’s a basic design principles discussion thread, if someone mainly does pve, should they have gear advantages inside wvw, over someone who did wvw instead? Should alternate game modes to wvw, reward better advantages inside wvw?

E.g. if you do wvw you get exotic armour and weapons for wvw.
If you do pve you get ascended armour and weapons for wvw.

Gear/stat progression in pvp has always been problematic. At a certain point it will definitely kill pvp. On the other hand a lot of people who pvp still like to pve, so a bit of grind doesn’t seem to actually deter most people.

It’s a balance. Without some pve, the game would just be less interesting to most people. That’s not my personal preference, but I’m in the minority (I leveled most of my characters through crafting I hate pve).

The point where it’s bad is when you have the combination of a lot of grinding to get the best gear, and the difference is so large that gear starts to overcome skill. Every game that has done that, has killed open world pvp.

IMO Anet has done a pretty good job so far at balancing this for the largest majority of players. But progression has a way of creeping, so who knows what it will be like down the road.

It’s so easy to avoid thieves in wvw. If you are solo and see one coming, and don’t know how to fight them, just run away. If you are in a zerg, dont’ be just standing out there by yourself, stick with the group where thieves have a hard time surviving.

In general, pay attention! It’s been 8-9 months since I’ve been downed by a glass cannon thief, and I play every class there is, and I play quite a bit. Every time I’ve been downed by one of these, it was my fault, I immediately knew i had done something stupid to put myself into that situation.

Not every class is supposed to be able to counter every other class. And people who actually get angry over stuff like this, should go do something else.

When people complain about thieves, do they ever bring up the number of times we just get run over by a larger group, because our ability to take damage and stay alive is next to nothing? How about our overall effectiveness in group play? We don’t contribute nearly as much as other classes in many situations.

IMO the reason people hate thieves is they can’t beat them 1v1, and that’s exactly the scenario where a thief is supposed to do very well. We are supposed to be able to reset a fight, that’s by design. We give up quite a bit to be good at what we do. If we did not have strong abilities to reset fights, the thief would be extremely weak.

I strongly suggest for players to expand their horizons and actually play classes that frustrate them. I now have a lvl 80 of every class, all of which I play on a regular basis. I don’t get class envy, or get upset about losing fights to any other class. Even if I think a class is imbalanced, I don’t complain about it, it just is what it is, so I learn how to counter/deal with it and move on.

The whole retaliation thing is misleading. It’s a situational hazard and completely manageable.

And I do roam, scout, zerg dive, all of it depending on my mood, and the engineer is very effective at all of those.

For roaming, more dps is always better in the hands of a skilled player then toughness. Even the best players start to run when you hit like a truck.

Full Valkyrie is not the optimal choice unless all you ever get hit with is conditions. This isn’t really open for debate, it’s how mitigation works. Your effective hit points are lower going full Valk then having a balance with more toughness. You are just fooling yourself because the effective hit points you gain from toughness are not visible.

For zergs and taking/defending structures, you need toughness period. You don’t always have the option of avoiding damage in confined spaces or when taking ac fire, and the penalty for dying is that you just rallied a bunch of the enemy. And if you cannot take some damage in these fights and stick with your team, you are next to worthless.

I always carry a mix of gear. There is no one gear set that is the best for all situations. I have a full set of rabid, invaders, knights and zerkers, and mix it up depending on the situation. For keep fights I almost always put on the invaders.

Nades are really strong especially with 1500 range. We can keep walls cleared very well, punish zergs that want to just ball up in one place, and dps choke points very well. drop supply crates in open field fights to immobilize, bombs to immobilize, and we have enough mobility to skirt the zerg very well without dying.

IMO a big advantage we have over most other dps classes is our 1500 range. I maximize that to my advantage as much as possible.

If you don’t like karma trains, just find a commander that also doesn’t like them. There are always a few good commanders that do everything they can to avoid pvedoor.

Mbelch.9028:

It should be free any time you transfer to a server with a lower population than yours, but obscenely high if you want to transfer up.

That would eventually equalize all servers I think

This would unfairly penalize people that are not in guilds. Large guilds help players pay the transfer costs, and in some cases the server the guild is moving to helps pay also.

The transfer costs have to be reasonable, and work fairly for everyone. Being in a top wvw guild where servers will pay you a lot of gold to transfer to them, should not give you an advantage.

Unfortunately for you, this issue has been hashed out on the forums too many times to count.

Forcing people to play the part of the game they do not enjoy doesnt’ work out well for anyone. You hate it, and those of us who only wvw hate it because you take up valuable space in our maps:)

Anet probably likes it because a fair amount of people most likely pay to transfer to get this completed.

While I understand why commanders run tagless, it’s not good for the long term health of the game. New players need a way to learn, making it more difficult for them to get involved makes that even more difficult. It’s especially bad when you are running tagless on a tagless map, which certain guilds I won’t name do quite often.

Hats off to guilds like TSYM that actively try to get new players into their TS, make their tactics and builds public, and do what they can to train noobs while still being very much a competitive force on the battlefield.

I think moving the forums elsewhere is a good idea. Anet is living in a different world then it’s player base. That post they made is just over the top politically correct double talk. What they are really saying is they want to get rid of any post that might possibly offend. Why they can’t just be honest and straight forward about what they really want is insulting to me as a player.

IMO the lack of certain forum tools such as being able to block specific posters is intentional. They want to maintain control, not give control to the players. Obviously that did not work, and to add insult to injury they blame the players instead of their own failed way of handling the whole thing.

This could have ended differently, and it’s entirely on the heads of the Anet community team. They should take responsibility here and not just blame it on the player base.

I think the problem is that the forum rules don’t match what we do in game every day. Most of us that play wvw and read these forums hear far worse on TS or in chat every day. Their posting on the whole thing is very disingenuous, acting as if they don’t know how public forums work (especially in pvp games), and try to blame the players rather then how they structured the rules and expectations.

Anet needs to adjust the rules for this to work. They should be harsher for certain things like racism or obvious spamming, but let the community sort out the rest. So what if someone accuses someone else of hacking? Why in the world is that an infraction? Aren’t we adults enough to handle that ourselves?

If something is an obvious troll or unsubstantiated accusation, I think we can figure that out for ourselves and get over it. Anyone that takes things posted in a public forum personally, should probably just disconnect from the internet anyways. This is how it works. I might not like all that goes along with it, but it is what it is and you learn to filter out the noise, or simply don’t read it.

I’d say d/d and d/p are still the kings of solo/small group roaming. Haven’t changed much. The recent initiative changes effected d/p to some extent, but it’s not as bad as it sounds on the forums.

I use the versions Yishi uses in his outnumbered videos, they are still very viable.

Erebos.6741:

snacktime.1082:

[1] Down state is a mechanic to cap the power of highly skilled, experienced players. [2] If power scaled with skill, then 10 mans would be wiping 60 man zergs. Ditto for aoe caps. [3] A game that lets experienced/skilled players completely dominate would end up driving most people away, and become a niche game with a much smaller population.

1. Down state isn’t needed to cap player power. Limited player capability already does this
2. Power does scale with skill. But because players have limited capability, skill isn’t the only factor for determining combat and therefore quantity yields an advantage
3. True! However segregating players based on skill directly solves this problem

Power and skill do not scale on the same curve. Outnumbering your opponent gives a huge advantage by design, through mechanics like down state and in combat rezzing.

There have been other games such as Daoc where power and skill scaled much more in line with each other. A 10 man squad could take out a 100 man zerg. Not every day, but I saw it happen more then a few times. Unskilled, inexperienced players were at a huge disadvantage.

Down state plus low damage output/weak healing and high health pools is what makes superior numbers the first order optimal strategy. If you took out the down state, skill would become much more of a factor in most fights.

Down state is a mechanic to cap the power of highly skilled, experienced players. If power scaled with skill, then 10 mans would be wiping 60 man zergs. Ditto for aoe caps. A game that lets experienced/skilled players completely dominate would end up driving most people away, and become a niche game with a much smaller population.

The down state works quite well for what it was intended to do. It’s frustrating at times, but I’d rather see a game where the large majority of people can have fun and get in a win, then a game dominated just by the hardcore players.

The downed mechanic is IMO the number one reason why heavies are so dominant. The most powerful weapon in large fights is downing someone at the right time. Heavy classes are harder to down and more forgiving of mistakes.

Things like the down state and aoe caps are mechanisms to cap the effectiveness of player skill. Most people would not want to play a game where a highly skilled 10 man could wipe a zerg of 60. Games that let experienced, skilled players completely dominate never have huge populations. You have to give the lower skilled players a way to make up for their lack of skill/experience, a way they can still ‘win’.

IMO what would be really cool is an alternate rules server where PPT is awarded to guilds. No downstate, no or significantly increased aoe limits, better scaling for healing, etc.. Take off the training wheels and let those who really want to play with sharp objects go at it.

Another thing is that FOO strategies tend to be used past the point where they are most effective. Progression makes it difficult for a guild to completely change classes and tactics and try out radically different approaches. This is unfortunate, but progression is what the masses want, so it’s what we all get.

First off, although I think gear progression in pvp is wrong, currently ascended gear is not enough to make a difference in pretty much any fight, so as long as gear progression stops with ascended, I don’t have an issue with it.

The solution for people that just want to pvp is to just spend a bit of money and buy some gold. It doesn’t take that much, and you never have to pve beyond leveling to 80. I have a lvl 80 of every class, all with multiple sets of exotics, and I spend probably $20 per month. For something that I play several hours per day, this seems completely reasonable and it allows me to just ignore pve completely.

The day that I have to grind in this game to be competitive in pvp, is the day I quit playing.

Fomby.4295:

It’s just that a full glass barrage can’t produce more damage than an ele’s meteor shower. Especially if combined with tornado. Ele’s also bring 2 water fields where they don’t have to waste their heal. Along with other things like uneven ground, fire fields, and blast finishers.

meteor shower takes longer to start hitting and has a shorter range. In my experience it’s much easier to land barrage reliably then meteor shower due to these two factors.

I have a full set of zerkers and pvt, so I throw on more or less pvt as the battle demands. open field it’s usually full zerkers, once I know we are going into a keep I throw on a few pieces of pvt.

Retaliation is still an issue, but it’s manageable.

The one reason I still think rangers are underestimated is that we can dish out more burst damage on a group quickly and reliably then any other class. Barrage + rapid fire is the best range burst in the game that you can get off reliably on a zerg.

With the current popular strategies yes rangers are less effective. But I still think that because of the burst we can do there is a lot of underused potential in rangers.

aspirine.6852:

fellyn.5083:

Maybe I’m just smarter than the average bear but I don’ think TS is needed to know that you’re supposed to follow the blue triangle around on the screen.

For a simple train perhaps you are right.
For fighting against good organized guilds/zergs that’s not the case. They use TS for movement and tactics and you will have a hard time winning from such a group. If you win at all.

Not necessarily true. There are several factors at play here.

One, some commanders just don’t lead well, and there is really no big advantage to listening to them.

Two, good situational awareness and experience trumps all. Even when I’m not on TS, I’m often sticking to commander better and dropping the bomb better then those on TS.

Three, what class you are matters. Heavies not on TS are at a disadvantage, but ranged classes have the advantage of watching from a distance and it’s usually obvious when to drop the bomb, haze, etc… If I dont’ want to be on TS, I usually play a ranged class.

All that said, you do still need a core that is on TS, but good players can follow that group easy enough and mean the difference between winning and losing.

Players with little wvw experience, or badly geared players, is just something you have to deal with gracefully. They will rally the enemy and lose battles for you, but that’s part of the game, we all have to deal with that. It’s better to just keep spamming mapchat with TS info and incentives for getting on TS. Don’t yell negative things to people not on TS, like ‘you are losing battles for us’. That’s not going to encourage people to get on TS.

I often ditch TS either because as someone else said, I just want to play in relaxed mode and unwind, or if there is just a bad commander on the field, or I just get tired of the immature conversations that the commander won’t squelch like they should.

To the OP’s question though, good commanders get more people into TS because people naturally want to follow good leaders. Never get negative in TS, don’t denigrate those not in TS. Make it fun, keep a good signal to noise ratio. Treat fights as learning experiences. If you lose NEVER go negative or blame other people. You were the leader, take responsiblity and move on.

I’ve found it works well to tell people that you know you are outnumbered but you are going to use this as practice and fight anyways. Find a way to have fun even when losing fights, that is just so crucial to keeping up moral and numbers. What separates good commanders from bad is how they handle bad situations, not how much they know about the game or classes.

Apollothirteen.7201:

My prayers are answered. Thank you A-Net for the “rewards”. Now all the people that need a carrot to play wvw got punched in the face. If you thought that you would get a precursor in the chest go read pre-launch A-Net’s manifesto. All the tears in this thread bring me joy.

We don’t need a reward to play wvw. Playing wvw IS the reward. Remove farming and progression from wvw. Skins are nice but actual progression killed most pvp games. I am tired of farming new gear. I am tired of chasing the carrot and when i get close to biting it , they move it farther away. I just want to log in and kill people.

Agree. Fortunately very little of the progression has a major impact in wvw. Arguably some of the best rewards (like applied fortitude) are only obtainable through just playing a lot of wvw.

Personally, I have had a blast thist last week trolling the JP’s in my guardian, denying those that waited until the last minute to finish their wvw meta.

Of the commanders I’ve run with, I really liked Purp Nurp from Choo on Sor. One of the few commanders that is highly skilled yet didn’t have a huge ego about it all.

Also liked Smokee Gee from HB. Excellent situational awareness and decision making when in the heat of battle.

I second Indo as a possible worst commander of the year. Let me rephrase that. Most annoying commander of the year.

Disco from TC for knowing how to have a good time no matter what.

Jude.8172:

I’m close to getting my tag. And I have been taking notes. But I’m still very uncertain of many things.

First off, I’m not concerned with capturing or defending stuff. I’m not saying that I plan to avoid it entirely. But boosting the ppt of one’s world is not something I care much about nor am I impressed by commanders who do a good job at it. Its pretty simple actually. And I believe I’ve grasped everything I need to know on the subject anyway.

Now that that is out of the way, I want to know what is expected of certain classes in a zerg vs zerg scenario. I know what all the necro skills do, so I don’t need feedback on them.

For instance, I’d like to know the best ways to stack as many boons and damage a large amount of enemies as fast as possible. But I do not plan to ask people to play a certain way. So what are general things that I should command certain classes to do? What should I be wary of, and/or what are the biggest signs to knowing when to back away. Any particular youtube vids of good pvp commanding would help.

Thanks.

The things you are focusing on is not what makes a great commander. Tactics can be learned. What you need most is to be a good communicator on TS, and hopefully have a good sense of humor as well. After that situational awareness, then tactics and strategy last.

And pretty much by definition, you need to be a guild leader to get people to follow you. That’s mainly because people want to follow commanders that can win fights, and you need a core group of people who have practiced together and can move and fight well together.

Your lack of respect for other people and their talents though tells me you are not ready to be a good commander. You need to play well with the server as a team to be a commnder people will actually follow. Lose the ego and you might have a chance.

Decrypter.1785:

Congratz to my fellow comrades we deserve a roll of honour , ill start it in no particular order :

[Icoa] imperial Coalition
[RK] Radiant knights
[WM] War Machine

Add youre guild if you contributed below ty

You can’t even get the guilds right that contributed most to getting you there. Those aren’t them. Icoa is the only one that didn’t pay to win, and I remember when they were pretty much the running joke on the server.

The fact that you don’t know this, tells me you probably paid to win also.

LionZero.3479:

Could it be that the balance of this game just isn’t that good ?

Or is it something else.

It’s definitely balance. It’s nearly impossible to balance a game like this perfectly. You have a limited number of game designers, against thousands of players min/maxing the system. There hasn’t been a game yet that’s found a perfect solution for this.

What makes it worse is that as a game grows the number of factors you have to consider with any change also grows. Any large complex system eventually becomes almost impossible for a human to reason about effectively. This is kind of a truism with development in general, not just games.

What sucks about the meta game is that it’s been responsible for literally months worth of stale matches at almost every tier which resulted in fewer good fights for everyone involved. I could care less about what server wins anymore, I just want good fights and anything that furthers that objective.

And to all the guild leaders who’s moves resulted in weeks of stale matches and fewer good fights, kitten all of you.

Been away about 6 months now and thought I’d come back and play a bit. At the time I had full elite gear and weapons, other then vanity items I was pretty much set. Am I good to just jump back in WvW, or are there any must have things I need to get?

Mikitten058:

Monsoon.2589:

I think it is really funny that two servers have to double team in order to fight Blackgate. Tonight I saw in EB first hand that you guys are communicating and organizing mutual defense/offenses.

The fact that you are double teaming to beat BG is rather pathetic.

JQ and BG double Team SoR.
BG and SoR Double team JQ.
JQ and SoR double team BG.

GG. /end sarcasm

No one does it.
If you have proof, as in actual recorded conversation of 2 servers directly working together PM it to me. Otherwise you’re just calling wolf, and I can’t believe you.

I’m not going to say names because I don’t think there is anything wrong with coordinated double teaming. It’s a legit part of the game, I don’t get why people whine so much about it.

I have seen agreed upon double teaming for very short periods of time or for specific objectives like a keep. It wasn’t some grand strategy or planned, it was just an opportunity that presented itself.

Spurnshadow.3678:

Well, I haven’t seen any specific numbers with regards to all the monies raised for transfers. I’m a very defensive person and I’ll probably get a lot of crap from my guild leader about saying anything, as we usually try to stay off the forum drama, but I just can’t help it.

So, all of the NA guilds that transferred here have paid for themselves. The Oceanics, needed a little help. All of the WvW players donated some gold freely of their own accord. What we have raised and spent is enough to transfer @20-25 people over, give or take depending on that days gem price. If you look at a guild the size of MERC, for example, which i think has about 400-500 members, that is helping @5% of them transfer.

That’s it.

That’s all.

Even the guilds that needed help farmed their kitten off to help out their own guld mates. There has not been thousands of gold spent/bought/gifts/bribes. This has all been done out of the spirit of generosity to help some of the poorer members out so they could be with their fellow guildies.

KnT, Blackgate

Only active members in a guild would transfer. I’m pretty sure merc didn’t have anywhere close to 500 people who transferred. I’d be surprised if that number was over 100.

But in any case, trying to frame this in a certain way means that certain people do think it’s in poor taste, otherwise it wouldn’t be an issue. My opinion. Be a man, if you think you did the right thing don’t apologize for it or try to justify it. Doing that just shows the weakness of your position.