Guild Wars 2

If tpvp players took their builds and tactics into wvw they would get dominated. If wvw players took their builds and tactics into tpvp they would get dominated. Those are facts. If one went to the other but adapted their build and adapted their tactics then who knows, but what I believe the OP is trying to say is that the top tpvp players are better than the top wvw players? We may never know. But some of you are saying that pvp players like to stroke their egos. Since this seems to be what is going on here, and I’ve never seen a thread solely for claiming wvw players are better than pvp players, I’m inclined to believe it.

fishball.7204:

Pretty much ^

When some of the most hardcore WvW players on SoS decide to take a break and play L4D2 (ew) there’s something wrong with GW2.

You can keep saying “things will…” but most people have waited for months now. WvW has gone from being neglected to being FUBARed, people don’t have the patience anymore.

I’ve been waiting for almost a year. My money is not going anywhere and neither am I. It’s always now, now, now with everyone on here. Most of us are realistic and understand that these things take time. And I’m not so naive as to think that one day people will stop complaining about games. I just find it funny that on one hand you have people rightfully fired up about video game companies doing everything they can to get their hands deeper into their pockets, and on the other you have companies like A Net that give us amazing content which only requires you to pay once, and because that product needs a little bit of polish they pick it apart as if it were the worst thing to come out. Given the former I’m amazed that the latter even exist.

Back on topic though, I only meant to address that a one up one down system would do nothing for the advancement of wvw. You can do all you want to fix the problems now but if you don’t look ahead that’s when you start to bury your game. This game is going to be around for a long time, that’s why you see so much talk about the future and “things will…” To say wvw has been “fubared” since the culled mess it was before is simply delusional, not to mention an insult to those who have been busting their kitten on it these last few months. Just because progress is too slow for you doesn’t mean it’s getting worse.

And I’m sorry people are so hurt by the fact that every week there needs to be a winner and a loser. That’s life. May be time to start blaming the morale of your server instead of A Net.

I don’t understand why people are crying for one up one down. It seems great unless you actually think one or two weeks in advance, which A Net thankfully did. There are a couple of scenarios created by one up one down. First, server wins and moves up a tier then loses the next week. They could get stuck in this endless loop for who knows how long. Second, server loses and moves down a tier then wins the next week. They could end up stuck in this endless loop for who knows how long. Third, server stagnates in second place. They could sit there for who knows how long.

Short term, yes one up one down would stabilize tiers. Long term, people would eventually complain of stagnant match ups again. Guild movement would be the ONLY thing that would cause any type of movement. Win streaks greater than one would be unsustainable by anyone other that the top server.

In the current system as far as short term is concerned, the match ups are random so stabilization will take longer. In the long term however this will place servers more permanently where they belong while still allowing for some sort of randomization. Basically, we will have what we had before only moving tiers wont seem so hopeless because a. Tiers will not matter and b. There is always that element of randomization.

Nothing A Net does short of forcing guilds to move to different servers will ever fix imbalanced match ups. I’m sorry tier 8 or anyone who is being dominated. It’s a simple fact of life that imbalanced match ups will occur as they always do in every online game. Just rest assured that over time servers will stabilize, this current madness will end, and you can all go on to crying about something else.

Zephyrus.9680:

Pryda.8257:

Zephyrus.9680:

Pryda.8257:

You don’t need a single field to keep 100% uptime on retaliation on your melee train, sorry. Guardian isn’t the only class that can do it.

Like I said, if its a 50% guardian zerg built around it, they deserve it. But the power there really comes from stability + super tanks. If you want argue certain specialized zerg compositions are overpowered, that’s a different topic.

For everything else it’s just not a big factor. Already nerfed, doesn’t need another.

What don’t you understand in “not only guardians can run 100% uptime retal specs”? No point to argue with you, like I said first you have no clue.

You’re right I don’t understand that… What other classes/skills? I’m curious because I’ve never seen skills or traits that can keep retal up even close to 100% on other classes.

Feel free not to answer like you haven’t for any your other ridiculous claims.

Beside the point though, guardian is the only one that shares it — which is the whole point of the thread. So are organized guardian/warrior zergs the undefeatable meta now or something?

Because it seems like this thread is more a line of rangers and engineers who are having problems freely spamming their AoEs. That’s not an argument for a nerf as much as a possible rework, if anything, unless its actually every class getting destroyed by retaliation that’s somehow up on everyone all the time…

Mesmer with sword focus can keep 100% retaliation uptime by using focus #4 and sword #3 twice while standing on top of the temporal curtain. I don’t even think you need any kind of traits but I may be wrong, it’s been a while since I saw that build. Granted, this isn’t AoE retaliation being transferred to a whole zerg so it’s not as potent, but I felt the need to point out that his claim wasn’t ridiculous at all. Especially since I happen to know of one case off hand and I don’t claim to be a master of all builds and play styles.

As a former confusion mesmer I think that if Anet is going to stick by their guns then they have to nerf retaliation into oblivion like they did with confusion. Retaliation is just as powerful as (if not more than) confusion, not to mention more difficult to remove.

I don’t necessarily think they should remove it however. For one, if both zergs are using it, as is often the case, then it is balanced. If you have a balanced build, and are careful, it is not difficult to heal through. Then again, being careful seems to be just too much ask when facerolling is also an option. Secondly I was always against the confusion nerf. I have my own reasons for that but they aren’t pertinent to this thread.

I think that in the long run this could do great things in terms of balancing wvw. Yes, there will be a lot of one sided victories, at least early on. The great thing about this system is that (at least for now) all but the lowest rank servers will likely have their day in the sun. Barring some really bad luck, if you’re server gets absolutely steamrolled one week there’s still a chance that your server will be the one steamrolling the following week. Morale boost (something that only existed before in the form of picking up a massive guild).

I hope, but I can’t really say for certain, that this will encourage guilds to move around, since rivalries between servers in their respective tiers will become less important. If this does happen, then it’s a step in the right direction for wvw.

I do however, think that the deviation they showed in their example may be a tad too large. If I were them I would shrink it a little bit, for now, then if wvw balances out a little more I would increase the randomness a little. As it currently stands the higher a server is the more extremely stacked it becomes, which means less deviation is more appropriate. If this change spreads out the guilds a little bit, servers become less stacked and more deviation is possible.

Again, this is all just speculation, but if things start moving between servers as far as guilds are concerned (and this may get me flamed) it may be time to open free transfers again.

Roo Stercogburn.9671:

Olvendred.3027:

lol, yeah. “Become even deadlier in The Mists with new World vs. World abilities like Burning Oil Mastery”

Best laugh I’ve had in days.

If mastery changes the range on it, its potentially some ouchness. But yeh, probably its just going to be increased damage on empty spaces where nobody stands until the oil is destroyed.

You’d be surprised how often people try to cut corners by skipping the oil and going full dps on a gate. It only takes one mishap from the commander, not 50 idiots following him.

I don’t run this setup but I find it funny that people think warrior is the most killable class. I wont go too much into my build but I have mostly pvt gear and I run sword/shield & greatsword. I don’t die unless I decide I’m going to go down with the ship so to speak. Even then, I’m one of, if not the last man standing in a losing fight, not counting those who ran away of course :P The most killable class is the one with the worse person playing it.

I think a 50% increase in damage would have been way more prudent. As it stood before I could stand in arrow cart fire almost indefinitely if it was only one hitting me. Add to that combo fields giving me regen, other support abilities, heals, etc and raining arrows were just a fancy effect on my screen. Arrow carts needed more teeth, and let’s not forget both sides have them. An attacking force can use them just like a defending force can.

Range is way over the top though. This is really what is giving insane advantage to defenders moreso than the damage itself. The fact that not only has damage increased but now more arrow carts can hit the gates has compounded the dps exponentially and made rams useless.

Then again, I think everyone is really just shell shocked by this change right now. Attacking forces are fully capable of coming up with new strategies to use arrow carts in their favor. I haven’t experimented with some of the ideas I have yet, but it’s only day one. Let’s not go too crazy about this.

Lets all just keep crying about this nerf for months. I know it will be hard, but Anet has shown they listen to QQers. We can do it! Fight fire with fire! I mean it’s basically what forums are anyways. Problem solved. Gold and grind saved!

elorei.6251:

If you guys can’t think of why confusion was ridiculously overpowered in its current state, then you are not very creative with combo fiends. Here is a hint: Have your friends shoot through ethereal fields into the enemy group, watch the enemy rocket up to 25 stacks of confusion, profit.

Projectile finishers that cause confusion through an ethereal combo can only be applied to a single target. And unless I’m mistaken these stacks also do not last for very long (I want to say 2 seconds or less but I can’t back that up). That enemy group will still be largely unaffected, but I supposed you forced one person to cleanse one condition :/

Not sure why I’m arguing though. The damage has been done.

graverr.6473:

thievery.2701:

This is exactly the kind of crap that made my switch my main from mesmer to warrior.

Gl rerolling soon when you will realize what a joke 30 points in warrior discipline tree is and how boon hate will not give any increased dps overall,but it will actually lose it .But i don’t wanna spoil it all for now.

I’m actually already 80 and almost in full exos with my warrior and I’m having a blast. I see no reason I would absolutely have to put 30 points into a tree either. Also, I haven’t done that much research into this patch yet (waiting for it to drop first) but could you please explain how boon hate will decrease my dps. I’m apparently suffering from confusion 0.0

This is exactly the kind of crap that made my switch my main from mesmer to warrior. I can understand most of the logic behind some of the nerfs to mesmer, but this is just silly. There are skills put in the game for every class for the express reason of removing conditions, and because some people don’t want to use them another class needs to be nerfed?

At least we can all rest assured that the QQers didn’t actually win anything here, since they will just end up QQing about something else next week. They will never be able to sit comfortably in their chair as long as they continue to fail miserably at games. Most of you mesmers out there are good enough to find another way to kill these bads anyways, just sorry you guys stuck with the class longer than I did.

Also, if you end up with 25 stacks of anything you are either getting trampled by a zerg or you are just laughably bad, especially when it comes to one of the most difficult to apply conditions in the game.

Necros, watch out. You are probably next based on what this community has been crying about.

I still don’t understand why people don’t like zergs to begin with. Do number advantages not exist in real life? Has everyone suddenly forgot that wvw is 90% numbers and coverage, 10% skill? Or is it that nobody will be content until there is a group of five in every tower and camp taking turns for watch? Split the zerg, that will be fun. Nobody will be able to get anything done on the map. Nothing will ever flip. The dynamic will never change.

As soon as you make it easy for a group of five to defeat a group 50 (via increased aoe cap or what have you) offense will become impossible. Siege already nearly makes it so, and the only thing keeping that from becoming reality is (ironically) a siege cap.

Yes skill lag sucks, and culling did suck, but everyone is dealing with it. Implementing policies to remove the zerg is only putting a band aid on the issue, not fixing it. And until you deliberately put things in place for the express purpose of countering zergs you can’t discourage it. Frankly, doing so would be discouraging teamwork and go against ANet’s manifesto. Adding wxp for every arbitrary thing you can do to help your team in wvw will be nice, but I promise you that wont stop zerging in the slightest.

This is all not to mention that after a while the skill level of a group of gamers reaches a kind of plateau. Somehow increasing that skill plateau, even if ANet was all powerful and could do something like that, would be the only legitimate way to somewhat counter zerging since skill would be a larger factor. But lets face it, wvw will never be 50% numbers and 50% skill.

I agree with you OP. ANet can reward whatever they want, it wont change human nature. And besides, which is really more appealing to the masses? Two large forces colliding in glorious battle to test their mettle against each other, and may the best man win. Or, escorting a dolyak between towers at a snails pace for a minimal team reward in comparison to a decisive victory in the field. Go ahead and reward them equally. See which one more people do. The only difference between two top ranked players who got there differently is that one had fun getting there and the other was left with an empty feeling of pride.

TL;DR? OP is correct. Zerging is here to stay. No use complaining.

Always with the negativity. I don’t think anyone asked for this content, but it seems that as per the usual the optimists are enjoying what they got (for free mind you) while the pessimists do what they do best. Also, this is not indicative of any “direction” that GW2 may or may not be headed. In my opinion this game is seriously lacking in the mini-game department anyways, with Keg Brawl being the only one I can think of offhand. Is adding a new mini-game and weapon skins really setting off alarms for a sudden change of direction in people’s heads?

The fact that it is nowhere near complete tells me that they were skeptical about SAB to begin with, which really is sad. Sad enough that it prompted me, someone who rarely posts here, to sign on and ask: What kind of community are we that the same company that gave us GW2 is hesitant to share some of their creativity with us? I have nothing but praise for A-Net, especially in these last couple of weeks. Keep on naively hoping for a perfect game developer and pardon me while I go back to enjoying my free and optional content.

Same situation here. Never happened prior to this week. I immediately disconnect when I get remotely close to a battle.

Well, if enough weren’t doing it before this thread they will now. In all seriousness though, I don’t think that you need to bring out the nerf bat for this one. Stealth just definitely needs to be touched up before this gets out of hand. Imagine how many people complained about it on release and how much it’s only gotten worse. Game hasn’t been out for a year yet and there are some pretty imaginative players out there. Stealth is only going to cause more problems as time goes on and eventually it will get so bad that it will probably be nerfed beyond the point of uselessness.

Simple solution: extend the Revealed debuff, make it proc no matter how you leave stealth, and give it to the mesmer too. Imho, that would fix a lot of problems in the short term, and when/if culling gets better stealth will still have it’s uses. It will just be more balanced.

I don’t understand this nonsense about JQ having done something wrong by recruiting. All three tier one servers saw that this was a need, and all three servers tried to recruit via these forums. JQ seems to have won and why is that wrong? Someone had to.

At least the vast majority of you guys aren’t working overtime on the forums trying to defame JQ, and for that I’m grateful. Some of us enjoy the game enough to play without much complaining. I, for one, am grateful that there is a new top dog. It keeps wvwvw fresh (I may be speaking too soon here). It also helps that I happen to be a part of that server. Happy hunting weekday crews from all three servers! Might be the last time we’re all together.

If they nerf AoE damage to the point where it is only as effective on a single target as a single target attack, then it only makes sense to increase the cap of 5 as well. Otherwise, what is the point of even having AoE in the game at all?

As far as pve is concerned, yes it sucks that we can’t get around the map as fast as everyone else. If we want to even come close we have to change our weapon set to do so, granted the #5 skill of that weapon set just happens to be extremely useful in pve. I don’t really see it as a major issue though that warrants a need for a 25% passive buff. Pve is not a competition with other players, therefore a speed buff is not required to be competitive.

On the topic of competitiveness however I can see why this warrants discussion for wvw. Personally, I can do without it. I am pretty generally always with a group in wvw and people often use swiftness abilities that proc on nearby friendlies as well, so keeping up is usually not a problem. If I happen to be unlucky and miss their swiftness then I also run blink, so I just blink up to the front again and then it’s extremely rare that I still don’t pick up a swiftness from someone else twice. This is also assuming I’m not even running with a focus, which in wvw I usually am (I’m growing out of greatsword so it’s staff + sword/focus for me). I say let everyone else water down their builds with speed buffs. So what if I show up to the fight a couple seconds late? That just means I’m fresh and ready to go while most of the enemies abilities are on cooldown, and I don’t have a wasted utility slot.

I can’t really speak for other forms of pvp as I don’t play them at the moment.

So let me get this straight. You want them to work on fixing the game less and respond to redundant posts more?

Seren.6850:

It’s a sad day when illusions are more useful than phantasms

Phantasms are illusions, I think the word you were looking for is clones <.< In all seriousness though I think you are right. My build will definitely be changing after this patch until things get back to normal. No reason to throw a hissy fit and frustrate yourselves even more fellow mesmers. Just take solace in the fact that you’ve probably got your 60 bucks worth out of this game, keep Anet informed on the issues, and wait patiently for things to get better. Hopefully they will. Until then I’ll change my build and keep having fun with my alts.

I do think people are overreacting a little bit here. Really, the changes aren’t that bad. You can still put that Berserker up on the wall, you just need LoS now. Portal bombing is still possible, you just need to wait an extra thirty seconds assuming your Portal is even on cool down to begin with. And Moa still makes the enemy completely useless for 10 seconds, only now they are (very slightly) less useless.

The Berserker damage nerf does really suck though. Any situation where the already awful Mesmer AoE is nerfed really sucks. I truly hope that this wasn’t intended.

Right now I’m just glad Time Warp wasn’t touched.

Cantatus.4065:

I can’t see them ever completely removing it. The combat in this game is intended to be skill-based, not just hitting your number keys and hoping for the best. It’s about strategically using your skills when appropriate and taking into consideration things like range and positioning. There should be some downside to using a skill incorrectly.

That said, I do wish it wouldn’t go into full recharge, especially when you have skills that tend to bug out if you are on a slope or have random objects in your way. It’s especially punishing to Mesmers since most of our damage output relies on our illusions, and our autoattacks tend to be weaker compared to other classes.

Either that, or I have played other MMOs that will display the range of your target, which would be fairly useful since saying something has a range of “600” is really arbitrary. Some other MMOs have also made is so your skills will be tinted red if your target is out of range.

I was in danger of completely disagreeing with you until I got to your second paragraph. I was never really a huge abuser of the LoS “bug” before this patch because it didn’t get me many kills anyways, but the fact that LoS doesn’t always work correctly in situations where you clearly have LoS makes me feel like this change is introducing more problems than it is fixing. That is not something you want to start doing in your patches.

Also I don’t think it’s really ANet’s intention to punish players “just hitting the number keys and hoping for the best.” If that is true then why don’t AoE’s go on cooldown after you attempt to cast them beyond their range? I agree that the game is skill based. There are mechanics in place that clearly demonstrate that. I just don’t think that this is one of those instances where ANet is in the right.

It’s pretty annoying too in Orr DEs when you go to cast Phantasmal Beserker (or one of the other very few AoE options) on a group of enemies and then your target dies before the cast is complete. You get no AoE and the skill goes on cool down, preventing you from casting it on something else. This wouldn’t be so frustrating if we had other viable AoE options to turn to, but as Mesmers alas we do not. Now LoS is going to be an issue…

I don’t see a major problem with removing nameplates. Enemies are silhouetted in either green (if they are friendly) or red (if they are hostile) not to mention the color of their clothes. I would have no problem with it. Although it is a nice counter to someone trying to use third person to their advantage i.e. looking around corners/over hills. The gigantic nameplate kind of removes the whole “they can see you but you can’t see them” dilemma of third person.

Ugh, I hate combat loggers. And I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I’m starting to hear about them in a game where there is no mechanic in place to stop them. I don’t imagine it’s something that Anet will let go without addressing though. They’ve got a lot on their plate now with the event and ironing out some bugs. Once they’re done with that though I’d imagine will seeing more gameplay adjustments like this taking place.

Also, I’ve put around a hundred hours into wvw and this has never happened to me. Either I’m lucky or it’s just not that widespread of a problem, yet… If you’re logging to avoid a couple silver in repair costs: Seriously? Repair costs are such a trivial amount of money in comparison to how much you should be getting a given level. If you are really dying that much that it’s lightening your pockets maybe it’s time to stop combat logging and rethink your build/playstyle.

Ianervan.3415:

Firefly.4165:

I’d consider that being waaay too serious. But then again, I find that gaming is a fantasy and not real at all. People do act differently when they have the internet anonymity.

Well, you payed money for this game. You can pretend it’s not real, but it costs some very real Money, takes some very real Time, and some very real Brain usage, as well as occasionally Emotions. The characters may be imaginary but those who play it are very real. And how many of corpse dancers try to insult pixel characters? None. They all go with the intention of insulting that very real player behind the character.

The main difference is the lack of physical consequences. That’s why some people say this is not real. When there is someone to inflict physical punishment there’s a sense of reality. On the Internet you can be who you want to be: dancer on corpses. Without physical consequence.

But again, the main point I was making was: Corpse dancers are not different IRL. You’re not going to convince me that someone who acts online as if he grew up on the street is in fact a deeply respectful and noble person IRL. He might withhold his actions IRL, but his mindset will be the same.

That’s all.

There’s a major difference between internet bullying and a few innocent jumps over a person’s dead toon. If you were making a case for internet bullying then you would have a valid argument, otherwise this is just oversensitive nonsense.

Don’t play football if you don’t want to get tackled. Don’t play basketball if you don’t want to get dunked on. And don’t play online video games if you don’t want to get tea bagged. It’s just part of the game and that’s why ESRB cannot rate your online experience. Try to think of it as a celebration and not an insult to you if you really are that sensitive about it. And if you feel it’s excessive celebration then all I can say is it’ll only hurt you as much as you let it.

I say enjoy your /kneel’s while you can. Usually it’s me standing over the body and when it is I will not hold back.

Don’t get me wrong, as I stated at the beginning of my post I think you do have a really scoring system put together. But there are some pretty radical things proposed in it that would still affect evenly matched games. For example, your scoring system rewarding teams more for capturing objectives would make for juicy targets late in a close game. Transversely, it would also make recently lost objectives less attractive targets, which would make the better choices of where to attack also the more predictable choices. I’m not sure if this is a good thing, as I haven’t seen it in practice, but I definitely get the impression that it would make things odd, to say the least.

Also, as someone who is clearly good with numbers, I would expect you to know that even in your system there will come a point in every match up where winning is mathematically impossible for the losing team. And while these numbers are unclear to me as I don’t have the exact equations for calculating scores in either your system or Anet’s on hand, you don’t have to be mathematically sound to get a sense that you are at that point as the losing team. Although your system would increase morale by keeping the scores closer, your assumptions are also assuming that the losing team is being uncontested while taking a supply camp, tower, keep, etc.

There is also the problem of teams that may intentionally play from behind, or find some other way to exploit the scoring. History has proven that gamers will always find a way to exploit a given system. Like the once great Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” If implemented, your system would fix a lot of a problems, but it would cause a lot of problems as well. The real question is would it fix more than it solved.

You have a really good scoring model here Draygo. Perhaps even better than the one Anet has currently for wvw. Unfortunately you can’t factor player morale into any equation. I think that even in the way off chance that Anet did implement this, the scores would still be one sided because the majority of the player population gives up way too easily in wvw.

In my experiences, I have been in situations both where I am on the spawn trapping side and on the spawn trapped side. So many times when I am on the spawn trapping side the side that is spawn trapped actually has way greater numbers than the people trapping them there. They don’t seem to want to win as badly as the winning team. Now, think now about the times in military history where an army backed into a corner facing overwhelming odds actually snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. The opposite happens in a video game it seems, because retreat is still always a couple clicks away. Not to mention there is no real fear of death, and these days it’s too easy to defect to the winning side anyways. Other than bragging rights and pride when your server actually does win there is no incentive for players to stay with the losing servers. I think we can all agree that free transfers need to end.

Also, I’m not sure how I feel about the losing teams getting buffed this dramatically. Whether or not a wvw match up is won in the first few days, and match length in general, are other matters for debate. But if that is the case then tough luck, come back and do better next match. It sucks losing, but not everyone can win either. That’s what makes winning feel so good. And frankly, when I am winning I don’t want to know my work is being rewarded any less.

Just look at the tier one match up this week. In spite of all the problems with wvw in its current state (culling, free transfers, night capping, hacking, etc.) it’s still a very close match up and everyone seems to be enjoying themselves. I think it can be attributed to high morale on all sides. Although I do think the scoring system could use some minor tweaks, that match up seems to be evidence to the contrary: That there is nothing wrong with the scoring system, and the player morale is what causes losing teams to be blown out to begin with.

I’m getting this a lot more lately. Kinda disappointed, when the game first came out I would just report these and they would usually get fixed in a day or two. I hate to be a Debbie downer but it’s been happening so much lately I’m probably going to just take a break until these all get fixed. Sucks when the last thing you need to 100% is a bugged out skill challenge.