Showing Highly Rated Posts By zen.6091:
Against all odds, the level of incompetence and inability to understand what features players actually want has gone up another notch.
Regular WvW has become increasingly untenable. Players are spread out over too many servers, and there’s too much of a disparity between the players that are still serious about PPT, and those who only want to have fun and fight other players / guilds. Many of the latter have abandoned regular WvW for EotM, or hot join blobs, whatever it is. Anet has only exacerbated these flaws by:
1. Never addressing what the role of guilds in wvw is, giving them any recognition or material reward for playing well as a group.
2. Making siege mechanics far worse with WXP abilities. Rarely is there an even, hard fought siege these days. It’s either a k-train with an insurmountable blob doing PvD, or an upgraded keep that has a nearly insurmountable amount of siege, plus the WP bug and war banners to deal with if you do spend hours getting inside. Most groups will map hop or wait for coverage gaps rather than commit to a long siege.
3. Disparity between roaming and zerging builds. Most of the best roaming builds / classes are almost useless in a zerg, while players with a zerg build are almost useless trying to roam or fight roamers. If you want to do both with the same character, you pretty much have to carry around 2 sets of gear, 2 sets of cons, pay to reset your traits every time you want to change roles, and manually set traits. Only the most avid WvW players will commit to this, and it’s almost completely unrealistic with ascended gear (and so are alts).
4. Long line of broken promises, terrible communication, general lack of care. We’re going to fix the commander system, do something about equipment acquisition, better reward scouts, just to name a few. Whoever is responsible for WvW PR has either been reassigned or spends 39.5 hours a week playing flappy bird under their desk.
Stomping crash course for all classes—
Tricky classes
Thief – Main skill teleport, just start stomping, then move to teleport location. Second downed skill is stealth, just wait for it to end at same location after a few seconds, and keep attacking in the meantime. If the thief happens to put down a shadow refuge right before they die, they will be invisible for 10-15 seconds. Make sure to keep spamming the area with AoE or CC, and wait there if you see a very low health thief go stealth under a log cabin animation basically.
Ele – Main skill mist form. Start stomping, follow, stomp. They can move quite far and through gates, and are invulnerable while moving though. Second skill is useless.
Mesmer – Main skill clone (and also short invis). Start stomping, first character to appear is clone, second is the real mesmer. CAUTION, downed mesmers can stack a ridiculous amount of confusion if you try to auto attack them dead. Always go for the stomp. Second skill also does a kitten load of damage. Make mesmer dead asap when downed.
Control classes. All can be bypassed with stability or invulnerability. All but guardian can be bypassed with stealth, unless someone else is stomping too with ranger.
Necro – Main skill single target fear, second skill pretty much useless.
Guardian – Main skill pushes all nearby foes back. Second skill can heal the guardian very fast to a rally, so get them down.
Ranger – First skill dazes all stompers, but it needs to be targeted (unlike guardian). Second skill heals the ranger very fast, so get them down.
Warrior – First skill single target KD, second skill rallies the warrior for 15 seconds. If they pop vengeance just run away, the job is done.
Engineer – First skill interrupts and pulls one target…to the engineer. Second skill is a blowout. By far the easiest stomp…poor engis.
Well, let’s break it down nice and easy if any devs actually read this and care.
1. WvW should not be pay-to-command in the first place. The commander icon should be something you eventually earn through playing WvW. Anymore on most servers, you are basically doing a public service for WvW to actually throw up a tag to drive pugs around.
2. The different colors and account bound aspect of the tag should have been features for the commander tag from day one. This is two years in now.
3. A guild tag that is visible to guild members only, hello?
4. The commander icon itself is still has woefully inadequate visibility in typical WvW fights. P.S. so does the cursor. Again, we’re two years in now.
5. The cost of the new tag is hysterical. Many WvW players that have been playing since day one have never even had 300g at any point in time, and they had to beg / scrape together 100g for one tag.
What universe are you guys operating in?
So what is to prevent defenders from spamming these on a gate so rams effectively cannot be used, or some bored player sitting in a paper tower with 100 supply effectively locking out the gate for 7.5 minutes (an eternity if there is a blob response). Will catas out of range of this new trap effectively replace rams as the standard easy flip siege because being trapped even once or twice makes rams far too risky and possibly annoying? Is that good or bad for the game?
If the above is true, you can also pretty much forget about ever ramming an waypointed keep that has tons of supplies in it. Even one trap buys a big chunk of the time needed for the zerg to port in. No one is going to do rams + catas or ram multiple gates as the dev in the video seems to think. But…on the other hand, maybe 40 players with potentially 800 supplies shouldn’t be able to show up at a fully upgraded keep and use 5 sup rams per gate to suddenly flip the keep before the enemy has any chance at all to defend.
I don’t think this was completely thought out, but I won’t pretend to have a crystal ball that can see the future either. It would probably be good for the game for keeps to be more defensible without loading them up with arrow carts and gate trebs. Hopefully though more defensible doesn’t mean even more hiding in keeps.
Don’t worry, they are having internal discussions on some small tweaks we may see in 2017.
It’s a fairly simple fact that with any game server, more players requires exponentially more resources to maintain the same level of performance, and there is a limit to computing resources. This game clearly does not function with blobs of 50+ players spamming each other, and yet, nothing has been done to discourage massive blobbing with either a hard de-buff or making it wildly inefficient point wise.
That’s really all there is to it.
Speaking as someone who has only gotten Ascended gear via WvW vendors, I’d say that’s nonsense.
I have / had at least 500 hours played since the laurel vendor update, and have exactly 3 ascended trinkets after doing the dailies and monthlies that I really have no interest in completing. You’ve already stated there’s “no chance” that ascended gear will get the stat selection system legendaries now have, so obtaining them is purely an exercise in pointless treadmill grind that’s been put in place to supposedly keep players interested.
Until the entire philosophy of gear grind changes, there’s no hope of this format being anything but PvE with different scenery and an occasional, probably terribly lopsided player battle.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Ascended-Weapons-and-WvW/page/2#post2720532
I think I’ve posted in about 10 different threads over the years now that ascended would be slightly less terrible if you could somehow change the stats on ascended gear. This is the only reply from a dev on the topic that I can recall.
I just wish Anet would comprehend how restrictive ascended equipment in general makes builds and theorycrafting. It makes no sense on all levels. PvE basically amounts to stack and do max DPS, with no build diversity outside whatever provides max DPS. If you made a full set of ascended zerk / assassin gear for PvE, that’s all you basically need.
WvW on the other hand actually has some build diversity. Power builds alone may use combinations of zerk, assassin, soldier, knight, captain, cavalier, valkyrie, cleric, celestial, or whatever else to get a mix of offensive and defensive stats. There is some actual diversity with runes and sigils too, although some are more popular than others obviously.
It’s a massive headache trying to change anything though. Play multiple classes? More headache. Why do players who experiment with builds and play multiple classes get punished the most with frustration and gear grind? Do you want players to just play one class with one build, throw all progression grind into that, then quit when they get bored?
On top of that, the rug has been pulled out from under us three times with gear.
1 – The introduction of ascended. May be hard to believe now, but it took a lot of effort to get full exotic the first 4-6 months after launch. Of course the PvE farmers had no trouble (and then they needed ascended to grind on), but it was tough for WvW players that got practically no rewards for playing.
2 – The critical damage nerf (ferocity). This changed the optimum stat distribution when using gear with defensive stats. Not a huge amount, but enough to matter and force you to change some gear stats.
3 – Unlinking traits from stats. I like this change, but at the same time, losing up to 3000 health and 300 armor that you had factored into you build is kinda important. Removing guard stacks is another thing I support, but if you ran a little low on vitality planning on having the defensive one (2500 health) most of the time, again, that changes how you would make your builds.
tl;dr ascended has always been a headache many WvW players don’t want + Anet showing no sign of caring about how their changes to the game affect our ability to play it. By play I mean play, i.e. not spending huge amounts of time doing things you don’t want to for gold.
I would love to help field a discussion on the commander system, I know there are a few other topics everyone brought up but I think a good brainstorm about how to improve large scale communication/origination has very large impact on WvW. This is also becoming more important in PvE as we move forward with large scale encounters. So I think it would be a fun discussion as there is a lot of room to improve the current system.
- Battlefield style command rose with common commands like stack on me, advance on me, hold here, fall back, etc.
- Ability to enter information about what you are doing, which is shown with a hover over the commander icon on mini map or a pop out box. It would also be nice to be able to enter information for voice chat like Teamspeak and Mumble, maybe even auto link in the appropriate format. Other ideas for features here are a donate siege to commander link, and thank commander option that works into some sort of rep system.
- Designate squad sizes between 5 and 40 players or so, make it easier and more intuitive to join and leave squad, and increase rewards for players in squad on objective taking and defense when the commander completes the same objective. This would make it much easier to run smaller groups for roaming and havok without having a bunch of mystery tags everywhere, and might be a reasonable check on full map zergs.
- Make commander tag account bound, refund players that have multiple tags.
- Give guilds the ability to research a guild commander tag that can only be seen by guild members.
It dosen’t matter how much you QQ over the fact Ascended gear is in the game. Its here to stay and alot of us like it and use it. Just because you refuse to do the work to get it doesn’t mean those who do shouldn’t be able to use it. You have no one to blame for yourself, and before you throw that out again, I dont’ champ farm. I play the game.
This is a perfect example of the attitude about ascended gear that I’ll never quite understand.
What exactly do you mean by “do the work”. Is this a game, or a job? Why should I have to spend one second of my time doing things I don’t enjoy doing so I can be at the same gear level as those who “do the work”. I want to launch the game, load into WvW, and start playing. That’s it, that’s all I want to do.
There was a great post on Reddit the other day that does perhaps provide a little insight. The tl;dr version is there are a lot of people playing MMOs that don’t play to have fun; they are addicts who just need achievable goals put in front of them. Maybe like, oh, dailies, monthlies, achievement points, increasingly grindy gear acquisition…
Well anyway, not trying to pick on on you, but the people who do like ascended equipment have to try to understand why many of us don’t like it, and it’s not because we are lazy / stupid / etc.
I’d probably be laughing if it wasn’t so sad how quickly these clowns have crashed the game into the mountain.
I’m just curious how many other players did the same.
I quit playing after the ascended crafting update.
It seems that the argument against power creep in WvW held no sway whatsoever. I’m still hopeful though that once the ascended treadmill exhaust itself and the league fails miserably that anet might go in a different direction. There’s too much potential left in this game to let it all be flushed down the toilet.
Haven’t done any scientific testing yet, but it doesn’t seem like the nerf to critical damage is the 10% anet said it would be. More like 30-50%? I just tried out my mesmer and thief that have power builds with some unscientific testing against veteran guards and, for instance, backstabs that used to hit for 7k are now 4k, illusionary berserkers that used to be 4-4.5k are now 2-2.5k. I rarely play my thief anymore, but this is game breaking for a power mesmer…won’t be able to kill any decent player in a reasonable amount of time (i.e. before every dot on the map joins in).
I don’t know how roaming and small scale combat can continue to exist in WvW as the meta will inevitably shift to all condi spam. It was already dicey against the top condi builds, now a power build of any kind will have no chance against those builds at all.
I also think this is going to have an extremely negative effect on zerg combat where condis are not so much a factor. We’ve already seen endless numbers of wet noodle hammer trains that can barely kill a thing unless they CC lock and mob down individual and pockets of players. Their damage is also going to go down, which means it will take longer to kill players, which means longer periods of blobs being blobs that can’t kill a decisive number of players to end a battle. It will also seriously hinder highly offensive zerg busting guild builds that did go for quick wipes using large numbers of power staff eles and well necros.
Anyway, doesn’t look good at all.
However that should clear that up. So yes, seriously. Hey it’s early, I could be wrong. Please correct me.
You’re not wrong at all, I hope more people look into the math on this. Ascended stats, consumables, sigil stacks, and guards stacks all incrementally add up to a ridiculous sum. Sure, player skill will still prevail in most situations, but since the most skilled players tend to spend the most time playing, all it’s doing is making it easier to beat down players who have less time to play. This has been the folly of PvP in most MMOs.
Amazingly, Anet was the first to say no mas to this with a major AAA title, and yet here we are, with the devs continuing to double down on grind at every turn…
I use to do almost nothing but solo roam, but it’s not very interesting anymore. The meta has sorta fizzled down to a half dozen builds. Most common by far is still two button d/p shadow arts thieves that will run away freely if you best them and can’t cc shadow refuge. Then there’s warriors, which can be kinda fun to fight and can have build variety, but they are also very tough to pressure, and many will also run away. Lastly there are condi pressure necros and engis that are over the top because of a food buff. Mesmers also have a troll condi build, but you practically have to kill yourself, and it was recently nerfed a bit.
I think you see way less solo roamers nowadays because of this lack of build diversity and meta builds that are not very interesting to fight. Perhaps equally discouraging is how ridiculous anet has allowed statistical imbalance to set in with stacks and ascended equipment.
Those problems go away somewhat if you have a numerical advantage in a group or simply play together better.
We want each character to have a unique experience in WvW, so World Ranks and WXP are all character-based values rather than account-based. We believe that in the long run, this will actually help incentivize players to experiment with various different ability builds for each character. It also creates a long term goal for players of multiple characters, as they can strive to
Make WXP account bound with stat distribution spent on each individual character…if you have to do something to limit stat spending on lowbies, fine.
There’s no future for WvW long term if it keeps getting harder, more expensive, and less rewarding to play alts, or even change builds on a character. That is what makes the game fun for people that actually enjoy the format and play for reasons beyond the carrots being dangled in front of them. It’s depressing that you still don’t seem to understand this.
Heck, you could even find a new revenue stream making it easier to and faster to create alts and exotic equipment without playing PvE or otherwise banging your head against the wall.
I’m finding so far with my mesmer, after changing from a perception sigil + oil (precision) to bloodlust + stones (power), overall DPS and burst damage is about the same. However, burst damage with a power mesmer compresses many small and medium hits into a short time window. It’s not all or nothing with a single attack.
On my thief backstab damage is down considerably, but that that’s potentially good and bad. Good because no one likes fighting d/p thieves that only attack with BS over and over off combo leaps, bad because many of them might reroll dire p/d builds that are even worse to fight and difficult to down.
I agree with the comment that power builds are generally more…interesting to fight at least. You are more rewarded for build, pattern, and skill use recognition for avoiding burst attacks, while needing how and when to land yours by keeping track of their defensive skill use and estimated endurance.
The person that commented that “2 shot” builds are not interesting, true, but in a way many condi builds work the same way. With the perplexity builds in particular, you are often almost instantly in a position where you’re taking more damage than you can deal, being penalized even more for dealing damage with a confusion stack, and fighting mostly mostly ranged attacks that can be difficult to predict. Even if you have a full purge utility skill, which not all classes have access to, that’s not a win button. Neither is running -36% / 40% duration food all the time.
It just feels like the meta is headed in an even more thoughtless direction because anet really doesn’t seem to care. In my opinion they really need to be aiming towards a state where every class has a minimum of 1 viable power build, preferably more of course, with variations that are either more defensive or use condition damage for a modest amount of passive pressure. This state of the game where you have hammer train heavies running around in all PTV that can’t be killed in a reasonable amount of time without a mob gang banging them is bad. Condi builds using dire gear to do 90%+ of their damage with passive condi damage, while have a ton of toughness and vitality is in solo / small group combat is bad too.
About the 100th thread on this topic, but whatever, here’s another since the devs don’t seem to have even a passing interest in it.
Roaming and small groups play a huge role in WvW on every tier. On some tiers, it’s all that really exist outside maybe a few hours where there’s larger zergs running around.
It’s been pretty much completely ruined by the power creep in condis and bunk play in general. Perplexity runes, the dire stat, tormenting, a food that more than doubles a stat (+40% condi duration). Not to even mention all the other garbage, PvE only condi upgrade components that don’t even change anything in PvE. They only make WvW worse.
Then you have the flip side of the coin with power (well, vaguely) bunk builds that are almost entirely built for counter-condi with -condi duration runes and food, plus max armor / vitality to laugh at the few players still stupid enough to run burst power builds. These kinds of builds are only a small degree worse than condi bunks because they are not dangerous, only annoying and boring.
This is not to argue the complete opposite with everyone running around with instagib gank builds. There should be a happy balance somewhere between. Some very simple ideas:
-Get rid of the +40% food, or max it at 10%
-Change the dire stat
-Hard cap on condi damage as a baseline for balancing
-Rethink the crit damage nerf
Even an acknowledgment that condis are out of control would be a start.
Nothing changes with the dire stat, perplex runes, or +40% condi food…so the same face rollers will still be the dominate meta.
Personally, I’d rather they just use PvP rules for WvW and be done with it.
+1
Not going to happen though because everyone in WvW LOVES PvE grinding to play WvW, and PvP has been such a smashing eSport success story that they need to keep all players that like PvP in PvP. Right?
It must really annoy Arenanet that WvW enjoyed so much success as an infinite replay, many ways to play sandbox format, while their other major post-launch projects have failed to garner the same kind of genuine fun and enthusiasm.
WvW-only players are the minority, but when the most enthusiastic (trying not to use the word hardcore) players quit, everyone suffers. Players like Reyana that help run server communities, guild leaders, commanders, streamers, youtubers, whatever. When those players stop playing, WvW becomes a wasteland no ones cares about. Thinking that players who mainly log in for WvW will keep logging in to play other things if WvW is a wasteland is a huge mistake, and I believe Mr. O’Brien may be vastly underestimating how many of those players there are.
I transferred from SoS to TC a little over a week ago after wrestling with stay or go conundrum most everyone was faced with. Many guilds on TC are PvX with specific times they organize to play as a guild 3-5 times a week or so. There’s no pressure with week long map assignments (and the ensuing burnout), ppt, or the score. Playing at your level of fun and commitment is the name of the game without all the ridiculous drama. You can play a few times a week with your guild, or play all the time and find guild groups to run with in TC’s community mumble.
TC could really use more commanders in your time slot too that have the experience to deal with War Machine’s zerging. Whether it’s turtling with siege, back capping where they aren’t, or taking them on in the field, I know AFS has experienced commanders that are capable of taking on that challenge. You may also find there is a great opportunity to recruit new members on TC with many unguilded players, and players with a renewed interest in WvW post-patch.
So where are these threads he mentions…seems to be a non-honest response…
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Sick-of-condi-builds-when-roaming/page/6#post4128732
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Nasty-WvW-condi-builds/first#post3966254
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Feedback-regarding-Conditions/page/15#post3934508
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/WvW-meta-condis/first#post3905975
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/RIP-Power-Builds/first#post3905789
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Game-health-power-vs-condi/first#post3813825
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/RIP-power-builds-in-roaming/page/5#post3556164
Those are just some of the threads I’ve posted in because oh…the search is still broken.
But yeah, I get it that most ppl have quit or rerolled bunk by now.
WvW when you’re karma training yields what, maybe 1-3g per hour? So let’s just say that’s 150-200 hours of playing, just to get the gold required to craft from 400 to 500, for each craft.
Then you need the mats. To get the mats from WvW, specifically dragonite in large quantities, karma training is again the only way you’re going to get a reasonable amount.
Then you need to log in every day to do your time gate craft.
Rinse, repeat for more weapons.
Don’t ever change your build enough to necessitate different stats.
Now how this is fun and rewarding again? You give more incentive for people to blob in karma trains, not even competing against opponents with defense of structures. Players that don’t blob get almost nothing except their pride while the blobbers progress to more powerful gear and faster WXP gain. Ok…
/end weekly rant
Sadly my money is that they will be a large advantage. This is based on how anet has handled things in the past (poorly). Being forced to pve to enjoy wvw is a bad idea.
My goal is to eliminate the latter scenario. And I promise to do as much as I can to meet that.
I take it that since legendaries will soon be able to have stat changes out of combat, it would be possible to do this for other gear?
Why not just get it over with and make a system where a character has a set of WvW gear (armor and trinkets) that can have its stat combos tweaked outside of WvW, along with a bag slot for extra weapons? Each piece could also have a slot for the WvW infusions that are ridiculously expensive right now too, if you’re trying to get ascended gear with laurels.
The progression in this system would be account bound unlocks (unlock soldier’s stats, unlock superior sigil of air, unlock superior rune of divinity, unlock skin etc.) for a modest amount of badges. Then you can simply adjust your gear as needed. It would also be incredibly nice to be able to save an entire gear loadout as a template!
If you are serious about letting WvW players play without having to farm PvE for gold or doing PvE for decent skins, this is the only way to do it. It would sill be a bit of a grind, but a goal with an actual result that is useful when you’ve done it and worth playing for so you can easily make different builds for WvW like sPvP. That is what makes the game fun in the long term. Otherwise you are just dangling empty calorie carrots in front of people that are kind-maybe-not-really fun for about two weeks.
If this were to actually happen, it would also be nice to maybe have a special item to put in the mystic forge with our old unwanted gear that returned badges, xp or whatever is needed for the new unlocks. This would probably help the PvE economy so WvW players don’t dump a bunch of stuff on the market all at once too.
PS: Account bound world XP.
The power creep has pushed the roaming meta, if there is such a thing, to the two extremes. On one end there are power builds with extreme burst damage, the other extreme bunkers like the p/d thief and blackwater mesmer that are almost impossible to kill 1v1, or even 2v1. Because most random encounters are also being fought over nothing more than who’s going to die, there’s no penalty for running away away or stealth spam.
Please make the post-apocalypse LA a non-mega zone. This really hurts WvW centric servers in particular that like to have a per-reset hangout around the mist portals. Mega makes a lot of sense for the other sparsely populated cities, but there needs to be one that is non-mega.
Those are some good points Remicity, but the main problem I see with direct damage vs. condi damage is this. Powerful direct damage attacks can easily be tweaked if a specific skill is too strong, and many direct damage attacks have warm up animations that can be read. How do you balance a build that uses dire gear with 90-95% condi DPS? Let’s consider the three most common condi builds in WvW.
1. The blackwater mesmer. Not a thing you can do when they have 2-3 staff clones out, they all attack you with condis. Dodge out of confusing images and chaos storms. Illusionary counter usually comes randomly. Chaos army uptime 30-40% of the time? What can you do, not attack? More condis. Using a weapon that cleaves? You’re going to get hit by dissipations with tons of bleed, weakness, and cripples. Best option is never to fight this build 1v1 or 1vX if the other players are clueless and end up hurting you more than helping.
2. The P/D perplexity thief. Even if you deny cloaking off yourself, they often just cloak off PvE or walls, and you’re going to catch some portion of sneak attack. Shadow strike is very tough to read with near instant activation and also creates a gap if you’re in melee. The daze + confusion from steal almost always comes from any sort of attack and can’t be denied. Even vital shot ends up being a fairly strong attack with full condition damage and duration increases. Most run D/P on their off set to reset or run away if they get in trouble.
3. Bomb engi. This one pumps the most confusion, but can be read a little since many of the setups come out of tool kit. Still though, you have no idea what bombs are being dropped, and end up being hit by static shots and parts of poison volley. The almost permanent burn if they are using enough rabid gear with incendiary powder is what hurts the most though.
I feel bad for anyone that has to try to put down an angry mob on a forum, but they’ve only brought it upon themselves. Whether it’s someone who only does PR or an actual dev posting, it really does not seem that they’ve grasped any of the real problems in WvW or given us a credible plan to make positive changes. “We’re changing the Quaggon’s” is like saying “We’re changing the flowers in your garden”, as the house is on fire.
I can’t get over how ridiculous anet has allowed a PvP format to become balance wise. Take Joe the Engineer for example…plays through some PvE with his engi, gets to 80, now he wants to play WvW. The kind of player that WvW is ostensibly designed for. First he realizes his class is terrible in WvW. Ok, so he makes a new one. Now he’s out fighting with his level 2 necro against players running around with far better gear, superior sigil stacks, food, and now guard stacks too. It is hilariously lopsided. How many hours of his life does Joe get to look forward to wasting before he’s on an even playing field?
I’m sorry, I know a lot of people from the MMO scene actually like grind, but it’s antithetical to GW PvP and players who got use to 5 minute re-rolls to play anything, any way they wanted, with all the tools at their immediate disposal to theorycraft and learn new things. Why we are still stuck in this awful grind mentality for WvW rather than moving to an sPvP type system, or at least a compromise amazes me. Ahead of all the other problems with WvW, this has got to be the #1 reason players drift away from it or make a decision that their time is more valuable than grinding to simply play the kitten game.
The above two paragraph rant is a direct response to anet’s goal of “making WvW more fun” and “not introducing more power creep”. Aside from fixing culling and making siege not character bound, practically everything you’ve done to the bloody game has made it less fun and introduced more power creep! So I’m not buying a let’s take it easy on the devs plea when they have been going in the wrong direction for a year now.
Absolute catastrophe for lower tier servers.
I can’t believe players are even debating this like there’s something to consider. There’s no point in doing anything besides mindless k-trains now. It will probably become even worse than EotM. Lower tier servers are lucky to have a competent player or two roaming / scouting the whole map. No one wants to physically sit in structures to scout. It’s literally the most boring thing to do in game unless you’re semi-afk or chatting.
As for PPK, well, that remains to be seen. It is difficult to bust a map queue if it comes to that, but it can be done. That doesn’t make it fun though. The game starts to become a dicey button smashing affair when there’s more than ~60 total players in a fight, provided the server isn’t lagging of course. Plus, it also does discourage risk taking with deaths, which there’s already plenty of with stacks / wasted walking time / pride / etc.
Lastly, it worries me that this is a “just a test”. There has been an alarming trend in this game of stupid changes, players quitting because of those changes, and before you know it, few remember what the game was like before the changes. By then Anet’s logic seems to be, well, no is complaining now, right? Examples: Ascended treadmill, siege power creep, condi power creep (solo / small group), siege disabling.
(edited by zen.6091)
Bronze league has been a lot of fun with competitive matchups that players, to varying degrees of course, care about every week. Anyone in gold league enduring the ongoing stupidity, or the imbalanced matchups in silver really missed out with the free transfer opportunity.
Long term who knows what will happen with WvW. The ongoing lack of communication from anet doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that they care at all about the format that is the only reason a huge number of players continue to play.
Fun night, ggs BT and PD.
I hope we don’t have an ok week in T2 and then totally fall apart like SBI did. The zerg sizes in T2 seem much more reasonable and the quality of competition is good.
The problem with FA is…I am Fort Aspenwood, legendary Kurzick melandru’s turtle tank griefer guy. Those Luxon dogs wouldn’t even make it to the juggernaut before all the monks rage quit.
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Called it when this trap was first shown that catas and golems would become the only practical way to take most things…fix / re-think incoming soon I hope…
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I mostly agree with Pannonica, but at the same time, I won’t beat around the bush in saying this thread was inspired by how I see RG playing the game. Everyone, or at least almost everyone, in their guild will be using pie + oil + skale + even the stupid blessing buffs. Do I fault them for playing with maximum efficiency? No. Even if they did not abuse veil or use all the cons, they would still dump truck 95% of disorganized zergs in the field.
The point I’m getting at though is senseless power creep, i.e. if someone else is using cons, then you have to use cons too or be at a disadvantage. I realize this is not tPvP, and a balanced game will never come close to being reality, but there needs to be some sort of restraint. I would be all for a whole line of 400 level food that is cheap and WvW only with all sorts of stat combos so you could tweak your stats without new gear. I am not for the special effect food that is clearly too good, and all all the other kitten (like skale venom) that is totally ridiculous.
I would be more ok with ascended gear if I was certain it was the last piece of gear ever needed. An acceptable compromise in my opinion would be WvW ascended gear that is obtainable though normal WvW play with the acquisition balanced by rewards from player kills, structures taken, and minor objectives…a fair way to measure a reward defense would also be great. Ascended equipment obtained through WvW should also have the stat selection system that legendaries now have so you can change builds and try new things without a huge amount of hassle.
And 300g for a color is almost an insult for people who have been playing a game mode neglected for a year.
Almost? It’s waaay beyond that point. Let me be figurative here: It’s to the point where after years of ignoring us they suddenly come to us, start mocking us, then knock us out with a punch, start kicking us and at the moment they are urinating on us. That’s how it feels like.
And then poured sugar in your gas tank for good measure.
I am really starting to think there are team meetings where they discuss options for doing worse. There’s no other explanation for how these kinds of decisions are made and get stamped off by someone.
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I kinda feel like players with full ascended, mixed ascended / exotic, and full exotic are all having the rug pulled out from under them to some degree.
-If you had full ascended, but figured in trait stats into your build (up to 300 armor and 3000 health), that goes away now, and may affect your build.
-If you ran a little low on vitality assuming you’d have guard stacks most of the time (up to 2500 extra health), that goes away now.
-Can’t salvage ascended gear if you would want to trash something to get the upgrade component back
-Still can’t salvage exotic WvW and karma gear.
These things don’t affect PvE players much since PvE is most generally played with full glass gear, and the meta for optimum runes and sigils has not changed much. Things change in WvW though.
Add in this new mysterious system for skill points / skill challenges (?) to unlock specializations….and you’re basically screwed if you’re a WvW player that players multiple classes, but without a lot of gold and / or time to grind, grind grind.
Then again, we know the wise masters don’t really care about players that just want to play WvW.
It would be great to see all PvE cons evaluated, and a cooldown added to pie. Skale Venom is the most popular one with many players using it all the time…what else is there to say besides weakness is a sparingly used condition because it is very powerful 1v1 and in small group combat. Also, Skale Venom does not work with all weapons, so there’s not even a facade of an “everyone can use it, so it’s balanced” argument to be made.
I am saying this as a thief with 500+ omnomberry pies and skale venoms in my inventory too. It just gets old after awhile having to pump cons and knowing that they are a silly one up advantage. What would be great is if WvW had its own food recipes, maybe even a few consumable items too that are fun, but not over the top in effect.
It’s patently obvious that anet doesn’t give two chickens about any notion of balance in WvW. They did a good job getting rid of the really trashy PvE cons like the ash legion spy kit, golem in a box, gear, and skale venom, and nerfing life stealing pie, but they have not done anything else is over a year now.
Think about this too. You can run one of the gimmicky dire / perplexity condi builds as a roamer or in small groups with devastating effect using all exotic gear, 1 con that cost 2 silver each, and no stacks of any kind. With power builds you need all ascended equipment (except armor maybe) and all stacks to be fairly equal to other power builds, and have a chance against condi builds. Plus, you have to constantly use very expensive -condi durration food to counter cheap +condi duration foods.
It’s ridiculous. Anyone claiming this isn’t a problem doesn’t roam or small group at all, runs a perplexity condi build, or has a very crude understanding of things.
I am sure there will be blobs in OS for 9 weeks straight working in shifts to prevent you from getting the reward.
I already took one three month hiatus, and after doing a clear OS install the other night, doubt I’ll even bother installing GW2 again. WvW can still be extremely fun, but there’s simply too much hassle and the devs stewarding it inspire zero confidence for moving the format in the right direction.
With the rank system and high economic inflation, coming back when or if things improve is even less attractive.
People like me who have played one class as a main from the beginning of the game are being rolled by newbies with a cheese builds. I refuse to give this game anymore of my time when they are doing NOTHING to support my play style or give us power builds a chance. Why should we be forced into playing in a way or class that we do not like?! I thought before the patch was bad but GG anet… you definitely proved me wrong.
You sorta answered your own question. I hate passive condi play as much as anyone, but most new players will give up if there’s not some sort of button smash build that will give them a chance against players that have mastered one build / one class for the last two, almost three years now. I’m not saying the new player should actually win fights, but they need something that is easier to play so they at least feel they have a chance.
Anet has always kept such builds in the fold. Ten years later, there’s still ppl playing blood spike in GW1 GvG’s when all it requires is face roll from left to right on keyboard. Like it or not, the e-z mode build thing is part of the MMO genre so new players don’t quit straight away, like they do in games such as Quake when they are murdered over and over, with no chance whatsoever because of the massive skill gap, and steep learning curve.
The logical solution is to have a generic downed state in WvW (all classes same skills) with faster stomping. I might even go so far as to make the downed player revealed for a period of time and the first stomper immune to damage while channeling, but not to CC. This would definitely encourage more aggressive play and less boring zerg plinking. It might encourage more gank type builds too, but that would also place a higher value on defensive skills and skill use rather than safety in numbers.
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I remember being so excited for EotM when it was announced. A format that would have the good elements of WvW, without the endless grind of ppt and coverage wars. Something you could actually sit down and play for the fights and the score like alliance battles in GW1. Try to win and use your brain a bit, but mostly fight players.
Kinda sad how poorly basically everything was executed, and how it’s become an awful cesspool of all the stereotypical MMO player behavior. Also keep in mind that this whole concept was dreamed up when there were lengthy queues on all maps in T1 much of the day, the next few tiers during NA, and most servers during reset night. EotM was supposed to be an overflow for WvW queues. Anet has does such a bang up job neglecting WvW that the original problem no longer exist.
Excellent summary. I just want to correct one mistake:
The engineer’s first downed skill, throw junk, is a 900 ranged attack, which inflicts a random condition on the foe….The 3rd engineer downed skill, booby trap, plants mines around the engineer. Pretty useful, but you die anycase if you get chance to use it.
I wrote the post describing the #2 and #3 cool down skill for every class, and the engi mines come from the @ 25% health sub-trait in explosives . The #3 skill booby trap does cause a blowout, you rarely see engi’s survive downs that long through if they are not helped in WvW.
But yeah, engis have the worst downed state for WvW, closely followed by necros, then warrior, ranger or guardian, then the “tricky” classes, thieves, mesmers, and eles. I rate mesmers higher than thieves just because the clone does confuse many noobs and their primary downed skill is so powerful to force a stomp. Eles of course have the best downed state by far since they can run, jump, move into water (incredibly ridiculous), or pass through gates all while invulnerable.
I have advocated for a generic downed state for all classes in practically all QQ downed related threads. It’s not fair for the “tricky” classes to have such measurably better survivability downed. Hell, the extra engi downed trait doesn’t even help the engi…it drops something useless for allies! Not sure what the consensus is in the tPvP community, if it even still exist, but last I checked the downed state was a serious grievance there too.
Habib leaving (huge).
CDI’s that have resulted in no action. Raise expectations a bit, then do nothing. Good thinking.
Not doing anything to make large group combat more diverse than pug omniblobs with numbers or hammer balls.
Not doing anything to make small group combat more diverse than power builds with mobility advantages or condi bunkers.
Tacitly feeding the stack to win mentality because many players buy gems to transfer.
Not being more imaginative with the tournament format to create more interesting matchups week to week. I think the tournaments are a good idea to try to get more PvE players interested in WvW, but the upside is wasted with bad matchups and burnout.
I won’t claim to be a psychologist, but I do wish anet would try to identify their core constituency of the game and work from that rather than trying all the random band-aids on the game that have been failing badly.
In politics the right track / wrong track poll is one of the most important metrics that leaders use to pretend they care about the will of the governed. I would guess that such a poll taken of WvW players that really care about the game, and aren’t just there to farm more stuff would be abysmally low.
I’m not sure when anet designed WvW they really thought players would be using cons all the time as a purchased advantage, or that the advantage would be significant. It has however now reached the point where entire guild / zerg groups will use omnomberry pie (or ghost), 6/4 stones or oil, and skale venoms. Entire groups will even use mage potions to either help disguise their profession and weapon set in combat, or just annoy people.
The cost of cons isn’t that much, around 6s / hour for omnomberry ghost, 5/3 oils, and skale venom if you craft…even less if your group uses trays to charge up. It does however force everyone to use them, or else you are playing at a disadvantage. For instance, spinning like an idiot with daggerstorm through a mob of players I may get 4k+ in life stealing from an omnomberry ghost. In 1v1 or small group combat, 4-5 life steals is around a 3k health advantage, they lose 1.5k, I gain 1.5k.
The skale venom in particular is the one that alarms me because of the weakness that can tip the scale in combat, the exploit with doors, and that it works with some weapons while not with others, so there isn’t even a facade of fairness if “everybody” uses it.
Anyway, this isn’t a QQ thread, I am just wondering if this is this is really a fun plus for the format, since you are free to use any cons you do or do not want to use, or something that is having a negative impact.