Guild Wars 2

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.

Kyley.9436:

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.

It’s better to back peddle than keep going in the wrong direction. The ability to change gear stats on ascended equipment actually makes it worthwhile to invest your time in now over the long term without worrying that your effort will be be for nothing if you want to change something down the road. Getting a full set of ascended equipment will still be a long road for new players, but for existing players that may have many unused pieces, this will help a lot. I guess that’s just part of the game with MMOs in the end.

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.

Nokaru.7831:

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?

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.

Annoying and skillless as massive damage rapid fire and long range shots are, if you look at the upcoming mesmer changes, that will pretty much be the end of the pew pews as far as solo roaming and small groups go (small groups of mesmers). Evasive mirror gives you reflection for 1.5s seconds (with a 1.5s cool down) for simply dodging one attack, distortion reflection is easier to access, and other sustain options make the healing skill mirror more viable. There’s also a trait in chaos that gives you mirror when using using manipulation skills.

Don’t forget your blessing buffs and running through a zerg with whirling axe / hundred blades / whirling wrath healing for 20,000 with no cool down omnomberry pie. Make sure to have a full stack of golems in a box to throw off walls too. Way better than rapid fire pew pewers!

dancingmonkey.4902:

so, yes, as has been explained in the dev post on this matter years ago, there are perfectly good reasons not to make such a change.

Years ago, there were no exotics items that cost less than the WvW armor and weapons (they still cost 80s-1g each). Now there are lots of exotic items that cost less, so the original reason for making the equipment non-salvageable no longer exist…it hasn’t for awhile.

When Anet gave us the exotic equipment vendors for WvW it was a bargain to address the issue that playing WvW gives you nearly zero reward compared to PvE, but you need equipment to play it. So some players like me used a lot of it because we were poor and liked to have different builds on many characters. Well, now a lot of those upgrade components are quite expensive (e.g. Hoelbrak runes)…so if you have stuff on gear that’s no longer used, what are you supposed to do? Would you delete 400g?

I think it would be good anyway to flood the market with components to bring down the cost of commonly used WvW gear. It’s crazy that common WvW gear cost 2-3 times more than common PvE gear.

Necromancy bump.

Anyone with a pile of un-salvageable gear in their inventory / bank should want this =/

PowerBottom.5796:

GW1 never had an arena-mode, because it’s a bland and uninteresting and strategically boring game-mode

?

I guess all that time I spent in team arenas / randumb arenas getting up to r9 gladiator was a dream. A lot of GW1 players enjoyed both TA and GvG until the TA meta became permanently terrible from balance trickle-down. A more interesting question is why 4v4 in GW1 was so much fun, while 5v5 in in GW2 is not.

I agree though with larger teams there needs to be other game mechanics than kill, but not necessarily cap points that artificially force constant splits and fights at a specific spot. Here again I think GW1 provides some guidance with how Hero’s Ascent and GvG worked. Any group of idiots in HA could play gimmicky 8v8 builds for the first two maps that were death match, but they became disadvantaged to balanced builds on relic run / cap point / king of the hill maps. Same with GvG. Low end GvG was most frequently determined by 7v7 or 8v8 at the flag stand, but in higher end play there was much more strategy with splitting or controlling splits.

Doesn’t really matter though. The NA GvG scene has proved itself to be completely idiotic at every turn. EU seems to have a more healthy scene, but the only thing keeping a lid on gimmicks or trash builds is the difficulty of re-rolling a whole team, and what seems to be a gentleman’s agreement to play a certain way.

Lastly, for reasons we will probably never know, Anet has no interest in this. Most developers would jump on anything their player base is enthusiastic about trying to create, but for whatever reason there has been an awkward silence whenever the topic comes up. Maybe they just don’t want to commit resources to it, or see the PvP player base get too fragmented. Player base already is fragmented though between PvP and different tiers of the WvW ladder becoming de facto spots for different types of fighting.

Mixed feelings about it I guess.

Seems like yesterday I came on this forum to whine about the meta the EU guilds created with hammer trains (that was two years ago), and that more or less didn’t change until enough guilds started doing the “dare you to push on our necros” meta, or whatever we’re calling it.

Basic fact is Anet has created a format that encourages large fights with no real direction on how it’s supposed to be done. Hammer trains can be boring, but the ranged bomb standoff is even more boring, and siege humping / ppt is even more boring yet. There’s probably still some fun to be had with smaller fights, but there will always be zergs, and even the small fights have become a lot more boring over the years with more and more condi / bunk play.

It wouldn’t be so bad to theorycraft new ways for large groups to play except…oh yeah, it’s incredibly difficult to get a large group of players to play different classes, with new builds, and new gear on the chance that it might work better. Very, very few guilds are willing to radically depart from established norms either.

tl;dr more boring QQ + usual no confidence in anet.

Hadan finds the bags, Yana brings the kolaches, and Ben supplies the jokes. It’s a great system!

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.

Tyeme.6589:

Funny, I didn’t see anyone from DR complaining when they were rolling over HoD and BP. It seems people are only upset when their server is getting rolled over, not when their server is doing the rolling.

Believe me, my eyes were rolling when BP’s EBG keep was waypointed a few times during that matchup as well. The last matchup I was excited about was IoJ / SBI / DR.

Ah yes, the thrill of waking up to your entire BL and EBG keep waypointed by an enemy server, and hoards of everything condi roaming with siege disablers ready to call in a zerg if you do have the audacity to attempt a recap with pugs.

These matchups may as well be called don’t play our game for a week, or transfer to a server that can roflstomp every week with no danger of moving up a tier because the ratings are so messed up. Most of the NA silver tier matchups are pretty much a disgrace at this point.

Don’t worry, they are having internal discussions on some small tweaks we may see in 2017.

Logical solution:

Variable time for white swords to pop based on # of players on the map (more = a bit longer), and completely re-balance the stupid siege disable trap.

Really disappointing that this is still going forward despite near universal objections to it, but at least it’s a test at first.

It’s not the maps that are stale in WvW, it’s the combat and lack of opponent variety. Thinking new maps will somehow shake things up and make it more interesting is akin to changing the colors on a chess board. It’s still the same game with the same pieces. Also, given how shockingly bad and gimmicky the EotM map is, careful what you wish for.

As for commander burnout, every commander has their reasons. Too much of a time commitment, second guessing pugs wearing you down, half the group raging after a wipe, no one helping you lighten the load with some individual initiative, etc. The players in WvW do an amazing job of making the most simple task more complex than the Apollo space program sometimes.

John, one very simple step that could be taken to moderate the effect of coverage and number disparities is giving teams a better “foothold” on the map when they are outnumbered.

Make the garrison keep on the borderland maps, and the corner keep on eternal battlegrounds function like the EotM keeps. That is, when the home team has it, it always has a waypoint, cannon build sites, plus the doors and walls that are halfway between paper and reinforced. When an enemy holds has those keeps, block siege deployment and upgrades so they must hold it with fighting players. Fix the garrison watergate upper while you’re at it too, or just get rid of it and make the southwest gate (frequently referred to as the suicide gate) less risky.

Frequently the coverage and number disparities are greatly exacerbated when a team has their whole borderland or EBG corner papered, then camped by a much larger group. People very often quit when this happens because it’s so demoralizing. If teams had a faster way to recover a defensible keep as a foothold on the map, they would be far more inclined to rally some people together and try to get that back at least, then maybe keep fighting elsewhere.

I use to be an advocate of PTV for newbies because paper tigers > rally bots, but it doesn’t seem like many players actually take the next step and work in more DPS gear. In fact, many do the opposite and get even stupider with sentinel and nomad.

Use the karma PTV if you’re really poor as a first set, but don’t put expensive upgrades on it, and always be challenging yourself to run riskier stats that force you to do better to survive.

If you’re actually considering playing a mesmer, I highly recommend dispensing with all the gimmick builds and simply learning how to play the basic 4/4/0/0/6 shatter build. Although it’s been weakened (comparatively) in a very bunker and condi spam oriented meta, it’s still a good build. For example….

Roaming
Zerging

All you have to change is a slot skill (portal or veil, which ever is needed) and four traits. When you are going to try to hide in towers / keeps, change all the illusion traits to chaos for PU and the fall trait, put veil + portal on you slot skills.

As for playing a mesmer in a zerg, people try the craziest “zerg only” builds that are really terrible. You can still get plenty of tags with greatsword skills and shattering if that’s what you care about, and running a real build you can actually gank glassy back line or at least make eles burn up all their cantrips, which is your real job in zergs besides the glamor skill.

Much as I enjoy mesmers on a personal level though, I don’t think you’ll enjoy it as much as playing an ele well. If I had one do over in this game I would have learned to play ele first and had that for my main instead of dabbling so much with niche classes and builds, then being relegated to an easy mode blob guardian in zergs.

RashanDale.3609:

zen.6091:

more than doubles a stat (+40% condi duration).

How does +40% more than double the base condi duration? That would be 100%. It’s 40%, not 100%.

Depends on whether you look at the stat as a absolute numerical value or a percentage. Max stat from traits is 30, and the food is 40.. 30+40 = 70 = 233% increase over 30.

The rational for looking at it this way is to compare it to other stats from traits. How would you feel about food that offered +400 power, ferocity, or precision, plus 70 more of another stat? If the argument is that condi builds need +40% condi duration food to be viable, it’s frankly terrible because no build should be viable or not viable because of a PvE consumable. That’s like, the laziest, we DGAF game balance imaginable. Which is pretty much a concise description of WvW build balance and the powers that be anyway :p

Alchymista.8192:

he is just crying because someone with condi build farmed him.. thats all

Yes, I just started playing yesterday…or I’ve been posting in this forum for 2 years now mostly about roaming topics.

It’s not the wah wah, I got beat by condi factor anymore. As the above poster was starting to get into, the meta becoming so entrenched in condi and counter-condi has severely limited what kinds of builds you can run, and it’s boring.

Skeletor.9360:

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.

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.

Sorry to see you go. You might check on the DR forum before forking over 1,800 gems to try to find a guild / group.

But if you’ve already made up your mind, one good way to do recon on a server is the live maps….

http://mos.millenium.org/na/matchups/

Periodically watch it for a few days, see what guilds claim and take stuff. Guilds that advertise themselves as havoc, and actually do havoc are going to be claiming camps for +5 all the time. Roaming heavy servers will also usually be controlling more camps in general, even if they don’t really havoc stuff much.

Eh, roaming has been going down hill for a long, long time. I try not to say that looking in the past with rose colored glasses, but it’s the truth.

All of the additional PvE-only condi gear has been disastrous for solo and small group play in WvW. It’s really a joke now. No better than the tab hex, condi spam, face roll fest GW1 eventually became (does someone at anet secretly have a kitten for this?). People use to endlessly whine about burst thieves and mesmers, which did dominate roaming before the condi meta, but it was for the most part a learn to play thing. In small groups it was manageable because the risk / reward of glass builds became much more of a risk.

Then there was the completely unnecessary (global) nerf to crit damage, another fail carryover from PvE, which has exacerbated the problem with condi being so strong.

I don’t know what to think of the LB ranger rage yet. Part of me wants to believe it’s not OP, it’s just that there’s a lot of players on little to never played rangers alts now that are better than the typical clueless WvW bear bow.

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…

Basch.1347:

Friend, I’m just quoting the many YB from the PvF forums who said they have no desire whatsoever to go to Gold. And citing the fact that many within FA and SoS have stated that YB’s bunker play style is not welcome in T2, myself included.

YB is still a very bunker / ppt oriented server, perhaps more so than any other server on the ladder, but they do have some guilds that come out and fight. I have no idea what’s been going on with SoS’s seemingly daily 600+ overnight tick, but maybe a bunker server is what’s needed to stop the PvD express.

Not that I would selfishly want YB out of our tier area or anything.

A hidden hand could have given Mag the 1% chance, or whatever it is a T3 matchup and avoided all this.

It is pathetic that after the experience with season one, Anet has gone with the same system for not one, but two more tournaments where a few unlucky servers will be locked into terrible matchups for a period of time. Why bother doing these things when absolutely no effort is put into creating somewhat fair divisions? Are they that lazy, or is it effectively an admission that the whole tournament is farce for PvE / LW players that makes real WvW worse for many players?

They are more or less giving the middle finger to anyone left on Mag who wants to play WvW. It’s arguably a worse situation than SoR had in S2, though SoR had to endure it for a longer period of time.

The sages of game balance @ anet HQ decided that wet noodle wars was the best option to stop all the QQ 12k backstab thief threads.

bump

…bumping every day.

After thinking about it, testing it some, and imagining what the buffs will mean for the build, I actually think a hybrid 4/4/6 CI mes with sword / pistol , scepter / torch and mantra of distraction will be way over the top after the patch. Build has a higher skill cap than PU, but with WvW food buffs the imobs from swap and CI last nearly 4 seconds (i-leap / swap should be far more reliable). In small groups that currently use condi warriors to lol imob lock and burst players, it could also be extremely powerful and annoying.

vincecontix.1264:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usMYNWy1cPw

hard counter to perplex pd thief.

I think you posted this same video the last time I ranted about perplexity teefs. I suppose in a technical sense a glass scepter ele with renewal is a pretty hard counter to thieves and most other condi builds that do little physical damage…but it’s a one trick pony build. A glass medi guardian with the right traits and slot skills might be able to produce a similar result if spec’d for that one particular fight and the thief didn’t run away after getting bursted once.

ykyk.2740:

T2 is dead. There’s no saving it outside of a chunk of SoS moving up to T1 out of boredom. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened yet, you would think anyone remotely interested in actually playing WvW on that server would have left it by now.

But it’s fun to beat down doors 18 hours a day and cap out every map on a daily basis…

The NA ladder from T1 through T4 is completely screwed right now because of the situation in T2. SoS can’t get into T1, even if they wanted to because GLICKO RATINGS DO NOT WORK (sincere capitals), T3 doesn’t want to be in T2, and T4 is effectively the bounce tier to go up and do the same tanking in T3…

It will be weaker, particularly if you’re running it in WvW with traveler runes (swiftness then pointless) and it’s 1 dinky stack of might for 5s.

The defense of power PU I’ve always clung to in WvW is that 1) most players run even trashier condi builds 2) maybe mesmers should have a power build with some sustain? The way the traiting is setup now, you can’t get any sort of boon sustain with a mesmer unless you do a split in chaos and inspiration that doesn’t make much sense and leaves you with pointless GM trait options…basically a phantasm AI build in all but name only.

I wish there were better options in adapt chaos and BD was frankly a much better GM trait.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Gamgee.8612:

Prysin.8542:

harharhar got rekt by condi spec when running power…. bet it was a power bunker or less bursty power spec then….

The problem is that conditionspecs can be bunkers and tanky as hell but still do as much dps as a full spec zerker with no survival. It’s simple – it takes one stat to go full out condition and three stats to go power.

Conditions have a wind up, power doesn’t. Power builds always try to kite and outlive condition spec’s, I see it happen all the time. They think if they play defensive and stay at range somehow they’re safe. Power damage is instant, condition damage is over time. Aggressive power spec’d builds will always beat a condition build, but 90% of power spec’d builds are too stupid to be aggressive.

Unless you’re playing a warrior with hoelbrak / melandru, -40% food, and dogged, ranged damage and kiting between burst is your only option against dire necro / perplex engi / blackwater mes / trap ranger / condi warrior. If you face roll in all the condis they can dish out point blank and ground target, you’re toast.

I can beat most of these builds with my mesmer by simply GS spamming skills and maybe using few careful MH sword burst. That doesn’t make it interesting or in any way exciting though…it can take a good 2-3 minutes to take down a dire necro with both spectral skills as they eat 95% of my damage, even if I lock down their heal skill. It’s a stupid fight where there’s no high risk turn of events where one player really outplays the other for the kill.

Then you have perplex thieves, which owe their existence to an absolutely indefensible rune and / or the one “why the kitten was this added to the game?” GM trait. There is no individual build that is a hard counter to the perplex thief that can actually kill them unless they completely screw up refuge or don’t have PvE creatures to cloak off of. Heck, very often you will see a group of 3-4 reasonably good players that can’t even kill them before they are able to break combat or refuge has reset with a safe gap.

urieldhynne.2743:

zen.6091:

Nothing changes with the dire stat, perplex runes, or +40% condi food…so the same face rollers will still be the dominate meta.

After the nerf, confusion is no longer a issue as condition. The damage is pretty low unless you are spamming button like no tomorrow.

My matchup is full of nike warriors right now as roamers. And a lot of thief as usual.

Yeah, the builds that can run away from condi bunkerz. There is almost zero viability right now with a power build that cannot either run away or stealth (solo).

Nothing changes with the dire stat, perplex runes, or +40% condi food…so the same face rollers will still be the dominate meta.

I really wish the rng element of PU was removed altogether, maybe even add an internal cool down to it. Something like this:

Idea 1 – all defensive boons:

1st tick – 3s aegis
2nd tick – 5s regen
3rd tick – 3s prot
4th tick – 3s retal

2nd idea – mixed boons

1st tick – 3s aegis
2nd tick – 5s regen
3th tick – 5s 3x might
4th tick – 3s fury

15 second internal cool down. So that means no added benefit with mass invis, moving through veil twice, stacking duration from other stealth skills, or extended stealth from allies (e.g. smoke blast, refuge, etc.). I know these two idea may seem a little whoa OP at first, particularly getting aegis on 1st tick every time, but prot and regen go way down, plus there’s a decent cool down to make it far less useful with stealth spam.

Well…a lot changes for mesmers with the upcoming changes, directly and indirectly.

i-leap actually being a reliable gap closer and imob setup / snare (fingers crossed) changes a lot directly. Now you can reliably dps with blurred frenzy and / or setup imobs for phantasm strikes, and the clone should summon correctly for immediate mind wracks. This is potentially a massive change in how you setup combinations for big burst damage.

Indirectly, thieves and warriors getting nerfed will also change roaming mesmers quite a lot. My perspective is playing glass builds, and the only (power) builds I fear right now are trickery thieves, and somewhat tanky evis or hammer warriors that still do considerable burst damage, while being nearly impossible to burst or even pressure when you don’t have poison and heal sig + adrenal health tick full most of the time.

Burst sword thief is getting a bit of a nerf, offhand pistol is getting a nerf, HB and whirlwind are getting a nerf, and burst misses are being nerfed (which also means adrenal health will tick less while they kite around). Only time will tell if this will lead to more diversity with power builds (like more power mesmers), or even more condi roamers.

EotM would have had a better chance if the sides were permanent alliances with at least some sort of community aspect, and we didn’t get trolled with super-skyhammer map design. Completely divorcing the format from PvE gear and the PvE economy would have been good ideas too.

…but that didn’t happen. You know when it first came out, a lot of WvW guilds and new EotM guilds did try to make it competitive and fight oriented. It didn’t work out so well.

Chris.3290:

You know, both SBI and HoD ended up in the same place or better when the bandwagons were finished.

Here’s some honesty:
There will be no T5 wunderkind this time. DR has no off-hours and just limped past IoJ

T3 is well balanced and doesn’t want what you are selling; and Maguuma is fading.

The top 5 are the stable servers that will still be the top 5 in 3 months. No matter what happens to them, none of them are likely to disappear anytime soon.

You go to any other than those 5 in the top 12, then you are rolling the dice but God bless you all the same.

Eh…DR had trouble with IoJ because they got 2v1’d practically every night by the door bangers after Yak’s Bend papered everything using golems.

I also find this kinda funny coming from the guy who’s been the chief apologist for a server that has literally been carried for two years now by a forever loyal OCX PvD crew. SoS’s unwillingness to compete for T1 (in the past, now it’s lol glicko) or de-stack so T2 is somewhat competitive has been acting as a bottleneck the ladder, and it’s only worse now that Mag has finally thrown in the towel.

Having played on every tier except 8, I could probably write a dissertation on the subject, but I’ll try to keep it short. There is a reason a lot of players have taken to having multiple accounts with one on T1-3, and another T6-8 or so. It’s an entirely different experience with pros and cons to both.

High tier advantages:

-More larger scale combat if that’s your thing.
-More players familiar with GWEN balls, again, if that’s your thing.
-More coverage in the off hours.
-Sometimes at least, a higher level of organization
-More opportunities to fight guilds in open world and GvG (increasingly the one undisputed advantage).

High tier disadvantages:

-Coverage disparities are exacerbated. Everything gets papered on a daily, sometimes hourly basis when you don’t have coverage.
-There’s more of a need to be playing ppt, which often means flipping a lot of paper stuff very quickly.
-Skill groups can’t zerg bust a 50 deep hammer blob all wearing PTV gear.
-Roamers and small groups tend to run very boring bunker builds and group compositions.

Low tier advantages

-Less emphasis on ppt around the clock.
-Most servers don’t have a major coverage advantage with EU / OXC / SEA.
-Waypointed keeps are harder take because it’s rare for anyone to have a 30+ group trying to flash grab.
-Offense tends to be more methodical when there are defenders, because a response group often isn’t coming.
-You get to know players more on an individual basis, even many enemies with frequent opponent servers.
-More a DIY experience if you like doing things yourself.
-More roamers and small groups that play high risk builds.

Low tier disadvantages:

-Frequently only 1 commander between all maps, if that.
-Organization is sometimes severely lacking, particularly when you need to defend without siege humping to victory.
-If you can’t handle yourself solo, you’re going to have a really awful experience.
-When a server does have a coverage advantage, they will sometimes paper a whole map, or even every map virtually opposed.
-Orange sword level battles are fewer and farther between if that’s what you’re after.

brb while I finish ultimate yakslapper.

A summary of the previous 100 ranger discussions.

Large groups (~15+) – Rangers have absolutely nothing another class can’t do better or more often.

Small groups – Put it this way. Let’s rank player skill from 0-10, with 0 being the worst, and 10 being the top 1% of players. Rangers need to be, let’s say, 1-5 ranks higher than most classes / builds to be as effective and useful. So for instance, compared to a mediocre shout heal warrior at a 5, a ranger needs to be like a 9 to be as useful to the group.

Solo – Well, you’re own own, so it doesn’t really matter what you’re playing. Points for bravery for sure, and if you ever get a rage whisper solo roaming on a ranger, you’ve pretty much won WvW solo roaming.

Meh. I thought alphas would be used a lot more when they dropped to 50s, then even as low as 15s on the TP, but they aren’t. I am actually the only player I know of that uses them on a regular basis for the lulz and, and because you can mostly bypass the clumsy nature of moving them playing a mesmer with traveler runes. They are basically an easy way for one player to transport supplies from a full camp to a gate.

Alphas are really bad for fighting players or doing much more than tanking the lord room NPCs when teammates are fighting enemy players, or you need to DPS the lord as quickly as possible. All this really changes is not ejecting at ~5-8k or so, and maybe getting some sort of random knock down when the golem dies (alphas already have a knockback this is largely useless). I would be more concerned about the possible effect of the new heal with the bubble. If it’s a decent size heal and bypasses the 5 player cap, it could be very OP for both sides in lord room blob battles. Attackers may use alphas more often, and more servers might start keeping alphas ready to use in their waypointed keeps for defense.

Omegas on the other hand will still be as OP as always for taking down any siege on the walls, bypassing any behind the gate defense, and spinning to win in lord room fights with a massive HP pool.

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.

That’s true to some extent. I have never experienced high level PvP and can’t really comment on how much of a factor cancel casting is there. Shutdown mesmers are very, very rare, and even d/p + SoH thieves that can also be super annoying and dangerous with key shutdown are rare in WvW (players that actually play the build well). In GW1 you could expect rangers and mesmers that were loaded down with interrupts in all levels of play all the time, and the sub-game of interrupting and trying not to be interrupted was always a huge factor.

What I’m talking about though with the standard models is really basic defensive stuff. It’s almost impossible to read anything off tiny asura models besides the most incredibly obvious animations like earthshaker and mesmer greatsword skills, and that’s why many players choose asura. So…now that standard models are coded into the game, and anet probably won’t ever allow that option for lower level PvP and WvW, they are basically saying enemy fashion is more important than an equal playing field for one of the pillars of game balance.