Jeydra.4386

This change definitely had an impact, it's just that the impact was not big. It means that if you want to hold the ring, you have a smaller area to kite. But holding the ring is something that you can only do for a short amount of time, so it only matters if you're currently outnumbered but there's a friendly zerg coming. Which doesn't happen often. Hence impact was not big.

I'm not a fan either. One of the major problems of the format is when the other team has a large population advantage. If they have 40 vs 10 you are going to lose the keep anyway regardless of what you do, but with 40 vs 30 you have realistic chances of defending. Which gets harder after the nerfs to defense. I think WvW needs more defense, not less. However, having played with the changes for a while, I don't think they actually have much of an impact. In fact I don't think they've been decisive in any fights I've been in yet. The closest was one fight where an enemy server came to our T2 EBG keep and knocked down the gates. They were organized, we weren't. After a long fight we forced them out. Then they came back and this time flipped the keep. However, since they were barely downing, it doesn't feel like the changes had much impact (unless the extra power would've made a difference, which I doubt). If they were dying and their respawns still kept coming in because we didn't have the supply to patch the gates to 50%, then yeah, but that wasn't happening. So ultimately, I don't think the changes had much impact, but the motivation behind the changes is disturbing. PS: Maybe the biggest impact is a positive one - it's nice to be able to farm nodes while capping the circle.

See screenshot It seems impossible for my Artisan of Arms: Elementalist's Pistol to have more kills than Pistol Master. Bug?

Really miss the old Arcane Wave. I used it a lot too in WvW. New one doesn't seem useful in most formats, it might have some use in a PvP format but the cast time is too slow.

Then this is derailing OP's thread, so I won't be responding further either.

"Something to play for" would be by far the most effective way to stimulate my participation, but I remember the WvW seasons from many years ago when there was something real to play for, which led to people playing like crazy. At one point my server was queued on all four maps 24/7. ANet said afterwards that it led to a permanent decrease in player population, so we're unlikely to see this happen again. Without something to play for I doubt there's much/anything that will make me play more. I already play a lot of WvW, and it's enough.

You might be in the wrong thread. High level ZvZ or GvG is not a factor, because OP specified "Me and about 10 other people are up against 45-60 people".

The original word wasn't "safe". It was "safer". You are safer in a large group than a small one. Doesn't mean you are safe, but you are safer. So, your best bet is to run from them? What happened to "don't hit them head on, lure, flank, hit tail feathers" etc. as you wrote originally then? It honestly feels like you're arguing for the sake of arguing, so I'm done.

Are you seriously suggesting uplevels are safer in a small group? This makes me think you've never tried fighting 10v40. Have you? Would be nice if you can post a before-and-after screenshot of a time when you have 10 players and they have 40, and you somehow kill them.

Completely disagree. If you're new, start with large-scale stuff. After all, if you have 40 people and they have 30, you have a LOT more leeway to make mistakes. Comparatively if you are 1v1, you are toast against anyone who isn't new as well. #1 priority is to get appropriate stats (I imagine most people start with their PvE gear, and therefore are fully glass).

I think the biggest one is overpowering population advantage. This one takes precedence over everything else, because the game mode is simply not fun if you have 40 vs. their 10, or vice versa (if you have 10 vs. their 40). Some amount of imbalance is part of the WvW experience, but not to the point where the inferior side might as well log off and do something else. I still think dynamic balancing (where the number of players you can have is dependent on the number of enemy players playing) is the way to go. Otherwise: Celestial seems to be overpowered and dominates every other stat. Permanent boons should also be removed. Stealth needs to be nuked out of WvW small-scale. Same goes for extremely-high mobility builds. These are way too abusable at griefing opponents. Bans or suspensions for tactics trolls. Same for anyone who jumps/hacks into objectives. Make it an announcement so everyone knows it's coming. I'm also looking forward to alliances.

Certainly feels to me like part of the issue is too much boon application. Similar to how cc's got their damage reduced (so you use the skill for cc), it seems sensible to me to increase the cooldown of the boon skills such that you can boon up, but only for so long, and near-100% uptime does not happen.

If you're 10v40, the best thing to do is go play another game mode. If you insist on playing WvW, then don't bother defending, go roam instead. No, at 10v40 odds it's pointless to play. At 30v40, sure you can give it a go.

I don't mean to say you can't come up with something, you surely can, but rather that it will not be ideal no matter what you do (i.e. some people will complain regardless).

There is a pragmatic reason for the relic change. Currently there are several achievements tied to unlocking relics (e.g.: Relics - Secrets of the Obscure 1). If legendaries provided immediate access to all relic effects past and present and future, how would these achievements work? Do you instantly unlock all of them? That would also break new ground, since it trivializes the effort that some might already have invested into those achievements. Which doesn't mean that the new legendary relics are justified. If you ask me, ANet made the bed, now they have to lie in it. But reasonable people might disagree with me.

Who are you to dictate how other people play the game? If they are only interested in PvP/WvW, why shouldn't they be able to play those game modes? What would you say if there were a relic which requires you to play 20 PvP matches to unlock? Furthermore, at 15 minutes per game, it takes only ~5 hours to do 20 matches, or about the same as 10 convergences. What if the relic takes 120 matches to unlock? Note 120 matches is not a grind for PvP players, who play at least 120 games every season to reach the leaderboard. "If you don't complete the story even once ..." - well guess what, some people don't care, and your preference for how to play the game has no impact on them, any more than their opinion that PvE is stupidly boring affect your enjoyment of the format. "Why are you even playing the game?" - because the other modes are fun. Finally I am not sure how aware you are of when these things matter, but you could e.g. be in some instanced content and then someone goes "did you know that you can use Relic of Resistance to prevent the fear effect of the Zhaitan scream" and since the group is struggling with that mechanic, you figure you'll make the swap. Then you find out you need to do 10 convergences before you can make the swap. Huzzah. It don't matter if it takes hours or weeks to do 10 convergences. By the time you're done, the group has already disbanded.

Idea: make legendary gear retain their last-used stats while in the armory. So you could like, swap your mainhand from Dagger to Scepter on the fly. Or if you misclick and equip a wrong weapon by mistake, you don't have to spend the (admittedly few) seconds required to set up the original weapon again. Certainly not a big deal but it's a QoL change.

I find it incredibly ironic how you claim that "unlocking relics/stats is one of the easiest things to do, if you think that's a grind then for your own sanity please find another game to play", and then, in the very same post, quote a relic that cannot be easily done on day one of the new content. "With the exception of Nourys, all of these could be easily done on day one of the new content." Like, I don't have to point out that e.g. Demon Queen could take a nontrivial amount of time for people who never do the story, because you've refuted your own argument for me. Am I getting trolled? 😕

Not a fan of the new Legendary Relic mechanic where you need to unlock the stat to use it. Part of the reason I make legendaries is so that I can swap into a new build freely, without having to buy new items, no matter what happens. Having to unlock new relics is aggravating. It means there's still a gear grind after every balance patch. I suppose it's still better than not having the legendary, since another reason to make legendaries is to save inventory space, but it's still aggravating.

Bump. Events like the Alliance beta increasingly convince me that this is the solution. If there are only 10 enemy players, you should not be able to play with a 40-man zerg; you should simply be put into a map queue. Lowering the rewards you get for karma training doesn't stop people from karma training because what else are they supposed to do when they so heavily outnumber their enemies. The exact number of players permissible should be fine-tuned. I am not sure if this number should be single-map or across all four maps, as well.

Exactly. We have had so many people on BG say we weren't overstacked when we obviously were. The JQ/SoR/BG matchup was just the most egregious example. Several years after that BG were still stuck on top of T1 every single week there were still BG players that said they weren't overstacked. Nobody likes admitting they are overstacked. They will deny it, then when they play against a server that is overstacked (relative to them) then they will complain about the other server being overstacked. Has happened in the past, is currently happening, and will happen in the future. That's why WvW needs dynamic balancing. I don't think so. It is very accurate. It is pointless to play 4v5. It is less pointless to play 40v50, but against Maguuma you never play 40v50, it's more like 40v70, and then it becomes pointless. So you don't bother. In the 4v5 sPvP case you blame the guy who went AFK or dc'ed, in WvW you blame the server with 70 for being overstacked. Or, if you're on the server with 70, you blame the server with 40 for not logging on to play, yeah. I've seen a lot of toxic things in sPvP, but I have not seen a team with 5 players complaining about a team with 4 players sitting in base and not coming down. /shrug.

I gave you the explanation earlier. Did you read it? If not, I'll quote: "Well, if you've ever played a sPvP match where one of your teammate dc's at the start or AFKs in the base, you know what it feels like. Sure you might win a fight and cap the point, you might be able to score a hundred more points, etc., but ultimately the match is pointless and you are almost surely going to lose anyway. It's why once one person AFKs, more people start to AFK. And that is at a 25% numbers disadvantage (4v5). Maguuma on their peak timezones have way more than a 25% numbers advantage (50v40)." If Maguuma magically un-stacked themselves this week compared to last week I can almost guarantee BG would play more this week. What's happening again reminds me of JQ vs. SoR vs. BG from so long ago. After BG demonstrated they were overstacked with queues on all four maps 24/7, SoR started to lose motivation and stop logging on. Some BG players complained about SoR's attitude as well, and SoR responded with "now BG is complaining that other people aren't logging on for their entertainment". Ha. Haven't seen anyone say that yet re Maguuma yet, but hey.

You mean team spirit that disappears against Maguuma, right?

You know what happened last week on Blackgate? RAWR decided they didn't want to play against Maguuma, so they did their utmost to stay in T2 - by griefing their teammates as much as possible. They put bad tactics on everything, trolled tactivators, built tons of paper siege, etc. The rest of the server responded by trying really hard. For a while it looked like RAWR might succeed. TC and BG were neck-and-neck for several days in skirmish points, but eventually the rest of the server won out and BG made it to T1. So don't criticize "team spirit". It was there last week. You might ask what happened to the team spirit this week? Well, if you've ever played a sPvP match where one of your teammate dc's at the start or AFKs in the base, you know what it feels like. Sure you might win a fight and cap the point, you might be able to score a hundred more points, etc., but ultimately the match is pointless and you are almost surely going to lose anyway. It's why once one person AFKs, more people start to AFK. And that is at a 25% numbers disadvantage (4v5). Maguuma on their peak timezones have way more than a 25% numbers advantage (50v40).

People don't like to admit they are overstacked. Like, I remember way back in Season 1 when the tier 1 servers were SoR, Blackgate, and JQ. I was on Blackgate at the time and witnessed firsthand how we were queued on all four maps 24/7, which means it was literally impossible for a server to be more overstacked than we were. But of course during the trashtalking of that era there were Blackgate players who refused to believe they were overstacked. I remember one player calling me toxic and offering to pay me to leave the server for saying Blackgate was overstacked (they never did, so I'm still on Blackgate). Maguuma is obviously overstacked. They do have weak timezones, but short ones, and they often have enough online during those weak timezones to resist the other two servers. This doesn't detract from how Maguuma are: Good players on average, it is quite dangerous to stand on walls and attack them for example because they will pull you off; Dedicated, it takes dedication to sit in camps until keeps/towers are T3, and Maguuma has players that dothat every day. But Maguuma are overstacked. They roll over every other server on most timezones by such a margin that I find it funny some people can blame the lopsided score on other factors with what sounds like a straight face. I wonder how many of these players do nothing except zerg, play only during a certain timezone, have experience fighting guild groups with pugs & slightly inferior numbers, or have played when the opponents have such a large numbers advantage across all maps that you are outnumbered no matter where you go even when roaming (including to other maps). It's human nature, I suppose. Finally I'll point out something that was also true in the SoR vs. Blackgate vs. JQ matches of so many years ago: during the weekends and especially immediately after reset, when the other servers have more people playing, Maguuma are not nearly as dominant. They actually lose fights, fail to upgrade objectives, and die a lot. Hell, we can see that even this week, where BG/KN had 1.99 K/D in the very first skirmish, far ahead of Mag/YB with 1.28. It's only in the following skirmishes when Maguuma have significantly more players that superior population asserts itself and they start pulling ahead.