Deniara Devious.3948

I play on Desolation (EU). Since we are once again without a link, we are outnumbered almost all the time, sometimes on all 4 maps at same time. Outnumbered buff should not give any stats, as that can easily be abused, but it should significantly improve the rewards from the game mode. Maybe the +5 pips was bit too much, but at least +3 pip should be given. There should also be motivation for the winning higher population servers to attack each other, instead of both praying the weaker one. Now WvWvW is often 2 vs 1, where 2 stronger servers attack the weakest one. Most people want easy wins, so this is natural, but the game designers should be aware of this. Stats are problematic in many ways, imagine it would be +300 on all stats. What if outnumbered buff disappears and your health was less than 3000, then you would be instantly downed. All these stat bonuses all calculations to the server and increase the lag.

Desolation (EU) supposedly being full, yet having outnumbered in tier5 almost all the time. Smaller number of kills and deaths than any other server combination. If the metrics of a server population are based on anything else than actual total number of played minutes, then they are wrong. E.g. basing them number of individual players who at some point log to WvWvW doesn't make sense, as some might just log in few few minutes to do a daily. If you cannot delete a tier in EU (4 tiers would be enough), at least give us the outnumbered buff back!

Yes please. Kessex hills was one of the most beautiful maps ever created in a MMORPG. Together with Queensdale they form a perfect 1st player experience. I tried the new Cantha themed expansion, but found myself going back to Kessex hills and marvel how much better the old map looks compared to the new maps. It also flows better except those sore areas, which were butchered in the Season 1. Looks better and more fun to play. Just invent a story excuse, where everything is back to normal.

I cannot play at night and most evenings because of family and work and I am sure a lot others cannot just choose any time. No server should be without a link. Just abolish one tier in EU. I really don't understand why there is 5 tiers in EU, when there is literally no queues, except on reset there might be few player queue to 1 map for a short time. A full status is a joke as it doesn't feel full at all. I am guessing Arenanet is measuring something else than just total play minutes. The only thing which should matter are total minutes played by all players on server. All other measurements will be flawed and I can explain this if somebody wants to argue algorithmic stuff. With just 4 tiers every server in EU can have a link and some will have 2 links (3 servers together). A game will feel more populated and fun for most. Returning some extra pips from outnumbered would also be no brainer. Arenanet should work hard to make more people want to play their game, instead of adding living story / pve stuff, I don't want to play. Playing literally alone on home borderland or seeing another player on my side once per 5 minutes, doesn't feel like large scale at all.

This is just the result of Arenanet's kitten metrics. No queues on Desolation and outnumbered on multiple maps same time. Just give us the outnumbered buff back! At least +3 pips/tick if +5 extra pips/tick was too much.

Why there is 5 tiers in EU? Once again the same 3 servers are left without a link and stuck to bottom tier. In previous 8 weeks (besides the two betas) Desolation had every week the lowest kill count per week and lowest death count per week. Some other servers with a healthy link and full status had more than twice the amount of kills probably because roughly 2x more players. The number of kills and deaths of course correlates with the true amount of players.

Core engineer has never been a problem. The problem is that the scrapper and holosmith elite specifications are overpowered. Nerfing core traits and coefficients will hurt core as well. Engineers have never been a very common profession here in EU. You see much more guardians, necromancers, thieves, rangers etc. I have a better suggestion: All kits should do 10 % or 15 % less damage when elite specification is selected. Thus there would be a trade off. Core be left as it is as it also needs some reliable source of damage (pistol/pistol is not viable, nor it rifle).

Combination of extremely high burst, and having same time some access to stealth, invulnerability, evade / blocks is toxic. To make matters worse ranger can do the burst from very long range. I have to add that some condition builds are also toxic. Condi revenant has been broken for years.

Here is my list: Kits should do 10-15 % reduced damage when elite trait line is chosen. This could allow minor buff to kit damage for core without making the elites too strong. F5 toolbelt skills need buffing e.g. reduce cast times/delay, cooldown significantly. Elites don't have F5 toolbelt skill, so that would be the skill the sacrifice for elite. Improve the least used trait lines: tools, arms and inventions. 1 & 2 are both just number tweaking, sometimes requiring some change of animation as well, but overall wouldn't require too much work from Arenanet. #3 requires much more thinking, testing and planning.

I know the player. He is indeed abusive in the chat, constantly pulling all the tactics to make it harder for us to defend. He is constantly bad mouthing other players, even when the main problem is population imbalance. Typically he is complaining why some players want to be in EBG and he thinks it is just lack of coordination when we lose stuff to enemy morning blobs. The truth is handful of players isn't going stop a blob from taking objectives. We often have outnumbered on both EBG and home borderland at same time and I usually play on those maps. But at least he is sometimes contributing, tagging up and capturing stuff back. But this really doesn't cover up the intentional sabotage. Ayna

Did you enjoy the beta alliance system and would you like to see more of it?

How do you figured out which beta server corresponds to old server? People's placement on these beta servers seems to be more or less random. I had Desolation Community (DC) selected. So far I haven't seen much any Desolation players on the Giant's Rise, even though I have played on Desolation server since 2012 and never moved out of Desolation. It feels weird to play with players whom you don't know at all and the language mess is also an issue.

Long queues? Before this beta there was no queues on my server (Desolation), more like regular outnumbered. Now with the beta event the population balance seems better and there was at one point a queue to 2 maps, but the other queue was just 1 player and the other queue was about 15 players. Soon the 2nd (1 player) queue died. If there is queue to just 1 map and 2 maps which are almost completely void of players from your side, I don't think queues are a problem. Outside prime time the maps feel more or less empty. EU should delete a tier. There isn't enough players for 5 tiers.

Just to correct some people might misunderstand me that I am sitting on repairs. I just took a lot of some statistics of my playing using gw2efficiency stats: I have been capturing more supply camps and killing more dolyaks than 99 % of players, but over the time this gets boring. Almost 20k captured camps and 23.5k killed dolyaks is a lot. (Interestingly I also found that in gw2efficiency I am rank #7 in number of testimony of heroics, over 85.5k of them. All the other TOP25 players in that list had over 9k play hours = more than I have. It seems is just tells I am mostly playin WvWvW and I have spent considerably little time in other game modes compared to most. WvWvW is pretty much the ONLY reason why I play GW2) Arenanet could very easily add more stuff to WvWvW to keep it interesting. It would be easy to add more skins to a WvWvW trader (from pve or traditing post), which are possible obtain via WvWvW e.g. using WvWvW related currencies and reward tracks. I don't mind the grind and I am not even expecting any new skins, but allow WvWvW players to obtain more existing skins by playing their favorite game mode. There should also be more viable ways to obtain/keep participation. I don't understand why using siege on enemy structures no longer gives any participation, trying to break through walls/gates is active playing and major part of this game mode. Also successfully using traps should give you +5 min participation, but currently traps are underused and you get no participation. Getting no participation from successful defend structure event seems to be a bug, instead of intended design, as sometimes I get participation even if I don't kill any enemy player during the 3 defend cycle. https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/statistics.wvwCapturedSupplyCamps https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/statistics.wvwSupplyCaravansKilled https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/statistics.testimonyOfHeroics

Biggest gripe: Repairing no longer gives any participation, not even after a successful event. I know this was removed as some players abused it. But now even completing a keep defend event with gold level gives zero participation, unless you kill enemies. Why or is it a bug? What Arenanet is supposed us to do when you are heavily outnumbered and your keeps and towers are attacked? Just let enemy zergs pvd everything? Wasting supplies and using a disable traps and supply trap or two used to be a standard tactic to slow down enemy zerg and trying to desperately summon some allies from other maps. Trying to kill enemies alone isn't very realistic if the enemy zerg is in a heal ball. Even if you manage to down one, they will most likely be resurrected. Using siege weapons on walls etc. no longer gives any participation. This is especially bad when you are alone trying to recapture lost keeps and towers. It takes time to take down walls, especially if objective is tier 2 or higher. The lord + NPCs can be soloed, but while taking down the walls, your participation drops even though you are actually actively contributing to the game. For those advising to play on such time slot when your server has a lot of players, please keep in mind that some of us have a large family with small kids + job. I can generally mostly only play on such hours that there are few players on our side. It is very demotivating to play as now the only easy way to get reliable participation is to flip camps. As a sort of proof that my server Desolation has less players is that it has much both less kills and deaths than any other server combination in EU, yet it has positive KDR. See stats at: https://gw2mists.com/matches/eu Despite being so called "full" status server, on off-peak hours it really means that I can be literally alone on home borderland seeing no other Desolation player for a long while (yet seeing enemy players especially in the South half of the map). I ask Arenanet developers: What is the purpose of making the game mode empty? A full server should mean there are other players to play with, not just against. I remember a time (in 2012-2014) when all borderlands had a queue. Those times had epic fights and epic lag, but it was more fun. Every year the game mode just becomes more dead. I guess Arenanet just lowers the treshold of full status to keep the status indicators artificially high. The reality is that there are far less players than let's say 5 years ago or even 2 years ago. WvWvW was supposed to be about large scale open map pvp. Fighting alone doesn't feel epic at all, more like solo pve on a empty map. Is the purpose of Arenanet to change WvWvW is to drive away core players? What is the purpose to turn WvWvW into a solo pve experience? Removal of outnumbered buff for pips was a bad decision. +5 extra pips was probably too much, but there should more motivation to play on off-peak hours, so maybe +3 could be a good compromise. Now having constantly outnumbered and getting zero extra pips, playing this game more like a chore. PS. I always try to seek map with most players, not seeking outnumbered on purpose, but due family/work reasons I am most often playing on such hours that server just doesn't have much any players on any map. Sentries no longer cripple the dolyaks. They just damage them. Why this change? Sentries are even more useless now. Removal of different ways of obtaining participation, the outnumbered pip buff and basically forcing players "just play on prime time and relocate to a server, who can fill a map or two" is just dumb. Here are ideas to make WvWvW better: Give participation for using a trap successfully. E.g. if a disable trap disables anything or supply trap triggers, give +5 minutes participation Reintroduce participation from damaging a wall/gate. Used to be 2 mins per hit. Reintroduce participation from defending a tower/keep/castle by repairing a wall/gate. Used to be 5/10 minutes. Increase participation from killing a dolyak from 2 minutes to 3 minutes. Reintroduce WvWvW outnumbered extra pips, but keep it to +3 pips this time. Give more points for attacking enemies and objectives owned by them, for those servers who are currently dominating the match up. Instead of the dominating ones usually ganging up against the weakest one. Give us a siege wallet. Now siege blueprints take a significant portion of backbag space. Give better rewards. Reward tracks are littered with a lot of useless "fluff", reduce the clutter and give more useful stuff to be sold. Give us more useful stuff we can buy with WvWvW related currencies. I mean badges of honor, testimonies of heroics, WvWvW claim tickets. I got crazy amount of each of them (158k+ badges, 85k+ proofs of heroics... not much to buy after a lot of legendaries). Ayna / Desolation (EU)

Please just NO. Desert borderland is already such an abomination and NOT fun to play.

Your experience may vary, but at least here in EU tier #1 most small scale roamers don't use celestial. Thief is probably the most popular roaming class and most deadeye or daredevils are using more or less berserker stats. Some thieves go for a condi build. Celestial stats sacrifice too much damage, especially condition damage. Same for rangers, which are probably the 2nd most common roamers. LB rangers go for power damage (berserker), but condi rangers are not uncommon either. Mesmers either choose power burst or condition bunker. Condition revenants are still pain a to fight against. Dragonhunter guardians usually go for direct damage to be able flip camps fast. Firebrands take minstrel, but that is a zerg build. Elementalists and guardians could benefit from celestial stats, but I think I have fought more against pure condition elementalists than celestial. Zerg staff eles are usually full damage. Most engineers play holosmith or scrapper. The former almost always going for direct damage and scrappers go minstrels, but that is a zerg build. Necromancer isn't particularly well suited for roaming due limited mobility (wurm). Warriors are probably the least commonly played roamers.

People who think Desert borderland is just a learn to play issue are delusional. I have probably spent at least 6000+ h playing WvWvW. Desert borderland doesn't become better the more you play on it and more you learn its quirks. It is a gimmick map, which was designs with visuals 1st and game-play last design approach. The keeps are towers are all designed stupidly and too far from each other. The map is simply NOT fun to play and should be removed from rotation. The only "fun" I can name of Desert that its garrison (the earth keep) is the easiest keep to solo in the entire game. You need just 1 catapult in correct location and the keep lord is easy to solo (fire lord isn't much harder, where as air lord is much harder, making the keeps very uneven). At least here in EU red bl has less play than the Alpine borderlands. Of course EBG has the most play. Ayna

NO! Just get rid of Desert borderland, because even after years the map sucks in so many ways, that it would better to have 3 identical Alpine borderlands and Eternal Battlegrounds. Less players play on Desert, because the map is not suited for WvWvW, but it could be resigned as a pve map. What we need is better skill and population balance!

Depends what you want to solo. If you want to do open world pve alone in any of the Tyria, PoF, HoT or Living Story maps, then celestial is more than fine. In fact you can breeze through those pve areas with ease and solo most of the champions and group events, albeit it will take more time as you lack DPS + have very nice sustain. No need to do anything complex: core + rifle + few kits for DPS will be fine. This is not speculation as I have done the above.

I really haven't had trouble clearing any pve map as core engineer or core build on any other profession I play regularly. But my engineer has full legendary/ascended gear and I have thousands of hours of play time with it. Suboptimal builds are fine in any open map pve. I use core everything, even the consumables are core. Despite that I can even solo most of the champions and group events, but it goes rather slow. You should not use any rare gear, go at least for exotic level 80 gear, which is not expensive at all. Mixed stats like celestial work fine for me. That will allow you to do amazing amount of face tanking in pve. You can literally aggro all the mobs and 80+ veterans and elites you see and stand in their damage and your sustain will be enough to keep you in >90 % health almost all the time.

Fastest way to gain ranks is being double teamed by two different server karma trains and capture back everything as quick as possible while being outnumbered. Also when your entire server is outnumbered vs enemy blob waste all keep supply to useless repair wall/gate etc. On mornings I have gained as much as 4 WXP ranks in 30 minutes: captured several keeps + towers + tons of camps. Just killing all the NPCs with outnumbered "buff" + birthday booster gives a lot of WXP. I use a build with tons of AoE. Practice that you can solo towers/keeps if needed and clear camps very fast. I used birthday booster and tagged as much as possible and played on 2 different maps, which both enemy servers with higher population karma trained. Use map/team chat + tag up to get some team mates to build siege so you can recapture stuff fast. Calling for daily tower + keep is a great way to get people act fast. I always carry lots of siege blueprints. It is useful to have some intel where enemy karma train is and have they changed maps. And you must be as fast as possible as enemy might still be on map and defend. I play on Desolation. Actually if you want to gain WXP ranks I would advice to play against RoF + Piken or the German servers when their karma trains are active. 🙂

Desolation has a decent amount of Russian speaking players, but most of our Russian-speaking WvWvW guilds like Dalzone [DZ] are small. There would of course be need for many different language specific servers e.g. Russian, Arabic, Italian etc. just to mention a few languages. But in WvWvW linked servers do not depend on language, so maybe all servers could just be in same multi-language basket?

Both holosmith and scrapper are overpowered as are several other elite specs in WvWvW. Core engineer is however among the weakest core specs. As core engineer you need to sacrifice quite a bit of survivability to get such levels of damage. Much weaker access to stealth (no sneak gyro) and stability, no superspeed, no blast/bulwark/purge gyro. Basically you can still do a lot of damage, but you are a glass cannon and even tiny mistake and you are dead, if the enemy knows how to play. Enemy which doesn't know how to play can be beaten with pretty much anything. I suggest that both holo and scrapper specs should do 15 % less damage using kits (grenade/mortar/bomb etc.). This would not affect core engineer as core engineer has already been overnerfed in many areas. I really do NOT want gear/stat standardization for WvWvW as that would kill a huge amount of builds and lead to much less build variety. Keep using pve gear, but some rune sets and consumables need to be toned down for WvWvW. Consumables + runes + sigils together can lead to ridiculous amount of condition duration, boon duration or dodges. Or self-generated 20+ stacks of might. These are all toxic. Ayna

I agree that the RoF + Piken advantage is mainly the best coverage. The population advantage they have is minor. Quality is pretty bad on most servers and fights can be over very quickly or people just flee. I agree that stopping Points-per-Tick is very hard for servers who has a lot of PuGs who are into that style of play. I am also one of those type of players. Easily just few of such players can make quite a big difference in final score as they can flip camps, towers and even keeps at critical moments. Interestingly tier 1 has the most even match up in EU: both in points and KDR. The bottom 2 tiers (tier4 and tier5) are the most uneven match ups in terms of points. FSP + Arborstone is absolutely annihilating their opponents (2.0 KDR vs. 0.6 KDR). So huge differences are not fun for the losing side. Aiming for perfect balance is not possible, but we can certainly make it so that the population statuses are updated more often (this can be automatic process done every day) and that new relinks happen more often. The most important thing is: There should be only 4 tiers in EU. There simply isn't enough population for 5 tiers. With 4 tiers all servers could have a link and some would have 2 links.