Deniara Devious.3948

Interesting that both Piken Square and Ring of Fire are classified as "high". They are already dominating the Tier 1 EU match up in terms of Points per Tick (PpT), albeit last when it comes to Kills-per-Deaths-Rate (KDR). It would be logical that either of these of both becomes a bandwagon destination. Seafarer's Rest (SFR) got the short straw and they are stuck in tier 5 most likely for the entire 8 weeks. Many people earlier were moaning about Desolation getting a link. The population even with a link isn't so high and there rarely is any queues. There are often outnumbered on multiple maps at same time. I have said it multiple times: 5 tiers is too much for the current population of EU. We should have 4 tiers, just like NA. Then all the servers could have at least 1 link and some would have 2 links. Ayna (Desolation since late 2012-)

Think positive man! Outnumbered "buff" in the early morning on EBG and home bl, often both at same time. Plus if you quickly capture back the camps, towers and keeps, you can easily gain 2-3 WXP ranks per hour using birthday booster and get your dailies done in < 20 minutes. All those pips and WXP! Ayna Desolator since 2012

I get that some people truly hate Desolation, but inventing theories that we have used alt accounts on other servers and then just kill farmed them is a serious allegation without a proof. WSR was stacked and was the ideal server pair for Desolation as they provide fighting guilds and Desolation provides PuGs, who do the Points-per-Tick and scouting. That also almost perfectly complemented time zones. Some of you Deso haters must have an alt account at Desolation. Show me the "big" queues during weekdays now that we are NOT linked with WSR. Today I only saw short queue to 1 map at time and most of the time, even in prime we had no queue to any of the 4 maps. It is NOT healthy for any game to start punishing servers "they don't deserve any link for xxx amount". The WvWvW communities of many servers have already suffered too much and been fractured. Yes, this means that Gandara and SFR would also deserve a link. Like I said many times: there is NOT enough players for 5 EU tiers. Just delete 1 tier and then with 4 tiers everybody can get a link and some servers get 2 links.

Desolation numbers get greatly exaggerated in threads like this. It is mostly a matter of which times you are playing. Night time coverage matter the most for points per tick as there is least amount of players present. Desolation has a good coverage already long time ago and most our players care about points per tick, thus the play style, which should not punished. German tier1 servers generally come with a early morning zerg 25-35 and pvds pretty much everything. We literally have about 4 defenders vs 25+ enemies. This can lead to outnumbered "buff" for Desolation at EBG and home borderlands at same time. I can imagine at night time the enemy servers are facing the same. I have said this many times: There simply isn't enough players for 5 tiers in EU. Desolation is rank #1 and we have basically 1 queue to 1 map in prime time and no queues at other times during weekdays. It means that even for tier1 if the number of players would increase, there would still be open maps. Some servers should be merged or least give us just 4 tiers. Then all the servers can have a link and some will have 2. Ayna Desolation since 2012-

The fact is: without a link Desolation doesn't have much players on prime time and early mornings it is almost empty. Even with the massively stacked WSR link there was outnumbered buff either at home or EBG in the mornings. Almost all the commanders and big WvWvW guilds have left Desolation a long time ago. Points per Tick (PpT) is pretty much all we got and of course the remaining loyal players are pretty good with it. Now with FR link things seem much more balanced. Deso has a night crew, but the German servers come with their morning zerg. In other words it is not just Desolation, which is taking advantage of the hours when almost nobody else plays. The migrations will once again determine the actual outcome. E.g. if the players on WSR once again decide to migrate to some other server, which as a good PpT player base link, it is guaranteed to dominate. Ayna On Desolation since 2012-

Population status got updated. Now both Desolation and Whiteside Ridge (WSR) are marked as "very high". There are only two full servers in EU: Gandara and Seafarer's Rest. Interestingly in NA there are 13 full servers (!). Do EU and NA use same population thresholds? If so, how this can be explained? Very high + very high link has more overall population than full + medium link. "Medium" is a bit misleading, because it often means an almost empty server. So I am not denying that Desolation + WSR has more population than other server links right now. But to claim that Desolation + WSR has massive queues on all maps is also not true. Most of the time there are no queues at all. The queues are mostly an issue in prime time if you insist to play EBG map (which is so full of lag any case). I still stand with my suggestion: Low population EU servers should be merged so that we will have 12 servers in total, 4 tiers. This 2 months new relinks is not a healthy system at all.

What would be the solution? This very morning on I did NOT see any other Desolation or WSR player on Eternal Battlegrounds (EBG) for about 20 minutes. I didn't even see anybody AFK at keep or Stonemist Castle either. And yes, we had outnumbered "buff" on us, but enemy also only seemed to have some roamers. Still at 9:30 am outnumbered on home borderland as well. This just tells that the morning population is very low. If Arenanet would lower the population limits so that both WSR and Desolation would be marked as full, that would make half of the EU servers full. I would say: just get rid of the links completely and merge some of the lowest population servers. There is NOT enough players for 5 tiers in EU. Get rid of the lowest tier as well. 12 servers is enough.

Queues on all maps? People are forgetting how dead Desolation was on prime time before this link. We could barely fill a map or create any queues. Almost all big guilds have either disbanded / left or have just few active players and not much commanders. Now with WSR link, there is queue to 2 maps on prime time and generally outnumbered on 1 of the 4 maps. Outside prime time there is generally no queues, except on Saturday and Sunday afternoon, when there is almost always a queue to EBG and those EBG queues in prime can be crazy (80+). In early mornings there are only few players on borderlands and often outnumbered "buff" on our side. Since enemy servers are no abusing our weak moments, we can dominate the Points-per-Tick game by holding so many tier3 objectives. The size of the Desolation night crew is overstated, it is more a matter that enemy servers often have none. PS. I don't play on reset.

Desolation is currently trying to tank and drop down a tier, meaning a many players are going to play other stuff and not much anybody tags up. Seems to be working well, as both enemy servers just focus on us, thus a guaranteed loss for us. :) Numbers can come up once we reach a tier, where we are not that outnumbered. Desolation hasn't had that much WvWvW specific guilds for ages. In other words those guilds migrated already long time ago and most just disbanded after leaving. Even when were "full" last time, barely any queues. Even if a 1 or 2 guilds would move to Desolation I doubt we can create queue to more than 1 map. I cannot comment reset as I almost never play Friday reset. Ayna

It is not just eternal champion... Berserker sorely needs more sustain and redesign. Otherwise it is pretty much dead spec for spvp (and WvWvW). All the berserker minor traits only benefit using berserker mode. When the berserker mode is over the berserker warrior is basically missing one trait line = huge design problem. To make matter worse: one needs to first build adrenaline to enter berserker mode and one cannot even exit berserker when one wants. Warrior used to be my 2nd most played profession, but it has been so bad for the entire year, I haven't used my warrior much at all for past half a year.

At least give us a special core only week. No elite specs at all. I can already guess core guardian, thief and necromancer would be popular. Poor core elementalist and core engineer.

This would be an easy fix:changing between kits goes faster on core (e.g. 1/4 s instead of 1 s)kits do less damage for those who equip elite specilization (e.g. 10 % less damage) That would make core quite a bit of kit oriented. But most core builds have used at least a kit.

Instead of gutting the core engineer to oblivion, how about instead addressing the true problem, which is overperforming elite specs? Both holo and scrapper offer too much in one elite trait line compared to core trait lines. Scrapper offers solid melee damage, evade, block, mobility and AoE stun in one weapon (hammer) and good access to stability (mass momentum and kinetic stabilizers). Holo offers basically an extra kit (photon forge) and added sustain, despite being supposedly "glass cannon" spec (holo is supposed to hit hard, but also has vulnerabilities). By extra sustain I mean stuff like Prismatic Converter (conditions to boon holo trait) and Crystal Configuration: Eclipse (barrier with corona burst) and Crystal Configuration: Zephyr (removal of movement-related conditions and superspeed and cripple). If you take away the defenses of above mentioned holo traits, holo will still hard, but at least it will be easier to snare or kill holo. If you remove daze from flash bang, give explosives at least a decent grandmaster trait. Big boomer heals much less than the numbers stated in wiki, the real healing is slightly more than 100 points / second = pretty useless for a GM trait, about 350 per 3 seconds. Even backbag generator (alchemy line master trait) heals better and not that many select it over Emergency Elixir or comeback cure (mostly WvWvW). I agree on one thing though. Lesser grenade barrage on heal must go. Using healing skill should not trigger damage skill as bonus, but instead of do something healing related, like cleanse a condition. I would rather see grenade range increased from 900 to 1200 (it used to be 1500 with grenadier trait) or just make grenadier base line and come up with a new trait.

Big boomer heals only slightly over 100 hp/second in WvWvW and pvp. The split has been there already like half a year. It is literally worse than backbag regenerator, which is major alchemy trait, which not that many pick.

People constantly talk as queues are a problem and having just 4 tiers would make the game unplayable. I remember having regular constant queues to all maps last time in 2013, when we still had tournaments! Then queues were a problem in prime time in 2012-2013. I have been on Desolation since 2012. Right now we can create a queue to max 1 map at best. Even at prime time most of the time there is no queue to any maps, no queues at night, morning nor day time.... and people talk like queues are some problem in this game. It is a like a rich person constantly telling to a poor person: "I have so much money, it is a problem". Arenanet still thinks a server is FULL when there is basically almost never any queue to any map. Maybe they should just admit there is something wrong with their population estimation algorithm? Once again there is a Full + full in this match. This time it is SFR + WSR. Last 8 weeks it was AG + FR (basically same players from WSR). And before that FSP + UW were both full. What is with this? Some so called "full" servers cannot even get any transfers and thus locked without a link. And then two full servers together. It is like playing football when one team has 3-5 players on the other field and another has 9-12. Football would die as a sports if matches were all the time like that.

Arenanet's "quality" metrics consider that Desolation [Europe] is full status server without a need for link. At reset, we have a queue at 1 map, other maps of course outnumbered and no queue. Does Arenanet understand that their "full" metrics are a bad joke and hurting the game? A full should really mean full and not artificially full. A full server is closed and much worse position than very high + link, because then people can cheaply transfer to the link. Yet, Arenanet keeps Baruch Bay artificially open, even though it is full+ I have been already many times requesting to permanently merge some servers and have only 4 tiers in EU instead of 5 tiers. There is simply not enough population for 5 tiers. Bottom tier will be 8 weeks very low activity for servers without a link. Just few players per map will make more and more people who enjoy this game just leave the game.

Different opinion here. I have been playing rifle 4-kit core engi almost since launch, over 6000 hours. Full celestial legendary/ascended gear. Diamond+ WvWvW rank. Fairly good amount of commander experience with this as well. My build has ZERO blocks, evades, stability, invulnerability etc. Since there is no easy "oops" escapes, you need to position yourself super well and anticipate your enemy. If you are mediocre at positioning, then forget full celestial. Just like some commented above, you will be lacking damage, BUT with the right build, you can still solo all the camps (even those which are upgraded or have annoying NPCs, like hyleks or dredge to protect them). You can also solo towers and keeps, if they are undefended. Capturing t3 camp will take about 2 minutes, which is quite risky and enemy might be in time to defend it. Solo capturing an open tower will take about 3-4 minutes, depending how much it is upgraded. Theoretically if nobody will defend Stonemist Castle, you could solo open SMC in about 6 minutes. So the build is actually good when there is not much enemy players around. It is also reasonably good in large blob/zerg fights as you can provide so much AoE pressure and do so many unblockable AoEs with 4-kits. Once again, you need to know what you are doing an engage in close distance, only when there is opportunity do so. Don't just jump into massive amount of enemy AoE, as you will melt and your condition removal alone will not save you and you have zero stability. BUT:Don't expect to win much any outnumbered small scale fights or be great at 1 vs 1 against elite specs. Don't expect to be tanky, but have quite good sustain, but nothing to handle focus fire. You will be jack of all trades and master of none. Your main damage comes from rotating the kits, explosives line and avoid using rifle auto attack, which is weak. Also don't expect to be a great healer, because < 1000 healing power is not enough. But you can heal and cleanse condition kit with medkit and elixir gun. Once again, you will be mediocre, but not completely useless. Btw. you can solo pretty much all the open world pve content, including almost all champion-level group events, using the full celestial rifle core engineer. I have no experience in raids, but Tyria, HoT, PoF, Living Story etc. will not be a challenge will full cele gear, but rather a breeze, when you can even leave your character AFK for a while to fetch some water to drink, since it will not die instantly.

In addition that we have Aurora Glade (host) + Fort Ranik (link), both being full. Full + full obviously dominates tier 1. And that full+full has already existed many weeks in a row, so it is not just a temporary anomaly. I previous link FSP + link were also full + full for a short while. Bottom tier looks so sad that I really Arananet will merge some some servers and create just 4 tiers for EU. WSR is medium population and hopelessly outnumbered vs anything it faces. Dzagonur is also without a link and been stuck to bottom tier for many weeks. Baruch Bay (BB) is the only server, which can be at top without a link, because Arenanet keeps it articially open. Their true population is full+, not very high.

Kill / death counts in EU tier #1 is large, which tells about big population imbalance. The lowest server has less than half of the total enemy kills, but also much less deaths. EU tier #5 is much worse. The total kill count the lowest server is less than 1 / 10 (one tenth) of the other two servers and the death count is also 9 times less. Meaning that they probably have about 10 times less players than the two other servers. Imagine playing WvWvW where enemy has 10 times more players than your side? That is just a bad joke! And Arenanet is doing nothing, not even replying these threads. Source of information:https://wvwstats.com/eu

That is true as well. Elona Reach (ER) and Miller's Sound (MS) are currently full + very high. MS might also become full, creating yet another full + full link, while Dzagonur is stuck to last tier 5, because they lost so many players. I remember that FSP + UW were both full at one point and of course dominating tier 1 with massive population advantage. That was stupid as well. Anyways, population imbalance created by these player mass migrations is creating totally lopsided match ups, which are not fun for a lot of players. This will lead to death spiral. Aranenet will lose GW2 players, who play WvWvW as their main mode. Not everybody is going to pay gems and transfer to the latest bandwagon servers. Basically the developers inability to address this issue, will be the slow, but guaranteed death of this mode. A lot of good guilds have already quit for good. Even migrating to a new server didn't help, players just lost interest.

It happened here in EU. Whiteside Ridge (WSR) went from full status on medium status in a period of 1-2 weeks, when several big guilds and many players transferred to Fort Ranik (FR). FR was medium and went to full. FR is linked to Aurora Glade (AG), which is the host server. It went from very high to full, just like I predicted. So we have two full servers linked to each other. Of course they are dominating tier 1. Talk about pay to win. Now WSR. which used to be full and active, is stuck many weeks at the bottom tier 5, because they don't have enough population. My own server is also seriously lacking players. We don't have any queues nor any big WvWvW guilds left. Our off-time coverage puts us to higher tier than we should belong to. In prime time it seems that the opposing servers can fill multiple maps with many guild teams and blobs in prime time. And of course enemy wants good "fights" to pick on the side, who has outnumbered buff. 2 months waiting time for new relinks is a long time, considering that population statuses can change as radically as illustrated above, creating totally imbalanced match ups. The expectation that players and guilds would automatically spread more evenly on servers to create balanced match ups is not working. Instead the vast majority of players and commanders bangwagon to those server combinations, which offer easy wins. One solution could be to make the transfers to the linked server as expensive to the host server. This of course cannot now fix the AG + FR problem. They are both full and guaranteed to dominate others.

Then nerf the sustain and mobility holosmith elite spec offers. Holosmith is supposed to be very high damage glass cannon. Core engineer needs to sacrifice sustain for might generation and high damage. Holosmith has to do much less trade offs and that is the problem and has lead to unwise "balance" decisions in past as well. Instead of addressing the holosmith, they are constantly just nerf hammering core engineer to the ground.

Why not to then remove unblockable AoEs from other professions as well? There are much more toxic unblockables in this game, such as Choking Gas (Thief bow #4), which is pulsing AoE with great synergy with traits and sigils. And it has no cooldown, where as poison grenade has 25 s cooldown., Do you understand that core engineer has been NOT been meta since HoT came out and that was already soon 5 years ago. Yet, the people on these forums, keep asking core engineer nerfs, when the elite specs are the problem. If holosmith is doing too much damage, then nerf holosmith, but stop nerfing the core engineer. One could argue core engineer is among the worst specs in the game, because it really is balanced and needs to trade in something defense or damage, but cannot have both. I would like to see many of the core engineer nerfs reverted to give some versatility back and not shoehorn all engis play the few viable specs.

Ask yourself: do you want fair fights or just steamroll? The vast majority of the WvWvW players seem to want the latter and avoid situations where there is high likelihood of losing a fight. Then your main targets would be the current bandwagon servers:Aurora Glade + Fort Ranik (the main server is still open, but might become full as well, so full + full)Gunnar's Hold + Fissure of Woe (the link server is open and likely to stay open some time, I expect full + very high/high) Then you can enjoy queues and win your enemies with 2:1 advantage. I mean having 50 on your side is so much fun, when enemy has 20-30. Population imbalances are just becoming worse with the current link. I also expect crazy differences in total kill numbers during the no downstate special event. Balance seems to be the least important priority for Arenanet.

Why Desolation should not be linked? That would mean almost non-stop outnumbered "buff" for Deso. Even with a linked server there is generally just a queue to one map in prime time on Deso. At same time enemy servers can usually fill several maps. During weekdays and non-prime there is no queue and plenty of outnumbered buff for Deso.