Lord Meowalot.3690

Meh, unless squad members are consistently getting pulled or cc'd, it's a little difficult to pinpoint FB being at fault. Often times people die because they are squirreling off tag, or commonly, the commander made a mistake in movement/positioning. "We stood in damage too long", "Ran out of cooldowns", "1/3 of the squad chased that one person", "y u push into enemy wells and bubble?" are not situations where the fb is to blame, and you can call it out.

For this round of beta I decided not to select a wvw guild and instead go with a pvx guild of friends. During reset my experience was: Enemy sides: fight guilds blobbing together and steamrolling everything, having selected an alliance guild to stay together. Our side: Black sheep guilds (I recognized several that you might classify as "casual yet toxic") running closed tags with a lot of pugs and new players getting mowed down. My alts on which I did not select any guild actually faired better. I guess if you are solo, then it's easier for you to get a spot in one of the stacked teams. Whereas in smaller guilds, there is limited room and the overflow gets consolidated into a new team: the punching bag team lol. I know there are issues again with people not being placed together but this is not a great new player experience. When this gets rolled out, the experienced guilds will try to stack together as much as possible. People who forget to select their guild will now remember to do so and the bugs placing people together will be fixed. This may mean that punching bag teams become even more of a punching bag.

Yeah, just take a look at Glassdoor reviews for ArenaNet and it will tell you a lot. Mismanagement. As if all the squandered potential is not evidence enough. http://www.glassdoor.ca/Reviews/Employee-Review-ArenaNet-RVW53937973.htm

Your guild is [DETH] You Cannot Escape, am I right? I used to be a member of that guild and your account name looks familiar. Try joining a fight-oriented guild on your server, run arcdps, and compare scrapper numbers with your own guild run - you will see the difference.

I'm not talking about fight guilds running private - obviously pugs are not allowed to join their squad. I'm talking about open tags who try to rally pugs to have some action, whether pugmanders or guilds that like to run open. I am sure clouders who don't join squad or comms yet hang around the tag have their own reasons for doing so but is there any point if your side wipes each fight? Imagine you are on the pug tag's side, unable to push together to break enemy groups since majority of greenies squirrel around and get mowed down in chunks off tag. I've seen many pug tags just tag down in situations like this because it's just pointless. Good for you if somehow your server is always full of veterans. Otherwise it's not coordinated fights - just disorganized wipes.

Not a commander but when I came back to the game a year ago after a 5-6 year break and entered wvw, I felt like I was in the twilight zone. People used to BEG for parties and comms details. Now I join squads where 50-75% of the friendlies are out of squad and clouding around the tag, doing their own thing. I don't understand it. There are even support players who don't join squad and just cloud around. Like why?

Every reset when I swap between alts I check this thread to see if there is an update. Update: I had to restart the game 10 times for my 13 characters tonight.

Last night, after wiping a guild group several times, they switched out their comp to run rise reapers AND golemancer runes. This guild squad of ~30 was stealth pushing our squad of 10 guildies and ~15 pugs then popping rise to swarm us. Honestly ridiculous. Our guild likes to run open tag with a small core of guildies to support pugs and recently we end up fighting a lot of groups like this: organized guilds, very often "fight" guilds, running 25+ and spamming rise from inside their boon balls.

What do you mean? We had scavenger protocols activate on player kills for like a whole WEEK, my dude.

Just had this happen 7 times for 13 characters. Getting a little ridiculous. I now set myself to invisible on first log in to avoid spamming my friends list.

This is just part of the immutable laws of WvW that hold true for every server. I am sure you have heard them mentioned in map/team chat on your own server: Your server is always being double-teamed. (When you sneak off to cap red's towers while blue is busy pushing red keep, that's not double-teaming, it's just being strategic) The other servers always have alt accounts on your server to spy on you. (When the response to you hitting one of their towers is just too quick, it is clearly a spy and in no way the result of scouting or the zerg happening to be nearby. kitten, where are all OUR spies with alt accounts for every server in NA?) Everyone else is hacking, especially when we can't kill them. (If you die, and don't understand why, it's haxxx. If you can't kill them despite trying your best, it's haxxx. "Imagine if Indo didn't use boon ball and haxxx. We would beat them easily." <- a real map chat quote from a pug)

I've been having fun with it... but probably not the way it was intended to be played. I play 99% wvw and love both glass weaver and aura tempest so I tried to mimic those builds but with catalyst. I kept d/f for tempest and picked all the aura traits then arcane brilliance, arcane wave, and the augment stun break (because of the low cooldown). This thing basically poops auras all over the place thanks to Elemental Epitome and all the access to finishers. The aura traits also synergize well with a hybrid build. But I haven't even tried hammer yet. The jade sphere is completely underwhelming, as others have mentioned. Takes ten years to build up for an effect that is pretty much negligible. I barely even bother with it to generate combos for auras. I'd rather just use finishers on allies' fields. If you are dead set on keeping this mechanic, at least have it function like warrior burst and adrenaline. Energy build up should be quick and the fields on low cooldowns with high impact. You have kind of trapped yourselves with this though. If you increase sphere impact, you pretty much made ranged tempest overload except using energy instead of channeling. The augments are otherwise inferior to other utilities. Honestly, there are so many skill types. I don't understand the need to create new types other than for flavor. Elite specs utilizing existing types then interacting with runes is one of the more interesting buildcrafting aspects. Why not give it wells, mantras, or symbols then introduce a rune for mantra/symbols? If you keep augments, they need serious beefing up. If you insist on the mechanism that improves them based on sphere use, at least have them be improved when a jade sphere is deployed ANYWHERE much like how shades function. Recommendation: Let's keep energy since the concept is building it up for something big to happen. But now energy is built up through strikes, being struck, executing combos, and swapping attunements. F5 triggers a temporary mode like Berserker's berserk mode. Within catalyst mode, stack 3 elements through quick swapping to get compounding effects that differ based on the swapping order. Order effects: Starting element - aura and boons, 2nd element: combo field and conditions, 3rd element: special effect on 600 radius high damage blast finisher. First two effects should be simple and intuitive while the 3rd effect is more unique. Sample: Earth - Magnetic aura + Protection, Fire - Fire field + burning, Earth - extra effect: pull 5 targets Catalyst mode grants unique boons based on the element it was activated in, such as increased ferocity if in Air. Traits affect energy build up, effects on triggering catalyst mode (stunbreak, for example), and effects during catalyst mode. Utilities should have combo fields and finishers. Or interactions that encourage combos like a unique boon that grants increase 3% increased damage for each combo finisher you execute within the time frame.

If the burn guard is consistently out dps-ing the revenant, does it matter? I'm trying to answer the question, "is condition damage useless in wvw?". If some condition builds consistently (or are able to) match or out-dps many other builds/players, regardless of how much effort it takes, how can the statement that it's cleansed too often/instantly be true? It's probably true though that because of the ramp-up, condition damage is less consistent than power so it's not as reliable.

I don't know if I'm convinced by the argument that conditions are cleansed too often and too instantaneously for them to make a difference just because I can see the occasional burn guardian topping arcdps damage. Yes, burning might get cleansed, but they still dealt damage, right? What is the difference between a 5k spike from a power herald vs a 5k burn tick from a burn guardian? Now if you said that all that burning gets converted to aegis such that the overall damage of your zerg is lowered due to all the blocks, then I'd buy that. Or if all the torment gets converted to might such that the enemy zerg is hitting way harder than they should and that the torment damage isn't worth it, then I'd buy that.

DPS is sometimes a bit difficult to benchmark around a specific per second number. Fights can vary a lot depending on things like terrain, commanding style, etc. Compare your per second and total damage figures to other power DHs in your squad. Check to see which skills contribute the most to their damage and how often they use the skills then compare them to your own. If you run often enough, you'll start to notice the names of top DHs in your server and you can use them to benchmark against. You can benchmark against other classes as well, but it may not be as useful. For example, if I am on scourge, I am not expecting to out dps top weavers and DHs so I am looking to out dps and out strip other scourges instead.