Opihi.6972

Background: been playing GW2 off and on for 10 years where my interest in the game SIGNIFICANTLY increased with the introduction of mega-servers that breathed new life into a game that was burdened with the typical MMORPG funk - low player activity. Currently my favorite activities are doing my dailies and helping anyone in need, and joining activities where commanders herd us like cats, like TT, Tequatl, Dragon's End, EoD meta's, etc. So a few years back, I got my first legendary precursor, but it was for Kudzu, and everyone and their mom has Kudzu, and I knew if I wanted it I'd have to slog through WvW, so I sold it promptly. Then a few months ago I got the precursor for The Legend, and figured I might as well try WvW for once to see what that's all about. I did WvW in October (not realizing the servers that play in WvW change from time to time) and had relative fun running sloooooowly behind the mounted zerg and frequently getting singled out by marauding bands of roaming hooligans. I used to love playing Alterac Valley when it first released in WoW, and unlike some kids with ADHD, I rather enjoyed playing the AV games that lasted 20 hours - it gave me the closest taste to WW1's trench warfare than I think I'll ever encounter anywhere else, and obviously some good memories, despite dying about once every 2-15 minutes. Plus, I'm used to 1vX PvP since playing Alliance on Malorne, an open-world PvP server where the population sizes between Whored:Alliance was 13:1 (everyone was forced into PvE, since groups of Horde players would regularly "police" zones and gank everyone they found, and Alliance preferred to stay the HELL AWAY from open world PvE...except me, because I wanted to kill me some scrub Whored). Anyways, I thought I was working toward getting my Warclaw mount (the wiki was fairly confusing about how to obtain certain things, like what WvW reward tracks are, where to find them, and to make sure you're queued for the RIGHT ONE before going into a match, finding out where to re-learn gliding, etc., etc.) but I didn't know about the Warclaw reward track, so I ended up grinding through the Ascalonian Catacombs reward track, fully expecting to get my Gift of Battle for my legendary precursor and my Warclaw, only to get...neither. Thoroughly annoyed at spending 10+ hours in a game mode that I still had no idea what I was doing, still didn't have a mount, and still had to grind through not just one, but TWO reward tracks in a game mode that seemed doable, but only after playing it for weeks and amassing enough experience/gear/mounts to make it fun. Fast forward to this past Black Friday weekend thing; I've not fully recovered from my WvW experience less than a month ago, but figure that I might as well give it another go, just because of the bonus exp, figuring it was going to take less time than my first experience. This time, I played a Dragonhunter (with WAY too much concentration gear, spamming my swiftness shout so I can maintain permanent 33% movement speed, since there was NO WAY any player with the Warclaw movement speed buff was going to run alongside me for any amount of time longer than a few seconds), and had significantly more success at the PvP aspect of WvW, but unfortunately, my server, apparently Isle of Janthir (red), was placed somewhat inexplicably between Maguuma (green) and Sea of Sorrows (blue) - at least the colors sort of matched the server name (green forest, blue sea...and tiny island about to be stained with the blood of its natives). I thought my server was small and the other two were gigantic, since I got the "vastly outnumbered" buff at nearly all waking hours, only to find there is significant griefing existing on the WvW forums...or something. I start playing around 3:00am (natural wake time) and stop playing around 8:00pm. I know from my previous experience that even after 10+ hours of WvW, I still have no idea what I'm doing, so I wait around for a commander to flock to, but there aren't any commanders in the morning, so I'm left to my own devices, wandering around and helping other, hopefully more knowledgeable people, to do their tasks and pray I get participation credit so I can make my dumb WvW currency or exp points or whatever so I can leave this ridiculously boring gameplay. I don't see a commander until mid-day, but he's only around for barely an hour before he gives up hope after getting roflstomped for the 7th time from the MASSIVE blue wave washing across the worlds all throughout the day - the most amount of people I saw on my side was about 20, on Maguuma's side, about 20 but they're in small groups of 2-3, on Sea of Sorrow's side, about 100, with numerous "raiding parties" of about 5-10 roaming. SoS pretty much dominated all day, with Maguuma regularly getting minimal activity while SoS was doing well - Maguuma came back with a vengeance post-reset, but victory went back to SoS all afternoon, and by the next time I got to see more than 10 people on my side and a commander, I was half asleep. Come Saturday, more of the same, but with Maguuma dominating and Sea of Sorrows with minimal activity - so far as I can tell, the only reason why Isle of Janthir got such high ranking was because there were a few die-hards running around doing God's work while us newbs sat in town twiddling our thumbs, waiting for a group to form. Sunday was more or less the same as Saturday - the only times when Isle did well was in the early morning when there were like 10-20 people on Maguuma/Sea of Sorrows and 10-20 people on Isle, and since the populations are even, Isle regularly won matches. Once the sun rises, either Maguuma or Sea of Sorrows dominates the map all day, with a few Isle guilds popping in to do their dailies then dropping out after an hour or two. All in all, I spent about 5-8 hours of each day kitten around WvW, mostly standing around waiting for something to do or running from A to B to C to A to C to B to D to E to A to B then building a catapult then getting roflstomped then repeat. I got my Warclaw mount, finally, after 15-24 hours of gameplay, with the Black Friday boost, and with every boost that I've been saving for these moments, Birthday/Black Lion/WvW/experience boosters, ascended food, banners, guild exp boost. Needless to say, WvW, in my experience, should NOT be played by new players. I'd heard from other players throughout the years that WvW is 50% PvE, 50% PvP. Personally, I would say WvW is 90% running around, 8% PvE, and 2% PvP. Unlike open world where there are not only waypoints all over the place but also mount rentals, WvW punishes new players with their pathetic inability to mount up and travel at "normal" WvW travel speeds. The necessity to travel far distances in open world only occurs in specific zones, like chasing the Ley Line Anomaly, but in WvW (as with PvP), movement is paramount to accomplishing ANYTHING, so if you're mountless, consider yourself a MAJOR disappointment to the rest of your squad. Sure, there's the Warclaw boost that makes people on foot run at the same speed as the Warclaw, except the chances of being in a zerg where someone is kind enough to lend their speed to you is extremely low - I've only experienced this moment once, when the commander insisted the entire zerg move at the same speed as its slowest member (me). As far as actual gameplay for a newbie, the WvW experience was thus: zone in, check map for commanders, if not, move to another map and repeat until commander is found. Run to commander and follow them like a lost puppy and get INTENSELY BORED standing around, running to another location, standing around, running to another location, building a catapult, running to another location, getting supplies, running back to the catapult, build it, watch someone else use the catapult and stand around, run inside the keep with a bunch of people, skip all the NPC's and head straight for the boss, kill the boss, get zerged, start over. WoW's AV trench warfare was sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much better than this, even though it was literally just two zergs butting heads for HOURS and gaining like two feet in territory, only to lose it all when one side manages to summon the gigantic raid boss, causing the other side to completely lose all interest in PvP so they can kill the big fatty for phat lewtz. Travel times in WvW are seriously game-breaking for me, especially if "zerging" is the most successful mode of PvP in the game. Thus culminating in my ridiculous first/second takes for WvW: I see two solutions, the first being the worst-case scenario, the second being the best-case scenario. Worst case scenario, make WvW maps populated evenly between servers. For example, if Isle of Janthir/Maguuma/Sea of Sorrows gets paired up and only 10 people from Isle are in WvW, then the maximum number of players allowed into the map from Maguuma or SoS is 10 each. This essentially punishes players who choose to play on servers with high WvW activity, causing massive queue times, and forcing many guilds to move to lower population servers if they want the opportunity to even play the game. Best case scenario, WvW FINALLY gets upgraded to the mega-servers of PvE. The game type is called World vs World, not Server vs Server, so there's no reason why servers need to battle each other - just make them fractal worlds populated by whomever wants to participate, and upon entering the map your account gets flagged for that side, preventing players from zoning in/out until they get into the "right" side, or whatever, I'm sure there are better ways to do this. Guild members can choose to stay with their guild members in WvW, or if they don't and they end up killing their fellow guild members, maybe have a silly debuff called "Turncoat" that sets your character with a blood red aura whenever you're near guildies. The point being, WvW populations need to either down-scale so that WvW geeks can enjoy their game playing against other WvW geeks, or scale-up so that populations can be balanced, and zerging is a tactic that can only be used during large population games. It would be neat if WvW became an RTS, allowing commanders to direct players with markers visible only to their side. In other words, some players can play the game from a birds' eye view like Starcraft, with enemy movement and positioning only known when friendly scouts linger nearby, and commanders pinging the world with markers so they can direct their zerg in specific directions without the dire need for a communications service like Discord with some random person shouting the same command in triplicate every few seconds. "Push! Push! Push! Push! Now pause! Now come back, pull back, pull back! Head East, go east, go east! Wait for it! Now push! Push! Push! Push! Now come back! Come back! Come back!" Ugh, I get why they do it this way, but watching WvW videos on youtube is sooooo obnoxious!

So clearly I was in the minority here, but I thought Vindicator was in an okay spot - it just needed some dps boost in the form of Bladesworn love. Make it so those skills that normally use energy instead increase energy - the higher the energy, the more damage output for the next "leap," with all accumulated energy lost after each leap. It could even be made with "Death Drop" "Imperial Impact" and "Saint's Shield" in mind, increasing the effect while decreasing its AE range. Personally, I really liked thinking of my "dodge" button as a major dps boost and burst attack, forcing me to think of alternate means of avoiding certain death, like using GS block or Staff evade - it's a similar mechanic to using a healing skill for offensive purposes and not for healing. If I wanted a class that hops around like my legs are made of springs, I'll play my Daredevil (she has a scarf specifically so I can watch it flutter while hopping about), but I want a big, fat, neck-breaking, spine-shattering Dragoon class that jumps sooooo high in the air that I disappear then reappear with a massive crater, big impact sound, and a massive cleaver shoved into the ground, with a dramatic wrist-flick of my blade as I pull it out (now that animation is way too fast to discern). As far as PvP balance is concerned, just keep its current "fast leap" format. Maybe have a penalty afforded to players who dodge excessively, like a "Ghost" debuff (seen but can't be touched) that reduces the amount of currencies awarded at the end of a match, or make it so the effect of the jump is reduced with each passing jump. For example, you could make it so the energy bar turns orange for ~4 seconds after leaping that shows performing another leap at that point will cause significantly reduced effect, reduced damage, etc. If feeling particularly devilish, you could make it so that leaping with an orange bar will occasionally cause your character to come crashing down to the ground with a knockdown and vulnerability effect, which would prevent infinite leaping (gotta bring the dirt-napping meme from FF somehow XD). That, or make it so that dodging while the energy bar is orange will make your character perform a regular rolling dodge - that way, players can do a big fat leap then make a hasty retreat with a quick dodge if any energy is accumulated from Vigor/Song of Arboreum/Reaver's Curse after leaping. This could add another tactical flavor to Vindi - choosing whether to burn endurance on a regular dodge after making a leap, or save the endurance for a future leap.

Personally, I would love for more Home Instance improvements, like having a chicken coop for farming eggs(!!!)/meat, animal husbandry for farming of leather/meat, cotton/silk worms/etc. Maybe add a butter churner where you can convert stacks of buttermilk into butter once/day (because your arms get tired and to limit its effect on the economy), have an aquaponics lab for the raising of fish/water-based plants like seaweed. Add multiple quest lines that will improve the quality of items sold in the Home Instance markets and increase the number of NPC's to make it appear growing in popularity. Allow player Home Instances to be open to the public so that new players can access higher-tiered home instances for activities like harvesting, neighborhood maintenance, etc. Oh, and one more thing: add a Jade Bot Recycler that converts junk items into compost, which can then be refined by chefs into Exquisite Extracts of Nourishment. It is seriously ridiculous that this game expects us to follow the logic of the most wasteful society in existence, where chefs convert thousands of raw materials into feasts then composting those feasts to make soil then using this refined soil to make cilantro, one of the easiest herbs to grow on planet Earth.

Guess what else has a double cast bar underwater? Vindicator "dodges" - you get one cast bar for the dodge, then one for some weird swirly animation, then we become corporeal again and we do big damage. Why can't we just get a portal to the Mists that we swim through then pop back in with an underwater explosion. Simple graphical change, and change the double cast bars!