[Population doesn't seem to be balanced]

Just now, Dawdler.8521 said:

But one have to wonder how many of the WR system bad impressions comes from being on 3rd or 2nd place this week. The idea of balance seem to directly linked to winning.

I mean… would you have made this thread speaking for the loosing team if your team was dominating the matchup? Honestly? They would still have been in the same situation after all.

Uh, yes, I actually would. Because I never played this gamemode for the sake of winning.
I belong to a tiny guild of roamers, within a server that stayed in the lowest set of tiers for years. Never once thought of leaving, because playing tower-defense with people that I liked was what made me enjoy it in the first place and had kept me playing for years.
What this system is doing, as shown by this current beta, is that the way I've enjoyed the game is being disrupted. Why do I care that we're constantly getting swarmed by enemy zergs? Because I enjoy roaming. Why do I care that we're constantly outnumbered? Because I enjoy defending, and defense is thrown out the window when you're fighting numbers too large for you to make a difference.

That was what motivated me to make this post, on top of the glaringly obvious reason of: WR is supposed to balance populations. My match-up shows otherwise. It's therefore important to provide feedback that shows their system isn't bringing about the expected outcome of more balanced populations.

[WvV reconstruction (or alliance ) is the worst idea to come up since Gwen broke her flute.]

11 hours ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Sounds like to me Maguuma was the only servers that actually got a community guild together.

Everyone has had 6 years to do this step, we've had at least 2 years and like 8 betas to figure this out.

"But we can't drop a guild slot for this! How dare they ask us to do that!"

Does that really sound like a person from a community committed to each other if they wouldn't even commit a guild slot for it to stay together.

🤷‍♂️

I can't speak for everyone of course, but I come from a very community oriented server who hasn't gotten together a server guild, so I might be able to add something here.

For one, a lot of our guilds died when server linking became permanent. So when Alliances got announced, our community was already a bit weakened with the loss of a lot of active voices. As for the server guild, essentially some of our major guild leaders couldn't agree on a solution (i.e. one of the guilds offered themselves as leaders of sorts of this new server guild, while others disagreed because it no longer felt like a "server guild" if done that way). It led to even more disagreements, and so, here we are without a shared guild to speak of. Plus, there's the general confusion with what Anet's doing in the first place. Some people still think Alliances would be a thing, so they don't think making a server guild is all that necessary. Some of us obviously don't have that kind of hope.

But here's the thing. We, as a server, knew that not all of our guilds got along perfectly, but it worked out for us anyway because we didn't have to agree on everything in order to play on the same server. As long as we had similar objectives and we agreed on some key things, we were able to enjoy playing together. With this new system, we don't really have the freedom to do that. Come together as a guild or bust, as if being in a guild meant the same thing as being in a server that contained different guilds and sometimes even guildless people. That in-between that allowed for the growth of our community in the first place is what's being lost here, so it's understandable to me why people are apprehensive to move into this new guild-centered system.

I'm actually going to try and convince our leaders one more time to create a server guild. I think there's a way for us to be in the same guild while maintaining the freedom of each of our actual respective guilds. I've been inactive for years though so my efforts may not mean much, but I feel it's worth the shot. Just thought I'd give an insight as to why making a giant guild hasn't worked for some of us, and that it's not simply because people don't have enough guild slots.

[Population doesn't seem to be balanced]

3 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

People seem to forget absolute balancing in a perfect world does not exist, WR is a chance to make it so. A reset shuffle to change that chance for everyone, to break up anything that is “stuck”(ie bandwagon worlds winning every matchup, T5 that’s going nowhere for 6+ months).

A 50 vs 50 can still be a complete roflstomp for one side. It can even be a perfectly even fight with both sides doing good in the fighting and still one loose almost every time. When a third side is taken into account, it gets exponentially more difficult to judge.

I...

Ok. First off, no one's asking for an absolutely perfect balance. Sometimes I feel like you read these posts and honestly think people are just stupid?
I made this feedback based on several days of gameplay, not just during reset when things are already typically chaotic as expected. What was not expected was how, all the way up to now, it continues to be extremely and perfectly clear to everyone involved in this match-up that the populations are heavily unbalanced. And since population balance is the entire point of this beta (and WR as a whole), it might be important to let them know that the system isn't giving the expected results, no?

 

3 hours ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

But the scenarios you mention already happen in the current system, so again what use is WR then, it really just comes down to reshuffle singles to try and make population more balanced, but really doesn't accomplish much when these in game factors will still happen at pretty much the same frequency because the same big bandwagon groups are involved.

5 hours ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Overall the system doesn't seem that big of an improvement over the old system, at the cost of a lot of extra mess to deal with.

^All of this. WR doesn't prevent the things that've lead to our current issues in the first place, while making the system even more convoluted.

Is there truly no possible way to rebalance populations while keeping the servers system? I mean, we can still have a restructuring.

An idea I've had is to decouple everyone from their current servers, scrapping said old servers and introduce new ones. They should have a good idea how many servers are needed per region, right? So if they do it correctly, we'll end up with enough servers to accommodate current populations with room for newcomers.
We all choose the server we want like we used to back then, including being able to see info on how high or low each server's population is. Servers are closed as they become full. Pretty similar to what we've done before. However, once this is all done and all servers meet proper population thresholds, they are all then closed from any transfers, then the match-ups begin. Once a month, servers can be opened up so people can move to other servers if they want to (with a fee?) while keeping the full servers closed from any incoming transfers. Since populations tend to fluctuate, this type of restructuring would need to be done again when populations start becoming heavily skewed (sans having to introduce completely new servers unless needed), but I doubt it's something we'd have to do on a monthly basis. It might feel less chaotic than what they plan to do with WR, which would be a constant reshuffling of guilds to new teams. 

[The World Restructuring is Fun and should be Permanent]

17 hours ago, Custodio.6134 said:

no, it´s actually quite the opposite. 

At least a large portion of "progressive" WvW-guilds and their players actually HATE one-pushing the enemy. It´s not fun, it´s not challenging, and it doesn´t show any kind of skill. 
I am also part of 2 WvW-focused guilds. And while i do like my easy stack of bags, if there is no threat of the enemy, it´s just boring. Winning an outnumbered fight (talking about 1:2 or 1:3 in factors of being outnumbered) is by far the second most satsifying thing that can happen in WvW. Right after winning an evenly numbered fight against other players of similar skill. I don´t even mind LOSING against enemies/an enemy guild, if the fight was close and we made a mistake that cost us the win. It´s a lesson to be learned to not make the same mistake again, which ultimately leads to improvement (one of the main goals of progressive WvW-players). 
 

That may be for you and your guilds. But that hasn't been my experience with a ton of them over the years. More often than not, I play with/against guilds that are more interested in easy wins. The amount of times I've scared off a large zerg by simply being there, or when they run as soon as an EWP shows up, is too numerous.

The problem with what Anet is doing in this restructuring is removing options for people who want to play differently. Players are forced to consolidate themselves into one guild, just so they can get some semblance of organization to be effective. That may not spell out anything negative for you, but it does to people who are in different circumstances than you are.

@A Hamster.2580 People aren't anti-social just because they don't want to join specific guilds or use discord. Where'd you get this idea?
In terms of not wanting to join guilds: Some people simply don't have a spot left for an additional guild. I'm part of 4 guilds that are all WvW-focused, and each one is scattered to the four winds because we couldn't make one giant guild for ourselves for multiple reasons. I have a spot for one, while a good number of people in my server don't. On the other hand, I've played with a lot of guild-less folks who freely interact with other players around them. Having a guild isn't a requirement for social interaction.
In terms of not joining discord: If you're playing in a zerg or organized group, I get the need for discord. But some people don't enjoy playing in zergs or organized groups. Roamers are a thing in WvW. Communication through the in-game chat is more than sufficient for the types of messages I'd like to share with my team while I'm roaming, and joining discord is unnecessary for that purpose.
Notice that none of the reasons provided above is correlated to anti-social behavior. People are just different and are in different circumstances. This kind of diversity has not been an issue within the server system, yet it is in this system we're testing. In fact, a lot of the people who are not having fun with this beta are people who put value in communities, which are going to get blown apart by the current iteration of WR.

Edit: What part of this is confusing. Please actually engage instead of just leaving your confused faces 'cause I want to get an idea of what people are actually thinking.

[Y'all havin fun?]

Not fun.

The community aspect that was naturally brought forth by servers has been historically under-appreciated, and the results of its removal has been consistently negative.
I'm in a server with what seems to be made up of smaller guilds or left-over people (those who didn't choose particular guilds). We are unsurprisingly getting overpowered by enemy teams who have much larger guilds at their disposal, due to them being far more organized than we are, on top of them having much higher numbers in general.

Chat is more toxic.

We are outnumbered in all maps more often than not. It typically isn't that much of a negative for me, but because I'm playing with others who either don't know how to defend properly or just simply don't care, then it's just more stressful than fun.

A lot of people just standing around at spawn.

I want this experiment done, but we've got more weeks of this. And the worst part is that they want this as a permanent thing for WvW. Sure, it might help with population balance (currently, that's a no) but it won't solve the issue of being placed in a team that makes WvW more of a negative experience.

 

[Population doesn't seem to be balanced]

Coming back here to add since it's been more days since my initial feedback.
I can only say that my thoughts have grown worse, as I've noticed more issues with this type of system.

On top of populations not being balanced at all, there's an issue in terms of gameplay. People play WvW in different ways: you've got people who just likes to zerg with big numbers, there are those who like to defend while others do not, etc. etc. I want to emphasize that I feel this is fine. It's nice to give people options so they're able to find what suits them most.

What worked with having servers is that people are able to find a place wherein their playstyle is complementary to the way others played. This guild/teams system gets rid of that because, even though my guild matches my playstyle in general, the rest of the people in our team do not. My guild (as well as most others out there, I imagine) can't be on 24/7. When they're not on, my enjoyment of the game decreases drastically as the people I'm playing with feel like they're playing a different game mode altogether. Obviously this wasn't an issue with servers, since the server naturally fostered a certain kind of understanding between its players. My gameplay wasn't hampered by the absence of my guild in the way that this WR system does.
An easy example is the difference between players who care about defending and those who do not - I belong to the former group. Regardless of the number of people I'm surrounded with, if they quite literally won't respond/help with defense because it's not how they play, then what am I left with? (A bad time, is what.)

We saw this happen already with the world linking. Some servers or guilds would literally stop playing for the duration of their match up because they're paired with another that they don't get along with for a variety of reasons - an important one being a mismatch in playstyles. Or, they just leave the match-up to find a better one.

Removing our abilities to choose our own teams really makes this gamemode unenjoyable for a lot of people. Which, I mean, what's the point of a game if not foremost for the sake of enjoyment?

I don't think this system works without alliances.

[Population doesn't seem to be balanced]

On 1/16/2024 at 2:59 PM, XenesisII.1540 said:

I just want to note something here.

On reset for homebl you will typically be outnumbered considering you're fighting against two other equal sides trying to take your stuff, and they're less interested in each other, unlike ebg which is equal footing for all sides with smc being the biggest beacon that pulls players away from your side, so less stress on defense, while on homebl the keeps are the smc beacon.

On homebl you need to try and distract and lead teams into each other, in a setting where all sides have map queues you should expect to lose objectives as you cannot be at two places at once for the most part, especially when working with paper structures with no defenses in place. 

Desert is also on another level of hard to defend with how much bigger than map is compared alpines due to the verticality of it, but you can use the shrines for ports if you own them for faster travel, this is where roamers are important to have around. Also it's harder to scout for, unless you were already sitting there when the enemy shows up.

That's not say there isn't a problem with the population sorting, because there definitely is and I'm not even sure if the time zone sorting is even working properly either. Just saying this is kinda the typical experience you would find on a homebl because of it's design, and why frankly WR doesn't really change what happens in the game, despite getting 1% of activity time matching instead of like 13% gap.

I understand that reset nights on home bl's tend to suck for reasons you mentioned. I included that part to emphasize that it didn't change even in the following days (including up to now).

[Population doesn't seem to be balanced]

I waited to play through the whole weekend to get a better feel of the population. I played at different hours of the day as well for this purpose. And I can say that, so far, it seems like population between teams are not balanced correctly.

I'm in a Red team. On reset night, we had queues galore (as expected) yet we had the outnumbered state the whole time. We essentially couldn't hold any of our structures in our home BL until one of the enemy teams stopped fighting us. Saturday was close to the same, on all maps. Sunday was the calmest day and we were able to tier up all our keeps, which we lost in less than hour (save for Stoic/Garri).

Essentially, based on our experience so far, our population is far lower than the others. The one time we were able to actually defend our borderlands or even fight back was when our enemy's zergs were about the same size as ours, and it's because it was 10 AM on a Sunday morning in NA. What seems to be the enemy's LOWEST point in their population... was the only time we found ourselves at an equal footing.

Which to me says that your system for balancing population isn't working well, at least for the match-up I'm on.

Other feedback:
-The time you provided for choosing WvW teams did not specify whether it's 11:59 AM or PM. If it was AM, then other people who thought otherwise probably chose their guild too late.
-It's probably good to have an in-game notification that people should choose their preferred guild within a set time frame. People who don't visit other sites and just play the game wouldn't have known to do this crucial thing.
-I am not convinced this is a good way to cultivate community in this game mode. Obviously time can change that perspective, but how this is set up and implemented has so far only fragmented the communities we've had. If you plan on reshuffling team composition every X interval, then I'm definitely far less convinced this WR will fulfill what you say it will (especially since the ability to choose who you can be teamed up with outside of creating a mega guild is out of the question at this time).
-Lag and connection issues. I am not sure your environments can handle the high populations.

That's my feedback for now. I think I'll just edit this post if I can think of more as the beta continues.

[sPvP player, I have been trying out WvW during Rush. My thoughts on the gamemode.]

3 hours ago, Buzzbugs.1236 said:

Well it's been a few days and I've only been back to the mode once or twice. The thing that was keeping me in WvW was getting a Gift of Battle. Now that I have it, I'm back to sPvP to get some gold. WvW was giving me some WvW skirmish tickets instead, but I'm not sure what the value that is to me? When Gold can be used for almost everything. And so sPvP rewards are just universally better in my mind.

Don't get me wrong, I can see why some may enjoy WvW. I still think it has potential. But the content is obviously outdated.. even more outdated than sPvP somehow.

I do think the rewards are a bit lackluster. And it was far worse back then lol! For me, I make sure I go in there with a reward track guild bonus, plus magic find. I get various ascended gear and valuable materials. You can gear up characters pretty nicely through drops or using WvW currency. But, even so, your thoughts on the rewards has merit.

In terms of your overall experience... it just honestly varies. As others have said, it's more like a sandbox and the activity changes depending on time and other factors.
One key thing is knowing why certain things are being done or why they're even important. If you have keeps and towers that need to be tiered up, then keeping camps (flipping them and defending them) is also incredibly important. You can't tier up a structure without them. Players will often put buffs on camps in order to tier up structures faster, and thus making it even more important to defend that camp. Why is it important to tier up a structure? To make them more defensible, as lower tiered ones tend to be made out of "paper", as we like to call it. We also get waypoints in keeps that are at maxed tiers, which is useful for convenience and also defense. Why is it important to defend? The answer to this can vary. Some people don't care, while others do. I'm pretty sure that we get more points from structures we've held the longest, but not sure if that's been changed. If it's still the case, then people may find value in defense for that reason. Other people like to defend simply because they don't want to lose, and the less structures you hold, the sadder your team looks.

For me, I enjoy defending. I like being able to keep the structures in our home borderlands, so I focus my energy and game time on defending them. I'm a roamer and a scout, so I let others know if I see something contested, and I do my best to defend those areas by fighting off players or using siege (depending on what I'm actually facing). Some of us spend our time literally building up siege to use as counter defense. At the end of the day, it all depends on what you find important and enjoyable. If you can't find any of that in WvW, then it's definitely ok not to be active in the game mode 🙂

[World Restructuring Beta will run from January 12 to February 2!]

7 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

I admit before New Year Anet had stated they would be back with a blog on the WR with more details. Either they should have written a post or they missed in delivering the blog that was mentioned which is a marketing oops in my book since this would have been an opportunity to share more info on changes they have been making to the algorithms and chances to showcase features.

So part of you confusion is in the 500. 500 was targeted as the number of players across various guilds could link up together as part of an Alliance which was subfeature of the WR project. 500 was used to match up with guild limits. An over all world/server/shard, the thing we currently consider as a sever, is of an unknown size more than that, that was meant to contain these Alliances but in a way that they were not the dominating population. Anet did not share percentages but again stated in prior releases that an Alliance would be part of these worlds and would be layered in first when sorting followed by Guild and players. So by capping Alliances at max Guild size potentials they could use and Alliance of many Guilds to likewise balance out Guilds of various size. Then non-Guilded players could further be used to help balance out numbers once both Allliances and No-Alliance Guilds were factored into the numbers.

Now fast forward to this test. Alliances are currently onhold as they work out issues with the UI and dynamics on how they would be created. Anet looked at what they were trying to do and then considered the fact that an Alliance looked a lot like what some community guilds were already doing by creating a server wide Guild to group like minded players together so they said why not just and handle it that way for now. The sorting logic was already adding up numbers from Guilds in a fashion that was also used by An Alliance minus the coding they were getting tied up in with the Guild linking an user interface. 500 was an Alliance max and a prior Guild max so when they talk about people linking up they are also using this in the idea of form up a community Guild to group with people that you might already see on a regular basis.

So now lets go back and picture what you are facing. What will happen is that when sorting occurs your Guild will be ranked with other Guilds of similar players, play hours (hopefully time of play) and Guilds will be distributed out to new servers first based on similar numbers. Picture a round robin system, everyone get one that is x, now everyone gets a y, everyone gets a z and so fourth as the system tries to balance out distributions. Once Guilds are all placed out in new groups(server/shards/worlds) now non-associated players are then layered in to help balance those groups out and better balance them.

Now you mentioned non-active players. Anet should have been collecting (this is not shared information so some assumptions here) information on players, and various attributes that they have determined will be used to determine numbers for individual players. As an example, take a simple Guild of 5 players. Each player will have their own numbers but those individuals will roll up their numbers to form a Guild's definition so that it can stacked up to other guilds when that round robin process occurs. So a 5 player guild would be ranked against other 5 player guilds based on their number of 5 players plus other attributed like this 5 player guild plays 20 hours a week and this one plays 40 hours a week to further sort them out. So if a Guild has non-active numbers that should also be accounted for with some margin for potential play or average play time already factored in. This Guild has 40 players but 35 of them play only 1 hour a week so weigh them out with that in mind.

One of the potential additional reasons that they had been adding in a Bonus event when these run is to gather info on the potential play time factors for their background numbers on players and to use for their potential factors. The other reason I could see why people needed to select their WvW prior to reset is to use that time to start the sorts before reset triggers since this wouldn't be an on the fly number crunch but would need to be done before the match sorting starts. So more than likely background numbers have been/are being crunched now to do this round robin before reset happens. Players that missed the Guild selection deadline have in the past questioned why they couldn't just selected their Guild right before reset so wanted to cover that, though it was not part of your question.

Might have been overstated but I hope that helps in some of your questions.

 

Thank you for this. What I'm getting from your and other people's answers is that, they're trying to give themselves the ability to move things around better for population balance purposes.

Honestly, part of my actual confusion is less on the process, but rather how all this can actually be conducive for building communities (though your explanation definitely helps regardless). We have communities now, due to the server system, not merely the guild system. Nixing the server system obviously fragments these communities. To use my server as an example: we have a number of guilds that are mainly on the medium-large size. For various reasons, we're not able to make a server wide guild. So during this beta, I may see some of my server mates, but won't be able to play with 75% of them. And if this is how it's going to work in WvW when they finally release WR fully, then this obviously spells out negatively for those of us who actually wanted to stick together but couldn't.

The other part of my confusion is whether or not teams (or the alliance of guilds) continue to get reshuffled whenever that "redistribution" phase happens. I don't think that was answered by your post (if you did, I'm sorry that I'm missing it). To elaborate: If we fast forward to when WR is fully implemented, and my guild gets placed in a team wherein we're working well together. With the current iteration of WR, does it mean that when redistribution happens, my guild will be taken from that team to form a new one again? And if that's the case, how is this conducive for forming long lasting communities, when guilds are the only source of consistency while the overall team composition is random each time?

Edit: I just read another user's response that teams themselves should stay intact. Feel free to add other info on it though if you're feeling like it. Much appreciated to you folks giving extra information.

[World Restructuring Beta will run from January 12 to February 2!]

2 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

The "agency" they are talking about is letting the players choose their guilds. The 500 max players of a guild is never "redistributed", but they are auto-balanced to form a larger team on a monthly basis if they stick to that.

Right, I get that if you have a guild consisting of 500 players already, that you won't have to worry about it. My questions were for people who do not belong to a guild that already has 500 members.
What I'm understanding from this is, if I'm a player that's part of a small WvW guild, we'll be paired with other guilds until we form a team of 500 players? Is that correct?
And, when the scheduled "redistribution" happens, does that mean that the process I said above restarts (your guild will be paired with another group of guilds to form 500) OR do we continue stay with the same general group of people/guilds unless some heavy rebalancing has to occur?

Sorry if I'm having you repeat yourself. I've been getting different explanations about this over the years, and have only taken part in one beta event that I don't remember. So the confusion is real.

[World Restructuring Beta will run from January 12 to February 2!]

If someone would like to help me just understand this whole thing, that would be great. And just to clarify - I understand the concept of WR, but I'm finding contradictions within Anet's own announcements that's leaving me with question marks in terms of what to expect.

They said: "[WR will] also give players more agency in choosing who they want to play with on an ongoing basis and allows long-standing communities to continue playing together."
But, they also said: "[WR introduces] a team-building system to the game mode in which players and guilds are programmatically redistributed to new teams (previously known as shards) on a set schedule."

So we can choose our own communities that we can play with long-term, yet the teams we'll be in are programmatically redistributed on a set schedule. My question is, how can we actually choose to continue playing together if our own teams get redistributed from each other anyway?

I guess this is where the whole "you all need to be in the same guild in order to play together" thing comes into play. But here are my concerns with that:
-what if you're part of a guild that doesn't constitute 500 players? I'm assuming that means your guild will be paired with other guilds to complete that 500 player count, essentially similar to how the world linking works now? If so, that to me means that "playing within the community you choose" goes sideways when you're consistently teamed with others who are not of your own choosing. Again, essentially like how it is now. When our server gets paired with another that we don't do well with, a lot of our players become inactive for that duration. It is a constant consequence of Anet deciding who plays with who, instead of giving players full agency here. Is there anything in this system that addresses this?

-how is team distribution affected by guilds with inactive players? For example: a guild starts out strong with a good amount of players, but then half of its population drops from WvW (which happens for a myriad of reasons). Won't this end up in a similar issue that we've already been having, in which players end up in servers/teams that are not populated, especially if the system just bases its team composition on what's on the guild rosters? Unless of course I'm missing some crucial info here.

-connected to the above point, what happens to players who are part of guilds that become inactive in WvW, but with whom they'd like to continue being a part of? Will we have an expanded slot for guilds specifically for WvW teams, or will these players be left with no good choices?

(If some of my questions don't sound right, I'm sorry. I typed this all up in a hurry as I'm supposed to ...well be doing something else heh).
Thank you for any info that can help me understand what they're trying to do here!

[Pets in WvW- Why won't they increase their survivability?]

17 hours ago, Oahkahmewolf.6210 said:

So I was mathing out recently on Turtle pet in Spvp and you can applie this to Wvw as well. So turns out, Opening Strike Turtle with heavy shot and all the dmg modifers +sic em +nature magic % dmg per boon trait and finally having max vuln stacks on the enemy can yield you roughly 11k-12k damage.  You can probably push it further if you didn't take an elite spec and took some other trait or normal spec that buffs the stats out for your turtle but to behonest you're banking on Rng for all that to align. Also i want to specify that this is done on target that have 0 toughness or base toughness so damage can vary.

The chances of having all that align is pretty rare, so at most with heavy shot you can see yourself having it hit with 4k to 6k consistently. Been rolling it in Spvp for my druid and its funny when someone gets downed by it.

People sleep on turtles damage.

Also here's a damage log on Turtles Heavy shot Turtle Log - Max might- sic em and Opening strike.

That's wonderful. I've been running around with turtle lately for the higher health like you folks mentioned, and paired with its bubble plus the slam, it has been pretty nice. I don't use the slam skill much since it takes forever/seems to get stuck on queue the most, but the bubble has been very consistent so it feels nice for defensive moments. Having it dish out a 5k hit that people don't typically expect is a nice plus. I have just been doing my best to time it when the opponent is not paying attention to it, since it's slow and needs a bit of element of surprise IME.

4 hours ago, Zenos Osgorma.2936 said:

or a Bear mastered , increases its Maximum HP or toughness by x or the Bear gets a little faster its mastered how to run downhill lol, starting at 5% and then maxing out at a 15% movement buff (could reduce speed on Pet's Prowess for this you don't want a bear running around at 45% base at all times or the Regen Adds Fear on F2 for all bears that have mastered their Personal trait line maxing out its EXP.

I am imagining this happening and I love what I'm seeing in my head. A rolling bear that causes a push/knockdown if you're in the way. I would honestly love skills like that.

This idea of a pet traitline makes me think of what they've added for the Soulbeast, in terms of what interactions we get per type of pet. So it doesn't seem out of reach. I definitely agree that this class would have benefited with this kind of system, so that a stronger focus on pets is established right at the onset. Gives them more weight even before we take them out into the battlefield.
This also adds into the RP side of things for rangers. I've always liked how we go out in the world and tame the pets we have (albeit sometimes killing their parents in the process, but let's not talk about that...), so something like this just adds to that kind of flavor.

At this point in the game, I'm not sure if they'd be open to adding something like this for us though I have a feeling your idea isn't really for that purpose, but rather a "they should have done this" idea, which I agree with. If something like this is in the cards though, then they'll definitely have to polish the pets to make sure boons and actions they're supposed to do work consistently. And scalable defenses would still be needed for scenarios wherein pets are typically nuked into orbit in a few quick seconds. We don't have to go ham, just make the pets useful and balanced according to the changes the game has gone through with each expansion. If players are dealing much beefier damage, for example, then our pets should be upgraded to withstand the damage better as well, etc.

[Pets in WvW- Why won't they increase their survivability?]

On 12/31/2023 at 6:46 AM, Oahkahmewolf.6210 said:

Yeah, I've been sitting and teaching a plethora of rangers both newbies and vets the tricks you can pull off, what spec & weapon synergies with what pet.  I generally always recommend starting Longbow or shortbow route if they're completely new.... the weapons is very straight forward. However, I hope one day people who play or even main rangers would open up their eye to full melee build as it does surprising amount of damage that people under-estimate. I've been teaching few rangers about some relic combos with opening strike, Midnight king relic is essentially like another version of Two-handed training expect it gives the added bonus of 3 might, downfall of this relic is that it has an internal cd of 1 and doesn't give you % dmg boost from your Greatsword like two-handed Training.

I make a video one day about it, as its feel much more rewarding compared to range counter parts.

I used to love the GS + sword/warhorn on my ranger, so much so that the GS was my first legendary. But after they changed the animation for the sword, I couldn't get into it again. The original animations were so clunky for me at first, but then I learned to get used to the thing and ended up really liking it. I switched to axe/warhorn after the changes. Then the staff unlocked for us, and I've been having a blast with it alongside the aforementioned pair. The problem is... all the projectile hate lol I just cry inside when I fight a catalyst and I can't make a dent. Let alone when we're facing a boonball 🫠

I never got into the dagger. It looks really fun with Untamed, so I might have to suck it up at some point and try to get used to its animations/attacks. I definitely feel that ranger is very strong with its melee weapons. I guess I just didn't like that the dagger is really similar with thief attacks? Idk why that bothers me but it does. Even though it's known that Anet recycles various animations all the time. Anyway, I'm just on a tangent now. I feel like I can talk about ranger things all day.

[Help with fighting certain Mechanist builds]

On 1/1/2024 at 11:25 PM, Dawdler.8521 said:

Well I'm not an anti-mech expert but I would never focus any pet unless it's a really good opportunity (ie you cant hit the engie because he line of sighting constantly and the mech happen to be on you or something). Stuns usually dont last long enough to matter for pets, you want that stun for the engie itself.

Lol minstrel isnt sustain that's full bunker. Sustain still have some damage orientation (ie trailblazers, celestial, hybrid combos with around 2800+ armor etc). The build isnt magically going to solve the problem but if even a minstrel could take one down, obviously it helped in that case.

Usually this is the result of the 2 being highly coordinated and some of the 5 being utterly useless by bringing the "wrong" builds, so it's not really a 2v5 in terms of effective players. Pretty much any class combo can do this (and there are far, far worse combos than 2 mechanists). There is no magical answer to how to fight them but it's often a matter of splitting them up and getting the "right" builds to fight them... or rather getting them to focus on the "wrong" build so that the real damage dealers can work without getting splattered. At such low numbers if you loose even one potentially effective player early (ie usually the glassier ones) you can be done for. There is a reason why class/build/skill identification and quickly swapping targets in combat is critical. Unless the mechs where identical twins, one of them was probably the weaker link. 

Usually when I end up in a situation like this it's hard the first fight and much easier the following fights even if it's not always successfull. It's not really a matter of l2p and suddenly have skills, just adapting to them and not making stupid mistakes.

Thank you for this, and fair point on the minstrel gear (and I definitely might be mixing up my terms).
I did try fighting one of them alone and I still just lost completely. My build could certainly be the culprit, but at this point, I'm finding that I'm ok with losing against these folks since most players I saw fighting them were getting beaten. My minstrel-wearing guildie who was able to at least down one can still put out some high damage along with his various CCs (he's a hammer untamed), which I'm sure helped a lot in this case. But again, still lost 'cause of the bot lol Only happened one time though, as every other time they fought, my guildie lost and sometimes fairly quickly too. Hence this post!

Might just have to wait until we go against this particular build again, to try and figure out what exactly is their weakness (outside of probably other bunker builds with the ability to dish out a really good amount of damage). Will have to keep in mind what's been mentioned here so I have a better idea for the next encounters.

[Combat log bug or what is going on with that burst?]

26 minutes ago, Remus Darkblight.1673 said:

I've had a reasonable amount of success with this build, definitely not one and done. It's more of a brawler/duelling build. Played well it's actually quite fun, but hardly meta. Also yes it's cele, if you can't beat them join them right?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?POwAwiVlVwkYPMKGKeyXuPvCk+A-D2IY1o7vYiMEyMSjtA6NoKOB043QAC3vlq80AA-w

I originally threw this together after the One Wolf Pack nerf and on seeing the demon queen relic, I wanted to see how useful it could be.

• You have access to multiple sources of hard CC to proc the additional poison.
• Multiple leap skills to use while fighting inside your healing spring.
• Back-to-back movement skills for gaining or closing distance.
• Multiple weapon evades.
• A second heal.
• Loads of might generation to help with damage.

Works great solo in a 1v1 and as part of a small roaming party because of the chase, CC, and additional anti-heal pressure.

Sweet, thanks! I'll most likely get the itch to run SB again, and will definitely try this out when that happens.

[Combat log bug or what is going on with that burst?]

3 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Yeah, that's just basic needing to cleanse.   

Condi bursts on ranger aren't new...the soulbeast one is a one trick burst but have an Untamed build that can kill people pretty quickly with condi:

In fact, this isn't even a ranger specific thing--with trapper runes and various relic interactions, condi damage is higher than it ever has been. 

The downfall is outnumbered situations--at least on ranger, as if enemies are properly cleansing it is very hard to keep the condi pressure up with only a few conditions.  Also do not have the stealth for disengage unless you run Druid, and that build is so niche it's pretty unreal.  

This looks pretty fun. I've been having a good time with my power untamed but if I want to try condi, I might look into finally trying out dagger.
A tangential question, but do other folks also see very little Untamed players in WvW? My guildie and I both play untamed, can square off against 80% or so of our opponents successfully, so I feel it's not weak (both in damage and sustain). But I rarely see anyone else who's running as one! I see a lot of SBs though.

[Combat log bug or what is going on with that burst?]

7 hours ago, Remus Darkblight.1673 said:

You can see from the images, Hunter's Call, so yes that is exactly what it was.

Also running dire it isn't low sustain at all. You have 28k hp and 3k armour. It still gets Dolyak stance and stability from SotP, condition removal from bear stance, access to stealth, and mobility on staff.

The main thing it suffers from is being a bit of a "one and done" build. You need to prep, offload your burst, and also finish the target (conditions get removed when they go down). After which you're completely useless, even though quite the tank, you're not able to apply that same pressure until your 30sec cooldowns have refreshed.

All this ^.  And also why I stopped running SB. I don't like the one and done aspect of it, which I find most SB builds that's worth something to be exactly that.

[Combat log bug or what is going on with that burst?]

11 hours ago, SleepyBat.9034 said:

This is a basic condi soulbeast burst combo. Sharpening Stone (10 stacks of your next hit bleeds your target) and Vulture Stance (Your attacks apply poison for 6-9 seconds with a short icd) into Warhorn 4(Hunter's Call) which hits 16x for a minimal amount of power damage but it will proc those other two skills I mentioned. The whole skill will miss if you evade it when they first cast it. They often follow this up with merged smoke assault(5x small hits while evading) which you get when a soul beast merges with their pet Smokescale.

Something to add is they're most likely using the Fractal relic, which applies burning and torment when hitting an enemy with more than 6 stacks of bleeding. This SB might also have it traited so their bleeding does more damage.

[Help with fighting certain Mechanist builds]

On 12/31/2023 at 3:28 AM, Dawdler.8521 said:

It's generally the long stun that kills you, otherwise mechanist is one of the weakest engineers as the mech itself is dead weight against most targets (works as a projectile stopper I guess). The overall trick is usually to bait out that knockdown and ignore the mech.

With a mid build and power damage you might have a tough time solo because engies are decent at sustaining (if they run sheild, more likely to be a full bunker build). Overwhelm their defenses with a rapid engage or bring a better sustain build which is pretty much any other class.

So, I actually have some follow-up questions for you, if you don't mind. Just going back to the things I bolded in your comment.

Are the mechs typically not good damage dealers? Because IMO, if something is able to shred people's health down, I feel like that's not dead weight at all and pose an actual threat. Especially if it isn't easy to kill. I've tried focusing on the mechs before, thinking they'd be as easy to kill as ranger pets are, and found out that wasn't the case. I've seen other people suggest stunning the mechs, so I'm wondering if that's still a viable thing to do as if one's taking too much damage from them?

In terms of sustain, a friend of mine with minstrel's gear who was able to down the engi still ended up dying from the mech (his health still got really low by the point he was able to down the engi, but the mech pretty much finished him off). I guess I'm just not sure if it's as simple as having higher sustain.

For what it's worth, the Mechanists that urged me to make this post in the first place was 2v5-ing folks at various points (aka were not fighting the same players/classes/builds), were able to down several people, and 3 of us was needed to kill the engi when their health finally dipped down to below 25%. Now that I'm thinking about it more, perhaps these guys just aren't your average bunker Mechanists 😆

[Game Crashing in WvW [Merged]]

Just wanted to add to the post that I've experienced this, as well as other people in my server and our opponent's servers (NA, and I'm in Ferg) .

At first, it was the opponent's team that kept crashing the moment we were about to meet up. It's very similar to the ones other people have been reporting. Then today, it was my server's turn to crash, and it also kept on happening when we met up with the opposing team but only in areas they controlled.

It honestly makes many of us think that the other team or guilds are doing something fishy, but after seeing all the reports on here, I don't think that's the case. When we were crashing earlier, I messaged a person from the other servers and asked if they're experiencing any issues. Some of them weren't having any issues (just like some of our people weren't crashing either), while others were experiencing really heavy lag and rubberbanding around the time that my team was probably crashing.

[Help with fighting certain Mechanist builds]

18 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

It's generally the long stun that kills you, otherwise mechanist is one of the weakest engineers as the mech itself is dead weight against most targets (works as a projectile stopper I guess). The overall trick is usually to bait out that knockdown and ignore the mech.

With a mid build and power damage you might have a tough time solo because engies are decent at sustaining (if they run sheild, more likely to be a full bunker build). Overwhelm their defenses with a rapid engage or bring a better sustain build which is pretty much any other class.

I do think the stuns are my biggest problem. I typically am able to bounce back from bursts, but I just couldn't with this one. And since they dish out some good condi damage too, then I'm stunned while taking heavy strike damage and getting even more wittled with the condi.

This gives me an idea, so thank you.

[Pets in WvW- Why won't they increase their survivability?]

2 hours ago, Oahkahmewolf.6210 said:

*shrugs*  I guess so, but back on pets I did forget one pet interaction thats pretty awesome. Shark with Beastmastery taunt is interesting, its one of the very few pets that has 1200 range on its F2, I was planning on limit testing its capabilities through fights as the taunt goes off after it gets into position which usually can catch people off guard easily, which 100% lands the knock up if people dont stun break out of taunt. The only down fall about the pets is the fact it loves to spin in place, which reduces dps when people just speed/tp/blink/dart or dash out of its Aoe and the only way to break it out of its spin is to call it back to you ... or play untamed and don't ever use the ability unless you know for sure you can get all its dmg out. Fun interaction don't know if I could fully recommend it.

I've always liked taunt, and whenever I come across that when fiddling with my build, there's this urge of wanting to utilize it somehow. So I'll try this, 'cause I've been working with the shark lately.

14 hours ago, Oahkahmewolf.6210 said:

Dude, I don't know how you are play your ranger I won't assume, but I can take on good 60%-75% of  cele boon builds with my druid... as a strike build with turtle/wyvern or Turtle and Bear and I'm able to land those abilities quite fine. I'm not going to say learn how to pet management but know how your kit synergies with your pet. I usually run make a null sigil or absorb sigil occasionally due to the amount of daze I throw out and people tent to back of in fights alot, its generally enough for me to deal with it properly.  Having a good balance of Conditions also help make people blow their utilities and abilities especially immobs, I generally play builds to exploit improper use of them as it always leads to an opening for me to unload my damage.

I know this is in response to someone else but, my issue with using Bears and honestly anything that's melee based, is how slippery most other classes are. I am glad that at least now, quickness is beneficial for our pets and I'll have to test that new change on my melee pets that I haven't used in awhile.

And I understand what you're saying with knowing your kit and making sure it synergizes with the pet. Part of what's been brought up in this thread is the bugginess of the AI, however, and how things that they're supposed to be able to do aren't happening. Not sure if this has been fixed but a good example is the bug wherein boons that a beast skill is supposed to apply, is applied inconsistently. Then there's the skill lag issue. And others that have been stated before. I main the ranger class because of the pets. I love the interaction with them and actually theorycrafting builds with them. But with them dying so easily while having so many bugs is the reason why I brought up this topic.

I appreciate the ideas you've brought up though. More ways to play around with the pet is always welcome 😄

[Pets in WvW- Why won't they increase their survivability?]

15 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

Pets are more utility, I would not expect them to be able to actually hurt my enemy. Pets like the Smokescale got nerfed becouse there are a plus one untill their cooldowns go.

As much as they can Arena avoid the pet creating a 2v1, which makes sense. If people expect enough damage to 2v1 we will have to trade some player damage for it.

I don't know if you remember but after they nerfed the pets damage and health they starting buffing alot of the Ranger core weapons over the following years to where we are today. 

I agree with your utility statement, but I'm curious. Do you feel the same about the Mechanist, especially since mechs survive things better than ranger pets do and can also dish out much heftier damage? Why do those things exist if Anet doesn't want a situation wherein you have to worry about 2 things in the field instead of just the player? Or how about mesmers? You have to watch where the illusions and phantasms are and evade them so you won't get nuked by their shatters and other conditions they apply, while also dealing with the player themselves. They don't stay in fights long, but you have to worry about them constantly since the mesmer will poop them out like a broken candy machine. Should we get rid of that mechanic too since players should ONLY worry about one thing in the field?

You keep repeating the same point but I'm sorry, it's not valid. Because we're NOT asking for an OP version of the pets. We just want them to be active and available for a reasonable duration of our fights, be it small scale or large scale. That's it. Stop acting like we're asking for anything else on this thread.

[Pets in WvW- Why won't they increase their survivability?]

On 12/30/2023 at 2:24 AM, Mell.4873 said:

Even if you increase there survivability what do you expect the pet to do, Heal....? 

What

Why? To me, just a higher survivability would be good enough. I don't really understand this.