[WvW Players - What are your thoughts on Boon Strips for WvW?]

26 minutes ago, Floz.8904 said:

The alternative to it being easy to run unskilled boonballs is that it's easy to run unskilled boon ripping classes.

I respectfully yet wholeheartedly disagee.

Boon rips are very situational and tactical. For example, you want to ensure you removed protection before your burst, or stability before your CC. On the other hand, getting your boons on is super simple: almost bolied down to smash buttons on cooldown.

Therefore, boon ripping builds are definitely FAR from unskilled. On the contrary, I would argue that they are the hardest to master.

[So is the goals with the nerfs and new wvw changes to make it one dimension?]

Some players do not realise that the "meta" is subordinated to the current gameplay (environment, skills, gear, etc), not the other way around.

The meta is by definition the optimal solution (i.e. the best you can do) GIVEN the current gameplay. Of course the meta changes, but ONLY AFTER the gameplay changes e.g. skill updates, new specs / classes are added or new gear is available.

[June 9 – June 23 World Restructuring Beta]

1 hour ago, Solvar.7953 said:

I almost wonder if there should be some sort of WvW tutorial.  I have no idea how it would work, but there is probably a bit that should be explained for new players.

I think the GW2 wiki has excellent info: link here ... but I know almost nobody reads.

The TLDR version for new players, hoping it helps: once you are in, find the coloured dorito or cat symbol in the map or minimap: that is the "commander" of the moment (they rotate and change). Either just follow the commander or ask them to join their squad: I recommend just following because, as a new player, I doubt you know the "jargon" and run "meta builds".

Actually, your dilemma is exactly why the beta alliances are a mess. The "ANet algorithm" seems to match X guilds in red vs Y guilds in green vs Z guilds in blue, then adds guildless players to get the same amount of players per WvW server: let us say 400 players in all three teams.

However, 50 players in a single WvW guild from a tier 1 server (e.g. Maguuma, BlackGate, Fort Aspenwood, etc) are definitely NOT EQUAL to 50 guildless players who have no idea how WvW works (esp. those without PvP experience).

If I was to do the matching algorithm, I would have selected tiers based on WvW prowess of guilds and personal rank, so there is a real challenge at the top of the Olympus.

On the other hand, I would have left all new players in a special match for themselves, where everyone has room to learn on the fly and mistakes are not unforgiving.

As it is, matching a PVE solo player vs a high-ranked solo player (aka roamer), or throwing a group of PVE players against a WvW guild (aka boonball) is NOT fun at all.

[June 9 – June 23 World Restructuring Beta]

55 minutes ago, Johje Holan.4607 said:

Did you both select the same guild as your “WvW guild” before Thursday?  This is not the same thing as the guild you are “representing”.

Unfortunately, that "select your guild for WvW beta" feature did not work at all the whole week prior to beta.

Every time I pressed B to open the WvW menu, selected a guild, closed menu and reopened it my selection disappeared.

Every log on my selection disappeared.

Even 5 minutes before the beta started, my selection disappeared.

Therefore, we cannot blame the guild splitting to people not aware of how to do the WvW beta guild selection. It was a buggy beta even before it started, as it has been a perfect pattern of bugs for years.

EDIT: Not that the buggy beta got better after it started. I have been disconnected 3 times a day minimum since Friday.

[June 27 Balance Update Preview]

There is a always a lot of backlash when skill updates are out.

Unfortunately, the backlash is totally justified. Whenever there are skill updates, it always feels like the GW2 devs do not really play their own game.

Moreover, many changes place players on one side or the other, hating or welcoming the new update.

I believe that, in this Age of Information and Data, ANet could and should base their decision-making process on hard and real data, not on whimsical ideas, good intentions or pure theorycrafting.

Like other games, ANet could implement tests to scientifically assess the effects of a given change. It could be just a weekend with a an optional test or matchmaking.

Examples of tests that I would implement, if I was given the chance:

1. Want to give back 2 dodges to Mirage but they can no longer evade when CC'd? Have a "new Mirage dodge weekend" in sPvP where you always place at least 2 "new Mirages" on every side, every match.
2. Want to see if alacrity Scourge is more desirable / balanced than res-heal Scourge? Have a "No res Scourge weekend" in a given raid where res Scourge is meta.
3. Want to see if players in WvW want more or less boon strips? Have a "no-cooldown boon strip weekend" in WvW followed by a "no boon strip weekend"  and see the reaction of WvW players, both boonball lovers and haters, ingame and in forums.
4. Do you think Alacrity and Quickness are great, despite the forum actually asking for the deletion of the two? Have a "no-quickness, no-alacrity weekend" in all game modes and see how all players behave ingame and react in forums.

 

[June 27 Balance Update Preview]

13 hours ago, Anthony.8056 said:

Elementalist- I don't like the change to churning earth, I understand giving it more mobility, but it is a unique charging skill that is being replaced by similar skills. I like the expanding field aspect, why are you getting rid of the pulse and channeled skills in this game. Also, the skill is called churning earth not leap and smash. The skill that should be changed and looked at is earth quake because it has a boring animation and is not an earthquake. I have been waiting for a change to that skill forever a simple jump up and knockdown is very lackluster for a skill called earthquake.

I completely agree.

Churning Earth is my favourite skill in GW2. Aside of Meteor Shower, it is for me one of most iconic Elementalist skills. It was one of the 5 skills showcased when the GW2 devs revealed the Elementalist class 11 years ago: link here

Dagger Elementalists are known for their great mobility. Churning Earth is a great exception to this rule because, along with Meteor Shower, is the only channelled skill that requires the player to stay rooted for a few seconds. But the tradeoff is great, sacrificing movement and making yourself vulnerable in order to stack cripple/bleed on your foes and end the channel with (perhaps) the highest damage skill for elementalists. Moreover, coupled with Lightning Flash it is deliciously, beautifully devastating.

Unfortunately, everything since EoD boils down to "all classes are the same, just change the visuals and sounds". The new Churning Earth version is another leap, just like any F skill for the Windbender. Besides, a dagger/dagger Elementalist already has three leaps: Earthen Rush in Earth, Burning Speed in Fire, and Ride the Lightning in Air.

I am afraid we are going down the path where all classess are homogeneous and all everyone does is:

1. leap -> stab -> dodge -> repeat in solo
2. boon spam in boonballs

[June 9 – June 23 World Restructuring Beta]

29 minutes ago, blp.3489 said:

While I understand your point, I really hope that anet is distributing the guilds evenly between worlds and only using individual players to even things out after all the guilds are placed.  It's hard to imagine anyone writing an algorithm that would create a world made up exclusively of individual players.

It was an extreme case to highlight the issue that numbers should not be the only variable to determine how to balance each realm.

Two guilds of 50 players each are not equal: say one guild is hardcore, comped, disciplined and experienced in WvW and another guild is a casual PvX family-friendly guild. Both cannot be considered equal for the purpose of WvW balance just because they are 50 players each.

[WvW Players - What are your thoughts on Boon Strips for WvW?]

At 01:22:24

"The reduction of all those ranged boon rips is to bring down the number of boon rips overall: that is part of our goals for WvW in the long term. We want boon balance to be in a sensible spot. This particular set of changes may push a little bit more towards the very good and very prevalent meta, but that also potentially enables pushing a little bit more and getting into those melee fights instead of camping at range and getting boon ripped at range and not being able to really push in."

Translation: playing melee boonballs is meta and we want to be even more meta. Any counter to boonballs bulldozing their way to victory will be purged.

Seriously, if this guy is one of those responsible for balance I can understand why ANet has a perfect track record of 15-plus-years of balance incompetence.

ANet should create test realms, or at the very least test days, to properly assess the effect of their whimsical updates. Having hard data to help them make the best decision is sorely needed.

[June 9 – June 23 World Restructuring Beta]

1 hour ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

But something that should come as a shock to absolutely no one, same size does not necessarily mean same strength. Just a few dedicated guilds can make a TON of difference. That's what the 1 up 1 down tier based matchup system is supposed to handle - which is something that take like 4 weeks to start to settle even in normal link WvW.

Absolutely true.

There exists something called "weighted average", whereby not all sample points are equal. In WvW terms, this means not all players should be counted as equal when talking about "averages" and this difference must be taking into account for matching purposes:

1. Many will not admit it, but mostly all players in the Lord Voldemort server (that which cannot be named) are way above your "average wvw player": they understand very well how and when to roam, gank, havoc or cloud; they carry builds they are good at for each purpose; they respond very quickly to calls for defence.
2. A boonball comped guild with 20 people is way harder to beat than a pugmander squad of 30 people. And both can easily beat an unorganised cloud of 50 people: it all boils down on how easy it is to "kill tails" (i.e. pick up stray players).
3. In roaming, a very good player can win more than 50% of the time when 1v2. This means that a single good roamer counts for more than 2 "average roamers".

This gets exacerbated in Alliances.

In an extreme case, you could have 200 people in blue team with exclusively 4 top comped guilds from tier 1, whilst in green team you could have 200 people that are guildless and were placed together by default. I believe no sane person will think this scenario is fair because it is 200 vs 200 players.

[Ahem may I have your attention please]

9 hours ago, Luranni.9470 said:

I'll just drop this entirely unrelated work-in-progress here. Yer welcome.

 

ROFLMAO Uber awesomeness and infinite badassery!

Can we ping this post? Pretty please? 😁

[Condi builds are easy to play and boring.]

3 hours ago, Napo.1230 said:

My only problem with Condi builds is the armour they require.

If they removed trailblazer/dire or made Condi require 3 stats like power it would fix alot of the problems.

I currently have a higher burst playing condi with so much more survivability than my power alternative.

Absolutely this.

In any other MMORPG there is only Power and Precision stats, not Ferocity: critical hits give a flat 2x or 3x damage vs normal hits, depending on trait lines.

Condi builds only need condition damage and expertise (condition duration).

Precision is completely optional for condi builds:

1. Condition ticks do not proc precision damage
2. Precision simply triggers another stack of a condition
3. My Harbinger with trailblazer has "only" a flat 20% of critical chance, but it becomes 40% with fury.
4. The extra damage in Trailblazer for each condition tick makes the overall DPS higher than celestial, even if the latter has a flat critical chance of 44%.
5. With trailblazer, my Harbinger has 30k health and 3k flat armour, which becomes 3.6k+ once I start stacking conditions on my enemy.

Really, more health and toughness than a tanky warrior and ticking above 7k+ condition damage per second... who needs precision for fake's sake?

[WvW infusion]

The infusion is the completey opposite of everything the Skritt like: completely, terribly unshiny 😁

It is great if you want to look like an Ascalon Ghost.

Not so great if you want to keep your armour or outfit colours intact.

For those sitting on the fence and hesitating to buy, here is a pic taken in Lion's Arch: https://ibb.co/0nxm3nm

[Who Was Asking For Nerf For Invul Walls!?]

20 minutes ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

I think it comes down to is EWPs are often buggy, questionable when they are pulled, and make more sense in double walled structures. Invul made more sense for towers since the main towers of biggest concern are inner towers and there are already quick access to those objectives.

In my years of playing WvW, I have known only of one server that plays EWP in towers instead of the deprecated Structural Invulnerability. Perhaps ANet believes this particular server's gameplay and behaviours are the standard of everyone else in WvW.

And at least one third of the times I have taken an EWP I ended at spawn, even with ultra fast internet and GW2 installed on SSD.

[WvW Players - Overall what is the most annoying spec for you to face in whatever scenario?]

4 hours ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

** Except dragonhunters, obviously.

I bet you have not faced a stealth-freiendly DH trapper hahaha.

Pre EoD, the specs that were the most annoying were those with access to stealth. Sic'em ranger was a meta for roamer just because of their ability to stealth via Longbow and pet. Thief was already ridiculous but perma-stealth Deadeye is a proof of how much ANet is fixated with a broken mechanics.

Post EoD, it is not only stealth the issue: all EoD specs have the power creep and the easiness to get and maintain boons, not to mention their high survivability.

My favourite examples of EoD meme balance:

1. My Power Mechanist can start a fight with 61% damage reduction (traits, protection and ascended food). They can also tick 500+ points of healing per second (signet and regeneration).
2. My celestial Willbender has below 45% critical chance, but can attain and maintain 100% once a fight starts.
3. My celestial Harbinger can attain and maintain 3.8k armour via Death Carapace whislt dealing condition damage above 10k per tick (my record was 7.9k torment per tick). Not to mention they can interrupt every 5 seconds.

[WvW Players - Overall what is the most annoying spec for you to face in whatever scenario?]

3 minutes ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

It's like fighting daredevil on crack. 🤷‍♂️

Sometimes I think they made Willbenders to lure thieves to play them and get some of the stealth out of roaming, while allowing those players to now have multiple zerg specs as options, unlike thieves. 🤷‍♂️

This, I completely concur.

[WvW Players - Overall what is the most annoying spec for you to face in whatever scenario?]

Any spec that can use and abuse stealth is annoying and broken.

[WvW Players - What should be Anet's top priority development for WvW?]

2 hours ago, Crazy.6029 said:

Boons are so far off the chain it is ridiculous and haven't seen a nerf that I can remember.

Actually, boons were boosted in an update this year, whereby ANet nerfed boon removal (Sigil of Absorption and a few skills).

[WvW Players - What should be Anet's top priority development for WvW?]

I would say ANet needs to be honest and humble: they need to admit that balancing is not their forte and that balancing WvW in particular is way beyond their skill level.

The sheer number of potential classes specialisations, sigils, runes, armour stats and consumables makes the task of balancing nigh impossible, no matter how capable and awesome is your dev team.

I would suggest 2 things to try to bring more balance to WvW:

1. Restrict the number of usable combinations in WvW.
2. Create test servers or dedicated matches in WvW to get data on particular features and try crazy ideas.

The first idea does not necessarily mean reducing WvW to what exist tof PvP. It simply means to keep the number of combinations at a manageable size for ANet to try to attempt a balance. For example, not allowing a certain combination of stats + runes + sigils to reduce the overpowerness of certain meta/meme builds.

The second idea is to really go gung-ho into crazy stuff to assess specific features. For example, a weekend of "only celestial armour" followed by a weekend of "no celestial armour" would give clearer ideas on how the players run their builds and counter others, and how this is affected or subordinated to stats.

[Expectations for Emblem vendor on June 6th ?]

8 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Was recently hit by a 20k gunflame, I run with just about 3k armor. 

Anyway, thieves wont run any meta cele condi build (maybe like 1 in 30 thieves) but granted, the harbinger is a big part of those maybe 10% meta builds that are condi compared the other 90% that run power.

Wow then my assassin was a noob if they "only" managed a 15k shot, hahaha.

Power creep is something ANet should realise and address properly. Unfortunately I do not believe ANet has the skill level to palliate, let alone solve, the balance problem: they have a perfect 15-plus-year track record of balance incompetence since GW1... remember "Touch Ranger" or "Shock Warrior"?

I am super afraid they will add more power creep with the next "new purchases" upcoming on June 6th. The odds of ANet being on the right side of balancing skills are  microscopically small.

[Expectations for Emblem vendor on June 6th ?]

24 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

... and then someone cleanses all your bleed stacks which only increased from maybe 60 damage per tick to a whooping 100 damage per tick with 25 might while the power build just dumped a 10K+ gunflame on you and is prepping another. 

Unfortunately cleansing is not as straightforward.

A simple cleansing works vs Firebrand since they only spam fire, Some Renegades do not know anything beyond torment and shortbow, which you can effectively cleanse.

But some condi dps meta/meme builds (e.g. Harbinger, Thief) can spam a lot of conditions. It is not rare to see a celestial Harbinger stack bleed, torment, fire and poison for a whooping 3k per tick per condition in a matter of 3 seconds or less. Not to mention how easy is for them to CC you every 5 seconds. Even my Aurashare healer build cannot counter a cele Harbinger.

But I agree that Gunflame is definitely scary. Just yesterday I was hit for 15k whilst escorting yaks with my celestial gear. I was not one-shotted, but the second shot killed me (I was unaware). This definitely is a one-shot if you do not run defensive gear (cele, minstrel, etc).

Power creep, in my opinion, is the main reason why WvW is broken and some builds are OP. Celestial issues, I believe, is just a side effect of power creep: since the compounding effect gives way too many attribute points, and since you can easily stack boons on yourself, you can kill with a "relatively slow" burst (say 4-5 skills well chained) whilst having very high survivability.

[Expectations for Emblem vendor on June 6th ?]

6 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Alongside the regular mighty/malign etc, celestial infusions with +5 to all stats.

Anyone expect something else? 🤷‍♂️

If the sigils are a pattern, a celestial infusion will give +1 to every stat:

1. Sigil of Bloodlust, Corruption, etc. gives +10 attribute (power, condition damage, etc) per kill, maximum 25 stacks (or +250 for the given attribute).
2. Sigil of the Stars gives +2 to all attributes per kill, maximum of 25 stacks (or +50 to all attributes).

 

Number crunching alert!

Spoiler

Just as a reminder, there are 9 different attributes that a celestial piece of gear can affect: power, precision, ferocity, condition damage, expertise, concentration, healing, toughness and vitality.

That means that, accross the board, Sigil of Stars provide +450 points (9x50). That is 80% more points than the single-attribute sigils.

A bit of history for context. When celestial gear (amour and weapons) was launched in vanilla (pre HoT), there was no concentration nor expertise. These stats were added by ANet later on because the d/d elementalist in vanilla could use:

1. Consumable for 100% reduction in condition duration: without expertise around. this meant almost no condition duration.
2. Consumable for 100% boon duration: essentially perma boons esp. protection and regeneration.

At that time the healing factor was too high, so the healing provided (plus the perma protection) could outpace any zerk burst. And with Runes of Might and sigil of Strength the d/d elementalist was the only class that could attain and maintain 25 stacks of might.

The big mistake in balancing celestial was when ANet added concentration and expertise to celestial gear without adjusting the numbers. This mistake is exacerbated (aka compounding effect)  by the ascended +5% on stats vs exotic gear, since celestial gear gets +5% on all 9 attributes, compared to 3-4 attibutes of other stat types.

To add injury to insult, let us mention the power creep and ease to attain and maintain 25 stacks of might. Recall thath 25 stacks of might provide +750 power and condition damage. My celestial gear has 1,769 power and 679 condition damage. This means that 25 stacks give me +42% power and a +110% of condition damage.

No wonder condi cele is meta in WvW.

 

[June 9 – June 23 World Restructuring Beta]

18 minutes ago, idpersona.3810 said:

Any specifics on this? Or will guidance come out on the 6th?

Ingame press B (WvW menu), then choose the last tab with swords over a shield (world restructuring beta), then choose the guild you want to participate with by tagging it.

[June 9 – June 23 World Restructuring Beta]

The current relink will only last 2 weeks before the beta Alliances start on June 9th.

After the alliances, are we keeping our current relinks? Or will we have a fresh relink on June 23rd?

[June 9 – June 23 World Restructuring Beta]

1 minute ago, ShamanRobek.3168 said:

Excited to play against [Object, Object]

Shhh...

One post of mine was deleted because of the Lord Voldemort server, that you cannot name without incurring the wrath of ANet.

[June 9 – June 23 World Restructuring Beta]

4 minutes ago, Bristingr.5034 said:

Anyone down for going for a tie? 😆

Hahaha it will be epic if it can be pulled off. I would love to see all tiers achieving a tie, "breaking the system".