Matty.1234

Wish me luck! Number: 114 Account: Matty.1234 Character: Busi

I kill plenty at lord and get no defense. Defense are the only weeklies I don't complete. Keep I can usually get done. Tower usually ends on 2 / 8. It should be cap SMC 8 times, defend tower 1 time. It would be a lot more achievable.

You must play on a busy server at times when a lot of people are on. There's times when all the camps that aren't at the absolute furthest parts of the maps are already ours and no opponents are flipping. By the time you get anywhere near close to those they're often taken by another solo'er on your team anyway, since there's not a lot to do. When you find a sentry that's alive and not yours you can get a 5 minute boost. That helps, otherwise it's down to walking dolyaks. I've also seen many times where there's 3 - 5 around opponents just sitting around guarding camps. I can solo a camp. I can't solo a camp that we own or that the enemy is actively defending. I can't solo a tower and there's been times where you call out for people in team chat and you got not one response, where you see no one anywhere. When it's our EBG home keep, and there's near no people online it's better not to defend at all, just let them cap and hope they leave so we can recap and get another 10 minutes. Then again there's been times when some sit there and defend and we call for more to come for ages and we still can't get even 10 to come try and reclaim. I'm glad that you are fortunate enough to play during active hours on an active servers, but unfortunately that seems to blind you to the situations that others face. Try having so few people on that the enemy owns almost everything and anything you try to attack brings up the contested icon and a bored zerg drops on you each and every time you try to cap. Time flies fast when you're outnumbered and being actively hunted.

I play during off hours, being Aussie, there's usually not enough people on to defend against a zerg. If I go to defend, chances are we wont get enough people. We likely wont even get a single kill if it's 40 vs 3 - 10, which happens often. All we get for going there is lost participation. The longer we hold them off, the more we get penalized. Back when we could do a repair and at least keep our participation up and hope we could accumulate enough people to defeat them. If we lost, was a good try, oh well. Now if we try, we most likely end up just losing participation levels. Now less people even bother trying to defend. Which means we almost never accumulate enough defenders. Why even bother? Flipping a camp instead might not get me great rewards, but at least the timer wont keep going down while I try to defend. The old solution... Defend like a mad thing and throw 4 supplies in a wall to keep up participation. It worked. I want to defend, but when we have not enough people to get groups or zergs together, it's way to hard to get participation back up to 6 again.

You're assuming there is a blob. On my server during my hours we don't have blobs. They do. When they decide to attack something we are just barreled over. It's impossible to get a kill for defense when you're 5 vs. 30. In theory we could try and hold them off and do some repairs, if we're lucky there might just be enough players online, but if we can't get enough people to come to defend we've just wasted all our participation and get demoted for even trying. Those supplies you mention? Those aren't ours, those are now property of the zerg who killed wiped us. It doesn't matter how hard we fight, how long we hold them off, we get nothing. If we do somehow manage to down one of them, the other 29 instantly run to bring them back up. No kill, no participation, but the clock keeps on ticking. I'm glad your server is well populated when you're online. But it's not like that for everyone. I have a few friends who have quit WvW recently. I now just ignore any defense weeklies and try to focus on camp flipping. It's the only consistent way to keep my participation up now. I used to enjoy fighting and defending, now I'm forced to sit around and camp flip every 10 minutes if I ever hope to get legendary gear. Defending just drains my participation time down to nothingness if I'm not playing at 4am. Counterpoint though, ANet did manage to make sure supplies on towers and keeps are always full of supplies now. Win?

Sure you can, you put up the 10 minute warning 10 minutes before you release the new update. Preparing ahead.

It seems to be, if that player didn't kill a guard of the objective, it doesn't count as defense. Possibly if they destroy a wall too. But if only one person in a zerg destroys wall and kills a guard, you have to kill that 1 particular one to get your bronze reward. The other 40 don't count. Gold is impossible in that case. AKA You killed the wrong 40 guys. =[

It really depends on your server and time zone though. Servers are most active at about 4am my time, while I'm usually asleep or getting ready for work. When I get on, there often is no tag. Day 1 after the patch, I logged in and our keep was under attack. 5 defenders vs a zerg of about 40. We had no hope. I did a repair and tried to slow do some damage but was dead the instant the gate came down. I was surprised I didn't get any participation. A few of us went to try and cap a tower, we had the gate to about 30% before the/a zerg flattened us in seconds again. I did try to find a camp, but they were either ours, on the far side of the map, capped just before I arrived or had about 5 minutes of cooldown left. Went for another tower, got zerged again. There were no tags, there weren't enough people. I tried to find a sentry, but they were either dead or ours, I guess I wasn't the only one struggling. There was no hope. I logged off with participation at low 4 or high 3. The moral of the story for me is that defending is no longer worth it unless we have tons of people. You can't defend against a zerg, and small groups run if their HP gets low. It seems the only reliable way for me to keep participation up now is to just sit near a camp and hope the opponent flips it regularly. No more running around, I could miss it by being seconds late if I'm not nearby. I used to be able to try and defend, hope more came, give it a go, throw a couple of supplies in the gate to guarantee my participation, do what I can. Now the cost and risk of trying to defend is too high. It's not worth even trying if there's not a guaranteed amount of people who will arrive to defend. All they had to do is reduce the rewards to prevent people farming WXP through supplies, but they pretty much killed WvW for me. I'm essentially penalised for even attempting to defend. For every action I take now, I have to consider how it will affect the participation clock. Only camps give sort of reliable results for me now. If killing a guard didn't cap out at 2 minutes, maybe at least I could top it up a bit by running around and killing a few. Participation doesn't measure participation. It measures success. This is a problem if all the factors are stacked against you when you play. It doesn't measure how much I'm doing or trying. Tried to defend that keep with 3 other people? Couldn't kill any of the 40 tightly grouped opponents? You... Didn't... Participate!

Paying for that, leaving my friends and guild on my server, and making my server even more unbalanced. I really don't feel good about that. What would fit my needs is getting participation for participation, whether I win or am run over by a zerg of 40.

As an Aussie it's already tough, peak time is at 4am my time. So I log on today, go to try take SMC with a group of about 8. We're in, and obliterated by a zerg of 40 blue, ouch! Trying to find an objective to take or defend. There's nothing close to spawn to cap on any map. Everything starts turning blue. I try to defend, but the 5 or so of us left are totally outnumbered. I can't even get in the towers before I am dead. Participation is getting a bit low. They get to our keep, they're at the gate and it's melting, I throw some supplies in to slow them and call people, up my participation a bit. No noticeable number come within the minute or so it takes to tear down the 2 gates. The gates are open and I'm downed in the blink of an eye. 40 vs 5 is not really fair. No prob, I did a repair, at least I'll pop my participation back up. No participation ever came. I'm down to participation 5. We try to take it back, some stay and defend. We don't have the numbers. =[ We do have the numbers to take a tower! We go to a border land, we're killing a tower gate, zerg of 40 inc, dead. Twice... Participation 4. The sentries are all dead our ours, mostly dead. I guess everyone is hunting for any participation they can get. I decided to log at participation 3. Without getting any participation unless I manage to kill some, and then only maybe... It's hopeless. They just moved in a big zerg and were more interested in killing us than flipping camps. When they did flip a camp, there's a 5 minute cool down before that's an option for participation. I logged off. At least before repairing just a little would make sure I at least got to keep my participation level up if nothing else. Roamers, low population servers, and off-peakers can be really hurt by this change. I think the only steady way now to keep participation up is so sit in one place and flip a camp, if the enemy is kind enough to flip it every now and again, which is not guaranteed. If the problem is too many people after the rewards, reduce the rewards, it used to work before the increases. Making participation unattainable even when you're madly running around participating just because of your time zone and being insanely out numbered just isn't fair or fun at all. Just because I'm not winning doesn't mean I'm not participating.

As an Aussie it's already tough, peak time is at 4am my time. So I log on today, go to try take SMC with a group of about 8. We're in, and obliterated by a zerg of 40 blue, ouch! Trying to find an objective to take or defend. There's nothing close to spawn to cap on any map. Everything starts turning blue. I try to defend, but the 5 or so of us left are totally outnumbered. I can't even get in the towers before I am dead. Participation is getting a bit low. They get to our keep, they're at the gate and it's melting, I throw some supplies in to slow them and call people, up my participation a bit. No noticeable number come within the minute or so it takes to tear down the 2 gates. The gates are open and I'm downed in the blink of an eye. 40 vs 5 is not really fair. No prob, I did a repair, at least I'll pop my participation back up. No participation ever came. I'm down to participation 5. We try to take it back, some stay and defend. We don't have the numbers. =[ We do have the numbers to take a tower! We go to a border land, we're killing a tower gate, zerg of 40 inc, dead. Twice... Participation 4. The sentries are all dead our ours, mostly dead. I guess everyone is hunting for any participation they can get. I decided to log at participation 3. Without getting any participation unless I manage to kill some, and then only maybe... It's hopeless. They just moved in a big zerg and were more interested in killing us than flipping camps. When they did flip a camp, there's a 5 minute cool down before that's an option for participation. I logged off. At least before repairing just a little would make sure I at least got to keep my participation level up if nothing else. Roamers, low population servers, and off-peakers can be really hurt by this change. I think the only steady way now to keep participation up is so sit in one place and flip a camp, if the enemy is kind enough to flip it every now and again, which is not guaranteed.

It doesn't appear instantly in your inventory. It comes in a floaty chest in the bottom right of your screen, just above the mini map. Where your level up rewards appear. I'd be checking whether it's hiding there on any of your characters. Some are account wide, some are character specific.