Riba.3271

Adding another keep would make groups have more options for assaulting enemy map. There wouldn't be massive jump from attacking easy south towers to suiciding in enemy T3 keeps with full buffs but an objective to smoothen that transition (middle "castle" shouldn't have presence of the keep). Point would be that the new keeps south gate would be around the south ruin so it wouldn't make that big of a difference for dolyak distance. And side keeps upgrading a few dollies slower would be actually towards better balance. Issue is that if you place the new keep in the middle of map, it would be way too close to garri. Point regarding lord room openness would be that it has more space than SM lord room making it different from existing keeps. Similar to bay lord room but open to more sides. Some servers and lot of commanders don't play Desert map specifically. Meaning when it is their home border they just drop tiers and go up next week. And they don't defend it which makes it boring map for all sides. Open commanding meta right now is very defensive territorywise, which is mostly because effect claim buff has on fights, but also the strongest server has tendency to sit in SM and farm enemies whenever they move out of their corner (you really need to keep eye on anza and QL against greens). Same is happening on offensive borderlands where ton of commanders never come out of their keeps where they have MASSIVE advantages, so then you could hit the middlefort that upgrades superslow and has no presence of the keep. Smaller groups have had issues doing anything other than flipping camps since HoT due to all the introduced defender advantages and upgrade times being 3+ times less. Not every small group needs to play WvW as hardcore gamers and they should have at least some easier options on EB where usually 6-7 out of 8 enemy towers are T3. What would the sentrytower do, nothing much really. It would be just equal to flipping the NPCs or killing grub except you need siege for it and possibility of being scouted. And be good spot for equal fights. It wouldn't be improvement for veterans but quite noticeable for new players, commanders and casuals. Guess they could do something like spawn a few mercenaries for camps you own and give you some small non-combat buff like mounted speed or amount of supply you can carry. Anyways, I am just saying map changes should be tried out. I am sure someone can think of a better solution than a sentrytower. Maybe just adding extra tower, that upgrades based on time held instead of incoming dollies, to the borderlands would suffice.

Hey guys, you might know me from "Claim buff is the BANE of WvW" thread and while I believe it is by far the main offender for state of WvW being worse than pre HoT, there are other things anet could experiment with while not changing too much of the essentials. I will be suggesting map design changes in realistic ways that don't require much resources in this thread. Feel free to toss in your ideas. Borderlands: Replace bloodlust with "neutral" keep similar to stonemist little bit south from the middle. This would add 1 more penetrable objective at borderlands, which small groups and large groups could fight for. The design of this keeps lord room could be more open compared to stonemist. Dolyaks from south camp could run at this objective before south towers making it harder to upgrade (only 1 incoming dolly).Make NE tower on alpine borderlands more penetrable by removing possiblity of mortaring the side wall from Garri (move the mortar). People could still build trebs inside garri.Remove desert map due to balance issues the player behaviour towards it doesEternal battlegrounds: Replace neutral NPCS with similarly themed "sentrytower" that doesn't have siege or supply in it, the NPCs aren't strong and the lord is easy to kill.Location: Sentrytowers could be at locations where the skill points are.Points: Equal amount of points to T0 tower.Why: Sentrytowers would be approachable by both blobs that want to fight at a neutral spot and roaming groups that want something easier to cap than heavily defendable towers.Designwise: Recycling dredge/hylek/ogre themed walls and such from PvE and it is a fun job for designers, making new towers/keeps that are competitively viable. Skill lag: Add another "EB" themed map (maybe just another EB with different kind of middle castle) and reduce the mapcap of players by 10 to 15 to reduce skill lag.Why add easier-to-cap objectives/another map? Less objectivecampingBetter meaningful spots to fightCan "outsmart" enemies by map rotationsSomething for smaller groups to doNew commanders won't struggle as muchRemoving "outdated" parts of WvW for things more people care aboutBringing the relaxed/newbie groups back alongside the tryhards!Why have only 1 "eb" commander when you can have 2 to choose from?Note: These are just suggestions and most likely would require about month of playtest to see which are good changes

5 elements maybe, the 5th element linking to the others. For example fields dropped in it could turn into fields of your next element.Also the 5th element could have separate cooldown from the existing 4. So you could Fire -> 5th element -> Air -> 5th element etc. smoothly 5th element could maybe be light, dark or ethereal.

Yeah, you're right, both sides can do it. Attacking/smaller group commanders will tag down fast regardless due to how hard it is to take things (often just random pugs can kill small side groups at objective). Attackers are on reliant on 2-way attack though, defenders aren't, so for one it is desperation, for one it is strategy. And capping a keep when enemy is distracted elsewhere includes very little fights. And lets be honest, 2 commanders at same time isn't happening outside primetime when guilds are camping objectives to farm anyone trying anything too elaborate. WvW is supposed to be about epic fights for objectives, not epic fights or objectives Anyways, 800 extra stats broke the whole attacking-defending balance post-HoT and should be reduced massively ASAP. Best RvR game out there but people don't wanna lead to assault objectives because you're reliant on enemy groups leaving their upgraded objectives to have decent PvP experience. Lot of commanders want to play WvW for a lot of hours a day but leading and suiciding is kinda meh experience. Attackers need better experiences. WvW servers will adapt to there being more enemy groups. More commanders will tag up to match the new attacking commanders. More keeps will be lost but it will be on both sides. Less T3 objectives, especially SM and sidekeeps home BL, for everyone is better balance.

Yes it is a passive buff that affects WvW in large scale. It makes defending too favourable in general. It isn't as rough on 5-10 player groups that focus on camps and towers, but makes keeps a terror. So they could either remove Presence of the keep (that is obviously much stronger than Auto turrets) or nerf claim buff in general. I am pretty sure even you wouldn't take a 5v5 fight these days near enemy keep which was possible in old days. This might even make you alter your walking routes and make you get less fights in general... I am pretty sure having extra sets of runes are felt in stronger roaming scene and might have caused roaming dying a bit due to not being able to have powerranking between roamers. The great players usually hate losing, and overcoming extra 1 or 2 sets of runes against a measly decent player, might just lead them to dying too often in WvW against inferior players without even understanding what caused it. I am talking about taking a keep. Once the walls are down, the buff is less an issue. Again, the buff isn’t our underlying issue with balance. The buff is busted. Walls are down and enemy group is holding the entrace, with choke/siege/ewp ready, with 800 extra stats, 2 extra sets of runes. They failed to take your siege down before you breached inner, maybe respawned a few times, and they still have a massive advantage. Numbers don't lie. PvP game. Doesn't matter if your guild/commander is having the best raid of its existance, overcoming the 800 stats and other defender advantages multiple times is kinda too much to ask. Winrates favor defenders too much.Quite strange then that most objectives fall to 50+ zergs once supplies run out because for some reason, the largest and most organized zerg usually wins. Well, if you put new roaming players against WvW group players, thats what happens. Objectives are supposed to be lost against much stronger group, but just a bit stronger groups should stand a chance against enemy group inside it. Guilds should be fighting guilds over objectives. Maybe they wouldn't breach the inner due to running out of attacking supply or constant respawns but that is how WvW used to work. Draining 1100 sups from presieged keep + with some upgraded objectives nearby, if the defender is smart regarding supply usage, takes hours anyways. Braingame, attackers have to be smart regarding supply, defenders too. If you had to choose between buffing and nerfing claim buff by 50 stats each, which would you choose? Which one would have positive impact for WvW regarding longetivity and fun?"New roaming players", lol? I've seen 50 mans take garrison on queued borders. Its not strange, or uncommon. The stronger zerg wins because you are vastly overstating the impact of the buff and vastly understating just how kitten tanky zergs are. WvW is working the same as it "used to work". Whether there is an actual point to having the buff at all can be argued, sure. I would prefer an active defense boost instead of passive. But I really dont care one way or another. Well as long as you're okay with shifting the claim buff power from raw stats to other defender helping things (AC damage, wall/gate/ram health, attacker supply cost), I believe it better way to balance the game in favor of increasing the quality of sieging objectives for both sides and thus commanders.

Lets talk about winrates. Lets say Pre-HoT quite a bit stronger group had 60% winrate against weaker group, which still had mortars, cannon, and other defender advantages. Now it is quite standard for attacker having to beat the defender THREE times (outer, inner, lord) before they can cap the keep. *So before the chance they cap the keep was (0.6 0.6 0.6 100%)=21.6%** So a group that is much stronger than enemy and achieving 60% winrate against enemy despite all enemy advantages only took the keep 1 times out of 5. These 5 times was doable in 3 hours. And this is talking about weaker keeps like Bay and Hills, not Garrison or EB keep. Now post HoT, the same group has maybe 40% (if I am being generous, reality is more like 20%) winrate fighting in the situation. *Now this 40% winrate with 3 fights becomes 0.4 0.4 0.4 100%) = 6.4% chance to take the keep.** This would 15.6 so 15 attempts to take the keep. 15 serious attempts with a much stronger group would require way longer time than a commander/guild would lead. The balance before was more acceptable as people won't stick around as long as that, guilds don't raid as long as that, defenders lose numbers more slower than attackers (as they win the outcome). Defenders can always hit the attackers on other map to pull them away. And don't forget that this was in case where stronger group was a lot stronger than defending one. Defending is busted, pre-HoT balance was much better WvW is supposed to be about epic fights for objectives, not epic fights or objectives

Well as long as you agree that claim buff isn't healthy for the smallscale. Don't know how many players you mean but if it matters a lot up to 5v5 near anything claimed (which is everything except ruins/borders JP and EB NPCs), you can imagine it making everything else worse too, especially when combined with Presence of the keep and all other defender advantages. Especially for guilds, sniper groups, off-prime and new commanders that aren't running 60 people. In summary: Claim buff is bad! I disagree with small impact though, 400 stats has massive difference in GvGs, 800 in ZvZs.

Yes it is a passive buff that affects WvW in large scale. It makes defending too favourable in general. It isn't as rough on 5-10 player groups that focus on camps and towers, but makes keeps a terror. So they could either remove Presence of the keep (that is obviously much stronger than Auto turrets) or nerf claim buff in general. I am pretty sure even you wouldn't take a 5v5 fight these days near enemy keep which was possible in old days. This might even make you alter your walking routes and make you get less fights in general... I am pretty sure having extra sets of runes are felt in stronger roaming scene and might have caused roaming dying a bit due to not being able to have powerranking between roamers. The great players usually hate losing, and overcoming extra 1 or 2 sets of runes against a measly decent player, might just lead them to dying too often in WvW against inferior players without even understanding what caused it. I am talking about taking a keep. Once the walls are down, the buff is less an issue. Again, the buff isn’t our underlying issue with balance. The buff is busted. Walls are down and enemy group is holding the entrace, with choke/siege/ewp ready, with 800 extra stats, 2 extra sets of runes. They failed to take your siege down before you breached inner, maybe respawned a few times, and they still have a massive advantage. Numbers don't lie. PvP game. Doesn't matter if your guild/commander is having the best raid of its existance, overcoming the 800 stats and other defender advantages multiple times is kinda too much to ask. Winrates favor defenders too much.Quite strange then that most objectives fall to 50+ zergs once supplies run out because for some reason, the largest and most organized zerg usually wins.Well, if you put new roaming players against WvW group players, thats what happens. Objectives are supposed to be lost against much stronger group, but just a bit stronger groups should stand a chance against enemy group inside it. Guilds should be fighting guilds over objectives. Maybe they wouldn't breach the inner due to running out of attacking supply or constant respawns but that is how WvW used to work. Draining 1100 sups from presieged keep + with some upgraded objectives nearby, if the defender is smart regarding supply usage, takes hours anyways. Braingame, attackers have to be smart regarding supply, defenders too. If you had to choose between buffing and nerfing claim buff by 50 stats each, which would you choose? Which one would have positive impact for WvW regarding longetivity and fun?

Yes it is a passive buff that affects WvW in large scale. It makes defending too favourable in general. It isn't as rough on 5-10 player groups that focus on camps and towers, but makes keeps a terror. So they could either remove Presence of the keep (that is obviously much stronger than Auto turrets) or nerf claim buff in general. I am pretty sure even you wouldn't take a 5v5 fight these days near enemy keep which was possible in old days. This might even make you alter your walking routes and make you get less fights in general... I am pretty sure having extra sets of runes are felt in stronger roaming scene and might have caused roaming dying a bit due to not being able to have powerranking between roamers. The great players usually hate losing, and overcoming extra 1 or 2 sets of runes against a measly decent player, might just lead them to dying too often in WvW against inferior players without even understanding what caused it. I am talking about taking a keep. Once the walls are down, the buff is less an issue. Again, the buff isn’t our underlying issue with balance. The buff is busted. Walls are down and enemy group is holding the entrace, with choke/siege/ewp ready, with 800 extra stats, 2 extra sets of runes. They failed to take your siege down before you breached inner, maybe respawned a few times, and they still have a massive advantage. Numbers don't lie. PvP game. Doesn't matter if your guild/commander is having the best raid of its existance, overcoming the 800 stats and other defender advantages multiple times is kinda too much to ask. Winrates favor defenders too much.

Buff the rest, remove/nerf claim buff. Though they did buff upgrade times a lot (you can literally get T3 bay within an hour now when it took 6 hours minimum before), added tactics, added the fact that upgrades don't use supply. There have been plenty of buffs to defending, they just all happened at HoT launch. And attacking is still too unfun. They just happened to nerf wrong things (AC damage, wall/gate HP) when claim buff was the biggest offender. Upgrade times, and packed/speedy dollies, are the 2nd biggest offender. Regarding attacking, shield gens and guild golems are biggest offender which should have their supply cost increased by 20 or something. But this doesn't matter until attackers can actually fight back defenders a bit in their objectives. Also ACs should do more damage. After all, fights are fun. There is no pleasure farming much worse players that lose a keep with 800 extra stats. Neither is there feeling of accomplishment when defending one when you have 800 extra stats. It is just too much. Ask any games PvP balancing dev or pro is 13% extra damage and 16% defences acceptable for one side and they'll say no.

They could also:Buff wall/gate health a bitIncrease AC damage a bit (the damage is quite low now)Increase supply cost of Guild golems/Shield Generators by like 20 Basically promoting active defences that your enemy can play around by taking their time rather than passive ones that will lead into miserable situation where you just get overwhelmed by stats that you can't play around in any other way than waiting for enemy to attack instead. Defenders have plenty of other advantages, not sure why so many people are saying 400 or 800 stats is "not noticeable". My assumption as a lot of defenders use siege and the buffs dont impact siege, thus there's no noticeable difference?EU meta for defending is quite simple: Call help, cut backline, then just cloud enemy down with respawns/superior stats, no siege included. This is same on all strong KDR servers with quite a bit of transfers: WSR, Deso, Dzagonur. Players do more damage than ACs anyways (there is internal cooldown how often one can be hit by an AC), only thing with ACs is that it pulses a lot and removes Aegis. You don't even need a commander to defend keeps/SM now... Issue isn't the siege being killed by the defender siege either. You can easily play around defending siege with Ballistas, trebs, shield gens, etc. All attackers need is to have equal fighting ground so they don't have to just rush walls/gates down and get in the lord room, and can actually take their time clearing siege and having some fights.

Yes it is a passive buff that affects WvW in large scale. It makes defending too favourable in general. It isn't as rough on 5-10 player groups that focus on camps and towers, but makes keeps a terror. So they could either remove Presence of the keep (that is obviously much stronger than Auto turrets) or nerf claim buff in general. I am pretty sure even you wouldn't take a 5v5 fight these days near enemy keep which was possible in old days. This might even make you alter your walking routes and make you get less fights in general... I am pretty sure having extra sets of runes are felt in stronger roaming scene and might have caused roaming dying a bit due to not being able to have powerranking between roamers. The great players usually hate losing, and overcoming extra 1 or 2 sets of runes against a measly decent player, might just lead them to dying too often in WvW against inferior players without even understanding what caused it.

They could also: Buff wall/gate health a bitIncrease AC damage a bit (the damage is quite low now)Increase supply cost of Guild golems/Shield Generators by like 20Basically promoting active defences that your enemy can play around by taking their time rather than passive ones that will lead into miserable situation where you just get overwhelmed by stats that you can't play around in any other way than waiting for enemy to attack instead. Defenders have plenty of other advantages, not sure why so many people are saying 400 or 800 stats is "not noticeable".

Hardly noticeable because it is passive. If you look at your winrate between enemy camp and friendly camp against same enemy, you will see quite big differences. Same goes for bigger fights. Just look at the amount of stats: If you add extra runes to your build as a skilled player, wouldn't you be busted? If a guild fights another equally strong guild that has extra set of runes, wouldn't they lose over 65% of time despite enemy having no visible advantages? And this is just regular claim buff (that extends to 90% of in the map), inside keeps it is twice as bad. You don't need to use brain now to defend things despite having so many more options than attackers, you can just brute force kill the enemy.

Guard stacks were attainable by both sides at the same time. It was different as you could play around it to some extent. Still was unfair to low ranks though. It benefitted attacker more though meaning removal of guard stacks and addition to claim buff were both nerfs to attacker stats. So my point stands, attacking is too hard right now. And it wasn't as much stats, 100 + 100 condi damage power is not as much as 200 power + 200 precision regarding damage. 250 vitality isn't as much as 200 toughness and 200 vitality.

You keep assuming these are 1 v1 or 100 v 100 fights. They are not, they are 5 v 1 or 60 v 5 until and/if defenders arrive. You already have less people willing to defend now, I am not sure where you are playing that see warbands waiting in a structure to defend, outside of SMC. The more you weaken defenders the more you just end up with ktrains circling each other around a map. I run a havoc and these buffs don't make us pause at all. Until they show up with more than us or the zerg shows up, it's still a target unless we run out of supply. If it is a zerg issue, this sounds more like a commander issue concerned with not taking something and losing the zerg's moral. I think we will have to disagree, I see less havocs defending these days because there is little odds of holding off a larger force, it's just easier to attack them elsewhere than to try and hold or to strike their tails, which again does nothing since they will just rez them after the fight and keep going, you still lose the structure to numbers. If you need 5 less attackers to penetrate objective, it would be more fair balance than what we currently have. Buffs don't obviously matter in 5v1 or 60v5 and are not representation of fun WvW. I am talking about how WvW used to be, and is still sometimes, where there were actually large groups defending and attacking willingly. Now large groups only snipe or rush objectives. Very few play this game just for fights and even fewer for just PPT, you're supposed to have big fights for objectives. Garrison should be your last line of defence, like it used to be. Rest should be quite a lot easier to take than they currently are. Yes more groups would be attacking, thus more objectives would be lost, but also more defending would be had and logging into WvW everyday would guarantee you action. Half the time these attacking groups would have to obviously defend against enemy servers attacking group. Main thing is that proactive gameplay (tagging up and hitting something enemy owns gives not only your server but also enemy server something to do) should be more enjoyable and the past balancechanges have pushed defending to be too easy. Anyways please focus on the balance. 800 stats is too much. Think about it from PvP perspective.

And additionally, the negatives don't hold water either: Guilds still do, but usually only to draw out other players to fightPoint was, they were fighting inside keeps and towers before, now all the defending side needs to do is not go outside and enjoy the farm of bored guilds disbanding when their options are either suiciding, GvGing or not raiding at all. WvW is supposed to be epic fights for objectives, not epic fights OR objectives Still happens now, only the defenders rarely win because of siege and wall durability nerfs + warclaw means faster reinforcements. If anything the boon isn't ENOUGH to help defenders in this type of situation. Happens very rarely. Defenders win the fight always as long as they're on the map soon enough. Scouts and commanders should be necessary. Capping keeps because enemy happens to be busy on other side of map doesn't give you same thrills as killing them once and buying enough time for both keeps to flip. Yes I get it, lot of people are already used to "Snipe it" or "Rush it" meta for objectives but this isn't enjoyable way of attacking. Defeating enemies in the same go is the more enjoyable way Defenders have tactics (EWP every 30 min, faster upgrade times and dragonbanners everywhere on map). Yes T3 keeps were rarity before HoT because upgrade times were like 5 times longer (no packed dollies, required more dollies) and so the walls were stronger. You can consider current T3 keep as strong as old T2 keep regarding gate/wall strength because upgrade times are similar. Commanders quit for various reasons, and I suspect the number who left because of the claim buff pales in comparison to those who just quit the game because ANET prioritized the Gem Store and PvE over WvW for...well, ever. Server lag, warclaw, no alliances...do you really think its the CLAIM BUFF that has chased away so many commanders? Lot of the commanders are still around, and fewer are just not tagging up until something hits their BL and they can have easy farm. Yes people quit because various reasons, and don't tag up for others. This is more of a reason why they're not tagging up rather than quitting the game. Then when there are less commanders, both enemy and ally, keeping them around, they have less fun, and then they disappear. But yeah I am sure some of them quit because the T3 SM holds strong in both T1 and T2 everyday for same server (WSR, deso) making the most active map very very dull to play. I do agree that there are other balance things like they could shift the balance by reducing claim buff and buffing AC damage, Increasing guild golem/shield gen supply cost and wall/gate HP a small amount making the defences active rather than passive.

Well yeah, 400 stats + 25% movement speed is only 1 rune set (camps and towers). Movement speed doesn't apply when you have swiftness but still make a pretty big difference in a fight where boons are removed. I mean of course extra set of runes makes massive difference in roaming and defending, which is why lot of roamers transfer to servers that hold SM most of the time. Keeps are 800 stats + 25% movement speed. But as you see, my main focus wasn't on the movement speed but on the fact that Keeps are busted where you're essentially fighting against a group with 12+% more damage and 16+% more defences. Tower/Camp numbers aren't nice either. For example "best" camp defender will almost always beat "best" camp flipper making it harder for there to be any group/player to get sense of accomplishment of being better than others. And yet, keeps and towers flip frequently when there are populations to support. It incentivized holding an objective. Supposedly no one cares about score anymore, so why else would someone want to defend their structures?Main thing is that, the game is supposed to be fun. Increase amount of attackers and the epicness of defending and there will be more active players around. Attackers are the proactive side, defenders just show up after attackers. If the game is more fun in general, defenders won't ever run out. People often downtalk the bad feeling of losing a fight when attacking to overwhelming advantage in favor of one where you lose an objective. So they made defending super easy, which incentives people to not attack. And without attackers, there are no defenders.

Well yeah, 400 stats + 25% movement speed is only 1 rune set (camps and towers). Movement speed doesn't apply when you have swiftness but still make a pretty big difference in a fight where boons are removed. I mean of course extra set of runes makes massive difference in roaming and defending, which is why lot of roamers transfer to servers that hold SM most of the time. Keeps are 800 stats + 25% movement speed. But as you see, my main focus wasn't on the movement speed but on the fact that Keeps are busted where you're essentially fighting against a group with 12+% more damage and 16+% more defences. Tower/Camp numbers aren't nice either. For example "best" camp defender will almost always beat "best" camp flipper making it harder for there to be any group/player to get sense of accomplishment of being better than others.

Claim buff:+400 stats + 25% movement speed (25% only active when no swift/superspeed)Presence of the keep:+400 stats EDIT: Added suggestion about replacing presence of the keep.

Look up the word condescending. Reflect. At a group level, the old meta rewarded piano skills far more than reactions and positioning. You formed your machine (x part scourge, y part firebrand, etc), practiced hitting buttons in sync, and then moved around the battlefield as a nearly invincible ship of death. Yes, sometimes clouding could take the ship down, but it wasn't a very fun way to play. Now you have to choose when many of your top-tier skills are used based on the situation around you. Skirmishers have more of a chance to prey upon mistakes at the edge, and use of terrain and positioning matter more. Count me among the players who like "strange things" like counterplay, build variety, and positioning. Random tangent - has anybody noticed pull-skills surging? I've seen several groups of 2-4 players pulling odd targets from the edges of the zerg. -Jeff Sorry, not sorry, to inform you but my level of condescension doesn't invalidate anything I said and isn't part of the issue. So really there's nothing to reflect just because you don't like the way I address things. =/ At a group level the old meta rewarded bad players and bad groups, and poor playing style, I agree, but only in very large numbers were groups like that significant or successful, and usually only against other bad players and groups. It also wasn't punishing to good groups and players, so I agree with that too. This is the third time I've said that now. In this "just the tip" meta thing we've got now because of the limited variety of effective builds, it is far more punishing to good groups and players to engage when outmanned because their skill is completely overshadowed by game mechanics which do not allow them to function based -on that skill- they developed nearly as much. Yes, they can still achieve some success, but now all of their practice, rotations, synchronizations, etc. etc. matter a lot less. That is, at least, until some things are inevitably re-buffed. At least pre-patch the rewards, though not very substantial outside of dynamic engagements and victories, weren't just a means to not be punished for developing a playstyle that progressed the way we play, based on how we play and not some boring, stale mechanical change. What you're saying is the new meta has always existed... More to the fact, you have to choose when to use these so called top tier skills? What? That's what good groups and player do/did already. Shifting to the now, we are more limited in our scope of acceptable, synergistic builds and compositions. I'm sure you meant well with what you said, but offhandedly agreeing with me in your own words without realizing it just helps me prove my point. How many balance patches have we been told something along the lines of , "We're changing the way this skill works to give it more viability."? This patch, yeah, killed a lot of those improved functionalities (like hot kitten...the cooldowns w.t.eff actually with some of them) You have to appreciate when you tell me we have more build variety and counter-playable B.S. when the opposite holds a greater truth (now at least). More people are playing easier, low-tier, low skill-ceiling builds that vary (if at all) ever-so marginally that it's hard for me to believe this is a serious belief people share and don't appreciate the irony. Like...seriously there are more burn guards, reapers, and condi revs than I've ever seen, and I've been through three tiers of WvW since the patch dropped. Skirmishers and roamers have always had the opportunity to "prey upon the mistakes" and blah blah blah, and terrain advantages also always mattered. That hasn't changed either and people keep picking at points like that as if it isn't stating the obvious. Engaging more aggressively because there isn't as harsh a consequence isn't being aggressive, it's because there aren't as great of consequences for actually making mistakes. Pre-patch: Go in, try to capitalize on a mistake the enemy group made, boom, the enemy group pays for it.Post-patch: The same, but the enemy group passively doesn't have to worry about dying for making that mistake because there isn't a looming threat because of the mistake they made, and out the window goes the opportunity to learn from it. It's going to promote laziness in the long run. Effectually bad groups and players can get away with more (hmm...so can the group they're trying to "pick off") without worrying about consequences. Congratulations, again, everyone is getting a safer place to play.There are still ways to 1-shot enemies. You just run Fiery GS eles, Scourge wells and axe 3 still deal close to prepatch damage together, add the fact that rev deals about same damage but has longer cooldowns. Spellbreaker GS F1 nerf hasn't even gone through yet. If you really want to end the fight in first engage, which doesn't sound very fun, you have to compromise your builds or composition for it. And become more organised. Have you even tried giving your spellbreakers fiery GS before engage (they can still use adrenaline skills with fiery GS)? Like yea, sometimes your 1-shot comp didn't 1-shot something, but big deal, try again. At least you can't just run 1 "stealth, superspeed" comp anymore and have enough damage to kill everything in 1-hit. Current condirev is harder than old power rev. Reaper being able to deal more damage than scourge is just balanced considering how much support scourge has. I'd say preferring short 30 second fights over a few minute ones is quite an interesting point of view.

Ah yeah, is this better way to look at it? At friendly keep: Friendly Group has +800 stats ( +3 ascended trinkets)At enemy keep: Enemy group has +800 stats (+3 ascended trinkets)Difference between fighting at these locations: Godmode. Only one side needs to play "defensive" and the other can't do much even if he takes down all enemy siege down from a far playing patient and smarter than enemy. Then what if all servers have 3 fully upgraded keeps on their borderlands? Well borderlands are unplayable, provided there are scouts, unless you somehow manage to gather 20 more people than enemy, which is hard on offensive BL because each server gets more players on home map. Yes the stats should be toned down if it makes such a massive difference. Defenders have ton of other advantages, even more than before claim buff was introduced. WvW is supposed to be about epic fights for objectives, not epic fights or objectives

Your logic is flawed. Havocs already don't think about this buff because they know they are choosing when to attack something and it won't matter. I run both roamer and havoc and this never plays a factor into whether or not to attack something. Nor does its tier after they removed the extra HP from higher level walls. They have only strengthened attackers and reduced the Time to Take a structure over the last year. If this buff is causing a zerg to pause, that's just a mental block in the tags head or they broadcasted where they are going and didn't use advance forces to weaken something. There have never been tags dedicated to just defending, this has always been regulated to smaller forces if not individuals. There are some tags that will response but never that just defended that I have ever seen ranging from T1 to T8. WvW could use more reasons for small scale but this buff is not one of the factors. If you are looking for that, up PPT and add in rewards for winning the week. But if you go there also up the personal rewards for PPK since killing other players is far more difficult than taking an empty structure. Claim buff doesn't prevent you from taking empty structures, it prevents you from taking manned ones. Add 3 extra ascended trinkets worth of stats (800, in keeps) to defenders and you can see how busted the buff is. Try removing 2 ascended trinkets from your build and you will see how weak you are compared to before. You think it is only "800" stats but even much much smaller advantages make massive differences in PvP games. Like I am asking for them to reduce the stats for sake of PvP balance (think of any popular PvP game balancing) at locations, camps and upgraded keeps included. You just don't understand how much difference having your own claim buff (400 stats or 800 stats) or enemy claim buff (400 or 800 stats) makes in how strong you are in fights. That is why people play defensive, not offensive. It isn't just 400 stat difference, it is way more, even up to 1600 for every player. There are no hierarchy of power between commanders, blobs, guilds, roamers because just STATS (not strategy, discipline or how you use tools provided (defender has much more)) decide fights. Just try it, take 2 ascended trinks off and try saying you're still strong against people that have full build, go ahead. Claim buff is busted and shifts blobs/guilds winrate against another from 1 keep to another from 0% to 100% (not even considering respawns, tactics, siege, positioning and other defender advantages), even from 1 camp to another from like 35% to 65%. Are these numbers acceptable for a passive buff? No, I say. WvW is supposed to be about epic fights for objectives, not epic fights or objectives

Condis not a problem largescale. Parties are literally running 4 people capable of removing decent amount of conditions. Roaming seems kinda different tho. Tanky condi Scourges kiting until eternity and Soulbeasts everywhere. WvW maps weren't designed for increased movementspeed. The distances between places is very small, increased movementspeed would make sense in other RvR MMOs that have bigger maps like ESO. You can't just die and be back in 15 seconds.

WvW was functioning very well even before claim buff even started existing. Lack of tags online is the reason you have only "roamers" defending. The reason those tags don't log in is because if they don't have 60 people, stepping onto enemy bl, is a suicide. Even upgraded SM is the same. So they just sit around waiting for enemy to come to their BL. Oh wait, enemy commander is doing the same. Wow, no real commander on either side, I guess WvW is dead. If there are more "attacks" on your bl, more people will log in to defend. If there is "dead" weeks, people won't be logging in. It is simple, WvW needs more groups. Right now defending groups are so heavily favored that while people are willing to defend, they're not willing to attack. Commanders and guilds included. You worry too much about roamers being able to defend against organised groups just because they have been able to do so for such a long time. Let them fail defending on their dueling builds for a few months and they will start logging good classes to defend things with, it isn't a problem. Catering to lazy players isn't the way to go. And no server should be able to hold T3 sm all day. And flipping upgraded EB/side keeps shouldn't be limited to nighttime or guildstacked blobs. WvW is supposed to be about epic fights for objectives, not epic fights or objectives