Riba.3271

True, if the organized group is heavily outnumbered. Even numbers no way, unless people are really bad at staying together with bad uptime. Then they're really not that organized. Now, an organized cloud is a different story. An organized cloud can definitely crush a boon blob, but that is mostly due to exploiting ignorance, arrogance, and complacency. Disorganised = not on voice, not with parties and/or bad party comp. Having good players on your server does not mean your cloud is organised. Which is why almost every group with more than 2 similar guild tags runs a boon ball all the way from map queue to 5 person "roaming" party? I really hesitate to believe they're all handicapping themselves because boon spam is high skill gameplay, especially when people are willing to take any edge they can get. The superiority of stacking sustain and instat res carry me skills simply cannot be denied, beyond user error and skewed numbers. My words do not mean clouding is ever best strategy, just that the defending bonuses are stronger than strategy granted defending players bring enough damage (f/e not random 0 damage rangers) and actually builds that work in that situation. You completely misunderstood what I was saying. The same defending groups become completely useless when they try to go open field or attack an objective. Why? Because they overly relied on defending bonuses. Now since one side has already went on voice comms, fixed their comp and organised, and the other side hasn't, it is quite clear who has more room for improvement, even though neither side can take objectives from enemy. Balance should never promote stalemates and defence focused gameplay. After all, all disorganised clouds need to be come semi-organised is for 1 good player to press "Create Squad" button. Balance should never be skewed enough for defending side to be able to defend against voice tags without this occuring.

As long as balance is in a way where objective balance is a joke, organised groups won't be too interested in defending or taking anything: Playing greatly unbalanced combat isn't as fun. Defending side wins almost always. When outcome of results is almost defined, losing will just lead to unnecessary frustration after or before. Disorganised clouds can easily defeat organised groups. Good comp and putting extra effort in to group up is rewarded less than transferring to cloud servers with good numbers. SM will be T3 and untakeable, even with slightly stronger group, most reasonable timezones which in return makes EB unplayable. This also applies to any borderland with lot of T3 objectives and numbers available to defend. Now of course server linking system and 500 gem transfers also disinsentivise groups from playing for objectives, but mainly groups don't do it because it isn't fun and requires ton of effort and time compared to how much you get out of it. People wouldn't avoid any cloud server if they could overwhelm them and their territory once in a while, but objective balance is just in a way that disorganised groups are stronger than organised groups as soon as you go inside their keeps or castles.

This announcement includes nothing. More betas? Choice of balance in guild hall? What? Did they work more than a day in past year?

Just stop using arcdps, and press whatever buttons you want. Might not hit benchmark dps, but at least 70-80% of it. Which is plenty considering the powercreep. After all, the game isn't about being the top dps, but not hindering your team by dying or failing mechanics.

It is nearing primetime and 4 tiers out of 5 in EU has T3 SM. If other servers have attempted all day to reset it and failed, isn't it little bit too easy to hold or upgrade? Every server should have weaker timezones than opponents, but apparently stonemist is so easy to hold that it can't be reset even when server is at its weakest. Increase amount of dolykas required to upgrade and reduce the combat stats inside. Maybe reduce effectiveness of some SM specific tactivators. You could even extend the nerfs to all objectives, and defenders would still win most of the time. Overall WvW would feel much healthier if attacking objectives felt remotely fair. After all, to defend, you need willing attackers first. And to all the disorganised individuals that always come here to cry about defending being too hard: you losing stonemist or t3 keep with inexperienced chatmander against organised 40 man guild voice tags, doesn't mean it isn't easy to hold. You or your server just didn't try their best.

You don't want this---or won't once you meet a ranger that knows how to use one of these. Especially Iboga, I for one am glad there are like 5 people that know how to use this because he already received a nerf on consuming bite--don't want any more nerfs here. Seriously, I'd never need popcorn salt again if the pull actually worked right. Well, yea, I am sure they're decent pets in 1vs1. Once I met a some kind of mix of unkillable celestial/minstrel druid that was almost entirely relying on iboga damage to kill me. I killed the pet and smashed at him killing his pets on respawn for about 10 minutes until he ran away. But it isn't like there hasn't been damage creep in the game, pets like Rock Gazelle, Bristleback and Smokescale just feel better due to being able to take couple of hits. For example you can't claim smokescale being very tanky, but somehow Tiger is half as tanky as that while having 0 defensive cooldowns. Smokescale has CC, stealth, evades and more damage in abilities. 30% bonus hp to something that dies to 1 willbender ability, would just be fair, it wouldn't be overkill, but at least might become worth the tradeoff. After all the pet has to survive 16 (with beastmastery) or 20 seconds.

This is bit hard to support because there have been lot of survivable ranger builds for which counterplay was to kill the pets first. If those builds had lower revive time, they would become absolute menace. However I am all up for buffing survivability of following pet types: Wyvern, Spider, Phoenix, Moa, Iboga, Feline, Devourer, Canine, Burrowing Shark and Bird. Just because they aren't really viable due to how easily they die. 30% increased base hitpoints would be nice. Of course unused pets could use other improvements or buffs in their signature skills as well.

From what I have understood, there were North American guilds spamming "Rise!" shout to make map lag for opponent.

Willbender, Untamed, Dagger Berserker and Hammer Holosmith. Basically mobile bruiser builds that can pop off in large or small fights.

Late notes: Arc Divider: Reduced the power coefficient from 1.8 to 1.5 in WvW only.

Honestly, the nerf makes sense. They're cutting down burst and there is no reason for highest burst trait to require barely any skills to be chained for big burst. Ranger has plenty of other fury sources, and forcing one of them to be implemented to the combo goes a long way to increase difficulty of burst builds. What doesn't make sense is why did they nerf OWP damage alongside strike interval. Weren't only multihit skills the issue?

Nice. They nerfed Berserker and Soulbeast burst. Nice patch. I do think One Wolf Pack nerf is poorly managed and the skill definitely shouldn't have been made worse with all weapons, only multihit ones (LB2, WH4, Axe5).

Skills already have different scaling in WvW, just extend it to stats. Concentration: 1% boon duration per 15 concentration everywhere -> 1% boon duration per 25 concentration in WvW Expertise: 1% Condition Duration per 15 Expertise everywhere -> 1% Condition Duration per 25 Expertise in WvW. This solution is perfect because it will also adress the other problematic gearsets and WvW large scale fights already suffering from too long of stability, protection, vigor etc. durations up to a point where it isn't skillful anywhere. Admittedly PvE has same problems and could use tuning down boon durations until key boons are not permanent anymore. After all maintaining 100% quickness upkeep is much less skillful than choosing how to optimize 80%.

Because they're used to rangers being oneshot wonders (Soulbeasts), and other ranger specs are more bruiser oriented compared to it. You're playing well-rounded build with decent amount of cleanse, damage reduction, stunbreaks and stuff, so they just assume it is celestial. Ranger was bruiser class for years alongside warrior and engineer until Soulbeast was released and made lowskill cheese mainstream.

And this is exact reason they should remove gliding in combat

Yea, but someone that doesn't use pulls effectively means they benefit from having them nerfed and has little reason to argue for them. That is a very strange statement to put in regardless. But they will also have flawed perception of how strong things are when properly utilized. Ask PvE player that hasn't ever played WvW, how important stability is in WvW, and they will give false answer. Ask the worst WvW player how to survive in GW2 largescale fights, and they will have no clue. Being bad or inexperienced at the gamemode, does lead to flawed perception and inability to have correct ideas about balance. You actually have to land your skills effectively to have clue about true balance.

You mentioned that some players defend pulls because they fear nerfs to their main class but don't have the skill to use pulls effectively. That's a bit contradictory, don't you think? If someone can't use pulls well, why would they advocate for them to protect their class? The motivation should be based on the perceived balance and utility of pulls, not just fear of nerfs. Those are separate people as the word "or" indicates. Some defend pulls because they aren't yet at level to succeed at them and others because their whole playstyle is revolving around it and they have 0 cares about balance or others enjoyment. I just can't tell which group is larger. There will always be youtube montage pull spamming players that are worried about their viewcount so some opposition to make the game better is natural.

So yesterday I had this amazing idea for the game and the idea just kept getting better and better. I will start by listing system changes required for such content to be implemented, and continue to more specific details. Generic changes Pets can be stored in pet bank now, up to 5 of each species. After this, taming or breeding a new pet of that species will require deletion of one. Pets can be tamed to pet bank by any class now, only ranger can wield one open world. Juvenile creatures now roll randomly between -200 and +200 power, precision, ferocity, toughness and vitality up to same total stats. Juvenile creatures start with 3 personal traits that affect their ability in combat. To get certain trait combinations, you have to breed next generation pets. More about traits in later section. Increased amount of Juvenile spawns and they do not get removed from map when tamed Juvenile creatures roll new stats and traits every 6 hours Breeding 2 pets of same type can be bred together to make off-spring. Off-spring gets 25-50% of their stats from 1 parent, and rest from another. 1 trait is chosen by the player from each parent, and 3rd is randomly rolled between both Specifics regarding breeding time taken or possible fashion options included, will be left to imagination of developers. Content pets would be included in Ranger pets: Same as before but more indepth stat and trait combinations. In following content, each pet type will have couple of extra abilities outside the base ones for diversity. You do not have to play Ranger to experience following: Pet battles 1vs1, 2vs2: All characters can participate with team of 3 pets: 1vs1 and 2vs2. You control the pet as if it was player character. Pets cannot heal in combat outside certain abilities. If your pet or team of 2 players controlling pets loses, you enter with next pet in your team against the winning pets remaining health until 1 team of 3 pets is fully eliminated. Pet battles can be initiated as matchmaking system in pet arena of any major city, or used for personal battles at guild hall. Pet GvGs 15vs15: Guild members each control 1 pet and work to eliminate enemy lord. Respawn available after certain time of being dead. Pet dungeons: 5 person dungeons. Each player controls 1 pet and tries to pass the epic dungeon. Pet instance: Pet instance would allow breeding and decorating pets for your home instance. Note: Pet content outside Ranger gameplay is all player controlling a pet, your actual characters don't participate. It would be "content with simpler combat system" and more about time investment in breeding and theorycrafting perfect pets. Pet traits As you tame pets, they would come with 3 different trait. Each trait has 2 positive and 1 negative effect. Traits could be such as: Agressive: +10% strike/condition damage, +15% endurance regeneration, +10% damage taken Agile: +15% movement speed, +200 precision, -15% endurance regeneration, Calm: +20% healing, +200 toughness, -10% critical strike damage Passive: -10% damage taken, + 200 vitality, -15% movement speed Reckless: +10% critical strike damage, +200 ferocity, -200 precision etc: at least 10 different. For example Juvenile Pets with agressive trait could come with 2 of Reckless, Agile or other fitting traits, but not Calm or Passive traits. If you want agressive and calm together, you have to breed pet with agressive trait with a calm one together but there will be little bit of randomness involved regarding 3rd trait and stats the pet gains from each parent. As you can notice, all the negative effects of a trait will have a cancelling effect in another trait. So if you choose to have only positive effects for your pet and cancel all the negative ones out, you can choose to do so. Or you can also choose to have lot of negative and positive effects. For example condition pet probably won't care much about ferocity so sacrificing 200 ferocity to have an positive trait would probably be optimal Why would this content be good for the game? Lot of Guild Wars 2 content is limited by its amazing combat system with lot of depth. However Super Adventure Box (SAB) is still extremely popular despite its simplicity and that proves going away from complexity isn't necessarily bad. By entering pet content and breeding in this game, not only does it allow for simpler content, but another creative/competitive outlet for people. Also as lot of pet abilities and art already exist in the game, you cut development costs and time of this completely new content to minimum. With pet taming being more complex and having content associated with it playerbase would not only discuss optimal combinations but communicate with each other when and where there are good pets. The differences between average random pet you tame won't be massive or gamebreaking, but still worth small optimizing if you play ranger or participate in pet content a lot. The whole idea of this content fills me with excitement and nothing would be more thrilling than spending time to build, tame and breed my roster of pets, and outplay enemies by controlling it. This could be as big opportunity within MMORPG community as Pokemon worldwide: simple, little bit of randomness involved but still requires skill.

Guys, you're just focusing on weirdest specific stuff. It doesn't matter if it is a melee fight, wall fight or ranged fight, short or long fight, pulls are the strongest CC abilities you can bring as they are. And they're also on the lowest cooldown outside warrior hammer spam that occurs on melee. Now I get that people here are fearful their main class will get nerfed but compensation buffs were also brought up in the thread so fear not. This isn't a personal issue, I have played this game long enough to know and avoid all the cheese, but it is still annoying the game revolves around pulls so much when teammates are involved. Of course pulling isn't super easy for most players as daily there are squads with 10 pull classes, with no one skillful enough to pull anyone to the tag for free kills. But once you reach or face certain understanding of boons with experience to back it up, it just overpowers anything else in close fights. I get some of you guys don't think pulls are overpowered in group fights and are blaming L2P problems from me, but that just means you're not at the level where you can succesfull pull off pulls consistantly.. And there is nothing with it, you will get good eventually. Or you need to be stop being super defensive about your class getting shift in power.

Not sure here Riba. I am not opposed to people setting their toon up to be support, its more someone else can't stack their toon up to be anti-boon support. So under the example you give people could still just stack more support. But without more strips and conversions a group doesn't need to balance both their boon support and their anti-boon up to counter another group. It also removes options for havocs and roamers to set up to counter boons in smaller scale or to help act as a counter zerg busting unit as well. Note to mention large scale versus small scale balance, the above would just give small scale even less options versus large scale while large scale could again just pack more support. Appreciate the idea but not sure it would work as expected in balancing the boon/anti-boon balance. It serves to bring boons away from permanent. So one will be using protection when they need it, and take breathers to refresh stability cooldowns. Biggest reason why single targeting agaisnt large groups is quite impossible with anything that can't remove boons is because people have permanently all the boons. But if you for example reduce stab and protection uptime by 20%, that 20% will give you big openings to work your magic as better player. Anyways Minstrel will still be the strongest supportive gear as going down from 60% bonus boon duration to 42% won't have massive impact to anything else than increasing skillcap as you will actually have to save boons from when you need them. Btw, while DPS builds have variety of stats they use: Berserker, Marauder, Dragon, mix of celestial, even knight. What do supports use? All minstrel. So if you're so adamant about support builds being viable to build, you should be advocating for stat diversity.

Solution 1% boon duration per 15 concentration ➡️ 1% boon duration per 25 concentration Wow, that just improved the game more than all the changes together in past 5 years.

I don't necessarily find single target pulls like Scorpion Wire or Magnet troublesome, as it does require targeting and using great amount of concentration to time it right, not just throwing it in. Whereas AoE pulls can easily rely on boon strip RNG or stab downtime to pull 2-3 targets out of 5. The amount of effort required to be succesful AoE puller is just so much less and rewards are much greater.

Will have to disagree my friend. In the boonball meta increasing cooldowns on CC abilities is a non starter without increasing boonstrip and conversations that were nerfed. This grants the boon side even more strength. So -1 from me here I hate to say. Well that is separate issue and I do agree that concentration as a stat needs reduction in potency so we can move away from dominance of minstrel and celestial gear. Overall what I am trying to say is that pulls are stronger than elite abilities, with 3 times less cooldown, and 40% of a blob or guild running them. Intent is not to remove pull abilities completely, but move them from spammed abilities to ones that require some forethought.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Scorpion_Wire : 60 seconds Maximum count: 1 Range: 300 Scorpion wire isn't AoE pull. I don't really get your point.

It is because link servers are bigger than you think. While average link server in the past might have contributed 10% or so of the playerbase, now they account for probably almost 40%. The system just hasn't aged very well and is filled with problems. Anyways, if you look at Guild Leaderboards at GW2mists, you will find more FSP guilds than any other server. FSP is just so active. You will notice that Oblivious Minds guilds Almost Harmless [AH] and Notorious Big [BiG] are big reason FSP has high activity and is unlinked whereas WSR is unlinked again because they have extremely active [QWOP] guild. I don't think they themselves mind being unlinked as they get to play on any map they want with whatever members they got.