Gotejjeken.1267

What is playing WvW "normally"? Camping non-outnumbered maps? I love high post count account logic 😂.

That's not how outnumbered works at all. MAG doesn't even own EB anymore since they had their shakeups, so could be outnumbered there as well for all I know, I don't like EB so I don't do it. Even if EB is never in outnumbered status and is the only map to do so, and you have to go there to get 'normal' pips (as you are losing 2 pips in outnumber maps no matter how you cut it)--you just created an inverse problem to where you have to seek out non-outnumbered to get normal pip gain. Gratz.

If only it worked like that--for instance, I'm in the DH/MAG link and as we know MAG only does EBG. So trying to defend home borderland am outnumbered all night, and even in either of the other two maps that are not EBG. So lost a LOT of pips. Would make most sense to leave the outnumbered stuff alone until they can actually get Alliances to run without it setting their offices on fire. Then tune that later...but nope....

Removing outnumbered pips do not give 99% of players more rewards.

Nice to see the Stockholm is real in the WvW forums--please never change. Anyway, I've been playing since launch and also think it's ridiculous how WvW is undertuned in terms of reward structure. In fact, they often go out of their way to make it WORSE, such as 'normalizing' pip gain through outnumbered bonus elimination or removing participation from repairing non-active structures, etc. etc. Also, yes, WvW used to be different--how is this applicable to OPs concerns? Could get on my soapbox all day about how we used to have to RUN down paths instead of glide, or how we used to have to WALK places using swiftness instead of warclaws...that doesn't change anything. Like, guys, remember orbz? Or the giant lake in alpine?! *sigh* Some good changes they really need are to at least normalize pips to like 10 base and then go from there on rank / placement etc. and also do something with reward tracks or vendors to equalize what you can do in PvE. Meaning something like Bjora marches vendor exchanging for LWS3 currencies...we should have something in WvW like this. Also finally, ignore all talk of 'git gud' in terms of WvW. That's nonsense, as almost all WvW is either a gank fest (i.e. Xv1), blob fest, or playing peek a boo in structures. Or I guess if you're a 'fight guild' standing around in spawn until enough of you show up to actually leave it when you are getting EBG farmed 😂

How do we even know what it looks like--- Oh, Reddit.

So I learned through raging that there are parachute drops and also straight up area teleports to camps (they are big blue orbs on your overworld map). Since the former requires wp'ing back to a station and all that (causing you to miss a lot of keepers), going to try the latter to get my last few. It has to work better as every commander I see must use it as they are from keeper to keeper in seconds. Also keep in mind a keeper location will ping shortly after it spawns--so I've been just ignoring the cache chests for now and waiting on the next ping to get a head start.

So...why aren't these repeatable? Meaning Bjora, Grothmar, etc.; and I don't even see a track for Drizzlewood? Makes no sense considering doing PvE on these maps nets insane mats, especially Drizzlewood. Is half hour / hour of hitting '1' in Drizzlewood in PvE to get coffers full of mats really better than just putting a reward track up for WvW? EDIT: Nvm, guess there is a Drizzlewood one (I'm not far enough in PvE story yet to unlock), but point above still stands....why in the world are these unrepeateable?!

If it helps, consider repairing walls as part of 'cunning strategy' 😄

Stealth is still a crutch to me. If they ever do add more sources of revealed or if you are against opponents that know how to keep you revealed, you end up relying on protection and dolyak stance anyway. But it stands to reason if you are beating more than two enemies by yourself then they are objectively worse than you anyway. That has very little to do with build...

It's still not PvP though. As in structured PvP--you know, the mode that is only centered around killing opponents for the purpose of point capture. That is what I meant in my reply, thought it was pretty clear but guess not. So while yes, WvW obviously has player vs. player elements it also has a lions share of PvE type elements. Asking for reduction of rewards for engaging in the PvE side means fundamentally changing the mode. But no matter what, catt'ing a wall (the reason I replied in the first place) is not PvE OR PvP. It's strategic part of the meta of the WvW mode--you know, taking objectives is the primary purpose no matter what 'fight guilds' like to say.

Duplicate

SweetPotato answered this pretty well, but I will add that WvW is not PvP. If you want PvP...go play PvP.

This is where I guess we agree to disagree on a lot of points; anyway for a few: - You don't need the shout heal on NM builds to keep 25 might if you are running axe (and presumably smokescale), as that has a ton of might generation built in. An alternative is bear stance as it heals for slightly less but has all the condi cleanse built in, and I find the extra time on the boon copy is often overkill - Sustain on Soulbeast for me wholly comes down to protection uptime and dolyak stance; WS provides plenty of prot uptime with dodging and if you are that worried about condis can always run second skin and even OH axe for resistance uptime. Weapon skills like GS block and swoop to stealth are great for running, but I don't find they turn fights practically ever - Condi builds for me are far worse to deal with than power, as 'busted' for me is trailblazer, and all that poison damage and application makes it super hard to heal and cleanse. For general condi builds and survivability, outside of trailblazer giving 3k+ toughness--on Druid you have pretty much infinite survivability with staff unless super outnumbered as you are going to need chain-cc to keep you down, and soulbeast you have dolyak stance and a whole lot of other things to help you run if in melee range. Since the topic is about cele slb though, I feel it wrong to leave out condition damage in the build no matter how 'lackluster' the condi weapons may seem. I mean if built right it's still pretty easy to get 2k power, 1k+ condi, 3k+ toughness all base with the cele build. So no real reason to run straight power when you can still do decent condi damage as an auxiliary. Maybe it's just a fundamental difference of playstyle though. For me, I'm not really concerned with having a ton of kiting options unless purposefully going into outnumbered fights or running a role where I have to troll (point stalling, keep stalling, etc.). In general, I find most players just get downed to really anything, and if I wanted never to die I'd just run a good deadeye build or something.

Yeah, punishment or tradeoff for me is that pets for untamed are non-stowable. So Soulbeast has extra benefit of being able to merge and unmerge whenever and for as long as they want, and still gets a 10s CD at the cost of pet swap. Untamed would be similar except they can't stow the pet--so the 10s swap still seems reasonable with the 'feature creep' they've introduced with soulbeast.

This is great but, we had spirit ranger and they even nerfed that. By this I mean they stopped spirits from moving and they STILL aren't invulnerable totems (even though they are literally tailor made to be). You would think they'd work into this and unleash 'sprit pets' or something new with Untamed. But, nope!

They firstly need to match soulbeast in terms of pet management. Essentially, 10s max swap CD no matter if pet is alive or not, no more 60s penalty. Then, they need to get rid of the damage received increase, as that's an awful idea all around. Unleashed state should only power up and have no tradeoff in terms of lowering defenses as its already underpowered to begin with. Next, Untamed NEEDs and identity other than 'slightly better core', because core ranger is about the worst spec they could have picked to expand upon. Even then, with the damage taken increase and overall blandness I'd rather just stick with core because it at least gives a third traitline that's better than anything Untamed has. Finally, yeah they need to fix the hammer. Just get rid of the idea of a secondary skillset with shared CDs--its pretty much unusable. You aren't beating Druid at the CC game, and again that's a bad thing for a new spec that is being promoted as some 'frontliner'.

One could say this is an apologist spin on a rather valid take...

It's celestial, which is why you don't need GS. I realize GS is a crutch in practically every 'meta' build, but if you do run NM dagger gives you perma quickness, and with quickness trait it also extends your boons to absurd amounts. Run vulture stance and you still have perma 25 stacks of might, with or without axe. Anyway, I personally find WS stronger because of the built in condi removal on survival skills so you don't have to take cleansing sigils. For celestial it is also handy to have the trait that increases condi damage instead of poison on hit, because you can get poison from practically anywhere on ranger. Essentially, I wouldn't pin celestial to 'boonbeast'. I think there are better stat sets for that then cele; for me cele is more of a hybrid, so again, I like WS more for the condi (removal and damage increase) than NM.

Wait...what? Someone catting a wall should absolutely reward participation, as a lot of times that is how havoc is done. Trebbing on the other hand is a different story, because people LOVE to afk treb. As a sidenote, if catting a wall is 'PvE'ing' then what exactly is flipping camps? As that's literal PvE if no one comes, right? Anyway, removing participation for repairing something is about the dumbest thing they could have done. I say this because to my knowledge you can't afk repair, and repairing is an essential part of WvW....so why remove the participation time gain from it? At this point in time, everything defense related is pretty thankless--escorting yaks, repairing, refreshing siege....

Goes on to rant about how good the build is then at the end through ad hominem basically says WS will keep you alive longer anyway: Not saying the build won't work btw, just that I found it isn't as good as WS options because anet loves WS too much. Personally when I run a similar build for fun I use dagger MH, as I find it plays better with cele than GS does. I wouldn't go so far as to say it 'carries hard' though, because for me true 'build wars 2' would like in the direction of trailblazer...

I understand the build, the reason it works is 90% of players in competitive are awful. I mean your 'rotation' includes burning your defense skill (protect me) and your heal skill... But, your counter of 'don't get bursted' is super insightful lolol

It's fine for a YOLO build, but doesn't take advantage of a lot of things--like second skin, as you are losing a lot of prot uptime not taking WS. A good condi burst would down this build no matter how much boon uptime you have. Doubly so if they catch you in Axe/Wh as you're only means of kiting is #5 blasting smokescale field, or trying to use smoke assault while merged (fine for evading not great for running). Anyway, with cele builds I've found better luck with leveraging the quickness trait to get a ton of boon uptime over camping second skin.

I don't really care if others see my damage, I'm just annoyed I myself can't see my (overall) damage without taking the risk of using a third party app.

That's great, but at least the official one won't come in a 'grey area' that may be a bannable offense. I'd personally take something official over a third party app interfacing any day, regardless of feature set.