Vekks.6013

A lot of the discussion I'm seeing here now is about large 500 player guilds that "play together." Even if you had like... half of that that were all active and online at the same time, the map caps as they currently stand wouldn't let them play as a single team. These 500 member PvX or WvW guilds have players across many different playtimes, there is no way any single member of that guild is playing with 499 other players, let alone even knows a majority of who those players are. Inside that guild are smaller groups of players that play at the same time, and if they would like to continue they should make a new WvW specific guild. Again, I stress that the purpose of WR is to break down large servers and communities, ensure balanced matches, and to provide more flexible and varied matchups to make WvW more interesting.

You’re failing to read all of the feedback I provided. Reducing squad size+smaller map caps+smaller alliance size+open more tiers. Doing one of these things by themselves will not effect anything, you’re right. And that’s not what I’m suggesting.

I'm not suggesting that they nerf guild sizes across the board. What I'm suggesting is a system that makes large guilds (100+ members in my example) ineligible to be set as a WvW guild. The max alliance size would be 100. You could say this would break up some guilds, but the reasoning for WvW Restructuring was, at its core, to break up large and dominant server communities to better facilitate equal and fair matchmaking. The idea is smaller squads, smaller map cap for players, smaller guilds, smaller alliances, MORE TIERS. Bringing back 5,6,7, and 8. Specifically, on NA servers, our OCE playerbase is following essentially 1 of two squads. They only ever get to play against each other, assuming they're even in the same matchup. The guilds are massive and need to be broken down. Imagine being an OCE player outside of those guilds, or an NA player with a strange work/sleep schedule popping in to a map to see that. You can't play against it. It's essentially a guild that has monopolized the whole timezone, and that's why mega guilds on NA can't exist in WvW. It's unhealthy for the game.

Thanks, yep. I was wrong on that. anyway, next time they do a beta like this where it is multi week we need access to accurate information from the api. So they need the team name/map name bug sorted out first, and then sites like gw2mists need access to track the matchup correctly from the api.

You know what, it’s entirely possible that I am too tired tonight and I’ve completely got this wrong.

This sounds like OP is repping the same guild but did not actually set it as their WvW guild prior to matchmaking last thursday. Changing it now does nothing, and repping it has not impact on your assignment. In the WvW panel (B) there are two new tabs at the bottom which show all of your guilds and what teams they are assigned to. It will also tell you in the last tab which team you are assigned to for the duration of the beta.

Based on a discussion after our WvW raid time tonight. For context, we're a 20-25 man group and faced a map blob of 60 players on one team, and a larger group of 35-40 on the other team. We were 30 tonight even including pugs following us. Our map, our Home BL, was queued, but we were the only tag running, and we were even running public. (We checked and looked around, there was not even a private tag hidden to us on our team.) The restructuring beta has not gone well for us. We're consistently on maps alone, and always end up facing, no matter what map we go to, a full map blob. Alliances aren't implemented yet, but mega guilds are being formed and could theoretically contain 500 dedicated WvW players as the system stands. We believe that's far too many people to be allowed to self-organize and negatively impacts balanced matchmaking. In general, we also believe that the current amount of players allowed on the map per team is too many and negatively impacts both game client and server performance, and creates large gameplay and combat balance issues that are not easily addressed. (ie., server/skill lag, and issues relating to boon and condition spam, power spike damage, pulls, etc. less players, less of all this being constantly spammed, better performance and more interesting gameplay) We'd like to see a reduction in maximum squad size down to 40 in WvW with a cap on players per team per map down to 50. We also believe the max alliance size should not exceed 100 players, which would allow for 2 full squads with some overflow to elect to play together on the same team. The alliance would then be subject to matchmaking to fill the rest of the team up. Matchmaking needs improvement as well. Active play hours need to be tracked better and averaged out over a period of time for each guild inside of each alliance. Teams should consist of guilds, alliances, and solo players that play at different times whenever possible. More matches, more tiers. With smaller maps and alliance sizes, its important not to turn WvW into a map queue hellscape. More matches will need to be opened up. Again, this is just our thoughts as a non-blob WvW focused guild, and I'm sure there are many other opinions out there.

I'm seeing, unless I'm mistaken, that several teams that either won or lost their previous matchups were not placed as their correct color in the new matchup. Teams that win should move up a tier and become green, while teams that lose should move down and become the red team. Second place should remain in their matchup and become blue. At least this is how it normally works. I'm going to assume this means the system is not working as the team intended and therefore the alliance beta will be delayed until world restructuring works. If I'm wrong, I'm going to blame it on the fact that there aren't tools and information available to properly track this, since the api doesn't support these new team names and none of the community-run wvw sites can provide this information. Unless of course, this system is changing and winning or losing a matchup doesn't matter in determining what color or what match you will be in the following week. We of course, just don't have any information on how this is supposed to work, but I can say for sure it does not seem to be working as it usually would. EDIT: I was wrong. Sorry. Big tired when I wrote this. My criticisms about the api and data availability stand. We need to be able to look at realtime match information during these betas.

An excellent point! There was a time the split wasn't needed, because the PvE side was properly balanced.

Soon I hope! 😁 On a serious note, I'm aware that this is a major balancing concern. Ultimately the balancing should have been targeted on the ambush skills, or perhaps on a certain weapon sigil, rather than removing an entire dodge bar from an elite specialization! There is so much strange functionality changes like this that don't make sense and at this point. It all feels very patchwork style. I'm not at all suggesting that we remove the splits, but we need cohesion and for abilities to function at least similarly to the point that they can be recognized across game modes. Nothing worse than finding out that your biggest hitting ability is doing 2% of its PvE damage in WvW and has become your weakest ability. It doesn't have to be as strong as it is there, but it should still be one of your best buttons to press. In this case, for Mirage, you can't even press it, and that's a truly terrible feeling.

Dear WvW players, I write today to address the persistent issue of skill split in Guild Wars 2, specifically in the context of World vs. World (WvW). While the intention behind splitting skill functionality between PvE, PvP, and WvW was well-meaning, it has led to confusion and frustration among players. Skills in WvW often perform differently, and some are severely weakened, leaving us feeling disheartened and unsure of our abilities. I would like to commend ArenaNet for their recent efforts in rebalancing WvW, but I believe it is time to take a more thorough approach. We need a comprehensive balance patch that examines and aligns every profession and elite specialization, ensuring consistency and meaningful gameplay. No skill or trait should ever feel useless. I encourage ArenaNet to develop this balance patch with a singular vision for WvW gameplay. By doing so, we can eliminate inconsistencies and create a unified experience. Let's examine each ability to ensure they make sense, fit the current philosophy, and offer a similar functionality across game modes. This will promote balance and prevent skills from feeling significantly weaker than others. In conclusion, while the skill split was intended to promote fairness, it has caused confusion and weakened skills in WvW. I urge ArenaNet to deliver a comprehensive balance patch, considering every profession and elite specialization, aligning skill functionality, and fostering a cohesive vision for WvW gameplay. Together, we can enhance the enjoyment and competitiveness of WvW. Thank you for your attention, and let's work together to bring positive change to Guild Wars 2. Sincerely, Vekks Gold Raider, Sorrow's Furnace

Unattended gameplay is reportable and against TOS, so I report all these afk farmers/bots whenever I see them, in fact I keep a spreadsheet of account names that I have reported, and when I find an account multiple times and report them again, I update how many times they've been spotted and reported. So here are some statistics of my fairly diligent efforts to report and track afk farmers from the past year. Unique accounts reported: 736 Average times sighted/reported per account: 35 Most frequent zone reported in: Domain of Istan (851 Total Reports)

Congrats Anet for creating a new viable support for wvw and immediately obliterating it to return us back to fb/scrapper meta. Well done, "support diversity" accomplished. Just pull your teams off the game mode honestly, they're not making anything better.

Ultimately it's not your job or any other player's job to control or police people outside your guild, OP. This Beta and the WvW Restructuring had/has to happen to end the server stacking cycle. If you like other players outside your guild on your server, talk with them and get them into your guild or alliance when those are finally implemented. But again, it's not your job or your right to "excommunicate" commanders because they play the mode differently than you. So if that's your primary issue, outside of your guildmates not clicking the right button to get matched with your team, sorry. Some people like to karma train, some like to blob, some like to roam, some like to PPT their kitten off, and some of us are just here for the open field, outnumbered fights. There are people like you on every server, OP, that feel like they're some sort of important ruling figure that everyone should listen to and obey. That's not how it works. Command your squad, worry about your team, and respect other tags and their squads.

Your answer is: ...more times. Please fix this.

Thank goodness, Anet. I agree that firebrand needs the nerf, but we need other support classes in a position where they can substitute the utility that they provide in large scale WvW fights. Taking it out without addressing the massive CC output in some way would absolutely destroy the game mode. Look to give more specializations access to group stability first, then tone down the FB. Big thumbs up for rethinking this move. Please though, let's get a WvW focused balance patch out soon.

condi mirage was actually in a good spot for once, and its a fun build and isn't being overplayed either. no idea what these nerfs were for. completely uncalled for.

My exact problem with this. You can't pull stability out of WvW right now and not add it back in somewhere else. The problem was that Firebrand was the only only that could do the job and put out what is needed. Now it won't be able to keep up, people will fall back to pirate ship or even worse.... cloud.

WvW needs some of these support boon diversity changes. Consider applying tempest stability to all game modes, and increase the stacks from 1-2 on Eye of the Storm. Thanks.

I appreciate all the memes and responses on this topic, but I think we've exhausted the talking points here. At this point, the feedback is submitted, and ArenaNet can choose to acknowledge or ignore at their pleasure. I hope, for the sake of the game, that the devs and balance team will provide some insight at least into why this class is designed and tuned this way and to the level it is at, and seriously consider moving more of their damage into some active abilities. Low Intensity builds are great for accessibility and are really popular, but this isn't LI. This is a 0 APM abomination. This is No Intensity. Thanks again for providing your input and having a mostly civil discussion. OP is out.

I just gave you a very detailed post with an example proving otherwise, and further explained why having afk builds doing this much damage is harmful. I'm not engaging further. You're just defending a clearly broken example of class design/balance that opens the game up to seriously bad bot farming that will ultimately clog up maps and meta events with afk mechanist farmers when steam hits. The game deserves players that will honestly critique and point out flaws when they happen for the sake of a healthy game. But like I said a few posts back, I'm enjoying all the people here trying to defend this so they can keep exploiting it. It's really funny. But honestly, sad.

What else is the game about? You do damage, boss/enemies dies and you get loot. It's the most honest and easy to comprehend part of the game. Making it so you can not do anything at all, and outperform people that are playing actively and engaging with the content is bad for the game. It encourages players to not pay attention, the amount of damage they passively do will be more than enough damage to completely bypass mechanics. Look at an easy example that a lot of players do daily, death-branded shatterer. If your whole squad is afk autoattack mechanists right now, and I just saw this happen yesterday so I know it's easily possible, you can completely bypass and ignore all mechanics including the massive heal the boss does during riftstalker uptime. You don't need to do anything but afk a squad of mechanists at shatterer's feet and it will die, and it will die faster than a group of semi-organized pugs even doing the griffon spear shenanigan. [Hs] guild actually has been doing this same strat where they outdps the shatterer's heal during riftstalkers for a while now, but it requires them to have comped groups with quick/alac boon support in every sub to meet the average dps requirement to skip mechanics. You see how this is bad and exploitable? Imagine being able to pull in 40 mechanist bots that you can just park at boss meta events and they will kill it with no inputs required. DPS at this level means you skip mechanics and get easier loot. So the game is almost entirely about doing DPS.

LI builds =/= NI builds. Press enough buttons =/= Press no buttons.

All it needs is some sort of auto follow mechanic so they can run around behind a commander tag in a train and 100% passively get tons of loot and xp and gold.

To be bored with something implies that you have been participating/interacting somehow.