nthmetal.9652

What exactely is the "duck" your are seeing? That the "full" and "very high" of Gandara are false and Anet has set Gandara intentionally to "full" because Anet hates Gandara? I don't think "hate" is any factor. I wonder what you're trying to achieve by putting me in that corner. Hate is something that actually takes a lot of effort, consumes and wastes energy, and I don't think this has any room for that. I could speculate, that Gandara is not as economic, as it could ideally be, so opening it up might have no priority - but then again by the amount of players transferring, the transfer costs, the frequency, even such a speculation does not exactly make much sense. It doesn't appear as though the WvW transfers are that much of a notable chunk in the revenue stream, right?So no, I don't know. Maybe it's simply neglect? Maybe I'm completely wrong, and Gandara, despite all the hints we have pointing to the opposite, is actually full and our population just distributes very, veeeery evenly, so that there are never queues (well I am exaggerating here. Of course we sometimes have queues. Very small ones. During primetime, and not during the last weeks - but generally moving even big groups was pretty easy during the last months). And we're just so slightly above the full threshold, that moving between maps 50-man-zergs is indeed easily possibly. Yet somehow we never dip below the "full" threshold anymore, despite guilds transferring off the server and no one new being able to join.And of course our players are all pretty bad, so that we can't win fights. That aspect is very easy to explain generally. There is a lack of commanders (we're not the only server suffering from that), which means a lot of activity is pretty unfocused.And maybe, just maybe, the average Gandaran player is so bad, that even the PPT is bad, right? Bad enough to not make it past T4 when we have no link (but we can make T4 and even T3 when we do have one).But you have to admit, that's a lot of factors that have to combine together to give the picture you imply, namely Gandara being actually a full server which does work exactly as I describe above. Or you take the simple explanation. That we're not full. Or at least that this criterion of being "full" is inadequate for the gamemode.And that doesn't only go for Gandara. Maybe someone could take the time to cross-reference server population history (for example researchable through gw2mists.com) and cross-reference with links and matchup-history (activity, points) from wvwstats. Might give us a better idea on how activity or points and server population might or might not be related and thus remove at least some of bias, we're all prone to have :)

Yep, we all know the reason. Because this isn't about population balance and surely not about matchup balance.

Yes, I can see that with the tail.And I can also see the effects of Gandara activity and "fullness" for several months now. Not as extreme as in the last few weeks, but no queues, ability to easily transfer whole zergs between borders, etc - that has been a thing for the whole last year. The only times when we could not do that was, when we actually had a linked server. Which makes be believe this is untrue. Also we can see population adjustments pretty quick after transfer of big guilds like KISS or KILL, so the statement above cannot be true.

@Zok.4956 we will have to simply agree do disagree here then. Maybe you are right and we on Gandara have figured out a secret: How to play a game, without playing a game. Because that's apparently what is happening: A lot of people are playing the game (according to your facts and the combination thereof) without really playing the game (in terms of seeing any kind of result - result not only being measured in score here, but in any kind of thing where population has an impact on the in-game experience).The activity of Gandara is not shown in either PPT score, kills or deaths, it also doesn't show up in queues (as has been confirmed by other people in this thread, whereby a commander is apparently able to move a full zerg between maps without much of an issue - which I personally can confirm. There were no issues moving even a full 50-man-zerg between maps freely, even to home and EB). To which I would say:If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. Your experiences seem to differ.

Yes, and in that very same night, the whole zerg has beaten, and has been beaten by enemy zergs. Of course you can port out. Of course you can run. But while having a FULL server, doing so consistently over a whole evening is NOT possible. Doing the same thing over a whole week is even less possible. And as I said before, it is pointless, even if it were. If you could really build a server that is as full as other full servers and can manage to consistently, over a sustained amount of time, port out without causing kills and deaths, this is not a problem, if at the same time that server cannot win any matchups. And as population balance itself is only a means to an end that should not be a reason to keep a server locked and thus prevent guildmates from playing with each other.

Wow, @"Meowmaru.9341" that was quite negative and I don't think Gandara deserves that. I don't think any server deserves that, whether they perform well, or they perform bad. It's simply not everyone's goal to be top of the line, but it is surely not the goal to be bottom of the line. I know, the information we do have available is incomplete, and there is no hard connection between the pieces of information, but that isn't our fault. As Anet is unwilling to create transparency, gw2mists and wvwstats (and similar sites) are the pieces we have, and from that you can draw conclusions. gw2mists tells us, that not many registered players are on Gandara, compared to other servers. We have no reason to believe that the amount of registered players on gw2mists from Gandara is for some reason significantly lower than that of other servers. But of course you can draw that conclusion, despite no evidence given.Now add to that some information from wvwstats: activity as measured in kills+deaths. Especially over the lasts weeks, where Gandara has made its way from T3 to T5 and thus was facing different servers with different populations, the numbers have been consistently low. Lowest of all servers world wide. Now you can, of course, believe that this is, because the whole Gandaran population is especially good at running. They can't kill people, but they also cannot be killed, because they always run away, and somehow they do that way better than everyone else. Were they just bad fighters, they would have low kills, but a lot of deaths. So that must be it, right? I believe that's how you build a conspiracy theory, because what I actually see in game does not match this theory. Gandara players go for fights, they do not overly employ hit-and-run tactics with greater success or "skill" than anyone else. We also see no, to very low queues on borders. Seeing all these facts as unrelated pieces of information that match up "just by chance" and thus would not tell us anything about population - that is how you build a conspiracy theory. But if you accept the facts present as actually being connected they suddenly point to a population problem. And in the end it might not even be relevant, because the goal of WvW server status should not be to balance population. Balancing population is not an end to itself, it just a means to and end: Achieving matchups where everyone can have a chance, where everyone can have fun and the possibility to win. Thus opening a server, that's already performing very well is a much bigger problem, than opening a server that's performing pretty bad ...

I am not saying that warrior is now super weak, by the way. You can still achieve many strips, ESPECIALLY if the fights last, if your support is at least okay, if you position correctly. Thanks to the way warrior strips work, thanks to reduced CD on break enchantments, thanks to warrior survivability skills, it is still valuable. The CC skills may be weak in terms of damage, but they are highly disruptive. Support is still okay, especially since you will be able to bring your support even under high pressure.That warrior is high damage is something I cannot confirm. I almost never see warriors in top damage spots, and when I do, they are for the most cases berserkers and are not top consistently as they are very glass cannon. I still see revs up there very consistently. The only thing I am saying is: The bubble, for an elite skill, is too weak. Maybe it should be replaced with something different altogether, something that is worth a 90s CD. Or keep it and lower the CD.

As an area denial tool it is relatively weak. It's pulses have been halfed, the cooldown is high, it only actually denies area, if you put a lot of additional effort into it (immob / stun targets inside, that for some reason are not able to circumvent a non-moving target) and on top of it, there is a long cast time.So unless you need to block a choke and blocking the choke for 5s is somehow enough this is very situational. Dropping the bubble on openfield fights is almost like a random thing now, thanks to the long cast time. Pinpointing that where it needs to be is going to be hard. To boil it down, the bubble is now like a necromancer well. It pulses for 5s, once every second, hits 5 targets, and strips 1 (or 2 with trait) boons. With a cooldown of 90s. The high cast-time of 1.5s and personal cast area make the bubble hard to place right.Whereas necro well pulses for 5s, once every second, hits 5 targets, deals damage, also hits 5 targets and strips 1 boon. With a cooldown of only 40 (!) seconds. There is no direct trait to make the well boonrip more, but necros have other traits, which enhance their boonrips in general. I'd call that comparable. The necro well can be cast at range! The necro well also only has a cast-time of 0.25 seconds making it easy to place correctly.The bubble area is a bit bigger (but the well is still big enough to hit its targets I think). Maybe I should be comparing the Winds of Disenchantment to Ghastly Breach, but look at all the things breach does. Compare it to the bubble and tell me these things compare well. I think for an elite skill, in comparison the warrior bubble overall as it is now is just too weak. I am aware that there are further differences (like not able to gain boons in bubble, and the missile block - but honestly who uses bubble for the missile block?)

Sure it is a totally bad idea, that a tactic, which is tied to an objective like all the other tactics, can only be used around that objective. It makes no sense at all. None whatsoever. Yes, the current implementation isn't perfect, as things like the dune roller for example can still be used away from their objective and they make little sense were it otherwise, but then again the dune roller is mostly used against other objectives and less so against players. On the other hand: If banners were allowed to be used all over the map, why not make other tactics also usable all over the map? Wouldn't it be great, if you could designate an area in which chilling fog is to be used instead of working only on the objective it is tied to? Or a supply drop! Less running around! Simply pull the lever and select, where the supply drop shall be applied to! Or the airship from SM. Mmm, so much fun.If you start applying logicals arguments to tactics, please apply the same logical rules to all tactics, not an arbitrary subset. Yeah, we can see that. Your agument is mostly based on the fact, that you hate this decision. Not on logical reasoning. Not on the overall design of what tactics were meant for: Protecting and defending an objetive. A specific tower or keep. For those who hate this great idea: Please go play other games, stop whining. Learn to use the skills of your profession instead of being a dragonbanner main.

You know what is worse? Apparently the game forces me to do PvE, if I wanna make a legendary weapon! (at least those, that I can't straight up buy from TP - and even then, due to efficiency reasons, it's way better to do PvE, if you just wanna buy a legendary)

Well, the first time that happened it was something new, so I can kind of understand, why it took so long to fix. But now this has happened before. If we can't play WvW all weekend long, I'd be .... unhappy. Very unhappy.

Ah! So you would like WvW to be more useless running around, less time actually spend fighting?Let's look at the reverse situation: Increased number of targets, and the DPS per attack, while at the same time removing the warclaw. More people will hit more targets while also doing more damage with each hit. - so overall more damage in a bomb. You said nothing about sustain, but even if I would assume that sustain powers are likewise increased in target cap again, there is a lot more damage than sustain, so overall this would buff the attacks.Yes, this would make fights last less long, because that's awesome for everyone: Kill more players more quickly, making the action go over faster. And then also we increase the rerun-times by removing the warclaw. So you end up with less action per encounter, while at the same time reducing the amount of encounters due to higher run times. I can clearly see how that will lead to a more interesting WvW experience.

Except that isn't true at all. The problem isn't that there is not enough Power builds going on in WvW. The reason we have setups, where parties are 3/5 support and 2/5 damage (which usually is power, too, not condi) is that otherwise the power spikes of the opposition kill you instantly. The effect of power is not too low, I can assure you.

You seem to be under the misconception, that minstrel support in mass-group combat is so that you have "revive bots". This is not the case, and maybe as a PvP player, which I must assume you are, you are not aware of the effect of greater numbers and the imbalance between offense and defense in the game, as this imbalance does not exist / exist as strongly in a 5 vs 5 match. Attacks in GW2 stack indefinitely for all practical purposes. It does not matter, how many players target a single target, all their attacks will have an effect on that target. Damaging conditions stack indefinitely.Cleanses help, but are typically on a much much higher cooldown than the abilities to dish out damaging conditions. Helpful boons have a limit to which they can be stacked, typically 1 (and stack duration) or 25. Or they cannot be stacked at all, like superspeed.Just imagine you could not stack burn. What would happen to this game?Just imagine only a certain amount of direct damage attacks could affect a specific target in a given period of time. Just imagine only 5 or 10 attacks could, and anyone else, who would also target the same target would simply get no effect at all. Just imagine what would happen. Stuns and immbolization can be chained to achieve a total lockdown, over quite a long number of seconds. Way more than the few seconds of stability and invulnerability you can get. I have seen immoilizations, that were chained together so nicely, that players can't move for well over 10 seconds. I have seen stuns and dazed, that lock out players for well over 10 seconds from firing skills. These thing happen in mass combat, when things go awry. That is the reason why you take minstrel. Not for the situation when things work out perfectly, then you can survive ez on full zerker, but for the moments, when things do not work out. And since in 5 vs 5 you will not encounter situations, where more than 5 attacks hit one target at the very same moment, you will not encounter the same kind of problems as in mass battle combat. You will very rarely even encounter situations where 5 enemy players group up on one target!So you will not encounter the same kind of solution. It is not "minstrel revive bots", it is the effects of the underlying mechanics, which play out very differently in 5 vs 5 than in the 20 vs 20 or even more, which are common in WvW.

Lol. Well, I am against custom-tailoring solutions for a game mode designed for mass-group battles, that cater to a subgroup. If anything, mechanics overall need to be abalyzed and revised so that the numbers game isn't as important anymore.Also, if downstate is altered, good luck adapting the profession traits and skills for WvW. That will be costly. Or the solution will be very half-assed.What would need to happen is, that all traits and skills that cater to downstate need to be reworked. Be it sigils, illusion of life, etc. There are quite some traits for warrior, that come to mind.And of course it still needs to work for PvE; sounds like a massive split. Yeah. No.

If your enemies know how to pull and burstdamage properly, it's like there is no downstate anyways, so I'm against that suggestion.

IMO DPS meters are necessary, as the game itself provides poor feedback, especially when you're not doing damage. If you do damage at least you can look happily at "big numbers" popping up. If that's useful, or not, is a different matter, but at least you receive feedback about thhe actions and quality of your actions in a certain way. If you are doing support you can monitor the boons, but even here things get hard: Boons are not featured prominently in the UI, and what makes things worse is, that the buffs do not have a fixed position. Good lucky tracking that consistently without the help of additional tools. If you are providing disruption support in forms of CC and strips, things get even more shifty. There is no feedback for strips at all (except for the one target you have selected, where you can see boons disappearing, but how does that help with area effects?), and feedback for interrupts is inconsistent at best. Wanting feedback is not only important for the psychological effect - it does feel nice to know what you're doing is right - it is also necessary to learn how to improve. Now as to the demand that DPS meters should only track personal stats: That is a bad workaround. In the end guild leaders will still demand numbers for comparison, and if you fake it, over time it will be discovered (simply by comparing performance, videos, and analyzing what can obviously be seen). It also means you can't evaluate your own relative performance. And if you want to improve, that is necessary.

Wow. Toxic. Calling people, who want PPT not serious! Of course keeping the score up is a serious business. Just don't do it, go to T5 and then tell me again, that score doesn't matter. That aside though, maybe devs should look more at server performance instead of server population and come up with mechanics and decisions regarding that, to enable better fights and pairings. Servers that struggle in T4, but utterly dominate in T5. Mmhm. I am sure that's how you motivate people to play. On both sides.

I do care, but I hope we'll never see it. What is left of the server communities will be dead with the arrival of alliances. While for some servers this might not make much of a difference, I feel it does for mine. There is such a nice mixture of softcore, roaming and casual guilds, roamers and zerglings. With the arrival of alliances, the different guilds would probably land in different alliances. The community would be dead.

I doubt that the resources developing a warclaw are the same resources dealing with performance issues. So arguing that it took away resources is just bs. And I personally do not find it fun to spend my time running around. Thanks to all the warclaw nerfs, that time has increased, which adds nothing to the game. If you really want being taken our to cost you time, that time should be be attached to respawn penalty instead.

But there is defense against condi. It is called condi cleanse. Learn to use it, slot it, and condi is not really a problem. Generally I would agree that the difference between how condi works and how power works and how to defend against them, is a problem that should be tackled in the design of things instead of through skills.

This really is key. With the reduced sustain due to less stunbreaks, and shorter boons, while condis were not hit in a similar way, ranged damage wasn't hit in a similar way, and CC was hit - but not with the outcome expected - changes like this are necessary.The only alternative is to add a lot more tankyness to melee, especially in cases where damage isn't the main focus. And dev don't wanna go back to such specialized solutions as the 300s CD on the defense traitline traits for warriors show for example.

It's not boons and condis. It's the constant back and forth from the server, where are you? I'm here. What are you doing now? I'm doing this. You can tell when a blob is coming well before you can see them just by the lag and they will have minimal boons on them and there are no condis flying around. I disagree. Yes, when the framerate drops, that's not boons and condis. That's just the client needing to load in and handle additional models and effects, so you'll likely always sense a zerg nearby. But the skill lag only occurs, when the zerg is actually fighting. And it only occurs, if one or both of the zergs put out a significant number of AoEs, Condis and Boons.

It's not about making ppl upset. People will get over it, and those that don't have already resigned from the game anyway. DIstributing the boons and buffs more around seems like a great way to move forward, hopefully we will see more of that. It's that line of thinking, which encourages teamplay and diversity.

I wonder where people get the idea from, that mounts might be responsible. I mean, we don't know the code, so of course anything is possible, but look at what is likely: Where would a mount lead to additional calculations on server side, especially calculations that would need to be executed every tick?No, the problem lies with the AoEs, boons and condis, and maybe on top of that, that you need to track each instance of them separately, because one specific condi is not like any other specific condi, and a boon is not like any other specific boon. Each of them has modifiers attached. They might last longer. They might have more impact.Same goes for areas. You can't just say "there is a shade here", because some of them might be bigger, some smaller, their effects are controlled by attributes. You can't just look at "what player is inside the area", because the powers have target caps. For each area you need to track the targets separately. There is likely a lot of room for improvement in the code, hopefully we can get to that, while we examine the current temporary workaround.