Silinsar.6298

This was meant to be in reference to players not learning how to react when being engaged while alone anymore in general because they usually just ride to their zerg. There're are also plenty running roaming builds whose reactions just do not match the supposed experience their rank indicates. Rank never equaled skill, but in the past high ranks were at least more likely to have a decent grasp of their skills and the combat system. Now sometimes it seems like the opposite. Anyway, what someone trying to get back to their zerg can do is: Avoid the most direct route and literally riding through opponents (Sniff lets you spot enemies behind obstacles) Wait for other people to respawn and go with them, instead of creating a constant line of 2-5 players between 2 objectives Learn to use the defensive tools you have, even when they are few Try to fight back with what you have Or simply switch to a different loadout while on the way (build templates made this easier than ever)

That's pretty much on point. In general higher out of combat mobility makes it more risky to engage in fights / objectives when you're outnumbered. The meta's quite durable, so even if you do target respawning players specifically, it's very likely someone adds before you get to finish the fight. It also makes in-combat mobility even more of a must-have, because it's more important to chase targets down (when they could otherwise reset but rejoin fully healed within seconds due to mount leaps or just keep you in combat with lance while you're fighting other players). And if you want to escape you'll also have to handle opponents jumping on / ahead of you with mounts. Mounts also make it harder to engage someone in small scale fights on even ground - the aggressor has to deal with two leap dodges, "super speed" and an extra ~10k HP if they are not mounted as well and hit with a lance. Mounts effectively shrunk the map - the response and respawn (+return to the fight) time is lower. And tend to take longer now. That's a combination that reinforces numerical advantage. So in short, yes, it's harder to start skirmishes and they're even more risky for the side that has less players around. About Zerglings returning to the Zerg, yes... and it's sad and funny to see how badly many players with very high ranks handle themselves if caught in a small scale fight. You could expect more from Bronze Ranks 6 years ago than from a lot of Diamonds now.

Instead of borg cubes we got boon balls.

Might have not been the perfect word, but I think the meaning comes across. You are changing your own argument here, you were talking about a number of solo players capping camps, not a single big group waiting at one camp. You're also just assuming what some other players are actually doing without knowing it - unless you're there in person to observe it. There are different ways to help in that scenario, and yes, going there and joining the blob is one of them. You could also lay supply traps, hit their spawn so they have a longer way back, distract / kill off some stragglers trying to get to the zerg or quickly flip a camp of the third server before they go to resupply there, hit an objective they'll be afraid to lose during a longer siege... It is not a given that rushing to the commander is the best way for everyone to be helping out in this situation. In some situations the mistake is already done though - the attack was spotted too late, no siege was prepared, there's too little time to organize the necessary defense and / or you just don't have the people on the map. So the blob wipes, and would probably wipe with 10 more people rushing in to "help" too. All you're doing could be feeding the opponent loot and points. Maybe it's smarter to cut your losses, prepare to defend other objectives or hit something else while the opponent's zerg is still busy. Anyway, you don't know what every player is doing exactly. You don't know what the best course of action would be. Players are not participating like you want them to, but they have no obligation to do so.

2024 series started with 6 roaming videos and some stream recordings as well:

Don't gaslight scouts, roamers and havoc groups. Splitting up and hitting multiple objectives, drawing more enemies away from their zerg than you'll be missing yourself is one of the best tactics to fight an opponent with numerical advantage. It's also much more interesting and rewarding to do than being a cog in a 1-5fps boonball fight that might or might not make any difference.

You're running around with ~50 players. I dare say this is a self-made problem.

In general, players are good at finding and pointing out problems, but bad at providing a solution or reaching a consensus about what should be done about it. A lot of balance updates feel like ANet's picking up a random idea from somewhere that might address a problem but wasn't thought through. Or acts oblivious to problems that are being pointed out. I'd love to get more insights into why some things were or weren't addressed in a certain way.

I'm active again, there's a couple of new videos and stream recordings on the channel, the most recent one:

I think the beauty of engi is that you have the freedom to build it as a one-weapon spec, as a 5 (or even more, if you consider the kits that don't really have weapon-like loadouts weapons) weapon spec. Or anything in-between. If you play it as 1-weapon, you indeed get only one weapon, but more utilities to make up for that. The more kits you play, the more options / "weapons" you have, but it becomes more difficult to make full use of them and you might like some utilities that have more impact "condensed" in a single skill use. This is what kept engi interesting for me since GW2's release. I like that it breaks the usual convention of two weapons somehow, similar to Elementalist, but in a more flexible way (there are the summoned weapons but they have a high CD). Having little (if you count holo forge) or no CD on weapon swaps also is a unique advantage of Engi, you can react more quickly and frequent when a fight's dynamics change. It's just a blast to play. tl;dr: Engi's amazing as it is.

Commander's log: "16th of February, 2024: We've reached the point of no return. WvW players are asking for a cash shop item that lets them revive to be usable in a PvP game mode. We can no longer keep the ship afloat."

Stat mixing was arguable much more important when there were less stat combinations and mostly 3-stat ones. It also tied into the old trait system that "attached" some of your overall stats to your traitlines, so for example you'd automatically spend some of your stat pool on 300 toughness when maxing a defensive traitline. I still mix and match me stuff to what exactly I want (from 3-4 stat combinations) and think some builds can benefit from that. For example cele builds that also use defensive traits + utilities would be much more dangerous when investing more into offense and still plenty hard to kill. However, many builds you can default to one combination without much drawback.

Even when I was new, which was more than 10 years ago, I had better things do than looking for characters running into walls. My main point is that tying the system to participation is a bad idea because the participation system is inaccurate to say the least. WvW is a complex game mode that allows you to play in various ways and not all are recognized by participation. So using that for judging activity would've probably kicked me a hundreds of times while trying to fight off multiple opponents in open field, or delaying attacks on a tower by deactivating siege, preventing it being built etc. It's fine to get a less rewards doing that, when things go bad (e.g. getting ganked before you can get a kill / cap an objective) or you're PPT "slacking" at duel spot for a while, but getting kicked for it would be a joke. We for sure don't need any more systems driving people to zerg for easy participation. Zerg play at prime time can make WvW literally unplayable (see this for example), having a couple of people in the map not being rallybots is the lesser evil imo.

Players automatically get kicked by being inactive. Not getting participation for 10min can happen during normal play (especially when defending, because often you can just stall without getting any kills). Don't enforce a certain way of playing WvW, blobbing is already encouraged enough.

Autos usually don't force it but when you cleanse stacking condis applied by autos will also be cleared. I think it would be fair to count the first 2-3sec of condi ticks as an approximation.

Most aren't very experienced, just like in sPvP really. You have to consider though that you meet the whole range of players in WvW, because there's no matchmaking based on individual performance. The challenge is usually not the same number of similarly skilled opponents (that's why people meet up to duel / GvG) but navigating the map, fighting outnumbered and making a difference where you can.

Granted there are a few absolutely delusional individuals in WvW, I've found sPvP'ers much more unsatisfying to deal with on average due to frequently inciting in-team conflict, giving up instantly when not being ahead for half a minute and generally taking themselves far too seriously. My block list remains empty when I'm roaming, I can't say the same for sPvP. And some WvW roamers are a joy to talk / interact with.

They generally don't revert changes, even when the previous implementation was working better. Or when X makes - among other things - Y overpowered, they nerf Y (which isn't the problem), then later nerf X, but don't undo the nerf to Y (which never needed adjustments). I rarely wish for ANet to balance anything anymore over worrying they'll "balance" it.

It's not a lot of work, but I was irritated by this too: I'm suddenly forced to engage in a game mode I don't enjoy much. Anet had figured out how not to do that in the previous expansions. Awful "stealth" mission Unskipable dialogue where my character talks about all the stuff I / they didn't ever do. And it didn't even feel like it's something that added to soto's story or was of any importance. GW1 had expansion-specific storylines that did that better. So if I'm ever going to get into other parts of the story, I'm now spoiled There are characters I think I'm supposed I should know / care about but I don't even know Mission following the NPCs bugging out because some enemy is stuck behind a bookshelf and they won't move on Skyscale part that gave me an introduction about the controls of the mount which were actually incorrect - what was supposed to be the ascend command was actually the fly downwards move so I had to figure out why I couldn't ascend Holo forge blowing up during unskippable cutscenes because why wouldn't it To add something positive: voice acting was good imo Overall it might have been the worst first impression I ever got from any newly added content in a game. I didn't take long but it was ridiculous how many moments of annoyance occurred during that time.

Kinda crazy to see the OS JP alive again after all this time.

A probably inexperienced, unaware and distracted player got hit by a glassy burst build, didn't react in any way and died. What's new or wrong with that?

WvW smallscale / roaming is a balance of imbalance - everything that does well is "broken" in some regard, and has been for years. The lines that weren't supposed to be crossed, where fight deciding effects were limited and would be applied deliberately in a much lower frequency, have gone out of the window over years. Every viable spec has "too much" of something: sustain, evasion, boons, pressure, burst, mobility, stealth, cc, conditions... take your pick. However, relatively, builds are still excelling in some of those areas and doing worse in others - there's variety, hard counters, soft counters and somewhat even matches between a lot of different builds. The burstiest specs still lack defense or mobility for example, a lot of the sustain builds aren't well suited to finish enemies off etc. Some of the most played specs are also the most overrated ones. A good player experienced in playing a good build still makes a force to be reckoned with, no matter the class (for especs at least, some cores are not up to speed). I won't argue it's perfect, but it's not as bad as some claim it to be. There's no "apex predator" in roaming with no downsides, only some builds that do better against more others. And a meta can keep those in check by adjusting and playing what works against them.

I've had far more positive interactions with enemies and allies in WvW than in sPvP. Off topic. I'm not a fan of the direction group play took in WvW either, but I still have fun roaming. I'm usually not wasting my time counting forum threads. In my experience the majority of what people call out as hacks aren't actually hacks. And there are exploits, but they aren't abused so much that it lessons my enjoyment of the game. That's why I asked OP "where" they are playing, I think I've seen about one hacker per 500-1000 hours of playing WvW. I don't deny they exist, but those encounters are so rare for me that I doubt that people claiming to constantly encounter hacks are actually witnessing hacks. Why cheat in WvW though? There are little rewards and if you wanna troll you can do it without cheats.

Are you playing on NA or EU? Which tier? There are cheaters, and some guilds are known for exploiting themselves into towers. But it isn't widespread. I've been from tier 5 to tier 1 on EU within the last half year or so and I think I've encountered a single actual hacker. Most of the times when someone claims another player is hacking they just don't know the trait / skill / rune etc. that is being used. Or it's just a bad connection causing temporary rubberbanding / desync. Without seeing a video I can't be sure of course, but this sounds like one of those situations. I get the frustration about known hackers / exploiters not getting banned, but honestly, as far as online multiplayer goes, GW2 doesn't have a lot of cheaters in WvW.

Now 19 (!) new videos since the last update here, including some duel sessions. Here's one of the recent ones: