Help me understand pips

[Khalisto.5780]

I just want to max out my pips, as a solo player a roam and flip camps basically, and I see it gets to a point it doesnt matter if I flip 3 or 8 camps, i get the same pips, I just want to understand it to farm max pips with less effort

[Xenesis.6389]

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Skirmish_reward_track

A good chunk of it comes from your rank and your warscore placement.

[Solvar.7953]

Unfortunately, not a lot can be done to change your warscore placement (or at least not individually).

And improving your rank is not a quick process.  You do at least get 1 extra pip for completing wood the previous week, so once you go down that path, keep that up.

There have been discussions that the pip system is fairly broken.  Maximizing pips with minimal effort is doing 1 activity every 5-10 minutes to keep your participation up, and then sit around between those events surfing the web or doing something else.

 

 

[Dawdler.8521]

The entire point of the skirmish rewards is that you can not farm it. You're just meant to play WvW "as designed" ie fight the enemy worlds. Its just passive income based on your WvW rank and in a small way the world score. All you have to do is maintain participation (ie do stuff). The more you play (ie rank up) the more you are rewarded.

In a bubble for someone coming from PvE this maybe doesnt make sense, but thats because the skirmish reward track was added after everything else. You "farm" WvW by action - getting bags from kills and objectives, hence why rewards was absolute dogshit compared to goldrain of PvE. It basicly still is with maybe the exception of drowning in mystic clovers thats absolutely worthless, might as well throw them away.

Edited January 18, 2023 by Dawdler.8521

[Gorani.7205]

12 hours ago, Khalisto.5780 said:

I just want to max out my pips, as a solo player a roam and flip camps basically, and I see it gets to a point it doesnt matter if I flip 3 or 8 camps, i get the same pips, I just want to understand it to farm max pips with less effort

Controllable factors (easy):
- Never drop below T3 participation. If you drop lower (by being AFK or not doing "events" in WvW) you won't get a tick reward of pips.
- +1 pip for having reached at least Wood Chest in the previous week. (so play a minimum each week, even if you have very little game time available)
- Don't log out "early". The first reward round never counts when entering WvW, meaning if you just go to WvW for 15 minutes, only the 2nd and 3rd tick count towards pip rewards. If you log out at the "14 minute mark", you will only get one reward tick. To get the most out of your game time, playing for one bigger chunk of time is better than two or three small chunks. And always log out just after you have received a tick reward
- +1/+3 for commanding a squad. (you have to change your play style a bit and gather at least 5 other people to join, because solo roaming can't earn you extra pips)
Controllable factors (hard):
- Total WvW rank adds additional pips, but it is very time consuming process to go beyond +3 although it can be sped up with boosters (food, guild boost, even weekends etc.)
Uncontrollable factors:
- War score placement: An individual player has to live with what your server achieves every week, being 1st, 2nd or 3rd.

[Solvar.7953]

One thing I do (to follow up on the timing) - I have several characters at the flax farm.  When I log in, I see how long is left in the current battle - if several minutes, I'll do more farming with other alts.  When it gets down to an increment of 5 (eg, 5, 10, 15, 20) minutes), then I hop in with my WvW character.  This should mean I join with <1 minute in the skirmish.

Ideally, you want to join with 1 second in the skirmish, but that would require very specific timing.

If you enter early (say 4 minutes left in the skirmish), you get no rewards for those 4 minutes, yet your participation still decays.

And I also try to leave right after the skirmish gives the rewards.  I usually do this by doing whatever objectives I want, and then maybe just hitting an owned tower of camp and gather materials - the timing on that is fairly predictable.

Also, at the end of the week, look where you are and how close/far to the next chest (presumably, that is what you care about) and make a decision - it may be that one more skirmish will get you the next chest, or it may be several more.  And the chest at the end of each tier is worth more, so while it may not be worth 3 skirmishes to get a non end chest, it might be to get one of the ones at the end of a tier.

 

[TheGrimm.5624]

On 1/17/2023 at 8:44 PM, Khalisto.5780 said:

I just want to max out my pips, as a solo player a roam and flip camps basically, and I see it gets to a point it doesnt matter if I flip 3 or 8 camps, i get the same pips, I just want to understand it to farm max pips with less effort

Farm WvW? If you don't mind, let's figure this out early, for what? I think I know the answer but might help in later game mode updates.

[Gehenna.3625]

On 1/18/2023 at 2:44 AM, Khalisto.5780 said:

I just want to max out my pips, as a solo player a roam and flip camps basically, and I see it gets to a point it doesnt matter if I flip 3 or 8 camps, i get the same pips, I just want to understand it to farm max pips with less effort

Flipping camps just means your participation clock gets reset but it also is WXP (World Experience). The reason that WXP is important because you'll gain ranks more quickly. Just capping camps though doesn't really advance your rank that quickly. Towers and Keeps give you much more WXP.

Ranks give you two things (beyond useless titles):

• Rank points that you can spend on WvW abilities
• Extra pip gain every 5 minutes.

So it's actually good to maximize your rank gain as much as possible in order to gain more pips in the future. So I stack the following to gain more WXP:

• Celebration booster or Birthday booster - these boosters gives 100% WvW rank gain. They cannot be used simultaneously.
• Ascended food like this - These foods also give an extra 10% WXP (not sure if the 5% bonus for all exp gain works for WvW)
• WXP Enrichtment (can be slotted in an ascended or legendary) amulet - This enrichment also gives an extra 10% WXP
• Guild Enhancement for WvW - This boost (if your guild has this) can give you up to 10% extra WXP gain.

Rank gain can be slow because you need to get rank 150 to get one more pip and that's the least amount of ranks you need to get to get another pip. And as already said, if you completed at least wood the week before you get 1 extra pip for that week.

1 pip extra may not sound like a lot perhaps, but since you get it every 5 mins. it does add up. But imo focusing on rank gain gets you more pips more quickly.

And hey, if you want to be a commander, there's pip rewards for that as well detailed on the wiki page in the first reply, but you'll need to get a tag first.

Edited January 19, 2023 by Gehenna.3625

[Khalisto.5780]

1 hour ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

Flipping camps just means your participation clock gets reset but it also is WXP (World Experience). The reason that WXP is important because you'll gain ranks more quickly. Just capping camps though doesn't really advance your rank that quickly. Towers and Keeps give you much more WXP.

Ranks give you two things (beyond useless titles):

• Rank points that you can spend on WvW abilities
• Extra pip gain every 5 minutes.

So it's actually good to maximize your rank gain as much as possible in order to gain more pips in the future. So I stack the following to gain more WXP:

• Celebration booster or Birthday booster - these boosters gives 100% WvW rank gain. They cannot be used simultaneously.
• Ascended food like this - These foods also give an extra 10% WXP (not sure if the 5% bonus for all exp gain works for WvW)
• WXP Enrichtment (can be slotted in an ascended or legendary) amulet - This enrichment also gives an extra 10% WXP
• Guild Enhancement for WvW - This boost (if your guild has this) can give you up to 10% extra WXP gain.

Rank gain can be slow because you need to get rank 150 to get one more pip and that's the least amount of ranks you need to get to get another pip. And as already said, if you completed at least wood the week before you get 1 extra pip for that week.

1 pip extra may not sound like a lot perhaps, but since you get it every 5 mins. it does add up. But imo focusing on rank gain gets you more pips more quickly.

And hey, if you want to be a commander, there's pip rewards for that as well detailed on the wiki page in the first reply, but you'll need to get a tag first.

I play on jq, which is crowded by asians and I'm in Brazil, so basically the server is mostly active when I'm sleeping, when I get to play server is always dead and even if I tag up ppl will just leave after 2 or 3 consecutive wipes, which happens a lot, so I'm more focused in a way i can do things alone. I'm seriously thinking in invest this time I'm spending on wvw to farm gold to transfer over to another server to get things done more easily.

[TheGrimm.5624]

2 hours ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

Flipping camps just means your participation clock gets reset but it also is WXP (World Experience). The reason that WXP is important because you'll gain ranks more quickly. Just capping camps though doesn't really advance your rank that quickly. Towers and Keeps give you much more WXP.

Ranks give you two things (beyond useless titles):

• Rank points that you can spend on WvW abilities
• Extra pip gain every 5 minutes.

So it's actually good to maximize your rank gain as much as possible in order to gain more pips in the future. So I stack the following to gain more WXP:

• Celebration booster or Birthday booster - these boosters gives 100% WvW rank gain. They cannot be used simultaneously.
• Ascended food like this - These foods also give an extra 10% WXP (not sure if the 5% bonus for all exp gain works for WvW)
• WXP Enrichtment (can be slotted in an ascended or legendary) amulet - This enrichment also gives an extra 10% WXP
• Guild Enhancement for WvW - This boost (if your guild has this) can give you up to 10% extra WXP gain.

Rank gain can be slow because you need to get rank 150 to get one more pip and that's the least amount of ranks you need to get to get another pip. And as already said, if you completed at least wood the week before you get 1 extra pip for that week.

1 pip extra may not sound like a lot perhaps, but since you get it every 5 mins. it does add up. But imo focusing on rank gain gets you more pips more quickly.

And hey, if you want to be a commander, there's pip rewards for that as well detailed on the wiki page in the first reply, but you'll need to get a tag first.

 

Well put and good information, +1.

[TheGrimm.5624]

On 1/17/2023 at 8:44 PM, Khalisto.5780 said:

I just want to max out my pips, as a solo player a roam and flip camps basically, and I see it gets to a point it doesnt matter if I flip 3 or 8 camps, i get the same pips, I just want to understand it to farm max pips with less effort

 

52 minutes ago, Khalisto.5780 said:

I play on jq, which is crowded by asians and I'm in Brazil, so basically the server is mostly active when I'm sleeping, when I get to play server is always dead and even if I tag up ppl will just leave after 2 or 3 consecutive wipes, which happens a lot, so I'm more focused in a way i can do things alone. I'm seriously thinking in invest this time I'm spending on wvw to farm gold to transfer over to another server to get things done more easily.

 

So are you trying to farm for least effort or feel your ineffective due to the population differences in the timezone? These are not quite the same thing.

On 1/18/2023 at 5:25 AM, Dawdler.8521 said:

The entire point of the skirmish rewards is that you can not farm it. You're just meant to play WvW "as designed" ie fight the enemy worlds. Its just passive income based on your WvW rank and in a small way the world score. All you have to do is maintain participation (ie do stuff). The more you play (ie rank up) the more you are rewarded.

In a bubble for someone coming from PvE this maybe doesnt make sense, but thats because the skirmish reward track was added after everything else. You "farm" WvW by action - getting bags from kills and objectives, hence why rewards was absolute dogshit compared to goldrain of PvE. It basicly still is with maybe the exception of drowning in mystic clovers thats absolutely worthless, might as well throw them away.

 

Would agree here, the best thing is to just play the game mode. WvW is not that rewarding. Which it might draw more if it was as we have seen during Call To War events alone. To be fair to previous replies in other threads, yes its an easier place to get Leggo armor but its not that rewarding compared to sPvP or PvE as other examples.

[Dayra.7405]

On 1/18/2023 at 3:39 PM, Gorani.7205 said:

War score placement: An individual player has to live with what your server achieves every week, being 1st, 2nd or 3rd.

Most server have a time pattern when they are more and when they are less aktive. Resulting in match time pattern when which server is leading or not. If you are able to adapt to this pattern …

[Tryfan.1457]

On 1/18/2023 at 7:19 PM, Solvar.7953 said:

One thing I do (to follow up on the timing) - I have several characters at the flax farm.  When I log in, I see how long is left in the current battle - if several minutes, I'll do more farming with other alts.  When it gets down to an increment of 5 (eg, 5, 10, 15, 20) minutes), then I hop in with my WvW character.  This should mean I join with <1 minute in the skirmish.

Ideally, you want to join with 1 second in the skirmish, but that would require very specific timing.

If you enter early (say 4 minutes left in the skirmish), you get no rewards for those 4 minutes, yet your participation still decays.

 

 

Just to follow up on this, because there is some incorrect information being presented here and further up in the thread: you ALWAYS miss getting pips on the first server tick, regardless of how much time is on the timer or how much time was on the timer when you logged out.

 

However, that said, you can get around this by changing maps once you're in wvw. If you change maps, you will ALWAYS get pips on the first tick of skirmish rollover regardless of the fact you just came in.

 

So, when you are going into WvW, first go into a map you don't actually want to be in, and then immediately switch to the map you actually were coming for. You will get your pips as soon as the skirmish tick happens even if you have only been in WvW for a few seconds. (Edit: assuming you have the participation)

Edited January 20, 2023 by Tryfan.1457

[Gotejjeken.1267]

On 1/18/2023 at 5:25 AM, Dawdler.8521 said:

It basicly still is with maybe the exception of drowning in mystic clovers thats absolutely worthless, might as well throw them away.

 

Wat

[Gehenna.3625]

18 hours ago, Khalisto.5780 said:

I play on jq, which is crowded by asians and I'm in Brazil, so basically the server is mostly active when I'm sleeping, when I get to play server is always dead and even if I tag up ppl will just leave after 2 or 3 consecutive wipes, which happens a lot, so I'm more focused in a way i can do things alone. I'm seriously thinking in invest this time I'm spending on wvw to farm gold to transfer over to another server to get things done more easily.

I understand. So as long as you haven't transfered, focus on those boosts. Get cooking, so you can make those foods yourself and if you have any, use metabolic primers . It makes food you eat last for 12 hours. Also, here's a page that might interest you: 

 https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World_Experience#World_ranks

Particulary the sections WXP acquisition, WXP modifiers and WXP upgrades.

Also take a look at the Karmic Converter and the Ley-Energy Matter Converter because they can have Box of WvW Supplies sometimes, which can give you an instant boost to your rank and some other WvW related goodies.

And, well, I'm mostly a solo player, but I do carry around siege schematics which can be used for tower caps (rams/catas). You can cap towers with 2 other random players present. So even when you play solo, you might run into a couple of others that are like that or help others in capping a tower. For that, it's useful to increase your supply capacity. Up to you. 

But yeah it sounds that you might be better off on another NA server.

[Gehenna.3625]

3 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

 

Wat

There are the following possibilities:

• They have all the legendaries they need
• They are not interested in legendaries at all
• They made a mistake and meant something else
• It's a comment by Dawdler 🤣

Maybe it's a mix of some of them.

[Luthan.5236]

For low effort: Stay on a borderland and recap a camp every 10 minutes. That of course will keep only the participation high to get the regular pips. On the other hand: For the ranking to increase a lot to gain the additional pips ... it needs a ton of grind. Probably mainly playing WvW as main game mode - and that a lot.

Maxing all the chests during a week is definitely harder than maxing the PvP chests during a season. Cause of the way this is set up in WvW. (Trying to reward long-term players that play much over a long time.) Without the additional pips that high rankers get ... can already feel pretty grindy. (I usually get only the first one for commitment +1 pip in following week. Then ignoring those chests since I already have enough tickets and glory shards from PvP to get legendary armor all sets from there if needed lol.)

Edited January 20, 2023 by Luthan.5236

[Dawdler.8521]

2 hours ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

There are the following possibilities:

• They have all the legendaries they need
• They are not interested in legendaries at all
• They made a mistake and meant something else
• It's a comment by Dawdler 🤣

Maybe it's a mix of some of them.

Why wouldnt you have all the legendaries?

You're not a true WvWer unless you're really into PvE.

[Khalisto.5780]

On 1/18/2023 at 11:19 PM, Solvar.7953 said:

One thing I do (to follow up on the timing) - I have several characters at the flax farm.  When I log in, I see how long is left in the current battle - if several minutes, I'll do more farming with other alts.  When it gets down to an increment of 5 (eg, 5, 10, 15, 20) minutes), then I hop in with my WvW character.  This should mean I join with <1 minute in the skirmish.

Ideally, you want to join with 1 second in the skirmish, but that would require very specific timing.

If you enter early (say 4 minutes left in the skirmish), you get no rewards for those 4 minutes, yet your participation still decays.

And I also try to leave right after the skirmish gives the rewards.  I usually do this by doing whatever objectives I want, and then maybe just hitting an owned tower of camp and gather materials - the timing on that is fairly predictable.

Also, at the end of the week, look where you are and how close/far to the next chest (presumably, that is what you care about) and make a decision - it may be that one more skirmish will get you the next chest, or it may be several more.  And the chest at the end of each tier is worth more, so while it may not be worth 3 skirmishes to get a non end chest, it might be to get one of the ones at the end of a tier.

 

i like this, how long i can carry on with this without playing wvw, like i could cap 2 camps to get 100% participation, the timer on those actions are 10 min, so, i could set a 4 mins or 4:30 timer to get back next skirmish. Does those 10 min count only when I'm in a border? (i think this is the case)

 

Imma go try this while farming that domain of kourna camp

 

I tell you how it went after trying it for 1 hour.

[Khalisto.5780]

Thx for the help everyone

 

Right now I can semi afk the pips, i just flip 2 camps, set a 10 min timer, go read manga or listen music, after reading a chapter or after every song ends I move my character a bit to not get dc'd. When the timer bips i just flip 2 more camps and do it all over again.

 

It kinda bugs me the fact I have to play almost 3 hours daily to max out those pips weekly.

 

Also the maguuma weeks I think it's a better time investment learning raids to get the other legendary ring I'm missing

[Gorani.7205]

2 hours ago, Khalisto.5780 said:

Thx for the help everyone

I am glad we could help you, but it makes me extremely sad for us WvW players, casuals and hardcore alike, that you seem to be zero interested to participate in the game mode many of us like and love (despite all the troubles with it and the lack of rewards for our time and soul invested). 😢

[Khalisto.5780]

4 hours ago, Gorani.7205 said:

I am glad we could help you, but it makes me extremely sad for us WvW players, casuals and hardcore alike, that you seem to be zero interested to participate in the game mode many of us like and love (despite all the troubles with it and the lack of rewards for our time and soul invested). 😢

I have played wvw golden era 2013-2015 pre hot, played like hardore 50+ hours weekly. Then o realized wvw is a number game, whoever keeps more active players 24/7 wins, and little to nothing can be done about it. Some ppl have fun with the game mode even knowing that, i just dont.

 

Too bad there wasnt this legendary stuff back then, it would be way better getting this stuff when I actually had fun with the game mode.

 

Unless something meaningful changes, wvw will be my sad time to get shinnies

[LSD.4673]

7 hours ago, Khalisto.5780 said:

Thx for the help everyone

 

Right now I can semi afk the pips, i just flip 2 camps, set a 10 min timer, go read manga or listen music, after reading a chapter or after every song ends I move my character a bit to not get dc'd. When the timer bips i just flip 2 more camps and do it all over again.

 

What a waste of electricity. Might as well just pay for whatever you're farming. Or y'know, play the game.

[Khalisto.5780]

56 minutes ago, LSD.4673 said:

What a waste of electricity. Might as well just pay for whatever you're farming. Or y'know, play the game.

Id gladly play the game "as intended" if it was idealy a 1h daily farm to get those pips maxed out, but no, it's almost 3x this time, yeah, of course im gonna cheese it

[TheGrimm.5624]

Well now we have the building block on how to dismantle the pip system. So when do the threads start about the rebuild including more active game play? This is how we ended up with outnumbered means 'abandon ship' versus 'hold what you have'.

Still sticking with a new system including a buy in option with costs and time limits to complete activities. Aka bounties. More risk more reward. WvW currencies needed to do the buy ins and payouts include return on that, and other WvW materials, general mats and coin. Mats and such to continue the War effort. All of that multiplied by risk/reward/time limit. There should be paths to success but also allow for failures but risk is up to the player. That way min effort WvW is not rewarding. Key is it needs to be group size neutral so it doesn't favor zerg,warband,havoc or roamer. So maybe on kill quests its awarded to the death blow versus everyone so that a zerg can't auto-complete a quest together as they all kill one player. Taking a keep could count to a group so that it doesn't favor roamers and such. Maybe participation is still a thing but only while you have at least 1 thru 'x' bounties active.

Again we need to get thru WR to get to what comes after.