WvW perspective from a new player

[Curennos.9307]

Hello! 

I recently started jumping into WvW as I have some friends that do it and seeing their in-game location be something-something borderlands was enough to eventually make interested (also, my favorite build support specter, got some changes while I was taking a break from the game and I wanted a group pvp scenario I could try 'em out in).

Group Play

I just wanted to start this off on a decently positive note - I played my specter in a small group for a bit and had a lovely time. I hadn't the foggiest what was going on, but I mashed scepter/pistol 3 a lot and died a few times from jumping off a cliff 'cause I don't have the warclaw yet and was trying to follow the group, but gliding was apparently disabled in that area. Also, the speed buff I get from being near a warclaw is a nice touch, I apprentice that someone put thought into how to treat players coming in late. I still haven't got the darn cat yet, I just need to take a keep and buy a few things for the achieve. I'm sure there are issues but for now I'm not experienced enough to notice them. I'm told, however, that I should start shouting 'boonball OP!' or something to that effect when engaging. Also, I have fought one celestial scourge and I already hate them.

The warclaw

Okay, it looks cool, and I can certainly appreciate the function it fills similar to PvE - equalizing travel times to a certain extent and adding another layer of interaction between players. That said, it seems way too strong. It doesn't feel like people are encouraged to actually fight, but rather try to bait the other person into getting bored first. The thing has...What was it, 7-8k HP and CCs the rider if the mount 'dies' while active? This serves...Well, it serves one purpose that I do appreciate - makes it harder for super-power-spike specs to instantly nuke someone from stealth. That said, it seems to have a few issues.

It's too durable and isn't punishing enough if you get knocked off it- the thing has...I think two? Evades (which are very subtly animated, giving the dodge more of an animation would be good) and a chunk of health, and the rider 'only' gets CC'd if knocked off. Some evades and an 80% of a thief as a meat shield is, IMO, well worth the knockdown that you can (I assume, I don't have one so I can't test >_>) just spending a stunbreak to get out of. It seems disproportionately rewarding in combat and seems designed to where players are encouraged to play chicken pirate ship. I'm aware the warclaw gets a forced dismount skill, but that looks like it's only on hit, and the thing can evade. Unless the lance can't be evaded, I'm not optimistic this will improve.

Lastly, for the warclaw, it's too frickn fast! Multiple times I've tried to steal -> cloak and dagger into it, or heartseeker, or something and it just plain 'ol misses. I'm here to fight other players, not their mount. I can't imagine trying to deal with this kind of thing on a not-thief class with a melee weapon...Except if you have something that's 1200+ range like longbow, rifle, or something. Anyway. Unpleasant. Iunno, I feel like the evade skill should also dismount at the end of it or something and the health needs to be decreased. As someone who played both a thief and slower specs in open world, I don't want to deprive the slower classes of getting around a bit faster (and thus getting into fights faster, which is the whole purpose), but I don't like how the warclaw stands between players and getting into combat.

That all said, I like how (relatively) easy the 'claw is to get. I just need to take a keep (something I assume happens daily) and I should be good.

Reflect/projectile hate uptime

Special mention for this. Somehow WvW strikes the balance of there being huge amounts of reflect/projectile block, but also a large amount of PBAoE to where I sometimes just kinda have to stand there because my options are 1) Shoot myself in the foot via reflects or 2) Gap close and immediately implode from the amount of AoE muck I step in. Projectile reflect being 'negate all projectiles for a duration, potentially across an entire area or on multiple people' seems a tad too much of a reward for a single button press.

Class balance

Oh my god. I've only done sPvP up until now, but goodness fiddlefracknickelsticken gracious how are you people still sane. Everything is broken. You would think that there'd be a 'if everything is broken, nothing is',  but no. It turns out anet has managed to achieve a unique kind of situation where everything is broken in a myriad of different ways, so instead of having soft counters you have hard counters to everything, and if you hard counter someone you win. If they hard counter you, they win. There appears to be very little in between. Damage is somehow sky-high but also you can barely manage to tickle a celestial necro with protection.

Also, there are boons everywhere and everyone is super mobile for some reason. This seems to be much the same issue as spvp, where 5/10 games are blowouts (for outnumbered reasons), 4/10 are losses because of build, and maybe 1/10 are actually enjoyable fights, win or lose. Very unpleasant. And, much like spvp, there seems to be some sort of insistence that I suffer through 9 bad games/fights first for every good one, instead of just focusing on making the good one as common as possible.

Final thoughts

It feels like the effectiveness of concentration could be reduced by 25-50% overall without much issue, while leaving base durations alone. I'm not gonna pretend I have a super duper informed opinion or solution for this beyond 'a whole lot of things are very bad, also group play was fun for the hour or so I did it'. I will also admit I am mostly a thief player (specter in groups, DrD for now in small group/roaming) and we have our own broken things, but goodness gracious. I'm torn between dedicating my life to this game mode or walking off into the wilderness to become a pve map currency grinder for the rest of my days while I pay the nearest asura therapist hundreds of gold to help process my trauma. The asura therapist is probably going to be required regardless, but we'll see.

 

Anyway. Here's hoping it gets better as I get more experience and stuff. Keep in mind this is first impressions, written as-is - may it stand as a reminder to my future self, I guess. I'm interested to see how wrong or right I was, and if I'm still doing this a few months from now.

For the time being, at least, looking forward to spamming scepter/pistol 3 on all of you. If there are any support spectres out there, godspeed.

[TheGrimm.5624]

8 minutes ago, Curennos.9307 said:

Hello! 

I recently started jumping into WvW as I have some friends that do it and seeing their in-game location be something-something borderlands was enough to eventually make interested (also, my favorite build support specter, got some changes while I was taking a break from the game and I wanted a group pvp scenario I could try 'em out in).

Group Play

I just wanted to start this off on a decently positive note - I played my specter in a small group for a bit and had a lovely time. I hadn't the foggiest what was going on, but I mashed scepter/pistol 3 a lot and died a few times from jumping off a cliff 'cause I don't have the warclaw yet and was trying to follow the group, but gliding was apparently disabled in that area. Also, the speed buff I get from being near a warclaw is a nice touch, I apprentice that someone put thought into how to treat players coming in late. I still haven't got the darn cat yet, I just need to take a keep and buy a few things for the achieve. I'm sure there are issues but for now I'm not experienced enough to notice them. I'm told, however, that I should start shouting 'boonball OP!' or something to that effect when engaging. Also, I have fought one celestial scourge and I already hate them.

The warclaw

Okay, it looks cool, and I can certainly appreciate the function it fills similar to PvE - equalizing travel times to a certain extent and adding another layer of interaction between players. That said, it seems way too strong. It doesn't feel like people are encouraged to actually fight, but rather try to bait the other person into getting bored first. The thing has...What was it, 7-8k HP and CCs the rider if the mount 'dies' while active? This serves...Well, it serves one purpose that I do appreciate - makes it harder for super-power-spike specs to instantly nuke someone from stealth. That said, it seems to have a few issues.

It's too durable and isn't punishing enough if you get knocked off it- the thing has...I think two? Evades (which are very subtly animated, giving the dodge more of an animation would be good) and a chunk of health, and the rider 'only' gets CC'd if knocked off. Some evades and an 80% of a thief as a meat shield is, IMO, well worth the knockdown that you can (I assume, I don't have one so I can't test >_>) just spending a stunbreak to get out of. It seems disproportionately rewarding in combat and seems designed to where players are encouraged to play chicken pirate ship. I'm aware the warclaw gets a forced dismount skill, but that looks like it's only on hit, and the thing can evade. Unless the lance can't be evaded, I'm not optimistic this will improve.

Lastly, for the warclaw, it's too frickn fast! Multiple times I've tried to steal -> cloak and dagger into it, or heartseeker, or something and it just plain 'ol misses. I'm here to fight other players, not their mount. I can't imagine trying to deal with this kind of thing on a not-thief class with a melee weapon...Except if you have something that's 1200+ range like longbow, rifle, or something. Anyway. Unpleasant. Iunno, I feel like the evade skill should also dismount at the end of it or something and the health needs to be decreased. As someone who played both a thief and slower specs in open world, I don't want to deprive the slower classes of getting around a bit faster (and thus getting into fights faster, which is the whole purpose), but I don't like how the warclaw stands between players and getting into combat.

That all said, I like how (relatively) easy the 'claw is to get. I just need to take a keep (something I assume happens daily) and I should be good.

Reflect/projectile hate uptime

Special mention for this. Somehow WvW strikes the balance of there being huge amounts of reflect/projectile block, but also a large amount of PBAoE to where I sometimes just kinda have to stand there because my options are 1) Shoot myself in the foot via reflects or 2) Gap close and immediately implode from the amount of AoE muck I step in. Projectile reflect being 'negate all projectiles for a duration, potentially across an entire area or on multiple people' seems a tad too much of a reward for a single button press.

Class balance

Oh my god. I've only done sPvP up until now, but goodness fiddlefracknickelsticken gracious how are you people still sane. Everything is broken. You would think that there'd be a 'if everything is broken, nothing is',  but no. It turns out anet has managed to achieve a unique kind of situation where everything is broken in a myriad of different ways, so instead of having soft counters you have hard counters to everything, and if you hard counter someone you win. If they hard counter you, they win. There appears to be very little in between. Damage is somehow sky-high but also you can barely manage to tickle a celestial necro with protection.

Also, there are boons everywhere and everyone is super mobile for some reason. This seems to be much the same issue as spvp, where 5/10 games are blowouts (for outnumbered reasons), 4/10 are losses because of build, and maybe 1/10 are actually enjoyable fights, win or lose. Very unpleasant. And, much like spvp, there seems to be some sort of insistence that I suffer through 9 bad games/fights first for every good one, instead of just focusing on making the good one as common as possible.

Final thoughts

It feels like the effectiveness of concentration could be reduced by 25-50% overall without much issue, while leaving base durations alone. I'm not gonna pretend I have a super duper informed opinion or solution for this beyond 'a whole lot of things are very bad, also group play was fun for the hour or so I did it'. I will also admit I am mostly a thief player (specter in groups, DrD for now in small group/roaming) and we have our own broken things, but goodness gracious. I'm torn between dedicating my life to this game mode or walking off into the wilderness to become a pve map currency grinder for the rest of my days while I pay the nearest asura therapist hundreds of gold to help process my trauma. The asura therapist is probably going to be required regardless, but we'll see.

 

Anyway. Here's hoping it gets better as I get more experience and stuff. Keep in mind this is first impressions, written as-is - may it stand as a reminder to my future self, I guess. I'm interested to see how wrong or right I was, and if I'm still doing this a few months from now.

For the time being, at least, looking forward to spamming scepter/pistol 3 on all of you. If there are any support spectres out there, godspeed.

I will leave the rest of this alone since, as you stated this a new player experience. So first off, welcome to the Mist War! If you do decide to stick around, please do revisit this post and pass on your own thoughts about your initial thoughts after you have joined us for a couple of months. One thing I will be curious about, as most of us seem to go thru, is after getting the Warclaw how slow you find it while using it. 🙂 Till then good hunting!

[Custodio.6134]

17 minutes ago, Curennos.9307 said:

It doesn't feel like people are encouraged to actually fight, but rather try to bait the other person into getting bored first.

The warclaw doesn´t make any difference on that matter. It´s the willingness of the people you encounter. If they want to fight, they will definitely dismount in order to pre-stack buffs and start an engage. Both, engaging and being engaged while on a mount comes with severe disadvantages, mostly the lack of boons, and the CC applied to you when getting dismounted by another player. Also: "just using a stunbreak to get out  of it" is quite a massive understatement. your stunbreak-options are limited, you will usually have one single stunbreak yourself (if you have one even), and your firebrand in a squad-setup will have a maximum of 4 for you. with frequent CC being applied in large groups, every single stunbreak counts, and it is not worth it to intentionally make a move (giving the enemy an opportunity to get "free" CC by dismounting you) that will require you to burn one of your valuable stunbreaks. 

 

17 minutes ago, Curennos.9307 said:

pecial mention for this. Somehow WvW strikes the balance of there being huge amounts of reflect/projectile block, but also a large amount of PBAoE to where I sometimes just kinda have to stand there because my options are 1) Shoot myself in the foot via reflects or 2) Gap close and immediately implode from the amount of AoE muck I step in. Projectile reflect being 'negate all projectiles for a duration, potentially across an entire area or on multiple people' seems a tad too much of a reward for a single button press.

This unfortunately is subject to profession-design, and not a by default a result of WvW itself. And making projectiles more effective would require massive overhauls of especially firebrand, but other professions as well. You are also not even remotely locked into the 2 options you mentioned ("shooting yourself in the foot" and "melee-engaging"), every meta-DPS profession designed for zerging mostly deals damage with ground-targeted effects, that cannot be reflected (as they are not projectiles). 

 

17 minutes ago, Curennos.9307 said:

Oh my god. I've only done sPvP up until now, but goodness fiddlefracknickelsticken gracious how are you people still sane.

Why are you comparing sPvP to WvW in the first place? Not only does WvW have a different fight-dynamic based on the group-size, even the skill-balancing is different to sPvP in some scenarios. Yes, both modes are PvP-modes, but they play out fundamentally different. 

 

Edited October 2, 2023 by Custodio.6134

[kash.9213]

Before Warclaw, you might have had an alright time with map travel on a thief if you dedicated a slot or could switch builds smoothly and you still might think about dedicating a template to it. A lot of people were at a disadvantage, not so much in the sense of class to class balance, but in how fast you can get to something to benefit from events or whatever.

Warclaw isn't super hard to catch and kill if you really want someone off of it. The biggest hurdle is how much do you care.

Ya projectile hate can get stifling but it's sort of a card deck game where we fill out slots based on what we think we know of a server or from experience with a matchup. We're all hoping to trend towards an advantage for a while. 

Perception of class balance will be partly accurate but also skewed and confounded by what you're chosen role and goals are compared to others.

Boon balls can stifle a map, but then is one side of that map trying to square up blob to blob when they just don't have it right now and will they figure out a way to dismantle or murder key players or parts of a composition? 

All kind of valid takes but have to temper them a bit with what the game mode has coagulated into and who's in a matchup. 

Edited October 2, 2023 by kash.9213

[Curennos.9307]

52 minutes ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

I will leave the rest of this alone since, as you stated this a new player experience. So first off, welcome to the Mist War! If you do decide to stick around, please do revisit this post and pass on your own thoughts about your initial thoughts after you have joined us for a couple of months. One thing I will be curious about, as most of us seem to go thru, is after getting the Warclaw how slow you find it while using it. 🙂 Till then good hunting!

Appreciated, thanks! 😄 Hoping folks take this for what it is - I do want to look back on this a few months from now and see how my perspective has changed. My brain is half necro, half thief, so I am sure I can muster up both the proper appreciation and exasperation at its speed (and lackthereof) at the same time.

50 minutes ago, Custodio.6134 said:

The warclaw doesn´t make any difference on that matter. It´s the willingness of the people you encounter. If they want to fight, they will definitely dismount in order to pre-stack buffs and start an engage. Both, engaging and being engaged while on a mount comes with severe disadvantages, mostly the lack of boons, and the CC applied to you when getting dismounted by another player. Also: "just using a stunbreak to get out  of it" is quite a massive understatement. your stunbreak-options are limited, you will usually have one single stunbreak yourself (if you have one even), and your firebrand in a squad-setup will have a maximum of 4 for you. with frequent CC being applied in large groups, every single stunbreak counts, and it is not worth it to intentionally make a move (giving the enemy an opportunity to get "free" CC by dismounting you) that will require you to burn one of your valuable stunbreaks. 

Fair. I was mostly referring to it in the context of roaming, since I don't have one yet in group play and I haven't managed to find a significantly large group to join yet - oddly enough the tags were just taking a break when I popped in, so I missed the big groups. Pretty much the same answer for your next quote as well- I was roaming-ish(small scale?), and there was still a lot of reflects/PBAoE. Maybe I just happened to run into a lot of eles or something though, who knows.

58 minutes ago, Custodio.6134 said:

Why are you comparing sPvP to WvW in the first place? Not only does WvW have a different fight-dynamic based on the group-size, even the skill-balancing is different to sPvP in some scenarios. Yes, both modes are PvP-modes, but they play out fundamentally different. 

That's the point I was making, yeah. My lack of xp with all the stuff going on in WvW- the tooltips are different, the boons are different, the gear is different. Me taking my first bite of WvW content.

1 hour ago, kash.9213 said:

Before Warclaw, you might have had an alright time with map travel on a thief if you dedicated a slot or could switch builds smoothly and you still might think about dedicating a template to it. A lot of people were at a disadvantage, not so much in the sense of class to class balance, but in how fast you can get to something to benefit from events or whatever.

Warclaw isn't super hard to catch and kill if you really want someone off of it. The biggest hurdle is how much do you care.

Ya projectile hate can get stifling but it's sort of a card deck game where we fill out slots based on what we think we know of a server or from experience with a matchup. We're all hoping to trend towards an advantage for a while. 

Perception of class balance will be partly accurate but also skewed and confounded by what you're chosen role and goals are compared to others.

Boon balls can stifle a map, but then is one side of that map trying to square up blob to blob when they just don't have it right now and will they figure out a way to dismantle or murder key players or parts of a composition? 

All kind of valid takes but have to temper them a bit with what the game mode has coagulated into and who's in a matchup. 

I can def appreciate the warclaw in that capacity - one of the main reasons I've never really gotten into WvW before is the travel time - I want to fight people and I want to fight them as fast as possible, not spend 10 minutes in Cardio Simular 2023 for every 1 minute of head bashing. I wanna fight people who also wanna fight - but it's still pretty bamboozling when I can just fail to hit someone using a skill into steal. Maybe I got the timing wrong xD

Thank for the responses so far 😄

[Loke.1429]

1 hour ago, Curennos.9307 said:

Class balance

Oh my god. I've only done sPvP up until now, but goodness fiddlefracknickelsticken gracious how are you people still sane. Everything is broken. You would think that there'd be a 'if everything is broken, nothing is',  but no. It turns out anet has managed to achieve a unique kind of situation where everything is broken in a myriad of different ways, so instead of having soft counters you have hard counters to everything, and if you hard counter someone you win. If they hard counter you, they win. There appears to be very little in between. Damage is somehow sky-high but also you can barely manage to tickle a celestial necro with protection.

This is a good observation. The only thing I'd like to add / correct is that defensive stats and builds can be quite overpowered, because they reduced the damage scaling on very many skills (making it more friendly to beginners). The extra damage you get from offensive stats isnt really enough to justify them many times anymore. Many (broken) builds can have bursts without much offensive stats (and they were already there or gradually added after the damage reductions). So yeah these have damage sky-high compared to what they should, but there are also many builds that should have higher damage for how fragile and bad they are.

Edited October 2, 2023 by Loke.1429

[Curennos.9307]

4 minutes ago, Loke.1429 said:

This is a good observation. The only thing I'd like to add / correct is that defensive stats and builds can be quite overpowered, because they reduced the damage scaling on very many skills (making it more friendly to beginners). The extra damage you get from offensive stats isnt really enough to justify them many times anymore. Many (broken) builds can have bursts without much offensive stats (and they were already there or gradually added after the damage reductions). So yeah these have damage sky-high compared to what they should, but there are also many builds that should have higher damage for how fragile and bad they are.

I do need to get my grubby mitts on some cleansing sigils - I'm used to sPvP where I don't have to do anything to get 'em, and now I discover that they're actually crafted. Stuff's wild. I keep forgetting that energy sigils are nerfed in spvp and in wvw weapon swapping gives a ton of endurance back??? Like magic. Sorcery. Witchcraft. I definitely do have some build stuff to sort out though, and I may need to set aside a build template for a glassier setup to swap too just in case - though maybe condi thief would be better for dealing with those maxed out toughness setups. I guess I'll find out!

[ShadowKatt.6740]

19 hours ago, Curennos.9307 said:

but goodness fiddlefracknickelsticken gracious how are you people still sane. 

That's the neat part: We're not.

I've actually been struggling to get into WvW as well. I'm a squishy mesmer and I'm absolutely garbage at pvp. I'm also not the greatest team player; my general version of being a team player is being self-sufficient enough to not be a liability to the group. And when you said that WvW is broken, woof, I felt that. Especially....

19 hours ago, Curennos.9307 said:

if you hard counter someone you win. If they hard counter you, they win. There appears to be very little in between.

This is what I struggle with the most. NOw granted, as I said, I don't PvP. I'm not used to fighting other players and I'm not used to dueling people. THAT BEING SAID, the idea of a DUEL is that you trade blows back and forth. But you don't actually "Duel" in WvW. No, you hard stun with usually two or three different condtions so they can't be cleansed and then just murder them on the spot while they can't fight back. This is something I struggle with every time I log in. NOw I'm a mesmer, so even if I am stunned I have escapes, but it doesn't matter. If you try to run, they chase you down. If you try to fight they stun and kill you. Unless you're running the same build as them and NOW it's a different game. Now it's a quick draw; queue the tumbleweed and see who can stun first for the win, and the loser gets to go back to spawn and run all the way back. So the ONLY gameplay that's really viable at all is just mobbing up in the zerg and doing....

 

19 hours ago, Curennos.9307 said:

I hadn't the foggiest what was going on, but I mashed scepter/pistol 3 a lot and died a few times from jumping off a cliff 'cause I don't have the warclaw yet and was trying to follow the group, but gliding was apparently disabled in that area.

Yeah, I'm with you there. I have no idea what i'm doing most of the time. I just follow the group, attack what they attack, and usually flee when we mash two zergs together because I know what's happening if I get in the middle of that. It's worth noting a couple things. Firstly, most of the time when you see a zerg, there's usually a discord server associated with it with a live chat of what's going on. Or Teamspeak or skype or whatever. The point is that there's usually a LOT of communication going on in the background that you neither see nor have any clue about. Good zergs with dedicated teams will sometimes have a shot caller, so the commander (Or Catmander) will lead and the shot-caller will shout orders. But if you're not in on the conversation then you will forever be lost until you learn to think like they think.

And as for the warclaw, yeah, your warclaw isn't going to save you from cliffs. This isn't PvE. If your warclaw goes splat, you splat with it. Just forewarning you. No warclaw cliff diving...unless it's into actual water.

[KingHeaven.4590]

Nice to hear your thoughts and comments!  Welcome to the Big Dance.

  Although I appreciate your critical thinking on the game mechanics, probably comes from playing PvP - I would suggest not to focus too much on that.  Basically unless you work for ANET, you're going to have no control over the play balancing lol.  So it's better in my opinion to just accept things as they are, rather than constantly beat your head against a brick wall trying to change things, that everyone else is just going to argue with you about and ANET will never take anyone's suggestions anyways lmao.

  Vent posting on here is a good idea and that works too.  Again, you gotta find a way to have fun with the game mode otherwise it'll be a constant pain for you.  Depending on which class you play, you'll always find reasons on why your class should be buffed and the other classes should be nerfed.  Feel free to post here but ultimately, it's up to the ANET to figure all that stuff out.  

  As for the Warclaw, once you ride it, you'll wish it had a lot more health.  20+ players jumping on you as you run by and you're insta-dead.  haha.

      Relax a bit, don't overthink it.  Just find a group that's fun to run with and a server that plays the style you like and everything will be gravy.  Cheers.

 

 

[Fruit.7624]

Although I don't agree with 100% of what OP says ( cause he's new and lacks experience/ knowledge ) it is also soooooo sad that a new player like OP has a better understanding of the gamemode than 50% of wvw players.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

once you come to terms with the broken-ness and find your place in the mode, you'll realize that you can't get a bigger high anywhere else

[Chiral.8915]

1 hour ago, Deadhead.6947 said:

Although I don't agree with 100% of what OP says ( cause he's new and lacks experience/ knowledge ) it is also soooooo sad that a new player like OP has a better understanding of the gamemode than 50% of wvw players.

Except that he doesn't. Other than the comments about "boon ball", everything he's mentioning is related to roaming which is (sorry it's true) a minor part of WvW. 

[Fruit.7624]

1 hour ago, Chiral.8915 said:

Except that he doesn't. Other than the comments about "boon ball", everything he's mentioning is related to roaming which is (sorry it's true) a minor part of WvW. 

Honestly dude, i used to hold a very similar opinion..
I used to think the reason ANET doesn't make any effort to balance/adjust small scale fights is because the overall majority of people engage with WvW by zerging, and hence they only worry about zerg meta, and most if not all changes in WvW are usually aimed at large scale fights where people run meta builds, and there is a clear structure to the squad with people covering boons/cleanses/strips/damage/heals etc...

But the truth is that the people who run meta builds and organized squads in voice are not the majority of players in WvW... And most of total gameplay during single 1 week matchup in WvW is not zerging with meta builds either...

Sure, they can have a 50 man squad and at first glance it looks massive, but most servers ( at least in EU ) have 2, maybe 3 commanders on the very very stacked links, who can pull off numbers like this spread on different maps...aaand server/link active WvW players are usually much more than that.
Just think about how often those commanders have issues moving their squads to other maps, because of a queue. That queue is usually not generated by a friendly squad of 50 players on that map, but its usually cloud/pugs/roamers who take up the majority of slots on a map.

The majority of players in wvw either run around alone ( cause they are pugs/pvers ) and flip camps/dolyaks for that sweet sweet participation, or they join open tags which in 90% of cases dont require any sort of meta builds because they usually aim at PPTing / clouding .. 
Those people , like it or not, can be considered roamers.. or are the very least are engaging in gameplay that can be considered roaming..
Yes they arent running a roaming build and repping a roaming guild, and they wont siege and BM you to no end if you dare /laugh  at them..But they arent zerging with meta builds either.
Most of  what happens in WvW falls under those circumstances - smaller fights around camps/sentries/shrines/around SMC/towers..

If you are a dedicated WvW player and you play the game mode for multiple hours a day everyday, you will notice that most of the gameplay that happens is not revolved around the gameplay that anet balances the game around.

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

as long as willbenders and thieves exists in wvw, everything to evade a fight is needed.

Remove this crap specs and things would be much more fun.

[Benjialarue.3790]

4 hours ago, ShadowKatt.6740 said:

I've actually been struggling to get into WvW as well. I'm a squishy mesmer and I'm absolutely garbage at pvp. I'm also not the greatest team player; my general version of being a team player is being self-sufficient enough to not be a liability to the group. And when you said that WvW is broken, woof, I felt that. Especially....

Same here I'm a mesmer too and, worst of all, a dagger Mirage. And I'm bad at it. 🤣 (I don't do Strikes, Fractals and Raid for exemple)
So I do wvw for the leggie, Warbringer and (2) Conflux primarily. I try my best to help sometimes when a commander shows up but usually I go low profile and I take camp, ruins and kills Dolyaks. Anyway it depends of people but I really don't really enjoy WvW, as I say in an another thread , it's very frustating sometimes when a group of player crushes you.. but as I see the times when I am in a group it's the same for others players... it's very simple, you are far behind, you are dead. A very hard way to learn how to improve your positioning and knowing your environment.  😅

[kash.9213]

1 hour ago, VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig. said:

as long as willbenders and thieves exists in wvw, everything to evade a fight is needed.

Remove this crap specs and things would be much more fun.

Remove the class you mean or what particular specs are you talking about? It's kind of revealing how weak your take is if you're already sniveling right out of the gate and you don't give any legit reasons. 

[apharma.3741]

I started WvW fresh on a 2 new accounts recently, where I have loads of experience but non of the gear, levels and other stuff and my experience was "Wow, this sucks as a new experience."

Warclaw
Everyone is riding it and you simply cannot keep up without it,some might say "ah but there's the warclaw buff" but that doesn't help when everyone is using the dodge to go a little faster when no enemies are around. One account has PoF, the other only has HoT, so one account gets to use this completely broken mechanic and the other one has a bottom of the barrel experience that is honestly the worst if you're not experienced enough to play on a class that can escape being ganked. You will get constantly ganked for not being on a warclaw. Additionally the warclaw just promotes ganking, you see packs of them going around and the moment they see someone not on a mount 4-10 of them beeline for you. Often at other times they simply won't engage unless they outnumber by quite a large amount. Was the worst addition to the game and many mobility problems could have been solved with waypoints in T3 structures and requiring seige damage to contest.

Gliding
Honestly it's kinda whatever most of the time, it's nice to have, especially for desert map, but in general it's most useful in niche areas and unless you're a free player or someone who just never bought the expansions you will have it.

Gear
This was kind of difficult to begin with and I relied on having the level 80 boost celestial gear, I do wish you could choose what it gives you at least in terms of weapons so you can run a broken cele build in WvW. Also no relics, that's a pain for a new account and they cost quite a bit. Then ANet updated the gear vendor and I can say it's 80% of the way there while runes are relatively cheap, the only drawback is there's no back item in the vendor and you still have to insert jewels into the accessories which can be a 5% or higher stat loss. On the whole pop a booster, zerg a bit and you're there for your first character and gear set.

Class Balance
I'm kinda cheating here as I've had too much experience with what an utterly broken, after thought mess it is. We have some skills still on PvE values and completely busted and entire other classes using PvP balance to the point they're a janky mess. However every single class has some truly unfun mechanics or aspects and some have such extreme mobility, regeneration, cleansing and damage that they feel like raid bosses if you're not playing a class that can overload them (like cele harbinger to cele ele) or isn't just as broken and it comes down to who fell asleep first or who got a friendly 3 players to join. If I was new and had willbenders jumping on me then sprinting 3,000 range away or any of the other completely unfair builds around attack I'd be playing WvW less.

Stealth and revealed

Honestly hats off to ANet for having 2 paths in front of them and choosing the 3rd path of jumping in boiling lava. Stealth is as obnoxious as ever with some classes like ranger and thief disappearing every 3s or camping stealth if they're low on CDs but equally marked being on sentries and watchtower makes anything that might have 1 or 2 stealth skills for a reasonably short duration just not function. Worst of all worlds and stealth really just needs changing but ANet will never do that, they're too proud to admit they made a mistake all those years ago. As a new player I'd just quit against these people and I have seen new players do just that because it's not fun, it's not engaging and it doesn't feel like you had any interaction.

I have stopped bothering to do WvW dailies on my HoT account because it's such a hassle without warclaw and with kitten gear as I haven't used the 80 booster and probably won't as I'd want to play thief or mesmer and run away most of the time. Is it any wonder that a lot of people I come across seem to be more interested in extracting maximum value from pips and reward tracks?

[Justine.6351]

If you are new to wvw you don't have the experience to know the difference between a celestial player and otherwise. I assume you are parakeeting what your friends told you.

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

1 hour ago, kash.9213 said:

Remove the class you mean or what particular specs are you talking about? It's kind of revealing how weak your take is if you're already sniveling right out of the gate and you don't give any legit reasons. 

willbender is broken. Too much burst, mobility and sustain in one spec. It has been broken since EOD released and anet has done nothing about it.

thieves are broken because stealth is broken. They can engage and disengage at will, doing horrific damage while doing so. Add lots of mobility options and all thief specs are something that should be banned from wvw altogether.

There you go.

[Bunbury.8472]

solid post, I will suggest tho- playing support spectre is probably the root of a lot of OPs issues in fights. 

[TheGrimm.5624]

2 hours ago, Deadhead.6947 said:

Honestly dude, i used to hold a very similar opinion..
I used to think the reason ANET doesn't make any effort to balance/adjust small scale fights is because the overall majority of people engage with WvW by zerging, and hence they only worry about zerg meta, and most if not all changes in WvW are usually aimed at large scale fights where people run meta builds, and there is a clear structure to the squad with people covering boons/cleanses/strips/damage/heals etc...

But the truth is that the people who run meta builds and organized squads in voice are not the majority of players in WvW... And most of total gameplay during single 1 week matchup in WvW is not zerging with meta builds either...

Sure, they can have a 50 man squad and at first glance it looks massive, but most servers ( at least in EU ) have 2, maybe 3 commanders on the very very stacked links, who can pull off numbers like this spread on different maps...aaand server/link active WvW players are usually much more than that.
Just think about how often those commanders have issues moving their squads to other maps, because of a queue. That queue is usually not generated by a friendly squad of 50 players on that map, but its usually cloud/pugs/roamers who take up the majority of slots on a map.

The majority of players in wvw either run around alone ( cause they are pugs/pvers ) and flip camps/dolyaks for that sweet sweet participation, or they join open tags which in 90% of cases dont require any sort of meta builds because they usually aim at PPTing / clouding .. 
Those people , like it or not, can be considered roamers.. or are the very least are engaging in gameplay that can be considered roaming..
Yes they arent running a roaming build and repping a roaming guild, and they wont siege and BM you to no end if you dare /laugh  at them..But they arent zerging with meta builds either.
Most of  what happens in WvW falls under those circumstances - smaller fights around camps/sentries/shrines/around SMC/towers..

If you are a dedicated WvW player and you play the game mode for multiple hours a day everyday, you will notice that most of the gameplay that happens is not revolved around the gameplay that anet balances the game around.

Deadhead makes some good points, so this is less a reply to them and more of an anchor point for the following. Since we have seen non-posters will visit the forums when trying to understand WvW before trying it and Curennos also gave a fresh perspective, there is going to be different gear and buildouts for different reasons. The more you refine who, what and where you are fighting the more refined your build can be. You can build builds that do well while solo, in a havoc, and in larger scale play. The more refined your build though the better it will do but it will also make you more vulnerable to other players creating more refined or specialized builds that they have defined. There are some paper scissors rock mechanics among the various classes as well but you may build a fast pace hit and run build that does great in solo play until you come across a stun lock down roamer that has been built out to counter that style. 

It is a double sided sword though. As you move up in size of play you may find that other builds compliment the size of play you are in better, so then you continue to refine the build to compliment group play more, making you weaker against roamers. Yet larger scale play may allow you to more gain defensive aspects that your build may not account for on it's own. Which again sounds good until you reach the point that group size later matters when in large scale play when per say its 20v50. This situation is only countered by either more refinement of your build to meet others or more organized play in voice and someone trying to ensure the builds are more complimentary. Which leads us to Deadhead's point that once players reach that stage they are a times left now in the spot of what do I do now if there is no tag. 

So again would recommend the various levels of play, understand their roles in the game. Then consider what you find fun, where you feel effective and then start narrowing down on classes and builds. Just bear in mind there will be counters to your builds. There will be people that know your build and how to counter, there will people that just know their build better than one you just made and there will be some people out there that would be good in any build. So if new I would look at any fight you might have just lost and think, what could I have done different there first, question your build and setup second before just declaring something (class/gear) as OP, especially if you haven't built one yourself to see the playstyle from the other side. As an alt-o-holic with more toons then I will say there is nothing preventing you from having multiple toons to fits in various roles if you find you like a number of styles and methods. Would also recommend understanding gear and build templates as well so you can have multiple builds on the same toon ready to switch over to as needed if your who/what/where changes while out playing. In either case key is to find what you find as fun and go from there.

Good hunting!

[kash.9213]

52 minutes ago, VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig. said:

willbender is broken. Too much burst, mobility and sustain in one spec. It has been broken since EOD released and anet has done nothing about it.

thieves are broken because stealth is broken. They can engage and disengage at will, doing horrific damage while doing so. Add lots of mobility options and all thief specs are something that should be banned from wvw altogether.

There you go.

Good on you for pointing out that their damage isn't up to par to other classes who can mitigate better. 

You have to be able to add enough mobility options, but there's only so many slots. So, you want classes banned because a lot of those players made smarter build choices than you did? Is there anything else the devs or the playerbase can do to make your play time easier? 

[Curennos.9307]

9 hours ago, ShadowKatt.6740 said:

And as for the warclaw, yeah, your warclaw isn't going to save you from cliffs. This isn't PvE. If your warclaw goes splat, you splat with it. Just forewarning you. No warclaw cliff diving...unless it's into actual water.

This saved me from death, so thanks! I thought I saw a warclaw achievement that involved jumping off the cliff with the warclaw and I thought it would save me. >_>

 

9 hours ago, DivineAlphaLight.2738 said:

Vent posting on here is a good idea and that works too.

This has been working out for me. I'm trying to teach myself to enjoy GW2 for what it is and vent my frustrations on the forums for what it isn't. I had a great time roaming with friends no matter how much we died (okay, maybe sometimes it was frustrating being outnumbered a bunch of times, but overall decent). My main source of frustration is seeing the things that are allowed in wvw but aren't in spvp - moments of 'oh frick, people can do that?' and then adjusting for next time. Like Resistance uptime - it's been ages since I've seen that boon for more than a second or two in spvp, and even longer since it had any sort of what could be considered 'uptime'. But in wvw I can get nailed by a prime light beam because my blind was negated by a holo who had a huge dab of Resistance. It also really highlights how little information GW2's UI gives you, since it's something could have played around in the moment if it was more noticeable, but since every boon is a very small icon and the exact same color...It was one of those slow mo moments where my stunbreak was a second or two away from coming off cooldown but prime light beam's cast time was juuuuuust shorter than the stunbreak CD >_<

 

4 hours ago, Benjialarue.3790 said:

So I do wvw for the leggie, Warbringer and (2) Conflux primarily

Yeeeeeeep lol. Hoping to make some significant progress towards this - I want to get a full legendary account eventually because 99% of my playtime is changing builds and gear.

 

2 hours ago, Bunbury.8472 said:

solid post, I will suggest tho- playing support spectre is probably the root of a lot of OPs issues in fights. 

Admittedly I was a bit unclear, but I am not running around in full minstrel stats trying to 1v1 people. /wince

Right now, I'm alternating between the usual dp/shortbow DrD thief and celestial specter (scepter/pistol). The former for more solo/small roaming, and the second for when I will alternate between both, as I like using scepter 3 on allies and cele gives enough healing power that it's half decent, and I can still duel a bit. I def suffer the lack of d/p stealth there, though, and get caught more often.

2 hours ago, Justine.6351 said:

If you are new to wvw you don't have the experience to know the difference between a celestial player and otherwise. I assume you are parakeeting what your friends told you

On 10/2/2023 at 1:07 PM, Curennos.9307 said:

I'm told, however, that I should start shouting 'boonball OP!' or something to that effect when engaging. Also, I have fought one celestial scourge and I already hate them.

Woooooooosh.

 

2 hours ago, apharma.3741 said:

I started WvW fresh on a 2 new accounts recently, where I have loads of experience but non of the gear, levels and other stuff and my experience was "Wow, this sucks as a new experience."

I think I'm having a decent time without the warclaw almost exclusively because I play thief and can equip shortbow, which lets me keep up with everyone when combined with the speed boost. Dubiously seconded, though - as I play more, it feels like the warclaw exists because anet figured there *had* to be a mount in wvw because there were mounts everywhere else.

Stealth wise, shadow arts on thief has gotten a lot of healthier changes - reducing extended stealth duration, removing the things that reward stealth stacking (like the heal), etc, which is nice. It still has unhealthy function, imo, particularly as d/p enables a decent chunk of it, but on the other hand complete disabling of stealth by watchtowers feels excessive. One day anet will learn how to avoid doing feast-or-famine balancing, one day...

Also, yes, seeing the zooming willbenders is...not fun. Overall if I wasn't fully aware of the general gist of what I was getting into, I probably would have never come back. A lot of games IMO have huge issues with onboarding players into pvp modes.

2 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Good hunting!

Thanks! Solid post. My experience has definitely improved by buying the build template whatsits in the wizard's vault and tweaking the builds I was using - and using options I keep forgetting are available (like cleansing sigils...and FOOD. I keep forgetting I can have a food buff now).

 

Just a general update on my progress after a few days going at it:

I've been running several varients of builds, from cele specter, power d/p, etc, and am planning on trying out more (and other classes) once I get further into the swing of things. Experience gets better as I shore up builds and figure out what works and what doesn't. I had a grand time taking a keep yesterday, and the fight in the Lord(?) room at the center is really cool, and I found myself wishing I was on an AoE nuking class because the enemy blob piled up so juicily in one spot >_> <_< Alas, I didn't have any aoe burst builds set up on my thief just yet and my ele isn't set up for PVP yet either, so it was back to puking barrier onto my allies and testing to see how much damage I could do to enemies.

The only thing preventing me from trying rifle DE at the moment (crit strikes, full zerk - I'm not *that* scummy) is that I forgot to unlock it on the character I've designed my wvw thief, but Soon(TM). I've already used a boost on the thief, so I'll probably be playing them for the foreseeable future - maybe mix things up with staff daredevil or something for a more durable setup.

 

Thanks folks for all the advice n welcoming 😄

[Benjialarue.3790]

3 hours ago, Curennos.9307 said:

Yeeeeeeep lol. Hoping to make some significant progress towards this - I want to get a full legendary account eventually because 99% of my playtime is changing builds and gear.

It's not that hard, you just need to get the T6 participation and maintain it every ten minutes but it's very very time consuming. I'm close to the amount of tickets for one Conflux now, but I want Warbringer first, so I continue to play. (I'm rank 349 and I bought a commander tag a very very long time ago)
On a side note, I not a fan of the skins of Legendaries in general (too shiny for me) so I just want them for the QoL. I always find it funny that video game concept of unique legendary stuff that everybody can get. 🤣 (I know, the most important it's not the legendary itself but the journey to make it.)

[TheGrimm.5624]

16 minutes ago, Benjialarue.3790 said:

It's not that hard, you just need to get the T6 participation and maintain it every ten minutes but it's very very time consuming. I'm close to the amount of tickets for one Conflux now, but I want Warbringer first, so I continue to play. (I'm rank 349 and I bought a commander tag a very very long time ago)
On a side note, I not a fan of the skins of Legendaries in general (too shiny for me) so I just want them for the QoL. I always find it funny that video game concept of unique legendary stuff that everybody can get. 🤣 (I know, the most important it's not the legendary itself but the journey to make it.)

To the players in my guild, what I recommend is cover your armor first in all three weight classes if you run toons in all weight classes. Then do your back piece and then rings. After that you are off to PvE if you want the other three.