WvW perspective from a new player

[Benjialarue.3790]

Thanks for the advice but to make all the armor sets it will cost at least 27K+ tickets. It will take months to get them.😅 (but I'm ready to do that, if the Obsidian armor will take much more time than that. I'm slowly grinding the mats in parallels.)
And I already have the three PVE trinkets I did all of them nearly at the same time, thanks to the return to the living world achievements. (It was fun except the Chalice of Tears of course.)

[Riba.3271]

On 10/2/2023 at 8:07 PM, Curennos.9307 said:

 

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.

Yes, warclaw having 2 evades is a joke. Dismount skill is also slow enough that it is easy to predict and evade. It is also big benefit for defenders that already have large advantage due to other bonuses since attackers can very rarely get out of combat.

Now I understand warclaw probably needs 2 evades in PvE to feel somewhat fluid, but I do not understand why it is still that way in WvW

On 10/2/2023 at 8:07 PM, Curennos.9307 said:

 

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.

There are angles you can bypass reflects in most fights. Of course not against much stronger groups that can just keep pressing w to run around. But this is mostly skill issue. Projectile weapons weakness in WvW is mostly that they trade too much damage for range. If you play projectile build, you just have to play opportunistic gameplay and not rely on commander too much. After all, you can only hit 5 players.

Anyways you are right that current amount of reflects is overkill and their cooldowns are too low, but it is still necessity for group to have 100% upkeep on them if well coordinated. Else you will just have 50 players focusing commander down.

On 10/2/2023 at 8:07 PM, Curennos.9307 said:

 

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.

Yes, WvW has lot of free boon duration that needs tuning down. Boons should be momentary buffs, but with both celestial and minstrel dominating the 2 wvw scenes, their intended design has falled down a hole and they're pretty much permanent.

 

On 10/2/2023 at 8:07 PM, Curennos.9307 said:

 

It feels like the effectiveness of concentration could be reduced by 25-50% overall without much issue, while leaving base durations alone

YES!! This is what I have been saying on these forums. It should be 1% boon duration for 25 Concentration, not 1% for 15!!!! You're a smart person. It is just too free. I just don't understand why the people who have power to change it, do not see it.

On 10/2/2023 at 8:07 PM, Curennos.9307 said:

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.

Honestly, the current dev team cares very little about meaningful content or balance. I dont know what is holding them back from expressing themselves, but it is sad how they made it so that roamers don't care about camps and groups don't care about keeps anymore. Even dueling scene is dead because large amount stats across map swap side regularly ruining all the good spots and regular competition.

I would run away from the gamemode before you are too invested in it. The balance just isn't great, so it is also impossible to find players that take anything seriously. This is the only game that has gotten worse overtime because incompetence of managing it. Other games usually get ruined by greed.

Edited October 4, 2023 by Riba.3271

[Lucentfir.7430]

On 10/2/2023 at 10:07 AM, 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.

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.

 

I said it before. People on the spvp only side that never stepped foot in wvw don't know the horrors of what goes on in the roaming scene. Wait until you run into cele axe untamed and cele catas.
 

 

[Curennos.9307]

  

6 hours 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.)

I don't like any of the legendary skins either - except some weapons I may want to get eventually. I have two sets of armor (medium and light) and the backpiece from pvp and I use the skins of none of them. I also already have the backpiece and it's ridiiiculously shiny, ew. I think the trinket graphic is clever where it gets shinier if you have more legendary trinkets, but I don't think I could stand to play like that for extended periods of time with several glowy blobs above my head.

3 hours ago, Riba.3271 said:

Yes, warclaw having 2 evades is a joke. Dismount skill is also slow enough that it is easy to predict and evade. It is also big benefit for defenders that already have large advantage due to other bonuses since attackers can very rarely get out of combat.

I finally got my warclaw yesterday! 😄 And that dude somewhere else in the thread was right...it feels slow lmao. It should just be two leaps that only evade the dismount skill or something, but not player skills.

3 hours ago, Riba.3271 said:

There are angles you can bypass reflects in most fights. Of course not against much stronger groups that can just keep pressing w to run around. But this is mostly skill issue. Projectile weapons weakness in WvW is mostly that they trade too much damage for range. If you play projectile build, you just have to play opportunistic gameplay and not rely on commander too much. After all, you can only hit 5 players.

Yeah. I'm just a petty DE player sometimes. I can understand why this is the case when rangers with one wolf pack exist who would otherwise just nuke someone in your squad every so often (also, I do want to try OWP into longbow 5 against a zerg and see how much damage it does...A plan for another time). If I recall correctly, barrage is like meteor shower in that projectile hate doesn't work against it too.

3 hours ago, Riba.3271 said:

Anyways you are right that current amount of reflects is overkill and their cooldowns are too low, but it is still necessity for group to have 100% upkeep on them if well coordinated. Else you will just have 50 players focusing commander down.

I've always wondered, is targeting the commander a thing otherwise? Perhaps with bursty dive builds or something - dive in, kill the commander (or who you assume is the commander) and get out. It sounds like a fun playstyle to attempt, but iunno how accurately one can identify commanders in enemy blobs.

3 hours ago, Riba.3271 said:

YES!! This is what I have been saying on these forums. It should be 1% boon duration for 25 Concentration, not 1% for 15!!!! You're a smart person. It is just too free. I just don't understand why the people who have power to change it, do not see it.

In PvE too, IMO. I play support builds there too and I can easily cap to 30 seconds of everything on harriers or minstrel, and then like...Okay what next? It all feels wasted after that - excessive. And on scrapper, it's easy to get 30 sec of quickness even as a qdps. I actually enjoy GW2's boon system as a concept, but it's been crept up over the years. I'm running celestial specter atm and even with the small selection of boons I have on a semi-roamer build it feels like too much. My wells give four seconds of resistance! Four! It is madness.
I wonder if conc maybe being boon-intensity instead of boon duration (or some combination) would be interesting. It'd be hell to balance and figure out, but it's not like things are ever gonna be balanced anyway. More might stacks instead of longer might, fury increased crit chance instead of longer fury duration, etc. Ofc this would have to not function with quickness and alac because that would be horrible. Eh. Idle thoughts.

3 hours ago, Riba.3271 said:

Honestly, the current dev team cares very little about meaningful content or balance. I dont know what is holding them back from expressing themselves, but it is sad how they made it so that roamers don't care about camps and groups don't care about keeps anymore. Even dueling scene is dead because large amount stats across map swap side regularly ruining all the good spots and regular competition.

I am currently finding away to enjoy wvw for what it is, thankfully. I don't think I will be a hardcore roamer in the future - maybe small scale and blobbing when there's the mood for it. Some other poster mentioned the super high of coordinated group play - and I get that. I already feel dark urges creeping up on me saying, join a blob...Make an ele and press meteor shower...use all the necro wells...hump the commander's leg...

 

1 hour ago, Lucentfir.7430 said:

I said it before. People on the spvp only side that never stepped foot in wvw don't know the horrors of what goes on in the roaming scene. Wait until you run into cele axe untamed and cele catas.

Unfortunately I am already running cele specter 😞 Partially because I already ran cele catalyst in open world pve and had the trinkets available. I have fallen so far, so fast. I think it is sad that cele just has so much stats overall - even if there was a stat option I wanted to run (I like running condi/healing builds), it would fall short because cele just has so much stats. Even the power stats are useful, though I wish I could get rid of them. Plus toughness, vitality, expertise, concentration...It's really hard to justify *not* running it if I can benefit from it all. Cele existed in spvp once, I recall, and I'm glad it was nerfed and then gone

 

[TheGrimm.5624]

6 hours ago, Benjialarue.3790 said:

Thanks for the advice but to make all the armor sets it will cost at least 27K+ tickets. It will take months to get them.😅 (but I'm ready to do that, if the Obsidian armor will take much more time than that. I'm slowly grinding the mats in parallels.)
And I already have the three PVE trinkets I did all of them nearly at the same time, thanks to the return to the living world achievements. (It was fun except the Chalice of Tears of course.)

lol, I am not sure if I left one or two of my 4 Mez in the Chalice for guildmates that may later want to try and go for the Amulet after 4 of us were doing the JPs as a group to get it 🙂 . I have to admit, after that journey though the Amulet does have a leggo feel to me after that achievement list and I will have to say looking back it was fun overall if frustrating at times.

[kash.9213]

4 hours ago, Curennos.9307 said:

  

I don't like any of the legendary skins either - except some weapons I may want to get eventually. I have two sets of armor (medium and light) and the backpiece from pvp and I use the skins of none of them. I also already have the backpiece and it's ridiiiculously shiny, ew. I think the trinket graphic is clever where it gets shinier if you have more legendary trinkets, but I don't think I could stand to play like that for extended periods of time with several glowy blobs above my head.

I finally got my warclaw yesterday! 😄 And that dude somewhere else in the thread was right...it feels slow lmao. It should just be two leaps that only evade the dismount skill or something, but not player skills.

Yeah. I'm just a petty DE player sometimes. I can understand why this is the case when rangers with one wolf pack exist who would otherwise just nuke someone in your squad every so often (also, I do want to try OWP into longbow 5 against a zerg and see how much damage it does...A plan for another time). If I recall correctly, barrage is like meteor shower in that projectile hate doesn't work against it too.

I've always wondered, is targeting the commander a thing otherwise? Perhaps with bursty dive builds or something - dive in, kill the commander (or who you assume is the commander) and get out. It sounds like a fun playstyle to attempt, but iunno how accurately one can identify commanders in enemy blobs.

In PvE too, IMO. I play support builds there too and I can easily cap to 30 seconds of everything on harriers or minstrel, and then like...Okay what next? It all feels wasted after that - excessive. And on scrapper, it's easy to get 30 sec of quickness even as a qdps. I actually enjoy GW2's boon system as a concept, but it's been crept up over the years. I'm running celestial specter atm and even with the small selection of boons I have on a semi-roamer build it feels like too much. My wells give four seconds of resistance! Four! It is madness.
I wonder if conc maybe being boon-intensity instead of boon duration (or some combination) would be interesting. It'd be hell to balance and figure out, but it's not like things are ever gonna be balanced anyway. More might stacks instead of longer might, fury increased crit chance instead of longer fury duration, etc. Ofc this would have to not function with quickness and alac because that would be horrible. Eh. Idle thoughts.

I am currently finding away to enjoy wvw for what it is, thankfully. I don't think I will be a hardcore roamer in the future - maybe small scale and blobbing when there's the mood for it. Some other poster mentioned the super high of coordinated group play - and I get that. I already feel dark urges creeping up on me saying, join a blob...Make an ele and press meteor shower...use all the necro wells...hump the commander's leg...

 

Unfortunately I am already running cele specter 😞 Partially because I already ran cele catalyst in open world pve and had the trinkets available. I have fallen so far, so fast. I think it is sad that cele just has so much stats overall - even if there was a stat option I wanted to run (I like running condi/healing builds), it would fall short because cele just has so much stats. Even the power stats are useful, though I wish I could get rid of them. Plus toughness, vitality, expertise, concentration...It's really hard to justify *not* running it if I can benefit from it all. Cele existed in spvp once, I recall, and I'm glad it was nerfed and then gone

 

Commander pin sniping is a thing but if that squad gets shook from that then you probably didn't need to bother with that anyway, unless the commander is providing a lot of the sustain or Control counter. 

I usually scope out the body language in the area and normally you can tell where the commander is by their group gravity then you can point out whoever is calling the drive by their behavior. If we're defending our Keep lord or whatever, I'm probably going after one of their key parts of their composition that's holding them up in the immediate sense instead and I'm not going for a one-shot or one sequence kill but I'll take it. It's usually enough to start dismantling their comp a bit by making them scramble to gel again with my own Control plus de-buff/de-boon and maybe a pull if others capitalize on it but some builds are going to drop fast anyway if their squad security/cover (What my main Specter template is built for) isn't on point. 

Again, you can end up feeding them if your side is trying to push blob to blob when your blob isn't as equipped, and they won't calm down enough to feel things out. 

Edited October 4, 2023 by kash.9213

[TheGrimm.5624]

2 hours ago, Curennos.9307 said:

 I finally got my warclaw yesterday! 😄 And that dude somewhere else in the thread was right...it feels slow lmao. It should just be two leaps that only evade the dismount skill or something, but not player skills.

lol, welcome to the other side of the Warclaw. This is the same thing I told a recent guildmate while they worked on theirs. When they got it they were, wait this is so slow, WTW! And then they started facing the stair climb on the Warclaw. They said I was wondering why you dismounted so much when climbing stairs. 🙂 I still want it and gliding in EotM even if means falling off bridges. Which side note so you are not surprised by it, when mounting there is some weird bug that you may not mount in the direction you are running in at the time. So be careful when mounting at ledges or bridges on any map where a fall may not go your way.

2 hours ago, Curennos.9307 said:

I've always wondered, is targeting the commander a thing otherwise? Perhaps with bursty dive builds or something - dive in, kill the commander (or who you assume is the commander) and get out. It sounds like a fun playstyle to attempt, but iunno how accurately one can identify commanders in enemy blobs.

Tags never like to be sniped. To any roamer or havoc player, tag sniping is a 100% valid tactic. If a squad has not taken action to make sure they can go on without their tag then that was on them. Tracking a tag is just a matter of practice in watching the front end of a zerg and seeing who is the first person that is moving that the rest then just follow. You can also watch out for classes like Druids and Specters that might be pointing out a tag via their heals and shields being applied to a toon ahead of them, but better ones might ask people to focus someone else until a fight is on so movement is a better indicator. The funniest thing I have seen in chat though is when a tag says don't get in front of me, stay behind me. Those are the easiest tags to spot when they don't allow forward scouts or decoys to try and help them mask who is the tag. Again I recommend players to play all scale of play so that they can be ready if a tag goes down, the squad should still know what the objective and target is so that the squad can keep moving on. But this goes into voice versus voiceless tags and that's a different topic. Which is what also makes tag sniping valid when a havoc can disperse a squad once a tag is downed means the squad was more a focused mass or a source of boons which IMO makes sniping valid.

BTW, dive in and try and get out, that's part of Havoc play. Havocs fill a number of roles including trying to do what a Warband (24 or half Squad) or zerg (Squad) might do but with smaller numbers.

Again side note for those that might be reading while pondering WvW as a game mode to try it out, our WvW wiki peeps and all the other wiki players have done a lot of work so always worth a shoutout to them for their time they spent updating the game wiki so +1 from me and as a reference:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World_versus_World

Gratz again on the Warclaw and mind the stairs! 😉 

 

[solemn.9670]

As a WvW main I have over 50k tickets being used for nothing but Dugan because accumulating a decent amount of gold for a legendary set by playing WvW takes years, not months 😅

[Curennos.9307]

11 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

lol, welcome to the other side of the Warclaw. This is the same thing I told a recent guildmate while they worked on theirs. When they got it they were, wait this is so slow, WTW! And then they started facing the stair climb on the Warclaw. They said I was wondering why you dismounted so much when climbing stairs. 🙂 I still want it and gliding in EotM even if means falling off bridges. Which side note so you are not surprised by it, when mounting there is some weird bug that you may not mount in the direction you are running in at the time. So be careful when mounting at ledges or bridges on any map where a fall may not go your way.

Tags never like to be sniped. To any roamer or havoc player, tag sniping is a 100% valid tactic. If a squad has not taken action to make sure they can go on without their tag then that was on them. Tracking a tag is just a matter of practice in watching the front end of a zerg and seeing who is the first person that is moving that the rest then just follow. You can also watch out for classes like Druids and Specters that might be pointing out a tag via their heals and shields being applied to a toon ahead of them, but better ones might ask people to focus someone else until a fight is on so movement is a better indicator. The funniest thing I have seen in chat though is when a tag says don't get in front of me, stay behind me. Those are the easiest tags to spot when they don't allow forward scouts or decoys to try and help them mask who is the tag. Again I recommend players to play all scale of play so that they can be ready if a tag goes down, the squad should still know what the objective and target is so that the squad can keep moving on. But this goes into voice versus voiceless tags and that's a different topic. Which is what also makes tag sniping valid when a havoc can disperse a squad once a tag is downed means the squad was more a focused mass or a source of boons which IMO makes sniping valid.

BTW, dive in and try and get out, that's part of Havoc play. Havocs fill a number of roles including trying to do what a Warband (24 or half Squad) or zerg (Squad) might do but with smaller numbers.

Again side note for those that might be reading while pondering WvW as a game mode to try it out, our WvW wiki peeps and all the other wiki players have done a lot of work so always worth a shoutout to them for their time they spent updating the game wiki so +1 from me and as a reference:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World_versus_World

Gratz again on the Warclaw and mind the stairs! 😉 

 

Nice!

I did my best to fake a one-person havoc squad today - geared up my ranger in full zerk, unlocked soulbeast, and spammed sic 'em + One Wolf pack + quickness source + barrage at an enemy blob. Maybe it helped, maybe it didn't, but it was nice seeing pretty numbers pop up 😄 I still need to get around to running around with a full group tho - full coordination seems a lil less likely to find on a random hour of the evening. Maybe this weekend - got a 3 day weekend coming up, so woo \o/ And trying catalyst with the double meteor shower is next on my list. I'm liking eternal battlegrounds so far, as it seems to facilitate mass battles very easily at the center of the map.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

  

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

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.

I can't tell if you're upset because the mount ended your gank attempts or if you are legit trying to fight the mount...but it's hilarious either way

[TheGrimm.5624]

2 hours ago, Curennos.9307 said:

Nice!

I did my best to fake a one-person havoc squad today - geared up my ranger in full zerk, unlocked soulbeast, and spammed sic 'em + One Wolf pack + quickness source + barrage at an enemy blob. Maybe it helped, maybe it didn't, but it was nice seeing pretty numbers pop up 😄 I still need to get around to running around with a full group tho - full coordination seems a lil less likely to find on a random hour of the evening. Maybe this weekend - got a 3 day weekend coming up, so woo \o/ And trying catalyst with the double meteor shower is next on my list. I'm liking eternal battlegrounds so far, as it seems to facilitate mass battles very easily at the center of the map.

Roamers and havocs have a role of distract and misdirect. Part of their goals is to decoy targets either toward or away from targets. The key is to use less to do more, be that in take an objective or lead a larger group away from something or to lure it into something. We don't have as many these days but we also have zerg busting havocs. 

Hey [SRGE] I ally and fight you, giving you a plug here, [SPACE]/[rL] same. SRGE, sorry I do my own ecto gambling so, that's a nope from this Grimm. But will lend aid, unless you go for my camp, else I will be looking to scout you out. 😜 And grumpy Grimms are as stubborn as you. 

[Curennos.9307]

Update as I try to break into group play - I think I am participating in what seems to be called 'clouding'?  A spread out number of uncoordinated players versus a more coordinated, tightly stacked group.

Anyway, It's not fun. I've joined a few groups/tags/participated in a few group battles. EBG seems to consist almost entirely of trading the center node back and forth - I don't think I've ever actually seen two large, reasonably sized groups fight it out in there over the keep lord. In other maps, equally matched groups fighting seems rather rare - it's mostly a coordinated group farming a cloud of disorganized players, and it doesn't look like there's much I can do about it.

Also, maybe this is just me being tilted but it feels like the downstate invuln period is so much longer than it is in spvp? I can whack someone a few times with an AA and they'll still be invuln after being downed. It feels excessively difficult to actually kill someone because people can easily rez them regardless of healing power, or just get an insta-rez from a skill.

That said, I've tried out staff ele - catalyst for now, I'm not too fond of weaver. And staff in general but meteor shower is nice and does chunky damage....Not that I've managed to land a solid, beefy hit with it yet, but hopefully soon. I don't last on staff ele for long though since staff is awful for roaming - whereas with ranger barrage isn't as good as meteor shower, but I have a much higher chance of surviving a duel or when fleeing.

Another thing I'm noticing is the sheer amount of stability flying around in groups. In most other games, CC vs CC downtime (time when not CC'd, I guess, in the form of diminishing returns, or CC immunity after breaking out of a CC) feels...pretty even and consistent? In GW2 though, I'm seeing massive stacks of stability. 3, 5, 7, sometimes 10+, at huge durations.

That all aside, I did have some good duels in a lesser populated corner of the map a few days back. That was fun! I've got a 3 day weekend, so exploration continues. I still need a vast quantity of wvw tickets for conflux, so I'll be around for a little while yet. Today has mostly been soulbeast because any other ranger spec and the pet dies soooo easily, but untamed for roaming is nice.

[Curennos.9307]

This week is support scrapper. I am exceedingly displeased to find that mace 2, with 1760 healing power, only barriers for around 500 >:I This is...excessive. I can see 2k barrier on a 6 second cooldown/even less with alac being an issue, but 500? Really? It's ~200 outside my minstrel gear. 

Also there are weird discrepancies between specs/classes. Why is specter, with a GM trait that's effectively the same as druid's GM trait, changed to give protection instead of alacrity? Specter already has a (admittedly very kitten) way to give prot through stealth application (another GM trait) and scepter 2.

I like that anet was able to split skills between pve and PVP, and even different pvp modes, but it seems like they always fudge up the numbers somewhere.

[TheGrimm.5624]

10 minutes ago, Curennos.9307 said:

This week is support scrapper. I am exceedingly displeased to find that mace 2, with 1760 healing power, only barriers for around 500 >:I This is...excessive. I can see 2k barrier on a 6 second cooldown/even less with alac being an issue, but 500? Really? It's ~200 outside my minstrel gear. 

Also there are weird discrepancies between specs/classes. Why is specter, with a GM trait that's effectively the same as druid's GM trait, changed to give protection instead of alacrity? Specter already has a (admittedly very kitten) way to give prot through stealth application (another GM trait) and scepter 2.

I like that anet was able to split skills between pve and PVP, and even different pvp modes, but it seems like they always fudge up the numbers somewhere.

Mind you I am not judging the numbers, more the potential logic behind.

How to make the point but keep it PG13 for friendly forums. Replace what you will here. So its like having 1 cookie is good, 2 cookies is better, 3 cookies are great. Have 12 though and you are ill. So the numbers need to scale considering it could be between 1 and 65 doing the same thing. Quick morning thought.

[Curennos.9307]

1 hour ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Mind you I am not judging the numbers, more the potential logic behind.

How to make the point but keep it PG13 for friendly forums. Replace what you will here. So its like having 1 cookie is good, 2 cookies is better, 3 cookies are great. Have 12 though and you are ill. So the numbers need to scale considering it could be between 1 and 65 doing the same thing. Quick morning thought.

I get the need to scale things back sometimes - in PvE it does 2k barrier, which would be overpowered. But a75% reduction on basically the only support skill on engi's only support weapon (okay yeah, it's engi and they have medkit, but still) to the point where it's basically a vigor/regen upkeep skill just makes it feel bad to press 😞

 

[Scar.1793]

On 10/2/2023 at 7:24 PM, 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. 

The whole game no matter the mode has balance issues, from sPvP to PvE.

Anet just can’t properly balance the classes. Often nerfing to oblivion classes/specs/weapons that didn’t need to be nerfed and leaving disgustingly OP classes alone for years. Losing players in the process as they did with me. After 10+ years, I’m curious how they still blindly nerf stuff while leaving OP classes alone, they seem to only watch a couple of golem benchmark videos and not actually test in-game. It’s genuinely sad.

So not only it hurts the game, it hurts their pockets too, as anyone who really wants to enjoy good and balanced PvP will fly away to any proper PvP game and there are a ton these days.

I recently came back, saw how WvW and sPvP are still trash and just focus on PvE. There’s nothing fun in PvP in gw2, especially when compared to other more balanced and built games. When you need to make announcements saying you’ll do a better job at balance (and still failing miserably), you know it has to be bad to have the communication team forced to speak on the matter.

I might get another ban for this post but so be it. Not like this forum is super lively anyway.

Edited October 15, 2023 by Scar.1793

[Gop.8713]

When you're new to wvw the hardest thing to learn is that it's a sandbox and success lies more in finding your niche than 'winning', since ultimately there's nothing to win. Unlike OP's spvp experience, everyone gets the same rewards over time regardless of outcomes so living and dying has even less of a consequence here than it does there and 'losing' a defense is frequently more profitable than a successful cap . . .

So don't worry so much about doing the 'right' thing bc it's never going to be balanced and you're not going to be able to make it make sense in any sort of structured way. Just do what feels fun while you collect your rewards . . .

[kiwituatara.6053]

On 10/3/2023 at 3:07 AM, 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.

Totally agree.

 - any projectile reflect/deflect walls should disappear after a certain number of projectile counts is met

 - bursts needs to be toned down. Solo roaming has essentially turned into 1. burst 2. invuln and/or high mobility 3. get out of combat + warclaw or get inside towers 4. wait for your cooldowns to recharge. There are no fights, its just people sniping at each other.

 - boon duration needs to be reduced by 50%. Boonball is boring. Group roaming has also turned into miniature boonballs

 - protection shouldn't be so abundant. Too many people are able to go full berserkers and just apply protection. The risk of going full glass cannon used to be much higher. There needs to be more value for toughness and vitality

 

[Curennos.9307]

Well, it's been almost a month and change, and I'm still around! Here are my thoughts after about a month and a half. Admittedly most will be repeats, but here's all of them in one spot, I suppose, with more griping at the end.

- The mount shouldn't have as much health as it does. While equalizing travel times between classes is excellent, because travel time isn't content and while it's important for enforcing consequences for dying it is also boring, it's neither helping much nor really contributing to healthy combat

- Mount should only have one dodge. Increase base speed a little if needed, it's a PVP mount, why does it even have dodges goodness gracious-

- The effectiveness of concentration needs to be reduced, and perhaps base durations of boons could be bumped up ever so slightly. Boon availability feels too high compared to intended counters.

- Celestial needs to have its stats slashed by maybe 5-10%.

- Less rewards for taking objectives, more rewards for fighting (not necessarily winning). I keep running into groups who either just want to steamroll, or farm, or run away. In some cases, sure, running away is valid- I don't expect people to suicide against a larger group every single time. I'm not entirely sure how this could be solved, but it feels like the current reward setup encourages not fighting, or only taking sure-victories, and just getting participation up to t6 and then doing the least amount of work possible to keep it there. I've also noticed sometimes there'll be a queue for a map (usually EBG), and when I get there it's...bland? A queue and almost nothing going on. It's very, very odd. I really do not like how participation is set up where you only need to get to t6, and then 'upkeep' it to continue being rewarded for that.

- As a healer, siege feels weak. My group has gotten whacked a few times (before someone sets up some kind of shield thingy) and it's just...relatively easy to deal with? Maybe the people who were shooting at us were bad at it, but it felt like a minor annoyance even when getting hit.

- Stability access feels both excessive and lackluster. Firebrand has too much of it but provides little (comparatively speaking) in the way of actual healing, plus great uptime on a bunch of other important boons, while other support specs lack stab options. Further, stab can stack up a LOT, but on the other hand a boonrip will rip the entire stack. I think CC, even stab'd up, should be marginally more of a threat, while currently it feels like 'okay, have stab, ignore all cc except if someone pops out enough boonrips'.

- Stunbreak utilities should all come with a 3-6 sec long stack of stab afterward if a CC is broken. It's time.

- Burst needs bigger tells. It's ridiculous I can hop on a soulbeast and get quickness, OWP, etc, and my arrows (and the CC arrow) will look exactly the same. Encouraging high risk high reward playstyles is important, but with how GW2 combat revolves around cooldowns, the availability of the warclaw mount and other mobility/escape options, the risk is too diminished.

- Infinitely scaling mechanics need a looksie. Mostly aimed at projectile reflects/blocks, since groups are currently completely immune to them and places an excessive value on ground effects.

- Stealth needs a looksie. I don't want to screw over thieves (they've suffered enough elsewhere), but hitting or getting hit by a huge attack from stealth is no. I much prefer something along the lines of 'hitting someone from stealth applies a debuff that makes the next attack that lands do huge damage, lasts for a short duration', or something t that effect. Also kitten give thief more build options. Evades just doesn't go as far as they used to. I'm not sure how to deal with classes that have access to, but aren't necessarily built, around, stealth though. Take ranger- still decent stealth access, but they can just maul or rapid fire or CC from stealth more easily

- Every time I ask around 'what're the zerg busting tactics available in this game', every time the answer seems to end up being 'yeah anet nerfed that'. Rewarding coordination is all well and good but I don't really enjoy serving as free NPC content 😕 Ultimately wvw is turning out to be something with brief spurts of very enjoyable play followed by the majority of the time just...bleh.

 

TLDR: I really enjoy wvw...when I actually get to fight someone. It seems like the current reward mechanics go directly contrary to encouraging players to find relatively even fights and take risks, unfortunately.

Also, anet for the love of all that is holy please stop nuking traits when someone goes from pve to pvp. Engineer mace 2 in full minstrel goes from 2k barrier to 500. The vindicator dodge goes from 1600 barrier and healing, 20% healing increase to 600 barrier/healing and 10% increase. Reaver's Curse for vindicator is also effectively nonexistent too- I recall seeing youtube vids of vindis spam-jumping, which obviously needed tweaking, but 5 endurance on dodge when hitting five people? Really? It's immensely frustrating seeing things go from OP to basically unusable, or (in the case of Saint's Shield) unfun to use/feeling unimpactful but still basically the only choice.

Anyway. Back to speedrunning the five stages of grief, I guess, forever chasing that one particular even group fight I had a month ago that has never been had since.

 

Edit: It should be noted that I'm on Tarnished Coast. Maybe things are different elsewhere.

Edited November 19, 2023 by Curennos.9307

[adammantium.8031]

Love that you actually came back a month later 🙂

Anet does a horrible job telling new players how to contribute to the 'mist war'. Taking (and holding!) objectives is what the game mode is meant to be about. If you're proactively flipping camps and joining with other players to flip towers, the content will, population balance aside, come to you.

I am in complete agreement that there needs to be more done to encourage fighting around these objectives. Flipping them as PVE is content is no fun at all, but the incentives to defend are low. This has been the perennial problem of WvW's lifetime IMO, that the game mechicanics don't quite do enough to push players into combat with each other. 

Siege is probably ok. The alterative in the past was a few AC's being able to fend off a huge zerg, forcing them to move out of range and drop catas, and then you turn into siege wars which is frankly boring. 

Balance, yeah... we all know that's a mess.

Last thing I'd say, if you're a thief, mesmer, willbender, and you're trying to roam and see me, sorry. I'm just not going to waste my time. Too many classes are no fun to fight.

 

[Curennos.9307]

37 minutes ago, adammantium.8031 said:

Love that you actually came back a month later

I keep hoping to find that one high again...and sometimes I do! Just often enough to keep me sticking around, lol. I'm mostly a pve player at the moment though. I go through cycles of also enjoying spvp sometimes as well. I always hold out hope that a dev is reading these forums (and I hope they give me when I vent my frustrations as well).

1 hour ago, adammantium.8031 said:

Anet does a horrible job telling new players how to contribute to the 'mist war'. Taking (and holding!) objectives is what the game mode is meant to be about. If you're proactively flipping camps and joining with other players to flip towers, the content will, population balance aside, come to you.

I'm torn a bit on this, really. On one hand, I really like how they connected taking objectives to actual combat, since (if I understand correctly) you can't use siege without supply, and supply comes from owning things, and the supply in those things comes from dolyaks and stuff. Which is...a really cool way to link it all together. On the other hand, this makes it slower to deploy things like siege, it seems- compared to say, ESO, where you just spent some PvP Points(TM) and bamf you got a siege you can plonk down on your own and it's immediately ready. Pros and cons, I guess. I do like fighting over terrain though.

One thing I've noticed is that it seems the intended flow is...Take a resource. Pop up on the map, enemy comes to investigate. If they come with just a few to scout and notice the group there is too big, they come back with more, and more, and more, until it culminates in a good few battles of both sides duking it out until one recognizes the loss and splits to try to take other resources..and repeat.

In practice, it doesn't seem like that happens - either the group taking resources steamrolls and meanders around through a cloud of enemy players and/or smaller groups, or the opposite happens and a bigger group comes to wipe them out and then they go elsewhere because there's no point in them serving as NPC Grinder Content for the zerg they can't do anything against no matter what.

1 hour ago, adammantium.8031 said:

I am in complete agreement that there needs to be more done to encourage fighting around these objectives. Flipping them as PVE is content is no fun at all, but the incentives to defend are low. This has been the perennial problem of WvW's lifetime IMO, that the game mechicanics don't quite do enough to push players into combat with each other. 

Lol, I just saw someone complaining about this in map chat before I logged off- that it was hard to get defensive weeklies done or something.

1 hour ago, adammantium.8031 said:

Siege is probably ok. The alterative in the past was a few AC's being able to fend off a huge zerg, forcing them to move out of range and drop catas, and then you turn into siege wars which is frankly boring. 

Yeah. This is fair- I definitely don't want things to devolve into siege dependency. It's a tough issue to solve. I just want to fight groups of people with my own groups of people.

1 hour ago, adammantium.8031 said:

Last thing I'd say, if you're a thief, mesmer, willbender, and you're trying to roam and see me, sorry. I'm just not going to waste my time. Too many classes are no fun to fight.

I really don't like how the mount lets people much more easily avoid roamers- and I don't think it should be a thing. But on the other hand, I totally get it xD I despise fighting some builds too. I don't even chase willbenders at this point- unless I'm on a dedicated thief...And even then, even if I can catch them I might burn too many resources and not be able to kill them. I've taken to roaming on an untamed ranger most of the time, since people seem more inclined to fight them. Soulbeast seems better for getting people off mounts and killing them though. Oof, that chunk of HP and dodges when someone is trying to run away.

[TheGrimm.5624]

11 hours ago, Curennos.9307 said:

Well, it's been almost a month and change, and I'm still around! Here are my thoughts after about a month and a half. Admittedly most will be repeats, but here's all of them in one spot, I suppose, with more griping at the end.

Welcome back to Forum Wars 2! Glad you are still enjoying WvW to have stuck around. And thanks for coming back and sharing for those that might be just lurking in the forums. Going to skip some parts for various reasons and provide background context for some parts to try and avoid bias in a reply.

11 hours ago, Curennos.9307 said:

-While equalizing travel times between classes is excellent

Yes the idea was that Warclaw would help everyone have a standard speed. There was also a bonus to Warclaw speed in territories you controlled that would further increase that speed. That was removed. 

Additional detail is provided here on the Warclaw for non-forum players: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Warclaw

+1 again to the Wiki peeps.

11 hours ago, Curennos.9307 said:

- Less rewards for taking objectives, more rewards for fighting (not necessarily winning). I keep running into groups who either just want to steamroll, or farm, or run away. In some cases, sure, running away is valid- I don't expect people to suicide against a larger group every single time. I'm not entirely sure how this could be solved, but it feels like the current reward setup encourages not fighting, or only taking sure-victories, and just getting participation up to t6 and then doing the least amount of work possible to keep it there. I've also noticed sometimes there'll be a queue for a map (usually EBG), and when I get there it's...bland? A queue and almost nothing going on. It's very, very odd. I really do not like how participation is set up where you only need to get to t6, and then 'upkeep' it to continue being rewarded for that.

Will have to find this one as its buried in News and the Wiki. There was always a reward to win an objective but when they looked at encouraging fights at objectives they saw there was not a reason to defend, not a reason to continue a fight, not a reward to losing the fight while trying. So they added the defense events and rewards and indicated the other two were on the way, but didn't release them since they questioned their internal logic on how those event were defended and said they would be released later.  

 

11 hours ago, Curennos.9307 said:

- As a healer, siege feels weak. My group has gotten whacked a few times (before someone sets up some kind of shield thingy) and it's just...relatively easy to deal with? Maybe the people who were shooting at us were bad at it, but it felt like a minor annoyance even when getting hit.

Siege has been nerfed a number of times over time. Won't go into the why what where as that is debated.

The rest, multiple sides and more text then reasonable to reply to them all without potentially bias. Short answer: complicated. From me, keep posting and again, Have Fun in Forum Wars 2!

[Curennos.9307]

On 11/20/2023 at 3:15 AM, TheGrimm.5624 said:

The rest, multiple sides and more text then reasonable to reply to them all without potentially bias. Short answer: complicated. From me, keep posting and again, Have Fun in Forum Wars 2!

One highly skilled tactic I've learned from watching wvw map chat is that complaining on the forums also counts as ppt.

[Arya Whitefire.8423]

On 10/4/2023 at 5:41 AM, Riba.3271 said:

I would run away from the gamemode before you are too invested in it. The balance just isn't great, so it is also impossible to find players that take anything seriously. This is the only game that has gotten worse overtime because incompetence of managing it. Other games usually get ruined by greed.

If you're going to choose an addiction, you might as well choose one that makes you suffer a bit.  And through suffering, at least you know you're alive 🙂

[TheGrimm.5624]

4 hours ago, Curennos.9307 said:

One highly skilled tactic I've learned from watching wvw map chat is that complaining on the forums also counts as ppt.

Oh Forum Wars 2 is also valid in map chat, just some don't know they were engaging in it at the time, while others most certainly do. 🙂 Good hunting!