WvW Changes April 16th 2024

[Belisaria.8136]

Just popping in to say I really appreciate that y'all found a use for emblems of the conqueror. Thought they were gonna collect dust in my bank for all eternity.

[Chaba.5410]

1 hour ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Well if you prefer the other option of 6+ months between relinks and 3x DBL for that duration...

I voted for the option we finally got now: 1 month relinks.

[Riley.9851]

How about you just allow macros and all the practical cheat and hack tools that seem to be used by three quarters of the "professional" Troll players.
That would have been just as useful as this patch...

How to break a game mode...

Edited April 16 by Riley.9851

[misterman.1530]

6 hours ago, Kate.3679 said:

Siege golems no longer cause capture objectives to be contested in WvW.

Maguuma was too powerful

I wonder about that one. What, exactly, does that mean? "Siege golems no longer cause capture objectives to be contested in WvW." Does it mean if you leave an unmanned Siege Golem in an objective, when the guards attack it, the objective doesn't get contested?

[misterman.1530]

3 hours ago, Cael.3960 said:

I get it, players who prefer to stay safe on/behind a wall and retreat to safety the moment they're vulnerable will be very upset by these changes. Players who rarely, if ever, use their class skills will be upset that they can't just build siege and use it instead. Ultimately it's a PvP mode; the focus should be on players fighting other players with class builds and individual skill rather than the environment or with special actions.

Nah. If you want no siege weapons, go play sPVP. WvW had siege weapons as a distinct feature.

[Nomad.4301]

As someone who identifies as a long time roamer/scout/defender this ongoing crusade to tear down any reliable way to combat (or even slow down!!) the ever-increasing boon-ball meta is causing me to re-evaluate my time and money spent on this game.

[Dalamar.3940]

Confirmed yet again: ANET doesn't play this game mode....

[TheGrimm.5624]

58 minutes ago, misterman.1530 said:

I wonder about that one. What, exactly, does that mean? "Siege golems no longer cause capture objectives to be contested in WvW." Does it mean if you leave an unmanned Siege Golem in an objective, when the guards attack it, the objective doesn't get contested?

No, people used them to defend. You craft and leave multiple Omega around so that a scout coming to check could pop in one and delay the capture point till more players could arrive to assist in the defense. You still needed to to be manned to contest. Now you won't contest while in the golem.

[Chrome.9841]

I really don't understand which organ Arenanet workers are using to read player feedbacks for like last 3 years .-.

[Draygo.9473]

to be fair... they did nerf scrapper support

[Sonderm.4639]

Anet - how about ensuring more balanced matchups - both in absolute numbers and across the day before making those changes to attack/defense balance.

Being up against a server currently that paints all maps in their color at night it really takes away the last remaining motivation to try to stall their superior numbers when defending our structures. Fixing small stuff when big stuff is broken sometimes makes things worse.

Actually one of the most fun emerging gameplay situations are "heroic" defenses against superior numbers. But you wouldn't know that, would you?

Edited April 17 by Sonderm.4639

[LisannaDemonheart.6349]

Another update, and another miss. Anet seems to have no intention of solving the fundamental problems that exist in WvW.

The boonball meta is all well and good, but it is a symptom of a larger problem within the game mode we all know and love. A distinct lack of tactics, an over-emphasis of large group play, and a general lack of effort to improve the game mode from the devs.

I grew up in WvW at a time when we had to spread out the siege to counter both disablers AND counter siege. Now I see siege just stacked in a small group because it is easier to defend with a boonball, coupled with the disruptor change. More than half of my disables/disrupts get blocked, wasting supply, and now with that change it doesn't really matter if I even use the tricks/traps. This effectively removed them as a tool to defend with. as I do a much better job just outright killing their siege from on top of a wall with stability.

The most fun I have in WvW has been either when roaming or small group fights. Barely surviving, being the last man standing, locking down someone for an ally to kill them, clutch healing my guild, fights that devolve into nothing more than a bar room brawl. These are what keep me coming back to play. But with the emergence of boonballs, and players infighting shouting "everyone get on tag. if you are roaming, go roam on another map" in /map chat becoming more common, it is getting harder to just enjoy the game mode I love so much. Just the other day I was tagged up leading a 10 man, and was literally told to leave the map because I was PPTing when the other tag was fighting (and losing) despite them having equal numbers to their enemy. Keeping home borderland ours in the face of a whole other server. "PPTing" laughable. 

 

What WvW needs are actual solutions to problems. Not bandages that Anet THINKS will solve them.

• Remove the downed state. (This gives non-boonballs a viable way to kill boonballs. Focus your attacks onto a single enemy, and kill one-by-one)
• Relocate the EWP portal to a platform accessible via Jump Puzzle. (give the responders a chance. load times and late callouts do not allow for double way-pointing a lot of the time, resulting in a bag farm, and a useless EWP.)(the platform allows for a safer and more effective EWP, but still vulnerable if the attackers split their group to shoot fish in the barrel.)
• Change the way "pulls" work. Stop them being able to pull off walls, or behind gates. (If Anet wants to reduce the ability to defend in order to balance the experience, then we defenders need to be able to position ourselves to actually defend)(I don't like to turtle behind walls, but if I am the first to respond, I don't have a group to hop outside with)
• Add "timers" to ruins on the mini map. Not Rightious Indignation timers preventing caps, just "capped 3 mins ago" kind of timer. allowing roamers to better gauge where other enemy roamers might be. ( I have wasted literal hours of my life guessing where they might be going )
• Make the chance of getting supply from an enemy Dolyak higher.
• Add a chance of getting supplies for destroying enemy siege. (it is literally made from the same material we are making our siege out of.)
• Allow siege to be placed at EBG spawns. And give a modicum of supply to facilitate this siege. (In order to still be able to do SOMETHING while being spawn camped.)
• Make Edge of the Mists mean something. Incentivize GvG activity to take place there. Rewards per kill or something.

I could say something about boons or strips, but I don't particularly care about boonball fights as I avoid them. Let those players hash that out. I however will say that other groups SHOULD be able to fight against them without bringing a whole map queue.

I know my list is missing stuff, but I have written enough. What makes WvW fun is the smaller fights, the fights that could really go either way. The current trajectory of the meta will not allow for that kind of content in prime time hours for much longer. ESPECIALLY when we have entire guilds and alliances of guilds trying to tank to avoid T1.

TL:DR This patch solved little, and made things worse. Solve the underlying issues before making sweeping changes Anet.

Edited April 17 by LisannaDemonheart.6349

[Entara.3075]

8 hours ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

The following changes are part of an ongoing effort to make fighting for—and in—objectives feel better for attacking groups, as the defenders' advantage inside their own structures was previously too strong.

Eternally bugged defence participation was already hard to get. Let's buff the attackers and make it harder!

I was under the impression that walls, castles, etc were designed so that a smaller number of defenders had the advantage over a larger attacking group. This is just going to reward overwhelming boonballs on a kill train.

[Ronin.4501]

1 hour ago, Dalamar.3940 said:

Confirmed yet again: ANET doesn't play this game mode....

Actually they do. They're just some of the worst players out there, so they keep making changes to mask just how bad they are...

[Aralan.3872]

Arenanet, noooooooo!

I am currently active in several guilds, all of whom play in wvw as roamers or small groups. To be in a larger group, the vast majority of guilds want a commitment, correction, *need* a commitment to be successful against other large groups. Maybe that reduces the number of quality larger guilds fighting. You either have to be naturally good at the game or have the time to put in to become good. If you don't have the time to put in, or if structured fights make you want to go play something else, that shouldn't be a requirement to play wvw. So, if more casual guilds and smaller guilds are meant to survive, these changes are almost devastating. If you have to build siege to save your t3 keep from invading forces, you no longer have enough supply to repair your wall. Meaning players you kill from the enemy can just run back over and over and over again. That's fine if you have equal numbers, or balanced fights, but try that when it's a small group defending against a larger force. The very point of having towers and keeps is so that smaller groups can defend from larger ones. This makes no sense. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

I have heard many, many people complain about these changes, and very few people approving of them. I am willing to see how it plays out, but it's possible by then you've lost a good part of the player base that small groups enjoy playing with. It will kill the game mode in its current state. If that's what you're looking for, then go ahead. 

These forums feel fruitless to so many of us. People post things here that they feel strongly about, and then rarely hear any feedback on them. So, who knows if their voice was heard or not? The fact that we are voicing our opinions in the forums speaks volumes. I cannot remember ever posting here before; that's how strongly I feel about this. Please listen to your players. 

[Ferus.3165]

1 hour ago, Draygo.9473 said:

to be fair... they did nerf scrapper support

rip any build that used bulwark gyro. Especially the cd increase was complete overkill.

Edited April 17 by Ferus.3165
typo

[Krash.9486]

7 hours ago, LordHT.8297 said:

 

This will still continue to happen. Just imagine fighting near a wall that is 49% repaired... Anet's objective with this change was simply to nerf the defense, if they wanted to prevent trolls and accidents with walls it would be better to put a visual effect that indicates that the wall is being repaired.

Defense?  There will be no defense anymore....just remove the keeps and towers...the anti PPTers will love it..

 

[TheGrimm.5624]

It's Joel's fault. He made a deal to get more Helldivers out into play.

[MrZapples.6043]

"Across all objective tiers, walls and gates will now be rebuilt when 50% of their health has been restored."

• Pos: encourages more breach fighting and interaction.
• Pos: reduces trolls rep’ing wall mid-fight locking defenders outside.
• Pos & neg: Tiering-up is frustrating for attackers, but is legitimate defence tactic as it involves strategy to defend camps and dolyaks.
• Pos & neg: Greatly increases the chance for attacker reinforcements to rejoin main group. In not balanced for defenders.
• Neg: big resource cost for defenders using resources for other defences/repairs.
• Neg: 50% cap is too high for defenders as this is a high-risk activity to seal enemies outside walls (defenceless while repairing).
• Neg: reduces the need for attackers from thinking strategically i.e. bringing more supply & building siege, reinforcing in groups.

My opinion is that this change will disadvantage defenders significantly, mesmers/thieves with portals can use strategy to overcome wall repair anyway. Alternatively, defenders could build siege on walls for less resources to make up for increase repair cost, but does this likely create more issues? Recommend rebalancing/reverting this change.

"Several objectives' capture boundaries have been resized in all four maps"

• Pos: increases the chance of fighting on objective.
• Pos & Neg: impairs small groups or single defenders from contesting the ring.
• Pos & Neg: impairs mobility of both sides.
• Neg: encourages ‘boon ball’ meta and discourages ‘cloud fighting’. Vast majority or boon ball interactions have no counterplay other than whoever has more players wins.
• Possible Neg: Placing interactable items (harvest nodes) anywhere near fighting could result players interacting with objects by mistake, suggest they are fine to remain outside ring.

It would seem to disadvantage defenders more and encourages certain styles of play that are often not fun/interactive when player numbers are not even. These changes are not ideal, but are not game breaking. Suggest further monitoring.

"Presence of the Keep and Guild Objective Aura bonus effects now provide +25 power, precision, toughness, and vitality instead of +100."

• Pos & Neg: +100 is too much and reducing this is good. However, +25 is not enough to offer a significant advantage.

Suggest stat increase of +60 to match Borderlands Bloodlust. That way it is equivalent stat increase and will encourage both attackers and defenders to claim the objectives. The Guild Objective Auras remains the only significant advantage to the defenders.

"The Empower healing skill that was added to keep lords in Alpine Borderlands and Eternal Battlegrounds will now grant stability to allies it affects."

• Pos: Using lords to be part of the defences.
• Neg: not sufficient/reliable enough to help defenders, only relevant for smaller fights.
• Neg: encouraging fights to occur on the lord by providing minor buffs inhibits mobility of defenders by stacking on and benefits attackers by allowing lord to be focused at the same time as players.

Recommend implementing. However, not enough to balance the other changes that decrease objective defence. Perhaps a mechanic that doesn’t allowing rallying next to the lord, where down-states have to be revived (this would be a significant advantage to the defenders and attackers need to make the choice sustain numbers or deal damage).

"Siege golems no longer cause capture objectives to be contested in WvW."

• Neg: Legitimate defence tactic to buy time for reinforcements, especially when facing larger numbers.

Recommend reverting this change. More of a meme than a game breaking issue as golems are less reliable in large-scale fights (even from personal experience 5 players vs 1 player in golem + keep lord is not enough to defend keep, only delay).

"Flame rams' Iron Will skill now shares a cooldown between players."

• Pos & Neg: attacking using a ram is high-risk. This could potentially allow defenders to do more damage, but also acknowledge that the attacker is extremely vulnerable in this position.

Recommend implementing. This has not been a mechanic I have personally had problems with, but is a logical change similar to other siege. Ram operators tend to get neglected if not part of an organised boon ball and if they are protected by boon ball playstyle then the benefits of Iron Will are negligible.

"The Siege Disabled effect marker has been removed from siege weapons affected by siege disruptors."

• Pos: siege disruptor icon will no longer stop unfamiliar players from using siege.

Overall good. However, siege disrupters are still not as useful as siege disablers from a defender perspective. Suggest taking a look to analyse frequency of use, because anecdotal observation is that these are not used as regularly as the disablers.

Closing Personal Remarks:

I applaud ArenaNet staff for investing into this game mode, which I appreciate as I spend the majority of my time playing WvW. However, these changes feel like they’ve been suggested by players that prefer organised large-scale guild vs guild play.

In general, uneven fights (while defending) an objective with less players has/will become more difficult. The changes also encourage the ‘boon ball’ meta and this type of playstyle doesn’t suit new/casual players and actively disadvantages smaller guilds and roamers where the best strategy is to isolate players from bigger groups and whittle down numbers and prevent reinforcements (wall and gate repair).

Additionally, the ‘Rally’ mechanic should not exist in WvW as finishing a player can potentially revive entire groups of players and entirely change fight outcomes. Often at expense of newer players that have not mastered positioning in group fights (please consider this with future balance discussions).

No issues with WvW currency changes.

Edited April 17 by MrZapples.6043

[Krash.9486]

20 minutes ago, Aralan.3872 said:

Arenanet, noooooooo!

I am currently active in several guilds, all of whom play in wvw as roamers or small groups. To be in a larger group, the vast majority of guilds want a commitment, correction, *need* a commitment to be successful against other large groups. Maybe that reduces the number of quality larger guilds fighting. You either have to be naturally good at the game or have the time to put in to become good. If you don't have the time to put in, or if structured fights make you want to go play something else, that shouldn't be a requirement to play wvw. So, if more casual guilds and smaller guilds are meant to survive, these changes are almost devastating. If you have to build siege to save your t3 keep from invading forces, you no longer have enough supply to repair your wall. Meaning players you kill from the enemy can just run back over and over and over again. That's fine if you have equal numbers, or balanced fights, but try that when it's a small group defending against a larger force. The very point of having towers and keeps is so that smaller groups can defend from larger ones. This makes no sense. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

I have heard many, many people complain about these changes, and very few people approving of them. I am willing to see how it plays out, but it's possible by then you've lost a good part of the player base that small groups enjoy playing with. It will kill the game mode in its current state. If that's what you're looking for, then go ahead. 

These forums feel fruitless to so many of us. People post things here that they feel strongly about, and then rarely hear any feedback on them. So, who knows if their voice was heard or not? The fact that we are voicing our opinions in the forums speaks volumes. I cannot remember ever posting here before; that's how strongly I feel about this. Please listen to your players. 

I agree 100%!  Like I said in another post. There will be no defense anymore. You might as well remove all keeps and towers. Large grps zerg....it is the small grps that defend...but they need walls and siege to do so. It will be useless to try any more. Zergs are about fights not PPT....just change it to open world GvG and stop pretending Keeps/towers have any purpose in the game at all.....the small guild defenders and

roamers are ded...

[Chaba.5410]

Y'all keep talking about large v. small group and never about defense v. offense.  Small groups do try to play offense too sometimes.  And large groups do play defense too.

[Blockhead Magee.3092]

Confirmed. Anet only wants you to blob around and take objectives.  They hate defenders, they're barely even giving lip service to it now.  

I makes sense. The few Anet devs who play just run with the blob so, of course, they're going to change the game to their own way of playing. 

Sad that they're so short sighted. 

[MercurialKuroSludge.8974]

8 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

The key was to keep your stuff. They errored on the karma train here, not the fight else they would have made the rings bigger. I like how they say they are trying to balance the fight, but they aren't they want people to just run around the maps and avoid each other.

Except the zergs were conveniently standing over 9000 units away afking for 2+ mins as they "gather up" (exactly this "avoid the other zerg" mindset), while poor shmucks have to keep diving back into the ring knowing 100% they will probably die for nothing.
And then the tag and slowpoke zerg start moving AFTER the ring is 2 ticks away from flipping, resulting in them getting trapped in the flipped objective and becoming bags too.

Fighting aside, sometimes its easier to give up on X and fortify Y, if an enemy has a choke, instead of mindlessly trying to BAG into the ring.

[Waffler.1257]

Interesting that with sPvP Anet takes the time to submit proposed balance changes weeks in advance to solicit player feedback and make adjustments, while with WvW they simply implement garbage changes that are the exact opposite of what players want with no warning whatsoever. Pretty obvious they absolutely hate WvW, just like after introducing the poorly designed desert BL, rather that listen to player feedback and redesign the map (something that they have done with a number of sPvP maps such as skyhammer) they simply decided they were never going to make another WvW map again to spite the players. Sad really.

[foxof.8752]

When the WVW alliance finally come out, it will become EOTM 2.0:
WVW will be 2 hours reset like EOTM, random guilds put into the 2hr match tiers. Fight guilds will fight for 2 hours and left, as they never do obj upgrades and care to defend anyway, pug guilds will do rotation ktrain like old EOTM, no one will defend and upgrade objectives as no point for it when attacking and flipping earn more rewards than defend.

Because Anet cannot balance the game mode and player numbers.