Status of WvW: How much have changed (a few questions by a returning player)

[Delta Blues.8507]

Hi everyone first of all I'm sorry to bring this one up as I'm sure there's been many thread like this, I looked some of them up but I'd still rather ask a couple things for who's willing to give me an idea.

I quit playing a few months before HoT expansion. All I was/still am interested in this game is small scale skirmish in wvw that's why I ask here. Which is kinda the reason I left, by that time there was NOONE roaming anymore. I used to duo with an elementalist friend as a thief. At the time I was mostly playing S/D mobility thief which was just really fun to play. I also played D/D a bit but really felt too easy.

Ofc now I'm locked inside and I'm desperately looking for something to play. I probably won't get to play much after this quarantine but who knows.So, premising I won't mind spending 30bucks to get the expansions and that my char is still equipped with 90% exotic gear and a few ascended trinkets:

• How much "catching up" is there to do? To get back on par with others? Did new equipment come out that needs time sinking to get? Did the power-gap somehow become bigger that it was or should my old gear still be useful? How much time till I'll be able to be back into action at a competetive level?
• Have classes/combat changed much? I know there's specializations and such. Is there a lot to unlock/grind and learn to be able to play now? Are some of the old build still viable or has the meta completely changed?
• Is this game worth playing for WvW? Is there some action out there? I really hated PvE and have never been a big fun of PvP. Is it still a mindless zergfest or is it possible to find a couple skilled comrades to play with and most importantly enemies to fight?
• Anything you think I should know?

Thank you all who'll take the time for this and have fun!

[Sviel.7493]

I really don't want to say anything that would lead to another elementalist/thief roaming duo in the world, but w/e...

-The power gap has not increased in terms of gear for an S/D thief. You may encounter problems, but it won't be because of exotics.

-Combat has technically changed, but it was a clown fiesta before and still is now. You'll encounter way more condi builds than pre-HoT. Most of the Elite specializations are just flat out stronger as well, so there's a p2w frosting on the whole mess. That said, you can still use some old classes--they just won't perform quite as well.

-The game hasn't been worth playing for WvW for about 5 years. Everyone who is left likes their experience enough to stay despite that. Objectively, I can't recommend the game to anyone. But if you're one of the crazy folks like the rest of us...welcome back. In T1, at least, there's plenty of small-scale roaming action in between the zerg fests.

[Delta Blues.8507]

Ahah don't worry the ele won't be coming back anyway..Thanks very much for your reply.. looks like it's kind of what I thought.. I'm really not that convinced, I quit because WvW wasn't worth been playing at the time and I don't think the situation changed much for the better.. On the other side combat is fun and skirmishes always good..Well I'll think about it hope server transfers are open do you know what's the situation on EU? I think I was on Gandara

Thanks again for your feedback!

[Justine.6351]

Yeah it's not something to recommend anymore.

The builds you will fight against are boring afThe players you fight against are often potatoesThe players you fight against don't want to fight, they want your bag and will cheese you any way possible to get it

I don't have a recommendation for you. I play WvW like 2-3 hours a month and spend the rest of my gaming time playing pve in other games like gw1, Diablo 2 and eso.

[Turkeyspit.3965]

@Justine.6351 said:The players you fight against don't want to fight, they want your bag and will cheese you any way possible to get it

Very accurate description.

[Delta Blues.8507]

Damn that's really sad to hear though I remember it always being like this (which is the reason I quit really)

[Justine.6351]

@Delta Blues.8507 said:kitten that's really sad to hear though I remember it always being like this (which is the reason I quit really)

In every game with RvR I'm sure it is this way but now in gw2 that's all there is left.

[Vrath.1754]

@Delta Blues.8507 said:Ahah don't worry the ele won't be coming back anyway..Thanks very much for your reply.. looks like it's kind of what I thought.. I'm really not that convinced, I quit because WvW wasn't worth been playing at the time and I don't think the situation changed much for the better.. On the other side combat is fun and skirmishes always good..Well I'll think about it hope server transfers are open do you know what's the situation on EU? I think I was on Gandara

Thanks again for your feedback!

The best advice is to log in and queue up for a few hours and see how it feels, it costs you nothing but a bit of time.The truth is the forums are pretty jaded and only a small part of the player base providing feedback and some are recently disappointed with the recent changes. You might find you enjoy the changes, some players love it. If you've been gone a long time you might find you've missed the combat or other activities.

If you dont have the motivation to even do that then it's probably not a game you want to play.

On a tangent, when people ask questions like this it reminds of people asking about the Wheel of Time books and some vocal fans calling a couple of the mid to late books a slog. So the new reader has a negative perception of the books some skip them outright and others find they enjoy them. Some say the slog is books 7 to 10 others 9 and 10 others just 10. Anyway you get the point.

[Delta Blues.8507]

@Vrath.1754 said:The best advice is to log in and queue up for a few hours and see how it feels, it costs you nothing but a bit of time.The truth is the forums are pretty jaded and only a small part of the player base providing feedback and some are recently disappointed with the recent changes. You might find you enjoy the changes, some players love it. If you've been gone a long time you might find you've missed the combat or other activities.

If you dont have the motivation to even do that then it's probably not a game you want to play.

On a tangent, when people ask questions like this it reminds of people asking about the Wheel of Time books and some vocal fans calling a couple of the mid to late books a slog. So the new reader has a negative perception of the books some skip them outright and others find they enjoy them. Some say the slog is books 7 to 10 others 9 and 10 others just 10. Anyway you get the point.

Yeah I think you're pretty much spot on I probably wouldn't play it again if not for the current situation but I can't really find no games that interest me and at least I remember the combat here being fun. Ofc it's kinda useless if you can't find people to actually fight.But most importantly I wanted to know if I could eventually get back into battle with my old char/gear so that's a good thing.

[ArchonWing.9480]

How much "catching up" is there to do? To get back on par with others? Did new equipment come out that needs time sinking to get? Did the power-gap somehow become bigger that it was or should my old gear still be useful? How much time till I'll be able to be back into action at a competetive level?

Unfortunately, a lot of catching up is needed. The first thing is that you will need a mount or running alone will suck. You will need to do a reward track and do some achievements like take a keep. I recommend using a mobile class like warrior so you don't get left behind. Do dailies to get reward track potions.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Warclaw

Have classes/combat changed much? I know there's specializations and such. Is there a lot to unlock/grind and learn to be able to play now? Are some of the old build still viable or has the meta completely changed?

The big thing is that there is much power creep, meaning fights will usually last longer but at the same time burst will be also much higher than you know it as. If you stand in red circles, you will explode.

Most of the gameplay will involve elite specs, and that may mean learning those over again. Fortunately, they're not very hard to unlock in wvw because our wvw tokens means you can use them instead of going to unlock pve hero points.

Your gear will probably be outdated, but that's ok. Just go check out metabattle and remember you can often craft cheaper versions of gear. For example, instead of trailblazer, you can run dire gear for a while.

Is this game worth playing for WvW? Is there some action out there? I really hated PvE and have never been a big fun of PvP. Is it still a mindless zergfest or is it possible to find a couple skilled comrades to play with and most importantly enemies to fight?

That is rather hard to say and tbh I'm not really sure it's worth your 30 bucks. The game overall has been reeling, and WvW is the only reason for me personally because it still remains unique enough. Most of PvE is really boring and I would say most of PoF felt really uninspired. Pug zerging wvw will probably not be fun for you; you'll probably be best off getting on your server's comms if they have any for more organized play. Ideally, you want to find a guild because that's really where it's at these days.

Wherher or not there are enemies to fight depends on when you play. On Prime time NA, on NA servers, there's lots, but otherwise it's an issue.

[Delta Blues.8507]

So I ended up trying it out and.. it's really not for me. I completely remembered why I stopped playing. I mean the gameplay it's still smooth and somehow entertaining but.. I don't know even combat feels somehow off.Sure I have 5 years of rust on my fingers. I'm getting back into it. Had a few good fights too. But besides that what's the point in this wvw. Either follow numblessly in a huge blob a random tag walking over npcs, which by the way felt like the dumbest waste of time in my 20 years of gaming, or roam aimlessly for hours hoping to find some small groups to have a decent fight with. With no purpose at all.Guess I'll try out return of reckoning next.Might log in again sometimes to see if I can get decent again and if I might find some spark. Meanwhile I thank you all for your feedback and thank the few people I met in just two days on Gandara server (as well as duelling enemies) that have managed to make this little flashback fun.

As for people wondering to return, if you are in a similar situation, well just know that things didn't get better at all. I honestly don't understand how a game with such a huge potential, that was already upshit creek 5 years ago, managed to get even worse. I know I may sound arrogant but that's how I feel. Though I found TONS of people playing in wvw so I guess not everyone feels the same way. w/e

[Sobx.1758]

@"Delta Blues.8507" said:So I ended up trying it out and.. it's really not for me. I completely remembered why I stopped playing. I mean the gameplay it's still smooth and somehow entertaining but.. I don't know even combat feels somehow off.Sure I have 5 years of rust on my fingers. I'm getting back into it. Had a few good fights too. But besides that what's the point in this wvw. Either follow numblessly in a huge blob a random tag walking over npcs, which by the way felt like the dumbest waste of time in my 20 years of gaming, or roam aimlessly for hours hoping to find some small groups to have a decent fight with. With no purpose at all.Guess I'll try out return of reckoning next.Might log in again sometimes to see if I can get decent again and if I might find some spark. Meanwhile I thank you all for your feedback and thank the few people I met in just two days on Gandara server (as well as duelling enemies) that have managed to make this little flashback fun.

As for people wondering to return, if you are in a similar situation, well just know that things didn't get better at all. I honestly don't understand how a game with such a huge potential, that was already upshit creek 5 years ago, managed to get even worse. I know I may sound arrogant but that's how I feel. Though I found TONS of people playing in wvw so I guess not everyone feels the same way. w/e

So... how exactly did it get worse? Because you pretty much wrote "I completely remembered why I stopped playing. I mean the gameplay it's still smooth and somehow entertaining but.. I don't know even combat feels somehow off." and then complained about zergs/roaming without purpose. Seems to me you just never liked the combat/wvw system in general. Suddenly you tell people it "managed to get worse", but apparently forgot to write why?

So just 2 questions out of curiosity:

1. what "potential" do you see here?
2. how did it get worse?

[XenesisII.1540]

Sometimes people don't like a game and move on, no need to grill them about it.

[Delta Blues.8507]

What I mean is that while gameplay is fantastic, because of how smooth it is and how interesting the skills themselves are and how everything just flows really well while playing. I think this game just excel in how fun it is to actually play your character. I have played MANY multiplayer games and I think few or none equal this. Though I really hate combat. Balance is ridiculous. They kept adding conditions over conditions ever more powerful with no kind of diminishing returns. At the same time the burst damage got ever more insane. The whole elite mechanic killed half the viable builds. The "new" trait lines killed variety. At least before you could allocate your points and mix abilities in your build giving it maybe even just one little tool that made it different while still viable.And with huge maps, a siege system etc all that is left to do if you actually want to pvp (because zergplay cannot honestly be considered pvp imo, especially with all the lag you still get after 5 years of having this problem) is walking around for ages hoping to find an even numer of opponents willing to stop and fights.Then there's mounts. So people don't even have to worry about being a pvp environment because you can't even be dismounted!And there's bows that shoot freaking unicornsAnd there's so many light effects and crazy skins you almost need to turn your monitor luminosity's down if you want to still be able to see things outside the monitor

The potential is that the gameplay was so great it only needed proper balance and a tiny bit of structured system to be tweaked and after 5 years all there's left is a pve grindfest and a couple people that love the gameplay dueling in the middle of what should be an RvR map

edit: just logged quickly and spotted my first deadeye. just wow.

[Sobx.1758]

@XenesisII.1540 said:Sometimes people don't like a game and move on, no need to grill them about it.

Obviously. I just asked him to elaborate, because he didn't and I was curious what he meant. Not sure what's your problem with that? :D