So, the change to mount stomp seems reasonable..

[Guest]

@"God.2708" said:You know. I don't think people saying it helped the outnumbered side more actually have stepped back and thought about this.

Hot Take: If you are running in and mount stomping a 'boonballed' (such a stupid term) zerg repeatedly and respawning and coming back to do it again (or doing it over the corpses of your dead allies as they clamber to generate downs for you to do it) you AREN'T outnumbered. You're just abusing the fact you can respawn and run back repeatedly in a situation where your enemies cannot as effectively.

If this was actually a tactic that helped smaller groups fight larger ones, you would see such things when you push into enemy T3 objectives by small groups or something. You don't. It is almost entirely a tool utilized to abuse respawning to overwhelm your opponent with sheer numbers (yes, numbers) because they cannot compete against your limitless body count. If that is what is needed to hold your objective, Second Hot Take: You deserve to lose it.

Wrong, wrong, terrible take that is utterly, completely wrong. That's not how the tactic works unless you're just clueless.

Let's take the common situation that you're facing an off-hours map blob trying to take your EBG keep. They're running 50-60 in a zerg with a guild core and a decent commander. Your side has say 20 defenders clouding around. Maybe you've got a pug tag trying to rally people to the defense. Maybe not, you just have a handful of experienced players trying to repel the blob.

The blob wants to stay together. But invitably there are people who don't move in coordination with the commander - the "tail" - or who break off to do other things like try to desiege, gank, Leroy, etc - the "squirrels." Your job as a defense cloud is to pick off the tail. Get a down, get a stomp, start whittling their numbers advantage. Problem is the commander of their sustain core can see downs and will move to res them nearly instantly - certainly faster than you can damage a down or get off a solo stomp.

Enter the mount stomp - the counterperiphery, roamers, and others get some downs, and support/tanky classes can mount stomp on the tail and get out. Hell, as a competent warrior player I can even get off some risky stomps in tighter groups and still live. You gotta know your class and what you personally can survive, nobody should just lololomounstompanddie in the middle of a blob. That's obviously useless.

Now you've shaved off 10 of their players, hopefully patched the holes and killed off their siege, and your job is to expel the blob. It is MUCH easier for a defender to get out of combat in a friendly objective and remount than an attacker. For one, hostile NPCs. For another, attacking squirrels trying to OOC are easy pickings for good defenders. No, the blob wants to stay together, on the commander, meaning fewer mounts. Also, mount stomping is riskier for them - easier to just move the blob over the down and dps to death. In a defense cloud they aren't going to wipe you en masse - they either want to "farm kills" and will be forced to pick people apart, or they want to cap in which case they will be trying to push you out of the circle, not necessarily kill. It's a cat and mouse game at that point where one of the few tide-turning tools we have against the blob has been taken away.

(Not to mention they also absolutely crushed siege damage, which already had a hard enough time doing anything against the sustain meta blobs).

[SWI.4127]

@"Celsith.2753" said:Rip warclaw. One of the few things that actually aided against a larger or compd group when your server didnt have one. VIva la blob.

Good riddance. It often benefited larger groups who could afford to keep people mounted and still generate downs. If you were really fighting outnumbered, you'd need every person in the group there doing their job to even survive.

What you're really complaining about is not being able to gank someone and insta-gib them, completely invalidating the rez-game (which is basically the only "play" a support player can make). Sorry you can't rapid fire and have your buddy run in from 3000 range and insta-stomp them anymore for ez kills.

[Guest]

@"SWI.4127" said:Good riddance. It often benefited larger groups who could afford to keep people mounted and still generate downs. If you were really fighting outnumbered, you'd need every person in the group there doing their job to even survive.

This is a persistent myth that I don't know where people get it from. No attacking group "keeps" people mounted. They are all far more useful to a blob using their player skills to share boons, heal, and range attack. Zerg players don't even want to do this because they don't get loot that way. Attackers also know they are facing a respawn disadvantage. They'd rather bleed out defenders and let people get tags. The tactic is disproportionately useful to defenders to force attackers to run back, get through walls/gates again, and leverage their respawn/friendly objective advantages.

What you're really complaining about is not being able to gank someone and insta-gib them, completely invalidating the rez-game (which is basically the only "play" a support player can make). Sorry you can't rapid fire and have your buddy run in from 3000 range and insta-stomp them anymore for ez kills.

Not gonna say this isn't a thing, though (and doubly so if you were directing that personally at Celsith :tongue: ). But that's less impactful to the game mode as a whole. That's just mag-SMC-camping stuff, and some random roamer/gankers.

[God.2708]

@"Kunzaito.8169" said:

@"God.2708" said:You know. I don't think people saying it helped the outnumbered side more actually have stepped back and thought about this.

Hot Take: If you are running in and mount stomping a 'boonballed' (such a stupid term) zerg repeatedly and respawning and coming back to do it again (or doing it over the corpses of your dead allies as they clamber to generate downs for you to do it) you AREN'T outnumbered. You're just abusing the fact you can respawn and run back repeatedly in a situation where your enemies cannot as effectively.

If this was actually a tactic that helped smaller groups fight larger ones, you would see such things when you push into enemy T3 objectives by small groups or something. You don't. It is almost entirely a tool utilized to abuse respawning to overwhelm your opponent with sheer numbers (yes, numbers) because they cannot compete against your limitless body count. If that is what is needed to hold your objective, Second Hot Take: You deserve to lose it.

Wrong, wrong, terrible take that is utterly, completely wrong. That's not how the tactic works unless you're just clueless.

Let's take the common situation that you're facing an off-hours map blob trying to take your EBG keep. They're running 50-60 in a zerg with a guild core and a decent commander. Your side has say 20 defenders clouding around. Maybe you've got a pug tag trying to rally people to the defense. Maybe not, you just have a handful of experienced players trying to repel the blob.

The blob wants to stay together. But invitably there are people who don't move in coordination with the commander - the "tail" - or who break off to do other things like try to desiege, gank, Leroy, etc - the "squirrels." Your job as a defense cloud is to pick off the tail. Get a down, get a stomp, start whittling their numbers advantage. Problem is the commander of their sustain core can see downs and will move to res them nearly instantly - certainly faster than you can damage a down or get off a solo stomp.

Enter the mount stomp - the counterperiphery, roamers, and others get some downs, and support/tanky classes can mount stomp on the tail and get out. Hell, as a competent warrior player I can even get off some risky stomps in tighter groups and still live. You gotta know your class and what you personally can survive, nobody should just lololomounstompanddie in the middle of a blob. That's obviously useless.

Now you've shaved off 10 of their players, hopefully patched the holes and killed off their siege, and your job is to expel the blob. It is MUCH easier for a defender to get out of combat in a friendly objective and remount than an attacker. For one, hostile NPCs. For another, attacking squirrels trying to OOC are easy pickings for good defenders. No, the blob wants to stay together, on the commander, meaning fewer mounts. Also, mount stomping is riskier for them - easier to just move the blob over the down and dps to death. In a defense cloud they aren't going to wipe you en masse - they either want to "farm kills" and will be forced to pick people apart, or they want to cap in which case they will be trying to push you out of the circle, not necessarily kill. It's a cat and mouse game at that point where one of the few tide-turning tools we have against the blob has been taken away.

(Not to mention they also absolutely crushed siege damage, which already had a hard enough time doing anything against the sustain meta blobs).

You...

You literally just said what I said in a lot more words and then disagreed with me.

[SWI.4127]

If you guys want to insta-finish downs while roaming, then use Warrior banner. Not some cheese mechanic that, by definition, you could only use if you weren't even involved in the fight.

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

@"fuzzyp.6295" said:Thank goodness. The original mindset of Warclaw being this major game changing force in large battles was never the correct idea to handle a mount in WvW. I wish they'd just remove the stomp all together, Warclaw already is strong enough as a mobility tool in a game mode where mobility is important.

u poatoe miss that only removing the warclaw completely would be the last way out. they couldn't explain this to "the players" = the pve kittens that step by to farm for some currency we farm in one day... therefore they just nerf warclaw so bad that the kittens won't even bother to get it. i'd not have gotten it too if i know they'd give it like 20 nerfs...

@SWI.4127 sorry, but you're the one argumenting from the bear-ranger position here. if any zerg is big enough to just roflstomp the other group, it's more like 15 vs50, and that was never really winnable. earlier you could win 15vs 35's, that was made way harder. now 15 vs 25 is somehow possible, if you have 20 vs 40 it can work too... but the issue nor solution here was NEVER the warclaw. really not.

it gets now tons harder to disrupt blobs as a non zergsize defending position. where to the hell will people get the population for this? congratulation Anet, you created _a_n_o_t_h_er change that will cause people to leave.

outside of that, they make us litearlly waste our time. bad rewards, quality and quantitywise. and all the last months' changes nerf killspeed basically. it takes longer and longer and longer, battles take yet way longer than I can or want point my eyes on the freaking useless storm of flashy lights and useless effects that cause severe lag all across the bord.

tl;dr: big phat thicc dislike.

[SexyMofo.8923]

This mount is useless now. I want my gem refunded for the skins. I want my gold I paid to unlock this quest.

[Svarty.8019]

@Celsith.2753 said:Now it's ONLY going to favor blobs.. just like almost everything else.

It's enormously ironic that the Arenanet WvW design philosophy of encouraging gigantic zergs is countered by their servers' inability to handle it.

[stzy.7892]

@SWI.4127 said:If you guys want to insta-finish downs while roaming, then use Warrior banner. Not some cheese mechanic that, by definition, you could only use if you weren't even involved in the fight.

Cause everyone plays brain dead warrior? You can still not take part in a fight and use banner, btw.

[Svarty.8019]

@Steezy.2905 said:

@SWI.4127 said:If you guys want to insta-finish downs while roaming, then use Warrior banner. Not some cheese mechanic that, by definition, you could only use if you weren't even involved in the fight.

Cause everyone plays brain dead warrior? You can still not take part in a fight and use banner, btw.

All I ever see are groups of Engineers, Eles, Revs...

[MedievalThings.5417]

@Svarty.8019 said:

@Celsith.2753 said:Now it's ONLY going to favor blobs.. just like almost everything else.

It's enormously ironic that the Arenanet WvW design philosophy of encouraging gigantic zergs is countered by their servers' inability to handle it.

I got a laugh from this cause it's too true. They also nerfed arrow carts again, which were already useless. /smh

[Hymh.3245]

Teamwork requires skill.

[SWI.4127]

@Steezy.2905 said:

@SWI.4127 said:If you guys want to insta-finish downs while roaming, then use Warrior banner. Not some cheese mechanic that, by definition, you could only use if you weren't even involved in the fight.

Cause everyone plays brain dead warrior? You can still not take part in a fight and use banner, btw.

At least you don't need to, by definition, be out of combat to even use the skill.

[Guest]

@"God.2708" said:You...

You literally just said what I said in a lot more words and then disagreed with me.

Since reading comprehension isn't in your skillset, then, I guess I'll have to go back to your post verbatim:

You know. I don't think people saying it helped the outnumbered side more actually have stepped back and thought about this.

Not only have I thought about this, but I have nearly every day been a part of this scenario from the outnumbered side and found it to be greatly to our strategic aid.

Hot Take: If you are running in and mount stomping a 'boonballed' (such a stupid term) zerg repeatedly and respawning and coming back to do it again (or doing it over the corpses of your dead allies as they clamber to generate downs for you to do it) you AREN'T outnumbered. You're just abusing the fact you can respawn and run back repeatedly in a situation where your enemies cannot as effectively.

As I said, running into a zerg ball and dying is NOT what anyone who is defending against a larger group and expecting a positive result will do. You 1. Don't want to stomp into the group, you want to stomp on the edges where the downs are, and 2. Don't want to die while doing it. You are absolutely trying to win a war of attrition by making them have to run back farther, like EVERY DEFENSE since the launch of the game. And stomps help that.

If this was actually a tactic that helped smaller groups fight larger ones, you would see such things when you push into enemy T3 objectives by small groups or something. You don't. It is almost entirely a tool utilized to abuse respawning to overwhelm your opponent with sheer numbers (yes, numbers) because they cannot compete against your limitless body count.

No, you wouldn't, because you are fundamentally ignoring the difference in the two combat situations. For a defense, the one and ONLY objective is to defeat the enemy players. On offense the group also needs to cap. If they are facing a superior force on defense, they are up against 1. The hostile objective and its buffs, 2. a likely respawn disadvantage, 3. a larger fighting force, and 4. the need to cap to win.

If that is what is needed to hold your objective, Second Hot Take: You deserve to lose it.

And there it is, the crux of your position, that I can only imagine comes from the position of a player who mostly just rides the zerg. That you "deserve" to lose an objective if you have fewer players, or don't have a zerg to counter a zerg. That somehow using the tactics available to you (clouding, chipping away at the attackers, making it hard for them to get back to the fight) is not a valid way to play or defend. You're entitled to that opinion, and I guess ANet agrees with you. But the defense's body count isn't "limitless" and respawn time isn't 0 - you still have to win the tactical battle, it's just a different objective than the attackers'.

NOTHING that I said backed up or agreed with a single thing you said.

[Svarty.8019]

Might as well respec out of Warclaw WvW skill-"tree" now..

[MaxosStrife.9642]

@"SexyMofo.8923" said:This mount is useless now. I want my gem refunded for the skins. I want my gold I paid to unlock this quest.

so we can spend it on actual useful ones, but really, it was used by both big zergs and outnumbered groups, but if a big zerg used it they would win anyway, where it actually made a change was when fighting a bigger group, if other ppl just came by to protect a tower or a keep and stomped before engaging it could turn the tide;The first 2 or 3 weeks after relinks we had an empty main and linked server, always outnumbered, almost all day even on weekends with no keeps on our side and the enemy zergs just spawn camping outside our entrance, the kind of situacion where even the npc lord (that spawns when you are outnumbered) wasnt enough to get a tower, some ppl including myself just took a break from an already empty link/main servers, now i have gotten stomped just before getting a rez, its annoying but it was also a tool to defend our side when we have 10 and they get 30 most of the day, ill just take a longer break from WvW now i guess, pve is starting to look more and more attractive.

Nothing will change, gankers will gank, zergs will zerg, ppl that died with mount stoms will die anyway with an invul/stability/blind on them, all a warrior need to stomp is banner/"balanced stance", a guardian with a "stand your ground" and so on, the only real difference will be zergs having an easier time over smaller groups.

If you were going to remove the stomp, why reduce the target cap, if you were going to reduce the target cap, why take away the stomp.

[ArchonWing.9480]

They could have just reduced it to 1 target but keep the stomp. Wtf does 20% damage on downed do?

[DemonSeed.3528]

It makes people use 20% more brain power to make plays XD

[God.2708]

@"Kunzaito.8169" said:...NOTHING that I said backed up or agreed with a single thing you said.

You are trying to make your strategy sound tactical. You are throwing bodies at a zerg to whittle away at them, exactly as you (and I) described. It does not help the smaller force. It helps the defending force. IE. when You are a big zerg trying to fight for a keep with similar numbers (instead of less), now this 'tactic' that helps the 'smaller in number' makes the keep unassailable despite your force potentially being much stronger/more coordinated/more together simply by... raw body count because of respawns and mount leaps.

You didn't understand what I was saying because you couldn't see past your own paradigm. There are better ways to help small coordinated groups of defenders that does not have tremendously ill effects on same sized attack/defense scenarios. Whether Anet will implement them will be seen.

I have led defenses of objectives with smaller forces countless times successfully using smart tactics and coordination, no mount leap required. Generally the largest frustration I have in doing so is players showing up late on mounts and pouncing on my guys while trying to avoid the bomb from the group 3x our size. I will not miss something that was anti-fun and forced my team to be on high alert with perfect support play and instant revives whilst dealing with lucky soulbeasts and some dude who was AFK until 3s ago where he realized he could press 1 for an ez kill.

[Shiyo.3578]

Mount stomp completely ruined roaming and made being outnumbered even more of a disadvantage. I am so glad it's removed, not sure why it took them a year+ to remove this though..

[KryTiKaL.3125]

I think people on this game need to start accepting that, ultimately, it is near impossible to balance large scale combat in any capacity. Even in shooters it is a chaotic mess and while there are counters to things like tanks or fighter planes and other types of "limited" utility the combat is by far not terribly balanced in regards to large scale. Take any Battlefield game. Those are never balanced...ever...especially not the respawn locations. Those are atrocious.

It might be nice to think that large scale combat in MMORPGs fulfills this immersive fantasy many of us have of strategy and tactics winning out in the end but ultimately that is not how it works because it is a video game and there are about a thousand and one other factors that are affected by another thousand and one other factors.

GW2 large scale PvP is not balanced, it is not tactical and it never has been...just like it never has been on literally any other game that has ever delved into such areas. No not DAOC, no not ESO, no not BDO, no not anything ever. It is always a mess, it is always chaotic.

Now that isn't to say that ANet shouldn't pay attention to WvW as a game mode or as a piece of content within their game, they most certainly should, but it would really be nice if so many stopped trying to pretend like there is a large degree of "skill" or "tactics" and "strategy" involved in large scale PvP zerg vs zerg fights. There isn't, 90% of the time it devolves into smashing buttons and that gets even the most "experienced" through encounters.

[Guest]

@"God.2708" said:

You are trying to make your strategy sound tactical. You are throwing bodies at a zerg to whittle away at them, exactly as you (and I) described. It does not help the smaller force. It helps the defending force. IE. when You are a big zerg trying to fight for a keep with similar numbers (instead of less), now this 'tactic' that helps the 'smaller in number' makes the keep unassailable despite your force potentially being much stronger/more coordinated/more together simply by... raw body count because of respawns and mount leaps.

I am trying to make it sound tactical because it IS tactical.

No one is "throwing bodies" at anything because YOU SHOULDN"T DIE WHEN DOING IT IF YOU DO IT CORRECTLY. As I said MULTIPLE times now. And even if you do happen to die, that's part of combat too. It does take skill to pick apart a zerg without a zerg to help you. It's not at ALL a mindless lemming tactic - any halfway intelligent commander would not only counter that but welcome the bag farm.

Ok, then you finally made a somewhat salient point - what if the numbers are more even to start? My experience says this is rare, but I almost always play hours when my side has just uncoordinated pugs and the other side has massive zergs. I suppose it can and does happen, but consider the following:

1. Generally speaking, the state of the game is that no one mounts a serious attack on a T2 or T3 objective, especially a keep, without a big, somewhat coordinated zerg. When people are talking about it aiding a "smaller" group they MEAN defenders because that is the applicable situation. Small scale attacks on meaningful objectives are nearly nonexistent with the current blobbiness so mount stomping is neither here nor there in that case. And again, when attacking you'd rather have the downs bleed out slower unless they're in the ring, since you want to delay their respawn.

2. When you have a defensive zerg to help, mount stomping becomes more or less irrelevant, because then you get into zerg fighting tactics. You're not relying on slowly picking them apart - you are going to push into each other at some point and that's the bulk of the fight action.

3. What's more likely is that you start with a small group of defenders and a callout. You dance with the enemy zerg, you delay, you disable, some more people arrive. You use siege, they kill the siege, they get in. You get some more numbers, you start trying to pick them apart. You peel off 10 or so squirrels and stragglers, the numbers are starting to even out, but you're still facing organization as an uncoordinated cloud. Then the fight generally goes one of two ways - the defenders are able to smartly use siege, respawn advantage, and stomps to slowly defeat the attacking zerg. Or the attackers have enough bodies to withstand/res/port/runback/whatever and turn the tide the other way. The point is the defenders have a CHANCE, vs. just standing there helpless while the melee ball resses every down you manage to get and either farms you or just takes whatever they want.

You didn't understand what I was saying because you couldn't see past your own paradigm. There are better ways to help small coordinated groups of defenders that does not have tremendously ill effects on same sized attack/defense scenarios. Whether Anet will implement them will be seen.

I understood what you were saying. You set up a scenario to attack that doesn't exist - it doesn't happen that way and therefore has no meaningful part of this conversation. Now, you made a clearer point this time, as I acknowledged above, but I still happen to disagree that it's bad for the game for the majority of realistic scenarios, and do not think it is a "tremendously ill effect." But again, I don't really encounter those scenarios in my gameplay, and also, clearly ANet agrees with you as far as Warclaw goes.

I have led defenses of objectives with smaller forces countless times successfully using smart tactics and coordination, no mount leap required. Generally the largest frustration I have in doing so is players showing up late on mounts and pouncing on my guys while trying to avoid the bomb from the group 3x our size. I will not miss something that was anti-fun and forced my team to be on high alert with perfect support play and instant revives whilst dealing with lucky soulbeasts and some dude who was AFK until 3s ago where he realized he could press 1 for an ez kill.

We have different experiences. That's really all I can say about that.

[God.2708]

@"Kunzaito.8169" said:

3. What's more likely is that you start with a small group of defenders and a callout. You dance with the enemy zerg, you delay, you disable, some more people arrive. You use siege, they kill the siege, they get in. You get some more numbers, you start trying to pick them apart. You peel off 10 or so squirrels and stragglers, the numbers are starting to even out, but you're still facing organization as an uncoordinated cloud. Then the fight generally goes one of two ways - the defenders are able to smartly use siege, respawn advantage, and stomps to slowly defeat the attacking zerg. Or the attackers have enough bodies to withstand/res/port/runback/whatever and turn the tide the other way. The point is the defenders have a CHANCE, vs. just standing there helpless while the melee ball resses every down you manage to get and either farms you or just takes whatever they want.

And here-in lies the issue. You aren't smaller. You're uncoordinated. I do not think the game mode should favor the group that is uncoordinated vs the one that is. Sometimes the defenders are small and few. But It is 50/50 that I show up to defend an objective we are losing to 25 people following a tag with proper builds and we have 30+ rangers and mesmers going BAY UNDER ATTACK, HELP. Sure there are times things go well and you identify that plat soulbeast who picks people off every 15s for you to mount stomp and shadow step away or whatever. But that is individual cooperation somehow outscaling group coordination, and that is backwards and makes the game scale badly as groups even in size.

I'll agree that experiences can vary wildly depending on time zone and server. I do not agree it is healthy game design. It makes assaulting an objective a chore and discourages people working together on the defense because they don't need to, both of which are sour spots in a game mode that lacks external motivation to encourage such things.

Edit: I do want to thank you for your well written and thought out responses, however bitey our conversation may have come across. I do understand where you are coming from and, whilst I don't think mount leaping downs is the solution, do appreciate the work your type do and wish Anet gave you better more healthy tools to do so.

[Guest]

@"God.2708" said:And here-in lies the issue. You aren't smaller. You're uncoordinated.

I didn't say "smaller" not meaning that. I can count. 20-30 vs. 50-60 is smaller. It's not hard to see when you're facing a much larger force. I did not choose my wording idly.

I do not think the game mode should favor the group that is uncoordinated vs the one that is. Sometimes the defenders are small and few.

No one said favor. I said give an avenue to victory. A comped organized group with a commander and food and all that has plenty of advantages. Not least of which is that in the current meta it's nearly impossible to full down someone in an attacking ball using just siege and player damage. The available synergies between sustain and damage classes (read: FB/scrapper/scourge/rev) make it easy to stay healed, revive the downs, and still do tremendous damage.

Look, ultimately, since this is a game, it's about creating fun gameplay that encourages people to play, right? We don't need to concern ourselves much with what realistically "should" happen in a situation. Personally, I think it's bad for the game to make it futile to log in to wvw unless there's a commander running. If you can't hope to hold anything against an organized blob, people will log off unless their celebmander is on running a ktrain. We can all see that the game has trended further and further in that direction over the years. I personally don't find it fun to just mindlessly cap things against helpless opposition. Nor to watch helplessly while an opposing blob just takes anything they want. I guess I am in the minority given how popular blobbing is but I think WvW loses a lot more players by making the barriers to entry so high and by making it completely unfun and unrewarding to play if you're not on the blob side.

[ArchonWing.9480]

@DemonSeed.3528 said:It makes people use 20% more brain power to make plays XD

Fair, but 20% more is still rather close to 0.

Still more than the patch notes as a whole though xD