Sarrs.4831

>Celebration Boosters and Birthday Boosters now grant a 10% bonus to WvW reward-track progress.

most important change, legit so happy they did this

> @"Swamurabi.7890" said:

> and the fairness of matchups will eliminate the malaise that has been part of every server below T1 for years.

Below T1? The unfunness of T1 is the entire reason we have T2 and even occasionally T3 purposely tanking. WvW's rotten from the top down; T3 and T4 are arguably the most fun WvW experiences!

40%/50% effectiveness, with the state of condispam as it is, is far too generous. You'll just hit cover conditions half the time. Heavily inclined to agree that the Nefarious Favor nerf should be rethought.

> @"Funkyshit.9126" said:

> guys in case you didnt understand holosmith in nerfed quite big . no more cleanse for holo and it is a melee class. at least druid wont ruin the game as scourge did( scourge will still be on top of the game)

Anti-corrosion plating with hard light arena maybe? I don't know anything about holosmith but if you can go anticorrosion plating/purity of purpose/holosmith you'd end up with one of the best condition-removing fields in the game, completely delete condi pressure for any of your friends standing in a massive area for 12 seconds.

Looking at the top rated holosmith build on Metabattle you could probably switch Alchemy for Inventions and do pretty nicely.

Losing that condi clear and corrupt is pretty painful. So much weaker against cover boons/conditions.

With Path of Corruption nerfed I'm curious about Spiteful Spirit. Use that to cripple & flip boons; take Speed of Shadows to close the distance? Since you don't use F2 to corrupt boons anymore, maybe Savant's AoE boost not as important; use Feast instead?

I dunno, I guess we'll see how substantial the nerfs are.

I do not know what is wrong with expecting players to join a guild to join that alliance. You can make a 1-player dummy guild and use that to join an alliance. If you are worried about elitist behavior, and about elitists not allowing you to join their alliance... Why do you want to tag onto their server with this system?

The player time evaluation stuff is interesting to me because I find it confusing that so many people are against it. It is a system that has already been in the game for quite a while and it seems reasonably fair. I am particularly perplexed by your suggestion because it is only a problem because of your prior suggestion.

> @"Israel.7056" said:

> Separate guilds by timezone they tend to be most active in and then put the OCX/SEA guilds in their own distinct servers so they no longer distort the results like they have since launch.

>

> Restructuring doesn't matter if coverage is still the most important condition for overall victory.

Maybe when we get some actual servers

Very curious how this will go for Renegades and Heralds. I quite like the idea of a boon-duration stacking Herald which is good for sending Might, Fury and Alacrity.

If you're in a WvW guild as it stands there's no issue at all.

I am somewhat skeptical that an alliance would be so picky that it says that your guild is allowed in, so long as they kick *you* from it. It begs the same question... Why do you consider this guild your 'friends' if they're willing to throw you out just because an alliance leader demands it?

I also doubt that you would be constantly reassigned because surely you'll find *an* alliance which is willing to accept you. You'll get reassigned once but then won't you find a different group of players who would be willing to accept you into their group?

> @"Neph.2163" said:

> I see it as discouraging and reducing the fun of individuals and small groups that will likely constantly get reassigned from match to match and not be able to see the same people or join in alliance voice chat.

>

> (And, no, they won’t all be able to join the alliances. There won’t be enough room. There may be the always get on tag or get out of the alliance attitudes, etc.)

This somewhat begs the question

Why, if you want to play with specific people, are you unwilling to guild or alliance with them?

Why do you want to play with specific people who are unwilling to guild or alliance with you?

> @"Sumii.3065" said:

> So if you just recently paid to get into a different world server, it was a complete waste?

The system's likely going to be months out anyway.

If alliance size limits mean there are 5 superalliances that actually sounds like a really healthy number.

I pretty regularly see people saying that PPT is not an effective measure of score. With this in mind, I don't see what we're actually losing by potentially encouraging people not to PPT that much.

That said, if these roles are necessary for competitive alliances to win, then those competitive alliances will need to either form scout guilds as members of their alliance or allow scouts into their own guilds. If they don't, then these roles were never important anyway... And truth be told I think the sentry/scout role is an artifact anyway.

> @"Honest John.4673" said:

> Oh wait, you mean like an alliance? Imagine that.

No, that isn't my point.

I only really care about fun. You can build communities around an experience that is fun, but they won't survive if the game becomes unfun.

> @"Tyyphoon.5301" said:

> Where does this put the roamer populations? Many of the roamers played with each other or against each other for certain reasons. We have come to know more or less each other -- for better or for worse. Now you will be forcing ALL players to join big guilds, even if its against their wishes. How does that sit with ANET's tenet and original intent for the game? Forcing more zergling play, it seems.

Why don't you just form a guild with the roamers you like and set that as your WvW guild?

Very interesting set of changes. My main worry is that it's heavily predicated on the current metrics to measure player skill and participation, and while I'm sure they're quite refined, it's a hell of a lot of weight on those systems.

Does this mean we might not necessarily always be playing in a 4-tier setup? If you throttle world creation by the total amount of players allowed we might end up with 3 or 5 tiers. Dropping back to 3 tiers might be a good way to keep the experience consistent in a low-activity period.

I like the idea of a guild that's an informal friendslist so I can ensure that my friends who don't really play in WvW can join the same server as mine. Is there any reason for a guild *not* to declare itself as a WvW guild? With that in mind, is it possible to not select a guild to enter WvW with?

> @"Nidome.1365" said:

> You do realise that the name "Guild Wars" comes from game lore and has absolutely nothing to do with player guilds right so the name of the game has absolutely nothing to do with WvW?

It is still somewhat perplexing that you do not want players to be able to organize themselves into guilds to play competitively in a competitive multiplayer environment.

Yes, people are going to game the system. Refusing to allow people to play with their friends without coughing up a transfer fee so that nobody 'games the system' (even though they can still transfer anyway) is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Scourge seems strong to me because they have low investment, high effect skills that can produce big condi spreads. A properly-done F2 can cause half a dozen conditions while also providing the Scourge with defensive benefit. You could look at it as a Signet of Spite just for picking Scourge.

They also can produce a lot of outgoing power without much time investment or setup. We saw this with Condi Reaper in WvW while WvW still had 3bleed/5sec; Reaper Runes would let you push up to 20 bleeds with very little effort. A charged-up Scourge can mash the f-row and cause a ton of strike effects.

I don't think they're necessarily unreasonably strong (though they're almost certainly going to get nerfed). Scourge strengths just happen to do well in an environment with lots of boons, and Necromancer's traditional predators have been melee classes which is a less effective strategy against Scourge.

Why not just turn EOTM into a real WvW map, let it contribute towards the scoring and get rid of some of the sillier stuff

Fishing

Also anything at all to do with adding more stuff to WvW

I'd be pretty happy if you could seperate individual bags from the collated inventory mode so you can specifically have your Siege (and food) bag just underneath your shared slots, with your 'real' inventory underneath.

The only utility I'd actually actively use is Darkrazor. A lot of interrupts pulsing in a quite well-sized area can be quite helpful when you're +1ing or joining a teamfight. It's expensive if you only manage to land one interrupt, but if you land two or three it's okay. There might be a silly Dismantle Fortifications interaction there too when planting it in a Stability-rich group, but I'd have to test.

Razorclaw is supposed to be used to support Darkrazor (and yourself) but this forces you into weird positioning that you can easily get punished for. Never mind that the amount of Bleeding it applies is a joke- one Bloodbane Path does more bleeding than Razorclaw can cause you to do across his entire duration. DPE wise, Razorclaw isn't competitive with Bloodbane Path *even if Razorclaw causes 5x10 attacks*. And that's just one skill you can easily weave into your attacks.

Icerazor is supposed to be used when you're using Razorclaw and that's just nonsensical. You use Darkrazor so that you can use Razorclaw so that you can use Icerazor! 80 energy investment before you're even looking at Icerazor. There was actually decent synergy before, with Icerazor activating the Chill->Torment trait... Which isn't even that scary compared to the premier area control class, Scourge.

And all your opponent has to do is step out of their area, and they do nothing.

> @"Sigmoid.7082" said:

> It has the same premise and does almost the exact same thing as other shroud enters.

Death Shroud:

Assume a spectral form and gain new skills, turning your life force into health.

Reaper Shroud:

Assume the form of a reaper and gain new skills, turning your life force into health.

Desert Shroud:

Enter the desert shroud, gaining a powerful barrier and pulsing necrotic energy around you and your sand shades.

No not really. You don't gain new skills and you don't turn your life force into health.

> @"ArmageddonAsh.6430" said:

> Yeah the problem, IS that the current way they are VERY weak, killable, cant move. They are just simply put dreadful :/

I'm just looking at it on the wiki and to me it looks like their energy cost is 5 energy too high for their limitations.

> @"Sigmoid.7082" said:

> No shroud enter has a cast time nor should it.

AFAIC it's only a shroud in name and trait interactions. For what Desert Shroud does it's way too valuable to have no cast time.

I honestly prefer opening the option of Shrouds with cast times.

These arguments seem to apply to all sorts of minions.

Gyros would also be quite a bit stronger if you couldn't destroy them- but you can. It's a key balance point.

And honestly it seems like it would somewhat diminish the class fantasy.

You have either powerful, yet destructible, on-field effects in targetable spirits, or you have relatively weak indestructible effects. I would rather summon very strong spirits than weak indestructible ones.

If being an effective healer is a big concern why not use Ventari stance? If you want an untargetable object with powerful effects that's basically the ticket for you.