subversiontwo.7501

I didn't bother reading the post beyond just letting it flash by (sorry). However, I've posted about the topic a fair bit on the Ranger forums in the past. To give a very brief summary: The Druid's most important problems are two. 1) The staff mechanics fit poorly into the variety of WvW content (making Celestial both too important for its heals and not accessible enough in certain situations), they seem mostly built around channelling through your pet to build Celestial power but the pet is used very differently in different types of content. 2) Similar to the staff mechanics not really befitting WvW, the nerfs to the Druid's support functions were done for PvE raid reasons and when Anet sat down to decide on what abilities to keep and which to gut, they kept abilities with mechanics that do not work in WvW (like %dmg spirits) while they gutted it from glyphs and traits. That essentially robbed the spec of much of the roles embedded in its builds. This stuff keeps the Druid as just a PvE raider, solo/duo roamer and clouder. That isn't broad enough for me. However, all it needs is for these things to be adressed (Staff 1 being a narrow cone instead; offensive support being better available in WvW situations through either mechanical changes or moving that support to abilities with mechanics that fit better here - as it used to be).

> @"KrHome.1920" said: > If you play organized with a pug, then the bigger number wins. The average pug skill level is equal across the servers. Whoever says something different is delusional. This thread keeps on giving. Those were unexpectedly striking words I must say :3 . > I got away from organized zerging /.../ At some point you just stop playing the lootbag and either leave the game or begin to create your own gaming experience, which includes clouding as this doesn't require you to play a certain build and to be at a certain position, where you just die in your 30v50 fight. I can see part of this being a motivation for sure, I mean, clouding and/or havocking does give you some freedom that organized groups do not afford you. That's certainly what motivates me whenver I choose to cloud or havoc. I wouldn't say that number disparities on map motivates that very much though, at least not for me, that rather tends to motivate me more to organize closer with friends and bust those groups. In my experience clouding can be effective up to a certain point of organisation and scale of your opponents and once they surpass that you tend to want to organise something of your own to combat it even if you remain small. That is sort of when you transition from just clouding to havocking though since a havoc party basically is a specific party organized to cloud coordinatedly or simply into busting if there is nothing to cloud around so you need to take the attention. > @"Shroud.2307" said: > Don't let the wall Rangers and gank Thieves distract you from the real problems. Keep in mind that the thread mentions changes, not just nerfs. For me it's more of a question of representation and an understanding of that pickup groups are usually the doormat deeper into the mode. Rangers and Thieves can be real problems for multiple reasons with that in mind. It's one of those situations where things are not mutually exclusive. You can for example make an argument for that Rangers do have some niche and things they excel at (that are rarely seen) but also aknowledge that it isn't very good that they are regarded with disdain and often kicked out of public groups. Both things can be true at the same time.

Many shorter ranged weapons already have higher damage outputs, it is only that it is negligible without context. When overall damage output is lower and groups can sustain each other for longer this creates a demand for those weapons. That is what we are seeing budding examples of now in the meta with many "flex damage" builds (builds that combine ranged and melee weapons). This is also why you see salty pirates on the forums so much now, arrr :) .

> @"kash.9213" said: > Also clouding has been a thing since the beginning and no one has cared until recently for some reason. It's not unorganized, it's just more people know what to do with their class at this point and can stretch a little while still moving as a team. Logic would suggest that you are right, but alot of what we witness on many servers suggests that people have become incredibly poor at forming focus parties and coordinating damage. Quite alot of highly mediocre guild groups seems to be quite successful at just tanking through cloud damage and these forums with all their whines about guilds and "boonballs" would also suggest the opposite. Just take a look at this thread. That doesn't mean that there aren't still good havoc players who cloud who can bring their 8-year experience to bear. If we're talking common behaviour though every piece of observation I can gather says that is an exception. You do not see the forums rife with tears about clouds or how clouds are too strong or too oppressive.

> @"Shroud.2307" said: > I feel like attacker/defender balance is extremely situational, and therefore not as in favor of one or the other as some people say. It is entirely dependent on the creativity and knowledge of each, though objectively I do think defenders have the edge. In all fairness, defenders always have the advantage. Anything disadvantageous in defending could always be circumvented by just exiting the objective and going open field. There is never a situation in which a group that holds an objective and is strong enough to put up a fight open field does not benefit from holding the objective. Whether they then decide to use that advantage or uses it effectively is another question. It is never bad to hold an objective, if it ever was you could just choose not to hold it. With that said, looking past the unecessary phrasing of the OP, this time around Threater's arguments or suggestions are not necessarily bad. At least not the spirit of what he is trying to say. The passive system has not proven to be superior to the older active system or to not warrant a third system that builds upon what is good but reintroduces more active "stocking" or preparations. At the end of the day though, as with everything else, the real problem for PPT is coverage. It doesn't matter if it is passive or active if whatever you are trying to achieve with it is unfairly slated when you go to bed, work and school. Everything regarding passive, active, fun or unfun upgrades are secondary to the problems related to night-capping and population imbalance. I would start with mechanics dealing with that whether it is simply applied to score or more intricately and creatively applied to the objective mechanics somehow. I favour score because it is a simple db change but I could certainly see arguments being made for why outnumbered mechanics could be used to directly affect objective upgrade processes and vulnurabilities. Perhaps not so outright as to make them uncapturable when outnumbered but they could easily twist parameters of upgrade pace, timers etc.m if they wanted to and indirectly affect scoring through upgrade time. Considering that score has not been properly addressed in 8 years, it is an aim-small, miss-small issue for me though and I'd keep it simple.

> @"KrHome.1920" said: > > @"subversiontwo.7501" said: > > clouding [...] thievs and rangers > I absolutely don't see clouding a something negative. It requires far more individual skill from the players than boonballing. Sure it does bud, that is why all the good players do it. I do agree with you that clouding isn't necessarily something negative though. I think it has a place in the mode same as any other approaches. I merely pointed out that we see more and more rather unorganized groups and as a result you are going to see more complaints about such builds and classes. Your post kind of underlines that.

I'm pretty sure the two most common classes that are going to be brought up are Engineers and Guardians because clouders don't like people running support and as organisation in the mode falls low, more players end up as clouders. The two classes I think needs to be looked at the most are Thieves and Rangers. Thieves have a very odd balance at being underrepresented at large scale and overrepresented at small scale. Two wrongs do not make a right as the saying goes. The whole picking fights at will, committing and quitting, issue is not well designed. Just look at all those Thief meta builds running the same utilities etc., regardless of spec. Deadeye was also always a concept-design problem that goes deeper than just simple balance. A sneaky ranged dude is going to have nightmare balance and alot of built-in anti-fun. It's a typical example of where something that looks cool in concept is not very good design in gameplay. Rangers just have general representation issues and most of the things that get brought up when people complain about them are rather destructive but not particularily powerful niches (like tower pew and imob). I would rather that these classes got some stuff that made them appealing in groups, fit into broader conventional play, covered some holes in their design and made sure their concepts actually panned out well in gameplay.

I hate to disappoint but this question has the same answer as almost every other question: The people who used to create those events are gone, reluctant or hindered/discouraged to create such events due to the state of the game mode. Most of these things were not created by a single, lone player who did everything by themselves. They were created through cooperation and the initative of empowered groups of friends. That does not stop you from going out and doing it today but it answers why the people who used to do it no longer do.

> @"lordmeowalot.8135" said: > Title! What is your ideal squad composition? > > You can state your ideal squad size as well or state the the minimum squad size and composition then add numbers and classes/builds in increments. > > Also, about 5 years ago there were usually 3 or so squad members designated as gankers (I forgot the term) for coordinated bursting of enemy stragglers and squishies. It was more prevalent during GvG but is this still a thing? **The old and its downfall** It was commonly known as a focus party or havoc party (what Strider mentioned I have not heard before but I have heard people refer to the party as setting up picks so such a name would also make sense). It ceased being a thing when HoT released in 2015. The last time I heard some group actively using it was early-mid 2016 back when some groups still split out Tempests from their parties (to cross/splash heal over the priority mechanics and thus had two broken parties [ie., 5+5+2+3]) but even then it was just one option to comp among multiple that was already growing increasingly rare. Also, many of the trends that came with HoT had already begun appearing so the HoT balance mostly just cemented them as the norm same as how the new elites did the same for PoF, just cementing existing norms and throwing balance further in favour of what already was popular. Interestingly, both expansions did that. **The remains, rise and other remaining content** There are similar elements to it today at times, but that is mainly in oversized (50+) pickup environments and they are composed more like oldschool range parties of the same era. So you could just as easily argue that those are more so remaining elements of vanilla ranged parties than vanilla focus parties. Considering that the new map caps and the general state of the mode has made 50+ organisation increasingly rare, so have those elements also become, turning that aspect into more of just unorganized individuality again (ie., people solo-havocking and clouding like that on their own on classes that permit). GvG may still have parties that have different weight and balance to them for somewhat different roles rather than building every party equal in weight or similar in role, but the kind of focus party that used to exist also existed in a very specific rock-paper-scissor balance that we have not seen since. In fact the only reason that we may have seen traces of it in oversized pickups has to do with that superfluous clouds turning organized recreates those range parties and then you may need to find something to oppose them. In most cases, unorgnized clouding is just shrugged off as it doesn't have the coordinated damage to be effective. The old focus parties mainly existed to defend and attack range parties. Range parties existed to support (fields) and attack (AoE) melee cores that clashed with each other for position control. Even now with the past year of damage and healing nerfs we still do not really have that kind of sustain for position control meaning one side usually breaks the other too quick to sort of spawn such a division of roles. Instead we see groups that either dominate other groups through advantages in one of those dimensions (melee, range) or we see a segmentation of tactics (range first, melee after) when two sides are more even; with the ranged tactics establishing advantages to pounce on by moving into melee tactics after the fact. The latter can be seen in both 15v15 scales as well as 30v30 scale and 50v50 pickups. The former is quite common to see when a cloud is weak vs. a group (often seen in complaints here on the forum) or when a smaller group is incompatibly stronger than a larger group (busting). **The wider implications and most recent discourse** With that said, WvW is still diverse enough to allow a havoc approach to be effective, however, that kind of organisation is just rare to see these days. You rarely see people havoc for the same reasons as you rarely see the kind of public-privates that used to be normative in vanilla. Instead you see more of the opposite, private-publics (eg., build-exclusive, disc-mandatory pickups) or just all-out privates at any scale under full blobs. Players and groups have become very entrenched and you see fewer and fewer of them "cross-moding" like that, likely for the reason that so many of those groups have quit and people have gotten entrenched by being defensive/protective of what they have. This due to a demography change (fewer socially active mode-ingrained players; eg., even in disc-mandatory pickups you can see 90% mics turned off - people "~playing alone together just or next to each other" as GW2 combat systems designer Jon Peters once put it) and a direction/system that takes content for granted (just send players into WvW, there will be tags) while ensuring that it can't be taken for granted (caps, caps, caps) and stifles content rather than encouraging it. I've remarked on it in passing before, but I believe that this recent divide and sharpening tone on the topic of guilds stems from that they are beginning to become so rare now that their presence is becomming exceedingly powerful (more attention to who has content, more attention to meta etc.). There are more mismatched content matchups, not just per weekly reset but also day-to-day and on-map. That is interesting because it seeps through so many topics on this forum from players' attitudes to servers, to content and down to topics like these on balance, classes and composition. There is also some recent trends of groups that have been entrenched in specific subsets of content re-entering more of the day-to-day content (eg., poor roaming has benefitted busting, poor pickups have seen groups entering GvG and poor GvG has then seen those groups re-entering maps). When the GvG scene is 15, there are fight guilds around 25 and pickups around 50, that has an inherent balance to it. Something similar can be observed down in scale. Recent changes and trends are creating vacuums here. All of that is actually quite fascinating but no room to dive into it deeper here. This is already long enough and then some. The only reason I am blabbering about all that extra stuff here is to perhaps broaden your perspectives a bit and remind you that an ideal composition is both a very specific (to what scale/end) and narrow (if you want havoc, you can still havoc, go out and do it, you don't need a squad's permission - you just need some likeminded friends assuming you can find some on your server!) discussion.

When you say regional server you mean a separate region, right? Otherwise you seem to have spent quite alot of time arguing infrastructure without considering the infrastructure.

> @"FrodoBiggins.9184" said: > Let alone anyone who thinks they can kill anyone with condi is HARD COUNTERED by Engi comps! This seems to be your main concern. The question then becomes, in what way do you intend to play condi? I can't be bothered to discuss it at length again but in past recent threads with people like you I have pointed out that there are very few groups around that have actually attempted to sample this balance and can raise valid concerns about it. In most cases people seem to complain about situations that are uneven to begin with or isolated (such as them wanting to play condi in a pickup group that is predominantly power-based for personal, singular, self-motivated reasons). What they then go about suggesting will do nothing to change the situations they are concerned about. It will only impact situations they themselves do not partake in.

This thread has really taken a sharp turn for the worse again with people arguing semantics or whatever spirit of Alliances. **An alliance, the proposed entity in the system, is just a guild.** It is a way to stick 5 guilds into one piece or to divide your guild into 5 pieces, however you choose to see it. The Alliance on a World is just like a Guild on a Server today. There is no major significant difference. Alliances can't kick players off Worlds anymore than Guilds can kick players off a Server. That is just nonsense. Whether its authority or power is just semantics. **Alliances, the system, has two major perks remaining:** * **Guilds will be automatically transfered together every 8 weeks** * **Worlds will be seen as very high for players in a guild designated for that World but full for other players when 90% to the cap** That makes the guild less prone to transfer simply because the world is full. Do we not want guilds to stop transfering just because their servers turn full? Do we not want players to try to form guilds and communities that can go out there, form tags/squads and create content? It really is that simple and that is all anyone here needs to know unless they are curious enough about the system to dive into its details and discuss them out of sheer interest. **So what are the wider ramifications beyond those basics?** It also makes manipulation by transfers less impactful even if someone can throw tens of thousands of gold at it every 8 weeks to upset the reset. They can throw money at it but whatever investment into stacking with transfers disappear from the system every 8 weeks. I'm sure someone will try. I'm sure there will be resets that disrupts the system and turns some matchups bad for the duration. However, it will not be persistant or recurring. It will be less needed and less impactful to fork out 200g every 8 weeks just to reset yourself. People can still move. People can still pay to move as is now. People will just have alternatives or be less prone to feel forced to move. In fact, they could probably raise the transfer costs for any transfer to 600g/1800gm to make sure they got something back from anyone desperate enough to transfer within an 8 week window. I sincerely believe they don't make that much off the recurring 200g/500gm transfers even if they still continue to some degree of mass. If they did make bank out of it, I would assume them to farm that harder by making the mode more appealing to play. That's why I always say that it is a question of neglect before it is a question of business. It also makes sure less players will quit because of the 200-600g transfer wall and that players who want to make new guilds do not have to climb the transfer wall first. It also makes sure that if you have IRL friends who wants to come play WvW with you, either of you do not have to immidiately climb the transfer wall (or that you will not have to give up your entire existing ingame circle of friends just to get your IRL friend aboard it). If friends can play that means box sales. That has to be a hell of alot more lucrative than milking a dwindling existing playerbase dry. To any sensible business, not being able to sell your product because you have yourself in a twist is a major prioritized red flag.

> @"Shroud.2307" said: > > @"God.2708" said: > > Does anyone actually have any arguments about PoP being overtuned/overpowered? Or is 'People get boons if you cure their conditions' all you've really got? > > > > The only thing I really see being problematic is the fact chill gets converted to alacrity, which allows the scrapper to get an okay uptime of a boon it generally should not get access to. Chill is also not nearly as uncommon as it should be, and something as simple as a tempest support putting out frost aura occasionally allows a squad to gain way more alacrity than it should (which acts as an inadvertent nerf to the tempest too). > > > > And possibly that immobilize gets converted to resistance, but resistance does not get converted to immobilize (please do not bring that back). > > > > Keep in mind purity of purpose use to exist on e-gun cleanses only (which is 60% of a scrappers cleanses anyway) long before PoP came about with > > https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Inversion_Enzyme and scrappers still didn't get used as supports. It started getting looked at in the May 2018 update when MDF got a huge buff, Med kit got reworked, and defense field applied stability. That was 3 months where PoP existed and scrappers were 'meh'. They became staple in start of 2019 with the gyro/superspeed rework (compounded by the anti-toxin rune silliness). So I remain skeptical that PoP is in any way a problem beyond the resistance/alacrity access it gives scrappers (which is a small acceptable change that shouldn't be 'hard' to implement) > > > > One trait dictating whether or not Condition builds can reasonably contribute to large scale fights seems like it might be a bit strong to me. The issue with measuring that lies in conditions' own mechanics. They stack from multiple sources so the balance of power relative condi needs to be sampled from groups dedicated into either damage profile. Power still benefits from control conditions so even a very skewered power meta will have an abundance of cleanses. Most people overlook that when they consider conditions ability to scale up to content levels. Conditions also makes alot of other factors pointless outside of the control war. That is sure to make the developers err on the side of caution. If you remember the epi meta for example. If people want that to change they will have to nerf down the condition caps by alot because conditions still has the ability to tick for many times a HP-pool / tick when the caps are hit. Power is simply more common because it is easier to organize, use in unorganized conditions and less prone to be all or nothing. Some groups use condis at larger scale than typical 5-10 man roaming/busting comps though and it does have its own interesting tactical factors. It's one of those things in the game that can do alot more things than most people are aware of since it is (has to be) strongly written off by typical pickup authorities.

> @"Strider Pj.2193" said: > > @"subversiontwo.7501" said: > > > @"Strider Pj.2193" said: > > > > @"subversiontwo.7501" said: > > > > > > > The server population caps are different for different servers (and can be manipulated by exploiting the system while that isn't policed) > > > > > > > > > > Not to be argumentative, but do you have a source for this? > > > > > > I don’t disagree that the population *levels* are different in each server ( for many reasons) > > > > > > But the actual *caps*? I’ve never heard that. People speculate, but never seen where the caps are different. > > > > > The primary source is Tyler Bearce's old Relinking announcement thread on the old forums. It states that _caps_ are changed based on host-link combinations. Granted, things do no longer have to work like that. It is an old post and there are examples to the contrary. For example, the same post states that there are counter measures against servers trying to dump population by boycotting for a week or two, but recently we have seen servers do that just fine. > > > > The other issue is more of a rumour, but it is established well enough to be the greatest troll in the history of the WvW forums if it isn't true. That is that BB is kept manually open because it is the only server highlighted with that language definition. So, everyone in EU could transfer there. There may be a source, but I have admittedly just heard so many different players on different servers taking it for granted by now, so I have begun to do so myself. I shouldn't ofc. > > > > > > Got it. > > You are likely correct, and we both know that Anet won’t publish actual pop data. I wish they WOULD publish a population hours chart again like the infamous one from a couple years ago. Just with server names, but no actual ‘numbers’. I would like to see that too, I enjoyed that slope and it put things into perspective for alot of people. It really showed how big the differences were. At the same time, I don't know which region you play in, but I am almost exclusively on EU and here there are so many nomadic communities now that they are becomming norm and the server populations changes quite drastically every relink. The few remaining popular commanders and guilds have so much attraction that they will completely empty out or fill up a server over a single weekly update. Other servers are almost entirely carried by single guilds by now, so that guild can make the server implode as a server. Those are some of the realities the "server identity" people here on the forums do not see.

> @"Strider Pj.2193" said: > > @"subversiontwo.7501" said: > > > The server population caps are different for different servers (and can be manipulated by exploiting the system while that isn't policed) > > > > Not to be argumentative, but do you have a source for this? > > I don’t disagree that the population *levels* are different in each server ( for many reasons) > > But the actual *caps*? I’ve never heard that. People speculate, but never seen where the caps are different. > The primary source is Tyler Bearce's old Relinking announcement thread on the old forums. It states that _caps_ are changed based on host-link combinations. Granted, things do no longer have to work like that. It is an old post and there are examples to the contrary. For example, the same post states that there are counter measures against servers trying to dump population by boycotting for a week or two, but recently we have seen servers do that just fine. Ed. It should be underlined that the post was made during the Relink beta, so while it does say that those things are in that iteration/patch, it does state that they are looking at alternatives for alot of the information listed there. The other issue is more of a rumour, but it is established well enough to be the greatest troll in the history of the WvW forums if it isn't true. That is that BB is kept manually open because it is the only server highlighted with that language definition. So, everyone in EU could transfer there. There may be a source, but I have admittedly just heard so many different players on different servers taking it for granted by now, so I have begun to do so myself. I shouldn't ofc.