How can we get wvw back to the skill based game mode it used to be?

[Legendary Defender.5631]

In the past 4 yrs anet has dumbed down the game so much players no longer have to think about or even know what they are doing in order to win. Metabattle made it even worse. The meta has shifted to a tank, toxic spamming dull quasi pirate ship meta. This has caused the wvw population to dive drastically. So how can we as a wvw community bring back the meta where players had to learn the game and learn the classes in order to be successful in wvw?

Leave your input below.

[Hollywood.3490]

It's either cheese or get cheesed.

 

Zerging: Do not even care about classes other than Firebrands and Scourges. Get stability and heals, lay down red carpet. Rinse and repeat.

 

Roaming: Instagib someone, proceed to the next target. If missed, then disengage until CDs are back. Rinse and repeat.

 

Skillfull, fun and engaging gameplay.

 

+++

 

Revamp would have to start by unwinding Path Of Failure. Ain't gonna happen...

[Voltekka.2375]

Did you by any chance take a big break from gw2?

[Hyper Cutter.9376]

I'm wondering when this magical time was when WvW required skill instead of fielding the most people over the most time zones.

[Bigpapasmurf.5623]

While I understand where the OP is coming from (Days when Portal bombing was a big strat for example), with the way condis and powercreep came to be, it would need a complete overhaul to go back to "strategy" days

[Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365]

did it get dumbed down or did people start to learn their shit? every mmo out there that has open world pvp or closed world pvp (like gw2) has a period where its chaotic, all classes are viable, people are trying out everything there is to try out engineers are commanding zergs etc. But as the pieces fall into place some people learn whats more efficient to play and that quuickly spread to other players.

Just saying after 6 years soon it's inevitable unless Anet shake things up real good.

[Pancake.3092]

Revert WvW back to core spec only. But Anet will never do it.

 

Even now, if people were only allowed to run core specs and stats, fights would be so much less gimmicky than they are now. Anet should have a trial weekend or something. They already have this system in place for those non paying peasants. Anyone who's being playing a while already knows how op the elite specs are, it's just not easy to tell - but go on the GW2 wiki and compare the cooldowns, damage numbers, condi stacks etc of anything from PoF to anything from the base game.

 

_For Example_

 

I play core engi, and after HoT the only core build that was viable was condi - my pistol 2 shoots some poison bullets which do pretty much nothing but hopefully waste a condi clear so the burn stacks can do damage. Holosmith sword 2 leaps to the target (leap finisher), gives you (and your m8s) swiftness and sets you up to spam the rest of your skills (which are op as well)... and it's on a 2 second cd, compared to 10 seconds on poison volley.

 

In summary, it 100% got dumbed down. Don't believe me, try roaming with your favourite core spec and stats. Reply to this post with your montage of getting 1 shot by, or doing absolutely no damage to, any of the PoF specs.

[Rysdude.3824]

As a fairly recent (9 months or so) WvW player, what were the old glory day strategies? Because people still portal bomb, whether from mesmer or scourg.

[Israel.7056]

> @"Legendary Defender.5631" said:

> In the past 4 yrs anet has dumbed down the game so much players no longer have to think about or even know what they are doing in order to win.

 

Yes they do. But the old tank up and run them over strategy still works so I dunno what the problem is.

[MUDse.7623]

> @"Pancake.3092" said:

> Revert WvW back to core spec only. But Anet will never do it.

>

> Even now, if people were only allowed to run core specs and stats, fights would be so much less gimmicky than they are now. Anet should have a trial weekend or something. They already have this system in place for those non paying peasants. Anyone who's being playing a while already knows how op the elite specs are, it's just not easy to tell - but go on the GW2 wiki and compare the cooldowns, damage numbers, condi stacks etc of anything from PoF to anything from the base game.

>

> _For Example_

>

> I play core engi, and after HoT the only core build that was viable was condi - my pistol 2 shoots some poison bullets which do pretty much nothing but hopefully waste a condi clear so the burn stacks can do damage. Holosmith sword 2 leaps to the target (leap finisher), gives you (and your m8s) swiftness and sets you up to spam the rest of your skills (which are op as well)... and it's on a 2 second cd, compared to 10 seconds on poison volley.

>

> In summary, it 100% got dumbed down. Don't believe me, try roaming with your favourite core spec and stats. Reply to this post with your montage of getting 1 shot by, or doing absolutely no damage to, any of the PoF specs.

 

i dont think to disable core specs is a way anet can/will go as it would upset way too many players that are currently playing the game, might bring some back but how many of those would actually play longer than 2 weeks?

the reason why core specs are often weaker than elite specs is that you do not have to give up any specific trait/utility from core when you use an elite spec. but if you run core you cant run anything from that elite spec. there is no unique skill/trait to core builds in most cases ( lvl 3 burst skills for warrior , nekro shroud and guard virtues are the only unique ones i think). if there was a traitline that you can only pick with core or a set of utilities, then this would change alot but it would also limit the build diversity especially if you were forced to take said line to run core.

i still regularly run into core warriors, thieves, mesmers , guards, neks , rangers and eles. thats 7 out of 9 professions. i rarely see a core rev, and not many core engis aswell - altho i did run into one 30 min ago but that guy was running some strange condi build and stacking thoughness with that sigil, didnt really fight him as it was 1 vs 6 in their buffed camp and the engi then ran off so cant tell if that build was any good (guess not).

 

gimmicky builds have been there since release of gw2, it was just better to run a more balanced build at core times as the people were even worse than now and you didnt need as much damage to kill people so you could take more sustain and fight more outnumbered. i even did run a cleric ele at times and killed people in highly outnumbered fights, that shouldnt be possible - but it was back in the days. now often even in 1 vs 3 if i oneshot one of the opponent, the chances are good i wont be able to stomp.

[Bigpapasmurf.5623]

> @"Pancake.3092" said:

> Revert WvW back to core spec only. But Anet will never do it.

>

> Even now, if people were only allowed to run core specs and stats, fights would be so much less gimmicky than they are now. Anet should have a trial weekend or something. They already have this system in place for those non paying peasants. Anyone who's being playing a while already knows how op the elite specs are, it's just not easy to tell - but go on the GW2 wiki and compare the cooldowns, damage numbers, condi stacks etc of anything from PoF to anything from the base game.

>

> _For Example_

>

> I play core engi, and after HoT the only core build that was viable was condi - my pistol 2 shoots some poison bullets which do pretty much nothing but hopefully waste a condi clear so the burn stacks can do damage. Holosmith sword 2 leaps to the target (leap finisher), gives you (and your m8s) swiftness and sets you up to spam the rest of your skills (which are op as well)... and it's on a 2 second cd, compared to 10 seconds on poison volley.

>

> In summary, it 100% got dumbed down. Don't believe me, try roaming with your favourite core spec and stats. Reply to this post with your montage of getting 1 shot by, or doing absolutely no damage to, any of the PoF specs.

 

Ill 1 up that. Iirc I have vids of my P/P engi beating HoT and PoF specs...including a 2v1 vs DrD+Scourge

[Israel.7056]

If you went back to core spec it'd just be the old gwen meta with an even heavier emphasis on guardian and warrior since they've received the most work on their core lines.

[ToPNoP.2493]

Make kdr a bigger part of the warscore pie chart. Skill disparity drives resentment in servers that are less stacked. Strong servers go into t3 or t4 because they are not taking towers, they are farming bags. Towers have little to do with wvw, there are some ppt guys that want that, but the majority wanna fight over something. But how can they fight against a fight server that is out of their league? I mean, in some matchups the disparity is so blatantly obvious. If a server can keep a waypointed smc in t1, hold a 1.5kdr, and still lose the matchup, then there is something wrong with the scoring system. I'm not saying turn the boarderlands into eotm, but there might be a way to have a program detect when kdr is super high for a server, and shift the point scale more to kills and less to towers, reflecting the skill level, and level of participation of a server.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @"Legendary Defender.5631" said:

> In the past 4 yrs anet has dumbed down the game so much players no longer have to think about or even know what they are doing in order to win. Metabattle made it even worse. The meta has shifted to a tank, toxic spamming dull quasi pirate ship meta. This has caused the wvw population to dive drastically.

 

There were mindless zergs the first time I played WvW and every time since. Nothing has changed in that regard. MetaBattle has been around since launch, and people have been copying builds from it (and other sites) all along.

 

There have always been people complaining about the "dull" or "toxic" meta and threatening to quit (or quitting).

 

But more importantly, the game mode is mostly the same as it was at launch, so it would be a miracle if it had the same fraction of players today as it did a year ago. Or two years ago. And especially not like it was 4 years ago. Multiply that by the fact that _all_ games have fewer players as the game ages, it would be a double miracle if WvW has anything close to to the same amount of players are we had in 2014.

 

> So how can we as a wvw community bring back the meta where players had to learn the game and learn the classes in order to be successful in wvw?

Some players are always going to look for the path of least resistance. And there will always be builds that cater to that. Skill has to be its own reward, on the whole.

 

To me, the better question is: what changes would encourage fresh blood for skilled WvW gameplay, and which of those would also entice past veterans to return? I don't think it's as simple as the complex job of rebalancing.

[ArchonWing.9480]

Well, I agree on a fundamental level with passive crap that stuff has been dumbed down, there wasn't much to dumb down and what's worse is people still can't do it. In reality, 95% of players have done the same crap regardless while a small group of people are diffrent because the follow the meta which is created by an even smaller subset. Basically, if you're dying to randoms with fair numbers, your group (not necessarily you, just the matter of organization) is just bad and that wouldn't change regardless. And this is fairly evident by the myraid of complaints of people always complaining they die in 0.2 seconds and it's always the same people. It may not be the game. The game's gotten easier and hardcore players are leaving. if you're getting wrecked, well!

 

The other thing I'd like to point out is that in 2012, most players didn't know wtf they were doing (even the relatively good ones). There was no metabattle and people did whatever and thought like you should be full zerker or knights frontline. Plus with the rally system where 1 could rally 10, you could plow through tons of people who haven't learned to turn with their mouse. That might have looked skillful, but it really wasn't. Even these days if you should decide to make epic montage #46 for your 12 viewers where you plow through 30 pvers it's probably going to be a harder fight because they may still have learned something over the last 5 years. And that doesn't mean much. Not saying there weren't great players; just that it was easier to be mistaken as such and possibility deified. And that's why lamers like me like to try out new games sometimes.

 

Furthermore, any skill in WvW is capped by lag anyways. A lot of competitive games tend to be about great players utilizing tiny edges to beat other great players. Stuff like edges of 5-10%. This simply cannot exist in this game.

 

tl;dr don't balance a game around bads. The worst part is you can make it easier and it still won't help them. It just makes the game worse.

[MithranArkanere.8957]

What we need is making WvW more pvp-like. Spread players. make them be in many places. Break large zergs into smaller groups. Encourage people to fight in a smaller scale. Have more PvP.

And this may be counter intuitive, but to have more PvP in WvW, we need more PvE.

A fourth faction of NPCs, like Aetherblades, that will attack any point and take over it if no players attack it for too long, and no players were defending it. They would teleport in through an ether portal, pop siege, break the walls and take over it, turning the location to the 'gray' faction.

 

Right now, there's hardly any reason to stick defending a supply line and objectives attached to it. At most you'd have a half-idle scout to slow down attackers with tricks while help arrives. There's nothing like a meta-event connecting all objectives in a supply line and giving bonus rewards for maintinging it. Sometimes enemies hardly come by and when they do they will usually be a large zerg that thrashes everything like a swam of locusts.

Most of the time, chances are that whenever you reach an objective, you'll find only a large group, a straggler, or nobody at all.

 

A 4th NPC faction would be a reason to have a group of a certain size sticking around every spot, and when you are roaming in a group of any size you'll be more likely to find people in an objective, because they will have to be there to defend against the 4th faction. They would also make maintaining supply lines and scouting less boring, as instead waiting for enemies doing nothing, you'll wait for enemies doing events and progressing a supply line meta that gives bonus rewards.

 

And this is how 'more PvE' actually creates more PvP. Can't leave any place alone, players are more likely to meet other players, we get more players fighting players.

 

 

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

> @"MithranArkanere.8957" said:

> A fourth faction of NPCs, like Aetherblades, that will attack any point and take over it if no players attack it for too long, and no players were defending it. They would teleport in through an ether portal, pop siege, break the walls and take over it, turning the location to the 'gray' faction.

 

That's an interesting idea. I'm not sure how easy that would be to implement or whether it would eventually turn into something that got farmed or became so trivial that it is more like a mosquito flying in your ear rather than an actual threat.

 

On variation is to allow a fourth, unallied team to enter the map, limited to maybe 10 or 20 people who must be in the same squad. With a limited number of respawns available. Make the reward juicy enough and lots of people would leave a queued map to see if they can survive long enough to neutralize objectives of the Red, Green, and Blue teams.

[X T D.6458]

> @"Rysdude.3824" said:

> As a fairly recent (9 months or so) WvW player, what were the old glory day strategies? Because people still portal bomb, whether from mesmer or scourg.

 

In the past we had hammer trains with Guardians and Warriors in the frontline, and Zerk Necros/Eles in the backline along with Mesmers who were Glamour Kittens running Veil and Portals. Then we had the stability nerf which brought on the pirateship meta. Condition mechanics were overhauled, and eventually became a bigger part of the game. After HoT we had the boonshare meta which was godawful, then the condition meta, and with PoF the Scourge/FB, boon hate, pirateshipping aoe spam fest meta.

 

Personally, I liked the old days of hammer trains.

[Israel.7056]

> @"X T D.6458" said:

> Personally, I liked the old days of hammer trains.

 

Well it seems like we basically get two choices: melee trains or pirate ship. Either the frontline players can safely and comfortably push or they can't.

 

I actually think it's still very much a melee train meta if you've got enough firebrands because they basically negate scourges.

[Rysdude.3824]

> @"X T D.6458" said:

> > @"Rysdude.3824" said:

> > As a fairly recent (9 months or so) WvW player, what were the old glory day strategies? Because people still portal bomb, whether from mesmer or scourg.

>

> In the past we had hammer trains with Guardians and Warriors in the frontline, and Zerk Necros/Eles in the backline along with Mesmers who were Glamour Kittens running Veil and Portals. Then we had the stability nerf which brought on the pirateship meta. Condition mechanics were overhauled, and eventually became a bigger part of the game. After HoT we had the boonshare meta which was godawful, then the condition meta, and with PoF the Scourge/FB, boon hate, pirateshipping aoe spam fest meta.

>

> Personally, I liked the old days of hammer trains.

 

Thanks! Excellent info

 

[X T D.6458]

> @"Rysdude.3824" said:

> > @"X T D.6458" said:

> > > @"Rysdude.3824" said:

> > > As a fairly recent (9 months or so) WvW player, what were the old glory day strategies? Because people still portal bomb, whether from mesmer or scourg.

> >

> > In the past we had hammer trains with Guardians and Warriors in the frontline, and Zerk Necros/Eles in the backline along with Mesmers who were Glamour Kittens running Veil and Portals. Then we had the stability nerf which brought on the pirateship meta. Condition mechanics were overhauled, and eventually became a bigger part of the game. After HoT we had the boonshare meta which was godawful, then the condition meta, and with PoF the Scourge/FB, boon hate, pirateshipping aoe spam fest meta.

> >

> > Personally, I liked the old days of hammer trains.

>

> Thanks! Excellent info

>

 

I got nostaligic :'(

[Kaiser.9873]

> @"Hyper Cutter.9376" said:

> I'm wondering when this magical time was when WvW required skill instead of fielding the most people over the most time zones.

 

Kinda wondering the same thing. From the very beginning it was he who had the best stab won. Now it's he who pirate ships best wins. No skill difference at all.

I did prefer when ppl weren't getting one-shot, but none of the metas has been particularly skill based.

[X T D.6458]

> @"Israel.7056" said:

> > @"X T D.6458" said:

> > Personally, I liked the old days of hammer trains.

>

> Well it seems like we basically get two choices: melee trains or pirate ship. Either the frontline players can safely and comfortably push or they can't.

>

> I actually think it's still very much a melee train meta if you've got enough firebrands because they basically negate scourges.

 

It is absolutely still possible, its just that fights are not as satisfying or fun anymore in my personal opinion. Many times it seems like fights are over as soon as they start because a bunch of people just got killed instantly thanks to all the condi and cc spam, and power creep that has invaded wvw over the years.

 

In the past I felt comfortable running any of the GWEN classes, and even Mesmer sometimes. Nowadays I feel sucked into playing one class :/.

 

That stability nerf though, was so poorly thought out and caused so much damage to WvW. It led to so many players leaving and quitting which deprived WvW of many experienced players, and ultimately hurt a lot of guilds.

[X T D.6458]

> @"Kaiser.9873" said:

> > @"Hyper Cutter.9376" said:

> > I'm wondering when this magical time was when WvW required skill instead of fielding the most people over the most time zones.

>

> Kinda wondering the same thing. From the very beginning it was he who had the best stab won. Now it's he who pirate ships best wins. No skill difference at all.

> I did prefer when ppl weren't getting one-shot, but none of the metas has been particularly skill based.

 

You have probably never been in a 6 hour garri fight :/

[Orpheal.8263]

A forth faction is not needed, a split up of Supply is the easier solution. Getting on supply due to supply beign the only ressource that you need to get builded up everything to claim towers and fortresses and make tons of siege way too easily is the reason, why zerg are so big and peopel split not up, because it is simpyl way too easy to get all the ressources you need to get everythign in wvw done quickly...

 

Ressources in WvW must become alot harder and diversive to receive, to force the players to split up more and care for receiving ,more than just only 1 necessary ressource in WvW to get the stuff buildeedd up and upgraded, to get the siege weapons builded up and so on ....

 

If there would be instead of 1 ressource (Simply Supply) now like 3 to 4 ressources that your server side has about to care about, than will people naturally split up more, to be able to cover up the maps better to be at the various ressource spots on the map to fight for them and to protect them to ensure, that your side always has the necessary amoutn of ressources to be able to defend your most important locations and to claim and conquer lost territory.

 

Turn Supply into Wood, Food/Water, Ore and Oil for example and watch how the players on the maps are forced to split themself up more into smaller groups to be able to cover more places at the same time to be able to claim or protect them