GW2: Update Notes Thread

[Celeras]

It says to log in to see your own rank, but that's not enabled until it goes past the top 100.

[ClarkSammich]

I watched the Q&A of the dude who got rank one on the leaderboard (by abusing shitty MMR mechanics) and holy shit is he annoying. Makes me warm inside that it won't last more than a day.

To clarify, he just teamed up with some other players and ground games out for 5 days straight. Since you're awarded more points for wins against high rated opponents, he got rank 1 with like 150 games played vs. the 400+ of other players.

[Aevis]

The WvW board is a joke, updated once a week. It's simply the table previously posted in the WvW forum. I really wonder what the guy responsible for the leaderboards was actually doing.

[Churchill]

prob about the same as the people who did the wvw update, haven't released ascended gear, made gear/gob cost money, etc.

It's such sneaky bullshit too. Have a piece of armor for 200 tokens and 1g. Oh it's not so bad, it's just 1g. Except. 1g=100 tokens of siege. I can buy most of the armor in the game for 3g.

And we all know you make so much money in WvW that you need a gold sink.

[Celeras]

And we all know you make so much money in WvW that you need a gold sink.

Is that sarcasm? Because I rope in like 5-10g per zergsploding session, and I usually just deposit most everything from the Heavy Bags.

Not that I disagree with anything else you said (WvW leaderboards obviously blow atm), but I find WvW to be lucrative as fuck.

[Churchill]

5g would be a solid night of wiping people and flipping the map.

5g is an hour or less in CoF.

[Celeras]

I meant session as 1-2 hours or so, I'm usually not zerg busting for much longer.

And at least it didn't take long to expand on the leaderboards, top 1000 now.

[Aevis]

How the hell are you making 10g in 2hrs in WvW? I usually get like 2-3g during an evening with tons of bags, keeping most mats. I can see maybe 5g if you roflstomp entire maps constantly, but not in 1-2hrs. Are you running around in full MF% gear + food, campfire etc.?

[Celeras]

Just rapin bitches and occasionally defending/taking keeps. If you want numbers idfk, 25 bags every 10 minutes or so? I'm not hardcapping this shit at 2 hours either, just per session and thats on average.

[Churchill]

I don't really see it either, but if I was more skilled than all of my opponents and instead of running from us they just ran at us, guild buffs, food (because they sucks), infusion, etc. idk.

People generally bring more people and kill you or go to a more promising objective in T1 if you wipe them easily. I've done 10g just in gold in a night, but that wasn't anywhere near a 2h session.

[Sci]

All it takes is a group of organized people versus an uncoordinated zerg, and you get to watch the bags roll in. But there's still an element of luck with drops involved with zerg busting. I've had nights where I don't get a single rare in a couple hours, and just a few nights ago I got 2 exotics and 3 rares in the same amount of time. 5G in two hours feels high for an average to me, but it all depends on how good your group is.

[Kuya]

How does one someone stop a zerg? Even an unorganized one is dangerous, much like a wounded bull is.

[Aevis]

Either with a bigger zerg or a guild group. During our guild's prime WvW time, we had no troubles stomping zergs of ~50 with our 20-25 guys. Full exo lvl 80 with maxed buff stacks and slick coordination can handle double the amount of your average joe random zergs. Yes, it's not always the case and you might run into a zerg where the people actually listen to the commander, aren't playing with their twinks and don't scatter the second they see their number might not be enough. It's not that common tho, not even in T1.

If you want to see some good guild groups, check Red Guard: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfSv2s3BE0c. They're pretty famous and do nothing else than server hopping to find guilds to play against. Notice that they at least have 4 but up to 8 buffs in every single fight for the entire group, their coordinated condition removals/heals etc. The average joe runs once he sees more than 4 conditions on him and hp dropping to <50%.

[The Blackrose]

The guild I run with now takes after Red Guard. It's more than just buff stacks and coordination - you have to build your group around busting. That means taking equipment, traits, weapons and consumables into consideration. I fit right in because I was already playing Staff Elementalist (you know, that one weapon that a certain other Ele here openly derided).

We can break the big zergs no problem. I think the only drawback we've noticed with our build is if we can't keep the pack together, we can't fight as individuals. Leads to a separate train of thought.

[Sci]

Stacking is probably the most important thing a group can do. Most AoEs are capped at 5 targets, so while you might think you're making your group an easy target, in reality the damage gets thrown to different people. Let's say it's 20 vs 50, but the 50 is obviously spread out, so the fight really starts with 20 vs 5 or 20 vs 10. Once you start to down people, the bigger group will likely take notice if they already haven't, but they won't engage you all at once. Instead they'll trickle in and go down quickly because at any given moment it's still 20 vs 5-10. And if anyone in your group does go down, they can be almost instantly rezed by all the people right around them.

Some groups will do this exact sort of tactic multiple times, just leave a few of the enemies alive to rez the rest. Come back in a few minutes and wipe them again.

[Churchill]

RG is actually not doing as well anymore sans culling, they were the original abusers but they aren't doing as poorly as some of the people in NA T1 who abused it as well.

As far as unorganized vs guild, it's really a tier thing. 80 PUGs with a decent commander/who have done this WvW thing once or twice are formidable if you're only running 40-50. You have to be perfect, movement is perfect and tactics are perfect and this is against randoms. 80v50 guild v guild requires perfect scouting, movement, execution, etc. Some guilds give you more leeway, have all glass, easy to break backlines, not enough cc up front, etc, but some do not.

I definitely had a different experience in the lower tiers than in T1 currently. For the most part it seemed that even in large organized forces there were a lot of uplevels and derps and that shit is just rally central. A lot of the map zergs were also like 20guild+20random uplevels+10-20 others. You can effectively cross 20 people off that list. There are like 2 classes I'd uplevel/karma train with and actually be able to contribute and one of them always has bads using dagger/dagger so.

@Kuya: by being organized. More to the point, one player (commander) playing the entirety of his group through voice commands. If he knows what he's doing, then it's easy.

[Kuya]

If i wanted to be an effective member of a wvw zerg as a guardian, what should i do doing? At the moment i spec consegrations and drop a reflect wall in front of my zerg, along with hollowed ground for stability. I have sanctuary but i'm not sure it's that useful for anything other than keeping me alive. I did notice that some people were smart enough to run to the bubble when i dropped it though.

[Celeras]

Stability, staff 5, and don't drop your light fields on top of water fields(this includes sanctuary). Other than that I don't know too much about guardians.

And I don't know what kind of crazy shit 50v80 would be, but I'm referring to more like 10-20 versus the world. Can't call it zerg busting if you're a zerg yourself!

[Churchill]

It's fun, a different kind of fun though. Before free transfers/JQ ruining Tier 1, we used to do a lot of 15-20 man stuff against SBI and JQ and generally be an irritation. Locking down panglos or danelon in EB, keep siege, etc. It's a different game now though at T1, some of the older stuff is still prevalent at lower tiers though.


Guardian is going to be 0/10/30/25/5, some burning build with 0/15, and 0/0/30/20/20 (I think). I personally run the first build but I don't command on Guardian. If I did, I'd run something a bit different so I was tankier/more support.

Basically, you're looking at a few things. Staff is going to be your primary weapon, you can try to heal with staff2 (but lol sucks) and can use staff4 to heal during lulls/stack might. Staff5 is wall, very useful to cut groups in half. Secondary weapon will be GS/Hammer. GS for indignation camps w/dark fields or for pulls/low man stuff. Hammer for pretty much everything else. You get a wall, mighty blow, protection, and it's your best speed buff outside of retreat!.

Utilities should be at least 2 shouts and then a 3rd or a wall, sanctuary, etc. Hold the Line! and Stand Your Ground! are pretty standard though.

This is my build, it's about as glass as you'll ever want to be: http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/....19.10.16.1i|e

[Kachiko]

I believe guardians also throw out their wall ability, at certain times, depending on when groups tend to burn their stability.