WvW happenings

[Quine]

Re changes in WVW since The Past:

They capped mesmer portals to have a 10-man max, and limited AOE heals to match AOE damage (5 people?), which has stopped a lot of the worst of the mindless portal bombing that was going on.

They've said they're completely reworking the rendering system to address the culling issue, though it's a bit worrying this never got addressed before launch.

Orbs were removed from the game ages ago due to hacking problems and they're not back yet. Fly-hacking and glitching through doors and up walls is still a big problem with some of the...less fair-minded servers. They have nailed down certain exploits however.

A new breakout event was recently added for players with no control points on a map to kick off a Siege Commander NPC who builds siege around the nearest tower and beats people up in an attempt to stop spawn camping, with mixed results.

My guess is that the free transfers issue probably got caught up in some political bunfight with the PVE teams about getting guesting fixed before locking it down, and their focus has largely been on PVE since launch.

Anet have announced some 'big changes' to WvW sometime next month, but apparently it's not new maps. I suspect they will reintroduce orbs in some form and possibly change the outmanned buff. If we're really lucky free transfers will end.

Overall the biggest change was that the tiers were balancing out after months of mismatched fights. We're down in tier 8 now and have had some great balanced contests (which we're winning) recently. Except now the lamers in the top tiers are starting to move to the lowest tiers to roll around like kings and lord it over the peons, except it's not working out too well for them so far...

[jha4ceb]

Are mesmer portals capped at 10 now? I thought it was 20, but I could be behind the times on that.

[Quine]

Oh I'm probably wrong, never having played a mesmer. They did cap it from 'unlimited' though, so prioritise your golems when porting.

So after the experimental ranger/flaming dogs groups the other day I was wondering how powerful single-class squads would be. Yes they might be easy to counter if you knew what was coming, but 5-10 people doing a synchronised single attack could be rather OP, especially on a single called target. Also if you're trying to organise squads then giving classes a single role might be a bit of a throwback to the bad old days of the trinity, but also a lot easier to coordinate in certain roles. Maybe we should try it if we get enough people on sometime.

[Quine]

Sigh more pre-moderation fun. How many posts do they want from me?

Anyway yes it was probably 20 people and I'm getting it wrong, I've never played a mesmer.

[Zpinget]

I thought it was 20 too.

(Which is still a lot of people to have land on your head in a hurry)

[Lippsy]

It's still 20 as far as I am aware

[sendmark]

We'll have to test it while portal bombing a WSR or RoF zerg next event

[squirrelfanatic]

Who's able to claim and apply this upgrade from the currently active people?

I looked up which guild ranks are able claim keeps and schedule upgrades, Barons (something like "Senior Officers and Commanders") and upwards can. As Timofee has stated before, these are quite a few people already, but if we feel the need to add some more, I am sure nothing is set in stone.

[Krathor]

Pssssst Animal House, I'll be around tomorrow night for frolicking.

[Zpinget]

Prepare the Ruminant Tonics!

I'll have mine on the rocks with a twist of grass.

[jha4ceb]

Was following a cooking guide last night on my mesmer and it directed me to make twenty Ruminant Tonics. See, cooking is useful for something

[Zpinget]

...cooking?! Not artificating?

[jha4ceb]

Oh, er, yeah. It was artificing. *facepalm* Must think before typing...

[Krathor]

Beautiful evening all. True poetry.

[Quine]

So the reset ended with us ticking nearly 600 points at one point and taking all of EB. I was rolling in a short-notice set of squads under Insky and we had 4/5 scouts from [redacted] along to see what's what. We went for Ring Of Fire's borderlands and got wiped quite a few times by Night Pact. It looks like they pulled almost all their strength to hold their BL and we kept them busy enough for other squads to cap their Garrison and then Bay.

Then we went over to Whiteside Right to cause more trouble and helped with a last minute save of their garrison. By then we were well in the lead on points income and all was well. WSR seem even fewer in numbers so far but I can't say I blame them given the relative populations. All in all a good start to the match and there should be plenty of heroism in the coming week.

[Zpinget]

...or no heroism whatsoever.

I completely fail to see why we're trying so hard to crawl up the backsides of Rddt and XaoC. They've got numbers, yes, but if tonight is anything to go by, we're going to be spending the next two weeks rolling from one target to the next with very little thought process involved.

Tonight was dull and boring. All those tactics we've worked on? Waste of time, just ram the front door. Split groups? Use commanders wisely? forget it, just roll up and roll on. Paint the whole BG our colour, then move on somewhere else. Might as well go to Dzagonur, because that's who we're going to turn into. I pity our opponents, they're in for as rough a ride as we had the last few months.

I don't know who's pushing this ridiculous recruitment (although I have an idea), but I bloody wish they'd stop it. We were doing seriously well as we were and (more importantly) having fun. Being in tier 8 is really not a big issue for most of the people who stayed on the server. Where did this drive to move up appear from?

Pfffff. Rant over. Move on, nothing to see here.

[jha4ceb]

I was interested to see that one of the [rddt] scouts posted a fairly perceptive post about our reset night, identifying several of the things that I think most of us know are issues: http://www.gunnars-hold.eu/threads/6...ull=1#post6204

(Chance for a rant: seriously, it's unacceptable that many of the powers-that-be still ignore map chat.)

[Zpinget]

Hah, the mods swallowed last night's rant... Probably a good thing.

Personally, am bored of 'courting' Reddit and wish they'd push off somewhere else. Only problem now is that they'll take our tactics with us. But hey. We're such a big zergy ball right now, who needs tactics.

I think I'm out of WvW for a week or so.

[sendmark]

Imo he's generally accurate with all those points.

Shame WvW is shaping up to suck a bit this week due to the imbalance of numbers/morale. Although I guess at least with a dominant week GH is on target to move up to the next tier and fresh opposition. Roll on the 28th and end to free transfers, long past time for players to pick a server and stick to it.

[noaru]

Zpinget, I'm not as worried about [rddt] joining as I am of [xaoc] and the bigger problem of our numbers rising through the roof.

I agree that this courting is utter bollocks... I mean I was there a couple Mondays ago when they came for the first time to talk and it was like everybody forgot the forum discussions and only tried to sell to them how good and awesome our world is. It was too much.

But I'd rather have their method of doing things, checking out servers, doing research before moving, rather than [xaoc], who talked with someone(Insky?) from our server and directly transferred after. You saw how many of them were around last night already.

Last night was fun because of general wackyness on mumble - going round and round zerging and PvDoor-ing is not something I'm going to come back to. We were in RoF's shoes some weeks before and this is not fun for either party involved.

PS Always Ctrl+C your post text before submitting.

PPS The reddit guy was bang-on with his assessment. One thing though, showing off an x-core late at night without any prior organization was not one of the best decisions.