Cake is Cake

They've been the equivalent of a machine gun dropped into a musket battle.. But once they can't damage rams (coming patch) I think the balance will be acceptable. As a team that burns all it's supply on AC's will be sorely disappointed at the result.

I have no issue with the damage the AC's do, just the damage they do to other siege.

  I think ALL siege should be buffed vs players. But now that AC's can outrange, outdamge, and out AE everything else, they make captures, long, boring, and/or impossible.

  Strip the AC's of their ability to kill siege, and give ballista the ability to wipe trebs on cliffs, and it's al good.

I thought people wanted zerg busting options. Now you get one and you are bitching?

On the whole, I am having a blast in WvW right now, fighting as the underdog in WvW.

   I am not sad to see fair weather warriors disappear, either. I am OK with that.

  The only two issues I am having right now that pisses me off are;

1) JQ zergs break and run. This really irritates me. However, this is a natural side effect, I think, of JQ not having large guilds that form the core of our zergs. Guild zergs are better than PuG zergs. Thats just life, you have to accept it.

2) I am happy as long as we are ticking 120+. That means I have somewhere I can go, get into a fight, and have some friends and allies around me.
   Ticking 60 PPT and stuff like that just means everyone quit, and I am looking at facing 1 vs 40 every fight if I go to any map. This happens from time to time, and since I only play to WvW, it means that I just turn off the computer and go do something else.

   All I want is a good fight somewhere I can join in on.  Damn the score, and damn the quitters.

The most rewarding profession to play (in my opinion) will be determined by two criteria, and the one you prefer is up to you.

Either...

The profession that requires the most micro ability to excel with.  Maximizing this profession requires lots of APM and micro skills to get the most out of it, but when you do, it's validation that you're competent.  In PvE, I would say Engineer is the best for this, since the best ele build doesn't require much micro.  But if they nerf Lightning Hammer a traditional ele would also be up there in micro, however an engie will do way more damage and be more useful.

Or...

The class capable of carrying a team the most.  I would say that Guardian is this.  A good Guardian is capable of carrying awful pugs and making encounters trivial and smooth.  If your ideal of "rewarding" is having bad pugs you carried say "wow that was the smoothest I've ever run ______" then a Guardian is probably the one to roll.

It seems like people are confusing two issues here.  Complaining that Defiant/Unshakeable limits the type of boss mechanics available is valid.  Berserker gear being the only viable gearset is also a valid thing to complain about.  But those two are not the same, and not particularly related.  Even if you had to CC a boss (imagine Bjarl but more punishing for failure to interrupt) to pass the mechanic, DPS would be be the preferred gear across all classes.

The only way to make dps not the preferred method is, as others have said, to make support (like a full cleric water ele) better and make the encounters require the better healing.  Within the framework of what the game engine is like now, that's probably some kind of constant environmental effect that is also time gated so that even if you kill the mobs fast enough you will still DOT out unless you have party healing.  But... does that sound fun?  I'm not sure that is at all an improvement over what we have now.

I think some aspects of molten facility are a step in the right direction.  The cold room with the DOT effect was good.  The Protector mob who had to be CC'ed is good.  A lot of the guild bounty bosses have interesting mechanics that are quite difficult to melee, and it's clear to see that this is the direct future content is going to go.  If you look at the trend of fractals to new AC to guild bounty to molten facility, it's pretty clear they are going in the right direction.

Rhomulos, on 20 May 2013 - 12:36 PM, said:

ANet was just absolutely terrified that if toughness and vitality actually made a tangible difference, that somebody would use a tank in a dungeon. We can't have people playing the game that way, so we need to make toughness and vitality useless. The same is true with healing.

They approached the design of the game with the bitter hatred that a DPS accrues while waiting for dungeon queues in WoW, rather than just rolling a tank/heal spec. While completely ignoring the fact that some people actually like something existing besides putting out as much dps as possible.

Cake is Cake, on 30 April 2013 - 05:25 AM, said:

Those nasty elitists ruin every game they're in
I hate how they're so much better than me
grrr

Also, missed this little gem:

Dasryn, on 30 April 2013 - 04:08 AM, said:

Are you serious?
Are you trying to say that people should play an MMO out of sympathy for a developer, rather than if it's a good game or not?
This quote hammers in your white-knighthood.
"Can you really blame them for putting out a game with utterly backwards systems? Their publishers forced them to!"
Disregarding, of course, the fact that many of the systems ANet had time to get right utterly flopped due to being counterintuitive to other systems in the game.

My condition heavy spec I use in WvW is so terrible out in the PvE world.  I melt Molten Alliance invaders in seconds flat, then sit and wail on their stupid personnel carriers forever.   There's no way I'm going to retrait every time I get in and out of WvW under the current system, however, so that character has been resigned to WvW and PvP only.

So the system has me not only flipping between builds, but between entire characters/professions/races.  So much for a sense of immersive permanence.

They've given much the same answer for why WvWXP is per character rather than account.

As much as I like many things about the game, these terrible decisions for a sense of "permanence" and "choices have consequences" is just dumb.

Guardians with condition builds isn't their playstyle, even if you forced it. Burning on a Guardian is themed more towards little perks you get with it, and it mainly shines in PvP with the all out aggressor type builds. Also, you're talking about moving traits from where they really do belong. Virtues deals with the passive and power of the virtues, why would you take away a trait that deals with it? Same as the Valor trait, it deals with blocking. If you're blocking, that implies you're being more defensive, if you're being more defensive, why not have it in the defensive tree?

Radiance deals with conditions, of course, but also 1 handed weapons, mainly swords. Swords are probably one of the fastest attacking weapons a Guardian has, which procs Justice quite frequently. The burn damage isn't bad, it's not really noticeable, but the damage adds up. Honestly, if you want a condition damage build, go play Necromancer, or even a warrior, since conditions are more into their playstyles.

The reason is incredibly simple: There is no dedicated healer.
In other games you have group members who only heal allies, nothing else. In GW2 it doesn't work that way. Everyone is responsible for his own hp almost everytime, you wouldn't be able to heal against the constant high damage you would receiving.

And please, before demanding the removal of the AoE-Cap, think back to 80 men portal bombs, healing balls, shoutheal-warriors healing entire zergs. Think about skills like timewarp, null field, earthshaker and so on.
Honestly the aoe cap is fine.

Laylyn, on 23 March 2013 - 04:27 PM, said:

Well yeah when the server looks to be losing they just transfer. Of course they have an amazing record. I guess the loss to BG was too much and they quit the game this time, instead of simply transferring. Gratz to PRX, masters of the bandwagon. May whatever game you move to also have free transfers also so you can join winning servers and claim to be champions.

Killyox, on 29 March 2013 - 12:32 PM, said:

All of that is terrible reasoning. Let's start with "google it." It was difficult for you to say that their reasoning was that they wanted to rope players into WvW? Or did you legitimately forget the reasoning?

Instead of telling you to look up the real responses in the past thread, I'm going to educate you.

Now let's move on to the actual reason ArenaNet gave us. WvW is thriving, as you say. So why do they need to advertise it to players at all? We knew it was there. Our monthly achievements up until November/December dragged us there. I have friends that bought the game purely FOR WvW. It isn't a lesser-known aspect of the game.

Also, do the world explorers or people in jump puzzles actively help with the keeps? Or are they too far North getting that skill point done to even get there? Instead they're taking up slots from the real WvW players that play in guilds.

And the old "Nobody said you HAD to do it!" Nobody told you to read this response to the end. Nobody told you to sign up to these forums. Nobody told you to even buy the game. You can't use an extreme to finalise something with many variables that affects many people far different from yourself, especially in a casual game.

If I want a legendary, I do have to do it. If I want the star next to my name, I do need to finish it. There are clear incentives for doing it. The problem is what needs to be done for these rewards has nothing to do with PvE at all and is affecting BOTH sides of the community.

Their original reasoning may have held truth in August. This is almost 8 months later. We all know about WvW and if we'll enjoy it or not.

I still, to this day, find it amazing that people that claim to have independent thought cling on to everything a company says as gospel. Although I suppose that's exactly how companies thrive; blind loyalty.

heatrr, on 28 March 2013 - 12:48 PM, said:

Just because some of us had to do it doesn't mean it was right the first time. Why should WvW be a part of world exploration when it isn't part of the world?

Also, it's 8% total of the entire map completion. Are you saying that the other 92% was redundant and only that 8% matters? Since the rest is the "easy way out."

Oh boy.  Another cautionary tale of someone posting a build on guru labeled "best" "ultimate" "perfect" when it's far from that.  Try letting the build and your guide speak for themselves rather than hyping it up, but when in the end it makes you look like an attention seeker.