Putting the War in Guild Wars 2 - Saturday Night PVP/WVW Fights

With the way WvW seems to work Monday night could be a tough call. Unless we know we have a balanced match WvW may be kind of boring* by Monday night. As of 1040 EST we have a >130,000 point lead over the other servers (with relative gains of 630,40,25). Not insurmountable, but lopsided enough where it may not be exciting* and the other servers probably won't give it a go.

We have 14 supply camps, 22 towers, 12 keeps, and 1 castle to AR's 8,1,0,0 and BP's 2,1,0,0. If that holds it will mean WvW will consist of swapping a couple of points over or at prime time could mean we own everything and are defending, spawn camping, or doing PvE (jumping puzzles/skill points/PvE events).

I'd recommend seeing what Monday night populations looks like for GWJ and WvW before switching nights. If we get out of the bottom 6 ranks for next week's match we could be getting the same punishment our server has been dishing out (over the last two weeks I've seen). Coming from a server that was ranked 10th in the initial rankings and got rolled two weeks in a row ... I can tell you that the losing side is not fun at all* once all of the upgrades have been built. On the flip side If we get a balanced match it could be fun all week. From what I've seen on two different servers so though is that whuppins are more common than balance.

Other than that in my experiences organizing group events with the GWJ crowd in other MMOs Monday was one of the nights where people don't have much (or claim much) in the way of availability (maybe the GW2 crowd will be different?).

I also think hitting something other than Eternal Battlegrounds or NS Borderlands will yield better queue times on Saturday nights.

* - What's fun for me might not mesh with other people's idea of fun.

GrandmaFunk wrote:

The Battle in Borlis Pass was tons of fun! and for the first time, I left WvW with more silver than I had going in =)

I made about 1.75 gold Saturday night. Got a lot of badges and made three levels. It was a good night.

I think Monday could work as an additional night. Obviously we want to get as much action immediately after rematching as possible, but Monday could work as a night to really squeeze the opposition out.

It's less pressured, people are more likely to be able to meet up and there should still be some opposition.

Had some fun on Saturday night with RubbEd and Rybble(iirc?). We weren't particularly coordinated, but took a tower and a gate before I had to crash (living in the future as I do)

maxox wrote:
GrandmaFunk wrote:

The Battle in Borlis Pass was tons of fun! and for the first time, I left WvW with more silver than I had going in =)

I made about 1.75 gold Saturday night. Got a lot of badges and made three levels. It was a good night.

Yeah, I had a lot of fun in Borliss on Saturday. I definitely need to buy a new mic so I can actually talk on vent though.

It was good running with everyone on Saturday night, though I doubt I'll be able to make a weekend night like that anytime soon. Had to get a special hallpass from the family to pull that off.

Was a blast and look forward to doing it again sometime!

I won't be on tonight as I'm helping to organize the church meatoberfest - err Octoberfest. Good luck to all and if anyone's interested I'll probably be dropping in Monday evening.

Had a blast last night once I finally got into Yak's Bend. Then internet went down and I had to queue up again. Boo

FYI - it's a very close game tonight. We're in second place but only a thousand points separate each world. Man, I wish I could join you guys for a long run.

Not much of a turn out tonight...5 of us. But, I did ding two levels, hit a couple of vistas and a skill point thanks to Moosicle. Hopefully, we'll have a better turnout next week.

Possibly dumb question but does it matter what your home server is for WvW purposes? I'm not on the GWJ server but I would be interested in joining up sometime if possible.

I was queued up earlier to join Zappa and DonD, but it was nearly 1 am and I'd had a seriously long day so I needed to bail.

WvW when you're tired just gets you repair bills.

Going to grab a cup of coffee now and jump on to see what's happening, maybe some late players need a hand.

Scaphism wrote:

Possibly dumb question but does it matter what your home server is for WvW purposes? I'm not on the GWJ server but I would be interested in joining up sometime if possible.

Yes, WvW is pretty much the main reason for picking a home server. You will not be able to play WvW with friends on other servers. Once they get the guesting feature working (...grumble...) you will be able to play with friends on other servers in regular PvE.

I didn't want to wait for a queue last night so I jumped into Sanctum of Rall borderlands with no wait. Got about 38 kills in the next hour, hour and a half, which was way better than I've ever done before, so I was happy. One thing though, people kept yelling in zone chat for people to come help someone who I can only presume was a commander, but they never said where the hell they were. Aren't we supposed to see the commander icons on our zone map? Because whenever I pulled it up I didn't see any, anywhere in the zone.

Also, this week's matchup is pretty freaky for me. I was thinking of starting on Sanctum of Rall to join the Gaischioch guild (have a friend in it) over the summer but decided against it to join the GWJ server. And I have 2 coworkers who are on Yak's Bend that keep trying to get me to switch to that server. So it was quite a shock to hit B and see which 2 servers we are paired up with this week

What level can/should you start RvR and PvP?

You can start as soon as you leave character creation/tutorial. You won't be as effective as a higher level character, though. But you can participate and contribute in WvW, at least (don't think I'd want to do sPVP without all the traits and equipment you'd have at 80). You don't unlock all your utility skills, elite, and weapon swapping, for example, til later.

I noticed I was much more effective in WvW since hitting 80 and getting good 80 exotic gear. But I still ran WvW throughout the earlier levels and had fun.

I did jump in WvW from about 14, and did manage to contribute a bit, but from about 30 when you unlock your elite and have a few more trait points I think you can hold your own better.

It's still worth jumping in though, sometimes numbers are all you need.

The main cap on effective WvW can be being able to afford siege equipment... I know even at 60 some levels I don't feel entirely happy paying for siege or upgrading places.

KingMob wrote:

The main cap on effective WvW can be being able to afford siege equipment... I know even at 60 some levels I don't feel entirely happy paying for siege or upgrading places.

Jumping puzzle chests in the warzones give siege equip if I remember correctly.

KingMob wrote:

The main cap on effective WvW can be being able to afford siege equipment... I know even at 60 some levels I don't feel entirely happy paying for siege or upgrading places.

Jumping puzzle chests in the warzones give siege equip if I remember correctly.

They do indeed.

karmajay wrote:
KingMob wrote:

The main cap on effective WvW can be being able to afford siege equipment... I know even at 60 some levels I don't feel entirely happy paying for siege or upgrading places.

Jumping puzzle chests in the warzones give siege equip if I remember correctly.

And they're fun!

Jumped into Sanctum of Rall borderlands again last night just to see how different it would be from the night before. Found it to be an almost identical experience. Even the same commanders running around. Seems like it's forever bound to just be a stalemate of trying to take the same 2 places, getting pushed back by siege defenses, the enemy comes pouring out to push us back, we fall back a little, start killing them, then push back to the walls and start over. It was fun, but I hope in the long run there's a way to break the stalemate.

I was pleased to note that of the times I was running around and encountered an enemy player 1 on 1, I won every encounter. I'm not bragging cuz I certainly don't think I have much in the way of skills. It might be that level 80 warrior with exotic armor + rare or better rifle is a tad overpowered. I was wasting people left and right with that rifle. And I didn't even change my spec to be rifle based. Kinda scary.

One thing that kind of puzzled me, though: I had left the scene of one battle that looked pointless. I was running through open terrain, didn't see any enemies around at all, really no where I can think of they could be hiding. There was definitely a zerg behind me, but easily a couple hundred yards behind. I pop my runspeed buff, and pull up the map to see where to go. 5 seconds later I close it, and I'm surrounded from behind / overtaken by a huge zerg of enemies. How the heck could anyone overtake me from behind if I'm running with speed buff on? I wasn't too mad since I was running with the map open :), but I couldn't figure it out. Hoping it wasn't due to an exploit; there was a player from Sanctum of Rall that apparently used a Mesmer exploit to get up on top of the hill to the north of Ascension Bay. That was kind of annoying, especially since I really respect and like the guild that player was from.

NSP is now up to 15th place in NA! =)

Wasn't able to make it Saturday night but got to play in the Friday night rush as well as bit of keep defending on Saturday/Sunday mornings. Definitely getting a better feel for what's viable with certain group sizes(or solo).

Now that we finally have a good match up, I think the action will be going all week so I'll try to play some more tonight as well.

I'm still loving my nade-tossing Engineer when accompanying big groups but I've slowly been trying out(and leveling) some other options in the form of a Necro and an Ele. I'm hoping these can do better when operating in small hit squads.

I went back to Sanctum of Rall borderlands for the 3rd night in a row, and holy cow, we got rolled, badly. Both Yak's and Rall ganged up on us in there and took everything we had and pushed us back to just our spawn area. By the time I quit, the battle was raging fiercely within about 200 yards of the spawn area. Insane. I still got about 22 badges for the night, but I died a LOT more than the previous 2 nights, had to repair twice due to broken armor. It was not pretty. Also, the back and forth bickering between "leaders" in map chat is really annoying. I look forward to running with some GWJers instead.

Ya once you get spawn-camped in enemy borderlands you need to have a group of 50+ to plow through the roadblock and take that first keep quickly.

groups of 15-30 can sneak off the back roads to take the camps and roam behind enemy lines but as long as you don't push back the spawn campers, whenever someone dies they're stuck in spawn, unable to break out alone or join back up with the infiltrators.

Match is still very close and will probably require effort the whole way through, which is very exciting =)

With that in mind, I'll be focused on WvW tonight if anyone wants to join me. I should be online starting around 8PM eastern.

For the Shiverpeaks and the mighty OctoGear!

GrandmaFunk wrote:

Match is still very close and will probably require effort the whole way through, which is very exciting =)

With that in mind, I'll be focused on WvW tonight if anyone wants to join me. I should be online starting around 8PM eastern.

For the Shiverpeaks and the mighty OctoGear!

Cant promise anything but I'll try to be on.

I might try to get on some WvW tonight. Would probably be good to decide which zone to queue for so can get the queuing going ASAP. Which map would you like, GrandmaFunk?

Thanks for the help last night Khoram.

checked in on the score this morning and we're starting to build a lead(well, relative to how close it's been this week)...hopefully we can hold on to it for another ~35 hours =)

Woot! That was fun though not as one-sided as a couple nights ago That orb-run by that ARMA guild was pretty intense.

Also, when I mentioned a couple posts back about doing really well 1-on-1, I don't think I had gone up against any mesmers that night. Hoo boy are they tough...

Doh! We were in the lead last night but this morning we were in second place with the smallest point gain..I think it really will come down to the wire tonight but unless NSP has a surge during the day we may simply be out of reach of first place for the time we have left.

Either way, I hope all 3 teams remain in this tier so that we get a rematch next week. On Guru ppl have been coming in from other servers to comment on how jealous they are of this match-up, it's become the poster child for what WvW should really be like.

Is there a way to see the current scores for all the server match-ups? How do other folks know how close our matchup is? Just word of mouth?