Fort Aspenwood no longer balanced.

You win if you have enough ele's. I run E/N SH nuker with [gaze of contempt]. If you have tons of melee you are sorta screwed though.

Btw, you get ~1200+ for a loss so its not terrible.

Im not complaining about faction... its all good. However, I would rather actually have a fair fight, rather then a team where 1 kurzick monk can just camp behind the green gate, and bond, spellbreaker, and heal one NPC the entire match. Thats what pisses me off.

It's kinda hard to keep spellbreaker up indefinately and like others have said, just don't use any melee type characters or those who require line of sight for spellcasting. Bring some enchant removal and maybe a good mes in tow and it'll be GG.

hmm FA no longer balanced?
well - Before Luxons usually won - now the wins are split evenly.
I'm pretty sure it's balanced now

It has been that way from day one, if the Kurzicks have two good heal/bonder monks it is a virtual win especially now. The only way to fix that part would be to limit each side to one monk.

On the Luxan side it seems players are for the most part content to cap the mines and just break walls for faction not trying to win anyway now.

I call shens on that, I play their a lot on both sides out of ten matches Kurzick will win eight prior to the update now it is easy to win every time. It is why there are usually double the amount of players on the Kurzick side waiting to play. No one likes to loose thus it is natural for players to migrate to the side that wins the most and it is obvious that they do thus do.

I am no different, you could not pay me to play on the Luxan side any more.

FA has been broken forever, cuz gunther is rite next to the spawn.
Since HFFF is not an option anymore and due to the change on faction rewards in FA, ppl now tend to spam monk skills there.
Killing the usual amount of 3+ monks since the update (4 monks in 5 out of 10 matches) is not an option, they just respawn secs later (with full hp, energy and next to the battlefield)
Enchantment Removal and Caster Shutdown do not seem to work either....Too many monks, ench spam, ability to outheal any damage dealt in an instant.
And in addition to this, gunther is an annoying tank...

Sigh.

FA wasn't balanced for faction gain and here's why:

Luxons could win in 5 minutes, getting full faction.
Kurzicks always needed to wait 20 minutes (few exceptions like when you run amber, but even then it takes almost that long).


If Luxons want faction fast, well they better put more effort into it. If you dont want to, I will. And many others will. Why? Because we're the ones who played Kurzick side when it was underpowered. I remember that time, because I played FA alot. Not lately since I was gone, but I do think Luxon side is the one that should be more difficult (see faction gains above).


I'm curious how much more difficult is Luxon side now, and I will check out from what I saw, only time was reduced to 15 right? You can still comfortably win. It's all down to players. If good players are 1 night on kurzick side, it's bad to play luxon. And vice versa. It was always like that.

Funny how Kurzicks always knew that bonding means winning, and only rare Luxons knew that anti-enchants = winning. Imagine that, preparing for a battle instead of taking random build and whinning.

Truth is, Luxon NPCs are better. Turtle > Juggernaut, any day. Kurzicks were on average always better prepared, they had players who are up to challenge, and they had players who knew that they need to think and prepare to win. Luxons, I remember back in the old days, always had chaotic approach with "lets just go in with whatever, follow turtles and we win".

a) reduced to 10 (!)
b) anti-enchants =/= winning. as already mentioned, gunther is a tough guy. by the time ur able to deal significant dmg to him, he gets covered in enchantments again resp. even straight heal is enough to keep him alive if u consider to brind well of profane, NR....

^btw: i'm referring to the ~75% chance to face a kurzick team with 3+ monks / heal rits whatever....(maybe i'm just unlucky >_>)

to try and put an end to this silly rumor about not enough servers.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Arena..._Jan-June_2008
From gaile herself.
Scroll to Easy FA Question.
Theres a time for everyone at some point but for as long as ive been playing (used to play FA for 1 & 1/2 years been playing game since beginning.)
Kurz have won 90% of the time. Although I didnt get many games because there werent enough Luxons to play.

I'm kinda surprised to read some of the comments. I've played both Kurzick and Luxon sides excessively and always found the Kurzick side more challenging. The amount to do/time involved to win and need for some sort of team effort/ coordination always was a big factor. There always seemed to be a need for everyone participating (leeching on the Kurzick side seemed to have a bigger effect than luxon side based on a person to person basis) and there usually needed to be a good mix of defenders and mine takers/ amber runners. Having folks open gate up at inappropriate times, particular NPC's not respawning and the duration of the weapon also added to the issue.

Now don't get me wrong - there exceptions to be made everywhere ranging from classes brought to the skills used to the quality of players etc. but it always seemed like a lot more work and a lot more had to come together for a win on the Kurzick side in relation to the Luxon side.


elk

Of the games that I have played on both Kurzick and Luxon, the time line was pretty similar. If the Luxons hadn’t broken thru the outer gates by 60% and kept up the pressure it was more than likely going to be a lose for them. If they hadn’t gotten into green by 75% and kept up the pressure, it was going to be a lose for them. The games that were won in the early stages were done so by use of E/A shadow form ele’s, Glyph of Sacrifice ele or multiple mm’s (basically a shock and awe approach). The E/A build got so common that I would carry Signet of Disenchantment on my warrior to counter (yeah doesn’t make a lot of sense but it would do the job). Now that the time line has been reduced it has become even more difficult for the Luxons, and all the Kurzicks need to do is stall for time. Which means highly defensive builds and healers.


Recently bonding on the kurzick side hadn’t been as common because people were carrying more enchantment removal. When playing a nec or mesmer on the Luxon side I would often carry 2 or 3 skills for enchantment removal and sacrifice damage output. Even then it was difficult because of the number of monks and rits (with non strippable weapon spells).

I agree that the turtle does major AOE damage but it is easily countered with skills that are common in bars. There isn’t much deep thought or preparation for a ranger to carry an interrupt and maintain high dps (flail +read the wind). As a warrior I would carry Distracting Blow to interrupt the turtle and the warrior npcs. I would sacrifice any kind of healing or defense simply because I knew if we had healers they would heal me if possible and if not I would die and rez in only 6 sec. Once I was up again the walk to the nearest Luxon was just a teleport away.

What Anet did was treat the symptoms rather than cure the disease. They saw that you could get in twice as many games as a Luxon than a Kurzick and decided to shorten the match so more Kurzicks could play. They didn’t bother to wonder why more Kurzicks play than Luxons.

The new time limit punishes you alot more when you get stuck with a team of ninjas who just wanna run around pvping.

Previously you could kinda get away with it by using the extra time to *ahem* politely explain to the 'lost' luxons what they should be doing ~

New timer also brings out every Kurz Monk, Rit and his uncle too...but that's another story.

A good luxon team clearing npcs as fast as possible can still win ~

The mistake that is, and has always been made is defending. The Luxons are supposed to be attacking -

Spend the match defending the mines and chasing people around the map = lose.

Brought out my old friends [skill]lingering curse[/skill] and [skill]well of the profane[/skill] again too ^^ - Good times.

The problem is that luxons NEED to have a high offense. Last two matches I was in both sides had 4 or more monks. Guess who wins in a stalemate? Also the AI on the turtles/luxon warriors is horrible, they can be rendered useless so easily.

Nope. Now it's balanced.
It's just that all poor players that could not stand a chance in AB went there for easy faction.
Kurciks defend, and PvP is balanced so a total defense removes most of the attack, so if you only defen, you become overpowered sooner or later.
Now it's no longer a 'just call more turtles and overpower them'. Instead of it, it now requires (a bit more of) skill in both sides.

Now that it's balanced, Kurzicks win most of the time. The natural outcome.

Since it's a PvP Competitive mission, you can make a PvP character and go there with a well equipped character.
You don't have to go with your PvE newbie character with not much skills.

3 words - Well of Profane

Lots of bodies and lots of ways to remove enchantments.

Besides, It wasn't balanced before. I have to admit prior to SF getting nerfed, I loved running my Cynn Sister E/A build. I could drop 2 gates in the time it took to run there. If a guildmate was on get could in the green gate and have dropped a monk before the first amber was in. No it wasn't balanced before for a very long time.

-ignores all the "strategies" for FA-

I believe this was done to promote play in JQ. In JQ, Luxons would have the advantage, in FA Kurzicks do. So those wanting a challenge would go to the opposing one. Those wanting easy Faction would go to their side's battle. Overall - more people at JQ - at least on Luxon side.

OP you're frickin crazy the Luxons broke in two times in a row this morning because they had MONKS and most of the time when the luxons lose they don't have any monks. Same on the Kurzick side when we have MONKS we win quite a bit when we don't we lose most often. So, it's well balanced based on the number of monks on each side. Plus if you're smart and bring chant removals you have a better chance of winning on both sides as well. Man I swear people lose and as soon as they lose they come whinning unfair not balanced wah wah wah. I've lost 10 times in a row on the Kurzick side and I didn't whine about it. Just kept on truckin.

How do luxons have the advantage at JQ? As far as I know the map is perfectly symmetrical.

JQ also has a few really irritating design choices. The first person to run to the NW quarry instantly spawns tons of NPCs there along with a carrier, giving a huge starting advantage to whomever has the best speed buff which, is a really dumb thing. Along with this quarries/posts instantly convert and spawn npcs when the last npc defending is dead, basically assuring that anyone else there is gonna die. It would be much better if the quarries had to be capped like in AB, the guard posts its not as big of a deal since there isn't heavy fighting over them.

One decent monk can sit inside the green gate and hold out for like 5 minutes by themselves. A crap monk can do it for 3. Due to the unorganisable nature of FA, the luxon teams need more time to actually get their buts into the fort, and to the gate. Each time I played and we actually got through the green gate it was when kurzicks were at 95% of winning... 30 seconds later we lost.

The only time I won in 2.5hrs of playing was against a kurzick team with 1 leaver, 1leecher and no monks.

The mechanics of FA didn't change. Anet reduced the time by 5 minutes to even out the faction rewards.

In order for Kurzick side to win you needed to hold your gates for the "entire" duration of the match. I'll say it one more time for the reading impaired. Kurzicks need to hold for an ENTIRE MATCH.

In order for Luxons to win they just crash the gates regardless how much time it takes. Luxons if and when they are winning could squeeze in 2-3 quick matches before 1 Kurzick victory is achieved. Do you people not understand this???