Fort Aspenwood no longer balanced.

It's a team effort, therefore an unorganised group should not win. I've recently been enjoying FA from both points of view, and have been rolled quickly by a good Luxon offensive and struggled to make the Green Gate on several occasions when assaulting. I've also had a lot more close battles than previously, but that may also be due to my playing here more often since the update.

In my experience, Luxons generally have a higher chance of success when they have one or more MMs with a Rit spirit spammer, otherwise it seems that the Luxons are too happy to go in one by one to take on the fort. Not always the case, of course, and I'd like to think that over time the players currently trying FA as a replacement to HFFFing will improve with each hard lesson learnt.

How exactly can a group be "organized" when it's 8 random players?

While I agree that going in one by one is a an issue - losing against a MM or a SS rit just means you played badly. There is nothing about those two builds that would make them strong, let alone overpowered.

Sup rune?

Minor Ftw ... ....

Hence my shocked face ...

Oh please

A random team of 8 good players will be organized because that's what makes them good - ability to organize fast and 'on the fly'.

Exactly. It gives me more damage, more effect and more fun overall. With Survivor insignias it's fine.

Come on, let's face it, it's FA not GvG. In FA, I actually WANT to die sometimes, and I suicide. After I die I rez up few sec away from enemies (if they are inside), with full energy. Don't use it always, but sometimes it's a good tactic.

Also, with water magic hex, Iron Mist and Imagined Burden (for energy, if i dont use above method), my crowd control is excellent and unless I'm stupid I won't die just like that. Basically, I go in - Deep Freeze, nuke spells... I move out. Things die. I live. Yes I will have a bit lower hp, but with the build I use and with the map itself, I did not notice the difference.

(btw I usually use all minor runes as well, SoI is only exception)


I'm open to counterarguments. Is the difference between 14 and 16 worthwile in this case? I've no idea honestly, simply like having things cast at 16 attribute. It's guy thing, kinda

You will deal 10 damage more, or with Iron Mist you get 2 seconds more compared to minor rune. And you loose 75 health.

75 health < 2 seconds? Are you insane?

Random =/= good. Even if all players are good, they are just too random.

8 warriors will easily fell again ONE bonder monk that holds the Gunther. Simply because they would have to somehow remove the bonds and defend against a team that has a monk and damage.

Thank God it's usually random vs random.

Loosing 20% of health IS WORTH IT?

Had some success on the Kurzick side running a bonder with dshot then just camping the two sides of NPC's from the top and using longbow range to dshot turtles from a safe height. Not one person tried to stop me or make bonding the NPC's difficult so until people learn I'm just going to keep running that. Really if the Luxons just built properly and made the most out of their turtles it wouldn't be that bad.

Who cares about health as a caster in FA? You respawn in 5 seconds, you have snares, you are casting from maximum range either behind npcs or ontop of the well. Good enemy players aren't going after kurzick players most of the time anyway, they go after npcs. Dieing can actually help you be giving you an energy recharge, much better then standing around for 20 seconds to regen (and that lets you bring a much more energy intensive build, increasing damage again). A single Sup is perfectly reasonable.

Superior runes are fine in FA/RA/AB/etc.
A) They are everywhere so its not like you are harming yourself relative to other players
B) Its not like there is every organized spiking in those areas anyway.
C) If you are knocked down to 75 health during a FA fight, you are probablly going to die anyways, what with the turtles hitting for several hundred damage and the general lack of healers.

You could probablly run around with 2 sup runes in FA and still never be killed if you are running a competient bar (though I wouldn't suggest it).

In that case - this thread is completely irrelevant.
When you have people opting for sub-par choices they aren't playing to win. And if they aren't playing to win - why does it matter if the battlefield is balanced?

If the team wants to win - then the sub-par choices (IF they are made) need to be negated. They can be either negated by the actions of other party members or the opposing team. And considering we are here talking about the better players - the ones that actually know what is going on - who's going to negate YOUR mistakes?
YOU are there to negate mistakes of shitty players - not make new ones!

YEAH! People trying to apply GvG/HA strategies to FA and then calling people failures for not doing so.

Only the ones that work.

If the point is to go in and NOT do your best - I don't see why shouldn't the others do the same?
And because of that - it doesn't make sense for people to bring ench removal because someone else might do it. It doesn't make sense to not use weapon mastery guys since you might get someone who'll remove all the all the weapon-mastery hate AND open the door for you. It doesn't make sense to bring a fully grown pet - since you can farm some XP there ....
Everyone aboard the failboat!

If we aren't playing our best - how do we know that the map is actually unbalanced? Maybe the Luxons just lose constantly because we're shit?

Upier, I have yet to lose a game on Kurzick side with that Mesmer.

Heck, I've been so bored in many games that I go outside and kill Luxon NPCs, Commanders etc. Is that optimal and doing the best I can? No, it's bordering on noobish. But I never played FA to win monthly trophy for best FA player. I take battles seriously, that's true, but I dont always take "the most optimal build just because..". I PvP in GW because it enables me to pick various and yet still effective builds. Let's take RA for example. I can hardly think of a Mesmer there that's better than old school one, or at least domination one in any case. But sometimes, just sometimes I might make some illusion build and go into the battle. Yes, it will be less effective, but still effective relatively speaking and fun.

But I will take minor rune now.. although, in FA it doesn't really matter much to me. As HawkofStorms said, if turtle hits me im dead. If Luxons go on me outside of fort - im dead, although it takes time because I snare them. So they win battle but lose war. If Luxons go on me inside the fort, why does it matter, I fast-cast nukes, run out of energy, I die, rez in 3 sec with max energy and FC again. It's in the interest of Luxons not to kill me.

Not quite true. You can still choose to take some sub-par choice like IW and still play to win

I rate Fun over Efficiency when I play games. If I had to choose between #1 guild that always plays the same build, or #300 guild that has fun killing enemy players in 1001 ways, i'd choose the latter.

However, I agree with you that even a sub-par build can be optimized, and should As in, if someone wants to play IW, there are good IW builds and bad IW builds (although, IW is subpar in itself).

The sad truth is that Kurzicks can even run subpar stuff if they have a couple of good healers backing them up, whereas Luxons pretty much have to have builds geared towards healer hate and manage to rack up some communication amongsts their random 8 man team (with usually 1 leecher).

I've pretty much given up Aspenwood now, since it's just not fun anymore. Jade quarry borderlines there too with multiple Mo/P's with Make haste and N/A's exploding all over the place, but at least there Luxon can win every now and then.

Yeah, I really don't see how people can say FA is balanced when the kurz can be a bit sub par and yet the luxons have to be on top of their game and pray a hail Mary that they have an optimal setup.

i do find it rather hillarious about how people are bitching that its no longer balanced when it never was balanced allthough i do agree that its way to easy for kurzicks to win.

How many Luxon ships have been annihilated by the Vengeance of the Gods?

Well all I know that as a Kurzick player all the Luxons needed to do is bring a couple of monks to keep the turtles alive as they advance. It's a rare thing that Kurzick players (sad but true) actually grasp the concept of working together to kill the monk(s) and then the turtle. So my advice to you is to play a monk and concentrate on healing the turtle and running arround dodging damage.
Seems to work all too well.

The only thing wrong with Fort Aspenwood is the necessity of monks. Considering parties are randomly grouped, the chance of having monk(s) on your team is purely based on chance (or the ratio of monks entering to other players). Like RA, having a good monk on your team is usually what makes or breaks your matches. While having random parties is an easy way for people to quickly play FA, I think that having a grouping system like in AB would help to fix this problem. Semi-coordinated FA seems like more fun than the current FA random mix'n'match system.

The problem with that is that a single ranger can stand inside the central kurzick area and indefinitely hold up a turtle and its warriors. Yeah, the monk can keep it alive, but the turtle is useless if it's just sitting outside orange gate.

They need to change the turtle AI to where it ignores if someone is standing up there.

Maybe also make the amount of time to complete God's Vengeance increase per gate broken down by the Luxons. (Just a thought.)

The problem is ANet tend to play favorites when it comes to kurzicks and luxons. Fort Aspenwood is a prime example, and the Kurzick FFF is another.

All kurzicks need to do in aspenwood is to bring a bunch of monks and protectors, run amber to keep repair gates, and the architect would never ever die.

I am a kurzick that have played on both sides and I can definitely confirm that it is extremely easy to win as a kurzick but extremely hard to win as a luxon. Many luxons even gave up and just leech through the game. Poor luxons almost always lose. At least AB is more balanced.

Where is that eye rolling emote....

If you don't get it, ANet doesn't give a flying crap which "side" is "winning". Actually, anyone calling themselves a luxon or a kurzick at this point is lulz-worthy; you can play preferentially for one side or the other based on what your guild is because that's the best way to max the title, but zealously championing your chosen side and making the "kurdicks" and "suxons" jokes got old about 2 seconds after the game was released.

Call it what you will but there is indeed an exploitable imbalance right now. Every aspenwood game I go to, 10 out of 10 kurzick wins over luxon and that is an obversation over the entire thanksgiving weekend.

Luxons are so discouraged that about half the team are leeching most of the time. If something is so imbalanced then why not exploit it?

The noobs like to go on luxons thinking that all they should be able to do is cast some weak aoe spells or bring some ra build and win. There are easy ways to win and screw over all the kurzick healers.

Ranger spirits are among the best, natures renewal and edge of extinction for starters. There all humans, once you get it past 90% health your gonna have a stream of deaths coming from luxons and kurzicks so their pretty much guaranteed a death. Bring a Pain of Disenchantment necromancer, even add rend if you need it. Or bring a soul bind necromancer and watch all the healers hurt themselves under 90% and then eoe will explode them with the rest.

There is 2 easy options to aid in a pretty easy win. Combine a lot of partywide pressure, with soul bind and edge of extinction on say gunther, and watch as every single death brings it closer to being exploded.

It is funny when your team pressures the entire team and about 10 deaths go off at once from eoe, exploding gunther with it.

I would suggest using a beastmaster build(with EoE of course). I think I used an enraged lunge build with the one cry which makes pets attacks unblockable. So even guardians and stances couldn't prevent the damage.

As long as the Kurzick knows how to get amber and repair their gates, and as long as they have good healers, Kurzick would almost always win.

The only time luxon stand a chance is when kurzick team composes of mostly noobs and dont know how to repair gates.

Luxons should be able to snare or out right kill most of the runners and control the mines. Not to mention if your busy pushing with soul binds being thrown around and eoe going your going to break through those gates so quick that you'll be in after gunther and his 2 little healers that even if they repair it'll still be so much pressure they will have to stop running amber and try to thin out the mob.

That's the thing, they can run amber all they want but if you can kill their monks and be bombing anything under 90% health, you would be able to get stuck inside the gate and win most likely.

If you just give up all the mines after every round or let amber runners (who generally only have a speed boost and perhaps a self heal) go right by then theres a problem). But for the most part you can just steamroll through as long as you learn to counter their healers and don't just let amber runners run forever. I play kurzick quite a bit and it's sad to see me stroll right by a bunch of enemies who are busy attacking some juggernaught who's being healed by 3 healers.

I have played in plenty of games where we had a few healers and still lose to overwhelmed tactics. Luxons can push so hard that as soon as people respawn we would just continue fighting inside our base. No chance to run amber or to split up because of the firepower. So a good luxon team can beat a good kurzick team, just got to actually strategize a bit and use certain advantages (EoE and Soul Bind should be a must in a team for the most part).

Killing kurzick monks doesn't help much since they res quickly inside their gates where they are mostly needed anyway to protect the gatekeepers.

If you have ranger with a long/flatbow, you can even hit the NPCs guarding the mine from the ledge.

Playing Kurzick is dead simple to win most of the time. Winning with Luxon CONSISTENTLY would be difficult.

Most of the Luxon side are leechers right now, time for some kurzick FFF in aspenwood.

By the way, one way to counter the leech reporting system is to leech with more than one account:

This means that as long as about half the team is leeching (as in the case with Luxon nowadays), the person reporting the leech against you would be hurt more than you do.

It's fairly difficult to define exactly what constitutes a reasonable game balance in FA, given that it's a thoroughly asymmetrical map. In that sense of the word FA was made to be "imbalanced" from day one. In any case, I've played FA extensively both under the old and new time limit, on both sides (for the record, I'm in a kurzick guild). Balanced or not, there is definitely a noticeable difference in win percentage. That seems as good a measure of balance in this case as anything.

My impression of the current state of FA can be summed up fairly easily:

If both sides have bad teams (limited or no healing, low(er) quality of players, etc), kurzicks tend to win. Because of the reduced timer length, an unorganized effort on part of the luxons will no longer get them through. There is a lot more pressure on the luxons to draw exactly the right amount of healing, pressure and enchantment removal combined in each game. No healers on the luxon side will especially hurt a lot, cause turtles are sitting ducks without support.

However, if both teams are good, luxons tend to win, or at least win just as many as they lose. Luxon npc's are strictly superior, no contest. Teams that know to stick by their turtle/warrior groups and let the npc's do the heavy lifting and carry them through are incredibly hard to counter, even with a good team stalling on the kurzick side.

What it boils down to is that because (semi-)bad teams are much more frequent in a place like FA, kurzicks now have the advantage imho. They are certainly not the underdog they once were. The pressure to draw the right combination of classes and skills have shifted from the kurzicks to the luxons, and that, imho, is what's making the difference.

As for the various other problems in FA, they exist on both sides. True, it's a bitch that turtles can get stuck on a player standing in certain locations, especially on the orange side. Same goes for not being able to hand in amber while your gatekeepers are fighting. Ditto for the fact that your energy sometimes gets bugged if you die while holding amber. And so on. But as I see it these are peripheral issues that don't really pertain to the reduction of the timer length to begin with.


- Mana

Don't agree with that. If you take the best possible kurzick team, they can be really amazing too. Don't expect the gates to be down for too long and expect their NPCs to bonded, healed, and very hard to kill.

NPCs do not determine the outcome of the match as much as the players and kurzicks have the superior ground. They res closer to the action, siege turtles are no match for good co-ordinated degen and interrupts. Even luxon warrior AI is dumb and easily exploited.

Even the official wiki said:
Kurzicks definitely has an advantage if you play both sides like I have and count the number of kurz wins over luxon wins the results will be staggering. Think about it, kurz average skill is about the same as lux average skill over a vast number of games and yet I have never experience a kurz loss as long as I am playing.

Those of us who have seen both sides of the battle know for a fact that it is indeed extremely inbalanced to the kurzick's favor.

True, but there are countermeasures for just about every single strategy kurzicks can employ to win. They just require more components, that's all. You need a very specific combination of healers, damage, monk hate and enchant removal to succeed. Random teams favor the kurzick side by a mile and then some.

However, if you do have those components, kurzicks can find themselves shut in, even with a good team. Pretty much all you have to do as a luxon is hug the turtles. Amber runners must still get past around half the luxon team to get through, not to mention the turtle and four warriors. Good luxon teams intercept amber runners and exert control of mines. Weapon of warding or guardian on the turtles makes interrupting a lot less reliable. Bonds are a gimmick and well of the profane (or any other decent enchant removal) owns them flat out. Once enchantments are taken off the table, healing simply cannot keep up with damage, and gates will fall, especially if pressure is applied to the monk that's keeping the gate up.

NPCs mean the world to the luxon side. Keeping them functional and moving with them is how you force a win. But it takes a lot of specific tools to get through the obstacles. And like I said, I don't disagree that FA is biased against the luxon side. And yes, it's also true that a large amount of monks on the kurzick side can make luxon victory next to impossible.


- Mana

As a comment to this, I tested a monk on the Kurzick side of Fort Aspenwood for ten matches. I used the following build:

[build prof=mo/e protect=12+1+3 divine=12+3][blessed aura][shield of regeneration][protective spirit][spirit bond][shielding hands][dismiss condition][remove hex][glyph of lesser energy][/build]

Yes, that is two superior runes. I walked to any of the gates and protected one of the elementalists standing in front from dying.

In no case did the enemy manage to break through the two gates. Only in one case out of ten did they manage to break through the first wall. This was with only me fixing up the elementalist, every game.

In one of the games, the enemy broke through both gates on the other side and broke into Gunther. I went back to the area with Gunther and proceeded to cast all my enchantments on him, die, respawn, and repeat. Despite both the NPC monks being dead, even a concentrated effort by six offensive luxons, two siege turtles and two monks could not kill Gunther with me and one more player monk.

I think this says it all.

Yeah, it says that Luxons need to bring enchant removal. One copy of rend would have been enough to open a window to kill any npc you've protted up; two would have completely nullified you.

Rend enchantments has a 20s recharge dude. He can recast his enchants in .25 seconds. Do you have an entire team of renders ready?

Exactly and if you have two renders it's all over. A mesmer/necro can take out that monk build no problem.

Alright, with my PvE mesmer in 4 days I have only lost one battle on Kurzick side. I played half of these battles with half-brain and multitasking on comp.

The battle I lost, looked like this:
- 1 leecher
- Me taking experimental build just for the fun of it (was too boring otherwise) which consisted of Simple Thievery and those other thievery spells, Diversion etc. Really, build was total crap
- Luxon team accidently being good actually, with nukers that went straight at the gates and knew what they were doing and
- My team had no monk

..so yes, in 4 days I have seen Luxon team win. But see above what had to occur to make that possible.


I have never seen FA more imbalanced than now. I have seen in the old times Luxons plowing through Kurzick defenses and winning often in 5 minutes, while Kurzick wins were rare and much more difficult. But then it was challenging to play as a Kurzick. Nowdays, I can go on Luxon side but I dont find it challenging (unless I sync). I find it frustrating and the morale is so low that hardly anyone is trying.


Edit:

I take that back.

I played 3 games now on luxon side:


1st game = victory

2nd game = defeat
reason: 1 leecher 1 mending monk

3nd game = defeat
reason: 1 quitter ("wrong build" noob) and 2nd quitter ..right at the start


The saddest thing is, this 3rd game we almost won 6vs8. If only one quit, 7v8 we would win (only gunther remained).



Reason why Luxons lose, is not #1 map imbalance, but for some reason a huge number of noobs, idiots, and scum. Map imbalance comes 2nd as a reason.

Did you see the Kurzick builds on the occasions that you won?
How about if they ran builds equally dumb?
(I am not trying to say that the builds used by the Luxons weren't stupid - but I see my share of "interesting" moments when I go after the Kurzicks and yet those guys still win ...)


You should. Or at least some other form of ench removal.
One of the most insane moments was going after the protted ele - calling my Pain (keep in mind to ALWAYS call ench removal use so that the guys know who is vulnerable!) - the ele going down and then the other side asking me if I could come to the other side since they had a bonder! I was the ONLY person in the team that had ANY kind of ench removal.
There is just NO excuse for that.

I have seen touch rangers eat the architect

another trick is have someone die at his feet and then use well of profane,

EoE is a nasty treat to, and hated.

I understand your point, but let me tell you this:

In many many games on Kurzick side lately I can't remember a single quitter. On Luxon side, people quit in the very beginning, like first 20sec, and for no good reason.

Also, I have seen people semi-leech on Kurzick side, but even more so on Luxon (probably becuase they think they gonna lose anyway).

And as for builds, I have to say I noticed many experienced and great players on Luxon side. These can compensate for some who have semi-useless skillbars. So in a way you're right, but these expert players have to cope with leavers and leechers (more so than kurzicks).


However, my conclusion after these 3 games on luxon sides is that although map is imbalanced, it's playable. I can win as Luxon, with 8 active players (not necessarily pro's).