Cities should definitely have separate queues for PUGs and premades

[CyunUnderis]

As long as you have classes that won't get warband spot, and as long as warbands are too picky regarding gear, you will have people that are forced to go pug.

Every class can have a spot in city. Some need more gear/build to play around them.

[mynban]

All organized WB do not dodge : if you want to have a good set up with people that know how to play, sometimes you can take 15mn of the 30mn timer, sometimes even more. People are always talking about dodging, but they don't know how much time it can take to make a good 24.

Not true. I've been in full guild WB's going into a city and we wait for 1-2 pops before queueing because we know X guild is running a top of the line all BiS WB. And we don't want to get roflstomped because it's not fun. We want a decent fight where we actually stand a chance of winning. It's not because we want to smash pugs, because that's not fun either. We just want to avoid being crushed ourselves. And ultimately someone takes the brunt of the BiS WB and the lucky WB's get the pugs (unfortunate for the pugs). Only way to solve this would be to create a level playing field within cities. That's either some bolstering based on gear/RR or raising the bar of entry requiring RR70/ Invader ToK unlock. Both of those prob aren't great ideas. But the point is for such an important event, people want to win, especially because it's the main source of endgame currency.

So your guild dodges and you justify it with the famous "gear gap". That does not mean every organized WBs do. What's your guild name ?

Also, I don't know how many of you have less then Vanquisher set, but if you know how to play a little bit, you can play against other WB. During yesterday's city, we saw a WP with green gears outheal some BiS healers.

What vanquisher. even rr80+whs with sov/inv mix dont get invites to city. You clearly havent been actually playing recently.

[CyunUnderis]

What vanquisher. even rr80+whs with sov/inv mix dont get invites to city. You clearly havent been actually playing recently.

Been in cities with 2 ST parties with 2 WL / 2 WH. Like often. What about you ?

[mynban]

What vanquisher. even rr80+whs with sov/inv mix dont get invites to city. You clearly havent been actually playing recently.

Been in cities with 2 ST parties with 2 WL / 2 WH. Like often. What about you ?

6man ST parties with wh. and truth is without buddy deals that spot would go to a wl. There are many 80+ whs left out every city.

My point stands. Vanq is nowhere near enough to go into city, even full inv is barely acceptable.

[CyunUnderis]

That's sad but this is because there is an archetype with more choice. 2 archetypes have 3 possible classes and the DPS archetype has 6 possible classes.

So, of course, you will see a lot of DPS out of city. But this is the same for WB in oRvR or SC.

[nebelwerfer]

As long as you have classes that won't get warband spot, and as long as warbands are too picky regarding gear, you will have people that are forced to go pug.

Every class can have a spot in city. Some need more gear/build to play around them.

and this is very unrealistic, how to get gear from city when you need to have that gear already? it just dooms pug groups because they get more than often the runt of the litter classes / poorly geared toons, it's in the way the game is designed.

you don't bring your full sov toon you bring your vanq guy to gear him instead!!! it's preposterous

it's why we need orange currency to be Bind on Account so you can bring your decked toon and gear your beastlord WE/WH at the same time with the goal of eventually using this in a niche role.

Sad that no lessons were learnt from FORTS, where the gear was bis for some and trash for others, so you had an extreme amount of suboptimal classes that made the whole thing cancerous and impossible to do!

[jshort]

So this is my view on this topic (R8x choppa, 90% Bisgear): All this, gear does not matter you just need the better strategie... blablabla is bullshit. The step from invader to Sov was noticeable. My dmg did not get a big boost, but my survivability. So yes a green wp can outheal a full sov one if he is a bit lucky and has good positioning etc. but in 90% cases he wont. So having invader and rr70 as a requirement for city would help with that. But than invader should be far easier to optain.

Having higher numbers with low gear does not make you better or worse
And having higher healing numbers, or dmg numbers does not automatically means more/better impact (fe: if you are the only healer in your sc party you usually outheal the party with 2 healers even if your groupmates died 10 times and the party with 2 healers died 0 times. This does not make you a better healer or worse healer, the numbers dont show that)

Why are you pugging in end game content?
Because getting in good wb requires you to play a lot, you have to get in some discords, connect to the some lead players etc. At a certain point in life (atleast in my) things like job, family, etc are quite time consuming. I really like playing this game even if it is just once in two weeks. So because of that you wanna exlcude me from endgame content?
And what do you define as pugging?

4 Diffrent city setups: solo pug > pug wb > 4x6mans > premade wb
joining solo vs joining a pug wb only gives you the advantage of having heal/tank/dps. In both cases coordination is bad, and most times after 1 lost fight the city is lost.
4 premade parties can be quite effective if they manage to follow one leadparty. But i seen it quite often that every party thinks like this: "we know better, the other 3 parties are trash, we do our own thing" and so all 4 premade parties try their "solo" stuff and get stomped.
Last setup: the premade wb
First there are not many full 24 premade wbs. Usually 80% of the players know each other (ingame), 20% are filled with "randoms" (these randoms have usually Bisgear, know how to play their class and follow the commands), the wb has a main assist dps, a caller for tank defensive skills, etc. It takes a lot of time, efford, endless discussions, etc to build this warbands before they become this "elite" premade group. So these warbands deserve their wins.
The most effective wb i have in mind is Marcs wb.

Dodging:
I have seen many wbs queue late to avoid Marcs wb. I dont blame them, nobody likes getting stomped. And with the reward system even if you have a super hard fight, but loose in the end it feels like you fight for nothing.

I like the idea of having 20 minutes time to queue as a premade only. And 10 Minutes to queue as solo only. Or go for 15 minutes to queue as wb, 15 minutes as 6/12 man and the last 15 minutes as solo. If you finished one city get a debuff so you cant queue for for solo again. (So you cant queue for wb and solo) Adds up to 45 mintues city queue time in total.
If you dont get a match as a wb, you have to split up. Thats the downside. And as a solo player you have to wait atleast 30 minutes before you can join the fight. But this would make City fights as fair as they can get without complicating the system too much or without excluding to many players from endgame.

[Everdin]

As long as you have classes that won't get warband spot, and as long as warbands are too picky regarding gear, you will have people that are forced to go pug.

Every class can have a spot in city. Some need more gear/build to play around them.

Thats bullsh.. and you know it.

Try to get a spot with AM as long as there are RP or WP with same gear/rank available, same for some dps classes or even tanks.

[Kaeldrick]

What vanquisher. even rr80+whs with sov/inv mix dont get invites to city. You clearly havent been actually playing recently.

Been in cities with 2 ST parties with 2 WL / 2 WH. Like often. What about you ?

6man ST parties with wh. and truth is without buddy deals that spot would go to a wl. There are many 80+ whs left out every city.

My point stands. Vanq is nowhere near enough to go into city, even full inv is barely acceptable.

Cities are random encounters so I personally don't see them as a high lvl rvr content but only a SC where people can get the best gear. That said, Vanquisher is just fine for Cities, what's the point of running them in full Sovereign if you can't tell what you will fight? Most of the time it won't be fun at all for both sides as it's almost always a stomp or get stomped phenomenon. In 1,5 years of City Sieges, I can remember only a dozen being interesting...

It's the same topic as the weekly "sc event isn't fun because of premades".

[CyunUnderis]

Thats bullsh.. and you know it.

Try to get a spot with AM as long as there are RP or WP with same gear/rank available, same for some dps classes or even tanks.

Are you serious ? If you have a party with a SM, you will replace the WP with the AM to get the insta rez + EoV.

Same for Shaman with a Choppa.