Guild Wars 2

Hey guys!

EDIT : Note, I will be expanding this thread with more detail as more thoughts pop into my scattered brain.

This expansion will likely include specific ideas and current builds and variants that would work in the given roles/lanes as well as an extract on different strategies in game. Can’t wait to discuss my experience with lord rushes! My god what fun!

Right so I thought let me ‘pen’ down some of my thoughts for the Battle of Champion’s Dusk Stronghold game mode.

I will be dividing this into lanes and roles.

No lane :
Just like conquest there would need to be one roaming(high mobility) class that would reinforce either lane with DPS as well as run supply. Some CC is required in this role in my opinion as they would help with hero channel contention.

Attacking lane :
I see two prominent arising roles in the attacking lane.
The pusher/supporter. This roles will likely be specs that specialize in assisting the doorbreakers(DBs) and archers push the lane with swiftness, protection, invis or even reflects.
Optimally the second role in my opinion would need to be a bursty or general DPS class that can focus on killing or locking up(soft and hard CC) enemy players and guards so as to protect the DBs.

I feel like their should always be a minimum of 2 players with a near permanent presence in the attacking lane to constantly apply pressure.
Defending lane :

Hard defender, which would optimally have the capacity to heal guards and have decent range capability(not a must). This would would be relatively tanky role with a good size chunk of CC or sustain and should camp the defending lane 90% of the time while also keeping a presence on the hero channels(another reason to have CC, channel interrupts).

The other role would optimally need to double as a secondary roamer with a bit more sustain that can assist the main roamer in running supply.
In general the game tends to lean in the defenders favour to a significant degree and when in trouble, some effort should be made by quite a few team mates to save a gate. Gates are extremely powerful and once all of them are down it is literally anyone’s game.

Right so there we have it, feel free to input on my initial impressions of what would be optimal with the first stronghold map!

Expansion 1 : Builds that I have played a few games on.

Builds that work relatively well for hard defense :

Cele engi, the leaching variants was especially good and darting in and out of combat to defend gates but I found that Tri-kit (Toolkit/Elixer gun/grenades or bombs) worked the best mainly because of super elixer as well as the zone control and kiting potential on acid bomb. Elixer S and Slick shoes just felt useless to me until you actually were forced into smaller spaces such as the lord room.

Power ranger, oddly this worked better than i thought with the sniping potential as well as the meta fear and immob associated with it, i did find fire sigil a must have though. While this build lacks ally healing(even with healing spring), it makes up for it a little with great DB bursting.

Turret engi, i found a neat trick where you can place the thumper on the inside of the gate and it will knockback the DBs quite effectively, obviously this is only effective when you are under heavy enemy pressure. I used elixer gun, rocket turret and thumper most of the time and swapped thumper for rifle at one point. Thumper allowed more zone control while the rifle turret helped out with DB and archer killing to a much larger degree.

Celestial Staff ele, truly amazing zone control in front of the gate but needed a bit of DPS help and struggled to defend once the gate is down. This build is second only to the cele tri kit engi in my opinion. But this could be a little engi bias.

Terrormancer, while effective in keeping them off the gate, the 5 target AoE cap makes this a little harder than you might think. This obviously lacks the ally healing and buffing that other classes bring but is at least fun and relatively effective.

That’s it for expansion 1. I’ll be back for more once I get some sleep and a few more games of testing. Ill be running attacking lane tomorrow late morning.

EDIT : I have the discussion going on reddit, which is a lot easier to use in my opinion, feel free to follwo there. http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/38a66k/stronghold_bocd_a_discussion_on_meta/