Guild Wars 2

If you have a tip to help new players in WvWvW, please post them here.

A common question I see all the time is, how to exit WvW.

The easiest way is to go back to the original Spawn location and leave via the Lion’s Gate portal.

The other option is to go to the HERO tab, enter SPvP Mists area. Once you are there, go back into your HERO tab and select option to leave the Mists. This will exit you back to the spot you were before you entered WvW.

Another tip:
Do not remove supplies from Towers or keeps. These are required by the workers that are hired to do upgrades.

If you need supplies, get them from a supply camp.

^You can also hit “esc” go to character select and log back in. This will put you back to the spot where you entered the WvW zone from.

Another big tip is to always make sure you have supply on you. BUT do not always take supply from the nearest towers/keeps. It is very important that those defense structures get upgraded and if everyone hijacks the supply they can run out very fast. Then they get stuck with 0 supply while being attacked and no upgrades.

Supply camps have re-spawning supply and very low upgrade costs so always try and take supply from them.

Tip: Don’t over-advance on your enemy. Good players note the back-and-forth of a fight. The problem is when you push too far, your forces spread thin, and the enemy pushes you back, killing off a few of your team. Try to ‘hold the line’ just in front of your Keep seige, and you will be much more effective at taking the Keep. More often than not, chasing down the enemy as they run away means a flanking force will come in behind you to clean up your seige crew bashing on the gate.

Do not chase enemies into their base camp.

No matter how badly your team is routing the others, entering an opposing spawn is insta-death.

Here’s a tip I’d love to see more people take to heart: don’t run off and do your own thing, either by yourself or with friends. There is nothing less fun than joining WvWvW and seeing nothing but 6-8 unorganized groups all doing whatever they want in /team, and then all coming up with various excuses for why the server is being trounced so thoroughly.

Try to identify the person who is in charge of coordinating everything, and do what they say. If there does not seem to be any such person, nominate someone. WvWvW only works well when everyone on the server plays as a single, cohesive unit. When everybody’s just in the zone to kill mobs, stage pointless raids where you’re massively outnumbered, and generally lulzing it up, it’s incredibly frustrating.

Not to mention a huge waste of resources for those people willing to spend money to build siege weapons and improvements.

One tip i learned is the need for group support skills. You’ll be supprised how many ppl never use these, so try using skills like “for great justice” and banners over might signent and other only single use skills.

You don’t need 50 guys just to “Finish” a downed player when there’s another 49 still there and fightning you.

I disagree with you mcl. There are lots of things smaller groups can and should do. Anything to divert the enemies is good for your team.

If you are in borderlands and you go for the north camp, it requires them to recall back to get it. Especially if you are being cornered on your map. You need to divide the enemy up to allow your zerg to make progress. Also, the north camp feeds the south east and south west towers.

Getting the quaggen is worthy in borderlands. They send an attack force out to help you get the camps. (Or they send guards to the camps if you already own them) And getting the Hyleks, Dredge & Ogre in eternal are also worthy and doesn’t require a large group. They also help you take the camps on either side of them.

I am from Henge of Denravi btw.

Orbs. Orbs are important stat boosters that benefit everyone in all 4 lands. Your primary goal should always be to get the orb and place it in a castle you own.

@setch: Yes. if you are in a subgroup BEING DIRECTED TO DO SO BY AN OVERARCHING LEADER it’s good for your team. The key word there being “team”. My point was that there needs to be — MUST be — one leader coordinating the actions of an entire server. He or she may have other people autonomously coordinating smaller groups, but they take their marching orders from the one person in charge.

If your entire server’s concept of WvWvW is “me and 5-10 friends are going to roam around the map attacking whatever we feel like”, wandering into a match consisting of nothing but that is pointless. It’s a waste of time, it’s a waste of resources (any your server has spent erecting defenses), and if you somehow managed to get an orb or two earlier in the week, it’s a waste of that effort.

For example: The other night, I was in WvWvW. There were 6 different people all making seaparate and at time contradictory orders for various groups of people, leaving almost anything we held, including our garrison, woefully undefended and without any supplies whatsoever. We were constantly overrun at any location we held because these 6 people couldn’t or wouldn’t coordinate their efforts at all. One would take a location and call for help, while others were desperately trying to hold another location against ridiculous odds. Both were lost. And it went like that the entire night. Groups would occasionally manage to push back the enemy’s small skirmish units…all the way to their holdings, and get killed. Or they’d be lured into chasing a small group of enemy into a much larger ambush.

In short, a completely uncoordinated mess with zero strategy and very little comprehension of battle tactics.

And they spent the entire night bantering back and forth, trying to figure out why they couldn’t hold anything.

The most helpfull tips I can come up with:

- Don’t assault something you can’t hold. The tower closest to the spawn on borderlands for example. It takes a lot of resources to capture it and it takes a lot of resources to keep holding it. Not worth the 10 points.

- Know when to fall back and/or defend. If you’re going to lose to tower, take all supply you can, run away and start preparing the defense in the next location.
If you’re capturing stuff, defend till there’s some equipment, so that small groups of people can hold off bigger groups.

- Don’t all rush to one place. If your zerg is assaulting the keep, fine. Don’t go there, get a couple of people and deny the keep supply or capture supply camps near it.

- Zerg strats suck. It’s better to have a trebuchet hammering a wall for 10 minutes, than to have 50 people hammering the wall. It takes the same amount of time to accomplish the same objective, you only need 49 people more when zerging.

- Also use the trebuchet if their tower/keep is heavily fortified.

Well, I could probably think of more, but these points are the ones that annoy me most when people don’t use their brain.

Most of the people on my server know what has to happen. There is no single leader. In fact we never have anyone barking orders. There is actually very little chat going on. Chat is reserved for the facts. Not orders. IE: “Dreaming Bay being hit by 20-30”. That’s all that is said for a few minutes. Our server knows to go get the north and south camps back so dolyaks can run supply to that keep. Also, siege is placed accordingly. etc. etc.

I’m with Stetch here. Someone believing that they’re in charge is no reason to take what they say seriously.

Until people have the commander symbol, “follow the person in charge” is largely meaningless. The reason you’ve got groups bantering back and forth is that they all have different ideas as to who should be in charge. I’ve seen a lot of people on /team yelling that people should be following them while (usually in all caps) giving out some of the worst advice possible.

Also, while a large, co-ordinated zerg force is powerful, there’s a lot to be said for not having the entire server in one place the whole time. Having a couple of people watching some towers is a great idea. Having them reinforce the towers (and yes, escorting dolyak to make sure those towers can be reinforced) can make all the difference.

Dys put it well with not assaulting something you can’t hold. I’ve seen a lot of zerg forces rush to take a tower or keep and then immediately rush to the next, leaving the one behind them as “a distraction”. Any gain they may have had by gaining the place is lost before the next tick or the tick after that, and eventually they get themselves surrounded and overwhelmed.

Someone leading a Zerg is not a tactician. They may well be crucial, but there’s more to it than that. A zerg is easily countered by not being where the zerg is and mopping up behind them.

Now yes, there should be some strategy. And yes, you’re all on the same side so you should be working together. But the idea of “one person on the server giving overarching orders” sounds fanciful at best and disastrous at worse.

Don’t underestimate the power of catapults when taking down doors. It also means you don’t have to worry about that pot of oil right away.

Don’t neglect your supply camps. If you have no supply camps, you have no way to reinforce or place siege weapons.

If you’re intending on placing a trebuchet or golem, make sure you’re with people who know what you’re doing and have the supply to get it built as quickly as possible.

You’re really not doing much damage to the door without a siege weapon. Yes, you CAN take it down, but why not focus on the enemy on the walls or on protecting the siege weapons? It’ll get done in roughly the same amount of time and you’re probably going to have an easier time once you get inside.

Arrow cart and ballsta is a great combination. Even better is a second arrow cart and ballista so that you have two groups protecting each other.

If you’re leading an assault on a tower or keep, please make sure you have some siege and supply with you. Nothing breaks my heart in WvW like reading “we’re through the first door! Quick! We need someone to come here with flame rams! ARGH! THEY CLOSED THE DOOR BEHIND US! HELP! HELP! HELP!”. Assaults should be planned – things will go wrong, of course, but be as prepaed as you can be.

Setch.2398:

Most of the people on my server know what has to happen. There is no single leader. In fact we never have anyone barking orders. There is actually very little chat going on. Chat is reserved for the facts. Not orders. IE: “Dreaming Bay being hit by 20-30”. That’s all that is said for a few minutes. Our server knows to go get the north and south camps back so dolyaks can run supply to that keep. Also, siege is placed accordingly. etc. etc.

Glad this was said. There’s always this one guy on WvW in my server that orders everyone and acts superior. I’m wondering if that’s even allowed. Good I came across this topic. Very helpful to the starters!

So, as long as you’re on a server where everyone knows instinctively what they’re supposed to do, there’s no problem.

But if you’re on a server where they don’t, you shouldn’t expect any sort of coordination, or attempt any (by the way, ‘coordination’ != ‘zerg’; I have no idea why some of you are interpreting it that way).

In short, if you’re on a server that’s not full of PvP guilds, just don’t bother with WvWvW is what several of you are saying.

That’s not very helpful.

Having someone watch the supply caravans to make sure it makes it to your base isn’t a bad idea.

Having 10-20 players falling it is. It doesn’t matter if it gives you decent rewards, you will get much better rewards helping your team win.

A well-upgraded Tower/Keep/Castle is exponentially harder to lose with each upgrade it gets.

Most of the people here have already covered what I would have put down and have provided excellent advice. I just want to add a bit more to this…

1. Supply will make or break your assault/defense. It is paramount to the team and to the server’s war effort that you have adequate supply. Make sure you have supplies on your person as well (taken from the CAMPS..not the towers, keeps, or castle) in order to help build defensive and offensive siege equipment.

2. When playing WvWvW it is important to keep the “big picture” in mind and understand that you don’t have to control the entire map for your team to be in the lead. You just have to have a higher score through each score tick (which is based on the amount of camps, towers, keeps, and castles your team owns.)

3. Keeping this in mind, it is beneficial to the overall server as well as the individual player that there are dedicated defenders attached to supply camps. For example, a team of 6 were able to hold off constant attacks from the opposing team because they upgraded the supply camp defense and amount of supplies and dedicated themselves to defending that area. When the opposing team did not attack we were able to get xp, loot, and money from killing NPC’s and taking over the Hyelek (sp?)/ Dredge/ Quarran camps.

Holding these supply camps with small dedicated teams allowed the rest of our server to absolutely dominate the map. It was a slow approach but the upgraded supply camps (sending more supplies) in turn upgraded the towers and keeps.

In short? Supply management and keeping the big picture in mind is central to securing the win for a team.

A few other things:

- zerging is a horrible strategy and leaves spots undefended.

- Make sure and join/form a party. This gives you the advantage of being able to see health bars of your party members and allows you to see where your party is on the map at any given time.

- Report what you see in a clear and concise manner! If 20-30 are attacking a keep report the status of the keep, what siege equipment is being used on it, etc.

- There is a time and place for taking Stonemist Castle. Please be mindful of this when thinking about the overall war effort.

What most people seem to forget in the battlegrounds is that you’re suppose to have fun, not win. If your world is winning, but you are just following the orders of some kitten crying out in the chat with stuff like “Everybody get to SM right NOW!”, you’re gonna lose in the end… That would just be a zerg vs zerg which is boring and useless.

I remember me and 9 fellow adventurers forming a squad and doing a well coordinated attack on Stonemist Castle. We won even they had about 50 defenders, just because we worked together and they just was a zerg of 50 people playing by them self, not as a unit.

After that we managed to hold Stonemist for about two hours against their zerg while all the smaller groups were doing their own stuff. Getting experience killing mobs, taking sentries and camps.

At the end of the day it’s the one who had most fun that was victorious!

mcl.9240:

So, as long as you’re on a server where everyone knows instinctively what they’re supposed to do, there’s no problem.

But if you’re on a server where they don’t, you shouldn’t expect any sort of coordination, or attempt any (by the way, ‘coordination’ != ‘zerg’; I have no idea why some of you are interpreting it that way).

In short, if you’re on a server that’s not full of PvP guilds, just don’t bother with WvWvW is what several of you are saying.

That’s not very helpful.

It will only be messy at first. Once the matching system is got everyone figured out, you’ll be playing with other clueless worlds, while all the PvP-heavy worlds will be busy fighting each other.

Thanks for all the tips – it is much appreciated. Keep them coming!