Guild Wars 2

At reset there generally seems to be (from most servers) a reasonably organised effort to send lots of different teams to different places to try to establish map control. This makes perfect sense, but I don’t see why, after the first few hours, it becomes blobs and roamers, with the odd defender here and there. I’m going to look mostly at server borderlands here rather than EBG because I’m more experienced with it.

You have 150 people at your disposal, in an ideal world and as someone who is against the zerg philosophy I really can’t see the difference between a 100 man zerg and a 50 man zerg in terms of its ability to take things and actually I see massive benefits in having two 50 man groups rather than one 100 man.

I was wondering how you would organise the 150 players to be the most effective in taking, holding and defending a borderland, so I thought that I would probably aim for something around this set up:

Three teams of 25, each led by an experienced commander taking different objectives around the map. Should one of these teams encounter a larger zerg, another would come to help it, taking on the zerg from a different angle. The focus of these teams would be tower and keep capture. I don’t know much about the formation of teams of this size, but ideally each one would be a guild group experienced in working together. (Total:75)

6 teams of 5, one to each camp, well balanced roaming classes with good mobility. They would be in charge of capturing and holding camps and nearby sentries, while also upgrading the camps and running supply to nearby keeps/towers, ideally all these teams would come from the same guild and be in constant communication with each other, with an overall leader (Total: 105)

Between 5-10 players who move around following enemy activity. The sole role of this group is to report back exactly what the enemy is doing to the rest of the team, allowing the three large groups to coordinate. These would be mostly made up of thieves or warriors, classes that can escape easily and would go around in 1s or 2s. (Total:115)

The final 35 would be responsible for the upkeep and upgrading of keeps and towers. Along with running Dollies, the main role would be running supply from camps to build siege.

Each of these groups would be represented by a guild who use that channel to communicate with each other and each have their own TS server. Each of the leaders of these teams and the scouts would then talk in team/map chat on the server.

From here I go on a rant about why this doesnt happen, I’ve put it in a spoiler because really I’m just repeating old stuff, but feel free to read it, but how would you organise 150 people on a borderland? Is there anyone that thinks a zerg of 125 people with a few others dotted about is the way to go? I’m genuinely interested and was also wondering if something akin to what I’ve just said happens on the very high tier servers.

small objective teams.

The most ideal would be 1 main force to hold back enemy zergs ’while rest are divided in multiple teams(havoc, SM defense, scout, portal squad, etc) spread over all 4 maps.

This requires a lot of coordination and experience o.o

The problem is what happens when your oppent (or even both of them) just rock up with 80 people in one big blob. Suddenly none of your teams (not even 2 combined) can deal with them and they will just rampage through the whole borderland taking one thing after another. Sure, you’ll cap things back very more quickly and effectively, but you will lose all your upgrades and generally weaken the BL by doing so.

The only way you’ll stop them is but uniting your three 25 man groups into one blob yourselfs and suddenly you have the exactly situation we do have. One huge blob on both sides with some smaller guilds/roamers hanging about doing other stuff.

Essentially the problem is there is no real counter, defensively, to an enermy blob other than making your own blob. If you are attacking a BL its different because if they are blob defending you can split up and attack multiple towers/keeps and it works great.. But when you’re defending and they are blobbing? There really is only one solution.

Cufufalating.8479:

The problem is what happens when your oppent (or even both of them) just rock up with 80 people in one big blob. Suddenly none of your teams (not even 2 combined) can deal with them and they will just rampage through the whole borderland taking one thing after another. Sure, you’ll cap things back very more quickly and effectively, but you will lose all your upgrades and generally weaken the BL by doing so.

The only way you’ll stop them is but uniting your three 25 man groups into one blob yourselfs and suddenly you have the exactly situation we do have. One huge blob on both sides with some smaller guilds/roamers hanging about doing other stuff.

Essentially the problem is there is no real counter, defensively, to an enermy blob other than making your own blob. If you are attacking a BL its different because if they are blob defending you can split up and attack multiple towers/keeps and it works great.. But when you’re defending and they are blobbing? There really is only one solution.

this.

yeah divide up and take the map seems like a good idea but the map is so small and easy to navigate people tend to start following each other to win thru numbers so inturn the other teams must do the same.

So what we’re saying here is that its more effective to run around as one group of 80 than to run around as a coordinated server effort to take a BL? Thats a really dire state of affairs if thats true, and I completely see your point. By your suggestions, the reason is because the maps are so small youre guaranteed to meet big zergs. Are bigger maps the answer? Whats really the reason that zergs are effective and what (if we should) can we do to stop that mentality?

I’m trying to think of a way that zergs aren’t gamebreaking, but at the same time a coordinated organised effort is more effective, which is quite difficult to accomplish, but thats the way I believe WvW should be. Like any game, higher skill should = higher reward

BG tends to have 1 main zerg of around 40~ish plus 1 or 2 smaller groups of 10-20 to work the borderlands on reset night. Rest of the numbers being made up of roamers. Works well.

We only get 1 zerg on each map at most during weekdays though, simply through lack of commanders.

So the pop cap is 150? How did you come up with that number?

Theres a lot of thought on it. Theories are its somewhere between 100 and 200, so I went somewhere down the middle. The blackgate thing sounds really good, shame it doesnt carry on during the week. Do you think thats a more effective strategy? Glad to hear

So… you guessed.

I didn’t mean it as a, you all know we have 150 people to use in a borderland. It was a hypothetical question intended to get a rough idea of what proportion you would want doing what. Its easier to define that if you have a total number of people to work with

jonnis.2946:

I didn’t mean it as a, you all know we have 150 people to use in a borderland. It was a hypothetical question intended to get a rough idea of what proportion you would want doing what. Its easier to define that if you have a total number of people to work with

Ah ok, a thought experiment.

If I had 150 people to work with for 1 borderland, I’d split up into 80, 30 and 30, leaving the rest as roamers and scouts. 80 to fight the opponent zergs, 30 to support the main zerg should a fight occur where they are outnumbered, and the other 30 to run supply and defend structures, both 30 man groups tagging in and out depending on their location.

The borderlands realistically has a cap of around 80 though, so it’s more like a 40, 15, 15 and 10 roamers/scouts that would be optimal for me.

The Maps are based so that each Side gets there Part of the map.
If you have 150 and u would care about defending and scouting. and so would your enemy.
then the map would be in 3 parts like in the picture.
https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/458x685q90/837/5b26.png

But realisticly i would suggest doing something like this:
If you would be the attacker of starting in the SouthWest corner(underneath bay)
http://imageshack.com/a/img823/5662/rrnr.png

LetoII.3782:

So… you guessed.

It’s not a fixed number. On an EOTM map I’ve seen a commander count of 98.

You send them a refund.

go capture the place they port in.

Cufufalating.8479:

The problem is what happens when your oppent (or even both of them) just rock up with 80 people in one big blob. Suddenly none of your teams (not even 2 combined) can deal with them and they will just rampage through the whole borderland taking one thing after another. Sure, you’ll cap things back very more quickly and effectively, but you will lose all your upgrades and generally weaken the BL by doing so.

The only way you’ll stop them is but uniting your three 25 man groups into one blob yourselfs and suddenly you have the exactly situation we do have. One huge blob on both sides with some smaller guilds/roamers hanging about doing other stuff.

Essentially the problem is there is no real counter, defensively, to an enermy blob other than making your own blob. If you are attacking a BL its different because if they are blob defending you can split up and attack multiple towers/keeps and it works great.. But when you’re defending and they are blobbing? There really is only one solution.

This is exactly what happens when mismatches occur. You spend an entire week running in a circle trying to capture stuff on your bl & eb the 80 man blob ran over in a couple of minutes. Do not bother upgrading anything as they will be on another circuit around the maps shortly unless they decided to place a scouts in all locations and wipe any attempt you make. Defending against these blobs is proving to be impossible because either the doors are pvd’d down in a minute or two or you face insane golem rushes.
Must state I am not against the blobs or zergs etc. This is about who has best coverage & player numbers vs those that do not.

Map cap is about 80 ~ 90 btw, and defense is easier than offense… 30 people can defend a blob of 80 from a t3 tower/keep if sieged to the teeth. And then only call for help when they do counter all the siege. But one thing you must think is, are there people willing to camp towers/keep and waiting for a defensive, if yes then are there enough people willing to do so, cause a blob of 80 hits a tower you only have less than 2 minutes to react and defend it, assuming you can even enter the tower

Send 50 to each T8 server, then congratulate yourself on making WvW a better place.

Send them home so there’s more space for roaming.

Knackers.8562:

Map cap is about 80 ~ 90 btw, and defense is easier than offense… 30 people can defend a blob of 80 from a t3 tower/keep if sieged to the teeth. And then only call for help when they do counter all the siege. But one thing you must think is, are there people willing to camp towers/keep and waiting for a defensive, if yes then are there enough people willing to do so, cause a blob of 80 hits a tower you only have less than 2 minutes to react and defend it, assuming you can even enter the tower

Defence should be “easier” than offence. I disagree with the term easier, purely because I think that if you’ve spent the time upgrading a tower, and you’re inside a bloody tower, that should mean something! Towers and keeps should be defencable places and with the power creep in siege and the lack of upgrades to the defence of towers, theyve become near worthless until you get to t3. I think its ludicrous how quickly you can take a tower/keep at the moment, but thats just me.

The Maps are based so that each Side gets there Part of the map.
If you have 150 and u would care about defending and scouting. and so would your enemy.
then the map would be in 3 parts like in the picture.
https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/458x685q90/837/5b26.png
But realisticly i would suggest doing something like this:
If you would be the attacker of starting in the SouthWest corner(underneath bay)
http://imageshack.com/a/img823/5662/rrnr.png

This is the kind of thing I was thinking of. Perhaps my world has far too much of a focus on our own borderland, because we rarely take keeps on other servers, but maybe thats true of all worlds. Surely though if someone could orchestrate something similar to your second image, they would be incredibly effective. Like I say though all the old problems with WvW come back to haunt us. I did like the idea of having a large central general supportive group when I saw it though!

Or they could just make it so you can’t attack certain points before capturing and holding other points..

Now it’s : get a large group of people, enter a borderland, (cap one camp for supps) and rush the keep.

how about introducing a asuran barrier making walls and doors invulnerable on inner and outer untill certain objectives are held.

-Bay: hold vale/ 2 closest ruins and brair = Barrier goes down and bay can be attacked..

Lose one of the objectives and the barrier will go up again in 2 minutes.
Capture the onjectives back and the wall goes down again 30 seconds after capturing your objectives.

Something like that.. maybe make golems immuun to the barrier with golem mastery or something..

anyway…

There are several problems that make one huge blob with a couple really small havoc teams the way to go. The maps are so small the blob can get to anything it needs to defend before its taken. Aoe can only hit 5 people so it doesn’t have that much of an effect on the blob. When 20 people of the 80 die to a smaller greater skilled force 40 can keep fighting the smaller skilled force while 20 power rez the 20 that died. Towers/keeps are designed in a way to benefit attackers. A blob showing up at your door can easily take out your ac’s cannons oil etc… A blob can carry way more supply so they can toss down 3 or 4 superior rams and some ac’s at your front door. You get rewards for taking stuff and not defending which promotes blob karma training as well.

Most effective would be to have a zerg of 140 and then have 10 do small objectives

Pretty sure the cap is around 80-90 like someone else said. Not 150.