Guild Wars 2

“An important distinction should be made between large, organized groups of players making strategic strikes and mindless groups of players running around in a mob.”

“Our goal is to continue to encourage organized large groups while giving small, tactical groups the necessary tools to put a dent into larger mobs of less-skilled players. We think that it can be fun to run around in a zerg — but we also think that the game should be about tactical acumen and skill more than sheer numbers.”

-Devon Carver. June 5

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/devon-carver-on-the-future-of-world-vs-world/

Well, it’s almost November and we haven’t seen any news on anti-zerging tools yet. I’m willing to bet that Arenanet is cautious as to how they implement anything that changes the metagame permanently, but I think there are several changes that can be made that can discourage zerging or encourage people to group in smaller sized groups.

So, here are some changes that I would like to suggest in order to spread out zergs a little. The general direction of this post is to encourage the minor objectives more and to penalize zergs by having them more affected by supply traps and allow sentries to place supply traps.

However, what it comes down to is PPT and keeps are what zergs are formed for taking- thus, I humbly suggest that more objectives to reward PPT, such as towers, be implemented to split zergs between areas. But, towers cannot be too strong in that small zergs or groups of players cannot take them, so I advocate changing defensive siege in that they are less powerful so that a few people on superior arrow carts cannot hold back a small zerg easily. In order to facilitate this change in the game, I highly suggest making upgrades cheaper or free and automated so that objectives can upgrade themselves without players. Furthermore, I think every tower should have a sentry to alert players in team chat of a zerg in their location (with appropriate cooldown on that message of course). Sentries need an overhaul for their function, and I have more suggestions below.

Encourage Commander Squad System and Cap Squad at Appropriate Size

• Commanders can type alerts to squad that appear in center of screen (dredgehaunt cliffs is now under attack by scarlet!)
• Commanders can place special markers and long lasting drawings on map
• Raid UI enabled like in mini-games so at least commanders can see everyone’s hp
• Commanders can see dots on map for everyone in their squad
• Commanders can see traits of players in their squad like in spvp spectator mode
• Commanders can invite players to join their squad via mapchat linking
• Commanders can make their command symbol private to be exclusively seen by only those in their squad.

Nerf Superior Defensive Siege

• Less siege can be placed in one place (however, this makes it easier to troll)
• Make superior arrow carts more expensive and rare
• Disallow arrow carts from being placed in certain places
• Lock camera FOV while using AC to disable zoomhacks/multi-monitor unfairness
• Reduce Superior Arrow Cart damage done to players
• Nerf Trebuchets so they can’t hit rams through gates
• Longer cooldown on mortar build sites appearing
• Nerf Trebuchet mastery to limit how much supply is destroyed from cows on players
• See my reasoning for this in my post below.

Traps Need Tweaking

• Lower Price. Maybe allow to put on TP? Or allow it to give you karma/badges back when you trap enough people.
• Buff: Trap Effect scale up to greater effect as more people run through the trap and very little effect on smaller groups of players.
• Trap UI needs overhaul. Tell the player when his or her trap has any effect.
• Traps to detect zergs or add zerg radar
• Traps should have cooldowns and not last as long as an hour
• Placing traps should destealth you
• Remove stealth trap
• Add ‘tells’ so you can tell there is a trap somewhere, like a suspicious rabbit or odd looking bush etc.

General Map Changes

• More towers and less keeps
• Lessen PPT from Keeps, add more towers and add ppt from open objectives for roamers
• More minor objectives like bloodlust capture points (see my previous post
  here for ideas for buffs other than current bloodlust buff)
• More siegeable walls (more secret catapault areas like the one on Briar)

Nerf Rally Mechanic

• Reduce amount of people that can be rallied from one person dying
• Disallow rallying off of non-player characters with exceptions to lords and supervisors
• Keep Lords can only be resurrected from a player spell once every 5 minutes

Fix Siegerazer

• Make him despawn when you get a tower/keep
• Make him put down a pile of 200 supply (that lasts a minute or so) instead of giving everyone full supply
• Disallow players from changing maps right after taking siegerazer supply or have them lose supply when they do so.

More Yak Killing – Possible Buffs

• More and better loot
• Give player limited time buff
• Give nearest 5 players long lasting speed boost upon kill
• Make the yaks explode when they die
• Your team has earned 3 points for killing a dolyak" – make dolyak killing more visibly noticable to you and your team.

More Yak Defending – Possible Buffs

• Loot chest after escort (cooldown of 30 minutes)
• Rewarded with supply after escort
• Rewarded with world experience thimble (cooldown of 30 minutes)
• Give temporary 30 minute finisher buff after escort

Sentries

• Allow them to talk in team chat and tell everyone when a zerg attacks them
• Upgrade sentries so they can place supply traps
• Give sentries a patrol path, similar to keep/tower NPC patrols
• Remove sentry capture points
• Make sentries always be on your side if they are in your territory (no more capturing them)

PPT Log

• Let players know when they helped give points to their server
• Log every point that you personally have earned
• Points from Dolyaks/Stomps/Sentries should all appear more visibly on the screen
• Trap activations should be logged
• Announce major upgrades to the map “A Waypoint is being constructed in Hills!”

These are just my humble ideas. I am not a designer, so please cut me some slack before you criticize. I want to create more ideas and more suggestions, so I just put down ideas as they came to me. Many will not work, cannot work, and require too much front end and back end work- however, I think they can help get some people thinking about what can be done about the anti-zerg solutions that we have yet to hear about.

In short, I think the best way to dissipate a zerg is to:

1. Have multiple vulnerable, but valuable objectives
2. Less keeps, or make the keeps worth less points and have more towers instead.
3. Knowledge of where zergs are (either through sentry mechanic or traps or whatever)
4. Commander system that has hard caps on players to strengthen smaller groups.
5. Promote lesser objectives like yaks, sentries, and camps.

ps. Sorry for the clickbait title.

the game is fine, the people aren’t. I think it would be better for them to get bored of skill lag, long ques and lack of any equally sized competitor, than change a great / fun game because some people insist on chewing chess pieces and putting them in their diapers.

Give them time, I think eventually some of them will get the idea and grow out of wanting moar power than common sense.

if you really want to balance the servers and cut down on the zerg, make the lag so bad that any small server can go out on the field and shoot them – they’d just be badge bags running round on the map that can’t hit anything. Just isolate the lag to their fat servers.

Just don’t ruin the game for the rest of us because a few neanderthals can’t play normally.

defending doesnt need nerfs, attacking does -.-
its too easy to ninja thanks to ram mastery. its too easy to overwhelm with numbers thanks to omega dupes.

the rest of your suggestions are mostly good.

I think folks over think the issue.

Split WXP earnings by people participating. Kills divided by people, objectives divided by people, etc.

I think that one change will have enough impact that the meta of the game will gradually change. Of course someone will post that this will mean folks will tell others to leave so they do not lose points. Perhaps this will happen, but the rally system does that as well and yet ANET doesn’t change that so enough with the double standard arguments.

I disagree with nerfing defensive siege. All of it except the killing stuff on the other side of the door. I agree that should be fixed like they did with catapults.

I don’t agree with everything in commander squad. Other options do need to be introduced. Not sure why the commander would need to see the players dots unless you are suggesting that players can’t see other players dots on the map which I disagree with. I also disagree with needing to see the traits of the players.

Map changes I disagree with. They just need to spread out everything. As they are now, boarder land maps have most of the stuff in the middle to middle south of the map. This stuff needs to be spread out.

Rest I don’t mind.

I really think that smaller zergs would be more effective if some towers had less defensive utility. Towers like Cliffside should be takeable with smaller groups, but even in this current omega golem heavy meta, it is extremely difficult to do so. In order to split zergs, the split zergs need to be able to take objectives and some siege is just too difficult to overcome with small numbers.

On the flipside, stopping a large zerg is difficult. However, if there were more towers and objectives then the zerg should be broken up more because attacking one tower or keep should not be as effective ppt-wise as attacking multiple towers (which is what I want to push for). In the current meta, yes- nerfing defensive siege would make no sense, but I think it will be needed as zergs are split up more- or else they won’t ever split up and they will blob once again.

If experience given from kills scaled per player as it did in daoc…much less zerging happens.

1 kill with 8 guys = 250 RP’s
1 kill with 20+ = 15 RP’s

Tower with 20+ = 300 RP’s
Tower with 8 guys = 2000 RP’s

Makes a WHOLE lot of sense. And I am not being sarcastic. It is an age old mmo concept that should be household.

body block from gw1
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Body_block

I really do disagree with nerfing supply decay cows; supply and supply loss is one of few difficulties with running a large group. With both these and supply traps you can wreck a lot of havoc.

I think the supply cows affect smaller groups more because large zergs can do more without supply than smaller groups. In it’s current state, it only takes one spell to deplete hundreds and hundreds of supply directly from players. A spell that good should have a better counter like not taking your supply on your first tick of the poison. At the moment, it is supremely better than supply trap. I’m not saying it should be nerfed into the ground, but it makes one person able to deplete unlimited supply from 50 people at a time in a choke.

yeah…we need body block in WvW….. introduce them now please…..

insanemaniac.2456:

defending doesnt need nerfs, attacking does -.-
its too easy to ninja thanks to ram mastery. its too easy to overwhelm with numbers thanks to omega dupes.

the rest of your suggestions are mostly good.

yeah if u nerf all the defenses u actually encourage zerging even more. the treb is important as the current rammastery is making gates melt in seconds. if u are outnumbered, all u can do is to turtle up in your keeps and build a ton of siege. eles can pretty much destroy every siege u have. if they cant reach it with meteorshower, they will use the dragontooth “thing” and then there is the ac zoom “thing” that lets the enemy shoot right in the middle of your keep without los at all.
then ther is omega golems that can barely be countered if enemy has a lot of eles that keep u away from walls. etc……

defending a keep should be easier than capping it period. nowadays we barely have time to react. most of the time the zerg is already on the inner, before u can even get in.

id say, we need new keeps! new upgrades, that get traps or something to slow zerg down. traps that can be deadly. traps that can destroy mindless pvdoor zergs. stop the gate tagging. make keeps and towers that have more chokepoints….etc, there is a lot that needs to be done in this area.

McWolfy.5924:

body block from gw1
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Body_block

No. This will introduce rubber-banding which is as horrible as skill lag.

Mada.5319:

McWolfy.5924:

body block from gw1
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Body_block

No. This will introduce rubber-banding which is as horrible as skill lag.

source ?

I would not mind seeing body blocking introduced. It is kind of silly trying to hold a choke and the other side can get right through. Only thing that actually blocks a choke is AOE and it can be passed through.

My perspective is that when an attack fails, it is usually because the enemy has too many arrow carts and my force is too small to cope with the damage. This causes the zerg to grow, because we can’t attack it without more people and more supply. If defensive siege is buffed further, then there will be even less attacking and arrow carts will become more necessary for attacking as they were before and the zoomhacks will be even more prevalent.

If defensive siege is nerfed a bit, and there are more objectives- then you can feel more free to attack with your smaller outmanned force and force the enemy zerg to defend it’s towers and the attacker is benefited. Defending shouldn’t be discouraged, but attacking shouldn’t require a large zerg either.

It’s always going to come down to coverage however, so I’m not saying you won’t lose if you are outmanned and fighting a super blob. That being said; not being able to take anything is a real problem for small forces. Defending only becomes problematic when it’s an overwhelming force attacking and the gates go down too fast, but their weakness is that they are only attacking one structure at once and they should be punished for that.

In the current meta, a large zerg can defend and attack at the same time quite easily. A zerg will always be able to defend because they can port and run to any structure and save it within a minute, but if they had to choose between objectives more than they would have to split to defend or only save one. The current counter against a zerg is only another zerg with a large amount of siege or players. A smaller force cannot crack multiple superior arrow carts and defensive trebuchets and mortars and cannons as quickly as a zerg.

Turtling up is very boring gameplay in strategy games, and I think a more aggressive metagame would allow for more diverse strategies to emerge. Supply traps and other traps (golem trap please!) should be good for slowing down large zerg attacks, but they currently do very little. We need more anti zerg abilities for sure, but these are just the beginning.

awww, how cute, so many good advices and missing the obvious.

remove the AOE cap.

Lalangamena.3694:

awww, how cute, so many good advices and missing the obvious.

remove the AOE cap.

u are aware of the fact that smaller groups will get wiped in seconds if aoe cap gets removed if they meet a bigger group.

Double the maps, cut in half the pop cap per border, except EB.

With 6 BL instead of 3, but same population numbers, you’ll be forced to spread your zergs.
Otherwise, you’ll be extremely open to any sneak attack.

Also, fix the WP rushing on a contested keep. That alone would be MASSIVE.

Make all roaming groups >40 perma visible on the map with an icon (ie skull), if the group is in a tower or keep then the icon will not show.

Very little coding required and very effective discouragement for zerging which in turn would reduce skill lag.

insanemaniac.2456:

defending doesnt need nerfs, attacking does -.-
its too easy to ninja thanks to ram mastery. its too easy to overwhelm with numbers thanks to omega dupes.

the rest of your suggestions are mostly good.

Not sure. Me and a mate captured Garrison yesterday with 2 omega golems. We’re definitely not zerging, and if they nerfed attacking, we wouldn’t be able to do this kind of thing. On the other hand if they nerf defending, that’s also bad for small groups, because we often use arrow carts, ballistas and catapults to destroy zergs.

Sirendor.1394:

insanemaniac.2456:

defending doesnt need nerfs, attacking does -.-
its too easy to ninja thanks to ram mastery. its too easy to overwhelm with numbers thanks to omega dupes.

the rest of your suggestions are mostly good.

Not sure. Me and a mate captured Garrison yesterday with 2 omega golems. We’re definitely not zerging, and if they nerfed attacking, we wouldn’t be able to do this kind of thing. On the other hand if they nerf defending, that’s also bad for small groups, because we often use arrow carts, ballistas and catapults to destroy zergs.

Attacking and taking objectives is awfuly easy. I dont know how many ppl you had but timewarp+golems melt through gates like paper even if they are upgraded. Now take 2+ golems and not to mention you can teleport them in, which gives defenders a timeframe of what 5-10 sec to react? Attackers have a HUGE advantage – there is no damage cap on gates and walls. Walls can be locked down with ease, avaible siege to defend is horrible (cannons, burning oil are a joke for defending, mortars? who cares it gets outranged by trebs and catas are usually so close to the wall so you can’t hit them).

So whats left as an defender is spamming acs or exploiting trebs, because they still hit through gates. And everything gets worse with growing numbers.

Btw those who want body blocking to be a thing. Sure do it the enemy team will be glad to collect your lootbags. Because standing in enemy aoe fire is such a great idea. There are enough options to lockdown a choke point. Of course you would have to know how to use your skills as a guardian for example or working as a group together.

selan.8354:

Lalangamena.3694:

awww, how cute, so many good advices and missing the obvious.

remove the AOE cap.

u are aware of the fact that smaller groups will get wiped in seconds if aoe cap gets removed if they meet a bigger group.

small groups get wiped today when they meet bigger group.
if you remove the AOE cap small group will have a good chance if they are organized and the big group is mindless zerg.

EDIT:
5 man group vs zerg.
1- thief,
1-guard
3- eles or necroes etc

thief spot the zerg, cast shadow refuge on group.
the zerg come close, thief switch to SB
the eles and necros and thief start casting their AOE together
the guard cast sanctuary.

the zerg is busted

Zerg versus zerg in the open field usually ends up with the larger army winning. Superior tactics may prevail at times but with the rally mechanic, banner drops and rezzing the larger force will usually come out ahead.

Solutions: Remove rezzing while in combat mode. Force those people that have been stomped to recall and re-enter the battle much in the same way as reinforcements arriving in a real life battle. If the battle is over and you are no longer in combat then you would have the luxury of reviving those that have been stomped. Banners, etc. should not revive anyone that is dead. They could still function to quickly rally someone who is down but not anyone that is out.

Against towers/keeps the main issue is that the force in the field more often then not has the advantage. They have access to the supply camps and with the AOE limitations defensive siege is worth little. The first thing an attacking force does is target cannons, oil pots and any siege not placed far enough back on the walls. Now I find it difficult to understand how arrows and such can take out iron cannons and oil pots.

Solutions: Force the need for open field siege against a defensive fortification. Before an enemy force can swarm up to a gate they should have to place siege in the field that can take out defensive siege.

Make the walls on towers/keeps wider. Re-design them so proper placement can be done making that siege useful.

Fix LOS issues with ballista (which is currently practically useless on walls as a defensive weapon) and arrow carts. Arrow carts placed at the base of a wall should not be able to target siege inside a fortification. It is not possible within the laws of physics that arrows can go straight up and then fall at a different angle. (taking away any wind factor)

Walls and gates should STOP arrows.

All of this should allow a smaller defensive force to hold off a larger attacking force making things a bit more realistic. It would draw the fight out longer but it removes the flipping/re-flipping of towers and keeps. A larger defensive force would then have to sally out to take out attacking siege while a smaller defensive force would hold as long as they can for reinforcements or finally be overcome. Coupled with the first suggestion of removing the resurrection of players in a combat zone and you have a much more realistic scenario, even with the limitations of the AOE cap.

Theftwind.8976:

Zerg versus zerg in the open field usually ends up with the larger army winning. Superior tactics may prevail at times but with the rally mechanic, banner drops and rezzing the larger force will usually come out ahead.

You need a clarification on this… Pug zerg against pug zerg means the larger group will win.

Well coordinated guild group vs a larger pug zerg means the guild group will usually win. That of course assumes it is not 20v60 or something.

canadez.5328:

Sirendor.1394:

insanemaniac.2456:

defending doesnt need nerfs, attacking does -.-
its too easy to ninja thanks to ram mastery. its too easy to overwhelm with numbers thanks to omega dupes.

the rest of your suggestions are mostly good.

Not sure. Me and a mate captured Garrison yesterday with 2 omega golems. We’re definitely not zerging, and if they nerfed attacking, we wouldn’t be able to do this kind of thing. On the other hand if they nerf defending, that’s also bad for small groups, because we often use arrow carts, ballistas and catapults to destroy zergs.

Attacking and taking objectives is awfuly easy. I dont know how many ppl you had but timewarp+golems melt through gates like paper even if they are upgraded. Now take 2+ golems and not to mention you can teleport them in, which gives defenders a timeframe of what 5-10 sec to react? Attackers have a HUGE advantage – there is no damage cap on gates and walls. Walls can be locked down with ease, avaible siege to defend is horrible (cannons, burning oil are a joke for defending, mortars? who cares it gets outranged by trebs and catas are usually so close to the wall so you can’t hit them).

So whats left as an defender is spamming acs or exploiting trebs, because they still hit through gates. And everything gets worse with growing numbers.

Btw those who want body blocking to be a thing. Sure do it the enemy team will be glad to collect your lootbags. Because standing in enemy aoe fire is such a great idea. There are enough options to lockdown a choke point. Of course you would have to know how to use your skills as a guardian for example or working as a group together.

This doesn’t change that if you nerf defence or attack, this won’t specifically help small groups and won’t specifically hurt zergs. It will hurt both parts of the game.
Instead there should be a debuff for zergs.

I am not experienced enough on overall Zerg recommendations, but I will say in response to the posts with the loot/rewards issues needing addressed: seriously.

The rewards in WvW are horrible. In no way do they even compare to PvE event rewards and the like, and they should at least be on par. Camps and escorts need help with better rewards as well. Have rewards scale down based on the amount of players taking the objective. This would help keep zergs taking camps for good rewards down, while rewarding smaller squads better for the same objective.

I agree that the rewards need to be tweaked. Dolyaks and sentries and camps need to be more valuable. If the rewards are fair, and have cooldowns to prevent farming, then I don’t see how we couldn’t get more people to complete those objectives. If we really aren’t getting any WvW changes in between league seasons, then I hope we get a large overhaul after this season.

Mada.5319:

McWolfy.5924:

body block from gw1
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Body_block

No. This will introduce rubber-banding which is as horrible as skill lag.

the game already count with your characters body. and if it makes problem to the server let the client side handle with it

Why not just use lines of warding and spectral walls for blocking people? Core combat principles can’t be changed this late in development.

Boy I don’t know about all this….

Try to think in terms of how many things have to be messed with here b/c that’s also the scale of Collateral damage done by it as well. This is a problem of SCALING and there’s really no way to target for specifics when it comes to something like that nomatter how many little “complexity” rules you try to shoe-horn into it.

They didn’t Scale PvE that way…. And this is basically PvE as far as skill balancing is concerned.

Make gates tougher based on the number of enemies nearby. Like a champion mob, but leave the repair amount per supply as it is now.

I think something would get terribly broken. Not that anything like that has happened before.

The fix is bigger maps with spread out objectives,

remove the npcs from supply camps and towers and remove the cooldown for taking it.

Then if you dont protect it at the PPT you aint getting the points

And collision would be a godsend

One thing I see to help with Zerg mobility is disallowing the use of waypoints when you are alive. Only allow them to be used when you are dead. I rarely see anyone mention this but imo it would help. Zergs are already fast enough with perma-swiftness.

Collision detection.

Remove rezzing in enemy borderlands. Bigger maps or more spread out, same thing I guess.

style.6173:

Your mistake is assuming that most people really care about the xp or wxp. I still find it shocking that people complain about zergs. I don’t think the people in this forum are a good representation for this particular topic. No one forces people to zerg. People play the way they want to. You have plenty of people who roam. You have plenty of people who roam as tagless guilds. You also have plenty of people who zerg.

If zerging wasn’t fun, people wouldn’t do it.

If people don’t care about rewards, then why do they “karma train.” Clearly, they are doing it for rewards. Server coverage has also been one of the most heated issues since day 1. Read server coverage as “the enemy has zergs more often than we do.”

You’re conflating the means and the ends. People zerg up for reasons, not necessarily because of fun. For most people, winning is more fun than losing. In order to combat guild groups, you probably need to outnumber them. Hell, in this game, the standard response to defeat is “we need more people” because you can’t really enforce tactical change on a server level. As you said, people play how they want.

Karolis.4261:

Collision detection.

Probably not viable for the same reason that they won’t increase the AoE cap.

50? gak. Nobody has time to read that much drek.

Xoranium.6481:

Make all roaming groups >40 perma visible on the map with an icon (ie skull), if the group is in a tower or keep then the icon will not show.

Very little coding required and very effective discouragement for zerging which in turn would reduce skill lag.

Make that 30 people and il call it a great idea.

I like your ideas on these things:

Battletorn.4102:

More Yak Killing – Possible Buffs

• More and better loot
• Give player limited time buff
• Give nearest 5 players long lasting speed boost upon kill
• Make the yaks explode when they die
• Your team has earned 3 points for killing a dolyak" – make dolyak killing more visibly noticable to you and your team.

More Yak Defending – Possible Buffs

• Loot chest after escort (cooldown of 30 minutes)
• Rewarded with supply after escort
• Rewarded with world experience thimble (cooldown of 30 minutes)
• Give temporary 30 minute finisher buff after escort

Sentries

• Allow them to talk in team chat and tell everyone when a zerg attacks them
• Upgrade sentries so they can place supply traps
• Give sentries a patrol path, similar to keep/tower NPC patrols
• Remove sentry capture points
• Make sentries always be on your side if they are in your territory (no more capturing them)
  I removed a few things I thought were unnecessary ^
  PPT Log
• Let players know when they helped give points to their server
• Log every point that you personally have earned
• Points from Dolyaks/Stomps/Sentries should all appear more visibly on the screen
• Trap activations should be logged
• Announce major upgrades to the map “A Waypoint is being constructed in Hills!”

In short, I think the best way to dissipate a zerg is to:

1. Have multiple vulnerable, but valuable objectives <— Yes I like it
2. Less keeps, or make the keeps worth less points and have more towers instead. <—- ehh not really ok with less keep or less keep points, but like the more towers idea, especially more towers that can back each other up defensively (ie be in range to provide siege and backup – but not within range of keeps for kitten ganking keep walls, ect)
3. Knowledge of where zergs are (either through sentry mechanic or traps or whatever) <—- if it’s set up to only show zergs above “x size” then yes
4. Commander system that has hard caps on players to strengthen smaller groups. <—- yeah ok makes sense
5. Promote lesser objectives like yaks, sentries, and camps. <—- MOST IMPORTANT ONE! YES!

ps. Sorry for the clickbait title.

mass rally is such a bad mechanic in my opinion.

azizul.8469:

Mada.5319:

McWolfy.5924:

body block from gw1
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Body_block

No. This will introduce rubber-banding which is as horrible as skill lag.

source ?

Its basic knowledge.

Body blocking will require additional computational resources by the server thus increasing lag.

The server will have to track movement more accurately as well.

Lalangamena.3694:

selan.8354:

Lalangamena.3694:

awww, how cute, so many good advices and missing the obvious.

remove the AOE cap.

u are aware of the fact that smaller groups will get wiped in seconds if aoe cap gets removed if they meet a bigger group.

small groups get wiped today when they meet bigger group.
if you remove the AOE cap small group will have a good chance if they are organized and the big group is mindless zerg.

EDIT:
5 man group vs zerg.
1- thief,
1-guard
3- eles or necroes etc

thief spot the zerg, cast shadow refuge on group.
the zerg come close, thief switch to SB
the eles and necros and thief start casting their AOE together
the guard cast sanctuary.

the zerg is busted

What actually happens:

Zerg sees your shadow refuge and pounds you with AoE and AoE CC from 50 people and you all die before you get your second aoe off.

Please just take a hint from DAoC. The primary reason zergs existed were three fold:
1) Controlling more territory gave you access to Darkness Falls, a pvp/pve dungeon with good gear.
2) Controlling enough of the enemy territory breached the shield protecting their relic keeps (Which is where the orb idea came from)
3) Giving access to Darkness Falls to the faction that had the most keeps would pull people out of RvR into the dungeon for pvp/pve within Darkness Falls.

It was a very good system that shifted numbers around and provided a way for the other two servers that didn’t have as many players to catch up to the lead realm.

Draygo.9473:

Lalangamena.3694:

selan.8354:

Lalangamena.3694:

awww, how cute, so many good advices and missing the obvious.

remove the AOE cap.

u are aware of the fact that smaller groups will get wiped in seconds if aoe cap gets removed if they meet a bigger group.

small groups get wiped today when they meet bigger group.
if you remove the AOE cap small group will have a good chance if they are organized and the big group is mindless zerg.

EDIT:
5 man group vs zerg.
1- thief,
1-guard
3- eles or necroes etc

thief spot the zerg, cast shadow refuge on group.
the zerg come close, thief switch to SB
the eles and necros and thief start casting their AOE together
the guard cast sanctuary.

the zerg is busted

What actually happens:

Zerg sees your shadow refuge and pounds you with AoE and AoE CC from 50 people and you all die before you get your second aoe off.

Guess you’ve never seen a ‘bomber’ group in action =P
EDIT: DAoC bomber group, bomber groups don’t really exist in GW2.

Trap for detect zerg?

Start to scout instead of introduce this trap. All player like to run in zerg for loot, exp, wxp, karma. Scout dont give any type of reward so nobody do it.

I like move in map alone or in small Group. And it’s good for a commander have someone follow enemy zerg or scout some place to spot enemy. I think they have to find a way to discourage large zerg, but i think this is not the way :P

Some of your proposed ideas will only make the zerg bigger I’m afraid, to even out the effect (Look at AC buff).
A solution, which also gives WvW a bit more ‘defensive’ flavor, is to have objectives (especially camps) lose their supplies when captured.
This will lead to zergs resupplying and thus steam-rolling a lot less.

Lalangamena.3694:

remove the AOE cap.

ABSOLUTELY! Keep the cap on AOE boons and take off the cap on AOE DPS.