Guild Wars 2

I play wvw a lot. I also play the rest of the game, but wvw is probably the thing I’ve been most excited about for a while now. So since I can’t claim to be a noob anymore, but I’m still pretty confused, I guess that means I’m just… a bad.

And I might be on your server. So how about some advice? I have some questions. Just off the top of my head:

1) PUSH! PUUUUUSH! Number one thing commanders berate their troops for (btw, commanders, please don’t berate your PUG troops? We’re just trying to help, we have other fun things we could be doing): not pushing on command. Well, I do. I stay right on that blue double-triangle. And often that means dying almost instantly. Then I read forum posts about light- and medium-armor wearers who hang back and work on trickery and picking off stragglers and “the backline” of squishier characters to good effect. Can… I be part of them? Maybe me dying soaks up a little AOE that would have gone to more valuable players, but I’m not convinced that’s the best use of my game-given talents. I also saw a reddit post recently saying it’s wrong to try to provide air support from a keep wall (using siege weapons or ranged skills) instead of following the commander on a sortie, even if melee isn’t your specialty. Really surprised me.

TL;DR: How does a “backline” coexist with “PUUUUSH!”?

Specific sub-case: charging into the mouth of a keep where you can see about 20 red circles lying in wait. You know you’re going to die, then you die. What’s the point? Are you supposed to be doing something different?

2) siege refresh/tick timers. I don’t get this at all. I’ve read that you only have to use the siege for a few seconds to refresh it, and I’ve read that the decay timers are visible. Yet, the only indicator I see on siege is a yellow horizontal bar like a health bar, and my using said siege has no effect on this bar, no matter how long I stay on or whether I fire the weapon. (I haven’t actually tried staying on for more than half a minute at a time since I read it was supposed to be seconds and come on, ain’t nobody got time for that!)

3) People keep posting that you shouldn’t waste supply on repairing walls. Maybe this is a server-specific thing? It seems to me that when your commanders have made it clear, usually verbally, that they don’t intend to defend a structure (more XP for flipping), why not use the supply? It’ll be your enemy’s in 30 seconds. Sure, it’ll be yours again in 5 minutes, but then it’ll be theirs again in 10, so… why not get the achieves? Obvs this is situational.

The commander asking everyone to push is an answer to the red circles on the ground. AoE limit is 5 people for each circle so what’s better? 10 people triggering 10 marks? Or 30 people triggering 10 marks? The thirty people will take a great deal less damage than the 10 so more people will survive and be abke to DPS the enemy down. There are other things involving momentum and such but the whole push deal I think is based on AoE damage.

The question to push with the commander should usually go like this. Is it a zerg made up of a variety of people and guilds (pug zerg)? If so, everyone should stack on commander and push as a group. If the zerg is more of a single guild group this will change to the casters rotating around the outside. But most importantly, you should do what the commander asks no matter what. There ia a method to the madness..

The siege tick timer can be found by mousing over the small blue icon above the yellow health bar. The timer lasts for one hour before despawning and all you need to do to refresh is tap F twice when you run by it.

The whole supply thing is based on this idea. Say SMC is being trebbed by Red Keep in EB. The guy on the treb is a persistent person and will keep trebbing until the wall is down. He will ONLY stop once it is all the way gone. You cannot stop him from trebbing either. If you keep running back and forth dumping supply into the wall to repair it and the trebber keeps hitting the same wall, the repairing is effectively wasting supply as the wall will still be down in a while anyways. That supply could instead be used for siege on inner and lords room of SMC instead.

Anyways, hope that helps and sorry about any spelling errors. I typed all this on my phone.

Thanks for the reply! So, the whole backline/strategy/actually using your utility skills/not just rushing in to die in AOE thing is basically only for organzied guild groups, you’re saying? Bah, I was afraid of that. : /

Thanks so much for the siege timer info! This has been driving me crazy but I was too embarrassed to ask! I’ll look for it next time I’m in.

Not sure I understand the wall-repairing answer, I’m asking about cases where the commanders have chosen not to defend, so no, that supply won’t be used instead for siege in the lord’s room or anywhere else. I guess you mean the people complaining about this aren’t talking about cases where a server has committed to constant flipping? I’m basically trying to make sure there’s no reason not to use the siege on maps where people have decided not to defend anything.

1) what class/gear are you? A lot of advice is build dependant. Anyway, despite what some people say, it is not always optimal to have everyone stack on the commander, and most stacking is done just for organizational purposes. So feel free to range, just make sure you are contributing too.

ShredsAndPatches.3417:

Not sure I understand the wall-repairing answer, I’m asking about cases where the commanders have chosen not to defend, so no, that supply won’t be used instead for siege in the lord’s room or anywhere else. I guess you mean the people complaining about this aren’t talking about cases where a server has committed to constant flipping? I’m basically trying to make sure there’s no reason not to use the siege on maps where people have decided not to defend anything.

If a wall is getting hit by a cata/treb, don’t repair it until the cata/treb has been destroyed.
If your commander is telling you not to fix the wall and to let your opponent cap it without any resistance, then he’s probably karma training.

When your commander tells you to push, that means to starts using your skills on the enemy zerg. If you’re a light armor class you shouldn’t stand right on the commander tag. Instead, you should be at the periphery, outside of the kill zone (where everyone drops their aoes) and away from your melee. There are lots of exceptions though (plague necros, d/d eles etc) so you should probably tell us what class & build you use…..

ShredsAndPatches.3417:

If your commander is telling you not to fix the wall and to let your opponent cap it without any resistance, then he’s probably karma training.

and if your commander is karma training. you should ignore him and dig a really deep whole in the place he said not to defend, push him in it so hes bait for the enemy and hes never herd from again. karma train mentality is runeing WvW

Tibstrike answered this well enough.

But I’ll take issue with him saying you should do what the commander wants regardless. I’m not prepared to follow a bad commander and keep paying repair bills while he continues to insult me.
A good commander of course – that’s a different matter. Even if he makes mistakes occasionally.

My personal strategy is this:-
When playing a heavy armour class, I stack as tight as possible on the Commander to take advantage of the AoE limit and the heals/buffs coming in from various sources.

When playing a ranged clothie, I avoid heavy concentrations of AoE, regardless of the screams to ‘STACK!!!’. Good commanders will realise that necessity and really they mean for only melee to stack.
I dps from maximum range if at all possible, avoid being hit and run clear to heal if I do get hit.

As an example, only today we had a very good commander with us who specifically instructed range to keep clear and dps as far as possible. We had open ground and plenty of room to move The result was that we wiped a zerg easily five times our size who stuck together. (tbh despite my own misgivings as we attacked)
If we’d all just stacked they would have simply run us over..

Specific sub-case:-
That’s a tricky one. If you join the initial rush, even as a clothie you stand a chance because of the short-term stability/ invulnerability buffs your group can muster.
If there’s more AoE inside and nowhere to dodge out of it, you may not survive.
It’s a fine call you have to make based on your own experience.
If you’re not sure, hang back – but you might miss out on the loot.

ShredsAndPatches.3417:

I play wvw a lot. I also play the rest of the game, but wvw is probably the thing I’ve been most excited about for a while now. So since I can’t claim to be a noob anymore, but I’m still pretty confused, I guess that means I’m just… a bad.

And I might be on your server. So how about some advice? I have some questions. Just off the top of my head:

1) PUSH! PUUUUUSH! Number one thing commanders berate their troops for (btw, commanders, please don’t berate your PUG troops? We’re just trying to help, we have other fun things we could be doing): not pushing on command. Well, I do. I stay right on that blue double-triangle. And often that means dying almost instantly. Then I read forum posts about light- and medium-armor wearers who hang back and work on trickery and picking off stragglers and “the backline” of squishier characters to good effect. Can… I be part of them? Maybe me dying soaks up a little AOE that would have gone to more valuable players, but I’m not convinced that’s the best use of my game-given talents. I also saw a reddit post recently saying it’s wrong to try to provide air support from a keep wall (using siege weapons or ranged skills) instead of following the commander on a sortie, even if melee isn’t your specialty. Really surprised me.

TL;DR: How does a “backline” coexist with “PUUUUSH!”?

Specific sub-case: charging into the mouth of a keep where you can see about 20 red circles lying in wait. You know you’re going to die, then you die. What’s the point? Are you supposed to be doing something different?

2) siege refresh/tick timers. I don’t get this at all. I’ve read that you only have to use the siege for a few seconds to refresh it, and I’ve read that the decay timers are visible. Yet, the only indicator I see on siege is a yellow horizontal bar like a health bar, and my using said siege has no effect on this bar, no matter how long I stay on or whether I fire the weapon. (I haven’t actually tried staying on for more than half a minute at a time since I read it was supposed to be seconds and come on, ain’t nobody got time for that!)

3) People keep posting that you shouldn’t waste supply on repairing walls. Maybe this is a server-specific thing? It seems to me that when your commanders have made it clear, usually verbally, that they don’t intend to defend a structure (more XP for flipping), why not use the supply? It’ll be your enemy’s in 30 seconds. Sure, it’ll be yours again in 5 minutes, but then it’ll be theirs again in 10, so… why not get the achieves? Obvs this is situational.

1. PUUSSHHH primarily applies to the heavies, the warriors and guardians. The squishies, particularly Eles, Mesmers and Thieves, shouldn’t attempt to be right at the front of the push.
However, that doesn’t mean backline shouldn’t push with the commander. Backline should stay close enough to lay damage/support right on top of the commander’s position. You shouldn’t be at the very front of the charge, but you should still be close.

With regards to your specific sub-case: Dodge. You have 2 dodges, use them to get through those circles. Most classes also have access to block/invulnerability or to some sort of leap/teleport.
The key thing to learn is to not blow your dodges or other survival skills when you don’t really need to, and to save them for when they’re really vital.

2. When you select a seige weapon, there’s a small blue icon on it’s “buff bar” that shows the timer when you hover over it. It’s the same as checking the buffs/conditions on any other player/NPC.

3. If you truly have no intention of holding or defending a structure, then there’s no reason you shouldn’t pick up the supply there.
However, if you do intent to hold it and upgrade it, you absolutely should leave the supply in there alone.

As for repairing walls, this is something that you should never, never, never, never do if the wall is still being hit by catas/trebs. It should only ever be done when the trebs have been destroyed. Burning 500 supply repairing a wall being hit by 3 trebs won’t stop them eventually getting through. At best it stalls them for another 5 minutes. All it does is it means you now don’t have that supply to build arrowcarts/ballistas at the inner.
And even if you do get the hostile trebs down, if the structure is upgrading you shouldn’t repair the wall beyond what is needed to get it back up and stop enemies walking in. Use supply from supply camps to repair the wall the rest of the way, and leave the supply in the keep for the upgrades.

That said, if there is genuinely no hope of holding a structure, then go nuts with that supply. If it is 100% guarunteed that the enemy will take the objective, then might as well deny them the supply inside.

TLDR: Common Sense.

Contiguous.1345:

Tibstrike answered this well enough.

But I’ll take issue with him saying you should do what the commander wants regardless. I’m not prepared to follow a bad commander and keep paying repair bills while he continues to insult me.
A good commander of course – that’s a different matter. Even if he makes mistakes occasionally.

My personal strategy is this:-
When playing a heavy armour class, I stack as tight as possible on the Commander to take advantage of the AoE limit and the heals/buffs coming in from various sources.

When playing a ranged clothie, I avoid heavy concentrations of AoE, regardless of the screams to ‘STACK!!!’. Good commanders will realise that necessity and really they mean for only melee to stack.
I dps from maximum range if at all possible, avoid being hit and run clear to heal if I do get hit.

As an example, only today we had a very good commander with us who specifically instructed range to keep clear and dps as far as possible. We had open ground and plenty of room to move The result was that we wiped a zerg easily five times our size who stuck together. (tbh despite my own misgivings as we attacked)
If we’d all just stacked they would have simply run us over..

Specific sub-case:-
That’s a tricky one. If you join the initial rush, even as a clothie you stand a chance because of the short-term stability/ invulnerability buffs your group can muster.
If there’s more AoE inside and nowhere to dodge out of it, you may not survive.
It’s a fine call you have to make based on your own experience.
If you’re not sure, hang back – but you might miss out on the loot.

Yeah, I guess it really is dependent on having a good commander. I just try to emphasize following what the commander does as it sets a good habit. I’m pretty poor in game but I still don’t really worry about repair costs. But to each their own.

Most of my advice about the push was focusing on choke points such as gates of towers and keeps as this is where people get melted a great deal. If you can get your group inside of the keep mostly alive its better than having half inside dead and the other half outside still alive. Open field fighting is a lot different and this is where the periphery strategy makes a lot more sense.

But like a lot of these guys have been saying. Use your best judgement. It is just a game.

If you don’t push as one, you scatter your force and subsequently have less power to wipe the enemy. He who hesitates gets picked off by the enemy that is pushing forward as one big unit. From even a simple numbers example: Ten guys killing three who push forward, then one by one taking out the ones who hesitated, is much easier than hitting another 10 guys head on.

Repairing the walls and why not to:

NEVER repair a wall that’s being trebbed. It’s a waste of supply. Why? Because each 10 supply you put into a wall is removed/wasted each time the enemy treb hits that wall. So it becomes a war of attrition: forcing you to waste supply into a wall that will only get hit seconds later using up that 10 supply you just put into the wall. Eventually you will have zero supply to repair the wall, and be without options to build siege or run and get supply from a camp. Wait until the treb is destroyed before you start to repair a wall. In very rare cases it’s wise to repair a wall being trebbed, but that’s usually to buy a few minutes time as your friendly zerg comes into the rescue. Nine times out of 10, leave the trebbed wall alone until that enemy treb is destroyed.

As for how to determined decay of siege, someone explained it well above, but here’s an image too to show an example:

From my own experience:

1) You shouldn’t be dying if you’re on the commander tag. 90% of the time, if you stick on your commander’s tag, you’ll outlive everyone else in the zerg. Keeping in mind this is from the perspective of an elementalist, who can basically get bursted down in 2 seconds by a condi-necro or thief. A commander pushes to break AoEs and achieve certain strategies within the zerg. People have different reasons for pushing, so I won’t be talking about that too much here. Pushing against another zerg is very situational afterall.

2. Siege needs to be refreshed at least once per hour or they despawn.

3. Supply could be better used to build siege equipment rather than repairing gates. Not sure which server you play from, but we would often let the wall open and instead build 2 arrow carts to defend the choke point rather than fix the wall up and waste the supply when it’ll be trebbed or cata’d down again in 1 minute. Fix the wall up after you’ve cleared out enemies. Also watch for the “Reinforce/Fortify Wall” upgrade. If that’s nearly up, then don’t put supply into walls, since once it upgrades, all walls go back to having 100% hp

What a bunch of helpful, polite responses. Thanks, all.

ShredsAndPatches.3417:

I play wvw a lot. I also play the rest of the game, but wvw is probably the thing I’ve been most excited about for a while now. So since I can’t claim to be a noob anymore, but I’m still pretty confused, I guess that means I’m just… a bad.

what server?