Guild Wars 2

When did WvW become so much about massive groups zerging around?

I know this happened some times in the past but never to this extent and smaller groups could do more to make an impact in the game. Now it just seems like the ideal is to get a few tanks, a few support (tempest + druid?), a mesmer or two to spread boons around, and then 30 condition damage build players to fill out the ranks.

Being in a small group and flipping camps doesn’t seem to impact too much because the zerg just runs place to place to restock or TPs between Eternal Battleground or Borderland to move supply. It doesn’t seem to be much of a pressing issue.

Even T3 towers seem pretty easy to take with the zerg, especially if the enemy doesn’t have the numbers to compete or don’t have just the right amount of time to respond.

It just seems like the entire original balance of WvW has gone out the window, which is a shame because it was one of the great unique things about GW2 imo.

1. HoT happened, elite specs gave major power creep across the board.

2. Boonsharing meta.

3. Server linking so you aren’t fighting just 3 servers, you’re fighting like 6-8.

4. Guilds that used to care about skilled fighting 15v15 or 20v20 have either broken up, left for other games, or those still around are a shadow of their former selves. What you have left are just zergling and a lot of PvE-centric players that are out there just for dailies, achievements, and reward tracks.

5. Anet.

Add it all together, you have what you see today.

Basically it comes down to Gavyne’s #4. The majority of the skilled guild groups left and now it’s just blobs with the occasional bad guilds nuthugging each other to compensate the numbers difference.

There are still some guilds that run 15’s and 20’s that don’t nuthug eachother sure, but they’re few thesedays.

That said, the game has been recovering (at least from what I’ve seen) since HoT made a mess of everything a little bit in recent months with the return of the melee train to a point.

Blobs blob like they always have, but there are far less organized groups running around because they are not appropriately rewarded (performance-wise) for their dedication in the post-HoT game.
Builds and roles within the meta require very little organization and cooperation in order to perform optimally. Many rotational requirements have been abolished due to poor balance decisions (rip in pieces static field) and most classes have had their primary weaknesses covered by elite-specs, making them far more self-sufficient (/yolo friendly).
A large part of the formerly dedicated population simply doesn’t enjoy the meta (even the non-boonshare part of it), which contains little to none of the tactical and communicational requirements of the 2014 version of the game.

Basically, WvW caters to the casual player to such an extreme degree now that there is no point trying to be anything else.

Gavyne’s #4 nails it. Though I’ll add, he may say it is due to PvE-centric players, but I see a lot of WvW players too basically going casual. That’s a major reason why these guilds are “a shadow of their former selves”. It is far more attractive to transfer up and join a pug blob for casual play than it is to work on builds and synergy with a new group trying to fight those blobs. But who can blame us having played the same content for so long?

It always been like that but now without small group guilds

It’s the stability changes really that is responsible for the gameplay we have today.

Because you cannot rely on stability anymore the group with the most amount of ccs automatically wins the fight, so the larger groups are almost guaranteed to win.

For example you could once fight and win a 12v25 before the stability changes and rely on skills like Armor of Earth for 6 seconds of stability. Today I sometimes get the 10 stacks of stability removed in less than 1 seconds because there are so much ccs around.

Then you have skills like Coalescence of Ruin on a 3 second cooldown that I hit and 1-shot someone for 18k with yesterday.

If you roam thieves can blow you up from stealth pressing 2-3 keys while you’re dazed, mesmers can dual shatter on you from stealth, DH traps can daze you for 4-5 seconds, druids can pewpew you from 1500 range while their pet keep knocking you down, etc. All of this needs addressing and fine tuning. Then you have classes like the elementalist, that is a boon machine with nothing else really working well anymore. You cast meteor shower and 3/4th of your meteors are blocked and even at max zerk for a light class you can barely do half the damage of a Revenant auto-attack. Sometimes by the time your first meteor or Ice Spike fall everyone is dead already.

Basically nothing is balanced around WvW at all.

Because fights are not about skill anymore but about numbers people are afraid to engage, and you get this meta where everyone just pewpew from range for 5 minutes or run away as soon as their skills are on cooldown because they know if they really engage the fight is about 5 seconds and then they have to run back from spawn.

Mayor problem is that elite specializations covered a lot of weaknesses of classes and as such groups do not require perfect compositions anymore(better for zergs),

a lot more damage seems to be floating around, eather that is becouse of easy boons or new skills,

people have gotten better (guilds did get better-i guess, but quality of pugs has increased dramaticly-remember the days people were using rare armor and some were upleveled),

or the worst case scenario, a good famous commander on an offensive borderland with a bunch of veteran (ex)guild players and 40% guardians(they will just go thourg everything in 1 push).

The heart and soul of wvw the small elite guilds all left due to very bad decision making on anets part.

I also believe server identity was a big part of this game. Everyone back then had a chip on their shoulder if they were on x server. Rival servers are no longer a thing and there’s no competition or reason to beat another server. How fun was it to conquer YB knowing they were ppt machines? At the end of the week the community often felt rewarded in a sense for beating a certain server so therefore it built up the community more.

Small zerg busting guilds were highly respected and called on to be the saviors, there’s little left of that and those legendary guilds are not what they use to be because the current state won’t allow them or the hardcore attitude is gone.

The new meta, you will run the boon meta or die. There’s no longer any diversity therefore no guilds can have a certain style of play. This leads to boredom and stagnant play. Guilds leaders/officers want to come up with something creative in wvw, they just can’t do that anymore. If you look back there was some pretty impressive styles of play with guilds.

The game needs to evolve, not be stuck in neutral with the same issues that drag out entirely too long.

Players want to be a part of something, a guild, server, or roaming crew. Anet wants you to be a number and blob up and I’m honestly surprised the 3 faction system hasn’t been implemented.

Rewards over players. Pvers come in do their thing in wvw and leave not caring about their server or the state of it. As far as they are concerned they’d love the game mode to go away because it inconveniences them. I only speak from experience from killing a lonely pver and getting a rage whisper that “I’m just trying to get my dailies, leave me the F alone!”. This appears to be more frequent lately and I don’t pay attention enough to know why.

The game mode is most likely a thorn in anets side but produces some cash flow with server transfers. Other than that, don’t expect much. As long as the players are purchasing gems anet will roll with it. Close the wallets watch the panic mode begin.

Thanks for all the insightful posts, it’s a bit disheartening to hear.

I find blob counter play to be very uninteresting after a while, if you’re a small group it just seems to boil down to everyone hoping on condition necromancers and trying to herd the cattle with marks and pick a few off at a time until you can thin the ranks enough to engage.

The long drawn out battles are too tiresome when it’s one after the next.

I’m sure there are more skilled and insightful people that can offer suggestions on how to fix WvW but from my perspective supply costs needs to be reevaluated, keep defense needs to be retuned, each siege needs to have a specific purpose and be the best at that thing and only that thing, supply starving should be more meaningful (I think a good place to start would be not allowing players to map hop with supply), all things that contribute to a blob needs to be reevaluated (such as boon share), and ideally WvW skills need to tuned differently.

I guess that’s a lot of things but it can boil down to reassess supply and it’s purposes and reassess class skills in WvW format.

However, I hear from a lot of players that many of these changes won’t be done because the demand for WvW is not that high comparative to other game modes.

“Keep defense needs to be returned”

Please no. Poor objective offense/defense balance is a big contributor to blobs. It used to be that a 5 man squad could work on taking a tower against 2 defenders reasonably. Then they buffed the damage on arrow carts. Then they added siege disablers. Then they added the desert bl and dragonbanners that could one-shot siege because everyone who defends cried about blobs and Anet tried to appease them. Now you need a 10 man squad who can carry more supply to take it against those 2 defenders. And then everyone wonders where all the smaller groups went…

Small groups quit because of crap roaming on DBL/massive player quitting, essential +5 supply guild buff progress being wiped and locked behind guild halls/scribing for thousands of gold with HoT, and the powercreep from the elite specs that absolutely broke small scale to a point where what was once a very diverse way of playing has boiled down to total and complete domination by maybe three or four cheese builds.

ANet systematically killed WvW with HoT and quite frankly, I don’t think they have any intention on fixing it.

DeceiverX.8361:

Small groups quit because of crap roaming on DBL/massive player quitting, essential +5 supply guild buff progress being wiped and locked behind guild halls/scribing for thousands of gold with HoT, and the powercreep from the elite specs that absolutely broke small scale to a point where what was once a very diverse way of playing has boiled down to total and complete domination by maybe three or four cheese builds.

ANet systematically killed WvW with HoT and quite frankly, I don’t think they have any intention on fixing it.

I think they are enjoying the gem transfers, but overall I’m sure they loath the wvw topic during meetings. That is if anet is even organized enough to hold meetings.

Chaba.5410:

“Keep defense needs to be returned”

Please no. Poor objective offense/defense balance is a big contributor to blobs. It used to be that a 5 man squad could work on taking a tower against 2 defenders reasonably. Then they buffed the damage on arrow carts. Then they added siege disablers. Then they added the desert bl and dragonbanners that could one-shot siege because everyone who defends cried about blobs and Anet tried to appease them. Now you need a 10 man squad who can carry more supply to take it against those 2 defenders. And then everyone wonders where all the smaller groups went…

Re-tuned not returned. I was simply trying to say ‘it needs to be reassessed and rebalanced because the way it is now doesn’t work’ in as few words as possible.

I can see how making keeps easier to assault can force large blobs to break up though, perhaps it should be made easier, access to siege reevaluated, and some sort of bonuses for taking multiple points at the same time put into effect.

These types of changes could also bring back small groups that harass enemies and mess with supply distribution.

Navi.9308:

These types of changes could also bring back small groups that harass enemies and mess with supply distribution.

Sorry I misread.

Easing up defense would help, but I’m also not entirely convinced it would bring back small groups to do those kinds of things. Getting a small group together requires players willing to organize them. The incentives to do that aren’t really there and multiple things conspire against that. It is difficult to recruit for WvW. HoT guild upgrades hit smaller guilds hard. Small group combat in WvW is not in a good place. Etc.

Xillllix.3485:

It’s the stability changes really that is responsible for the gameplay we have today.

Because you cannot rely on stability anymore the group with the most amount of ccs automatically wins the fight, so the larger groups are almost guaranteed to win.

For example you could once fight and win a 12v25 before the stability changes and rely on skills like Armor of Earth for 6 seconds of stability. Today I sometimes get the 10 stacks of stability removed in less than 1 seconds because there are so much ccs around.

If you get your stabilty removed in a fraction of a second you certainly got corrupted. Through CC you can only lose one stack each 0,75 seconds.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stability