Guild Wars 2

So, last night I was having a discussion with a few of my guildies about what the best 5man roaming setup would be. We like to run smaller groups and normally avoid the really zergy areas. We much prefer hitting yak’s, sentries, supply camps, and even towers but we normally do it with just our small group rather than a commander and a full zerg.

Anyway, we have all been playing for a decent amount of time now and for the most part everyone has just played exactly what they wanted and we just worked with what we had. Now that we have been playing for an extended period of time, we are thinking of how we can tweak the setup to make it as optimal as possible.

Unlike conventional games, I don’t feel like we necessarily need specific classes, but rather roles to filled. We need the following:

• Swiftness for the group – Incredibly valuable when avoiding the zerg
• Control – We need someone to knockdown our specified target and keep them controlled (other conditions like fear, chilled, immobilized, etc) while we damage them down
• Damage – We need someone that can provide significant damage to a target rather quickly
• AoE Damage – For those times we are being outnumbered, being able to provide some AoE damage can hold back a few enemies from just rushing in
• Boons – We need someone who can provide the group with as many boons as possible.
• Condition Removal – We need someone who can remove conditions as often as possible.

Now, these roles can be filled by more than one class. AoE damage can be done through a necro or elementalist, damage can be done from a thief or ranger, etc etc etc. The main thing we want is as many characters as we can get that can provide multiple benefits. So, something like a warrior that is Warhorn/Shout build with Hammer secondary can provide boons (via Warhorn and Shouts), swiftness, condition reversal, small aoe heals, damage with Axe mainhand, and control with the hammer 4, 5, and burst abilities would be beneficial because it provides several of the categories above.

So, any ideas? Even if you only know of one really good class for this type of fighting, please share it with us. We are just looking for some more insight. I have most of my experience on a warrior so I know the abilities of that class but I haven’t played anything else too extensively.

Thanks for the feedback!

Mesmer / Thief / DnD Ele

I would take those 3 over any 5 man team without them.

Warrior are not that usefull in roaming as they are in zergs.Roaming is more about self mobility.Also self survival.When you got heads up with a enemy zerg , you can easly slip away with a mesmer , ele or a thief but not a warrior.

So i agree with Peetee.

Mesmer / Thief / Ele & if you still want 5 man over 3 man , make it 2x of any of that 2.

We , generally make our roaming team , 5 carrion gear condi thieves.They can defence a camp for like 30 mins to 1 hour from a 40+ man zerg.

Well if the game has some soft spots , why wouldn’t i use it?

Our guild seems to find the most success when our setup is:

1 Mesmer
1 Guardian
3 Thieves

Time warp, bubble control, stealth and high dps, and the ability to reset battles with escape portals. I love it!

Boons – Mesmer’s Chaos Storm, or shouts from the Guardian. I think those are your best bets.

Condition Removal – Mesmer’s for Null Field (also remove boons from opponents) or a Necromancer with the signet that pulls conditions to them from allies.

Control – a D/D ele or a Warrior with Hammer/Mace’s seems to work best for this.

Damage – Thief, it will also provide you with group stealth should it be required. Other classes can deal damage as well as a thief but not with anything like the same speed or escape.

AoE Damage – Ele with a staff is unmatched here in my opinion, certainly for dealing the damage at range from safety.

Swiftness – Warrior is pretty much the best at group swiftness, with certain traits/runes the Warhorn alone can grant 100% swiftness uptime to a 5man group.

There are of course other things to consider, the bigger the force you are facing the more that melee becomes a hazard, and you never want a melee to be alone as they will take ALL of the fire rather than spreading it. My guild runs between 4-8 on average against the zergs (we are on a bottom tier server) and if we have an 8 man setup going it is usually: Warrior, Guardian, Guardian, Mesmer, Mesmer, Thief, Ranger, Ele. Although we are not playing in perfect supportive specs as we tend to be fighting outside objectives so swiftness for instance is not so important.

Certainly though the most enjoyment of the game for me is to be had in a small group. And as above, I think Mesmer and Thief (and guardian) are the most indispensable classes in WvW.

Im uploading as video as we speak and you can see it doesn’t matter what comp you have instead of how well you can perform as a team.

5 thieves are OP especially as strike teams for camps and hitting zergs from behind

Bunzy.8674:

Im uploading as video as we speak and you can see it doesn’t matter what comp you have instead of how well you can perform as a team.

I agree this is extremely important. However, as the game progresses, there will definitely be certain combinations that simply outperform other combinations. Now, I understand the rock/paper/scissors mechanic of the game, so I am not looking for some undefeatable combo because it doesn’t exist. I am just looking for what people will find to be the most competitive.

It may be a bit early to even be discussing something like this. It usually takes a bit of time to figure out better setups and as time goes on, the optimal setup will continue to be tweaked.

Neandramathal.9536:

Boons – Mesmer’s Chaos Storm, or shouts from the Guardian. I think those are your best bets.

Condition Removal – Mesmer’s for Null Field (also remove boons from opponents) or a Necromancer with the signet that pulls conditions to them from allies.

Control – a D/D ele or a Warrior with Hammer/Mace’s seems to work best for this.

Damage – Thief, it will also provide you with group stealth should it be required. Other classes can deal damage as well as a thief but not with anything like the same speed or escape.

AoE Damage – Ele with a staff is unmatched here in my opinion, certainly for dealing the damage at range from safety.

Swiftness – Warrior is pretty much the best at group swiftness, with certain traits/runes the Warhorn alone can grant 100% swiftness uptime to a 5man group.

There are of course other things to consider, the bigger the force you are facing the more that melee becomes a hazard, and you never want a melee to be alone as they will take ALL of the fire rather than spreading it. My guild runs between 4-8 on average against the zergs (we are on a bottom tier server) and if we have an 8 man setup going it is usually: Warrior, Guardian, Guardian, Mesmer, Mesmer, Thief, Ranger, Ele. Although we are not playing in perfect supportive specs as we tend to be fighting outside objectives so swiftness for instance is not so important.

Certainly though the most enjoyment of the game for me is to be had in a small group. And as above, I think Mesmer and Thief (and guardian) are the most indispensable classes in WvW.

This is exactly the type of thing I was looking for and I agree 100%, I much prefer the smaller fights.

5 highly skilled players, pick any class with no more than 2 of any one class.

There’s your 5 man killer roaming combo…

I wouldn’t look for optimal in each of those roles, but rather a good mix to obtain them all.
I’d go with Guardian, Mesmer, Thief, Warrior, Ele though. Maybe ranger instead of warrior, but it’d be more of a support role w/ spirits + healing spring(which is great with the cluster bomb spam of the thief… you can easily get out 20k in heals just from the blast water combo).

4 people in that group have group swiftness, 3-5 can give out boons, 3 can cleanse (not counting light combos), All 5 have control (ranger is a little low, but the elite root is good enough to make up for it), 3-5 have good aoe damage (mesmer zerker+staff ele alone is great aoe), single target burst can be done by mesmer and thief, while the other 3 will do decent damage.

I wouldn’t really depend on mesmer chaos storm for boons, but that’s me. Warrior, ele, guardian, ranger, and even thief are more reliable sources and at least then you know what you’re getting. Besides, I think mesmer is better off with focus and gs for aoe damage and the reflect/pull/swiftness/cripple. Reflect is huge in wvw and this group has a decent amount between guardian and mesmer.

Yeah, I’ve got to agree with genocide… 5 thieves are amazing to have as a strike team. Another one to try out would be 5 mesmers. I ran with a mesmer only guild the other day – they were called something of Entropy – and MAN was that a lot of fun. Apparently they scared off huge groups with a bunch of their clones because the invaders couldn’t tell the difference.

5 thives or 5 mesmers

I’d say:

-1 Thief for mass-cloaking and bursting down a single target
-1 Bunker Guardian for drawing most of the attention. Send him in first.
-1 Warrior with a Hammer, for stunning lots of people who can then be bursted down by the group.
-1 Mesmer because Mesmers are the best profession in game and excel at everything.
-1 Anything…..Elementalist would work, but so would anything else.

Couple friends and I just rolled Mesmers that look exactly the same. The three of us all cloning and looking identical along with 3 Moa.. should be fun :P

Anything works but you need to have a) always-on speed buff b) someone dedicated to stopping runners c) enough key buffs to win against larger groups (plauge, group invis, stability) d) enough burst that you can take 2-3 people out before enemy realizes you engaged.

as the player form [Ruin] said (cause Desolation knows a lot about this unfair move), 5 thieves is by far the best team.

You can fully prevent enemy team to take camps and one-shot any single player with 5 steals. Around 20k damage, so just press on Heartseeker, if the player is still alive.

Another good team could be 3 thieves and 2 mesmers to hide inside keeps and towers and then use portal to teleport your team to the lord.

Don’t underestimate a D/D ele for fast AoE burst. Have a guarding to pop stability on him and he can leave a wake of downed enemies for you to clean up.

RE’s Gorilla squad since first week’s m,atchup has always been a tide turner in matchups.

We dont run from a zerg though, we dont run from any one, If we get spotted we will go out fighting lol.

We usually consist of:

Gurdian (Tanky GS)
Engineer (Tanky)
1-2 Warriors (Tanky)
Elem (dagger/dagger)

Our biggest asset is the ability to solo 2-3 players each (Usually)

No one has mentioned it, but a water/arcane healing Elementalist is king at eating zerg damage. Got a large Norn ele in our guild that soaks up damage because no one can put him down through the massive aoe heals and condition removal. He makes a good target while the dps cleans house. Can duo with him and take down 5-10 people regularly.

As was mentioned above, many combinations can work well. IMO the key is gearing/traiting for group functionality/support…ie not a “selfish” glass cannon solo build to get the best results….if your goal is to be able to engage and participate in sustained fights and not just run in ff down 1-2 targets and run until CDs are back up.

Ender.3508:

Don’t underestimate a D/D ele for fast AoE burst. Have a guarding to pop stability on him and he can leave a wake of downed enemies for you to clean up.

Really don’t even need a guardian for that. Armor of earth gives stability…and since most D/D Ele’s use a +Boon duration build, it can give like 13.5 secs of stability…not bad. We can also get 25s of stability if we use tornado and then cancel it right away.

Also, D/D Ele’s are great for group buffs. Everytime we switch attunements, everyone around us gets a buff. AND we will almost always be doing fire field finishers for 3 stacks of migh each time. It’s really not uncommon for all of our melee guys to have like 12 stacks of might in a PvP fight just from my fire field combos…and this might lasts like 26 seconds or something because of the +Boon duration stuff.

And if that wasn’t enough, I think that D/D Ele’s are probably the fastest class in the game. Perma swiftness + ride the lightning + burning speed + lightning flash = you ain’t gettin away. I have chased down and escaped from thieves many times with my D/D ele…and most people think that thieves are the most mobile class.

My 5 man rolls with who ever is on. War, Guardian, Ranger, Ranger, Ele or two guardins, or one ranger, one ele and a war, war guardian. What ever, it works well for us. We are all on TS and assist and do very well.

Group we had the other night that was freakin awesome was 2 Engi’s, 1 D/D Ele, 2 burst thieves. Everyone in this comp is very self sufficient, mobile, etc

Between the distraction the D/D Ele and Engineers cause the thieves usually go rather unnoticed while they destroy stuff. It’s hard to see the thief when there’s tons of turrets (2 supply drops) and flamethrowers and fire and bouncing AOEs.

Maybe not best, but its fun as hell and so far been VERY effective. We just run whoever shows up on whatever tho, doesn’t matter. Just out there for fun

5 Guardians(Or any 5 players) who know their class/playstyle… Not afraid to die.

5 Necromancer’s.
Why you look at me funny?

Lilun.8732:

any 5 players) who know their class/playstyle… Not afraid to die.

This. This is really it.

The best 5man is the one not afraid to suicide bomb that yak or rush strait into the enemy Zerg just to hold them back as long as possible before certain death.

Well since the maps are so small a zerg can get anywhere in literally less than 2 minutes I’d say the best 5 man roaming group is 5 warriors using GS and sword+warhorn so they can all escape the 100 man zerg that will be chasing them around the map anytime they try to accomplish anything.

I am not being sarcastic in this post. Make the maps bigger so my 5 man can actually get something done without being chased around by 100 people because a camp we are trying to take is literally 2 mesmer portals and a skip away from a spawn point.

Sorry this post is so QQ I just miss fun open field battles instead of running with 100 people to get supply to build a treb to counter the treb that countered our treb that was trebbing their treb that’s trebbing our treb.

An engi with superior rune of the centaur + medkit can almost keep group swiftness up by himself without sacrificing any skill/trait for roaming. If necessary, blowing up turrets inside a smoke field can stack group stealth. So an engi might be useful for 5-man roaming setup.

Mesmers and theives that is all

I was fighting right now against a group that had 2 Guardian, 1 Thief and the rest I don’t know what.

This is basically what you want. Guardians will be invincible for a while and will absorb damage, buying time.

During that time (and it’s plenty of time) the rest of the party (which will be Thieves) can kill in seconds. For example, I was killed by a Thief I never saw, had to check the combat log to see it was dancing daggers spam for 4-5k per hit (yes, I’m glass cannon but still it’s a lot of dmg).

Thus you have the best defense and invisible offense, which is very important because your enemy will not know when to use defensive skills, when to retreat a bit, etc.

In my personal opinion burst damage needs nerf across the board but particularly Guardian and Thief are very overpowered in WvW right now (and everyone uses them, much more than mesmers). Rangers for example are always food, you can tell that profession needs serious fixing. Engineers I can’t even say, they are so rare (outside of keep defense).

^good engineers are absolutely amazing for skirmishing, solo roaming, etc. That takes someone well adapt to the profession though (and many find it a hassle), most Engi’s you see I feel like were leveled solely for spamming nades at or off of keep/tower walls (which anyone can kitten do).

Been an Engi since pre-launch and don’t have any alts I WvW with at all, and I don’t use nades.

It’s true it’s rare though, so rare that I swear Engi’s random whisper each other if they see another good one out lol

Katsumoto.9452:

5 Necromancer’s.
Why you look at me funny?

OH man… someone should post a video of a roaming team of 5 necromancers with all pets for utility and elite skill. That is 6 dots / person(2 bone minions). You would have 30 dots moving on a map with only 5 guys. That could scare people to go another direction. Just hope you don’t get engaged cause 5 minion specced necromancers would get rocked.

Chidawg.6315:

Katsumoto.9452:

5 Necromancer’s.
Why you look at me funny?

OH man… someone should post a video of a roaming team of 5 necromancers with all pets for utility and elite skill. That is 6 dots / person(2 bone minions). You would have 30 dots moving on a map with only 5 guys. That could scare people to go another direction. Just hope you don’t get engaged cause 5 minion specced necromancers would get rocked.

Hmm… very good farming though. I expect all 5 flesh golem to stop and attempt to kill every single animal in sight, completely UNSTOPPABLE!

Well you can say there are some good engineer roamers and skirmishers, but we never see them. I’m a mesmer and roam often, and I can’t even remember when was the last time I saw roaming engineer, let alone die to one.

But this is a 5-man thread. What synergy does engineer provide? I honestly can’t think of anything when going through his skills.

I have played D/D ele a little bit but I personally feel that for support your better going with a staff ele. They have a metric crap load of combo fields and versatility. They are also useful in tower fights where a D/D ele will not be anywhere near as useful.

Regardless of which way you go, I would include an elementalist.

For the other 4, I don’t really know. I suppose a mesmer would be nice to have. I think including a ranger would be a good idea as well. When you have extra pets and things running around it can easily give yourself more battlefield control and illusory numbers advantages. I’ve only played mesmer, ranger, ele, and theif so I don’t have enough personal input to figure in the other classes.

P.S. I always keep a set of daggers on my ele for situations where it is more useful like a 1v1.

EDIT: + necro

2 mesmers, 1 to ge group down hills with fall dmg lesser, 1 to portal em up after dropped 1 portal at top.

1 thief for stealth so mesmers both can use time warp,

portals ftw

1 guardian to lock enemy zergs out from pass bridges, tunnels etc.

1 x elementalist

Ianervan.3415:

Well you can say there are some good engineer roamers and skirmishers, but we never see them. I’m a mesmer and roam often, and I can’t even remember when was the last time I saw roaming engineer, let alone die to one.

But this is a 5-man thread. What synergy does engineer provide? I honestly can’t think of anything when going through his skills.

Well engineers can do a lot of the “roles” listed in OP. Doubt they’ll be the “best” in any single one, but they can often do multiple of these things within the same build. I think the most problem I have with the engi class is trying focus and perform just one or two roles well because they can do so many different things. In a designated group of 5, it’ll be much easier to spec for it.

Swiftness for the group – Superior rune of centaur + medkit. Medkit is a healing skill, you can switch to medkit non-stop, there is no CD, so group swiftness based on the rune’s internal CD.
Control – Engi has decent numbers of immobilization, cripples, and launches skills. See wiki pages on immobilize and launches please.
Damage – Glass-cannon rifle + static discharge build can spike quite well. Problem is that’s all the build does and not much else imho.
AoE Damage – Grenadiers.
Condition Removal – Cleansing Formula 409 trait + elixir build, not to mention tossing elixirs effects. Kit Refinement trait + elixir gun gives super elixir and another super elixir from the gun ("While not mentioned in-game, Super Elixir also removes conditions on impact. " – wiki notes).

I should mention that supply drop is probably one of the best skirmish changing elite skills there is…

But honestly though, all those things mentioned above are pretty meh compared to stealth due to the culling issue imo. Hence a group of stealthers have the upper hand right now. (Case in point, try fighting glass cannon thieves along side NPCs and see how much weaker they suddenly seem because NPC aren’t affected by culling issue. Pay attention to NPCs movements to locate “unstealthed” thieves.) You’ll have to wait and see if the Nov 15 patch really fixes anything.

Mass invisibility is extremely powerful as an opening for a roam and can let your group down several people before the fight even begins. Also because of the low cooldown it can be used as an escape should a fight become larger than you wanted. It can also be used to get a teammate up who was downed without the big “aoe me here” refuge circle.

I can’t say there is an ideal roam composition as it really depends on how the group is built to function together. In a high glass group (1 glass mes, 2 glass thieves) Having the opening strike from Mass Invis is critical.

HenryAu.7523:

Ianervan.3415:

Well you can say there are some good engineer roamers and skirmishers, but we never see them. I’m a mesmer and roam often, and I can’t even remember when was the last time I saw roaming engineer, let alone die to one.

But this is a 5-man thread. What synergy does engineer provide? I honestly can’t think of anything when going through his skills.

Well engineers can do a lot of the “roles” listed in OP. Doubt they’ll be the “best” in any single one, but they can often do multiple of these things within the same build. I think the most problem I have with the engi class is trying focus and perform just one or two roles well because they can do so many different things. In a designated group of 5, it’ll be much easier to spec for it.

Swiftness for the group – Superior rune of centaur + medkit. Medkit is a healing skill, you can switch to medkit non-stop, there is no CD, so group swiftness based on the rune’s internal CD.
Control – Engi has decent numbers of immobilization, cripples, and launches skills. See wiki pages on immobilize and launches please.
Damage – Glass-cannon rifle + static discharge build can spike quite well. Problem is that’s all the build does and not much else imho.
AoE Damage – Grenadiers.
Condition Removal – Cleansing Formula 409 trait + elixir build, not to mention tossing elixirs effects. Kit Refinement trait + elixir gun gives super elixir and another super elixir from the gun ("While not mentioned in-game, Super Elixir also removes conditions on impact. " – wiki notes).

I should mention that supply drop is probably one of the best skirmish changing elite skills there is…

But honestly though, all those things mentioned above are pretty meh compared to stealth due to the culling issue imo. Hence a group of stealthers have the upper hand right now. (Case in point, try fighting glass cannon thieves along side NPCs and see how much weaker they suddenly seem because NPC aren’t affected by culling issue. Pay attention to NPCs movements to locate “unstealthed” thieves.) You’ll have to wait and see if the Nov 15 patch really fixes anything.

The Engineer is so much more versatile than what is used by most. I feel like most of what you listed is just the typical cookie cutter stuff

My Engi is specced for solo roaming and 5man skirmishes. I don’t know how to really explain to someone who hasn’t played the profession for a while what makes it so strong.

There is no CD on kit swapping. Kit engineers are the real skirmishes who bring tons to a fight. I can be doing ranged AOE burst and spreading conditions and AOE dazes and bouncing lighting burst between people one second, use my FT to knock the whole group on their kitten and then blind them all, the very next leaving caltraps in the floor and pulling someone in and on their kitten for a huge spike damage, then the next be back in my FT tanking the whole group be because I have 94% crit and 66% chance to steal life on an AOE 10 pulse attack.

Supply drop IS one of the best skirmish battle changing elites. If I catch the other group grouped up its going to game over the fight. Supply drop, throw wrench w static discharge, throw shield (this will do tons of burst while disabling the entire group for 4 -5 seconds). Bounce a static shot in there to blind everyone, then FT and knock them all back (12s CD AOE knockback alone is powerful and game changing in skirmishes).

Imagine all of this, and so much more bc the profession is just too versatile to be able to sum up like this, being done by 2 Engineers while some burst thieves are just picking off everyone.

I’ve for multiple blast finishers, combo fields, pull, knockbacks, dazes, stuns, blinds, every damaging condition there is (burning, poison, bleeding, confusion) being stacked on too of burst damage (peak 94% crit with 75% crit damage, near perma protection upkeep, over 2500 armor, multiple blocks/invul, stealth/stability for stomps, reflection, etc etc etc)

Got lost there because there’s just too much to it. Didn’t even get to main point.

Engi can react to situations on a dime, all the time. No CD on kit means when I need to be blocking attacks with my gear shield one second I can instantly switch to my FT, use the knockback to stop a pin or rez, then on no CD I can swap back out to whatever I want for the next situation. And this never stops bc there’s no CD on the kits.

To make it all even better. FT is the best anti stealth thief weapon in the game IMO and that + all the bouncing discharges and static shot are really amazing for neutralizing all Mesmer clones and illusions.

Velron.3729:

It’s true it’s rare though, so rare that I swear Engi’s random whisper each other if they see another good one out lol

omg i do this all the time!

5 thieves working together is pretty much unstoppable.

Dont understand how ppl can mention mesmers in this but not portals, nothing so strong for a group as the ability to be chased by a zerg, jump down a cliff, the zerg folows and the portal up behind it.

The number of uses is unlimited.

Osicat.4139:

Dont understand how ppl can mention mesmers in this but not portals, nothing so strong for a group as the ability to be chased by a zerg, jump down a cliff, the zerg folows and the portal up behind it.

The number of uses is unlimited.

Because you don’t need portals when you are a thief lol.

You can run with whatever comp as long as you know what you are doing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npQFOrc4Gxg

Bunzy.8674:

You can run with whatever comp as long as you know what you are doing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npQFOrc4Gxg

HAHA looks like you mopped up some of our zerg surfers. Good job on that hehe, but don’t expect that to work on our core groups should we be in a match-up again.

Still, all the respect in the world for you going out there outnumbered as you guys were and bloodying some noses.

Guardian, ele, mesmer and thief. Mass CD, bunker, crowd control and dps.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem as easy to do 5man roaming groups as people tend to congregate in certain areas, it’s easy to get to most areas on map by defending teams via portalsand respawns, and crossed swords act as map-wide radar. Maps just feel to crowded or small to fulfill the "roaming" part.

I’m not too sure what could be done to improve it. I often think back to playing daoc in 2001. Roaming worked there because there were long port (to emain) times, dedicated group aoe buff, and limited warnings so you actually had to hunt, not just watch map for crossed swords.

I think DAOC-like 5man roaming can work here, the only things that are really missing IMO are zerg-busting tools (currently only possible with siege, 5man AOE cap is dumb) and a touch more map space.

guardian with sword and hammer spirits/rifle warrior/mesmer/condition thief+Thieves guild/Burst thief+Thieves guild

Total of 5 players and 9 pets (A mini zerg)

If you time your pets at the right time (all at once over team speak), its amazing

People will start to run away as soon as they see the numbers double

you could trade the rifle warrior with a ranger, but that kill shot is amazing, and whilst people are confused with the amount of pets that appeared he gets time to pull it off once or twice.

You could also trade the warrior for an Ele or a second Mesmer

Or just make a group with 5x mesmers (15 pets and 5 players)

Each of these can remove conditions if traited. With the amount of pets youll have damage will not be an issue

Condition thief should take a caltrops
The burst thief should take scorpion wire to pull the ranged eles from the opposition into the mess to stop them kiting safely

You should kill 3 people (at least) for the time that the pets are active, leaving less to deal with when they are on CD

If its 5v5, I would say pets are key