Guild Wars 2

Some friends and I wanted to create a party to roam WvW the times we play together and there will be at least 2 thieves; on the other hand, we could not agree on the other 2-3 components of the team…
Anyone has some successful examples of roaming teams?
Or simply put, what would be your dream team and why?

All thieves.

You’re welcome.

5 guardians is the best party for roam.
With staff they can make perma swiftness, and with perma retaliation, every thief attacking them will just die.

All shatter mesmers your welcomer lool

Remember REQ on RS used to roam with 2 mesmers, 2 guardians and 1 other. They were pretty good and it seemed like a good set up.
Guardians were basically bait / meat shield and the mesmers blew stuff up.

2thiefs, 2 mesmers, 1 tanky guardian (bait)

most fun/success we’ve had as a 5 man :
1 or 2 guards, 1 mesm, 1 engie, 1 or 2 necros. can also have a s/d ele instead of the extra guard or necro.
we’ve beaten 20+ with this setup multiple times.

tbh it all depends on the players you have and what kind of synergies you have going. it also depends on where you are fighting. having or not a chokepoint can have a huge impact on how a fight goes.

I’ve found that multiple thieves are not good to have against bigger numbers, tho they can are good in a balanced fight. Shadow refuge is decent to escape zergs but it requires all 5 of you to stand in an aoe vulnerable spot and use stability. Mesmer’s mass invis/portal does the same job better.

My guild is setting up a Warrior, Guardian, Ele, and Necro group to try out. It’s only 4, but we only have 4 that play now so we’ll do what we do.

You’ll want a guardian for protective buffs and tankage, ranger or warrior for offensive buffs (I love shouty heal warriors with cc weapons and find that a guardian and a warrior with specs built around each other is an extremely underrated roaming duo. Guard shouts converting condi’s to boons, warrior shouts for great sustain, on top of guardian ji+hammer5 to quickly stack aoe’s on targets). A mesmer is nice for the tactical options it brings an organised group with its utilities mainly invis, but a d/p+sb thief could also help here. I wouldn’t take both. D/D thieves excel in group play where they can backstab spam but I wouldn’t bother personally.

You have all your bases covered with these 3; great sustain and condi removal and a solid front line with enough tricks to act as a collective ‘oh kitten’ button. All of these classes can do substantial dps already. for me my next 2 choices would be flexible but based around aoe dps. fotm necro is hugely popular right now for skirmishing in a 5man or zerging/zergbusting so I’d strongly suggest you fit one of these in, but most classes built for it can do the job.

But really, the game is very flexible with regards to the OP if you are playing at it’s limit and class selection isn’t as much of a priority unless you are trying to hardcore zergbust. As has been mentioned, situational awareness of positions and enemy inc’s are much more important than getting the ‘best’ classses and rushing into a bad engage spamming 1 and utilities…

<3 theorycraft

Hule.8794:

5 guardians is the best party for roam.
With staff they can make perma swiftness, and with perma retaliation, every thief attacking them will just die.

GuardianOMS.8067:

All thieves.

You’re welcome.

Thesilentflute.8761:

All shatter mesmers your welcomer lool

5 engineers, be unique

Thanks guys for feedback.
We understand that the game is fairly balanced for professions (still some work needs to be done). The topic is to trigger a discussion on actual game experiences and theory crafting, just to find some more fun in WvW, outside of the omnipresent zergs.
for the moment we are trying to set up a 2x thief, warrior, guardian, mesmer team, taking into consideration what we like to play and what can be useful for the team.
naturally, it is not always very easy to have ALL the teamplayers agree, but that is the purpose of theory crafting, isn’t it?;-)
We are thinking of keeping thieves and the mesmer full dps/glass (no condition dmg) with a classic berzerker equip. We are having some sort of disagreement on how to equip the two meat-shields (a.k.a. warrior and guardian) though. Is it worth to throw in +healing gear (Pr/T/heal for instance) or would the classic P/V/T do?

Below is our mix. The first two are important because they keep fields, stability, healing and full might stacks up in a fight:

• 1 D/D elementalist for the fields, buffs (auras are amazing), condition removal
• 1 guardian for the buffs, stability, tank (shouts and heals are ridiculous with 3+ players)

The thief rounds out our trinity as a DPS’r:

• 1 thief for the DPS/Blast finishers (built to burst down anything under 50% and stealth to keep the targeting dropped… needs decent toughness to handle AoE fights)

The last two slots are kinda optional but this is preferred:

• 1 control class. Any class/build that has several stuns, dazes, etc
• I would finish out with a mesmer or necro here. Neither are required but both bring a lot of diversity to a fight. Mesmer clones make a fast moving team bigger, necros make standing still difficult and have that big HP pool

Mixing is the important part as no one class has it all. Fields, stability, might and healing are the big parts. Focus heavy solo DPS, that team will get ripped apart by this one as combo fields and group might stacks make the DPS much higher than a single pack of thieves. Focus heavy tank, takes to long to dispatch players and can get over run.

5 minion necros.

dunnberry.2964:

5 engineers, be unique

lol

You guys underestimate the power of 5 shatter mesmers that is 15 clones going to explode on your butt. Along with any combo of 5 aoe cripple zerkers or 5 signet stuns and it only takes 6 clones aoe to drop someone and as soon as the first 15 are down 15 more are up.

GuardianOMS.8067:

All thieves.

You’re welcome.

^ this

That is all.

Ok honestly having anything more than 1 thief glass is a bad idea bc that either means a lot more damage is coming to your meat shields while rhe glass cannons all hide or the glass cannons die in seconds if you guys are outbumbered(which you will be a lot) almost instantly and than the rest will die. And YES having a heavy healer usually either ele guardian, or not well known bomb engi build. To constantly heal you guys fighting, and yea PVT is very important for your heavies

@Straegen: thank you for the feedback; any particular advice on build/gear for that set-up?

Unless your team has no skill then you want to go with 2 necro 3 engi as they have the most op aoe dps in the game.

Waffler.1257:

5 minion necros.

Lol pure terror

Manuelito.6081:

@Straegen: thank you for the feedback; any particular advice on build/gear for that set-up?

I think both the d/d ele and hammer/staff guardian run boon duration runes (2 monk, 2 sup water, 2 major water). This keeps them with swiftness up full time between fights and boons running longer in fights. The guardian goes with energy sigils on the weapons since every dodge is a heal.

The thief goes with divinity runes and a mix of knight/zerker since it is a healing thief build (0/30/30/10/0). We tried higher DPS versions of the thief but we found that DPS builds have a tough time standing in with better opponents as they use heavy AoE or burst really well. With bloodlust, might stacks, fields and auras high DPS is already a given on this class.

The other two player slots are sort of whatever someone wants to play. All of our builds are focused around solo/skirmish though. All the builds are heavy in toughness. Toughness beats out vitality in a medium duration fight and is significantly better in a long duration fight. The key is that nobody is glassy since glass players will raise opponents from the downed state and generally speaking do not handle being out numbered well. Survival and overlapping skills is our design and it works very well.

Mumble (or other voice chat) and call targeting are probably the two strongest pieces of kit we use.

@Straegen: it makes sense, mate. Have you considered Superior Runes of Altruism for the Guardian? Since we will not probably have an Elementalist and aura sharing.

Wish I could remember what guild I’ve seen run this, but they ran 5 guardians roaming team… they were stupidly hard to kill.

I’d have to say:
1 Mesmer (heavy Stealth or Interrupt spec)
1 Thief (Glassy D/D + SB)
1 AH Bunker Guard
1 Grenadier Engi or Condimancer
1 Staff Ele

You will have: A plethora of Fields and ways to blast ’em, Stealth out the wazoo, massive CC/Boons (Yay for AoE Stability!), Insane Condi Damage. Let alone enough Condi-cleansing, heals and Swiftness to roll through kitten near anything.

Manuelito.6081:

@Straegen: it makes sense, mate. Have you considered Superior Runes of Altruism for the Guardian? Since we will not probably have an Elementalist and aura sharing.

Those aren’t as useful for us since we already run with full might stacks and fury from shouts/elementalist. I cannot stress enough how powerful a D/D elementalist is in our group. Course he is our best player by a mile.

All warriors with the mace/shield + greatsword + healing signet stunlock cheese build.

This is what my guild runs when we roam together in 5 man groups in the lower tiers, Dont listen to ant of these zerging upper tier players who dont know what it means to meet skilled roamers.

1 Guardian, Staff/Greatsword. Tank Build with support shouts.
1 Thief, D/p and p/p for the fast dps and in and out of the fight. Inbetween tank and dps build.
1 Ele, D/d. Should be running bunker d/d ele build.
1 Warrior, Hammer/Sword and Warhorn. Should be running a tanky dps build with what he prefers on the skill bar.
1 Wild Card :P, This slot can be filled with any class your last member prefers, Your boons, Condi removal, and party healing are all covered with the above classes

Banzie.5248:

This is what my guild runs when we roam together in 5 man groups in the lower tiers, Dont listen to ant of these zerging upper tier players who dont know what it means to meet skilled roamers.

There’s something to be said for roamers on the varied tiers. Now I may be lose a match up against tier 1, but I cut their roamers apart like they’re trying to help me get loot bags. Conversely when up against the fellow tier 2 servers (and lower tiers) I’m suddenly facing some highly skilled small group/solo roamers. The strongest of these teams have incredible co-ordination in maintaining party wide Protection, Regeneration, Swiftness, Might, and Fury on permanent upkeep, and have a readily available access to party wide stealth. I’ve encountered 5 man parties take on a group of 15 (including myself) and not only survive, but actually put us on the defensive and force the retreat.

In the end the best party of 5 for roaming includes yourself and 4 others who have strong synergy, coordination, and the skill to pull it off consistently. Class composition is not relevant if you all know how to use a given tactic optimally.

In my opinion it would be:
D/D bunker cleric ele
2 healway guardians (preferably staff + gs/eventually hammer)
Warrior with Hammer, Axe/Warhorn
Mesmer Staff, Sword/Focus

With this or similar setup we’ve been running. I honestly can’t find other ultimate meta for outnumbered actions.

There’s something to be said about a 5 man group of thieves. Its scary for anyone you run into. And it’s pretty fun. I usually don’t play as my thief unless my guildmates are also on theirs. Coordinated backstabs on a single target are brutal. No one will survive, no matter what. The majority of the time though, i’m either on my bursty ele or guardian, one other guy is on his regen ranger, another on his bunker ele, and the remaining 2 using shout heal super tanky warriors who do ridiculous condition damage and never seem to be able to be dropped when there’s 10+ people on them.

My favorites:

2x Thieves
1x D/D Ele
1x Engineer
1x Guardian, tanky but still able to deal damage. (knights/valkyrie mix is good)

2x D/D Eles
1x Thief
1x Engineer
1x Guardian, tanky but still able to deal damage. (knights/valkyrie mix is good)

Hickeroar.9734:

1x Guardian, tanky but still able to deal damage. (knights/valkyrie mix is good)

We have tried just about every style of guardian in our mix but full on support guardians are by far the most potent for elevating the group. The problem with the guardian is that it cannot drop target and doesn’t have good in combat mobility so less tanky versions get focused heavily in high mobility groups. Try a full on support version and watch the kills rack up… not as fun for the guardian to play though.

Nikkinella.8254:

There’s something to be said about a 5 man group of thieves. Its scary for anyone you run into.

Thief groups melt to equally skilled mixed groups. Without stability or group heal they are almost always going to fall apart as soon as the element of surprise is gone against a skill group.

A fun party:

1 Power/CC Mesmer
1 Condition Thief
1 Defensive Guardian with a Hammer
1 Necromancer Condition/Power Hybrid
1 Offensive Warrior with some fury shouts / banners

Idk why but it seems fun.

Hickeroar.9734:

2x D/D Eles
1x Thief
1x Engineer
1x Guardian, tanky but still able to deal damage. (knights/valkyrie mix is good)

That looks nasty and I would hate to fight it. But it lacks the critical “stealth rez” role that thieves excel at.

Obscure One.4357:

In the end the best party of 5 for roaming includes yourself and 4 others who have strong synergy, coordination, and the skill to pull it off consistently. Class composition is not relevant if you all know how to use a given tactic optimally.

Yep, most important thing are the people who are playing but class/build composition does come into play with two evenly (wrt skill) matched groups.

^Gonna have to agree with that. As long as you work well together it shouldn’t matter. Everyone has their preferences what they feel is the best group, but it all comes down to what works well with each individual person. It shouldn’t be too difficult to coordinate your group if you have some kind of voice chat to communicate with eachother.

Nikkinella.8254:

^Gonna have to agree with that. As long as you work well together it shouldn’t matter. Everyone has their preferences what they feel is the best group, but it all comes down to what works well with each individual person. It shouldn’t be too difficult to coordinate your group if you have some kind of voice chat to communicate with eachother.

This isn’t true based on my experience. Group makeup is very important once you get a group of skilled players. Missing combo fields, stacks of might, stability, condition removal etc can easily cost a team a tremendous amount of damage and survivability. Call targeting and team chat are mostly a necessity but discounting team makeup is like chopping a leg off a chair and saying it doesn’t matter. It will still work but not nearly as well.

Urrid.4593:

That looks nasty and I would hate to fight it. But it lacks the critical “stealth rez” role that thieves excel at.

Mid fight rez is big no-no. Much better and faster to down something. Better to focus fire the downed teammate and drop the stompers.