Guild Wars 2

It seems like roaming solo is a dying art. I can’t recall the last time I actually met an enemy player roaming around the battlefield by himself.

I see plenty of roamers though…in packs of 2, 3…5. It seems like everyone has given up on fair fights and prefers either running or completely overwhelming their enemies.

A shame really since solo-roaming used to be kind of fun. But now it feels like nobody dares leave the house without an easy backup.

In t2 most people don’t solo roam anymore they do havoc parties. Sometimes they respect the fact that I’m solo and 1v1 most of the time they don’t.

Maybe because these people didn’t wanted to be in the new condi meta? It’s kinda hard to beat a condi bunker in 1v1 these days unless you are traited specifically for that…

Also not everyone is up to be ganked by a thief or mesmer (the kings of 1vX). But I think the first is the most acurate response.

If you roam solo then 95% of your “fair” fights will be against 5-2 thieves and pu condi mesmers, both of which will simply turn invisible and run away if the fight isn’t going well for them. Most people won’t willingly subject themselves to that kind of torture.

Just tossing it out there, but why would someone solo roam in WvW when you can just queue up SPVP and get a very similar play style but without all the running? Is there something I’m missing?

And the rewards in PVP are quite nice now, can’t say the same for WvW outside of big clashes of zergs where the bags are flowing.

Generally you won’t find a fair fight in wvw, you will find that most of the time you’ll be chasing or running away from zergs, or from certain Classes running “Cheese” builds that are not easy to counter.

Personally I also scout out guild groups and any other zergs running, and sometimes I get to lure them towards our own zerg or my guild.
In the end I still have a good time even if I get chased or ganked., I merge with other roamers if needed – but sadly I rarely find many fellow Roamers on Desolation post Tournament.

If you are solo roaming and all you meet are groups of 2-3-4-5 I don’t see whats the big deal. its way better than finding 25+guild groups everywhere. Solo roaming was never about 1v1s, not only isn’t the game balanced for those, most of the players you’ll find alone are easy, unchallenging kills.
You might be confusing solo roaming with dueling.

roaming in a small group is just as rewarding and just as fun as roaming solo for me, with the added benefit of being able to play classes and specs that do not work solo and being able to take down otherwise impossible odds.

I do solo roam most of the time though I do pack aswell when my friends are on but since we are just a few (3) I go solo most of the time.
I’m on Devona’s Rest

Because if you are solo, you are looking for 1-2 people to fight at most, and once you hit 3 or more you have pretty much topped out and will die. Stealth and mobility high classes of course can fight and run, but other classes will just die.

If you run a group of 2, 3, 4, or 5 – you can find a fun fight in a similar sized group, or possibly against a group of 6-12 people as well. The odds of finding an interesting fight are much higher. A single or even a few adds will not ruin the fight and send you back to the spawn.

Also so many skills are group centric, why not play in a group?

I do solo roam sometimes. and I do sometimes meet and engage solo or small groups like that.- and I do run the same wvw build and gear as I do in pve.- But it is suicidal most of the time.
And yes- perma stealth thieves will kill me almost instant and Ill have no counter. If I’m lucky they wont kill me outright and if so they will try a few times – then leave.

Being on small servers means sometimes there are few players online- and that does give a chance of smaller teams or solo roamers to make a difference.

Think someone is confusing “friends and/or guildmates” with “easyback up”.

Try to look more difficult to kill than 5 NPCs, stacks are stacks after all, that should keep all those nasty groups away from you.

Every other roamer in the game has adapted to the fact that to get consistently worthwhile fights you need to be in a group. No one is going to play how you want them to play to keep you entertained while they spend the other 99.9% of the time they don’t meet your august self dying to groups that if they were roaming in a 5 man team with their guildmates would be a) killable or b) at least interesting to wipe to.

Jerus.4350:

Just tossing it out there, but why would someone solo roam in WvW when you can just queue up SPVP and get a very similar play style but without all the running? Is there something I’m missing?

That’s a sincerely good question, and one we tend to get quite often.

Here’s my reasons:
1) Much more flexibility in gear selection. With armor slots, accessories, and weapons, we have tons of room to experiment with different stat combinations and fine-tune our builds instead of being restricted to a single amulet for our stats.

2) We’re not confined to a game mode. We don’t have to stand in circles unless we want to, nor do we have to wait as a match resets every few minutes. We can do as we please without wrecking the game for other (allied) players.

3) The chaos and randomness that can occur is what makes things thrilling for me. I could engage in a 1v1, then suddenly get zerged by 30 players right around the corner. Or perhaps I might run around for 5 minutes without seeing anyone, then instantly run into a 1v3 situation and have to play my kitten off just to stay alive. Constantly having to look over my shoulder and never feeling safe is why I consider roaming tons of fun and dueling extremely boring.

That said, the last several patches have been gradually killing the fun of roaming for me. Gear has been introduced with stat combinations that I feel shouldn’t exist because it allows some builds to gain full survivability and damage output without having to make any sacrifices at all. AI skills have also been buffed and auto-pilot builds are becoming much more common, so that takes away some of the fun mind games involved in fighting a skilled opponent out in the wild. And finally, seasons suck for roaming. Almost everyone you run into is running some form of zerg-role build, so there’s very little challenge in taking them down if you catch them running around solo.

I do roam solo occasionally,more so with a group of 5 simply because whenever you roam solo you;re bound to get steamrolled by a zerg or a “roaming” group of 15+,it’s only natural to get more people with you when you roam around because these things will happen.

Great answer, really appreciate the detailed response.

I’ve tried it. Just have to say my overall view on it is that I’ve wasted hours of my life on it for nothing really. I’ve spend a few nights trying it out with only a handful of fun fights. Most of the time it’s running around with no one in sight, then turning a corner seeing a zerg and hightailing it away. Running away can be fun, but it’s not really what I was looking for.

I solo roam on my thief on SFR. Gotta say it’s one of the more rewarding experiences to solo cap a sentry or a camp, or even a tower or a keep(yes, this happens even in T1 if you trail an enemy zerg inside the objective with perma-stealth build).

Jerus.4350:

Great answer, really appreciate the detailed response.

I’ve tried it. Just have to say my overall view on it is that I’ve wasted hours of my life on it for nothing really. I’ve spend a few nights trying it out with only a handful of fun fights. Most of the time it’s running around with no one in sight, then turning a corner seeing a zerg and hightailing it away. Running away can be fun, but it’s not really what I was looking for.

It’s the mentality of people really,why roam around with hardly any rewards when they can zerg and get huge amounts of loot ? I for one dont care about the loot.But 99% of other people do,hence they only zerg.If you do roam,just get a group of 5 people atleast and make sure your current build has somewhat mobility so you dont get caught up by the zergs.

And like Evalia said,i think roaming in a small group and able to ninja cap something is far more rewarding and much more fun ( not loot wise ) than just zerging around mindlessly spamming 2 buttons.

I solo roam every single day, and spend the majority of my time doing so. Few other players do it, it’s true, and you need mobility and knowledge of the landscape to move around and get out of situations where you’re obviously not going to win i.e. 12 zergers breaking off from the pack to chase you across the map.

I primarily play EB, and it’s correct that 1v3 is the most I feel competent in; I can take a fair few of them, but it, as all things, depends on who you end up fighting, if you come across 3 in the same guild roaming, it’s likely you’ll end up losing or having to run. Furthermore condi is over the top annoying in outnumbered fights, it’s always ticking away and you don’t have time to apply sufficient pressure to the guy dishing it out because you have 2 more stabbing you. I carry around some lemongrass just for those eventualities. There are indeed a metric tonne of condi builds floating around recently, notably pistol/dagger thieves, as always every other necro is condi and every Engi you come across probably is too, and they all use pistol shield, whatever the hell that fire circle is, explode their water turret and go flying away, etc.

Solo roaming is only really fun if you’re incredibly competent and experienced, you need to know your build, the landscape, enemy’s builds, know what to focus first, make use of mechanics like line of sight, and do it all vaguely well. Even though I like to think with a few thousand hours I’ve got most of it down, I still die quite a lot. Soloing towers (cough cough Anza cough) is fun, but hard to do when any enemy comes along. I once spent about 20 minutes trying to solo Hills, got the Lord to 30% and then the entirety of Germany came streaming into the lord’s room, and I somehow lost.

Solo roaming also happens a lot more on thieves than anything else, as everyone knows. Out of a misguided sense of honour, I sometimes let downed enemies get back up after I beat them; a year ago they used to be nice about it, now they generally get straight back up and start firing, at which point I roll my eyes and kill them. Also the best part is emote spammers; I killed this Warrior, this matchup, on AR inside SM in a 1v2, so he comes back, about 5 more show up so I jump out, and he starts spamming laugh, then follows me round SM to Anza to continue spamming laugh, hangs around portals and twirls away back into them in order to spam laugh, runs Snow Leopard form in order to run away, and every time he gets low runs until he resets combat then spams laugh. In any case I’ve killed him a fair few times, several times more than the two times he’s helped a group kill me, haven’t seen him for a couple days though.

I still like playing with groups, but there’s only one real guy where I feel safe with him at my back, estimate, and proven that we can take about 6 together. The other day we with 1 other guy took on 8 FR, were there for a while with hard ressing and them coming back from spawn, but those fights can be really fun and intense.

As is traditional I have slipped from my point and fallen into pointless rambling, but yeah solo roamers are few and far between, but not extinct.

Not as much as I used to. Whenever i would find someone else roaming its either a thief with constant stealth or an usain bolt warrior. They really take the fun out of winning when its extremely hard to catch them so ill rather go in a pair to at least have a chance of stomping them.

I solo roam every now and then but usually when I meet others (1v1) they run untill they find more allies and gank me 5-10v1. Otherwise when they are about to get stomped more allies come in to help and I get ganked again. Even 20+ guild groups (bb, js) are chasing roamers these days across the map so yeah sucks pretty much when you don’t have op stealth so you can’t die or go sword gs war so you run like usain bolt.

I solo roam all the time… yes.. I meet up with groups more often than other solo roamers… sometimes they kill me… sometimes I kill them. I play mesmer and never run… armor repairs don’t cost anymore… so no point in running when you have a chance to kill at least one person.

I very rarely use buffs (food etc) either… I like the raw fight and if I kill you and you are buffed to hell… then it just proves even more that I am the better player.

You know, with this and so many other WvW discussions it seems like what some people want is a hybrid between sPvP and WvW.

I guess… something with the flexibility and gear progression of WvW, but closer to the playstyle of sPvP. It’s hard for me to describe exactly what that latter thing means, because it’s frankly not my cup of tea, but the feeling is definitely out there.

Maybe there could be a new map, instanced like EotM, with a much smaller player cap and more reasons for people to spread out and a greater emphasis on individual and very small group tactics.

Again, not my cup of tea, but the more I lurk in this forum the more I see that there’s this in-between segment of players that seems to be unsatisfied with either free-for-all WvW or structured PvP.

I only roam by myself. I noticed this too like 6 months ago. People don’t appear to want a fair fight any longer, however, you shouldn’t be playing WvW if you want that. WvW is just unskilled zergs moving from place to place salivating over rewards. I can’t remember how many times I hid in a keep as a WARRIOR and took it back 5 minutes later by myself. Joke game mode, joke player base. If they cared, they would of checked.

Also, there are guilds out there who I will not mention by name that think they are so kitten hot rolling around in a full team picking roamer’s off, only to get destroyed on their live Twitch stream since they accepted my duel kittenily.

I blame ANET though, people roam around in WvW because sPvP is simply terribly lacking, and they desire some other form of skillful play.

Silalus.8760:

You know, with this and so many other WvW discussions it seems like what some people want is a hybrid between sPvP and WvW.

I guess… something with the flexibility and gear progression of WvW, but closer to the playstyle of sPvP. It’s hard for me to describe exactly what that latter thing means, because it’s frankly not my cup of tea, but the feeling is definitely out there.

Maybe there could be a new map, instanced like EotM, with a much smaller player cap and more reasons for people to spread out and a greater emphasis on individual and very small group tactics.

Again, not my cup of tea, but the more I lurk in this forum the more I see that there’s this in-between segment of players that seems to be unsatisfied with either free-for-all WvW or structured PvP.

the problem with spvp is that you get more rewards from avoiding fights. If they increased the number of points per a kill and reduced the number of points for a shrine cap then it would vastly improve.

WvW has its problems… but the essence of the game or the game’s model is fine. It is just all the bugs that really need ironing out and possibly a shake up of the maps.

What is needed is additional pvp content… there is a need for three more arenas and they should seriously borrow it from gw1

1) GvG – same model as gw1 would probably work… but it could be improved by allowing different team sizes – 8v8, 15v15, 20v20 (I would cap it at 20)

2) Random and team Arena – exact same model as gw1 – fight to the finish – no capping stuff nonsense.

3) 1v1 arena – one person vs one person – fight to the finish.

And to be honest, I would probably throw in a 4th arena while I was at it – HoH king of the castle style arena.

Seriously, some of the best pvp in this game are the special event pvp arenas.

Pray For Kosmos.5849:

I only roam by myself. I noticed this too like 6 months ago. People don’t appear to want a fair fight any longer, however, you shouldn’t be playing WvW if you want that. WvW is just unskilled zergs moving from place to place salivating over rewards. I can’t remember how many times I hid in a keep as a WARRIOR and took it back 5 minutes later by myself. Joke game mode, joke player base. If they cared, they would of checked.

Also, there are guilds out there who I will not mention by name that think they are so kitten hot rolling around in a full team picking roamer’s off, only to get destroyed on their live Twitch stream since they accepted my duel kittenily.

I blame ANET though, people roam around in WvW because sPvP is simply terribly lacking, and they desire some other form of skillful play.

A commendable feat doing it on a warrior. I have much problems doing it myself on a thief, because of how many scouts there are(were?) in gold T1… but it’s an awesome feat to perform nonetheless.

One of the huge issues of solo-roaming is, that balance and certain game mechanics reduce fights on being kinda RPS (assuming equal skill level on both ends). Also it currently boils down to some sort of PU condition or PU phantasm mesmer, P/D condition or D/P backstab thief, stunlock, condition or Nike warrior or perplexity necromancer. All of these specs are no fun to fight 1vs1…

I usually like to solo-roam, but it’s even more fun to roam the borderlands with a friend or some, which enables your team to utilize group synergies and to cover your team mates’ weaknesses to certain degrees — This is what the game is balanced for after all (and except for some cheesey stuff, Anet did a pretty good job in balancing stuff for small team fights in my opinion).

From my own experience solo-roaming can be quite frustrating because you can’t find single enemies or small groups which are willing to fight, but so far we’ve always found a solution for this: ask politely (/join party), visit the OS arena or make “friends” on other servers (always nice to have some random role playing going on with transformation tonics) so you’ll get recognized as a fair and honorable solo roamer on the borderlands. It won’t deter gank squads and zergs from steamrolling you, but it makes things alot easier and more fun in my experience.

Usually, if we are in a group and encounter a lone roamer, we don’t engage first. If an enemy abuses a cheesy build, acted dishonorable before, actively engages or threatens one of our low levels / dolyaks / camps / sentries, he’s in trouble nonetheless.

I stopped solo roaming due to runners.

Whether it’s a thief, mes, war, or ele, everyone just runs when losing.

I use to solo roam, but people keep running when they start to lose.

Personally I rather lose the fight (or hope for some miracle) than run from a fight I picked.

Most of the solo roaming builds are very boring to fight. P/D and D/D thieves that only fight where they can cloak off PvE, D/P thieves that can only be beat by heavy control, GS warriors that flee with whirlwind and rush, blackwater mesmers that really do nothing. The only builds I really like to face in a bout of skill are meditation guardians, D/D power eles, power mesmers, and the very rare power ranger that doesn’t suck.

The only thing I liked about roaming with my power mesmer for awhile was that one quick glance and it looks like the typical blackwater mesmer, and then suddenly you’re getting ripped up with a berserker and mind wracks while being spatial spammed trying to run. But now I’m in a tier where it’s easy to remember most of the roamers, and the roaming has dropped off quite a lot after the tournament. So all you get solo roaming are random idiots, thieves, and parties of 3-5 doing their own PvCamp that won’t be e responded to with even numbers. Very often those parties are also just zerg hammer warriors too, so it’s even more boring.

Primarily because gone are the days when a person could fight 1v3 with ease if well played.

Now everyone has good gear, knows how to trait well and knows how to play their toons.

However if you really want solo fights , organise a fight club at the windmill.

But I do encourage everyone to practice solo roaming just to gain experience.

Fuzzion.2504:

Now everyone has condi gear, knows how to trait for better cheese and knows how to spam 1 while putting 4 different condis on you.

FTFY

I solo roam for JQ on my celestial condi warrior with healing shouts. I use snow leopard for escaping 1v3 or worse and sometimes to wipe someone trying to flee a fight ;-)

Last night I forced a thief to run and I nailed him with the charge/leap of snowleopard and then stealth spiked him ;-)

Most people think of snow leopard as only escape, its deadly when you can turn your warrior into a dagger thief.

But to answer your other question, I meet many people solo out on the map. Roamers and peeps trying to catch up to their zerg. Try night time playing.

I still roam almost every day. I enjoy finding other solo roamers and those small groups too, although, like others said, it’s harder to win 1v 3-4 nowdays since most people are geared and use a proper build.
Generaly, it does seem there are less solo roamers then it used to be, but i still get good fights fairly often.

Dee Jay.2460:

It seems like roaming solo is a dying art. I can’t recall the last time I actually met an enemy player roaming around the battlefield by himself.

I see plenty of roamers though…in packs of 2, 3…5. It seems like everyone has given up on fair fights and prefers either running or completely overwhelming their enemies.

A shame really since solo-roaming used to be kind of fun. But now it feels like nobody dares leave the house without an easy backup.

Show me a Ranger build for soloing.

For some reason since the nerf on 15 April, I can’t kill much of anything whereas I absolutely could pretty darn easily before that…

Roaming seems to be in small groups, not viable with the OP’ness of Engi, Necro, Warrior and Guardian and Theives – oh gee that leaves Mesmers and Rangers, goodie.

I main a Ranger, with a tag, and since the nerf I haven’t been able to find a WvW viable build for solo roaming or even small group havoc.

So no, I am no longer an effective roamer.

Fuzzion.2504:

Primarily because gone are the days when a person could fight 1v3 with ease if well played.

Now everyone has good gear, knows how to trait well and knows how to play their toons.

However if you really want solo fights , organise a fight club at the windmill.

But I do encourage everyone to practice solo roaming just to gain experience.

My server is somewhat clueless when I tell them that the proper place not to have their favorite toys picked on is at the windmill, they have never heard of that as the “unofficial official” dueling and “off limits” from normal WvW unless truces are broken…

Geeze.

We really need a manual for WvW and all of the nuances that allow a player to understand WvW and not continually be mystified by unwritten rules that are normal in any MMO over time.

WOW has many civility rules that are not written but usually well understood by all but the least informed humans.

This game has guilds with websites who tell people what they can accomplish or those same types of websites can demand that all players do this at this time, what builds are “approved”, and what they can talk about “in public” without consulting a guild officer.

This more than any other game has rules that need to be understood before making a total nitwit of oneself in WvW – like anything else, first impressions can leave a stain or a can be yet another who “gets it” getting up to speed in the least amount of time with little to no confusion about where to be, what to do on an empty map, if you should command, how to command, how to place siege, how to attack a siege’d property, et, al.

atheria.2837:

Dee Jay.2460:

It seems like roaming solo is a dying art. I can’t recall the last time I actually met an enemy player roaming around the battlefield by himself.

I see plenty of roamers though…in packs of 2, 3…5. It seems like everyone has given up on fair fights and prefers either running or completely overwhelming their enemies.

A shame really since solo-roaming used to be kind of fun. But now it feels like nobody dares leave the house without an easy backup.

Show me a Ranger build for soloing.

For some reason since the nerf on 15 April, I can’t kill much of anything whereas I absolutely could pretty darn easily before that…

Roaming seems to be in small groups, not viable with the OP’ness of Engi, Necro, Warrior and Guardian and Theives – oh gee that leaves Mesmers and Rangers, goodie.

I main a Ranger, with a tag, and since the nerf I haven’t been able to find a WvW viable build for solo roaming or even small group havoc.

So no, I am no longer an effective roamer.

There are Ranger builds for 1v1’s and 1v2’s I roam solo on my Ranger all the time.

Builds in description.

Solo-Roaming is rarely any fun these days. Too many organized havoc groups that only farm single players and run when the numbers start to even out.

All day, all night, 24/7. No sleep, no food. All for the kills.

#SoloRoamIsNotDead

I solo roam on my Guard when I can and it’s only because WvW seasons drained all of our WvW guilds and left CD as a leftover husk.

Thanks Obama.

MarauderShields.6830:

Solo-Roaming is rarely any fun these days. Too many organized havoc groups that only farm single players and run when the numbers start to even out.

This seems to come up in every single post about roaming in WvW and I just can’t believe its true. EU doesn’t really have “havoc groups” but what we do is probably pretty close and fights are usually a procession until you are outnumbered thus killing soloers beyond getting stacks or discouraging ones that are being idiots from continued stupidity is a waste of time. I can’t believe that there is a large enough number of “organised” groups out there that do those things to justify the amount of times this complaint comes up.

Its war. War never adept to you, you must adept to war.

Solo roaming is dominated by Thieves, if you arent a Thief get ready to be horribly frustrated.
This has been like this since launch, and honestly solo roaming has never been all that popular outside of Thief players simply because WvW isnt fair. You run into a group they will happily beat you into the ground.

You are to slow to cap things on your own, sure you can solo a camp but its much slower then with a group which just raises the risk of getting caught.

Solo roamers big thing is scouting and reporting enemy movement, harrasing dolyaks and contesting keeps/waypoints. And if you are a Thief, trolling enemy roaming groups or reinforcements.
Pretty limited in what you can safely do, so a bit boring.

Due to Thieves and their trolly nature most roamers run in small groups, they get the security from getting instagibbed or worn down by perpetually resetting Thieves. And they can flip a camp much quicker. And a small group can even build a ram or guild cata to make a move on a tower/keep.

Your options are far widers when roaming in a small group then alone, and you are more secure from the horrible inbalance that is 1v1. So most people naturally roam in a small group.

Jerus.4350:

Just tossing it out there, but why would someone solo roam in WvW when you can just queue up SPVP and get a very similar play style but without all the running? Is there something I’m missing?

And the rewards in PVP are quite nice now, can’t say the same for WvW outside of big clashes of zergs where the bags are flowing.

Kinda true but roaming in wvw and spvp generally will have a lot of different builds.

If you are looking for solo roaming come down to the lower tiers, there are tons of solo/2-3 man groups.

I solo roam on my necro because I know people will be drawn to my lack of escapes and come for a fight. But I also kill yaks and take camps and communicate where enemy zergs are going.

Sometimes I get annoyed fighting certain builds but generally I have a good time, and I always consider it a win if they need to bring a group to kill me.

I may go to thief roaming anyway, though, as I can essentially do the same thing with less risk.

Lower tier servers are a lot better for solo roaming, higher up, everyone run in packs of 5+

WvW is like a random playground, you never know what you run into and what will happen. Yeah running back after being zerged over can be pain but it’s hilarious when I can get whole/most of that zerg chase me in vain. I even carry my troll gear for those days I don’t feel like flipping camps or fighting fellow wvwers. Escaping impossible rocks my boat.

I played few spvp games a while ago, I got bored really quickly. There is so much more variety in builds in wvw that makes spvp look like the most boring cookbook in the world. No rules in wvw to follow, I can do what I want.

There is nothing fair in wvw, it’s 1 vs 1 vs 1 game mode, anything goes and I love the unpredicatability. I could be winning a fight, boom random doe can rally my enemies or enemy from one server decides to help someone from another to kill me. It simply makes the game more fun for me.

Btw, except for pvp availability, I have no reasons to play pvp especially as a thief. Anet based so much in thief class around stealth and made a pvp mode centered around point capping. Oh, I need to condi cleanse, I can CnD. Oh wait if I do that I lose the point.. I am way too stubborn to play so badly designed game mode.

I run around solo, in small groups or with zerg, usually with S/D, SB or P/P cos nothing is better than perma stealthing with double pistols.

Dee Jay.2460:

It seems like roaming solo is a dying art. I can’t recall the last time I actually met an enemy player roaming around the battlefield by himself.

I see plenty of roamers though…in packs of 2, 3…5. It seems like everyone has given up on fair fights and prefers either running or completely overwhelming their enemies.

A shame really since solo-roaming used to be kind of fun. But now it feels like nobody dares leave the house without an easy backup.

Why? so the crazily OP’ed thieves can smack you down before you can even retaliate? Lets face it, most dont solo anymore due to the fact that thieves have the ability to unload massive DPS then stealth and remove any condi, then rinse and repeat until enemy dies. There is absolutely NO fun in trying to kill someone that keep cowering in the shadow. I believe it is because of this that people roam with 2 or more.

I solo roam regularly, using whatever profession I want. I most often just flip the supply camps, but sometimes solo attack enemy keeps and towers (killing guards is the easy part, building a ram alone takes a it of time). Of course a snipe a dolyak or enemy sentry if I can or capture the bloodlust for our server. Providing scouting information is perhaps the most vital role though. Since I am a PPT focused player, I am not much into dueling.

I am most often on my engineer. I play hybrid power rifle with 3 kits. My build is good all-rounder, not optimal for anything, but very versatile for almost any situation. I have never seen any solo roaming engineer using same build. Enemy engineers are rare and those rare engis I see are almost all running with healing turret + pistol/shield, usually condition spamming bunkers. Sometimes I meet a static discharge (SD) rifle engi, but those run in small groups or in zergs.

Almost all enemy solo roamers are thieves (D/P and P/D being currently most popular, but S/D, S/P and P/P are quite common as well) with mesmers (usually PU mesmer) and warriors (always using greatsword mobility build, or sword/sword + longbow condition) come distant second. I feel pity against the solo roaming rangers as they are so easy kills, but in small groups a zerker LB ranger is dangerous indeed. Necromancers used to be pain in the kitten and I would still consider a condimancer as a hard counter against condi engi (necro should win assuming equal skill level), but power rifle has good chances against any necromancers. All the solo roaming elementalists are bunkers and fights against them tend to be long, unless you get the burst through at start.

Recently meditation guardians have become increasingly popular in roaming. Some are using the perma burn build, which does really good DPS and still has mobility. But still solo roaming guardians are rare as hen’s teeth.

Like others have pointed: WvWvW is not fair. I do not see anything evil in running for help or fleeing back to own keep or tower, but I really despise ganking groups. By ganking groups I mean small teams, who e.g. flip a sentry and then stealth nearby to gank enemy solo roamers in group. All these deserve to be trampled by a zerg. So if somebody ganks me by a group, I almost invariably will tell their location in map chat and TeamSpeak and soon I am collecting loot bags from their corpses. A very good tactic is to act as bait and lure enemy into your larger group. Works pretty much every time. Those who play ambush tactic, deserve to taste their own medicine. Luring also works very well against enemy zergs. Nothing is better than to lure entire enemy group 30+ into unfavorable terrain and have own zerg stacked into small pile, so they look like a smaller group or hide behind a corner and veil in.

Certain professions and builds are inherently stronger in 1 vs 1 than others. If you are running for example a perplexity engineer/thief/mesmer/etc or PU mesmer, mobility warrior, P/D thief or some other cheese build, do NOT fool yourself. You do NOT necessarily have better skills if you can beat most others in 1 vs 1. Most people who enter WvWvW are not even geared for 1 vs 1, but have built their character for large scale battles. You win because of the build, not because of your skills.

Many people might think solo roaming is dead in top tiers. But at least here in EU tier 1, there is often very little players on the map during morning and closer to noon. There is almost nothing else than small scale roaming at those hours.

Lord Jim.3971:

This seems to come up in every single post about roaming in WvW and I just can’t believe its true. EU doesn’t really have “havoc groups” but what we do is probably pretty close and fights are usually a procession until you are outnumbered thus killing soloers beyond getting stacks or discouraging ones that are being idiots from continued stupidity is a waste of time. I can’t believe that there is a large enough number of “organised” groups out there that do those things to justify the amount of times this complaint comes up.

In our current matchup, even fully upgraded camps with mercs had ad leats three players in it. Not to mention the 5-7 player groups that only fought smaller numbers (in canon range, of course). Some servers have the manpower.

I solo roam all the time, but often not by choice because I’m on ET

I have to answer this “Queue pvp is you want to solo raom” thing a lot more than I need to. Having spent the first 6 months I played this game purely in PvP and then later on branching out to other areas (WvW & PvE) I can see a clear difference in the combat within WvW & PvP. For the builds I run in WvW there is no PvP equivalent, the stats and play style get changed too much.

In WvW you come across a HUGE variety of builds & stat combos, whereas in PvP the majority of people are running these easy to play cookie cutter builds. Now there is nothing wrong with the meta imo but I would never run it because it would be like me cheating on my maths test by copying someone else’s.

Now by solo roaming I mean that I intentionally put myself in an outnumbered scenario to test my skill. I also have a set of runes that I use and always abide by.
If someone engages me (1v1) I don’t stomp them, but if they stomp me..next time I see them they get stomped xD. For outnumbered fights If I win I stomp all but 1 of them just to show a bit of respect.