Guild Wars 2

I’m very rarely not solo roaming

Seems too lopsided. Either hard counter them or be hard countered. And regardless, they usually have friends.

Though once in a while there’s a truly skilled player that flat out kills me and sometimes even with the same class/build, and those are the moments where I get encouraged to “get gud” or whatnot. Especially if they don’t stomp me or something. Then it’s just like “come back when you get better nub”.

I’d do it more often but in many matchups you simply can’t. Too many Perplexity heroes showing off their mad skillz.

I guess it also has to do with some classes and builds just being better at roaming. Given the ascended grind, it may not be feasible for people to craft a set just for roaming unless they really like it. It can get expensive, like I can’t imagine a roaming guardian without speed or (preferably) traveler runes. Yes, you can make do with exotics, but I assume a lot of roamers care about min-max (dem food, sigil, and guard stacks).

When I solo roam, it is for the purpose of capping camps, killing /escorting dollies, upgrading towers/keeps and scouting on the map for whoever is commanding. I will also run supply to the commanders group if needed, join them for a fight or two and then go back to roaming.

For that reason, I am often not running a purpose built roaming build, as that is useless if one is needed to help the group/zerg. As such, if I see a group of thieves, or even one thief or a PU mesmer, I will run rather than fight as I know it is unlikely I will prevail, and then have to spend a whole heap of wasted time running back from spawn. If I know there is someone coming to help, I will hang around and try to prevent capping until they get there.

I don’t play WvW for 1:1 fights. I would go to PvP if that was the gaming experience I was after. I play WvW for the team effort and for the server, which I presume it was designed for.

1. Newer players come to the roaming scene having watched youtube vids of experience roamers wrecking 2+ other players and have a weird idea of what it means to be a roamer. As a result everyone just picks the hottest builds and protects guard/sigil stacks at all costs.

2. Playerbase is declining.

3. Roamers possibly aren’t organizing themselves that well anymore.

I pretty much always solo roam. If I’m having a hard time getting some opponents, I just go to EB, tap a keep, wait outside of spawn, and pray it’s not a zerg LOL. You will just about always get a few 1-3v1 scenarios though. Most server’s commanders aren’t stupid enough to throw the zerg at something without sending at least one scout, but there are severs that it seems people are literally afraid of engaging 1v1. When you’re up against those servers (not mentioning my experiences with WHICH ones as I’m not here to start flame wars) just bring speed buffs and ccs. Not the most fun kills but hey, they’re dead and that’s what counts.

You can solo roam in the lower tiers and still play focus on objectives, killing the enemies you see in your path. In the upper tiers people do not like to 1v1. Most of the time you have to run with a group to be successful. When you try to 1v1 in t1 players tend to run until they outnumber you and that does not guarantee that they will win. Alot of the t1 roamers have no skills.

Ulion.5476:

You can solo roam in the lower tiers and still play focus on objectives, killing the enemies you see in your path. In the upper tiers people do not like to 1v1. Most of the time you have to run with a group to be successful. When you try to 1v1 in t1 players tend to run until they outnumber you and that does not guarantee that they will win. Alot of the t1 roamers have no skills.

I recently moved to T1 because I was beginning to feel like I was spending more time running around the map than finding fights in the lower tiers and this was probably the biggest culture shock for me. I won’t comment on skill, because I have met some pretty bad groups and some highly skilled groups in all tiers and personally believe that the lower tier = better roamers equation is a myth. However, if you are solo in T1 you have to be prepared for a high frequency of players who will try to bait you into zergs or run mobility builds to keep you in combat while their 5 guild mates chase you down. I guess these tactics can be discouraging to solo players, but really half the fun of WvW roaming vs sitting in sPvP is becoming savvy to tricks like these and developing tactics and strategies to avoid or counter these situations.

Well skill varies no matter why tier you are in. When I was in t2 it was common to see a few dueling around south camp. Most of the time I do not interfere with a 1v1 unless someone is about to die.

considering solo roaming really means roaming around with more then one friend to back you up.. jumping on a player that is really solo roaming. i say you can stick that solo roaming idea im off to pvp..

I roam 90% of the time, the other 10% mostly being reset night/the weekend.

Deniara Devious.3948:

I feel pity against the solo roaming rangers as they are so easy kills

Bowbear rangers have so much to answer for.

I suppose at least they have made people more willing to engage me, even if half of them just end up running.

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

considering solo roaming really means roaming around with more then one friend to back you up.. jumping on a player that is really solo roaming. i say you can stick that solo roaming idea im off to pvp..

I really wouldn’t go to spvp for solo battles, spvp people have no respect for 1 vs 1

I sometimes roam on my warrior but its not easy feat to pull off, my best win was this:
I engaged necro and a thief, i swaped to my hammer wich has 3 crit hits after swap(forgot the sigil name) i had adrenaline full i killed the thief in 5-6 sec, i engaged the necro by the time i downed him the thief was almost up and i stomped him just in time,i had 40% hp, he managed to get me to 20% than i killed him too, i hid near some rocks a mesmer passed i jumped on him and stunlocked him and downed him, at this moment i had 10% hp, after that a warrior chased me but i had more mobility so while i was running i got to 100% hp, downed him also, i had sweat on my hands but was worth it, but the truth is, i really didn’t like fighting 2-3 people at once.

My best overall and most fun fight was with my thief friend we engaged in a battle 2v2v2 that lasted for 8 min, that was the most fun battle because everyone was skilled everyone was kiting when low and everyone knew who to fight.We were Deso vs Sfr vs BB, at the end both of us were standing , sfr had 1 who ran away and bb were dead, really fun fight, thats why i think duo roaming is the best.

I stopped solo roaming last year, because there’s no reward for it and you always get outnumbered by people who are worse than you and win through numbers alone

#blobbing

I play SPvP nowadays, teams are ‘more or less’ balanced, so you can get a fair fight and you are guaranteed to get a fight.

In WvW you can roam for hours and only encounter 30 people blobs (and have to run all across the map to lose them). In SPvP, you wait 30 seconds and you have your match.

What’s more, in SPvP there is no power creep: no guard leech, no applied fortitude, no food buffs, no sigil stacking, no ascended (usually used by PvE players to migitate their lack of skill).

Small man roaming used to be fun. Now it makes me want to put my fist through my monitor unless I have the right comp to deal with this condition spamming bullkitten, most of which comes from just having a few condi classes auto attack you or lack telegraphs anywhere near that of a power build.

I loved outnumbered fights , but Anet decided to nerf critical damage and do nothing to really bring condition damage into balance, forcing these little kids who can’t see their big numbers to now switch to condi builds (lolol perplex condi thief with new confusion trait ty Anet). They ruined WvW even further and I’ve lost all faith that they have any resemblence of a kittening clue of what they are doing. IMO there is one thing they care about anymore, and that’s the gem store.

So thank you Anet, thank you for taking a game that had great combat mechanics and teamwork in WvW and turning it into a blobby karma train piece of kitten that is so dumb downed with condi builds that I can’t even roam happily. I hope the plethora of magic school kids you attracted by letting them kill me with condis while sitting in stealth (and regening, getting protection and ageis too lol) makes you a lot of profits in the gem stores when mommy lets them use her credit card.

Solo roam is no longer viable in top tier servers. You can’t do anything significant alone cause the very second a sentry disappear or a camp get crossswords 5-6 enemies will head there.

Dragonax.6487:

Solo roam is no longer viable in top tier servers. You can’t do anything significant alone cause the very second a sentry disappear or a camp get crossswords 5-6 enemies will head there.

This isn’t true in EU. I play on Desolation, current rank #1, tier 1 server.

You just need to time your solo captures well. Timing really is the key for pretty much anything, also for large scale battles.

I really recommend to run a build, which can kill all the camp NPCs quickly alone. If it takes more than 2 minutes to kill NPCs, you are at huge risk to get stomped by enemy roaming group or even entire zerg.

Sirendor.1394:

I stopped solo roaming last year, because there’s no reward for it and you always get outnumbered by people who are worse than you and win through numbers alone

#blobbing

I play SPvP nowadays, teams are ‘more or less’ balanced, so you can get a fair fight and you are guaranteed to get a fight.

In WvW you can roam for hours and only encounter 30 people blobs (and have to run all across the map to lose them). In SPvP, you wait 30 seconds and you have your match.

What’s more, in SPvP there is no power creep: no guard leech, no applied fortitude, no food buffs, no sigil stacking, no ascended (usually used by PvE players to migitate their lack of skill).

While I agree with guard stacks introducing power creed since they are not available to new players for a while, things like food are available to anyone. Stacking sigils are available in pvp too. Ascended takes time to get but you really notice a difference in full exotic vs full ascended, other than that the difference is really small.

What’s the point?
Most of the time you’ll be facing either Mesmers or Thieves which will just stealth and run away if you get them low.

i constantly solo roam

but then 3-5 people kill me after i take 2 camps and kill the person who shows up at the 3rd

can be quite frustrating

Sirendor.1394:

What’s more, in SPvP there is no power creep: no guard leech, no applied fortitude, no food buffs, no sigil stacking, no ascended (usually used by PvE players to migitate their lack of skill).

Yes the PvP team has worked hard to try and get people out of WvW and into PvP.

Solo roaming is my main source of fun in GW2, 90% of my 1200 wxp levels are from solo roaming

yes you need to master your profession and get a mobile build with anti-condi tools.

yes you will meet tons of thieves and mesmers, can be pain but once you get used to them you can take on the world :P, i can say that i was trained by Mesmers and thieves, i know almost everything they can do without ever playing one :P , just because i faced too much of them.

along the way you can solo camps/towers and maybe even keeps (tried once and got the lord to 20% before the usual :P ).

I love to solo roam, it’s just difficult finding other solos to duel. I frequently solo flip camps and such, but I often see 2 person teams that complement each other well (guard/ele, thief/anything, war/mes, etc) or death squad havoc groups that steamroll me the second I’m spotted.

Had a very interesting last day of the tournament, though. A thief was taking out sentries in our BL so people went and tracked her down. When we approached she backed off, /bowed, and we took turns dueling her. She was quite good, out of 6 of us only 2 were able to take her down, one a mes and one a warrior. The mesmer fight went on for ages. The warrior fight was over in an instant. The thief was a high stealth blind spammer, so while the mesmer was able to deal with it using clones, most of us couldn’t get the blinds off to land many hits before she’d stealth out and heal. The warrior fight that ended quickly simply started with an F1 hammer smash and ended with hundred blades.

Duels like that, especially with spectators, are rare but fun — and good practice, too.

My experiences of solo roaming the last few weeks are:
1. Someone engages you, starts to lose and then runs into a group of guards and doesn’t want to fight you anymore without the NPC’s backing him up.
2. You fight someone and then get overrun by 2 other people who come out of nowhere.
3. You fight someone, they start losing losing, run away, come back with the zerg and then start to /laugh.
4. Condis and cheese builds all over the place (condi ele myself), still… they’re everywhere!

Tychondus.4821:

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.

If specs/classes currently viable for solo play were suddenly nerfed to the ground would you see solo gameplay open up for wvw? I think the likely answer would be no, it would probably kill it altogether.

One of the big reasons people group up is to take advantage the most IMBA thing in WvW: the downstate and rezzing, something solo players have no access too. The other reason is that Anet has made it incredibly hard to get kills even in 1v1 situations because of how tanky players are allowed to get. Its getting to the point that battles are being decided more on having that one extra guy over skillful play, basically mini-zerging.

If you want to see how refreshing quick kills and outnumbered fights are, go to EotM and focus on fear/knocking people off ledges. That’s the most fun Ive had solo-playing in WvW recently (well, at least until EotM devolved into a brainless karma train)

Solo roaming can be very productive to your server if done efficiently.

I was yesterday successfully capped enemy keep a total of three times so that I started it alone. I killed all the guards and started to build the ram. I way pointed back to get more supplies and then starting ramming the gate, when the ram was finished. Sometimes one other player from map came for help. At one point I was spotted by enemy and ram got destroyed, but I came back at a better moment. I had made sure they keep gets no supplies, so lacked supplies to repair the gate. I called in random guys from the map chat. We ninja capped the enemy keep with just 5 guys, with one of us being outside whole time as he could not find the way in (he doesn’t play WvWvW often). Enemy had lots of superior siege inside and one of their players was still sitting on superior arrow cart when the keep got flipped. One of the ninja cappings happened at the busiest prime time, when your zerg was clashing with enemy = basically keeping them busy. Solo ramming and taking the towers at prime time is everyday, but capping keeps like that feels so good. I still cannot believe this is happening in EU tier 1. I am always shaking my head when I see enemy to use 2-3 superior rams and 20+ man group to take a tower. I usually use just one normal ram, as it is faster to build that alone.

Maybe one day I can solo Stonemist castle in prime time. I surely tried it during the gold leagues and our zerg got inside after I did the dirty work and we capped it multiple times that way, but still that was zerg involved. I know enemy has been spying our TeamSpeak (some spies already got banned). But if you don’t tell it there until the gates are open, the enemy rarely has enough time to react and prevent capping. Yes, solo players get mowed over by enemy zergs, but if one player can keep entire enemy blob busy for 1-2 minutes, then their server probably deserves to lose for being so inefficient. One of my fondest moments has been succesfully solo defending a tower and managing to stay alive and prevent capping until our own zerg came for rescue.

I yesterday measured, it takes my engineer exactly 60 seconds to kill all the normal supply camp guards + 2 dolyaks (3 events in one). My ranger can do it almost as fast, but my ranger is now using sub optimal gear, so I think ranger could be as fast.. and yes can do it with a lame bear longbow/greatsword build. I think thief, warrior and ele can probably do it even faster – ele has the burst and dps in game. It often takes longer time to capture a camp if other random players join in as the NPC start wandering around.

It is also very important to be mobile to move from A to B like a wind. I have at at best capped 3 supply camps to my server within 1 tick. That gives server 15 points per tick = more than 1 tower. Not to mention all those sniped dolyaks and sentries.

Our server, Desolation, is famous for stomping (#desostomp) and we get roughly 40% of our total match up points from stomping, so letting your server always have bloodlust is essential. The bloodlust can be very difficult to solo cap, basically you need 3-5 really good guys if enemy groups try to stop it. Sadly the introduction of the ruins made solo roaming much harder. I would jump from joy if Arenanet would remove the borderland bloodlust (power creep) and give us the lake back (revert all the changes done to borderlands in September 17th 2013 patch). I still feel Arenanet is trying to force the capture the node mode to their player base. We already got spvp/tpvp with conquest. Those who like it, can go there, but keep that stuff out of WvWvW.

I think sometimes a solo player can bring server more points than entire zerg. Just play for the points!

roamzero.9486:

Tychondus.4821:

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.

If specs/classes currently viable for solo play were suddenly nerfed to the ground would you see solo gameplay open up for wvw? I think the likely answer would be no, it would probably kill it altogether.

One of the big reasons people group up is to take advantage the most IMBA thing in WvW: the downstate and rezzing, something solo players have no access too. The other reason is that Anet has made it incredibly hard to get kills even in 1v1 situations because of how tanky players are allowed to get. Its getting to the point that battles are being decided more on having that one extra guy over skillful play, basically mini-zerging.

If you want to see how refreshing quick kills and outnumbered fights are, go to EotM and focus on fear/knocking people off ledges. That’s the most fun Ive had solo-playing in WvW recently (well, at least until EotM devolved into a brainless karma train)

Yeah, so much this.

Run with a tanky Guardian and suddenly you’re immortal. Even a full glass cannon can’t pressure a tank Guardian enough to prevent him from reviving his team-mates.

Downed-State is the most kittened mechanic ever in a video game.

Also the amount of hackers these days makes it discouraging to solo roam

Dee Jay.2460:

roamzero.9486:

Tychondus.4821:

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.

If specs/classes currently viable for solo play were suddenly nerfed to the ground would you see solo gameplay open up for wvw? I think the likely answer would be no, it would probably kill it altogether.

One of the big reasons people group up is to take advantage the most IMBA thing in WvW: the downstate and rezzing, something solo players have no access too. The other reason is that Anet has made it incredibly hard to get kills even in 1v1 situations because of how tanky players are allowed to get. Its getting to the point that battles are being decided more on having that one extra guy over skillful play, basically mini-zerging.

If you want to see how refreshing quick kills and outnumbered fights are, go to EotM and focus on fear/knocking people off ledges. That’s the most fun Ive had solo-playing in WvW recently (well, at least until EotM devolved into a brainless karma train)

Yeah, so much this.

Run with a tanky Guardian and suddenly you’re immortal. Even a full glass cannon can’t pressure a tank Guardian enough to prevent him from reviving his team-mates.

Downed-State is the most kittened mechanic ever in a video game.

BS. My 3.3k Armor Guard with 1200 Healing can’t do kitten against Condition Spammers.
Shout Cleric build.

The condi-meta changes and WvW player attrition have greatly cut down on roaming. I used to do it all the time but now I either skirmish or try to form up into a havoc group. I just got tired of running away from zergs, getting beat down by 4+ players or getting loaded up with conditions while the other player avoids a direct engagement. Even if you find a half decent fight, most other roamers are so bunker the fights generally end when other player(s) show up.

Roaming build diversity has just gone to hell thanks to direct damage nerfs and the rise of condi-bunkers. If you try to run something effective other than a bunker build, it is too compromised to be effective in most cases. There is no decent direct damage bunker roamer build that I am aware of.

In answer to a question upthread.

Some of us solo roam because Anet forced us to, if we want to do map completion. I applaud the class and sportsmanship of those who (especially when it’s SUPER obvious a player is headed for a POI or Vista) just leave us the heck alone. I wish we were allowed to message other players (the opposing ones) in the game, I swear I’d give them a big thank you and “well done sir”.

And a huge boo on the poor sportsmanship of those who stomp the single player with 5-15 player groups. Wow, what a massive accomplishment that is. So much skill and effort required there (there aren’t enough rollie eyes).

If you just leave us the heck alone, we’ll map clear as quick as we can and never darken your HardCore WvW points game again.

On review of forum. A month is “old”? Wow, do we have the patience and attention span of 2 year olds?

Skye Terrier.3805:

In answer to a question upthread.

Some of us solo roam because Anet forced us to, if we want to do map completion. I applaud the class and sportsmanship of those who (especially when it’s SUPER obvious a player is headed for a POI or Vista) just leave us the heck alone. I wish we were allowed to message other players (the opposing ones) in the game, I swear I’d give them a big thank you and “well done sir”.

And a huge boo on the poor sportsmanship of those who stomp the single player with 5-15 player groups. Wow, what a massive accomplishment that is. So much skill and effort required there (there aren’t enough rollie eyes).

If you just leave us the heck alone, we’ll map clear as quick as we can and never darken your HardCore WvW points game again.

I had an enemy uplevel in WvW just trying to get from his side of the map to our side to get a Juvenile Salamander Drake. My party mate killed him thinking it was funny, so I left the party, re-invited the enemy, and escorted him all the way to my spawn for the Drake. Even politely asked several server mates that got him into downed state not to stomp so he could get the pet. All-in-all, I got him all the way there and even saved him from the monsters before he WP’d out. I just finished mapping on 1 char, and it was tedious… Don’t think I will be doing it on my other 7. Also, I hate PvE.

I don’t know why this has been bumped, but most groups will not hesitate to chase and down a solo roamer in many cases, so I don’t care if anyone else adds in to make it a fair fight, even when they get zerged down; sometimes it’s their just deserts.

And the Condi Meta? It’s so out of hand that 7/10 of the time, I reckon you will bump into any Class running a Condi Build that applies so many Conditions for a sustained period, that the classes with the least Cleanses will just melt.

Speaking of roaming, I recently ran across a condi engineer using what I assume is this food:

Prickly Pear Pie

+40% Condition duration
33% Chance to steal life on critical

He melted me. It’s a new food made from cactus introduced with the Dry Top area, and it’s insane. The only other lifesteal foods, of which one was my favorite until the direct damage nerf and rise of the condi metas, Omnomberry Pie, was a fantastic food. Unfortunately, I haven’t used any food other than Lemongrass Poultry/Poultry Leek since, because even at the maximum rate that my warrior can cleanse using quick breathing, mending, shake it off, and cleansing ire, it’s not enough* because they just get reapplied over and over.

*Yes I am aware of sure-footed+Berserker’s Stance, but if you expect a battle to last less than 10 seconds you had better be sure you can kill the other person in 3 or 4 hits. Which, for direct damage dealers, has become increasingly difficult against condi bunkers.

Roaming is a coin flip. I had a fantastic fight with a guard the other day that lasted a good minute or so, and while I won I would not have been upset at all if I didn’t. He left me with ~1k health at the stomp and I saluted afterwards. Unfortunately, roaming has typically resulted in running into a condi meta of one type or another that typically keeps their distance (really, part of what makes a condi meta work) and oftentimes I can’t prevent/cleanse/allow the conditions to wear off fast enough to be able to even put a dent in them.

I also find it a bit ironic that much of the food introduced with Dry Top has been offensive in nature instead of defensive given the stats of nomad gear and such. There’s one new food that I would actually love to use more often after having crafted some*, but simply can’t until I can find a way to better deal with conditions other than reducing their duration by 36/40%.

*The food is Plate of Roasted Cactus by the way, if anyone’s interested. +100 Ferocity, 33% chance to gain might on crit with an internal CD of 1 sec.

All of these new foods are bizarrely account-bound on craft, though, so I don’t expect to see too many people running around with them — yet. I don’t think Anet will leave it that way as Chef is a way for many people to earn income and these are definitely valuable foods, expensive to make no less, so we’ll see what happens. There’s already a huge backlash on the fossil/ambrite weapon RNG and non-tradeability of fossils or weapons, so I expect to see that change as less and less people are hanging around Dry Top and therefore willing to pump the Zephyrite tier influence to the level required to be able to buy the recipes.

TL;DR, sorry, went off on a bit of a tangent there.

Otaur.9268:

Skye Terrier.3805:

In answer to a question upthread.

Some of us solo roam because Anet forced us to, if we want to do map completion. I applaud the class and sportsmanship of those who (especially when it’s SUPER obvious a player is headed for a POI or Vista) just leave us the heck alone. I wish we were allowed to message other players (the opposing ones) in the game, I swear I’d give them a big thank you and “well done sir”.

And a huge boo on the poor sportsmanship of those who stomp the single player with 5-15 player groups. Wow, what a massive accomplishment that is. So much skill and effort required there (there aren’t enough rollie eyes).

If you just leave us the heck alone, we’ll map clear as quick as we can and never darken your HardCore WvW points game again.

I had an enemy uplevel in WvW just trying to get from his side of the map to our side to get a Juvenile Salamander Drake. My party mate killed him thinking it was funny, so I left the party, re-invited the enemy, and escorted him all the way to my spawn for the Drake. Even politely asked several server mates that got him into downed state not to stomp so he could get the pet. All-in-all, I got him all the way there and even saved him from the monsters before he WP’d out. I just finished mapping on 1 char, and it was tedious… Don’t think I will be doing it on my other 7. Also, I hate PvE.

You are one of the gentlemen then! I have had one of you help me in Edge of the Mists (Xmas version for Wintersday IIRC).

But I’m confused. Whenever I’m in WvW (as little as possible), there’s no way to talk to the “enemy”. How did you invite him? If there were only a way to say “PLEASE! Just let me get to this Vista and this POI and then you can smash me to your hearts’ content”! I’d be ever so grateful.

Not that you’re wrong, but why don’t you like PvE? The colors, locations, detail, content, everything has so much MORE to it.

I mean WvW is basically glorified “Capture the Flag” and kind of a one trick pony, isn’kitten Whomever has the biggest population wins. To be fair, I’ve only been in it for a few days, after playing “regular” PVE for almost 2 years.

If I had known that it was such a pain, and part of map completion requirements, I would have started it long ago! As it is, it took me probably 6 months to even get to know the game well enough to figure out achievements and so on.

Why did “isn’t” repost as “kitten”?

Skye Terrier.3805:

But I’m confused. Whenever I’m in WvW (as little as possible), there’s no way to talk to the “enemy”. How did you invite him? If there were only a way to say “PLEASE! Just let me get to this Vista and this POI and then you can smash me to your hearts’ content”! I’d be ever so grateful.

Typically I block them to get their name/account name, type it out in /whisper, and then unblock them.

I had a situation with an uplevel thief during the tourney that was desperately trying to get the yak kills achievement done in the last few hours (this was, of course, before people realized you could still do the achievements for days after the tourney ended). I had repeatedly killed her at SE camp trying to kill yaks, until she stood at the top in the invul zone and whispered if she could just kill 6 yaks coming out of SE camp to get it and she’d be on her way. Our towers were fully supplied, our hills were T3, so I said sure. I told people in map chat not to worry about the disappearing yaks from SE camp and kept an eye on her to make sure she was only killing yaks — forgive me for being a bit distrustful, but a tactic like that could allow her to call her buddies to let them know SE camp was free for the taking or some such and it was a tourney after all. She got her achievement, thanked me, and left.

Honestly, while I’m typically of a “red is dead” mindset, stuff like that makes me feel good.

CrimsonNeonite.1048:

I don’t know why this has been bumped, but most groups will not hesitate to chase and down a solo roamer in many cases, so I don’t care if anyone else adds in to make it a fair fight, even when they get zerged down; sometimes it’s their just deserts.

..

“…sometimes it’s their just [SIC] deserts….”.

Just out of curiosity, what did a person do to deserve that just because they happen to be alone? As I explained, a lot of us are merely trying to do map clear and we swear to you, by all that’s holy, you’ll get rid of us a lot FASTER if you’d just let us finish that.

As I also said, it’s usually quite obvious when another player IS trying to do map clear as they’re generally heading toward a POI or Vista.

Why do they need to have “just desserts” for that?

As I also explained, usually we steer clear and give other loners (of the opposing team) a wide birth. It’s pretty obvious when two opposing players pass each other and are giving each other that courtesy.

Yesterday, I was about 3 steps from getting up to get a vista and someone just HAD to come over and kill me. They just couldn’t wait until I got the darned thing, that’s being a very poor sport. CLEARLY I have no ranking and am helpless so they could have waited 2 seconds for me to get the stupid vista to kill me if they HAD to. But these guys were on the road (presumably going to a battle I could see going on a bit further north on the map), but they veered off their group to come over.

Since I was THIS CLOSE to the vista, and obviously not part of the enemy going to, or holding down the fort at the attack site, there was no real strategic need to kill me, other than out of sheer vindictiveness.

I think a lot of people forget that there are actual, you know PEOPLE on the other side of the monitor and not some imagined jerk that they have to “get”.

Ark Bladesteele.2943:

Skye Terrier.3805:

But I’m confused. Whenever I’m in WvW (as little as possible), there’s no way to talk to the “enemy”. How did you invite him? If there were only a way to say “PLEASE! Just let me get to this Vista and this POI and then you can smash me to your hearts’ content”! I’d be ever so grateful.

Typically I block them to get their name/account name, type it out in /whisper, and then unblock them.

I had a situation with an uplevel thief during the tourney that was desperately trying to get the yak kills achievement done in the last few hours (this was, of course, before people realized you could still do the achievements for days after the tourney ended). I had repeatedly killed her at SE camp trying to kill yaks, until she stood at the top in the invul zone and whispered if she could just kill 6 yaks coming out of SE camp to get it and she’d be on her way. Our towers were fully supplied, our hills were T3, so I said sure. I told people in map chat not to worry about the disappearing yaks from SE camp and kept an eye on her to make sure she was only killing yaks — forgive me for being a bit distrustful, but a tactic like that could allow her to call her buddies to let them know SE camp was free for the taking or some such and it was a tourney after all. She got her achievement, thanked me, and left.

Honestly, while I’m typically of a “red is dead” mindset, stuff like that makes me feel good.

Oh thanks so much for the tip. I didn’t know there was a way to communicate with the “enemy” at all.

Oh and Crimson. I bumped it. I couldn’t find another thread that as closely matched my comments/complaints.

In most online forums a month old thread is a fairly new, and depending on the subject matter can last for months (for example political/social debate subjects). Ergo, not “old”. Unless of course one is still measuring one’s own age in a very small number of years I guess.

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.

I do so all the time as a staff ele of all thing.

After 2 years everybody learned how to not die. So, solo means: Usain Bolt-warr, shaman flying staff-ele, 2xveil PU-mehmer, birds slayer-thief, back running-ranger, holy trinity-engi (fire, conf., torment), teleporting guard (meditation) and master of spite-necro.

Skye Terrier.3805:

Not that you’re wrong, but why don’t you like PvE? The colors, locations, detail, content, everything has so much MORE to it.

I mean WvW is basically glorified “Capture the Flag” and kind of a one trick pony, isn’kitten Whomever has the biggest population wins. To be fair, I’ve only been in it for a few days, after playing “regular” PVE for almost 2 years.

I’m not the one you directed this question at, but I’ll answer for my part.

I played PVE almost exclusively for a year before I “found” WvW. I had the preconception that WvW was Team Fortress/Call Of Duty set in GW2 surroundings, and I haven’t enjoyed those types of game modes in the past. It wasn’t until a guild mate took me to do some JPs in WvW and I had to get the vistas and POIs for world completion that I got to see there was a strategic side to it, and that’s what I fell in love with.

The reason I’ve pretty much stopped doing PVE is because compared to WvW it is so horribly stale. When I log into WvW, I never know what’s going to happen, who will be there, what I’ll end up doing, and so on. Conversely, every AC run is the same: the same stacking, the exact same bosses with the exact same moves. We all know what’s going to happen next to the last detail, we don’t care one iota about the story, and we are there simply for the loot.

The world bosses are no more enticing, now more than ever as they spawn at a specific time. It’s like fighting a pixelated cron script, there’s nothing dynamic about it at all. The Living Story is nothing more than “what do we farm now to get a chance at a big box which may or may not contain the weapon skin of the week”, slapped together with Gem Store promotions.

The PVE world is gorgeous, there are many awesome locations. I’ve seen most if not all of them while doing world completion and completing all the jumping puzzle achievements. But there is very little to do there. More is not better if it’s just more of the same.

My point was that Gankers deserved to be Zerged as that is Karma for chasing after Roamers in bigger groups, it usually happens against Emotefarers Rest.

It’s a PvP zone anyway, so anything goes, some people will let you get your World Completion, but a Red Tag = Dead and a lootbag to most.

I like to engage solo roamers (or even 2-5 players) and then drag them around the map as they try to kill my support built staff ele. Or drag them into guards.

Another favourite is to set a stealth trap near our keep to catch the annoying mechanic that allows a solo perma stealth thief to tag a keep:-)

I still do very often and I’m in a T1 server where 95% of the people around me are either in a zerg or with a havoc squad ranging from 5 – 15.

As someone who roams on a Necromancer for the most part, it can get frustrating. I’m a seasoned WvW’er and know my in’s and out’s, I can engage and escape but when you run in to groups larger than 5 it’s almost impossible to survive unless you have a ton of mobility or you’re near an allied structure.

I very, very rarely see other people solo. If I do, they’re in their own territory and I’m trespassing trying to take a camp, killing yaks, etc. I sometimes feel like I’m a part of a dying breed and it makes me proud in a strange sort of way… I may have a disadvantage by being solo while everyone else is in a group, but it gives me a nice rush knowing I have only myself to rely on when confronted with a conflict.

As for the “condition meta”, either I have somehow not noticed it, or a lot of people aren’t solo roaming and are just complaining about conditions… Most of the people I encounter while wandering around are actually power spec’d. There are still a good deal of condition spec’s, no doubt, but I’d say power/condition it would be 60/40. I think people just get more upset when they’re killed by conditions because condition builds are meant to overwhelm you and power builds are meant to incapacitate you.

And the people that chase me don’t really bother me. I of course hate being ganked repeatedly, no one likes it… But WvW isn’t meant to be fair and there are no rules. I respect a duel if I see it, I’ll let PvE’rs do their thing if they’re just doing map completion, often times I won’t attack uplevels at all, if someone waves at me or looks like they’re being playful I’ll usually do so as well… But when the time presents itself I will also use every dirty trick I have at my disposal. So don’t expect your opponents to play fair just because you think they should abide by some set of imaginary rules. People who emote at you after they jump you with 5 – 10 people make me cringe though… And on that note, you are not a “roamer” unless you are solo or with 1 – 2 other people absolute maximum. Anything more than 3 people and you’re either havoc or a gank squad so don’t get ahead of yourself thinking you’re a big risk taker if you’re always hiding behind 4 – 8 of your buddies.

Roaming in www is fun, but 99% of the time, you will only no match all of your opponents and win most of 1vs2 or 3+ if they are really bad, because you will mostly be fighting people who are really bad individually. It get boring after 1-2 hours and even more if you play like 6-10 hours everydays (i can play from work).
I used to mostly solo roam since the start of the game untill one year ago. Now i roam with my gf since almost 1 year (september 2013, i was on sfr between January 2013 and september, arborstone before that), but i still roam alone sometimes.
I was about to quit gw2 as it was really boring to roam alone before starting to play with her. 2 vs 3-5+ random www players is funnier.

If you really want to 1vs1, in EU you can go to obsidian sanctum arena. People there are usually a lot better than those you can catch alone or in a little group of 2-3 in www.
You can also play with an upscaled alt (don’t hit anything exept players and avoid group from your server, to lvl as slowly as possible. You can also move away without finishing the players that you beat), that way most of people in www will try to fight you in 1vs1 but still die lol

Dueling in Obsidian Sanctum is fun and a good alternative to solo-roaming, but thats mostly because of the unfair nature of roaming. Whenever i encounter someone alone, they either instantly multiply themselves by three and i have to flee, or second / third / fourth hero joins into a running fight they see from distance, surprising me and eventually killing me. Then you have the occasional wild zerg appearing… and other times people just put on their Nike Air and run like maniacs instead of fighting. Most annoying though is the fact that many people spam /laugh and hop around on your corpse when they got you down x vs 1 where x is a number greater than 1.
The Obsidian Sanctum has similar problems though, especially recently. Some servers have complete guilds specializing on hunting down and ganking people entering the OS, no matter if they want to duel or just want to do the jumping puzzle. last three weeks in Kodash´s matchup dueling was near impossible for me due to some very annoying guilds on Jade Sea, Desolation and Riverside. So you better be lucky and have servers with mature / right-minded people on them, or else your trip to Obsidian Sanctum will be a bitter one.
But beware anyway – the arena is often flooded with cheesebuilds. Bring -x% condi duration food.