Guild Wars 2

Gandara have come up with a simple solution to melee trains- the chaos pug mob.

Basically, all the pugs just spread out and chip away at those that don’t follow the leader perfectly, whilst being so spread out that the melee train only takes out a few players at a time. As soon as the train stops to rebuff, fear, interupts and other goodies all fall on the train causing it to miss buffs and chug chug some more.

It’s actually quite hilarious to watch a couple of semi organised guild melee trains become so frustrated at being unable to wipe the pugs that eventually they run away, leaving their dead behind.

And the best thing about the melee trains- lack of ranged firepower when attacking towers or keeps, whereas the Gandara pug chaos squad is almost entirely ranged and wipes anything that comes near the walls- and of course AC are deployed all over the place randomly.

:-)

Interesting!

I would like to see a video of it.

There has to be something better than the dumb melee zerg ball with constant stop for regrouping/stacking/buffing…

If you have space to move around, spreading out is a decent counter to melee trains.

I dunno, dodging out of the way and destroying the backline/chasing the tail sounds like a more useful counter. Scattering just makes little clumps that is easy for the melee pain train to run down and finish off.

I kinda agree with renmei. While scattering will let you pick off the straglers they are probably just pugs following the orgionized group that are not even on voice coms with the leader. The pain train will still crush whatever clump they target, the spreading out will just slow things down from 1 desicive blow to several slashes that pick off any gorups of players that clump up. I think the bigest impact scattering like that would have is that the pain train due to haveing a lower number of targets geting pounded on will have fewer rally opertunitys. One strength of the melee blob is anybody that goes down will probably rally almost instantly as someone gets killed every couple of seconds.

Gandara solution? Lol!

This type of counter to melee trains have been known for a long time. Piken Square even employed the scattering method against the mighty Red Guard successfully (after they tought us how to melee train, of course). Well, sometimes we wiped them. Most of the time it just hurt

The “problem” with the method is that it has to be organized chaos and each individual has to know how to stay alive and buff themselves. You have to do razor sharp cuts into the melee train to reduce their strength – not always easy with the chaos and all. Its constant movement to stay ahead of the melee train, a single mistake with stacking too many players in one area will mean a whole lot of dead people because the melee train suddenly got a place a to run to. It also assumes that you outnumber the train (by alot), making it ineffective in terms of overall strategy.

Dawdler.8521:

You have to do razor sharp cuts into the melee train to reduce their strength

Most guild groups get bored quickly / give up and try to find easier targets. The Kodash PUG Cloud™ does that since head start.

Look at that aweful ele’s stuff.

Well, your best bet as a guild group is to switch out the guardians’ hammers with great swords and use sth else than skill #1 and #2 sometimes hint, hint.

Fun stuff aside, I really hope there will someday be some viable alternative to the 2/3 melee train for (somewhat) organized raid groups. It really hurts variety in WvW, this being the easiest to play and strongest composition for groups of ~20+.

Vizunah been doing this back in the days to RG with 100 man blobs.

Don’t mind Victory, he is just catching up on current tactics Gandara have been employing this strategy for months against solo roamers and parties of upscales, works like a charm.

So the strategy is to just spread out and hope that the enemies choose to kill someone else first before eventually succumbing to ranged attacks?

That sounds like the “strategy” of a bunch of players each trying to use each other as bait to improve their own personal chances.

Stice.5204:

So the strategy is to just spread out and hope that the enemies choose to kill someone else first before eventually succumbing to ranged attacks?

That sounds like the “strategy” of a bunch of players each trying to use each other as bait to improve their own personal chances.

This popped into my head…

Just replace volcano with hammer train.

Gandara is a funny server, when you are alone, they would even use 180 cd elite, to ensure the kill on you, while they are with at least 3 people (should be easy enough without elites). When they are alone, and I surprise them, dropping their hp faster then they expected, they always run like headless chickens, STRAIGHT for their friends, to ambush you there. In the end, it’s a bit ridiculous cause as solo roamer you don’t stand a chance against ‘ganking addicted’ servers like gandara.

Basically running away, is the most viable strategy against lame tactics like this. And that in itself is lame. But if that’s how gandara wants to play so be it. Either do fair duels in future or i’ll just runaway. You choice really Gandara

It works like a charm against Seafarer’s rest.

Very interesting theory and I would like to see a video of it how it works or is it just talk.

After spending last week stuck in the same matchup with gandara, all I can say that they never offered our guild any decent fights and thus it wast one of the most boring weeks ever played. Lots of roamers and small parties running around and never got to see this vision of yours live. I would like to! Hopefully it works! Post a video! Best of luck with it!

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Gandara is a funny server, when you are alone, they would even use 180 cd elite, to ensure the kill on you, while they are with at least 3 people (should be easy enough without elites). When they are alone, and I surprise them, dropping their hp faster then they expected, they always run like headless chickens, STRAIGHT for their friends, to ambush you there. In the end, it’s a bit ridiculous cause as solo roamer you don’t stand a chance against ‘ganking addicted’ servers like gandara.

Basically running away, is the most viable strategy against lame tactics like this. And that in itself is lame. But if that’s how gandara wants to play so be it. Either do fair duels in future or i’ll just runaway. You choice really Gandara

It works like a charm against Seafarer’s rest.

The server ran away from you? Try spvp with your dueling build or hang around the windmill for some 1on1 matches if you are into that sort of thing. Maybe put a ’I’m up for duels in location x’ in your matchup thread.
Much better choice than embarassing yourself in forums.

The “Gandara” strategy is old and used by a lot of other servers. I have used it as a Desolation PuG commander. It sometimes works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Most important is:
1. Attack at the right moment
- take the initiative, do not give the organized melee train time to buff themselves, rush like crazy, but split immediately when you get in range
- if they are already buffing, wait and circle around until the buffs mostly wear out

2. Have the right composition (yes, go ranged and mix)
- a PuG group of having several medium armor actually works pretty well e.g. several grenadier engineers (watch out for retaliation) and longbow ranger (both having very long range), thieves, but also elementalists, necros, mesmers, guardians and warriors. In general a complete mix. Where as a typical melee train is mostly warriors, guardians, several eles and necros, 1-2 support mesmers and almost no medium armor.
- ranged attacks are the best for most PuGs as you don’t wanna end up having 5 hammer stuns in a row + getting all your boons ripped and smacked with a massive condition stack from their necro at same time.

3. Cripple their melee, but really wreck their ranged
- blind + chill etc spam on their melee part
- the melee trains ranged spell casters, mainly staff eles and necros are often kiting on the rear and sides and do not have any stability on, launch them, knockdown them, stun them, give them the hell as they have low armor and full glass thieves can crit them 20k+ with backstab.

It would be interesting to see video of this.

I also agree with the comments by other Desolation players in this thread about Gandara. Gandara is probably the #1 ganking server in EU. So many run ganking builds (= builds made for solo or small group roaming and killing fast, not that efficient build for zerg support). It was pretty sad to see even good players like [JDGE], an ex Desolation guild, to do that. I watched them near a sentry (sentry guard on their side) to ambush Desolation solo roamers. I observed it. 10 minutes later they are still waiting there and ganking. If Gandara would actually spend less time ganking they could easily have a higher rating with their number of WvWvW players. Desolation was very often outnumbered in matchup against Gandara.

I expect to see more ganking very soon as the masterminds of Arenanet are going to give us 1-3 points from stomping. Welcome to Gank Wars 2.

Weren’t melee trains a solution to spread out pugs?

QQ more Deso, QQ more…

Deniara Devious.3948:

I also agree with the comments by other Desolation players in this thread about Gandara. Gandara is probably the #1 ganking server in EU. So many run ganking builds (= builds made for solo or small group roaming and killing fast, not that efficient build for zerg support). It was pretty sad to see even good players like [JDGE], an ex Desolation guild, to do that. I watched them near a sentry (sentry guard on their side) to ambush Desolation solo roamers. I observed it. 10 minutes later they are still waiting there and ganking. If Gandara would actually spend less time ganking they could easily have a higher rating with their number of WvWvW players. Desolation was very often outnumbered in matchup against Gandara.

I expect to see more ganking very soon as the masterminds of Arenanet are going to give us 1-3 points from stomping. Welcome to Gank Wars 2.

kitten dem JDGE. Trying to do PvP in a PvP zone. PvP where they actually can use their skills instead of using #1 skill.

With other words:
butt = hurt
goal = accomplished

Seigfried.5938:

Weren’t melee trains a solution to spread out pugs?

Its a double edged sword, it highly depends on the organisation and numbers.

I figured this was common knowledge. Melee trains can only steamroll a small area at once, its why clumping up is proven so ineffective for a while now.

Spread out and they are blowing big cooldowns just to hit a relative small portion of players. If these players have any decent escape they can even kite the melee train. Those in the train with mobility will chase better and the train starts tearing itself appart.
If the train keeps moving as fast as the slowest players, its very easy to kite and range em down. Well, it takes a while ofcourse, but it works like a charm.

Smaller forces of mobile ranged can actually take on pretty big melee trains.

This tactic does work wonders, but as someone else said, it’s highly dependent on individual competence, so it all falls apart if a large proportion of your spread group can’t self-sustain. It did work well against some of the late night melee trains that Deso were fielding last week, although it often went horribly wrong and my poor Mesmer was trampled often. Was good practice the last two weeks anyhoo.

Also, I do enjoy how Gandara have been labelled a ganking server because many of the players enjoy small group roaming, using small group roaming builds. If you’re roaming with a PvE or zerg build and get ruined by a player who has built for roaming you have only yourself to blame. It takes 2 minutes to waypoint to spawn to change traits and gear to optimise your build based on your chosen WvW activity. That’s all you need to do.

This is no secret. Maguuma learned way back when fighting WM’s Kaineng that all you need to do is step sideways and the melee train goes right past you. Granted, War Machine was a bad joke, but it still works against the better hammer blobs. Don’t stand in front of them and they have nothing to do.

renmei.3102:

I dunno, dodging out of the way and destroying the backline/chasing the tail sounds like a more useful counter. Scattering just makes little clumps that is easy for the melee pain train to run down and finish off.

The cookie cutter strategy is
1.Spread out
2. Dodge push
3. Hit tail
4. Repeat.

maeggle.6021:

Dawdler.8521:

You have to do razor sharp cuts into the melee train to reduce their strength

Most guild groups get bored quickly / give up and try to find easier targets. The Kodash PUG Cloud™ does that since head start.

Look at that aweful ele’s stuff.

Well, your best bet as a guild group is to switch out the guardians’ hammers with great swords and use sth else than skill #1 and #2 sometimes hint, hint.

Fun stuff aside, I really hope there will someday be some viable alternative to the 2/3 melee train for (somewhat) organized raid groups. It really hurts variety in WvW, this being the easiest to play and strongest composition for groups of ~20+.

Yep, Kodash pugs were really good at spreading and focusing fire.
Hope to face them again in silver league!

Nooooo! Why do you spread this disgusting strategy?