Guild Wars 2

Can someone give me an explanation of wvw builds? I’m really starting from ground zero here. I’ve been playing Pve and I understand that typical Pve builds won’t cut it in wvw. I’m asking about the rational behind the common wvw builds. Are the different professions expected to fill different roles? Are expectations different in the various tiers? (My server is middle of the pack). Thanks

You might be better off going to your server’s home site and asking there — they will have a better idea of what is needed and what specs, etc … you can probably get generalized ideas from here, but it’s a massive topic, and best approached by actually plunging in and doing trial and error for builds until you find one that fits you.

There is a wide variety of builds. What class are you playing? What role do you want to take? (damage vs support) What group size is your server usually running?

Jeeze I don’t know what things are like on my server. I guess your right I just need to get in experience some wvw. I’ve been enjoying pvp and im thinkin I’ll enjoy wvw. I’m worried because all my Pve gear is berserker and I’ve been led to believe I’ll be an easy kill with that set up. I play guard, thief and necro. I Think it may be a bit difficult/expensive to experiment with gear in wvw.

Jayjaydee.3827:

Jeeze I don’t know what things are like on my server. I guess your right I just need to get in experience some wvw. I’ve been enjoying pvp and im thinkin I’ll enjoy wvw. I’m worried because all my Pve gear is berserker and I’ve been led to believe I’ll be an easy kill with that set up. I play guard, thief and necro. I Think it may be a bit difficult/expensive to experiment with gear in wvw.

it depends what you want to do, the builds for solo and small group are pretty similar, but it starts to change a lot when you hit 10v10, 30v30 etc.

choovanski.5462:

Jayjaydee.3827:

Jeeze I don’t know what things are like on my server. I guess your right I just need to get in experience some wvw. I’ve been enjoying pvp and im thinkin I’ll enjoy wvw. I’m worried because all my Pve gear is berserker and I’ve been led to believe I’ll be an easy kill with that set up. I play guard, thief and necro. I Think it may be a bit difficult/expensive to experiment with gear in wvw.

it depends what you want to do, the builds for solo and small group are pretty similar, but it starts to change a lot when you hit 10v10, 30v30 etc.

If you’re on the periphery of the blob you don’t need to be super tanky (the logic being that if the centre of the blob dies, the fight is over anyway).

Just get in and start playing with your PvE gear. Repairs are free. Tweak your builds for WvW, and if it’s something you want to pursue get your self a set of WvW gear.

Sagramor.7395:

Just get in and start playing with your PvE gear.

Haha, if you do that you may create bad first impressions amongst your teammates with your rallybotting. Always best to ask those around you for some help, like you’ve done here.

Chaba.5410:

Sagramor.7395:

Just get in and start playing with your PvE gear.

Haha, if you do that you may create bad first impressions amongst your teammates with your rallybotting. Always best to ask those around you for some help, like you’ve done here.

What I was trying to get across is that you shouldn’t be deterred by not having a “WvW set” of gear. No one likes a rallybot, but personally I’d rather have a player show up in their PvEs than not show up at all.

I started with a ton of PVT gear for survivability and replaced at various points with knight / Valk / zerk as I got used to it. It really isn’t that expensive. Just avoid the wvw gear if you ever want the runes / sigils back.

Doesn’t hurt to use meta battle to start and tweak to your play style……

Jayjaydee.3827:

Jeeze I don’t know what things are like on my server. I guess your right I just need to get in experience some wvw. I’ve been enjoying pvp and im thinkin I’ll enjoy wvw. I’m worried because all my Pve gear is berserker and I’ve been led to believe I’ll be an easy kill with that set up. I play guard, thief and necro. I Think it may be a bit difficult/expensive to experiment with gear in wvw.

Full zerker on my thief and necro, get some PvT trinkets and you’ll be fine as long as you can dodge a bit. Zerk on a frontline guard would not be advisable.

There’s a pretty good PDF guide floating around that explains how “hammertrain” works. Short, incomplete version:

Warriors and guardians form a front line. You want to be pretty tanky but still deal damage. The proper mix of damage and defense depends on your server’s meta because it’s about how big the fights are and how the commanders like to engage.
That front line generally wants to stay on the pin (commander). Being on the pin is life. Being off the pin is death. Because…
Eles are gonna be putting down water fields for you, usually on the pin (you’ll hear “big water” and “small water” in comms). People will be blasting these with their hammer skills. So the front line is CCing and healing. The idea is to roll over your enemies and chew them up with all the damage you get from cleaving auto-attacks and AoEs.
These days, warriors tend to be on the hook for condi cleansing while guardians provide party-wide stability. Party comps are very important.

Eles and necros form the core of the back line. They tend to be very zerky.
Staff eles provide waters, CC (Static), and AoEs.
Necros provide a ton of ranged DPS, both direct and AoE, and try to rip boons (especially stability) with wells.
The back line generally tries to hang about 600 behind the front line and also move so as not to get killed (getting your back-liners caught by their front line is a great way to lose very quickly). Who you’re targeting as a necro or ele varies.

Thieves, engies, rangers, and mesmers are most often part of a “pick team.” Using pulls and burst to bring down priority targets (examples include killing eles so the opposing team heals less, or trying to gank the enemy commander so the group becomes disorganized).
Mesmers also provide invisibility (Veil) and portals for the zerg.
Thieves can group up with the necros and venom-share to make their wells super-powerful.

Everything I’ve described is power-based because hammertrain groups do a lot of work to mitigate the impact of conditions (Hoelbrak and Melandru runes, condition-reducing food, all those warrior cleanses and stuff). Folks have experimented with condition tricks like Epidemic but running condition damage in a zerg is not “meta,” besides the venom-share thieves (who are mostly there for Immobilize but you might as well get some condi dps out of your venom-sharing, too).

~

For roaming, zerky gear is pretty typical for most professions, including guardians (maybe with a bit of extra sustain from a few bits of PVT or Celestial) is going to get you pretty far. Mediguard is fun and successful in WvW. Though you may need to build a bit differently from SPvP.

If all your gear is zerk everywhere, I recommend just getting some more defensive trinkets to play around with. Swapping trinkets is a lot easier than swapping armor. (You probably have a few lying around in your bank from rewards you’ve gotten, if you didn’t trash them.)

Roaming thieves tend to run zerk D/P or condition-troll builds. Not sure how well the condi builds work since the big June patch.

I think most roaming necros do conditions. It’s a bit tricky because you’re slow. Helps to have allies rather than go totally solo.

I would start out by hooking up with the main pub squad for awhile and hang out in your servers voice comms even if you’re just following the crowd for awhile or at least read chat often enough, you’ll soak up most of the terminology and you’ll catch what commanders are asking for from different classes or different encounters. Inch by inch you’ll push your old limit a bit more and you’ll get a better idea of the stats you’ll need and what you can pull off in a fight.

kash.9213:

I would start out by hooking up with the main pub squad for awhile and hang out in your servers voice comms

Best advice for anybody. Getting into the voice comms makes a world of difference. You get to know people and the community and it’s much more personal and involving than the austere textbox.

Jayjaydee.3827:

Can someone give me an explanation of wvw builds? I’m really starting from ground zero here. I’ve been playing Pve and I understand that typical Pve builds won’t cut it in wvw. I’m asking about the rational behind the common wvw builds. Are the different professions expected to fill different roles? Are expectations different in the various tiers? (My server is middle of the pack). Thanks

First off, before deciding on a build and gear setup you need to decide what profession you want to use and what you want to use it for. WvW builds are designed to be synergistic in group play if zerging and more mobility oriented for roaming builds and use skills/weapons/gear that are not used for zerging because they do not create synergy or add to your group.

Let me give you an example in regards to your question about build rational for common builds, Necromancers who build for zerging will generally use zerker gear and run wells for high damage, there is a gm trait in Soul Reaping that increases your crit chance in DS by 50% so with zerker gear it goes over 100%. It is common practice for power necros to drop wells and go into ds for that guaranteed crit chance for massive damage. See how it works? The build has to synergize with your role in a group.

metabattle.com is a good place to start for roaming and zerg builds (zerg being large group and roaming being solo or duo).

Very cool. I love reading about the theory behind zergs. Much more to it than I ever anticipated and that gets me more excited! Thanks for the overview. I’ll be able to piece something together and get my feet wet tonight. (Or friday, lol)

lujate.5432:

metabattle.com is a good place to start for roaming and zerg builds (zerg being large group and roaming being solo or duo).

There are no current “meta” builds up on metabattle for any prof. Sure you can adapt some PvP builds for (mostly) roaming, or take a look at the Draft/Test builds, but there are no Meta builds up for WvW.

If you’re curious about builds check the guides posted on intothemists. Some streamers post their guides there.

Voice Comms are definitely the place to be if you want to help out your server.

Sagramor.7395:

lujate.5432:

metabattle.com is a good place to start for roaming and zerg builds (zerg being large group and roaming being solo or duo).

There are no current “meta” builds up on metabattle for any prof. Sure you can adapt some PvP builds for (mostly) roaming, or take a look at the Draft/Test builds, but there are no Meta builds up for WvW.

If you’re curious about builds check the guides posted on intothemists. Some streamers post their guides there.

Voice Comms are definitely the place to be if you want to help out your server.

Whoops, you’re right. It looks like metabattle pulled down all the builds.

They probably haven’t been able to recreate the new ones yet, since the Trait changes. People are still theory-hammering through the new system.

There’s many different builds for all 8 classes for different situations, or even in the same situations. Guardian, for instance, has bunker GS, bunker Hammer, DPS GS, DPS Hammer, hybrid GS/Hammer (rarer nowadays due to the traits rework) for zergs, and a whole bunch of other builds for roaming. Warriors have shouts, stances, “worker” CC build, “Nike” build etc. just listing some few examples of the variety of builds available.

Which build is best for you would depend on your guild (join a serious WvW guild! If you’re in a 100% rep PvE guild, time to leave! Large guild does not equal good guild) and your zerg composition. Some commanders like to run more mobile and thus doesn’t want hammer guardians slowing down their melee train while having backline a little distance back to avoid them being run over. Some like to run more CC heavy, preferring a lot of hammers from their melee train and ranged to be fairly close to the frontline.

WvW is where roles are pretty clearly defined and acted upon in a similar fashion to GW1 (Front/Mid/Backline → Front/Back/Focus(or Gank))

I see this question allot. What build should you use for wvw. The honest answer, it boils down to your play style, how you wanna play it. Do you wanna roam, Run with the zerg, Do you wanna be up front, or stay behind and snipe.

What size of server you on, in the end, there is no “one size fits all”. Your toon will die. You will get ganked. The best way to figure out what you want and how to play it is find a friend, go to pvp and test your build. See if it works for you. Tweak it, and your traits so it fits your play style.

Myself, I like my PU mesmer, have her traits tweaked for my own style. Use lots of stealth just in case I get in trouble or run across a small group while I am alone, I stealth out, and get out of it. While I may not kill someone one on one. Chances are, they will never kill me either. That seems to work best for me………

Some tips (from personal experience):

• Wearing full zerk whilst front-lining is not the best idea, you will be squishy and die in seconds
• Visit metabattle for some easy, viable builds related to WvW
• Try and use some/full soldier (PVT) gear as the recent patch to condis + buffed dmg output can be devastating if you don’t have toughness/vitality somewhere in your gear
• With the recent changes to professions/skills etc the shift in WvW play-style has taken on a ‘pirate-ship’ theme aka a lot more ranged classes are evident and heavy melee classes should take extra care
• Warrior/Guardian shout heal builds are nice, good frontline, great support
• Necro/Ele/Engi are generally geared in more zerker/dmg output gear and are either in the back or middle of the zerg
• Thief/Ranger/Mesmer are nice roaming professions but also can be used to pick off singular targets that stray too far from a zerg. Mesmer in particular is excellent at providing support via portals/veils etc.
• It is best to check out your server’s way of playing WvW or even join their TS channel if they have one to help with what they may be looking for/get an idea on things
• Simply put, go and play some WvW and see what works for you! Don’t be afraid to try new builds/things and remember, have fun~