Guild Wars 2

Commanders that get frustrated with pugs not on voice comms and running wrong builds aren’t great commanders TBH.

There are Commanders and I will call them Commanders that know what they are doing and I will follow them readily.

There are also those that think they are Commanders but make such boneheaded mistakes, refuse to listen to advice from anyone that is not a member of their guild or who will come in at the tail end of something leading their train and take credit for your hard work that I will not follow.

Those are the ones that whine if you are not on TS (and face it, not everyone can be on TS), whine if you do not immediately rally to their tag even if you are busy doing something else, lead their sheep to defend something then run off elsewhere with everyone having full supply but not repairing anything and run down anyone not in their Guild or group. Those type of Commanders may as well leave their tag at home as they have not earned the privilege of having me follow them.

As an example I will go back to just a few days following the last tournament. We were being pressed at our NW tower with only pugs/militia defending and called for help. There were 4 Commanders on our map “training” up in centaurs with their tags up and their guild. Four tags! One of theses so called Commanders called for “everyone to come to my tag” in map chat versus coming to help at the tower and in the end we lost that tower. After I complained about it I was told “it was just a joke, that they were busy training, a T3 tower was of no concern to them and to kitten”. There is no way in hell I would follow any of them no matter how big their guild is.

Most WvW guilds care about their server, and that’s why they provide a commander tag/pin – not because they have an obligation to do so. Everytime they do that, it’s a privilege to follow them. This is their contribution to the long term survival of a realm: by becoming a “school”, where new players have a chance to learn WvW with less stress and even enjoy WvW from the start. But this is a heavy burden, and gets even worse when “PUG’s” don’t listen (chasing randoms, attacking anything on sight, even if asked to skip or stay hidden, and so on). Some new players don’t even read map chat… try to “lead” them. These are mostly exceptions thankfully. And the worse of them are those who “know better” what should be done, and just troll endlessly.

In the end, we all are and should be – grateful, when a good guild, provides a commander, allowing everyone to play with them. It’s a gift from them. You can play together, without being part of that guild. A thank you in the end, is the least they deserve. When they run without a pin, they have reasons for that, not because they are “such excluding kittens”… Join them, and find out. Or just ask, many times they may give an answer.

But even if WvW guilds are evil, you can step up – and you should. Not by trolling and backseat commanding, but by communicating with everyone online on the map, working together with those who answer, and contributing. Every bit helps. In time, by doing this, you will learn all the “secrets”, and you will be able to help those who are new. One step at a time. By expecting less, and contributing more. Not just in this game…

I play both sides of this issue quite a bit.

taggin up:
benefits

• More numbers to your cause
• your tag relays intel to other raids on the map for location of friendly forces.
• potential recruits for your guild.
  problems:
• Players who leech off your raid and don’t contribute: they don’t get in voice comm (when you advertise it at least 5 times) they don’t follow orders and are just there for loot. These players are sheep. I don’t want sheep in my raid i want players. Sheep get slaughtered and rally the enemy forces. You don’t want to be called a sheep right? So stop being one and get with the program. At the bare minimum you should know whether your class is periphery or frontline and to play such a role. I’ll even help you out at the end of this post with that.
• enemy spies can relay your location to their commander
• you have to play for PPT

Tagless:
benefits:

• Freedom from PPT play. If you like the fights you can hunt the fights.
• no sheep, better control over your players
• less spy potential
  problems:
• No tag to attract new recruits to your guild
• you don’t relay your position to other allied forces (there were a few cases where I almost attacked allied forces cause they weren’t tagged up. If friendly fire was possible they’d be dead and my zerg dead too).

Raid roles:
From my studies with raiding guilds on my server there are basically two role types.

• Frontline: stays on the tag, attacks with auto attacks and attempts to CC targets near the driver/commander. Calls out when CC on targets is happening so the driver can call for damage.
• Periphery: stays near the tag but not directly on it as they can’t take damage as the frontline can. Periphery fights much like sPvP for mesmer, thief, engineer, ranger. Elementalist and Necromancer provide support roles to the frontline.

Frontline classes and primary roles
Guardian – stability, condition control, crowd control, aoe cleaves (damage attacks that don’t root)
Warrior- Crowd control, aoe cleaves, combat resurrection

Periphery classes and primary roles
Elementalist – Crowd control, primary recovery healing (water fields), AOE cleaves (fire auto attack), AOE bombs (heavy targeted aoe damage)
Necromancer- Boon control, condition control, aoe cleaves, aoe bombs
Mesmer- Raid movement masking, single target periphery burst (targets other periphery classes)
Thief- single target periphery burst (targets other periphery classes)
Enginner (not common in raids)- Single target periphery burst , secondary recovery healing
Ranger (not common in raids)- Single target periphery burst, secondary recovery healing

Now you know what that guild you’re following is doing. Build your spec to match your raid role, get on their voice comm and contribute to the raid. They’ll like you much more for that.

Theftwind has it boiled down to a T. I don’t wvw much any more, it’s gone too stale, but when I did there were times I would follow the commanders and the server I’m on had a number of commanders who were worth following for the fights, others who took map wide strategy into consideration and others who only hunted other blobs for loot bags. I became somewhat tired of blob fighting as it just descended into who could out frame drop the other such that one side could gain an edge. So instead, I did much the same as Theftwind, capped camps, hunted yaks, picked off sentries as diversionary raids so the enemy commander would think our blob was heading to certain camps, popped white swords on keeps to pull enemy zergs out of position. At times I’d pull a militia together while the main mob was busy smacking the enemy’s blob and take a tower or two. I’d also run recon to see if our keeps were under attack, call troop movements, shadow enemy blobs.

There’s a wide variety of things to do that doesn’t solely revolve around fights, sure they can be fun but if you’re interested in helping the server then put yourself into a role, build your kit around it and go hunting.

Guilds that run with a tag usually do so in the borderlands because they are fighting at south sentry and tag up so they can individually target people in their own parties while still seeing where their driver is. Nothing more complicated than that.

We had a guild who did this all the time. They would insult volunteers and try to drive them out of the game, even when we were outnumbered. I was so glad when they moved to another server. What a bunch of jerks.