Guild Wars 2

So lately the WvW meta on my server seems to involve stacking 50-80 people on a single spot, and then moving them around in short hops with portals (no one walks, ever). I’ve watched turtle groups like this shrug off 5 arrow carts, so siege seems totally ineffective. Currently there are two ways I know of to counter:

1. Have your own turtle, and see who gets bored first.
2. Glamour mesmers

With the upcoming PVE/WvW skill split, there seems to be an expectation that confusion will be made harmless in WvW, which would remove option #2. I’m concerned this will further cement the turtle meta. The consensus I’ve been hearing even from people who participate in turtles is that no one has much fun doing this, it’s just the most effective route to victory.

What’s everyone’s take on this? I would argue that the most successful way to play WvW shouldn’t be soul-crushingly dull like turtles are. Success should not oppose fun in a game.

Should we kill the turtle? If so, how?

Remove the AOE limit.

In this game the AOE encourages people to stand together where as other games it makes people spread out.

get a few people on the ballys that have the 25% extra damage and other buffs – 3 or 4 all targetting a ball and firing at the same time has quite amusing effects.

Too few people use siege outside of walls.

Also, a necro well has a great effect of converting all boons into conditions.

in order to move the portal, a mesmer must move to the next position, so make sure they can’t- plenty of skills to block even an invisible mesmer from making progress.

+1 for removing or raising the AOE limit. I know they don’t want 2 people destroying 15 people or whatever but if those 15 people are dumb enough to stand in the pretty red circles they deserve to learn by death.

greyblue.4962:

So lately the WvW meta on my server seems to involve stacking 50-80 people on a single spot, and then moving them around in short hops with portals (no one walks, ever). I’ve watched turtle groups like this shrug off 5 arrow carts, so siege seems totally ineffective. Currently there are two ways I know of to counter:

1. Have your own turtle, and see who gets bored first.
2. Glamour mesmers

With the upcoming PVE/WvW skill split, there seems to be an expectation that confusion will be made harmless in WvW, which would remove option #2. I’m concerned this will further cement the turtle meta. The consensus I’ve been hearing even from people who participate in turtles is that no one has much fun doing this, it’s just the most effective route to victory.

What’s everyone’s take on this? I would argue that the most successful way to play WvW shouldn’t be soul-crushingly dull like turtles are. Success should not oppose fun in a game.

Should we kill the turtle? If so, how?

It’s simple:
We kill the Mesmer. :P

No, but outside from killing the mes that’s about to lay down the portal, remember that the portal very much acts as a bottleneck on groups. If you can guess where a portal is about to be thrown down, then you could be doing 10-15K DPS (across all enemies) on your character just by AoEing the portal.

You guys happened to realize that portal is limited to 20 uses only. How do you port 50 to 80 people without coordination of 3 mesmers? If 3 mesmers have to coordinate you mean the zerg moves a distance every 20 to 30 secs, with such mobility i doubt it is a problem

Sanc bubble wardings aoes on the portals such as wells means you win honestly these tactics work really well just see a portal stack your aoes on it and watch the bags drop or sanc or ward it so they get knocked down or go flying upon coming out the other end

sanctuary > turtle

Removing AoE limit is a bad idea. Players would simply spread out as much as possible, it would become impossible to walk through a choke point without invulnerability and zerks would become more brainless since you wouldn’t be able to regroup or move as a unit.

I usually use Temporal Curtain to pull some of those away from the crowd ready to pick off but I do think the AoE limit is truly the reason why zerging is so rife. If you could lay down AoE’s a plenty on a zerg they’d soon begin to panic and guilds would find themselves splintering off from the main zerg in order to get things done and earn rewards.

Remove the AoE limit and see how it goes!

Feedbacks. I don’t see how AC’s wouldn’t mow them down. In this case, it would do much more damage as they are all standing in one easy spot for the ACs which have a high AoE cap(i think around 50).

Or just run a melee train through them…

Acs are amazing counters too fall under blanket in aoe

The way most portal bombs work is the mesmer ports the group in your rear and then either he or another mesmer puts up a feedback bubble so you cant aoe them. The group will of course have retaliation and aegis with burning upon break up so anyone who aoes them is gonna be toast.

There needs to be a nerf as too how many people can port at once. Keep the portal open longer but limit it to one or two at a time to stop the abuse.

Why u use a sanc bubble or ward ontop of it really countering a portal bomb is soo easy and feed back doesn’t stop aoe fyi only projectiles most aoe aren’t projectiles why swirling winds doesn’t work

A few siege work pretty well. When they port there is a big “Oh no we are wiping” moment and then they all dies.

They could increase AoE limit to 7-8 instead of 5 and it would not break anything or change portal number to 15.

there once was a picture posted in a similar thread.
To be precise, it were 3 pictures.
Picture 1: 80 guys at one spot
Picture 2: 2 necros and a mesmer approaching the guys
Picture 3: 60 corpses lying in a feedback bubble, null field, chaos storm and a couple wells, with 20 guys getting out of the clusterkitten at 20% hp.

But well, that was that and this is this. Back then, shout heals etc had no AoElimit, so they stacked for an entirely different purpose.
A group stacked to abuse mass heal while spamming ranged attacks falls to this. A group which only stacks to break out of a portal and wipe everything with earthshaker chaining does not.
However, Necros and Mesmers are still the best counter.

Edit: back there there was a second suggestion: Build 3 omega golems and portal bomb them back!

naan.1823:

sanctuary > turtle

Removing AoE limit is a bad idea. Players would simply spread out as much as possible, it would become impossible to walk through a choke point without invulnerability and zerks would become more brainless since you wouldn’t be able to regroup or move as a unit.

You mean players would actually have to think about tactics instead of just straight rushing in :O that sounds like a terrible idea.

Tip: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Retaliation