Guild Wars 2

Hello.

I play on Dragonbrand as Moleni. I’m not sure when I won’t feel like a “Newbie” anymore, but I certainly do still at this point.

After playing WvW for about 3 months (of which about half was with WvW as my primary play choice) I’ve just passed my 50th WvW Rank, so I thought I’d share some thoughts from a new player perspective.

First, some background. I was an exclusive PvE player (having just obtained world completion after about a year of casual playing), hating PvP mainly due to the perception on my part that PvE = “Build Wars” and a lot of 1v1/1v2/2v2 matchups that I wasn’t especially interested in. then I found WvW, and changed my mind.

I prefer to play a scout/floater. I’m usually in our borderlands either running around making sure upgrades are running, dolyak paths are safe, or towers are defended/siege refreshed, etc. I really enjoy that role, and will happily play it unless I’m not the sole person scouting a tower and someone either asks for everyone on tag to repel invaders or retake an objective/help defending a keep/tower, or when people ask for help backcapping a camp, etc.

Occasionally I’ll head to ebg or an opposing borderland if someone asks for help there, or for a change of scenery. I occasionally will go disrupt camps in opposing borderlands with my SO for fun as well.

I’m going to presume I’m not your average WvWer. Most are probably in a guild, on TeamSpeak (I unfortunately can’t be due to the environment I play in), and far richer than I am.

Things I’ve learned playing WvW:

- Help deploy siege in assaults, but don’t use it – there’s almost always someone with better mastery than I around
- Same for defence. Use siege if I’m trying to hold an objective waiting for the calvary to arrive, but then step back – again, someone else probably has better mastery than I do
- Being wall-fished sucks.
- Burning Oil is almost entirely useless thanks to the range on most AoE’s from players and the lack of protection up there
- a well-timed siege disabler can mean the difference between holding your gate or not until calvary arrives
- The North camp of the borderlands is the single most important objective to hold if you have any hope of upgrading the NE/NW towers, or the garrison with any speed
- WvW infusions are great. I wish I knew this before I wasted laurels on PvE ones. :/
- good commanders really make the difference.
- Off hours, you are nearly guaranteed to 1: lose your siege everywhere but garrison and maybe bay/hills due to expiry, 2: lose towers that don’t have siege or 3: aren’t actively staffed to hold until the reduced population can mount a defence and coalesce from around the map.
- one person can make all the difference in holding an objective
- WvW is really, really fun.

As a new player, I have had some concerns. here’s what I’ve come up with over my playtime:

1 – I get almost no loot or wxp for my choice of playstyle. I exhausted what little gold I was able to obtain via PvE and have no hope whatsoever of being able to afford a commander tag so I can go yellow and actually show people where I’m scouting
2 – #1 means I find myself often running with the zerg on tag just so I can afford to go back to playing the way I prefer.
3 – I’m lucky that I’ve found some great people to hang out with on my server, but the barrier to entry was really, really high. The attitude towards new players can be pretty vitriolic – I’m not surprised it’s hard to attract new players to WvW.
4 – The inability to either run supply yourself to an objective (as in, run supply by hand and drop it in a depot) or otherwise affect dolyak supply rates beyond increasing the amount per delivery makes for some frustrating experiences. I know part of the reason for this is to make it difficult to upgrade an objective to full, but even if players could run supply, you could still supply constrain by taking camps, no?
5 – overnight coverage is really disheartening sometimes. Spending all day working to fully upgrade and outfit objectives only to find they flipped overnight (or, lost all their siege) not because of a well-planned assault, but because a handful of opposition attacked your objective and no one was around to defend it (or, in the case of siege, no one refreshed it) is extremely unfortunate, and I’m sure made worse by the separation of NA/EU servers, preventing better coverage.

So, that’s about it. Just some thoughts from a new player, who is excited to be a part of WvW and of the community surrounding it.

So now over to you – how am I doing? Any suggestions or sage words of advice?

Thanks.

This is essentially how I started, multitasking, and its the same way I play now, zerg, scout, havok, map hop etc. The important thing to remember dont let yourself get burned out, you will lose any desire to do wvw, take breaks, its ok to.

If your new being in ts, following a commander, engaging in fights is important in learning about wvw so dont shy away from these things.

WvW has a reputation for poor rewards compared to pve/pvp especially for scouts/roamers. If your burning through your gold because of upgrades and siege, its ok sometimes not to place that burden on yourself. Do some pve occasionally if you need the gold, farm some mats to sell easy gold right there, do a dungeon run here or there, guaranteed gold and there are many easy paths. Do a run of silverwastes, lots of champ bags and mats from the bags/salvages you can sell off.

Good luck to you, and remember its a team effort, dont burn yourself out, take breaks when needed, and of course its all about fun.

Hi,

Glad you are enjoying WvW.

1 & 2 – The rewards suck but you will have to live with that. Roamers and scouts are by far the poorest players in the game because we don’t get any meaningful rewards. Scouts have to pay for upgrades and roamers pay more for food than they earn back by flipping small objectives. According to a dev, defending will be made worthwile in the new expansion. I guess we will have to wait and see.

3 – That really depends on which server you’re on. Getting on your server VoIP helps a lot.

5 – That is not uncommon in RvR games. In DAoC, we often did relic raids during the night. Same with elder scrolls online. I think the only solution would be to make three match ups per day that last 8 hours each.

Orenwolf…players like you are the unsung heroes of wvw. I love roaming. Too bad you can’t use TS though, it makes it much easier to report info. And it’s easier to be “properly” descriptive. But, hey, not everyone plays under the perfect settings. TS just makes it feel more like a community. And you always have a better idea of what’s going on all over. I’m not busting balls though, contribute they way you can, at least you’re contributing, a VERY underrated contribution at that.

My suggestion to you(mostly what XTD mentioned above) would be to run a world boss train here and there, or find a good gold making method to supplement your wvw-ing. It’s pretty much what I do. My gold making trick isn’t as profitable as it was, but I can make an easy 30g an hr. under the right circumstances. YT gold making vids, you’ll find something. Sorry, I won’t tell my method to non-guildies. GL HF!

Welcome to WvW, orenwolf.1953. It’s great to see such enthusiasm when so many people seem to be becoming quite jaded with the state of things. Some thoughts on your comments:

1 – I see that you can’t join Teamspeak, but perhaps you can still join a guild? There are all manner of WvW guilds from total slackers to hardcore raiders. Making friends this way helps immensely. Lots of guilds have banks full of things that are there specifically to help people like you.

4 – This can’t work, sadly, as you point out yourself, because the larger force would have an even greater advantage. They can move from camp to camp much more quickly than a small group as they kill all the guards almost instantly. Add in any towers full of supply they capture on the way and you can fill up a Keep in no time.

5 – Kraljevo.2801 is correct. This is the holy grail of WvW/RvR. While I agree with him/her that time-gating the whole scoring system would be one solution, I think there are other, less dramatic (and, admitedly, less effective) ways to soften the problem, such as stretching resources more thinly the more one side captures – making it easier for enemies to re-capture and ninja objectives.

Moderation in all things, grasshopper.

You can’t control what happens overnight or when you’re offline. You do what you can when you’re online and hope for the best.

When running with the zerg, you need big bags and merchant stops. When roaming, I’ve never once had to stop to empty my pack. You might find a guild that will help with siege and upgrade costs, but you’ll need to find something to do to earn gold for yourself.

you sound like a great asset to your server. I think your perspective is great and something I should keep in mind when inducting new players on my server.

Im prolly one of the highest ranked wvw players on my server and I still learn new tricks. I remember when I started, learning siege placement was daunting. I spent alot of time building hundreds of trebs to find those ‘omg your amazing’ spots. The learning curve speeds up if you can find a few like minded players to help you and brain storm on new strategies.

my suggestion to get more wxp and loot is rank up AC mastery first, learn to place ACs in hard to counter spots and use them.

to get more practice fighting, spend some time in spvp hot joins. Sure its not quite the same as wvw but the fundamentals are transferable. It doesnt even have to be alot of hours, youll quickly see flaws in your build and play style and be able to improve.

I know you said that using the TS would not work for you, but let me encourage you to get a pair of headphones and at least go on to listen. Team communication is a pretty important part, and you do meet a lot of cool people on there. Several people on my server’s TS do not even own a mic, but they still log on to hear call-outs.

You’re awesome. It’s a rare playstyle choice that can be frustrating at times but also very fun

I do the same for my server(gameplay is a bit different here so I sometimes uppgrade most of the border) and I have the same gold problem. I’m lucky though to have amazing server mates that will send me spare gold to allow me to keep on going.

Your server doesn’t tip their defense? Akwaaard.

Usually our people running and destroying things tip those that stay behind to scout/refresh/defend/upgrade. Guess we have it down to a science though.

Dhemize.8649:

Your server doesn’t tip their defense? Akwaaard.

Usually our people running and destroying things tip those that stay behind to scout/refresh/defend/upgrade. Guess we have it down to a science though.

Your server tips? Anyone tries that on my server and the scouts usually send the tip back, feeling insulted. They do what they do for the server and take pride in that.

Chaba.5410:

Dhemize.8649:

Your server doesn’t tip their defense? Akwaaard.

Usually our people running and destroying things tip those that stay behind to scout/refresh/defend/upgrade. Guess we have it down to a science though.

Your server tips? Anyone tries that on my server and the scouts usually send the tip back, feeling insulted. They do what they do for the server and take pride in that.

For anyone running upgrades and lack funds it’s a way of getting them started quicker. Thanks for playing.

Chaba.5410:

Dhemize.8649:

Your server doesn’t tip their defense? Akwaaard.

Usually our people running and destroying things tip those that stay behind to scout/refresh/defend/upgrade. Guess we have it down to a science though.

Your server tips? Anyone tries that on my server and the scouts usually send the tip back, feeling insulted. They do what they do for the server and take pride in that.

I would do the same thing, however its a kind gesture, its like someone donating siege, nothing wrong with that. Not meant to be taken as an insult, just a kind gesture, people know that commanders burn through tons of siege and it can be expensive to make, same with scouts that put in a lot of time and gold to upgrade.

Moleni, you are awesome wvw player! Wish you are in my server TC. Yea, one thing I really wish Arena will change is make WvW more profitable so players don’t go broke investing money into defending, escorting, and scouting. I’m a roamer who likes to defend our camps and towers and hold off the enemies til back up arrives. This choice of play style is fun but wish we don’t have to go broke doing it.

The first 10k kills and 3-400 ranks are hard

Thanks for the suggestions.

Regarding tips: I’ve never been tipped (or even heard of the practice before now), It’d be nice if there was some sort of “team bank” where one could deposit gold for upgrades, or similar mechanism. Would allow the load to be spread more evenly, though I suppose you’d run the risk of people spending it on unnecessary upgrades to paper/easily flipped objectives the same way people steal supply from towers and keeps today.

Hi5 for being so very positive about such a thankless job! You could try joining your server’s community guild (If there is one), they usually gather funds and siege for the scouts. Piken even has a scout of the week award for showing appreciation and respect towards our scouts, and a little kaching prize ofc :>

The issue you brought up about going broke just trying to play how you enjoy is an important one that should be addressed, and one of the major issues affecting wvw at this time. Defending is personally unrewarding, easy and boring and to get more people to want to do so, they have to increase the rewards for players who do. I think it is important they increase personal reward for defending players, this helps with two primary issues:
1) this will solve the problem of not having enough defenders, bring them a chest and they will come.
2) blocks the K train for capping, if the rewards for defending are equal to if not greater than those for capping, people will also defend instead of just cap allowing for wvw to be both offensive and defensive as it should be.

X T D.6458:

I would do the same thing, however its a kind gesture, its like someone donating siege, nothing wrong with that. Not meant to be taken as an insult, just a kind gesture, people know that commanders burn through tons of siege and it can be expensive to make, same with scouts that put in a lot of time and gold to upgrade.

People are really different, I’d think that as a nice gesture too. I also thought that when roaming and downing an opponent, but leaving him unstomped was a polite gesture until I read here some persons take it as an arrogant insult towards them. No wonders those thieves immediately sprang up and spammed all their available bursts when they got up again, which I again thought was most disrespectful of them (never leave a thief unstomped nowadays)

But ontopic, scouting, sieging up, refreshing siege, defending/flipping camps, escorting dolyaks and roaming are incredibly important tasks that go so unrewarded, I’m really hoping the expansion would make them worthwhile to do.

Vikkela.7261:

People are really different, I’d think that as a nice gesture too. I also thought that when roaming and downing an opponent, but leaving him unstomped was a polite gesture until I read here some persons take it as an arrogant insult towards them. No wonders those thieves immediately sprang up and spammed all their available bursts when they got up again, which I again thought was most disrespectful of them (never leave a thief unstomped nowadays)

I remember the first time I ever entered WvW – I was there to get to the jumping puzzles and for world completion – and I was killed, repeatedly, by this same enemy that I kept, over and over, failing to see coming. I just stopped even trying to defend, instead letting him stomp me. After the third or fourth time, he downed me and left me there, which was a relief! So, I doubt everyone thinks of it as an insult.

Vikkela.7261:

But ontopic, scouting, sieging up, refreshing siege, defending/flipping camps, escorting dolyaks and roaming are incredibly important tasks that go so unrewarded, I’m really hoping the expansion would make them worthwhile to do.

Agreed – while I already consider it “worthwhile”, obviously, I’d love to get some sort of reward for sitting on my tower all day, especially when the only role I play is essentially announcing troop movements and babying the tower up to T3 – those are the days when I’m almost wishing for an assault, so I can both 1) have something to do, and 2) maybe get a bag or two and a couple completed objective defense events. I’m really interested to see the expansion and the changes coming.

Welcome to WvW matey!

Try not to let “elitists” wreck your gaming experience, you are there to have fun and support your server and from what you have posted you are more of a valuable asset than most guild groups out there…