Guild Wars 2

So, I just started playing WvW after leveling my character to 80. I played with a zerg a little bit and noticed zergs are not for me, unfortunately. Rewards are good, but no fun at all. What I actually enjoy is playing solo, so I was not sure I could actually enjoy WvW..

However, I heard some players talking about solo roaming, and taking on some WvW objectives also solo.

Could you guys give some insights on that? I mean, which objectives should I search when solo roaming? Also, which maps? And which WvW upgrades would be best for this goal?

Everything, if you are against a low population server, Alpine map usually is empty, it would be better to have a 5 man team with very good builds just for the ocasion.

If theres more defenders, just roam taking the supply camps, provoking swords on the castles with Waypoint.

But dont forgget if you roam, u better play some very strong gimmick class for that role.

Well, someone on the server I play used to make a habit of soloing T3 keeps so anything is possible…

More realistically, as a solo roamer you can and probably should be making sure as many Sentries as possible are repping your team. Sentries flag up enemies on the map and slow down enemy supply deliveries, both of which are very welcome. Anyone can solo a sentry and they are always changing sides.

All enemy Dolyaks need to be killed, of course. You want to stop the supplies getting to enemy structures so as to prevent them upgrading, plus you get War Score for killing the yaks, so long as you kill them when they are moving. If they are standing around in camp you don’t get war score for them.

Of course, if you’re taking the camp you’ll have to kill the yaks or they will try to kill you! I think just about any class and build can solo a T1 camp easily enough. Soloing upgraded camps takes a bit more concentration and tactics but it isn’t that difficult – until someone turns up to defend of course.

There are many defensive roles you can take solo – scouting and reporting the enemy’s movements in map or team chat or directly to a Commander; standing watch in towers or keeps and sounding the alarm if there’s an attack – especially a sneak attack that could otherwise see an upgraded structure suddenly change color before anyone realizes the danger. And siege always needs to be tagged (i.e. refreshed so it doesn’t de-spawn).

Soloing towers isn’t that hard – one person with a catapult can often get the wall down and Alpine lords are certainly soloable by a number of builds. Better, though, to knock the wall down on your own and then call in map or team to say there’s a breach. Someone will come and help.

And naturally you can roam around looking for enemy players doing any or all of the above and put a stop to it! Plenty of things to do without a zerg or even a havoc group – until a zerg or havoc group finds you, anyway…

Most solo and small groups stick to the border lands. Camps are easy to snag. Towers and keeps depend on what else is happening on the map.
For example Saturday morning I hopped on an enemy bl, saw orange swords on their hills, so I went and soloed bay. 1 person showed up when I had the Lord at about 5%, I managed to kill him and get the cap before they could send more people back to save it

If you just Start out? Camps and catta your way into a Tower? You can take down the Lord before the angry mob arrives? Time to think bigger

Thanks guys, seems it’s quite possible to enjoy WvW as I want. I’m playing a necro with full exotics, and ascended trinkets, so I in fact I’m feeling confident to take a challenge on soloing objectives.

Yet I’m pretty new to WvW, and I’m still not familiar with pretty basic words you guys used here, such as Tower, Camps, Sentries, Lord, “provoking swords on the castles”, lol. When following the zerg I had no idea what was happening, and I believe that was pretty bad for leaning the objectives and structures.

Anyway, I’ll take my time and follow your suggestions to practice.

leasm.1279, if ur a necro at least u can expect to defeat every guard and DH, XD

Just watch this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EedZ5kFAvSw

I’ve soloed everything on my Elementalist, Warrior, Guardian and Necro. That means camps, towers and yes, keeps. Never solo’d SM but I’ve duoed it.

Josh XT.6053:

I’ve soloed everything on my Elementalist, Warrior, Guardian and Necro. That means camps, towers and yes, keeps. Never solo’d SM but I’ve duoed it.

pretty much possible i know people hwo had done with a t3 SM it while their blob was flipping empty bl’s.

Aeolus.3615:

Josh XT.6053:

I’ve soloed everything on my Elementalist, Warrior, Guardian and Necro. That means camps, towers and yes, keeps. Never solo’d SM but I’ve duoed it.

pretty much possible i know people hwo had done with a t3 SM it while their blob was flipping empty bl’s.

I can believe it for sure, it would just take some time. I imagine I could do it on my warrior or ele at least, Guardian and necro might have a pretty hard time. While I’ve solo’d keeps on those, it is VERY hard to stay alive on Guardian and Necro when the lord start stunning you.

Guardian has enough stun breaks to make it work but the healing is just barely enough to survive. Doable, but its a pain to do lol. Necro is really mostly about just juking the lord and dodging its bigger hits and staying range the whole time. I think it is pretty easy to solo keeps on my ele and warrior though. Both have enough healing and over all sustain to do the job well.

So I tried a little bit of roaming, and I was able to easily kill Sentries and destroy Camps.

Towers also seem to be easy enough based on the veterans outside, but I couldn’t find a way to actually destroy the gate.

Do I have to build a siege weapon for that? How? (sorry for the noob question)
And once inside, the Champion guardian is also soloable?

Yeah you need to get siege blue prints. Superior siege cost more supply but does more damage. Catapults are better than rams when running solo

Puck.9612:

Yeah you need to get siege blue prints. Superior siege cost more supply but does more damage. Catapults are better than rams when running solo

Thanks. But trying this seems the most basic ram costs 40 supply, and I can carry only 10. This means I need to go back and forth several times to build anything solo?

leasm.1279:

Puck.9612:

Yeah you need to get siege blue prints. Superior siege cost more supply but does more damage. Catapults are better than rams when running solo

Thanks. But trying this seems the most basic ram costs 40 supply, and I can carry only 10. This means I need to go back and forth several times to build anything solo?

Yes. Once you get to a higher rank, you can generally carry 20-25 supply at a time with supply mastery, +5 supply guild buff that is generally on every keep your server owns and the “Presence of the Keep” buff that is also generally on at least one of your keeps. I usually have 25 supply with me, yes you’ll have to run to get more supply for any siege though. Guild Catapults used to only cost 25 until ANet messed that up for those of us who like to run around solo some times.

leasm.1279:

Puck.9612:

Yeah you need to get siege blue prints. Superior siege cost more supply but does more damage. Catapults are better than rams when running solo

Thanks. But trying this seems the most basic ram costs 40 supply, and I can carry only 10. This means I need to go back and forth several times to build anything solo?

Yep, that’s what you always need. At max WvW skill rank and with a +5 camp you can carry 20 supps so 2 trips for simple seige. Alternativly, you can build a trebuchet near a held camp/tower/keep and range it (takes a looooong time) or build a siege golem and walk there (expensive).

You should try joining a wvw guild. They can give you a lot of tips and access to some wvw buffs.
A lot of the time I rep a wvw guild that’s on another server so I can claim every camp I hit for the +5 supply without having to worry about removing the guilds claim from something important.

If going solo I find the cheap catapults the best. You put them up on a back wall on a tower so you do not get interference from the guards. The reason for the cheaper ones is you have to make fewer runs for supply and can start using the catapult earlier.

Catapults on back walls preferred over rams at gates simply because there less likelihood you will have the NPC guards interfere and enemy players running by a tower you attack might not see you if you work a back wall. You will also find if you do knock down a tower and flip it and the enemy takes it back you will very often find they leave your siege up if it at a back wall.

Some towers are easier to flip solo than others simply because of location. Ie the ones in the south of an enemy borderland tend to be closer to a camp so it quicker to run for supply. They also have better spots to set up a Catapult so as to go unnoticed and are less likely to be a higher tier.

Scrapper vs tower lord is easy mode. Haven’t tried keep solo yet but duo’d easy on tempest and reaper.

Yup once you get used to your class more you can solo Camps, Towers and even Keeps with ease. I’ve done Keeps with my D/D Thief and Warrior! Never had the chance to try SM :P

leasm.1279:

Puck.9612:

Yeah you need to get siege blue prints. Superior siege cost more supply but does more damage. Catapults are better than rams when running solo

Thanks. But trying this seems the most basic ram costs 40 supply, and I can carry only 10. This means I need to go back and forth several times to build anything solo?

leasm: Here is a decent place to start. It contains the basic mechanics of WvW. Some things are different since HoT came in to play but this will at the very least give you some good insight into WvW and how most of it works.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World_versus_World

And as someone said try to find a guild that runs in WvW on your server. (I don’t see it mentioned what server you are on). If you are this serious about learning then you will find people that are really willing to help.

One more thing… go to metabattle.com and check out the builds there. This site contains builds for all the classes for all areas of the game including WvW. It’s a very good place to start to find a roaming build for your character then tweak it from there as you learn what works and doesn’t work for you.

Dude, congrats on resisting the easy zerg route. The game mode needs more people with that mindset. But, sadly, the days of testing your solo might, might be close to an end and there may not be many more chances to do it.

In the olden days, we looked at camp solo difficulty by the amount of supply it held at the time. 250 was the pinnacle for soloing a camp, but you couldnt see it until you got to it or if you had the RI map pulled up on your second monitor. Now a days, it’s the same concept but you can tell a camps upgrade level before you even get to it simply by looking at the number of stars it has above it on the game map or by looking at the amount of time it’s been held and you can do that right from the comfort of spawn or as you’re capping 1 camp and planning your next move.

If a camp has been held for 5 mins, it’s a base camp, free of RI and fairly easy pickins. 20 mins, alittle more difficult and 1 hour, it’s a 250. Just like the old days though, you’ll probably only find a 3 star 250 camp in green BL, most likely North camp.

As far as the amount of supply you can carry. 10 supply is rough, but it’s doable to set up seige on a tower solo, you just have to go about it right. Cats are easier for a number of reasons, but the main one is guards don’t patrol the back wall on a tower without fortify. Setting up a ram, with max 10 supply on even an unfortified tower can be just awful, because even if the guards don’t respawn, sometimes the archer can destroy your ram before you get back with the next load of supply, so go with cats, test spots that can hit, watch other people and steal their tactics for next time.

I’d really recommend asking in map for a havoc party (less than 10ish) to start your path to solo. Learn from them, then scale down your roaming squad til you get better or find 1 or 2 other trusted roaming buddies. It’s a blast doing things alone, but having atleast 1 other person there always helps.

Good luck!

Josh XT.6053:

I’ve soloed everything on my Elementalist, Warrior, Guardian and Necro. That means camps, towers and yes, keeps. Never solo’d SM but I’ve duoed it.

Are you on a low population server? It seems that everytime I even run by SM I get several people from the other server chasing me, regardless of if I’m attacking or not. And taking SM…… yesterday I logged out after ~1 hour of trying to take SM with a blob of at least 100 people. Normally I don’t like blob play, but any chance I get at SM I take it.

Used to be any objective was a solo affair. However Anet beefed up the lords. Flags and Camps are still easy mode although T3 camps aren’t a pushover. Towers can be easy to difficult depending on class/build and tower rank. Keep lords are tiresome with huge health bars and often dangerous particularly when the keep is upgraded.

I haven’t solo flipped a keep since the upgrades but I am guessing I would struggle with the respawns and prolonged fight not drawing any attention.

OriOri.8724:

Josh XT.6053:

I’ve soloed everything on my Elementalist, Warrior, Guardian and Necro. That means camps, towers and yes, keeps. Never solo’d SM but I’ve duoed it.

Are you on a low population server? It seems that everytime I even run by SM I get several people from the other server chasing me, regardless of if I’m attacking or not. And taking SM…… yesterday I logged out after ~1 hour of trying to take SM with a blob of at least 100 people. Normally I don’t like blob play, but any chance I get at SM I take it.

At the time that I duo’d SM, yes – it was on Borlis Pass when we were in T6 at like 2AM when no one was there lol.

As far as keeps and such go, depends on time of day – I haven’t solo’d a keep in a pretty long time since the populations of the servers have risen. But camps and towers I solo all the time daily.

leasm.1279:

So, I just started playing WvW after leveling my character to 80. I played with a zerg a little bit and noticed zergs are not for me, unfortunately. Rewards are good, but no fun at all. What I actually enjoy is playing solo, so I was not sure I could actually enjoy WvW..

However, I heard some players talking about solo roaming, and taking on some WvW objectives also solo.

Could you guys give some insights on that? I mean, which objectives should I search when solo roaming? Also, which maps? And which WvW upgrades would be best for this goal?

Kinda everything is soloable. Of course on primetime a lot of people will def. But
during offtimes.
Have uploaded a video of a solo keep fight a year ago, even with a deffer ;P
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbo8pTF-rLU

Of course if you wanna open a keep solo you should pick (guild) catas and place them so that you can open outer and inner wall. Sadly you have to run a few times. If you are a mesmer you can work with portal and be a little bit quicker on building your cata.

Also tried to solo sm a few times, but always to many oponents joined the battle. So had no luck on it.

Straegen.2938:

Used to be any objective was a solo affair. However Anet beefed up the lords. Flags and Camps are still easy mode although T3 camps aren’t a pushover. Towers can be easy to difficult depending on class/build and tower rank. Keep lords are tiresome with huge health bars and often dangerous particularly when the keep is upgraded.

I haven’t solo flipped a keep since the upgrades but I am guessing I would struggle with the respawns and prolonged fight not drawing any attention.

Saturday was the first time I soloed a keep since alpine returned. I may be wrong since it’s been more than 6 months since the last time I soloed bay but it did feel like the lord took a lot longer than it used to.
I’m not sure if they changed it’s health since it now has the break bar, or if it’s the fact it randomly reset on me twice and I had to fight another player at one point, but it was a lot more tedious than I remember.

edit: I was also on my alt account and I don’t have guard killer on that one so I was probably doing at least 10% less damage to the lord. Still seemed a lot longer than it used to take.

Depends on the response time with enemies. just test it out before you actually hit a target. Take out some guards, hit the door a few times just to make the icon on the map ‘contested’ with white swords. Wait a few minutes with a path out of sight, watch and see if you get any response (could just be a single guy checking to see if it was a door tapper – if so, wait for swords to drop on the icon, and go build siege) give it a whirl and you know you may have 1 guy scouting that you may have to kill.

If a zerg rolls through as the response, maybe try to draw them across the map before attempting the takeover.

Start small, if you can with t1 or ‘paper’ towers. They go down alot faster.

And the tip about using guild seige is good. Seriously who wants to run all that supply back and forth it gets deflating when you almost finished to arrive at that superior cata and see it shot torn down by one scout.

Straegen.2938:

Used to be any objective was a solo affair. However Anet beefed up the lords. Flags and Camps are still easy mode although T3 camps aren’t a pushover. Towers can be easy to difficult depending on class/build and tower rank. Keep lords are tiresome with huge health bars and often dangerous particularly when the keep is upgraded.

I haven’t solo flipped a keep since the upgrades but I am guessing I would struggle with the respawns and prolonged fight not drawing any attention.

I was gonna say they buffed keep lords massively with HoT (so yes, Puck, it should have taken substantially longer), and frankly any build capable of sustaining against it solo is probably not going to have the damage to kill it and take the flip before enemies realize you’re there and defend it. They were pushovers earlier as I took a few keeps with very limited help, but going for them now is nigh impossible unless you’re against really incompetent defenders or have no opposition at all.

T3 camps are actually scary if you’re not built to take and deal multi-hit damage with lots of stability and mitigation. All the cabalist/guard CC gets pretty out of hand :P

Though this is not directly related and I don’t have the link and don’t solo myself.

I learnt a lot about roaming from Wooden Potatoes PvP for dummies guide, bare with me, in PvP conquest teams will have roamers also, their job is tricky and difficult and he talks about the best ways to play your role to help your world.

I had alot of fun taking and learning to take all the things on all the maps with my warrior solo (ebg, desert bl, alpine…..is almost impossible atm but the bosses r the same so i could do it eez). Only thing I haven’t done yet is the sm lord solo. I’ve tried it on 2 occasions and there was just no way to get more than 50% of it’s health down without a heavey as kitten sustain build…and i always run 80-100% zerk. All this was before the adrenal health changes though so….I could probably do it now just PEOPLE ARE EVERYWHERE. The alpine keeps and technically lowlands but only cause some1 else came when iw as about to get it and overlook are the only things i haven’t technically solo’d yet but could easily without player interference on either side.

So in other words people are the problem you will have when doing any and everything…but you alraedy knew that probably.