Guild Wars 2

Hi Fellow GW2ers!

I was wondering if you would share your thoughts on how to effectively play in WvW when you are constantly outnumbered by the players on the other servers.

BACKGROUND:
As background, I’ve been playing WvW for about two months now (3-6x per week) and I absolutely love it. However, I play on a server that is constantly outnumbered…and even after resetting this is usually still the case.

Now there are windows of time where we do have a good enough number to muster up and capture camps, towers, but hardly ever to seriously compete for a Keep or Castle (although we do indeed opportunistically try, because what’s the fun of never trying?).

It seems to me that the best tactic for us is to take advantage of the times we can zerg and take over what we can. But then the other servers inevitably counterattack and usually with numbers that are 1.5 – 2x larger than our group.

That stated, the commanders I go rampaging with are typically very good. They understand our situation well, go for smart objectives, and keep morale high. When we do battle zergs that are larger than ours, we build arrow carts and ballistas to defend/attack choke points, which works well until the opposing numbers get so huge that we are overrun (and I am not complaining about this because these battles tend to be epic and fun).

QUESTION:
What do you think we can do to make the best of this situation? Any specific tactics/game plans/jedi mind tricks you would recommend?

Please refrain from the obvious answer of “Join a bigger server” because, at this point, I would feel like a traitor (even though I do get tempted sometime to just do it!).

You could join/make a guild dedicated to beating the poop out of zergs 2-3x your numbers. I know with a group of 8-15 willing to organize and coordinate via some sort of VOIP (mumble, vent, TS3 ect) you can pretty much outplay most zergs of random pugs. I know in tier 5-6, these type of groups can demoralize the fairweathers back to PVEing making PVdoor a breeze.

Make use of point gain. Killing yaks from enemy camps, and killing enemy sentry guards & capping those sentry points give you valuable points immediately in between point tick intervals.

If you’re constantly out manned and don’t have enough on a map to take a keep and defend it for a few ticks, your time may be better spent hunting dolyaks around the map by yourself or with 1 or 2 other players for granting constant swiftness to eachother. You can actually gain more war points by letting an opposing team keep control of a supply camp and simply making rounds to kill the dolyaks that spawn from it. Each camp is worth 5 points to you every 15 minutes if you own it, or it could be worth 30+ if you farm it for an enemy’s dolyaks.

It’s a better time investment than beating your head on a camp supervisor for a few minutes at a time, hoping not to get run over by a zerg that sees cross swords and swings by to investigate.

Sentry posts are worth less because of their spawn times, but having more captures of them than your opponent means a lot in the long run.

Doing these two things with a friend or two, making runs up and down the map in tandem, has been the key to success for many higher tier servers to keep a point deficit from spreading too much and even spreading a point lead to brace for heavy night capping. If a map you’re in already has a friendly zerg assaulting towers/keeps already, it’s sometimes even the right choice to make to separate yourself from the zerg and head out to do yak slapping. One extra body inside of a zerg of 20+ will never outweigh earning those extra points per point tick (even just casually) killing yaks and sentries.

If a group of three to four players is doing this dedicated in each map, you can heavily stay on top of an enemy’s PPT without needing to hold and defend objectives.

1) Put a sticky note on your monitor over where the score shows. Now go enjoy those epic battles. :-)

2) practice ninja’ing keeps and towers (Ram rushes, golem rushes, etc)

3) learn how to time your success to coincide with the point tick

4) Make a habit of keeping multiple targets contested at all times. Lay down siege you don’t intend to build. Do anything you can to convince the opposing team that you are attacking the target that you’re not attacking.

5. Flip things even if you can’t hold them. It’s often worth it to have a less fortified target to deal with later.

tiramisu.8706:

You could join/make a guild dedicated to beating the poop out of zergs 2-3x your numbers. I know with a group of 8-15 willing to organize and coordinate via some sort of VOIP (mumble, vent, TS3 ect) you can pretty much outplay most zergs of random pugs. I know in tier 5-6, these type of groups can demoralize the fairweathers back to PVEing making PVdoor a breeze.

You make a lot of good points, I’ll make sure to pass this along to my guild!

Chill Winston.7263:

I was wondering if you would share your thoughts on how to effectively play in WvW when you are constantly outnumbered by the players on the other servers.

I’d suggest to try the following:

Coordinate — You are not alone. Many players will be likely minded, so join them. If you do not already have dedicated WvW guilds, found them. If your WvW guilds are uncoordinated, build alliances. Have a voice chat, have a web forum, have regular meetings. Make the WvW success of your server a community effort. Try to develop a server strategy. Have veteran players give advise to new players. Maybe have a regular tutorial day, and advertise WvW to PvE players. Assume good faith of all your guilds, and keep a level head even if things don’t turn out as planned. Refrain from pointing fingers and always remember that any “Guild Wars” should be directed at that other server’s guilds.

Concentrate — If you only have half the players, then play only half the maps. Coordinate before reset which guilds man which map. Let the other servers fight over the maps that you cannot man. Even if this might not help you to gain more points, it will help you to significantly improve the fun on the active maps since you may not be outmanned anymore. If the opponent is able to play at off-hours that you cannot compete with, then take your encouragement from your servers performance during the hours that you can play in full strength. After all, the points are only good for determining the next opponent, they are no measurement of fun.

Fortify — Even a small skeleton crew can defend a well fortified tower or keep. The game has defensive siege equipment for a reason. Heck, I stalled attacks on Quentin several times against groups of ~20 players by using only the mortar. A nightshift of only a few people can defend a map if they have a network of waypoints they can use. Don’t overreach yourself, play safe, and don’t be reckless. If you have secured your third of the map, you can start harassing your opponent. Focus on easy targets first (Dolyaks, supply camps) before trying to attack some low tier towers. Give your opponent something to do in his third so that she is distracted from yours. When in doubt, choose defending your (T2/T3) towers over conquering any enemy keep/tower.

Persist — Growing a lasting WvW community and leading it to success will take time. Maybe even a long time. Be patient, and don’t give up. Maybe you have to loose some weeks to end up in a bracket where you can rise and shine. It will be worth it, and you will have more fun if your opponent is of an adequate level. Define goals for yourself/for your server that can be reached. And if you fail (which you inevitably will from time to time), then stand up and try again.

Chill Winston.7263:

Please refrain from the obvious answer of “Join a bigger server” because, at this point, I would feel like a traitor (even though I do get tempted sometime to just do it!).

I’d never dare to suggest a server transfer, for the very reason you have given.

~MRA

Tiramisu, Morna Val, Jairon Kalach, ekleenex, and MRA: Thank you for being so generous with your advice and insights! My WvW intelligence just went up 100%. My buddy who got me into GW2 sold me on the game when he told me about the guild/alliance features and the whole community around the game…..and I never played an MMO in my life.

By the way, I’m in the ekoc guild on the IOJ server. If we ever battle, I will be easy to spot: I’m the Norn Warrior who seems to dies all the time!

roll warrior

carry arrow carts

1v50 u can do it

MornaVal.4508:

Make use of point gain. Killing yaks from enemy camps, and killing enemy sentry guards & capping those sentry points give you valuable points immediately in between point tick intervals.
…
Sentry posts are worth less because of their spawn times, but having more captures of them than your opponent means a lot in the long run.

Are sentry posts really worth flipping? You get a point for it, but can’t get any more points from it util the enemy flips it back, giving them a point too. You get no points for holding the capture point over a tick.

Back and forth, back and forth. If there were only two servers the best case scenario would be that one server finishes the week with just ~16 more points from flipping sentries than the other (assuming there are 16 sentries across all maps and they hold all 16 at reset, but not sure the exact number).

With three servers that becomes a bit more complex, but I doubt the differential is significant.

However, there are costs to capping sentries:

1. You show the enemy where you are on the map, and potentially where you’re heading.

2. It delays you from reaching a more valuable objective.

Combined, those two increase the enemy’s response time to your movements. One of the best examples is in enemy borderlands, if your strike group is heading to a northeast/west or far north supply camp to cap it, it’s best to ignore the sentry on the way so as not to give the enemy advance warning.

Curious what peoples’ thoughts are here.

Kurt, it really depends on what you are trying to do which makes hitting sentries worth it or not.

Alot of zergs passing by a sentry will kill that sentry (at least in T1 and T2) leading the other teams to know where a zerg is. Where sentry killing is worth it is when you have roamers and special ops teams. Both types can kill the sentries just as fast as an uncommitted zerg with little risk and effort, and forces the other two teams to evaluate their position on the board. Roamers and spec ops don’t care if they get curbstompped by a 30 man zerg as it is resources wasted on the zergs part.

Sentries can be killed as part of an offensive strategy to spread out enemy forces, one sentry killed on a weird path may confuse defending forces especially when its adhoc no strong commander on defense.

I think that sentries should not be killed if the zerg you are running isn’t strong enough to defeat a standing army of the other two teams. In any case when you are doing rushes of any type, killing a sentry can make the rush meaningless if the enemy can determine where you are going. If they can’t kill the sentry.

I’m an Oceanic Commander for Yak’s Bend. Yak’s bend has very few players during this timeslot, and has consistently battled servers with vastly superior numbers in this timeslot, most notably Dragonbrand, Sea of Sorrows and Crystal Desert, and sometimes two of these servers at the same time. Since our Euro coverage isn’t that great either, siege often despawns before the oceanic floodgates hit us.

In this case its all about the ticks. Our borderlands currently flipped twice each night, once by DB, once by SoS, with about two hours between them. We delay them as long as possible by aggressively backcapping supply camps, and picking our battles.

once they completely cap the map we tend to focus only on killing Yaks, because doing so denies the opponent clear objectives to go after and expedites them moving on. Once they’re gone, we backcap as much as possible to get a few ticks in before the other server arrives. We then try to delay them by turning a few of the more defensible positions into deathtraps inside.

Since the walls will be paper at this point, the best thing you can do is make their life as difficult as possible when they breach. Use CC/area control to give your ACs and ballistas the time to do their work. breaches, gates and stairs are all natural chokepoints to exploit.

In my opinion a distraction is the best tactic. or if you don’t like having a few thieves and mesmer’s pulling out, try an ambush. this is what I would do. if they are coming at you from front on and they have 2X more than you run to a choke point and tell the thieves in your zerg to find somewhere to hide, tell the mesmers to get Time warp and Portal ready for confusion. when they hit you hopefully your thieves got to a high place and are using shortbows to constantly drop Poison. your mesmers will then portal bomb wars/guards into the middle (this is suicide, but that’s the idea) your wars and guards have then caused grief/annoyance and that is when everyone in your zerg just AoE’s around the outside to group the oncoming zerg together. if this doesn’t work and they keep coming, call your thieves to pull out D/D and death blosom all through the Zerg and drop a shadow refuge at the end (if they live) your mesmers will hopfully have spawned millions of little clones and phantasms to keep the zerg at bay. all the while engis are dropping turrets and rangers are using arrow rain (or whatever it is called).

but for anything such as this to happen, you need to be somewhere you know that you can defend easier than they can attack.