Guild Wars 2

Somehow there’s a common misconception that roaming is not helping your server in WvW. Extreme versions of the argument claim roaming is greedy, self-serving, basically that roamers should go to sPvP (can never tell if trolls actually believe their arguments though).

I think it’s the other way around. Roaming is the hardest and least rewarding role in WvW (aside from commanding) but roamers have far more value than zergers.

- – -

For the sake of argument lets just consider supply camps. Lets pretend roamers don’t scout, or kill dolyaks denying supply, or contest waypoints, or distract zergs and other small groups, or do anything except capture supply camps.

Here’s the PPT values that tick every 15 minutes:
Supply camp: 5
Tower: 10
Keep: 25
SMC: 35

It takes me about 40-50 seconds to clear all the NPCs in a unguarded and non-upgraded supply camp. And most supply camps are not guarded or upgraded (if they are, I can often still deal with it up to the point where it gets the cultist NPCs which is a 200 or 250 supply camp).

There are certain zerg-heavy servers up to T2 (no idea about T1) where I can go to their borderland solo and run the circle of camps, holding between 4-6 of the camps just myself. This means solo I can be maintaining 20-30 PPT. This is the equivalent of 2-3 towers or 1 keep.

This doesn’t compare to anything an individual zerger could be doing.

On a bad day and/or in EB or vs servers with good roaming presence, I might be holding on average 1-2 supply camps per tick while roaming. By the points, this still seems far more than an individual zerg member could be contributing. And again, this is not counting anything else roamers do including points from sentries and dolyaks or the actual effect of the supply and supply denial from these camps.

edit: Confusion in the responses… I’m not saying zergs are unimportant, they obviously are. I’m saying on a 1-to-1 comparison, roamers do a lot more, at least with the current population levels of each.

maybe we should just flip a coin for keeps and towers at mach start, and all start roaming and fighting over camps…

Roamers are pretty well irrelevant. That’s because on the whole, camps, dolyaks and sentries are of very, very minor importance. Even towers are generally unimportant strategically (with one or two exceptions)

The battle is largely over who holds the keeps and the strategic towers and because of the way the game is structured, there’s little point in worrying too much about upgrading anything else. Very often (in fact, usually) the battle will roll over a structure, cap it and leave. The only value of supply camps and most towers is as a source of siege equipment supply.

The idea of ‘cutting off supply’ as a game mechanic has failed because camps are so vulnerable. They can be switched back-and-forth at any moment by minor forces. The only real obstacle being the buff timer.

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

maybe we should just flip a coin for keeps and towers at mach start, and all start roaming and fighting over camps…

Since when did keeps and towers not require fighting over camps?

Contiguous.1345:

Roamers are pretty well irrelevant. That’s because on the whole, camps, dolyaks and sentries are of very, very minor importance. Even towers are generally unimportant strategically (with one or two exceptions)

The battle is largely over who holds the keeps and the strategic towers and because of the way the game is structured, there’s little point in worrying too much about upgrading anything else. Very often (in fact, usually) the battle will roll over a structure, cap it and leave. The only value of supply camps and most towers is as a source of siege equipment supply.

The idea of ‘cutting off supply’ as a game mechanic has failed because camps are so vulnerable. They can be switched back-and-forth at any moment by minor forces. The only real obstacle being the buff timer.

I suggest you read the OP again since I’m essentially referring to the 1-to-1 value of a roamer vs zerger and nothing else. I also have no idea what you could mean by “strategic importance” with regards to holding objectives except for PPT. And in this case, again, refer to OP to refute yourself.

Cutting off supply doesn’t fail as a game mechanic… I’ve seen entire zergs dedicated to guarding a dolyak. If anything, it’s that there’s no one to do it in the times where it matters because WvW pushes zerging so hard in terms of effortless rewards relative to anything else. Of course, much of the time supply camps aren’t about dolyaks or even supply and nowhere did I claim this.

Contiguous.1345:

That’s because on the whole, camps, dolyaks and sentries are of very, very minor importance. Even towers are generally unimportant strategically (with one or two exceptions)

This is very short sighted. It is extremely difficult to hold a keep without supply at least in a competitive match. These players are vital to back-capping, escorting, calling out enemy movements, cutting off reinforcements and wreaking general havoc on non-zerg maps. They can break up mass zergs from one map by pulling enemies off a map for defense. Also points wise a roamer/skirmish group contributes more points per player than a zerg by far.

Zergs are important to combat other zergs and to take the hard objectives but roamers and skill groups are important for many other aspects of WvW.

That said, I do not agree with the OP who states they are more important. I believe it is a symbiotic relationship. Roaming would be difficult without the zerg and a zerg would have a hard time locking everything down without the roamers.

Roamers/small groups(<10) are great for capping/deffing camps and unprotected towers. A zerg runs into a roamer and it’s over.
The main reason roaming works atm for capping camps is RI, and it’s fine like that.
It causes people to defend camps and not just retake it after(
how it was before RI, everyonej ust running past eachother and retaking what was stolen =/=pvp)

Zergs(>10 & <50) are great for capping protected towers/keeps/sm, as well as holding them and running past the occasional camp.

Both are needed, regardless of the point ticks.
If everyone was roaming there would be too many people roaming to be useful, people would zerg to counter a ton of other roamers and if everyone was zerging in one zerg people would roam to get more of the small objectives..

Contiguous.1345:

Roamers are pretty well irrelevant. That’s because on the whole, camps, dolyaks and sentries are of very, very minor importance. Even towers are generally unimportant strategically (with one or two exceptions)

You do realize that ~25% or more of the total point from the week comes from dolyaks/sentries? Dolyak kills give 3 instant pts, sentry kills give 1. Also roamers give info to the main force about enemy positions. Roamers/scouts enable you to preactively react to an enemies forces movements.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/How-do-score-calculations-work

Contiguous.1345:

The idea of ‘cutting off supply’ as a game mechanic has failed because camps are so vulnerable. They can be switched back-and-forth at any moment by minor forces. The only real obstacle being the buff timer.

So stopping a keep from getting an extra 70-150 supply for siege/repair fails because camps are so vulnerable? I do not get your point here? Camps are vulnerable for that reason. A small group can stop supply/reinforcements, while the main force sieges a keep. The 5m buff and the slow speed of dolyaks movement/respawn gives your force time to break in and take a keep. If a keep has max supply then the defenders can build a ton of siege while having time to repair walls/gates.

Zephyrus.9680:

edit: Confusion in the responses… I’m not saying zergs are unimportant, they obviously are. I’m saying on a 1-to-1 comparison, roamers do a lot more, at least with the current population levels of each.

Yeah but you forget diminishing returns. If you have 50 zerglings and 5 solo-capping, dolyak killing roamers, one roamer will be more valuable. But if you have 30 zerglings and 30 roamers, anyone who switches to being a zergling instantly becomes more valuable because 30 roamers won’t take a keep or stonemist or even a tower, or prevent an enemy zerg from doing that, while that 10-20 additional zergers might make the difference. And there’s a limited number of roamer-appropriate objectives.

Roamer’s value rapidly diminishes as the ratio between them and zergers reaches parity or majority, while that of a zergling actually increases.

While people who do PROPER roaming are plenty valuable to their server,
The issue is that there are a lot of roamers out there who are not roaming because they want to help in WvW, they are roaming because all they want to do is gank uplevels and unsuspecting opponents (They call it “looking for good fights”) and feed their ego.

They don’t hit sentries, they don’t hit camps, they don’t hit yaks, they don’t build or repair. They idle around various parts of the BL and gank people 1v1. Those people are not valuable for anything other than very mildly trimming the opponent’s forces, probably of no actual consequence to the situation.

EnRohbi.2187:

While people who do PROPER roaming are plenty valuable to their server,
The issue is that there are a lot of roamers out there who are not roaming because they want to help in WvW, they are roaming because all they want to do is gank uplevels and unsuspecting opponents (They call it “looking for good fights”) and feed their ego.

They don’t hit sentries, they don’t hit camps, they don’t hit yaks, they don’t build or repair. They idle around various parts of the BL and gank people 1v1. Those people are not valuable for anything other than very mildly trimming the opponent’s forces, probably of no actual consequence to the situation.

A lot of roamers are having fun the way they want to have fun. Not everyone cares about PPT or overall score. I highly recommend this attitude as it makes the game much more relaxing and fun.

I think the word “roamer” has the negative connotation.

“Roamers” can vary into Scouts, Yak Killers, Camp/Tower/Sentry attacks & defense.

However, there are those “roamers” that just go out to find fresh kills. Mostly look forward to kill uplevels, undergeard’s, or less skilled players.

I hardly care for WvW Server ranks, but what really is the point in killing my (up)leveled 30 Warrior who is in full greens?

I roam solo and in small men guild groups, either way i run is cause i find it more fun and challenging than other aspects of WvW, that said my guild is in excellent relations with many commanders, giving info in map chat, dropping by taking camps to support undergoing sieges and help get towers or keeps, go defending against all odds towers and generally speaking our commanders on Gandara are well aware of roaming groups and DO ask us if in trouble.

I never understood all the fuss about the so called different playstyles.

As far as points … who gives a rat? It all boils down to numbers.

Whenever I refer to solo roamers, I’m usually talking about those players who walk around looking for 1 vs 1 fights.

The big problem is that pretty much everything you listed can be done a whole lot better with a small team. Take any group of 5 players, and they’ll capture camps and kill Dolyaks five times faster. They also have the added benefit that they carry 5 times the supply, letting them use siege and take towers. They can also defend towers, both with and without siege.

The only thing solo roamers are actually good at is scouting for larger groups. Otherwise, grab a small team.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Take any group of 5 players, and they’ll capture camps and kill Dolyaks five times faster.

You are now making couple of false assumptions:
- that 5 man group also travels 5 times faster than a solo player, which of course is fallacy. Big part of the time is actually spent moving around and solo player can do that as efficiently
- that the 5-man team never need to fight against enemy invadersand always captures the supply at right time, in other words when the lord is not buffed, no need to wait

I have found that at least here in EU top tiers a solo roamer without any stealth or teleportation skills can survive much longer than most small teams. One can stay alive hours upon hours. Enemy zergs rarely chase after solo players as it is not efficient, but enemy 5 man-team might chase a solo player (which is not then doing the supply camps). A 5 man team on the other hand often gets the interest of an enemy zerg, thus facing complete or partial wipe.

I agree that 5-man is of course better in building stuff and defending towers. But for supply camps and quaggans etc. 5 solo players all capping different targets would probably get more their server than 5 players moving in one group.

The reason “roamers” get so much hate is because many are looking for fights, not trying to contribute to winning WvW.

Contiguous.1345:

Roamers are pretty well irrelevant. That’s because on the whole, camps, dolyaks and sentries are of very, very minor importance. Even towers are generally unimportant strategically (with one or two exceptions)

The battle is largely over who holds the keeps and the strategic towers and because of the way the game is structured, there’s little point in worrying too much about upgrading anything else. Very often (in fact, usually) the battle will roll over a structure, cap it and leave. The only value of supply camps and most towers is as a source of siege equipment supply.

The idea of ‘cutting off supply’ as a game mechanic has failed because camps are so vulnerable. They can be switched back-and-forth at any moment by minor forces. The only real obstacle being the buff timer.

35-40% of all weekly points comes from dollyak kills alone.

Contiguous.1345:

Roamers are pretty well irrelevant. That’s because on the whole, camps, dolyaks and sentries are of very, very minor importance. Even towers are generally unimportant strategically (with one or two exceptions)

The battle is largely over who holds the keeps and the strategic towers and because of the way the game is structured, there’s little point in worrying too much about upgrading anything else. Very often (in fact, usually) the battle will roll over a structure, cap it and leave. The only value of supply camps and most towers is as a source of siege equipment supply.

The idea of ‘cutting off supply’ as a game mechanic has failed because camps are so vulnerable. They can be switched back-and-forth at any moment by minor forces. The only real obstacle being the buff timer.

Cut off the supply and you have paper towers. Paper towers go down by the main zerg force much faster than T3 towers. Continue to kill the dolyaks while waiting on the supervisor buff and they remain paper towers. Flip camps constantly and at best the enemy can get 70 supply instead of 140 supply into a tower. Flip them 5 minutes before the tick and you gradually add to your server’s ppt and detract from the enemy’s .. particularly if you wait and time it like that over and over.

He who controls the supply, controls WvW. Those who are doing this service should be lauded, because they’re making any push on the map easier for the main force.

Fun fact: A dolyak will net the server 10pt per kill. Doylaks respawn every 6-7 minutes I believe, could be a bit longer. Sitting at a camp exit and just killing dolyaks will net your server roughly 80pt per hour, longer than most towers on most maps if you’re in the higher tiers. And a tower is worth what? 10 per tick for a total of 60pt per hour?

Another fun fact: Most roamers act as scouts, track enemy movement and call out empty towers and keeps, and tagging towers and doors to help split up the enemy and subsequently make pushes on map easier.

People care about ppt?

Too bad playing for ppt has no incentive therefore is no fun hence booring and a waste of time :S.
Besides that OP has a point somehow,except you can’t take any of these objectives if the main zerg is not being kept busy by some other force so all group sizes have their place and purpoise.So ironicly you can’t have roaming without zerg

Blix.8021:

People care about ppt?

Must be from Visunah or U.S

i truly feel more useful roaming as opposed to zergling-ing.

its unfortunate that being a zergling gets me better rewards. a zerg can flip a tower in the time it takes me to solo a camp… for double to triple the reward (including the sentry nearby, and the camp the zerg sends 5-10 people to while theyre ramming).

insanemaniac.2456:

i truly feel more useful roaming as opposed to zergling-ing.

its unfortunate that being a zergling gets me better rewards. a zerg can flip a tower in the time it takes me to solo a camp… for double to triple the reward (including the sentry nearby, and the camp the zerg sends 5-10 people to while theyre ramming).

Yup! I enjoy roaming, but to get the loot and the dailies done easily you got to roll with the zerg a bit. I just usually try to break up my session 50/50 when I can.

OP, no one cares if you solo.

I’m curious, would it be more profitable(ppt wise) to flip enemy camps or to kill their yaks?

As in, could a 4-man team roam around the map just killing yaks rather than flipping the entire camp in a ppt tick and generate more ppt?

Assume two scenarios:
1. Camp w/o upgrades
2. Camp w/ upgrades

Well do the math. Camps yield 5ppt per tick, assuming you can control two and flip them before the timer runs out each time, that’s 10ppt per tick, 60 pt per hour.

Ok so if two yaks are spawning every 10 minutes(I believe that’s conservative) then at 3ppt a kill thats 60 pt per hour per camp(120 total). Assuming of course that it’s every 10 minutes and not less.

Now the question is at what supply count and/or at what upgrade point is it more beneficial to flip the camp vs just killing the yak?

I believe you get 10 pts per yak and sentry, but I would have to go back into game to confirm. If the yaks don’t make it to their destination, doesn’t really matter at what upgrade level the camp is. But you can max your ppt (and reset the enemy’s double supply if its done) by flipping the camp too while waiting on the doly to respawn. However a flipped camp is often noticed and reacted to before a missing doly.

Edited to add: Just checked and it appeared to be 5 pts for the yak, 10 for the sentry.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Take any group of 5 players, and they’ll capture camps and kill Dolyaks five times faster.

You are now making couple of false assumptions:
- that 5 man group also travels 5 times faster than a solo player, which of course is fallacy. Big part of the time is actually spent moving around and solo player can do that as efficiently
- that the 5-man team never need to fight against enemy invadersand always captures the supply at right time, in other words when the lord is not buffed, no need to wait

I have found that at least here in EU top tiers a solo roamer without any stealth or teleportation skills can survive much longer than most small teams. One can stay alive hours upon hours. Enemy zergs rarely chase after solo players as it is not efficient, but enemy 5 man-team might chase a solo player (which is not then doing the supply camps). A 5 man team on the other hand often gets the interest of an enemy zerg, thus facing complete or partial wipe.

I agree that 5-man is of course better in building stuff and defending towers. But for supply camps and quaggans etc. 5 solo players all capping different targets would probably get more their server than 5 players moving in one group.

#1: It is a small map, so travel times are negligible. Also, every second that solo roamer spends slowly capturing a camp is a second that a small team is already moving to their next objective. This also isn’t including run time for when that solo roamer gets caught and killed by a bigger group. Because of this, the small team has a culminating travel advantage that grows the longer they are active in the field over a solo roamer.
#2: This is assuming that the small team fights invaders. A small team can dispatch an invader much quicker than a solo roamer because they come with 5 times the offensive power as well kitten times the control. The 5 man team can also kill more invaders than the solo roamer, contributing toward more loot and greater impact on the field.

Here in the US, enemy zergs love to send 20 or so random players from their zerg to chase a solo roamer. This is assuming they don’t just pull that player or bowl over them instantly, getting hit by dozens auto attacks in an instant. Of course, the advantage to a small team is that you often won’t be attacked by solo or duo roamers, who are usually thieves and mesmers that attempt to burst you down as quickly as possible. There is no safety while running by yourself here; you are a target and little more.

Both roamers and zergs are important to WvW. A roaming group is great for disruption of supply and diversion tactics, a zerg is great for large assaults against defended objectives, fast captures of undefended objectives and crushing the morale of smaller groups. A server that doesn’t use roamers will find themselves constantly starved of supply and unable to hold objectives against a server that fields both roaming groups and zergs. A server that only fields roamers will find themselves crushed at every opportunity. It’s better to have both.

Edit: I’m only talking about roaming groups (3-5 people). Solo roamers take too long to capture anything besides sentries and yaks, it’s far more efficient to move as a group when roaming.

A five-man squad is a completely different animal from solo roamers, which is what the OP was talking about.

Nobody would deny that a squad is a useful unit. In fact, if I had my way, the whole zerg would organise into functional, coordinated squads.

Contiguous.1345:

Nobody would deny that a squad is a useful unit. In fact, if I had my way, the whole zerg would organise into functional, coordinated squads.

Join a highly coordinated guild, and not one blindly following the meta and you will see this.

Way back I did some calculations (didn’t use too much time, but even the brief time I used I came to some conclusions) how to make most points out of roaming and enemy border.

Short summary: Don’t flip camps or sentries, just take down every one of the dolyaks.

If you can keep every dolyak dead on the entire map, all of them, while enemy holds the camps, you will get roughly +7 points compared to them every tick. This is assuming dolyaks spawn twice per tick. Can’t really say whats the real spawn time of dolyaks but its somewhere around 5-7 minutes. So in some ticks you might get +13 points more than enemy from those camps.

So in borderlands, where this is easier to do, you would get roughly +42-78 points more than enemy every tick.

Some might think that capturing the camp would give you extra points but meh, then you have to wait till the enemy flips the camp back and then they get the dolyak credits and the camp tick again and you miss couple dolyak spawns as well.

One would need roughly 4 roamers to kill all the dolyaks from the map all time.

2 in north each on the both sides taking care of the camps and the one coming to their side from Crossroads. And 2 in south doing the same, taking care of the camp and the dolyaks from Orchard.

By doing this you will roughly tick 72 points to 108 points per tick while the enemy ticks 30 points from the camps.

Edit: Oh, about the sentries. If you flip sentry, you get points yes, but they don’t give you points after that. Well not until the enemy flips it back and then its back to +-0 situation. So it’s rather useless, unless you can flip every sentry on both enemy borderland as that would net you double points while enemy servers only get points for their borderland sentries. This ofcourse if its only your server who is roaming that border.

I just quit my guild. They took little to no interest in server WvW and went looking for fights with similar sized units. We besieged towers regularly just to try and flush out a fight and would abandon the attempt if no response.
Sometimes we did something useful, maybe ninja a keep or take down an enemy blob but it was more by accident than design.

It was fun at first – then it got old.

Killing Dolyaks gives points to the server?! And here I was, killing them for fun and attrition

If you don’ flip the supply camp, the enemy can just take the supply and than go for your tower or so. You cann’t interrupt the enemy because 50% of the time you will loose and a dolly can make it. Small group roaming is much more useful than solo.

Roaming is more interesting during off-peak hours, in prime time roaming has its value but zergs are more important.
We are a roaming and ninja focused guild and we feel as a strong component in the field, other zerg guilds value our actions very much. In fact, several servers hate us very much.
Both roles, roaming and zerging have its place in the game.

Best,

Haltair

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Here in the US, enemy zergs love to send 20 or so random players from their zerg to chase a solo roamer.

Luckily I don’t play in NA. I have heard and read from several threads that the US meta is even more about zerging and less about tactics. But I guess many EU guilds who moved to NA servers enjoy the relatively easier points.

Being alone and chased by 20 or more can also happen in EU. I have sometimes been chased even half across the entire BL map when I play with my engineer. Few rare times I managed to survive and laughed my head off because I don’t have any easy ways to reset a fight. In those cases the 20 men steam rolled me and jumped around my corpse, I have generally gotten revenge very soon = collecting loot bags from their team.

I still think very small scale roaming (group is smaller than 5) is efficient and I am actually thinking to start lessons for Desolation players: How to capture anything solo. We need the main zerg to attack and defend against enemy zergs, but also couple of very tiny teams / solo runners besides that.

Enemy knows me as a solo roamer, but I also act as a PuG Commander. I often like to run ahead of the entire group. It is so much fun when the enemy sees me approach: “Here comes that crazy engineer alone again… oh, crap… there is too many of them… he CCed us… ouch, we are dead… dang now he is attacking our tower and not even anybody can get inside to defend it”. ;-)

I agree with points above where if everyone was roaming/havoc/ninja groups it would probably be less efficient than having a zerg for the brute force but that would probably never be organized well enough to be able to test.

krijgsheer.9624:

If you don’ flip the supply camp, the enemy can just take the supply and than go for your tower or so. You cann’t interrupt the enemy because 50% of the time you will loose and a dolly can make it. Small group roaming is much more useful than solo.

I do both and find group roaming is only marginally faster than solo which makes it a lot less efficient. Solo player on a mobile class travels faster than a group (limited by its slowest member), caps at the same speed, and the only difference is NPC kill speed.

Most of the time I can kill a dolyak even with 2 or 3 players escorting though I may end up dying for it. What a soloer cannot do is ninja towers or keeps, defend vs this, or deal with other small-mid size groups. It’s slightly different roles and I guess not every class can quickly solo supply camps/sentries/dolyaks.

Avatar of Belle.9623:

EnRohbi.2187:

While people who do PROPER roaming are plenty valuable to their server,
The issue is that there are a lot of roamers out there who are not roaming because they want to help in WvW, they are roaming because all they want to do is gank uplevels and unsuspecting opponents (They call it “looking for good fights”) and feed their ego.

They don’t hit sentries, they don’t hit camps, they don’t hit yaks, they don’t build or repair. They idle around various parts of the BL and gank people 1v1. Those people are not valuable for anything other than very mildly trimming the opponent’s forces, probably of no actual consequence to the situation.

A lot of roamers are having fun the way they want to have fun. Not everyone cares about PPT or overall score. I highly recommend this attitude as it makes the game much more relaxing and fun.

I usually find the best fights while doing the rounds between camps, sentries, and dollys. Many players don’t seem to want to fight otherwise except for other seasoned roamers/duelists.

Zephyrus.9680:

Most of the time I can kill a dolyak even with 2 or 3 players escorting though I may end up dying for it. What a soloer cannot do is ninja towers or keeps, defend vs this, or deal with other small-mid size groups. It’s slightly different roles and I guess not every class can quickly solo supply camps/sentries/dolyaks.

One guy can take yaks and camps
Two can steal towers.
Three can conquer strongholds.

This doesn´t mean than it is better to run in smaller groups. It just means it can be done. Combined strategies are stronger from my point of view.

Haltair, one of the Twelve Shadows

I agree with the OP.

Recently my server has been invaded by some blackgate flunkies. In their eyes they will be heroes of crystal desert. They ball up and buff themselves in a very respectable and effecient manner…. and then they sit there. I gave them an honest chance, zerged around with them, and it was the most pointless and unproductive thing i have ever done. Even when we get enough on the map to make a queue their zergball kitten s around, yelling at the people on the map who are not with them, telling ppl to join them on ts yet try to dictate what can or cannot be said on map/team chat. And it sucks for those of us who have our own eyes and our own brains because nothing gets done. So we gained a whole guild of ‘hardcore wvw’ players, but our server is actually doing WORSE now. THey look cool running around with their massively sync’d lightning fields, but they are terrible at managing where to put their people and more importantly, terrible at communicating information and capping objectives in general.

IIRC, the more people that tag and kill a Dolyak, the more points you get which puts the balance in favour of a zerg which is stupid.

Zephyrus.9680:

Many players don’t seem to want to fight otherwise except for other seasoned roamers/duelists.

Wow! What’s your hat size? Just curious. Let me guess, you play thief?

WvWvW match up are won or lost at the moment of pairing. Take the 3 severs that’s paired value everyone who wvw on each server between 7pm to 2 am at 1 pt each, value the rest of the players at 1.5 each. You add up the pt values the server with highest pt wins.

Really? What does a Roamer who solos camps/sentries/yaks really do at the end of the week?

PPT means nothing, gives nothing, is nothing, unless you’re using the PvE bonuses your server gets…..right.

But what about the roamers who flip camps for 5 points. Since points mean nothing, all you do is take the WXP from flipping a camp and give it to one person on your server. If the other server flips the camp with 5,10,20 or 30 people, they get 5x,10x,20x or 30x the WXP for their server. All you really do is help the other side get WvW abilities quicker.

Without reading all these walls of text…we spent few hours with roamers, soloers, small man, mini zerg, taking Dragonbrand land back. SOR came with 70+ people zerg and took whole map in about 5 minutes. Yes, I see your point about roamers relevance

organized and well planned roaming is better than zergs, instead of a 30 man zerg, having 6 5 man group attacking towers and taking supply camps is better, but it’s still going to be very hard to take keeps, and it’s not that hard capturing towers with a 5 man party, just get 2 rams and use them, if you need any supply, just take from the camp near the tower that you’re going to attack, not all of the roamers will capture the tower, but I’m pretty sure atleast 2 will get towers

Ross Biddle.2367:

Contiguous.1345:

Roamers are pretty well irrelevant. That’s because on the whole, camps, dolyaks and sentries are of very, very minor importance. Even towers are generally unimportant strategically (with one or two exceptions)

The battle is largely over who holds the keeps and the strategic towers and because of the way the game is structured, there’s little point in worrying too much about upgrading anything else. Very often (in fact, usually) the battle will roll over a structure, cap it and leave. The only value of supply camps and most towers is as a source of siege equipment supply.

The idea of ‘cutting off supply’ as a game mechanic has failed because camps are so vulnerable. They can be switched back-and-forth at any moment by minor forces. The only real obstacle being the buff timer.

35-40% of all weekly points comes from dollyak kills alone.

Yeah, this. Lots of different ways to play WvW and they all contribute and you need all of them for a healthy WvW community.

Avatar of Belle.9623:

EnRohbi.2187:

While people who do PROPER roaming are plenty valuable to their server,
The issue is that there are a lot of roamers out there who are not roaming because they want to help in WvW, they are roaming because all they want to do is gank uplevels and unsuspecting opponents (They call it “looking for good fights”) and feed their ego.

They don’t hit sentries, they don’t hit camps, they don’t hit yaks, they don’t build or repair. They idle around various parts of the BL and gank people 1v1. Those people are not valuable for anything other than very mildly trimming the opponent’s forces, probably of no actual consequence to the situation.

A lot of roamers are having fun the way they want to have fun. Not everyone cares about PPT or overall score. I highly recommend this attitude as it makes the game much more relaxing and fun.

I agree.
I’ll take plenty of breaks and have fun with enemy roamers at various times throughout any one sitting.

But this isn’t a thread about the most fun way to play WvW,
This is a thread about the actual score value that roamers contribute, or help contribute, to their server.

My post was simply outlining that there are many roamers who do not care about the score and have no desire to contribute points to their server. They make roaming seem more useless than it really is when utilized as a proper tactic. I would also remark that your recommendation to not care about the PPT further illustrates this.

Whether you consider this to be a positive or negative thing is entirely in your interpretation of how the game should be played.

Contiguous.1345:

Roamers are pretty well irrelevant. That’s because on the whole, camps, dolyaks and sentries are of very, very minor importance. Even towers are generally unimportant strategically (with one or two exceptions)

The battle is largely over who holds the keeps and the strategic towers and because of the way the game is structured, there’s little point in worrying too much about upgrading anything else. Very often (in fact, usually) the battle will roll over a structure, cap it and leave. The only value of supply camps and most towers is as a source of siege equipment supply.

The idea of ‘cutting off supply’ as a game mechanic has failed because camps are so vulnerable. They can be switched back-and-forth at any moment by minor forces. The only real obstacle being the buff timer.

a total of 360 points exist from all the camps and towers alone. you mean to tell us that if a server held and owned all the camps and towers but no keeps that you wouldnt have the majority of all the points?

No. I said ‘The battle is largely over who holds the keeps and a few strategic towers’.

Choke points in a map give a server control of larger regions, which contain other towers and camps.
Quentin is a good example. When blue holds it, it’s very difficult for green to move troops into the Eastern section of the map and if they do, blue has little difficulty in clearing them out again.

Good Commanders know that it isn’t enough to look at a camp or tower that’s ‘the wrong colour’ and just try to take it without considering it’s value strategically.