Guild Wars 2

If you’re like me and many others who log everyday to spend most of your playtime roaming the (alpine) borderlands, what is it that drives you to keep playing this game mode?

Is it the thrill of a good skirmish? The assault or defense of enemy structures against seemingly impossible odds? Riches? (bad choice), the fabled precursor drop from an enemy lootbag you won’t forget to pick-up? All of the above?

Share your motivations!

Roaming is more fun than doing something else? I know that’s not as poetic as you were hoping for, but it’s just how it is for me.

PS: The one and only precursor drop I did get (Chaos Gun) was indeed from a thief, back when I was still green and afraid of their sneaky, ganky ways (back when p/d condi was a death sentence for warriors).

Keeping my home map the right color.

I’ll happily take the “winning against impossible odds” too, though for some reason I can’t get this to work too often. (I know, I know, you’re going to say L2P… )

Yuffi.2430:

Keeping my home map the right color.

I’ll happily take the “winning against impossible odds” too, though for some reason I can’t get this to work too often. (I know, I know, you’re going to say L2P… )

I don’t think it will ever be a L2P issue if you’re outnumbered, but those are indeed the best fights, specially when you manage to grab that clutch victory while defending or attacking an objective!

Surprisingly, I’m usually more inclined to check other server BL’s instead of home map (except for Desert, but I’ll hop there if it’s too blobby and laggy everywhere else).

I can’t confidently say that what I do is “roaming” because I don’t put myself in quite that much danger.

I don’t wander to the offending side of the map all too often. Mostly I stick to my own side roaming between towers and supply camps stalking zergs/small groups, relaying their movements to /map and killing solos/duos or +1ing fights. I’m a scout but I’m an active scout (“patrol” maybe?) in the sense that I rarely AFK in towers refreshing siege or trebbing things. I’m constantly on the move circling our objectives and I get lots of fights doing it. I’m talking battles every 5 – 10 minutes, although this is in EBG not the borderlands.

I say that it isn’t roaming because I don’t often venture far from safety and I don’t attempt to solo towers or contest keeps. I just keep everyone updated on the status of our objectives while personally killing/delaying as many people as I can by myself.

Once upon a time, I used to do all sorts of destructive things. Soloing towers, keeping waypoints perma-contested, building ballistas to kill objective siege then whispering commanders that it was safe to attack, defending enemy supply camps until they were fully upgraded, camping near dolyak routes to kill yak escorts, stalking zergs spamming supply traps on them (which I still do), etc. But ever since HoT power creep, server linkings and most people no longer roaming solo, I’ve given up this hobby, at least in EBG where I primarily reside. One can only take so many gankings before they feel that frustration outweighs fun. I still get outnumbered lots while doing defense but I don’t have nearly as far to run after I die.

Why do I continue to do it? Honestly, I’m not sure what it is. I’m just a go where the wind blows kind of player. I do what interests me most at that specific moment. I see a zerg and feeling blobbing? I’ll do that. I feel like small scale stuff? Maybe I’ll stalk some zergs with friends and kill the slow pokes. I see that we’re losing a lot of our stuff? Maybe I feel like preventing that by doing some active defense. SMC is trebbing everything in sight? Maybe I feel like opening it up so I/the commander can stop it.

I just never sign on with a specific goal or wanting to do only one thing all day. I sign on and see what I feel like doing, which happens to mostly be scouting/defense for what ever reason.

Also important to note: I used to do my roaming on a Necromancer and I still main a vanilla Necromancer. So that might give you a better idea as to why I eventually got fed up with solo roaming.

Lahm.7056:

I don’t think it will ever be a L2P issue if you’re outnumbered, but those are indeed the best fights

And I certainly agree with this. Last week, I won my first straight up 4v1 in a long while. I’ve won plenty of outnumbered fights but they’re usually very circumstantial in the sense that I had a supply camp or champion on my side, I killed them one by one as they split up, or something like that. This was the first 4v1 that I had won where I was actively fighting all of them at once, just kiting them through water and LOS’ing to stay alive. On my vanilla Necromancer at the time, I came out of that heart racing and feeling awesome for actually having succeeded. And last night I won a 2v1 against a condition Chrono and a shatter Chrono while I was trying to take their supply camp! I was just lucky that the condition Chrono was more focused on trying to hide behind things than fighting me or I might have gotten overwhelmed.

Again, I can’t exactly say that what I do is “roaming” but I’d like to believe it still shares some of the risks and responsibilities. But, I wouldn’t be insulted if someone disagreed either.

Random encounters that challenge me as a player.

Random action with surprises i love this ^^