Guild Wars 2

A simple question:

Can a small guild (10-15) defeat a zerg (+40)?

With this new condi meta, is this posible?

It happens all the time. There are countless youtube videos of even smaller groups than 10 breaking up large PUG blobs.

Against an organized group head on? Probably not.

For everything else, there is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kite

It always depend on the zerg more than the smaller group. Generally, its incredibly simple to break a zerg. A single bomb, 5 or so down, them backpeddaling, you’ve won. Or if you meet a zerg that completely falls apart if the commander goes down, no matter the numbers.

If we are assuming equal skills and similar group setups however, no its not really possible. It shouldnt be possible either. Best case scenario, you catch them so stacked and so utterly off guard that you bring them down to your numbers in one hit. Like an AFK blob standing on a bridge or something, lol.

Of course you will also have those that will say they did it because they facerolled into the backline if a zerg already engaged with another 50 man, but thats not really fair either.

The new “condi meta” is really only strong if one side fails to cleanse the initial burst – and 40 people will cleanse it alot easier than your 10-15 man. Hell you could have 10 healbot eles in that 40 man doing little to no damage and they would be invoulnerable, while still outnumbering the smaller group 2 to 1 of effective damage classes.

As a sidenote when someone “oh yeah we totally killed 40 people with our 15 man guild!” it was probably like 25-30 people in the enemy group and 5-10 randoms around the guild, lol.

Yes it can be done. My small group does it all the time. It’s all about group comp, and knowing whom you need to take down first. Get the back line casters and healers, and 9 time out of 10 your gonna wipe that big group. Condi is just a crutch that makes people feel safe to run. If you know how to fight it, it is a minor annoyance. If yo do not know how then you will die quickly.

Depending on how small of a group you’re running you may need to kite out chunks of players from the zerg. Once you get a down in that group, you can cascade that into many more kills when they try and help. With less than 10, it is more about whittling them down until there is nothing left.

vier.1327:

A simple question:

Can a small guild (10-15) defeat a zerg (+40)?

With this new condi meta, is this posible?

Generally speaking, it’s very unlikely. As others have mentioned already the zerg group would need to be very low skill and unorganized (i.e. a pugmander typemanding a k-train group that wasn’t anchored by a guild group) to even have a chance. The vids that do get posted of these ‘zerg whipes’ you’ll often notice that the small group isn’t fighting the zerg but able to pull out squirrels or small pockets and chip away at the larger group.

With regards to the condi comment, where essentially you are asking/implying that condi is so overpowered that an organized group could kill ~4x there numbers, I don’t believe condi is that strong, no. Yes, condi can be very powerful, but keep in mind that when an enemy target goes into downstate, the transition clears their condi bar. So if you are a small group you likely won’t be able to finish off downstates when you are as largely outnumbered as the example you gave.

It’s easy when you outplay enemy laika boss.

vier.1327:

A simple question:

Can a small guild (10-15) defeat a zerg (+40)?

With this new condi meta, is this posible?

Here you go lad, 5 organised and 3 pugs vs 23 pugs, not even condi builds
https://youtu.be/zkV1_6vXZKU?t=350

Philkafou.7481:

vier.1327:

A simple question:

Can a small guild (10-15) defeat a zerg (+40)?

With this new condi meta, is this posible?

Here you go lad, 5 organised and 3 pugs vs 23 pugs, not even condi builds
https://youtu.be/zkV1_6vXZKU?t=350

Wonder if Anet could fix the spam of cleaves… players need to get more effort to win and learn2 team instead of spam since they know AA will make damage in several targets…

All i can do watching that video is noding….

Saddly due the pve’ish design the groups who has more aoe+cleaves wins (aoe ain in offensive and defensive).
At the end is more who has better spamable build with more damage.

^this kind of gamplay was/*i*s the reason pvp was never great to watch or u could be carried easilly in some situations in gw2 and didnt artacted players.

Using terrain, keep/tower advantages, distractions, or other situational advantages it is possible to beat larger groups.

But given two equally organized groups and even terrain it is nearly impossible, even if the smaller group has a higher quality of player. The smaller group might push, and might get a few kills, but it will have to fall back in the face of pressure, and the larger group will often just res their dead.

The videos and examples people counter with are when they’re fighting unorganized forces, or distracted forces, or all to often they just miscount the number of enemy they are fighting.

Well my roaming group of 5 + 1 pug killed somewhere between 15-17 without being organized (no teamspeak, didn’t might or anything to engage, just happened upon the groupwhen going up the slope to NET on Alpine BL) a few days ago. I definitely think if we were to get 5 more mates and choke a zerg, they would die.

Harder in today’s game then the 1st year or two

There’s a reason all the,top guilds started running 20+ on their raids.

Depends entirely on the circumstances, really.

Short answer is yes, long answer is no with a maybe.

An organized guild of 10 – 15 versus another organized guild of double or greater numbers will not work out in favor of the smaller guild regardless of how bad the larger one is.

An organized guild of 10 – 15 versus pugs has potential for working out in favor of the guild but only if one of two things happen. One: The guild is experienced, stays tight and knows their positioning. Two: They cloud formation properly (split up and focus bomb targets).

Since the release of HoT, having only one or two more players can make a huge difference due to power creep. Smaller groups can still kill larger groups but it is much less often that this is done in an organized manner. And what I mean by organized is that the guild is sticking together instead of spreading out. There are generally too many threats for a smaller group to deal with no matter how skilled they are if they’re facing a zerg nearly twice their size.

Focusing targets can be done by roamers, you don’t need a guild to do it. There is skill in doing it properly but honestly as long as the larger group isn’t focusing single members of the smaller group, the smaller group should win simply because they can reset and recover more easily.

tldr: Cloud formation versus larger group = easy, effective and as long as the smaller group knows how to focus targets and avoid being focused themselves, can work in many different scenarios.

Organized and running in a tight ball = not so effective unless very skilled with positioning, sustain and eliminating downed players. More often than not, the smaller group will lose regardless of how good they are because they simply won’t be able to negate all the damage coming their way.

Dawdler.8521:

As a sidenote when someone “oh yeah we totally killed 40 people with our 15 man guild!” it was probably like 25-30 people in the enemy group and 5-10 randoms around the guild, lol.

I agree with everything you’ve said but I feel like gloating a bit and adding another example to the ones you’ve already provided.

A couple weeks ago 2 friends and I (3 of us, 1 Druid, 1 vanilla semi-tank Warrior, 1 glass Berserker) wiped a group of about 15 – 20 in EOTM. Following your example, they were caught off guard because a number of them were in the scorpian transformation attacking the red keep wall. We downed nearly half of them before they could react, got a few fully defeated, retreated to stealth and recovered, then finished the rest.

Of course yes, it was EOTM, but it was a group triple our size and our own group wasn’t on TS.

It’s easy to demolish a large group if you catch them with their pants down and don’t over extend.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Dawdler.8521:

As a sidenote when someone “oh yeah we totally killed 40 people with our 15 man guild!” it was probably like 25-30 people in the enemy group and 5-10 randoms around the guild, lol.

I agree with everything you’ve said but I feel like gloating a bit and adding another example to the ones you’ve already provided.

A couple weeks ago 2 friends and I (3 of us, 1 Druid, 1 vanilla semi-tank Warrior, 1 glass Berserker) wiped a group of about 15 – 20 in EOTM. Following your example, they were caught off guard because a number of them were in the scorpian transformation attacking the red keep wall. We downed nearly half of them before they could react, got a few fully defeated, retreated to stealth and recovered, then finished the rest.

Of course yes, it was EOTM, but it was a group triple our size and our own group wasn’t on TS.

It’s easy to demolish a large group if you catch them with their pants down and don’t over extend.

Not only did you obviously catch them off guard but the overall quality of EoTM zergers is… a little low… in my opinion.

I have seen a 40 man group nearly wiped by a keep lord.

vier.1327:

Can a small guild (10-15) defeat a zerg (+40)?

Not unless the zerg are terrible, and really that has always been the case, because this is not a high skill game. (even more so WvW)

Doable yes, common no. Pin sniping was always a good way to kill the larger group, and farm salty whispers. There were even posts on this forum complaining about pin sniping.

Last i played there were not a lot of 15man guild groups left in the game for NA. Maybe EU still has a lot of active 10-15 man guild groups? There was still some small mans in NA like 5-8 players, but they have dwindled as well.

I think a lot of the people saying yes are failing to take into account the periphery players not in the group. Had the op said 10 Vs 30 it’s still possible even if the 30 is organized but bad. Back in the day 20 Vs a map queue could be done, back in old pyro days i was lucky enough to be apart of this a couple times, but back then pugs weren’t as organized and critical damage had a much bigger punch.

When you see an enemy zerg of 40+ especially in prime time, they may not be all the same guild but they often have a lot of people who know what builds to run so its not going to happen with just 15 unless you find yourself in off hours facing eotm quality forces. 20 Vs 40 is still a challenge but a pin snipe with a well timed epi may work, but often only results in a retreat

Echoing what other commenters have said. One thing I’d like to add is there’s a distinction to be had between fights where participants on both sides are simultaneously engaged and those that are not. In the linked video I came up with around 15-18 hostiles in the entire clip. Of those there were only around a dozen present for the lord’s fight, and not even at the same time. Granted, an outnumbered win is a win and I congratulate you and your buddies, but if your group of five was fighting the dozen head on with no distractions I don’t think its a stretch to say the outcome could have been vastly different. Whether some person on a forum validates your montage doesn’t really matter though. The important thing is that you had fun, a culmination of a number of factors-
communication, teamwork, practice, and yes also the builds.

Azukas.1426:

Harder in today’s game then the 1st year or two

There’s a reason all the,top guilds started running 20+ on their raids.

I’d argue it’s a lot easier. The other night I literally solo’d on a 100% glass druid an entire guild. Yes, they were probably all newbies on free accounts. There is now a huge discrepancy between vets and newbies. Full ascended with infusions and cons you can almost 1 shot a newbie with an autoattack.

Obviously equal skill and experience: the larger number wins, but equal skill and experience are once in a blue moon.

Fluffball.8307:

Azukas.1426:

Harder in today’s game then the 1st year or two

There’s a reason all the,top guilds started running 20+ on their raids.

I’d argue it’s a lot easier. The other night I literally solo’d on a 100% glass druid an entire guild. Yes, they were probably all newbies on free accounts. There is now a huge discrepancy between vets and newbies. Full ascended with infusions and cons you can almost 1 shot a newbie with an autoattack.

Obviously equal skill and experience: the larger number wins, but equal skill and experience are once in a blue moon.

On Maguuma so Uhh yeah

Heres a relatively open fight with no distractions from vT Herald’s perspective. The SBI map Q vs two havoc squads plus some solo roamers. We were around 8, vT 4 and 3 or so solo roamers. So combined we roughly made up 15.

https://youtu.be/4LA5C84uBiY?t=488

Azukas.1426:

Fluffball.8307:

Azukas.1426:

Harder in today’s game then the 1st year or two

There’s a reason all the,top guilds started running 20+ on their raids.

I’d argue it’s a lot easier. The other night I literally solo’d on a 100% glass druid an entire guild. Yes, they were probably all newbies on free accounts. There is now a huge discrepancy between vets and newbies. Full ascended with infusions and cons you can almost 1 shot a newbie with an autoattack.

Obviously equal skill and experience: the larger number wins, but equal skill and experience are once in a blue moon.

On Maguuma so Uhh yeah

Do you guys have a lot of new guilds or something? I’m on FA. I don’t follow all the drama at all but it seems like you guys are tanking?

Chorazin.4107:

Heres a relatively open fight with no distractions from vT Herald’s perspective. The SBI map Q vs two havoc squads plus some solo roamers. We were around 8, vT 4 and 3 or so solo roamers. So combined we roughly made up 15.

https://youtu.be/4LA5C84uBiY?t=488

Haha, that’s awesome! Looks like you guys got a really nice epi off the Hate driver sending the rest of the dominoes flying. (b^_^)b

Fluffball.8307:

Azukas.1426:

Fluffball.8307:

Azukas.1426:

Harder in today’s game then the 1st year or two

There’s a reason all the,top guilds started running 20+ on their raids.

I’d argue it’s a lot easier. The other night I literally solo’d on a 100% glass druid an entire guild. Yes, they were probably all newbies on free accounts. There is now a huge discrepancy between vets and newbies. Full ascended with infusions and cons you can almost 1 shot a newbie with an autoattack.

Obviously equal skill and experience: the larger number wins, but equal skill and experience are once in a blue moon.

On Maguuma so Uhh yeah

Do you guys have a lot of new guilds or something? I’m on FA. I don’t follow all the drama at all but it seems like you guys are tanking?

No clue.

Really only WvW any more to hope all my server mates fail & die repeatedly