Guild Wars 2

For me, world-PvP is about solo ganking. I get my jollies by killing as many people as I can by myself. Sadly it seems that WvW is designed to hamper solo play.

First off the maps are designed for large scale fighting. In the Borderlands everything is wide open and everyone can see you coming from far away. The map is pretty big, which is good, but at the same time the wide open spaces make it small because you are always bumping in to people. If one person sees you others will most likely show up.

The Eternal Battleground is pretty impressive, and it has some cool spots for small scale PvP like the mines in the mid-northeast. The objectives are all very close together though which once again means you are constantly bumping in to people. Despite the fact that terrain is more varied in this map — a plus for both large and small scale PvP — I have worse luck then in the borderlands.

I’m not even going to mention all of the NPCs.

I have nothing against the fact that there are no mounts in this game, but the lack of mounts makes the price of failure when taking risks incredibly high. When solo ganking it is best to skulk around in enemy territory so you can grab solo players trying to catch up to the zerg, the thing is though it seems people even zerg in “safe” territory in this game.

The downed state is cool, it adds a lot of depth to sPvP / tPvP but in WvW all it does is make it very hard to accomplish anything by yourself. At least when having several enemies show up in other games when you try to gank someone else you can at least achieve a kill before you die.

I play a powermancer and I’m competent in 1v1. However, 1v1 fights rarely stay that way and I lack the burst to kill and run, or just kill and then take the death that will probably follow in a few seconds.

I’m thinking that the only way to successfully gank in this game is to have a whole lot of burst since the maps are so crowded. I like this game, but solo-PvP is naturally inhibited in this game, seemingly by design. This is some thing I will quit over. It isn’t the game’s fault, I just don’t find large scale PvP fun or challenging. I could just find some ganking buddies, but what is fun about jumping someone when they have no chance of winning?

Before I quit I’m going to try and get a thief to eighty. I’ve come to the conclusion that in this game solo-PvP is all about bursting your opponent down in the fifteen seconds you have alone together. Deep down though I don’t think rolling a FotM class will change anything though.

Any other solo gankers finding it hard to adjust? Am I alone in thinking that WvW is designed to encourage zerging and discourage small scale PvP?

P.S. I know some people will say that there is no point to solo-play in WvW because it is objective based. I actually think that solo-ganking has a place in the WvW system – namely for preventing supply runs.

Get an ele, get 2 daggers, get following 3 cantrips: mist form, lightning flash and armor of earth. Set your traits to survivability. Now you run around with an enemy zerg behind you making a fool of them, total fun =D

Ilesyt.7084:

Get an ele, get 2 daggers, get following 3 cantrips: mist form, lightning flash and armor of earth. Set your traits to survivability. Now you run around with an enemy zerg behind you making a fool of them, total fun =D

I’ll have to try that, I’m really not that into the thief.

I have to occasionly stop for them to catch up to me. If got zephyr’s boon and elemental shielding. Aura’s give me swiftness, fury and protection. So if they DO come close you can just do Frost aura or shocking aura, which will shock them for a second or chill them, slowing them down. Not even a thief can catch up to you or kill you.

Well, it is designed mainly for the large scale fights, but that doesn’t mean it has no options for doing the smaller scale stuff. If you are solo, you are best setting up shop in a location like a puzzle area or terrain with easy escape options if you prefer to pick off stragglers of a larger force, as they are often too busy to chase after you if they are headed somewhere important. I did this quite a bit in Warhammer online solo, picking off reinforcements and people headed towards the main fight. Make sure you have a good hiding spot and/or high mobility options would be my main advice. It’s all about pouncing at the right time and being aware of your surroundings.

Also, many people are new to the game, and many people are just getting into the WvW stuff still, so it’s easy to find people roaming all over the map still for easy pickings and 1v1 or 1v2s, like people roaming around just to get achievements. Set up shop at one of those away from the larger battle if you are having difficulties. It is all about patience and opportunity when solo.

Personally, I find the constant threat of danger and being overwhelmed at any time exciting, as it gives another layer to the game. You have to play smart and carefully. You are like the operative behind enemy lines or an outlaw on the run.

Ilesyt.7084:

Get an ele, get 2 daggers, get following 3 cantrips: mist form, lightning flash and armor of earth. Set your traits to survivability. Now you run around with an enemy zerg behind you making a fool of them, total fun =D

Shhhh please don’t give away this little secret, my record so far is kiting about 20 Germans with my d/d speed ele lol I was so busy laughing at the 20 players who couldn’t catch me, that I ran straight towards durios and another 20 players who did catch me :p

Necro’s don’t have any outs and they do not kill quickly. That is your problem.

From reading your post, you said you are rolling a Thief and you will have a much easier time getting to someone and killing them. They also have plenty of outs that will allow you to get away if you can’t handle the odds.

In the end, there are not a lot of places to catch players 1v1. There are a lot of places for small group stuff is WvW, but 1on1 is kind of hard.

Not a fan of ‘ganking’. A ganker, by definition is just a lone ranger who enjoys getting single or double kills just to be annoying. What it will mean is, if one person is trying to reach a large fight and is ganked a couple of times on the way, they will only end up bringing friends next time to clear the way so a ganker SHOULD expect to be killed. I find the whole idea of a ganker complaining that they cant 1v1 laughable, to be honest.

Ok solo kills can be fun, dont get me wrong. Trying to get to an area you need to be at to help your team and come across an enemy, kill them and continue onwards is great fun but sitting, hiding and laying in wait seems very low. Warhammer had a huge gank problem where you could end up getting more rewards from killing single players than you could from helping out large scale attacks on keeps. This encouraged a whole new mentality of “forget defending, we get more from solo kills” and eventually ruined the premise of the game.

GW2, however is built differently. Appart from the occasional chance of getting a badge of honor, your XP and rewards are extremely low from 1v1 kills in comparison to helping group events or even from ‘ganking’ dollyaks (yeh i know PvE). Thus encouraging ppl to actually try to do something worthwhile rather than sitting behind a rock trying to pick off the occasional player lagging behind the pack.

W3 isnt built for gankers, thankfully. By all means go do what you wanna do, have fun but dont cry on the forums when you find you cant gank as effectively as you may be able to in other games.

I roam solo almost 50% of the time.

Small parties and 3v3/3v5/3v? fights are my favorite though. I don’t think it’s dead, I think the giant red nametag inhibits us a little. Can’t be as sneaky when you’re behind a rock and they still see your bright red nametag. Other than that, there’s plenty of space to roam and kill lone reinforcements or people running supplies, etc.

I don’t solo a lot, but I had some fun solo fights the other day on my thief just roaming around supply camps, skill point challenges, and the veteran mobs. The nice thing about thief is that you can escape if the zerg shows up (and if 1-2 people break off to chase you…).

WvWvW is more about quantity over quality

You can still solo gank but obviously certain classes are better than others at it because of the downed state + the ability to escape fights if they so choose to run. The problem is you are playing a necromancer which is probably one of the worst ganking class in the game. They don’t have many gap closers or burst dmg so its extremely easy to run away from them.

I play a thief with over 19k kills all from EB and i can assure you that they are the best gankers if that is what you want to do. You also wouldn’t have to wait around for solo stragglers running around as you can pretty much just jump and kill anyone in a group and be able to escape right after. But if you don’t want to play thief i would recommend warrior as they have high burst dmg + good escapes with a greatsword + almost perma swiftness..

WvW however is not the best place if you want to fight a lot of skilled players, its better to go spvp for that because at the very least you know your opponents have equal gear as you.

Ilesyt.7084:

I have to occasionly stop for them to catch up to me. If got zephyr’s boon and elemental shielding. Aura’s give me swiftness, fury and protection. So if they DO come close you can just do Frost aura or shocking aura, which will shock them for a second or chill them, slowing them down. Not even a thief can catch up to you or kill you.

You just didnt met rightly specced thief yet.

I play thief glass-cannon backstab build and usually I can down some1 quickly even in group but I cant finish him off which kinda makes my whole ballet rather pointless. Still you can roam EB and u can have many 1v1 1v2 or small scale PvPs very often there. I like small scale PvPs. To me it is more fun then running with the horde, although defending or assaulting SM lord room is fun on its own.

I roam solo alot of the times as a ranger, its not ideal tho I get zerged down alot, but i did find a few nice spots up north in the borderlands where you have view of the road and can kill yaks and loners

@ Mike I know one of those spots and got caught out a couple of times there LOL

i now take a back route around and see if there are any enemy gankers using it.. to gank the ganker hehe..

Soon all fav ganking spots will be treated this way :p

@ Karicus (Quoting seems to be disabled)

Gankers don’t gank to be annoying. Gankers gank because we enjoy the hunt (we don’t wait behind rocks we actively move around the map), like to rely only on ourselves, etc. We even like being ganked back! (killing someone who is ganking you is fun) Also, we don’t care about the lack of rewards. I’m in greens, I do a couple of dungeons a week so in a couple of months I may have exotics (though still no exotic jewelry) and it doesn’t bother me.

I do expect to be killed – a lot. 25+ percent of solo ganking is spent eating dirt. On a bad day it could be 90+ percent. I don’t expect to be inhibited by design or to have a mini-zerg come after me every time I poke my head over a hill. As others have pointed out this may just be a class issue. The Necromancer can’t kill in the small windows of opportunity that are available.

I also want to point out that the rewards for ganking in WAR were too unreliable for most of the game’s life to be considered more rewarding then following the zerg. I should know. Now that most players are a high renown rank it is more rewarding on a good day. Usually it is about the same as zerging unless you made all the right calls for the duration of the zone cap.

wvwvw needs more solo based objectives cant think of anything atm but some1 sure will

The mode doesn’t really support it well because it doesn’t help your team much. Kills don’t matter on the scoreboard. If you kill one guy going to an objective, ok one enemy down, but then you also have wasted an equal amount of time waiting and fighting at the same location, not contributing to team points.

Structured seems the far better place for 1v1 playstyle, as you can get roles where you are on your own, defending or roaming, etc.

Using the word solo and ganking is completely idiotic, do you notice that?

Uder.9187:

Using the word solo and ganking is completely idiotic, do you notice that?

Not all gankers are solo. Some need help to kill one person.

Quantity over quality? The guy who said that is silly.

I can’t count the times my thief has dragged a zerg into siege fire and laughed my kitten off as they all died, trying to down a fully geared 80 in shadow ops and acrobatics. With siege, 1v20 can turn into 5v20 where the 20 loses easy.

Well, I’m a thief player on VS and I had some nice roaming sequence with a lot of 1v1 to 1v4 on Eternal and Borderlands.

If you want small scall fight you must roam between camps and with the right theif building you can cap supply camps by your own to bait your prey

I’m not playing pure glass canon thief but d/p and bow mainly to catching up with my prey quickly with shadow shot and get out quickly of a fight with my bow.
And I find myself pretty annoying against glass canon thief backstab spec (the other classes are just easy to deal with, with a bit of practice though).

build your character right and you can take on 2 or 3 at once.

run around with a friend, and you can take on 5 and maybe 6 on 2 if you guys can combo your abilities correctly.

me, running as a power tank heal guardian, and friend running a glass cannon thief.. we find it pretty easy to run around and just rampage on groups of 5 and 6 people.

he can easily stay stealth until the group comes up to me, i’ve got enough defense to gather them up, greatsword pull them all into a pile.. swap to hammer and throw down ring of warding while the spins to win on the thief simultaneously while i do a power smash and we end up eithe rkilling most or dropping them low enough to chase them off and pick em off 1 by 1.

the right combos solo, or with another player can be the difference between getting killed, and killing

Get a friend or two. You can jump groups of up to 5 with just the 2-3 of you, kill caravans, and take supply camps.

Here’s a video of me soloing 3 people

I would have won that 3v1 had that commander not shown up
Its definitely possible to win a 2v1 or 3v1 as not everyone is good at PvP

check out my thread:d
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/My-first-pvp-video-tanky-dps-ele-D/first#post317189

I solo gank as a mesmer all the time.

It’s not dead, but it’s generally not rewarding. WvWvW is MEANT to be a team-based style by design, as you yourself admit.

But it’s far from dead. I often play scout for my guild, staying behind the enemy zerg, or trying to harass them and lead them into deathtraps. While scouting, I can still gank Dolyaks/Sentries with ease, and take down lightly defended supply camps.

Don’t spec for 1v1. Spec for 1v3, and make sure you can win, or at least take one or two down and GTFO. Solo players aren’t useless in WvWvW, but there’s less you can do that contributes to the overall objectives. Making ore/resource farmers/PvE event farmers eat dirt is fun, but doesn’t help the team- they’re just taking up enemy slots anyway, the badge or two you get is hardly worth it.

Then again, if you just enjoy the hunt, I doubt your worried about helping the server :p Still doable, and far from dead. You just have to play smart, since you’re trying to solo in a mode meant for anything but solo. And don’t be surprised when other people bring guns to your knifefight.

@dapheonix – nice vid 3v1 perhaps but more like 1 kill for 1 death, great tactic tho, attack the npc to draw that guy away from his npc help… smooth, like that.

I understand the ‘hunt’ and if you can get your rewards elsewhere then more power to you (yeh im not in exotic just yet) but W3 is a team battle. The events are team based, score is based on team contribution i find, so called ‘gankers’ are not team players. besides we all know W3 isnt balanced so if your rolling full exotics and come up against scrubs like me who are yet to get exotics, the match is pretty much decided, unless I pull some smooth moves or you make some serious mistakes.

So honestly, i have no time for ‘gankers’ in W3 and, in a way, see it as an annoyance because, lets be honest, the real challenge for solos players is SPvP where the balancing is much tighter and relies more on skill rather than gear.

Then again.. I dont approve of zerging either, yeh it has its uses but in W3 where strategy is worth more than sheer numbers, a well put together team can do some serious damage.

Again, all my humble opinion anyway.

As for War, YES ganking got better rewards especially with the AAO buff.. Some players could get more renown from killing one or two players in a 400% AAO zone than the entire other realm could from the keep take. Which lead to small gank groups trudging round zones just picking ppl off for serious renown and totally ignoring any defense… broken game.