Guild Wars 2

So I’ve been a WvW roamer for a long time, and while it’s a blast taking on multiple players at once, I want to try something new. So my guildies and I are going to put together a group of 3-5 that will build everything (traits, utilities, gear, etc) to synergize with each other with the goal being to be nigh unkillable.

My question to you is this: What have you found to be the most effective group composition that consists of 3-5 players? Currently my only 80 is my Mesmer, but I’m thinking of leveling an alt anyway, so I’m open to anything.

It could be a group you run with currently, or one that you always find yourself running into that drives you crazy. Or, it could just be an idea you have for a rockin’ group makeup.

Let the theorycrafting begin!

Going to help you to have a full support guardian.

That means find a player that would rather heal/cc than do damage.

I think every group needs 2 guardians and a necro. From there, it’s kind of personal preference and what works best for your group specifically. Mesmers and thieves are useful for stealthing the party for a clutch rez or fleeing the scene when the odds are against you. Hammer warriors are great CC and damage if you’re not fighting a perma stability group. Rifle warriors can do some insane burst if you’re lacking single target damage. Having an ele is always nice too. A perfect group in my mind is:

Heal/Support guardian
DPS/Support guardian
Condi necro
Shatter mesmer
Rifle/GS warrior (must be an Asura)

Again, the mesmer and warrior can be replaced and still be a wrecking ball of a group… the guardians and necro are the backbone.

I would say, mind you this is all just personal opinions and I’m not trying to offend anyone, avoid running with engies and rangers. In a group of 3, they’re fine to have… but if you’re planning on running with 5 their usefulness diminishes and their roles can be fulfilled by other classes.

I actually just found a good thread from a month or so back that’s talking about exactly this….apparently I didn’t look hard enough before posting ><

osif.8673:

I think every group needs 2 guardians and a necro. From there, it’s kind of personal preference and what works best for your group specifically. Mesmers and thieves are useful for stealthing the party for a clutch rez or fleeing the scene when the odds are against you. Hammer warriors are great CC and damage if you’re not fighting a perma stability group. Rifle warriors can do some insane burst if you’re lacking single target damage. Having an ele is always nice too. A perfect group in my mind is:

Heal/Support guardian
DPS/Support guardian
Condi necro
Shatter mesmer
Rifle/GS warrior (must be an Asura)

Again, the mesmer and warrior can be replaced and still be a wrecking ball of a group… the guardians and necro are the backbone.

I would say, mind you this is all just personal opinions and I’m not trying to offend anyone, avoid running with engies and rangers. In a group of 3, they’re fine to have… but if you’re planning on running with 5 their usefulness diminishes and their roles can be fulfilled by other classes.

This was generally the direction I was thinking, although I hadn’t thought of a Necro being a central part of the setup. I thought Mesmer would be a very good addition since we bring a lot of things that are unavailable by other classes.

Your point about engies is interesting. Why wouldn’t you recommend them in a 5 man? From what I’ve seen (never played one past level 20) they have quite a lot of CC and could be a good addition to any group to help lock down targets.

If you want to be unkillable, consider taking Guards and Eles with you. Both offer good def. support/boons. Eles would be the better choice if you want to stay mobile. With group stealth, Thief and Mesmer have some neat moves to escape / initiate a fight. Portal is also tempting to use in small scale play.

Engis kind of offer everything your group might miss, plus some nice support tools like Elixir R and Healing Turret.

So for a balanced group setup, I’d take Ele, Thief, Mesmer, Guard and Engi. Not specialized in doing something particular (like Thief stealth groups), but it should be able to manage every situation well enough.

I’ve had good success with Support Guardian / DD Ele / Shatter Mesmer.

That being said, if we all were terrible we wouldn’t have that success. The most important thing is finding good players who are comfortable in running what they are running, and above all, are comfortable playing together.

Zumi.6384:

This was generally the direction I was thinking, although I hadn’t thought of a Necro being a central part of the setup. I thought Mesmer would be a very good addition since we bring a lot of things that are unavailable by other classes.

Your point about engies is interesting. Why wouldn’t you recommend them in a 5 man? From what I’ve seen (never played one past level 20) they have quite a lot of CC and could be a good addition to any group to help lock down targets.

For starters, the skill cap for engies are probably the highest in the game. So finding a viable engie is hard… but if you find one all the power to you! Don’t get me wrong, a good engie can be extremely effective. It’s just in my experiences an engie’s shoes can be filled by another, more beneficial class.

For a 5-man:
D/D Ele, Ranger, Engi, Thief, Heavy Guardian.

You can switch out the Ranger or Engi for a Mesmer as well.

My ideal group:

1 support guard
1 necro
1 ele
1 cc warrior
1 dps warrior

Instead of the cc warrior, you could also go with a trap ranger

Just make careful doses of D/D Eles, Guardians, HGH*409 Engineers and Mesmers and you’re done.

PS: Feel free to replace the Engineer with another Mesmer, Guardian, or D/D Ele.

Currently being in a 5-man group in WvW is THE worst idea that could have occured on you. Why? 5 men will easily kill 1 or 2 enemy players and will easily be wiped by the guild raids going in WvW which are between 20-35 players.

And you dont need to have traits “synergized” to be effective as a team in WvW. All you need is to know your class and how this game works.

Im playing HGH engi and I do play equally in both solo and group scenarioes. And there’s no “perfect class match up group”, Ive seen 5 thieves surviving and killing as much as SPvP groups roaming in WvW having no doubles as of classes.

Currently being in a 5-man group in WvW is THE worst idea that could have occured on you.

100% false. Understandable that people still think this, given how obscure the scoring details are in WvW, though.

Jinx.7258:

Currently being in a 5-man group in WvW is THE worst idea that could have occured on you. Why? 5 men will easily kill 1 or 2 enemy players and will easily be wiped by the guild raids going in WvW which are between 20-35 players.

And you dont need to have traits “synergized” to be effective as a team in WvW. All you need is to know your class and how this game works.

Im playing HGH engi and I do play equally in both solo and group scenarioes. And there’s no “perfect class match up group”, Ive seen 5 thieves surviving and killing as much as SPvP groups roaming in WvW having no doubles as of classes.

You have no idea, thus your comments are ill-informed and irrelevant.

My setup:
3 Warriors in full zerker gear
1 Mesmer with timewarp
1 guardian with wall of reflection

Bovinity.8610:

Currently being in a 5-man group in WvW is THE worst idea that could have occured on you.

100% false. Understandable that people still think this, given how obscure the scoring details are in WvW, though.

Ok when you are so smart answer me what exactly are 5-man going to do in wvw?… apart from taking camps,killing solo players and killing sentries? lol . Gonna boost their egos for killing RANDOM players with commander… thats soooooo 2004 lol

osif.8673:

Jinx.7258:

Currently being in a 5-man group in WvW is THE worst idea that could have occured on you. Why? 5 men will easily kill 1 or 2 enemy players and will easily be wiped by the guild raids going in WvW which are between 20-35 players.

And you dont need to have traits “synergized” to be effective as a team in WvW. All you need is to know your class and how this game works.

Im playing HGH engi and I do play equally in both solo and group scenarioes. And there’s no “perfect class match up group”, Ive seen 5 thieves surviving and killing as much as SPvP groups roaming in WvW having no doubles as of classes.

You have no idea, thus your comments are ill-informed and irrelevant.

Ye,throwing random crap is priceless. Base your post on arguements rather than talking rabbish.

Gotta love random forum warriors lol. Gotta be smart to take advices from ppl being on the forums 24/7 talking random kitten rather than the players actually playing the game…. jeez

In this case, you’re the random forum warrior. Have a nice day.

Ok when you are so smart answer me what exactly are 5-man going to do in wvw?… apart from taking camps,killing solo players and killing sentries? lol . Gonna boost their egos for killing RANDOM players with commander… thats soooooo 2004 lol

You might wanna read up on how WvW scoring works.

Jinx.7258:

Currently being in a 5-man group in WvW is THE worst idea that could have occured on you. Why? 5 men will easily kill 1 or 2 enemy players and will easily be wiped by the guild raids going in WvW which are between 20-35 players.

And you dont need to have traits “synergized” to be effective as a team in WvW. All you need is to know your class and how this game works.

Im playing HGH engi and I do play equally in both solo and group scenarioes. And there’s no “perfect class match up group”, Ive seen 5 thieves surviving and killing as much as SPvP groups roaming in WvW having no doubles as of classes.

Yeah I’m going to have to strongly disagree here. To be more clear I roam a lot solo, but I’ve been running with my guild in groups of 3-6 for a long time as well. This is just the first time we want to plan our builds around each other. I know first hand how effective a well organized small group can be, as we’ve wiped groups 2-3x our size multiple times. I just want to take it to the next level

The main reason I’m asking this on the forums is that I main a Mesmer and most (if not all) viable Mesmer builds are relatively selfish when it comes to traits, so the biggest benefit we bring to groups are our utilities (null field, veil, portal, mass invis, etc.).

That said, I might have to swap over to my Guardian if others in the group don’t feel like running theirs, because I completely agree that they bring more than any other class to a small group.

Jinx.7258:

Ok when you are so smart answer me what exactly are 5-man going to do in wvw?

There are quite a few things an organized 5-man can do in WvW to help the server/score.

They can take camps/sentries, protect those camps to provide supply to nearby towers, split up/flank enemy zergs, ninja towers while the main force is distracted by the zerg, even fighting/occupying groups larger than your own provides your server with an advantage. If you’re fighting a 5v15, that’s 10 more enemies that aren’t fighting other groups or defending towers that are being attacked.

Again, that’s only a short list of things 5 mans are capable of, and we use it to great effect in our matchup every week.

You may not enjoy running with a small group, but I promise you it can be plenty effective.

P.S. The “Perfect” part of the title was mainly used to spike interest/discussion. I don’t think there is really a “perfect” cookie-cutter group in this game, which is one of the things that makes GW2 great imo.

Jinx.7258:

Bovinity.8610:

Currently being in a 5-man group in WvW is THE worst idea that could have occured on you.

100% false. Understandable that people still think this, given how obscure the scoring details are in WvW, though.

Ok when you are so smart answer me what exactly are 5-man going to do in wvw?… apart from taking camps,killing solo players and killing sentries? lol . Gonna boost their egos for killing RANDOM players with commander… thats soooooo 2004 lol

osif.8673:

Jinx.7258:

Currently being in a 5-man group in WvW is THE worst idea that could have occured on you. Why? 5 men will easily kill 1 or 2 enemy players and will easily be wiped by the guild raids going in WvW which are between 20-35 players.

And you dont need to have traits “synergized” to be effective as a team in WvW. All you need is to know your class and how this game works.

Im playing HGH engi and I do play equally in both solo and group scenarioes. And there’s no “perfect class match up group”, Ive seen 5 thieves surviving and killing as much as SPvP groups roaming in WvW having no doubles as of classes.

You have no idea, thus your comments are ill-informed and irrelevant.

Ye,throwing random crap is priceless. Base your post on arguements rather than talking rabbish.

Gotta love random forum warriors lol. Gotta be smart to take advices from ppl being on the forums 24/7 talking random kitten rather than the players actually playing the game…. jeez

I think your mistake is believing that every server has the population of a T2 server.

As for the topic of the thread (wow that derailed quickly!) I think based on what I’m reading that we should be able to put together something pretty effective without having to switch many of our main professions, which is nice. If we just went with the default class of those who’ve been talking about it we’d have:

1 Shatter Mesmer
1 D/D Ele
1 Warrior
1 Guardian

Seems pretty solid to me.

I think the general lesson to gather from this thread is that the best way to put together an effective group is to make sure you have everything covered (boons, dps, cc) and from there just play with each other and figure out what works. I look forward to rolling with it!

osif.8673:

In this case, you’re the random forum warrior. Have a nice day.

Again saying nothing meaningless.

Welcome Mr. Clueless Wanna-be-troll

Bovinity.8610:

Ok when you are so smart answer me what exactly are 5-man going to do in wvw?… apart from taking camps,killing solo players and killing sentries? lol . Gonna boost their egos for killing RANDOM players with commander… thats soooooo 2004 lol

You might wanna read up on how WvW scoring works.

He is not asking how to be effective in wvw and help his server win. No one here gives a bloody crap about your stupid wvw score dude.

We are talking about PvP. I said in my previous post that it doest matter if you run 5-different classes in a group or 5 of the same class. It doest matter whether you copy paste build and gear you’ve seen on a stream or not, you aint going to be effective if you cannot play the class properly.

Its seen on dayly bases how clueless, players try to copy-paste builds and fail.

He’s asking for advice, my advice was: Pick a class you like the way it works, learn to play it and adapt to the needs of your friend(s). Playing a class you dont like bcoz “its perfect match up group that is making 50,000 server points keeping my server into T1” is bloody redicolous theory

I said what I gotta say. Have a nice forum summer wanna-be—trolls/warriors.

1. Class with a lot of fields, I prefer Elementalist or Mesmer
2. Class with a lot of boon stacking: Warrior or guardian
3. Class with a lot of DPS: Ranger, Thief or Warrior

If I had to pick, it would be Thief, Guardian, Warrior, Elementalist and whatever. Im tempted to go with something like an engineer for the fifth class for more bunker and conditions.

Zumi.6384:

The main reason I’m asking this on the forums is that I main a Mesmer and most (if not all) viable Mesmer builds are relatively selfish when it comes to traits, so the biggest benefit we bring to groups are our utilities (null field, veil, portal, mass invis, etc.).

Mesmers can actually be very solid group oriented players as well. Chaos armor is arguably one of the best buffs in the game. If your group is coordinated well you can keep chaos armor up with just one Mesmer for a decent amount of time. On top of that, running signet of inspiration with the boons that chaos armor gives you, you can keep some key boons up on your party for a pretty significant amount of time. With that said, my Mesmer is very selfish

He is not asking how to be effective in wvw and help his server win. No one here gives a bloody crap about your stupid wvw score dude.

There’s sPvP and tPvP for that. If you’re asking how to best PvP in WvW but you don’t care about the score at all, then what the heck is the point of the entire topic?

I said what I gotta say. Have a nice forum summer wanna-be—trolls/warriors.

When did this become a thing, anyway? The whole, “I don’t agree with you, so you’re a troll!” strategy?

Jinx.7258:

Again saying nothing meaningless.

Why thank you for the compliment, good sir.

Jinx.7258:

He’s asking for advice, my advice was: Pick a class you like the way it works, learn to play it and adapt to the needs of your friend(s).

Nah, your advice was to pick up a zerg and stop running 5 mans.

In response to your “5 thieves” group. 5 good players will always win against 5 lesser skilled players, no matter the group make up. 5 of one class vs. 5 of a well thought group composition of equal skill level? Those 5 thieves would lose every time.

osif.8673:

Zumi.6384:

The main reason I’m asking this on the forums is that I main a Mesmer and most (if not all) viable Mesmer builds are relatively selfish when it comes to traits, so the biggest benefit we bring to groups are our utilities (null field, veil, portal, mass invis, etc.).

Mesmers can actually be very solid group oriented players as well. Chaos armor is arguably one of the best buffs in the game. If your group is coordinated well you can keep chaos armor up with just one Mesmer for a decent amount of time. On top of that, running signet of inspiration with the boons that chaos armor gives you, you can keep some key boons up on your party for a pretty significant amount of time. With that said, my Mesmer is very selfish

That’s very true. I’ve seen a few builds based around spreading boons as a Mesmer, but while I always thought they were cool, I just thought to myself that other classes are much more effective at it. I do agree tough, that Chaos Armor is by far my favorite armor. Just providing the Ethereal fields for people to combo with is huge.

Unfortunately I don’t think I can see myself running Signet of Inspiration unless my build is centered around boon spreading lol. Just seems like there are better options out there.

To be honest, I’ll probably end up running my same roamer build, but switch out my utilities to something like this:

Solo – Decoy, Portal/MI/Blink/Mass Invis
Group – Veil/Portal, Null Field, Blink, Mass Invis

@Jinx – I completely agree that being comfortable with your class is more important than picking one and copy/pasting a build. I’m incredibly comfortable and effective on my Mesmer, I just brought up the fact that I was willing to try something new because I love experimenting. Usually it’s with my Mesmer builds, but a new class is an option as well.

Jinx.7258:

osif.8673:

In this case, you’re the random forum warrior. Have a nice day.

Again saying nothing meaningless.

Welcome Mr. Clueless Wanna-be-troll

This is where commas become important. Who is the clueless one here?

Shhh, let the little Jinxy bear think he outwitted all of us “trolls.”

3 knights/zerker shortbow/GS rangers
1 dps/support guardian
1 support eng or shortbow thief.

everything you do is in a water field so between that and melandru/lemongrass conditions mean nothing, and rangers have the easiest time with target switching and cant be kited… plus.. lolroots.

you could also run double guardians if you need extra stability, generally you dont, the thief is incredibly valuable for stealth stomping and blasting.

If you’re limited to 3, then thieves get more and more valuable. maybe 2 thieves and a tank, be it support guardian, support eng, bunker ele, etc, The tank is just there to distract people and not die while the thieves focus down targets one at a time.

It really depends on exactly how many you’re going to run with.
3 or less: eng/mes/theif, they all have extreme survival and lots of tricks to throw out, and most importantly lots of escape/mobility.
With 4+: 2 guardians, necro (corrupt boon), staff ele/ranger (waterfields, root/stun field).

As 3 or less each person will need to be able to escape and handle themeselves as if solo. With 4+ you can start relying on your team more, and fighting much larger numbers so buffs like stability or waterfields become far more important.

On traiting you open up a lot more specs that are non-traditional. As an example, me (guardian) paired with a necro will take the trait “blind causes vulnerability” because leaping/blasting a necro dark field applies blind. Paired with a greatsword (blind on 3) and a hammer (blast on 2) while activating virtue of justice it becomes very easy for just myself to stack 15+ vuln to all targets in the area.

I’d say the most important thing about any group comp is fully utilizing finishers. Whirl in a light field just cleansed my group of blind causing the warriors downed state interupt not to miss giving me the time to rez him. Clutch.

We run a bunker guardian, ele with a little bunker/good damage, a mesmer which is still being fine tuned and a d/d thief with healing. This mix has been working really well for us.

We frequently run with 25 stacks of might from the guardian/ele and perma swiftness. The guardian soaks up damage, ele shares auras drops fields, mesmer clones add battlefield haze and a thief that pops in and out finishing off players who drop below 50%.

Straegen.2938:

We run a bunker guardian, ele with a little bunker/good damage, a mesmer which is still being fine tuned and a healing thief. This mix has been working really well for us.

We frequently run with 25 stacks of might from the guardian/ele and perma swiftness. The guardian soaks up damage, ele shares auras drops fields, mesmer clones add battlefield haze and a thief that pops in and out finishing off players who drop below 50%.

I’d be interested to hear what your mesmer is running, because that looks very similar to what we’ll most likely be doing. Seems like a good combination.

@Sars – That’s exactly what I mean, it seems to be mostly about using each other’s combo fields/abilities well as opposed to having the “correct setup”

Zumi.6384:

I’d be interested to hear what your mesmer is running, because that looks very similar to what we’ll most likely be doing. Seems like a good combination.

@Sars – That’s exactly what I mean, it seems to be mostly about using each other’s combo fields/abilities well as opposed to having the “correct setup”

I’ll check with him tonight. I don’t know much about his specific traits and such just what fields he drops for chaos armor.

We focus less on burst damage and mostly on high mobility with the exception being the bunker guardian. The nice part is it is easy for one of us to peel off and heal up/reset cool downs so we can usually soak up burst damage and outlast bunker groups. That said Mumble (or Vent/TS) is probably our best asset. Being able to quickly call targets of opportunity makes any group a lot more deadly.