Guild Wars 2

I’m getting some friends together to start a small roaming group in WvW but it’s been awhile since I’ve played last, what are your opinions on a good small group profession/build makeup for 3-6 players?

Don’t bother to much with one.

Seriously, you are far better off to each be very very good at a class you truly love playing, than you are trying to fit into some comp. The trouble with comps in small fights is, while they may make the first fight or two go very nicely, After a couple engagements your opponents will learn who you can’t do without. Once you find the key player to a small teams comp, its over. If everyone knows their build and class perfectly, then when someone goes down you don’t fall apart.

I run a small roaming group that runs 3-6 people personally, our ideal comp is like this:

2 Elementalists (Celestial dagger/warhorn)
1 Revenant (Marauder)
1 Guardian (Celestial meditation)
1-2 Necromancer(s) (Power wellomancer)

To kind of explain why:
- Elementalists clear a lot of conditions with the auras as well as provide a ton of protection, regeneration, frost aura and vigor for the group. The damage is pretty decent with air overload and the burning from fire attunement is pretty strong as well.
- Revenant does a TON of damage and can catch people who are trying to run away very easily.
- Guardian running celestial meditation will clear conditions with purging flames as well as do a TON of burning damage with it and still manage to do decent raw damage and provide large heals from F2 for the group. Ours runs GS and Longbow with 2 traps, judges intervention and purging flames.
- Necros wells are very high damage and boon stripping, we usually have them drop the wells when the guardian pulls them in or rings them with longbow.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

Don’t bother to much with one.

Seriously, you are far better off to each be very very good at a class you truly love playing, than you are trying to fit into some comp. The trouble with comps in small fights is, while they may make the first fight or two go very nicely, After a couple engagements your opponents will learn who you can’t do without. Once you find the key player to a small teams comp, its over. If everyone knows their build and class perfectly, then when someone goes down you don’t fall apart.

I have to disagree, if you make everyone have an important part and support each other well, you don’t have this issue. They could focus me down being the driver on my ele, but with myself, my other ele and my guardian throwing heals and condition cleans on us, they would be pretty hard pressed to take any one of us down except MAYBE the necros, who are generally running zerk and marauders, but still have 100% protection and frost aura up time from the 2 eles. You just have to know how to build a good group comp where everyone supports everyone but still deals damage lol.

I don’t think it’s necessary to to have a group comp for something that small. The most important thing that goes beyond builds / comps is perfect teamwork and communication. If that’s missing then it doesn’t matter what sort of comp you have. And it just so happens people tend to be more vocal if they’re confidant with what they’re running – which is typically their main class and build.

There are good comps that work really well, no doubt. But I would seriously suggest taking the players you have and making note of what they’re best at playing, and formulate from there. Typically if you have an Ele in your group that’s running pure glass and your group is dying, it wont take them long to switch to a spec that might be more support orientated (like aura share / tempest.) It’s sort of something that just happens naturally.

Most will disagree with me, which is fine. Having players who are good without comp isn’t an easy thing to come by. But with the right players on classes they love to play, and are self sufficient on, ridged comp teams will loose 9 times out of 10. Like I said, those groups are few and far between, QQ (when they pay attention) pull it off nicely Opp did it at one point, FLOT was like that when we were at full strength back on TC and RIOT was (many many moons ago) pretty good at it as well. It requires a group that’s more solo roamers than group roamers. But with the right players in hand comps dissolve.

For example, with your comp the Necro is the key. Looking at the builds on your website, no one but the necro deals any really dangerous damage. The others in your comp are solid but the necro is the play maker, once hes gone the others can be kited around and killed off safely.

I understand why my point of view would be quite foreign to most people. But communication and knowing your team mates means much much more than what builds you each are running. As far as my guild has run in the past (anet trying to kill wvw has hurt our numbers) if you cant win most of your fights solo roaming with it….don’t try to bring it into our group.

Edit: Quite right Mist, very well said.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

Most will disagree with me, which is fine. Having players who are good without comp isn’t an easy thing to come by. But with the right players on classes they love to play, and are self sufficient on, ridged comp teams will loose 9 times out of 10. Like I said, those groups are few and far between, QQ (when they pay attention) pull it off nicely Opp did it at one point, FLOT was like that when we were at full strength back on TC and RIOT was (many many moons ago) pretty good at it as well. It requires a group that’s more solo roamers than group roamers. But with the right players in hand comps dissolve.

For example, with your comp the Necro is the key. Looking at the builds on your website, no one but the necro deals any really dangerous damage. The others in your comp are solid but the necro is the play maker, once hes gone the others can be kited around and killed off safely.

I understand why my point of view would be quite foreign to most people. But communication and knowing your team mates means much much more than what builds you each are running. As far as my guild has run in the past (anet trying to kill wvw has hurt our numbers) if you cant win most of your fights solo roaming with it….don’t try to bring it into our group.

Edit: Quite right Mist, very well said.

Necros are the heaviest of the damage in my comp for sure, but because the rest are built for self and group sustain, we still win the “long fight” because we can survive the enemy burst and also take out their higher damage people first.

Since we all stick close, we have permanent up time for protection, vigor, regeneration, frost aura, might, fury and swiftness in our fights. Having all of those things at all times in a fight makes you pretty scary strong lol. Our eles have around 2.9k power with might, so even being the least of our damage, they still do quite a bit. The revenant does more single target damage than our necros do also, but he can also survive as well as the eles lol.

Thanks for the input, I definitely agree about communication and people playing what they are good at will probably be the best bet, was just kind of looking for an idea as some players will be new to the game so trying to help point them in a direction they’ll enjoy and should work well with others

Honestly, the advice that has been given is imo the best route to take. Small group play is very different from zerging. A lot of times, your team will need to play different roles (kite when focus fired, support/cc, etc) and each member will need to do that at different times. So having people that know their classes makes that whole transition easier. If you wipe and each person knows their class, making adjustments as to why you wiped makes it easier rather than running a set build.

What you should focus on is your group play together more than builds, especially when starting off. Some things to think about:

*Communication (as mentioned):
– Calling out target
– Calling out when switching targets
– Calling out when you are getting focused
– Calling out squishies (both for focus fire and damage avoidance)
– Calling out CCs
– Calling team advantages (SR/Mass Invis) etc
*Focus fire in small scale is extremely important and should be on the top of the list along with locking down a player.
*Converging when one of you are going down
*Not over extending

Just some things to keep in mind. If your group wipes, learn from each other and move on. The toughest part is learning each others playstyle. From there, talking build and group comp becomes a lot easier.

6 condi mesmers

Vermillion.4061:

6 condi mesmers

^this, 12 moas or 12 grav wells and any fight is gg

Vermillion.4061:

6 condi mesmers

Yii best comp NA. Another good one would be 6 cleric druids, you will never die again!