Guild Wars 2

Today for the first time I spent a couple of hours with my guild and a larger team running around WvW. Got around 30 badges, and got WvW ranks as well.

But…I was bored out of my mind. In a zerg, there’s really no room for skill. Just spam your AoEs and hope they hit something. If you get focused, it’s most likely the end of the story. And with large numbers, the lag makes skilled play a joke. No way you can respond to anything in time. It essentially more or less comes down either to luck or to who has the initiative.

Now positioning is critical, yes. But there’s no scope for individual skill. The commander kept saying “Stay on me” as we went from one place to another either killing other zergs or getting killed ourselves. And when we respawn, the whole drama starts again.

I mean what’s the point of all this? Where’s the skilled play? Where’s the move and reflexive countermoves? I’m just another body. I’m under no illusions that my presence makes a huge difference to the zerg. I try and do my best, get retaliation up, share the boons with others, but…none of that takes skill.

It got to a point where I was just “Screw this, I’m outa here. Even farming PvE mobs is more fun than this. At least there I’m actually doing something”. Then I had to PvP a bit to get a my mind straightened out again.

So…how do the rest of you guys get entertained in WvW?

Havoc groups. You run in groups of 5-ish people and you just go around enemy borderlands flipping camps and doing small scale assaults on nodes to distract the enemy from the larger zerg.

With the smaller group, you’ll need to play to each of your group member’s strengths and do a lot more to cover their weaknesses. If you get discovered by an enemy zerg, you’ll need to do all you can to escape and if you get overrun, you’ll need to do all you can to survive the zerg, which can really test your creativity in trying to survive.

Think of being in havoc groups as having a Special Forces playstyle.

You chose to join the zerg. You chose to stand on the outskirts (or whatever) spamming attacks. You chose to do nothing but spam attacks, and do something that you felt offered nothing to the greater fight. I wonder if the problem isnt in the game itself, but your choices.

Funnily enough, no wars were won by two lots of 5 men running around dueling over capture points. It was seemingly insignificant individual footmen stomping ground and adding their sword arm or rifle to the moments combat. Above that organized ranks of leadership executing decisions that amounted to victory. Even then, if seeming “grunt work” is beneath you, go be a commando or something. There’s more to war than the primary big battles.

Think outside your box, or, domination based capture points.

Depends what you play for, but sounds like you play for fun and is not a try hard, so small man roams seem more likely to fit you, but thing is finding a good small man. Also if ur in t1-t2, dont even bother with small man, their 60man zergs will roll u over before u can even cast a skill becuz of skill lags/or being focused/cc to death becuz its 5v60.

Yeah there is skill involved in WvW. I was in a guild and they wanted to play WvW… 10 of us and the guild leader decides to place a catapult on the enemy keep walls… All I was saying to myself “for real dude, you going to siege a keep with 10 of us”, long story short we got fortified walls to 60% and enemy zerg came and destroyed us and I’m pretty sure they repaired the walls or just laughed and ran away.

Thing is, there is skill but you cannot take stuff like keeps with 10 man team unless your playing in some tier that zergs don’t exist. Especially if its a FORTIFIED KEEP as well LOL.

The best thing your guild can do if its 10 people or so would be to take a tower, now if its a fortified tower, I’d goto another borderland and look for one that isn’t. Because its fortified for a reason, which is, it will be defended, has been defended and chances are high that it will be defended by a zerg. Because people don’t just hand you there T3 towers.

WvW takes skill, there are DO’s and DONT’s in a lot of different situations, you just have to play for a long time to figure them out.

only reason why the guild I was in got fortified keep walls to 60% was because there zerg was distracted and it was in some random kitten spot, there wasn’t many of us so it was sneaky, until they found us. We built hella fast too!

Other’s have said, and I agree, WvW is what you make of it.
It’s your choice and how you play it makes it fun or not.
This is how a WvW guild fights.

Well. Everything you’ve said is correct.
There is VERY little room for skill in a zerg-fight, it all boils down to being lvl 80 with a decent build and equipment.
There would be basically no noticeable difference between the rank 1 from tPvP and a random PvE-guy in a zerg. If they were both lvl 80 with equal items, one would be as good as the other.
We all know that the rank 1 is much more skilled, but if you’re able to stack on a commander, use AoE and randomly spam shouts you’re very beneficial.
There is simply no way of denying this (this btw not me saying that people who participate in zerg fights are all bad).

If you want to matter you should solo-roam or roam with a smaller group.
But you will quickly notice how bad people in WvW generally are. You will probably win a 5v5 98% of the time, and fight even with groups almost the double of your size.
That can be a lot of fun, but if you really want a challenge and competitive matches tPvP is the way to go.

@Contiguous
So. An organized guild facerolling an evenly sized unorganized group?
Wow. That skill requirement is beyond my understanding.
That fight was not won by being skilled, but simply having a gear/level advantage.
They stacked might, he ran into the group using his AoE and they won the fight. I don’t really see the slighest amount of skill in that. Everybody could do that if they had the level and gear.
Furthermore, the group had the advantage of being on the offensive and coming from the side unnoticed.

lol! Who rattled your cage? It’s nothing to do with me, I wasn’t there but I’ve seen GoW tear up groups much bigger than that.
Here’s another one :-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG2t5vb4Zro

The truth is, organised groups can win against a pug group of almost any size, mostly because the pugs panic and start to run the moment they are hit.
Here’s a GvG where the opposing team know better than to just run away.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMXCvXLqcic

WvW has the lowest skill cap in any faction based MMO game I have every played. Going to smaller group helps, but the only way to keep challenging yourself is to take on larger and larger groups which has obvious breaking points.

Contiguous.1345:

lol! Who rattled your cage? It’s nothing to do with me, I wasn’t there but I’ve seen GoW tear up groups much bigger than that.
Here’s another one :-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG2t5vb4Zro

The truth is, organised groups can win against a pug group of almost any size, mostly because the pugs panic and start to run the moment they are hit.
Here’s a GvG where the opposing team know better than to just run away.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMXCvXLqcic

Sorry, but every time I see a video of Tarkus I have to remember this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-5FLzVoYIo

:D

Try solo roaming.

As people mentioned above, your problem is that you’re in a zerg, that’s usually just a battle of who has the bigger numbers. But, one thing you gotta consider is anywhere where you’re fighting as a team, team coordination > individual skill.

No wars are won because of individual skill of soldiers with a weapon, but because of better strategy. Same thing in sports, usually teams are way better than the national teams, even though the national team might have better players, just because they train together.

So you won’t be seeing one group wipe a bigger group because one dude in there used his 1337 combo. What you will be seeing is a small group wipe a bigger group because they turned around a corner, duked, came back and flanked the bigger one, pulled back to heal up, and came back in.

Still, there’s many places where individual skill can make a difference,
E.G: Guardians: nailing the lines of warding on the right places to stop enemy pushes. Mesmers: Doing portals in unexpected places to catch enemies off-guard.
Warriors: Having fast reaction time to banner-ress someone.

I think if you try playing in groups of 5-15 people, you’ll find a better balance between individual skill and team-work, and fights can get pretty fun.

so…teamwork!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G98e3ox6c_A

Slomo.1029:

Sorry, but every time I see a video of Tarkus …

:D

Oh! I see, it’s Tarkus got up your kitten.
He’s just a lovable little scamp. Tbh, I’ve met bigger egos that were less competent.

Contiguous.1345:

Slomo.1029:

Sorry, but every time I see a video of Tarkus …

:D

Oh! I see, it’s Tarkus got up your kitten.
He’s just a lovable little scamp. Tbh, I’ve met bigger egos that were less competent.

Nah, you understood me wrong.
Even though he left our guild because a bit of banter (like a kitten) and switched to Piken, I dont have any bad feelings at all! I just have to remember this moment everytime I hear his voice now.

group skill > individual skill.