Guild Wars 2

First off, this thread is to discuss strategies or ways to overcome the opposition in wvw. Please don’t bring your complaints, QQ, or any other form of negativity. This thread is here to help new or veteran players and feel free to add anything beneficial that I may have missed.

Here’s a common list that I think is important.
* Communication
* Scouts
* Roaming
* Countering Blob Army
* Common Tactics
* Deception

Communication

This is probably the #1 most important characteristic the player needs to succeed in wvw. Having a Teamspeak(TS), Ventrilo, Skype etc… can really help your world plan out attacks. Even typing in the chat box is better than nothing. For example, I was in SM while the enemy was attacking the inner gates. What did I do? I called out immediately in map chat and my world responded with a defensive counter attack which led the enemy retreating. Now this may seem common sense however I see players completely walk pass and ignore these kind of situations. A few words, “Zerg in SM’s inner NE gate” would suffice. Every player should adopt this behavior if they want to succeed in taking or defending objectives.

Having a good commander is difficult to find since they need to be coordinated and willing to listen. Another personal example from WvW, we had two commanders in attacking inner SM. One was attacking from the east while the other was attacking from the west. Luckily, we had a mesmer portal the commander and his fleet on the west. Knowing this, the commander from east was also asking for a portal. The west commander did tell someone to go help port them in SM however the east commander never got the port. The west commander assumed a mesmer was going to port them in however it was on cooldown. He launched a direct attack on the Lord and this completely wiped his fleet. This was the lack of communication and coordination on the west commander. He should have waited for the mesmer’s response to plan his attack.

A commander should always be willing to listen from other players. To keep this short, two heads are better than 1. In this case we have hundreds of heads is better than 1. The commander doesn’t know everything and they should be open to hear what other players may have to offer.

Lastly, don’t argue amongst each other this creates an uncooperative atmosphere and only benefits the other two worlds. If someone makes a bad call, instead of blaming and name calling, offer solutions. Negativity will generally induce a defensive response from the player and in-fighting will occur. However, offer ways to prevent making bad calls. Just be helpful and try giving solutions when problems occur. Not everyone is perfect, we all make mistakes.

Scouting

How can you defeat the enemy if you don’t know where the enemy is? This is why scouting is important it provides vital information in pinpointing the enemies’ location. Knowing a enemies location can help plan your attack. For example, if your scouts know the the enemy blue zerg is attacking on green’s territory then blue is very vulnerable to attack. You are safe to attack blue’s tower with little to no opposition.

Best locations to place scouts are the intersections to your side of the map. First you need to know where the openings are. Let’s take EB for example and for argument sake your world(red) has SM taken. IMO, all you need is five scouts: one at SM’s north gate, one at SM’s south-west gate, one at SM’s south- east gate, one at AP, and one at OC. These points cover important openings the enemy have when engaging red’s territory.

Roaming

Very similar to scouting, however you are more on the offensive than the defensive. They’re job functions similar to a zerg however in a smaller scale and mainly focus on capping camps, fending other roamers, or scoping out enemy zerg’s position. IMO, the most important part of roaming is that they serve as a distraction. Sometimes I see whole zergs popping out of nowhere attacking the roamers while our zerg is taking towers. The more time wasted a zerg is wasting on roamers the better off for the other team to capitalize on the opportunity.

Sometimes, solo roamers like a thief, can hinder a roaming party or zerg from completing objectives. The natural reaction when you see an enemy is to kill him. Inexperience roamers tend to kill enemies on sight and since the thief can successfully chain CnD the roamers or zerg aren’t able to react fast enough to kill him off. What did the thief accomplish? He manage to waste the roamers valuable time where it could have been spent on completing objectives. How should the roamers respond? Either by ignoring the thief or wait for the revealed debuff to cc and burst the thief.

Countering Blob Army

On the top of my head I can only think of one but there’s probably more options. Feel free to add on to this, if anyone else comes up with another strategy. If you are unable to defeat a blob army all you have to do is split up your forces to attack two different towers. The blob is usually run by one commander so he can only respond to one of the two attacks. You would at least get one capped tower if the commander decides doesn’t split his forces.

Basically Blobs can be weakened if you attack various towers. This forces the opposing commander to split up his army to respond to the multiple attacks or else he’ll lose towers.

Common Tactics

This is what separates a good and a great commander. Observant of your surroundings and knowing when to pull out from a fight.

Siege from a safe distance. Often times I would see commanders charge in to the gate with rams while arrows come raining down which depletes our numbers. The heals could not keep up with the damage output of the siege weapons. At this time we should pull out and set siege(catapults or treb) from a safe distance to break the gate/wall. This forces the enemy to engage us or let the gates break open.

Choose your fights wisely. Commanders would try to defend their towers even though their numbers are too low. Instead fighting an uphill battle, leave the tower and continue on with other objectives.

Deception

This requires some top notch thinking and high level play. You must lead you opponents astray. It has been mention above under roaming where commanders believe the enemy roaming party of 20 is the whole zerg and bring his 50+ zerg to drive them away. While wasting his time with the roamers SM has been capped.

For example, when commanders attack SM they choose one hallway to push their forces. While the enemy is focusing on the battle, a couple of mesmers and thieves from the opposite side of the hallway sneak their way to the top. I’ll let you guys figure out how that works. While they successfully sneak up the commanders forces would pull out which lets the enemy think they’ve won. However, given the right opportunity the mesmer would come down and port the whole zerg into the lords room taking SM with ease.

In terms of scouting, you only need 1 scout per structure. An experienced scout can cover the entire structure in under 30 seconds when the contested event starts. E.g in Garrison, I’d stand at the South East gate looking towards Watergate, which let’s me cover 3 gates (NE, SE and WG) without even moving. When the contested event starts, you have 30 seconds to waypoint back into garrison and check the SW and NW gates.

At Hills, you should stand on the north gate near the cata wall. If it’s not either of those two points contesting it, it’s definitely south gate. If your SE camp/tower isn’t taken, it’s likely a tapper. If it is taken, prepare to defend the gate with some well placed arrow carts

In Bay, you stand on the northern plateau. That covers 2 gates. If it’s not either of those two, it’s the south gate. Again, just check the state of your tower/camp.

SMC usually doesn’t need (and shouldn’t need) scouts. It’s either always contested (trebbing) or a karma train. If you are scouting SMC, best way is to build a treb on the third floor to hit your enemy server’s outer towers. From your vantage point, you should be able to cover around 1/3 to 1/2 of SMC depending on your screen resolution.

In terms of scouting, EB is the least urgent when it comes to a map needing scouts. Everything is so close together so you can respond as soon as orange swords show on the map and have plenty of time to get there. Also, due to the puggy nature of EBG, it’s unlikely that you won’t get orange swords when attacking something, so you need to prepare for counters. No shame in open field arrow carts and ballistas if your goal is to take/defend that tower.

In terms of roaming, it’s all down to your personal skill and class. Stay away from thieves and mesmers. Don’t try chase down nike warriors. Be wary of condi necros. Rangers are free bags (avoid the knock down + rapid fire combo, that kitten hurts). As you get more experienced and skilled, you can start to take on anyone you see.

Advice: Here we go. (watch out TL;DRers, this isn’t the place for that! )

Preparation
Your success in WvW depends a lot on what you do outside of it. Do you read forums? Do you participate in your servers’s forums? Do you trade strategy with your fellow commanders? Whether you’re leading a rabble of pugs or a guild raid you need to use resources outside of the game to be successful. This is how you know what your players should run and where you’ll be raiding. You can coordinate with your servers’ guilds too.

There is some preparation in game too. Do you have enough superior siege? Normal siege? A karma train cmdr can easily go through 100 rams in a night. You don’t want your pugs droppin that stuff. I’ll tell you why soon.

Do you have the ability to choose a class composition? This above all can determine how successful your raid is. You get the ability to chain Veils, chain guardian books, plague forms, and wells. You get water fields for when you need to heal up. You cant guarantee any of this strategy unless you choose class composition.
Are you not leading your guild raid? If not then be open to the strategy your raid leader wants to use. If he needs you on an ele for heals and you have one go get it. Don’t insist on being on your ranger because its your personal play style. You aren’t helping anyone.

The Real Time Strategy game of WvW
WvW is a real time strategy game and those leading it need to treat it as such. By treating it as such you can begin to define “units” based on the roles players take. There are 4 basic roles in WvW

• Commander: this is you… leading the pack
• Zerglings: These players follow the commander closely. These make the bulk of your raid. They fight for you, build your siege and rely on your leadership.
• Roamers: These players don’t follow the commander. They will attempt to take small objectives instead. They may provide scouting information.
• Scouts: These players will sit in towers and warn of enemy advance. Good scouts will tell you the moment a structure comes under attack

Like other RTS games WvW has resource management: namely Supply. You need to manage the supply you use. This is why only the commander should drop siege unless he specifically wants someone else to drop it. As the commander you’re tracking the supply your raid has on hand. If you build too much siege you will run out of supply when you need it most.

Within the zerglings…
You will find two distinct play styles within the zerglings.

• Frontline: These are heavy melee classes that run next to you as you drive the raid.
• Periphery: These are light ranged classes which will not go into fights but will bomb at ranged distance.

I’ll start with the frontline. The frontline classes are to be no further than 600 units away from the commander at any time during an engagement. The commander is driving their movement and crowd control. It doesn’t help anyone to have ele hunter heroes in the front line so if you’re a warrior/guardian stick by your commander.

The periphery should be 600 to 800 units from the commander at all times. Periphery characters are largely responsible for their own survival. They need to target their damage on the commander’s position. This is because that is where the commander is locking down enemy targets. Thieves are the exception to this rule within the periphery. They may target enemy peripheral targets which are not directly on the commander so long as such targets do not extend them into the enemy frontline.

Why does my commander want me to get on teamspeak?
Simple. Voice communication gets the message out faster than any other method. Don’t believe me? Try this experiment in game.
1. load up Eternal Battleground
2. Point in the general direction of stonemist and start autorun.
3. Type completely the following. You’re not allowed to abbreviate anything and you must have correct spelling and fairly okay grammar.
“Move on Stonemist. When we get there I’m going to drop 3 rams on the gate. Build left to right. Don’t drop your own siege. After the rams are built lights and mediums spread out check for incoming. All other attack the gate. Call out when it is at 25%.”

How far did you run by the time you typed that? I would suspect that if you started at the waypoint in the spawn you were out the door and half way to the keep by the time you got it all out. Now repeat the experiment, this time for step 3 just say that text instead of typing it. You didn’t even get down the steps by the waypoint before you were done huh. Simple point is saying the orders over VOIP is way faster than typing them.

Put this into a fight situation and you have the difference between successfully dodging a hammer train and eating 10 earthshakers to the face.
Even if you can’t speak in TS grab some headphones and log in so you can listen. This will improve your chances when you’re fighting larger groups.

(hehe post length pwned)

Thanks for adding to the thread. We need more veteran players like you to contribute and help out inexperience or new players.

only strategy is to make sure your blob is the biggest and the only helpful advice is to have a large amount of gold so your server can buy guilds to make sure the former happens