Guild Wars 2

Hello fellow respected WvW players.

This is an old (not new) but exciting way to play in small roaming groups and works best against disorganized groups. Given the constant state of map zergs, I thought it might be a refreshing change to see some interesting compositions in WvW for anti-zerg, small-group roaming.

A long, long time ago I came to the WvW forum and posted a video about “Elementalist Stacking”. It was well received, and sparked good discussion about the tactic, and got (some) people really thinking.

Over 1 year later, we decided to give it another try in EotM. I created a video to help train my guild-mates on the concept since the tactic is so outdated most people had forgotten how it even worked. We don’t have more than 8 players at any point in this video. Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzBV9X6Z07M

The basic gist of the composition in a 5-man party is as follows:

3x Elementalist – Dagger/Dagger
1x Thief – Venom Share
1x Flex spot (usually guardian)

The plan: synchronize Churning Earth from all elementalists—coupled with venom share, and guardian stability, and you would tank a target zerg by, literally, killing them before they kill you. We rally off of their downed to start a cascade effect

The strong, front-heavy DPS from 3x stacked Churning Earth is enough to insta-down unsuspecting players. By focusing the rest of our AoE on these downed players, we can guarantee they will die before we do—rallying our players to keep the push going.

I call this “Rally Tanking” because /giggle.

Alternate videos displaying the tactic:

A lot can go wrong in that composition especially if the opposition is running a lot of control or boon striping. Oddly that system might work best with Mass Invis. It is sort of a one shot deal but I can see it working with some hilarity.

IMO stack up 2-3 pull Guardians, chill Necro and splash in a mesmer. Anything that gets pulled gets dead. They are nearly impervious to control, conditions and strip boons like crazy. They even escape well. Fighting Mag teams with this setup this week and it has been a PIA to counter.

The counter to this is just simply rezing the downed and throwing banners down. And since you are AOEing everything all someone has to do is down one of you and the enemy zerg will rally. Not saying this strat doesn’t work just saying the AOE cap being only 5 and the Downed state mechanics have the potential to really work against you rather than work for you.

Also stacking can be a huge mistake if the enemy is aware of what you are doing they can simply spread out and range pierce and AOE into your group if there are only 5 of you that will be devastating since the AOE cap will not work against them.

Lastly Idk what server you are one but in T1 the fights that you fought would not be considered zergs. You are mostly downing equal numbers or fight groups of 10 and in that case almost anything can work. In T1 zergs are like 50 players on a dime.

The most effective zerg busting technique I have ever seen when you are a smaller force vs a larger force was the Shatter tactic using call targeting and ranged piercing and Dime Cannon which is a ranged pain train that kites around a zerg rather than at them one a enemy zerg closes on your dime cannon you shatter back out again and call targets.

Straegen.2938:

A lot can go wrong in that composition

Oooooh yeah.

a lot can go wrong with it. Namely—if you miss the churn. For the reasons you stated, if your stab gets stripped, or your get pulled out of stealth early, your whole stacks goes down like bowling pins.

But if you get it right, and your hit is good, you start a cascading effect which clears opponents like no tomorrow. The clip at 1m17s shows this the best. Every time we hit, they take a step back to recover—leaving their downed to us >:D

http://youtu.be/HzBV9X6Z07M?t=1m17s

Seems like the AoE limits of Churning Earth would be a problem against a decent sized group. Maybe a necro portal bomb would be a similar trick would have a greater chance of success.

Straegen.2938:

Seems like the AoE limits of Churning Earth would be a problem against a decent sized group. Maybe a necro portal bomb would be a similar trick would have a greater chance of success.

Surprisingly, the 5-target limit never bothered us. This is odd, I know… but it’s easily solved by using your lightning flash to the edge of their group. You’ll notice when we hit, we don’t normally aim for groups clustered numbering higher than 5. Be selective, and never teleport directly on-top of your target. Always go for the edge (Churn has a large AoE radius)

Warlord.9074:

The most effective zerg busting technique I have ever seen when you are a smaller force vs a larger force was the Shatter tactic using call targeting and ranged piercing and Dime Cannon which is a ranged pain train that kites around a zerg rather than at them one a enemy zerg closes on your dime cannon you shatter back out again and call targets.

This sounds incredibly intriguing to me. Do you have a video somewhere of this? I’d love to know how it works.

And yeah – the 50-man map zergs is what put a stop to this churn bomb over 9 months ago This comp seems capable of dealing with groups up to 2x its size. Not much greater than that, but it is scale-able.

Run staff instead of DD and bring a few guards with hammer and staff and u can kill coordinated grps instead of pug grps!

Dynnen.6405:

Run staff instead of DD and bring a few guards with hammer and staff and u can kill coordinated grps instead of pug grps!

We tried this. Staff can’t stand on its own. 5v10, your staffs will get run over every time. You can kite, but unless they want to stand still for you, you aren’t going to get those meteors to hit.

(but 30 fire, 30 lightning is balls of fun)

The concept of ele stacking definitely seems to work, so props for coming up with it and sharing.

However with more coordination and a better group comp/theory craft this can really be optimised. You shoudn’t be relying on rallying on your enemy with proper execution of your teams plays

Natronix.9827:

The concept of ele stacking definitely seems to work, so props for coming up with it and sharing.

However with more coordination and a better group comp/theory craft this can really be optimised. You shoudn’t be relying on rallying on your enemy with proper execution of your teams plays

That’s part of the reason I wanted to put this on the WvW forum. What other group comps has everyone else tried that they think would work equally well at killing numbers twice their size? I’d love to know. Zerg busting is the sweetest thing there is (in GW2)

Zerg busting is all about all at once dmg that why d/d can pull it off i am thinking having a gurd for empower and stability would add a lot to this. I like to see how s/d would work for a bit more burst dmg all though its mostly single target.

Guard stab really helps. But the empower isn’t necessary when we drop fire fields for the churn stack. Having a GS/hammer guard might work brilliantly though. Use the AoE pull to lump them together for the churn

I’d use 3 shatter Mesmers instead of 3 eles. Stealth entire group, pick a target, blink, mirror, target is dead (and probably everything around it, lol). With all 3 running MI you can completely control bursts from stealth every 20 second or so. Besides, its EoTM – I would be surprised if 3 shatter Mesmers couldnt wipe 50 people there.

Dawdler.8521:

I’d use 3 shatter Mesmers instead of 3 eles. Stealth entire group, pick a target, blink, mirror, target is dead (and probably everything around it, lol). With all 3 running MI you can completely control bursts from stealth every 20 second or so. Besides, its EoTM – I would be surprised if 3 shatter Mesmers couldnt wipe 50 people there.

I’m not sure that mesmers have the kind of sustain to pull this off. They might be able to get one down instantly, but they’re missin the sustained dps required to take control of the area around that person in order to get him hard downed. Especially outnumbered when the clones will go down to static damage from nearby foes.

I’d really like for this to work though. Mesmers seem like they have great potential, but it seems to depreciate the larger a fight gets. 5v10 I can see it working. 10 v 20, not so much.

But yes. EotM feels the way gW2 did way back at launch. Low
Organization. Casual gameplay. Loads of fun.

This churn bomb doesn’t work on 50 man map groups. But it has yet to be tested when 50 Eles churn bomb a 50 man map Zerg. I imagine it would be quite a spectacle, of nothin else

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

Natronix.9827:

The concept of ele stacking definitely seems to work, so props for coming up with it and sharing.

However with more coordination and a better group comp/theory craft this can really be optimised. You shoudn’t be relying on rallying on your enemy with proper execution of your teams plays

That’s part of the reason I wanted to put this on the WvW forum. What other group comps has everyone else tried that they think would work equally well at killing numbers twice their size? I’d love to know. Zerg busting is the sweetest thing there is (in GW2)

I’d suggest you searching either our YT movies or [Imp]’s, it will answer your question.

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

I’m not sure that mesmers have the kind of sustain to pull this off. They might be able to get one down instantly, but they’re missin the sustained dps required to take control of the area around that person in order to get him hard downed. Especially outnumbered when the clones will go down to static damage from nearby foes.

What they lack in sustain they make up for in burst and stealth. If you suprise a a group of 20 and down 5-10 of them, you should have still be able to spike at least half of them from stealth. Repeat just one time and the battle is pretty much won.

This churn bomb doesn’t work on 50 man map groups. But it has yet to be tested when 50 Eles churn bomb a 50 man map Zerg. I imagine it would be quite a spectacle, of nothin else

That’s what you think. Piken ran an all Engineer raid yesterday and supply crates absolutely destroyed the enemy blobs/zergs/guild groups/everything. We’re talking nearly instantly downing half a 50 man blob. If weakass Engineers can do it, I’m fairly sure Eles would be able to do it too :p

Since we’ve ran necro, mesmer and guardian before, I’m sure eles are coming up. I especially look forward to the 50 man ranger raid, lol. Can you say snare elite?

KrazyFlyinChicken.5936:

Dynnen.6405:

Run staff instead of DD and bring a few guards with hammer and staff and u can kill coordinated grps instead of pug grps!

We tried this. Staff can’t stand on its own. 5v10, your staffs will get run over every time. You can kite, but unless they want to stand still for you, you aren’t going to get those meteors to hit.

(but 30 fire, 30 lightning is balls of fun)

There was so much going on in the video with the enemy that you probably could have gotten away with running 3 mildly berserker staff eles to wipe that zerg while they sat on the steps.

SkylightMoon.1980:

There was so much going on in the video with the enemy that you probably could have gotten away with running 3 mildly berserker staff eles to wipe that zerg while they sat on the steps.

We did this once with 10 staff eles and a pair of time warp necros on the golems in heart of the mists.

It was glorious.

Sadly, we were not able to replicate the same effect on enemy groups. If we managed to get our bomb off—we might get three or four hard downed, but that’s it. After that, we get pushed hard and wiped off the bottom side of their boot because all they have to do is avoid red circles at that point.