Guild Wars 2

I have read a lot of qq posts on the forums over the past few weeks complaining about server imbalances, night capping, and the bonus’s. There has not been a lot of “beneficial” posts regarding WvW. I am hoping this post will allow other players to think outside the box a bit on tactics.

Now taken from other posts, and observing game play during the beta games and live,most are aware the “zerg” is the favored tactic. Take an overwhelming force and just muscle your way into various locations and move on. Now this tactic works great with the majority of tunnel vision players but does not work all the time and has drawbacks. First of all most “zergs” do not plant defenses. They swarm a location and move on leaving it primarily helpless.

Now the issue I am seeing is most players keep trying to play zerg even when they do not have enough players to compete with an overwhelming force. I am hoping players will offer different tactics in this post to help players improve their games and make more challenging matches.

First order of business is to get players out of the spawn. As with most overwhelmed games, players will most likely be in a situation of “spawn camped”. Now as most know, the spawn areas have 3 exits. The issue I read most often on the forums and by observing servers in the game is most CHARGE STRAIGHT OUT OF SPAWN RIGHT INTO THE INVADING ARMY. Bad Bad idea. Gather as many players ( 10+ players preferred) exit through one of the side exits.

Once the group drops out the back door, everyone usually reverts back to “zerg” and then caps the supply! Now they own the supply! BUT you have now alerted the invading force that you have moved into that area and they will send a huge overwhelming force to put you right back at spawn. The obvious answer would be to run past the supply (ignore it) and head straight into the lake.

Now you have a small force that is free of spawn what do you do? Now you get to cause issues for your opposing team. Move your way north, try to bypass any sentry and supply (except Dolyaks always kill the Dolyaks). Once North, it’s time to play guerilla style. Start taking every supply line and sentry NORTH of the map it is even better if you can time it when the score is calculated so you remove the score from the invading army tally and add it to your own. If you have enough players place 3 teams at the various supply nodes and wait until 5 to 6 minutes before score tally. At the same time take ALL the supply camps at once. Stay mobile do NOT try to set up defenses because you will be over whelmed. Move in a huge circle and keep taking those camps. Try not to be predictable. You don’t want them to meet you at one of the camps with a huge force and send you to spawn. Maybe even move south through the water and take a southern camp to keep them guessing.

Now eventually the invading team will send teams back to guard those areas which should reduce the amount of people attacking your spawn. If you see roving teams/individuals trying to fall back to reinforce, take them out and send them to spawn. If you have enough people with you then take out a tower, again do not defend they will overwhelm it. Once they have engaged that tower (either east or west) Move to the OTHER tower and assault it. Keep guards spread around and if they see a force moving to overwhelm you then LEAVE. Move to a different location, move back to the original tactic of hitting those supply camps.

Another tactic that works well (if you have a smaller team) is to HIDE and kill off the Dolyaks as they leave the camps. Do NOT kill the sentries as this will alert the opposing force to your location. Watch the map once the dolyak leaves the supply, wait until it reaches about half way then jump it. Here again they will have to start pulling players to escort the supplies splitting their forces even more. The more ground they own, the more ground they have to try and protect, the more spread out their forces will be. This tactic works well if you do NOT kill the sentries. You can easily “starve” a keep or tower since most will be actively upgrading or creating siege and using up their supplies. They will see their sentries and most will not investigate why suddenly they have no supplies.

Once they move more forces north to protect their holdings start aggressively taking southern resources. Keep up the random assaults on their northern supply and hopefully the rest of your team has been able to push out of spawn and will help in recovering your areas. Now one of the biggest issues I have noticed, is once you are able to reclaim the keep in front of your spawn, once again the “zerg” takes over and runs off to try and expand too fast. Resist the temptation. Reinforce your nearby supplies, upgrade and reinforce your keep. Once you establish a good base then try to move to adjacent areas. During this process KEEP THE ATTACK ON NORTH SUPPLY GOING, this is crucial to starve their towers and keep their forces split. You can also send a small strike force into the lake to keep the power nodes flipped to your favor. The random storm lightning will help take out siege equipment on top of the other towers and you have a chance to strike and destroy the Altar of power holding the orb and resetting the orb.

Now these are only suggestions and I am sure there are other and in some cases better tactics that can be employed. You can even hide a Mesmer or 2 in those towers so when they flip, you can easily take a small force in to recapture and put more pressure on the opposing team.

Great post! Thanks for taking the time.