Guild Wars 2

WvWvW Tactics group pvp mesmer.

I this setup and guide is based on a 5 – 15 max group. What this Guide is aiming on how to be a valuable strike force behind enemy lines for your server with a small team.

Tactical Video:

Position on the battlefield.

Ok this might supprice you but in my opinion we supposed to be first in. This cause as a shatter mesmer you will be able to avoid the whole 1st burst landed waste many of the enemy cd’s, you will also be able to get the portal and time warp up on 1 spot and draw fire from the group attacking.

Camp capping

No matter if its defended or not this is a big part of the small groups role in wvwvw. The big zerg group will hit the Keep or Garrison. The mid size/small team, jobb is to limit the feed of supply to enemy structures, secure supplies for our team, draw attention of the own team and get extra points for your server. Enemy defending a keep will at same time take blow after blow in a area they think is safe, loosing ppl etc. Attention will be drawn to you. Can you with a 5-10 man team keep a enemy team of 20+ ppl chasing you while you cap camps etc a lot is won for the team who otherwise would need to fight them at a keep/garrison etc.

To maximize the effect of this there is some things that can be done.

- 1 communicate with the other commander. Make sure you know when they hit the keep/garrison, when this happens its time to be maximum provocative in enemy area.

- Move al time. Cap a camp, stay the 4 min buf and defend vs the groups hitting it until you annoyed enough of the enemy team to send a zerg, then bail and hit next camp, if you lucky (yes) you get them to chase you around half of the world.

- When capping, go with Mesmer in 1st, get 2-3 clones up and hit a distortion, this will effectly eat al the cc. When 2 sec of the immunity passed do a blink and hit a portal to draw fire of the portal, time warp the team and cap the camp.

Role
In small group roaming I personally like to see a Mesmer in officer role alternative group leading. This as the group need to react fast on portals and if orders need to be given where to place portals etc misunderstandings is easy.

Portal tactics
-Portal attack of a group: Hide team, run in behind enemy team, land portal and then blink in to team. Draw fire on you and immune, get time warp up on friendly force.:

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll103/osianic/Poralattack.jpg

-Portal ambush chasing team: Several tactics but most common is taunt a enemy, have them case and place a portal in grass, behind structure etc and when they chased pass it group suddenly stop and portal behind enemy, important is to before 2nd Mesmer jump in place a 2nd portal where attack portal was for escape.:

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll103/osianic/portalescapeambush.jpg

-portal escape with terrain: team run of a cliff, leav portal at top, when enemy jump after keep run and then gather portal up behind saftley. This can be done even more effective if the Mesmer who jump down have less dmg from fall trait, jump of a cliff normal player die of and then portal team down, 2nd Mesmer place portal at top. Se the dying enmy fall and kill who don’t die, then ortal up to hit ppl not jumped. With some skill and puchbacks you can throw ppl that stood looking down on you of the wall.

http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll103/osianic/portalescaping.png

DPS/SUPPORT?
Priority is : Group leading (if you do)>portal management>Timwarp>chaos storm on friendly group>personal dmg.

When to flee and how.
If team get overrun, frends fall to left and right, gather a group and run, its hard to take down elementalists, thiefs and mesmers so you will often be a small agile group that escape. Now your role is to get back, use time warp and stealth to ress your team then portal out. This serve 2 purposes, 1 it strengthen the team spirit to not leave anyone behind unless he in a hopeless ress situation. Your team don’t get separated in unorganized small groups, and the dead can do some good scouting.

So what is the point of this?
First of all I want to enlighten how fantastic fun small group roaming is but ofc its not enough. As said before small group behind enemy lines lift pressure of your other teams, also by capping camps you get points to your server (often seen a server have stone mist but still be low on points cause another server have 12+ camps), stop enemy supply runs to towers and keeps and even more important, force them to run around and recap the camps. Make sure al carry supply and have guild catapults and golems ready, an unguarded tower with normal door fall fast to a 10 man team with a golem or 3 rams. Make sure have some superior rams ready for the perfect ninja cap

Videos:
Staff video show a good Portal attack of larger force starting at 7:20, link take you to 7:20.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=YAE-hjinNWw#t=445s

Osicat.4139:

Ok this might supprice you but in my opinion we supposed to be first in.

QFT.

Great work Osicat, you’ve inspired me to do one for my build as well!

- Hang out with an epidemic necro and watch zergs melt themselves after dumping 12 stacks of confusion on someone.

zastari.1730:

- Hang out with an epidemic necro and watch zergs melt themselves after dumping 12 stacks of confusion on someone.

Confusion/Reflection builds make me feel borderline OP in WvW that in combination w/the portal tools and other utility we offer is amazing.

Tip: Running around and using portals as escape mechanisms and bombing it does help to have centaur runes to maintain swiftness to get in too. Even if your a condition build IMHO

@Disastro Centaurs is nice for movment good tip, personaly I prefere Air thu, give a %swiftnes bonus, swiftness on demand but also wery good dmg bost for crit dmg class, have a sool in my guide if you interested.

What this guide is focused on thu is goup managment and how to be maximum effective as a smal team using mesmers as a central pillar. Video linked at 7:22 in top post end show how a smal team can work with another team to do great dmg to a big unorganiced enemy zerg. Here is a link how to place a attack portal for gank a mid size enemy team, explanation in vid aswell.

Link is from 5:29 and there is where the portal attack is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=uyBqXginwZI#t=323s

/Osicat

Osicat.4139:

I prefere Air

I generally don’t go for a crit/burst build so the crit% won’t do me much good however the lightning proc seems quite nice. Do you know if it will still proc during reflection or distortion?

It seem to proc if you burst a person with sword 2 ability who have retaliation up. So I should guess yes for reflection aswell.

Air rune got its dmg reducted in last patch by 25%, the higest crits I get now is around 6,5k on glascannon thiefs but still its 2/5 of their total hp

/Osicat

I was running solo in eternal last night and had an epic moment. I saw a single invader as I was rounding a corner (a cliff of some sort) and charged in to attack. As I cleared the cliff on my left, it turns out that this single invader was just one guy standing at the very back of a pretty big zerg — roughly 30 players give or take.

I thought I should run and for whatever reason I did, forward through the zerg. Clones and shatters flying along with GS 5, 2, and 4 for AoE. Three invaders downed and folks started to notice me. I popped mass invis, blink, ether feast, and decoy to get to very front of the zerg.

At this point I’m at the base of a keep with another important decision, try to run along the sides to get inside the keep, or just turn around and take my lumps. I’m out of cooldowns at this point except for my last utility which is… yep Feedback.

So I drop feedback and renew my assult (this time from the front of the zerg). All I have in the tank are GS skills which are on a pretty short c/d. After a few seconds I start to wonder “why am I still alive?”. Some Yak’s Bend players were on top of the keep and they jumped down like snow flakes to where I was. Now it was a counter-push and the zerg broke and ran.

I don’t think my role was that significant with regards to busting the zerg, but I’m sharing because it was one of those super-happy-fun moments in WvW where you feel like some sort of fantasy novel hero in the end.

@Juno, LOVELY hahah it would make a fantastic action orientated graphic novel

Uppdated

Added a tactical video, its also in my guide but feel it offers alot in terms of group fighting tactics:

/Osicat

Osi most of your videos are fun and lighthearted. This was just Epic. I loved it.

Adding a video who is important for this thread. IT show that even if your guilds strike force is 12-14 man you can make a difference. It also show mesmer gameplay.

We In general use 1 mesmer / 5 players but start with a mesmer. So a 12 man team use 3 mesmers.

/Osicat