Guild Wars 2

Jeydra.4386:

Kai.9182:

dadada.1306:

Kai.9182:

Always gonna have rallybots follow the big blue dorito just feint push chokes and get them killed.

And you’ll become known as the commander who’s always getting people who follow him killed. I like it… weeds out the lame commanders.

Well the ones in teamspeak don’t die and you become the hilarious commander. kapeesh rallybot?

You’ll quickly become known as a troll and people will simply refuse to follow you. After that you’ll be like “guys I need everyone on me” and “if you’re not on the commander you’re doing it wrong” and “omg why do we have so many PVERS who don’t know how to follow commander on this server?!” and then ragebuy 1800 gems to transfer elsewhere.

Or you wipe them after with the group in teamspeak and not be bad.

Kai.9182:

Jeydra.4386:

Kai.9182:

dadada.1306:

Kai.9182:

Always gonna have rallybots follow the big blue dorito just feint push chokes and get them killed.

And you’ll become known as the commander who’s always getting people who follow him killed. I like it… weeds out the lame commanders.

Well the ones in teamspeak don’t die and you become the hilarious commander. kapeesh rallybot?

You’ll quickly become known as a troll and people will simply refuse to follow you. After that you’ll be like “guys I need everyone on me” and “if you’re not on the commander you’re doing it wrong” and “omg why do we have so many PVERS who don’t know how to follow commander on this server?!” and then ragebuy 1800 gems to transfer elsewhere.

Or you wipe them after with the group in teamspeak and not be bad.

Yeah, wipe an 80-man zerg with a 40-man TS-coordinated group, I’ve yet to see that happen.

Hello Jeydra,

Actually I’ve seen that happen before. When organized guild groups go into a ball formation, we’ve fought out numbered but have folks dropping and dodging out of the way, then bombing a 50-60+ man guild group, killing about 70% of them and forcing them to back off our tower.

We had about 20-30+ guys on TS during that time. I remember it was during league. Was massive fun because the enemy guild was known to be formidable. Would not have been possible without some massive coordination in TS using the cloud formation.

Best thing is that we were just pugs/militia/rallians.

However, I do understand that some folks don’t want to get on TS because family/friends are in the background and they don’t use headsets. No worries, that’s all part and parcel of a game. It’s not real life. As we often repeat, if we die in game we won’t die in real life.

FW

Jeydra.4386:

Kai.9182:

Jeydra.4386:

Kai.9182:

dadada.1306:

Kai.9182:

Always gonna have rallybots follow the big blue dorito just feint push chokes and get them killed.

And you’ll become known as the commander who’s always getting people who follow him killed. I like it… weeds out the lame commanders.

Well the ones in teamspeak don’t die and you become the hilarious commander. kapeesh rallybot?

You’ll quickly become known as a troll and people will simply refuse to follow you. After that you’ll be like “guys I need everyone on me” and “if you’re not on the commander you’re doing it wrong” and “omg why do we have so many PVERS who don’t know how to follow commander on this server?!” and then ragebuy 1800 gems to transfer elsewhere.

Or you wipe them after with the group in teamspeak and not be bad.

Yeah, wipe an 80-man zerg with a 40-man TS-coordinated group, I’ve yet to see that happen.

Kai’s idea is to get all the friendly militia killed, and then kill the enemy group. That’s not the same as what you describe. You can kill a 50-60+ man group with 20-30 people on TS plus friendly militia, yes (also if you had ~30 militia in addition to the people on TS, you’d be at equal numbers, and you can’t claim you won an outnumbered fight). You can’t kill that same 50-60+ man group with 20-30 people on TS and nobody else, at least not without something like heavy siege backup.

I don’t know what goes on in SoR’s TS, but if it’s anything like BG’s, it’s perfectly possible to play well without it.

Hello Jeydra,

I see what you mean. It was 20-30 in TS. It was a good night, only a small handful, probably about 5+ who weren’t. No siege backup. So it was a really smaller group. However, I don’t have hard evidence so I don’t expect you to believe me.

It’s possible to hit and demolish groups bigger than yours. I have done it to ZDs, FB, ND with smaller numbers. I was exWM, learned from Jang. He’s one of the commanders I’ve been lead by and what he can do with militia is amazing, fighting even bigger numbers and wiping/driving off the enemy. I have also trained various groups to do the same. One in particular is TE from SBI. In a SBI v SOR match, in training session I led the same SBI group to wipe SOR guild groups also. It took a really long time to learn from Jang, Indo, Pryan & Ace but it’s been a great ride.

I strongly believe if militia is given enough training, they can do amazing things.

FW

Jeydra.4386:

Kai’s idea is to get all the friendly militia killed, and then kill the enemy group. That’s not the same as what you describe. You can kill a 50-60+ man group with 20-30 people on TS plus friendly militia, yes (also if you had ~30 militia in addition to the people on TS, you’d be at equal numbers, and you can’t claim you won an outnumbered fight). You can’t kill that same 50-60+ man group with 20-30 people on TS and nobody else, at least not without something like heavy siege backup.

I don’t know what goes on in SoR’s TS, but if it’s anything like BG’s, it’s perfectly possible to play well without it.

Jeydra.4386:

Yeah, wipe an 80-man zerg with a 40-man TS-coordinated group, I’ve yet to see that happen.

This happens daily, if not hourly…….

Deli depends on server. On lower population servers only weekly as nobody have 80 man zerg.
But I have seen many 10 vs 20 where 10 man group won.

Jeydra.4386:

Kai.9182:

Jeydra.4386:

Kai.9182:

dadada.1306:

Kai.9182:

Always gonna have rallybots follow the big blue dorito just feint push chokes and get them killed.

And you’ll become known as the commander who’s always getting people who follow him killed. I like it… weeds out the lame commanders.

Well the ones in teamspeak don’t die and you become the hilarious commander. kapeesh rallybot?

You’ll quickly become known as a troll and people will simply refuse to follow you. After that you’ll be like “guys I need everyone on me” and “if you’re not on the commander you’re doing it wrong” and “omg why do we have so many PVERS who don’t know how to follow commander on this server?!” and then ragebuy 1800 gems to transfer elsewhere.

Or you wipe them after with the group in teamspeak and not be bad.

Yeah, wipe an 80-man zerg with a 40-man TS-coordinated group, I’ve yet to see that happen.

Watch this video AGG was running about 25-27 people destroying blob after blob :P
http://www.twitch.tv/aggression_gaming/c/3360450

Nanyetah Elohi.4852:

Know that everyone who can hear the commander knows that you cant and is talking about what a dumbkitten you are. It is completely obvious who is not hearing the commander. There is a tremendous amount of information being sent in voice comms that you are missing, and it does show. If you are out of voice communication, you are the reason pugs have such a bad name.

You should differentiate between those who actually know what they’re doing and stick to the zerg and those who either don’t know what they’re doing and/or just care for their own kills and run off behind people.

Even if Player X is on TS it doesn’t make him a better player nor does it mean he won’t try to solo kill a Dolyak, run after the single enemy, stay in the circle etc.

Often enough there are people who constantly bad-mouth about other players in TS as they think they know more than others do. Always annoys me tbh.

PS: I do believe TS is better than no TS, but it is no necessity. I just don’t see any reason to bad-mouth at others.

Mike.5091:

Nanyetah Elohi.4852:

Know that everyone who can hear the commander knows that you cant and is talking about what a dumbkitten you are. It is completely obvious who is not hearing the commander. There is a tremendous amount of information being sent in voice comms that you are missing, and it does show. If you are out of voice communication, you are the reason pugs have such a bad name.

You should differentiate between those who actually know what they’re doing and stick to the zerg and those who either don’t know what they’re doing and/or just care for their own kills and run off behind people.

Even if Player X is on TS it doesn’t make him a better player nor does it mean he won’t try to solo kill a Dolyak, run after the single enemy, stay in the circle etc.

Often enough there are people who constantly bad-mouth about other players in TS as they think they know more than others do. Always annoys me tbh.

PS: I do believe TS is better than no TS, but it is no necessity. I just don’t see any reason to bad-mouth at others.

… but without TS, you cant hear anyone bad-mouth others :/

Really, I play on Piken and we’ve fought Vizunah and SFR for 3 weeks or something now. Meaning, T1 zergs and guild groups.

Fighting them with the guild would be impossible without TS. We wouldnt be able to compete, period. Not to mention it would be incredibly boring. Lets just say that what the commander yells on TS get us all pumped up and aggressive as all kitten.

In random pug zerging with no goal and not being in any real competition mode, sure you can run without TS. There is little to no challenge in it and boring as hell, but you can do it.

You can’t, and it’s not nice to poke fun of them for not using it. If they don’t want to use, they don’t want to us it. No one should be forced to do something they don’t want to. I don’t like dailies, so I don’t do them unless by accident. I don’t like Fractals, so I don’t do them.

My server makes fun of the pugs(which is a poor term for them, since it stands for pick up group and then are more like floaters or followers or puafs: pick up and follow) and often calls them cannon fodder. I’m fine if people don’t want to get into TS. Sometimes TS can be a terrible place with people talking poop, and acting stupid. Sometimes it’s just someone barking orders. Sometimes you find out one of your teammates is able to target untargetable siege, and then you get to listen to your team discuss why it’s not cheating. Other times it can be fun, with jokes, and good times. Like when we all decided to wear Christmas colours and be a Christmas zerg, even though our enemies can’t see it… and we stopped for pictures. That was cool.

Servers with a good community like SoS, and I would assume all the lower servers, don’t have ANY of the things people have complained about in this thread.

We have a laugh, play music which you can just mute if you’re not interested, and bag farm our enemies.

If your “casuals” don’t want to use teamspeak, nominate someone to turn on their tag to lead them around and cap objectives, while your members on teamspeak follow a tagged down commander, you don’t need to be one blob.

Of course the T1 servers (and their TS) are filled with whiny babies that no one wants to be around, those kinds of people always fair weather to places/servers (no matter what game) where they can rely on the other players to win for them.

Have No Faith In Me.1840:

Of course the T1 servers (and their TS) are filled with whiny babies that no one wants to be around, those kinds of people always fair weather to places/servers (no matter what game) where they can rely on the other players to win for them.

Having played in T1, namely Blackgate, for nearly half a year before moving back to T2, your above comment and malicious falsehood simply indicates the clueless nature of your falsehood. Blackgate, as with other T1 servers, use TS very, very effectively, hence the desire to get ALL into TS. Furthermore, they utilize methods of Commander comms that allow for greater communications and capabilities with other server commanders.

At any rate, your talking out your clueless behind, nothing more, nothing less.

Rigel.3092:

Having played in T1, namely Blackgate, for nearly half a year before moving back to T2, your above comment and malicious falsehood simply indicates the clueless nature of your falsehood. Blackgate, as with other T1 servers, use TS very, very effectively, hence the desire to get ALL into TS. Furthermore, they utilize methods of Commander comms that allow for greater communications and capabilities with other server commanders.

At any rate, your talking out your clueless behind, nothing more, nothing less.

Thank you for providing me a perfect example.

Voice com is important. But real life trumps every time. There are just situations that simply don’t allow for voice. Nothing you or anyone else can say that will change the minds of peeps in those situations.

Sure is arrogance in here, then you guys wonder why people won’t get on your TS. While I have seen some really good replies here, I’ve also seen some really bad ones, from people who clearly do not understand how other people work.

Rule #1 to beat your opponent: Remember that not everyone is YOU. This is a good thing, not a bad thing, because if everyone was the same, and always playing the same metagame, and always following the leader nicely, etc. It would also make your side extremely easy to counter, because it will only be a limited amount of time before the enemy learns from everything that you do and starts anticipating it. Having casuals, roamers, havoc groups, etc. is very important to keep your enemy guessing. Variation is a heathly thing and it should be encouraged, not stamped out. The last thing you ever want to do as a commander is put all your eggs in one basket.

As a commander, I don’t run TS, intentionally, because my real life usually demands that I pay attention to other things, and I often playing the early morning hours with the SEA folks while everyone else in this place is asleep. Even if i could get them on TS, they wouldn’t understand me and vice versa. Its pointless. Instead, awareness is the big goal. I recommend playing some somewhat difficult PvE events like Tequatl with people who you cannot understand at all, and look at how they react to what you do. You will learn alot of things about how people respond by initiative alone.

It is possible to follow without TS, and be effective. But more importantly, it is possible to lead without TS , and still be effective. Who you are – the decisions that you make – how you treat people especially, are all more important than when you time your water fields or all of those technical details. Because one slur, one put-down, all of it undoes any amount of hard work that you do otherwise. And to make it worse, TS is often full of things (like music) that distract people more than making them pay attention. People have a limited attention span, and if you use up too much of that attention span on a bunch of dudes and bros yammering away, it gets much harder to focus on the real battle or what the commander is actuallly saying, to the point where you will perform worse than if you weren’t in TS.

The secret to being a good commander is to remember that it is a game, winning isn’t everything, and that there are no casuals; everyone is equal, some are more hardcore players than others, but they are still all players under your wing at the end of the day. You are responsible for what they do. If they fail, it may be because of real life limitations, but more often it is because you screwed up by chosing a battle that is too complex for people to win without extreme coordination.

Anyone experienced with sports or e-sports (professional gaming) will understand the importance of what I am saying. If you tried to lead a football team with these kinds of mentalities, you would most likely be fired for causing stress.

There are many people who consciously avoid voice communications, and that’s perfectly fine. Some people are just winding down after work and don’t want to be bothered, others dislike voice communications because it evokes the idea of whinny 10 yr olds voices.

However, there is a great number of people who don’t do voice comm in games simply because it it is unknown to them, it is a large step in changing their experience, they must download a 3rd party program (big deterrent), some people are just very shy. Also, “the base game doesn’t utilize it so why should I?”.

These are the people the OP should focus on – folks who would use voice comm if they got to experience it themselves but for one reason or another don’t want to take the chance of crossing the barriers, downloading 3rd party programs, buying a $3 mic down the road, etc.

There are servers where avoiding voice communication while following a commander is not acceptable. Go do your own thing, stay out of the zerg if you don’t want to follow the commander.

The problem is, the commander is working very hard sometimes long hours for the benefit of the whole group. People who are too lazy to listen and respond wear the commander down, and that impacts the whole server. Just leave if you cant be bothered to listen up. Leave, go do your own thing.

You dont need to speak, just listen. easy. I almost never speak, I respond in Say if I am on tag, in Team if I am scout or sentry off tag.

I’m an ele. Examples of the kinds of commands I get in voice comm this afternoon are “I need a static field between those two trees…” “Can I get a water field on the treb…” “Two people on those catas, the rest with me, we are heading to…” That kind of detail will not be typed into chat on any channel.

phantomlord.3417:

Jeydra.4386:

Kai.9182:

Jeydra.4386:

Kai.9182:

dadada.1306:

Kai.9182:

Always gonna have rallybots follow the big blue dorito just feint push chokes and get them killed.

And you’ll become known as the commander who’s always getting people who follow him killed. I like it… weeds out the lame commanders.

Well the ones in teamspeak don’t die and you become the hilarious commander. kapeesh rallybot?

You’ll quickly become known as a troll and people will simply refuse to follow you. After that you’ll be like “guys I need everyone on me” and “if you’re not on the commander you’re doing it wrong” and “omg why do we have so many PVERS who don’t know how to follow commander on this server?!” and then ragebuy 1800 gems to transfer elsewhere.

Or you wipe them after with the group in teamspeak and not be bad.

Yeah, wipe an 80-man zerg with a 40-man TS-coordinated group, I’ve yet to see that happen.

Watch this video AGG was running about 25-27 people destroying blob after blob :P
http://www.twitch.tv/aggression_gaming/c/3360450

OK, let’s rephrase: it’s impossible to beat a zerg twice one’s size that is not consisted of lots of uplevels, is equally buffed with food, and is aware of your zerg’s presence before the first spell is cast, no matter how coordinated on TS your zerg may be. If you have a video to the contrary, I’d love to see it. Jang Gun’s a great commander, but a couple of days ago we ran into just that on EB in BG vs. JQ, and he couldn’t do it.

I watched the first few minutes of the fight you linked and while it’s impressive, the first attack had the element of surprise, and after that the other zerg were never coordinated enough to cut losses and regroup. Also it really is not hard to play like that, just do like the guy in the video did: call target on commander and then keep following him. I’d be quite confident of surviving a fight like that without dying, even without TS, although I wouldn’t join the melee train since I don’t have nearly enough defense to survive the damage.

One more thing … I’ll say again that to play well without TS still requires some people to be on TS and follow the commander. If a server plays entirely without TS, they’d be at a gross disadvantage. But if half the population is on TS, the other half can tack onto the first half if they play well. I will log on to TS if it’s clear that there aren’t enough people on TS to play without it (or if the situation is dire enough that we need every advantage to stabilize), but if there clearly is a core of people who are already coordinated on TS, I generally don’t feel the need to log on.

@Above – the very first time a player sees the commander do something like call for Veil, Water Field, AoE on Arrow carts, etc, then yes he needs that kind of detail. After that however … if the player is thinking, he should also learn how to do all those things without being microed. Are you not able to figure out to put the Static Field, the water field, etc, where it is without the commander saying so?

Nanyetah Elohi.4852:

There are servers where avoiding voice communication while following a commander is not acceptable. Go do your own thing, stay out of the zerg if you don’t want to follow the commander.

The problem is, the commander is working very hard sometimes long hours for the benefit of the whole group. People who are too lazy to listen and respond wear the commander down, and that impacts the whole server. Just leave if you cant be bothered to listen up. Leave, go do your own thing.

And this right here is the kind of attitude that helps keep people away from TS. Congratulations you’re part of the problem. “Can’t be bothered” “too lazy to listen” just because a person doesn’t want to download TS or has other reasons for staying away from voice comms? Do you say the same things in map chat to the people on your server?

Just the way it is. If voice communication is too complicated for you, get out of the zerg. Everyone in voice comm wants you to leave, belive it. Go Do Your Own Thing. Leave.

we get sick of watching you die stupidly. really. Brings everybody down.

That’s what the rally bot and pug slurs are about. People are trying to discourage the get killed supidly behavior. Voice communications can help a lot with that.

canadez.5328:

Show them that not everything is serious buisness. Try to get people on TS when your server does karma trains or other funny stuff. They will come on their own when they see/hear that you can have alot of fun on TS too. People who are not regulars in WvW hear “come to TS for better organisation” that doesn’t really sound like alot of fun does it?
They probably have the image in mind that everyone is serious on TS with screaming commanders and if you dare to do something wrong hell breaks loose.

And don’t try to force microphones onto them some people just don’t want to talk. You better mention that when you advertise your TS that it is not a requirement to talk on TS.

This.
I think a lot of the trepidation most non-voicecomms users is that they imagine it will be like this

but most of the time it’s chill & fun, just the commanders/scouts talking, plus some cool music.

WvW is war. Go chill and fun in PvE.

we are fighting actual people in WvW. This is tribal warfare. Listen up or go play with a bunch of npc toys or something.

You realize this is a game right? TS is not a requirement to enter WvW, you will not get everyone into TS. Best to just accept it and move on.

I don’t join TS when i’m WvWing because lol, it’s WvW. Stack up on the blue triangle and roll your face on the keyboard. It’s not rocket science.

If you die in a zerg, you’d die whether you’re on TS or not.

Maybe if getting commander tag actually required talent instead of just blowing a few gold you farmed day in day out in CoF P1 back then, hearing you whine all night long about stuff would actually be worth my time.

don’t need ts for solo roaming, pushing around dollies or watching over structures.
However, you need ts if you run in the zerg or any other bigger group.

Nanyetah Elohi.4852:

we get sick of watching you die stupidly. really. Brings everybody down.

That’s what the rally bot and pug slurs are about. People are trying to discourage the get killed supidly behavior. Voice communications can help a lot with that.

I was with this zerg yesterday playing against JQ. I didn’t log on to TS. Throughout over two hours of play, I didn’t die once, but two different commanders (and presumably the other people on TS) died three times.

It’s not typical, but hey, “supidly behavior”.

Jeydra.4386:

I was with this zerg yesterday playing against JQ. I didn’t log on to TS. Throughout over two hours of play, I didn’t die once, but two different commanders (and presumably the other people on TS) died three times.

It’s not typical, but hey, “supidly behavior”.

Yes and if you could hear the TS I’m guessing it went something like this:

PUSH INTO THEM STUN THEM DPS ON ME NOW kitten PEOPLE I NEED ALL ON ME WHERE IS THE WATERFIELDS WTF ARE YOU DOING BACK THERE DPS ON ME ON ME kitten PEOPLE IN THE BACK GET TO ME NOW DONT SCATTER THEY ARE RESSING WE NEED DPS kitten PEOPLE WTF ARE YOU DOING WE HAVE NO HEALS AND EVERYONE IS RUNNING AROUND LIKE IDIOTS WE ARE LOOSING BECAUSE NO ONE IS ON ME BACK OUT dead

I can’t say this enough, running tagless doesn’t encourage anything. Players will zone in, not see an icon and move to a different BL. So many of you feel like these other players owe you something and that they should work harder but if they weren’t doing it in the first place what makes you think segregating yourself and them will help?

Yes it’s a pain in the kitten. Yes it can seem unfair when so many of us try so hard. But to expect them to just do what you say and care as much as you care is just ridiculous.

Dunno, maybe our commanders are better than average. (A couple of them aren’t that great but most are probably top notch.) There is so much information we get in voice command it is hard to imagine play would be better without it. I enjoy getting to know the commanders and other players by their voice also. Big variety of personalities. Getting to know team members better adds to team cohesion.

Nanyetah Elohi.4852:

Dunno, maybe our commanders are better than average. (A couple of them aren’t that great but most are probably top notch.) There is so much information we get in voice command it is hard to imagine play would be better without it. I enjoy getting to know the commanders and other players by their voice also. Big variety of personalities. Getting to know team members better adds to team cohesion.

Agree. There really is way more to TS than the simple commands that have been suggested here. I would even say it’s crucial at the higher level of play.

Quells.2498:

I would even say it’s crucial at the higher level of play.

I don’t know of a single serious, high-end WvW guild who doesn’t use some form of VOIP. Nothing can match the communication speed of voice chat.

I’m going to address the comments that are along the lines of “I don’t die, and it’s because I don’t stick on the commander tag.” Here are several reasons why this is an extremely flawed mode of thinking:

• Heals. A zerg’s primary source of healing comes from blasts into water fields. No, not guardian dodge heals, personal heals, regen ticks, etc. Those are all (very powerful) tools to keep the zerg sustained. However, they cannot match the power or importance of blasting in water fields. Since most of your blasts will be derived from frontliners, it’s extremely important for the frontline to be as tight as possible.

• AoE Cap. The AoE cap is 5 damage packets/AoE. The more people you have concentrated in one spot, the more the AoEs are distributed. No, this doesn’t mean stand in AoE. It does mean that the effects of incidental AoEs are mitigated, improving the zerg’s sustain. Once again, the tighter your frontline stacks, the more spread out the AoE damage will be.

• Boons. Both warriors and guardians pump out many important boons throughout the course of an engagement. If you want good boon uptime, you need to condense your frontline as much as possible. Simple.

• Condi cleanse. PoV, Purging Flames, Runes of the Soldier, traited warhorn, rolling water fields, etc. . All are most effective when your frontline is moving together. Am I starting to sound like a broken record yet?

• Damage. Your bombs should be killing at least 3-4 people every time. The only way to accomplish this is by heavily coordinating damage, otherwise players are more likely to pop a stunbreak and flit away. You have typically 1-2s to convert alive people to downed, otherwise your bomb is nullified. So, for the 5th time, if you stick on your commander, you vastly improve your zerg’s damage.

My point through all of this is the following. While you, as an individual, may not cause your zerg to die, the effects of several people with a similar attitude most certainly will. If your excuse is that the commander always positions like crap and you would’ve died by sticking with him, then good. Keep sticking with him and keep dying. How else is a new commander meant to learn positioning if not by getting punished for poor positioning?

Now, if you’re ranged, it’s a bit of a different story. Ranged players shouldn’t ever be dying, no excuses. If they do, it’s due to poor positioning and poor skill usage, period. That said, the key as a ranged player is knowing what your skills do and how best they support your frontline, because that’s your job. The frontline is constantly playing interference to allow the backliners to free-cast. However, the frontline cannot play interference without intelligent backliners. As a backliner, you’re both support and the main tool to apply pressure.

Discipline in a pub train is incredibly important, because you need to play well enough to make up for all those who may not necessarily know what they’re doing. Coordinating in TS is an important part of this. I also think that, if you’re not willing to coordinate via VOIP with the rest of your server, you should concentrate on flipping camps, contesting fortifications, running supply, etc. Being in a zerg and not coordinating through VOIP is only hurting your server.

Agricola.2817:

And this right here is the kind of attitude that helps keep people away from TS. Congratulations you’re part of the problem. “Can’t be bothered” “too lazy to listen” just because a person doesn’t want to download TS or has other reasons for staying away from voice comms? Do you say the same things in map chat to the people on your server?

If people aren’t willing to be in teamspeak, commanders aren’t willing to help them progress in the game. They can keep wandering around getting killed over and over while the people in teamspeak are following tagless and getting kills and bags. It’s 7it for tat. If you’re not willing to help the group, the group will not be willing to help you.

Red Is Dead.2145:

I don’t join TS when i’m WvWing because lol, it’s WvW. Stack up on the blue triangle and roll your face on the keyboard. It’s not rocket science.

If you die in a zerg, you’d die whether you’re on TS or not.

Maybe if getting commander tag actually required talent instead of just blowing a few gold you farmed day in day out in CoF P1 back then, hearing you whine all night long about stuff would actually be worth my time.

That’s a problem with your commanders and/or your server population’s general WvW coordination, not with voice comms. Voice comms will always help with coordinating movement across maps better than mapchat. When the call for retreat sounds, it’ll be the people not in teamspeak that dies. Not the people in teamspeak.

Boonprot.6274:

Now, if you’re ranged, it’s a bit of a different story. Ranged players shouldn’t ever be dying, no excuses. If they do, it’s due to poor positioning and poor skill usage, period. That said, the key as a ranged player is knowing what your skills do and how best they support your frontline, because that’s your job. The frontline is constantly playing interference to allow the backliners to free-cast. However, the frontline cannot play interference without intelligent backliners. As a backliner, you’re both support and the main tool to apply pressure.

Agreed with everything but this paragraph. Ranged tend to die easier in a push, especially if your front line fails to keep the enemy back. As a staff ele, I can live for quite a while, but after a while of fighting, cooldowns will catch up with you and you will die. There’s also certain people (thieves and mesmers mainly) from the enemy server that will target the backline and burst them down

Of course, I sometimes also sacrifice myself to throw a final waterfield on the commander.

Reverence.6915:

Agreed with everything but this paragraph. Ranged tend to die easier in a push, especially if your front line fails to keep the enemy back. As a staff ele, I can live for quite a while, but after a while of fighting, cooldowns will catch up with you and you will die. There’s also certain people (thieves and mesmers mainly) from the enemy server that will target the backline and burst them down

Of course, I sometimes also sacrifice myself to throw a final waterfield on the commander.

I’m not saying that this pertains specifically to you, but something important to keep in mind is that the safest place isn’t always behind the frontline. Playing backline requires you to read the flow of the battle for both positioning and skill placement. Also, if there are people focusing the backline, your first instinct should be to drag them through your frontline and get them killed. That said, this requires that your commander knows to constantly put himself in the position where you CAN drag snipers through the frontline, which isn’t always the case. Even so, getting into a quick frontline regroup is usually enough to dissuade any thief, mesmer, or ele from chasing you too hard.

Jeydra.4386:

Kai.9182:

Jeydra.4386:

Kai.9182:

dadada.1306:

Kai.9182:

Always gonna have rallybots follow the big blue dorito just feint push chokes and get them killed.

And you’ll become known as the commander who’s always getting people who follow him killed. I like it… weeds out the lame commanders.

Well the ones in teamspeak don’t die and you become the hilarious commander. kapeesh rallybot?

You’ll quickly become known as a troll and people will simply refuse to follow you. After that you’ll be like “guys I need everyone on me” and “if you’re not on the commander you’re doing it wrong” and “omg why do we have so many PVERS who don’t know how to follow commander on this server?!” and then ragebuy 1800 gems to transfer elsewhere.

Or you wipe them after with the group in teamspeak and not be bad.

Yeah, wipe an 80-man zerg with a 40-man TS-coordinated group, I’ve yet to see that happen.

I did it with my guild quite a few times tonight with 30-35. Do coordinated guild groups count? Or are we just talking pug groups?

Alacrity.4312:

This.
I think a lot of the trepidation most non-voicecomms users is that they imagine it will be like this

but most of the time it’s chill & fun, just the commanders/scouts talking, plus some cool music.

It’s funny that you linked an RG video. Agree or disagree with Sacrx’s methods, but while RG was active it was the top WvW guild in the entire game. Even after its collapse, RG’s members went on to be part of the current top WvW guilds in the game: VotF, VII, Scnd, and several others. They were effective, extremely organized, and it shows.

Here’s a question for you BoonProt. When I played GW1’s PvP seriously I could see a big and immediate difference between having TS and not. There is no substitute; everyone has to be on TS. In fact not only do people have to be on TS, they need to have microphones and be willing to use their voices. In WvW however I’ve both played with TS and played without it. I can see almost no difference. I still do the things I do and I could’ve done it just as well without TS (in zergs, anyway). Why?

nirvana.8245:

Jeydra.4386:

Kai.9182:

Jeydra.4386:

Kai.9182:

dadada.1306:

Kai.9182:

Always gonna have rallybots follow the big blue dorito just feint push chokes and get them killed.

And you’ll become known as the commander who’s always getting people who follow him killed. I like it… weeds out the lame commanders.

Well the ones in teamspeak don’t die and you become the hilarious commander. kapeesh rallybot?

You’ll quickly become known as a troll and people will simply refuse to follow you. After that you’ll be like “guys I need everyone on me” and “if you’re not on the commander you’re doing it wrong” and “omg why do we have so many PVERS who don’t know how to follow commander on this server?!” and then ragebuy 1800 gems to transfer elsewhere.

Or you wipe them after with the group in teamspeak and not be bad.

Yeah, wipe an 80-man zerg with a 40-man TS-coordinated group, I’ve yet to see that happen.

I did it with my guild quite a few times tonight with 30-35. Do coordinated guild groups count? Or are we just talking pug groups?

Read a post I made later.

weirdness you don’t see a difference. I can only guess your commanders must not be very good.

My look is one of l2type I find that I can coordinate pushes, regroups, veils, DPS unloads and might stacking pretty easily without TS, a split second or two slower perhaps, but my main advantage is that I’m playing with 100% of the group, not a fraction who are on TS.

In general I rely on explaining every time I tag up (for new players, because there’s always bound to be one) the basics of what should happen. The Guardians know to empower, the Mesmers know to veil, the group knows to stun/control; I leave it to their disgression when to actually use their abilities, having told them how and when it is used normally, and it works in most all circumstances. We’ve killed TS groups consistently, guild groups, and been accused of being a TS group in the proceedings, so I find that chat commanding is not the end of the world. That said I have been accused of typing inhumanely fast, though I find that hardly true.

There should be no obligation to be on TS, nor childish bullying or exclusion for not doing so; you’re hampering your effective strength by reducing communication to TS alone, if 50% of your force is on TS and you aren’t commanding them through obstinance and laziness, you’re only shooting yourself in the foot. I don’t dispute that TS is very helpful and unlocks new levels of speed communication, however if you’re going to command on it find a way to work with those not on it too, a command relayer or DIY. Don’t reduce your maximum potential efficiency by only playing with 50% of your forces, I command on TS as well and like to think I do it well, but I make sure all of the group knows what’s going on, if only via basics and a second after I say it in TS.

I think I lost my direction of thoughts somewhere halfway through writing this, but here I’ll present you with this jumbled up collection of repeating the same few points.

Jeydra.4386:

Here’s a question for you BoonProt. When I played GW1’s PvP seriously I could see a big and immediate difference between having TS and not. There is no substitute; everyone has to be on TS. In fact not only do people have to be on TS, they need to have microphones and be willing to use their voices. In WvW however I’ve both played with TS and played without it. I can see almost no difference. I still do the things I do and I could’ve done it just as well without TS (in zergs, anyway). Why?

Read a post I made later.

Probably because you actually aren’t as aware about what’s happening as you think you are? Either that or most of your experience is from within queue-sized blobs or Tier 4 and lower. Heck, even T3 has some truly awful pub trains and guild raids on their servers. T1 pubs are probably the most organized and disciplined, but you’re more likely to run into 3-4 guilds smooshed into a voltron blob than a true pub train. Anyways, that’s getting a bit off topic so I digress.

My guild runs with 15-25 players a night, mostly in the 15-20 players range. We typically have no issues wiping zergs double our size unless it’s a few select guilds. Even then, we can typically mow through quite a few of them before we get overrun. I promise you that we couldn’t accomplish this without VOIP. Why? You miss every single bit of micro that the driver/rest of the zerg is trying to coordinate. Book rotations, banner rotations, water/chill/regroup rotations. Line placement, static placement, hammer stuns, immob bombs, etc. It’s impossible for all of this information to be relayed via chat in a timely enough manner so it can be taken advantage of. This is why VOIP is so important.

Don’t confuse tottering around in a T8 queue blob with actual, coordinated, competitive WvW content. They’re not the same in the slightest.

Boonprot.6274:

My guild runs with 15-25 players a night, mostly in the 15-20 players range. We typically have no issues wiping zergs double our size unless it’s a few select guilds. Even then, we can typically mow through quite a few of them before we get overrun. I promise you that we couldn’t accomplish this without VOIP. Why? You miss every single bit of micro that the driver/rest of the zerg is trying to coordinate. Book rotations, banner rotations, water/chill/regroup rotations. Line placement, static placement, hammer stuns, immob bombs, etc. It’s impossible for all of this information to be relayed via chat in a timely enough manner so it can be taken advantage of. This is why VOIP is so important.

I’ve never heard commanders call for banner rotations, chill rotations, etc, on TS. If your guild does, more power to you. Until it becomes commonplace on TS however, I still see no reason to log on to it (not to mention I play Mesmer in WvW, which means I don’t do any of those things). It’s strange though to see that you’re mentioning chat in these rotations. Nobody is going to take a timeout to type during a fight, but I would’ve thought you’d have worked out the rotation beforehand. I do see commanders call for regroup, but those are easy to spot without TS.

I just played ~2 hours on EB against JQ and SoR, both of which fielded large zergs. This time I died once. The two commanders who played died a combined three times, although one of those deaths was undoubtedly the commander going on YOLO mode (he must have been able to see that we were outnumbered and getting hit by Treb + AC fire, but he went anyway). I also got enough kills to finish Daily Kills (50 required), without partying.

There is no question that in my experience TS is overrated, and the idea that not being on TS makes one a rally bot or causes one to fail to get bags is a myth.

@Immolator – Two thumbs up! Should I ever see you commanding on whatever server, I’ll be sure to join your zerg.

TS isn’t really necessary for following a karma-train or mega-blob-zerg around. People in this thread saying “I manage to follow commander and get lots of kills without TS and don’t die”; yeah, of course you do, because that’s what pug-zergs are like and 95% of the time they require no skill or co-ordination beyond basic common-sense and awareness.

However, if you think TS won’t improve your performance, then you couldn’t be more wrong. When you see 20 guys wiping your zone-blob, the biggest factor in their ability to do that is TS.

Frankly, alot of people who say you don’t need TS, don’t actually know what they are missing out on. Not just “stack”, “push”, “fall back”, there is plenty more to it than that. Ignorance is bliss.

It just depends how much you care about success. TS won’t turn you from a noob to a pro by itself, but it is absolutely necessary at the top-level.

Carzor Stelatis.9435:

Nope, even when I do use TS (usually when I’m running with the Yakslappers guild group) the commanders never go into that sort of detail. They must be doing something right, as we finished second in our league above some higher-population servers and behind only the Desolation gigazerg.

Or maybe your enemies weren’t using voice comms effectively either.

Jeydra.4386:

I’ve never heard commanders call for banner rotations, chill rotations, etc, on TS. If your guild does, more power to you. Until it becomes commonplace on TS however, I still see no reason to log on to it (not to mention I play Mesmer in WvW, which means I don’t do any of those things).

Sounds like a terrible server to be in. Mesmers have rotations for veil, timewarp, and null field.

Reverence.6915:

Agreed with everything but this paragraph. Ranged tend to die easier in a push, especially if your front line fails to keep the enemy back. As a staff ele, I can live for quite a while, but after a while of fighting, cooldowns will catch up with you and you will die.

Rangers should learn to swap to a GS to defend themselves if they have to. GS 2 and GS 4 make excellent escape tools. It’s amusing to have some warrior go yolo on your ranger thinking you’re a soft target, only to plant them on their kitten with GS 4 and then turn and leap way out of their range with GS 2.