Guild Wars 2

WvW is all about number of players. Nothing can counter a large zerg except another large zerg. It doesn’t matter how upgraded a location is or how much seige is built inside, the zerg will win, especially against a tower or supply camp.

Things flip too easily and frequently. This is good right now since the achievements are based on this principle. But honestly, it shouldn’t be like this. Structures should be sturdier, and something should counter the zerg.

One simple correction could be that the “legendary” defenders and guards scale to the number of enemies in proximity to it. If you don’t like getting one-shot, make them have nasty AOE attacks. Anet certainly doesn’t hold back when it comes to the Nightmare content.

Force strategy: How many times have I been in or near a zerg that busts easily through a fully-upgraded tower only to drain its supply and move on with no intention of upgrading? I propose that towers specificly award no points for ownership until a new, gold-free, but supply-required upgrade is completed. This would force a server to take a supply camp first and hold the structure until enough yaks supplied the tower with this basic upgrade. Towers and Keep should be stragetic strongholds. How many towers, keeps, and SM itself have trebs built on the supply depot? That is ridiculous. The only strategic place to put a treb in most towers is on the supply depot so that it can still hit things, but forces an opponent to actually take the tower to destroy it. The outer area of SM is a huge EMPTY area with trebs build on the various supply depots. Anet, I think you can design something better than that.

Personally, I think Keeps should have more than 1 level, with a gate in-between. Have permanent traps fall from above, triggered by players. The defending server should have the advantage — by a lot. The borderland Garrison has 5 outer gates to baby-sit. Why does it take more effort to defend it than to overtake it? Why build a tower if you’re not going to put a mass weapon on top of it? For the view? It should be a strategic structure. What castle doesn’t have dozens of guards defending it?

If the structures remain basically useless besides awarding points, the answer will always be numbers. Why have the matchup at all?

If this were true, BG blobs wouldn’t constantly be running/avoiding SoR counter (albiet much smaller) forces. But I can agree with your sentiment that there should be more counters to blobs.

How about a new trap that hits 60 players, and multiplies its damage based on the number of enemies it hits. So it’ll land a nice instant 500 damage vs 1 target.

2500 vs 5 man

5000 vs 10 men

10,000 vs 20 men

20,000 vs 40 men

30,000 vs 60 man blob. Insta counter. No longer safe to run blobs., and super costly prior to that.

Crazy idea but no more crazy than blobs?

For balance sake, trap could only trigger on 40+. Players can still blob, but there’s always that risk that the enemy has set an ambush.

Just fix the res/rally mechanics. They give too much survival to larger groups and make it nearly impossible for a smaller more skilled/coordinated team to chip away and eventually defeat a much larger group.

I have proposed smth in that direction:
Entropy

Detailed description:
Entropy is a condition, that stays for 3 seconds on the target. During this time it does not do anything. After this 3 seconds it will be removed and cause 2 effects:

1. it spreads to 5 other players (range: 130)
2. it deals 2000 dmg

And then it does it’s work on those 5 players the same way and will spread from each of them to 5 more players (so it is now 25 times active). It is important to note, that the spreading range is only 130. That means, it will only spread to players who are in mellee range and therefore punishs the stacking Zerg. If the Zerg keeps stacking, the effect of Entropy will soon amplify exponentially and you don’t want to have 25 stacks of that on you. A condition cleanse only causes it’s effect to happen earlier than those 3 seconds, so in order to stop it from spreading, you need to seperate from your mates (the numbers might need some tweaking).

It is only a way to make the blob players stand appart of each other. Where a defending AoE heavy player could finally hit with their skills and it doesn’t devide the dmg between 40 player, but only a few, making the indiviual actions more important. Maybe that would be a step in the right direction. Also a defending smaller Zerg, granted the attackers don’t apply Entropy too, can now easier defend against the attackers for they can still stack. That would force you to use smart siege placement to first destroy your targets walls/doors, before you run in. Mellee damaging the gate, if some defenders are inside, wouldn’t be so easilly possible any more.

Things flipping quickly actually supports small groups not large ones.

a 70+ person zerg can definatly take things quickly, but 15 people can do it at almost the same speed, also 20 people can significantly stall a 70 man zerg outside of omega spam.

Put these two together, if you have a force of 20-30 working to stop/stall the 70 man group, several groups of 15 or less can cap other undefended objectives.

Strategically smaller coordinated groups are better and more flexible than a single larger group. They can meld when needed to also form a large group and split as needed to cover more territory quickly.

Tactically, the larger group will win engagements with smaller groups, are you perhaps talking more about the tactical advantage of grouping up verses the strategic advantage and disadvantage of larger groups.

Safety in numbers, that’s what it’s all about. AoE’s can’t hit more then 5 ppl and so on.

Change that and things will be a whole lot different, trust me. Game is designed to reward blobs as it is but smaller tighter groups can still defeat a blob but it requires so much more then just skill and tactics now.

Another thing could be to change the WxP for stuff, ie. Structures gives just a tiny amount of WxP while players gives a lot more. A defended structure rewards more WxP the longer the fight rages on, a undefended structure would just give a tiny reward in WxP.

Just my 2 cents.

Not sure what you’ve been playing but strategy always trumps numbers. Unless it’s something crazy like 10 v 60. But a coordinated 10 man squad can easily handle 20-30 person blob. IF that blob isn’t coordinated and in ts that is. If it’s a strategy game the more coordinated team will always win.

Most of the time in the big blobs there’s maybe 20-30% of the ppl actually in ts. The other % that isn’t you can see constantly lagging behind trying to chase down 1 person, capping a sentry etc etc.

Strategy is probably greater than blob, but almost nobody plays on that level of strategy. So blood are still winning.

Ross Biddle.2367:

If this were true, BG blobs wouldn’t constantly be running/avoiding SoR counter (albiet much smaller) forces. But I can agree with your sentiment that there should be more counters to blobs.

How about a new trap that hits 60 players, and multiplies its damage based on the number of enemies it hits. So it’ll land a nice instant 500 damage vs 1 target.

2500 vs 5 man

5000 vs 10 men

10,000 vs 20 men

20,000 vs 40 men

30,000 vs 60 man blob. Insta counter. No longer safe to run blobs., and super costly prior to that.

Crazy idea but no more crazy than blobs?

For balance sake, trap could only trigger on 40+. Players can still blob, but there’s always that risk that the enemy has set an ambush.

This idea is brilliant! I’ll just log on my Thief, run into your zerg (in stealth ofcourse so you wont know im there) and just instakill a whole zerg.

That sounds entirely reasonable and above all fun. Right?

Or in a zerg on zerg fight, ill run into your clusterkitten and pop stability and just blow you all up with this trap. That sounds balanced right?

Because what this game needs is even more instagib mechanics that you dont see comming. Especially in WvW.

TyPin.9860:

I have proposed smth in that direction:
Entropy

Detailed description:
Entropy is a condition, that stays for 3 seconds on the target. During this time it does not do anything. After this 3 seconds it will be removed and cause 2 effects:

1. it spreads to 5 other players (range: 130)
2. it deals 2000 dmg

And then it does it’s work on those 5 players the same way and will spread from each of them to 5 more players (so it is now 25 times active). It is important to note, that the spreading range is only 130. That means, it will only spread to players who are in mellee range and therefore punishs the stacking Zerg. If the Zerg keeps stacking, the effect of Entropy will soon amplify exponentially and you don’t want to have 25 stacks of that on you. A condition cleanse only causes it’s effect to happen earlier than those 3 seconds, so in order to stop it from spreading, you need to seperate from your mates (the numbers might need some tweaking).

It is only a way to make the blob players stand appart of each other. Where a defending AoE heavy player could finally hit with their skills and it doesn’t devide the dmg between 40 player, but only a few, making the indiviual actions more important. Maybe that would be a step in the right direction. Also a defending smaller Zerg, granted the attackers don’t apply Entropy too, can now easier defend against the attackers for they can still stack. That would force you to use smart siege placement to first destroy your targets walls/doors, before you run in. Mellee damaging the gate, if some defenders are inside, wouldn’t be so easilly possible any more.

Trust me breaking up the ‘stacking’ part of a zerg, is very important, in the goal to destroy overpowering zergs. If you do this to vizunah square they will be at least 50% weaker (might still win, but changes would go downhill incredible fast for them).

Aberrant.6749:

Just fix the res/rally mechanics. They give too much survival to larger groups and make it nearly impossible for a smaller more skilled/coordinated team to chip away and eventually defeat a much larger group.

Too many times this has been suggested but it seems that Anet is affraid that the blobs will disapear and therefor the player. That might not be the reason but I have never ever seen them participate in a discussion about avoiding combat res, or enemy borderlands rezzing. Its weird that attackers with more numbers can combat rez their mates where the defenders normally have to waypoint and run to the fight, giving the zerg even more power.

Part of the problem is definitely the tech behind it all… stacking is extremely effective way of negating siege damage in a large group… and since there is zero collision between player characters as far as I am aware it is a free way to essentially ignore most siege.

Of course player cast AoE’s are even easier to avoid since their caps are even smaller.

Also the problem with (unintended) splash damage through a doors to prevent repairing (I know there is a mastery ability for a similar effect with launches on something, and that is okay, but it is not really needed now is it) is something that promotes meele’ing a gate in addition to siege, which is just stupid… if you ask me gates like walls should not accept melee damage at all from regular players, because it is counter intuitive. I could understand unupgraded gates taking damage from burning and or blast finishers from players but not from any old auto attacks.

Also when are they going to fix stonemist and move the castle lord back to its original place (why does damage leak through structures at all, ignoring the fact that the floor prop is full of holes, but that is obviously intended aesthetic only, or they wouldn’t have moved it downstairs).

Ross Biddle.2367:

If this were true, BG blobs wouldn’t constantly be running/avoiding SoR counter (albiet much smaller) forces. But I can agree with your sentiment that there should be more counters to blobs.

You are aware that SoR is famous among all wvw servers for exclusively running full map blobs right? I know the SoR mantra that you are playing for fights, but BG right now is playing for PPT, and that frequently requires running to defend things rather than open field engagements.

On topic, in open field fights strategic playing can and will always beat mindless blobbing. It is just fairly unlikely that every single player in a blob is mindlessly not bothering to play well. Siege was an effort to make spreading forces more viable, but it just ended up being too strong and forcing counter siege or bigger blobs.

I was thinking about this a bit myself lately and the only thing I could come up with was randomly spawning resources – IE an item that spawns in a random place on the map, requiring full map scouting to find it. Maybe make it so that the item can be picked up, and has to be brought to a friendly claimer, which then grants 10 score. Spawns once per tick on every map. That is 40 potential ppt which is definitely small group centric, and hopefully since it has to be brought to a claimer it is not just completely luck based (IE it gives other servers a chance to find and kill the item carrier to take it for their own server).

Aberrant.6749:

Just fix the res/rally mechanics. They give too much survival to larger groups and make it nearly impossible for a smaller more skilled/coordinated team to chip away and eventually defeat a much larger group.

^ THIS. One of your guys dies to that massive group, well here you go a gift. the 20 enemy players you just downed just rallied. This is a major factor in why zergs (even though totally uncoordinated will destroy your group.

This used to not be as much of an issue when there was no AoE limit though, because eating 1-2 meteor showers in a choack would kill your zerg and not just dammage down 5 players that will rally as soon as you get killed by the other zerglings.

Um, meteor shower has always been aoe capped in GW2.

Crise.9401:

Part of the problem is definitely the tech behind it all… stacking is extremely effective way of negating siege damage in a large group… and since there is zero collision between player characters as far as I am aware it is a free way to essentially ignore most siege.

Eh? I’m pretty sure arrow carts maximum is 50.. Stacking a large number of people under ac fire is going to give a lot of lootbags to the ac operator, especially when combined with treb poison.

Also ever see the effect of a superior ballista’s spread shot?

Its just not true.
Very few people on some arrow carts+ a trebuchet can delay a much bigger group for long.
While the huge blob sieges one place you can siege several other places of them at once.
And a organized guild group farms the public zerg easily. (greetings to GD here )

Winning a matchup is just about the better 24/7 coverage, not about running the whole server together. ( the exception is of course getting into SM,garni)

But problem is that if enemy use zone blob and you attack many targets same time you mainly PvD whole time. It’s kind of boring walk some golems and try to take empty tower before enemy zone blob coming.

Terrahero.9358:

Ross Biddle.2367:

If this were true, BG blobs wouldn’t constantly be running/avoiding SoR counter (albiet much smaller) forces. But I can agree with your sentiment that there should be more counters to blobs.

How about a new trap that hits 60 players, and multiplies its damage based on the number of enemies it hits. So it’ll land a nice instant 500 damage vs 1 target.

2500 vs 5 man

5000 vs 10 men

10,000 vs 20 men

20,000 vs 40 men

30,000 vs 60 man blob. Insta counter. No longer safe to run blobs., and super costly prior to that.

Crazy idea but no more crazy than blobs?

For balance sake, trap could only trigger on 40+. Players can still blob, but there’s always that risk that the enemy has set an ambush.

This idea is brilliant! I’ll just log on my Thief, run into your zerg (in stealth ofcourse so you wont know im there) and just instakill a whole zerg.

That sounds entirely reasonable and above all fun. Right?

Or in a zerg on zerg fight, ill run into your clusterkitten and pop stability and just blow you all up with this trap. That sounds balanced right?

Because what this game needs is even more instagib mechanics that you dont see comming. Especially in WvW.

1) Yes. Finally a job for thieves. That said, if you’d ever placed a trap recently you’d know you can’t drop them in stealth. Good luck running into an enemy blob and doing a 4 second channel as a thief.

2) Yes, in general, it does sound reasonable. And fun!

3) Yes. But then again, are you suggesting you and your server are stupid enough to cluster up in the first place? Because surely you know and have heard about these new traps right? I mean sure, I’ll be reasonable, you probably pushed your luck a few, 5, 6, 7, ..10 times. But eventually you learned the new “dont blob you kittening idiot” meta.

4) But hey, if you cant look around and see 59 other players and think "I probably shouldn’t be standing here, I guess there really is no hope for you to ever see anything coming.

This whole post makes no sense, zerging is itself a strategy, and it is used because it is so effective. Do servers send out small teams when they need to? Sure do. The idea that nobody will figure out what to do and keep forming 60 man zergs even when it’s blatantly foolish to do so is just silly. And this does nothing to combat the problem of just being flat outnumbered; you will just be losing all your territory to 3 separate groups instead of getting steamrolled by one.

ens.9854:

This whole post makes no sense, zerging is itself a strategy, and it is used because it is so effective. Do servers send out small teams when they need to? Sure do. The idea that nobody will figure out what to do and keep forming 60 man zergs even when it’s blatantly foolish to do so is just silly. And this does nothing to combat the problem of just being flat outnumbered; you will just be losing all your territory to 3 separate groups instead of getting steamrolled by one.

zerging is a strategy is like saying atheism is a religion. its lack of.

BAITness.1083:

Ross Biddle.2367:

If this were true, BG blobs wouldn’t constantly be running/avoiding SoR counter (albiet much smaller) forces. But I can agree with your sentiment that there should be more counters to blobs.

You are aware that SoR is famous among all wvw servers for exclusively running full map blobs right? I know the SoR mantra that you are playing for fights, but BG right now is playing for PPT, and that frequently requires running to defend things rather than open field engagements.

Hell, if that’s what SoR is famous for among all wvw servers, then JQ must be Jesus, and BG Muhammad for fames sake, because both servers have been more stacked and running bigger blobs (across all maps simultaneously one might add) than SoR ever has.

Be honest now. Leagues have been going for 4-5 weeks? BG’s open field history, or lack thereof, has been running faaaaar longer than that. I’s cool though, I applaud your ppt mastery, I really do. But lets just be honest about things.

Freya.3214:

Its just not true.
Very few people on some arrow carts+ a trebuchet can delay a much bigger group for long.
While the huge blob sieges one place you can siege several other places of them at once.
And a organized guild group farms the public zerg easily. (greetings to GD here )

Winning a matchup is just about the better 24/7 coverage, not about running the whole server together. ( the exception is of course getting into SM,garni)

The theory is great but in reality things play out differently.

A 60 man blob shows up at bay and starts nuking siege, and setting up to burn down the gate. The defending side has a 30 man force available. Enough to sit and counter the blobs entry, but not necessarily enough to quickly charge out and wipe them.

You find a spare 5-10 men to go run havok, maybe even two of these groups. They head across the map away from the blob (weakeneing the defenders mind you, but they’ll hold for the sake of this scenario). When the havok groups get to their objectives, they find scouts in the towers. With an arrow cart or two they deny access to said tower. In fact, in a fully upgraded north camp with a couple bits of siege, and a dedicated scout, north camp can be easily held.

In one instance all is going well. You break into a tower and get to the lords. The scout there couldnt keep you out for some reason. Now, while you’re burning the lord, the blob at bay pulls off, wp’s out, and charges in for the save. Not that it’s probably needed but circle divers and warrior warbanners are on hand to slow the 10 mans progress if need be (blob servers are stacked servers, never short on players). The 10 man is no match for the incoming 60 + scouts, and is quickly overwhelmed. kitten … they should have come full force if they wanted the objective.

While it’s completely possible to ninjacap something, reality is that if the enemy knows you’re there, you’re already countered.

Freya.3214:

Its just not true.
Very few people on some arrow carts+ a trebuchet can delay a much bigger group for long.
While the huge blob sieges one place you can siege several other places of them at once.
And a organized guild group farms the public zerg easily. (greetings to GD here )

Winning a matchup is just about the better 24/7 coverage, not about running the whole server together. ( the exception is of course getting into SM,garni)

The only server pulling this off so far (and i played on a lot) is vizunah square. Like in defending sm, they can have 3 people stopping a whole zerg.

However before you go all ‘omg yay someone confirms i’m right’, to get result, they first had to blob the inner 3x (20 mins or so) with full supply runs to setup this crazy siege amount. Wich again means, small guilds will never get there, they can’t build fast enough, move supply fast enough. Supply blobbinb is part of the problem lol.

Aberrant.6749:

Just fix the res/rally mechanics. They give too much survival to larger groups and make it nearly impossible for a smaller more skilled/coordinated team to chip away and eventually defeat a much larger group.

^^ This would solve a good chunk of the problems. Removing them both all together however would practically solve it. We’d see a much different look in the standings if this were the case.

The problem is that there is currently no way to make it harder for blobs and still make it viable to play as a small group. Right now it’s possible to take down a tower (sometimes even a keep) with 5 people and a couple of rams.

If they make it harder to destroy gates/walls: higher hp/lower dmg > a small group won’t be able to cap the tower in time and instead the blobbers will have plenty of time to come in force and kill the small group.

SOLUTION:
The only approach that would make WvW a tactical structure would, in my opinion, be if they deleted the concept of servers, and made it Everyone vs. Everyone, with the exception of guilds. Guilds should be able to make alliances and those should make it possible to make bigger tactical wholes.

There would of course still be need of other things: make towers/keeps claimable by an alliance (or a single guild) and allow “contracts for hire” to players who don’t have a WvW guild so they fight in service of that guild. This would tie towers to one specific alliance/guild and they would do everything to keep their towers/keeps out of the hands of enemy guilds. However they could also make non-attack treaties with guilds who have a structure in the neighbourhood. There would be a deal more sieging, upgrading and a great deal more defending.

Lastly it should of course give an advantage to these guilds or alliances of guilds who have claimed and defend their towers/keeps/camps/sentries: a gold bonus every 15 minutes for every player of the guild/alliance who defends his/her keep and loans for the mercenaries (pugs). On top of that, add a tax on all loot that will allow the guild/alliance to build new fortifications at certain places (walls, possibly camps).

Of course to stop from making this a farm, there would need to be actual fights: events will keep a measure of how hard battle has been for that specific keep/tower, through timers and calculators of how many people were in a radius of the fortification.

BAITness.1083:

That is 40 potential ppt which is definitely small group centric, and hopefully since it has to be brought to a claimer it is not just completely luck based (IE it gives other servers a chance to find and kill the item carrier to take it for their own server).

Pretty sure that bloodlust already proved that server imbalance in wvw participation and coverage ability allows for more small groups in additon to zerg/blob rather than keeping them in a zerg/blob. sure. 30-40 are still running a zerg. but the larger servers are still running 5-10 man groups across the maps for every supply (even defending yaks into enemy garrisons).
While it sounds exciting, it really shouldn’t be possible unless you have overwhelming numbers. Adding a buff and more ppt to them would simply make the scores even more disparate.

I think shorter cooldowns would really help a small group against a large group which can only hit 111111 or mash 1-5 without knowing what those skills do.

Why strategy over Zerg doe snot work at the moment (not counting the fact that zerging gets easier the larger the zerg gets and requires less skill):

1) Zergs outside have an insane ability to revive downed players, which makes it hard to reduce their numbers when you are defending a fortification (you can’t jump down and finish him).
2) Devs have given us more and more offensive WvW abilities that make attacking easier than defending.

Solution IMO:

1. Tweak Supply traps like I described on another thread

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Fixing-the-zerg-problem-Supply-Capacity/3250318

2. Introduce defensive ability lines to the score of abilities (some ideas, e.g. : gaining Aegis when fighting on walls, so you don’t be in that much danger when fighting from the top of the wall; double the effectiveness of repairs while the fortification is contested; gaining stability during repairing gates; doing 25% more damage to downed foes with siege weapons)

DeadlySynz.3471:

Aberrant.6749:

Just fix the res/rally mechanics. They give too much survival to larger groups and make it nearly impossible for a smaller more skilled/coordinated team to chip away and eventually defeat a much larger group.

^^ This would solve a good chunk of the problems. Removing them both all together however would practically solve it. We’d see a much different look in the standings if this were the case.

I highly doubt they would remove it since it’s a big “feature” of this game.

They could make it far more limited/reasonable in WvW though. No in combat ressing of fully dead players, DR on the healing some one gets when downed (I can get people up from downed while being hit by ac’s etc far too easily), 1:1 ratio for rallies on kills (the current rally system is why random people get told to go away from hardcore guild groups), etc.

^Not new ideas. No clue why they haven’t been explored more either.

If you don’t like large numbers then transfer to a underpopulated server or play tpvp. Wvw is server vs server vs server… large “blobs” are exactly what one should expect in that environment.

CyRuS.6915:

If you don’t like large numbers then transfer to a underpopulated server or play tpvp. Wvw is server vs server vs server… large “blobs” are exactly what one should expect in that environment.

So you’re saying it’s better to have your players avoid the problem Vs. fix it? That’s a very bad way to deal with something if you’re a dev…

Epic.3950:

ens.9854:

This whole post makes no sense, zerging is itself a strategy, and it is used because it is so effective. Do servers send out small teams when they need to? Sure do. The idea that nobody will figure out what to do and keep forming 60 man zergs even when it’s blatantly foolish to do so is just silly. And this does nothing to combat the problem of just being flat outnumbered; you will just be losing all your territory to 3 separate groups instead of getting steamrolled by one.

zerging is a strategy is like saying atheism is a religion. its lack of.

Zerg vs Zerg has just as much strategy as does 5 vs 5 or 1 vs 1. The real issue is that some servers have considerably higher populations than other servers and the less populated cannot compete. The solution to that problem is not to somehow nerf zergs. A solution would involve balancing the server populations.

I agree with the guy above who said that the post makes no sense (or perhaps little to no sense). The post presumes that all zergs are not implementing a strategy. I can see the logic in a highly skilled small group being able to take out a larger group of button mashers. However, to assume that all large groups (zergs) are composed of noobs and facerollers would be simply incorrect. There are plenty of zergs that are doing alot of strategic things with very skilled players. A small group of skilled players is supposed to get rolled by a larger group of skilled players.

CyRuS.6915:

Epic.3950:

ens.9854:

This whole post makes no sense, zerging is itself a strategy, and it is used because it is so effective. Do servers send out small teams when they need to? Sure do. The idea that nobody will figure out what to do and keep forming 60 man zergs even when it’s blatantly foolish to do so is just silly. And this does nothing to combat the problem of just being flat outnumbered; you will just be losing all your territory to 3 separate groups instead of getting steamrolled by one.

zerging is a strategy is like saying atheism is a religion. its lack of.

Zerg vs Zerg has just as much strategy as does 5 vs 5 or 1 vs 1. The real issue is that some servers have considerably higher populations than other servers and the less populated cannot compete. The solution to that problem is not to somehow nerf zergs. A solution would involve balancing the server populations.

I agree with the guy above who said that the post makes no sense (or perhaps little to no sense). The post presumes that all zergs are not implementing a strategy. I can see the logic in a highly skilled small group being able to take out a larger group of button mashers. However, to assume that all large groups (zergs) are composed of noobs and facerollers would be simply incorrect. There are plenty of zergs that are doing alot of strategic things with very skilled players. A small group of skilled players is supposed to get rolled by a larger group of skilled players.

Out in the open field, yes, of course a larger group would overtake a smaller group. However, defending a structure should be a different dynamic. A huge zerg assaulting a tower gate succeeds regardless of what rains down on them – with very few exceptions. And who wants to stand around all day in a tower to defend it? The structure should be able to defend itself substantially — and scaled. Players would tip the balance. The design is wrong. Get a tower, build a treb. That treb should not be vulnerable to damage unless the tower is taken, else why bother putting it in a tower? The current tower designs don’t account for this. The smartest seige is placed in odd places because the base design doesn’t give an advantage.

The Lowlands Keep: Why does that not have champion moat monsters that come up on land?

The Valley Keep: Why isn’t it completely surrounded by maze, and why doesn’t that maze change?

Sirendor.1394:

SOLUTION:
The only approach that would make WvW a tactical structure would, in my opinion, be if they deleted the concept of servers, and made it Everyone vs. Everyone, with the exception of guilds. Guilds should be able to make alliances and those should make it possible to make bigger tactical wholes.

There would of course still be need of other things: make towers/keeps claimable by an alliance (or a single guild) and allow “contracts for hire” to players who don’t have a WvW guild so they fight in service of that guild. This would tie towers to one specific alliance/guild and they would do everything to keep their towers/keeps out of the hands of enemy guilds. However they could also make non-attack treaties with guilds who have a structure in the neighbourhood. There would be a deal more sieging, upgrading and a great deal more defending.

Lastly it should of course give an advantage to these guilds or alliances of guilds who have claimed and defend their towers/keeps/camps/sentries: a gold bonus every 15 minutes for every player of the guild/alliance who defends his/her keep and loans for the mercenaries (pugs). On top of that, add a tax on all loot that will allow the guild/alliance to build new fortifications at certain places (walls, possibly camps).

Of course to stop from making this a farm, there would need to be actual fights: events will keep a measure of how hard battle has been for that specific keep/tower, through timers and calculators of how many people were in a radius of the fortification.

Make it so!

Aberrant.6749:

DeadlySynz.3471:

Aberrant.6749:

Just fix the res/rally mechanics. They give too much survival to larger groups and make it nearly impossible for a smaller more skilled/coordinated team to chip away and eventually defeat a much larger group.

^^ This would solve a good chunk of the problems. Removing them both all together however would practically solve it. We’d see a much different look in the standings if this were the case.

I highly doubt they would remove it since it’s a big “feature” of this game.

They could make it far more limited/reasonable in WvW though. No in combat ressing of fully dead players, DR on the healing some one gets when downed (I can get people up from downed while being hit by ac’s etc far too easily), 1:1 ratio for rallies on kills (the current rally system is why random people get told to go away from hardcore guild groups), etc.

^Not new ideas. No clue why they haven’t been explored more either.

Yep the 2 biggest problems with WVW wrt zergs are due to:

• AOE cap
• downed state/rallying

Anet claims they can’t remove the AOE cap for tech reasons (even though DAOC, a 10 year-old game, handled more players per chunk and it did it without any AOE cap…).

Downed state/rallying is something they could and should do something about though.

Another positive change would be better base defenses for towers/keeps, eg: spawned ACs.

scerevisiae.1972:

Anet claims they can’t remove the AOE cap for tech reasons (even though DAOC, a 10 year-old game, handled more players per chunk and it did it without any AOE cap…).

DAOC is a old game with worst graphic effects. Notice how Anet had to instance every zone in game instead of making a few HUGE continuous map like in WOW. To get better graphic you need to have limitations in other places.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Terrahero.9358:

Ross Biddle.2367:

If this were true, BG blobs wouldn’t constantly be running/avoiding SoR counter (albiet much smaller) forces. But I can agree with your sentiment that there should be more counters to blobs.

How about a new trap that hits 60 players, and multiplies its damage based on the number of enemies it hits. So it’ll land a nice instant 500 damage vs 1 target.

2500 vs 5 man

5000 vs 10 men

10,000 vs 20 men

20,000 vs 40 men

30,000 vs 60 man blob. Insta counter. No longer safe to run blobs., and super costly prior to that.

Crazy idea but no more crazy than blobs?

For balance sake, trap could only trigger on 40+. Players can still blob, but there’s always that risk that the enemy has set an ambush.

This idea is brilliant! I’ll just log on my Thief, run into your zerg (in stealth ofcourse so you wont know im there) and just instakill a whole zerg.

That sounds entirely reasonable and above all fun. Right?

Or in a zerg on zerg fight, ill run into your clusterkitten and pop stability and just blow you all up with this trap. That sounds balanced right?

Because what this game needs is even more instagib mechanics that you dont see comming. Especially in WvW.

1) Yes. Finally a job for thieves. That said, if you’d ever placed a trap recently you’d know you can’t drop them in stealth. Good luck running into an enemy blob and doing a 4 second channel as a thief.

2) Yes, in general, it does sound reasonable. And fun!

3) Yes. But then again, are you suggesting you and your server are stupid enough to cluster up in the first place? Because surely you know and have heard about these new traps right? I mean sure, I’ll be reasonable, you probably pushed your luck a few, 5, 6, 7, ..10 times. But eventually you learned the new “dont blob you kittening idiot” meta.

4) But hey, if you cant look around and see 59 other players and think "I probably shouldn’t be standing here, I guess there really is no hope for you to ever see anything coming.

The fact you’re trying to defend “i want to one-shot 60 ppl at once”, even calling it fun gameplay, says enough about how serious we should be taking you.

Anet could just put a lot more objectives on the map and force zergs to separate into smaller groups.

Ulion.5476:

scerevisiae.1972:

Anet claims they can’t remove the AOE cap for tech reasons (even though DAOC, a 10 year-old game, handled more players per chunk and it did it without any AOE cap…).

DAOC is a old game with worst graphic effects. Notice how Anet had to instance every zone in game instead of making a few HUGE continuous map like in WOW. To get better graphic you need to have limitations in other places.

It has nothing to do with graphics.

IMO no aoe cap wouldn’t help and just increase the benefits to larger groups… as the larger group would have more aoe and overwhelm with that while still be able to better mitigate that damage.

Zanshin.5379:

Anet could just put a lot more objectives on the map and force zergs to separate into smaller groups.

They wouldn’t separate though. They would just clump together to take down these objectives faster one by one so everybody gets credit.

They need something that hurts big groups when fighting smaller groups.

@OP, it’s more effective if you spell it correctly.

Sorry I had to

Changing the Rally/Revive mechanics would really be the best way to limit the power of the Zerg.

But that would require ANet to revisit some of their fundamental design concepts.

Zerg is just a word for them having more people than you in a fight.

Until people stop whining about zergs and start considering what is really wrong, we get nowhere.

Wait, we probably get nowhere anyway….because who is going to listen?

(For example, the fact doors on structures go down so fast and nobody wants to upgrade are faults of the siege system and the upgrade system…nothing to do with ‘zergs’…whatever that means.)

GW2 has too much traits/skills put into the mechanic of rallying to have it removed in a rather big part of the game (WvW). But I DO agree that persistent rallying is annoying and frustrating when fighting a zerg.

I think a simple solution is simply put MORE penalty on post-rallying. Instead of dying after you rallied for the 3-4th time in a brief time period, make characters die after ONE rally in that same time period. That will at least alleviate some of the problems of rallying while still making rally part of the game in WvW.

Or, give the rallied characters lesser health right after rallying. I think a lot of things could be modified in WvW considering it’s a whole different ball park from PvE (some mechanics should work differently for obvious reasons, rally is definitely one of those mechanics that need to change).

ens.9854:

This whole post makes no sense, zerging is itself a strategy, and it is used because it is so effective.

Agree with this.
Until a more effective strategy emerges then zerging will continue. Making the maps bigger would favor smaller groups, but I don’t see this happening to the current maps. Maybe if they release more maps.

Fomby.4295:

Zanshin.5379:

Anet could just put a lot more objectives on the map and force zergs to separate into smaller groups.

They wouldn’t separate though. They would just clump together to take down these objectives faster one by one so everybody gets credit.

They wouldn’t be able to do that if there were too many objectives and far away from each other.

If there are enough objectives, while the enemy zerg is taking one of yours, you’re taking 5 of theirs. They try to take one back, you take 5 more. Ultimately, they would either need to divide or lose the whole map.

Right now, when the enemy realizes that one of their keep is getting attacked, they have all the time in the world to come defend. If you make the objectives so far apart that when they are all the way in the west they can’t get to the east fast enough to defend, they would have to divide and leave a team in the east for defense.

So make the maps way bigger and add a lot more tower/keeps. That’s it.
Of course, that’s not gonna happen because Anet’s servers are too flimsy.

My guild is pretty successful at taking out larger numbers. Not 100% success rate but I would say we win a good majority of it.

Your statement is based on your assumption that a smaller force is always more tactical and/or strategical than a larger force. Which is not true if your smaller force constantly gets -steamrolled-. When both sides have equally good players, the only ting left to define the fight is numbers, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that, the option to move away to a better position or attack a different objective is always there if you believe your small force is in cappable of taking on the larger force.

Remove the rally mechanic from WvW. That’s basically solve everything. The strength of the blobbing will reduce drastically.

Increase more AoE cap also prevent blobbing as well.