Guild Wars 2

Blackgate – What’s Defense?

And with a server forcing through it; it’s kitten near impossible to get him

An authentication failure on my friends list caused me a restart; because you know it’s logical to step backwards in expertise when making a game.

tl;dr = wants to complain, doesn’t want to read

Still missing about 300 points…

Nokaru.7831:

Raksha.8049:

If I wanted to play a 5 player game, I would do nothing but dungeon runs.

Slowly but surely, WvW is getting effected by these changes.

Yeah well, my AoE only hits 5 players per hit in a Turtle, while their Warriors were healing everyone for 1500+. This change was needed.

Blame the Turtles. Let’s see how strong their shell is now without their healing abuse.

I love the turtle crying you know how you countered it before? Siege…

Bump for awareness!

If Beastgate wasn’t full 24/7 I would say come here. You could try early in the morning before EU time kicks in.

We have plenty of recruiting guilds for a bunch of different time zones; KnT is looking for solid NA players that will play WvW

If anyone has anything else to add; I would be excited to add it to the thread!

To the above; thank you!

Thank you; I want more intelligent and aware WvW players, especially the militia (PuGs)

It really comes down to knowing which ones to cap; I’m not saying you should ONLY cap for points but if you only have the time to cap one then you want to choose the appropriate camp to get the most benefit out of it for your team. If you have the time to get two; pace yourself properly and you can knock out two but once again knowing which ones to cap and which ones not to is experience related and paying attention to the map.

Also as psirca said sniping yaks is also very important and every supply camp party SHOULD be sniping the yaks they can without putting themselves in danger.

If the supply camp is defensive and in your territory you need to flip the camp immediately that is supply cut off from your own towers.

Kardiamond.6952:

Wwow didn’t know ether about the Dolyak.

And thanks Alsonia for this guide, it’s pretty useful to read it.

I don’t like zerging, so supply/tower capping is all I do right now. Your guid will help a lot.

Thank you, this guide actually spawned from a Blackgate forum post of the same nature being tired of losing to SBI/JQ because of poor defense/supply control. I just expanded it a little more since, I pretty much always Supply Cap as well.

psirca.9452:

Here’s something else to add to the mix.
Killing a dolyak nets you instant points that don’t wait on a timed tick.
Those points are at least 2, some say they have seen up to 6 for each kill.
Dolyaks respawn around every 5 minutes (yes I camped one and watched).

If the enemy gets 5 points for holding the camp and you get at least 4 points for killing their dolyaks every 5 minutes, you get more points killing their supply rather than holding the camp.

~ Sneaky tactics for a losing team Lesson #104

You see I never actually knew that; I only killed Yaks for their direct blow to the supply income. I’ll update it, if some others can confirm it; however killing Yaks does give you supply if you have no and land the killing blow.

So here are some pointers for both Offense AND Defense of Camps!

Offense :
1) Pay attention to the time to a tally; this part is really huge, you need to assess if taking a camp at that point is worth it, or if you can even do it in time (Especially if the Mob has the buff)

2) Always pay attention to your map! I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH! In order to properly assess and time your attacks you NEED to know when camps were last flipped/attacked in order to flip properly.

3) Always move quietly. You have to avoid proccing swords on the map as they reveal your location and definitely sell your intention.

4) Never under any circumstance take the most direct route! You want to be unseen as a small camp flipping team if you travel the road you may accidentally be caught out by tower defenders and other people.

5) Worry about composition. When taking camps you want a small force; but with that small force composition becomes a much larger need. Rangers; Warriors; Mesmers; Guardians; Thieves all classes that are very mobile and can move around the battlefield and offer group swiftness are great classes for this. Mesmers may want to consider running their AoE Stealth Elite for surprise attacks. As for Warriors and Rangers get a Warhorn, there is no excuse to not have a cheap Warhorn in your inventory. Guardians; no excuse to not have a staff in your inventory, same goes for Mesmers with a Focus.

6) Last but not least. Pay attention to the Mob’s buff; if you intend on supply capping and you have the intentions of trying to take camps with buffed leaders Vulnerability and Conditions are huge as conditions are not effected by the buff in strength but in duration.

Defense – What can you do to prevent this from happening?

1) Once again, time and map awareness you want to try to have a handle on where the enemy is watch the map for out of place swords; especially around 5 minutes until tally.

2) Assess your own teams needs. Ask yourself the following questions “Are we going to take a tower before tally?” “Am I really needed to take the tower?” and “Do we have the man power to actually defend properly?”

3) Timing yourself and having good classes for stalling. Thieves; Guardians; Mesmers; BUNKER eles. These are all very solid choices when it comes to defending camps from small tactical group as they can hold people well on top being fantastic at stalling.

Tips and Tricks!
1) Not only does killing Yaks along the way benefit your server directly by cutting off supply but as others mentioned it gives non Tally related points – Psirca

2) Defense Camp flipping! Don’t hesitate to flip a camp in your own territory as soon as possible every minute not flipped in another minute without supply flow!

3) VERY IMPORTANT! Do not linger as well; if you’re out of your territory you’re a walking target!

4) Do not take sentries if you’re trying to secure Camps for points! They are a red flag to enemy players! (Dhar)

With all that being said; I hope those of you who are new to WvW can understand the importance and power of the supply camp and for those who are veterans I hope maybe you learned a thing or two, if there is anything you would like to add or a point I made that you would like to refute post it below and I will get around to updating this thread.

Disclaimer : Do no take absolute paramount in supply camps as they don’t make or break the game but they offer a huge advantage in the overall scheme of things.

Fun facts :
Supply Camp Flipping is the most effective way to make money in WvW
While Camp Flipping you can easily snipe Dolyak’s for extra Money/Experience/Karma as well as help your team!
You can really hurt the other team by stealing their supply!
You feel like your individual actions are much more important than in a Zerg!

Normally; if you didn’t notice most servers lose Supply camps a lot before the points ticks. I spend a lot of my time in EB and around 3-2 minutes left before tally all I see is

/t CampA/CampB flipped

Let’s put this in perspective as most people don’t see the value in supply camps and camp flipping. Generally numbers are the easiest way to represent this. Ok in close matchups much like what you see in balanced T1 play small point differences influence the game highly. Camps are worth 5 points at a tally with 24 camps being available in the entire match. So in all camps are worth 120 points at tally.

This leads to presumably 11,520 points per day at most. In a week? 80,640.

You might be wondering what I’m getting at here; well what I’m trying to say is Supply Camp flips can infinitely help win or lose games. If you pay attention to how a top tier server such as SBI plays; when they flip camps they don’t do it because they can at any time; they do it very methodically with more than one party generally. They almost always cap around 2-3 minutes until points tick this. If you lose one or two camps per tick that’s 5 or 10 points you miss out on every 15 minutes.

So that comes out to be
5/10 Points Every Tick
20/40 Points every hour
480/960 Points every day

Now here comes the real interesting part; those points if you hold these camps for 12 out of every 15 minutes and they get flipped because you didn’t defend them; not only do you lose 5 points but the enemy server GAINS 5 points. If you don’t think about it; this may sound silly at first but the longer you reflect on this every point tick they flip one of your camps simply for the tally points you effectively LOSE 10 or 20 points.

I say you LOSE 10 or 20 points because you SHOULD have gained 5 and not been put behind 5 more; so this nothing more than an effective loss of that.

Put into perspective

10/20 Points every tick
40/80 Points every hour
AND 960/1920 EVERY DAY.

Now these aren’t reflective in score but the loss is still there; as you should have held them. This more often than not proves how important camps are; while towers/keeps/castles can cover this deficit, if you can afford 5 people for each supply camp why should you put yourselves further behind by not properly defending and more methodically flipping camps. Now this isn’t to say that a zerg is stoppable by that small force but a proper defense perimeter can deter them for a slight amount of time. When a top tier server (Such as SBI) defends a camp they have Ballista/Arrow Carts covering it, proving they understand the power of a supply camp.

Let’s not forget losing a camp can easily LOSE you 100 supply since they will flip the camps build siege and steal your supply; and effectively cut off one or more Dolyak spawns. So even outside of point end of tick supply camp flipping is so detrimental to the overall scheme of things.

Honestly the strongest use of the portal IMO is a tactical retreat. If you want to retreat you tactically you don’t want to sell it since it leads to a dead on chase which in turn can lead to a wipe of a zerg.

If you call for a tactical retreat and a Mesmer portals on a Turtle or zerg and runs away solo you might be selling a defense of another area on the map in which case you can use Focus 4; Blink and Decoy to retreat safely drop a portal at a safe distance and do a tactical retreat.

Also play in T1 WvW Portal Bombing is not near as prominent as other tiers where Portal bombing is so prevalent. Honestly in T1 turtling which is abuse of Guardian abilities is MUCH stronger than a portal bomb since a turtle can effectively hard counter a portal bomb.

Well I was wondering because after sinking the gold for Bolt I have nothing to spend my money so I was thinking I wanted to sink into Eternity. Since my Ranger has 100% too

I’m looking to begin building my first Legendary; the sword for my Mesmer. Now question lies; is there is a limit to the Legendaries you can craft since I know you need 100% map completion to make it…

At the moment I understand the frustration a lot of servers are having when it comes to Commander’s and it’s application in WvW and it’s completely unrelated attainability through PvE.

The title has practically zero PvE application yet in WvW it can make or break a server. Herein lies the problem; farming methods have evolved and become extremely mainstream over the past 2 days I’ve farmed nearly 50g simply from farming Plinx to level my Mesmer. Another 2 days I could be another person with a Commander title; and Dorito.

Granted while I could effectively use the title; I chose not to, the example proves the fundamental flaw in it. Instead of being able to farm for a week in PvE for something with an extreme WvW application; instead what I think A.net should do is provide a secondary title that is attainable through WvW only; be it a rank implementation AND badge sink. Even while you can still zerg farm; largely commanders lead zergs if you earned 2000-3000 badges in a zerg; logically you should learn how to lead people simply by watching others do it themselves.

I say we should implement a second title instead of removing Commander because the people that have already farmed Commander would be very mad if they lost their attention Dorito in LA. Another proposition I have is to create a fine distinction between the new one and Commander; effectively disabling the commander icon in WvW so the PvE earned Commander title doesn’t undermine the WvW one.

While I realize this will never fix stupid; it is a very large bandage. Not to mention it fixes a lot of second guessing regarding establish and respected Commander’s being pushed off maps; or the carebear Commander’s who think they deserve respect and can’t handle criticism.

In the end; a position of power demands responsibility, and when you mess up you better be able to handle the backlash when you do mess up.

tl;dr for lazy people who just want to argue
Create second Commander title earned through WvW and disable PvE Commander icon in WvW

Mattargul.9235:

A nice change would be if badges would be awarded not just for P/K-ing.

If you play WvW “the correct way”, i.e. escort yaks, guard your fortifications and camps, and run supply you are a great team player and contribute greatly to your server winning, and you will get ZERO badges. Same for playing support classes. If you want badges play AOE glass cannon builds and classes.

You’re right being a strong AoE class means you’re not a team player. Last I checked Necros are a fantastic stall class especially in choke points.

Blackgate is looking to strengthen our NA/Oceanic Timezone coverage over the coming weeks; if you WvW often and are willing to learn T1 with us we’d be more than happy to have you. We have plenty of organized guilds recruiting that you could join as well.

Just something to think about.

Ferris Bewler.9706:

I think also that the game is just flat out losing players on all servers, hence why there’s just no people on Blackgate that are on to play Wvw.

False; nobody on BG wants to WvW. It’s not a population issue; it’s a motivation issue. RQ left and the NA players feel like it’s pointless to even WvW now. If these players looked for other active guilds like KnT or HB to play consistently we’d be fine but our players would rather sit in LA and whine all day about imbalance instead of getting into the BL and EBG and grinding it out.

It’s frustrating to have such a strong offense but no defense to even speak of; I was saying the way we played earlier proved we deserved to be in T1; but throwing games like this is proving the contrary.

Don’t worry somehow BG is gonna super focus EBG and throw every other map

Enter Blackthrows.

blackthye.6395:

Blackgate – Just a question to all of you: Do you really WANT to see SBI and JQ again?
If so, stop and desist ALL WvW interaction. If the score is such, that if we lay off now, we can drop out of this bracket of hypocrites.

If I see another JQ or SBI red-name, it will be too soon. I’m sure they feel the same way about us.

Maybe when they get SoS up in their bracket, we can see how they bash them on the Forums for using the same tactics they’ve used just as much in the past.

Cheers. Have a merry-kitten-day.

What we need to do is get crushed willingly and let the bandwagoners outgrow BG and we need to grow as a community and try to “trudge” out of T2 opposed to absolutely making tons of noise.

Noise = Attention
Attention = Bandwagon

Also IMO BG is a better server in terms of skills than SoS; SoS will get bandwagoners and they will get crushed simply due to poor EU coverage. They’ll probably blame it on that exact reason; EU coverage.

Syphen.1980:

Alsonia.4753:

Bandwagon servers are the worst; SBI, JQ enjoy assblasting SoS next week.

It is what it is. We may or may not win that match when it comes but you can be kitten sure we will do our best and die trying.

You will definitely win that match. SoR is a zergfest and is weak at night. SoS is all Australia their day is pathetic; they threw a 60k lead over the course of a day a couple weeks back.

Needs to be seriously limited; 7 days does not stop bandwagon hopping and in turn ruins servers. Look at SoS, BG, SoR everyone is hopping on the bandwagons and it is hurtful to the game’s community.

Bandwagon servers are the worst; SBI, JQ enjoy assblasting SoS next week.

Kaarnak.2865:

Chuiu makes a good point – Zhaitan’s the kinda whole-sale Necromancer-creature. He goes to the supermarket, sees “Undead minions – Raise 2000, get 1000 free!” and he’s all like I’LL TAKE TEN THOUSAND.

We, on the other hand, are more like Dr. Frankenstein. Except obviously when we made our Bone Minion’s, we never got beyond “The leg bone’s connected to the…”

I about died of laughter at the library thanks to you.

I feel like people vest too much power in themselves upon getting the commander title; the ability to lead a team is earned not given upon farming 100g in AC

I used to play on Sea of Sorrows but sadly due to time zone issues with Sea of Sorrows being a very Oceanic heavy server; their mid day/US time zone WvW was weak. I can say that against the time we played against SoR; they had a stronger mid day but got beat outright at night .

SoR has better coverage and more people while SoS has better strategy; a lot of day play on SoS was damage control after Australia straight up dominated at night. I feel bad for SoS since they’re gonna be getting the bandwagoners with their recent performances.

I’ve had friends that played on ET and HoD pre-transfer disaster and the frustration of learning to deal with 2v1 was there; especially when chatting with them about it. My knowledge on Blackgate is minimal seeing as I have only been here about a week and a half now; as I transfered to Blackgate over SBI/JQ simply for the learning experience that comes with just entering T1 and having a more stable US based server; but from what I have seen BG is making some costly amateur mistakes in the defense department… but offensively they are sound. But other than that BG is a young T1 server only time will tell if they can actually adapt to T1 play style and deserve to be there.

The bandwagon kids do they; one slight clue of doing bad they jump ship. They all went to Sea of Sorrows to leave there when they don’t move to T1 or get stomped when entering T1

Compared to servers like SoS; or SoR. BG has not only better coverage but more sound strategies. Reason why SoS and SoR are both in T2 is purely because they have such a strong and dominant night squad being largely Oceanic based. However during the day both servers have NA guilds/players that love to throw games.

Thing is; T1 is a completely different beast than T2 and under. The strategies are more complex and the pressure on the wining team is a lot higher. 2v1s happen; BG has to look at the 2v1 with a level head and develop defense strategies and hell even watch what SBI does against 2v1s; instead of crying about it. Getting 2v1d in T1 is a rite of passage every T1 server has to deal with at some point; and learning to handle it is a huge weight off your shoulders.

That being said; when not being 2v1d BG does just fine; however I noticed a blatant lack of anything tricky. BG plays too standard, we were getting pounded by Mesmer portals last night during the BG|BL standoff at Arahs/LV/Keep. Also the server needs to better react to pressure better. I watched (Before I went to bed) keep get pushed to the wall but SBI fell back to take Arah’s while SE Gate was getting pushed in; instead of falling back to defend the wall the small zerg (15-20 players) went to intercept a lost cause at Arah’s wasting time; instead of falling back and properly defending/regrouping.

At the end of the day; as said before, BG has what it takes to be in T1, more so than Sea of Sorrows or Sanctum of Rall (Especially Sanctum of Rall; they are literally a zerg they have numbers and practically no strategy.) and Sea of Sorrows is a decent server with; shall we say it; fortunate, time zoning.

I came from SoS to Blackgate after the brutal beatdown SoS put on the transfered servers; I wanted a more competitive environment.

Let me go on the record and say the way BG is playing right now, SoS deserves to be in T1 more than us. if BG could get their heads out of their own kitten and see that 2v1 is able to be handled and actually respond accordingly we could do something; but until then.

Soft it up in T2 and 3.

I can get behind that…

MY main is a Male Norn Necro and it’s absolutely hilarious hearing a Norn Necro screaming on getting an achievement

“I’M THE MASTER OF LIFE”

When you actually go play through Eye of the North and you recruit the individual races you’ll see the accurate portrayal of the Norn’s strength.

You recruit Pyre Fierceshot’s warband and the liberated Charr from the Flame Legion. You recruit (Naturally) the Ebon Vanguard through Gwen and Keiran Thackeray.

You recruit the remaining Deldrimor Dwarves through King Jalis Ironhammer, you also manage to persuade the Asura (Whom use their Technology and less of themselves in the GOLEMs) as well as the Shining Blade…

Then you have the Norn; if you played through it… not only did it take nearly an ENTIRE legion of Charr to force Jora from her homestead but Ogden constantly was arguing with the Norn about their numbers “Will you send an Army?” and Olaf Olafson replied “No but I will tell the other Norn of these worthy foes, the Destroyers, and we will hunt them with you”

The Norn are extremely powerful in Lore shown through their ability to fight large amounts of enemies in Small numbers and without technology.

If you choose the massive Norn body type; of course they look ridiculous. I play a Norn heavily ATM and seeing massive Norn makes me shake my head and weep for humanity.

My problem with female norn are the twig body type where their boobs are individually almost as wide as their waist. Their arms and legs in that body type are extremely unbelievable as well since (Most people that make them) use cultural armor or heavy armor types.

Let me put this into perspective for you, you are walking around with a multi hundred pound suit of plate/metal armor you’re going to develop some muscle mass… same can be said for the light armor cultural variants as well as medium (Leather… REAL leather isn’t light)

The ability to select this body type leads to everyone picking it because they want their COMBAT character to look like a porn star. Variety is why I picked the skinniest male norn, because they look like someone of reasonable Nordic Ancestry which was the intent with Norn.

tl;dr Female Norn have the option to be oversexualized, and I think giving people that option leads to a lack of diversity.

Both my female characters are Sylvari with small bust… you can in fact make a female character without making her looking rediculously over sexualized.

Did it my first time with 3 giant Norn and 2 giant Charr… these idiots that make the giant characters generally aren’t that great at all and fall off early in the puzzle. If you’re quick on your feet you can pull ahead of everyone else after the choke and have not one problem.

FYI I was a small female sylvari on my clear.

In GW1 Mad King Says happened hourly, I expect nothing less than a one hour reset on the event if this is the same A.net that made GW1

Noon on a weekday seems to be an AWFUL time for a one time only event.

I have a 30 Necro, 30 Gaurdian, 25 Thief, 80 Ranger and 20 Warrior. I can say I’ve had little to no issues with any class; the classes are designed to be able to play the PvE game solo. If you are dying take a look at what you’re doing wrong be it gear, builds, or even how you’re handling combat.

Elementalist and Thieves are both very squishy and you have to either kite effectively (Ele or Pistol/Shortbow Thief) or dodge effectively (Double Dagger Ele/Melee Thief)

On top of this, manage your CDs and use them at the appropriate times and less liberally; the game was designed with the solo player in mind. If you stop and think for a second instead of spamming you should be fine.

Well my main is a Ranger so fighting Thieves; kinda sucks. If it’s 1v1 same class, I like it because it ultimately comes down to who is the better player or who counters who.

Would also love to add, why do Thieves not only have a better disengage, but a better snare as well compared to Shortbow Rangers? I mean seriously…

I play my Ranger primarily; and is my best character. One thing is a must; you must have an environment that prioritizes respect.

Decent; SoS is just obliterating them in WvW and I would rather not go to that…

It seems like every good server is largely based in Australia or Oceania; it makes the game very lonely and barren for American players. Any good server to play on?

How exactly do you get this title to start tracking? I can’t for the life of me get it tracking.