Guild Wars 2

It’s filling up in NA.

EB is pretty fun, you’ll have 35-40 man groups with roaming packs or you’ll have multiple 15-25 man groups floating around on each side. During NA peak hours you can have 3 orange swords on borderlands where there’s a lot of fighting happening around the keeps.

When those guilds all converge into a single spot you probably have 50v50v50 + the dead running back.

I would recommend any server from rank 11 to 14.
http://mos.millenium.org/na/matchups

bump

Lots of good guilds to fight in T3, come get your piece of the action

please do not use the longbow in WvW if you’re going to be in things bigger than 10v10. If you’re going to take a ranged weapon, take the rifle

sadking.9625:

longbow ranger bursts me down from 1900 range on a wall. IT MAKES NO SENSE.

fixed.

dem arrows arc and travel farther than their tooltip, mostly because they’re on high ground.

L Step.8659:

People who think venomshare in wvw is fine as it is clearly just have not played any competent groups. And yes it’s the immobilize venom that’s the problem, but it doesn’t have to be tied with just wells. The thief will share it with 5 others, and that’s 25 attacks that will cause immobilize, you clear one and it’s another immediately reapplied, you’re going to get caught, there’s no way to possibly out cleanse it. It can be a boring pirate fight and will never evolve to a fun strategic fight because the guild getting immob spammed will never push. It’s just suicide.

So no, it needs fixed. Unless people think 20-40 pulsing immobilizes is fine. I’ve literally seen a guild group run 3 venomshare thieves before, who thinks that’s fun to play or fight? There’s a reason GvG is dying, and it’s a lot more of the player’s fault than ANET’s.

soo much what this guy said.

When I don’t have my gank squad available for raid or GvGing, we will use venom wells. Sometimes, when the guild you’re supposed to fight shows up an hour late, we’ll use venom wells just to mess with them.

Lets be honest though, any group that is paying attention, will wait until your dodge-rolls and some of your skills are spent before they will venom well-bomb you. You don’t initiate your fights with venom wells, that is still the realm of Eles, and the frontline.

(sorry about potato quality)

IoJ recently suffered an exodus of players and are on their way down. Their OCX have moved to: T1, SBI, and FA.

We’ve got our eye out for almost every role!

Gank squad, Teef and Mesmer,
Warriors, and necromancers!

If you’re interested in joining a veteran zergbusting and raid guild, we’re here for you.

Watch Them [Melt] is now recruiting active WvWders!
About Watch Them [Melt]
We are a WvW and GvG guild on Stormbluff Isle. We are here to collect bags and help develop steady WvW coverage in the NA -> Ocx timezones.

Melt’s focus is to play, and play well. We have a relaxed environment, and we come together to break zergs. We have an array of skilled commanders available, and a close relationship to the well known roaming and GvG guild [DOLO].
We are very active in World Vs. World, and we want to help you learn how to make the most of your time there. We will do our best to help you understand the flow of ZvZ combat, We have skilled players in every class who can tutor you in your class’s roll in the zerg, and how to optimize you for competitive play.

Our most active time zones are NA and OCX
Recruitment Information
_________________________________________
As a member of Melt you can expect:
A WvW focused environment – We raid every day at approx-6 PM Pst, and when we aren’t raiding, we’re out havoking on enemy Borderlands, forming gank teams to assist the map commanders, as well as scouting and upgrading our own borderlands. We also participate in S and TPvP.
Guild Teamspeak
Generous amounts of sarcasm
A skill building environment
Frequent trainings, both individual and team, to help you build your individual skill set and develop a cohesion within the group.
open and approachable guild leadership.
EOTM blob farming!
We’re scouting for GvG and scrimmage opportunities in order to give all of our members a chance to try their hand in GvG!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOZiHR2ibwU

Melt conditions:
Represent us during rallies!
Join us in Teamspeak during raids!
Recommended builds are available!
( Our builds are made to synergize, Everyone is traited in such a way that they keep their party, and the whole team alive, and our group synergy is what helps us dominate in the field)
Patience, and a commitment to developing your personal skill and teamwork in game.
To find out more send in game mail to Hamster.4861, or Sassenach.1590, Imagine.3864, Marine Biologist.9843
Apply by registering at our website and contacting us in game!
http://melt-sbi.shivtr.com/

Man, i was hoping this was going to be a suggestion about what key to rebind the F5 to. that thang is way too far away to reach for mortals with hands.

Novalily, depending on how big you want your fights to be, you should look at T2-4 for the hours that you mentioned.

If you’re going to play more in the morning, you could still have big fights in T4 or T3. If you’re going to play more in the late evening hours, you’ll want to go to T2 or 3, for big fights in the late-evening and early OCX.

Dawdler.8521:

I keep reading that GvG hasnt changed (which I agree with as noted above) and that blobs have more ranged than melee.

So… uhm… whats changed?

Here’s a great post-stab change GvG, it’s an excellent example of pirate-shipping:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hISfvGpFY4I
(language warning)

What HAS changed, is that small groups are much more limited in their ability to take down larger groups. After the stability nerf, using ranged pressure to soften up enemies for the melee is something you MUST do. Melee still push, but its really just a clean up/secure kill. ZvZ now includes a lot more baiting, and “peeling the onion” of an enemy zerg. Before the change, Melee were a hefty part of your engagement. It was easy to open with a melee strike, and put your enemies on the back foot. Now, you try to open with your melee and you will get melted before your melee get anywhere near an enemy zerg.

If a small group tries to melee train down a group larger than them by even as little as 1/3, they’re going to get ping-ponged, unless the larger group was AFK, or PvDooring, or otherwise not paying attention.

We still have Stability, it wasn’t ever a push to win boon. Now that stab has stacks, we simply have to choose when we close a little bit more carefully.

In all probability, revenants will not bring back the melee train. Their stability road will be useful, but not for initiating. If you were to run up to your enemy, on a stab road or not, you’ll still get nuked before you can touch them. Resistance will be nice, but it’s not really going to affect Soft CC, which causes most players to get brought down by focused AOE or melee training.

In terms of your raid meta, I do think that the stab change has weakened warriors. However, stability was not their claim to fame in WvW. They take the cake for their condition clear and high mobility. a 25 man raid group will still need 3-4 warriors in order to keep them mobile. It’s a poor group that requires the Battle Standard to carry them through the day, but 3 warriors in a 20 man group is definitely sufficient post stab change.

Guardians are STILL the heart of your zerg. They are unparalleled in their ability to give boons, sustain in fights, BLAST finish, and they have access to as much CC as Elementalists do. Focused symbol bombs are very effective ( 6 guardians hitting you with symbol of swiftness, for 1k on critical hit) and can force an enemy to dodge-roll into a well bomb. Between your elementalists, and your core of guardians, you can strip ALL of Stand Your Ground, and Virtue of Courage stabilities before an enemy even closes with you. When they do get to you, you STILL have the rings of warding, and your 1200 range, line style immobilize.

Guardians are definitely still here to stay.

I think sir, you will like the Gear #2 a little bit more, although i’d recommend having more zerker. Possibly your rings.

if you think you need to be tankier, and don’t want any celestial, try this. The player who made the build below rarely lost duels.

his build: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQJAoYlcMozhVOwwBMsNwDgQ+XsdiCUuaynA-T1yHABCpERM9AOpEsHlGEqSwQKjG4EAsnqC+pGDAPAAR2fIAACwNbzAYoDdoDdoDtbezbuclrcSBwkyI-w

IMO Fresh Air, S/D annihilate or S/F are both dueling, roaming, ganking builds.

Play it in conquest the way you would play a thief, or a shatter mesmer. It is quite a comfortable way to 1v1, but 1vX is definitely a serious challenge.

I think in a world where coverage and population is balanced, we could use climbing ropes.

MAYBE in t1 this would be possible, but certainly not in any other tier where a side has a clear coverage advantage or disadvantage

Healing power is pretty weak in larger scale combat. However, that said, a cleric/nomad spec player in a small team can do wonders towards keeping that small team alive.

When you choose to spec into healing power, you sacrifice almost all your other utility in order to make yourself a healbot. You had best hope that your team has players who are completely specced into damage in order to make up for the loss of pressure from you. Now that you are essentially only good for CCing enemies, since your damage pressure is nil, your job becomes that of the medic, apply your CC, keep your allies alive.

Here’s a small team with a guardian healbot taking out almost 4x their numbers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id99moK7YzA

TLDR; if you’re going to spec into healing power, play your role, and do a good job of it. Make sure your team knows that you are not going to contribute to damage.

MaximillianVonSchatten.6278:

This may be radical but they need to do away with the server based system entirely (since servers mean nothing now anyways). Distribute guilds across matchups based on population and performance and have guild based ratings and reward systems.

Your guild “performance” index would need to include a whole lot of information, like:
successful defense, capture, escort, claimed objectives (frequency and duration of active claiming) peaks and troughs for their numbers over time, maybe even the MAPS they play on. Pretty complicated.

not a bad idea.

I thought that PPT was fun, for the first thousand hours I played WvW. During that lovely time in EB, I learned to defend towers, how to siege enemy towers, and how to deal with zergs. I learned to command, and led the half afk mobs in a parade around the map taking things. We laughed, we loved, we danced on the bodies of our enemies as we took their things from them.

Then, in the second thousand hours, i got bored. I got tired of laying siege in the same places, stopping people from getting in the doors, and destroying ACs with focused meteor showers, getting pushed off by 5 ACs and endless siege spam. I still taught people the basics of WvW, i instructed new commanders, I recommended people watch youtube videos of WvW fights in order to be able to sustain in them. I started to understand what “Coverage” meant, as i found fewer and fewer commanders willing to take over when I tagged down.

By the third thousand hours, I was done PPTing. I was done pugmanding, i played WvW for the pleasure of playing with my friends and guild, improving on how we played and fought together as a group, and for the pleasure of outsmarting other commanders while fighting outnumbered, and GvGing some of the best players in the game. You play in the field, you win, and then you GvG with a top guild and die in 45 seconds. Its remarkably humbling to get outplayed like that. It reveals where your group, (or you, if you’re the commander) have weaknesses that your enemies capitalize on. I spent the third thousand hours improving our play, and teaching others. By this point, PPT is something that I did in between fights, just to have something to do.

By the fourth thousand hours, Guild raids are all that I played for anymore, my server had gone through bronze and silver, and been ground to dust by the population imbalance at the top of silver league. Our coverage was inferior in every time slot. If you didnt stay in structures you captured, you lost them in less than 15 minutes. If you stayed still in any place for too long, the enemy servers’ roaming fights guilds all converged on you, and you get blobbed to death by a multi-guild jam. Fighting an uphill coverage battle is fun when you have the right mentality for it, but it wears on people. Upgrading a keep all day is rather pointless when, an hour after you log off, the enemy servers are organized and fielding 4x the number of players that your server has available.

insanemaniac.2456:

yes.

i like random, but i never want to see those stupid low rank pvp finishers ever.

Blood for the Bunny God!

Kasteros.9847:

Flyphish.6398:

Blob fighting is casual. Only when group size is reduced to 5, does this game become competitive. Even then it’s a bit spammy. Just because you spend a lot of time at a casual activity, does not change the nature of the “game mode”. So yes, casuals.

And, your community is tiny, tiny, tiny compared to the other sanctioned modes. Reality is a tough pill to swallow sometimes, but I do encourage some perspective.

Blob fighting with 5 ppl? U are joking right? Tell me you are joking please! Or show proof of 5 ppl wiping blob in open field I bet u didn’t run with a guild against blob or u did but gaianst eotm train

Yes it is tiny when we compare it with all pve casuals, but w8…there will always be much more casuals than hc players

Does 6 vs 22 count?

kagak.4230:

stab was initially reworked for balancing in PVP in my opinion and it did need to change this is not being said that stacking stability duration in the previous sense meant that you were a bad player. I would simply say that it was the path of least resistance just as now you see a large increase in range classes a.k.a. “pirate ship” because with the new “stab balance” this now has become the path of least resistance. I cannot say that I’m particularly fond of the current stab change but it is necessary to alter it from its previous state for PvP and WvW. as can be seen again and again normally in gw2 balancing is done on the PVP and not the WvW side.

what this guy said. The Stab change was not for WvW, it wasn’t done as a balancing for Anet’s precious esports, PvP. It was probably done so that three people could actually nuke down/CC lock a cele shoutbow warrior.

Stability never really chained the way that immobilize does. We still have guardians who are sequencing their stabilities. What people are having trouble adjusting to is the ranged meta. Melee classes are essentially shaking their butts at enemy casters in order to bait them into dropping AOE, and then they leap/dodge out of the bomb, and prepare to push as usual. Melee instead of pushing all the way through an enemy, are pushing in, and cleaving off a chunk of them to the side.

for a Front-line guardian or warrior,

You’ll want to have 2000+ power, between 2.8 and 3k armor,
~30% critical chance.

Here’s an example of a strong warrior build for World vs World:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNBiYDbkpjKPLDxzD6QDwFUY77AQXKkODChNA-TliFABKcBAM4BAsmuhqUCCwRAwIleEq+DVKDS4gAsy+DBAQAu5NzmtZwRP6RP6RPafXnHdnH9olCgJlRA-w

This build is not even min-maxed as well as it could be. I’ve seen warriors get 2900 power and 2950 armor at the same time.

the 3k armor will keep you alive long enough to dodge out of any damage that you’re taking. You will still have to dodge though. This isnt a T1 commander build where you can just wade into wells and laugh it off (3.7k armor what!?!), but the link is a good example of how warriors can be built

Quadox.7834:

Chaith.8256:

Ross Biddle.2367:

Chaith.8256:

Siva Mira.3546:

Before it was Pistol’s AA hits like wet noddle and Riffle wasn’t a thing. But it is all in the past now. So what is the excuse of this OP trait?

I think it should either:
1- Redesign it like they did with Dhuumfire.
2- The laziest way, Limit IP to Pistol only like how Glacial Heart works.
3- The boriest way, nerf the Trait and improve Pistol’s AA.

Well something you should consider is that a Rifle user’s IP does at most half as much damage over time as a Pistol user’s IP.

Chill of Death, Air, Fire, Incendiary Powder, Glacial Heart, Halting Strike, as much as many wish they weren’t, they’re all intended game mechanics.

Whoa whoa whoa, what’s wrong with Halting Strike? Requires narrowly timed skill to land, is limited to the number of interrupt skills the mesmer has, and is easily countered by stability (among other things). If there are tears being shed out there because of halting strike they’re purely tears of being outplayed.

Not sure why it was lumped in there with all those passives.

Please tell me more about how that Chaos Storm daze was timed or you planned on the illusions staggering the daze to interrupt subsequent casts. :o

Walk out of Chaos storm / dodge. Watch for shatter daze and don’t cast skills while the 3 clones are walking to you, like i do vs interrupt mesmer.

i was gonna say, mesmers absolutely space out their clones in order to stagger daze. Just because you’re spamming skills and get interrupted each time doesn’t mean that anything is wrong with halting strike.

You can’t count on the distortion clones to actually interrupt. Most of the time, they don’t. However, good mesmers will use *diversion to stack vulnerability on you, and the interrupt chain is just a fun bonus.

On the topic of IP, i really dont think it’s too strong of a trait. Especially in PvP, where you can’t run into 2000 condition damage Dire tanks.

Saturn.6591:

Hamster.4861:

Saturn.6591:

^ I dunno, but if you go for pack runes and thus stack less might, you will most likely need to build a bit less tanky in return, which means you lose out on survivability… if you want to keep your dmg on the same level, that is.

Or do I get that wrong? Has anyone done the math on this?

I Haven’t done the math, but i believe high fury up time will net you more damage than the +5% from having might, especially in WvW, where you can get might stacks quickly and easily, even in a 5 ele party.

Uhm, I mean in comparison to Hoelbrak. How would you think the difference in (theoretical) dps is if you are solo-roaming and fighting someone (be it NPC’s or another player)?

Hoelbrak procs much more might than Pack, and the additional might-duration sums up nicely. It actually adds 6 seconds to Might from blast-finishers and battle-sigil, which means the latter one procs again before the first two stacks from it run out.

There’s an old thread I’ve found from 6 months ago, but some things might have changed since then (for example battle-sigils). Also, he’s using Stone Splinters in the build with Pack-runes, while I’d probably go for Elemental Shielding (aside from a bit different stats overall, but the main factor probably are those 10% from having the trait or not): https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Hoelbrak-Strength-vs-Pack-analysis

I have both hoelbrak and Pack runes on different elementalists, mostly in roaming and 20v20. I’ve noticed that i have higher sustained damage with the Pack runes. I’m critical hitting more often, and my criticals HURT, and the swiftness is just freakin fabulous. I’ve run the pack with Staff, D/D and S/F. I like the pack runes the most for Staff and S/F.

On my hoelbrak set, i’ll say that the ele feels better, and you maintain very high Power. soft CC like cripple and chill falls off at a much more comfortable rate, especially with poultry leek soup. However, The bonus for might uptime on Hoelbrak and strength runes only applies to might that you apply to yourself, which makes this build favor D/D for ease of blasting. Most of the might that I had coming in with most of my fights was stacked for me by guardians, or 4 eles blasting a fire field with eruptions.

Either set is an excellent pick. They just play differently. I think that the swiftness+fury from pack runes is excellent, and if you’re going to build for dueling and small group play, the pack runes will really excel there, giving your party fury and swiftness.

IMO Pack runes are the best power armor rune for your $ at the moment.

Saturn.6591:

^ I dunno, but if you go for pack runes and thus stack less might, you will most likely need to build a bit less tanky in return, which means you lose out on survivability… if you want to keep your dmg on the same level, that is.

Or do I get that wrong? Has anyone done the math on this?

I Haven’t done the math, but i believe high fury up time will net you more damage than the +5% from having might, especially in WvW, where you can get might stacks quickly and easily, even in a 5 ele party.

Superior runes of the pack are great for the high fury uptime, and the swiftness. They’re also cheaper than hoelbrak/Strength runes, which is part of the reason they’re so highly recommended.

As for getting hit, of course you dont want to get hit, but it’s unavoidable a fair amount of the time. The swiftness helps you a lot to avoid getting hit in the future.

I nominate Meridia.

However vyx, it seems like you would need atleast one moderator in every tier in order to keep things actually in order. Alot of posts per day on gw2wvw.net, and it would be pretty difficult to maintain alone.

There are three variations of builds that I use for teef in WvW.

Like you, I’m a mediocre teef, but I’ve had success with any of these three builds:
S/D Panic Strike : 6/0/2/0/6:
Mug, Improvisation, Panic Strikes,
Cloaked in Shadow,
Thrill of the Crime, Bountiful theft, Sleight of Hand

D/P SA: 2/0/6/0/6
Mug
Shadow’s Embrace, Cloaked in Shadow, Shadow rejuvination
Thrill of the Crime, Bountiful Theft, and Sleight of Hand

S/D 2/0/0/6/6
Mug
Power of Inertia, Vigorous Recovery, Quick Pockets
Thrill of the Crime, Bountiful Theft, Sleight of Hand.

I’ve had to do a lot of fiddling to figure out what works for me armor wise. My experience tells me that running super tanky does not really help you as a teef. You need to evade almost everything. I’d recommend that you run berserker armor, with Runes of the Pack. Get some Cavalier Trinkets ( Toughness, Power, Ferocity) in order to keep you from getting 1shot. If you fiddle with the balance of Cavalier gear to zerker, you’ll be able to take some hits, while your auto attacks critical hit for 3k.

Of the three builds, I like the first one the most. It gives you incredible lockdown, and If you’re good at using CnD +Mug (steal) you can do a very good job of keeping stealth up. Blinding on entering stealth is a very valuable trait, and it will do an excellent job of keeping you alive in smaller fights.

For general Teefing, your fights should be like doing the hokey pokey, you steal in, auto attack once or twice, blink out, wait for another opportunity to go in for some more auto attacks, and blink out. (sword2)

Anyway, I’m hardly an expert on teef, but that’s the advice that helped me enjoy the class. I dont really have an excellent feel for the initiative regeneration. The best teefs get the groove of their initative gain/loss and they can make the class sing. There’s my $0.02

gavyne.6847:

The fact that you can double dodge out of most circles make it fairly balanced. Without them, there would be no way to hold a choke. I mean how exactly do you propose to stop or hinder a solid melee train?

The pirate ship meta is fun to play around in sometimes, it’s fun to joke about it, but truth is a solid melee train is still hard to stop. It’s even worse when a pirate ship meta raid goes up against 2 drivers with melee trains, coming at you from different locations. The red circles that really hurt you have timers & cooldowns, they aren’t up all the time. They’re also most effective when concentrated. But that’s part of the game, the whole timing thing, making your enemies burn their cooldowns, flanking tactics, know when to commit, etc..

It’s good to know there are some basics to WvW that separates players. If you aren’t on your toes and stand in the red stuff too long, you’ll pay for it. It’s really WvW 101, don’t stand in red circles…something new WvW players learn quickly.

Very much this.

Picking when you engage with your melee is extremely important. Its become more and more important to bait out enemy wells and meteor showers. Pirate ship style fighting is about focusing your damage in a tight area to secure kills.

It’s also a test of agility for your commander, and the frontline. Even though damage has been moved to the range pressure, the frontline are still an important part of balancing your boons and conditions, and securing stomps.

Ahh, that’s a bug with the “floor”. The Tooth animation appears at X height above ground.

Tooth does like to go inside hills, structures and other stuff before it hits.

IMO,

Fresh Air builds are good for 1v1s, small scale group combat. They are not nearly as good for conquest, or bunkering a point.

I dont think that they are survivable enough to become the meta for elementalist.

However, people get bored of Celestial or Knights D/D, and want a change which is a bit more balls to the wall, and Fresh air S/X is a LOT of fun once you master the burst combos.

You missed the field with the tooth. Among blast finishers, the tooth is pretty hard to land, compared to most of the others.

DarkSyze.8627:

Stephen ClarkeWillson.1802:

Yup, it’s bad for EU tier 1 Eternal Battlegrounds right now. The cool thing I just discovered is another perf counter that correlates better with the lag than total CPU. Y’all in a big fight right now? I guess if you are you’re not posting to the forums.

Giving us player update is not solution! Will Arena net fix the lag? Yes? or No?

“Communication without result is not communicating at all”

calm down bro, let the man work. your “quote” is just utter bullkitten. It’s not like he can snap his fingers and Poof goes the lag. He’s communicating just fine.

I like this guy too.

Do your thing man, work hard work fast. Thank you for taking the time on the weekend to do this =D

For WvW, It’s quite fun to run a 0/6/0/6/2 build with staff

Running: Bolt to the Heart, Air Training, Lightning Rod
Cantrip Mastery Soothing Disruption, Cleansing Water
Blasting Staff

For armors/trinkets, run as much celestial/knights as you need to stay alive. Do try to keep your power above 2200. I personally run Zeker everything except for pants and chest armors, which are celestial.

ArchonWing.9480:

GWEN still works? I thought it was about range crapping these days.

yes, GWEN still works.

The change is that you’ve inverted the ratio of the GW to the EN it used to be 60/40 and now there’s more backline and periphery than melee train.

Bomb kit is very strong for melee support, but as XTD said, you need to be very good with engineer to survive in the frontline. Here’s an example of a frontline engineer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHHTeP_Xh68

I’ve used engineers as a “water field” for blasting – it’s very difficult to make other players blast the field. You typically would need to have the engineer countdown in TS, and after he says “water” he has to wait 1/2 a second and then cast the spell in order for other players to have a chance to blast the field.

Engineers are great for AOEing downed enemies, applying Poison to the downed in order to prevent Warbanners from resing enemies.

The main reason they’re not meta is because it’s not simple to play an engineer, and they’re difficult to survive with against large numbers.

If you dont want to make Celestial armors, here is an alternative:

This Ele: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-hYOiAUiFw

his build: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fFEQJAoYlcMozhVOwwBMsNwDgQ+XsdiCUuaynA-T1yHABCpERM9AOpEsHlGEqSwQKjG4EAsnqC+pGDAPAAR2fIAACwNbzAYoDdoDdoDtbezbuclrcSBwkyI-w

I’ve dueled with serane, and he was tough as nails to kill. Even some of my acquaintances that consider themselves to be experts at killing D/D eles had an immense amount of trouble fighting him.

There’s already a thread about this…
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Can-see-through-walls-with-Postprocessing/first#post4938669

Hey anet, Being a B52 is fun and all, but with post processing on, i can see through stuff that i shouldnt be able to see through. like walls. and cliffs. and such.

screenshot attached.

So you want to learn some Scepter Ele!

My advice will be for S/F. I’ve been running a zerker build S/F ele in WvW for roaming for a few hundred hours so i’ll try to give you the rundown on Scepter/Focus versus other players.

First, lets take a look at what you have for the S and the F.

Scepter:

Fire – Massive Aoe damage (tooth, phoenix)
Air – Single target damage, blind
Water – little regen, auto attack hits deceptively hard.
earth – condition pressure, toughness + small hits, blind

Focus:
Fire – ground target burning, fire shield
Air -Projectile Destruction, Knockdown
Water – Chill, Interrupt
Earth – Condition Clear, reflect, Invulnerability

For fighting other players, I run a Fresh Air build. Every time I critically hit, I refresh Air Attunement. With mostly zerker armor, this happens pretty often. I also carry two arcane skills (shield and wave) as utilities in order to force an air attunement refresh.

I’ll typically start with the air burst (Lightning strike, blinding flash, arc lightning) and wait until my opponent counters. The arc lightning channel is very strong. Like rapid fire, it will track an enemy if the channel started before the stealth.

Your arc lightning is channelling, and you’re watching your opponent. If they try to counter with ranged pressure, you can use your swirling winds, or attune to earth for reflect. If you rotate into an attunement like earth for the magnetic wave, put up your rock barrier while you reflect. Be ready to use your Obsidian flesh. Many players will instantly swap/cancel their ranged pressure when they realize they’re being reflected. Use Hurl from your Rock barrier. This will probably refresh your Air Attunement.

Now, you’re ready to burst. Pop obsidian flesh (earth 5), rotate to fire, Line up your Phoenix, with the ground target slightly BEHIND your enemy. Ideally, they are in the AoE ring, but with the majority of the ground target on the opposite side of your enemy from you. This is because your Phoenix travels from you, to the target and back. The Phoenix can hit your enemy on it’s way to the location, at the location, and coming back from the location to you. Now comes the tricky bit. This is also your 1 shot kill.

Phoenix is channeling, you have 1/4 of a second to:

Lightning flash (cantrip) to your target
Air Attunement (there’s a lightning strike from being traited all the way into Air)
Lightning Strike
Blinding Flash
Arcane Wave/Bolt

Phoenix Impacts (3x)
GG.

OKAY. So there’s one way to open and execute a burst. What about when you get initiated on?

I spend most of my time in Air attunement. When I get initiated on, I’ll immediately dodge (if possible) acquire the target, and blind them. IF i must, i’ll pop arcane shield, rotate to earth, put up rock barrier, and send ANOTHER blind at them with the dust devil. If by luck, your enemy dodges the exploding arcane shield, throw Hurl at them to ensure your air attunment is ready to be activated. At this point, you’re very low, if not almost dead. Use obsidian flesh, and rotate to fire and do your best to phoenix. It can be effective to phoenix behind you when you’re running away, or you and your enemy are rolling past each other to stay out of melee cleave. If your phoenix lands, immediately follow up with an Air burst, in order to keep up the pressure. If your phoenix does not land, throw out a Dragon Tooth, and run under it. Greedy, 2 spamming punks cough thieves will die to the tooth like this. If you have time, put the flame wall underneath it as well, so that you can get some might out of the blast finisher on the Dragon Tooth.

After your Fire -> Air burst, rotate to water. This is basically all that you have left. Use your Chill, and Comet, and then your remaining arcane utility, wave or bolt. Air burst again, channel Arc Lightning.

If you’ve done all this and your enemy is still alive, you need to kite until your magnetic wave and Rock Barrier/Hurl are back up.

I’ll leave you two links, One is a combo guide that I used to help teach myself how to execute these combos, and the other is some of my own S/F roaming with a small team.

(Zoose S/F guide) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXjGXYXSwek

(S/F roaming, relevant clips stop at 8 min. I’m using a 0/6/0/4/4 build, which is WAY less YOLO than Mallex) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD4qR3PJFoA

The Mallex Montage is just epic, so I’ll link that here too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4xpjcPSDWQ

The old school document that teaches commanding is here:

guildwars2.ro/Ghid-WvW.pdf

The more combat-oriented guide is here:

http://www.tinyurl.com/WvW-Combat-and-Tactics-doc

With the stability change, and expansion soon to be, the meta is shifting a bit. Your group comp will depend on what kind of numbers you’re trying to fight. For a long time WvW has been about Melee, and the stab change is making it very hard to hammer train like we used to.

However, I’ve grown fond of: 6 guardians, 3 warriors, 4 eles, 6 necros, 1 thief, and 2 mesmers for outnumbered fighting. Have your guards running Hammer/Staff to have access to all the lines/rings of warding that you can get.

third post about TC exploiting like this in a few weeks. They must be getting rekt.

Zefrost.3425:

So, I already explained how a few people wouldn’t be able to do that alone. (NPCs, new trap, ballista/cannons/player CC, etc.)

If stealth is an issue for avoiding NPC archer fire: Cannot stealth using gliders.
Easy fix.

besides the fact that you are already over the wall and in the tower.

If you had proofed your idea against abuse already, i’d consider it, but gliders are definitely not going to be a part of WvW when there are height advantages that will take you clear over/through fortifications. We already don’t have enough players to camp in our towers without having to worry about them being soloed by someone who glides into the kitten thing.

a ballista shot at a glider should KILL the glider pilot, even if falling damage does most of the work.

IoJ has a very vibrant roaming community.

zedixa.4063:

In even-numbered fights, the stab changes don’t mean much, so I have no complaint there.

However, the stab changes do make it ALOT more difficult to win outnumbered fights, for example 25v50. Now, zerg busting is not totally impossible anymore, but with the stab changes, it does put to rest the old meta of the melee train taking big chunks out of the blob whenever you had stability uptime, and for that 5s the frontline was unable to be touched by anything, because stability was not in stacks, esentially the frontline could go balls deep in a blob, do some damage, and get out before stability ran out.

Now, all your stab stacks are gone alot faster, since when your fighting outnumbered, the other side can put out A LOT of just random ccs, and it litters the ground everywhere, and all it takes is a few of them to mitigate your stab completely. What does this mean? The new meta will now revolve around solely range players, range poking each other, forcing the enemy to pop and waste stab, then engaging when the opportunity is right.

I am not QQing about the change, but I do agree it makes playing melee train in outnumbered fights a living hell and forces guilds to use a very stale and boring meta of just simple range poking for 10 years until one side dies, and when your outnumbered obviously the opposing side will have more CCs then you, so it’s only a matter of time before you die to attrition.

This game is slowly being catered more and more to the casual player, while punishing players that want a challenge and to play it more competitively.(As far as WvW goes)

If all the good guilds were still around that recently quit the game for reasons, then you’d see them all developing a meta to revolve around the stab changes and attempt to punish opposing sides for it, and the meta would be an extremely stale and rely very heavily on you winning the engages and get all the cc pressure before the other side.

Basically, one push or get one pushed is the name of the game now, so you remember those 5 minute long outnumbered fights that were extremely hype and required you to be constantly on your toes and stay engaged in the fight for a long time? Yeah those are gone now, because if you try and stay engaged in a outnumbered fight for too long, your going to die to attrition no matter what.

Just my 2 cents.

+5 well said.

This sounds more like a critique of your commander than anything else.

To be honest, there are many commanders on a variety of servers who do nothing but hunt down enemy zergs in order to fight them.

In my experience, most of the problem is that there are not enough veteran commanders who know how to lead people into battle effectively. By effectively, I mean they know how to engage an enemy in the field, and come out alive with most of their players.

There are PLENTY of commanders who know how to siege structures, how to map politick, and how to keep a karma train/ solid PPT going.

They’re two different sides of WvW. One is about “winning” and the other is about fun.

That will tend to happen when your server buys up the community of another server =P

Welcome to the Isle of Aspenwood.

another top guild bites the dust!

Thanks for all the fun videos Re! We’ll miss you.