Guild Wars 2

EDIT: Just saw that there was already a thread on this on. Sorry! Feel free to close this one / merge with the other thread.

I’ve heard tell of JQ, SoS and BG commanders talking to one another and agreeing to move their zergs in a specific way. I don’t know how they know each other is commanding, but the results are obvious: the zergs cap around one another, constantly exchanging possessions.

So far karma training has been the only effect, but one day commanders might agree to 2v1 another server. Perpetual karma training is also extremely boring. The experience is nowhere like WvW at its best, and (in the case of JQ and SoS anyway) the weaker server basically agrees that it will give up playing in return for the rewards – so much for recruitment threads that declare that their server will never give up! There’s nothing that any individual player can do about it. It can be especially sad when playing for a low-population server because the only map with enough players to actually do something with may be the karma train map.

I think interserver communication highly unethical, not to mention unfair. I presume the developers are against it, which is why there’s no map-wide chat which can be read by the other server(s), but unfortunately there’s no way to ban whispers. What do other players think?

Don’t have time to write a full essay, but something brief [EDIT: Lol this turned out to be quite long] …

First thing to do when you tag up is to be aware of the situation on the map. Which towers / keeps / SM are upgraded? Which are defended with siege, and if so, how many? This is important because upgraded possessions are (of course) more easily defended, and a few ACs go a long way towards holding off a larger enemy group.

The next question that needs to be immediately answered is: is there an enemy zerg on the map, and if so, can your zerg take them on? In some matchups you can assume that there is not just an enemy zerg on the map, but that it is more powerful than yours (e.g. if you’re SoS fighting JQ, you can pretty much assume that there is a JQ zerg on the map and it will annihilate yours in open combat). In others it is more even. If you + your teammates don’t know whose zerg is more powerful, you can risk an open field battle to find out.

Next: if your zerg is more powerful, then you should take the offense. It depends on how cruel you want to be. If you’re really playing to win (and at the cost of the lesser server feeling agrieved) then hunt down the enemy zerg and keep killing them, until they all rage quit the map, when you can take everything with impunity. Take possessions whenever you can, but prioritize killing the enemy. If you aren’t that cruel, then prioritize taking possessions, and killing the enemy zerg if they’re foolhardy enough to run into you.

If your zerg is less powerful than the enemy zerg, then you need to be more defensive. Avoid the enemy zerg at all costs. Select some core possessions on the map and prioritize holding them; anything else is a bonus. An example would be the home Garrison on your BL, or home keep on EB (of course if you already hold towers / keeps on the map, your priorities may differ). If you manage to take it, then stop offensive action and siege it up + upgrade it. Once that’s done you can move on to the next most important target (Cliff + Sunny on home BL, Veloka / Langlor / Jerri’s on EB). If the enemy zerg comes – and they will, since they’re stronger – you want to fight defensively from one of these sieged possessions. This doesn’t mean you’ll win, but you can hopefully hold and make progress on the map. If all else fails, change maps; this is basically an extension of “avoid the enemy zerg”.

Finally: talk to your teammates. Give them constructive advice, such as asking for numbers from a scouting report. Reminders such as to place water fields and reflects against ACs are helpful as well. Tell your teammates what you’re planning, for example if you’ve taken Umber and intend to move to Dan, say so on map chat. Teamspeak is great, but not everyone is on Teamspeak, and it helps to know what the commander is intending to do. If someone talks to you on map chat, try to respond. This gives your teammates confidence in you. If you lose their confidence, don’t expect people to follow your lead.

Have fun.

1. Skill lag;
2. Lack of rewards for doing essential things like scouting, running supply to build siege, etc;
3. Making skill > money in the format (number of players of course matters more, but that’s not easily controlled). Skill should be a prime factor, but right now things like food, superior siege weapons and the money required for upgrades matter a lot as well. I personally would just remove all these money-oriented advantages.

If you don’t mind me saying a 4th thing, more balanced populations across servers would be helpful. I’m not sure how to implement that, however.

Well I transferred to Blackgate looking for more competitive WvW. First I go to Eternal Battlegrounds to see that we’re #1 outnumbered, #2 no commander on the map, and #3 no keep with waypoint on any of the four maps (even TC have two). There was also #4 no siege in any of our keeps and towers. I flipped a couple of camps and sentries and with nothing else to do started running supply to build Burning Oil, escorting yaks, etc. Throughout all the time I spent on the map, nobody said anything, no “JQ zerg at Lang” or “let’s push to Speldan”, even though JQ and TC were going at each other.

Then I switched maps to BG BL, where there was a commander. Before I got out of the spawn area I noticed a 30-man JQ zerg taking Hills, so I call it; the response is “seriously leave the tower” and “I’m in contact with JQ”. Lol! Talk about karma training!

I know it’s reset night and there’s no way BG will make up the 70k point deficit this week, but I must say so far I’ve been awfully disappointed. It feels like playing for SoS, except with more players.

I’m looking for a new server to play for and will probably move to a T1 server … so a question: what do you think are SoR’s relative strengths compared to Blackgate? I’ve also not played against Blackgate and not played for Blackgate for a year as well, so I don’t know what it’s like, but the recruitment thread’s cited:

1) Enough of a population to defend EBG and home borderlands during off-peak hours;
2) Strong community (vague though – don’t know what is meant by “strong”);
3) Dedicated commanders that don’t tag down until a replacement is available;
4) (Many?) players who are happy to do things that earn them no rewards but are invaluable to the server, such as refresh siege, speed up Yaks, scout enemy zergs, etc;
5) Relatively little queue times, but there’s always something to do;
6) Strong PvE community that among others was the first to kill Teq.

Compared to BG, what does SoR do well?

Apologies for asking such a difficult question as well – but with transfers costing so much money, I need to be confident I’m making the right choice. Sorry!

Jubelum.3472:

There’s obviously a little more to it than just sieging a lord’s room, in most defenses you are undermanned as almost no one ever assaults you with equal or inferior numbers. The real math of a solid defense is done with the individual defenders and the coordination of their commanders. If you have 30 uplevels defending against 50, you’re going to lose, if you have 30 well geared/specced seasoned WVWers in voice comm with their experienced and knowledgeable commander, your odds significantly improve. After awhile of being on a server it becomes clear which kind of WvWers are most prominent, this is why guilds move to different servers most of the time.

Well if we had more time, I would’ve sieged up both inner gates as well. Unfortunately, we didn’t.

30 uplevels should be able to defend against 50 if they had the time to prepare … how would you take a keep that’s defended by 15 ACs and a couple of Trebs + Catapults, even if you had a 50-to-30 numbers advantage + level advantage?

Jubelum.3472:

Jeydra.4386:

If one day I buy a commander tag of my own, I’ll probably become one of the most defensive commanders ever … after taking SM, I’d immediately lay down 10 ACs and Ballistas, covering both inner gates, running supply from Overlook, Pang and Speldan to do it.

Well if you did that then you’d be acting like an SoR commander, and servers like SoS would troll you and say you can only win by blobbing.

Screw what servers like SoS think to hell and back. Do whatever wins the game.

As one of the most defensive commanders on SBI, I can tell you it is not as easy as it sounds. We’ve had completely sieged towers fall to the sheer number of SOR’s forces. They will push in, wipe your eleventy billion pieces of siege, then proceed to eat you for breakfast.
It can be fun to hold/farm them as long as possible, but yah…

Last week during the TC / SoS / DB matchup, there was a brief period when SoS held SM. There was again no siege in SM at all, but for whatever reason, although there were active TC and DB zergs on the map and trebs had punched wholes in SM outer wall, neither attempted to take SM immediately. I placed some siege down in the Lord room, asked on map chat for people to help build them, and ran supply from Umber. I completed two runs before SM came under assault, but by then we had something like 6 ACs and 4 Ballistae in the Lord room, and the commander decided it was worth trying to defend SM.

So we turtled in the Lord room while TC broke down the inner gates. We waited, waited, waited some more, and then suddenly both DB and TC rush in at the same time. With the siege placed we might have been able to fight off one server, but not both at the same time. Afterwards our commander decided it was time to go to bed, and the map depopulated until we were outmanned.

But at least we tried … and that’s the whole point, no?

Is it fair to say that BG vs. JQ vs. SoR is essentially aggressive play during NA timezones and then defensive play during every other timezone? Are there enough players even during these other timezones to defend with? And is it fair to say that a 3-way match between the three servers is a case of “whoever plays better that week wins”?

Also does BG have collective “donate your siege blueprints to the commanders” movements?

Man WvW can be so depressing. I log on after taking a 3-hour break to see that SoS not only held all the towers on our side of the map but also Stonemist Castle. To top it off all of them, including SM, were either upgrading or upgraded. Good job to whoever was commanding and the players that did it!

Then in just a few minutes all their hard work becomes undone. SM was upgrading, but there was zero siege in the castle. When SoR comes to retake it we don’t even bother to defend it and just lose it. The same went for Mendon’s. In just a few minutes, everything our teammates had spent the past few hours working for vanishes into smoke.

Imagine how the people who advanced SoS’s position so much must feel. If we lose SM to a 70-man SoR zerg with 10 omega golems that rolled over 20 SoS defenders, fair enough and it can’t be helped. At least we tried. But we lost SM and Mendon’s with nary a shot being fired in defense. If we’re going to lose those possessions that someone else had put in so much effort into taking and $$ into upgrading, can’t we lose them in a blaze of glory rather than in a muffled whimper?

If one day I buy a commander tag of my own, I’ll probably become one of the most defensive commanders ever … after taking SM, I’d immediately lay down 10 ACs and Ballistas, covering both inner gates, running supply from Overlook, Pang and Speldan to do it.

Fannwong.3059:

To the SOS Commander and troops of Overlook in EB, I have nothing but the sincerest respect for you. The battle for Overlook that stretched 2 hours ending at 1130pm (GMT+8) was really tough. The tenacity and the never say die attitude of SOS soldiers are awesome. You guys never ever gave up and for that we salute you.

FW

Not sure if we actually had a commander lol – there was a period when we had no commander, just several vocal people yelling things on mapchat.

As a whole SoS are doing better than we did against JQ. In the past few hours we witnessed SoR zerg overpowering SBI and seizing everything in their corner of the map – in that sense while we made no progress in terms of possessions, holding Overlook and getting it upgraded was a decent achievement itself. If we had a defensively-minded commander we could have not just defended Veloka and Overlook, but also defended and upgraded Anz, Mendons and Ogrewatch, such that when Luvpie logged on later he would have a lot more room to work with.

Props to the people who spend all their time doing essential things like scout for zergs, refreshing siege and running supply. They get no reward, but they’re crucial in us advancing our map position.

Tell me honestly, can BG realistically beat SoR and JQ?

SBI have improved tremendously. They had a small ops team flipping SoS’s towers and camps while a full SoR zerg was trying to take their T3 Valley – that speaks volumes of SBI’s new-found confidence. I like it. SoS has also improved some … I saw other players selflessly place down siege, run supply and get defenses up instead of karma training. It paid off too: after SoR failed to take Valley they came around and knocked on OL, but the siege we placed in advance ensured that we held it. I never saw anything remotely close to this the when we played JQ.

Good job SoS – we’re going lose to SoR and perhaps even SBI, but at least we’re playing to win now.

scootshoot.6583:

renmei.3102:

Jeydra.4386:

How are you going to compete against JQ then?

shrug SOR has always been the smallest of the 3 T1 servers population-wise. We are the least 1st place finishing and the most stable T1 server with no real server booms or implosions/drama. We don’t get too many bandwagoners (thankfully, they’re mostly PPT stomping bait) and no major wvw guilds transferring off.

Well put. SOR is the most stable amongst BG and JQ. As an example, SOR’s recruitment thread “Meet Sanctum of Ralls army”. SOR doesn’t hide the fact we have the least coverage of the 3 so people who transfer in know exactly what they in for, underdog role and lots of fights.

Blackgate recruitment post on the other hand states, “Blackgate, ranked tier 1 in North American WvW,”, so the bandwagoners go to that server for that specific goal but I’ll tell you what, when BG can’t meet those claims for weeks on end is when the in fighting and drama starts from the new transfers which can quickly spread.

Regardless you still have the least coverage. JQ literally annihilated SoS. It got to the point where most SoS players didn’t even bother trying to make progress on the map; they just wanted to avoid JQ’s zerg while maintaining a decent cap rate. SoR may be winning, but the margin isn’t anywhere near what JQ did to us. Are you saying that BG is more likely than SoR to beat JQ … ?

Peetee.9406:

Jeydra.4386:

Such a strange game … I was just on EB and there’s no SoR + SBI zerg on map, even though all towers are upgraded. Makes no sense. It’s almost as though SoR doesn’t want to roll over SoS and SBI the way JQ did.

We don’t have nearly the amount of players that JQ has. Most of our commanders hate that map and will only show up to defend.

How are you going to compete against JQ then?

Yes but JQ had zergs on every map, practically all the time. SoR’s supposed to be one of the 3 best servers in North America. If SoR can’t field zergs on every map, how are they going to fight JQ? Skill and tactics and manoeuvre are great and all that, but numbers still matter a lot.

Such a strange game … I was just on EB and there’s no SoR + SBI zerg on map, even though all towers are upgraded. Makes no sense. It’s almost as though SoR doesn’t want to roll over SoS and SBI the way JQ did.

Nickthemoonwolf.1485:

Jeydra.4386:

Lol can immediately see the difference between fighting TC and fighting JQ.

TC zerg inc with 4 golems against paper keep: get inside keep, build ACs.
JQ zerg inc with 4 golems against paper keep: it’s OK, we’ll recap it later.

Keep up the fighting spirit SoS!

Because chances are that the TC zerg is on average 10-25 people smaller.

Yes but the number of SoS players on the map in both cases were correspondingly different – when TC zerg came, we had just gotten off outmanned; when JQ zerg came, we had maybe 60+ players on the map. It’s a mentality issue, really.

Lol can immediately see the difference between fighting TC and fighting JQ.

TC zerg inc with 4 golems against paper keep: get inside keep, build ACs.
JQ zerg inc with 4 golems against paper keep: it’s OK, we’ll recap it later.

Keep up the fighting spirit SoS!

How competitive are you guys? For comparison, JQ weren’t very competitive when they rolled SoS last week: they weren’t actively hunting down our numerically inferior zergs and wiping us. How often do Blackgate’s commanders make choices that are aimed at maximizing the score count, and how often are they made for some other reason?

Wish there were a way to see what the WvW on BG is like before transferring

Asuna you’re one of SoS’s commanders whom I’ll immediately join if I see are commanding.

Rooster, OK … next time we meet in WvW, we’ll be wearing different colours. Good luck.

Rooster as I said before give me the 100g and preferably a few hundred of each siege blueprint and I’ll command. I’ve already had people follow me even though I don’t have a commander tag, idk.

You’re free to do whatever you want if you’re commanding. It’s your command after all. But don’t complain if I don’t join your zerg / don’t follow your commands / switch maps.

As for maintaining positive attitude, I’ve seen plenty of chat with some variation of “wow anet is kittened how did we get this match up” or “that’s it I’m quitting wvw this is no fun” or “hands up which one of you is a JQ spy”. Meh.

aceai I was playing maybe 5 hours ago from the time I make this post? I log on during irregular intervals throughout the day as well, and generally do not see Overlook (or any other tower / keep, for that matter) being defended. Sometimes there’s good reason – the JQ zerg on the map is more than twice the size of our own zerg, so we don’t have the time to even take Overlook. Other times we’re just running around the map trading towers and making no effort to defend them.

I increasingly think I should switch servers. SoS and I just aren’t compatible. It’ll cost more than half the price required to buy my own commander tag, but so what … BG, JQ or SoR, pick one?

By “not giving their all” I mean things like some people don’t want to defend because they want to level their characters (so trading towers and keeps is good for them, and they want to maintain the ring-around-the-roses game), while other people don’t want to drop siege because what’s the point anyway? It’s not that they don’t have supply. When I drop siege, it gets built quickly.

I wonder how many times JQ actually faced a SoS tower / keep defended with siege weapons this week. Presumably never … even when we have a zerg 80% the size of JQ zerg defending a keep, the commander wants to stack and fight instead of build ACs. SoS aren’t playing to win.

Chris.3290:

^ Really busting people’s chops on a Friday afternoon? It’d be nice if we could close the gap a little more with FA but the JQ factor in this match has things scrambled.

We’ll have our game faces on for tonight and be ready to roll.

Good luck to JQ (may you not leave a T1 matchup for a long time LOL) and to FA.

Yes and that’s why we have a problem. You and some other players in SoS aren’t interested in winning. That’s fine if it’s the majority desire. I’m interested in winning however. I feel that even though SoS has no chance of beating JQ (JQ has way too big a numbers advantage) we don’t have to lose by this big a margin. Since our aims are different I’m not compatible with SoS.

Maybe I really should swap servers.

I’m close to giving up on my server … they don’t want to play, they just want to karma train. Even when the number of players we have isn’t that much less than JQ zerg, such that we can do something like hold Overlook and actually make some progress on the map, even with FA within 3k points for #2 with some 4+ hours still to play for, they would rather just play ring-around-the-roses with JQ and keep trading towers.

SoS “will fight as hard or harder over the next two weeks as we fought the last two”? More like SoS will just give up. If it weren’t for the transfer fee I’d probably already have switched servers.

Well clearly I’ll be using the Greatsword most / all of the time when I’m in a zerg, so the second weaponset should patch up the weak points of the Greatsword: mainly the 1v1 part.

I actually have no problems with running full Berserker in a zerg because I don’t usually get sniped out (part of the result of levelling my Mesmer from level 2 to level 80, I guess). If I die in a zerg vs. zerg, usually it means all my teammates are dying also. However I’m still cautious about going full glass cannon because I still want to be able to escape from 1v1s that I can’t win. As I wrote, I don’t have to win, I just have to not die. I can’t give up on “not die” however, because it was extremely annoying when I was levelling to be sniped out before I can get to the zerg. Practically anything kills a level 10 Mesmer in WvW.

Interesting build choices Helios. Thanks. I’ll try it out.

Some time ago I made the choice to play Mesmer in WvW, and have been using only her since. She’s level 80 now though, and I need to decide on a build.

I typically join zergs in WvW, although I do roam a bit as well. It’s my opinion that in zergs the most important thing is spike damage since that’s how kills are scored: see someone overextended, and spike him. Because of that the best weapon in my opinion is Greatsword. The GS Phantasm applies Cripple to, making it harder for the overextended person to retreat, and to top it off the autoattack is instant. Other weapons like Staff may output more AoE damage or be stronger in a 1v1, but trying to kill with a staff in a zerg is an awfully painful experience. The damage just doesn’t get to its targets fast enough.

I’m aware that Greatsword isn’t one of the better weapons for duelling and as a result I’ll usually lose 1v1s. That’s fine – I actually feel that many of the videos posted of Mesmers winning 1v1s or 1v2s are largely irrelevant because they take so long to score kills. A 5-minute duel for example is more than enough time for help to arrive for either side, when it doesn’t matter what build either is running. Even a 2-minute duel is too long. I’d rather move around the map and achieve something tangible. I wrote earlier that I roam a bit, and that’s true, but even when roaming I will avoid 1v1s and move instead for camps / dolyaks / sentries / bloodlust.

While I don’t prioritize 1v1s, I do think it’s important to be able to escape a 1v1. If another player wants to fight and I obviously cannot win, I want to be able to run away. On the same note I preferably don’t want to die to Thieves, who are in my opinion an extremely annoying class and for obvious reasons quite common as roamers. I don’t need to be able to kill them. I just need to be able to not die to them, at least for long enough that I can reach the nearest ally.

I have no qualms doing things like changing equipment while out of combat, so if I do use Focus in one of the two weaponsets it’s for Swiftness within combat and the projectile reflects (while out of combat I’ll always equip the Focus for Swiftness, then change back – I haven’t been caught with only the offhand equipped yet). Same applies to Runes of the Traveler or Runes of the Air, etc. If I use them it’s for their effects within combat, not outside of it. Also price isn’t an issue; I don’t mind saving for equipment.

Finally I use my Mesmer for WvW only and never use her for dungeons / PvE / Fractals etc. Any build I use need not translate well also into PvE.

So considering my requirements, how should I build my Mesmer? The only certainties I’m seeing are that GS will be one of the two weapons, and Blink is necessary as one of the utilities. I’m not sure about traits, although I presume GS training will be important. I find I barely ever use the Shatters; the illusions I spawn are just too valuable. I’ve not tried the Mantra playstyle yet, although for the spike damage Mantra of Pain might be good (is it?).

Suggestions?

SoS makes no sense. First, we go storm FA Valley and break water gate. Then after JQ interrupts us, we retreat to base and build a ton of golems while JQ picks up where we left off. Then we try to golem rush SM while JQ is fighting FA. Before we get SM front door JQ takes Valley, and the entire JQ zerg shows up to stop us.

“Oh my God we have a spy on our server”
“Hands up which one of you is being paid by JQ to spy on us?”"
“What do you think it’s JQ they paid guilds to jump to their server”

I wonder if the people saying these things ever considered the possibility that if they were the JQ commander with a 60-man zerg, with nothing else to cap on the map the obvious target is Overlook? The rush would work if FA held out longer, but ironically we were the ones that went and exhausted FA’s supplies.

Meh, so much easier to claim conspiracy theories than to admit we were outplayed.

nomdeplums.5780:

So why is SoS always so insistent on establishing a 2v1? I’m skeptical that would even work at this point given how many guilds have joined the all-expense-paid bandwagon to JQ.

And I can’t speak for FA (although many will express the same sentiment), but me having fun in WvW isn’t something that’s conditional on accomplishing even the slightest thing in regards to PPT or score.

It’s great fun to play against players better than myself. It’s also great fun to play at a slight numbers disadvantage. However it’s no fun getting choked by superior numbers to the point that I’m always running away. At the moment often SoS can barely move, and when we do, the JQ army comes straight down on our heads. By joining forces with FA, we hopefully double our player count and can compete better with JQ. It’s better for both of us and arguably even for JQ, since they’ll have more of a game to play.

I’m going to abide by the two points I listed, plus this one: given equal choice, I’ll choose to take JQ possessions instead of FA’s. It may not mean much, especially since I’m not a commander, but it’s a start.

Hey FA!

We’re both getting stomped here. How about we form a treaty to resist the evil JQ empire? I propose we agree to:

1) Not attack each others’ players unless attacked first;
2) Not take each others’ possessions. Exceptions apply to our respective sides of EB + SM, and to everything on our respective borderlands. So for example if JQ is holding SoS Garri, FA can take it, but SoS can take it back. On the other hand if FA is holding JQ Garri, SoS agrees not to attack it.
3) Given equal choice, we choose to take JQ possessions first before each others’.

Of course not everyone on the server would agree to such an agreement and some may not even be aware of it, but for those who agree … it’s a start.

In?

bendog.9416:

Seriously??……do really think SOS have the numbers, organised or not, to combat the obscene amount of kittens JQ have……..that pic proves two fifths of kitten all in regards to defending etc…..it’s all about numbers…..don’t delude yourself.

JQ players are really good at knowing when to split and when to group up. SoS can’t hold JQ even if there are equal numbers on the same map.

It’s still fun playing against JQ though. Fighting JQ’s constant roaming makes WvW a completely different experience.

Reply to NotInTheFace

I’m not saying grouping up is bad. It certainly has its purposes. But there’s a time to group up and a time to split up. You group up when you need to fight another zerg, when there’s a key point you need to defend (like SM), when you’re assaulting a Keep, etc. But using an 80-man zerg to cap supply camps is silly. Sure the 80-man zerg can blow down the guards defending a supply camp in a second, but they still take the same amount of time to actually flip it as a 5-man team, and (more importantly) they can only cap one camp at a time. The 80-man zerg still needs to take camps of course, but they should only do that in between taking towers and keeps – which they should have as their priority.

In the example you gave, TC certainly didn’t play very well because after the entire episode SoS ended up with more points than they did. But try to figure out what TC did wrong. I’ll tell you what I think: they tried to fight your zerg after the first couple of battles indicated they can’t win an open fight. That means they have two options:

1) Split up and outmaneuver your zerg. In a map with only supply camps, your 30-man zerg (I find it hard to believe than a 30-man zerg loses to a 20-man zerg in open combat) will be easily outcapped by 6 5-man zergs. With towers and keeps, they can still split two 5-man teams to flip camps, kill yaks and intercept any players heading towards your zerg while leaving a 20-man zerg to cap towers almost as fast as your zerg can. This does mean that their 20-man zerg has to avoid a confrontation with your 30-man zerg, but with good scouting it can be done.
2) Start defending their towers instead of fight on open ground. Siege weapons allow 10 players to hold off 30 for a long time.

In this case it sounds like TC had two zergs on the map, which opens up a third possibility:

3) Evade your zerg while keeping tabs on your location, while yelling at the other zerg to come help.

By getting wiped three times, TC was outplayed (more accurately, outcommandered). When we played against SoR a few weeks ago, they did #1 very well. We had a big zerg, they had all-thief gank squads that constantly kept us on the back foot, and the map was mostly theirs even if they probably had fewer numbers.

In the scenario at Mendon’s, 2 ACs would’ve been enough to defend it because DB had no siege. At the very least getting into Mendon’s would’ve forced them to drop their siege weapons.

tl; dr – there’s a time to split up and a time to group up. If you group up all the time, you will lose an equal numbers game against a server that both splits up and groups up (in fact I strongly suspect you’ll lose even if you had greater numbers).

From what I can see, TC has sufficiently large a numbers advantage that they’re going to win even with the best of commanders for SoS, but they don’t have to win by such a large margin. If you want me to tag up, send me 100g, and preferably a couple of hundred of each siege blueprint.

Sharpoon.8197:

Jeydra.4386:

This same commander’s idea of defending a tower against slightly superior numbers is to stack, rush out the portal, kill and get killed, rush back in, and stack again. If his zerg decreases in size, it’s his fault because he’s getting them killed.

This is standard practice in the T1-2 servers. If the numbers are relatively even (like in your example), it’s not the commanders fault if people die. Effective movement, skill usage and sticking close to the commander will help prevent death. Not being up-leveled and poorly geared helps as well

Apologies I wasn’t detailed enough. Yes stacking, running out, running back in, re-stack etc does work, but it’s a strategy that has its places. What happens is that both sides are going to take deaths, and hopefully since you’re fully stacked while they are not you kill more than they do.

It didn’t work this time because the tower we were defending (from TC) was Durios. The tower is in TC’s territory – barring a full wipe their numbers will be essentially limitless (it doesn’t help either that they held their keep and they had a waypoint in it), while ours will dwindle. The couple of times I did this with the commander we scored plenty of kills. But each time we did it, we left a few dead bodies outside that we can’t res. If we were defending Veloka, sure this kind of attrition strategy will work. With Durios, it makes far more sense to just build a few ACs, leave 10+ people to hold the tower, and then take the zerg to cap the rest of the map that TC aren’t defending. Either TC leaves Durios to hunt the zerg (and the people at Durios are ready-made eyes on the zerg), or they lose supply camps or maybe even towers. Those people defending at Durios have nothing to lose either. If worst comes to worst and it’s obvious they cannot hold the tower, they can just disengage just before the wall / gate falls, and map back to Overlook.

Stacking is certainly a powerful tool, but use it blindly and it’ll even be counterproductive. It’s something I notice TC uses way better than SoS. When TC zerg shows up with stacks, SoS gets wiped. When SoS zerg shows up with stacks, TC may suffer some deaths, but they still win overall.

If you give me 100g, sure.

Reply to NotInTheFace

If the commander was attacking Veloka (which I agree is more important to hold than Mendon’s) then why did he go to Mendon’s? If he had no supply (which is a perfectly valid reason not to help immediately), why didn’t he say so?

Also there are good reasons not to follow the commander. A good team raiding the other servers’ supply camps is an example. Hunting down dolyaks is another. And so on. There are things that are better done with a big zerg and others that are best done with only a few people. Also I’ll argue that me and the ~6 people who were in Mendon’s together made the right decision. I went to Mendon’s once the call went out on mapchat that there was a DB zerg attacking it. The commander either reacted slowly or chose to do something else first. The results are obvious: we got into Mendon’s and were in position to save it. The commander didn’t (or more accurately he did, but he got there late, and didn’t actually attempt to get into the tower).

SoS’s commanders aren’t inexperienced; I recognize many of the commanders and have seen them play for months. The problem is they’re subpar. I don’t want to name names, but some of the calls some commanders make just have no sense in them. A few more examples, I had one commander with a 50-man zerg wait 3 minutes outside a supply camp with RI. I had another commander yell for everyone to get on him and stack with the closest battle more than 20 seconds away. I followed his commands a couple of times, but once it became obvious he was wasting time I stopped. (This same commander’s idea of defending a tower against slightly superior numbers is to stack, rush out the portal, kill and get killed, rush back in, and stack again. If his zerg decreases in size, it’s his fault because he’s getting them killed.) I get the feeling that at least part of the reason people abandon the commander is because they have no faith in the commander’s calls. For example, I would switch maps or at least try to do something without the commander if the commander on whatever map I was in can’t be trusted. On the other hand if the commander is doing good work, I will travel across a hostile map to join his zerg. I play for the server, not to serve any individual commander.

PS: about SM I will choose to hold it. It’s more valuable than holding towers or keeps, and it’s not just because of points. Its location makes it especially strategic, and the simple fact that the server holds SM may entice players to join Eternal Battlegrounds. Difficult to hold, sure it is. Impossible though it is not, as TC are proving. The only complaint I have is how much gold (in the sense of upgrades and siege blueprints) has to be invested into holding SM. I envision WvW to be played for points, not to spend the least amount of gold. Presently many players are just abandoning towers and keeps on the grounds that they can’t be held. I would rather that not happen.

Thought I’ll share some thoughts on the matchup as well (I play on SoS).

TC is obviously way stronger than Maguuma and SoS, and the score shows. What is especially frustrating about playing against TC is that they just have more players. So even if we hold TC to a stalemate on Eternal Battlegrounds, TC just conquers their borderlands unopposed while holding a significant fraction of Maguuma BL and SoS BL, and they just win. SoS rarely if ever has players on TC BL for example. I remember one very frustrating time a few weeks ago when TC had enough players to take Stonemist Castle AND assault Ogrewatch simultaneously – and SoS weren’t outmanned.

However complaining isn’t really justified because numbers aren’t everything. TC players are just better than SoS players, and TC commanders just better than SoS commanders. For example earlier in the weekend we had a queue to enter Eternal Battlegrounds, and yet TC were dominating the map. How is that possible? We had at worst equal numbers, and yet we were getting stomped.

To the SoS commanders and possibly Maguuma also, I honestly think before we complain about the matchup we should step up our game. I’ve seen us make all sorts of weird calls that I just don’t understand. Earlier today we took SM because we outmaneuvered TC; they were taking Maguuma keep when we got to SM and we overpowered the defense before the zerg arrived. They were already en route when we took it. I thought this was good play, and yet shortly afterwards we make another call to give up SM to take Maguuma keep!? Even if Maguuma keep was held by TC at the time, even if SM can be treb’ed from Overlook, what is the point? SM is worth more points, it offers more map control, etc. Just about the only reason I can think of to take Maguuma keep and give up SM is to cartograph the area.

There were other calls that were obviously weak. Last week there was a time when we had ~5 people defending Mendon’s with ~25 DB attacking. When I got into Mendon’s, DB had no siege and we had one AC built, but the gate was at ~10% health. We yelled for help, and since we had nothing on the map (everything else was held by DB and EBay) our commander came. From within Mendon’s I saw he had maybe 15 people with him against a 25-man DB zerg. I called for extra supply so we could build more ACs. We already had blueprints down and half-built. Instead the commander stays outside, stacks, stacks some more, gate goes down, DB rushes in kills the Tower lord, and then the commander comes in, whoops Mendon’s has fallen, and then he says “we can’t get in without dying” (equip blinking / stealth skills or at worst stability / protection skills, with 2 dodges also should be able to at least sneak some people inside), and “defending a non-upgraded tower is the least of our concerns” (when we had nothing else on the map?).

tl; dr – we are terrible, therefore we lose. Before we start complaining about how bad the matchup is, step up our own game.

I saw the PM; the only problem is that you guys are on SoR. There’s no easy + cheap way to switch servers, is there?

I started playing WvW seriously after the change which pitted SoS against FA and TC. The format suddenly became impressively fun after the games vs CD and SBI. I feel it’s always more fun to play against people who are better than myself.

As a result I’m looking for a serious WvW guild modeled on guilds in GW1. Things I’d like:

1) Set times for everyone to try to log on, and
2) Voice communication. Not everyone needs to speak, but there should be enough banter on TS / Vent that it’s not silence more often than not.

Currently I play mostly in the evenings (7-11pm +8 GMT) on weekdays. On some weekends almost the entire day is open (7am-12am +8GMT). On other weekends things are much more restricted (7-8am on Saturday, 4pm-11pm on Sunday). I’m not always online, but I can log on if needed.

I have two level 80 characters that I can use (one Necro, one Ele), but prefer to use my Mesmer, who at time of posting is level 17 (I’m on a mission to hit level 80 purely from WvW). I’m not a commander. I’m also not an expert at WvW – I understand the basics, but not the advanced concepts.

I will represent when I’m playing WvW. If the guild is active in PvE also, I’m happy to represent all the time (but I’d like some time to test out the guild before committing).

Message PM etc …