Guild Wars 2

I think some of these are a test like The Last Starfighter. When a person finally gets the achievement they will be wisked away into an alien realm to kill Yaks.

Yes, but the Living World is clearly played by far by more players than WvW. It is pretty clear at this point we are a minority and WvW is an interesting playground in a PvE game.

Eventually a game will come along that uses a character skill leveling system, is modern and centered around PvP but it will probably be an evolution of a shooter rather than a skill based MMO.

GuardianOMS.8067:

I already see where this topic is headed so I’m gonna stick there here. Also, the topic is about ranks, not titles.

Problem is they are STILL using the same broken abacus to calculate the WvW ranks that they used to calculate the achievements. No matter how we slice the data the hours required to get multiple masteries across multiple alts is ridiculous. If the masteries were like PvE levels, then sure I can see keeping them soul bound. However the current pace makes a player choose one of a few possible options:

• Focus one character in WvW and get masteries
• Play thousands of hours to get alts on an equal footing
• Completely ignore the feature and play alts

None of those is a particularly good choice and goes completely against the original stated design philosophy of GW2.

Because we are trolls and enjoy upsetting zerglings or maybe just because that is what we enjoy doing in the game.

Pure Heart.1456:

I didn’t spend 1000 hours in PvE and WvW to get all my gear and equipment, only to not be able to use it in sPvP.

This at least for me… I also like roaming, dueling, skirmishing, etc because it is a nice change of pace from zerging. Actually I zerg as a break from roaming, dueling, skirmishing, etc.

I will frequently down a clearly over matched player but not stomp them. I figure they need the combat experience and I don’t need their badges. Now if badges were worth something, I would fleece their hide into a pimp hat.

I am not in favor of PvE mobs, but I do think changing the scoring would make defense more important and more fun. Rather than getting points for flipping anything, the game would randomly assign 2-3 objectives (such as a tower) per map per cycle (say 15, 30, 60 minutes or similar). The server holding an objective at the end of a cycle would get points. All other non-assigned objectives would be worthless points wise but might be worth taking strategically for the next cycle.

In the video it wasn’t the damage that got that group in trouble it was the control as they were all switched off. I have long believed that damage should be capped (for DPS reasons) but control abilities should be area of effect without a cap. Turning off 50 players stacked tight would likely ease lag and make staking inherently dangerous.

As for DAoC combat in this case being superior… being chain stunned sucked.

According to the nay-sayers you only need to wait a few days for WvW to finish dying. In the meantime, shift down to T3 or lower if you want to avoid the queues.

Jayne.9251:

Releasing soon

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/08/02/soe-live-2013-everquest-next-explained

Most new MMOs since WoW suck. Only a precious few have made a good showing of themselves and it is likely that EQ Next, Wildstar and TESO will probably fail. Hopefully one will be a better mousetrap but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

The math the devs use to figure out what an average player and average hard core player can do in a gaming session is wrong on a fairly epic scale. I think they believe that a typical player can get several masteries per alt on casual play. I can level a player in pure PvE to 80 faster than I can get one of the masteries in most cases. Some like Supply are ridiculously long and something few will ever get on more than one player.

They certainly haven’t crunched the numbers on the ridiculous WvW achievements. I am pretty sure the game devs will be dead of old age before anyone achieves Yak Slapper or most of the other WvW achievements.

Fishbait.6723:

But we don`t have high mobility any more. Guardians can out run us, warriors rangers & scummy thieves even more so.

I completely disagree with that assement. Ele with D/D:

Perma-swiftness, Burning Speed, RTL, Lightning Flash, drop Fire Sword and gone. If something does get close, chill/stun anything that hits them or simply chill anything near them. Armor of Earth and Mist Form both provide easy stability. A decent bunker who knows how to cycle the skills is a real PIA to bring down and almost impossible to do so solo if they want to run. Even if you can catch one while avoiding the condition/control they spit out, they just tie you up in combat and go for another cycle until they get close to a door or find an ally.

Fishbait.6723:

As for necro, they`re actually great for roaming & it is what I use mine for.

“great for roaming” must mean something different to you. Sure they have a high health pool but they are slow, have few escape mechanisms and solo they are pretty easy to manage. Really good players can be a handful but “great” roaming classes/builds need high mobility, good escape and solid combat skills IMO. Otherwise they will get killed going to a place, ambushed by more players while in a fair fight or have to remain very close to a spawn point.

Faelaan.4681:

My guess is that the map he was queued for popped while he was stealthed and he vanished.

this… players of all classes have used this “trick” to escape certain death. Otherwise it was probably SS/SR or similar port ability like shadow trap.

The last possibility was a teleport hack which are still around.

I don’t get bored but WvW isn’t very exciting these days either. Not sure how to change it since a lot of the problems are pretty fundamental to the design. At least for me, I have gotten my monies worth. $50 for 1k+ hours of fun WvW is a pretty good deal… cheaper than cable or a movie.

While thieves and rangers are not the “meat” of a zerg the thief blast finisher and the ranger healing spring are better than any other comparable skill from any other class by a mile. Those skills might not be necessary but valuable nonetheless.

I don’t know much about engis so I will leave that one to someone else.

Unbuffed stats from my harder to kill class/builds, but keep in mind survivability is only partially stat based. Just as important is the trait lines chosen and most important player skill. Also left out Healing Power on the request which is important for many bunker builds. Boon duration can also be really important.

Profession : Thief (Healing Build)
Vitality/Hit points : 1272 / 14,365
Power : 1972
Precision : 1887
Toughness : 1540
Healing Power: 360
Crit%/CritDmg : 50% / 98%
Boon Duration: 10%

Profession : Ranger (Regen)
Vitality/Hit points : 1196 / 17,882
Power : 1059
Precision : 930
Toughness : 1979
Healing Power: 1293
Crit%/CritDmg : 5% / 0%
Boon Duration: 10%

Profession: Guardian (Alt Healing)
Vitality/Hit points : 1255 / 14,195
Power : 1523
Precision : 1740
Toughness : 2045
Healing Power: 675
Crit%/CritDmg : 44% / 30%
Boon Duration: 40%

mjharrison.3209:

Straegen.2938:

I know of no other action MMORPG that scales as well as this game. There probably is one out there and I would like to hear about it. I know DAoC was close but even it would at best struggle mightily under the fast pace, near constant zerg on zerg fights GW2 offers.

Darkfall routinely has sieges with >1K players in the same area, more than all 4 WVW instances combined. In the same area. Also, it’s an MMOFPS, faster-paced than GW2.

Also, planetside1 & 2, savage 1 and 2… there are quite a few games with faster gameplay and higher player density.

Planetside is a shooter… if GW2 eliminated boons, removed most conditions, streamlined damage types, reduced gear modifiers and made most skills single target they could likely handle Planetside numbers with relative ease. There is A LOT more going on in a GW2 battle than Planetside 1/2.

Darkfall I don’t know much about (never played it). Looking at it quickly it seems it too has a pretty simplified combat system more akin to an FPS than a typical skill based MMO. It also falls under the… if it was so good why aren’t more unhappy GW2 people playing it banner.

In both cases these games were designed from the outset to be near solely PvP and every design decision is based around that.

Magnetron.5823:

I have read some posts about that the server cannot handle more AOE etc. But isnt that because the server is using DX9?

DirectX version has nothing to do with skill lag at least in anyway that I can see. The graphics API system is entirely client side for rendering and the skill lag is server side trying to process data. I highly doubt their servers have DX on them and may not even be Windows based (I have no idea though).

Besides no AoE cap means some other change to AoE to keep it balanced. AoE already generates more DPS than most other skill types. Imagine what the DPS of an AoE would be if it could hit 100 people rather than 5.

It takes dozens of hours to get a single mastery which means most players will only be able to experience a couple or so masteries in their GW2 play experience. IMO this play requirement is fine but to limit it to a single character and no ability to change is a poor decision on ANets part.

I can see ANet’s viewpoint but they should either lower the time it takes to get a WvW mastery or allow us to reset/share them with alts.

Eles have the distinct advantage of picking up two daggers and being a great solo/skirmisher build with high mobility. Necros while powerful are one dimensional in comparison.

Dawdler.8521:

They could just make it so that the arrowcart require a target and Player LoS to fire (same as all targetted skills).

Problem solved. You cant bypass it by zoomhack.

Arrowcart annoyance reduced by 98%. No more arrowcarts behind walls inside/outside keeps.

That really wouldn’t fix anything. Zoom hacks allow the player to see more of the field and around visual barricades such as walls. So long as the player is there, they can lock onto them.

IMO they should improve targeting so that ACs can easily target anything in range thus rendering zoom hacks moot. To make that balanced, ACs should take into consideration cover. Build that cata under a bridge, sorry AC user your arrows won’t go through a bridge.

Rezzet.3614:

Jscull.2514:

EZ mode class- allows bad players to feel like they can compete.

Put the same player on a warrior/guardian, and see how good they are in open field without stealth. TERRIBLE.

^ this so much true

Bad players in the thief class aren’t any better than any other class. Sure they might score a big hit a couple times a day but you know that old saying about a broken clock.

Good players are good player regardless of the class they play. Besides most truly good players have more than one class in their bag. A player believing they got beat by a crap player rather than someone with skill, I suppose that is one way to look at it.

Most who have played D/P and played against it feel the same way, it falls in the very powerful category and IMO OP category which isn’t something I say lightly. I simply don’t think backstab was meant to co-exist with near perma-stealth.

IMO a lot of misconceptions in this thread. Processor speed is just one factor in the skill lag equation. Game engines such as these have contention in various places so making one area faster may have little payback. Read up on multi threaded environments and synchronization to get a feel for how many moving parts are in a system like this.

Network bandwidth (how much data can be transmitted) has increased a tremendous amount over the last decade but network speeds (how fast a packet arrives) have not. Ping times are what count not bandwidth. DAoC needed decent ping times, all action MMOs need good ping times.

BF3 is a horrible, horrible comparison. Limiting a fight to 64 players makes the programming MUCH easier and calculating 128 players isn’t twice as difficult it is exponentially more difficult. They also limit damage types, their damage calculation is much simpler, far fewer skills to resolve, fewer buffs to contend with, etc.

DAoC had lag, combat wasn’t nearly as fast paced, had far fewer 100+ player fights in the same area at the same time, lots of running between fights, far more stuns/dazes limiting skill output and people can still play it if they think it was miles better than GW2.

I know of no other action MMORPG that scales as well as this game. There probably is one out there and I would like to hear about it. I know DAoC was close but even it would at best struggle mightily under the fast pace, near constant zerg on zerg fights GW2 offers.

Thedenofsin.7340:

A black screen would not prevent rez exploiting through gates and walls.

This to me is an exploit and a separate bug. Players shouldn’t be able to rez or bring players up from a downed state through a wall under any circumstance. Targeting any player without a clear line of sight should not be allowed.

Even if they could remove the cap and not suffer a tremendous amount of extra lag, they would have to nerf it some other way. Most likely they would simply take the pool of damage and spread it out over all the targets. It is a bad idea if an ele could do a 100k + DPS because they dropped one AoE on a stack.

There is virtually no scenario where removing the cap is a good idea either for technical or balance reasons.

Skyeyes.4935:

Am I the only one thinking that the naming system is stupid? You go all the way from ‘Invader’ thru ‘Colonel’ and ‘General’ and right to ‘Legend’, then… you become an ‘Invader’ again (albeit a ‘bronze’ one). Greeaaat. That sounds all-powerful, not. I can’t wait to work my way up to the coolest title ever only to go back to the lowest.

I posted this in suggestions, but never hurts to share an idea:

The Bronze, Silver, Gold system waters down the “Legend” concept in the game. It is far too easy to become a “Legend” currently and after a player gets it they get demoted in a sense a bit later to Bronze Infantry. Doesn’t work very well in my opinion.

Below is a suggested starting point. I think the community could modify it and create a fantastic list:

00 Initiate
05 Recruit
10 Cadet
20 Invader
30 Footman
40 Journeyman
50 Assaulter
60 Vanquisher
70 Raider
80 Scout
100 Guardsman
120 Soldier
140 Trooper
170 Crusader
200 Knight
250 Veteran
300 Commando
400 Sergeant
500 Master Sergeant
600 Captain
700 Major
800 Colonel
1000 Brigadier
1200 General
1400 Champion
1700 Grand Champion
2000 Legend

By stretching out the levels as a player progresses, a Legend title will likely be held by those that put in hundreds of hours of WvW play. This change would make the title far more meaningful.

It is possible that the combat log is “rolled up” for performance reasons. They may not be sending all the pertinent data down to each client. That said, I know they are sending down some of it and not logging it.

I suggest supporting this topic in the Suggestions forum. I as well as many others have posted this before.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Combat-Log-Revamp-It-is-Time/first#post2387922

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Accurate-combat-log/first#post2220781

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/More-detailed-combat-log

T1 has a heavy player base 24×7. Lower tiers are frequently a ghost town during off peak hours (some are ghosty during peak hours). Simpy put there are more people to kill in higher tiers. Lower tiers usually only have one zerg running on a map and rarely have zergs on all maps… in off hours BP frequently has no zergs. Queuing two maps outside of reset is pretty big deal.

Even when a lower tier wipes an enemy zerg for a bunch of points, that is the only zerg from the other side so it takes a while for those players to be worth any WxP.

The speed a building can get capped goes up with more players as well. Big zergs can beat down a door without siege faster than many small-mid sized groups can with.

Crawford.4135:

1st:
Daggers ignore all armor (test you’ll see — not many players realize this, not even the developers realize)

2nd:
Toughness is simply stupid. ArenaNet should have placed flat out “Armor” in the game, not “Toughness = X Amount of Armor”. That’s just sugar coating crap with crap. Call it what it is: Armor, period.

3rd:
Armor, like Gennyt said: Toughness is a joke. Yes HP is nice, with some Toughness in the background. I can’t say which is best because honestly neither work well together — you give up too much of one or the other.

4th:
Dagger speed in this game is extremely fast (hopefully the speed will get nerfed). So no matter your Toughness, Armor or HP, in the end it only keeps you alive for a ‘tad’ longer. You only delay the inevitable.

5th:
Read number 2 again

This post is completely wrong at least based on my experience and understanding of the damage calculation.

1. Daggers do not ignore armor. In fact there is no “dagger” damage in the game as all damage is done from a skill.

2. Armor is comprised of toughness. One point of toughness adds one point of armor. The armor calculation is ridiculously simple and how it reduces damage is also extremely simple.

3. Toughness reduces direct damage by a percentage so it scales well against power builds. Toughness also makes healing more effective. The only place vitality clearly wins out is condition, falling damage and spike damage not based on power.

4. There is no dagger speed or any weapon speed in the game. Weapons have skills relative to the class that is using them. The five dagger skills for a thief are going to be different than an elementalist.

Dommmmmmmmmm.6984:

I’ll race you on my Thief against your maximum mobility Warrior. I’m willing to wager 200 gold that there’s no way in hell Warrior has better mobility than Thief.

There are some speed warriors that are ridiculously fast and in a sprint I find it hard to believe they can be easily caught. Even if you can catch that that tiger, the thief will be spent. CHAR group from Ebay runs at least one warrior that has incredible speed.

NS has some Rangers that are unconventionally fast. I chased one from QL through Dane across our spawn point, behind Bravost, past Umber and finally got him before Ogres. He would stop, use a skill or pet to put me in combat/fear and take off again. Had a teammate cut him off with a stun he would have gotten away.

Also our D/D ele is probably the fastest player on our team. Blows through his skills, drops that fire sword and then rotates skills again. It can be really hard to catch a perma-swift with a dozen surge skills.

Agreed. The current system rewards zerging in high tiers above all other forms of play.
Nothing wrong with that style of play but other forms of play should be similarly rewarding.

As it is now, Anet creates WvW account objectives measured against the highest tier zergs leaving lower tiered servers or non-zerg players behind despite a similar effort.

How about flipping the screen black… seems like a simple fix and probably an easy change.

zen.6091:

It’s a fairly simple fact that with any game server, more players requires exponentially more resources to maintain the same level of performance, and there is a limit to computing resources. This game clearly does not function with blobs of 50+ players spamming each other, and yet, nothing has been done to discourage massive blobbing with either a hard de-buff or making it wildly inefficient point wise.

That’s really all there is to it.

I mostly agree with this post. No game with multi-skill options to my knowledge has this level of PvP scale. The easy route to “fix” this issue is to scale down the matches which is best done by encouraging teams to break apart. They could also scale down the amount of data needed to process or disseminate (more caps, fewer conditions, etc) but I think this would not go over well.

TheAgedGnome.7520:

That does seem to be it. It is all good until the “blob v. blob” encounters and then my skills I hit just flash while I am engulfed by red circles and I pretty much wait to die. This is with video on lowest quality and a decent internet connection.

His response is basically saying your client has little if nothing to do with this lag. It is mostly server side. Hundreds of players in the same location sending hundreds of commands per second, effecting hundreds of players per second then calculating all that out and sending the updates down to each effected client has an exponential overhead that no reasonable modern server architecture can handle.

As noted above take the parts of the map your side controls (prior to the randomization this is what drove a lot of players nuts such as our server being stuck as Blue for 3 months).

The other piece of advice I have for you… get a thief or three to go with you. Stealth makes most of these objectives cake.

Ommu.1649:

It would have been so easy for them with this living story too…

Achievement: Kill 20 Kiel Supporters in WvW while supporting Evon Gnashblade
Achievenemt: Kill 20 Gnashblade Supporters in WvW while supporting Ellen Kiel

This is a good idea and hopefully they will use it in forthcoming content.

Toughness is the power counterpart. If a player has equal toughness to another players power, they effectively cancel each other. Players sporting over 3k armor rarely see huge crit dmg either. Even the venerable Steal/CnD/BS will usually top out around 8k on heavy armor from a zerk thief (barring mitigating circumstances like heavy vuln, sub 50% players, etc).

kishter.9578:

Backstab is (front, rear, back, up, down, inside , outside) every dimension.

Base damage and multiplier is halved if not flanked. Backstab in this context isn’t literal as they are using it to mean surprise attack.

Standard camps sure… but what classes given average player skill have great difficulty with upgraded camps?

Bloodlust is incredibly powerful and should have limits. This limit is reasonable.

EFWinters.5421:

Morbridae.8607:

I love to play necro, and I don’t want to accept that they are the hardest to play and less “powerful” class… but they are.

While I want this thread to be full of constructive discussion, and while I dont want to shoot people down, if you are going to claim that Necromancers are the weakest profession in WvW I really don’t think you have enough experience to make an accurate judgment on anything related to profession balance.

Agreed… Necros are one of the premier power classes in a zerg setting. They are also formidable on a skirmish team. I agree their limited mobility in solo fights is a hindrance but they more than make up for it in other areas.

OP… no, powerful… certainly

For pure WvW, a second thief since you can both share stealth. If mixing in dungeons, pick a bunker guardian. They can soak up damage and buff DPS to a ridiculous level. I find in WvW when I stealth our bunker guardian gets focused which takes the pressure off me.

As an alternative, the speed warrior could be a decent choice. Also if you have excellent combat awareness the D/D ele bunker hybrids can be a force. They can soak up enough damage, juice up the DPS and hit hard enough to be respected. Their problem is stability… if they get caught flat they die but their auras and fields make them potent when paired with a class that has such excellent leap/blast finishers.

The thief is probably the best bet. I have seen some VERY fast warriors and recently a ridiculously fast ranger that might work but stealth is the ultimate in dropping target and avoidance. The thief is a very fast class making them excellent at recon, yak killing and with the shortbow has some decent siege skills. A defensive thief build might work. Haven’t played it but this build sure would be fast and slippery:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYMQNAsaVlYmaPHfy5EG+EB3Dnm0m6pgsftTBWtKA-j0yAYLFNyCEdBjAhkALiGbVrIasqFMlLRUtBXIykna/BmMAmLA-w

Stealing allows this build to cross a map very quickly. Stealing from critters will frequently give a lot of mobility with Thrill of the Crime. Another big advantage of the thief is the learning curve is pretty light at least for being a scout and half decent solo fighter.

The easy fix is to make the vials necessary to craft this stuff available on the market.

Having a piece of equipment that can only be obtained from grinding a specific dungeon but is useful almost everywhere else in the game is an oversight at best and plain stupid if done intentionally.

Bloodwort MacFangho.4638:

I don’t understand why it would be considered a bug for a Bird pet to be able to get at anyone on a wall! It’s a BIRD, FFS! It should be a PoP for a BIRD to FLY to the top of the wall!

Not having a go at you, Kinky .. just one my my favourite rants.

Tyria could have a high gravity or maybe the air is thinner preventing birds from achieving high flight. I am sure some highly educated Asuran could squawk out a plausible reason.

IMO the fix isn’t in mist form but in rally itself. They shouldn’t reset the counter on rally but on the true death.

Mordecai.6318:

Never have I seen a community complain about something so much. My god, this combo has an infinite amount of counters that multiple people have listed throughout this thread. Clearly this is everyone’s first MMO and first experience with a stealth mechanic because thieves are easily countered by every class.

This combo does not have infinite counters… in fact it has very few and even fewer are reliable. Any decent thief executing this combo will present an extremely difficult target to kill. They often trade DPS to execute this so most are less dangerous than other builds. However frequently 2+ thieves can make a devastating team with one generating smoke fields and both using them. One is the stealther and the other the hammer with everyone looking like a nail.

I primary a thief and don’t use this partially because it really does feel and play like a broken combo. I define broken as any ability/combo that is extremely powerful, easy to execute, can be repeated relatively quickly and has few or no substantial downsides.

Good to see the devs in here responding and I do understand how difficult these things can be, BUT:

• There have been dozens of PvE achievements added to the game in the last year
• Now that achievement points mean something, WvW players are at a massive disadvantage trying to get those rewards
• It has been over a year now
• Some of these like Yakslapper are ridiculous… NOBODY will EVER get it (unless they play for 15 years killing nothing but yaks as efficiently as possible)

I am sure ANet will get there but this is one of those fixes that look easy and a design decision that probably shouldn’t have made it out of beta.

fishball.7204:

We know how its like to be outcoveraged and starting with nothing but paper stuff… it’s not fun and it’s not fair but this is coverage wars 2 and unfortunately it is what it is.

I find paper stuff can be liberating. Capping a bunch of paper towers, keeps, etc when the numbers even out is both productive (XP, Karma, WxP, etc) and IMO fun… different kind of fun but fun nonetheless. Losing the waypoints is a hindrance but all part of the game.

Now if someone is trying to play during oceanic against the SoS horde… that probably sucks a bit.

There are several guardian builds that make them far more survivable than either the ele or the thief. They do not posses the escape mechanism (well non-Norn guardians anyway) but that is a trade off most are more than willing to make for the ridiculous amount of group buffs/healing they can drop. Heal on dodge, heal on shout, armor out the wazoo, stability, plenty of control abilities once you get through that… they have a big heal. Killing a good one usually requires a very special build and a lot of patience.

Thief if you like mobility and 1v1. Mesmer if you like to be useful at key moments in a zerg and flip camps with ease (some mesmers get tired of all the portal, veil requests after a while). Guardian if you want to be a super support class that borders on un-killable when played well.

Dawdler.8521:

Or one could just do a power/crit Necro and laugh at how hideously OP they are, yet few seem to have taken notice yet (everyone is too busy to complain about stealth, clones or immortal Guardians). Ranged auto-attack hit harder than Thief backstab and everything pretty much melt in front of you.

The forum warriors may not have noticed, but the better zergs have. These days necros are about as common as guardians in zergs.

Contiguous.1345:

You don’t seriously think that the people who make big bucks in program development would waste their time playing video games?

Big bucks? Most game programmers work ridiculous hours, their jobs require a very high technical skill level and frequently they have no long term job stability. A decent one could easily shift into the traditional business sector, cut their hours substantially, get a raise and have tons of job security. Most work in this sector because they love being in this business.

SpehssMehreen.5897:

if thats the case why doesnt anet at least consult with people especially commanders and leaders from all servers to help better shape the wvw environment?

Because honestly… users are idiots. Doesn’t mean they are stupid but they do not know all the difficulties adding a feature or fixing a bug entails. Users also behave like children… give them a toy today and they will be clamoring for another toy tomorrow. Above all users are happier with a stable less featureful system. The more that gets crammed into a system the less stable it becomes thus often the best course of action is to improve what the user doesn’t see and put in new features judiciously.

Contiguous.1345:

That’s because on the whole, camps, dolyaks and sentries are of very, very minor importance. Even towers are generally unimportant strategically (with one or two exceptions)

This is very short sighted. It is extremely difficult to hold a keep without supply at least in a competitive match. These players are vital to back-capping, escorting, calling out enemy movements, cutting off reinforcements and wreaking general havoc on non-zerg maps. They can break up mass zergs from one map by pulling enemies off a map for defense. Also points wise a roamer/skirmish group contributes more points per player than a zerg by far.

Zergs are important to combat other zergs and to take the hard objectives but roamers and skill groups are important for many other aspects of WvW.

That said, I do not agree with the OP who states they are more important. I believe it is a symbiotic relationship. Roaming would be difficult without the zerg and a zerg would have a hard time locking everything down without the roamers.