Guild Wars 2

Dual.8953:

Zephyrus.9680:

Vena.8436:

DrWhom.3105:

Honestly I’d rather the buff were entirely reward orientated, which wouldn’t step on either side’s toes. +50% XP, MF, WXP. Maybe to make the buff more meaningful, you get twice or three times as many points for stomps. I don’t think that’s enough of a “gamechanger” for Anet though, which is why I made those other suggestions.

But then its irrelevant and doesn’t do anything.

I’d bet my bottom dollar that the whole point of making it “stats” and a “game changer” is to force people to care about it. The same way no one cares about Outmanned now, is the same way no one will care about Bloodlust if all it did was give you PvE rewards.

But that’s the opposite of what it should be. Why reward the stronger team with MORE power? Already tried with orbs, already failed. You just get one team that snowballs which is boring for everyone all around.

So switch the new bloodlust buff with the current outmanned. The outmanned team gets a small stat boost to help balance the combat, the dominant team gets greater rewards.

And who would waste their time getting a minor MF bonus when they could be getting towers? Southsun already showed us that not even +300% MF makes a noticeable difference. If no one would care about the points, there’d be no grand open battles trying to get them, no new tactics, just the same old WvW with the odd roamers grabbing them because they happen to be in the area.
The beauty of these control points is small groups can aid their servers in ways they never could before. They can be more places then a blob can and play keep away with the blob rather easily. This’d make commanders have to think. They’d have to become more coordinated and split up. If a server has a good set of coordinated strategists and disciplined fighters, they’d be able to perform some really interesting plays. All they need is good communication and incentive. Idealy then, WvW would evolve into a game that weighs strategy, discipline, communication and coordination over simple brute force tactics.

That doesn’t address the issue we already saw with orbs. You’re trying to generalize “skill” across the entire WvW population which is meaningless. It’s human nature to believe otherwise but when you generalize ‘skill’ across a large random population, the only result can be numbers (brute force).

The priority will be clear to everyone and ultimately the server with the best coverage and numbers will best maintain control of the buffs. This causes the stronger server to become even stronger and makes fights even more uneven. It directly contradicts what you’re trying to argue in the last sentence.

Also, magic find? I care about WXP. No repair costs is nice too and would certainly help promote open field fights.

I have no problem with zerg fights per se. The problem with the tagging system in WvW more generally is that it ONLY promotes big zerg fights and so is anti-strategy. Zergs do individual objects faster but get the same rewards.

A roamer can demonstrate greater skill in a 1v1, 1vX, or small scale fight while in that same time, in a zerg they could have gotten 50 times the reward of a 1v1. So the default and unchangeable meta is always towards bigger zergs to do individual objectives as fast as possible.

It’s anti-strategy and there’s no incentive to form smaller groups that could be much more efficient.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Thrashbarg.9820:

Large scale combat isn’t necessarily “zerging”. The term ‘zerg’ comes from an NPC race in StarCraft, mindless aliens you could use as cannon fodder basically.

Zerging is large scale stupid combat, when players don’t know or care about positioning because they simply outnumber their opponents and can win by brute force alone.

Large scale, coordinated combat is quite fun until there are simply too many people involved for the server to handle.

TheAmpca.1753:

Next, let’s look at another common complaint. Due to lag most zerg fights just dissolve into players spamming their auto-attack button and not pulling off well coordinated combos. However, the appropriate response shouldn’t be to simply say “let’s discourage zerg fights” and instead should be more along the lines of “let’s fix our server performance”

It’s not something they can fix. Their servers are as top of the line as they can get, their game engine as modern as possible given development costs. The problem is the game is too complex for current tech. 80v80v80 results in billions of simultaneous calculations over 240 systems with varying latency. With combo fields/finishers, projectile physics, position/direction/velocity based calculations, boon/condition interaction/stacks/timers/power of sources etc. there is more going on behind the scenes than the combat in any other MMO.

The only fix would be to reduce total map caps, which they are very reluctant to do, for various reasons.

It’s almost certainly possible to farm some of the current server-only computations to clients.

To prevent cheating, the server would always simultaneously be doing a random collection of those computations — and if your client is giving different answers, they ban you (not really as simplistic as different answer = ban, but that’s the gist of it).

This idea even includes Anet’s favorite tool: RNG!

They already have the maximum possible done clientside. Mid-range CPUs can be near 100% in big zerg fights.

Vena.8436:

DrWhom.3105:

Honestly I’d rather the buff were entirely reward orientated, which wouldn’t step on either side’s toes. +50% XP, MF, WXP. Maybe to make the buff more meaningful, you get twice or three times as many points for stomps. I don’t think that’s enough of a “gamechanger” for Anet though, which is why I made those other suggestions.

But then its irrelevant and doesn’t do anything.

I’d bet my bottom dollar that the whole point of making it “stats” and a “game changer” is to force people to care about it. The same way no one cares about Outmanned now, is the same way no one will care about Bloodlust if all it did was give you PvE rewards.

But that’s the opposite of what it should be. Why reward the stronger team with MORE power? Already tried with orbs, already failed. You just get one team that snowballs which is boring for everyone all around.

So switch the new bloodlust buff with the current outmanned. The outmanned team gets a small stat boost to help balance the combat, the dominant team gets greater rewards.

Altie.4571:

Or just create another EB Jumping Puzzle type of zone that’s a flat map and let people go to duke it out.

Problem is this will never be done because it “takes away from WvW”. Which you cannot blame Anet for since it is true.

Not a good argument. Adding new features to accommodate more PvP modes is always a good thing and will bring players to the game. So for example sPvP is “taking away from WvW” in the manner you seem to imply so they could remove sPvP and force maybe half of those players into WvW and lose the other half…

natsos.3692:

The buff as it is, probably a no.
Bloodlust to take outmanned’s place and outmmaned to take bloodlust’s place, it is a yes.

Yes to this.

Valik Shin.9027:

Zephyrus.9680:

Shemsu.8721:

Esuni.2498:

Veteran Oakheart.4035:

The fact is that you ask to remove features requiring more pvp “personal” skill to take and hold than zerginess, which benefit the most to small group play and which is also leading to a better balance of servers in most case-

Fact is that we ask to toggle something so a part of WvW stays legit and existant.
This which we want to toggle should also not be in the game in the first place as it will bring even more unbalance to the game mode.

I remember the days where customer feedback was taken seriously and not ignored or looked down upon

GvG is not an intended or legit part of wvw. I’m not saying there shouldnt be a place for more than 8v8 or 10v10 fights (unless they add support for spvp up to 20v20 then it would be fine there) However, that place is not wvw

It would be a ridiculous twist to claim PPT is the ultimate and sole purpose of WvW. The ultimate purpose of WvW (and GW2 in general) is to have fun. Everything else, including the PPT/objective system exists to supplement that. Either it is intended or else it’s an exploit and/or against the rules. Open field fighting is not against the rules, sorry.

What about people who enjoy th ppt system the most of all the wvw aspects? I always played wvw to win. I would sacrifice having “fun” if I ment I could help the team win

To clarify, you’re having fun the way you play WvW for the reasons you do it. You’re not “sacrificing” fun to do it, that’s just semantics.

But what about it? What is your question?

No to combat boost.

They already tried it. Larger servers blowout which is fun for no one. Why would the 2nd time be different?

Shemsu.8721:

Esuni.2498:

Veteran Oakheart.4035:

The fact is that you ask to remove features requiring more pvp “personal” skill to take and hold than zerginess, which benefit the most to small group play and which is also leading to a better balance of servers in most case-

Fact is that we ask to toggle something so a part of WvW stays legit and existant.
This which we want to toggle should also not be in the game in the first place as it will bring even more unbalance to the game mode.

I remember the days where customer feedback was taken seriously and not ignored or looked down upon

GvG is not an intended or legit part of wvw. I’m not saying there shouldnt be a place for more than 8v8 or 10v10 fights (unless they add support for spvp up to 20v20 then it would be fine there) However, that place is not wvw

It would be a ridiculous twist to claim PPT is the ultimate and sole purpose of WvW. The ultimate purpose of WvW (and GW2 in general) is to have fun. Everything else, including the PPT/objective system exists to supplement that. Either it is intended or else it’s an exploit and/or against the rules. Open field fighting is not against the rules, sorry.

OP hyperbole more… Warriors seem fine to me. Seen and dueled the warrior builds mentioned by Obscure One and they are really good. I was guessing zerker gear and defensive traits (+ shield). As most of their damage, they rely on hitting eviscerate though, which can be seen and dodged.

Glad Anet balanced warriors to a decent 1v1 level with the recent buffs.

Still, warrior skill animations are the easiest to dodge of any class. If you’re not one of those 75% of players who dodge at random in a 1v1, you can dodge 100% of hammer KDs and most of the other powerful skills as well (bow 5, evis, bulls charge, etc…).

Seen exactly the same arguments against duels/fightclub as GvG, before GvG was popular. From the same people even…

It always seems like the argument is either:
a. It’s not the intended way to play WvW. As if there’s an intended way.
b. Somehow a threat (sabatage) to the server. With some argument which just makes no sense.

Because clearly the most skilled PvPers and organized groups wanting an occasional competitive fight against their equals can’t also be dedicated WvW players as well!!! Wait what?…

So here’s an example from a different thread: “I wish they won’t allow anyone to turn the [orb] buff on and off. This is World vs World. 1v1 is SPvP.
GvG is.. well… not an option supported by Arena.Net yet… maybe in another game you will find what you are looking for.”

He’s arguing against a feature that will have no effect for him (option to turn the buff off for yourself). The only justification: “This is World vs World”… I would guess these people are threatened by the idea of competitive play in their battlefield.

Titan.3472:

If GvG oriented guilds are so skillfull they might be able to level up the game from lowest tier servers if they really like challenges like they said. As they don’t care of PPT I don’t see why they pollute T1 servers they should give their room to people and guilds that like WvW and the contents related to WvW provided by Anet then instead of sabotaging it. If they don’t care of T1 ppt well T1 server don’t care of these guilds neithers: they are more like a plague litteraly…

More of the same. GvG is a threat to WvW. Those players are contributing nothing, no, they’re actually sabotaging the server in WvW.

T1 must be a really odd place. Or maybe just Maguuma (well I know that already)… All the GvG guilds are filled with some of the most active and dedicated WvW players.

Signed.

Not only GvG, for duels and fight clubs as well.

Phantom.8130:

it doesn’t matter what the wiki currently says, as the only thing relevant in this thread is the suggestion made at the beginning of it. and, as was already pointed out by a few people already, vitality is the counter to condition damage, toughness is the counter to burst damage. if you want better mitigation against condition damage, more vitality on your gear is the best way to achieve that.

Well I think most of us agree OP’s idea was terrible. Any % reduction without diminishing returns cannot be balanced no matter what. Any reduction vs everything stat is terrible for balance and should not exist.

Though to qualify what you wrote in terms of basic stats:
Vitality (and to a lesser degree, toughness) is the counter to burst damage.

Toughness and healing power (to a lesser degree) mitigate sustained damage. Of course, for tanky builds almost ALL damage is sustained damage.

And vitality and/or healing power will mitigate condition damage.

It doesn’t make any sense for balance to buff what’s already the strongest defense stat (toughness) and make it a reduction vs everything stat.

More generally, condition damage isn’t overpowered. It’s only a handfull of skills and slightly overpowered (but skill dependent) rune set that’s all the complaints are about.
It makes 0 sense to nerf a whole damage type that has essentially remained unchanged and for a year, remained the least popular set of builds. The complaints are only about a few builds and skills that people may just not have adapted to yet.

Good example being signet of spite: 1 minute cooldown and slow super-obvious animation to dodge. Just, most people don’t recognize to dodge it.

Konrad Curze.5130:

Terrahero.9358:

As for konrad curvez, really? The current zerker is a reaction? How long have you even been playing this game? Glasscannon’s have been running around since beta. And Thieves in particular never dropped the subject. Whereas conditions are a fairly new cup of tea people are kittening about, which didnt even start untill Necro’s got overbuffed.

I’ve been playing since release, and no, glasscannons werent as prevalent as they are now in WvW.
they were prevalent in thief builds, and perhaps 100b warriors, but thats about it, most people preferred balanced builds. there were plenty of bunkers too.

but then ANet buffed conditions to ludicrous levels, and nowadays everyone and their dog that doesnt go conditions go fullzerker, and bunkers are relegated to organized GvG….and that, just to support their condition spammers.

Way I remember it, zerker builds were extremely popular after release (more than any other time). Then knights became the trend because the extra defense could beat zerkers and toughness is stronger than vit (sustain). Then PvT became the next big thing because full knights is actually not that well optimized particularly in skill lag where you can’t get off your heal. During all this time, condition builds were actually called “unicorns” because of how rare they were.

Now we have a wide mix of every build while certain condition builds may be a bit overpowered after recent buffs. I would still say PVT is the most common build by far for WvW players… Because it’s so good.

Aside from certain possible overbuffing and perplexity issues on some classes, condition damage in general is not overpowered and if anything, has been made more legitimate across the board.

Jamais vu.5284:

Ducking Frunk.5127:

From what I have been reading so far the best way this issue can be resolved is to spread people out over the map, so less interactions then occur with each other.

People aren’t dumb mathematical constants though. If a commander determines that a massed assault to overwhelm the defending force is what’s needed, he won’t equally distribute his men among the “other objectives”, he will take his entire zerg to the keep/SM because no matter how skilled or bunkered in, once the keep is open 20 people won’t stand a chance against 60. And if he does that, what is to stop the other commanders to call in most of their people on the map as well?
Unless they make the maps much bigger (much bigger than feasible, I’m thinking fifty times bigger) no amount of secondary objectives will resolve megablobbing in centerpiece keeps.

Sure but megablobbing isn’t the special strategic exception, it’s pretty much the norm for everything, even supply camps. How often does a commander send 1-2 players to take a supply camp to collectively save hours of the zerg’s time while the rest of the zerg does something “important”? Almost never, because then the zerg will miss out on the camp rewards and the few that were sent to take it might miss out on the big objective.

It would be false to assume it happens because of strategy; really they do it because they want to. And I’m guessing a huge part of this permanent metagame is because essentially if you work harder (doing the same with less people) you actually get less rewarded (same reward but takes longer) than if you just tagged a hit or two in the megazerg.

Not that it’s inherently good or bad (I don’t like it personally), but the very design has always strongly pushed massive zerging as the solution for every tangible benefit (PPT or fun from smaller fights is of course intangible). The new ascended mats (as little as you get in WvW) still reinforce the “blob for maximum rewards” intention of the devs. And of course, skill lag remains then as a persistent problem.

Interesting I never noticed that.

Deamhan.9538:

Just going to run a little example…

Let’s say that we have one server box running all three BLs and EB. That server is over loaded with the amount of information it’s trying to process by all the activity going on in these maps. So it begins to lag.

If you add a new map and then lower the population per map, you will still end up with that one server trying to keep up with the same amount of information.

You would need to add a new server and then divide the maps across the servers or just reduce the population limit of the servers without adding any new maps.

That’s not what will happen. For example 100 vs 100 zerg fight is actually close to an order of magnitude more intensive than 100 individual 1v1s would be (assuming they happened simultaneously). The whole issue is with AoE abilities/boons/healing etc… AoE is usually hitting the target limit in zerg fights while 1v1 is always single target and likewise with small scale fights.

This is compounded by the fact that in zerg v zerg essentially everyone on the map is hitting everyone else all at once while roaming fights are sporadic and spread out over time.

That’s why the solution can’t really be just throwing more server cpu power at it unless they could somehow distribute the load to additional servers just for zerg fights. It would have to be something like reducing AoE limits in big fights or else… De-emphasize huge zerg vs zerg encounters in the first place (what a concept!)

You should only need 1 build to beat everything in 1v1 and zerg vs zerg. Hmm… no.

Otaur.9268:

Superior Ballista Bolt 10k Damage, Superior Ballista Improved Spread Shot – Point Blank 35k+ Damage.

The Ballista is meant to hold a choke point, hitting 50 players in a line or bundle. The Catapult is meant to destroy walls.

I believe if they increased Ballista range it would make it overpowered, as it can already cause mayhem if you have 2 – 3 of them and players trained in the rank line.

You can basically prevent a capture with these.

Ballista AoE limit: 10
AC AoE limit: 50

Ballista is only good when you can hold players in a choke point. So maybe for 2 shots total. AC is infinitely more useful and works in infinitely more situations including before and after the chokepoint is broken, before gates are broken, and beyond LoS including countering ballistas.

Ballista should be overpowered at holding small choke points in straight lines because that’s all it can do. But it hardly is. Because it lacks the CC (cripple) that AC has, is extremely limited in siege placement, and is basically single target after the choke is broken.

Mattargul.9235:

When you level it causes a huge blowback to enemies around. I think that’s still the case in WvW, so it should be noticeable to you if you are on top of the guy.

What?… That’s a visual effect and only for your team.

He lvled. Seen it happen as well and it’s happened to me too.

You can’t rally off wildlife. Rally doesn’t give full health. No hack I’ve ever seen that rallies.

A tower, keep, camp, dolyak was taken/lost that gave the exp.

Ballista has needed a buff since the AC buff. I used to see tactical use of ballistas in chokepoints and hallways. Now AC does everything just as well or better. And also shoots over/through walls.

Cactus.2710:

LoneWolfie.1852:

Anyone seen the cost of crafting one kitten ascended weapons? 200 Gold in total to reach 500 and craft one weapon. Subsequent weapons cost 50 g each. WvW players are completely shafted. Either give players bags of coins for each player kill or increase rewards for taking over areas or drop more heavy loot bags. This is getting out of hand.

You and people like you are the reason we are on this treadmill. Why aren’t you asking for new and better content instead of better gear and more loot??

Are you really kidding yourself into believing it actually takes effort to balance rewards between PvE and WvW? Changing a number from, say, 5, to say, 12?

This has nothing to do with new content or the exclusion thereof. It has to do with remaining competitive without having to grind PvE, which is what a lot of other hardcore WvW players would like to see I’m sure.

Treadmills you say… Would you rather WvW be about who grinded PvE most to win due to gear? Seen that in other games, I don’t play those games. Have, but don’t anymore.

Went through the same pattern with ascended accessories and was never really resolved… But this is worse. Took me about 10 minutes of PvE to get 30 ore (temple was up).

How can this fairly compare to 6 keep takes? Depending on the how skewed match is (and we all know how skewed it can be), some casual players might not even do this in a week of WvW.

Anet should realize by now that many of their dedicated WvW players have no interest in PvE and even less interest in being forced to PvE to remain competitive. I mean if they don’t realize this yet, maybe they don’t deserve to keep these players.

In my experience, reviving someone after the first down is a fraction of a second slower than stomping. If you start reviving right when the thief downs a player, the time it takes to CnD and stomp is actually too slow and the stomp will fail (happened literally thousands of times when I solo roam). I don’t think most players realize this though.

Second, Every class I can think of has multiple easy AoE/untargeted stuns and/or knock backs. Except ranger(?)

Assuming 2v2 (or 2v1), run to the downed player, stun, revive.

Or, if you have 2 revivers near you’ll win the race regardless of any other action.

If its 1v1 and you’re down, not even an argument.

Also, cheesecake is the only really good cake. Otherwise pie all the way.

Lopez.7369:

I honestly don’t understand how skill lag isn’t a No. 1 concern above everything else to the point that ArenaNet is throwing every resource at the problem. It’s probably the one thing in PvP that would make a casual player quit on the spot. People don’t put up with lag, especially when it causes horrible gameplay. (I understand they’re working on it, but I doubt that it’s a top priority, considering it’s still a huge problem in the game one year later.)

I’m also not sure Devon said time dilation wouldn’t work in Guild Wars 2. I actually agree with that, but time dilation actually does happen in Guild Wars 2 right now. After the server lags for a bit, everyone in the zone appears to gain haste. All attacks fire off faster, even downing people. This happens to everyone. So if time dilation doesn’t work — and I agree it doesn’t — why is that happening?

I experience skill lag about 0.001% of my gameplay in WvW so its honestly not a big issue for me. I assume it’s actually the veteran players who are most affected, not new players, because it essentially equalizes the playing field. But I would much rather they put the effort into improving WvW in other ways (like new content/map).

If they wanted to fix skill lag it would probably be something like a reduced AoE cap (but increased damage per AoE target) in large fights beyond a certain threshold. Also, the rare bug you’re referring to is… a bug.

Or transfer off the top 3 or 6 servers. Skill lag fixed.

This is a technical limitation with any mmo that includes large scale battles though.

Zacchary.6183:

Tricare.2946:

Someone close this thread please. This thread isn’t creating healthy discussion because there is nothing to fix.

This thread is now about pie.

I like southern pecan pie. Simple to make and SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO freaking delicious.

I hope you add whiskey. Whiskey pecan pie.
Best. Pie. Evar.

Expect fighting in the JP as the norm, not the exception.

I enjoy camping the JP (near the entrance) and it has nothing to do with griefing. Just a way to get lots of PvP action in a PvP zone. Since everyone has to pass the same way.

Condition “meta” is meaningless. At least refer to individual classes or builds… Because statements like the above are ridiculous when applied to most condition damage builds which have no burst or condition “bombs” whatsoever.

Some of it is probably just a L2P issue as well as adapting to a damage type that was rarely seen before since condition builds have never been very common in the past. I’ll admit, with shame, I didn’t realize you could dodge necro signets though they are definitely easy to see and have a slow cast.

Second, the problem in general with conditions and balance is that it gets much weaker in group situations because of the number of condition removal skills that are AoE. I’ve noticed with even just two players (particularly with an ele), the effectiveness of conditions drop off rapidly.

And third, counters to conditions can be a lot stronger than counters to direct damage builds. Warriors for example can build extreme condition duration reduction. On my P/D thief today, I faced a mesmer with an unusual build That I could not even get under half in 5-10 minutes of fighting; which was odd since I didn’t consider mesmer as having strong condition removal or sustain.

So maybe it’s several skills on 1-2 classes or maybe it’s just L2P (adapt) but broken “meta”? I don’t think so.

Ty mods I got ADD reading this thread.

P/D thief, definitely not ‘meta’ for thief or even for p/d builds.

I do think ‘condition meta’ is somewhat of an oxymoron or else meaningless term because… conditions are not meta. And the builds are different for each class. It’s like saying ‘power meta’.

Thesilentflute.8761:

Each server has players that spend allot of time to try to succeed and have to deal with the distraction of “GvG”, taking spots and pulling players during a war stunting server mobility and being counter productive as a whole in respect to the game mode. The much larger problem is that these players are exploiting the loot and wvw exp systems.

If there’s a queue on the map, the GvG group won’t fit and will go elsewhere and your argument is invalid. (All maps could only be queued in T1 anyway, right?)

If there’s not a queue on the map then they’re not ‘taking spots’ and your argument is invalid.

If you’re trying to argue GvG open field fights are an exploit, WTF I don’t even…?

Fight club at JP entrance. Like 10 awesome SoS and only 1 DFND and me from Maguuma for the last hour lol…

Frosch.7809:

Tobias Steele.2071:

As a rule when I command in a match when we are the favorites to win, I always go for whomever is ranked second or the greater threat. Unless Yaks bend actively get in our way or we run out of things to http://www.guildwars2.com/en/cap, its baguuma first.

Your other commanders seem to not follow this rule of yours, i really don’t blame them. Our BL is almost completely flipped by your Zerg, while Mags is mostly theirs.
Hearing from one of you about your higher morale standards is funny though.

Of course the undefended borderland will be more tempting to karma train regardless of the hate for magswag… Meanwhile in EB its the reverse.

Anyone want to Fight Club now? YB BL ss normal spot. A few here but not enough.

I don’t think thief should get any more group value. It’s just class diversity. The playstyle fits the name. Thief is terrible in large fights, strong in small fights >5v5, and excellent solo.

Also, 4 second revealed was a lazy nerf and the wrong way to do it since it just equalizes bad and good players by slowing everything down. I do think stealth could use some tweaks to be a little less troll-y. Possibly in exchange for some buffs as well.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/How-To-FIX-WvW-Thief-Stealth/first

insanemaniac.2456:

imagine a 50 bot zerg walking back and forth between pangloss and ogrewatch, specced for aoe swiftness and trained to shoot but not chase.

when they can prevent that, theyll re-add escort rewards

That’s why there’s a report feature… Imagine 50 accounts being banned for the most obvious botting ever. That’s like $2500 for nothing, who could complain about that?

Also, anet could be not lazy for a change and make rewards specific to each path. But no.

Atherakhia.4086:

If this thread had a point, servers that are grossly outnumbered or had poor coverage would actually have a chance. Since we know this isn’t the case, apparently roaming isn’t worth squat in this game.

um… Logic? You may have been trying to say something semi-intelligent but trivially obvious like “nothing except numbers and coverage is worth squat”. But even that’s not entirely true. Skill, strategy, and organization is of course worth something; which is the point of this thread although you don’t see it.

Doomdesire.9365:

The problem here is that most people think the score matters.

Though mostly just a representation of population and coverage for match making, score is the context for which most of WvW is played for and the point of even discussing strategy. Otherwise wouldn’t everyone open field fight all day and as often as possible for $$$? Would be awesome but might get boring fast. Well okay I forgot skill lag too…

WvW in general is zerg-heavy but I imagine anything under T2 has a lot more of what you’re looking for. I’m on Maguuma and there’s usually a fair number of small groups and soloers but also some heavy zerging. Seen the same from YB, EBay, SoS I think, CD on occasion, probably others, if you’re looking at NA servers.

Since it mostly depends on the opposing servers you get, I would tend to recommend any T4 server or under though can’t speak from direct experience for under T4.

I agree with points above where if everyone was roaming/havoc/ninja groups it would probably be less efficient than having a zerg for the brute force but that would probably never be organized well enough to be able to test.

krijgsheer.9624:

If you don’ flip the supply camp, the enemy can just take the supply and than go for your tower or so. You cann’t interrupt the enemy because 50% of the time you will loose and a dolly can make it. Small group roaming is much more useful than solo.

I do both and find group roaming is only marginally faster than solo which makes it a lot less efficient. Solo player on a mobile class travels faster than a group (limited by its slowest member), caps at the same speed, and the only difference is NPC kill speed.

Most of the time I can kill a dolyak even with 2 or 3 players escorting though I may end up dying for it. What a soloer cannot do is ninja towers or keeps, defend vs this, or deal with other small-mid size groups. It’s slightly different roles and I guess not every class can quickly solo supply camps/sentries/dolyaks.

Avatar of Belle.9623:

EnRohbi.2187:

While people who do PROPER roaming are plenty valuable to their server,
The issue is that there are a lot of roamers out there who are not roaming because they want to help in WvW, they are roaming because all they want to do is gank uplevels and unsuspecting opponents (They call it “looking for good fights”) and feed their ego.

They don’t hit sentries, they don’t hit camps, they don’t hit yaks, they don’t build or repair. They idle around various parts of the BL and gank people 1v1. Those people are not valuable for anything other than very mildly trimming the opponent’s forces, probably of no actual consequence to the situation.

A lot of roamers are having fun the way they want to have fun. Not everyone cares about PPT or overall score. I highly recommend this attitude as it makes the game much more relaxing and fun.

I usually find the best fights while doing the rounds between camps, sentries, and dollys. Many players don’t seem to want to fight otherwise except for other seasoned roamers/duelists.

Contiguous.1345:

Roamers are pretty well irrelevant. 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)

The battle is largely over who holds the keeps and the strategic towers and because of the way the game is structured, there’s little point in worrying too much about upgrading anything else. Very often (in fact, usually) the battle will roll over a structure, cap it and leave. The only value of supply camps and most towers is as a source of siege equipment supply.

The idea of ‘cutting off supply’ as a game mechanic has failed because camps are so vulnerable. They can be switched back-and-forth at any moment by minor forces. The only real obstacle being the buff timer.

I suggest you read the OP again since I’m essentially referring to the 1-to-1 value of a roamer vs zerger and nothing else. I also have no idea what you could mean by “strategic importance” with regards to holding objectives except for PPT. And in this case, again, refer to OP to refute yourself.

Cutting off supply doesn’t fail as a game mechanic… I’ve seen entire zergs dedicated to guarding a dolyak. If anything, it’s that there’s no one to do it in the times where it matters because WvW pushes zerging so hard in terms of effortless rewards relative to anything else. Of course, much of the time supply camps aren’t about dolyaks or even supply and nowhere did I claim this.

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

maybe we should just flip a coin for keeps and towers at mach start, and all start roaming and fighting over camps…

Since when did keeps and towers not require fighting over camps?

Somehow there’s a common misconception that roaming is not helping your server in WvW. Extreme versions of the argument claim roaming is greedy, self-serving, basically that roamers should go to sPvP (can never tell if trolls actually believe their arguments though).

I think it’s the other way around. Roaming is the hardest and least rewarding role in WvW (aside from commanding) but roamers have far more value than zergers.

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For the sake of argument lets just consider supply camps. Lets pretend roamers don’t scout, or kill dolyaks denying supply, or contest waypoints, or distract zergs and other small groups, or do anything except capture supply camps.

Here’s the PPT values that tick every 15 minutes:
Supply camp: 5
Tower: 10
Keep: 25
SMC: 35

It takes me about 40-50 seconds to clear all the NPCs in a unguarded and non-upgraded supply camp. And most supply camps are not guarded or upgraded (if they are, I can often still deal with it up to the point where it gets the cultist NPCs which is a 200 or 250 supply camp).

There are certain zerg-heavy servers up to T2 (no idea about T1) where I can go to their borderland solo and run the circle of camps, holding between 4-6 of the camps just myself. This means solo I can be maintaining 20-30 PPT. This is the equivalent of 2-3 towers or 1 keep.

This doesn’t compare to anything an individual zerger could be doing.

On a bad day and/or in EB or vs servers with good roaming presence, I might be holding on average 1-2 supply camps per tick while roaming. By the points, this still seems far more than an individual zerg member could be contributing. And again, this is not counting anything else roamers do including points from sentries and dolyaks or the actual effect of the supply and supply denial from these camps.

edit: Confusion in the responses… I’m not saying zergs are unimportant, they obviously are. I’m saying on a 1-to-1 comparison, roamers do a lot more, at least with the current population levels of each.

Because you can…

JP under Maguuma control.

Most important priority.

Friendly fire would need to be something like 15% damage while the player who does it, takes 30% damage back to themselves.

But either way it would restrict the meta to all ranged nukers with minimal melee because the frontline would just be soaking up the AoE cap. While all melee zergs would be hitting each other every fight. Kind of lame, bad in every way.

It certainly DOES matter what profession you are and is critical in how the zerg’s tactics will play out.

Guardian/warrior is going to be the best for lawnmower-type aggressive zergs which are probably the easiest to do (you’ll need to go FULL bunker build).

Ele will be good for more organized defensive/ranged play which can counter the above but probably harder to pull off with pugs.

Thief won’t be good for any type of zerging except overall strategy by showing people where to go on the map.

ACs only had the biggest thread probably ever with 50 pages of replies. And then after a month or so they were re-balanced some.

They seem to be the worst at fighting underwater (not sure maybe guardians are worse). Spear which was heavily nerfed (not even good before nerf) has an evade and a block while speargun has a shadow step so they’re good at running and mobility (to get out of water).

So the post is really a tactic for every class, not just eles. But then why not say run to the neariest tower, or small roaming group? That’s a much more common tactic, and more successful.