I think small group is a thing of yesterday. I small grouped for years and years in gw2 and since feb the decline in both activity and skill in small group settings is comparable to how bad hot release was. Small group aside, I think it's actually fair and realistic to say that roaming is dead atm, fully dead. Small group/havok itself (mainly composed of roamers) is not far behind and is now relegated to cloud/zerg surfing pretty much as they pose almost 0 threat to a significantly larger group.
The devs are nerfing the skill ceiling, ultimately that's the issue. Small group can't have an impact a gamestate that exists in that reality. One shots cannot exist in the current expression of wvw and without them small scale cannot function in a gamemode that more and more focuses on balancing the blob v blob meta.
It's easy to point to and suggest that blob balancing is responsible for the decline in wvw over the last few months but I feel a huge element of that is the removal of other wvw playstyles. Those people also zerg (and mostly to a much higher level than johnny potato, by this I mean increasing the overall 'fun' level for all members of a zerg) and removing their primary style of play (roaming or small scale) definitely impacts the feel of the map overall.
But it is what it is. Wvw has provided so many hours of great, great content. It's easy to be annoyed at what it is now, but it's important to remember all the fun times it once brought, so I'll just play something else and goodluck to those enjoying it :)
I think small group is a thing of yesterday. I small grouped for years and years in gw2 and since feb the decline in both activity and skill in small group settings is comparable to how bad hot release was. Small group aside, I think it's actually fair and realistic to say that roaming is dead atm, fully dead. Small group/havok itself (mainly composed of roamers) is not far behind and is now relegated to cloud/zerg surfing pretty much as they pose almost 0 threat to a significantly larger group. The devs are nerfing the skill ceiling, ultimately that's the issue. Small group can't have an impact a gamestate that exists in that reality. One shots cannot exist in the current expression of wvw and without them small scale cannot function in a gamemode that more and more focuses on balancing the blob v blob meta. It's easy to point to and suggest that blob balancing is responsible for the decline in wvw over the last few months but I feel a huge element of that is the removal of other wvw playstyles. Those people also zerg (and mostly to a much higher level than johnny potato, by this I mean increasing the overall 'fun' level for all members of a zerg) and removing their primary style of play (roaming or small scale) definitely impacts the feel of the map overall. But it is what it is. Wvw has provided so many hours of great, great content. It's easy to be annoyed at what it is now, but it's important to remember all the fun times it once brought, so I'll just play something else and goodluck to those enjoying it :)