Group tactics

[Leo.3428]

Watching videos I'm seeing a lot of many-headed blobs going back and forth on the rampart walks in a kaleidoscope of red and white circles. Although I know there is a tactical movement here, based on superposition and dilution of effects that takes advantage of the particular mechanics of the game, I would like to see other types of tactical positioning and movement based on splitting your group, splitting the opponent group, circling, clearing a way, etc. Does the game mechanics allow this to exist and do you have any pointers? Thank you!

[Mist.6217]

Have fought many groups that do just that (part will peel off veil/ hide for a portal bomb or just try to flank the group), have done it with my guild as well (when playing off another larger tag we would try to bait the zerg so our other tag could hit them when they were on cd or flank while they go for the other tag). Think once a tag hits a certain size without a second tag they turn into the back and forth blob fights that are more attrition based to win.

[Woop S.7851]

> @"Leo.3428" said:

> Does the game mechanics allow this to exist and do you have any pointers? Thank you!

 

This idea was proposed quite a while back before release of POF expansion in an ancient thread, where commanders can assign "numbered sub-tags" to players (not the current symbol markers - star/heart/circle etc), it'd be similar to battlefield's squad leader that can follow a waypoint/path/line to the objective assigned by a commander, allowing small havoc groups to break off in order to flank the enemy zerg from sides or behind. However this idea was not fully implemented (or may have been misinterpreted), similar to the "look for group" window that no one uses after entering WvW; currently the closest thing would be marker symbols: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Commander#Markers funny how things turn out in the end :D

 

 

[Dawdler.8521]

> @"Woop S.7851" said:

> > @"Leo.3428" said:

> > Does the game mechanics allow this to exist and do you have any pointers? Thank you!

>

> This idea was proposed quite a while back before release of POF expansion in an ancient thread, where commanders can assign "numbered sub-tags" to players (not the current symbol markers - star/heart/circle etc), it'd be similar to battlefield's squad leader that can follow a waypoint/path/line to the objective assigned by a commander, allowing small havoc groups to break off in order to flank the enemy zerg from sides or behind. However this idea was not fully implemented (or may have been misinterpreted), similar to the "look for group" window that no one uses after entering WvW; currently the closest thing would be marker symbols: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Commander#Markers funny how things turn out in the end :D

You are talking about literally using a second (or third, or fourth) commander. That exists and used to be a daily occurance. The focus party have really gone out of favor since PoF though, nowadays commanders just want 80 guards/necros/revs on them if possible, everybody stack. But its not that uncommon to see pug tag + guild tag working together. Whether they do it good is a whole other matter.

 

[enkidu.5937]

I very much like the situation, when a casual-oriented zerg, roamers, and an elite guild group are operating seperately on the same map, and join together when big scale enemy forces are showing up. During that fight, the roamers do that kind of „light skirmishers“ job, the casual zerg is like that cheap mass of undertrained pikemen, and the guild group as „elite heavy hoplite infantry“ holds its groud, even if outnumbered, or as cavalry, making a suprising charge from the flank. To let a truely epic big scale Gaugamela-experience kick in (or Waterloo, depending if you're on the victory side, or Thermophyles if you're a true Spartan =) ).

 

„Big scale“ experience does not only mean „big numbers“, but also a „wide battlefield“, and yes, there has to be some degree of chaos, not only coordination. Thats just my personal understanding of how WvW should be played.

 

But in Reality, devs say: „We've introduced scourge shades and SpB bubbles, to split your blob.“

And in return zerg vets say: „Oh ok, then now we need EVERYONE on cookie cutter builds, sticky in the ball, to tank that damage and condi pressure, and thin out the damage among as many players as possible. Otherwise the scourge ball fails“

:/

[Aeolus.3615]

> @"Leo.3428" said:

> Watching videos I'm seeing a lot of many-headed blobs going back and forth on the rampart walks in a kaleidoscope of red and white circles. Although I know there is a tactical movement here, based on superposition and dilution of effects that takes advantage of the particular mechanics of the game, I would like to see other types of tactical positioning and movement based on splitting your group, splitting the opponent group, circling, clearing a way, etc. Does the game mechanics allow this to exist and do you have any pointers? Thank you!

 

What u request is to hard for most gw2 players.

[sephiroth.4217]

> @"Aeolus.3615" said:

> > @"Leo.3428" said:

> > Watching videos I'm seeing a lot of many-headed blobs going back and forth on the rampart walks in a kaleidoscope of red and white circles. Although I know there is a tactical movement here, based on superposition and dilution of effects that takes advantage of the particular mechanics of the game, I would like to see other types of tactical positioning and movement based on splitting your group, splitting the opponent group, circling, clearing a way, etc. Does the game mechanics allow this to exist and do you have any pointers? Thank you!

>

> What u request is to hard for most gw2 players.

 

I'm giving you a "helpful". :lol:

[Aeolus.3615]

> @"sephiroth.4217" said:

> > @"Aeolus.3615" said:

> > > @"Leo.3428" said:

> > > Watching videos I'm seeing a lot of many-headed blobs going back and forth on the rampart walks in a kaleidoscope of red and white circles. Although I know there is a tactical movement here, based on superposition and dilution of effects that takes advantage of the particular mechanics of the game, I would like to see other types of tactical positioning and movement based on splitting your group, splitting the opponent group, circling, clearing a way, etc. Does the game mechanics allow this to exist and do you have any pointers? Thank you!

> >

> > What u request is to hard for most gw2 players.

>

> I'm giving you a "helpful". :lol:

 

With all the easy access to spam increased all over this years, don’t expect better gameplay, Anet need to make next elites stronger in spam and powercreep mechanics than pof ones, combat only tends to get worse, they can’t evade the aoe spam low lvl skill gameplay they have to make life easy for casuals and pve players.

 

Just get in the side with more aoe spam... it’s a casuals game.

[subversiontwo.7501]

Like others have already said, what you suggest are things that are already being done and have been done for a long time (whether it is havoc/focus parties, clouding or guilds and roamers combining into large scale fights). It is still being done today, you may not just see it very often for various reasons. I wouldn't say that "skill" or "balance" is necessarily one of them but effort certainly is. Alot of players, whether they are old or new, these days tend to be very content with just farming bags and server-level organisation tend to struggle with building support for such players and focus alot of that kind of effort on that (hence all the meta-discussion).

 

If it is more precisely focus-parties you're interested in they have some other issues that makes them rare today. When a player group gets the organisation to actually do focus parties they also reach a level when they can begin to roam- or raid as a guild group and then rather tend to gravitate towards that, especially if it is a group that picks up players with a bit less experience of guild fights, then they tend to be very keen on trying that kind of semi-closed content rather than taking your guild-group into the open content. That means that players who tend to do focus parties now are rather people who are bored with the roaming- or raiding scenes or people who are involved with them and do some focusing on their off-time.

 

All of these things makes it scarce but it is still around, can still be alot of fun and can be very effective if you build and organize for it. That's one of the upsides this game has always had, when something becomes scarce it isn't necessarily weaker and rather becomes stronger because no one else adds that dimension to their gameplay. It does involve the effort and ability of leading and organizing yourself however and few people are willing or prepared to do that right now. Yet, only in the past 2-3 weeks I've seen or been apart of both focus parties, clouding, guilds adding in or multiple guilds vs. singular blob.

[Leo.3428]

Thank you all for the detailed answers. I'm still leveling my characters in PvE and I imagine WvW as _the_ place where things get more realistic and spatial awareness, team coordination, making each bullet/cast/arrow count... matters as much as, or more than, memorizing every one of a thousand bar skills and their combos. WvW is what drew me to the game in the first place. I had a moment of doubt about the fact that fifty players can stand on one pixel and there is no friendly fire, which encourages blob wrestling and transforms the fight into a card game. But you guys convinced me that there is more to it :)

 

Regarding the debate on casual, I consider myself a casual player - so far anyway - but I'm not of the mind to want WvW made easier for casual players, especially if this means a festival of AoE.

[alcopaul.2156]

someone posted some nonconventional tactics in the forums in about 2012-2013 here in the forums (not sure bout the years but its here, maybe in the archived forums).

 

Just search keyword "Master Strategist/Boyd".

[shiri.4257]

> @"Leo.3428" said:

> Watching videos I'm seeing a lot of many-headed blobs going back and forth on the rampart walks in a kaleidoscope of red and white circles. Although I know there is a tactical movement here, based on superposition and dilution of effects that takes advantage of the particular mechanics of the game, I would like to see other types of tactical positioning and movement based on splitting your group, splitting the opponent group, circling, clearing a way, etc. Does the game mechanics allow this to exist and do you have any pointers? Thank you!

 

It used to be every commander thinks he's the second coming of Rommel. Now it seems every pug believes he's the reincarnation of Napoleon. The finer tactics are usually in voice coms or subtle plays that may not be seen in a guild hype video. IE: a staff 5 from guardian to cut, a timely grav well, a soft CC to cause some separation, the triple Soulbeast driver snipe, the radar engi to mitigate stealth engages, etc.

[coro.3176]

Problems:

 

* projectiles are useless because a large group has 100% projectile reflect/block uptime.

* CC is useless because a large group has near permanent stability

* single-target attacks are inefficient because they don't pressure a group, and even if you down 1 person, the other 4 around them will pick them up near-instantly

* conditions are *worse than useless* because a large group is has scrappers and FB's cleansing and converting constantly. Some groups have shared resistance too

 

So what are you left with? ground aoe. Rev Hammer, Scourge circles, Ele meteors - and the rest of the classes geared to supporting that damage. the current meta basically.

 

"Clouding" works, to a point, but once the opposing force is organized enough, the only thing that will accomplish is picking off the weaker enemies that aren't in squad or voice comms. Eventually you will whittle down the opponent to just the comped/organized group, and your cloud won't be able to touch it.

[Leo.3428]

@"alcopaul.2156" - Is it this thread of yours?: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Ian-Boyd-on-WvWvWing-in-Guild-Wars-2/page/1#post1963445

Very interesting! Does this still apply today, or as @"coro.3176" describes, blobs have turned hedgehogs (and maybe smaller zergs too), leading to slow attrition fights as @"Mist.6217" puts it?

@"shiri.4257" - Voice comm looks like a must-have to me, I wish it was integrated into the game with channels for the different group sizes so you can lower the volume of the main channel while you focus on one operation with a small group.

 

 

[shiri.4257]

> @"Leo.3428" said:

> @"alcopaul.2156" - Is it this thread of yours?: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Ian-Boyd-on-WvWvWing-in-Guild-Wars-2/page/1#post1963445

> Very interesting! Does this still apply today, or as @"coro.3176" describes, blobs have turned hedgehogs (and maybe smaller zergs too), leading to slow attrition fights as @"Mist.6217" puts it?

> @"shiri.4257" - Voice comm looks like a must-have to me, I wish it was integrated into the game with channels for the different group sizes so you can lower the volume of the main channel while you focus on one operation with a small group.

>

>

 

You have a good attitude. Just fair warning, not all commanders are competent enough to think of counterplay, so even voice coms can't save them. most focus on theory crafting builds and spitting out numbers. very few theory craft tactics and counterplay. WvW is very open, it requires a lot of work to get people to believe in your ideas. if you can get enough people to prove it works, you'll be fine.

 

A fairly good example are commanders that don't understand the meta and available zerg compositions he has on him. There are probably 3 basic "organized" zergs, when i say zerg i consider it 25+.

 

1) melee centric - heavy frontline setup

2) pirate Ship- heavy backline setup

3) Hybrid- a mix of both

 

You'll have tags with a pirate heavy composition trying to melee and a melee heavy setup trying to pirate ship. Then you got the mish mash of whatever composition with a commander that just lolligags in a circle. WvW is a very amusing game mode.

[ArchonWing.9480]

A lot of what you see exists, not because people understand what is going on, but rather people just doing something because they've been told by "someone else really good that is an ultimate dominator". The following post is also completely anecdotal and there are no refunds.

 

As the game is, there's basically 3 common "tactics" in blobs you will face, unless they're not what I described above. Note that none of these things are inherently bad; and in fact better players will combine these things but most lack imagination. I feel like it's necessary to understand these things, so you may be able to develop tactics on how to counter them.

 

* "Puushheee Pusshheee Pusshheee Pusshheee bom bom bom" Generic Hammer Train. Basically this is a commander/guild that's seen too many Red Guard videos and expects the same results when they just yell bomb that things will die. You can spot this zerg very easily because they move very linerally, with some pugs hanging off the back of the train. Eventually the more succesful this train gets, the bigger it snowballs as everyone and their dog wants that free karma.

 

Dealing with this is not too hard if you remember what happens when trains go off their tracks. Against their initial push, it's sometimes not even necessary to do a full dodge; often times they are so inflexible you can literally sidestep them. All you need to do is pick off the pugs and the commander will eventually rage out and give in to attrition. This will also cause them to shrink until all that is left is a bunch of scrappers/firebrands that can't kill anyone. But that brings up something else. A moving target is often harder to kill than one that is standing around. So don't just stand around!

 

* Stealth one trick ponies. This group usually splits into two so you will chase them while the big group stealths and drops a giant bomb on you, instantly downing you and running off to do it again and again and again.

 

Basically the large scale of zerk thief ganking, with the exact same counter. Most of these do not have a follow up so you just need to survive the first stealth bomb. Remember those thieves and rangers you kicked out of squad? These are great for scouting ahead and locating this nonsense as well. But mainly your people have to not be potatoes and dodge back the moment they see a cluster of red circles forming. Unfortunately, if your connection is crap, well, hopefully you have teammates telling you what else.

 

* Choke campers. Basically this group never fights unless they have a choke because it's still 2015 and pirate ship is king. The only way to deal with this is to eventually find a way behind them though they'll just go to the other side. Just don't fall for their crap unless you must. Some spots, such as the bridge in inner hills is often a death trap.

 

Oh yea, and don't randomly repair walls ffs.

 

There is a 4th type, and that's the organized guild(s) that are actually good, or have voltroned up to make up for that. In general, you will notice if these countermeasures don't work and if that's the case there is little you can do to fight them with a pug group and will require actual effort which is far beyond the scope of this post. You can only get this by playing more with an organized group. Or just pull the emergency wp and blob it out.

 

Other notes:

 

* No yoloing. Nobody cares how high your dps is if the group wipes

 

* Ress'ing must be done together. Diving in to save one person sounds cool but it's even cooler if that person gets up instantly and no risk is taken. Oh, and let people know if you're dying. That's sorta important.

 

* If none of this works, try making a thread complaining about it here so you can have your concerns noted ~~ignored~~

[alcopaul.2156]

> @"Leo.3428" said:

> @"alcopaul.2156" - Is it this thread of yours?: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Ian-Boyd-on-WvWvWing-in-Guild-Wars-2/page/1#post1963445

> Very interesting! Does this still apply today, or as @"coro.3176" describes, blobs have turned hedgehogs (and maybe smaller zergs too), leading to slow attrition fights as @"Mist.6217" puts it?

> @"shiri.4257" - Voice comm looks like a must-have to me, I wish it was integrated into the game with channels for the different group sizes so you can lower the volume of the main channel while you focus on one operation with a small group.

>

>

 

yeh. :P. was just bored and thought of something else and compiled it in a post.

 

incidentally, that post was 9 months after the vanilla release. it's like the cycle of the moon. or the ideal # of months when babies are born from conception.

 

anyway i would like just to comment on the above comment, the number 4 type.

 

i think i saw this multiple times. they are like a ball with the damage the might the heals basically everything. they are ideally bout 20 or 15. yeah, with people just logging in and belonging to different guilds soloing and not a hardcore "Fight" guild, they can be frustrating to fight. but that does not mean that they can't be taken down or they have no choice but to retreat. people who have been everyday playing together "communicate" by character movements (or in the outside, body language). some people may place tactical sieges. or probably let the enemy ball go into a "trap". or maybe they can just overpower them with numbers.

and that is again when the server has no dedicated "fight" guild that is in equal foot with the 4th type.

 

or maybe just guess the usual commander class of the group. if they have a backup commander, this won't be easy. otherwise, just spike the who you think the commander is. if that one is downed and a player finished him by THE warclaw dive, just observe if they are retreating/moving in panic. if yes, you got the commander.

[Leo.3428]

Thank you guys for taking the time to elaborate on this topic! I will go back to this thread often while I prepare to join WvW.

Also, thank you for the humor - it will help me get over the initial streak of getting killed every other minute :D