Roaming is dying out

More and more I play this meta the roaming side of the game seems to be dying out because of unbalance of warrior/spellbreakers and the lack of boon strip from all but one class that doesn't compare to spellbreakers mobility. Don't get me wrong I like most of the changes making classes like the ranger and engineer more mobile witch should help the roaming side of the game. This post will probably fall on diff ears because the majority of people suck at roaming and have no idea what I'm pointing out. But that's my two cents for today.

Could change again in a few weeks.

One of the top roaming specs, Mirage, is completly bugged atm and therefore unplayable. Many peoply try out Zerking now with scourges. People who played Daredevil over the last 2 years try deadeye now. (i dont think deadeye is heavy roamer- not knowing) Many people still play PvE.Lets wait a little bit.

@Lionwait.4815 said:More and more I play this meta the roaming side of the game seems to be dying out because of unbalance of warrior/spellbreakers and the lack of boon strip from all but one class that doesn't compare to spellbreakers mobility. Don't get me wrong I like most of the changes making classes like the ranger and engineer more mobile witch should help the roaming side of the game. This post will probably fall on diff ears because the majority of people suck at roaming and have no idea what I'm pointing out. But that's my two cents for today.

I see more thieves and rangers roaming around than I do Spellbreakers, and both of those classes can easily eat Spellbreakers for breakfast in a roaming scenario. Both can (or will) have better mobility too.

I get people getting upset about Spellbreaker in large scale combat (though most do nothing but whine), but roaming? They're not remotely overpowered and FC just took a damage hit too.

Keep in mind guys ; a lot of servers arround with different tiers.Things happening on our/your server may not be the same on others.

i always see roamers from gandara and sfr. they seem to be thriving. must be a timezone x server issue?

Cause condis and anet not knowing their ass from their elbow.

In short, it's no fun for the prey so they leave, which makes it no fun for the predators.

This is an inevitable result of the top roaming builds being SO MUCH more effective at what they do than "normal" builds.

Why bother fighting a roaming spellbreaker if at best you'll stalemate them before their invulns/sustain come back, and at worst, they'll kill you in 2 hits.

Why stick around to fight a roaming thief if you know they'll continually reset the fight and eventually catch you off guard with basi-venom up and burst you down?

Why fight a roaming condi mes when your build doesn't pack enough cleanse to reasonably compete with their spam?

Why fight a roaming scourge if you don't have 1200 range?

There are so many situations where a player stands no chance in a fight that they tend to avoid 1v1 confrontations. They just assume (rightly, for the most part) that it's not worth trying, so instead they either give up and afk/die or run away and join the zerg. Then the roamers get bored because no one fights them and they go join the zerg too.

I've mostly encountered spellbreakers, all kinds of thieves (even core thief, surprisingly), druid/soulbeasts and condi chrono/mirages. With the easy and overwhelming condi application + point and click AoE playstyle of Scourge I've even encountered a few of those zany enough to go out by themselves.

I try to play off meta/home cooked builds if you'll put it but sure enough I find myself switching to things like condi daredevil as 'roaming' these days is more like gank squads of 5+ players and there's no way I'm surviving on builds that don't have mobility/sustain etc.

Not to mention it's safer to zerg up and press 1 - more rewards, more xp, free loot bags from blobbing down smaller groups, teammates to res you when you die.

@coro.3176 said:In short, it's no fun for the prey so they leave, which makes it no fun for the predators.

This is an inevitable result of the top roaming builds being SO MUCH more effective at what they do than "normal" builds.

Why bother fighting a roaming spellbreaker if at best you'll stalemate them before their invulns/sustain come back, and at worst, they'll kill you in 2 hits.

Why stick around to fight a roaming thief if you know they'll continually reset the fight and eventually catch you off guard with basi-venom up and burst you down?

Why fight a roaming condi mes when your build doesn't pack enough cleanse to reasonably compete with their spam?

Why fight a roaming scourge if you don't have 1200 range?

There are so many situations where a player stands no chance in a fight that they tend to avoid 1v1 confrontations. They just assume (rightly, for the most part) that it's not worth trying, so instead they either give up and afk/die or run away and join the zerg. Then the roamers get bored because no one fights them and they go join the zerg too.

I couldn't have said it better

Roaming was always an issue, due to thieves, being inherently Stealth/High Burst DPS/Mobility, and while Anet can't really downplay any of those traits off the Thief without totally destroying the class making it worthless, Notice they have been trying with Daredevil not having much stealth, and dead-eye's lack of mobility, both have only been lukewarmly received. So Anet's next direction would be to give things like Mobility and Stealth to other classes to try and bring balance.

But turning every class into a "Thief" of a different flavor, will only serve to make a bigger problem, that is trying to balance the flavors, as well as how crushing the game will be for any of the classes that have not become 'Thierifid"

I think it's a side effect of WvW as a whole, not the power creep (although fuck warriors of any kind).

What I mean is, back in the day when we thought WvW mattered, people roamed the hell out of roaming to benefit their server. Now people roam like they're some sort of elite assassin that can only be satisfied by finding the perfect prey. If you roam to sneak that T3 camp on a queued EB on reset night while also keeping eyes on the enemy commander, that's always going to be fun. If you run around looking for the perfect fight and run into a bunch of people running trailblazer or whatever, that's almost never going to be fun.

People see me on my hammer rev, turn around and run away, see an ally and come rushing at me.

Put simply, people who don't solo roam don't want to ever take a 1v1. That's their perogitive.

You are kidding right? If you are dying to warrior and clamming that you are not mobile enough then you are a bad player.The most mobile are:

• Thief
• Mesmer
• Ranger
• Elementalist
• Engineer
• Revenant
• warrior
• Guardian
• Necro

Now, if you create a build that allows you to teleport up cliffs, then a warrior will NEVER catch you and to be honest that is OP and it should be removed from game. Ranking the classes with teleport up cliff OP builds is as follows:

• Thief
• mesmer
• Elementalist
• Necro
• Guardian
• Ranger
• Engineer
• Revenant
• Warrior

The warrior does not even make the top 5 most mobile classes! If you are dying to a warrior its because you suck!

@Hitman.5829 said:You are kidding right? If you are dying to warrior and clamming that you are not mobile enough then you are a bad player.The warrior does not even make the top 5 most mobile classes! If you are dying to a warrior its because you suck!

If you think every class out matches warrior at roaming then it is clearly you that needs some practice with warrior.

@Hitman.5829 said:The warrior does not even make the top 5 most mobile classes! If you are dying to a warrior its because you suck!

As a roamer who often uses warrior I'm laughing at this. I use my warrior as a hunter for nearly every class. A good built warrior has a permanent 25% run speed, access to a a lot of swiftness, and several gap closer leaps. The only classes that even have a chance of escaping are thief and mesmers because of cloaking. Besides for that, its pretty much a guy trying to outrun a truck.

because nobody wants to get shotgunned by a stealthed mesmer, in stealth

@zerorogue.9410 said:

@Hitman.5829 said:The warrior does not even make the top 5 most mobile classes! If you are dying to a warrior its because you suck!

Rangers can outrun you if built for roaming, both druid and soulbeast. In part that's due to stealth options, but the straight mobility is about on par as well. It just so happens though that most rangers seem to have no idea how to play their class... like when all the druids roaming around were tank spec when they could do so much more when tuned for damage. Also, thieves can leave you in the dust without even bothering with stealth.

While I don't entirely agree with his assessment of warrior being at or near the bottom of the barrel, the perception that warrior has got top tier mobility hasn't been a thing for a long while. For example, those three things you mentioned don't stack with each other - swiftness replaces Warrior's Sprint, and neither have impacted on gap closers since June 2015 or so (which cut down the distance traveled by quite a lot).

Not to say that warriors are slow if an effort to build for speed is made and you deliberately play with the mindset of getting in and getting out when things get hot. But starting at roughly the same spot and then trying to chase or be chased, warrior probably comes in just above middle of the pack (with a number of classes bunched around that middle). As Hitman mentioned, that goes out the window if porting up the Z axis is an option (which is something I don't personally mind a bit).

@zerorogue.9410 said:

@Hitman.5829 said:The warrior does not even make the top 5 most mobile classes! If you are dying to a warrior its because you suck!

And in what server do you play? please don't tell me you play in tier 9999 server!

@Hitman.5829 said:Now, if you create a build that allows you to teleport up cliffs, then a warrior will NEVER catch you and to be honest that is OP and it should be removed from game. Ranking the classes with teleport up cliff OP builds is as follows:

• Thief
• mesmer
• Elementalist
• Necro
• Guardian
• Ranger
• Engineer
• Revenant
• Warrior

The warrior does not even make the top 5 most mobile classes! If you are dying to a warrior its because you suck!

What do rangers/engi's have for teleporting up hills (seriously asking). Only thing I can think of for ranger is soulbeast mode for smokescale f2 but that's for chasing not escaping, and the gazelle one is leap. I can't think of a teleport for engi either, only know of leaps. Help me out here, unless I misunderstood the list.

Roaming has definitely gone down over the years, and solo roaming isn't as common anymore either. When I do see people I rarely see them roaming alone anymore, its usually at least 2 or 3 people together. I'm on FA and I've not seen many roaming groups as often as I used to on FA and other servers, even less so people running around alone unless they are just hitting a guard to keep participation up (also guilty of that; outnumbered pips too hard to pass up).

I couldn't pin a reason on it, as its probably multiple combined reasons, but if I had to guess its probably:

• A lot of players that roamed solo or in smaller groups back in the day left because HoT power creep and lack of WvW changes at the time, new map sucked then etc.
• Zerg metas shifted a lot and I've seen more people just join the bigger WvW guilds to participate in zergs rather than find smaller groups and roam on the regular.
• Rewards for roaming/taking small objectives have been, and will always will be, worse than joining zergs and getting lots of bags/taking big objectives
• And to tie in with the point above after this most recent large WvW update with pips, its much faster to get to tier 6 for max participation with a big zerg than it is taking camps around the map.

I know personally I stopped playing GW2 for over a year after HoT dropped and I did most of that content. WvW was getting stale for me and the class balance was something I didn't want to deal with anymore since I didn't agree with how it was being handled. TBH I still don't but I came back for PoF and like the content and the new WvW rewards/changes (like gliding). But I can already tell its getting old again fast for me enjoyment wise. I find myself just holding on until the next balance patch like I did after HoT, and also TBH I'm not nor have I ever been a fan of conditions in this game, and the way its looking right now I don't think GW2 will ever go back to pre-HoT where power was meta for most classes and condi was rare (but still effective in some scenarios if played well). So if the next balance patch or 2 isn't what I'd enjoy playing (cough, engi buffs, especially support/med kit please I'm dying) then I'll probably stop playing for another long period of time, if not forever.

That ending was a long rant but it feels good to type it out. I've had lots of fun in GW2 but I'm not feeling it anymore, and the WvW game mode isn't where it should be, especially after 5 years and 2 expansions.

@Hitman.5829 said:You are kidding right? If you are dying to warrior and clamming that you are not mobile enough then you are a bad player.The most mobile are:

• Thief
• Mesmer
• Ranger
• Elementalist
• Engineer
• Revenant
• warrior
• Guardian
• NecroIf I understand you correct, this list excludes the z-axis. Then it's just wrong.

• Daredevil (NOT Deadeye)
• Ranger (only Staff+GS Druid)
• Mesmer (just when abusing multiple stealth sources)
• Warrior (GS) + Elementalist (GS Elite)
• Guardian (DH with F-skill + GS + Sword leaps and Meditation ports)
• Engineer (only if built heavily around leaps)
• Revenant (only if he can port to ambient creatures - if not he is the very bottom of mobility - I roamed half a year on PowerShiro, it's clunky!)
• Necro/Scourge

Side Note about Reaper: Reaper has more mobility than Guardian, Engineer and Revenant if they don't run such a build I listed. The 600 leap every 10/6 seconds on top of perma swiftness is pretty decent.

So.. maybe I am wrong but to me, roaming is solo and the OP is not wrong about the prevalence. At least on T-1 NA prime. (Though that's like saying you can't keep an ice cube in the desert in the summer..)

2-5 is a havoc group to me. We run 2-5 mobile classes to keep camps paper, supply starve an area, and draw the enemy Zerg to us.

Yes, we hit solos running back to the Zerg, and try to keep our third's supply and towers functional.

@Lionwait.4815 said:More and more I play this meta the roaming side of the game seems to be dying out because of unbalance of warrior/spellbreakers and the lack of boon strip from all but one class that doesn't compare to spellbreakers mobility. Don't get me wrong I like most of the changes making classes like the ranger and engineer more mobile witch should help the roaming side of the game. This post will probably fall on diff ears because the majority of people suck at roaming and have no idea what I'm pointing out. But that's my two cents for today.

I agree with you : the roaming scene is currently a full cast of spellbreaker, who hit like a truck while being nearly invulnerable the whole time. But as some others stated, I'm also beginning to see more diversity : I'm roaming as a mirage, and I see more and more of those. Likewise, I'm seeing more and more soulbeasts. Not so much firebrands, they're more in 3 ppl havoc squads...I also agree with the fact the boonshare meta is still up and healthy, and that neither scourges nor spellbreakers are being an effective counter to it, mostly because of re-apply possibilities.

Yet, I'm not really sure it's dying. It's more... evolving. We'll see if it's for the best (and I'm pessimistic on that point).

@Lionwait.4815 said:More and more I play this meta the roaming side of the game seems to be dying out because of unbalance of warrior/spellbreakers and the lack of boon strip from all but one class that doesn't compare to spellbreakers mobility. Don't get me wrong I like most of the changes making classes like the ranger and engineer more mobile witch should help the roaming side of the game. This post will probably fall on diff ears because the majority of people suck at roaming and have no idea what I'm pointing out. But that's my two cents for today.

There are a plethora of issues surrounding WvW, professions, certain combat mechanics..., ... so that’s kinda far reaching to blame the state of roaming on Spellbreaker and Boon strip...