What is happening to me in WvW

I'm still a relatively new player, and while I've dabbled in WvW out of curiosity, I'm very curious about something I've seen in WvW matches recently. I purposefully didn't post this in the WvW section as I suspect it will do nothing but attract vitriolic statements.

I gave WvW a run just to see what it was about. I quickly discovered it was a fast way to bang out the daily, and 2g per day is something I enjoy. I do whatever I can to help, be it building / manning fortifications, or joining a zerg or even small roaming group.

But this past week, I've come across something repeatedly: as the enemy zerg approaches, the ground gets covered by dozens and dozens of red circles, even before my Ranger w/ LB can target someone. The circles spread life a flood, often faster than I can outrun, which usually ends up with me dying.

As my team re-forms and heads out, without fail, that zerg will re-appear, and just demolish my entire force in the same fashion.

I see a lot of comments in chat about Necros and Scourge. I'm genuinely curious here: what is happening?

As you said, it's mostly sand shades and condi marks from scourge that pulse damaging and crippling conditions. Generally positioning is very important especially for ranger since the strat in WvW is to dump all ground aoe infront of the group, standing in it for more than 1 second will blow you up. If you're playing power long bow you're going to want to be in the backline so that you are protected from the aoe madness and have tanks infront to lead the charge (be a good guy and focus down those annoying scourges!).

When you notice the fight going south use a movement ability (lightning reflexes) or weapon skill (greatsword 3, combine the leap with smokescale smoke field to get stealth) to get out of the way. You can also use longbow 3 to get stealth and reposition as well. As for targeting i would just try using tab target as it will select the closest enemies in your field of view.

Those growing red circles are the new scourge animations.

While a lot of aoes are tossed out there from all professions, the pulsing ones are.. yea.. scourges using desert shroud. I started WvW only a week or so ago, so still consider myself a novice to the game mode but the zerg can quickly kill ones motivation to play WvW. Either the pulses of Desert Shroud need reduced or Demonic Lore needs a cd nerf added. Arenanet claims to want counterplay to encounters which is why sand shade was given the 1/2 second delay nerf, but wheres the counterplay here? You die in 2 seconds and have to respawn to do it over again. I main necromancers (1 reaper and 1 scourge) and still want a nerf to this b/c it isnt fun as it is.

@Blockhead Magee.3092 said:Those growing red circles are the new scourge animations.

The animations are definitely a scourge ...

Yeah Scourge Shades are painful. I mainly play one myself in WvW and it's what i do the most damage with and get killed by most of the time.

@OkamiLuna.5182 said:Yeah Scourge Shades are painful. I mainly play one myself in WvW and it's what i do the most damage with and get killed by most of the time.

They're indeed awful. Was defending bay in our BL I think 2 resets ago and the enemy had catas up. I stealthed and dropped a disable on my mesmer and as I was walking back across the wall to grab supply, careful to skirt these red circles of death, an enemy mesmer used focus 4 to pull me right into the sand shades where I died before I could even pop invuln. Annoying to say the least lol.

Long before the red carpet of death, WvW zerg fights and winning them had become a simple matter of "who has the most condi scourges?". Thats why the meta is ~70% condi scourges and 30% mostly firebrand. The new effects only showed us how truly over the top insane the amount of AoE it really is.

The advantage these days is that we can see the circles more easily; the disadvantage is we can see how many gazillion circles there are.

That said, there are ways to survive it (mostly by knowing not to push into it without the right support from squad mates and a smart commander picking the right locations).

PS props to the OP for their efforts supporting their server, even if they just got into things for the easy dailies.

PPS I am pretty sure that if you asked the same question in the WvW forum, you'd get mostly constructive responses. I've asked for help in profession forums and the threads have been nearly 100% constructive, even though I'm asking out of ignorance.

Your best bet to evade them is to move laterally to the direction of the zerg, and use your movement skills to quickly gain distance. Zergs tend to move for the big group first, and since you're not really a part of that, you have a decent chance to get away by not being there. Near structures attacking zergs tend to AoE toward the portal of that structure, so you're generally better off not heading for that, unless you have plenty of headstart. As many has stated above, they're AoE circles. Organised groups tend to have a lot of scourges due to the high AoE damage output of shades, even after the nerf.

As was mentioned earlier, Positioning is critical in WvW. You are learning this the hard way.You are probably misjudging the response time you need. I did it constantly when I first started and still do the same a couple times a day now. The more you WvW the more you will get a sense of proper distance.

As a ranger in WvW running LB (most do), your Job is to be a fair bit behind the tag at all times. If the Commander is leading you into condi bombs/aoes then the problem is the tag. Some tags are like this, they get a hard on for a target and lead their zerg in to get farmed over and over.

Put Signet of Stone on your utilities. This will help your survivability immensely

Thank you all for the comments and feedback. In a small way it's helpful to know what is roflstomping me hehe. I'm not too broken up by it because for me WvW is very much a side activity, but I want to be as useful to my team as I can be. (given how I see a lot of chat about afk'ers, I guess I'm already ahead of the curve lol!)

ya scourge took over like the plague, locus in wvw...dead in pve lol

Scourge Is boon eater/corruptor. If boonspam classes get Nerf scourge loose dmg(most od the dmg Is from Corrupted boons (necro itself Is lowdmg prof. Especialy with staff). But boonspam meta Will not change So we Will be seeing this red circles over And over again.BUT be glad for red circles. Some classes have attacks that dont show where the Spell Will land.(Hammer rev 3,..). Thats hard to react if you dont see attacker casting it.