Is there a composition that is equal or stronger than the current Pirateship meta?

[EremiteAngel.9765]

I was watching Noody's video and noted that in the past, the death ball melee train was the king meta style used in GvG/Blob fights.Then AGG transformed the meta to Pirateship range when they invented this meta to defeat their strongest foe in a GvG.And since then it seems that everyone started using the Pirateship and the meta has not changed for a long while.

So many patches have come and gone since then with many changes.Has any top guilds tried to change and counter the Pirateship meta?Have we gotten another 'AGG' level of style creativity since their era?Or is everyone just copy and pasting their style without trying to find a stronger style?Or is there really no other style that can triumph the Pirateship meta?

Or am I wrong and the current meta is not Pirateship? :'(

[Dawdler.8521]

The current meta is not pirateship. Its boonball and it has been that for a long time. The boonball has only marginally suffered from the anti-toxin and scourge nerf. Not even the chrono nerf did much, thats how strong it is.

The classical pirateship ended with the stab change that allowed melee to push again (after the stab change that caused the pirateship because melee could no longer push).

[Zephyra.4709]

@"EremiteAngel.9765" said:Or is there really no other style that can triumph the Pirateship meta?

We haven't even reached full pirateship meta yet. Give it another few decades.

I can see it now.

Gather round the campfire you filthy cubs... the inevitable horrors which lay ahead will haunt you for eternity.

It is the year 2069. The hamster running the servers still miraculously slaves away, a true hero. You can hear him naruto running relentlessly beyond the dimly lit corridor to which lies a door with the word Soon™ carved upon it. You creak open the dusty covered door and find the team scraping their final balance patch off that untouched ancient table... straining your eyes you can barely perceive the proposition "alliances" crossed out and replaced with a more intellectual solution of words so carefully written in crayons; "...all classes have been deleted from WvW save for rangers. Warclaw can now fly and shoot lazerbeams. Ranger longbow buffed from 1500 range to over 9000 range. All ranger pets except for bears have been deleted and replaced with warclaws as pets that one may only obtain by defeating other players on flying warclaws."

Thus, the next meta will be the true peak of classy pirateship meta. Immense core ranger zergs... colossal core ranger blobs as far as the eye can see! Tremble in fear at the almighty wombo combo of double bear double longbow eloquently dubbed - OMEGA BEARBOW LAZERBEAMCLAW META ...coming to a server near you Soon™.

[ArchonWing.9480]

There is no Pirate Ship Meta; sometimes you have a skittish group afraid to lose that insists that the other side push through a choke but that is not the same thing.

Current meta is stealth ===> advancing wall of doom via Shades and Warrior Bubbles while the whole group is immune to condi. Everything else is merely a distraction.

[EremiteAngel.9765]

Weird... usually what I see is that the first group that pushes loses because the other group will run in the opposite direction and bomb behind them on the chasing group before turning to counter push on the chasing group once they lost their initial momentum.

So nobody likes to push first and they resort to pulls and bombs from range.

[Dawdler.8521]

@EremiteAngel.9765 said:Weird... usually what I see is that the first group that pushes loses because the other group will run in the opposite direction and bomb behind them on the chasing group before turning to counter push on the chasing group once they lost their initial momentum.

So nobody likes to push first and they resort to pulls and bombs from range.Thats not pirateshipping. Commanders do this because the boonball will push - often with no regards into what because they are used to zoneblobbing smaller numbers. They just push. Thats the point, push and sustain with permaboons.

Counterbombing like that requires coordination and often only work after the enemy ball has gotten used to rolling over its enemies. If they loose once, they will be more alert... And usually far less since those just wanting to easy roll the enemy leaves. Thats when the boonball start rolling the other way.

[mad.8374]

since hot PS doesn't exist or u don't know what is PS

[XenesisII.1540]

I mean I guess you could call that period at PoF release pirate shipping when scourges were broken with the corruption and condition spamming and they made up more than half the zergs, other than that it's been strong boonball ever since stability was improved in HoT. I think groups, especially pug zergs, retreat because they don't have a stable front line, or facing larger numbers it's best to try and lure groups back into your bomb and hope for the best.

[Liston.9708]

Some servers definitely cloud.

[Psycoprophet.8107]

I don't kno if its pirate ship but every zerg I've seen is still forced to stay at range due to scourge spamming among other aoe's. I could care less in the end but if scourges and other large aoe spam didnt exists and was just a matter of small area aoe like revs hammer etc zerg battles would be fun asf. Ofcourse boon spam would have to be lowered as well. Having large groups actually rushing in for melee battle without being insta deleted by aoe's would imo be far more engaging combat than the current stay back and spam aoe's and who ever has the most aoe's wins yay good times. Also all the aoe spam leads to such skilled gameplay.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

there probably are other possible metas, but not many people are willing to try them out.

[subversiontwo.7501]

It really depends on where you play as well. I think Expandas made a comment about that recently. In NA and at lower tiers in EU where scales are smaller there may have been a return towards more melee metas earlier whereas in higher tier EU there has certainly been a pirate ship meta that only recently has started to budge a bit. Obviously, there have always been other ways to play (and sometimes it can be hard to tell based on the balance between the groups fighting as well with a far superior group just plowing or snowballing another group) but the most common approach in the 50 v 50's+ has certainly been pirate ships in tier 1-2 in EU and it is far from dead yet even if Scourges are being replaced by Revs.

Every time they have shaved at the Scourge however, other approaches have become just a little bit more competetive in a broad sense. It just takes time to see it reach effect if you scale it up to largest scale and assume that sides are somewhat equal. The last few changes that dropped the common amount of Scourges down to something more normative also turned the playing field into something where other tactics can begin to make cases for being on a competetive footing. Revs, despite all their appeal for pirate ships, do not rip at 1200 so there simply isn't that same combination of rips and killing power at the same ranges anymore, leaving room for more diversity in tactics or for other moving pieces in a collective tactic to be more notable.

Also, one pretty simple way to tell if melee or ranged tactics are prevalent is to look for if groups pass through each other or not. In a ranged meta a group that is snowballing their opposition may rush in to finish the job. However that is usually just to deliver the killing blow. Whereas if you have a melee meta you will see the groups passing through each other multiple times because they are in melee before the fights are decided.

To answer the question of the thread: I don't think a new meta has really settled in yet. I see some groups/servers running Warrior-heavy, others still run Scourge- (and Rev-) heavy and others yet run Rev- (and/or Elementalist-) heavy. That's not really a problem though, rather it is indicative of there being a better balance with more ranges represented both as solid approaches and as a loose mish mash.

[mad.8374]

full rush bubble warrior is not pirate ship

now people think if you have a bacline it's ps :#

[subversiontwo.7501]

@kialb.2098 said:full rush bubble warrior is not pirate ship

now people think if you have a bacline it's ps :#Well, it certainly depends on the amount of Warriors and the amount of backline or who the support actually commits to follow.

Even the pirate ship meta had bubble Warriors but a good tell was that they were running in often unsupported and had little staying power.

Where the commander is that is also a pretty telling sign. If the commander is mostly in melee then it is a melee comp, if the commander is mostly at range, then it is a ranged comp.

Easy peasy.

[Dawdler.8521]

@subversiontwo.7501 said:Where the commander is that is also a pretty telling sign. If the commander is mostly in melee then it is a melee comp, if the commander is mostly at range, then it is a ranged comp.99.9% of commanders run firebrand, so I suppose there is your answer.

[ArchonWing.9480]

@"EremiteAngel.9765" said:Weird... usually what I see is that the first group that pushes loses because the other group will run in the opposite direction and bomb behind them on the chasing group before turning to counter push on the chasing group once they lost their initial momentum.

So nobody likes to push first and they resort to pulls and bombs from range.

That's just a standard "hit their flank" maneuver. A tip to remember is that your average train is literally just that-- a train. People have to group together and run in the same direction. Thus, if they're not that great, they're highly predictable and you can literally sidestep and bomb the side that passes through.

The true meta is actually just moving at 30-45 degrees relative to your enemy, lol.

But yes, there are definitely groups that look for a bridge or something and stuff a bunch of marks and wells on it. In those cases it does get shippy because one side wants the advantage, but there is no reason that anyone has to play along. If you let them goad you, you lose.

A good way to practice is find a small group of pugs and just stay within like 2000-2500 range of a enemy zerg. Don't even engage; just try to dodge them with as few movements as possible. Eventually it should be obvious who sticks out in a zerg and who you and your friends can pull/focus/w.e. They will get pissed and run you over eventually though, but it's ok.

[shiri.4257]

the ajam meta has been the predominant meta since HoT. we just have stealth now for 10s+ for 20-30 guys, so it looks like you're fighting a pirate ship. until that surprise booty bomb smacks you.

[Swagger.1459]

@EremiteAngel.9765 said:I was watching Noody's video and noted that in the past, the death ball melee train was the king meta style used in GvG/Blob fights.Then AGG transformed the meta to Pirateship range when they invented this meta to defeat their strongest foe in a GvG.And since then it seems that everyone started using the Pirateship and the meta has not changed for a long while.

So many patches have come and gone since then with many changes.Has any top guilds tried to change and counter the Pirateship meta?Have we gotten another 'AGG' level of style creativity since their era?Or is everyone just copy and pasting their style without trying to find a stronger style?Or is there really no other style that can triumph the Pirateship meta?

Or am I wrong and the current meta is not Pirateship? :'(

The new meta is called “sasyho”! It means “stack and spam your heart out”! Incidentally, it’s basically the same type of meta we have always had, but with a cooler name.

[LetoII.3782]

The meta is mostly what you can get half of your 50 person blob to not screw up.

For most groups that's bomb the chokepoint

[Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365]

probably the bandwagon meta

[expandas.7051]

All else being equal it depends on the number of players per team. As you scale up a ranged play style becomes more effective.

[Dawdler.8521]

@ArchonWing.9480 said:A good way to practice is find a small group of pugs and just stay within like 2000-2500 range of a enemy zerg. Don't even engage; just try to dodge them with as few movements as possible. Eventually it should be obvious who sticks out in a zerg and who you and your friends can pull/focus/w.e. They will get pissed and run you over eventually though, but it's ok.For some reason zergs usually dump siege on me when I do that.

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

Spellbreaker, reaper, stance share soulbeast, support scrapper, fb. The melee dream team steam powered meme.

[RedShark.9548]

We are slowly moving away from pirateship, if balance is going as it has done for the last few patches, you still stand around as melee alot, but not as much as you did after hot. Playing warrior was a pain, zergs just staring at each other, and when you had 10 down you pushed them, they knew they would lose and started running, teleporting to spawn as soon as they got ooc.Warriors just running at them, begging for atleast someone to stay and fight/get cced to get 1 single lootbag. It was the absolute worst meta ever. So boring i wanted to kms.

[Dawdler.8521]

@"RedShark.9548" said:We are slowly moving away from pirateship, if balance is going as it has done for the last few patches, you still stand around as melee alot, but not as much as you did after hot. Playing warrior was a pain, zergs just staring at each other, and when you had 10 down you pushed them, they knew they would lose and started running, teleporting to spawn as soon as they got ooc.Warriors just running at them, begging for atleast someone to stay and fight/get cced to get 1 single lootbag. It was the absolute worst meta ever. So boring i wanted to kms.Would still say we are well past it, not "moving away" from it slowly. Do zergs still range each other? Yes but they are no longer designed for it. Zergs arent 70% backline anymore, its completely flipped - they are 70% frontline. From what I see when a zerg is "pirateshipping"... its actually clouding because only 20 out of the 50 people there are in the squad.