Why is roaming dead? what happened?

[ollbirtan.2915]

39 minutes ago, Aeolus.3615 said:

Actually ive found more players  trying to go  solo ,  issue here is that most i found  do  300-1k   damage  o  assume  most are traiblazer  and similiar to minstrells or very  defensive stats.... 

GS guardians that do no damage and  QQ when u absord   their CC  and sword skills ...  (most guardians dont  know how  easy its to absord some of their  skills).

Deadeyes doing  max  2k   damage ....

Warriors 300 damage  on  100Blades...

Minstrells mesmers

Useless Condi heralds.. w/o a team to get carried.

No  damage weavers but are unkilable if one  doesnt   have  boon rip  and high damage.

Wow we must be playing different games --- I'm yet to meet a SOLO ROAMING minstrel chrono / zero damage immortal weavers etc. Are you sure you are not confusing strayed zerglings with roamers? 🤣

[Dawdler.8521]

5 minutes ago, gloflop.3510 said:

Roaming is not dead. However, roaming suffers from a huge problem called "class balance". Way too often the outcome of a fight is pre-determined by the classes which are fighting each other.

Isnt that what a class based game is supposed to do 😐

 

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

1 hour ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Isnt that what a class based game is supposed to do 😐

 

That's actually funny, because GW2 wasn't supposed to be that way, but here we are I guess.

[Clownmug.8357]

Can't really say it's dead if you have opponents to fight but you don't like that there are too many. I do get where op is coming from though. Roaming isn't fun when the mind set of stacking advantages in terms of number of players, coordination, and build composition to create uneven fights is becoming more prevalent.

[KrHome.1920]

2 hours ago, ollbirtan.2915 said:

Wow we must be playing different games --- I'm yet to meet a SOLO ROAMING minstrel chrono / zero damage immortal weavers etc. Are you sure you are not confusing strayed zerglings with roamers? 🤣

Minstrel chrono not so much, but unkillable cc tempests (you can't apply any meaningful pressure cause of dumb cc spam) and bunker weavers (just total bunker and evasion) are quite frequent in EU. Both builds will kill you eventually when you can't disengage (that's pretty much their strategy: find a target that can't get away and wear it down). At times they are even more frequent than the dolyak stance hardcarried boonbeasts. 

That said: roaming is still a thing, but for the best experience you adapt to what's happening on the map. And when the map is full of gank squads I have no issues joining our blob for an hour or so.

Edited October 25, 2021 by KrHome.1920

[ollbirtan.2915]

Just now, KrHome.1920 said:

Minstrel chrono not so much, but unkillable cc tempests (you can't any meaningful pressure cause of cc spam) and bunker weavers (just total bunker and evasion) are quite frequent in EU. At times they do outnumber even the dolyak stance hardcarried boonbeasts, which are a plague since PoF release. 

That said: roaming is still a thing, but for the best experience you adapt to what's happening on the map. And when the map is full of gank squads I have no issues joining our blob for an hour or so.

Trust me ---- weavers are not immortal. I run cele "bunker" weaver myself when I roam solo and happen to be up against certain EU servers that are "famous" for camp / spawn camping and/or "roaming" in groups of 5.  Weavers are perfectly killable - just don't pepefaceroll all your cooldowns into evades (ToF is quite long cooldown btw) / don't tank damage - also, CC and soft CC (especially chilled) is your best friend. 
It's hilarious to be fighting vs 2-3 people who just unload all their skills within 2 seconds into your evades. After that they become free loot bags- and  qq that weavers are "unkillable"  🙄
P.S. I could never survive ( and I mean survive - not kill) vs more than 2 players who actually know better than to faceroll their skills. 

[KrHome.1920]

7 minutes ago, ollbirtan.2915 said:

Trust me ---- weavers are not immortal. I run cele "bunker" weaver myself when I roam solo and happen to be up against certain EU servers that are "famous" for camp / spawn camping and/or "roaming" in groups of 5.  Weavers are perfectly killable - just don't pepefaceroll all your cooldowns into evades (ToF is quite long cooldown btw) / don't tank damage - also, CC and soft CC (especially chilled) is your best friend. 
It's hilarious to be fighting vs 2-3 people who just unload all their skills within 2 seconds into your evades. After that they become free loot bags- and  qq that weavers are "unkillable"  🙄
P.S. I could never survive ( and I mean survive - not kill) vs more than 2 players who actually know better than to faceroll their skills. 

Nah, I wasn't speaking about getting focused by 2 or more players. Each build dies to a 2v1 focus of competent players (even a thief with godlike reflexes) - GW2 balancing has its issues, but it is not THAT bad.

I was talking about solo roaming weavers/tempests. There are a lot of solo roaming weavers, while tempests are a bit more small scale oriented, where they are 3 times more effective than hammer warrior in terms of pinning down targets.

Edited October 25, 2021 by KrHome.1920

[ollbirtan.2915]

27 minutes ago, KrHome.1920 said:

Nah, I wasn't speaking about getting focused by 2 or more players. Each build dies to a 2v1 focus of competent players (even a thief with godlike reflexes) - GW2 balancing has its issues, but it is not THAT bad.

I was talking about solo roaming weavers/tempests. There are a lot of solo roaming weavers, while tempests are a bit more small scale oriented, where they are 3 times more effective than hammer warrior in terms of pinning down targets.

Weaver/tempest if they are playing on the bunkerish cele side, have very low chase potential. So if you find yourself with skills on cooldown and there is a jolly weaver snailing your way nothing is stopping you to disengage, rinse, and repeat. 

[frareanselm.1925]

5 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

So you think roaming is dead because more enemies can come and you don't like it?

I don't see how that was ever any different or how that makes roaming dead.

You dont understand it. In the past I coud roam and could find 2 or 3 allies, join them and even defend a camp against 3-4 invaders, that was fun. Nowadays it's only the zerg and the farmers who flip camps and port home. That's my complaint.

Edited October 25, 2021 by frareanselm.1925

[Sylvyn.4750]

5 hours ago, ollbirtan.2915 said:

OMG this. So true....or 10 ppl waiting for a kitten harpy to spawn - not caring there is a small battle going right in from of them! 

Those would probably be the PvE'ers getting through the GoB reward track...they aren't there for server pride, etc.

[kash.9213]

1 hour ago, frareanselm.1925 said:

You dont understand it. In the past I coud roam and could find 2 or 3 allies, join them and even defend a camp against 3-4 invaders, that was fun. Nowadays it's only the zerg and the farmers who flip camps and port home. That's my complaint.

Not everyone is all in on one or the other. Most people don't decide before they leave their keep gate that they're going to do exactly this tonight and hold themselves to some rule set. Solo roaming is basically dueling. If you want duel, set it up with someone. This isn't open world, it's a big match and the maps lanes truncate activity so you're going to run into groups. Also, most people hit up all of the different scale action as they run into it, not everyone is going to do the bunny hopping and the will they or wont they dance with you while you wait for good conditions to jump them. People are vibing in WvW for lack of open world, set up duels in spvp or something. 

[Sleepwalker.1398]

6 hours ago, Aeolus.3615 said:

 

Deadeyes doing  max  2k   damage ....

 

Rifle Skill 2 is the new auto attack....has been for a while.

 

6 hours ago, Aeolus.3615 said:

 

Warriors 300 damage  on  100Blades...

 

While many are doing fine on core and spellbreaker, a minority will complain damage is low to cover their bad gameplay.

[Fatherbliss.4701]

A lot of this depends on time zone. Or which map you are on in general. I won't say its totally dead but you do have to know where to go. Which tier you are in. All that factors in. Plus the OP is on the EU side and I'm not sure about that side of the game currently. If you want more duels those folks still tend to hang out in the southern portion of the alpine borderlands. Flipping camps can get you smaller fights. Cutting across the middle of the map, being annoying in the ruins. Kinda what folks in this thread were saying. You can attempt to get some roamers to come out to you. Depending on the matchup I'm in it definitely feels like most people are attached to a zerg. They might just be rotating around the tag but that makes your pick of role even harder.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

Claim buff and mounts are the two biggest things I've noticed. 

 

If someone comes flying into a camp to defend on a warclaw, you can't intercept them nearly as well as you could if they had to burn actual utilities.  If you do manage to down them, more are on the way on warclaw; it's very hard to cap a camp if people know you are in there, even if you do down / defeat 2, 3, 4 people.

 

The general trend towards defensive stats also is a problem--a necro, fb, weaver, soulbeast, etc. can stall long enough for help to arrive without much chance of downing them if they are built for tanking  / evading.  We can blame that February patch for that one.     

 

So yes, roaming has definitely changed.

[Banto.8761]

Can't say roaming is dead. I constantly keep getting raided by those roaming blobs. It's a total joy running 1 vs 50 roamers

[suialthor.7164]

On 10/23/2021 at 11:26 AM, frareanselm.1925 said:

I love roaming with thief or mesmer, there's nothing more satisfying... but ultimately I'm gonna quit

I've been playing is Kodash, Desolation, and Baruch Bay, and I dont know if it's the same in other servers but I hardly ever find 1v1 or 1v2 fights (except the typical zone between the 2 pillars next to the guard).

Then 4, 5 enemies come and I cannot defend it against them and is super frustrating. 

You play something that has the advantage in many 1v1 and 1v2 fights.  Then wonder why people only want to fight when they have more than that?

[Shinjiko.1352]

For me it's a combination of factors.

You can't sneak anything anymore. Watchtower, mounts and gliding mean people react faster than ever, making it almost impossible to havok or roam.

You want to take a camp on your own or in a duo? 8/10 like 5-8 people will respond fast on mounts/ gliding. People want the easy kills so never run around in duos or such as often. But that's just a human nature thing so I don't blame that really.

Also as mentioned above class balance also heavily controls how you feel when roaming as some just can do more for less effort and eventually it becomes not worth it to you as you get tired fighting an uphill battle should you be on a less fortunate class. Don't get me wrong overcoming such difficulties is fun in its own right but most regular people get disheartened faster over things like that.

[Sobx.1758]

On 10/25/2021 at 8:26 PM, frareanselm.1925 said:

You dont understand it. In the past I coud roam and could find 2 or 3 allies, join them and even defend a camp against 3-4 invaders, that was fun.

That's still a thing nowadays.

[Justine.6351]

When Anet severely nerfed the ability for a solo player to blow up tryhards they left roaming wide open to gank groups and runaway peekaboo masters. But yeah "you just want your easy mode one button push hammer rev" was all the verbiage I would get regarding complaints about nerfing power damage. When I would say "wvw is dead" people would just be like "look at the 100 man que every prime time! But hur dur wvw dead!" Its not that there are not more roaming builds out there and cannot have a good time, its just people are only going to learn a new class so many times before walking away from a game randomly pounded by nerf hammers.

People clearly don't want roaming to be a thing, just karma train zerging. And Anet is happy to give them that experience. "If you want to play small scale PvP, go to spvp" - the zerglings

[JTGuevara.9018]

28 minutes ago, Justine.6351 said:

When Anet severely nerfed the ability for a solo player to blow up tryhards they left roaming wide open to gank groups and runaway peekaboo masters. But yeah "you just want your easy mode one button push hammer rev" was all the verbiage I would get regarding complaints about nerfing power damage. When I would say "wvw is dead" people would just be like "look at the 100 man que every prime time! But hur dur wvw dead!" Its not that there are not more roaming builds out there and cannot have a good time, its just people are only going to learn a new class so many times before walking away from a game randomly pounded by nerf hammers.

People clearly don't want roaming to be a thing, just karma train zerging. And Anet is happy to give them that experience. "If you want to play small scale PvP, go to spvp" - the zerglings

 

Yeah....the same spvp that is full of win-traders, botters and cheaters...no thank you. I think you're a bit off on roaming though, roaming really declined because of zergs along with stronger support specs from the expansions. Stuff like scrapper, firebrand, scourge, heralds, spellbreakers essentially made them into AoE-bombing, boon JUGGERNAUTS. There is simply no in-game counter to them besides...(surprise)...another zerg. A good chunk of roamers gave in and joined those same zergs they fought against. Another chunk simply left the game. The server bandwagoning from GUILDS over the years to get easy bags also sped up this process.

[Justine.6351]

4 hours ago, JTGuevara.9018 said:

 

Yeah....the same spvp that is full of win-traders, botters and cheaters...no thank you. I think you're a bit off on roaming though, roaming really declined because of zergs along with stronger support specs from the expansions. Stuff like scrapper, firebrand, scourge, heralds, spellbreakers essentially made them into AoE-bombing, boon JUGGERNAUTS. There is simply no in-game counter to them besides...(surprise)...another zerg. A good chunk of roamers gave in and joined those same zergs they fought against. Another chunk simply left the game. The server bandwagoning from GUILDS over the years to get easy bags also sped up this process.

"another chunk simply left the game"

yes I know

[ASP.8093]

On 10/25/2021 at 10:01 AM, Aeolus.3615 said:

Actually ive found more players  trying to go  solo ,  issue here is that most i found  do  300-1k   damage  o  assume  most are traiblazer  and similiar to minstrells or very  defensive stats.... 

GS guardians that do no damage and  QQ when u absord   their CC  and sword skills ...  (most guardians dont  know how  easy its to absord some of their  skills).

Deadeyes doing  max  2k   damage ....

Warriors 300 damage  on  100Blades...

Minstrells mesmers

Useless Condi heralds.. w/o a team to get carried.

No  damage weavers but are unkilable if one  doesnt   have  boon rip  and high damage.

… Are you sure it isn't you who's running the Minstrels?

Or, you know, something like forgetting that necro shroud comes with damage reduction?

[Lonecap.4105]

Just go PvP if you want smallscale though? You can queue up against equal numbers in just a few mins in an environment without -10% damage food and other kitten. Just saying this is the best option for you tbh, despite what people say PvP is actually still good fun if you like smallscale balanced fights.

[subversiontwo.7501]

18 hours ago, Justine.6351 said:

When Anet severely nerfed the ability for a solo player to blow up tryhards they left roaming wide open to gank groups and runaway peekaboo masters. But yeah "you just want your easy mode one button push hammer rev" was all the verbiage I would get regarding complaints about nerfing power damage. When I would say "wvw is dead" people would just be like "look at the 100 man que every prime time! But hur dur wvw dead!" Its not that there are not more roaming builds out there and cannot have a good time, its just people are only going to learn a new class so many times before walking away from a game randomly pounded by nerf hammers.

People clearly don't want roaming to be a thing, just karma train zerging. And Anet is happy to give them that experience. "If you want to play small scale PvP, go to spvp" - the zerglings

Don't get me wrong when I jab at some of your comments here, because I can definitely understand where your frustrations come from and share some of them myself.

However, I think you are pointing to the wrong causes while the results or experience it ends up in is more widely accepted. If you look into it, I'm sure you'll see that the stereotypical "peekaboo masters" were already gaining the upper hand over the the equally stereotypical traditional "speed roamers" so even before the so-called february burst nerfs you had started to see a split and gravitation for several classes away from typical solo-duo play towards small groups, pocket support and the like. The power burst changes may have been the final straw for some hold-out players but balance wise and behaviour wise things were already in motion. That's been my experience but also verbatim what I've been told by friends who were/are eg., Warrior or Elementalist roamers. So the power-burst nerfs did not cause this, it was already a thing.

The same kind of goes for the tanky and condi stuff now. There are obvious balance issues with some of those builds (certain shroud builds, certain barrier builds, certain condi/cc builds etc.) but they are also a bit of a double-edged thing as they now occupy that same spot that certain stat-friendly power burst builds had before. They also, in my oppinion, and what I think is the most interesting bit in your posts and Kash's posts, kind of suffer the same balance issues if we distinguish roaming from straight up duelling.

For me, this is later where it gets interesting because this is where a perspective of from-small-to-large meets the perspective of from-large-to-small. The reason we do not see more variety scaling up or down (or cross scaling) or, as you put it, "just karma train zerging" being so prevalent, has much less to do with balance and more just to do with the state of WvW as a mode. So of these two extremes ("solo-ish roaming" and "karma train zerging") one is driven by balance issues and the other is simply driven by ambition issues as a result of overall ambition and attention issues.

Whether you scale from 1-2 to 5 or from 50 to 15, whether you look to find a target pool within your scale or if you opt to cross-scale in various ways (guild/zerg busting, havocking etc) all of that requires effort and it has mostly been effort that players have been unwilling to put in. I'm not saying that players are lazy (or just that) but rather that it is understandable that players see little point in putting in that extra effort into a game mode that the developers do not to care about or signal to not care about. That is largely why we have such a polarisation of low-effort roaming and ganking as well as low-effort zerging. I've always considered the game to shine inbetween and WvW as mode is at is best when there is cross-scaling and a broad variety of content and group sizes but I can also understand why there is not because those are the things most sensitive to the abandonment of the mode and they have been the things first sacrificed by the developer (when they have focused on making WvW appealing to existing players in other modes, encouraging tourism and taking tags for granted, etc.).

So, from my perspective, the health of casual roaming as an isolated thing is a balance issue and that classes pushed towards small-group roaming content is not healthier than it is, is more of a broad WvW effort and attention issue.

Edited October 28, 2021 by subversiontwo.7501

[Aeolus.3615]

2 hours ago, ASP.8093 said:

… Are you sure it isn't you who's running the Minstrels?

Or, you know, something like forgetting that necro shroud comes with damage reduction?

I  find that comment  very  offensive :}

No i dont  use minstrell, i use actually zealot to cleric  (cleric and  celestial m8 be the tankiest gears i m8 use).

Misnterll on a herald  is  a mistake .... no  herald should  be runing misntrell potato... and when ic minstrell s herald with  sword sword.... idk what to think about gw2 players overall...

EDIT: 2 players  tryed  to  ganked me  this week again by a  minstrell warrior plus minstrell thief... 259-400  100b hits...   thief had no damage nor condi damage..

Thing is most players dont want real risk/reward  builds  they wan reward with low risk....9 

 

Edited October 28, 2021 by Aeolus.3615