WvW zerg busting is dead

[gitssac.7302]

Just a disclaimer, I still log into the game with my guild every reset and we still do well. We often get in the top 5 guild kills on GW2mists for the reset period. We can still push and kill in outnumbered fights, nothing will help the scrubs off tag not paying attention, you know?

 

However what is more upsetting than anything else is that no one seems to want to get good at fighting anymore in WvW. Most of the server pop seems to prefer the T1 boonbeast cloud or the Indo omniblob safe zone. I have been spending time playing with our proposed alliance guilds for a while now and even they tell the same story of only seeing basic plays from omniblobs in the higher tiers. Granted, all you need to do as a 70 man omniblob is press W key and then 1 key.

 

Don't get me wrong either. I've played with Indo and a few other blob commanders and their core group of 30 odd players are really good. They're actually the best fights I get when in a matchup facing them. Indo is a good commander too. But once again the numbers game is what has killed the surgical playstyle for me. No longer can I hit more than a max of 5 people with my skills, and no longer is there a possibility of actually hitting the people I need to hit thanks to 'Rise' reapers being the new meta. It'd be awesome to have more GvGs in WvW like in the glory days of the game, but it seems that no one wants to do that anymore outside of some rare organised tournaments in EotM.

 

It's interesting to see some of the feedback that has been dropped in this thread. I know Anet won't read any of it but nice to know there are some people still playing that embrace the competitive side to WvW. Gives me some hope in the future for good fights, even if we only get to fight with nerfed plastic spoons 😄

[Xenesis.6389]

I think back in the day guilds had actual pride running at certain numbers, and fat groups use to get laughed at and farmed. Now the system is stack everything, boons, players, even minions, and exploit the target cap to get free damage diversion.

So tired of this beep catering to these blobs, but everything falls on deaf ears. Stop taking our counter tools away is all I can say, I'm actually worried about the may 10th patch destroying the game mode more cause balancing is so one sided. I'm sure the chuckleheads running this beep will be laughing, right until the day there's nothing left to fight.

Edited April 15, 2022 by Xenesis.6389

[Lord Meowalot.3690]

Last night, after wiping a guild group several times, they switched out their comp to run rise reapers AND golemancer runes. This guild squad of ~30 was stealth pushing our squad of 10 guildies and ~15 pugs then popping rise to swarm us. Honestly ridiculous.

 

Our guild likes to run open tag with a small core of guildies to support pugs and recently we end up fighting a lot of groups like this: organized guilds, very often "fight" guilds, running 25+ and spamming rise from inside their boon balls. 

[Kozumi.5816]

36 minutes ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

So tired of this beep catering to these blobs

It's pretty clear Anets vision for WvW is numbers > all.

[RisenHowl.2419]

I see the flesh rats have struck a nerve

[Coldtart.4785]

This whole rise reaper thing reminds me of the dawn of condi comps in HoT. Is rise reaper really overpowered or does it just counter the current meta that relies too much on pulls and ground target aoe?

[La Venus.6598]

I know what you feel, but that's the truth in wvw. Number is an absolate benefit.

I running with a 10-15man squad for years and actucally feels the busting is lossing time by time.

Alliance is coming soon (maybe few more years), it makes more guilds stacking, you will see these number everywhere.

I think that's what we paid for the restructure. Future of small groups is limited, have fun and enjoy as much as you can until you feel it's time to change your mind.   

 

[gitssac.7302]

9 hours ago, Coldtart.4785 said:

This whole rise reaper thing reminds me of the dawn of condi comps in HoT. Is rise reaper really overpowered or does it just counter the current meta that relies too much on pulls and ground target aoe?

I run with a melee push guild and most of our DPS is in the form of 600 range or less. We only utilize pulls for when we are against the Mag cloud or something like that. Basically the issue is that when we go over our our DPS logs, when switching between damage done including/excluding NPCs (Any minions/pets count as NPCs) almost two thirds of our DPS is to jagged horrors. Once upon a time as a zerg busting group that would have been 5 downs EZ PZ, now it's maybe one down and we are standing in poison fields from the 4 jagged horrors we killed.

 

I'd say if anything the pirate ship mesmer pull meta is less effected because you aren't standing in the poison fields.

[Kate.3679]

Rez utility is also a big part of the problem smaller groups have to use their bomb to generate downs but then there's no damage to actually finish them before they get rezzed for free from range 

[kash.9213]

50 minutes ago, Ruru.1302 said:

Rez utility is also a big part of the problem smaller groups have to use their bomb to generate downs but then there's no damage to actually finish them before they get rezzed for free from range 

That can be frustrating. Might as well set that downed as bait and drop big Control on them when their people scramble to them, then drop more big Control or something that spreads or ticks behind that group once they're zeroed in on their downed, if they bother with them. You might end up putting yourself in a bad spot but you might also cause panic recovery and down a few more. It's always a gamble though. There were a couple of times last night I thought I was about to be clutch only to catch a quick and embarrassing death. 

[Coldtart.4785]

9 hours ago, gitssac.7302 said:

I run with a melee push guild and most of our DPS is in the form of 600 range or less. We only utilize pulls for when we are against the Mag cloud or something like that. Basically the issue is that when we go over our our DPS logs, when switching between damage done including/excluding NPCs (Any minions/pets count as NPCs) almost two thirds of our DPS is to jagged horrors. Once upon a time as a zerg busting group that would have been 5 downs EZ PZ, now it's maybe one down and we are standing in poison fields from the 4 jagged horrors we killed.

 

I'd say if anything the pirate ship mesmer pull meta is less effected because you aren't standing in the poison fields.

My first thought for how you could minimise the impact of rise in melee would be trying to force it to miss with blinds and evades on contact. Rise only summons one minion and has a 40s cd if it completely whiffs so you should end up with way less minions to deal with. After the rise bomb I think you'd pull out of melee and try to separate the minions from the players. Minions shouldn't have any stab or cleanses so I think dropping cripple/chill or knockbacks (wtf knockbacks in wvw?!) should be able to help scatter the minions and give you a chance to hit the players. If you have to kill the minions before pushing back in I think multi-aoes from things like burn guards or meteor showers should be able to pop them pretty fast. The wiki unfortunately doesn't have the hp values for the shambling horrors so I'm not sure exactly how much damage you need to remove them.

[Iceman.4509]

Rise reaper will be nerfed in a few weeks. Relax and stop being over dramatic, have faith in the team. 

[Obtena.7952]

On 4/14/2022 at 5:37 AM, gitssac.7302 said:

All I'm saying is I'd rather fight as a small group that triumphs over the bigger group because the smaller group has the tools to do so, rather than sit in a 70 man Indo blob and press 1 on the 3 people that got mesmer pulled.

The only way to do that is the same as how it's done in PVE ... form a static, git gud and 'speed run' the 'content' of 50 man blobs. As someone already said, their 50 man group was decimated by 10 people. How? Those 10 people were just better than most of the 50 group. 

[Reverence.6915]

Doubt ANet will ever go back in that direction for balancing purposes. Just enjoy the ride and become part of the karma train.

 

We used to drive 10-15 constantly into 30-40+ less organised groups for shits and giggles since we could fight them to a stalemate regardless of the numbers advantage. Waste of time nowadays.

[Nokturnal Lunacy.3186]

On 4/14/2022 at 12:48 AM, gitssac.7302 said:

I know no one at Anet actually cares about WvW balance, but I thought I'd have a whinge about how many of the recent patches (As in like 4 balance patches in as many years 🤣) have killed zerg busting in general.

 

I come from a guild that specifically loves the play style of running a smaller group that's disciplined and hits hard. Once upon a time we as a group of 15 could take on an enemy 50 man group and cut chunks out of them. Much like a surgical tool we could get in, cut out the problem, disengage and reset to do it again. This was honestly the most fun I'd ever had in WvW. Knowing that as a well disciplined player, I could follow specific calls and absolutely ruin a good third of an enemy map queue blob because I bothered to get good at the game mode. It was rewarding to take on outnumbered fights and come out on top a lot of the time.

 

Then Anet nerfed power builds. Sure there was some some busted stuff that needed fixing, but in general it made it difficult to out scale the 'press 1 on medkit' Engi healing that a blob can maintain. I sucked it up though and as a team we could still do some damage and kill a good chunk of people if we tried really hard.

 

Then Anet nerfed the 10 target cap skills that were the bread and butter of our DPS. Other higher target cap skills were also nerfed in general like Scourge shades, etc. This might have limited the maximum amount of burst damage a large group can do, but it also effectively neutered zerg busting groups abilities to do their job. We went from being able to kill the backline of a zerg quickly and effectively, to not being able to kill more than two or three people with the same bombs. That's plenty of time for an omniblob to then turn around and destroy you.

 

I didn't think it could get any worse to be honest, but then some smart cookie realized that 'Rise' reaper and Lich 4 minion spam could be used to soak up so many of the 5 person target cap damage that it essentially makes it impossible to reliably get any damage off onto a person when facing a much larger group. I haven't seen a zerg running in recent weeks that isn't stacked with minions on engage.

 

So what do you guys think Anet should do about this? Not that they will step any of their innovation outside of the 'Gem Store Skins' department, but hey, miracles occasionally happen. I'd love to see a return to the glory days of WvW, with larger target caps, better power builds and more 'risk for reward' types of gameplay. Omniblob pirate ship mesmer pulling is so boring and caters to defaults that don't want to learn how to do anything except press 1 on their keyboard.

 

 

Psssh good luck on that. too many players are scared of dying and therefore will cry non stop and quit the game if their carry me was removed. And there's more of them then there are real fighters, so anet has to cater to them or the game dies completely.

[Nokturnal Lunacy.3186]

On 4/15/2022 at 6:14 PM, Iceman.4509 said:

Rise reaper will be nerfed in a few weeks. Relax and stop being over dramatic, have faith in the team. 

its going to destroy my roaming build. which means its on to a meme gank class like ranger or something. necro was the only class i liked to roam on cuz you could actually make the necro balanced even against other classes, but now when they nerf rise or pretty much anything on necro itll be unplayable other than a condi spamming harb. thats what necro class going to be reduced to, a condi spamming harb class. its going to be disgusting to play against.

[Esufer.8762]

1 hour ago, Nokturnal Lunacy.3186 said:

its going to destroy my roaming build. which means its on to a meme gank class like ranger or something. necro was the only class i liked to roam on cuz you could actually make the necro balanced even against other classes, but now when they nerf rise or pretty much anything on necro itll be unplayable other than a condi spamming harb. thats what necro class going to be reduced to, a condi spamming harb class. its going to be disgusting to play against.

You don’t need Rise to roam on a reaper.

[Nokturnal Lunacy.3186]

5 hours ago, Esufer.8762 said:

You don’t need Rise to roam on a reaper.

No I don't but I like it. And you know as well as everybody else, they won't just stop with rise. Theyve already nerfed necro to the ground how many times? Reaper was the only real class that was great for power builds. And if they nerf reaper to the ground, then that means the only viable option left is condi spamming scourge or harb. I will never play them 2 specs. 

Sorry I don't run around spamming condis as a roamer. I like power builds. Which is what 99% of the necros do, run around spamming condis making wvw a toxic place. You're right don't need rise to roam but it helped deal with these no skill meme spammers.

Edited April 20, 2022 by Nokturnal Lunacy.3186

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

I've said this many times, but offensive skills should have a 10man target cap while defensive skills should stay 5man. Many games do this, as it automatically gives the advantage to the smaller group.

[Vortigern.1987]

And if a small squad (lets say 20 players) meets a much larger cloud (let's say 35 players)? Who do you think will benefits more from the increased target cap? Personally i would say it is the cloud, because for them it is a huge damage increase at zero costs, which obviously would disprove your claim.

 

 

 

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

really depends how good players that cloud has in it. if i cloud, i play still meta dps builds - its easy to set up dmg when nobody can see u coming. if u hit that surgically, u can deal a lot of disruptive damage

 

a good 20ish group shouldn't be bothered further by 35 pugs/cloud, at least if its a voice squad.

[Vortigern.1987]

Due to the nature of clouds you have to be lucky to hit more than 2 or 3 players with the same aoe, so increasing the aoe cap would increase their damage against "boonballs", but it would have no negative effect on them. This disproves the claim that " it automatically gives the advantage to the smaller group", because clouds are not always smaller than the squad they are fighting.

My point was that clouds (of any size) would benefit the most from the increased aoe cap, i never said anything about builds, skill or voice communication.

Edited April 22, 2022 by Vortigern.1987