How can ArenaNet solve this roaming problem?

[Silinsar.6298]

3 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Sorry, lets hold here for a second and discuss if you don't mind. By allowing all roamers the same rate of speed, how has that impacted the balancing in roaming versus neutralized it by making more classes into roamers? I see more diversity in roamers after Warclaw than I did without it. And I say this while I roamed on all classes and not just those with speed options. Prior to Warclaw there was less diversity in the fights and now am seeing a lot more diversity IMO. So would you mind expanding on this?

The problem is any bigger group of players, no matter their builds, can chase down roamers by having some actively engage / fight them, while others remain close on their mounts (using lance so they can keep you in combat). If you manage to fight off or escape those actively engaging, they can retreat back to get out of combat. You can rarely push for a kill there because kiting / disengaging is what keeps you alive. Now the mounted ones keep you in combat, you start fighting them, they'll dismount and fight you, all CDs ready. Meanwhile the ones that went out of combat, mounted up and closed the distance, and the whole thing starts again. So either you need lots of mobility bursts, sustain, and / or stealth to escape. That doesn't lead to diversity, imo. The diversity you're seeing comes from more specs getting access to more mobility options, not Warclaw. Specs that don't have the mobility / stealth to escape Warclaws are incentivized to go for sustain - This is part of why we see so many bruiser / cele roaming builds today.

 

Without mounts, anyone keeping you in combat would also be subject to in combat speed, and therefore would need to have similar mobility tools in their build to keep up. And they wouldn't have two big leaps for free as soon as they left combat. Meaning you usually could at least shake off some of them, having higher chances of escaping when outnumbered.

 

Also, the "number of lances" vs "number of dodges" creates situations where groups can force fights, while solo / duo roamers have to run ranged burst builds to dismount players correctly using their dodges. Again, limiting your build choices, if you want to get people off their mount reliably.

 

In conclusion, the mount creates a dynamic that makes roaming less rewarding (because it's harder get fights you specialize in) and more risky (because groups have better tools to chase you).

Edited January 29, 2023 by Silinsar.6298

[Dawdler.8521]

3 hours ago, Greviathan.6107 said:

Not all classes and not all situations allow it, not every roamer plays meta builds that have tons of mobility, active defenses, sustain and damage. For solo roamers it only narrows down the choices of what to play if you don't want to be punished. I simply want to roam with what I like and not what I'm forced to use.

And you could also roam on a core thief minstrel healer that refuse to use stealth because it's not honorable, if you'd like.

If you dont bring the tools to help you perform a task such as stomping and killing outnumbered you cant blaim that on the downstate system. Not all classes does it the same - some bring fancy teleports or stealth, others bring invouln and most just bring tons and tons of AoE damage.

The entire point of a roamer is to make a flexible build and have the tactical skill to use it.

Edited January 29, 2023 by Dawdler.8521

[Zyreva.1078]

4 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

If you dont bring the tools to help you perform a task such as stomping and killing outnumbered you cant blaim that on the downstate system. Not all classes does it the same - some bring fancy teleports or stealth, others bring invouln and most just bring tons and tons of AoE damage.

If only the rezzers had to think about it and invest just as much ...

Edited January 29, 2023 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[Gehenna.3625]

7 hours ago, Greviathan.6107 said:

Another thing that ruins roaming in my opinion is toxicity:
Do you kill someone? You get hate messages.
Are you being killed by someone? You get hate messages.
So you play with offline status to not receive messages? You get emails.

 I've never had this happen and I usually roam. Is this an NA thing or what?

[jaif.3518]

On 1/27/2023 at 7:12 PM, Elementalist Owner.7802 said:

I think that we can all agree this is a problem, but the question is how do we solve it? I want to hear your suggestions, because quite frankly I cannot think of any. What can ArenaNet do to save roaming?

 

No, it's not.  Without the warclaw, everybody with a roaming build escapes all the time, and that's the boring part.  Even with warclaw, some roamers can escape several pursuers with a clever combination of porting and stealth. 

 

 

[Doggie.3184]

I'd sacrifice the roaming playstyle if it meant Thieves were allowed to join zergs and get AoE skills (Ricochet returned).

[TheGrimm.5624]

6 hours ago, Silinsar.6298 said:

The problem is any bigger group of players, no matter their builds, can chase down roamers by having some actively engage / fight them, while others remain close on their mounts (using lance so they can keep you in combat). If you manage to fight off or escape those actively engaging, they can retreat back to get out of combat. You can rarely push for a kill there because kiting / disengaging is what keeps you alive. Now the mounted ones keep you in combat, you start fighting them, they'll dismount and fight you, all CDs ready. Meanwhile the ones that went out of combat, mounted up and closed the distance, and the whole thing starts again. So either you need lots of mobility bursts, sustain, and / or stealth to escape. That doesn't lead to diversity, imo. The diversity you're seeing comes from more specs getting access to more mobility options, not Warclaw. Specs that don't have the mobility / stealth to escape Warclaws are incentivized to go for sustain - This is part of why we see so many bruiser / cele roaming builds today.

 

Without mounts, anyone keeping you in combat would also be subject to in combat speed, and therefore would need to have similar mobility tools in their build to keep up. And they wouldn't have two big leaps for free as soon as they left combat. Meaning you usually could at least shake off some of them, having higher chances of escaping when outnumbered.

 

Also, the "number of lances" vs "number of dodges" creates situations where groups can force fights, while solo / duo roamers have to run ranged burst builds to dismount players correctly using their dodges. Again, limiting your build choices, if you want to get people off their mount reliably.

 

In conclusion, the mount creates a dynamic that makes roaming less rewarding (because it's harder get fights you specialize in) and more risky (because groups have better tools to chase you).

I understand your point and can agree a havoc or group has better odds of getting a roamer engaged and keep them engaged once a fight starts. Honestly though this sound more like a bad choice of when to assault a group as a roamer. While roaming I am choosing when to go in and strike and when not to to. If I engage and don't take down my target or targets that's on me. Mounts just mean I can keep distance with others at the same rate while choosing when to make an attack. Might be something if we still had the logic that defenders get a larger speed boost but even that's not in place. Classes and builds that have speed advantage while on foot still do, but it also regulated classes to being group classes or roamers. Mounts help balance that by turning more classes into roamers, IMO. Could be a your mileage will vary, but again after mounts I encounter a larger variety of roamers then pre-mount days.

[Xenesis.6389]

If you're "roaming", and not "aware" of a zerg getting close enough to kill you, I dunno what to tell you. Playing alone and roaming should teach you to always watch your surroundings for surprises, to know/plan where your escape routes are, to watch for additional enemies, to watch your enemy and gauge their aggression or targeting of you. If you cannot figure out these things out then maybe roaming isn't for you. You should only play pick around zergs if you have escape skills, I don't care how skilled you think you might be, it doesn't matter if you don't have the right skills equipped in the first place, you're just asking to be a bag to a zerg eventually.

P.S I get a laugh out of zergs not being aware of other zergs about to truck them, because they were too lazy to have one scout. Like you know when your zerg goes to nw inner smc, and the owners come stacking behind the outer portal, guess who's the only one that sees them, yeah me, cause I'm standing on the wall scouting, while the underdunders are down by the gate pewpewing it. Roaming teaches you every lesson to survive in wvw.

Edited January 29, 2023 by Xenesis.6389

[Alsandar.7420]

Roaming is dead on your server because most roamers transferred to Mag. I’m not kidding

[Gotejjeken.1267]

10 hours ago, Alsandar.7420 said:

Roaming is dead on your server because most roamers transferred to Mag. I’m not kidding

 

I didn't really see any last week (I'm on Darkhaven and we were T1 matched with Mag). 

Of course, I don't play on EBG so maybe they are all 'roaming' there? Which would be odd since they usually take it over and make it entirely green, so not sure what roaming is actually going on...

[Kozumi.5816]

• Delete gear from WvW
• Replace gear with the SPvP amulets/runes/sigils
• Use SPVP balancing

It's extremely simple but they intentionally want this mode to be a joke.

Edited January 30, 2023 by Kozumi.5816

[Esufer.8762]

In regards to sorting Warclaws out, I think Warclaws would be less damaging to the roamer playstyle if you could only mount in certain areas rather than any time out of combat.

It would make it so when you mount up, you're committing to travelling back to your zerg, or travelling to a specific objective, and can't just mount up and run away from anyone that wants to fight you (well, not as easily as you currently can. You'd actually have to use mitigation/mobility to escape... or just map.) If you get dismounted - that's it. You're on foot until you can get into a tower to re-mount.

The idea I had was only being able to mount up in your spawn, or in a structure (keep or tower, not camp) that your server currently controls, to give it some kind of parity with gliding and still making it a good tool for getting back into zergfights, as well as actually incentivising defending structures. Imagine that.

It also would give roamers a decent chance to get away from bored zergs that have decided that running down solos is the best content ever, rather than the current system where the people in front keep you in combat, and the people at the back mount up to catch up to you.

[Gorani.7205]

What @Xenesis.6389 said on page #1: Warclaw mobility does not hurt roaming, at least not at the current state of the game, when adapted builds on quite a few professions are as fast as Warclaw (and much more flexible on their abilities).
What's hurting roaming right now is ANet cutting down on active game play option for roamers that keep you "in game" (=participation loss if you fail defences and you bother to repair things) and the far better state of "zerg down anything in a boon ball". Roaming style game play of stationary scouting was removed when participation was introduced. Clever camp flipping with keeping the dolly to trigger defense event was removed. Repairing was removed as a means to keep participation up, because it was abused by "SMC sitters" to stay in a safe place. Clever siege placement and maintaining got removed, because defensive siege is pretty useless due to nerfs and horrible LoS design choices that never have been fixed. Warclaw is the least problem the roaming play style is facing right now.

[Zyreva.1078]

5 minutes ago, Gorani.7205 said:

Roaming style game play of stationary scouting

That's a contradiction in itself, considering roaming basically means "wandering arround".

And nothing of what you mention impacts roaming in any way, because camp/tower hugging is not actually roaming.

[Gorani.7205]

1 hour ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

That's a contradiction in itself, considering roaming basically means "wandering around".

And nothing of what you mention impacts roaming in any way, because camp/tower hugging is not actually roaming.

Then let us call it "small team / single player" activities, if you don't like it to be summarized in the term "roaming".  Nothing, but large zerg fighting and rolling over structures with numbers and not strategy has been catered to the past years. All small scale activity, either offensive or defensive has not been improved or is rewarded compared to zerging. And, back to the original post: The Warclaw has go nothing to do with the state of the "small team / single player" disappointment that WvW has developed itself into.

[Zyreva.1078]

3 hours ago, Gorani.7205 said:

The Warclaw has go nothing to do with the state of the "small team / single player" disappointment that WvW has developed itself into.

Well, it single-handedly made me - a dedicated solo roamer - quit the game for 1,5 years (and if it didn't get nerfed i wouldn't have returned) and other (solo) roamers i know of dislike it too. It's not the only thing hurting roaming and small scale ofc, but saying it has no impact is simply not true. It has been detrimental without doubt and there has been plenty of explanation why.

Edited January 30, 2023 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[Xenesis.6389]

Meh, only gankers have a problem with mounts cause most of their easy prey is gone.

Practically everyone has a mount and has the spear, including gankers, don't pretend they don't run either, and don't use the mount  for that purpose either.

If someone wants to fight they'll stick around to fight.

The people getting away are the ones who actually don't want to fight you at that time, or waiting for the situation to be more fair for them.

If all you were doing was ganking zerglings on their way back to their zerg, then honestly you're not going to find a lot of sympathy there about mounts.

If all you are doing is going around ganking people in groups of 2-5, then honestly you're not going to to find a lot of sympathy there about mounts.

Still plenty of mobility on gank specs to catch people, or to get away

🤷‍♂️

What killed roaming over time was fighting broken stealth builds, broken one shot builds, broken mobile builds, broken support builds, broken duos, more group than solo roamers. I use to roam a lot, but I'm personally tired of fighting most of that garbage anymore, I pick and choose who to fight now, and half the specs are on my, nope, you get nothing, you lose, good day sir, I said good day!

Edited January 30, 2023 by Xenesis.6389

[kash.9213]

1 hour ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

Well, it single-handedly made me - a dedicated solo roamer - quite the game for 1,5 years (and if it didn't get nerfed i wouldn't have returned) and other (solo) roamers i know of dislike it too. It's not the only thing hurting roaming and small scale ofc, but saying it has no impact is simply not true. It has been detrimental without doubt and there has been plenty of explanation why.

I'm easier to catch for people during that window of my mount dying than I was before. The main impact of mounts that still holds up is when your group plans a quick leap frog over a zerg drive or for punching into and past SMC lord room.

[Silinsar.6298]

4 minutes ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Practically everyone has a mount and has the spear, including gankers, don't pretend they don't run either, and don't use the mount  for that purpose either.

Yes, but having 1 spear every 30sec and 2 dodges every 20sec doesn't hurt gankers, it encourages them to gank people 3+v1 instead of 1v1.

 

6 minutes ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

If someone wants to fight they'll stick around to fight.

The people getting away are the ones who actually don't want to fight you at that time, or waiting for the situation to be more fair for them.

Many don't want the situation to be "fair". They jump past you and dodge the spear, then remain close enough to come back in case someone else of their server join in to fight you Xvs1. Mounts facilitate more uneven fights than they prevent ganks.

 

7 minutes ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

If all you were doing was ganking zerglings on their way back to their zerg, then honestly you're not going to find a lot of sympathy there about mounts.

Again, zerglings readily turn into gankers when the opportunity arises. And doing what I described in my previous comment, they will get the chance to chase down outnumbered players. Does that deserve any more sympathy?

 

8 minutes ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

If all you are doing is going around ganking people in groups of 2-5, then honestly you're not going to to find a lot of sympathy there about mounts.

Mounts are a benefit to gank groups that go after outnumbered targets.

 

14 minutes ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Meh, only gankers have a problem with mounts cause most of their easy prey is gone.

No matter if the players start out as roamers, gankers or zerglings; mounts skew the situation to whichever side has more in the vicinity. It's a mechanic that empowers the group that already has the numerical advantage. That's not a good thing to have imo, when you want more even fights in WvW.

 

On 1/29/2023 at 8:15 PM, Xenesis.6389 said:

If you're "roaming", and not "aware" of a zerg getting close enough to kill you, I dunno what to tell you. Playing alone and roaming should teach you to always watch your surroundings for surprises, to know/plan where your escape routes are, to watch for additional enemies, to watch your enemy and gauge their aggression or targeting of you. If you cannot figure out these things out then maybe roaming isn't for you. You should only play pick around zergs if you have escape skills, I don't care how skilled you think you might be, it doesn't matter if you don't have the right skills equipped in the first place, you're just asking to be a bag to a zerg eventually.

I agree that roamers are supposed to be able to avoid zergs / bigger groups. However, in the same vein, zerglings should also learn to dodge roamers / gankers when running back to their group. Either of them failing to do these things should find themselves in a difficult situation.

But even though you can get good at this, it will never be 100%. On a Warclaw spamming leaps, players can cover the render distance in ~10sec. Meaning wherever you might decide to engage a player or an objective and do a 360° check for enemies, one or multiple ones you won't be aware of could add to your fight in less than 10sec. And that's not taking into account stealth or terrain. So unless you only take fights you can win in less time, you will get surprised at some point. The best early warning system for zergs remains the FPS drop.

[Xenesis.6389]

2 minutes ago, Silinsar.6298 said:

However, in the same vein, zerglings should also learn to dodge roamers / gankers when running back to their group.

Lol they already do, that's why we have complaints about mounts.

[Zyreva.1078]

6 minutes ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Lol they already do, that's why we have complaints about mounts.

Giving a little child a toy car to sit on and roll arround does not mean it has learned how to walk ...

Edited January 30, 2023 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[Kozumi.5816]

The mount is actually power crept by specs with more mobility.

The reason roaming is dead is because it's too easy to run away and too easy to live forever.

[Arya Whitefire.8423]

2 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

I pick and choose who to fight now, and half the specs are on my, nope, you get nothing, you lose, good day sir, I said good day!

 

Yep, I refuse the vast majority of roaming fights.  Either they have some completely overwhelming build(rock to your scissors), or they reset reset reset to keep from losing.  There's very very little interactivity left, not that there ever was much.  And with virtually no one caring about the ppt game, even taking a losing fight to delay something a bit, it just a pointless waste of time.

 

[Doggie.3184]

10 hours ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

• Delete gear from WvW
• Replace gear with the SPvP amulets/runes/sigils
• Use SPVP balancing

It's extremely simple but they intentionally want this mode to be a joke.

I just threw up in my mouth and swallowed it after reading this 🤮

[Graymatter.4723]

On 1/27/2023 at 4:12 PM, Elementalist Owner.7802 said:

I think that we can all agree this is a problem

No, I don't agree at all. I am a roamer and have no issues escaping zergs. Then again, I don't make a habit of lying in wait and ganking players either so perhaps that's the difference.