Metas in the Past

[CafPow.1542]

Hi all

 

i am not a wvw veteran but history is always interesting. I heard about older metas, I’m referring primarily to zergs (now it’s boonball)

now i imagine there where numerous zerg metas throughout the time this game exists. And i am just very curious about it.

what metas existed in the games history? How where they called, and how did they work? What was the „special thing“ there?

and mostly: which one did you like and why?

for some, maybe a bit of nostalgia might kick in, the reason for me is just: asking cause i wanna know. Let the thread die if you think it’s not a cool topic but i would be really glad if many people contribute here 🙂.

 

PS: note, it’s not about „my favorite meta was less toxic than yours“ arguments. It’s just about sharing the history of this game mode.

[Arya Whitefire.8423]

In my ever so humble opinion, the biggest issue with the boon ball meta is not the mechanics of the meta.  But rather the huge gap it creates between organized and less organized groups.  Most previous metas let decently skilled, less organized players have some chance to win fights, especially when defending objectives. 

 

[CafPow.1542]

Sure okay. 🙂

i would like to hear more about those other metas. This is not supposed to be a „boonball bad“ thread cause there are wnough of them. ^^

[RisenHowl.2419]

Reaper rat meta will always have my heart

[Sleepwalker.1398]

Guardians had a loot stick with just pressing 1 on staff.

Groups had to buff in fire fields to gain might before engagement.

Portals were used so much more and this guy was/is an amazing Chrono. Has some really good guides on his channel that inspired me to start playing mesmer.

Sadly mesmer got nerfed too hard shortly after.

 

[RisingDawn.5796]

Post expansion metas, where some Elite specs were OP at the start, like Scourge and Spellbreaker, after PoF came out.

Big damage, bigger player caps on shades and bubbles, you know.

[joneirikb.7506]

Never been much of a zerger, so I don't really know/remember much, but from memory:

* GWEN (Guardian, Warrior, Elementalist, Necromancer) Vanilla
* GREN (Guardian, Revenant, Elementalist, Necromancer) HOT

I think those where the first two, I kinda fell completely out by the time POF came out, so not sure when pirateship and other metas came and went.

Over all, I'm just generally fan of everything before HOT.

[Bigpapasmurf.5623]

Portal bombs were so much a thing that some servers offered training due to how effective they could be (golem porting from spawn to mid map using 4-5 Mesmers was an amazing sight). Stacking to hide numbers and fields blasting for cleanses/might stacking was epic (hammer warriors ftw). Thieves solely being used as scouts (scouting back them was actually scouting and there were many good scouts).

[Megastorm.6219]

Hello gamers. I remember a time in the early years of WvW when groups of 20s' would ask for portsmiths and speeders for their comp.  The casual badassery would be rewarded with small victories steamrolling into large-scale callout dogfights in the enemy keeps.  The premise was similar to other comp builds aside from the need for those two roles in numbers of 2-3 per in to cover ground faster with their multiple offset refreshes, and to cover down if one had to afk or go family it up for the night.  This made the scene more casual with coverage, and it felt great to be a part of that comp no matter the roll you chose.  Having the group be around 25 max made the comp easy to manage and rewarding for the gamer to play their role.  We didn't feel overlooked as the blobs do today.  Zerglings could use a refresher course on these tactics of days gone by.  We carry siege disablers and supply traps as a tactical way to kill larger zergs or multiple zergs ganging up on us.  A group of 25 can destroy every bit of supply and siege any size zerg can bring.  We would lay drain tracks just on the inside of the outer walls that were about to go down, laying paths towards the gate nearest or ourselves as bait.  "COME AND GET THEM!" By the time they got to the gates or us, their supply would be gone, and our squirrels would already have disabled form above, or the DPS gods would have ran "round the outside" and melted their outer siege then tapped the outer shut to cage them in with us.  You don't see these tactics often from the basic zergs with a pugmander. 

Now back to those portsmiths and speeders...  These gamers make the big fights happen and bring life to the group they help.  The basic idea is to have 10-13 omega golems parked at each WP on each map.  You can port a 10-golem group around the map with 1 mesmer at a time making the cooldowns easy to manage for all.  The speeders would use swiftness and superspeed on the omega golem group to get them to the next portal faster across the map.  You could move a group out of any WP with them and across the map to a tower or keep with great speed when working together for that simple but effective goal.  The rewards are missing for this style of gaming to be popular these days.  Gone are the days of server pride fights and guild-tag glory stories.  Why use omega golems?  The blue basic bots and the gold guildies don't have a ranged and AoE punch on skill 1 spam.  Omega golems do.  You can stand one robo boot in a glowing doorway and target the oil above the gate.  This AoE attack at the right sweet spot will hit the oil, gate, and the wall next to it if available.  Since the omegas have ranged punches, you can spread them out at gates targeting more at once while providing disabler protection compared to bunched-up groups at a gate.  Dropping supply traps under your omega golem at a gate and turning the bar sideways, pushes the line under the gate.  This provides a way to drain any disablers nearby by using multiple callout pulls on the gate area, which pulls them into the trap.  Having a golemancer's dozen omegas parked at each WP provided security for every WP on map.  Gamers knew they could get on the map that was told to prepare for a EWP and there would be omegas parked nearby to get in and wait for the drop pull.  Dropping into an EWP inside your omega is a great feeling.  Your skill 2 is a whirling CC which breaks any size zerg's many stacks of stab when used in multiples at a time.  These callout CC hits from the omegas would be spread around the zerg by using our extra dodges provided by being on the weapon swap with energy/stamina.  In an omega, this is how we were mobile.  People don't understand that being one of the omega pilots is an honor and a thrill for those prepared. 

We used to build swap into DPS to hit gates inside omegas with more power, and swap to tank mode to hold out and bunker with them at times.  Staying inside the omega isn't the goal or the strategy.  Being in them at the right times and in the right spots is what counts.  You can always get out of the omegas and use your skills to provide something needed on the spot but know that you can get back in to save your life when focused.  If you were badly damaged before entering the omega, be in a safe spot when you exit with that low HP you had at the time.  Know your omega knowledge and it can provide your small team the ability to not only face off against any bigger zerg, but make them look like absolute fools for even thinking they could compete with your capabilities.  Having around 30 omega golems on every map gives you the backup plans that are largely lacking these days.  When a place with an EWP would get hit, you could bring up to 30 omegas into that fight, melt the threat, and then WP them back to protect all the hotspots on maps.  The enemy zergs hit, then decide to hit another spot you might not protect as well for a spite play or revenge hit.  Having these omegas on each EWP on maps gave us the confidence we could destroy those groups, again and again, no matter their chosen big target choices on any map.  We don't have that these days.  The omegas give us the ability to win against all odds.  This provided us with morale building and recruitment.  Gamers want to be a part of a fun and winning team. 

I think most gamers I see these days don't understand the potential of omega armies, or how they build morale, relaxing and humorous scenes, and a welcoming community.  The way that these omega armies provide morale and draw in fun crowds of manageable sizes was amazing to me.  You could have 2 small teams on maps helping at times, coordinating, or simply doing their hits.  When you are one of up to five small party-sized teams compositions in a squad of twenty-five, you feel your value compared to the mindless blobs we see today.  No sense of music sharing.  No recipes or pictures of numms sharing.  No joking around because hey...the pugmander might want to say the same command four times fast and get everyone in a panic, unable to ever feel they can chat out of fear of talking over the panicmander.  What is with your panicmanders?  Chill out with the callouts and let your group gell.  Much can be done better with a casual "tag moving" "get to tag" "save dodge" and "ready to move" if you would try those.   Play some music, ask for requests so the group shares music tastes from across the globe.  Use the squad markers as commander and party leader tags above gamer's heads.  You all are missing out on this strategy to engage your small teams, build morale and cohesion through flipping small camps, and build an omega golem with the 150 supply after using quickness.  Stand near the supply boxes, build omegas right next to them so you can stand in the middle, and cancel/click each side to build and resupply fast. 

We used to park one that was damaged near the gates that normally get hit as a way of respecting the fight they lived through, and providing a disabler bomb for a scrappy scout after the team chat callout telling us to get on map.  Gamers...I miss those ways and those days.  I miss seeing the symbols above party leaders' heads and watching them become confident commanders through small victories.  I know spies have ruined this because hunting small teams with big teams is what they think has kept so many of us around for so long...Oh, wait...  I guess spies have destroyed the morale-building and recruitment of small team guilds leaving a barren sandbox largely.  Alliances haven't happened sadly.  I wanted Alliance rewards to be in every game mode and bind us all with an /Alliance chat that had checkmarks for gamers to click on allowing group builders to schedule and assign rolls ahead of outings.  Hunting prestige skins and commander tag option unlocks would make WvW and other game modes so much more engaging.  I would love to see more chevrons under the commander tag indicating group options and notoriety.  I would like to see more colors like black, gold, silver, and glow effects on commander tags also.  The rewards for these groups could be capped at 25 instead of the normal 50.  Alright..I'm getting into my vision for WvW Alliances again..I better stop and go burn one.  o7

[bigmouse.2163]

The first meta I remember was churn bomb - you had a group with a guardian, a thief, and three dagger eles. The eles would churn and then use lightning flash to teleport onto the enemy just before it went off. You could instadown people with it, but it was kind of fidgety and was soon replaced by hammer train.

Hammer train was the second I remember, this is what the famous guild Redguard [RG] used. If you search for them or their commander Sacrx on youtube you can find videos. Before stability was common, this tactic was dominant as you could chain CC enemies with earthshaker for example. They were also the first to make good use of combo fields, mainly water for healing between pushes.

GWEN (Guardian, Warrior, Elementalist, Necro) was kind of a variation on hammer train. It had more variety however and the first use of what we now call "clouding" (kind of) started here. The best GWEN group I remember on NA was Everything Purple [EP].

Pirate ship was kind of like GWEN, but focused on ranged bombing - this is when melee pushes became less commonly used. Aggression [Agg] or Night Shift [NS] used this type of strategy, they have videos on youtube as well.

[CafPow.1542]

1 hour ago, Bigpapasmurf.5623 said:

Portal bombs were so much a thing that some servers offered training due to how effective they could be (golem porting from spawn to mid map using 4-5 Mesmers was an amazing sight). Stacking to hide numbers and fields blasting for cleanses/might stacking was epic (hammer warriors ftw). Thieves solely being used as scouts (scouting back them was actually scouting and there were many good scouts).

Funny enough, i see those elements until today (or at least parts of that.)

[CafPow.1542]

53 minutes ago, bigmouse.2163 said:

The first meta I remember was churn bomb - you had a group with a guardian, a thief, and three dagger eles. The eles would churn and then use lightning flash to teleport onto the enemy just before it went off. You could instadown people with it, but it was kind of fidgety and was soon replaced by hammer train.

Hammer train was the second I remember, this is what the famous guild Redguard [RG] used. If you search for them or their commander Sacrx on youtube you can find videos. Before stability was common, this tactic was dominant as you could chain CC enemies with earthshaker for example. They were also the first to make good use of combo fields, mainly water for healing between pushes.

GWEN (Guardian, Warrior, Elementalist, Necro) was kind of a variation on hammer train. It had more variety however and the first use of what we now call "clouding" (kind of) started here. The best GWEN group I remember on NA was Everything Purple [EP].

Pirate ship was kind of like GWEN, but focused on ranged bombing - this is when melee pushes became less commonly used. Aggression [Agg] or Night Shift [NS] used this type of strategy, they have videos on youtube as well.

Ah the churn was this long cast on earth dagger 5 yeah i remember. I prefer the skill how it is now but i still use earth or fireoverload with my TP. Especially earth to cripple a lot of enemies feels great, churning them like that seems a fun thing.

 

was GWEN or something like that just how a subgroup in a zerg looked like (if possible?)

or where there more smaller squads?

[Bigpapasmurf.5623]

14 minutes ago, CafPow.1542 said:

Funny enough, i see those elements until today (or at least parts of that.)

I see attempts at portal bombs, however they arent as well placed or executed as days of yore. I appreciate seeing the attempts however. chain golem porting I havent seen in many many years.

[CafPow.1542]

1 hour ago, Bigpapasmurf.5623 said:

I see attempts at portal bombs, however they arent as well placed or executed as days of yore. I appreciate seeing the attempts however. chain golem porting I havent seen in many many years.

Not in chains no. I see golem ports but with maximum of 2-3 mesmer portals.

portal bombs are rarely effective (i guess the timing is everything and lots of players like myself aren’t used to it)

stealth bombs are used more with us when possible and they are easier to pull of tho. But i see the attempts.

[Dawdler.8521]

1 hour ago, CafPow.1542 said:

was GWEN or something like that just how a subgroup in a zerg looked like (if possible?)

Just the parties yes. The extra peeps was usually more necros and guards I think, or "special" utility (kitten I miss my confusion reflection mesmer).

[kash.9213]

47 minutes ago, CafPow.1542 said:

Not in chains no. I see golem ports but with maximum of 2-3 mesmer portals.

portal bombs are rarely effective (i guess the timing is everything and lots of players like myself aren’t used to it)

stealth bombs are used more with us when possible and they are easier to pull of tho. But i see the attempts.

I feel like portal bombs aren't so much shabbier than before, but they can be gobbled up more readily more often. You can see people stealthing across a map if you pan your camera around a lot and you can size up map movement lag most of the time with a pretty good guess where they're staging at. 

I agree, stealth bombs keep the group intact and mostly in whatever formation they know they're going to fight in when they're closing the distance. There's always going to be more apprehension about the other end of a portal also. If the portal runner doesn't get sniped right away, everyone's gambling with getting melted Hot Emergency Waypoint style. 

Edited January 30 by kash.9213

[CafPow.1542]

I guess stealth bomb is also harder to pull off cause you bomb a boonball today. Those don’t tend to explode so easy maybe.

[godofcows.2451]

A meta you would probably not see again would be the separation of the melee group and the ranged. the commander would assign a ranged sub commander just to visually mark the ranged group but would usually command the melee itself. The ranged and the melee group would move close to avoid being singled out but still separate itself to provide their own timing and angle for their own attack. Used only in open area fights. This is probably the closest you will have an organized zerg to clouding and will probably not see the light of day in the future anymore due to how difficult it can be. Players who were able to play in this era are usually a different breed though. 

Edited January 30 by godofcows.2451

[ArchonWing.9480]

I wrote something about it in the past.

Since then, I would include the
 

EOD Era: Characterized by even more emphasis on healing and sustain, with Warrior bubble being (more) annihilated. There were some attempts at nerfs to classes like Firebrand but fundamental issues were not really resolved with the only real effect of heal scrapper falling out and druids coming in after some buffs.

SotO Era. The current era I would say is the polarized era, where we sometimes see the worst of both extremes, thanks to the unlocking of weapons across all specs, resulting in a balance nightmare of huge proportions. However, it's not as bad as it could be, maybe because certain things might have cancelled each other out.

The current meta consists of a generally unkillable boonball until it faces another boonball. The best tactic is generally to catch the other boonball by surprise by very high bursts from berserkers and holosmiths, and disengage if failed, trying again ad nauseam.  In theory, that sounds like a great form of cat and mouse, but in practice it just leads to guilds chasing orange swords in order to land a burst on already occupied enemies. (and running away if they fail)

Also there was a misguided attempt to push Chrono to the forefront again but it seems they will be deleted again in a bit as usual.

There is some work on trying to address all of this, but there's also a lot of random buffs every patch that cause even more problems.

 

Edited January 30 by ArchonWing.9480

[Arya Whitefire.8423]

Hammer train, was probably the peak.   Hammer trains were very powerful offensively, but any similar sized group of skilled players could eventually attrit them and kill them during defense.  Against less skilled players Hammer train let you win 15 vs 60s.  Basically it was a skill vs skill game, instead of a meta vs meta game at that point.

Post HoT Boon share was probably worse than boon ball, but very few guilds actually ran it to it's full potential, so it had way less impact on the overall game, for most of the day.

The various pirate shipey metas, were all yawn-fests.

Pretty much everything post PoF has been some shade of terrible.  There was a period from 2017 to about 2019 where the meta hadn't been made ez-mode-able by enough guilds where you could still squint and pretend to play wvw.  But post 2019, wvw is just a sandbox for farming pips, wxp, and kill count.

In the distant past when the game was much better, most guilds were very poor at playing the meta or metas.  So it had way less effect on average game play.  You really only saw the meta's full effects in open field fights of voice comms vs voice comms guilds in the 15-25 size.  And in that environment the larger, but still strongly organized groups, were often pariahs.  Which was probably a good thing.

And I think the addition of PPK(Points Per Kill) had a much larger effect on destroying "will to fight" than is generally recognized.

 

[zemiacsik.4590]

One important thing is that skills are mostly limited to target only 5 players/targets (which is alrightish in even numbers scenarios, but really really sucks when outmanned), but it was not at start so you had greater chance to kill larger group (not only skills but your skill involved).
So I think it would be beneficial to increase target cap, for example at least, for boon removal skills or so. It could lead to more lively live encounters (but I am not sure if it would not affect or bring skill lag or lag in general).

Sadly, numbers are important due to target cap atm and groups are not punished by staying in lava or aoe because only a few will get hit in the end. WvW turned into PvE style content when 5 player subgroups living their perma boon live which is broken and bad..

Edit: just adding this one more an example. When a group bombed some place it bombed the place (not partially). It is like when you mow grass, you take one swing and you mow all the grass. Currently, you take one swing and mow only 5 blades of grass so you can imagine the difference (not even for smaller groups).

Edited January 31 by zemiacsik.4590

[DanAlcedo.3281]

HoT started out with a Pirate ship meta. 

Hammer on the newly released Rev was giga OP and could one shot full soldier gear guards (pre hot meta), so pushing in was not an option. 

With Anet not nerfing stuff fast enough, it was up to the players to find a solution. And they found it. 

Anet introduced alot more sources of dmg reduction. Which, when stacked, produced greater results then expected. 

Tempest for example was able to be 100%dmg immun on top of being immun to conditions via old diamond skin. 

Alas, the dmg reduction meta was born. 

And again, it was up to the player to find out how to counter that. 

Before this moment, the idea of playing condi setups was not on people's minds. 

But now, it Was. Give that condi ignores dmg reduction. However, most guilds didn't bother because gearing was already extremely expensive and with Wvw players being so freaking poor, switching to condi gear was not an option. Adding that all of this would also be an experiment. Nobody knew if condi setups would even work yet. 

But a handful of madlads did do it. And it wrecked house. 

Anet also fixed the stacking of dmg reduction bugs and nerfed diamend skin. 

So the cornerstone of the entire dmg reduction meta. An Tempest spamming frost aura, could be killed. 

For the first time in GW2 history, condi was the supreme ruler in Wvw. 

Leading to 3 commenly run setups. 

- Balanced

- Anti condi

- Condi. 

Balanced loses 100% to condi but wins 100% against anti condi. 

Anti condi only had a fighting chance against condi. 

For the most part condi destroyed all. 

This killed many guilds, as most players didn't have  the money to switch to condi gear. (Yes gearing was extremely expensive back then and Wvw players kitten poor) and it was extremely unfun to play against condi. 

Again, it was up to players to find a solution. 

And they found it again. A specialist Mesmer build who's only job was to spam resistance on people. It literally did only that. 

With that and still very limited Boon removal, condi setups got hard countered. 

Simply put one of these Mesmers in every group and Condi could not do anything. 

This lead to condi finally dying out. 

The world was healed again. Guilds ran the normal kitten setups and most fights were mirror matches. 

But this lasted not very long. 

Anet, in their infinite wisdom, deleted the resistance mesmer build without nerfing condi. 

So condi setups, stronger than ever, dominated the WvW meta uncontested. 

Anet did some minor nerfs but it would not be until shortly before the PoF release when everything got hard nerfed to sell the new Elite Specs. 

 

The Hot Wvw meta in a Nutshell. 

 

Edited January 31 by DanAlcedo.3281

[Dawdler.8521]

31 minutes ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

HoT started out with a Pirate ship meta. 

Hammer on the newly released Rev was giga OP and could one shot full soldier gear guards (pre hot meta), so pushing in was not an option. 

With Anet not nerfing stuff fast enough, it was up to the players to find a solution. And they found it. 

Anet introduced alot more sources of dmg reduction. Which, when stacked, produced greater results then expected. 

Eh I’ve never seen that as the cause of the pirate ship meta. The problem was more that there where so many stuns that stab was being outpaced - zergs could simply no longer melee. This then turn into a ranged brawl where pushing was suicide.

Anet literally had to redesign stab for melee to work again.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

5 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Eh I’ve never seen that as the cause of the pirate ship meta. The problem was more that there where so many stuns that stab was being outpaced - zergs could simply no longer melee. This then turn into a ranged brawl where pushing was suicide.

Anet literally had to redesign stab for melee to work again.

This was a problem starting with the stab rework Pre HoT. 

And the pirate ship Desaster in early Hot was rather short because why care about power dmg when you can simply ignore it via stacking of dmg reduction.

Edit:

CoR also had a 20(?)target cap and overlapping AoEs from the same CoR would hit you for double dmg. 

Edited January 31 by DanAlcedo.3281

[Kate.3679]

10 target shade one shot out of stealth meta and prenerf epidemic meta were unironically some of the most fun metas i've ever played on this game

toilet bowl mercy rune meta was the worst