Feedback: my experience as a new player in WvW

[Nkrisc.7408]

To begin, I have played GW2 before. I played for maybe 6 months at launch, and then stopped after that. I think I probably entered wvw once or twice then, but honestly I can't remember. Then over the years I'd log in for a few days here and there just to check out the game but never stuck with it for that a few days again. I've started playing again for the most I have since launch and have been playing for a few weeks now.

 

This is not a complaint. I just think the introduction experience to WvW is very lacking and just wanted to share my experience so that perhaps one day it might be improved.

 

I was recently reading about all the different ways to get geared, and looking at end game activities and rewards, and that's when I saw WvW get mentioned a lot. I saw that for some legendaries it's necessary. I'd like to start working on a legendary item, so I figured I'd give wvw a shot and learn about it in the process. Trying to figure out how to even get started in WvW left me confused for quite some time. I opened the WvW screen and saw 6 different options. There was no indication what any of them really were beyond a vague description. I saw that three of them were each red, blue and green. So I chose the red one because red means bad guys, right? I'm looking for PvP.

 

So I enter the map. I'm in some kind of fort and there's a bunch of vendors that are clearly for more progressed players than I. I scan the zone map and see it's very large with no Waypoints, so it's going to be a lot of running it looks like. I find a group of people leaving the base so I follow them. They stop at a smaller base next to ours, we fight a few NPCs and capture it. They all mount up and run off, leaving me in the dust. I can't keep up with them because my mounts don't work here. I make a note to look up why at a later time. I can see their dots on the map for now, so I try to catch up but by the time I find a way to get to them, they're long gone.

 

I give up trying to follow a group since they're too fast for me to stick with them. I look around, and there's not much around me. No NPCs, no friendly players, no enemy players. Honestly the whole thing felt pretty empty and dead. I find an enemy base and manage to kill the guards, but then I'm downed in about half a second by an enemy player. I was trying to figure out what happened and how I could take them on when... looks like I have to resurrect all the way back at the main base. It took me like five minutes just to run to where I was before, and I really didn't feel like running all the way just to find no one was there.

 

There was no indication of what to do. I found the participation score which seems to be tied to my rewards, but I struggled to keep it at tier 2 because there was simply nothing I could find to do. Killing NPCs didn't do anything, and I couldn't capture any bases by myself, and I could keep up with the groups who were capturing bases. There were still the 5 other wvw zones that I had no idea what they were for, or how I know which one to go to. Did I just go to the wrong zone? Should I have gone to Green or Blue or one of the ones without colors? How do I know which ones have any people? The game explains none of this, or if it does, I missed it.

 

I can see how WvW could be fun, and it looks fun in some of the YouTube videos I've seen of people doing it. But all those videos are from a year or so ago. Is WvW just completely dead now? Did I miss all the action? I tried it again a few days later and it was the same. I ran around a giant empty map for 40 minutes and couldn't find anything that seemed like it was worth doing. Anything I did do have no effect on anything or didn't get me any rewards.

 

But really the thing that irked me the most was that I HAD found a group of people to run with, but because new player mounts don't work in WvW, I couldn't even play with them. Seems weird to artificially segregate new players from experienced ones in that way when this seems like a game mode that requires a group of people. I thought it would playable solo since you can enter solo, but it doesn't feel that way unless you're some kind of PvP god who can take on a group of five by yourself.

 

Anyway, that's all. I'm going to keep trying to figure it out a few more times and ask around in chat. Some people were helpful, others just told me "maybe wvw isn't for you" when I was just asking how it even works.

[Rall.4586]

Which server are you on? WvW has varying degrees of activity based on the server you're in and the timezone you play at. Your other points are valid, and there are some guilds out there that will take in new players and show them the ropes in WvW. The WvW community can be small, but there is usually no lack of people who want to bring new faces in and help them learn.

[bigo.9037]

Just look up some tutorials loll

[Nkrisc.7408]

17 minutes ago, Hobu.8751 said:

Which server are you on? WvW has varying degrees of activity based on the server you're in and the timezone you play at. Your other points are valid, and there are some guilds out there that will take in new players and show them the ropes in WvW. The WvW community can be small, but there is usually no lack of people who want to bring new faces in and help them learn.

Dragonbrand, I think? I'm not sure if that's the server or not, but it's on the login screen. And yeah, I kinda came to the same conclusion that wvw seems to require organized play, but I thought it would be something I could just jump into on my own, but definitely didn't feel that way. Which is kind of stark contrast to PvE. I can go to any zone and just kinda join up with a big group of people doing meta events and such, it's what I like about GW2, and I thought it would apply to wvw too.

 

I was playing at 9PM Eastern so I thought it would be a populated time, if any.

 

4 minutes ago, bigo.9037 said:

Just look up some tutorials loll

Unless those tutorials show me where people are on the map when I join a match, I don't think it's going to be as helpful as you seem to think. The few things I did read about wvw mentioned joining up with a large group running around, but there's nothing in game (as far as I can tell) that shows if there even is any groups or which zone I should join. Why are there always 5 zones available if they're all most empty? Shouldn't the number of zones available scale based on how many people are participating? Seems silly to thinly spread everyone out over five zones, but maybe I'm missing something. That's why I'm trying to figure it out.

[Rall.4586]

1 minute ago, Nkrisc.7408 said:

Dragonbrand, I think? I'm not sure if that's the server or not, but it's on the login screen. And yeah, I kinda came to the same conclusion that wvw seems to require organized play, but I thought it would be something I could just jump into on my own, but definitely didn't feel that way. Which is kind of stark contrast to PvE. I can go to any zone and just kinda join up with a big group of people doing meta events and such, it's what I like about GW2, and I thought it would apply to wvw too.

 

I was playing at 9PM Eastern so I thought it would be a populated time, if any.

 

Unless those tutorials show me where people are on the map when I join a match, I don't think it's going to be as helpful as you seem to think. The few things I did read about wvw mentioned joining up with a large group running around, but there's nothing in game (as far as I can tell) that shows if there even is any groups or which zone I should join. Why are there always 5 zones available if they're all most empty? Shouldn't the number of zones available scale based on how many people are participating? Seems silly to thinly spread everyone out over five zones, but maybe I'm missing something. That's why I'm trying to figure it out.

This might be your problem. Dragonbrand has one active WvW community and that's ViP. They generally run at the time you play, but they'll be relegated to one map and one map only, so if you're not on their map you wont find them. DB is also paired up with Blackgate, who only really has RAWR and SEAL that play during that time, so really you're not on a very active and pug friendly server pairing right now.
Source: Command on Crystal Desert and we're matched against yall this week.

[LSD.4673]

The poorly explained side of WvW is a fair point, but unfortunately it's something that plagues the rest of the game, too.

 

I remember when i started in 2016 with a friend. Absolutely nothing was explained, from cc effects to conditions. We made it to Kessex Hills where (what i now understand to be an absurd group boss from the LW1 events) a toxic spider started trashing noob players left right and centre. Why does he have a blue mana bar? Why does the tooltip say the bar makes him stunned? 

 

Fractals, bosses, status effects, WvW...it's all poorly explained. Players are just chucked into the game regardless of which mode it is.

 

To learn WvW, take it slow -- it's a very slow paced game mode.

The big towers, as you figured out, need a group to take. The camps, however, do not (if youre decently geared and understand how to play your prpfession).

 

Wander about. Interact with the new things on the map. Like siege weapons, which you'll quickly find are useless (in a sense: you won't beat back an attacker alone with them. Eventually you'll understand their worth). Or supply, which you'll quickly find is worth its weight in gold. Pick up supply, repair a damaged wall, and make some world xp points. 

Google specific questions, or try your luck with the deadzone that will likely be /map chat.

 

You may well find you hate WvW. 

If you enjoy it, then find a written guide online once you have an idea of what's going on.

Good luck.

[bigo.9037]

14 minutes ago, Nkrisc.7408 said:

Dragonbrand, I think? I'm not sure if that's the server or not, but it's on the login screen. And yeah, I kinda came to the same conclusion that wvw seems to require organized play, but I thought it would be something I could just jump into on my own, but definitely didn't feel that way. Which is kind of stark contrast to PvE. I can go to any zone and just kinda join up with a big group of people doing meta events and such, it's what I like about GW2, and I thought it would apply to wvw too.

 

I was playing at 9PM Eastern so I thought it would be a populated time, if any.

 

Unless those tutorials show me where people are on the map when I join a match, I don't think it's going to be as helpful as you seem to think. The few things I did read about wvw mentioned joining up with a large group running around, but there's nothing in game (as far as I can tell) that shows if there even is any groups or which zone I should join. Why are there always 5 zones available if they're all most empty? Shouldn't the number of zones available scale based on how many people are participating? Seems silly to thinly spread everyone out over five zones, but maybe I'm missing something. That's why I'm trying to figure it out.

You know what commanders tag looks like on minimap? That’s how you find players. If there’s no tag , ask in /team chat where the people or fighters are at. The reason I ask you to watch tutorial is because you seem to not have a basic understanding of the game mode in the first place, not even the menus and maps. It’s important to understand this before you go out on your own. Wvw can be somewhat of a sandbox gamemode, so if you don’t know what’s going on, wvw will feel very empty and boring to you even tho there might be huge fights going on without you even realizing it.

[bigo.9037]

Since I’m really bored At work today I’m gonna give you a brief overview of the very basics.

 

In the wvw menu you can see all the wvw maps in a current matchup. The team colors aren’t important, but you can be on any color. Matchups last 1 week from friday to Friday. You might be red team 1week, blue the next. 
 

Eternal Battleground is a map that is evenly divided between all 3 teams, each have the same amount of camps towers and keeps, with a massive keep in the middle of the map that is being fought over. 
 

As for the borderlands, each team have their own map. Borderlands maps are skewed towards the team that maps belong to. They start with the biggest objective on that map, other teams start with much less. 
 

red team has the desert map which is the same core principle just a different design.

 

 Each tower keep and garrison has walls and gates you can break through with siege like catapults, rams and trebuchets. You can buy siege from npcs in wvw or on the TP. 
but to build siege, you need supply. You get supply from supply camps, they are scattered around every map. These camps can be taken over solo with the right build. 
 

the goal is to hold as many objectives as possible for as much time as possible throughout the weeklong match. Like I mentioned before, use the chat and join your server’s discord to get involved. Commander tags will usually be where people gather together. Also ask if any guilds are recruiting.

[jahaan.1405]

As far as which side you are on, the area you start in is outlined in the color of your side. There is also a little person silhouette on the WvW tab with the pip track. If there are no commanders on, you will have to roam the map or hope you see dots of players on your side in the map at the lower right. Unfortunately, lots of players are able to hide their position, so tracking the opposing forces is pointless. Unless you are unlucky enough to be on Gate of Madness, your side should be active and doing fairly well.

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

the mounts basically messed up a lot. bad idea to put them in, but it's too late now. funny enough, they got nerfed 10 times yet, so they are nearly useless overall, outside of the big mobility boost that causes inequality.

 

when i set up my alt account, i had a necro with all possible speed buffs (the movement signet + spectral walk) just to somehow be able to keep up with the crowd. if u stick close enough to them, their warclaws can give u a speedboost so u be fast as well 😜

 

first, seek your home border. keep maybe the camps there clear, if u enjoy that.

 

otherwise, go gw2mists.com and get proper fighting builds. practice the build first on some npcs and then seek a commander/tag and just follow him. u see the comm tags across the whole map. friend him, then u see also when and where he swapped map.

[Custodio.6134]

so first of all: it´s nice to see a player, that is new to wvw AND actually asks for help. That´s (from my expierience) quite rare, which is a shame. 

In many points i have to aggree, even though i am one of those players, that almost exclusively plays WvW, and almost nothing else. 
The introduction given from the game is non-existent. So it is up to the player to look up for the information they need. 
As recommendation: look out for guilds on your server. Guilds are usually the best way to get the informations you need, and if you get lucky, you may find a guild that also recruits beginners and teach them how to play wvw (though this may not be the case for your server, it heavily depends on the guilds themselves). 

WvW is the exact opposite of "beginner-friendly". The mechanics are in a variety of styles very different from the rest of the game and sometimes even more complex and hard to learn. So let me give you a few "advices" what you may want to do: 

1. ask in your map-chat/team-chat if you find someone that introduces you to wvw (maybe you even get lucky and find a guild that guides you through your first hours)
2. look up what builds and classes are suited for WvW, and the respective "sub-gameplay" you want to do. This could be solo-roaming (mostly running around alone or in very small groups, fighting other roamers, flipping camps or siege smaller/easier structures like non-upgraded Towers), or Zerk-Gameplay (Large scale, usually leaded by a commander). Those 2 "subtypes" of WvW have a very different Meta from each other and require different builds and gear. you will need these builds almost all the time
3. join your WvW-Server´s community-platforms. What those platforms are varies from server to server, but is usually one or multiple of the following: TeamSpeak-Server, Discord-Server, Website/Forum, Community-Guild. From time to time, you also may find "trainings", usually specific classes/builds that get teached, organized by community-members. Also, that´s a good chance to find someone that guides you through the first hours of WvW. 
4. If you are part of an organized Zerk (basically, you are in the squad of a leading commander): don´t use your own blueprints. The commander has a supply overview for his squad and will calculate the amount of siege based on the available supplies. Siege that gets built up can screw up the commander´s calculation if there are "random" blueprints built up. 

Also: be aware, that WvW is designed as a competetive game-mode, and a lot of player take it very serious (sometimes a bit TOO serious). So the language, especially in voice, may get quite rough, depending on who you "meet". When joining a public commander, you may want to talk to him first and tell him you are a new player, there is a chance that he may explain a lot of things while playing. 

so let me grab some of the points you already mentioned: 
 

2 hours ago, Nkrisc.7408 said:

I opened the WvW screen and saw 6 different options. There was no indication what any of them really were beyond a vague description. I saw that three of them were each red, blue and green. So I chose the red one because red means bad guys, right? I'm looking for PvP.

 

That´s actually wrong. red, blue and green are "just" team colors, defined by the previous matchup. The first place of the matchup will always be the green team in the next upcoming match (after matchup-reset on friday), the second will always be blue, and third place becomes red respectively. 

 

Quote

 

So I enter the map. I'm in some kind of fort and there's a bunch of vendors that are clearly for more progressed players than I. I scan the zone map and see it's very large with no Waypoints, so it's going to be a lot of running it looks like. I find a group of people leaving the base so I follow them. They stop at a smaller base next to ours, we fight a few NPCs and capture it. They all mount up and run off, leaving me in the dust. I can't keep up with them because my mounts don't work here. I make a note to look up why at a later time. I can see their dots on the map for now, so I try to catch up but by the time I find a way to get to them, they're long gone.

 

 

That is actually one downside of the mount (warclaw) that got introduced "not too long ago". But if you find a group of enough size, you will get a buff that lets you keep up with them, even without mount. you will want to acquire the warclaw asap (there´s lots of guides out there how to do that). 
 

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I give up trying to follow a group since they're too fast for me to stick with them. I look around, and there's not much around me. No NPCs, no friendly players, no enemy players. Honestly the whole thing felt pretty empty and dead. I find an enemy base and manage to kill the guards, but then I'm downed in about half a second by an enemy player. I was trying to figure out what happened and how I could take them on when... looks like I have to resurrect all the way back at the main base. It took me like five minutes just to run to where I was before, and I really didn't feel like running all the way just to find no one was there.

 

There was no indication of what to do. I found the participation score which seems to be tied to my rewards, but I struggled to keep it at tier 2 because there was simply nothing I could find to do. Killing NPCs didn't do anything, and I couldn't capture any bases by myself, and I could keep up with the groups who were capturing bases. There were still the 5 other wvw zones that I had no idea what they were for, or how I know which one to go to. Did I just go to the wrong zone? Should I have gone to Green or Blue or one of the ones without colors? How do I know which ones have any people? The game explains none of this, or if it does, I missed it.

 

 

yeah, doing something solo is already quite difficult in general, and even harder if you are new. That´s why i advised you to look out for players to introduce you, and guilds or public squads are almost the only way to do so. How this gets handled though depends on your server´s community, commanders and guilds. I cannot promise you that you will find a "Mentor", but you will need to get in touch with the community. 

 

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I can see how WvW could be fun, and it looks fun in some of the YouTube videos I've seen of people doing it. But all those videos are from a year or so ago. Is WvW just completely dead now? Did I miss all the action? I tried it again a few days later and it was the same. I ran around a giant empty map for 40 minutes and couldn't find anything that seemed like it was worth doing. Anything I did do have no effect on anything or didn't get me any rewards.

 

 

At least in my case: WvW is far away from being dead. You may have gotten quite unlucky, because populations, "Primetimes" and even the matchup themselves are factors that heavily impact the activity in WvW. Also, as you wrote this topic just today, This day is the last day of the current server-linkings, that will get redone with the matchup-reset occuring in a few hours from now. Especially the last week of a matchup, even though the WXP-Event is technically still ongoing, is a time where activity usually goes down. that´s because the outcome of the matchup is irrelevant for next week, as servers-linkings will be redone "soon" (ANet´s attempt to maintain proper population-balances). I can almost promise you, that activitiy will go up after today´s relink/reset. 

 

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But really the thing that irked me the most was that I HAD found a group of people to run with, but because new player mounts don't work in WvW, I couldn't even play with them. Seems weird to artificially segregate new players from experienced ones in that way when this seems like a game mode that requires a group of people. I thought it would playable solo since you can enter solo, but it doesn't feel that way unless you're some kind of PvP god who can take on a group of five by yourself.

 

That´s actually a bad choice made by ANet, but you will get a buff if you are near enough players with mounts. So in a Zerk, u usually will be able to keep up with them (unless they charge forward with the dodge-skill). Here the same advice as i have given earlier: communicate with the leading commander, that you are new and don´t have the mount (yet). There´s a good chance he will try to get some stuff for your achievements to unlock it, and will not use the mount to move over the map, so you can keep up with the zerk. Communication is the key, that´s one basic rule of WvW (and at the same time, one that gets neglected by a lot of players)

Edited July 30, 2021 by Custodio.6134

[Harfang.1507]

Hi OP, I started WvW myself maybe a week ago and already asked and got help on these forums too. Things I can tell you from a slightly better-prepared position:

Several people mentioned sticking close to mounted people, because they can buff you to match their speed. This is only partially true. They need to have trained the second rank in warclaw, and from my own experience, a large number of players have not done so. In that spirit, the very first reward track you should activate is the warclaw. And if they jump forward, you lose their buff. 🙁

Find a commander tag on the map if you can. They may adopt you. If you see a large concentration of green dots on you minimap, head for them. Unless they are running from the red dots . . .

Check out Mukluk for an introduction.

Look for your server's discord. I googled mine. A WvW-dedicated guild may also help.

Set yourself short-term objectives of what you want from WvW. I want Gifts of Battle. What are yours?

 

I found the chat extremely confusing and often toxic. Last night on Kaineng it was . . . 🤢.

[SWI.4127]

My advice would be to just check out Eternal Battlegrounds.  It's not always the best map, but more often than not, it will have more people on it.  Red BL is the biggest, most spread out map.  Quite a few people dislike that map and just don't play on it.  These are just generalizations, experience varies depending on what server you play on, which servers you play against, what time of the day it is, etc. 

 

The mount was a really bad change for new players as now they are at an even bigger disadvantage than veterans.  There is a mastery for the mount that gives any unmounted players in an AoE a speed boost that will help you keep up with mounts, so you can try to "hitch a ride" that way.  However I think it takes a few seconds to kick in, and the mounted people usually leap once or twice, which you can't do on foot, and you may be left behind. 

[XenesisII.1540]

Whew that's a lot to unpack.

 

Yeah the newbie experience in wvw can be pretty terrible and overwhelming unfortunately, and it's probably a good reason why it doesn't get as much new players over the years, you're just thrown into the deep end. There is no real tutorial like they kinda did with spvp. I believe there's an npc at citadel spawn that explains some stuff, but you really have to play and give the game mode some time to learn all the intricacies of it. But even the wvw menus can be downright confusing to new players.

 

Time zones and server play a big part in seeing people around. Dragonbrand I believe has been lacking NA population for some time? Also the red map is the desert map, which is bigger than the alpine map and also usually more emptier than the other maps. Try eternal battlegrounds (the map on the bottom middle), it usually has the most population through the day, the objectives are closer, so it isn't as much of a marathon as the borderland maps, but you will probably run into more roamers and groups. Or try to stick to your home map where I'm sure there's roamers around trying to recap objectives.

 

As for the mount, yeah pretty terrible decision by anet to have the mount on a chain achievement and reward track to unlock, especially tied to needing some extra skirmish tickets to finish (which is even more terrible if some new or returning player moves before they get into wvw and realizes they got locked out of skirmish rewards for a week or two, so forced to wait that out or buy the wvw mount skin reward track).

 

Maybe that's their way of doing a tutorial 🙄 should have just made it unlock as the glider, and maybe make an actual tutorial, they even have a nice big empty map that no one uses to do so in eotm. Also if a lot of people may not have the mastery to give speed aura to others, it's probably because they're working on their masteries still and there's a bunch more that are more important to get first.

 

Tips and tricks.

- Load up some movement skills until you get the mount, the mount is the priority, all classes now have some type of teleport/dash/leap/swiftness skills to use. Try to use out of the way areas to travel through(when you learn them), and stick to your own objectives mostly when going through areas.

 

- Read the map, when you see white swords on an objective it means an enemy disturbed your guards or hit your objective with siege, if a tower flipped nearby it could mean a group or zerg is there, if you see orange swords it's a zerg of 25+ people fighting. When you see orange dots that's the enemy moving through your areas. Also just reading chat for scout calls helps 😆

 

- If you see a sentry or dolyak disappear it could mean a roamer or small group, and it also kinda indicates where they may be heading next, like if in alpine you see your ne camp flip, and then the ne sentry flip, more than likely they will head to north camp.

 

- You don't have to kill the lord for credit on an objective flip, you can also be in the ring or kill an npc connected to the objective to get credit for the rewards and participation. Like if you see one of your commanders is already in a lord room of an enemy held keep, you can just go kill a guard at the keep and still get credit for the flip, you can even kill a guard before your zerg even went there to cap it, as long as you stay on the map you will still get the credit.

 

- Ask for help, yes there are quite a lot of trolls in wvw, a lot of grizzled vets who have no time to teach others, but there are still also nice people around willing to help new people out. So roll with the punches, use /ignore if you have to, and find those helpful people/guilds. Check if your server has a discord.

 

- There are only a few waypoints on a map, your spawn, emergency waypoint(with the tactics slotted after an hour) only triggers when pulled, keep waypoints (after keep is upgraded to tier 3), and stonemist castle (again tier 3 but usually always contested). It's really convenient and important to get waypoints, so groups will usually try to save those, takes around 2-3 hours to fully upgrade a keep again.

 

- Legendary armor. Be aware there's two different versions of the ascended armor to get to upgrade to legendary, the plain version requires skirmish tickets and crafting marks, the mistforged version requires double the tickets, no marks, but minimum 500 wxp ranks. I believe there was also a bug where if you reforged the stats on them you would essentially break them for use on the legendary upgrade, so don't reforge these pieces. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Legendary_armor#WvW_armor_set

Legendary weapons require the gift of battle from the wvw reward track, you still have to go to pve to make them.

 

- Don't be afraid to die, it's part of the learning experience. As you play and learn more about the classes, the combat, the maps, the situations, you'll be able to adapt and read situations even before they happen, there's a lot of repetitive patterns in wvw.

 

A lot more info from the wiki https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/World_versus_World

For starter builds https://metabattle.com

 

Good luck to you, and hope you have fun.

 

P.S also a very big annoyance of mine that the menu isn't setup something like this, simple and easier to read, list both servers in the link, then warscore, then victory points, don't need to mouse over every kitten element. https://i.imgur.com/chFPvHi.jpg

 

 

Edited July 31, 2021 by XenesisII.1540

[displayname.8315]

Don't let the mount discourage you.  There are various ways of moving fast.  Read through the different weopon skills and utility abilities.  Utilities are in sets like potions/sigils and you should pick sets that work with your 3 skill tree "builds"

[Cuks.8241]

Locking the mount behind a reward track and wvw rank was a bad idea in my opinion. Yeah it's a trivial task for experienced player but annoying and confusing for a new player. It really serves no one and doesn't help new players with learning. 

 

Look for open tags. Ask in /team chat if there are any open tags on the maps (borders). Follow the commander, learn. Join discord or teamspeak if it is available. It will help you learn faster and many tags require it. 

 

Player will refer to maps as borders. RBL, GBL, BBL - red, green, blue border land. Your current home border is often referenced as HBL - home border land. EB  - Eternal Battleground, it is the neutral border with the castle in the middle.

[ArchonWing.9480]

Yea the whole mount crap is pretty annoying for new players.

 

Note that if you finish bronze tier you get a stat selectable exotic that can help. I think the best class to start out with is scrapper, because of its access to stealth and superspeed. so you can get around more easily and also evade enemies. It also is wanted in zergs.

 

Your own borderland is probably the best place to start out since usually there's stuff happening nearby.

Edited July 31, 2021 by ArchonWing.9480

[Gotejjeken.1267]

Bring swiftness skills until you can train the mount--it's how we had to get around prior to mounts being a thing.  

 

In fact, I would learn your class pretty thoroughly before going  into WvW because you need to know your role.  Learning everyone else's class isn't super important as long as you understand basic game mechanics and also have a basic idea of what to expect in each encounter.

 

After that, really the only things you need to know are camps are easy captures for solo, towers for small groups, keeps for larger groups.  It doesn't get too much more complicated than this--I've been playing for nine years and still haven't trained half the siege weapons for instance.  

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

@Gotejjeken.1267wait how, u must be several 1000s of ranks kappa ... why would u not train all the siege weapons. that's one of the first things i did, so i could man everything if necessary and have the full usage access to it.

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about the wvw mastery points, my first always go into the provisioner, bc u really want that auto-loot pickup. staple skill.

 

then u want some supply capacity, and as soon as u can afford, max out one siege type per character at least, so u can man a ram or cata, if necessary (without mastery, not all skills and worse damage)

 

 

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as archonwing wrote, focus on home border. u can got EBG for sightseeing and during off-hours, but during the most populated time, it's just not where u wanna be as new player. it's the hellpit. either a zerg or a gankergroup of roamery glasscannons farms u on it, if u don't know yet how to avoid that. which simply takes time and experience to learn

[Avengedeath.4671]

Sadly I have noticed over the years fewer and fewer wvw players being helpful/nice to new players.  Most ppl run with their guild or friends, hardly ever use map or team chat because they are in discord.  I have accounts on 5 different servers. They all seem to be about the same.  I have helped many new players over the years, only a few still play wvw. Maybe with alliances we would get to play on the same team, if so add me to friends I am always looking for ppl to run around with.

[Sviel.7493]

I think folks have largely covered everything, but I can give some absolutely useless technical info.  I usually play solo, so I can give some tips on doing that as well.

First, are you level 80?  It sounds like your total playtime is just a few weeks--if you're not level 80, then it will be very difficult to do much as a solo in WvW.  Many years ago, I started WvW before level 80 and focused on repairing Keeps/Towers after attacks and killing Dredge...but I don't think that's a realistic mode of play anymore.  You can get lvl up Tomes in WvW, but it might take longer than lvling in PvE.  If you're getting killed in half a second, this might be because you're underleveled and thus undergeared or because you're using gear with no defensive stats.  In WvW, this is a huge no-no.  DO NOT wear Berserker gear unless you're very confident or are a masochist.

 

Second, what class do you prefer, if any?    Some are way better or worse at doing certain things.

When I say I play WvW solo, I mean I am not explicitly grouped up with anyone.  However, due to the nature of the game mode, you're going to temporarily group up with people all the time.  I personally play as a field scout, so my goal is to find the action and direct my allies to it.  While I'm often alone, I am also often fighting alongside allies I have called in.  Since I don't have PoF, I also don't have a Warclaw.  My build (thief, daredevil) is thus focused on mobility rather than dueling potential.  I can almost keep up with a Warclaw for a moderate period.

The four most important things about this solo playstyle are Sentries, Callouts, Camps and White Swords.  This mostly pertains to the Borderlands.  Eternal Battlegrounds (EBG) is a completely different game.

Sentries are the Charr guards marked by a colored flag on your map.  When enemies go near them, they get marked and show up as orange dots on your map.  Smart zergs will send a few people to kill these rather than lighting up the whole group, but it will at least buy you some time.  Sentries are easy to kill and doing so will buy you 5 minutes (I think?) without participation drain if you also flip the circle that pops up when they die.

Players will often refer to objectives as NorthEast Camp or NEC, North Camp or NC or sometimes North North Camp or NNC.  This is done because the actual objective names change for each map and no one bothers remembering them.  You may also see NWT (NorthWest Tower), Garrison/Rampart (the middle keep), Firekeep (west keep on red border), Bay (west keep on blue/green border), Airkeep (east keep on red border) or Hills (east keep on blue/green border).  You don't really have to memorize all that, but understanding how to decode the nomenclature is helpful for reading or making scout calls and thus knowing where the action is at.  When making a callout, try to include the server, number, location and siege of the enemies.  E.G. "4 Green at NWT gate with 2 Rams" or "2 Red entering SEC from the north."  Whether or not anyone shows up varies by server and who's on.  I don't know the situation on Dragonbrand in that regard.

Camps are located in the NorthEast, NorthWest, SouthEast and SouthWest corners of the borderlands as well as at the absolute North and absolute south.  They can be tricky for a solo depending on your build and especially tricky if you aren't lvl 80.  The NPCs don't all aggro at once if you pull them carefully, but they only stay dead for 3 minutes so you have to work quick.  Ideally, you can group them up and AoE them to death.  While they are the easiest scored objective to take, they are also the most important.  Towers and Keeps do not upgrade unless Yaks travel from camps to their doors 20, 40 and 80 times depending on the tier.  In addition, Yaks give your team 1 point whenever they make a delivery and, alongside the base Point Per Tick (every 5 minutes) from the camp, are a sizeable chunk of your team's score.  Conversely, if enemies hold something, flipping the camp will prevent it from upgrading which means they get less score and the objective remains easier to take for your team.

White Swords appear on camps, towers and keeps 30 seconds after they have been attacked by enemies.  Currently, if someone slaps one of the guards, white swords will appear after 30s and last for 2.5 minutes.  Thus, it's impossible to know if there's an actual siege going on unless someone goes to check.  If you see enemies at a sentry or a camp flips and then white swords appear on a nearby tower, you may want to check that out quickly.  Many players just ignore these because they are often false alarms, but someone who has been paying attention to small objectives (camps/sentries/shrines on red border) can usually tell more accurately when they deserve to be checked.

Of course, none of this matters if the borderland has absolutely no enemies on it.  Ironically, that's probably more likely to happen during primetime than outside of it as people tend to gravitate to the guild runs when the guilds are running.  Also, a zerg being present tends to scare the small groups away.

[Pacificterror.7805]

On 7/30/2021 at 11:20 PM, Nkrisc.7408 said:

.

 

I only started WvW a couple months ago. Here's how I started out:

 

If you haven't already, put a WvW mastery point into Warclaw. This is the mount in WvW.

 

Then, go to the Reward Track page and start the Warclaw Reward Track.

 

For finding groups to play with, there are 2 easy options to suss that out. When you enter a map, look at your minimap to see if there are any Commander and/or Catmander tags. If there are, click it and press Join Squad.

 

No open tags? Use the Team chat channel to ask if there are any open groups to join. Team chat talks across all of the 'regular' WvW maps, so you may find a squad on a diff map (you could also hop maps looking for an open tag).

 

AS FAR AS FALLING BEHIND, once in a squad it may be worthwhile mentioning you're working on getting Warclaw. Some Commanders will give people shared participation- so even if you fall behind you're not fully missing out. There is also a buff Warclaw riders can grant at random (with the appropriate mastery unlocked) to nearby players that enables them to run at Warclaw speed, so being near others at the start of a run is helpful.

 

Welcome to WvW. Once you get used to things, it's an amazing game mode *it's the only one I play at the moment!)