Dec 16th: No White Swords - How do we want to handle?

What makes the most sense to me is to defend the northern half of the map.  3 camps, 2 towers, Garri.  Bay and Hills are optional depending on number of forces on the map.  This way, supply is funneled in to the two towers and Garri, and you have two clear lines up to those positions.  The northern towers have only one access point.  The Z-Ramp.   If you put scouts at the bottom of the Z-Ramp, you will see if NE or NW camps are being taken as well as have a forward scouting position to see if anyone is sneaking up the Z Ramps for the towers.  Then you house someone in Garri to watch SE Gate and Water Gate.  North camp will need a scout as well in case they take the china route there bypassing the Z-Ramp scouts.  Total of 4-5 scouts on home map.  Everyone else can be taking objectives on other maps.

Your friendly neighborhood Smitty here!
Sif Ellisdottir - Gaiscioch [GSCH]
Maelgwyn Gryffud - Gaiscioch [GSCH]

I say definitely keep garrison guarded and seiged up, and  it is the easiest to respond to. It would also be nice to watch the others and set traps to ambush them with. Additionally this means they won't have white swords, so we could go raiding them if they won't come to us. I just want to fight, taking stuff is nice, but the fighting is the best!

Siege in Garri wont matter if there isn't some forward thinking about NE and NW tower.  Trebs will make short work of Garri walls.  Having your butchers box is fine, but the amount of time it will take to reset, and maintain it after a takeover could prove to be frustrating.

Your friendly neighborhood Smitty here!
Sif Ellisdottir - Gaiscioch [GSCH]
Maelgwyn Gryffud - Gaiscioch [GSCH]

Training Mesmers better places to hide could be awesome turning points for maintaining Garri.  Having a well trained Mesmer hide in Garri gives us both advantages of a scout, and someone to portal us back in if things go south there...

Your friendly neighborhood Smitty here!
Sif Ellisdottir - Gaiscioch [GSCH]
Maelgwyn Gryffud - Gaiscioch [GSCH]

I think this new system will work well for us, because we can start teaching people how to play the PPT timer now, without distractions of OMGWEGOTTADEFENDSORTOWERCOMEHELPPLZ!! every time Siegrazer is sent to one and it crosses up.  Understanding how to manipulate the PPT timer is the primary factor between being in 3rd place or 1st place.

I've always believed that we would be best served by playing that timer on an offensive level, and just defending SOR Garri and EB Home Keep.  We've done it and shown that we can easily maintain a 300+ tick with ~30-40 players across all maps and honestly, playing that timer is all we really need to do, to start ranking better again.

This game is just designed that way, you want to hold as many points as possible, during the last 5 minutes of the timer, well really the last minute of the timer, and the other 10-14m are free, to allow plotting and planning on how to do that.

edit: I think I'll write a little Understanding Scoring and PPT Timer type of guide for folks, when I get a few hours free to write one out.

Leaving someone in the garrison is a must. What is seen as the biggest target on a map and the most morale-breaking, this one should always have a handful of siege and at minimum one scout. An arrow cart can easily break a golem rush, which I foresee will be the new tactic to be used once white swords go away.

Hey, it gives me a reason to try to seek out fights now - and a reason for us to try to work as a group. Throwing yourself at a keep until you take it won't really be an option anymore.

Professor Bannister, engineer

I agree with many things you all have to say... But....

I really don't think our server has a force sizable to seek out fights.  I don't think we have the manpower for when it will really count to scout much more then the north part of our own BL, and I don't think just focusing on the timer is the way to go either.

I think the key to the best defense in this case is going to be a good offense.  Keep them on there toes.  I know many players that log in and it becomes there goal to turn there entire map there color before striking out elsewhere.  

Paying attention to the timer is a hard one for me to agree with, I understand it, and know about it, but the days of 30-40 other then SORC nights is long gone.  It only makes sense if we can regain what was lost during the first 10 minutes.  If our numbers are low, you can not retake 4 camps, 2 towers and a keep in 5 minutes.  If we are loosing more then one or two camps per tick on our BL or area of EB and don't have numbers, we must take them whenever we can, if only to make the enemy stop and waste time retaking again before striking our bigger, closer targets.  Not to mention if we take an enemies camp or tower at any time, that will force them to focus there hopefully before the tick allowing us to keep everything we started with.  If you are a solo havoc, by all means watch the clock and take them in the last 5 minutes, but I can not commit any of my force to that idea as I think it is a loosing idea.  If you are taking an enemy Keep or Garri and there are 6 minutes on the clock, it is a good idea to hold DPS for a little bit to get the cap in the last 5 minutes, but don't not cap it because it is after the reset.  Remember every inch they loose they have to regain to get back there same PPT or higher, same goes for us.

I agree we need a scout or two in Garri, and hopefully one in each north tower.  Beyond that, we need to keep the northern camps upgraded preventing the many solo roamers from an easy take.  Siege up Garri at least one Sup Arrow cart on each gate including inners.   We need to then focus on keeping our map blue no matter the timer.  As far as EB, we need to focus on our Keep(scouts) and two closest towers again with those targets take when we can.  If you target what would normally be enemy structures, by all means follow the timer if you would like.

We need to try to prevent the "morale-breaking" take of our prime buildings, and hope we can work out the rest in the process.  Remember we are not the only ones that won't have white swords.  Take the fight to the enemy.  I suspect the first week of the change we will run into a lot of things with siege, and I expect golems to play a big role as I feel we are going to see smaller but more enemy groups when this happens.  I do plan on running a decent scale golem rush myself during one of the weekends this is going on.

Mesmers are a great idea, I would like to see a good mesmer once again do a training hour or something on this subject and would try to send a few of my guildies to it.

Team Speak, Team Speak, Team Speak... Ccoms!

BTW, Sekkerhund, about the PPT timer thing, although I understand it, I would still be interested in reading your take on it, by no means do I mean offense when I say I think it is a loosing idea.

Mistress Collisto|Molly Oakenheart|Lena Andersdotter|Heather Jones
Guild Leader of [JADE] www.Immortalizedin.enjin.com

This update not only encourages smart play, as having too many of your force dying will offset the points you earn from large and well-defended structures, but it also encourages stealthy play.

For one, I don't know if we'll have assault timers on a structure so that you know it's under siege - these timers dealt with waypoints and the timer of the white swords. If they're removing this timer, this needs to be taken into account with our strategies.

Most servers will have at least one scout in each of their keeps - this is the bare minimum in terms of scouting that should be performed when you have the population. Focusing on blitzing towers and camps that aren't as well defended for immediate points is an option, bouncing to the other side of the map on EB to keep them on their toes is a strategy I used with a group on reset night that worked pretty well, that may excel in the next four weeks.

Don't leave them a trail to follow right back to you.

Professor Bannister, engineer

Hmmm, waypoints.  I think you're on to something Aiden.

Surely waypoints will still have swords (and be unusable during the defense event for the keep).   That's so basic to GW2, even in PVE, it's hard to see it changing.  So one minor strategy to consider: upgrade straight to waypoints first.  That'll give us poor man's white swords (that work x-map) on keeps, at least.

I predict after ppk goes live, the maps will be thick with roamers for a few days.  Then everyone will blob harder than before because the wolves will be picking off the stragglers in the back.  There will be backlash on uplvls.  Finally things will calm down after a few weeks and everyone will forget ppk exists. 

This sort of reminds me of the early system in warhammer and may lead to similar situations such as... stop fighting we're trying to flip the map!  Thats why we did alarm clock raids for years, cause any resistance meant the point gap would never grow large enough to trigger map capture.

Instead we might see... stop fighting we're trying to increase our ppt!  Even grumpy ol' Mythic eventually changed the system.

I think the swordless strategy is not going to change the game much.  as it is we barely have time to respond to the notification.

there are some solid strategies in here but they are missing a key element; we need to attack the mind of the enemy as well.

thats what tapping gates was about before, trying to make them think something was happening.  now we are missing that element but lets not forget this tactic exists.

how do we attack the enemy psyche?

here are some of my ideas...

strongholds - create a forward position that is scouted and defended.  For our BL, the southern towers are usually attacked first and if we have players making themselves noticed and then withdrawing inside, that will pull attackers to the gate.  Remember we are fighting the clock as much as other players, if our ppt is favorable, making them spend 30m to assault a tower is time they werent attacking elsewhere.  Even if we end up losing the 10ppt on the tower, we lost ground we didnt rly care about holding anyway.  For EBG pick one of the forward towers, assign scouts, build siege and defend it with the main force.  Build trebs and fire at smc to create a ruckus which lets the commander attack more freely and not have to worry about every tower being scouted.

city sieges (aka kicking the bee hive) - best example is attacking veloka. enemy doesnt want veloka to fall, its near spawn, baddies pile up inside, loitering around on the walls (possibly drooling on themselves a little) waiting for the attacking force to make the first move.  sometimes i drop some troll catas or an AC to desiege and then leave.  this tactic puts enemies where you want them, wastes time, forces them to defend rather than attack.  its important not to get boxed in, keep the fighting out of our yard.  very often if you do this 2-3 times, you show up and veloka is empty, the wall at 50% still not repaired.

I would like to come up with something new, Im still brain storming on it though

No worries, PPT timer is one of the most misunderstood, yet most important, components of the WvW design.  The key is in realizing that for 14:59:59, how many objectives you own, just does not matter.  What matters is what you own during that single second that the Points timer counts how many objectives each side owns.

The skill of strategy lies within making sure that your side owns the most points during that single second.  That's what the other 14:59:59 of the timer is for: planning and executing strategies to have those points when the timer hits 0:00:00.  :) 

Its not easy to execute, I won't understate it, but when you are the undermanned server, being able to control that timer gives an advantage that you would otherwise never have.  Its purely strategy and skill of execution, which is something that zerg servers don't have, because they've become lazy.

TBH, that's still what we're trying to recover from... zerging the higher tiers.  We learned bad habits, because it was more advantageous for us.  Once we lost numbers, we hit a wall because we didn't have the experience or knowledge to control the majority of points.

We need to change that, if we ever want to start finishing 2nd, or even 1st, place again.  We're not done by a long shot.

If a waypointed Garrison is attacked, will the waypoint still have swords and be unusable?

Problem with mesmers in keeps is that a good commander knows where the hiding places are and should be training their troops how and where to search for the mesmers.  Once everyone is onboard with that the mesmer becomes null and void.  I think keeping a single scout in garri is the best course.  They can report on tower conditions/loss asap.  That war reaction force can retake if necessary.  If we have enough people then a scout in each tower would be next step, followed by scout at north, nw and ne supply camps.  Focus should be on keeping forces concentrated and not too spread out.  With extra points avail for killing/spikes this will be a focus for theifs.  Only way to defeat theif teams is with 3-4 man teams.

I hate to be the negative Nancy here, but all these things suggested can and will eventually be played by both sides.  Playing with such small numbers prohibits us from operating and carrying out the same tasks as other servers, and I think the proof here has shown that we play with the least numbers of anybody anymore.  Before everyone gets blown up on the PPT and points strategy game, remember that we're the underdogs and the most important thing is to go out and have a good time with each other.  Don't expect to win the PPT game until we can get more even numbers on the battlefield.  This stuff happens every time we start to rebound, we start talking about PPT and then when it doesn't pan out the fingers start pointing and we devolve again.  Please don't start the cycle again, we already can't afford to pay for the last two.

As far as the December changes to WvW, my opinion is that we take as much advantage of it as possible.  I also read this change to be implied that they are advocating more of a karma train type game style for WvW with these changes.  WvW is a numbers game and while the killbox idea is great for an even numbered or slightly outnumbered scenario; if we are heavily outnumbered all they have to do is setup a treb to break our defenses which will eventually lead to heavy casualties(PPK) and the loss of the structure (Lost PPT X2).  In this example, it would have been more fruitful from a PPT standpoint to capture a couple of towers and camps to make up for the deficit.  However, when you outnumber your enemy, it is more productive for you to play the hunting game to chase the opposition for PPK while taking every structure in your path.

-Dharkon

Per https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/introducing-the-wintersday-competitive-event-schedule/, sounds like the "no white swords" ends January 13.    We have dates now!

Perhaps we could run more PvE-WvW hybrid events? I'm hoping the k-train lure is good enough to get a considerable portion of SoR's HUGE and predominantly PvE only so far population to try WvW.

At our current tier having a group of 20 or more rookies lead by an able commander who can keep them alive and happy would be a huge advantage. If they have fun on a map long enough to take even just a few conservative objectives on their own, other players can work in small groups or even solo to take other objectives, do havoc or siege down walls and gates while our opponents try to figure out how to handle our rookies.

With regard to scouting a few could perhaps volunteer for select keeps and towers, but we have to temper our expectations and accept that other installations are just gonna be supply camps to be taken back asap to keep enemy k-trains busy though it would be nice to have a surprise 5 man AC squad instantly farm an up-lelvel zerg trying to take a tower once in a while :P  

Lastly it would be nice if we could find a way to bolster our presence at around 1:00 PST to euro prime as those would be prime k-training hours for this Tier.  Oh hey less than 24 hours til the patch I think? I wonder if the changes will boost or reverse our 4k lead against SF this week? :)

Playing the PPT is how WvWvW was designed.  Its like... the scoring method.  Of course all the sides are going to be playing it... because they already do (well some of them).  We're just too used to zerging everything, as are the other current (and former) higher Tier servers.  We all started playing this game on underpopulated servers, so we're just back to business as usual.  We just need to remember what that was.

I'm not suggesting special strategies or trickery here, I'm just pointing out that we need to get back to playing the game as its designed, not using bad habits learned from having higher numbers that just karma trained across the zones.  We can't do any of that stuff anymore, we have to re-learn how to actually play the game again.  :)

On that note, I will make a post on playing for PPT after the holidays.  I have too much going on right now, mostly bad stuff, but toss in holidays and my focus is elsewhere for a bit.  I gave a basic outline in my previous post, its a good starting point.

Whelp. We managed to take and hold all of their T3 keeps and we took T3 Stonemist not too long ago.

I'd say this no white swords thing is working out for us. Though I'd like to point out that the white swords will show up on Waypoints still. So get waypoints on keeps ASAP.

Viktor Rageclaw - Seaimpin na Cu (Veteran Member) of The Gaiscioch Family.

Crazy day at SF BL with small teams, at one point during early NA we simultaneously went for Garrison (team Kingxcon), Hills (team Arya) and SE Tower (me).  A few SF came to defend of all things the SE Tower only to lose all three.  At that point I think they rage quit to EB where they were holding on a way pointed keep against Kaineng and we took practically the rest of the BL afterwards.

After you left 15 SF came to take a good portion of it back, but I ran around and mass upgraded to deplete the supply. So we took their homes and left them zilch. Oh, and took bloodlust in their borderlands. If you get major and superior you get extra PPK, with a smaller force, does anyone think that could add up in the course of a week? But yeah, very strange not having one single defender when taking Hills haha. 

Also, as thieves we have ways to deny the enemy to stomp us in our downed utilities...Wait till they go for stomp, shadowstep, then invis after that. If I'm downed by a group, I can usually hold off a stomp till I'm burned down by aoe and/or condi...

*Xeero Cool-Mez,Admiral Wiggin-Engi,Arya Sinfelle-Teef,Dirtyfilthyrotten-Necro,Ender Tha Xenocide-Rev
Filthydirtyrotten-Warrior

Oh and just a reminder for camp raiders, if the camp you take will not be sending yaks to anything that we own on that map please consider buying the yak escort upgrade.  Since the yak will just be staying at the camp you will effectively be buying 4 additional guards at a very small cost, this can give the illusion of a fully upgraded camp and dissuade less experienced would be raiders.

Also there seems to be a great deal of complacency in our opponents trying to take our stuff, earlier I caught 5 SF ninja-pulting their way into SF SW tower, so I put up a sup AC on an adjacent wall and stealthed.  The wall shortly went down and they made a beeline for the lord so I got on the AC, and the rest I leave to your imagination :-)

"Oh and just a reminder for camp raiders, if the camp you take will not be sending yaks to anything that we own on that map please consider buying the yak escort upgrade.  Since the yak will just be staying at the camp you will effectively be buying 4 additional guards at a very small cost, this can give the illusion of a fully upgraded camp and dissuade less experienced would be raiders."

This is great advice for our solo camp takers that want to make there time count, and for that matter any havoc group.  A lot of nights durring the week, I know I can only dedicate 30 minutes to an hour I will run out and take as many camps as I can and often.  I have quickly learned to look and see if this upgrade is on because it requires a slight change to how I take them.  However for many, less experienced players this would be an automatic skip.  If the camp is fully upgraded it is usually not worth my time taking(at least when swords are turned on).  Remember if our average person has an issue taking a camp that has that upgrade, other servers will have the same issue out there.  BTW, one thing I have just started doing when I lead, and I am sure my guys might think its getting old, but every camp we take I try to describe to them just how to solo them, like where to group the mobs and your focus on what targets to burn down first.  I would be happy to group up with anyone on a one on one to show them the ropes of running Solo Havoc on Camps. 30PPT for each BL that we own all camps at.

Mistress Collisto|Molly Oakenheart|Lena Andersdotter|Heather Jones
Guild Leader of [JADE] www.Immortalizedin.enjin.com