40 replies to this topic

[Blackthorn]

It went very well, overall. The group stayed together for 3+ hours, I think. We unknowingly picked a good night to do it too, with some of the other guilds not raiding. Big thanks to Lucid, Sanji, Oggy, Lucent, and Bay for leading at various points in the night. I recorded everything, I think. I'll see if I can cut it into something worth sharing. No promises.

Taking votes on a theme for next time if there's interest. Some ideas that were thrown out there were: all longbow rangers (we'll call it 'roaming arrow cart'), all PU mesmers, Polymorph moa (now Signet of Humility) zerg, and an all-asura raid, led by one norn commander.

Slein Jinn, on 27 June 2015 - 06:54 PM, said:

Or by liking either one of them instead of The Story of O?

Let's cut to the chase and go right to De Sade.

[Sanji]

I like the asurian and norn thing...wont need to change my build on ranger since melee and am dredge-ful on Mesmer...am not Gravey.

If we do above do we should maybe be all black head to toe to hide better in the norn.

We could call it get the gotl out of tower raid...still fixated on them courageless peps...

Was fun they never split up and in the end almost lost bay and garry same time tho before logging computer off I believe yous capped Bay:)

[Biff Rangoon]

I'd say it was pretty successful if the goal was to bring together a bunch of regulars and new folks to have a good time and make some stuff green. If there's interest in making it more Voltron and less pugmand in the future, then a few tweaks could kick that up a notch. First, let's review:



We had a higher than normal number of people that know what they're doing in fight and siege scenarios, but we were largely roaming next to each other and operating as a pugmand. Seems to me a true Voltron would have us split into highly effective havocs and roamers doing what we normally do on the same map, and then forming up together against a challenge that was too big for one of the parts (like Voltron).

The opportunity is we could completely baffle blobs by being everywhere at once and, when fighting one, confuse them by harassing different parts of the blob simultaneously giving their driver more than one thing to worry about. In a big fight, a well-organized classic approach with a skilled driver will always have the fight advantage, imo, but against a large blob a Voltron can do fine. From a ppt perspective, a Voltron that can split has the advantage by either taking stuff in several places when the big group can only be in one, or forcing the the big group (even an organized one) to split away from their commander to put out the fires, which takes them out of their comfort zones and right into ours.

As an alternative, we could always use the Voltron approach to improve the skill and knowledge of our server base. Having multiple havocs running that have veterans mixed with less experienced people is a dynamite way to show people the ropes. It'd make us better as a server and help more people get through the difficult early part of wvw when you have no idea what your'e doing and get stomped by everybody including skiritt..

Blackthorn, on 28 June 2015 - 07:51 AM, said:

Taking votes on a theme for next time if there's interest. Some ideas that were thrown out there were: all longbow rangers (we'll call it 'roaming arrow cart'), all PU mesmers, Polymorph moa (now Signet of Humility) zerg, and an all-asura raid, led by one norn commander.

All sound hilarious to me. We could also have fun with super cheap tonics: The Nutcracker Suite (toy tonics), The Blob (ooze tonics), etc.

[nessarena]

Thank you for organizing this event.  It was definitely a change and got me out of my boredom state for the game.  For me, doing different class events would be great since I have everything but only play my necro.  But then again anything will help my boredom at this point.  I was bummed that I couldn't stay later (if I stayed any later I would have been really really late for work instead of just late).  Anyways it was fun.

[Silvernis]

Good times. We did pretty well despite being often hilariously outnumbered. Quality > quantity.

I'd like different class events myself. It could be funny, and would also be a good excuse to take my less-played classes into WvW.

[cassy]

It was tons of fun, even if I missed a lot of it.

Blackthorn, on 28 June 2015 - 07:51 AM, said:

Let's cut to the chase and go right to De Sade.

I would think that was standard fare for BDSM.
I thought it might be something like Gitanjali.

[Blackthorn]

Vid is up! Again, many thanks to everyone who came, especially those who came sloshed. We'll do it again sometime.

cassy, on 28 June 2015 - 06:49 PM, said:

It was tons of fun, even if I missed a lot of it.

I would think that was standard fare for BDSM.
I thought it might be something like Gitanjali.

Cassy pls. We're a family guild.

Biff - hold that thought. I'll hopefully reply later if I get some down-time in the office.

[cassy]

I love the music, and of course the random squirreling interlude.

[Blackthorn]

Biff Rangoon, on 28 June 2015 - 09:15 AM, said:

I'd say it was pretty successful if the goal was to bring together a bunch of regulars and new folks to have a good time and make some stuff green.

Yeah, basically. In my head, we were trying to bring together people that don't often play together because they're usually off running around in their own small groups.Getting others to follow along and have fun was just another positive. In reviewing the footage, we accomplished quite a bit, actually. We lost some outnumbered fights (won some too, for the record), and I think that disappointed some people because we've become accustomed to wiping larger groups in the open field when running as a guild. But, that's more us being hard on ourselves than anything; it's not reasonable to expect to wipe 30 with less than 20, generally. Still, given that some of the other guilds did not raid and we accomplished quite a bit in their place (and had a good time doing it), a success for sure.

Biff Rangoon, on 28 June 2015 - 09:15 AM, said:

We had a higher than normal number of people that know what they're doing in fight and siege scenarios, but we were largely roaming next to each other and operating as a pugmand. Seems to me a true Voltron would have us split into highly effective havocs and roamers doing what we normally do on the same map, and then forming up together against a challenge that was too big for one of the parts (like Voltron).

The opportunity is we could completely baffle blobs by being everywhere at once and, when fighting one, confuse them by harassing different parts of the blob simultaneously giving their driver more than one thing to worry about. In a big fight, a well-organized classic approach with a skilled driver will always have the fight advantage, imo, but against a large blob a Voltron can do fine. From a ppt perspective, a Voltron that can split has the advantage by either taking stuff in several places when the big group can only be in one, or forcing the the big group (even an organized one) to split away from their commander to put out the fires, which takes them out of their comfort zones and right into ours.

This is a great idea as it would also probably help alleviate pressure on the larger guilds so they can get more done too. However, I think it'd take a bit of organizing since our peak times are so different: EVIL seems to be NA prime, ROME and ICEE are late NA, and BDSM is late NA/OCX. For example, I think when we started we had a lone ICEE, but two hours later ICEE was the majority and most of EVIL had logged. So, I think we'd have to rally up and split in to three or so mixed groups (which, personally, I like the idea of; can see others not digging it). As you said, we could coordinate our efforts while split up for maximum efficiency and Voltron if it became necessary. I'm game to try this some time. However, Mr. Bay demands that perma-invis zerg (PU mesmer) happens, and I've got a bunch of annoying children in the back seat screaming, "roaming arrow cart!" Maybe we can try the proper Voltron strategy if we roll T4 one of these days, and save the lulz for T5?

[Sanji]

Tatiena that Lion DB ranger dodged your pvp but she came at me twice neat NE just south of north camp and lost both times even with the guards at the bridge so your revenge is done.

Tho I have my own pewpew ranger from DB...dire guild that lost a 1vs1 and started after killing me with not only the guards near north bridge but 2 other db...db has lost any respect I have and hope they go met SoR...twin salts.

[Slein Jinn]

Blackthorn, on 29 June 2015 - 09:08 PM, said:

it's not reasonable to expect to wipe 30 with less than 20, generally.

There's almost nothing you can't fight with around fifteen people.  Those fifteen have to be extremely tight and organised and have a really good comp, but fifteen is enough to fill every role and bring enough of all the key tools to be able to sustain at a very high level.  If you have fewer than twelve to thirteen, it's an entirely different proposition, as you simply can't possibly meet all the requirements of a good comp, but past that point, there's pretty heavy diminishing returns on adding more bodies.  Obviously when skill, organisation, comp, etc. are all roughly even, numbers will tip the balance, but among those factors, when you're looking at 15+ v 15+, I would rank numbers as one of the less important factors on the list.  

Back when I was active in zergbusting, winning 15 v 50 was nothing out of the ordinary.  I don't suppose you'd remember the old Ehmry Bay powerhouse Good Fights [GF], but they never ran much more than 15 as a matter of policy, and they were basically unstoppable.  They also had Killian--one of the best drivers any NA guild has ever seen--and a very selective membership policy with very strict internal rules about comp, but all that added up to a pretty unstoppable fifteen-man killing machine.  When [Seek] was at its peak before we started losing members to other games--which unfortunately lasted all too short a time--we had pretty similar results.  I remember one reset in particular were we held the AR map blob in EBG for well over an hour in the area around Pangloss-Veloka (their corner) with fourteen [Seek]; according to my Realm Avenger achievement, we got something like 400 kills in that one fight alone.  

Someone sent me a PM a while back asking about 10-man comps, and my reply covered a lot of this stuff as well as I could do now, so rather than reinventing the wheel:

Slein Jinn, on 26 January 2015 - 12:53 PM, said:

It's hard to give a straightforward and precise answer for groups around 10.  For groups smaller than 8, I'd always run a havoc comp, because you don't have enough people to adequately fill all the roles in a zergbusting comp.  For groups larger than 12, I'd always comp for zergbusting, because you can basically fight groups of any size at that point.  But groups of 8-12 fall in a sort of no man's land in between, and it really depends on what you're facing.  When we comp for zergbusting, we can consistently fight pug zergs of 20-25 with just 8-10 [Seek], but guilds like [Mean] can be a really tough fight with even numbers in that configuration, because they'll comp specifically to hunt us; to fight other small coordinated groups, we have to get into havoc builds to compete.  

Against groups that are small but highly organised, you'll do better in havoc builds, because if you comp for zergbusting with a group that small, a good havoc group will be able to focus down individual members of your group before you can apply enough counter-pressure.  But against groups that are large but poorly organised, you'll fare much better in zergbusting builds, because you won't have enough sustain to grind them down with havoc builds.  So what's the difference?  Well, havoc builds are generally a bit more self-contained, and havoc comps generally have a bit more focus on damage--especially single-target damage--whereas zergbusting builds fit into much more narrowly-defined roles, and zergbusting comps bring a lot more synergy.  It's also noteworthy that, for a variety of reasons, condition builds can work well in havoc comps, but they're almost completely incompatible with zergbusting comps.  

As far as what those comps actually look like, zergbusting comps generally involve something along the lines of two Guardians, a Warrior, a Staff Ele, and some kind of DPS in each party.  Havoc comps, on the other hand, might have one bunker and one or two bruisers, or even no bunkers and just two to three bruisers, plus two DPS in each party; you need plenty of damage, but you want to keep it well under 50% glass.  Of course, the builds themselves that comprise those comps are quite different, too.  If you want to go deeper into the details, it'd probably be better to have a chat on TS, because there's a lot involved in some of this stuff.

The moral of the story is that it definitely is reasonable to expect to wipe groups of thirty with fewer than twenty, but when you're working with people who primarily havoc and roam, you're going to have to convince them to shift their mentality and change their builds in order to do it.

[Blackthorn]

Slein Jinn, on 30 June 2015 - 07:24 AM, said:

Obviously when skill, organisation, comp, etc. are all roughly even, numbers will tip the balance ..

This is more what I was getting at. All things being roughly equal, there's no reason to expect to win a fight when the enemy has a significant numbers advantage. Even less so in our situation since we were, as Biff pointed out, essentially a pugmand engaging guild groups (sometimes two at once) open-field.

Also, I stuck the "generally"  at the end of my sentence because I basically agree with you, except I would phrase the moral of the story as, "it can be reasonable .." as opposed to, "it is reasonable ..." There are so many variables that go into winning a fight that sometimes it is reasonable expect to wipe superior numbers. I've seen all our havoc/roaming guilds do it regularly, Woe does it, CoT does it - sometimes drastically outnumbered. I'll harken again to my misadventures with Fraani and Rev (just cuz they both read the forums), taking out  7-8 SoR , sometimes under additional pressure from siege. We were able to do it because we were better coordinated and their comp consisted of three mediocre bruisers and the rest were very glass back-line, sitting ducks for our two gank. Just kited the melee while we bursted down the casters quickly and then focused the heavies down one at a time. Ez pz, did it a few times.

So, yes, it can be done, and it can be done with regularity. It wasn't really the aim of this particular outing (we wanted everyone to play whatever they felt like), although as I said, we did end up doing it a few times.

Edit: Oh, and thank you for reposting that, interesting perspective. Be curious to know if you think condition builds still generally have no place in zerg-busting comps in light of this most recent patch, or does the cleansing provided by support builds (assuming a zerg has some) still outweigh the removal of the condi cap?

[Slein Jinn]

Blackthorn, on 30 June 2015 - 07:47 PM, said:

This is more what I was getting at. All things being roughly equal, there's no reason to expect to win a fight when the enemy has a significant numbers advantage.

Well, all things are seldom roughly equal, though.  Even fighting guild groups, it's very possible to outskill or outcomp them.  For one, the overwhelming majority of people who WvW frankly just suck at GW2 combat.  But beyond that, the overwhelming majority of WvW guilds don't really do much to regulate their builds or manage their comps, so even when they're individually skilled, you can beat them through superior organisation.  A skilled group of something along the lines of a properly built 6 frontline Guardians, 3 frontline Warriors, 3 sturdy staff Elementalists, and three DPS (maybe two Necros and a Mesmer; but not full glass DPS that can't push through a choke with everyone else) will be advantaged against a skilled group of 30 people just running whatever classes and builds they want.  

You chopped the second half of the sentence you quoted, but it was the second half that was really the point.  

Blackthorn, on 30 June 2015 - 07:47 PM, said:

Edit: Oh, and thank you for reposting that, interesting perspective. Be curious to know if you think condition builds still generally have no place in zerg-busting comps in light of this most recent patch, or does the cleansing provided by support builds (assuming a zerg has some) still outweigh the removal of the condi cap?

Condi cap is pretty much irrelevant in a large-scale context.  The problem with conditions is more that condi cleansing stacks better than condi application.  To oversimplify a bit for illustration, five people can cleanse the condis applied by five enemies roughly five times more effectively than one person can cleanse the condis applied by one enemy.  The only way to make conditions strong in large-scale combat would be to make each player generate his own individual stack of conditions, but if that happened, we'd swing the other way and condition builds would become the only builds pretty much.  I don't really see a middle-ground.  

Note: I'm referring specifically to damaging conditions here.  Control conditions are very useful in large-scale WvW.

[Sanji]

Blacktorn lets include our new havok friends in the next one mate...zerg otbs etc.
+ zerg seems to have an asurian fetish also so its all cool!

[Blackthorn]

No one is not welcome.

Any interest in doing the next one on the weekend of the golem event? I see lots of possibilities for chaos, whether we run in small, coordinated groups or perhaps one large (all mesmer?) group. Thoughts/suggestions welcome from everyone.

[Ehmry Bay Bay]

I am definitely in for the golem weekend! Voltron with golems just makes sense. Might bring my necro instead of mesmer to do battle with the golems though.

[Aduah]

I was actually considering trying my All Engi raid again. I was thinking of Trying it on both a Saturday night (so I can run it longer in the night and have longer participation) and a Wednesday night (so it doesn't poke into weekend guild raids). Not necessarily this week or next, but just some time in the coming weeks.

[Blackthorn]

You know you've got plenty of supporters here. Let us know and we'll promote the shiz out of it.

[cassy]

Slein Jinn, on 01 July 2015 - 04:48 AM, said:

Condi cap is pretty much irrelevant in a large-scale context.  The problem with conditions is more that condi cleansing stacks better than condi application.  To oversimplify a bit for illustration, five people can cleanse the condis applied by five enemies roughly five times more effectively than one person can cleanse the condis applied by one enemy.  The only way to make conditions strong in large-scale combat would be to make each player generate his own individual stack of conditions, but if that happened, we'd swing the other way and condition builds would become the only builds pretty much.  I don't really see a middle-ground.  

This explains a few things actually.

Blackthorn, on 30 June 2015 - 07:47 PM, said:

This is more what I was getting at. All things being roughly equal, there's no reason to expect to win a fight when the enemy has a significant numbers advantage. Even less so in our situation since we were, as Biff pointed out, essentially a pugmand engaging guild groups (sometimes two at once) open-field.

  It has been my general experience on Ebay, that we usually do win when we are outnumbered.  I only pugmand, and sometimes everyone squirrels off and we do get killed, but usually if everyone stands and fight we can kill a larger group.
There are some folks here that can be outnumbered and win every time.  If they are tagged up, or following the tag it is actually pretty reasonable to expect that they will continue to kick butt as they have done in the past

[Silvernis]

Aduah, on 07 July 2015 - 09:13 PM, said:

I was actually considering trying my All Engi raid again. I was thinking of Trying it on both a Saturday night (so I can run it longer in the night and have longer participation) and a Wednesday night (so it doesn't poke into weekend guild raids). Not necessarily this week or next, but just some time in the coming weeks.

If I'm around/awake, I'd be game. AND YEA, VERILY, OUR SUPPLY CRATES AND MORTAR SHELLS SHALL RAINETH UPON THE ENEMY.

cassy, on 08 July 2015 - 07:47 AM, said:

It has been my general experience on Ebay, that we usually do win when we are outnumbered.  I only pugmand, and sometimes everyone squirrels off and we do get killed, but usually if everyone stands and fight we can kill a larger group.

This is one of the things that makes me proud of Ebay, especially now that we're moving up to the blob tiers. We can hold our own against bigger groups, and even if we lose, we at least make the enemy work for it.