An honest enquiry

[Celtic]

I just started several days ago, and I have to say I'm one of those new players struggling to learn the best tactics... I'm playing an engineer, and out of frustration trying to kill tanks I've decided to try to kill other DPS/healers.

And WE's i speak from experience lol

I haven't really had much direction, but by playing more and trying different tactics I'm learning a few things simply by process of elimination. Hopefully others are doing the same, trying out their different abilities to figure out how to maximize their impact.

this is why i asked the question, it took a while to learn tactics during defenses and keep takes, it took a while to learn which build worked best with my play style, which tactics to slot, who i should make my primary target etc etc.....lack information is the easiest thing to rectify and might help others to feel more confident in RVR and with their chosen class. Theres nothing like passing on information and learning from those who have a better idea.

I can honestly say my original bad playing was not intentional and hopefully others are out there just like me that's still in the learning phase and will get better with time. That being said, I've never tried to kill steal or not participate in a SC. I have been guilty of trying to kill rather than capture BOs though.

We all start without a clue and just see red things and hit them lol but its good to feel like you know your class a bit better, that you're more effective in SCs or warbands etc, for me it adds to the game, so dont sweat not knowing what your doing if you want to know more about your class ask in the class forums there are always people willing to share how they play, their build etc, then its down to you to find your style of play

[Dabbart]

The biggest difference I see, mainly in the tactics area, is the general lack of communication/orders. Frequently, Wbs are having discussions about what to do next, even calling for a vote on the order of BO takes! But generally, they just quietly move from Bo to Bo to empty keep to the next unlocked zone, occasionaly getting ganked.

The defensive and offensive tactics worked because there was direction. Lack of WB features seriously hurts RvR though. You have a Wb where nearly a full group is not actually in the WB, but you can't boot. Reforming works, for all of 10 minutes. I honestly don't think there are many groups that want to spent the energy trying to get good fights up, when the system is making it super difficult. Now, there are those that do it however.

I've had the great fortune to be in 3 awesomely led WBs. Quick, concise directions and orders. Utilizing tactics, attempting to flank, utilizing seperate parties to watch posterns or gaurd BOs, it was great. And once it was shown to be effective, nearly the entire WB was on point following the instructions, and we defended keeps with AAo, and had a blast. But you can't have leadership without a leader. And alot of people get frustrated at being ignored, and being unable to boot, or being outright told to go fornicate with an iron stick. They lose their patience.

The lack of knowledge of what to do in BOs is very similar to LIVE imo. As are people not knowing whom to target first. That is actually how I can ALWAYS tell when I am playing against a premade. If my healer is actually being targeted by more than a random tank, I'm not playing PUGs. But on this point, just cause someone isn't targeting the healer first, doesn't necessarily mean they don't know what they are doing. Fighting against rezz happy PUGs in SCs, you can take out a squishy lowbie Sorc, get the healer to try and rezz, rekill said sorc and then push on the healers. Or just dropping a silence and few debuffs on that RDPS to stop them melting your entire squad for a moment... /rant

Knowledge takes time and effort. I believe the best thing you can do is to keep doing precisely what you are doing. Try to offer advice, politely inform that WB leader that no, insulting me isn't leading. How about we try X or Y? Answering questions in advice, helping out newbies. I send gold or equip to starting players all the time(Actually one of the reasons I can't afford decent tali's). However, I believe and have been shown, that a little kindness can really put someone in an excellent mood, and then the questions and requests for advice start to come from that guy. Or they just want to chat for a minute, and now instead of 300~ faceless people on a new game, they have a buddy and a good impression.

But in the end, I think the community is generally pretty similar. There are wankers in every walk of life. That is what makes the good ones so damned special.

[roadkillrobin]

Yeah there's a big skill drop amongst players compared to when the game was live. Biggest one seem to be that people are in wrong specs at the wrong time.

Healers pug as dps spec, wich is one of the worst thing you can do. Don't go dps on a healer and join pugs groups. Go solo or find a premade. You just end up getting alot less renown and gimpibg groups.
Dps and tanks not in WB spec for WB's. I know a couple of classes don't have the choises but to go ST build for RVR. But ST build kinda sucks when you're facing 50+ enemies so if your in ST spec just que for scenarios or find a roaming group.
Tanks not guarding/assiting. You chose the wrong class. If you're not gonna utilize guard and assist you're playing the class wrong. Again gimping your group much like a dps healer. Even if you're dps spec you can still do this.

[Vayra]

Just one thing I want to touch on from your post, tank walls are far from the best way to defend a keep. None of the top guilds on live (at least on Norn) used tank walls after the advent of bombing. A tank wall gets instantly destroyed by decent opposition no matter what, simply due to the volume of aoe's that can be applied. We had a far more effective way of defending that protected our players and would crush the enemy.

[Celtic]

Just one thing I want to touch on from your post, tank walls are far from the best way to defend a keep. None of the top guilds on live (at least on Norn) used tank walls after the advent of bombing. A tank wall gets instantly destroyed by decent opposition no matter what, simply due to the volume of aoe's that can be applied. We had a far more effective way of defending that protected our players and would crush the enemy.

ive always found it worked and worked well but everyone does things differently and thats what i wanted to do by starting this conversation share information..........so how DID you guys defend and crush the enemy? is it a secret??

[Rebuke]

Just one thing I want to touch on from your post, tank walls are far from the best way to defend a keep. None of the top guilds on live (at least on Norn) used tank walls after the advent of bombing. A tank wall gets instantly destroyed by decent opposition no matter what, simply due to the volume of aoe's that can be applied. We had a far more effective way of defending that protected our players and would crush the enemy.

ive always found it worked and worked well but everyone does things differently and thats what i wanted to do by starting this conversation share information..........so how DID you guys defend and crush the enemy? is it a secret??

Believing a tankwall is an effective way of defending a keep is like believing the maginot line was an effective way to keep the Germans at bay. Might be more viable once magnet/rift/GtdC are fixed.

Edit: Typo.

[Vayra]

Just one thing I want to touch on from your post, tank walls are far from the best way to defend a keep. None of the top guilds on live (at least on Norn) used tank walls after the advent of bombing. A tank wall gets instantly destroyed by decent opposition no matter what, simply due to the volume of aoe's that can be applied. We had a far more effective way of defending that protected our players and would crush the enemy.

ive always found it worked and worked well but everyone does things differently and thats what i wanted to do by starting this conversation share information..........so how DID you guys defend and crush the enemy? is it a secret??

That would be telling

But no it's hardly a secret, both sides on K-Norn were using it to great effect. It's a tactic called funnelling, where you set up the tank wall on the inside of the door/gate on either side of it at an angle, so that the enemy can come into the room and then you bombard them with AoE to kill them pretty much instantly. It's an adaptation of the bombing tactic for defensive purposes that quickly became the dominant form of defense for both pug and organised WBs. It allowed one organised full wb to defend against 100+ pugs with ease, or a smaller number of organised opposition. It led to a couple of server crashes when we had 200+ on either side all spamming aoes in the keep doorway.

e: rift/magnet won't help tank walls, it will just make the funnelling better as it's easier to rift people into the funnel than to rift the defenders out of it.

[Midwifery]

I agree with the OP that there is a knowledge gap between players from the live servers and players that are playing WAR for the first time. I feel like those of us that played back when had the advantage of countless guides, written on nearly every facet of the game, at our disposal on the official forums and on war alliance, as well as the massive forum archives. I know that's where I would often turn to try to learn about something. Sadly, most of that stuff is gone now. Asking for help in-game is and always was a gamble bc for every helpful person to reply, you're likely to have 3-5 other people trolling. This is why the /Advice channel came to be in the first place.

Would it be helpful to add a forum board that just for guides, tips, sc/rvr strategy, new player help, etc? We now has the class-specific boards, perhaps many new players aren't aware of those.

Leeching will always happen, I recall that Mythic had to make it so that if you stood in the wc you didn't get the xp ticks so it was clearly a problem on the live servers as well, or it least it was on the NA servers.

The last thing I want to point out is that, imo, T3 was always the trickiest tier because many people still hadn't perfected their classes - how can you when you don't even have all your abilities yet - and the synergy between our various classes isn't quite there yet. I feel that t4 is where, back on the live servers, a lot of people finally saw how to do sc's and orvr properly, maybe because city sieges made it actually matter.

I fully agree that more communication is needed for players that are learning or have been away from the game long enough that they've forgotten some things, but it will ultimately be up to the player base to get that communication started. I am starting to see people posting guides and that's exactly what we should be doing.