3 Rules of WvW Roaming - GW2 Outnumbered Commentary

So you saw that juicy guild wars 2 roaming  montage and were motivated to create your own   but you realized that the only part of it you were  good at was the RP walk well have no fear because   this video will teach you how to become a montage  god with my three rules to outnumbered roaming   and then I'll commentate over some raw footage to  show the difference between a montage and reality   because we know most montages are cherry picked  fights that don't show the whole situation   and of course a montage is about excitement  so it's not really wrong to do that but then   it's also misleading and people don't know how to  handle counter pressure or how to land damage on   people with functional movement keys or know how  much to invest to get a kill because they watch a   montage and don't really see what amount of work  is put into getting those kills. The reality is   that there are so many more skills and thought  processes required to truly winning outnumbered   fights against decent players. Now the results may  vary depending on many factors such as if you're   playing a broken roaming class or build. Add how  skillful you are and experienced you are at that   build and multiply that by how many players you  roll with. Divide that by how outnumbered you are   and subtract that by whether or not you're  fighting montage fodder or actual gamers. So the first rule is always assess the  situation. Count how many you're against   the more outnumbered you are the more you  want to assess the situation figure out their   builds you can generally guess what builds  people are playing by their weapon skills   and no I don't mean a weapon gives off a certain  playstyle because a staff alley is probably dps   but a staff firebrand is probably a support you  also want to look around for any terrain if you're   out in the open it's much easier for enemies  to focus you. Kiting and terrain can split up   the enemy because they may have varying amounts of  mobility or knowledge of the terrain you're using.   Handling an outnumbered situation is very  much about splitting up a group and focusing   isolated players. The second rule is you want  to establish a win or kill condition. Usually   getting the first kill is your win condition  because if you can kill one person in a 1v4   then you can probably kill a person in a 1v3 and  it just gets easier over time so you want to find   your first target essentially this relies heavily  on the information you gathered in your assessment   but can also change as you experience the  situation you may see that the enemy has   a support but whether you focus the support or  not depends on if there are any easier targets.   If they are supporting someone with a lot of  self-sustain or mobility or evades already   then it's going to be even more difficult to  focus that person when they're being supported   and then you're going to need to create a more  efficient strategy for killing your target because   you're going to need to get around their defensive  cooldowns and burst them while also taking   tons of added pressure. As a general rule of thumb  you want to go for squishy but high damage targets   first because they do most of the pressure  and you can survive being outnumbered if they   aren't free casting on you. If you find that their  supports end up being squishier than you thought   then you can swap targets. This is the true beauty  of roaming: every situation is like a puzzle and   finding your own win condition becomes more  clear as you piece the new situation together.   The third rule is that while you are going  for that kill you want to swap between two   very distinct play styles: aggressive pressure  and passive kiting. Most roaming builds will   want to have some kind of burst potential and  mobility so you can play very opportunistically.   My main goal is to stay alive but if i play  too passively I'll never get the kill so I   need to take educated risks. You want to expect  the unexpected and save cooldowns for a worst   case scenario. If you stay in too long when  you have no cooldowns you may instantly die   so always have an escape plan and keep kiting and  waiting for cooldowns until you see an opening.   Another reason you want to play very passively  and then very aggressively is because you need to   follow through with down states. If you're about  to down someone but won't have enough damage to   cleave the rezzers off of the body or keep them  down you'll be in a worse situation. Generally you   want to preserve some of your cooldowns so that  you can follow through with that win condition.   If you blew your elixir S as an engineer  or your shadow step as a thief because you   went into recklessly then you won't have that  to secure the stomp when you get a down body.   If you have to use the last of these  cooldowns to get them on the ground   then you won't have them to secure the kill then  you'll often see inexperienced players commit to   a cleave they don't have the steam to follow  through with and die rather than disengaging   while they res and reassessing the situation. This  is also why you should play very greedily and save   cooldowns when you feel like you're going to need  them rather than just spamming them off cooldown.   Of course it will be hard to survive  outnumbered while holding cooldowns if   the enemy is playing better than you. This is why  you'll need to be mechanically and positionally   sound so that you can avoid damage  and get in damage as much as possible. So here is a situation I just got finished  killing the camp and I'm low on cooldowns so   I immediately have to play very safe. I see that  there's one thief um and then there's another one   or two coming at me so I immediately go to terrain  where thieves can't really steal on me very easily   or if they can they can't really combo it with  anything so I'm pretty safe there and then   I'm just trying to kite the thief until I can see  an opening. They use shadow portal but they're   still very low so I play aggressively now and  I see that there's another thief here I'm just   using dagger storm to gain information here  because it's basically like a three second   window where you don't really need to interact  with the enemy I play very aggressively again   but if I try to go for the kill there I'm gonna  die so I shadow step out and I'm playing very   safe until my heal skill comes off cool down and  then I can play very aggressively again because   if I play aggressively with two hp well then I'm  gonna die and the thief jumps on me and at this   point I can play very aggressively on that and as  you can see I'm also playing around the down state   by keeping it down while also not letting  it interact with me too much by staying   out of range of it until  the other guy tries to rez   now a third player comes in this is another  thief and I get the stomp on the first thief   because I'm just kind of waiting for time just  waiting to see what that third thief is gonna do   so that's the best thing I can do I got stolen  on and I immediately shadow step out because   I'm gonna get bursted there and now I'm just  kiting I have my shadow return if they jump on me   and I immediately use that as soon as they get  close to me and there's like a third player here   so this is like kind of like four players I've  experienced at this point though one of their   thieves has really low sustain so I do end up  getting the down on that just waiting for that   opportunity to present itself and now I've seen  that the thief has used their downstate ability   but they do have the stealth so that is  unfortunate. I play greedy for the cleave   here because I have enough cooldowns to do so  and the shrine that I just captured is actually   now helping me out and the yeah the golem is  like doing damage for me so I can actually play   pretty safe here and at this point I'm pretty  far in the lead this is going to be a win for me   okay so they all stealth there that's a very bad  situation for me because I don't want to let some   someone who has you know numbers advantage open  on me because that's just going to be a losing   situation every single time so  yeah I shadow stepped out of there   now I'm trying to duel the thief while they fight  basically the npcs over there. I'm basically   splitting them but you know there's a lot of  people starting to stream into this shrine now   I see their scrapper is low so I go on  that and I do have stealth to get the stomp   but there's way too much cleave there so I  kite and just resustain with my heal skill.   They're getting destroyed by the npcs now so this  is looking really good. So one thing I did there   is I played very aggressively even though I was  under pressure because I knew that I would rally   if I had gone down but I ended up not going  down because the npcs are peeling for me so hard   and as you can see I'm still playing very safe  even though this is a winning play because   you don't want to throw you don't want to take  any unnecessary risks so and especially in a   situation where you're outnumbered and you get  a kill you always want to play very aggressively   until you get that kill and then as soon as you  get the kill you need to go back reassess the   situation and wait for cooldowns because you can't  really steamroll that easily in an outnumbered   situation where you can just chain kills like  that I mean unless the enemy is that free So here I am checking out the comp it looks  like it's a chrono a renegade a thief and then   two reapers so immediately I recognize  that there is no support which means that   I can get a kill on whoever I want really, so the  issue with supports is that they basically make   every single person that much tankier so I have  a big advantage here because I don't have to deal   with the support and I can just isolate targets  and the damage that I deal will generally stick   unless they run builds with high sustain and I see  as soon as the majority of their party recognizes   me and starts to focus me I immediately shadow  step out and play more passively because I want   to kind of like poke at them and see if I can  get some damage to stick with my cluster bombs.   Now their chrono comes at me and this is a  prime target to focus when it's isolated because   they don't really have that much sustain so my  damage is going to stick and the chrono is now   going to be very easy pickings because they're  actually so scared of me that they run away from   their zerg or their group but I don't really have  enough cooldowns to finish the kill there because   there's still a lot of players and a full camp so  instead of dying there while greeding for the kill   I back up I reassess the situation and I see that  their renegade is actually pretty easy to kill too   because they're just eating cluster  bombs so I aggressively shadow step in   and I still have a secured stomp with my stealth  cooldowns and blinds and that allows me to get a   really easy kill there and now I'm chasing their  thief. I can go for the mesmer or thief at this   point because the rest of them have basically left  they lost interest in chasing a thief around which   in a lot of cases is the best play is just to  ignore the thief because I'm a shadow arts thief   and I get headshot here in my stealth combo so I  have to play very safely I go around terrain here   and this is a very safe spot so I do go for  aggressive shadow step heart seeker there   to pressure the thief and I do spam heartseeker  to get the kill there but I don't know if I can   get the stomp because it's a thief downstate  you got to be careful around that but they get   illusion of life by the mesmer so to me that  signals that I can get the kill on that thief   if I just down them within the time that the  illusion of life lasts so yeah I finished the   kill there and at this point the mesmer is all  alone they're running some illusion of life   kind of like boon build so they can't really  1v1 me so at this point it's over for them. Okay so this final clip is going to be a long  one so get out your popcorn if you didn't have it   already. Basically the purpose of this is to show  that not only can you really have a lot of sustain   but in order to get results in a lot of situations  sometimes you do need to have sustain and patience   and to be able to have those long-winded sequences  where maybe you don't even get anything out of   it but that's kind of like the fun of roaming  is as I said before finding that puzzle piece   and whether you solve it or not is maybe not  relevant but the process of figuring out what   works and what doesn't and just learning is  kind of like the the fun of the experience, so   a lot of people you'll see they have like  these one pump chump montages where they   just play like a one-shot build and they just  cherry pick you know they're the one shots and   it doesn't really show any skill from the enemy  players. It's probably pretty interesting to watch   but it's not realistic to the actual situation  of world vs world. You're gonna have really   unclean kills a lot of time you're gonna have  these situations where well maybe you die but also   you're gonna have these situations where nothing  happens and yeah that's kind of what world versus   world is like a lot of nothing happens and maybe  there's some highlights in between those moments   but you don't get to those highlights by doing  nothing. Maybe nothing interesting happens but   you got to be doing something to create those  situations so here I am in this camp I'm just   trying to basically get the attention of the  enemy I'm just harassing this guardian it's   like a burn guardian they can actually kill me  very easily so I'm playing pretty safe because   those burns stack up very quickly. It's a core  guardian so yeah there's very little animation on   it too. I do get the down and I steal to get the  extra blind application because I'm running the   cloaked in shadow trait but now I'm kiting  off. I've got the kill and I see that my   ally so that's another thing is roamers have to  not only interact with enemies that they can't   predict but also allies that they can't predict  and you know if you want to win in situations   you're going to have to be able to work with your  allies even if you didn't really choose to, so   I rally my teammate there by cleaving out the  guards and now there's a I think this is a burn DH   on us and you know a lot of players  are starting to stream into this so   this is getting a lot more complicated of a  situation but I found the target as the DH   so I'm just sticking to that and  kiting and maintaining my health.   I get a little bit of a pressure here because I  have the sentry mark on me I'm not sure if it's   actually because they used a trick on me but yeah  I'm basically revealed because I have the sentry   mark on me and I have pretty much no cooldowns at  this point so I am playing super safe. I have a   lot of initiative but my heal skill is also coming  up very soon so I just get my heal skill off   and then I go back in now I've got time to do  what I want to do. I don't go into that damage   though because you know that's very dangerous  that's that sword spinny sword thing also   a ranger comes in now rangers are  probably the biggest menaces to thieves   because no matter how much mobility you have a  longbow doesn't really care about that because   they can just full burst you from maximum range  so terrain is very important and because of that   I decide to swap to the ranger as my target  because they are the new biggest threat   and if I stand close to the ranger it means that  they're usually going to want to try to reposition   and that means they're not free casting on me.  A ranger that's free casting in world vs world   is probably the most scary thing because a lot  of them can run like really aggressive builds.   I do go for the stomp there very greedily and it  doesn't work out so I have to play safe here and   now there's like a condi dead eye on me and this  is very dangerous so I steal to get stealth at the   end of my dagger storm animation there it's really  important that you stow dagger storm because   there's a three second evade but a four second  animation so after the evade is over you want to   stow and then I use my steal for the stealth. Now  I'm just kind of like looking for a opportunity   here because you know I just had a lot of heat  on me and I probably don't want to um you know I   want to lose some heat but I do realize that they  built a ballista in the camp so I'm using terrain   here a little bit and just you know trying to bait  some people to come and attack me. I don't want to   go into the camp right because then I've got so  many guards and that's just so much more pressure   and you have to remember that they have the  advantage so if I'm 1v7 I have no compulsion to go   and fight on their terms. If anything they should  be fighting on my terms because they're the ones   thirsting for the kill in like a 1v5 here so  really I need to just play basically as safe   as possible using terrain to my advantage not  allowing them to use things to their advantage,   so obviously I'm not letting the ballista line of  sight me. I'm staying on the other side and if I   can't get a kill because of that well then that's  that's fine because I'd rather that happen than me   dying so it's in a lot of cases when you do play  around staying to your advantages it means that   the fight gets drawn out but obviously I'm forced  to do that because I am so heavily outnumbered.   I'm trying to get on that terrain there it's  a little bit of a difficult thing to realize   at first but you gotta jump on the smaller of  those like mushroom kind of like shrubs there   and yeah I'm just I'm just  looking for an opportunity because   there's so many different things  that I have to assess here   and yeah I'm kind of failing to do this jumping  puzzle here so it's like a worst case scenario   like all these people jumping on me and I  can't even jump on the little flower there   so I get on top finally and I really don't see a  good kill until the dead eye reveals themselves   and I get a nice little down on the dead eye  and I go for the stomp by interrupting the   guardian and at that point I could have gone for  a shadow step stomp but the dead eye just kind   of stood there so I had the outs to get my win  condition of the kill but also yeah they kind   of just stood there so getting the dead eye  kill there is not really doing me too good   because they weren't really pressuring me but it  presented itself to me so I took the opportunity.   Now I do see that the ballista mesmer  is maybe a good target so I jump on them   but they end up being some sort of like tanky  staff thing so I'm reassessing the situation   again and just looking around um yes the mesmer  is still on the ballista maybe oh there's so   the dead eye just marked me there that's a  that's my cue to basically get out because   dead eyes they can cc you with a skill called  binding shadow and it's like a three second   knockdown and if they do it from stealth it  has no animation so it's kind of scary and   I'm still looking around. I see I'm getting shot  from the back by a ranger so I dagger storm until   I can get behind terrain and I get a nice backstab  on the ranger and I want to finish them off so   I get a really nice heart seeker and a shadow step  stomp before they can even realize that he's gone   down so that's another thing you want to kind of  prepare for like your win condition and do it as   fast as possible before the enemy can react to it  so since I immediately shadow step stomp I took   no delay there they couldn't res it even though  they did make the right play they just did it   slow and I've got a lot of people chasing  me now there's even a berserker on me   and berserkers are kind of like key targets  for you to focus because they usually have   very low sustain so I've kind of got a new win  condition here. I see a berserker that's pretty   juicy target um the dragon hunter  is kind of a good target too but   I had some troubles killing that earlier so  I definitely want to stay on this berserker   and they've got endure pain up so I'm just kind  of life stealing waiting for that to go off. I   get stolen by the dead eye so that really neuters  a lot of my damage potential there and they're in   the camp now so I want to kind of reset and put  it in my territory not in their territory because   it's outnumbered already.  As I said I don't need to   die basically if they want to play on their terms  then nothing happens it's really in their hands   to create the content here. I'm  giving them the content trust me   um so the dead eye is kind of like shooting me  from below I still kind of want to stay on that   berserker but I'm low on cooldown so I'm still  playing very safe with my cooldowns. This warrior   jumps up here as well so I mean they've isolated  themselves so that's kind of like a good target so   I'm gonna attack them a little bit but  at the same time it is a spell breaker   and those are probably one of the worst targets  and that's because of the eight second cooldown   of full counter which is very strong so yeah the  berserker finally comes up here and this is my   kill window right here so I play very  aggressively on this berserker because that's   this is the situation I want so I even go into the  enemy camp but I get stolen onto by the dead eye   again and that interrupts my final heart seeker  that would have got the down and I would have been   able to shadow step stomp potentially so that's  unfortunate but I'm still going in for the kill.   I get some nice damage you know a  backstab into a shadow shot there   and my shadow return is right on top of the  berserker so I go for that down there but I have   not enough cooldowns to get the kill so I have to  once again disengage reassess the situation and at   this point the enemy is actually getting baited  pretty hard because they see that I'm low health   so in a lot of ways you kind of want to  play as aggressively as possible because   the more pressured you appear the more thirsty  the enemies get and if they've been chasing me   for this long you know they're really thirsty so  you have to kind of play mind games in a way too   so I am playing very safe because the dragon  hunter is using longbow which can do like a   7k crit so that is very scary I steal to them and  I'm just going back and forth between these trees   and terrain and it looks like they're actually  did they swap builds because the the warriors   running like a war horn or something like that now  but yeah they're they're still pretty killable.   I'm wasting a lot of time now because I've  basically changed the entire roster of the enemy   right now I'm not even fighting the same people  I was fighting at the beginning of this fight   so you do have to be constantly reassessing  the situation as I said and the dead eye just   stole onto me again they landed the binding shadow  which is very dangerous so I basically lose all my   cooldowns because of the dead eye even though the  dead eye didn't do any damage to me they basically   made me lose all my cooldowns because I would  have died if I didn't use them all so once again   I'm resetting because I mean if I go in I'm just  gonna die so you do have to have this very in and   out-ish play style and I mean it's not pretty it's  definitely not pretty to watch this but this is   what a live stream looks like this is what reality  looks like when you actually play the game and   if I do end up montaging these players um it's  probably going to start from this point on   or you know I won't include any of the previous  stuff right but all the stuff prior to this   was necessary to getting to this situation  right and I do realize I'm getting shot from   the tower above by the rangers so I'm just getting  out of range of that you know just luring them   to a favorable position. Now I see that this  warrior is kind of like low health it's like   half health he's even running the shout or is  that the meditation that reveals so at this point   they're so thirsty they've even changed their  builds to adapt to me and I'm just running around   and trying to create a situation where they're  isolated right because if they're that thirsty to   change their build to counter me they're probably  gonna chase me so and then there's varying degrees   of thirstiness right like some people they're  out in the desert right they're thirsty they   think that there's water and I am that water and  then there's some people who really don't care so   creating a situation where they're chasing a thief  after a while doesn't really appeal to them so   here I am finally engaging again on the dragon  hunter. I see the dead eye is nearby and the   warrior who changed his build is now chasing again  and I see that there is another player there but   they look wholly uninterested so now I'm in a  1v1 situation so it took me what like 10 minutes   for one of these players to finally get fed up and  come to my territory and fight me in a fair fight   but sometimes that's what it takes  because people don't like to lose   and maybe they get a little bit overconfident and  that's probably what happened with this warrior so   he ends up dying and it takes me like  I think I killed the dead eye once but   it takes me basically 10 minutes to get two  kills there but that's pretty much how it works   but don't think I'm gonna leave you guys hanging  like that. I have all this montage footage   I'm gonna show you guys what it would  look like if I actually made one out of it If you like this video give it  a like and subscribe for more   and leave a comment down below  if you would like to see more   of thief or maybe other classes of roaming  commentaries and check out the links in the   description. Thief isn't the only build you  can roam on. There are a lot of other builds   that I've created videos for so check out that  playlist and you can also check out the live   version of this video on my twitch which is also  linked below and I will see you guys next time

Channel: Vallun

Views: 41,354

Keywords: guild wars 2, gw2, wvw, world, world vs world, rules, three, 3 rules of roaming, outnumbered, commentary, gameplay, thief, daredevil, vallun, montage, fights, roaming, guide, combat, 2021, path of fire, end of dragons, arenanet, mmo, rpg, action

Id: WygAizx6OPY

Length: 35min 32sec (2132 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 04 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/whiteaden]

I might be in this video :o

Uh oh,

[u/Moogri]

Dunno why I clicked on this cos I usually hate montage videos, but I was hooked all the way to the end. It's definitely because of the commentary part.

To me, montage videos are just a person's entries to the dick measuring contest. My disdain for them is mainly because it can be difficult to tell if the person actually has skill or they're just showing you the parts where they're picking on newbies and inexperienced players.

Your commentary is giving back to the community and shows that you actually know what you're talking about and know what you're doing. Respect!

[u/death8689]

ngl I was too busy paying attention to the rev getting shot in the air than the commentary lol

[u/Kylargrim]

Step 1. Be Good enough to successfully 1v1 to begin with.

[u/Duke-W]

Long video, but good commentary.

[u/fabiorosa]

i don't know what anet had in mind with this class. Practically impossible to kill

[u/tzucon]

Which daggers are in the thumbnail please? It's a very nice character.

[u/FaithlessnessFluid30]

Vaans 2.0

[u/deniszerro]

Calling out crev is the best part of video :).