Beginner's Guide To WvW Roaming

Introduction

World vs World is one of the PvP gamemodes of GW2 and perhaps the area of the game where players have the most freedom to create their own gameplay loops, set their own goals. As a result a lot of new players are struggling to understand what to do in WvW. The goal of this guide is to explain one of the most common ways to play WvW: roaming.

WORK IN PROGRESS ROUGH DRAFT STAGE

What's Roaming?

In short, roamers are WvW players who've decided to play solo or band together in smaller groups to hunt down enemy players and take lesser objectives on their own instead of joining up with a commander and engaging in massive siege battles.

Objectives

Here's a couple of things you might do as a roamer:

• Killing supply dolyaks to cut off enemy supply lines.

• Taking out sentries.

• Capturing and defending supply camps.

• Engaging in smallscale PvP be it duels, outnumbered fights, or hunting down respawning enemies who are trying to make their way back to their zerg - just to mention a few.

• Lingering on the edge of larger battles and picking off stragglers and backline players.

• Taking over ruins found in the middle of all 3 home borderlands or shrines on Desert Borderlands.

WvW gives players the freedom to choose which aspect of roaming they want to focus on and to what degree. Some roamers are mostly interested in hanging around duel spots while others are all about flipping camps and going behind enemy lines. As long as you're maintaining participation you can do whatever you want. Keep an eye on WvW daily achievements too as dailies often encourage certain objectives and you're bound to find more PvP action around those.

Participation

This is the main driving force behind a roamer's gameplay loop. Essentially there are 6 tiers of participation, every 5 minutes you earn WvW reward track progression based your participation level. Higher participation equals faster progression. As long as you're earning rewards you're doing it right, it's up to you how to achieve that.

There's a countdown after which your participation starts decreasing if you're not engaging with any of WvW's main objectives. The maximum amount of time you can go without doing anything is 10 minutes, after which you start losing participation.

To check your participation level simply hover over the chest icon at the edge of your minimap.

The following activities reset the duration of the countdown timer to:

• 10 minutes - capturing or successfully defending an objective with a territory marker (camp, tower or keep) OR killing an enemy player.

• 5 minutes - taking a sentry point, taking a shrine on Desert Borderlands, killing a Veteran Camp Supervisor, killing a Veteran creature with an event attached, taking a mercenary camp, successfully escorting a supply dolyak.

• 2 minutes - killing a supply dolyak or a guard NPC, taking a ruin in the middle of a borderland map.

Note: these values aren't additive, they only reset the timer to a set amount. Taking a sentry with 4 minutes left will set it to 5 minutes, not 9.

Essential Masteries

Even in your first few hours in WvW you're probably going to accumulate enough WXP to gain a few WvW ranks - each time you rank up you're awarded 1 WvW ability point. WvW rank is account-bound, but the ability loadouts are per character.

This means that if you rank up 10 times you'll have 10 points to spend on all of your characters and you get to decide which masteries to prioritize on which character.

The most useful masteries for roamers are:

• Warclaw - helps you get around the map faster and reach objectives. The really important thing however comes at rank 166 which unlocks an ability that allows you to dismount other players.

• Gliding - allows you to use a glider inside your realm's territory, making vertical travel much easier.

• Guard Killer - increases your damage against enemy NPCs, making it easier to capture camps (especially fortified ones).

• Defense Against Guards - reduces damage taken from enemy NPCs, once again something that's useful when you're taking objectives.

• Provisions Master - improves your ability to gather loot and grants access to new vendors.

• Siege Bunker - reduces damage taken from siege weapons. While roamers generally don't engage in siege activities, sometimes enemies might use them to defend even the smaller objectives. Not the most important mastery but still useful.

• Supply Capacity - lets you carry more supplies with you. Building siege isn't something you do often but it's better to come prepared, and carrying more supply could make all the difference in a small group.

For more details on how and when to spend ability points check out the roaming section of our WvW Ability Point Guide.

Builds And Gear

Once you're ready to delve into WvW all that's left is to get a build. On this link you'll find a wide variety of viable builds for all professions made specifically for roaming.

Don't worry too much about the gear when you're starting out, Exotics will do just fine if you don't have Ascended gear yet. Consumables are recommended but for most builds aren't mandatory either and some of them can be quite cheap.

Warlord's Armor Boxes are worth holding onto, you get these from the Bronze chest of the WvW Skirmish Reward Track as well as the sPvP League Reward Track.

The gear that comes from these is stat-selectable (one time only) which could save you a lot of time and money if you're going after some of the more expensive stats like Celestial.

Dueling Spots

Another thing you need to know is where to find hubs of 1v1 activity in WvW. Not only because they are useful for honing your skills but also because it's rude to interrupt duels, so please try to respect the fights at these spots.

Hero's Lodge/Champion's Demesne (North)

This is the same spot on two different Alpine Borderlands, just across the bridge from the southernmost supply camp of the map.

It's the most popular one for many reasons. It's close to the spawn of 2 servers yet zergs rarely cross here, there's a sentry to the north and a camp to the south which can be flipped regularly so all sides can maintain participation between duels, and it's a huge open space that can host multiple duels at the same time.

Usually it's divided into 3 parts for 3 concurrent 1v1s, but sometimes a 4th group might also join in on the eastern side if the place is packed.

Hero's Lodge/Champion's Demesne (South)

This is more of an oldschool spot that predates the participation system. There's more room for dueling, it's completely out of the way of zergs, and even the terrain's arguably better, however it's only in the vicinity of the camp but not the sentry, and being this far south means that fewer roamers will naturally stumble upon this spot which means fewer people.

It's good for having prearranged fights though in case you have friends on one of the enemy servers, or if you've faced another dueler up north but want to continue your fight at a more remote area, perhaps planning to fight for a lengthy period of time.

Edge of the Mists Arena

Now we're entering the realm of pure 1v1s with no participation or WvW activity involved.

You can't earn the usual rewards in Edge of the Mists but at least this is a place where you're free to fight others without having to worry about participation.

What's even better is that here you get to fight even those who are not in your current WvW matchup! Making it an ideal place to practice against your friends too.

Downside however is that this arena was made mostly for GvGs, so you'll get booted if some guilds show up to duke it out. Best to avoid during prime time.

Armistice Bastion

This one is not like the others: Armistice Bastion is a VIP Lounge. To get here you must use an Armistice Bastion pass (either permanent or the 2 week one).

It's a special WvW themed lobby densely packed with all sorts of traders, crafting stations, even a Mystic Forge. Participation levels are frozen here, you'll have access to WvW balance and even team chat but you can't earn rewards.

Armistice houses an arena too. Since this zone is regionwide you could meet up with any of your friends here anytime for a fight as long as you all have the pass.