How to Make Your WvW Track Excursion as Painless as Possible
So since everyone’s gonna have to complete a reward track to get BATTLECAT™, I thought that I, as a bona fide PvE-casual-turned-seasoned-WvW’er, would offer up some tips:
Turn off /team in your chat window. DO IT NOW. Literally nothing of value has ever been said in /team. This is the single most important thing you can do to improve your WvW experience. No one but commanders and trolls plays with /team open.
Boosters! To get through that reward track quick-like, pop on a Celebration/Birthday Booster, an EXP Booster (or Heroic Booster works too), and your WvW Reward Track Boost from the guild tavern if your guild has it. You can also invest a few black lion statuettes in some Black Lion Boosters, if you’ve got spares to burn.
If you want to make a longer-term investment, you can get a WvW Reward Track Enrichment infusion for ascended amulets… but it’s only a 5% increase so it’s not really necessary unless you’re going to be coming back a lot for Gifts of Battle, etc.
THOSE ARE THE ONLY BOOSTERS/EFFECTS THAT AFFECT WVW REWARD TRACK GAINS. People will put down guild banners in WvW, but that’s just to make us feel good and does not give you any more WXP or track progress. Save your bonfires for Labyrinth.
What’s the best class to play if you want to join on a tag? Glad you asked! (You didn’t, but bear with me.) Do you want to really participate in the squad? Then your best choice is going to be a damage-dealing class: Scourge, Herald, or Weaver/Tempest. Go to the WvW section of Metabattle and pick out a build from the Zerg Builds section. You don’t have to follow the gear exactly (no one’s going to check), but using the recommended weapons and the traits/skills will help you out.
But why not Firebrand/Chronomancer/Spellbreaker? Because if you’re playing those classes, you will be expected to know what you’re doing. Particularly on Firebrand. Firebrand is the foundation of the WvW zerg’s support phalanx system. If you’re a shitty Firebrand, everyone will secretly hate you.
Your other option is to just straight-up go on a more roaming-oriented class like Daredevil, Holomancer, Mirage, or Soulbeast. YOU MIGHT GET KICKED FROM SOME SQUADS ON THOSE CLASSES. It’s nothing personal–it’s because WvW zerg squads are composed in specific ways so that the classes in them reinforce each other, and roaming classes don’t contribute as much to that reinforcement. You can still follow the tag around, even if you get kicked because you’re a Soulbeast. They can’t stop you.
Roamer class builds, by the way, can be found in the WvW section of Metabattle under the Smallscale Builds section BUT PvP builds tend to also work if that’s something you do.
If you’re going to go at it alone instead of following a tag, you need a roamer build. See above. Even then, unless you’re a decent PvPer, you’ll probably get wrecked by some solo asshole (probably a Soulbeast or Mirage, by the way) looking for easy kills. I hate roaming, can you tell?
If you have extra rank points, make sure you put at least one into War Gliding!
Remember, if you are double-downed and combat is still going on, you physically cannot be revived. Don’t ask for it. Don’t complain about it. Just use the waypoint, unless you’re really far away and it looks like your group is going to win the fight in the next 30 seconds.
If you don’t want to be seen as extremely obnoxious and a really obvious PvE leacher, don’t ask commanders to take specific objectives for your dailies/collections.
Similarly, don’t complain in /say or /map (or, heaven forbid, whisper the commander) if you get kicked from a squad. I said above that it’s almost definitely not personal–but start griping about it, and it absolutely will be.
Don’t place siege if you’re running with a tag. That’s the commander’s job–they’ll put the siege down where it needs to be, and you use your supply to build it. They probably have better siege blueprints than you do, anyway.
If you join on a tag and they have Discord or Teamspeak info in the squad message, it’s strongly encouraged that you join. You don’t HAVE to, but it makes everyone’s experience better. You absolutely don’t have to have a microphone or talk at all, and most people don’t! I didn’t speak for an entire year of regular WvW with my guild! But the commander is likely giving instructions to coordinate the group that it will help you to hear–you’ll stay alive longer and win more fights, and may even have fun.
Some commanders also won’t let people join squad unless they can confirm they’re in Discord/Teamspeak–again, no one can stop you from just following along with the tag outside of squad.
If you join a Discord/Teamspeak and they’re a bunch of shits throwing around slurs and otherwise being terrible, you can absolutely leave. Whether or not that’s likely to happen depends a lot on your server and the guild of the tag you’re following. If you have a bad experience with one guild/commander, try out another! They can vary a lot.
If you have a good experience with a commander, thank them when you leave squad or they tag down! You can also send them a tip of some kind like you would a Mesmer portaling a JP, but it’s by no means necessary.
Finally, WvW can be really intimidating when you’re new to it, but it can also be a lot of fun! I never would have guessed 3-4 years ago that I would fall in love with this game mode. I love being part of a squad that works together and tests ourselves against other squads, it really makes me feel like I’m part of something and contributing to a goal. Try to keep an open mind about it, and you may wind up really enjoying yourself!
Good luck, and GET THAT KITTY!
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