Your friendly neighborhood Smitty here…
I have been observing many WvW fights of late and have noticed our increasing/improving in use of combo fields and organizing parties to benefit our numbers in battle. I have had a LOT of help understanding how they work from Terafer and have been reading up on the subject. Many sites have forum topics outlining this, but nothing comprehensive or sticky. So, I offer you these charts. They are not all inclusive, and I hope that by following this pattern, we can create a sticky in the forum that would allow us to improve this collection. Please feel free to comment and tell me to stuff it if it isn’t a help.
First, the three most common combinations I have seen and can think of that would benefit us in battle immediately and what we COULD say to call it succinctly in the heat of battle and have people know what we want consistently:
Type |
First |
Second |
Call Sign |
Might AOE |
Fire Field |
Blast Finish |
"Might Combo --- Finish It" |
Heal AOE |
Water Field |
Blast Finish |
"Heal Combo --- Finish It" |
Swift AOE |
Static Field |
Blast Finish |
"Swift Combo --- Finish It" |
Next, I have put together a little chart outlining what classes can make those fields as well as what their action is called, and the weapon number to activate it:
Class |
Might AOE Order |
Heal AOE Order |
Swift AOE Order |
Elementalist (Staff) |
Lava Font (2) |
Geyser (3) |
Static Field (5) |
Ranger (Torch) |
Bonfire (5) |
Healing Spring (6) |
N/A |
Guardian (Hammer) |
Mighty Blow (2) |
Mighty Blow (2) |
Mighty Blow (2) |
Talking with Terafer, he said putting together parties that have consistent composition will help ensure that there are enough of each class to ensure that these combos get pulled off, but also that we can be sure of how many parties we have to pull these off. The recommendation was to start off separating your guardians as party leaders in squad, then dividing Elementalists evenly. That ensures that each party has the ability to pull off the combo, Adding rangers to the party after ensures that you can at least pull off two of the combos. Also, let your party members know what weapons you want on them. If you have Guardians and Elementalists running alt weapons, it’s a moot point. We shouldn’t be afraid to ensure our troops are properly outfitted for battle. (Tick, you can’t fight evil with a macaroni duck!)
Conversely, I have been reading up on how other guilds are exploiting this concept to its fullest and can recognize when zergs stack on the blue taco and try to light off the fields. They will see the cluster, count to 6, zoom in while skills are on cool down and catch the zerg off-guard. If a zerg seems to take a while to pull off the combo, then the commander should ensure that the zerg is well hidden before execution.
This is just a start for this, and I hope it helps other commanders out. It has certainly helped ME get it in order in my head!