A Critical Look at Guild Warring from a Noob

Who'd have thought that some unknown grookcoin enthusiast would bring back guild discussions?

My name is Leonhart_Arkada, and I am an inexperienced captain in Titans Valor. I preface this post by conceding that I've played Wynncraft inconsistently for over 2 years, yet I have no experience with economy managing. While I offer an analysis of guild warring, I also invite people to post their thoughts about the state of guild warring...if anyone still remembers this forums section.

Formalities aside, let's start with the actual act of guild warring, the tower fighting mechanic. This is without economy managing, planning how to cut connections, toxic shouting, etc. Before 1.20, people criticized warring for being mindless, no-strategy, spam killing. Did 1.20 fix this issue by adding tactics or skill-rewarding mechanics?

At first, yes in regards to buildcrafting. Yet it didn't take long for optimization to reduce guild warring to a simplistic, restrictive state. Archers and Shamans are as incapable of warring as I am incapable of being funny. So, of the three classes you can war with, what are the options?
1. Mage. All prospective mage warrers are assigned a King of Hearts and nothing else. It's the law.
2. Warrior. Pray like a Bovemist for LE (or grookcoin if you're cultured) to sink into an Alka DPS build. On harder territories or HQs, use a Guardian build and move Wynncraft to your second monitor while you watch taco bell bathroom asmr.
3. Assassin. Limbo or Cata. I don't make the rules.

In addition to needlessly restrictive builds, 1.20 warring introduces another irritating factor, Tower Aura luck. Now, this isn't the first post to mald about Aura, but I will address a slightly different malding point. Unless you're using Optifine, the area in any given HQ war is filled with more smoke than your stepdad's garage. Mass mob spawn can, but not always, interfere with jumping over Aura. So, like the kid you headshot in insert popular FPS here, I argue that dodging aura is a matter of luck rather than skill.

Now for economy, which I argue is more a community issue rather than an inherent game issue. While Wynn staff did a poor job of explaining the largely unintuitive economy system, the community did and still does an even poorer job of making economy info inaccessible. It's a common joke that no one knows how to do eco, and finding someone to teach you eco is impossible unless you buy them Champion, return their family you held hostage, and send them Ava feet pictures. We have players who can map out every Festival of the Spirits location 0.2 milliseconds after the location is available to be discovered, players who can buildcraft so well that they beat a literal mad scientist with a spider tooth. You'd think at least a few people would make a publicly available, recent, "how 2 eco" guide. The culmination of genius from Wynncraft's brightest is a 1 year old video from a guy in a dead guild.

If you've read this far, put ppfart in your response. Feel free to share your thoughts, criticize mine, or do what you want with this post. I'm not your dad.

 

archer can war. ppfart

aura dodge fail is skill issue. ppfart

eco is subjective although i will make you guide:
if not enough ems make more or use less
if not enough res make more or use less
def as high as you can
emerald seeking max

 

I know that there really are tons of opinions about guild war changes from 1.19 to 1.20 and one system is not neccessarily better than the other, but I certainly would not call 1.20 wars "simplistic" or "restrictive", especially compared with 1.19 wars. Towers have huge ranges of difficulties and certain bonuses like aura and volley to make fights interesting enough. In contrast to 1.19, it now depends on the team you are warring with and the respective builds, which makes even the fights itself so much more complicated than before.
Furthermore, the classes and builds to use are far more versatile than what you have posted above. Sure, the fact that shamans are useless for warring is well-known and a shame, but archers can and are widely used in wars, even when it comes to highly-defended territories.
Most classes do indeed have certain builds / weapons that are mostly used in wars, but again, it is far more versatile than only a single weapon per class. Mages, for example, are usually KoH healers in full groups for hard wars, although for defences up to medium, there are many other builds that work, with other (mythic) weapons like Fatal or Monster.

That said, it is obvious that most war builds (not to forget consumables) do require a certain extent of money; but hey, wars are indefinite endgame, what do you expect? Your critique that some positions in wars can get really boring is true to some extent, compared with 1.19 wars it is a huge difference though.

This mechanic is exactly one of the things that do make wars more interesting and, to a certain level, unpredictable (in contrast to stale 1.19 wars) - and of course aura dodging is not nearly as luck-based as you have depicted above. If you really don't manage to consistently dodge it by getting up: Dodging aura by just running / teleporting away always works. On every class.

Yes. And it is good that way.
Guild wars are the one thing on Wynncraft with the most competition. Every guild should manage teaching their members about wars and getting them into economy. This makes it hard for new guilds to get into competition, yes, but most of the warring system is pretty self-explaining in my opinion, the rest comes from experience: Once you have found the /gu attack command, you will soon realise that you will need some actual build / team to defeat the tower; after this has been done, it gives you a hint in the chat with how to defend the territory. Following that, you will soon find all of the (first overwhelming) management commands, but every option has tooltips and shows you what to do. I mean, by now you even get chat hints when resource storage is configured wrongly! Most of the people "learning" economy don't learn it by following other people, but from experience and trial & error.

One guide on guild wars does exist: https://forums.wynncraft.com/threads/286984/; even though it is made for an older version, it is still relevant for the most part. And I can totally understand that nobody would bother to make a public guide because why would you want your "enemies" to know about strategies?

The issue about pretty closed guild politics and mega map alliances, which especially affect new guilds, are sadly very present, but the current map state shows that it is possible to eventually break alliances and that member activity is one of the most important factors for warring success, which is exactly how it is supposed to be.

 

There IS some skill behind dodging aura. Go attend wars often when the Vanir map is restored and you'll eventually learn it

my guide i made on economy that I got thanks to the other people in our guild
low on emerald or resources? budget them or get more
go crazy on emerald seeking and defense

________________________________

archers are perfectly capable of warring

 

I now know the ways of divzer warring, nullifying one of my many bad arguments

To clarify, I do prefer 1.20 wars to old wars. I also don't think having a meta is a bad thing in a competitive game. My issue is just how restrictive Wynn's competitive warring meta is. With so many weapons, only 2-3 from each class are viable.

I should have mentioned teleporting out of aura, which is effective yet doesn't make the luck-based components of aura dodging less annoying.

I actually appreciate the eco guide. While it makes sense most people don't release eco guides publicly, in practice people don't release eco guides at all, even in alliance discords closed to enemy guilds. Maybe Vanir would be more competent if someone volunteered to actually teach eco to less skilled strategists.

Nice to see some good opinions and arguments about warring, overall.

 

I was starting to write a full on answer and shits like I always do, but flemme as we say

so

if your alliance doesnt work as an alliance, then your alliance is not an alliance

communication is the key

learn from your mistakes

STOP FORGETTING TO 40% YOUR TAXES! YES @Essentuan THIS IS A DIRECT VERBAL ATTACK AGAINTS YOU >:(

and many more tips and trick I guess

 

man I did leave me alone french canadian :((((

 

ppfart
Ok ok so I'm not the most experienced warrer either, but, pre 1.20, it was fun to capture territories (and have them taken back in like 15 mins) just to screw with big guilds, and 1.20's wars are honestly just much harder (see restricted playstyle stuff from first comment).
I also might be the tiniest bit biased as a shaman player who had it easy in 1.19 wars (woo AoE).