I am no expert but thought i would make a guide to help new players to ORVR understand how to start and run with new ORVR open warbands in the hope both sides can have more leaders and therefore more ORVR action.
Creation of a warband (ORVR)
First things first, find the active ORVR zone, this will be on your RVR messages, and if you can’t find that, go to each zone contested on the map and see where the supplies are generating.
1. Now you use /invite “name here” to invite one person to your group
- If you can’t see anyone or know anyone, ask in /guild or /T4 “send me a message to start a warband”
2. Once you have a party of 2, now right click on your party and go party options
- In this window make sure you’re on the management page, click “form warband”
- Now go the nearby page in the same window and click the tick box “make party open”
3. Now you have an open warband, type in /T4 “open warband on me
4. Now go join in existing fun or go and take battle objectives and run supplies and tell your warband what you are all going to do and when. (most open warbands start by running supplies in groups and taking BO's, they grow quickly)
People who logon for at least an hour, will usually have a level 40 character, and most would rather play this character in ORVR rather than T1 alt's or SC’s, crafting or PVE, so don’t worry people will ways join, even if you loose battles, people will leave then others come back.
So long as you are the open warband in ORVR you will always have people joining. People will also have different expectations of an ORVR warband, if you just want to roam the zone and have some fights, control some battle objectives, that’s fine and some people will stay to join in, some will leave.
If you want to take the keep, and a lot of people will expect this, go for it, but don’t give up if you loose, keep going and people will keep joining, and eventually even if you have to re-take all the bo’s and they repair the keep door, your warband will grow back again to full numbers, some kind soul will start an overflow warband and you will get there.
Guild/Alliance Warbands
There are 2 ways for guilds and alliances to start warbands
1. When they have a good 6 man group going, or 2 within the guild or alliance, then group up together into warband. Then ask in /alliance if anyone wants to join alliance warband, when you have a few spaces left, open the warband up and let others join to fill the ranks. This works very well in the NA timezone on Order.
2. Anyone within the alliance/guild say in /alliance anyone want to join an alliance warband, when people say yes, invite them and build a good solid foundation for warband with players you know, then open it up and lets others fill the spaces left. The advantage of alliance warbands is usually they are on voice and when over half the players are on voice and less than half are new people, then new people follow the majority and it works really well.
Management of a warband
3 areas to this, group setup, communication and a plan.
Group setup
Right click your party and go to the manage tab, in here you can click and drag players from group to another. Basically make sure you have the below and keep watching it as people leave and join over time:
Each party needs:
- Healers – 1/2
- Tanks - 1/2
- DPS – 1/2
If you have more of one type and less of another type spread them out
More technical approach can be below:
- 1 Warrior Priest, 2 melee dps, and 3 tanks in one party (front line party, lot of armour/guards)
- 2 healers, 3 ranged dps and 1 tank in one party (back line party, less armour needed, more resists)
- 2 tanks and 3 different healer classes in 1 party = Keep lord tank party
You can explore all kind of setups here based on what you have available at the time.
Communication
Ideally voice, but open warbands don’t tend to be from alliances and guilds and the game doesn’t have built in voice, or good ways to communicate private voice channels. So go join a guild with voice.
1. However usually no voice, so make sure you state what battle objective you are going for in /wb and /R4 and your movements and plans, doesn’t have to be an essay, just “go Kuvlov’s BO follow me".
2. Make sure you remind people to stick together, the skills of all classes benefit a “Blob” of players sticking together, so guards, aoe heals, buffs, morales etc, the success of a warband will be based on how well they can move together and position together. This positioning includes tanks engaging the enemy on the front, healers/ranged position to the back away from this engaged line and melee dps choosing their targets and moments.
3. Also make sure you communicate with other warbands, and by saying in /T4 where you are going, other 6 man groups, and there are some great ones out there doing ORVR/SC’s will help you.
Warband goals (have a plan)
Usually your plan is either going to be to have some fun, this is having fights in open terrain, defending/attacking keeps and taking BO’s.
1. Take a look at the map, decide what BO’s you can take/hold, try to predict the enemy’s movement so you can plan where you will be able to have a good fight a terrain advantage.
2. Then if you have a full warband, why not try the keep, the worst that happens is you respawn back at the warcamp, loose a few players from the warband and start taking BO’s and go back to having fun other ways, open terrain battles etc, more players will come to join and if you keep going and don’t give up, you’ll win.
To take a keep see brief notes in this Spoiler on the whole process
Spoiler:
1. You need to run supplies(boxes that regenerate at battle objective) to your keep flag inside the keep, these build the rank of the keep with each drop.
2. Once your keep is rank 1 (1 star) you can spawn a ram at your own keep (bought from the siege vendor in the gatehouse and lasts for life, can be used multiple times forever)
Also consider spawning cannons to shoot enemy siege weapons etc
3. To move your siege equipment, get on your mount and right click on the ram for example, then move and it will follow you
4. Now take your siege equipment and ram with your warband to the enemy keep, guard it as you can only have a new one very 10 minutes if it gets destroyed on the way.
5. Once at the enemy keep, take the ram to the enemy keep door, dismount and right click on the ram, it will auto position if close enough to the keep door.
6. Now 4 people need to right click the ram and use it to destroy the door, if you don't get a bar in the middle of your screen to use the ram, come out of with escape key and go back in by right clicking again.
7. To use cannons dismount and right click it twice.
8. Once the door is down, destroy the inner door
9. Then kill the occupying players first, then the keep lord.
10. To lock the zone, once you have taken the enemy keep, hold at least 3 battle objectives, if possible 4.
Some basic strategies are in this spoiler which can you help you lead your warband to some good fights Buffs
Spoiler:
1. Stick close together as a warband, most buffs, aoe heals, guard abilities are very powerful, and only work within a small range, if people aren't listening keep practicing movements together, stop and wait till they group up around you, then move, and keep practicing as new people will come and go. (tanks install GES from you will be suprised how often you are not guarding anyone because you are too far away https://tools.idrinth.de/addons/ and everyone install enemy really great addons)
2. Make sure people are using buffs, these buffs can drastically increase the survival abilities of each player, bringing great advantage in a battle.
Positioning
Spoiler:
3. Tanks decide where the front line is, a warbands tanks engage the enemy and don't die very quickly, that creates a frontline, healers will adjust their position to have the tanks between them and the enemy, as will dps, so control your tanks and you control your positioning. If tanks run too far into the enemy lines your healers will try to follow to keep healing them, the enemy dps will retreat and you will spread out into the enemy ranks and be overun easily with no buffs or aoe heals. If your tanks hold the line and don't push too far but don't back off, you will stabilise a successful front line where buffs and aoe heals reach everyone and you can time a push all together in a formation. Or you can coordinate your tanks to pull back slowly if your tanks hold the line and walk backwards to re-position to a defensive position.
4. Positioning in battles, this is key, not just sticking together, but archtype positioning, so:
- Tanks - as above tanks are the front line defenders, punt melee dps back when they push, snare tanks trying to get past, hold the line to save players behind you when ranged damage comes in, buff, guard and work with melee DPS when you push.
(any tank who says but i'm solo harassing the enemy back lines is in a ORVR (not SC) situation is not buffing anyone, not guarding anyone and not doing enough DPS to take anything out, work with melee dps on a push. Of course all class types can be played in a number of ways and their are exceptions in every case, but this guide is for optimising skills available for classes in a ORVR situation)
- Healers - work back from the front line, reduce the chance of melee dps hitting you and ranged dps you, get a good position with clear line of sight, unless your a good melee warrior priest in which case, use a group setup 2 tanks 2 melee dps and 2 melee warrior priests and fight up close.
- Ranged DPS - work back from the front line made by the tanks, reduce the chance of melee dps hitting you, and ranged reaching you, get a good position where you can target their healers if possible, you are the only players who when working together can really take their healers down and with them the ability for them to resurrect their fallen and keep fighting. An exception here would be a magnet/rift user coming forward to disrupt the enemy formation.
- Melee DPS - work together if possible, individually you will not be able to take 1 target out in a warband situation, hang back from the front line and choose your target, and the right moment then strike with burst damage together, warband leaders can call out targets, and DPS can make /assist "name here" macro's put on their hotbar and assist a designated main assist DPS player.
Targetting
Spoiler:
5. Pressing the "tab" key cycles through targets, or you can click to select a target, or if you make a macro and type in it /assist "type a name of a player here" then when you press this macro it will give you the same target as the players name you have typed in, you can change the name at any time. This way with macro's DPS can work together on select targets and a main assist can even carefully select a target and call out "assist me", then the warbands dps can at once assist on a single target (ST warband).
Morales
Spoiler:
6. Build your morales and don't always use them, wait for the right time, when the enemy push drop defensive morales, when the enemy look weak or the warband leader shouts push, drop offensive morales.
Timing
Spoiler:
7. As a warband leader once your tanks have engaged and made a front line, and your warband is close together in the right positions and you have stabilised in the fight. If you're warband morales are at M2, or higher, get your main assist to take a healer out, then say be ready to push, prepare people, say 3, 2, 1 then push! this way you give people the most chance to listen and be ready and then go together. With experience you will learn when its good to push and if to push left, or push right for example, or even coordiante with other warbands to push.
Terrain
Spoiler:
8. Use the terrain for battles, healers can only heal well if they can see who they are healing, pull back around a corner when they push and all of their tanks and melee dps will be out of line of sight of their healers and can be taken out easily.
Map Control
Spoiler:
9. When there is only 1 battle objective the enemy can take, think which is the quickest/safest way for the enemy to get there from their last known position/warcamp, then look at the map where is best to meet them and fight them, then position your warband there ready to intercept them.
10. Don't chase the enemy to their warcamp, they have cannons and you will die, and secondly its not fair to pin them in.
11. When taking an enemy keep if you have enough numbers, think about guarding outer posterns once the outer door is down to stop more defenders getting inside.
12. Look at the maps, there are a number of natural choke points you can use to ambush the enemy on regular routes they must take, learn them and hide to catch unaware enemy off guard and have some good fights when outnumbered.
Last edited by Fractus on Wed Feb 22, 2017 8:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
That's the easy part. The hard part, having people listen to you and managing a WB and working with what you're given despite the fact that people aren't listening to you, is something that requires a treatise of Silmarillion proportions.
Fractus wrote:If you want to take the keep, and a lot of people will expect this, go for it, but don’t give up if you loose, keep going and people will keep joining, and eventually even if you have to re-take all the bo’s and they repair the keep door, your warband will grow back again to full numbers, some kind soul will start an overflow warband and you will get there.
Order's PUG perspective:
If you plan to go keep with PUG warband, get ready for losing 1/4 people after 1st wipe and another 1/2 of warband after 2nd wipe. In that case make a proclamation that your warband is focusing on BO fights/skirmishes only in order to regain people.
If you lose several fights in a row, get ready for being hit with Hammer of Xrealming and prepare for intense skirmishing and/or keep defense. Warriors desert and your rag-tag company is facing real challenges now, it is normal.
magicthighs wrote:Finding bugs is what players are for. The RoR team itself doesn't have the people nor the time to do that.
I've edited to include guild/alliance warbands and added a few bits on basic warband ORVR strategies.
Thanks Roadkillrobin, and yes Blaqwar, little tricks like stopping every now and then on the way somewhere and saying keep close to me often helps, clear direction of course will always help, things can help over time.
Also OldPlayer is right go in with right expectations and you won't be dissapointed, expect a few good fights, anything else is a bonus!
One other thing that, but you need to be somewhat more confident in it, is to gradually kick the people that don't follow you or don't listen to orders.
Eventually you'll be left - if the campaign goes decent enough - with a group that actually follows you. Then close the WB, and only invite in those archetypes that the WB needs so you get a good balance across all parties.
