WvW warfare has evolved and that evolution has been fascinating to watch.
WvW kicked off with small groups of roamers everywhere, clashing over objectives. Then came the first unorganized blobs (a.k.a. the zerg). Then the unorganized blobs organized into functional blobs. Functional blobs were able to steamroll the small groups and unorganized blobs. Functional blobs ruled! Functional blob warfare was the name of the game for a while, with the blob stratified into melee up front with ranged/support behind. This worked well until the melee train was developed to pierce the melee line at the front of the blob and kill the softies in the back. The blob separated into two parts, front line and back line, to free the ranged and support from being tied to the melee at the front. The back line was now able to move freely to avoid being rolled by the melee train. Assigning a separate commander to the back line was the birth of the modern WvW battle group.
We're lucky in that SoR has some of the more innovative commanders in the game. They're always experimenting with different tactics, group makeup, gear/build synergies, and how to apply all of those to defeating large enemy forces. Sic did a really good job of describing the general idea behind the front line, back line organization. There are a couple of newer strategies and force organizations that SoR now fields that have been very successful.
In part IV of my WvW Workshop we'll be covering a lot of this and I may even have a guest lecturer to go over some of the cutting edge tactics we're currently developing in the field.
» Edited on: 2013-06-17 09:55:18