Guild Wars 2

I want to preface this by saying, yes, all current siege strats have a counter. They are not OP and it is an L2P issue if you succumb to these tactics. I agree, so lets not focus on this trope.

Anet has expressed a desire to reward people for playing more defensively.

Siege placement in WvW is currently a large reason for people playing more offensively.

Offensive Siege:

At the moment – the ability to place, for instance, 3 catapults right next to a wall in a secluded area results in a tower being “ninja capped” by a small team. I doubt this was the intent when giving people the freedom to place blueprints.

What I propose for offense is the requirement to construct a “siege camp”. This camp would only be able to be built within the radius of a tower/keep, supply camp, or allied NPC camp.

This would allow some strategic flexibility. You can siege up “rogues”, but it’s only within treb range, so it’s a slower siege but has more access to supply. Or you can siege up “frogs” with it’s nice walled structure for easy defense, but would need to supply run. Or you could siege up outside of the walls of the tower/keep you want to cap, which has the longest supply runs, but your siege equipment cant hit further in (for instance, the inner walls).

This would require a group of players to “supply run”. Even a 30 man zerg, for instance would need to use 15 supply per person to build the camp.

The camp would become the focal point for the siege team to defend while forcing them to “split their forces” to run supply and defend at the same time. This force a zerg to split a bit, another desire of Anet

The siege camp would also, of course, be a focal point for the defenders to “sally forth” and attempt to destroy.

The siege camp would have it’s own build radius, where players could place down blueprints. This would allow for still unique placement (for instance, the hill outside of Mendons).

Until the siege camp is constructed, only Ballistas and Arrow Carts can be built in it’s radius (obviously for mainly defensive purposes, and to help “clear the wall”).

Once built, it would allow for trebs and catas. Now, the WvW would look like it does in all of Anets cool WvW screenshots, with cats and trebs actually within “siege range” of a wall.

Rams and Golems should remain as they are now. I believe it would allow for more flexibility, though I believe something should be done to tone down the speed of flamerams.

Defensive Siege:

Placing a treb “on the dome” or “on the lions tail” or “above supply hut” just looks messy, for one, and is a clear example of players using the mechanics to their natural advantage (give us the ability to game the system, and we will do it all the time!).

I believe trebs should only be allowed to be placed on the walls and bridges.

As it stands now, if you build a treb in the outer wall of SMC in order to hit something far away, it should be exposed to enemy fire. That’s a good mechanic. If you want a “Defensive Treb” on the inside of your keep, it should be placed in the inner wall curtain.

Most of the rest of the exploited siege spots (tail, dome, etc) would be rendered unnecessary (and so could also be disallowed) because they could not be used offensively (ref: siege camp).