Guild Wars 2

One word: Catapults

This can be done solo but gets incredibly easier the more people that you have. All you do is spam catapults around the center platform. Do not upgrade them. Once there’s a lot of catapults around the center platform, put them in key places where enemies spawn. Catapults deal a lot of AoE damage and 3-4 of them can easily wipe a group of mobs.

You can use the snowmen to act as distractions. Do not upgrade these.

There’s really no reason to use rifle or the repair gun for the majority of the activity. Rifle can be used against Toxx but that’s pretty much it. Kite Toxx away from the center platform with the rifle. This may require you to do enough damage to grab his attention or to cut him off before he gets to the platform.

There are also skritt that can help out but they’re not really necessary.

You don’t even have to build them in the center.

Just build them where the scrap drops (but outside of monster AoE range of other siege).

Cataputs have well over 50% map range and hit in AoE is don’t worry about precise placement, mobs tend to run from siege to siege in big clumps, so having the catapults spread out everywhere will slow the mobs from zigzag pathing.

I prefer to start off with having them in the center to protect the yaks. After there’s enough coverage, I then place them near where they drop.

The Super and Mega catapults get increased damage and range the more you upgrade them though. (It is the Mega catapults that can cover almost 50% of the map. The normal ones can only cover about 30%.) I only bother upgrading when I see a catapult is almost destroyed.

At the early stages, having walls built on choke points and in between the dolyaks can help block off toys, but I agree that once you’ve got a good defense system going, building Snowmen to delay/distract toys near their spawn is a better strategy. Toxx pretty much blows walls over with her attacks, which is another reason not to go crazy with too many walls.

How much of a damage increase over the tier 1 ones? Normally 4 tier 1 catas are enough to wipe most of a spawn group so I’m curious if it’d be worth it more to actually upgrade them.

Tier 1 catapults do about 3000 damage. Tier 2 do about 4000. I didn’t specifically pay attention to the T3 ones, but I imagine it would be about 5000.

I’ve seen a variety of strategies used to good effect. If you can get into the groove in the first 3 to 5 minutes, it’s just a matter of staying ahead with building as your siege is destroyed/damaged.

The main strategies boil down to active defense vs. bunker defense. I’ve had several people insist (one quite rudely) that you should always build walls and never snowmen. However, after one particular match of watching some guys use the active defense, I now only build walls to close off the maze and use it as a catapult fortress.

Basically, you want to get up the ring of catas on the hub so that they work together to bring down mobs once they get inside to the yaks. It’s actually good to let the mobs in so that everyone can keep building instead of killing. Once the ring is up and you’ve started to put down snowmen a little further out, most mobs take forever to get into the center and are nice and squishy for the cata ring to take down.

The next phase is going to the hill tops and to the maze to put down a group of five or six cata and 4 or 5 snowmen. I try to wall off the maze as well. The mobs bunch up on the walls to take it down and the catas mow them down. Then each guy moves clockwise (or counter clock), never grouping up, to set up your “side” perimeter batteries. After that, it’s all about upgrade and resieging areas that get beaten down by Toxx. You know you’ve set your batteries up correctly when they can take down Toxx without player intervention My two main batteries end up as all mega catas, a mega ballista, and mega snowmen. They form a pretty tough hard point that can resist destruction long enough to put down some serious hurt. The battery on the hilltop is supported by two side batteries and a field of snowmen spaced out across the area.

In the early game its also best to just setup snowmen where you find snow. It’s like a little minefield that the mobs get stuck in. By that time your teammates have cata up and the mobs get killed from range while they try to take down the snowmen. It also helps as you’re out getting supplies and the mobs spawn close by. Just kite the mob into the snowmen, they aggro the snowmen, and then get taken down.

Yeah, I would heartily recommend Snowmen over Walls. They actually deal decent damage (500+. For comparison, Ballista deal 400 damage at their base level, but attack a lot faster), and the Chill actually works really well for slowing down toys/Toxx so the catapults have an easier time smashing them.

I spread the Snowmen out in front of the catapult ring and scatter them in between external siege to distract and occupy the toys, using them to soak up damage that would otherwise have gone to the catapults. The only time I would use Walls is either to wall off the maze, as suggested above, or to wall off ramps in the initial period when defenses are scarce.

I find a good way to handle Toxx is two people with the hammer “Toysmashers” doing dodge-based melee on her and cycling through the knockdown and basic swing so she stays away from the center platform.

Catapults are incredibly useful, but there is a cap to how many objects may be placed. So once you hit it, it might be a good idea to upgrade the ones in the middle to Mega-rank so they can just hit anything.