Guild Wars 2

If I understand correctly NPC’s are still fully killable by players, and we also have a trebuchet to further support this.
If I throw 5 players into defense, where defense is “aoe the hell out of the NPC’s” can’t I stale-mate or greatly prolong the game? Since the opposition only has one way of winning which is to push that singular lane via their npc’s?

Back in Fort Aspenwood, we used to nuke the hell out of Siege turtles, but the deal was there was more then one Siege turtle, and so you could be out-rotated, and lose your advantage as such, however since your options are really “throw all 5 of your teammates in the lane to oppose all 5 of my teammates” I don’t see how rotations play the part. Generally Offense is supposed to beat defense and I assume that the reality is NPC’s have so much health that you can’t indefinitely defend…but the Doorbreakers seemed to drop extremely easy so…. 5 Icebows?

They mentioned that in Ready Up today. Time limit is currently at 15minutes (might change) and if a game ends by the timer, whoever has the most points wins. Teams can earn points by playing the map (completing various objectives) and a team that only defends and kills npcs probably wont have as many points as the other team doing other things on the map.

i didnt see any mention of buying defense units or upgrades so if one team is focusing 100% on defense then they will stay at the same level of effectiveness. On the otherhand the attack team could run supply for building units and do the channel to get heroes increasing their level of effectiveness meaning they would likely win in the end. Add to that the fact that once a defense unit dies its done with no replacement coming then even a failed attack could chip away at the defenses side.

Unless there are some bits of info missing I don’t see full focus on defense being a viable option for victory.

If one team plays pure defense they concede all the supply and heroes. I imagine a team that can freely spawn attacks at the highest possible rate can at the very least chip away at the enemies defended gate.

Maybe this makes for a 15 minute game but the defending team has 0 chance of winning since the attacking team needs only to take down the first gate and then they’ve won once the timer hits.

Phantaram.4816:

If one team plays pure defense they concede all the supply and heroes. I imagine a team that can freely spawn attacks at the highest possible rate can at the very least chip away at the enemies defended gate.

Maybe this makes for a 15 minute game but the defending team has 0 chance of winning since the attacking team needs only to take down the first gate and then they’ve won once the timer hits.

Actually they dont even need to take down the gate. Killing the guards and summoning heros seems to give points aswell.

A defending team can definitely contest heroes given that if they send someone to channel heroes they’ve weakened their offense to perform that and you can rotate 1 or 2 over to contest the heroes. So long as they can’t damage the gate they can’t kill the lord or get credit for destroying the gate. So shutting down NPC’s is the crux of what you need to do, unless it’s confirmed that score allocation is out of your means by playing defense.

You don’t have to concede the heroes, and you can kill supply runners, given they’re on a rather lengthy channel.
There is only one lane to your gate, and there is an entrance to the supply area from that lane.

Presuming

ensoriki.5789:

A defending team can definitely contest heroes given that if they send someone to channel heroes they’ve weakened their offense to perform that and you can rotate 1 or 2 over to contest the heroes. So long as they can’t damage the gate they can’t kill the lord or get credit for destroying the gate. So shutting down NPC’s is the crux of what you need to do, unless it’s confirmed that score allocation is out of your means by playing defense.

You don’t have to concede the heroes, and you can kill supply runners, given they’re on a rather lengthy channel.
There is only one lane to your gate, and there is an entrance to the supply area from that lane.

Presuming

Mhh but if you contest heros and kill supply runner isnt that like an offensive move?

It will be very unsatisfying if matches go to points often, and there are builds out there that can put out so much healing that a lot of them will. They could have brought back the Victory or Death tiebreaker mechanic instead, have both lords with all their guards walk out the bases at 15’ and have a huge pitched battle at the centre of the map instead.

Moreover, if you were able to attack down either lane instead of having asymmetrical attack and defence lanes, it would be much harder for a bunkery team to turtle effectively.

It doesn’t seem like you need more than one person to play defence. And with the verticality of the map, that could easily be a Ranger or any class that can nuke things from the roofs of buildings.

ensoriki.5789:

A defending team can definitely contest heroes given that if they send someone to channel heroes they’ve weakened their offense to perform that and you can rotate 1 or 2 over to contest the heroes. So long as they can’t damage the gate they can’t kill the lord or get credit for destroying the gate. So shutting down NPC’s is the crux of what you need to do, unless it’s confirmed that score allocation is out of your means by playing defense.

You don’t have to concede the heroes, and you can kill supply runners, given they’re on a rather lengthy channel.
There is only one lane to your gate, and there is an entrance to the supply area from that lane.

Presuming

If you play a very defensive team that will never lose the gate, then I doubt you’ll have the offensive potential to be able to spike down good players on the opposing team running supply, nor do I expect you to be able to win the team fights over the heroes.

Defending team will slowly lose. The trebuchet is outside the gates, so it’s easily destroyed. The hero grants 50% damage reduction and in combination with defensive boons from players, NPCs can survive long enough to take down a gate. Defensive NPCs don’t respawn, so attackers will quickly get an advantage there.

Not that any of this matters. Stronghold will devolve into a couple 5v5’s and whoever wins them snowballs the game.

Exedore.6320:

Not that any of this matters. Stronghold will devolve into a couple 5v5’s and whoever wins them snowballs the game.

You could say the same about Conquest, but rarely does that happen. Someone leaves the 5v5 to accomplish other things and further the interests of their team.

Koviko.3248:

Exedore.6320:

Not that any of this matters. Stronghold will devolve into a couple 5v5’s and whoever wins them snowballs the game.

You could say the same about Conquest, but rarely does that happen. Someone leaves the 5v5 to accomplish other things and further the interests of their team.

Conquest requires splitting up a team because there are three equally important nodes. Stronghold looks like it should as well, but I’m willing to bet that once people figure out how to play it efficiently, it will be nothing but one or two 5v5 deathmatches.

There’s one supply depot (two channel points, but both are in the same area). You win that at the start then use a mesmer portal to dump 10 supply into NPCs (on top of the initial 5) and then back to mid to push the enemy gate. Your enemy has spawned at most 5 NPCs and it should be easy to clean that up by exploiting the AI. So now the team which won the initial supply fight pushes straight to the enemy gate with their whole team and a bunch of NPCs. Unless the defenders can quickly nuke down 10 supply of sappers, both gates will be destroyed in seconds. If the defending team breaks off to try and run supply for their NPCs, they just lose the defensive fight faster or just turn it into a PvE race where they’re already behind. If the offensive team’s NPCs die, they fall back to the depot and repeat the process while still denying the defending team supply.

Unlike conquest, the offensive team can’t lose anything because the defending team needs supply in order to inflict losses and the offensive team denied them any additional supply by holding a single area of the map.

Granted it’s just theorycraft without knowing all the details of the map. But I’m hard pressed to come up with an alternative game flow.