Guild Wars 2

Mif.3471:

LilMcGinley.3890:

Mif.3471:

ParaldaWind.4523:

I’m sure there are people who like using arrow carts to wipe zergs… I’m just not one of them.

Well whether you like it or not, siege warfare is one of the fundamental design elements of WvW. Stop demanding WvW to be changed to something it was never intended or claimed to be.

So is the 2nd part, I don’t see it all that often though.

“sieging and controlling objectives and about open field combat”

No one is demanding open field combat be removed from the game.

No one is demanding Siege warfare be removed from the game, it is needed to bring down walls/doors and that part should stay.

The suggestion was to bring the siege part of WvW down from the levels that it is so that people can actually fight people, rather than look for siege inside and decide it isn’t worth their time to attack. I pulled the quote from Devon because very few people actually fight in the open field anymore (until recent gvg-movement on the NA side). 9 times out of 10 the group will retreat to their nearest tower, even when even-numbered.

LilMcGinley.3890:

Raven.9603:

snip

AC mastery has removed this from WvW and like VoTF pushed hard for months back, it needs to change.

I’m still here. I’m glad people are bringing this up again, it was overdue because elsewise people might think that there is no longer an AC problem. The reason it appears as if the problem isn’t such a big deal anymore because of the awesome playerbase of this game. It only took a couple of weeks for certain communities to reject the AC’s. Even though AC could still kitten in open field, people have held back on using them out of love for fights. It does show that something is terribly wrong if people prefer not to use something that can give them a real edge.

I personally don’t think regular AC’s are op. But I would be ok with reverting AC’s if:

1. They get rid of superior siege entirely – not just AC’s but all superior siege. Imo, this is the real problem.

- A regular AC, even with the buffs is not THAT strong. But make it superior and add the trait line, then its rediculous I agree.

- A superior ram (or 3) can melt gates way way too fast, even upgraded ones.

- Omega Golems, yeah enough said.

2. Nerf the damage of regular golems. Regular golems can melt gates way too fast.

3. Make siege not-tradable on the TP. It is way too cheap now.

Best post writen in very long time. Clearly it show the dev don’t play there own game.
Sitting behind and AC is the most boring thing in the game. The devs should focus on fights and siege wars.

All I am reading in this post is ppl crying about siege stopping their wxp train, which they justify as “good fights”. Sorry no, defending an objective already have crappy reward as it is. There is no need to nerf siege such that people are even less inclined to defend.

Adding a siege buff and/or defensive structure buff onto outmanned servers would be a good addition to try and balance wvw population differences.

The way Outmanned is determined also needs to be addressed IMHO. Currently its based of a single map population. I feel it should be based off total wvw population of a server at a given time period. And it should be given to any server who is outmanned not only the least populated one (Stacked server A outnumbers both B and C by % so both deserve Outmanned Buff).

With the current match-up system failing miserably something needs to be done……..

Cymric.7368:

All I am reading in this post is ppl crying about siege stopping their wxp train, which they justify as “good fights”. Sorry no, defending an objective already have crappy reward as it is. There is no need to nerf siege such that people are even less inclined to defend.

I think you misunderstood. I don’t really care if we take the keep or not, I just miss utilizing the relatively unique terrain and layouts of keeps in fights. It was fun to fight inside outer of garrison. Now it’s just a death trap of red circles.

ParaldaWind.4523:

I think that the recent popularity of GvGs in NA is in a large part due to ACs.

It is one factor, but only a minor one in my opinion.

More significant factors are easy to spot;

1) We know who is going to win each match-up at the start of a week(with the sometimes exception of T1).
2) No drive to push harder, since the RNG roll will determine who we fight next week, not our performance. Player’s agency in their fate is removed.
3) We’ve all taken hundreds or thousands of towers and keeps.
4) Everyone who plays WvW for any amount of time knows that numbers and coverage win.

All of these factors put together force people to recognize one conclusion, “WvW is not, and has never been(even before buffed-ACs) a competitive game mode.”

Everyone who spends long hours in WvW want it to be competitive. And since Anet is not making any moves to foster a competitive environment, players have taken it upon themselves to do so in the form of GvGs.

LilMcGinley.3890:

SHAKA ZULU.3128:

LilMcGinley.3890:

Give Arrow Carts limited ammo.. problem solved. You want 20 ACs? congratz you just blew all your supply when you have to rebuild them

That’s interesting. Would you figure all projectile-based siege should have this? Do you think there could be a mechanic to feed it more ammo, but it would cost you?

For other projectile based siege.. it’s iffy. They don’t hold the same “lock down” power that ACs do. It would be really interesting to decide.. upgrade Garrison or treb Bay? Now you can do both really easily.

If there was a way to “reload” them, take it from available supply in the Keep but only after a worker upgrade. You upgrade your workers to “Ammunition Mechanics” for 300 supply and they will reload X number of AC every Y minutes.

The spammability of ACs puts them in-line with thieves, thus creating problems.

Caliban.3176:

LilMcGinley.3890:

Give Arrow Carts limited ammo.. problem solved. You want 20 ACs? congratz you just blew all your supply when you have to rebuild them

While that help a lot I think it opens up too many possibilities for griefing. I do like the general idea of having to tactically pick the right time to use the AC. Maybe give it 20 shots before it goes on a full cooldown for 60s or more. Something to reduce the spam.

The reasoning was the spam-ability of ACs. Making them more tactical is my reasoning behind such a move/change.

I think we may be into something here.

I already suggested something similar in a different thread, but this take on the limited ammo for siege sounds really cool. And the idea of workers recharging unused siege is just perfect.

Long-winded post.

Flowchart :

Arrow carts – > Do you have a sugardaddy / sugarmummy ?

Yes → Eye infinity – http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/0nHKqbNX4fs/hqdefault.jpg

No → GW2ZoomUnlocker

Don’t care → rant on forums for 4 months ++++

Everything the OP says is true.

And you could also add randomized server matchups decreasing competition, and encouraging GvG. If you are in blow-outs week after week (either giving or receiving), at some point you are going to stop caring about PPT. This has already happened on many servers I think.

The OP also makes a great point about large group play having a high skill ceiling. And also about it being completely unintended.

The Devs don’t want anyone to use the Trinity, and so they divided its functions among many classes. But if you are an organized and efficient large guild group, you can put those classes back together and recreate it. (Ele light fields + Blast for Healing, Necro well-bombing, Hammer warrior train).

And the fact that you have to be hyper-organized to play at this high level also contributes to GvG’s where you don’t have PUGs overlapping your fields, or rallybotting your enemies.

I’d really like to focus attention back to arrow cart screen stretching or zoom hacking. If Anet can’t fix that, defending is near impossible for anyone not willing to do such a thing in return. Sitting inside with lesser numbers and some siege? Watching all your interior siege get wrecked by a hard to reach arrow cart outside the walls? Might as well just walk away and let them have it. This one thing has done more to wreck the will to defend than anything else in the game.

This OP speaks the truth.

Thank you

I’m not sure if the problem is arrow carts as much as it is other siege. In WvW I used to run around with an inventory full of superior blueprints of every kind. I stopped doing that, mostly because half of the siege is pointless. I mean, take a look at them:

Flame Ram: This is an exception, since it is cheap and does what it needs to do well, but doesn’t do much otherwise.

Ballista: Requires a line of sight to be used, an is obstructed by everything. It is anti-siege, but way too short ranged to be used, not damaging enough against other players to be meaningful, and the limited placement means that anyone on the ballista is instantly focus bait. Arguably the worst offensive siege in the game.

Catapults: Don’t cause nearly enough damage, too short ranged to be used effectively without fear of being bowled over, extremely hard to maneuver and aim, and are largely a minor nuisance to enemy players.

Trebuchet: What catapults strive to be. They are good because they are basically a catapult, except that they have the range and damage to actually matter.

Siege golem: very useful, but requires a lot of resources and cooperation to use, requiring two portal mesmers to be of any practical use on the battlefield. Because of this, you can’t have a lone “siege golem”, making it largely a zerg tactic.

Burning Oil: a complete waste of space. It is on the forefront of the gate, so anyone who approaches will just focus the oil pot until it is destroyed before putting flame rams up. It requires odd camera angles to work, is completely useless against anything but rams and the players manning them. Operating burning oil just puts up a big sign that says “I’m immobile and fixed within range. Focus me!”

Cannons: Suffers the exact same problem that burning oil does, in that thy are readily focused down and whomever mans them is a dead man. But at least they have enough range and ease of use to harass zergs who aren’t dumb enough to destroy the cannons first. Too bad zergs aren’t that dumb.

Mortar: Basically defensive trebuchets, except thy don’t have the convenience of being out of the line of fire, instead being on fixed positions that can be hit by AoE.

So, to tally up the list:

Useful Siege:
Arrow Cart
Trebuchet
Siege Golem
Flame Ram

Useless Siege:
Ballista
Cannon
Burning Oil
Catapult

Questionable: Mortar.

I’m not sure if the problem is that Arrow Carts are too strong, or if everything else is just too weak.

Here is the frekkin’ problem when you buff siege. Any defensive weaponry can also be used offensively. This leads to stupid fights with nothing but siege creeping. It doesn’t take skill. Take siege, apply to ground, spam skills, move forward, take siege, apply to ground…. don’t forget to abuse the window size/fov bug… and these are very common T1 tatics (I kid you not). Yes it works and yes you win. But that’s not fun for me and this is a game.

Most of the time I feel like this:

I Wanna go and fight another players. They keep hiding inside and just running away. So now we’re trebbing their tower…

(waits 5 mins)

ZZZZZzzzz….

ALL RIGHT THE WALL IS DOWN, LETS GO FIGHT!

(runs into tower)

(notices they all wp-ed out…)

Oh the fun…

Remember that day… that one BEAUTIFUL day when no siege other than golems worked? Dear god. That was by far the most fun I’ve had in WvW in a LONG time. Sure there were gates and stuff we had to crack open, but once we did there were players… fighting… players. ZOMG AMAZING!

Aberrant.6749:

Remember that day… that one BEAUTIFUL day when no siege other than golems worked? Dear god. That was by far the most fun I’ve had in WvW in a LONG time. Sure there were gates and stuff we had to crack open, but once we did there were players… fighting… players. ZOMG AMAZING!

Best WvW day ever. No joke. Full stop.

I think that day and the degrading game experience as more siege masteries are added shows exactly how far in the wrong direction Anet has wandered. I’m not sure who they think is going to enjoy what they’re doing, but I doubt the people who will are going to spend as much time, effort, and money as the more dedicated guilds that are being bored to the point where inaction and simply messing around is more entertaining than genuine participation.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Catapults: Don’t cause nearly enough damage, too short ranged to be used effectively without fear of being bowled over, extremely hard to maneuver and aim, and are largely a minor nuisance to enemy players.

I have to completly disagree with you about catapults being “bad”. Catapults are the best siege for small team tower/keep capping. Super/guild catapults do 13-14k dmg (1 point in catapult mastery) to not upgraded walls, which makes it one of the fastest siege to get inside tower/keep. Also well placed catapult can let you hit both outern and inner wall of the keep.

bradderzh.2378:

Are the fights in keeps not that much more intense when a prolonged siege has melted away both parties supply to the point where attackers are forced into making decisions like “kitten we really need supply for more siege but can we risk sending guys out to run supply? If the enemy notice they could rush the position and drive us out”

Yes, keep fights are much more intense when that happens.

Unfortunately, that is not the game WvW is.

Outside of hugely imbalanced numbers, keep fights end when the arrow carts finish eating the rams / golems; you can’t build more under arrow cart fire, and you can’t kill the arrow carts AoEing the gate through the wall. So you don’t get extended keep fights; you stick around until they man the ACs and wipe your siege, at which point you leave with your army to get more supply to punch more holes – preferably in a different keep where they aren’t manning the ACs.

As far as I am concerned, an AC that cannot be hit with a ballista has no business being able to clear rams and golems off a gate.

Mif.3471:

LilMcGinley.3890:

Mif.3471:

ParaldaWind.4523:

I’m sure there are people who like using arrow carts to wipe zergs… I’m just not one of them.

Well whether you like it or not, siege warfare is one of the fundamental design elements of WvW. Stop demanding WvW to be changed to something it was never intended or claimed to be.

So is the 2nd part, I don’t see it all that often though.

“sieging and controlling objectives and about open field combat”

No one is demanding open field combat be removed from the game.

No one is demanding siege be removed from the game, either. The main idea seems to be making arrow carts less OP, not removing them entirely.

mewmewmyoo.7809:

No one is demanding siege be removed from the game, either. The main idea seems to be making arrow carts less OP, not removing them entirely.

They are not OP. They need to do more damage.

I like the LOS idea, but it would be easier to just tone down the damage. To anybody throwing out the “realistic” argument, (an argument i hate for videogames where people try to escape real life for a bit) should arrow carts be allowed to fire into a lords room? No, there is a ceiling there. Last night we were holding EK from a much larger force, and while some of them tried to push into the lords room, most stayed back and built arrowcarts.

My POINT: They could have wiped us by pushing into us, but it has become such the norm to build carts, that that’s what they did.

It doesn’t make sense that they can fire into a completely covered dome, and through that narrow choke. Only thing that should make it through are ballistas.

Fomby.4295:

I like the LOS idea, but it would be easier to just tone down the damage. To anybody throwing out the “realistic” argument, (an argument i hate for videogames where people try to escape real life for a bit) should arrow carts be allowed to fire into a lords room? No, there is a ceiling there. Last night we were holding EK from a much larger force, and while some of them tried to push into the lords room, most stayed back and built arrowcarts.

My POINT: They could have wiped us by pushing into us, but it has become such the norm to build carts, that that’s what they did.

It doesn’t make sense that they can fire into a completely covered dome, and through that narrow choke. Only thing that should make it through are ballistas.

I can agree that some areas the AC shouldn’t be able to fire into the lords room or any area with a roof. I do think that if there is an opening and the cart is in front…hills bridge…it should be able to fire into but it should fire more in a direct path. I also think that if you are standing directly in front of a AC firing, you should get all arrows because that is like a shotgun firing. This all needs reprogramming of how ACs work though and I don’t see that happening anytime soon. I do think the damage needs to be upped but ANet already adjusted it once so I don think it will get toned down or increased again. The damage is about where ANet thinks it should be because they stated so after the last damage adjustment.

@OP please inquire with devon if they are hiring

ParaldaWind.4523:

Cymric.7368:

All I am reading in this post is ppl crying about siege stopping their wxp train, which they justify as “good fights”. Sorry no, defending an objective already have crappy reward as it is. There is no need to nerf siege such that people are even less inclined to defend.

I think you misunderstood. I don’t really care if we take the keep or not, I just miss utilizing the relatively unique terrain and layouts of keeps in fights. It was fun to fight inside outer of garrison. Now it’s just a death trap of red circles.

You see, this is a layer of depth in WvW that will disappear if the siege are make weaker, the control of supplies.

A keep whose defenders refuse to come out and fight will eventually fall because you can cut their supplies, take out their siege one by one with siege of your own and break through eventually. If the lords room is too well siege up, hit somewhere else to force them to move, without supplies they can’t do any significant repairs. When they move you can force them into a battle.

Of course, this course of action will take a long time if the defenders have plenty of supplies. If this happens, its entirely the fault of the attacking side. Why did the attacking side not killed dolyaks and take supply camps to prevent the defenders from upgrading and stockpiling supplies? If everyone want to zerg and no one want to cut supplies, well, you reap what you sow and deserve to have and grinding long battle to take the keep.

The problem imo, is not the siege, its the failure to control supplies.

Cymric.7368:

ParaldaWind.4523:

Cymric.7368:

All I am reading in this post is ppl crying about siege stopping their wxp train, which they justify as “good fights”. Sorry no, defending an objective already have crappy reward as it is. There is no need to nerf siege such that people are even less inclined to defend.

I think you misunderstood. I don’t really care if we take the keep or not, I just miss utilizing the relatively unique terrain and layouts of keeps in fights. It was fun to fight inside outer of garrison. Now it’s just a death trap of red circles.

You see, this is a layer of depth in WvW that will disappear if the siege are make weaker, the control of supplies.

A keep whose defenders refuse to come out and fight will eventually fall because you can cut their supplies, take out their siege one by one with siege of your own and break through eventually. If the lords room is too well siege up, hit somewhere else to force them to move, without supplies they can’t do any significant repairs. When they move you can force them into a battle.

Of course, this course of action will take a long time if the defenders have plenty of supplies. If this happens, its entirely the fault of the attacking side. Why did the attacking side not killed dolyaks and take supply camps to prevent the defenders from upgrading and stockpiling supplies? If everyone want to zerg and no one want to cut supplies, well, you reap what you sow and deserve to have and grinding long battle to take the keep.

The problem imo, is not the siege, its the failure to control supplies.

Supply control doesn’t exist in this game. When you can freely port to any BL, grab supply and port back, that defeats the purpose of playing the “supply game”. Each keep in EB after the first 10 hours is constant 1,700 supply and with the ability to move that to other BLs instantly, like I said, defeats the purpose of trying to control supply.

LilMcGinley.3890:

Cymric.7368:

ParaldaWind.4523:

Cymric.7368:

All I am reading in this post is ppl crying about siege stopping their wxp train, which they justify as “good fights”. Sorry no, defending an objective already have crappy reward as it is. There is no need to nerf siege such that people are even less inclined to defend.

I think you misunderstood. I don’t really care if we take the keep or not, I just miss utilizing the relatively unique terrain and layouts of keeps in fights. It was fun to fight inside outer of garrison. Now it’s just a death trap of red circles.

You see, this is a layer of depth in WvW that will disappear if the siege are make weaker, the control of supplies.

A keep whose defenders refuse to come out and fight will eventually fall because you can cut their supplies, take out their siege one by one with siege of your own and break through eventually. If the lords room is too well siege up, hit somewhere else to force them to move, without supplies they can’t do any significant repairs. When they move you can force them into a battle.

Of course, this course of action will take a long time if the defenders have plenty of supplies. If this happens, its entirely the fault of the attacking side. Why did the attacking side not killed dolyaks and take supply camps to prevent the defenders from upgrading and stockpiling supplies? If everyone want to zerg and no one want to cut supplies, well, you reap what you sow and deserve to have and grinding long battle to take the keep.

The problem imo, is not the siege, its the failure to control supplies.

Supply control doesn’t exist in this game. When you can freely port to any BL, grab supply and port back, that defeats the purpose of playing the “supply game”. Each keep in EB after the first 10 hours is constant 1,700 supply and with the ability to move that to other BLs instantly, like I said, defeats the purpose of trying to control supply.

I think this is touching on another issue entirely, but you make a good point. I just argue that no one wants to spend 3+ hours sieging a keep, methodically killing enemy siege, cutting off supply, and not getting a single actual fight during the whole ordeal. The large scale group PvP in this game is phenomenal, and I think that Anet had a really amazing balance of ways to force people to fight before. Now the buffed siege has made those fights irrelevant.

Organized guilds like mine like good fights, and the arrow cart buff has largely removed those fights from keeps. They still exist in the open field, and in GvGs, but they used to happen almost everywhere. I miss them.

I think this is touching on another issue entirely, but you make a good point. I just argue that no one wants to spend 3+ hours sieging a keep, methodically killing enemy siege, cutting off supply

the only time i see a long siege with few fights its because the defenders are badly outnumbered and know they will just be squashed. thats why they’re hiding in the keep to begin with.

WXP is a great feature PvP. I give a Facebook thumb.

as a defensive player, my take on it is this. the initial damage and range on the carts were fine at launch, the extra damage and range from the mastery traits would have been fine too. the 80% damage increase was unnecessary. a slight buff of, say, 15% or even up to 25% would have been acceptable.

the problem was never really with the damage. it was always with the rewards. it was never a problem with being able to defend, it was a problem actually getting people TO defend. buying siege and upgrades was a massive gold sink, with nearly nothing to offset that cost. that hasn’t changed at all. there was no incentive to do sentry duty, other than keeping the siege ticked that you bought so you weren’t just flushing your gold/badges down the toilet. that also hasn’t changed at all. those were the issues that they needed to fix, but their “solution” instead went in the complete opposite direction and pretty much just encouraged people to run laps flipping and reflipping paper towers/keeps to farm as much gold/karma/WXP as possible. sometimes even directly organizing those efforts with opposing servers.

and if they really wanted defense to be easier, then all they had to do was make it so only siege could damage gates. there was no need to buff carts up.

that being said, however, carts can be worked around. a treb can be build solely to take them out. not to try to take down the walls, not to take out players, only to hit the carts. a defensive treb acts as a counter to that, so two offensive trebs need to be set up from multiple angles just to take out the carts. after the carts are down, then rams can be set up. the problem with this, however, is that it requires a larger group to have enough supply to pull it off. the extra supply capacity from the WXP traits are ridiculously expensive, so that’s not a feasible option in any way, shape, or form. so the only way to go about it is to form a bigger zerg. which…… goes in line with every other change they’ve made so far. all they’ve done is buff the zerg, and increased the rewards it gets, while screwing over anything else.

so…… the best thing they could really do is reverse the 80% damage increase on the carts, make it so only siege can damage the gates, and actually give rewards to the defenders instead of the whole lot of nothing they get now. and by giving rewards to the defenders, i mean increasing the rewards they get from the defense quest to match the capture quest, as well as giving some form of reward for people staying in defensive positions when those positions aren’t directly being attacked, even if that just has to come by way of fending off NPC mobs. reward players for smart play, instead of running laps around the map and spamming 1. the rewards for doing the chores in WvW are an absolute joke, and the rewards for playing poorly are just plain staggering. on top of all of that, they won’t even give us the tools to play intelligently, instead just giving everyone further incentive to full map queue WXP train around the maps. it’s beyond bad at this point, and they’re showing zero sign of improving the situation, instead doing everything they can to make it worse. meaning, Anet has been systematically destroying WvW since launch.

so when people say that WvW will be empty as soon as some of the upcoming games launch, it’s not hard to see why. and the players can’t really be blamed for it, because they had a better game at launch than they now do a year later. and even if they do start reversing their direction, and start going in a positive one, it will take ages for what they do to make it into the game.

the kicker is, WvW was screwed the instant they first opened up free transfers, and has only gotten worse from there. it’s just plain beyond repair at this point. because even if they do get the game itself fixed, the population is so out of balance that it’s impossible to have any close matches outside of tier 1. nothing they do will ever be able to fix WvW.

Bleh, yes some siege is better than others, but they all have their uses. I wouldn’t call cannons/oil useless in this new meta of golem rushing empty or near empty keeps. One person or two people on ac’s is not going to stop a golem rush, but 2 people on cannons can force the attacking force to have to spend time killing the cannons/oil first, or their golems die. Forcing the attackers to dps oil/cannons buys time for the defender to call in reinforcement.

Field ballista to take out trebuchets and defend chokes with its very powerful #4 attack is certainly very viable right now. They are defiantly not quite as useful overall as an arrow cart.

Catapults are being used more than ever, so I don’t know why they are even in your useless list as they are in fact, quite useful.

Draygo.9473:

Bleh, yes some siege is better than others, but they all have their uses. I wouldn’t call cannons/oil useless in this new meta of golem rushing empty or near empty keeps. One person or two people on ac’s is not going to stop a golem rush, but 2 people on cannons can force the attacking force to have to spend time killing the cannons/oil first, or their golems die. Forcing the attackers to dps oil/cannons buys time for the defender to call in reinforcement.

Field ballista to take out trebuchets and defend chokes with its very powerful #4 attack is certainly very viable right now. They are defiantly not quite as useful overall as an arrow cart.

Catapults are being used more than ever, so I don’t know why they are even in your useless list as they are in fact, quite useful.

I don’t think that anyone was implying other siege was worthless.

What are:

Ele Scepter Fire2/Staff Fire5/Necro marks/Death Shroud 4
Water fields
Protection/Stability/Cond. Removal
Long-range siege
Double-dodging

Only thing wrong with ACs is the Eyefinity hack, and that’s out of Anet’s hands. Everything has a counter, try using some of them.

AC damage is fine, just make them obey some sort of projectile physics so that people can’t put them in areas that prevent retaliation while being able to rain death freely. That fixes the whole camera hack issue.

Once AC’s are forced to deploy in more vulnerable spots in order to be used, they won’t dominate so badly compared to other options for defending a fortification.

Outside of that, to solve the zerging and unbalanced population issue, Arenanet is going to have to look into both better logistics modeling and more incentives to spread out when in a zone and incentives to transfer to lower pop servers.

Once AC’s are forced to deploy in more vulnerable spots in order to be used, they won’t dominate so badly compared to other options for defending a fortification.

ACs would be useless then, except for the singular task of firing arrows at the gate, which only works because they’re still breaking los.

People manning siege are immobile, without active defenses or healing, they will usually lose to people throwing AOEs. Part of the point of ACs is to give defenders SOMETHING they can do to harass a big attack force. Any change to AC needs to keep this in mind.

I put ballistas on the edge of tower walls all the time, and half the time they get destroyed without anyone ever manning them. Another quarter of the time they get off a shot or two before mass AOE renders them unuseable, and the other quarter of the time they are marginally effective.

ACs would probably be even worse off.

EDIT:
what if ACs worked like mortars but were even deadlier?

I hate all siege, I think it is ruining the game…With that said, ACs are the absolute worst offenders.

Mainly because it allows horrible players to sit in a tower and spam at pretty much anything in the vicinity. In a way I like the fact that a few players can defend an objective with siege, but ACs were and still are ridiculously OP in the grand-scheme of things, especially when you factor in widescreen viewing, no LoS required, and just plain zoomhacking.

Shoe.5821:

Once AC’s are forced to deploy in more vulnerable spots in order to be used, they won’t dominate so badly compared to other options for defending a fortification.

ACs would be useless then, except for the singular task of firing arrows at the gate, which only works because they’re still breaking los.

People manning siege are immobile, without active defenses or healing, they will usually lose to people throwing AOEs. Part of the point of ACs is to give defenders SOMETHING they can do to harass a big attack force. Any change to AC needs to keep this in mind.

I put ballistas on the edge of tower walls all the time, and half the time they get destroyed without anyone ever manning them. Another quarter of the time they get off a shot or two before mass AOE renders them unuseable, and the other quarter of the time they are marginally effective.

ACs would probably be even worse off.

EDIT:
what if ACs worked like mortars but were even deadlier?

More vulnerable =/= within range of 0900-1200 range player attacks. More vulnerable means you have to actually deploy them in a spot that can get counter-sieged by say, a ballista or catapult. The issue is both of those have to obey either line of sight or projectile physics while the arrow cart that should be their natural prey does not, and as such usually requires treb spam to clear them out.

But if you have enough trebs to do that, you are often better off just taking down a gate or wall and clearing them in melee.

Another part of the issue with wall mounted siege getting blasted is that walls are both too thin and the merlons are too low to provide cover against AE’s lapping over them, plus there are rarely any effective moats to prevent/slow attackers from getting into range to drop AE’s on top of the walls.

Not a single one had offered 80% buff to AC. Yet they did and ruined teh fights for no reason. And the AC mastery has arrived at the same time and put some flavour into cake.