Guild Wars 2

Xeno.4610:

Coldtart.4785:

ACs are hated because people that use ACs only use ACs and never fight even if they outnumber you. They just hide in their tower hoping their 111 spam will stop the big mean fight guild and run away when it becomes clear that it won’t.

100% agree. Seen this so many times – even if they outnumber you, they just sit in their upgraded keeps and spam 1 on ACs. I really think, that nerfing ACs will make more interesting fights in structures. I mean real fights, not dull siege spam.

A keep takes a long time to fully upgrade. There should be defensive siege inside them and people using them to protect the upgrades that people payed for. Even towers take a few hours to upgrade. Why should we have less defensive options and make it easier for larger groups to take? A keep shouldn’t be an easy thing to take.

One good idea would be that players need to eat inside keep. For example after 10 hours inside keep players start to get hungry and stats start to get lower.

Well, okay.

What would ACs be useful for now? I’m trying to figure out what would be considered their intended use.

ArchonWing.9480:

Well, okay.

What would ACs be useful for now? I’m trying to figure out what would be considered their intended use.

Something to hold on to as the enemy zerg breaks your gate and melts you into the floor

slingblade.1437:

ArchonWing.9480:

Well, okay.

What would ACs be useful for now? I’m trying to figure out what would be considered their intended use.

Something to hold on to as the enemy zerg breaks your gate and melts you into the floor

Or bring back the old warrior skill trigger that immobilized everyone, lol.

Perhaps they should’ve just lowered the siege cap. I get that fighting in siege is annoying, and can become lethal, but all this does is make larger blobs completely unstoppable.

ArchonWing.9480:

Well, okay.

What would ACs be useful for now? I’m trying to figure out what would be considered their intended use.

Same thing it’s good for now; letting us know where the free kills are.

Kaiser.9873:

Perhaps they should’ve just lowered the siege cap. I get that fighting in siege is annoying, and can become lethal, but all this does is make larger blobs completely unstoppable.

Reducing the siege cap sadly won’t reduce the mass blob size. Pandora’s out of that box. This would only let the blobs face-nom the gates faster, with zero time to call for help.

After reading thru all these comments it seems that everyone overlooks the main reason LOS was enforced on ACs and that was because of payers taking advantage of the new camara system and using AC to hit every inch inside a Tower. Unfortunately that fix also screwed ACs defensive value. A fix for the camara system should have been made instead, after all, OP eles can still meteor spots where they should not be able to if they had LOS on their skills. Rangers also can barrage beyond LOS it seems. So if the camara system cant be adjusted to prevent this LOS should be applied to all player skills also.

Personally I think it would fix a ton if they reverted back to the old fov angles. I know the new ones were meant to level the playing field with those who had the three-monitor setups — but frankly those players were few, and easy to call out and target and mercilessly kill over and over again once spotted on the map, so they couldn’t abuse their advantage.

Coldtart.4785:

ArchonWing.9480:

Well, okay.

What would ACs be useful for now? I’m trying to figure out what would be considered their intended use.

Same thing it’s good for now; letting us know where the free kills are.

Well, apparently nobody can give a straight answer, so I’ll just leave it at that.

The ‘outmanned’ buff, should include a massive damage reduction on incoming siege damage. For example ACs do 50% less damage to you while you have Outmanned on your bar. The 3-way nature of how outmanned works is an issue for this though.

ScionKai.4907:

The ‘outmanned’ buff, should include a massive damage reduction on incoming siege damage. For example ACs do 50% less damage to you while you have Outmanned on your bar. The 3-way nature of how outmanned works is an issue for this though.

I think that’s a good use for the buff (finally).

If they have a massively outnumbering blob, they can easily just face-nom the gate without feeling much pain from this buff.

ArchonWing.9480:

Well, apparently nobody can give a straight answer, so I’ll just leave it at that.

If you want a better answer to take to your questionably attentive overlords…

Siege is incredibly unsatisfying both to use and to fight against. When large quantities of ACs are used it’s usually unreasonable to try and use rams so you generally have to go right to catas or trebs. That’s when things get double boring(!!!). The vast majority of your players are reduced to nothing more than glorified supply caddies and the few that are manning your siege get to play press 2 to kill tower for a while.

Once it gets to this state there’s essentially no gameplay at all. You just sit around waiting for something to happen; and depressingly often nothing actually happens. You knock down a wall and blow up the ACs then walk up and take the tower without even a finger lifted against you, because the ACs were the only reason anyone was “defending” at all.

To sum up: siege fights suck and are too much pve, not enough pvp.

I did a check today on the changes to the AC. I noticed some significant changes to defensive AC targeting. I put up ACs on the tower’s inner ledge, on the inward protruding horizontal timber, the stair in-cropping, and even the outer ledge. The outer ledge certainly has the most coverage, as it should. The inner ledge ACs had much less. They were still able to hit the area alongside the exterior of the wall, with blind spots only where the ballista barriers are. If you want to hit more stuff, you need to expose yourself to more fire… fair. As for offensive ACs, I also made several on the outer walls. They adhere to the LOS much more restrictively.

I hear a lot of complaints about defensive ACs disproportionately affected. The truth of the matter is, offensive ACs got a huge nerf. Defensive ACs got put back into perspective. I play on a low-pop server and I like my ACs. They are just a speed bump to the map blobs we have to deal with. I am glad that these blobs can’t annihilate the entire courtyard before they even get the door down.

Bishop.6120:

I did a check today on the changes to the AC. I noticed some significant changes to defensive AC targeting. I put up ACs on the tower’s inner ledge, on the inward protruding horizontal timber, the stair in-cropping, and even the outer ledge. The outer ledge certainly has the most coverage, as it should. The inner ledge ACs had much less. They were still able to hit the area alongside the exterior of the wall, with blind spots only where the ballista barriers are. If you want to hit more stuff, you need to expose yourself to more fire… fair. As for offensive ACs, I also made several on the outer walls. They adhere to the LOS much more restrictively.

I hear a lot of complaints about defensive ACs disproportionately affected. The truth of the matter is, offensive ACs got a huge nerf. Defensive ACs got put back into perspective. I play on a low-pop server and I like my ACs. They are just a speed bump to the map blobs we have to deal with. I am glad that these blobs can’t annihilate the entire courtyard before they even get the door down.

Sorry, no. I was using a defensive AC and could not hit anything, even though I could see them. On the other hand, the group assaulting the tower I was in had 3 AC’s, around corners, where they could not see anything and were still hitting all the defensive siege in the tower.

I think Siege (like AC’s and Ballista’s) if you cant see it, you can’t hit it, even with the camera angle ploy.

Warning: Stream of consiousness…
I feel that the question is: “Should one guy be able to stop a zerg?”
…. and if not one guy, how many? The keep or tower is there to make defending easy.

• If the zerg can roll in and cap it with little effort, then that’s a design fail.
• Equally, if there are 60 guys and you can’t cap a tower that’s defended by one guy, that’s also a design fail.
  As you can see, this is an extremely tricky balancing act.

The new invulnerable walls will at least be a fun way to frustrate 60 people for 1 minute.

If 60 player blob you stack in one place one defender should wipe them in seconds. If you 60 player blob is stacked in one place siege should make 600% more damage.

Junkpile.7439:

If 60 player blob you stack in one place one defender should wipe them in seconds. If you 60 player blob is stacked in one place siege should make 600% more damage.

This post exemplifies why siege balance is hard for the average player to think about.

This guy didn’t post the hypothetical situation of a 60-man blob stacked in one place, what would happen if there’s five guys on arrow carts each with 600% more damage? This poster forgot that arrow cart damage stacks. That is in no way balanced.

briggah.7910:

A keep takes a long time to fully upgrade. There should be defensive siege inside them and people using them to protect the upgrades that people payed for. Even towers take a few hours to upgrade. Why should we have less defensive options and make it easier for larger groups to take? A keep shouldn’t be an easy thing to take.

I think this is a faulty line of reasoning. Increasing structures defensiveness and siege power makes of course harder to take it by larger groups. But:
1. It forces you to take even bigger group. This direction promotes even bigger blobbing, since you need tons of supplies and manpower just to break a wall.
2. You profit more from offhours sneaky captures, making server with offhours blob to always win.

Instead of discouraging blobbinng, the direction Anet is heading, just promotes even bigger blobbing and increases match influence by offhours blobs. So thank you, but this is defintely wrong direction. I still hope for some fights in borderlands structures without blobbing, but the current system just forces the opposite.

Xeno.4610:

Instead of discouraging blobbinng, the direction Anet is heading, just promotes even bigger blobbing and increases match influence by offhours blobs. So thank you, but this is defintely wrong direction. I still hope for some fights in borderlands structures without blobbing, but the current system just forces the opposite.

They are aware of this issue (see below). I think it would be wise to see what they change. There should be huge changes coming but not until AFTER HoT is released. We have to wait and see, and I know we can’t trust Anet – We all waited a year-and-a-half after release only to be told they weren’t working on anything balance-wise, but in this instance we’ve been told they ARE working on something. Maybe they’ve already changed their mind and have decided not to, who knows?

Hand in hand with population imbalance is scoring. The current scoring structure allows scores to run away, a problem that is compounded with night capping where it is possible for a team who has recruited players from different time zones to conquer everything in off-hours leading to one side getting ahead while most players are asleep or at work. Comebacks are difficult and it is hard to make up for that lost time that you spend on your real life needs.

you guys need to start fighting one of these AC deffense only servers..
when they have so many AC’s up that u cant even go tru any choke point without losing half your zerg is bullkitten.. dont tell me learn to play, i can run tru with some classes but on class like thief i cant possibly go tru this i cant port tru all circles even if i do max range port and then 2 dodges i still drop dead.. thats what happends when some servers are making like 10/15 AC’s, now they can still do it but atleast they wont be able to spam these 10/15 Ac’s constantly on the door

if u cry about not being able to deffend your stuff without it then obviously ur server doesnt deserve it?
many times my server kitten s a tower/keep but we dont cap it we just want the players to come to PvP or to deffend it..
when whole zerg is hiding behind walls on their ACs not coming out and when u do catch them on open field u see them go up in smoke all waypointing? yes thats amazing im glad they did this nerf..

Coldtart.4785:

ArchonWing.9480:

Well, apparently nobody can give a straight answer, so I’ll just leave it at that.

If you want a better answer to take to your questionably attentive overlords…

Siege is incredibly unsatisfying both to use and to fight against. When large quantities of ACs are used it’s usually unreasonable to try and use rams so you generally have to go right to catas or trebs. That’s when things get double boring(!!!). The vast majority of your players are reduced to nothing more than glorified supply caddies and the few that are manning your siege get to play press 2 to kill tower for a while.

Once it gets to this state there’s essentially no gameplay at all. You just sit around waiting for something to happen; and depressingly often nothing actually happens. You knock down a wall and blow up the ACs then walk up and take the tower without even a finger lifted against you, because the ACs were the only reason anyone was “defending” at all.

To sum up: siege fights suck and are too much pve, not enough pvp.

Yea that actually does sound like a better answer. It does seem arrow carts do have trouble fitting in through how the game mode works.

ArchonWing.9480:

You knock down a wall and blow up the ACs then walk up and take the tower without even a finger lifted against you, because the ACs were the only reason anyone was “defending” at all.

Likely because this was their only chance – we killed 12 Omegas and 15 guys in Lords with 10 the other day, but we couldn’t have done it without cannons. There is some reason behind siege and ACs are pretty weak overall in my opinion. So I don’t really get why you have problems with them.And to be honest; No matter whether you use rams or trebs/catas – that phase of a fight doesn’t become more exciting just because you use different siege.

Edit: We had no ACs up.

Upgrading a keep takes effort and time and should reward the owner of the keep.
And taking it, should take effort and/or time from the attacker as well.
Right now it’s more like this:
run to the front gate,
build 2+ flame rams
if the keep is defended, drop some aoe on the walls, drop waterfields at the gates,
wait for the gates to open.
If a zerg is waiting inside build catapult, and laugh at the AC’s inside
Still not working? build Golem
Also not working? take something else and come back later.

In my opinion (defensive) siege should be balanced around this idea:(if they knock at the gate with 1 flame ram)
Level of the Tower || Number of defender || Number of attacker || time to get in
1———————|| —-——1————-||————5————-|| —-—3Min
2———————||————2————||———-10————-||——-5Min
3———————||————3————||————15————||——7Min

Right now, you can open 90% of the keeps quick and dirty via flame ram.
even if they are defended by some scouts.
Thanks for the design of current keepwalls, it’s verry easy and save to attack someone on the walls, while it’s risky and not that easy to attack someone outside the wall.
I would love it, if it turns out to be a high risk high reward thing to stand next to keep wall/gate. this could be/was achived by the old pre nerf AC.
Since Arrowcarts on walls are also easyly destroyed by Deathshroud#4 and Meteorshower, i would apreciate it, if you get spot’s on each keep wall, dedicated for AC’s which can’t be hit by Meteorshower or deathshroud#4 (maybe a bit strong, need some closer look)
This change would force the attacker to invest more time and supplys for long ranged siege like catapults to attack a defended keep.

This would help both sides a bit. With this changes, it would be worth it to scout/defend a keep. (Right now the best aktion a defender can do is using a siege blocker, since AC’s are to easy to kill from outside)
Defenders are more likely to leave their keep to kill the long ranged Siege, generating more fights between defenders and attackers.
less braindead “head through the door”-aktions