Defenders are almost extinct because its too time consuming to get around the new map. Look at the desert bl’s and notice something common about them? Both south towers are rarely, if ever, owned by the home team. It’s easier and faster to run to Cursed Shore from LA than it is to run to a south tower from spawn in the new bl’s. This is NOT conducive to active and fun play on defense.
Jayne.9251 hit the bull’s eye with her post above. How does/did Anet WvW devs NOT see this? I wish I could +1,000 that post so they’d see it.
Sich.7103 also nailed it above, as ScionKai.4907 mentions and brilliantly expands on. I think the dev team should have gone to Wales and toured every Edwardian castle there, then duplicated as much of that terrain as possible for WvW borderlands.
Here are my responses to the original questions:
1. How often do you play defence? Always, sometimes, occasionally? Never?!
On Alpine, I always started in home bl and many times never left until I had to log out, or got called to EBG. Always had a lot of action because the terrain was conducive to fighting, and defending our WP’s was a priority. On Desert, I’ll try to recapture what we don’t own if there’s a group big enough to take the keeps, or get a friend or two for smaller objectives. If no one is available and shrines and camps need to be re-taken, I’ll go do that.
2. Which maps do you defend? EB, BL, both?
Mostly home bl, then opponent’s bl for camps and towers. Opponents keeps if we have a full party or more.
3. Briefly, how do you spend your time on each map you play? Do you look after a whole map, small group of objectives, just stay and guard one place?
4. Are you usually solo or part of a team when playing defensively?
Depends on the people I’m running with. I have a friend I’ve played with since Prophecies and we like to see if we can take objectives with just the two of us. Skirmishes are a blast if and when we can find them. We’ve won some 2v5 fights and lost some 2v1 fights. We’ve driven off attackers while defending a structure, which is always a hoot. If some guildies are going to hit an enemy’s BL, we’ll jump in with them and flip as much as we can to draw defenders to the map. It’s difficult to look after the whole map if the enemy is smart. Defending Air and Fire keeps can be difficult unless you have a lot of people, simply because as mentioned above they are not designed well. Rampart, or Earth Keep, is easier to defend. Because of the WP, it’s easier to get people to come defend if needed. Solo defense of the keeps is near impossible because if the attacking group is large enough, by the time you see swords on the objective, run 4 miles to cover a quarter mile as the crow flies to reach the objective, you still have a huge area to search for where the target is getting hit. If no defensive siege had been built previously, by the time you find out where their catas or trebs are located, its too late to build if you’re solo.
