Guild Wars 2

I’ve posted about Borderlands defense before, but I thought I’d pop a few bullet points to explain where I’m coming from. After the tournament, when I realized that nobody was really doing BL defense anymore (there are about 5 of us that are truly dedicated to watching camps and towers and initiating immediate responses if we see swords), I decided to start doing things myself. I am still a bit green to wuvwuv, as this is only my 5th month in playing, just FYI. So, since then, I’ve learned the following:

• In the first week of my defense campaign, it cost me me about 90-100 gold in upgrades and superior siege, siege mainly because it was often not refreshed and I’ll be placing siege at the same points every few hours. At about 20s+ per superior arrow cart as an example, this can get rather expensive.
• Upgrades cost money, and often karma. That increased supply delivery you just had to reorder from the camp you flipped back? 10 silver. Want to upgrade the camps even more? More silver. Oh, and karma this time too. Yep.
• Tower and keep upgrades, even more expensive. We don’t want our towers and keeps to be paper, right? We want waypoints in the keeps, right? Well, that’ll cost ya. A lot, actually. You’ll go through a few gold if you’re the only one that’s ordering upgrades at keeps alone. Unfortunately, many people have learned this, and are often unwilling to order the upgrades themselves, instead asking in map chat if someone can order upgrade X at location Y, and if nobody responds, it doesn’t get ordered.
• Playing defense has downright abysmal rewards. If nobody attacks, you get nothing. There’s no WXP or karma to be had by building siege. Repairs get you a pitiful amount of WXP, and so does building cannons/mortars/oils. Compared to, say, running offense in EBG, it’s peanuts. You also won’t be seeing any kind of income from this, as even when you do successfully repel an enemy attack, unless you managed to kill 20-30 people on your arrow cart, you’re just going to get 200 WXP for a gold rewarded defense, some XP, and some karma, and that’s it.

• Bottom line: defense costs a lot, but there is no measure to reward the people defending to even the costs out so that they don’t go broke. The people out in EBG are gaining ranks like crazy, farming zergs, flipping camps, towers, keeps, SMC, over and over, and the people holding the borderland for them so they can go off and do so get virtually nothing for it. Feature, or bug?

After dumping about 250g since the tournament into defense, I’ve slowed a bit. Is this the conclusion others have arrived at as well? For example, I’ll only build maybe one superior AC on each keep gate, and a gate treb on the most-often attacked gate, because I know at least the trebs will generally be refreshed because they’re giant, have an icon on the map, and people routinely pop in one when they’re running by it because it’s quick and easy. North towers generally get a cata on the gate and maybe one superior AC, and I’ll do my best to keep them upgraded. South towers, forget it. I’ve spent the time and effort warhorning dolyaks into the towers to get them upgraded to T3, but even then, unless response time is super fast and there are enough people to do it, a group of 5 or so can easily breach a fully fortified tower in minutes by activating our favorite overpowered nightmare, Siegerazer. Why was his activation dropped to a flat 5 people as a requirement again? I’ll get to this guy in a minute.

I’m fully aware that this is probably different on many other servers, where people share the cost of upgrades, siege refreshing is commonplace, and there are generally more than 5 people in the BL at all given times to help with doing so as well as responding to attacks. I was actually shocked at first when I called some people over from EBG to help defend Hills, when one guy asked in map chat where Hills was because he’d never been to a BL. A bit of a learning experience for me, there: some people only do EBG, and have no idea what siege refreshing is, or in this case, where some things are even located in borderlands.

Back to Siegerazer. This guy can be a great utility if you’re trying to come from behind, so I’m glad he exists. On the other hand, if a pug militia or guild group decides to go on a raid run in your borderlands, and their server is already ahead of you by 70k, is this really what ANet intended? My thoughts and proposals on Siegerazer:

• Increase the number of people required to activate him if their server is ahead of the server’s borderlands they’re currently attacking by a certain percentage of points. I’m not sure of how to formulate the logistics for this, as early in the match percentages could just be a few hundred points instead of 5k or 10k or 50k, etc, but at least make it harder for someone who’s already winning to win even more easily.
• Make it so the guy isn’t so unbelievably strong. A group of 5 will have trouble against him, and even then he’s going to take a good few minutes to kill — that’s if he’s alone. If he’s not, people will hide in his buff radius and not only is taking Razer down almost a non-option, it’s insanely hard to kill these people. Since it only takes 5 to activate, it shouldn’t take 5 so long to shut him down. I’ve found that the best recourse is often to kill his elder yak, and then just let him sit there so he doesn’t reset and thus be reactivated again so quickly (this is actually funny, because he will literally just stand there doing nothing after the yak is dead except roar at the gate. At least that doesn’t do any damage).
• If the server attempting to activate Siegerazer is already ahead by an extremely wide margin, don’t allow him to be activated at all. Again, it shouldn’t make the winners able to win even more easily.

Finally, the question: do you bother? If so, why? What’s BL defense like on your server? Do you find it enjoyable or tiresome/tedious (the hurry up and wait mentality, in a sense)? For me, it seems that when an attack occurs, it ends up being more fruitful to speed-build a couple arrow carts when needed to drive enemies away, and often it works out pretty well. The same goes with speed-building a balli if someone’s cracking into a cata wall, or on the top of Battle’s Hollow if they’re trebbing bay from SW tower, etc. I’m truly interested in others’ thoughts on this.

Some places are easy to defend with little people. Some places aren’t so easy to do…

I personally don’t order upgrades in the southern towers due the enemy being able to call Siegeraper all they want. Why should I bother upgrading the hell of that tower if 5 people can come with the nearly unkillable NPC that can solo the tower if you open it for him? You can say “Oh just kill his siege and leave him there”. Yeah, but you’ll have to baby sit the tower for the rest of your life, or at some period a dude will see Siegerazer standing there and will say “oh let me open this tower for you” and there, you lost it. I personally opened towers for siegerazer many times while no one was watching it thinking it was safe (Siegerazer keep popping swords on the tower, so you can’t really tell if there is a attack unless you go check).

Keeps are rather expensive as you said. Rule of thumb: Fortify is not worth it. I never ever will order fortify. Same goes for Tier 3 personal upgrades. So, If you see a ET keep that is WP’ed, T2, and 1150 supply depot, it problably was me upgrading it and I wont go past over this point.
Now some keeps area real pain in the kitten to defend if you have few people. The worst of them is Bay. I do not dare to touch bay upgrades. It’s the easiest keep to take since it can be trebbed from anywhere in Tyria. At best I order cannons to troll people that place rams on inner. But upgrading bay for me is a big no.
The only keeps I really go on in upgrading like I stated are Hills and the EB keep (Garrison still viable, but it has so many gates that make it somewhat siege intensive, so I usually don’t bother too much with it).
Inner Hills can be pretty much held by 2 people if you have a treb for each gate and a AC for each breakable wall, so I know that I can hold an attack there without much help, thus maintaining the money spent.
EB is kinda self explanatory. Since its the only map where there is constant action in lower tiers, it’s the only map where you can expect to have people around to help you maintain the keep.

I think the actual system is not the best but not the worst. I think it could be better if the towers, keeps upgrade, downgrade automaticly if you flip camps or players upgrade it manualy by building them

Would be nice to have some of the towers redesigned so we can actually defend them. It’s very frustrating when ppl can aoe you on every spot on the wall.

Defense is dead; why even bother.

With the inclusion of eotm many players are within reach of the gold rank now and if/when they enter into real WvW they will be incredibly difficult to kill even with Sup AC’s. Defense cost gold and as has been said the southern towers in the BL are not even worth the silver to upgrade to even the lowest tiers thanks to commander “can’t kill me without a zerg”.

Keeps are even seeing the same treatment now, and even in T1 I am finding it more and more difficult to find a +5 before reset night. Due IMO to the cap and leave attitude that has flowed over to WvW from Eotm.

The only solution I can see for the future is a drastic change to the way defense rewards the players, and thanks to the bots, I believe this day will sadly never come.

I bother.

unless it’s patch day and my server decides to take a hiatus.
like yesterday. Patch hit and our PPT dropped by 300 within the tick. I spent the rest of my afternoon just trying to hold down the borderlands which was literally impossible with our 5-10 vs 30.

Assuming that everyone could carry 20 supply (which is a kittenumption) it’s STILL impossible to defend a keep like bay, as Jeknar pointed out. In this context, as soon as you commit to defensive siege on a gate, the enemy knows that there are only so many of you, so they simply switch gates. Your team of 10 can only carry 200 supply at maximum, which is 4 super arrow carts. You built two which are useless at the other gate, and you need all 4 of them focused firing in a choke point to stop them in this context. (Dont even suggest regular AC. That kitten hits like a wet noodle)

I wouldn’t seek to blame EoTM for the problems we all have defending borderlands. and people dont kittening share the cost of upgrading. It’s the same 5-10 people who upgrade everything every week. The same people who run yaks, upgrade their siege from regular to superiors every week, and the same people who do the callouts in TS3.

WvW is steadily bleeding players out as they get frustrated with stagnation.

• SIDE NOTE***

ANET WHY THE KITTEN IS YOUR ALGORITHM turning the word as-sumption) into a freaking kitten@!? That’s not even a curse word brahs. just a regular word which happens to include the letters A followed immediately by two S

250 G? Where you get that kind of cash?

I only play WvW and I can’t afford to upgrade. Up until the other day I still had some green trinkets on one of my toons lol.

I do make superior siege and donate it to the commanders and server guild stash.

I don’t bother any more. I’ve been absolutely flat broke since I made my one and only legendary, and I’m trying to rebuild my supply of mats. I’ll drop some siege in my favorite towers on reset night but otherwise I’m barely playing real WvW these days.

EoTM is far more profitable.

It’s pointless to upgrade unless you have a response team to defend it until it’s done. The t3 ugprades (wp) is very strategic for the map. you can defend more with less once you have WP’s. If you notice, servers that can endure the rebuild of their WPs everytime they are wiped are more durable. A server needs the right balance for fight guilds and ppt guilds. The moment when your best field guilds decide they are fights only and disregard to home BL, is usually the tip of the downfall of a server. Once the PPT goes down, these guilds will usually transition off to another server that has the PPTers to carry them and people to upgrade continually. upgraders during strong time zone are unheralded but highly coveted for a server as long as their is a guild to back them up while they manage the lines.

Johje Holan.4607:

250 G? Where you get that kind of cash?

I only play WvW and I can’t afford to upgrade. Up until the other day I still had some green trinkets on one of my toons lol.

I do make superior siege and donate it to the commanders and server guild stash.

I do regular AC runs (all paths) every day. CoF1 and HotW1 every day. Sometimes all of CoE (those charged cores/lodestones add up). I sell a bolt of damask and deldrimor steel ingot every day. I turn karma into gold. I invest in new skins when they come out and sell them months later when they are worth 10x what I bought them for. During the festival, I spent so much time gold blitzing in the Crown Pavilion I ended up with 670 gold chests (that’s 6700 lvl80 t6 champ bags). And plenty of other methods I’ve learned after PvEing for a long time. There are a lot of different ways to make cash without spending too much time in PvE, which for me, has gotten less and less lately (meaning less income, and being unable to make back what I’ve been spending, hence my defense slowdown).

For the IoJ and CD people who posted, I’m on HoD. If there’s a superior AC raining down helpless fire on your 2 or 3 omegas, there may be an annoying sylvari with an eyepatch wearing silver and blue armor manning it. If you put down rams on south bay or hills, the treb blowing them up from the other side is likely mine. When your trebs hit from SW tower, I’m amongst a few others who try to sneak to the top of battle’s hollow to speed-build a balli to try and take it out. I’m the idiot who pops endure pain and defiant stance then bull’s rushes into the ring and hits take root while you’re capping just to prevent it for a few more seconds before I suicide. When you guys decide to raid, you sure as hell don’t hold back, I’ll give you that.

Hi.

I know exactly where Ark is coming. Upgrading a keep to full T3 takes money that you cannot recoup easily in WvW, especially a keep on your own BL. If you have the time to upgrade that means there is no sustained pressure on your BL during that time period, thus you put out the money for upgrades but occasional camp recaps do not give you an equal return on investment. During a period of heavy pressure you do not have time to run upgrades other then drop in some siege.

Many times I have logged out with the BL full T3 only to log back in after sleeping to find it papered. All that coin invested is gone with no hope of return as you have to start spending all over again. The current design of WvW gives full advantage to the attacking force with the design of the Keeps, the ability to take out siege from the base of the wall easier then the defenders can take you out and the easy access to omega golems.

Which brings us to BL defense. Of the 4 maps, the home BL requires the most responsibility to upgrade and defend. On an enemy BL the responsibility is not as great as it is expected for the enemy to recapture their towers and keeps. In Ebg you are essentially responsible for your triangle, the rest is no more then a karma train. Because of these varying levels of responsibility you will see Commanders say to hell with the BL and go to an enemy BL or to EBG. The reward for effort is greater for the attacking force which is why EotM is so popular.

Given that I had proposed awhile back a taxation system. The more you upgrade your towers/keeps/camps in your BL the more “taxes” the local populace pays for the protection you give them. Those taxes are paid in the form of credits at the Quartermaster for future upgrades and are banked even if the structure you upgrade gets swarmed and flipped. That would give you the credits to begin the upgrade process all over again once the structure is back in your hands. Since this works for the home BL only (enemy peasants are not going to pay you taxes willingly) it gives the home BL defense team an advantage.

hiatus … plahh, you just missed the fun

Before I begin I’d like to state that I’m not accusing you or trying to put you down in any way;

Don’t put effort in to something you’re not willing to lose. As someone who has spent hours upon hours doing tower/camp/keep maintenance, scouting, solo roaming, killing yaks and harassing enemy camps, I can say from experience that it’s a thankless job. If I put hours in to upgrading a tower from wooden to fully fortified with siege and it flips 5 minutes after it finishes it’s final upgrade I’d be lying if I said it’s not discouraging. But I do it because I enjoy being a part of the backbone that holds my server together. You will rarely get a thanks, not everyone will know your name and it’s kitten the wallet… Really there aren’t a lot of benefits but I still enjoy it more than mindless zerging all day. That, and the people that do appreciate it appreciate it enough that they will send you donations or thank you personally which to me means a lot.
There are times where I won’t bother with scouting or defense such as when towers/keeps etc. are flipping before they can get 5 yaks to them or when we’re clearly outnumbered (this week on Jade Quarry, but no complaints because it’d be boring if numbers were always even or one server was always winning) but I don’t ever really “slow down.” I’d just say know when to take a break from being defender and merge with the zerg for a while or go do something else. I usually shout in /map that I’ll be leaving my post and that it’d be great if someone could take my spot for a while. If any one ever blames you for not being there when something is attacked to call it out, don’t take it personally. The game isn’t a job and shouldn’t be treated as one, so just enjoy and know when to either take a break from the game or when to do something that requires less effort (zerging.)

/Salute
To all the scouts out there; you’re not wanted, you’re needed! Keep it up ^^

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Before I begin I’d like to state that I’m not accusing you or trying to put you down in any way;

Don’t put effort in to something you’re not willing to lose. As someone who has spent hours upon hours doing tower/camp/keep maintenance, scouting, solo roaming, killing yaks and harassing enemy camps, I can say from experience that it’s a thankless job. If I put hours in to upgrading a tower from wooden to fully fortified with siege and it flips 5 minutes after it finishes it’s final upgrade I’d be lying if I said it’s not discouraging. But I do it because I enjoy being a part of the backbone that holds my server together. You will rarely get a thanks, not everyone will know your name and it’s kitten the wallet… Really there aren’t a lot of benefits but I still enjoy it more than mindless zerging all day. That, and the people that do appreciate it appreciate it enough that they will send you donations or thank you personally which to me means a lot.
There are times where I won’t bother with scouting or defense such as when towers/keeps etc. are flipping before they can get 5 yaks to them or when we’re clearly outnumbered (this week on Jade Quarry, but no complaints because it’d be boring if numbers were always even or one server was always winning) but I don’t ever really “slow down.” I’d just say know when to take a break from being defender and merge with the zerg for a while or go do something else. I usually shout in /map that I’ll be leaving my post and that it’d be great if someone could take my spot for a while. If any one ever blames you for not being there when something is attacked to call it out, don’t take it personally. The game isn’t a job and shouldn’t be treated as one, so just enjoy and know when to either take a break from the game or when to do something that requires less effort (zerging.)

/Salute
To all the scouts out there; you’re not wanted, you’re needed! Keep it up ^^

I think that you may have missed it, but by your description, that is indeed “slowing down.” Since we both know that eventually the gold has to run out for upgrades and siege, doing it less often, taking breaks for PvE or zerg running/busting, etc, is slowing down. I also agree with everything you said.

How much time and coin I put into the home borderland depends on how the match is going and what time of day it is. A list of a bunch of factors and thoughts:

• If we are winning or close to winning, and holding keeps for 1+ days, I’ll keep upgrading them. It’s nice to have waypoints for no other reason than to hunt down PvCampers and move to other roaming action.

• If keeps are not being held for 1+ days, or there’s a huge coverage gap where the whole map gets papered, I only try to build waypoints for NA primetime and don’t do fortify or the minor upgrades.

• If we are being rolled over and no effort is being put into defense, I don’t spend anything.

• Usually only pre-place regular siege (namely gate trebs) during NA prime time, and only put it near waypoints and the paths out keeps where players might see it. Off hours I only pre-place siege when a guild that is known to try ninja keeping is on the map.

• Only throw sup siege on reset night, or when an attack is underway and there’s no choice but to siege hump.

• Only order oil pots and cannons on the north towers if I’m on the map and will run to the tower to actually use them.

• Only order oil pots on the south towers because they cost so little and it’s sometimes mildly amusing with mastery. The 5 player siegy being launched so often now though has made it faster for small groups to recap rather than spend any time trying to defend the towers though. Fights with players when siegy is active are always a messy affair too.

BL defense is what it is. You don’t have to go to the extreme and have keeps siege capped with people working in shifts around the clock to scout. On the other end of the spectrum, it sucks when the whole map is regularly a paper k-train playground. A few players that use the live map to intelligently play the havoc and anti-havoc game can have fun while upgrading things, and alert guilds looking for larger fights when they happen. Usually the best borderland roaming happens in the camp game or small fights over towers.

It would be nice to have some sort of material reward for doing this rather than losing gold for playing the game, but it seems anet has completely given up on rewarding players for anything other than LW content or mindlessly zerg farming something.

I am still one of those carebears around to throw upgrades around and siege stuff. I dont do anything else with my mats then building superior siege with it and all the money i get in WvW, stays in WvW.