Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playin GW2 for only a few months now and just started WvW….so forgive me if my questions seem obvious to some of you.

When defending battlements on a tower, I often see that attackers create red circles on the battlements from below (mesmer condition AOE?) that encompass the entire front tower battlements.

As an attacker from below, where do you target to create that effect?

Are you placing your targeting reticle at the base of the tower or high up on the wall, with the center of the targeting reticle at the top of the tower wall?

It often seems like almost an entire red circle appears on top of the battlements, not only half of a circle, so it seems to me that placing the targeting reticle at the top of the tower wall would only result in half of the circle appearing on the battlements.

Also, are those red circles only mesmer AOE? For example, I’ve never experienced an elementalist meteor shower on me while on the battlements, so is that deep targeting unique to certain classes?

Similarly, when I have used my elementalist (staff) or warrior (long bow) as attackers against towers, I can easily target defenders who get close to the edge of the battlements (line of sight), but I’m not certain that elementalists or warriors have the ability to target deeper onto the battlements themselves (to try to take out defenders, arrow carts, etc. that are set back from the edge). If so, which skills/traits are useful for elementalists and warriors to use in seige for the purpose of attacking deeper onto the top of the battlements themselves?

Similarly, when defending, other than using arrow carts set back from the battlement’s edge, what should an elementalist or warrior do while defending a zerg? To get near the edge of a tower is often suicidal due to the red rings of death or moving into line of sight of attackers, but I find my defending options (particularly as a longbow warrior) fairly limited due to my also not having line of sight to most of the attackers near the gate.

I’d appreciate any insight you guys have!

I’d guess what you’re seeing is AOEs that don’t require line of sight to cast.

The Elementalist’s Dragon’s Tooth is a particularly annoying example.

Ok, ill go through the parts of your question one at a time:

When attacking a tower, you press your aoe ability, and aim the center of the circle (the mouse) near the very lip of the wall. This gets you ~50% of the aoe over the edge and able to hit enemies on it. Some abilities also do not require LoS to cast, as Haze said, for example the reflection dome thingy mesmers can cast. If you have an ability like this, you just need to target an enemy up there.

The deep targeting as you put it results from either the non-LoS abilties, or large aoe circle abilities. These can include rangers longbow 5, or elementalist meteor shower, both of which have larger than usual aoe circles. This means that even with only 50% of the aoe circle hitting on the wall, its going a lot further back than other aoes might.

As a warrior, you’re pretty limited in targeting far back on the wall. Longbow 3 and f1 are your only aoes, and you have no non-LoS abilities. If you’re taking the longbow for just this reason, you’re probably better off taking hammer or something and stopping enemies from getting in the entrance portal. Warrior ranged doesnt do too well firing up at walls. As an elementalist, having staff and the larger-aoe-circles trait will help here, allowing you to hit far back. If Haze is correct and dragons tooth can hit without LoS, a scepter might be useful too (scepter and focus would work well, as air focus 4 is really useful if you’re taking fire below walls).

Defending walls against large numbers of enemies is just as you said, almost suicide. Stand too close, you get pulled down and ganked. Stay just far enough back but for too long and you’re downed inside a sea of aoes. As a warrior or staff ele, try to get your aoes off (like warrior longbow 3, lots of elementalist staff abilities i.e. fire 2) that dont require a channel, and duck back behind cover. Other than that, get on some siege, its more effective that you can ever be.

Hope this answers all of your questions.

You can put siege (eg arrow cart) on the inner lip of a battlement, at a corner point. It’s very hard/impossible for attackers to hit it when it’s well placed, but you can still hit them. A well placed cart can hold a fort against a medium sized group for quite a while – easily long enough for you to call in the cavalry zerg to scatter them.

Hope this helps.

Thanks, that’s helpful.

Following up on jamesigall’s comment above:

“When attacking a tower, you press your aoe ability, and aim the center of the circle (the mouse) near the very lip of the wall. This gets you ~50% of the aoe over the edge and able to hit enemies on it.”

Wouldn’t that mean that as a defender, I would only see semi-circles on the battlements? I’ll look more closely tonight, but my impression was that the circles were full circles or almost full circles, which really confused me as to how one might target to accomplish that.

The circles were definitely not the larger diameter that elementalists use (with blasting staff trait upgrade) and they primarily put conditions on me, not only dd. I’ll have to pay closer attention to see which conditions.

Any mesmers out there have any idea how you target the top of battlements for maximum effect?

Or perhaps the circles are even ranger/necro or other classes AOE…I see tons of red circles on the ground during zerg battles and, other than the mesmer domes, I haven’t figured out how to tell one red circle from another or predict what conditions/damage the circles will cause.

BARFn.2841:

Thanks, that’s helpful.

Following up on jamesigall’s comment above:

“When attacking a tower, you press your aoe ability, and aim the center of the circle (the mouse) near the very lip of the wall. This gets you ~50% of the aoe over the edge and able to hit enemies on it.”

Wouldn’t that mean that as a defender, I would only see semi-circles on the battlements? I’ll look more closely tonight, but my impression was that the circles were full circles or almost full circles, which really confused me as to how one might target to accomplish that.

The circles were definitely not the larger diameter that elementalists use (with blasting staff trait upgrade) and they primarily put conditions on me, not only dd. I’ll have to pay closer attention to see which conditions.

Any mesmers out there have any idea how you target the top of battlements for maximum effect?

Or perhaps the circles are even ranger/necro or other classes AOE…I see tons of red circles on the ground during zerg battles and, other than the mesmer domes, I haven’t figured out how to tell one red circle from another or predict what conditions/damage the circles will cause.

The only real direct damage AOE a Mesmer has is Chaos Storm. They could put a Feedback or NullField up there but that would only cause Confusion for conditions, if traited in Glamour.

Was it Necromancer marks? Did they have green icons in the middle of the circles? Was there an arrow cart outside, did you get bleeds and cripple? Otherwise most likely an Ele or Ranger.