Guild Wars 2

I don’t know about the rest of you guys but I really dislike the layout of the BL and EB maps as well as the design of the defensive siege in tower/keeps. I personally love to defend keeps rather then to attack them but the way WvW is now heavily favors the attacker which makes defense just to hard to do. First I want to talk about the wall defenses.

Cannons, oil, and mortars are all powerful weapons to help defend the castle but the problem is, they are so vulnerable to enemy attack that its nearly impossible to use them to the effect they were meant for. First oil, I’ve been playing this game for a few months and I don’t believe I’ve ever used this to kill anyone. I’ve manage to get a few rams with it but only because the enemy slept and drop the ram before the oil was destroyed. The oil is so vulnerable too that anyone can attack it and make it utterly useless for the defenders other then a 15 second speed bump that the attackers have to destroy. Cannons are also very powerful weapon but these suffer the same fate as oil. Having the gunner and the cannon so expose to fire just makes these things sitting ducks when an attack comes. Mortars are just tough to use since its a long range weapon but you can never see if your hitting or missing due to render distance for infantry. It is quite useful for destroying their siege though so mortars are the only ones I think that isn’t in rough shape. Also they really need to add a repair feature for all wall siege too since a cannon with 1hp is worst then a fully destroyed one. The guards on the walls might as well be nonexistent since half of the time I rarely even see them shoot at the enemy let alone survive more then 5 seconds. Giving more simple cover for the oil/cannons and letting the guards hit the gym again would help tremendous to the defenses for the keeps

Now for the map layouts. I can understand why all 3 boarder lands are the same for balance and memory issues but that map should be extremely well designed if you are going to do this. These maps are just way to cluttered with towers and keeps only a few yards away from each other. This causes the effect of people besieging keeps/towers from other keeps/towers. Some may argue that this adds strategy to WvW but I say it just promotes mass attacking and no defending. A small team can’t defend towers and keeps if they are getting siege from a tower they can’t attack. Ex: If your defending Bay but are getting siege from the garrison, there isn’t anything you can do about it if you don’t have the man power to take that keep.

I’ve heard somewhere that the WvW maps can’t be any larger then what they are due to technical reasons (If this is true I’m not sure but I’ll assume it is) which really questions me why they lay out the map the way it is. The north half of the BL is just empty space with nothing in it other then 1 messily camp. This is roughly 25% of the map that is used for nothing but if you go south of the citadel, you can’t walk two feet without bumping into a tower/keep. This is even worst in EB where you can literally have catapults shooting at each other from tower to tower. Also the lake is the middle of BL is just overly massive for what it is. They really need to manage their space more and spread out these towers/keeps to prevent this tower to tower siege. The jumping puzzles to me just seem like wasted space as well I would rather see more land for actual WvW then have 3-5 jumping puzzles in a place they really shouldn’t be. We would have better luck having WvW dailies that reward blueprints/badges then have the puzzles.

Sorry for the long read. These are just my opinion and I’m just wondering if others are starting to feel the same way?

I have heard talk of them connecting the three borderlands maps together….might be interesting but I doubt it could ever work. I personally don’t really like the bordlerlands maps and people tend to neglect them for EB…which results in all the regulars being in EB and there being a 30+ min queue. I think it might be better if there were no borderlands at all and just 3 different unique EB style maps with different objectives (similar to stonemist castle). Maybe keep 1 borderlands map, EB, and release 2 other fun maps that people would want to play on.

Oil should drop karka hatchling hordes so ranged attack don’t work as well on them.

Defence is already insane if properly positioned, I vote for walls/gates HP to be reduced across the board and for retaliation to affect arrowcarts again.

I agree, They should have oil/cannons on raised platforms out of player range, you should have to use siege to destroy both. Or add alot more health to both so they are actually useful. I gotta say, I have honestly never wasted my time on Oil, I wouldn’t waste supplies building it either.

They really need a coffee shop that sells good cookies somewhere. Four bloody worlds and I can’t find one.

The problem with using a cannon and oil is not that its not useful. It is. What IS stupid is that it is impossible to use it when there are people hitting the cannon. OKAY fine, you should be allowed to hit the cannons and oils, but at least make the user of the cannon or oil not take damage from enemy atks?? As it stand you cant use it without being hit by 50 rangers 20 ele’s with staff 5. It renders wall siege absolutely useless. Until the cannon/oil is destroyed the user should not take damage.

The door is the weak point on towers and keeps you should only need oil above the doors. As for canon they should mainly def the weak point that are the doors. We could have tower with oil and canon all over it but then no one will be able to take these tower and keep. I must say it would be funny to see a tower with canon all over it. An idea to make canon and even oil more use have building packs that you can put on towers and keeps that lets you set up these weapons only on walls and have a very high set number allowed on a tower and keep.

There are more problems with players being too dumb or indifferent to place siege properly and actually use it than there are with the siege itself. Arrow carts and sometimes catas can often be used effectively to protect cannons and other siege, not to mention various player abilities that don’t get used nearly enough. A properly sieged and manned tower can easily defend against 3:1 or more odds.

It’s also part of the game strategy that you actually place siege in one tower/keep to protect a nearby tower/keep. Fireballs from mortars and cows from trebs can make a huge difference if people actually cared about defending.

A massive zerg is going to cap your tower no matter what you do, but I’m pretty sure that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

The oil ground targeting is terrible as well. Even when I manage to jump on the oil during a siege, even if I can tank the aoe damage, it takes several seconds just to align my camera and find the one tiny spot where the circle is green and I can pour. It can only pour in a super small area anyway, why not just put a chain behind the door to operate the oil?

Map redesign is a whole different issue, and much more complex that I wish to discuss right now. Should they be better? Yes. Do I know how to accomplish that? hmmmm……

Taking a keep or a tower should be difficult, its not … at all. Even with a large force bashing on the gate/wall it should take time and strategy … it doesn’t. Oil should one shot players who are not running rams, heals should be timed while oil is on CD. Players running rams should get a buff to reduce oil damage.

Just my opinion on the matter.

I largely agree about defenses. The oil’s radius of “Use” should be larger so that even if the attackers can kill the oil at least we can get in there to pour it without instantly dying to literally 20 different AE fields.

Cannons need to be rethought in general, I think. The ones on towers are almost completely useless. The ones on Keeps and the Castle are mainly only useful in the sense that you can usually find one that’s not in the main field of fire but can still be useful (and sometimes there are cannons on the inner keep wall that can hit the outer doors, which makes them VERY useful…but the outer cannons tend to be useless except for sneakily turning them to shoot inwards after the door breaks down…)

Mortars aren’t too shabby although the ones on towers tend to be useless because they shoot so far away even at minimum power, they usually have nothing to hit.

I do hope they make some pass at these hard-point defenses eventually. It would be nice if towers had something in them that actually helped the handful of defenders. I get more use out of my own single arrow cart than I do out of the cannon, mortar and oil combined. On the bright side, I can usually man the cannons when I want because they’re so bad, nobody else bothers to get on them.

A couple arrow carts or a ballista can kill a treb that is hitting the bay from garrison. If you add counter trebs to the mix there isn’t a treb placement in a structure that can treb another structure that you can’t counter it with an AC, Balli, Cat, or Treb.

The following list assumes that the treb placed in a structure can hit another structure.

-NE tower treb can be trebbed from supply camp area
-NW tower treb can be trebbed from citadel side or north of tower – This is the hardest one to kill IMO. However, you are on higher ground so you can treb this without them being able to hit you with their treb.
-Garrison treb on east side can be countered with a Balli in some spots and AC at others
-Garrison treb on west side can be countered with an AC
-Garrison SW treb can be countered with an AC or Balli
-East keep trebs can be countered with AC or Balli…if treb placed inside keep walls then you will need to counter treb
-SW tower treb can be countered with AC’s
-SE tower treb is pointless if you don’t own the east keep. Either way you can catapult it from the supply camp or treb it from the east keep.
-West keep isn’t an issue with trebs placed there.

I hope this helps you out.

I myself would love to see the BL’s changed to give a slight advantage to the lowest ranked server in the tier. For example, the red team is 3rd place in the tier so give them the biggest advantage for their home BL. Next would be the blue BL with a slight advantage over green’s BL. As for the northern dead space…I would agree that we should lose the jumping puzzle and centaur camp for a couple more structures. Move the garrison to the middle of the map and landfill the lake. This is just a thought but at least it might help under populated servers have a chance since the current system rewards the biggest zerg vs. strategy. Therefore, the most pop coverage seems to win more than not; if not all the time.

Honestly there is a lot of wasted space in WvW. What I put in red could be changed to encourage people to use that space more, I mean all that area for a few skill points, come on. The orange has a little more usefulness but is rarely use tactically. Yellow can/is used but I feel a small change could make it even better. The green area is what I like. Terrain makes it fun to fight on and forces zergs to change tactics.

EDIT: The top orange arrow is more yellow than orange as it is utilized and is a safer route to the North. If there was something to do in the top left map I think it would be a great backdoor route.

As for defenses I am kind of on the fence about. Cannons are so powerful if you can have at least a small force defending the front, especially with the new buffs. I like the cannon placement on South Hills, it can still be hit but has some defense. Oil is mostly a buffer when there is one guy at a keep and a zerg shows up with Golems. It would be nice if it got a little more HP and maybe reduced the damage of the player who is on it by a certain %.

Honestly, I never understand why people a handful of organized people mashing buttons on siege should really stop an attack.

It’s not “fun” and it’s not a “good fight”… it just leads to lots of inaction as well.

Some changes are warranted as now it often feels like there’s no reason to defend at all, but I don’t think ‘buff siege’ is the real answer. I’d think slowing down takes (more better doors.. doors have more absorb against non-siege attacks) and more strategic options for defenders (back/postern doors) would be better.

But still, if you want to defend something against a serious attack, you should be forced to have a game plan other than try to get through the door and mash buttons on siege from relative safety.

boondocksaint.6529:

Honestly there is a lot of wasted space in WvW. What I put in red could be changed to encourage people to use that space more, I mean all that area for a few skill points, come on. The orange has a little more usefulness but is rarely use tactically. Yellow can/is used but I feel a small change could make it even better. The green area is what I like. Terrain makes it fun to fight on and forces zergs to change tactics.

EDIT: The top orange arrow is more yellow than orange as it is utilized and is a safer route to the North. If there was something to do in the top left map I think it would be a great backdoor route.

As for defenses I am kind of on the fence about. Cannons are so powerful if you can have at least a small force defending the front, especially with the new buffs. I like the cannon placement on South Hills, it can still be hit but has some defense. Oil is mostly a buffer when there is one guy at a keep and a zerg shows up with Golems. It would be nice if it got a little more HP and maybe reduced the damage of the player who is on it by a certain %.

WvW is more then just pvp its partly a pve thing and your wasted space are part of that pve. Now if they add in a way to get the Centaurs and Skritt on your side would be fun. It would add in the 2 added help on the BL maps where EB has 3 type of help BUT it may be odd where they go to once you get them on your side. It could be just added mobs at your towers that appear one for the east side and one for the west side.

Jski.6180:

boondocksaint.6529:

Honestly there is a lot of wasted space in WvW. What I put in red could be changed to encourage people to use that space more, I mean all that area for a few skill points, come on. The orange has a little more usefulness but is rarely use tactically. Yellow can/is used but I feel a small change could make it even better. The green area is what I like. Terrain makes it fun to fight on and forces zergs to change tactics.

EDIT: The top orange arrow is more yellow than orange as it is utilized and is a safer route to the North. If there was something to do in the top left map I think it would be a great backdoor route.

As for defenses I am kind of on the fence about. Cannons are so powerful if you can have at least a small force defending the front, especially with the new buffs. I like the cannon placement on South Hills, it can still be hit but has some defense. Oil is mostly a buffer when there is one guy at a keep and a zerg shows up with Golems. It would be nice if it got a little more HP and maybe reduced the damage of the player who is on it by a certain %.

WvW is more then just pvp its partly a pve thing and your wasted space are part of that pve. Now if they add in a way to get the Centaurs and Skritt on your side would be fun. It would add in the 2 added help on the BL maps where EB has 3 type of help BUT it may be odd where they go to once you get them on your side. It could be just added mobs at your towers that appear one for the east side and one for the west side.

We can keep the PvE element in there just fine but the way they do it in WvW isn’t right. Plus almost all events for PvE have zero effect on the WvW for example the veteran wurm just north of the bay keep does nothing. If you kill it, your team gains nothing and if you leave it alone, it doesn’t bother you at all. It just feels like they slap in a few random events to fill in space. Plus you don’t need random events or roaming NPC mobs to say it has PvE elements in it. They just add more annoyance to WvW then fun I say. They need to add in more merc camps and ideas like that that will actually help your team (Not that mercs actually do help you). Those ideas should be added for PvE elements instead of the random pack of moa running around.

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WvW is more then just pvp its partly a pve thing and your wasted space are part of that pve. Now if they add in a way to get the Centaurs and Skritt on your side would be fun. It would add in the 2 added help on the BL maps where EB has 3 type of help BUT it may be odd where they go to once you get them on your side. It could be just added mobs at your towers that appear one for the east side and one for the west side.[/quote]

I understand that and while its debatable that if PvE should be in there in the first place that is another argument. The point is those entire area’s the PvE part plays little to no roll in WvW. Look at the jumping puzzle, JPs can be considered PvE but the reward has WvW items. It gives people a place to brawl and contribute to the team by preventing chest groups or getting siege. Yes it would be better if they were taking camps but at least the JP has some use. The centaur and skritt area are never used. And that is bad for the map.

If they want to keep the PvE part make an event take place up there that allows you to summon skritt or centaur reinforcements. Something 3-5 man teams could do but would not really be worth it for the zerg.

My suggestion is to add an additional upgrade to towers/keeps that would create AoE areas on the walls that grant stability/regeneration/null field. This way you won’t be pulled off walls if you’re the only single defender against a zerg or you’d have a bit of a sporting chance when manning a cannon, rather than getting in one or two hits and then run off to cry to your mommy full of conditions and pain.

Create a tunnel between the Citadel and NE/NW towers. That way trying to pierce the zerg to get into the towers to defend won’t be a lost cause.

I agree with OP that NPC defenders are worthless. Need some serious attention there – they should be wielding superior weapons or something (maybe cause multiple long duration conditions?), because I can stand nekked in the line of fire of an NPC piano wire archer all day with a smile on my face.

Further to keep/tower upgrades – add an upgrade option to add those wooden hirati spikes all around the tower to prevent enemy players getting close enough to range attack and purely rely on siege to destroy defences. Or make it so that player attacks deal zero damage to doors. A group of 20 players and PvD a door to bits faster than a ram can – King Arthur would not be much impressed if 20 bandits could chop away at Camelot’s front doors while calmly communicating to stack and gain might/regeneration.

Make the ledges of tower walls sloped so that rangers can (for the love of Dwayna) shoot back down at rangers shooting up without tiptoeing to the very last rendered pixel…. and then get pulled off by a mesmer with a smirk on his face.

You can put arrow carts on your tower, but eles will hit them down. You can put them further back out of AoE range, but then they will just ram your tower. You build catapults behind the door with arrow carts there too, and arrow carts on the wall out of ele reach, but they will just golem rush you.
The only thing that annoys me is there should be some way to defeat golems quick and easy.

Henrik.7560:

The only thing that annoys me is there should be some way to defeat golems quick and easy.

Another tower/keep upgrade component suggestion I made a long time ago in the suggestions thread: Mine fields only golems can trigger. If one mine can take out 1 golem and they are randomly place around doors then that would at least turn a group of 6 golems into 3 real quick….

Scleameth.6809:

Make the ledges of tower walls sloped so that rangers can (for the love of Dwayna) shoot back down at rangers shooting up without tiptoeing to the very last rendered pixel…. and then get pulled off by a mesmer with a smirk on his face.

They really need to fix this lip problem with the walls as well. Batista are almost useless on walls unless you can build it on top of the lip but making it extremely vulnerable to attack or build it with some sort of high advantage but limits the minimum range it can shoot. LoS is too difficult for defenders to deal with attackers is another issue that defenders have to face along with countless other things. Really hoping the next patch whenever it is will have big changes to how defenses play but not getting my hopes up.