Guild Wars 2

Has anyone noticed that ever since week 2, burning oil has been something that is completely obsolete?

All it currently serves to do is to delay the building of rams for about 20-30 seconds. No one in their right mind would build rams until the oil is gone, or if they do, they obviously don’t WvW enough so don’t treat them as the norm.

I recommend a few changes to make this more interesting.

KEY CHANGES:
1. Make burning oil indestructible OR only destructible by balista/catapults/trebuchet

OPTIONAL:
1. Make burning oil usable by multiple people up to 10. The more people using it, the more damage it does to rams and players standing under the door.

2. Make burning oil use require supplies (it takes oil! makes perfect sense). requires say 30 supplies a shot but creates devastating damage to rams and people.

3. Make burning oil a lot more powerful but increase the cooldown period to much longer.

4. Decrease the damage it does to golems or else golems will no longer be used AND make oil cause golems to malfunction for a 5 seconds after it gets hit by oil. This makes oil a serious threat to golems, but does not make golems completely useless against oil.

Side Notes:
1. Catapult behind gate should really be fixed. Yes I know there are ways to counter and yes maybe its very hard to code and design. But It simply does not make sense! Oil should be the main defense against rams.

2. I think arrow carts should not do so much damage to rams and ram users. Maybe give ram users a sheltered buff to defend against arrow carts, most ramming in real life war is done under a shelter too to defend against arrows. Oil should be the main defense against rams.

Keep siege weapons have lost all their bite. They used to be so much better and now they are basically worthless. The mortar are nice, but the canon/oil are feared by no one.

personally I think seige items attached by the tower/keeps should have defensive buffs on them and the user. Most of this WvWvW is matched up with a previous game known as Dark Age Of Camelot. I am SOOOO glad they took and learned from that game, it was great and this one is greater for it. HOWEVER…

The issue here compaire to there is our walls here are a bit shorter, in daoc only a hand full of ablities could take down wall defenses due to a range factor. To counter this, they could just buff those items or give them a timer buff for defense (IE ability). As it is right now, everyone just AOE’s and takes the users/siege down in no time flat (no seige needed ).

It’s a tough balance for sure, for in the end you don’t want it where it takes a zerg to take a tower or keep. While it would be “more realistic” this is , in the end a fantasy game , so true realism be damed. I say, just give this buff and it would solve some of the wall siege issues. If people use siege against siege, well it’s the same as before, it will go down quickly with or without said buff added.

Tracker

Cannon’s not too bad if you’ve already got people sitting on it. Seen many attacks on the keeps in EB that were foiled just thanks to the cannons. They do, however, go down remarkably quickly under fire, so if that zerg’s been nice and stealthy, then sucks to be you. The only one I’ve seen that actually almost makes some sense is the one on the right (as you look at it) of the south gate of the Hills keep in the borderlands, because most classes can’t actually hit it, so it actually takes a reasonable amount of time to destroy. At the same time, because most classes can’t hit it, it’s also rather unfair on those classes getting pounded by cannon fire with nary a thing that they can do about it.

I do agree that oil is completely redundant though. Any group worth their salt knows to go cannons > oil > ram and that whole process from start to finish can even take less than a couple of minutes with a small group. Or, heck, just ignore the oil entirely and set up a catapult and have something that isn’t vulnerable to the ’pult behind the door trick.

If it weren’t for the potential issue of griefers, I’d almost suggest that oil was entirely replaced with mobile siege. Something like where you buy the upgrade and you get a couple of some sort of weapon you can pick up from the Quartermaster/around the location of one that isn’t usable outside of the walls (maybe even make it so it’s an auto-drop and put back if so) that either you deploy where you want it (possibly with a small supply set-up cost) or is just a portable weapon that does extra damage to siege weapons, particularly rams, but minimal damage to players themselves. Would at least be nicer on the inattentive worlds that don’t leave lookouts and find all of the weapons on the walls are gone by the time they get there, even if I do personally enjoy taking advantage of such inattentiveness.

In terms of the issue of using rams/the problem with catapults behind the door, would it not make sense to just give anyone using a ram Stability? I might be mistaken on the mechanics, but I think that would neatly solve it, without making them overpowered.

@SoulstitchMMO.1396
Yes cannons and oil is useless. Even the brain dead zerg has realised it has to be taken down straight away. Its all gone within a few moments.

Oil is free with the keep so you can’t really complain about it too much. However I do think they should buff up the cannons/mortars. Seriously you have to shell out good coin for those and they are fundamentally worthless.

Jedahs.2713:

4. Decrease the damage it does to golems or else golems will no longer be used AND make oil cause golems to malfunction for a 5 seconds after it gets hit by oil. This makes oil a serious threat to golems, but does not make golems completely useless against oil.

Right, but we got Omega Siege Golems. Standing under a gate to fight is not how war should be if you have the technology for it XD

i do wish certain aspects of keep defenses would remain invulnerable until gates have been broken.

make cannons and oil take 1/10th damage (like doors) until the doors have been destroyed, and then have them despawn once doors are destroyed that they protect. it is easy enough to kill the players manning them, but at least it gives the aspect of a possible defense that can be manned by an outnumbered force.

even though we are mostly on the attacking side being in Ruin, it is only fun for so long just rolling through objectives, the real satisfaction is tearing through a super fortified and heavily defended structure and going through an awesome fight where you end up possibly dying (or dying) multiple times and getting saved in the nick of time by a good teammate.

the best days of WvW were the initial Beta weekends, when everybody was sub 40 (for the most part). there were no OP builds, everything felt…. equal…. and siege could really do some damage.