Guild Wars 2

It takes 20 Yaks to get a camp to secured, which only adds caravan guards but doesn’t make it any harder to cap. This is ~15-20 minutes for an undisturbed camp. It takes 60 total Yaks to reach reinforced, or ~45-60 minutes. At this point, the camp is slightly harder to take for some classes but still a piece of cake for anything with AoE (anything not a thief, that is). Finally, at 140 total Yaks, or ~135-180 minutes, the camp gains a patrol which might possibly aggro someone killing the Supervisor.

I don’t want them to be so strong that they’re impossible to solo (roaming is life!), but I do wish that they could hold out a bit so that there’s time to respond if I’m in the area.

To that end, I propose a few changes:

ALL TIERS

- Increase aggro and leash range or institute a call for help functionality so that no camp guards fail to notice the screams of the dying supervisor. This should make the difficulty more reliable. Doesn’t matter how strong the guards are if they don’t actually guard.

- Give guards limited condi clear. Since condi seems like it’s here to stay, the guards should have a predictable method of clearing it. It wouldn’t be too tough to play around but might make them melt a little slower.

TIER 1 (Secured)+

- Add Ranger guards. It’s a little embarrassing how easy it is to clump the guards up and nuke them to oblivion. Conversely, they can be kited super easily. A few hard-hitting pew-pew bots would help diversify camp taking—though they should be frail and easily killed if focused.

TIER 2 (Reinforced)+

- No additional changes if Rangers are added at tier 1.

TIER 3 (Fortified)
- Add Elementalist guards. Nothing says fortified like AoE. As with the rangers, they would be glass cannons with a focus on damage rather than CC (there’s enough CC already in the camps). If picked off early, they wouldn’t pose a problem, but they would punish mindlessly running into the middle of the camp and spamming AoEs.

Ideally, this would make guarding a camp actually worthwhile. It’s currently pretty soul-crushing to get a camp to fortified and then lose it in 45 seconds to a Reaper.

tl;dr
Keep base camps just about the same. Make upgraded camps take longer to cap without increasing kill pressure by adding high damage targets that should be picked off before engaging the whole camp.

More PvE in WvW? I get what you are saying but I think a better option is to have players attacking a camp light up on the mini-map like they do near a sentry. Players should be defending the camps but almost nobody is going to sit in one to do that.

Sviel.7493:

It takes 20 Yaks to get a camp to secured, which only adds caravan guards but doesn’t make it any harder to cap. This is ~15-20 minutes for an undisturbed camp. It takes 60 total Yaks to reach reinforced, or ~45-60 minutes. At this point, the camp is slightly harder to take for some classes but still a piece of cake for anything with AoE (anything not a thief, that is). Finally, at 140 total Yaks, or ~135-180 minutes, the camp gains a patrol which might possibly aggro someone killing the Supervisor.
…
~sip~

That would effectively make camps more zerg friendly and I’d hate to have small fights around a camp like that. Instead of buffing NPC babysitters, perhaps the focus should be getting the maps to be alive with player activity again.

i kill guards just as fast with power as with condi. adding clears would only annoy me.

thanks power creep.

Sviel.7493:

At this point, the camp is slightly harder to take for some classes but still a piece of cake for anything with AoE (anything not a thief, that is).

I like it like it is actually. New 300 camps are slightly easier (5% maybe) to take than the old 250er. We still have a power creep and until that is adressed/fixed I would leave it like it is.

ETA: I’m still running more or less my old build (long story but I’ve run this exact build in June and am running it now – so I can tell that the difference between fully upgraded camps is marginal).

Straegen.2938:

More PvE in WvW? I get what you are saying but I think a better option is to have players attacking a camp light up on the mini-map like they do near a sentry. Players should be defending the camps but almost nobody is going to sit in one to do that.

Even if players lit up in the camp, it would still flip before anyone could make it there. Additionally, the 30 second grace period on swords allows a group that moves undetected to clear a camp before a response, which is not something I want to get rid of. The goal is to slow down 1-2 man teams so that taking a camp is something that more often involves several players—in essence, I want more PvP in my WvW.

gennyt.3428

That would effectively make camps more zerg friendly and I’d hate to have small fights around a camp like that. Instead of buffing NPC babysitters, perhaps the focus should be getting the maps to be alive with player activity again.

A zerg wouldn’t notice a difference. A solo player would need to invest more time, but shouldn’t have a spike in difficulty. As for fighting around a camp…it should be a bad idea to take on enemies in the middle of a guarded objective.

Jana.6831

I like it like it is actually. New 300 camps are slightly easier (5% maybe) to take than the old 250er. We still have a power creep and until that is adressed/fixed I would leave it like it is.

ETA: I’m still running more or less my old build (long story but I’ve run this exact build in June and am running it now – so I can tell that the difference between fully upgraded camps is marginal).

The new camps take much longer to upgrade than the old camps and require more work as one has to guard the camp as well as the yaks leaving it. Also, if the objective it feeds to flips, the camp no longer makes progress. Thus, shouldn’t they be harder to take?

Additionally, even before HoT, camps were too trivial to solo. Just like towers/keeps get take longer to flip as they are guarded, so should camps.

Sviel.7493:

Even if players lit up in the camp, it would still flip before anyone could make it there. Additionally, the 30 second grace period on swords allows a group that moves undetected to clear a camp before a response, which is not something I want to get rid of. The goal is to slow down 1-2 man teams so that taking a camp is something that more often involves several players—in essence, I want more PvP in my WvW.

If the flip is too fast, double the circle time. Making the PvE NPCs tougher doesn’t encourage more player fighting. I get a lot more fights at sentries after the HoT change because players know I am there and the same or fewer at camps.

I would add that most of the time players don’t care to defend a camp since they get very little for it. Flipping a camp is far more WvW points. The number of times I have called for backup at a camp and not seen a soul only to see 5+ moments later to flip the camp after the timer expires is crazy high.

Sviel.7493:

The new camps take much longer to upgrade than the old camps and require more work as one has to guard the camp as well as the yaks leaving it. Also, if the objective it feeds to flips, the camp no longer makes progress. Thus, shouldn’t they be harder to take?

Additionally, even before HoT, camps were too trivial to solo. Just like towers/keeps get take longer to flip as they are guarded, so should camps.

I don’t stand around in camps but since when has a player to be in it for it to upgrade – that would be new to me.
I don’t think you have a point actually, sorry. I’ve flipped somewhere around 10k camps and maybe 100 of them were 250 – the rest was either 100 or 150 when me and my fellow enemy roamers trolled each other by ordering additional guards.

I think solo roamers still should have a chance to flip camps, HoT made their lives bad enough, if you want to keep your camps guard them; it still takes me ~5 mins to flip a 300 camp but no one comes to defend – tough luck.

yep, can make camps more important, prolong the cap time instead. But buffin guards, no thanks.

sirloin.9145:

yep, can make camps more important, prolong the cap time instead. But buffin guards, no thanks.

I think it already is increased – I have an old video and can check the time.
If it takes much longer you’ll have the problem that the guards will respawn – and with that an endless flow of guards and you are pretty unable to flip said camp alone.

ETA: No, it’s the same ~28 seconds for one player in the circle – gets a bit less with additional players.

The change to have yaks be required again for upgrading structures was a good change. People actually defend camps more now.

The issue at hand is the distance required to travel to the camp to defend it.

Pretty much the major camp fights in desert BL are for north camp on the odd occasion a team decides to attack a garrison (earth keep) by trebbing it from north camp.

Remember in alpine borderlands, taking northwest/northeast camp actually meant more than it does now ; enemies taking northern towers put your garrison in danger.

Infusion.7149:

The issue at hand is the distance required to travel to the camp to defend it.

oh how i long for the days when the only camp i could not contest was south camp.

nowadays the next 2 camps flip by the time i can walk to even the south towers. and all 3 keeps are my servers! sadface.

The 300 camps are extremely easy compared to the old 200/250 camps. The biggest reason for me was how the guardian-type guards were able to apply retal to each other, which was a bit harder to deal with. Now, I find that guards just melt easily.

I can solo a camp with ease, with power or condi build.

There are cases where you can pull the vet supervisor and cap the camp without killing any guards.

So yeah, soloing camps is marginally easier.

@Straegen
Since Yaks now give +3 points on arrival, camps are worth more than walled objectives in terms of PPT. If you own what they feed to, the corner camps are each worth ~38 PPT and North Camp is worth ~50 PPT. That doesn’t even consider their necessity for upgrades and usefulness in tracking enemy movements.

Doubling the circle time would work but I was hoping to make it more interesting than forcing players to stand and do nothing for longer. Additionally, I didn’t want to make them take longer to cap for large groups as response time is a moot point in that case.

@Jana
They’re more work because guarding the yaks and the camp is much harder. They also take more time no matter how you go about it. All in all, the effort investment is higher than when you could just run by and click a few buttons.

I don’t see why you bring up how many camps you’ve flipped. I’m not saying they should be easier to upgrade, just that the point of the upgrades (better defenses) is currently ineffective. In essence, defenders get nothing for guarding a camp—it doesn’t take much longer to flip at all.

Note, I do not want to make them more difficult to take, I just want them to take longer. Any solo roamer that can currently cap a camp should still be able to cap it after these changes. They’d just have to pick off the rangers/eles first.

Currently, even a trash ele can flip a camp in ~40 seconds. That’s less than 10 seconds of warning time. It’s pathetic.

@Infusion
Given the longer travel times, it would make sense that defenders had more warning.

redzerofighter.2381:

The 300 camps are extremely easy compared to the old 200/250 camps. The biggest reason for me was how the guardian-type guards were able to apply retal to each other, which was a bit harder to deal with. Now, I find that guards just melt easily.

I can solo a camp with ease, with power or condi build.

There are cases where you can pull the vet supervisor and cap the camp without killing any guards.

So yeah, soloing camps is marginally easier.

There’s a difference between BLs and EB – the camps on the Bls are easier but only because the guards are placed that far apart that you lose aggro really quickly – and they are that far away from the circle that you can just stand there while the ring is up.
Anyway: The camps on EB have stayed the same – 250 and 300 are the same.

Sviel.7493:

@Jana
They’re more work because guarding the yaks and the camp is much harder. They also take more time no matter how you go about it. All in all, the effort investment is higher than when you could just run by and click a few buttons.

Sorry, I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Sviel.7493:

I don’t see why you bring up how many camps you’ve flipped.

To make the point that no one ever had that many 250 camps as you make it out to be – 250 camps were really rare because they took a lot of silver and effort to get there – so by now claiming that every camp should become and stay a 250 you’re actually trying to “change history”

Sviel.7493:

I’m not saying they should be easier to upgrade, just that the point of the upgrades (better defenses) is currently ineffective.

The defenses of the camps are 1:1 the same like they have been a year ago (except on the new BLs) – the thing that changed is the massive power creep in game. And since there’s no balance right now it’s hard to tell who will be able to flip said camp in x,y,z time once classes are being toned down – I would wait for that before implementing yet another change that will be bugged for at least 2 months. I have been one of the few who was able to solo 250 camps back in the day, so assuming that everybody could always and will always be able – is short sighted.

ETA: You sound a bit as if you started to play with HoT and don’t know how things have been back in the day, in that case, sorry, in every other case: upgrading stuff has always been hard work – and it was harder when all upgrades relied on supply. Because yak dead = no supply = no upgrade – the very same like now – only that you don’t have to wait in a camp or tower for enough supply to come in so you can start the next upgrade and hey the supply in camps and towers/keeps doesn’t disappear with the upgrade, another big plus.

Camps should upgrade faster and/or the upgrades they receive should be changed to fit the current game. Dolyak guards are pretty wortheless considering that all dolyaks are moving so fast that pve elements can’t really hurt them. Sentries don’t cripple or materr to dolyaks either now….the only point of dolyak guards is on the offchance they help you with killing another player (pvp).

In terms of camp defenses, anything except fortified camps is a cakewalk for solo players. Fortified camps can take more than a single encounter when they have mercs and/or another players defending them. But that’s the only real difference between fortified and any other level of camp. It would make sense that they do more damage or take longer to knab when fortified. let’s be honest here, if a camp is fortified it means that the towers next to it are likely fortified as well. In which case they don’t serve any purpose except for giving players that visit them supply.

If you think stronger camps means more pve you really need to learn how to play properly. Camps upgrade and become stronger currently just for the sake of keeping newer players from capping them over and over. Vet players will know how to cap all the current camp types just as fast even if the guards are changed and made twice as strong. Camp upgrades exist to hinder new and less skilled players. By making them stronger you are simply raising the bar that determines who is a new or less skilled player. If you fall into that category you simply need to adjust your build a bit and learn the patterns of the enemy guards…they aren’t hard to kill if you know what you are doing and even if their healthpool is raised 2x they still won’t be hard to kill. It’s a case of smarter pve instead of more pve….the fact you even complain about pve in wvsw to begin with is ridiculous though, experienced players already know how to solo 90%-100% of the pve elements.

@Jana
I never made any statement saying that fully upgraded camps were more or less common, just that there is more effort involved in getting there. Also, I in no way stated that every camp should reach max tier—I explicitly said that camps should be stronger when/if they get there but did not suggest making it easier for them to reach it.

I’ve been playing for 2 years and am very familiar with how things used to be. There’s certainly been power creep in that only a few classes could solo a fully upgraded camp with ease before, but that isn’t the only problem here. Besides, I’m not trying to change who can solo what, just how long it takes them.

Sviel.7493:

@Jana
I never made any statement saying that fully upgraded camps were more or less common, just that there is more effort involved in getting there. Also, I in no way stated that every camp should reach max tier—I explicitly said that camps should be stronger when/if they get there but did not suggest making it easier for them to reach it.

I’ve been playing for 2 years and am very familiar with how things used to be. There’s certainly been power creep in that only a few classes could solo a fully upgraded camp with ease before, but that isn’t the only problem here. Besides, I’m not trying to change who can solo what, just how long it takes them.

I think you didn’t get my points.
Let’s try.
You say that guarding camps is hard work: That has always been like that.
You say getting a camp to 250 is hard work: That has always been like that.
You say camps should be harder to take: The reason why they seem so easy to take is the power creep which made nearly every class into a super hero. Trying to take a guarded camp is still as hard as it has been, so if you want to keep your camps – guard them, otherwise they’re gone – NPCs shouldn’t do your job.

You can however complain about the design of the new BLs – time to get to the camps, and distance/aggro of the NPCs, as that is what it makes it easier to take camps without anyone noticing. And, of course the power creep which is a problem in the whole game, not only wvw.

I said that it has become harder to guard them while they upgrade, I didn’t say it wasn’t hard to start. Same with getting a camp to max upgrade.

Yes, power creep is part of the problem, but it is not the sole contributor. There used to be more ranged mobs in camps and also those Zealots that did all sorts of nasty things (like retaliation). With HoT, the camps shifted to being all melee to start and still mostly melee by the end—the scouts don’t do significant damage at all. Combine that with all the super powerful AoE the elite specs brought in and you have a recipe for pushover camps. Even if the power creep is toned down, that’s still going to be a problem.

Also, I’m betting that the new power levels from elite specs are here to stay whether we like it or not.

And for the record, I do guard my camps. That’s literally what I do the whole time I’m in WvW. I run around in the south trying to anticipate which camp is going to be hit and then cleaning up w/e I don’t save.

Why is it harder to guard them while they upgrade? Isn’t it the same? Only that now the yaks that leave the camp are important for it to upgrade as well, but that wasn’t your point.

When taking a camp on EB it’s the exact same npc like they always have been – there never was any really ranged class? The only ones that were “ranged” (and still are) are Necro asurans who pull you into the camp. The npcs on the new BLs are different, yes, less blind more fumble. Can’t remember how a fortified camp looks on the BLs – I should check.

And something I tried to tell you when I came to this thread: The damage the npcs do is still the same: My build is still “the same” (with minor changes that even each other out) like he was before June, before Hot – I’m a dinosaur – the reason why I wrote in this thread as I can judge what has changed.

ETA:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CNxP8uksyU
Old camps – still the same npcs on EB.

I already explained why it’s harder to upgrade:

@Jana
They’re more work because guarding the yaks and the camp is much harder. They also take more time no matter how you go about it. All in all, the effort investment is higher than when you could just run by and click a few buttons.

In fact, having to safeguard the yaks that leave the camp was exactly the point I raised…twice.

I am speaking specifically about the BLs here. Obviously, EBG camps are the same. Also, when did I ever say anything about NPC damage changing? And when did I say ’let’s do this to get back to some point we were at in the past.’ You’re putting so many words in my mouth…every post is admonishing me for another argument I never made.

Sviel.7493:

With HoT, the camps shifted to being all melee to start and still mostly melee by the end—the scouts don’t do significant damage at all.

They blind – nastiest npcs in camps.

Know what?! Yeah, whatever. Do your thing =)

Sviel.7493:

@Straegen
Since Yaks now give +3 points on arrival, camps are worth more than walled objectives in terms of PPT.

I wasn’t referencing PPT, I was referencing WxP. There is little incentive for a roamer to defend a camp. I would also add the PPT portion only counts if a side doesn’t hold it for the tick. It is possible and likely that a faction can lose a camp and flip it back before it has any effect on the immediate score.

Sviel.7493:

Doubling the circle time would work but I was hoping to make it more interesting than forcing players to stand and do nothing for longer. Additionally, I didn’t want to make them take longer to cap for large groups as response time is a moot point in that case.

As I said earlier, if camps could highlight enemy players on the mini-map there would be a lot more players defending them. We can already see this at guard checkpoints as those are now defended more than camps. An added bonus is that the enemy dots show before a camp is even attacked giving players more time to react and they won’t write off swords as a skelk tripping the warning.

Ah, my mistake, I agree that defense events are hardly alluring in terms of wxp rewards. However, I’m not trying to give more incentive to defending camps—I just want it to be more feasible for the people that already consider points to be an incentive.

If camps highlighted enemies, it’d be even harder to do sneaky things as a group. The camp owner would immediately spot a zerg. It would certainly make responding to them more practical, but I think that the information given is too much.

In a similar vein, I was considering removing the 30s delay but, in the end, if a person can take a camp in ~40 seconds (my average on my half-geared warrior), it doesn’t matter if the attack is announced over a loudspeaker—there’s just not enough time to get there.