Guild Wars 2

Comparing this to formations is ridiculous. It’s not the same, as no where in the real world can you have 40 people in the same exact physical location, and that’s what this does. Not to mention that area effect weapons in reality do not magically cap at hurting 5 people at a time.

It’s physically impossible to create a formation in reality like this “turtling” garbage.

Agreed. Turtling is abusing game mechanics.

Its unfun and will result in loss of interest in WvW as gimick strategies like this are required to succeed.

The crying in this thread is pretty funny. Just learn to counter it.

waeren.9743:

The crying in this thread is pretty funny. Just learn to counter it.

While at other times I’ve agreed with people saying, ‘counter it’, I have to disagree here. This is an exploit, plain and simple. Anyone that comes out with the kitten excuse, ‘why would they put the AoE cap on if not for this reason?’. NO. They put the AoE cap there to make sure AoE classes weren’t completely overpowered, but unfortunately this has led to this situation, where AoE, and in general every other form of damage(except siege) is underpowered.

So you’re not using catapults behind doors? I see everyone using and it wasn’t intended either but to be honest it makes defending towers quite a bit easier.

Just learn to coordinate, mindless zerging isn’t going to and shouldn’t work.

You could solve the turtling issue by allowing debuffs to jump to other unlimited players who are within 1m of each other. So even if the initial damage hits 5… the entire stack is affects by the bleeds, cripples, blindness, etc… because they are all within 1m of each other…

This would force groups to spread out and/or half their number would constantly be having to dispell cumulative effects. Possible… but not practical.

@Waeren… that sounds reasonable- find a counter; but the fact is I’m getting tired of having to finding solutions to major game mechanics that are out of balance. Instead I’ll move back to Lotro or something else.

F2P games that don’t generate wealth… don’t do very well.

They need to remove the 5 player limit on AoEs for PvP to solve all of these issues.

Evokerz.4952:

2000 years ago the Romans invented the turtle formation, did the Persian/Parthia crying and yelling to the gods for unfair tactics employed by the Romans? lol

Cry me an effin river.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testudo_formation

Did Roman soldiers phase shift into other Roman soldiers? Were attacks that affected large areas limited to only hitting five people? Could the Romans become invisible?

No? Okay, so we’ve established these two situations are completely different. Your analogy, even though I appreciate the point behind it, fails. Turtling makes WvW far less fun for almost every single person I’ve talked to. I’ve not heard one convincing reason as to why it’s preferable that it should exist.

Limiting the number of players affected by boons make some sense, changing the AOE mechanic however is just crazy talk.

People keep talking about only being able to dmg 5 ppl at a time in a stack of 40. If I am a solo person taking on 40 ppl should I expect to win anyways?

Lets say that I have 10 other people with me and we all AOE a group of 40, will the outcome be all that different than if we fought 4x our numbers with our normal non-aoe skills? We actually might make out a little better AOE-ing with the current mechanic than each person being taken down 4 to 1.

We dealt with a guild from JQ last night that was using portal bombing and turtling very effectively to attack our siege equipment. When we would see the portal go down we would call out for people to focus their AOE and with roughly equal numbers we would mow them down in pretty short order.

Later on when we finally broke into the Lord’s room there was only about 10 of us left alive when they portal bombed the turtle in again. It was annoying to not even be able to damage them however if 40 random players ran through the door the normal way I wouldn’t be expecting us to have wiped them all and carried the day.

kaltastic.3146:

Limiting the number of players affected by boons make some sense, changing the AOE mechanic however is just crazy talk.

People keep talking about only being able to dmg 5 ppl at a time in a stack of 40. If I am a solo person taking on 40 ppl should I expect to win anyways?

Sorry but that logic breaks down instantly when you realize no one in this thread is talking about a single player fighting the whole 40 person turtle. The problem is that they are immune to any amount of AoE due to the 5 person cap on AoE, not that one person can’t kill 40.

40 people throwing AoEs at this should be able to take it down, but they can’t because the people turtling are abusing the cap on AoE damage.

It’s not hard to understand why it’s a problem and there’s no chance in hell that standing on top of eachother negating all AoE damage is in any way an intended design.

ArenaNet needs to put the same cap on the heals/boons these people are abusing or figure out some other way to get rid of this exploit before it completely screws WvW.

ChairGraveyard.2967:

kaltastic.3146:

Limiting the number of players affected by boons make some sense, changing the AOE mechanic however is just crazy talk.

People keep talking about only being able to dmg 5 ppl at a time in a stack of 40. If I am a solo person taking on 40 ppl should I expect to win anyways?

Sorry but that logic breaks down instantly when you realize no one in this thread is talking about a single player fighting the whole 40 person turtle. The problem is that they are immune to any amount of AoE due to the 5 person cap on AoE, not that one person can’t kill 40.

Is this really the way it works? I can have a group of 100 people casting AOE on a stacked group of 40 and the the server randomly picks 5 ppl in the stack and all of the AOE dmg is limited to them?

I guess I am unclear on what exactly is capped at 5. Is it the number of enemy a single player can damage or the number of people in the turtle than can be damaged regardless of how many people are dropping AOE.

If the cap is 5 enemy per player then I stand by what I said. If you have even roughly the same numbers and each of you is damaging 5 random ppl in the turtle that seems like enough damage going around to wipe them. The boons that apply to the entire turtle might make this more difficult but, like I said, I agree that those should be looked at.

Lets take a look here and break it down when people designed this strat.

• Take into account game mechanics.
• Design strategy to play around mechanics
• Discover AoE Limitation, Mass AoE healing without restriction like that on dmg AoE.
• Effectively implement way to mitigate dmg on massive scale.
• Gain invincibility.

Making a strategy like this that can play of the game mechanics like this and then saying… “How about you just find a counter then noob!”

How do you counter something designed to be invincible by playing on the Game Mechanics?

Even then. What 2 Turtles against each other? Sounds super fun…. lag city.

I’d much prefer the random mindless zerging and the fun you can have actually fighting on a battlefield ridden with the corpses of your enemies.

These are meta game tactics. Designed and planned out by PvPers with alot more general experience in PvP MMOs all together. They know how to take into account all the angles, use all the mechanics to their advantage.

wait till you see a zerk of 50 people standing on top of 3 Trebs built up all on each other. Cant hurt the people, cant hurt the trebs, but they’re standing outside garrison and the only thing u can do is watch.

Why not put a limitation on buffing/support AoE? (Or is there O_o?)

Dhar.6392:

You could solve the turtling issue by allowing debuffs to jump to other unlimited players who are within 1m of each other. So even if the initial damage hits 5… the entire stack is affects by the bleeds, cripples, blindness, etc… because they are all within 1m of each other…

This wouldnt work. All it would take is one smart guardian and popping off Purging Flames on the entire turtle. All Conditions = Gone.

Edit: Sry for the double post….

The opposite of GW2s AoE cap of 5 is WAR where you could get insta-gibbed if 10 or more people decided to randomly place their AoE on the same location… Which in a zerg is more often then not. Getting insta-gibbed is fun for for nobody. Clearly none of you have experienced what happens when there isn’t an AoE cap.

But this game gives you the whole “Watch out for the red ring!”

I’d almost want to try and dodge AoEs that could hit everyone then knowing that i can bypass it with more people then it allows it to dmg.

Its only further going to widen the gap between server population differences. 50 people vs 80 people can win in a zerg v zerg if they’re well coordinated. 50 people turtling v 80 people turtling. It become a math problem and the side that either screws up first or has less people will lose.

This game is about massive pvp and getting awesome looking armor/weapons. Who needs money to burn on cool stuff when your a giant obscure blob of insta-win.

Personally i think the turtle wave is going to catch on until everyone is doing it and there will be set strategies that have to be used in order for everything.

Expect team msgs saying…. “Turting at EH!” “DB is getting Turtled from 2 sides with 3 trebs” “Turtle on the move” “Turtle attacking Garrison!!” Turtle, Turtle, Turtle, Turtle.

Its going to be the same thing over and over again. I wanted to play a game that allowed for the option of creative tactical gameplay. Not repetitive advantage exploiting servers using that to win.

I mean come on you dont even get anything winning a WvW. Just those 500man pvp-guilds fighting for bragging rights. Bragging right of who can turtle better?

Anyone else see how stupid this is?

Nope. Fort Aspenwood successfully counter this by backcapping simultaneous objectives.

The biggest disadvantage of zerging and stacking is that it concentrates all your people power in one place. They aren’t spread out over the map verifying troop movements and numbers, escorting yaks, pre building siege at keeps/towers, defending keeps/towers from ninja attacks.

The natural counter to running into a gigantic army which you cannot beat, is to not fight that army. You don’t get points for winning this battle, no matter how stacked the odds (pun not intended). You get points for map control and a team that never over commits forces, a team that only uses enough resources to get the job done has better capability to control the map than a single death ball rolling around or standing in one place.

Lets not pretend that the biggest problem isn’t huge WvW population imbalance here.

Besetment.9187:

Nope. Fort Aspenwood successfully counter this by backcapping simultaneous objectives.

The biggest disadvantage of zerging and stacking is that it concentrates all your people power in one place. They aren’t spread out over the map verifying troop movements and numbers, escorting yaks, pre building siege at keeps/towers, defending keeps/towers from ninja attacks.

The natural counter to running into a gigantic army which you cannot beat, is to not fight that army. You don’t get points for winning this battle, no matter how stacked the odds (pun not intended). You get points for map control and a team that never over commits forces, a team that only uses enough resources to get the job done has better capability to control the map than a single death ball rolling around or standing in one place.

Lets not pretend that the biggest problem isn’t huge WvW population imbalance here.

But its still natural for people to chase kills.

I myself am apart of a strike team guild that excels at 5 man teams working in unison wiping zergs. Whether its mass stealth or daggerbombs or Ret Guards with back up healing Engi’s people find ways to fight a force greater then them because they expand on the realistic aspects of this game, like surprise attacks and catching people off guard.

And what you said about a concentrated force would most likely leave area undefended….

Yes your right (unless massive population can dictate otherwise with forces to spare) but even then. That means every siege would be a karma farm and no one would fight back against the turtle knowing it would only end in repair costs. Smart people will eventually just go at the same directions taking all their own stuff back after the enemy finsihed turtling it down…. so then they can turtle and come take it back.

Bottomline. If something isnt done, then this is what the meta-game between “skillful” players will look like.

- Tzenjin

keep trading essentially.

I certainly don’t like the idea of turtling as it seems unintended and unfun, but I really would like to encounter one of those groups and try out my piercing-bullet-explosive-shot which deals one AoE for each target it pierces through. Does amazing things to tight groups of 10+ risen in Orr, I guess it would be no different here.

BG taking out massive JQ turtle, shout out to all who were fighting on JQ BL last night, great fights this week.

This an exploit pure and simple. We don’t need people saying they should just counter it. We need to have the problem fixed.

Exploiting a design problem is not something that people here should be encouraging.

Netsu.3769:

I certainly don’t like the idea of turtling as it seems unintended and unfun, but I really would like to encounter one of those groups and try out my piercing-bullet-explosive-shot which deals one AoE for each target it pierces through. Does amazing things to tight groups of 10+ risen in Orr, I guess it would be no different here.

Wall of reflect, Sanctuary, Retaliation, Protection, Shield Bubble, Constant Regen, and Aegis. (And those are only guardian moves, as you can tell im a guardian)

This is just from my profession alone. Imagine 40 people taking advantage to this.

Even if you did get a shot in with out it being impeded. Retaliation is up 24/7. hitting 10 plus people would probably hit you back for about (267dmg(base dmg for retaliation at 80) x 10) 2,670dmg. And they dont even need to target you. Imagine what happens when they notice the “Hero”.

One person will target you. 40 people press T and you be dead. Simple as that.

(didnt mean to burst ur bubble about ur idea, but im being realistic)

Wizardauz.3761:

Wall of reflect, Sanctuary, Retaliation, Protection, Shield Bubble, Constant Regen, and Aegis. (And those are only guardian moves, as you can tell im a guardian)

This is just from my profession alone. Imagine 40 people taking advantage to this.

Even if you did get a shot in with out it being impeded. Retaliation is up 24/7. hitting 10 plus people would probably hit you back for about (267dmg(base dmg for retaliation at 80) x 10) 2,670dmg. And they dont even need to target you. Imagine what happens when they notice the “Hero”.

One person will target you. 40 people press T and you be dead. Simple as that.

(didnt mean to burst ur bubble about ur idea, but im being realistic)

Oh wow :C

All those AoE buffs (and preferably bubbles and walls) should really also be limited to 5 people as long as the damage is.

Netsu.3769:

Wizardauz.3761:

Wall of reflect, Sanctuary, Retaliation, Protection, Shield Bubble, Constant Regen, and Aegis. (And those are only guardian moves, as you can tell im a guardian)

This is just from my profession alone. Imagine 40 people taking advantage to this.

Even if you did get a shot in with out it being impeded. Retaliation is up 24/7. hitting 10 plus people would probably hit you back for about (267dmg(base dmg for retaliation at 80) x 10) 2,670dmg. And they dont even need to target you. Imagine what happens when they notice the “Hero”.

One person will target you. 40 people press T and you be dead. Simple as that.

(didnt mean to burst ur bubble about ur idea, but im being realistic)

Oh wow :C

All those AoE buffs (and preferably bubbles and walls) should really also be limited to 5 people as long as the damage is.

Its a complicated situation. Cant really just up and change 1 major thing for 1 problem without generating a whole new slew of problems. They can theorize what they can do, see if they can design what they want to do/use it, test it, and then hope it goes right when its running live.

no one wants WvW getting any worse.

Stacking/Turtling is pretty “zzz”. Countering it however is hilarious
The thing about managing to tear apart the turtle is that they don’t really expect it to happen that easily so they scramble around and you move in to wipe them up.

Might be hell to fight them when they’re together but if you tear them up, they’re easier than ever.

Try rolling a group of engi’s with piercing shots, Ive said this before and I don’t know if this works since Ive never encountered a turtle. You could also try reflection abilities, Ive killed a good amount putting wall of reflection on doors, 40 shooting at the wall means whoever is up front most likely instantly dead. Theyre are also some skills that remove boons, try removing stability then droping a ward on them.

I don’t understand why people complain of mesmer portals. It is a game dynamic and it adds strategy and more fun than just seeing an enemy charging at you. My guild is currently mastering the art of mesmer portalling. It is very fun to have a zerg attacking our keep gate and then a mesmer makes a portal and in a flash theres 40 of us attacking the enemy from behind. It is a great mechanic.

iiMulch.2138:

I don’t understand why people complain of mesmer portals.

People complain because people like to faceroll.

iiMulch.2138:

I don’t understand why people complain of mesmer portals.

It’s not the portals people are complaining about, it’s the culling.

Personally i find portal bombing a huge crutch and the majority of people that do it seem to be subpar in normal engagements.

Having said that, i have no issues with the actual strategy itself as it adds another layer of interesting combat.

Fix the culling though.

Arani.9057

@ kidbs.8920: no think this one was the first dedicated to the topic except the one where SOME BG members (not all) are trying to say its some new leet strat they came up with the spartans and their elite slave Helot forces or such…

I really hope people aren’t taking the BG clearing up a few concern thread that seriously. Reading the first post should make it fairly obvious that its a light-hearted jab at those complaining a “new” tactic is frustrating those its used against, while still making the very real point that, until anet says the tactic its an exploit, adapt adapt adapt.

Besetment.9187:

Nope. Fort Aspenwood successfully counter this by backcapping simultaneous objectives.

The biggest disadvantage of zerging and stacking is that it concentrates all your people power in one place. They aren’t spread out over the map verifying troop movements and numbers, escorting yaks, pre building siege at keeps/towers, defending keeps/towers from ninja attacks.

The natural counter to running into a gigantic army which you cannot beat, is to not fight that army. You don’t get points for winning this battle, no matter how stacked the odds (pun not intended). You get points for map control and a team that never over commits forces, a team that only uses enough resources to get the job done has better capability to control the map than a single death ball rolling around or standing in one place.

Lets not pretend that the biggest problem isn’t huge WvW population imbalance here.

By that measure- upgrades and siege become meaningless. Just constantly cap and recap… sounds a lot like Rift Conquest…

These are all valid tactics, in accordance with the game rules today.

What I think people are trying to say is – these tactics aren’t fun. They don’t seem “real”, they make the graphics a kittenshow, and they presumably weren’t what ANet envisioned when they came up with WvW.

I’d just like some confirmation of that; that it’s something they’re “looking into”. If their solution is to just counter it, great; if there is another solution, then that’s great too.

how are people falling for turtiling i mean really.There all in one spot it is easier to find them id rather them be in one spot then spread out.Ive had the other factions do this to us a few times and it has to be the worst tactic i have ever seen

Removing Mesmer stealth or putting in some form of stealth detection would seriously reduce these tactics. He could no longer simply strut up and plonk a turtled group in your midst with little risk. The turtlers would be less mobile.

/sigh

Searching for “survival” “stack” “turtle” would already have given you a solution how to counter it.

Mesmer Null Field + Necromancer Well of Corruption

Thereafter DPS as usual and pick up your many loot bags

Too easy

Arius.7031:

Evokerz.4952:

2000 years ago the Romans invented the turtle formation, did the Persian/Parthia crying and yelling to the gods for unfair tactics employed by the Romans? lol

Cry me an effin river.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testudo_formation

Did Roman soldiers phase shift into other Roman soldiers? Were attacks that affected large areas limited to only hitting five people? Could the Romans become invisible?

No? Okay, so we’ve established these two situations are completely different. Your analogy, even though I appreciate the point behind it, fails. Turtling makes WvW far less fun for almost every single person I’ve talked to. I’ve not heard one convincing reason as to why it’s preferable that it should exist.

It’s not whether or not its fun or not for the other side. Clearly the people the Romans conquered didn’t think it was fun, but doesn’t make it illegal in anyways.

Orb “hacking” is clearly grounds to ban someone, standing on top of another person in order to gain their boons is not.

If people want to get rid of this tactic because it’s not fun for some people, that’s not a valid reason at all. The only reason anything should be removed from a game is if it is in violation of ANet’s T&S.

Golem rushes were initially seen by some naysayers as “too OP” “Doesn’t give the defense enough time to respond” ect, and now that people know how to counter them, that mostly has stopped. I’m guessing it’ll go the same way for stacking. Rendering and culling issues are completely different and once ANet fixes them, no one will have an excuse for being wiped by a stacked group besides being unprepared or caught off guard.

Just to add to this, not many people know but you can counter counter siege. The only effective siege to counter turtling is catapults; arrow carts do too little damage, and ballistas will probably get killed pretty fast, as it needs line of sight. However, elementalist focus skill “swirling winds” can destroy catapult shots. Lol, can’t wait till you guys start using that.

The Necromancers epidemic might be very helpfull in this situation as the cap on that is much greater than 5.

Bring in clipping!!!!

I know people will abuse clipping if the bounding box is the size of the player. So I suggest a small sphere in the middle of each player.
That way people can still jump over and around each other, but not stack right on top of each other unless it’s an Asura under a Charr or Norn. You could even then run over the spot where someone was lying down.

I personally love games where there is real clipping. I’m not asking for that however as they usually require some more careful level design to avoid players from getting stuck or walling off an area with their characters to grief something. However my suggestion of a small sphere would stop the walling-off problem, and address stacking.

Not only that, it would solve the Mesmer portal problem in one easy swipe too. The devs wouldn’t have to change the limit to avoid 40+ people portal bombing as players would have to go through in bunches as they squeezed into the circle as others ported though. Also with the portal time limit not everyone might get through if they are not organized enough.

Hopefully with a sphere with a small enough polycount it wouldn’t slow the game down too much as it resolved some more physics.

I would like to hear Anet’s thoughts on turtling just in terms of whether they like it as is or think it needs to be changed in some way.

Ran into it once so far against a group at the garrison who did it remarkably well, turned what should have been a fairly even fight into a much more lopsided one for our side, though we wore them down eventually.

It would seem to require a decent degree of coordination, so it’s not like it’s an easy win button for engagements, but it does seem to give a lot of benefits with few pitfalls. Hopefully they’ll speak up about it at some point.

Aezan.2310:

Bring in clipping!!!!

I know people will abuse clipping if the bounding box is the size of the player. So I suggest a small sphere in the middle of each player.

Nah, the biggest problem with collision detection of any kind is trying to get to the Trading Post guy in Lion’s Arch when theres already a hundred people there 24 hours a day trying to game the price of sugar pumpkins.

It’s not whether or not its fun or not for the other side. Clearly the people the Romans conquered didn’t think it was fun, but doesn’t make it illegal in anyways.

I’m not talking about whether it is illegal or not. Rather, we’re talking about if it is good or bad for WvW. I’m saying that we need to do what’s necessary to remove it from WvW. Is the goal of war for the Roman’s fun? No, it’s conquest—Testudo helped them achieve that. Stacking helps you win, but does it make it more fun for all parties? WvW is not about dominating your opponent—it’s about having fun. If you have fun by dominating, fine, let’s make it so actual strategies dominate the field as opposed to hiding inside of one another.

It’s silly and stupid. It removes the feeling of chaos, that awesome feeling when you see a huge zerg of enemies charging you… Now you just see one blob of dozens of names. It’s not as fun. Sure, it can be countered, that’s fair, but should it exist at all? I still, through every post I’ve read, not heard one good reason as to why it is more fun to have. Yet, I can provide multiple reasons why it is less fun for most parties involved.

Orb “hacking” is clearly grounds to ban someone, standing on top of another person in order to gain their boons is not.

I’m not talking about what is illegal—it’s irrelevant.

If people want to get rid of this tactic because it’s not fun for some people, that’s not a valid reason at all. The only reason anything should be removed from a game is if it is in violation of ANet’s T&S.

I disagree completely and 100%. A bug that makes people’s equipment disappear is not in violation of ANet’s T&S. Under your logic, it should not be removed. See why that logic is faulty? Also, I’m not talking about removing something that is not fun for some people. I’m talking about removing something that is not fun for most people (I believe anyways).

Golem rushes were initially seen by some naysayers as “too OP” “Doesn’t give the defense enough time to respond” ect, and now that people know how to counter them, that mostly has stopped. I’m guessing it’ll go the same way for stacking.

No, because even when stacking is countered it is still more efficient than not being stacked. More than that, there’s a difference between Golem rushing and stacking. Building an army of Golems fits the setting. It requires a lot of money, but it’s not gaming the system. Stacking is borderline (not quite, maybe) abusing the system to milk out every last little advantage you can get. It doesn’t fit within the lore, it uses advantages that shouldn’t be present in first place, and it removes a lot of the fun things about WvW from the equation (chaos, large battles and battlefields, individuality and so on).

Rendering and culling issues are completely different and once ANet fixes them, no one will have an excuse for being wiped by a stacked group besides being unprepared or caught off guard.

I know. I’m saying that this is just another way that stacking provides a massive benefit. Even once this is 100% fixed, stacking/turtling whatever you want to call it will still be lame for many reasons.

The only thing that needs to be changed about the “turtle” is that most buffs need to only apply to 5 players, same as offensive AOEs. Certain buffs can still be uncapped, similar to some AOEs.

The disparity of “stability x100 players” and “knockback x5 players” is the core issue.

Edit: You can even be generous and go with x7 or x10 for buff spreading. Uncapped is just silly.

Stacking is not comparable to a Phalanx. If you think otherwise, dream on.
It would be a bit impressive if boons didn’t stack in duration, and you would have to chain boon to keep them up.

Otherwise is like this:
1. Stack up on commander
2. Spam stuff on recharge
3. Move towards the target when commander says so in map chat.
4. Profit
5. Go to forums and start saying: oh we so organized, emagheerd, stackz

waeren.9743:

The crying in this thread is pretty funny. Just learn to counter it.

It’s not a point of whether it can be countered or not. Of course it can. But it is a risk vs reward scenario where the reward for turtling is way too high for the amount of lazy play and risk that it requires. It simply breaks AoE damage except for siege weapons. It also allows ridiculous amounts of buff stacking which further increase the strength of the turtle (you can’t knock or pull people out of it b/c they have near permanent stability).

Honestly there is nothing skillful at all about abusing this mechanic (and yes I consider it an abuse). It promotes lazy play and renders certain classes almost completely ineffective. People are supposed to actively react to AoEs and damage in general. Otherwise you could almost bot a zerg formation like this.