Guild Wars 2

It is my opinion that this should not knock enemies back.

I suggest that Arenanet either;
a) make it so that this does not knock enemies back, or
b) make it so that this damages the door.

They need to make no AOE going through the door, not from the outside or inside.
But then there’s also an issue of AOE wrapping around the keep walls and hitting on top of the walls instead of the front of the wall and stuff like that.

There should be a separate seige that helps you protect your door. The walls should be higher so people can not jump off the walls to do suicide attacks. Walls being higher, will make the oil harder to target (along with the player using it).

Have you actually watched a tower or keep gate, while it is being attacked?

I have, and while it is being attacked, it moves, backwards and forwards.

If people are facerubbing the gate, and the gate moves towards them at speed, due to being hit with a catapult, what do you think is going to happen?

Excession.2198:

If people are facerubbing the gate, and the gate moves towards them at speed, due to being hit with a catapult, what do you think is going to happen?

I expect that the door is going to be damaged.

I agree, but I don’t think B is such a great idea. The trolls and spys would love to see that happen :/

No AoE damage through doors is the only answer. If Cata’s shouldn’t disrupt rams then attackers AoE’ing the door from the outside shouldn’t effect repairs. Otherwise taking a fortified position becomes far too easy. After all, historically, attacking a castle was spectacularly difficult without overwhelming numbers and equipment.

Personally I’d go for the removal of AoE through doors on the provision that the HP pool on oil pots was drastically increased, to the point where it’s pointless trying to take them out. If Cata’s can’t damage attacking rams then Oil pots are the only viable (and historically accurate) form of defence. Manning them should still be tough under enemy fire, but currently they are destroyed so easily that they might as well not exist. The only function they currently serve is to give the defenders an extra minute or two to get defenders in whilst the oil pot is nuked down and rams go up.

Oil is almost useless now in WvW (except it used for mindless zerg). Except Anet make oil defense and HP pool drastically increase and player can operate it from somewhere in tower by pulling some mechanism, cata will always a good choice for defending.

And as attacker you have more advantage than defender. Open field, more options to strike (wall/gate), more choice of siege you used, easy to get supply (defender has hard time to bring supply to their keep/tower). Its just matter how organized you are.

I considered the idea of making oil remotley operated but decided that would be unfair. If you’re a bow or spell slinger you should be able to try and pick off the guy pouring the oil. Likewise it should be up to the defenders to turtle up over that player or to keep the ranged folks pinned down.

For tactical reasons, any change in how catas and arrow carts AoE through doors should come with a massive boost to oil. Like making it a significant percentage of the gate’s strength which in turn would change the focus to killing the operator, rather than killing the oil. As stated above, oil is currently almost not a factor.

I like the way it is now.

What you want is being able to take a fortress without wasting your money in expensive trebuchets, that require supplies to be built, and people going to resupply to the nearest camp. Using a catapult to defend a tower/keep right now prevents unorganized mindless zergs to be successful.

Catapults are the almost only way to effectively damage people rubbing against the door. Also, door catapults are part of the secret defenses a tower/keep has. Atacking one of them has this point of surprise that makes you think about another strategy.

Towers/keeps are for prepared players (no meaning pro players). Supply camps and caravan are for smaller groups, and you can take them for free.

I’d like to see some ‘murder holes’ in the walls around the keep but especially near the doors. [Murder holes- vertical breaks in the wall that are too small to walk through but plenty big enough to fire through. Being vertical in nature they could be designed to be useful for Asura without altering the inherent property of the ediface]

Ranged defenders need to be able to fire with at least some protection.

Back in beta… at least I could fire behind the low wall, but our poor Asura players were too short. Now we stand on the wall… 100% in view of the attackers? That isn’t defense- it’s suicide 9/10 times. Lucky to get 1 cast or shot.

I don’t really see what the issue is. If you can hit a door from the outside with a catapult and it knock everyone inside back (to stop door repairs), what’s the problem with the defensive use of one on the inside. “Reality” aside, this is a video game and certain mechanics were not included to keep things “real”. Also, with the lack of an anti-ram device besides the pitiful oil that gets destroyed in 1 min flat with a zerg, what else should a defending tower/keep have in order to take out rams/people?

You propose taking away one side of the equation without thinking about the possibility that you’d also have to take away your “attacking” side of the equation as well for balance. So if you want cata’s abilities to be removed from inside, and all AOE abilities to not “pass through” or “go over the edge”, this means that only rams can be used to enter towers/keeps and that oil has to be made nearly invulnerable as well as the user given “safety” from said AOE’s that are in question in this thread.

RicardoAR.9628:

I like the way it is now.

What you want is being able to take a fortress without wasting your money in expensive trebuchets, that require supplies to be built, and people going to resupply to the nearest camp. Using a catapult to defend a tower/keep right now prevents unorganized mindless zergs to be successful.

Catapults are the almost only way to effectively damage people rubbing against the door. Also, door catapults are part of the secret defenses a tower/keep has. Atacking one of them has this point of surprise that makes you think about another strategy.

Towers/keeps are for prepared players (no meaning pro players). Supply camps and caravan are for smaller groups, and you can take them for free.

Arrow carts are great too

remove all siege weapons,they are ruining the game

in reality, they would use a counter ram inside the gate, to mitigate the effects a ram on the outside would have. i’m not sure if using rams like this is even really possible in the game, due to how targeting works. which leaves catapults as the only viable option, unless something is changed. they could rework the rams to work similarly to how trebs and catapults do, in that their direction needs to be turned manually, and they “fire” in whatever direction they’re facing. if there’s a gate in that direction, it and whatever is behind it, take damage. if used behind a friendly gate, it mitigates the damage, and damages whatever is behind it. they the gates (and walls) could be set to where AoE didn’t pass through them. which would eliminate the need for catapults set up behind them.

oil is completely worthless. not only because of its HP, but also the fact that anyone who tries to use it will be AoE’d to death the instant they get close enough to use it. cannons suffer from the same problem. they’re not defenses, they’re traps. once the attackers are at the gate, the prebuilt defenses are immediately abandoned in favor of player built siege. perhaps if any incoming damage was directed into the oil and cannons, and not the player using them, they’d actually be used more. i.e. make the player using either be immune to damage, but make the oil and cannons take double damage when there’s a player using them. then it’s just a matter of tinkering with the HP of the cannon and oil until the sweet spot is found.

If you think spies are a problem now, that will be nothing compared to what will happen if you add friendly fire to siege.

I think it’s ok. The gates hp goes down to fast currently when multiple rams are set up. It doesn’t give players time to rush back to defend it.

one thing Ive noticed about the nature of AOEs or ranged fights in this game is you are actually at advantage when fighting from below. Ever hear of having the high ground?

example: i play a thief, and cluster bomb aoe is a powerful range attack, but it is limited because it is arcing. When I am lower than my target it is much more effective, like if I am attacking a wall I run up to it until im touching the wall and then shoot at the top (but not actually where enemy is standing— still the side of the wall) this takes away the arc aspect of the skill and allows me to spam it. Also, even though I am hitting the wall face the aoe still acts like it would on level ground and spans the reticle distance on top of the wall hitting any defenders there.

in the reverse; if I am defending on top of the wall I have to deal with arcing, so much slower time to target. and thus is not spammable and a lot less effective. also I can not hit anything directly below without being completely exposed literally standing on the edge. this top-down dead zone is rather large and often I waste a scatter because it clips the edge of the wall instead of where I try and shoot.

Phantom.8130:

in reality, they would use a counter ram inside the gate, to mitigate the effects a ram on the outside would have. i’m not sure if using rams like this is even really possible in the game, due to how targeting works. which leaves catapults as the only viable option, unless something is changed. they could rework the rams to work similarly to how trebs and catapults do, in that their direction needs to be turned manually, and they “fire” in whatever direction they’re facing. if there’s a gate in that direction, it and whatever is behind it, take damage. if used behind a friendly gate, it mitigates the damage, and damages whatever is behind it. they the gates (and walls) could be set to where AoE didn’t pass through them. which would eliminate the need for catapults set up behind them.

oil is completely worthless. not only because of its HP, but also the fact that anyone who tries to use it will be AoE’d to death the instant they get close enough to use it. cannons suffer from the same problem. they’re not defenses, they’re traps. once the attackers are at the gate, the prebuilt defenses are immediately abandoned in favor of player built siege. perhaps if any incoming damage was directed into the oil and cannons, and not the player using them, they’d actually be used more. i.e. make the player using either be immune to damage, but make the oil and cannons take double damage when there’s a player using them. then it’s just a matter of tinkering with the HP of the cannon and oil until the sweet spot is found.

Very well put re siege being more a trap than a defence.

Lots of problems as people have noted. My thoughts.

1. Catas on doors.
Aoe through walls in general. A necessary evil. coding to stop aoe though it would be incredibly difficult. So we should look for alternatives.
Increase ram attack range. Allowing rams to hit from farther back, would allow them and attendants to avoid catas through doors. Oil may need a +range to compensate as well. All siege but arrow carts, should give stability. or.. perhaps it should be an additional skill on siege. Think, ram, flame wall, 5s stability buff.

2. aoeing walls. Attacking up is stronger then down.
Yeah, walls in general. Aoeing the edge of walls is lame. A camera rework would be amazing honestly. If we could shift the camera to a top down.(Mad king!), then we could aim aoes onto walls from below, especially ones with arcs, like mortar/grenades/raiin of arrows. Same would apply to defensive though, we could aim down much easier. currently, you can’t get close enough to the wall to fire down, without getting sniped, or aoed. Siege, out of aoe range, is the only defense.

3. The edge of the all allows attacks from below, but attacks on the wall, hit the edge. The only way to attack down, is stand on the edge.
The murder hole idea would help a bit. Having lips, where defenders could go right up to the wall edge, and fire down, without having to worry about getting pulled off, and having attacks hit the edge of the wall, dealing no damage, while all attacks on them, land. This however would not solve the aoe problem. and would be a deathtrap.

4. Cannons/oil. useless, because any force just burns them down. and you can not man them, as you die instantly to the aoe, bouncing hits.
Cannons/oil need to give stability and protection to the user, at the least. full immunity wouldnt be unbalanced. Not like cannons/oil have that much hp.

“oil is completely worthless. not only because of its HP, but also the fact that anyone who tries to use it will be AoE’d to death the instant they get close enough to use it. cannons suffer from the same problem. they’re not defenses, they’re traps. once the attackers are at the gate, the prebuilt defenses are immediately abandoned in favor of player built siege.”

I completely agree. Beside the boredom of defending, Anet has made it so hard to defend that many don’t bother. If you could use siege like oil and cannons without getting nuked to death people would defend more. Taking a tower SHOULD be MUCH harder than it is right now.

You should not have to spend so much time and money trying to place arrow carts and balistas in a perfect spot that is out of aoe range. Maybe the solution is make players AOE spells do like 75% reduced damage to siege and to a player that is controlling siege. No idea how hard to code but sounds easy enough to me.

Oil needs to be about 10 times harder to take out. An a user should have some sort of shield that absorbs about 90% of incoming damage so they can actually operate it. This would at least allow a small force to keep rams off the gate long enough for more defenders to arrive.

Some wouldn’t like it but I also think they have a limit on number of rams you put on a door. I think you should only be allowed to have one ram hit door. Maybe 2. Slow down the nightcapping of zergs against doors and allow a handful of defenders to actually defend against a zerg for awhile. Now the doors are down with 4 or 5 rams before a defender can move to a tower to defend. The doors melt with 4 rams on them so fast they my as well not be there.

Same for catapults and trebs on a wall. Allow only one to hit the wall at a time.

Someone mentioned murder holes. Loved the way there were in DAOC. You had slots above gate and on sides where you could attack from. And defenders had to stop you to protect the ram users and in doing so put themselves in danger.

Castles built in the 16th Century didn’t factor in ‘magic’. There was no real AoE. Arrows from a wall or via wall slits would massacre attackers. You need 5 to 10 times the force to kill a keep. Sieges lasted months and years. So we can’t rely on reality too much.

If a door was more like a door and AoE, swords, fear, defensive siege truly didn’t go through it, you would need to have a significant advantage defending on the ramparts.

At the moment standing on a castle wall shooting down is a disadvantage as 20 siegers can shut the wall down with AoE.

As it stands you need at least a 2:3 presence to defend a keep. So some advantage (eg cata’s on the door defensively) is really bringing balance.

Seresh.8045:

After all, historically, attacking a castle was spectacularly difficult without overwhelming numbers and equipment.

Gunpowder.

And with the advent of gunpowder or more specifically the cannon….the reign of the castle ended. Fundamentally castles stopped being the key component of warfare when cannons became cheap to manufacture and easy to move around.

GW3…..trenchwarfare

One option to band-aid oil would be drastically reduce the damage players can do to them directly forcing the use of siege (balistas) to take them down in a reasonable time frame. Might need to give the operator some help as well considering how quickly they are murdered by the current AOE mechanics. Oil would still die prety quick but it would force the use of more supplies and blueprints potentialy limiting the number of rams that could be dropped depending on the size of the zerg attacking.

Oil asside several game mechanics need to improve. AoE up onto the ramparts makes it near impossible to defend from the wall tops aside from arrow carts out of range of the AOE. LOS issues and limited range of movement also make defence problematic compaired to offense. The main advantage defenders have in most places right now is the attackers can not get in quickly (with cat through door) and a small number of defenders poping their heads up can often tunnlevision enough attackers on them to allow for a force to roll them up from behind. Still theres prety much no way as mechanics stand now to sucessfuly defend from inside the fortress without either a relief force hiting the attack from behind or a large enough sortie from the fort to push the attackers back. About the only exception is the north east borderlands tower as you can target the area of the door with balistas up on the cliff

“About the only exception is the north east borderlands tower as you can target the area of the door with balistas up on the cliff”

Every tower and keep needs a spot like this to make attacking it a challenge for the attackers. It should be a challenge. But now everyone just moves between garrison and tower and puts up a few catapults to take down the wall.

The NE tower is one of the easier to defend in the game if enough siege is up. But it still hardly slows down a 50 man zerg for long.

So much money gets spend on siege and upgrades and it all usually means next to nothing. I think it should change. A fully upgraded tower should be a scary thing to attempt for even a 50 man zerg. Then more would spend time and money upgrading it and defending it. And servers would have to try hard to keep that from happening.

I love karma trains as much as anyone, especially when leveling alts. But towers and keeps change hands way too fast and easily for me.

You can already put down rams and man them from such positions and angles that the persons using them are not knocked all over the place by the catapult.

Rams are cheap and highly expendable, if one goes down its easily replaced. So i dont really see the problem. The catapult through door-trick hurts only those that facerub against a door. Last thing we need is more catering to this kind of player.

New to WvW? You know you don’t need a ram to destroy a gate, just adapt to the situation and build few catapults and destroy the gate from range. You will actually force the defenders to get out and try to kill your catapults, We call catapulting a gate “CatNiping” . Heck don’t even bother with the gate, you know you can destroy walls in this game?

Svarty.8019:

I suggest that Arenanet either;

b) make it so that this damages the door.

And within 5 minutes people will be transfering to opposing servers to cata down doors from inside the keep while invulnerable to attack.

I don’t like the whole catapult behind the door either. But let’s face it, a siege situation in general is pretty wonky at this point, there’s more wrong with it than just the cata behind the door. The attacker has such a ridiculous advantage via ease of area denial on the walls. Defensive siege mostly has to be placed where it can be very easily destroyed. How many positions are there to put a balista on a tower where it can actually fire at enemies and be relatively safe from the swarm of cluster bombs/meteors/etc?

Until the whole siege scenario is adjusted to behave more realistically, you know, like actually give the defenders the advantage you would expect from a fortified position, I’m fine with the cata behind the door.

how about removeing all the siege weapons exept rams?

Why even bother attacking a gate at all? The walls are much easier to take down with siege. While I am not sure about the fully upgraded wall, a basic/fortified wall drops easily twice as fast as a normal/fortified gate.

Flarenza.8150:

Why even bother attacking a gate at all? The walls are much easier to take down with siege. While I am not sure about the fully upgraded wall, a basic/fortified wall drops easily twice as fast as a normal/fortified gate.

not really 4-5 rams will drop even a fortified gate in a minute or less if the rams are not killed before then. Rams are cheep both in coin and supplies. To damage a wall you need cata’s or trebs. Not only are those more expensive to produce but you’ll need twice as many of them to knock down a normal wall that quickly. You do have the advantage of being able to set them up outside of easy retaliation from inside the keep but its far from faster than useing the door unless you just cant get rams on the door.
Honestly some of the best defenses I’ve been on didnt revolve around preventing the enemy from getting inside. Saveing the door/wall was hopeless as well as pointless. Instead just setukittenllzone where the breach is expected to happen with multipul arrow carts, balistas and a few cata’s trained on that spot. watch the enemy wipe, go kill any siege left over and drop a load or two of supplies on the breach point to force them to set up more siege. Its about the only way a smaller force has the advantage over the attackers as long as you have enough to cover the needed siege.

There are ways around catas behind the gate. It’s annoying but if you were defending your own tower, you’d want to use the cata behind the door.

Flarenza.8150:

Why even bother attacking a gate at all? The walls are much easier to take down with siege. While I am not sure about the fully upgraded wall, a basic/fortified wall drops easily twice as fast as a normal/fortified gate.

Well that’s just not true at all.

I have similar issues with the current tower/keep design in WvW as others have stated. My biggest complaint is that defenders are at a disadvantage, which is opposite of how it should be. You can’t stand up on the walls long enough to do any defending without being annihilated by AoE overlap. Basically if you aren’t manning a siege weapon you’re of almost no use for defense unless you do hit and run tactics outside the keep.

In order to take a tower/keep you generally need very little siege weapons. Just 2 or 3 rams on the door and that’s about it (granted having catapults/trebs makes things easier and faster but it’s not required). However, to defend a keep takes a lot of siege weapons. Does anyone else find this backwards? IMO the only AoE that should be able to hit people on the walls is siege weapons. That way the defenders would be able to stand up there longer and actually contribute to defense, and the attackers would be required to build siege weapons to fend them off and overtake the tower/keep. That’s how it should work.

Speaking of siege weapons, it’s mind boggling to me why the boiling oil is even in the game. It’s not like you can stand there and control it due to the aforementioned AoE on the walls. Anet could remove it altogether and it would go unnoticed. If they fixed the boiling oil such that the person controlling it were protected and give it a lot more health, we wouldn’t have to build catapults inside the courtyard and fire them at our own gates (how much sense does that make anyway?).

Lastly, it makes no sense to me that when you do attack from the walls you can’t target anyone without jumping up on the outer ledge. Seriously? It’s bad enough we can’t stand up there very long, but to make us fully expose ourselves and even risk being pulled down off the wall? We’re supposed to have an LOS advantage on the walls, not a disadvantage. It should be easy for the defenders to target/attack the enemy and difficult for the attackers.

Towers and keeps change hands so fast in this game it has gotten silly. Often times people won’t even bother defending towers and just let them fall, then go back 10 minutes later when the enemy has left and re-take them.

Try new ideas, there is ways to come around a cat behind gate defens, i usaly defend and 1 they tried gate then they usaly try a wall and after that they give up or start to think how can i setup a attack so the balista, arrowcarts, cat cant hit me…. with them meen i have to kitten we need to build*** here comeone.

reinforce oil (200% more life, more range for players to use it (like Balistas), give players who use it protection buff)
same goes for cannons just not more health.

Lots of good observations and ideas in this thread. IMO, until they can address several issues at once, we should still be able to use catas behind gates.

Dhar.6392:

I’d like to see some ‘murder holes’ in the walls around the keep but especially near the doors. [Murder holes- vertical breaks in the wall that are too small to walk through but plenty big enough to fire through. Being vertical in nature they could be designed to be useful for Asura without altering the inherent property of the ediface]

Ranged defenders need to be able to fire with at least some protection.

Back in beta… at least I could fire behind the low wall, but our poor Asura players were too short. Now we stand on the wall… 100% in view of the attackers? That isn’t defense- it’s suicide 9/10 times. Lucky to get 1 cast or shot.

Murder slits are already there in several keeps, murder holes are avaible in some Eternal BG keeps, sadly, not with a second door to box people in.

I don’t get it. Did you know you can place rams far away enough that you don’t get hit by the cata inside but close enough that it damages the gate?

Cata inside towers is actually working just fine. Stop whining and trying to neft anything that works against you because of your lack of ability and knowledge.

The inner catapult is currently doing the job of the oil. If you could actually use the oil as intended the catapult would not really be needed. But since it so easy to completely destroy anyone on the oil, and the oil itself but just spamming GTAOE on players out of LoS it makes it completely useless.

But if you build rams at max range the cata wont hit them.

Cata’s really only counter golems, and if you just blob up on the golems it completely negates the cata’s damage.

Cata’s are not really an issue.

Most of the time you can take them out with a cata, balista, or treb if you know the terrain well enough, and hour to aim your shots.

Arrow carts on the side of a wall using a peep whole work as well.