Guide to Desert Borderlands Towers & Keeps

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Posted by: Catalin.5341

Catalin.5341

Here are some guides that I’m working on right now. These guides are for people that want to scout (defend) an objective and also for commanders that want to capture an objective. In the end you will understand fully where the weak spots are, how to defend from certain attacks and how to attack it most effectively.

I managed to finish the guide for all the towers (Academy, Necropolis, Outpost and Depot) for the new desert borderlands map which can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLduHbZPbtobHjIvdoZtd_99Y2ZFJpbFAx

This playlist will include all towers and keeps eventually and I will keep you posted here when new guides show up. The next video coming up is for the Rampart keep.

Note: The siege placement might change in the future when new tactics and strategy are learned, but for now this is the “meta” so to speak.

Let me know what you guys think and if you have any suggestions/questions.


Chaba also made videos on shortcuts from point A to B:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZDlfzyAWJZDCX2PbSxC-3KeLCYY-9QKk

EU Seafearer’s Rest, Guilds: [AR] [tD]
Catalin Puf (Human Elementalist)
Catalin Elf (Sylvari Thief)

(edited by Catalin.5341)

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Posted by: BrickFurious.7169

BrickFurious.7169

Judging by the issues some forum users are having getting used to the new map, videos like this are sorely needed. Thank you.

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Posted by: Fellfoot.8156

Fellfoot.8156

Overall, would you say the height of the walls of the towers has made life better or worse?

[AIR] Henge of Denravi aka Pink Abu, [BAMA] RollTide
chopping wood one day, dropped a piece,
all I could say was, “…fell…foot…”

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Posted by: Catalin.5341

Catalin.5341

Overall, would you say the height of the walls of the towers has made life better or worse?.

The height has made things worse because arrow carts have a hard time reaching the proxy catapults, so it’s harder now to find a good spot for them. The enemies can still target the walls and carts like before, so nothing has changed on this part.

EU Seafearer’s Rest, Guilds: [AR] [tD]
Catalin Puf (Human Elementalist)
Catalin Elf (Sylvari Thief)

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Posted by: Tyler Bearce

Tyler Bearce

Game Designer

Hey, great start with your guides. We’ll keep an eye on this thread, and once you have a few more guides collected, we may sticky it as a reference.

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Posted by: Cogbyrn.7283

Cogbyrn.7283

Thanks for putting this together, Catalin. I’ll be taking a look for sure.

Alduin Nightsong, 80 Human Necro
“He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup.”

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Posted by: Chaba.5410

Chaba.5410

Catalin,

I haven’t looked at your guides too much because they focus just on siege locations. I feel that a more useful guide to start out with will be a “shortcut routes” guide. I have a lot of guildmates who get absolutely lost.

Chaba Tangnu
Founding member of [NERF] Fort Engineer and driver for [TLC] The Legion of Charrs
RIP [SIC] Strident Iconoclast

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Posted by: jdallen.5179

jdallen.5179

Catalin,

I haven’t looked at your guides too much because they focus just on siege locations. I feel that a more useful guide to start out with will be a “shortcut routes” guide. I have a lot of guildmates who get absolutely lost.

I hear you, Chaba. Scale and time to cross are major problems.

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Posted by: ArchonWing.9480

ArchonWing.9480

Thanks, that video will help quite a bit but I agree with Chaba that navigation is a critical element.

For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards,
for there you have been and there you will long to return.

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Posted by: Fellfoot.8156

Fellfoot.8156

@Catalin. Just noticed you said NE tower will be the next one. Ugh, that north wall makes me naseous. Why?! Why would a tower wall be leaning inward 20-25° that makes no sense. Unless you want to make #arrowcartlife ridiculous.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-0pnAY5NjRfk/VjrONH0XhhI/AAAAAAAAADE/ebpbgjhJhAM/w1590-d-h894-p-rw/12184102_1510635699251398_2745060511070503992_o.jpg

Also, I found a treb spot above and to the west of the NE camp that hits the wall to the right of the front gate of Necro tower, has to be 100% power.

[AIR] Henge of Denravi aka Pink Abu, [BAMA] RollTide
chopping wood one day, dropped a piece,
all I could say was, “…fell…foot…”

(edited by Fellfoot.8156)

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Posted by: Catalin.5341

Catalin.5341

@Chaba
I will make a guide about shortcuts from point A to point B for all towers and keeps, but after I finish with the Necropolis tower

@Fellfoot
So far Necropolis looks like the most susceptible tower to proxy catapults. It’s almost impossible to put carts on the walls and hit all the spots.

EU Seafearer’s Rest, Guilds: [AR] [tD]
Catalin Puf (Human Elementalist)
Catalin Elf (Sylvari Thief)

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Posted by: Ychiju.7960

Ychiju.7960

Excellent :mr burns finger pyramid:

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Posted by: rchu.8945

rchu.8945

Here’s a guide that I’m working on right now.
I managed to finished the guide for the Academy tower for the new desert borderlands map which can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik06pDvoVaw&index=1&list=PLduHbZPbtobHjIvdoZtd_99Y2ZFJpbFAx

Images for siege placement can be seen here: http://imgur.com/a/0SBj2

This video will be part of a playlist which will include all towers and keeps.
The next video coming up is for the tower Necropolis.

Note: The siege placement might change in the future when new tactics and strategy are learned, but for now this is the “meta” so to speak.

Let me know what you guys think and if you have any suggestions/questions.

Thanks, but will not play the terrible new BL maps ever. If Anet doesnt change I am just going to stick with EB.

Sanctum of Rall
Pain Train Choo [Choo]
Mind Smack – Mesmer

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Posted by: Timelord.8190

Timelord.8190

Thx this siege guide is what we really needed, now we can defend against nothing.

Far ShiverPeaks (EU)

(edited by Timelord.8190)

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Posted by: Catalin.5341

Catalin.5341

SFR is suffering at prime time because many guilds left, but last night at prime time there was only one guild raiding and our only objective was Necropolis. I had it all sieged up and for almost 2 hours FSP and JS with guilds like SLAY, Kale, GoldenHorde and others tried to get inside.

They tried for proxy catas at SW walls, then for trebuchets at South wall, proxy catas at NW wall, rams a couple of times and at some point they managed to destroy the SW wall with catas because we were starving for supplies and that wall was only at 30% and couldn’t be repaired.

The commander did a good job [FD] guild, by claiming the Refugee camp to have supplies and basically took all surrounding objectives to know when the enemy was coming.

JS got inside and we managed to kill them all at the lord, but FSP got inside too and wrecked the remaining of us. It was really fun and unfortunately it only happens at prime now on SFR (8-11pm).

Thx this siege guide is what we really needed, now we can defend against nothing

Too bad you weren’t in there last night to see all the chaos cause I see you’re from FSP

EU Seafearer’s Rest, Guilds: [AR] [tD]
Catalin Puf (Human Elementalist)
Catalin Elf (Sylvari Thief)

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Posted by: Catalin.5341

Catalin.5341

Right now there’s a bug with the superior carts making the camera center on the cart instead of you which makes targeting proxy catapults extremely hard or impossible. For now use normal arrow carts even if they do 50% less damage unless a superior cart grants you enough vision range.

EU Seafearer’s Rest, Guilds: [AR] [tD]
Catalin Puf (Human Elementalist)
Catalin Elf (Sylvari Thief)

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Posted by: Sich.7103

Sich.7103

@Catalin that good to know thx

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Posted by: GROMIT.7829

GROMIT.7829

Right now there’s a bug with the superior carts

Don’t you mean ehem cleaars throat “Working as intended”.

!!!! YOU’RE NOT MY SUPERVISOR !!!!

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Posted by: Catalin.5341

Catalin.5341

@GROMIT
Not really, since every other siege centers the camera around you and only the superior cart around the cart. I haven’t tested it with all the possible siege, but I didn’t find another one so far, that behaves like the buggy superior cart.

EU Seafearer’s Rest, Guilds: [AR] [tD]
Catalin Puf (Human Elementalist)
Catalin Elf (Sylvari Thief)

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Posted by: Catalin.5341

Catalin.5341

I have updated the main post with the 2nd video on the Necropolis Tower

EU Seafearer’s Rest, Guilds: [AR] [tD]
Catalin Puf (Human Elementalist)
Catalin Elf (Sylvari Thief)

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Posted by: Trajan.4953

Trajan.4953

Meh. It’s empty on most servers, just use your now-useless guild catas and yawn away.

CCCP….

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Posted by: Notsoperky.2348

Notsoperky.2348

Thanks for the guides. I admire your dedication to a dying game mode.

Sadly most of the time there isn’t anyone defending, so placing all that siege that then times out isn’t much fun. On the other hand, seeing all that siege and then capping it anyway as no one is around is equally not fun.

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Posted by: Catalin.5341

Catalin.5341

Sadly most of the time there isn’t anyone defending, so placing all that siege that then times out isn’t much fun.

These guides are not just for scouts, but also for commanders that try to attack an objective.
I see very often commanders that kitten-kitten around an objective and place bad siege everywhere and it takes them 2-3 hours to capture something that is properly defended. I have videos for the old borderlands that I’m able to kill 3-4 omega golems and repel an entire zerg of almost 50 people just by myself with one cart and one treb. They were really bad at attacking it, but it was fun and rewarding to be able to do that.

I don’t scout anymore, but when I command and attack objectives I know exactly where the weak spots are and know where to expect incoming carts/trebs etc. Understanding this stuff makes attacking look easy

EU Seafearer’s Rest, Guilds: [AR] [tD]
Catalin Puf (Human Elementalist)
Catalin Elf (Sylvari Thief)

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Posted by: Chaba.5410

Chaba.5410

Here’s a short video I made about routes for defenders in the northern half of the map. Intended to be the first in a series.

1. From Spawn to NE Garrison
2. From Spawn to NW Garrison
3. From Garrison to N Hills
4. From NE Garrison to Oasis
5. From Garrison to Bay
6. From NW Garrison to Oasis (typo in title)

Chaba Tangnu
Founding member of [NERF] Fort Engineer and driver for [TLC] The Legion of Charrs
RIP [SIC] Strident Iconoclast

(edited by Chaba.5410)

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Posted by: Catalin.5341

Catalin.5341

I have added the video guide for the Outpost tower. Please check the first post which I edited.

EU Seafearer’s Rest, Guilds: [AR] [tD]
Catalin Puf (Human Elementalist)
Catalin Elf (Sylvari Thief)

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Posted by: Catalin.5341

Catalin.5341

@Chaba
Amazing video you really did a good job. I wanted to make a similar video but I wasn’t sure of the format of it. First I tried like set paths from A to B, but didn’t know what to say. Then I tried a freestyle format where I just wonder on the map and talk at the same time, but that didn’t work out either. Never thought of just adding music)

Again, really nice, and I like how you’re saying garrison and bay instead of rampart and undercroft, but that’s what will make people understand it better.

I have added your video in my first post so people see it, if this threads gets too many posts.

EU Seafearer’s Rest, Guilds: [AR] [tD]
Catalin Puf (Human Elementalist)
Catalin Elf (Sylvari Thief)

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Posted by: Chaba.5410

Chaba.5410

My guildmates harass me into saying fire, air, and earth keep now. But it is still bay with lava for a moat and hills because there are dangerous cliffs. And garrison is always central.

Yea I purposely use old jargon because it helps those following me to understand.

I don’t think there is an easy way to present it than to just run it. It is tempting to get into more detail with regards to the jump pads and lava portals. I’m going to avoid that though.

Chaba Tangnu
Founding member of [NERF] Fort Engineer and driver for [TLC] The Legion of Charrs
RIP [SIC] Strident Iconoclast

(edited by Chaba.5410)

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Posted by: Chaba.5410

Chaba.5410

Defense Routes 2

1. From Garrison to NW Tower
2. From NW Tower to N Bay
3. From Garrison to NE Tower
4. From NE Tower to N Hills
5. From Garrison to SW Tower
6. From Garrison to SE Tower

From Spawn to the northern towers seem pretty obvious so I don’t plan to film those. I’m also going to leave out NW and NE supply depots because those seem a bit obvious too once you are familiar with getting to the NW and NE from garrison and from NE and NW towers to hills/bay.

Chaba Tangnu
Founding member of [NERF] Fort Engineer and driver for [TLC] The Legion of Charrs
RIP [SIC] Strident Iconoclast

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Posted by: Catalin.5341

Catalin.5341

Cool, I have added your other video to the first post. Would be great to make a playlist and just link that.

EU Seafearer’s Rest, Guilds: [AR] [tD]
Catalin Puf (Human Elementalist)
Catalin Elf (Sylvari Thief)

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Posted by: Shadow.3475

Shadow.3475

Tried to defend home keep on homemap but were ever i built a AC enemy AOE cod hit it so as it been on old map.

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Posted by: Catalin.5341

Catalin.5341

Hey Shadow,
I have posted a quick guide with some print screen where proxy carts can go and be hard to kill – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Quick-guide-to-Desert-Borderlands
I’m finishing up the last tower and then I will do the Rampart video guide.

EU Seafearer’s Rest, Guilds: [AR] [tD]
Catalin Puf (Human Elementalist)
Catalin Elf (Sylvari Thief)

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Posted by: Chaba.5410

Chaba.5410

Offense Routes 1. East side.

1. From Spawn to S Hills
2. From SE Camp to NE Tower via E Hills
3. From Spawn to NE Garrison
4. From Spawn to NW Garrison

Here’s the link for the playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZDlfzyAWJZDCX2PbSxC-3KeLCYY-9QKk

Chaba Tangnu
Founding member of [NERF] Fort Engineer and driver for [TLC] The Legion of Charrs
RIP [SIC] Strident Iconoclast

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Posted by: Catalin.5341

Catalin.5341

@Chaba
I have edited the first post to include the link to the playlist.

Chaba made videos starting from the spawn point, but usually you have your spawn tower and starting from there, destinations are much quicker.

EU Seafearer’s Rest, Guilds: [AR] [tD]
Catalin Puf (Human Elementalist)
Catalin Elf (Sylvari Thief)

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Posted by: Chaba.5410

Chaba.5410

The routes can be a bit different if you start from the spawn tower and not always will a server have their spawn tower.

Chaba Tangnu
Founding member of [NERF] Fort Engineer and driver for [TLC] The Legion of Charrs
RIP [SIC] Strident Iconoclast

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Posted by: Catalin.5341

Catalin.5341

I have updated the first post to include the guide for the Depot tower and with this one we finished all the towers. Next is Rampart.

EU Seafearer’s Rest, Guilds: [AR] [tD]
Catalin Puf (Human Elementalist)
Catalin Elf (Sylvari Thief)

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Posted by: Chaba.5410

Chaba.5410

LOL My bad with typos…
The eastside video should be “2. From SE Camp to NE Tower via W Hills”

1. From Spawn to S Bay
2. From Spawn to NW Tower via E Bay
3. From Spawn to NW Garrison
4. From Spawn to NE Garrison

Offense Routes 2: West Coast, Best Coast

Chaba Tangnu
Founding member of [NERF] Fort Engineer and driver for [TLC] The Legion of Charrs
RIP [SIC] Strident Iconoclast

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Posted by: Chaba.5410

Chaba.5410

Here’s a map of the routes I took.
http://i.imgur.com/WBon2yu.jpg

Red = Defense Routes 1
Yellow = Defense Routes 2
Blue = Offense Routes 1
Purple = Offense Routes 2

You may notice I left off some routes, for example going from SE spawn to NW tower and SW spawn to NE tower. The NE, NW, SE, and SW areas have a lot of overlap and alternate routes which I think players will be able to figure out on their own.

I’ll be making one last video about some additional N-S and E-W routes that are both for offense and defense.

Edit: Does my drawing look like a person flailing? LOL

Chaba Tangnu
Founding member of [NERF] Fort Engineer and driver for [TLC] The Legion of Charrs
RIP [SIC] Strident Iconoclast

(edited by Chaba.5410)

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Posted by: Sviel.7493

Sviel.7493

I think it’s pretty silly that proxy catapults are so effective. It’s line of sight abuse and feels awful to deal with.

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Posted by: LittleAussieMozzie.7425

LittleAussieMozzie.7425

Why would u want to pvd kitten down, The new bls are boring as kitten and nobody should play them. The lack of players issue isn’t going to be solved with a guide on hitting a door or wall..

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Posted by: Cogbyrn.7283

Cogbyrn.7283

Why would u want to pvd kitten down, The new bls are boring as kitten and nobody should play them. The lack of players issue isn’t going to be solved with a guide on hitting a door or wall..

Actually, a guide might encourage players who are lost to give it a shot, since they would now have direction.

The “I don’t like it, so I hope no one else ever enjoys it and it dies” mentality isn’t welcome here.

Alduin Nightsong, 80 Human Necro
“He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup.”

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Posted by: Shadow.3475

Shadow.3475

Catalin.5341 they use ram on gate and there not even on top of the A you cod have a AC they cod not shoot down with normal AOE.

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Posted by: Catalin.5341

Catalin.5341

For rams you need a treb at the gate. Doesn’t that work?

EU Seafearer’s Rest, Guilds: [AR] [tD]
Catalin Puf (Human Elementalist)
Catalin Elf (Sylvari Thief)

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Posted by: Shadow.3475

Shadow.3475

Did not have a treb and i like my ac but there is no way to Place them for gate (behind maybe but then i Think that is cheating, like treb) Damage should not go through gate, wall and roofs.

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Posted by: Catalin.5341

Catalin.5341

Proxy catapults can be considered “cheating” too. I don’t stand by these principles when playing WvW. If I can place a siege and does damage then I will use it.

EU Seafearer’s Rest, Guilds: [AR] [tD]
Catalin Puf (Human Elementalist)
Catalin Elf (Sylvari Thief)

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Posted by: Chaba.5410

Chaba.5410

Last video. I didn’t put all possible routes in. These should be more than adequate as an introduction to map navigation.

1. From S Garrison to S Camp
2. Bay NE Upper Approach
3. Bay E Lower Approach
4. From Bay to Hills SW Lower Approach
5. Hills NW Jump Pad Approach
6. Hills W Upper Approach
7. To Hills SW Gate
8. To Hills W Gate
9. From Hills NW Jump Pads to Bay E Approach

Updated map: http://i.imgur.com/FvoAThM.jpg

Chaba Tangnu
Founding member of [NERF] Fort Engineer and driver for [TLC] The Legion of Charrs
RIP [SIC] Strident Iconoclast

(edited by Chaba.5410)

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Posted by: Chaba.5410

Chaba.5410

Bump!

Seems like players are still lost on the new BL. And I certainly need to figure out better siege options because defenders are not coming out to fight.

Chaba Tangnu
Founding member of [NERF] Fort Engineer and driver for [TLC] The Legion of Charrs
RIP [SIC] Strident Iconoclast

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Posted by: Chaba.5410

Chaba.5410

(Catalin, are you making videos for the keeps?)

Chaba Tangnu
Founding member of [NERF] Fort Engineer and driver for [TLC] The Legion of Charrs
RIP [SIC] Strident Iconoclast

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Posted by: Catalin.5341

Catalin.5341

No, because I had a closer look at it basically everyone knows about treb at the gate for rams and carts on the walls for proxy catas. The kill siege with meteor shower is pretty standard too. The most interesting spots are the sneaky catapults and safe trebs and this is a small fraction of the entire video.

What I am doing instead is a video about the best spots to attack each objective. More like a definitive guide for commanders on how to take a tower/keep and what they have to watch out for.

I have been commanding for a while on my server and I have most of the footage so most likely next week I will make that video.

EU Seafearer’s Rest, Guilds: [AR] [tD]
Catalin Puf (Human Elementalist)
Catalin Elf (Sylvari Thief)

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Posted by: Julenal.3907

Julenal.3907

SFR is suffering at prime time because many guilds left, but last night at prime time there was only one guild raiding and our only objective was Necropolis. I had it all sieged up and for almost 2 hours FSP and JS with guilds like SLAY, Kale, GoldenHorde and others tried to get inside.

They tried for proxy catas at SW walls, then for trebuchets at South wall, proxy catas at NW wall, rams a couple of times and at some point they managed to destroy the SW wall with catas because we were starving for supplies and that wall was only at 30% and couldn’t be repaired.

The commander did a good job [FD] guild, by claiming the Refugee camp to have supplies and basically took all surrounding objectives to know when the enemy was coming.

Thanks, I was leading that day. SFR community has not appreciated it’s scouts for a long time and as a scout/roamer/smallscale commander I try always to help scouts. I actually got whispers from our friend guild Kalevala that was one of the attacking guilds that day: “Nice that someone is actually fighting back”.

I have to state that our guild has been really inactive in normal borderlands but have somewhat enjoyed the new borderland map. It has many things to benefit small scale and outmanned fights when compared to old maps. Still EotM seems to be more enjoyable as there is much less toxiticy.

GM of Finnish gaming community guild “Frozen Dawn” [FD] since GW2 announce
GW player of 14+kh and Passionate Mind Wracker since 2005

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Posted by: erKo.9586

erKo.9586

Hey, great start with your guides. We’ll keep an eye on this thread, and once you have a few more guides collected, we may sticky it as a reference.

Impressive that you answer a thread that is positive regarding the new maps – but you are ignoring the 100s of threads that doesnt like the new maps. Good job

[WvW] Thanks Anet for listening to your players during 2016.
Far Shiverpeaks – EU – Since release.