Guild Wars 2

Ok, this is an open question I have no obvious answer to.

Picture the following scenario. You’re in a tower or smaller keep, defending it with about 10 fellow players against an enemy random zerg of say…25 players.

What is the best you can hope to achieve in such a situation? Is there any effective way to break the siege? Is targeting random players and hoping for the odd kill or two the best you can hope for?

Is there a realistic chance of destroying attacking siege weapons?

Or must you simply call for help and hope for the best?

I’m asking because, outside of summoning your own zerg to relieve you, defending a tower seems almost futile. Even if you have 50% of the attackers numbers, it’s really hard to break up the enemy force.

Any tips or strategies on how to deal with such situations.

The best I’ve seen so far is hope that you have 3 Thieves, tell them to drop down and Daggerstorm all at once while the others storm in to mop up the rest. This can be very effective, although it’s hard to coordinate in random groups.

Cannons & ballistas. Arrow carts, unfortunately, don’t have enough “oomph” to knock players out anymore.

Both cannons & ballista have good range and do really good damage, plus an already-built ballista will knock out any enemy siege equipment that it can reach. The tricky part with ballista is setting them up where they can hit attacking players without getting hit themselves. Somewhere up high, but not behind a ledge (the ballista shot will just hit the ledge).

Any tactic depends on whether you’re up against an organised group or a random zerg, organised groups are better equipped to deal with surprises. With coordination it’s quite easy, though even with simply a decent collection of arrowcarts its pretty doable, and that doesnt require so much coordination.

You can also surprise and break a larger group apart by an organised sortie, or by leaving a few on the walls (though with only 10 people that might be a challenge) and dropping from the side tower and jumping them from behind/the side.
A small contingent of our guild together with a zerg broke apart a (relatively) organised attack force by telling the zerglings to gather up and come to us to go out, and count down to actually going out.

Another way is simply outlasting them. Also, killing the people who res (they are often so nice and all rush to the defense of their wounded comrades!), or at least damaging them enough that they’re scared off, is also fairly good.

Remember you can AoE the inside of the doors and hit people on the other side, even as a melee, though i heard thats not intentional and they’re looking at changing that, and by putting a catapult behind the door and firing it on the door you have the same effect + a knockback.

you’d be surprised how effective burst aoe popping in and out of the postern door is. so many people aoe and fight from the battlement but against only 25 people as few kitten people could effectively successfully defend a keep. If the opponents are an orgasnised guild though then yeah you’ll struggle. siege is your best bet.

try quickly nipping out and dropping some aoe close quarters and getting back inside to heal up, fighting on the walls invites a lot of unwanted attention but popping in and out of the door can reward a much more devestating and surprising outcome.

Cluster bomb. Especially if people are digging in right at a gate. Which the do, often. Which means they get hit in the face with a bomb. Often.

Cannons are the first thing to die. Poor design honestly. Way too easy to take them out and the operator.

10 vs 25. call in re-enforcements in /map of course first. is there an organized pvp group on that map with you? if so they will likely respond.
If not, take it on yourself to organize a bit. Set a rally point so they don’t trickle in.
You can either set up a means to enter via back door. (un-assailed door, or mesmer portal) or establish a rally point outside for randoms to meet up and then attack as a group. Example. you are in brair keep, you need help. Tell re-enforcments to rally at vale arch/sentry. and to then precede to briar when you have a force of 10-15.

10 man alone. catapults, arrow carts built back away from wall aoe. Pummel for a awhile. focusing on killing any rams. once siege machines are down, you can focus on breaking the siege. (offensive cata’s are harder to deal with)
On call, charge out together. situation will dictate if frontal, or side attack is ideal.
Most classes have an ability that makes a charge very effective.
Mesmer portal/quickness onto catapult line.. Engi supply drop, thief dagger storm, etc.

I’ve nearly broken seiges single handedly with supply drop and grenade barrage. give me quickness and projectile absorb/reflect and yeah. seriously, mesmer/engi probably can 2v25.

Canons will die within 60 seconds when faced with a medium size zerg. Even if you mount them, you will die before firing off 2-3 shots.

When faced with a 25 people zerg while having 10 defenders, my strategy would be to hold out as long as possible while waiting for reinforcements to save the day. Helm’s Deep Tactic, in other words lol :P I believe that’s how it’s meant to be by design.

If you have the dps and organization, you can flank the attacking the team from the side or behind or use a portal behind them or in the middle of them like my guild does. We constantly break down enemy sieges or zergs using portals to their fullest potentional, and I’m not saying we abuse the culling problem, because we can definately see the enemies, and they can see us, but most of the people are still unaware how good portals are in skilled hands and they are unprepared for the huge burst we can do with the mesmer speed elite buff. We also have decidated healers and pure glass cannons for the initial burst. A group of 10 people can take down 30+ enemies rather easily if they dont expect it.

.. But if there are randoms defending against a siege, you probably just need to utilize the use of defensive siege weapons, ballistae, arrowcarts etc.

I find the best way is by humiliating them in a quick flashfire approach. Discouraging your foe is the quickest way to end a fight. However getting your people to play along is a tough one.

We’ve a lot of times let them break the door rush in with balista’s and arrow cards waiting inside. to the flanks. Then have 3 drop from the oil and close the door behind them. Usually the fight is over in a few seconds and unless they are filled with youth who you can repeatedly kill over and over and over, they wont be back. The flashfire approach saves you a lot of time in the long run and demoralizes their troops while invigorating your own.

Any siege equipment on the defensive side of a siege is only there to delay the attackers, unless the attackers come in very small numbers.

Anything placed on the walls can be aoe’d down with some effort, players on the wall aren’t really able to kill attackers as they can’t bring more then a few skills to bare at any one time.. sometimes the combined shots will knock some people over but usually not enough to have attackers even think about falling back.

Best ways i’ve seen in game so far to deal with it include:

1) Players grouping on a mes portal, mesmer rushes out of the postern gate and drops other side of portal… contents of the keep goes through and aoes the hell out of the attackers. Seen this work just as well with players just grouping and rushing out of the gate.. never seen it fail with a mes though.

2) A rush of players coming from another angle, preferably behind the attackers.. this will bring defenders out to help as well, needs a sizeable force to avoid just getting stomped.

3) Building siege inside the walls can be effective, balistas especially.. the bottleneck of most gates can sometimes be all you need but this one is very last ditch effort.

Could name a few more but these are ones i’ve seen work most often, most require player action and communication.. which sadly isn’t always something people want to take part in, many seem happy to sit on the walls spamming there one aoe while there keep/tower slowly gets crushed.

It really is all about seige 11 people vs 25 should win. It all depends how determined and organize the 25 is but you said random zerg the 11 should win.
The 11 otoh isnt going to win by auto attacking. You arrow cart and aoe in and around the gate area once their seige is done and a few manning them jump down and charge
Human nature for most people when charged move backwards just go out aoe then jump back in rinse repeat
Once you get into bigger numbers like 40 v 20 and fifty v 25 its alot harder to hold that amount but still possible

Multiple arrow carts are the only thing with much chance of success. 1 arrow cart is an annoyance but 4 are deadly enough that you can’t realistically rez anyone.

Otherwise what you’re really doing is holding them off until the friendly zerg can arrive.

Incidentally, they should make regular attacks do 0 damage to doors.

Then you could break sieges simply by….killing their siege.

As it is you don’t really need rams. They speed things up a lot but 1 guy with a rusty spoon can eventually destroy a reinforced gate in this game. Which is dumb.