Guild Wars 2

EDIT: Apparently I have to spell this out for people. I’m not asking for tips on how to play, I’m a perfecly good player. I’m asking if the way the game makes us play makes sense, when you consider that our sieges and siege weapons are roughly based on medieval warfare.

As the game is currently set up, I feel that battles and seiges at towers and keeps are upside down.

Currently, walls favour attacking players. If you’re attacking, it’s incredibly easy to stand at the bottom of a wall, AoE the top and pull off players who peep over the edge. And conversely, if you’re defending, it’s very difficult to get off any attacks without being targetted by half a dozen enemies and pulled over. Simply to get an attack off as a defending player you have to stand right on the edge of the wall. And cannons are only useable if you have a death-wish.

Seige weapons, on the other hand, favour the defender. By far the easiest way to deal with enemy catapults or trebs is to build a counter cata or treb. The easiest way to deal with rams or golems is to put up ACs or catas behind the gate. Meanwhile, for the attackers, seige out in the open is incredibly vulnerable. Vulnerable to the point that the preferred tactic is simply to build another cata or w/e if the enemy rushes it, rather than trying to defend it.

Maybe it’s just me, but this just seems the wrong way around. Walls should make it incredibly easy for defending players to keep attacking players away, while seige weapons, particularly catas and trebs, should be the go-to, first-choice for attackers (the guys conducting the seige), rather than the defenders. The defenders should have to form up and sally out to deal with seige, not just throw a treb on top of the supply depot.

It just seems to make more sense that way around. It’s always bugged me that archers and casters can’t defend at least on even terms from a massive wall. But then I do think there is a fairly nice balance between attack and defence at the moment, so would trying to resolve this screw up this balance? Opinions!

Almost any arrowcart on top of walls is useless since it easily gets blown up by AoE (assuming that the person manning it doesn’t run after being nuked too), so yes I kinda agree

There are tons of safe spots for siege and if you are standing on the walls during a siege you are doing it wrong. Siege warfare always favors the defense assuming the place siege intelligently and use it, including counter siege. I’d recommend checking Youtube, there are a lot of great videos on siege placement.

Chiolas.1326:

Almost any arrowcart on top of walls is useless since it easily gets blown up by AoE (assuming that the person manning it doesn’t run after being nuked too), so yes I kinda agree

Or rangers can “guard” against them sending in their pets to “guard” against enemy players. :P

Standing on the outer edge of a wall to defend is no different than standing out in front of the wall to defend … both will get you quickly killed, as they should. Merely standing on a wall should not give you any particular protection. Walls are there for you to stand BEHIND if you want to be protected, and siege is available if you actually want to defend.

Regarding defensive siege itself, most of it gets dropped in really stupid places so of course it gets wiped out easily by AoE. People put arrow carts in the middle of the wall, or even on the outer lip, because they don’t know how to twist the camera view for targeting. How stupid is that? Most siege also gets dropped independently instead of placed to protect each other. Many times towers in particular simply don’t have enough siege to properly defend because there aren’t enough players willing to stick around to properly build it, and many times siege gets easily taken out because there weren’t enough players there to use it quickly enough when the attack started.

The system isn’t broken … players are just too dumb to use it right.

While I don’t agree about the siege weapons I do agree about walls being useless for defenders. A fix could be:

1) Find a way to not to force defenders to stand on the very edge of the walls in order to effectively hit attackers. This would help to lessen the pulls and the effectiveness of the small AoEs, since only the largest AoE could hit defenders, who are no more forced to stand on the edge, who are trying to hit attackers.

2) Do not let defenders place AC in spots which are not reachable by attackers. This would mean that siege weapons could stil be placed in spots which are not within the range of the normal enemy AoEs but ARE within the range of e.g. enemy AC.

3) Provide a defense bonus for defenders on the walls. For example a 5% damage reduction for people standing in wooden walls, 10% in reinforced walls and 20% in fortified walls.

Frenk.5917:

While I don’t agree about the siege weapons I do agree about walls being useless for defenders. A fix could be:

1) Find a way to not to force defenders to stand on the very edge of the walls in order to effectively hit attackers. This would help to lessen the pulls and the effectiveness of the small AoEs, since only the largest AoE could hit defenders, who are no more forced to stand on the edge, who are trying to hit attackers.

2) Do not let defenders place AC in spots which are not reachable by attackers. This would mean that siege weapons could stil be placed in spots which are not within the range of the normal enemy AoEs but ARE within the range of e.g. enemy AC.

3) Provide a defense bonus for defenders on the walls. For example a 5% damage reduction for people standing in wooden walls, 10% in reinforced walls and 20% in fortified walls.

I tried to say it in a constructive way, but you didn’t read it? It’s not broken so it requires no fix.

Sunspots.9861:

There are tons of safe spots for siege and if you are standing on the walls during a siege you are doing it wrong. Siege warfare always favors the defense assuming the place siege intelligently and use it, including counter siege. I’d recommend checking Youtube, there are a lot of great videos on siege placement.

I wasn’t asking where safe spots for seige are. Please re-read.

Swirling Winds and Smoke Screen can give attacking siege the advantage, almost too much so sometimes IMO.

Ragnar.4257:

Sunspots.9861:

There are tons of safe spots for siege and if you are standing on the walls during a siege you are doing it wrong. Siege warfare always favors the defense assuming the place siege intelligently and use it, including counter siege. I’d recommend checking Youtube, there are a lot of great videos on siege placement.

I wasn’t asking where safe spots for seige are. Please re-read.

Then what are you asking then, if anet can make it easier for stupid people to stand on walls? Sorry I’m a little confused by your post.

I was just trying to get a discussion going on how, historically, in a castle seige, the defenders could rain down death from the walls on any attacking footmen with relative impunity, while attackers would set up catapults etc. safely out of range of the castle and would entrench themselves around that until they had made a breach and were ready to storm it.
However in WvW this would appear to be the other way round. I’m not arguing that anything is overpowered or broken or needs fixing.

If you just want to stroke your ego and tell me to L2P, then please go away.

Historically there also weren’t magical spells either. You know this is fantasy right? By all means don’t learn to be better, continue dying on walls and asking anet for help.

Sunspots.9861:

Historically there also weren’t magical spells either. You know this is fantasy right? By all means don’t learn to be better, continue dying on walls and asking anet for help.

Are you trolling me, or are you still not reading?

I’m not dying on walls, and I’m not asking for help. Once again, instead of engaging in discussion just go straight to “L2P”.

Honestly, I was just trying to engage in some friendly discussion about the meta-game, but this forum is so vicious and full of whiners that you immediately assume that I’m crying because I keep dying. I know perfectly well how to conduct a siege in game and how to do it without dying. I’m not asking for tips, I’m not saying either attack or defence is over or under powered. Just discussion. Think you can do that?

Okay good luck with your “discussion”

Well you’ve pretty much killed it, so thanks.

I think the developers missed out on many opportunities in the WvW scenario, that the world they created offers. The whole warfare machinery reminds me to human and charr technologies. But where is the Asuran shield? Preventing spells from penetrating it as long as the shield is provided with some sort of power source (there are many ways, how u could make such a power source, the best way imho would be to make it be fueled by some crystals for example, that have to be gathered to replace the ones being burned out). Where is the asuran mega laser, that is fueled by the same crystals?

Also, the tower and keep design reminds me of a world without magic (our world). The architects of the fortifications in WvW seem not to have thought about the possibility of massive AoE dmg. There are some keeps where the walls have some place in the back, that can’t be reached by AoE dmg from the attackers. Here somebody had thought about such situations…

But as long as players place a trebuchet next to a wall or in range of the defending morters, as long as arrow cards are getting burned away on walls, while the ones I place stay alive, as long as golems are constructed directly in front of the tower, that is to be attacked, we won’t have an ideal balance of siege situations. So I agree partly with one post here. People sometime use siege weapons in a dumb way atm.

i think its a fair point.

siege is often more useful in a tower than outside and players are often safer outside a tower attacking than inside defending.

it is strange

They could make arrow proof glass that extends 10 feet above the lip of the wall, and heat seeking arrows that can fire around corners.

fivekiller.1432:

i think its a fair point.

Siege is often more useful in a tower than outside and players are often safer outside a tower attacking than inside defending.

No way. I’ve done a lot of attacking and I’ve done a lot of defending. Unless the defenders were too stupid to deploy any siege, anything even close to equal numbers gives a huge advantage to the defenders.

You want sieges to be more medieval…

…

Yeah, I’m not too keen on fights lasting months while waiting for the people inside to starve.

As for those “useless” walls, pretty good at avoiding getting meleed to death, and a tower with just a couple of manned arrow carts in a good position can help hold off a decent sized group of attackers for a while. Also those walls are pretty handy in keeping invisible thieves from instant killing you while you’re trying to rally… that’s if you let yourself die instead of, say, just backing away before you die and hiding behind said wall for a bit.

Sunspots.9861:

Frenk.5917:

While I don’t agree about the siege weapons I do agree about walls being useless for defenders. A fix could be:

1) Find a way to not to force defenders to stand on the very edge of the walls in order to effectively hit attackers. This would help to lessen the pulls and the effectiveness of the small AoEs, since only the largest AoE could hit defenders, who are no more forced to stand on the edge, who are trying to hit attackers.

2) Do not let defenders place AC in spots which are not reachable by attackers. This would mean that siege weapons could stil be placed in spots which are not within the range of the normal enemy AoEs but ARE within the range of e.g. enemy AC.

3) Provide a defense bonus for defenders on the walls. For example a 5% damage reduction for people standing in wooden walls, 10% in reinforced walls and 20% in fortified walls.

I tried to say it in a constructive way, but you didn’t read it? It’s not broken so it requires no fix.

I think “fix” is a wrong term, but he does have a good suggestion. Providing wall people with boon advantage will move the siege a bit farther away from the wall. But I don’t think that’s enough to make defending from the wall viable.