Guild Wars 2

Is repeatedly tagging a fully upgraded keep/garrison, thus preventing people from waypointing into it, a common and acceptable albeit inane tactic, or is it griefing?

Tactic, making the enemy port to their spawn so they have a longer distance to run can change the face of a battle. Like tagging a keep then go for a tower can make the reinforcements arrive to late.

So definitely a tactic.

It’s a good tactic. You can also prevent it by leaving a few people to hunt down and chase the tapper. Kill him enough times and he’ll get tired. Unless he’s a Nike warrior, that’s when you’re out of luck

Nothing inane about this tactic. What’s wrong is the mechanic of contested itself.

A person knocking on the door shouldn’t make the whole keep “unsafe” for owners. Contested should mean “it is not under your control anymore” and should be triggered by something that represents real danger to ownership. Outer perimeter (gates of walls) being breached for example. Or orange swords inside. Something like that. But not the simple “Hello? Is anybody home?”.

Griefing .. when someone does it to my keep or tower..

Tactic .. when I do it to an enemy ..

Went to check crossed swords once on our Bay and got into outer just as it was flipped. Hid and got away with it. Hid long enough for the enemy blob to go off somewhere else.. then proceeded to ‘knock’ on inner gate.. I am a Necro so was the only useful thing for me to do. Totally inane since there was no way I could build ram to speed up the process and the DPS I had was cr@p.. But it was enough to bring up white swords .. and the entire blob back to smear me.

The point is .. it distracted then long enough to allow the rest of us to get back to Garri to defend.. Definitely tactic.

Tagging garri is a nice way of saying, hey we are about to start our assault on hills or bay, better go there.

Tactic, but also griefing.. depends if it’s a bot or not..

For instance AM has 1 warrior who does nothing but tag keeps and towers.. it all depends on what you want to be known for, or how dedicated you are.. that warrior ..so dedicated people thought he was a bot..

Its a legit tactic as often as not as it often means that enemy commanders need to get more scouts to figure out what is being legitamately hit. An example is tapping garrisonand hills while committing your force on bay.

It’s to easy currently. I would prefer if WP-blocking would be changed:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Why-is-SM-waypoint-contested-all-the-time/1810315

Waypoints are too powerful as it is, the contested mechanic will never change to be harder to achieve.

I personally think they’re in a good spot.

That would depend on who owns the keep. If it’s mine, you’re griefing. If it’s your keep? I’m playing the game as intended. I hope that helps.

Currently a tactic. However, a waypoint should only contest when a keep has a breach (inner or outer). It should stay contested until the breaches are sealed.

I don’t see as a problem, you have scouts for a reason to react accordingly.
I think a zerg has plentiful ways to manoeuvre quickly around a map as it is, even in the EoTM.
It’s not always safe for us contesters though..

It’s a strategy. It prevents the enemy from spawning in their keeps and forces them to use the hill waypoint. This can buy the offending team valuable time to secure what ever it might be they are attacking.
It can also alert the team that their keep is under attack and in some situations they will fall for it, pulling off of what ever they’re attacking and returning to inspect their keep.

Tactic, it can be avoided with scouts. No scouts means the larger force will probably migrate to said tower/keep, with scouts, the larger force will be informed that its nothing more then a tap.

To clarify, I wasn’t inspired to ask because I was on the receiving end; I was actually the one tagging the garrison on an enemy’s borderland while watching Ripper Street. After a couple of hours of unrelenting tagging despite many deaths I started getting some whispers, and not particularly friendly ones. I barely started up again tonight when I got more whispers, and more threats of being reported. So I hoped to get some consensus as to the legitimacy of this particular activity.

Yaro.3251:

Nothing inane about this tactic. What’s wrong is the mechanic of contested itself.

Second this. The structure should be contested when it’s in real danger, such as when any portion of it takes damage from a siege engine, or there’s a breach somewhere.

It is definitely a tactic. The only change should be that it require a certain number of people to contest it. Maybe 5.

Tactic. It’s a good way to get fights started.

Ok, seriously:

I do think it needs to be modified based on the amount of damage done.

Going up and “ringing the doorbell and yelling trick or treat” should not be the same as I just used a ram to take your back door to 98% percent and then left, leaving you not knowing I just TP’d and egged your house and you need to get it repaired.

msalakka.4653:

To clarify, I wasn’t inspired to ask because I was on the receiving end; I was actually the one tagging the garrison on an enemy’s borderland while watching Ripper Street. After a couple of hours of unrelenting tagging despite many deaths I started getting some whispers, and not particularly friendly ones. I barely started up again tonight when I got more whispers, and more threats of being reported. So I hoped to get some consensus as to the legitimacy of this particular activity.

It is a legitimate tactic and can be quite a game changer if it’s done correctly. It can cause distraction, prevent reinforcements and throw the enemy off the trail of your actual forces. Those that have threatened to report you have no grounds to report you for a start, and there is also no report feature for such a thing any way. All I can say is, those that are threatening you need to grow up, stop being so childish and play the game, because this is always going to be a legitimate tactic of WvW until something changes with how waypoints work in WvW.

Its a tactic but its something that anet should change so its no longer possible.

maybe i’m thinking of this in terms of “T1 problems” but 99.9999% of the time this is griefing. when it’s used legitimately it can turn a battle—this is true. but i would invite you to come watch JQ borderland sometimes or even EB during certain primetimes. there are people who will literally log in and spend 8-12 hours knocking on doors to contest waypoints. its pretty much the same few people from the same few guilds who do this. they won’t fight you if you attack (although some will try to run if you chase). they are so persistently doing nothing but contesting and dying that it’s honestly just sad that any human would devote this much timer per week to it. (and why it’s been heavily speculated that bots are doing it but personally i haven’t seen evidence to prove that.)

and most of the time these guys are doing this uselessly. i’ve personally watched a warrior in EB do this for 6-8 straight hours when his server had the outnumbered buff. he wasn’t even doing this to let his people take or control things…he didn’t even have people he was supporting by doing this. similar guys have done this in the borderlands too—constantly contesting a waypoint when we own the whole map and not a single other person is trying to take anything but maybe spawn towers or spawn camps…for hours…

personally i think the contesting is way overdue for a change, especially with another season threatening. what has been stupid, nonsensical contesting over the last 2+ months is about to be considered “legitimate” all the time “because its season 2 lol!!!!1one.” eso doesn’t let their version of waypoints become contested until a door/gate/wall is taken down by 5% and from what i saw in the betas, it wasn’t swaying battles like people are scared of here.

consider this:
if anet would bite the bullet and make the door take 5-10% damage, it would actually be a zerg-busting tactic. instead of one guy ringing a doorbell, a small group would have to run up together, clear guards, drop a ram and hit and until noticed, forcing someone somewhere to respond. if this pulls some people off the enemy’s zerg, then great, because by having to have a group move to accomplish the waypoint constesting, they are pulling off their own zerg anyway. resources and manpower being split to have cause and effect is a good thing imo.

the only problems i see in wvw is not enough zerg-busting mechanics. gate-tapping, when used appropriately, is still one guy hitting a door and does nothing—-2 people can wait and kill him repeatedly while he is 1 less person in his zerg. and usually even in the appropriate format, that door knocker is doing it to ensure his zerg is not interrupted with an accidental pvp fight while they pvdoor. so while it may be used to give a team of 10 time to take a keep before a team of 40 comes to kill them, i don’t see this happen very often.

I’d prefer if it wouldn’t work unless a keep/tower got hit for at least 1% of damage to a wall or gate. That way you’ll only be able to contest it if you actually pulled off some damage. Meaning just killing the guards won’t do squat, and attacking the door would take too long.

It is an INTENDED TACTIC.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=UCrTlXky2Z0

Here we see Isaiah Cartwright, one of the lead developers for GW2, showing the tactic in his WvW segment.

It was indeed intended that gates always signal they are getting attacked so that players could play mind games with enemy servers.

CrimsonNeonite.1048:

I don’t see as a problem, you have scouts for a reason to react accordingly.
I think a zerg has plentiful ways to manoeuvre quickly around a map as it is, even in the EoTM.
It’s not always safe for us contesters though..

that’s adorable

It’s a tactic. A very annoying tactic, true – but a legitimate one.

It’s a perfectly legitimate tactic: you’re denying them the use of the waypoint (if they have one), and also denying them accurate information about your team’s location (because if the keep and three towers are tagged, they don’t know which you are actually attacking without scouting in person).

Only ever seen this happen when enemy servers want to attack the surrounding towers; think its a great tactic.

It’s a tactic, but sometimes it’s fun to grief by having it permanently contested for half hour to an hour just to see how many people can chase you, which is fun if you’re a thief.
Even then that is a tactic lol, you managed to get 10 people to chase you around in circles instead of rallying on their zerg to cap or defend.

• **** anoying tactic that works were well.

Tactic for the greatest masochists out there. Nothing beats tagging a keep for 5 hours straight till the enemy stops bothering. Then solo building a ram. On a t3 keep. And breaking down the gate.
Of course the kitten commander failed to use the opportunity to take it. “Treb manned behind door, commander”. “Everyone move into the poison and build rams.” Followed by “What do you mean we ain’t got supply?”. ARGH.

msalakka.4653:

To clarify, I wasn’t inspired to ask because I was on the receiving end; I was actually the one tagging the garrison on an enemy’s borderland while watching Ripper Street. After a couple of hours of unrelenting tagging despite many deaths I started getting some whispers, and not particularly friendly ones. I barely started up again tonight when I got more whispers, and more threats of being reported. So I hoped to get some consensus as to the legitimacy of this particular activity.

As a commander it seems your always subject to such opinions of others, and if you’re not doing it their way they whisper you. My server is usually extremely supportive for me, but like everyone else, I’ve had those haters go offline to whisper me so I can’t even respond.
Seriously, it’s a legit tactic and a cue to the enemy to keep their eyes open. Nothing wrong with it.

This is definitely a tactic mate, and a clever one. sometimes u do this a few times, they get used to it being tagged, and u go for it for real, they don’t show up as quick bc they think its just another tag.

aspirine.6852:

Tagging garri is a nice way of saying, hey we are about to start our assault on hills or bay, better go there.

lol no kidding

There is an element of risk in it and I`ve died on occasion getting a necessary tag on a high tier keep door.