Guild Wars 2

This is just an idea I had for making defending easier and makes playing offense much harder. Not 100% percent sure how it would play out but want to throw the idea out to the community. Hope this sparks some interest.

First I’d like to start off by saying get rid of Superior Siege/Omega Golems they are way to strong offensively 3 superior rams melt a reinforced gate even more so with the mastery this is a complete disadvantage to lower pop servers the duration the gate stays up isnt nearly enough time for 20~ Defenders to kill 50+ man zerg not to mention Iron Will + Waterfields can make killing the guys manning the rams nearly impossible and with the zerg that size and siege at only the cost of 50 supply theoretically they can build 10 superior rams. Now the solution to this defensively is to have 4-5 superior arrow carts and sometimes yes with a reinforced tower can be held against a zerg like this when you are there and ready to hold the tower. If you get there even 30 seconds after the Rams have gone up the hold is nearly impossible AC’s can be destroyed as well before your small zerg is able to get there and defend the tower you are just purely overwhelmed by lack of time and their numbers.

While there are advantages to superior defense siege as well like AC’s and Bali’s the purely offense siege Rams, Cata’s, Omega’s, Trebs, are just to strong for smaller numbers to hold off.

(I understand Treb’s and Cata’s can be used very well in defensive situations as well, but they are mostly used offensively so I will refer to them as Offensive Siege vise versa for AC’s and Bali’s)

I purpose completely removing Superior Siege from the game and buffing AC’kitten cap to 10 and giving them a damage buff as regular AC are a lot weaker then superior.

Now that I have discussed removing Superior Siege its time to talk about limiting siege

Having a Bigger Zerg = More Supply
More Supply = More Siege
More Siege = Things Dying Faster

The amount of supply a zerg of 50 people can hold 500
That equates to 12 rams -10 Cata’s – 5 Treb’s – 5 Alpha Golems

Not to mention the fact that every supply camp has 100 supply in it to begin with which regenerates 10 every 30 seconds!

Generally when I am commanding and I see a unmanned tower I drop 2-3 rams and if all goes well we have the tower in a matter of 1 min or 2. And if my zerg has 50 men (Keeping a generic number for a matter of example this is a pretty standard silver league zerg) it has spent about 80-120 supply out of 500 to take one of the four tower objectives and I can resupply this amount simply by going to a supply camp and grabbing 100 more. The amount of supply spent does not nearly cover the ground lost especially if this tower is reinforced and your zerg was stuck fighting off the third server.

To me those numbers don’t add up
I propose increasing the cost of each piece of siege by a much greater number mainly for offensive siege

Rams – 150 supply -Treb’s – 300 supply – Cata’s – 200 supply – Bali’s – 80 supply – AC’s – 100 supply – Alpha Golem – 300 supply

Now these costs may seem steep for one piece of siege, but with this assaulting large targets like keeps will have to extremely coordinated and planned to actually succeed instead of just building 10 + Omega golems and walking through entire borderlands because the home server can only get 20~ people to defend.

Also to keep it balanced there needs to be a siege limit inside towers and keeps.
Towers with a 5 AC’s 5 Bali limit
Keeps with a 15 AC 15 Bali limit

Also the Commander will need to have siege placement override what ever siege a commander throws will override others siege
(Yes there will be trolls but without a cap Assaulting would be literally impossible)

Continued:
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My theory for this idea is that looking at the overall theme of WvW its far too easy to flip things and way to hard for small amounts of people to defend making Zerging extremely effective when your numbers are much higher. By increasing the cost of Siege by extreme amounts, it slows down there ability to melt gates, and gives the defenders a chance to set up or man previously created siege and have an actual chance of pushing back massive zergs. Kill the idea that taking a tower is a 2 min thing and actually introduce work in taking a tower make it a 15-30 min SIEGE of a tower. When you finally take the tower the feeling will be good and rewarding and will make people want to stay and defend rather then to move onto the next 2 min tower capture. With these small numbers you can defend really well, helping keep your towers/keeps holds your PPT which in turn creates closer match ups less steamrolls. Coordination is key and the 1 Warscore from stomping an enemy seems a lot more now that the match ups are closer and things aren’t flipping back and fourth every tick. Stability is given to low pop servers and there defensive skills can shine.
Thanks for reading I apologize for grammar/spelling error’s and hope this sparks some discussion.

Disclaimer: This is not an end all for zerging! It only makes wiping mindless karma zergs much easier defensively .

Stats information on Rams vs. ACs and ACs vs Golems:
Credit to Cymric.7368 for this info

Just want to post some numbers to help the discussion here.
A paper gate has 375k hp. A normal ram with no mastery deal 1600dps on the gate. So it takes ~234s to take down a gate if ignoring player dps.
A normal arrow cart with rank 2 mastery deal 1155 dps to rams and rams has ~100k hp. So it take less than 100s to kill a ram.
A normal treb with rank 3 mastery deal nearly twice more damage to rams than arrow carts.
All siege deal 15% less damage to golems compare to rams. All superior siege deal 50% more damage. Rank 3 mastery increase ram dps by ~50%.
dps test of siege vs rams and golems:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQQsp5_xBR4
It is certainly possible to defend against normal rams, but against superior rams and rank 3 ram mastery, you will need a lot of pre build siege to destroy them in time.

Superior versions of siege requires more supply which does not hinder a zerg much. Such a design promotes zerg mentality. Superior versions should require gating requirements like the guild versions that uses commendations so that they are truly special and not used by a zerg at every structure.

first off, its 10 supply every 30 sec not 10 sec

second, regular acs do kitten dmg and any one that has even a little bit of regen can out heal them. atm it takes about 3 acs to out pace 1 ram on a paper gate if the rammers swap out so it keeps hitting. So with out sup acs it now will take more ppl and more acs to defend a tower aginst just 1 ram.

third, your destroying small groups and promoteing zerging, with 150 supply to build a ram it will now take min 15 guys to drop 1 ram. and you need 30 ppl to just build the 3 acs needed to stop said ram, so this in no way helps defence. So, just no there

fourth, one a 2 ac limit in towers, means you cant stop any attack on the tower without a zerg there to stop them

your original purpose of this post was to aid small groups defending towers and keep. in reality your entire post crushes any hopes of small groups defending any thing or taking something for that matter and promotes mindless zerging

denimdan.8642:

first off, its 10 supply every 30 sec not 10 sec

second, regular acs do kitten dmg and any one that has even a little bit of regen can out heal them. atm it takes about 3 acs to out pace 1 ram on a paper gate if the rammers swap out so it keeps hitting. So with out sup acs it now will take more ppl and more acs to defend a tower aginst just 1 ram.

third, your destroying small groups and promoteing zerging, with 150 supply to build a ram it will now take min 15 guys to drop 1 ram. and you need 30 ppl to just build the 3 acs needed to stop said ram, so this in no way helps defence. So, just no there

fourth, one a 2 ac limit in towers, means you cant stop any attack on the tower without a zerg there to stop them

your original purpose of this post was to aid small groups defending towers and keep. in reality your entire post crushes any hopes of small groups defending any thing or taking something for that matter and promotes mindless zerging

First, I apologize for being misinformed about the supply camps

Second, Originally I typed out to buff regular AC to superior and took it out because I felt it would be too strong and I forgot to increase the amount of AC that could be placed in a tower now that it was just regular

Third, I have no intention of wanting smaller groups to be taking towers its built on smaller groups being able to defend what they own against bigger zergs I also wanted the amount of ACs to be put in a tower to be discussed I dont want to make taking an objective impossible just a lot harder then it currently is

Lastly, If your running in a group under 15 people flipping camps stopping yaks and spiking enemys is a lot more effective then trying to ninja a tower for 5 mins with 5 people you can also find and kill will amount to more points then the 10 you would get for the tower for that one tick

Attacking shouldnt be as easy as it is. On low pop servers WvW has no stability
I will edit the AC numbers and reconsider making them Superior Thx for the insight

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denimdan.8642:

first off, its 10 supply every 30 sec not 10 sec

second, regular acs do kitten dmg and any one that has even a little bit of regen can out heal them. atm it takes about 3 acs to out pace 1 ram on a paper gate if the rammers swap out so it keeps hitting. So with out sup acs it now will take more ppl and more acs to defend a tower aginst just 1 ram.

third, your destroying small groups and promoteing zerging, with 150 supply to build a ram it will now take min 15 guys to drop 1 ram. and you need 30 ppl to just build the 3 acs needed to stop said ram, so this in no way helps defence. So, just no there

fourth, one a 2 ac limit in towers, means you cant stop any attack on the tower without a zerg there to stop them

your original purpose of this post was to aid small groups defending towers and keep. in reality your entire post crushes any hopes of small groups defending any thing or taking something for that matter and promotes mindless zerging

First, I apologize for being misinformed about the supply camps

Second, Originally I typed out to buff regular AC to superior and took it out because I felt it would be too strong and I forgot to increase the amount of AC that could be placed in a tower now that it was just regular

Third, I have no intention of wanting smaller groups to be taking towers its built on smaller groups being able to defend what they own against bigger zergs I also wanted the amount of ACs to be put in a tower to be discussed I dont want to make taking an objective impossible just a lot harder then it currently is

Lastly, If your running in a group under 15 people flipping camps stopping yaks and spiking enemys is a lot more effective then trying to ninja a tower for 5 mins with 5 people you can also find and kill will amount to more points then the 10 you would get for the tower for that one tick

Attacking shouldnt be as easy as it is. On low pop servers WvW has no stability
I will edit the AC numbers and reconsider making them Superior Thx for the insight

second point….with the current pvt armor meta and ram buffs any thing short of 2 sup acs cant stop 1 ram. i dont believe there should be an ac cap for towers of less than 5 if there is one at all.

third point…by increasing the amount of supply for both rams and acs you make it so a small group will have a vry difficult time siedgeing up a place, takes long enough as is to get 3 sup acs up in a tower at 40 supply each, when you have to run the supply from a camp.

i agree that takeing a tower or keep shouldn’t be as easy as it is, but your changes are still drastically hindering defensive capability as it will take 10 runs of supply to build 1 ac, and thats alot of time wasted that most defenders dont have time to waste

I run around with my guild group with about 5-8 people usually. We cause major havoc behind enemy lines. Cutting off supply, papering towers. Increasing supply required for siege would just make it way harder for my small group. It will also just promote zerging because more people would be required to build siege.

Also, defending towers against enemy zergs is not that difficult. Smart siege placement and priority targeting can stop entire zergs. Players are useless if they don’t have any siege or supply to take a tower, they will leave. Which is what you want them to do. If it is a prolonged siege then that gives you time to gain reinforcements. There have been many times where I was able to fend off zergs solo because I was smart about what to hit, or what to build.

The only thing that makes defending “boring” as it is now is because you can’t leave the tower empty unless you want to risk a zerg just rolling right on through.

And hell no I don’t want a limited amount of siege I can put in a tower. There is already the 1k radius 5 siege limit. There is nothing more satisfying to me then getting more siege in the tower then you can put in stonemist.

Also, getting siege up in supply camps is very important to me as evident in this picture.

denimdan.8642:

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denimdan.8642:

first off, its 10 supply every 30 sec not 10 sec

second, regular acs do kitten dmg and any one that has even a little bit of regen can out heal them. atm it takes about 3 acs to out pace 1 ram on a paper gate if the rammers swap out so it keeps hitting. So with out sup acs it now will take more ppl and more acs to defend a tower aginst just 1 ram.

third, your destroying small groups and promoteing zerging, with 150 supply to build a ram it will now take min 15 guys to drop 1 ram. and you need 30 ppl to just build the 3 acs needed to stop said ram, so this in no way helps defence. So, just no there

fourth, one a 2 ac limit in towers, means you cant stop any attack on the tower without a zerg there to stop them

your original purpose of this post was to aid small groups defending towers and keep. in reality your entire post crushes any hopes of small groups defending any thing or taking something for that matter and promotes mindless zerging

First, I apologize for being misinformed about the supply camps

Second, Originally I typed out to buff regular AC to superior and took it out because I felt it would be too strong and I forgot to increase the amount of AC that could be placed in a tower now that it was just regular

Third, I have no intention of wanting smaller groups to be taking towers its built on smaller groups being able to defend what they own against bigger zergs I also wanted the amount of ACs to be put in a tower to be discussed I dont want to make taking an objective impossible just a lot harder then it currently is

Lastly, If your running in a group under 15 people flipping camps stopping yaks and spiking enemys is a lot more effective then trying to ninja a tower for 5 mins with 5 people you can also find and kill will amount to more points then the 10 you would get for the tower for that one tick

Attacking shouldnt be as easy as it is. On low pop servers WvW has no stability
I will edit the AC numbers and reconsider making them Superior Thx for the insight

second point….with the current pvt armor meta and ram buffs any thing short of 2 sup acs cant stop 1 ram. i dont believe there should be an ac cap for towers of less than 5 if there is one at all.

third point…by increasing the amount of supply for both rams and acs you make it so a small group will have a vry difficult time siedgeing up a place, takes long enough as is to get 3 sup acs up in a tower at 40 supply each, when you have to run the supply from a camp.

i agree that takeing a tower or keep shouldn’t be as easy as it is, but your changes are still drastically hindering defensive capability as it will take 10 runs of supply to build 1 ac, and thats alot of time wasted that most defenders dont have time to waste

Well I believe that once you take back a tower you should siege it up as a commander taking the zerg on two supply runs to get two ACs up to hold a tower. Also remember that these are Regular Rams they will die before they can get the gate down if there is 2 constant ACs on them and of course there would have to be a lot of testing to be done with this, but I dont believe it would be fair to just bump up the cost of Rams 110 supply and not move ACs at all, like I said I want it to be a lot harder to take a tower but not impossible

A 50 man zerg in theory could get 3 rams up on a gate for 450 supply while in ACs for 500 you could have 5 ACs dealing damage to the rams and the zerg so even if the reinforced tower had zero supply if it was sieged up by a commander prior to the assault (good defensive practice for a commander) your chances of holding a tower are much much higher then they are currently. Then again on the flip side if you ignore siegeing the tower prior you may get into supply trouble trying to put up ACs and hopefully will learn to siege before you push your zerg out.

If this was implemented Reset night would be more focused on holding and siegeing everything in your corner before rushing other teams corners/keep

Also this will make a lot less Ram play and a lot more strategic cataing and trebing

Again thx for the posts it makes me think of factors initially that I may have missed I enjoy the criticism

ArkAngel.7940:

I run around with my guild group with about 5-8 people usually. We cause major havoc behind enemy lines. Cutting off supply, papering towers. Increasing supply required for siege would just make it way harder for my small group. It will also just promote zerging because more people would be required to build siege.

Also, defending towers against enemy zergs is not that difficult. Smart siege placement and priority targeting can stop entire zergs. Players are useless if they don’t have any siege or supply to take a tower, they will leave. Which is what you want them to do. If it is a prolonged siege then that gives you time to gain reinforcements. There have been many times where I was able to fend off zergs solo because I was smart about what to hit, or what to build.

The only thing that makes defending “boring” as it is now is because you can’t leave the tower empty unless you want to risk a zerg just rolling right on through.

And hell no I don’t want a limited amount of siege I can put in a tower. There is already the 1k radius 5 siege limit. There is nothing more satisfying to me then getting more siege in the tower then you can put in stonemist.

Also, getting siege up in supply camps is very important to me as evident in this picture.

I agree that this will hinder small group play when it comes to taking tower I also run with 5 man group in the northern halfs of BLs flipping camps yak slapping and occasionally taking towers but for WvW you can not hold a tower currently again a fully supplied 50+ man zerg with a commander who understands siege placement they can flash build 2 rams before the AC has any effect and destroy a gate with only 100 supply

As for promoting zerging my post isnt a end all for Zerging in my believe zerg can never but killed just by the way the game type is set up. My idea is to make it less about zerging objectives and more about fighting opponents like it says in the OP 1 warscore per spike (which would prolly make more sense if it was per kill in general) in closer match ups matter a lot more

understand that with this Tower wont flip constantly and the PPT scores will be a lot closer then they are currently. In this environment Skilled groups that zerg bust or roam have a better chance to contribute racking up points per spike (should be kill) roamers can make a lot more points killing enemies and spiking them with 1 bloodlust stack then they can capping a tower and waiting for it to tick.

No thanks.

Would prefer to see the map cap for siege go up to 200. Sometimes to properly siege up a structure, I need a lot of siege. I like a good siege.

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denimdan.8642:

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denimdan.8642:

first off, its 10 supply every 30 sec not 10 sec

second, regular acs do kitten dmg and any one that has even a little bit of regen can out heal them. atm it takes about 3 acs to out pace 1 ram on a paper gate if the rammers swap out so it keeps hitting. So with out sup acs it now will take more ppl and more acs to defend a tower aginst just 1 ram.

third, your destroying small groups and promoteing zerging, with 150 supply to build a ram it will now take min 15 guys to drop 1 ram. and you need 30 ppl to just build the 3 acs needed to stop said ram, so this in no way helps defence. So, just no there

fourth, one a 2 ac limit in towers, means you cant stop any attack on the tower without a zerg there to stop them

your original purpose of this post was to aid small groups defending towers and keep. in reality your entire post crushes any hopes of small groups defending any thing or taking something for that matter and promotes mindless zerging

First, I apologize for being misinformed about the supply camps

Second, Originally I typed out to buff regular AC to superior and took it out because I felt it would be too strong and I forgot to increase the amount of AC that could be placed in a tower now that it was just regular

Third, I have no intention of wanting smaller groups to be taking towers its built on smaller groups being able to defend what they own against bigger zergs I also wanted the amount of ACs to be put in a tower to be discussed I dont want to make taking an objective impossible just a lot harder then it currently is

Lastly, If your running in a group under 15 people flipping camps stopping yaks and spiking enemys is a lot more effective then trying to ninja a tower for 5 mins with 5 people you can also find and kill will amount to more points then the 10 you would get for the tower for that one tick

Attacking shouldnt be as easy as it is. On low pop servers WvW has no stability
I will edit the AC numbers and reconsider making them Superior Thx for the insight

second point….with the current pvt armor meta and ram buffs any thing short of 2 sup acs cant stop 1 ram. i dont believe there should be an ac cap for towers of less than 5 if there is one at all.

third point…by increasing the amount of supply for both rams and acs you make it so a small group will have a vry difficult time siedgeing up a place, takes long enough as is to get 3 sup acs up in a tower at 40 supply each, when you have to run the supply from a camp.

i agree that takeing a tower or keep shouldn’t be as easy as it is, but your changes are still drastically hindering defensive capability as it will take 10 runs of supply to build 1 ac, and thats alot of time wasted that most defenders dont have time to waste

Well I believe that once you take back a tower you should siege it up as a commander taking the zerg on two supply runs to get two ACs up to hold a tower. Also remember that these are Regular Rams they will die before they can get the gate down if there is 2 constant ACs on them and of course there would have to be a lot of testing to be done with this, but I dont believe it would be fair to just bump up the cost of Rams 110 supply and not move ACs at all, like I said I want it to be a lot harder to take a tower but not impossible

A 50 man zerg in theory could get 3 rams up on a gate for 450 supply while in ACs for 500 you could have 5 ACs dealing damage to the rams and the zerg so even if the reinforced tower had zero supply if it was sieged up by a commander prior to the assault (good defensive practice for a commander) your chances of holding a tower are much much higher then they are currently. Then again on the flip side if you ignore siegeing the tower prior you may get into supply trouble trying to put up ACs and hopefully will learn to siege before you push your zerg out.

If this was implemented Reset night would be more focused on holding and siegeing everything in your corner before rushing other teams corners/keep

Also this will make a lot less Ram play and a lot more strategic cataing and trebing

Again thx for the posts it makes me think of factors initially that I may have missed I enjoy the criticism

remember this to though, many ppl in WvW only there to karma train, and alot of commanders are the same, they dont like to place defensive seidge so you cant plan on relying on the fact that a commander will bring a zerg to build the acs, cause most of the time this isnt so

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

No thanks.

Would prefer to see the map cap for siege go up to 200. Sometimes to properly siege up a structure, I need a lot of siege. I like a good siege.

They wont up the cap due to lag issues sadly, also that wouldnt solve not being able to hold with low pop

Also you would be able to build other siege in the towers like a said cap is open for discussion

i completely agree with you guys, i love a good seidge…but at times i do think that the mega blob has a slight unfair advantage with there endless amount of supply and you only have 2 guys in the tower, with eles and rangers able to kill 90% of seidge placed on walls, even with vry well placed seidge is extremely tough at times

denimdan.8642:

remember this to though, many ppl in WvW only there to karma train, and alot of commanders are the same, they dont like to place defensive seidge so you cant plan on relying on the fact that a commander will bring a zerg to build the acs, cause most of the time this isnt so

The way WvW would be changed there really couldn’t be nearly as much Karma Training as there is now and servers, who do not build defensively would not do as well unless they could stop the other servers from attacking the towers properly with numbers advantage.

Then again server who are karma training have numbers advantage already this is why they can karma train so they wouldn’t have to play very defensively they would have to not mindless run there zerg into the gate to actually take a tower places trebs and siege it

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CreativeAnarchy.6324:

No thanks.

Would prefer to see the map cap for siege go up to 200. Sometimes to properly siege up a structure, I need a lot of siege. I like a good siege.

They wont up the cap due to lag issues sadly, also that wouldnt solve not being able to hold with low pop

Also you would be able to build other siege in the towers like a said cap is open for discussion

I still like the superior and omegas. Don’t care to give that up. I don’t think lag is the issue with siege numbers. If I could dump more than 100 pieces of siege on the map, a dominating server that can take all three keeps in a boarderland would have 50 pieces of siege at minimum in each. I think I can cram a lot more in there. While I don’t mind going into that, I don’t think that many are like me.

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

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CreativeAnarchy.6324:

No thanks.

Would prefer to see the map cap for siege go up to 200. Sometimes to properly siege up a structure, I need a lot of siege. I like a good siege.

They wont up the cap due to lag issues sadly, also that wouldnt solve not being able to hold with low pop

Also you would be able to build other siege in the towers like a said cap is open for discussion

I still like the superior and omegas. Don’t care to give that up. I don’t think lag is the issue with siege numbers. If I could dump more than 100 pieces of siege on the map, a dominating server that can take all three keeps in a boarderland would have 50 pieces of siege at minimum in each. I think I can cram a lot more in there. While I don’t mind going into that, I don’t think that many are like me.

lols indeed sir but I do appreciate the criticism thxs :P

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denimdan.8642:

remember this to though, many ppl in WvW only there to karma train, and alot of commanders are the same, they dont like to place defensive seidge so you cant plan on relying on the fact that a commander will bring a zerg to build the acs, cause most of the time this isnt so

The way WvW would be changed there really couldn’t be nearly as much Karma Training as there is now and servers, who do not build defensively would not do as well unless they could stop the other servers from attacking the towers properly with numbers advantage.

Then again server who are karma training have numbers advantage already this is why they can karma train so they wouldn’t have to play very defensively that would have to not mindless run there zerg into the gate to actually take a tower places trebs and siege it

server tha karma train still will, because takeing the towers will still give more of a bonus than defending sadly, unless this changes, karma training wont die…no matter what changes like this we make.

denimdan.8642:

i completely agree with you guys, i love a good seidge…but at times i do think that the mega blob has a slight unfair advantage with there endless amount of supply and you only have 2 guys in the tower, with eles and rangers able to kill 90% of seidge placed on walls, even with vry well placed seidge is extremely tough at times

Walls need to be higher but we also need to be able to hit the stuff on the ground if we are shooting down to kill them. I’ve been out of range to shoot a clusterbomb when on my thief and I was shooting down to the ram but I was out of range. Would love to also be able to dead fire that skill even if it is out of range. I don’t see how the ground can be out of range when shooting down. All I wanted to do was blow the bomb up over their heads but it wouldn’t let me do that. Had a hard time shooting down from the wall with how you have to stand on the ledge to shoot. That shouldn’t be required but that little lip gets in the way a lot and I got obstructed.

Some towers, a thief can use cluster bomb to destroy siege but doesn’t need to hit the top or the piece itself. All they have to do is get close enough. I saw a thief hitting the side of the tower at Quentin Lake, the round part right where you turn into the lords room we had an arrow cart keep getting destroyed. That bomb wasn’t hitting close to the top of the wall but it still destroyed the cart because the cart was within the bombs radius.

There are some problems with structures that need to be fixed.

denimdan.8642:

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denimdan.8642:

remember this to though, many ppl in WvW only there to karma train, and alot of commanders are the same, they dont like to place defensive seidge so you cant plan on relying on the fact that a commander will bring a zerg to build the acs, cause most of the time this isnt so

The way WvW would be changed there really couldn’t be nearly as much Karma Training as there is now and servers, who do not build defensively would not do as well unless they could stop the other servers from attacking the towers properly with numbers advantage.

Then again server who are karma training have numbers advantage already this is why they can karma train so they wouldn’t have to play very defensively that would have to not mindless run there zerg into the gate to actually take a tower places trebs and siege it

server tha karma train still will, because takeing the towers will still give more of a bonus than defending sadly, unless this changes, karma training wont die…no matter what changes like this we make.

If the karma training zerg continues to push it will be much easier to wipe them with the defensive scheme which intern = loot again I agree there isnt much incentive to defending but the ability to defend easier would mean more loot bags, but still not a concrete answer

Apologies, but you need to learn what to use to defend a keep more. Supply is a key factor, so use your brain. They can’t build if you strip supply. 3 ram do not melt a fully upgraded door at all. Here are a few things you can do.

Trebuchet – this does HUGE damage to all siege behind that door and also causes a knock back. Yes, even to golems. If you have mastery then cows drain supply causing issues for inner gates and what siege they can use.

Supply traps – ALWAYS put a supply trap at the door or stairs at both inner and outer gates. Stripping 15 people of 5 supply is massive.

Clever placement – spread your arrow carts out. High range AoE has a long cooldown. Take advantage of that fact. Yes they will focus arrow carts down, however whilst killing one siege, you should have 3 others hitting them applying pressure.

The second they go away to reapply is when you do the same and resiege. Traps and grabs are key as it can stop a Zerg in its tracks. Get creative. The new ranks for siege have allowed a range of siege to be used to devastating effect as a defensive tool.

KarlusDavius.1024:

Apologies, but you need to learn what to use to defend a keep more. Supply is a key factor, so use your brain. They can’t build if you strip supply. 3 ram do not melt a fully upgraded door at all. Here are a few things you can do.

Trebuchet – this does HUGE damage to all siege behind that door and also causes a knock back. Yes, even to golems. If you have mastery then cows drain supply causing issues for inner gates and what siege they can use.

Supply traps – ALWAYS put a supply trap at the door or stairs at both inner and outer gates. Stripping 15 people of 5 supply is massive.

Clever placement – spread your arrow carts out. High range AoE has a long cooldown. Take advantage of that fact. Yes they will focus arrow carts down, however whilst killing one siege, you should have 3 others hitting them applying pressure.

The second they go away to reapply is when you do the same and resiege. Traps and grabs are key as it can stop a Zerg in its tracks. Get creative. The new ranks for siege have allowed a range of siege to be used to devastating effect as a defensive tool.

I agree that defending current isnt completely useless Im not here QQing about Zerging to stronk nerf Katrina she op

There are lots of creative ways to currently hold towers a lot of the things you explained work, but still even with all that holding golem rushs from 50 + man zergs with full supply with a miser force is very difficult which in the end mean that the numbers win regardless of what you do this plan is to makek defending easier for small er numbers and too also make attacking less viable. To give an example of the current issue my server is currently facing SBI this is a fun match up but very one sided SBI has 60 man zergs on almost every map nightly (NA prime) they tick near 400+ during NA prime while we can get 20-30 for our BL and EB with these changes SBI would not be able to walk there 60 man zergs which = 600 supply up to gates and drop 3-4 superior rams for a paper gate and still walk away with only a 200 supply hit plus what ever they lose in supply traps only to go take a camp and get 100 more

The creative ways to defend you suggested are awesome and great especially if you are there previous to the attack starting but with such low numbers that isn’t always the case, this would make those creative means of defending even better make it even harder for them to flip towers makes match ups even closer.

This idea is to create closer match ups regardless of numbers it favors skilled players through smaller numbers being able to defend keeps/towers instead of getting rolled over by golems and seemingly infinite supply

Then you supply trap the camps. You supply trap everything. 60 man zergs loosing 50% of supply is a big deal. Those numbers are hard to get back up without towers full of supply.

Coverage is an obvious issue but changing siege isn’t the answer. Having two trebs behind doors would double the poison supply removal. Trebs also hit golems very, very hard. They would only survive 5-7 hits from a sup treb.

KarlusDavius.1024:

Then you supply trap the camps. You supply trap everything. 60 man zergs loosing 50% of supply is a big deal. Those numbers are hard to get back up without towers full of supply.

Coverage is an obvious issue but changing siege isn’t the answer. Having two trebs behind doors would double the poison supply removal. Trebs also hit golems very, very hard. They would only survive 5-7 hits from a sup treb.

to bad supply traps only affect 20 players, weather they have supply or not.

also with the current build mastery you can insta drop all your supply into objects, as for that many of the masterys more favor attackers over defenders. as does most things in wvw, but thats another discussion all together

I think the OP needs to move around a few servers and see how small some of the numbers are on a lot of servers outside of prime time. 15 people to build a ram? Not going to happen for a lot of servers.

Thinking that people are going to supply run to what will now be permanently drained camps to build defensive siege at 150 a pop when you get people throwing down siege randomly is dreaming- everyone will assume someone else is doing it, and no one will get it done.

If you try and run your zerg back and forth just to build siege see how long it takes before people stop following you- defence doesn’t get you anything, so most people won’t bother.

Upping the supply used to create siege isn’t the problem- it’s getting people to the tower to defend it in time that is. You might have spend all that supply building a couple defensive ac, but if no one is prepared to sit on them or refresh them (almost all siege despawns at some point due to not being refreshed) then it’s just wasted.

The problem is that gates melt way too fast as there is no cap on the amount of rams that can be built at a gate- 6 superior and the gate just melts in seconds. If you think of sieges, there would be one or a maximum of two rams, so maybe the solution is to cap the number of rams at a gate to two. This would give defenders a little time to organise a defence and reach the tower to defend it before it’s flipped.

Just want to post some numbers to help the discussion here.

A paper gate has 375k hp. A normal ram with no mastery deal 1600dps on the gate. So it takes ~234s to take down a gate if ignoring player dps.

A normal arrow cart with rank 2 mastery deal 1155 dps to rams and rams has ~100k hp. So it take less than 100s to kill a ram.

A normal treb with rank 3 mastery deal nearly twice more damage to rams than arrow carts.

All siege deal 15% less damage to golems compare to rams. All superior siege deal 50% more damage. Rank 3 mastery increase ram dps by ~50%.

dps test of siege vs rams and golems:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQQsp5_xBR4

It is certainly possible to defend against normal rams, but against superior rams and rank 3 ram mastery, you will need a lot of pre build siege to destroy them in time.

I think they just need to make a few adjustments. Rams superior especially need to have dmg reduced. Bali’s need to have dmg increased to other siege. Its supposed to be the anti siege wep yet its dmg is pretty crap to siege weps. Mortar are the true anti siege wep. Trebs need to have range reduced so we can end this stupid treb the enemy tower from stonemist third floor type crap. Trebs should need to be placed out in the open, on a hill or something. Somwhere the enemy can get to them and not the safety of a tower supply depot etc…. Last range of weapons like say ranger longbow for example should be reduced when shooting up over a wall. Right now you can’t put an arrow cart down anywhere the offensive zerg can’t just aoe it down real fast.

Victory.2879:

I think the OP needs to move around a few servers and see how small some of the numbers are on a lot of servers outside of prime time. 15 people to build a ram? Not going to happen for a lot of servers.

Thinking that people are going to supply run to what will now be permanently drained camps to build defensive siege at 150 a pop when you get people throwing down siege randomly is dreaming- everyone will assume someone else is doing it, and no one will get it done.

If you try and run your zerg back and forth just to build siege see how long it takes before people stop following you- defence doesn’t get you anything, so most people won’t bother.

Upping the supply used to create siege isn’t the problem- it’s getting people to the tower to defend it in time that is. You might have spend all that supply building a couple defensive ac, but if no one is prepared to sit on them or refresh them (almost all siege despawns at some point due to not being refreshed) then it’s just wasted.

The problem is that gates melt way too fast as there is no cap on the amount of rams that can be built at a gate- 6 superior and the gate just melts in seconds. If you think of sieges, there would be one or a maximum of two rams, so maybe the solution is to cap the number of rams at a gate to two. This would give defenders a little time to organise a defence and reach the tower to defend it before it’s flipped.

I will admit I have never moved servers and prolly never will but in my view you shouldnt be able to take a tower with less then 15 without some serious commitment to running supply I have been on the bottom and the middle of NA never had an issue getting 30~ prime time and 15-20 off hours. Also this help hurt coverage destryoing everything while the mass of the server sleep because 5 people will be able to hold a tower vs 30 no problem

As for defense being rewards less this is completely true Anet needs to fix this there is nothing we can do about that atm. All I can say is with this build an AC is considerably easier then a ram

Also I thought about capping the amount Rams its not a terrible this could still be open for discussion

Agree 1000% with removing superior siege of all types, never should have been introduced in the first place. Just makes the strong stronger.

And get rid of the mastery lines while they’re at it. Just another form of power creep and making the strong stronger.

I do agree with the fact that the way supply works in the game benefits larger groups and higher population servers. So its another part of the problem relating to population imbalance.

I don’t agree with the increased costs for siege though. Some scaling mechanic would be better. But who knows if that’s possible.

Cymric.7368:

Just want to post some numbers to help the discussion here.

A paper gate has 375k hp. A normal ram with no mastery deal 1600dps on the gate. So it takes ~234s to take down a gate if ignoring player dps.

A normal arrow cart with rank 2 mastery deal 1155 dps to rams and rams has ~100k hp. So it take less than 100s to kill a ram.

A normal treb with rank 3 mastery deal nearly twice more damage to rams than arrow carts.

All siege deal 15% less damage to golems compare to rams. All superior siege deal 50% more damage. Rank 3 mastery increase ram dps by ~50%.

dps test of siege vs rams and golems:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQQsp5_xBR4

It is certainly possible to defend against normal rams, but against superior rams and rank 3 ram mastery, you will need a lot of pre build siege to destroy them in time.

Thank you for posting these stats I will add this to the OP and give you credit this is very helpful in understanding Rams vs. ACs

KarlusDavius.1024:

Then you supply trap the camps. You supply trap everything. 60 man zergs loosing 50% of supply is a big deal. Those numbers are hard to get back up without towers full of supply.

Coverage is an obvious issue but changing siege isn’t the answer. Having two trebs behind doors would double the poison supply removal. Trebs also hit golems very, very hard. They would only survive 5-7 hits from a sup treb.

Currently if you where to siege up a tower like this the enemy would simply avoid it and hit other tower and while your trying swap they will kill you in the open field with there numbers being that much more then your due to how little supply it costs to build ram you can feint every tower in EB with 2 rams and still come out with more supply then when you started

Now if you supply trap stuff thats awesome it cuts there supply even more but setting up supply traps when ever the enemy leave is just impossible you will have to tower hop over and over there will be no time to retrap tower/camps and when they go back its just two more superior rams they can put up eventually they will kill a good amount of the defensive force and then they will get the tower which will make people not want to play with means less and less people to defend

If they commit tons of supply to take a tower they will be less likely to pull off it and will be more likely to wipe because they just dont have the supply to attack other towers

One of the biggest problems I see is Tower defense/offense strongly favors the attackers. The cannon boiling oil and pretty much all arrow carts and balistas have to be placed so they can easily be aoe’d down in seconds. Rams superior especially do an insane amount of dmg so you can break even a reinforced door down in seconds. So once the defensive siege is down stack on door with rams profit. Or stack on wall with catas profit. Aoe can only hit 5 people so 30+ people stacked on your door= win.

Maybe its just me but I feel the defenders of a tower/keep should have a big advantage but I just don’t see it right now.

Have the tower/ keep/ garrison champion buff defensive siege if a guild claims the tower. Defensive seige takes 50% less damage and operators on the seige take 20% less damage.