Nerf ACs, Buff Ballistas and Reduce Supply

Nerf ACs, Buff Ballistas and Reduce Supply

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Posted by: Sviel.7493

Sviel.7493

tl;dr: Reduce direct AC damage to players. Retain AC niche of AoE anti-infantry by adding Vulnerability, Cripple and/or Weakness to skills. Reduce the amount of supply a zerg can snatch up in a karma train without hurting small group supply counts and therefore reduce how much offensive siege can be sustainably deployed at each barrier.


4/30/2013 – Arrow Cart skill 1 damage is buffed by 80%, Crippling Arrows damage is buffed by 17% and Barbed Arrows damage is buffed by 60% plus the bleed is extended to 15 seconds. Arrow Cart mastery is added to the WvW trait lines.

7/5/2013 – In this WvW guide (https://youtu.be/64Mwats025Q?t=9m56s) by developer Hugh Norfolk (owner of Red BL NEC), he goes over various siege machines and what they’re good for. He tauts Arrow Carts as being useful for Keep defenses. “The purpose of these things is really to start getting those big AoEs down—getting those things to really damage large groups of areas.” He also describes them as doing moderate to high damage to infantry. He says the benefit of using them over skills is that they have a target cap of 50 instead of 5.

8/23/2013 – A player-made thread on these forums (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/4-months-in-Arrow-Cart-Mastery-has-split-WvW/first) says the effect of the Arrow Cart buff is that there are no longer any good fights in keeps. They claim that they need too many people to take anything and, as such, people have begun to run in 60-man zergs instead of the usual 20. They also claim that commanders will no longer attack a defended Keep.

7/26/2016 – Siege weapons can now be affected by conditions and critical strikes. Their health is doubled to compensate. Siege damage from other siege weapons remains the same, however, effectively doubling how long it takes to counter siege with siege.


Reduce Fire Arrows (skill 1) damage by 50%. Give it a 300% damage bonus to siege (so, same time-to-kill for siege as prior to 7/26/2016).
-This is a partial revert as the amount of sustain and especially outgoing healing has substantially increased since 2013. The idea is to make it possible to fight under Arrow Cart fire so long as you don’t just sit in it. Groups should have the option to push the entrenched positions and destroy the siege.

Reduce Fire Crippling Arrows (skill 2) damage to match skill 1. This is about a 10% reduction. Reduce the duration of the Crippled condition to 3 seconds from 4. Now also inflicts 3 seconds of Weakness. Reduce cooldown to 6 seconds from 9.
-There was little point in using this skill before unless you had several Arrow Carts and coordinated to keep enemies Crippled while other Arrow Carts dealt high damage. That’s not a situation that should exist. Instead, the focus should shift to the debilitating conditions.

Reduce Fire Barbed Arrows (skill 3) damage to match skill 1. This is about a 40% reduction. Replace the bleed with 10 stacks of Vulnerability for 10 seconds. Reduce the cooldown to 6 seconds from 9.

-The Bleed was pretty pointless. It dealt more total damage than skill 1 on paper over an extended period of time, but since it had a much longer cooldown the actual damage increase was not significant. If we also consider that Bleed can be cleansed and zergs excel at cleansing conditions, it was not accomplishing it’s goal of being anti-zerg.
I switched to Vulnerability to make it a potent anti-zerg skill when you actually have other damage to cash in on that Vulnerability. If you just have a gauntlet of Arrow Carts, you’ll see a large reduction in damage from today.

In general, I’ve shifted Arrow Carts to non-damaging conditions instead of damage. Since zergs are so good at cleansing conditions, I’ve lowered the cooldown on the skills that apply them. There should still be a window to act but the Arrow Carts also cannot be ignored. Meanwhile, the damage dealt to Siege by Arrow Carts remains effectively the same as before 7/26/2016.


Add a 200% damage boost versus siege to Fire (skill 1).
-This is to return their time-to-kill numbers to pre 7/26/2016 and to make up for the removal of skill 3. Since skill 3’s chief purpose was to damage siege, it served as a DPS spike that ultimately didn’t mean much since it was on such a long CD.

Replace skill 3 with Bulwark: Block all attacks from the front of the ballista for 6 seconds. Cooldown 12 seconds.
-This is to, perhaps, allow Ballistae to survive long enough to deal damage. Since they are so easily obstructed, they must be built where they can be destroyed by any ranged attack. This has rendered them largely useless whereas they should be better than Arrow Carts at destroying enemy siege.

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Posted by: Sviel.7493

Sviel.7493


8/23/2015 – Heart of Thorns removes the supply drain at objectives when upgrading them and increases the availability of a guild’s +5 supply buff once they unlock it. The supply master traitline is reduced from 300 points to 145 points which makes it easier to access a permanent +5 supply. In addition, the tactic Presence of the Keep increases the maximum supply capacity to 25. To compensate, objectives now hold less total supply and Yaks deliver 20 supply down from 35 (double for keeps). The end result, however, is that zergs can hold much more supply and there is much, much more supply available on the map.


The general goal with these is to make tossing down six pieces of siege for one barrier a consequential decision. Players should still be able to stuff a gate full of rams if that’s what they’re into, but that shouldn’t be the standard operating mode.

Reduce maximum Supply on flip of Keeps/Towers to 50% of the cap.
-This means that instead of getting 500 supply for flipping a T3 Keep, the zerg gets only 250. Thus, instead of using 5 rams at each gate and breaking even, they must also resupply at camps or other objectives.

*Reduce Supply Generation at Camps from 10 per 30 seconds to 10 per 60 seconds.
-Since no Supply is being used in upgrades, less Supply needs to be supplied to the game overall. This was partially recognized in the change that reduced how much Supply Yaks carry but Supply generation at camps was left untouched. All of that excess Supply makes building gross amounts of siege much easier.

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Posted by: Famine.7915

Famine.7915

I’d be happy is they increased siege damage against other siege to compensate for the doubled HP of siege to begin with… :/

Vee/Volk
Maguuma – Predatory Instinct [HUNT]
Necromancer

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Posted by: Aeolus.3615

Aeolus.3615

make balistas apply cracked armor on players XD moooar condis

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Cracked_Armor

1st April joke, when gw2 receives a “balance” update.

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Posted by: Ok I Did It.2854

Ok I Did It.2854

The should do week long events in WvW,

No AC week,
No Cata week,
No Treb week,

Siege is the bane of WvW its actually gotten really boring to watch an enemy zerg run away just so they can see who can get on the AC first.

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Posted by: Jayne.9251

Jayne.9251

Just reduce supply map wide. Revert dollies back to increments that means a player has to physically go to the camp to increase each time (do it without money need).

Those two things would have significant impact on the map.

Forces players to jump to another map to get supp — reducing the supp on the other map and forcing players to pick a map to prioritize.

Forces players to have to leave keeps and towers to maintain camp upgrades.

Everything is based on supply. The rest of your wish list would follow.

L’enfer, c’est les autres

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Posted by: Famine.7915

Famine.7915

With none of that, enemies will simply run to their impenetrable towers. :/

Vee/Volk
Maguuma – Predatory Instinct [HUNT]
Necromancer

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Posted by: Aeolus.3615

Aeolus.3615

The more stuff one side has the less the camps produce, reduce camps from map, place constructions nodes where players need to build the reouseces camps and create several type of resources, players need to choose that kind of supply they want more.

shout supply camps, are places where enemies can build their supply camp on that map, wich needs supplies from other maps.
A guild or groups to atack enemy BL needs to create a campaing that will need to be accepted/checked from server, to avoid supply trolls, from a menu.

this could be challange and less ktrainy, it has structure and mechanics.

1st April joke, when gw2 receives a “balance” update.

(edited by Aeolus.3615)

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Posted by: Sviel.7493

Sviel.7493

Yeah, so I don’t think anyone actually read the OP.

I’m not trying to radically redefine the game or force players to do one thing or the other. Rather, I want small, easy to implement changes that actually have a chance of happening.

That’s why I suggested reducing the amount of supply in freshly flipped structures by half and reducing the generation rate at camps. Both are just numbers that can be adjusted.

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Posted by: ich.7086

ich.7086

I would add Slow to the #3 (or the poison+reveal shot) to make a bigger non damaging impact.

I don’t agree with the Bulwark since i feel it could be exploited. Maybe a immunity/reflections to siege & projectile only for the siege and the user. Or add a disabling effect to a shot. Or add a mortar-like shot that deal high siege but low player damage so you can use that to clear AC / proxy cata and open up more placements.

Else +1

I Am An Intruder – War 80
Ich Bin Marc – Thief 80
All Your Dolyaks Are Belong To [Us] (Fort Ranik)

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Posted by: Kiroshima.8497

Kiroshima.8497

An easier change would be to make using siege spend supply. Can’t turtle if you keep losing your camps, and it affects offense too as the defenders can snipe the camp if you aren’t paying attention.

It’d work better with more camps so you have to split up in order to attack/defend but that is a map change which takes a ton of work.

But to address the original post, those are good ideas but I think shield gens need a change to make them not super lame to play against. Like an anti stacking effect so you can’t target an area with too many different shield gens, forcing you to spread out siege (also stops you from perma-bubbling a wall).

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Friendly environment, no question is too basic. Enroll Now!
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Posted by: Sviel.7493

Sviel.7493

@ich

By slow, do you mean the new condition that Revenants have? I’m pretty sure that’s the name, but sometimes people use that for Cripple. At any rate, that’s a good condition for a non-damage impact but it might be too powerful to apply in an AoE unless it was a really long CD.

With Bulwark, I was thinking a really narrow area that would cover just the siege and user. Someone directly behind would also benefit since the projectile would be destroyed. What kind of abuse cases are you thinking of?

@Kiroshima

I think turtling is more of a symptom of the problem. If ACs deal less damage, it should be ok as long as there are multiple paths to take to the lord room. If siege spent supply, it’d be much harder for small teams to operate.

As for shield gens, I’m definitely up for changes to those. I wanted to make a focused post instead of dropping a whole dissertation at once, though. That said, I think that a perma-bubbled wall is ok if it takes enough shield gens. That’s a lot of invested supply that’s totally useless in defending some other wall.

Also, I see you’re from UNIV. Had a lot of fun with you guys on DBL last week (or the week before?). Your persistence caused me the most enjoyable kind of stress q_q

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Posted by: Artemis Thuras.8795

Artemis Thuras.8795

+1, I like op’s suggestions. Seem fairly straight forward to implement too.

Co-Leader of The Mythical Dragons [MYTH],
Advocate of learning and being a useful party member.
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Posted by: Samug.6512

Samug.6512

Supply definitely needs some tweaks. 50-men squad can carry 1250 supplies. It’s 25 superior rams. Who cares about some ACs above the gate if you can just keep building new rams until the gate is down?

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Posted by: Jerus.4350

Jerus.4350

Supply definitely needs some tweaks. 50-men squad can carry 1250 supplies. It’s 25 superior rams. Who cares about some ACs above the gate if you can just keep building new rams until the gate is down?

psst… shield gens exist

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Posted by: Baldrick.8967

Baldrick.8967

Supply definitely needs some tweaks. 50-men squad can carry 1250 supplies. It’s 25 superior rams. Who cares about some ACs above the gate if you can just keep building new rams until the gate is down?

psst… shield gens exist

Of course, that assumes that everyone has mastery and can stop to carry 25. Also, never seen a figure much over 800 even with a full 50- some are just too lazy to stop by and pick up, usually the same ones that don’t bother building either.

As defenders, you should be draining supply with supply traps and trebs, as well as wiping out enemy siege.

I see way too many just stand on walls, moan about the lack of defensive siege (but don’t ever place any), and watch whilst the gate or wall goes down- when they knew the blob was coming but did nothing to prepare for it.

WvW player. Doing another world completion for my next Legendary. Hater of mini-games.

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Posted by: Gorani.7205

Gorani.7205

Sviel.7493 ideas a definitely worth trying, although I don’t agree with some numbers in his suggestion (e.g. AC #1 reduction by 50% makes it pretty much useless unless you could compensate with the #3 vulnerability stacks).

My biggest gripe with siege placement is that stacking of catapults next to a wall. The importance of placement would be so much better, if catas could have a minimum range of perhaps 1200, before they do damage. This way ballistas would play a much bigger role in defending and attacking (e.g. attackers would need to clear defending siege with their own ballistas, because they can’t hide the catas in the blind spots close to the wall).

Member of The Guildwars Online Guild [GWO]
Still keeps a volume of Kurzick poems ;)

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Posted by: Aeolus.3615

Aeolus.3615

Sviel.7493 ideas a definitely worth trying, although I don’t agree with some numbers in his suggestion (e.g. AC #1 reduction by 50% makes it pretty much useless unless you could compensate with the #3 vulnerability stacks).

My biggest gripe with siege placement is that stacking of catapults next to a wall. The importance of placement would be so much better, if catas could have a minimum range of perhaps 1200, before they do damage. This way ballistas would play a much bigger role in defending and attacking (e.g. attackers would need to clear defending siege with their own ballistas, because they can’t hide the catas in the blind spots close to the wall).

ac reductions by 50%.. that would be… same as bee afk, i do hit arround 500-800 damage with a normal ac and arround 1k 1.5k with a superior ac….

Still i dont get it, classes do over 15k on wvw,… players says its balanced, players leech from pvd and cry when some hits do 1k from a superior ac, where they have the option to not be under the ac area….

i really dont get it.

1st April joke, when gw2 receives a “balance” update.

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Posted by: Stand The Wall.6987

Stand The Wall.6987

pretty much plus one
ballis it does seem to me are way to weak for what they are supposed to do

Team Deathmatch for PvP – Raise the AoE cap for WvW – More unique events for PvE

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Posted by: coro.3176

coro.3176

I generally agree with these suggestions.

Arrow carts vs siege – great! That’s good strategy by the defenders. It’s a bit frustrating that they can be placed in completely safe areas to hit gate rams, but .. in general I find them balanced.

Arrow carts vs players – awful. So boring. I would rather quit and go play Overwatch than fight near an objective where players are camping on arrow carts. IMO, they’re bad for the game.

I guess my main complaint with arrow carts is that they can be placed in safe areas behind walls and hit outside. Open-field arrow carts are fine because they can be rushed or shot down with a ballista.

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Posted by: Caedmon.6798

Caedmon.6798

I generally agree with these suggestions.

Arrow carts vs siege – great! That’s good strategy by the defenders. It’s a bit frustrating that they can be placed in completely safe areas to hit gate rams, but .. in general I find them balanced.

Arrow carts vs players – awful. So boring. I would rather quit and go play Overwatch than fight near an objective where players are camping on arrow carts. IMO, they’re bad for the game.

I guess my main complaint with arrow carts is that they can be placed in safe areas behind walls and hit outside. Open-field arrow carts are fine because they can be rushed or shot down with a ballista.

Your complaint is that ac’s can be placed in safe areas.. ? Unlike shieldgens,trebs,balis,catas.. ? Dont forget about heavily outmanned servers,or night timers trying to defend vs 2 – 3x their numbers.It still needs to be possible to defend with siege only if you dont have the people to fight.

And if people choose sitting on siege during the day,so be it.Theres other ways to cap something heavily sieged up with ac’s,also shield gens ftw.

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Posted by: coro.3176

coro.3176

Meh. It’s just boring. I go on wvw to engage with other players and fight them. If they want to turtle in their towers sitting on ac’s, that’s fine. I’ll just go play something else and they can enjoy defending their empty borderland all night.

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Posted by: Drinks.2361

Drinks.2361

yeah it is a shame after all the effort of balancing classes & traits from Anet & the work a player goes though gearing their character that it is all replaced by 4 skills on an arrow cart.

I do think reverting supply to the way it used to be would be a huge step in the right direction. Force the wall flowers to actually go out to a camp if they want to shoot at people without putting themselves in harms way. Maybe Dolyaks should only carry supply for upgrades & player have to drop it off in depots for wxp if they want it there. It would make roaming important again.

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Posted by: Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365

Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365

superior rune of guardian

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Posted by: Aeolus.3615

Aeolus.3615

Guys this sounds a bit nerf or remove ac’s so i can pvd or proxy cata…

ANet just needs to increase the radios of forbiding same siege being constructed, that needs to be much larger, in some tower i cant stack 3 + AC’s in one place that needs to end wich is the issue.

if 20-30 players cant cap a tower becouse 2 or 3 ac’s they dont deserve that tower the issue is the siege stacking situations, both offensively and defensively.

1st April joke, when gw2 receives a “balance” update.

(edited by Aeolus.3615)

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Posted by: Drinks.2361

Drinks.2361

if 20-30 players cant cap a tower becouse 2 or 3 ac’s they dont deserve that tower

the problem isn’t really when there are 2 or 3 ACs it’s when the defending server has the bulk of a map queue in there vs 15-20 & won’t come out to fight. I get red names always look bigger but siege isn’t fun.

(edited by Drinks.2361)

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Posted by: Baldrick.8967

Baldrick.8967

Nerfing ACs isn’t the answer- using your brain is. Trebs are a wonderful way of removing siege from most objectives (I’m ignoring Deserted BL, that’s just a mess) as well as forcing the enemy to either come out and fight or lose outer and inner walls/doors.

It’s not necessary to rub your nose against the wall or doors- a fact most people seem to forget.

I’d like to see an addition to siege, which is the portable fire pot. Takes 25(would need to tweak this) supply to build, can be dumped over a wall or gate and removes 50% of the HP of superior rams or catapults in a small area. Would make people stop and think about placement and shield gens/bubbles rather than ‘throw 6 sup cats against the wall and wail at it’.

Most people turn off their thinking when they enter wvw. A fine example this evening- mounting an attack on PS keep in EB. Couldn’t get anyone to come over and build a ram on the tower that is completely stacked with siege but undefended, which we could have flipped with three people. Or a couple catas on outer sm whilst attacking one of their towers which their entire zerg came to defend.

Multiple targets are too difficult for most pugs and pug comms to cope with- the zerg just wants to blob.

WvW player. Doing another world completion for my next Legendary. Hater of mini-games.

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Posted by: jamesdolla.3954

jamesdolla.3954

they will not nerf ac’s. they want everyone to turtle in their keeps and towers. they added t3 doors and DOUBLED the HP on ac’s for a reason. Soon all the commanders and guilds will quit and we’ll all just wait in our keeps and towers for someone to attack. FUN STUFF

Native Maguuman

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Posted by: ich.7086

ich.7086

@ich

By slow, do you mean the new condition that Revenants have? I’m pretty sure that’s the name, but sometimes people use that for Cripple. At any rate, that’s a good condition for a non-damage impact but it might be too powerful to apply in an AoE unless it was a really long CD.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Toxic_Unveiling_Volley seems to be a good candidate : long cd and meant to “reverse” a fight ? I would add a 5s slow here.

With Bulwark, I was thinking a really narrow area that would cover just the siege and user. Someone directly behind would also benefit since the projectile would be destroyed. What kind of abuse cases are you thinking of?

Put 2 ballistas as close as possible in the corridor leading to hills lord and chain the bulwark.

I Am An Intruder – War 80
Ich Bin Marc – Thief 80
All Your Dolyaks Are Belong To [Us] (Fort Ranik)

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Posted by: Sviel.7493

Sviel.7493

I agree that ACs should be able to help an outmanned server defend against enemy hordes. However, there needs to be counterplay to that or turtling becomes the predominant strat and that doesn’t make for a fun game.

That’s why I want to return AC effective damage to siege to what it used to be while toning down the damage. Defenders can use them to kill enemy siege and keep their walls up, but the attacking force can cut off supply so the wall can’t be repaired and can also attack from outside of AC range. Both groups have methods to work towards their goals. With the current iteration, ACs are pretty bad at destroying siege but make for effective choke holders when stacked. The attacking force can bring down the wall but pushing in is problematic. This is somewhat mitigated by having multiple routes to the lord’s room, but I saw an opportunity to improve it.

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Posted by: Gorani.7205

Gorani.7205

I don’t think ACs should work as anti-siege instalments (=higher damage to siege), they should be an anti-personal threat. I understand why Sviel.7493 wants to make then stronger vs. siege, but the real problem is e.g. Burning Oil being so weak.

It should really be Ram vs. Oil, Ballista vs. Cata/Treb with ACs being the tool to drive away players from the defensive/offensive siege on both sides.
If Burning Oil was stronger (e.g. the use if the Oil would apply Ironhide and Burning Shell would have its recharge reduced to 20sec and radius increased to 400) and proxy Catas would not work at point blank range, siege warfare would be much better for both attackers and defenders.

Member of The Guildwars Online Guild [GWO]
Still keeps a volume of Kurzick poems ;)

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Posted by: Caedmon.6798

Caedmon.6798

I don’t think ACs should work as anti-siege instalments (=higher damage to siege), they should be an anti-personal threat. I understand why Sviel.7493 wants to make then stronger vs. siege, but the real problem is e.g. Burning Oil being so weak.

It should really be Ram vs. Oil, Ballista vs. Cata/Treb with ACs being the tool to drive away players from the defensive/offensive siege on both sides.
If Burning Oil was stronger (e.g. the use if the Oil would apply Ironhide and Burning Shell would have its recharge reduced to 20sec and radius increased to 400) and proxy Catas would not work at point blank range, siege warfare would be much better for both attackers and defenders.

Theres rlly no point to ever use oil vs a blob,you might use it once and than youre being aoe bombed so u have to move off right away or melt,same goes for cannons.In alot of situations ac’s are in range of being aoe bombed aswell.Add those aoe bombers while u have others ramming under 2 or 3 shield gens and there is barely a way for outmanned servers to do anything if they cannot fight.

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Posted by: Sviel.7493

Sviel.7493

I want to return AC damage to siege to what it used to be in terms of time-to-kill. Ballistas would still be far and away the fastest way to take down enemy siege, though.

Proxy catas are a Line-of-Sight issue. There’s often no place to build a ballista that can hit them unless it’s super vulnerable to enemy attacks. That means you need 2-3 people just to get it built and then have to tank attacks while it goes to work. ACs work slightly better due to hitting in an AoE, but they are also stifled by LoS when catas are built against the wall. There’s no trade-off for building proxy—it’s just the best choice all the time if you have even/greater numbers.

If we just increase zoom while on an AC or remove the need for LoS at all, we end up with offensive ACs clearing all of the siege on the other side of the wall. The best way would have been to increase zoom and use a custom LoS calculation to prevent firing over walls or too far uphill. They do use a custom LoS calculation, but it apparently isn’t that.

So, yeah, proxy catas are only good due to abusing limitations in the game engine. They’re going to need to be addressed sooner or sooner, but people get really upset about those and Anet refuses to comment on them (here or on reddit) so I decided to focus on things that might garner more support.

@Caedmon

If enemies manage to build multiple rams and shield generators on your gate, they deserve that kind of power. It cost them huge amounts of supply and should be difficult to deal with. Rather than making that sort of thing impossible, I want to make supply more meaningful so that they can’t pull those sort of shenanigans on every gate unless they take pains to do so.

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Posted by: gitflap.9031

gitflap.9031

Siege is the bane of WvW

Wrong. K-Train blobs are the bane of WvW.

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Posted by: Keefe.3821

Keefe.3821

Arrow carts need to be fixed. Why should we have to see what we are hitting if it’s under the aoe. This makes no sense and still hasn’t been fixed after all these years. What the kitten anet?

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Posted by: Napo.1230

Napo.1230

Siege is pretty pointless as walls are so poorly designed it’s actually a death trap to man them.
Not to mention an ele with meteor shower can nuke most siege.

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Posted by: Caedmon.6798

Caedmon.6798

[quote=6583239;Sviel.7493:

@Caedmon

If enemies manage to build multiple rams and shield generators on your gate, they deserve that kind of power. It cost them huge amounts of supply and should be difficult to deal with. Rather than making that sort of thing impossible, I want to make supply more meaningful so that they can’t pull those sort of shenanigans on every gate unless they take pains to do so.[/quote]

You do realize im talking about less vs 2 – 3x more numbers right ?

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Posted by: Sviel.7493

Sviel.7493

I do.

2 Shield Gens and 2 Rams cost at least 160 supply, assuming guild siege. That’s 8-10 people worth assuming relative veteran status.

If you have 3 people, you can deal with that, but it will take some coordination and time. I think that’s ok.

If you scout the group before they’re on your gate and hit them with 1 supply trap (-5 × 8-10 = -40 – -50) or cow, they lose the ability to build 1-2 of those items. Since they need 100% Force Dome uptime, that means they’re down to 1 ram or 0 rams. A similar result can be achieved if you have any pressure on their siege while they’re building it.

Thus, I don’t think it’s a situation that needs to be made impossible. There are already things in place to deal with it.

Now, if the population imbalance is pushed to gross levels (30v3 or so), then it is very oppressive. However, I don’t think there’s much point in trying to balance for a situation that is that skewed.


That said, I think reducing the amount of supply on the map should make that sort of occurrence less frequent if players work toward it.

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Posted by: Straegen.2938

Straegen.2938

ACs are already near useless against zergs as at least two specific builds kill them passively. They are also the only line of defense against a superior numbered force which thanks to shield gens and those aforementioned builds already have a massive advantage.

Sarcasm For Hire [SFH]
“Youre lips are movin and youre complaining about something thats wingeing.”

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Posted by: Sviel.7493

Sviel.7493

ACs are already near useless against zergs as at least two specific builds kill them passively. They are also the only line of defense against a superior numbered force which thanks to shield gens and those aforementioned builds already have a massive advantage.

I didn’t mention it in the OP because those builds are likely to be changed soon. At the outset, retaliation damaged siege and it was quickly changed not to do so. Anet moves much slower these days but it seems like that sort of mechanic is not something they want in the game.

As for shield gens, I didn’t cover those either for sake of brevity and pending further research. What do you think about giving the force dome a minimum range, though? If it can’t cover the shield gen itself, there should be better options for dealing with offensive shield gens while defensive shield gens are about the same.

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Posted by: Napo.1230

Napo.1230

I don’t think an ac has killed me. It has contributed to my death hundreds of times though.
When I defend against a blob it does almost nothing to them, I don’t get why they need nerfing.
For them to be even a threat you need like 4-5 of them and a stationary enemy without a shield. If your happy to stand in ac fire that’s Darwin telling you it’s time

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Posted by: Yuffi.2430

Yuffi.2430

I’d be happy enough to keep AC damage as it is but reduce the rate of fire.

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Posted by: Baldrick.8967

Baldrick.8967

There are lots of ways to take places without standing under AC fire forever, and lots of ways of eliminating it too.

If people weren’t so dead set on face rubbing the doors or walls things would be a lot more interesting.

WvW player. Doing another world completion for my next Legendary. Hater of mini-games.

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Posted by: Straegen.2938

Straegen.2938

I didn’t mention it in the OP because those builds are likely to be changed soon. At the outset, retaliation damaged siege and it was quickly changed not to do so. Anet moves much slower these days but it seems like that sort of mechanic is not something they want in the game.

Both AC destroying builds survived the latest balance patch with no changes. Firing on a map q zerg or organized guild group will still destroy an ac in about 30s.

As for shield gens, I didn’t cover those either for sake of brevity and pending further research. What do you think about giving the force dome a minimum range, though? If it can’t cover the shield gen itself, there should be better options for dealing with offensive shield gens while defensive shield gens are about the same.

I would leave it alone at least for now. Most commanders are not savvy enough to know how to deploy siege effectively so making it more difficult seems unnecessary. What I would like to see is defensive shield gens protecting defensive siege better. Mortars, cannons and oil are completely useless which is something a shield gen should address.

Sarcasm For Hire [SFH]
“Youre lips are movin and youre complaining about something thats wingeing.”

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Posted by: TinkTinkPOOF.9201

TinkTinkPOOF.9201

Boy, I hate to see what half of you would do back when ACs were actually powerful before the first nerf.

Don’t stand in red circles, and remember there is more than just rams and catas right on a wall. Cata range when well paced is out of AC range, so are trebs. You can also place catas on walls that are out of sighting ability of ACs as well as in tunnels/hills etc. learn some tactics, that is the problem I have seen with playing since beta. Old time Coms had tactics, more than “build as much siege as we can right up on the wall/gate and hope for the best”. It took time and skill, things were planned out hours in advanced with roamers building golems or trebs, using stealth and ports to get golems in place or hiding them all over the map. Setting up golem/cata bubble rotations, requiring ANYONE manning siege to be in TS for call outs.

But no, lets just Nerf ACs again so we can AFK get into towers/keeps. ACs and other siege is supposed to make it harder to get into something, that is the whole point. If you can’t take the time or tactics required to clear them or avoid them, you don’t deserve the tower/keep.

And for those talking about “only” wanting to fight players and removing siege altogether, that’s called PvP.

6700k@5GHz | 32GB RAM | 1TB 850 SSD | GTX980Ti | 27" 144Hz Gsync

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Posted by: Eypheha.5831

Eypheha.5831

Yeah….reduce supply so it’s even harder to take em. That way we can all just stare at each other from our little towers, unless, of course, you happen to be one of the servers with a billion people who can run around and get supply all over. So, who would this penalize…yep: the lower population servers….again. Figures.

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Posted by: Sviel.7493

Sviel.7493

@Straegen

I said ‘soon,’ but perhaps it would be more accurate to say ‘eventually.’ For now, in the absence of a statement from Anet, I hope I can assume their stance on retaliation-esque damage to siege hasn’t changed.
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@TinkTink

If you check out the History/Context section on ACs, you’ll see that their damage has been buffed twice since release. Once directly and once through WvW traits. The LoS calculation has been adjusted but the damage has steadily increased since opening day.

That said, I agree that ACs should be able to defend against enemy siege placed in their range. That’s why I propose buffing their damage to siege (it was indirectly nerfed last year) while reducing damage to players. That should allow them to defend without being able to create tunnels of death as easily.
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@Eypheha

I didn’t suggest lowering supply capacity for players. The only servers that will be hurt by this are those with large enough zergs to completely drain a keep. There’s literally no change for small-teams or low-pop servers.