Guild Wars 2

Right now one of the biggest problems for smaller wvw teams, is that when it comes to attacking, if your enemy is on ball and has a larger team you are almost always going to loose. You can have the best commanders, most talented wvw guilds and it wont matter if the enemies group is literally a wave of death.

What people need is a new way to think outside the box.

This is what I propose, and how to make it work properly:

Siege Ladders:

These would be an alternative method of attempting to bypass a wall rather than trebbing it to death and hoping no one notices, or trying to mass produce siege golems on a slow march that gives your enemy enough time to prepare for them.

The idea:

Siege Ladders will cost 30 supply, be easily produce-able, but very frail, they are mobile, and can be moved into position near a wall using a diagonal ramp like ladder rather than a vertical ascending one, to switch out between “stationary” and “mobile” modes.

In Mobile mode, the ladder is considered a non physical object in the world, and therefore, can bypass players without much trouble, but in physical mode, the ladder can be used by both allies and enemies as a stationary position that can be ascended and used to leap onto walls.

Of course the ladder isnt without drawbacks, to balance the game-play, the ladder has a moderately lengthy deployment time of 5 seconds for each ladder and the ladders cannot be too close to each other either when deploying.

They also have a very weak amount of HP making them easily destroyed by heavy bombardment from other siege weapons but easily mass produced to allow smaller teams a chance to over scale more formidable defenses.

A more advanced version, the Siege Tower, costing a whopping 120 supplies is a slower moving mammoth of a thing that can take a much heavier beating and allows people to scale it in a similar manner, taking huge damage before falling apart but able to slowly advance to a wall and allow the players to bypass its defenses.

I’m not terribly good at design drawings but I would try to come up with it if I could in a way that one might be able to grasp the visual reference, but the point is, its not supposed to be climbed, so much as outright ascended, you leap onto it in stationary mode and rush up a ladder before emerging on the other side, which ends at a certain point, people can then use to leap onto walls (conditioned people can place the kitten thing well).

Why is this a good idea?

It helps smaller groups have a fighting chance against their larger and vastly more resourceful counterparts, as well as giving for a more epic battle for larger groups, storming the walls with their endless armies as the smaller ones hold them at bay with siege weapons from on high.

Not only is it good for atmosphere, its just good for balance. Sometimes players feel like they need more ways to play, ways that force people to think without just zerging things, building rams, trebbing walls.

It just adds another field to the game that forces larger zergs to think in a defensive way rather than just aggression.

It wont eliminate the zerg, and it wont stop large zergs attacking, in-fact it will make it a lot easier for them to do so, but, it also gives the players a fighting chance to do something about that, and, for smaller teams to start taking points instead of holding them from larger ones with occasional gains.

Thoughts?

I like it.
The superior ladder must be very slow though and cannot be built within a certain range of a tower or keep wall (this will give a little time for defense, but not as much). Also it needs a certain amount of people to move it.
I would also like to see airships. that cannot fly above ballista range. but can be utilized to take out enemy siege (not walls or gates though). this will enhance the use of ballistas that every WvW player has stacks and stacks of.

WvW needs sappers. Something like a deployed food which has limited charges. Players run up, grab a charge then have to get to the wall, boom. Something along the lines of 50 charges to take down a non-upgraded wall and 25 to blow a gate. The low cost is offset by the high risk of running up to a defended tower/keep/garrison and planting charges under fire. A 2.5 – 3s cast time to basically allow for planting the charge and rigging the fuse.

In an age where technology already covers explosives, why are rams still used on gates?

The ladder idea sounds good. Would it be used for a stealth op or basically how would it give warning to the defending keep/castle that is was being deployed? I can see that if it was used in a large group that they could easily just use a couple of ladders and take over a vacant keep/tower way faster than ram/catas and before the defending world even knew what hit them. Would it use orange swords or a special icon to indicate it after placement?

Do I understand correctly, that with only 60 supply and 4 mesmers a 40-man zerg can go from outside a fully fortified, fully sieged keep, to being on the lord in under a minute?

We don’t need getting inside tower/keeps to be easier. It’s already easy enough as it is…

Your idea will simply screw even more the severely outnumbered servers…

I like to impose some restrictions if you will-

- Siege Ladders are nice, but there has to be a limit on the number of ladders placed on a per wall basis. Maybe 1-2 ladders at any large wall segment (no ladders can be placed on mini walls). Furthermore being fragile and easy to move, let enemies be able to unhinge and throw ladders off the wall, knocking back climbers and destroying the ladder entirely after like a 5 second uninterrupted channel. Lastly, climbers will be unable to do anything as they channel the ladder in an odd animation showing them climb up it. I envision ladders as a means for a group to sneak onto walls, and where using them on a wall with numbers is not the wisest choice.

- Siege Towers are a different story. My thought is something more complex than what you described, here is my version of the tower:

> Takes a high amount of supply, clearing for making a machine capable of taking heat, whether it be 120 or 150.

> Build Restriction: Open Field only, no building of this structure allowed inside allied or enemy keeps. It is a large movable structure, there is more complexity in it than any other siege weapon in the game, even the golems.

> How it works: The Siege Tower is meant as a movable staircase to ascend enemy walls, its infrastructure can support holding infantry and protect them from attacks until the tower reaches the wall and both the top of the tower and the bottom of the tower open, allowing a bridge of sorts. You build it, people actively enter the inside of it and the First person inside drives it slowly (like the supply yak speed) to the wall. It can support…let’s say a cap of 20 people, clicking the structure will tell allies and enemies the number of infantry inside. Once it reaches a predetermined spot on the wall, likely certain highlighted points the driver can see, moving the tower there will open an extra skill called “Open Gates”. The structure then shifts from movement to stationary until it disappears or is destroyed.

> Once stationary, infantry inside the siege tower cascade to the top of the wall immediately, and the tower is now an object which has clickable entrances for allies and enemies to cross back and forth, and the tower itself can still be damaged by enemy fire. The thing is, a Siege Tower is literally a truck, Omega Golems are brutes but the Siege tower is a structure, its akin to a gate or wall. So how do you damage it?

> Fire. Defenders will be able to pick up a torch from the supply huts and use the bundle to stab and throw at the Siege Tower. This “On Fire” debuff stacks intensity, slowly ramping up and burns the tower to the ground. Obviously ally and foe alike going through the Siege Tower gets a healthy dose of ‘Burning’ on them, and yes things like trebs and ballistas do damage the Siege Tower as well. But you want to burn them down right? Also bear in mind that torches aren’t the only things you as defenders can use to apply burning…like another defense siege not commonly used.

> That’s right! Mortars! Mortars are devastating to Siege Towers, which are slow moving and not quite able to dodge incoming shells and fire. It’s silly to run outside your keep with a torch to deal with a Siege Tower that is likely defended by other militia, use your mortars instead! If and when it arrives, grab the torches and all hell breaks loose!

Sykper.6583:

I like to impose some restrictions if you will-

> Build Restriction: Open Field only, no building of this structure allowed inside allied or enemy keeps. It is a large movable structure, there is more complexity in it than any other siege weapon in the game, even the golems.

rather than open field, how about we make it so that a structure such as this an ONLY be built in supply camps, and require an upgrade to said supply camp for this to be built, i.e. engineer upgrade at say t2, this way attacking groups have a reason for taking and HOLDING supply camps as well as defenders to stop this action.
This would give the defenders adequate time to stop the piece of siedge and give some warning that it was coming, as well as giving upgrading supply camps a purpose.

Yes all my yes.

Additionally Barricades and Pitfalls. Allow players to shape terrain in a meaningful way.

So we all run around with ladder blueprints only and mesmers to get the rest in.

Bad idea imo.

Sykper.6583:

I like to impose some restrictions if you will-

- Siege Ladders are nice, but there has to be a limit on the number of ladders placed on a per wall basis. Maybe 1-2 ladders at any large wall segment (no ladders can be placed on mini walls). Furthermore being fragile and easy to move, let enemies be able to unhinge and throw ladders off the wall, knocking back climbers and destroying the ladder entirely after like a 5 second uninterrupted channel. Lastly, climbers will be unable to do anything as they channel the ladder in an odd animation showing them climb up it. I envision ladders as a means for a group to sneak onto walls, and where using them on a wall with numbers is not the wisest choice.

- Siege Towers are a different story. My thought is something more complex than what you described, here is my version of the tower:

> Takes a high amount of supply, clearing for making a machine capable of taking heat, whether it be 120 or 150.

> Build Restriction: Open Field only, no building of this structure allowed inside allied or enemy keeps. It is a large movable structure, there is more complexity in it than any other siege weapon in the game, even the golems.

> How it works: The Siege Tower is meant as a movable staircase to ascend enemy walls, its infrastructure can support holding infantry and protect them from attacks until the tower reaches the wall and both the top of the tower and the bottom of the tower open, allowing a bridge of sorts. You build it, people actively enter the inside of it and the First person inside drives it slowly (like the supply yak speed) to the wall. It can support…let’s say a cap of 20 people, clicking the structure will tell allies and enemies the number of infantry inside. Once it reaches a predetermined spot on the wall, likely certain highlighted points the driver can see, moving the tower there will open an extra skill called “Open Gates”. The structure then shifts from movement to stationary until it disappears or is destroyed.

> Once stationary, infantry inside the siege tower cascade to the top of the wall immediately, and the tower is now an object which has clickable entrances for allies and enemies to cross back and forth, and the tower itself can still be damaged by enemy fire. The thing is, a Siege Tower is literally a truck, Omega Golems are brutes but the Siege tower is a structure, its akin to a gate or wall. So how do you damage it?

> Fire. Defenders will be able to pick up a torch from the supply huts and use the bundle to stab and throw at the Siege Tower. This “On Fire” debuff stacks intensity, slowly ramping up and burns the tower to the ground. Obviously ally and foe alike going through the Siege Tower gets a healthy dose of ‘Burning’ on them, and yes things like trebs and ballistas do damage the Siege Tower as well. But you want to burn them down right? Also bear in mind that torches aren’t the only things you as defenders can use to apply burning…like another defense siege not commonly used.

> That’s right! Mortars! Mortars are devastating to Siege Towers, which are slow moving and not quite able to dodge incoming shells and fire. It’s silly to run outside your keep with a torch to deal with a Siege Tower that is likely defended by other militia, use your mortars instead! If and when it arrives, grab the torches and all hell breaks loose!

Kind of what I was going for anyway, but I actually like these additions, either way, I feel like adding a new way to deal with defenses could spice things up for WvW in a more exciting than problematic way.

In the case of smaller zergs and teams that have less defenders the answer would be, as quite rightly said, adding a vulnerability to the thing so it can be easily destroyed by well aimed concentrated fire.

The high supply cost also means larger zergs will have to constantly retreat to recover more supplies in order to build more, thus, it actually works more favorably for the little guy.

But it is an idea I think A-net should look into, ultimately, as I said in the case of ladders and towers, mobile, but switched into a stationary mode, however, this idea of turning the tower into an APC would work well too.

I like the ideas, so thumbs up for those. The Siege Towers might be especially fun as something for defensive ballistas to destroy.

No thanks. Don’t really like the idea of ladders in WvW. Siege turtles and juggernauts however, I would like to see.

Interesting idea, BUT we have mesmers so its a big NO-NO from me.

While it would give small roaming groups a new way to breach keeps and towers (would be a bit OP imo, considering how fast 5 guys could climb up to a tower and flip it because Lord aint that tough).

But like a lot of people already said. You can just make ladder. Tell the mesmer to climb up, plant portal for the rest of the zerg. Then proceed to inner wall and repeat. Now you are inside the lords room with a huge amount of people before you can say “Fix your game ANet”