Guild Wars 2

Under current game mechanics, zerging is an exploit — an abuse of faulty game design.

Area-effect damage can only hit 5 people at a time. If you stack 25 people on a door, it’s virtually impossible to kill anyone. As the various AE attacks rain down, they keep picking 5 different people, spreading the damage out and giving everyone in the stack more of a chance to heal themselves or, at the very least, get out of the rain. So in this way, stacking 25 people on a door is an intentional exploit of a bad game mechanic.

Along similar lines, retaliation is a mechanic that most classes have no counter against. If you stack 25 people on a door and get most of them running retaliation, I’ll kill myself if I stack too much AE on you. Even though I can only hit 5 of you, every hit of a meteor or every tick of a flamethrower or every tick of a damage-over-time ability sends ~340 damage times 5 back to me. With my flamethower I can hit each of you for about 2000 damage and I will take about 17,000 damage in return (10 ticks of flame times 340 retaliation damage times 5 people).

Therefore, zerging is an exploit.

Ban all zergs! (or fix game mechanics….if you want to get extreme)

Somehow I don’t think your argument will stand up in court.

Learn to arrowcart

ecwoodrow.7034:

Learn to arrowcart

Retaliation>arrow cart. When they fix that, then yes, l2arrowcart.

In term of zerging, not being able to see a 40-50 people running at you to defend a door until they almost wiped you is by far the biggest issue. It’s not fun for anyone to try to hit wind.

travosaga.6089:

ecwoodrow.7034:

Learn to arrowcart

Retaliation>arrow cart. When they fix that, then yes, l2arrowcart.

True.

Even when they fix arrow cart retaliation damage, I think you’ll find that arrowcarting a stack of 25 people is spreading the damage too thin.

As far as I know, arrowcarts are limited to 5 people per attack just like everything else. They do multiple overlapping circles so you get a lot of numbers but there are people standing in that pile not getting hit because of the AE limitation.

And even disregarding that, arrow cart damage isn’t THAT high. With my level 80 engineer, I intentionally stand in arrow cart rains with retaliation running. Light field + multiple blasts gives me about 14 seconds of retaliation, plus I get another 10 seconds from my elixir B. I run out of retaliation before I run out of health. (Granted, 5 arrow carts would be another story but presently they all die to retaliation anyway. “No ETA” on that fix, so it could be like this until 2013 for all we know.)

Algent.3562:

In term of zerging, not being able to see a 40-50 people running at you to defend a door until they almost wiped you is by far the biggest issue. It’s not fun for anyone to try to hit wind.

Cant agree enough

Slamz.5376:

Even when they fix arrow cart retaliation damage, I think you’ll find that arrowcarting a stack of 25 people is spreading the damage too thin.\

No

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Remove-the-ability-to-place-seige-inside

Slamz.5376:

Even when they fix arrow cart retaliation damage, I think you’ll find that arrowcarting a stack of 25 people is spreading the damage too thin.

As far as I know, arrowcarts are limited to 5 people per attack just like everything else. They do multiple overlapping circles so you get a lot of numbers but there are people standing in that pile not getting hit because of the AE limitation.

And even disregarding that, arrow cart damage isn’t THAT high. With my level 80 engineer, I intentionally stand in arrow cart rains with retaliation running. Light field + multiple blasts gives me about 14 seconds of retaliation, plus I get another 10 seconds from my elixir B. I run out of retaliation before I run out of health. (Granted, 5 arrow carts would be another story but presently they all die to retaliation anyway. “No ETA” on that fix, so it could be like this until 2013 for all we know.)

Arrow carts also have the side effect of moving the enemy team since they will quickly drop what they are doing to get out of the AoE. The warriors bow burst and similar skills have the same effect. With smart aiming, it’s possible to direct the flow of the Zerg or halt its advancement entirely.

Zerging is not an exploit. The retaliation shield in a zerg is. Or retaliation as such. ArenaNet is working on a fix I think.

Algent.3562:

In term of zerging, not being able to see a 40-50 people running at you to defend a door until they almost wiped you is by far the biggest issue. It’s not fun for anyone to try to hit wind.

Precisely. Had a report about it since the forums opened: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/BUG-Mobs-and-players-suddenly-appearing-pop-in

Still no official response or acknowledgement.

I agree that the biggest issue though is the invisible enemies. It’s impossible to fight what you can’t see. You think your sending your group of 10 into ~15 people, when it’s actually 40-50. Or you can’t even use your siege weapons effectively since you can’t see the bulk of enemies to shoot.

But to be honest there is a bigger issue for siege weapons aside from retaliation with arrow carts. The reflect and immunity shields can be effectively rotated by bigger groups to basically make rams immune to damage from trebs, mortars, and cata’s. It’s a big reason why a lot of organized guilds run heavy on guardians, aside from other obvious reasons.