Guild Wars 2

Spending hours and quite some gold on upgrading keeps and towers, all lost within a min to golem rush…sieg is useless due to eles ability to ignore LOS, defense doesn’t really give any real rewards.

Please buff defense:

- eles shouldn’t be able to ignore LOS
- reinforced doors/walls should be harder to take down
- upgraded guards shoul be a threat and not a joke
- outmanned buff needs revamp really bad
- successful defense should give better rewards

I agree or as in my topic thread, limit the amount sides can use or get rid of them altogether (golems that is).

The wall/ gate upgrades should be different:

1st: Reinforce gate
2nd: Fortify wall(at cost of the old reinforce gate T2)
3rd: Fortify gate

Gates need to be stronger. Most of the time they are attacked. But we still want the fortify wall… and because we can’t make 2 upgrades for wall(would be 4 there then and probably needing more redesign of the quartermaster interface) we just use this as 2nd wall upgrade. A kitteneaper but then again you have to wait and don’t even get reinforced walls first… and since gates are main target gate upgrades should be first.

I’d also remove golems. Golem rushed make upgrading keeps pointless. Or you can keep golems, but many golems next to each other dmg each other (kinda radioctive power sorce?^^) so that golems in small numbers are still viable but golem rushes with like 40 golems simply not possible any more, because they die due to dmging each other.

I like the idea of having an upgrade to make gates as strong as walls. It should take a significant amount of supply (like walls) to complete though.

Golems used to be a thing used only when a tower or keep was impenetrable, and usually as a last resort because the costs were prohibitive. That’s not the case anymore, and frankly four superior rams at a gate can do pretty much the same thing, even with the defenders firing from within — and often so fast that allied forces can’t even get halfway there before the objective is flipped.

I don’t think we ever want it to become too tough so that each tower and fort becomes impenetrable — where’s the fun in that? — but at least make it a tiny bit tougher to get down that gate.

This promotes zerging

Without it there still is zerging. Either people have enough players to zerg. Then they will zerg. Or they don’t have enough people. Then they won’t zerg. Not dependend on other stuff in the map or game. Only the number of players online decides if there is zerging.

The problem is that something like Rams dont have a real counter. The only siege that can reliable hit them is Arrowcarts. And Rams take greatly reduced damage from arrowcarts, and someone with Mastery can sit in the arrowcarts aswell. So carts are out, unless you have a great amount of them. But rams are cheap.

Unfortunaltly most towers and keeps are designed in such a way that Rams are kitten near impossible to properly counter. Something like Cata’s, Trebs and Balista are rarely able to hit Rams, and unhibitively expensive in case of the Treb.

And defenders are pretty much commiting suicide if they stand on the edge of a wall where they can actually attack ram users. If i was a King i’d have the architect of these towers and keeps hung, drawn and quartered for doing such a poor job.

I agree that the defense needs more support.

There are two separate issues though that make defense so futile.

1. Relative weakness of structures against Siege and trash-damage.

Basically a 40 man zerg can punch through a standard gate in 30-40 seconds, giving defenders barely a chance to react, let alone set up defenses.

I agree that “Reinforced Gates” should be the first structural upgrade you make since they are the most vulnerable.

Second, the amount of trash damage done to a gate should be limited to melee-weapons only. That would severely limit the ability of a zerg to punch through a well defended gate. Now kicking the gate in would require a little more strategy and risk.

I don’t agree that Golems are a problem. Yes, they maybe a little too cheap and readily available but I think it’s important for WvW that you can’t bunker in endlessly. Offensive tools need to outweigh the defensive ones in the end and Omega Golems accommodate that niche quite well. But maybe they do need to be made a little more expensive and less easy to “mass produce”. Golems are fine in small numbers, but the fact that you can stockpile them so easily is arguably overpowered.

2. But the second big balance blunder is the inability to wipe an attacking zerg, without having one of your own. A lot of this is due to the ability to resurrect and revive everyone, even while in combat. So even if you do score a number of kills while defending, the zerg just resurrects them within a few seconds. This doesn’t give defenders the opportunity to shift the momentum and drive the attackers off.

Limiting resurrections to “out of combat” would really help alleviate this issue a lot.

3. Active defending is suicide. For some reasons, the way the engine calculate line of sight and ground targeting, standing on walls is far more dangerous for defenders than it is for people attacking. Standing on walls, shooting down is the best way to get yourself killed. And this is completely counter-intuitive and needs to be changed.

Walls need to give and advantage…even a range-advantage, to the defenders, not the attackers. I mean someone with 900 range can barely hit the foot of the wall but someone with 1200 range can wreak havok on the entire palisade.

I think root of the problem is that price of siege weapons has become irrelevant since there’s bunch of people with so much gold it doesn’t matter if they lose 10000 golems.

I think it would be nice if you only get siege prints for doing stuff in wvw not from mechant. That would increase prices if demand was high. I.e. do puzzle get print etc. or research prints in your home tower by collecting some items around the map etc..

And oils/cannons are a joke. There’s no way people can use oil with 1000 red circles on top of it even if it doesn’t get destroyed in 10 seconds.

Blobs should not be able to taking down a door without sieges. This is the evidence of how this game is bad designed. People will keep zerging in any case but at least there would be a reason, not becouse it’s easy farming towers and keeps…

I think the problem you guys are seeing with the omega golems is that there was a mass dupe about a week or 2 before league started. Remember when if you put siege in your hand you couldn’t put it back away. That was there quick fix to the problem. Yet it was already to late thousands and thousands of omegas hit the trading post. At one point they were like 10 silver a piece.

Zerging & blobbing are always going to happen no matter what. The issue is defense of anything is becoming next to impossible when facing superior number. You win back a keep, no time to upgrade let alone build up any defense because the enemy drained supplies etc then a large zerg/blob arrives at the gate and tears down the gate with or without siege.
Even fully upgraded keep’s can be steam rolled in a relatively short period of time with the aid of golems.

• Powercreep via WXP abilities,
• the sale of Omegas on the market,
• cloning of Omegas,
• willingness of people to make and part with Superior Siege

… have combined to make walls and gates fall faster than ever before.

Arenanet have to reverse these problems because PLAYERS CAN’T.

Just replace the arrowcart’s final mastery with something like this:

- 300% extra damage to siege
- Blocks all healing temporarily

Have the cooldown reflect that if 3 AC’s are grouped together with 3 people with AC mastery and are coordinated, it would be impossible to take the keep with rams.

You don’t ever want something to be impossible though. That creates a whole different set of problems.

Terrahero.9358:

Unfortunaltly most towers and keeps are designed in such a way that Rams are kitten near impossible to properly counter. Something like Cata’s, Trebs and Balista are rarely able to hit Rams, and unhibitively expensive in case of the Treb.

Emphasis mine, what? And trebs are ~2 silver each on the TP. Or you can spend the endless badges you get on them.

Jayne.9251:

You don’t ever want something to be impossible though. That creates a whole different set of problems.

Catapults are the answer then. It may be difficult to get 3 coordinated people together to even pull it off, but if they do, whip out the catapults then, no longer impossible.

Remember, were not likely to have 3 people sitting in a tower to begin with as sentries.

I’ve solo run supply catas and gotten outer garrison walls down by myself on reset. I’d hate to lose that

That said, catas take time to break down a wall. I think the issue you are having is that rams x3/4 are just too quick. In another thread someone suggested a gate upgrade that made gates as tough as walls. I think that’s a good solution. Invest in the upgrade = buys you some response time, which is what upgrades are supposed to do anyhow.

Gates are kind of squishy versus the zerg, but I think the bigger problem is the lack of protection for defenders. I don’t think it’s reasonable for two or three people to defend against 40, but I do think it’s completely unreasonable for five or so mesmers in the 40-man zerg to be able to yank the defenders down the ramp from the lord room, across the front wall to the gate and then off the wall right into the middle of the zerg. Yes, this requires some impressive coordination but it has happened to me. Elementalists likewise are a problem because they can ignore line of sight using their scepter’s fire abilities. Throw necros into the mix with ele AOE and have the mesmers yank defenders into the kill zone even on top of the wall and it means instant death.

In summary, it is too easy for a massive group of players outside the tower without siege to reach a small group of players defending it and kill them despite the presence of the walls.

Indeed there should be a buff in defense. As it is at the moment it´s pretty much not worth it to upgrade a keep or tower. Just simply leave it at T1 and recap it afterwards. At the moment you do not even need siege. You just need 40-50ppl to brake a gate without a siege-equipment.

A possible solution would be to simply :

1. Make all Siege equipment part of “Art of War” research available.

By doing all the Siege-Equipment part of “Art of War” research available, you will accomplish the following things :
1. Promoting the Guild team play more, since all the equip comes from a Guild research.
2.You cannot buy/sell Siege-equipment en mass from Trade-Post. Also, the CD from the research for siege equipment and the usage of it comes better into play.
3. Making the claim and upgrade from Keeps/Towers as a Guild better rewarding experience.

You might ask what about the Normal and Superior siege equipment ? You could simply make the normal siege equipment, a guarantee reward by taking a Keep/Tower instead of buying from TP or from merchant. And if you want to have “Superior” then you have to upgrade it instead of buying it.

2. Make the “Gates” immune to players damage.(If that is possible.)

By making the “Gate” immune to player damage, you will help the few defenders in a Keep/Tower to hold their ground until help arrives. Since now the “Gate” is only breachable with a “Siege-Equipment”.

Regards

Seed

If you really want to upgrade and buff defense then you need to upgrade the people. No, not added skills and the like, but have it worthwhile for people to sit at home and defend. Right now all the rewards are offensive so that’s all people want to do is run with the offense. There’s no reward to playing defensively on a personal level. I’ve spent, on some weekend days (don’t laugh…) sometimes six to eight hours in a tower keeping the siege refreshed and being that early alarm bell when an attack comes. Hey, I rarely lost the tower, but didn’t really get (or care about, for that matter) rewarded beyond the fact that I did my part.

We don’t need to eliminate golems or nerf eles or whatever… we need it to be worthwhile for people that like to stay at home and defend to do so. How? No idea. I’ll leave it to the powers that be to come up with a great, rewarding means that no one will claim they like because it “promotes zerging” (whether it does or not). But if you want to “buff defense”, make it so people want to defend.

The buffed guards really bothers me. I shouldn’t be able to solo buffed guards. And a 5 man should have a pretty hard time with them.

Simple solution: limit the amount of damage a gate can take per-second to what a group of 15-20 can output, so ~3 rams and 20 players worth of auto-attacks.

This means a group of 80 can’t melt a gate in seconds, but a smaller group can still be effective.

Ragnar.4257:

Simple solution: limit the amount of damage a gate can take per-second to what a group of 15-20 can output, so ~3 rams and 20 players worth of auto-attacks.

This means a group of 80 can’t melt a gate in seconds, but a smaller group can still be effective.

Yep. I wish they would scale the damage. But they probably can’t do that technically.

Limiting is the second best. If you’re talking about 3 normal rams above, I agree. Three superiors though are too strong, they can melt gates way too fast.

May I ask a question? How can an ele ignore LOS.

Giotto.2607:

May I ask a question? How can an ele ignore LOS.

Through a poorly designed skill: Dragon’s Tooth