Siege has a problem imo, especially defensive siege: it’s too ineffective. In reality siege is a battle changer and in this game it should be as well.
Now that catapults have been ‘fixed’ (which is a good thing overall I’d say, it was cheesy as it was) defending a structure is a fools errand. The only thing that really matters is having a big enough zerg and if you do, you’re better off exciting the tower/keep and fighting outside.
In reality sieging an upgraded structure is a battle of attrition, supplies are paramount. In WvW upgrades are merely a speedbump to large groups and supplies are only useful to finish some siege if you forgot to place some before the attack and maybe repair a bit (rarely).
The suggestion:
- Defensive siege should be harder to kill than it is even now (or very hard to hit at the least), do more damage and the people using it should not be able to be hit (even by AoE).
> But that’s completely OP, how can you balance that?
- Defensive siege uses supplies to fire.
Perhaps offensive siege should be somewhat more effective, but use supplies to fire as well (with the exception of rams and golems).
Oil, cannons (perhaps add integrated Arrow carts to an upgrade), these should be things to be feared, not just something that slows you down for 30 seconds while you nuke them.
Having supplies ready and getting more should be vital to defense, not just a thing of convenience.
Why do I suggest this?
- Defense is weak, very weak compared to Offense atm. I am talking about defensive tactics here, not the fact you are fighting near a structure your server owns. Upgrades are but a minor inconvenience to attackers and there is virtually no way to stop or even significantly slow down a large force other than being an equally large force, running out and attacking them in the ‘open’.
- There is just not that much tactics going on when assaulting a structure with a large force atm, beyond “not getting orange swords”.
You decide which gate to hit and then throw everything with a pulse at it.
The only thing that sort of matters is speed, because the only thing that somewhat harms you is if the other side brings a bigger/better zerg.
- There is a huge gap between the haves and the have-nots in WvW; some classes are just vastly more effective at sieging than others. This change would allow more people to be significant in these battles.
- Supply lines aren’t very important beyond getting a few dolyaks in to finish upgrading walls and gates, to slow attackers down slightly during the day and for the full repair during prime time (the full repair is a very cheesy side-effect of upgrading as well imo).
Especially during prime time camps are all about flipping them every 5 minutes to stock up and get the ‘tick’.
P.S.: I fully realize this is mostly a ‘pie-in-the-sky’ idea, in that it would be a fairly big change and probably takes more effort than A-net can/is willing to invest in this atm.
P.P.S: This is coming from someone that’s on Desolation [EU] and has been ‘trapped’ in Tier 1 for many weeks/months now, perhaps it’s different in other tiers but in ours the blob rules all and keeps and towers (upgraded or not) often flip colors so fast the map looks like a disco at prime time.