Shield Gens should not be able to shield themselves. Difficult enough to repel a larger force nearly impossible once they get two shield gens down right near rams. At the very least make them stagger them allowing for more counter play.
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It is extremely difficult to kill a shield gen if it shields itself. That is the entire point of this request. Ranged attacks don’t work when the bubble is up either from counter siege or from players. That bubble is mostly a safe space requiring defenders to basically suicide into it.
If Shield Gens had a minimum range it would prompt more fighting not less as defenders would have a better chance at counter play.
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kitten it would promote sitting on ACs inside keep without counterplay to that…
you either wipe the enemy and destroy the gen or they take the keep, thats how it should be
Are we forgetting about being outmanned ? Oh wait…lemme guess,you blob only right ? Youre never on the side of 5 v 30,youre always on the 30 side right.You dont realize its impossible to try and defend vs a blob with shieldgens vs a few inside trying to hold.
Are we forgetting about being outmanned ? Oh wait…lemme guess,you blob only right ? Youre never on the side of 5 v 30,youre always on the 30 side right.
no not always, but i dont think its a good idea to cater to 5 kittenters sitting on ACs instead of a group of people that actually fights
if you cant bring your own group to deal with that, you shouldnt keep the objective, its simple
Are we forgetting about being outmanned ? Oh wait…lemme guess,you blob only right ? Youre never on the side of 5 v 30,youre always on the 30 side right.
no not always, but i dont think its a good idea to cater to 5 kittenters sitting on ACs instead of a group of people that actually fights
if you cant bring your own group to deal with that, you shouldnt keep the objective, its simple
What do you mean “Your own group”,thats the thing about being OUTMANNED,there is no zoneblob to hold since theyre most likely on another bl.Youre talking about a zoneblob with rams and shieldgens vs a few people,then you kitten about the 5 people trying to hold with ac’s instead ofd fighting the zoneblob 5v30 ? Make sense,its obvious youre always on the side of the shieldgen users.
thats my point, you either get the bigger group to come and save it or you lose it
why the kitten do you think its appropriate for 5 people to be able to hold off 30 people without any skill even?
Besides you cannot expect a zoneblob to keep hopping to a bl to hold vs a zoneblob that only runs around grabbing towers defended by a few where theres no other zoneblob on the map (BECAUSE THEY AVOID THEM ). You talk about that particular blob having skill,im seeing them mostly as a blob that avoid fights to ppt all day long where the 5 defenders trying to stop them since our main blob gets bored by them running away on sight or insta dying.You talk as this blob with rams and shieldgens is so skillfull while the 5 defenders are not.
siege is a crutch for the worse team sure, but it should only help not be the complete counter
i never said the blob has skill, im saying the 5 people spamming AC shots wouldnt need any skill to counter 30 people
It should help to the extent that we should be able to counter this siege,at this point theres is absolutely nothing to counter when theres a blob with 2 shieldgens,they can chain the bubble and you cant even disable it,hence you cannot ac it,bali or or use any other siege to either kill it off completely or delay it untill a zoneblob can be called for help if it’s t3.All you can do is stand around,keep suiciding yourslef on the gens or keep trying to disable mostly killing yourself in the process or failing it.
OP makes a good point—one I have made myself fairly often.
Granting invincibility to blobs not only encourages blobbing but makes it necessary to play the game at all. You simply have no power unless you are a blob. I’m not interested in playing that game.
Agree with OP.
Suggestion in the interim would be to plague lands the gens, the bomber the hell out of them with the ACs and disables. But of course that entails you having one or two necros that are condi.
The double shield generator with alacrity on them for unlimited uptime, can be countered. You can actually just throw the siege disabler on the outside of the shield generator bubble so that the AoE can affect the shield gens. This one act will shut down the entire setup. It’s the achilles heel.
I’ve attached a picture showing it. The black squares are shield gens. The orange squares are catas/rams. The red circle is disabler range, and the red dot is where you throw the disabler.
Ideally, once you disable the shield gens, you’re going to want your teammates on those Arrow Carts putting pressure on their now-exposed siege. Otherwise, stopping the shield gens won’t matter all that much. Take this 35 seconds to kill the shield gens with siege.
The OP makes a very good point – one that has been repeatedly made since shield generators were introduced. Sadly nothing has been changed. The best defense is to simply bring a bigger blob, and if you can’t do that you are better off letting them karma train empty objectives. If they are using ranged catapults + shield gens the best defense is to simply spam shield gens yourself and this just leads to a boring stalemate.
While the AoE works for that set-up, a competent group will place the gens on the side of the rams. It’s possible to disable 1 with splash, but not both. They can fit 4 in before you’re able to disable 2 at once and it will take a minimum 3 disables to get them all. When all is said and done, you have 10-20 seconds where you can hit the rams assuming all disables were successfully pulled off (not blocked by player skills) in a 5s window since the shield doesn’t immediately drop when the gen is disabled. Since the update that doubled siege health without boosting siege vs. siege damage, that means you need to pull this off ~5 times to kill the rams.
It may be possible for a guild of ~6 people to do this, but even if it goes off without a hitch, they have to be ready to go as the rams are being built or they won’t finish before the gate goes down.
Recall that Siege disablers only have an AoE of 300. It was nerfed a while back.
I’m in SoS. I played against Maguuma last week in tier 3 and I saw what you’re talking about. I attached a screenshot of it. In the screenshot, you can see Maguuma put down 4 rams on Ogre Watch and then 2 shield gens to the left and 2 shield gens to the right. It was quite absurd. I, as a single player, couldn’t counter this alone. But, if I had 2 other players with me on defense, willing to stealth and disable, I believe I could. This assumes pugs would be on Arrow Carts spamming down on the Flame Rams.
To bring this back to the main point “Shield Gens should not be able to shield themselves.”I disagree with this. By shielding themselves, Shield Generators prevent themselves from taking arrow cart damage. They can still be disabled by using a disabler since a Shield Generator can’t lay a bubble which stops itself from getting disabled (due to an aoe throw mentioned in my previous post). I think this is acceptable counterplay. I like that Shield Generators can prevent Arrow Cart damage. Arrow Cart spam can become absurd.
If they change this it’s basically a buff to the ol’ ACs-hugging strategy, which is already bad enough as it is…
You want to stop the shield gens? You want to save the objective? -Fight for it. Stop sitting on your ACs all day.
As pointed out already, this strategy is not even 100% safe as the gens can still be disabled and destroyed if you aim right behind the bubble.
This has reasonable counterplay as it is already.
Look at how effective someone is in a full Soldiers set.
Look at how effective someone is in a full Dire set.
Nice balance.
If the attackers have the supply to set this up, then all power to them, frustrating as it is.
I’m quite happy that fending off such an attack really requires a sizable force to get out there and fight. It has always been quite unreasonable to me that 5 people can hold off 30+ for so long.
What never gets mentioned as counter-play to this is to prevent the opposition getting enough supply to even do this. Supply traps, and capping camps whenever possible helps greatly. Defensive trebs to drain supply.
Even if the enemy is WP’ing to another map to get supply, you can do a lot to disrupt them… but if there are 30 people banging on your door and you only have 5, then all you should expect to be able to do is slow them down.
Guys ur arguments that siege is a crux is valid, and so is the opposite argument. But admitting that siege is a crux presents a new array of problems, mainly the lack of any balancing in terms of server population.
Building the mode around that fact would mean enforcing that 75% of all battles are unwinnable for one side against the other. The mode itself would become niche.
Anet has refused to go that route, and has refused to properly balance the servers/teams. Meaning that the gamemode falls on the idea of counterplay. And for counterplay to exist vs shield gens and large vs small forces, things like shield gens bubbling themselves need to be remedied.
So really it doesn’t matter how you think the game should play. This is how the game has to play to ‘work’. Its broken in the current state.
The combat mechanics themselves are HEAVILY swayed in favour of the larger groups, so much so that most engagements will lead to 0 casualties on the blob side and 100% casualty rate on the lesser blob regardless of what the lesser blob does. But that is only “if” the lesser blob fights the larger blob. So the mechanics would then switch to being where the larger blob isn’t and routing multiple objectives mapwide to take advantage of the fact the blob can only be in 1 spot at a time. But the objectives themselves are setup so they cap significantly faster the larger the force u field in battles. This makes play for one side impossible from the perspective of “siege is a crux”. One side winning regardless of what the other does, doesn’t make for very compelling games. Infact in most games if the matches are unbalanced in any way most people refuse to play! They Just outright refuse to play!
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no not always, but i dont think its a good idea to cater to 5 kittenters sitting on ACs instead of a group of people that actually fights
if you cant bring your own group to deal with that, you shouldnt keep the objective, its simple
I’d like to see shield gens removed completely, and return of good old siege placement maps, with proper treb sieges against T3 objectives, instead of current “ayy lmao, I placed 3 shields + 8 rams/catas, lets go cap fast”. Not able to clear defensive siege properly? You don’t deserve that objective.
Players projectiles should still be able to go through that bubble. Kind of kittened the blob can sit in it throwing out aoes from a safe place where as opposite group has to run INTO them to damage them.
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Madness Rises [Rise] – Banners Hold.
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I’m also on SoS. You may see me sometimes when there’s a queue on EBG and you’re on home border.
As I laid out, I agree that it is possible to counter shield gens with enough people/disablers, but I disagree about that being reasonable counterplay. It takes that many people just to have a chance to do something and, having done it, it’s still a toss up if to if it manages to take down the rams before the gate falls. It’s super high risk with very little reward and should not be the only option against a super low risk strategy like blobbing.
An attack on the gates should have a faster breach time since it’s technically higher risk, but that means it should also have several drawbacks for the offensive team to balance it. Due to shield gens, it’s no riskier than anything else.
