Guild Wars 2

I’d like to point out to Anet that Shield Generators are anti-competitive and in many cases prevent defensive siege from being effective at preventing attacks provided the attacking group have enough people/supply to build shield gens in addition to their rams/cata/trebs/etc.

In the past (pre-shield gens), a small number of defenders could be effective in holding off large numbers of attackers through good siege placement and being “on the ball” when it came to using said siege. These days, in most cases, attacking zergs can build several shield gens on a gate to prevent defensive trebs from killing rams, or build shield gens in an area to prevent their trebs from being destroyed while they take down gates/walls with impunity. Given similar numbers this isn’t such an issue since an active engagement will generally lead to the destruction of the attackers siege, even if the defenders ultimately wipe in the end, but with lopsided populations as we see today, there is little to no option for the smaller/defending side to defend their structures. This generally leads to a long, drawn out siege of towers/keeps leaving defenders with no option but to stand and watch.

Some examples of this scenario are building 3-4 shield gens + trebs in Aldons, Jerrifers, Bravost, or Langor and simply trebbing the keep for as long as it takes for the walls to fall.

I believe shield generators ultimately give increased power to servers who massively outnumber their opponents which is anti-competitive and leads to reduced participation from the server on the receiving end of such tactics. Standing inside a keep for 30-60 mins while a superior force trebs you with relative impunity does not make for compelling game play. Counter siege is, in most cases, ineffective due to shield gens, and enemy numbers make a direct attack unviable – in some cases the defending side may be able to counter a portion of the attackers siege, but this is often rebuilt quickly due to size of the attacking forces. Shield Generators turn WvW sieges into a game of attrition which will always be won by the larger force. In most cases the only option left to defenders is to stand and watch, or simply leave the keep and try to find other structures to take for a few brief moments until the enemy zerg is done with whatever objective they are currently targeting…neither option is very good.

If Shield Generators are to persist in the game at all, I think the radius and/or duration of the #3 ability needs to be reduced dramatically, or have the #3 provide a different function entirely – potentially reduced damage to players from siege fire, or something of the like?

Thank you for reading.

Shield Generators are OP as hell. A lot of focus on ACs being over used by the community but the true threat post HoT has always been the Shield Generator.

Option 1: stand and watch. Utter waste of space you are. One of my pet hates is players afraid of getting their pixels hurt (that includes players who can run backwards faster than forwards..). Players will literally stand there and watch the wall/gate melt from catapults rather than run in, get a few hits on them, and have their pixels hurt. If enough run in and suicide, you can melt the siege quite quickly. But people would rather stand there than do anything at all…

Option 2: do something about it. If the siege is in any way reachable, then go suicide on it. If it isn’t directly reachable, then counter it. HINT: it might be useful to build a shield generator first , then the counter treb…

Option 3: attempt to pull them away by attacking something else, or attacking several structures at the same time. When wvw first came out we used to have at least one team whose sole job was exactly that- known as the suicide squad due to the fact they would get killed quite a bit, but in doing so would pull off a lot more of the enemy.

Option 4: take a small squad and insta build superior bally or cata to take down some enemy siege/help a co ordinated push on the siege and shield generators.

The larger force if well organised should win eventually- this is balanced.

Baldrick.8967:

Option 1: stand and watch. Utter waste of space you are. One of my pet hates is players afraid of getting their pixels hurt (that includes players who can run backwards faster than forwards..). Players will literally stand there and watch the wall/gate melt from catapults rather than run in, get a few hits on them, and have their pixels hurt. If enough run in and suicide, you can melt the siege quite quickly. But people would rather stand there than do anything at all…

Option 2: do something about it. If the siege is in any way reachable, then go suicide on it. If it isn’t directly reachable, then counter it. HINT: it might be useful to build a shield generator first , then the counter treb…

Option 3: attempt to pull them away by attacking something else, or attacking several structures at the same time. When wvw first came out we used to have at least one team whose sole job was exactly that- known as the suicide squad due to the fact they would get killed quite a bit, but in doing so would pull off a lot more of the enemy.

Option 4: take a small squad and insta build superior bally or cata to take down some enemy siege/help a co ordinated push on the siege and shield generators.

The larger force if well organised should win eventually- this is balanced.

All these options are viable provided the defenders have enough people, but with the crazy population imbalances we currently see during various time zones, most are not practical. Siege, in my opinion, should serve to balance the odds in uneven battles, not skew them further in favor of the stronger side.

In order to “suicide” on the attackers siege you need to get close enough to actually hit the siege, which means you need enough people to make a solid push – shield gens actually have a lot of HP…they are not easily suicided on unless you have a decent sized group.

Building a balli can work if you have LOS on the siege/shield gens, but let’s not forget that balli range is relatively low in the context of a treb fest, shield gens also block ballista fire, and the superior attacking force are typically watching closely for such tactics…they literally have nothing else to do.

With regard to building counter shield gens/siege, etc, that is the attrition loop I was speaking of in my original post. A relatively small number of defenders will never have enough supply/people to stage an adequate defense. You can prolong a siege, but rarely by very long as any of your counter siege is generally re-countered easily by the larger attacking force. If the defenders build shield gens to defend their counter treb, that leaves their walls vulnerable, whereas if they defend their walls, that leaves their counter siege vulnerable. All that aside, the chance of defensive siege actually hitting/killing attackers siege is low due to their shield gens. The real problem is that the most viable solution to the problem involves a direct attack of some sort from outside the walls of the keep which is unviable against an attacking force that has a significant numerical advantage.

I’ve had this happen a few times, already, but I think there are enough ways around it except for when Shield Gens are used to cover catapults (because catas have shields as well).

The key is that the shield generally doesn’t cover both the offensive siege and the generator itself. If it does, they’re so close together as to all be hit by a single treb shot or siege disabler. If the situation is truly dire, I hop onto my thief and ask someone to pressure the siege with a treb/mortar while I sneak in and disable the generators. To date, while significant damage has been done, I’ve never lost a keep to a treb farm. Also, since gens take significant supply to build, simply having them is a DPS loss for the offensive group. I think that’s an ok trade-off.

That said, using the shield gen on a treb inside the tower is more problematic. If one can’t get access to an angle that will allow disabling or just hitting it…but I think that’s more an issue with the tower. I would suggest using your own treb to take down the tower wall to at least force them to use supply keeping it up. If it goes down, the situation is easier to handle since someone can sneak in and disable. If it doesn’t, you at least prevented them from building more trebs/gens.

This is still as important as ever in my mind. Blobs and timezone mismatches are even more prevalent since the server linking came into place. Large zergs are able to build 3+ Shield Gens and grind out gates/walls while the smaller number of defenders have literally no counter play. This type of engagement kills the competitive spirit of the game IMO, and needs to be stopped.

Siege mechanics in general need an overhaul, to much abuse and overuse. Siege wars is more boring then scouting and watching wildlife run around…

WTB WORKING SIEGE CAP

this is an issue most players cant understand or just refuse to acknowledge. Ive written about this on multiple threads where its dismissed or just mocked.

let me just recap for anyone who new here.

fov and camera height were added.

most of us wvw players gave feed back on the change saying it was a bad idea. anet’s justification (iirc) was some players knew how to use windowed mode so lets give dumb ppl the option too.

the repercussions were slow to be realized but over all it worked ok because this ability added more ways to use siege and gave advantage to good team work. how ever the QQ was enormous and anet caved eventually. for a time ACs were useless which necessitated more reworks.

along with hot adding shield gens they also changed how siege was deployed (thx to a single mesmer vid) greatly limiting the viable locations. this worked ok on the desert bl but again massive QQ and we’re back to the old maps. all of the siege work in ebg and alpine is very straight forward where in desert the attack could come from many directions and counters could be deployed in equal variety.

the old style of sophisticated defense strategy is pretty much dead. lotta ppl will say stop siege humping, go out and fight! most of these players dont spend that much time in wvw nor do they fight out numbered constantly. only a few ppl rly see the big picture, instead they are angry cause their ktrain got interrupted or the precious AC they built was destroyed. they want their mediocre actions to be grandiose.

gw2 was pretty much perfect at one time. then anet took their master piece and remolded it but more isnt always better. so here we are again, give it a few months and they will nerf shield gens, changes always needing more rework and so on. maybe there will be new peak times of perfection.

is the game rly better with no growth? I gave up the defense game when hot came out, I joined a fight guild and now Im learning all new strategies. dont cling to the past.

Do non-hot players still not have access to shield gens?

Don’t worry guys. The next xpac will have the power creep solution to shield gens. Just have that $50USD + ready to go!

Anet: selling balance solutions since October 2015.

Just leave the objective and destroy them with your weapon skills.

Turtling is really boring and should never be rewarded.

If you don’t have enough numbers to go outside and kill the siege then that is a population problem, not a siege problem.

You need to address the population issue and then the siege issue will take care of itself.

If you have a decent population on your server and you’re still defending outnumbered then that is bad luck. Ask for help from other maps.

Shield generators also work very nicely in the defenders favour. We had 3 trebs attacking hills and nothing was hitting the wall due to shield generators. Instead of complaining we went and destroyed them.

i hope ac dmg up to 100K each time and it can kill all the people
when they want to attack the town or keep. i love ac <3
we don’t need to fight with other , we only need stay on a wall to control the AC 11111111111111 forever

X T D.6458:

Siege mechanics in general need an overhaul, to much abuse and overuse. Siege wars is more boring then scouting and watching wildlife run around…

WTB WORKING SIEGE CAP

It is a gimmick game based not much brain is needed besides know wath will make players win faster and easy even if it means cluster play, swarming everything in lesser time, as much i wish mechanics improvement that is not how Anet showed us how they work.

XTD, what makes WvW a mess is not the siege alone, theres serveral aspects that are killing the gamemode, giving less option over time for players, and thus Anet added gimmicks like banners and other kittens to cover that…

Hardly will improve.

Ive been sieging alot the past weeks bunkering in Alpine towers, and on my play time all i see is clusters looking for stuff to easy take, if one defender apears they drop of, even when using a AC doig 300 damagr to players and 100 to siege …

We need more objectives in WvW
Siege and tower/keep redesign with, taking in mind a no gimmick concept.
Both Alpine, and Desert BL, need strong changes to be decents maps, one is to easy to cap, and other is to confise cause players want everything easy and free aka no effort.

Biggest thing we’ve run into is the amount of national servers than will build 4-5 super trebs, 3 shield gens, ACs and ballista on the hill outside red keep and proceed to sit there taking out all our stuff and murderising anyone that tries to get near.

It’s not enough they outnumbered us 3:1 but to do that is pathetic. Our only defense a lot of the time is have a small stealth group go and take out the ballista and then a few people at keep build shield gens to block the trebs.

As much as I despise shield gens used to protect offensive trebs I value them for being able to protect your walls from offensive trebs more.

Course non of this would be an issue if ANet hadn’t merged national servers the way they did creating map blobs karma training all day on all maps…

apharma.3741, it looks they are covering wvw issues and lack off mechanic by making cluster swarming stuff ove r and over and over.

It is not a good intention, but it is a simple one.

Aeolus.3615:

apharma.3741, it looks they are covering wvw issues and lack off mechanic by making cluster swarming stuff ove r and over and over.

It is not a good intention, but it is a simple one.

Yes, I wish ANet would do something about it but we’ll see, they have been making in roads to improving WvW recently and I do appreciate their efforts even if they aren’t always spot on.

apharma – what you describe is the exact situation I have the most problem with.

In my opinion, there is very little that Anet can do in order to force people to destack overpopulated/unbalanced time zones, but in the past, a small force of defenders with careful siege placement and good scouting would have a reasonable chance at defending their structures. Since the introduction of Shield Generators, this is no longer the case. What I see more and more often is map-queue sized groups either rolling up to a gate/wall, building 3 shield gens, and rams or catas, then grinding it down while their vastly superior numbers keep the defenders from getting close enough to disable or do any significant damage to the siege itself.

Your example of EB is very much the same, and potentially more imbalanced since all this can be done from a number of towers while using trebs to hit other objectives.

Any mechanic that gives more power to a side that already heavily outnumbers their opposition is a bad one in my mind, and Shield Generators do just that. Massive numerical superiority prevents direct engagement, and Shield Generators essentially prevent indirect attacks of all sorts, other siege included.

aarias.4016:

apharma – what you describe is the exact situation I have the most problem with.

In my opinion, there is very little that Anet can do in order to force people to destack overpopulated/unbalanced time zones, but in the past, a small force of defenders with careful siege placement and good scouting would have a reasonable chance at defending their structures. Since the introduction of Shield Generators, this is no longer the case. What I see more and more often is map-queue sized groups either rolling up to a gate/wall, building 3 shield gens, and rams or catas, then grinding it down while their vastly superior numbers keep the defenders from getting close enough to disable or do any significant damage to the siege itself.

Your example of EB is very much the same, and potentially more imbalanced since all this can be done from a number of towers while using trebs to hit other objectives.

Any mechanic that gives more power to a side that already heavily outnumbers their opposition is a bad one in my mind, and Shield Generators do just that. Massive numerical superiority prevents direct engagement, and Shield Generators essentially prevent indirect attacks of all sorts, other siege included.

I agree shield gens make it bad for attacking said map blob but if you remove shield gens from the scenario you’re left with a map blob using trebs with ACs and ballista preventing all counters in an entrenched position.

Sure if you have a treb pre built and it’s facing the right direction you can counter treb but a lot of the time the map blob will build multiple trebs and take out all your siege first. Then how do you defend? Portal bomb the trebs I guess but shield gens never stopped that.

I would like to see shield gens go but as far as I’m concerned removing them wouldn’t make the situation better without resolving the issue of map blobs doing this. Now at least you can stalemate the situation with defensive shield gens. Don’t see them built at 0 range but that’s mainly because they build 6 super catas and are through the wall before anyone spotted them.

apharma, thats not really a problem. all keeps have superior positions/range with their trebs than the guys attacking, at least from inner – only exception is Bay. Imo what we need is a working siege cap so they cant put 6 superior rams on a gate or 6 superior catas on a single spot defended by 2 shield gens.

@Steelo

That would be an interesting approach too, actually. I agree that siege cap needs to be tweaked, but I kinda see that as a separate issue to Shield Gens being OP. At the end of the day, 3-4 Catas/Rams protected by 2-3 Shield Gens are going to be just as broken as 6 Catas/Rams with Shield Gens.

That being said, it would be nice if gates/walls lasted a little longer vs large groups…6+ rams/catas will shred whatever they are hitting. All of this is exacerbated by the fact that many people can carry 25 supply now…building a mass amount of siege is much easier now than ever before.

aarias.4016:

@Steelo

That would be an interesting approach too, actually. I agree that siege cap needs to be tweaked, but I kinda see that as a separate issue to Shield Gens being OP. At the end of the day, 3-4 Catas/Rams protected by 2-3 Shield Gens are going to be just as broken as 6 Catas/Rams with Shield Gens.

That being said, it would be nice if gates/walls lasted a little longer vs large groups…6+ rams/catas will shred whatever they are hitting. All of this is exacerbated by the fact that many people can carry 25 supply now…building a mass amount of siege is much easier now than ever before.

Bay also has those spots for outter and inner.

Since shield gens do not work against splash damage or ACs, they don’t really do much. If an attacker has the patience to long range treb a tower/keep they have always been able to find a placement that is near impossible to counter siege from a distance.

Towers such as klovan, wc, anz, etc are just as vulnerable from close range attacks and less vulnerable from long range as shield gens can block SMC treb shots. Shield gens are also somewhat effective on gates.

There are only a handful of scenarios where sheild gens really turn the tide of a battle and they almost all could be done without them.

Why should a small amount of people be able to hold of a far larger amount of players? I like shield generators as they are.

Malediktus.9250:

Why should a small amount of people be able to hold of a far larger amount of players? I like shield generators as they are.

Wait.
Didn’t you hear? 2guys running arround complaining about zergs, sorry New word for more than 2 players is blob, is the best you can do. OFC you then have to be able to fight of 30 guys. If that does not work, go to the forums, tell all that may\or may not care how good a roamer you are for fighting outnumbered 360 no scope against Server XYZ and their cheating blobbing most likely hacking blobb of 2000 players all multiboxing and bot trebbing while all running zerkercondi Warriors that carry condi Mesmer who fire open field acs and that you and your Buddy tool out at least 3000 of the 2000 guys while posting and listening epic music compilation 2016.

The sad thing is that so many people are fine with it and just play, vor come to the forums to help other players and therefore never participate in the general forum:" oh maaa gaawwd dis soooow oowp." drama.
But ofc they don’t care for the game, you only care for it if you whine on the Forums.

Um defensive players can use them, too. Use them to protect your wall ACs and the players using them; use them to counter a treb or cata hit.

Or we could go back to using ele’s, standing on the top of walls, yelling, Ele 1! Now!

The supply situation needs to be fixed. There is too much supply littered around the maps, and it screws up the balance of defensive vs offensive siege.

Once/if supply is regulated more strictly….this won’t be a problem.

I agree. Let bubbles decrease damage by 50-75% and remove knockback effect instead of completely prevent damage.

why should a handful of people be able to hold off numbers 10 times their size indefinitely?

if a group of people dumps 380 supply (5 sup catas, 2 shield gens) into one section of wall, it should come down. end of story.

if no one on the defending side builds ballis to counter the gens, or they dont stealth and go destroy it, the wall should go down.

Never had issue taking towers/keep equipped with shield generators. Some people are better at devising counter strategy than others. One key difference: One actually active find way to counter, one raged quit and went to forum to vent, and hopefully it will be nerfed so they won’t have to think about countering.

Shield generators are OP. Really bad idea and implementation.

quaniesan.8497:

Never had issue taking towers/keep equipped with shield generators. Some people are better at devising counter strategy than others. One key difference: One actually active find way to counter, one raged quit and went to forum to vent, and hopefully it will be nerfed so they won’t have to think about countering.

Yes no one has an issue about taking towers/keep equipped with shield generators. If you read what OP wrote perhaps you can understand what he is referring to.

What they should do is allow generators to be built only inside a keep or tower your team controls. None allowed in open field.