Guild Wars 2

I have been thinking, for a while now, that siege ladders would be a great addition to the game. Before you dismiss this, actually READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE before commenting. Here’s how it would work:
Ladders cost 20 supply. If one man is carrying the ladder, it reduces speed by 50% and there are no useable weapon skills. If two men are carrying it, there is no speed reduction but there are still no useable skills.
When approaching a desired tower, you must find a targetable wall. When within range of the wall, you can press F to set the ladder. An unlimited number of players can climb the ladder while it is active. The ladder can be taken down and carried to a new tower to be used. It has 3 uses and must be taken down from the ground, not the top of the wall. It takes a reasonable amount of time to climb the ladder and only two people can be on the ladder at once.
Now, before you go crying OP, here are the down sides. A player on the wall of the opposing side can approach a ladder and press F to push it off of the wall. There is a 3/4 second cast time when pushing which can be interrupted, but must be done from directly against the ladder. Pushing off the ladder shatters the ladder so t can no longer be used, and gives fall damage to the enemy equal to 50% of their health, and they are knocked down for 3/4 of a second.
Also, to benefit the defender, the ladder obstructs all AoE attacks. This may seem insignificant to some of you, but is truly not. This means you can not blast an absurd amount of AoE at the top when someone tries to push the ladder off. However, it is possible to shoot them with physical projectiles, such as ranger knockback arrow or thief scorpion wire.
Also, the moment a siege ladder is placed, it puts up swords on a tower. This avoids complete ghosting of a tower where if flips without swords even appearing, and if they do, for only 10-20 seconds.
Finally, there are upgrades in which the archers on the wall, which currently aren’t very useful, can shoot ladders off of the wall. This would be a high end upgrade on towers and keeps that comes with raising guard level or patrol, whatever is the T3 upgrade. Or, ladders are not able to be placed onT3 walls.

As is fairly apparent, this promotes small group playstyles. This would help havoc groups to have an even greater role, and the need for defenders in every tower even greater. This process would be fairly ineffective for a zerg, however, as it takes time for each person to climb the ladder, and they cannot support more than two people. Additionally, using a ladder renders you nearly useless in fights, and makes you very vulnerable. This is why it would be more effective for 5 man groups because it is not unreasonable for two people to climb the ladder, but 40 would be.
I feel this would add new play styles into the game, such as in a long siege, sending people to another portion of the keep to climb the outer wall and defend the main zergs ladders, or destroy a piece of siege.

I’m not really for or against the idea, neutral if you will. I do think it is a interesting idea and new siege would be cool (new traps even).

The one down side or possible complaint I would foresee is scouting for these ladders. People already complain about scouts and needing scouts but this would require more visibility over your objectives. I personally don’t see this as a issue (punishment for not scouting or having scouts) I can see the current population having issue with it as scouting is a considered a “boring” obligation. Just my 2 cents.

If you want to implement ladders, please suggest a counter siege to it as well.

Attacking shouldn’t be as easy as defending, and due to Mesmer’s portals, siege ladders would make it incredibly one sided taking a structure. Right now, we have catapults and trebuchets to kind of counter flame rams and alpha golems, as well as cannons and arrow carts to counter omega golems. Ladders would just break this tenuous “balance”

Although… If siege ladders cost 500 supply and only applicable to Stonemist Castle as well as Keeps, I’d be ok with it. It would basically mean nearly draining the entire zerg of supply allowing for limited options once you’re in.

@Reverence: Solution to your problem of no counter siege:
As I stated earlier, an addition to either T3 walls or upgrading archers to knock down ladders would be a great way to help limit the usefulness of this, and make these upgrades even that more valuable. Also, with the ability to simply press F and destroy any ladder placed on a structure is a pretty good counter IMO.
If you really want new siege, it wouldn’t really be feasible to just add one siege weapons to counter just one other type of siege. It would be better if it was an upgrade on ACs or Ballistas.
As for the 500 siege thing, I’ve had another idea of building Siege Towers, which are frequent throughout history and medieval fiction. They cost 500 supply and you need 10 people to push it. It moves at half the rate of a golem, and is very difficult to kill. You would need to hit it with a trebuchet a couple times or a catapult a few times to destroy it. It is immune to ACs and only penetrating shot from ballista affects it. It hits walls, so cannons are irrelevant. It can hold 20 people inside. Destroying it downs 5 of the pushers randomly and insta kills all inside. Superiors can withstand more damage, but cost 1000 supply. The guild would be OP. They cost 1700 supply and areas of metal. Takes 6 treb hits or 12 catapult hits to take it down, but is virtually unbuildable. Of course, these cannot be transported to the inner of a keep in any way, and can be destroyed after having been mounted on a wall. They can also be re-used.