Guild Wars 2

In this video, my guild was about to defend a supply camp from three waves of 20 Sea Of Sorrows Invaders:

We only lost this camp once they came with a zerg of 40-50, some of our defense forces had left, and we had not rebuilt all of our siege. However, this video proves that smart use of siege weapons can allow a small group to defeat a larger force, even without the protection of walls!

Defending supply camps is an important and often overlooked aspect of WvW. It helps your team in a variety of ways:
- It provides a source of supply for your team to siege enemy points, repair damaged structures, and build defensive siege weapons inside your towers and keeps.
- It denies the enemy all of the above and can slow down or prevent them from building a golem army.
- Dolyaks will steadily leave the camp and supply your teams towers and keeps so they can build upgrades and have emergency reserves in case of attack.
- Your server earns 5 points per tick for every camp held on the map.

Having a camp for your team to consistently retrieve supply will help prevent players from taking supply from tower and keeps that are currently upgrading or which have a small amount of supply in reserve. This is important, because depleting a keep’s supply can drastically delay the time required to finish an upgrade, leaving it vulnerable and easier to capture in the long run.

You can upgrade camps so that the dolyaks with deliver double the amount of supplies to your towers and keeps, and you can increase the level of the guards to aid your defensive efforts.

Another important reason to defend your camps is that it encourages your team to invest in these powerful upgrades without fear of losing them to a petty strike force of 2-3 enemy players.

So get out there, find a group of reliable players, and defend those camps!

This guide was also posted to the fan made wiki I am building at gw2frog.com/supply-camps.

Well… the theory is nice, but is this actually more cost effective than just letting them have it and taking it back when they leave? Siege equipment can add up and the upgrade isn’t that expensive.

LameFox.6349:

Well… the theory is nice, but is this actually more cost effective than just letting them have it and taking it back when they leave? Siege equipment can add up and the upgrade isn’t that expensive.

That depends upon many factors. The cost of the supply camp’s upgrades is not the only thing to consider. The Dolyaks departing from the camp help to build upgrades at keeps, which are much more expensive. They are also much harder to recapture once lost.

The enemy’s behaviors must also be examined. Some camps can be easily defended by one ballista and an arrow cart if the enemy is sending smaller strike teams.

Lastly, it isn’t only the upgrade costs you can lose by leaving camps undefended. It can also hurt the morale of the individuals who consistently upgrade them, only to see them lost on a whim. Keep in mind that siege weapons can be acquired without spending gold or badges by completing the jumping puzzles on any of the four WvW maps.

LameFox.6349:

Well… the theory is nice, but is this actually more cost effective than just letting them have it and taking it back when they leave? Siege equipment can add up and the upgrade isn’t that expensive.

This is true too. But sometimes u need to hold the supply camp for upgrading towers etc. Also if a small group hold a zerg who attempt to capture a supply camp means u can have spared groups to assault their territory.

How important the supply camp is depends on your whole team’s strategy. There will be at some point need a hardcore defense with full sieges. And, of course, there will be a portal bomb to destroy it. This happens a lot in t1 eternal battleground and i’m kinda burned out with these.

Nice idea’s but playing on Gandara this week makes all your idea’s pointless being as the enemy zerg is consistantly 50-100 players 24 hours a day.

Bluesavanah.8562:

Nice idea’s but playing on Gandara this week makes all your idea’s pointless being as the enemy zerg is consistantly 50-100 players 24 hours a day.

We probably could have handled a zerg of 50 with our original defense setup. You would need plenty of siege and all of it manned, but it is doable.

I know a lot of people have been complaining about rendering; if it is affecting you, turning your graphics to Best Performance has helped in my experience. Other than that, upgrading your computer hardware and ArenaNet’s future graphics optimization are possible solutions.

Killing a zerg of 100 is a tougher cookie. I don’t see these very often, even being from Stormbluff Isle originally (tier 1) and now on Sanctum of Rall (tier 2). Therefore, I have not been able to observe strategies to defeat them.

One thing that is certain is that an entrenched force using siege weapons has a range and damage advantage. A mobile zerg would have to stop and build siege weapons to gain an equal advantage, but your ballista gunners could then target their build sites.

In any case, you can destroy a larger force with a fraction of their numbers using the power of siege. The hard part is being prepared with a sufficient enough force to tips the scales in your favor.

viperior.2461:

LameFox.6349:

Well… the theory is nice, but is this actually more cost effective than just letting them have it and taking it back when they leave? Siege equipment can add up and the upgrade isn’t that expensive.

That depends upon many factors. The cost of the supply camp’s upgrades is not the only thing to consider. The Dolyaks departing from the camp help to build upgrades at keeps, which are much more expensive. They are also much harder to recapture once lost.

The enemy’s behaviors must also be examined. Some camps can be easily defended by one ballista and an arrow cart if the enemy is sending smaller strike teams.

Lastly, it isn’t only the upgrade costs you can lose by leaving camps undefended. It can also hurt the morale of the individuals who consistently upgrade them, only to see them lost on a whim. Keep in mind that siege weapons can be acquired without spending gold or badges by completing the jumping puzzles on any of the four WvW maps.

The only problem is while you were continuously holding the enemies off the camp, none of the yaks made it to any towers because they couldn’t make it past the enemies outside the camp. If you had let them take the camp, and take it back 5mins later when they had moved on, you would of let dolyaks actually leave the camp and go on their rounds.

Still, I know this sort of thing is fun and i cant say that if I had been there id have done things any different in the heat of the moment, nice vid

Have tried this many times with tons of siege. The problem is, without walls or a way to keep melee off of your operators, siege is useless. You could have 20 ballistas firing at a choke-point and the enemy will run right through them :/… siege sucks for open field defense. This is why they should implement defensive siege lol

I’ve wasted a lot of time trying to siege up supply camps and it’s basically impossible to hold back unless you have equal or greater numbers than the attacking force.

Nice video, but I hardly consider having 10ppl and siege and fully upgraded NPCs versus waves of 20-25 invaders terrible odds. Not great odds, but partly manageable. A wave of 50 would have been an impossibility though. Unless you had your “oh crap” skills on, you would have been dropped when they got to that first ballista.

All that lost siege could have instead been placed on a wall.

When it comes to camps, the only upgrade that really matters is the double supply runs, and that only costs 10s. I defend a camp if it is defend-able and I abandon it if it isn’t. I can re-cap it in 5mins if necessary.

I do understand that there is a time when a camp needs to be defended. Most often the case when a tower or keep has been taken, and is in desperate need of supplies. Double supplies, a maintained camp, and Doly escorts is often times the deciding factor on whether that objective will fall or not.

Siege is a force multiplier. It basically turns 1 person into the equivalent of 3-5 damage wise.

Most of the player don’t realise that you get more Karma and Points with defending keeps and camps; barely anyone upgrades and build a defence.

We did the same with like ~8 player and had so much fun vs. a well outmanned opponent.

Oh man this reminds the time last week when 11 HUG on their alts are defending champ’s. You guys(about 20 or more) were attacking all sides at once, tried 2 – 3 portal bombs, and even try to taunt us to chase after you guys while another force attacks from behind. Of course, HUG still held it to the end. Good times, good times…

Edit: That was wild by the way. I wanna do that again. haha

Every time I use siege in a supply camp it’s for a reason.
The enemy focuses on siege before people.
Those are hits not taken by a person.
If you imagine it like paying for another NPC with the perk of being controllable for a short time, then you have the right idea and aren’t as unhappy when they get killed off.

We held off some takeover attempts for hours at Godsword in IOJ with siege but it did cost me 2g to keep dropping it each time they were pushed out. Others bought some too but I didn’t ask what they spent.

I had fun that day using a trebuchet dropping stink bomb cows in the circle while others were below fighting. What also helped us defend though were attentive players that WANTED to help protect a fully upgraded camp. When we called out enemies, ppl showed up. We held it for about 6 hours until finally they sent in the full zerg to take it. It’s possible to defend them but sometimes, yes, numbers can overwhelm anything.

As it pertains to points tho, you get more points killing the dolyaks leaving an enemy camp than you do holding the supply camp. I’m starting to come to a strategic thought that if we don’t need the supply camp, I’m fine with just farming the enemy for more pts. There are always roaming small groups taking supply camps, rarely a time when you need to send a whole zerg.

Wish they would add more defense to supply camps. ATM they’re almost useless to defend. It takes 5 minutes to resupply a camp, but < 5 mins to take one and get full supply. When I see a supply camp I see 1 golem, 1 trebuchet, 3 ballistas, etc.. Zergs roll camps before they go on the offensive.

Only reason to hold a supply camp is to upgrade a keep/tower – and points of course.

It’s a waste most of the time to tie people down to defending camps. You can have those people form a roaming party instead and have them go camp to camp retaking or defending when needed.