Guild Wars 2

Reinforce walls: mandatory
Reinforce doors: mandatory
Fortify walls: questionable. Expensive and most people go through the doors anyway.

Entire line of oil, cannons, mortar: mostly a waste. You only get 1 cannon, easily killed and hardly anyone is dumb enough to die to oil anymore. The mortar is nice but really not worth the cost to get there.

Entire line of second worker, additional guards, raise guard level: mostly a waste. The second worker can help with the walls and doors but at 100 supply he drains a lot of the stuff he needed to do the upgrade! NPC guards are all worthless. They MIGHT help in a few edge cases but generally guards just get squashed flat instantly and making them level 82 and adding a few more doesn’t change that. 20 people won’t even notice the difference.

Entire line of outfitter, siegemaster, patrol: mostly a waste, unless you really want forward vendors. The patrol has the same problem of the other NPC upgrades, which is that “NPC guards are useless”. A level 80 can solo a whole patrol, so why spend 15 silver on it?

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In summary, upgrades could use some work, especially on towers. I’m starting to see more and more places upgraded with walls and doors and nothing else, because it’s just not worth it. Some keeps have good placement of cannons and mortars, but not towers. Guard upgrades are a waste everywhere you go.

I hope to see some adjustments made in the future to make more upgrades more useful.

Fortify walls is an amazing upgrade.

With the Catapult on door mechanics it’s tough to go through the door and a lot of servers are starting to slow siege towers like they do keeps. ET had 3 catapults and 2 trebs on Anz last night and with fortified walls it took them a long time to get the wall down.

If our server were more co-ordinated they would have never taken Anz because the mortars from overlook protect the door.

I will say that although some of the upgrades are questionable in value, having a full 700 supply in a tower is a very big advantage while defending! You only get that full 700 through upgrading.

My view on the upgrades:
-Outfitter, it’s convenient to be able to empty your bags and buy salvage kits and gathering tools without having to go back to spawn.
-Siege Master, can be a huge help in defence. It’s highly convenient to be able to buy blueprints on demand rather than have to go back to your spawn, and possibly have trouble getting back into a fortification if it’s under siege.
-Patrol, makes it difficult for most enemy players to snoop around a fortification or cause an inconvenience while passing by. Stalls solo or small groups, although they do lose effectiveness on a larger force
-Second worker, good and cheap upgrade if the fortification has a large stockpile. Also useful in upgrading faster if there’s a large stockpile of supply, or if the fortification is really close to a camp and one worker can’t use it as fast as it comes in.
-More guards, again helps with solo/smaller forces
-Increase guard level, makes the guards even tougher for small groups to handle
-Oil, semi-useful as while it’s up it’s suicide for enemies to stand under, but it is a high priority target because of that. It’s cheap anyway, and leads to better upgrades
-Cannon, very useful while it’s still up. It can help keep an enemy at bay for a bit, and does massive damage to groups
-Mortar, depends on the tower really, some towers can assist other towers with mortar fire
-Reinforce walls and door, as you already touched on these are very much high priority upgrades
-Fortify, true enemies don’t always go for the walls, but this is a very good upgrade to have if you have the doors defended well and the enemy tries to siege you

Problem is most everything listed helps against a very narrow array of enemy attack groups.

5 players = all upgrades help
10 players = cannon somewhat helpful. NPC guards already rendered useless as they die to focused fire in literally about 4 seconds.
20 players = cannon and oil die too fast. Guards don’t even register as a speedbump (even the lord will die in seconds to a group of 20 players). Only the walls and doors really help you and you’d better have siege up and have the place manned.

That’s for towers, anyway. Keeps get more use out of cannons and mortars but for towers, you get 1 cannon, easily destroyed, and 1 mortar, not as good as a trebuchet and costs a ton of supply.

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I actually think Fortify is more useful as a way to troll enemy servers by logging in and buying it. It will leave most forts dry of supply for ages because it takes so much to build. They’ll spend more supply building that upgrade than you’ll ever spend destroying it.

There is one advantage mortars have that I forgot to mention, they do huge damage to siege. They kill trebuchets in about four hits or so.

But yeah, many of the upgrades deter smaller groups, once a large force attacks a tower you need actual defenders present and defensive siege helps as well.