Guild Wars 2

DevonCarver.5370:

They do less damage to all siege weapons, siege golems included.

So we need twice as many now. Sigh… where’s my hammer…

Nice to see stuff like this. Accountability is always nice.

So, Arrow carts gets nerfed BIG time, 50% less damage to siege, but no point reset.

I do not understand how it is possible that ANet treats their customers like this. Really, I don’t. 50% damage nerf and no reset. 50% !!!

How can you justify this towards us?

They’ve promised the point reset at the same time as the range nerf. Given that you read the 50% damage nerf, it’s disingenuous to suggest that you also didn’t read why and when there’d be a point reset.

Overall, given that this nerf will bring damage to siege back down to ~90%, ~60% and ~80% of their pre-buff original attacks, I think this will prove suitably balanced for most siege (no, when attacking with rams, you won’t just be able to stand there, you will have to move in and out, but your rams won’t just die in seconds just from one cart firing at them) except for golems. Arrow carts before the buff didn’t really do enough to hope to effectively deal with golem rushes (even with several carts, this could often be the case) and now they’re doing less damage to them than they did in the first place. I suppose to an extent, this may just be a conscious effort to make golems more viable overall, justifying the cost, etc., but by the same token, because of the cost, seeing a massive boost in their viability almost starts to border on feeling like the richest person on the field now has the best chance of winning.

I’m not sure how to properly address this without damaging their viability, except perhaps that maybe the option to buy golems with gold should be taken out? At least that would restrict them to either 1) people who either earned enough badges by actually playing WvW to warrant being able to use one once in a while or 2) folks who were just genuinely lucky enough to get them from one of the jumping puzzles/as a random drop. That said, I guess not many folks have gone out of their way to buy a ton with gold. It just strikes me that for something that’s being made much more viable and is supposed to be quite rare, there are too many in circulation and it’s too easy to organise regular large-scale golem rushes. Heck, as a world, I’m pretty sure we run at least a couple a day, often with the odd Omega or two.

DevonCarver.5370:

Greetings WvW players!

We are aware that there has been a great deal of controversy about the recent changes to arrow carts. One change that is happening in today’s build will be a reduction in the amount of damage arrow carts do to siege weapons. While we believe the damage to players is in line with what we want it to be, we do think that we overshot a bit on the range of the arrow carts once they have been upgraded. We intend to change the arrow cart upgrade line to bring the numbers more in tune with what we intended the whole of siege weapons to be, but we felt that it would be unfair to make that change until we were able to provide all players with a reset of their spent World Ability Points, allowing people to reallocate them however they choose. To that end, we will not be making the adjustment to the range of the upgraded skills until we are able to implement a one-time reset of said points. This will make it so that everyone who upgraded arrow carts can decide if they still wish to put their hard earned points into that spot, or spend them elsewhere after the change. This reset is a special event because we feel it is unfair to make changes to lines once people have put points in them. Hopefully this explains the method behind the madness and we hope you continue to fight the good fight on behalf of your realm!
Cheers!

Devon Carver

Now I call that entirely a bunch of bull, right there! As a mastery in Ballistas, even with a measly 50% damage reduction for arrowcarts, they still currently max-range my ballista and destroy before it’s deployed properly by supplies. That’s totally, 100% SCREWED UP!

Why wait? Right now it’s not “unfair” to those that decided to spend their points, as they’ll get more points in the long-run anyways. Right now it’s completely UNFAIR to everyone else that has to deal with this clearly, ADMITTEDLY outreached ranged that’s far beyond the intended range.

And 50% damage reduction to siege? Really?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! So instead of destroying siege in 30sec, it’ll be destroyed in 1 minute? Why not 80% damage reduction like what was done to player abilities when hitting doors so that Rams became useful….do you not recall that?

It maybe an evil, but a necessary evil to balance the servers because ARROWCARTS ARE NOT ANTI-SIEGE DEVICES! They should be doing minimal damage to siege at best. A trebuchet can take 300,000 arrows hitting it and still fire it’s load to the enemy…because it’s wood, and the arrows just barely stick into the wood…..NOT FLESH (i.e. personal, which is what an arrowcart is for).

Siphaed.9235:

It maybe an evil, but a necessary evil to balance the servers because ARROWCARTS ARE NOT ANTI-SIEGE DEVICES! They should be doing minimal damage to siege at best. A trebuchet can take 300,000 arrows hitting it and still fire it’s load to the enemy…because it’s wood, and the arrows just barely stick into the wood…..NOT FLESH (i.e. personal, which is what an arrowcart is for).

Yeah, idk why arrow carts are able to do so much damage to rams. Frankly, I’d like to see them do very little damage to rams and have a skill like the balista that does more damage to siege (fire arrows or something) on a longish cooldown.

What a joke. What siege gets improved next patch, all under the flag of ‘look at us make WvW improvements’ while ignoring all the issues that involve players actually fighting players?

Siphaed.9235:

Why not 80% damage reduction like what was done to player abilities when hitting doors so that Rams became useful….do you not recall that?

Flame Rams don’t take 80% less damage from players. They take 50% less damage from everything. (Players, Cannons, etc.)

Arrow Carts now only do 25% of their normal damage to Flame Rams: -50% vs. siege from AC , and -50% damage vs everything as a Flame Ram.

Usless Devs first fix the problems inside WVW THEN INTRODUCE NEW CRAP, why introduce the traps this patch and the lag is still there???? FIX THE REAL PROBLEMS THEN DO WHAREVER U WANT

So damage to players is where you want it to be?

What? Do you even play your own game man? This is ludicrous.

Half damage to seige? Ok, so that helps the ram, what about the guy on the ram? He’ll still be melted in seconds.. what.. I just.. what?

God I can’t wait for TESO to come out, or hell, might even go back to RIFT in June once it’s F2P. I love WvW, it reminded me so much of DAoC when GW2 came out, but recent changes have made it absolutely boring. Seige Wars 2 is what it should be called.

It’s crazy because these arrow cart changes promote using hacking programs that allow you to zoom out. ANet wouldn’t realize that though because they don’t have a friggin clue man!

People are still complaining about arrow cart damage????

shakes head

the WXP reset sounds promising .. but not in the way you think.

It will benefit most those who wasted their points in the “meh” tracks, ie Guards/Mercs/generic Siege, as well as the relatively meh 5th tier Cannon/Ballista.

Arrowcart Mastery overwhelmingly remains the strongest trait line, anyone who invested in that before will still do well to keep their points in it.

Thats nice and all, but does not go nearly far enough.

They should do no dmg against seige. Or at the veryleast no dmg to rams or people on rams.

This is turning into boring seige wars, not player vs player group combat. I enjoy fighting other players, charging the zerg, hoping our group tactics will overcome usualy superior numbers.
I dont enjoy sitting on seige, or watching seige being used…..

Yet again anet fails to see the big picture. Yea ok, they do less damage to siege but siege operators are dead before they can even get a 2nd hit…

AC damage was already very high before this mess. Individually they sucked and this is probably why anet thought it needed a buff (which means you obviously don’t play your own game) but everyone knows to build MULTIPLE arrow carts at each gate. Max in a 1000 unit radius is 12 arrow carts. 12 arrow carts were overpowered back then and now it’s worse.

And let’s not even get started with the range……

For once, can Anet please not be so incompetent and actually TEST their updates before releasing and REVERT IMMEDIATELY things that go horribly wrong. There’s no reason to leave it in the game while you take another 7 years to figure out how to fix it (and still not really change anything). Stop killing this game like you killed GW1.

No one ever asked for this kitten.

At least we know that the upgraded range of AC is so kitten.

High damage + Wide range = OP.

AC upgraded range should not more than 75% maximum range of ballista (including its radii) >>>> if it is same, ballista is rendered useless.

Damage to siege down to 50%, but for player who use it ? Siege without players = wasted.

Tallis.5607:

So, Arrow carts gets nerfed BIG time, 50% less damage to siege, but no point reset.

I do not understand how it is possible that ANet treats their customers like this. Really, I don’t. 50% damage nerf and no reset. 50% !!!

How can you justify this towards us?

So let me understand… You take advantage of an obviously broken game mechanic, and then you ask ANET to help you.

Tallis.5607:

So, Arrow carts gets nerfed BIG time, 50% less damage to siege, but no point reset.

I do not understand how it is possible that ANet treats their customers like this. Really, I don’t. 50% damage nerf and no reset. 50% !!!

How can you justify this towards us?

It’s 50% less on the increase. It’s still 140% of its original value…down from 180%.

They already said they’re gonna do a point reset too. :-P

Can’t believe people complain about the damage to players; use your head and stop throwing your squishy players on siege.

I see couple things coming out to Arrowcart:
-Increase range of arrowcart to 10000, (who needs treb anyway)
-Allowing arrow cart to do half *chuckle*damage to gate and walls (again, catapult, ram, golem, pfft)
-Increase AoE radius (pffft, we hate zerg, might as well wipe them)
-Remove minimal range (pfft, you’ll die anyway even if you get close)
-Make supply cost 10 (one AC for everyone!!)
-E-Ray vision, allow you to target through walls………….w00t

…..if WvW is already not enough about Cart vs Cart, seriously, after two weeks of hoping Anet would balance this load of crap, what we get is this kitten?

A few points of clarification:

1) Arrow Carts have a default range of 2,500. Ballistas a default range of 3,000. Catapults a default range of 4,000. Trebuchets a default range of 10,000.

2) An Arrow Cart that gains added range under the current Arrow Cart Mastery line increases to 3,500. It outranges Ballista and Ballista only with this upgrade. Even with an Arrow Cart’s targeting reticle taken into account, it still falls short of a Catapult’s range.

3) With the increased reticle size in the Arrow Cart Mastery line, an Arrow Cart then matches the range of a Catapult. Even so, a Catapult can still outrange an Arrow Cart by virtue of being able to apply damage beyond its maximum range due to its blast radius. This extends the Catapult’s damage beyond its default range of 4,000; which still beats an Arrow Cart affected by the Arrow Cart Mastery line since Arrow Carts do not benefit from a blast radius.

4) How the math works:

Let’s assume a base damage of 1,000 for an Arrow Cart pre-buff. An 80% increase bumps that up to 1,800 damage. A 50% nerf to that damage versus siege reduces that to 900 damage. So Arrow Carts now do less damage to siege than they did pre-buff; not by much, but it’s still a reduction. As to the argument that it’s not the siege weapon damage but the damage to the operator that is the issue; ummm…yeah…that’s the kind of the point of an anti-personnel weapon. Learn to coordinate with your teammates to rotate duty on your siege weapons. As you begin to take too much damage, swap with someone who’s at full health.

Trying to hide behind the argument of “WvWvW should be about PvP, not siege wars” is disingenuous at best when zergs outnumbering their opponents by factors of 3, 4, 5, or more to 1 roll up to a gate. Anyone who does so and then tries to pull out the “I just want to PvP” argument is flat-out lying. Maybe WvWvW should be about PvP and not siege wars. If that’s the case, then neither should it be about zerg wars that has absolutely nothing to do with skillful PvP. Running in a herd and spamming auto-attack while being shielded from AoE damage is not skillful PvP play.

Since the meta did devolve into zerg wars, a counter in the form of buffs to Arrow Carts was introduced. Maybe it has little to no impact on certain servers; especially at tier 1 or tier 2. Conversely, though, it’s been quite effective as a zerg disperser on other servers. Arrow Carts are anti-personnel weapons and working as intended now. The damage was buffed 80% to make them actually have an impact; even for defenders who are grossly outnumbered.

The damage against siege has been scaled back (which is appropriate) and they are looking at reducing the range. Even so, the range buff can’t be scaled back too far given that the default range is already 2,500. Short of a change to the default range itself, there’s not much room for the developers to drastically reduce the range buff and still have it be a worthwhile upgrade in the Arrow Cart Mastery line.

Given that there’s only 500 units of difference between an Arrow Cart and a Ballista at their default ranges, the extended range buff for an Arrow Cart would only change the range from 2,500 to 2,800 if we were to accept the argument that Arrow Carts shouldn’t match a Ballista’s current default range (the radius of the targeting reticle then extends the AC range out to 2,990; just shy of a Ballista). A mere 300 unit increase in the range makes the upgrade nearly worthless for the points spent.

Unless the developers change the siege weapons’ default ranges (unlikely given that the WvWvW maps and tower/keep layouts were likely designed with the current siege weapon ranges factored in), for the increased range from the Arrow Cart Mastery line to be worthwhile but not excessive means reducing the buff from 1,000 units to ~500 units. This makes it competitive with Ballista while falling even shorter of a Catapult than it does now; giving those not very skilled in siege placement and range estimations a fighting chance when building Catapults.

ArenaNet is guilty of making a mistake. That mistake was game mechanics and a lack of counters that allowed the zergs to grow to ridiculous proportions and rule the WvWvW meta single-handedly. The changes to Arrow Carts are an attempt to restore balance, introduce more varied strategies and tactics, and make it a game of counters and counters to counters (rock : paper : scissors). It’s not perfect, they’ve admitted that, and they are tweaking it for balance. One thing is clear, though; the days of standing in the red circles of an Arrow Cart and laughing it off as a if it were a light Spring rain are over. The zerg had its day in the sun but now it’s time to close that chapter. It’s still viable for some situations; just not for all situations any longer.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

Let’s assume a base damage of 1,000 for an Arrow Cart pre-buff. An 80% increase bumps that up to 1,800 damage. A 50% nerf to that damage versus siege reduces that to 900 damage. So Arrow Carts now do less damage to siege than they did pre-buff

There are several assumptions in here. I could instead interpret that the 50% reduction only applies to the recent 80% buff and not the total damage. Would appreciate a dev confirmation on this.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

Trying to hide behind the argument of “WvWvW should be about PvP, not siege wars” is disingenuous at best when zergs outnumbering their opponents by factors of 3, 4, 5, or more to 1 roll up to a gate. Anyone who does so and then tries to pull out the “I just want to PvP” argument is flat-out lying.

So where is the tipping point between defenders within a structure and attackers? Sould just 4 people with superior arrow carts be able to defend against 50? Should deploying arrow carts in the field be a reasonable tactic? Personally I don’t think it should.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

Since the meta did devolve into zerg wars, a counter in the form of buffs to Arrow Carts was introduced. Maybe it has little to no impact on certain servers; especially at tier 1 or tier 2. Conversely, though, it’s been quite effective as a zerg disperser on other servers. Arrow Carts are anti-personnel weapons and working as intended now. The damage was buffed 80% to make them actually have an impact; even for defenders who are grossly outnumbered.

And the reverse is also true – attackers who are grossly outnumbered have, literally, no chance at all.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

Even so, the range buff can’t be scaled back too far given that the default range is already 2,500. Short of a change to the default range itself, there’s not much room for the developers to drastically reduce the range buff and still have it be a worthwhile upgrade in the Arrow Cart Mastery line.

Agreed, instead why not just remove it. We already have the cheapest siege in the game to deploy while having an incredible coverage and rate of fire out ranging many other more expensive items of siege. We also have no range finder when placing siege either – how good are you that you can see an arrow cart in a lords room and define if your ballista can hit it while not being hit by return fire?

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

ArenaNet is guilty of making a mistake. That mistake was game mechanics and a lack of counters that allowed the zergs to grow to ridiculous proportions and rule the WvWvW meta single-handedly. The changes to Arrow Carts are an attempt to restore balance, introduce more varied strategies and tactics, and make it a game of counters and counters to counters (rock : paper : scissors).

I think even Anet would agree they made more mistakes than this. I haven’t yet heard any dev specify that this change was introduced as a counter to zergs. There are dozens of counters to zergs, not least playing as a co-ordinated group with communication.

Zergs as you call them are not going way either. By your own admission you already need twice as many people now just to man a couple of rams so you can rotate them.

The changes have done nothing to introduce more strategies – they instead made the strategies incredibly stale and boring. Build lots of arrow carts when defending. Build lots of trebs when attacking. Sit around pressing one of three buttons or watch someone else do it.

If your hope that zergs will reduce is based on people just being bored out of their minds by the current meta game then I think you actually might be on to something. Less players enjoying the game should eventually mean less zergs.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

Too long to quote, sorry.

You’re math has some holes in it. No offence.

It does not theoretically outrange a catapult but it does outrange it in some practical situations. For example the little rock next to cliffside/cragtop/dawn’s eyrie. You cannot put catapults at max range and cannot put them outside of AC range. They are effectively outranged like that. There are more examples.

Damage to siege:
Don’t forget there is also a damage boost from the traits. Which is 25% as people have told me. So assuming that is correct the AC still does 1125 damage (using your numbers) to siege. So still stronger than before and AC were already very strong before the patch.

Zergs:
Zergs are still better off with this patch. If killing anything up to 50 players gets a lot easier, just bring even more people, preferably more than 50. It has not yet been shown to be an effective zerg dispenser. Just because the zergs can build arrowcarts and trebs. Zergs are good at this because they have a lot of people(= a lot of supplies). Small teams do not and they get hit the hardest. So this is an incentive to zerg.

PVP
The balance between sieging and fighting had always been a precarious one. Now it has completely shifted towards siege. Siege promotes no skill at all (especially not the anti personnel AC) and devaluates all the things the PvP’ers have been doing until now. A lot of use did not think the old balance was perfect but it was a lot better than it is now.

Tiers:
Friends from T1 tell me the arrowcarts ruined there fun even more. We noticed the same on T7. On T3 I must say that it is not that bad, people there like to fight and we have good guilds. Those guilds aren’t really into the AC meta (even though it is the most efficient one). It probably stems from their desire to not be a big blob because arrowcarts promote blobs.

Old AC’s
The damage of a single arrowcart was laughed at, correct and it should be. The arrowcarts were dangerous because they could be stacked (if you had many, which was often the case) and because they help the players on the ground. I don’t think anyone should ever die just from arrowcarts on walls (unless of course they are trying to die). People should kill people, not bots that press 1.

Caliban.3176:

You’re math has some holes in it. No offence.

No, the math does not have holes in it. Using a base 1,000 damage, what is 80% of that value? 1,000 × 0.80 = 800. Now, add that 800 to the 1,000 (since we’re increasing it by 80%). This equals 1,800. Alternately, you could have just multiplied it by 1.80 as a shortcut. 1,000 × 1.80 = 1,800. This is how percentages work.

The only question then becomes whether the 50% reduction in damage against siege applies to the total damage or only that portion that resulted from the 80% buff. That’s for a dev to answer. If it’s a 50% decrease in the total damage, then that equals 900 damage against siege per the original calculation.

Caliban.3176:

Damage to siege:
Don’t forget there is also a damage boost from the traits. Which is 25% as people have told me. So assuming that is correct the AC still does 1125 damage (using your numbers) to siege. So still stronger than before and AC were already very strong before the patch.

Agreed that I didn’t account for the damage increase from the Arrow Cart Mastery line itself. In light of this, yes, the damage to siege will be 1,125 as you stated. An even greater reduction in damage against siege may be worth considering. As far as the damage to players, the new damage buff is working to effectively force zergs away from gates where before it did not (in my experience). Your experience may differ from mine, but doesn’t invalidate mine (nor mine, your’s).

Caliban.3176:

It does not theoretically outrange a catapult but it does outrange it in some practical situations. For example the little rock next to cliffside/cragtop/dawn’s eyrie. You cannot put catapults at max range and cannot put them outside of AC range. They are effectively outranged like that. There are more examples.

There are numerous situations where siege can not be placed to leverage it’s range to the maximum. This isn’t a flaw; it’s the whole point. There’s no single cookie-cutter strategy or set of tactics that is going to work for every encounter. Using your example, if you want to capture cliffside/cragtop/dawn’s eyrie, Catapults in the face of Arrow Carts are a poor option. Other options would be to capture the Garrison and treb cliffside/cragtop/dawn’s eyrie from there or build a treb on the Astralholme/Fog Haven/Stargrove supply camp cliff face and treb the cliffside/cragtop/dawn’s eyrie wall from there (yes, it does reach if placed correctly).

Alternately, place Catapults on the Northeast side of cliffside/cragtop/dawn’s eyrie and fire at the wall through the “tunnel”. It’s unlikely Arrow Carts will have been built on that side of the tower pre-emptively, as most are built to face the gate and the West wall. Put down an Arrow Cart of your own to counter the defenders’ attempts to build ACs on the cliff above to target your Catapults. In other words, think of alternatives instead of claiming ACs are OP because they counter a single-minded approach.

Caliban.3176:

Zergs:
Zergs are still better off with this patch. If killing anything up to 50 players gets a lot easier, just bring even more people, preferably more than 50. It has not yet been shown to be an effective zerg dispenser. Just because the zergs can build arrowcarts and trebs. Zergs are good at this because they have a lot of people(= a lot of supplies). Small teams do not and they get hit the hardest. So this is an incentive to zerg.

In your experience, perhaps; not in mine. The auto-attack spammers showing up at the gates are being dispersed in my experience. Their larger numbers and greater supply-carrying capacity are not an advantage in the face of pre-emptively built siege defenses. Now, if they build some Trebs out of range of the Arrow Carts and then proceed to destroy the Arrow Carts and smash down the walls, then good on them for being willing to change tactics. Working as intended.

Caliban.3176:

PVP
The balance between sieging and fighting had always been a precarious one. Now it has completely shifted towards siege. Siege promotes no skill at all (especially not the anti personnel AC) and devaluates all the things the PvP’ers have been doing until now. A lot of use did not think the old balance was perfect but it was a lot better than it is now.

A “lot of us” is completely subjective. It’s just as easy to counter that a lot of us think the new balance is better. It’s completely a matter of opinion. The arbiter is ArenaNet and they have chosen this route. It’s not going to make everyone happy; nothing ever will. They have access to the metrics on WvWvW dynamics that neither of us have. Based on that data, player feedback, and analysis of the situation, they’ve chosen this path as the one that’s best for WvWvW overall.

(continued)

Does it now make some styles of play obsolete or less effective? Certainly. Does that equate to the death of WvWvW because a minority of the player base is unhappy with the changes? Hardly.

As for skill, again the counter-argument can be used just as effectively. Standing at a gate spamming auto-attack promotes no skill at all. The difference is that tactic allowed zergs to dominate WvWvW. The buff to ACs, by contrast, has not led to that one tactic dominating WvWvW. Towers and keeps still flip, zergs are still engaging in battles, the game is still being played.

Caliban.3176:

Old AC’s
The damage of a single arrowcart was laughed at, correct and it should be. The arrowcarts were dangerous because they could be stacked (if you had many, which was often the case) and because they help the players on the ground. I don’t think anyone should ever die just from arrowcarts on walls (unless of course they are trying to die). People should kill people, not bots that press 1.

Again, matter of opinion. My opinion is they should kill people if those people are going to stand there mindlessly spamming auto-attack at a gate. We went down that path and saw the result; skill-less zerging came to dominate the meta.

We’re not as different in our opinions of how we think WvWvW should be played as it might appear. I prefer PvP combat where skill determines the outcome; and I suspect from what you’ve posted here and elsewhere that you do, as well. The impression that we have a difference of opinion stems perhaps from the circumstances under which we play.

I’m assuming you play at what is your server’s prime-time. You likely face enemy forces of roughly equal numbers. I can fully appreciate the frustration that comes from being denied the opportunity to square-off against an opposing army in an open field battle in a test of PvP skill because that army turtles behind a wall and mans arrow carts. I agree with you that ACs can undermine that aspect of WvWvW.

However, I don’t have the luxury of facing roughly equal forces. I play in off-peak hours on a server that is perpetually outmanned at those times. There is no skill demonstrated by a force of 20 that shows up to spam auto-attack against the gate at a tower where I and two comrades are defending. I would much prefer that enemy force be 3 to 7 players where I and my friends can leave the tower and engage them in open field combat in a roughly “fair” or “balanced” fight (and which – when such opportunities present themself – we do; and quite often prevail). That’s not the reality, though; those 20 enemy players aren’t going to voluntarily agree to break up into smaller groups and face us in PvP combat. They’re there to play PvDoor; not PvP. The buff to ACs have put an end to that within the context of my experience.

That force of 20 gets discouraged as they fail in attempt after attempt to take objectives I defend. They eventually give up and either go looking for easier targets on the same map or leave the map completely. This leaves their roamers and small camp flipping parties behind. It is then that the game returns to being about PvP as I and my friends are then in a position to roam the map ourselves, engaging those opponents in fights that are more a test of skill than numbers.

Anytime the numbers are roughly equal or even 2 to 1 in the enemy’s favor, I’ll gladly take open field PvP combat over turtling inside a tower or keep. When a force that outnumbers me 7-or-more to 1 shows up thinking that spamming auto-attack is a demonstration of superior skill? Uh-uh; I’m going to level the playing field with the tools available to me. If they want to PvP, then let’s play PvP. If they want to PvDoor, then we’re going to play siege wars.

It also comes down to a matter of definition. For me, a zerg is a group of unaffiliated players in WvWvW in which few if any are using voice comms, who do little more than play-follow-the-leader while spamming auto-attack at a gate, and believing that such skill-less play should translate into an automatic “I WIN”; all-the-while defending their actions as examples of “skilled” play and criticizing anything that counters it.

This contrasts with coordinated groups (they don’t necessarily have to all belong to the same guild) who use voice comms, practice strategies and tactics, are skilled PvP combatants, and seek opportunities for open field battle against enemy forces of equal or greater numbers as a test of skill. I take to task the former while having respect for the latter. Within the context of this definition, I welcome the changes to arrow carts as a deterrent to what I call a zerg (and, in my experience, it’s working). If that definition doesn’t apply to you, then we’re more alike in our opinions than not.

Dayra.7405:

Will Golems have reduced damage by arrow carts (seen as siege weapon) or not (seen as player in special armor)?

I would see them as player in special armor, because they could move out and you cannot harm the user of it without destroying it.

Are you numb when the golem is destroyed you become downed it is not armor it is seige.

Folk.2093:

Can’t believe people complain about the damage to players; use your head and stop throwing your squishy players on siege.

Our “full tank” commander got downed by 1 arrow cart while he used his own arrow cart to destroy a treb. Even tanks can’t sit in arrowcart damage and operate siege.

In tier 1 the “flash build” of arrow carts in ZvZ battles is becoming commonplace during fights – because everyone knows how overpowered and game changing they are.

There is no point reducing siege damage if you aren’t reducing the damage on the player operating the siege. The siege will be gone before the near-death player can swap out and another fresh player can get on.

Additionally, OP arrowcarts just make the game sooooo boring now.. taking objectives now almost always requires “the long siege” where you sit there for hours in a tower trebbing a wall while they eat through their supply. Even if you destroy their ACs they’ll just flash build new ones because commanders know how OP they are.

Games are about having fun and OP arrow carts make WvW significantly less fun for the majority of players – the only person having fun is the arrow cart operator (I suspect many of the people in the thread that are pro-arrowcart-buff are from servers that are often Outmanned or they have invested their trait points into the arrow cart traits).

TL;DR: The damage against players is too high and it is making the game boring and rewards turtling – arrow carts need to cost a lot more supply or they need their damage to be massively nerfed. Right now the damage:supply ratio is totally off.

Can’t quote because it’ll be too long. and I’ll try to adress most things anyway. I do enjoy that we can have a reasonable discussion about this.

I said there where holes in you math because you forget to adress certain things like the 25% damage increase from traits. That what was I meant by that. So that is over.

About our different zergbusting experiences with Arrowcarts. Opinions do not invalidate anything, this is true. But the fact that several guilds have done it, several times proves that it indeed was possible. Your experience might have been they could not force zergs away from doors, but we have shown that it could. (I will grant you that it is hard to fight off much bigger groups if you are not a coordinated group, but for a real guild group, 30v100 was doable with the help of the old arrowcarts)

You have a point that it is definitely not the only way to attack that tower. I was just saying that in that situation the new range on arrowcarts does outrange the arrowcarts. Building trebs is a much bigger undertaking (especially if you have to take garrison first) and they are very hard to defend. So again this promotes bigger zergs. Shooting cata’s through the tunnel works but there is a reason nobody does that anymore, they are too easy to take out. These cata spots seemed to be well balanced and thought out (even the npc commander uses them) and now they are “broken” because of the range. These good things now no longer work, there are better ways to make the meta change. I’m happy they acknowledged having overshot the range a bit.

Ok, you say that it does bust zergs away from doors now, that is true if the tower is defended, but that was no different before. A well defended tower could always push zergs off. Now you say that it is good that these people are now forced to use trebs. I don’t like that change and would not call it good. I also don’t understand how you could say that larger numbers and supply are no advantage. I must have misunderstood something. The fact that they can have more supply, doesn’t that help them with the trebs they are supposed to build? I say the zergs advantage got bigger with that. More supply required to take a tower=harder for small teams to take a tower.

I said that there were a lot of us. That is because I have heard the opinion of a lot of people on this. Literally hundreds of people. This may still only be a small portion of the total population but it is a lot of people. You can even see in the other thread that more people have voiced an opinion against the patch than in favour of it. (I counted, took me a very long time). It is still a skewed sample but it is the only sample we have.

I think the balance is off. Some might like it more now but at least there was a lot less outrage about it before. It wasn’t perfect for anyone before. But now it is just bad for a part of the population. (You say it is a minority but you can’t know that, in fact the only information you can have suggests otherwise, though it is far from strong proof)

There is less skill now in battles and definitely in defending. Most towers and keeps flip now because they are undefended and people try to shy away from defended towers now because it is not worth the effort. You say that spamming attacks on the gates required no skill, this is true. It did however require some skill to stop them. And it did require skill to make sure the defenders didn’t wipe you. The only reason people would hit doors was to get inside and get to fight those people inside, again to use there skills and gear.

About the old AC’s. We were cursing about them quite a lot before they buffed it. But if we needed them, they never let us down. Nobody is going to change anyones opinion on this matter.

About my playtime. I usually play from 10am till 1am. (don’t worry I take breaks in between). So that does indeed cover my servers primetime, it does also cover most other times.

About your definitions of zerg. I can see your point.
So something has to change so these coordinated groups have an even easier time of dispersing these real zergs. Arrowcarts do not achieve that, they do the opposite.

The problem in WvW still is that sieges are very stale, unless zerged.
The battles are the most fun when people are fighting people, and when there’s a door or wall involved it just already makes you think three times before doing anything.

If these huge obstacles could be eliminated more quickly then WvW will be paced faster, and usually more fun.

The damage on arrow carts is okay, if the other siege is better in what they are designed for.

I also wouldn’t mind seeing palisades or other forms of blockades within a tower. or ballistas that aren’t limited by the angle they shoot at. Ramps in WvW structures + the way ballistas work are just a joke. I wanna point my ballista down the stairs to stop that on going zerg. Especially the ballistas in the Ascalonian Fractal to me feel perfectly annoying enough to be worth putting up or taking down. (due to the knockback, instead of the damage really)

Biggest problem for me
1)not all arrow cart can be counter with treb/cata/ballista.
2)Open field fight where people use instant build arrow cart
3) Range upgrade of the arrow cart should be more expensive not a mere 5 points
4) Ballista should work better, if they use arrow on the wall i should be able to hit it with all skills
5) Siege wars is about knowledge, basically how to counter that other siege and with that is very stale and static

My solution to siege wars, Buff the central quaggan a lot, if you hold 5 min central quaggan you should be able to kill most siege in keeps, towers. with that we get a open field fight were siege doesn’t matter, only problem there is the central island is very small and becames a problem of space

has anyone went outside and actually fired a bow? they can go pretty kitten far. I always thought the range was borked. Arrow Carts should be able to shoot long range 6000+ at least

they should just increase the range + Damage of superior siege.. seems to make sense that way.

I’m much more concerned with this " a one-time reset". Devon, have you not been listening to us? Many of us want WxP to become account bound and retraitable. This is so alt unfriendly I can’t even begin to tell you. Why is my time less valuable than another’s because I like variety?

Valuing pixels over the actual player seems ridiculous to me. Because it certain makes me feel, as the player, irrelevant.

Digs.8435:

LOL. It makes no difference if you lower the dmg against other siege when you cannot operate said siege because of AC dmg. What a joke. Many developers make the mistake of pushing players too hard in a direction they feel is where the game should be heading. Just gonna keep losing WvW players with this kitten.

True, hopefully someone at AN has had the common-sense to understand this. There needs to be a corresponding reduction in damage taken by those manning the siege.

flame rams can be placed far enough away from the door where they can still hit the door and the operator cannot be hit by arrow carts that can only shoot the back of the door. (the arrow cart will hit the ram, just not its operator).

I like the change, it made no sense that an AC could melt other siege as easy as it did. I man an Ac, and when my points are refunded I will put all my points into AC just for the ability to keep the thieves away from my towers etc. The damage is good yes, but I can tell you from experience that ONLY the really stupid stand in the red circles for more than one volley, the rest disperse, and this is how it should work. If you want to take out arrow carts, then set up a treb with a few protectors; problem solved.

If all you want to do is zerg from place to place then of course your gonna have a problem with them. If however you put a bit of thought into it the AC’s arn’t anymore of a problem than any of the other siege. As for the rams, a third protection shield could be warranted, however I think that having your most defensive guys operating than switching is a much better choice.

So this patch buffed Arrow carts as there was no damage reduction to the players in general or players on siege. Strong Logic arena net. I think you should hire some dead cats; they could do what you’re doing.

Just make Golems invulnerably to arrow carts, hell they are metal why is an arrow doing dmg to them in the first place?

How about at least lowering AC dmg vs pets, minions and other summons?
They just insta die when running through it. Makes them even more useless.

Good to see devs making adjustments as needed and being proactive. I’ve never had issues with ACs, I just stay out of the red circles

phabby.8945:

Just make Golems invulnerably to arrow carts, hell they are metal why is an arrow doing dmg to them in the first place?

Wait for golem mastery or I would see ram mastery offer some defense to the user.

2:35 is what arrow carts (even pre-patch) do to WvW.

Do you want WvW to feel like an epic battle, or like someone is sitting on a cart cranking a handle for 2 hours? The solution is simple. Rebalance the other siege, and take arrow carts out entirely.

Burning oil should be keeping people from autoattacking gates (and should be buffed so it can), not arrow carts. Ballistas should be killing opposing siege/players (and can be dodged, promoting some measure of skill), not arrow carts.

They stack 10-12 arrow carts, and the only counter is to build trebs and pray they run out of supply so they stop mass-repairing the wall before you ragequit out of boredom. It’s not fun, it’s not good game design, and you are going to lose (more) players because of it in the long run.

I have not played since short before the new arrow card ability was introduced. However I startet playing wvw again after the 50% nerf and what the hell did you do to the game!? I have the feeling it is just now all about having enough arrow cards and enough ppl to use them.. It was much better before the ac abilitys. Very very bad design decision from my pov…! You should really invest your time in improving what is there and not in just producing as much new content as in pve…

Calm down cubed. All they did was put the siege back in siege warfare. The vast majority are adapting fine to the changes as they are.

VOLKON.1290:

Calm down cubed. All they did was put the siege back in siege warfare. The vast majority are adapting fine to the changes as they are.

How would you know about the majority? There is no data to support that. I know my entire matchup now tries not to adapt to it. Where people would have built 4 defensive arrowcarts before they might build 1 now because if they would adapt and adopt the most efficient way of playing (the AC meta) the game would become too boring.

Lower that dmg done to people..If you notice a tower is filled with ac’s..you either have to clear it all out with trebs wich takes time,and is boring.In the meantime something can happen in one of your towers so you have to pull away…coming back later.. seeing 5 ac’s back inside the tower again.Or you have to treb the tower all together..hoping to drain all their supps…wich is slow,and boring..I like to treb a tower every now and then,but having to treb/cata every tower or kill of all their ac’s inside first ( And they get rebuild right away ) is getting Tiresome..it’s just no fun to be doing Constantly,and being forced to do so.

Also seems like devs forget about superior ac’s…doing 50% dmg ontop of that
Not everyone being lvl 80
Not everyone being guardians
Not everyone wearing full toughness/vit ( And no it shouldnt be a requirement to be wearing either ).

Either tone down the dmg,and also make it that Ac’s will cost 60 – 80 supps.
AC’s are the most used sieges in this game,does the most dmg..Yet is far to cheap to build.

Caedmon.6798:

Lower that dmg done to people..If you notice a tower is filled with ac’s..you either have to clear it all out with trebs wich takes time,and is boring.
(…)
Also seems like devs forget about superior ac’s…doing 50% dmg ontop of that
Not everyone being lvl 80
Not everyone being guardians
Not everyone wearing full toughness/vit ( And no it shouldnt be a requirement to be wearing either ).

Either tone down the dmg,and also make it that Ac’s will cost 60 – 80 supps.
AC’s are the most used sieges in this game,does the most dmg..Yet is far to cheap to build.

AC’s are mainly to counter players, range its fine, on this i blame map design, as being able to almost keep-tower fight just with AC’s (i understand this as a bad desing and its ugly to play and watch), the damage could be reduced and AOE effect larger, about the other siege well, there could be created a weakness/defense triangle, IMO it is what makes more sense.
Some siege have to get a lower fire rate, while AOE effect reduced to and damage and efect raised , ex: catapult more damage KD on cone AOE and more damage to other siege.

After playing with this fix since the patch, I will reinforce my previous statement that this is exactly what ACs needed. I think they’re perfectly balanced now. I hope they don’t change another thing….

Aeolus.3615:

Caedmon.6798:

Lower that dmg done to people..If you notice a tower is filled with ac’s..you either have to clear it all out with trebs wich takes time,and is boring.
(…)
Also seems like devs forget about superior ac’s…doing 50% dmg ontop of that
Not everyone being lvl 80
Not everyone being guardians
Not everyone wearing full toughness/vit ( And no it shouldnt be a requirement to be wearing either ).

Either tone down the dmg,and also make it that Ac’s will cost 60 – 80 supps.
AC’s are the most used sieges in this game,does the most dmg..Yet is far to cheap to build.

AC’s are mainly to counter players, range its fine, on this i blame map design, as being able to almost keep-tower fight just with AC’s (i understand this as a bad desing and its ugly to play and watch), the damage could be reduced and AOE effect larger, about the other siege well, there could be created a weakness/defense triangle, IMO it is what makes more sense.
Some siege have to get a lower fire rate, while AOE effect reduced to and damage and efect raised , ex: catapult more damage KD on cone AOE and more damage to other siege.

Exactly..to counter them,to hold them off for a bit.Not to wipe entire zergs with pressing 1 , 2 ,3,with only 2 people manning ac’s.Also im not even talking about the range,thats ok with me,it’s the damage that needs to be looked at and if not changed,then make it so that ac’s cost more supps to be build,they are far to cheap.

Caedmon.6798:

Exactly..to counter them,to hold them off for a bit.Not to wipe entire zergs with pressing 1 , 2 ,3,with only 2 people manning ac’s.Also im not even talking about the range,thats ok with me,it’s the damage that needs to be looked at and if not changed,then make it so that ac’s cost more supps to be build,they are far to cheap.

Well if your zerg is in anyway competent, they will think ahead and have supply. There is no rule written in stone that says one MUST head bang the gates in order to enter the structure. If your zerg is carrying supply is is a simple matter to set up a few catapults and an AC to protect them and blast a wall into dust and THEN entering. Seriously If all you want to do is follow a zerg mindlessly then maybe you deserve to be wiped by a few guys in AC’s.

I have to say that ACs are definitely perfect as is. After all, this game mode is named ACvAC for a reason.

Im kinda stunned, we have people in this thread that speak about that the game should be about fun, are you not alittle egoistic right now ?, how about those three for people that spent, a few hours sentrying said tower, paying upgrades, setting up said siege, and you think its FUN that 20-30 in a merry zerg just can rofl stomp a fully upgraded tower ?, in 1min flat and five defenders cant do anything ?, i think thats very uncool, and extremly unfun… a few must be able to hold of azerg so people can reinforce it, or are you expecting to have 10-15people sitting guarding a tower… a fully upgraded tower keep is far to easy to take, a few should be able to hold off many, thats the hole idea with fortifications, and SIEGE…

buff doors, buff walls, make taking towers alot harder, a map shouldent be able to be steam rolled in under a hour, it should take time to take them, and it give people when they have low numbers, a fighting chanse, most servers have periods of “low pop” then they can revert to defence, and try hold till day breaks and their people come back, not like now, servers comming back and have lost everything, its bad for the game, and bad for servers, so maybe the ACs aint so bad, atleast the poor defenders can atleast get some loot bags before they get owerrun, the Zerg still takes a tower far to fast against a outnumbered oponent. and we are not talking about outnumbered in the field, we are talking about a heavily fortified positions