Guild Wars 2

When WvW first launched, Retaliation could be used to reflect damage back on siege weapons. In September of 2012, this was changed.

Patch Notes

17 September 2012
World-versus-World

Retaliation: This boon no longer reflects damage received from siege weapons.

In July of 2016, almost four years later, the type of health siege weapons have changed so that they are no longer immune to conditions and critical hits.

Patch Notes

26 July 2016

WORLD VS. WORLD

General

Siege weapons can now be affected by conditions and critical strikes. In addition, their base health has been doubled.

As a result, they can now be set on fire by a blocking Guardian or bled by a Necro with a chilling aura. The damage is much greater than from Retaliation. Was this intended?

In addition, since siege weapons cannot crit and do not apply significant condition damage, it now takes double the time to destroy a siege weapon with another siege weapon. Was this intended?

Bump for business hours~

Yes. Condition damage to siege was in fact intended. I am not sure about your other mention on siege weapons taking longer to destroy other siege weapons.

trailofsalt.6571:

Yes. Condition damage to siege was in fact intended. I am not sure about your other mention on siege weapons taking longer to destroy other siege weapons.

I think OP is specifically talking about Retaliation, rather than condition damage. As one patch note mentions deactivating retal damage on siege, then another patch comes along and reactivates it, yet does not specifically mention it in the notes.

Turk.5460:

trailofsalt.6571:

Yes. Condition damage to siege was in fact intended. I am not sure about your other mention on siege weapons taking longer to destroy other siege weapons.

I think OP is specifically talking about Retaliation, rather than condition damage. As one patch note mentions deactivating retal damage on siege, then another patch comes along and reactivates it, yet does not specifically mention it in the notes.

Ah okay. Thank you for clarifying.

Sorry, I was referring to conditions being applied to siege in a similar manner to Retaliation. That is, siege hitting players and drawing conditions in the process which leads to damage. My presumption is that Retaliation was changed because this wasn’t a good interaction, but I need some clarity so that I know if I should invest in making guild ACs.

Between the feedback damage and the doubled time-to-kill, it makes more sense to just spam siege disablers instead of building an AC. If I have surplus supply, a door treb is much better against rams. Catas are kind of GG since ballistae can’t usually hit them and take forever to kill catas if you place them aggressively enough that they can hit, so I’m relegated to just spamming siege disablers there too. 4 more disables (5 instead of sup AC) means 140s (175s) of delay. Killing the siege simply isn’t an option anymore since my siege dies or the wall is breached before the enemy siege dies.

i think should bring back retal to dmging seige since retal is no longer a global boon it a bit harder to keep up time on it.

We don’t know if the problem was that Retaliation was too easy (in which case the current situation would not offend) or if the entire interaction was unsavory.

I suspect it’s just an unforeseen consequence like when they removed Centaurs from the borderlands but also required a drop that only came from those specific Centaurs for the guild hall. It’s not quite that cut-and-dry, though, so clarification is needed.