Guild Wars 2

As a player who has been in WvW since beta I have come to the conclusion that it is all but impossible to defend. Think about it, the defenders inside a structure (keep, tower, garri) should have the advantage. The have the high ground, they have the walls, gates etc… but they are actually at a disadvantage. If you are on siege on a wall, in a location where you can actually hit an enemy, then you are AOE’d by a 30 man zerg.

My point, A Player on siege trying to defend a location, should be able to last more than 10 seconds on.. the amount of damage done by groups AOEing from the ground is absolutely ridiculous. Something needs to be done in the scaling, the number of people who can hit a single target or something, it is just ridiculous, it makes it to a point there is just no reason to try to defend, and all that does is promote the idea of huge blob karma zergs….

My opinion, for those that care anyway…

I too find this to be a fundamental flaw in design. Not that it’s impossible to defend, but defense hinges almost entirely on the successful use of Arrow Carts.

Walls are supposed to be a defensive structure giving an advantage to the defenders. But they’re death traps due to AoE spam.

Oil and Cannons are supposed to be massive deterrents against enemy siege and blobs. But they too are death traps that are AoE’d down in seconds as soon as a blob comes knocking.

Instead we have to resort to completely non-intuitive stuff like building trebs behind gates and Arrow Carts in fancy corners because the normal defensive weapons are so absolutely impotent.

But to me the most frustrating thing about defense is the futility in light of a larger zerg. Even if you do down people during the defensive battle the all-mightly blob can just revive them in a matter of seconds. It’s really crushing to see any of your efforts countered by 3 people bending over a dead guy for 4 seconds.

I think that kind of fits into the same argument, if you could use defensive siege on walls to attack the blobs, they wouldnt be able to revive players as fast and you could cut down the blob

AOE used against any structures or players on keep walls has it’s damage cut by x%.

Simple fix.

OTOH, historically, outer keeps were never meant to hold back invading armies. Just slow them down. You’re speed bumps.

Gaspodin.9207:

AOE used against any structures or players on keep walls has it’s damage cut by x%.

Simple fix.

OTOH, historically, outer keeps were never meant to hold back invading armies. Just slow them down. You’re speed bumps.

And in fact the outer walls do just that, at least in my WVW the outer wall buys us time to let the commanders know what is going on, at which point the mobilize a zerg to counter.

While an issue, I am not sure that this would even make the top 10 list of all the things wrong with WvW.

No they shouldnt be able to stop an invading army… but they should be able to slow it down more than 10 seconds or so…. A wall, the high ground, siege is supposed to be the tactical advantage of the army that holds the keep, but with AOE the way it is, its a disadvantage

For arrowcarts I see no problem, as you can put then in places the AOE cant get you.

But I agree that cannons and oils are almost useless as it is impossible to keep using then while people AOE you to death. I do not know if mastering it with WxP gives some protection as ram master does, and it should not be like that. You should not have to buy extra protection to use those sieges…. they needed to have a natural protection to the user, but still be destructible, at least could give people sometime to use it.

As far as it is today even a small group can kick you out of a cannon or oil.

I know what you’re talking about OP. We were defending a tower against ~50 people from enemy server with 4 people. One on guild catapult, two on arrowcart. They broke the gate in about 3 minutes nevertheless. By the time I could destroy one ram, they probs had 5 more.

It’s not defense that is underpowered though… it’s blobs that are overpowered.

Sirendor – Yeah the blobs are over powered but your not goint to get people to stop blobing as long as it works, so fix it where we can defend against them

albotelho – Ive only found a few places, maybe 3 or 4 in all of wvw that aoe guys havent managed how to get too…

albotelho.2931:

For arrowcarts I see no problem, as you can put then in places the AOE cant get you.

But I agree that cannons and oils are almost useless as it is impossible to keep using then while people AOE you to death. I do not know if mastering it with WxP gives some protection as ram master does, and it should not be like that. You should not have to buy extra protection to use those sieges…. they needed to have a natural protection to the user, but still be destructible, at least could give people sometime to use it.

As far as it is today even a small group can kick you out of a cannon or oil.

I think oil mastery does have some ranks that grant protection, but cannon mastery does not.

Oil mastery does actually look quite good, but it’s so rare that I actually get on oil.

You’re right though, there should be some inherent “cover” buff that grants protection to those on a wall, and you shouldn’t need ranks to get it. You do have some advantage on a wall, you can run up throw out some attacks and run back to safety, but this often doesn’t accomplish much.

They could also improve the situation with keep design. Imagine if a fortified keep had turrets with cannons on top, those turrets being a little higher than 1,200 … like the cannon on south gate of hills most classes can’t reach.

There’s also some interesting design on the keep walls in EotM. Take a look at this oil placement As you can see there are two oils instead of one, and they have cover from the front, so for enemies to attack they have to move right under it.

Note that there’s no upgrading in EotM, oil and cannons are always available.

Sirendor.1394:

I know what you’re talking about OP. We were defending a tower against ~50 people from enemy server with 4 people. One on guild catapult, two on arrowcart. They broke the gate in about 3 minutes nevertheless. By the time I could destroy one ram, they probs had 5 more.

It’s not defense that is underpowered though… it’s blobs that are overpowered.

Sorry but what you are writing here is just crazy, you defend a tower with 4 guys against 50 enemys for 3 minutes and you still wanne buff the defending side?
What’s going on with you people? And now you want to stand on the Walls and attack the invaders without any chance of getting killed? I mean, how can you guys have fun, standing on the siege and pressing 1,2,3 on your keyboards – not even moving a cm?

As it is now, it’s already a pain in the kitten to cap a T3 Keep thats getting defended and another problem are all the chickens who run into their T3 Keeps, if they see guildgroups crossing their path – looks like a lot of people have lost their fighting spirit, if they ever had something like that…

+1 for AC nerf

As a tradeoff to defenders being able to properly defend, attackers should be able to properly besiege and starve defenders. Loosing 3000 HP every 5 second inside a keep that has no supplies and is contested sounds fair.

No, the whole point of this is it is supposed to be a whole lot harder to attack a T3 keep than it is to defend it, and right now the way things are, there really is no defending it, unless you outnumber the attackers 3 to 1. If the attackers want to take out siege on the wall, make them build siege to do it, dont let a group eles or necros walk along the outside of the wall and prevent any posibility of defense

Bhodi Le.6251:

No, the whole point of this is it is supposed to be a whole lot harder to attack a T3 keep than it is to defend it, and right now the way things are, there really is no defending it, unless you outnumber the attackers 3 to 1. If the attackers want to take out siege on the wall, make them build siege to do it, dont let a group eles or necros walk along the outside of the wall and prevent any posibility of defense

I agree that you should be able to defend keeps easier, and not with the use of siege. Character skills should be able to defend points. I disagree that you can only defend if you outnumber your attackers 3-1, if you outnumber your opponent no reason you can’t wipe them.

I do think that 20 should be able to hold off 40 though, with the use of skills instead of siege. Right now with the 5 person AoE cap, and stability, it’s pretty much impossible to hold a choke vs greater numbers.

Sam Houston certainly knew this and Patton said it best:

“Fixed fortifications are a monument to the stupidity of man.” — General Patton.

Don’t be a William Travis… that one is for all the history buffs.

Jaxs.5830:

While an issue, I am not sure that this would even make the top 10 list of all the things wrong with WvW.

I agree with this. Its an issue, a large one, but absolutely not near the top.

I think it is a major issue simple because I believe fixing it would fix some other issues, namely cutting down on the huge zerg blobs that pvd their way into everything

Gaspodin.9207:

AOE used against any structures or players on keep walls has it’s damage cut by x%.

Simple fix.

OTOH, historically, outer keeps were never meant to hold back invading armies. Just slow them down. You’re speed bumps.

I’d much rather see a wall give people a 200 range bonus and attackers who shoot upwards a 200 range malus.

That way you’d be much less able to AoE on the walls and defenders would also have a much more realistic defensive advantage.

Defensive trebs are better than oil, cannons, or mortars.

Trebs can make defending extremely easy.

If you have trebs on inner keep you can defend against almost all siege, except for 2.5 things:

1) catapults right up on an inner wall – these will have to be AoE’d and hopefully you can reach with an AC, otherwise they’re getting in.
2) golem rushes
2.5) a flash-built counter-treb with both supply mastery and treb mastery. I count this as 0.5 because if you also rotate mastery it will be a stalemate, however they will be able to start getting the wall down very slowly. If you have a WP you can then suicide to kill their treb before it opens back up.

Bhodi Le.6251:

As a player who has been in WvW since beta I have come to the conclusion that it is all but impossible to defend. Think about it, the defenders inside a structure (keep, tower, garri) should have the advantage. The have the high ground, they have the walls, gates etc… but they are actually at a disadvantage. If you are on siege on a wall, in a location where you can actually hit an enemy, then you are AOE’d by a 30 man zerg.

It’s bad enough that one can get attacked anywhere on a wall but it’s even worse than that. The walls actually get in the defenders’s way and help the attacker. Cannons have blind spots. Mortars are put behind crenellations and structures that block their fire. The walls usually have a lip that helpfully prevents attackers from pulling defenders off of the wall, but it also blocks outgoing ranged attacks, including AoE attacks down forcing defenders to jump up on the wall… where attackers can pull them off. Only a madman would build fortifications that do more to help the attackers than the defenders.

Want to make WvW more interesting? (And, yes, I know this would be a nightmare to balance well.) Make all the locations flat-topped boxes and let players place the built-in siege, add crenellations and lips to the walls, put in a moat, ditch, or spikes to keep pesky Dragontooth Elementalists away from the wall, add siege weapon platforms to the insides of walls to build siege weapons on further in, add small siege weapon towers to allow ballistas and other weapons to fire down without being on the edge, and so on instead of forcing players to defend a stupidly built location that they can’t fix. Let players actually build up the sites they defend.

Dawdler.8521:

As a tradeoff to defenders being able to properly defend, attackers should be able to properly besiege and starve defenders. Loosing 3000 HP every 5 second inside a keep that has no supplies and is contested sounds fair.

The starving mechanic in Guild Wars 2 is to keep destroying the defenders’ walls and siege, forcing them to use supplies in response, while keeping supplies and defenders out. Works quite well. I’m sorry if it doesn’t happen in seconds, but I have little sympathy for a zerg that can’t stay on task for 10 to 15 minutes to take a site that took hours and quite a bit of gold for defenders to upgrade and siege up. If you want indefensible sites guarded by ineffective NPCs that can be taken in seconds, PvE is simply full of that stuff and it’s a lot more varied and interesting. I play WvW precisely because I’m not looking for a fast, predictable, and easy rinse and repeat experience.

Defending in this game is NOT underpowered. It’s simply not rewarding, and so very few people are actually GOOD at it.

But the ability is there – some servers and guilds are extremely good at defending, knowing what siege to put down and where, and leaving people inside at all times.

But too often towers and keeps are left empty and without siege until they are being attacked, at which time it’s often too late.

If defending was more rewarding, the tools are already in place to be successful at it.

I don’t know if I would say WvW is broken because of this, but it’s a major fun vacuum.

Even T3 Keeps are nearly impossible to defend when the enemy is able and willing to throw 9+ Omegas at it… I remember a time when this would have been a special situation, but it’s become the norm and happens several times with in NA prime now in the mid to low tier server groups.

T1 walls and gates are a lost cause, with all of the improvements to siege and the plentiful WXP abilities the basic walls and gates haven’t kept pace in the slightest.

We can sit here and argue about if 4 arrow carts should be able to shut down 2 rams or whatever, but I think we can all agree that the zerg from tower to tower with little to no defense ever being played out is what we’re seeing in mid to low tier match ups.

It reminds me of the champ trains in high level zones. Low skill, boring, min/max rewards and everyone is doing it. WvW is devolving into a game of wack-a-mole in the same way most of the rest of the game already has.

I’d love to believe anyone on the WvW team has a vision for improvement but, given we’re getting an overflow map for WvW that more than half of the servers don’t even need, instead of incentivising balancing out world populations… yeah well, seeing the forest for the trees I guess?

Ask yourself one question, if your guild/mates were not playing this game, would you still play it?

I bet most will say no, that’s how this game has failed, players have tried to pass on suggestions to the devs but get infracted and ignored, it could have been a great game, but the devs have fallen short.

I play in a T1 server, we manage to defend keeps just fine. Sounds like your server needs to L2P.

Edit: and we don’t need arrow carts to defend.

The trick I think some are getting at is if there was a way to make defending outnumbered more possible without making defending with equal #s more OP.

And I think the only answer is still L2P – having siege ready, the right kinds, in the right places, and scouting ahead and being where you need to be ahead time. These fundamentals will always mean more than game mechanics. Since they are not rewarded, they currently remain only for the most selflessly dedicated players.

Players take no damage while on siege only siege damage. Cc effects still work. Ie. Fear knockdown. Siege hp 50% increase. Because u dont kill it unless ur blobbing anyways. And walls dont los ac fire from inside. Allowing more siege placement possibilities. But lower ac max targets.

hellsmachine.4085:

I play in a T1 server, we manage to defend keeps just fine. Sounds like your server needs to L2P.

Edit: and we don’t need arrow carts to defend.

Exactly, and trust me the lower tier servers are “farm teaming” entire guilds to transfer up and extend your queue times.

There’s a very different experience in lower tier servers where a whole borderland is being defended by 15 people, in the middle of primetime against 40-50 man karma trains. Not really a “learn to play” issue it’s just not scalable with the wide variation in player populations among tiers.

It’s one of those things that never seems to get addressed and it impacts the overall player experience in the lower tiered matchups and largely contributes to why the server populations are so imbalanced.

They should just make it so that anyone who engages with a piece of siege acquires Iron Hide until they dis-engage.
something along those lines….

Over and over ppl complain here about how difficult is to defend.

If we are talking about keep with WP, on my server we defend 20vs50+. Cause we are better organized, can ress ppl, Lord and have WP.
Fights like this are the most fun for me.

If we are talking about tower with siege(door treb, some ACs), if u cant hold enemy until your zerg comes and wipe them, u should lose tower.

But I agree, only cannons on top of the SM are useful. And I wanna see some iron hide here.

I imagine that a good solution for that would be to add interiors to castles and a new WvW design with rewards for holding the keeps for X days, rangers and thiefs would have a good use for traps in the interiors, and would be more fun to defend IMO, gw2 compared with old mmo’s in terms of siege wars was a complete desapoint to me, becouse old mmos still do it better, and more strategy was required.

Omaris Mortuus Est.2738:

Ask yourself one question, if your guild/mates were not playing this game, would you still play it?

I bet most will say no, that’s how this game has failed, players have tried to pass on suggestions to the devs but get infracted and ignored, it could have been a great game, but the devs have fallen short.

Rec’d and bumped.

I look at it this way. If another game showed up that looked just like WvW except that it simply incorporated the best ideas that were offered by players in the two WvW CDI’s we’ve had so far (the ones that have already been totally ignored by ANet), how many WvW players would turn their back on this one and immediately go to the new one? I can’t imagine why anyone would stay. That probability should both embarrass and scare ANet.

They need to resesign the keeps and towers into something more interesting strategically. But I have little hope they will do that considering the time it took to get EOTM out and how they can design beautiful areas like the borderlands ruin and have the gameplay in that area as an afterthought.

I have issues with map design of the borderlands. Specifically, that it takes about half the time for an attacking force to get to Hills / Bay of off their respective waypoints, then it does from Citadel to the northern towers / garison, assuming gari waypoint is non-stop tapped, which 90% of the time it is when a large opponent force is present on the map.

This is the biggest flaw in the game which makes it hard to defend. Your home BL should be harder to attack and easier to defend because it is your home BL. This is currently not the case.

Solstice.1097:

Defending in this game is NOT underpowered. It’s simply not rewarding, and so very few people are actually GOOD at it.

But too often towers and keeps are left empty and without siege until they are being attacked, at which time it’s often too late.

If defending was more rewarding, the tools are already in place to be successful at it.

I agree with Solstice. Make defending rewarding and more people will do it.

If I log on for 2 hours a night, I want to run around and pick fights, collect bags and get my daily laurel. I’m not doing that by sitting on an outer wall and waiting for people to come and attack. Nor is that any fun.

The meta for this game is attack, attack, attack.

The only time I’m going to defend is if there is a queue for EB, and I don’t have a zerg or raiding party to join in one of the BLs. Nor am I selfless enough to want to sit on a wall, and then spam map-chat when under attack, only for no-one to come anyway. Kitten that.

Berk.8561:

Bhodi Le.6251:

As a player who has been in WvW since beta I have come to the conclusion that it is all but impossible to defend. Think about it, the defenders inside a structure (keep, tower, garri) should have the advantage. The have the high ground, they have the walls, gates etc… but they are actually at a disadvantage. If you are on siege on a wall, in a location where you can actually hit an enemy, then you are AOE’d by a 30 man zerg.

It’s bad enough that one can get attacked anywhere on a wall but it’s even worse than that. The walls actually get in the defenders’s way and help the attacker. Cannons have blind spots. Mortars are put behind crenellations and structures that block their fire. The walls usually have a lip that helpfully prevents attackers from pulling defenders off of the wall, but it also blocks outgoing ranged attacks, including AoE attacks down forcing defenders to jump up on the wall… where attackers can pull them off. Only a madman would build fortifications that do more to help the attackers than the defenders.

Want to make WvW more interesting? (And, yes, I know this would be a nightmare to balance well.) Make all the locations flat-topped boxes and let players place the built-in siege, add crenellations and lips to the walls, put in a moat, ditch, or spikes to keep pesky Dragontooth Elementalists away from the wall, add siege weapon platforms to the insides of walls to build siege weapons on further in, add small siege weapon towers to allow ballistas and other weapons to fire down without being on the edge, and so on instead of forcing players to defend a stupidly built location that they can’t fix. Let players actually build up the sites they defend.

THIS. Exactly this. I agree with every single point you have made if keeps/towers had a more intelligent design and actually let you defend, then you would find more people willing to try and defend. As it stands, people don’t bother because they know that a blob can just destroy most of the siege you place on walls by just AoE’ing areas. It’s honestly ridiculous.

Keeps can be easily defended if theres some people inside it, so many times we had to back off hils or bay because there were too many inside and we used too much supply already, so many times we pushed into the broken wall or gate and got hailed by enough arrows to cover the sun. The thing is, not a single of that siege was on a wall, it was all around lord’s room or nehind a choke point, on the ground.

Defending on gw2 is easy, but counter-intuitive, walls are death traps, nothing lasts on a wall, not siege or players. You have to use things like door-trebs and find that glitchy spot behind a wall that the AC will only get hit by meteors 1% of the time.

Destructible towers or fortified positions where the defenders have a advantage point would be more “realistic”

Have you guys ever defended a blob with a blob? There actually a chance u can successfully defend it compared to a 4 vs 50. You have enough people to not hide behind the walls and gates and actually go out to attack the people using the rams or catas to allow people on your arrow carts or cannons to be able to utilize it

You shouldn’t be able to target the vertical face of a wall with AOE. Problem solved.

Looking at this game it seems to be designed around the zerg ,which is wrong. When you reinforce a Wall it should take longer or at least show its reinforced. At the present it does not. Why not have two walls one outer and one the inner the reinforced wall ,so they take down the outer but still need to take down the reinforced section.

In real battles a Castle battle to take down a wall would take anywhere near 2-3 hours or even longer ,why not make these battle last for 15mins (min).

With NPC’s they seem like blobs just standing their ,a enemy can attack them before the NPC reacts which is wrong.

As for Attackers and AoE that needs to change as on those angles of Attack the Wall should have deflected the attacks.

Rams need to change so players they are slowed down ,maybe allow defenders to reinforce doors under attack.

Walls should be higher so that the attackers can’t hit you with their AoE and defenders should get a range bonus so that they can hit the stuff down below. I don’t think player AoE should be able to just melt people on top of the wall. That area is rather dangerous to be and it shouldn’t be that dangerous. Could have better crenelations instead that granted protection. Some areas have a decent set but not all wall have good barriers. Those barriers don’t really help too much though.

If they make defense OP though, then they’re gonna need to make new siege, “Wooden Horse” – Allows you to go through a gate with 20 ppl inside, like a portal!

“Superior Wooden Horse” allows you to fit 40!

Its anet, so they might actually do something like this xD

In my opinion… most fortifications in a realistic setting have multiple towers and keeps. In this game… a tower counts as a fortification, while one tower isn’t actually something big.

What this game needs is LARGE FORTIFICATIONS, like cities, with multiple rings of towers and sentry posts and several objectives within one fortification (e.g. capture the East Tower, the East Bastion, break down the East Gate, and so on). Only after penetrating to the very core of the fortification, the enemy should be able to switch the whole fortification to their side, and as long as any core of rebellion within the whole fortification would make capturing it impossible.

albotelho.2931:

For arrowcarts I see no problem, as you can put then in places the AOE cant get you.

You’d think that but ele’s can easily attack anything on a wall with Dragon’s Tooth even if out of range of every other AoE in game since Dragon’s Tooth isn’t LoS

It’s really not that hard to defend. Of course if you stand on a wall in front of a 40 man zerg they will AOE melt your face. The trick is to have your siege cover each other. i.e. Arrow Carts cover Ballistae, Trebuchets cover your ACs, etc. Of course the enemy will find a way to counter what you’re doing, so have everyone bring supply and be ready to counter them again. It’s like a chess game, and if you have a clever commander (like our siegemaster… i are n00b at siege) you can hold the NE tower, Hills, NW tower, etkittenil the cows come home.

Is this thread really complaining about siege. Really. What a sad state WvW’s in.

How about a buff (toughness, vitality, whatever) for the defenders? Automatic, separate from guild upgrades. Either in the form of the raw stats or in granting a boon like protection.

The problem is cyclical. Because defending is often impractical, no one does it. Because no one defends, it’s impractical. The fact that attacking is not only more glamorous but more lucrative is a further disincentive.

If there were (good) rewards for defending, people would figure out how to defend.

But the way for players to maximize rewards is to trade objectives back and forth by zerging, so of course they do.

Dee Jay.2460:

Gaspodin.9207:

AOE used against any structures or players on keep walls has it’s damage cut by x%.

Simple fix.

OTOH, historically, outer keeps were never meant to hold back invading armies. Just slow them down. You’re speed bumps.

I’d much rather see a wall give people a 200 range bonus and attackers who shoot upwards a 200 range malus.

That way you’d be much less able to AoE on the walls and defenders would also have a much more realistic defensive advantage.

I have to agree that the ranged weapons use is quite frustrating when defending. For one, if you don’t have 1200 range you basically have a similar range on bow/pistol as the oil has.
When you stand on the wall but not right on the edge, you basically are shooting your own feet, or your aor skill is blocked due to no line of sight, and on the other hand enemy on ground can just put aoe on you by targeting the wall. So result is that it’s easier to attack from ground up to wall than other way around.