Thread where everyone can post basic, intermediate and advanced tips for WvW. As I see many who don’t seem to understand certain basics i’ll put them down.
1) Supply. Supply is used to upgrade fortifications, supply camps and build siege. Supply is generated solely by supply camps. You can get supply by killing enemy Dolyak’s also, but it is a small chance and only 5 supply from doing so. Max supply you can carry is 10 unless you are from a guild which has the extra supply upgrade researched, in which case you can carry 15.
Take supply camps whenever possible. Interrupting enemy supply lines helps siege enemy fortifications massively. They have less supply to repair and build siege with.
Take supply from your supply camps unless you must have that supply, and you cannot get it from a supply camp. Taking supply from your keeps/towers only slows your team fro upgrading your keeps/towers to have improved walls, guards, cannons, mortars and oil on the wall and depletes resources a defending team can use to keep the fort. Try to always have supply on you.
2) Siege. Carry it. As much as you can afford without ruining your bank.
Rams are essential for fast taking of an enemy fortification and cost the least supply to build. They have to be right up to the gate of course, but deal far more damage than some whole zergs can put on a gate. RAMS ONLY WORK VS GATES.
Arrow carts. The cheapest and most effective siege weapon to deal with a ram focused assault, or closer quarters. They cost the same as a ram in supply and money (6 silver for blueprints, 30 supply to build). Cheap and cheerful. You can use them offensively too to defend a fortified point you are using to take an enemy position. These have 2500 range and don’t require line of sight to fire. So long as your character can see a spot of ground in range, you can shoot.
Ballista’s. Longer range than arrow carts and high single target damage output. Also if put high you can improve its range a fair bit. These are great on defence to take out an enemy using catapults to take your position. Good for offence too if on a rise to clear enemy siege on walls. Best counter siege weapon for turtling and also good for defending against small groups. 3000 range.
Catapults. Again put high range is improved. Excellent when put behind a gate on defence to stop rams. Also good to take a tower than is defended heavily with arrow carts, as you can plop it down at 4000 range, and simply knock a wall OR gate down. More damage vs walls. Keep these safe.
Trebs. The master siege of long range. Boasting 10,000 range nothing comes close. These can smack many enemy towers from within the safety of your own tower quite often. Again put high the range is yet higher. Position these wisely and the enemy will have a real struggle stopping you knocking a wall down.
Siege golems. Darn expensive, but the only mobile siege. Can knock gates down rather rapidly with enough of them. Melee. Best tip for these is DO NOT BUILD THEM ON THE FRONT LINE! So many golems have been lost at as a build site it’s untrue. They cost a lot of supply, so they won’t get put up rapidly. Build them from safety and march them to where they are needed, or mesmer portal them.
Points:
You gain points every 15 minutes for how many supply camps, towers and keeps you have (and stonemist castle). In that order they gain more points, stonemist offering the most per 15 minutes.
Tactics:
Try to organise some people to run around disturbing the supply. As mentioned earlier this is powerful, as you can halve their potential income (they’ll never get double supply deliveries) and more for even minute you hold the camp.
If you see you cannot head on ram a gate down, move back and setup a point to catapult it down.
Use trebs. They are amazing. Boring to use but highly effective.
Learn positioning of siege. There are spots where you can hit multiple towers with one treb, where you can put arrow carts/ballista’s in relative safety of enemies. One such example being stonemist towers upper levels, on the fingers. Put trebs on those.
That’s just a few of the basics. The final one being learn to use the map. Hit M a lot. You may think, there’s no orange sword in X direction so our stuff is safe there. Wrong. Hit M and take a full look. White crossed swords over an objective means it was or is under some form of attack by a small group (5 or less), or from NPC’s (Quaggans, Hylek’s, Dredge or Ogre’s).