Guild Wars 2

I will use a real example to illustrate the point of this topic, I’m not sure if anyone else has already brought this up. So today, I was keeping scouting the movement of an enemy guild approximately of twenty people, they skipped the sentry point towards godslore, and quickly captured the camp, as I continued to scout them i guessed that their next target would be the northern gate of ascension bay, the one towards the veteran worm. I quickly waypointed and checked that gate to find that they were no where in sight.

I also they have not even killed the veteran worm, therefore I guessed their target must have been our fully fortified walls/reinforced doors woodhaven tower. I waypointed to citadel and then I noticed the gate was below 50percent dropping fast with the use of 2 or 3 superior rams, without the players dpsing the gate.

At this point, the tower did not even show it was contested, I did relay the information on team/map chat instantaneously and we had responded right away. The problem was at this point the gate was already down by the time the tower even showed it was contested. The numbers we had at the time was not enough to hold them at the lords room. This paragraph is quite lengthy, but all this occurred within 30s before the tower even contested.

To make clear my point, the reinforced gate was already down before players were even alert that the tower was contested. Keep in mind that when I scouted them the reinforced gate was below 50percent and players online at the time had responded right away. The little time it took me to observe the situation (confirming the numbers, whats seige is being used, what defenses wehad in the tower, how much supply we have in the tower) —-takes like 10seconds tops and relay it to my teammates was all the time it took for the enemy player to destroy the gate.

To me this is definitely an issue, it really is hard to see the point in even upgrading structures knowing that they can be taken so easily. The gates are pretty much equivalent to being paper and not upgraded at all, considering that 2 or 3 superiors is enough to take down the gate before players are even aware. It takes away what I find to be a very rewarding aspect of world vs world (being able to defend while outnumbered, having enough time to respond to enemy attacks).

As it is currently, world vs world just does not seem very rewarding, it can potentially take an hour to upgrade fully upgrade structures only to lose it before you are aware it even happened seems a bit ridiculous to me. There are several ways to resolve this: changing the third ability of ram mastery, changing the ability of seige masteries that increase damage, increasing the effectiveness of reinforced doors or introducing fortified doors are examples. I posted this cause I wanted to see the opinions that other people had and if they have faced similar situations.

In all honesty, I’m pretty much losing interest in playing world vs world for the ppt(points per tick) or even for the competition to win,I mean it is one thing for a structure that is paper/unupgraded but once you spend an hour getting the upgrades then lose it in such a quick timeframe (before you have the ability to even react) it kind of takes away the point.

i didnt read the wall of text but yes defending is imbalanced right now so +1 to whatever you said cuz i feel like i cant defend efficiently either

lol yeah i apologize for the long paragraph, I had the mentality of “make sure I am as accurate as possible” so anyone who reads this can understand exactly the point I am getting at, any future kittening I do will have a short paragraph i promise:P

you have a good point, but no one will read your post if you don’t go and edit some paragraphs into it.

I feel superior rams (and superior siege in general) are already broken. Add to that ram mastery and there’s basically no defending towers in way too many situations. If you’re in the lower tiers during the night shift, OP’s story happens all the time.

In the end, it diminishes play for everyone (except for those who are just there for the karma).

Personally, I think superior siege should be severly nerfed and maybe even banned in the lower tiers. Ram mastery was a huge mistake what with the reduced incoming damage and increased outgoing damage via gate vulnerability. Either it needs to be nerfed or gates need to be buffed.

alright ill be sure to make a new post reducing the long wall of texts

I don’t think it’s imbalance. Because it’s a tactic every team could use not just theirs. We have adapted and added more scouts on the rotation, southern scout shouldn’t be alerting people to northern areas. I am not saying that you can’t but if you had a more efficient scouting system you would’ve saw their movement. The higher you climb in the tiers the more disasterous a lapse in scoutting could be. Fully upgraded keeps have been lost due to poor scout coverage. It’s admirable that you scout for your server, but people need to take turns doing the “boring” job.

i am more kitten ed about how it doesn’t matter where you place any sieg on walls, it gets instantly destroyed by eles/necros/rangers/engis…. :/

I hate when the swords dont appear when something is being attacka d yeah the upgraded gates need more hp to combat how powerful rams with mastery can be

Hard to read paragraph (please edit !) but very valid point ! Defending should be more fun/easier and there should be a point in upgrading structures.

I read it and yea… they deserve credit for being organized. Think of these ways of assaulting a tower

1. Run a pug zerg that instantly hits the door before you drop siege, starting the 30 second white sword timer instantly before the group can even properly dps the gate.

2. Run a well organized zerg that will first build siege, then wont even start ramming until all rams are built and then even have the will to hold back pvdooring, so oranges wont pop. – If they build enough rams/omegas they can literally have a reinforced gate down before the white swords pop. Your lucky you scouted it at 50 percent, usually the gate is down before swords pop. This is why you run with guildies.

Not intended with any disrespect, trying to give you a t1 servers perspective to help you all.

TLDR: Have permanent scouts at your keeps/north towers if you want to make sure there is enough response time. Roaming scouting doesn’t work.

JJBigs.8456:

I read it and yea… they deserve credit for being organized. Think of these ways of assaulting a tower

1. Run a pug zerg that instantly hits the door before you drop siege, starting the 30 second white sword timer instantly before the group can even properly dps the gate.

2. Run a well organized zerg that will first build siege, then wont even start ramming until all rams are built and then even have the will to hold back pvdooring, so oranges wont pop. – If they build enough rams/omegas they can literally have a reinforced gate down before the white swords pop. Your lucky you scouted it at 50 percent, usually the gate is down before swords pop. This is why you run with guildies.

Not intended with any disrespect, trying to give you a t1 servers perspective to help you all.

TLDR: Have permanent scouts at your keeps/north towers if you want to make sure there is enough response time. Roaming scouting doesn’t work.

This method should work on a heavy wvw populated world but not in lower tiers, im playing on Underworld and it seems we almost have given up trying to upgrade structures as it seems pointless with the new ram mastery, enemies able to rush through the wooden gates with ease and were to late to try to defend most of the tims.
imo anet destroyed the fun of scouting/defending a keep

I can see it on lower servers too. No point of defending. Just leave it and then take it back=profit
PPT does not matter anymore because we either stomp or being stomped by a lot.

Permanent scout doesn’t really help if defensive force can’t get there in time. You don’t have much of a chance to repel the attackers even if you are inside the tower and have sAC, cannon and oil ready. Also, if you happen to be there they will just skip the place and run elsewhere.

And yea, in lower tiers we don’t have manpower to have a scout in every tower and keep watching stuff.

Also wooden gates are meaningless. Meaning that if you lose your keep for what ever reason, you will be having hard time to upgrade it because enemy blob can just waypoint to border and sweep all the work and upgrades you have tried to do in that keep. Usually this kind of sweep happens in minute or two with keeps and less than a minute with a tower. Even if you prepared sAC or some kind of defenses in the keep/tower, you are not able to slow down the enemy blob as the rammers and the rams can withstand the damage of 3 sAC easily until the gate is down.

There is pretty much no sense to defend at the moment if you don’t happen to be the upperhand on the match. Playing as underdog means that you have to just try to organize a zerg to retake stuff after the enemy has taken it from you. You can always try to defend a keep, but that means it opens up your other side of border for the other server or other small hit group.

For the love of Balthazar add some better rewards for defending!

Very few people actually do it, at least give us good rewards. Give an incentive for people to come back to the home BL.

TL:DR

1. [..]the gate was already down by the time the tower even showed it was contested.
2. [..] it really is hard to see the point in even upgrading structures knowing that they can be taken so easily.
3. [..] It takes away [from] being able to defend while outnumbered, having enough time to respond to enemy attacks
4. There are several ways to resolve this: [examples][..]
5. I posted this cause I wanted to see the opinions that other people had and if they have faced similar situations
6. [..] spend an hour getting the upgrades then lose it in such a quick timeframe [..] it kind of takes away the point.

I hope you don’t mind, but I tried to cut your W.O.T down for lazy people.

I think you’re absolutely correct, defending is kitten as we’re back to giant unkillable zergs doing circular karma (and now WeXP) trains.

Well truth be told have a permanent scout on each tower with a treb or two behind gate.
It will force the enemy to dps the gate and lose theyr supply if the trebber got mastery or go around for catapults which they will lose more supply to build them as well.
Though its quite difficult to find defenders this days with the karma train meta.
Already had people abandon upgraded structures so they can farm them as well.
There is one last hope if that leaked patch notes beeing true,since it will enforce guilds guarding towers and keeps.
Lets wait and see the next patch notes.

Making gates stronger would be a huge improvement.. atm normal acs are completely useless no matter how many of them you have (which is ridiculous). Even with 3 superior acs you can’t kill 3 superior rams at a gate unless you have all of them manned the second the enemies hit the gate.
Another thing that could be considered is reverting the change to the contested swords.
The ram mastery made life as a defender hell

@keiel, I understand your point, but there is one thing you misunderstood you stated “southern scout shouldn’t be alerting people to northern areas.” I want to clarify that this all happened on the northwest side of the borderlands (godslore,ascension bay-northgate,woodhaven tower). I should have added that along with my long wall of text:P Not to mention the run from citadel to woodhaven is short but still was too late.

Arena Net doesn’t want you to defend, they want stuff to flip frequently. And when Arena Net wants something that’s how it’s going to be, no matter what.

A lot of people seem to make the point that even if they are in the tower it won’t matter because the reaction time is too slow. That is on your server, literally nothing Anet or anyone else can do about it. Even if they gave doors 100% more health, if your server’s commanders are sluggish or literally don’t care since it’s just a tower and would rather have the rewards for flipping then, yes, a scout is useless.

Even if they get through the door, it’s not over until they cap the tower, it’s very common in T1 server to have first responders to just keep the objective contested/lord alive until the bulk of the reinforcement arrives the fight for the tower after the door/walls gets broken can last much longer than taking down the gate itself (sometimes I would get the defender bonus several times) before the outcome is determined. Either way, it’s an extremely fun scenario.

Lastly to the person who said that if reinforcement arrives on time the attackers would pack up and leave. It’s fine and should be for you too, it’s tactically smart to not wipe, even numbered defense should have the advantage and should beat the offender. It’s basically a game of perserverance and see which side caves first or which side out manuvers the other. Sometimes we would get in the tower and prepare for a fight and they run off, some times we run in and catch them off guard and destroy them, sometimes we get wiped on a bad call, and sometimes its a mix. Either way as long as your team doesn’t just leave there would be plenty of fights and fun to be had.

(1)
Defend a tower, hold out against 20x the number who spend their time dps the gate with auto-attack.
Reward: 100 WXP in 2.5 min (spending resource ) , high risk of dying if you dps from wall.

(2)
Join the WXP train on the other side taking stuff
Reward :
Taking Tower
100 WXP from guard, Another 100~200 WXP from guard inside tower
300 WXP from taking tower in 2.5 min (Total 500WXP, more bags, more karma,less risk of dying)

Your choice
The only time defend happen is when train is reforming and need a place to gather. Since no one like to stand around doing nothing, a place to fight is ideal.