Guild Wars 2

please remove the tactic of tapping keeps

no one wants a 15 man group to hunt down 1 single high evasion theif that keeps tapping the same keep for more half an hour

and if anet dosen’t, i’ll start doing the same thing out of salty spite

ye its really annoying.
also, inb4 the argument “well youre bad if you cant chase him down, maybe you should do the same thing, omg use reveal traps”

Proposal:
1)Require one of the following to contest:
damage over a certain threshold to a gate/door in a single hit ( aka, this thing has been hit by siege, and is actually under credible attack)

2)a gate/wall is broken/destroyed

3)any damage to the lord ( or inner guards?).

Possibly only counting inner gates/walls for SMC/keeps on scenario 1/2.

I do appreciate this means they could PvDoor and not contest ( thus not be noticed).. But honestly that doesn’t seem like a terrible compromise considering how long PvDoor alone would take.

The first option could be redesigned to “gate/wall takes x% damage over y seconds” but I suspect the calculations and constant polling of hp would add substantial workload to the servers – and WvW lags enough as it is.

It’s annoying as hell but it’s a viable and clever tactic. Rather than everyone following the commander in the omniblob, it encourages single players to lose out on personal reward for the greater good of the server. Tap keep, slow down enemy reinforcements from getting back to SMC or bay/hills.

Lahmia.2193:

It’s annoying as hell but it’s a viable and clever tactic. Rather than everyone following the commander in the omniblob, it encourages single players to lose out on personal reward for the greater good of the server. Tap keep, slow down enemy reinforcements from getting back to SMC or bay/hills.

That losing out on personal rewards is going to make it feel bad for most players.
Sure there is shared squad participation, but you’re still losing out of bags/event credit etc.

Making people choose to lose out on rewards is something that hurts the population in wvw imo. It wouldn’t be so bad if those rewards were less significant, but wvw rewards are lacking at the best of times.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Lahmia.2193:

It’s annoying as hell but it’s a viable and clever tactic. Rather than everyone following the commander in the omniblob, it encourages single players to lose out on personal reward for the greater good of the server. Tap keep, slow down enemy reinforcements from getting back to SMC or bay/hills.

That losing out on personal rewards is going to make it feel bad for most players.
Sure there is shared squad participation, but you’re still losing out of bags/event credit etc.

Making people choose to lose out on rewards is something that hurts the population in wvw imo. It wouldn’t be so bad if those rewards were less significant, but wvw rewards are lacking at the best of times.

Not really. It’s a lot like scouting or running yaks. Its an important solo job that more people enjoy than you realise despite the loss in reward (aka the selfless people of wvw). Once you nerf these roles, WvW will turn purely into omniblob wars, more so than it has already.

Lahmia.2193:

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Lahmia.2193:

It’s annoying as hell but it’s a viable and clever tactic. Rather than everyone following the commander in the omniblob, it encourages single players to lose out on personal reward for the greater good of the server. Tap keep, slow down enemy reinforcements from getting back to SMC or bay/hills.

That losing out on personal rewards is going to make it feel bad for most players.
Sure there is shared squad participation, but you’re still losing out of bags/event credit etc.

Making people choose to lose out on rewards is something that hurts the population in wvw imo. It wouldn’t be so bad if those rewards were less significant, but wvw rewards are lacking at the best of times.

Not really. It’s a lot like scouting or running yaks. Its an important solo job that more people enjoy than you realise despite the loss in reward (aka the selfless people of wvw). Once you nerf these roles, WvW will turn purely into omniblob wars, more so than it has already.

It was a subtle attempt to say the rewards from bags/events shouldn’t be so significant in the grand scheme of wvw loots. I guess it was too subtle

Tapping a keep really isnt a problem until you factor in a single class – thieves. Perma-stealth ghost thieves is what I would classify as taking it so far that yes, its an exploit. Sure nike warriors or druids etc can hit and run but you can still bring 5 peeps if needed and lock them down and kill them. Ghost thieves you never have enough time to kill because they will never be visible and by the time a guard or you steps in a trap, they are long gone even if they where next to you a couple secs earlier. Cant counter it, cant fight it. Bring reveal or stealth traps you say? Hahaha… Have fun covering an entire keep. And he will still be 10,000 distance away in 3 seconds once revealed and back shortly after in permastealth.

I think guards should automatically reveal all stealthers within 3K range. Problem solved. Mesmer, Thief, Druid it doesnt matter. They want to tag guards? They do it in the open.

Dawdler.8521:

Tapping a keep really isnt a problem until you factor in a single class – thieves. Perma-stealth ghost thieves is what I would classify as taking it so far that yes, its an exploit. Sure nike warriors or druids etc can hit and run but you can still bring 5 peeps if needed and lock them down and kill them. Ghost thieves you never have enough time to kill because they will never be visible and by the time a guard or you steps in a trap, they are long gone even if they where next to you a couple secs earlier. Cant counter it, cant fight it. Bring reveal or stealth traps you say? Hahaha… Have fun covering an entire keep. And he will still be 10,000 distance away in 3 seconds once revealed and back shortly after in permastealth.

I think guards should automatically reveal all stealthers within 3K range. Problem solved. Mesmer, Thief, Druid it doesnt matter. They want to tag guards? They do it in the open.

3k range seems a bit crazy.

A 240-360 radius “aura of revealing”? with reveal lasting 4s – but no icd. That would be interesting. The patrols would have an interesting purpose.

but theres a difference between slowing down people from keep and completely locking out a wp and stopping people from using for a half an hour or even more, COMPLETE lock, no one was able to use it in between taps. because it was always tapped

no single player should have the power to disable a wp for long periods. thats my issue

Why would you take this away from thieves? Would you rather see, well maybe not see, more ghost thieves in WvW?

They should put something like – dmg wall or gate for 5% puts the wp into contested.

It is kind of exploitive. Not really sure that makes it wrong though.

Could make non-seige damage tag for 30sec,
Siege damage tag for 2min:30sec

You would have to be a really sad player to keep tagging a keep every 30sec.

Anet should revert this to actually tapping the gates, rather then pulling archer’s attention and get it contested. I can see why they changed it with HoT and the gates upgrade, but tsince that one has been nerfed to 50% pvd they can revert this change aswell.

If it’s just one thief, and you’ve ascertained it’s just one thief; let him fill his boots. He can’t solo the lord even if he somehow does get beyond the gates and once you stop giving him attention, he’ll likely go find something else to do.

In fact, if I spotted him, I’d stand there and wave because it reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuYPjzeY_Fk

You’re basically just entertaining him by running around looking for one guy.

The problem isn’t a single thief (even ghost) as that’s a tangent class balance issue.

The problem is a single person can lock-down waypoints from outside a keep. It’s a lesser form of griefing (not usually strategy or even coordination involved).

Show the swords so people know and can react to an objective being potentially attacked but there should be either a siege hitting the keep or several players (5+) hitting it for 15+ seconds.

Should have to kill at least 1 guard, not cast 1 thing at it.
Contesting the structure without siege shouldn’t be a thing at all.

katniss.6735:

Should have to kill at least 1 guard, not cast 1 thing at it.
Contesting the structure without siege shouldn’t be a thing at all.

I would consider going one step further – SMC/keeps don’t contest til inner is being hit – since there is two walls between the enemy and the WP.

But yeah.. It should take a credible threat to the structure to contest it’s wp.

I think requiring someone to tap a gate to contest a waypoint is a good compromise. It doesn’t seem reasonable to me to have player limits or require siege damage. There has been so many changes since HoT to discourage solo roaming and I don’t think we need to add more. If we keep going down this path WvW will eventually become EOTM 2.0.

Dawdler.8521:

Tapping a keep really isnt a problem until you factor in a single class – thieves. Perma-stealth ghost thieves is what I would classify as taking it so far that yes, its an exploit. Sure nike warriors or druids etc can hit and run but you can still bring 5 peeps if needed and lock them down and kill them. Ghost thieves you never have enough time to kill because they will never be visible and by the time a guard or you steps in a trap, they are long gone even if they where next to you a couple secs earlier. Cant counter it, cant fight it. Bring reveal or stealth traps you say? Hahaha… Have fun covering an entire keep. And he will still be 10,000 distance away in 3 seconds once revealed and back shortly after in permastealth.

I think guards should automatically reveal all stealthers within 3K range. Problem solved. Mesmer, Thief, Druid it doesnt matter. They want to tag guards? They do it in the open.

You had me up until your second paragraph there. That’s just ridiculous. I hate stealth, but 3k range auto reveal from guards? That’s asinine levels of stealth hate.

OT – Make outer walls/gates take siege damage to contest the WP, any damage to inner walls, or any inner guard killed should contest the WP. Show the orange swords if someone is PvDooring, or just aggroing/killing outer guards. Because honestly that shouldn’t be enough to shut down a WP.

@Lahmia – There is nothing clever about this tactic. Absolutely nothing. You can defend it if you want, but don’t pretend like there is anything clever about it. And it is broken. However viable it is, it shouldn’t be possible for a single person to invisibly contest the WP of a keep for any length of time. They should need siege to do so. Contesting that keep WP hampers an entire server’s ability to respond to anything on that map, how can you honestly claim that is balanced that a single person can keep that WP shutdown while remaining invisible?

There’s no rational argument to support that. If someone wants to contest a keep’s WP, they need to either be inside the keep killing guards/attacking inner gates, or using siege on it. Hitting the outer gate, aggroing an outer guard should not be enough to contest that WP, and everyone with any sense knows that.

You cannot run down a well built thief. I have been trolling NSP pretty much every night while our side flips their T3 SMC. The keep contesting design is stupid but it is part of the game right now so we must endure its crappiness.

OriOri.8724:

You had me up until your second paragraph there. That’s just ridiculous. I hate stealth, but 3k range auto reveal from guards? That’s asinine levels of stealth hate.

Stealth hate?

No it’s perfectly in line with other objective reveals Anet has put in the game.

Have you seen the range of the scout balloons?

Just because the scout balloon is in game does not make it well designed. And at least that’s an upgrade, based on your comment I have to assume you wanted all guards to have this ability baseline.

How does any of this have anything to do with not being able to chase/kill the person who is tapping your keep? Even if you killed the person every single time they tapped, if the player is dedicated to tapping your keep, they can respawn and run back in time to tap the keep again – and die again.

This is a non-issue, contesting a keep to prevent waypoint usage is a valid tactic that has been around for years. The fact that it inconveniences you since you have to run slightly further to get to your destination – means that this tactic is working.

Turk.5460:

How does any of this have anything to do with not being able to chase/kill the person who is tapping your keep? Even if you killed the person every single time they tapped, if the player is dedicated to tapping your keep, they can respawn and run back in time to tap the keep again – and die again.

This is a non-issue, contesting a keep to prevent waypoint usage is a valid tactic that has been around for years. The fact that it inconveniences you since you have to run slightly further to get to your destination – means that this tactic is working.

so a SINGLE person. disabling a wp slowing preventing up to 80 players to use the wp for a long period of time is okay?

the word valid means nothing. you can justify how legitimate the tactic is. doesn’t make it a balanced strategy

blackgamma.1809:

Turk.5460:

How does any of this have anything to do with not being able to chase/kill the person who is tapping your keep? Even if you killed the person every single time they tapped, if the player is dedicated to tapping your keep, they can respawn and run back in time to tap the keep again – and die again.

This is a non-issue, contesting a keep to prevent waypoint usage is a valid tactic that has been around for years. The fact that it inconveniences you since you have to run slightly further to get to your destination – means that this tactic is working.

so a SINGLE person. disabling a wp slowing preventing up to 80 players to use the wp for a long period of time is okay?

the word valid means nothing. you can justify how legitimate the tactic is. doesn’t make it a balanced strategy

Thief players will always answer your question with a “Yes”, don’t bother asking them.

Its not ok for a single person to invisibly hamper an entire server’s ability to respond to a fight. That’s unbalanced, and places far too much power in the hands of a single person, even though they never place themselves in any risk by doing so if they run ghost thief build.

It’s totally unbalanced and annoying that one thief can keep a wp contested all night, making having that wp pointless. 1v80 shouldn’t be a thing.

Easy solutions have been proposed for several years but since wvw is behind ‘fix hair out of place on npc number 234533 in town’ in Anet’s priorities I’ll be amazed if anything concrete is done to fix it- and it if is, it will probably break something else by being completely OP the otherway.

The easiest solution is 5% damage to a wall or gate.

Turk.5460:

This is a non-issue, contesting a keep to prevent waypoint usage is a valid tactic that has been around for years. The fact that it inconveniences you since you have to run slightly further to get to your destination – means that this tactic is working.

For it to be a “valid” or more importantly fair tactic, there needs to be a counter to it. Right now no counter exists that can stop a thief from constantly contesting a keep WP.

In contrast, cutting off supply is a “valid” tactic because players can escort yaks and guard camps. They at the very least have a chance. No such chance exists when a thief just has to fart when going near a guard to contest the entire keep.

Basically no single player should be able to effectively undo what took hours to obtain and impacts an entire map’s population at least without some reasonable ability to defend against it.

Why so concerned about a teef, any class can tap a keep easily just by drawing guard’s attention. Get killed? Plenty time to run back and do the same thing over and over again within the 3min marker.

Offair.2563:

Why so concerned about a teef, any class can tap a keep easily just by drawing guard’s attention. Get killed? Plenty time to run back and do the same thing over and over again within the 3min marker.

Its funny you should say that. The most problematic class that has perma keep tapped vs our server are rangers. I have managed to kill him before, and he just came straight back. Hell I could start doing it on my necromancer if I liked. Now is this annoying? Yes. Is it an exploit? Definitely not.

Ah, i see my legacy is alive and well.

I used to use Nike Warrior though, as half the fun is getting as much enemies as possible to chase you. If you use thief, most stop chasing after a bit.

In our current matchup, we have a thief and Mesmer that do it endlessly. They both seem to run around in 1 big circle over our 1/3rd of the map in nearly the exact same pattern over and over again. It’s not unusual to look at the map and see EVERYTHING in our third of EB contested with no enemy to be found.

I’m amazed at how many people don’t understand, know, or care about stealth traps and revealed skills. Most times it’s hilarious to watch as 10 or more people chase them around in circles. I can almost hear the Yakety Sax music playing…

Brigand.9502:

I’m amazed at how many people don’t understand, know, or care about stealth traps and revealed skills. Most times it’s hilarious to watch as 10 or more people chase them around in circles. I can almost hear the Yakety Sax music playing…

I run a thief without stealth or Unhindered Combatant and nothing catches me unless I stop to fight. It is nearly impossible to catch a thief that doesn’t want to stop running. Even if after hours of flipping a side and contesting, I die (and it usually takes hours) I just run back in about a minute.

I do reserve my tapping antics to winning servers with a T3 SMC or when another side does it to us. At any rate it is a cheap mechanic and relatively unfair but meta is meta.

It’s not at all an exploit, it’s just a really stupid mechanic. There shouldn’t be a way a single person can “deactivate” a waypoint.
It has been like this for a very long time and it was stupid all the time.

Thief or not if you die you can easily run back and contest it again. It takes absolutely zero skills and has no counter. A dedicated player with nothing else to do can keep your keep contested all evening. It should take a little bit more to contest a structure.

I think if it was only contested with siege damage that would solve the issue. A small group could still PvD gates but it would take ages and would make scouting more important. A large group would be faster but orange swords would give them away.

Only contested with siege… only if gates cannot be pvd’d…

Dagger.2035:

I think requiring someone to tap a gate to contest a waypoint is a good compromise. It doesn’t seem reasonable to me to have player limits or require siege damage. There has been so many changes since HoT to discourage solo roaming and I don’t think we need to add more. If we keep going down this path WvW will eventually become EOTM 2.0.

1. Your suggestion “tap a gate only” will not counteract the grief behavior.

2. You should not confuse HoT power creep (a tangent conversation) with discouraging roaming as that has nothing to do with something (contesting waypoints) that existed before and after HoT.

Some “solo roaming” activities should be discouraged in WvW environments. This isn’t the only one.

Sarika.3756:

Only contested with siege… only if gates cannot be pvd’d…

I would be fine with that as well.

However even if gates could still be pvd’d you could use watchtowers and scouts to know if something’s up and the damage is low enough that you should have enough time to react and defend.

Sarika.3756:

Only contested with siege… only if gates cannot be pvd’d…

That was the case with Hardened Gates upgraded, been nerfed to 50% pvd. However you do not need to tap a gate, just drawing guards attention does the trick these days.

Sarika.3756:

Only contested with siege… only if gates cannot be pvd’d…

Why though? If someone wants to PvD your gate and you don’t check on it often enough to let them kill it, its on your server and you deserve to have that gate be killed.

It should take siege damage to walls/gates, or a destruction of a gate, to contest a WP. Enough with this aggro a guard and knock the WP out of commission nonsense

One option is to make it so swords don’t pop unless the Gate/Wall has taken 5% dmg, this would mean the person tapping has to spend some time on it. The downside is now you will have people complaining that you aren’t getting ample warning for when the structure is actually under attack.

The simplest solution is to have your own scouts tapping and checking for tapped structures and relaying the info. I know it’s not optimal for lower tiers but I don’t know that you will find a happy medium for a solution. That and then you have to trust that the Dev’s won’t get crazy with it and make things considerably worse.

I honestly think the sword popping should be separated from contesting the WP. Swords could pop as soon as any guard is killed, or any wall/gate takes damage. But it needs to be harder to contest the WP, that should involve siege, or PvDing the gate until you kill it if you really feel like wasting your time.

Easy fix: gotta do 5%+ damage to a gate or wall. Its fast enough so a legitimate group trying to actually take something won’t be punished by people using the WP, yet it will stop the trolls from just killing a guard to contest the keep.

Bhima.9518:

Easy fix: gotta do 5%+ damage to a gate or wall. Its fast enough so a legitimate group trying to actually take something won’t be punished by people using the WP, yet it will stop the trolls from just killing a guard to contest the keep.

Actually even 1%. Or just any damage typed as siege hitting gates, walls, cannons, mortars and oil.

Turk.5460:

How does any of this have anything to do with not being able to chase/kill the person who is tapping your keep? Even if you killed the person every single time they tapped, if the player is dedicated to tapping your keep, they can respawn and run back in time to tap the keep again – and die again.

This is a non-issue, contesting a keep to prevent waypoint usage is a valid tactic that has been around for years. The fact that it inconveniences you since you have to run slightly further to get to your destination – means that this tactic is working.

Not strictly true. WP’s used to be open for a moment once every 3 minutes. Now they are not. So no, perma contesting WP’s has not “been around for years” as you put it.

One thing that bothers me about ghost-thief perma-tapping is that they rarely use it for strategic purposes. Most of them perma-tap for the sole purpose of annoying others. Their server is hopelessly crushed to they might as well just log on and annoy people. Most of the time these thieves can be ignored since, A) The locked WP doesn’t matter at this point in the match and/or, B ) The Perma-Tapping-Thief is no threat to players since most of them run away at the sight of even a rank 1 newbie.

Boysenberry.1869:

One thing that bothers me about ghost-thief perma-tapping is that they rarely use it for strategic purposes. Most of them perma-tap for the sole purpose of annoying others. Their server is hopelessly crushed to they might as well just log on and annoy people. Most of the time these thieves can be ignored since, A) The locked WP doesn’t matter at this point in the match and/or, B ) The Perma-Tapping-Thief is no threat to players since most of them run away at the sight of even a rank 1 newbie.

If that’s the case then there seems that there is no need for you to use your keep waypoint. The walk from the spawn waypoint to the keep takes all of about 37 seconds with swiftness/no leaps (just timed it). The only time it is annoying is when you need to respawn quickly and get back into the action at say SMC. In which case it is indeed a strategy, to stop enemy reinforcements from arriving.
Do people think repairing inner gates, to stop enemy respawns from getting into smc is an exploit? Both are legitimate strategies.

Boysenberry.1869:

B ) The Perma-Tapping-Thief is no threat to players since most of them run away at the sight of even a rank 1 newbie.

Careful with that assumption. Some tappers are just annoying… others are looking for a few suckers to take the bait. After about 10 minutes, I typically have a nice line of people to kill.

Lahmia.2193:

Boysenberry.1869:

One thing that bothers me about ghost-thief perma-tapping is that they rarely use it for strategic purposes. Most of them perma-tap for the sole purpose of annoying others. Their server is hopelessly crushed to they might as well just log on and annoy people. Most of the time these thieves can be ignored since, A) The locked WP doesn’t matter at this point in the match and/or, B ) The Perma-Tapping-Thief is no threat to players since most of them run away at the sight of even a rank 1 newbie.

If that’s the case then there seems that there is no need for you to use your keep waypoint. The walk from the spawn waypoint to the keep takes all of about 37 seconds with swiftness/no leaps (just timed it). The only time it is annoying is when you need to respawn quickly and get back into the action at say SMC. In which case it is indeed a strategy, to stop enemy reinforcements from arriving.
Do people think repairing inner gates, to stop enemy respawns from getting into smc is an exploit? Both are legitimate strategies.

or, we can just remove the waypoint entirely, it doesn’t need to be there if theives can just tap it, completey locking out access to wp

oh wait. backwards logic is the dumbest way to justify things

Boysenberry.1869:

The Perma-Tapping-Thief is no threat to players since most of them run away at the sight of even a rank 1 newbie.

It isn’t important if he is a threat. It’s kind of playstyle the game should never support. Why should some be allowed to play a build that only exists to headbutt a gate and run and repeat that for hours?