Guild Wars 2

If they can be aoe’d down quickly no matter where on the wall you place them? Makes trying to hold off superior numbers while holed up in a tower impossible.

I take it you don’t know the power of Arrow Carts.

You are placing them in the wrong locations.

Location, location, location.

I have nothing else to add here.

Where do you place them then? Because there is no place on the walls that cannot be reached by aoe.

Walls – bad.
Behind gates – good.
Somewhere at something inside a tower – even better.

Keep experimenting. This game just came out, and main thing you need for WvW is zerg knowledge. Sometimes I just placing useless rams at mountains and cliffs just to see if siege weapons can actually be placed there. And use WvW map for better calculation.

harumph.9621:

Where do you place them then? Because there is no place on the walls that cannot be reached by aoe.

This is the part that annoys me. People not manning siege weapons need to rally over the gate and STOP these guys from AOEing your siege weapons. Stop being pansies, equip a melee and get down there!

I don’t understand what that picture is supposed to show, building something outside? Not relevant to my question about defending inside a tower.

And yes, I know the power of arrow carts. Just show me where I can put one where it’s useful to me (can hit attackers), but won’t be aoe’d down.

you need to place them correctly. place them as far as possible away from the outside wall, to the point wehre you can just barely see the front of the gate. if you do it correctly, and have people build the cart up quickly, there is literally no way the cart can taken down unless they build up counter siege equipment, such as well placed ballistas, or a catapult.

A decent siege defense won’t be AOE’d down because you’ll have:

a) The siege weapons firing on the people trying to AOE your arrow cart
b) A group of people that are tasked with protecting the area outside the walls to stop the AOE
c) Your own AOE’s raining down on those on the ground who are trying to AOE your siege equipment
d) Guardians and other classes putting up projectile reflects to stop your siege being damaged
e) Your siege equipment in an area where only the edge of the AOE radius hits your siege, rarely hitting it

There are a heap of different ways to stop your siege from being hit. You really need to experiment with locations for siege and you’re bound to lose it time and time again until you either find somewhere great or you start to be more efficient with how you protect it. Can you honestly imagine how impossible it would be to attack a Keep/Tower if people couldn’t take down your siege inside or on the walls!

I think OP maybe referring to the actual defensive siege you get from upgrades? Like Cannons, Oil and Mortars. If he is, then he is correct, they can be taken out extremely fast. Saying “position” is key is irrelevant for these as you cannot place their location.

There are sweet spots where AoE cant / will barely hit, and you easily counter that AoE by having players on your team AoE the spots that are used to AoE sweet spots.

But some of the ground target AoE’s need a radius nerf.

But most of the time if a siege weapon dies it was just placed badly. Remember balistas and cata’s can shoot twice the distance on any AoE so you can put the higher up or farther way and still have them be effective.

In fact most keeps and towers have nearby hills or buildings you can send sneaky commando teams to. Have 6-8 organized players sneak behind build 2 balistas and hammer the enemy zerg then kite away as they zerg around to push back.

It’ll get you more than a few kills and let defenders inside push out to kill rams.

Thalantyr.2856:

A decent siege defense won’t be AOE’d down because you’ll have:

a) The siege weapons firing on the people trying to AOE your arrow cart
b) A group of people that are tasked with protecting the area outside the walls to stop the AOE
c) Your own AOE’s raining down on those on the ground who are trying to AOE your siege equipment
d) Guardians and other classes putting up projectile reflects to stop your siege being damaged
e) Your siege equipment in an area where only the edge of the AOE radius hits your siege, rarely hitting it

There are a heap of different ways to stop your siege from being hit. You really need to experiment with locations for siege and you’re bound to lose it time and time again until you either find somewhere great or you start to be more efficient with how you protect it. Can you honestly imagine how impossible it would be to attack a Keep/Tower if people couldn’t take down your siege inside or on the walls!

What is incorrect about these siege defensive tactics is if you are out numbered it will not matter.

A) If you are outnumbered it does not matter, there AoE will the cart faster then you cart can kill them.
B) If you are outnumbered they will be slaughtered fast if they leave the keep/tower/garrison.
C) If you are outnumbered you cannot stand on the walls to AoE down because you die to fast, or in the cast of many walls the “Obstructed” Monster will slay you first.
D) If your outnumbered this will not matter much as they will throw so much AoE at you that you will not have enough Guardians to keep it up much.
E) This is the only working point you have for an outnumbered force and it only applies to some towers/keeps. Most of them you can pretty much hit any siege placed on the wall with AoE.

The thing is you would think that a smaller outnumbered force would be able to hold off a large zerg easily. It should be able to. No zerg should be able to take down a reinforced and sieged up keep/tower/garrison without siege of there own. Fact is you can currently. True this is not always the case, like I said some Keeps/Towers are easier to defend then others due to terrain.

What a load of horse kitten.

(this is based off my server, Isle of Janthir, and our opponents to date)

We’ve defending Towers & Keeps against five times our numers time and time again. The number of times that a large force actually goes around to the side of the keep to AOE is rare. It’s usually a scattered group of players that are quite easily dealt with. AOE rarely hits the side of a keep because it’s all concentrated on the front. There is never enough AOE from the ground to the walls of the keep on the sides that you can’t actually stand on the wall and get off a Ranger or Elementalist AOE to the ground. A simple “Root” ability followed by a ground-based AOE is enough to take someone down to half-health and have them running for their life, and not usually returning because they know if they die around the side their chances of being revived are quite slim.

a) Multiple Arrow carts can fire insanely faster than a group of players AOE’s can, so it doesn’t necessarily matter if it’s a zerg or not. Could it be improved so that numbers don’t mean as much as they do? Yes.

b) We do guild drops off the edge time and time again. I’m not sure whether you’re running with a PUG or random players but a well coordinated guild group can EASILY kill and halt a large group of players down the side of a Keep or Tower.

c) I never get “Obstructed” when firing down because I’m launching an AOE then moving back, not constantly auto-attacking the players which is when “Obstructed” usually kicks in.

d) You only need to push them back once or twice and they’ll stop coming. Zergs don’t sit at the side of keeps, they sit at the FRONT of keeps. If they surrounded the entire Keep or Tower then your point would be valid, but it’s never like it in any siege I’m a part of

e) It’s not about some Towers or Keeps, it’s about where you place the Arrow Cart. We probably placed 50 Arrow Carts before we realised the best places to put them. There’s only a handful of Towers & Keeps on each Borderlands map and then those maps are repeated another two times, so learning where stuff works best is quite easy given a bit of patience.

The problem that people have when placing arrow carts is that they build them WHEN the force arrives. Unless you’ve got a guild group standing on top of you, waiting for you to put down the building site, then the other team will see the giant concrete block being built and focus fire it. You should either have the arrow carts built prior to any force arriving or you should ensure that as soon as you build it you have 3-4 others building it so that it’s built in less than 5 seconds and doesn’t actually get seen by a lot of the attackers. Once it’s built half the time you can’t even see an arrow cart from the ground so you need to rely on looking for the players with the little ‘cog’ icon to show they’re on a piece of siege.

All of the above is based off my experience on Isle of Janthir… it may be completely different in Tier-1 with HoD/SBI/ET/JQ, but we’ve reguarly been in the Tier-2 bracket and don’t see a lot of what you’re referring to.

Most towers, and all keeps, have spots you can place defensive siege which is out of range for aoe attackers. You don’t get optimal coverage but you can still hit attackers close to the structure and, importantly, remain out of enemy range.

Arrow carts, catapults and ballistas all have much longer range than player aoe attacks. You are probably having trouble positioning them out of aoe range because you are always trying to give them optimal coverage of the battlefield.

Mog.1589:

I think OP maybe referring to the actual defensive siege you get from upgrades? Like Cannons, Oil and Mortars. If he is, then he is correct, they can be taken out extremely fast. Saying “position” is key is irrelevant for these as you cannot place their location.

I don’t think he’s refering to the upgrades because he specifically talks about “where on the wall you place them”.

I suspect he is trying to build arrowcarts as the siege itself is already going on. And seeing them being nuked before he can finish them.

Finished siege shoots back, and are relatively safe.