Guild Wars 2

Here are some guides that I’m working on right now. These guides are for people that want to scout (defend) an objective and also for commanders that want to capture an objective. In the end you will understand fully where the weak spots are, how to defend from certain attacks and how to attack it most effectively.

I managed to finish the guide for all the towers (Academy, Necropolis, Outpost and Depot) for the new desert borderlands map which can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLduHbZPbtobHjIvdoZtd_99Y2ZFJpbFAx

This playlist will include all towers and keeps eventually and I will keep you posted here when new guides show up. The next video coming up is for the Rampart keep.

Note: The siege placement might change in the future when new tactics and strategy are learned, but for now this is the “meta” so to speak.

Let me know what you guys think and if you have any suggestions/questions.

Chaba also made videos on shortcuts from point A to B:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZDlfzyAWJZDCX2PbSxC-3KeLCYY-9QKk

Here’s a quick tip to buy in bulk, sort of.
Make sure you align the Confirm “yes” option with the item in the list. This way you don’t have to move your mouse just click once for the popup and then click again for the Yes, and again and again. You do have to click twice for one item, but there’s no mouse movement needed.

- Towers dont threaten keeps due to being too far away.
- Keeps dont control their area due to no waypoints.
- Camps are no longer the lifeblood of upgrades due to autoupgrades (at least EB only suffer this).

1) I agree towers are not really required to be captured since you can’t treb from them the keep. So basically Academy and Necropolis are only captured for points while Outpost and Depot are very important to defend for WP if you can use it.

2) In my opinion WPs should be removed completely. You can already traverse the map in -5 minutes.

3) If dollyaks would spawn slower then the problem would get fixed.

Dawdler.8521:

It has been requested before and it doesnt need to be trialed. Just add a UI tickbox option with “Abbreviated WvW nametags”. End of story, implementation done.

WTB c++ coder

This event can easily be fixed by changing the following:
1) change announcement time from 10 minutes to 1 minute, this way only people that reacted fast enough get it
2) change the event time from 50 minutes to 10 minutes, this way organized groups get it first
3) make the laser attack only the gates and not touch the oil and the wall because right now the outpost tower gets all 3 damaged
4) reduce the damage by 70%

Let me ask you this. What benefit does a tower give? What benefit causes a server to defend it, and what benefit causes a server to want to capture it? What relevance does it have to the other structures on the map?

If the barricades were actual walls, then the zerg would have to take those walls down or go the other way around which takes a really long time especially circling the academy tower.

You can shoot west gate at rampart from close to UC, the ennemy can’t counter treb you.

I think you’re referring to that deser platform on top of undercroft. That is indeed a nice spot for a treb and it’s very hidden since no one really goes there.

Same for north west tower, build a proxy cata on the north wall, ac won’t be able to shoot that cata if they are too far from the wall border

Check my guide at https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Quick-guide-to-Desert-Borderlands For defending the back wall of Academy you need 2 carts. I think the cart in the bushes is protected from ballistas because it’s protected by the wall, by I haven’t tested this fully.

The keeps especially are hard if not impossible to scout alone. The spots where the enemy can enter are numerous. So the safest way I guess is to scout only the inner but then it would be too late if you spot them there.

Pls check my guide on this forum – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Quick-guide-to-Desert-Borderlands
Bay had 3 outer gates and 3 inner gates all spreaded very far away, now it has only 2 gates at inner. There were ton of walls including underwater walls which were hard to scout, now in undercroft you can protect both walls wityh one cart.

PLEASE LEARN THE MAP AND STOP WINNING LIKE LITTLE KIDS

Bumping this so people stop complaining about how hard scouting is

1) learn the map
2) yes I agree, the laser is too powerfull, it destroys even oils and walls not just gates
3) learn the map
4) roamers need to learn the map
5) scouting is much easier because of the lack of supplies for upgrades and because dolyaks bring supplies faster; this hasn’t changed scouting unless you’re a masochist and liked building a superior treb in 40 minutes
6) that’s the whole point of this new map, to reduce rewards and keep farmers in PVE and to reduce the blobbing

Please learn the new map and you will like it. You base your opinion disliking the new map on you having trouble traversing it. If you knew the paths and shortcuts you will have fun roaming around, etc.
Right now the BL maps are empty because people grind PVE so you have a better chance to not knock into enemies everywhere and you can focus on the terrain and learn it. Do it now and fast while everyone is kittening and not giving it a try, otherwise later will be more difficult.
If you played WvW for 6000 hours then you know that if arena net will ever remove the desert maps will be more like 2 years from now. So are you willing to only play EBG for 2 years?

What is the concept of small/solo play as envisioned through the map?

A small group can accomplish a couple of things:

• take sentries to track enemy movement and help our zerg not to get tracked by them
• take only one earth/fire shrine to deny the enemy the perma stealth or fire immunity, or take all air shrines to deny the air pads/turrets and fall immunity.
• scout a keep/tower and prep it with siege in key locations, call out your zerg when enemies are attacking it, repair walls/gates, activate tactics if a guild has claimed it and placed tactics in it
• contest WPs by attacking one guard to deny the enemy the chance to teleport and make them check if it’s actually attacked
• follow zergs and kill off stragglers and/or turn your tag on to let your zerg where the enemy zerg is moving
• capture camps to deny the supply and camp upgrades, but right now this is pointless and needs to be fixed because there are too many dolyaks
• duel other players which unfortunately this is what most roamers do

The places I was most likely to find fights are dead. No one cares about camps since supply is no longer a requirement for upgrades.

I was leading a team of 5-6 players we took the whole map and by the end of it we haven’t flipped one camp because we took all our needed supplies from the towers/keeps we captured. I believe the problem with the supply is the dollyaks spawn way too quickly. We needed supplies for upgrades, siege and repair and now when upgrades no longer require it, normally the supply income should have been made slower not faster. Not really a good game design decision.

If the defending group was camping a keeps walls instead of jumping down to fight, I could set up defensive siege and treb a keep to make them come to me. Now the towers are just pointless

Didn’t enjoy the trebbing from one objective to another. If I was scouting lake and someone took hills and placed trebs to hit lake then I was feeling helpless because there was nothing a scout can do defend lake from being trebbed from hills.
If the barricades are replaced by real walls which need to be taken by catapults, then zergs would have to plant siege and burn supply for them. By right now zerg burn through barricades like butter while the regular roamer has to go around it or spend 10min to take it down.

People don’t bother to defend anymore since no work goes into upgrading them and they aren’t defending WP’s they spent hours building.

Pls remember that you are basing your opinion here on a stupid bug that hasn’t been fixed since day 1 of GW2 (when it’s contested you teleport in the first second before going into contested again). If this bug was fixed, then that WP would be pointless because enemies will tag garri for one hour before attacking it and you wouldn’t know exactly when the big push is coming. Also, people were defending garri because of the reinforced gates and fortified walls, not just because of that waypoint.
Honestly I would rather not have WPs at all on the map only at spawns. This makes the zerg less mobile. And if you want a reward put into your scouting effort then getting T3 (wall+gates) should be good enough without the WP upgrade.

WvW didn’t become “harder”, it became more tedious and soulless now that everything is on auto pilot.

If you never did scouting where you had build a superior treb from supplies taken from camps even form other maps and spend like 40minutes only on that you would appreciate the auto-upgrades a lot. Supply is important now because you can build your siege painlessly and of course you get to fully repair your walls/gates.
Right now there are lot of more supplies than needed (which can be resolved by decreasing the dolyak spawns) and this makes camps a bit pointless.

At the cost of total loss of strategical gameplay due to towers and keeps being completely disconnected from each other.

If you’re talking about trebing from one objective to another, actually I really hated that in the old borderlands.

The new borderlands map is really cool since it’s new and I’m having fun learning the shortcuts, siege placement for attack and defense, etc.

The notion that this new map is designed to break up blobbing is absolutely laughable.

Yes. Big map = less blob. In your opinion, don’t you think a bigger map would separate people in smaller groups to be able to defend/attack on all fronts? If not then what, a smaller map?

You place incentive on defense and ppt over fights and made capturing stuff harder instead of working towards a balance, what on earth made you think this would make blobbing less of an obvious strategic choice

Yes because auto-upgrades and fortified gates makes capturing last longer and gives the option to at least have time to get there and place some carts or something to defend.

And of course autoupgrades, the negative effect of it is that it simply encourages more blobbing since stuff upgrades so much faster and easier

So paper objectives flipped constantly by a running blob is better than to have fortified gates which discourage people to attack?

You add more pve to the maps? For what, why?

Where exactly have you seen PVE? There are way less mobs now on the map all the real mobs now are just part of an objective. Objective mobs are not PVE mobs.

Navigation and movement on the map is absolutely terrible, when your trying to rush somewhere to defend, catch up to your group, or run back after dying, and instead your standing there wasting time looking for a way down that wont kill you

It called LEARNING THE MAP. Once you know map you know exactly the shortcut to quickly get to an objective.

Whoever thought that keeping track of all this gimmicky garbage while trying to fight an even bigger blob was ever a good idea?

Learn the map.

Wow, I’m baffled of how subjective you can criticize something. Dude forget your emotions for a second and think with your head, objectively. Most of the stuff they implemented is to lower the blobs and make defending/upgrading easier. They made some mistakes like the laser event which is too overpowered and actually helps the winning team, but mostly it’s positive stuff.

17 players and doing PVD for 20mins to get a keep, you must have killed all the oils, canons, mortars and destroyed all gates

I fully agree with the OP. If people aren’t even taking care of that objective by not even at least pressing a button then they don’t deserve the upgrade.
But once the button is pushed it should trigger the effect in 5minutes, otherwise you could let the enemies bring the reinforced wall to 5% and then hit that button and bring it to fortified at 100% health which is not nice.

A lot of people here are complaining about map complexity, which is very different from map size. OP is only trying to say that the size (and travel times) are basically the same as the old BL.

If you learn shortcuts you realize that it takes mostly 1 minute to get to one keep to a tower and viceversa. You also have to refresh your 40% speed increase from the shrines. When pass over a sentry and it’s yours remember to grab a first aid kit and auto cast skill5 if your build doesn’t have perma swiftness.

the Palace inner north wall, arrow carts will get hit by a balista in the little corner spot…You can also place an arrow cart above the left side of that north inner gate that can’t be meteored but it can still hit everything around the gate area.

I thought so, kitten . I guess that inner north wall is as vulnerable as the south inner wall. There is not much love for the palace keep. Might become like old bay.
The place for these carts is to be protected from meteor at least for a while.

Easiest counter I found is to put a treb in the open space near the bottom of the stairs to lords room.

This is really a quick guide that helps with rams and proxy catapults. Haven’t touched on the catapults/trebs at a distance which have to be countered by inner trebs.

I’ve got a question about the floater outside the Oasis gate at Rampart. Can it be hit from the ground by meteor or balista? I haven’t had a chance to test that yet.

I did test with the sylvari sentry turret skill which has a range of 1500 and you can cast the skill on the floating thing where the mortar is. This is why I put those carts there at SW+SE outer walls. They might get slightly hit by meteors.

Does the treb at outer gate for Undercroft work ? They are really close…

Can’t remember if I managed to hit with them, but they don’t hit any ceiling at the top which indicates it should work. The rampart trebs at inner are bad. There were 2 rams and that treb couldn’t hit any of them. I think the trick is to place the rams furthest away from the gate and to the left/right side as possible.

Thanks Catalin. I enjoyed your old videos for the alpine borderland; this also provides a good orientation.

I’m glad you enjoyed them. Those were really detailed unlike to this guide But I will probably make some videos on the desert borderlands too in the future when people know the spots cause right now everyone goes for rams or at most, proxy catapults.

You can defend the outer northern wall in Palace with the mortar or with a Treb built a little more to the west.

I know about that mortar. Funny enough I used it against some FarShiverPeaks that went for trebuchets. The thing is that if you build your proxy catapults a lot to the right side and very close to the wall, then that mortar won’t be enough.

I cannot view these particular pictures (don’t know why)

Which images don’t load? They load fine to me, just remember to click on them to see them bigger.

Only thing that doesn’t seem to work is supply cows through gates.

I can confirm that. I tried to hit them with cows, but there were no green dmg bubbles and no supply removal sounds. Might be a visual bug or they don’t get supply depleted in which case it sucks, cause supply traps are limited to 1 per account.

Though, it would help to have a full size map at the start of each section, with maybe the names of each place you’ve detailed in bold and the plot being reviewed circled on that map so that we step into the guide with a directional image in our heads.

I will if I can make a map like I did for the old borderland maps.

Not really trolling.
I’m not saying the new desert maps are smaller than the older ones, but they are not that big, only wider. The verticality helps it a bit too, but I was expecting 2x size and maybe improve their engine to support it too which might make EBG less laggy.

I will post a quick guide on each objective (keep and tower) for the new desert borderlands map. Check the description at the top of each image and click on the image to make it larger.

Rampart
http://imgur.com/a/gceK8

• At inner it has 2 gates and 2 walls. Trebs are a bit too close to the gates and sometimes they don’t hit the rams, so I will need to find a better spot for them.
• At outer it has 3 gates and 6 walls (2 east, 2 west and 2 at the water gate).
• The best attack approach is to use a proxy catapult at the outer north wall and then quickly climb the stairs and hit the inner west wall with another proxy catapult.

Undercroft
http://imgur.com/a/eT8a7

• At inner it has 2 gates and 2 walls. The 2 walls can be defended with only one cart built on the supply depot at the top.
• At outer it has 3 gates and 6 walls (2 north, 2 south and 2 east). The carts for the north and south walls are a bit vulnerable but unfortunately there’s no better spot for now.
• The best attack approach is to use a proxy catapult at the east bottom wall because it’s the least scouted and then hit the north inner wall with a catapult placed on the pillars. I took undercroft with the same catapults a couple of times because the enemies didn’t bothered to thoroughly search for enemy siege.

Palace
http://imgur.com/a/xpbsV

• At inner it has 2 gates and 2 walls. The north wall cart might be sniped by a ballista (haven’t tested it), but the most vulnerable is the south wall cart which is easily killed by aoe and it doesn’t even reach catapults placed right next to the wall
• At outer it has 3 gates and 3 walls (1 north, 1 at NW and 1 at SW). You can’t actually sit on top of the north wall so you can’t place any carts which makes it the most vulnerable wall
• Even if it has 3 less outer walls than the other keeps it is the most vulnerable because the north outer wall and the south inner wall can’t be defended against proxy catapults. Placing a catapult next to each wall will grant you easy access to this keep.

Academy
http://imgur.com/a/Xqr7S

• It has the most walls (6) and even if they are close to each other only the SE walls can be defended with one cart, while the other you have to place one cart for each wall.
• The best attack approach is to use a proxy catapult at the north wall because it’s the least scouted and it’s also pretty hidden.

Necropolis
http://imgur.com/a/6Uyo7

• It has 5 walls and unfortunately you need the same amount of carts as for the Academy because of the height of the walls.
• The best attack approach is to use a proxy catapult at the west wall because it’s the least scouted and it’s also pretty hidden under the rock.

Outpost
http://imgur.com/a/ehXZw

• It has 4 walls, but can be defended with only 3 carts and has the best layout out of all the towers. This means it’s easy to scout and easy to hit with a treb placed on the top cliff.
• The best attack approach is to use a proxy catapult at the north wall because it’s the least scouted. Just make sure you come from the oasis otherwise you will have to break the barricades which makes unnecessary swords.

Depot
http://imgur.com/a/VqOsc

• It has 4 walls, but can be defended with only 3 carts. The tower is small but has a lot of dead ends with the inner walls which makes it a bit difficult to scout.
• The best attack approach is to use a proxy catapult at the north wall because it’s the least scouted. Just make sure you come from the oasis otherwise you will have to break the barricades which makes unnecessary swords.

Keeps aren’t that big, they have verticality which you need to learn. For example in Undercroft you can stay at inner and also scout the north and south outer gates by moving to the edge of each cliff at inner. People don’t know the map so they complain.

Defending is easier now because you have fortified gates which take a long time to bring down. You also get the upgrade automatically as long as you defend it and it doesn’t require supply. This means that with the supply inside you can build your 5 trebs and 6-7 carts to defend from rams and proxy catapults. Supplies get in the keep faster than ever which means that you build you siege quickly and you also have leftovers to repair stuff. There are a 5 supply depots close to each gate which makes it even faster to place those trebs.

If anything arena net buffed defending objectives a lot. How people are not seeing this is beyond comprehension? Probably cause they don’t know the map.

Flipping objectives was easier before HOT because everything would stay T0 (paper) and 2 superior rams would take a paper gate in 20 seconds. Now, if you move into a map with your map jump crew and everything is capped and fortified (because of the auto upgrades) you have a hard time to cap the entire map. Which means that the opposing factions have time to react.

1. no waypoints at all; make the zerg suffer and promote the small groups that don’t need them
2. make the laser event last only 10mins which rewards the server that reacts fastest
3. i agree with +5 supply buff, but since guilds no longer claim it’s kinda` irrelevant right now
4. no rewards at all; if you are in it for the big shinies, then farm maguma maps
5. hp options?

The purpose of the game is siege warfare. If it were just fighting why would you need towers, keeps, supplies and siege? You could make it like a spvp map with capture the point, but make it bigger.
Can’t wait for arena net to make huge kitten map where people can bash their heads against each other, get bored with it and then move on to another thing.
WvW is about PPT, make points, defend, scout, flanking, tactics, siege etc.

Killacam.2064:

I like large and small maps, wouldn’t it be nice to have a REALLY small one that encouraged a different kind of pvp? I think it would be nice to have both but nice rant.

There is a small map. It’s called Obsidian Sanctum

I was expecting a huge map, maybe like 2 EBGs merged, but actually it’s just as long as the old borderlands map, but now it’s wider like EBG. But the wide area is just to accommodate for that big oasis in the middle, as for the sides are still kinda` small.

People complain about it to be too big, but actually they don’y even know the map. I very often see kitten commanders that lead people all over the place, for instance yesterday a commander went to the bottom of the map to get the the Palace’s gates instead of taking the high cliff and arriving at the north gate in like 30 seconds.

If you think about, let’s take the old BL map, if you come from cragtop and you go into the water, go through the middle ruins, arrive at Lake tower, then go up the bridge and arrive at the south gates of Hills, instead of running directly up the cliff from Garri to Hills, then everyone would complain that even the old BL map is too big.

And also if people play EBG all the time where every objective can be trebbed from one keep to a tower, tower to castle, etc, and blobs run around all over the places using the WP, etc, then yes even the old BL map is huge.

Example: Rampart to Undercroft (30 seconds), Rampart to Palace (30 seconds). You just have to know your way around and take the shortest path. Remember the old borderlands map, people jumped off the cliffs to get from Citadel to Cragtop. No one was waling down the dollyak path.

ARENA.NET
Please stop listening to people that say the map is too big. They are just spoiled kids that would like the learning of the map to be surgically implemented into their brain without any effort, served on a silver platter. Once you know the shortcuts, all is easy.

People say it is normal that wvw maps feel empty atm, because with HoT realese many players are in PvE, wait a week or 2 bla bla bla bla. That is stupid.

No it’s not. On the SFR server when the Halloween, Christmas, Easter events are on, the maps are always empty and we have trouble keeping up our score. Now combine that with the release of a new expansion with a new class, mastery system, guild hall grinding, new PVE maps, and the fear of exploring and learning the new BL maps, no wonder the population is low. All the focus right now is on PVE. I wonder how sPVP is right now.

Like, can you actually stop for a moment and truly immagine and visualize it how it would be riddiculous to siege such a big area AND REFRESH that siege?

Not really. I scouted yesterday Undercroft and it’s quite easy: 1 treb for each of the 3 outer gates, 2 carts on the edges next to the oil on the North and South outer gates to protect the walls, and 2 carts on the platform for the outer east gate walls, and at inner is easier, only 2 trebs for each gate and only one cart at the top to cover both inner walls. You sit at inner and from there you can see both North and South outer gates. You will not see the East one, but usually no one attacks that one. The same thing was with old BL Bay. You had to travel a lot from the North gate to the South one, you also had a lot of walls, the water walls, and the inner area was even bigger then inner Undercroft.

Sieging, upgrading and scouting in WvW was just for an elit part of players.

And the “elites” will shout at people that took supplies from garrison when the upgrades were important or a wall needed repairs. The auto-upgrade goes like this: if you scouted your keep for long enough and protect it from invaders then you deserve an upgrade. Also building siege is faster since you use the supplies inside instead of doing 10 runs to the nearest camp (which was never always 100% available) to build that 120 supplies superior trebuchet.

You don’t want to fight in an area where the enemy is getting free stealth or you’re constantly burning.

This implies more cooperation from the commander to send a 1-2 players to get that one shrine to remove the stealth, fire etc.

The keeps are full supply and will eventually upgrade so the defenders just sit on the wall and wait for you to get bored.

The supply is only for people to build siege and repair stuff. If your keep has 1100/1100 supplies but all the siege has expired or was never built, it’s pretty much the same thing as before. You also know exactly which objective has upgrades and when they will finish by clicking on it on the map. So if you see that rampart gets fortified in 30mins, then you better knock on those defenses quickly before they do so.

The lack of WP’s at T3 gives no incentive to hold anything. The WP’s you get are instantly given to you when you flip a structure so what is the point in defending when you can just flip something back.

Only rampart and the 2 spawn towers have those WP. It’s a way for people to easily defend their starting objective. I don’t agree with the WP in rampart, if it were to me I would only leave it in the spawn towers only. Already servers that started at the north side of the map have an advantage and quickly take over the rest of the map. A WP in their main keep only gives them more advantage.

The new map rewards blobbing and helps the dominant server steamroll.

Blobbing will always exist as long as an aoe cap exists. Making these maps larger helped with diminishing the blob, but not eliminating it completely.

towers are easier since you only have to deal with 1 npc rather than a small lords room full of them

Actually right now towers and keeps are harder to cap because of the new bosses. Btw, some bosses summon minions (necropolis).

Yeah but those “people” are in it only for the rewards. They don’t care about the gameplay mode of wvw. They are the ones that whine a lot when things don’t go their way (remember, they are there for farming only and it has to be efficient), they bm the commander when he f***s up, stealing supplies from objectives, overall being a spoiled brat that only wants his candy and on his terms. Sorry, but I would rather play it with fewer more involved people then with tons of farmers.

And probably they are the ones that forced arena net into bringing the wvw skill system and the big loots, cause they want rewards and progression. The point of wvw is not to progress your character or your hoarding stash, it’s to get your server to the top through defending your captured objectives or attack enemy objectives. It’s like a glorified capture the flag skirmish game, but instead of lasting 40 minutes it lasts 1 week.

Nope, this will make more blob, because people don’t want to run back if they are killed. At least inside your blob your friend can res you.

There are all kinds of objectives next to you. If you die at the north side of the map and you spawn in the south side then you do some objectives there. And besides the death penalty is almost 0, no xp loss no repair costs, just the spawn reset. Large maps are very hard for a blob of people to control. You are sieging undercroft and manage to take it and during this time you lost rampart or academy And then you go to the academy to defend it, but you lost it and necropolis is under attack and soon taken too. Large map = spread of people = less zerging/blobing

Now there is no point to running doly, you always have sups inside the keep because it’s not used for the upgrade.

There was always a lot of drama when people were taking supplies when you were trying to upgrade it. It is easier now, but brings people together because supplies are used for building siege or repair.

And as we don’t care to defend those useless keep, we don’t care if they are T0 or T3 and we don’t even care to build siege inside…

Well you do care if it’s T3 because now gates are fortified too and takes a really long time to bring them down. Upgrades are as important as on the old maps. T2 adds guards next to all walls, which prevent from ninja catapults since you have to kill that guard and make swords.

Now as the upgrade are free and automatic, that we don’t have WP anymore (or WP at T0 for Rampart) the keep have the same value at T0 or T3. Then we don’t care to defend it… We just take it back, welcome to the Karma Train.

Their decision to have WP at rampart and spawn towers baffles me, because in order to make the map seem larger and prevent zerging, WP should be removed completely. I play on SFR and we always have a map jump crew that used to cap an old borderlands map completely very very fast and it’s not normal. It should take you time to cap an entire map. This also helps with the karma train prevention too.

In fact, most roamers have said to me that they can now roam forever without ever running in to an enemy and it is terribly boring.

I think it’s too early to make a statement on this because most people are learning the map and the shortcuts. Once you know the map, you know exactly how to get there really fast. And once the shortcuts have been established you know where to find people if you want to find them and surprise attack them.

Auto upgrading is bad for the smaller server, and those with less coverage. You turn up on the map which is totally enemy colour and everything is t3, making small groups and roamers unable to achieve very much at all, so they log off and go play something else.

This has nothing to do with the auto-upgrades, it’s the NPC champions that are really hard. Let’s take a paper tower, you place down a superior catapult behind a back wall and it takes you 1.5 minutes to take it down. If it were a T3 it takes you about 3.5 minutes. Are those 2 minutes that much of a difference? What’s really hard right now for roamers are capping a tower/keep because the champions are really strong.

EOTM is a “huge” map and you see practically no small groups and roamers because it is so big and you have to spend so much time getting from point A to B. People die and wait at spawn for the zerg to zone back home. How is this going to be any different?

EOTM is the red-haired step child of arena net. Because there’s no PPT in there you won’t see any scouts, defensive siege built, etc. All you see are people wanting to farm and those are not your wvw players, those are farmers. Also EOTM is filled with areas where you can fall off the map while these new maps don’t really have that, that much.

How do you figure less rewards are going to promote people playing wvw? Maybe I’m odd but for some reason I’m thinking more rewards would mean more participation?

Rewards are for pve players, fights are for spvp players, while PPT is for wvw. Unfortunately wvw is filled with players that want everything (big rewards to craft legendaries, zerg fights, gvg fights or single duels and also have their server to be number 1). If wvw would be more focused then people that enjoy the core gameplay of the wvw (PPT for your server either defending or attacking) then we would probably have a more similar wish list for wvw.

The good parts:

• Huge map which means zergs have a hard time defending and promotes roamers and small groups. The verticality of it helps too making it even bigger.
• Auto-upgrading without using supplies is fantastic. This removes the shouting at people that use supplies from inside the keep when you try to upgrade it and also makes the building of siege inside much faster without the need to do supply runs from the camp. Having a supply depot next to each gate is helpful too. Also, since the auto-upgrading revolves around time, it promotes defending points for a long time to get those upgrades. And maps no longer have paper doors when no scouts are around to upgrade them which makes the zerg farming more difficult.
• Lesser rewards from WvW are good because it promotes activities that help the PPT, not farming
• Same amount of gates/walls for all keeps and towers makes it fair for all servers. All keeps have 3 outer gates and 2 inner gates and 1 or 2 walls next to each gate.
• Barricades are good because towers become real hinders when traversing the map instead of objectives that you can easily pass by. The bad thing with this one is that they can be attacked by player attacks when they should behave like walls and force you to place a catapult. Right now it hinders roamers while zergs simply burn through barricades in a second.
• Dollies now bring supplies more often, but carry less, which means that killing caravans is no longer such a huge deal. Defending them is easier now too, popping a 90% damage reduction when next to a dolly.
• Sentries now show the enemies on the map which helps to track zergs and promote roaming and small-groups
• First-aid kits from the sentries (skill 5) give a swiftness buff and the shrines give a 5min speed boost too which helps you run faster if you are in a hurry.

The bad parts:

• Claiming only if 3 guild members participated in the capture makes it that roamers and PUGs can’t fortify a location using the claim upgrades. This might drive players into bunching up in fewer guilds or not; we shall see, it might be a good thing in the end
• High walls makes it very hard for the defenders to defend from proxy catapults with carts. You will always have to place those carts on the stairs of the walls, but they can easily be killed by aoe spells, instead of being able to place them in obscure places.
• Arrow carts need line of sight. This makes the proxy catapults attacks very common and is very hard to defend them.
• Tactivators prevent siege from being places around them which makes certain locations to be hard to defend without having arrow carts there.
• The Palace keep has one inner wall and one outer wall which as a defender you can’t sit on it and you can’t place any arrow carts to defend it against proxy catapults. This means it’s the most vulnerable keep of all 3.
• The come back mechanic (Oasis event) in badly executed. If you want to make the small guy have a chance then the event has to happen fast as in a 5 min announcement and a 10 min gather event and without the progress of the other teams being displayed, only your progress. This will make roamers run fast to the oasis and quickly gather the cores without the enemies knowing what they do. Also the damage to the gates from the sky canon has to be lowered, because paper gates almost get destroyed, so it should be reduced to 50% on paper gates and less for the others.

Things you might not have known:

• You can click an objective on the map/mini-map and the upgrades/claim popup appears and I think you can even claim or add tactics/upgrades if it’s yours.
• Undercroft and Palace look like they have barricades on the map, but in reality there are no barricades there.
• Shrines only give the benefit to the server that owns the keep.

This makes the server starting from the SW corner to be at a disadvantage to hold the undercroft keep since it can’t get any supplies with which to build siege inside or repair. You have to rely on the NW camp which is usually held by the enemy.

WvW.
Undercroft keep can’t get supplies from the encampment camp because the dolly catches fire when next to the keep and dies. Not even escorting the dolly which gives the bubble buff helps, because those lava stacks ignore it.

I have created video guides for the borderlands map (attack point and positions).
Unfortunately the will become obsolete once the new desert borderlands come into play.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLduHbZPbtobGpF6P9Xb2qO00ZguZN4DjX

90% of the roamers are thiefs, why do you think that is?

It’s because of the concept of the Stealth mechanic. WvW is a zerg fest and when roaming, there’s a big chance you will encounter more enemies than your group. Having 40k HP and 5k armor will still not protect you when outnumbered. So the best option is to just become invisible. Another option is to run fast, that’s why elementalist D/D is preferred too.
If Stealth gets nerfed to a point that thieves can’t escape these encounters then that class will be abandoned. So you either have 90% thieves or 0%. There’s no in between.

The idea around the thief class is getting stealthed, dish out as much damage as possible, go back in stealth. If you take that away then it becomes just a squishy warrior.
Warriors have HP to compensate, Thieves have Stealth.
Roll a thief and you will learn their stealth rotation and will be able to counter them with your main class.

Karizee.8076:

It’s been my experience that face-tanking siege weaponry will end up with my face in the dirt

You just need to bring some bigger weapons to the party. Here’s a good guide:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2bh6ei/a_video_guide_for_borderlands_towers_keeps/

I’m glad you found the guides helpful

Indeed, ArenNet will not ban people for using the PPT app because they are the ones that are promoting/sponsoring the contest.

I think, perhaps, the only concern about it is the prospect to grief since anyone could supply or change the information about siege placement and damage to gate and walls

If you trust the scout and connect to his map then you will have valuable information. If some random guy says, hey commander connect to my map for the scouting info on Briar and everything there is bogus, then it’s a problem with the person. Trolling is everywhere, can’t really escape it.
What trolls can’t do, is mess someone else’s siege map. Only the owner can edit the info, the rest are guests and can only view it.
Like I said in the video I would like to add extra security features for the siege map like requiring a password if needed or give someone you trust edit permissions.

Alt tabbing was a problem for me too. I don’t have an extra monitor so when I was raiding with my guild I always had to do that to see if the camp has the buff or not. Now with the PPT app I don’t have to do that, and on top of that I also have an overview of what the enemy is doing.
Yesterday I was playing WvW and the claimed by guild feature actually told you the trail that the guild GOD was leaving. Every time they got a camp they put +5 on it for extra supply.
And the app has other stuff in it too, like the scouting map, bloodlust, etc.

I’m glad, did you manage to install it?

There’s a new app for WvW that will tell you buff timers, notifications, siege placement for objectives, etc.

This is the short 5min video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8VLVJE-ijc and here are some screens:

http://i.imgur.com/DFeBkko.png
http://i.imgur.com/JtgmUuu.png
http://i.imgur.com/CwYsrDQ.png

How about just have one tag up at anytime no mater the color while the rest stay hidden on the map. On my server there are always spies and giving them our entire player movement on the map is not safe.

Impressive golem army
On our server we have a 4-10 omega golems almost every day on every map. If you like this type of action you can always join a T1 server.

I have published the video for Bay, which means that all towers and keeps for Borderlands have videos now.

New version of Briar is up

New versions for garrison and hills are up, check the playlist url. I’m struggling with bay now because we have no scouts or players anymore and it’s hard to get bay to T3. So this video will take a while. Same for v2 for Briar.

I posted new versions for Sunny, Cragtop and Lake tower. The change list is in the video comments.

I have added the video guide for Hills. Check the playlist youtube link https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLduHbZPbtobGpF6P9Xb2qO00ZguZN4DjX

you can edit your first message and sum up all these videos

Thank you for your input. I have changed the original post to have the playlist video url.

The last part is true, although most people make it general practice to wipe all siege before going after the lord. Those who don’t either haven’t played much or have an 80+ blob where it doesn’t really matter.

I do mention in the video that the mortar and canons are those at inner when defending outer or the ones from the east walls when they attack the west gate. Other wise I would have said use oil when faced against rams or the canon right next to oil.

I don’t post in WvW forums really, but I wanted to say that these videos are absolutely fantastic. Good job.

Appreciate it. I already have a to-do list of how to improve all the videos I already posted, but I now want to push Hills and Bay and then do the re-edits. If I manage to finish the editing for Hills today it might be up on youtube tomorrow.

It’s a good spot for the treb, although it’s hard to hit their catas at sentry because of limited visibility. The treb I show in the video is placed on the ramp, but it’s placed lower so they can’t kill it with ballistas. If they decide to build ninja cataputs and bombard the entire tower’s yard to kill siege inside then that’s a bit overkill, because that can easily be accomplished with one cart (check the video at 14:32) or even with the cart at the gate.

Also everything placed on and next to the supply hut can be killed with the cart at 16:06 in the video and that cart can be built easily without any threat because it’s very far away from the tower and the camp is near.

Good spot non the less. I’m glad you find the siege game in WvW interesting.

I have added the garrison video. Check the youtube playlist link at the top.