Guild Wars 2

I have just added Cragtop to the playlist.

I have made a playlist for all the videos [check at the top]

Inside each video description you can find the siege placement images.

PS: It’s a work in progress. I will post here when new videos get added to the playlist.

The changes I proposed would make defending easier, which will stop the mindless blobbing and karma trains.

“And how long does it take 1 thief to enter a tower or keep, assuming he didnt cheat?”
Please don’t go offtopic, I was talking about the stats on the NPCs that are really low and they need a buff. Not uber NPCs, but at least the same NPC as you encounter in PVE.

“NPCs are a distraction and used poorly as a content blocker because its “not normal”.”
So why do we have 6 Personnel upgrades? Then let’s just remove those upgrade, because usually people run those upgrades to troll.

“Karma train doesn’t invloves ANY KIND of defences, so all this changes will just do prime time even more boring”
The human mind is trained to keep what it captures, unless you are ill and you need to seek a doctor. At first people got excited about upgrades, until they realized that you can spend 8 hours and scout a tower and make it T3 and fill it up with siege, but if you go to the bathroom for 3 minutes there’s a good chance you lost it, because it takes a couple of seconds for 3 superior rams to burn through the gate and cap.

Ultimately people understood that Personnel Upgrades are worthless as are the NPCs, and the Structure Upgrades are somewhat good, but that reinforced door still burns quickly. And coupled with the fact that you constantly have to refresh the siege, makes defending quite fragile, if not already very boring.

Knowing that defending is hard, attacking made more sense, but unfortunately you loose it as quickly as you captured it. And PVE farmers loved this idea because they can grind faster.

I’m making a guide for the borderlands towers and keeps (in progress).
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/A-video-guide-for-Borderlands-Towers-Keeps/first#post4231529

I said " It’s not normal for 5 people to capture a keep." .
Keep != Tower

5 ppl taking tower is fine.
15 ppl taking a keep is fine too.

But right now 1 thief can solo a tower lord (check youtube) and 5 people can easily take a keep.

7 Easy WvW Improvements that I can implement myself if source-code is available in less than 1 hour.

• Make veterans and champions (hp+dmg) as powerful as the ones from PVE – look at the NPC commander its dolyak. It’s not normal for 5 people to capture a keep.
• Personnel upgrades that increase the level should add 5 more levels not just 2.
• Double the life/armor of walls/gates. Gates no longer go down in a couple of seconds.
• Gates can’t be hit by normal damage, like the walls are now. No more PVD.
• Siege decays in 4 hours, not 1 hour. Scouts will no longer manifest the refresh syndrome in their sleep.
• Make guild cata and guild golem the same as the other guild siege, which are just superior siege that cost the same supply, but have an esthetic improvement. Also remove them from the guild upgrades and move them in the guild shop.
• Siege skill cooldowns should be set per siege weapon, not per player. This creates the situation where 5 ppl use the same catapult and they can keep that bubble permanent.

The idea is that wvw skills have increased the siege damage, but there are no improvements to the camp/tower/keep upgrades. These 7 things will make flipping less often and slow down the karma train. Or is wvw just a karma fest and I misunderstood it for RvR?

I have added siege placement map images for all videos

I’m glad you found the videos helpful.

Now here’s the guide for the sunnyhill, woodhaven, longview tower
[check the playlist video link at the top]

Here’s the defensive/offensive guide for placing and using siege equipment for the Briar Tower
[check the playlist video link at the top]

Thank you. The other 3 towers are coming soon.

Here’s a video guide on scouting/defending/attacking all the borderlands towers and keeps.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLduHbZPbtobGpF6P9Xb2qO00ZguZN4DjX

Inside each video description you can find the siege placement images.

Please let me know what you think.

PS: All videos are up

The guild is called Pisici [MIAU] and was created a very long time ago with a different purpose, but it does have a lot of upgrades including guild catas and would be a shame not to use it. We can change it later if needed. The aren’t any members as of now, this is why I started recruiting.

You can still play in your current guild if you have one and only represent this guild when playing together. The purpose of my “call to arms” topic is to gather all people that enjoy the tactics that siege weapons provide.

When we are defending we will:
- build siege in hard to kill places which will allow us to kill enemy siege when we are attacked
- start relevant upgrades (structural)
- upgrade the nearby camp (increase supply only) and escort the dolyak
- repair the walls and gates when damaged
- call out in map chat or ts when we are attacked and provide scouting information

When we are attacking we will:
- scout the enemy tower/keep to see where they placed their siege
- destroy their siege with normal aoe attacks or arrow carts
- after the location is cleaned up we can attack ourselves if we are at least 5 or call the commander to join us

Defending can be expensive but we can minimize the costs by defending towers if we are not that many, only place siege in key locations and only do the walls & gates upgrades.

It will be fun to figure out the best spots for offensive and defensive siege and working together.

If you like to siege up a place, run upgrades, call out attackers, escort dolyaks and upgrade camps for the extra supply, then add me in game Catalin.5341
Also if you enjoy going on the offensive by first cleaning up the enemy siege and then attack with good placed siege, you are welcome to join the guild.

The server I’m on is SFR.

First of all when you teleport into blobs, you get tons of skill lag, so you are pretty much suicidal and for what? 5 enemies going into down state and then the rest of bob raising them up.

I guess that’s why I saw 5 ac circles inside the tower from only one offensive a.cart at the gate. He probably was a warrior.

That would be great.
I will add you in game and chat.

Hi,

I would like to join a guild that does only wvw and is from Seafarer’s Rest server. I don’t like to run with the zerg, but instead be part of a small team that believes in the power of siege, capturing towers and defending key locations.

I have a lvl 80 thief and elementalist (fully geared) and I have a lot of wvw experience, especially in siege placement.

You should come to a T1 server. You will never see 100/100 supplies on a wooden tower with no siege placed and no people defending it.

Wow, no one is interested in this. Ok I’ll post a kitten. Let’s see if this gets any interest.

Here’s a quick video I just made that talks about placing arrow carts right at the gate to destroy their siege and then move on to placing rams to hit the door. I believe this is the most efficient way to quickly take a fully upgraded, fully “sieged” tower and with 2-3 people manning the siege inside.

Basically if you want to capture a tower you have 2 options:

1. from a distance with catapults and/or trebuchets
2. hitting the gates with rams and/or golems

You can also try the ninja option, but I’m talking about T1 servers where people actually defend what they capture.

The first option gives you much more distance from the enemy and with swirling winds you can protect your siege. This will pretty much render all their siege worthless cause they can’t reach you, unless they have a trebuchet inside, but you can built trebuchets too, further away.

The second option involves being in the range of enemy siege fire, near the gates. You can clean up the oil, canon and all the siege placed on the walls, but most of the time you don’t clean up the siege placed inside in the courtyard. And I’m talking here about the always present catapult and the 2 arrow carts.

These 2 options also apply for capturing keeps, but I want to talk about the towers because not many people know about the weakness of the tower gates. There’s quite a big hole between the gate and the upper wall and you can build 1-2 arrow carts right at the gate, like you would place rams and start hitting all the siege inside.

It’s very important to first take out their oil, canon and arrow carts on the walls. Once you cleaned their walls, then move away and come back again in 5 minutes for the actual attack. During this time it’s very probable that they didn’t have the time to rebuild the siege on the walls.

If you do this, you are basically ignoring all their siege and the only way to stop you is if their zerg comes in and stomps you. But if you move quickly with 3 superior rams and 2 superior carts (that’s 190 supply, 19 people) you take it faster than they could mobilize their zerg.

I’m interested in the effect of catapults hitting golems through gates.
Or do they have some sort of hidden stability?
Are golems affected by other conditions like stun, fear, basilisk venom, etc?

bhagwad.4281:

“Fun” isn’t enough. I need something for my time.

I think I need to stop playing mmos. These type of people, unfortunately very common, makes me sad to live in this world.

Anyone willing to share more information on this subject?

Well, the 3 skills I mentioned protect the siege weapon. that’s the whole point to not let the enemy destroy your trebuchet or your walls/gates. So there’s no engineer skill to protect siege weapons?

For guardian, why is Shield of Absorption and Wall of Reflection not working? And has anyone tested Zealot’s Defense and Shield of the Avenger?

Ok besides Sanctuary, Smoke Screen and Swirling Winds, are there any skills/classes that can absorb/ignore siege projectiles?

From all 3, the most efficient skill is the Swirling Winds, because you can boost it to a 24s reuse and covers a very wide area, while Smoke Screen had to be present in the exact spot the trebuchet is hitting and Sanctuary has a 120s reuse which makes it difficult to consistently eat trebuchet shots.

Reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX3_zfcSJZ8

I agree. I remember in Lineage 2 if I quit the game then I was kept around for 30 more seconds and then logged out. All mmos have this. It needs to be in gw2 too.

Keep in mind that taking the temple of storms also zaps your keeps too. I saw it happening when we took the temple, went to garrison, which was ours and one catapult got zapped for 4k dmg almost destroyed it.
Normally i should give the healing buff to the temple owners, but lately the quaggans zap everyone regardless.

I guess the arrow cart description text that says it’s good for infantry was a bit misleading since golems are actually siege weapons.

If it were to me I would just remove the mesmer portal completely. These maps are already very small and favor the zerg ball that conquers everything. Having waypoints in keeps and mesmer portals makes the map feel even smaller. But that’s another discussion.

They took down the outer gate (reinforced) in 2 minutes. How many superior arrow carts do you need to kill them in this time frame?

Balistas aren’t very good, because first the zerg streams in the inner court and then the golems. If you place them on the walls, then you need them right at the outer edge to have line of sight, but the zerg will kill it before you have the chance to see the golems. Same for canons.

Today we were attacked at bay by elona and i was at hills defending the trebs for lake. At some point I went to the water camp and saw 5 vizuna golems marching north. I immediately announcement on the map that 5 golems are going for hills north. It took them about 2-3 minutes to arrive at the gates with mesmer portals and they started bashing the gates.

They had 2-3 rams and 5 golems for each gate and they were about 40 people.

We had catapults for defending against rams/golems but they weren’t enough cause they burnt through the gates in less than 2 minutes. We were about 15-20 of us, but they just ignored us and went only for the gates, to the lord and just took hills.

Catapults counter rams, Trebs counter catapults and Portal bombing counters trebs. How do you counter golems then?

Basically it’s what arena net said, that the siege expires after about 30 minutes. But they only apply this rule for siege placed on walls. It may be a bug that siege on ground never expires.

Here’s what I found so far:

Arrow carts, rams, catapults and balistas placed on the ground, not on walls, stay forever without having to use them at all.

Arrow carts, rams, catapults and balistas placed on walls expire after 30m, 40m, 1 hour, it’s a bit random

Trebuchets always expire after 30 min if you don’t use them. Don’t know about siege golems, but I believe they follow the same principle as trebuchets.

Building sites for any siege weapon don’t last more than 10m and everytime you add more supply to it it resets the timer.

Note: using the siege weapons means pressing F when next to them. You don’t have to fire with it.

Not sure if I agree that oil and cannons are useless… At the very least they are targets that usually need to be taken out prior to rams going down which stall for time allowing defenders to get to the tower to defend.

Unfortunately this only applies to the first assault of the tower. Once they take them down and let’s say they fail, the second assault will make all those oil/canon/mortar upgrades useless.

Playing in T1 usually puts you against organised players and very often they will do a sweep to clear your siege before committing to a full on assault. And even if they don’t clear the canon and oil on the tower walls, you will not be able to man it since they can easily aoe it.

If people are dropping catas and rams all up in your grizzle, then yeah, cannons the way to go.

Catapults are usually used to take down walls, so it’s better to have the fortify upgrade. The canons are worthless in this situation because smart players place the catapults away from the canon range.

Kid Taylor.5479:

Thank you for your hard work on the videos, I found them very useful.

Thank you too. Today, if I have time I will try to do a video about camps/supply/points.

I still don’t know exactly on what conditions sometimes siege on walls disappears. I will do more testing and then make the Cliffside tower video.

bradderzh.2378:

Not sure if I agree that oil and cannons are useless… At the very least they are targets that usually need to be taken out prior to rams going down which stall for time allowing defenders to get to the tower to defend.

They do provide a delay, but I don’t think they are more important than the fortify upgrade. Like I said in the videos it’s important to have the walls/gates upgrades done including the fortify and then move on to canons/oil.

I will start by providing my points of view on which upgrades should be built and in which order and also what siege weapons you should place when defending a spot.

The first spot is Longview, SunnyHill, Woodhaven and there are 3 parts of this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGTEhea_4Vw&list=PLduHbZPbtobFj67iMqpJt6b87WPyTAW8A

If you guys feel that the information is constructive then I will do more for camps, other towers and keeps.

Centrix.4065:

Do you actually have to USE the siege to reset the timer? Or is just entering the siege enough?

I’m talking about building the siege. You can’t use siege that you haven’t built yet
So the only way to reset the 10 min timer is to add more supply to the build site.

I did some tests today and if you start a siege build site without completing and don’t put any supply in it for 10 minutes, the build site will disappear. Every time you add more siege the timer rests again for 10 minutes.

Thank you Darxio,

Advance notification of new builds (updated 12/14 – see below)
In order to allow WvW players to make good decions about siege placement, assault timing, etc. we’re adding a new build pre-announcement. This will be in the form of a message broadcast to all players some time before the current build expires. Because this notification is tied to one of the final steps in our build process, and those final steps take a variable amount of time, we won’t be able to say exactly when the current build will expire. Instead, the message will provide a window of time in which the new build will become available.

I hope this comes soon so we know when the trebuchets are going to expire. Probably after they add this feature they have the rest of the siege expire after 30 minutes too. If any dev is reading this, can you please increase this to 1 or 2 hours? I’m sure you guys don’t play wvw and don’t know that 30 minutes in wvw goes very very fast.

Rams built on the gates stay for ever and never despawn. This is tested and can be confirmed by many people.
Arrow carts, balistas and catapults built inside a tower/keep stay for ever. Yesterday there were 2 balistas, 2 arrow carts and one catapult in cliffside and for at least 6 hours that I have played they haven’t respawned. And we only were attacked 1-2 times and the tower wasn’t constantly contested, unlike other towers/keeps.
Trebuchets disappear very quickly after you place them. I will test this tomorrow to see exactly the time.
Golems → I don’t know. Usually when you build them you use them immediately.

There are some myths that the siege will despawn after you logout or if the place is contested then the timer reset. But nothing can be confirmed. Is there anyone that can confirm any of these myths?

I will test this tomorrow and come back to you with a reply.

I believe this siege cap is both for the entire map and also for a certain area, am I correct?
For example you can place a maximum of 100 siege weapons per map, but no more than 15 siege in garrison. Anyone knows exactly how this works?

Caliburn.1845:

Build one piece of siege equipment. In my case I built an arrowcart. I then sat watching said arrowcart for THREE hours, no player touched it. And it did not despawn. After that I got bored and went to go find people to kill. But I checked on my arrowcart periodically. It survived for five days, right up until friday’s WvW reset.

That’s what I’m saying also. The only siege that despawns are the trebuchets. I love building trebuchets and be able to counter catapults and even other trebutchets. So if you have this 30min timer on trebuchets, then please add it to all the other sieges, otherwise, I will fill the entire map with arrow carts

Matt Witter.6982:

Player placed siege weapons have a 30 minute timer that remove the siege from the game, when the timer expires. Players using the siege causes the timer to restart.

Can you please respond to the question without lying?
I played a lot of wvw and saw arrow carts, balistas, catapults and rams not being removed for hours and hours. The only siege that get’s removed in probably 30 mins is the trebuchet and probably golems (haven’t tested these yet)

From time to time I like to play defensively and just upgrade and place some basic siege in one of the towers and escort some dolyaks. I only focus on that specific tower and ignore the rest. What’s very frustrating is that trebuchets always disappear very very quickly while the other stuff remains for ever.

Please give a straight answer and not lie. It doesn’t do any of us any good. Now if this is a bug you don’t know about, then I’m sorry for making you a liar. And if it’s a bug that this timer only applies to trebuchets, then please fix it because it’s making the 1% people that actually defend instead of running with the command zerg attacking, very disappointed.

The wvw population is already getting lower by each day and that I can confirm for a fact. Don’t scare away the other players that actually want to play your game.

Regards.

I’m glad some people are interested in defensive tactics.
I will try to make some videos and post it here about upgrades and siege placement

The game can be played differently, but because people are set on attacking only, no defense what so ever and attacking only in zergs.
Right now it’s so pathetic to see SFR using the same zerg tactics with Vizuna even though SFR is constantly repelled by Vizuna because they have the bigger numbers.
Anyways, let’s see what we do, next week, but if we continue playing the same we will never match Vizuna’s zerg.

For me wvw represents tactical battles and siege warfare with lots of people. Structure/Personal upgrades are a good way to improve the defensive value of a fortification even if it’s a camp. Also placing siege weapons in key locations is very important, for instance a trebuchet to counter catapults, catapults to counter door rams/golems and arrow-carts to keep invaders at bay.

As time passes you realize that the personal upgrades aren’t very good because the NPCs are week. The oil/canon/mortar are very easily killed by players and only provide an advantage when fighting against unorganized pugs. Camps are easily captured at least twice every 12 minutes in order to get the 5 points when the timer resets, so they are rarely upgraded even though with the 4 upgrades dolyaks can carry 140 supply instead of the initial 35.

In the end, the only upgrades that are worth the money and dolyak escorts are the walls/doors upgrades and the waypoint for the keeps.

Siege weapons are a necessity when defending locations. You must always have at least 1 catapult at each door. 2 catapults are better because you can time them correctly and keep the rams always knocked down and damage the golems really fast. When the door attack fails, usually the attackers go for catapults and if you don’t have a well placed trebuchet you have to resort to portal bombing their siege.

But the siege weapons are only good if you have at least reinforced walls/doors. Without them your siege weapons are pretty much worthless especially when defending a small tower.

Most people know most of these things, but the problem is that not many people spend the money upgrading or placing and building the siege weapons or escort the dolyaks. So people go where the rewards are better which is where usually the commanders are. And you can’t blame them since playing defensive is sometimes boring and doesn’t give any rewards, while at the same time you have to spend your money, blueprints and time.

I thought that when we will reach T1 I will see a lot more emphasis on the defense and zergs will not be that efficient. But on the contrary I was proven that WvW is all about the numbers and very importantly all clumped together in a big zerg. Some may argue that well placed siege and upgrades mean a lot but time and time again I have been proven that nothing can be done to an organized zerg. Guardian bubbles can prevent a lot of the knockback and damage from catapults when dealing with the zerg and with a couple of golems teleported by mesmers you can take the whole map. Also the aoe heals, the downed state, the resurrect spam, the mesmer teleports and the culling issue makes it very hard to see what’s going on to give you a chance to counter it.

If at the beginning of the game the term zerg was used as more of an insult, now zergs can be a lot more efficient than packs of people going around the map capturing points. A good strategy is to have 1-2 teams going around the map and destroyed the siege on the walls and then the zerg will follow and take the point.

To come to a conclusion I’m disappointed in WvW because it was built as a glorified capture the point system with the purpose of a gold sink for pve. Since the top server in T1 Europe uses mainly the zerg to capture points it is a fact that zergs are much more efficient than other ways and since everyone is in WvW for the rewards people are always attacking instead of defending so it’s easy for a zerg to capture wooden structures with barely any siege in key locations.

We will have to wait until February to see what the devs will change, but I have a sad feeling that not much will be changed and WvW will continue to function as a gold sink for some or a gold/karma farm for others.

Culling + mesmer portal = no wvw for me
I will avoid fight and just repair, fire with siege, upgrade etc.