No.
I do not camp in the puzzle but I absolutely love the fight to get to the end. I just need to find allies who love it as much as I do. I do the puzzle solo almost every day or every other day. My guildies? They love the PvP. The jumping? They would rather bang their head into a wall.
It is possible to clear out the groups of players that camp that chamber but it requires team work and siege of your own. Which logically make sense. If 5-8 players are using siege then you need 5-8 players using siege against them.
Where do you put the counter siege? In a location shortly after you zone into the jumping puzzle. Instead of starting the puzzle go down the stairs and turn to your right. There is a platform that is level with the area they are sieging you from. You can build siege there and blast them out of that location.
Hint: You can first go to where I described, grab a 4 minute invisibility boon and scout the enemy. If no one is there with siege then you have a window of opportunity to complete the puzzle.
If you are a solo player and already at the bottom of that chamber then you are at a severe disadvantage. There are methods to get to the top that can be sort of successful. But no matter what if you do not have equal numbers to kill them all then you will not proceed. They have a mesmer with them and they will come down to save a buddy and kill you.
I WvW as a thief a lot. Everyone plays differently but the following is what I tend to do, and I love it. I am also a fan of using condition damage as a thief but that’s a whole other discussion.
1) Shortbow – The short bow is phenominal in WvW. When attacking a tower/keep you can use its AoE to keep defenders off of walls. When defending a tower/keep you can use clusterbomb to hit enemies and attack rams. Hint: You don’t have to stand on the lip of a wall to shoot clusterbomb on the ground. Its arc will go over that little lip and help prevent you from being pulled down. Finally, the blast finisher on clusterbomb is great. You can give lots of boons to your allies.
2) Daggerstorm – I love thee so much. Group vs Group in open field? Daggerstorm into them and retreat with stealth and your short bow. Defending a tower/keep? Daggerstorm out the front gate and get back in before it runs out. Your allies need to rereat? Daggerstorm at the end of your group and use your short bow plus stealth to get away. You just protected your allies and if done right also survived.
3) Scorpion Wire – Obviously, great for pulling off of walls and grabbing runners. You can also use it to prevent the enemy from running into a tower/keep you are attacking. Watch a corner and grab players making a charge for the door. Cripple and immobalize from the short bow helps out as well, but any cripple/immobalize you use will help. If someone using a siege isn’t hidden from view than you can always yank them off the weapon.
4) Shadow Refuge – Great for resurrecting downed allies. Combo’ing this with projectiles is great too. Leeching venoms!
5) Shadowstep – Not an ability I use much but mostly due to my style of play. It has 1200 range and can be used to jump into an enemy group, attack a target, and jump back.
6) Combos – The Thief has a great arsenal of combos starters and finishers. You can create your own combos, play off your allies’ combo starters, or finish combos for your allies.
7) Steal – If traited for it you can give yourself and allies some very nice boons. Also, there are some very nice stolen abilities for WvW: gain all boons from mesmers, another stealth from thiefs, AoE fear from necromancers, regenernation combo field from rangers, etc.
I am of the opinion that siege equipment in the jumping puzzles is unintended, but until they say or do anything about it than anything is fair game. Once in the chamber your only recourse is to use pull-down abilities. The mesmer’s is the best.
There is a second method. Don’t forget the top of that arena chamber is wide open. You can zone in with 10 players and setup a trebuchet across from their arrow carts. I haven’t tried it yet but the roof seems high enough to not interrupt the shots.
Fighting in the EB battlegrounds is fun as hell. I typically go in alone and grab invisibility buffs. I will sneak past large group of 5-10 players who actively camp. The individuals that camp are great to take out and then move on. Once completed just go back to the war and help win!
This sounds like our server was retaliating for what happened several days ago. Tarnished Coast had setup one arrow cart and one ballista above the chamber following the dark room. They slaughtered a group of Maguuma. Eventually enough of us showed up to where we could take them. Then a mesmer in our group pulled a couple down. It took a while but we eventually cleared out Tarnished Coast and then I went back to helping our side win in WvW.