(edited by Lifewaster.5912)
As those of us who actually spent a lot of time refreshing siege in wvw know, the existing so called 30 minute timer was bugged, and catapults/arrow carts used to last for at least 2+ hours in sieged up keeps, people used to refresh siege every hour or so and that was enough to maintain it.
Todays patch fixed that and now the strict 30 minute timer applies to everything.
This is really now just too much constant donkey work to maintain sieged up forts.
A change up to 90 minutes would be a great quality of life improvement. People could just do their refresh runs on the hour like they used to, and then go play the game.
The new arrow cart range is huge, from 2500 to 3500 for just 5 wxp points invested.
Timer display doesnt seem that helpful, you have to get close enough to target it to see the timer , at which stage you may as well tag it to refresh it anyway…so nothing really changes.
In fact its a lot worse now they have fixed the “bug” that let arrow carts and catas last for hours.
The decay timer should be at least an hour.
AC range/radius will be great for killing those pesky garrison trebs hitting bay.
Quite a few fixes there:
No more spawn cliff siege defending sunnyhill, no more lifesteal food killing supervisors, no more blocking trebs, and 80% more arrow cart dmg defending gates.
Sounds like defenders will now get 30 seconds to waypoint their entire zerg to a keep after the gate is already attacked, provided a scout is there to call it.
(edited by Lifewaster.5912)
Perhaps the solution would be to cut treb range in half so you can’t treb one structure while safely locked away in another.
Trebs are currently 10000 range.
Reduction to 9000 range would be enough to stop garrison trebbing bay.
Reduction to 8000 range would stop hills trebbing lake tower, and stop Stonemist from trebbing every tower in EB and vice versa.
It would atually befenit the zerg over a skeleton crew defending, sure you can counter then siege now with your catas or treb but so can they, and they have more numbers which means more supply to put up more siege. All a smart zerg would do is spread out their siege by the time you take down one treb and try to turn to take the next all the siege in your tower will be dead
A skeleton crew will not have swirls, a zerg will. At least now they have a chance to deal some dmg to the enemy siege.
Currently, a 30 man zerg with 300 supply can build 6 catapults , swirl them with 4 eles and ignore the 1-2 defense trebs/mortars inside the fort. A small team defending has zero chance and the fortified wall will be down in 3 minutes.
With the change, the zerg is forced to firstly build treb to take out the defense siege, even with spike building the defending trebs will get the first hits in and probably kill 2 of the 3 trebs and dmg the 3rd before they lose theirs.
This leaves the enemy zerg with a half a treb at a cost of 300 supply. This is now a far less potent attack compared to 6 catas. They have to send runners to resupply, meanwhile defenders can spike build more trebs using their stockpile and repeat the process untill the tower or keep runs out.
What used to be a 3 minute catapult roflstomp of a keep wall is now turned into a far longer battle of attrition, costing the attackers 600 + supply before they can fully suppress a small team of defenders in a sieged up fort.
Oficially it all is supposed to last 30 minutes unless someone touches it.
However:
30 minutes is correct for trebs and golems.
Arrow carts and catapults seem to last about 2 hours at least.
Flame rams last for days.
A good rule of thumb is: the more useless/useful the siege , the longer/shorter it lasts.
Actually I think it will be easier to counter treb garrison, now that they cant block you with eles.
The treb change is great, no more boring work for eles.
It will make it harder for zergs to brute force certain defensive structures such as hills and garrison inner walls with swirling cata blobs.
Most of the sPVP balance changes that occured over the months do not apply in wvw because it uses pve ruleset.
For example thief cloak and dagger was nerfed by 50% in pvp but still hits full dmg vs players in wvw.
So wvw thiefs you encounter are going to be stronger then what your used to. Remember to use food buffs also.
I wanna know how they there siege it so far into the no-siege zone that it cant even be AoE’d from below.
You can stand at the ledge below where you no longer have the siege block buff, and place/throw the siege at anywhere up to 1200 range away above or behind you, even if the location is in a blocked area, since the block applies to where you place from, rather then where you place to.
In the case of the screenshot, theres a slight slope down from the middle ledge where the blocked buff is gone, allowing them to place it on the top ledge.
(edited by Lifewaster.5912)
Going to miss you Noodles and gang. You did an awful lot for JQ over the many months since those initial days as ESOL. Brought some great organisation and leadership across multiple maps and timezones.
Best wishes in your new endeavours.
As mentioned, you can use a transmutation stone to move the rune into a salvageable item, and then I believe you can salvage that item to get the rune out completely.
Killing him doesn’t really prevent it, he can probably run back before the 3 minutes is up if he is determined.
My view is that the gate should take at least 1% dmg , and be down to below 99% total before it becomes contested from people hitting it.
The problem as I see it is that many want the fastest/easiest wxp points now.
Wiping smaller or lesser organised blobs with your own blob is the go-to source for wxp now that ppl have realised its much faster then flipping objectives.
Rangeds tag as many ppl as possible to register for loot/wxp, melees cleave towards any downeds you see to register for the same loot/wxp.
Even with the reduced wxp for those recently killed, this hasn’t seemed to be strict enough to deter this from being the best overall source of wxp.
So if your server is third place , you may be playing the role of the wxp pinata/wiped blob more often then not, as there is not enough wxp incentive for the 2 strong servers to fight each other.
An increase to about 2 hours for siege despawn timer would make life a lot easier.
I dont think BG is in any great danger.
Talk about falling to T2 is certainly premature, when you haven’t even fallen from Blue to Red yet.
Red is a fairly big safety net actually, you have a much more Secure EB keep and Green should be focusing on Blue instead of you.
The titles are terrible when theres a lot of names on the screen.
60 names alone takes up alot of screen, with the titles added on each name takes up the space of 2-3 names.
Turning off names isnt a solution in wvw, we still need to see the names to get full awareness of the battle. If theres 80 enemys over there I need to know that. But I dont need to have my screen additionally blocked up with white text junk.
Please revert it to the way it was, only showing titles if you specifically target them. A toggle option would be good either.
The balista abilities seem like they might be useful, especially the increased range.
guys get a zerg of necros…
•Necromancer trait: Now allows life-stealing on walls in World vs. World.
I can confirm after testing in game , this is a typo.
It should read, 15 point Vampiric trait “siphon life on hit” no longer allows life-stealing on walls.
Agreed on the player-titles display.
It really clutters up the screen with each name taking up the space of 2-3 names due to a huge title below it.
Any way to turn off player- titles from appearing below nameplates now?
Really clutters up the screen when each name is taking up the space of 2.
I thought they could already lifesteal off walls? Or ‘siphon health’ anyway
With 15 points in trait “siphon life on hit” , necros could already dmg walls and contest waypoints.
I think this is actually a typo. Meaning necros can no longer do it.
This really needs to be addressed, currently troll Flame Rams inside keeps are not despawning at all, ever. While any useful siege is despawning in 30 minutes, after which more troll rams are built to block them also.
In fact the code seems to be that the more useful the siege the faster it despawns, and the more useless it is the longer it stays.
The maps 100 Ram limit is capped, so teams cannot build rams to attack any towers on the map.
The keeps local proximity siege limit is capped, meaning you cant build any carts/catas to defend the gate near the rams.
This should be hotfixed now.
C: according to anet rams have their own personal siege cap of 100, independant of other siege on map. (But I do agree something needs to be done about the griefing)
Rams have their own cap regarding the overall map, meaning 100 troll rams wont prevent you placing siege overall on that map.
But,
Rams still contribute to the local area siege caps, meaning 8 troll rams inside a keep gate will prevent you from building any arrow carts/catas to defend that specific gate, because the local area siege cap at that gate is maxxed out.
This should be fixed.
This should happen regardless if ppl touch or refresh them. They should simply vanish 20 minutes after being placed.
There is no need for rams to remain long after gates are down, and there is far less need for multiple troll rams built by saboteurs sitting inside friendly keeps for hours preventing actual defensive siege being placed , since they siege cap the local area.
I might add, since its sure to come up, that currently scepter eles can fire dragon’s tooth, with nothing targeted from behind a gate/wall and the aoe will land about 600 range in front of them, on the inside of the gate/wall.
So if you see smaller red circles hitting your siege inside thats close to walls/gates think about placing it a bit further away from both.
Regarding the trebs, they still need to be allowed to counter enemy siege outside the keep, disabling them inside forts wouldnt work.
They could instead apply a modifier to siege weapons, that reduces their dmg versus structures if they are placed inside an existing defensive structure.
Regarding the jump puzzles, you can indeed do them with each of your alts. However, they reset exactly 24 hours after you do them, so you need to keep track of when exactly you last did them on each char.
Regarding being in PvE when you logged out, this is normal whenever you log out of WvW.
Regarding JQ , it could slip to second place overall if Blackgate wins a few weeks in a row, meaning JQ will become Blue. Check out http://mos.millenium.org/matchups#NA to see the rankings.
Several arrow carts behind gates are a strong counter, however the south inner garrison gate never gets reinforced when the keep is upgraded, meaning you only have 1 and a half gates defending that route.
But I think the main balance issue with golems is mesmer timewarps….5 golems and 3 mesmers will take down a reinforced gate in about 30 secs of staggered timewarps.
I dont think its a big deal, probably wont take all that long to unlock the most vital abilities onto seperate chars anyway.
Timewarp is the biggest issue here, building 6 golems is an expensive undertaking, but having them deal the same damage as 12 is a huge force multiplier versus those gates.
I’m aware that I’m angry right now with how bad JQ did tonight, and that this post will probably get deleted, but hopefully some people see it, and it makes them shape up, stop making excuses, and try to better the server. Because at this rate, it won’t be long before a bunch of people get tired of JQ and transfer off. I know if I played WvW at this time of day, every day, I would of left a long time ago.
20 minutes after you logged in disgust, we took back garrison . Its a pity you didn’t stay to see, it was a pretty well organised event considering the bulk of our force was random small guilds.
(edited by Lifewaster.5912)
If the timer was 90 minutes, we could just call out for ppl to refresh on the hour, would be easy to manage.
Logged into home BL in offpeak hours, there was zero siege in any of the forts. Prime time was due in a few hours so I started rebuilding in gar. Dropped cat and several carts at each gate. By the time I had finished building them it was already time to refresh them.
Next 2 hours of my gameplay was spent worrying and babysitting them, popping back every 20 mins, and spending about 5 mins touching everything.
There was some small scale fighting going on at camps, so I joined in to try and actually get in some fun gameplay. Got into a good fight for a few mins and slightly distracted myself before rushing back to gar to refresh my siege.
Only to see each siege literally vanish in front of my eyes split seconds before I could reach them.
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So can we please get this adjusted, things were much better back when carts and catas used to stay for ages.
Maybe use a 2 hour timer rather then 30 mins, or only start despawning things when the zone is above 50% of the overall siege cap limit.
With that said, Veil’s targeting point doesn’t last all that long. Even with massive Swiftness, it’d be shredded before the OP’s mentioned 60 people got through.
Actually I have tested it in game, it lasts for 6 seconds, or 8 seconds when traited for longer lasting glamours.
Veil isn’t really the thing you are experiencing. Veils dont stack and u have 1sec debuff after you leave the first veil. This allows you to see the enemy group running into you and gives you time to react.
Well, not quite.
The Veil stands there for 8 secs, meanwhile an entire zerg blob can run though it, they all will receive a 3-4 sec stealth as they pass through.
When their stealth wears off , they will remain invisible for 2-4 secs due to culling/rendering.
This allows a charging blob to drop a veil at quite a long range , before they initially render to the enemy, and then still reach their target within their 5-8 seconds of stealth/rendering and begin smashing against ppl who will never get to see them before they die.
Obviously, with clever use terrain, they can drop the veil at even closer range getting more of an advantage.
So basically when you ask “why are we exploiting culling?” the answer is “everyone is doing it” .
To compete in open field, you have to move as a blob, run through a Veil, and explode into the enemy who still cant see or target you for several seconds after you de-stealth , while you smash them all to death.
If this fails, you run away , hide or circle round, reposition your blob , cast a new Veil and repeat the process. If you dont do this, you will likely be smashed by an invisible enemy blob.
Open field WvW has become cavalry charges of invisible blobs against each other, each trying to outmanouver the other into being the ones who cannot see their enemy.
Many top guilds are doing it, there is obviously a skill and co-ordination required to to do it well, but its hardly healthy for the game that such an obvious abuse of culling/rendering has become the must have strategy to win.
Its become all about render bombing them with veil, before they can render bomb you.
Veil effectively lets you stealth 60+ ppl at the same time, its far more effective then portal bombing ever was when used by co-ordinated teams. It lasts for 8-10 seconds meaning an awful lot of ppl can run through the same veil.
So I’m asking the bigger guilds that use this, are you really content with this type of combat or would you rather that neither side has to rely on blatant culling abuse to win a fight?
(edited by Lifewaster.5912)
Elementalists can also directly dmg the trebs with their basic staff fireball from the ground below.
The easiest counter is Eles using Swirling Winds to block the treb shots, 2 eles can stop 1 treb , 4-5 eles can stop any amount of trebs.
EB has certainly been tough as hell, 12 hours later and JQ still haven’t managed to finish a reinforced gate on anything.
Next time we have a 2v1 like this off a reset with limited supply, I recommend building more defensive siege inside the keep with the limited keep supply rather then burning it all on upgrades.
To fix this:
Allow defenders to target/damage the health bar of defeated players so you can at least prevent the res from ticking up, just as it works vs downed enemies.
If the counter was so simple, this wouldnt be an issue. There is no easy counter to 3rd floor SM trebs hitting Durios/Quentin/Klovan/Wildcreek
They can be placed out of sight un-targetable by any ballistas. The only counter is a treb of your own to hit the 3rd floor.
This requires 10 ppl to instand build your treb, and 3-4 eles to swirling winds their counter fire from their mortars and trebs.
Meanwhile they can zerg down your treb or just have eles swirling winds the 3rd floor making your efforts useless so this only works if you can catch them by suprise.
There are some cases where you literally have the same trebs knocking down tower walls over and over for hours or days, with very limited options to counter them for example on the 3rd floors of SM hitting the adjacent towers.
The towers end up being flipped back and forth over and over.
The issue becomes rather unfair, since it costs the defending side supplies to repair, or several siege every time they take it back, meanwhile the other side gets to knock back down the wall all over again for free with the same trebs.
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I suggest: Every time a treb damages a wall, the treb takes 1% dmg to itself. This would allow them to take down the same wall 2-3 times at most.
The 20 player limit for portals has failed to deal with the mass portal/render abuse.
Teams that are determined to abuse culling in large scale fights simply have multiple mesmers placing entry, then they go through the initial portal and activate their additional portals at the destination allowing 40/60/80+ people to effectively use the same portal .
Possible fixes :
(1)Going through a portal places your own portal skill on cooldown.
(2) Further reduce the limit below 20.
(3)Going through a portal applies a debuff preventing you using a portal skill for a short time.
Actually, one guardian bubble still works, but its quite a small one.
Thief smokescreen also works, but requires good placement to intercept.
This appears to have been done specifically to siege cap JQ and prevent any trebs being buildable to hit SoS in SM for the next several hours.
At least 20 rams were built by the same player….with a further 2 more builds immediately placed the moment our last existing treb was destroyed.
Part of the problem is that its so much easier for the home team to push AB, since they can Treb the outer walls with impunity from garrison, whilst pushing Hills is much harder.
That leaves the initiative with the right corner side to choose whether to push north from Hills against a distracted JQ, or push Briar against a sandwiched left corner team.
It can often be an opportunistic move to reset Briars upgrades and deter you from ever pushing Lake tower since you need to re take Bay.
Your best recourse could be to abandon Bay (retake Briar if possible) and push Lake, and wait for the home team to see a chance to push Hills. Ultimately the Home team will prefer to own Hills since its so much more defensible then Bay and if they see the chance to get it they eventually will join the 2v1 vs the right corner team.
When that happens, they will eventually choose to lose Bay back to you rather then lose Hills, so ultimately you end up with Bay and Briar while they battle over Hills.
(edited by Lifewaster.5912)