Keeps need longer upgrade times, Castle longest.

We all know how fast things upgrade now compared to Pre-HoT outside north towers on Alpine bls. It does rise some issues like if a commander only tags up for 2-3 hours, resets everything, takes a break for a few hours, everything is back up to T3 for enemy again.

It is kind of weird that Keeps and SM that took like a dozen hours to upgrade before, can be gotten T3 within 2 hours now. This is particularly troublesome during morning because everything upgrades faster than a group can manage to deal with.

Way too frequently people log in and see T2/T3 objectives everywhere and with defending being so easy in this meta, it discourages them from attacking anything. There should almost never be a case where all home borderlands are fully T3. This just causes a stalemate between servers where everyone defends and only joins commanders when they defend for easy bags.

People prefer fighting in lower upgraded objectives anyways. This makes T3, even T2, SM kind of a fightkiller. Same applies to side keeps on borderlands when there are too many of them.

So here comes my suggestion:1)Make packed dolyaks carry 3x supplies (instead of 2) but count only as 1 towards upgrade (instead of 2: no 4x upgrade speed with speeding packed dolyak anymore)and2)Make keeps require 25/50/100 dolykas instead of 20/40/80 and Castle require 30/60/120 dolyaks. So reasonable 25% increase to keep and 50% to castle upgrade times.

Of course this won't have a massive visible impact to how WvW plays out, but at top open-commanding/guild level, it would make a huge difference just based on how WvW feels. More fights, less sitting around.

The issue I see is why would someone want to fight?

What incentives is there?

I know ppl like me like to slay others so, there's that. But for the general public ? Isn't it because the enemies are easy?

What if it's not easy. How do we bring justice to the playing field?

I'm at a loss. Why. I know for sure there's some ppl even if few I'd rather avoid and even if many I'd hunt down.

This is a big issue as to fights

@Sovereign.1093 said:The issue I see is why would someone want to fight?

What incentives is there?

I know ppl like me like to slay others so, there's that. But for the general public ? Isn't it because the enemies are easy?

What if it's not easy. How do we bring justice to the playing field?

I'm at a loss. Why. I know for sure there's some ppl even if few I'd rather avoid and even if many I'd hunt down.

This is a big issue as to fights

People used to fight for the objectives. Just right not attacking is so overwhelming as everything is T3 in blink of an eye. As if going through the siege isn't enough, enemy has extra stats and movement speed from the claim buff. You go downtate? No problem, theres always a defender out of combat ready to mount stomp you. Then you gotta deal with all the banners, chilling fogs, tanky lords and ewps.

It's just that the core balance of the gamemode has been going downhill for a while so fighting pretty much exclusively open field and that is quite repetitive compared to epic extended keepbattles with attackers taking their time taking down defences.

Point is, if balance was better, the fighting/guild commanders wouldn't be separate from objective commanders as both parties could have fun doing same things rather than being separated into open field and siege fights.

The T3 walls are too strong and the T1 walls are too weak. I feel like the differences between the walls needs to be narrowed. That would have a better outcome for teams that don't have squads during the off-hours. A couple of hours is a lot of time for things to upgrade, but it's also a lot of time to have a team holding something.

@Threather.9354 said:

@Sovereign.1093 said:The issue I see is why would someone want to fight?

What incentives is there?

I know ppl like me like to slay others so, there's that. But for the general public ? Isn't it because the enemies are easy?

What if it's not easy. How do we bring justice to the playing field?

I'm at a loss. Why. I know for sure there's some ppl even if few I'd rather avoid and even if many I'd hunt down.

This is a big issue as to fights

There's also the issue though if players can't fight off attackers they'll just log off if they lose everything.

I remember one time where we faced this blob and we couldn't play against them. We just didn't defend and avoided them for hours. Until they disappeared and didn't play much that week. :/

It's just not easy to give justice to players based on timezones and queues

There's also the issue where for situations where you need sustain in keep fights some players are so papery or lack the siege mastery defense etc.,

Like I feel you got to have a lot of firebrands and then your pugs better rune atleast 1.6k vita toughness to atleast not be downed. It's like prepare your wet noodles.

@Quench.7091 said:The T3 walls are too strong and the T1 walls are too weak. I feel like the differences between the walls needs to be narrowed. That would have a better outcome for teams that don't have squads during the off-hours. A couple of hours is a lot of time for things to upgrade, but it's also a lot of time to have a team holding something.

I don't really mind the auto upgrades. What I find that I mind is, I wish there's more to defending .

I.e. before the world's that won had bonus for pve. That was always worth fighting for.

@Sovereign.1093 said:

@Quench.7091 said:The T3 walls are too strong and the T1 walls are too weak. I feel like the differences between the walls needs to be narrowed. That would have a better outcome for teams that don't have squads during the off-hours. A couple of hours is a lot of time for things to upgrade, but it's also a lot of time to have a team holding something.

They should consider that for the guild alliances system. :s

@Quench.7091 said:

@Sovereign.1093 said:

@Quench.7091 said:The T3 walls are too strong and the T1 walls are too weak. I feel like the differences between the walls needs to be narrowed. That would have a better outcome for teams that don't have squads during the off-hours. A couple of hours is a lot of time for things to upgrade, but it's also a lot of time to have a team holding something.

All successfully stuff follows a basic premise.

1(2(3(4(5(6(7(8(9)))))))). Simply you build on the base and always make sure it's connected. Related. And supports it's other.

@"Threather.9354" said:People prefer fighting in lower upgraded objectives anyways. This makes T3, even T2, SM kind of a fightkiller. Same applies to side keeps on borderlands when there are too many of them.Fightkiller No. 1 imo is outnumbered situations where it makes no sence to fight and give the enemy ppk for free. So we need objectives with some kind of bonus for the defending side. But you are right, its not fun to "fight" vs. 10 ACs and such.

What about the superior force has to split, generating fun fights with even numbers?

(A) high-tier keeps should cost a constant upkeep of supplies. If it runs out of supplies, the structure loses HP to a minimum of lets say 50%.

And (B) keeps should have 2 or 3 cap zones, not just one. Capping only one zone takes a long time to conquer the keep, capping more zones simultaneously speeds it up.

-> If the defender is superior in numbers, they might consider to split up outside the walls to secure supply lines and keep up the T3 structure and ticks.-> If the attacker is superior in numbers, they might consider to split up to wreck enemy supply lines, bring down T3 strucutre HP, and finally split up within the keep to speed up the capping process.

The other team that is inferior in numbers could concentrate their forces at one spot. As an outnumbered defender that would prolly not be enough to defend the objective, but slow down the enemy and generate fights that are even in numbers. As an outnumbered attacker you would not be able to conquer the structure, but you at least could drain some supply from the keep and lower structure HP.

The ease of how some servers upgrade keeps with little to no threat is really just the result of the communities ongoing effort to put "fight" and "ppt" into two separate boxes and shame whoever thinks differently. Zerglings has been conditioned to think you need a 50 man to ppt, larger guilds often run around being very successful at being useless, while smaller guilds are caught somewhere in between because neither party is helpful.

If they need to change something, then the "u hit 2 walls with one shot" spots AND "u hit inner and outer wall with the same siege"for all keeps ,castles and gates on EBG

Kill yaks, take camps, it happens less frequent now that it did before. Less people roam for this purpose, less people care about it. Draining enemy supplies seems to be a lost art now. Frankly I don't care if something gets to t3 and then the zergs cry about taking an hour to brute force take something, they all expect everything to just fall under their feet in 5 mins.

Keeps should be big fights, they're one of the most important structures in the game in providing a waypoint even more so on the borderlands, yes even more important than smc because it's waypoint is almost always contested, but it still has a positional advantage on the map. Keeps should require 40+ people to take out, not 20 making it look like a walk in the park, otherwise everything should just a tower then. If you want to hard stall it's upgrading then take the camps and kill the yaks, it's really that simple.

2 hours to upgrade sounds fine, the upgrades are there to help stall attacks until a response can be made, if everything was paper then no one would bother to defend, it would just become a backcap game because paper gates and walls drop so fast from 3-4 catas or rams. Yes reset night is exciting when everything is paper, but that's also because for those 2-3 hours all sides also have numbers to match, which may not always happen for the rest of the week.

SMC on the other hand could probably have t3 shaved off it's upgrades. But let's be real, the actual fight for it is in the lords room, not the outside wall or the inner gates which can be dealt with safely from a distance or with the help of shields, but in the lords room where many zergs come to die because they're terrible at positioning and think they can cap faster than the responding defending zerg. Plus the two attacking sides are usually are too dumb to coordinate a double team to break a t3 smc, usually it's oh team b is attacking smc from team a, well team c is gonna attack team b since they can't defend their side hahahah! brilliant!....

@XenesisII.1540 said:Kill yaks, take camps, it happens less frequent now that it did before. Less people roam for this purpose, less people care about it. Draining enemy supplies seems to be a lost art now. Frankly I don't care if something gets to t3 and then the zergs cry about taking an hour to brute force take something, they all expect everything to just fall under their feet in 5 mins.

Well said.

1. Revealing players undermining the scout and destroy tactics
2. Nerfing damage on the builds and classes that normally roam which then has a knock on effect in that it takes longer to take higher Tier supply camps
3. Packs of mounted players using the tactic of one player remaining mounted to finish off lone roamers with mount skill 1
4. Mounts allowing players to move around quickly and easily defend supply camps
5. Imbalance between the nerfs to power builds v condition builds

these are just a few of the issues that have made roaming awkward and in many cases not much fun for many players. It is little wonder that there has been a reduction in the number of roamers. People are then surprised that Camps are T3 and so are all the surrounding Towers/Keeps?

You get what you wish for in this game and we've got what we deserve.

The castle problem could be easily solved if it took yaks to upgrade, but had NO supply, ever. The only thing happening is blobs stack a server/timezone, tier smc, than ktrain around the map trebbing everything from inside the fully fortified, siege capped castle. Personally, I think they should remove all siege except rams and oil (and limit rams to 3 on a gate), but that aside, smc still should never have supply. It just adds to the brokenness that is the population imbalance.

I feel like the whole upgrade system is busted. It tries to funnel alot of power into a very few things (like really strong walls). It does branch out a bit with the guard patrols and whatnot but not enough to help. If you spread the power of upgrades out to the land surrounding the objective instead of focusing it around the Lord, you'd find smaller groups could work through it much easier.

@Ubi.4136 said:The castle problem could be easily solved if it took yaks to upgrade, but had NO supply, ever.

I think this is an excellent idea, it would force players to think about supply movement and starvation a bit more. You wanna sit and repair walls, or stack siege up in there, then go grab supply from your territories to do so. Sabotage depot would become even more important for sides trying to hold out feeding supplies to enemies in paper stuff.

@"XenesisII.1540" said:Keeps should be big fights, they're one of the most important structures in the game in providing a waypoint even more so on the borderlands, yes even more important than smc because it's waypoint is almost always contested, but it still has a positional advantage on the map. Keeps should require 40+ people to take out, not 20 making it look like a walk in the park, otherwise everything should just a tower then. If you want to hard stall it's upgrading then take the camps and kill the yaks, it's really that simple.

Issue is that it is not really a fight right now between groups where attacker isn't MUCH stronger than the defender, defender will win every time. The fighting balance just favours defender too much due to double claim buffs, airships, stealth fountains, lords, combat resets, wall safety (ranged damage nerfs, gliding), mount stompers etc.

Right now the balance is too simple: Die once in enemy T3 keep and if you go there again, you will just die again over and over. This hardly makes up for exciting "keep fights". They definitely need to nerf defences to even out the fighting ground, but upgrade times (especially when done with superspeeded packed dolyaks) are also causing another kind of balance problems where before servers needed only 1 active timezone during noon/morning or so to reset things to make rest of the day "playable" for more casual groups, now there needs to be a skilled voice commander pretty much 24/7 to cater for the pugs.

TLDR: Defender always wins the fight, due to claim buff, mounts and other stuff, even when with quite a bit worse players making long-term assaults on enemy keeps not worth anyones time. Keeps are not fight locations anymore due to balance, just farming or ppting.

Kill yaks, take camps, it happens less frequent now that it did before. Less people roam for this purpose, less people care about it. Draining enemy supplies seems to be a lost art now. Frankly I don't care if something gets to t3 and then the zergs cry about taking an hour to brute force take something, they all expect everything to just fall under their feet in 5 mins.

Draining enemy supplies/slowing upgrades is lost art because:

• Upgrading doesn't take supply and is MUCH faster, T1-T2 keeps are already full of supply instead of empty when you start doing it
• Dolyaks are impossible to snipe alone provided theres minstrel/stealth player escorting them. This forces 2 people to run together instead of splitting up for efficiency and even then catching to permasuperspeed minstrel scrapper with massive damage reduction dolyak isn't that easy on a boonstripping build that is necessary to kill such a person
• Can't do it alone, claim buff makes other roamers beat you at their camps (they don't even need movement speed from runes/build so they can go flat stats)
• Speedy/Packed dolyaks
• Sentries cover about half of dolyak routes essentially shutting down "outplaying with brain"
• Roaming is ded, mostly because claim buff and everything being upraded (Attempting T2/T3 keeps with small roaming group has like 1% success rate and even then it won't involve a fight)
• No breaks allowed, have a 30 min break? Enjoy T2 keep.

TLDR: One would need way too much time and effort to even make a dent to upgrading while not even being able to have fair fights (claim buff, spawn proximity). Not fun. Defender can always shut you down by having equal number of worse players.

Now I made thread about claim buff and defender advantages needing to be nerfed easier so this time I was touching more minor issue: Upgrade times. I do agree that nerfing claim buff, tactics and supply income to keeps is more important but regardless upgrade times are way too fast even for passive upgrading where you just flip camps on cooldown.

SMC does upgrade way too fast now. It's base speed is like 1/10th of what it used to be, even before considering tactics. Once upon a time, I would be shocked and surprised by such an oversight, but nowadays I didn't even bother complaining about it.

As for other structures, it's kind of a mixed bag. Under the old system, each objective had different upgrade times depending on how far the workers had to travel from the supply depot to the wall. Assuming someone only did some of the upgrades (Cannon, Wall, Gate, Mortar, WP, Fortification) and activated each one exactly on time and never ran out of supply, Bay took 3 hours and 2 minutes to upgrade, Hills took 3 hours and 23 minutes and Garrison took 4 hours and 54 minutes. This is assuming Double Workers. Under the new system, assuming all Yaks survive, Bay takes 1 hour and 45 minutes, Hills takes 2 hours and 20 minutes and Garrison takes 2 hours and 23 minutes. If every Yak is packed, this is cut in half.

On DBL, Firekeep (Bay) takes 2 hours and 45 minutes, Airkeep (Hills) takes 3 hours and 15 minutes and Rampart (Garrison) takes 1 hour and 58 minutes. This is because the Yak paths to each keep are not normalized.

The short version is that upgrade times are generally shorter for keeps. On ABL, the side keeps upgrade MUCH faster than under the old system, but on DBL there was only a small speed increase. For the middle keep both ABL and DBL see more than a 50% speed increase with DBL being the fastest. This suggests that, as far as any of this was intentional, the new system was tested only on DBL as they were rolled out at the same time and ABL was supposed to be gone forever. But then ABL came back and they said it would eventually be adjusted for the new mechanics and it never was...so several of the new systems just don't work very well on that map. Unfortunately, they re-abandoned WvW soon thereafter, promised a new update (Alliances!) and then disappeared for 3 years and counting.

Here's a thread from the old forums with upgrade times: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Average-Time-to-Build-a-Waypoint/page/1#post5332741And here's a graph of current upgrade times under the new system: http://puu.sh/FPLvd/375d762392.png

@"Sviel.7493" said:SMC does upgrade way too fast now. It's base speed is like 1/10th of what it used to be, even before considering tactics. Once upon a time, I would be shocked and surprised by such an oversight, but nowadays I didn't even bother complaining about it.

As for other structures, it's kind of a mixed bag. Under the old system, each objective had different upgrade times depending on how far the workers had to travel from the supply depot to the wall. Assuming someone only did some of the upgrades (Cannon, Wall, Gate, Mortar, WP, Fortification) and activated each one exactly on time and never ran out of supply, Bay took 3 hours and 2 minutes to upgrade, Hills took 3 hours and 23 minutes and Garrison took 4 hours and 54 minutes. This is assuming Double Workers. Under the new system, assuming all Yaks survive, Bay takes 1 hour and 45 minutes, Hills takes 2 hours and 20 minutes and Garrison takes 2 hours and 23 minutes. If every Yak is packed, this is cut in half.

On DBL, Firekeep (Bay) takes 2 hours and 45 minutes, Airkeep (Hills) takes 3 hours and 15 minutes and Rampart (Garrison) takes 1 hour and 58 minutes. This is because the Yak paths to each keep are not normalized.

The short version is that upgrade times are generally shorter for keeps. On ABL, the side keeps upgrade MUCH faster than under the old system, but on DBL there was only a small speed increase. For the middle keep both ABL and DBL see more than a 50% speed increase with DBL being the fastest. This suggests that, as far as any of this was intentional, the new system was tested only on DBL as they were rolled out at the same time and ABL was supposed to be gone forever. But then ABL came back and they said it would eventually be adjusted for the new mechanics and it never was...so several of the new systems just don't work very well on that map. Unfortunately, they re-abandoned WvW soon thereafter, promised a new update (Alliances!) and then disappeared for 3 years and counting.

Here's a thread from the old forums with upgrade times: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Average-Time-to-Build-a-Waypoint/page/1#post5332741And here's a graph of current upgrade times under the new system: http://puu.sh/FPLvd/375d762392.png

DBL north towers upgrade much faster because theres 2 incoming camps. This is reason I think desert home bl has advantage over alpine for PPT because you can get everything T3 in matter of hours, including towers.

But yea, they should increase upgrade times. Do note that you can also speed up packed dollies with holosmith (permasuperspeed) making upgrade times 4 times, not just 2, faster. This is why they should nerf packed dolyaks to only count as 1 in addition to increasing amount of dolyaks needed.

I'm sorry but why shouldn't the defenders have the advantage in defending their biggest objectives? All throughout history we have many examples of defenders using extremes to defend and give them an advantage, high walls, moats, oil or tar pots, murder holes, arrows, canons, mines, punji sticks, etc. You're coming into their territory to take something from them, they should have an advantage in owning that land to repel you. A t3 keep should require big numbers to take, and if the defenders don't have the numbers to defend they deserve to lose it, by the same token if you don't have the required players or strategy to overcome it's obstacles then you don't deserve to take it. I've seen some unique ways some commanders break into some of these fortified places.

There's plenty of times zergs will break outer towers and then camps, leaving that areas easy for roamers to recap stuff, roamers still go around borderlands to cap all the camps and not be detected by a tower or sentry once, I've seen it happen even this week. It's not the problem of the defender if attackers don't come take their stuff, nor should they be penalized for it. I'm not exactly against slowing down upgrades or taking away some stuff like presence of the keep, especially after seeing Sviel.7493 post on timers, although going back to 5 hour upgrade on garrison seems like madness and gives big population servers who can hold and take stuff better, even more of advantage over their enemies.

What I'm against is this constant hammering that the defenders need to be on equal or even lesser ground in defending their stuff, from nerfing siege, to getting people off walls, to paper gates and walls, to no tactivators, to longer or even no upgrades. It's at the point where people just want to stroll into a place with their blob and take it in under 5mins cause they can't be bothered to take minute to de-siege a place first, or make an outer hit and drain supplies from the place first. It's not ok that defenders work 2-5 hours defending stuff to get upgrades, but it's a-ok for attackers to just blob down something in 5-10mins?

P.S I still really like that idea of taking out all supply from smc.

Yay! Discussion about WvW's unique features!

The SNOWBALL effect has applied to so many of Arenanet's modifications to WvW over the years.Effectively, the already-strong are now unstoppable, so it's just a case of backcapping or even PURE night-capping determining the winners.

Thanks to the proliferation of Superior Siege and especially Shield Generators, defending keeps against zergs is no longer unlikely, but is instead virtually impossible without counter-zergs.Combine this with the rapid, automatic upgrading that costs nothing and you have a recipe for APATHY.

It's too EASY to cap stuff, and too easy to recap it. This is one reason I still resent the fact that Anet nerfed walls. What happened to CHALLENGE?!

With no passion, what's the point? There's nothing to really grab the player like there used to be - garrison on red map, for instance, is FAR too easy to capture, there should be NOWHERE that you can catapult two walls down (inner and outer) from the same spot, and the cannons and mortars should be placed somewhere USEFUL. Frankly, the design is abysmal, no wonder people think Asuras are as dumb as rocks, dumber even.

@"XenesisII.1540" said:What I'm against is this constant hammering that the defenders need to be on equal or even lesser ground in defending their stuff, from nerfing siege, to getting people off walls, to paper gates and walls, to no tactivators, to longer or even no upgrades. It's at the point where people just want to stroll into a place with their blob and take it in under 5mins cause they can't be bothered to take minute to de-siege a place first, or make an outer hit and drain supplies from the place first. It's not ok that defenders work 2-5 hours defending stuff to get upgrades, but it's a-ok for attackers to just blob down something in 5-10mins

This is about making the gamemode not so hard-split between PPTers and Fighters, for example ideally guilds could fight other guilds inside keeps and on a great day even capture it. While defender can have active defences such as Arrow Carts, trebs and tactivators, as enemy can somewhat play around them: Passive ones such as upgrade times and Claim buff deserve to be nerfed. It is just about making keeps fun spots to have fights at instead of feeling like defender is just on godmode while increasing the timeframe to have those epic sieges.

Acceptable balancing changes would be something like:

• Buff siege damage to siege (anet doubled siege health and made condis affect siege more but didn't buff siege damage to siege making defensive trebs, cannons, ACs and oils much less effective)
• Increase shield gen supply cost by like 40 and reduce radius of the bubble also (both offense/defence nerf, attackers can use catas/trebs more but can't ignore defender trebs/ballis/ACs)
• Increase Guild golem supply cost (Guild golems are just best solution for attacking right now) and make golems unaffected by boons once more (other golems are busted too provided you have supply)
• Nerf claim buff to ground and upgrade times a bit; Less upgraded keeps and less stats -> More fights and proactive tagging up, mapstate is less punishing for inexperienced/bad commanders
• Nerf incoming supply to objectives (Both attacker and defender nerf as both need to be smarter regarding supply)
• Nerf Banner tactivator effectiveness (Defenders usually have more on map/nearby and can keep them alive easier)
• Remove mount stomping (Defenders are OOC when running back, attackers don't have luxury as defenders can just close them out)
• Reduce Iron guards to 35% damage reduction (Lord too tanky for 25-35 man groups rn, it is fine with higher/lower numbers, they could also touch scaling), nerf Airship/Stealth fountain damage/duration (less SM cheese) and nerf watchtower to only work on contested objectives (to help small groups and make active "Target painter traps" more important)
• Buff some unused tactivators (Autoturrets could use a rework, armored dolyaks are useless, Charr car could deal more damage to objectives)

So nerfing things that defender get passively and rather increase meaningful siege vs siege gameplay rather than defender relying too much on raw stats and cheese to overwhelm enemies. Defenders have so many tools almost no one is using right now, such as supply/target painter traps, ACs on roofs, trebs behind gate, active scouting, thousand mortars/cannons, presieging. This is because it isn't necessary right now; defending is busted statwise. Of course some attacker cheese would need to be nerfed as well, else it would be too easy to get into lord room.

WvW should be about epic fights for objectives, not epic fights or objectives

EDIT; added missing word

Again I don't see why keeps need to be easier or the "cool" spot to fight, there's only 3 of them on a map, and tons of other areas to have fights. Also keeps at paper level feel meaningless to defend, it's better to wait for the attackers to leave and back cap. Let's also mention that many commanders will not bother defending something unless it's t3 in the first place, even then there's ones that simply don't care and will just go for the easy backcap.

Epic fights for objectives, sure, if both sides have equal numbers, which you know isn't always the case past reset.

But yeah sure, go ahead and nerf everything defenders have, make it take 5 hours to upgrade everything, cause boon balls aren't rolling through fast enough and camping an open tower for stragglers I guess is getting boring.

@"XenesisII.1540" said:Again I don't see why keeps need to be easier or the "cool" spot to fight, there's only 3 of them on a map, and tons of other areas to have fights. Also keeps at paper level feel meaningless to defend, it's better to wait for the attackers to leave and back cap. Let's also mention that many commanders will not bother defending something unless it's t3 in the first place, even then there's ones that simply don't care and will just go for the easy backcap.

Epic fights for objectives, sure, if both sides have equal numbers, which you know isn't always the case past reset.

But yeah sure, go ahead and nerf everything defenders have, make it take 5 hours to upgrade everything, cause boon balls aren't rolling through fast enough and camping an open tower for stragglers I guess is getting boring.

Nah, it isn't just keeps, Dueling died because SM claim buff. Tower and camp claims control who wins a fight. Just only at keeps it becomes overwhelming difference that you cant really make up for by playing much smarter.

Yes, recently there are less and less commanders because there isn't many places to go on map for fun even if you tag up. All inner towers on eb (Jerri, Aldons, veloka, mendons, langor, bravost) that used to be amazing places to fight for, are now terrible places to do so. Even Klovan that used to be equal ground feels now like defenders win like 80% of the time. More commanders = More players, its that simple.

Anyways if you can get Bay T3 under an hour speeding packed dolyaks, it is a balancing issue that needs to be fixed.

Yes, WvW is a numbers game, but it doesn't mean that 15 man guild, that doesn't even try to drain enemy supply and use siege should have a chance defending against 30 man guild with equally good players. This is why siege balancing is also necessary, so this 15 man group has tools to defend instead of being shut down by shield generators (and reflects on those) blocking any defensive siege possible.

Let Ktrainers Ktrain (impossible outside south towers and like anza rn), let scouts use siege to counter offensive siege (impossible due to shield gens right now), lets fighters look for fights (quite impossible rn because all enemy server needs to do is stay in t3 keeps), let small groups have some agency. Overall sieging/upgrading balance is in quite terrible spot right now and I feel like the original WvW devs had much better vision of how WvW should be.

And yea, having more paper keeps isn't a bad thing, it helps commanders build up numbers on the map. Yea, each server might have 1 less T3 keep on home bl, which is much better balance than what we have currently (usually 3, sometimes 2 waypoints). Id welcome back the times when usually only Garrison and EB keep were upgraded, and SM only once per week, outside the deadest hours.

@Threather.9354 said:DBL north towers upgrade much faster because theres 2 incoming camps. This is reason I think desert home bl has advantage over alpine for PPT because you can get everything T3 in matter of hours, including towers.

But yea, they should increase upgrade times. Do note that you can also speed up packed dollies with holosmith (permasuperspeed) making upgrade times 4 times, not just 2, faster. This is why they should nerf packed dolyaks to only count as 1 in addition to increasing amount of dolyaks needed.

This is true. I held off on mentioning that because the OP was specifically about keeps, but the upgrade time difference in the Northern Towers is BANANAS. This is one of many reasons I prefer DBL because they actually fixed that nonsense.

But if we're just talking keeps, Alpine side keeps upgrade much faster and their Yak paths are much easier to protect (especially at Bay). Buuuuut, the minimum break-in time is much lower since you can re-use outer siege on inner and can hit from places where enemies have no meaningful way of interacting with you. So it's harder to hold the side keeps as the defensive team and easier for other servers to upgrade them on Alpine. In the end, I agree that DBL has a PPT advantage (the 2 extra Yak paths alone do that), but I don't think side keep upgrade times are a big part of that. The middle keep upgrades much faster, though, which does have a big impact.

I'm hesitant to take away sped up Packed Yaks as that's basically the only time people actually walk Yaks. It's super obnoxious from SWC to Bay since the path is like 3 meters long, but it's ok elsewhere as it sets up a large area of small skirmishes. Still, if they lost their double count I don't think it would be the end of the world.