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Watchtower nerf


darkwarrior.1670

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Watchtower is both a good, and bad feature in wvw. Its good because it tells you enemies are attacking your tower so you can defend, at the same time its bad because its tells enemies youre hitting their tower. This isnt the problem i have with it. The problem i have is the radius of the watchtower mark area. Theres certain towers you simply cant hit without a treb. North East tower in Alpine bl you cant hit this without a treb. Otherwise youll be marked with cata or obvs ram. The other issue is for example this week SBI has been farminv BG by taking BG green keep in ebg, and the towers surrounding it. Spawn camping in ebg happens alot, and for the most part theres side exits out of spawn to be able to leave spawn safely. On green side you canttt leave without being marked by andons or jerrifers. Its impossible not to get marked. Im not trying to make this about being spawn camped, its about not being able to move passed certain towers by being marked. This happens also due to location of towers and such since the game didnt come with watch tower. If the radius was smaller or maybe watch tower triggers when hit, it wouldnt be as bad. Idk just a thought

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Most towers in the game can be hit with catas out of range from watchtower, NET is about the only exception to this because of it's layout and not being able to hit walls from it's north side.

As for ebg green side, there are other advantages of that side such as you can hit every tower with trebs safely from the keep, you cannot do this for red or blue sides. All towers are easy to reach coming from the keep, unlike red or blue which have more obstacles and travel time to deal with. I think green having a slight disadvantage in their spawn routes is ok to make up for this, there's other ways to deal with spawn camping, just players are too lazy to bother.

And considering the winning server gets green in T1, essentially the top server, there's really no reason to complain here, also cannot complain about servers owning ebg since BG has done this very thing in the past, there's no reason they should suddenly be the exception and now changes need to be made because suddenly they can't hold their side. Mag is the other server that camps ebg out 24/7 all the time, yet no one comes in here to complain to change ebg because of them. You either have the people to fight for your side or you don't, and if you don't you lose and move to the ranking you belong to for this linking, welcome to the world of every other server. Your guilds or commanders need to show up and help break your side free.

P.S even if you reduce the radius of watchtower, essentially making it useless because most commanders use range anyways, green side is tightly enclosed on both sides and those camping your keep or spawn can still counter you easily. You want your side back bring a matching army.

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@Sleepwalker.1398 said:

@darkwarrior.1670 said:Theres certain towers you simply cant hit without a treb. North East tower in Alpine bl you cant hit this without a treb. Otherwise youll be marked with cata or obvs ram.

If you saying these towers can't be hit with treb then i have some news for you. Setup treb on the hill area near NEC, can easily treb this.

He's saying you have to use a treb. Using anything else will get you seen by watch tower

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I mean if you let them hold Ebg towers that long then sorry. Noone going to feel bad for BG anyway and if you need to flip these towers drop 4 or 5 rams and do it by speed only chance. Again everytime I see this watchtower thing pop up. On every server we could run around and I bet less then 1 in 5 probably 1 in 10 have the balloon so it's not some crazy issue that needs to be addressed.

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@Anomander.6791 said:

@darkwarrior.1670 said:Theres certain towers you simply cant hit without a treb. North East tower in Alpine bl you cant hit this without a treb. Otherwise youll be marked with cata or obvs ram.

If you saying these towers can't be hit with treb then i have some news for you. Setup treb on the hill area near NEC, can easily treb this.

He's saying you have to use a treb. Using anything else will get you seen by watch tower

Thanks for clearing this up. I thought he meant it couldn't be ninja-ed without being marked.

Its just been an ongoing thing in T1 that green and blue will gang up on red for a long time.First time BG gets to feel how other servers feel and nerf requests begin.

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@Sleepwalker.1398 said:

@darkwarrior.1670 said:Theres certain towers you simply cant hit without a treb. North East tower in Alpine bl you cant hit this without a treb. Otherwise youll be marked with cata or obvs ram.

If you saying these towers can't be hit with treb then i have some news for you. Setup treb on the hill area near NEC, can easily treb this.

He's saying you have to use a treb. Using anything else will get you seen by watch tower

Thanks for clearing this up. I thought he meant it couldn't be ninja-ed without being marked.

Its just been an ongoing thing in T1 that green and blue will gang up on red for a long time.First time BG gets to feel how other servers feel and nerf requests begin.

Yeah in terms of servers and balance things like that there are much bigger issues than watchtower.

Id like to see it changed so that it isn't so strong against small groups of 5 or so. Right now small groups struggle on those towers/areas as they are seen long before they attack and can't use stealth properly to engage/disengage. Larger groups already have an advantage, they dont need more.

I say make it a tactic. 10min duration with a 15min cd or something. Means if a tower is left without a scout smaller groups have a chance. But a smart scout can rush in and hit the tactic to show others how many are attacking and provide a defensive anti stealth buff when its a large group attacking.

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@"Anomander.6791" said:I say make it a tactic. 10min duration with a 15min cd or something.Thats just about as rdiculous as the current watchtower with near constant uptime.

It should be an active tactic yes (available for all objectives), but more like 30s-1m duration on 20-30m cd (repeatable). It should be a call to arms triggered by scouts to call attention to enemy forces and accurately show enemy numbers and position for a short time.

Hey look suddenly scouts became useful against instead of just saying "hills inc".

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I'd go the opposite way and rename it 'scouting reports'. Apply it to every structure so people can detect enemies and lead to more fights. Might even help stop the karma train as you will know where the blob is and can go fight it before their multiple rams down the gate in seconds.

Scouting isn't really that much fun and very unrewarding and people who say 'scouts become useful' are usually not the ones doing the scouting, they are the ones asking for scouts to give up their time so they don't and continue on their blob train.

And let's face it- if an enemy blob turns up at a castle you should know about it, so watchtower is doing what should happen.

Alternatively, make scouting compulsory for all those demanding scouts, or make it a compulsory thing every player has to do for at least 30 minutes in order to receive any rewards. They must stay in a tower or camp, must move around, make sure siege is refreshed and type in all chat before obtaining track rewards (they can accumulate but not be given until scouting had been done). Add a scouting NPC in each structure that you report in to. If your structure is taken that time counts but you have to move to another to finish your shift. No more than 5 scouts to be active in each structure at a time (so you can't all just 'scout' whilst defending or sitting in a blob).

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Yup, watchtowers definitely are one of the offenders that punishes smaller groups. Especially ones that don't play actively around things like these (new/drunk players).

Do note that having 1 spot you can cata it outside from watchtower range isn't exactly fun and completely negates your ability to play around already existing siege. The maps are already small and you take 1 or 2 possible objective to capture away, it becomes like a dark closet causing you anxiety.

I think bringing smaller groups back would be nice because scouts can't do much against 60 man zergs. Watchtower isn't the biggest issue around, but issue nevertheless. It definitely makes job of scouts too easy while putting small groups in this loop of a few easy towers per map.

How to nerf watchtower tho, here are some ideas:

  • Reduce radius, make it only work when the objective is contested
  • Make it pulse periodically, like every minute, to apply revealed buff for a few sec
  • Make it active effect. It could slot where banners are. Make some resonable passive ones like a long range plasmacannon on roof or autorepairing stronger walls/gates.or
  • Only reveal siege weapons

Also:It should definitely not stop attacker from stealthing as this breaks build diversity and make attacking strats very 1-dimensional. Mesmer and thief mains play for epic stealthbursts.

Truthfully I do not believe that fixing a few tactics is big work, they just have no1 dedicated to work on WvW anymore. Maybe a few dozen thousand players just isn't worth a few devs.

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Reduce the radius of the watchtower and have the tactic only active when the tower becomes contested.

@Threather.9354 said:

It should definitely not stop attacker from stealthing as this breaks build diversity and make attacking strats very 1-dimensional. Mesmer and thief mains play for epic stealthbursts.

As a thief main, it would be so much better if marked just allowed enemy players to see and target you after 2 seconds but allow you to stay in stealth. This way thieves that just want to hide will be unable to, whilst the rest of us that actually want to attack won't be locked out of our highest damage dealing skill for 6 seconds.

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I don't get it. Why changes are suggested only when BG is losing (For the first time) ? Why can't you suggest this earlier?And watchtower is just a convenience to replace having an active REAL player scout like in the past, remember?My suggestion: Leave the watchtower as it is, fix other more pressing WvW issues.

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@April.4765 said:I don't get it. Why changes are suggested only when BG is losing (For the first time) ? Why can't you suggest this earlier?And watchtower is just a convenience to replace having an active REAL player scout like in the past, remember?My suggestion: Leave the watchtower as it is, fix other more pressing WvW issues.

Watchtower and marked in general has been rightly criticised since its inception. Complaining into the apathetic void that is anet and WvW gets tiresome though so people need a rest before having another go a few months/years later.

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@April.4765 said:I don't get it. Why changes are suggested only when BG is losing (For the first time) ?

Far from the first time.. Multiple players from multiple servers have asked. And... maybe this player is in BGs link.

Why can't you suggest this earlier?

Multiple people have complained. In fact, NET had its watchtower radius reduced slightly once to allow people to climb the ramp without being marked. People have been asking about this almost since watchtowers inception.

And watchtower is just a convenience to replace having an active REAL player scout like in the past, remember?

Which, btw it is ineffective at that unless the attacking force is incompetent.

My suggestion: Leave the watchtower as it is, fix other more pressing WvW issues.

I wouldn’t argue that there are more pressing issues. If I could be assured that they were actually working on alliances, I would ask that NO additional work be done until it was completed.

But let’s face it. It ain’t happening.

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@Doug.4930 said:

@April.4765 said:I don't get it. Why changes are suggested only when BG is losing (For the first time) ? Why can't you suggest this earlier?And watchtower is just a convenience to replace having an active REAL player scout like in the past, remember?My suggestion: Leave the watchtower as it is, fix other more pressing WvW issues.

Watchtower and marked in general has been rightly criticised since its inception. Complaining into the apathetic void that is anet and WvW gets tiresome though so people need a rest before having another go a few months/years later.

Only by thief's basically. We all get marked also and either avoid sentrys and tower radius but thief's somehow can't do that

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As someone that's scouted in the past and still does currently, no please stop asking for other players to just stand around in a structure and watch. It's boring, it doesn't reward and it's even worse when people don't respond to scout reports. You are looking at it through tinted glasses and romancing it was a wonderous thing in the past, it wasn't, it isn't now. When havocing the watch towers are easily fooled and leads to sides that don't use roaming scouts to be even more easily deceived. No please don't spend time on this. If we are spending time on map features, be working on a new map over all.

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What? There's so many blind spots you can abuse to attack tower without being noticed by watchtower... Sometimes you won't even see enemies marked on map by watchtower because they sit on top of objective icon(you need to move around your minimap to see dots on its edges, annoying). Most of the time scouts still have to go to tower and see for themselves "what's tagging objective", because usually enemies try to sneak it out of watchtower range.

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@Strider Pj.2193 said:

@April.4765 said:I don't get it. Why changes are suggested only when BG is losing (For the first time) ?

Far from the first time.. Multiple players from multiple servers have asked. And... maybe this player is in BGs link.

Why can't you suggest this earlier?

Multiple people have complained. In fact, NET had its watchtower radius reduced slightly once to allow people to climb the ramp without being marked. People have been asking about this almost since watchtowers inception.

First, the first post presenting BG as a victim after stating the problem with NET. To what end? To gain sympathetic from other servers or from Anet devs? That is no way to present the case to the general public especially if you are from top tier server.

Secondly, the spawn point is just a few feet away. Wow.... How is that a BIG problem when you can respawn and reappear in matters of seconds when the enemies have to either get res or run all the way from one end of the map to another?

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@April.4765 said:

@April.4765 said:I don't get it. Why changes are suggested only when BG is losing (For the first time) ?

Far from the first time.. Multiple players from multiple servers have asked. And... maybe this player is in BGs link.

Why can't you suggest this earlier?

Multiple people have complained. In fact, NET had its watchtower radius reduced slightly once to allow people to climb the ramp without being marked. People have been asking about this almost since watchtowers inception.

First, the first post presenting BG as a victim after stating the problem with NET. To what end? To gain sympathetic from other servers or from Anet devs? That is no way to present the case to the general public especially if you are from top tier server.

The ‘end’ could simply have been using that particular matchup to illustrate the issue. No one is going to feel sympathetic to BG. I would doubt sympathy was the intended purpose.

Secondly, the spawn point is just a few feet away. Wow.... How is that a BIG problem when you can respawn and reappear in matters of seconds when the enemies have to either get res or run all the way from one end of the map to another?

In EBG that is correct. But not NET. Unless the assumption is that the OP ‘couldn’t get out of spawn in alpine’. Which, if that was what was intended, it would show much lower level of competence than I imagined.

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Towers actually serve some kind of useful strategic purpose right now, instead of just acting like baby keeps for "havoc groups" to pvdoor.

The current tower/sentry "radar" system is pretty much the only thing that enables scouting to still work at all, since one person can quickly see and investigate "nearby" action rather than babysitting just 1-2 objectives. This way you at least get a trickle of "roaming-lite" interactions around camps, yaks, and sentries while still being able to spot and delay enemy groups some (siege disablers were basically made for scouts) when they decide to knock on your towers or keeps. Reducing the local map awareness available to a scout just means even fewer people scouting, not more.

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I think I'd prefer it if Watchtower activated only when the objective becomes contested. That way it's still passive and not something people can Tacticator troll, but not constantly active so it can be avoided.

Don't aggro NPC's or damage the objective in any way and you won't be Marked. A radius reduction on certain objectives would still be nice though.

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