Ballistas should not fire unless siege is targeted

I'm getting really sick of people building several ballistas in towers or at a distance during open field fights to snipe. These things do between 6 and 10k per hit depending on your armor and have a range of 3.5k. I wouldn't have an issue with it if it didn't do so much damage, but when you randomly get speared by one of these things, whether the scale of the fight is large or small, it forces you to disengage immediately.

It should not be rewarding to sit inside an objective and snipe people from a football field away for half their health each shot. At least cannons are slower projectiles and even do less damage to players so it only has much of an effect if it's firing in to a large zerg.

There are plenty enough options for objective defense as is so my suggestion is to change ballistas so that they can only fire if siege is targeted (any form of siege; golem, cannon, shield gen, etc.)

The problem is, you have to select the target to fire. This is a problem with the siege is outside of selection range, but can still be hit by the ballista, and the only workaround is to select a player near the siege and pierce through them to destroy it.

If they change this, ballistas need to be able to target siege that you can't select, like you can with cats and trebs.

@Hannelore.8153 said:The problem is, you have to select the target to fire. This is a problem with the siege is outside of selection range, but can still be hit by the ballista, and the only workaround is to select a player near the siege and pierce through them to destroy it.

If they change this, ballistas need to be able to target siege that you can't select, like you can with cats and trebs.

Manning a ballista with the mastery maxed out could grant an additional 500 - 1000 range on targetable siege. That would be a change I'd be fine with.

Another more simple solution would just be to make it so that they do reduced damage to players, 3k tops. It makes sense for objectives to be dangerous to be near, but you don't even have to be particularly close to one to be hit by a ballista because they have so much range. If they're to be kept as they are at minimum they should have their damage reduced. Otherwise, I think making it so they can only fire at other siege would be a good change, and if necessary increasing the range at which they can target siege regarding your concern.

And I'm really sick of people bandwagoning to one server to fight doors with 70 people.Also, I'm really sick of being in a 2v5-10 fight, constantly downing 2 or 3 and have them all just instantly ressing each other over and over until I make a mistake.

There is nothing wrong with balistas. The karma train has already whined enough to get walls and siege nerfed, and that includes balistas.

@"SpellOfIniquity.1780" said:I'm getting really sick of people building several ballistas in towers or at a distance during open field fights to snipe. These things do between 6 and 10k per hit depending on your armor and have a range of 3.5k. I wouldn't have an issue with it if it didn't do so much damage, but when you randomly get speared by one of these things, whether the scale of the fight is large or small, it forces you to disengage immediately.

It should not be rewarding to sit inside an objective and snipe people from a football field away for half their health each shot. At least cannons are slower projectiles and even do less damage to players so it only has much of an effect if it's firing in to a large zerg.

There are plenty enough options for objective defense as is so my suggestion is to change ballistas so that they can only fire if siege is targeted (any form of siege; golem, cannon, shield gen, etc.)

Tiering up an objective needs to get more rewards and scouts / solo roaming players need more reward too, rewards need to scale with the size of zerg. Bigger zerg with more player sharing should get less. if i solo kill 1 cow, i get 1 cow , 10 ppl kill 1 cow, it should be divided by 10 .

There aren't many option for objective defense. There is only always 1 scout who call for help for ages and objective still gets flip. Stop the whine.

also need #5 keys for balista to do reveal shots to kill sneaky thiefs and hacking player who can't invisible but still stealth snipe ppl all the time

@Ubi.4136 said:

There is nothing wrong with balistas.

You're right. It's what's wrong with the players that sit inside objectives all day.

Ballistas were never a problem until recently. Now more and more people are sitting on them all the time because they've learned that there is almost 0 risk involved in doing so while inside a structure and you can still chunk people from a mile away.

All other siege is fine as is. Arrow Carts have a short range and their damage isn't instant, it's multi-hit and rapidly builds. Cannons are slow projectiles and always in static locations. Burning Oil has very short range and is in a static location. Trebucets are slow projectiles. Catapults are slow projectiles.

Ballistas are fast projectiles that do more damage than all of those and have more range than all of them except for Trebuchets. The only draw back is that it's single target.

Sentrys and supply camps are objectives meant for solo and smaller groups of players. But people have taken it upon themselves to aim ballistas at sentrys in a lot of places making playing alone or in small groups some how even more irritating than it already is.

Make ballistas do more damage to siege and way less damage to players....

What did people think would happen when you take away glass cannon builds? Now they just use ballistas instead apparently rofl. Power to them.

I don't think I have ever been killed by a ballista or have seen an uptick in players using ballista. I'm sorry you were killed by a ballista or a ballista takes half your health. Technically we should all die from a ballista or when a cata's huge boulder hits us or mortar or 4 arrow carts or burning oil but we don't. Siege vs humans irl killed you everytime so no to even less damage. Just have your zerg los cheat zoom w/e move bs and kill it like everything.

To be honest, if you get hit by a ballista, it SHOULD hurt.

@"SpellOfIniquity.1780"

"It should not be rewarding to sit inside an objective and snipe people" and "It's what's wrong with the players that sit inside objectives all day."

The beauty of wvw is that players are allowed to play whatever way they want, not the way you want or prefer them to play. Also, wvw was designed as a 3 sided realm vs realm mode where siege is fundamental to the overall experience, so just be more aware of your surroundings.

Out of curiosity, were you dueling when someone was pegging you with a ballista?

It's very easy to dodge a ballista bolt..were you sleeping whilst moaning about not being able to instantly roll over everything in your mono-blob?

Ballistas in open field fights are fun and add some more tactics to deal with - maybe invite a couple stealth types to your squad who can very easily sneak around and kill the ballista users. Ballistas in towers etc can be countered with a little effort and skill. Adds to the breadth of tactics instead of rolling face against gate without fear of anything being able to hurt you.

Maybe learn to keep your eyes open to the whole battlefield and not just your blob ball?

I'm gonna screenshot this next time I see it since some of you seem to think this is a rare occurrence.

@Swagger.1459 said:@"SpellOfIniquity.1780"

"It should not be rewarding to sit inside an objective and snipe people" and "It's what's wrong with the players that sit inside objectives all day."

The beauty of wvw is that players are allowed to play whatever way they want, not the way you want or prefer them to play. Also, wvw was designed as a 3 sided realm vs realm mode where siege is fundamental to the overall experience, so just be more aware of your surroundings.

Out of curiosity, were you dueling when someone was pegging you with a ballista?Not to mention, how is it ever "rewarding"? You're not really getting anything for sitting on a ballista unless the fools willingly throw themselves at the bolts. Its a scare tactic. They are easily dodged, easily destroyed, easily "disabled" with cc and personally I prefer some classes sitting on them and letting me get the first burst in rather than them using their own skills.

That said maybe I should build ballistas on every camp I cap this week because I like to spite people.

So, most comments here do get the idea of how odd it would be to lower the reward of using a siege weapon on a siege game mode.I would love to see siege weapons do MORE damage to players, specially cuz I lost count of how many times I sneak (re)build a cannon/ballista to defend a keep and the zerg would just outheal the damage taken, so much that they often ignore the siege's existence.Maybe a ballista targeting shouldn't be so tricky? something like cannons targeting, so avoiding it should be as easy as walk away from the targeted area, while the siege's user could see it's range limit.

@Arcan Blues.5284 said:So, most comments here do get the idea of how odd it would be to lower the reward of using a siege weapon on a siege game mode.I would love to see siege weapons do MORE damage to players, specially cuz I lost count of how many times I sneak (re)build a cannon/ballista to defend a keep and the zerg would just outheal the damage taken, so much that they often ignore the siege's existence.Maybe a ballista targeting shouldn't be so tricky? something like cannons targeting, so avoiding it should be as easy as walk away from the targeted area, while the siege's user could see it's range limit.

Anet could make the structure sieges indestructible. They are not that great since most zerg know where to stand to avoid them. Right now they just melt when a zerg walks by... You can use them anyway when a zerg is too close, unless you have a deathwish.

It's a frikin ballista. If it hits me, I expect to be destroyed...

OP, i'm pretty sure your server is known as one of those that utilizes these siege the most when they sit in SMC.

Personally I'm more curious as to why this is suddenly more noticeable.

Ballistas were never a problem until recently.

When you say something like that. There has been zero patch notes for ballista damage adjustments. I don't think people just woke up and were like 'Hey what happens if I build a ballista? Whoa that's a ton of damage!' Ballista have been doing the same thing since the games inception (though their targeting has been 'improved').

Balista's are really easy to avoid, I've almost never been hit by them.. likewise i've rarely hit people with them either.

@"God.2708" said:Personally I'm more curious as to why this is suddenly more noticeable.

Ballistas were never a problem until recently.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/109335/game-update-notes-july-7-2020#latest

Siege Weapons

Arrow Cart: Reduced power damage of all skills by 20%.Ballista: Reduced power damage to players of all skills by 20%. Damage to siege weapons is unchanged for skills 1 and 3.Cannon: Reduced power damage of all skills by 20%.

@"SpellOfIniquity.1780" said:I'm gonna screenshot this next time I see it since some of you seem to think this is a rare occurrence.

We don't think it's rare. We think players dying to it is. Are you a special exception?

@ArchonWing.9480 said:

@"God.2708" said:Personally I'm more curious as to why this is suddenly more noticeable.

Ballistas were never a problem until recently.

Arrow Cart: Reduced power damage of all skills by 20%.Ballista: Reduced power damage to players of all skills by 20%. Damage to siege weapons is unchanged for skills 1 and 3.Cannon: Reduced power damage of all skills by 20%.

Even more confusing then! Forgot they included that in the AC and cannon nerfs.

@"ArchonWing.9480" said:

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/109335/game-update-notes-july-7-2020#latest

Siege Weapons

Arrow Cart: Reduced power damage of all skills by 20%.Ballista: Reduced power damage to players of all skills by 20%. Damage to siege weapons is unchanged for skills 1 and 3.Cannon: Reduced power damage of all skills by 20%.

Comp guild/zergs be like: "We could out-heal your siege damage before and its even easier now....(haaahahah) but we're just k-train your empty BL...i mean looking for fights."

@God.2708 said:

@ArchonWing.9480 said:

@God.2708 said:Personally I'm more curious as to why this is suddenly more noticeable.

Ballistas were never a problem until recently.

Arrow Cart: Reduced power damage of all skills by 20%.Ballista: Reduced power damage to players of all skills by 20%. Damage to siege weapons is unchanged for skills 1 and 3.Cannon: Reduced power damage of all skills by 20%.

Well, I don't claim to understand what's going on xD. But I guess someone thought it was a bit overtuned.