Catapult Damage

I looked through the first couple pages of threads, and I read through the release notes, but I didn't see a catapult damage change anywhere.

So, has anyone else noticed that catapults of all varieties are doing less damage now? Against a paper tower wall, a regular cata use to do enough damage uncharged to reduce the wall's health by 3%; a superior catapult managed 5%. Now, the percentages have decreased to 2% and 4% respectively, with a charged superior catapult shot only managing 7%. The raw numbers have changed as well, with an uncharged superior catapult shot having been 18.3k damage to a paper wall, and now clocking in at 15k and change.

I'm not trying to debate the merits of such a change, I'm just trying to figure out where this was communicated to players. And, if it wasn't, is this an actual change that slipped someone's mind or are we dealing with a shiny new bug? I have no idea if the damage done by other sieges have changed.

**Edited to denote the above information is viewed from the perspective of having full catapult mastery and full siege might.

Was not in patch notes, so it is either a bug because the last patch increased the damage. Or it is an intentional stealth nerf.

I wouldn't be surprised if they nerfed it, it was a little high.

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-August-8-2017-3

Siege Balance:Ballista:Ballista’s damage to siege has been increased.Ballista’s 4th skill has been replaced with an antiair bolt that shoots people out of the air and immobilizes them.Catapult:Catapults’ boulder shots now deal damage based on their charge level. The longer the catapult is charged, the more damage it deals.

@XenesisII.1540 said:https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-August-8-2017-3

Siege Balance:

Ballista:

Ballista’s damage to siege has been increased.Ballista’s 4th skill has been replaced with an antiair bolt that shoots people out of the air and immobilizes them.

Catapult:

Catapults’ boulder shots now deal damage based on their charge level. The longer the catapult is charged, the more damage it deals.

That was from last month when catapults damage was increased, todays update seems to have decreased the damage. But it does not seem to be in patch notes so it is either intentional or a bug.

WvWCatapult boulder damage has been adjusted to have consistent damage output no matter the charge level

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/2879/game-release-notes-september-22-2017#latest

Back to normal I guess. Fun experiment.

Yep, hopefully someone in red will notice this and give us some insight.

Honestly, I could've seen the charged damage being reduced a little, but reducing the uncharged damage is a surprise if intentional; those values have been the same for years.

Hadn't seen Hesacon's post before I responded previously, but now I'm curious if things are back to before-charging levels, or if they've slid the base damage a nerf in the guise of ditching the charge mechanic. I can't hop into game to test it for a bit, others will have to have fun!

good, it needed to be reverted. T3's got zerged in seconds. Now we just need a golem fix.....so you can't boon a golemn. Booning golemns is stupid, if you got a good enough group you should run only golemns and smash stuff. 1.5x damage multiplier with quickness.....and +750 power from might.....just like, wut? Plus the golemns blowing up give you combat advantages and keep you safe. No reason ur entire zerg shouldn't just man golemns if you are winning the zerg fights.

Catapult damage seemed random earlier this evening. I was on a cata doing a consistent full shot and my guildie said the damage was anywhere from 5% to 9% (maybe 5-8, I forget). Very odd.

Yea after finally getting some old friends and family members who quit GW2 a looooooong time ago to join me in making a small Havoc group this nerf hit... Had just enough people join me to make something happen...

The damage does seem random 5-9% which is still down from what it was before.

It seemed like Anet's attempt to encourage players to place their catas further away from walls to deal more damage at longer charges. In the end, people were still placing catas up against walls and just charging it to maximum power.

There needs to be a damage modifier based on distance the boulder travels.

i wonder if they would do the same to trebs

It is in the patch notes(check the replies section in the game release notes for September 22.):"Catapult boulder damage has been adjusted to have consistent damage output no matter the charge level."

This means, no matter how you charge the cata, it will do the same damage over a period of time.

@HolyWood.7853 said:It is in the patch notes(check the replies section in the game release notes for September 22.):"Catapult boulder damage has been adjusted to have consistent damage output no matter the charge level."

This means, no matter how you charge the cata, it will do the same damage over a period of time.

It's not consistent though.

Which, in essence, does not incentivize someone to place it further away. well, at least for large groups anyway

Still doesn't explain the random damage from a consistent fully charged shot. My post above:Catapult damage seemed random earlier this evening. I was on a cata doing a consistent full shot and my guildie said the damage was anywhere from 5% to 9% (maybe 5-8, I forget). Very odd.

@"McKenna Berdrow.2759" said:Charging the cata still increases the damage that it does. It now has consistent dps compared to before where charging it increased dps.

I don't understand this.

So are you saying that you lowered the max damage in a way where charging it and not charging offers the same dps? So in other words you are looking at those "seconds" it takes to charge and giving smaller bonuses than before to negate their impact?

So I can proxy cat a wall using fully charged shots, and it would take the same time as it does to proxy it with tap shots?What kinda hp pool does this assume though? If I have a single cat on paper wall, there is likely to be one method of catapulting that is faster than the other....given that both do large %'s of dmg there will be a remainder that could lead to an extra shot on the charged or the uncharged.

OR I guess I'll have to do the maths.......can u give us some stats to do the maths tho?

guess im overthinking part of this.tl:dr: doesnt matter if I charge or tap, still gonna do the same dps ....yes? I don't know what u meant by consistent dps... you mean the same dps as the tap method? Same damage per second?

Would be nice to have values so we could work out how to take down a wall t1/t2/t3 optimally with 2-7 catapults...whether to have them all charge shot or to all tap shot or mix it up a bit....

Basically would need the wall % that the charged shot and the tap shot does vs each wall type....

@Cerby.1069 said:

@"McKenna Berdrow.2759" said:Charging the cata still increases the damage that it does. It now has consistent dps compared to before where charging it increased dps.

The first bit: Yes in a sense; if you tap off cooldown, it'll do the same rate of damage to a wall as a cat would if you just held the button down to recharge and max charge off cooldown. Before, cats always dealt the most damage by maximizing the shot charge meter. People were then just point-blanking them at max charge for higher cat damage in general.

The second bit: I guess it would depend on how siege damage is calculated, but if it's all multiplication like normal damage is, then it doesn't matter what kind of wall it is. If they've done it to fully scale closely with the charge meter... then while I guess you "could" optimize shots, you're talking a matter of a few pixels and fractions of a second to optimize splash based on how granular the charge calculation is. The higher precision the calculation by charge, the less potential there is to create such an advantage, which would only really be doable/repeatable with some kind of script/illegal program given a high degree of precision needed. I mean, I guess something as broad as "one less hit" is learnable given the scale of the numbers and whatnot, but safe placement/hitting two walls usually takes priority, and perfect optimization would only be possible with some kind of cheating, which, for the record, I do not condone.

Really, if they want to encourage reasonable cat placements, damage should just scale on a bell curve with projectile airtime. Point-blank takes a penalty by being too close for ranged counterpressure/ballistae, and super-far-on-a-hill-physics-advantaged shots from cats that can't be targeted should take a similar penalty for also being too safe.

That was from last month when catapults damage was increased, todays update seems to have decreased the damage. But it does not seem to be in patch notes so it is either intentional or a bug.<

Isn't every change either "intentional or a bug"? ;)

I am glad the changes were made, the high damage made defense too tough. I think a better approach would be for player's attributes to influence siege, as if the siege was considered another weapon.

@TheBravery.9615 said:It seemed like Anet's attempt to encourage players to place their catas further away from walls to deal more damage at longer charges. In the end, people were still placing catas up against walls and just charging it to maximum power.

There needs to be a damage modifier based on distance the boulder travels.

just had the aoe damage to self inflict on the catapult lol....

I think they accomplished what they wanted. They gave smaller havoc groups a way to raze tower walls in a similar timeframe but from more strategic positions, whether being behind an object or terrain to block ballistae or simply out of arrow cart range.

Would still have prefered range to do more damage. Faceplanting a cata into a wall looks stupid. Boulders flying through the air from afar... now thats a proper siege.