Stop Punishing Defenders

There is very little tools, nerfed and otherwise, that defenders have to slow down a larger force. On top of that defending and gearing up a structure just leads toward people losing contribution to do these actions. Be that siege, repairing, escorting yaks. The idea of squad contribution really doesn't cover this and is at best a token gesture. Outnumbered is great but only if you are attacking versus trying to defend. So everything we have just leads to K-training. We need a better balance on attacking and defending.

I love siege wars but it seems like I'm in a pretty extreme minority on that. Anet has nerfed defense some in the past bc players complained that tiered, defended structures yield a stale map where no one is really willing to attack anything. I doubt they would go back on that, the nerfs are just a case of giving ppl what they want . . .

There are lots of tools to slow down a larger force. That's why T3 objectives are often avoided unless the offending server(s) are confident in their ability or certain they heavily outnumber their opponents.

Siege is not supposed to stop a zerg, though it is capable of doing so with enough players using the siege and having it properly placed. It is supposed to delay a zerg until either they're overwhelmed from losing players to the pressure of that defensive siege (as well as roamers, AOE's from walls and other sources of damage) or until an allied zerg strong enough to stop them shows up.

Defensive upgrades have seen a variety of improvements over the years while offensive options have seen far less. The only reason it appears that defensive options are few is because the overall activity of WvW has declined which means there are more times in a day where people will experience heavily outnumbered fights. Not just fights where they can't rally enough people to defend, but fights where the map total of players currently online are >10. In those kinds of scenarios, you really can't expect to do much other than making it as much of a chore as possible for the enemy zergs to get anything accomplished. The end game will always be losing what ever you're defending when you're that outnumbered and that's how it should be. Otherwise what would be the point in trying to attack anything when half a dozen players can huddle up in an objective and be effectively untouchable.

In my opinion, defense is too strong. The only thing capable of taking upgraded and defended objectives are full sized (30+) zergs. The problem isn't that defense is weak, it's that players think building a dozen AC's should stop anything. A properly sieged objective is incredibly difficult to take, mind you specific towers are more difficult to do this with than others. But towers like Langor or Jerrifer's in EBG for example can be sieged in such a way that every angle can covered. The only way to take them when the enemy server has enough players to defend it is to try to ninja rush it and get inside before anyone can respond. Which means needing to build like 6 rams or catas.

Defense is actually too strong in certain ways and in other ways it's not strong enough. You should not expect to hold objectives forever against overwhelming force. You should actually have to dedicate enough people to defend it. Stacking siege to defend objectives has always been too easy and tactics like emergency waypoint and invulnerable fortifications have no right to exist. Siege disablers are okay, because you have counter play. You can stop enemies from deploying them and even if they do, you can still try building more siege if you want or you can try having your siege more spread out next time. Invulnerable fortifications has no counterplay at all, you can only wait it out. Emergency waypoint has no counterplay unless you already managed to get through the walls.

Walls and gates also become exponentially stronger as you go up in tiers, which at least is a thing that ArenaNet is looking to address. Another issue that I have with defenses is that it's too easy for the defenders to stall taking the objective when you are in the circle. I'm sorry, but 1 warrior that is immune to everything for a few seconds should not be delaying an entire zerg from capturing the objective. If the defenders do not have at least 1/4 the players in the circle then they should be losing the objective. Though having players in the circle should make capping slower of course.

What should be buffed about defense though is walls. Walls should be a clear advantage for the defenders. You should not be able to paint the entire wall with AoEs like you can now and walls should probably provide a bit of a range increase for the defenders. Maybe something like +20% range.

@Ganathar.4956 said:Maybe something like +20% range.That would be an insane thing to give to certain ranger builds though. I agree though, there's a lot of things that a defender has to contend with [aoe all over walls/pulls through walls/etc]. Would be interesting to see if los could be done from top of wall. There's just no safe space, even supply depots can be hit. Only sm has a kind of advantage due to the upper floor placement.

@Ganathar.4956 said:Another issue that I have with defenses is that it's too easy for the defenders to stall taking the objective when you are in the circle.

some of the best fights come from defenders trickling in and stalling.

I’d say that buffing defenders would tilt things out of balance.

@Ganathar.4956 said:Defense is actually too strong in certain ways and in other ways it's not strong enough. You should not expect to hold objectives forever against overwhelming force. You should actually have to dedicate enough people to defend it. Stacking siege to defend objectives has always been too easy and tactics like emergency waypoint and invulnerable fortifications have no right to exist. Siege disablers are okay, because you have counter play. You can stop enemies from deploying them and even if they do, you can still try building more siege if you want or you can try having your siege more spread out next time. Invulnerable fortifications has no counterplay at all, you can only wait it out. Emergency waypoint has no counterplay unless you already managed to get through the walls.

Walls and gates also become exponentially stronger as you go up in tiers, which at least is a thing that ArenaNet is looking to address. Another issue that I have with defenses is that it's too easy for the defenders to stall taking the objective when you are in the circle. I'm sorry, but 1 warrior that is immune to everything for a few seconds should not be delaying an entire zerg from capturing the objective. If the defenders do not have at least 1/4 the players in the circle then they should be losing the objective. Though having players in the circle should make capping slower of course.

What should be buffed about defense though is walls. Walls should be a clear advantage for the defenders. You should not be able to paint the entire wall with AoEs like you can now and walls should probably provide a bit of a range increase for the defenders. Maybe something like +20% range.

Walls give something like 50% range increase already, it just only applies to arcing projectiles. That's why you can get hit for 10k AAS from a slb sitting on a wall

Other than that agreed completely

@"SpellOfIniquity.1780" said:There are lots of tools to slow down a larger force. That's why T3 objectives are often avoided unless the offending server(s) are confident in their ability or certain they heavily outnumber their opponents.

Siege is not supposed to stop a zerg, though it is capable of doing so with enough players using the siege and having it properly placed. It is supposed to delay a zerg until either they're overwhelmed from losing players to the pressure of that defensive siege (as well as roamers, AOE's from walls and other sources of damage) or until an allied zerg strong enough to stop them shows up.

Defensive upgrades have seen a variety of improvements over the years while offensive options have seen far less. The only reason it appears that defensive options are few is because the overall activity of WvW has declined which means there are more times in a day where people will experience heavily outnumbered fights. Not just fights where they can't rally enough people to defend, but fights where the map total of players currently online are >10. In those kinds of scenarios, you really can't expect to do much other than making it as much of a chore as possible for the enemy zergs to get anything accomplished. The end game will always be losing what ever you're defending when you're that outnumbered and that's how it should be. Otherwise what would be the point in trying to attack anything when half a dozen players can huddle up in an objective and be effectively untouchable.

In my opinion, defense is too strong. The only thing capable of taking upgraded and defended objectives are full sized (30+) zergs. The problem isn't that defense is weak, it's that players think building a dozen AC's should stop anything. A properly sieged objective is incredibly difficult to take, mind you specific towers are more difficult to do this with than others. But towers like Langor or Jerrifer's in EBG for example can be sieged in such a way that every angle can covered. The only way to take them when the enemy server has enough players to defend it is to try to ninja rush it and get inside before anyone can respond. Which means needing to build like 6 rams or catas.

Pretty much nailed it mate.

@RisenHowl.2419 said:

@Ganathar.4956 said:Defense is actually too strong in certain ways and in other ways it's not strong enough. You should not expect to hold objectives forever against overwhelming force. You should actually have to dedicate enough people to defend it. Stacking siege to defend objectives has always been too easy and tactics like emergency waypoint and invulnerable fortifications have no right to exist. Siege disablers are okay, because you have counter play. You can stop enemies from deploying them and even if they do, you can still try building more siege if you want or you can try having your siege more spread out next time. Invulnerable fortifications has no counterplay at all, you can only wait it out. Emergency waypoint has no counterplay unless you already managed to get through the walls.

Walls and gates also become exponentially stronger as you go up in tiers, which at least is a thing that ArenaNet is looking to address. Another issue that I have with defenses is that it's too easy for the defenders to stall taking the objective when you are in the circle. I'm sorry, but 1 warrior that is immune to everything for a few seconds should not be delaying an entire zerg from capturing the objective. If the defenders do not have at least 1/4 the players in the circle then they should be losing the objective. Though having players in the circle should make capping slower of course.

What should be buffed about defense though is walls. Walls should be a clear advantage for the defenders. You should not be able to paint the entire wall with AoEs like you can now and walls should probably provide a bit of a range increase for the defenders. Maybe something like +20% range.

I'm not 100% sure if arcing projectile work like this in the game, but okay I'll believe you here. Walls getting painted with AoEs is still a problem though, and Anet could still give you a a buff while on the wall that makes all the non-arcing projectiles and all the AoEs have larger range.

Defending is super easy right now and needs to be nerfed more.

Ofc you cant defend permanently with 5 dudes against 50 but you can stall them for a loooooong time until your own zerg arrives.

@DanAlcedo.3281 said:Defending is super easy right now and needs to be nerfed more.

Ofc you cant defend permanently with 5 dudes against 50 but you can stall them for a loooooong time until your own zerg arrives.

Only if those 50 are really terrible. And even then I doubt you can even stall them for long. Besides disabling siege, tell me what is so bad that these 5 people can do against your shitty 50 man zerg.

Additionally keep also in mind that due to addition of mounts defenders can now go back to their objective very super fast which makes things even more harder for the attacking side in terms of flipping anything.

T3 objectives, full of siege, are the death of the game mode: it's extremely un-fun to stand in siege and / or wait for long times, until trebs and catas or rams can tear through walls or gates. It's a lost time, absolutely wasted, when a few siege users are pressing same buttons over and over, and the rest are bored to death, while half are away from keyboard. If the offensive siege is destroyed go find supply and start over. Inside for defenders is the same boring shooting from far away. These are the worst parts of the game and take forever, no wonder people are burnt out and avoiding T3 sieges. The suicide runs to kill the offensive siege are not fighting. Stealthing to disable leads to even longer siege, even more boring.

What is fun, is the fighting -- WITHOUT ANY siege: everyone is involved, requires movement and coordination, can be fun if you play 10 minutes or for hours. The T3 siege requires very long time, and without plenty of supply it's not even possible, and even when happens, rarely is a fun event, it's just eating siege damage constantly. Unless the defenders come out to fight.

A game should be fun. That's what we want from games. Sieges as they are now, are not fun, but MAY lead to some fights, and they are sometimes fun (if both sides are skilled or some other way the forces are somehow balanced).

The "not fun" parts must go away, needs changed. This is a big problem, it's beyond "I like JUST fights", or "I just want to sit on siege" personal preferences. Defending and fighting over an objective (with walls and gates or just simply a circle to take over like in sPvP) COULD be fun, and COULD bring a reason for those fights (that are the only fun parts for now). Just the boring parts needs fixed, removed, replaced, solved somehow.

1. Everyone needs an active role in destroying the walls & gates,
2. and that has to be challenging and enjoyable (not manually press 1 on treb every 20 seconds or press and hold on catapult, these should be done by a bot, same on Arrow Cart, though that at least requires targeting, still way to easy and repetitive)
3. breaking walls or gates has to be short, just enough for defenders to arrive, not longer

This isn't asking to make taking objectives easy, they shouldn't be easy or quick, just getting quickly through those parts that doesn't involve player participation: tearing down walls & gates, so the fight can begin. Make those defensive fights extremely difficult, but not by arrow cart use and mortar one shoot: siege usage ISN'T fighting. Let us use our class skills. If they are less numbers, give defenders huge bonuses, and also allow half of the attackers to join the defender team, like the switching teams happens in sPvP.

Or anything that leads to fights, mantains fights and gives a reason for fights to never cease. Let's put an end to "karma train" (quick capping an usually undefended objective and then moving to next), allow us to stop our "own" forces by becoming defenders of those who can't defend themselves.

Assumptions made by personal, subjective observations concerning the "don't punish defenders" original post:1. Large Number of Attackers vs. Low Number of Defenders at the beginning of the fight:This will always be in favour of the attackers, unless the defending force is on an overstacked server and they can have a handful of scouts in every keep and tower (this is a global population issue for Anet, we all know they have not found a solution for and might never will be able to). If there is no siege inside, the clever defender will call out for help in chat/discord and drop an disable on the siege. After that (should he survive the red circles of doom from below and pulls), he most likely will build a a superior AC (cover gate or proxy catapult at wall) or a sup ballista to shoot at a ranged cata if possible. The current game design makes canons & oil useless (and mortar usually very slow to react & turn). The ability to hold up the attackers is very limited.2. Getting in the fight as a defenderIf Anet wants us to fight at/over an objective, they have to allow "un-organized" defenders rushing in to help to he able to help. some of the map design, especially in the EB and Alpine maps makes this very hard to accomplish. DBL has two entrances to every tower, which allows observant defenders to sneak in and join the fight. Perhaps adding more gate portals would be something to consider on ANet's side.3. Original design structures of the past vs. power creep professions of todayNot (yet) counting the impact of siege, a big problem of attackers vs. defenders is the differences of the professions that clash at each other. The abundance of ranged AoE makes fighting on walls a death trap. When WvW came out many years ago, Meteor Shower and Barrage (and perhaps a few Necro wells) where the only skills that could target the top of the wall and hurt defenders. The amount of AoE damage now available to many more professions, in combination of the LoS issues have turned walls from a defensive advantage to an attackers advantage4. Supply and its role for attackers and defendersMost of the supply meta game has faded away after the auto-upgrading that was introduced with HoT. This needs to come back and would give defenders more tactical options over attackers when combined with the tactics and improvements - which a "defenders only" perk. What about being able to recharge tactics in towers and keeps faster, by spending supply on them? This would require an option to give supply to a quartermaster for a %-reduction of the recharge timer. Defenders would not spend so much repairing failing walls, but could prepare for a counter attack under a "second" chilling fog. Attackers, already inside, would have to secure the depots (small areas you can fight over) to prevent defenders to hand in supply. This would be fighting for a special task, instead of fighting over a wall.5. Rethinking old ideas?Perhaps it is just me, but I remember way more epic fights over a Lord's circle in keeps, when you could still "banner a lord" and there was a small "Waypoint window" after each "contested" timer has reset.

@Gop.8713 said:I love siege wars but it seems like I'm in a pretty extreme minority on that. Anet has nerfed defense some in the past bc players complained that tiered, defended structures yield a stale map where no one is really willing to attack anything. I doubt they would go back on that, the nerfs are just a case of giving ppl what they want . . .

Structures are mento to be lost, not maintained for long time, also wvw has been mostly a ktrain spam pvd game.

You guys think the people trebbing really sit there for hours pressing the #2 button? Nope it's super boring. They just auto treb while afk. Which is against the rules technically.

A certain server uses alt account bots every day like this. Minutes after taking smc there are 6 - 12 trebs with bots firing at 4 different towers. The ultimate fun mode.....

@displayname.8315 said:You guys think the people trebbing really sit there for hours pressing the #2 button? Nope it's super boring. They just auto treb while afk. Which is against the rules technically.

A certain server uses alt account bots every day like this. Minutes after taking smc there are 6 - 12 trebs with bots firing at 4 different towers. The ultimate fun mode.....

Which is why I am a firm believer in the fact that NOBODY should be able to hit another Tower or Keep from any Tower or Keep. Also, if Anet is set on making it easier to get into Towers and Keeps, they REALLY need to look into this and make sure this isn't possible. It makes it way too easy to sit inside your own controlled area and Treb at a Tower or Keep until the walls go down, then shout out in Map Chat that the walls are down for anybody to go take. If they are going to continue to allow this, then I propose that all Towers and Keeps have an outer AND inner wall system where only the outer wall can be breached by a Treb located inside a Tower or Keep. Also that the inner wall be set up in such a way like SMC and only the gates can be attacked for entrance to the inner area, and that there are more than one entry point for each area as to allow defenders more of an opportunity to defend.

Is everyone forgetting that defenders get 800 stats for free after only one hour of holding it?? You can also use supply traps to deny enemy, disable their siege, free cast (if not from the walls then from literally everywhere else because you can glide and just spread around), close outer walls when attackers are on inner to deny more people joining because most of the time they wont have supplies (keeps only). Not to mention tactics as well as dragon banner which can annihilate both siege and players.

On top of all that it's a lot easier to destroy attacking siege than defending one because there's many safe spots in many objectives. Defenders also have a lot more supplies for counter attack (especially in t2/t3 objectives), can pre-build siege for defense and can regroup faster due to mounts. Meanwhile, destroying attacker siege on outer keep walls/gates will almost certainly deny them chance to reach inner because they'll have to rebuild siege on outer.

I honestly dont understand why people are trying to force "we're being outnumbered" as their argument in objective control and general roaming/downed state balance. If you're outnumbered then you get good to beat enemies, otherwise you deserve to lose, period.

80% of defenders on my server have no clue what to do when enemy is attacking, they just die on the wall over and over again and I'm pretty sure that majority of such posts come from such people. I have almost no problems laying down meteors from the wall because of evade frames, freecasting from sides while attackers are focused on walls, blasting someone's smoke fields to secure my dmg/siege disabler etc etc. It's literally a l2p issue or straight up using useless build/class for defending. Just adapt to situation, it's actually very easy to defend as long as people have some clue what to do.

@steki.1478 said:80% of defenders on my server have no clue what to do when enemy is attacking, they just die on the wall over and over again and I'm pretty sure that majority of such posts come from such people. I have almost no problems laying down meteors from the wall because of evade frames, freecasting from sides while attackers are focused on walls, blasting someone's smoke fields to secure my dmg/siege disabler etc etc. It's literally a l2p issue or straight up using useless build/class for defending. Just adapt to situation, it's actually very easy to defend as long as people have some clue what to do.

In a lot of those cases, leaving the wall is the better option anyway. Cloud out behind them, pick off some of their squirrels, keep them in combat so they can't rez, etc. You can kill a zerg by attrition in your keep. It's generally not going to be from a ranger going to the edge of a wall and pressing longbow 5 though lol. Not saying that's what you're doing, just adding to your point.

Most everyone in this thread is missing Grim's additional point regarding objectives and that is the risk/reward gained from running doly's, defending camps, etc compared to blobbing is way out of whack. There is great strength in numbers, it is much safer running in the 50 man zerg than it is escorting dolys to gari. With the major nerf to arrow carts the life of the average zergling is much easier. It sounds like that mega zerg life will improve further if the devs implement some of the structure changes they discussed in their last stream. It would be nice if the devs acknowledged that the risk/reward for doing the hard/important things is much different than doing the easy/simple things (ie zerging). This is one of the main reasons most WvW players won't do the little things you need to win your weekly matchup.

@GUFF.5692 said:Most everyone in this thread is missing Grim's additional point regarding objectives and that is the risk/reward gained from running doly's, defending camps, etc compared to blobbing is way out of whack. There is great strength in numbers, it is much safer running in the 50 man zerg than it is escorting dolys to gari. With the major nerf to arrow carts the life of the average zergling is much easier. It sounds like that mega zerg life will improve further if the devs implement some of the structure changes they discussed in their last stream. It would be nice if the devs acknowledged that the risk/reward for doing the hard/important things is much different than doing the easy/simple things (ie zerging). This is one of the main reasons most WvW players won't do the little things you need to win your weekly matchup.

Can you explain us what's hard about giving swiftness to an npc?

Objectives get upgraded even if you don't escort dollies. You don't have mercenaries like in EB that are constantly attacking objectives.

If upgrading objectives was an active job instead of passive one, then we should consider the reward vs effort. Right now there's no effort in upgrading.

@steki.1478 said:

@GUFF.5692 said:Most everyone in this thread is missing Grim's additional point regarding objectives and that is the risk/reward gained from running doly's, defending camps, etc compared to blobbing is way out of whack. There is great strength in numbers, it is much safer running in the 50 man zerg than it is escorting dolys to gari. With the major nerf to arrow carts the life of the average zergling is much easier. It sounds like that mega zerg life will improve further if the devs implement some of the structure changes they discussed in their last stream. It would be nice if the devs acknowledged that the risk/reward for doing the hard/important things is much different than doing the easy/simple things (ie zerging). This is one of the main reasons most WvW players won't do the little things you need to win your weekly matchup.

If you have to question the difficulty in keeping camps yours or doly's alive then you don't do it. It's so easy for that 50 man zerg to come and take the camp you were defending for 2 hours straight, working to get it to tier 3. Since it is so much easier for a blog to take objectives they get much more rewards per hour with less risk of dying. Only another mega blob will put people in that enemy zerg at risk. Defending small objectives is a very active and thankless task indeed.

@GUFF.5692 said:

@steki.1478 said:

@GUFF.5692 said:Most everyone in this thread is missing Grim's additional point regarding objectives and that is the risk/reward gained from running doly's, defending camps, etc compared to blobbing is way out of whack. There is great strength in numbers, it is much safer running in the 50 man zerg than it is escorting dolys to gari. With the major nerf to arrow carts the life of the average zergling is much easier. It sounds like that mega zerg life will improve further if the devs implement some of the structure changes they discussed in their last stream. It would be nice if the devs acknowledged that the risk/reward for doing the hard/important things is much different than doing the easy/simple things (ie zerging). This is one of the main reasons most WvW players won't do the little things you need to win your weekly matchup.

If you think that flipping t3 objectives with 50 people against 30+ defenders on siege and clouding around is easy then you're not doing it. If you think that every player in that 50 man group is playing flawlessly then you're not doing it. It's amazing how people just throw out random facts that arent even true just to prove their point.

Yes, I defend camps, but I'll never escort dollyaks because it's pointless. You'd be much more useful as a defender inside attacked objective, as a ganker distracting enemies or as a roamer denying enemy supplies by flipping camps. If enemy wanted to kill your dollyak they'd do it with or without you there because they can always bring more people. If you have more people on dollyak then congratz, you just enabled enemy to have more useful people on the map, an easier attack on objective and easier time regrouping because your roamers are doing pointless work.

It's so easy for that 50 man zerg to come and take the camp you were defending for 2 hours straight, working to get it to tier 3. Since it is so much easier for a blog to take objectives they get much more rewards per hour with less risk of dying. Only another mega blob will put people in that enemy zerg at risk. Defending small objectives is a very active and thankless task indeed.

It's also much easier to let it upgrade on its own during night or are we forgetting about that fact? 5-10 people would flip the camp just as easy, is that also a problem? Why should a small objective be any more important than the rest? If it was it would have walls or gates too.

What makes you think that people in zergs have less risk of dying? You can cloud around and disengage all you want, they cant so when someone gets off guard it's an easy target, no matter how close the zerg is. There's always an easy target in a zerg, you have the movement freedom, they dont. You can kill them 1 by 1, they cant because there's no point of focusing 1 out of 30 players with whole zerg.

The only additional loot that blobs get are heavy loot bags which is like 1 gold per hour at most, depending on how many people you farm.

The true punishment for defending is now that it’s not rewarding at all. U barely get anything for defending. It’s almost u hurt ur self when u defend since u could just let enemies take the tower so u can recap it after that