Keeps need longer upgrade times, Castle longest.

[Riba.3271]

@Sviel.7493 said:

@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.

Well, lets say they remove packed counting as 2, that would mean that any class can escort dollies, not only ones that can give swift/superpeed. Meaning it would open more variety to WvW.

I did suggest that packed dolyaks would instead carry 3 times as much supply as speedy, so speeding them could result in 6 times more supply compared to normal dollies.

[Svarty.8019]

@Threather.9354 said:

@"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 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

It looks like you've blown Arenanet's WvW manpower budget for the next 80 years right there!

[Riba.3271]

@Svarty.8019 said:

@Threather.9354 said:

@"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 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

It looks like you've blown Arenanet's WvW manpower budget for the next 80 years right there!

Yes, that 1 coder that is paid 1 hour a year to change a few numbers might have to work extra day :pensive:

[Svarty.8019]

@Threather.9354 said:

@Svarty.8019 said:

@Threather.9354 said:

@"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 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

It looks like you've blown Arenanet's WvW manpower budget for the next 80 years right there!

Yes, that 1 coder that is paid 1 hour a year to change a few numbers might have to work extra day :pensive:

They'll never get the opportunity to tweak jack, they seem to permanently be pulled off WvW to code that Story Mode guff. As a student of narrative, I can tell you that they shouldn't be half as proud of it as they are.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

I'm the type that believes that every captured objective should have a waypoint. Those waypoints are easy to disable, so it would increase skirmishes, give reasons to defend (or attack) side objectives, such as the Tower before the Keep, and make defending more difficult because your enemy would have a waypoint nearby, just like you, and give them a real chance to take even T3 Keeps/Castles.

It would turn all of WvW (but especially EBG) into a true push-pull war, and give even more value to gureilla tactics, use of multiple tags/squads, and reduce the gap between unmounted and mounted players, and more..

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

I actually don't see the problem. Took T3 keeps with roughly same numbers on both sides. Defended T3 keeps with roughly the same numbers on both sides.

The one thing that really influences the outcome is the amount of arrow carts. Some servers put as many into a structure as they can.

Either AC damage goes down or the amount of ACs that can be put in goes down. Apart from that, I do not see the problem some people seem to have.

[Riba.3271]

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:I actually don't see the problem. Took T3 keeps with roughly same numbers on both sides. Defended T3 keeps with roughly the same numbers on both sides.

The one thing that really influences the outcome is the amount of arrow carts. Some servers put as many into a structure as they can.

Either AC damage goes down or the amount of ACs that can be put in goes down. Apart from that, I do not see the problem some people seem to have.

Back in the old times SM was almost never T3 which ment EB was always place for fights (due to SM taking whole day, like 15 hours to upgrade). Yes people built ACs but they were behind wooden gates and walls, and SM never had supply during those 15 hours if you tried to upgrade it. Right now it is rarity not see upgraded SM for 1 server on EB, it is daily occurance. Mostly because it is so fast to upgrade to T3 (less than 3 hours with unoptimal dolly management) and defending is quite a bit easier due to tactics, claim buff, mounts, stealth fountains, much tankier lord, beforementioned abundant supply. Even gliding helps defenders a lot because as long as they are on higher ground, they can often just glide to safety when chased.

Same logic applies to T3 side keeps on borderlands. I have nothing against Garri being T3 but upgrading any objective requires almost no coordination right now.

Yes, you can take T3 keeps and defend them. Just issue is the difficulty. Not a single server is building trebs behind the gate to drain supply/stop rams which just shows how easy defending is now. There is just no brain involved, everything is bruteforced with shield gens or stats. Attacker should be whittling down the defenses one by one while defender is trying to buy time to get strong enough players+commander to wipe the attacker or just drain the supplies.

I don't find ACs a problem though: There are plenty of ways to take them down like trebbing them from further away, stealthing or running 1 more minstrel player. Even shield gens give you 12s buff of AC immunity (interesting fact: you don't have to stay in the shield gen bubble to have the immunity, the immunity lasts as long until the bubble ends as long as you touched the bubble). Trick is to never build melee catapults tho, as enemy only needs 2 dragonbanner 5s to kill them almost fully.

[Sovereign.1093]

O.o;; tone me down mechanics? Game won't be fun if you don't work for it. I mean there's a lot of ways to take something and it's not just one thing tactic. You can easily do a bit 3 things at that same time tactic so the other team must defend. But I guess this is not so easy if your not many

If you don't have a lot, do what mag does, just camp one structure. I don't really know what they do if they're not on sm, chat? Talk about life? Hey man, how's your work man. Etc.

[Dawdler.8521]

Imagine if a keep runs out of supply... it starts a 10-15m or so timer and if it still has no supplies when timer is up, it downgrades 1 tier (resetting the timer, but it will happen again if it remains without supplies).

[Sovereign.1093]

@Dawdler.8521 said:Imagine if a keep runs out of supply... it starts a 10-15m or so timer and if it still has no supplies when timer is up, it downgrades 1 tier (resetting the timer, but it will happen again if it remains without supplies).

Mmm that might be interesting. Makes roaming classes great again

[Dawdler.8521]

@Sovereign.1093 said:

@"Dawdler.8521" said:Imagine if a keep runs out of supply... it starts a 10-15m or so timer and if it still has no supplies when timer is up, it

downgrades 1 tier

(resetting the timer, but it will happen again if it remains without supplies).

Mmm that might be interesting. Makes roaming classes great againAnd theoretically encourage zergs to break up, more people with tags in order to coordinate starving keeps that would otherwise be inpenetrable/defended by borderzergs, until they are weak enough for an attack. Which naturally lead to lots more large scale fighting around the camps and dolly routes and players actively being able to reduce passive PPT without any "we're gonna force you to play like we want" mechanics.

But I digress, simple fact is WvW is as WvW is.

[Sviel.7493]

Downgrading keeps like that probably would be awful in practice.

Assuming you didn't have a Supply Drop slotted in to just negate the whole thing, the only time it would trigger would be when some noob grabs the last morsel of supply which will inevitably lead to them getting yelled at. The downgrade would then be blamed on them, if it occurred.

In addition, since one Yak could stop the downgrade, it's going to lead to a full zerg escort. Very boring.

It makes more sense to keep the current system where you can drain supply to 0 and then keep hitting multiple entry points so that they can't possibly repair them all. This is much more active and potentially leads to a larger number of smaller scale fights. If you keep pressure on, they have no walls at all rather than a lower tier wall.

[Sovereign.1093]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Sovereign.1093 said:

@Dawdler.8521 said:Imagine if a keep runs out of supply... it starts a 10-15m or so timer and if it still has no supplies when timer is up, it

downgrades 1 tier

(resetting the timer, but it will happen again if it remains without supplies).

Mmm that might be interesting. Makes roaming classes great againAnd theoretically encourage zergs to break up, more people with tags in order to coordinate starving keeps that would otherwise be inpenetrable/defended by borderzergs, until they are weak enough for an attack. Which naturally lead to lots more large scale fighting around the camps and dolly routes and players actively being able to reduce passive PPT without any "we're gonna force you to play like we want" mechanics.

But I digress, simple fact is WvW is as WvW is.

Careful with that breaking up comment. It got me suspended 3 days for suggesting that a few months ago haha

[Sovereign.1093]

@Sviel.7493 said:Downgrading keeps like that probably would be awful in practice.

Assuming you didn't have a Supply Drop slotted in to just negate the whole thing, the only time it would trigger would be when some noob grabs the last morsel of supply which will inevitably lead to them getting yelled at. The downgrade would then be blamed on them, if it occurred.

In addition, since one Yak could stop the downgrade, it's going to lead to a full zerg escort. Very boring.

It makes more sense to keep the current system where you can drain supply to 0 and then keep hitting multiple entry points so that they can't possibly repair them all. This is much more active and potentially leads to a larger number of smaller scale fights. If you keep pressure on, they have no walls at all rather than a lower tier wall.

That's hard to do against mag and their love of stone must though.

I mean you got to take advantg and put attention. To ones of their structures and if they def, the other team sneaks to take sm.

Straight wise. A good team can siege the fuck out of something. Cata ac treb canon mortar and lots of pew pew rangers sniping you endlessly

[Dawdler.8521]

@"Sviel.7493" said:If you keep pressure on, they have no walls at all rather than a lower tier wall.Problem is people often cant keep up the pressure because at the end of the day its still T3.

The point is, regardless of what ideas are applied, it would be good with more dynamic objectives in WvW. The way the upgrades work is very static. You upgrade it and it gives you exponentially better PPT end of story.

Its like... imagine a scenario where 10 attackers are trying to take a keep from 15 defenders. Assume the defenders do nothing but defend and lets assume that the groups are similarly skilled, thus the 10 wont beat the 15 in a straight up fight and there exist no third side or other players. What can the attackers really do to actually affect the keep? They can break every wall - it will still tick max PPT. They can drain its supplies completely - it will still tick max PPT. If by some miracle they manage to cap it after 2-3 hours of struggle - it has still ticked max PPT all that time.

This is the primary reason that PPT is just careening out of control for the "dominating" servers. Objectives just sit there. No matter how much you fight over them. That curve shouldnt be so steep and unrecoverable IMO.

If you have issues with downgrading, you can imagine an even softer idea - PPT gain is based both on passive and supply. So lets say a keep has 4/6/8/10 basic PPT (half of now). Then 3 tiers of supply gains, +0/4/8 PPT for <33% and >66%.

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

@Threather.9354 said:

are you on NA? Because I fought plenty of servers who put trebs behind gates the last couple of month.

[Sovereign.1093]

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:

@Threather.9354 said:

are you on NA? Because I fought plenty of servers who put trebs behind gates the last couple of month.

He should be in deso. The char with the top hat. As far as I remember .

[Sviel.7493]

@Dawdler.8521 said:If you have issues with downgrading, you can imagine an even softer idea - PPT gain is based both on passive and supply. So lets say a keep has 4/6/8/10 basic PPT (half of now). Then 3 tiers of supply gains, +0/4/8 PPT for <33% and >66%.

I think I understand what problem you're trying to solve, but let me summarize so you can correct me if I've misunderstood; PPT accrual in WvW does not track closely enough with the immediate reality of the battlefield. No matter who's winning a fight, objectives continue to tick at the same amount for the full duration of the battle.

If I have that right, then we more or less agree on that point. It's the solution where we differ. To explain why I disagree, please allow me to highlight how we got here.

Right now, a fully upgraded Keep gives 20 PPT. A Tower gives 10 and a Camp gives 5. So assuming you have T3 everything, you can get 130 PPT from static objectives.At the same time, Yak deliveries give about 4 PPT for SC/SEC/SWC, 5 PPT for NEC/NWC and 6 PPT for NC. This is down from roughly 13 PPT per non-NC and 18 PPT for NC before they cut Yak points by 66%. Currently, Yaks give ~28 PPT whereas they used to give ~73 PPT.

In a more realistic scenario where camps are not fortified, a team can expect 112 PPT from static objectives. That means 28, or roughly 20% of their PPT comes from Yaks. Pre-nerf, almost 40% came from Yaks. In a reset scenario with a paper map, Yak PPT is unchanged but static PPT is reduced to 52. That means Yaks make up 35% of PPT now and used to be ~65%.

In short, a much larger chunk of PPT used to be dynamic. By killing Yaks--not even flipping camps, just killing Yaks--it was possible to both deny upgrades and deny a significant portion of PPT accrual. If we want to make PPT more dynamic without penalizing dying for objectives, reverting the Yak PPT nerf is the first place we should look.

If we base it on supply levels in an objective, no matter what the bonus/penalty for certain supply levels is, then PPT will become more arcane but not necessarily more dynamic. A server that simply doesn't use supply when near the threshold will maintain full PPT. A less organized server will lose PPT.

*All numbers are based on DBL. Yak PPT is different on ABL because that map is an absolute mess. The southernmost camps give more PPT and all camps vary widely. Unlike DBL, there was never a standard YakPPT goal and it shows.