Defending More Frustrating Than Fun

[binidj.5734]

So I'm sure that zerg players are having a great time at the moment but for defenders, the game has to be at an all-time low. With the recent changes to walls it is now almost as easy to take a T3 keep as it is a T0 which means that the incentive to develop keeps (defend camps, escort dolyaks, etc.) is rapidly vanishing. I foresee a future where battlegrounds will be like EotM with zergs running in a perpetual k-train around each other, taking empty keeps and towers.

The advent of Scourges with their infinite wall clearance was bad enough but now not only can defenders not get onto the walls to defend but the paper walls are likely to crumble before you even get up the stairs (I exaggerate slightly for effect) leaving you to wonder why you even bothered even trying. Add to this a lone character (any class, any build) being able to deactivate a waypoint with barely any effort. Now locking waypoints is an entirely valid tactic but really it should take a bit more effort than one character going up to a guard and calling them names. Perhaps if there were a few minutes of grace between a keep/garrison being attacked and the waypoint locking during which time there had to be consistent damage done to the structure of the fortifications, not just to guards or siege.

Now I'm not saying that five people should be able to defend a keep against a map blob but any defence should be capable of slowing an attack to differing degrees of effectiveness. Stop the complete area denial of battlements, make levelling up a structure worthwhile again (ie. dump the changes made to walls) ... make fortifications worth defending again!

[Dawdler.8521]

The other day I saw a zerg literally build 10 golems outside the door of one of our T3.

Do you think armor would have made any difference?

Oh and btw that was during a ~2h battle for said T3 involving all 3 servers. The weaker keeps is reminding me of the insane fun that was early GW2 WvW, before all the buffs. When they get through, it cost more to repair compared to the damage so things sort of stay broken.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

the ease of contesting a waypoint has gone on for so long now... really an embarrassment in terms of failed mechanics.

[displayname.8315]

@Dawdler.8521 said:The other day I saw a zerg literally build 10 golems outside the door of one of our T3.

Do you think armor would have made any difference?

Oh and btw that was during a ~2h battle for said T3 involving all 3 servers. The weaker keeps is reminding me of the insane fun that was early GW2 WvW, before all the buffs. When they get through, it cost more to repair compared to the damage so things sort of stay broken.

All 3 servers were active at the same time? Wow sounds like EU. You in EU? Guess these changes to the game might work if the maps are actually populated by more than just 1 server K-training around.

[aspirine.5839]

@displayname.8315 said:

@Dawdler.8521 said:The other day I saw a zerg literally build 10 golems outside the door of one of our T3.

Do you think armor would have made any difference?

Oh and btw that was during a ~2h battle for said T3 involving all 3 servers. The weaker keeps is reminding me of the insane fun that was early GW2 WvW, before all the buffs. When they get through, it cost more to repair compared to the damage so things sort of stay broken.

All 3 servers were active at the same time? Wow sounds like EU. You in EU? Guess these changes to the game might work if the maps are actually populated by more than just 1 server K-training around.

Must be Ros/vabbi, the so called fight servers. They use more siege than the ones they always cry about.

[hunkamania.7561]

It's more population balance that's the issue not defending.

[Voltekka.2375]

It IS fun to see overstacked fight servers farm pugs in their own keeps, as you can get to lordroom within mere seconds. Finally, some balance.

[KeyOrion.9506]

It starts getting stupid, when said assault force breaks in, and they decide not to capture, but to farm. Not cool. Still, used to watch and defend towers for couple years in the beginning after launch for two years. Used to defend locations for 8-12 hours a night. Most of the power creep and the power defense, and the permaboons have made defensive siege absolutely useless. Being traited for siege to use some siege in order to cause more damage seems absolutely worthless today than it was six years ago. What's the point of having 5 Superior Arrowcarts, all in use, with all players traited and maxed out for Arrowcart use...and the enemy force just kinda, shrugs it off like their wearing raincoats, and your firing little flower petals at them. I'm going to have to agree with the original poster. Defense is a joke nowadays. Either you have an equal or greater force than the enemy, and that's the only thing that makes or breaks the stalemate of an assault. But it still pisses me off that Cannons can no longer down 1/2 the zerg with three shots. That 5 Superior Arrowcarts can't even bring down one foe. That permaboon stability offsets any knockback caused by a treb or catapult. When your defensive siege is just worthless, when the enemy zerg doesn't even bother building Rams, and they just tear apart the gate with their hand weapons, all the while standing under burning oil. That's just stupid. And that stupidity isn't on the players parts. That's on the programmers and whoever made the decision to make defensive siege no longer a deciding factor in...defense against....Power Creep, Power invulns, and Permaboon.

[Gop.8713]

I'm with the OP in that I'm a solo roamer who used to spend a lot of time tiering and defending towers and keeps but I disagree that the changes are negative for the game mode . . .

ANET just seems to be moving the game mode towards a more group-friendly ruleset, which is fine . . .

[L A T I O N.8923]

40 man ktrains did exist, yes they through faster...people need to adapt a little in respons time stillKeep tapping could have Done earlier with all classes...direct double porting on guard, war with inf leaps OR mesmers Being invuln and port

Defending changed i agree, but the most thing i see in the changes is IT Will take less time to get into a structure and everyone to man ac's to take everything down.

There's still plenty of time to gather peopleYou can still win with Inferiore numbers, it's Just way harder

[Queen Anastasia.7103]

any defence should be capable of slowing an attack to differing degrees of effectiveness.

Wait I thought you can slow an attack to differing degrees of effectiveness?

Why, LOOK NO FURTHER, FOLKS!

On our list of the most ingenious ideas ever created - you have the big brother house watch towers, amazing sentry reveal npcs, beloved stealth + supply + disabler traps, brilliant shield gens, awesome EWP, marvelous golem sitting in lords ring to contest, stellar-performance air ship tactivator, spectacular auto upgrading objectives, faithful Warclaw sniffer, tricky siege placement spots. You need that +5 supply to build more ACs? HoT has got you covered, look no further than the astounding guild objective aura VIII. Is your lord not buff enough? Slap some trusty iron guards schematic on him to bide you extra time. But wait! There's more we have on offer - wonderful supply tactivators so you can fit even more ACs in a keep - you name it! Unlock the extraordinary Warclaw today! Spot those enemies before they even make it out of spawn.

Defending has NEVER been EASIER! Buy your copy of HEART OF THORNS™ and PATH OF FIRE™ TODAY at official retailers for the CHEAP price of 9000 gems!*

! Don't forget to purchase our affordable server transfers so we can do our best to link all the fight guilds onto the same server! Support population imbalance today!

[Kylden Ar.3724]

That sarcasm is a thing of pure beauty. Be a shame the mods will delete it.

[Luranni.9470]

The officially stated point of this change was to create more fights. Personally I'd love to see the metrics on how many golems have been built since this change for er.... fighting, yep. :D.

From what I've seen, this change -kinda- works in prime time if all 3 servers have decent and matching populations and they are all fighting in ONE keep. The rest of the time it's just allowing less fights coz ktrains are getting to lord room in a T3 keep in <5minutes, keeping waypoints contested, pulling tactivators or double teaming (IE: 2 enemy servers help each other make sure the third server cannot defend at all) and of course just waypointing their entire blob out if they see a single scout and the ewp wasnt pulled yet.

Keep defenses are borked anyway because of all the little changes and tweaks and powercreep and aoe creep and siege fiddling and warclaws and whatnot, I'm no longer remotely sure what anet want WvW to be in all honesty.

I'm pretty sure any change that allows for easier AVOIDANCE of fights is a bad one though.

Guild Wars 2: Powercreep so bad even T3 keeps get one-shot :D :D :D.

[joneirikb.7506]

@Luranni.9470 said:From what I've seen, this change -kinda- works in prime time if all 3 servers have decent and matching populations and they are all fighting in ONE keep.

Just couldn't resist responding to this one, so: The game works if all 3 servers have similar numbers, and wants to fight? Imagine that! ;)

Agree with your post, and that quote just points out probably the singular largest flaw in WvW. Servers are horrible at creating even numbers, and player doesn't want to fight they just want to win.

[Dawdler.8521]

@Luranni.9470 said:I'm pretty sure any change that allows for easier AVOIDANCE of fights is a bad one though.Hence why its a good change, since servers no longer avoid fights by proxy when no one want to bother either attacking or defending T3. So you are absolutely right, I agree 100!

Yesterday on RBL we where about 8 people trying to take T3 bay. That was pretty much our entire border population. After breaching outer, of course they came to defend. And took us out and repaired it. So we did it again and fought them inside. Never did got far. They beat us out, we beat them on the spawncamp and attacked bay again. Another fight inside, the third server came which was twice as many at least... and bay defenders beat them, we fought even more. For 1.5ish hours we where constantly fighting around bay. Never did take it though, because the enemy kept coming.

Do you know what would have happen prenerf? One of two things - either no one would have cared to even try a siege, because its frikkin T3. Or we would have tried, and the enemy would have just killed our catas and repaired while still having full supplies inside because it would have taken us much longer to damage walls compared to them easily repairing, so we would have given up the first fail and try again far later when no one is there.

[L A T I O N.8923]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Luranni.9470 said:I'm pretty sure any change that allows for easier AVOIDANCE of fights is a bad one though.Hence why its a good change, since servers no longer avoid fights by proxy when no one want to bother either attacking or defending T3. So you are absolutely right, I agree 100!

Yesterday on RBL we where about 8 people trying to take T3 bay. That was pretty much our entire border population. After breaching outer, of course they came to defend. And took us out and repaired it. So we did it again and fought them inside. Never did got far. They beat us out, we beat them on the spawncamp and attacked bay again. Another fight inside, the third server came which was twice as many at least... and bay defenders beat them, we fought even more. For 1.5ish hours we where constantly fighting around bay. Never did take it though, because the enemy kept coming.

Do you know what would have happen prenerf? One of two things - either no one would have cared to even

try

a siege, because its frikkin T3. Or we would have tried, and the enemy would have just killed our catas and repaired while still having full supplies inside because it would have taken us much longer to damage walls compared to them easily repairing, so we would have given up the first fail and try again far later when no one is there.

The difference is IT feels a little more rewarding because you come closer to capping without needing 40 people

[HazyDaisy.4107]

@L A T I O N.8923 said:

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Luranni.9470 said:I'm pretty sure any change that allows for easier AVOIDANCE of fights is a bad one though.Hence why its a good change, since servers no longer avoid fights by proxy when no one want to bother either attacking or defending T3. So you are absolutely right, I agree 100!

Yesterday on RBL we where about 8 people trying to take T3 bay. That was pretty much our entire border population. After breaching outer, of course they came to defend. And took us out and repaired it. So we did it again and fought them inside. Never did got far. They beat us out, we beat them on the spawncamp and attacked bay again. Another fight inside, the third server came which was twice as many at least... and bay defenders beat them, we fought even more. For 1.5ish hours we where constantly fighting around bay. Never did take it though, because the enemy kept coming.

Do you know what would have happen prenerf? One of two things - either no one would have cared to even

try

a siege, because its frikkin T3. Or we would have tried, and the enemy would have just killed our catas and repaired while still having full supplies inside because it would have taken us much longer to damage walls compared to them easily repairing, so we would have given up the first fail and try again far later when no one is there.

The difference is IT feels a little more rewarding because you come closer to capping without needing 40 people

That's what I love about the people that want to do away with tactics (the last bastion of defense). Do they suppose people will actually show up for fights without an EWS? The answer is no, because there wasn't a scout there to call it out.

Yes, havocs would be able to take structures, but more often than not 40 people would still be used to do it and suprise its the other teans 40, so your 8 man havoc group is DEAD, how but that! And it won't even be T3 structures, just paper paper paper. Heck people probably wouldn't even bother to claim it.

[Timelord.8190]

How can you complain about defending when you still got so much more advantages than the attacker have? You have overpowered tactivators that didn't use to be in the game as well as keep aura. Everything that came with HoT made defenders advantage too overpowered. You can get t3 double the speed as you used to with packed dollies. If you can't defend with every advantage at your side, it's not the games fault.

[Ansau.7326]

@KeyOrion.9506 said:Defense is a joke nowadays. Either you have an equal or greater force than the enemy, and that's the only thing that makes or breaks the stalemate of an assault.

Defense is not a joke. What happens is now you need to gather people and be better than attackers to defend a structure.But of course, when you have been educated during years that brain dead defense of 5 people sitting on arrow arts being able to stop full blobs, it is normal that you feel effortless now...

[Dawdler.8521]

@HazyDaisy.4107 said:

@L A T I O N.8923 said:

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Luranni.9470 said:I'm pretty sure any change that allows for easier AVOIDANCE of fights is a bad one though.Hence why its a good change, since servers no longer avoid fights by proxy when no one want to bother either attacking or defending T3. So you are absolutely right, I agree 100!

Yesterday on RBL we where about 8 people trying to take T3 bay. That was pretty much our entire border population. After breaching outer, of course they came to defend. And took us out and repaired it. So we did it again and fought them inside. Never did got far. They beat us out, we beat them on the spawncamp and attacked bay again. Another fight inside, the third server came which was twice as many at least... and bay defenders beat them, we fought even more. For 1.5ish hours we where constantly fighting around bay. Never did take it though, because the enemy kept coming.

Do you know what would have happen prenerf? One of two things - either no one would have cared to even

try

a siege, because its frikkin T3. Or we would have tried, and the enemy would have just killed our catas and repaired while still having full supplies inside because it would have taken us much longer to damage walls compared to them easily repairing, so we would have given up the first fail and try again far later when no one is there.

The difference is IT feels a little more rewarding because you come closer to capping without needing 40 people

That's what I love about the people that want to do away with tactics (the last bastion of defense). Do they suppose people will actually show up for fights without an EWS? The answer is no, because there wasn't a scout there to call it out.

Yes, havocs would be able to take structures, but more often than not 40 people would still be used to do it and suprise its the other teans 40, so your 8 man havoc group is DEAD, how but that! And it won't even be T3 structures, just paper paper paper. Heck people probably wouldn't even bother to claim it.Are... Are you even playing WvW?

The change has already happened.

Everything gets claimed, there are lots of T2/T3 and EWPs in every one of them. And yes, zergs fail attacks because its defended. Its WvW as usual, just... less T2/T3 bunkering.

[oOStaticOo.9467]

I'm no longer wanting to upgrade the tactivators because of this. It's a waste because everything gets taken so quickly now there is no point in upgrading. So many times I have tried only to have the tower taken before the tactivators can even be used. That's less than 2 minutes. It's just dumb now. I have even stopped scouting for my server and just let the enemy take the tower now and then just help take it back after they leave.

[Gop.8713]

@Timelord.8190 said:How can you complain about defending when you still got so much more advantages than the attacker have? You have overpowered tactivators that didn't use to be in the game as well as keep aura. Everything that came with HoT made defenders advantage too overpowered. You can get t3 double the speed as you used to with packed dollies. If you can't defend with every advantage at your side, it's not the games fault.

Attackers will always have the advantage. The only advantage defenders ever get is delay, which is no advantage at all unless ppl respond. The prob is attackers are too lazy to actually siege, they just wan the ktrain . . .

@oOStaticOo.9467 said:I'm no longer wanting to upgrade the tactivators because of this. It's a waste because everything gets taken so quickly now there is no point in upgrading. So many times I have tried only to have the tower taken before the tactivators can even be used. That's less than 2 minutes. It's just dumb now. I have even stopped scouting for my server and just let the enemy take the tower now and then just help take it back after they leave.

This is also true, but I don't see how it's a problem. Making tiered structures less desirable does seem to have increased player activity. If those players choose to flip structures back and forth instead of fight each other, that's not anet's fault . . .

[Luranni.9470]

@joneirikb.7506 said:

@Luranni.9470 said:From what I've seen, this change -kinda- works in prime time if all 3 servers have decent and matching populations and they are all fighting in ONE keep.

Just couldn't resist responding to this one, so: The game works if all 3 servers have similar numbers, and wants to fight? Imagine that! ;)

Agree with your post, and that quote just points out probably the singular largest flaw in WvW. Servers are horrible at creating even numbers, and player doesn't want to fight they just want to win.

I am Captain Obvious! /o/

:D

[Timelord.8190]

@Gop.8713 said:

Attackers will always have the advantage. The only advantage defenders ever get is delay, which is no advantage at all unless ppl respond. The prob is attackers are too lazy to actually siege, they just wan the ktrain . . .

This is just wrong. If the attackers don't build siege you should have an even higher chance of defending.

Delay is an advantage no matter if people respond or not. That's up to your server. The game shouldn't adapt after players who are not good at defending. The game was already stale when the only time to take enemy keeps is when the enemy is not there.The defenders got all of the advantages. They got chilling fog, sieges, keep aura, closest spawn, emergency waypoint, more supply to build siege and sige that is already built. 1 min immortality on the wall/gates. You can place supply traps and treb cows that drain supply. If you can't defend with all that, it's your server's fault. Stop blaming the game for your bad defending capability. The defender's advantage is still too high.

[HazyDaisy.4107]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@HazyDaisy.4107 said:

@L A T I O N.8923 said:

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Luranni.9470 said:I'm pretty sure any change that allows for easier AVOIDANCE of fights is a bad one though.Hence why its a good change, since servers no longer avoid fights by proxy when no one want to bother either attacking or defending T3. So you are absolutely right, I agree 100!

Yesterday on RBL we where about 8 people trying to take T3 bay. That was pretty much our entire border population. After breaching outer, of course they came to defend. And took us out and repaired it. So we did it again and fought them inside. Never did got far. They beat us out, we beat them on the spawncamp and attacked bay again. Another fight inside, the third server came which was twice as many at least... and bay defenders beat them, we fought even more. For 1.5ish hours we where constantly fighting around bay. Never did take it though, because the enemy kept coming.

Do you know what would have happen prenerf? One of two things - either no one would have cared to even

try

a siege, because its frikkin T3. Or we would have tried, and the enemy would have just killed our catas and repaired while still having full supplies inside because it would have taken us much longer to damage walls compared to them easily repairing, so we would have given up the first fail and try again far later when no one is there.

The difference is IT feels a little more rewarding because you come closer to capping without needing 40 people

That's what I love about the people that want to do away with tactics (the last bastion of defense). Do they suppose people will actually show up for fights without an EWS? The answer is no, because there wasn't a scout there to call it out.

Yes, havocs would be able to take structures, but more often than not 40 people would still be used to do it and suprise its the other teans 40, so your 8 man havoc group is DEAD, how but that! And it won't even be T3 structures, just paper paper paper. Heck people probably wouldn't even bother to claim it.Are... Are you even playing WvW?

The change has already happened.

Everything gets claimed, there are lots of T2/T3 and EWPs in every one of them. And yes, zergs fail attacks because its defended. Its WvW as usual, just... less T2/T3 bunkering.

Yes, I play wvw. Do you read before responding?