Defender disadvantage on walls

[blp.3489]

It seems to me that defenders are actually at a disadvantage when defending a wall in a structure in that a defender usually has to go to the edge of the wall in order to attack an attacker at the bottom of the wall, which usually results in near instant death as the attackers can place AOEs on the top edge of the wall, which conveniently bend at the edge of the wall so that they cover the top of the wall, and also pull people off the wall when you can't pull a person onto the wall.  Anything that requires a line of sight favors the attacker rather than the defender.  Most of the preplaced siege weapons are also placed on the edge of the walls where anyone trying to use them gets insta-killed.  Not to mention that some generated siege defense weapons seem to have been designed to be useless against enemies at a wall or gate, e.g. mortars that can't be targeted on enemies against a wall, etc.  Why not have an arrow cart placed back from the edge as one of the automatically generated wall defense siege weapons?  I haven't experimented with it but do shield generators offer any protection against AOE attacks?  I'm guessing not.

[Chips.7968]

This isn't *the* solution you're after - just defense work arounds to the issues listed.

Try some creative defending. Nearly every location has safe, but not instantly accessible, counter siege location outside of the attacked objective. They at bay south walls? Up on the hill behind them (near the ruin) build a cata, or balista, and shoot onto them (cata can safely be away from edge) or a treb in briar (if you hold it). In keeps some areas are coverable from other areas safely (think garrison water gate and SE gate where you can build between Crag/garri near the wall a cata that can fire down onto the gate below, same with ac's, treb etc, or the mortar at SE fires onto Water gate. Bay wurm gate, the big rock between quarry and the gate. South wall near south gate, likely treb / mortar firing onto that from the depot on outer or depot on inner for when it goes down. You get the idea.

Hills you can build stuff on the middle island rock between the ruins and hills (treb, cata, balista) though rangers can likely hit cata placements. This isn't obviously every objective, every angle, every potential - 

Likely issues are getting people to coordinate for it in order to "get it up" in time to be effective🙂 If they send people to destroy the siege, you're weakening and slowing their attacks. 

Edited February 15, 2023 by Chips.7968

[Sandzibar.5134]

>>when you can't pull a person onto the wall. 

 

That would be an awful idea.

Spy alts pulling enemy mesmers/thieves inside towers and forts.

Its bad enough with them pulling tactics etc to troll.

No thanks.

Edited February 15, 2023 by Sandzibar.5134

[solemn.9670]

Ele can quickly burning retreat + meteor shower below from the parapets with relative safety, depending on how thirsty they are lol

[blp.3489]

Definitely pulling people into the defense structure would be a bad bad idea, so how about making it so attackers can't pull you from the back of the wall into their AOE attacks at the front of the wall?

I think the biggest equalizer would be if AOE attacks didn't bend over the top of walls.

Edited February 15, 2023 by blp.3489
Added second paragraph.

[Xenesis.6389]

Walls are there to delay attacks until you have enough to push onto them. Not be an absolute safe spot for you to do whatever you want, go back to spawn if you want a safe spot. If you're on the lip of the wall trying to aoe a zerg of 30+ just by yourself, you deserve a smackdown. There's plenty of places for smart counter siege.

Get on your mount, or use stability and stun breakers when you get in trouble from pulls, it's pretty simple, and as a puller I see lots of people on mounts to negate pulls in the first place. The only thing you should be on the wall for in outnumbered situations is to throw a disabler, preferably from stealth, or on siege that's placed to do something to counter siege, not just tag bodies below you.

Learn from mistakes, play smarter.

[Nikola.3841]

I agree with OP, and whenever issue is brought up, its best to see video of game that did it proper way, to the point

of actually calculating physics and (for example) defending archers having much bigger range than attacking ones

 

 

[Johje Holan.4607]

Yea, this has been an issue commented on since launch.  The worst part is when that teeny tiny lip of the wall blocks my giant Norn from shooting over it 😆.  Anet tried do something about with the design of the Desert BL towers/keeps, but we see how well that went.   Its annoying, yes but, its not going to change.  

The worst is all the pulls.  I think they maybe could do something about not being able to be pulled off a wall.  I mean if I can't even shoot over the tiny little lip on the wall then I certainly shouldn't be able to be pulled over it!

[SFShinigami.1572]

You'd be surprised how often groups will let you just stand up there and free cast.  Watching people stand still and explode as I nuke their siege is one of my favorite parts of wvw.  Sometimes you just have to find the right build and watch the others around you for the right timing.  I suppose I am lucky enough to often have a good supporty friend with me, though.

[Dawdler.8521]

We can always make walls impossible to walk on. Just make them plain walls. 

People no longer complain about how AoE works on them. 

Lazy people no longer hog the walls when they should be out fighting. 

Everybody win.

Edited February 15, 2023 by Dawdler.8521

[MarzAttakz.9608]

9 hours ago, SFShinigami.1572 said:

You'd be surprised how often groups will let you just stand up there and free cast.  Watching people stand still and explode as I nuke their siege is one of my favorite parts of wvw.  Sometimes you just have to find the right build and watch the others around you for the right timing.  I suppose I am lucky enough to often have a good supporty friend with me, though.

You hit the nail on the head here. "A good supports friend" - people, or rather support fail to realise that stab and reflects are just as, I'd not more important, on wall defense as they are in open field. I'm generalising to a degree because it seems to me they're only used to "supporting" around a tag. Come support your backliners where they're going to be focused the most.

As a staff Ele main I'm subjected to an obscene amount of pulls and have extremely limited access to personal stability and reflect. I work around it due to experience but fail frequently due to the amount of CC being thrown at us. You have no idea how much I'd appreciate some help from the rest of my team especially in windows when the siege has been disabled and nobody is willing to push out.

Your Rangers, Necros, Elementalists are an asset and the right tools for the job, use us and assist us please.

If I get pulled from the lip, fair game (kinda) what really kittens me off though are Mesmer pulls that can pull me from the back or below the wall. It needs to be looked at. In general these "line of sight" calculations also need to be looked at. A projectile cast by a character should have line of sight calculated from character height, not pathed along the ground.

[ArchonWing.9480]

23 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Walls are there to delay attacks until you have enough to push onto them. Not be an absolute safe spot for you to do whatever you want, go back to spawn if you want a safe spot. If you're on the lip of the wall trying to aoe a zerg of 30+ just by yourself, you deserve a smackdown. There's plenty of places for smart counter siege.

Get on your mount, or use stability and stun breakers when you get in trouble from pulls, it's pretty simple, and as a puller I see lots of people on mounts to negate pulls in the first place. The only thing you should be on the wall for in outnumbered situations is to throw a disabler, preferably from stealth, or on siege that's placed to do something to counter siege, not just tag bodies below you.

Learn from mistakes, play smarter.

What no. This is Gw2, I don't want to use my brain.

I almost never die from getting pulled unless it's a fully comped zerg pulling on the wall. I don't think a lot of people realize getting pulled isn't instant death unless on a very squishy build.

There are some exceptions are on Desert BL, because some of those walls in towers are stupidly high and the portals are very far away. But that map needs a lot of work I think.

Then again it's somewhat dubious since most ranged weapons don't work due to projectile hate vs zergs. So you're left with your ground aoes but that only requires you to be on the wall for very short periods of time.

Edited February 16, 2023 by ArchonWing.9480

[Xenesis.6389]

11 hours ago, MarzAttakz.9608 said:

If I get pulled from the lip, fair game (kinda) what really kittens me off though are Mesmer pulls that can pull me from the back or below the wall. It needs to be looked at. In general these "line of sight" calculations also need to be looked at. A projectile cast by a character should have line of sight calculated from character height, not pathed along the ground.

There is line of sight to dropping those aoes, there's no line of sight of their effect, just a radius, including the pull. That's why you can drop aoes on the bottom side of walkways and hit people above it.

 

17 minutes ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

What no. This is Gw2, I don't want to use my brain.

I almost never die from getting pulled unless it's a fully comped zerg pulling on the wall. I don't think a lot of people realize getting pulled isn't instant death unless on a very squishy build.

There are some exceptions are on Desert BL, because some of those walls in towers are stupidly high and the portals are very far away. But that map needs a lot of work I think.

Then again it's somewhat dubious since most ranged weapons don't work due to projectile hate vs zergs. So you're left with your ground aoes but that only requires you to be on the wall for very short periods of time.

Yeah one stun break and dodge and you're in the clear. Only times I've been stuck in that is if there's double pulls, which is rare. I can probably count on my one hand the amount of times I've been pulled on the wall in the past two years. If it's sitting up there to scout it's on the mount, if it's to disable it's by stealth, I might go in and out to throw an aoe on their siege, but I'm not sitting there to eat aoe bombs. The amount of times I see morons that sit on corners trying to throw their 5 cap aoe on 50 below them I can count on my one hand probably a hundred times over.

 

I will say about desert tower walls, they're harder to pull from, cause there isn't usually a bottom lip to help with the pull momentums. Like there's some places in air corners you pull a person but they just end up going form one platform to another. But there's still a few fun places to pull from.

 

🤭🍿

[subversiontwo.7501]

Since people are already giving you good advice in this thread, I'll give you one more:

Some of the things people used to do together are almost becomming lost arts. Something as simple as getting friends together into a party with one player providing smoke fields for group-stealths and all players building towards a damage maximisation that they can synchronize is going to do wonders for you in all kinds of situations: Whether you are on the walls, go around the walls or push in-and-out of the walls.

Do not confuse things not being as big of an advantage as you'd like it to be, with it being disadvantageous.

The biggest challenge people defending seem to have is playing a multiplayer game alone or simply not playing with friends and making a party a in the first place. You can accomplish so much more with a party that has some synergy and is built as the right tool for the job.

Edited February 16, 2023 by subversiontwo.7501

[subversiontwo.7501]

23 hours ago, Nikola.3841 said:

I agree with OP, and whenever issue is brought up, its best to see video of game that did it proper way, to the point

of actually calculating physics and (for example) defending archers having much bigger range than attacking ones

Projectile physics in this game do make elevated players have longer range.

I'll hijack your comment to say something else instead of making my other post longer too:

Fighting outnumbered and the size disparities is another one of those fabled, mythical, lost art whatever things especially when it comes to defending objectives.

In my experience it is perfectly doable to fight up to around 2-3x your own numbers in this game open field. Your "skill" (or your overall organisation and ability) will carry you that far. Past that point it starts getting exceedingly difficult. Add a defensive objective to the calculation and you raise that figure up to 4-5x your own numbers. That's the force multiplication it adds. Then it becomes a question of what you expect out of it. For me, I assume that is what it is meant to do and it does exactly that for me.

If you are expecting to force-multiply more than 2x with a defensive objective or if you feel like you need a fighting chance against 6x your numbers or more then maybe walls, objectives, class balance or the like isn't your problem and that your actual problem is something else entirely.

If you consistantly face 6x your numbers: Then we enter the realm of population imbalances (Alliances), the outnumbered buff begin to appear and that maybe the outnumbered buff could be used for something more creative and useful in WvW than it is. I've argued that it should impact score in the past, but it could just as easily do things like triggering the invulnurable walls buff for as long as it is up to discourage people from stacking servers, stacking timezones and stacking maps to absurd disparities just to go around and fighting doors (or walls). I'm not saying that is what ArenaNet should do, but it is certainly something they could explore, if they had the creativity. The tech for it is here, so it's a game-design thing.

It is something that falls to the Floyd and Cecil side of things.

Edited February 16, 2023 by subversiontwo.7501

[ArchonWing.9480]

1 hour ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

There is line of sight to dropping those aoes, there's no line of sight of their effect, just a radius, including the pull. That's why you can drop aoes on the bottom side of walkways and hit people above it.

 

Yeah one stun break and dodge and you're in the clear. Only times I've been stuck in that is if there's double pulls, which is rare. I can probably count on my one hand the amount of times I've been pulled on the wall in the past two years. If it's sitting up there to scout it's on the mount, if it's to disable it's by stealth, I might go in and out to throw an aoe on their siege, but I'm not sitting there to eat aoe bombs. The amount of times I see morons that sit on corners trying to throw their 5 cap aoe on 50 below them I can count on my one hand probably a hundred times over.

 

I will say about desert tower walls, they're harder to pull from, cause there isn't usually a bottom lip to help with the pull momentums. Like there's some places in air corners you pull a person but they just end up going form one platform to another. But there's still a few fun places to pull from.

 

🤭🍿

lol noticed in your first video that most of the people that did get pulled had most of their health and could still have a good chance of escaping. Though I'm really wondering what the heck they're doing up there in the first place-- can't really hit much from that angle anyways.

Like in most cases you just hot on the lip, toss an aoe and jump back in. There's absolutely no reason to sit for any extended period of time.

Perhaps MetaBattle needs a proper wall humping build with the needed aoes and defensive tools but then people aren't really open to suggestions. xD

Edited February 16, 2023 by ArchonWing.9480

[Xenesis.6389]

21 minutes ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

lol noticed in your first video that most of the people that did get pulled had most of their health and could still have a good chance of escaping. Though I'm really wondering what the heck they're doing up there in the first place-- can't really hit much from that angle anyways.

Like in most cases you just hot on the lip, toss an aoe and jump back in. There's absolutely no reason to sit for any extended period of time.

Perhaps MetaBattle needs a proper wall humping build with the needed aoes and defensive tools but then people aren't really open to suggestions. xD

They had the shrines too so falling over didn't hurt them, but yeah there was no reason for that many people up there other than the ac operator, the catas were way below. That's why I say play smarter, there's no reason to be there, nor is there any reason for anet to give advantages to players taking dumb risk like that.

[Chips.7968]

23 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

We can always make walls impossible to walk on. Just make them plain walls. 

People no longer complain about how AoE works on them. 

Lazy people no longer hog the walls when they should be out fighting. 

Everybody win.

Remove walls then, because that proposal means walls serve zero purpose than a time sink.

[Dawdler.8521]

6 hours ago, Chips.7968 said:

Remove walls then, because that proposal means walls serve zero purpose than a time sink.

Invisible walls just so you can oogle indecisive defenders that outnumber you but wont go outside is also acceptable.

[ArchonWing.9480]

7 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

They had the shrines too so falling over didn't hurt them, but yeah there was no reason for that many people up there other than the ac operator, the catas were way below. That's why I say play smarter, there's no reason to be there, nor is there any reason for anet to give advantages to players taking dumb risk like that.

And even for the arrow cart, the attacks have some decently long cooldowns so you can get on/off it as needed. Now arrow carts being weak is another topic though.

Edited February 17, 2023 by ArchonWing.9480

[Killthehealersffs.8940]

On 2/15/2023 at 2:09 PM, Dawdler.8521 said:

We can always make walls impossible to walk on. Just make them plain walls. 

People no longer complain about how AoE works on them. 

Lazy people no longer hog the walls when they should be out fighting. 

Everybody win.

Or the door is  transformed into a Rock Dog/Cat/Dude , that is getting pushed back by the enemy zerg  , while doing pitiful damage . It prevents their mobility indoor (pulsing Ring of Warding, Or Tether the enemies), and the defenders can attack by the walls .

Less PvD action ad more "survive and hit from every direction for 3min."

 

Based on how many allies vs enemies hit the Golem accidentally , the golem offer around him the Mesmer bubble that absorve projectiles from either allies or enemies , every 2 sec , or constantly cc the enemy zerg if their numbers are vast or pushed towards the door if the defenders rally for a pushback or some "hero" stands beside him and slowdown the "pus effect" )

 

This effect is enabled if any team have 5mid objectives capped

Edited February 17, 2023 by Killthehealersffs.8940

[Chaba.5410]

What's wrong with being pulled off the walls?  I see no disadvantage.