Runes of Magic US / AU

Quoted from "oregonnerd;587151"

I initiated a discussion just after siege ended on Feb 1 and Govinda server pretty well all agreed that it is unsportsmanlike although neither technically a cheat or exploit. There are guilds from other servers which consistently do use them. What I am looking for is response from mainly other servers so that we can reach an agreement on this matter for siege. The matter has given rise to a lot of bad feeling.

Nryven, Govinda

I honestly don't care either way. If you can't keep a mage inside your castle or your gates on focus, you kinda deserve to be fotted.

I don't know if as a tactic it's more unsportsmanlike than putting flames on the roof, or shooting through the walls if your combo has a skill that ignores LoS. I dunno, it seems less so to me.

If the whole RoM community could come together and agree not to fot gates, I would go along though.

Dirty, unsportsmanlike, and personally, I think it should be considered an exploit and fixed already.

That being said, we DID get an OK from blue text so you can't hold anything against anyone who does it. I blame that GM, and had said in that very thread and another, that he was opening the door for some very dirty sieges. Saying "just have a mage on it" is a bit silly imo.

I personally dont care whether we do or whether we don't do it. I prefer not to, and just use nado/scrolls. But if I see another guild use on us, we'll remember, and no doubt pay them back the next siege.

Blame the former GM's, and RW/GF for not fixing what should have been deemed an exploit.

You are attacking gates from outside with a merit-bought item. Where exactly is a dirty underhanded part of the tactic in that? You are not bypassing the castle wall integrity like you do with skills that ignore LOS or using shadowstep. When you attack things on inside the castle from the outside, that is a problem. When you attack it from outside with an item that is used outside, you are doing what you are supposed to, be it FOT, scroll of causing siege damage or tornado.

So, what exactly is causing the complaints? That the item used is something that you don't normally think of as causing damage? Would it help better if there was an item specifically for the purpose?

The original method of attacking gates from outside is just not workable anymore. Most castles dont even have arsenal building. I seen a siege engine working on gates exactly twice in all the time I've been playing the game. And it lasted about 5 seconds too. There is just a need of a portable carryable method of gate attack, and FOT is as good as any.

And, as Fan said, it is not exactly hard to defend against. It doesn't work all that fast, it is not easy to place if you have towers defending the gate (and that IS something that violates LOS) and it is easily destructable from outside or inside.

The "exploit" is that the gates and buildings, base level 55 and 60, were not increased when the base level of the guards and towers were increased to level 70. The faces do not affect guards like they affect gates. But with the level cap for players increasing, it soon wont matter as we will be back to one shoting the gates. I have already seen that the crystal tower guards are back to nothing more than piles of merits.

This wont be deemed an exploit until the higher level guilds go back to relying on their pay to win gear and OPness and a lower ranked guild uses this tactic against them to stomp them. Then, and only then, will something be done about this.

What man with pink hat said... nuff said.

If they don't even fix actual exploits, I doubt they'd bother with something that a GM ok'd to.

Quoted from "mnkmurphy885;587167"

I honestly don't care either way. If you can't keep a mage inside your castle or your gates on focus, you kinda deserve to be fotted.

Agreed. I don't see that using FoTs on gates is an exploit, nor is it particularly underhanded or unsportsmanlike--see Rusty's post. It's a legitimate *tactic*, though not very merit-efficient or fast. There are ways to defend against it (Eyes of True Seeing, Flame and Electric Towers), or at least mitigate it, until someone with an AoE can deal with the little buggers and a healer or two can put things right again.

Now that I've said that, my guild (Fortuna) prefers not to use FoTs against gates, or at least, we hold it as an option to be used *after* our opponent has done it to us. The gloves come off, and FoTs come out.

Quoted from "Ravesden;587179"

Dirty, unsportsmanlike, and personally, I think it should be considered an exploit and fixed already.

I disagree, it's not an exploit. FoTs do precisely what they're intended to do, which is to stun players and do a *relatively small* amount of damage while "attacking". (Both FoTs and Eyes of True Seeing have an attack or aggro radius, if you haven't noticed.) Or have you forgotten how they seem to "attract" the balloon mobs either beside a castle or in the middle zone, the same as Eyes do? Or, before the perma-stunlock effect was removed from FoTs, how a player could *die* from being surrounded by a bunch of them?

A single FoT doesn't do a lot of damage. A stack of 5 or more seem to amplify the damage, though it's difficult to tell exactly by how much. It's not linear, it seems to be closer to geometric.

Most times they're planted by Rogues in Hide. Electric Towers (upgraded) and Eyes of True Seeing + Visual Illusion towers can bring a Rogue out of Hide so you can see what they're doing. Upgraded Flame Towers can interrupt FoT placement, and begin to damage those already placed. If you can, detail someone to keep a lookout in the castle for the gates taking damage. Pass merits to them so they can buy defenses and make sure they understand that they need to *upgrade* those defenses. I do understand that everyone would just *love* to go gallivanting out to up their kill or merit-gathering totals, but a lower-level player can do this, and report FoTs and gate damage in voice or guild chat.

Quoted from "camagic;587197"

The "exploit" is that the gates and buildings, base level 55 and 60, were not increased when the base level of the guards and towers were increased to level 70. The faces do not affect guards like they affect gates. But with the level cap for players increasing, it soon wont matter as we will be back to one shoting the gates. I have already seen that the crystal tower guards are back to nothing more than piles of merits.

This wont be deemed an exploit until the higher level guilds go back to relying on their pay to win gear and OPness and a lower ranked guild uses this tactic against them to stomp them. Then, and only then, will something be done about this.

Again, not an exploit, it's a *tactic*. I've never seen a gate knocked on its butt by a FoT, but I've seen tower guards (not the guard leaders, though) knocked down and temporarily stunned by them. It happens on a regular basis. Pay attention the next time you take a tower, and there's a FoT planted by a tree within a lesser guard's aggro range. He'll go floppo on the ground as he attacks the FoT. Always humorous.

If RW increases the levels of the gates to 70, as they did the guards, they'll be that much more difficult to take down, whatever tactic is used. Do you *really* want that? I'd much rather that RW increase the guards' levels to 80 (along with their HP), find and fix the bug that turns a gate sideways, along with tweaking the LoS rules so that AoEs cannot be used to take out buildings inside a castle through a gate (make it so an AoE can *center* on a gate, but go no further, for example), as well as removing the ability of a Warden pet to attack *anything* through a wall--make the walls truly solid, so buildings and players cannot be targeted, or that the targeting is lost once the player is behind the wall, period.

Define "high-level", plz. Oh, you mean guilds such as PPK, Bteam, and Heretic (hi, Raves!)? *Those* "high-level" guilds with their "P2W gear"? Please don't make me laugh when I have chapped lips. We faced Bteam a couple of nights ago. Guess which tactic they used. You get three guesses, and the first two don't count. (This answer counts for 1/2 of your final grade.) Bteam's siege score was roughly 13,000 points *higher* than ours at the time.

The same tactic (this answer counts for the other 1/2 of your final grade) was used against us by Deadly (Indigo) as well, with a roughly similar point score to us (2400 vs 2000), even though they were overwhelmingly superior, both in gear and numbers to us that night. An up and coming guild, IMO, if they can be consistent with the number of people they bring. They do need to improve their strats, though. Eventually, they're going to run up against guilds they can't simply steamroll. Just saying.

I'm not "naming and shaming" here, nor am I complaining, just stating for the record what happened. The FoTs didn't take down the gates--we were able to neutralize them each time and heal the gates up again. We were more concerned about other "legitimate" tactics. Those were the ones which eventually did us in.

Unless there are guilds out there which are made up of spectacularly *stupid* people, I presume that 99% of all level 9 guilds have a Throne installed in their castles. Thrones have scrolls, though the "Arrow Storm" scroll is now useless for taking down gates. Scrolls do a lot more damage to gates than FoTs do, and more quickly and merit-efficiently. If you haven't yet figured out how to successfully Tornado and scroll a gate, it truly sucks to be you.

I'm confused - how ARE you supposed to bring down a gate if not for FOTs, then?

As a mage, I can barely scratch them (maybe 2k damage - on a 2MIL HP gate? Yeah, got 10 hours? I might have it down halfway by then)..

Unless you have a guild full of OP 75s, many low-ranked guilds simply have no way of bringing down a gate other than FOTs, at least to my knowledge.

What are the alternatives (other than siege engines that I've never seen a single guild use)?

other ways to bring down gates:

-scrolls, specifically the intel scroll(no matter what you class, use the int scroll on gates)
-flame and lightening towers
-herald tornado
-players normal class skills and attacks
-crystal tower guard leader
-guild honor guard

For the guards: It is legitamte to stack a couple of upgraded lightening towers by the crystal tower as defense, not in a line from the tower to the gate. This defense of the crystal tower will also cause the aggro range of the guards to increase to include the gate, because RW continues not to fix the walls.

Quoted from "Southern;587221"

I'm confused - how ARE you supposed to bring down a gate if not for FOTs, then?

As a mage, I can barely scratch them (maybe 2k damage - on a 2MIL HP gate? Yeah, got 10 hours? I might have it down halfway by then)..

Unless you have a guild full of OP 75s, many low-ranked guilds simply have no way of bringing down a gate other than FOTs, at least to my knowledge.

What are the alternatives (other than siege engines that I've never seen a single guild use)?

The same way we did before FoT's became common knowledge.. tornado and scrolls.

Quoted from "Southern;587221"

I'm confused - how ARE you supposed to bring down a gate if not for FOTs, then?

As a mage, I can barely scratch them (maybe 2k damage - on a 2MIL HP gate? Yeah, got 10 hours? I might have it down halfway by then)..

Unless you have a guild full of OP 75s, many low-ranked guilds simply have no way of bringing down a gate other than FOTs, at least to my knowledge.

What are the alternatives (other than siege engines that I've never seen a single guild use)?

A scroll and herald tornado is the fastest way. Tornado takes out 80% of a gate's HP, scroll takes 49% or so. Combined, they'll usually take out a gate unless there are 20 healers on it.

I don't see why anyone is complaining about treaches when 1. they are easily defended/destroyed 2. clearly visible 3. cost merits and 4. takes quite a while

For the people mad about those you think they'd have a heart attack over scrolls being able to take out a gate in a single second that's WAY worse then even when we bled the gates!

Thanks, all - I'll try the INT scroll tonight and see what that does (assuming we don't get sandbagged) against a gate. I did forget about the Herald Tornado; but the CD on that makes it all but useless in being able to take down both the outer and inner gates. I don't believe in dragging the guards to the gate, although we've had that done to us a few times - not many, but a few.

Every single guild we've gone up against (except for no-shows, of course) has used FOTs though, so I've never even thought twice about whether that was "legitimate" or not - I just assumed it was. They're easily destroyed with ThunderStorm, so they don't bother me too much - as for being slow though, I guess that depends; if you drop 20 of them, they'll take a gate down in 1-2 minutes.

Except for that one time we got matched up against a guild that had upgraded walls. We couldn't even SCRATCH that gate. I think it even tore off a few fingernails.

As for healing a gate, is there some secret to that? I've tried and tried to heal our gates, and they never heal. Granted, I can only heal for about 500 points per cast, but the HP of the gate just never goes up. It's that way for us on both the original gates OR the rebuilt/replacement gates.

Quoted from "Southern;587233"

Thanks, all - I'll try the INT scroll tonight and see what that does (assuming we don't get sandbagged) against a gate. I did forget about the Herald Tornado; but the CD on that makes it all but useless in being able to take down both the outer and inner gates. I don't believe in dragging the guards to the gate, although we've had that done to us a few times - not many, but a few.





As for healing a gate, is there some secret to that? I've tried and tried to heal our gates, and they never heal. Granted, I can only heal for about 500 points per cast, but the HP of the gate just never goes up. It's that way for us on both the original gates OR the rebuilt/replacement gates.

If you can't hold the inside of the castle for the 7 minutes it takes for tornado/scroll to come off CD, you don't deserve to be capping the crystal.

You have to put healing salve or the druid equivalent on the gate for heals to do anything.

Quoted from "oregonnerd;587228"

So we do have a consensus here among most players, which is that treaches used in siege against anything at any place are a legitimate tactic; this also means that agging the guards against a castle is legitimate.

Not sure how this follows. Treacheries are used outside of the castle. If guards stayed outside of the castle, then I can see how you can make inference. But they do not. They can get inside and start destroying things on the inside without gate being down. That is a horse of a different color.

Yes, you can't control them, so if they go in, it was not because of something you did. Still, you know they can go and ignore walls, and you lured them knowing that they do that; that makes the technique of sicing guards against castle a far more questionable practice, IMO.

Unless I misunderstood what "agging the guards against a castle" means. Dragging? Nagging? Using aggregator so that your castle looks like your guards?

Quoted from "ruisen2000;587227"

A scroll and herald tornado is the fastest way. Tornado takes out 80% of a gate's HP, scroll takes 49% or so. Combined, they'll usually take out a gate unless there are 20 healers on it.

Um, no, not necessarily. You don't need 20 healers to heal a gate that's been hit by a scroll and a Tornado. It depends on the overall quality of the healers and how well or poorly the Tornado was placed.

Tonight, we had a guild that must have been awfully frustrated. They FoT-ed the gates several times, none of which were particularly effective. They hit the B-side gate at least twice with Tornado and scrolls, and we managed to keep it from going down (It got as low as 1% health, lol.) They hit the A-side gate at least once with a scroll--we healed that. They hit the B-side gate again, took it down, killed a proc, but otherwise failed to do much of anything else. We ultimately lost, 5 towers to 1.

Healers were myself (p/s), a druid, and two m/p casting UH. I'm not all *that* great a healer, but i can usually manage around a 14K Heal on a gate, which is pretty fair for me. Depends on my distance from the gate and whether or not there are FoTs being used, of course.

Quoted from "Borella;587234"

If you can't hold the inside of the castle for the 7 minutes it takes for tornado/scroll to come off CD, you don't deserve to be capping the crystal.

You have to put healing salve or the druid equivalent on the gate for heals to do anything.

Not true, but it helps.

Quoted from "oregonnerd;587228"

So we do have a consensus here among most players, which is that treaches used in siege against anything at any place are a legitimate tactic; this also means that agging the guards against a castle is legitimate. You have all agreed, and this sets the stage for a more even playing surface; I'll make sure Govinda is aware that it is a legitimate tactic and is to be used in the obvious way.

I'm sure that most of Govinda--in fact, most of all the servers--already know about using FoTs as well as luring the guards towards gates, or other portions of the castle. (Put an Electric Tower on the front corner of the castle, or start hitting the guards with one of the corner catapults. See if those don't lure one or more guards to the location.)

Quoted from "Malignatus;587246"

Tonight, we had a guild that must have been awfully frustrated. They FoT-ed the gates several times, none of which were particularly effective. They hit the B-side gate at least twice with Tornado and scrolls, and we managed to keep it from going down (It got as low as 1% health, lol.) They hit the A-side gate at least once with a scroll--we healed that. They hit the B-side gate again, took it down, killed a proc, but otherwise failed to do much of anything else. We ultimately lost, 5 towers to 1.

That could have been their goal anyway. Sometimes we drop scrolls on a gate just to make the other team worry about it, causing many to go back and take care of it while the rest of us set up in the middle or whatever. Either that, the guild just wanted to keep killing people for an hour, or they weren't good enough to get in regardless, i dunno.

But if most of your guild is occupied with the gate, you arent able to fully push anything.