The Issue With 1.20 Guild Wars

So 1.20 has been out for about a month now and I have seen no real change in how guild wars make it easier for guilds. If a mega alliance is already in control of the map then, there is no real chance for smaller guilds to ever hold a territory longer than the cool down. Although the change away from using personal emeralds to attack was good, in practice it doesn't help much; you still can't make decent headway towards wiping a guild, especially when they can simply raise their taxes and target wood territories to prevent guilds from being able to store enough emeralds to attack more territories. For example, yesterday we were warring in Rymek, and after we had taken 4 territories, the price went up from 4096 emeralds to 24k emeralds - effectively impossible to war without a highly upgraded wood territory. There are very few wood territories in desert area (understandably) making any attempt to attack in that region a waiting game more than anything.
There's also the problem of wars heavily favoring players with mythics. Other people have voiced similar concerns about this, but the only way a guild can reliably take out any guild tower medium defense or above is if that war team is equipped with mythics. This makes warring and acquiring territories for small and medium sized guilds nigh impossible. While you might say that pre-1.19 wars also suffered this problem, at least those guilds could even try to challenge guilds in a megalliance. Now in 1.20, a large amount of them may not even be able to attempt them (either due to not having the adequate mythic builds to take towers down, or not enough people online to have a chance at warring the tower) - either way, most smaller guilds are barred from wars entirely effectively, locking them out from a major feature of Guilds. As I see it, the guild update shifted from repetitive wars and an environment where it was hard to establish smaller guilds on the map, to an uncreative "build meta" and an environment where it is nearly impossible to establish smaller guilds on the map.

So what can we do about this? My suggestion is this: Either debuff tower strength, or greatly increase the time between tower aura and volley. A longer attack cool down a distance limiter to where if your hq is on the other side of the map you cant help your ally on another side of the map to limit alliances. A change in resources how they apply to guild towers and emerald storage. Change how a guild can just increase the attack price on there territories to a stupid amount 24k attack price is just stupid. And make it to where guilds cant transfer territories that part is more broken then sniping territories in the last war system. A guild could not a have a single care in the world for owning territories and could just have other guilds feed them territories and they could never be wiped. over all I think this system needs a lot of changes and I know several people that agree.

some comments from others-

anonymous-Also my personal opinion, on a macro scale the guild war system may be more skillful (if you ignore the whole haha we got mythics so we can deal with much higher difficulties), but on a micro scale (a single war) it feels maybe slightly more skillful? so instead of being shaman and afking for 2-8mins you now instead play the numbers game of do we have enough hp and healing to withstand non-dodge able attacks that can deal up to like 12k per 1/3rd seconds for medium def(?) while also dealing enough dps to not get squashed by the upgrading tower. Which all boils down to using a certain build set (fire tank)(KoH) and just spamming heal or spamming attack spells.

A lower lvl Guild member-
i was warring with lvl 47 plus levels and was super happy becoming lvl50 and over so I wouldn't be as bothered by the level difference but noooo, they go and change it not cool
i feel like frigging hawkeye from the avengers; a useless archer who can't help the rest of the team, or in this case the guild. - that's what made it all so fun, lower levels could war as well. - I've had a lot of blockades on my way to level 50, some mental, some due to struggles to find a grinding spot I wouldn't get too tired at after a while and more, and reaching 50 felt like such accomplishment because I could do things for the guild and now that's kinda been taken away

I think that Admins have gotten plenty of feedback from guild owners this is from guild members.

 

Excuse me if the formatting goes awfully wrong I was in the middle of replying to the thread when it was moved, nonetheless:

Factually correct

So the 7 new patches in a month were useless for guilds?

Why would a smaller guild hold a territory by themselves if guild wars are a team game where diplomacy is the key? Also the cooldown is 13 minutes at minimum, which is enough time to get your hq to very high.

Why would your first goal be to wipe a 20 territories guild in 15 minutes? Does it also mean that you consider the change to personnal emeralds useless because it changed nothing? Should this mean we could bring back personnal emeralds to balance it out? Have you had enough defensive practice to see how removing personal emeralds war severly impacted the defense of wars?

everyone's tax are on 80% for non ally and 1% for ally, there's no other way around using those taxes (I noticed your taxes were also on 80%)

overshadowing the fact that every guild in artemis except probably 4 were warring the whole desert/savanah/rymek area currently held by Rays, so its normal that after 5h of constant warring the "pity price" (which nobody understands so far) rose up

for both the attacking guilds (which were overcrowded for such a small area without wood territories) and for the guild recieving all these attacks, Rays.

a mythic build won't get stats bonus in wars compared to non mythic builds. mythics are very good indeed and thats why they get the title and rarity of mythics. if every players had mythic, which is slowly whats happening since lq was introduced in 1.20, then they would not be as important as they currently are right now. To say mythics builds are heavily favored is not a problem considering not everyone is meant to have mythics (and im not even entering mythics tier lists)

I know a player who uses morph cascade to take out medium defenses. The balance problem is not that mythic makes you instantly OP, otherwise people would run Az or ArchangeL builds in war and solo anything (and as far as I know im the only player seriously using ArchangeL in war, tho its beside the point).

TNI and CXZ are two guilds I would consider medium sized at the moment, we have members who war without mythics yet have very good war builds nonetheless, but the main factor which makes us hold territories is, again, the alliance game. Also a small guild can be made out of 10 players who own all the mythics in the game.

The same way they can challenge guilds in a mega alliance today, hitting /gu attack ??

These same guilds who have 1 warrers online at max and not a good build to solo over medium probably couldn't solo a 22k, which any guild owning the map pre 1.20 had the financial ressources to do.

Last time I looked at Wynn, any guild could use the /gu attack command. You're not locked from attacking behind any wall, you can always /gu attack a territory unless its on cooldown! (its even easier now that your first war is free)

Establishing yourself on the map has and will always be a question of alliance and team games. A person or a guild solo will never be able to war an entire alliance and come out victorious. Wars make you take territories, but words make you hold them. Also I disagree that its "uncreative warring" because you actually need to develop strats to take on a tower and to manage your ressources to defend. Pre 1.20 you had as many warrers into the same war as you wanted and all the builds were set on 1 shot kills dps with either old keeper ring to be your entire sustain or a shaman to set down a totem and forget it exists, now in 1.20 you're locked to 6 warrers maximum per wars which means you actually need to balance every role in your team. Furthermore, the cap on 6 players per war means you can have 2 warring team say you have 8 warrers online to go for different territories which makes coordination even more important. Speaking of coordination, you actually need strategies and to speak to your allies to war and defend territories instead of /gu attack every blue square with the same 3 letter tags label in any order you want because all these territories have the same value.

if builds are outperforming by a large margin, then its up to the IM to nerf them

by how much?

by how much time? Also you do realize that limiting wars range would make the map even more stale because if an alliance take over a province and a second alliance take the other they could not be able to war each others, thus establishing an even bigger monopoly screwing over smaller guilds with less warrers as you keep mentionning.

A buff or a nerf? Can we get actual numbers? Will it make it easier for guilds to take a chokepoint and establish a very high HQ from taxes in only 10 minutes like we've seen countless times?

By removing taxes entirely? Cause thats the only way a guild can "just increase the attack price on there territories" (even tho patch 6 I believe removed all territories taxing attacks passing through them to only 1)

Explain how it is more broken, also snipe wars were most of the time RNG wars on who had the best ping or had the most cps without entering the "probably autoclicker" zone, which looks more unfair than ceding terrs.

No, because owning 0 territories give you no territories benefit. Also relying on your allies to war for you is even harder in 1.20 because more than the 10 minutes cooldown before being able to attack a territories, there is also the fact that war timers are more than 1:30 to attack any territories. Speaking from experience in TNI during the Rays raid: our smallest attack timer without counting the 10 minutes cooldown was 8 minutes. Which meant that any guild attacking Rays had 18 minutes of free territories (assuming we could kill the tower in 1s which is impossible) and considering Rays HQ kept getting taken because they couldn't war againts 10+ guilds, then they had near 0 fighting power back as their emeralds kept resetting because of HQ taking. Consider also that TNI having 18 minutes timers (counting 10m cooldown) on territories was the best timers in the whole alliance as every other guilds HQ in Wynn/Ocean wasn't any closer to desert.

and I know several people that disagree.

Forgetting some non mythic items like king of hearts, statue, the nothing, cluster, blossom haze, eden blessed guard, second wind (to name a few) are all very good in wars yet do not have the mythic tier.

you can dodge them

well yes, everyone need a solid build with thoughts in it to challenge medium+ towers, also the difficulty rating of towers is still confusing ill give you that, it can be upgraded to tier 11 damage yet have medium for some reason which is very confusing. Ofc tho if you war a guild that has a lot of ore territories like Eden you should be ready to fight towers with a high amount of damage, if you fight the ocean be ready to fight towers with a large amount of defense, etc.

ROTS healing also works well, I havent tested abso healing but I assume its not that bad, theres more than only koh which works well for healing, im thinking of monster lament, phoenix wing, nepta, peacefull rest maybe even. healing mage has been good since wynn came out, but there are still more sustain option that are good than them. Same as healers, spell oriented builds have always been very good, tho I agree melee builds could use a buff somehow on attacking guild towers (even tho from experience certain heavy melee builds were very good for dps) there still remain the fact that spell builds are and will always be good for combat.

there indeed needs to be a way for lower lvls to war one day, maybe just a tutorial or something, sadly tho I think guild wars should be designed more as endgame content than mid to lategame content like pre 1.20 wars

I think thats pretty much all there is to it

 

They helped In my opinion but it is still not great.

My understanding was this update was supposed to help smaller guilds and help more guilds get on the map A mega alliance is very difficult to beat. Also A good team of warrers mythic equipped can take a high def even if your hq is buffed.

I haven't had much defense practice since ESI currently doesn't hold territories (though I would like to know more about it), Personal ems were very beneficial to helping ally's I am sure as you wouldn't have to wait for your ems to transfer, but guild warring should be for everyone not just the rich. So the removing of that feature was a good one.

Yes I think there should be a tax break for guilds with less territories as is is difficult to gain enough ems to fight a 20k priced terr

Yes that is a problem I think, The territories shouldn't raise that high before I didn't bother me because we figured out how to take a very high hq def so we could just burn the ems that were in the hq. Now that the current map holder 'Goose' has had time to figure out how to defend it is nigh impossible. So it brought the problem to mind.

Yeah I think that the whole map should be warrable Like If you want to see more guilds on the map a nice little spot would be the rymek area but there is no way I can see to hold the area. It shoudlnt be dependent on if you can get a wood territory to where you can upgrade you emerald storage. I thought that cane to mind the bank upgrade could be dependent on the resources your hq produces.

you are right mythics are meant to be very rare and everyone shouldnt have one, but guild warring is for everyone not just people who own mythics and a good legendary build should be able to contribute well.

A question is this player a member of a Goose guild, Because Once some territories have sat for a while in possession of a guild they have time to buff the territory very well. A problem I have noticed is the variation in defenses under the same difficulty rating. Some mediums are very easy some are very difficult where is the line drawn.

Most of the territories Goose members war are low defended because the attacker cant defend them adequately in the time provided. Also I have still noticed that when a specific guild cant take a territory after a few trys they have to call someone else to take it- I assume with mythic builds

you say that but hitting gu attack is just the begging there is much more to attacking and warring.

Any decent build could solo a 22k in 1.19 I soloed 22ks in morph and the gravity war build which doesn't do very much damage. comparing this war system to a 22k is like comparing a Lion to a otter both are predators but I know which one scares the average person.

you took it too directly sure they can attack and they might win they might not. but most small guilds are not in a mega alliance so they cant call ally's to help. Also they may not have the resources or manpower to start a guild wipe

Yes it will always be a fact of an alliance. The uncreative part Is the fact that you say there are all these roles there are 2 that I can think of damage and healer. you sit at the bottom of the tower and spam spells. Seems very similar to 1.19 to me

A longer attack cool down wouldn't change the big problem of the tax issue. but perhaps a longer cd could allow a guild to build enough ems in there hq

some of those Items are not weapons and are used in mythic builds so I wont include them but on the weapon side koh does no damage but it has its place in war. the others sure they are not bad I use a the nothing build my self. But they are not a reliable way to take territories while having enough sustain and damage to take a well defended territory before the tower gets to strong.

I cant say as I dont have any numbers to compare to

I dont have numbers to give, taking a chokepoint is apart of this war system but a guild that has held an hq can afford the taxs from a chokepoint

I either say remove taxes affect on attack price and just set a capped price. Or give guilds with less territories a tax break

provided people are not using macros how is sniping not more fair it gives both parties a chance to take the territory and keep a guild wiped. If you can just give a guild a territory you can prevent a wipe entirely and gives the other side 0 chance to get the territory for 13mins.

you can dodge them but the time between tower aura makes it very difficult to deal damage before you have to run away from the tower again to dodge aura. you can say you can just stand on the out side of aura range with archer or mage but then you get hit with tower volley.

this Is what I got for you as a response

 

Omg the texts are huge i only read the thread but the comments ill skip for now. Hello i am the morph cascade guy that did 700 wars on it no regrets its very solid for vlows and lows, still solid for mediums with def and int pots (10eb cost per medium).

I also gave my feedback on the wynn discord i might copy paste it here later.

The only important suggestion i see is nerf aura and volley (no more true dmg) but lower aura costs.


Edit: tldr of my comments on the discord

Thre is no point in letting it be easy for small guilds, but 1.20 made it easier than in 1.29. I have a concrete example in form of ICo, a 12 player guild that held rol against both artemis and goose and now has neutrality from goose. PROF is also another guild not on the mega alliance that through dilomacy got their terrs. When was the last time that this of having guilds outside the mega alliance having actual claims (im counting Fux as symbolic claims)? So this is a concrete example of how it made it easier for smaller guilds. Imo why it got easier: no subbing, no hopping, big timers and taxes.

The second point about mythics, morph cascade is a budget 3le build that is rpetty solid for wars and that i used for about 600 of my wars, and so many mediums were involved and some highs and vhigh. With the personal le thing i agree it was a softlock to prevent poor player from entering guilds but rn it isnt. Also, mythics should give an advantage lmao, and that is what they are doing rn, giving a slight/good advantage like they always did on the normal gameplay and never mattered on guilds.

About the point of low level ppl not being able to contribute anymore, the answer is quite simple: they never should have been able anyways. Guild wars are designed to be endgame content, and the lvl 100 mobs and snipers etc were created having in mind that they would be used. Low lvl players could only war in 1.19 because of consumable abuse and bc of how easy even 22ks were so no one defended it.

 

I'll give my cents on a few specific things for now to keep it short and sweet:

- I think at this point we just have to accept that wars are a team-based effort, not just within your own guild but in that it requires you to reach out to other guilds to make progress on the map. This doesn't seem like a bad thing to me, it encourages guild to reach out to other guilds and cooperate and adds a whole new layer to guildwars in the form of diplomacy, This cannot be underestimated, it actively discourages selfish and arrogant guilds, you have to be nice to a certain degree to succeed in this system and thats very very good.

Trying to force a system where singular smal guilds can make an impact is going to require overhauls so massive it will completely demolish the current guildwar system

This is probably caused by the pity limit, which shouldn't proc after taking 4 territories so I'm not sure if this is the full story (just spread your attacks out to different guilds already) But regardless there are still a few issues that need to be adressed for both the attackers AND defenders and this is one of them.
Additionally: you bring up a solid point that it's hard to get going in places with very little of a certain resource due to not being able to buff emerald production.

Balancing wars for lvl 100+ players seemed like the most sensible thing to do, 99% of people who participate in wars are beyond that level and for many this is the only exciting piece of content left once raids are exhausted. There is no real way to balance out wars for lvl 50s and 100s at the same time without extensive amounts of code. It should be the duty of the guild to guide lower leveled players through their first playthrough and get them to a point where they are able to war (and war properly). At least up to high difficulty, wars seem reasonably fair in difficulty. Many of the larger guilds are able to manage those higher difficulties both with and without mytics in their builds (eco builds exist, trust me), It just takes practise and that's aweomse that wars now have an actual learning curve.

Wars are being set up right now as THE endgame content, a very highe difficulty tower is by far and beyond the biggest challenge in wynn right now. and that's not something that should be watered down(I'd actually love more complexity to towers to increase the learning curve more). with that it's quite natural that it requires heavy investments into proper builds.

 

Yes It was the "pity limit" we had taken territories before this but we got stuck in rymek with only 4 territories and a 24k attack price which is why I had brought it up before

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I would also Like to note that in the poll above all of the no's are from goose guilds... I dont know if its because none have you have fought actual good defended territories that have sat for a long time and have collected a defense. or something else

 

you completely forget Ghz 5 days hq on cathedral harbour and every ERN's hq staying on very high for hours on end. We have fought medium+ don't worry ;)

oh and PUN, ERN and Fox had established defenses on the map on the start of the update

 

LOL, if you wanna get into ethos then ok: i have 700 warcount and i could bet is soloed more mediums than you ahve of total wars. I did it all on morph mage, most with cascade and some with fatal. Idk what you have been doing if you think goose isnt fighting against good defenses, ern is doing a great job with strategies by using choke points and taxing at their favor.

 

That moment when high/very high def is no longer considered good defended territories

 

Listen... You don't NEED mythics to take a medium or high, there are other alternatives to this and heres a tip If you run morph Mage KOH or any class even, don't try face-tank an aura with ridiculous damage. Secondly, stop going off a poll then instantly saying "goose trash" when ESI itself hasn't even been able to fight a giant rat nest in a shed - even if it costed their life; are you really setting a good example of yourself?

Have you not taken into account guilds like EDN who had to literally try crawl through ERN terrs all on Medium and High, even Very High occasionally, have you done that? Because I really don't think so..

Literally betting this is a snippet from the 24 page letter from ANO on why guilds are bad and unfair.

 

I think that the new war system is supposed to be a little more challenging, I actually quite enjoy the new system. I think that mythics definitely help you in wars, just based on the fact that they are mythics lmao. But I don't think you NEED a mythic to be successful in wars, I have found multiple forms of The Nothing builds that work very well for warring. As well as the obvious statue KoH builds. I think that if they were to nerf guild tower defenses it would become too easy to take territories. You want to have a balance of wars being possible but still challenging, and I think they are pretty much at that point in terms of damage output and such. After all, it IS a completely new system and takes some getting used to. Best of luck to you guys!

 

I took plenty of hard defended territories before goose figured out how to defend to they are close to impossible now

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I never said goose was trash I just found It interesting and worth noting

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In my experience warring rays, shy EDN, TNI, Avo, IBT mediums mythics are almost essential to dealing a significant amount of damage with enough sustain to tank the tower aura once it has been upgraded

 

Sorry to break it to you, but if medium def is impossible for you, get a new build bro. Yall gotta be wearing leather armor if you think that shit is impossible.

 

I'd say im a pretty decent warrer with 450 wars under my belt. TBH i don't have the time or effort to expend and make these huge structured responses as some people have done here, but my guy your extremely limited warring experience that you nonchalantly revealed really shows in your knowledge, you clearly haven't done enough research and based a lot of your "points" on your own and a biased group's experiences. You guys speak of strategy but if you can't even solo a medium defense then there's a problem with you. Also tower attacks and aura are dodgeable.

 

I mean by a good defense is that I have found a major difference in the labeled difficulty on a territory I have faced some mediums where I could solo and some I had to use stat pots and war scrolls, with 2 koh mages, my fantaisa shaman That does 20k auras with 35k hp by the time i have all the buffs and a warrior with 33k hp dealing 20k per hit. And we are struggling with a medium defense... Call me crazy but I think that combination is far more powerful than your morph cascade/fatal/koh. You must have far more skill than us or you havent done one with 2mil hp that the tower gets stonger several times

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I dont think it is impossible but It is terrible read above for reason why

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They did hold those territories But I have noticed a large increase in difficulty between rated defenses now vs then. Like I said earlier we used to be able to 4 people take out a very high def hq. now when we try it we instantly die same builds or better

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And all of you doubting the reliability in my claims go try it go solo a medium owned by a goose guild that has had time to be buffed and has all dam bonuses but is labeled a "medium"

 

lmao how many times we have to tell you that i soloed dozens if not 100+ medium defs. Yes medium defs, the ones with 2mi+hp, some defense and like 6-10k starting dps, all in morph fatal or cascade, with def and int pots. Your koh mages must be doing smth wrong, because outhealing 10kish dps isnt hard when you have 7k heals and good def/agi.

 

I dont know what to tell you then we have clearly had different experiences

 

I know you didn't say those exact words, this is literally what you're suggesting it seems, and "worth noting" that apparently voting on a poll determines a guilds potential skill or what they are capable of?

 

Regardless Fighting over a medium def is not accomplishing anything that was not the point of my post. The point was to bring notice some of the issues I have found and others I have talked too about 1.20 guild wars in general I am glad to see your guys' opinions about it but this is not constructive in any way it has turned into a pissing match

 

well yes indeed, I think it is safe to assume Eden is the guild that warred the most out of the whole update so far, what about you?