Fort Aspenwood...Unbalanced survey?

#800 is terrible; your rating is below your starting one and you've most probably lost more matches than you've won.

Anyway, player skill barely has anything to do with FA unless we are talking about the very extremes of the human mind. It is much easier to spam enchantments, heals, defensive spirits, tank than to to use teamwork to break those barriers.

But that's just the nature of FA. One side defending and one side attacking. IMO, that's the imbalance in Fort Aspenwood. Everything else is just a product of this underlying imbalance. You can't have a balanced format if each side requires a completely different playstyle.

I actually wouldn't mind it if the luxons had their own version of Gunther in the map and the kurzicks killing it would mean victory. Of course, a similar amount of defense would be needed for the NPC. This way both sides would have to play offensively and defensively, which is a step towards a balanced format. (lol this sounds like GvG)

If you do that then you also need to change the map layout, NPC placement, teleport locations, add gates for the Luxon side, etc. You would also have to remove the timer.

The only way to really make it balanced is to completely revamp FA.

You can't judge someone #800 at this point of the game. For sure it's not regular and top GvG'er , but whether it's r12 HA'ers or total PvE'rs , both would get rolled by smurfs or good GvG'ers ( what you only face in GvG nowadays), whereas r12 HA'ers would probably beat PvE'rs.....

Anyway back on topic , that's again due to the new skills that appeared along years and the " zero update " that FA had... Thus , today it's an other place where playing melee is close to useless on both sides

Once you're in the gunther area, don't kill the monks, that makes them respawn with full energy. Just train on gunter and whatever is killing your turtles. It's impossible for any kind of team to keep up if there's 2 turtles pumping attacks on the gunther pit. Monks will run out of energy and you can kill gunther.

The map is indeed unbalanced, but due to random teams tis still quiet playable. FA and JQ were not ment to be high level pvp so you should not try playing it like it is.

@HB

Not really, if you're a sin and you can sneak through the gate when kurzicks are running amber and take out a gatekeeper you're quite useful.

No trolling, I'm dead serious actually.

The turtles get more distracted than a 6 year old...All it takes is someone taking the portal, making him appear right behind them and then back up a little to avoid the warriors. The turtles will try to kill him. And because the turtles are also slow...by the time he gets up, the turtles would use on shot, or none.
Also the turtles are able to hit Gunther and the area to his left only if they are really at the green gates, and once again it's quite easy to keep them from getting there.

Turtles should target NPC's Only. They can use there close combat defenses but when it comes to attacking they should be focused. Let the warriors worry about the players attacking them from a distance. Another thing is why do warrriors have to run back to the turtle to change targets??? Attack kill attack kill is all they need to know. No need to check on Wilber the Turdle Tard. Get out there and make some noise

Pretty much what I have thought about the map. Defenders have a basic advantage in that they can simply delay the attackers and win by stalemate. The only good thing about FA is that you can play test builds or skills, you can get a good idea of how they work and some of the weaknesses they have.

I've monked on the Kurz side and to avoid this you work your way to the door as you heal. When you run out of energy run to the luxon warriors by the turtles and you die instantly.

Unbalanced?

Turtles does weak DPS. Sure, 200 damage may sound a big deal, but a single WoH makes turtle's attack useless.

Pretty sure turtle damage is AoE and WoH is single target.

Maybe but the recharge is 10 and the cast time 3. You have the time to cast WoH almost 4 times. But why would cast WoH 4 times for a siege attack ? You need it twice : for you and Gunther. Plus it's not like a monk only has 1 healing skill.

Of course I'm not going to say that the turtle is useless. It can kill people if they aren't healed by a monk...and if you manage to get 2 of them inside the green gate, then yes you might be able to put a lot of pressure. But they get easily distracted...

That should have been /thread. It's so easy as Kurzick it's retarded. I don't think anyone could possibly post a losing record on defense.

There is a very easy way to combat monks if you are playing on the luxon side . . . Dom Mesmers. You can pretty much shutdown a monk completely just by maintaining diversion and shame on them.

Luxon side: Once you're in the green, melees are amazing.
Kurzick side: Stopping people from getting to green is one of the primary objectives, and what stops people from moving? Oh yea, knockdowns.

Just adding stuff to the awesomeness that is melees

I have played over 500 FA matchs on both side and would have to say it is harder for luxons especially when 3/4 of the time the turtle gets stuck which is a huge disadvantage especially when the turtle siege attack does aoe damage and removes 1 enchant and a-net refuses to fix this. I honestly don't get why they can't fix the turtle getting stuck but they have time to spend countless hours on a few day event like april fools.

For the rest of this post, we are going to assume that every player has at least a "normal" level, not exceptionally great and not exceptionally bad.

Well if we are going to go into theories, I can think of 3 outcomes :
-you manage to shutdown the monk
-you manage to shutdown the monk, but he isn't the only one healing and you can't shut down the other on your own
-you manage to shutdown the monk once, and then for the rest of the match ever kurzick that understood what you are doing (because some called you or because they saw it) will come and kill you before you even have the chance to cast diversion.

Of course, there are so many variables like how many monks are there, are you the only one putting this kind of pressure on the monk, what is the rest of your team and what is the rest of their team and how "smart" are they.

When I think of it, I am so glad that FA is random. If people actually made teams, 90% of the kurzick team would be filled with monks and rits. You can try to bring a mix of dom mesmers and necroes, but I don't think that it's going to be much wonder with 4 players protecting the outergates.

I still don't get it why people complain about losing on kurzick side if they aren't bringing a monk or a rit. It's like complaining that HM is too hard for a mesmer using frenzy and wearing starter armor : you have a choice to make it easier, do it, instead of complaining.

Of course this is all just theory talk :
-how many games are there with really more than 3 monks/rits on kurzick side ?
-how many games have more than 1 anti-monk on luxon side ?
-how many games have team that try to organize a startegy ?
Not that much, and this is why someone, on any side could get a 50/50 win/lose. (Well getting 50/50 win/lose on kurzick side is kind of bad...).
FA is random, but, and I have said it before, the map imbalance (rez points and NPCs) aren't and clearly give an advantage to kuzicks.

Since when did diversion and shame completely shut down a monk? For diversion just use a skill that isn't critical, no monk bar relies on all 8 skills all the time. Shame is a minor annoyance at best without proper coordination. Bringing an Ele with enchant removal would accomplish a lot more.



Please tell me you are not serious. For the Luxon side melee is pretty much useless until the game is almost won. Kurzick side isn't much better, why run melee for KD when you can run an ele and have ranged KD + snares? Melee is bad in FA, just accept it.

Because that skill will be available the next time diversion hits right?

Fast recharge sets and ritualists say hi!

Sorry to break this to you but it's not the profession that is bad. Depends if said melee knows how to be useful and actually accomplish something. (which goes for every other profession that makes their way to FA)

Well, imo, I always though that even if there was more than one healer on the kurzick side, that shutting down just one of them would make killing gunther at least a little bit easier. But this is just my opinion and yes it is still heavily dependant on your team.

Which is about nothing when the gate is held shut by healers spamming behind it.

It's not just melees, bows and spears can suck it too.

Even if you managed to land a diversion on a monk every 8 seconds, in 30 seconds you would only manage to shut down 3 skills. For that to happen you would need to get half skill recharge every time, be ignored, and it only affects 1 person. Diversion is simply not that great without both good coordination, and good timing.

Fast recharge effects enchant removal too, so that is a terrible argument. Weapon spells wont keep Gunther alive, they are balanced around the fact that they cannot be removed.

Good players can be "effective" with boon prot in GvG, it doesn't change the fact that it is bad. Melee is bad in FA due to the objectives and NPC's. Player skill cannot change that.

They don't like Arcane Languor much, either.

Yea, i think its kinda unbalanced aswell, imo, it will always be to the kurzicks...

Why were you grouped up in the first place?

3 seconds recharge for WoH. Plus a 3/4 a second cast to WoH.

10 second recharge for the Turtle attack plus 3 seconds to cast.

Is that so hard to at least heal 3-4 people before they learn that there is a turtle nearby and should spread out?

I play on both sides of Fort Aspenwood quite a bit. The Kurzicks definitely have the advantage. Turtles can be easily be glitched, exploited, and taken down. Luxon's always have a bunch of warriors, assassins, rangers, and dervishes who think they can contribute to the team until a competent monk is behind a gate - then they are rendered completely useless. Also, all the Kurzicks have to do is run around outside the base and half of the Luxon team will try to chase you down which causes the game to last longer and NPCs not being attacked.

All the Kurzick team needs is a good monk to win. The Luxons rely on much more than that. Every 2-3 games I participate in the turtles glitch. It makes things tougher than you think.

Also, the Kurzicks have a height advantage and also have easier NPCs to kill.

I wish it weren't the way it is - but sadly that's just how things are. And they won't change.

Jade Quarry is much better imo.

Edit: Lost 4 rounds in a row due to 2-5 monks behind walls. Trust me, the Kurzick side is unbalanced if anything.

The ledges on the edge of the outer gates let rangers attack at least one of the basic amber sites. Unfair.

It's a fort so there will be turrets to shoot from. Even seen Luxons using them in game to thier advantage.

Yes, the map is probably more biased towards the Kurzicks, but bottom line is the team.

Get a good team on either side and that's the game.

I've seen many a good Luxon team come in and take down Gunther in 10 or so minutes.
Get the underhand Toucher or SF'er in, and that goes down to '2mins game over', especially if you have new players on Kurz who haven't got any idea of what a toucher is capable of.
Lux teams usually full of monks, each healing each other and the turtle.
So pro's and cons to defending and attacking strategies. Each match is different.

The best matches are when both sides have equally good teams, then it's fight to the death, up against the clock; last minute and nail biting. Match could go either way. Doesn't happen often enough sadly, and bias doesn't come into it then. Just pure clean fun

By far the worst thing is the high amount of leavers on Luxon side. No team no game. Let's the whole luxon team down, and always spoils the match

As much as people complain about the monks on Kurz side and the thing being unbalanced, I'm still amazed that people don't bring more healer hate and Necros. Soul bind is kinda fun to watch bad monks behind the wall suicide healing the jugg and go wtf?!? If nothing else, it forces the monk to stop healing for a second and either heal himself or remove the hex.

I often used to bring soul bind as luxon, but it doesn't change things. You don't even need healers. Tie up one turtle for half the game, you've won. Constantly run amber, win. It's really, really easy to win as kurzick. Really easy. I used to run the stupid defy spear warrior turtle tank and just tie up one side. Even if they brought enough hate to kill me, I respawned in 5 seconds and was back at the turtle before he killed any npcs. If you lose when defending FA, you have at least 6/8 really really bad players on your team.

eh kurzicks have a huge advatange st has became popular in fa now which greatly slows down luxons the turtle no longer can just rofl stomp the gates and a st rit makes a luxon team go from instantly nuking a gate to taking around 5-6mins just to tear down the outer gates with all of them focusing on one side

add a bonder/healer to each side with st rits and you basically have a perfect defence build that you wont even have to leave the gates

I play FA more than anything in GW and Kurzick have a HUGE advantage. Why do you think their outpost is beyond full and it takes them forever to enter, meanwhile Luxon is dead and always losing? Cause everybody knows that Kurzick is more reliable.

From what I see, Luxons usually have no teamwork and I really do question their collective intelligence. I didn't come to this conclusion through a match or 2, I'm talking a couple years playing the side and seeing everything. And I play Luxon more too so this is from experience:

Too many leeroys + fragmented teams, bad splits, way too many "Ok we broke the second gate, lets run to green immediately!" (what about the damn center!?), and not releasing the turtle or telling anybody if it was released (I constantly have to ask). I am not exaggerating in the least, Luxons are not the smartest and most teamwork friendly bunch, at least in FA. You want things done, you gotta grab the ropes in team chat and lead or taunt your way to victory.

Luxons also seem to have a fixation on pure damage whenever I play that side. It's all about huge nukes and numbers game, blah blah. I rarely see people come prepared with things to make things die easier like cracked armor, healing reducers, Fragility, Curses in general. It's all about the huge numbers which are usually typed damage (bad). The nukers should be instead playing Wastrel Mesmers if they want real damage. And even though it's armor ignoring, it's still easier easier to defend. YOU NEED vulnerability skills yet I never see anybody take them. Alone, damage is not enough.

Keeping with the "KILL EVERYTHING IN SIGHT!" mentality, I also see a lot of players go for broke on the Luxon side... sometimes no self heal, no heal for the turtle, just rush in and hit the whole bar. This is just beyond stupid and it never goes away. If you want to spam and go for broke, then you should be playing Kurzick - THEY have the spawn point/quick death advantage. On Luxon it is ALL about pacing yourself... given how far you have to travel to get to Gunther, rushing and being reckless only splits up the group and wastes you time when you have to run back. Yet I totally see it happening 24/7. On Luxon side, the team has to be incredibly dynamic and adaptable the current situation at the moment, Kurzicks can go for broke since death isn't that time consuming, and be monotone in whatever they want to do successfully more often - hold a single thing, concentrate on on tasks.

Luxons also don't understand how vulnerable they are as either... lose a mine or 2 and you are seriously disadvantaged, lose a turtle or two and you can the reward will be 1200 or less if they have a competent healer. Most times you NEED a turtle, and running ahead or being reckless just gets them killed.

Good teams go slow and steady, protect the turtle but adapt to NPCs when it's safe.

Kurzick, well you have so many easy tools at your disposal: degen in general, turtle stalling, snaring to prevent new squads, Migrane to slow siege attack, WW/WD spam on turtle, spirit spam, Air of Enchantment stacking.

It is much harder to get the team to switch onto a target and go for the kill... usually I literally scream NOW and magic happens, but if I'm not doing that, forget winning. How often do you have somebody in your match calling when Monks/Rits are down? I am the only one I've seen do it in FA and it's crucial to winning against good teams, so if nobody else does it, goodbye chances. Nobody else also calls diverted skills and they don't leave Mo/Rt alive but disabled in green.

A major problem with the match up is how the team dynamics work. Especially so in the Luxons case, it's easy to say "Just run a domination build, go anti-monk and remove enchantments" but there's been cases when that falls flat on it's face, when multiple members of your team just happen to do that. Your teams offense becomes very low and all the skill diverting and enchantment removal doesn't make up for the lack of damage/pressure you cause. It's especially bad if you're running hexes and a team mate is running the same ones as you.

Same with monking, Luxons work well if there's a monk or two to protect the turtles(if they don't get stuck) but go as a monk, a couple other people might as well. Then there's situations where you end up with teams where you have 3-4 healers and your party can't out damage the Kurzick defenses/healing.

On the Kurzick side as long as there's atleast 1 healer you can't go too wrong with builds, you can kill foes or play defensively and hold them back. If you go as a monk or ritualist and if there's 3-4(or more) other Monks/Ritualists in your team you've just exponentionally increased your chances of winning.

I'd say it's mostly unfair because the more Ritualists and Monks the Kurzicks have the better their chance of winning. Whereas an optimal Luxon team can't have too many of a single class.

Its not imbalanced.... it depends on who is playing at the time.

You can interrupt a siege turtle.... ok. You can't get rid of the person interrupting it?

You can bond/heal the siege turtle.... which is much more annoying in my opinion.

The only bond/heal worthy npcs are the kurz juggernaut and master architect (and by that time its a little too late).

First of all:

It is possible to unstuck the Turtle yourself but you need Aura of the Lich, Verata's Aura and a skill that removes enchantments from you.

-Place yourself behind the Turtle, cast AotL and VA remove VA with your Ench Remover. The free Minion that came with AotL will turn into "neutral hostile", then the Luxon Warriors will run through the Turtle to attack the Minion behind it and the Turtle is free to move again.

Second:

It is possible for Kurzicks to interrupt the Turtle with just 1 single "interrupt": any Hammer-Skill that knocks down will interrupt the turtle instantly (without knocking it down of course).

As an enchant spam monk I have held an outer gate, on my own, for an entire match simply because the lux didn't have any way of shutting me down.

Now, you would think this would be auto-win for the kurz. But it isn't. I've sat there holding that gate against a turtle and a couple lux as I watched the opposing outer gate, then inner gate, and then the green gate fall. I'm like, wtf, there's 7 of you on that side, what are you all doing. Answer: not running amber, not killing turtles.

FA is not about PvP, it is about the meta game and working towards objectives.

For the Lux it is about slowly creeping the turtles forward, killing everything in your path, and once you get inside the inner gates, locking down that central area to prevent the Kurz from getting out to the amber mines.

For the Kurz, as has already been mentioned, it is about running amber, which has the duel benefit of forcing the Lux to walk further and repairing gates which screw up the attack flow of the Lux.

As to unbalanced, the turtle bugs I think are the biggest unbalancing factor. Granted I have won plenty of times with a bugged turtle, but it requires a much more solid team. A luxon team with a bugged turtle and a few crappy players is pretty much a lost cause. Kurz just need a few solid players to make a game out of it. But that is the reality of an offense/defense type of map.

an defy pain warrior can stall the turtles at the outer gates by standing in the middle up top.

The turtles are happily firing away without any LOS.

Sure you can try killing the warrior, but with endure pain, defy pain, signet of stamina, various self heals, it is a big PITA.

Well defending is inherently easier than invading.
That being said, FA will never be perfectly balanced.
There's no way it can be.

To be fair, there is at least 1 fatal bug on the Kurzick side aswell:

- Both Gatekeepers leaving green and running almost out of one of the Inner Gates and getting stuck in a Wall on the way back. (I'm not talking about being pulled by a Luxon). It happens sometimes when you run amber, I am sure you have noticed that at least once.

Indeed I have, but the rate of occurrence of this bug is miniscule compared to the luxon turtles bugging out, at least from my experience.

If you have two competent teams in FA, they will split wins. However, FA is largely filled with incompetent players, and it's easier to compensate for bad players on the Kurzick side.

That's not exactly fatal because you can fix that by paying attention and re-opening and closing the gates when that happens. On the other side you can't just click on something to get the turtles moving again.