Keep Sieges again

So last night offered another abortive attempt to take a defended keep. Someone in the warband asked how many order were defending and when told around a dozen, replied "and we're a full warband? What's the problem?" It's a fair question. Honestly, for a PvP-centric game i'm a bit surprised that people are so easily flustered. Straggling through the keep lord room, arriving in different groups, pathing in different ways to the pad or stairs: these things get you wiped.

So I left that warband as it floundered for a reason to exist and switched zones (to the elf t2 pairing). There I saw some other warband refugees loitering around in a zone that had an order defense around the keep and order controlled keep and objectives.

"Want to take BOs?" Yes, yes they did. So we formed a little group: Czarnal, a witch elf and a level 12 DoK. We gathered another on the way to the Unicorn Siege Camp objective.

There we handily took out the objective and an order defender. A couple more trickled in to their demise.

We took the other objective and our group started to swell, by the time we'd grabbed the second objective in Ellyrion we had two full parties, and people were talking keep siege.

Problem: only healer was the level 12 DoK. So I presented my patented strategy (tanking, focused DPS killing champs first and then Hero). The not-surprsing response: why kill the champs?

We went to the keep, and tried to run through to the pad. Surprise, our DoK dies on the way in, as do I trying to defend everybody else. That's why we kill the champs people.

Run back from Shadowlands, killing a WH on the way back (thanks for the renown, pal!)

Meanwhile, the rest of our WB: 2 tanks and something like 9 dps at this point are burning down champs ... with no healers.

This is my point. It's not hard.

We get back and handily, from the pad, kill the hero with 2 groups and only one healer.

If there had been order there would we have succeeded? probably not, but it's not unimaginable. Frankly we probably could have done it without the healer (though he did a great job). we had three high-level tanks. Taunt rotations, debuffs, and knockdowns will do wonders of mitigating damage.

So the project continues. I'll call it the Pug Tactics Project. Can a PuG be trained on the fly to succeed against difficult conditions? I think so, but time will tell.

***

Random Interlude


Orcs with bows? That guy's gotta have some self-image issues.

"Bows iz for gobbos! I no gobbo!"

/sobs uncontrollably