A small explanation on how to set sieges correctly, what the different sieges do and some example tactics for siege placements. Starting off with the descriptions:
- Normal Ballista : Deals more damage to walls & gates
- Fire Ballista : Deals damage to structures and burns people
- Lightning Ballista : Drains Magicka and slows people down
- Flesh Catapult : Deals Damage over Time on people
- Oil Catapult : Drains Stamina and slows people down
- Stone Catapult : Deals damage in a huge radius & increases the damage taken by affected players
- Stone Tribok : Deals more damage to walls & gates
- Fire Tribok : Deals damage to structures and burns people
- Ice Tribok : Deals damage and slows people down
- The Ram : Deals increased damage to gates only
- Coldfire Sieges : Same as other sieges, but deal significantly more damage
- NEW Lancers : Lancers shoot multiple arrows at once, inflicting shock, fire or frost damage at each hit
Coldfire Sieges
The Coldfire Ballista does the same thing as a fire Ballista, but deals increased flame damage and increased DoT (Damage over Time). Coldfire Tribok does the same as a Fire Tribok, but will have increased damage. The Cold Stone Tribok stands out a bit. It does more damage to enemy sieges then the ordinary stone Tribok, but the same damage to structures. It has the highest damage against enemy players. Coldfire Sieges can be a rare reward at the end of the campaign and can also be obtained by doing Dolmens in Cyrodiil (also a very rare drop).
Stone Tribok
It has a huge range allowing you to siege walls or gates from a distance, without being hit by enemy defensive sieges. It takes a long time before it's ready again, but does does the most damage to enemy structures. The primary use is to siege castle walls. When used at wooden gates it really just steals away space for the small ballistas that would be more effective at gates. The "Cold Stone Tribok" does the same thing, but not to be confused with the "Cold Fire Tribok", which is basically a fire Tribok.
Fire Tribok
As with all Triboks it has a huge range. The primary use is to support your ballistas by attacking the defensive sieges. It deals less damage to gates and walls, so it is a waste of space if you siege only the gate or wall with it. This is to be fired at your opponent to slow them down in their defense or offence.
Ice Tribok
Very usefully against large groups (Ball groups), as it slows them down and deals damage. It is as good as never used, but still a great siege. Primarily used as defensive weapon to slow enemy movement down.
The Ram
This is your primary weapon, when attacking enemy gates. It requires 3 people to function and each person will increase the damage dealt by this - up to 6 people. When using the Ram 4 people can also use ballistas at the same time, while the other 2 are responsible for taking incoming damage and healing / siege shield. If the enemy has oil up and you are standing at the ram with no siege shield you will very quickly die.
Normal Ballista
Primarily used to attack gates and walls. It deals more damage then any other ballista to structures, but less damage to people. Everybody should have this in their inventory when attacking a castle.
Lightning Ballista
Draining the Magicka of people. To good to not be used. When you see an enemy group at your gate with a siege shield, shoot the lightning ballista at the group and the healers will quickly have no magicka to heal trough the incoming damage. Against ball groups it's okay, but the healers in those groups usually have enemies around that they can heavy attack - so unless you place more then 1 it won't have a huge impact on ball groups. Still helpfully if you use it.
Fire Ballista
Mainly a defensive siege made for aiming at people and siege weapons. It will burn enemy siege weapons and people and deal a lot of damage, which can potentially win the defense for you. Shooting this at walls is possible, but it will deal less damage then a normal ballista so just keep that in mind, if you stealing a spot.
Stone, Oil & Flesh Catapult
These 3 catapults are all meant to be shot at people and people only. If you shoot this at a wall it will do absolutely nothing. If you combine all 3 at a gate for defensive purposes the chance of any enemy getting in is extremely low. Stone catapult increase their damage taken by 20%, the Oil catapult slows them down and the flesh catapult will poison them while they take more damage and are slowed down. This will stop almost any ball group coming trough the gate, if you manage to hit all 3 on them. In small outposts you can only safely position 2 of these (you can fit more on the sides, but will be exposed) - my personal recommendation is 1 stone and 1 oil catapult, as you usually have fighters and oil to deal some damage.
NEW Lancers
Lancers are the new Siege weapons from the Greymoor chapter. They are
obtainable trough the archaeology system. The lead can be found from the conquest PvP Missions (directly next to the tent - Picture 1). It is not a guaranteed drop, you will have to do this mission a couple of times. It can be shared by group members, so you can do it more then once per day. Once you have found the lead, you can go to the zone it is located in (this will not be Cyrodiil) and dig it out. You will need to learn archaeology for this.
There is 3 different types of Lancers: Frost, Fire and Shock. Each one has a guaranteed chance of afflicting a status effect to an enemy player.
- Frost - Chilled effect (small damage over time + slow)
- Fire - Burning effect (damage over time)
- Shock - Drains magicka, applies concussion (off balance) effect
They deal increased damage to players, but almost no damage to structures. As mentioned before, it holds multiple arrows and when fired they are spread out depending on how far you are aiming. So for example, if you aim down with it at the lowest point, your arrows will be hitting a lot more precisely around the area you are aiming on. When you aim up (far away) the arrows will be spread out a lot, covering a large area around your initial aiming point. Both of these can be very effective in certain situations. An example can be found in Video 1.
At the time of posting this, the view from the Lancer seems bug or simply awfully. Some people might have noticed, that you just can not see anything, when you place this on top of a wall. I have found a great addon called "
Siege Camera Toggle", that can help with this problem, by giving an alternative view for the siege weapon, as seen in Video 2.
*There is currently no preview available at the training parkour seen in Video 1, but it might be added to there at a later point of time. The one you see there was placed by me.
- Images
- Videos
Price Table
- Stona Ballista - 1800 AP
- Lightning Ballista - 1200 AP
- Fire Ballista - 1200 AP
- All Catapults - 1200 AP
- All Triboks - 1800 AP
- Ram - 1800 AP
- Oil - 800 AP
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How to NOT siege
Before showing some examples i'd like to show you something which i see on a daily basis. I call it the "braindead cheese". The example: A group attacks a castle (any castle) and encounters a huge defensive siege. They can not break free. One person is yelling in chat /y OPEN NEW BREACH!. So 20 people turn their sieges and siege the wall on the side of the gate. This is what botheres me. If you can turn your sieges, then so can the enemy. There is no point in opening a new breach DIRECTLY next to the other breach, as the entire force will also be there and they won't even have to move their sieges, they can just turn them.
Where to NOT place sieges
This one has the potential to save you a lot of anger and frustration, because it actually happened to me more then once. I just didn't think about it. Now i have learned from previous mistakes. What do i mean? There is certain castle "Addons" (shown in the images below) that appear, once you have taken the resources (Lumber, Farm, Mines or only Mines to be more precise). They are there to allow you to place more sieges, so the theory. Unfortunately they are very dangerous and can get you and your siege weapon killed. The reason: When you place your siege weapon on these Addons during a siege defense and somebody of the enemy team captures the Mines - the entire section will just disappear. You fall off and your siege weapon vanishes into oblivion (bye bye Frost lancer
) If the siege weapon would be automatically put in my inventory, i would definitely use those areas, but not when it has the potential of me loosing my siege weapon at any moment.
How to ram
I know what you are thinking here: I know how to place a stupid ram! I'm telling you: You are wrong! 99% of the people will run to a gate and place a ram, which is correct, right? Wrong. When you place a ram you can only put 3 ballistas around, thus limiting your effectiveness. What you got to do is put one ballista right in the middle and then a ram on top of that. In Picture 1 you can see how to NOT do it. Picture 2 and 3 show correct examples on an effective siege. You really want as many people as possible to be actively doing something, if you are going for the quick ram. The longer it takes you to break the main gate, the more time the enemy has to respond with defensive sieges.
How to Oil
Starting off with the most common mistake. Oils on Porches. Often people will put them on the side, as much as they can, but this is not good. As shown in Picture 1 you will not have enough space for 2 oils next to each other, if you place it right at the edge. What you should do is place them as much centered as possible as shown in Picture 2. Your oil will still hit the ground, so don't worry about it landing where it's not supposed to be.
Another common mistake is to place oils all around. I didn't prepare an example for this, as it's quite obvious in the other pictures. When you place oils on the circle you basically hit only the middle, while ballistas that are placed on the corner can hit the entire outer circle. So you should be placing oils at the whole on the top (Picture 3) and the outer porches, but not on the corners, where the ballistas should be (Picture 4). You can also place Oils at the very corners that lead inside the keep (Picture 5) and on the stairs (Picture 6).
How to wall siege
The next example shows a very basic way of attacking the wall. You'll have normal ballistas at the front that (hopefully) will all attack the same wall and the fire triboks at the back, that will provide fire support for your ballistas. In this example you'd hopefully have somebody with a siege shield up at the ballistas, as they are more likely to be hit from any defensive sieges. The most common mistake is to stack all kinds of ballistas that all siege a different wall. Your siege weapons will quickly be destroyed without any support fire and you might even loose the siege due to this. Use triboks!
Inner defensive sieges
This one is tricky and easy at the same time. What you want to do is have at least one of each type of catapults phasing the door. This is often quite hard due to obstacles, but if you have the stone in the middle and the other 2 at the sides it usually works. Picture 1 is an example of a keep with defensive sieges. In outposts you can only fit 2 without exposing yourself, but you can fit more on the sides if you really wanted to. It is important, that you fit the catapult as close to the stairs as possible, so you have space for ballistas behind you. You can ruin a defense, if you place it too far back.
Prepare inner walls
The last 2 pictures show setups of formations that allow you to siege both the outer and the inner wall at the same time. The primary use it to quickly open a passage at the sides, for example if the main gate can not be passed or is currently too dangerous to siege. It's a very risky setup, but might be usefully to you.
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Other Tipps@NordSwordnBoard
The occupancy of siege flows out from the door or main line for a wall. Don't take siege being used near the door if you didn't put it down. However if you see siege being laid out and not used by the planter make use of it. It's easier to spot when its just 3 people taking an outpost - a typical player can only use about 4-5 ballistae on cooldown in a diamond type pattern - so when you see me put down 8 siege I want others to use them. We don't get much out of our time on a failed attack. Coldfire isn't shared so freely with others, be apprehensive with that.
@Ourorboros
Keep trebuchet off porch so more ballista can be placed.
Place ballista adjacent to porch columns, so two can be placed. One between columns is one less ballista.
Postern doors take no damage-hit stairs or wall around posterns.
Kill NPC asap, especially mages who heal or cast negates.
Don't attack resources before the keep. It's a red flag to your presence and gives enemy time to set up defense.
@mague
If you are a healer you should have one of those slotted. Wherever siege weapons come in the shield should be up.
@Joy_Division
- If the enemy is about to break down a side postern, remove your fire ballista off the oil lips - which isn't really doing anything - so oil can go there which actually has a chance to defend said postern.
- If you insist on trying to countersiege on the top floor on an inner castle, please slot and use skills so you won't die in the hail of enemy meatbags and fire trebs raining down on you. It's hard to rez you and if I'm doing that, I'm not defending the castle.
- If you see what you think is an unattended siege weapon, 9 times out of 10, it is very attended by a person who just temporarily gets off of it because they don;t like standing in stupid. If you are still convinced it isn't being used, then loose one shot/pour and get the f*** off please. Thank you.
- On a related note, if you steal someone's Coldfire siege, you are a jerk.
- Do not fire at the actual door on the side postern. It does nothing. Hit the surrounding wall.
The picture the OP has for oil placement over the Inner front door is not efficient. Placed correctly, there is room for at least 7 oils, 5 of which can be operated without taking fire from enemies from below.
@FrancisCrawford
When should one stow siege engines? When should one repair them?
I ask in particular around the idea of reusing the rare or expensive ones.
That's a good question! I'd say it depends on the siege weapon you are using. The big trebs can easily be repaired while you are waiting for them to reload. So you shoot, go out, repair (x2) and then it'll be ready to be repaired again. You do not want to do this, when you're under heavy fire tho, as you can get killed while repairing. If it's a good siege then i just place them inside the castle when it's quiet, repair them and then re-pack them.
For the Ballistas it's different. You can repair a ballista almost one time between the shots (you do loose a bit of time, because the repair takes slightly longer then the reload). However i feel like it does make sense to do this during a defensive siege, as you are often in a relatively safe position. When attacking, it depends on the situation if i bother to re-pack or not. For example a heavy defended castle - i might just leave it and move on or if everybody is focused on one area i'll re-pack it, as i know i won't be targeted because the focus is on the main gate for example. On an empty castle i almost always pack it, as long as it has over 25% durability. I never bother to repair normal ballistas, i only repair the expensive ones, but that is personal preference. If you don't want to spend to much AP in buying new ones, you can pack them and just repair later.
The new Lancers can be repaired once between each shot (just about) and since you never really need them in offensive sieges, i'm doing this a lot - as long as it has above 70% "health" remaining.
And the best Tipp of
@Delsskia
The correct way to siege is to never aim one at me.
If you have any suggestions or more examples feel free to post them here.