Guide to Siege Weapons

Nermy

I've been compiling a guide for my guild on siege weapons and we've been having a discussion around what is purgeable, I was under the impression that you could purge the fire DoTs from oils and fire ballistas but that was all. Anyone any further information?

For interest I'll post my guide:

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Types of Siege Weapons

1. Battering Rams can only be deployed near keep doors and cannot be used to attack walls or enemy players. Once deployed, it will move to the nearest door and begin attacking. A ram works faster with allies near it, to a maximum speed with 6 allies nearby. Battering Rams are most vulnerable to flaming oils as there're always spaces to place oil pots on the roof at main doors

2. Trebuchet are best used against keep walls and can even be fired into keep courtyards and on the walls due to their long range and arcing shots.
Each Alliance has five types of Trebuchet available:
Stone Trebuchet - Deals high damage to buildings and enemies.
Firepot Trebuchet - Deals flame damage over time to enemies.
Iceball Trebuchet - Deals frost damage to enemies and reduces their movement speed for a few seconds.
Cold Stone Trebuchet - Deals extremely high damage to buildings, structures and enemies - deals the highest initial damage out of all siege weapons. These weapons can only be obtained from Dark Anchor chests.

Cold Fire Trebuchet - Deals Coldfire damage to enemies and very high damage to structures. These weapons can only be obtained from Dark Anchor chests.
Trebuchets are tough and have a long range. Due to their long radius, they can shoot enemies behind walls easily and can even hit the Inner Postern Walls of keeps if they are placed correctly. Among all the siege weapons, the Cold Stone Trebuchet does the highest damage to walls and other structures for each hit, with around 5,000 damage per hit, but it is somewhat rare. Firepot and Iceball Trebuchets are better for attacking enemy players than keep walls, but they are outnumbered by Ballistae due to their faster reload time. All types of trebuchets have a long reload timer and cannot shoot targets in close range, unlike the Ballista and the Catapult. Trebuchets are ideal for attacking due to their long range and very high damage, but it is recommended for trebuchets to be accompanied by ballistae or catapults when attacking as trebuchets cannot fire in close range.

3. Catapults are a wide area siege weapon that can be combined with effects such as disease. Useful against large groups of players.
Each alliance has three types of catapults:
Meatbag Catapult – This type of Catapult deals disease damage to enemies and reduces their healing taken for a few seconds.
Oil Catapult – This type of Catapult ensnares enemies and drains approx 5000 Stamina.
Scattershot Catapult – This type of Catapult hits a large area for each shot which is useful of detecting hidden enemies and adds 20% damage to all other siege damage..

4. Ballistae are useful to take down walls and doors, destroy other Siege Weapons and against players.
Each alliance has four types of ballista:
Ballista - This type of ballista shoots a normal bolt that deals very high damage to buildings and enemy siege weapons, but less damage to enemy players.
Fire Ballista - This type of ballista shoots a fire bolt that deals fire damage to players plus damage over time.
Lightning Ballista - This type of ballista shoots a lightning bolt that ensnares enemies, reducing their movement speed for a few seconds also drains approx 5000 magika.
Cold Fire Ballista - Deals Coldfire damage. Does a lot of damage to players but no extra damage to walls/doors. These weapons can only be obtained from Dark Anchor chests.

5. Flaming Oil is used to defend against attacks by Battering Rams and breaking up groups of players charging into breaches in the walls and doors.

Flaming oil is not a range siege weapon, but it has a decent area of effect radius. If placed at the edge of walls, the oil will be dropped off the wall. It MUST drop at least 6 metres to be effective. Flaming oil is very effective in battle of defense. It is good at destroying enemy Battering Rams as well as other siege weapons closed enough, dealing high flame damage over time. Other than that, Flaming Oil is also good at dealing flame damage over time to enemy players, especially vampires.

All side effects from siege weapons (snare, healing taken reduction, siege damage increase taken) are no longer purgeable. (Not sure if this includes oils or fire ballistas, can't find any information.)

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I'd be grateful for any corrections etc.

Turelus

I didn't actually notice who posted this when I opened it.

Good guide though so +1 insightful.

IxSTALKERxI

Nermy wrote: »

1. Battering Rams can only be deployed near keep doors and cannot be used to attack walls or enemy players. Once deployed, it will move to the nearest door and begin attacking. A ram works faster with allies near it, to a maximum speed with 6 allies nearby. Battering Rams are most vulnerable to flaming oils as there're always spaces to place oil pots on the roof at main doors

Might wanna add that you need a minimum of 3 players to operate. Can also be wheeled over the top of existing siege so you can do 3 ballista with a ram on top. Also siege repair kits can be used to repair your siege when it gets oiled etc.

Nermy wrote: »

All side effects from siege weapons (snare, healing taken reduction, siege damage increase taken) are no longer purgeable. (Not sure if this includes oils or fire ballistas, can't find any information.)

All negative effects from siege can be purged. They talked about making siege unpurgable on PTS for thieves guild but people were quick to point out why that is a bad idea.

Nermy

Turelus wrote: »

I didn't actually notice who posted this when I opened it.

Good guide though so +1 insightful.

What's that supposed to mean? lol!

Any input of any use there Tarvy?

IxSTALKERxI wrote: »

All negative effects from siege can be purged. They talked about making siege unpurgeable on PTS for thieves guild but people were quick to point out why that is a bad idea.

Thanks, have you any sources for that? Or can you point me in the right direction to get the info.

Sharee

Nermy wrote: »

Cold Stone Trebuchet - Deals extremely high damage to buildings, structures and enemies - deals the highest initial damage out of all siege weapons.

To the best of my knowledge, cold stone trebs deal the same damage to walls as regular stone trebs - 4000 damage.

As a general advice, i would also add that postern doors are immune to damage, and you have to shoot the wall next to it if you want to make a postern breach. Only main doors are vulnerable to siege.

Fire ballistae are much worse against walls than normal ballistae (1000 damage vs 2000 damage). This is not so with fire treb vs stone treb, where the fire treb is only slightly less viable than stone (4000 vs 3500).

Stone treb is the best siege against a wall, but a regular ballista is nearly as good (treb 4000 damage every 14 seconds, ballista 2000 damage every 7.5 seconds). A ballista can hit a wall from further away, thanks to a flatter trajectory(you can shoot rayles wall from rayles LM tower, for example).

One player can effectively operate up to 3 trebs simultaneously (you can do more but they will have idle time).

Juli'St

Amazing guide!

keep this and some like this, UP guys!

People need understand, new players need LEARN how fight PvP in a campaign.

Juli'St

"One player can effectively operate up to 3 trebs simultaneously (you can do more but they will have idle time)"

In a rotation, 3 big stone siege works very fine. Flag a keep in few time. I flag some keeps alone in this way. In 2016, AD won a campaign with this strategy like support, in last week (At that time, I opened a topic in the forum about this, if i remmember).

Nermy

Thanks for the input guys... I'll update asap.

geonsocal

I think there's a limit of 20 siege in a specific area...not sure if that's the right number, or, what the exact size of the area is...

not sure if you mentioned it - but the deploy and stow times on the type of siege vary...

for a solo player ballistas are great at setting down fast, firing quickly, then being able to stow away without getting left behind by the zerg

Nermy

Ok, bit of a bump but I'm looking for damage figures. For instance, somewhere I read a Oil catapult drains 3000 stam and cause a snare but can I find any info.

Anyone got a link for some damage numbers? The best I could find was this (taken from here.) Are these accurate do people think?

Balista
2000 to structures
270 to Units

Fire Balista
1000 to Structures
1080 to Units over 3 seconds (360 per second)

Lightning Balista
1000 to Structures
810 to Units over 3 seconds (270 per second) and stun

Scattershot Catapult
2000 to Structures
180 to Units

Meatbag Catapult
500 to Structures
540 to Units over 3 seconds (180 per second)

Oil Catapult
500 to Structures
451 to Units and ensnare

Stone Trebutchet
4000 to Structures
360 to Units

Iceball Trebutchet
500 to Structures
225 to Units and ensnare

Firepot Trebutchet
2000 to Structure
higher than 2400 to Units. The first dot destroys a 800 hp dummy, so I couldn't really measure it

Battering Ram
It is difficult to measure it, because it may vary between having 3 to 6 players near a ram, and you need an actual enemy keep door to measure it, and it is a mess during battle.

Flaming Oil
810 to Units over 3 seconds (270 per second)

Feanor

From the top of my head: Stone Trebs do 4,000 Damage to structures, Meatbags add a heal debuff to players, and Fire Trebs hit players for 3k+...

Nermy

Feanor wrote: »

From the top of my head: Stone Trebs do 4,000 Damage to structures, Meatbags add a heal debuff to players, and Fire Trebs hit players for 3k+...

Yeah, I know they apply Defile but I really was looking for some accurate numbers. But you're right about Stone, will edit it.

crosius

This seems like the appropriate thread for a question I have...all the siege weapons seem to be 'used up' in rather quick order, even when not attacked. Is it better to have a couple of replacements on hand, or to have additional repair kits for each active weapon? I was looking at primarily a cost effective solution...
Thanks!

Sharee

crosius wrote: »

This seems like the appropriate thread for a question I have...all the siege weapons seem to be 'used up' in rather quick order, even when not attacked. Is it better to have a couple of replacements on hand, or to have additional repair kits for each active weapon? I was looking at primarily a cost effective solution...
Thanks!

When you look at how many "siege hp per AP spent" you get, you will see that you should repair trebs, but not ballistas (buying a new ballista is more cost-effective than buying repair kits and fixing it), the obvious exception being coldharbor ballistas, since those cannot be bought for AP.

However, once you take convenience into account - just buy a stack of repair kits, 3 trebs, 2 ballistas, and repair everything as you use it. Such "standardized loadout" saves you the headache of carrying loads of sieges, and you always just top it up when passing a siege merchant.

kevinb16_ESO40

Sharee wrote: »

When you look at how many "siege hp per AP spent" you get, you will see that you should repair trebs, but not ballistas (buying a new ballista is more cost-effective than buying repair kits and fixing it), the obvious exception being coldharbor ballistas, since those cannot be bought for AP.

However, once you take convenience into account - just buy a stack of repair kits, 3 trebs, 2 ballistas, and repair everything as you use it. Such "standardized loadout" saves you the headache of carrying loads of sieges, and you always just top it up when passing a siege merchant.

I was trying to repair a Cold Fire Trebuchet but found the HP was dropping almost as fast as I could repair it.
What was I doing wrong? Is there a certain way to make sure I get the stuff repaired?

Kartalin

You could have a friend operate it while you repair, or vice versa. The issue is the longer you leave it alone without firing, the faster it wears down.

Sharee

kevinb16_ESO40 wrote: »

Sharee wrote: »

When you look at how many "siege hp per AP spent" you get, you will see that you should repair trebs, but not ballistas (buying a new ballista is more cost-effective than buying repair kits and fixing it), the obvious exception being coldharbor ballistas, since those cannot be bought for AP.

However, once you take convenience into account - just buy a stack of repair kits, 3 trebs, 2 ballistas, and repair everything as you use it. Such "standardized loadout" saves you the headache of carrying loads of sieges, and you always just top it up when passing a siege merchant.

I was trying to repair a Cold Fire Trebuchet but found the HP was dropping almost as fast as I could repair it.
What was I doing wrong? Is there a certain way to make sure I get the stuff repaired?

Once a siege is left unattended for about 15 seconds, it starts to decay very rapidly. Unattended means noone is using it - repairing it does not count. So what you need to do is repair once, max twice, then get on the siege. You do not have to shoot it, just get on it and back off, so you reset the decay timer, then you can continue repairing.

You can also repair while sieging - just shoot the siege, get off it while it is recharging and repair, once it is loaded get on it and shoot again, repeat.

Nermy

What he said...

If you're in a raid and have a lot of siege going, try repairing other sieges while people are using them. We used to have a designated repair guy in our sieges you could call to repair your siege while you kept using it. Worked really well.

Red_Nine

Nermy wrote: »

Scattershot Catapult – This type of Catapult hits a large area for each shot which is useful of detecting hidden enemies and adds 20% damage to all other siege damage...

This is the only place I have seen it reported that the scattershot catapult adds 20% damage to all other siege damage.

Is this correct? Has anyone tested this? If this is true, running one alongside a DPS siege targeting the same enemies would be a pretty good technique!

Thanks!

Sharee

Red_Nine wrote: »

Nermy wrote: »

Scattershot Catapult – This type of Catapult hits a large area for each shot which is useful of detecting hidden enemies and adds 20% damage to all other siege damage...

This is the only place I have seen it reported that the scattershot catapult adds 20% damage to all other siege damage.

Is this correct? Has anyone tested this? If this is true, running one alongside a DPS siege targeting the same enemies would be a pretty good technique!

Thanks!

Fresh from the game:

Nermy

Aye, though it looks like I will have to update this as there are changes coming with Summerset Isle.

Beardimus

Great guide @Nermy has it been updated for Sunmerset?

Nermy

Beardimus wrote: »

Great guide @Nermy has it been updated for Sunmerset?

Sorry, no. Completely forgot about it. Will try and do that over the weekend. Thanks for the poke...

xan4silkb14_ESO

I believe that the DoT on the catapult AoE's are slated for a reduction to 4.5 seconds according to one of the PTS patch notes.