Blackwater blade is rough, those guards are not funny. As a vet they arent so bad, but when youre 1000 armor down (even with battle leveling), 1/2 the health youre used to, skills not unlocked, less aoe, and the like, they can and will one shot entire groups.

Especially the archer guards, they can hit for 1500+ per hit, even through block.

Its actually harder to take an undefended keep on BB than it is a keep on any vet campaign with 10 guys defending it. offensive numbers being equal.

All it takes is one guy with siege defending, and your whole raid is just feeding him 20k defense ticks, nearly constantly. Happened to me at Bleakers (was how I got emp there actually), I just defended bleakers for a couple hours mostly solo, and bam next thing I knew I had almost 100k AP ahead of the second place guy.