How tower upgrades, improvements and tactics work in World vs. World
Today we are talking about upgrading towers and the Improvements and Tactics you can add to them. All of these will give your world benefits as long as you hold the objective.
Automatic upgrades
In order to upgrade a tower you want to make sure that you hold camps and that the dolyaks running from each camp make it to a tower.
Each tier of automatic upgrades require the following:
- Tier 1: 20 dolyaks
- Tier 2: 40 dolyaks
- Tier 3: 80 dolyaks
As you reach higher tiers for each objective, the objective will gain benefits, the most notable being walls and gates upgrading from tier 2 and higher on towers, keeps and stonemist castle. Keeps and stonemist castle also unlock a waypoint to use once they reach tier 3 that you can you whenever you want as long as the objective is not contested by enemy attackers.
There is a full list of the specific changes for each tier over on the Guild Wars 2 Wiki.
Claiming an objective
When you take an objective a box will pop up on the left side of your screen allowing certain guilds to claim the objective first. These are the guilds that had most representatives at the capture event. After their chance expires you can click on an objectives icon on the map and click the claim button.
Claiming an objective will give it your guilds passive buffs that you can unlock in your guild hall. And it will allow you to slot in Improvements and Tactics.
After a guild claims an objective it will start a timer that decides when each Improvement and Tactics tier can be slotted in. Tier 1 Improvements and tactics can be slotted in after 10 minutes, Tier 2 after 30 minutes and Tier 3 after 60 minutes of having an objective claimed. Which Improvements and Tactics you can put into an objective depends on whether it is a camp, tower, keep or stonemist castle.
In order to slot them in, you click on an objectives icon on the map, go to the second tab "Guild Claiming" and here you can drag Improvements and Tactics into the different slots from your guild storage. Do note it takes 3 minutes before an Improvement or Tactic is available after it has been slotted in.
Lets give you are rundown on how Improvements are different from Tactics and what some of the most notable ones are.
Improvements
Improvements are passive upgrades you can choose and once their initial cooldown timer is expired they will start working. Since Improvements are passive, they will once activated then be constantly active until a new Improvement is slotted in to replace it or until the objective flips to another color.
I would say the most notable Improvement is Watchtower. This will mark any enemy that comes within the area of the objective having the buff. It means you will not have to have any scouts hanging around in that objective. Do note, that certain objectives can still be hit from futher away with trebuchets or catapults, so you still have to keep an eye on whether an objective is contested or not.
Presence of the Keep is also a very strong Improvement. This one can only be used on Keeps and it will double the effectiveness of the guild claim buff that keep has. It can provide a significant advantage over other players.
The last one I want to highlight is one of the most used ones and this is Iron Guards. It is a Tier 2 Improvement and will reduce the damage that guards around the objective takes, by 50%. This means you are effectively making the Lord inside your important objectives twice as tanky.
There are 8 other Improvements besides the 3 I chose to highlight in this guide, you can find them over on the Guild Wars 2 Wiki. They will give you a full list of them, which types of objectives they can be used on and what they do.
Let's jump over and have a look at what tactics are.
Tactics
Tactics are the active upgrades you can add and these are the ones you will find as levers inside an objective. They are generally referred to as Tactivators.
Since Tactics are active upgrades, you will have to pull the lever to activate them. Some of them are banners that you can pick up, that will work almost as if is a type of mobile siege while others will give you a temporary benefit to your objective.
Just like the Improvements, I am going to highlight a few:
Emergency waypoint is one of the most utilized and it will spawn a waypoint inside your objective when the lever is pulled. This waypoint can be used, even if the objective is contested. This allows you to strategically either get safely on the inside of a tower or keep before the enemies can get all the way in, or you can use it just after you might wipe, giving you a very quick respawn time. Just note that enemies will be aware that you have it and they can see when it's active. It is very common for enemy zergs to run over to where you will spawn and try to kill you as you take the emergency waypoint. Don't fear though. If you die immediately, quickly take the waypoint again. The second time you take it, you will have a few invulnerable frames allowing you to more easily dodge away from the waypoint and the enemy damage.
Next one is a slightly underutilized one: The Dune Roller, also referred to by some as the Charr Car. This is a little tank that lasts for 15 minutes. It will allow you to roll around as siege and more easily destroy walls or gates without having to spend supplies. It is not as good as it used to be, since the Warclaw is now a thing and it therefore feels a bit slow. But, with a Dune Roller, you can easily manage to take down multiple Tier 1 walls or even an entire Tier 3 wall before your time is up.
Last one I want to highlight of these is a very flashy one, the Airship Defense. This one can only be used on Stonemist Castle and it will spawn multiple waves of airships flying around Stonemist and bombing it, adding a ton of AoE's that the attackers will have to avoid.
As with the Improvements, here is a link that will give you a full list of the different Tactics available.
Conclusion
I hope this guide has given you some insight into how towers get upgraded and how you can give them their own small builds by using Improvements and Tactics. Having this fundamental understanding of World vs. World is super important and I hope you will go check out the full lists of all the Improvements and Tactics over on the Guild Wars 2 Wiki.
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