I have to hand it to the Averheim Order guild HOSS. For nearly a week in Tier 3 of Warhammer Online, they have pretty much been locking down all the Keeps. It does suck that most of my guild is farther on in Tier 4, but it’s not like we don’t have Destruction players to make up a Keep-sieging warband. HOSS (and alliance) doesn’t just ninja Keeps when Destro players sleep; they make very sound tactical choices when defending Keeps.
When defending a Keep, it seems very normal for defending players to filter in through the main and postern doors in order to build up a defensive warband inside the Keep. The first time HOSS led order crushed my Alliance-pug warband, they all met at their warcamp and came all together like a hammer against the rock that was the first Keep door. We were completely unprepared. They ran over our soft backline like butter with their well communicated focus fire.
The second tactic that really gained my attention was during a pitched battle. Our warband was a tad more organized, and we pushed the defense (including people in the HOSS alliance) pretty hard. We rushed through the second broken door, regrouped at the bottom of the stairwell, and felt pretty good about how many defenders we had killed inside the keep. Then just as we started to rush the Keep Lord, the Order defenders rushed from behind the Keep (it seems they all fled through the postern door just as the second door fell) came around to the front of the Keep, and again they swept us from behind while our tanks were agroing the Keep Lord and crew. Just for perspective, most the time the defenders will hole up behind the Keep Lord.
Tier 3 Order has definitely upped the skill and communication required (not to mention amount of live bodies) to RvR succesfully on the Averheim server.
–Ravious
To the person that commented, and that comment somehow got deleted or bugged or something.
I agree that it makes things more exciting. Like the first Guild in Guild Wars GvG to split their team, these kinds of tactics will have to be taken in to account.
Someone on Alliance chat last weekend was moaning that there was no one in T4 to kill and that ‘HOSS should hurry and level up.’ I have not heard of the Keep taking tactics they do in T4, but needless to say… the game has been changed.