Siege weapon

Siege weapons are environmental weapons in World versus World game mode used to attack enemies and their structures like gates and walls. Whether deployed automatically or built by the players, they are fixed to their build site location, except for Siege Golems, which can be moved. These weapons can only be used by the team that created them; opponents can attack and destroy the objects. Important for both offense and defense in World versus World combat, siege weapons are often the key to winning an otherwise impossible battle.

When placed, a build site is created and requires players to use supply to complete before it is usable. The progress is indicated by a yellow life bar. The build site can take damage during this time, and the more damage it takes, the more supply is needed to reach completion. If the build site is destroyed, the siege weapon and all supply used on it is lost.

Siege weapons can hit more targets than player character's skills can: either 10, 25 or 50 targets depending on the weapon (Contrary to the limit of five maximum targets for player skills.)

Types of siege weapons

Castle under attack of siege weapons.

There are seven types of siege weapons that players can build. Siege weapons require the corresponding blueprint to place. Blueprints can be bought from various merchants, such as a Siege Masters or the Permanent Portable Provisioner. They may also be obtained as a reward from achievement chests, Skirmish Chests, WvW Reward Tracks, and the end chests in the WvW jumping puzzles. Finally, they may be looted as a rare drop from NPCs.

The siege equipment blueprint system has been simplified. Players who have basic and superior siege blueprints can exchange them for siege blueprints by either double-clicking the items in their inventory or exchanging them in bulk at Siege Masters in WvW.

Infinite Siege Equipment gizmos (blueprints) can be earned by completing each siege weapon's respective collection, found in the WvW Collections section under the WvW Achievements tab in the Hero panel.

Stationary and self-propelled siege weapons

The available siege weapons are:

Type	Supply Cost	Range	AoE Limit	Description
Flame Ram	40	360	50	Deals heavy damage to gates.
Arrow Cart	25	2500	25	Deals lethal area damage to infantry.
Ballista	30	3000	10	Deals heavy single target damage to siege equipment and infantry.
Catapult	40	4000	50	Deals heavy area damage to walls and moderate damage to gates.
Trebuchet	50	10,000	50	Deals heavy area damage to walls and moderate damage to gates.
Siege Golem	125	1500 or 225	10	Deals heavy damage to gates. The only mobile siege weapon.
Shield Generator	40	2200	50	Project force fields to disrupt enemy movement and support allies.

• Siege Golem can swap between ranged rocket autoattacks and melee fist autoattacks.

Structural siege weapons

Siege Golem and Burning Oil used to defend Castle walls.

Towers, keeps and Stonemist Castle can be upgraded to have their own defensive siege weapons. These are stationary on the objective and must be obtained as an objective upgrade by safely transporting a certain amount of dolyaks from supply camps.

Cannons and Oil are attained at the Secured upgrade, while Mortars are obtained at the Reinforced upgrade. Once the upgrade is complete, the siege weapons will appear on the objective. If they are destroyed, a build site will spawn after a period of time to allow the weapon to be rebuilt by players.

Type	Supply Cost	Range	AoE Limit	Description
Burning Oil	50	600	50	Deals heavy area damage to infantry.
Cannon	50	3,750	50	Deals heavy area damage to infantry.
Mortar	50	9,400	50	Deals heavy area damage to siege equipment and infantry.

Mechanics

• The player who placed the siege weapon is considered its owner. While any ally can use the siege weapon, the owner can take control of the weapon at any time.
• Using the "swap weapon" / "drop bundle" hotkey will cause the unplaced siege blueprint to return to the player's inventory (i.e. the bundle won't actually be dropped nor lost).
• Character-specific offensive attributes (like power and precision) have no effect on siege weapon performance.
• WXP upgrades have no effect on siege weapon performance outside of the World versus World environment.

Siege weapons despawning

Player-placed siege weapons despawn if they are not manned for 60 minutes (15 minutes for Flame Ram). The time remaining is shown by the  Siege Decay Timer effect on the weapon; players can reset it by briefly manning the weapon.

Build sites for siege initially have a despawn timer of 2 minutes. Every time a player contributes supply to the build site, the timer is reset to 10 minutes.

Structural siege weapons and build sites do not despawn.

Siege weapon map limit

There are two basic hard limits to siege placement.

There is a limit to how many siege weapons can be placed within a certain radius of each other. 5 weapons (sites or completed weapons) can be set within any 1000 unit radius. If players try to place a new site somewhere within a radius that already has hit its limit, the placement will fail but the player will retain the weapon bundle in their hands.

There is also a hard limit to how many weapons can be placed on the map. This map limit is explained by Mike Ferguson of ArenaNet as "basically anything that is not a ram counts towards one 'limit' for the purpose of this explanation and each team can have up to 100 of these types of weapons out at any time per map. Each team can also have up to 100 rams placed on a map." There is also a cap to the number of golems that can be made, which is a value of 65.

Siege weapon blocked

While in Sanctuary areas, the  Siege Deployment Blocked effect prevents siege weapon construction.

Related world abilities

Upgrade	Rank	Ability	Cost
Siege Bunker Total Cost: 35  Reduces the siege damage you take	1	2% increased siege defense	1
	2	4% (total) increased siege defense	3
	3	6% (total) increased siege defense	6
	4	8% (total) increased siege defense	10
	5	10% (total) increased siege defense	15
Siege Might Total Cost: 35  Increases damage done with siege-engine attacks	1	2% increased siege damage	1
	2	4% (total) increased siege damage	3
	3	6% (total) increased siege damage	6
	4	8% (total) increased siege damage	10
	5	10% (total) increased siege damage	15
Build Master Total Cost: 15  Improves your building capabilities	1	Spend 4 supply at a time when building siege	1
	2	Spend 6 supply at a time when building siege	2
	3	Spend 8 supply at a time when building siege	4
	4	Spend 10 supply at a time when building siege	8
Supply Master Total Cost: 15  Improve your ability in gathering, spending, and running supply	1	Pick up supply faster	1
	2	Gain swiftness after spending all of your supply	2
	3	Gain improved swiftness when picking up supply	3
	4	Have a chance to recover spent supply when spending supply	4
	5	Deployed siege sites are invulnerable for a short duration	5
Grand Total:	100

Trivia

• As of the 9th July 2013 update, siege blueprints are no longer account bound, and can be mailed and traded on the Trading Post. Existing blueprints were converted to tradable ones after acquiring a new blueprint of that type.
• As of the November 19, 2024 update, the blueprint system has been simplified. Guild siege blueprints have been renamed to siege blueprints. Basic and superior siege blueprints are no longer usable.

See also

The Guild Wars Wiki has an article on Siege weapon.

• Trap
• Trick

References

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World versus World

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Siege weapons, traps, and tricks