Guild Wars Defense for Noobs

Hey all,

I've noticed that I can set a single defender, and swap in extra defenders at any time. My relatively weak low cost team has 9 units in it (largely underleveled 4* with one 5*). I used to set 5 to offense, and 4 to defense, though my defense would always get wrecked by one attack.

Every time my defense died, the enemy seemed to get less GP compared to if they hit my base directly. I thus started to put out one defense unit (knowing it would get destroyed), then wait for it to get killed, and put out a second defense unit, etc. until I had deployed all 4 of my defense units.

This seemed to get me 4 base blocks (1 unit per defense) as opposed to my prior all in strategy which only got me one block (4 units at once). Is this common strategy/recommended strategy? It seems to waste the opponents action points more effectively this way. Just wondering. Thanks.

It's a common defense tactic, but some players use 2 units rather than one. It gives them even less BP (16k rather than 22k i think).

Interesting- so for points, defeating 5 would yield you the least points by that logic, and defeating 1 defending unit would yield the most points? Thanks.

It doesn't work as well against a full guild that synchonizes attacks. Ppl will slip through while you go through the menus to put the next defender up.

Or in the case of last GW someone on the other guild could just start spamming 1 unit attacks to hit your 1 unit defense like 1 of us did mostly for lulz.

Basically, to sum up: Full (5 unit) defense > 2-unit defense > 1-unit defense > nothing.

If your goal is to blunt the assault completely, keep a 5-unit defense and heal regularly. If you're attempting to minimize the impact of a superior attacking force, 2-man will give you the most mileage for the least amount of GP gains by the enemy. 1-man is simply a trolling tactic to annoy and irritate teams that are attempting to farm GP through base hits. All it does it cut the gains by 50% and annoy a team that's going to be spending to attack more anyway. If you're simply using 1-unit to annoy the opponent, that AP is better spent on cannon farming than on healing units that aren't doing much to stop the enemy anyway.

If the game is very close, 1-man COULD be the difference between a win and a loss, but usually, fights are so one-sided that this is rarely an effective tactic. You're simply attempting to lose less which has no bearing on the result of the fight, whereas GP farming is a meaningful attempt at win more affects ranking.

I run 5-man defenses in order to force more heals out of the opponents. We both end up burning about the same amount of AP on heals, but it slows down their offensive.

I rarely run 2-man defense, just because it's slower and gives little reward other than bleeding out the GP gains.

My teammates run 1-man defense when they don't want to burn more pots on a last-minute defense.

Multiple 1-man or 2-man defenses can effectively protect a base from a sustained push without burning many pots. Unless your attackers are coordinated enough to attack at about the same time, with more people than are defending, they won't get through. One defender can stop most attack attempts from two uncoordinated people.

What I've noticed is that heavy spender teams (without very strong attackers) will just stop attacking a dedicated defense and spam cannons instead.

xfalconhunterx wrote:

Basically, to sum up: Full (5 unit) defense > 2-unit defense > 1-unit defense > nothing.

If your goal is to blunt the assault completely, keep a 5-unit defense and heal regularly. If you're attempting to minimize the impact of a superior attacking force, 2-man will give you the most mileage for the least amount of GP gains by the enemy. 1-man is simply a trolling tactic to annoy and irritate teams that are attempting to farm GP through base hits. All it does it cut the gains by 50% and annoy a team that's going to be spending to attack more anyway. If you're simply using 1-unit to annoy the opponent, that AP is better spent on cannon farming than on healing units that aren't doing much to stop the enemy anyway.

If the game is very close, 1-man COULD be the difference between a win and a loss, but usually, fights are so one-sided that this is rarely an effective tactic. You're simply attempting to lose less which has no bearing on the result of the fight, whereas GP farming is a meaningful attempt at win more affects ranking.

If your opponent is well overpowered keeping a 5-man defense is completely useless. Wether you have 5 units or 1 unit in defense, they'll take you down. All you're doing setting 5 units to defense is wasting AP, as you'll have to heal a lot more often. It's not just about attempting to keep the opponent from the base, it's also about time and having the opponent spend potions or tonics. Resources run out, not everyone buys shoot (Edit: Seriously, I just got censored?), the opponent won't keep using potions, and they'll have to use more than you. 1-man defense is a very solid tactic, especially if you're not the only defender doing it, and if the MID line supports you in defense, from time to time.

If you are a weak defender here are some tips
- never take the top left spot AND put 5 to defense, cause you´re attacked first (I think someone posted about that).
- in my case 1 unit defend is better than 2 unit defense, cause my 2 unit gets oneshoted of 7star attackers...
- 8-9 active 5-6* players >4-5 active 7*star players (without spenders)=>better chance to win with more ACTIVE members

Thanks all for the great advice. Nice strategies.

Mass Zero wrote:

If your opponent is well overpowered keeping a 5-man defense is completely useless. Wether you have 5 units or 1 unit in defense, they'll take you down. All you're doing setting 5 units to defense is wasting AP, as you'll have to heal a lot more often. It's not just about attempting to keep the opponent from the base, it's also about time and having the opponent spend potions or tonics. Resources run out, not everyone buys shoot (Edit: Seriously, I just got censored?), the opponent won't keep using potions, and they'll have to use more than you. 1-man defense is a very solid tactic, especially if you're not the only defender doing it, and if the MID line supports you in defense, from time to time.

Mass Zero has got this right. There are quite a lot of pros to using this and some cons as well. I will try to list out my experiences with this tactic for the benefit of all:

PROS
1. Helps in soaking up damage. I've seen top players with event units deal around nearly 80K worth of damage just from their normal attacks. A one man(unit) defense (OMD from now on) brings it down, no matter how high to just 22k worth of damage. That just shaved off 72% of the attack damage right there.
2. Healing is needed less often (i.e conserves your AP). Have 10 units on your team, keep switching them out until they're all dead. You'll get 10 uses out of this before you need to heal. By the time those 10 units get killed, you'd have already recovered 150AP (provided you are at max morale) and ready for more. Saves your resources. A single pot at max morale should give you 4 heals(plus an extra after recovering 50AP) meaning you can carry this out like 50 times with a single pot for a single member.
3. Cuts the potential GP gain of the other team massively. They'd be making 50m against your 4* free player guild normally but now that you are using this, they'd be struggling to make 10-20m (as long as you have the numbers and keep this up).
Not to mention, this has the potential to drop their rank.
4. Opponent can't attack your base easily anymore. Even more so when most members of your team are following this tactic.
5. No particular units required. Since they will get murdered anyway, why worry about placing a 6* there? You can do just as well with 1*. If you're going to use this tactic, use 10 deploy cost units so that you can have a lot of room to place good offensive units.
6. Wastes a lot of resources for the other team. Like Zero said, resources aren't unlimited. The more they attack you trying to get rid of you so as to get to your base, the more pots/tonics they use up. This is especially disastrous for a free player team since they're burning their pots and face the risk of ending up short later, most likely cutting off their chances of getting a 6*.
A single pot as said before can give a player 40-50 chances at defense so imagine the pots required for a spender to crush that. That's just 1 pot by the way. For the heavy spenders,  there's only so much pots they can use per battle due to the 1 hour limit even if they have thousands.
7. Great for an all offense team and for free players. Unit cost getting too high? You can now put an all 30 cost team for a total of 150 and leave the rest to 10 cost defense. These units tend to be powerful and have lots of HP too so you'll be taking down 5 unit defense teams a lot more often too.
8. Great when facing an overpowered team. Self explanatory.
9. Extremely effective when combined with other members defense. That is, if your whole team uses this, imagine the "pain" caused to the opponent's team. And if you put this in with a mixed defense  (that is 1 unit defense as well as 5 unit), that leaves only cannons as the only choice for the other teams most of the time.
10. Pisses people off, especially the top ranking heavy spending guilds. A good thing most of the time.

CONS
1. Less effective than a full 5 unit defense. Whereas you can fend off a few or all attacks with a great 5/4 unit defense, this is almost impossible here.
2. Quiet the hassle constantly switching units. If you can't do it fast enough, they hit your base. I hope your allies are fast enough at least.
3. You aren't getting any real "defense" done, you are just sacrificing your units for the greater cause.
4. Pisses people off for obvious reasons stated before. So much that some of the top guilds do try to hunt you down for what they call "troll defense" and keep attacking/harassing (depending on who you ask) days after the battle (even if they had won). The methods to deal with attacking teams are well-known so I won't discuss that. Do note you can't bank your luna during GW so one of the methods is off.
// On a side note, a certain guild in the top 5 this war could only make 12m gp whereas their opponent from the top 30 made 9m. Oh, and the top 30 guild used the legendary "troll defense". The heated exchange after the battle was interesting to say the least and I'll leave that to your imagination.

COUNTERS
So far, I know three methods:
1. An all-at-once attack. That is, co-ordinate with your allies and attack the other team all at once. If you're lucky and they are slow to swap, you'll get a good number of direct hits to their base.
2. Pick one or at least two of your strongest and fastest units. Kill off all other offensive units/put them in defense so that your offense team consists of just 1-2 units. Now attack the OMD teams with these two units.
Each unit uses 30AP to attack. So for 30-60 AP, you'll kill an opponent's OMD, far less than the standard 150AP you normally use. A single unit can thus kill off 5 OMDs with the standard amount.
The only problem is if the team is a mixed defense, in which case good luck dealing with a 5 unit defense with your One Man Offense (OMO).
I find that poison and incinerate are highly effective if you're running an OMO.
3. Cannons. I find them to be highly cost-ineffective though. It takes around 300AP to put together all those parts not to mention the large amount of time taken. And then, they cause anywhere from 20k-150k damage depending on the number of golden parts, criticals, etc.

Feel free to add to the above.

THX a lot MagnaCrimson, good tips for next GW :-)
I can't understand why the top guilds hunt them if they use 1 man defense. It's a strategy- much more sophisticated than just burning pots.

There's also an interesting mindgame that happens when you have many players doing one man defense. A normal five man defense is hard to heal up, but using one at a time means you can always have people alive. Just staring at 9 players on defense is intimidating, and sometimes enough to deter inexperienced opponents from attacking at all.

Against experienced players the opposite might happen. If you know the enemy is doing one man def, you know you can kill them easily.

I feel like the best strategy is actually a combination of one or two legitimate 5 man defenses (put your best defense top left) with one man def from other players. It's cost-efficient, nearly impossible to break, and really messes with your opponent.