Thanks to greyw1z from the 2moons forums (Acclaim)
An average Castle Siege can easily be divided in 2 main parts: Pre-Gates and Post-Gates (see picture). The first part consist in all the events that take place before the South gate and at least one of the other 2 gates (West and East) are broken, once this happen the second part starts.
Over the entire siege the defending guild has the edge (better teleport system, easier goals, etc), therefore, on the Pre-Gates part the attacking guilds should work together, and under no circumstances attack each other, otherwise, there would be a huge waste of time that only benefits the controller of the castle (this is if the guilds actually want to win and not to help the defending guild to keep control).
How to not attack each other in the first part?
The guilds that participate on siege are known on Wednesday night, so the leaders of the participant guilds have 5 days to talk to each other and make an agreement of peace until the gates are broken (even if they are KOS), then is a free for all.
In siege you must hold control to attack other attacking guilds, so there is no “oops my bad” excuse. After all, everyone wins from this alliance.
Some of the roles for the first part are:
Mages & Staff Summoners: The Supporters
Their main function as ranged attackers with Magic attack (Gates are immune to Magic attacks) is to hit the defenders that are attacking your tanks, and the ones melee classes can’t reach. Example:
The other thing they could do is to attack gates with their non-magical-attacks (the Summoners could switch to Twin Blade and Mages could use Uzer Gain or Aqua Circle), but this role is far in importance from the main. Everything else they do (like a random Imitid Flash or Palpus to another attacking guild) would result in help to the defending guild.
TB Summoners, Knights, Bagis: The Physical Damage Dealers
These ones play the most important job by far: they must destroy the gates as soon as possible. You only must attack gates, nothing else, if someone else is attacking you ignore them, killing those are the job of the Supporters. The description of your work is basically: 1) Run to gate 2) Attack 3) Die & Reborn, repeat all over again, pretty easy in theory.
Segnales, Hunters: The Hybrids
These are the versatile classes. Segnales should play both roles, Curse Field the defenders out of melee range and do Physical damage to gates (healing plays a tertiary role, buffs are important though).
Hunters can play any role, if your guild is lacking of Mages and/or Staff Summoners, they got to help killing the defenders out of melee range, if the guild is lacking of (physical) damage dealers, they should attack gates. On a semi even circumstance, Hunters should attack gates.
First gate was a piece of cake but the other 2 takes years!
Empirically, I have seen that the East and West take a lot of more time to break than the first gate, but mostly if because of players mistakes as well:
No Soloing
This is not a race, you don’t win anything to get to the gate first and die seconds after, and going alone to a gate will only get you killed faster. Regroup: All the members of your party meet at some point (not in the entrance, in case some noob is spamming Aoe’s) and go to the same gate at the same time, always respecting the roles of course.
Play smart
There are some factors you have to take into account when choosing which gate to go:
-Gate remaining HP.
-Defenders and attackers at the Gate.
If one gate is about to be destroyed, ALL the GUILDS should go there and finish it, take a statue and ignore the other gate for the rest of the game.
If the West Gate has a full party of Mages and Hunters defending it and the one in the East has 1 Bagi and people from the other guilds attacking guilds are running to that gate, don’t try to be a hero, go to the one with more chances to be attacked and destroyed.
Learn from your deaths
If your party got crushed 3 times in a row by 6 Curse Field from Segnales with +7’s 130 Whips, are you going to go again with no changes? Of course not, get some resistance and go again, this time you will have the advantage.
Woooot, we’re inside, now what!?
Every guild has their own strategy. In my opinion, the best one is:
After guild takes control of a guardian stone (your favorite one), The entire guild must rush and attack another stone, no one must defend, the reason is because the stones have 5 minutes of invulnerability. After 5 minutes passed one Physical Damage Dealer should attack the stone until it has 42% left, a little less than half bar (So even if an enemy guild does the rest of the damage and gets the 15% bonus for last hit, you will keep control of stone). After guardian stone has a little under half bar left, everyone must continue conquering other statues.
After you got enough statues (at least 3), EVERYONE must meet at Juto, and AFTER everyone is there, start to empathize.
Don’t rush the empathize
The penalty for stopping communication with Juto is huge, you lose a random stone, which removes you some buffs and increase your respawn time. It’s important to wait until the guild has enough stones and everyone is at Juto or blocking the entrances to Juto to start to empathize. My favorite block spot is this.
There are plenty of others tactics; some more controlish, others more aggressive.
Also, is important to note that guardian stones shall not be taken in a random order; each one adds a special effect to the member and this has to be taken into consideration, also the location of the guardian stones play a HUGE factor when deciding what stone to pick first.
Other common mistakes:
Warm Chocolate Pudding:
Killing the other guilds in the spawn point doesn’t increase your charisma at all, just makes you look lame. Got to admit it is a great source of help to the defending guild though…
Lack of rules knowledge
Your laziness might cost 50M and 600 adventure points to your guild; I have seen plenty of Mages doing Gracious Eddy to Guardian stones among other atrocities. The Guides are quite short, just read them:
Intro
General guide
After reading the guides you should be able to answer questions like: What happens after a Stone is taken? What happens if I lose communication with Juto? How long is the respawn time if I control 3 guardian stones?
Lack of preparation
Siege is not just another Dead Front since there are only 2 sieges you can play per month (unless you have characters on both servers and both are high levels). You should be prepared for a whole hour of action, some of my personal suggestions are:
-Take all your resistance there (if you don’t have, make some sets and buy necks).
-If some part of your gear or weapon sucks or you just broke it, try to get one lent from a friend just for Siege.
-Use all the consumable items you need (the ones from Dead Front or North Ares).
-Buy (or win) an Orphina Seal and Clear Water of the Volcano just for siege, they are awesome. (You can also farm the timed rings from Crespo, some of them have crazy effects and you can wear them with personal item).
-Bring all your personal items (like Dark Eye or the Critical Ring, each one will be useful at some point).
-Buy enough pots for 75 minutes.
-Try to get Ventrilo or Team Speak.
-Meet and know your guildies (guild hoppers have extra work here).
-Know your enemies weakness (Make some class break and level break).
-Minimize your lag (Restart your PC before the Siege, use the lowest graphics, turn ads off, close the other programs, etc).
-Guild HAS to have 50 members for siege, you can go in with less people, but really, FIFTY is the ideal number, get some fillers from your friend list if someone felt sleep or can’t connect, the one with most people always has the advantage.
-Watch previous Sieges.
Have a nice Siege.
