The Curious Turtle – How much damage should Siege do?

‘The Curious Turtle’ is a new bi-weekly column I’m starting where I discuss anything ‘Elder Scrolls Online’! My aim is to do at least two articles a month.


‘Can’t these bloody milk drinkers handle a bit of extra siege damage? It’s called PURGE! Put it on your bar for god’s sake!’

It was certainly an interesting week in Cyrodiil after Wrathstone launched. The Devs managed to bug out siege so that not only were Siege Shields useless but Siege was basically doing the equivalent of Oblivion Damage (unavoidable damage).

I mean it really wasn’t that bad initially when I was surfing with pugs healing them. We’d get hit with the odd bit of Siege (yes people were using Siege open field), a quick purge and no dramas we kept on turtling about killing every banana we could find. Then when the bananas got too close to BRK the timid EP who never leave walls of keeps ever (who am I kidding that’s most of the faction) were ready with the OP siege to kill them instantly. For the first time in forever, their fire ballistae were actually useful.

When I ran with my Zerg, again it was bearable, initially. If purges were on point, it wasn’t too difficult for a coordinated group/zerg to survive Siege.

However, when the siege was highly coordinated, boy did it hurt. It wasn’t uncommon to just drop dead from invisible Siege. One minute you’d be purging and healing away handling the oils just fine. Then in a single instant, you were on the ground, dead.

While it was all fun and something new at first, it quickly got tiring. Having to constantly Purge and roll dodge just got tedious.

Hell, this bug even got me naively believing that EP might finally learn how to properly Siege defensively. Yeah, Nah.

Naturally, the question came up, ‘Should Siege always do this much damage?’ Opinion among Cyrodiil regulars was mixed. Some welcomed Siege doing more damage while others insisted people should learn to play their classes instead of being Siege monkeys.

The devs even chimed in saying they were discussing options for increasing Siege damage in a future Update. I would certainly support Siege doing more damage as it is quite tame currently. But the damage it was doing that week was just a tad too much. Perhaps with the Elsweyr Update, we may see some Siege damage adjustments? Or maybe just start with making some of useless and rarely used Siege more useful?

Either way, I’m glad that week has been put behind us. I do look forward to having Siege possibility do more damage in the future.


Did you experience the OP ‘oblivion damage’ Siege? What are your thoughts on Siege damage?

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