Guild Wars 2

This topic is aimed to hit multiple fronts. Something mostly related to pvp environments but also applies to pve.

1. CC Spam: Some have it, others don’t. In groups however this becomes overwhelming to most and leads to little enjoyment when you play the role of a ping pong ball. One might say, “Well you have a stun breaker, just time it right”, or “evade the cc to begin with”. Sometimes, that just isn’t enough especially if you do not have stability. Some builds can reapply a cc effect over and over and you’re left with no option but to spam evades or back off, or fight fire with fire which isn’t healthy. It’s not so much of an issue in wvw because of group builds and foods helping cope with the amount of cc but still it needs to be addressed. There are a couple of ways of going about this.

a). After being affected by a cc skill, you gain immunity to it for a brief moment after the effect wears off (1, 1.5, 2 seconds?).

B). Similar to A, except only cc effects of the same type will not apply while allowing mixed cc to work. For example, you can pull and knock someone down, but you can’t knockdown and launch someone until the debuff wore off. Stun would be a universal category, since it doesn’t move the enemy.

C). Apply lesser effects from each consecutive ckittenil the debuff wore. So if you stunned someone for 3 seconds and used a launch, they would almost immediately get back up once they stopped bouncing off the floor vs slowly getting back up.

2. Evade spam: This applies to a number of builds, who can utilize evades to simply annoy the enemy. This DR would be minimal and only affect certain actions. Using a weapon skill that has a built in evade, will consume X% endurance (7%?). This will not apply to healing and utility skills that evade, because their cooldowns are generally much longer. Weapon skills that evade will still consume endurance even below the 50% margin, but if you do not have the endurance to supply the evade, the skill will still go off but without the evasion. This is meant to reinforce timed use of skills, and not just spam them in unison with dodge rolls. The % should be small to not punish the use of an evasion skill, but present to manage your skills better. This would apply to any weapon skill with a built in evade, including pw, blurred Frenzy, whirlwind attack, etc. Not suggesting gs warrior was evading too much, but the idea is to have evades and dodge roll work off the same resource so it doesn’t let people off so easy.

3. Skill spam (A.K.A Initiative): I flatly refuse to fight alongside a teammate who spams the same skill and have on occasion left a 2v2 to let them die. Why? Because I don’t support button smashing. Problem is, there really is no down side to it for some builds. We’ve seen S/D take the plunge and recently pw got visited with an increased initiative cost. This doesn’t necessarily mean these kits or skills were op, but the results people got from pressing 33333 were unhealthy and needed attention. Similar to how condimancer’s have received nerfs for having dhummfire, thieves have been punished for having initiative. I believe they could of done a much better job of addressing this than simply increasing initiative costs or nerfing the skill, because those weren’t the issues. What there needs to be is DR for using the same skills over and over, and here are a couple of ways that it could be done imo.

A). Repeated use of the same skill increased the iniative by 1, and stacks up to 2 times lasting a short time (1, 1.5, 2 seconds?). This is to not harm the player to much for using say #3 on sb to avoid burst, but to push the thief to use other skills in a fight.

B). Keep the initiative costs the same, but provide lesser effects from the skills for each consecutive use. This option would be much more tricky because some skills are already fairly weak or low in effect. For example, headshot’s primary goal is an interrupt, but it already lasts .25 seconds making any lesser duration essentially absent (idk if there is a skill that last less than .25 seconds). Also in the case of unload on p/p, which is the primary dps for p/p and already hits fairly low. Each skill would need to be treated differently for this to be balanced across each kit. For skills whose primary result is a condition, the durations would be shortened but again, this leads to an issue with some skills whose durations are already incredibly low like body shot, dancing dagger, cluster bomb, etc.

In any case, use of the same skill over and over should not be promoted or rewarded. Some kits unfortunately have little choice in that matter, like p/p, and should be looked at carefully to not nerf them into oblivion.

4. Stealth Stacking:This would apply to all builds that can stealth themselves, but primarily be aimed at the 2 who have the easiest access to it. For starters, high uptime on stealth isn’t fun. A smart player would use that time to recover just like the thief, but it still leads to an uneventful duel. Stealth should be tactical, not a reset button(thieves) or a pit stop to let clones do your work while you hide (mesmers). So a few things I think that could fix this would be

A). While stealthed, any other skill that grants you stealth has its duration reduced by 1 second. This effect stacks until you exit stealth. This will not affect Shadow refuge (because it pulses stealth), veil (because its already really short), or blasting a smoke field (group stealth shouldn’t be punished).

B). Stealth cannot exceed 16 seconds. After 16 seconds, you are automatically revealed for the appropriate time (3 for wvw, 4 for pvp). (trying to not nerf SR).

C). There will be 2 stages of reveal. Stage 1, you become mostly transparent but still retain the effects of being in stealth and remain untargetable. You enter this stage when you attack an enemy from stealth and they block the attack. Stage 2 you are fully revealed and cannot reenter stealth until it wears off. Goal being to reward those who use block skills like counter blow, counter attack, shield of wrath, etc. Conditions will not apply any type of reveal, because harmful condition skills are followed by direct damage which reveals you anyways.

D). Combo Skills that stealth (combo field: Smoke + blast/leap) will have their durations affected by skills that increase stealth time (prismatic understanding, meld with shadows). Combo field: Smoke + blast will not have DR, but Combo field: Smoke + leap will be. This is to combat d/p perma stealth but not harm those who use these combos for group stealth. With meld in shadows, a thief can use bps + HS to enter stealth for 4 seconds, the next leap for 3, and the next for 2. If they keep waiting around in steath for the next bps, that HS will give 1 second. 1 second will the lowest a skill can grant as to not completely remove the combo mechanic. Goal being to punish perma stealth but not those who use it for an escape or diversion.

E). Counter skills that block will not retaliate against a target who is not targetable. Goal to again, reward those who use these skills at the right time. Aegis will continue to be stripped as usual. Reason being is aegis is more of a passive defense and isn’t a huge part of counters across the 8 professions. It will however cause a level 1 reveal to the attacked giving you the edge to react accordingly after seeing “Block”.

I’ve done it with engi, and warrior numerous times where either a Mesmer or thief will just be tossing cooldowns at me while blocking, and it seems a little silly that you can’t do much but wait. I don’t think a full on reveal from being blocked would be fair, because technically they havn’t hit you yet but a small tell fits thematically without completely countering stealth benefits.

If there are other mechanics people feel need to have DR or more/less strict DR feel free to post. Maybe pvp environments can move away from button smashing and OP build combos so even new people can feel like they have some place to learn and grow in addition to less rewards for using numbers as a tactic (or in other words, only fighting people who have less people than you).

No. Diminishing returns is a horrible idea in my opinion. Players already hate passive things such as diamond skin and automated response. This game is designed around action and reaction. Making the game design inherently passive will harm the game as a whole as I see it, and damage the need for action or reaction in battle.

If 5 players spend their CCs on me, why should some of their skills be diminished for it? Why should we limit build build diversity because you dislike the effect 5 players have on you attacking you as one player? I mean isn’t it logically intended that when the enemies group aims all of their focus on you, that it should most defiantly be annoying and bothersome?

All your aiming to do is discuss rebuilding the game to make it less inconvenient when multiple aggressors attack you or the small patch of ground you are on. Personally, I feel this is very poorly thought out, and will make suffer when on the offensive, and make all of those on the defensive more powerful.

The end result is, a few weeks after the changes you propose were introduced, you or others will be back here spamming the forums with complaints to buff all of the things you list, because now when they invest in CC skill, their builds are negated by your proposed game mechanics.

Is this a thief hate thread?
I’m sure it is one.
Thief fundamentally built different than the rest of the classes.
I don’t think that’s fair Thief gets a resource-only management system for it’s weapons over everyone else’s cooldown/resource management system…

But what the heck… Anet can’t make any fundamental changes without scrapping the Thief class entirely.

blakdoxa.7520:

Is this a thief hate thread?
I’m sure it is one.
Thief fundamentally built different than the rest of the classes.
I don’t think that’s fair Thief gets a resource-only management system for it’s weapons over everyone else’s cooldown/resource management system…

But what the heck… Anet can’t make any fundamental changes without scrapping the Thief class entirely.

The opposite actually, to prevent further nerfs to any weapon skills. Its only a matter of time before things like disabling shot, and even shadow strike get the wrong kind of attention from the balance team and just slapping on higher costs or reducing their durations. The problem is people keep complaining about thief spamming the same skill (really this only kills baddies but anyways), so we get nerfs for it because Q.Q prevails unfortunately.

i gotta say i’d love these changes OP proposed however DR would be much too strong and bad for wvw Unless the CC DR is applied individually so teamwork isnt punished for locking a character between 3 players

because it would render DR useless i it was global Example i immob someone for 3s my buddy tries to use same immob but instead applies 1s

Rezzet.3614:

i gotta say i’d love these changes OP proposed however DR would be much too strong and bad for wvw Unless the CC DR is applied individually so teamwork isnt punished for locking a character between 3 players

because it would render DR useless i it was global Example i immob someone for 3s my buddy tries to use same immob but instead applies 1s

It should work on ANY form. The amount of times i have seen groups with 3-4 or even more Hammer Warriors that will ALL just jump in and spam all the CC they have. It should be per a target, not the caster.

So if i get a CC from Player A then Player B, his should be reduced. It requires little skill to just have X number of Hammer warriors and just get them to bash all their hammer buttons from the start. This could go for ALL Daze, Stun and Knockdown skills.

That is a horrible and unfair punishment. Why should the second attacker be punished and have diminishing returns to his attacks, simply because someone else already hit his target?

Why shouldn’t a group of 3 or 4 overwhelm a single target? It if fully reasonable in all aspects that they should cc him, condition him, and direct damage him in a brutal pummeling. It is a 4v1 for goodness sake.

coglin.1867:

That is a horrible and unfair punishment. Why should the second attacker be punished and have diminishing returns to his attacks, simply because someone else already hit his target?

Why shouldn’t a group of 3 or 4 overwhelm a single target? It if fully reasonable in all aspects that they should cc him, condition him, and direct damage him in a brutal pummeling. It is a 4v1 for goodness sake.

this is my point a team should be able to cc a single player or another group if coordinated wht makes people rage on hammer warriors is that Each warrior has an aoe stun an aoe knock and an aoe launch so thats 2-3s of doing nothing per warrior spamming or necros with their super fears gotta love when you get slapped with a minute long fear (necro fears are quite limited at least as far as i played one so fear doesnt count i think )

Rezzet.3614:

this is my point a team should be able to cc a single player or another group if coordinated wht makes people rage on hammer warriors is that Each warrior has an aoe stun an aoe knock and an aoe launch so thats 2-3s of doing nothing per warrior spamming or necros with their super fears gotta love when you get slapped with a minute long fear

Ahh, got ya.

We have an easy hard counter to this. We say pop stabs (cast Stabilities) when we see a hammer crew incoming. It isn’t that difficult. We will also have an engineer or two drop smoke bombs in front for AoE pulsing blinds, then they step back behind the tank line and use fumigate for the AoE cleanses.

To me, for CC to be an issue at all, you were either careless and put yourself in a bad situation, very poor game play, or even poorer coordination. As I see it, I cannot even comprehend how anyone could think it is a game mechanic issue.

I am a thief. What is this stability you speak of?

Stability may look like a good counter to situation like that but you completly forgeting that it have very short duration and not all of the profession have good access to it, like mentioned above thiefs have rather hard time geting some, Engineers are on the same boat, CC should have an DR.
Like in fighting games when you get stun-locked for the whole fight, oponent have no way of fighting back, thats why ther is an DR on spamable lock attacks, the longer you keep someone in a lock the less damage you deal to the them.
It may require skils to pull it off but its not fair that other party have no way of doing anything once their short duration stability run out.

And 4vs1, it doesnt mean that 1 must lose, these 4 may be really crapy players ,skill wise, and yet they just have to use some of thier CC to completly lock any skilled player that doesnt have good access to stability, and even stun-breaker wont help, cus you know, ther is a limit on how many you can have on your skill bar.

coglin.1867:

That is a horrible and unfair punishment. Why should the second attacker be punished and have diminishing returns to his attacks, simply because someone else already hit his target?

Why shouldn’t a group of 3 or 4 overwhelm a single target? It if fully reasonable in all aspects that they should cc him, condition him, and direct damage him in a brutal pummeling. It is a 4v1 for goodness sake.

A group of 3 or 4 already overwhelm a single target just by raw dps and their group buffs. How it is now, those 3 or 4 people lock the enemy down and they can’t even use a skill let alone a stun break without being victim to more cc afterwards. Basically, the enemy will use their stun breaker along with a pair of nike’s and run like the wind assuming they have a stun breaker than creates distance or provides some additional defense like invulnerability or evasion. This isn’t just a hammer train issue, this is for all cc. Engineer’s can chain it, necromancers can chain it (pull, fear), guardian can to some degree chain it, etc etc. Being locked out of your skills because the enemy blew every cooldown along with their buddies isn’t skillful but it is rewarded greatly.

As someone already said, stability isn’t easily accessed by all. It is a great counter to cc spam in theory, but in practice it’s’ not reliable and only pertains to a select 2 (guardian and warrior).

On a side note, this could also open up the option to remove the horrendous defiant stacks that pve bosses love so much. I don’t think its a good system, as it doesn’t reward timing your stuns for the right moment as much as shooting those stacks off for the next round. It’s just to easy to ignore (except open pve, where it stacks to like 50+). If they want stuns to be meaningful for unique bosses, they should have skills you WANT to interrupt, as well as a time frame in which they cannot be interrupted if you waste your cc. If they want to go the extra mile, limit the amount of times a boss can be interrupted during an encounter, that way blowing CC at him is going to punish you drastically later on for that skill you wish you could interrupt.