Guild Wars 2

Been playing the game since Beta weekend event 2, hooked on Mesmer, loved Shatter before people believed it was good, now it’s too good because of a glitch. The glitch is in the burst damage, which I believe will be resolved soon enough, but it started to make me wonder about burst damage in general.

A hotly debated topic in PvP is whether burst damage of a players entire life total is fair at all. . . many players, myself included believe it is not. It real issue isn’t with the amount of the damage, as I have said many times before, but instead because of when that damage is applied.

The suggestion here is to restructure when that damage is applied. Currently it is generally applied right at the start of a fight by popping a few cooldowns running in and blowing someone up, or putting them low enough on life that they are out of the fight. A few examples where this could be done:

Thief Backstab combo, damage applied higher the longer the player is in combat.

Warrior 100 Blades, damage starts off lower and gets stronger the longer it’s channeled, delink it’s self immobilization, add follow up ability skips to last hit which is itself scaled to number of times you’ve hit (does 10% extra damage for each hit landed).

Mesmer Mind Wrack, bug fixed damage scaling reversed (getting 3 clones up should be a reward not a penalty, probably fixes the bug anyhow) with base damage reduced by about 30% then given back by making it scaled by 3% per condition on the target.

There are tons of ways that can make applying the damage less front loaded than it currently is, and opens the door for much more counterplay, which encourages players to play with strategies and tactics, as opposed to being instantly downed and not getting a chance to even try anything at all.

A good player will wreck a weaker player anyhow even under these circumstances, but at least a weaker player will feel like they have a chance to do something. . . even if it’s to go get help.

TL;DR: Massive reduction to front loaded damage, MASSIVE increase to back loaded damage equates to good counterplay opportunities.