Guild Wars 2

Currently the biggest benefit of teamwork in GW2 is the focus of condition stacking, getting everyone on their team to maximize conditions. While this isn’t a bad thing, it’s very much a individualized strategy. You improve your build and min/max it to point where you you know you’re doing best DPS your profession can offer. It certainly can make the strategy feel one-dimensional, despite the complexity of some builds.

What if ArenaNet were to make a greater importance of using CPCs (cross profession combos)? Many players simply don’t feel compelled to utilize them when planning their builds. CPCs can be a huge factor in creating teamwork if ArenaNet actually made them worth doing. The way to do that is to provide much longer duration of the boons and conditions. This would also require ArenaNet to lower the overall DPS for every single profession, so that the best can only be achieved via CPCs. Of course this means the mobs would be tougher to take down in solo action, but as a team, triggering CPCs would be a higher priority, hence greater teamwork.

So here’s an example; A Ranger’s arrow through the Elementalist’s firewall should offer 8 stacks of burning (2 sec.), Wherein a Warrior using Fan of Fire skill should offer 1 stack of burning (3 sec.).

Another example; A Guardian lays down a Line of Warding and a Thief Leaps into the Area of Effect with Heartseeker to gain 1 minute 30 seconds of Retaliation as opposed to just 5 seconds.

As you can see I’ve really cranked up the benefits of CPCs. I think it would help provide some team structure and open up the focus on builds as a team, as oppose to individualized builds that seem to plague GW2.

Thoughts would be very much appreciated.

While this would work in PVE, it most likely wont be changed as your example would be abit over powered for PVP and as we’ve already seemed in GW2 most spells are nerfed even in pve to benefit pvp.

This being said i do agree that anet need to look at teams in pve, atm it’s simply 5 people doing their own thing to nuke a boss down asap, afew of the fotm dungeons require abit of teamwork, but there simply isn’t enough of it. It’s why most games stick with the tank/healer/dps because it allows teamwork, but as GW2 is basically about zerging hard and fast, it really feels like it’s limiting pve and making it so boring to play.

Well the benefits of the CPCs can be adjusted for SPvP gameplay, but overall I think CPCs need to be a bigger focal point of the game as it will increase the complexity of the builds and demand greater teamwork.

I wanted to revive this thread as I have thought more about how to improve the importance of CPCs.

Executing them should reap greater benefits and mobs and champions should have specific vulnerabilities to them. To give you example:

Current CPC

A Necromancer lays down a Well of Suffering (Dark) and a Guardian uses Leap of Faith (Leap) and the result is blindness for 3-5 seconds on a Champion.

Upgraded CPC

A Necromancer lays down a Well of Suffering (Dark) and a Guardian uses Leap of Faith (Leap) and the result is blindness for 8 seconds on a Champion who has vulnerability to blindness which suffers another 4 seconds of blindness, bringing the executed CPC’s value to 12 seconds of blindness. Now that’s a huge benefit, but they could also put an internal cooldown for blindness to 180 seconds on the champion to prevent abusing CPC spamming.

This idea could be expanded where mobs might have completely different vulnerabilities than the champions, which allows for all professions to contribute in executing CPCs. Another thing they can do is give Champions more than one type of condition vulnerability and even more depth can be added by having the vulnerabilities chain. In other words lets say a specific Skritt Champion is vulnerable to blindness, crippled, and fear. You could apply a CPC vulnerability in any order or you can trigger a bonus if you apply the vulnerabilities in a specific order. The bonus could be something simple as the Champion dies quicker and players within the area gain a lengthy buff like 5 minutes of Might or maybe a 5% magic find buff.

GW2 is often accused of not having enough importance of roles, most notably the trinity. ArenaNet actually has a unique system for roles such as Initiators and Finishers for CPCs. Not enough importance has been given to this system, which can bolster the visibility of the roles without suffering restrictive nature of the trinity.