1.) Remove the limit currently on damaging aoes to allow small-man operations with better coordination to more easily deal with zergs. Retain the 5-person limit to defensive aoes/buffs.
2.) Remove the unlimited nature of buffs for non-party members. If random player X could no longer provide speed buff for others outside his group, the zerg couldnt move at perma-swiftness. A zerg shouldn’t be able to move as quickly as a 5man.
I thoroughly agree with your first point – the current model totally favors offense and numbers; if you can only hit five of us, then I’ll bring thirty and lessen my own chances of getting hurt, much less dying. It means that, unless I get singled out, I’m likely to storm a tower without ever getting below 75% health. Only issue I could see is massive, multiple AoEs being taxing on the servers (meaning things such as more skill lag).
The second point… I’m iffy. I agree that a zerg shouldn’t move quite as fast as a 5man, but if I have two guild parties together, that’s not quite my definition of a zerg . The 5-person limit for buffs/defensive should suffice for this; even in zergs, I’ve seen many people get left behind because of missing the boosts, leaving them as easy targets (and, subsequently, making the zerg itself an easier target).
Edited to further agree with point one.
Yes. So obvious. In B4 people claim that this is unbalanced. What is unbalanced is that an 80 man zerg can throw 80 AoEs at a 5 man team hitting all of them but a 5 man team can only throw 5 AoEs at a 80 man zerg only hitting 5 of them.
If this was implemented it wouldn’t change anything unless you are in the radius of an AoE with more than 5 people. You still will take the SAME amount of damage…If people run mindlessly like lemmings into a massive ball they deserve to be hit with AoE. It ruins the natural flow of the warfare.
GW2 is all about giving casual gamers easy access to the different gaming modes and allow them to do well enough that they don’t give up right away. This means that you don’t have to be in party for boons, everybody can rez everybody, downed state and you don’t have to worry too much about positioning in large groups.
I really don’t think any of these things will change any time soon, however much some people would love it.
If Aoe cap is removed then Aoe skills need a huge damage nerf based on amount of area it hits. Otherwise you will have 50 staff ele groups destroying everyone
As for Aoe buffs, they would have to be changed on a case by case basses. Warrior banners could affect everyone as long as the benefits to everyone were less. Skills that grant things like fury an might would still need to be capped
Definitely disagree with #2. The beauty of WvW is that anyone can play. If you start making buffs limited to party members, it now forces people to group or they cannot participate as effectively.
Sorry for this nooby question but what is this AoE cap you guys are talking about? Is it just there is a cap on the amount of people an AoE can damage?
Sorry for this nooby question but what is this AoE cap you guys are talking about? Is it just there is a cap on the amount of people an AoE can damage?
Yes. If you launch an AoE, and there are 10 enemy players standing in your AoE circle, it will only hit 5 of them.
Sorry for this nooby question but what is this AoE cap you guys are talking about? Is it just there is a cap on the amount of people an AoE can damage?
Yes. If you launch an AoE, and there are 10 enemy players standing in your AoE circle, it will only hit 5 of them.
I read earlier in this thread that defensive buffs apply to everyone in the area of the AoE – is this still accurate? What about AoE heals? I remember being told quite a while ago that they also only applied to 5 ppl which led to me re-spec’ing my ele for offense.
Definitely disagree with #2. The beauty of WvW is that anyone can play. If you start making buffs limited to party members, it now forces people to group or they cannot participate as effectively.
I’m ok with making most buffs limited to party members. Makes each team need a support to work well and rewards more organized forces. However, I also think that if they do that they should add raid groups and buffs that effect whole raid ( elite skills maybe).
Removal of the AE ca kitten illy and opens the door for immense amounts of abuse. The idea that it will stop zerg play isn’t true. It will just reinforce it.
Zerg play is more a result of poor class design, poor environment design, and a lack of depth in PvP in general.
I think removing the AoE cap fully would be a bad idea but I do feel they need to either increase it to 10 (10 for sometime then go from there, doing extreme changes is normally bad and can brake part of the game) Also it will promote AoE based classes. Just one that jumps out to be is epidemic. This skill alone would be unbelievably to overpowered if the AoE cap was removed.
I just don’t think its going to be so cut and dry as “just remove the whole cap”
I think removing the AoE cap fully would be a bad idea but I do feel they need to either increase it to 10 (10 for sometime then go from there, doing extreme changes is normally bad and can brake part of the game) Also it will promote AoE based classes. Just one that jumps out to be is epidemic. This skill alone would be unbelievably to overpowered if the AoE cap was removed.
I just don’t think its going to be so cut and dry as “just remove the whole cap”
Pretty much.
Increasing just harmful AE (things that do damage and apply conditions) to 10 while leaving the boons and heals at 5 means that offense will scale past defense. This in conjunction with the boon hate mechanic (assuming it actually removes boons and puts debuffs on targets so they can’t get a new boon for 5 seconds or so and it isn’t just a passive damage increase) will encourage a more in-your-face style of play instead of the whole 1200 yard mexican stand off styles of play we have now.
I want the AoE cap removed, but it won’t stop zergs or fix WvW or make 5 man teams any better off. 5 players with unlimited AoE targets is still less powerful that 20 players with unlimited AoE targets.
I hate the AoE cap, but it hurts zergs just as much as 5 mans. Imagine the front line damage load of an uncapped AoE heavy zerg???? OUCH.
I think removing the AoE cap fully would be a bad idea but I do feel they need to either increase it to 10 (10 for sometime then go from there, doing extreme changes is normally bad and can brake part of the game) Also it will promote AoE based classes. Just one that jumps out to be is epidemic. This skill alone would be unbelievably to overpowered if the AoE cap was removed.
I just don’t think its going to be so cut and dry as “just remove the whole cap”
Pretty much.
Increasing just harmful AE (things that do damage and apply conditions) to 10 while leaving the boons and heals at 5 means that offense will scale past defense. This in conjunction with the boon hate mechanic (assuming it actually removes boons and puts debuffs on targets so they can’t get a new boon for 5 seconds or so and it isn’t just a passive damage increase) will encourage a more in-your-face style of play instead of the whole 1200 yard mexican stand off styles of play we have now.
When I run epidemic I use corrupt boon and normally find a guardian to target because they tend to have the most boons. Spam scepter to get a ton of bleeds and bam 5 people start melting. If the cap was removed and I was able to put ~25 stacks of bleeds plus all the other conditions on everyone (not even including all the other AoE) very small numbers would be able to wipe very large numbers.
Anyways IF they were to remove or increase the cap they would really need to take a good look at all AoE skills and adjusts them accordingly, not just nerf the damage to the ground.
I read earlier in this thread that defensive buffs apply to everyone in the area of the AoE – is this still accurate? What about AoE heals? I remember being told quite a while ago that they also only applied to 5 ppl which led to me re-spec’ing my ele for offense.
Heals were changed from unlimited to 5 max back in November. If I recall, buffs are limited to 5 players as well (such as quickness, swiftness, etc). The skills that do not have a player limit are the wall skills, such as the Mesmer skill Veil.
Sorry for this nooby question but what is this AoE cap you guys are talking about? Is it just there is a cap on the amount of people an AoE can damage?
Player cast AOE can hit up to 5 opposing players. That is the cap.
Boons as far as I know act the same way. My shouts don’t heal more than 5 people. Fields and blast finishers don’t seem to hit more than 5 either.
Siege can hit up to 50 players except ballista which can hit up to 10 I believe.
1. Remove AoE cap.
2. Give more points to smaller groups for taking objectives. For example, zergs should not get more points for killing a Dolyak thakittenman group should get.
3. Give more points for defending objectives
4. Give points for dropping/building and refreshing siege and repairing gates and walls
5. Give +WXP for upgrading camps, towers, keeps and garrisons
And by points, I don’t just mean score (PPT), but include gold, karma, experience and +WXP and rewards as well.
This might help to lessen the size of zergs on the map and make smaller groups just as effective.
I think removing the AoE cap fully would be a bad idea but I do feel they need to either increase it to 10 (10 for sometime then go from there, doing extreme changes is normally bad and can brake part of the game) Also it will promote AoE based classes. Just one that jumps out to be is epidemic. This skill alone would be unbelievably to overpowered if the AoE cap was removed.
I just don’t think its going to be so cut and dry as “just remove the whole cap”
Pretty much.
Increasing just harmful AE (things that do damage and apply conditions) to 10 while leaving the boons and heals at 5 means that offense will scale past defense. This in conjunction with the boon hate mechanic (assuming it actually removes boons and puts debuffs on targets so they can’t get a new boon for 5 seconds or so and it isn’t just a passive damage increase) will encourage a more in-your-face style of play instead of the whole 1200 yard mexican stand off styles of play we have now.
When I run epidemic I use corrupt boon and normally find a guardian to target because they tend to have the most boons. Spam scepter to get a ton of bleeds and bam 5 people start melting. If the cap was removed and I was able to put ~25 stacks of bleeds plus all the other conditions on everyone (not even including all the other AoE) very small numbers would be able to wipe very large numbers.
Anyways IF they were to remove or increase the cap they would really need to take a good look at all AoE skills and adjusts them accordingly, not just nerf the damage to the ground.
That’s not even half of it.
Imagine a handful of elementalists for example. RTL crits for about 2-4k. Has 1200 range. You move at 200% movement speed. Imagine a handful of those diving into a zerg without a cap.
Imagine a handful of Rangers with longbows. You have an area the size of an arrow cart’s reticule that ticks for 1k a second, applies a snare, auto crits, and applies a bleed. Imagine this x10. I wouldn’t even consider 30 people standing around in an area this size being ikittenerg ball. A few rangers could completely defend the inside of any tower indefinitely safe from the walls.
And despite these things, removing the AE cap won’t have the smallest impact on zergs. It would just reinforce their need because stragglers will be picked off by the classes that don’t have AE’s and the zerg will be even more needed to ensure buffs are spread around, heals are kept up, and what few bottlenecks exist in this game are properly defended.
I disagree with removing the AOE cap unless there is a very large reduction in damage or serious modification in how those abilities work. If you remove the cap, a team of elementalists would be able to wipe a zerg, or any other class with strong AOE would be able to wipe a zerg and it would just make them way too powerful.
I understand and agree with the arguments that AOE should hit more people but I disagree that this would be a good idea to implement without serious modification of AOE abilities and I like how they work now.
I disagree with removing the AOE cap unless there is a very large reduction in damage or serious modification in how those abilities work. If you remove the cap, a team of elementalists would be able to wipe a zerg, or any other class with strong AOE would be able to wipe a zerg and it would just make them way too powerful.
If you didn’t get it, that’s exactly why people want the aoe cap to be removed: to allow small parties to wipe entire zergs, in order to incourage people to not to zerg anymore.
I disagree with removing the AOE cap unless there is a very large reduction in damage or serious modification in how those abilities work. If you remove the cap, a team of elementalists would be able to wipe a zerg, or any other class with strong AOE would be able to wipe a zerg and it would just make them way too powerful.
If you didn’t get it, that’s exactly why people want the aoe cap to be removed: to allow small parties to wipe entire zergs, in order to incourage people to not to zerg anymore.
A 5 man group should not be able to wipe a 30 man team unless they have a huge tactical advantage or the zerg is stupid. Plus if all you have is 5-10 man teams running around it makes it almost impossible to cap anything other than supply camps. Also it would kill the large wvw guild that like to run as a group.
Agree with #1 but not so much #2, I always thought that one of the “undesirable” classes should have a signate that boost speed by 25% like Ele, Necro, Thief, Ranger however it should be a passive AoE that only affects party members. Maybe give it to the Engi to make them more desirable in grp play.
I disagree with removing the AOE cap unless there is a very large reduction in damage or serious modification in how those abilities work. If you remove the cap, a team of elementalists would be able to wipe a zerg, or any other class with strong AOE would be able to wipe a zerg and it would just make them way too powerful.
If you didn’t get it, that’s exactly why people want the aoe cap to be removed: to allow small parties to wipe entire zergs, in order to incourage people to not to zerg anymore.
It will not discourage zergs. safety in numbers. 5 people can now wipe 30? Well we want 60 and everyone has to be a Necro ele or ranger built for AoE. Oh your a theif or warrior? can you out AoE a necro or ele? Nope your dead wait in WvW…
I disagree with removing the AOE cap unless there is a very large reduction in damage or serious modification in how those abilities work. If you remove the cap, a team of elementalists would be able to wipe a zerg, or any other class with strong AOE would be able to wipe a zerg and it would just make them way too powerful.
If you didn’t get it, that’s exactly why people want the aoe cap to be removed: to allow small parties to wipe entire zergs, in order to incourage people to not to zerg anymore.
It will not discourage zergs. safety in numbers. 5 people can now wipe 30? Well we want 60 and everyone has to be a Necro ele or ranger built for AoE. Oh your a theif or warrior? can you out AoE a necro or ele? Nope your dead wait in WvW…
I suggested that eons ago for Warrior. A shout called marching orders. Gives a 25% movement buff to everyone for 30 seconds on a 20 second cooldown. A Ranger aura like in WoW would have also been great. Worst part about being a Warrior or Guardian is no real movement buff for treking across those large empty spaces of land between towers.
I disagree with removing the AOE cap unless there is a very large reduction in damage or serious modification in how those abilities work. If you remove the cap, a team of elementalists would be able to wipe a zerg, or any other class with strong AOE would be able to wipe a zerg and it would just make them way too powerful.
I understand and agree with the arguments that AOE should hit more people but I disagree that this would be a good idea to implement without serious modification of AOE abilities and I like how they work now.
Learn to move out of AoE. It’s that simple. Right now with the current 5-man AoE limitation, you are safer running ikittenerg.
There’s an aspect of removing the cap that no one seems to have noticed: retaliation. That ranger barrage? Hitting 30 people once a second? That’s 30 hits of retal per second, or ~9000 damage to yourself per second. The biggest change that removing the aoe cap would force is just more light fields and more blast finishers. Right now, only engies really feel the pain from retal because of 3x grenade tossing, but without the aoe cap, everyone would kill themselves absurdly quickly.
There’s an aspect of removing the cap that no one seems to have noticed: retaliation. That ranger barrage? Hitting 30 people once a second? That’s 30 hits of retal per second, or ~9000 damage to yourself per second. The biggest change that removing the aoe cap would force is just more light fields and more blast finishers. Right now, only engies really feel the pain from retal because of 3x grenade tossing, but without the aoe cap, everyone would kill themselves absurdly quickly.
Then you are forcing any class that can run retaliation to run it and any class that cannot run it is also going to be dead weight.
Hey, we’ll get rid of those pesky thieves then.
Look out guardians. They have plenty of choices. Necros and mesmers would also have a huge advantage again.
Removal of the AOE cap will mess up the current state as it is and quite frankly, I don’t have a problem with zerging. When we need to we do, when we don’t, why bother. Zerging is a player mentality and if they believe it is the only way, they need to change their thinking.
I disagree with removing the AOE cap unless there is a very large reduction in damage or serious modification in how those abilities work. If you remove the cap, a team of elementalists would be able to wipe a zerg, or any other class with strong AOE would be able to wipe a zerg and it would just make them way too powerful.
I understand and agree with the arguments that AOE should hit more people but I disagree that this would be a good idea to implement without serious modification of AOE abilities and I like how they work now.
Learn to move out of AoE. It’s that simple. Right now with the current 5-man AoE limitation, you are safer running ikittenerg.
No, it puts way too much power in a few small classes.
Remove AOE and why bring any class at all other than a class that has ranged AOE?
You cannot give a class this kind of power. You’d be able to take 2 elementalist teams and descimate both zergs. No other class needed. That is a problem with removing the cap. You cannot invalidate other classes just to force other players to split up.
Stupid idea is stupid.
2 ele teams wouldn’t kill a zerg, because they’d kill themselves. Eles have the lowest base health of any class. Just a single lava font dropped in the middle of a large zerg could kill them from retaliation.
When I drop feedback ikittenerg, I will often lose upwards of 14k damage during its duration, and that’s purely from people attacking into it and gettin retal from the reflects. With no cap, any aoe into a zerg with retaliation would be instant suicide.
I disagree with removing the AOE cap unless there is a very large reduction in damage or serious modification in how those abilities work. If you remove the cap, a team of elementalists would be able to wipe a zerg, or any other class with strong AOE would be able to wipe a zerg and it would just make them way too powerful.
I understand and agree with the arguments that AOE should hit more people but I disagree that this would be a good idea to implement without serious modification of AOE abilities and I like how they work now.
Learn to move out of AoE. It’s that simple. Right now with the current 5-man AoE limitation, you are safer running ikittenerg.
No, it puts way too much power in a few small classes.
Remove AOE and why bring any class at all other than a class that has ranged AOE?
You cannot give a class this kind of power. You’d be able to take 2 elementalist teams and descimate both zergs. No other class needed. That is a problem with removing the cap. You cannot invalidate other classes just to force other players to split up.
Stupid idea is stupid.
2 ele teams wouldn’t kill a zerg, because they’d kill themselves. Eles have the lowest base health of any class. Just a single lava font dropped in the middle of a large zerg could kill them from retaliation.
When I drop feedback ikittenerg, I will often lose upwards of 14k damage during its duration, and that’s purely from people attacking into it and gettin retal from the reflects. With no cap, any aoe into a zerg with retaliation would be instant suicide.
You still don’t seem to understand.
Too much power for a class to have.
People already think they are OP now. I’m fine with how they are. Add in the AOE cap removal and then you’ll just love the forums.
Stupid idea is stupid.
CreativeAnarchy, not sure you get that Pyoatheist is agreeing with you but looking at it from a retaliation perspective.
CreativeAnarchy, not sure you get that Pyoatheist is agreeing with you but looking at it from a retaliation perspective.
I think they are arguing in disagreement.
If otherwise then I misunderstood.
These nerf zerg threads are touchy with me. I don’t like to see artificial mechanics in place just to change something that others find unappealing when I think that players should really be the ones to deal with that and if something truely is unballanced, then I can see a change in programming is called for.
AOE cap is a artificial mechanic that I disagree with but I understand why it is there. I also don’t think retaliation would fix the problem.
I think there are a nice amounts of a variety of classes present at the moment. No one can seem to have enough elementalists or mesmers or necros as it is but I think any removal of AOE cap would just invalidate melee style classes and I don’t care to see that happen.
I tend to get a bit passionate about my position when arguing against a change that can really mess things up.
(edited by CreativeAnarchy.6324)
I disagree with removing the AOE cap unless there is a very large reduction in damage or serious modification in how those abilities work. If you remove the cap, a team of elementalists would be able to wipe a zerg, or any other class with strong AOE would be able to wipe a zerg and it would just make them way too powerful.
I understand and agree with the arguments that AOE should hit more people but I disagree that this would be a good idea to implement without serious modification of AOE abilities and I like how they work now.
Learn to move out of AoE. It’s that simple. Right now with the current 5-man AoE limitation, you are safer running ikittenerg.
No, it puts way too much power in a few small classes.
Remove AOE and why bring any class at all other than a class that has ranged AOE?
You cannot give a class this kind of power. You’d be able to take 2 elementalist teams and descimate both zergs. No other class needed. That is a problem with removing the cap. You cannot invalidate other classes just to force other players to split up.
Stupid idea is stupid.
2 ele teams wouldn’t kill a zerg, because they’d kill themselves. Eles have the lowest base health of any class. Just a single lava font dropped in the middle of a large zerg could kill them from retaliation.
When I drop feedback ikittenerg, I will often lose upwards of 14k damage during its duration, and that’s purely from people attacking into it and gettin retal from the reflects. With no cap, any aoe into a zerg with retaliation would be instant suicide.
Who cares if it’s suicide if you take out the enemy zerg when you do it? Lava Font with blasted staff is a fairly large AE that ticks for a large amount every second. 10 ele’s dropping this would take out everyone who didn’t get out (anyone without 2 dodges up) in 3 seconds. RTL bombs of 10 eles into a zerg and they’d probably die, but they’d take out everyone.
Hunters could probably take 3 ticks of retaliation hitting 20-30 people. They only need that for their AE to have launched completely and finish its full duration unchanneled.
Removing the AE cap solves nothing and just creates even more exploitable scenarios. And the only reason for removing the AE cap is apparently to discourage zerg use, but it will likely have no real impact on zergs to begin with
CreativeAnarchy, not sure you get that Pyoatheist is agreeing with you but looking at it from a retaliation perspective.
I think they are arguing in disagreement.
If otherwise then I misunderstood.
These nerf zerg threads are touchy with me. I don’t like to see artificial mechanics in place just to change something that others find unappealing when I think that players should really be the ones to deal with that and if something truely is unballanced, then I can see a change in programming is called for.
AOE cap is a artificial mechanic that I disagree with but I understand why it is there. I also don’t think retaliation would fix the problem.
I think there are a nice amounts of a variety of classes present at the moment. No one can seem to have enough elementalists or mesmers or necros as it is but I think any removal of AOE cap would just invalidate melee style classes and I don’t care to see that happen.
I tend to get a bit passionate about my position when arguing against a change that can really mess things up.
I agree with you, with the current state of the game removing the AoE cap would be bad for quite a few reasons. The point Pyro was trying to make was right (assuming the zerg stacks Ret) you only hit 5 people the damage is meh BUT if you remove the cap and hit all 30+ people your going to get Ret ticks from everyone basically instantly killing anyone that AoE. This will make it so every zerg is constantly stacking Ret over other boons. And in now way would help small groups, it would kill them faster.
Personally I don’t have a problem with the cap. As a thief in small man groups, we focus fire key targets and work as a team to pick them off not AoE the group. The other point would be choke points like the hill lord room, right now its hard to take if there is a good team on the inside, if the cap was removed there would be no way to get in that room. The onyl way to take hill would be to ninja it and I don’t know about other tiers but thats not happening in T1.
I disagree with removing the AOE cap unless there is a very large reduction in damage or serious modification in how those abilities work. If you remove the cap, a team of elementalists would be able to wipe a zerg, or any other class with strong AOE would be able to wipe a zerg and it would just make them way too powerful.
If you didn’t get it, that’s exactly why people want the aoe cap to be removed: to allow small parties to wipe entire zergs, in order to incourage people to not to zerg anymore.
A 5 man group should not be able to wipe a 30 man team unless they have a huge tactical advantage or the zerg is stupid. Plus if all you have is 5-10 man teams running around it makes it almost impossible to cap anything other than supply camps. Also it would kill the large wvw guild that like to run as a group.
A 5 man group won’t win against an organized guild group. But “could” against mindless blobs. A guild group can outnumber the 5 men aoe, can outheal them, can spread out and avoid damage, etc, etc. A mindless blob cant.
As it is now, an organized guild group can “only” have better moves, nothing more, since skills don’t even work anymore.
Remove downed state is an easier fixed. Problem isn’t necessarily damage, but a 5man will be able to assist and focus people down, but they can’t finish fast enough before the enemy is power rezzed or rallied off some stupid pve mob.
Remove downed state in wvw and you will see the zerg split up.
These nerf zerg threads are touchy with me. I don’t like to see artificial mechanics in place just to change something that others find unappealing when I think that players should really be the ones to deal with that and if something truely is unballanced, then I can see a change in programming is called for.
The big problem is that you have artificial mechanics in place already that make it better to run in large groups and penalize anyone not doing so. And it’s not just about wxp or karma, there are “hidden mechanics” in the game that have only been confirmed in the past week or so by Anet to award more points to a server (points added to your score) simply for bringing far more people than you need to take an objective:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Clarification-needed-please-Dolyak-points/first
These kind of rules mean that taking something as simple as a Dolyak with a smaller group or solo will effectively result in your server losing potential points. Rules like this make absolutely no sense in the game, but do heavily incentivize roaming in unnecessarily large groups even when there is no real danger on a particular map.
Remove downed state is an easier fixed. Problem isn’t necessarily damage, but a 5man will be able to assist and focus people down, but they can’t finish fast enough before the enemy is power rezzed or rallied off some stupid pve mob.
Remove downed state in wvw and you will see the zerg split up.
Do you really think it would be enough to split up the zergs? I would think that ikittenerg if some one die (with no downstate as you suggested) they would be able to get picked up much faster then in a small group.
In my small group experiences picking up a dead player mid fight is near impossible.
If you are going to argue that AoE needs to be uncapped so that everyone in the AoE circle gets hit then it should be everyone in the circle including allies/teammates, I mean how does a meteor/arrow know who to hit or not hit?
Magic
Definitely disagree with #2. The beauty of WvW is that anyone can play. If you start making buffs limited to party members, it now forces people to group or they cannot participate as effectively.
I’m ok with making most buffs limited to party members. Makes each team need a support to work well and rewards more organized forces. However, I also think that if they do that they should add raid groups and buffs that effect whole raid ( elite skills maybe).
Organised forces already have a huge advantage in tactics and communication over PUG groups. If a group with voice coms and synchronised tactics can’t outplay larger groups they need to rethink their strategy.
If you buff 5 man groups so that they can run around wiping 40 man pugs you will kill WvW. It will become another Warhammer Online.
The zerg is still the major major issue in wvw and one that they attempted to address and fix but failed at. I gave wvw a new chance, an honest new refreshed chance, after the updates, but nothing at all has changed. I still feel like I contribute nothing no matter how many personal victories I land, all my conquests are recaptured in a matter of minutes (faster on occasion due to zerg>defenders). So basically zerg still wins. Nothing has changed, that has been the core problem of wvw since shortly after release. You either zerg or you lose or have a downright miserable time in wvw. There is still nothing to entice me or anyone else it seems than run with the largest group we can find. Steamrolling all defenders is still flavor of the year. When zerg is addressed and a negative side introduced to zerging, then wvw will be fixed. Still waiting on it.
Honestly they should increase the danger of conquesring locations, make it so the more of a zerg you have the more dmg you receive or something. Make it so a massive zerg is not favorable, it’s detrimental. But make a reasonable cutoff, so you can still have capture groups, as well as reasonable defender groups (would be based on the size of the locations, for example, supply camps-not really much debuff on defenders, a small debuff on attackers, but a Keep a reasonable debuff for both attackers and defenders, should they choose to do nothing but zerg up. Garrisons should be much harder to take than they are. Right now they’re just keeps with an extra gate). And to keep this from turning into a small group diversion win, make the larger structure guard NPC’s much much tougher so a smaller group of 5 or less could in no way blast through a gate and avoid the debuff. Supply camps…w/e no need for that on them.
I think at this point a lot have just given up and are waiting for this.
We could also do with some kind of reward for downing a wall. Example:
yesterday in the EB I spent 5-10-15 minutes (whatever, felt like forever), solo catapulting down a wall from an enemy keep. My side’s zergs were in Stonemist at the time, fighting big battles. Eventually they won, and when I had the wall to 2% HP or something, part of the zerg came and finished the keep. Now I gained exactly the same reward as they did, while they got 100000 WXP from fighting in Stonemist as well. So basically I was wasting my time, even though I greatly contributed to the WvW since solo downing a wall is a very efficient way of playing.
We could also do with some kind of reward for downing a wall. Example:
yesterday in the EB I spent 5-10-15 minutes (whatever, felt like forever), solo catapulting down a wall from an enemy keep. My side’s zergs were in Stonemist at the time, fighting big battles. Eventually they won, and when I had the wall to 2% HP or something, part of the zerg came and finished the keep. Now I gained exactly the same reward as they did, while they got 100000 WXP from fighting in Stonemist as well. So basically I was wasting my time, even though I greatly contributed to the WvW since solo downing a wall is a very efficient way of playing.
2 large problems with that.
First, it would be highly abusable. You’d find people wasting supply and whatnot in all sorts of horrible places to break down the walls of things that are completely unnecessary.
Secondly, breaking down a wall really hasn’t done anything. If you break down the wall and then someone takes the keep for your team, THEN you should get points. But just breaking down the wall isn’t actually indicative of any progress if your server doesn’t have the manpower to go take the keep, which is the actual objective in this situation.
WvW got some issues, and flaws in design like any other thing in this world. Now neither of the suggestions given are worth implementing. For one, the cap gives a small balance sort of thing that prevents classes which just happen to be dominating already from dominating even more. Sure people mention retaliation, but what good will that be? I AoE You retaliate, we kill each other wheeee~ over and over again, no strategy, no skill involve no nothing.
Now, sure you could make small team play more rewarding, but why do so? Would capping camps be any more enjoyable if i limit the amount of people in my group? Nop, I solo camps all the time, so yeah. Zergs exist for a simple reason, 3 – 5 out of 10 people in WvW are there for a free ride to exp, badges and money. This creates bad players to follow around adding little more than a few supplies on the move to the Zerg. Sure you could divide your team and be all like 30 go take this keep, another 10 go that tower so on, but, when the enemy call for reinforcements both sides will inevitably end forming a zerg.
Ironically this isn’t Anet’s fault, in most attacking teams you got a few men handling the siege engines, while the rest as staring at the door waiting for it to open. On the defense side sure defending requires much more men, but if these useless wanna be carried people carried some siege of their own and assisted with AoEs WvW would have much more interest and intrigue to it.
Now back to the top at hand, let’s use those days with muskets, when men formed lines and shot at each other, would the bullet keep going on and on killing more, would the cannon ball keep bounding from left to right killing more? nop. Why should an AoE do so in game? Now from balance and magic perspective, Elementalist exeed in everything already, why make em even more op by letting them kitten faster in WvW? Why would people want to play a warrior who is lacking love as it is already if this was implemented?
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