Guild Wars 2

Problem

• WvW can quickly devolve into a numbers game—if the enemy force has superior numbers, they will usually win.
• Although this makes sense logically, it isn’t very fun to be on the outnumbered side, and it makes individual player effort feel less significant.
• It’s also less conducive to player-created WvW “roles” or a real individual meta to develop outside of small skirmishes.

Requirements

• Any new mechanics should give outnumbered groups a fighting chance against zerg, and make zergs work harder to deal with small threats.
• This mechanic shouldn’t make zerging impossible or even really discourage it. A coordinated zerg should still be able to defeat a group they outnumber.
• The mechanic should not affect fights between equal groups of players. 1v1 and Zerg vs. Zerg fights where the player counts are the same should behave as they do now—they are already fair.
• The effect should impact player vs. player fights only and focus on the use of profession skills. Siege is already tactically interesting and fair, and should behave as it does now.

Suggested Mechanic: Aura of the Mists: Add a global buff/debuff to all players in WvW with the following features:

• Aura of the Mists grants +50% bonus damage against other players.
• Aura of the Mists reduces damage received from other players’ attacks by 50%.
• When within X Yards of an allied player, the benefit of Aura of the Mists is reduced by 1% for each allied player in range.
• Aura of the Mists only affects direct damage dealt and received from player skills, and not from siege, fall damage, NPCs, or any other damage sources.

Examples: Here are some examples to clarify how the mechanic might work. There are some combat scenarios based on these examples in the second post.

• If you are alone with no allies in range, Aura of the Mists will grant the full +50%/-50% bonus.
• If you are near 20 allied players, Aura of the Mists will grant +30% bonus damage vs. other players and 30% damage reduction from other players.
• If you are near 50 or more allied players, the Aura of the Mists buff will be totally negated—you will get no +Damage or +Damage Reduction bonus.

Impact & Commentary

• Sample Numbers:The numbers above are just an example and will be need to be improved with playtesting.
• New Roles: Solo players and small groups will be able to build for new WvW roles—a stealth class might build an Assassin aiming at picking off stragglers in a Zerg just on the edge of the aura. A tanky class with lots of disengagement options like Engineer might make a Harass build to break up a zerg, making them easier pickings for an Assassin or delaying their approach to the objective.
• More Zerg Strategy: Zergs will remain effective based on numbers alone, but will need to be more careful. They will need to travel closer together and keep an eye out for small groups or solo players harassing them. Very coordinated Zergs might decide losing the buff is not worth having so many players in one place and may try to keep multiple groups split up just outside of range of the Aura.
• New World Abilities: New world ability lines could be added that play on this buff. A small group ability line could increase the threshold of nearby players before the buff reduction triggers—useless and unnoticeable in a big zerg, but beneficial to a small group. A solo ability line could increase the damage or damage reduction bonus, but only when alone.
• Calculation Rate: Calculating the buff could be computationally expensive if done in realtime, so it might have to operate on “ticks” like many Pet abilities. Even if it’s a relatively short (5 seconds) or long (~15-20 seconds) “tick” coordinated players will learn to work around this and it will increase the overall skill cap in WvW.

TL; DR: Add a new mechanic that impacts damage dealt between small & large groups in WvW to encourage more solo & small group play. Reduce the dominance of zergs without making them unviable.

Combat Scenarios: Some scenarios using the above examples as reference.

One vs. One

• A Red and Blue player fight each other alone, 1v1.
• The Red player deals 1000 damage with an attack, and gets the +50% damage bonus, dealing (1000 × 1.5) =1500 damage before damage reduction. The Blue player has +50% damage reduction, so she receives (1500 / 1.5) = 1000 damage.
• The Blue player deals 1000 damage with an attack, and gets the +50% damage bonus, dealing (1000 × 1.5) =1500 damage before damage reduction. The Red player has +50% damage reduction, so she receives (1500 / 1.5) = 1000 damage.
• The auras cancel each other out when player numbers are equal.

One vs. Zerg

• A solo Green player attacks a Red player in zerg of 73 Red players.
• The Green player deals 1000 damage with an attack, dealing =1500 damage. Because the Red player is near 50 or more players, he doesn’t get any damage reduction, and takes the full 1500 damage.
• If the anyone in the Red zerg attacks the Green player for 1000 damage, she will take only (1000 / 1.5) = 667 damage.
• The solo player deals a little more than twice as much damage to the zerg as she receives from them.

Small Group vs. Zerg

• A small group of 6 Blue players attacks a zerg of 34 Green players.
• A Blue player deals 1000 damage with an attack against a Green player, and gets a +44% damage bonus, dealing (1000 × 1.44) =1440 damage before damage reduction. The Green player has +16% damage reduction, so she receives (1440 / 1.16) = 1241 damage.
• If anyone in the Green zerg attacks someone in the Blue group for 1000 damage, they will get the +16% damage bonus for a total of (1000 * 1.16) = 1160 damage before reduction. The blue players get 44% damage reduction and only take (1160 / 1.44) = 806 damage.

Plus one.

Minus one.

I agree that there needs to be viable, team helping goals that an individual or small group can make in the WvW setting, beyond taking supply camps, but penalizing one group for playing together is NOT the way to do it. Applying a large buff/debuff such as this overly empowers the few, and naturally caters to those who are already building high damage.

Zergs are the fastest, safest way for someone to level in a WvW setting, and this new feature would allow high damage, high escape classes like thieves to rush in, burst them with heightened damage and escape. Because the thief is dealing 50% increased damage and the up-leveled target is penalized for being near its allies, reducing its ‘decreased incoming damage’ to zero.

In my opinion, what Anet is doing in the next patch will vastly help fill this ‘small group/individual roamers’ niche. These locations are able to be freely capped, important enough to be desired by all teams, and extremely conducive to small group play. A zerg running through could cap one of these points very easily by wiping out the defenders, but the points themselves do not grant points, and you already need the majority of your forces to attack and hold the locations that do (towers/keeps etc).

It will be small groups that are constantly fighting over these points, due to their extremely transient nature.