Guild Wars 2

Hi, I am concerned about a rumor i’ve recently read, that AoE attacks are going to be nerfed even further. My main class is Elementalist, therefore, most of my skills are AoE, therefore, I’m concerned that my class will be made completely useless.

To be a hundred percent honest, the few MMORPG’s that I have played, they always make it so one class is better than the others…. and what I tend to find, is that they always make one class stand above others. The last game I played, everytime they tweaked a class, the next time they would make changes to the weakest class, they would make it the godly class…

so far, in my SPvP experiences, i’ve found that all the classes are technically the same. As an elementalist, i’m using a bunky(ish) build…. I can survive a good deal… which honestly, is what makes me love this game, cuz the other games i’ve played, each class has their own role, and honestly they always make magic classes squishy. Well, back to my point, in my experiences in this game, with a bunky elementalist, i have hardly lost any battle. but despite this, I find the game to be really well balanced. I am not that great a heavy hitter, the only times I empty an enemy’s health quickly is when they are running with a glass cannon build. But despite this, glass cannon builds hit like a truck… I may be able to kill them quicker than any other build, but if they managed to land a few successful hits on me, I am done for. Now all the other classes that have a somewhat balanced defense/offense build, I tend to have a durable fight with them, they don’t damage me all that much, I don’t kill them quickly. And then those who have a bunk build as well, they too, tend to not die… at all…. normally those duels tend to go for MINUTES.

What I heard about the coming nerf to AoE abilities, is supposed to be due to players inability to resurrect down players. As I was saying before, in previous games that I have played, they tend to either weaken way too much, or buff up way too much a single class… what’s happened with those class that are weakened, is that the players of that class tend to stop playing that class. I don’t wanna stop playing my elementalist, I love it the way that it is. I think that rather than nerfing classes, in order to balance them out, my opinion would be that you guys boost other classes by adding something to their current skills + traits. For instance, for every weapon, if that weapon has an attack that only does damage, add something else to that attack… maybe instead of only doing damage, it will also give a buff that will immobilize enemies for a sec, or it will give evasion, or it will allow u to leap in/out of battle, or it will give u boons, etc….

and to counter being easily killed by AoE to those players who are ressing, I think that the best way to counter that… i think it would be to give a buff to players who are ressurrecting down players. for instance… it could be a buff that would heal them every second, or it could be a buff that would make them invulnerable for a few seconds, or it could be a buff that would fear those who attacked them for a few seconds, or one that would knock their enemies when attacked for a few seconds…. considering htat when we are down we have different abilities, maybe each class should have a different skill when they are resurecting down players…

I don’t think that the problem is with AoE abilities. To be honest, if you are in WvW, and you and a group of people are fighting against a zerg, and some of your group might fall in battle, if you had several players attacking you (Single targets, NOT AoE), all those players attacking you while you are resurrecting down players are going to be able to kill you. The problem isn’t that players resurrecting down players get killed by AoE…. to be honest… the problem is that when they are doing so they are defenseless… They can’t attack, they can’t move and resurrect from a safe distance….they are just kneeling there, doing nothing, but taking attacks. The real problem honestly is that they are doing nothing while taking attacks… IT IS NOT that that the AoE attacks are extremely powerful.

And while we are on the subject, I think that attacking only 5 targets with AoE is absurd. If thousands of enemies (whether players or mobs) are allowed to attack us.. why are we allowed to only attack 5? I think that instead of only attacking 5 or so, maybe it would be best to reduce the damage to after say.. attacking 10 enemies…. or maybe not reduce, but spread the damage all around (like in WoW)….

when u r in an open map, whether in PVE or PVP, you may be able to attack in really large groups…. but… for instances… you can only have 5 people attacking, there are instances where it is easy to isolate enemies and attack in groups against those enemies, but there are other instances (like fractals, especially the dredge fractal) where a heck of a lot of dredges come attacking u, while you are only allowed to hurt 5. It’s unfair… Same goes with WvW… Zerg vs 1… absolutely ridiculous.

Thanks for your time, I really hope that you take my advise into consideration, my concern is mainly due to my main class, it’s mostly AoE attacks. I don’t like tweaks that make the class completely different… I love it just the way it is… So if there’s a problem in balance… Please boost up the other classes so that they are able to be balanced instead of making them completely different by weakening them.

I am looking forward to a positive reply, would appreciate it more if the person in charge of the tweaking department would answer.

thanks

They are nerfing them due to WvW and dungeons. People just see a kitten load of enemies and pull out their aoe build, instead of coordinating attacks against a select few now it’s just “hit them hard, and keep on hitting”. Dungeons are even worse, just pull out frost bow and burrow down. Or meteor on CoF path 2 at the end and watch the crystal drop. These AoEs are being nerfed most likely since too many situations seem to ask for them and it isn’t promoting much fun when you’re forced to play a role you may not care for. They also said they are planning to rework many boss encounters to compensate this so don’t expect AoEs to be the only part of large fights anymore. (NOt to mention, Meteor shower can hit for like 4-5k maybe more each hit. Put that in WvW against a zerg and tell me thats fair…. Personal seige weapon?)

As a Warrior, this has me greatly worried.

EVERY attack we have is an AoE attack, pretty much.

Does that mean we get to see a flat reduction on ALL our damage?

They havn’t said any details on what about AoE skills and which AoE skills they are nerfing. I wouldn’t worry about this too much until they release that info.

Oglaf.1074:

As a Warrior, this has me greatly worried.

EVERY attack we have is an AoE attack, pretty much.

Does that mean we get to see a flat reduction on ALL our damage?

No, because all attacks hit multiple targets, at least melee attacks do, but they are not AoE. AoE are for instance the grenadekit the Engineer uses and I already tell myself that the damage is WAY higher then when I pew with my pistol, which is not how something should work. AoE should be stronger at multiple enemies yes, mostly weaker enemies, but not be stronger than a single target attack, which is now the case.

I am not sure if they are nerfing it, but they are bringing it more in line with the rest, which is only good: balance is key.

Technically, melee weapon swings are either Point Blank AoE (Hammer auto-attack finisher) or Cone AoE (Greatsword auto-attack).