Guild Wars 2

With the upcoming AoE nerf, how does anet expect us to get through high level fractals with the ever increasing size of the mobs and their health bars? I can only think of more groups skipping given the increase in time, effort and risk to kill these mobs with neutered AoE. Anyone have any idea of what they’re thinking?

If this is not what anet is intending with the upcoming AoE nerf, I think you(anet) should clarify to us(players) because frankly its quite worrying what the state of high end PvE will be in by next month.

Through more Ascended gear

didnt they say two things:

1. we are not making drastic changes to anything in game, i.e. and “nerf” to AoE will likely be a multiple step process with minor changes each time and monitoring for a month or so to see if more needs to be done, meaning you shouldn’t notice a big difference

2. its more of an issue of AoE being strong enough that when the question of AoE vs single target skills come up for single target fights (bosses, 1v1, …) that the AoE is almost preferred in many cases which is something that is wrong. There are many ways to deal with this, lower AoE dmg, longer cooldowns/cost for AoE skills, buff to some single target skills for classes that only use AoE. There are many ways that they can “nerf” AoE so it is not the preferred skill for every situation and we will just have to wait to see what they do.

Koga.7215:

didnt they say two things:

1. we are not making drastic changes to anything in game, i.e. and “nerf” to AoE will likely be a multiple step process with minor changes each time and monitoring for a month or so to see if more needs to be done, meaning you shouldn’t notice a big difference

2. its more of an issue of AoE being strong enough that when the question of AoE vs single target skills come up for single target fights (bosses, 1v1, …) that the AoE is almost preferred in many cases which is something that is wrong. There are many ways to deal with this, lower AoE dmg, longer cooldowns/cost for AoE skills, buff to some single target skills for classes that only use AoE. There are many ways that they can “nerf” AoE so it is not the preferred skill for every situation and we will just have to wait to see what they do.

I find 2) to be rather silly though. If there is just one enemy and I have AoEs on my bar(pretty much unavoidable for some professions) why shouldn’t I be using them? What would be the point of purposely prolonging a fight by not using all the skills you have available? I am not advocating spamming every skill on your bar but for some fights(especially in dungeons) there just no reason not to.

How do you even determine “preferred”? Many AoEs also provide combo fields. I haven’t watched the video itself, only read the transcript but that reply seems a bit ill conceived/badly communicated.

That means almost all the 2 hand weapon skills get nerfed then since even skill 1 for warrior/guardian GS/hammer effectively does AoE damage, albeit hitting upto 3 targets per swing compared to the normal 5. So its kind of a gray area that they need to clarify.

Khisanth.2948:

Koga.7215:

didnt they say two things:

1. we are not making drastic changes to anything in game, i.e. and “nerf” to AoE will likely be a multiple step process with minor changes each time and monitoring for a month or so to see if more needs to be done, meaning you shouldn’t notice a big difference

2. its more of an issue of AoE being strong enough that when the question of AoE vs single target skills come up for single target fights (bosses, 1v1, …) that the AoE is almost preferred in many cases which is something that is wrong. There are many ways to deal with this, lower AoE dmg, longer cooldowns/cost for AoE skills, buff to some single target skills for classes that only use AoE. There are many ways that they can “nerf” AoE so it is not the preferred skill for every situation and we will just have to wait to see what they do.

I find 2) to be rather silly though. If there is just one enemy and I have AoEs on my bar(pretty much unavoidable for some professions) why shouldn’t I be using them? What would be the point of purposely prolonging a fight by not using all the skills you have available? I am not advocating spamming every skill on your bar but for some fights(especially in dungeons) there just no reason not to.

How do you even determine “preferred”? Many AoEs also provide combo fields. I haven’t watched the video itself, only read the transcript but that reply seems a bit ill conceived/badly communicated.

There’s not much choice to begin with anyway, just because of how limited our attacks are in this game. It’s not as though we have a bar of 50 attacks to choose from and people are picking out all the juicy AOEs and sticking to them.

If you have a weapon with both single target and AOE attacks. Well you can use the single target ones and put them on cooldown, then your choice is either use #1 or use the AOE. If the AOE does more damage you use it then spam #1 until something comes back. If it doesn’t, you just spam #1 and ignore the AOE.

Sure you can swap and do the process again first, but you’ll still set things on cooldown and have to make that choice at least for a little while.

Minion of Vey.4398:

If you have a weapon with both single target and AOE attacks. Well you can use the single target ones and put them on cooldown, then your choice is either use #1 or use the AOE. If the AOE does more damage you use it then spam #1 until something comes back. If it doesn’t, you just spam #1 and ignore the AOE.

Sure you can swap and do the process again first, but you’ll still set things on cooldown and have to make that choice at least for a little while.

Don’t you see right there is what they’re talking about. The fact that AoE spells are currently better or equal then doing single target spells even on single target fights. In most MMO’s, AoE’s don’t do as much damage as single target spells, but you get to hit more than 1 target making them better when fighting groups of targets. However, when it comes to somthing like a boss fight where you’re single targeting, single target spells should be stronger then aoe.

Let’s say you have 2 spells.
Spell 1: hits 5 targets for 9 damage
Spell 2: hits 1 target for 10 damage

Now let’s say you’re doing SPvP and you’ve just downed a player, a team mate of his runs over to try and ress him, currently all you have to do is lay down as much AoE and you’ve got the kill, theres nothing to think about

Now let’s say they made that same aoe spell do 6 damage to each target instead.
Again, pretend you’re doing SPvP and you downed a player and someone comes to try and res him, now you actually have to stop and think, do I either A, run in and try and spike down the player before he can be ressed using my more powerful single target spell, or do i try and scare off the resser by casuing damage with my aoe spell.

Finally, they have not confirmed that nerfing all aoe spells is what they’re going to do, they’re looking into it to try and find the best fix for it. Maybe they’ll just increase single target spells and leave aoe as it is, maybe they’ll find another way to balance it more, how knows for now we just have to wait and see what their plans are