Guild Wars 2

Hey there everyone, I’m a tabletop card/board game designer/producer who tackles video game design problems as a hobby (and for the experience!)

I posted a while back in the Fractal CDI, and now I’m going to be doing a few posts here about the most troublesome topics in GW2. Today’s focus is on Crowd Control, namely how crowd control can be satisfying and useful in a group situation without the use of CC-negating buffs.

First off, let’s quote the wiki on what exactly we are dealing with:

Note that Blindness (while not strictly CC) has a damage dampening effect by causing attacks to miss. Oddly, Chill isn’t given the same treatment.

A lot of dissatisfaction concerning this system stems from the binary nature of the Defiance buff. In a large group, it is nearly impossible to time a large CC to hit right as the group removes the last stack of Defiance. The inability to make meaningful tactical decisions beyond “don’t die, keep hitting it, do the special mechanic X” (Also known as “The Plays”) is rooted in this binary (either you CC or you don’t) and obfuscated (you have no reasonable way of knowing if your 3 second stun or one of the 40 other 1/2 second dazes will actually be the one to break through defiance) system.

So, what can we do about it?

With our previous observations, we make a few guidelines for an improved version of our CC reduction mechanic.

• CC should be at least marginally useful when used: This one is pretty self-explanatory. Abilities have unique effects. That effect is not “remove a stack of arbitrary CC negation”

• CC should be a tactically used mechanic, not a spammable I-Win button: The current defiance system is intended to work this way, but the coordination required to effectively CC rises much faster than the effect of CC itself. If you have 5 players, you can fairly reliably CC a dungeon boss at the critical moments where it’s CC or die. When you have 10 players, the mobs scale up to match, so effective damage is the same, but now CC is that much harder to coordinate.

So, what does this mean for our current CC skills?

It means that mobs need to RESIST, not NEGATE. Scaling effectiveness means that every person can have an appreciable effect on CC, and brings tactical usage of skills back into the limelight.

Examples (Assume diminishing returns for all values):

• Chilled: Movement speed decreased by 66%Variable%; skill cooldown increased by 66%Variable%; stacks duration.

Chilled is now weaker when being applied by a single player, but each application makes it more powerful.

• Blind: Next outgoing attack has 10% Miss Chance (rolled per target, not per attack); stacks duration.

This reduces the binary nature of rolling a single 10% blind attack. Instead, the attack misses 10% of the players, giving the group a chance to react and recover.

• Knockdown/daze/stun: Allow chaining, but apply defiant stacks in the opposite manner to the current system. Instead of having to burn CC to land one, Chaining hard CC causes stacks of a buff, granting a powerful stunbreaker and temporary CC immunity if it goes high enough (Variable by enemy type!).

Brought in a Jiu-Jitsu expert on this one. When grappling or performing takedowns, your first move is likely to be your most effective, and further struggles give more opportunities for devastating counterattacks.

I have to agree with this. Using a primarily CC heavy build, I feel as though I must put down the weapon I’ve put so much time into making in order to use one that gives higher dps, and I don’t like it. The game is currently less about coordinating and completing the mechanics and more about not dying to said mechanics but killing the challenge as quickly as possible so you don’t have to deal with them.

Yep, I agree with the OP. It’s ok when you are in a dungeons with really organized group, but if you are in a pug, then forget about CC all together. I also feel that using CC skills to burn down stacks is really, well, not rewarding to a player as it is to deal damage. I can see the reason why Anet made the defiant stack, after all we don’t want to stunlock the boss, but this system is bad as well, and I hope that they are at least thinking about this problem.

While I like the way the OP describes Chill and Blind working, I question whether the hard CC mechanic would actually be any better in an uncoordinated setting with many players. With lower numbers of players, CC would be fairly reliable and limited stun-locking might occur — a least until the breaker/immunity hit, by which time the fight might well be over. I suppose that depends on the thresholds programmed.

With larger numbers of players, the initial stages of the fight would include limited stun-locking. If the boss survived the initial phase, the stun breaker would be automatic and the temporary CC immunity would likely persist until the mob’s death — assuming further CC attempts refresh duration. Since we’re talking about random players in large events, it’s likely a given that additional CC will occur — since such random application is what makes Defiance problematic in such settings in the first place.

I guess I’m not convinced that increasing the initial hard CC occurrences by some number is better than having one occurrence, especially with how quickly many mobs melt.

I did used to write about this topic in the dungeon forum and I still stand my point Defiant is not that bad of an attribute in the current state of gw2.
With a few alterations to the way it works it could lend to encounters(5 man-ish) where cc have a consequence.
The fact is that even if defiant was removed I would not be such a big deal destroying the boss asap is still a better tactic than stun locking (time wise), in lage events and trains zerg would still effortlessly kill the champ and the overall way to play of the mass would not be affected.

I will illustrate the alterations i would make to Defiant i will give an example.
a 5 man boss has 3 stacks of Defiant.1, each time it is CCed it loses on stack, each 3 second it gains one back, now he has one attack with the potential to wipe the party he uses each X. To counter it you have to 1. prepare a lot of dodges, blocks and invulnerability skills or 2. interrupt the attack.
With just this you changed the way the whole group face the boss each time it charges is wipe move the players will be able to deal with it by using 4 CCs during a 3 seconds window.
Add to this a few “rewards” for interrupting this move like +7% damage dealt or a 4 seconds stun on the boss and you have even more interesting ways to play around the boss as a groups: use the highest burst abilities only after the move is interrupted …

…they can do so much…

Desthin Sinkropht.4123:

• CC should be at least marginally useful when used: This one is pretty self-explanatory. Abilities have unique effects. That effect is not “remove a stack of arbitrary CC negation”

ANet: This^.