Guild Wars 2

Bit disappointed. You just repeated what we already could read at https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/colin-johanson-on-guild-wars-2-in-the-months-ahead/ and https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guesting-is-coming/

Figured as much, which is why I didn’t bother to see their faces live.

Yep they didn’t say anything we don’t know yet. Time wasted.

What the hell are the AOE nerfs that were apparently mentioned?

• One of the issues brought up a lot in WvW./sPvP is AoE (Area of Effect). We feel like they are too strong at the moment and a lot of people in WvW are gaming the system using AoEs.
• For people that don’t know – max targets for siege weapons is 50 while max targets for AoE is 5.
• Reducing AoE effectiveness to bring them in line with the single target damage skills.
• Major update coming to all the AoE skills – make classes that are good at single target damage stand out a bit more.
• Same thing with dungeons – right now if you have a lot of AoE you can past encounters by just spamming AoE which is not what we want.

http://dulfy.net/2013/01/17/gw2-dev-livestream-jan-17-transcript/

Er, wat. No one is “gaming the system” with AoE. It’s simply the most effective way to battle in WvW where you’re being rushed by zergs of enemies.

Does ANet seriously expect their WvW players to each focus on single target 1v1 damage when combating in groups of 20 or more, where AoE is clearly the most effective tactic? Who in the world thought that nerfing ALL AoE in every profession everywhere would be a good idea? If anything it will only further cripple some of the already lackluster professions in the game and ruin some of the best non-broken combos there are, while leaving the clearly broken single-target spikes of multiple classes completely intact. ._.

I’m interested to see if they can force a play style change with the reduction in AoE. Are skills with a conical effect considered AoE?

dulfy.1493:

• One of the issues brought up a lot in WvW./sPvP is AoE (Area of Effect). We feel like they are too strong at the moment and a lot of people in WvW are gaming the system using AoEs.
• For people that don’t know – max targets for siege weapons is 50 while max targets for AoE is 5.
• Reducing AoE effectiveness to bring them in line with the single target damage skills.
• Major update coming to all the AoE skills – make classes that are good at single target damage stand out a bit more.
• Same thing with dungeons – right now if you have a lot of AoE you can past encounters by just spamming AoE which is not what we want.

http://dulfy.net/2013/01/17/gw2-dev-livestream-jan-17-transcript/

That is just utter silliness. WvW has a 5 character restriction on aoe how is it too strong or gaming the system? WvW is arguably too zergy as it it is, this stands to make it even worse. Is this what anet wants?

Such changes should be given very very careful consideration and buffs given in other areas for specs like staff eles to compensate. I’d also want to see hard evidence of what they consider players gaming the system with aoes.

Seriously? Aoe is not strong, aoe needs A BUFF IN WVW its already about who has the biggest zerg as it is, this is because LACK of aoe, i don’t see a problem whatsoever with aoe in any game mode.

Infact i’d say remove the silly 5 person limit on aoe, this way we wont have zerg vs zerg which is ruining wvw.

In dungeons Aoe is used but its not overused, perhaps SOME single target weapons could use a little buff, like the sword, daggers seem just fine they do TONS OF DPS.

Ofcourse people are going to use aoe’s in dungeons, but i don’t see how thats a problem

look at every other game, theirs always 1 or 2 people usually using only aoe.

And this is coming from a main guardian and theif player who doesn’t use that much aoe in the first place.

WvW’s main problem is it comes down to who has the biggest zerg and we need less huge man eating zergs and more smaller 10-20 people groups.
The nerf to aoe making it effect 5 people only just made wvw worse and i can’t believe they want to make zerging even MORE viable.

also
lack of melee players because ranged is far to viable compared to melee in big zergs

Im actually interested to see how they “nerf” the AOE’s. Elementalist being the clear target, just deals ton of damage with staff, but other AOE’s like necro staff AOE’s apply bleeds/transfer conditions and that is really all they do in a condition build. Even if you smacked all AOE damage hard, that would have little effect on a condition necromancer. Also Epidemic does not damage whatsoever, but has a huge AOE impact if the target is bleeding heavily.

Lets hope the overall decision is not to just reduce the AOE cap to 3 targets, that would be sad.

Rennoko.5731:

Im actually interested to see how they “nerf” the AOE’s. Elementalist being the clear target, just deals ton of damage with staff, but other AOE’s like necro staff AOE’s apply bleeds/transfer conditions and that is really all they do in a condition build. Even if you smacked all AOE damage hard, that would have little effect on a condition necromancer. Also Epidemic does not damage whatsoever, but has a huge AOE impact if the target is bleeding heavily.

And yet staff eles are not as strong as D/D eles. This would nerf them more.

On Wvw and ascended gear:

From dulfy’s transcript:
“Q: WvW and ascended gear?
It is an idea being tossed around – use the badge system perhaps.
I am hopeful that it will.”

Seriously, I thought you had already made decisions about ascended gear being made available by February in all areas of the game including WvW. This sounds like you haven’t actually made a decision about including ascended gear in WvW. To introduce full ascended gear sets to other areas but not WvW would be a huge mistake.

And thanks dulfy for the great transcript

Maybe they could do it where maximum damage is dealt to the target and damage decreases as the radius of the spell extends.

critickitten.1498:

Er, wat. No one is “gaming the system” with AoE. It’s simply the most effective way to battle in WvW where you’re being rushed by zergs of enemies.

Does ANet seriously expect their WvW players to each focus on single target 1v1 damage when combating in groups of 20 or more, where AoE is clearly the most effective tactic? Who in the world thought that nerfing ALL AoE in every profession everywhere would be a good idea? If anything it will only further cripple some of the already lackluster professions in the game and ruin some of the best non-broken combos there are, while leaving the clearly broken single-target spikes of multiple classes completely intact. ._.

Just like their are single target skills that do absurd damage, the same goes for AOE. Both need nerfed and who is to say the single target ones are getting nerfed as well. Why should some AOE skills literally do more damage than a single target melee attacks? The answer is they shouldn’t thus the nerf.

Now I believe the AOE target limit is a bad solution. The correct solution would be what WoW implemented. The AOE has a total damage it can do to a number of targets, if there are more enemies in the AOE then the total damage gets averaged out over the the number of enemies. So a 1k AOE to 5 players becomes 500 to 10. Or perhaps the WAR route is better where everyone in the AOE gets effected BUT you cannot stack AOE’s. Or another route is just reducing the damage to each player hit past 5. Anything is better than the current 5 limit but we definitely don’t want 100% damage to everyone because then WvW will become all AOE classes, yes far worse than even now. Warhammer proved what unlimited AOE does to RvR, we don’t want to repeat that here.

IMO the way to balance AOE is to reduce their damage so they don’t hit harder than single target damage, but allow them to hit more than 5 people at further reduced damage.

Distaste.4801:

Just like their are single target skills that do absurd damage, the same goes for AOE. Both need nerfed and who is to say the single target ones are getting nerfed as well. Why should some AOE skills literally do more damage than a single target melee attacks? The answer is they shouldn’t thus the nerf.

Of course they do more damage thats the idea. If the issue is that too many aoes can be spammed in a short time then they should cost more like increasing the cooldown, not changing the damage. But the classes affected should receive a buff in another area to compensate.

They implied that there are people complaining about aoe spam, I haven’t seen many if any complaints about it. The complaints are more around the 5 character limit and then there are complaints about the overall weakness of aoe specs like staff eles.

Distaste.4801:

critickitten.1498:

Er, wat. No one is “gaming the system” with AoE. It’s simply the most effective way to battle in WvW where you’re being rushed by zergs of enemies.

Does ANet seriously expect their WvW players to each focus on single target 1v1 damage when combating in groups of 20 or more, where AoE is clearly the most effective tactic? Who in the world thought that nerfing ALL AoE in every profession everywhere would be a good idea? If anything it will only further cripple some of the already lackluster professions in the game and ruin some of the best non-broken combos there are, while leaving the clearly broken single-target spikes of multiple classes completely intact. ._.

Just like their are single target skills that do absurd damage, the same goes for AOE. Both need nerfed and who is to say the single target ones are getting nerfed as well. Why should some AOE skills literally do more damage than a single target melee attacks? The answer is they shouldn’t thus the nerf.

Now I believe the AOE target limit is a bad solution. The correct solution would be what WoW implemented. The AOE has a total damage it can do to a number of targets, if there are more enemies in the AOE then the total damage gets averaged out over the the number of enemies. So a 1k AOE to 5 players becomes 500 to 10. Or perhaps the WAR route is better where everyone in the AOE gets effected BUT you cannot stack AOE’s. Or another route is just reducing the damage to each player hit past 5. Anything is better than the current 5 limit but we definitely don’t want 100% damage to everyone because then WvW will become all AOE classes, yes far worse than even now. Warhammer proved what unlimited AOE does to RvR, we don’t want to repeat that here.

IMO the way to balance AOE is to reduce their damage so they don’t hit harder than single target damage, but allow them to hit more than 5 people at further reduced damage.

your last little paragraph their seems up what i think pretty nicely, 5 limit cap is making zergs too strong in wvw, if they just tweaked the damage perhaps if aoe is has more then 5 people in it the damage is spread out between how many people it does (starting at 6 or more people) but again this would have to be tweaked so it isnt too weak or too strong, personally i never felt aoe was o.p in this game even before the 5 limit cap,

i mean its so easy to just move out of i dont understand how its hard, and in pve theirs always gona be a need for aoe its normal in these kind of games, look at daggers their single target and do great damage, but then the sword for guardian is lacking but i dont find its because of no massive aoe, you can still hit 5 peeps if u just move them into position in wvw, the sword needs some kind of rooting attack so i can catch stuff as the gs for guardian has 2 options for catching people, sword/whatever has one which doesnt work too well.

They still talked about the same things…