Guild Wars 2

So now there the technology or code is in for CC to be more or less effective based on type and duration is it possible to switch how stability works over to this style? I’ll lay out how it works below:

• All players have a Breaker bar that by default is empty
• When the Breaker bar is empty the player is subject to CC like normal (with no stability)
• When a player uses an ability to grant stability they instead get their breaker bar fill by “x” amount depending on how many stacks of stability and duration
• If a player get’kitten with CC when the bar is partial filled it drains the bar (similar to how breaker bar works on bosses) but don’t get affected by it (like having stability on)
• The breaker bar will slowly drain over time (similar to how stability will time out after so many seconds)

Pros

• Stability didn’t handle different ‘power’ cc well, one stack is lost from either a .25 second daze or a 3 second stun (different power cc both 1 stack). The breaker bar handles this well by removing more or less depending on how ‘strong’ the CC is.
• More clear when cc will be effective or not (sometimes it’s hard to spot stability stacks, especially with boons moving around)
• If stability get’s ‘too strong’ or ‘too long’ easy to put a ‘max’ to the stability bar (also doable with stability stacks but might be harder because they have stacks and duration).
• Allows for more ability to affect the bar with traits that make it drain slower, higher max, gain more per ‘stability stack’, ect

Cons

• Breaker bar cannot be striped like how stability currently can, however this could possibly be fixed by draining the bar by ‘x’ amount or completely(if one boon strip is supposed to be that strong vs stability) when boon striping is used
• Classes that can spread boons to allies can’t spread the bar but can with stability, again possible they can also spread their bar (but might be difficult to code)
• Boon duration would not affect this (can be changed to do so possibly)

Any thoughts, ideas, suggestions, pros, cons are welcome in the comments and thanks for reading.

Berserkers’ “Eternal Champion” trait used to give them a break bar apparently, but was changed to pulsing stability.

I like this idea, but Anets apparently tried it before and it didnt go through.

Throdin.8061:

Berserkers’ “Eternal Champion” trait used to give them a break bar apparently, but was changed to pulsing stability.

I like this idea, but Anets apparently tried it before and it didnt go through.

I think part of the reason for the scrapping was that it gave a sizable advantage to berserkers because small/weak cc and boon stripping was ineffective when compared to stability. However it isn’t as much of an advantage if all classes get access to it. Also they got a full bar which took a lot of cc to bring down which was strong.

The actual numbers behind the bar can be tweaked so that it lines up with how much cc stability abilities currently block with the exception that stronger cc will be a bit more effective and weaker cc will be less, but shouldn’t that be how it is?

I think break bars on characters have the same basic problem as duration stacking stability.

Stability specifically counters “lockdown” style hard CC, which soft CC is generally countered by cleanses. Hard CC is also countered by stunbreaks, and much of skill balance is done around this core separation between “hard” and “soft” cc.

Because soft CC is often spammable for various reasons (in creasing sustain on some classes, pressure on others) and hard cc is not (because spammable hard CC is unfun to play against) they moved to the stacking stability we have now to allow coordinated hard CC to punch through stability so boon stripping is less of a “make or break” mechanic for team fights in pvp or future instances.

This allows soft CC to maintain a separate balance.

On mobs the break bars are a good solution, as in general the assumption in PvE is that any time you want to interrupt a mob, it is critical to the fight design that you do so. PvE is asymmetrical. In PvP, or even giving players a break bar versus mobs creates a wildly different balance paradigm that takes a lot of workarounds to make sure it remains balanced.

Thus, I think the break bars being relegated to mobs seems to be the best solution, since mobs don’t need to be balanced to be “fair” as much as “fun to fight”

PopeUrban.2578:

Because soft CC is often spammable for various reasons (in creasing sustain on some classes, pressure on others) and hard cc is not (because spammable hard CC is unfun to play against) they moved to the stacking stability we have now to allow coordinated hard CC to punch through stability so boon stripping is less of a “make or break” mechanic for team fights in pvp or future instances.

Yes, the breaker bar is similar because the hard cc will knock it down much faster. For example something that currently gives 2 stacks of stability maybe gives 10% breaker bar (numbers to be adjusted according to balance). In the current system it takes 2 cc of any strength to get past stability. With a breaker bar it might only take 1 large cc or 3 small ones. The way it currently is, the smaller cc is better at ‘breaking’ or removing stability because it is lower cd and more spam-able and the larger cc doesn’t have a chance. Shouldn’t it be closer to equal? Meaning the larger cc can ‘break’ though stability quicker since they have to wait longer to reuse? and smaller cc take a bit more since it’s widely available and spam-able?

This isn’t only relevant for PvP and WvW because if ArenaNet want to add a boss mechanic with a devastating cc, one simple stack of stability will block it in full instead of having the option of it requiring a larger amount of ‘stability’ (or more full break bar) so you don’t get caught in it.

Also the idea with a break bar at 1% getting hit with a large cc is that part of the cc would be used up to remove that last percent and the rest would still be applied. So something like a 3 second stun get’s reduced to 2.34 seconds after it breaks though the remaining breaker bar.

Pink Ninja Man.4375:

PopeUrban.2578:

Because soft CC is often spammable for various reasons (in creasing sustain on some classes, pressure on others) and hard cc is not (because spammable hard CC is unfun to play against) they moved to the stacking stability we have now to allow coordinated hard CC to punch through stability so boon stripping is less of a “make or break” mechanic for team fights in pvp or future instances.

Yes, the breaker bar is similar because the hard cc will knock it down much faster. For example something that currently gives 2 stacks of stability maybe gives 10% breaker bar (numbers to be adjusted according to balance). In the current system it takes 2 cc of any strength to get past stability. With a breaker bar it might only take 1 large cc or 3 small ones. The way it currently is, the smaller cc is better at ‘breaking’ or removing stability because it is lower cd and more spam-able and the larger cc doesn’t have a chance. Shouldn’t it be closer to equal? Meaning the larger cc can ‘break’ though stability quicker since they have to wait longer to reuse? and smaller cc take a bit more since it’s widely available and spam-able?

This isn’t only relevant for PvP and WvW because if ArenaNet want to add a boss mechanic with a devastating cc, one simple stack of stability will block it in full instead of having the option of it requiring a larger amount of ‘stability’ (or more full break bar) so you don’t get caught in it.

Also the idea with a break bar at 1% getting hit with a large cc is that part of the cc would be used up to remove that last percent and the rest would still be applied. So something like a 3 second stun get’s reduced to 2.34 seconds after it breaks though the remaining breaker bar.

On mobs, that has a lot more to due with how the break bar reduction values are tuned for specific skills, but this thread is about using break bars on players.

Basically, using break bars on players removes the hard separation between soft and hard CCs. It makes soft CCs stronger than they should be, and hard ccs weaker.

This is okay against mobs, as break bars are mechanics which allow them to design mob CC as a completely binary thing. You either CC the mob or you don’t.

The problem with old defiance was that it worked like stability on steroids, which made it an impossible system to counteract unless you had direct coordination and communication with your allies. As a lot of GW2’s combat consists of having tons of allies you can’t control, and often passive cc applications, defiance effectively made them just plain CC immune.

They moved to break bars to make it much easier to coordinate large uncoordinated groups of players against single targets.

This design is problematic for players because the range of hard and soft CCs are specifically designed to impact players in different ways. Defending players from CC is meant to be more complex than applying CC to mobs, as when you’re fighting other players that extra level of coordination is expected and rewarded, where fighting mobs it can’t reasonably be assumed in many pve encounters.

Only if i can get intensity stacking blind as well <3

PopeUrban.2578:

Basically, using break bars on players removes the hard separation between soft and hard CCs. It makes soft CCs stronger than they should be, and hard ccs weaker.

Quite the opposite, but I think we consider weaker cc to be something different. I’m calling weaker cc stuff like .25 second daze and stronger 3 second stun. I would think they would leave blinds, chill, cripple like how they currently work (what you are calling soft cc). If the soft cc did affect the breaker bar (for players) then the players should be immune to the soft cc and it wouldn’t bring the bar down much making ‘soft’ cc almost useless vs breaker bar (hence leaving it how it is).