Guild Wars 2

the whole idea of area of effect is to effect an area…. when limiting the effect to a certain number of players/npc in the AoE the skill is no longer a true AoE. with the damage nerf to AoE such skills are highly unattractive. I suggest making AoE in gw2 “real” AoE.

I would rather have an AoE like now that actually does same damage, than a real AoE that does no damage at all and is pretty much useless like i have seen on other games.

i understand your view; however, the damage should remain the same and effect all players in the area. the players in the AoE should have to move out of the AoE as to not take damage. That’s the whole idea of AoE.

hharry.1967:

I would rather have an AoE like now that actually does same damage, than a real AoE that does no damage at all and is pretty much useless like i have seen on other games.

The best option would be to let AoEs hit as many people as possible but give AoEs scaling damage. It would deal the most optimal damage to five people, then scale down slightly until reaching one (because we don’t want it to have equal damage to a single target spell, but still want the Area effect to be an advantage) and scale down further with more opponents.

Something like this.
1: 80%
2: 85%
3: 90%
4: 95%
5: 100%
6-10: 78%
11-15: 67%
16-20: 57%
21-25: 48%
26-30: 39%
31-35: 33%
etc.

O’course that’s a bit simplified, I’m sure a real game designer could come up with a better scale.

Conncept.7638:

hharry.1967:

I would rather have an AoE like now that actually does same damage, than a real AoE that does no damage at all and is pretty much useless like i have seen on other games.

The best option would be to let AoEs hit as many people as possible but give AoEs scaling damage. It would deal the most optimal damage to five people, then scale down slightly until reaching one (because we don’t want it to have equal damage to a single target spell, but still want the Area effect to be an advantage) and scale down further with more opponents.

Something like this.
1: 80%
2: 85%
3: 90%
4: 95%
5: 100%
6-10: 75%
11-15: 65%
16-20: 55%
21-25: 45%
26-30: 35%
31+: 25%

The problem with this is that it still disadvantages small groups in WvW vs. large groups.

It means that a group of 20 will do 100% damage against a group of 5 players. But, those same five players with only do 55% damage against the group of 20.

The results are already borne out in WvW: zerging overwhelming all other forms of play.

Thrumdi.9216:

The problem with this is that it still disadvantages small groups in WvW vs. large groups.

It means that a group of 20 will do 100% damage against a group of 5 players. But, those same five players with only do 55% damage against the group of 20.

The results are already borne out in WvW: zerging overwhelming all other forms of play.

They can’t just give AoE every advantage, and only give it the single disadvantage of being in a fixed spot, especially when the game is so loaded with snares, slows, and CC. That is just never going to be balanced for more than one game mode, but at the same time, limiting the amount of people it hits does exactly that (except in the opposite direction), and really makes it ‘not’ AoE anymore. There needs to be a compromise.

And to be honest, a group of 5 shouldn’t have much of a chance against a group of 20 anyway (in a normal, flat-footed fight), so I don’t see how that’s a problem. One of the entire purposes of large scale battles is that scale matters, IE the amount of players you have.

Thrumdi.9216:

The problem with this is that it still disadvantages small groups in WvW vs. large groups.

It means that a group of 20 will do 100% damage against a group of 5 players. But, those same five players with only do 55% damage against the group of 20.

The results are already borne out in WvW: zerging overwhelming all other forms of play.

I don’t understand, this solution is better than currently exists. Currently, a group of 20 will 100% damage against a group of 5. However, the group of 5’s AoE can only hit 5 people, so the AoE is doing 25% of what it should. 55% > 25%, so the 5 man would be better off with this

Thrumdi.9216:

Conncept.7638:

hharry.1967:

I would rather have an AoE like now that actually does same damage, than a real AoE that does no damage at all and is pretty much useless like i have seen on other games.

The best option would be to let AoEs hit as many people as possible but give AoEs scaling damage. It would deal the most optimal damage to five people, then scale down slightly until reaching one (because we don’t want it to have equal damage to a single target spell, but still want the Area effect to be an advantage) and scale down further with more opponents.

Something like this.
1: 80%
2: 85%
3: 90%
4: 95%
5: 100%
6-10: 75%
11-15: 65%
16-20: 55%
21-25: 45%
26-30: 35%
31+: 25%

The problem with this is that it still disadvantages small groups in WvW vs. large groups.

It means that a group of 20 will do 100% damage against a group of 5 players. But, those same five players with only do 55% damage against the group of 20.

The results are already borne out in WvW: zerging overwhelming all other forms of play.

A group of 20 vs a group of 5 will gank each one of the small group with 4 of their own simultaneously, using single target abilities -.-

The scaling idea is good, but it should penalize more the use vs 1 target only.

MrNobody.4357:

A group of 20 vs a group of 5 will gank each one of the small group with 4 of their own simultaneously, using single target abilities -.-

The scaling idea is good, but it should penalize more the use vs 1 target only.

Yeah I kind of figured, no idea where to put that though. Logically, if an AoE deals damage to five enemies equal to a single target spell, then at 1 target it should deal 1/5th of that to balance it out. But in spite of what many think, AoEs already deals less damage than single target spells, and putting it at 1/5th power against a single target would make them beyond useless. The debate is really on how much less they should deal, and I don’t know the difference in order to make that calculation.

And every 5 man zerg slayer I’ve been a part of doesn’t use AoEs, but we focus one guy down at a time, with one of us assigned to reserving skills for spiking.

And to note, without the 5 player cap, a handful of Staff Eles would make a choke point a living hell, regardless of how many they are up against. Getting into the Lord’s Room in SM during peak times is already a mess, even with the limit.

Gisei.5749:

And every 5 man zerg slayer I’ve been a part of doesn’t use AoEs, but we focus one guy down at a time, with one of us assigned to reserving skills for spiking.

And to note, without the 5 player cap, a handful of Staff Eles would make a choke point a living hell, regardless of how many they are up against. Getting into the Lord’s Room in SM during peak times is already a mess, even with the limit.

The fight would still be manageable with defensive skills. in addition a diminishing return system like noted above should prevent AoE from being too OP. or just rename it from area of effect to something like stationary damage to 5 random targets.. hehe : )

You don’t need to scale the AOE’s for the first handful of mobs. You just make it so that you need at least 3 targets or more before the AOE damage is worth using.

For simplicity sake, let’s say single target attacks are doing 1,000 damage.
Then an AOE attack should do like…300ish damage to each target.

So if you are facing a single target or two targets, it is more beneficial to use focused attacks. Against three targets it becomes a matter of preference or what is needed(do you want to kill all together or take out one of the more dangerous targets first?)

At 4, 5, or 6 targets, AOE begins to outstrip the single-target damage, but you still have to consider what the situation calls for. If there are targets that are more dangerous than the others you might still want to focus them down.

At whatever number(in this case 7 targets+) you can begin to have diminishing returns. Maybe at 7 targets, damage to all targets drops by 10%, then another 10% for 8, 9, 10, etc. Until you hit something like 50% damage cap(or lower, whatever.)

This way you stop AOE farming while adding choice and variety in terms of tactics for fights.

Problem with AoE (as it is right now) is more that “large radius” and “high damage” just don’t fit together.

AoE which deals high damage must always be limited to small areas (like the whirlwirnd attack with greatsword or little, tick based AoE fields).

Now whats with “large radius” AoE? One could either go the cheap way as GW2 did (deal low, direct damage), or the proper way, which is to think outside the box:

If you deal with large numbers of enemies, your goal is usually to gain an advantage to even out the odds. This means that you require mass CC effects rather than plain damage. In terms of GW2:
Long duration mass vulnerability, mass slow, mass weakness, maybe even mass confusion. Or summed up: Effects which HELP you taking out target 1by1 more efficient.

The Goat.1940:

the whole idea of area of effect is to effect an area…. when limiting the effect to a certain number of players/npc in the AoE the skill is no longer a true AoE. with the damage nerf to AoE such skills are highly unattractive. I suggest making AoE in gw2 “real” AoE.

It’s all about ‘balancing’ pvp. It’s always been that way. Remember all the soul-crushing nerfs that happened to GW1 so that pvp could be ‘balanced’?

the moidart.3612:

The Goat.1940:

the whole idea of area of effect is to effect an area…. when limiting the effect to a certain number of players/npc in the AoE the skill is no longer a true AoE. with the damage nerf to AoE such skills are highly unattractive. I suggest making AoE in gw2 “real” AoE.

It’s all about ‘balancing’ pvp. It’s always been that way. Remember all the soul-crushing nerfs that happened to GW1 so that pvp could be ‘balanced’?

several of the above posts provide acceptable methods of allowing true AoE. it’s doable without faking it as the current method does. do you have any suggestions for making AoE an actual AoE, as it stands the current system is not real AoE….