Guild Wars 2

I’ve been thinking about an idea for a while now to make combat in GW2 more dynamic, with an additional benefit of further differentiating AoE and single-target/cleave attacks. I thought I would present the idea here to get feedback.

The inspiration for this idea came from first-person shooters. GW2’s combat system is designed to be action-oriented and was most likely-inspired, in part, by FPS gameplay. I will talk about one aspect of FPS gameplay that could be useful if incorporated into GW2. In a FPS game, when you use an explosive weapon such as a rocket launcher or grenades, you risk harming yourself in the explosion. Consider if GW2 implemented this idea in the following way:

Your own AoE attacks affect both enemies and yourself (but not your allies).

Obviously, AoE attacks can’t affect allies, or there would be game-breaking levels of team-killing, both intentional and unintentional. But if you could be affected by your own AoEs, this would encourage situational use of AoE attacks rather than the rampant “use them for everything” response we see now. The objective of this change is to encourage selective use of AoE abilities rather than simply using them when they do more damage, for example.

Certainly, this change would require significant overhauls to skills and traits, with some of the following considerations:
1) not all AoE attacks should affect the user. For example, Guardian symbols should not harm the user and Necro marks shouldn’t be triggered by the user.
2) AoE attacks that harm the user should be rebalanced. For example, Engineer bombs would be unusable in their current state if they harmed the engineer. They may need a longer fuse and correspondingly increased damage/radius, for example, to allow the engineer to avoid their own bombs.
3) Traits can be selected to give the user partial or complete protection from their own AoEs. For example, Elementalists may find a Fire trait which makes them immune to their own fire AoEs. Rangers may find a trait which reduces the effect of their own traps on themselves.
4) Combo fields need to be considered – Blast, leap, and whirl finishers in fire and poison fields, for example, may be discouraged by this change. Because of this, skills that are important field generators likely need some inherent or optional immunity for the user (e.g. as part of the base skill or through traits)

Finally, I am addressing this idea as a primarily PvP/WvW player. Someone with more PvE experience may need to comment on the viability of this change in that environment, but it may also require changes to some PvE content.

Worst. Idea. Ever.

I used to think about how GW2 would’ve looked like if all AoEs affected both sides.

I came up with that it would be interesting enough to try out, but a completely different game.

No. For starters this screws with EVERY rune set that does a zero-point AoE effect when you get hit, and any sigils that have on-hit and on-crit damage/condition effects. It also screws with traits that provide zero-point AoE effects (the ele’s on-dodge one for example). It also completely disregards the cases where if something’s right on top of you, you cant use aoes. Nor does it bode well for classes who’s AA is an aoe attack.

Aidan Savage.2078:

No. For starters this screws with EVERY rune set that does a zero-point AoE effect when you get hit, and any sigils that have on-hit and on-crit damage/condition effects. It also screws with traits that provide zero-point AoE effects (the ele’s on-dodge one for example). It also completely disregards the cases where if something’s right on top of you, you cant use aoes. Nor does it bode well for classes who’s AA is an aoe attack.

Certainly those rune sets and sigils, for example, would need to be changed or not affect the user. The same is true for traits, like Ele’s on-dodge trait. I am not proposing that skills/traits/runes/sigils should be broken, and I am aware that balance changes needed for them, if my idea were implemented, are not trivial. However, part of my objective was to discourage using AoEs on enemies that are on top of you (except, again, those those AoEs which would decidedly not affect the user). Currently, one of Anet’s goals was to reduce AoE damage to make single-target attacks more viable. I think, however, that this would leave AoE attacks needlessly weak. The change I propose, instead, would leave them just as strong as they are now, but less spammy and more situational.

Lishtenbird.2814:

I used to think about how GW2 would’ve looked like if all AoEs affected both sides.

I came up with that it would be interesting enough to try out, but a completely different game.

Different doesn’t mean bad. :P

I brought up this idea because of an actually small set of skills that seem to be used in a way different than intended. These are long-range skills with arcing trajectories that make it difficult to hit moving targets. So, these skills often have high damage to compensate. Examples include engineer grenades, warrior longbow#3, and thief shortbow #2 and #4. What often happens is that people use these skills point-blank to get around their difficult trajectory. These skills are intended as high-risk high-reward, but when used point-blank, the risk goes away. Then the skills have to be balanced around point-blank use, which means that if someone uses them at range, they are still high-risk but without the reward. My suggestion above was meant, in part, to address this issue. But there are several options for improving it:

-increase the attack velocity and decrease the damage (I don’t like this idea because I think it’s good to have some unreliable, high-risk, high-reward attacks)
-allow the attack to damage the user and balance the skill accordingly (which discourages their use as a point-blank AoE) – this is the method I discussed above
-use a minimum range on these attacks, and again, balance accordingly (this is the simplest option, but I think a minimum range generally just ends up being frustrating to most players)

In reality, the subset of skills that may provide gameplay balance benefits by affecting the user as well as enemies may be a pretty small subset. But I do think it is a real problem that affects balance and fun, and solving this issue could be beneficial for build diversity.

Nihevil.8024:

Worst. Idea. Ever.

I agree. I can’t imagine how this would work on a staff Ele for example, it would make them worthless

fluidmonolith.3584:

Examples include engineer grenades, warrior longbow#3, and thief shortbow #2 and #4. .

Yes Warrior Longbow 3 and Thief shortbow 2 are some of the best skills used in the game to proc blast finishers…. And to stay on the subject of blast finishers, if aoe skills damage the user as well, how do you propose players use blast finishers?