Guild Wars 2

DiogoSilva.7089:

How many of you poor, saint souls have never, ever abused AoE to do dynamic events? Are you going to all tell me “oh, this idea never once crossed my mind”? No. We all abuse AoE for events. There’s no other optimal way to play them, because AoE is crazy strong. One of the ambitions behind this game is that you should play the build you want; but at the moment, for events, you either go AoE, or are at disadvantage.

How many of you have seen mobs dodging your AoEs? Probably not many, neither, especially with some good control skills. Sure, it is the fault of the enemy’s AI too, but if all enemies in pve could and would dodge, it would create the opposite effect: be extremely annoying for aoe players.

How many of you haven’t abused AoEs to clean entire capture points in pvp (and farm glory in the process)? Remember, at the smaller points, dodging and evading aoe damage is not an easy option, because it gives away the control of the point, and this might decide the outcome of the entire match. Or how many times haven’t you just spammed aoe on downed allies and anyone trying to rez them, because it’s simply easier and more effective than using the more risky finish mechanic itself? That’s cheap.

And WvW? WvW zergs are an AoE spamfest. This is a fact. None of you can argue against that. The format itself motivates that.

Matter of fact is, AoE is almost always better than single-target damage in this game. When you fight two mobs, are you going to quickly burst one so you can have some room to breath while fighting the remaining one? No, you’re going to AoE spam them, because it’s easier. Maybe if both options were equally viable strategically, but they are not.

It’s true that the devs must be very careful with how they nerf AoE, and IMO, they should find unique mechanisms that trigger at specific situations, and not simply make a straight damage nerf all across the board.

However, if any of you want “statistical proof”, just enter WvW and walk and pick a few flowers, just enter spvp and check what is happening around the points, just go take a walk in normal pve and check what is happening in dynamic events.

No one is whining? How many people have complained that some portions of GW2 are zergfests spamming aoes to each other? How many rangers, necromancers and the like have complained that aoe compeltely destroys their minions? How many melee players have complained that it’s almost impossible to melee in a slightly crowded zone because they would be AoE’d to death?

Very well said

@DiogoSilva

The issue in your argument, is that some class have VERY limited acces to single damage damage. You know why engineer use AoE to finish people? Because otherwise they woulkd be auto attacking.

“And WvW? WvW zergs are an AoE spamfest. This is a fact. None of you can argue against that. The format itself motivates that.”

If you remove AoE, it will become even more a Zerg fest. AoE Boon and buff will get stronger, as are AoE heal. People won’t fear AoE, so they will stack on each other and abuse the 5 target limit.

Zerg will be stackier, and bigger. It’s going to be a lot worse.

“No one is whining? How many people have complained that some portions of GW2 are zergfests spamming aoes to each other? "

I see a lot more complaine about Single damage burst then AoE. BS thief in WvW anyone? Each day we have a new thread about it.

I AoE in PvE not because it’s easier, but because it’s my only choice. I don’t have other dps’ing single target skills. Will I be stuck with auto attacking?

DiogoSilva.7089:

How many of you poor, saint souls have never, ever abused AoE to do dynamic events? Are you going to all tell me “oh, this idea never once crossed my mind”? No. We all abuse AoE for events. There’s no other optimal way to play them, because AoE is crazy strong. One of the ambitions behind this game is that you should play the build you want; but at the moment, for events, you either go AoE, or are at disadvantage.

How many of you have seen mobs dodging your AoEs? Probably not many, neither, especially with some good control skills. Sure, it is the fault of the enemy’s AI too, but if all enemies in pve could and would dodge, it would create the opposite effect: be extremely annoying for aoe players.

How many of you haven’t abused AoEs to clean entire capture points in pvp (and farm glory in the process)? Remember, at the smaller points, dodging and evading aoe damage is not an easy option, because it gives away the control of the point, and this might decide the outcome of the entire match. Or how many times haven’t you just spammed aoe on downed allies and anyone trying to rez them, because it’s simply easier and more effective than using the more risky finish mechanic itself? That’s cheap.

And WvW? WvW zergs are an AoE spamfest. This is a fact. None of you can argue against that. The format itself motivates that.

Matter of fact is, AoE is almost always better than single-target damage in this game. When you fight two mobs, are you going to quickly burst one so you can have some room to breath while fighting the remaining one? No, you’re going to AoE spam them, because it’s easier. Maybe if both options were equally viable strategically, but they are not.

It’s true that the devs must be very careful with how they nerf AoE, and IMO, they should find unique mechanisms that trigger at specific situations, and not simply make a straight damage nerf all across the board.

However, if any of you want “statistical proof”, just enter WvW and walk and pick a few flowers, just enter spvp and check what is happening around the points, just go take a walk in normal pve and check what is happening in dynamic events.

No one is whining? How many people have complained that some portions of GW2 are zergfests spamming aoes to each other? How many rangers, necromancers and the like have complained that aoe compeltely destroys their minions? How many melee players have complained that it’s almost impossible to melee in a slightly crowded zone because they would be AoE’d to death?

Don’t know what game you’re playing
1. Nobody complained about player done AoE, rather complained about the AoE bosses do in dungeons
2. Never used AoE for 2 mobs, because it would take me 30 seconds to kill them
3. Never spammed AoE in events because that would be uselessly slow
4. Spvp is almost AoE free
Now a question for you – how many thieves did you see running around invisible doing backstab for 14K damage? How many warriors do you see single target massacring in WvW and sPvP. Plenty of people have complained about various things in WvW, AoE was never a complaint here on the forums. So the “how many people have complained about AoE” question’s answer is pretty much zero.
Now ever heard that Engineers are “Op”? Neither do I. Do you know what they use? AoE.

How is spamming AoE in events slower than killing mobs one-by-one? There’s no incentive to kill them one-by-one. The looting doesn’t helps, neither, because spamming AoE gives you twice or more the loot too. If you focus on killing a single enemy, all other players will kill all the remaining foes, and you’ll only get loot from a single guy at a given time.

Spvp is not “almost free of AoE”. Several complains come from pvp itself: especially point capping and coordenated party rezzing. And I’m talking about tpvp, because for hot-join pvp, aoe on zergs is an excellent way to farm glory too, and it renders almost all burst builds (with the exception of mesmer’s and thief’s) useless.

It’s true that backstab thieves are unfun, but that’s a completely unrelated balance issue. Regardless of how strong or not backstab thieves are, that has absolutely nothing to do with how strong or not AoE is for several areas of the game.

As long as the AoE changes are carefully done, aoe-driven classes should not suffer from this agaisnt single-target opponents (ex. s/d or d/d eles).

Improve enemy AI…nerfing damage and making the area smaller is just lazy.

Because just the other day I was thinking “man, these Thieves and Warriors are all getting rolled by Ele’s and Engineers. I wish Anet would do something about all this uber OP AoE and help single target damage stand out more.”

These guys are getting to be even worse than Blizzard at their jobs and that is saying a lot.

First they nerfed the drop rates,
and I didn’t speak out because the graphics were amazing.

Then they nerfed the manifesto,
and I didn’t speak out because finding a group for Fractal 63 takes time.

Then they nerfed the engineer’s grenades,
and I didn’t speak out because I was rerolling a thief.

Then they nerfed the aoe,
and there was no one left to play their game.

I will not take part in a game where balance is attempted through a culture of continual nerfs. Nerfs are the lowest form of a fix available. Nerfs should be the last ditch effort, not the first go-to quick fix. I have walked away from other games which took this route and shall again. I’d hate to, as there are many exceptional qualities of this game, but I will not have my characters feel less powerful over time. That is backward.

Build up. Don’t tear down.

Substance E.4852:

Because just the other day I was thinking “man, these Thieves and Warriors are all getting rolled by Ele’s and Engineers. I wish Anet would do something about all this uber OP AoE and help single target damage stand out more.”

These guys are getting to be even worse than Blizzard at their jobs and that is saying a lot.

1) Elementalists are stronger than Warriors in this game 1vs1, at least in spvp. Warriors rely on allies to be good, because they’re predictable to dodge/ counter and have weak means to take care of themselves.
2) The popular HB Warrior build is AoE, so it should get affected by the changes too.
3) Engineer’s weakness has nothing to do with AoE, because elementalists are extremely strong and they are aoe-driven too. Hundred Blades is extremely strong, and it’s AoE. Mind Wrack is extremely strong, and it’s AoE.
4) And just because two classes have overpowered burst damage, that does not means that AoE is never overpowered in several areas of the game neither.

Build up. Don’t tear down.

Over-reliance on buffing creates more problems than nerfing.

I think it’s obvious people are gaming AoEs in WvW by working together and coordinating attacks.

Obviously what we need to do is not nerf AoEs but instead nerf programs like Ventrilo, Mumble, and TeamSpeak.

So far I have tried 4 different professions: warrior, thief, mesmer and ele.
And I certainly don’t think AoE skills are overpowered nor need to be nerfed.

AoE skills are certainly not in general better than single target skill.
Single target skills deal significantly greater DPS and are much more effective in boss fight and that’s why dungeon groups always want warriors.
Whereas powerful AoE skills such as meteor shower often need long charging time and this already poses a large constraint on the usage of powerful large area AoE.
Not to mention in order to have decent damage for my AoE, my ele have to be a glass cannon and can get killed easily.If you see eles spamming AoE on the wall in WvW, you can pull him down and kill him pretty easily.
So I don’t see why AoE skills are overpowered nor in general better than single-targeted skills.

By the way, the argument that something needs to be nerfed because many people spam it is ridiculous.
Eles spams AoE simply because we almost only have AoE and it is the feature of eles, just like stealth for thieves and portal,time warp for mesmers. (And ppl spamming AoE could be an illusion simply because they are more obvious than other skills) If you nerf something simply because many people use it, you will end up with nerfing everything and making all profession boring and dull.

Finally a simple suggestion that could make everyone happy:
improve other builds instead of nerfing current good builds

@DiogoSilva

What we have in TPvP:

Burst Thief : Single Target
HB warrior : Main dps is from Single target, not AoE.
Guardian bunker : They aren’t about damage.
DD SD Elem : AoE. But most people agree that there power can from having acces to everything (CC,Heal, Condition removal, Mobility, boons) then the Damage.
Necro : This one is AoE damage.
Trap Ranger : Aoe Damage, mostly for CC.
Mesmer : The AoE is really small, their damage is mostly hiting one player. Anyway, they are there because htye are efficient, but mostly because of portal. Nothing to do with AoE.
Engineer : Not much representation.

I don’t see how it makes AoE class OP? More than half the classes don’t rely on AoE to be efficient in TPvP. One of the most AoE centric class (Engineer) are nearly missing from tournament.

You know why AoE is efficient in DE and WvW? Because AoE are, by logic, better in mass fights. WvW is mass vs mass, DE is full of wave of mobs. That’s the perfect situation for AoE to be effective. That’s how AoE are supose to be used. If you nerf them for WvW, you nerf them even more in small scale fights.

I don’t feel like AoE in general is overpowered at all, I was quite surprised that this was even an issue. Sure some AoE skills are too strong, but AoE skills are also suppose to be strong. I think it makes more sense to just plain out remove the AoE effect from some skills, instead of taking down AoE damage across the board. Because it sounds like the real problem is that some professions simply have too many AoE skills. I know that when playing Ranger and Mesmer, I feel like my AoE skills and their damage are very important, as they are now. But I think an Elementalist feels quite the opposite about AoE skills, because they just have more of them. So they have no reason to saviour them for the right moment.

DiogoSilva.7089:

The only reason why (HB) Warrior is so strong, is because of the AI. Hundred Blades and other oftheir burst skills was meant to be easily dodged/ blocked, something that pve enemies can’t do. A Warrior is not even a top tier profession in pvp.

And yes, AoE is a problem. For events, AoE builds are much better at farming than other builds, regardless of the players’ skill level, which is unfair. For pvp, AoE spamming is very stronger against a coordinated team trying to rez their ally and against players defending points, weakening both strategies and making the format slightly more 2-dimensional. In WvW, there’s nothing to say: it’s an AoE fest by nature.

Maybe some of you never thought of this before, while you have been abusing AoE in this game, but just because you got used to it, does not means it was meant this way. That being said, I hope they nerf AoE VERY carefully. I want them to nerf AoE, but noone surely wants them to nerf entire builds, weapon sets or even entire professions because of that.

Okay, so you say that AoE is over powered in PvE situations but it’s something that’s available to everyone. Each classs has a forte or an advantage over the other, in my experience they fairly balanced with the exception of the thief (almost garuanteeing a kill in WvW situations) but I don’t think they have AoE’s. I play as a ranger and I only have one real AoE to use which is Barrage. Nerfing that would make the Ranger class useless when it comes to AoE, but you did say carefully nerf. I’m assuming what you mean by this is nerfing the classes that use AoE more than others or have a better arsenal of AoE’s like the Ele. Ele’s have some nice AoE’s but I’ve never had an issue with them. In fact, I play the smart player and as gamers you should all be aware that the first person to take out is the squishy player which in this case is the Ele. So, i’m assuming to get around this squishiness Ele’s have damage output which makes sense but again as a ranger I can pick that Ele off, so ele’s don’t do so well against Rangers. So does that means rangers should be nerfed, I don’t think so. Again, from what I’ve seen it’s balanced. An ele’s AoE is great against a a mesmer who is dropping illusions and phantasms left and right but the ele or even an engineer doesn’t have a hard time damaging that mesmer because of their AoE. As for necros, they have marks and very short AoE’s so I don’t see a point in changing that at all, and I’m sure others can agree that Necro’s aren’t a threat when it comes to AoE’s, just try to avoid the marks. If AoE’s were nerfed on a massive scale Ele’s and Necro’s would pretty useless in my opinion. N one has any complaints about the Warrior class since they only really have 2 AoE skills I believe but if nerfed they’d become useless as well. Again though, when it comes to PvE I still think it’s fairly balanced.
As for downed players, it’s part of the game. I’ve been able to revive players in the middle of battle and there have been times that I haven’t, but why should someone be able to revive someone in the middle of battle? It sounds as if you’d like to have a never ending battle because you’d like people to constantly be able to bring back their dead in the middle of a fight which would make the fight pointless. Also there are ways around that, mesmers and thieves do it best, they stealth and revive players all the time. But I don’t think that stealth should be allowed while their finishing off a player, that’s definitely unfair because it doesn’t allow that downed player the chance to truely fight for their lives or others to help. I’ve been multiple situations where i 1v1 a thief but usually the thief wins, but usually it’s because he stealths and finishes me off but before he does this he’s usually at quarter health or less. How can one fight for their lives if the thief is stealthed while he’s finishing you off? But that’s for another topic. All in all, I don’t see the need to ruin AoE’s.

Players that have put so much time into developing their characters such as Necro and Ele might feel pushed away from the game as they would be forced to change their playstyle or their character would not be viable any longer from such a nerf. How do they expect to make each class have “5 or 6 viable builds” if they’re nerfing so much of their abilities? If a player hasn’t learned how to play their class well and just complains of other class’ attacks without truly knowing how to deal with them get catered to, how are the other players going to feel, especially with all the time and effort they put in to learning their class and developing their character? This will force players to change their builds, have to buy new gear etc. What if it changes the enjoyment of the class for that player? Then they would feel as though they wasted their time? Will it push many players away from the game? AoEs are a part of many games and weakening that might result in the game not feeling as satisfying to play for many people. It’s something to be viewed from both sides and considered carefully. All in all I think the real problem isn’t AoE but the effort the players make to utilize their abilities to their full potential, whether it be escaping or countering AoEs, targeting the caster etc. Some people spam auto-attack and think that will get them through the game— these might be the same people complaining about AoE or classes actually utilizing their utilities to get them through situations. Some people don’t dodge. Etc. It’s not a problem of AoE.

it IS. AOE is an ACTUAL problem. aoe rules conquest s/tpvp, and makes certain wvw encounters trivial. too much aoe damage is actually the reason for 3 of the most OP and cheesy specs in the game, well necro, shatter mes and d/d ele.

aoe also trivializes open world PVE encounters. remember mob tagging? yeah, that mess. they said theyd fix it months ago.

It sounds like you don’t understand the mechanics of the game. Many people will agree that necros are hardly a threat when it comes to AoE, they’re more of a support. A shatterer mesmer can be easily avoided if you stay AWAY from their phantasm/illusions and as a ranger I don’t have problems with ele’s. This goes back to people not knowing how classes work, how their own classes work and that other classes balance other classes. An ele would do well against a mesmer, rangers kill ele’s, and a think a thief wouldn’t have too much of a hard time taking out a necro, or a guardian taking out a necro. I’m sure there’ s aclass that doesn’ t have a hard time with necros, I know as a ranger i don’t.

They nerfed aoe with the five person limit. I think the only other aoe nerf that should happen is to make them work along the same lines in the since of over all range.
For example being on the third floor of the keep with an ele and being able to aoe the ground floor. Where as a ranger’s aoe will not fire to the first floor and necro’s can not drop wells on the 1st floor from the 3rd floor. But to nerf the aoe damage is kind of sad considering there is a price for that damage our single target damage is less than other classes.

Raylina.7538:

They nerfed aoe with the five person limit. I think the only other aoe nerf that should happen is to make them work along the same lines in the since of over all range.
For example being on the third floor of the keep with an ele and being able to aoe the ground floor. Where as a ranger’s aoe will not fire to the first floor and necro’s can not drop wells on the 1st floor from the 3rd floor. But to nerf the aoe damage is kind of sad considering there is a price for that damage our single target damage is less than other classes.

An ele is pretty useless aoeing the ground floor from up there. You can aoe exactly below you and no one goes there while you are doing it. And it only covers a small part of the middle of the floor in Garrision

Just as some people mentioned. It makes no sense because its a counter-measure to farming. Protip: if a nerf or change doesn’t make sense: the gem store probably has something to do with it. It’s unfortunate that a lot of people just write it off as “lol tighten up that tin foil hat xD” which allows them to get away with this sort of thing.

Since this game has released they have constantly be tweaking and tuning (nerfing) viable methods of obtaining decent amounts of gold in game to shoehorn people into the gem store. If you’re on a dead server you might have trouble seeing this but on populated servers, you can go to the cursed shore (or other DE chains) and mow down hordes upon hordes upon hordes of enemies and run around sweeping up the loot. Just an hour of farming the tunnel events with the occasional planx you can make upwards of about 5-10 gold depending on drops and that’s not counting magic find and if you sell EVERYTHING. What makes this possible? AoE. The horde comes, people rip their AoE’s and its dead, so they are working hard at a fix for that, just like they will “fix” other methods of obtaining more gold than they want you to have in the future.

DiogoSilva.7089:

How is spamming AoE in events slower than killing mobs one-by-one? There’s no incentive to kill them one-by-one. The looting doesn’t helps, neither, because spamming AoE gives you twice or more the loot too. If you focus on killing a single enemy, all other players will kill all the remaining foes, and you’ll only get loot from a single guy at a given time.

Spvp is not “almost free of AoE”. Several complains come from pvp itself: especially point capping and coordenated party rezzing. And I’m talking about tpvp, because for hot-join pvp, aoe on zergs is an excellent way to farm glory too, and it renders almost all burst builds (with the exception of mesmer’s and thief’s) useless.

It’s true that backstab thieves are unfun, but that’s a completely unrelated balance issue. Regardless of how strong or not backstab thieves are, that has absolutely nothing to do with how strong or not AoE is for several areas of the game.

As long as the AoE changes are carefully done, aoe-driven classes should not suffer from this agaisnt single-target opponents (ex. s/d or d/d eles).

you do about 1/25th of all the enemies health if you do an AoE. Spam AoE’s and if enemies won’t move (which they will) it will take you close to a minute to kill them. You get a hit on all of them, but it won’t help with killing them. Go talk with Engies in levels 50 to 60. I had an engineer ask is it normal to take 10 minutes to kill a regular mob. Zerging is zerging. It is not bad because of AoE, but because it’s zerging. Take 5 thieves and force them to backstab a team. Bam, everyone dead. Because it’s a zerg. You know what counters thieves? AoE. Because it’s the only way to actually attack them…

AOE always struck me as being UNDERpowered in GW2. Certainly not OVERpowered. shrug

This is kitten nosense, AoEs (at least for elementalists) have something called RECHARGE, it’s going to be pointless using AoEs, they nerfed to the ground staff eles, kitten

Valento.9852:

This is kitten nosense, AoEs (at least for elementalists) have something called RECHARGE, it’s going to be pointless using AoEs, they nerfed to the ground staff eles, kitten

Worse than that, as a guardian I’ve stood directly under a meteor shower in WvW several times, for its entire length, and only been knocked down 3-4k health. Those things only hurt if they HIT you, and even then they don’t hurt that bad.

Nerfing AoE makes no sense to me. I hope they don’t do it because I think it will hurt the game.

Hickeroar.9734:

Valento.9852:

This is kitten nosense, AoEs (at least for elementalists) have something called RECHARGE, it’s going to be pointless using AoEs, they nerfed to the ground staff eles, kitten

Worse than that, as a guardian I’ve stood directly under a meteor shower in WvW several times, for its entire length, and only been knocked down 3-4k health. Those things only hurt if they HIT you, and even then they don’t hurt that bad.

That’s another point, too, who is kitten enough to take a meteor shower?
I am going to tell my friends there is no such “aoe class” anymore, they can head back to TERA, may I follow them soon after.

@Edit
Just to add, it does not matter how I position my meteor, it rarely hits people, only siege, because they are often smart enough not to take a heavy damage on the head; remember this nerf will affect healing rain too, I rolled an ele because I chose AoE to be my gameplay, now I’m forced into a 1vs1 class again.

Sigh…

The devs minds are made up. Whatever changes they alluded too are happening. No amount of reasoning, logic, anger, questioning, flailing or arguing will stop it.

Similar to the ascended gear situation this thread won’t get any response or explanation until long after the changes are in game. Then through some PR magic or AMA they’ll say ‘sorry, we knew players wouldn’t like the change but we did it anyway and we’re sorry. We’ll try harder next time’

AoE’s will be nerfed in some unknown form or fashion. If you don’t agree your only option will be to not play or at the very least, certainly, don’t buy gems.

Swagger.1459:

gains from aoe farming is probably one of the main reasons as well.

I’d like to point out that nerfing the skills won’t change farming scene at all. No one farms on their own. It’s not the individual AoEs that kill. It’s the swarm of players.

They could make AoEs do 10% of the damage they do now and people would still use them while farming because it does not matter how much damage you do as long as you do enough damage to “tag” foes. Of course no one would use them outside farming then.

For example I farm with my necro in the usual farming spot which is the penitent path DE farming. I can tag all groups with my AoEs even though I don’t provide majority of the damage. I don’t even care. I do just enough to tag the first group and then tag the next one.

The damage of combined players is what melts the enemy. Not a single player.

Also for the record: I don’t play my necro anymore outside of farming. Their damage just sucks compared to pretty much any other profession. Similarly I no longer play my ele outside the shatterer event (I’ve parked one level 80 on every dragon spawn point) because they are way too squishy and pushing out the same damage than for example my guardian or mesmer requires much more effort and is much more dangerous than with my Mesmer or Guardian. Mesmer is the prof I play most.

AoE is not a problem in the game. Usually, when game companies want to tweak the game, for whatever reason, they will deflect the criticism by saying that players have asked for it. In our case, players have complained about AoE to some extent. I hate “When are they going to nerf X class” threads. Sadly, game companies seem to fancy them.

A previous post suggested that AoE is unfair because it makes for better farming. Guess what, predominantly AoE builds have historically always been better at farming than single target. These are simply the trade-offs you balance in choosing your profession and build. They all should have distinctive strengths and weaknesses. I have 6 level 80’s and a mix of both. There is no jealousy among my characters. (Well, my engineer actually lusts after my warrior’s rifle, but that’s another thread.)

I think part of the agenda is to nerf the d/d ele as they’ve said it’s on their ‘watchlist’. The last place I would want to be would be a game companies watch list. d/d eles, prepare to be nerfed. And, don’t be surprised if mobility is in the mix.

While peaks and valleys need to be addressed, nerfing is probably the least creative method to bring balance to the game. Sadly, as the crude hammer is readily available, it’s what we usually see.

I’m also going to copy paste following statements:

If your skil does 10 damage to a single target, if you have another skill that have the same opportunity cost but deals 8 damage to 5 targets, the AoE skill is better – we don’t want you to use AoE skills on single target mobs.

I don’t know which skill they are referring to but I sure as hell don’t have any skills that do that. All highly damaging AoE skills have something to counterbalance them: they are either slower to cast (nearly all elementalist AoEs), have significantly lower damage (all necro AoEs) or generally have difficulties hitting single foes (meteor shower).

Also if they don’t want us to use AoEs against single targets they are basically saying that they don’t want us to use certain weapons at all.

I really dropped WvW because of all the thieves but last time I checked that was pretty much the only PvP related place where you would see staff necros and eles. No one really does team or mostly single target PvP with a staff ele or necro to my knowledge, and that’s because people know AoEs are significantly weaker vs single target. Especially against target who knows how to dodge.

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.

Again this feels like a weird statement. Current enemy design in dungeons seems to favor foes that either:

a) spawn in swarms until you destroy the thing that spawns them in which case yes. I want AoEs to damage the swarm while simultaneously damaging the spawner. I thought this was exactly what AoEs are for. Why do a swarm encounter if you expect us to fight them one at a time?

b) trash mobs that have ungodly amount of hp so in fact abilities that allow you to do more damage certainly won’t hurt. I have never heard anyone complaining that for example staff ele is too powerful in a dungeon as opposed to for example a thief.

What exactly do they want? We already skip all mobs we can. Forcing us to fight every trash mob one by one certainly won’t make at least me want to fight them any more than now. I mean stating “now if you have a lot of AoE you can past encounters by just spamming AoE” is not true in my experience. That’s now how you get past them. You get past them by stealthing…

When playing ele I use staff when in teams because I know I’m squishy and fighting from range is much safer than showing your squishy self against massively damaging enemies in melee. 14k hp and enemy that does 8k hp damage with a few hits certainly does not encourage me to be in melee. I never D/D dungeons because it’s a suicide.

@Nerva

Nothing personal, but I have seen you post and post and post about nerfing everything excedpt your Ranger. You even said in one post that you thought AoE were ok other then Elem and Mesmer. Now you say it’s an issue.

Your crusade are again Mesmer and Elem DD, please don’t push this nerf as it will only make thief better, and nerf engineer.

DD Elem aren’t OP because of their damage. They take quit some time to kill someone. They are strong because they have acces to everything on the same build. Nothing to do with AoE damage.

I still don’t get why they think AoE is a problem. Its fine just the way it is. If they think single target skills (at least weapons anyways) are weak, make them like other weapons and hit multiple (i.e. swords = 3) people. If its that much of a problem in sPvP, split the skills, like they did in GW1. We PvE players should not have to be nerfed because of PvP players, and vice versa. They keep making these weird decisions…

Gaudrath.6725:

1. NOTHING deters zergs. People like to zerg. The only way to prevent the zerg from forming is to give each player an indiscriminate damage aura so that they kill anyone coming too close to them.
And even then you’ll just end up with a lower density zerg. We humans like to do it and have been doing it ever since one tribe of smart monkeys zerged another.

Nature teaches us that safety in numbers is an illusion. War teaches us that big explosions decimate packed infantry.

Gaudrath.6725:

2. I have seen videos of ele teams absolutely melting entire groups of people with Flash + Dagger Earth #5 synced up. I have seen concentrated AoE used as killing fields when defending gates…

Assaulting a fortification is dangerous business, bro.

Gaudrath.6725:

…or when enemy players are ressing mates,…

Is there some in-game Code of Military Conduct stating we can’t target combat medics?

Gaudrath.6725:

…making it impossible for players to actually do anything about it.

If you’re ever in a WvW situation where you find it impossible to do whatever it is you want to do because of your opponent’s actions then you’ve either been outplayed or you’re trying to force your will upon a foe who has superior strength.

Gaudrath.6725:

Good luck dodging when your actual goal is in the killing field and you don’t have invuln. skills to rely on.

You don’t need to dodge if you stay out of the killing field.

Gaudrath.6725:

Just because YOU don’t have any bad experiences with AoE, doesn’t mean anything.

Just because YOU don’t have any good counters to AoE, doesn’t mean anything.

Gaudrath.6725:

Statistics say otherwise.

Statistics? What statistics? Link please.

Gaudrath.6725:

And also, AoE requires far less skill and player coordination than single target skills.

And also, AoE requires far less skill to dodge than single target skills. That big red circle around your character? That’s a warning that an AoE attack is imminent. Dodge. Pretty simple, huh?

Gaudrath.6725:

AoE is a shotgun. Just point in the general direction and squeeze the trigger. You’ll hit someone. You don’t have to think about who you are attacking, who is the greatest priority… just drop an AoE on them all and pray for the best.

AoE is a grenade with LED lights and a very long delay before the blast. Anyone you hit was either too stupid to avoid the blast or was the victim of your skillful play.

Gaudrath.6725:

Obviously ANet doesn’t want a “spray and pray” game. The only dumb thing on their part is why they designed so many classes to use nothing BUT AoE.

So now players coordinating AoE attacks is “spray and pray”? You’re reaching.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Just wanted to let you guys know that we’re reading this thread.

Your logic, reasons, anecdotes and ideas are being listened to. Also keep in mind, that as I said yesterday, a skill can be a balance problem in one area of the game, but underpowered in another. That’s the nature of using one set of #‘s to balance across all areas of the game. So we’re keeping that in mind as we look at this. We may need to do different tweaks in different areas of the game.

We’re also not going to make a knee jerk reaction to this. We’re still gathering data, watching player trends, and having meetings on all possible ramifications from possible changes.

thank you for the answer, it calmed me down. If you think there’s a problem with AoE in WvW, nerf it in WvW, but not PVE, because nerfing AoE in PVE when some classes already have problems would effectively kill off engineers and staff builds of mesmer, elementalist and necromancer.

DiogoSilva.7089:

How many of you poor, saint souls have never, ever abused AoE to do dynamic events? Are you going to all tell me “oh, this idea never once crossed my mind”? No. We all abuse AoE for events. There’s no other optimal way to play them, because AoE is crazy strong. One of the ambitions behind this game is that you should play the build you want; but at the moment, for events, you either go AoE, or are at disadvantage.

How many of you have seen mobs dodging your AoEs? Probably not many, neither, especially with some good control skills. Sure, it is the fault of the enemy’s AI too, but if all enemies in pve could and would dodge, it would create the opposite effect: be extremely annoying for aoe players.

ABUSED aoe in events?! What?! That’s the entire bloody point of AOE skills in the first place! To hit everything in an area! How the heck can that be considered abusing the skills?

You know what, you’re right. Anyone that sees 20 mobs all grouped together at an event who casts an AOE is a cheating kitten that is gaming the system! Any real player would see 20 enemies all grouped up and say: I’m going to attack one at a time!

Just because you don’t understand the entire point of AOE skills, doesn’t mean that the people using them are abusing anything. And, you must be playing a completely different game than I if you really think people AOE against as little as 2 enemies. In dungeons, each add gets beat down separately for the most part because they simply do too much damage when all up together. Not only that, but all my thief really has for AOE is shortbow. I’m much better off going into single-target focused attacks.

But let’s look outside of dungeons. How about solo open-world play. Am I AOEing down 2 enemies at a time? Not unless the skills I’m using to fight one simply happen to also hit a second enemy at the same time. Why? Because unless I’m over-leveled, fighting more than one enemy at a time is very dangerous for some classes. And if I pull more than one at a time, I’ll focus one down before I focus the next. Why? Because I need to decrease the amount of damage I’m taking pronto.

And are NPCs dodging AOE? Not really…but they do tend to wander right out of it a heck of a lot more than they do direct damage. In fact, they don’t dodge direct damage at all really. So…not really sure what this point of yours in your crusade against AOE is.

I didn’t include the PvP or WvW because I frankly don’t care. Both are a tedious mess and waste of time currently. But, in both cases, if you have a mass group of enemies in front of you, you’d be an IDIOT not to use your area of effect skills. If it’s abusing the system to use them, then why even have them in the game at all?

DiogoSilva.7089:

How many of you poor, saint souls have never, ever abused AoE to do dynamic events? Are you going to all tell me “oh, this idea never once crossed my mind”? No. We all abuse AoE for events. There’s no other optimal way to play them, because AoE is crazy strong. One of the ambitions behind this game is that you should play the build you want; but at the moment, for events, you either go AoE, or are at disadvantage.

This is because if you don’t use AoE for some dynamic events, you get your face eaten off.

I rarely if ever play single-target damage heavy builds because PvE seems designed to put a person playing alone at a disadvantage. If you focus damage on one enemy at a time and are attacked by 2-3 enemies (very common in PvE and especially in events), you will likely be downed or have to run away before they’re all killed. This is why everyone “abuses” AoE, it allows them to mitigate the horrible death they would experience otherwise.

If this is countered solely by nerfing AoE, it’s only going to make the game harder to do without groups. And I don’t know about everyone else, but it seems when I’m playing, groups are incredibly hard to come by for random area PvE content.

And for people using AoE skills on single enemies, if that’s what’s on my skill bar that’s not currently in cooldown, of course I’m going to use it. If I have enemies ready to bash my face in, I’d rather hurt them than sit around waiting for a single-target skill to be ready.

AoE type builds generally take less skill to play, I think this change will help PvP immensely. People need to overcome and adapt rather than wish for things not to change.

Also another thing I wrote: If there are nerfs to ranged AoEs there also needs to be nerfs to melee AoEs. This includes the basic attacks for all melee professions!

Has anyone considered that in current implementation basic melee attacks for guardians, warriors, and rangers (probably thieves too) actually hit up to three targets. Most ranged basic attacks do not. For example necro axe, dagger, and scepter are all single target. Actually so is elementalist scepter and even some of the elementalist staff attacks.

If AoE damage is nerfed significantly but basic attack damage or maximum limit is not then melee professions become the best both in single target AND AoE damage. If that’s the case then congratulations for making melee professions even more powerful.

This may not be an issue in PvP because ranged professions are going to stay in range if they can. However it will certainly screw up PvE balance in a major way.

Maoric.6132:

This is because if you don’t use AoE for some dynamic events, you get your face eaten off.

Perhaps if we politely ask the waves and waves of enemies who want nothing more than to kill us to form a single file line and fight us one at a time the nerf to AoE won’t be so bad?

SneakyLemon.8461:

AoE type builds generally take less skill to play, I think this change will help PvP immensely. People need to overcome and adapt rather than wish for things not to change.

Adapt me an engineer build that uses no AoE, but survives. 90% of engineer skills available are solely AoE. Engineers can’t put out strong dps, but do conditions well and are able to do tank builds. AoE is what puts conditions though.
Also if to nerf AoE, then why not to take it out all together? That way weapons such as staff would still have a use for elementalist, necromancer and mesmer. Now it’s pretty weak and with an extra nerf 4/5 skills would be unusable, meaning that those classes could use 1 weapon less.

SneakyLemon.8461:

AoE type builds generally take less skill to play, I think this change will help PvP immensely. People need to overcome and adapt rather than wish for things not to change.

AoE type attacks generally take less skill to avoid, I think this change will help bad players immensely. People need to overcome and adapt rather than wish for things to change.

I have not read this whole thread so correct me if i’m wrong.
no one knows the exact changes to AoE being made, yet everyone is acting like these skills will be next to useless.
wait till more information comes out about it to make a final decision, until then, theorycraft and think of other builds for your class that rely less on AoE skills.

also

SneakyLemon.8461:

SneakyLemon.8461:

AoE type builds generally take less skill to play, I think this change will help PvP immensely. People need to overcome and adapt rather than wish for things not to change.

AoE type attacks generally take less skill to avoid, I think this change will help bad players immensely. People need to overcome and adapt rather than wish for things to change.

if AoE is easier to avoid, and they are nerfing AoE, then that would mean more single target attacks happening which are harder to avoid.

this helps bad players how?

Draemos.8045:

It’s not enough problem that they should be focusing on it , they are playing with fire as some of their class designs are almost entirely AoE centric and have really poor single target options; and they are liable to make a lot of folks extremely upset.

I know a more important aspect to much of the community is actually overbearing single target burst damage, (aka thiefs). I don’t quite get how Anet has keyed in on AoE as being a bigger problem when almost nobody actually complains about it.

It just doesn’t seem like a smart change to me. I don’t see very many people coming away from that update without having a really bad taste in their mouth.

This in particular makes sense to me. While the statistics may say something else I guess the real question here is GW2 only an e-sport?

For the average PvE and WvW player it’s not an issue, at all.

Meanwhile we see thread after thread after thread of rendering issues and the thief stealth ability around it it.

Rendering issues should have been solved months ago. Instead we’re here talking about nerfing AoE…….

As I prefer the Engineer Profession, this annoucement has me really concerned.
Practically all abilites for the Engineer have some form of AoE. GTAoE, PBAoE, Bounce, Cone, Piercing.
If AoE as a whole is nerfed, my favorite Profession (which already feels a tad underpowered) may become too… eh.
The Engineer is already paying for its “Versitility.” Yet, even if I wanted to use a Single Target attack, I’m limited to Tool Kit (Melee Kit, which has a PBAoE), Elixer Gun Kit(Support Kit, which has a Cone), or Rifle(Which also has Piercing, a Cone, and GT/PBAoE).

Gah! Even the Traits are geared towards making the Engineer AoE’s bigger, more powerful, and supporting.

I don’t know. Will nerfing AoE have a good result on PvE? Doubtful, as it will require some major reworking of zones/encounters. Will nerfing AoE have a good result on WvWvW? Doubtful, as it will still be a zerg-fest. Safety in numbers is tried and true. Will nerfing AoE have a good result on Dungeons? Don’t know, as I don’t run them much. Will nerfing AoE have a good result on PvP? Don’t know, as I don’t PvP.

What I do know, is that they stated they want all the Professions to have “Multiple, Viable Builds.”
When they implement these builds, I’d appreciate it, if they’d list them in detail.
At least then, I’d be able to understand how they want us to play.

I thought I understood the “Big Picture,” but the past few changes, and this annoucement, have got me questioning, if I really understood it at all.

SneakyLemon.8461:

I have not read this whole thread so correct me if i’m wrong.
no one knows the exact changes to AoE being made, yet everyone is acting like these skills will be next to useless.
wait till more information comes out about it to make a final decision, until then, theorycraft and think of other builds for your class that rely less on AoE skills.

Alternatively: voice opinions and concerns over a sweeping, vast reaching change to an entire class of skills to hopefully prevent these skills from becoming next to useless.

I have to ask this, does melee weapon set considered AoE then? For example War GS.
The discussion also mentioned about dynamic events AoE spam fest and I have seen War GS to be very effective in decimating clustered enemies.

In fact, I believe most melee weapon would hit both resurrector and the ressed. So I don’t see why it became an issue. (Hitting downed player with AoE)

I have a lot of “kills” in my WvW achievement tab, but for every 200 kills, I have less than 20 badges. Necro AOE is not the quick way to fame and fortune, I can tell you. It helps my team out, because I can target healing and condition removal and fields where it’s needed, but I don’t push out nearly enough damage to be a threat to anyone who’s not an idiot that stands in the circle.

The whole point of cloth wearing caster classes is that they ARE not up-close, face-rolling, melee classes. Taking AOE from casters would be like telling warriors they could only equip wooden spoons, and that their primary shout would now scold their opponents. It’s absurd.

That said; that comment in the livestream has started to set off a firestorm; and were I in charge of Anet’s messaging, I would get someone out in front of this before it causes players to just move on to the next thing, rather than waiting for the nerf bat. From a public relations standpoint; that was a singularly stupid thing to say if they weren’t going to have specifics to hand to the community to keep the rage and panic at bay.

Why AOE should not be nerfed:
in WvW:
being able to hit huge zergs with some decent damage: if there isn’t enough damage, the zerg can outheal/outprotect each other = boring fights

also you have to be more carefull not to stand in bottlenecks to much = more
dynamic gameplay

in PVE: i do not see the problem at all in PVE, what are they even talking about, some classes use single target dps and have high spike damage. other classes or builds focus more on AOE,it is fine

in sPvP: AOE is just fine in PvP, i like that you have to watch out for it, again more dynamic teamplay, also rezzing SHOULD be risky, if you want ur mate to live, deal with the AOE, pop some protection and stability and rez. I also like that you can punish players for making a real solid block together, with decent hitting aoe you can disperse them, even in paid tournaments that is a good thing.

ALso AOE is balanced in itself because it has longer cd’s and casting times.

ANd yes you can use AOE on a single target but it is all about positioning, if u hit multiple targets you get rewarded, if not u do pretty low dmg overall, don,ttell me you can do high damage with any aoe on a single target, not as high as a warrior or thief

Very VERY few people were complaining about high AOE dmg because 1 it is how it should be, AOE should be doing decent damage

Focus on getting the BUGS out first that should be your top priority, don’t fix what 99 prcent of the gw2 players have no trouble with. the same amount of players do however have a problem with bugs

The proposed nerf to AoE abilities makes absolutely no sense from a PvP/WvW balance standpoint. It makes you wonder if they really know what’s going on. As outlined in the video, it will render certain builds and playstyle no longer viable, staff elementalist among them. Don’t do it.

elementalist is like all aoe skills they will get hit hard by the nerf bat