Guild Wars 2

If they want to claim that this nerf is to help balance WvW, I can think of at least five FAR more imbalanced issues that they need to address before AoE.

1) Spike damage from thieves, capable of killing foes in a single hit.
2) Numerous glitches that allow enemies to get into a keep or garrison through the walls.
3) Portal bombing from mesmers, allowing players to drop 30+ enemies anywhere they want.
4) Players using various abilities or invulnerability effects while “finishing” opponents, preventing any chance of retaliation or recovery (things like Stealth, Elixir S, Mist Forn, Obsidian Flesh, etc).
5) The invulnerability buff that protects spawn points extends too far out from the actual spawn point. Because of this, players can abuse this glitch to kill players who are just wandering by, which isn’t fair.

And that’s without even having culling on the list (only because they’ve already said they intend to address culling). Heck, fix those five things, and add an option in the “Report Player” menu for “abusing exploits”, and most of WvW’s biggest problems are instantly gone.

I don’t wanna hear how AoE is ruining the game when there’s so many other areas for them to fix first that actually DO ruin the game.

plasmacutter.2709:

killcannon.2576:

Palador.2170:

killcannon.2576:

Should engies then have portals?

Actually….yeah. On this ONE, I would have to say “yes”. Engineers should have some kind of portal-like ability. Maybe a “blast catapult” or something.

There’s at least two places in-game where NPC engineers can launch your character. One in Lion’s Arch (to reach a vista), and the catapult/cowtapult. Giving engineers a portal-ish ability with different mechanics to it would be a great improvement.

Just don’t make it a kit that equips you with a white, gun-like device that you use to generate the portals. It would be fun, but Valve might sue.

You can buy the portal gun from a NPC, and I have no clue how to make the cattlepault small and mobile.

please keep things on topic, this is a topic on AOE.

I’m sorry if you didn’t or decided not to read where those posts came from. Those posts came from an on topic discussion. Please let the mods do their job, if you feel the need to do something akin to their jobs, have a child.

So are Sigils of Fire going to be nerfed?

Any idea when changes will be made(if any are)?

Energumenus.5319:

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.

And the US government was behind 9/11
And the the moon landing was fake
And the immigrants are all here to take over the country
And my wife is cheating with someone behind my back
And

critickitten.1498:

If they want to claim that this nerf is to help balance WvW, I can think of at least five FAR more imbalanced issues that they need to address before AoE.

1) Spike damage from thieves, capable of killing foes in a single hit.
2) Numerous glitches that allow enemies to get into a keep or garrison through the walls.
3) Portal bombing from mesmers, allowing players to drop 30+ enemies anywhere they want.
4) Players using various abilities or invulnerability effects while “finishing” opponents, preventing any chance of retaliation or recovery (things like Stealth, Elixir S, Mist Forn, Obsidian Flesh, etc).
5) The invulnerability buff that protects spawn points extends too far out from the actual spawn point. Because of this, players can abuse this glitch to kill players who are just wandering by, which isn’t fair.

And that’s without even having culling on the list (only because they’ve already said they intend to address culling). Heck, fix those five things, and add an option in the “Report Player” menu for “abusing exploits”, and most of WvW’s biggest problems are instantly gone.

I don’t wanna hear how AoE is ruining the game when there’s so many other areas for them to fix first that actually DO ruin the game.

Totally agree on this, probably the developer is just trying to dodge these issue by making up an issue that is easier to change to show progress. Many selfish reasons are suddenly appearing to support it. As an ele player i dont mind, i’ll just wait and see what is the changes, if the changes reduced the ele to nothing then and i get bored i’ll just stop playing.

FWB.1704:

AoE is neccessary in the core gameplay simply becuase the game revovles around faster paced combat with multiple mobs. How many times in Orr or Dungeons have you ever fought with just 1 mob at a time? AoE is neccessary becuase you’re usually fighting 2+ guys at the same time in PvE. If you lower that, fights will take longer (forcing you to use more auto attacks, unless they decrases the CD on weapon skills to compensate) and players will die more, especially classes that rely on quickly killing something to survive (thief, ele). Basically if this goes through the game will become less fun overall. They would have to atleast double the damage of single target skills by whatever was nerfed in AoE just to allow for a small drop in the pace of gameplay. I don’t see this happening. Lots of potential to ruin the game’s fun factor here, and that fact that they’re considering it makes me think they don’t know what fun is.

This is why there should be both fewer but harder mobs AND fewer AoE skills. All these AoEs make the gameplay more boring. Its fine that for example the Ele has more than other proffs, but every profession has lots of skills that hits multible targets – which makes PvE events a mindless spamfest.
The enemy in events should not attack as big piles of useless trash mobs. They should be fewer more spread out and then there should be put more thought into AI, difficulty and how the encounter plays out.

I don’t understand why in MMOs you only have the choise between piles of trash mobs or lonely “epic” bosses (ususally even more boring than the trashmobs).
Well, thats another story, of cause.

Yeah, hearing about this change made me scratch my head. As someone who generally plays single-target builds (and not the 15-20k per hit ones like warrior or thief but engy rifle and ranger longbow) I notice that there is AoE but it seems pretty reasonable to me. I’m not sure why it’s bad for people to AoE downed players? As someone who runs in to rez, that’s part of the peril of doing so…that’s why there’s 6-second invulns, area stealth and quickness skills.

The only thing I see people actually complaining about is the single-target spike builds that 1-shot people either at range or from stealth. I guess I don’t play my ele or necro enough to know how to do something comparable to a 15k backstab or 19.7k kill shot with AoE.

Voltar.8574:

Yeah, hearing about this change made me scratch my head. As someone who generally plays single-target builds (and not the 15-20k per hit ones like warrior or thief but engy rifle and ranger longbow) I notice that there is AoE but it seems pretty reasonable to me. I’m not sure why it’s bad for people to AoE downed players? As someone who runs in to rez, that’s part of the peril of doing so…that’s why there’s 6-second invulns, area stealth and quickness skills.

The only thing I see people actually complaining about is the single-target spike builds that 1-shot people either at range or from stealth. I guess I don’t play my ele or necro enough to know how to do something comparable to a 15k backstab or 19.7k kill shot with AoE.

That’s because there are no such moves for aoe, besides one very specific build I’ve seen for an ele that would never work in pvp.

“A lot of WvW players want the AoE cap removed because it currently encourages zerging. Instead they want to nerf AoE? If 50 people are stupid enough to mindlessly run through a tiny gap, a smaller force using AoE should be able to punish them. All I see this doing is making zergs feel safer.”

Iatrogenic, jan. 2013

I can see a dual change to AOE:

- Nerf the damage a bit

- Increase target limit to 10

I wish we had been told about what kind of AoE they will nerf. All melee attacks that can hit multiple targets? All attacks in an area around the character? All the attacks that create those white circles in the gounrd? All of the above?

My main concern is whether ease of targeting will improve if aoe is nerfed. I rely a little more heavily on aoe than I would choose to otherwise, because targeting feels more difficult in this game.

Like repicking up a target that was in stealth because for obvious reasons dropping target when people go to stealth should happen.

want to really make things interesting AND fix AoE and Zergs once and for all?

boost AoE power to insanity, but make them effective also on your own party/team (i.e: friendly fire can harm you the same way as enemy’s one). No more Zerg, lot more tactics, everynab happy.

I really hate to hear that AoEs will be nerfed. It doesn’t seemed over powered for what you are expected to kill for mobs. As mentioned in previous posts, mobs seem to be very numerous and come in groups, and using AoEs seem to take as long to kill the mobs as one on one seems to take.

If ArenaNet doesn’t change their mind, it will be interesting to see what effect the changes make.

playandchill.3908:

AOE need to be nerfed.

Hope ANet is working on a fair balancing.

I think you should argument a little and add why you think AoE`s are so op. Otherwise people would think you`re just a troll and ignore you.

I’m not sure if I would call AoE overpowered or not, but there are some skills that do a considerable amount of damage. What bothers me is this huge concern over AoE damage, but no mention of the fact that warriors and thieves have an absolutely insane amount of damage output. Is a 15k Backstab or 20k(+) Killshot really what Anet wants to be happening? If you add up the total of 5 AoE hits (when you actually have 5 targets to hit), how many of those are going to equal 20k, or even 15k?

For ele, the dagger offhand skills are some of the most powerful AoE abilities. Excluding highly conditional +damage traits (hp under 33%/knocked down), Churning Earth tops the list hitting light armor (test golem in the Mists) for around 7.4k. Next highest on the D/D set is Fire Grab at 4.5k (with +10% fire attune and 5% damage to burning foes traits). A few more skills are able to hit 2.2-2.5k, which is still well under Backstab/Killshot damage with all 5 targets totaled.

Churning Earth is by far the worst “offender”, but is it really an offender at all? CE has a 30 second cooldown, compared to a thief only having to wait out a 3 second revealed buff before getting a 2nd backstab, completely negating any damage advantage CE has, excluding the easily removed bleeding DoT. The thief can already have it out-damaged with 2 Backstabs during the 3 second channeling of CE. Aside from using Lightning Flash to teleport during the channel (I do think this should be changed), CE is extremely noticable and very easily dodged. Even using the teleport, the ele is still 900 distance or less, doing a very obvious channel animation with a distinct sound. A stealthed thief is not easily dodged, especially in a large scale fight or when the stealthing method is not Cloak and Dagger on the target. I do not see any way that CE can be considered overpowered without Backstab being overpowered as well.

There are always people trying to apply the “just dodge” or “learn to dodge” statements to this, but the same applies to AoE damage, too. AoE is actually easier to dodge because you get a red warning circle, or have the ability to move out of a DoT AoE area after the first pulse. But a Killshot from a warrior that is part of a 25-player group is not practical to dodge. You can’t watch every single player in that group to dodge it, and it’s likely to come from a player that’s not even in your current view.

And to make a decision like this, while at the same time stating that they want to discourage zerging in WvW is completely ridiculous. I’m appalled that they can be so out of touch with reality to think that nerfing the best counter to a zerg will somehow help reduce zergs. If you want zergs gone, increase AoE damage and remove the 5 target limit. Nerfing AoE to prevent zergs would be about as smart as increasing drop rates and making enemies die in one hit to reduce farming…it should be obvious that it will have the exact opposite effect.

mrstealth.6701:

For ele, the dagger offhand skills are some of the most powerful AoE abilities. Excluding highly conditional +damage traits (hp under 33%/knocked down), Churning Earth tops the list hitting light armor (test golem in the Mists) for around 7.4k. Next highest on the D/D set is Fire Grab at 4.5k (with +10% fire attune and 5% damage to burning foes traits). A few more skills are able to hit 2.2-2.5k, which is still well under Backstab/Killshot damage with all 5 targets totaled.

I suppose that’s not including when said Kill Shot pierces to hit 5 targets, huh.

Why don’t they just have 2 sets of numbers for each skill, one for PvE and one for PvP? Isn’t this what they did in GW1? Why not do the same thing?

My 2 copper about AoE in PvE:

Yes, some AoE skills can toned down. It is the how, that concerns me. And the which skills. They stated in the livestream, that they will be looking at any and all AoE skills, and that just scares me.

The most simple solution, that would make sense to me is this:

You use a single target skill and do 10 dmg on a mob.
You use a AoE skill and do 10 dmg to the mob closest to the middle of the AoE circle and less dmg to the mobs further away. The further a mob is from the middle of the circle, the less dmg it takes. Doesn’t this just make sense?!

MANY builds are build around AoE, so generally nerfing AoE dmg or Lord behold, making mobs immune to AoE dmg, would make AoE skills COMPLETE useless. It’s as simple as that. In PvE, there are barely ANY encounters, where it is you vs 1 mob. It’s almost ALWAYS you vs 2-5 mobs. So for PvE, I really do NOT understand why is is being looked at at all personally, but understand the thinking behind it. And making logical changes to AoE like mentioned above wouldn’t only make sense, but also keep AoE builds viable.

I find that the game drops a single target way too easily… this needs to be improved for single target builds b4 anything like this is implemented.

I play 7/8 professions and I must admit this has me very concerned for my engineer. Already the most underplayed class in game it’s hard to find any weapon/kit setup which is aoe free.

Thieves are already too numerous in wvw thanks to the introduced culling… hope more thought is given to the consequences of this.

ALL I SEE here are pure speculations.

We know nothing about what exactly they change and how exactly they do it. But you are making up stuff about how Anet is bad, how they are runing your way to make gold, how lazy they are to fix real issues. What crazy reasons they have, bla bla…

YOU know nothing. YOU have no numbers. Areanet has them. They know exact numbers, they see whats going on in big picture.

you ONLY know what you see at YOUR monitor, nothing else. So stop these speculations already.

Just wait for the changes, its Anets game after all and they decide what changes are the best for the game and for the company.

Kacigarka.5176:

ALL I SEE here are pure speculations.

You know nothing about what exactly they change and how exactly they do it. But you are making up stuff about how Anet is bad, how they are runing your way to make goald, how lazy they are to fix wvw. What are those reasons, bla bla bla.

BUT YOU know nothing. YOU have no statistics. Areanet has them. They know exact numbers, they see whats going on in big picture.

YOU ONLY know what you see at YOUR screen, nothing else. So stop these speculations already.

Just wait for the changes, its their game after all and they decide what changes they make.

We do have statistics though.

We have the number of posts complaining about overpowered AOE before their announcements (0%)

We have the percentage of posts complaining about single target bursts in pvp on the forums before their announcment (about 60%)

we have the fact that nearly 100% of the toolkits of the weakest professions in the game for pve damage are aoe.

We have the fact that the normal MMO rules of “aoe doing less than single target” should go out the window when you have such an inflexible set of weapon skills available in combat already, and we don’t want combat to become even more shallow.

We have the fact that AOE is the biggest counter to zerging, which is a problem in this game, and the devs want to kill that.

We add these up with ANet’s announcement and rightfully are frightened that devs could be this out of touch, and are this interested in putting an end to player fun in general while completely ignoring un-reactable thief insta-gib combos (and to a lesser extent 15k kill shots from the warrior you’ll never see in the zerg).

plasmacutter.2709:

Kacigarka.5176:

ALL I SEE here are pure speculations.

You know nothing about what exactly they change and how exactly they do it. But you are making up stuff about how Anet is bad, how they are runing your way to make goald, how lazy they are to fix wvw. What are those reasons, bla bla bla.

BUT YOU know nothing. YOU have no statistics. Areanet has them. They know exact numbers, they see whats going on in big picture.

YOU ONLY know what you see at YOUR screen, nothing else. So stop these speculations already.

Just wait for the changes, its their game after all and they decide what changes they make.

We do have statistics though.

We have the number of posts complaining about overpowered AOE before their announcements (0%)

We have the percentage of posts complaining about single target bursts in pvp on the forums before their announcment (about 60%)

we have the fact that nearly 100% of the toolkits of the weakest professions in the game for pve damage are aoe.

We have the fact that the normal MMO rules of “aoe doing less than single target” should go out the window when you have such an inflexible set of weapon skills available in combat already, and we don’t want combat to become even more shallow.

We have the fact that AOE is the biggest counter to zerging, which is a problem in this game, and the devs want to kill that.

We add these up with ANet’s announcement and rightfully are frightened that devs could be this out of touch, and are this interested in putting an end to player fun in general while completely ignoring un-reactable thief insta-gib combos.

Oh .. 60% of actual player base? I didnt see 1-2 milion posts complaining about it, did you? And if you mean 60% of posts on forums, who cares? Everyone knows that forum is just filled by unsatisfied complaining customers. Not majority…

Even if there was 1000 players complaining about it on forums, there are 1000x more players ingame who dont care about it.

By they way, who would anyone complain about too powerful aoe? PvE easyer, WvW easyer badges. Anet knows how they want players to play their game.

They clearly showing you that they dont like players rushing Waypoints at dungeons so they remove this option. They dont like players using only aoe to kill mobs in dungeons, so they nerfing aoe, etc. No matter if you like it or dont.

Thiefs op, warriors op .. come on, no they arent godlike

Kacigarka.5176:

plasmacutter.2709:

Kacigarka.5176:

ALL I SEE here are pure speculations.

You know nothing about what exactly they change and how exactly they do it. But you are making up stuff about how Anet is bad, how they are runing your way to make goald, how lazy they are to fix wvw. What are those reasons, bla bla bla.

BUT YOU know nothing. YOU have no statistics. Areanet has them. They know exact numbers, they see whats going on in big picture.

YOU ONLY know what you see at YOUR screen, nothing else. So stop these speculations already.

Just wait for the changes, its their game after all and they decide what changes they make.

We do have statistics though.

We have the number of posts complaining about overpowered AOE before their announcements (0%)

We have the percentage of posts complaining about single target bursts in pvp on the forums before their announcment (about 60%)

we have the fact that nearly 100% of the toolkits of the weakest professions in the game for pve damage are aoe.

We have the fact that the normal MMO rules of “aoe doing less than single target” should go out the window when you have such an inflexible set of weapon skills available in combat already, and we don’t want combat to become even more shallow.

We have the fact that AOE is the biggest counter to zerging, which is a problem in this game, and the devs want to kill that.

We add these up with ANet’s announcement and rightfully are frightened that devs could be this out of touch, and are this interested in putting an end to player fun in general while completely ignoring un-reactable thief insta-gib combos.

Oh .. 60% of actual player base? I didnt see 1-2 milion posts complaining about it, did you?

Even if there was 1000 players complaining about it, there are 1000x more players ingame who dont care about it.

Let’s apply this fallacious and dismissive logic to your post as well:

This post has enough replies to be a representative sample when paired with other threads like it which have cropped up in this and other subforums.

For every post like yours supporting the destruction of depth-of-combat in this game, there are 30 against.

Clearly, under your own “logic”, your thoughts can be dismissed.

And saying players in-game don’t care about cheap deaths to thieves they can’t touch, that’s funny. I hear spvp is very much “alive” in this game. If anything, the complaints against thieves in this forum are less prevalent than the complaints in-game.

If the Elementalist AoE’s are nerfed there is simply no reason to play one anymore. Period.
The Dev’s should really start considering this:
Nerf skills like this will make people to stop playing elementalist and nobody will take elementalist in squads for dungeons, FOTM, etc so why play it at all?
Drop rates are dropping to a discouraging level now with each new patch.
Difficulty overall is increasing constantly, and newer players are now at huge disadvantage over those who started early on with the game.

I hear nothing about any trade offs in Elementalist skills so just kill AoE’s and who needs an elementalist at all anymore what good will they be to themselves and to a group? What are you giving them back to compensate? They are already considered way UNDERpowered now, nerf them further and watch them dissapear from the scene.

When you lose sight of your players (customers) you doom the game to failure. I already have heard how many players are ready to leave with all these new changes, continuous nerfs and increased difficulty and these are ppl who really know the game.
6 months into a new game there should not be this many unhappy customers ( players).

I just wanna say Jonathan Sharp should do the game My Little Pony online, he is the man for the job…

Kacigarka.5176:

Oh .. 60% of actual player base? I didnt see 1-2 milion posts complaining about it, did you?

lol!

So you think the game has between 2.5 and 3.33 million active players right now, when they only just admitted to finally hitting 3 million sales and it’s well known that they experienced a large downturn in player count after November?

Are you serious? That’s honestly hilarious!

You’re right about one thing though: it’s their game and they can do what they want with it. Who cares what the players think, after all? So if they want to do things their way, you’re right, it’s their game….and everyone else can just go away. And then when there’s only a handful of players left and NCSoft brings the hammer down, at least the game stuck to its principles, right?

People are not complaining just for the sake of complaining. They’re complaining because they love this game and don’t want ANet to ruin it. They don’t want to be scared away from this game, they want to play it for years to come. If you are bothered by people complaining on the forums, trying to get things fixed and improve the game, then don’t come to the forums.

AOE isn’t a problem. And where you design your game in order to make it so that AOE abilities are meant to be used in the same rotation as single target abilities then you shouldn’t be surprised when AOE abilities are being used in the same rotation as single target abilities.

Furthermore when you design abilties so that AOE abilities do damage that is nearly substituteable with single target damage (which is a necessity to make AOE abilities viable) and you so vastly limit the abilities that a player has access to at any given time then once again you shouldn’t be surprised that everyone is taking AOE abilities instead of single target abilities (which are actually greatly inferior to AOE abilities because they have much less utility because of longer cooldowns for not much more damage.

When the players prefer to deal a lot of damage to many things at once instead of a lot of damage to one thing at once because they are taking damge from multiple sources and have such minimal ways of mitigating that damage you should not be surprised when the players need to take AOE abilities simply to survive because the single target abilities simply do not provide the utility that the player needs in order to deal with the superfast respawns.

If you the developer are finding that players are completely ignoring one novel aspect of your game which you were particularly proud of and then want to chastise the players for ignoring it by making their chosen playstyle less viable then maybe the real problem here isn’t the players, the choices they are making or their reasons for making those choices. The reason is your own hubris and the thing which needs to change is you.

Ultimately I feel that AoEs are fine as implemented and single target abilities are what need to be fixed. I would even suggest going so far as making all abilities AOE abilities and then rebalancing accordingly. That really makes the most sense because conceptually a really big attack is going to deal big damage in a large area whereas an attack which only deals damage to an incredibly small area is more likely than not to deal small damage which is why it only affects a very small area.

Writetyper.1985:

Meglobob.8620:

Nerfing AoE, really, how many players want that? Like 0, zero, nought, no one…

I want it. Provided they’re talking about melee cleave AoE. What is there right now to punish warriors and guardians from walking into a crowd of mobs and autoattacking with greatsword? Nothing. Absoloutely zilch. And there’s no way other classes without melee cleave can get aoe melee damage.

Honestly you don’t even know how they’re nerfing AoE yet, you’re the one living in your own little bubble if you read two words and overreact like this without anet even detailing what “aoe” they’re talking about. You don’t even know a single thing yet.

What about instead of asking for nerfs to other classes and harming other players you instead ask for buffs to fix problems with your own class?

I don’t like the idea of Aoe nerf. I’ll probably leave after this update.

Ellisande.5218:

Writetyper.1985:

Meglobob.8620:

Nerfing AoE, really, how many players want that? Like 0, zero, nought, no one…

I want it. Provided they’re talking about melee cleave AoE. What is there right now to punish warriors and guardians from walking into a crowd of mobs and autoattacking with greatsword? Nothing. Absoloutely zilch. And there’s no way other classes without melee cleave can get aoe melee damage.

Honestly you don’t even know how they’re nerfing AoE yet, you’re the one living in your own little bubble if you read two words and overreact like this without anet even detailing what “aoe” they’re talking about. You don’t even know a single thing yet.

What about instead of asking for nerfs to other classes and harming other players you instead ask for buffs to fix problems with your own class?

Probably because buffing other classes would make them OP? Contrary to popular belief, buffing does not always balance the game. Let’s just buff all melee damage to that of a warrior/thief, but now everyone dies in 2 seconds which isn’t balanced for the TTK the devs or most players want. Instead it is far easier and makes the game less imbalanced to nerf the outliers back into the area the devs want them. This is of course exactly what is happening with AOE.

AOE damage on some skills needs nerfed, some need buffed, some need cooldown adjustments, and radius changes. If they reduce damage, increase the number of targets, and get rid of red circles in WvW I’d be very happy.

Late to the thread, and I don’t have time to read all eight pages, but at the risk of repeating arguments already stated I want to throw this out:

Is it possible to have AoE damage output scale differently (within a single cast of a spell) depending on the number of targets being affected? IE: An AoE with only one target deals maximum damage, where an AoE with five targets caps out, dealing less damage per target.

It seems to me that AoE spells become difficult to balance because you cannot consistently predict the opportunity cost in terms of targets effected. The number of targets in combat at one time makes for the most wild and least predictable variables in combat. With static damage output, skills must get balanced by assuming either Maximum target capacity (the skill is only totally effective when used on the maximum number of targets) or Minimum target capacity (the skill is totally effective even if used on a single target), where each one generally invalidates the users’ skill set in some part, either by making the single-target or aoe attacks too weak to compete.

But if AoE dealt damage dynamically, based on the number of targets affected by each tick or impact, then you could balance each end of the system without loss or excess at the other end. This effectively doubles the use of all AoE skills since they would function as both single target and aoe utility— and insofar as I can see it would preserve single-target functionality as well.

MisterEction.9382:

So, if I understand this properly, when I’m running around soloing in PVE and 2 of my 5 skills are AOE on my skill bar, only 3 will be worth using on the single mobs I encounter most of the time, so I’ll press 1 pretty much all the time after accounting for cooldowns on my other 2 single target skills. And, when I aggro multiple attackers and get swamped, and I use the 2 AOEs, they’ll be doing less damage to the multiple mobs, which will all be hitting me for their full damage.

That sounds like fun.

That pretty much sums up the problem with this dev decision.

The point of AoEs is that they can and are used to kill groups of mobs. If they cannot kill groups of mobs then they do not fulfill their purpose. The fact that single target abilities can also be used to kill multiple mobs (albeit more slowly) or that AoE abilities can be used to kill mobs individually (albeint less efficiently) is completely irrelevelent to deciding whether AoEs are fulfilling their purpose of killing groups of mobs.

However the fact that the skills can be used interchangeable albeit with limited effectiveness is support of my belief that this unneccessary distinction between single target and aoe damage is the actual root cause of the problem which could be fixed by simply makign all abilities AoE abilities and then rebalancing accordingly. And let’s not make any mistake, when every ability operates exactly the same then the game will be much easier to balance than it is now where every ability does not operate in exactly the same way.

Ellisande.5218:

MisterEction.9382:

So, if I understand this properly, when I’m running around soloing in PVE and 2 of my 5 skills are AOE on my skill bar, only 3 will be worth using on the single mobs I encounter most of the time, so I’ll press 1 pretty much all the time after accounting for cooldowns on my other 2 single target skills. And, when I aggro multiple attackers and get swamped, and I use the 2 AOEs, they’ll be doing less damage to the multiple mobs, which will all be hitting me for their full damage.

That sounds like fun.

That pretty much sums up the problem with this dev decision.

The point of AoEs is that they can and are used to kill groups of mobs. If they cannot kill groups of mobs then they do not fulfill their purpose. The fact that single target abilities can also be used to kill multiple mobs (albeit more slowly) or that AoE abilities can be used to kill mobs individually (albeint less efficiently) is completely irrelevelent to deciding whether AoEs are fulfilling their purpose of killing groups of mobs.

However the fact that the skills can be used interchangeable albeit with limited effectiveness is support of my belief that this unneccessary distinction between single target and aoe damage is the actual root cause of the problem which could be fixed by simply makign all abilities AoE abilities and then rebalancing accordingly. And let’s not make any mistake, when every ability operates exactly the same then the game will be much easier to balance than it is now where every ability does not operate in exactly the same way.

Making all abilities aoe and rebalancing accordingly would most certainly stop zerging.

imagine aoe backstab!

Wise people acknowledge when they know nothing. And therefore they know that it is ignorant, borderline stupid and embarrassing to pass judgements about it.

You can always discuss your Own experiences, wishes and expectations, and I think that is excactly what A-net wants you to do.

But why in gods name are you already hating on Anet just because they mentioned that they will be looking at AoEs in the game (they said it seemed to be a problem in PvP).

Don’t you understand:
- You know NOTHING about what they intend to do
- they probably still don’t know themselves

By the way, there is other possibilities than just nerfing AoE damage. Just to give an example, they could change some AoE skills to single target skills, bouncing skills, give them more or less control – and so on.

And why are all the Elementalists so mad. Are you so sure that you will be the victims? Or do you just like to hate?

jobah.7241:

Wise people acknowledge when they know nothing. And therefore they know that it is ignorant, borderline stupid and embarrassing to pass judgements about it.

You can always discuss your Own experiences, wishes and expectations, and I think that is excactly what A-net wants you to do.

But why in gods name are you already hating on Anet just because they mentioned that they will be looking at AoEs in the game (they said it seemed to be a problem in PvP).

Don’t you understand:
- You know NOTHING about what they intend to do
- they probably still don’t know themselves

By the way, there is other possibilities than just nerfing AoE damage. Just to give an example, they could change some AoE skills to single target skills, bouncing skills, give them more or less control – and so on.

And why are all the Elementalists so mad. Are you so sure that you will be the victims? Or do you just like to hate?

Because, NOTHING needs to be done about AoE – that is why we are “passing judgment”.

Nobody was complaining about AOE, aoe-related professions have become increasingly irrelevant and pushed into bunker-builds, and anyone who understands the meta-game understands how many more things would be broken when aoe gets “adjusted”. (these types of fundamental meta-balance adjustments generally take years to weigh and are thus saved for expansions by most AAA houses, talk about anet’s hubris here.)

Meanwhile, single-target focused professions have been buffed into the stratosphere despite people being literally downed and stomped in 2 seconds due to their already-insane burst.

Then the comment about the 0/10/0/30/30 ele build that is the only viable build for ele left in the game being “watched”, the synergy-of-which should be emulated, not “watched” or dismantled.

Add this to the terrible lost shores patch, and the way mesmers, eles, and engineers have been handled vs warriors and thieves, and you have a recipe for utter cynicism boiling over into rabid hatred. Most of the people in this thread have been down-right civil given the circumstances.

This game really needs what happened in GW1 really late in its life cycle: Skill splits for different formats. I think it’s just too hard to balance skills for different formats that involve so many different types of battles and tactics.

In this forums we also need to start talking about what Jonathan is saying as well. There are some weapon sets where AoE is an issue for some professions. They will address those specifically. That is fine. What they need to work on is how they communicate that. I see what ArenaNet is talking about. They just didn’t communicate it well.

Iason Evan.3806:

In this forums we also need to start talking about what Jonathan is saying as well. There are some weapon sets where AoE is an issue for some professions. They will address those specifically. That is fine. What they need to work on is how they communicate that. I see what ArenaNet is talking about. They just didn’t communicate it well.

So which weapon set is “overpowered”

lolengineer with grenade kit hitting for less than environmental weapons, or bunker eles whose 45 second cooldowns don’t hit as hard as a rifle warrior auto-attack? maybe the “miss thrower”?

or maybe its staff necro (trying. to. control. urge. to. gut. laugh.)

cough kill shot cough backstab cough still cough being hack, cough IGNORED!

plasmacutter.2709:

jobah.7241:

Wise people acknowledge when they know nothing. And therefore they know that it is ignorant, borderline stupid and embarrassing to pass judgements about it.

You can always discuss your Own experiences, wishes and expectations, and I think that is excactly what A-net wants you to do.

But why in gods name are you already hating on Anet just because they mentioned that they will be looking at AoEs in the game (they said it seemed to be a problem in PvP).

Don’t you understand:
- You know NOTHING about what they intend to do
- they probably still don’t know themselves

By the way, there is other possibilities than just nerfing AoE damage. Just to give an example, they could change some AoE skills to single target skills, bouncing skills, give them more or less control – and so on.

And why are all the Elementalists so mad. Are you so sure that you will be the victims? Or do you just like to hate?

Because, NOTHING needs to be done about AoE – that is why we are “passing judgment”.

Nobody was complaining about AOE, aoe-related professions have become increasingly irrelevant and pushed into bunker-builds, and anyone who understands the meta-game understands how many more things would be broken when aoe gets “adjusted”. (these types of fundamental meta-balance adjustments generally take years to weigh and are thus saved for expansions by most AAA houses, talk about anet’s hubris here.)

Meanwhile, single-target focused professions have been buffed into the stratosphere despite people being literally downed and stomped in 2 seconds due to their already-insane burst.

Then the comment about the 0/10/0/30/30 ele build that is the only viable build for ele left in the game, and the synergy-of-which should be emulated, not “watched” or dismantled.

Add this to the terrible lost shores patch, and the way mesmers, eles, and engineers have been handled vs warriors and thieves, and you have a recipe for utter cynicism boiling over into rabid hatred. Most of the people in this thread have been down-right civil given the circumstances.

Well, I hope they will look at both the “single” target damage AND the AoE skills AND improve encounters with mobs in PvE (less piles of trash, better AI, less stupid bosses). Too much AoE and too much trash in the game, it ruines the gameplay a bit (no challenge). In PvE (and WvW i guess) it all depends too much on killing large groupes of enemies with “AoE” (or multitarget skills) as fast as possible.

jobah.7241:

plasmacutter.2709:

jobah.7241:

Wise people acknowledge when they know nothing. And therefore they know that it is ignorant, borderline stupid and embarrassing to pass judgements about it.

You can always discuss your Own experiences, wishes and expectations, and I think that is excactly what A-net wants you to do.

But why in gods name are you already hating on Anet just because they mentioned that they will be looking at AoEs in the game (they said it seemed to be a problem in PvP).

Don’t you understand:
- You know NOTHING about what they intend to do
- they probably still don’t know themselves

By the way, there is other possibilities than just nerfing AoE damage. Just to give an example, they could change some AoE skills to single target skills, bouncing skills, give them more or less control – and so on.

And why are all the Elementalists so mad. Are you so sure that you will be the victims? Or do you just like to hate?

Because, NOTHING needs to be done about AoE – that is why we are “passing judgment”.

Nobody was complaining about AOE, aoe-related professions have become increasingly irrelevant and pushed into bunker-builds, and anyone who understands the meta-game understands how many more things would be broken when aoe gets “adjusted”. (these types of fundamental meta-balance adjustments generally take years to weigh and are thus saved for expansions by most AAA houses, talk about anet’s hubris here.)

Meanwhile, single-target focused professions have been buffed into the stratosphere despite people being literally downed and stomped in 2 seconds due to their already-insane burst.

Then the comment about the 0/10/0/30/30 ele build that is the only viable build for ele left in the game, and the synergy-of-which should be emulated, not “watched” or dismantled.

Add this to the terrible lost shores patch, and the way mesmers, eles, and engineers have been handled vs warriors and thieves, and you have a recipe for utter cynicism boiling over into rabid hatred. Most of the people in this thread have been down-right civil given the circumstances.

Well, I hope they will look at both the “single” target damage AND the AoE skills AND improve encounters with mobs in PvE (less piles of trash, better AI, less stupid bosses). Too much AoE and too much trash in the game, it ruines the gameplay a bit (no challenge). In PvE (and WvW i guess) it all depends too much on killing large groupes of enemies with “AoE” (or multitarget skills) as fast as possible.

tweaking mob density and making AI smarter is excellent.

AOE still needs to be powerful though.

1 – few weapon skills as-is (and those with more aoe on their bars should be keeping up with the others — and no, they shouldn’t have more single-target, homogenization is BAD in an rpg where people are supposed to get stronger in groups)
2 – everyone zerging in wvw – target cap needs to be removed to punish people for stupid.
3 – with how hard things hit in this game, any diminishment of aoe in pve needs to have a corresponding increase in personal survival skills geared toward 1vsMany fights.

Iason Evan.3806:

This game really needs what happened in GW1 really late in its life cycle: Skill splits for different formats. I think it’s just too hard to balance skills for different formats that involve so many different types of battles and tactics.

Unfortunately they said in the stream that they are aiming at NOT splitting because they want PvP players to learn the game through PvE, i.e learning to play with the same skill power.
Its a problem

plasmacutter.2709:

Iason Evan.3806:

In this forums we also need to start talking about what Jonathan is saying as well. There are some weapon sets where AoE is an issue for some professions. They will address those specifically. That is fine. What they need to work on is how they communicate that. I see what ArenaNet is talking about. They just didn’t communicate it well.

So which weapon set is “overpowered”

lolengineer with grenade kit hitting for less than environmental weapons, or bunker eles whose 45 second cooldowns don’t hit as hard as a rifle warrior auto-attack? maybe the “miss thrower”?

or maybe its staff necro (trying. to. control. urge. to. gut. laugh.)

cough kill shot cough backstab cough still cough being hack, cough IGNORED!

I don’t think any one of those builds is OP at all. I don’t think anyone thinks that. If you would like to have a serious discussion fine, but mentioning those builds doesn’t make sense at all. Countering Thieves isn’t all that hard. Proc a block.

Iason Evan.3806:

plasmacutter.2709:

Iason Evan.3806:

In this forums we also need to start talking about what Jonathan is saying as well. There are some weapon sets where AoE is an issue for some professions. They will address those specifically. That is fine. What they need to work on is how they communicate that. I see what ArenaNet is talking about. They just didn’t communicate it well.

So which weapon set is “overpowered”

lolengineer with grenade kit hitting for less than environmental weapons, or bunker eles whose 45 second cooldowns don’t hit as hard as a rifle warrior auto-attack? maybe the “miss thrower”?

or maybe its staff necro (trying. to. control. urge. to. gut. laugh.)

cough kill shot cough backstab cough still cough being hack, cough IGNORED!

I don’t think any one of those builds is OP at all. I don’t think anyone thinks that. If you would like to have a serious discussion fine, but mentioning those builds doesn’t make sense at all. Countering Thieves isn’t all that hard. Proc a block.

I am having a serious discussion. I’m asking what AOE you see as overpowered, becuase the ones I’m seeing are either heavy-hitting with massive cues and cast time and/or massive cooldowns or range trade-offs, or hit like wet noodles and could honestly use some kind of buff (grenade kits should, for instance, do significantly more damage to foes with at least one condition, this would produce a “rotation” in that kit rather than 1, 1, 1, 1)

even “spin-2-win” has a tradeoff and should remain as-is on guardians (not just in pvp, in pve too!)

I honestly think ANet wont admit where this is coming from because I think it’s coming from the old complaints that certain AOE classes were able to tag up on way more mobs during dynamic events.

This is not the fault of the AOE damage, this is the fault of ANet not properly incorporating support into event and loot credit.

If I give 20% crit to someone by aura sharing, or give them protection, or aegis the damage stopped by that protection or aegis, or the damage caused by that extra crit, should be factored in and I should get looting rights on anything killed by people I support.

AOE should not be nerfed because of this, the “tagging” system ANet never wants to talk about needs to be fixed instead. That’s much harder work than just making AoE classes suck even worse everywhere OUTSIDE dynamic events.

jobah.7241:

And why are all the Elementalists so mad. Are you so sure that you will be the victims? Or do you just like to hate?

That’s simple. Nearly every elementalist skill is AoE.

Many people notice only the big, flashy AoE spells eles have, but when you go skill for skill, there’s only a half dozen or so single-target skills across all weapon sets for the profession.

One of the statements made in the talk was that AoE was going to be toned down in general, and if taken seriously, that means that elementalists can look forward to an across-the-board damage nerf.

Of course, there have also been conflicting statements made that the devs will look at skills on a case-by-case basis, so it’s hard to know what to think.

This discussion seems highly imbalanced and seems to focus only on the AoE abilities. There is very little discussion of the other side of the equation…that is building characters that can avoid and /or mitigate AoE.

I have a condition/wells/epidemic necro. To get it even partway viable I have had to sacrifice a lot of burst and trait up survivability so I can conform to the devs vision of an attrition class but it sort of works…I can still be well and truly ganked…no one should be invulnerable or anywhere near it.

Maybe and just maybe those glass cannons complaining about AoE need to adopt a similar approach and tone down their burst for better avoidance and survivability rather than just look at a one sided argument of nerfing AoE. If they don’t want to chose better survivability/avoidance then why should other players be punished for that choice through limiting their options? It is a trade off and should be meaningful in terms of sacrifice vs utility vs survivability.

This is what I have been alluding to all along. There is a real lack of balanced analysis of what the real issues are. The only focus seems to be based on a kneejerk approach of “treating the symptom rather than the disease”.

I run a GC mesmer… If I go down because I got ganked or because I know I am a Glass Cannon. I’m fine with it. It should be a give and take. I can have insane damage but I also better know that I am squishy and will go down super quick. I hope other glass cannons have that mind set but I feel like they want to do insane damage and want to feel entitled to not get killed. It’s kind of ridiculous.

i agree with them that AoE-damage is too important in WvW right now.
most of the time you dont even have to bother with single-target stuff in bigger group-fights.

as for the rez-problem:
anet should just reduce the infight-revive speed by a lot. its ridiculous how fast you can revive downed players and that you can outheal a lot of incoming damage.

tbh, i’d love to see some portal-like restrictions on many other AoE-skills. for example all the block/reflect-walls and -barriers. or these ridiculous “lolcantcross”-lines and bubbles of the guardian.

They need to also fix the dynamic event “kill tagging” system to give credit to support builds for a certain percentage of the kills made by the people they’re supporting.

Items which should go into kill credit tagging systems should be:
-the (rough) incoming damage blocked/mitigated by your boons and fields (protection, aegis, wards, reflects)
-the (rough) amount of damage done by others attributable to your offensive boons (might, fury)

People used to complain about engineer grenades for orr farming.

The complaint was not that grenades were too powerful, it was that the tagging system did not account for anything other than damage done to enemies, which in an MMO with support and control as major roles is just plain “D – U – M – M ‘dumb’”.

RashanDale.3609:

i agree with them that AoE-damage is too important in WvW right now.
most of the time you dont even have to bother with single-target stuff in bigger group-fights.

what game are you playing?

Your solution to stopping mindless zerging and button mashing is to make the anti-group tools more useless?

People would be more intelligent with their deployment strategies if AoE didn’t have a target cap and was actually more powerful.

People who pack-up in groups of 10 to 50 and zerg should be punished severely for their mindlessness. It’s the only way zerging will stop.