Guild Wars 2

I think it has more to do with saving on bandwidth and lag than anything.

They say they don’t want one ele holding up a zerg, they even talked about nerfing AOE even more…

Kinda makes you wonder what game they’re playing.

AoE limits affects everyone including those in the zerg. It would be ridiculous when two or three players could stack their attacks essentially wiping a zerg. It would then come down to who could cast their spells the quickest/soonest.

I’ll also add that tactics like flanking do still work very well if done correctly. Staff ele is support, not main dps. They should generally not be on the front lines so speed is not an issue.

1 ele can’t hold a zerg, meteor storm has a cooldown and a range. You’d still have an advantage against a smaller group, it just would be less. It’d also allow more siege use, battle lines would be a little more entrenched as you couldn’t just grab 25 people and rush anything. In wow they just reduced the damage per tick of aoe, but not the number of targets hit. Spreading damage this way would be much more organic than “random 5”

It enables the zerg, that’s the point of it. The question you should ask is why the devs want the zerg.

Actually what the OP makes a lot of sense. I would prefer these AoE abilities to have an unlimited amount of targets in WvW (exclude PvE) to deter people from grouping and playing with a zerg.

Smaller, more mobile groups would be pretty much unaffected by this change.

This is exactly why there shouldn’t be an AoE limit, or at the very least.. each “pulse” of AoE does area damage forcing the zerg to change it’s tactics.

Lets be honest here.. it doesn’t take a hell of a lot of thought or skill to join a large group with mob mentality to trample smaller groups with little to no skill. It’s far more challenging for say 2-3 elementalists to time their AoE’s properly together to nail a zerg dead on.

There was a video a bit ago of a WvWvW bot group storming through with like 25-30 people I think. Allowing such behavior to continue with no real counter other than “find a bigger group” is only going to encourage such things.

If anything it will force the group to change it’s tactics or use some sort of counter measures / group make up to go through.

This is what I see as a staff ele.

5 people out of that really is a drop in the ocean.

Great pic Chronometria.. perfectly illustrates why there should be no AoE limit.

Its always been a five target cap just think about the revers argument when it comes to buffs why should they only hit 5 ppl if i use stand your ground why should not the entire zerg get stability? Why should my heals only hit 4 other ppl (just think about having heal spells big heal spells hit every one ikittenerg)? One person should not make a major different in a big zerg fight or you would have the zerg made of that one person and no one wants to have everyone at the same class and same build in wvw.

even if there is an AOE limit to save on bandwith it should be much higher than 5. even somthing like 20 would be a big improvement. At lest than you might kill some one

as is you AOE hit 5 targets AOE agen hit a differant 5 targets so in the end you did NOTHING

Jski.6180:

Its always been a five target cap .

not in beta it was put in to nerf AOE in PVE from what i remamber ((something to do with farming))

UnderdogSMO.9428:

Jski.6180:

Its always been a five target cap .

not in beta it was put in to nerf AOE in PVE from what i remamber ((something to do with farming))

I did not play the beta. I tend to stay away from beta they give very unreliability views of the game both bad and good that tends to destroy the game for most ppl.
Where buff never caped and heals?

The cap was introduced in a late 2012 patch, if addled memory serves me.

The fact is that zerg tactics are about the best/most common that have been developed (even now, think outside the box folks gah), the idea of skirmish mini-zegs smashing into each other with uncapped AoE (offensive, defensive support, direct support etc) is amazing and would have balanced reasonably well – class bugs aside.

Unfortunately that vision of gangs hunting each other out ended up being a rehash of the wonderfully well considered “WoW AV” method of just blobbing up and switching off high level thought (for most of the players zerging) which make the overlapping impacts of all of the AoE fields… messy and less interesting.

And far as PvE AoE farming caps go – basically no effect, if you were AoE farming more than the cap at a time it might have had a SLIGHTLY negative effect on time-to-kills ratio, but generally speaking the AoE farming just adapted slightly instead of forum-raging over it.

……
Youre right, Aoe Should have no limit.
To compensate single target skills now do triple dmg to make them not completely worthless in comparison, since people are not happy with taking effort to owning nubz in large numbers. Also, we have removed all siege since one 100b warrior can elimate an entire zerg that attempts to rush build it.
/sarcasm

You should at least think about the nightmare of balancing multi-hit and single hit attacks before you post more worthless threads. If you claim your Aoe does nothing, does my single hit attack that deals equal dmg without the chance to hit more than one character do negative nothing?

For those wondering when this was put in, the earliest mention I found was May 1st 2012 http://gw2.junkiesnation.com/2012/05/01/dev-tracker-jon-peters-on-aoe-target-caps-for-all-skills/

Do you know what else suffers from this limit ? Shouts, banners and giving boons. Imagine, only 2 guardians to needed to maintain 25 stacks of might.
Conditions ? Who cares, with shouts and runes/traits, not a problem if you have a guardian or a warrior, and it will even give protection.

Time Wrap might have been nerfed, but imagine if 50 players got quickness. Place a few mesmers and you can keep it up for quite a while.

It makes sense to cap it. If you don’t, imagine having 10 elementalists AOE at a single spot, and you just happened to have a group of 50 standing in a single spot. Those 10 eles are probably going to down a huge amount of that group if there wasn’t a cap.

It’s both a con and pro, but overall, at least it limits AOE mass insta killing of a group by limiting it to 5 at a time.

@ thisolderhead.5127
I am looking though the patch notes and i am not seeing it i have a feeling it was always caped at 5 but no one realty noted it until Anet pointed it out. I could of missed it but unless they did not put it in the notes at all i do not think i am missing it.

RedStar.4218:

For those wondering when this was put in, the earliest mention I found was May 1st 2012 http://gw2.junkiesnation.com/2012/05/01/dev-tracker-jon-peters-on-aoe-target-caps-for-all-skills/

Do you know what else suffers from this limit ? Shouts, banners and giving boons. Imagine, only 2 guardians to needed to maintain 25 stacks of might.
Conditions ? Who cares, with shouts and runes/traits, not a problem if you have a guardian or a warrior, and it will even give protection.

Time Wrap might have been nerfed, but imagine if 50 players got quickness. Place a few mesmers and you can keep it up for quite a while.

Ok so they never let them hit more then 5 once the game was out but in beta it was not caped.

I actually dont think removing the AoE limit would discourage zerging at all. Since removing the AoE limit also applies to the players in said zerg.

What it would discourage is mindless zerging. And counter-intuitive tactics like stacking to avoid AoE damage. And I am ALL for that.

It would also have the benefit of smaller groups becoming much, much more viable against larger groups. The larger groups would still have the numbers advantage, which means if the groups are equally skilled, the smaller group is going down. However, it would give more room for skill to really shine through and I would love to see that.

@kenshi;

If the 10 eles were doing that, the zerg has the opportunity to do the same. They can pump out significantly, significantly more damage against the eles than the eles could do to them. This is, of course, if they have equal skill.

Jski.6180:

@ thisolderhead.5127
I am looking though the patch notes and i am not seeing it i have a feeling it was always caped at 5 but no one realty noted it until Anet pointed it out. I could of missed it but unless they did not put it in the notes at all i do not think i am missing it.

I can’t recall the exact patch – maybe november or the one prior… been a long year lol.

At launch there was no cap – I was running an AoE force multiplier guard and at a party of five it was fun, at a zerg of 25+ it was just completely ridiculous, plus take a couple of trees with healing seeds and you could tick away heals at the entire chunk of zerg… it was interesting but completely blobby (which kills games more often than not).

thisolderhead.5127:

Jski.6180:

@ thisolderhead.5127
I am looking though the patch notes and i am not seeing it i have a feeling it was always caped at 5 but no one realty noted it until Anet pointed it out. I could of missed it but unless they did not put it in the notes at all i do not think i am missing it.

I can’t recall the exact patch – maybe november or the one prior… been a long year lol.

At launch there was no cap – I was running an AoE force multiplier guard and at a party of five it was fun, at a zerg of 25+ it was just completely ridiculous, plus take a couple of trees with healing seeds and you could tick away heals at the entire chunk of zerg… it was interesting but completely blobby (which kills games more often than not).

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Game-Update-Notes-November-15-2012/first#post808152
It was boons and heals. Not dmg spells. This tread is more about dmg spell then heals and boons now i was trying to flip the argument to boons and heals as a way to show what happens if there was no cap to how many target can get hit by things.

Ezeriel.9574:

I think it has more to do with saving on bandwidth and lag than anything.

Exactly. Also, this is a reason why we have bleed cap.

This the first and only game I’ve ever seen, where people would see a bunch of AoE coming their way and yell “AoE’s are coming! Quick! Everyone stack together!”

Does that make any sense?

I think that nerfing AoE is beneficial to melee players that might have problems tagging mobs and results in better loot drop distribution during events in which lots of players participate. At least this nerf evens out drops amongst all classes.

Lord Aargadon.4135:

……
Youre right, Aoe Should have no limit.
To compensate single target skills now do triple dmg to make them not completely worthless in comparison, since people are not happy with taking effort to owning nubz in large numbers. Also, we have removed all siege since one 100b warrior can elimate an entire zerg that attempts to rush build it.
/sarcasm

You should at least think about the nightmare of balancing multi-hit and single hit attacks before you post more worthless threads. If you claim your Aoe does nothing, does my single hit attack that deals equal dmg without the chance to hit more than one character do negative nothing?

The balance is quite simple: player proximity.

A melee profession charging down a squishy and owning him can be relatively easy due to roots and CC. You know what nearly all AoE in the game has? These big red warning signs on the ground. If a player doesn’t know enough to get out of it, why should a crutch mechanic especially in open world WvWvW ensure he takes no damage?

If there were no AoE limits, guess what would happen? Players would stop mindless mobbing, and have to actually think. Little impact in sPvP (not enough players on the map plus they’re not stupid), tough to round up enough mobs in PvE to really take advantage of no AoE cap, so the only real effect would be WvWvW.

I for one am sick of the giant zergs simply playing tag across giant maps. No limit AoE would force players to carefully consider team composition, and weigh whether they had enough damage/protection to cap points, kill supply yaks, etc.

Every profession has single target attacks, every profession has AoE. Some have MORE, but not to the exclusion of all else. The balance doesn’t have to be numerical, its simply player situational awareness. Perhaps before you criticize my “worthless threads” you should take a step back and examine the Wv3 meta and see just how lame it is and what potential it has.

This games WvW mechanics will never be taken seriously,

I don’t think its possible to dumb down pvp/rvr any worse then this game has done.

I bought this game for the WvW, and haven’t touched it really since the first 2 months.

As a die hard PvP type, I find making alts more interesting then that poop pile they call WvW, and its stupid mechanics like AoE restrictions and the further pushing of people into a cow in the herd zerg mentality that caused it.

Seriously, they couldn’t put any more training wheels in a game to facilitate stupid peoples gameplay if they tried.

I mean cmon, people here are actually arguing FOR a AoE limit, in order to prevent the stupid zerg from getting smashed by their own stupidity?

Gw2. PvP for the inept.

Course I havent actually called it WvW in ages, we just call it whack a mole.

Gwartham Haldane.8459:

I don’t think its possible to dumb down pvp/rvr any worse then this game has done.

./snip

Seriously, they couldn’t put any more training wheels in a game to facilitate stupid peoples gameplay if they tried.

You hit the nail right on the head. Oh, a red circle on the ground. Lets stand in it gaiz! Then they rage: “omg aoe are so OP, wtb nerf!”

This is the most scrub friendly game I have seen. Apart from (a less than) handfull of bossfights, nothing is even remotely challenging. “Skill: not needed here in Tyria”

I generally complain about the lack of reward this game has to offer, but I just realised, that the trivial rewards match the equally trivial challenge/risk most activities offer.

There are plenty of good reasons for the cap and plenty for no cap. Anyone who played warhammer just has to remember the fiasco that was the Bright Wizard to realize why a cap is good idea. There is to many design flaws around character abilities right now that also make capping a good idea. To many AOE abilities are also the biggest DPS ability. example. A guardians biggest hit, the one you would use on a single target is an AOE ability.
If you want to talk strategy of the zerg killing, AOE is still the most effective, you simply do it a bit differently. People have to pick different players in the stack to hit, lay down the AOE and you will hit more people. I have seen plenty of effective aoe wipe large groups fast.
I am ok with no limits on AOE if they lower aoe damage, lower the HUGE amount of aoe, no aoe through doors structures etc. and give more abilites to combat aoe through choke points etc.
All of that was WvW btw. The aoe in PvE (cursed shores as an example), is so stupid over the top as to not even be worth going to the zone

@Jski

May 2012, that was after the first BWE (can’t remember what was the situation in the first one).

As for your link about the update in november, I think it “fixed” certain skills that weren’t affected by the limit.

But I’m fairly certain that the limit has been there before the game was released because I remember using that fact when talking about content with 6+ players.

killcannon.2576:

It enables the zerg, that’s the point of it. The question you should ask is why the devs want the zerg.

It drastically lowers the skill cap so even noobs could log in and not get decimated. Guarantee you’ll have less players in wvw if new players would log in and get wiped easily even when they’re in a large group because roaming with no gear, lvl and experience with the class is not an attractive option.

But I don’t agree with that rationale though. What they should’ve done is to give subs lvl 80 players some kind of aoe defense buff that gradually gets worse as they lvl towards 80 and finally take those training wheels off when they hit lvl 80. If you haven’t learned to roll out of the red circle when you get to lvl 80, you deserve to die.

Aridia.3042:

What they should’ve done is to give subs lvl 80 players some kind of aoe defense buff that gradually gets worse as they lvl towards 80 and finally take those training wheels off when they hit lvl 80. If you haven’t learned to roll out of the red circle when you get to lvl 80, you deserve to die.

Thats actually a really good idea. Training wheels are really great for some people, and I think that encouraging PvE players to start doing WvW is a very, very good thing.. but you have to eventually take the training wheels off!

Who knows, maybe they will implement an option to input different AoE limits in the custom arenas. I think thats a good idea as well. If they are worried about the impact it will have large scale, they can collect data from the custom arenas to see how it actually plays out. And giving more options to a “custom” fight is never a bad thing.

I still maintain the zergs would be just as prominent, but it would reduce the amount of mindless blobs rolling around the map.

Dont stand in the fire.

Simple. It would make a single character wielding AoE attacks insanely powerful if they can hit everyone in the target region. Get a couple of such characters together and they can recreate the fight in 300 anywhere.

That’s why there’s a cap on number of affected by an AoE attack.

You’d think we didn’t have to nerf aoe to 5 targets concidering the aoe has fricken red circles!

Behellagh.1468:

Simple. It would make a single character wielding AoE attacks insanely powerful if they can hit everyone in the target region. Get a couple of such characters together and they can recreate the fight in 300 anywhere.

That’s why there’s a cap on number of affected by an AoE attack.

Only if all of your targets stand in one spot for you.

Everybody thinks AOE would be OP because of the current zerg tactics. Remove the cap, and the tactics will change.

-People will spread out instead of stack up to help against AOE. This not only makes more sense, but would also lead to much more interesting fights that encompass a larger area of the battlefield.

-Exploiting weak points in your enemy’s formation would become extremely important (as they are now spread out instead of one giant zerg) leading to more tactical fights. This is a huge plus.

-It’s much less likely that people would get insta-gibbed as the combat would be more spread out. In short, you wouldn’t get hit by 40 people at once.

-Flanking, among other tactics gains importance leading to more interesting tactical gameplay.

-Choke points actually become useful and dangerous.

-Skill begins to matter more than numbers. 10 smart players can hold off a zerg of not so smart ones.

The list goes on. Removing the AOE cap would get rid of this silly zerg mentality that predominates WvW and make people actually think. I can’t begin to describe how much more interesting and engaging it would be.

There is one thing that your forget in your logic. The zerg doesn’t think, it has no ability to comprehend anything beyond devour and breed. They won’t care if they are going to be killed, they will just regroup. I can understand the AoE cap, it would be kind of silly if a single person could hold off an entire zerg, but the cap is quite low. Choke points are useful if you think about it, setting up a trap at a cliff can easily kill off a zerg(Since most back up instead of looking behind.) The AoE cap should be a little bit more(Maybe 7-10) but there should always be a cap. If your smart, you can overcome 50+ zergs with 10 people, you just have to think and place siege equipment in spots where they can’t go around.

Not to mention that zergs are USUALLY led by a commander and if you can target and eliminate him, then the rest of the zerg will probably try to go back to him.

I just lol at people that are trying to say that the zerg must be protected from AoE. They have huge numbers, so they SHOULD be invincible! And then we complain that WvW is actually ZvZ.

As somebody who applies AoE, the problem is that when there is a target limit, I can throw down 4 of my AoE skills and end up hitting 20 individual people and do hardly any damage to any one of them. So, the effectiveness of my AoE skills become MUCH MUCH less if I throw it down on a big stack of people than if I threw them down on a single target standing alone. That is exactly opposite of what it should be.

Behellagh.1468:

Simple. It would make a single character wielding AoE attacks insanely powerful if they can hit everyone in the target region. Get a couple of such characters together and they can recreate the fight in 300 anywhere.

That’s why there’s a cap on number of affected by an AoE attack.

But every class…EVERY CLASS has an AOE ability. In that essence alone, there shouldn’t be a cap. Sure, certain classes have specs that circulate around AoE, but right now in the state of game with caps they’re not even close to being viable.

Top AoE classes:

1) Elementalist

2) Necromancer

3) Engineer

4) Ranger

5) Guardian

Now, to say that ONLY Elementalists would be played and feared because of a cap-removal is absurd. That’s like saying that right now everyone is playing Warrior because they’re OP (well, a large portion is, but… not everyone). At least 3 classes would shine if the restriction was removed, and others would also pick up slack in use of their AoE abilities too. So ya…..just give it a shot, because right now the Zerg-vs-zerg BS is getting old and sucking a lot.

The only problem I see, even though I’d love to be able to Meteor Shower the excreta from a big zerg, is that a big zerg will have a ton of elementalists and necros in it and they could potentially create instagib death zones. Forget about even getting near a door then, rams would be completely useless.

It could create interesting gameplay, but in my opinion if ANet was to lift AoE cap, they would have to introduce some sort of AoE protection as well, something which requires a bit of coordination but which can protect areas from massive AoE spam that would ensue. Something along the lines of bubble shields that work on stuff like Meteor Shower, or ground “anti-AoE” spells that nullify necro wells, fire fields etc.

The best thing would be a sort of counter gameplay… light fields cancel out with dark fields, water fields cancel out with fire fields etc. So you could cast a water field and actually literally put out that fire field a warrior placed on your allies. Or a necro could cast a dark field and have it cancel out with that Symbol of Protection a Guardian placed.

Might be interesting. Doubt any of that will ever happen.

There is no logic, it’s just that AoE is OP as hell in WvW so they circumvented the issue this way (though it did not resolve it completely).
Imo they should reduce the max amount of AoE damage that one player can take.
That way AoEs can hit everyone but only up to a point, else WvW will be an AoE spamfest.

RedStar.4218:

@Jski

May 2012, that was after the first BWE (can’t remember what was the situation in the first one).

As for your link about the update in november, I think it “fixed” certain skills that weren’t affected by the limit.

But I’m fairly certain that the limit has been there before the game was released because I remember using that fact when talking about content with 6+ players.

I truly think aoe dmg was 5 all the time we just did not see it until they pointed it out. Now i have prof of where they only got on boons and heal for this but there is nothing about the number of targets aoe where changed.

The problem is you remember something that happen some time ago that not prof for any thing.

What a lot of ppl seem to leave out that its 5 targets per tick of the aoe. A lot of the AoE in question are the over time AoE so its not hard to move out of these aoe avoiding most of the effect.

Might want to give this a read…. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo

Combos aren’t limited and are the main reason a (5 man team) can take down a 20+ of unorganized mayhem. Staff is really only worth anything on sieges (either defending or attacking), roam D/D with a few organized teammates and make your life a lot easier. You should be swapping weapons anyway, depending on the situation.

A fundamental issue with open-world content is that you cannot create equal teams leading to one always being larger in numbers than the other. Generally this number issue can be overcome when skilled players can take down forces much larger than their own, but the slow pace of this game makes it difficult. Between the down state, slow damage pace, and AoE cap, skilled players just don’t have much advantage over a larger force.

The simplest way to address this is to completely change the pace of combat either through strengthening of siege equipment or an increase in player damage, neither of which I think will ever happen because the game is designed to be slow.

And just increasing the AoE cap wouldn’t be a solution as it would be overpowered compared to everything else. You would also need to increase single-target damage and make changes to, or possibly remove, the downed state, in order to give combat tactics a real advantage over numbers in a balanced way.

Ezeriel.9574:

I think it has more to do with saving on bandwidth and lag than anything.

While I’m sure that’s part of it, the cap on aoes also opens up design space for features unique to WvW such as:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Arrow_cart

munkiman.3068:

Might want to give this a read…. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo

Combos aren’t limited and are the main reason a (5 man team) can take down a 20+ of unorganized mayhem.

@ Silentsins.3726
What they are doing is using the non dmg aoe to slow there progression the frost field and shock field even the earth slow (shame this is not a field too should at least be a dark one). I do not think these skills have a cap to them i would love to know if this is true or not. Things like Meteor Shower i think only hits up to 5 ppl per meteor not the full spell so if you get a few ele to use it you will see ppl drop.

Lord Aargadon.4135:

……
Also, we have removed all siege since

Fine with me. Until they make it a function of your desired role in WvWvW (sort of like the half baked Engineer elite that builds an operable mortar), Siege is just a pointless sink to encourage RMT.

Jski.6180:

@ Silentsins.3726
What they are doing is using the non dmg aoe to slow there progression the frost field and shock field even the earth slow (shame this is not a field too should at least be a dark one). I do not think these skills have a cap to them i would love to know if this is true or not. Things like Meteor Shower i think only hits up to 5 ppl per meteor not the full spell so if you get a few ele to use it you will see ppl drop.

Of coarse. The point that I’m making is that while damage is capped in WvW, there’s several mechanics in place that aren’t capped, and can be used for a few to take down many.

While the 5 person limit to damage is somewhat pro-zerg, I’m having a good laugh at the expense of the people in this thread that are translating that into WvW being “skill-less”… That’s just basic forum hyperbole that looses all credibility to the poster.

I’m pretty indifferent as to weather or not they have a cap or not, btw… I haven’t seen much of an argument for REMOVING the cap except for “because it would be better” which is not much of a convincing point at all.

Edit: To answer your question: yes, those fields do have a cap, but since they are persistent, they are affecting 5 people at a time in pulses.

John T Hall.3574:

There is one thing that your forget in your logic. The zerg doesn’t think, it has no ability to comprehend anything beyond devour and breed. They won’t care if they are going to be killed, they will just regroup. I can understand the AoE cap, it would be kind of silly if a single person could hold off an entire zerg, but the cap is quite low. Choke points are useful if you think about it, setting up a trap at a cliff can easily kill off a zerg(Since most back up instead of looking behind.) The AoE cap should be a little bit more(Maybe 7-10) but there should always be a cap. If your smart, you can overcome 50+ zergs with 10 people, you just have to think and place siege equipment in spots where they can’t go around.

Granted. So if the zerg doesn’t think, has no ability to comprehend anything beyond devour and breed (lol) and don’t care if they’re going to be killed, why should they be successful at what they’re doing? If they don’t think and just ball up in a giant cluster they should be punished for it, not rewarded.

Take the cap off of AoE and use it like its name implies. Area of Effect. The direct center is the max damage and any distance from that center point decreases damage applied in direct correlation with distance. There is a maximum range of effect already so unless the zerg is piled one on top of each other then only those closest to the center point are taking real damage. If they ball up… well then…. good times ensue

I’m an ele but I think the 5 target max is appropriate.

Not really interested in tactics where a small group of people can outright reject any amount of people from crossing through an area.