Guild Wars 2

I think aoe should be uncapped and be done as Wow does it. Blizzard even used the DR aspect in Warcraft 3. IT WORKED. I disagree that the cap should be entierly removed, but I think if 20 people stand in the lava font, all 20 deserve to get burned. They stood in the font. Now that damage could be spread out over the 20, whatever, but the point remains, it still hit 20 people.

If you completly uncap it, you give zergs more power as well as small groups. Which means a zerg of 20 eles would decimate everything.

I think a funnier issue here is that everyone fears the ele with the AOE cap. Yet as it stands, the slaughtering theives, or lets not forget the Super powerfull warriors are entierly ok. I think every class should have its talents in wvw, and Eles with a staff are always going to be the best support and defenders. They have range, aoe, and heals. Staff eles are good at that, but good luck in a battle one on one against a warrior who can one shot you(and your running pure Earth and water). There should class balance.

frostflare.6390:

If you completly uncap it, you give zergs more power as well as small groups. Which means a zerg of 20 eles would decimate everything.

I really don’t think it would, due to cast times, recharge, and the ability to just go around an AoE wall. That would be a group of 1 trick ponies that once hit their meteor shower are left to die by those of us with CC or that can walk through that damage unscathed. In strategy there is always a counter.

frostflare.6390:

I think a funnier issue here is that everyone fears the ele with the AOE cap. .

and that tells a lot on the experience of most players…..
try an ele an dyou will NEVER complain again….

If a player stands for MANY seconds in a red circle you deserve to lose..

I mean…if players can t kill a thief in 4 seconds while they are visible its a l2 kitten ue.

if another player stands in a circle for 7 seconds…NERF ELE!!!!
In the meantime you see players that ask to interrupt 1 seconds skills with 0,5 seconds skills ._.

double standars…….

Not to mention that the purpose is to stop blobbing and make people spread on the battlefield….so that an uncapped aoe still hits few players….

Aside those debatable posts……
Just don t remove cap on everything (CC spells would be OP).
But give all class at least 1 spell uncapped to prevent blobbing…

That would work expecially with long CD AND channeling spells.

There are nearly uncapped spells already. They are called “siege weapons”. Arrow carts and the like.

In beta, obvious before cap, a friend and I in wvw ran myself a warrior cc and him a staff ele. we could stop a zerg just the 2 of us at a gate. he start aoe, i drop down which fall damage knocked down. when they got up i use burst hammer, when they got up i stomp, only a few would survive from stability and running but case in point definitely would only need to uncap ele IF they did it at all. im still for it hitting more players than unlimited.

I play and ele, I understand the duel standerds. Everyone fears the ele~and its unprecidented. Our 10 extra skills in battle does not really make us gods…It doesnt. On top of it, anet likes to nerf us becuase of our versatilty, so I don’t understand the fear.

If ANet ever removes the AoE limit you can count on seeing professions that have ranged AoE in excess.

not having a cap and running into maybe 3 or 4 mesmers would pretty much ruin your day :P

shatter spec would hit for ~2.5k on a bad day 3 times, 4 if specced for it. 4 people doing 10k damage instantly to say 50 targets would just be silly and this is from pressing 2 buttons and is near unavoidable especially if you just see 50 friendly names swarm 4 red then instantly get shattered. Mesmers aren’t even the strongest aoeing classes either.

The cap seems to be a very strong addition to the quality of the game

Zephyr.1683:

not having a cap and running into maybe 3 or 4 mesmers would pretty much ruin your day :P

shatter spec would hit for ~2.5k on a bad day 3 times, 4 if specced for it. 4 people doing 10k damage instantly to say 50 targets would just be silly and this is from pressing 2 buttons and is near unavoidable especially if you just see 50 friendly names swarm 4 red then instantly get shattered. Mesmers aren’t even the strongest aoeing classes either.

The cap seems to be a very strong addition to the quality of the game

So what you’re saying is, removing the AoE cap would be bad because in your example above, 50 players would get punished for standing close enough together for mesmer shatters to hit them all?

Maybe the solution is not to have training wheels allowing zerg gameplay to dominate, but to remove the AoE cap forcing players to choose to stand close and be a target, or spread out, removing the zerg as the dominant strategy and making WvWvW interesting and fun?

As in, the whole point of this thread and my initital question.

I came back to post here. I have 2 80s, and the main reason I came here is the promise of three sided combat. Similar to one of the best games to ever offer this, DAOC. AOE by no means is op, it is one of the most easily avoidable attacks in the game. Hitting more then 5 people is exactly what this game needs, it would completely change the tactics for the better. It would spread out the battlefield, it would make flanking larger numbers possible, and it would limit what the mindless mass of players are capable of. I like all of you love this game, but it lacks the luster to keep people playing, it lacks the depths in combat to promote true tactics. When they limited AOE I died a little inside because I knew then what was going to happen and I was 100 percent correct. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKFe2CKuH2E is a guild from DAOC that demonstrates superior organized tactics VS mindless zergs. This is not possible now, and WVW has become incredibly dull, and very little tactics are used outside of the massive keep swapping zerg tactics, where numbers win every time. I fell in love with WVW in the game because this was possible, so rather than giving players time to adapt and understand how to avoid these tactics they just nerfed it. There is no point in the maps where the zerg has to run through the choke points, only the dumb ones choose to. These tactics are there to simply slow them down. 5 people can’t keep 60 from taking a keep, unless they are incredibly bad, and this only happened early game because people knew no better. I guarantee this game will lose all of it’s WvWvW player base if a game gets the open field combat correct, and limits the capabilities of the mindless blobs of players, and does not handicap small groups. The sole reason for that will be because that style is more fun.. Trust me.

There is two games of know of now that has to potential to capture the tri-world/realm combat. One is in Kickstarter, the other soon to release. Not promoting leaving, because I have a ton of time invested here, but I came here for WvWvW and it is not retaining players like it should.

Lets try a No-AoE-Cap week or month testing phase?
And let the Com test and decide, which meta is preferable in WvW?

Because arguing about what if class X stacks Y but ruling out a counter possibility in the first place…doesnt help the discussion nor does it solve the zergblobbing problem.
And takeing the caps out for a test-phase, cant be that much effort considering the big interest in AoE changes and splitting zergs up.

I like how people want to argue that removing AOE cap will be overpowered but yet at the same time they want to argue zergs will not change the way they play. They’re pretty much mutually exclusive ideas….either AOE will empower smaller groups in which zergs will likely change the way they play, or increasing AOE cap won’t change anything so you can’t argue that they’re overpowerd. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. So which is it?

And I want to remind people that when we talk about removing AOE cap, the idea of change is predicated on the smaller group in not being half wits. Typical response is do you know how badly smaller groups will be wiped if we introduced no AOE cap? You’ll get complete area of denial! Well no kitten Sherlock. If you plan to face a zerg head on while vastly outnumbered, you’ll get wiped regardless with or without cap. In fact, you could take an equal number of people in 50 vs 50 fight and have one group being a ball, the other side in groups of 5s coming from all sides and the broken up side will likely lose because you can’t do anything to a zerg ball.

However, if you actually remove the cap, things like flaking and pincher attacks would actually work. Guerrilla tactics would work. If a small group can wipe 15 guys off your tail while a zerg pvd, would the zerg break off and chase? Or do you risk them coming back for more?

It’s LOL to have Anet wanting to not split PVE/PVP skills for the longest time because they want players be familiar with the mechanics across the game but yet have them using AOE cap in funneling players into zerg balls in wvw when in all of the 80 lvls of PVE they were taught to gtfo out of red circles.

On a more philosophical level, even if smaller groups cannot take out the larger group EVER, I would still want the cap the be removed or increased. This is an issue of equity and people who don’t want to increase the cap is looking at the wrong metric. I don’t care that zergs might not break up with no AOE cap. Players should not be given a handicap for no reason. I don’t care if I can’t wipe your 50 with my 5 but I want to have a chance to kill at least 15 to 20 of you if I’m going to die. That’s basically impossible to do at the current state. Yes, zergs might not break off anyway but at least I can kill more of you if you play that way instead of you being granted immunity. There’s at least common sense and fairness in this set up. If Anet has doubts, start by doubling the AOE cap to 10 and see what happens.

Live by the sword and die by the sword, that’s all I want.

Aridia.3042:

On a more philosophical level, even if smaller groups cannot take out the larger group EVER, I would still want the cap the be removed or increased. This is an issue of equity and people who don’t want to increase the cap is looking at the wrong metric. I don’t care that zergs might not break up with no AOE cap. Players should not be given a handicap for no reason. I don’t care if I can’t wipe your 50 with my 5 but I want to have a chance to kill at least 15 to 20 of you if I’m going to die. That’s basically impossible to do at the current state. Yes, zergs might not break off anyway but at least I can kill more of you if you play that way instead of you being granted immunity. There’s at least common sense and fairness in this set up. If Anet has doubts, start by doubling the AOE cap to 10 and see what happens.

Live by the sword and die by the sword, that’s all I want.

Funny, for me common sense would be that you’d notice removing the AoE cap would make the non AoE classes completely obsolete. Unless ANet does something like -75% damage for all the uncapped AoE skills. Obviously, they cannot uncap the CC AoE skills then because it’d be stupid fast.

I don’t understand. In GW1 aoe was a form of area control. People were rarely hit with meteor shower, but it did mean you had control of a choke because of it.

It would be the perfect anti-zerg measure, since 5 good people could hold of an entire unorganized group.

Methinks it’s a technical issue where ANet’s trying to adjust the game so that it can be playable on the lowest common denominator of connection bandwidth/latency.

You guys have to remember that when you’re dealing with a game where every single action is calculated on a case to case basis, every increase in limits makes the increase in total data to be communicated multiplicative or even exponential.

Even in medium scale battles, server response becomes so delayed with the number of data streaming in that everyone simply auto’s every now and then.

Are there 100+ player zergballs in DAoC? Anyway, I’m still voting for the DR approach WoW uses. It’s fair without being a hard cap from what I see.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Area_damage_caps

Shadowbane had the greatest PvP system ever used in an MMO. It had a cap.
DAoC has zerg balls. It also has pain trains.
WoW didn’t have AE caps at release and this was nerfed quickly.

I’m still of the opinion that just increasing the harmful cap to 10 and leaving the beneficial cap at 5 would solve a lot of the problems people are having.

But no, simply removing the AE cap won’t resolve anything because we’ll assume it’s done to all AE’s. Blast a water field heals you and everyone in your zerg for 1.5k. 25 of the other 100ish people in your ball also blast the same ae healign for 1.5k to themselves and everyone else for 1.5k too. So what’s the solution to this? Only make harmful spells AE unlimited? What about confusion then? And even with a 5 per blast cap, do you think retaliation won’t be on the whole zerg within 5 seconds?

We can also see what area denial with siege weapons do right now with unlimited AE’s. Imagine players being able to do that? A single Ele could lock down an entire courtyard due to how many AE’s they have.

I understand completely why people want it done. I can only point you to DAoC where AE caps didn’t remove zergs, it just transformed them into highly mobile PBAoE trains, but at least DAoC had a solution to these by having long range AE lockdowns that could stop these things.

WoW had unlimited AE and Mages would destroy everything that moved in check points like hallways and gates (something this game has plenty of with no alternative approach available in many cases). WoW eventually put a cap and then offered DR over a 10 cap due to exploiting.

Shadowbane had much more AE than this game, but also had utility AE (AE snares, roots, vulns, etc) and one the greatest resist systems in any PvP mmo to date.

Now granted many of the above have zerg balls, but they weren’t the only strategy mostly because the world map offered players real oppurtunity to use the landscape to their advantage and offered much more diverse and complex classes. These are areas we should focus on because if we had a tiered WvW system where players actually had to do more than run around as a single group, things wouldn’t be this bad.

mysteryos.5329:

In guild wars2, we have AOLE{Area of Limited Effect} instead of AOE.

But seriously speaking, a limit of 5 players is so small in the face of so many in WvW

A limit of 5 players seems small if its 1 player vs 40. But since it’s zerg vs zerg, you have dozens of people with 5 player limited AoEs, which covers enough to hit everybody.

I do like “AOLE.” Its like phonetically saying AOE but with a ’Ole" in it, lol.

Why does no one see that WvW will become staff/well necro zerg vs staff/well necro zerg lol. If they remove AoE caps I will start a guild with nothing but staff/well necroes and have a 60 man zerg of them, they will be unstoppable. There will be nothing but necroes in WvW. Also a huge zerg of confusion mesmers would also wreck WvW.

You have to think on the large scale, with no AoE limit the fights would be who can get the most marks/wells down the fastest.

The only way to remove AOE limit would be to set up a damage value for an aoe attack then that amount of damages is divided byt the amount of people targetted.
Lets say power X deal 1000 damage AOE on 5 target it would deal 200 dmg each on 20 it would deal 50 damages each. With a rule that under 5 target you can t deal more than 200damages per targets so an aoe on a single person targeted would not deal him 1000 but 200. If damages scales down with large AOE targetted people then aoe limit could be remove. More people you hit at once, less damages they receive individualy. To remove aoe limit you have to balance it that way that it can’t be overpower at all. In any other case aoe limit shouldn’t be remove if not balance. About the conditions applied I suggest to add a secondary effect to AOE cleanse and self cleanse that grant people a 7 second status protection that cant be cumulative (would be possible to get that status protection only once each 30sec to prevent perma protection on conditions)
I like any change if people keep in mind the overal game mechanisms, professions and powers balance.

Titan.3472:

The only way to remove AOE limit would be to set up a damage value for an aoe attack then that amount of damages is divided byt the amount of people targetted.
Lets say power X deal 1000 damage AOE on 5 target it would deal 200 dmg each on 20 it would deal 50 damages each. With a rule that under 5 target you can t deal more than 200damages per targets so an aoe on a single person targeted would not deal him 1000 but 200. If damages scales down with large AOE targetted people then aoe limit could be remove. More people you hit at once, less damages they receive individualy. To remove aoe limit you have to balance it that way that it can’t be overpower at all. In any other case aoe limit shouldn’t be remove if not balance. About the conditions applied I suggest to add a secondary effect to AOE cleanse and self cleanse that grant people a 7 second status protection that cant be cumulative (would be possible to get that status protection only once each 30sec to prevent perma protection on conditions)
I like any change if people keep in mind the overal game mechanisms, professions and powers balance.

This would make AoE completely useless. So hitting a zerg of 60+ would net a total of like 5 per tick lol.

Ruprect.7260:

Why does no one see that WvW will become staff/well necro zerg vs staff/well necro zerg lol. If they remove AoE caps I will start a guild with nothing but staff/well necroes and have a 60 man zerg of them, they will be unstoppable. There will be nothing but necroes in WvW. Also a huge zerg of confusion mesmers would also wreck WvW.

You have to think on the large scale, with no AoE limit the fights would be who can get the most marks/wells down the fastest.

Why do you and others not seem to understand the concept of a “shifting meta”? In GW1, skills were adjusted all the time, meaning certain classes had an advantage, while others did not.

Players adjusted, adapted and excelled. The imposition of an artificial cap removes the need to adapt tactics. If you start up your guild and run 60 man necro zergs, than other guilds will as well, and NO ONE WILL WIN. It will be a stalemate every time. So someone else runs a counter build, or a new tactic and makes your zerg mentality obsolete.

The point is, an AoE cap imposes a penalty to any other style of gameplay, or the advantages to longevity that a shifting meta can provide. Again, no one else has yet answered this question, why is it that in EVERY other area except WvWvW players are taught to avoid red circles, yet in WvWvW it is fine to stand in them? You honestly see nothing wrong with that?

As for the idea that AoE would need to have its damage nerfed to compensate the non-AoE classes, well that’s completely untrue and honestly seems to be pandering to a favorite class. Even uncapped, AoE in general does not have the “oomph” to instagib a target, meaning that an Elementalist is at a significant disadvantage against a Warrior or Thief. This is especially true when you consider that most AoE gives a glaring warning (red circle) along with the total damage being divided up into damage “packets.” The only way for a melee class to die to AoE like Meteor Storm is if several Eles were casting all on the same spot, and for some reason the Warrior was dumb enough to just stand in it.

Right now, the balance is completely tipped in favor against AoE classes because of this artificial restriction on their skills. A Warrior knows that if he hits with a certain skill, he will do a certain amount of damage, and can plan for contingencies if his attack chain fails to kill. An Elementalist on the other hand has no such guarantee, as most of the AoE, in addition to having the artificial cap, is also randomized (both by type of hits ala Meteor Storm and by player proximity randomly targeting five different players per pulse) as well as doing its damage over a significant period of time, rather than all at once in quick succession.

tl;dr version: AoE cap is there because ANet didn’t think out properly player number balancing. Except in VERY rare circumstances, throughout every other game mode, both players and NPCs never encounter opportunities to hit more than 5 targets at a time. Obviously, this is not true in WvWvW. Player behavior in WvWvW (zerging) is an emergent property of various factors, map design, player mobility, AoE cap, etc. If the AoE cap was not a significant factor, then you would also see “zerg” behavior in other game modes, which you don’t. Hence, the AoE cap is artificially stagnating and dumbing down the WvWvW environment, and needs to be removed (or at least doubled) to make AoE professions competitive with the burst, “dueling” professions like Thieves and Mesmers.

stof.9341:

Funny, for me common sense would be that you’d notice removing the AoE cap would make the non AoE classes completely obsolete. Unless ANet does something like -75% damage for all the uncapped AoE skills. Obviously, they cannot uncap the CC AoE skills then because it’d be stupid fast.

Melee does more damage than range. If you don’t know how to gap close and rush properly, you won’t get kills even if there’s an AOE cap. Ever try to leap a light field to get retaliate?

You might as well try to argue arrow carts render all classes obsolete because it offers multiple types of AOEs with drastically lower cool downs vs skills and it has 10 times the AOE cap.

Now guess what class Kaleban is playing. Not really a surprise. Funny that suddenly Eles are “at a significant disadvantage” when it helps in arguing for removing the AE cap.

Aridia.3042:

stof.9341:

Funny, for me common sense would be that you’d notice removing the AoE cap would make the non AoE classes completely obsolete. Unless ANet does something like -75% damage for all the uncapped AoE skills. Obviously, they cannot uncap the CC AoE skills then because it’d be stupid fast.

Melee does more damage than range. If you don’t know how to gap close and rush properly, you won’t get kills even if there’s an AOE cap. Ever try to leap a light field to get retaliate?

You might as well try to argue arrow carts render all classes obsolete because it offers multiple types of AOEs with drastically lower cool downs vs skills and it has 10 times the AOE cap.

Arrow carts are not mobile.

Kaleban,

Have you ever seen a zerg that has 40+ necros now? I have, and I gotta tell ya with a cap they are near unstoppable. Without a cap most people would /ragequit.

Iruwen.3164:

Now guess what class Kaleban is playing. Not really a surprise. Funny that suddenly Eles are “at a significant disadvantage” when it helps in arguing for removing the AE cap.

does make sense considering that actually aoe best professions are necro and mesmers…

As an ele player i would like to see cap removed from MOST damage spells (but even just 1 per weaponset would be nice)…..and kept as it is on most cc spells.

And as i said who would benefit from this?

Thieves
Guardians
Warriors
Rangers

Yes
Just because you would have both sides spread on the battlefield because deathball would have “downsides”.

When people are spread aoe hits few players, but at the same time this gives more space for melee. roaming and 1VS1 classes to play without being focused by 50 players.

Its what happens in lower www tiers basically without the huge unbalance connected to low population….

obviously if you remove cap from healing, CC and Boon aoes you could have issues.
That is why it would be acceptable only for damage spells.

Giving just 1 uncapped to EVERY profession (possibly with LONG channeling time to give people chance to evade) would be even more effective to prevent abuses.

Iruwen.3164:

Now guess what class Kaleban is playing. Not really a surprise. Funny that suddenly Eles are “at a significant disadvantage” when it helps in arguing for removing the AE cap.

Wow, you’re so clever. Its almost like you missed the first sentence of my original post.

That cleverness must have made you miss the point of the thread, which is not to empower Eles, but to change how WvWvW plays out.

As to the comment about a 40+ necro zerg, yes they are nearly unstoppable. Why? because no smaller unit stands a chance against them, specifically because of the AoE limit. Five necros could take out the 40+ necro zerg with no AoE limit, thus discouraging zerging in the first place. Which is kind of the point of this whole thread.

That’s all neat and stuff, only problem is that your cute little theory simply doesn’t work out because people don’t think (and play) that way, which you know of course. Example: pretty much every MMO.
The only idea of the thread is to make AE more powerful than it already is by repeating the same feeble arguments over and over again. Same holds true for LordByron. Bad news for you: ANet alread said they’re gonna nerf AE to bring it in line with direct damage.

Real fact:

Iruwen is a MESMER player….

Mesmer curretnly is the only profession ABUSING aoe cap with uncapped glamour fields and confusion stuffs.

If people spread mesmer lose their OP tool.

For me its not an issue…i have both a mesmer and an ele……..

There’s probably a reason for that, I don’t mind if it’s changed if there’s something unbalanced though. What exactly was your argument?

/e: I’m not using Confusing Enchantments, and Blinding Befuddlement is capped as far as I know. Confusing Enchantments requires you to actively cross the field so it’s in line with other skills/traits that work that way I guess.

The fact that now pretty much every commander will say “stack on me”, which is in theory an exploit of the AoE limit, shows how much developers have messed it up by limiting the AoE target amount. They wanted to nerf something, result: they broke the WvW strategic aspect of having area damage and created another exploit to be used by people.

In fact, the zerg who stack the has statically more chance to win a WvW battle, while it should be the opposite. Way to break your own game while also breaking the classes affected by this.

I have a hard time fitting a whole zerg in my aoe and getting them all to stand still anyway.

The logic of the AOE limit is extremely simple.

Abilities balanced for 5v5 fighting. Limit imposed as quickest way to make sure AE abilities are not overpowered when they hit 10 or 20 without splitting abilities.

Fixing will require a review of almost all abilities in the game (since so many are AE of some sort), likely a LOT of splitting abilities between sPvP and WvW, or just admitting 5v5 is not where it’s at and balancing the abilities for WvW instead.

People who think it’s an easy fix are foolish. It’s possible they could get away with increasing it to 8 or 10 or so.. and just dealing with the aftermath as it comes. But would that help anything, or would it cause more problems? Nobody knows!

Hell, who cares if its hits everyone, they are mostly small aoe, and they have red circles to warn people. If a zerg stays in it they should be punished and thats coming from someone who doesnt play around with a lot of AoE.

Its probably because I hate those huge zergs because it indeed makes WvW mindless if the zerg is big enough.

miniL.7361:

Hell, who cares

ANet, they’re really into that balancing stuff.

PS: the way to anti-zerging isn’t making some abilities op but to encurage playing in smaller groups.

Iruwen.3164:

That’s all neat and stuff, only problem is that your cute little theory simply doesn’t work out because people don’t think (and play) that way, which you know of course. Example: pretty much every MMO.
The only idea of the thread is to make AE more powerful than it already is by repeating the same feeble arguments over and over again. Same holds true for LordByron. Bad news for you: ANet alread said they’re gonna nerf AE to bring it in line with direct damage.

Feeble arguments? Such as making AoE dangerous enough that people don’t stand in it for giggles? Quite feeble.

Face it, the reason the zerg tactic works in AoE is because AoE is capped. When faced with multiple arrow carts, people SCATTER and spread out because of the increased amount of targets on arrow carts. Which of course means uncapped AoE is the direct counter to zerging.

The point is not to make AoE instagib capable, its to make it dangerous enough that people STOP STANDING IN IT. You wouldn’t voluntarily stand in a Warrior’s HB attack, why then should an attack like Meteor Shower or Wells be handicapped to the point that congregating inside it is a viable damage mitigation tactic?

If AoE was uncapped, people would stop zerging through it, which means very quickly that AoE would do about the same amount of damage it does now, just because fewer people are dumb enough to stand in it. Which causes people to spread out, smaller sized group engagements, and WvWvW finally looks like it was meant to.

But by all means, keep criticizing it so that WvWvW dies off because it stays as zerg-train for the next six months, people get bored and leave.

We don’t scatter when faced with multiple arrow carts, we stick together so we profit from AE boons unless the damage absolutely isn’t bearable, which means the tactic has to be changed (i.e. reduce supply and take out defenses first). With the removal of an AE cap, the same will have to apply to boons. Go figure.
And that’s yet another false assumption, just because people spread slightly more to avoid AoE, it’s still one huge zerg. Because it’ll still be the easiest and most viable way of playing WvW. There has to be an actual incentive to quit playing that way by making other approaches more rewarding.
That HB comparison was just a joke I guess.
The correct way of getting rid of the hard cap would be: make zerging less interesting, then introduce a diminishing returns based system.

Ezeriel.9574:

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

Then get rid of catapults, trebuchets, arrow carts, and thieves.

Seriously, I’ve seen the tenuous coordination of a zerg melt at the sudden and brief appearance of a thief.

kitten the AoE cap. Three people I knew who played ele staff main just plain uninstalled the game when that patch kittened them over. I was tempted to, myself. Now I run a d/d spec and that’s obviously soon going to be nerfed because ArenaNet has this kittentupid idea that when everyone playing a class flocks to one strategy it’s a clear sign that the class obviously is not so severely underpowered that it’s the only viable means for them to play — rather, it’s a sign that the class needs to be stamped even harder into the ground.

You have to wonder if the developers even play the game.

Iruwen.3164:

The correct way of getting rid of the hard cap would be: make zerging less interesting, then introduce a diminishing returns based system.

Since everything is so obvious to you, I guess I don’t have to explain about how players naturally gravitate to the most efficient way of doing things. This applies not only to playstyle, but gearing as well. A zerg allows undergeared/leveled players to survive, as well as non-tank builds. Which means zerging is just easier for most.

Not sure how you would institute diminishing returns for proximity to other players, this seems like a lot more work for ANet in addition to more awareness paid to the UI, which is something ANet has stated it doesn’t want.

So what’s the obvious solution? Allow the players to be the (dis)incentive to zerging via intelligent, tactical skill use. As it stands now, zerging CANNOT be defeated by anything short of another similar sized group, or one extremely well coordinated group that usually still requires 10 or more players. Again, if players KNEW that the red circle on the ground meant they would be hit no matter how many others were in it, they are then de-incentivized to rush into it, kind of like every other part of the game.

Uncapped AoE opens up tactical options that are simply not available right now. And brings it in line with every other part of the game. As it stands, WvWvW already has a skill split via the cap, making AoE professions much less powerful than their single target counterparts. Melee professions for example can count on their skills doing the listed damage and taking down their targets. AoE professions are victims of the RNG gods when it comes to their skills hitting anything. This isn’t balanced.

I didn’t say anything about proximity. It just has to account for all players affected by the AE so the total damage doesn’t grow absurdly high with more players in range. Also few people shouldn’t be able to reject lots of of people from crossing an area. Total damage is what counts here, that’s what supposed to bring AE in line with direct damage. And they’re probably gonna reduce it further, at least that’s the last thing I heard on that topic:

AoE abilities balancing
- One of the issues brought up a lot in WvW./sPvP is AoE (Area of Effect). We feel like they are too strong at the moment and a lot of people in WvW are gaming the system using AoEs.
- Reducing AoE effectiveness to bring them in line with the single target damage skills.
- Major update coming to all the AoE skills – make classes that are good at single target damage stand out a bit more.

http://dulfy.net/2013/01/17/gw2-dev-livestream-jan-17-transcript/

Simply because it’s not balanced. Pretty much the opposite of what you claim is true.

If an aoe only hits say 5 people… That ENCOURAGES the zerg. IF an aoe hits everyone…then that encourages players to spread out, thus dispersing the zerg.

If a few Ele can strongly defend a choke point with aoe…THEN THATS A GOOD THING. It gives the choke point stategic meaning…just as the spartans were able to hold of an entire army of persians, so to should players be able to defend themselves easier when the environment plays to their favor. This will encourage players to i dunno, use longer range skills or abilities, think of alternative strategies…maybe even siege weapons…

Everything Anet has done so far has encouraged the zerg, has encouraged a lack of strategy and environmental meaning. If the game cant handle it, then theres an optimization problem occurring.

Iruwen.3164:

I didn’t say anything about proximity. It just has to account for all players affected by the AE so the total damage doesn’t grow absurdly high with more players in range. Also few people shouldn’t be able to reject lots of of people from crossing an area. Total damage is what counts here, that’s what supposed to bring AE in line with direct damage. And they’re probably gonna reduce it further, at least that’s the last thing I heard on that topic:

AoE abilities balancing
- One of the issues brought up a lot in WvW./sPvP is AoE (Area of Effect). We feel like they are too strong at the moment and a lot of people in WvW are gaming the system using AoEs.
- Reducing AoE effectiveness to bring them in line with the single target damage skills.
- Major update coming to all the AoE skills – make classes that are good at single target damage stand out a bit more.

http://dulfy.net/2013/01/17/gw2-dev-livestream-jan-17-transcript/

Simply because it’s not balanced. Pretty much the opposite of what you claim is true.

Truth and fact are two different things. As regards Ele AoE specifically, people the world over complain that D/D is overpowered because of PBAoE, heals and mobility/escapes. The problem with that assessment is that while it may be somewhat true, the fact is that a D/D can rarely deliver a killing blow in the typical bunker spec. Yet, that build does what it is designed to do, stall, but people claim its some awesome massacring machine when it is mostly certainly not.

A few people watch Excala and cry OP. If that is the extent of the devs game knowledge (and looking at Engineers and Elementalists its apparently the case) then balance will never be achieved. Just the fact that they want to “Reducing AoE effectiveness to bring them in line with the single target damage skills” makes absolutely no sense. An AoE skill SHOULD be more powerful by simple virtue its AoE and should have a greater effect on the battlefield. The counter to its power is to simply move out of the AoE. Saying that AoE should be balanced in effect to single target skills is like saying a rifle should have the same effect as napalm on a battlefield.

The problem is the way the game is set up. If you make single target skills stronger and AoE weaker, then zergs will become stronger since they can focus fire targets down even faster, i.e. alpha strikes. It will also make burst gank professions like Thieves stronger too.

There is no way to purely balance AoE to single target skills, as the former depend on the player factor to remain in their effect. The reason AoE is strong is because people remain in the effect. If you increase the AoE damage to the point where players realize the dangers of standing in it, then you change the face of the meta, zergs become obsolete, and the game plays how ANet intended. Weakening AoE even further than it already is will only make the propensity to zerg even stronger.

Ruprect.7260:

Aridia.3042:

stof.9341:

Funny, for me common sense would be that you’d notice removing the AoE cap would make the non AoE classes completely obsolete. Unless ANet does something like -75% damage for all the uncapped AoE skills. Obviously, they cannot uncap the CC AoE skills then because it’d be stupid fast.

Melee does more damage than range. If you don’t know how to gap close and rush properly, you won’t get kills even if there’s an AOE cap. Ever try to leap a light field to get retaliate?

You might as well try to argue arrow carts render all classes obsolete because it offers multiple types of AOEs with drastically lower cool downs vs skills and it has 10 times the AOE cap.

Arrow carts are not mobile.

Doesn’t change the the argument. It refreshes and hits 10 times better than the current AOE skills. If AOE is that big of an issue maybe you guys should ask Anet to nerf the arrow cart too? I thought people were arguing earlier than melee would be made completely obsolete and that they’ll all be killed before they could close in? So again, which is it?

AOE would have the cap limit increased if the overal damaged dealt per target scale DOWN. counterpart of larger effect is less damage on each target to keep balance.

So a consensus on removing AOE target limit replaced by a total damage dealt limit.
And an idea on total amount healed as well instead of target limit.
Leave buffs, debuffs, and other special effects (knockback, some fields) capped at five or slight increase.
Sounds good to me.

The AoE cap is the reason I don’t play my ele (which unfortunately has my commander tag) in WvW at all anymore. What’s the point? When a 100 person group is rolling up on you and you can only heal/dmg 5 with a skill on a 30 sec cd? I’ll stick to my guardian thanks….

AoE limitation is needed. Everyone who played Warhammer Online will tell you the same. The only other way to limit the dmg is to lower it per target hit. The more target it hist the less dmg it deal, but this will make the skills useless, so there is really no other way to.

Titan.3472:

AOE would have the cap limit increased if the overal damaged dealt per target scale DOWN. counterpart of larger effect is less damage on each target to keep balance.

Why?

Again, people have mentioned DAOC and WO and even WoW as benchmarks. GW2 has warning circles on all AoE, and the ability to actively dodge out of it, negating damage completely. You don’t need DR because one keystroke and you just negated all of the damage.

Heck most AoE is over time, the only way you receive full damage from a Barrage or Meteor Storm is to stand in it for the full duration.

The only reason I can think of as to why ANet is considering further nerfs to AoE is because they recognize that their player base is either too brainwashed by older MMOs to move out of red circles of death (even though the rest of the game teaches you this simple lesson) or too braindead to do so. Apparently, the braindead part of the playerbase still has enough juice to come on to forums and complain ad nauseum about how OP a class is because it wrecked them and they’re too lazy to find a counter.

Should a condition build be nerfed into the ground because people refuse to bring cleanse skills on their bar? Then why should AoE builds be nerfed because people refuse to dodge/move out of the AoE and/or not zerg into it in the first place?

Its so sad to see really. WvWvW feels so neutered and not really dangerous. The only way to find any excitement is to play a bunker and 1vX a bunch of invaders. But even that falls off as any bunker build would be hard pressed to kill multiple targets, unless you’re one of the top 1% of players.

Kaleban.9834:

Titan.3472:

AOE would have the cap limit increased if the overal damaged dealt per target scale DOWN. counterpart of larger effect is less damage on each target to keep balance.

Why?

Again, people have mentioned DAOC and WO and even WoW as benchmarks. GW2 has warning circles on all AoE, and the ability to actively dodge out of it, negating damage completely. You don’t need DR because one keystroke and you just negated all of the damage.

Heck most AoE is over time, the only way you receive full damage from a Barrage or Meteor Storm is to stand in it for the full duration.

The only reason I can think of as to why ANet is considering further nerfs to AoE is because they recognize that their player base is either too brainwashed by older MMOs to move out of red circles of death (even though the rest of the game teaches you this simple lesson) or too braindead to do so. Apparently, the braindead part of the playerbase still has enough juice to come on to forums and complain ad nauseum about how OP a class is because it wrecked them and they’re too lazy to find a counter.

Should a condition build be nerfed into the ground because people refuse to bring cleanse skills on their bar? Then why should AoE builds be nerfed because people refuse to dodge/move out of the AoE and/or not zerg into it in the first place?

Its so sad to see really. WvWvW feels so neutered and not really dangerous. The only way to find any excitement is to play a bunker and 1vX a bunch of invaders. But even that falls off as any bunker build would be hard pressed to kill multiple targets, unless you’re one of the top 1% of players.

I agree with you completely but I don’t think there will be any fix because of how much the dominant voice in the community has changed over the last few months. The community used to be one of my favorite things about this game, now, it’s just like all the rest of the major market MMO’s