Guild Wars 2

LordByron.8369:

@coldtart finally somone that understands how aoe works ._.
Notice how many players don t want aoe cap removal in fear of meteor shower….that displays quite a lack of knowledge….

Everyone here knows how meteor shower works.

It has a large radius where little meteors fall. Each of those little meteors has a very small radius that can AE and hit up to 5 targets for upwards of 2-5k a hit. So yes, the random nature of meteor shower blunts its overall value to the group. Barrage on the other hand (or any other AE in the game really) doesn’t have this.

The other poster mentions arrow carts providing area denial, which they do. But arrow carts do it amazingly well and only hit for 300-400. Barrage on a hunter hits for 1-2k and has the same size AE. And it snares. And it puts up bleed. And it has a 100% chance to crit.

And one must remember that games came out before WoW with AE in it. And even WoW had uncapped AE’s for a long time. Even they decided to cap them.

DAoC had uncapped AEs and they were easily abused with eldritch trains.
Shadowbane had 10 capped AEs and every class had AE’s and everyone was happy.
WoW had uncapped AE’s and Mages would rip through hundreds of people.
WoW capped their AE’s and everyone was happy.

I’m not opposed to raising the cap. Say raise the damaging AE cap to 10 and leave the beneficial AE cap at 5 that way you aren’t left with a stalemate. But removing the cap is a terrible idea.

There’s so much more involved in WvW in this game that is causing zergs to be the goto strategy than just AE’s having a 5 person cap. Some can be fixed (more AE options and more AE utility) and some likely can’t (redesign of the WvW map to have an actual tiered sieging system).

Atherakhia.4086:

Everyone here knows how meteor shower works.
.

then tell me how people can be concerned of Meteor Shower (so many posts) if they remove cap…..
I read everywhere…MS would be OP.

Btw they should change caps on skills…some should have cap other should not or have more targets….

LordByron.8369:

Atherakhia.4086:

Everyone here knows how meteor shower works.
.

then tell me how people can be concerned of Meteor Shower (so many posts) if they remove cap…..
I read everywhere…MS would be OP.

Btw they should change caps on skills…some should have cap other should not or have more targets….

I’m concerned stacking 10 meteor showers on top of each other would be powerful without an AE cap, but I’m least concerned with that skill. I’m morce concerned with 10 Elementalists using RTL to dart into a zerg at the same time or rolling 10 norn ele’s to stealth into a zerg and fire grabbing. Or the oft mention ranger scenario.

you can stack 10 MS as well today….nobody does…
You have some innate hate for ele it seems….

RTL and firegrab? really .-.

As Atherakhia already said: there’s a reason WoW was changed to have an AE cap with patch 2.2. The system that is used to calculate the cap was then changed later with patch 3.3, see: http://www.wowwiki.com/Area_damage_caps
I didn’t play WoW for a while, but it sounds like this should work out quite well. They’d also have to add a DR system for conditions that can be applied by AEs. That may cause too much load for their servers considering they can’t even calculate condition stacks per player instead of applying an absolute cap of 25.

LordByron.8369:

you can stack 10 MS as well today….nobody does…
You have some innate hate for ele it seems….

RTL and firegrab? really .-.

I have an ele… And we stack every AE the Ele has today. I don’t know if you run with 10 eles though.

But think about what RTL does.

It makes you move at 200% speed up to 1200 yards and it hits for about 2k damage to everyone within 300 yards. Have all your Eles in your zerg do this to the enemy zerg and that’s a lot of damage that’s very difficult to anticipate, very difficult to stop, and even more difficult to avoid.

And firegrab I’m not sure why you scoff at. That thing crits for like 10k and is a cone attack. Since Ele elite skills are so awful (we all use greatsword for another escape option), Norn is the best race for them because of cat form. Zergs line up. Your eles cat form. Run into the enemy zerg undetected. Firegrab hitting everyone for 10k ecah.

This is stupid honestly… you’re an already OP ele asking for another buff to eles… you only understand your side of things and just wanna be stronger and stronger

If you make AoE that strong, it does EXACTLY what you are advocating against… the only viable profession in wvw would be an ele to stack these massive amounts of AoE armageddon… then you have the same mindless zerg running around, but now instead of different professions in it, you’ll just have a mindless zerg full of eles

You gotta understand people, they do the simplest thing that gets results… how are you going to on the spot coordinate movement/attacks of 50 people who you don’t know? The zerg exists because it’s easy and effective… the zerg will never go away…people in the zerg will just spread out…
Congratulations, now you’ve killed wvw, you didn’t get rid of the zerg and made ele the only viable class all because you wanted to wipe people out…

Actually… Let’s do this, you can have your uber stacking armageddon AoE if I can take my ranger and insta-kill everyone that my piercing arrow passes through with rapid fire at 1500 range… deal?

Phoenix.3416:

The issue is more what do you remove the limit for.

AOE Damage
AOE Conditions
AOE Boons
Healing

If you remove the cap for damage you have to remove the cap for conditions, if you remove the cap for conditions you have to remove the cap for Boons to remove those conditions and balance out the negative

The issue is that means that some skills would be overpowered , Shadows refuge could make an entire zerg invisible and AOE cripple would slow an entire zerg down, mix that with AOE damage and so many players will die instantly.

Timewarp on an entire zerg? Mass healers supporting the DPS meaning a smaller group cant dent anyone?

so many things could go wrong with removing the cap up it to 10 to start with and see how it goes

That’s just it, though…..Stealth isn’t really in any of those things as it is it’s own category. I think that Stealth is fine being left untouched in a change and stays capped at 5 people for usage. Don’t try and say “that’s unfair” or whatever, as it’s a wholly separate mechanic from damage, Boon, Condition, or Heal and is used to skirt players around a battlefield undetected.

I could at the very least meet in the middle with a request of a 10-man cap instead of 5, increasing the effected targets by double. It’s just right now it’s designed to be capped at a “party size”, where in WvW (and even in sPvP) people do not roll just a single small party size, but instead a large group of a minimum of 10, going up to 15-20, and in the cases of larger groups making 30, 40, and 50 man groups. This is ruining WvW for many players who are sick and tired of it not being about skill, but instead about who has the larger number.

French castle sieges were never about numbers, but about who had the better strategy and best siege set up. If an enemy brought trebs to the fight, it would seem to be “all over”, unless you had ways of either hitting those with counter trebs, catapults, or a fire of sorts to burn them down (assuming the enemy wasn’t near a supply of water that could put out he fire quickly).

This is what sieges should be like:

But, instead of this. We have large groups bashing at gates, because they KNOW that the “fire wall” is only going to hit 5 of them, the KNOW that the barrage of arrows will only hit 5 of them, they KNOW that defenses are no match for their numbers because of an artificial system helps them skirt by just by stacking in as many as they can (essentially throwing bodies at the gate until it’s down). This is not siege warfare, this is not fantasy fun. This is oxen dung.

Edit: P.S. To those complaining about “OP Eles” stacking on a wall and destroying your precious zerg, I’d like to say something. Take 3 people from your zerg, which should better kitten well have supply, and have them build a ballista. While one person of the zerg sits back and suppresses the Elementalists off the wall, your precious zerg can enter the keep and then bum rush into melee mode to finish them off. Congratulations, you’ve taken the objective. Siege Tactics 101, people just are too lazy or ignorant to use them.

Dude, how old are you?

You’ve determined what sieges “should be like” by watching one movie?That’s hilarious…

If you want to argue what sieges SHOULD look like, why don’t you present some historical evidence and examples instead of ollywood movie…I was at least expecting a history channel program…tthis just took the cake lol

Also, you yourself seem to ignore the hundreds of archers on both sides getting slaughtered by a rain of arrows, not 3 guys taking out the whole castle…

I think you want more something along the lines of that siege scene in Lotr where Gandalf arrives and massacres the entire orc army with his shiny staff…

Haha… also forgot… if you want to talk about what sieges should be like, unlike what Hollywood tells you, there weren’t many epic and heroic battles… most “sieges” would happen by an attacking army surrounding the castle for months until everyone inside died from starvation… hence why it’s called a siege… would you like to camp outside a keep for a couple of months just like a real siege?

All the AoE limit does it make small groups useless because the larger group can hit more targets.

Atherakhia.4086:

LordByron.8369:

you can stack 10 MS as well today….nobody does…
You have some innate hate for ele it seems….

RTL and firegrab? really .-.

I have an ele… And we stack every AE the Ele has today. I don’t know if you run with 10 eles though.

But think about what RTL does.

It makes you move at 200% speed up to 1200 yards and it hits for about 2k damage to everyone within 300 yards. Have all your Eles in your zerg do this to the enemy zerg and that’s a lot of damage that’s very difficult to anticipate, very difficult to stop, and even more difficult to avoid.

And firegrab I’m not sure why you scoff at. That thing crits for like 10k and is a cone attack. Since Ele elite skills are so awful (we all use greatsword for another escape option), Norn is the best race for them because of cat form. Zergs line up. Your eles cat form. Run into the enemy zerg undetected. Firegrab hitting everyone for 10k ecah.

I’m not sure how many different ways I can say this. That’s the point. Yes your RTL would do a ton of damage if you use it on a [B]ZERG[/B]. This would create large disadvantage to zerging which is exactly what we’re trying to accomplish. You’re basing all of your speculation on the idea that everyone would still clump up in a ball. We’re saying that removing the aoe cap would make it so clumping up in a ball is a terrible idea. That RTL isn’t nearly as powerful if it hits 2 people instead of 5. Or 3 people instead of 10. Makes it a good idea to spread out instead of clump up, don’t you think?

eXs.6210:

Dude, how old are you?

You’ve determined what sieges “should be like” by watching one movie?That’s hilarious…

If you want to argue what sieges SHOULD look like, why don’t you present some historical evidence and examples instead of ollywood movie…I was at least expecting a history channel program…tthis just took the cake lol

Also, you yourself seem to ignore the hundreds of archers on both sides getting slaughtered by a rain of arrows, not 3 guys taking out the whole castle…

I think you want more something along the lines of that siege scene in Lotr where Gandalf arrives and massacres the entire orc army with his shiny staff…

I’m not going by actual historical sieges. Because those actually took weeks, months, and years to do. Most the time your enemy’s armies would start to die off from lack of sustenance or disease and plague spreading through the ranks in their tightly packed living quarters with poor hygiene conditions. That’s when sieges were more blockades than not.

But yes, I am thinking it should be more Hollywood style sieges in that there’s epic battles with spread out offensive troops and well standing defensive positions that hold them back. But, as it stands now there’s not that. It’s just a ball smacking on the gate until it’d down and then the ball rolling over the lord.

And don’t be so naive to assume that with an AoE cap removal, “3 guys taking out the whole castle” will be a scenario. That’s absurd. The cap removal would make for better defenses for keeps, towers, and castles as well as a few field choke points. But, it wouldn’t be an end-all defense either as the enemy would also have AoE restrictions lifted and offensive attacks against the defenses would be possible. Thus the use of siege to cull the numbers on either side would be used and advised of.

You’re assumed one-track mind of think that removal of an AoE cap would have single players (or groups of 3) wiping out groups of 50 is just crazy. Please, think logically.

i mainly do wvw and run staff, and i think it’s fine at 5. If AoEs hit everyone, it would be waaay to powerful. I never get more than 5 people in my AoEs for long anyway, because anyone with half a brain is going to move out of the red circle.
AoEs are mostly effective for controlling zerg movement. Put a big red circle to the left of the zerg and theyll move right. I also cast my AoEs over my teammates (wars and guardians) to add dmg support to their pushes.
tldr you are not a one man army! You can still take advantage of bottlenecks with your AoEs, you just can’t down 10 people at once…it takes 2 eles to do that

ANet has a good reason to limit the AoE to 5 targets at once in WvWvW where zergs would even be more powerful.

Ayrilana.1396:

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.

Actually, non-capped AoE would just require large groups to spread out to prevent death by AoE, rather than just roaming around as a mindless, unstoppable force that really only fears an even larger zerg.

The OP is correct. The cap is a big reason that the mindless zerg IS the superior strategy for WvW. If they ever want WvW to be more strategic and tactical and less zerg-fest, the AoE cap needs to either be greatly expanded or removed all together.

The Rooster.2615:

Atherakhia.4086:

LordByron.8369:

you can stack 10 MS as well today….nobody does…
You have some innate hate for ele it seems….

RTL and firegrab? really .-.

I have an ele… And we stack every AE the Ele has today. I don’t know if you run with 10 eles though.

But think about what RTL does.

It makes you move at 200% speed up to 1200 yards and it hits for about 2k damage to everyone within 300 yards. Have all your Eles in your zerg do this to the enemy zerg and that’s a lot of damage that’s very difficult to anticipate, very difficult to stop, and even more difficult to avoid.

And firegrab I’m not sure why you scoff at. That thing crits for like 10k and is a cone attack. Since Ele elite skills are so awful (we all use greatsword for another escape option), Norn is the best race for them because of cat form. Zergs line up. Your eles cat form. Run into the enemy zerg undetected. Firegrab hitting everyone for 10k ecah.

I’m not sure how many different ways I can say this. That’s the point. Yes your RTL would do a ton of damage if you use it on a [B]ZERG[/B]. This would create large disadvantage to zerging which is exactly what we’re trying to accomplish. You’re basing all of your speculation on the idea that everyone would still clump up in a ball. We’re saying that removing the aoe cap would make it so clumping up in a ball is a terrible idea. That RTL isn’t nearly as powerful if it hits 2 people instead of 5. Or 3 people instead of 10. Makes it a good idea to spread out instead of clump up, don’t you think?

And as I’ve said…. repeatedly…

Removing the cap won’t have the effect you’re thinking it will. Have you played other MMO’s? Games without caps with far better AE options than this still have zerg on zerg. All it does is alienate classes that don’t provide AE (about half of them in this game) and create more specialized zergs (trains in DAoC). We’ve even discussed how things like retaliation would nullify the changes to AE and again, leave us with nothing but zergs.

Increase the cap to 10 on harmful spells.
Leave the cap at 5 for beneficial spells.
Make sure every class has a real spammable AE option.
Introduce null fields to force people to actually move out of AE.

Null Fields are things like the guardian wall would now block line of site through it so you can fire through it but the enemy can’t. Mesmers being able to drop their reflect orbs wherever they please removing LOS to the enemy. Introducing AE’s with AE knockback pulses. Remove the heal from shadow refuge and replace it with a pulsing blind.

Seeing a trend here? This game lacks any kind of real depth to the pvp environment. There’s nothing but damage, damage, and more damage. There’s nothing to discourage people from balling up. The maps are designed in a way to provide no real options but to ball up. There’s no strategy involved in conquering a map (why isn’t it a tiered tower system?!?!?!).

Can’t remove the AE cap until every class has equal power at the AE game.
Can’t remove the AE cap until AE actually follows the typical rules of LOS and barriers.
Can’t remove the AE cap until it will actually have a real impact on the game.

DAoC, my favorite MMO, will be my quick reference point for my post.

Hard rupts, etc aside — DAoC had the right idea. When you want RvR (WvW), you have to give groups the ability to fight zergs, which means no AoE cap. To make this fair, the strongest aoe spells were very short range(pbaoe) while the long range aoe spells didn’t have much splash. It’s so simple, yet completely overlooked by the anet team. However, this game is what it is and either we like what’s put out there for us or we don’t. This isn’t something that will see change in its current state, at least not for a -very- long time.

Atherakhia.4086:

LordByron.8369:

Atherakhia.4086:

Everyone here knows how meteor shower works.
.

then tell me how people can be concerned of Meteor Shower (so many posts) if they remove cap…..
I read everywhere…MS would be OP.

Btw they should change caps on skills…some should have cap other should not or have more targets….

I’m concerned stacking 10 meteor showers on top of each other would be powerful without an AE cap, but I’m least concerned with that skill. I’m morce concerned with 10 Elementalists using RTL to dart into a zerg at the same time or rolling 10 norn ele’s to stealth into a zerg and fire grabbing. Or the oft mention ranger scenario.

Oh god, could you possible like… Move out of the way of the aoes?
Meteor Storm is SLOW AS HECK… and long too, and the caster has a precise animation when he starts it.

Its one of the easiest abilities in the game to avoid, and to be honest, the ability actually sucks, even with uncapped AEs.

Thz.7569:

DAoC, my favorite MMO, will be my quick reference point for my post.

Hard rupts, etc aside — DAoC had the right idea. When you want RvR (WvW), you have to give groups the ability to fight zergs, which means no AoE cap. To make this fair, the strongest aoe spells were very short range(pbaoe) while the long range aoe spells didn’t have much splash. It’s so simple, yet completely overlooked by the anet team. However, this game is what it is and either we like what’s put out there for us or we don’t. This isn’t something that will see change in its current state, at least not for a -very- long time.

And what did DAoC devolve into? Instead of zerg balls standing at max range firing salvos into each other they turned into trains where the zergs would have a class for group movement buff, a class for group invuln, and a billion eldritch to pbaoe and they would just run through the map never stopping running into everything. And how did they stop this? AE lockdowns with ranged AE.

End result? Still zerg on zerg combat. No one moved out of AE range or scattered.

Daecollo.9578:

Atherakhia.4086:

LordByron.8369:

Atherakhia.4086:

Everyone here knows how meteor shower works.
.

then tell me how people can be concerned of Meteor Shower (so many posts) if they remove cap…..
I read everywhere…MS would be OP.

Btw they should change caps on skills…some should have cap other should not or have more targets….

I’m concerned stacking 10 meteor showers on top of each other would be powerful without an AE cap, but I’m least concerned with that skill. I’m morce concerned with 10 Elementalists using RTL to dart into a zerg at the same time or rolling 10 norn ele’s to stealth into a zerg and fire grabbing. Or the oft mention ranger scenario.

Oh god, could you possible like… Move out of the way of the aoes?
Meteor Storm is SLOW AS HECK… and long too, and the caster has a precise animation when he starts it.

Its one of the easiest abilities in the game to avoid, and to be honest, the ability actually sucks, even with uncapped AEs.

English…. not your first language I presume?

Atherakhia

You keep saying Barrage snares, it doesn’t do that. It cripples, which is just a 50% movement speed for a whopping ONE second that is very easily rolled out of. A snare would be an immobilization or a pull, which it is neither.

Insulting English just made me overlook and completely disregard anything you said. Low….

Atherakhia.4086:

There’s nothing to discourage people from balling up.

Hey! You’re right! You know what would discourage people from balling up? Removing the AoE Cap.

Atherakhia.4086:

Introduce null fields to force people to actually move out of AE

You’ve lost me here. So you want to introduce a new mechanic that makes people move out of aoe as opposed to say, just making the aoe itself a reason to move out of the aoe…

Atherakhia.4086:

Can’t remove the AE cap until it will actually have a real impact on the game.

So that I understand this correctly, your points are this:

-Removing the AOE cap would result in certain classes having enormous power and would make AOE OP.

-Removing the AOE cap will have not have a real impact on the game and so it shouldn’t be done.

These points are mutually exclusive. You can’t logically argue both at the same time. Furthermore, if you’re honestly serious that removing the aoe cap would not have a real impact on the game, then why argue so vehemently against it? WvW is already a zerg fest. Say you’re right and the changes have no impact, it’s still a zerg fest. But if it works, then the game becomes much more interesting.

Atherakhia.4086:

Null Fields are things like the guardian wall would now block line of site through it so you can fire through it but the enemy can’t. Mesmers being able to drop their reflect orbs wherever they please removing LOS to the enemy. Introducing AE’s with AE knockback pulses. Remove the heal from shadow refuge and replace it with a pulsing blind.

The changes you suggest would be very interesting and add depth indeed. But even adding just one of those skills would take anet months of balancing to get right. Removing the aoe cap is a simple fix that can be done immediately.

The Rooster.2615:

Removing the aoe cap is a simple fix that can be done immediately.

Make a different type of zerg more powerful, it will totally stop zergs!

The short-sightedness of many of the posters in this thread continues to astound me.

Puaru.9325:

Atherakhia

You keep saying Barrage snares, it doesn’t do that. It cripples, which is just a 50% movement speed for a whopping ONE second that is very easily rolled out of. A snare would be an immobilization or a pull, which it is neither.

Sigh… this is what I’m talking about. People haven’t a clue what kind of AE’s exist in this game or what they do.

A snare is a movement impairing effect. In this case, a 50% movement impairing effect which lasts one second. HOWEVER, that is 1 second per second which means so long as you’re under it, you’re snared.

The Rooster.2615:

Atherakhia.4086:

There’s nothing to discourage people from balling up.

Hey! You’re right! You know what would discourage people from balling up? Removing the AoE Cap.

Atherakhia.4086:

Introduce null fields to force people to actually move out of AE

You’ve lost me here. So you want to introduce a new mechanic that makes people move out of aoe as opposed to say, just making the aoe itself a reason to move out of the aoe…

Atherakhia.4086:

Can’t remove the AE cap until it will actually have a real impact on the game.

So that I understand this correctly, your points are this:

-Removing the AOE cap would result in certain classes having enormous power and would make AOE OP.

-Removing the AOE cap will have not have a real impact on the game and so it shouldn’t be done.

These points are mutually exclusive. You can’t logically argue both at the same time. Furthermore, if you’re honestly serious that removing the aoe cap would not have a real impact on the game, then why argue so vehemently against it? WvW is already a zerg fest. Say you’re right and the changes have no impact, it’s still a zerg fest. But if it works, then the game becomes much more interesting.

Atherakhia.4086:

Null Fields are things like the guardian wall would now block line of site through it so you can fire through it but the enemy can’t. Mesmers being able to drop their reflect orbs wherever they please removing LOS to the enemy. Introducing AE’s with AE knockback pulses. Remove the heal from shadow refuge and replace it with a pulsing blind.

The changes you suggest would be very interesting and add depth indeed. But even adding just one of those skills would take anet months of balancing to get right. Removing the aoe cap is a simple fix that can be done immediately.

Rooster… please see english comment above.

1.) I addressed how removing the AE cap won’t remove zergs.
2.) Because the AE cap won’t remove zergs, removing the cap won’t accomplish anything.
3.) I argue against it because unlike the majority of people in this thread, I’ve actually played more than WoW. I even played WoW when the AE cap didn’t exist. I know it doesn’t resolve anything from past experience. And those were real MMO’s with properly developed classes and real depth (tactics, strategy) that could be used.
4.) Removing the AE cap throws all balance out the window because we’ll have no one playing this game anymore but classes with real AE’s.

Like I’ve said….

Removing the AE cap can’t even be considered until we’ve ensured all of the classes can actually bring something to the AE table and they’ve fixed the numerous exploits AE’s can already do like ignore LOS and barriers. It’s probably quicker for ANet to add secondary effects to skills that already get no use than it would be for them to fix these issues.

Atherakhia.4086:

Puaru.9325:

Atherakhia

You keep saying Barrage snares, it doesn’t do that. It cripples, which is just a 50% movement speed for a whopping ONE second that is very easily rolled out of. A snare would be an immobilization or a pull, which it is neither.

Sigh… this is what I’m talking about. People haven’t a clue what kind of AE’s exist in this game or what they do.

A snare is a movement impairing effect. In this case, a 50% movement impairing effect which lasts one second. HOWEVER, that is 1 second per second which means so long as you’re under it, you’re snared. .

Oh I know what it does, all ~500 hours I’ve spent on GW2 has been as Ranger. I’ll point to a patch note to prove my point.

Risen Putrifiers will no longer immobilize themselves when attempting to snare players with their anchor.

Snaring is referring to immobilization, cripple does not immobilize. Which is why it’s not a snare. Another example can be seen in League of Legends with Ryze. His Rune Prison is a snare, it stops them from moving. If they we’re simply slowed (as with Barrage, called Crippled in this game) they are not immobile, only slowed.

That being said I don’t think the AoE cap should go away either.

Atherakhia.4086:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Snare

This game has no snare.

It was blatantly obvious my meaning. I’m not getting into a semantics debate over the internet.

Wasn’t obvious to me, seeing as you call Rangers “hunters”, I just assumed you were an idiot. My first post was telling you you were using the wrong term, and you took that to mean that I didn’t know what Barrage did. So I broke it down for you. Sorry that you learned something today.

If any of you have watched TL talk about this on Tales of Tyria you’d know how we stand on this. Organized WvW teams can only go so far against zergs which triple our own numbers, which should not be the case. In my opinion, the AoE limit is the primary reason as to why zerging is so effective compared to legitimate tactics and strategies.

Viking Jorun.5413:

If any of you have watched TL talk about this on Tales of Tyria you’d know how we stand on this. Organized WvW teams can only go so far against zergs which triple our own numbers, which should not be the case. In my opinion, the AoE limit is the primary reason as to why zerging is so effective compared to legitimate tactics and strategies.

Why not? The side with more people should have an advantage. It’s just a matter of how much more of an advantage, which is entirely subjective.

Sunflowers.1729:

Viking Jorun.5413:

If any of you have watched TL talk about this on Tales of Tyria you’d know how we stand on this. Organized WvW teams can only go so far against zergs which triple our own numbers, which should not be the case. In my opinion, the AoE limit is the primary reason as to why zerging is so effective compared to legitimate tactics and strategies.

Why not? The side with more people should have an advantage. It’s just a matter of how much more of an advantage, which is entirely subjective.

But it is not subjective at all. The advantage of number is based purely on the skill that makes up said numbers. However, this game gives another ‘artificial’ advantage to the side with more people, and that is the AoE cap. That itself gives them an upper hand that basically lowers the bare-minimum skill requirement to get by in the game and win a fight just by clustering numbers against a predictably capped damage attack.

>Think of Zergs like Scritt: Stupid as individuals, to the point of near brainlessness. However, the more that get together in a single area, the better they perform. Yet unlike the Scritt this isn’t some kind of “hive-mind effect”, but instead it’s where the system actually rewards the cluster of brainless (in fact, this is where people keep saying that “people will always zerg, it’s more rewarding”…that’s just making the point).

The purpose of removing the AoE limit wouldn’t be to remove zergs, I seriously don’t know why people keep repeating this argument. Zergs will always be around, as they should be because it’s a viable tactic. It’s the zergballs that’s the problem.

Apparently, all the bazillion year DAOC veterans know everything about MMOs so we should all just be content with the zerg as the only viable tactic.

Do the people arguing against the AoE cap removal really not see a problem with this? Is it so difficult to see how allowing an unlimited number of players to group up, but limiting an opposing force’s options to disperse said group is unbalanced?

As it stands now, the only hard counter to a zerg is a larger zerg, OR an extremely well coordinated team whose AoE exactly matches the opposing force’s number. This is why you see guild teams of 10 people obliterating zergs of up to 40 or 50.

However, the skill and coordination required of the smaller team is disproportionately much larger than that of the larger zerg. This effect also hampers non organized teams, roamers, and casual players from ever being truly effective on the battlefield.

A zerg or “zergball” should basically be considered the training wheels noob tactic, where people fresh to WvWvW can cut their teeth on the game style and get used to the size of the maps, where things are located, etc. But it should not be the ultimate tactic that except for a very few exceptions wins every time.

As Rooster and others have been saying, removing the AoE cap makes congregating in a zerg very dangerous and risky, as it should be. This would force players to learn and adapt new tactics, which makes the game more interesting and rewarding. Thus extending the novelty and interest of WvWvW.

Again, to all those arguing against the AoE cap removal, in what sense, logical or gameplay-wise, does the notion of an artificially induced AoE cap make sense? If a bunch of players are dumb enough to stand in obvious AoE, then why should they not take the damage? It would be like raising the player/party cap in dungeons to 10, but making NPC and Boss AoE circles still have a 5 target cap. This could be terribly exploited by players, and probably not “working as intended” yet its the same thing as the AoE cap in WvWvW.

The AoE cap is there so that ANet can balance AoE skills and AoE heavy classes the same for small fights than big fights. Remove the cap and the AoE using classes become MUCH stronger in WvW. Remove the cap and rebalance the power of those skills and the classes become very weak in normal small group/solo PvE and PvP.

stof.9341:

The AoE cap is there so that ANet can balance AoE skills and AoE heavy classes the same for small fights than big fights. Remove the cap and the AoE using classes become MUCH stronger in WvW. Remove the cap and rebalance the power of those skills and the classes become very weak in normal small group/solo PvE and PvP.

Just as I thought…the melee fighters, or the single-targeters (i.e. Rangers) are the counters of the removal of the AoE cap. Why? Because from their perspective it would make them less optimal in a fight and they would be out shined by other classes. They don’t want to be out shined, thus don’t want other classes to take advantage of an AoE cap removal. That is selfish.

This game is a team game. It’s not PvPvPvPvPvPvPvP(x200 more times), IT IS WORLDvsWORLDvsWORLD.

The point of having a team is to rely on your allies just as much as them relying on you. Single-target classes such as Thieves and Rangers rely on sniping mechanics to quickly take out priority targets for their team; they are essential in wiping out the enemy’s group hitters or boon builders such as an Elementalist or a Mesmer.

Yet in that same sense, Elementalists should be relied on to set up fields which either damage or disperse enemies (which in the current state of the AoE cap, it doesn’t) and Guardians to boon their allies and Mesmers to confuse the enemy.

Without a cap, don’t expect an Elementalist to do world-destroying damage that will kill everyone in the game instantly; that isn’t happening. However, expect them to apply AoE’s that direct enemy movement by forcing them to dodge it and move around the battlefield (instead of moving right through it unscathed due to an artificial 5-man cap). Expect that the AoE’s apply a moderate amount of damage in which the single-targeters mentioned above can then take advantage of and finish off the enemy for their allies and their team.

It’s WvW, not Elementalist vs Elementalist or AoE vs AoE. ANet won’t make AoE that powerful because they want to balance their game and their professions.

The class repartition in WvW is bad enough already, there’s no need to make it worse. The huge amount of elementalists I met is already annoying enough.

Siphaed it’s been repeated a dozen times or more that is one of the main reasons people are against this change.

It’s been said that removing the AE cap won’t solve zerg balls because of things like retaliation and confusion.

It’s been said that removing the AE cap isn’t realistic so long as AE’s can so easily ignore the rules of LOS and barriers.

It’s been said that removing the AE ca kitten imply too powerful when you consider a select few AE’s and how they work and a blanket rule simply isn’t a realistic option.

This thread has been going in a circle for 5 pages now because these points are brought up and ignored by the people in favor of removing the AE cap even though it’s pretty obvious those who want it removed haven’t clearly thought it through, have no real understanding of the type and power of various AE’s in this game, how few classes have AE’s of any real value, and just how little room is available inside keeps and towers.

If you feel AE needs to be improved, then improve it. Simply increasing the cap on harmful AE spells (conditions and damage) over beneficial AE’s (boons, barriers and heals) so offense outweighs defense and AE’s aren’t nullified by zergballs would be enough and wouldn’t drastically change the balance of the game to favor a select few classes.

But the real reason zerg balls are so powerful here has more to do with poor class design and balance, poorly designed WvW maps, and a poorly implemeneted sieging system than it has to do with AE’s alone.

5 target aoe limit must be removed, or at least it must be increased to 10 or 15.
This just encourages zerg play.

I thought I would add another screenshot of a battle I had the other day that lasted the best part of 2 hours outside stonemist castle. At one point, all one could see from the castle walls was red names, covering the ground up to the horizon.

5 man aoe limit is a drop in the ocean when it comes to WvW. As it is, the only way to get this situation sorted was to go down into personal combat and there its a matter of who can kill the other guy first, one on one.

People complain that they see a lot of ele’s, but what they mean is dagger/dagger eles. There are a few staff ele’s around and frankly, you can just ignore them. The aoe limit turns us all into the thief class, so if you really want to spend your last 3 seconds of life seeing a “ride the lightning” and then instant death, then by all means support the aoe cap.

The alternative is that you see a red circle on the floor and you step out of it. Which would you rather have?

Atherakhia.4086:

Siphaed it’s been repeated a dozen times or more that is one of the main reasons people are against this change.

It’s been said that removing the AE cap won’t solve zerg balls because of things like retaliation and confusion.

It’s been said that removing the AE cap isn’t realistic so long as AE’s can so easily ignore the rules of LOS and barriers.

It’s been said that removing the AE ca kitten imply too powerful when you consider a select few AE’s and how they work and a blanket rule simply isn’t a realistic option.

This thread has been going in a circle for 5 pages now because these points are brought up and ignored by the people in favor of removing the AE cap even though it’s pretty obvious those who want it removed haven’t clearly thought it through, have no real understanding of the type and power of various AE’s in this game, how few classes have AE’s of any real value, and just how little room is available inside keeps and towers.

If you feel AE needs to be improved, then improve it. Simply increasing the cap on harmful AE spells (conditions and damage) over beneficial AE’s (boons, barriers and heals) so offense outweighs defense and AE’s aren’t nullified by zergballs would be enough and wouldn’t drastically change the balance of the game to favor a select few classes.

But the real reason zerg balls are so powerful here has more to do with poor class design and balance, poorly designed WvW maps, and a poorly implemeneted sieging system than it has to do with AE’s alone.

Ofcourse there would be some issues without an AoE cap, but it’s not like you can’t balance things to accomodate for it. Just to give you a few examples:

-Introduce a retaliation cap
-Decrease the radius on some AoE abilies that might become too powerful without a limit (I don’t mind if this is done to a lot of AoE, just so that people who stand in the smaller radius do actually get hit)
-Individual caps for certain abilities that provide powerful boons for your team (might stacking, shadow refuge, etc)

And the list could go on. I’m not sure about AoE ignoring LoS, as most elementalists have to stand on the very edge on the wall to pull off a decent Meteor Shower, which is a whole different issue. I don’t know how confusion would be a problem either.

I agree AoE is just one of the issues WvW has, but I think that removing (or even increasing) the limit would be a step in the right direction if balance changes are made accordingly.

I find it a bit condescending for you to say that people who disagree with you automatically have no understanding of AoEs in the game, and find it a void and slightly offensive argument to use.

Atherakhia.4086:

Siphaed it’s been repeated a dozen times or more that is one of the main reasons people are against this change.

>SNIPPED DUE TO 5001 LIMIT<

But the real reason zerg balls are so powerful here has more to do with poor class design and balance, poorly designed WvW maps, and a poorly implemeneted sieging system than it has to do with AE’s alone.

First off, if you’re going on to dissing the game that much and insulting the programmers of the game so badly, you can either quit or design a game yourself. To say that basically everything is poorly designed is an absurd statement that only pushes your agenda (against the AoE cap) out the window and makes everyone know what you are: a troll.

The zerg-ball is a clustered up group of 20+ players (right now scaling into the 40’s and 50’s numbers) in a tightly formed group that moves through anything in their path [be it gate, Keep Lord, player, wall, whatever]. When it comes to them going into a marked damage area of an AoE, they care not because a fraction of their entire group is going to be hit and overall they can heal through it.

Scenario #1:

>Zerg of 20 goes to tower and smacks on door.

>Defender-A drops an AoE on said Zerg. 5 players are slightly damaged (not even that much).

>Players are getting healed by Attacker-A’s AoE heal.

>Defender-A drops another AoE hitting a completely 5 players of the same 20 man group.

Report: Because the AoE effects different, random players within the same group, it’s not determined that you can hit the same players twice (and that chance decreases the larger the enemy group is). This means that the damage is spread out slowly, artificially across different players which can easily be out healed by the most meager of healing abilities. With the current state of the game, subsequent AoE’s within the same area against the same group of players larger than 6 are rendered weak to the point of near uselessness.

1) Retaliation is basically a reflection skill. So, what you’re saying is that AoE won’t be increased because AoE casters will be killing themselves because the other group will Retaliate the damage? I’m confused on your complaint here. It sounds like a negative, a hindrance on the AoE caster instead of a positive for them. Even so, Retaliation in a moderate cooldown on most classes, last only between 1-5 secs at the most, and is a very noticeable Boon on the enemy target that you can see visibly below their HP bar.
4 classes and 2 races have direct access to this condition; Light Fields can apply it for anyone with a Blast or Leap finisher;

2) Confusion deals damage only each time the attacker uses a skill. If an AoE is only cast once and channeled (like say Meteor Shower) than the caster will only take one hit against them from the Confusion. It’s not based on the damage they do. Again another Condition that only lasts 1-5sec and is clearly visible on the infected by the swirling red icon next to their Boons and Conditions area on their UI. 6 classes and 1 race have access to this Condition; 4 classes can remove it.

3) Barriers block projectiles and physical passage, which many AoE abilities are neither. They are lava pools from the ground, Chaos storms in the air, Meteors from the sky….these things don’t have Line of Sight because logic dictates that they don’t NEED line of site to hit someone just as long as the someone is directly below or above the area of the summoned spell effect. But if a player doesn’t have access to a LoS-breaking spell to reach someone that does, they can rely on their teammates which certainly will have one to use (even have a Mesmer pull or a Necro fear).

4) Exactly what AoE’s are going to be so ‘uber powerful’ after the removal of an AoE cap that they’ll do more damage than 12k hit from a Warrior? Or more so than a 15k hit from a Thief? I mean, every class has AoE abilities, even melee classes do. So, I’d like to know exactly which one will “throw off the class balance” of an already unbalanced system that favors numbers of brainless over strategic gameplay.

5) It’s been said many times again and again that AoE would help SPREAD out the zergs to eventually cull them. Sure, it won’t eliminate the mindless sheep balls, but it certainly will lessen their likelihood to just steamroll everything without recourse. It gives defenders an actual chance to defend against such high numbers. It also helps small groups and guild actually matter in WvWvW instead of only large guilds and super groups mattering (which as I recall was one of A.Net’s goals originally when they’d created WvWvW anyways).

It’s almost as if some of you guys don’t realize that they can limit the amount of targets differently for each skill. Having a universal hard cap isn’t the only way to handle it, nor the best way.

^While it is possible, it also creates a ridiculous amount of balance issues. Many classes will want more AoE to compete with other classes, and many players will want one weapon skill to have more AoE than another weapon skill and so on. In the end, the AoE caps put on individual skills ends up discriminating against classes that don’t have higher caps.

This is the course of history the game will likely take, though. If the AoE limit is removed, then the devs are going to end up having to continually balance things based on how exploitable they are. I imagine it’ll be a week before Life Transfer gets hit.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

^While it is possible, it also creates a ridiculous amount of balance issues. Many classes will want more AoE to compete with other classes, and many players will want one weapon skill to have more AoE than another weapon skill and so on. In the end, the AoE caps put on individual skills ends up discriminating against classes that don’t have higher caps.

This is the course of history the game will likely take, though. If the AoE limit is removed, then the devs are going to end up having to continually balance things based on how exploitable they are. I imagine it’ll be a week before Life Transfer gets hit.

But you could use that same line of reasoning to justify why all professions should have the exact same skills. It’s easier, but not very engaging or gratifying/complex for the player. And according to what your end goal is, it’s usually not the most suitable design anyway.

There will need to be balancing done to have varying caps, yes. But that’s the nature of a competitive game generally. It’s a change that would be for the betterment of the WvW experience as a whole.

chronometria.3708:

This is what I see as a staff ele.

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

You have to love it when the 5 random targets Meteor Shower chooses walk out of the circle, you end up with it raining down an entire zerg and not one person is taking damage from it.

Atherakhia.4086:

And one must remember that games came out before WoW with AE in it. And even WoW had uncapped AE’s for a long time. Even they decided to cap them.

Unless Pandaria changed the aoe “cap”, WoW never “capped” aoe, they put diminishing returns on the damage when it was affecting 10 or more targets.

And even this could be circumnavigated by abilities such as the Death Knight’s diseases spread by pestilence.

Although this will probably stress out the already over strained servers, the 5 man aoe cap needs to be replaced with the diminishing return model.

GekoHayate.2451:

Atherakhia.4086:

And one must remember that games came out before WoW with AE in it. And even WoW had uncapped AE’s for a long time. Even they decided to cap them.

Unless Pandaria changed the aoe “cap”, WoW never “capped” aoe, they put diminishing returns on the damage when it was affecting 10 or more targets.

It was a hardcap pre 3.3.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Area_damage_caps
Anyway, a DR cap still is a cap. I also think WoW finally found a good solution there. But unfortunately, ANet seems to follow some kind of “we don’t want to do things like WoW, even if they’re good” policy. Also, as I said before, considering they can’t even implement conditions properly and we already have skill lag due to overloaded servers, they probably can’t do that even if they wanted to. They’d also have to implement condition/cc DR which would add additional load.

The logic of caps on AoE

• buffs is that it promotes stacking up.
• debuffs/damage in PvE is that mobs are incredibly stupid by design.
• debuffs/damage in PvP is that ….. players are incredibly stupid by design???

Seriously, this thread is quite funny. The by far most common argument for the AoE limit in WvW seems to be “People are zergballing because of the AoE limit, so we can’t remove the AoE limit”. What a wonderful example of circular reasoning.

And people keep repeating it over and over again in different variations. The only AoE spell that would really become more powerful if the AoE limit is removed is Meteor Shower as it is the only spell that has any real potential to hit more than 5 people who aren’t zergballing. Worst case scenario? Nerf MS a bit.

I can understand the AoE limit on players from a technical standpoint. Perhaps it is difficult to differentiate between players and mobs when assigning damage. What do you do when 6 mobs and 3 players are within the AoE effect? If 5 mobs are closest to the center, do you stop counting after you reach the fifth mob, or do you continue iterating over all nearby objects to see if anyone of them are players. It could cause performance issues in case you have many mobs in an area.

Performance issues due to too many players getting hit is probably irrelevant. If for some reason lots of players get hit by the same AoE effects (they can’t avoid zergballing out of habit?), they will simply die faster, thereby quickly reducing the size of the battle and thereby minimizing lag.

All the AoE limit does it make small groups useless because the larger group can hit more targets.

Pretty much. Having no AoE limit on damage serves to make fights between groups of different sizes a bit more even, which is a good thing as you get less facerolling and more exciting battles. You also reward the use of terrain to your advantage.

i mainly do wvw and run staff, and i think it’s fine at 5. If AoEs hit everyone, it would be waaay to powerful. I never get more than 5 people in my AoEs for long anyway,

So, AoE would be way too powerful because they would hit the no more than the at most 5 people you usually have in your AoE circles anyway? Great reasoning there….

It’s been said that removing the AE cap won’t solve zerg balls because of things like retaliation and confusion.

Which is a plain lie and doesn’t hold up to reasonable logic. If one person dies from retaliation while severely harming a zergball, that would be considered a good trade. As for confusion? Ah kitten I just responded to a troll didn’t I. Ah well, at least I didn’t waste much time doing so.

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

I’d benefit from any cap removal. Nevertheless, I’m against it because I’ve seen what happened in games that tried this. If they go with the DR approach, fine. Until then, the five player cap is a simple and practical solution everybody understands.

Atherakhia.4086:

Siphaed it’s been repeated a dozen times or more that is one of the main reasons people are against this change.

It’s been said that removing the AE cap won’t solve zerg balls because of things like retaliation and confusion.

It’s been said that removing the AE cap isn’t realistic so long as AE’s can so easily ignore the rules of LOS and barriers.

It’s been said that removing the AE ca kitten imply too powerful when you consider a select few AE’s and how they work and a blanket rule simply isn’t a realistic option.

This thread has been going in a circle for 5 pages now because these points are brought up and ignored by the people in favor of removing the AE cap even though it’s pretty obvious those who want it removed haven’t clearly thought it through, have no real understanding of the type and power of various AE’s in this game, how few classes have AE’s of any real value, and just how little room is available inside keeps and towers.

Yes, all of these things have been said. But just because you keep repeating them doesn’t make them fact. All you have been repeating is your personal speculation and challenging our usage of the English language. The reason this argument is circular is because each time someone brings up a logical counterpoint to your argument, you just repeat your original argument that people have brought up counters to numerous times. Let’s try and at least define your argument in one coherent statement. Our logic seems to be the following:

Uncapped aoe = dead zerg = good.

Now if you disagree, you must argue either:

Uncapped aoe (does not) = dead zerg.

Or:

Uncapped aoe = dead zerg = bad (overpowered aoe)

Pick one of those and let’s go from there.