Guild Wars 2

Would Regeneration (boon) be better if it stacked intensity instead of duration? This would have several benefits as I see it, and no detriments:

Intensity stacking plays better in teams. Regen is not considered very useful right now in groups, perhaps because it stacks duration. When one player applies regen to a group, other players who also apply it increase the duration resulting in regen lasting for up to several minutes but still healing only at a low rate per second. Furthermore, players with low healing power who apply regen can hinder players with high healing power who apply regen afterwards, – the latter application has to wait until the weaker regen wears off before their more powerful regen will have it’s effect.

More customization of skills that provide healing over time. Right now, Regen plays a fairly small role since it will only provide around 125-250 or so hps, depending on the healing power of the person who applied it. Some skills could be modified to provide a quick burst of healing (e.g. 5 stacks for 5 seconds) while others could provide more sustained healing (e.g. one stack for 20 seconds).

Is there any negative side to revising Regeneration to stack intensity instead of duration? The healing power scaling per stack may need to be revised as well, of course.

I like the idea in general since I’d agree that regeneration as it stands now is not terribly useful. It apparently was a boon meant to help against slow pressure rather than a damage spike, but even in that regard it is pretty lackluster.

That said, I can also see some potential for intensity stacking regeneration to get a bit out of hand. With the right build and concentration stat you could probably get some pretty long-running high intensity regeneration that could make you more survivable than could be considered balanced.

Anyway, like the idea, but it would have to be implemented very carefully.

It’s too easy to access currently to enable it to work like that. You have things like Healing Spring, some options on thief via SP, the potential absurdity that would be a blob of BM Cleric necromancers in large-scale combat casting MoB with staff (permanent AoE 10k health per second heals), PU breaking mesmer substantially, and engineer and ranger just having way too much access in general.

It’s a neat idea, and one which would probably help make Regen not horrible, but it’d require a massive overhaul of access to it. That said, boons themselves need a huge rework as it is, because they’re just way too strong.

DeceiverX.8361:

It’s too easy to access currently to enable it to work like that. You have things like Healing Spring, some options on thief via SP, the potential absurdity that would be a blob of BM Cleric necromancers in large-scale combat casting MoB with staff (permanent AoE 10k health per second heals), PU breaking mesmer substantially, and engineer and ranger just having way too much access in general.

It’s a neat idea, and one which would probably help make Regen not horrible, but it’d require a massive overhaul of access to it. That said, boons themselves need a huge rework as it is, because they’re just way too strong.

Well they reworked Stability in a similar way so i doudt it would take that much work. I would like to see something like that implemented because right now regen is not really usefull.

I agree that careful rework would be needed. Like Thaddeus mentions about Stability, similar revisions could be done for skills which apply Regen. For example, base durations may need to be changed, and healing per stack + healing power scaling may need to be changed as well.

Glad to see this suggestion hit the forum again. Since conditions were fixed, we’ve yet to see boons get similar treatment, except for the tweaks to Stability. Regen and Poison aren’t really comparable anymore.

Regen would need a rework, of course. Possibly a reduction in potency to counter how easily it’s acquired. And yet, stacking regen might convince me to bring banners again.

Regen stacking would be great, and allow it to help counter condis on a lighter note. As it is, regen is so terrible that the developers have been forced to add regeneration-that-isn’t to the game instead.

Sartharina.3542:

Regen stacking would be great, and allow it to help counter condis on a lighter note. As it is, regen is so terrible that the developers have been forced to add regeneration-that-isn’t to the game instead.

Not sure if that’s a fair thing to say. There are benefits and drawbacks to simply tying the effects to boons. Quite honestly, I think the powerful boons like Protection, Resistance, and Quickness should get removed as boons and just become static buffs as to prevent them from being stackable and affected by duration bonuses. But this also has a gain which prevents them from being capable of being stripped, corrupted, or stolen.

DeceiverX.8361:

Sartharina.3542:

Regen stacking would be great, and allow it to help counter condis on a lighter note. As it is, regen is so terrible that the developers have been forced to add regeneration-that-isn’t to the game instead.

Not sure if that’s a fair thing to say. There are benefits and drawbacks to simply tying the effects to boons. Quite honestly, I think the powerful boons like Protection, Resistance, and Quickness should get removed as boons and just become static buffs as to prevent them from being stackable and affected by duration bonuses. But this also has a gain which prevents them from being capable of being stripped, corrupted, or stolen.

I would actually like to go in the opposite direction – fewer static unique buffs and more buffs that apply basic boons. GW2 was supposed be be about minimal UI. Lots of unique buffs sometimes force me to mouse over a target that has them so I can see what a given static buff does. If all or most of the buffs were the few boons that we have, it would be a lot easier to see at a glance what effects are active on another player.

I think a better solution to boon stacking is to just reduce the number of skills and the duration of skills which apply boons to multiple targets.

It would definitely require a rework, since it’s currently tacked on to so many skills that hitting the cap would be trivial. However, I think this would do a lot to make it more useful and increase build diversity.

On Topic: It’d be interesting to see how it’d need to be reworked to stack in intensity… It would definitely change my approach on many of my healing builds.

Off Topic: Y’all’re wrong thinkin’ regen is bad. No healing taken alone is sufficient, and any decent healing build requires stacking healing from multiple sources. Taken alone regen provides more health/sec than many other heals, PLUS it has the added benefit of being a HoT so you can set-and-forget. Automated heal > Activated heal.

~EW

If they were to add stacking intensities to regeneration they will have to take a look at all sources of it, but I think it could work. They managed to do it with burn and poison. You do run the risk of having too many stacks running at the same time if all current sources remain as they are, this can be balanced by tweaking durations on all of those aswell as the scaling they get from healing power.