Guild Wars 2

That title seems like a “choice” question, but really it’s a force of action needed. I think it’s more related to PvP/WvW than it is in any other aspect of the game, so bare with me PvEers.

Right now the game has 5-player hit cap on AoE damage. I’m sure this was related to the massive arrow cart buildup in the Beta of the game (remember when you could defend a keep just by building 5 arrow carts on the walls and nothing could get in?). They did an Arrow Cart damage decrease at the same time, so I think the AoE damage cap was overkill; and I’ll tell you why…

Turtle

Confused? Well, basically a “turtle” is balling up an entire group (roughly 20-40 players) and Mesmer portaling it to the front lines. That group contains at the very least 2-3 Guardians that are support speced using bubbles and applying constant group heals. Just the same there’s a few Elementalists in the group laying down Healing Rain and Water fountain heals.

That Turtle ball stays in the tight group no larger than the diameter of the Mesmer’s portal. In doing so, they make sure that everyone in that tiny spot is getting constantly healed.

This is where things becomes a pain: With the cap for AoE damage, only 5 of the 30+ players are getting hit with an AoE. However, since they’re the only one’s being damaged, they’re the only ones getting healed by the many healers there. And, it’s not just those healers; every Sylvari most likely has a healing-plant ability, every Engineer with their healing turret. There’s tons of group heals going on in that ball.

I already know there are some mechanical counters to this tactical assault, but they are very few and require select class abilities (one being a Mesmer’s #4 Focus ability to pull people out of the ball formation…though the range on that is shorter than that of the ball, which is max ranged 1200 + ).

But, why is there a cap for AoE? Honestly right now WvWvW is nothing but a complete “zerg fest” and it seems that AoE in mass is the only way to counter this. Because all one zerg facing another zerg becomes is one giant cluster-ouch (and also becomes a culling issue too). This isn’t just for AoE for player abilities, but siege too. When you have a 100-supply, 25 silver Trebuchet only hitting 5 people out of the 30+ people it visually hit, it seems very weak and shouldn’t happen.

P.S. Does AoE healing really have a 5-cap as well? It seems like it doesn’t and heals for far more people. I know Elementalist Mist Aura heals more than 5 people, low ticks or not.

Heals dont have a cap, i believe there was a tactic of having zergs ball up with guardians built for healing and since aoe dmg caps at only 5 people in the zerg with enough healing you can complete negate all damage coming your way.

pretty comical.

Lorana.2468:

Heals dont have a cap, i believe there was a tactic of having zergs ball up with guardians built for healing and since aoe dmg caps at only 5 people in the zerg with enough healing you can complete negate all damage coming your way.

pretty comical.

Really? See, I thought that and that’s why I added the “P.S.” part. The only reason I was lead to believe they have a cap was…

http://www.guildwars2junkies.com/2012/05/01/dev-tracker-jon-peters-on-aoe-target-caps-for-all-skills/

Originally posted by Jon Peters (Source)
This is a general rule of our skill system. AoE attacks hit up to 5 targets. AoE buffs or heals can heal up to 5. We cap it at 5 because its the party size and lets us reign in the balance on AoE without impacting most normal situations. WvW is the one place where this shows up, but we believe the alternative is worse. Hope this helps…

Ya, if there’s no cap on AoE heals that only worsens the situation and means the other option besides removing the AoE damage cap would be to apply one on healing.

The majority of heals in game have a player cap of 5. Some healing abilities that were (according to Anet) incorrectly healing infinite numbers of people were fixed in yesterday’s patch (e.g., see Elementalist patch notes).

I’m not sure if any non-cap heals remain, but there may be some.

The reason people ball up on guardians in wvw is because their shields of absorption and walls of reflection prevent many forms of damage (mostly projectiles) from hitting anyone under the protection of that ability. Elementalists’ ability Swirling Winds provide a similar benefit. These types of abilities are not aoe damage, nor heals, nor buffs; this is how they can protect more than 5 people. They are merely temporary environmental obstacles.

While I’m confident about the healing cap, I am less sure about siege – do arrow carts cap at 5 players? I was under the impression siege was left cap-free in order to promote it as the clear choice to handle zergs in wvw (I.e., making siege a neccessity to defend a keep against large parties). I could be wrong about this of course.