Guild Wars 2

There’s always been a huge discrepancy in the game in terms of certain AOE abilities. While most AOE abilities cap out at 5 targets max, there are many ground targeted abilities that have potentially an unlimited number of targets for their duration. Some classic examples are:

Static Field
Unsteady Ground
Line of Warding
Spectral Wall
etc

All of these abilities are ground targeted AOE abilities that provide potentially unlimited amounts of crowd control. In WvW, for example, these are often times bypassed entirely by Stability and requiring Stability for large zerg encounters like 40+ vs 40+ that are quite common.

With the new stability changes it’s easy to imagine a scenario where there’s enough of these kinds of abilities with unlimited amounts of CC that will simply strip stacks of Stability off you with little to no effort. This means that it either will require a large number of stability stacks per use, negating the real point of stacks, or maintaining any semblance of stability is impossible and WvW is going to be dramatically altered (not neccessarily a good or bad thing).

My question then is simple: Will these skills with unlimited CC potential also be changed alongside the change to stability since they go hand in hand?

Probably not, because they only do anything if you’re dumb enough to run into them.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Probably not, because they only do anything if you’re dumb enough to run into them.

By that logic all AOE’s should be unlimited because they’d only do any damage if you were dumb enough to run into the AOE, right?

It’s not as if with 80+ people on the screen all of them doing AOE’s and other ground targeted abilities it’d be impossible to miss a thin wall often times with no graphical profile out on the ground buried under the rest of those AOE’s right? I mean surely they don’t instantly appear and instantly take effect in the middle of a large group running around right? It’s soooooooo easy to avoid you’d just have to be dumb to run into an instant cast CC wall buried under other AOEs.

They mentioned in another thread that each time you pass through these walls you’ll lose a stability charge. Believe it or not, coordinating 10+ of these effects takes a bit of effort though so you’ll probably be fine.

Consider each guardian you bring will drop 1 wall, but their group stability will provide 3 charges. It’ll take quite a bit of effort.

Kodiak.3281:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Probably not, because they only do anything if you’re dumb enough to run into them.

By that logic all AOE’s should be unlimited because they’d only do any damage if you were dumb enough to run into the AOE, right?

It’s not as if with 80+ people on the screen all of them doing AOE’s and other ground targeted abilities it’d be impossible to miss a thin wall often times with no graphical profile out on the ground buried under the rest of those AOE’s right? I mean surely they don’t instantly appear and instantly take effect in the middle of a large group running around right? It’s soooooooo easy to avoid you’d just have to be dumb to run into an instant cast CC wall buried under other AOEs.

First off, none of those abilities are “instant cast”.

Second, unlike other AoE’s, the walls don’t work reliably if they are placed directly on a person. It is entirely up to the opponent whether or not they apply any CC.

On the rare occasion that they do work on a person they were placed directly on top of, they certainly would not be hitting more than one or two people. In that respect, they are just like any other AoE effect. The difference is when people are dumb enough to run into them after they have been placed. If there are so many effects in that area that you can’t see the walls, maybe you shouldn’t be there yourself.

Kodiak.3281:

By that logic all AOE’s should be unlimited because they’d only do any damage if you were dumb enough to run into the AOE, right?

yes, indeed, like AOE worked at launch – before some swarm mind WvWs bashed in their collective heads trying to overrun some choke points guarded by elementalists. And whined a lot. And it is a shame.

Atherakhia.4086:

They mentioned in another thread that each time you pass through these walls you’ll lose a stability charge. Believe it or not, coordinating 10+ of these effects takes a bit of effort though so you’ll probably be fine.

Consider each guardian you bring will drop 1 wall, but their group stability will provide 3 charges. It’ll take quite a bit of effort.

With duration, sure, you’re just fine because you can run into a number of them and for that duration you’re immune currently. However it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the new meta is going to be spam CC (which it always was) to burst through Stability stacks. Remember hammer warriors? All that CC is going to make a huge comeback for zerg vs zerg and unless the stacks of stability are huge when combined with the sheer number of walls and other CC going on it’s going to be crazy.

Most of that CC is already limited by the 5 target cap. However that doesn’t address these other effects that are unlimited in the number of targets they effect.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

First off, none of those abilities are “instant cast”.

Most abilities, outside of Line of Warding, all have under a second cast time and all of them can be done on the run. If you really want to mince the fact that 1/4th of a second isn’t instant by all means, but in actual functionality of the skill it appears instantly for other players.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Second, unlike other AoE’s, the walls don’t work reliably if they are placed directly on a person. It is entirely up to the opponent whether or not they apply any CC.

When you’re talking about 40 vs 40, like we are, being exact isn’t exactly required. If you put down a wall in a giant group of people it’s really hard to miss.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

On the rare occasion that they do work on a person they were placed directly on top of, they certainly would not be hitting more than one or two people. In that respect, they are just like any other AoE effect. The difference is when people are dumb enough to run into them after they have been placed. If there are so many effects in that area that you can’t see the walls, maybe you shouldn’t be there yourself.

You seemingly either have little or no experience with large Zerg vs Zerg game play in WvW or you just seem to be speculating on how things happen. Walls reliably hit targets constantly in large group play. These forms of ground CC with uncapped targets are going to be a problem with the stability changes unless we either get a stupid amount of Stability stacks or the CC is capped on these abilities. Saying “Oh well, avoid the area, problem solved!” is about as naive as it gets when it comes to Zerg vs Zerg game play.

Now this could be by intent for ANet to dismantle zerg play. That’s totally a huge possibility and they’re going after Stability to make make that happen. That’s why I’m putting this question forward. Belitting the obvious problem with some “l2p” trope is simply ignorant.

I have the experience you are whining about. If you are honestly having difficulties seeing the walls due to particle effects, it means a ton of skills are being used in that location. So instead of whining about the wall skills that you’re having issues seeing, why not avoid the area that is effectively being carpet bombed by the enemy? Even if the walls weren’t there, you would want to avoid that location due to the sheer amount of AoE that’s being dropped. If there isn’t enough going on in that location to make you not want to be there, then the wall skills are easily visible.

And my experience says that, other than trying to assault a keep, wall spells are very easy to work around. They simply aren’t very effective in open field fights because it is so easy to just go around them by accident. Assaulting a keep is the only exception because of the tight corridors and limited paths, but the assaulters can’t make use of this. In this manner, wall spells are a more effective defender’s advantage after the Stability change.

But to think that the Stability change will make them noticeably more powerful in your typical ZvZ fight is ludicrous. The only thing that will change is that you can’t pop Stability and outright ignore them all anymore.

These skills currently are only really effective when a large number of players are funneled through a small point. If they weren’t unlimited in nature, they wouldn’t even be good then. A skill that isn’t even good in its niche use is a waste of code. I don’t see any reason as to why they should get a limit. It’s not like their usage would change with Stability’s alteration.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I have the experience you are whining about. If you are honestly having difficulties seeing the walls due to particle effects, it means a ton of skills are being used in that location. So instead of whining about the wall skills that you’re having issues seeing, why not avoid the area that is effectively being carpet bombed by the enemy? Even if the walls weren’t there, you would want to avoid that location due to the sheer amount of AoE that’s being dropped. If there isn’t enough going on in that location to make you not want to be there, then the wall skills are easily visible.

I normally hate to get involved in a talk like this but frankly that is pretty dumb.
What you’re implying is that any place where there is a fight breaking out you just shouldn’t be there. So the second a big fight breaks out and 70+ people are all using skills your computer can’t keep up with the answer is “Welp might as well just leave” Which is just dumb. And you are saying L2P.
Which was the same answer when warriors were running rampant with quickness. The answer was just “L2P” but that particular section didn’t have much to any counter play. Like if you are storming a castle and you have a few coordinated Eles and Guards They could hold up an entire zerg, instead of the walls stopping up to 5 people they knock 2 to 3 stacks off of 40+ people. Which like before has little to 0 counterplay.

So there is still QQ that you can’t straight up ignore CC in a choke point post change? I think that was the point of the change ;-)

Algreg.3629:

yes, indeed, like AOE worked at launch – before some swarm mind WvWs bashed in their collective heads trying to overrun some choke points guarded by elementalists. And whined a lot. And it is a shame.

I am quite certain that AoE have never been unlimited. And it has more to do with gameplay stability rather than balance.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

So there is still QQ that you can’t straight up ignore CC in a choke point post change? I think that was the point of the change ;-)

While I think the change is more positive overall, I think the problems people are having is it really isn’t changing much from a gameplay perspective.

Meta classes will be even more enforced while the non-meta crowd will be even easier to ignore. We are going to see larger zergs holding domination over smaller ones. Etc Etc.

I certainly feel it’s a good change for the game overall. It’s just not gonig to actually have any positive impact on things imo.

lordkrall.7241:

Algreg.3629:

yes, indeed, like AOE worked at launch – before some swarm mind WvWs bashed in their collective heads trying to overrun some choke points guarded by elementalists. And whined a lot. And it is a shame.

I am quite certain that AoE have never been unlimited. And it has more to do with gameplay stability rather than balance.

I wanted to chime in on this. At launch, aoe skills were unlimited in the number of targets. I remember this quite pointedly because I ran a healing banners warrior for a while and remembered seeing way more than 5 ticks of regen during world boss fights. When the change to limit that and other aoe skills to a maximum of five targets, I rethought what sort of builds I was running. There was a patch referring to this change but I forget when it was.

Edit: Check out the notes here from a dev live stream. There is a section on AOE that refers to this change. http://dulfy.net/2013/01/17/gw2-dev-livestream-jan-17-transcript/

nightwulf.1986:

I wanted to chime in on this. At launch, aoe skills were unlimited in the number of targets. I remember this quite pointedly because I ran a healing banners warrior for a while and remembered seeing way more than 5 ticks of regen during world boss fights. When the change to limit that and other aoe skills to a maximum of five targets, I rethought what sort of builds I was running. There was a patch referring to this change but I forget when it was.

Edit: Check out the notes here from a dev live stream. There is a section on AOE that refers to this change. http://dulfy.net/2013/01/17/gw2-dev-livestream-jan-17-transcript/

Actually the only thing that transcript says is that those are the limits. Not that they will be the new limits.

Based on the wiki (and the history of the AoE-page) it has been stated to be limited to 5 people each since release

.

I think the real point here is that while AOE’s were unlimited, they were made limited. That’s something we’ve always had to deal with. Rehashing whether that was a good or bad decision is more or less irrelevant since they seem largely unwilling to go back and revisit that decision.

However there’s also a number of skills that still have unlimited targets. Specifically any kind or form of ground CC like Line of Warding, Static Field, Spectral Wall, etc. These generally aren’t as bad now because Stability has unlimited CC protection against walls that have unlimited CC potential. They both negate each other.

However once Stability becomes stacks, these forms of unlimited CC generation will cause huge havoc in zerg play because there’s no equal counter. In large enough battles even people dropping them as they run away (common tactic) will be enough to strip huge stacks of Stability off people. It’s really not hard to see a CC heavy meta develop again (Hammer Warriors, etc) with these unlimited forms of CC at the core of it.

Which again, may be 100% possibly the intent of Anet. Maybe they want more ways to dismantle zergs and CC is the way they are going to do it. Thumbs up. However maybe not, and maybe they didn’t consider these as part of the Stability changes and these forms of CC need to go to charged base similar to Mesmer Portals where after X people run into them they disappear.

lordkrall.7241:

nightwulf.1986:

I wanted to chime in on this. At launch, aoe skills were unlimited in the number of targets. I remember this quite pointedly because I ran a healing banners warrior for a while and remembered seeing way more than 5 ticks of regen during world boss fights. When the change to limit that and other aoe skills to a maximum of five targets, I rethought what sort of builds I was running. There was a patch referring to this change but I forget when it was.

Edit: Check out the notes here from a dev live stream. There is a section on AOE that refers to this change. http://dulfy.net/2013/01/17/gw2-dev-livestream-jan-17-transcript/

Actually the only thing that transcript says is that those are the limits. Not that they will be the new limits.

Based on the wiki (and the history of the AoE-page) it has been stated to be limited to 5 people each since release

.

To be specific, offensive AoE (other than wall skills) has always had a 5-target limit.

Supportive or defensive AoE, on the other hand, was unlimited at launch. This caused massive problems in WvW where zergs would just stack in a single spot and be completely immovable due to the heal and boon spam. Offense had the 5-man cap, but heals and boons didn’t! Now, that was immensely broken.

As to the “if you can’t see it, don’t go there,” it isn’t a matter of running away from every fight. It’s a matter of avoiding the heaviest damage in the fight. How do you currently deal with wall skills in open zerg combat? Generally speaking, you note their appearance and avoid that spot for a few seconds. Even through meteor showers, a static field or spectral wall is visible. Line of Warding even moreso. If the graphics are actually so intense that you can’t see a wall spell in their midst, you are looking at incredibly intense damage in that location. You would die anyway in all likelihood.

Besides, I would argue that the Stability change will make wall skills easier to avoid. With the change, walls are more likely to get piled up together to strip off all stability. But that also means the walls will only be there for a few seconds instead of staggered to cut off the choke for as long as possible. If they get piled up, just wait a few seconds longer for the charge. You keep your Stability at full strength and they blew their best control tools to no effect. If they spread them out, you only lose 1 or 2 stacks of Stability and get through anyway.

lordkrall.7241:

Algreg.3629:

yes, indeed, like AOE worked at launch – before some swarm mind WvWs bashed in their collective heads trying to overrun some choke points guarded by elementalists. And whined a lot. And it is a shame.

I am quite certain that AoE have never been unlimited. And it has more to do with gameplay stability rather than balance.

then you may want to check your sources of information or your memory.

These have always been unlimited. It’s only a problem to your charged if you repeatedly run through these kind of aoe-CC’s. Considering the Warriors self-Stability gives 10 stacks that should give you a general idea of how many of these walls you can run through. If 11 Guardians put down their LoW, maybe a single ability shouldn’t get you through all of that?

The point of these changes are ultimately not to keep a status quo with regards to Stability. This is something people will need to get their heads around.

Algreg.3629:

lordkrall.7241:

Algreg.3629:

yes, indeed, like AOE worked at launch – before some swarm mind WvWs bashed in their collective heads trying to overrun some choke points guarded by elementalists. And whined a lot. And it is a shame.

I am quite certain that AoE have never been unlimited. And it has more to do with gameplay stability rather than balance.

then you may want to check your sources of information or your memory.

There was already a discussion about this that was mostly resolved a few posts up. With sources even! Might want to take a look.

Also, I finally found the patch that referred to the change in target limits and the language does indeed only refer to healing.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-November-15-2012
“Many skills, items, and traits were applying healing to an infinite amount of targets and have now been limited to 5 targets.”

Algreg.3629:

then you may want to check your sources of information or your memory.

To be fair the AoE that was talked about in this very thread (damaging one) HAVE always been limited. It was the support/healing ones that where unlimited but fixed with that patch.

AoE cap exists because the game would have trouble processing more than 5 ticks per second. all the skills you listed are “wall” skills (including static field, as it’s basically a circumference, not a full circle), which do ticks individually as the player collides with them, rather than pulsing damage to everyone within radius of it. that’s why they can have unlimited cap.

on the main subject, people need to stop complaining that stability won’t be the “get out of jail” card that it once was. it completely bypassed a whole part of the combat and is pretty unfairly distributed among classes. it will still be pretty strong (and i doubt it’ll have much effect on WvW, actually), and it’ll be balanced so current skills give multiple stacks, so it’s not like it’ll be super easy to get rid of stability like you get rid of aegis.