This is something that has bother me from day 1 having played countless MMO’s prior and transitioning from gw1 to here (I know they aren’t the same nor should they be, but still).
Boons in this game are fairly powerful, and maintaining many of them for either long periods of time or even in some cases, permanently brings out some overpowering builds. I’m not saying this is something new, its actually been going on from the beginning and just gotten worse since then. Things like extensive uptimes on stability or protection and especially heavy might stacks on for a long period of time either put certain aspects of a build over the top or they give them something they were missing from investing into another stat basically giving them the best of both worlds. For the professions who can’t combo such things it feels very imbalanced having to keep up with a tanky cannon and you’re playing a glass cannon or just a tank. So to break this into 2 parts: (tl;dr below)
Part 1
Ofcourse this is for all professions but not so much against traits that alter boons like vigor, regeneration as they make those builds a little more unique. They should make boon uptime for more group orientated skills like empower, blasting a field, protecting screech, power break, etc be more potent and reduce smaller less thoughtful effects like siphoned power, juggernaut, nefarious momentum, HGH, chaotic dampening, etc to some formidable restriction so they aren’t so easy to maintain on your own.
What this solves is boons being dished out without thought and pushes for more coordinated applications. Sure for some builds like thief or Mesmer or engineer can have permanent vigor or numerous professions having permanent regen and honestly should be addressed, but these boons don’t play a big role in keeping people alive as much, except with vigor in the case of thief.
Part 2
With boon’s being a little more challenging to maintain, their presence should still be felt especially when some skills already come with a long cooldown. So a buff to just about all boons with a few changes to some functionality
-Might now grants 50 power and condition damage. Leads to higher spike but much shorter durations to where no build can maintain self might stacks to high numbers without heavily investing and even then, it wouldn’t go that high without the help of ally might application. So in turn, this boon becomes a group spike effort and not a replacement for loss dps on tank builds.
-Regeneration is fairly harmless on its own. As a boon, it isn’t overpowering to maintained permanently however some applications should be adjusted so for those who try to boon strip it can feel a little more satisfied than just having it reapplied with no effort. In most cases however, this isn’t a threatening boon.
-Stability stacks need to be addressed however, in the case of groups using multiple CC effects its very challenging to treat only 1 aspect of crowd control and stun breaking and consider it balanced. People have suggested it before so I won’t go on about it but I think cc needs to have diminishing returns where some builds are just too potent at controlling a group which makes even low dps builds very strong when all they have to do is keep you stun locked until you die. Between stun breakers, stability and cc effects there is a lot of room for adjustment to make these effects a little more rewarding to use and to retaliate against and not be dependent on heavy stability stacks or fast stability applications as a solution for a select few professions and leaving the others stuck with a very painful experience.
-Aegis imo has very little applications and could use an alteration. For the very few uses, I believe aegis should become a true block for the simple reason that it can be so easily removed from miscellaneous skills leaving you with nothing. Guardian has many traits tied to aegis but I rarely see anyone run them because it is such an unreliable boon. To give it a little more light both an increase to its overall duration and no skill can pierce it’s effect given that it only stacks 1 time and only blocks 1 attack. This would make its application in a group a lot more potent from heavy hits like that of a pve boss or from enemy siege in pvp or wvw. It does belittle unblockable effects a little but given its very limiting access, I don’t think it would be a serious problem when you consider how easy it is to remove it and how few methods there are to apply it.
-Vigor is fine, the past nerf pretty much solved the 100% uptime some professions had on it to where it isn’t crazy strong.
-Retaliation needs to be toned down in duration for self applications. For groups, its a great boon too coordinate and I think its very healthy in that sense but to self apply it to near permanent uptime pretty much hard counters fast attacking builds and there is next to nothing you can do about it except try to remove it, which very few builds can do, or walk away. The damage it applies is fine its just the application for some is far to high both in sources and duration.
-Fury I’d say is fine in its current state, alone as a boon it isn’t breaking any builds as much as 20+ might or high protection is.
-Protection needs its application sources toned down, but I think the durations are fine since many are tied to long cooldowns or are difficult to maintain. Primarily I think Mesmer is the culprit being able to get protection incredibly easy from their chaos trait line and even sharing that. 33% dmg reduction is pretty significant to have a high upkeep on and should be addressed for traits that grant it too easily.
- Quickness as a boon I think it is very strong and the traits that grant it sure do help out but in the case of utility skills granting it, they really should give a better duration given their long cooldowns. For those utility skills, simply increase their durations but the traits, sigil and elite skills granting it are in a good spot imo.
-Swiftness is easily countered from cripple which comes in many forms so I think its balanced just fine. Honestly w/o swiftness combat feels far too slow.
-Resistance seems like a funky addition to the list but I don’t see it being abusive on any build given its very short duration and limiting applications. I feel like they could of improved on condition removal rather than making a boon say “nice try” but in any case, its fine in its current state.
tl;dr
Make self boon applications less dominant and improve on group boon applications and the boons themselves so strong boons can’t be maintained without a group effort but when applied you get a moment of power rather than a staple on your build that cannot be removed.
break. I feel like they should be back by now..”