Guild Wars 2

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.

Durability getting removed from PvP, let’s take a look again next week

Doesn’t matter if durability is being removed if people can still maintain permanent boons. There are plenty of ways to do it and the meta rune will just be the next best boon spammer or it’ll go back to strength/ hoelbrak for perma 25 might. Removing 1 rune isn’t enough when it comes to boons either the duration stat needs to be removed or the access to boons on classes needs to be looked at. The fact that this isn’t a new problem says it’s not only a HoT problem.

On the side of engi’s using hgh its too make up for the fact that we have to use elixers for condiclear having no other utility skills (aside from slick shoes) to us offensively the rest is only survivability skills to be able to be a near unkillable roamer spec (according to some) its actually nearly impossible to maintain 25 stacks of might unless you get supported by teammates or have a mesmer or mm have multiple targets out so you can get might from the auto chain using this build is far from mindless and is already being nerfed in the upcomming patch.

lloydst.6985:

On the side of engi’s using hgh its too make up for the fact that we have to use elixers for condiclear having no other utility skills (aside from slick shoes) to us offensively the rest is only survivability skills to be able to be a near unkillable roamer spec (according to some) its actually nearly impossible to maintain 25 stacks of might unless you get supported by teammates or have a mesmer or mm have multiple targets out so you can get might from the auto chain using this build is far from mindless and is already being nerfed in the upcomming patch.

where lol?

Cynz.9437:

where lol?

Durability runes removed ( no more toughness aside from trait and no access too resistance)
And rocket charge "nerf might make it actually easier to use for healing only, fact is engi will be hit a lot harder without getting something else to counter/ make up for that (aside from the likely meta shift to glassy builds)

They boost toolkit. And circle is back. Now everyone cry that scrapper have much sustain and cc, meaby after 2 weeks they will say blockenieer.. Actually i think that engi is at good balance stance(except scrapper-sneak gyro 120sec cd in pvp, 20sec in pve, slick shoes-pvp imobilize, pve core skill etc) separate pvp can be great step forward…but they doing this(warrior axe 5 is diffrent from pvp/pve ? )

I am ok with boons. Meaby retalion can get really little nerf but it not nessesary. Meaby bit more ressistance they can give to proffesions.

This has been a problem before durability runes, before HoT, before even the june major patch. It wasn’t as bad as it is now with all those things but still, heavy boon uptime has been a thing for sometime now but from when I first started playing wvw (my best example of what I think proper boon application was and should be) you would stack up to blast a fire field and get a bunch of might or a smoke field to stack a bunch of stealth to surprise your foe, or a light field, or properly placing professions like guardian in each party to ensure everyone had stability, etc.

This was time dedicated to playing like a group and you got a serious payoff for doing so. I don’t know if that still exists in the current wvw, as I do not play it, but I do know from watching “pro” pvp matches and playing pvp for so long that I do not see that kind of effort. Its not that it isn’t good, but that it isn’t necessary when you can just naturally play however and apply the same effects or run a build that grants itself these effects without any thought behind it. The kind of effort that lead up to what I would call “buffs” has become so passive minded that it really doesn’t feel like a team effort anymore than just a bunch of skills being shot off in a general area and people rez’ing/stomping their allies/enemies respectively.

That is why I bring up skills like empower or power break where they take a little planning and definitely help your team rather than some AoE passive boon application that you never have to think about other than placing it in your rotation of button smashing. Siphoned power for example is just incredibly strong even with that 1 sec ICD, I can and also watch necro’s getting 10+ stacks just from that trait and you can’t exactly strip it because it is so easy to reapply in a group fight. That’s 300 power and condition damage from a single trait, add that to a already high power build and they hurt like a mother kitten.