Guild Wars 2

With the new announced changes, it is obvious that the devs are on a mission to reduce dodge spamming.

I think this is good for the game and most of the community has called for such action. It is important that dodges are used thoughtfully and are limited in use in order to create skillful play.

But let me express my concerns with these changes. As logical as all these changes sound, in application they could currently be very bad for the game. With the amount of damage and skill spam available, this game could quickly devolve into who spammed what the fastest. Everything from glasscannons to bunker guards will see their ability to survive literally get cut in half.

If this trend of nerfing dodges is to continue then raw damage needs to be brought down significantly, animations need to be designed (for things like necro marks), and skills need longer cooldowns to promote timely and skillful use.

Cutting out dodging without also looking at these factors could lead to a VERY different gaming experience.

I also know the devs mentioned reaching for boon duration to counteract the vigor changes and this also sounds logical in theory. In actuality its is only going to hurt build diversity and for many professions it will force you to spec in trait lines that are useless.

Please consider these factors when making these changes. Encounters currently are pretty spammy but atleast its a balance of skill spam to dodge spam. I cant say how encounters will be after the changes but this is one PvP community member who is worried.

i have 2 dodges only, no vigor, nada.. i am doing ok as long as i don’t run inside fields of death called capture point x engi x necro.

as far as spammy abilities go, something should hit you at somepoint anyway or it would be unfair

what truly needs to be changed is how aoe works in pvp:
- aoe should be waaaaay weaker than single target dmg – it is only worth using aoe if you are fighting 5 people
- aoe should come at higher costs (longer CD, higher ini etc)

GW2 is only game i encountered where spamming aoe is actually a good things and comes only at low CD costs. In any other games spamming aoe was pointless as dmg was so low that it would be only worth on 5+ targets. Also aoe would costs recources, meaning if i spent mana/enery/xy recource on aoe i wouldn’t have enough for single target spells.

GW2 doesn’t have recource system outside of thieves lol, they are only ones that get punished for spamming aoe atm.

I am honestly not quite sure how to implemenet recource punishment on other classes that in fact don’t have it. Just a random brainstorming: spamming aoe uses small portions of life force or adrenalin, puts engi kit on longer CD, longer CD on ele attunement etc. But this suggestion might be bad so bear with me.

AoEs, Skillspam, Evadespam, too AI

All of those 4 basicly are things, I suppose almost nobody likes. They all are tied to another in my opinion, so they should all be brought down.

Eg:
AoE is good versus AI
AI leads to more spam
more spam leads to more evade
more evade makes it more necessary to spam and use AoEs

Actually, reducing the amount of dodges available for everyone should help bring glass-cannons and bunkers closer towards a median. Bunkers can’t survive as long, and glass-cannons need to spec slightly more defense rather than just go all-in on offense while relying on the dodge-key to save them when their burst doesn’t work.

BlackBeard.2873:

Actually, reducing the amount of dodges available for everyone should help bring glass-cannons and bunkers closer towards a median. Bunkers can’t survive as long, and glass-cannons need to spec slightly more defense rather than just go all-in on offense while relying on the dodge-key to save them when their burst doesn’t work.

This sounds good in theory but in actuality I dont think the results of these changes will render anything close to your logic.

Homogenizing roles and bringing everything closer to a “median” sounds good but in my gaming experience, anytime this has been done it has resulted in much less appealing gameplay and depth.

The main point of me creating this thread is to bring attention to the fact that this game has endured a power creep and damage is much higher and more prevalent than before. Nerfing the ability to mitigate this without also addressing the power creep could lead to disastrous results. This is not a sure thing, I am only speculating as everyone else is, but I think it is necessary to express these concerns to further discussion and find creative solutions to the issues at hand.

EverythingEnds.4261:

AoEs, Skillspam, Evadespam, too AI

All of those 4 basicly are things, I suppose almost nobody likes. They all are tied to another in my opinion, so they should all be brought down.

Eg:
AoE is good versus AI
AI leads to more spam
more spam leads to more evade
more evade makes it more necessary to spam and use AoEs

THIS
except for the brought down part. if they are all tied together, then imo that makes game skills and mechanics logical.

i really see it this way.

soldier classes -> low accessability to perma evades (although warriors do have vigor but barely see any1 prefering those traits lol) -> can tolerate most hits compared to all classes, for more survival, has seriously annoying blocks and blinds and CC.

Medium classes -> when Glass Cannon (GC) spec, can tolerate very little amount of hits thus needs evades to compare survival uptime a bit closer to soldier (and this isn’t by traiting 30 into both dps lines) ..
TBH, while in a team fight, this evade class evade effectiveness is reduced alot as more amount of hits are directed to him thus more probability it will finish him off, if a team would stop playing like a kitten and actually focus him they’ll notice it’s obviously the best to target that class first (togeether).

Light armor classes -> tolerates less hits than medium when GC, also needs vigor for alot of evades, and has further skills to help them survive other than evades, all to make up for the low capability of survival compared to a glass cannon soldier when taking hits.
(except for elementalist, i’d suggest a huge rework on elementalists skills. imo their survivability does not compare to a necro or mesmer, now you would say use cantrips; not everyone want’s cantrips and they are on huge CD and thus doesn’t feel reliable for some people) they need some way to handle team fights, they seem fine in 1v1 fights but for teamfights they are just useless to play, heck i even think staff ele’s are more useful for tpvp than the other weapon skills, but that negates the ability to handle 1v1 and thus not a playable tpvp class. maybe a grandmaster trait that makes you reduce damage taken by 30% when targeted by a target other than the elementalsit target would solve this (water line do have useless trait’s so why not) ).

now i don’t mind evades being brought down a bit more, something that results in 15% less evade uptime for all classes and that would probably satisfy me. but please consider that not everyone uses sigil of energy.

Cynz.9437:

GW2 is only game i encountered where spamming aoe is actually a good things and comes only at low CD costs.

Sorry for the snip, but reading this reminded me of something. I was getting back into FPS gaming recently and found myself equating what things I could to GW2 combat. And then I came to grenades.

In order for AoE damage to pressure a group of players, it has to be effective. Else we would have the same sort of stacking seen in PvE.