Guild Wars 2

Hi all, I just wanted to see what people’s opinions are of the completely insane amount of lockdown’s the new elite spec’s has access to. This thread is somewhat pointing fingers at dragonhunter, But I wanted to bring attention to all the classes.

So since the stability change it made it increasingly harder to maintain composure in teamfights. Then the elite spec’s come out and we’re seeing entire comp’s focused around just keeping people locked down for extended amounts of time. almost to the point of little counterplay.

So my question is this, With the completely stupid amount of CC the game brings would it be that out of the question to bring on diminishing returns on CC? stunbreaks are nice but unavoidable CC is just insane if your a low stability class. (Thief, Rev, Engi,Mesmer). I just find myself frustrated when a mid fight ends, I’ve used all my stunbreaks and end up still locked down until I die. Doing alot of damage is fine. But unavoidable high damage whilst being locked down is toxic to the game. Just my 2c,

What do you guys think?

To be honest cc is just out of control, its not just dh, chronos, druids,revenants all do way more cc than dh couls even hope to do. They really need to tone down the cc in this game, its just not fun being stunlocked or moad for 20 seconds straight and really ruins pvp imo.

I completely agree. Being bursted down is annoying. Being bursted down while unable to use any skill is pointless.

I do feel that DH is one of the main offender, but druid is also there. On the other hand, revenants are fine (CC-wise at least). The main problem with DH is that its CC synergies a bit too well with their damage. Knockback/pull in and out of their “test of faith”, “dragon maw” or “hunter’s ward” while using procession of blades, etc… And the daze on traps is just the extra thing which kills you because any skill you try use in a team fight gets interrupted.

engi is a low stability class? really? i have a lot more issues with condi cleansing on my engi than cc’s, though if heavily focused by the other team they will stun lock me and down me, but with any luck my team focused on one of them and will win the fight regardless

100% agreed.

There is way to much AoE CC that lasts way to long with relatively low cooldowns.

Main offenders:

Dragonhunter -

• Piercing Light
  Daze lasts for 1 second. What the hell? A whole second?! Not to mention Dragon Hunter traps has lower casting time than other traps because… ArenaNet fails a lot.
  Solution: Reduce the daze duration to 1/4 a second. Have it function more as an interrupt than a daze.

• Hunter’s Verdict
  A 1,200 range pull to enemies tethered by Spear of Justice. On top of a low casting time like Scorpion Wire this just synergies too well with traps as well as other guardian builds.
  Solution: Increase the casting time to 1 second, allowing players time to react.

Chronomancer:

• Tides of Time
  A rather large ethereal boomerang that destroys projectiles, a 2 second stun (if both tides hit) and applies haste. Holy BALLS ArenaNet.
  Solution: Remove the damage it deals. This one really isn’t that bad but a critical can easily be an extra 2,000 damage on a shatter combo.

• Gravity Well
  Basically create a dark hole trapping everyone for 3 seconds.
  Solution: Change this elite function entirely, not only is it a very powerful CC but it forces people close together. Allowing a wombo combo on multiple people. There is really no way to balance this, it is the most powerful CC in the game and changing the CC duration will only lead to it being outclass. I have plenty of better ideas and I’m sure many people as well has a better idea for this overpowerful elite.

Druid:

• Glyph of Equality
  A 2 second AoE stun on a 30 second cooldown.
  Solution – Reduce to 1 second. It has no casting time, making it a very strong CC skill.

• Glyph of the Tides
  A 300 range pull or push on a 25 second cooldown.
  Solution – Increase the cooldown to 35 or 40 seconds. It’s recharge is really low for a CC utility.

• Primal Echoes
  A 1 second daze whenever you swap to staff.
  Solution – Reduce the daze to 1/4th a second. A whole second?! ArenaNet did you just forget partial seconds exist?

• Ancient Seeds
  Immobilize a target for 5, 1 second ticks when you CC them.
  Solution – Reduce the amount of ticks to 5 to 3 and increase the cooldown of this trait to 15 seconds. Immobilize is a very powerful condition ArenaNet, how do you keep forgetting that?

• Lunar Impact
  A 2 second daze on a 5 second cooldown.
  Solution – Reduce the daze duration from 2 seconds to 1. Why such long durations?

Revenant:

• Jade Winds
  A 3 second stun that can be instantly used on swapping legends.
  Solution – Reduce the duration from 3 to 2 seconds or reduce it’s AoE range.

Dragonhunter CC has to be one of the most annoying things in this game. Getting tossed around like a pin ball while they do thousands of damage with a side of endless free dazes, because using a skill while locked in a 180 radius cage would be so sinful. Literally punished for trying to dodge with a cute little fall on the butt animation.

Druid has “long” Dazes so they could be synergized with Moment of Clarity.
If they would reduce Daze time, then suddenly Moment of Clarity would be completly garbage trait requiring buffs.

There is no problem with Druid CC. They aren’t able to do massive damage like a DH can while maintaining such high defense. Speccing into Marksmanship for MoC is already a dangerous thing to do. Their defense becomes their ability to CC and without that they have no defense at all. Stability alone can screw them over.

1. There is a difference between druid and the other classes. Druid doesnt deal the same amount of damage compared to rev, chrono and dh. Using lunarimpact mean that you deal NO damage. Our stunbreakglyph just to cc somebody with daze? Waste of time. CC with druid just means to survive. And most skills you mention are actually just dazes, no real stuns.
2. Immobilze a strong cc? Maybe before addon release. Now most classes run traits with immobilze-durationreduction. I stoped using entagle. Why?
1 second immobilze per puls + 33% reduction with trait + 20% reduction with hoelbrak = 0,47 s immobilze. Conclusion: People can move simple out of it (even without hoelbrak). Ancient seeds is nothing else than entagle as an mastertrait.
3. Druids cannot apply multiple dazes at one time. Just a bit stability and you are not even notice the druid and his stuns. Chrono and DH at the other hand can use multiple cc`s in a short period of time. Not even pulsing stability works against dh and chrono.
4. Ancient Seeds doesnt trigger when you cc somebody. It triggers when you hit somebody WHILE he is stunned. Reducing primal echo to 1/4 second means no synergy with ancient seed. You cannot swap to staff and hit the dazed person within 1/4 seconds daze. This just shows, that you just read some tooltips (and also wrong) and has no experience with its usage. But hey, its easy to write just some reduced numbers.

You know’ I wouldn’t mind the CC the game has if stability were a more common sight than it is. As it sits, stability is one of your more “Elite” boons that show’s itself alot more rarely than any type of crowd control skill does. While I agree there should be more CC than stability application; I DO think that the gap is too far. Now, Reworking a ton of skills could give us the outcome that we would like, But I think a DR system that maybe gives you stability within maybe being CC’d 3-4 times consecutively within a timer threshold would be interesting.

-When you enter a pvp match stunbreaks are mandatory, but on another painful note: Condition clenses are mandatory as well. and for some classes it’s impossible to bring both.

You know nobody would mind druid cc if actually dh would abuse his traps in such a boring and skillless kind of way. DH abuse this and druid should be punished for this too? We dont have much usefull grandmastertraits. Lingering Light was before nerf op, now its useless. Gracing land is a pve-trait. Ancient seed is most of the time also useless, but still better then the other two traits. CD to 15 seconds? Ok, then give us something in exchange. And in the end dh, reaper, chrono, tempest, warrior, and scrapper are already laughing about immobilize.
What is the real balance issue here: Pulsing CC+ massive dmg+ a good sustain+ nearly no skillanimation is inbalanced. Guard brings sustain even with his core-functions. Druid CC is not pulsing, not dealing great dmg. Just the sustain is good.

Dont get me wrong, we finally learned to deal with trap-dh, but even then its annoying to see, that it require nearly no skill to port and instant drop two traps while using blocks and invuln. In a premade team all we do this weekend was looking for dh. Its boring. And if you go solo unranked most of the time the team with more dh`s win the game.