Guild Wars 2

Yeah, sounds bat kitten crazy right? Hear me out.

I know this has been suggested by some before briefly but I wanted to elaborate on how reducing cool downs, and reducing skill effects, can reduce power creep. It’s very important that skill effects, such as duration, radius, condition stacks and auto attacks are also reduced to compensate.

By lowering durations of skills like shield stance you are promoting much more active skilled plays rather than just using it for 3s of near invincibility like we have now. Blocks will need to be more precise, even if the cooldown was reduced proportionately.

Radius is also quite important. Currently we have AoE effects so large, the skill isn’t concerned with accuracy (let’s not forget target locking), it’s concerned with how many other targets you can hit. Which is fine for PvE but in PvP when the gameplay should be dictated by skill, AoE effects should be reduced and locking disabled. You want skills with AoEs to have good, important effects, but require the player to aim it correctly. Also,

Weapon skill 2 currently is usually a 6 second cooldown skill which is almost like a second auto attack. You want to use it as often as you can. Some people also find that skill 2 is usually a better alternative to the last hit in an auto attack chain, such as the necromancer greatsword. If we reduced the cooldowns on skills like those, it could create interesting gameplay choices that promote active skill usage. For instance, using skill 2 every time instead of finishing your auto attack chain will give a DPS boost of your timing is right. Active skill usage rewards the player.

The major winners from these changes is that you actually address power creep quite well. Skills need to be more precise and also, after cast will remain the same. So even if all the numbers were reduced proportionately, there are less effects (duration wise) happening because there would be more instances of after cast.

Finally. Skill combos. Skill combos would happen more often since cool downs are reduced. While the current combo system is wonky thanks to field ownership, you can’t deny that allowing more opportunities for players to capitalise on them will further promote active skilled play.

The thing is, you want a PvP system that promotes higher APM (actions per minute). Almost all competitive games have APM as one of the indicators of high level play. These suggestions will promote higher APM. One way to reduce powercreep is to naturally phase out lower skill level play by awarding high APM/high skill level play.

Hmmm I can’t imagine this to be honest. The thing I like about gw2 is the tactical rotation, lowering cooldowns would make games a lot tighter and more fast paced. In my opinion it’s hard enough to see whats going on when players are stacked, implementing your ideas would reduce kiting/rotating and would in a way make the game more facetanky which is what I don’t like about most other mmorpg’s.

However I think some classes would benefit from more skill changes, I would like to have a quicker cast time at the price of a reduced damage and duration on my engi’s lightning field.

I would also like to see some actual real combos instead of as you said combo fields, an incentive to combo and rotate certain skills together would be great and would really set the good from the bad and the ugly apart.

But we are asking for a lot, anet seems to balance around far few and between often small nerfs and buffs here and there, also changing gear. Were asking for actual class and skill mechanic changes and balancing, a very, I’ll say time consuming thing to do. I would like to see something new though for sure.

Well, I always try to tailor my [idea]s in the realm of something that seems doable, much of this seems like adjusting cooldown times, and maybe just a flat proportionate adjustment of all the numbers in general. Still a colossal task, I know.

I actually think if the aftercast times are properly kept, the game would be slower in a sense. Like I said above, ideally you are setting more aftercast, so people have a real purpose in using skills, rather than just button mashing. Guild Wars 1 actually did this very well. Shame, huh?

Removing all autoprocs would be a good start to force more active play.

If then a class becomes unviable (like warrior as he loses double Endure Pain) lowering some cooldowns to compensate should be the next step.

i think all passives should be remove and cooldowns INCREASED by 10% across the board on all utilities. Boon durations , condi durations REDUCED by 10% across the board.

BOOM instant reduction of the spam fest we are currently seeing. See how that goes. If necessary do another 10% on next balance patch.

That’s how you achieve absolutely godawful balance.

You cannot apply the same change to everythign in the game and hope it balances out. Believe it or not, there are plenty of skills and traits that already have way too long CDs for how little effect they have. All your proposed change would do is cement the current builds even further as the only ones people use, because the other ones would be that much worse.

OriOri.8724:

That’s how you achieve absolutely godawful balance.

You cannot apply the same change to everythign in the game and hope it balances out. Believe it or not, there are plenty of skills and traits that already have way too long CDs for how little effect they have. All your proposed change would do is cement the current builds even further as the only ones people use, because the other ones would be that much worse.

Other skills that have way too long CDs are already ones that are not being used. The problem we have is skills can be spammed at will and dont even have to think about it. A 10s cd going to 11s cd is not gonna kill any build but will go towards reducing the spamming we are seeing. Boons that give 5 sec buff going to 4.5 sec. Burns or bleeds going from 10s to 9s is minor changes that are easy to put it and IMO still the fairer way. Since its a percentage change not a hard change.

Remove elites from pvp then balance from there -_-’

Spartacus.3192:

OriOri.8724:

That’s how you achieve absolutely godawful balance.

You cannot apply the same change to everythign in the game and hope it balances out. Believe it or not, there are plenty of skills and traits that already have way too long CDs for how little effect they have. All your proposed change would do is cement the current builds even further as the only ones people use, because the other ones would be that much worse.

Other skills that have way too long CDs are already ones that are not being used. The problem we have is skills can be spammed at will and dont even have to think about it. A 10s cd going to 11s cd is not gonna kill any build but will go towards reducing the spamming we are seeing. Boons that give 5 sec buff going to 4.5 sec. Burns or bleeds going from 10s to 9s is minor changes that are easy to put it and IMO still the fairer way. Since its a percentage change not a hard change.

Exactly, they aren’t being used because they are not good enough. Nerfing those skills just serves to further remove intra-class diversity, as it makes them even worse.

Yes, skill spam is too much. Yes, boon and condi spam is too much. No, that does not mean that we need blanket changes like this to the game. It won’t work out well for balance.

Remove cleaves from auto atacks and damage utilities imo that is all that is needed…keep the CD and CT(cast time).
Actually most 1 target"able" skills need to just effect 1 player….

This will make Aoe capable classes more valuable as well.
Players need to work more together, ganks, spike, interrupts, this pvp is to much team single player and cross finger the other guys are playing a worse build than yours…

Even WvW would gain from this change…

The real problem is the PVE noobway design, not PVP nor WvW.

Aply this change for pve as well and your game gets 50% fixed….

Reducing cleave would also be really nice.

Yeah, but you’d have to tweak rezing downed people too though. Which I am for. Interrupting stomps and res should be about using cc, not just passively auto attacking.

Not too much. Would be an interesting change if you reduced cleave and people would have to start actually focusing on the downed person/interrupting those trying to rez. I imagine that just slightly lowering the speed would be perfect.

If theres anything I noticed with HoT these days is that less people stomp in pvp and more people cleave.

That’s cause cleaving is incredibly effective. Takes a bit longer, but also puts a ton of pressure on the person rezzing along with contributing to killing the downed player, and by you not channeling a finisher, your character is more free to defend yourself from any attacks they might throw at you.

IMO cleave is too effective for killing downed players. I’d be happy if all quick rezzing skills were removed and cleave was reduced across the board so that you needed to stomp to guarantee a kill in more situations.

I actually think quick rezzing skills should have their cooldowns reduced, but increased cast time, like 5 seconds, same time as a stomp since it has range.

And for my previous point, yeah. HoT gave cleave to necros, engis. There was that dagger cleave buff and thieves got vault. So much more cleave across the board.

Cynz.9437:

Remove elites from pvp then balance from there -_-’

The problem is not that the elite specs are there but that the core-class-lines aren’t taken into account.

Over performance in most cases comes from taking the core line, for example Illusions, and the elite line, staying in example Chronomancer.

Core class lines should be elite-specs in their own right so that you have to decide: Do i want A or B.

And yes, that would bring more build diversity while killing some setups.

OriOri.8724:

Spartacus.3192:

OriOri.8724:

That’s how you achieve absolutely godawful balance.

You cannot apply the same change to everythign in the game and hope it balances out. Believe it or not, there are plenty of skills and traits that already have way too long CDs for how little effect they have. All your proposed change would do is cement the current builds even further as the only ones people use, because the other ones would be that much worse.

Other skills that have way too long CDs are already ones that are not being used. The problem we have is skills can be spammed at will and dont even have to think about it. A 10s cd going to 11s cd is not gonna kill any build but will go towards reducing the spamming we are seeing. Boons that give 5 sec buff going to 4.5 sec. Burns or bleeds going from 10s to 9s is minor changes that are easy to put it and IMO still the fairer way. Since its a percentage change not a hard change.

Exactly, they aren’t being used because they are not good enough. Nerfing those skills just serves to further remove intra-class diversity, as it makes them even worse.

Yes, skill spam is too much. Yes, boon and condi spam is too much. No, that does not mean that we need blanket changes like this to the game. It won’t work out well for balance.

But this topic is not about balance, its about power creep. Since ANET seems to have a severe shortage of manpower my suggestion is the easiest way to reduce power creep while maintaining the current “imbalance” as it is. The Balance issue is something entirely different and needs to be addressed.

LouWolfskin.3492:

Cynz.9437:

Remove elites from pvp then balance from there -_-’

The problem is not that the elite specs are there but that the core-class-lines aren’t taken into account.

Over performance in most cases comes from taking the core line, for example Illusions, and the elite line, staying in example Chronomancer.

Core class lines should be elite-specs in their own right so that you have to decide: Do i want A or B.

And yes, that would bring more build diversity while killing some setups.

This is impractical. Which core traitline becomes the “core elite spec” that can only be placed in the third slot? How do you explain that to new players? Why does it even make sense? What happens when a new player accidentally tries to train that traitline first, but is then unable to use it, because it can only be placed into the third slot? This doesn’t actually solve anything, all it does is reduce build diversity.

@Spartacus – Your suggestions is still one of the most godawful ways to reduce power creep in this game. You cannot apply unilateral balance changes like that. Yes, plenty of stuff needs to be toned down. No, just reducing numbers and increasing CDs is not the way to do that. Every skill and trait needs to be looked at individually. The amount of condis and boons that a skill applies could be reduced. The amount of things that another skill does could be reduced. The CD on other skills could be increased. The damage on yet other skills could be reduced while leaving the CD the same. The range of some skills could be decreased. Etc etc

That is how you properly reduce power creep. You don’t just blindly apply the same change to every single skill and trait in the game.

Ramoth.9064:

Yeah, but you’d have to tweak rezing downed people too though. Which I am for. Interrupting stomps and res should be about using cc, not just passively auto attacking.

Hybrid version of gw1 and gw2 for the rezes

Downed players could be rezed with stacking like we have, defeated players could be rezes only by hard rez spell/utility/elite/whatever with a decent CD like 90sec
4-5seconds CT just one target.

Or could be the other way around.

Cynz.9437:

Remove elites from pvp then balance from there -_-’

Or rather give ALL elite specs atleast 90 secs CD…

Mutaatti.2789:

Cynz.9437:

Remove elites from pvp then balance from there -_-’

Or rather give ALL elite specs atleast 90 secs CD…

Are you sure about that there? You really think Reaper needs a 90 sec CD on reaper shroud? You really think berserk mode needs a 90 sec CD? Or CA? Or do DD’s need to wait 90 seconds after using a third dodge before their endurance refills to 150?

As if the elites skills were the issue… :\ powercreep needs to be adressed , not the elite skills.

Hold on. I know the general suggestion is that skill effects need to be reduced, damage/aoe/etc, and which is something I suggested originally. But I don’t think cooldowns should be increased. Increasing cooldowns actually just buffs auto-attacks, i.e. whoever has the best auto attack generally wins, and reduces your APM, which makes the game much less skillful.

That is why i suggested the game needs to have lower cooldowns and lower skill effects, with more skills require manual targeting.

I’m not also suggesting for a % sweep of reductions, of course, these skills need to be managed carefully, but I do think most of it should be done proportionately.

Still they could/migh have saved pvp with this changes IMO, but since would affect the pve as well they prefered to quit the pvp side of the game, esl drop was a start.

Is that hard to make pve players stop being carried against mobs? so pvp/wvw migth have a oportunity to get more decent?