Guild Wars 2

Let me start this by saying I don’t want this to be a rage post. Simply to bring up an issue that’s appearing in wvw and how a similar situation was handled in the past.

From the title I’m sure yall have guess this is yet another post on the boonshare meta. Whats different about this is I would like to mention a few specifics. And something that might have been forgotten.

Namely. The boonshare meta at the moment uses a mesmers signet of inspiration to repeatedly copy boon to its party. THis enables the stacking of every boon in the game… INCLUDING quickness. to 2 minutes or higher. With a little help from a herald revenant.

This creates a frontline that with extreme levels of sustain. Near Glass levels of damage. And virtual immunity to corruptions. The prescence of a herald and a Mesmer in each party FAR out performs its rival mechanics. Boon Strip and Boon Corruption. To put it simply you can not corrupt fast enough to create a window of opportunity to break the zerg. The only method of beating these murderballs is to circle them repeatedly over the course of 10-15 minutes and slowly whittle down there outliers until you finaly reach the ever important mesmers tucked away inside.

The above is just meant as a description. Not a complaint. The following is what I want to bring up.

A similar level of boon generation has existed before. In the rangers Heal As One shout skill. For a very short time rangers were able to stack and maintain all boons permanently in a very specific build. However this was met with an outcry from the community and the shout was changed to its current form. Rightly so. Now it is still a strong skill. But does not create a massive amount of artificial strength like it did before.

Both setups run on similar concepts. However one was FAR less impactful in that it only affected the ranger and his pet. No one else. To put it simply an INCREDIBLY weaker version of this same mechanic was reduced for the sake of fair play.

And yet a far stronger version exists today in WvW. And has become the standard. Even guilds that don’t WANT to run this setup are being pressured to. Simply because of how much more effective it is than litteraly every other possible method of play. That’s the kind of behavior we expect from the endgame PvE community (whether that expectation is deserved or not).

My point is this. Limiting this mechanic in a similar fashion may be necessary.

IF however you feel that this mechanic is balanced and promotes skillfull play. I ask that you petition to have rangers Heal as One returned to its previous form. After all. 2 Minutes of quickness isn’t OP right? And atleast rangers are vulnerable to being corrupted unlike most frontline parties of today.

(Edited for accuracy: If I have made any mistakes in the above post please inform me. The general purpose of my post holds true I believe even if I have made a mistake. But in the spirit of accuracy I ask for corrections if necessary. Thank You)

There have been dozens of posts about this topic on here. My thoughts are that anet has no idea on how to fix the balance issues they’ve created. The fact that it’s a multi class mechanic probably is too taxing for their balance team kappa. Even with skill balance split they still haven’t even addressed it. What can you expect though, when there are reemerging bugs in a game this old.

I’m not super optimistic either, but this is a pretty constructive post, so good job.

/agree
/agree
/agree

It’s actually pretty simple. Remove Quickness and Resistance from the Mesmer boon share list. All that would be left is nerfing Durability Runes’ resistance sharing.

Kyon.9735:

It’s actually pretty simple. Remove Quickness and Resistance from the Mesmer boon share list. All that would be left is nerfing Durability Runes’ resistance sharing.

Or install hardcaps on boon timers. Such as Quickness and Stab never going above 10s, Resistance above 20s, etc etc…

Great post.

The fights are now amazingly boring.

The fighting tactics was always to look for the weak part of the enemy and engaging it.

With this new boonshare meta, the game-play became disgustingly boring and unfair.

In addition to the comments above, Warrior (or any class running the Durability, Gnashblade, Commander armor, Concentration) Boon Duration reaching upwards of 100% is problematic as well.

Oh everyone can reach 100% boon duration. You realize Rev F2 gives 50% boon duration to everyone? For only a little bit of energy upkeep you effectively account for 750 points of concentration. 750 stat points….

If I only got one thing to nerf the game that would be it right there.

Too many boons flying around even without a mesmer around.
Conditions barely dent big groups because of resistance and cleanse.
But also too many conditions in the game anyways.
Not enough corruption to go around unless you want to run an army of necros.
Hardcaps need to be looked at, but probably never will be because 1. it’s not a problem in spvp, 2. affects pve.

What’s the point of the post?

1) Has been discussed before
2) We all agree
3) Anet won’t read this

Sorry mate but the boon meta won’t go away at least till the new expansion. Either Anet is too afraid to make big changes because whenever there is a nerf, deserved or not, people will complain. Or this is what Anet actually wants: dumbed down faceroll fights to attract more casuals = more people = more gemstore money. WvW combat started to be as easy as pve encounters where your rotation is all set in stone, leaving little room for improvisation. Right now only hard thing to do in GvGs which requires skill and coordination is to burst properly.

Nerfing boons would also mean a nerf to conditions…

Resistance helps power builds fight through all that weakness spam, while quickness helps fight against protection spam.

I’m all for nerfing it, just saying that we already have a dominant condition scene creeping in because right now it feels like you’re either playing a boon build or a condition build, removing one only leaves the other.

We all know there is not enough corruption and strips for the boons, while we also know there is not enough cleanses to keep up with HoT application of conditions.

+1 to destroying the boonshare meta please Arenanet

I play with a guild that uses boonshare extensively and I also play in a PUG map blob.

I think the boonshare is way too overpowered when I compare them.

25 stacks of might, fury, quickness, stability, resistance, protection, etc.

Quite clearly OP.

Pugmanding is a huge part of WvW and it makes it almost impossible to win a fight as a pugmander if you don’t have boonshare.

When you get a pugmander (with a full map queue following him) versus a boonshare group (with a full map queue following them) then the boonshare group wins 95 times out of 100.

Saying things like “Organise yourself better” just doesn’t work as a proper group composition isn’t always possible with pugs. Sometimes we can barely find one mesmer to do a veil, let alone 4 mesmers that know how to boonshare and have builds set up for it.

In the long run it would make it simpler for guilds not to have to constantly do boonsharing also.

Anet has put themselves in this corner by making concentration gear and the desire to keep revs OP so people buy HoT.

Simple solutions though -

1) Designate more boons as non-stack non-boons. Quickness and resistance for example would work like superspeed. It wont stack and you cant boonshare it.

2) Cap boon duration at 50%.

Done deal. Anet get to keep their super OP rev skills but people will no longer be able to stack to extremes.

While they are at it they could also cap ferocity at 50%, cut power/prec by 25%, condi dmg by 33% and cap condi duration at 50% on all gearsets while adding these stats to vitality. But hey let not get ahead of ourselves.

Boons, Share moments. Share life. – kodak
Boons, Reach out and touch someone. – at&t
Boons, When you care enough to send the very best. – hallmark
Boons, Let your fingers do the walking. – yellow pages
Boons, Because life’s complicated enough. – abbey
Boons, Have it your way. – burgerking
Boons, Just do it. – nike
Boons, It’s finger lickin’ good! – kfc
Boons, I’m lovin it. – mcdonalds
Boons, Beauty outside. Beast inside. – macpro
Boons, Outwit. Outplay. Outlast. – survivor
Boons, The happiest place on earth. – disneyland
Boons, Stronger than dirt. – ajax
Boons, Pleasure is the path to joy. – haagen dazs
Boons, Good to the last drop. – maxwell house
Boons, Power, beauty and soul. – aston martin
Boons, The miracles of science. – du pont
Boons, Keeps going and going and going. – energizer

Boons, And now for a taste of things to come. – shang tsung
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDoYzm4Unlk

Boons, The greatest tragedy is indifference. – red cross

Nope. Anet is doing something good because Like it or not this promotes more team game play not like before.

Team play.
We only want guardians, revenants, elementalist, necros, 1 mesmer for veil and boonshare.
Everyone else reroll or go home!

Every time a new meta comes around the community QQs. Anet nerfs the meta then a new meta comes around, community QQs, Anet nerfs it. Then a new meta comes around, community QQs, Anet nerfs it. Then a new meta comes around, community QQs, Anet nerfs it. Then a new meta comes around, community QQs, Anet nerfs it. Just stating the facts…im not for or against this. I honestly dont think they can balance the game mode, only shift the balance every couple months.

They can’t balance it because they always go overboard with fixes one side to the other, always. They’re not willing to do a minor fix to see if it works for a week, no no, because they use to take 6-12 months and now 3-4 months to bother checking balance(only because of spvp esports), so they end up making 3 or 4 changes at the same time that fudges things up too much.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they ended up nerfing mesmer signet, revenant boon bonus, hard cap boon timers, make durability runes only affect the wearer, nerf some traits, dump some more boon strips on necros(every staff skill strips a boon!), all at the same time. When all they would need to do is cap timers on boons, and maybe give some better boon strip options to other classes.

But whatever it’s a mess, they’ve already gone down too far on this condi vs boon combat road.

in all competitive scenarios the playing field needs to be as level as possible or enjoyment will die faster then you can say “unfair”. fighting boon share zergs without boon sharing yourself is absolutely impossible. therefor i vote for everyone getting all boons all the time.

Thanks to HoT changes any class can extend boons 2x without having to give up much. Boon Duration much like many stats should have diminishing returns.

I wish there was a Shatter enchantment with a reasonable CD

Null field removes all boons, but boons are reapplied WAY faster than the CD on Null Field.

Things like Shatter should AoE punish heavy boon usage. I’d even go as far to say the skill should do dmg per boon, but then we’d have another issue. Skill would be super fun.

Finding that balance ain’t easy.

The necro line has a closer equivalent with spinal shivers on another long 20 second CD – but the others either require you to stand next to your foe, or don’t spike dmg on them, rather convert boons.

The reapplication and sheer volume of boons is very strong in team play with little counters on long CD.