Guild Wars 2

Are there any plans to re-look at these mechanics?

Methinks that aside from AoE cap this is the biggest problem with the imbalance towards zergs. A smaller more skilled group can often down players in a larger group, but the zerg can flash rez their downed before even the quickest stomp has any remote chance of finishing. Can we at least limit the # of resurrectors in-combat to 1 or 2, or maybe just while a stomp is being performed? If a player is skilled enough to get them down and fast enough to immediately begin finisher and smart enough to avoid cc during it, even with these changes the player could STILL escape due a rally or warbanner or ele/thf/mes downed skill, etc. But with the current setup adding the ability to multi-rez virtually instantaneously there is really nothing the small group can do without a sieged up choke point. Even then camps are open field so they’d just get starved while massive siege builds on nearby terrain. The end result is the same no matter how hard you fight – in undermanned teams the better of a player you are simply prolongs the agony of your eventual defeat.

Rallying is a whole other issue. The current mechanic so often leads to a player new to WvW joining, and getting yelled at and exiled by his own server because he dies, rallies 5 enemy players, and swings the battle in the other team’s favor. This player is not unlikely to repeat this behavior out of spite, retaliating against those who treated him so rudely… a troll has been born. While player behavior is a contributing factor, I think fixing this system is a much simpler approach than trying to fix the behavior of your player base

I know you didn’t ask me, but here’s how I’d fix it: You only rally when downed if an enemy dies AND the damage you did to them is = or > 20% (or some X%) of their max HP.

If it’s a zerg and each of them hits a player once, probably nobody would be able to rally on his death. Conversely, if that player kept getting healed before downed, it is possible that more than 5 players dealt enough damage to rally on his death (unlikely there would be that many downed at the time though). This also helps balance away from zerg-favor, because zergs have a ton of AoE healing so the bigger the group your enemy was in, the more of your players that will have a chance to rally on his death.

A fix like this could mean:
—the more you outnumber your opponents by, the less likely you can expect to rally on killing them
—the smaller your opponent’s group is, the more likely you can expect them to rally on killing you
—in a large group you will for once have to fear actually getting finished when you get downed
—in a smaller group vs zerg you actually have a chance (if you’re fast and skilled) to finish a downed enemy

Anet will inevitably do something about it as it seems to be an ever growing problem with players with the prime reason that it doesn’t encourage small group play.

While I don’t see them removing downed state or rallying, I could see them putting restrictions on it..

- I could see them only allowing players to rez others only when their out of combat
- I could also see people rallying with a hit in stats (similar to WoW’s battle sickness or whatever it’s called).

Both would be leaps and bounds better than what we have at the moment. Why run in a small group when a much larger group will just rez everybody you downed?

DAOC had a nasty res sickness when you ressed someone in combat.. for good reason too

Because Ressing in combat is incredibly powerful.

But yea, If this was Warhammer Online for example or DAOC….If you had a Large number of people outside the door of the keep you’re in, and only a handful defending, You could use Siege and such to kill those people..They’d of course die, and because not everyone could res, It would take a while to res these people, You could eventually wear them down enough for you to run outside and destroy them…Thus ending the fight.

This game is different, Often unless you have a stupid amount of siege just wailing a spot, a group of people can run over and res anyone downed within seconds….Meaning that they’ll eventually just get the door down unless you have a Large Zerg of your own show up..

This subject is not new but I agree and want to put my weight (as insignificant as it is) in hope Anet will eventually pay attention to it. Yes Rally is fun and harmless in pve but it has no place in pvp or WvW. It is only yet another mechanic that favors large groups and penalises smaller ones and WvW already favors enough large groups. Same goes for rezzing from defeated. A zerg attacking a tower, keep is at the moment unstopable by the mere fact that no matter how many of them die and how many times they do, their number will stay the same cause of how easy it is to rez from defeated for a zerg. So as someone before me stated, having well placed seige won’t make the tower defendable, you’ll still need a sizeable force to push the invaders away from the tower.
And I’m not preaching against large group or large scale fights. They can be fun at times (if skill lag is ever fixed). Large groups are a strong attacking force that can carry a lot of supply and is efficient. But large groups shouldn’t be almighty. There is supposed to have advantages and disadvantages to every kind of gameplay in WvW. Right now, because of the rally mechanic, the rezzing from defeated in or out of combat and because of the waypoint window of 2-3 second between contest in keeps, the zerg is not only the ultimate attacking force but also the ultimate (and often the only) means of defense against attacks.

In short:
1. Remove the rally mechanic from WvW,
2. Disable reviving from defeated while in combat in WvW,
3. Fix the waypoint window in contested keeps

And we’ll see a whole new fun and dynamic of WvW where Zergs will still be useful but will have to NOT be mindless (there are some really well organized zerg out there, but zerg tactics at the moment are only really necessary when facing another zerg) and smaller groups will have some of their usefulness restored (other than circle capping supply camps)

Actually, one better, remove all way points from WvW (including the ones in your home base). Stop zergs from map jumping, stop zergs from flash spawning in bases and near-by camps. If they want to defend them, they can leave people there to defend them.

Replace all the way points with something different like turning all guards into champions or legendaries. WvW is a combination of PvE and PvP so make the PvE portion of it actually harder.

DeadlySynz.3471:

Actually, one better, remove all way points from WvW (including the ones in your home base). Stop zergs from map jumping, stop zergs from flash spawning in bases and near-by camps. If they want to defend them, they can leave people there to defend them.

Replace all the way points with something different like turning all guards into champions or legendaries. WvW is a combination of PvE and PvP so make the PvE portion of it actually harder.

while the initial thought of this idea sounded great, a deeper thought revealed it would make the zerg more powerful. get a zerg together and take anything you want because theres no way the enemy can get people there in time to defend anything. sure they could leave a few people in each structure but not enough. zergs are ALREADY together. waypoints allow people to GET together quickly to try to defend against a zerg.

maybe a compromise would be limit waypoints to say…. aside from spawns, they can only be used by 6 players per minute. a 30-man would take 5 minutes to WP. a 60-man would take 10 minutes, etc. they’d have to WP to spawn and run to get there any faster. ??