Guild Wars 2

I’m making this thread just to ask a question. Currently you can chain together CC’s on multiple people via skills like binding blades and temporal curtain. With a small amount of coordination you can keep entire groups of players unable to act or play.

Do you think there should be diminishing returns on CC?

I acknowledge that specific skills such as line of warding might need to bypass this to maintain their usefulness and keep their roles.

So IF there was a desire to add diminishing returns here is my idea.:

1 stack of “determination” per second of CC applied to you. 5% reduced duration of CC’s applied per stack of determination. Stacks last 10 seconds. This only applies to hard CC, not cripples, immobilizes, or chills. Thus a 3 second stun gives you 15% reduced duration, a 1 second daze only gives you 5% reduced duration.

You’ll notice that you would have to eat around 5-6 seconds of CC for this to become meaningful. I want this to be a soft system that compliments what we have out, not an OMG CC is meaningless system.

Example:

You eat 3 CC in a row, 2 seconds, 1 second, 3 seconds. You have now been CC’d for approximately 6 seconds and have 6 stacks of defiance. The next CC will be 30% reduced. Combined with a bowl of roasted lotus root this CC duration would be reduced by 70%, but that requires a food choice sacrifice. A loaf of saffron bread would level that out at 50% with additionally reduced condition duration.

The goal here isn’t to invalidate CC, but to give people better counters and not absolutely require stability spam.

With the new matchups, I’ve come across players who are very good at executing this. I seem to be locked down, or locked out of a tower, even after I’ve burnt all my “Get out of Jail Free” cards. (Mesmers come with quite a few.)

I am frustrated when this happens, but I would not support diminishing returns on CC. It takes a lot of skill for a group of people to be effective with this, and skilled gameplay should be rewarded.

Instead, I’m revisiting my build and utilities to see where I can get some extra wiggle room, and avoiding situations where I see it happen most often. My immediate response to locking people out of towers is that I start portalling reinforcements in through the back instead of having them charge the gate that is swarming with enemies.

There was 90s long mezz and 11s long stun in DAOC and it was much more bearable because there was immunity, too…been permalocked is not fun

Nikked.7365:

With the new matchups, I’ve come across players who are very good at executing this. I seem to be locked down, or locked out of a tower, even after I’ve burnt all my “Get out of Jail Free” cards. (Mesmers come with quite a few.)

I am frustrated when this happens, but I would not support diminishing returns on CC. It takes a lot of skill for a group of people to be effective with this, and skilled gameplay should be rewarded.

Instead, I’m revisiting my build and utilities to see where I can get some extra wiggle room, and avoiding situations where I see it happen most often. My immediate response to locking people out of towers is that I start portalling reinforcements in through the back instead of having them charge the gate that is swarming with enemies.

Single target controls are not near as big of an issue since the CD’s are general long and outside of CC warriors single people cannot stack too much CC on 1 person. Speaking of stuns, pulls, and knockdowns mind you.

However AOE CC effects are another story. Not only are these controlling many people at a time, but the classes that have these abilities are typically very survivable. (Mesmer and Guardian). Furthermore these can be stacked with the lines of warding and ring of warding.

The only real issue I have had with CC in GW2 is that I wish stun break skills also broke immobilize. Not a huge deal, but that is the one change I have always thought I would like.

Niim.9260:

The only real issue I have had with CC in GW2 is that I wish stun break skills also broke immobilize. Not a huge deal, but that is the one change I have always thought I would like.

I’ve never been in a situation where I ate enough immobilize to kill me that I would have otherwise survive. Nothing that would have killed me where I would not have already been dead provided I had at least 1 condition removal tool or teleport that is.

I find condition removal is actually extremely plentiful, AOE condition removal might be TOO plentiful with the light fields and warhorn/shout warriors. There is a reason why well necros are generally more preffered, because the damage is power and the meaningful conditions are being applied by a pulsing AOE, one shot conditions normally get quickly removed.

Stability is meant to be the counter to cc

Makes stability too strong a boon and if it gets eaten by boon stripping leaves groups pretty defenseless though so i dont think it was a great idea. Makes guardians too necessary to groups too.

Short answer, yes. I personally think a player, well any player should only be limited to 1 CC every 5 seconds and that 5 sec cool down starts once the last CC is broken. It just slows the game down. One thing I’ve noticed over the past month or so (in regards to skill lag), it seems to occur often in small scale battles when chain CC’ing occurs. I’m guessing its one of the culprits in large scale fights as well.

Remove chain CC’ing, and we may just see a sweet reduction in skill lag.

Answer is NO. I know the main focus of your nerf suggestion are the guardians and mesmers, but…

There are some professions, name necromancer and engineer, which don’t have any viable gap-closers (= skills which move fast-forward). Thus using several CC skills in a row is their only way to escape.

Solo roaming or getting out of the fight turned ugly is already unforgivable for these 2 professions on a busy map and your suggestion would make it just harder.

Hey hey, don’t you dare to touch my hammer warrior, grrrr.

But seriously. How are we supposed to take down thieves without CC combo, or d/d ele. They cry for CC to take down. Well placed Immobilize will shut eles ability to ride the lightning and slowing down thieves will make it that easier to chase when they pop out of stealth and so on.

But yea, I agree its sometimes frustrating that I can’t enter a tower because it has so many people infront to CC me down. I understand where this shout for help comes, but beware what you wish for.

Edit: making a 5 sec cooldown on CC on a player would mean that Warriors hammer would be useless, 4 out of 6 skills are CC.

no DR, but as mentioned before, stun breaker should remove immobilize.

No, would be a terribad idea.
Honestly, if you’re being zerged by 20+ people, unless you use stability/invulnerability, you deserve to die, that’s it.
CC in the game are pretty short in general so it’s only fair combined use of them which provide these long lockdowns.

KratosAngel.7289:

No, would be a terribad idea.
Honestly, if you’re being zerged by 20+ people, unless you use stability/invulnerability, you deserve to die, that’s it.
CC in the game are pretty short in general so it’s only fair combined use of them which provide these long lockdowns.

I wouldn’t mind if they would double duration, if there would be immunity, too. My opinion is probably skewed a bit by playing necro in wvw

Diminishing returns on CC destroyes games. DRs are needed when the controls are like 8 second long hard CC, like polymorph and randomly breaking fears, that kitten is just stupid obviously. But gw2 control is short 1-2 seconds most of the time. Asking for DRs to that is instanity, with lack of words.

You have to know when your CC works and when it doesn’t, you can’t have that on a hidden diminishing return. Other people screwing up CC with doing them useless times and so on.
That guardian wall HAS to work on the keep door when they push and countless other examples. All tactical play would be gone and destroyed if suddenly no CC works.There are so many ways of getting out of crowd control anyway.

DRs usually work out well. But since they also refuse to introduce proper DRs on AE instead of their trivial five target cap and because their servers are already overloaded, this probably won’t happen anyway.

No. In most games I have played when a dr came in it was because 1 person could stun lock you for a size able length of time. Here as the op pointed out it takes a group of people working together. That is sort of the point of the game I believe.

Wryscher.1432:

No. In most games I have played when a dr came in it was because 1 person could stun lock you for a size able length of time. Here as the op pointed out it takes a group of people working together. That is sort of the point of the game I believe.

Yes, but it becomes absurd when said group is 80 people

Paavotar.3971:

Hey hey, don’t you dare to touch my hammer warrior, grrrr.

But seriously. How are we supposed to take down thieves without CC combo, or d/d ele. They cry for CC to take down. Well placed Immobilize will shut eles ability to ride the lightning and slowing down thieves will make it that easier to chase when they pop out of stealth and so on.

But yea, I agree its sometimes frustrating that I can’t enter a tower because it has so many people infront to CC me down. I understand where this shout for help comes, but beware what you wish for.

Edit: making a 5 sec cooldown on CC on a player would mean that Warriors hammer would be useless, 4 out of 6 skills are CC.

1st off a good thief of mesmer isn’t that worried about CC. They have some of the best tools to deal with CC. Thief in particular should not die to CC because they choose when to engage and they possess shadow step/shadow return. BAD thieves die to CC. They can even steal to change positions drastically while stunned.

Also as far as hammer warrior goes, they have 3 hard CC, not 4. Staggering Blow, Back Breaker, Earthshaker. As well You don’t even know my suggested implemenetation for fixing it, how can you say “Warrior’s hammer would be useless!!!”? Still it’s interesting you say that as a CC based hammer warrior with sword/mace offhand can keep someone helpless for over 10 seconds and multiple skills are AOE CC. (I have one btw). Ironically since the AOE CC’s knock or fear people away I would still perform my job of disruption.

I’ll update my OP with the following suggestion since people automatically jump to immunities.

Personally imo it should be an increasing resistance as you are CC’d. Stacks of defiance or something that last for 10 seconds each. 1 stack per second of CC, each stack reduces the duration of the next CC by 5%, max of 10 stacks. This means that a long duration skill such as 3 seconds of fear from “Fear Me” would give 15% reduced hard CC duration. But a spammable small skill like “Head shot” would give only 5% reduced duration since it is 1 second per “Head Shot”.

Maybe on Immobilize, but not on stuns or fears.

I find the CC atm okay. I play lately a necromancer in WvW and so I play one of the professions, who have it the hardest to eskape from CC. With my mesmer I almost never had a problem being CCed.

Speaking from my necro’s point of view I need CC myself (fear) to prevent being CCed. I like this way the necro works. You have to get some sense of anticipation.

The idea behind your suggestion is understandable, but adding another boon to the game might only increase the server lags, for it is smth else, the server would have to account for now.

Some stunbrakers should remove imobilize imho. But not all. It could be added to the skills. Mesmers for example wouldn’t need an imobilize removal skill. On my necro on the other hand, I sometimes wish I had smth do deal quickly with imobilize, for most condition removers have a cast time, that makes you too good of a target.

Wryscher.1432:

No. In most games I have played when a dr came in it was because 1 person could stun lock you for a size able length of time. Here as the op pointed out it takes a group of people working together. That is sort of the point of the game I believe.

A single hammer/mace/mace warrior can perma stun 1 person for over 10 seconds. Of that 10+ seconds Fear Me, Staggering Blow, Stomp, Earthshaker, and Tremor are all AOE effects. Lets add that up shall we?

Single target stuns capable in a single warrior build:

Backbreaker (2 seconds)
Bull’s Charge (2 Seconds)
Skull Crack (2 seconds)
Pommel Bash (1 second)

AOE Stuns capable in a single warrior build.

Staggering Blow (1-2 seconds)
Earthshaker (2 seconds)
Stomp (2-3 seconds)
Fear Me (3 seconds initially, can be more easily increased than other stuns)
Tremor (2 seconds)

Juggernaut:
Kick (1-2 seconds)
Throw Boulder (2 seconds)
Stomp (2-3 seconds)

So that’s a total of over 20 seconds actually, with quite a few of those CC’s being AOE’s. Warrior is one of the best at it but they are not the only class that can lock someone down for a sizeable length of time.

the current cc is ok.
you can dodge it, block it, remove it with conditon clean or use stunbreaker.
there are stabi,
melandru-rune + loaf of saffron bread.

the system works well.

CC nerf? Not really. That’s what stun breaks/condition removal are for. The only CC I really have an issue with is immobilized which bugs for me and I frequently cannot break where basically my skills won’t work because there is some kind of lag issue with immobilized where it resets me in the location after I used a stun break/condition removal.

Niim.9260:

The only real issue I have had with CC in GW2 is that I wish stun break skills also broke immobilize. Not a huge deal, but that is the one change I have always thought I would like.

Pretty much this.

Stability is the counter to hard CC, and it is a rare enough boon that I feel that it’s in a good spot. You have to anticipate hard CC to get stability uptime to counter it. I am perfectly fine with immobilize going around stability because cripple / chill are typically too short duration in large AoE settings to pin down groups with good stability management. However, immobilize is too powerful in its current spot and making stunbreakers remove it would balance out CC pressure very well.

sostronk.8167:

CC nerf? Not really. That’s what stun breaks/condition removal are for. The only CC I really have an issue with is immobilized which bugs for me and I frequently cannot break where basically my skills won’t work because there is some kind of lag issue with immobilized where it resets me in the location after I used a stun break/condition removal.

I suspected it would be an issue one day, I finally ran into groups running massive amounts of CC. I can tell you straight up that even if the fight gets won it is no fun to spend 3/4 of the fight on your face or stunned.

Stability is a counter to mass CC, not stunbreak. Stunbreak is more like a GTFO if you are stunned. But it will do little about you immediately eating another stun. However stability is also able to be boon stripped. Not all classes have as much boon coverage as guardian or ele after all. Rangers and necros for example are much more vulnerable to being stripped of their stability.

This is also one of those things that actually helps the zerg more. For example my current WvW matchup is Maguuma and Fort Aspenwood. Fort Aspenwood has tons of people compared to us so we eat alot of CC just from the sheer numbers. Maguuma meanwhile actually has a heavy CC focus in it’s groups. We are regularly providing feasts of Saffron Bread now just to give people a chance to survive the chain CC.

Ralathar.7236:

sostronk.8167:

CC nerf? Not really. That’s what stun breaks/condition removal are for. The only CC I really have an issue with is immobilized which bugs for me and I frequently cannot break where basically my skills won’t work because there is some kind of lag issue with immobilized where it resets me in the location after I used a stun break/condition removal.

Stability is a counter to mass CC, not stunbreak. Stunbreak is more like a GTFO if you are stunned. But it will do little about you immediately eating another stun. However stability is also able to be boon stripped. Not all classes have as much boon coverage as guardian or ele after all. Rangers and necros for example are much more vulnerable to being stripped of their stability.

In all of our testing and GvGs we have been unable to reliably strip stability off of the majority of a group with good boon control even when running a necro and boonstrip on shatter mesmer heavy group composition. If your group is not providing enough boons to maintain stability on your frontline during a push then you need to rethink your group composition.

FWIW, I’m part of one of those CC heavy Maguuma groups you’re running into. No, CC does not help the “zerg”, it helps the group with better group cohesion. We put heavy soft CC on groups with stability uptime and we dish hard CC on them the instant we see stability run out.

CC and positional control are pivotal parts of winning a group battle. They’re mostly well set to make an interesting meta. The only one that is kind of broken is immobilize. However, there are not any uncapped AoE immobilizes (unlike cripples, stuns, and pushes), and most of them have a short enough duration that traiting accordingly or using food/runes that reduce condition duration can largely mitigate the impact of it.

Ralathar, there was couple posts above me a suggestion to make player immune to CC for 5 seconds after one CC. So my post was ment for that, not for your OP post. Should have cleared that up a little bit more.

What comes to warrior hammer, should have been more clearer here, that with leg specialist trait you will have 3 stuns/knockbacks and a cripple that also immobilize, so I consider that 4 abilities that have CC. Im not aware if you count immobilize and cripple as CC, but I do.

But yea anyways, with a system like that you would be immune after the 5 second, if I understood right, with right foods and traits. Warriors (and eles) can attain almost 100% reduction to conditions even without this system. Maybe the calculations shouldn’t be added, but more likely calculated from the already reduced time?

And what bugs me most with the stun breaks atm is when you are flying around from knockback and use your stunbreak you are still going to suffer the whole knockback, while waiting till you land you can break it, bleh.

no diminishing returns on CC, just that you should not be CC again until the initial CC effect has run its course. this way should require more coordination to lock down someone. as far as immobilize, i feel that you should be immune to CC if you are under the effects of immobilize. chances are, the skill you would need to cleanse or get out of immobilize is not a stun break. it is a strong form of control, but it does not reset your skill bar.

zastari.1730:

Ralathar.7236:

sostronk.8167:

CC nerf? Not really. That’s what stun breaks/condition removal are for. The only CC I really have an issue with is immobilized which bugs for me and I frequently cannot break where basically my skills won’t work because there is some kind of lag issue with immobilized where it resets me in the location after I used a stun break/condition removal.

Stability is a counter to mass CC, not stunbreak. Stunbreak is more like a GTFO if you are stunned. But it will do little about you immediately eating another stun. However stability is also able to be boon stripped. Not all classes have as much boon coverage as guardian or ele after all. Rangers and necros for example are much more vulnerable to being stripped of their stability.

In all of our testing and GvGs we have been unable to reliably strip stability off of the majority of a group with good boon control even when running a necro and boonstrip on shatter mesmer heavy group composition. If your group is not providing enough boons to maintain stability on your frontline during a push then you need to rethink your group composition.

VS Ele’s, Guardians, and perhaps Warriors boons tripping would be difficult indeed. Vs the others however boon stripping has a much better chance of removing stability and you are almost certainly removing important boons they need. There is also the corrupt boons option that can be combined with a focus on a target that will quickly end a guardians day. Also don’t forget that Necro’s remove up to 3 boons with Spinal Shiver’s alone.

If you are having issues removing stability then you mean reliably stripping stability off of zergs. Because you can most certainly reliably remove stability off of single players with a minimum of coordination or perhaps none at all.

Boons could also most certainly be removed in an area extremely effectively if people bothered to take the skills and traits that enable such things. That may not be the meta now, but it will likely show it’s head in the meta one day. Example of such a trait is “Searing Flames” for guardian. Not viewed as a great trait currently due to the 20 sec CD per target, but metas change and the trait patch will be incoming soon.

FWIW, I’m part of one of those CC heavy Maguuma groups you’re running into. No, CC does not help the “zerg”, it helps the group with better group cohesion. We put heavy soft CC on groups with stability uptime and we dish hard CC on them the instant we see stability run out.

CC most certainly does help the zerg. Stability coverage, CC density per player, and boon removal per player all tend to increase, sometimes dramatically, with player count vs smaller forces. This is especially true with good organized teams.

However even with FA we have run into a lot of CC, not because they are as good as you guys but simply because of sheer numbers of people.

CC and positional control are pivotal parts of winning a group battle. They’re mostly well set to make an interesting meta. The only one that is kind of broken is immobilize. However, there are not any uncapped AoE immobilizes (unlike cripples, stuns, and pushes), and most of them have a short enough duration that traiting accordingly or using food/runes that reduce condition duration can largely mitigate the impact of it.

I think CC can still be a part of the meta but be a little more balanced for the individual players. Regardless of what the game is I don’t think being CC’d from 100% to 0% should be possible unless you literally die in 5 seconds or under.

When you can be CC’d for 10+ seconds quite easily or be CC’d for approximately half of a several minute battle this is a bad mechanic. It runs into both balance issues and playtime enjoyment issues. It will never be fun for the average victim to be unable to act consistently until they die.
.
.
.
If stun breaks gave even a short 2-3 second immunity it would counter this quite handily, but as it is stun breaks can be rendered worthless by the exact same thing they are meant to counter. But I felt such immunities could be abused by some of these stun breaks so I suggested a very soft diminishing returns instead.