First, to quote from patch note Jan 26, 2016:
Supporting your allies will now contribute toward earning rewards for killing enemies and damaging event bosses. The actions listed below now cause a percentage of the target ally’s damage dealt for the next several seconds to also count toward your participation. In addition to that, damaging an enemy’s defiance bar will also grant you some participation toward receiving rewards from that enemy. In order to discourage AFKing with boon-applying auras, you must still be actively attacking targets to receive rewards from them.
- Applying boons to an ally (small percentage).
- Removing conditions from an ally (small percentage).
- Reviving an ally (large percentage).
- Healing an ally (percentage scales based on how much healing is given).
This has been a great step made by developers for WvW community, promoting build diversity by providing incentives to play roles other than damage. However there could be still some room for improvement.
One is the mechanic how you share ally’s ‘tagging’(attacking) credits, as stated in the patch note:
In order to discourage AFKing with boon-applying auras, you must still be actively attacking targets to receive rewards from them.
Basically, it means that in order to share ally’s credits from killing something, you have to at least score a hit on it. The credits gained from supporting and healing your ally only serve as a bonus on top of that (if I understand this correctly).
For PvE, I believe such approach is necessary, as we have already been seeing a considerable amount of people AFK farming and such act should be and have been disincentivized. However, for WvW there is really no such concern, since anyone who’s gone AFK in a fight scene is an instant kill for the other team anyway.
While on the other hand, players in support and healing roles often find themselves in situations requiring complete focus on support/healing action instead of attacking. And by dedicating to the team, they gain less material rewards under current credit-sharing mechanic.
Furthermore, weapon types excelling in support, healing, and/or self-sustaining are often bad at tagging (lacking five-target AoE, with long cool-down, slow firing, short range, extremely low damage coefficient and so on). The reward gained by supports and healers is thus even more disproportionate to the influence they actually put out on the field. And all these could be solved simply by lifting the must-tag limit for WvW mode without introducing unintended AFK farm play.
Another thing is the ‘tagging’ mechanic itself. To again quote from the patch note:
…cause a percentage of the target ally’s damage dealt for the next several seconds to also count toward your participation.
(Italic emphasis added by OP)
While damage dealt is a good indicator of a player’s offensive output, it certainly does not represent the entire picture. Many offensive skills are powerful and influential without inflicting any damage upon the enemy. Just take Time Warp for example, which applies ‘Slow’ condition to five enemy targets for a relatively long span. Also, crowd control is another thing not explicitly taken into account, yet it is essential in any PvP scenario. To address this problem, I believe we need to extend the tagging mechanic, from only damage to non-damage-inflicting conditions and control skills. Some classes and builds are absolutely great at these aspects, yet they do not receive rewards proportionate to their contribution to a kill under the current system.
TL; DR:
To conclude, the current reward system does not reward players proportionate enough to their contribution in WvW.
First, ‘tagging’ as the least requirement to share credits for rewards from a killed target is not preventing unintended AFK farm, which hardly exists at all in WvW scenario, while on the other hand crippling down the material rewards gained by support/healing classes.
Secondarily, based on the patch note, the ‘tagging’ mechanic itself does not seem to take non-damage conditions and crowd control into account, while some classes/builds are very effective in the latter two aspects and such aspects are essential, perhaps even more important in any PvP scenario.
A possible way to provide more proportionate reward to supports and healers is to cancel the requirement to attack something as base requirement to receive credits for, and to share credits from, buffing/healing allies. Additionally, on tagging mechanic itself, take non-damage conditions and crowd control into account.
Edit: fixed typo and polished.
(edited by Virtuality.8351)
