Guild Wars 2

This proposal is intended to address the 4 legitimate complains that I’ve heard about the update in the forums today:

I) Performance Problems, making skill lag worse and so on. I’m a programmer and this may help, based on how I understand the buffs being applied and managed.
II) Destroying GvG for those players who like that mode of play.
III) Boosting the winning server signficantly to make them even more powerful.
IV) Roaming and 1v1 being not very viable against a server with 3 stacks of stat boosts.

My solution is:

1) Divide the Borderlands Bloodlust buff into two buffs:
a) Borderlands Bloodlust provides +1 point for a finisher and can either stack or not stack.
b) Borderlands Boost provides the +50 to all stats and does NOT stack. The maximum benefit any server can get is +50 to all stats.

The goal here is to limit the imbalances caused by the stat buff, keep roaming viable against a buffed opponent, simplify the calculations, and enable a workaround that’s specified below.

2) When a server holds three of the five ruins in a Borderland simultaneously for 2 minutes, it applies the two buffs to everyone on the server for 15 minutes.

The benefit to taking another server’s ruins if you already have the stat boost is to deny an opponent the stat boost. If more incentive is needed, then I recommend applying the Borderlands Boost for the first ruins taken, +30% gold for the second ruins, and +30% Magic Find for the third ruins, or something like that.

3) Every 15 minutes, when server points are added in, a server holding three ruins in a Borderland will have the appropriate buffs refreshed for another 15 minutes.

The purpose of (2) and (3) is to limit the server overhead of applying and removing buffs that seem to be causing a problem. Buffs won’t need to be recalculated the instant ruins change hands, just applied when they are taken, because they won’t need to be removed from everyone when ruins flip. They’ll expire like any other buff and will expire naturally if the ruins are not held when they run out.

If there is concern about flipping abuse here (as proposed, it could be possible to flip ruins between all three servers such that all three could have all buffs), then put a cooldown timer on each set of ruins so that only the first server to hold them can get a benefit from them during every 15 minute heartbeat. The cooldown mechanism already exists, as does the 15 minute timer, at the top of everyone’s screen.

4) The fix for the GvG complaint is to provide a craftable or magic forgable consumable buff that also provides the same +50 to all stats Borderlands Boost buff for 15 minutes in WvW only, such that it will act like a refresh to that buff and won’t stack. That will effectively cancel the benefit any server enjoys from the boost and allow for the even fights that some people are asking for. It also gives roamers an option to equalize things.

This consumable should be fairly expensive to make so that it’s not ubiquitous, will only work in WvW (or maybe it should work in PvE, too), and will only last for 15 minutes. It will also not provide the finisher bonus that holding a set of ruins provides.

If nothing else, I hope this gives the ANet developers some food for thought.

Get rid of this bloodlust. So far no one is defending anything, they are running around in the centre trying to pvp with eachother and then there is the lag which makes the whole game ridiculous.