Guild Wars 2

Recently there was a poll on gw2wvw.net about the stability nerf a while back. A lot of people said they would come back if there was a complete reversion of that nerf. Regardless of your personal opinion of the site, its clear that there are a lot of people who think that stability is a big cause of wvws current status. I agree, and would like to propose some buffs to profession wide group stability that I think would be beneficial.

Warrior
Make eternal champions stunbreak effects apply to party. Possibly make dolyak sig apply stab to party as well.
Guardian
Reduce the cooldown on hallowed ground and increase stacks given.
Revenant
Increase the radius of inspiring reinforcement and increase stacks given.
Ranger
Possibly make sig of the wild apply stab to party as well. Maybe invigorating bond can give group stab as well.
Thief
Switch shadow protectors and cloaked in shadows place. Rework shadow protector to give stab to allies when blinding a foe.
Engineer
Increase throw elixirs radius. Make perfectly weighted apply stab to party as well.
Necro
Give foot in the graves stab to nearby allies as well, increase stacks.
Ele
Increase the radius, duration, and stacks of rock solid.
Mesmer
Increase the radius, duration, and stacks of mantra of concentration.

I think by now its clear that for at least stability, balance should be separated for each game mode. Its too crucial of a boon to balance in such vastly differing game modes.

edit
Updated some ideas for group stab.
A possible balancing act for smaller fights could be that applying stability to yourself gives you less stacks then it would if applied to an ally. Seems kinda janky at first but it could work.
edit
A possible balancing act for smaller fights could be that applying stability to a teammate gives them less stacks then it would if applied to yourself. (i.e. ranger+warrior signet)

In it’s current state, stability doesn’t work in WvW. At all. Ever.

So yeah, I agree with your suggestions.

Some kind of buff is sorely needed. They eat through stability stacks too easily in WvsW especially if there’s 2 (or god forbid more) guardians. Way too much aoe to deal with.

Stability is a joke in WvW, it simply doesn’t not exist. Getting so many stacks for a short amount of time in combination with the new specialization abilities is completely pointless. One or two people can rip up to 5 stacks instantly with ease, and while having a large group fight your stability is ripped before you even lift your finger off your key press. As of now it only exists as a stun break, just to get instantly CC’ed again immediately. What is the purpose of this? Why is stability in the game when it is ripped before it finishes casting?

There are simply too many CCs and boon strips in this game now for this method of stability application. Not to mention necros planned to get even more boon corruption abilities. There is only one solution to this: bringing back the original method of stability with a decent duration and remove stacks completely.

They’ve shown they have the ability to separate skills between game modes (PvP, Pve)… This really needs to be done. The combat is just -not as fun- as it was 2 years ago. Skill groups are dead and now its all a boring blob numbers game.

Honestly if Anet reverted stability in WvW it would reduce the toxicity and lack of faith in these forums by 83%.

Argos Helios.4965:

Honestly if Anet reverted stability in WvW it would reduce the toxicity and lack of faith in these forums by 83%.

But it would bring the old problem back again. Whoever can maintain perma stab will get the upper hand aka the heavy frontline meta.

The only solution I can think of for this stab problem is separating skills between wvw, pvp and pve. Or making someone’s immune to cc for a few secs after casting stunbreaker

BlueBoy.1236:

Argos Helios.4965:

Honestly if Anet reverted stability in WvW it would reduce the toxicity and lack of faith in these forums by 83%.

But it would bring the old problem back again. Whoever can maintain perma stab will get the upper hand aka the heavy frontline meta.

The only solution I can think of for this stab problem is separating skills between wvw, pvp and pve. Or making someone’s immune to cc for a few secs after casting stunbreaker

What OLD problem?! There was never an old problem, nor was stability EVER a thing that we asked for to be nerfed…

Yes, whoever can coordinate and maintain permastab SHOULD have an advantage…its called COORDINATION….

If you play eyes open you don’t need stability at all.

Saw someone suggest a middle ground, where each stack of stability when hit made you immune from further CC for 1-2 seconds. So 5 stacks of stability gave you at least 5 seconds of no CC. But don’t really know how it would work out, since I’ve never been part of organized fight stuff.

The concept that stability needed to be fixed in WvW was wrong. For a time hammer trains were OP but Necros eventually became part of the larger meta to counter them. Given the new HoT changes to the meta, it is difficult to see exactly how the old stability would be OP. Reverting would certainly make for better fights IMO.

Straegen.2938:

The concept that stability needed to be fixed in WvW was wrong. For a time hammer trains were OP but Necros eventually became part of the larger meta to counter them. Given the new HoT changes to the meta, it is difficult to see exactly how the old stability would be OP. Reverting would certainly make for better fights IMO.

it still has issues with the lack of boon stripping skills. Unless we get more boon stripping skills and stab gets more priority in getting stripped, the unstoppable heavy frontline meta will be there. That was the reason ppl were shifting to immobilize skills (gs warr, hammer guard) rather than sticking to hammer train. CC was kinda irrelevant with the past stab system

joneirikb.7506:

Saw someone suggest a middle ground, where each stack of stability when hit made you immune from further CC for 1-2 seconds. So 5 stacks of stability gave you at least 5 seconds of no CC. But don’t really know how it would work out, since I’ve never been part of organized fight stuff.

Imo, this suggestion is the best so far. Old stab made melee invaluable but with current stab they just get shredded to pieces instantly.

BlueBoy.1236:

Argos Helios.4965:

Honestly if Anet reverted stability in WvW it would reduce the toxicity and lack of faith in these forums by 83%.

But it would bring the old problem back again. Whoever can maintain perma stab will get the upper hand aka the heavy frontline meta.

The only solution I can think of for this stab problem is separating skills between wvw, pvp and pve. Or making someone’s immune to cc for a few secs after casting stunbreaker

Between Dh traps, CoR, Mesmer wells(making ppl invulnerable),true shot and gunflame i doubt it’ll be as big of a problem as it was back then

Remember when mesmer confusion was nerfed and suddenly the ubiquitous WvW mesmer was hard to find for getting your golems ported because no one wanted to play mesmer much anymore? Melee is a bit like that now since the stability nerf.

Jayden Ennok.3687:

joneirikb.7506:

Saw someone suggest a middle ground, where each stack of stability when hit made you immune from further CC for 1-2 seconds. So 5 stacks of stability gave you at least 5 seconds of no CC. But don’t really know how it would work out, since I’ve never been part of organized fight stuff.

Imo, this suggestion is the best so far. Old stab made melee invaluable but with current stab they just get shredded to pieces instantly.

So warrior would push couple buttons and 15 no cc. Haha sounds balanced. Could work if they remove stability share from game and best stab skill would give only 5 stacks.

Chaba.5410:

Remember when mesmer confusion was nerfed and suddenly the ubiquitous WvW mesmer was hard to find for getting your golems ported because no one wanted to play mesmer much anymore? Melee is a bit like that now since the stability nerf.

We run melee heavy and we do just fine. Lots of great fights today.

I really don’t get all these stability complaints. It’s more difficult now, yes, but definitely doable.

Boreal.9826:

Chaba.5410:

Remember when mesmer confusion was nerfed and suddenly the ubiquitous WvW mesmer was hard to find for getting your golems ported because no one wanted to play mesmer much anymore? Melee is a bit like that now since the stability nerf.

We run melee heavy and we do just fine. Lots of great fights today.

I really don’t get all these stability complaints. It’s more difficult now, yes, but definitely doable.

Not doable at all; coordinated groups will stun CC the hell out of people that make a difference. Anet needs to improve the cap on Endurance regen if they are going to keep the system the way it is. Otherwise, with the old system all you had to do was pay attention to boons under the health bar of your enemies and just run around in circles to avoid melee professions. TRUST ME ON THIS. The only reason stability is like this is because of the buffs to elite skills and their boon interval applications. Originally, it used to be you could boon rip elite stability duration; now you have stack intervals that essentially do nothing because they get wiped so kitten fast when you need to get out of the way of AoE stacks…ergo, pirate ship battles.

TL;DR, if the current system for stability remains in place then a simple fix is to expand on the Endurance regen system. Otherwise they need to revert back to the old system and improve everyone’s ability to boon rip/convert (since everyone and their mother at least have one CC skill)

FugueState.3842:

Boreal.9826:

Chaba.5410:

Remember when mesmer confusion was nerfed and suddenly the ubiquitous WvW mesmer was hard to find for getting your golems ported because no one wanted to play mesmer much anymore? Melee is a bit like that now since the stability nerf.

We run melee heavy and we do just fine. Lots of great fights today.

I really don’t get all these stability complaints. It’s more difficult now, yes, but definitely doable.

Not doable at all; coordinated groups will stun CC the hell out of people that make a difference. Anet needs to improve the cap on Endurance regen if they are going to keep the system the way it is. Otherwise, with the old system all you had to do was pay attention to boons under the health bar of your enemies and just run around in circles to avoid melee professions. TRUST ME ON THIS. The only reason stability is like this is because of the buffs to elite skills and their boon interval applications. Originally, it used to be you could boon rip elite stability duration; now you have stack intervals that essentially do nothing because they get wiped so kitten fast when you need to get out of the way of AoE stacks…ergo, pirate ship battles.

TL;DR, if the current system for stability remains in place then a simple fix is to expand on the Endurance regen system. Otherwise they need to revert back to the old system and improve everyone’s ability to boon rip/convert (since everyone and their mother at least have one CC skill)

Sorry, I just don’t agree.

To me, the old stab was pretty much easy mode. While new stab can be rough, it is doable. I guess people have gotten rusty from all the pirate shipping lately, and forgot how to push as melee. Or maybe the dragon banners look too scary.

Junkpile.7439:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

joneirikb.7506:

Saw someone suggest a middle ground, where each stack of stability when hit made you immune from further CC for 1-2 seconds. So 5 stacks of stability gave you at least 5 seconds of no CC. But don’t really know how it would work out, since I’ve never been part of organized fight stuff.

Imo, this suggestion is the best so far. Old stab made melee invaluable but with current stab they just get shredded to pieces instantly.

So warrior would push couple buttons and 15 no cc. Haha sounds balanced. Could work if they remove stability share from game and best stab skill would give only 5 stacks.

Sure with the current number of stacks that change would be too good. My idea of this is: reduce stab stacks through the game and reduce stab stacks gives to allies, for example the player gets 5 stacks, gives only 3 to allies. If they would cut stab share completely from the game, no need to take guardians into teams.

Boreal.9826:

Chaba.5410:

Remember when mesmer confusion was nerfed and suddenly the ubiquitous WvW mesmer was hard to find for getting your golems ported because no one wanted to play mesmer much anymore? Melee is a bit like that now since the stability nerf.

We run melee heavy and we do just fine. Lots of great fights today.

I really don’t get all these stability complaints. It’s more difficult now, yes, but definitely doable.

What server and what guild are you?

BlueBoy.1236:

it still has issues with the lack of boon stripping skills. Unless we get more boon stripping skills and stab gets more priority in getting stripped, the unstoppable heavy frontline meta will be there. That was the reason ppl were shifting to immobilize skills (gs warr, hammer guard) rather than sticking to hammer train. CC was kinda irrelevant with the past stab system

The meta has changed. The backline AoE DPS is much higher now, far more effective builds with both short and long range damage and sustain is 4x better than it was. A hammer train with the old style stability cannot dominate backliners like it used to.

At the very least I would suggest reverting it for a couple weeks and see the effect. If nothing else we get a change of pace and a new discussion topic.

morrolan.9608:

Boreal.9826:

Chaba.5410:

Remember when mesmer confusion was nerfed and suddenly the ubiquitous WvW mesmer was hard to find for getting your golems ported because no one wanted to play mesmer much anymore? Melee is a bit like that now since the stability nerf.

We run melee heavy and we do just fine. Lots of great fights today.

I really don’t get all these stability complaints. It’s more difficult now, yes, but definitely doable.

What server and what guild are you?

exa on yb.

Boreal.9826:

Chaba.5410:

Remember when mesmer confusion was nerfed and suddenly the ubiquitous WvW mesmer was hard to find for getting your golems ported because no one wanted to play mesmer much anymore? Melee is a bit like that now since the stability nerf.

We run melee heavy and we do just fine. Lots of great fights today.

I really don’t get all these stability complaints. It’s more difficult now, yes, but definitely doable.

There were still mesmers running around after the confusion nerf, just less of them.

joneirikb.7506:

Saw someone suggest a middle ground, where each stack of stability when hit made you immune from further CC for 1-2 seconds. So 5 stacks of stability gave you at least 5 seconds of no CC. But don’t really know how it would work out, since I’ve never been part of organized fight stuff.

This is the same as the old stability, except with stacks.

My proposal is imo (ofc) a good middle ground, as guardian is the only class that can reliably give their party stability. Since the stab gets eaten in seconds, melee is perpetually locked into pirateship. I definitely dont want the old stab back, but people being afraid to push because of cc spam is bs and needs to be addressed. It takes away from the fluidity of the fight, which is why I think a bunch of people left.

It’s mesmer job sneak in and make portal. Silly idea that blob should just run through cc. If you run through cc you are stupid and deserve lose.

Junkpile.7439:

It’s mesmer job sneak in and make portal. Silly idea that blob should just run through cc. If you run through cc you are stupid and deserve lose.

See so how come it has to be CC though to deal with melee? What happened to the days were commanders would call for fields and make damage chokes which would still wreck melee trains.

There are several, several ways of blowing up hammer trains. But there is no way to run a hammer train, at all, whatsoever given a certain number of enemies.

Boreal.9826:

Chaba.5410:

Remember when mesmer confusion was nerfed and suddenly the ubiquitous WvW mesmer was hard to find for getting your golems ported because no one wanted to play mesmer much anymore? Melee is a bit like that now since the stability nerf.

We run melee heavy and we do just fine. Lots of great fights today.

I really don’t get all these stability complaints. It’s more difficult now, yes, but definitely doable.

Its clear then that you are running substantial numbers or the enemies you are facing are incompetent. Thats just the math speaking.

I remember when the stab changes came out, a blob guild was like, “oh hey I like the stab changes” and literally every other wvw guild was infuriated at anet for ruining this great game mode.

The melee->ranged shift wasnt really that bad. A strong melee core with guardians is still pretty much standard in all zergs I have seen. But that doesnt change the fact the current stab system has always been impossible to balance.

I rather like the idea of 1s icd on dropping 1 stab. Sounds like a simple solution that should buff it alot in large scale and group combat while keeping it similar small scale.

Dano.5298:

What happened to the days were commanders would call for fields and make damage chokes which would still wreck melee trains.

That didn’t exist unless they were scrubs, any competent guild or pug zerg with half decent players and a commander who wasn’t brain dead could go through chokes in the days of heavy melee trains, broken stab and hard CC being borderline useless (hence it was all about immobilize back then).

Take inner hills as an example, if you had a melee heavy blob attacking and a ranged heavy blob defending, it was kitten easy for the melee blob, hard CC was useless because of so much stab, so many covering boons, that stab was last to be stripped by well of corruption, etc, then you add all the guards / shout warriors / ele large water etc that cleansed condies, had silly AOE healing, etc, then the invurns.

So all that would happen unless the melee bob were terrible is the melee blob stab up, invurn, etc to get across the bridge, the ranged heavy blob would be forced inside the lords room, so then just wait till stab up, maybe invurn up, and same thing again into the lords room, chokes were a joke, the only way a ranged heavy blob actually beat a melee heavy blob (that wasn’t terrible) was to split / kite, and take out eles, then eventually wear the melee blob down, that required space, and took a long time.

Which is why at points in the game you had the vast majority of players in the blob as melee, it was faceroll, pushing was was beyond skilless with the way stab negated hard CC.

Stab isn’t the problem, decent commanders / guilds are able to push melee in that respect just fine (obviously scrubs have issues, but well…), what makes the combat dull these days is the endless sniping by baddies, the power creep on damage, the running away / avoiding fights unless outnumbering the opponent signifcantly (hello French/German/Spanish servers) etc.

With all the CC spam, and it was bad before but it is 100 times worse now with the new specializations seemingly designed to just CC, they need to change stability.

My idea is to revert the change but reduce Stability durations. In all honesty, all they needed to do to fix stability was just reduce the durations in the first place but as we all know Anet has no idea how to balance anything. To me, if you reduce duration and you still wanted significant up time you would need to spec heavily into boon duration to make it happen and then lose out on other stats in the process. That is a good compromise.

Chaba.5410:

Melee is a bit like that now since the stability nerf.

I haven’t played my warr in wvw in over a year. They are completely useless now. The stab nerf would have made sense in spvp, but since anet can’t be bothered to separate the two game modes…..

Osu.6307:

Chaba.5410:

Melee is a bit like that now since the stability nerf.

I haven’t played my warr in wvw in over a year. They are completely useless now. The stab nerf would have made sense in spvp, but since anet can’t be bothered to separate the two game modes…..

People play melee necro in zerg and you can’t play warrior? Idea isn’t run every possible cc in battlefield. Do you still try to use this tactic that was pop 2.5 years ago where you follow bad commander like a sheep? Commander yell push and run straight in enemy cc.

zinkz.7045:

Which is why at points in the game you had the vast majority of players in the blob as melee, it was faceroll, pushing was was beyond skilless with the way stab negated hard CC.

And at other points in the game the vast majority of players in the blob are ranged.

This is my only point: the meta causes some classes to be played more than others at different points in the game. Players go to what is fun to play. Melee is not as fun to play right now.

zinkz.7045:

Dano.5298:

What happened to the days were commanders would call for fields and make damage chokes which would still wreck melee trains.

That didn’t exist unless they were scrubs, any competent guild or pug zerg with half decent players and a commander who wasn’t brain dead could go through chokes in the days of heavy melee trains, broken stab and hard CC being borderline useless (hence it was all about immobilize back then).

Take inner hills as an example, if you had a melee heavy blob attacking and a ranged heavy blob defending, it was kitten easy for the melee blob, hard CC was useless because of so much stab, so many covering boons, that stab was last to be stripped by well of corruption, etc, then you add all the guards / shout warriors / ele large water etc that cleansed condies, had silly AOE healing, etc, then the invurns.

So all that would happen unless the melee bob were terrible is the melee blob stab up, invurn, etc to get across the bridge, the ranged heavy blob would be forced inside the lords room, so then just wait till stab up, maybe invurn up, and same thing again into the lords room, chokes were a joke, the only way a ranged heavy blob actually beat a melee heavy blob (that wasn’t terrible) was to split / kite, and take out eles, then eventually wear the melee blob down, that required space, and took a long time.

Which is why at points in the game you had the vast majority of players in the blob as melee, it was faceroll, pushing was was beyond skilless with the way stab negated hard CC.

Stab isn’t the problem, decent commanders / guilds are able to push melee in that respect just fine (obviously scrubs have issues, but well…), what makes the combat dull these days is the endless sniping by baddies, the power creep on damage, the running away / avoiding fights unless outnumbering the opponent signifcantly (hello French/German/Spanish servers) etc.

… But all the good commanders and guilds left because of the stab changes.

heavy boon corrupt incoming with necro changes, 1 necro can corrupt up to 5-10 boons every 15 seconds, and 2 necros can boonstrip spike roughly 8 boons in a matter of seconds… and thats just single target boon corruption, I did not count it AoE corrupts like Well of Corruption…
and on top of that, I was told by guildies that boonstripping is now random, meaning that stab will get corrupted much more easily…
stab needs to be buffed… melee barely survived the change to stacks and now with more corrupts, its gonna have serious problems…

Peterson.8345:

heavy boon corrupt incoming with necro changes, 1 necro can corrupt up to 5-10 boons every 15 seconds, and 2 necros can boonstrip spike roughly 8 boons in a matter of seconds… and thats just single target boon corruption, I did not count it AoE corrupts like Well of Corruption…
and on top of that, I was told by guildies that boonstripping is now random, meaning that stab will get corrupted much more easily…
stab needs to be buffed… melee barely survived the change to stacks and now with more corrupts, its gonna have serious problems…

If youre talking about corrupt boon the skill its gonna be 3 boons with a cd of 15 seconds. Necros are not likely to take scepter in wvw despite the buff to it (could be wrong idk).

Stand The Wall.6987:

Peterson.8345:

heavy boon corrupt incoming with necro changes, 1 necro can corrupt up to 5-10 boons every 15 seconds, and 2 necros can boonstrip spike roughly 8 boons in a matter of seconds… and thats just single target boon corruption, I did not count it AoE corrupts like Well of Corruption…
and on top of that, I was told by guildies that boonstripping is now random, meaning that stab will get corrupted much more easily…
stab needs to be buffed… melee barely survived the change to stacks and now with more corrupts, its gonna have serious problems…

If youre talking about corrupt boon the skill its gonna be 3 boons with a cd of 15 seconds. Necros are not likely to take scepter in wvw despite the buff to it (could be wrong idk).

just gonna leave this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ-1bMjukaM

Peterson.8345:

just gonna leave this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ-1bMjukaM

This video contains content from Marvelousaqlmusic. It is not available in your country.

Stab must be buffed/reverted if ANET would like to see their game last a little longer.

Surely people are getting sick of PVE meta events. WvW is the reason to play this game… PVE stuff is nice sometimes to work towards say a build in WvW, but if WvW is gonna be this dead for much longer (or get worse) then the game won’t generate any more money.

The stab changes have wrecked WvW.. If you like them, I’m glad, but you are the tiniest of minorities and I would assume you would rather have to people to play with and against then have stab the way it is now.

anet has introduced so many new skills that daze stun imob yet they havent balanced stability to go with it. Trying to fight in wvw now is a complete joke even guardians are getting bounced about when trying to push into a fight i cant see why anet cant bring the old stability system back into wvw once u enter the instance

headraver.4862:

anet has introduced so many new skills that daze stun imob yet they havent balanced stability to go with it. Trying to fight in wvw now is a complete joke even guardians are getting bounced about when trying to push into a fight i cant see why anet cant bring the old stability system back into wvw once u enter the instance

Pretty much this.

Edit: I really feel bad these past 3 years whenever I slap on hammer on warrior, ESPECIALLY against necro. Imo (I’ve said this before and I will beat it like a dead horse) some professions need stab enhancements and some need CC completely taken away coughcoughchrono/mesmercoughcough

Im not really good at explaining but i hope everyone can get what im trying to say.

If Anet reverted stability then Revenant will need a nerf to two of there traits
(Unwavering Avoidance) and (Enhanced Bulwark) Revs can stack boon duration really easy wich is not good for those two traits and with energy sigils and riposting shadows they can dodge for days!

hope everyone understood the point i was trying to make…..
Or maybe im just over thinking all of this…. :p

Here’s what I think happened. Anet put more HARD CC into the game and did not do anything to adjust stability to match the number of CC they added in. So, as of right now yes stability needs buffed if anet does not plan to substantially reduce the amount of HARD CC’s they added in with HoT and the elite specs. However, I dont believe they will add more stacks to skills that give stability. I think ul see small nerfs to some not all HARD CC’s, but I have a feeling its not going to change much until they themselves play WvW as much as we do and see how annoying it is.

Stab was meant to be countered with boon stripping, boon corruption, and soft ccs, not hard ccs.

Bump
/15char

Stab seems fine in spvp, but the old system worked much better in wvw. As long as anet is too lazy to have separate rules for each gamemode, we’ll always have to deal with what works best for spvp.

With the increase in boon corruption its actually getting worse now.

Chaba.5410:

Stab was meant to be countered with boon stripping, boon corruption, and soft ccs, not hard ccs.

For WVW AOE boon strips are just too weak and too infrequent to accomplish this. In addition soft CCs do not work because they can also be removed by non stop AOE cleanse spam since they are mostly conditions, and in many cases you don’t even need that, jsut have enough -condi duration on you to bring duration of soft CC under 1 tick to be completely immune to it.

The 2 things above is what made stab in its original form stupid OP when added into any build.

if they buff stab, it will jsut be the other extreme, they need to rebalance the above in order to buff stab its somewhat in the middle.

I’m all for an adjustment on the number of stacks given to reflect the sources of cc we have but I vehemently oppose a return to the old stab. Replacing a problem with another is not a good idea. Fine tune stab until you hit the sweet spot that won’t make ppl rag dolls or cc irrelevants.

Tongku.5326:

Chaba.5410:

Stab was meant to be countered with boon stripping, boon corruption, and soft ccs, not hard ccs.

For WVW AOE boon strips are just too weak and too infrequent to accomplish this. In addition soft CCs do not work because they can also be removed by non stop AOE cleanse spam since they are mostly conditions, and in many cases you don’t even need that, jsut have enough -condi duration on you to bring duration of soft CC under 1 tick to be completely immune to it.

The 2 things above is what made stab in its original form stupid OP when added into any build.

if they buff stab, it will jsut be the other extreme, they need to rebalance the above in order to buff stab its somewhat in the middle.

I don’t recall there being too many complaints or problems with the old stab. Stab was applied, necros stripped or corrupted it, eles cc’d the enemy then the groups clashed. If you were co-ordinated well enough the boon stripping and corruption lasted long enough to do its job. And groups were evenly balanced.