Guild Wars 2

grifflyman.8102:

Why can’t they just change the way stability works in WvW? I’m so tired of the design philosophy that all the skills in three very separate game modes have to be the same.

GW2 is completely divided between PvP, WvW and PvE, so it’s time to accept that and designing skills around that.

A perfect example of a change would be to revert the warhorn skill on warriors to effect 10 targets again instead of 5 and convert the conditions back to boons.

This change was out in because it was OP in PvP but it really crippled warriors frontline ability in WvW.

Especially since you have sigils in PvP that differ than in the rest of the game.

The reason for the stability nerf was that it was a fire and forget button, and it was to some degree. But for smaller groups it took coordination to cycle through stability to ensure its uptime, even then it was not 100% (notice I said smaller groups, meaning 15-20 tops). If you just popped all your stability at one time, a necromancer from our guild would have easily picked you out removed it, and we would have focused you down. It was about stability rotation to keep going despite being outnumbered.

With the stability changes, the fire and forget has just changed from the stability to the CC. Now, it’s all about who can throw out the most CC the fastest, which is usually the larger group. The stability changes were rough at first, but adopting a new play style (not pirate ship at first) made it bearable as some of you said, but with the release of HoT and every class getting a new Hard CC (despite it not really fitting their style) just to allow all classes to break bars in PvE was a huge oversight to WvW (not really a surprise though). For example, necromancer only had mostly soft CC before HoT (counting Fear as soft CC since it counts as a condition) and they had 3 added. One of the CCs I have the most problem with is Hunter’s Ward. Its duration, its range, and its amount are just stupid, taking 5 stacks to walk through 1 CC that you cannot avoid unless the enemy is just playing with their monitor off. But back to point.

There were always counters to stability before the change such as coordinated soft CC with bombs and boon strips. With the change, a group of 15-20 people look at the map blob and realize that no matter what classes they are running or how good they are, they will have enough CC and more stability than you can stability through or CC. I do not advocate a full reversion to the old stability, because it was more unskilled and somewhat of a fire and forget button, but numbers should not just mean an automatic win. With numbers, you already had the advantage in boons, CCs (both hard and soft), and damage. Now, you also get the advantage in movement, mobility, and positioning which was usually reserved for the more skilled and more coordinated.

The stacks granting immunity for X seconds just seems like the old stability, or the suggestion that CC can only remove 1 stack of stability per second is basically the old stability. I do however want some reliability in stability (that sounds weird). When I press a skill that should make me immune to CC to be instantly stripped just because the other group is larger and has more CC in my opinion is worse than the old way stability worked. The only solution that I can think of is to have stability scale somehow with the number of enemies in X range, making the enemy have to coordinate more CCs to stop your movement instead of just a few.

I believe there should be a counter to stability, but I do not think it should just be superiority in numbers. In the past, I enjoyed fights, both backline and frontline, because the flow of the fight was dictated by movement. It was a back and forth dance of coordinated damage. Not a cluster of CCs which alone have enough damage to kill you. I do not say any of this as trying to sound that blob or zerging is bad or from an elitist standpoint. It is just frustrating that numbers mean even more in WvW since the stability changes.

Edit: Another solution could be to have stability removed first guaranteed in WvW to provide more counter-play to it and return it to stacking duration.

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.

The problem I have with this is that its basically a reversion. Even with a 1 sec icd, it would be possible to walk through 50 ccs again, which I hope we can all agree shouldnt be possible.

Peterson.8345:

runeblade.7514:

Stand The Wall.6987:

ArchonWing.9480:

It may be entirely possible that hammer trains were unstoppable in the past, but I do recall pirate shipping already being a thing before the stability change. I understand CC should have value, and maybe you felt left out.

But….

Can anyone clear me on any sources…..

Was any of this intended for World vs World? Did they actually say something on the lines that stability and trains were too strong in WvW? Do you think the stacks of stability granted per skill was considered?

The way I see it, it seems to be centered around PvP and WvW just seems (as usual) as collateral damage. I don’t find that particularly sound even if there are arguments in favor of this.

I think the stab change was two fold, but since esports is getting so much attention (heh) the change was probably primarily focused around that.
Arent you supposed to defend anet with that forum specialist title?

The stab change was purely for WvW.

sPvP has felt no change from the stab skill except for pulsing 1 stack stability. You can’t stun an enemy with 5 stability stacks unless the team is all hammer warriors and the player doesn’t dodge anything.

The stab change was to reflect developing new CC system with break bars seen on NPC bosses and to coexist with upcoming pulsing stability changes with HoT stuff (reaper’s shroud stability for example)… at least that’s what I think
…and as runeblade mentioned, this change did not have significant impact in sPvP, but it changed WvW very much…

You are correct. The stab change was for PvE monsters. They made a big to do about it when they introduced the wyvern at like the beginning of last year.

Stand The Wall.6987:

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.

The problem I have with this is that its basically a reversion. Even with a 1 sec icd, it would be possible to walk through 50 ccs again, which I hope we can all agree shouldnt be possible.

I totally agree, I always hated to wait the end of the stab before apply my hard cc. Also my cc have a shorter cd than all stabs in the game so I have almost nothing to manage. I hope Anet will also put stacks on resistance, block and invul because they shouldn’t be able to walk through more than 9000 condis and direct damage attacks.

WvW so good now, the size matter more than never and the organized small 5-15 groups cannot even approach my brain dead 50 mans zerg , just our passive traits for cc rip their stab, it’s very healthy for this game mode. I really wonder why 50% of the 2015 community left the game after this wonderful change.

Qcom.3462:

Also my cc have a shorter cd than all stabs in the game …

You mean like how static field is a 40 sec cooldown whilst stand your ground is 30 sec (24 sec in most frontline guard builds)…

Qcom.3462:

WvW so good now, the size matter more than never and the organized small 5-15 groups cannot even approach my brain dead…

WvW is “braindead” fullstop, what you think it is SC2? It is just a casual low skilled game mode, in a casual low skilled game.

Qcom.3462:

I really wonder why 50% of the 2015 community left the game after this wonderful change.

Most of the “community” had already left before the stab change in 2015, the game mode was already moribund.

Stand The Wall.6987:

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.

The problem I have with this is that its basically a reversion. Even with a 1 sec icd, it would be possible to walk through 50 ccs again, which I hope we can all agree shouldnt be possible.

I cant agree to that.

Isnt the very point of PvP counter-play? You pop skill X, the enemy pop skill Y to counter you, you pop skill Z to counter them, etc etc.

The simplest example being someone that shoot an arrow at you and you raise your shield to block it. Incidently, this also show the difference from the current stab implementation. If you sheild block you will block all damage for the duration. Yes, even 50 arrows. The idea here is that only a fool would shoot those 50 arrows while you are blocking – that’s poor counter-play. They have to wait until you are voulnerable. When your block is on cooldown.

1s of stab getting hit by 50 CC and letting 49 CCs through doesnt allow for any counter-play. Mind you that this icd would only affect massive zergs vs focused targets. Especially if Anet tweak stacks and times to account for such an icd.

Well 4/10 to detect sarcasm but I will answer it in the same order:

You mean like how static field is a 40 sec cooldown whilst stand your ground is 30 sec (24 sec in most frontline guard builds)…

No I mean how solid rock with 10 sec cd whilst gravity well with 90sec cd. Omg I just destroy more my previous statement… If we compare the stab and cc in a large scale fight it easy to realize how the cc sky rocket. A group of 40 man need 16 stand your ground to push on 5 staff ele’s. Even if I hated the old stab because it was faceroll when we run with 60% guard now it’s worst.

WvW is “braindead” fullstop, what you think it is SC2? It is just a casual low skilled game mode, in a casual low skilled game.

I didn’t talk about SC2 or about WvW mode. I said that a 5-10 organized don’t have a single chance now again 40 players who got the game 2 weeks ago.

Most of the “community” had already left before the stab change in 2015, the game mode was already moribund.

I didn’t talk about the people on left before 2015 but the players who were in the game in 2015 and left after the stab change. The 50% is an observation,, I don’t have the metric information . Yes, in 2014 a lot more people left the game than 2015.

Qcom.3462:

If we compare the stab and cc in a large scale fight it easy to realize how the cc sky rocket. A group of 40 man need 16 stand your ground to push on 5 staff ele’s. Even if I hated the old stab because it was faceroll when we run with 60% guard now it’s worst.

Except any commander with a clue, just baits out CC, then pushes, frankly the powercreep and the level of damage is more of an issue.

Qcom.3462:

I didn’t talk about SC2 or about WvW mode. I said that a 5-10 organized don’t have a single chance now again 40 players who got the game 2 weeks ago.

You don’t talk about ‘WvW’, so what is this mystery game mode that isn’t WvW that you are playing in GW2 with zergs of 40 going against 10?

As for SC2, apparently you need that explained, so, you made some comment about ‘organised small groups’ and ‘braindead 50 man zergs’, the point I was making, was that you seem to be under the delusion that an ‘organised small group’ isn’t brainless, requires skills, etc, newsflash it is a low skilled game, WvW lower skilled still that requires a laughbly small amount of thought, that includes your ‘small organised group’, hence it is hardly SC2 a game that actually takes a brain and level of skill way beyond anything in WvW to play well.

Qcom.3462:

I didn’t talk about the people on left before 2015 but the players who were in the game in 2015 and left after the stab change. The 50% is an observation,, I don’t have the metric information . Yes, in 2014 a lot more people left the game than 2015.

The point was that WvW had heavily been losing players for a long time, even before the stab change, for a whole multitude of reasons, you read too much into the stab change.

zinkz.7045:

Qcom.3462:

If we compare the stab and cc in a large scale fight it easy to realize how the cc sky rocket. A group of 40 man need 16 stand your ground to push on 5 staff ele’s. Even if I hated the old stab because it was faceroll when we run with 60% guard now it’s worst.

Except any commander with a clue, just baits out CC, then pushes, frankly the powercreep and the level of damage is more of an issue.

Qcom.3462:

I didn’t talk about SC2 or about WvW mode. I said that a 5-10 organized don’t have a single chance now again 40 players who got the game 2 weeks ago.

You don’t talk about ‘WvW’, so what is this mystery game mode that isn’t WvW that you are playing in GW2 with zergs of 40 going against 10?

As for SC2, apparently you need that explained, so, you made some comment about ‘organised small groups’ and ‘braindead 50 man zergs’, the point I was making, was that you seem to be under the delusion that an ‘organised small group’ isn’t brainless, requires skills, etc, newsflash it is a low skilled game, WvW lower skilled still that requires a laughbly small amount of thought, that includes your ‘small organised group’, hence it is hardly SC2 a game that actually takes a brain and level of skill way beyond anything in WvW to play well.

Qcom.3462:

I didn’t talk about the people on left before 2015 but the players who were in the game in 2015 and left after the stab change. The 50% is an observation,, I don’t have the metric information . Yes, in 2014 a lot more people left the game than 2015.

The point was that WvW had heavily been losing players for a long time, even before the stab change, for a whole multitude of reasons, you read too much into the stab change.

All this sound elitism tbh. You must be the only high skilled player in the game, I am happy for you.

JoTur.7256:

zinkz.7045:

Qcom.3462:

If we compare the stab and cc in a large scale fight it easy to realize how the cc sky rocket. A group of 40 man need 16 stand your ground to push on 5 staff ele’s. Even if I hated the old stab because it was faceroll when we run with 60% guard now it’s worst.

Except any commander with a clue, just baits out CC, then pushes, frankly the powercreep and the level of damage is more of an issue.

Qcom.3462:

I didn’t talk about SC2 or about WvW mode. I said that a 5-10 organized don’t have a single chance now again 40 players who got the game 2 weeks ago.

You don’t talk about ‘WvW’, so what is this mystery game mode that isn’t WvW that you are playing in GW2 with zergs of 40 going against 10?

As for SC2, apparently you need that explained, so, you made some comment about ‘organised small groups’ and ‘braindead 50 man zergs’, the point I was making, was that you seem to be under the delusion that an ‘organised small group’ isn’t brainless, requires skills, etc, newsflash it is a low skilled game, WvW lower skilled still that requires a laughbly small amount of thought, that includes your ‘small organised group’, hence it is hardly SC2 a game that actually takes a brain and level of skill way beyond anything in WvW to play well.

Qcom.3462:

I didn’t talk about the people on left before 2015 but the players who were in the game in 2015 and left after the stab change. The 50% is an observation,, I don’t have the metric information . Yes, in 2014 a lot more people left the game than 2015.

The point was that WvW had heavily been losing players for a long time, even before the stab change, for a whole multitude of reasons, you read too much into the stab change.

All this sound elitism tbh. You must be the only high skilled player in the game, I am happy for you.

Sounds like you don’t read things properly, or I simply touched a nerve. You think that something like baiting out CC / cooldowns that many commanders manage to do is elitist? Probably says more about you…

Or perhaps you are upset that I call Gw2 / WvW a low skilled game, in case you missed it, I play WvW, I’m not bothered at all that it is low skilled, unlike some I simply don’t have delusions or some pathetic ego about it.

Stand The Wall.6987:

The problem I have with this is that its basically a reversion. Even with a 1 sec icd, it would be possible to walk through 50 ccs again, which I hope we can all agree shouldnt be possible.

Why shouldn’t it be possible for stability to block an unlimited number of stuns when lines can stun an unlimited number of players? Why shouldn’t a mechanic that’s only function is to counter another mechanic be able to reliably counter that mechanic?

Under the old system the balance between stability and stuns didn’t depend on group size at all. Under the current system it’s nearly completely dependent on group sizes. How is it bad for a mechanic to not depend on group sizes?

The current stab need a buff, simple math are speaking. If you can push or bait , you are simply facing incompetent or a groups who aren’t on ts. Sadly most of them already left, it’s why even my thief can push at the moment. Stab is no more a counter cc in a large scale fight, people bait it forever and we have a piratships meta.

Seems like the other classes will have to do like the warriors did… Adapt. Folks complain about other classes but when the nerf hammer hits them boo hoo hoo!

Enjoy gang this is what the player base begged for, for over two years. Now it’s time to sit back and enjoy the results of all your hard work.

This is great, I’m loving it.

Dawdler.8521:

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Coldtart.4785:

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Both of you make valid points, and I cant wholeheartedly and completely disagree with them. I dont want this thread to turn into an argument over the morality of anets decision to so drastically change stab, because despite what I said I believe it to be the wrong decision. Wrong in that 1- they didnt try any minor tweaks, and 2- they didnt separate the changes across the game modes. Different game modes demand different game play styles, because there are different rules.

What I do want to do is to try and make this stab change work. Not by reverting anything, or doing anything so drastic (as they did before, which led us to this point). Not only will anet be more likely to implement any minor tweaks we come up with here, but quite frankly its a much better way to go about things. Theres also the fact that a company is more likely to stand by their decisions (no matter how good or bad) because thats what responsibility forces them to do. If they werent, and changed things around all the time, then this wouldnt be much of a game at all.

I do think we can make this work by increasing the accessibility to stab across all professions. More access is more stacks. I think this increased stab stack count could counteract the cc spam while keeping the game play risky enough to be considered “skilled”.

/end rant

Stand The Wall.6987:

I do think we can make this work by increasing the accessibility to stab across all professions. More access is more stacks. I think this increased stab stack count could counteract the cc spam while keeping the game play risky enough to be considered “skilled”.

I can understand the need for a simple rebalance, the problem is that you cant balance a stack system with more stacks. Doing this would only make stab OP in small scale and sPvP.

Image a 1v1 scenario with 5s stability.

With 10 stacks, you need to CC him 10 times over 5s. Pretty much impossible without abusing some very specific skills on specific classes (which is unfair). Yes the player will stand up a while vs a zerg, but a solo player will struggle. If the zerg is big, those 10 stacks are gone in an instant. Should it be 15 stacks? 20 stacks? Impossible to break small scale and equally impossible to know how many stacks you “need” or how long it last. 1v5, 1v10, 1v50, the requirement changes.

With 2 stacks and a 1s icd instead, the scenario change. Suddenly a single player has the capability to break the stability before 5s has passed if he use a mere 2 cc skills with 1s apart. Thats doable on any class, often with a single skill if an enemy is careless and keep running through it (previously mentioned unfair skills really should be fixed…). Against a zerg, the scenario is changed as well to something a player can easily comprehend. You got at least 2s of CC immunity even if they recklessly throw down 50 cc skills.

In both scenarios a specific counter would still work, boon rip. But thats pretty much the gist of why slapping on more stacks dont work. Its the same as power creep.

Dawdler.8521:

Stand The Wall.6987:

I do think we can make this work by increasing the accessibility to stab across all professions. More access is more stacks. I think this increased stab stack count could counteract the cc spam while keeping the game play risky enough to be considered “skilled”.

I can understand the need for a simple rebalance, the problem is that you cant balance a stack system with more stacks. Doing this would only make stab OP in small scale and sPvP.

Image a 1v1 scenario with 5s stability.

With 10 stacks, you need to CC him 10 times over 5s. Pretty much impossible without abusing some very specific skills on specific classes (which is unfair). Yes the player will stand up a while vs a zerg, but a solo player will struggle. If the zerg is big, those 10 stacks are gone in an instant. Should it be 15 stacks? 20 stacks? Impossible to break small scale and equally impossible to know how many stacks you “need” or how long it last. 1v5, 1v10, 1v50, the requirement changes.

With 2 stacks and a 1s icd instead, the scenario change. Suddenly a single player has the capability to break the stability before 5s has passed if he use a mere 2 cc skills with 1s apart. Thats doable on any class, often with a single skill if an enemy is careless and keep running through it (previously mentioned unfair skills really should be fixed…). Against a zerg, the scenario is changed as well to something a player can easily comprehend. You got at least 2s of CC immunity even if they recklessly throw down 50 cc skills.

In both scenarios a specific counter would still work, boon rip. But thats pretty much the gist of why slapping on more stacks dont work. Its the same as power creep.

I’m not sure I’m following where you go with this idea that more stacks would screw small scale.

Before stacks, no matter the amount of cc it would not affect you for the whole duration. No matter how huge a number of stacks you have to go through it would still be far less than infinite no? So how could more stacks make stab more OP in small scale than it was before since infinity is, after all, pretty hard to beat? I’m probably just not understanding what you want to express.

Dawdler.8521:

I can understand the need for a simple rebalance, the problem is that you cant balance a stack system with more stacks. Doing this would only make stab OP in small scale and sPvP.

With 2 stacks and a 1s icd instead, the scenario change. Suddenly a single player has the capability to break the stability before 5s has passed if he use a mere 2 cc skills with 1s apart. Thats doable on any class, often with a single skill if an enemy is careless and keep running through it (previously mentioned unfair skills really should be fixed…). Against a zerg, the scenario is changed as well to something a player can easily comprehend. You got at least 2s of CC immunity even if they recklessly throw down 50 cc skills.

In both scenarios a specific counter would still work, boon rip. But thats pretty much the gist of why slapping on more stacks dont work. Its the same as power creep.

All of my suggestions including increasing stacks given are related to skills which 1- arent used that much and/or 2- have a long cooldown. You make it seem like I proposed to increase all stacks given by all skills granting stab, which I didnt. The skills which are listed are either 1- a pulsing aoe or 2- very conditional (requires the party member to be close to the caster, the caster gives up their own stab). I actually didnt list the radii for certain skills because I thought they would be taken as a given. Obviously the need for balance here is very important, and I would think certain skills would give more/less stab based on their cooldown and other factors. I added another edit to reflect this.

I really dont understand your reasoning here. Giving cc an icd does not benefit any scenario. The icd is basically giving stab invuln frames to cc, so stand your ground (syg) is now 6sec of invuln (assuming ofc that you hit that player with cc at every 1s interval, which in zerg v zerg isnt hard but in smaller scale it is exponentially harder). Also no skill gives long duration stab at a low stack count, in relation to your 2 stacks @ 5sec example. In a small team setting (5v5 i.e.), it would be impossible to be so coordinated that every stack of syg is removed without massive waste of ccs due to invuln frames. Impossible to remove it at all actually without stripping it, which is why I said that this idea of giving stab an icd is basically a reversion to the previous op version.

Again I only slap on more stacks on less used/ longer cooldown/ conditional skills. Buffing unpowered skills is not power creep. I do agree however that an increased stack count would and could lead to more imbalances. Thats why this conversation is so important (yeah important, all these changes are definitely going to make it into a balance patch :P ).