Guild Wars 2

I know this topic has come up a billion times, but I don’t think Anet realizes how this cap totally limits and restricts WvW from what it could truly be. A truly exciting, strategic form of mass fighting and war between servers.

As opposed to RAWR EVERYBODY STACK MIGHT ON ME, STAY TIGHT WE WILL ROLL THROUGH THEM WITH OUR SUPERIOR NUMBERS AS A WRECKING BALL.

That really seems to be the only strategy, stacking. I’ve never heard of any game where stacking directly on top of each other in a war was a genius idea. I’ve also never heard of a game that is as restricting as a 5 player AoE cap.

Currently, there is no punishment or drawback to stacking, yet it reaps all the advantages of might stacking, combo fields, etc. There needs to be a risk involved. A team of 10 staff eles should be able to meteor shower and drop that zerg of 30 people, making them pay dearly for stacking like that.

With that said, what does lifting the AoE cap do?

#1: Force people not to mindlessly step on red AoE circles because they can’t be touched by it due to the AoE cap. Stepping in AoE circles should cost you dearly.

#2: Force people not to mindlessly stack and have this mentality that just because they are in a zerg, they are safe.

#3: Spreads out the battlefield, allowing tactics such as flanking one side, focusing different sides of the battle field, etc to be effective instead of just one big huge zerg mowing down everything in sight.

#4: It actually promotes more build diversity in WvW. Far too many hammer trains. A thief and a shatter mesmer could maybe actually go to flank a side of the zerg, taking down 3-4 people. It also promotes the importance of high single-target DPS characters in taking down targets and slowly withering the zerg down. Maybe a Zerker/Knight’s warrior with a hammer and Greatsword built for DPS could keep certain targets locked down, etc. Or a Necro could come from behind and condition bomb a side of the zerg, and be effective. It promotes better variety and more engaging gameplay.

#5: Each player carries extra burden on themselves to play skillfully and well. As opposed to a zerg where you can run absolutely terrible builds and be a terrible player and it wouldn’t matter because your zerg was carrying you. A team of 10 very coordinated and skilled people should be able to beat a team of 30 bums. Each player should feel as if they have a sizable impact on the outcome of a fight and play to those standards.

And I know people are going to argue …. “oh it’s just going to be AoE Wars 2” …. No it wont. It just means that you can’t step in AoE circles without thinking and that you aren’t always safe within a zerg. And it means that you can’t just simply stack and that is your strategy to victory. With AoE’s being more impactful. It will spread the battlefield a lot more.

I realize that ANet has stated in the past that they cannot do so due to server limitations. But even increasing the cap to 10 players would go a long way in improving WvW and making the experience less frustrating because of this zerg to victory mentality.

Also this would entail lifting the AoE caps on many things such as boons, as long as you are in a given radius, you should be able to get those boons as well. And also lifting the cap on cleave or at least increasing it. If i swing my hammer at 8 people standing on the exact same spot theoretically it should hit all 8 of them.

Of course tweaking would need to be made, however, increasing the AoE cap is a great start to improving gameplay for what GW2 should be about, Guild Wars. People will cry and complain at first, but will then learn to manage and adapt.

The meta would change to groups running with 30+ guardians all spamming 1 and instakilling anyone who comes in range.

Garrisyl.7402:

The meta would change to groups running with 30+ guardians all spamming 1 and instakilling anyone who comes in range.

as opposed to the current meta? lol

Anet will never remove the aoe cap. Ever.

Garrisyl.7402:

The meta would change to groups running with 30+ guardians all spamming 1 and instakilling anyone who comes in range.

Because that can’t easily be countered right?

killahmayne.9518:

Garrisyl.7402:

The meta would change to groups running with 30+ guardians all spamming 1 and instakilling anyone who comes in range.

Because that can’t easily be countered right?

30 PowerWell Necros! LETS GO!

The AoE cap isn’t for game balance, it’s to stop the game engine from breaking down.

I Disagree for Aoe Cap removal.

In fact,

I encourage Arena.net to Cap more; like Burst, Mobility, Stealth and Teleport.

We need skills like ward against foes and ward against melee.

This is not going to happen. The servers can’t handle it. Even increasing the cap by 1 will place an incredible amount of extra stress on the servers.

yeah its not a case of for balance reasons.

The engine simply cannot support it. Until/if they do an engine overhaul… they simply cannot remove the cap limit.

all siege weapons have a cap of 50, AC’s are a surefire way to stop a zerg

1-3 all of these things are already in the game, DPS builds who stack with the hammer train will die, people can get picked off on the outskirts of a zerg, flanking a group from an unexpected angle is still effective since you can cc and burst people down before they dodge or use defensive cooldowns.

Also, stacking is generally only effective at the outset of a fight in order to spread the buffs around with empowers and blasts, remaining in a stack for an entire fight is suicide.

4 how could buffing aoe builds make single target builds more viable…single target builds are already almost exclusively ran by roamers as it is.

5 why does everyone get this mentality that just because they are fighting with less numbers that they are automatically better than everyone else. Did you ever stop to think that maybe 30 decently skilled players should be able to beat your 10?

I used to support the AoE cap being lifted but after tonight.. again with the skill lag, it would make the game completely unplayable..

I think I have a better solution though.. Amplify the damage based on the number of targets sitting in the red circle (up to a max of 25 players). Basically for every player past 5 in the red circle incurs a 5% damage increase to whoever is hits.

10 players = 25%, 15 = 50%, 20 = 75%, and of course 25 = 100%.

I don’t think this is too over the top because most people generally don’t run full dps builds, so their AoE won’t be too noticeable. Those that do run full zerker will now possibly get their damage back and then some to compensate for the critical damage nerf. Gives reason for players to more run zerker now and play on the edge so to speak.

Id even go as far to say that if there are 30+ in the red circle, also incur a healing debuff that prevents healing for a few seconds.

Banzie.5248:

killahmayne.9518:

Garrisyl.7402:

The meta would change to groups running with 30+ guardians all spamming 1 and instakilling anyone who comes in range.

Because that can’t easily be countered right?

30 PowerWell Necros! LETS GO!

30 zerker eles and their Meteor Showers…

Removing AoE cap just buffs bigger groups more. Don’t know why’d you want that

Any argument for or against this is irrelevant because the designers have stated that the AoE cap is never going away due to performance issues.

Lets have another discussion… remove AoE.

Removing AoE is far more practical. First it would greatly reduce lag. Second it would eliminate the need to stack. Third it requires more skill to use targeted abilities than using AoE. On and on and on… AoE is the devil.

If ANet could do it all over again, I suspect the top of their list would be toning AoE WAY down.

Zerker eles…. zerker eles everywhere…

When we go against huge blobs (I’m talking 15-20 vs 50+) the problem we have to deal with in order to stand a chance of winning is never how much damage we can do to them, it’s how much damage they can do to us. It’s honestly harder to get people down in 15v15 gvgs with melee trains that are only 6-8 deep than it is to drop a number of people in a blob, but their numbers give them the ability to do more damage than we can possibly sustain.

Blobs aren’t beating you because you can’t damage them. They’re beating you because you because you can’t survive their damage. Who do you think is going to get the bigger boost from the removal of aoe caps?

Since blobbing is A-net’s wet dream we’ll never see an end to that. And how they have managed to turn a WvW into a PvE or PvS (S for structure) enviroment is even worse.

So as long as they’ll keep the zerg mentality in the dev team, this is the product we’re up against. So what could we do other then cope with it, or go with the flow as some may say.

Restrictions in a game like this means they did something wrong from the beginning and instead of fixing it, they came up with another illusion of fix. So the game was broken from the start but as they didn’t care for the wvw community the never bothered to fix the issue from the get go. Restrictions is the way to go. I don’t think we’ve seen the end of bad wvw decisions yet, there’s still plenty of em around the corner, I can feel it. But I try to adapt, even if it makes me spend hours on end to fix my build, gear and what not.

Burnfall.9573:

I Disagree for Aoe Cap removal.

In fact,

I encourage Arena.net to Cap more; like Burst, Mobility, Stealth and Teleport.

actually a interesting idea. Limiting burst atleast. Mobility skills should just have their cooldowns corrected. and teleports (i assume you refer to shadowstep skills on thieves as they got lots of them) should only have their range and or window of “return to last location” reduced (forcing faster play)

This whole blobbing and stacking mentality as the begin all end all is just stupid and it really needs to stop. Like I said, there is no drawback to being to running in a blob.

The problem does have a lot to do with not being able to damage everybody in a given AoE Radius, more so than the damage they are outputting. Because before they are even outputting damage, and are stacking and running towards a group of players, they are taking damage from AoE’s, they are clearly running through AoE circles with no regard because in a group of 30 people against 10 people firing AoEs, at most maybe 4,5 people are getting dropped. It is just mindless and stupid and there should be enough repercussions for them to think twice about doing that.

And guess what, 30 people stupid enough to stack in a narrow spot like a bridge, walking through every AoE imaginable deserve to get dropped against a guild of 10 people who are coordinated. Nobody is saying that 10 people are automatically more skilled then 30 just because they are outnumbered. Smaller groups are already hurt severely with this AoE cap. At least giving them a chance when coming up with a sound tactic/strategy would only help them.

Stacking is effective in literally every area of the game. I 100% disagree with stacking being only effective at the outset of a fight. Because if you move as a "stacked" group that group is able to deal a lot more damage in a concentrated area and drop people quickly. I am not saying stacking should be completely rendered null, but there should be a risk to doing so.

I never denied some additional tweaking would be needed to accommodate this change. And people complaining about 30 Zerker Eles, lol ... A zerker ele will literally die if you breathe on them. Retaliation will hurt them immensely and they would probably kill themselves off of it. They still have to stand still and cast Meteor Shower within a range of 1,200, which is enough for other skills to land and drop them. And guess what? If there are 30 zerker eles, develop a tactic to counter them???? Maybe???

Buffing AoE builds will indirectly give viability to more single target builds IN A ZERG and we will see a more variety of different builds other than hammer train this hammer train that. I am strictly talking about battles where there are large numbers.

If ANet cannot lift the AoE cap, certainly something else needs to be done to bring an element of risk to stacking, blobbing and the zerg mentality. The answer shouldn’t be always to do those things and your fine. If you are apart of a mindless, uncoordinated zerg that does things that are logically stupid (i.e running in a straight line through AoE’s) that zerg should pay for their actions, against a more coordinated group with lesser numbers. Which is the notion that tactics/strategy > zerg/numbers to a degree. Obviously I’m not asking for 10 people to completely destroy 100 people, but sending 100 people at something probably means somewhere else is suffering.

I don’t think many people here have played GW1.

DeadlySynz.3471:

I used to support the AoE cap being lifted but after tonight.. again with the skill lag, it would make the game completely unplayable..

I think I have a better solution though.. Amplify the damage based on the number of targets sitting in the red circle (up to a max of 25 players). Basically for every player past 5 in the red circle incurs a 5% damage increase to whoever is hits.

10 players = 25%, 15 = 50%, 20 = 75%, and of course 25 = 100%.

I don’t think this is too over the top because most people generally don’t run full dps builds, so their AoE won’t be too noticeable. Those that do run full zerker will now possibly get their damage back and then some to compensate for the critical damage nerf. Gives reason for players to more run zerker now and play on the edge so to speak.

Id even go as far to say that if there are 30+ in the red circle, also incur a healing debuff that prevents healing for a few seconds.

Scaling damage….I like that. ++

Yeah, the cap needs to go and people need to learn the value of strategic positioning. There is no way WvWvW will ever be anything but mindless zerging as long as the cap remains. Do the right thing and remove it. Allow skilled groups to shine and punish those who rely on the zerg for success.

As for the popular skill lag excuse… honestly, guys, if your engine is so bad it can’t even handle AoEs and condition stacks you might want to look into hiring a bit of outside help.

Couldn’t agree more.

There really is no reason too. You just have to be smarter than an enemy balled up. Its quite easy to wipe a melee train. Just have all your guys spread out in different directions. Don’t zerg up in any one spot. That way the melee train is surrounded and they can only hit 1 spot at a time and when you are so spread out, any spot they attack doesn’t have more than 3 or so people, so they can try to attack 3 who could escape while being hit by +20 others ranging them.

You can pretty much wipe any guild this way if you are smart enough. The core of most skills groups is their melee ball whose driver is directing where the damage goes. I’ve literally taken pugs in ts and wiped guild groups with similar numbers to ours by doing this, its not super hard just requires people to be on their feet in case they draw aggro from the melee train.

Anet simply can’t do it if they wanted to due to performance reason. We can start doing some things though such as. Remove rally or make it 1 person rallied per kill. Remove hard rezing if you get spiked you waypoint period.

It’s very clear that the cap is due to the limitations of the engine. A-net is simply not going to redesign the engine (ROFL) to address this. I used to complain about this… months ago. I used to be an adventurer like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee. Now I just hang out in town and show off my new outfits.

Guardian staff 1 doesn’t tag enough enemies so removing aoe cap is good idea.

For those who played GW1. Do you remember condition called “Disease”?
Why not add similar mechanic to GW2? Spreads and stacks between players.
20 players stacked in one place? 20 Stacks of “Disease” ticking for -Y each second.

when you remove the AoE cap please make Meteor Shower cast while moving as well.

AOE??? They should be nerfing AOE. It is the definitely of skill-less play. I’d like to see all AOE damage nerfed by 25% and all single target damage increased by the same amount.

Straegen.2938:

Lets have another discussion… remove AoE.

Removing AoE is far more practical. First it would greatly reduce lag. Second it would eliminate the need to stack. Third it requires more skill to use targeted abilities than using AoE. On and on and on… AoE is the devil.

If ANet could do it all over again, I suspect the top of their list would be toning AoE WAY down.

Agreed. Maybe as a compromise they just drastically reduce the effect area on most of the spells. I feel like the defensive aoe spells aren’t that much of a problem.

Banzie.5248:

killahmayne.9518:

Garrisyl.7402:

The meta would change to groups running with 30+ guardians all spamming 1 and instakilling anyone who comes in range.

Because that can’t easily be countered right?

30 PowerWell Necros! LETS GO!

LOL, sweet jesus. 30 Power build Necro’s with Well Of Suffering would melt a zerg like a hot knife through butter if there were no AOE caps.

Nick.6972:

For those who played GW1. Do you remember condition called “Disease”?
Why not add similar mechanic to GW2? Spreads and stacks between players.
20 players stacked in one place? 20 Stacks of “Disease” ticking for -Y each second.

One word, Epidemic

Please Anet, please limit the AoE cap to 2 instead of 5!

Rofl…. at people thinking this game needs less AoE in WvW

4 more hours and it won’t be a problem

style.6173:

AOE??? They should be nerfing AOE. It is the definitely of skill-less play. I’d like to see all AOE damage nerfed by 25% and all single target damage increased by the same amount.

AoE is designed to punish players hanging out in close proximity of one another. It isn’t skill less in the slightest, and actually requires crucial timing to get the best effect, unlike single target skills that auto-aim themselves to players, and NEVER miss once activated.