Guild Wars 2

Played this game since beta with some friends mostly because WvW sounded amazing (Coming from DaoC)…

6 Months later my friends quit due to the zerg-meta all over the place….

What do you guys think about removing the AoE cap?
It encourages small group tactics instead of “Lol, look at me blob i win”

Most people would agree on that. But according to Anet the current engine cannot handle all the data.
I would settle for now that elite skills override the 5 people cap. If every profession has a nice aoe elite skill. :/

The appeal of zergs comes down to much more than the AoE caps. AoE caps simply reward stacking and moving in a blob.

Removing these caps wouldn’t dissolve zergs, they’d merely change their tactics.

There are quite a few MMOs that had large scale PvP without AoE caps and that just meant everyone spread out more and you didn’t really have charges or attempts to push. Instead you had hour-long Mexican stand-offs with people taking potshots at each other.

Given these two alternatives, I take stacking and actual movement over spreading out and taking potshots any day.

The appeal of zergs is more complex than a simple mechanic. the small map sizes are a big part of it as well since most maps only have 1 point of conflict at a time and this point is rarely more than a minute of travel-time away.

Basically it’s easy for a single zerg to cover and entire map which is why it’s the most prominent form of WvW combat.

Without an aoe cap packed blobs of any size would get steam rolled by max range aoe kiters.

As a zerker ele, sounds like a good idea!

lol I remember the first month after beta or so before the aoe cap was removed. I also remember sitting in a blob ball barely moving shooting at another blob ball in a few “fights”. Dropping blast finishers on multiple fields back when a blast activated any field that was under it before they put the current combo caps in.

It sucked. They first had no aoe caps. then they put in 5 person dps caps but no support/combo caps. Then they moved to the system they have now. A lot of people complain about what is in now, but the alternative was bad.

That is also not taking into account the servers blowing up from not being able to handle it.

Agree with you to remove AoE cap ON ATTACK.

I made a similar thread without the ‘’Divine intervention’’ of Anet …

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Easy-Solution-to-Remove-Zerg-in-WvW

AoE limits cannot be removed due to engine limitations. Even if it could, AoE skills would have to be balanced because the game could not support a class/build that could generate DPS 100 times more powerful than non AoE.

The game is already AoE wars. If we want to stop stacking, remove AoE skills completely. Problem solved.

aspirine.6852:

Most people would agree on that. But according to Anet the current engine cannot handle all the data.
I would settle for now that elite skills override the 5 people cap. If every profession has a nice aoe elite skill. :/

Oh man… If elites ignored the AoE cap, imagine the leaked thief trap elite or Tornado in EotM. Troll to the max.

Oh hey, no one has suggested this before.

Yep, remove them by nerfing the hell out of their damage. That would help but there would have to be a few more things done, but anet likes the zerg so that probably wont happen. I like the option of zerging. I dont like being forced into pvp like scale and thus pace.

The current zerg meta is already all AoE. Warrior hammer leaping for AoE stun while flailing their AoE attacks, Guardians running around with shotgun staff and Necros dropping a gazillion marks on the ground.

Why on earth does anyone in their right mind want to make AoE blobbing 100x more powerfull?!

Because that’s what removing the AoE cap will bring. Instead of having ranged AoE units make up maybe 1/3rd of the meta group, they will be 2/3rd+ and people will be insta-gibbed by massive berserker Necro blobs. No point in going after tanky or balanced builds/professions – just blob up into the largest ranged force you can muster and massivly overdps entire areas that the enemy cant walk through since the AoE limit no longer allow melee to stack and go through it.

It wouldnt be skirmishes and battles anymore, it’ll be AoE slaughter based on who drops the biggest nukes.

Dawdler.8521:

The current zerg meta is already all AoE. Warrior hammer leaping for AoE stun while flailing their AoE attacks, Guardians running around with shotgun staff and Necros dropping a gazillion marks on the ground.

Why on earth does anyone in their right mind want to make AoE blobbing 100x more powerfull?!

Because that’s what removing the AoE cap will bring. Instead of having ranged AoE units make up maybe 1/3rd of the meta group, they will be 2/3rd+ and people will be insta-gibbed by massive berserker Necro blobs. No point in going after tanky or balanced builds/professions – just blob up into the largest ranged force you can muster and massivly overdps entire areas that the enemy cant walk through since the AoE limit no longer allow melee to stack and go through it.

It wouldnt be skirmishes and battles anymore, it’ll be AoE slaughter based on who drops the biggest nukes.

What he said. Unless you drastically cut back on the number of aoe skills and/or require building a certain way to be aoe centric or have any aoes. The ease of use and access to aoe in this game would make removing the cap a nightmare. Not against removing the cap. However with the amount of aoe in the game that’s a recipe for disaster.

There where less ppl in the beta so you got a very bad view of what the game should be wvw is made for large scale battles all RvR games should be made for this. Having anything below a 5v5 should not happen that often or at least not have that big of an effect on the over all RvR. That and ppl did not have set up planes so it was easy to pick off ppl who did not know what they are doing this is stander for any thing new not just GW2 you will see the same effect in other mmorpg as time progress after they are put out. Even EoTM is some what this way when it was first put out over time it will become more stander because that is what humans do they find a trick and exploit it as best as they can. The only way to avoid this as a player is to only play a game in its beta and for the first 3 months of it coming out after that the game will of moved on from its early setting and you too would need to move on to the next thing. This would be a very shallow way of playing mmorpgs that are made for long term gaming.

To make the AoE have no cap would make AoE classes the only meta as things are they are about the only meta but you still can have mez and thf gank will ok effectiveness. To remove this AoE cap you will effectively kill the mez and thf class and any wepon that is non AoE from WvW. Image a hammer war earth sharker uncapped or an ele Shock wave or a necro any well it gets a bit crazy what one of these skills can pull off if they where uncapped.

no aoe cap would make engis god like

players will still zerg regardless cuz of sheepishness.

Just food for thought.

No Aoe cap and retal?

RIP nade engis and glass eles.

let most people that ask for AoE, they don’t think about the implications of removing the AoE cap.

Zerging wont go away due to AOE cap remover, because the cap removal will involve significantly reducing the effects of AOEs to the point of irrelevance since that would be unfair to certain classes. So essentially nothing really changed.

Zerg is part of most games with open world faction based PvP, it is in aion (when I played b efore 2.7 for 2 years) and it is in blade and soul.

Support.

I really don’t understand why people are anti-zerg (and this is coming from a staff ele who is squishy all the time, especially zergs. The difference is, I just choose my fights). This is WvW, not PvP. If you want to test out your own combat skills against a small amount of players, go to PvP, that’s what it’s there for – WvW is just that – World Vs. World (many players), not Player vs. Player (small fights).

Another thing I don’t understand is why the meteor skill for the ele is only limited to what, 5 players now? It’s so stupid – it sort of defeats the purpose of a ‘meteor’, because when I think of a meteor, I think mass havoc, not a small sprinkling of fire on a select few. I have adapted with the changes, but ‘meteor’ really should live up to its name.

Zaoda.1653:

Another thing I don’t understand is why the meteor skill for the ele is only limited to what, 5 players now? It’s so stupid – it sort of defeats the purpose of a ‘meteor’, because when I think of a meteor, I think mass havoc, not a small sprinkling of fire on a select few. I have adapted with the changes, but ‘meteor’ really should live up to its name.

This I can agree with too. Just imagine how simple scoring would be.

Reset night. You stand with your guild on the blue border, all hyped and ready to go. You enter the zone the instant the points count down and rush to stack up at spawn and then…

A blinding light.

Sudden intense heat.

As you look into the sky you see massive pieces of citadel seemingly stuck in the air.

Then a wall of fire obliterate your spawn and you’re forcibly logged out from the game.

Blue team won the reset and the borderland is unusable for the rest of the week.

As you go onto the forum to wonder how this happened you come across a thread named “WTF my cat walked on my keyboard and it accidentally called a meteor onto our own citadel”

What are you guys talking about? You don’t want a AoE Meta? In a zerg fight of course AE is going to be greatest. There are 50 people literally standing on top of eachother. Futhermore, every class has AE. Every. Single.Class. Everyone uses AE Skills!

This cap is a HUGE issue. It is a fundamental flaw in the game. They designed their game so incorrectly that it couldn’t handle how it should be played. This is how it used to be. It was changed not because it is better this way. It was changed because the game was designed so badly that it couldn’t handle it, and they had to change it.

The worst part is that apparently according to this thread there are a lot of people who defend this. Meaning nothing is going to change. Meaning GW2 will always be flawed.

Ozoug.4158:

The worst part is that apparently according to this thread there are a lot of people who defend this. Meaning nothing is going to change. Meaning GW2 will always be flawed.

That’s not why nothing is going to change.

Nothing is going to change because Anet has said no, never going to happen. The result would never be worth the cost. AoE zerker blob meta and expontentially increasing lag vs keeping it as is with melee/ranged combos and fairly fluent gameplay? Its a no brainer.

Removal of the AoE cap will do nothing to fix the flaws of GW2 WvW. There are a ton of other things to look at – the way siege works, the way points are scored, the design of the maps, overall class balance issues, commander system, involving guilds, bugs&glitches, bringing back the orbs that they promised to fix (just yesterday noticed that Anet has removed the stairs instead, wtf), etc. And yes, discouraging zergs is also in there somewhere but its not going to be solved with something that’s never going to happen.

I, personally, think that the removal of AoE cap could solve a lot of problems in WvW and even in PvE, but with some other adjustments.

The AoE cap limit what one person can do. If you hit 15 people with one great placement of a AoE skill, it will count only 5. If you hit the same 15 people with a great placement of a AoE skill without cap, it will count all 15. One person damaging 15, instead of 5. Because this person played well.

This could bring more powers to small groups against giant groups, if the players in the small group plays better. Fewer people could have more value. With the AoE cap and no meaningful CCs, sheer numbers are the most important thing. Player skill takes third place, behind strategy/coordination.

But, only removing the cap wouldn’t solve the problem. AoE skills would have to be tuned down, and maybe single target skills be buffed. In the present gameplay, using a single target or AoE skill against one single person makes little difference, because the damage/utility of AoE is as good (if not better) than a single target skill. The player should have to make a choice between a weaker AoE that could do more damage overall hitting more targets, or a single target skill that could do a better damage by itself.
AoE and cleave in GW2, in group fights, are more strong that they should be.

There is already a benefit to choosing single target vs AoE. Against single target, retal won’t kill you. Against many targets, retal will kill you.

Thinking about skills that already ignore the cap (such as Wall of Reflection, Burning Retreat) retaliation stacking would become the new meta and everyone would be running necros. A diverse battle would be 50 guardians vs 50 necros.

eithinan.9841:

lol I remember the first month after beta or so before the aoe cap was removed. I also remember sitting in a blob ball barely moving shooting at another blob ball in a few “fights”. Dropping blast finishers on multiple fields back when a blast activated any field that was under it before they put the current combo caps in.

It sucked. They first had no aoe caps. then they put in 5 person dps caps but no support/combo caps. Then they moved to the system they have now. A lot of people complain about what is in now, but the alternative was bad.

That is also not taking into account the servers blowing up from not being able to handle it.

No. AoE cap on damage always existed (except for few spells like Artillery barrage for example).

If there has to be an offensive aoe cap, I think there should be a defensive one too.

Dawdler.8521:

Ozoug.4158:

The worst part is that apparently according to this thread there are a lot of people who defend this. Meaning nothing is going to change. Meaning GW2 will always be flawed.

That’s not why nothing is going to change.

Nothing is going to change because Anet has said no, never going to happen. The result would never be worth the cost. AoE zerker blob meta and expontentially increasing lag vs keeping it as is with melee/ranged combos and fairly fluent gameplay? Its a no brainer..

If everyone was like “Your game is flawed, I am not going to play it”, and this was the deciding issue for everyone quitting the game, then it would get changed. Don’t delude yourself, everything is possible. They just think this isn’t worth their time. It is possible though. They CAN get rid of the AoE cap. They just don’t want to.

Furthermore if there was no cap on AE an argument could be made that there would be less zerkers. Damage mitigation would become even more important. If they got rid of the cap it would be so much better for the game, other changes would need to be made though. Make heals more effective, make CC more effective. Up group size and range of boons to group members.

There are a lot of things that could be done to balance the game after removing the cap, but having the cap makes GW2 fundamentally flawed.

I say remove that cap! Oh and while they are at it remove all the AoE. Not only does this completely resolve the stacking issue but server performance would get much better and player skill would be center piece rather than the current Captain AoE Spam-a-lot builds.

Taking away all AEs would make zerging easier. With no AEs it is literally just a numbers game. Player skill would NOT be the centre piece.

Its like teaching history in english to a german crowd. Dont bother.

Making maps bigger would really help.

As it stands, one zerg is all you need per map.

There is actually a guild (I think on BG) named APEX that will throw all necro marks and wells at their feet if you rush them. If you don’t rush them, they portal bomb you. Its an interesting tactic that works pretty well if you don’t kill their mesmer or know about the stacking.

I don’t even want to imagine a zerg of necros well and mark spamming more than they do now.

there’s other changes that would hinder the zerg meta while not killing servers, such a rally removal, retaliation removal.

surprised there’s not more posts of bugged retaliation in eotm – it’s possible to take 5k damage in retaliation alone with one attack on my mesmer. even in its nerfed form in wvw it’s stupid that I’m punished for attacking players that are blobbed together.

If you stack on their portal 9 times out of 10 you will crush them.

Ozoug.4158:

Taking away all AEs would make zerging easier. With no AEs it is literally just a numbers game. Player skill would NOT be the centre piece.

AoE in or out will not fix zerging. Zerging is the way most players WANT to play the game. This discussion at best is about STACKING. If all players had to target or better yet had no targeting to bring something down, there absolutely would be more skill requred. Certainly more than spamming 1 on a guardian or the occasional Earthshaker on a warrior. Both AoE and auto targeting is lazy and easy which is why few skill based games rely on these tactics.

Pero.4362:

Played this game since beta with some friends mostly because WvW sounded amazing (Coming from DaoC)…

6 Months later my friends quit due to the zerg-meta all over the place….

What do you guys think about removing the AoE cap?
It encourages small group tactics instead of “Lol, look at me blob i win”

You know that time in SMC when there is a 3 way battle and no one can see / tell whats going on due to all the skill lag… That is ANets servers frying from all the information they are trying to process at once so things slow down until all information can be processed. Until they upgrade their servers to better handle all the traffic and information (most likely to expensive and would require to much time) they will not increase the aoe limit…

I myself would love for them to remove Arrow Carts 50 target AoE and make it an Elementalist ability to have a 25 target limit on Meteor and 10 target AoE on Lava Font and a few other abilities. Bam Glass Ele is now worth the Risk and Zergs will met!

Oh the dreams.

Make arrow cart users suffer from retal damage lol. Darn siege monkies.

they need to go old school with AoE damage:
remove cap, but make it damage/people = how much each takes
i seriously don’t understand why games stopped using that formula.

effinshiddy.1364:

they need to go old school with AoE damage:
remove cap, but make it damage/people = how much each takes
i seriously don’t understand why games stopped using that formula.

Err… That would only mean people stack even more.

Really, it cant be fixed. Zerging is here due to game mechanics that cannot be changed. The argument at the moment is this:
Anet: “Look, we built a rectangular house for you!”
Players: “We want a square house.”
Anet: “Err… We cant remake the foundation of the house now. Do you want a second floor?”
Players: “No it need to be square.”
Anet: “But its impossible. We could add balconies on the second floor to make it sort of square?”
Players: “No we cant live in the house without it being square.”
Anet: “We cant make it square.”
Players: “It have to be square.”
Anet: “…”

The best suggestions I have read still lies within the commander system – which Anet coincendentally has utterly failed to deliver on. Activly encourage “smaller” groups of say 25 peeps to stay together. It doesnt need to punish 50 people for running on a commander, it need to be bring thoughts like “hey wtf are those 25 peeps getting so much bonuses for being around their commander, we want a commander too!” to the other players. In its current state, zerg is the meta and multiple commanders is completely taboo. This is something Anet can change by completely revamping how the commander tag works.

To me, its real simple: We can use the boon system. The commander get up to 25 stacks of “commander bonus” for every player in his squad that is within a certain distance. Each stack give HP/damage/etc bonuses. The same stack is transferred to all players within the same distance to the commander. So 10 players near a commander would have 10 stacks each. Players not in the commander squad do not get bonuses.

And there you have it. Running in multiple commander groups is activly encouraged because one commander cant cover an entire border. The taboo is gone. Will you see 75 man groups running with 3×25? Most definetly – but at least its something that’s not impossible, unlike changing the way AoE works :/

Sidenote: and before you say “OMG this will mean the death of guilds running without a tag!” of course there should be an option for guild only visible tags. And even for pugs, the commander should see everyone in his group and manage players (ie kick/invite/etc) so that a guild group can run with a “locked” yet visible tag no pug can enter.

how i imagine the aoe mechanism :

1. player surrounded by 5 -10 ally players in 600 range , then his aoe limited to 5 enemy players.

2. player surrounded by 10 or more ally players in 600 range , then his aoe limited to 2-3 enemy players.

3. player surrounded by less than 5 ally players in 600 range ,then his aoe is not limited or any number equal or more than 10 ( for possibly exploit problem ) .

this will give a great utility to roamers to stand and fight the melle trains and also limit the effect of the godcondition ( condition+toughness+vitality ) builds inside melle trains

You want to unreward stacking a bit? Do something about Retaliation.

A mindless boon that takes more effort to not stack, that returns great amounts of damage back at people who use Aoe against a blob because it has no icd.

Give it an icd and balance it accordingly, no more instagibbing yourself, no more rewarding mindless blob stacking with passively returning more damage then they take.
And you’ll go along and actually improve server performance a little, as it wont have to process those 40 instant retaliation procs from a single ability anymore.

Arenanet have said this won’t be done for technical/performance reasons.

Terrahero.9358:

You want to unreward stacking a bit? Do something about Retaliation.

A mindless boon that takes more effort to not stack, that returns great amounts of damage back at people who use Aoe against a blob because it has no icd.

Give it an icd and balance it accordingly, no more instagibbing yourself, no more rewarding mindless blob stacking with passively returning more damage then they take.
And you’ll go along and actually improve server performance a little, as it wont have to process those 40 instant retaliation procs from a single ability anymore.

++++

The entire idea of the boon doesn’t make sense when you hear arenanet post about how they want to discourage blobbing.

The natural counter to beefy blobs should be mobile ranged damage, right? Just try dropping AoE on EoTM blobs. If you do a meteor shower you’re going to take 3x your entire health pool in damage. If the OP’s idea of uncapping AoE went through with no retaliation change, you would literally be instantly killed by dropping a single AoE on these blobs.

Wont fix blobbing =/, people will still blob while being more spread out, or pop retal 200 retal damage x 50 players = insta kill. All i have to do is make a blob of 40 retal bunker guardians. And without a cap, if 2 blobs clash in a choke point, theres no more possibility to push forward, youre gonna be stuck there or forced to go around. Which will make places like SM impossible to go through

And with the cap, you have to actually strategize where to drop damage, and trickle down enemy numbers etc. With cap its going to be insta wipes everywhere. Smaller groups have their role. If youre running 10 ~ 15 people do not expect to kill 60 ~ 70. Its not going to happen on open field unless they are completely mindless. But remember as enemy blobs get bigger, their movement get clumsier, its harder to follow and to direct. Use that advantage to take out parts of the zerg and using your environment such as choke points. Thats why you see guild groups of 25 ~ 30 wiping zone blobs.

The current engine could handle it if in fact they re-worked the damage to mirror that of siege. The game seems to have no problem having piles of AC’kittenting 50 targets at once; just have player AoE damage mirror that.

It doesn’t have to do the same damage, I’m pretty sure people would be happy if their AoE damage was cut in half as long as it hit up to 50 people.