Guild Wars 2

With the new episode comes two things in particular that might/should be of concern to some people.

A sigil that provides +9 boon duration to 25 stacks on kill. ttl of 9(25) = 241 concentration = about 15-16% boon duration increase

And more important a new utility that provides +100 vitality/toughness/(not sure what the crystal one is….healing?) With convert 10% of the listed value (vit/toughness/heal) into concentration. I shouldn’t have to explain how high this value can go if some1 is spec’d with existing dire/tank/healer stats. Ur looking at 15-20% boon duration increases with many of these stat’d classes.

The main build these have significance in is large zergs and fight groups. Boons are still the lifeblood of a zerg even with the former share nerfs…..increasing their duration is gonna have significant impact on the overall tank of enemy zergs. Theres also my own personal concern that it will make classes such a mesmer and their quickness share…..even more ridiculous and one-sided in its play (they will remain the trump cards for any group).

Do you think adding 30% (15+15) boon duration to the roles of classes in wvsw is gonna have a large impact? I do.

I would argue that boons are currently placed heavily in favour of defense over their offensive statistics.
YOu can look at the list yourself if you think I’m wrong… (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Boon).

In the current meta, more boon duration increases only serve to increase the defense of large groups making them even harder to pickoff/deter. More stability means being able to revive downed players easier and stay grouped easier…..I’m not gonna go through all the the boons, u get the idea. Might is the main offensive boon and most groups already run 25 stacks which is the cap….so the impacts of a boon duration increase arguably ain’t gonna increase a group’s offensive power any.

Many boons such as quickness will have a chance to shine even brighter now. This is mainly aimed at mesmers. THis will make pve cleave a complete cake walk for large tanky zergs that otherwise might stall or delay on an objective’s lord (at which point they risk being overrun if they aren’t large enough to sit there all day). Boon mesmers alrdy hit something ridiculous like 20 seconds of quickness using timewarp…..provided to 10 people.

My point is that larger groups will have an even easier time with these tools inplace. And I hope that the developers are aware of this, and monitor it in such a way where they are willing to introduce more offensive tools to balance it out.

Summary: Don’t expect the meta to get any easier for smaller groups. We have evolved/devolved into very much 2 groups: The coordinated 5-10 man group that remains an effective cap and fighting force that can fight things twice its size if deployed effectively; and the GIANT 15-50 man large group that reigns supreme over all beings and obstacles. The game is very much about building these 2 units, and deploying/choosing them based on available resources for the purposes of gaining the most PPT.

Sigil could be OP….but compared to concentration it’s not crazy, and the current meta food has about the same boon duration and mitigates far more damage than 100 toughness ever could.

More annoyed at the new utility; bunkers 4 life. I hope it’s prohibitively expensive.

Mesmers have been able to reach an effective 100% boon duration for over a year now, even before factoring in traits. These new items will help reduce the barrier of entry for folks that don’t have the gold to splurge on boon duration armor and sigils- and if that encourages one more person to give WvW a shot, perhaps it should be viewed positively. This release should impact the doubloon/pearl economy quite a bit, but I’m more concerned about the next content patch and if the developers are going to use the same approach but with condition duration. Currently, reaching 100% condition duration on Necromancer has a much larger set of trade-offs to consider.

ArchonWing.9480:

More annoyed at the new utility; bunkers 4 life. I hope it’s prohibitively expensive.

Ya…its not. It does require them to actually pve farm for it though to some extent….so take some solace in that fact?

The stone: 1 crystaline dust, 20 bloodstone, 1 fire orchid blossom = 30 min active
The oil: 1 crystaline dust, 20 empereal frags, 1 fire orchid blossom = 30 mins active
the crystals: gonna assume its same but dragonite

You have to make them in groups of 5 tho. and the recipe is…30k karma I think? something like that.

In other words its dirt cheap compared to the other ones (furious stones/oil/crystal)…assuming dust is 20s its pretty much ….20s per utility since those other 2 items are so plentiful atm and have no real value (even if u convert them to ascended items/magic or use them in feeders like mawdrey). crsyt Dust is pretty plentiful as you play wvsw as well….so its actually self sustaining if you think about it.

So existing bountiful utility consumables provide 10% boon duration. In a heavily defensive spec build the new consumables will provide 20% boon duration. In most balanced builds the new consumables will provide around 15%. So the net change here is between 5% and 10% additional free boon duration.

This has an impact of course, but it’s not enormous. The primary difference is that people don’t have to splurge on platinum doubloons every time they want to get boon duration from their utility consumable. The actual difference it’ll have on builds is really minimal.

The new sigil is in the same boat; it provides a static boost up to 15%, but you have to stack up charges for it. It’s far weaker than concentration, but much cheaper and is a passive boost instead of requiring active play. Imo it’s quite balanced.

I love when boon duration increases, and boon spam becomes popular. I hate playing it, but my friends have a great time while corrupting boons.

But it was a little unnecessary to add more boon duration. At least necros should have their corrupt boon back (as it was, corrupting all boons on a target).

Fay.2357:

This has an impact of course, but it’s not enormous.

Agreed.

The point though is that small interval buffs to the ‘gameplay’ as described in the OP have been rampant ever since HOT released. They will continue to stack ontop of eachother and the meta will continue on a specific trend if devs fail to recognize this.

Thus far the the devs seem to either fail to recognize it, or they embrace the overall trend. I think were at the point where its worth discussing and bringing to the attention of the community given how clear the trend seems to be at this point.

crunchyraisin.6054:

Sigil could be OP….but compared to concentration it’s not crazy, and the current meta food has about the same boon duration and mitigates far more damage than 100 toughness ever could.

except these are utility nourishments, not food.

Wanze.8410:

crunchyraisin.6054:

Sigil could be OP….but compared to concentration it’s not crazy, and the current meta food has about the same boon duration and mitigates far more damage than 100 toughness ever could.

except these are utility nourishments, not food.

Like this?
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bountiful_Maintenance_Oil

Jerus.4350:

Wanze.8410:

crunchyraisin.6054:

Sigil could be OP….but compared to concentration it’s not crazy, and the current meta food has about the same boon duration and mitigates far more damage than 100 toughness ever could.

except these are utility nourishments, not food.

Like this?
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bountiful_Maintenance_Oil

these have half the boon duration and offensive stats instead of defensive

So this comes with the caveat of: it’s speculation.

I suspect anet is balancing around new elite specs, and have been for at least 6 months or so.

So, considering the leaks/rumours/whatever about warrior, spellbreaker, and dual daggers.. This could be pulling inspiration from gw1 skills very easily.

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Assault_Enchantments
https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Shattering_Assault

These two look like candidates for spell-breaker-y skill inspiration.

Cerby.1069:

ArchonWing.9480:

More annoyed at the new utility; bunkers 4 life. I hope it’s prohibitively expensive.

Ya…its not. It does require them to actually pve farm for it though to some extent….so take some solace in that fact?

The stone: 1 crystaline dust, 20 bloodstone, 1 fire orchid blossom = 30 min active
The oil: 1 crystaline dust, 20 empereal frags, 1 fire orchid blossom = 30 mins active
the crystals: gonna assume its same but dragonite

You have to make them in groups of 5 tho. and the recipe is…30k karma I think? something like that.

In other words its dirt cheap compared to the other ones (furious stones/oil/crystal)…assuming dust is 20s its pretty much ….20s per utility since those other 2 items are so plentiful atm and have no real value (even if u convert them to ascended items/magic or use them in feeders like mawdrey). crsyt Dust is pretty plentiful as you play wvsw as well….so its actually self sustaining if you think about it.

Oh, well that all seems to be a waste of coin to me, though I will say it’s not too expensive either. I guess the t7 mats could actually be a small bottleneck depending on how often one trains.

Well it will make boon duration nourishment more accessable which is a good thing, consider you can do the WvW reward track and most likely ensure you won’t run out of the orchids.

I agree with Pyro, it’s not going to make a huge difference as concentration I feel is much better as it gives you a very large boost when you want it. Though I think a lot more builds can drop concentration sigil for these utility buffs now which might be an attempt at reducing the need for concentration sigil.

The +concentration stuff is fine. More build options are better than less… What’s not fine are the poor support skill designs and lack of quality support roles to play. Also, you need to take into account the amount of offensive damage and conditions.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

So this comes with the caveat of: it’s speculation.

I suspect anet is balancing around new elite specs, and have been for at least 6 months or so.

So, considering the leaks/rumours/whatever about warrior, spellbreaker, and dual daggers.. This could be pulling inspiration from gw1 skills very easily.

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Assault_Enchantments
https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Shattering_Assault

These two look like candidates for spell-breaker-y skill inspiration.

If that’s true then the new elite specs better be kitten well balanced at release. As it is, its pretty unforgivable to have classes almost untouched balance wise for a year+

I ll love to see warriors already op boons lasting longer. They r so balanced already.

my druid has 100% boon duration in combat already so i dont know the real impact. I mean sigil of concentration is in my opinion probably the most OP rune you can get.

Reason why you have boon stripping, and Thieves stealing.

I confirm for crystal : it’s dragonite, and it’s realted to the healing stat.

On one hand, I understand that strengthening the boonshare meta makes me sigh a lot, for all the reasons told above.
On another hand, I also think that such things might favor more varied game styles, and is a step back to more role-defined builds. Not too sure about it…

With the risk of broading that thread. What do you think of the rune ?

It is not a great rune in my opinion. But because of it we are going to see some insanely tanky builds.

If it came pre HoT era it would have been a decent rune, now it’s just a niche I think.

Positives:

• I can now make use of boon duration instead of useless ferocity (Furious Tuning Crystal) from the new utility food (Magnanimous Tuning Crystal) as a full healbot
• Barrier entry is possibly easier for players?
• It’s not that big of a deal in the case that many classes already can/would get near 100% boon duration anyway before all this
• Necro’s will have an easier time corrupting
• Asc mat mini “sink” which is good coz keesha that stuff be overflowin

Negatives:

• Akin to PvP amulets a while back – it’s evidently bunker-ish… could make fights more prolonged/sustain monsters/boring
• Kind of invalidates predecessors; those flat 10% (albeit power orientated) by building off percentages (a bit higher than 10%, sustain > offense perhaps)
• Bounty Sigil kinda’ useless (Bloodlust > Bounty anyday) and other classes like rev provide extra boon duration
• If you think more Concentration aka boon duration acquisition in WvW is off the rails ANet will more than likely introduce Expertise related items despite how exceedingly frustrating it already is to deal with the condi cancer
• New rune… its pretty meh. Can only see mediocre use on low CD heal skills like ventari or mantra mesmer and I’d probably take either Monk or stick to Dwayna runes

Just my 2 cents.

Cerby.1069:

ArchonWing.9480:

More annoyed at the new utility; bunkers 4 life. I hope it’s prohibitively expensive.

Ya…its not. It does require them to actually pve farm for it though to some extent….so take some solace in that fact?

The stone: 1 crystaline dust, 20 bloodstone, 1 fire orchid blossom = 30 min active
The oil: 1 crystaline dust, 20 empereal frags, 1 fire orchid blossom = 30 mins active
the crystals: gonna assume its same but dragonite

You have to make them in groups of 5 tho. and the recipe is…30k karma I think? something like that.

In other words its dirt cheap compared to the other ones (furious stones/oil/crystal)…assuming dust is 20s its pretty much ….20s per utility since those other 2 items are so plentiful atm and have no real value (even if u convert them to ascended items/magic or use them in feeders like mawdrey). crsyt Dust is pretty plentiful as you play wvsw as well….so its actually self sustaining if you think about it.

You can get 50 petals through WvW reward track.

Actually, ANet did a good job with the new items.

The tears about them belong to the condition damage lovers that now need an extra 1 second to kill everything…

OriOri.8724:

Artemis Thuras.8795:

So this comes with the caveat of: it’s speculation.

I suspect anet is balancing around new elite specs, and have been for at least 6 months or so.

So, considering the leaks/rumours/whatever about warrior, spellbreaker, and dual daggers.. This could be pulling inspiration from gw1 skills very easily.

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Assault_Enchantments
https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Shattering_Assault

These two look like candidates for spell-breaker-y skill inspiration.

If that’s true then the new elite specs better be kitten well balanced at release. As it is, its pretty unforgivable to have classes almost untouched balance wise for a year+

I didn’t mean to imply the possible balancing would be good. merely that I think they are trying. But yes, it would be nice if they release with something resembling balance.

Well pass the cap at this point you still need a rev for its resistances spam and they will still run there elite spec. so your still getting a “free” +33% and now with the new food like item most tankly classes should have 100% boon duration. So ele rev and mezmers your boons will never fall off and they simply become a check box and nothing more.

So in a way they are no longer boons they are things you need to even play wvw well in a constructed meta way.

My warrior will be using Destruction of the Empowered a lot more i guess.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Destruction_of_the_Empowered