Guild Wars 2

So far we dont know how many stacks for example the Guard skill “Stand You Ground” grants us do we?

So if it would give us like 4 stacks it would be at least for me a good change, while only 1 stack would destroy WvW imo.

If you have to pay attention to your Stability stacks, you cant just run through all CCs. The commanders must choose a better way through the enemy zerg etc.

With only 1 stack per stability skill the new meta would be static fields + necro wells only ^^

camelot unchained couldnt come any slower im willing to pay that sub fee if stability change ends up being crap

Dredd Spirit Caller.4082:

Phantom.5389:

Stability was not and never was out of jail for free.
-> Boon strip = no more stab.
->Immob -> counter stability.
-> Slow/chill -> pass throught stability.

And for a group to have permanent stability. You did need to grab more than 1 guard per party (that is without counting boon strip or other random factor : out of range to receive buff because the guard in your party or you got picked off/your guard died).

with revenant we got stability spammer and anti condition spammer
no GWEN team but GWER team
lol

More like GWERN, possibly. Necros are still valued for their ability to boon corrupt and drop into plague form. Not to mention their decent health pools thanks to DS and fear CCs, which will likely come into higher play with the changes to stability. We’ll have to wait and see how readily available the Resistance boon will be before we can make any judgments about how will affect gameplay.

I find the complaints funny. Speculation fine, I like to speculate. But saying it will kill open WvW fights is just… well overeager in the best case.

It will definitely change the meta. But without knowing how the specializations, the new class, the new boons, conditions and status effects are actually implemented makes predictions very hard.

Also, just a thought. If a class (like mesmer or necro, for the class theme) will get a good access to the slow status effect, then this could come in handy. Stability stacks in intensity making it vulnerable to multiple CCs, but making the enemy zerg slow, also slows their ability to through out multiple CCs one after the other… counter play and counter counter play^^

funassistant.6589:

It’s an extremely short duration when applied to allies

And that’s why WvW is nothing but Hammertrains. That is a lot of people giving stability to themselves and their allies. Stability has become, and this applies to pvp as well, a pre-emptive measure.
You don’t use Stability to get out of a CC or to evade a CC. It can be stacked so easily you use it to get a blanket CC immunity for the duration of a fight.

Boon removal sounds like a cute answer. But AoE boon removal is either random (Null Field iirc) or deliberately targets Stability last (Well of Corruption). So all those other boons that are flooding your bar do a pretty awesome job keeping that Stability safe from removal.

SkylightMoon.1980:

Its a good change for the meta. It will hurt melee a lot and probably shift people to have more clever engages to avoid cc’s or make fights more ranged focused like they are now.

Yeah you know we had that once using heavy Mesmer confusion builds. Then Anet said nope, you’re not allowed to do that and nerfed it to the ground (then later they boosted arrowcart damage by ~100%+ to make up for it I think. Its a little fuzzy on the why).

Whatever they’re doing with stability, Anet dont care one bit about WvW, what’s good or bad for it.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNBMhJ6kKR6CxKPwzDoDxAbBF6/OBCAVrQ6NYE6AA-TVSBABb8AAu4IAE0+DmpE8KlfRcCAqU9HAOEA5pPgUA+o1C-w
new meleetrain meta! you can also switch warhorn for shield for extra block

Thx anet for kittening up our WvW

the krytan assassin.9235:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNBMhJ6kKR6CxKPwzDoDxAbBF6/OBCAVrQ6NYE6AA-TVSBABb8AAu4IAE0+DmpE8KlfRcCAqU9HAOEA5pPgUA+o1C-w
new meleetrain meta! you can also switch warhorn for shield for extra block

Thx anet for kittening up our WvW

I lol’d. Zero stability, instead using -stun runes and food. Unheard of in current WvW but may just happen. But keep the warhorn to cure movement conditions and you’re gonna need the vigor from WH 5 because your butt is gonna be doing a lot of dodging!

This will be awesome, guardians will be mortal again, 1 spam staff/hammertrains will get shred and priortity targets will go down (any fat char with a rucksack). I already love this. Now please increase the healing reduction on poison to 50% and add a anti boon condition (basically a inverted resistance). If you do that you might be forgiven for the intruduction of death knight 2.0, I mean revenant…

Dredd Spirit Caller.4082:

with revenant we got stability spammer and anti condition spammer
no GWEN team but GWER team
lol

Yup, I’m pretty sure that’s why they made this change.

funassistant.6589:

Jski.6180:

Its needed badly stab alone was a hard counter to entire classes. Nothing like being an ele getting immune from a good bit of there effects its as if you where not even casting spells most of the time.
Now will this changes any thing it may but it looks like stab not going to last long so it maybe a very well timed effect BUT it seems that it maybe going on a much lower cd. So at the end of the day some one who knows how to play is going to stab a lot better then thoughts who do not and it really should be that way.

How could you possibly think that? It’s an extremely short duration when applied to allies and mediocre when applied to yourself. It doesn’t hard counter anything and this WILL RUIN THE WHOLE META OF GVG, guardians will become USELESS when compared to Warriors now. And it’s going to remove all needed skill. Just spam stability as much as you want.

It’s game over for WvW.

People say it will ruin melee? If it does, guardian is in business(bubble boy). Also if we are lucky, there will be less meta(or no meta).

First thing: remember they balance around s/tPVP, they never balanced the game around WvW (and it already shows). So, yeah, this will probably change the meta a lot.

Second: we don’t know what else will change, how many charges the current skills will give and so on, panicking is useless right now. We need more info. We’ll probably get more info before the expansion comes out (maybe already during PAX).

Just keep in mind that the stability change is not the only thing coming for wubwub:

At Rezzed, we’re pleased to announce that we’ll be presenting a panel on Saturday, March 14, 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time (15:00 UTC) that will walk through the core features of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns and exclusively reveal the future of World vs. World, including an in-depth, never-before-seen tour of the new desert Borderlands map. This panel will be streamed live on Twitch.

Something else that ppl seem to be leaving out is that caster stab getting hit too things like armor of earth are long lasting stabs but very long cd so if you see mages and ranges get a boon from the stab changes as in being able to stop melee in there tracks then classes like thf and mez become very important and maybe more able to kill eles and necros and ranger. Maybe this is what the meta needs and we can get past this 4 classes over and over in a tarn.
I am thinking intrusion mez or power lock mez back line harassment is about to be a very good class build.

Dredd Spirit Caller.4082:

Phantom.5389:

Stability was not and never was out of jail for free.
-> Boon strip = no more stab.
->Immob -> counter stability.
-> Slow/chill -> pass throught stability.

And for a group to have permanent stability. You did need to grab more than 1 guard per party (that is without counting boon strip or other random factor : out of range to receive buff because the guard in your party or you got picked off/your guard died).

with revenant we got stability spammer and anti condition spammer
no GWEN team but GWER team
lol

Necros aren’t brought for their (damaging) conditions ^^ they bring superior spike damage with wells and life blast

Zetsumei.4975:

Dredd Spirit Caller.4082:

Phantom.5389:

Stability was not and never was out of jail for free.
-> Boon strip = no more stab.
->Immob -> counter stability.
-> Slow/chill -> pass throught stability.

And for a group to have permanent stability. You did need to grab more than 1 guard per party (that is without counting boon strip or other random factor : out of range to receive buff because the guard in your party or you got picked off/your guard died).

with revenant we got stability spammer and anti condition spammer
no GWEN team but GWER team
lol

Necros aren’t brought for their (damaging) conditions ^^ they bring superior spike damage with wells and life blast

And boon removal the only current counter to stab. I would like to see if necro start to run fear walls and flesh golmes after the update giving them a bit more cc to remove stab charges.
For GWEN we may see the G become R though R is more like W due to self stab more then party stab G still the best and odds are will be the best even after the update at this type of support. What i am hoping for is it to be GWREENMTR (can some one make that spell something?). The meta of 4 classes realty needs to changes for wvw you simply cant play wvw the way you want to and keeps it stagnate and boring maybe this stab changes will go a long way to changes things and add in more ways to take down groups then just the hammer tarn.

Jski.6180:

Something else that ppl seem to be leaving out is that caster stab getting hit too things like armor of earth are long lasting stabs but very long cd so if you see mages and ranges get a boon from the stab changes as in being able to stop melee in there tracks then classes like thf and mez become very important and maybe more able to kill eles and necros and ranger. Maybe this is what the meta needs and we can get past this 4 classes over and over in a tarn.
I am thinking intrusion mez or power lock mez back line harassment is about to be a very good class build.

There’s a lot wrong with your assessment though. Eles aren’t hard to kill merely because of their stabo, it’s because they have a lot that allows them to get away. Cleanses, mistform, strong cc, and projectile reflection. Same can be said with Ranger. 1500 range that can arch to be longer, binding roots, reveal to mess up stealthies, charge with gs 3, blocks with gs 4, 6s immunity to direct damage with signet of stone, and a 3s stealth with only a 12s cooldown. As for Necros, they don’t really need to be “more able to kill”. Necros are generally the easiest targets to take down. They generally have very few stabos, few stun breaks, no/limited access to swiftness, and their deathshroud.

Stability and it’s stacking is the one thing keeping WvW open field melee fights from becoming something so disgusting it would cause players to uninstall.

After looking at the traitlines for the Revs, it seems like they’ll be extremely useful as a midline heavy. They gain a lot of their strength through eating conditions – so the revenants could be very useful for tanking the corruption wells and necro marks.

If a necromancer is a middle range backliner, a revenant could be a middle range front-liner, to eat up the conditions and convert it into something that makes you stronger.

With the new changes it should be quite exciting to see the meta change. I think we’re going to have to do a lot more tactical play, there will have to be more of outsmarting your opponent than out-muscling them. There will be a great deal of baiting your enemies into pushing, or wasting their cooldowns. Either way it should be fun.

Hamster.4861:

After looking at the traitlines for the Revs, it seems like they’ll be extremely useful as a midline heavy. They gain a lot of their strength through eating conditions – so the revenants could be very useful for tanking the corruption wells and necro marks.

If a necromancer is a middle range backliner, a revenant could be a middle range front-liner, to eat up the conditions and convert it into something that makes you stronger.

With the new changes it should be quite exciting to see the meta change. I think we’re going to have to do a lot more tactical play, there will have to be more of outsmarting your opponent than out-muscling them. There will be a great deal of baiting your enemies into pushing, or wasting their cooldowns. Either way it should be fun.

The conditions isn’t what kills you lol it’s the raw physical damage from the wells that does. Damaging conditions have no effect in zergbusting because it’s all done away with by -Condi duration and stray group cleansing.

This is how it is now, but do you know how it will be when the expansion hits?

Zetsumei.4975:

Hamster.4861:

After looking at the traitlines for the Revs, it seems like they’ll be extremely useful as a midline heavy. They gain a lot of their strength through eating conditions – so the revenants could be very useful for tanking the corruption wells and necro marks.

If a necromancer is a middle range backliner, a revenant could be a middle range front-liner, to eat up the conditions and convert it into something that makes you stronger.

With the new changes it should be quite exciting to see the meta change. I think we’re going to have to do a lot more tactical play, there will have to be more of outsmarting your opponent than out-muscling them. There will be a great deal of baiting your enemies into pushing, or wasting their cooldowns. Either way it should be fun.

The conditions isn’t what kills you lol it’s the raw physical damage from the wells that does. Damaging conditions have no effect in zergbusting because it’s all done away with by -Condi duration and stray group cleansing.

I’m aware that damaging conditions have no effect, the ones that really kill you are the soft CC, cripple, chill, immobilize. I’m suggesting that one could use revenants to bait the range bomb, and then once they’ve soaked up a few conditions, one could push.

It’s all theory anyway, we’ll have to wait until we have our hands on the rev to find out.

Lightning Rod Ele approves.

FirstInfantry.2795:

camelot unchained couldnt come any slower im willing to pay that sub fee if stability change ends up being crap

CU is at least 2 years away, they barely have anything tangible done. you’ll be playing GW2 for a long time, regardless of stab changes.

Hamster.4861:

If a necromancer is a middle range backliner, a revenant could be a middle range front-liner, to eat up the conditions and convert it into something that makes you stronger.

yeah, I feel revenants will bring a lot of utility to the melee train. I hope the druid makes in there as a midliner with the necro, cant wait to see the new mechanics. also, my body is ready to be disappointed.

Jski.6180:

For GWEN we may see the G become R though R is more like W due to self stab more then party stab G still the best and odds are will be the best even after the update at this type of support.

as much as I want to see GWEN get replaced by something more interesting, it doesn’t seem revs will be able to output enough power dps in melee. unless new weapon reveal proves me wrong, I see guilds taking a few revs here and there for utility purposes only (that stone road skill and stone form ult OP). we might see GGWRN being an effective party comp.

Ultimaistanza.4793:

Jski.6180:

Something else that ppl seem to be leaving out is that caster stab getting hit too things like armor of earth are long lasting stabs but very long cd so if you see mages and ranges get a boon from the stab changes as in being able to stop melee in there tracks then classes like thf and mez become very important and maybe more able to kill eles and necros and ranger. Maybe this is what the meta needs and we can get past this 4 classes over and over in a tarn.
I am thinking intrusion mez or power lock mez back line harassment is about to be a very good class build.

There’s a lot wrong with your assessment though. Eles aren’t hard to kill merely because of their stabo, it’s because they have a lot that allows them to get away. Cleanses, mistform, strong cc, and projectile reflection. Same can be said with Ranger. 1500 range that can arch to be longer, binding roots, reveal to mess up stealthies, charge with gs 3, blocks with gs 4, 6s immunity to direct damage with signet of stone, and a 3s stealth with only a 12s cooldown. As for Necros, they don’t really need to be “more able to kill”. Necros are generally the easiest targets to take down. They generally have very few stabos, few stun breaks, no/limited access to swiftness, and their deathshroud.

But its going to be a lot easier to spate mele from the caster there are ranges on ele’s spells and the more had cc they need to run though the harder it is for them to have there stab up. Thf are made for dazeing they will eat ele’s earth armor up. Any way ranger is not a “gank” at least how i am talking about them i am talking about melee to near melee ranges builds that get on the caster and kill / disrupted them. Ranger just attking into a caster is just not going to kill a caster because the caster just needs to fall back some to be out side of there ranges where a thf or a gank build stays on the caster.

funassistant.6589:

Anet will reduce WvW to pure ppt and/or roaming. Melee classes will be destroyed in large scale fights. So people wont run melee anymore! Ergo, no zergs or guilds.

Thanks Anet, like, really? This has made me so negative towards this game.

Anyone with me on the CU bandwagon?

CU bandwagon? Bro you’re about a year behind =P

Nobody has any idea of the following:

- How many stacks existing skills will apply.
- How long the cooldowns for the existing skills will be. They may be reduced.
- How many skills in general will yield stability – thus making it possibly given by more skills.

Honestly, this is a direction which if done remotely correctly could make the game way better. Proper stab timing and maintenance makes playing guard/war more difficult in a group environment but have way more devastating effects. Do recall that the hammertrain atm is pretty stupid seeing as most blobs will have stability, anyways, making the hard CC roles kind of useless. A lot of groups are recognizing this by running extra periph and more necromancers at the moment.

This can also help nullify the GWEN meta problem forcing other classes out of relevance, and also helps prevent instances where whole blobs are ignoring well-placed and well-timed CC fields and/or cannot do anything about it.

If anything, guardians will probably be even more in demand because groups of LoW’s will be able to make an entire zerg fall down instantly.

The short side of things is that stability in its current state creates an environment at the moment that inhibits of a lot of build and class success. I won’t sing praises about the changes yet since we know no specifics, but it has the potential to really help inhibit the toxicity the meta has created in WvW as a whole and allow for more creative thinking strategies to flourish.

Hamster.4861:

Zetsumei.4975:

Hamster.4861:

After looking at the traitlines for the Revs, it seems like they’ll be extremely useful as a midline heavy. They gain a lot of their strength through eating conditions – so the revenants could be very useful for tanking the corruption wells and necro marks.

If a necromancer is a middle range backliner, a revenant could be a middle range front-liner, to eat up the conditions and convert it into something that makes you stronger.

With the new changes it should be quite exciting to see the meta change. I think we’re going to have to do a lot more tactical play, there will have to be more of outsmarting your opponent than out-muscling them. There will be a great deal of baiting your enemies into pushing, or wasting their cooldowns. Either way it should be fun.

The conditions isn’t what kills you lol it’s the raw physical damage from the wells that does. Damaging conditions have no effect in zergbusting because it’s all done away with by -Condi duration and stray group cleansing.

I’m aware that damaging conditions have no effect, the ones that really kill you are the soft CC, cripple, chill, immobilize. I’m suggesting that one could use revenants to bait the range bomb, and then once they’ve soaked up a few conditions, one could push.

It’s all theory anyway, we’ll have to wait until we have our hands on the rev to find out.

Yeah thing is revenant probably won’t do as good a job of this as our current melee, reason is because while they have seemingly high access to resistance they have low access to consistant Condi removal. They also don’t seem to be able to put up a lot of cover boons like the guardian so if left alone to do their thing they might actually be prone to corrupt. As it stands well of corruption and null field doesn’t actually corrupt anything terribly useful because stability for example is very low on the priority list. Our current melee can convert conditions to boons with warr warhorn I think it is and in an emergency you have purging flames, what is hard for them to deal with is the single tick of soft CC taking effect because of pulsing skills like frozen ground.

This change makes zero sense to me for 2 reasons.
(1) It won’t affect pvp or small scale fights because are you really gonna waste 3 of your cc on one guy (then not have any left once you break his stab). Probably not, you will wait till the stab wears off or strip it like you normally would then hit them with all your cc. Now if you are outnumbered 3 to 1 its a different story. Each one will hit you with a cc then chain the rest of their cc. My point being that this change simply increases the favor of bigger numbers not skill. This imbalance will increase dramatically as the difference in numbers increases or the scale of the fight itself increases.

(2) They say they made this change to stability because they don’t like a “blanket” defensive boon, but then they introduce Resistance simply so that their revenant’s game mechanics can work properly.

(3)This is just a bonus for you saying “ooh you should just adapt to the changes”
Don’t worry with new Revenant you can abuse these changes by having a party full of revenants with half stacking stab and half stacking resistance. Then swapping stances. 2 seconds of resistance for the party per revenant (casted up to 3 times per revenant) + lemongrass +melandru = goodbye conditions. 6 seconds of 6 stacks of stab (casted up to 4 times) per revenant for the party = broken stab in small fights…Oh revenant is ranged too so you won’t need any of those. They have 2 blasts finishers so you dont need warhorn warrior or hammer guardian. Just throw in a staff ele or two and no other class needed. Sounds like a fun meta right?

Also for those claiming guardians give perma stability. Not true, you would need 4 per party to do that. Even with 3 you only get stability continuously up for the first push. Then Virtue of courage is on a 75 second cooldown so you get gaps in the stability after that. Now that’s with 3, most groups only run 2 guardians per party though as other classes are needed for various roles.

Stability currently is not ‘lel i has stab i win’. Playing with and against it requires a good level of situational awareness that simply won’t be required when it becomes possible to brute-force your way through it. The number of stacks that will be able to be generated is irrelevant also due to the unlimited aoe of lines. If my team can reach the critical mass of line skills, we only need to place one more line than you have stability stacks and that’s it; you aren’t crossing.

Right now a full ranged group comp can hard counter a melee group comp as long as the ranged comp is defending a tower due to cc spam, they just currently have to use venom share with the immob venom to do it. With enough line spamming it may even become possible for ranged comps to hard counter melee comps open field as well. Ever seen a zerg fight in EotM? Everyone sitting back taking pot shots at each other from max range while being covered by open field siege. It’s not a better meta than the current GWEN meta and I can’t help but worry it’ll come to regular WvW if stability gets nerfed so severely.

By the way, to get perma-stab currently you would need 4 guardians per party (2 with double stab, 2 with pure of voice is the smallest investment that makes it). No group worth worrying about is running 80% guards so no group worth worrying about has perma-stab.

If this goes through, this is one change that is desperately needed. Whenever a big clash ensues in WvW, it’s always the same; any and all CC is just thrown out the window as it’s nullified.

This is the one “minimal” change Anet can make to WvW to drastically shake it up because no longer will it be case of: stack might, pop stability, and run in unscathed.

DeadlySynz.3471:

If this goes through, this is one change that is desperately needed. Whenever a big clash ensues in WvW, it’s always the same; any and all CC is just thrown out the window as it’s nullified.

This is the one “minimal” change Anet can make to WvW to drastically shake it up because no longer will it be case of: stack might, pop stability, and run in unscathed.

I think you’re confusing stability with invunerability. Pretty sure when my group of 25 jumps into 40 we still take massive damage. If you don’t play well you die with or without stab. At least we have a chance to win though even if it’s small. With a pingpong cc meta, and stab potentially getting stripped away in seconds…that becomes an impossible scenario. I mean if you wanna argue that WvW should be all about who has the bigger zerg or the most siege and less about skill…

Stazee.6749:

If you don’t play well you die with or without stab.

Agreed. Sounds like people either don’t know how to use their stun break abilities, or don’t bother to equip any because of all the group stabs going off as it is now.

Most personal stun break are also a stability.

It is so funny to me, how people already know the impact of those changes. They seem to have a pretty good insight into all the changes of HoT. Can I get in on those information too? Also, where is the HoT build creator, so we can update metabattle.com with the new meta builds…

You guys are funny. Instead of complaining about things you know absolutely nothing about (unless you really know all the changes of HoT), you should wait and see. This goes beyond speculation, as some ppl seem to already call the game being ruined. (but what am I saying, WvW is dead for 2 years now, according to some of the loudest outcries in that forum here)

Also the lack of fantasy as to how we can adapt in WvW meta stuns me (get it? It “stuns” me^^). There are so many ways, of facing the changed meta. Did you guys ever think of stopping to stack all on commander tag and instead of developing other tactics? Blanked CCing to strip stab stacks won’t be possible on the whole army, if you stop stacking…

You fail to see the point. It’s not about cc-ing them necessarily it’s about what will happen to you if you’re running smaller numbers than them. Also I’m not complaining about all the changes of HoT…just this one and based off what I seen so far. I’m complaining about the mechanic itself of stacking intensity. It will be a difficult mechanic to balance in both pvp and wvw. If you make the number of stacks extremely high as needed for WvW then the change will have no point in pvp. If you make the number of stacks low but with more skills giving it or shorter cd then you create problems in pvp….do you see where i am going with this?

But you prove my point. You are complaining about possibilities of a not yet fully revealed meta that will hit GW2 some time in the future. That is my issue with some ppl in this thread. Theorize and speculate about certain effects and changes in the meta? Yes, I have no issue with that. But some here go beyond that and just QQ about things, they yet don’t understand. The complaints could be accurate, no question there, but they could be also completely unfounded, if the expansion reveals significant changes in certain skills/traits/ability and what not.

Will stacking stabi be difficult to balance? Yes it will be. Does that mean that it won’t be balances? No it doesn’t. At least, we can not reliably predict that for we know nothing about additional changes.

I would guess that the stability change is probably coming very soon as to give the player base time to adjust/relearn how to play and give the developers time to make the needed balance changes to close to three dozen skill/traits that are related to stability,

Not belittling anyone’s concerns as I do think that this is probably one of the biggest mechanics changes the game as seen to date.

My prediction:

It will be even harder to push into towers against siege humping enemies now because you won’t be able to chain stab as effectively through the push. One cata or treb shot could strip a stack of stab from an entire zerg. One line of warding, ring of warding, static field, spectral wall, etc. You get the idea.

This means more time setting up trebs to counter siege and therefore more time afking in the field instead of fighting. That also means there is even more incentive to PvD an undefended structure instead of sieging a defended one.

Not one person seems to have mentioned the likely extra load on the servers.

As I remember the best hard CC skills have no target limit, and will have the ability to remove a “stack” of stability. Is no-one else worried about the extra load on the servers having to calculate all this? WvW is almost unplayable in the 80v80v80 battles, with extra math having to be done on skills with no target limit surely this will turn it back into 1,1,1,1,1 spamming on guards anyway?

Just another thought on the process….

TyPin.9860:

But you prove my point. You are complaining about possibilities of a not yet fully revealed meta that will hit GW2 some time in the future. That is my issue with some ppl in this thread. Theorize and speculate about certain effects and changes in the meta? Yes, I have no issue with that. But some here go beyond that and just QQ about things, they yet don’t understand. The complaints could be accurate, no question there, but they could be also completely unfounded, if the expansion reveals significant changes in certain skills/traits/ability and what not.

Will stacking stabi be difficult to balance? Yes it will be. Does that mean that it won’t be balances? No it doesn’t. At least, we can not reliably predict that for we know nothing about additional changes.

My worry is with how long it takes anet to balance things. 6 months seems to be a quick turn around for them to fix something small, how long will it take for them to get this right?

Dal.5872:

Not one person seems to have mentioned the likely extra load on the servers.

As I remember the best hard CC skills have no target limit, and will have the ability to remove a “stack” of stability. Is no-one else worried about the extra load on the servers having to calculate all this? WvW is almost unplayable in the 80v80v80 battles, with extra math having to be done on skills with no target limit surely this will turn it back into 1,1,1,1,1 spamming on guards anyway?

Just another thought on the process….

I don’t think this should change anything, i mean the server has to check if your stability is up or not anyway. So in the end it’s just one more action to do. You could even say this change will improve the performance —> more stuns result in less actions per minute.

TyPin.9860:

It is so funny to me, how people already know the impact of those changes. They seem to have a pretty good insight into all the changes of HoT. Can I get in on those information too? Also, where is the HoT build creator, so we can update metabattle.com with the new meta builds…

You guys are funny. Instead of complaining about things you know absolutely nothing about (unless you really know all the changes of HoT), you should wait and see. This goes beyond speculation, as some ppl seem to already call the game being ruined. (but what am I saying, WvW is dead for 2 years now, according to some of the loudest outcries in that forum here)

Also the lack of fantasy as to how we can adapt in WvW meta stuns me (get it? It “stuns” me^^). There are so many ways, of facing the changed meta. Did you guys ever think of stopping to stack all on commander tag and instead of developing other tactics? Blanked CCing to strip stab stacks won’t be possible on the whole army, if you stop stacking…

Amen. Though i love to see all these people overreaction about something they havent played out themself.

Popcorn anyone?

TyPin.9860:

It is so funny to me, how people already know the impact of those changes. They seem to have a pretty good insight into all the changes of HoT. Can I get in on those information too? Also, where is the HoT build creator, so we can update metabattle.com with the new meta builds…

You guys are funny. Instead of complaining about things you know absolutely nothing about (unless you really know all the changes of HoT), you should wait and see. This goes beyond speculation, as some ppl seem to already call the game being ruined. (but what am I saying, WvW is dead for 2 years now, according to some of the loudest outcries in that forum here)

They said Stab change will be coming “sooner than you expect” ie. before HoT.

<<<<whoosh>>>>

That’s the sound of your point going out the window.

@Ragnar.4257:
Roy said: “It’s coming out sooner than you may think”. However, it is not clear what he referred to in that moment. Did he talk about implementing stacking stability before HoT hits? Or did he talk about the information about the change (especially after Jon talked about letting the “staby cat out of the bag”). It seemed like they actually didn’t plan on telling people about it that early but figured in that moment, they blew it already by using stacking stability for everyone to see. I find it highly unlikely, yet it’s not impossible, that they will implement it earlier. However, you still don’t know how they do it. Will a 10s stability changed to 10 stacks for 1s or 2 stacks for 5s or entirely differently? And ultimately it will be tied into the new HoT game play anyway. So no idea what you point was.

@Jim Hunter.6821:
Yes, I agree with you there. Imo ANet has a history of overbuffing or overnerfing things. How they kitten d the Mesmer glamor confusion builds just to later introduce Perplexity runes is one example for absolutely unnecessary balance decisions. However, instead of focusing on the moments where balance was screwed up by ANet, lets focus on the over all quite balanced game they created. (and before someone cries out, yes that game is well balanced considering what tools you get in building your builds. Mass WvW battles are supposed to be unbalanced, that’s how the whole game mode was announced and everyone cheered) I for my part will simply wait how the changes and new professions/specializations play out. The thing is that ANet not only needs to wait out the learning curve for the seemingly overpowered builds, which may be countered after the meta “kicked in”, but they must also think of not scaring player off the game. So we might see some questionable balancing decisions. But it is yet too early to tell anyway.

I’m not so sure the change to stability is a good thing. Worst case scenario is that melee/guardian essentially goes away. This is really bad for all the players that have invested tons of time/gold/affection into their melee/guardian characters.

Honestly, stability wasn’t/isn’t a problem even in zerg fights. Timely boon stripping was an essential tool when facing opposing groups. Often the best group at boon stripping was the winner. This change will make good boon stripping less important, and dropping tons of CCs the be-all-end-all.

Even in best case scenarios this change will turn a good number of players off to WvW. Many will simply migrate to ranged classes leaving melee in an even larger hole. Very much need to see more on this, and especially more on how they will mitigate the damage this will do to the guardian class before I cast final judgement.

3 years Later we get to Beta a change to stability……

Ballads.2509:

3 years Later we get to Beta a change to stability……

Well better late than never, right?

Kaiser.9873:

I’m not so sure the change to stability is a good thing. Worst case scenario is that melee/guardian essentially goes away. This is really bad for all the players that have invested tons of time/gold/affection into their melee/guardian characters.

Honestly, stability wasn’t/isn’t a problem even in zerg fights. Timely boon stripping was an essential tool when facing opposing groups. Often the best group at boon stripping was the winner. This change will make good boon stripping less important, and dropping tons of CCs the be-all-end-all.

Even in best case scenarios this change will turn a good number of players off to WvW. Many will simply migrate to ranged classes leaving melee in an even larger hole. Very much need to see more on this, and especially more on how they will mitigate the damage this will do to the guardian class before I cast final judgement.

Man, don’t be so negative! Of course we’re a little worried that our favorite game mode might be changed for the worst! But that’s a real problem on the WvW forum: people complain that devs never do anything for WvW, and when they do they get insulted. That’s not the way you’re gonna get anything new.

The devs’ idea is really good this time: a zerg jumping into another zerg just mindlessly following a blue dorito (or yellow, or purple, you know what I mean…) in perma stab is not fun. Sure, GWEN might not still be a thing after the change. But I believe your guardian will still be useful, and you could even like playing him even more! Think about it, you won’t have to pop SYG when your commander tells you too, but you could decide whether every guardian pops it at the same time or one after the other, depending on how you expect the other zerg to act. That’s some Sun Tzu kitten right there! I don’t do zerg fights anymore, but with the patch I might give it another try!

Now think about all these thieves, mesmers, rangers, and engineers who would love to join the zerg meta. This could be the patch they finally will. If we don’t have revenant-only zergs, that is.

Sorel.4870:

Man, don’t be so negative! Of course we’re a little worried that our favorite game mode might be changed for the worst! But that’s a real problem on the WvW forum: people complain that devs never do anything for WvW, and when they do they get insulted. That’s not the way you’re gonna get anything new.

People want changes that are designed specifically to improve WvW.

This change is clearly not designed for WvW. That it affects WvW is simply a side effect of what they want for PvP/PvE.

It is nearly impossible to balance the number of stacks of stability properly for WvW play… not that they will even bother. They will balance for 5v5, which is why this has potential to be disastrous.

reading this topic I notice that a lot of people seem to be looking at the stab changes as if it’s the only thing that will change. Did everyone forget about the following:

- Guard Longbow
- Engineer Hammer
- Necro GS
- Mesmer Shield
- Ranger Staff

and other changes?

At the moment if you see a guardian in a zerg, 99% of the time that guard is running shouts and staff because they lack a proper long range option in a zerg fight (scepter can be useful for roaming builds but useless in zerg fights). With access to a longbow, guards may end up being an effective backliner.

Necros, if you see one in a zerg, 99% of the time it’s a power necro with wells and marks. With GS? Maybe a melee necro in a zerg can become viable/effective.

You have to take the stab changes together with the rest of the changes, most of which we know nothing about right now.