sounds like to me is that all anet has to do is put a cap on aoe healing like it does on aoe damage. No way a 5 man heal every 20-30 seconds is going to outheal aoe damage practically every second.
*I’ve never actually seen this strategy myself but I heard it depends heavily on healing shouts which has infinite targets and can heal around 2k health per pop
How would they patch it? Change AOE to hit unlimited targets?
If that does happen it will solve the stacking issue. However, then non-AOE heavy classes will complain at the new DPS/kill-credit imbalance, and the cycle will start all over again (albeit regarding a different topic of imbalance/bug/etc).
IMO the way it should be fixed is make portal only available for your grp, so if a mesmer has 2 ppl in grp other than himself only those 3 can use it. If mesmer is solo than only he can use it. To reduce shout healing is dumb b/c outside of stacking shout healing doesn’t make too big a difference w/the amount of aoe.
AOE should be just that. If your in the “area” voila. Unlimited targets in AOE area would end this strategy pronto. On the downside thieves would now be able to kill 40 people a pop.
Out range the stack and its somewhat useless. (in most cases)
Dont build siege really close, one goal of a stack is to portal to siege and bomb it. If its built all spread out then the stack of people is a very poor tactic.
Stacking is fine, people just don’t counter it well. Seriously… just out range it until they move, if they portal again… move again.
Can I just say that this is my favorite tactic to counter? Feel free to stack up in front of me anytime. lol
This dead group was a lot bigger.. I tried to get a screenie of them all but they started disappearing before I thought about it.
Yeah having 3 orbs + Guild buffs tend to make countering anything easy.
Everyone has an excuse for something.
Are you really that full of yourself? The point still stands stacking up is the best tactic you can do in situations like that. You didn’t “counter” anything. Superior numbers + stats did that.
Can I just say that this is my favorite tactic to counter? Feel free to stack up in front of me anytime. lol
This dead group was a lot bigger.. I tried to get a screenie of them all but they started disappearing before I thought about it.
Yeah having 3 orbs + Guild buffs tend to make countering anything easy.
Everyone has an excuse for something.
Are you really that full of yourself? The point still stands stacking up is the best tactic you can do in situations like that. You didn’t “counter” anything. Superior numbers + stats did that.
Whatever. Feel free to lay down and die every time you see a “stack”. This isn’t the only encounter I’ve had this this “tactic” and it’s not nearly the best tactic in any situation. The only thing is doing is trying to take advantage of the AOE cap. Other than that it’s just a big pile of people doing “Hey, over here! Kill us! We made it easy for you!” Flanking, ambush tactics, and portals are still more tactically advantageous.
I’d say for you to learn to adapt and overcome but obviously crying on the forums is the only answer.
Stonesolid – Sylvari Mesmer
Member of Unlimited [ULTD]
Fort Aspenwood’s Force of Chaos
AOE is designed to punish people for mobbing up and not spreading out properly.
However the AOE cap essentially means that the BEST way to avoid AOE is to….clump up all on top of one person!
It’s bad and silly game design. Counters do exist, however. I think in general it is much harder to counter the stack than it is to form the stack in the first place.
All aoe should be a counter to excessive clumping.
Can I just say that this is my favorite tactic to counter? Feel free to stack up in front of me anytime. lol
This dead group was a lot bigger.. I tried to get a screenie of them all but they started disappearing before I thought about it.
Yeah having 3 orbs + Guild buffs tend to make countering anything easy.
Everyone has an excuse for something.
Are you really that full of yourself? The point still stands stacking up is the best tactic you can do in situations like that. You didn’t “counter” anything. Superior numbers + stats did that.
Whatever. Feel free to lay down and die every time you see a “stack”. This isn’t the only encounter I’ve had this this “tactic” and it’s not nearly the best tactic in any situation. The only thing is doing is trying to take advantage of the AOE cap. Other than that it’s just a big pile of people doing “Hey, over here! Kill us! We made it easy for you!” Flanking, ambush tactics, and portals are still more tactically advantageous.
I’d say for you to learn to adapt and overcome but obviously crying on the forums is the only answer.
Right it has nothing to do with stacking buffs, protective bubbles, heals, etc. Just to avoid AoE. sigh
You just keep proving how clueless you are. I never said there wasn’t other tactics, but guess what? You know portals? They involve using gasp Stacking.
Also I’m not crying about stacking. I actually use it over 90% of the time i’m doing WvW and I use portal bombs all the time as I am a mesmer. Im simply stating you thinking you can destroy stacks just because you have all the buffs and manpower possible is just a naive way to think.
I don’t use stacking in WvW. Stacking for a portal is only for the entrance.. if you don’t fan out when you exit you’re doing it wrong. Buffs and heals have a cap also. Reflection abilities seem extremely useful in this situation but no stack I have come across has dropped a bubble around themselves.
I’m sorry we had guild buffs in that picture.. I didn’t even notice at the time. I just saw a giant ball of people get instantly mopped up and by a much smaller force. (Not where you see superior numbers in that screenshot.)
I came into the thread just to say that it wasn’t a great tactic but I’m wrong. Taking your entire force and concentrating them in one small area is a GREAT idea. I’m obviously the clueless one for thinking otherwise.
Also I laughed when you said you “use it over 90% of the time” you’re in WvW. So pro.
Stonesolid – Sylvari Mesmer
Member of Unlimited [ULTD]
Fort Aspenwood’s Force of Chaos
AOE is designed to punish people for mobbing up and not spreading out properly.
However the AOE cap essentially means that the BEST way to avoid AOE is to….clump up all on top of one person!
It’s bad and silly game design. Counters do exist, however. I think in general it is much harder to counter the stack than it is to form the stack in the first place.
All aoe should be a counter to excessive clumping.
Guild Wars 2 has really some silly design ideas that are basically backwards from previous MMO’s…
This is one of them.
Clumping up in a Massive Scale MMO should never be a viable option..
This is why DAOC will continue to be the best PvP MMO on the market and the best Large Scale PvP MMO…..Because people keep screwing up it’s original designs which were bloody perfect.
AOE is designed to punish people for mobbing up and not spreading out properly.
However the AOE cap essentially means that the BEST way to avoid AOE is to….clump up all on top of one person!
It’s bad and silly game design. Counters do exist, however. I think in general it is much harder to counter the stack than it is to form the stack in the first place.
All aoe should be a counter to excessive clumping.
I will agree that an Ele’s meteor and other GTAOE abilities should completely destroy anyone stacked up like this. It’s very counter-intuitive that the solution to avoiding area-of-effect is to group up in the same small area.
Stonesolid – Sylvari Mesmer
Member of Unlimited [ULTD]
Fort Aspenwood’s Force of Chaos
This will be a difficult thing to fix, as we all know that allowing AoEs to hit an unlimited number of targets would be disastrous.
From my observations, the best clumping tactics always take advantage of the player culling problem and almost always involve a portal. If you can see a huge clump of players running toward you.. there’s plenty of time to prepare. When that huge clump is suddenly in the middle of your force, buffed out the wazoo and invisible due to player culling, then a proper counter is nearly impossible.
A fix to the player culling issue would help a lot.. then it would be easier to see the Mesmer running in and knock him down, or to see the zerg suddenly appear on top of you.
After that we could determine if portals still need to be adjusted to limit the number of players who can use them. One portal.. one single mesmer should simply not be able to transport 50 people. We all do it, but it’s a mechanic that’s been detrimental to WvW from the very beginning. Portal bombs should still be useable, but they should require much more coordination from multiple mesmers to get everyone to the target location. Just my opinion.
I love it when the enemy stacks. That might also be because my main is a grenade spamming, glass cannon engineer. If they decide to stack then at 1500+aoe circle which adds another 100 range, most of them can’t hit me. If they want to stand there and be slaughtered by my nades then I have no problem with it. In fact, I much prefer it than them running around, dodging my nades and all.
Saying ‘counters exist’ isn’t very helpful! List them.
Mesmer feedback bubble doesn’t have a cap. Throwing up a few of those on a stacked group could lead to mass suicides.
The engineer mortar #5 seems to knock back everything in the target radius. Good for breaking up the stack?
What else?
Surround them and blast them into oblivion? Even with the 5 cap on AOEs I haven’t seen a stack not melt if you focused fire on it. Knockaround abilities are good to split them up, reflection abilities are good in any situation. I love running up to a crowd and getting their attention and then dropping Temporal Curtain in front of myself and watching all the tunnel-visioneers try to kill themselves. A well placed Warden is even better especially when they start trying to shoot it while it’s spinning. Talk about crazy damage numbers and lots of dead bodies!
If they have too many people or if they’re coordinated with reflection abilities like Loco was saying then go somewhere else and let them be useless. That’s an entire group of people you don’t have to worry about covering any other part of the map.
Stonesolid – Sylvari Mesmer
Member of Unlimited [ULTD]
Fort Aspenwood’s Force of Chaos
This will be a difficult thing to fix, as we all know that allowing AoEs to hit an unlimited number of targets would be disastrous
AOE hit an unlimited number of targets in DAOC, and it wasn’t disastrous in any way, shape or form.
Then again, DAOC didn’t have ridiculous culling issues.
The WvW tactics in GW2 are just laughably clumsy and inept compared to what we saw in DAOC – almost all of them revolve around exploiting bad design decisions or problems in the code (like culling).
When you can’t distinguish between WvW players and ranger bots in frostgorge because both just stack up in a tight ball and mash the ‘1’ key, your design has failed.
11 hours into the fight and the boards are filled with JQ people crying over this tactic in different threads. Instead of spending your time crying on the forums, maybe you should watch, learn and adapt. We´ve faced many servers before yours and used this tactic.
If you read these boards carefully, you´ll learn that it´s easy to counter.
SBI – Good fights so far. You seem even more coordinated than last time.
The simplest counter to this is a ballista/siege. Have a group of 5+ on voice comm? Drop and insta-build a ballista, at double the range of their stack. They better move or you’re about to get 40 happy sacks.
Fort Aspenwood Server
Leader of Praetorian Order [PRO]
Member of FAA
Typically these stacks hit gates. Correct me if I’m wrong but a catapult behind the gate firing on the gate should pretty much break that up, no? Any structure that doesn’t have a catapult behind the gate is not one that is looking to be defended.
Lol the amount of coordination it takes to move a stacked group of that size is insurmountable. The amount of trust you have to put into your commander is just so as well, good luck with the balista/siege tactic, cause unless you build it on the walls where they can’t hit it, they will kill you before you have a chance to finish it. Keep trying though!
Typically these stacks hit gates. Correct me if I’m wrong but a catapult behind the gate firing on the gate should pretty much break that up, no? Any structure that doesn’t have a catapult behind the gate is not one that is looking to be defended.
A catapult certainly helps, but when people stack in this fashion they’ll usually have constant stability and healing that will easily off-set the damage and knockback.
Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t catapults limited in the amount of targets they can hit as well?
Typically these stacks hit gates. Correct me if I’m wrong but a catapult behind the gate firing on the gate should pretty much break that up, no? Any structure that doesn’t have a catapult behind the gate is not one that is looking to be defended.
A catapult certainly helps, but when people stack in this fashion they’ll usually have constant stability and healing that will easily off-set the damage and knockback.
Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t catapults limited in the amount of targets they can hit as well?
Does anyone know if Necro elite plagueform is target capped? Seems like the blind/poison combo might be pretty useful. If you had say 3 necros, 2 doing the blind, 1 chilling, you could effectively shut them off for 20 seconds.
Also, does anyone know definitively if Necromancers epidemic has a target cap?
Best way to deal with stacks on doors is to put 3-4 arrow carts behind the door out of aoe range to shoot at your own door. Catapults dont do enough DPS.
What you all are missing is that the balance is more focused around sPvP then WvW wich makes some of these things an issue. Making aoe hitting unlimited people will screw this game up. There are alot better fixes to this, the 5 man portals is one.
What you all are missing is that the balance is more focused around sPvP then WvW wich makes some of these things an issue. Making aoe hitting unlimited people will screw this game up. There are alot better fixes to this, the 5 man portals is one.
Pray tell me how limiting the portal to 5 man only will help out with warriors healing unlimited people.
So this is the method I will be trying next time I confront it:
I am a necro, the number 2 ability in plagueform puts out an aoe blind every second. I have a trait that causes chilled when I blind a target. I’ll stand behind the door while the arrows rain down.
This will be a difficult thing to fix, as we all know that allowing AoEs to hit an unlimited number of targets would be disastrous
AOE hit an unlimited number of targets in DAOC, and it wasn’t disastrous in any way, shape or form.
Then again, DAOC didn’t have ridiculous culling issues.
The WvW tactics in GW2 are just laughably clumsy and inept compared to what we saw in DAOC – almost all of them revolve around exploiting bad design decisions or problems in the code (like culling).
When you can’t distinguish between WvW players and ranger bots in frostgorge because both just stack up in a tight ball and mash the ‘1’ key, your design has failed.
Pretty much this, Anet has taken solid MMO game mechanics, and just turned them azz backwards….I mean bloody hell….Stacking shouldn’t be a valid game mechanic in an MMO in regards to AOE…Unless you’re the one actually doing the AOE.
Say what you will about Mythic, but WAR and DAOC both had superior PvP in every regard compared to this game.
Actually I was commanding that group you took a screenshot of there. We all spec a synergistic skillset for stacking and we were mopping you all across the map all day by mesmer portalling the stack around and dropping siege on our stack. This is what happens when your entire server has coordinated voice comms
There are counters, so maybe you should think really hard about them before complaining!
Also, that Maguuma portal stack is the exact reason you should play on Maguuma. I think all of us in Mumble had tears coming out of our eyes from laughing so hard. You all had us well outnumbered so we had to portal our stack on out of their eventually though. It sure was fun as hell! Hope to have more fun battles FA
I love it when the enemy stacks. That might also be because my main is a grenade spamming, glass cannon engineer. If they decide to stack then at 1500+aoe circle which adds another 100 range, most of them can’t hit me. If they want to stand there and be slaughtered by my nades then I have no problem with it. In fact, I much prefer it than them running around, dodging my nades and all.
Very very obvious you’ve never played against this tactic. 90%+ of your grenades will be coming back and hitting you instead. The ones that do hit are healed up instantly.
I love how people say this would be an easy thing to counter when they have absolutely no experience with it.
