Guild Wars 2

Granted, it’s almost never fun getting steamrolled by a 50 man map blob, when you’re barely running 15 people, but what were people expecting? A bunch of random 10-15 man groups running around the map? Every RvR that I know has zergs because it’s the generally the most effective way to capture objectives and to defeat the enemy team and thats fine; zerging is inevitable and players have been doing so for the past four years and that wont stop now or after this expansion drops.

The real problem is that there are no longer any viable ways for smaller groups to defeat substantially larger groups without the use of siege. Simply put, “zergbusting” has been nerfed the point where skilled 15man groups get steamrolled 99.8% of the time by any half-serious zerg running more than 35 people. Back in the Red Guard days you could wipe just about anything with 15 people, 20 at most if things were extremely blobby. And I don’t mean push in kill a bunch of guys then retreat once you start getting overwhelmed, but actually fully wiping the enemy blob. Nowdays, even the most selective zergbusting guilds wouldn’t dare rally in NA prime with less than 20 people with the intention of winning fights.

Why care about 15 man groups, why not 20 or 25 man groups?
Because most guilds today can only field a core of about 10-12 veteran players and about 6-8 players or varying skill to support the core. 20 is a lot people and again we should be empowering activity for both smaller and large groups. I’m not saying that we should get rid of zergs; they have their place in WvW like when it comes to sieging T3 keeps. However, I think for the health of WvW, smaller groups should have a bigger kitten nal when fighting against much larger blobs.

TLDR

Zerg-busting groups aren’t too viable due to the immense power creep HoT brought, including the removal of condi caps. People just get blown up, no matter how tight they play with their guild.

In PoF, warriors will be able to boon strip 20 at a time. So that’s a thing.

Powercreep + people have gotten better. It is no longer 2013 where there are tons of noobs for you to kitten apart. Well, I still can recall when people asked what is blast.

How would you change the system?

zerging is not a problem, only lag is. =) test how many players is max before server lag happens and change max cap.

then in the spirit of competition, add one wvw map. example

2 alpine 1 eb, 2 desert

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

How would you change the system?

There are two problems with the current system.

1. Relatively low skill cap
When the game launched it was possible for 15 solid players to wipe map blobs because everyone was that bad. Enemy blobs consisted of uplevels, poorly geared players, little to no understanding of builds or game mechanics and mostly inexperienced drivers. It’s basically like Eotm now, but probably worse. This is something that I can’t really blame anet for, because at this point the average pug probably has 1 year of experience and full exotic gear.

2. Power creep
Compared to launch everyone is literally doing 3x as much damage. Seriously, everyone is doing far too much damage, both condi and power, some classes more than others. In particular power rev still does too much damage, condi rev is even worse, zerker warrior also does too much damage, and chill reaper dps is stupidly high. Any random pug that runs the above build poses a serious threat to any guild. The changes to stability and condition caps have magnified this problem.

Some ideas that I had
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Massive damage nerfs across the board on all classes.

At this point anet might be better off adding ~1000 armor and 5k health pool to every class and just hit nerf some of the more broken builds. The armor alone should amount to be about 50% more effective health which should prolong fights and allow smaller groups to eventually defeat larger groups.

Reroll stability back to stacking in duration and immunity to cc.
CC is out of control, just look at how much was how much cc we have in this Game. Smaller groups can’t beat those larger groups when they’re getting knocked around like a ping pong ball.

Remove down state completely, or nerf it into the ground
Another post was made about it and I like his explanation for why it can’t exist in the game. His thread is here

Rework+buff to combo fields and mechanics
Bring back timing and skill to large scale fights. Intentionally calling for and blasting fields has long been extinct because other classes can do the job by themselves and far more efficiently. For instance my healing druid/ele can output more on demand healing than any group trying to blast water fields. Greatly reduce the number of combo fields, generously buff all combo finishers, especially the non-blast ones.

Nerf conditions
Condis op and are cheap as hell to when spammed. Conditions should work more like gw1 where they generally reduce sustain and hinder offense.

Poison-Damage does not stack in intensity, but the negative healing modifier does.
Burning-Should do slightly less damage.
Confusion-No longer does damage each second like bleeding. Whenever you do damage, you inflict a portion of that damage around you to your allies.
Bleeding- maybe slightly less damage
Weakness-Just turn it into a flat damage decrease.

No.

I disagree with almost everything the OP wants. He / she wants a return to the days where only few builds and only on a few classes were basically viable.

CC builds were worthless because of stab, condi builds …. don’t even get me started here. Condi builds were so incredibly bad its not even funny, on top of that people were running around with -80% to -99% condi duration.

After playing nothing but power builds for 1st few years of the game I find it boring as hell and I’m glad that meta is gone. Its time for zerker or G T F O to take its own medicine and G T F O.

The only 2 things I agree with is general HoT powercreep, in particular the removal of stats from traitlines which eliminated trade offs in spec focusing so you end up with too much defense on offensive builds and too much offense on defensive builds etc. And the increased stat weights of 4 stat pieces have greatly contributed to the current situation and need to be toned down across the board.

The other thing I do agree with is combo fields, it would be nice to see some new and effective combo fields instead of more passive procs and traits.

Last but not least ,as it has been stated above, the percentage of unexperienced players that will just roll over has greatly diminished and that will not change no matter what.

I most definetly don’t want to return to the days of GWEN + stab. It excluded far too many people from effectively playing. And in fact, I would like to see more inclusive stuff, so that they do end up having bigger roles in groups then is currently the case.

the biggest problem for smaller groups is that (to the best of my knowledge) one player can receive damage from 50 enemies at once. I asked this question in the main forum but sadly no dev response, but I’m pretty sure that at least the cap is really high. that would be where I would start, forget nerfs or roll backs. this way it doesn’t matter how much op crap there is.

If You want old good time where small/mid group could kill 50 ppl, it need just to fix down state.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/WW1-downed-state-analogy-pro-power/first#post6677260

I somewhat agree that big blobs are favored. Walls are a very good example. Walls favor blobs attacking the structure instead of giving defenders the advantage by having the high ground. If you have enough range pressure in your group you can keep enough pressure on the walls that it’s virtually impossible to man siege, build siege, or in general defend without getting completely melted. AoEs should never have been allowed to cover the entire top of the wall front to back. Wall height of at least keep inner walls should be raised high enough that you can not thwart defending simply by skill AoEs alone.

:) I heard a particular bunch of players managed to make this shenanigan work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqwaNU6kwKI&t=52s

Hey, invul almost 99% of the time, too. Great against omniblobs of 50+! No siege required! You’ll have a BLAST!

Zephyra.4709:

:) I heard a particular bunch of players managed to make this shenanigan work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqwaNU6kwKI&t=52s

Hey, invul almost 99% of the time, too. Great against omniblobs of 50+! No siege required! You’ll have a BLAST!

Anet balancing..This is why i dont have high hopes for the new xpack and its new skillset and utils.

Caedmon.6798:

Zephyra.4709:

:) I heard a particular bunch of players managed to make this shenanigan work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqwaNU6kwKI&t=52s

Hey, invul almost 99% of the time, too. Great against omniblobs of 50+! No siege required! You’ll have a BLAST!

Anet balancing..This is why i dont have high hopes for the new xpack and its new skillset and utils.

Yeah all jokes aside truthfully I AM looking forward to the next xpac (new skillsets, traits etc to shake up the meta) but a part of me is relentlessly pondering whether or not these elite specs will invalidate prior ones causing more powercreep and a shoe horn into another lengthy stale meta.

Blobs nowadays are like two guilds + pugs. God i miss EotM. Totally randoms zergs. No TS or other cheats, no lame meta builds and fun map mechanics. EotM were place where individual player skill did shine.

Junkpile.7439:

Blobs nowadays are like two guilds + pugs. God i miss EotM. Totally randoms zergs. No TS or other cheats, no lame meta builds and fun map mechanics. EotM were place where individual player skill did shine.

Yea I can agree with this. The biggest balance issue I see in WvW is the servers that run guild groups vs. the servers that don’t. 90% of the time you won’t stand a chance anymore because the meta is way too effective in an organized group for most random groups to counter.

mistsim.2748:

Zerg-busting groups aren’t too viable due to the immense power creep HoT brought, including the removal of condi caps. People just get blown up, no matter how tight they play with their guild.

it’s possible, people just need higher capacity

grifflyman.8102:

Junkpile.7439:

Blobs nowadays are like two guilds + pugs. God i miss EotM. Totally randoms zergs. No TS or other cheats, no lame meta builds and fun map mechanics. EotM were place where individual player skill did shine.

Yea I can agree with this. The biggest balance issue I see in WvW is the servers that run guild groups vs. the servers that don’t. 90% of the time you won’t stand a chance anymore because the meta is way too effective in an organized group for most random groups to counter.

Nonsense. Most pugs don’t use meta or any builds that make sense, they use random put together gears and traits which have little to no use in wvw perspective thus got owned.

SkyShroud.2865:

grifflyman.8102:

Junkpile.7439:

Blobs nowadays are like two guilds + pugs. God i miss EotM. Totally randoms zergs. No TS or other cheats, no lame meta builds and fun map mechanics. EotM were place where individual player skill did shine.

Yea I can agree with this. The biggest balance issue I see in WvW is the servers that run guild groups vs. the servers that don’t. 90% of the time you won’t stand a chance anymore because the meta is way too effective in an organized group for most random groups to counter.

Nonsense. Most pugs don’t use meta or any builds that make sense, they use random put together gears and traits which have little to no use in wvw perspective thus got owned.

this would greatly depend on the server, Mr. Henge of Denravi. servers that are more competitive have fewer randomly geared scrubs.

mistsim.2748:

SkyShroud.2865:

grifflyman.8102:

Junkpile.7439:

Blobs nowadays are like two guilds + pugs. God i miss EotM. Totally randoms zergs. No TS or other cheats, no lame meta builds and fun map mechanics. EotM were place where individual player skill did shine.

Yea I can agree with this. The biggest balance issue I see in WvW is the servers that run guild groups vs. the servers that don’t. 90% of the time you won’t stand a chance anymore because the meta is way too effective in an organized group for most random groups to counter.

Nonsense. Most pugs don’t use meta or any builds that make sense, they use random put together gears and traits which have little to no use in wvw perspective thus got owned.

this would greatly depend on the server, Mr. Henge of Denravi. servers that are more competitive have fewer randomly geared scrubs.

You mean stacked servers where majority are in wvw guilds? Those are not exactly pugs you know?

jul.7602:

Granted, it’s almost never fun getting steamrolled by a 50 man map blob, when you’re barely running 15 people, but what were people expecting? A bunch of random 10-15 man groups running around the map? Every RvR that I know has zergs because it’s the generally the most effective way to capture objectives and to defeat the enemy team and thats fine; zerging is inevitable and players have been doing so for the past four years and that wont stop now or after this expansion drops.

The real problem is that there are no longer any viable ways for smaller groups to defeat substantially larger groups without the use of siege. Simply put, “zergbusting” has been nerfed the point where skilled 15man groups get steamrolled 99.8% of the time by any half-serious zerg running more than 35 people. Back in the Red Guard days you could wipe just about anything with 15 people, 20 at most if things were extremely blobby. And I don’t mean push in kill a bunch of guys then retreat once you start getting overwhelmed, but actually fully wiping the enemy blob. Nowdays, even the most selective zergbusting guilds wouldn’t dare rally in NA prime with less than 20 people with the intention of winning fights.

Why care about 15 man groups, why not 20 or 25 man groups?
Because most guilds today can only field a core of about 10-12 veteran players and about 6-8 players or varying skill to support the core. 20 is a lot people and again we should be empowering activity for both smaller and large groups. I’m not saying that we should get rid of zergs; they have their place in WvW like when it comes to sieging T3 keeps. However, I think for the health of WvW, smaller groups should have a bigger kitten nal when fighting against much larger blobs.

TLDR

I disagree. I have been part of a lot of Zerg busting as of late. You need a solid group comp. Everyone running the builds they need to be running, and to stick with the tag. If you meet all these conditions Zerg busting is very possible. However with the influx of new players it is difficult to get people to run certain builds. Also the lack of experience hurts as well, because they do not want to be told what to run.

granted Zerg busting is a delirium. Part of the false premise of anyone who walks in Zerg is always low skilled. The most efficient zerg busting is you make your own 50 man group.

jul.7602:

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

How would you change the system?

There are two problems with the current system.

1. Relatively low skill cap
When the game launched it was possible for 15 solid players to wipe map blobs because everyone was that bad. Enemy blobs consisted of uplevels, poorly geared players, little to no understanding of builds or game mechanics and mostly inexperienced drivers. It’s basically like Eotm now, but probably worse. This is something that I can’t really blame anet for, because at this point the average pug probably has 1 year of experience and full exotic gear.

2. Power creep
Compared to launch everyone is literally doing 3x as much damage. Seriously, everyone is doing far too much damage, both condi and power, some classes more than others. In particular power rev still does too much damage, condi rev is even worse, zerker warrior also does too much damage, and chill reaper dps is stupidly high. Any random pug that runs the above build poses a serious threat to any guild. The changes to stability and condition caps have magnified this problem.

Some ideas that I had
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Massive damage nerfs across the board on all classes.

At this point anet might be better off adding ~1000 armor and 5k health pool to every class and just hit nerf some of the more broken builds. The armor alone should amount to be about 50% more effective health which should prolong fights and allow smaller groups to eventually defeat larger groups.

Reroll stability back to stacking in duration and immunity to cc.
CC is out of control, just look at how much was how much cc we have in this Game. Smaller groups can’t beat those larger groups when they’re getting knocked around like a ping pong ball.

Remove down state completely, or nerf it into the ground
Another post was made about it and I like his explanation for why it can’t exist in the game. His thread is here

Rework+buff to combo fields and mechanics
Bring back timing and skill to large scale fights. Intentionally calling for and blasting fields has long been extinct because other classes can do the job by themselves and far more efficiently. For instance my healing druid/ele can output more on demand healing than any group trying to blast water fields. Greatly reduce the number of combo fields, generously buff all combo finishers, especially the non-blast ones.

Nerf conditions
Condis op and are cheap as hell to when spammed. Conditions should work more like gw1 where they generally reduce sustain and hinder offense.

Poison-Damage does not stack in intensity, but the negative healing modifier does.
Burning-Should do slightly less damage.
Confusion-No longer does damage each second like bleeding. Whenever you do damage, you inflict a portion of that damage around you to your allies.
Bleeding- maybe slightly less damage
Weakness-Just turn it into a flat damage decrease.

LOL, the boring fights of static blobs looking at each other without do nothing, no thanks.

MadBomber.3719:

mistsim.2748:

Zerg-busting groups aren’t too viable due to the immense power creep HoT brought, including the removal of condi caps. People just get blown up, no matter how tight they play with their guild.

it’s possible, people just need higher capacity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG2hpwYmmPQ

Quality over quantity.

jul.7602:

The real problem is that there are no longer any viable ways for smaller groups to defeat substantially larger groups without the use of siege.

and that part baffles me a little bit – you have a great tools available guys to do bad stuff to zergs and blobs and you discard it so easilly…..

I have seen multiple times a sizeable zergs being prevented from capturing objectives dues to 3 arrow carts that happened to be manned.

so now imagine how a well “bust” of enemy grouped up zerg would be a properly equipped keep – or screw it even tower should have enought space to deploy enought arrowcarts to the point that even if they failed to actually stop the zerg from capping this tower they would be getting so much punishment that they would reconsider few times if this tower is worth it…..

[hint hint: last tiem I checked arrowcart has a target limit that happens to be for soem funny reason be exacly same as squad max size is – coincidence? I think not]