Guild Wars 2

I still stand by my statement that pulsing aoe condition skills would be a help to smaller groups. Conditions seem to be much easier on the lag, and kiting is the best deterrent against big melee groups.

Straegen.2938:

AoE is WAY out of balance in GW2. Surely that has to be obvious to everyone at this point.

IMO it is ridiculously broken…The cap itself is crazy too, some times I find myself standing in 1000 red circles taking no damage, others I find myself standing in a couple dodge rolling for my life….This game is RNG from start to finish….Which really makes it less about individual skill (yes even in a big fight) and more about playing the meta.

they need to remove the cap on AoEs. We constantly have the Outnumbered debuff so the only way for 5 people to kill 50 is if Meteor Shower can hit unlimited targets.

style.6173:

but it is fairly skill-less and should therefore hit for less damage.

placing Static fields at the right places and at the right time to split up an enemy force
having to predict movement so you can land Earth 2
having to predict enemy movement so you can land Staff 5
having to predict enemy movement so you can land Water 2
the fact that you are 100% useless roaming because no one is going to stand still.

AoE is far from skill-less. If you place your circle in the wrong spot you hit no one. Also it doesnt even work at all solo.

Dabrixmgp.4758:

they need to remove the cap on AoEs. We constantly have the Outnumbered debuff so the only way for 5 people to kill 50 is if Meteor Shower can hit unlimited targets.

If by “need” you mean make the lag ridiculously worse, create even more AoE dependence and ruin WvW. Think it through…

Imagine how ridiculously kitten a Guardian would be without AoE limits? Their shouts would buff and heal everyone in the stack. Their staff spam would hit a crazy number of players. Warriors… holy crap… the control would be disgusting. The shout healing would be insane. Every AoE class would be insanely powerful and fights of 10+ would end in under 3 seconds. Most importantly the lag would make the game UNPLAYABLE.

Removing the cap is not going to happen… it really cannot happen for a slew of reasons. Even if they could and did remove the cap on all AoE, players would still stack and zerg thanks to AoE heals and fields.

the only way i see aoe broken is making siege useless

all you see is meteor rains, lava fonts, arrow rain, wells on walls with so wide radius you cant drop siege even on the far back of walls

after checking necro you arent safe even behind the walls as their shroud # 4 skill hits through walls

all siege needs to give iron hide, and its resistance ot aoe skills upped by 60-80% as well

lets not forget the little exploits wich alone are not big deal but with a zerg doing them its huge like eles using meteor and trasnforming to tornadoes and necros doing the same dropping wells and transforming to lich form granting ovr 100% crit rate and doubling their damage

pza.8024:

^this is wrong.

• retaliation also affects quick attacking single target players.
• retaliation is already more than strong and promotes blobbing and zerging.

nerfing aoe’s would promote zerging, blobbing and the need of arrow carts even more.

Wrong. It will have NO impact on zerging. The fact is, you could remove retaliation from the game completely and it wouldn’t impact zerging. People zerg because it is the easiest way to get rewards. That’s the bottom line.

and yes, it does impact single target, but only if you spam skills. If you want to do a spam skill burst on someone, just look to see if retal is there first.

AOE needs a big nerf.

Allie Murdock.8152:

It is likely true that AoE will never be completely removed from the game, as the game is built with it being a factor. However, there are things we can look into doing to mitigate the importance of AoE in certain situations. Maybe even something we can do specifically for WvW.

We have a lot going on right now, so I’m not sure when we’d be able to get to it, but we can at least start thinking about our options.

Thanks for the feedback all!

Just add the body block system from gw1. No more zergball steamrolling. More professions, more builds available! More tactic!

All they need to do is turn on friendly fire. Then you can leave AoE alone.

You just need some consequence for killing friendlies.

Mizhas.8536:

The key to a succesfull WvW isn’t nerfing blobs but empowering small groups.

But how to empower them without overpower the blobs? Here is the problem.

That’s the core of the problem indeed.
If you delete aoe altoghether…well enjoy fighting against 30 with 5. It won’t work, because they can all still hit one of you, and if every 6 people hit 1, you still loose.
Is that a problem? I think so.

I believe the aim of the game should be risk = reward. Zergs/blobs/… don’t have any risk whatsoever.

Maybe…

Add a cap to the amount of people that can attack 1? For example, if a zerg of 30 chases down a lone guy, make it so only 3 of them can attack the guy the same time.

The 27 others don’t get loot, because what they did wasn’t meriting of rewards.

In the ideal situation, we would have body-blocking. I know, you want dynamic combat, but it just isn’t realistic and it screws any kind of fairness.
Body-blocking would fix a lot of things though: no more stacking, no more 30v1 scenarios etc.

Straegen.2938:

Dabrixmgp.4758:

they need to remove the cap on AoEs. We constantly have the Outnumbered debuff so the only way for 5 people to kill 50 is if Meteor Shower can hit unlimited targets.

If by “need” you mean make the lag ridiculously worse, create even more AoE dependence and ruin WvW. Think it through…

Imagine how ridiculously kitten a Guardian would be without AoE limits? Their shouts would buff and heal everyone in the stack. Their staff spam would hit a crazy number of players. Warriors… holy crap… the control would be disgusting. The shout healing would be insane. Every AoE class would be insanely powerful and fights of 10+ would end in under 3 seconds. Most importantly the lag would make the game UNPLAYABLE.

Removing the cap is not going to happen… it really cannot happen for a slew of reasons. Even if they could and did remove the cap on all AoE, players would still stack and zerg thanks to AoE heals and fields.

If AOE were completely removed, would there still be healing or boons at all? This change would completely annihilate classes like guardians or necros who rely on groups of allies or enemies, and shift everything to mesmers and thieves. Entire weapons and in some cases classes would need to be overhauled entirely, all for WvW, which they don’t make big changes for with balance.

AOE limit as it is now is fine for me. I did not see any real argument of how increasing/decreasing it would help small groups more than zerg.

Increasing it maybe to 10 would maybe help small groups that are less than 10, but will not stop them from getting hit from the zerg’s AoE… Limiting all attacks to one target will not help either, because the small group is still going to get damage from a way greater number of people…

Small groups will always be at a numerical disadvantage compared to zergs. If in old-time war (swords and such), you have 10 people attacking a 50 men troops, yep, they can take some down, but, well, they are not going to win the fight…

Friendly fire would make a totally different game (no combo), so I don’t find this idea pertinent for GW.

Body block, on the other side, would be awsome, as long as ranged attack get curve (not sure how to put it… instead of being in a straight line, it shots in the air and land down). Would mean a limited amount of player can really melee hit one player, would make holding a neck meaningful, and really allow to have a back-line and a front line…

Roe.3679:

If AOE were completely removed, would there still be healing or boons at all? This change would completely annihilate classes like guardians or necros who rely on groups of allies or enemies, and shift everything to mesmers and thieves. Entire weapons and in some cases classes would need to be overhauled entirely, all for WvW, which they don’t make big changes for with balance.

Two key points here is that both Guardians and Necros are fully capable with the skills they have today to be very potent solo. If AoE was removed, those skills would be replaced with non-AoE skills making heavy AoE classes as viable as they are today. This is really just a thought exercise on par with removing AoE caps in the game, but it is interesting to think about a GW2 with limited or no AoE.

If I could design this part of the game over again there would be some AoE and all of it on long cool downs. No spammable attack would be AoE that is for sure. I would also completely remove the target limits on the AoE that would be left.

I would be money that if ANet could start over, AoE would not be nearly as heavy in the skill system as it is today. Difficult to unring that bell now though.

The game engine isn’t desiged to handle wvw properly

King Amadaeus.8619:

Straegen.2938:

AoE is WAY out of balance in GW2. Surely that has to be obvious to everyone at this point.

IMO it is ridiculously broken…The cap itself is crazy too, some times I find myself standing in 1000 red circles taking no damage, others I find myself standing in a couple dodge rolling for my life….This game is RNG from start to finish….Which really makes it less about individual skill (yes even in a big fight) and more about playing the meta.

Completely agree! In huge zerg I take no damage due to aoe damage cap.
It’ unfair against smaller groups. They have not any chanses against our stacking melee train. And does not matter how they skilled are if we receive no damage from them. And vice-verca they receive full damage from us, because their group is small.
If Anet will remove offencive AOE-caps then stupid stacking will be not so IMBA as today.

quick offtopic – the OP sounds like a shill post setting up for the dev to come in and say yes great idea. So that when the devs implement it into the game they can say it was the players who asked for that change. Tons of these post seem like that to me. There is just so many players defending wak ideas that the only way my cynical mind can grasp it is that they are anet/ncsoft paid shills.

Sorry now back on topic. What anet needs to do is remove the cap on AOEs not rewrite the entire kitten game. But then again maybe its more cost effect for anet to waste time and money not creating content and instead creating an entirely new game rather than upgrade the infrastructure to handle the game they originally built. Removing the cap on AOEs will stop the hammer trains and spread all the stackers out with out nerfing anyone.

I’ll leave you with a link to an article I read earlier which I think pvpers in any game should read before posting about nerfs of any kind.

http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win-part-1.html

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

What anet needs to do is remove the cap on AOEs

snip

Can’t happen – next suggestion please!

Hopefully there are plans that compensate or rebalance professions for those that will have their builds or professions totally destroyed by major nerfs to aoe.

Svarty.8019:

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

What anet needs to do is remove the cap on AOEs

snip

Can’t happen – next suggestion please!

It actually can. How much lag do you see when AC’s are hitting 30-40+ targets? Zilch. So there are obviously mechanics or damage modifiers in game that allow for that type of AoE.

It really is simply a case of changing how current AoE damage is calculated to mimic that of siege.

Granted doing this will open up a bigger can of worms to begin with.. that is unless each class is given some sort of elite AoE skill that hit up to 50 targets with damage similar to how siege works.

Svarty.8019:

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

What anet needs to do is remove the cap on AOEs

snip

Can’t happen – next suggestion please!

Why, do you believe arenanet is inept and can’t figure out how to do what many other mmos do, which is have no cap AOEs. I have yet to hear why this “can’t” happen. Could it be as simple as upgrading server hardware and they just “will” not spend that money?

The truth is nothing will stop the zergs because just like in the real world there is safety in numbers. Removing the aoe cap will make it slightly easier for a smaller pop server to be able to defend keep and towers. Nerfing AOEs will just turn the meta into single target spike builds. It will not stop stacking or zerging because it would still be more efficient to stack and every one spike one target at a time. 30 guys spiking someone will make them drop just as fast as 30 guys cleaving. There won’t be as much splash damage but you would still be better off with a zerg.

next suggestion:
More AoE damage deals it full damage divided by half the amount of targets hit. No more target # caps.
hitting multiple targets would additionaly help triggering stuff.

example: lava field hits 10 balled targets per tick. it deals for example 2k damage per tick, would result in 400 per target.

result:
Pro:

• AoE would still be useful against both single and multitarget, but more against multitarget (in comparison to beeing completely useless against 1 target, but OP against multitarget)
• blobbing would become less due to no additional safety apart from group buffs, which would still affect only up to 5 people. and habit.

Cons:

• huge nerf to aoe, which would need to be compensated by buff of AoE damage skills, which would be a HUGE amount of work to be done at once. and lotsa QQ to deal with.
• huge buff to retaliation, since no more cap for aoe. so to avoid making retaliation be a must have in blobs (to protect them) retaliation would need to be nerfed somehow. -> huge balance problems for other game modes. -> huge workload for devs.
• would need overhauling ALL skills and traits -> won’t happen.
• weirder mechanic. not casual-friendly.

that’s way more cons than pro’s.

Friendly fire will do the job, 100%.

Roe.3679:

If all skills were single target, wouldn’t it benefit larger numbers even more? I thought the argument was the AOE cap needed to be removed for better WvW, not eliminated completely.

For an organized group, massive single target damage is an instagib of the others. I remember the “spike” groups of GW1 (pre IWAY group tactics) where they would target one person and “spike” on the count of 3. That person would go from full health to 0 in about a second, nothing would save them short of Aegis being up. This was in 8v8 play, imagine the damage output when scaled to 50v50.

I dont understand one thing about AoE though. How is it sometimes I can stand inside half a dozen red circles and take almost no damage. Then other times I go from 100%-dead in seconds?

5 targets cap maybe?
If a spirit Ranger with 3 spirits + pet is standing right next to you, you can be lucky and end up with no damage at all. But the targets are recalculated each tick if I am not mistaken.

Any AoE skill that has a cooldown of 25+ should have a increase AoE cap of 20.

Less lag while having less blobs.

Mike.5193:

Roe.3679:

If all skills were single target, wouldn’t it benefit larger numbers even more? I thought the argument was the AOE cap needed to be removed for better WvW, not eliminated completely.

For an organized group, massive single target damage is an instagib of the others. I remember the “spike” groups of GW1 (pre IWAY group tactics) where they would target one person and “spike” on the count of 3. That person would go from full health to 0 in about a second, nothing would save them short of Aegis being up. This was in 8v8 play, imagine the damage output when scaled to 50v50.

This.

If you remove AOE all that will happen will be target trains.

If you remove that, you have no game worth playing because teams will be useless.

As it is the 5 man group size sort of sucks.

My personal hope is that Anet simply stops listening to everyone whine about these things because this is exactly what killed DAOC, Over-balancing.

There is no perfect utopian world where everyone gets together in a 400 man and 1v1s. And to be honest that world would be a personal hell for many of us anyhow.

Now, if you go all the way back to DAOC, where all this stuff originated, which did not have fields…you got zerging, because guess what its what people do.

To me, it feels like spamming is the problem and not AOE itself. Smaller scale fights combined with long cooldowns discourage AOE spamming but as the group gets larger the AOE skills have better effect AND long CDs are less of a punishment since you’ll have overlapping skills and boons/conditions.

Rather than eliminate AOE, let’s punish mindless spamming of skills. How about a mechanic similar to the GW1 Mesmer’s Diversion?

Just as as an example, let’s say Chill has a secondary effect: if a player uses a skill while under chill, the cooldown on that skill is increased by X. Perhaps limit it to certain types of skills (eg. not auto-attack). Or it maybe need to be another condition altogether.

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

I’ll leave you with a link to an article I read earlier which I think pvpers in any game should read before posting about nerfs of any kind.

http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win-part-1.html

Hm. I guess I could head mine with irrelevancy too:
That’s quite the article. A very long page of the same logic said over and over. In summery, an expert player will exploit anything the game has to offer within the legitimate rules to win. Very sensible logic. The scrub plays within constraint, and thus not playing to win in comparison to the former. Very sensible logic also.

However…

Those who explore the greatest advantages ARE playing to win, but those who play within their own rules and constraints and still own face are more skilled. Some like to mix it up. Make it more challenging when they beat the ‘advantage exploiting press #1 to win experts’. Simply playing and exploiting a section of the game for an advantage to win in itself isn’t as skilled, nor expertise (though could lead to such in it’s own right). It’s just for those who play to win, but want it to go easier/faster. An alternate definition of ‘scrub’ to some, but a valid play-style. I do therefore agree that nerfing because of someone’s over-advantage isn’t always necessary. I simply… you know… practice. I just play the game ‘for fun’, which eventually leads me to winning.

I think the writer of that article—while logical and valid in one line of thinking—is a ‘scrub’ in disguise. So it contributes little to the thread.

On topic:
I believe that they can’t remove the excessive AOE/conditions/control effects that pepper the gameplay, because it’s to far into it. The gameplay (classes/monsters/explorable-areas) would be to impacted as has been already said. I don’t agree the excess in those areas, but I don’t agree with the AOE caps either, because it’s I like the possibilty for some lowly nobody with years of tricky gaming under their belt being able to use them in a tricky manner to either beat, or escape an absurdly huge group of fumbling oafs pressing one button over and over. :P I also like how scary it is when that group would be downing a smaller group with the same restriction removed. Friendly fire would disable a big portion of the game (combos), causing the need for a new combo system altogether (i.e: new game basically), rebalance of classes and dungeons, re structuring perhaps even. Body blocking would have some nice gameplay advantages of holding small entrances or mountain passes, while blocking friendly players in large groups would be a downside.

Posted tired and half asleep. Please excuse any convoluted areas of the post. I read through it, but… tired proof reading tired, is well… … tired… :P

just want to add that in order to do acceptable AoE damage I have to constantly rotate through the following

Fire 2
Fire 5
Water 2
Air 5
Earth 2

Counting F1-F4 to swap attunements thats 9 keys that I use every single large scale fight. Thats more skills than most classes use and Im not even counting my 2 heals, a snare, and attacks Im mashing because the good stuff is on cooldown. Then theres always making sure im positioned correctly because I die if someone sneezes on me. So how is AoE easymode again?

Mike.5193:

Roe.3679:

If all skills were single target, wouldn’t it benefit larger numbers even more? I thought the argument was the AOE cap needed to be removed for better WvW, not eliminated completely.

For an organized group, massive single target damage is an instagib of the others. I remember the “spike” groups of GW1 (pre IWAY group tactics) where they would target one person and “spike” on the count of 3. That person would go from full health to 0 in about a second, nothing would save them short of Aegis being up. This was in 8v8 play, imagine the damage output when scaled to 50v50.

That’s what I mean. Removing AOE – ridiculous rebalancing aside – just changes it to focusing on a player instead of an area.

Roe.3679:

Mike.5193:

Roe.3679:

If all skills were single target, wouldn’t it benefit larger numbers even more? I thought the argument was the AOE cap needed to be removed for better WvW, not eliminated completely.

For an organized group, massive single target damage is an instagib of the others. I remember the “spike” groups of GW1 (pre IWAY group tactics) where they would target one person and “spike” on the count of 3. That person would go from full health to 0 in about a second, nothing would save them short of Aegis being up. This was in 8v8 play, imagine the damage output when scaled to 50v50.

That’s what I mean. Removing AOE – ridiculous rebalancing aside – just changes it to focusing on a player instead of an area.

i dont understand how people think this would be better? If you think you die fast now with AoE circles everwhere imagine how fast you die if 40 people decide to focus you down. Forget about playing a Mesmer or Ele. Literally Everyone would reroll thieves.

Allie Murdock.8152:

It is likely true that AoE will never be completely removed from the game, as the game is built with it being a factor. However, there are things we can look into doing to mitigate the importance of AoE in certain situations. Maybe even something we can do specifically for WvW.

We have a lot going on right now, so I’m not sure when we’d be able to get to it, but we can at least start thinking about our options.

Thanks for the feedback all!

I really wish I knew what ANet has going on…communication on upcoming changes/goals seems to be rather sparse lately.

No AOE environment is for holly trinity games, cos you can outheal the dmg focused target have. U’ll mostly see ranged fights with daggers running among them. Face it when mele is starting to charge he’ll be dead in matter of seconds, cos he’ll get all the ranged dmg. For that u need tanks.
classic trinity setup is allways smth like this:
7 ppl in party ( lineage 2 game)
Healer
Recharger
sword singer (def buffs)
blade dancer (off buffs)
buffer
2x nukers/archers (which can’t do nothing without those 5 supporters)
so basically u have 2 main dmg dealers in whole party focusing on 1 target being healed. Ofc u don’t have any block and no dodge, but u have evasion stat. In GW2 u have party of 5 who can make huge dmg so that 1 target with no imba heals will be insta dead.

AE is one of the most important skills in ANY MMO. Otherwise, you have Melee Wars 2 and Zerg Wars 2. The whole point of AE is to bust up zergs and provide characters with less defensive capability the ability to do serious damage at range.

If anything, this game needs far more AE. I would up the AE cap from 5-7 as a start.

I used to play warhammer online, and one of the best changes they EVER made was to nerf aoe. See in a small group assiting targets determines who wins, but after a certain number of people, say about 10+ it becomes more about aoe coordination, which mind you still takes some skill, but much less. IF you nerf aoe the individual player skill of groups comes out MUCH more , who can assist etc.

In a nutshell, nerfing aoe results in skill being more expressed as a variable and will do more to separate the good groups from the bad. A lot of ‘skill’ groups are really just organized cooperative builds, that’s game knowledge, but its not skill.

obviously aoe shouldn’t be removed but could do with a change.

From reading this thread , it comes up that maybe removing the 5 cap limit would make a difference to helping break up zergs. I am not sure. If they removed the 5 cap limit they would have to massively reduce the damage that individual aoe’s do.
Might have to separate wvwvw from spvp ( ive played a lot of both) so that spvp isn’t too adversely affected.

Perhaps combo fields that do aoe damage should be introduced , raising the skill cap required for effective aoe bombing. But right now, its really frustrating watching the stack on tag and attack tactic that allows for nearly mindless zerging or hammer trains.

We already experienced AOE with more then 5 targets. Was not pretty. This system as it is now is giving chance for smaller group to defeat larger group of players.
Target play is all about how many dmg dealers u have, so more you are faster will enemy go down. So in the end winner is decided with numbers in ur group, which bring us to ZERG.

Try to join some wvw guild and experience from the first hand how actually wvw mechanic work or can work. U’ll be surprised

Bombsaway.7198:

AE is one of the most important skills in ANY MMO. Otherwise, you have Melee Wars 2 and Zerg Wars 2. The whole point of AE is to bust up zergs and provide characters with less defensive capability the ability to do serious damage at range.

If anything, this game needs far more AE. I would up the AE cap from 5-7 as a start.

+1, without aoe, you might as well remove any casters from any large scale combat games. Why are melee trains and zerg blobs so effective in WvW today? Because the lack of aoe cc and low cap aoe. It’s bad enough as-is right now, casters are encouraged to play like a melee running dagger/double weapon builds so they could stay up there and roll with the melee trains to avoid getting run over. Which in my opinion, are lame as I’ve always enjoyed playing caster classes in MMO’s like spell casters, not cloth wearing rogues. All these are direct results of the lack of aoe cc and low cap aoe.

Classes that are often shunned in WvW such as engineers and rangers could greatly benefit from receiving some game changing aoe cc & aoe abilities that’ll make them wanted in WvW again. Until then, we’re going to continue seeing 2 Guardians & Warriors to 1 of every class. The state of WvW today is a reflection of a lack of effective aoe cc and low aoe cap.

Ever wonder why in games like DAOC why it was possible for a lower number of defenders to defend a keep from a larger zerg that are twice their numbers? While in WvW in GW2, the larger blob will win 99.9% of the time guaranteed? AOE. Removing AOE will be the worst idea ever. It’s bad enough as is right now. Although seeing the demographics of the classes out in WvW, with the amount of melees playing, it’s no wonder why so many support such a dumb idea.

A lot of commanding does seem to be running something durable so you can stay up front and yell damage on my tag to focus where the aoe is going.

It would be nice if they could find a way to make skill more relevant in the open field. Not that good organized groups don’t trounce bad ones, but look at how much varience there is between a top 5on5 group and a merely good one, its huge.

whereas a good 20 man group will be 90% as strong as a great one. It becomes a lot more about specs and running the right balance of classes than skill.

“Ever wonder why in games like DAOC why it was possible for a lower number of defenders to defend a keep from a larger zerg that are twice their numbers? While in WvW in GW2, the larger blob will win 99.9% of the time guaranteed? AOE. Removing AOE will be the worst idea ever. It’s bad enough as is right now. Although seeing the demographics of the classes out in WvW, with the amount of melees playing, it’s no wonder why so many support such a dumb idea.”

That is why u set sieges on walls and behind doors. The only problem is none is smart or is lazy to run for supplies or don’t give a quack for helping at siege build… there is always only 1 or 2 players building sieges. That is the only problem why you can’t defend tower/keep in smaller group.
In open fields seeing 7 guild ppl pushing to home spawn 20 ppl makes u wonder. Even fighting blob with max 30 ppl is doable.
Raising the cap of AOE targets wont give u any skill fights and it will unbalance the fights vs skilled groups. And yes u’ll have zergs, more aoe more drops yo!. Again same will happen on field without AOE, which in this case u’ll lose mele players and more then 90% of players will be ranged. Combine those two and u’ll get mostly necro and eles playing wvw.
In blobs any class can run with. In guilds/organized play same as in any other MMO there will always be some class left out.

AOE one of things that destroying this game…