Guild Wars 2

Write +1 if you would like old stability

+1/2. Old stab was also OP.

The old stability was just as bad as the new stab, and if it came back with the current powercreep of durability runes, new boon food, sigil of concentration, commander/wanderer stats, heralds pumping out boons 24/7, resistance, etc it would take ‘broken’ to a new level.

Really they just need some way for stab to work that is in between the old system and the current system, so melee actually need to think and position themselves somewhat rather than brainlessly roll face over the keyboard immune to hard CC whenever it actually would matter as it was under the old system, and that hard CC is useful, but without being obnoxious in the way it is now.

I have a feeling that they’ll make all stability skills pulse similar to how some elite skills do right now.

Like https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rampage which applies 2 stacks of stability every 3 seconds for 15 seconds.

So https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/“Stand_Your_Ground!” would apply 5 stacks of stability every 3 seconds for 5 seconds, allowing it to proc twice (three times if you have enough +boon duration).

That should buff stability enough to make it viable for pushing the enemy, reward going for +boon duration for support Guardians etc and still allow CC abilities to make a dent if they’re applied properly.

Or they could just create a internal cooldown of how much stacks can be removed each second. Doing it and increasing a bit the amount of stacks from some skills and I guess it would be in a good spot.

+1 for internal cooldown on stack use. I think we can find a balance there instead of going back to biggest Zerg pushes at will. We spent a couple hours farming 20v40 last night. With old stab that would be much more difficult.

you cant say that CC as it is now, in Hot system and classes with elite spec, is, lets use the word “correct”

if before Hot it was a permaspam of stability (guardians) now it is a perma spam of whatever can AOE CC.

(reapers – huntersward – taunts of pets – gyro explosions – etc – etc – etc) so as i posted around threads (always concerning WVW)

stability as it is now isnt so useful, or CC is simply to much.

No it does not need to be changed back to the way it was, but it also cannot be continued in its current form. Both forms are/were completely unbalanced and unhealthy for wvw because you cannot have a boon determining the style of gameplay. The current form needs to be changed to be more useful, and cc’s need to be toned down a little, there is just to much.

The problem with the old stability was that it basically allowed people to stack up an insane amount and walk through all cc with immunity, CC exists for a reason much as we all hate it it does add to strategy, simply allowing the overstacking of a boon negated the strategic value of a lot of skills and professions. The problem with the new stability is that it encourages the new “Pirate Ship” Meta style of gameplay whereby groups are now ranged heavy and try to spam as much CC and aoe as possible because melee that used to rely on stability can now have their stability stacks stripped near instantly.

The change to stability was essentially a nerf. There was no balance whatsover because there was already an ungodly amount of sources that provide CC’s but anet did nothing to balance that out with the new form of stability. This change was essentially made for PvP 5v5 fights where it makes more sense, but for wvw it became an absolute disaster. Anet basically allowed this unbalance to go on for to long and it created a lot of anger and frustration among players, myself included I retired my warrior and barely ever play frontline guard anymore, its just to boring.

The problem with old stability was two fold: the amount of CCs and the amount of stability stacks.

When a single skill, “Stand your ground!” (5 seconds , 5 stacks, and 600 range) supports an entire team, you know that the rest of the skills with 2 or three stacks of personal stability aren’t going to be seeing as much use.

You can’t say Indomitable Courage (Virtue of Courage) has as much an effect, since it is 3 stacks of stability for 4 seconds , although it is also 600 range.

Fragments of Faith doesn’t work as effectively vs ranged although it is 3 stacks for 5 seconds

Toss Elixir B is 3 stacks for 4 seconds but with a small 180 radius

Power Break (Mantra of Concentration) is only 2 seconds per use (3 stacks though) with 240 radius

Rock Solid trait is not as reliable since you need to switch attunements and it only gives 2 seconds in 240 radius

Well of Precognition is a joke of a skill after nerf (1 stack for 1 second pulsed 3 times, really?) , 240 radius

Inspiring reinforcement is too unreliable since stability comes after 1 second, short duration (1second of 1 stack pulsing 5 times), and energy intensive

There should be emphasis on timing, not slamming a bucketload of stability ; the current iteration of spam CC to overcome any SYG / Virtue of Courage is the reverse of this.

NO, the old would be no better than what we have now. the old way was changed because it had its own problems.

They either need some new again, though I’m not sure what, or they need to look at cutting down the amount of CC in the game. However this would be a big task, as there are now Brake Bars all over the place now, PvE, WvW, Raids, you name it, even in the new PvP map. So I don’t think they can change the CC without changing a lot of other things.

whatever they do, there will be winners and losers.

“now Brake Bars all over the place now, PvE, WvW, Raids”
break bars only on Mobs (PVE) not on players (WVW).

yes, WvW banners. and lords. they can’t just change CC vs human players, without thinking of the reputations it will have on every other type of play.

can 20 players have a banner in 1 minute? no they cant (for the internal cooldown of tactivators).
im thinking on fights – lets say “normal” fights not using the banners of keeps.

should anet then rework (aka balance) every single skill in the game after the introduction of Hot?
with the power creep?

they first said that players would have had a “break bar” and then changed their mind.

break bar is: when it brakes deal +50% damage (if not more) on champ-mob.
break bar isnt stability

can come to mind that then (seeing the power creep) that every single player in wvw is getting the +50% damage (as they have the broken bar??? doubts…)

cant compare fights between players in wvw scenario as the same of 20 players killing a keep or tower champion.

The ideal solution would be to have specific skill balancing for certain things. For example confusion and retaliation scale differently in damage in pvp/wvw then they do in pve. This needs to be done with wvw in regards to stability. WvW is an entirely different gamemode then the other 2 and for certain things cannot be treated the same way. A one way fix all approach is simply idiotic and out dated. This doesnt mean there needs to be complete seperation of skill balancing for each gamemode. But for certain things like conditions, cc’s, boons, damage mechanics need to be treated differently.

Silverstone.4539:

NO, the old would be no better than what we have now. the old way was changed because it had its own problems.

The real question is this:

Was the old fixable?
Is the new fixable?

The answer is yes and yes I think, but the old would be much easier to fix – just cap the time stacking, much like what was done to cripple mesmer curtain. The new requires something completely different. If you do a simple increase on stacks, small scale will get OP stability while zergs will be crippled like normal because guilds will only bring more CC. If you do a technical solution like a 1s icd on stack removal, you need to rebalance everything and it might add lag. Basicly, the new stab is an arms race that you cant win.

Silverstone.4539:

NO, the old would be no better than what we have now. the old way was changed because it had its own problems.

The change likely had nothing to do with WvW in the first place.

People tend to vastly exaggerate the strength of old stability, looking at it in a vacuum and ignoring the bigger picture. Yes, it allowed people to walk through CC. Or rather, it allowed CC to be wasted (the onus being on the caster). It did not have permanent uptime, and there was clear counterplay to it through proper timing of both hard and soft CC (even easier now with the nerf to -condi). People act like it made frontlines immortal, yet the pirateship began before the stab nerf. Why? Because players eventually realized that if you just stack damage and immob, a good wellbomb will drop frontlines even if you don’t get a lucky corrupt on their stab.
So why did people used to run full melee hammertrains? Because they didn’t know any better. A 2014 style comp with wells necros would easily rip that apart. Considering the current metagame contains probably more than twice as much damage, expecting a stab buff to create unkillable heavytrains is ludicrous.

But most importantly, old stab forced movement in a fight. You have to stop thinking about each individual player’s special snowflake skills and look at the fight as a whole. The strategic, and indeed the interesting aspect of WvW fights has always revolved around movement. Given the nature of hard CC, a roughly ~40-50% uptime of stab is required to create decent dynamics in a clash. As long as it’s not viable to push through your enemy, we’re going to be stuck in a boring range meta where positioning and movement take a backseat to skill spamming.

I’ve been a vocal proponent of an icd on stab removal on this forum, but had I thought for a second that a full reversal was in any way possible, I would have been clamoring for that instead.

All that said, I’ll acknowledge that boonstacking, boon duration equipment and the resistance boon would all be way too strong with old stability. However, resistance stacking is already too strong and needs to be reduced (limiting the boon to only allow a single application at a time would work, the same could be done for stab), and stability can be excepted from boon duration effects to omit the duration issue. It really wouldn’t be difficult to fit it into the current game.

X T D.6458:

The ideal solution would be to have specific skill balancing for certain things. For example confusion and retaliation scale differently in damage in pvp/wvw then they do in pve. This needs to be done with wvw in regards to stability. WvW is an entirely different gamemode then the other 2 and for certain things cannot be treated the same way. A one way fix all approach is simply idiotic and out dated. This doesnt mean there needs to be complete seperation of skill balancing for each gamemode. But for certain things like conditions, cc’s, boons, damage mechanics need to be treated differently.

There could be need for completely separate WvW skills. Thing is, this gets more and more complicated with each xpax/LS. Anet will create new elite specs, new classes, new weapons, new condis, new boons to keep players paying for the new stuff. They all become more and more difficult to balance up properly, even in PvE or in very small PvP fights. They are already impossibly difficult to balance up for large scale WvW fights.

But many skills did work differently in PvE and PvP and Anet has spent a lot of effort to make everything work exactly same way no matter which gamemode you play. It is unlikely they want to turn back again and start to split back skills/stats/condi between PvE and WvW. If you remember, we used to have underwater combat too with special underwater skills and underwater weapons, but over the time it became so difficult to manage those extra underwater skills and extra weapons within ever-expanding complex skill/condi/boons system that Anet just gave up on underwater combat (yeah, I know, underwater combat is boring and confusing too but the extra micro-managing every skill is also more work).

I would not personally mind some simpler system for WvW as long it can be kept balanced properly. We could perhaps have only 1 utility skill slot. Or only 2 active specs. Or special WvW condition that increases every cooldown 4 times. What these changes would basically do would make balancing easier with less variables to consider. Also, these would reduce damage and cc output.

I’m wondering if they could do something with stun breaks…. maybe add a 2 sec invuln to CC after using them, and change several of the stun breaks to aoe for up to 5 people.

I could see this letting organized groups be able to push and retreat without being cc’d to death, but they wouldn’t be able to flat out ignore stuns.

Puck.9612:

I’m wondering if they could do something with stun breaks…. maybe add a 2 sec invuln to CC after using them, and change several of the stun breaks to aoe for up to 5 people.

I could see this letting organized groups be able to push and retreat without being cc’d to death, but they wouldn’t be able to flat out ignore stuns.

This is an kitten backwards way of trying to solve it. Stability is supposed to be a proactive boon you pop before/when the enemy attempt to CC you. By changing stunbreak to cc immunity, you would just promote players and zergs faceplanting into CC in order to pop stunbreaks and then stab through.

X T D.6458:

The ideal solution would be to have specific skill balancing for certain things. For example confusion and retaliation scale differently in damage in pvp/wvw then they do in pve. This needs to be done with wvw in regards to stability. WvW is an entirely different gamemode then the other 2 and for certain things cannot be treated the same way. A one way fix all approach is simply idiotic and out dated. This doesnt mean there needs to be complete seperation of skill balancing for each gamemode. But for certain things like conditions, cc’s, boons, damage mechanics need to be treated differently.

Why don’t they just bump the stats in sPvP to reflect PvE and WvW? There’s little reason for damage builds in sPvP to be dealing less than 60% of the damage they do in PvE/WvW. This would at least unify skill kits for a first round of balance. I don’t get why people keep pushing for even more separation of stats and skills between formats; it’s harder to balance this way.

Really, the new system in terms of functionality in the core game is fine as is. The problem is the amount of CC in the game on safe weapons now. Initially, you ran a hammer on warrior for massive CC-locking. Now the best in the game for large scale is on a 1500 range burst damage weapon (DH LB5), with chronomancers also having massive ranged AoE CC potential from gravity well.

There’s too much CC in the game now to make the existing stack system work.

I think most logical would be to return to the old one-stack-stability buff, but cut durations from what they used to be, even if that means reducing the cooldown of effects which apply it. Stability is a powerful boon, and should be used and timed properly just as any other skill or effect. One stack also makes it easier to strip, as many strip and steal effects only remove one stack. The shorter duration also makes it mirror to an extent the effect large-stacking values already have in small-scale encounters.

This way the standard stand still -> empower/swiftness -> stability -> CHARGE!!!1! meth of playing is no longer around where tanks are immune to CC, but instead frontline players must evaluate when to use it; too soon and you won’t have it on connecting, too late and you’ve already been CC’ed by the enemy’s backline.

^ even as a Chronomancer, I still think Gravity Well should be nerfed.

Dragonhunter LB5 / Hunter’s Ward also

i think gravity well is to op too – as the 5th skill of hammer engi Thunderclap as huntersward- especially compared to similar skills effects.

engi? shield 4th skill? with Radius: 180? if using magnetic inversion? with 1 stability ripped?
or ring of warding guardian in melee with 1 stability ripped??
or line of warding guardian at 1200 range? with 1 stability ripped?
one break stun was enough to get out of them – and in case of line of warding well, move a side – and u see it in the ground

dh lb 5th skill is 6 rings = 6 stability – and cant use a break stun – because there is other 5 cc after that LOL (same cooldown of line of warding staff same range – but one is 1 cc this one is 5-6 cc!)

Dawdler.8521:

Puck.9612:

I’m wondering if they could do something with stun breaks…. maybe add a 2 sec invuln to CC after using them, and change several of the stun breaks to aoe for up to 5 people.

I could see this letting organized groups be able to push and retreat without being cc’d to death, but they wouldn’t be able to flat out ignore stuns.

This is an kitten backwards way of trying to solve it. Stability is supposed to be a proactive boon you pop before/when the enemy attempt to CC you. By changing stunbreak to cc immunity, you would just promote players and zergs faceplanting into CC in order to pop stunbreaks and then stab through.

Do you really think zergs are going to continuously smash their faces into stuns rather than using stability beforehand? This would give them a small window to push through ridiculous chokes filled with DH baby gates that would otherwise be impossible.

DeceiverX.8361:

X T D.6458:

The ideal solution would be to have specific skill balancing for certain things. For example confusion and retaliation scale differently in damage in pvp/wvw then they do in pve. This needs to be done with wvw in regards to stability. WvW is an entirely different gamemode then the other 2 and for certain things cannot be treated the same way. A one way fix all approach is simply idiotic and out dated. This doesnt mean there needs to be complete seperation of skill balancing for each gamemode. But for certain things like conditions, cc’s, boons, damage mechanics need to be treated differently.

Why don’t they just bump the stats in sPvP to reflect PvE and WvW? There’s little reason for damage builds in sPvP to be dealing less than 60% of the damage they do in PvE/WvW. This would at least unify skill kits for a first round of balance. I don’t get why people keep pushing for even more separation of stats and skills between formats; it’s harder to balance this way.

Really, the new system in terms of functionality in the core game is fine as is. The problem is the amount of CC in the game on safe weapons now. Initially, you ran a hammer on warrior for massive CC-locking. Now the best in the game for large scale is on a 1500 range burst damage weapon (DH LB5), with chronomancers also having massive ranged AoE CC potential from gravity well.

There’s too much CC in the game now to make the existing stack system work.

I think most logical would be to return to the old one-stack-stability buff, but cut durations from what they used to be, even if that means reducing the cooldown of effects which apply it. Stability is a powerful boon, and should be used and timed properly just as any other skill or effect. One stack also makes it easier to strip, as many strip and steal effects only remove one stack. The shorter duration also makes it mirror to an extent the effect large-stacking values already have in small-scale encounters.

This way the standard stand still -> empower/swiftness -> stability -> CHARGE!!!1! meth of playing is no longer around where tanks are immune to CC, but instead frontline players must evaluate when to use it; too soon and you won’t have it on connecting, too late and you’ve already been CC’ed by the enemy’s backline.

PvP works differently then the other 2 gamemodes. PvP is standardized to give everyone equal access to basic stats and upgrades. All your stats in pvp are determined by your choice of amulet, 1 choice of rune set, and sigils, there is no consumables or boosters allowed. This is why the mechanics of certain things are generally changed such as stability, confusion, retaliation. Furthermore PvP has the smallest teams with no possibility of increasing them in size beyond the fixed max, it is based on small team fights. WvW and PvE on the other hand can have hundreds of players on the same map. There are just certain things that do not work the same way in all 3 gamemodes and need to be adjusted accordingly, and like I said there doesn’t need to be complete balance seperation, jut for certain things.

I also mentioned in an earlier post about why the stability change was not properly implemented because it did nothing to balance it with the existing and incoming
amount of sources of CC’s in the game.

I’ve read a couple of the recent stability/balance threads but haven’t had time to weigh in. However, Dawdler has been right in most of them.

What other people seem to have trouble getting into the thickness of their heed is that it’s a question of mechanics first and foremost. We can always nudge at balance by adjusting figures, but the old stab was a superior and inherently more balanced mechanic.

It had a better action-reaction balance, it had a cross-scale balance and it created a far more entertaining environment where the rip and the control were two different mechanics that had to be combined to be effective, not just dumped into one place. You had to rip to control and control to land effective damage. That made for a much more dynamic gameplay with a greater variety of outcomes. Never mind that it was better balanced at different scales and between differently sized groups.

That’s the motive behind any roll-back. No one is suggesting it was perfect, but it has a better chance of being tweaked into improvement with less effort (bagage or debt) from a design perspective. It’s the same as with the Alpine map, it’s likely outcome and effort.

X T D.6458:

DeceiverX.8361:

X T D.6458:

The ideal solution would be to have specific skill balancing for certain things. For example confusion and retaliation scale differently in damage in pvp/wvw then they do in pve. This needs to be done with wvw in regards to stability. WvW is an entirely different gamemode then the other 2 and for certain things cannot be treated the same way. A one way fix all approach is simply idiotic and out dated. This doesnt mean there needs to be complete seperation of skill balancing for each gamemode. But for certain things like conditions, cc’s, boons, damage mechanics need to be treated differently.

Why don’t they just bump the stats in sPvP to reflect PvE and WvW? There’s little reason for damage builds in sPvP to be dealing less than 60% of the damage they do in PvE/WvW. This would at least unify skill kits for a first round of balance. I don’t get why people keep pushing for even more separation of stats and skills between formats; it’s harder to balance this way.

Really, the new system in terms of functionality in the core game is fine as is. The problem is the amount of CC in the game on safe weapons now. Initially, you ran a hammer on warrior for massive CC-locking. Now the best in the game for large scale is on a 1500 range burst damage weapon (DH LB5), with chronomancers also having massive ranged AoE CC potential from gravity well.

There’s too much CC in the game now to make the existing stack system work.

I think most logical would be to return to the old one-stack-stability buff, but cut durations from what they used to be, even if that means reducing the cooldown of effects which apply it. Stability is a powerful boon, and should be used and timed properly just as any other skill or effect. One stack also makes it easier to strip, as many strip and steal effects only remove one stack. The shorter duration also makes it mirror to an extent the effect large-stacking values already have in small-scale encounters.

This way the standard stand still -> empower/swiftness -> stability -> CHARGE!!!1! meth of playing is no longer around where tanks are immune to CC, but instead frontline players must evaluate when to use it; too soon and you won’t have it on connecting, too late and you’ve already been CC’ed by the enemy’s backline.

PvP works differently then the other 2 gamemodes. PvP is standardized to give everyone equal access to basic stats and upgrades. All your stats in pvp are determined by your choice of amulet, 1 choice of rune set, and sigils, there is no consumables or boosters allowed. This is why the mechanics of certain things are generally changed such as stability, confusion, retaliation. Furthermore PvP has the smallest teams with no possibility of increasing them in size beyond the fixed max, it is based on small team fights. WvW and PvE on the other hand can have hundreds of players on the same map. There are just certain things that do not work the same way in all 3 gamemodes and need to be adjusted accordingly, and like I said there doesn’t need to be complete balance seperation, jut for certain things.

I also mentioned in an earlier post about why the stability change was not properly implemented because it did nothing to balance it with the existing and incoming
amount of sources of CC’s in the game.

That’s the thing, though. There are strictly less stats in sPvP. I understand the point of having stats be on amulets (fun fact, the game’s sPvP originally had 6 separate ones as gear to reflect build diversity but this was scrapped for an unknown reason). External modifiers and the higher stats in PvE/WvW simply make some builds which don’t work in sPvP work fine in WvW, and make a lot of builds which are fine and balanced in sPvP totally overpowered in WvW. As it’s been made very obvious, WvW has more viable builds because of this, meaning there’s little reason not to enable sPvP’s stats to simply be higher to reflect PvE and WvW. From here, skills themselves can be balanced for all three game modes if something from a numbers perspective is objectively overtuned.

Small-scale encounters before HoT’s guild hall blunder made up a bulk majority of fights and PPT contributions. A lot of groups of 3-6 players are often fighting other groups of 3-6 players, reflecting the sPvP environment outside of cap-and-hold. Further, balancing around huge numbers of players is a moot argument for PvE where encounters scale by the number of players (not how PvP formats work).

Stability definitely does need adjustments, however, though the big culprit right now is the sheer amount of CC in the game. Duration-based is likely the only way to fix this for WvW, and cutting said durations from before is the only likely way to balance it for PvP. More stacks as discussed above is not a feasible solution, as then we end up with the same problems as before, and an even bigger disparity between classes which have it and do not have it, as then it justifies excessive CC potential.

Extra CC was added to the game because of all the HoT monsters with breakbars. You can not do kitten in HoT maps without piles of CC and so amount of CC got boosted for every class. The fact that it also ruined some of WvW is unfortunate but we all know PvE content comes first and WvW is last. CC is here and stays here until PvE requires it.