Guild Wars 2

Am i the only one worrying about this?

I have not created a single offensive build without the elixir B autouse on 75% health which is amazingly good. And most builds i use contain the swiftness+vigor permabuff as well.

Having 4 boons up, is supposedly going to make a difference for bunkers being easier to kill. Well if it makes even bunkers easier to kill then the result for someone running berserkers or rampagers amulett would be horrendous (and to some degree rabid as well, actually i still get instagibbed by thieves right now even if i go full bunker and have protection up but thats another story)

I feel like its already hard to justify using a very offensive build as an engineer because of the lack of stealth/defensive options. (With the single exception of elixir S which is kind of a must in these builds ofr tpvp. But even that only gives 1 reliable invul and the stealth is a 50/50 chance so not that good imo)

I remember someone from Anet saying “Engineers use boons to keep themselves and their teammates alive” will that be changed into “Engineers use boons to make themselves and their teammates die faster” ?

Well, calm down a bit with the " Will Destroy" titel, we still have no idea about how any of the “Boon hate” stuff is going to work, so hard to really discuss/talk about how it will affect the Engineer! It might destory us, and it not really make a big effect on small scale!

There were always ways to steal boons, transform them into conditions, nullify them and so on. If you were solely boon-dependant, someone with such a strategy would be a pain in the kitten He, one the other side, was depending on his opponent having boons (or otherwise this part of his build would be useless). Upside, downside, game mechanics.
As it should be.

While having a positive attitude towards something is neato i dont think this is the time and place.

In the last SOTG they said very clearly they are going to implement boon hate to counter bunker builds which stack a lot of boons – i highly doubt that anets system is going to somehow differentiate between bunkers and non bunkers.

Also the title of your thread should preferably make people read it soooo..

@ fiftypercent – i disagree the number of boon removals in the game right now are actually quiet limited. In fact i know of only 2 which are being used regularly in tpvp right now being power necros spinal shivers (then again not that many necros around in tourneys atm) and the other one being mesmer shatters/nullfield.

Maybe add the boon removal well for necros as well but honestly i havent seen a well necro for like 2 months.

Feel free to help me out with other boon removals which are a part of the current meta (no throw mine is definitely not).

Tbh this idea is already implemented on Nerco, but if more professions have access to this the harder this is going to get. Love elixir b, to bad. Like HGH, its suicide, like the boon spike Engineer? Going to get your group killed. ANET has to tread very carefully because they may break not only the most viable build for engineers, but Guardians

Nah, I wrote that with those two build-types in mind but assumed there were hybrids out there with other forms of boon removal/transfer/transform – the source of information on those would be the GW2 wiki http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Boon#Skills_that_remove_boons

About the rest: I simply dont know yet. They might implement something that prevents perma-boon-stacking but won’t hinder the lone Elixir here and there. They might go over the top like you seem to fear and I would hate that, too.
I HOPE for something like diminishing returns for self-boon-stacking (the “self” part is kinda important since you can’t prevent others from boon-buffing you by accident).

But thats all speculation, right?

Boon Hate is such a dump idea and shows that Devs do not even understand their own game mechanics/design. There already is a counter to the boon bunker in form of conditions. Problem is condition dmg is so crappy and poorly implemented. Since protection and Armor do not effect cond dmg. If they would make it harder to remove 8K condition dmg in 1 cond removal instead make cond removal a certain number of stacks and not whole stack of condition.

So instead of adding a new broken and buggy mechanic fix the ones in game first.

It’s more of a global change rather than an Engineer specific one so ANet will hopefully spend a little more thought on it than they did on the terrible implementation of the Kit Refinement nerf for example.

I very much agree with the post above me though that they should fix conditions first and then evaluate how much of a problem boon stacking builds actually are. With my Necro I can already give boon stackers a hell of a time, with some adjustments to conditions they’d be free kills pretty much.

The solution is certainly not to give the already existing counters to boon stacking to the already overpopulated classes however…Warriors need some more sustainability not an IWIN button against Guardians and bunker Eles.

don’t go all pessimistic till you see how exactly it is. right now the ability to stack multiple long duration boons is somewhat broken since there’s no real counter to it.

Spinal shivers and mesmer clones/gs 3 are about the only good ones I can recall. null field and the necro well require the target to stand on them and will only convert one boon at a time a far as I know (not sure if null field works like this).

I’m all for making boon removal skills more appealing even though I play a boon heavy build on my engie.

For the uniformed: what is “boon hate?”

We don’t know yet, the only information we truely have is they want to introduce more “counters” to Boons, maybe a flat % damage bonus depending on how many boons, or maybe more boon removal! Time will tell!

Is this something that will be introduced in the upcoming patch on Tuesday?

Phineas Poe.3018:

For the uniformed: what is “boon hate?”

The concept of boon hate was explained in the last state of the game as a mechanic that would allow players to do increased damage vs players with boons up where the increase in damage depends on the number of boons which are up

^this is supposedly intended as a nerf to bunkers with mass boons

^It`s not well thought out imo and i think i speak for a few others when i say that i wold have prefered to see more boon removal skills instead to take off the strong boons like protection which cant be instant recast endlessly. In fact boon removal would take skill and timing, boon hate just involves spamming stronger autohits.

I also think that bunkers are only really a problem in low level play. On r40+ premade tpvp coordinated teams easily take out a bunker with only 2 offensive roamers and only have to wait through the bunkers invul and dodges.
Hell low rank bad bunkers can be taken out solo with 1 condition ranger or engineer

Not too happy to see even more damage coming to this game especially if its going to affect the squishy builds as well

I understand your frustration.

It seems you’re looking at things from the PvP side of things, but I could see it being a problem even on the PvE side of things. Most Engineer builds in PvE require boon-stacking to be competitive DPS options; should we really be penalized for this?

Having permanent Fury while swimming in Might is entirely what my build is based around.

Phineas Poe.3018:

I understand your frustration.

It seems you’re looking at things from the PvP side of things, but I could see it being a problem even on the PvE side of things. Most Engineer builds in PvE require boon-stacking to be competitive DPS options; should we really be penalized for this?

I think you misunderstood.

Boonhate will be an effect/stat/whatever that will allow PLAYERS to do more damage vs other PLAYERS who have a lot of boons stacked

So boonhate will actually only be an issue in pvp. Mobs or other Environment threats wont have boonhate at least they didnt mention anything like that in the SOTG.

Oh, alright. Still kind of sucks given that this may affect P/P HGH builds (which is what I use in sPvP).

I guess we’ll have to wait and see how it affects us (and Guardians too).

I think this game deserve something to counter boon.

Not that engineer is such an issue, but Elem buner and guardian get crazy with boon. Most class can’t counter boon stacking, engineer only having mines as boon removal (and who use mines).

I think it’s a bit early to call out the end of boon engineer, as we don’t know yet about the change. And they said it would prolly be a traits, meaning that a boon haters would have to BUILD for it.

Just like a boon removal mesmer and necromancer, you don’t see them often. They hinted toward the warrior. And warrior right now need that help.

Kardiamond.6952:

I think it’s a bit early to call out the end of boon engineer, as we don’t know yet about the change. And they said it would prolly be a traits, meaning that a boon haters would have to BUILD for it.

Just like a boon removal mesmer and necromancer, you don’t see them often. They hinted toward the warrior. And warrior right now need that help.

Good points overall. Actually i`m not as much worried about the massive might stacking builds we are seeing atm because >might< might just be counted as 1 boon regardless of number of stacks.

I really see the issue with our most basic abilities like perma stacking vigor and swiftness and especially the 5 point trait in alchemy (elixir B on 75% hp) as it would make putting any amount of points in alchemy a double edged sword.

Also i really dont see bunkers running that many DIFFERENT boons at the same time for a prolonged duration (not even eles have 4 boons up most of the time but engineer easily has 3 with many decent builds) and boon hate will only make players try to get protection as the only boon and nothing else. So guardians will remove that imbashout that gives all boons at once in an aoe area for 5+ seconds from their utility – not really a win in my eyes.

I really dont know to me it just sounds like a really poor design choice and one that isnt going to solve the issue its aimed at but instead cause other problems

WE ARE DOOOOOOMED

Spiuk.8421:

WE ARE DOOOOOOMED

yes!

Boonhate is a decent idea but with the current layout with trait lines it will be poorly implemented.

They should IMO rework trait lines, especially the minor traits that are mandatory to reach higher traits. If I wanna be able to avoid boons I should be able to do so if its not something I aim for.

Like the 5pt alchemy minor that procs the elixir at 75% health. Forcing people into those traits when boonhate goes live is not fair, there should be options.

Ok so here is my opinion on this.

The last State of the Game mentioned the possible introduction of the Boon Hate mechanic. We have no idea on the details beyond increased damage based on how many boons an opponent has. It could just diminish the advantage boons have, or it could be strong enough to punish. It’s likely just to diminish the advantage, but another key point was that the Boon Hate mechanic was to go in place on builds that aren’t already strong. I see it as highly likely we get some of the more obscure builds to end up having access to Boon Hate, like Sword/Dagger Thief and some non Hundred Blades variants of Warriors. Even then, I don’t necessarily think it’ll be strong enough to punish Boons unless it’s a short duration mechanic. As it stands, I think having boons will still be better then not having boons, but without the details I can’t really be certain of that.

Our HGH builds are very strong. I see nothing wrong with them being slightly toned down in terms of opponent’s increased damage against us. Especially when you add in the comment about how they want to buff condition damage on the Engineer. (I can hope that means Explosive Shot.)

This will affect us negatively in some form in a comparative fashion. I however do not think it’ll make Boons a net disadvantage. I also think this only affects our strongest builds, which really can take a hit and still be fine. It also leaves plenty of room for the rest of these buffs they were talking about. Sometimes in order to balance a class you have to tone down the strong points so that the rest of it can be brought up. I don’t think this is necessarily the case here, because frankly I don’t think Boon Hate is that big a deal for us, but it’s something important to note.

Yeah like Ayestes said, I really doubt having boon will be a bad thing. I don’t think you willl regret getting the elixir b at 75%hp.

I think the efficiency will only be reduced, but it will still be better to have boon then not have them.

@Rayn

Actually the fotm elem have perma 4-5 boon on them. Swift, vigor, 50% prot, might, regen, 50% stability ect..

Same for guardian. Bunker guardian have perma 3+ boon.

Ive thought about it but then I remembered not all our builds use boons. We still have..turrets lol

This is why I have a gadget / Med Kit version of most of boon based builds. If it bites us really hard, well…

I think it is relative to how many boons you have on you at any given moment. It is going to suck for guardians since they tend to run with a TON of boons. As an Engi I can stack some stuff pretty high, but I tend not to run with a ton of different boons on.

I don’t think it will hit us too hard. Boon hate will probably require investments in traits, making the opponent weaker against non-boon heavy opponents. And engineers generally only have about 4 boons on them at a time, as opposed to eles or guardians. So theoretically, engineers should remain about in the middle: boon hate builds would be weaker in general but stronger vs. 6-8 boons, so they should be about the same against us. Hopefully.

It was my understanding that some professions like theifs would be getting something like this to help fight bunkers…and perhaps their own boon shred. Might see more boon shreds if anything. But i dont think it will be a must have thing for everyone…just another option. This game is already paper rock scissors to some degree…this wont change anything.

Well the Engineer is apparently going to be one of the classes with a boon hate option, so I am looking forward to that. It might be possible to make an effective alchemy/mightstack free build now.

Kardiamond.6952:

I think this game deserve something to counter boon.

Not that engineer is such an issue, but Elem buner and guardian get crazy with boon. Most class can’t counter boon stacking, engineer only having mines as boon removal (and who use mines).

I think it’s a bit early to call out the end of boon engineer, as we don’t know yet about the change. And they said it would prolly be a traits, meaning that a boon haters would have to BUILD for it.

Just like a boon removal mesmer and necromancer, you don’t see them often. They hinted toward the warrior. And warrior right now need that help.

As I said there is a boon counter called Conditions. Problem is that ones Anet wants to nerf mainly D/D Ele also can trait to remove boons better than anyone else. And Anet wants to add a new mechanic to over come a broken mechanic to fix a OP mechanic.

Moddo.7105:

As I said there is a boon counter called Conditions.

Do conditions really “counter” boons? Or do they just “counter” Toughness?

yay more doomsday posts. you should work for the government. this is why devs are told “never say a date something will be done” and choose to be vague about everything.. because anything that is said feeds this drama b.s. 30 seconds of an interview caused so much kittening on so many forums without any information. you took one or 2 sentences and are doing this crap here. its not even in testing. get over it and stop whining and wait for some actual facts first.

Conditions would counter boons if they were more powerful/not so easy to cleanse. Professions like Necromancers who spend some time building up a 25 stack of bleeds only to see it removed by a single Ele doing a dodge roll must get terribly frustrated.

That being said, the solution that I’m hearing, of adding more damage the more boons one has seems absolutely stupid and counter intuitive. Boons are supposed to make you stronger and tougher, not an easier target! Why have Protection at all if its no longer going to do what it states in the tooltip (damage reduction) for example?

Should not the reverse be also true, that having more conditions on you gives you damage reduction? Would be a “boon” for Necromancers self inflicting conditions right?

The nerfs to various professions in the last couple of patches seem extremely poorly thought out. The nerfs to Elementalists for example to counter the D/D bunkering really only served to further push players into that build, as non bunker builds were more adversely affected. Of course, the crying and whining of the vocal minority should not be the yardstick by which ANet measures balance, even before the nerf it was easy to counter D/D Eles unless you were a faceroller (who would complain about OP Eles massacring everyone when in fact their damage output even pre-nerf was pathetic), but these are the bads who complain the most, and the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

While it may be poor form to be all doom and gloom before we see the results, ANet has not exactly had a great track record in releasing well thought out and effective balance patches. For those of you who played EoTN from GW1 and saw the introduction of PvE skills, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

ANet really needs to stop swinging the nerf bat every time some whiner complains a bit, and instead focus on the core game mechanics. In regards to “boon hate” it would be a simple matter to balance the strength of boons by instead adding mechanics to existing skills (such as Mind Stab from the Mesmer Sword chain) to several other professions and skills. Make condition removal affect a percentage of a stack, so that a condition that is “removed” either has a percentage of its stacks removed (like in the case of bleed, could start at 25% and trait up to 75%) or a percentage of its duration for conditions that don’t have numerical stacks. Maybe give condition based builds a “resistance” to having their conditions cleansed…

Fact is, there are better and more elegant ways to go about balance, it simply remains to be seen if ANet learns from its past mistakes.

Kaleban.9834:

Fact is, there are better and more elegant ways to go about balance, it simply remains to be seen if ANet learns from its past mistakes.

Fact is, it simply remains to be seen what “boon hate” really even is.

kaleban…

We’re freaking out over something we dont even have the ability to use yet or all the details on. You could also “theorcraft” positive results of it as well as negative.

Also, there is no point comparing boons to conditions. If you want to, every profession has multiple ways to remove conditions (some nearly a dozen). Boon shred however some professions have next to non…hell us engineers got 1 on throw mine…it removes a whole boon.

It just sounds like they think other professions need their own way of dealing with boonstacking. Which may be true, and i’m sure you’ll probably have to sacrfice some strengths for it. I doubt they’re gonna flip a switch and say “now ALL professions do extra damage to anyone with boons GG LAWL”. But, if ya got nothing better to do but write sensationalist posts filled with paranoia and anti-arenanet hate…by all means.

Also necros do benefit from conditions on themselves, they have various way to heal off conditions, throw conditions on themselves at other players, or turn their conditions to boons…even gaurdian/engineer have a one click utility to instantly benefit hugely from someone stacking conditions on them (hell you can trait so everytime you have burning on your gaurdian you also have fury).

Should these skills be removed? i thought the point of stacking conditions on someone was to hurt them not help them…why are 8% of my necros conditions helping the alchemy engineer??! See…its called a counter, just means there will be a decent amount of boons counter options available…to some profession or professions. Lets wait till we have all the details and can try it out for a bit before we panic.

RaynStargaze.6510:

Am i the only one worrying about this?

I have not created a single offensive build without the elixir B autouse on 75% health which is amazingly good. And most builds i use contain the swiftness+vigor permabuff as well.

Having 4 boons up, is supposedly going to make a difference for bunkers being easier to kill. Well if it makes even bunkers easier to kill then the result for someone running berserkers or rampagers amulett would be horrendous (and to some degree rabid as well, actually i still get instagibbed by thieves right now even if i go full bunker and have protection up but thats another story)

I feel like its already hard to justify using a very offensive build as an engineer because of the lack of stealth/defensive options. (With the single exception of elixir S which is kind of a must in these builds ofr tpvp. But even that only gives 1 reliable invul and the stealth is a 50/50 chance so not that good imo)

I remember someone from Anet saying “Engineers use boons to keep themselves and their teammates alive” will that be changed into “Engineers use boons to make themselves and their teammates die faster” ?

No Stealth and defensive options? Can you please recite the combo field table so the class can hear?

But I do agree, boon hate would seriously rip us to shreds because the minor trait is the first thing you get whether you like it or not.

you have no idea how boon hate (if it is ever created) will work. will it really “rip you to shreads”

a + b = panic…

oh wait…. you dont even know what a and b are.

Zinwrath.2049:

But, if ya got nothing better to do but write sensationalist posts filled with paranoia and anti-arenanet hate…by all means.

I LOL’d. You obviously failed to comprehend what I was posting, or didn’t bother to read it because it was too long.

If calling out ANet for its poor balance performance across TWO MMOs, then offering constructive ways to avoid ham fisted nerfing is sensationalist paranoia, then I don’t know what you want. Should I just take the blue pill?

Kaleban.9834:

Zinwrath.2049:

But, if ya got nothing better to do but write sensationalist posts filled with paranoia and anti-arenanet hate…by all means.

I LOL’d. You obviously failed to comprehend what I was posting, or didn’t bother to read it because it was too long.

If calling out ANet for its poor balance performance across TWO MMOs, then offering constructive ways to avoid ham fisted nerfing is sensationalist paranoia, then I don’t know what you want. Should I just take the blue pill?

you could just stop talking.

Phineas Poe.3018:

Moddo.7105:

As I said there is a boon counter called Conditions.

Do conditions really “counter” boons? Or do they just “counter” Toughness?

I wouldn’t say they counter all boons, but I would agree they counter Protection and Toughness.