Guild Wars 2

AoE abilities balancing

One of the issues brought up a lot in WvW./sPvP is AoE (Area of Effect). We feel like they are too strong at the moment and a lot of people in WvW are gaming the system using AoEs.
For people that don’t know – max targets for siege weapons is 50 while max targets for AoE is 5.
Reducing AoE effectiveness to bring them in line with the single target damage skills.
Major update coming to all the AoE skills – make classes that are good at single target damage stand out a bit more.
Same thing with dungeons – right now if you have a lot of AoE you can past encounters by just spamming AoE which is not what we want.

Yeah man. Guess we’ll have to ditch our traps and longbow? psh, who cares about barrage.

I think they’re referring to siege weapons and particular boss fights. If they nerfed the ranger, I think people would really be up in arms unless they buffed it in some other way. Let’s avoid worrying right now because no one knows exactly what’s going to be in the patch. Software development is hard work (I’ve worked in that field before) so I tend to give video game developers a bit of slack—kind of like waiters. I tip well because I know what that job’s like. It’s in our best interest to trust ANET to make good decisions.

Edit: To prove Arsenic wrong, here’s quotes from the reddit summary you appear to be referencing:

Upcoming AoE skill balancing (nerf)
One of the issues brought up a lot in WvW./sPvP is AoE (Area of Effect). We feel like they are too strong at the moment and a lot of people in WvW are gaming the system using AoEs.
For people that don’t know – max targets for siege weapons is 50 while max targets for AoE is 5.
Reducing AoE effectiveness to bring them in line with the single target damage skills.
Major update coming to all the AoE skills – make classes that are good at single target damage stand out a bit more.
Same thing with dungeons – right now if you have a lot of AoE you can past encounters by just spamming AoE which is not what we want.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/16rsh9/jan_17_dev_livestream_summary/

So what they’re saying is they will reduce the max number of siege weapon targets from 50 down to probably 15 or 20.

It’s almost like you didn’t even read what was posted. They specifically mentioned bringing the AOE skills in line with single target skills, that has nothing to do with siege.
They also specifically mentioned an update to ALL aoe skills.
They also mentioned dungeons, more pve content.

It is not in our best interest to trust net to make good decisions because they have shown us time and time again that their “class balance” decisions are ridiculous.

And don’t give me that “software development is hard work so we should just ignore bad ideas”

Er. How about we wait until we have more details on what they’re changing with AoEs before we overreact like this?

Well, you cannot really nerf the conditions themselves, so that leaves the duration and cooldown to nerf (lets face it they won’t nerf 83 dmg on the physical dmg omg!). Duration for the traps are instant (spike trap), 3 seconds (fire+poison) or 5 seconds (no dmg frost trap). Pretty much if anything does get nerfed for ours it will be the cooldown.

Taym.8326:

Well, you cannot really nerf the conditions themselves, so that leaves the duration and cooldown to nerf (lets face it they won’t nerf 83 dmg on the physical dmg omg!). Duration for the traps are instant (spike trap), 3 seconds (fire+poison) or 5 seconds (no dmg frost trap). Pretty much if anything does get nerfed for ours it will be the cooldown.

AoE size is a possibility, though I doubt whatever comes will have any meaningful effect on traps.

Next patch will be “We are improving the game by removing all classes except Warriors and Guardians to lessen our need to nerf stuff and actually improve these 2 classes.”

I just hope that barrage doesn’t get nerfed… I don’t see really too much they could do to traps without really screwing them over.

If anything they need to just leave the Ranger alone and either fix pets dying so easily in major battles (specifically larger boss aoe). Even if we don’t put any points into beastmastery, the pet should still feel somewhat useful without hearing “MY pet needs help!” every two seconds after swapping in a major boss fight.

I mean if I can dodge boss attacks to a decent extent (still kind of hard to do when theres essentially no real animation for many boss attacks; ooh look a red ring that you have to keep zoomed all the way out to see! Or, look a tiny almost invisible glowing thing that’s the only telegraphing for some massive attack!), my pet should be able to do so too.

I don’t think you understand what the Rangers role is… The post is referring to AoE specific proffessions.. Like the Ele. So that single target roles… Like Ranger and thief will stand out more. Eles should be worried not us. Were single target…

Actually, the post is referring to all AOE skills. I don’t need to point out ranger AOE skills to you, do I? anyway my post was semi facetious but it illustrates a good point.

Major update coming to all the AoE skills – make classes that are good at single target damage stand out a bit more.

Can I also point out at this point that any nerf to AoE is an effective buff to our pets, I for one am looking forward to trying WvW with reduced AoE. Secondly since we have so few AoE attacks especially compared to some classes we lose out a lot less than others.

Also I think traps will remain pretty much the same as the dmg is delivered through conditions which deliver the dmg over a period of time rather than front loading which is probably their main problem with AoE.

Good luck with your pets when you run into stealthed culled thief TEAMS- at which point your wonderful pet is completely useless as it loses the target then wonders around aimlessly while the team thiefs burst you done in about a second.

Nerfing aoe will lead to even bigger zergs and even more thiefs and d/d eles than there is now.

I like barrage, I wouldn’t want to see it go. It’s possibly my favorite ranger skill. I thought the red circles were quite obvious. I’ve never had trouble with AOE skills directed at me. AOE skills give enough time to move out of the red circle, or they declare their arrival well in advance. The only people would would have trouble with AOE skills are those who decide not to move out of the red circles.

If barrage gets nerfed, it should definitely not be a channeled skill anymore and be allowed to be cast on the move.

anyone noticed the rise of trappers (and rangers in general) in pvp?

they’ll probably poof again when the patch comes.

Arsenic Touch.7960:

It’s almost like you didn’t even read what was posted.

I admit my reading comprehension isn’t great but I did read it thoroughly two times.

[quote=1233208;Arsenic Touch.7960:][quote=1233208;Arsenic Touch.7960:]

>It’s almost like you didn’t even read what was posted.

I admit my reading comprehension isn’t great but I did read it thoroughly two times.

>hey specifically mentioned bringing the AOE skills in line with single target skills, that has nothing to do with siege.

This is what was posted in the summary on reddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/16rsh9/jan_17_dev_livestream_summary/

“One of the issues brought up a lot in WvW./sPvP is AoE (Area of Effect). We feel like they are too strong at the moment and a lot of people in WvW are gaming the system using AoEs. For people that don’t know – max targets for siege weapons is 50 while max targets for AoE is 5.”

So they’re going to reduce the number of players a siege weapon can hit (like I said) and perhaps do other minor tweaks to the damage calculation. This is where I got the information that you have a problem with.

“Reducing AoE effectiveness to bring them in line with the single target damage skills.
Major update coming to all the AoE skills – make classes that are good at single target damage stand out a bit more.”

I interpret this as pets stay alive longer underneath AoE so I’m not really sure what the issue is? Honestly, ranger is a hybrid single target / AoE class so I don’t think we’ll be affected badly. If ranger was nerfed in dubs, I can really see people getting really upset with ANET. They want to make us happy because that makes them money. Happy customers are paying customers—particularly when it comes to expansions.

>It is not in our best interest to trust net to make good decisions because they have shown us time and time again that their “class balance” decisions are ridiculous.

This is a biased and generally untrue statement.

>And don’t give me that “software development is hard work so we should just ignore bad ideas”

I never said that. But the fact that you think software dev. isn’t hard says tomes about your understanding of the field. They’re handling their job magnificently regardless of your opinion.

Arsenic Touch.7960:

Actually, the post is referring to all AOE skills. I don’t need to point out ranger AOE skills to you, do I? anyway my post was semi facetious but it illustrates a good point.

Major update coming to all the AoE skills – make classes that are good at single target damage stand out a bit more.

Yes it’s referring to AoE skills but a Ranger isn’t intended to be an AoE intense profession, the nerf is for professions like Necro and Ele’s where almost every attack is AoE, Ranger has Barrage and traps. Traps are “Intended” to be defensive measures not offensive, even though people chose to use them offensively.

I really don’t think this nerf will effect Ranger anywhere near as much as it’s going to effect Elementalist and Necromancers… And I can’t see much of a nerf they can do on traps and barrage, barrage is already weak as it is. And traps will still be effective at “Trapping” i.e their intended purpose no matter what gets done to them.

From what I can see it looks like there trying to make straight up damage attacks more of a focus, so who knows me might see a damage buff on the general attacks of Ranger. Their purely trying to saturate the AoE and non AoE to balance them out. Cause there is no denying that at the moment AoE is a lot more effective than non AoE, and they want to fix that by putting more of a focus on actual attacks and not AoE attacks. I see it as a benefit not a nerf

Sina.9208:

capuchinseven.8395:

This just sums up how stupid people and forums are.

People are whining we don’t do enough AOE and are useless, ANet tell us they are helping by bringing WvW and PVE AOE classes down a little to help single target classes stand out more, player makes a post of the forum that this is the end of the world and ranger is ruined.

You are very optimistic, they can easily nerf what little aoe we have.

^This.

Right now, the one objectively “good” ability on LB is Barrage. Its the only attack I can be proud of in a large fight. What is this nerf going to do to it?

Not to mention Axe MH’s only real selling point being the bounce on Axe 1 and the spread on Axe 2. Its our only ranged MH option and 2/3 of it is multi-targetted. Will they nerf it too?

If they decide that the best way to nerf AoE is an “across the board” system that reduces all multi-target abilities by X% for each enemy hit by the attack, we’ll be boned. If they instead do it on an “ability by ability” basis, I can’t imagine they’ll be too hard on us, but who knows?

Omega.1473:

Not to mention Axe MH’s only real selling point being the bounce on Axe 1 and the spread on Axe 2. Its our only ranged MH option and 2/3 of it is multi-targetted. Will they nerf it too?

Axe 2 is already nerfed – the skill is broken, it doesn’t do hit damage, only bleed damage. It’s borderline useless.

We should be less worried about this nerf, or about improvements, and more worried about getting our bugs fixed…we have dozens and dozens of straight-up bugs. Not a single person has every played a Ranger as designed, because that ranger does not exist – before anyone can talk about whether Rangers are good enough, ANet actually has to manifest them as intended.

Until they do that, it’s simply not possible to say how good or bad they really are.

Omega.1473:

Sina.9208:

capuchinseven.8395:

This just sums up how stupid people and forums are.

People are whining we don’t do enough AOE and are useless, ANet tell us they are helping by bringing WvW and PVE AOE classes down a little to help single target classes stand out more, player makes a post of the forum that this is the end of the world and ranger is ruined.

You are very optimistic, they can easily nerf what little aoe we have.

^This.

Right now, the one objectively “good” ability on LB is Barrage. Its the only attack I can be proud of in a large fight. What is this nerf going to do to it?

Not to mention Axe MH’s only real selling point being the bounce on Axe 1 and the spread on Axe 2. Its our only ranged MH option and 2/3 of it is multi-targetted. Will they nerf it too?

If they decide that the best way to nerf AoE is an “across the board” system that reduces all multi-target abilities by X% for each enemy hit by the attack, we’ll be boned. If they instead do it on an “ability by ability” basis, I can’t imagine they’ll be too hard on us, but who knows?

So you’re saying that 10 stacks of vulnerability isn’t good? Knockback isn’t good? Come on, all barrage is good for is cripple and AoE nerf likely won’t affect it. Why? Because that nerf is driven towards trap rangers in spvp, elementalists in wvw (their AoE fire attack is way OP in dubs), and necros (blood is might…if you haven’t tried this skill on necro, wow, it is awesome…and it is going to get the nerf hammer).

Anthrage.2519:

Axe 2 is already nerfed – the skill is broken, it doesn’t do hit damage, only bleed damage. It’s borderline useless.

Axe 2 is not broken. When activated, each of the 5 axes does 1/5 of the total damage (the physical damage, not the bleed damage) listed on the tool tip. I assume this is working as intended because similar skills such as our shortbow 2 (poison volley) work exactly the same way.

Axe 2 works alright, in line with other similar skills, but overall the weapon as a mainhand is really weak.

Arsenic Touch.7960:

AoE abilities balancing

One of the issues brought up a lot in WvW./sPvP is AoE (Area of Effect). We feel like they are too strong at the moment and a lot of people in WvW are gaming the system using AoEs.
For people that don’t know – max targets for siege weapons is 50 while max targets for AoE is 5.
Reducing AoE effectiveness to bring them in line with the single target damage skills.
Major update coming to all the AoE skills – make classes that are good at single target damage stand out a bit more.
Same thing with dungeons – right now if you have a lot of AoE you can past encounters by just spamming AoE which is not what we want.

Yeah man. Guess we’ll have to ditch our traps and longbow? psh, who cares about barrage.

Traps: garbage CHECK
LB: garbage CHECK

Point of thread: No idea OP seems to like sub pare game play

M8 you wanna run around with a LB and role play some weird sniper fantasy go ahead bro, all power to ya, but really LB and Trap builds are sub par…Or you like to stand back in a zerg and that’s how you get your rox off!

Seriously though if you don’t know why this change is being made go see the video of 4 Eles wiping AN ENTIRE ZERG in WvW!

Considering barrage is a channeled self cc, I doubt there will be much change to it.

I am curious to see about this single target damage buff. We may see much more buffs than nerfs if this happens.

That video right there. 2700 crits is the highest I’ve seen on my Longbow autoattacks, and that guy was having them drop from the sky like… well… like giant balls of fire upon the heads of 5 of his enemies at a time.

Kitten that noise!

Now if he was only hitting for, oh say, 1000k crits and/or many, many 300-500 non-crits he wouldn’t be killing anyone solo with it. However, if he were in a large enough group, that would add up, but it would still come down to focus firing targets.

The idea of an AoE should be to “soften up” your targets, not be the primary attack to outright killing them!

yep yep, now I see aoe has been nerfing, our pets attack should be to hit multiple targets in the first place!!!!

awesome video there btw, it’s just like 300 haha

Arsenic Touch.7960:

AoE abilities balancing

One of the issues brought up a lot in WvW./sPvP is AoE (Area of Effect). We feel like they are too strong at the moment and a lot of people in WvW are gaming the system using AoEs.
For people that don’t know – max targets for siege weapons is 50 while max targets for AoE is 5.
Reducing AoE effectiveness to bring them in line with the single target damage skills.
Major update coming to all the AoE skills – make classes that are good at single target damage stand out a bit more.
Same thing with dungeons – right now if you have a lot of AoE you can past encounters by just spamming AoE which is not what we want.

Yeah man. Guess we’ll have to ditch our traps and longbow? psh, who cares about barrage.

They are talking about AoE-skills that currently do too much damage measured proportionally against single target ones. Barrage acts mainly as a CC-skill, not as a nuke used to spike your way through “encounters”.

This will be more of an ele/necro nerf tbh……we’d lose some effectiveness in like…….one or 2 attacks tops?

Arsenic Touch.7960:

AoE abilities balancing

One of the issues brought up a lot in WvW./sPvP is AoE (Area of Effect). We feel like they are too strong at the moment and a lot of people in WvW are gaming the system using AoEs.
For people that don’t know – max targets for siege weapons is 50 while max targets for AoE is 5.
Reducing AoE effectiveness to bring them in line with the single target damage skills.
Major update coming to all the AoE skills – make classes that are good at single target damage stand out a bit more.
Same thing with dungeons – right now if you have a lot of AoE you can past encounters by just spamming AoE which is not what we want.

Yeah man. Guess we’ll have to ditch our traps and longbow? psh, who cares about barrage.

As a thief, this is welcoming news. I hope barrage is on the nerf list.

Thanks Anet, you’re awesome.

Cempa.5619:

Seriously though if you don’t know why this change is being made go see the video of 4 Eles wiping AN ENTIRE ZERG in WvW!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-919RMwyfnk

stupid zerg; js, if they pushed aggressively (and they clearly had the numbers) then they wouldve obliterated the eles (i also watched the same guys fort defence video; they help them back and killed a hell of a lot; but once the zerg aggressively forced their way up they got beaten back quick.

I’m not going to assume our AoE is nerfed. Mostly because you got this information off Reddit. Until I see OFFICIAL FORUM WORD from the devs on this, I take that info from Reddit with a grain of salt. Besides, to be honest I don’t recall seeing AoE from any class that needs to be nerfed…save for the elementalist, but they’re so easy for a ranger to kill that there’s no point worrying about that attack for us (plus the AoE is so easy to dodge).

RyuDragnier.9476:

I’m not going to assume our AoE is nerfed. Mostly because you got this information off Reddit. Until I see OFFICIAL FORUM WORD from the devs on this, I take that info from Reddit with a grain of salt. Besides, to be honest I don’t recall seeing AoE from any class that needs to be nerfed…save for the elementalist, but they’re so easy for a ranger to kill that there’s no point worrying about that attack for us (plus the AoE is so easy to dodge).

Actually, those are official dev words. Nothing I posted is from reddit. I don’t even go to reddit. I think it’s ridiculous that anet even turns to reddit instead of using this forum. Moving on.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Developer-Livestream-Discussion/first

Go ahead and click the link and read the transcript.

But here says something different. – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Is-AoE-actually-a-problem-Discussion-Thread/page/6#post1240951

Now they’re saying that it won’t be a blanket nerf but given their track record with saying one thing and doing another, that is what should taken with a grain of salt.
Remember the first thing they wrote is that they will be addressing ALL the aoe skills. Now they’re saying they’re only going to do some of them.

Any other questions?

Ahh, good point. I hadn’t looked at that thread yet.

Cempa.5619:

Arsenic Touch.7960:

AoE abilities balancing

One of the issues brought up a lot in WvW./sPvP is AoE (Area of Effect). We feel like they are too strong at the moment and a lot of people in WvW are gaming the system using AoEs.
For people that don’t know – max targets for siege weapons is 50 while max targets for AoE is 5.
Reducing AoE effectiveness to bring them in line with the single target damage skills.
Major update coming to all the AoE skills – make classes that are good at single target damage stand out a bit more.
Same thing with dungeons – right now if you have a lot of AoE you can past encounters by just spamming AoE which is not what we want.

Yeah man. Guess we’ll have to ditch our traps and longbow? psh, who cares about barrage.

Traps: garbage CHECK
LB: garbage CHECK

Point of thread: No idea OP seems to like sub pare game play

M8 you wanna run around with a LB and role play some weird sniper fantasy go ahead bro, all power to ya, but really LB and Trap builds are sub par…Or you like to stand back in a zerg and that’s how you get your rox off!

Seriously though if you don’t know why this change is being made go see the video of 4 Eles wiping AN ENTIRE ZERG in WvW!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-919RMwyfnk

All that is is a video of 4 good players killing the worlds dumbest zerg to ever walk the earth. 2 stealthed Theives could have BS’d those eles into fertilizer no problem. Or , hey, better yet, why not try pushing and not acting like a couple ticks of 500 damage is the end of the world. Maybe if people played a little more aggressively and stopped making glass cannons…
If anything all it shows is that the attunement mechanic needs to have a longer cool down to prevent them from setting off so many AoE’s at once. Even the ranger will become an unstoppable juggernaut if we taped 60 of them together in a zerg and had them all focus fire with LB 1 at max range.