Guild Wars 2

After a recent match up against a certain server it has come to my attention that there is a lot of issues that need to be addressed in regards to small numbers vs large numbers scale fighting. I am going to talk about the issues that make it extremely harder then it should be for smaller groups to defeat larger groups no matter how much skill is involved.

#1: The biggest issue at the moment is the fact there is an AoE limit of 5 people. This gives a major advantage to the larger side as they do more damage to your team members then you can to theirs for example.

Example: If a 5v20 were to take place and each person stacked on each other.
The 5 man team would only be damaging 25% of their team while the 20 man would be damaging the 5 man team 100%.

Fix/Suggestion: The AoE limit must be increased (To what number I am still unsure of this but I would personally go with 10-20).

#2/#3: These issues coincide with each other and they are known as the downed state and revive mechanic (in combat). The downed state is still to strong when it comes to being outnumbered in fights. The damage and health of people in the downed state needs to be reduced as they deal too much damage and can tank for too long considering they are meant to be downed .The revive mechanic needs to some major work. The fact multiple people can resurrect someone faster then you can channel downed is a problem.

Example: Fighting in a 3v1 if the 3 people know how to resurrect you will never be able to defeat these odds due the fact they can resurrect someone quicker then you can down them.

Fix/Suggestion: I would decease the damage and health people have in the downed state by ~50%. This would make it feel like they were truly downed and not just giving a second life. The revive mechanic needs to be changed for when in combat, I would suggest you only let 1 person resurrect each player while in combat.

#4: When looking at combo fields this one is pretty obvious this favors whoever has the most numbers are they can stack faster/longer and more often. This allows them to have alot more boons then you and gives them another advantage on top of the numbers one.

Example: A group of 20 people will be able to stack up to 25 might almost instantly and be able to retain it for most of the fight. Where as a smaller group (say 5)will have trouble reaching that many stacks and it will often fall off much quicker. Also during the fight people will often use combo fields without realizing it, and of course the more people you have means the more likely you are to have lots of combo fields to use.

Fix/Suggestion: Due to the fact this would be hard to maintain to only a certain numbers of people I would say you have to remove sharing combo fields and only let people use their own.

Thank you for reading!
Let me know your thoughts below.

I… I… agree with Bunzy.

(not about combo fields, that’s ridiculous)

Agreed. Combo fields could use a rework in general. In many cases what you lose in positioning or ability opportunity cost outweighs benefits.

CrimsonHandHiro.9574:

I… I… agree with Bunzy.

(not about combo fields, that’s ridiculous)

You don’t agree that larger groups are able to stack ridiculous amounts of boons due to all the combo fields going off?

Acelerion.6820:

Agreed. Combo fields could use a rework in general. In many cases what you lose in positioning or ability opportunity cost outweighs benefits.

Something definitely needs to be done.

Definitely agreed on the AoE limit. For combo fields, limiting the amount of times a particular field can trigger combos could work. Also, rallying from kills should only happen in PvE.

In my opinion, the main reason that Zergs are such a common and viable strategy is more due to the map design of WvW than anything else. With incredibly small and linear feeling maps, there’s really only one, maybe 2 ways to get from one objective to the other, so when players move, they move as a zerg for safety in numbers. Small groups moving the in the vicinity can be easily chased down and killed by the zerg and there is no place to hide.

Of course, many of your points are extremely valid, I think that there should be an AoE limit, but it definetely shouldn’t be as small as it currently is. Also, i agree with DarthBenedict’s idea regarding combo fields, they do get somewhat ridiculous, but the OP’s idea would basically gut the entire combo system in WvW and make it pointless. Limiting the number of uses on a field serves as a nice middle ground. Anyway, that’s just my two cents, i’m not exactly holding my breath for map changes, so your idea is certainly intriguing.

Polismassa.6740:

In my opinion, the main reason that Zergs are such a common and viable strategy is more due to the map design of WvW than anything else. With incredibly small and linear feeling maps, there’s really only one, maybe 2 ways to get from one objective to the other, so when players move, they move as a zerg for safety in numbers. Small groups moving the in the vicinity can be easily chased down and killed by the zerg and there is no place to hide.

To add on to this, zergs are common because of 2 things: no handicap for having vast majority of a map’s players in 1 area and lack of knowledge of how to run organized WvW.

First issue, nerf large groups of players. Give them less health, less damage, punish them for trying to steamroll other players by sheer numbers and not by tactics. You want to have 75% of a map in 1 spot? Awesome, here is a 30% health nerf and 30% damage nerf.

Second issue, there is a huge difference between casual WvW’ers and the more hardcore guilds. It’s to the point where the militia or any solo player, will only follow a commander and log off if one isn’t on. If there is only 1 commander on, anyone who isn’t familiar with tactics or is solo, migrates to that 1 person. Give commander’s ability to give out a “captain” tag that will allow another person to direct troops and attack/defend effectively. Breaking up the people is how to break up a zerg.

Also, fix outmanned buff please.

Just my personal opinions.

the max 5 AoE limit invites player to zerg……

The ae limit is to on the nose. If ae is a problem reduce its availability. Telling people that thing they just casted doessent matter is stupid

And why has open world PvP regressed since daoc? Shouldn’t things move in the other direction.

The fact of the matter is, an organized group can take on and defeat zergs twice their size with little difficulty, often using these very strategies that you argue favor zergs (coordinated buffing, stacking to mitigate aoe, not stopping to finish downed players, reviving their own quickly). Disorganized masses of people don’t use these strategies, and if they are, then they’re using teamwork and skill, and should absolutely be beating groups smaller than them. If you’re getting rolled by groups larger than you, you’re not doing it right, or they’re just good. end of story.

That being said, I will say that might stacks on fire fields is excessive, mostly when comparing it to other fields (3 stacks of might for 20 seconds vs. 3 seconds of retaliation on a retaliation field).

Are you really making the argument rez/rally doessent benefit the side with the numbers?

a good group vs a good group the larger one should win.
My guild groups runs over groups 3 times or larger their size almost every night a few times. I think there already enough things you can do to beat large zerg groups.

There are still lots of zergs that dont know how to play.. So enough things to kill.

Bunzy.8674:

#1: The biggest issue at the moment is the fact there is an AoE limit of 5 people.

Fix/Suggestion: The AoE limit must be increased (To what number I am still unsure of this but I would personally go with 10-20).

#2/#3: These issues coincide with each other and they are known as the downed state and revive mechanic (in combat).

Fix/Suggestion: I would decease the damage and health people have in the downed state by ~50%. This would make it feel like they were truly downed and not just giving a second life. The revive mechanic needs to be changed for when in combat, I would suggest you only let 1 person resurrect each player while in combat.

#4: When looking at combo fields this one is pretty obvious this favors whoever has the most numbers are they can stack faster/longer and more often.

Fix/Suggestion: Due to the fact this would be hard to maintain to only a certain numbers of people I would say you have to remove sharing combo fields and only let people use their own.

1) I am not sure this is a huge deal, you can certainly work around it, but I think increasing limit to 10 might be a good test.

2) I agree too much damage, too much health. Downed state should do no damage at all imo, just tools to keep from being capped and to heal yourself. Also I think the duration of the debuff you get for being downed needs to be longer, with fewer debuffs needed before you just die outright.

3) I personally think you shouldn’t be able to revive someone at all while in combat, it is something that should occur after the field of battle has been won.

4) I do not think this is a huge issue, certainly you can work around it. If combo fields limited its effects to the first 5-10 people triggering the field, so similar to the AoE limit, then it would be weaker for the zerg as its impact would be more random as to who is hit then with a group of 5.

This game is certainly different then others when it comes to zerg busting. You rely a lot more on movement and controlling the fight, then just bursting down your enemy. I enjoy it a lot.

Isnt the AoE nerf going to make zerging even more mandatory? Its going to hurt rather than help.

Only problem I see so far with WvW is terrible performance on settings lower then “Best performance” option. My rig was able render massive battles in EvE without problems and there we talk about something ANet can only dream about (hundreds people in same place and no hick ups on client and server side). I had stable FPS even during Jita blockade (in the system), yet my GW2 is unplayable when there are more then 30 people on screen just running around (add some fancy VFX in fight and you play turn based strategy).

Compare it to average castle siege in Lineage 2 (yes, it’s old engine, but I play WvW on gfx settings which looks much worse then Lineage 2 on best settings), again hundreds of people at one place, yet no performance issues what so ever.

Also seriously kittened up rendering. I’m tired of being killed by invisible zerg even if I try to be careful and watch my surrounding, the game just doesn’t render what’s near me.

But I agree on AoE limit, that just sucks. Did any developer actually said how they get the limit? Only thing I can see behind this is lacking server HW, so they don’t want too many calculations per one effect.

Little OT: So far I can agree that only part of GW2 witch works fine is PvE, everything else is either alpha/beta stage (yes, I’m looking at you sPvP in comparison to richness we had in GW1) or just screwed up in so many ways (WvW).

Definitely increase the AOE limit. I want to see the end of stacking. It’s a simple change… if someone is in the red circle, they get hit.

Bunzy.8674:

After a recent match up against a certain server it has come to my attention that there is a lot of issues that need to be addressed in regards to small numbers vs large numbers scale fighting. I am going to talk about the issues that make it extremely harder then it should be for smaller groups to defeat larger groups no matter how much skill is involved.

I disagree with all of them. I like how WvW plays right now. It encourages all style of play, small group to big zergs. Even small groups wiped out big zergs. Big zergs wipe out small groups etc etc.

#1: The biggest issue at the moment is the fact there is an AoE limit of 5 people. This gives a major advantage to the larger side as they do more damage to your team members then you can to theirs for example.

Example: If a 5v20 were to take place and each person stacked on each other.
The 5 man team would only be damaging 25% of their team while the 20 man would be damaging the 5 man team 100%.

Fix/Suggestion: The AoE limit must be increased (To what number I am still unsure of this but I would personally go with 10-20).

Completely against it. Zergs are really easy to join into. I do not want to join a zerg just to die. If you want to destroy zergs, learn to play. There are tons of organized guilds destroying larger zergs.

#2/#3: These issues coincide with each other and they are known as the downed state and revive mechanic (in combat). The downed state is still to strong when it comes to being outnumbered in fights. The damage and health of people in the downed state needs to be reduced as they deal too much damage and can tank for too long considering they are meant to be downed .The revive mechanic needs to some major work. The fact multiple people can resurrect someone faster then you can channel downed is a problem.

Example: Fighting in a 3v1 if the 3 people know how to resurrect you will never be able to defeat these odds due the fact they can resurrect someone quicker then you can down them.

Fix/Suggestion: I would decease the damage and health people have in the downed state by ~50%. This would make it feel like they were truly downed and not just giving a second life. The revive mechanic needs to be changed for when in combat, I would suggest you only let 1 person resurrect each player while in combat.

Completely against this. Big L2P issue.

If you don’t want players to be resurrected. Prevent their resurrection in the first place. Stomp them before they get resurrected. Use Invulnerability/stability to stomp them. Knock back the resurrecters. Etc etc.

#4: When looking at combo fields this one is pretty obvious this favors whoever has the most numbers are they can stack faster/longer and more often. This allows them to have alot more boons then you and gives them another advantage on top of the numbers one.

Example: A group of 20 people will be able to stack up to 25 might almost instantly and be able to retain it for most of the fight. Where as a smaller group (say 5)will have trouble reaching that many stacks and it will often fall off much quicker. Also during the fight people will often use combo fields without realizing it, and of course the more people you have means the more likely you are to have lots of combo fields to use.

Fix/Suggestion: Due to the fact this would be hard to maintain to only a certain numbers of people I would say you have to remove sharing combo fields and only let people use their own.

Dumb idea in general.

In otherwords, you want this game to be less about teamwork?

Thank you for reading!
Let me know your thoughts below.

Terrible ideas and there are really zero problems in the current state.

1) I agree, increase targets but reduce damage slightly.
2) Disagree, downed is fine for most professions.
3) I like the suggestion that niim had. Only allow revive from defeated state outside combat.
4) Disagree, but maybe limit the number of targets for combo fields, as with healing.

Also, if changes to number of targets for AoE is made, maybe targets for buffs and healing should be looked at too?

The Problem with Beginnerism:

Beginners roll a few beginners, then think they’re not beginners…then while plucking daisies, they get grilled by a beginner group +3, and think it couldn’t possibly be their beginnerness that hath spelt defeat, because they obviously aren’t beginners anymore…Then instead of transcending their beginnerisms, they decide in their ultimate beginner wisdom, that the game should conform better to their beginnerological assessments of beginnerry….

Hence this thread.

Cavemen and Aliens

1# Yea, why not all play ele/necro and insta kill everything with a pile of aoe….
The limit was needed to prevent insta killing zergs. (wells are kinda OP >.<)
2# and 3# I love the downed state, it adds another layer of gameplay and strategy. Rezzing mates encourages teamplay, our guild had trouble first too to stop larger groups from mass rezzing. But we learned how to deal with it and now we use it to our advantage (so yea L2P issue).
4# Combo fields are fun and adds ANOTHER layer of strategy to the game. It makes different classes sync with each other, remove this and you’ll make wvw a lot duller…

I couldn’t kill 10 other players in a FPS, although I was clearly a lot more skilled, nerf plox.
—>same issue….

Sometimes it ain’t ment in a game to take down groups 5 times your size. And please, you can take down 5-6 players with 2… learn how to stop em from rezzing (fear, knockdown, knockback, etc)

So yea, all your points are invalid.

The game is only what you make it, if you want to be apart of the zerg then go for it. If you want to be apart of an organized guild then join one (like mine) There are many ways to play the game and zerging isn’t the main one. Try being apart of a strike squad that hits the camps if you want to do something with a small amount of players while the main force is hitting keeps or harder to take structures.

Not sure what effect lifting AoE cap will have – in principle I support it fully (with a caveat I will divulge below), secretly I suspect it would be catastrophic for performance.

If you want to break the mindless zerg’s dominance on the battlefield, disable AoE/combo-field stacking.

By disable I mean make it more interesting – nobody knows what’s going on in the middle of a 100-man battle, never mind culling – it’s an incomprehensible cluster-kitten of effects which destroys anyone practically instantly… unless you bunch up, then only five of you will bite it.

Let us nullify opponent’s combo-fields with our own combo fields of an opposing element (air>smoke, fire>ice, water>fire etc); make stacked friendly combo-fields either cancel each other out, or perhaps combine to create new combo-fields in their place (water+fire=smoke, for example). It’s not a particularly radical design concept, and we might have a clue about what’s going on in the big battles.

Such a tedious metagame (no surprise, like OP I’m a dueling-focused player) of 50-man ‘lawnmower’ zergs rushing about, jockeying to be the ones who abuse culling better than the other and sweep over the top of their opponents like a steamroller, before they ever even render on their victim’s clients.

The stacking of AoE enables zerglings by making them as effective as the amount of people they can surround themselves with, all spamming the same kitten as them at the same time in the same place. Disabling AoE stacking does the opposite, in that the more people you surround yourself with, the less personally effective you become (due to people scrubbing all your stuff by placing their own on top of it), and you become more vulnerable to dueling builds who are bold enough to get up in the mix.

My point being that it will promote small-unit tactics, counterplay, dueling, and render the mindless/skill-less masses impotent. Do it Anet, people were telling you before release it needed remedy, and despite some vague mumblings about toning-down the effects (still can’t see anything in the average cluster-kitten) ain’t nothing happened.

LilMcGinley.3890:

To add on to this, zergs are common because of 2 things: no handicap for having vast majority of a map’s players in 1 area

the downside is they can only be in 1 place at a time,.

Ya the issue with aoes is they are tooo strong thats why they are capped at 5 targets. Thats also why zerging and turtleing is so effective vs smaller numbers. They could remove the AOE cap but not without scaling aoe damage. For example the aoe hits a single target at full strength but the more targets it hits the less power it hits each target. Its like this lets say your an ele and you firestorm 20 people you can hit all 20 for them but your damage is divided by 20. so instead of hiting each one of them for 2k a hit your hitting each one for 200 a hit or something. With proper scalling they can uncap aoes. This game just doesn’t have aoe scaling which is a flaw in the mechanics.

I personally believe that ranged aoes are too strong now though. with exception to pbaoe which is fine how it is at least with warriors HB roots you you cannot move and you can be easily interrupted and you can not pull this off from saftey of ranged. There are big drawbacks to using this skill so it isn’t op at all.

Just make some classes AOE specific, and some classes single target. Remove the cap, scale the dmg of aoe down, and go from there. The whole “everyone can do everything” MO is proving to be useless.

Pick a class based on what that class brings. Not so you can just run around spamming 2 buttons and kill most red.

Ya the holy trinity system does work thats why everyone uses that. It was refreshing to see the A-NET wanted to do something different and we all enjoy it in PVE.

In PVP the whole everyone can do everything is seriously flawed. That is why before ANET did it no one in thier right mind has done it. Turning a mage into a Cleric,Tank,Ranged DD and debuffer all at the same time. Since they can be everything build is one of the most un thought out things I think ANET did.

That is just an example. The problem comes in that even though they had the mindset to make every profession be able to fill every roll they failed at that miserably. And really didn’t give every profession equal powers they gave some way too many and made their skill trees so easy to build to make powerful and others they slacked on and made their skill trees very limiting in how they can build warrior for example.

I wont get into thief’s A-Nets take on how the assassin/ stealth rouge class should be played and balanced is way out of line as far as the mmo industry in general conceptualizes it to be played. Its very broken in how often it can stealth and that damage done to a cloaked player doesn’t bring it out of stealth. Like it should.

i’m pretty confident that if you hit something hidden you should know where it is because you hit it and it should be no longer hidden but it doesnt work that way in GW2 you don’t even see numbers.

Bunzy.8674:

CrimsonHandHiro.9574:

I… I… agree with Bunzy.

(not about combo fields, that’s ridiculous)

You don’t agree that larger groups are able to stack ridiculous amounts of boons due to all the combo fields going off?

And why shouldn’t a larger group of players be able to stack ‘ridiculous amounts’ (which is very subjective btw, boons have a limit to how much they can be stacked) boons? More players, more boons? Seems pretty legitimate and fair.

What I am getting from most of the OP and the guildies that identify with the OP is that they believe they are skilled and should therefore be able to rock large groups of players with significantly fewer numbers.

It appears the request to ANet is to give a small amount of players a greater advantage over bigger numbers of players.

But it already works like this. We have all seen groups that have wiped larger numbered opponents with smaller numbers.

I would suggest people roll with more than 5-10 people stop banging their heads against a wall of 25+ people if they want to succeed in more in WvW engagements.

Quenta.2978:

I would suggest people roll with more than 5-10 people stop banging their heads against a wall of 25+ people and roll with more people if they want to succeed in more in WvW engagements.

Why? Why should there be an artificial cap to protect these zergers? Whether you live or die should be based on skill, not based on anet coddling you so that you never have to get better. Whether it’s 10 people or 100, if they stand in the red circles, tough kitten.

Acelerion.6820:

Are you really making the argument rez/rally doessent benefit the side with the numbers?

The benefit is equal to all parties as are the results of the mechanic. If you don’t down your opponent faster than they down you, you risk rallying more of your opponents. This can happen with any amount of people in an engagement.

In fact, I would go as far to say that a very skilled, small group that can tag more opponents have the ability to rally off their opponents deaths more effectively than a smaller group. A smaller group (vs a larger group) has a larger pool of enemies to target and have the possibility to rally off of. A larger group has a limited amount of players to rally off of.

Either way, you have to kill faster than your opponent or you lose.

dreztina.4820:

Quenta.2978:

I would suggest people roll with more than 5-10 people stop banging their heads against a wall of 25+ people and roll with more people if they want to succeed in more in WvW engagements.

Why? Why should there be an artificial cap to protect these zergers? Whether you live or die should be based on skill, not based on anet coddling you so that you never have to get better. Whether it’s 10 people or 100, if they stand in the red circles, tough kitten.

It’s not an artificial cap, it’s clearly in the game.

If you are finding it difficult to succeed in WvW at its current state, you must adapt. You can continue to be frustrated that the current mechanics do not favor your particular play style, but you can do something about it in the interim (i.e., play with more people). Because until ANet decides to favor very small groups against large groups of players, I am afraid you will continue to be disappointed with the current WvW mechanics.

Quenta.2978:

dreztina.4820:

Quenta.2978:

I would suggest people roll with more than 5-10 people stop banging their heads against a wall of 25+ people and roll with more people if they want to succeed in more in WvW engagements.

Why? Why should there be an artificial cap to protect these zergers? Whether you live or die should be based on skill, not based on anet coddling you so that you never have to get better. Whether it’s 10 people or 100, if they stand in the red circles, tough kitten.

It’s not an artificial cap, it’s clearly in the game.

If you are finding it difficult to succeed in WvW at its current state, you must adapt. You can continue to be frustrated that the current mechanics do not favor your particular play style, but you can do something about it in the interim (i.e., play with more people). Because until ANet decides to favor very small groups against large groups of players, I am afraid you will continue to be disappointed with the current WvW mechanics.

Improvise, adapt, overcome?……. Cavemen don’t speak alien yo

Thor.1756:

The fact of the matter is, an organized group can take on and defeat zergs twice their size with little difficulty, often using these very strategies that you argue favor zergs (coordinated buffing, stacking to mitigate aoe, not stopping to finish downed players, reviving their own quickly). Disorganized masses of people don’t use these strategies, and if they are, then they’re using teamwork and skill, and should absolutely be beating groups smaller than them. If you’re getting rolled by groups larger than you, you’re not doing it right, or they’re just good. end of story.

That being said, I will say that might stacks on fire fields is excessive, mostly when comparing it to other fields (3 stacks of might for 20 seconds vs. 3 seconds of retaliation on a retaliation field).

Im not agree with you, the maths are clear, there is no strategy or skill, by simple stacking 30 people in 1 spot, with that u guarantee a -50% of dmg that u would get in a 5v5 battle if u are facing a smaller number of enemies, The small group can flank, can aoe and they still will get advantage of that 5 cap aoe thing.

You might have some valid points, but honestly your suggestions couldn’t have been thought out… if they were you don’t play many classes. Especially the combo field suggestion…. lets make ele stronger for having a large amount of finishers and fields, while classes like warriors get kitten because they have 1 field with a large amount of finisher. Increasing the cap on aoe will hurt classes who are already weak on aoe, making them even worse… which is the opposite direction anet is going considering they want to make ST better. I hate rally in wvw with a passion, but it only really becomes an issue when you have randoms running next to you playing rally bot.

In the end you’d be better served adapting rather than throwing out half thought out suggestions on the forums.

runeblade.7514:

Bunzy.8674:

#2/#3: These issues coincide with each other and they are known as the downed state and revive mechanic (in combat). The downed state is still to strong when it comes to being outnumbered in fights. The damage and health of people in the downed state needs to be reduced as they deal too much damage and can tank for too long considering they are meant to be downed .The revive mechanic needs to some major work. The fact multiple people can resurrect someone faster then you can channel downed is a problem.

Example: Fighting in a 3v1 if the 3 people know how to resurrect you will never be able to defeat these odds due the fact they can resurrect someone quicker then you can down them.

Completely against this. Big L2P issue.

If you don’t want players to be resurrected. Prevent their resurrection in the first place. Stomp them before they get resurrected. Use Invulnerability/stability to stomp them. Knock back the resurrecters. Etc etc.

Quenta.2978:

Acelerion.6820:

Are you really making the argument rez/rally doessent benefit the side with the numbers?

The benefit is equal to all parties as are the results of the mechanic. If you don’t down your opponent faster than they down you, you risk rallying more of your opponents. This can happen with any amount of people in an engagement.

In fact, I would go as far to say that a very skilled, small group that can tag more opponents have the ability to rally off their opponents deaths more effectively than a smaller group. A smaller group (vs a larger group) has a larger pool of enemies to target and have the possibility to rally off of. A larger group has a limited amount of players to rally off of.

Either way, you have to kill faster than your opponent or you lose.

I feel like the downed state is a very large disadvantage to smaller groups. 1 person rezzing can revived a downed player faster than one can finish a downed player. So trying to stomp someone downed in the middle of 20 of his friends is going to be impossible unless you also have 20 friends pounding the rez clump with aoe/cc. But lets say your 5 man group runs into 20 and you down one. One person throws up stability/invulnerability to stomp and the other 4 try to aoe/cc the rez clump (if all 4 of your friends aren’t getting focused at all and dont have to spend time playing defensively). If 3 people are rezzing the downed guy would be up very quickly, maybe before the aoe/cc gets to be 100% useful. Even then if the other players in the larger group are near, your aoe might hit them instead of rezzers. Also the larger group can spam aoes on the downed ally as well to protect him and melt anyone stomping that doesnt have invulernability.

Then from the other side of it, if a zerg downs someone in a smaller group… they dont even blink at the idea cuz the mass aoe damage makes you think your downed state didnt even happen. No reason to finish people when standard aoe of 20-30+ people will finish the job 10x faster.

Do you suggest you run quickness/stability/invul utilities and always save them just for stomping downed players? That really hinders your abilities outside of finishing people.
Its like the downed state was a scapegoat for the zergbabies that huddle in masses for protection and don’t know how to take some heat or focus fire. Your health goes away but don’t worry your not dead yet, your friends can still save your kitten

Lets keep downed state for PVE, but remove it from WvW. If anything, all its gonna do is give smaller groups a slightly higher chance of being successful. Not going to impair a zergs ability to kill people, just help smaller, organized groups. So much is already leaning towards zerging so lets just give this one thing to the non-zergers.

OP is mostly correct. All of those things would be good changes. The only exceptions would be the following.

Combo fields should be based off of your group only. Yea, it takes away some of that “you can play with anyone regardless of groups” crap, but, for a real friendly experience I think that grouping SHOULD have its rewards anyway for teamwork.

Also, downed HP is fine, except….You should start at around 30% of your downed HP, and need to be healed to 100 to get back up (still only allow 1 person to do it at a time). That way, instead of people starting with 10k hp and needing to get to 13k (2 seconds of channeled healing), you should start at 4k HP (and the “finishing move” should be 1.5 seconds all the time unmodified by quickness) That would mean it would take a solid 6-7 seconds to rez someone.
This would give reason to try to finish people off (because if they are getting healing by a rez that is hard to dps through), it would also give incentive to rush over and rez someone if you want them to live(rather than let them lay there and tank like a boss), and it would make it where you are actually almost dead when downed (the way it should be). You would still be invulnerable for 2 seconds as you get downed (to give people reaction time and the like). This would also take away the need to reduce players dmg when downed, as they would be very quick to finish off if you wanted to get rid of that dps.

Also, PLEASE reduce AoE cap, its dumb. Make AoEs do about 80% of their single target counterparts for classes, and hit unlimited targets. Its a no brainer.

Also, I know no one is going to read any of this…which is sad =[

Odaman.8359:

You might have some valid points, but honestly your suggestions couldn’t have been thought out… if they were you don’t play many classes. Especially the combo field suggestion…. lets make ele stronger for having a large amount of finishers and fields, while classes like warriors get kitten because they have 1 field with a large amount of finisher. Increasing the cap on aoe will hurt classes who are already weak on aoe, making them even worse… which is the opposite direction anet is going considering they want to make ST better. I hate rally in wvw with a passion, but it only really becomes an issue when you have randoms running next to you playing rally bot.

In the end you’d be better served adapting rather than throwing out half thought out suggestions on the forums.

The only thing he said that is remotely a bad idea is the 1 and only thing you point out. Make combo fields only effect group members and your complaints are null. Not to mention he never said AoEs need to do as much dmg as single target, only that they should not have a cap, which is absolutely true. Single target classes need to do more single target dmg, and aoe classes need to do aoe dmg, its not rocket science. A thief can drop 1 person extremely fast, an ele can hurt a large group badly, but unlikely to actually drop anyone quickly.

Quenta.2978:

Acelerion.6820:

Are you really making the argument rez/rally doessent benefit the side with the numbers?

The benefit is equal to all parties as are the results of the mechanic. If you don’t down your opponent faster than they down you, you risk rallying more of your opponents. This can happen with any amount of people in an engagement.

In fact, I would go as far to say that a very skilled, small group that can tag more opponents have the ability to rally off their opponents deaths more effectively than a smaller group. A smaller group (vs a larger group) has a larger pool of enemies to target and have the possibility to rally off of. A larger group has a limited amount of players to rally off of.

Either way, you have to kill faster than your opponent or you lose.

I don’t even know what to say to this. If you fight 5v20 how many invulnerabilities should I bring to stamp them all? How much HP do I need to live through 5 people throwing rocks at me for 1.5k a pop while I hold a giant “spike me now” sign over my head trying to drop one guy.

As a 5 man if one of us goes down its kitten near over while the 20 get chance after chance. Its not anywhere close to offering the same benefit.

Pretty good post by Bunzy here. Some things I agree strongly with, some I don’t but everything mentioned is worthy of discussion.

I’ve already given my opinion on downed state. I think it’s fine. There are times where we’ve been burned by it but honestly I think in most fights we manage downed state better than “teh zerg” and it helps us win. However, this is a numbers game. It’s much harder for 5 than it is for 10.

What is super bad is being able to revive people who have been stomped. That is a HUGE advantage to the zerg since as a small group you typically have to give up ground with tactical fallbacks and turns. We shouldn’t have to worry about people that we have stomped in an already very difficult situation.

In the words of Mr. Miyagi, “too much advantage your zergo.”

Have any small groups had success zerg busting that dont use a kite and extend strategy? If the ae cap was lifted I could see a pressure strategy work which would change things considerably.

At the end of the day it takes a fixed amount of time to stomp someone but rezzing is faster with larger numbers. Running 10 you have the luxury of being able to put multiple people on a rez and not get a ton of pressure due to your offense dieing. Theres a magic number in there somewhere between 5 and 10.

runeblade.7514:

Completely against it. Zergs are really easy to join into. I do not want to join a zerg just to die. If you want to destroy zergs, learn to play. There are tons of organized guilds destroying larger zergs.

Perfect example of the mentality of a zerger. While coordinated groups can take out groups of larger numbers, there’s a point when the zerg is just too big. I hope somewhere down the road they add a new WvW map for groups that want more competitive play where the incentive is to roam as a small group and kill other players. There is a good bit of population that finds the zerg fun, so just leave EB and the BLs the way it is, but add a new map for the large community of players that want something more competitive. sPvP is a joke with how all the maps are capture point (such a lack of creativity and understanding of what brings competition to a PvP game on ANets behalf).

Azgarn.2145:

runeblade.7514:

Bunzy.8674:

#2/#3: These issues coincide with each other and they are known as the downed state and revive mechanic (in combat). The downed state is still to strong when it comes to being outnumbered in fights. The damage and health of people in the downed state needs to be reduced as they deal too much damage and can tank for too long considering they are meant to be downed .The revive mechanic needs to some major work. The fact multiple people can resurrect someone faster then you can channel downed is a problem.

Example: Fighting in a 3v1 if the 3 people know how to resurrect you will never be able to defeat these odds due the fact they can resurrect someone quicker then you can down them.

Completely against this. Big L2P issue.

If you don’t want players to be resurrected. Prevent their resurrection in the first place. Stomp them before they get resurrected. Use Invulnerability/stability to stomp them. Knock back the resurrecters. Etc etc.

Quenta.2978:

Acelerion.6820:

Are you really making the argument rez/rally doessent benefit the side with the numbers?

The benefit is equal to all parties as are the results of the mechanic. If you don’t down your opponent faster than they down you, you risk rallying more of your opponents. This can happen with any amount of people in an engagement.

In fact, I would go as far to say that a very skilled, small group that can tag more opponents have the ability to rally off their opponents deaths more effectively than a smaller group. A smaller group (vs a larger group) has a larger pool of enemies to target and have the possibility to rally off of. A larger group has a limited amount of players to rally off of.

Either way, you have to kill faster than your opponent or you lose.

I feel like the downed state is a very large disadvantage to smaller groups. 1 person rezzing can revived a downed player faster than one can finish a downed player. So trying to stomp someone downed in the middle of 20 of his friends is going to be impossible unless you also have 20 friends pounding the rez clump with aoe/cc. But lets say your 5 man group runs into 20 and you down one. One person throws up stability/invulnerability to stomp and the other 4 try to aoe/cc the rez clump (if all 4 of your friends aren’t getting focused at all and dont have to spend time playing defensively). If 3 people are rezzing the downed guy would be up very quickly, maybe before the aoe/cc gets to be 100% useful. Even then if the other players in the larger group are near, your aoe might hit them instead of rezzers. Also the larger group can spam aoes on the downed ally as well to protect him and melt anyone stomping that doesnt have invulernability.

Then from the other side of it, if a zerg downs someone in a smaller group… they dont even blink at the idea cuz the mass aoe damage makes you think your downed state didnt even happen. No reason to finish people when standard aoe of 20-30+ people will finish the job 10x faster.

Do you suggest you run quickness/stability/invul utilities and always save them just for stomping downed players? That really hinders your abilities outside of finishing people.
Its like the downed state was a scapegoat for the zergbabies that huddle in masses for protection and don’t know how to take some heat or focus fire. Your health goes away but don’t worry your not dead yet, your friends can still save your kitten

Lets keep downed state for PVE, but remove it from WvW. If anything, all its gonna do is give smaller groups a slightly higher chance of being successful. Not going to impair a zergs ability to kill people, just help smaller, organized groups. So much is already leaning towards zerging so lets just give this one thing to the non-zergers.

Smaller groups of player will either learn how to deal with it, or cry more for their lack of skill and teamwork. If your small group aren’t skilled enough to kill zergs, then don’t kill zergs.

It is already proven that small groups can destroy large zergs already. Watch videos of 5 man groups killing 30+ zergs.

Can you link me these 5v30+ videos. I will be counting.

style.6173:

Definitely increase the AOE limit. I want to see the end of stacking. It’s a simple change… if someone is in the red circle, they get hit.

This. This game has already dumbed-down situational awareness to a big red circle, there’s no real justification for limiting AOE to such an extent.

It’s also ridiculous that the best way to combat AOE damage in many cases is to stack with your zergling buddies in the red circle.

No AOE cap, no downed state in PVP zones.

Bunzy.8674:

Can you link me these 5v30+ videos. I will be counting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ClIzBWTVIPU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MKNsSzZBag

I don’t feel like venturing to the deepest part of youtube to find more of these. I just wish Youtube clean out beta videos that no one cares about right now.

osif.8673:

runeblade.7514:

Completely against it. Zergs are really easy to join into. I do not want to join a zerg just to die. If you want to destroy zergs, learn to play. There are tons of organized guilds destroying larger zergs.

Perfect example of the mentality of a zerger. While coordinated groups can take out groups of larger numbers, there’s a point when the zerg is just too big. I hope somewhere down the road they add a new WvW map for groups that want more competitive play where the incentive is to roam as a small group and kill other players. There is a good bit of population that finds the zerg fun, so just leave EB and the BLs the way it is, but add a new map for the large community of players that want something more competitive. sPvP is a joke with how all the maps are capture point (such a lack of creativity and understanding of what brings competition to a PvP game on ANets behalf).

There is a location where coordinated groups can run free. It’s called sPvP/tPvP.

Thanks for not reading my whole post

runeblade.7514:

Bunzy.8674:

Can you link me these 5v30+ videos. I will be counting.

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ClIzBWTVIPU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MKNsSzZBag

I don’t feel like venturing to the deepest part of youtube to find more of these. I just wish Youtube clean out beta videos that no one cares about right now.

In none of them videos is there 30+ enemies. I think you should count them.

The reasons zergs form and are powerful have nothing at all to do with aoe limitation, in combat ressing etc. I dont really want non-siege aoe buffed in any way, last thing we need is ‘brightwizards’ in gw2 causing lagstorms while racking up lazy and easy killcounts.

It has to do with the objectives in wvw.

If they removed the righteous indignation buff wvw would be much more friendly to small groups constantly harrassing supply lines and supply camps, encouraging the enemy team to actually leave defenders at camps.

Something will have to be done to the event system to prevent intentional reflipping (scale reward based on how long the site was captured?). But as of right now, as a small group withdrawing from a supply camp, because a huge zerg is rolling in, to cap it back when they leave isnt a good strategic option.

I could see a whole bunch of small action plays that can be made if the RI buff was gone, includeing flipping camps right before timers to rob a lot of score out of the enemy team. That would be one suggestion I would make, to give small groups more things to do, and penalize teams for not covering multiple objectives at once.