Guild Wars 2

Caliburn.1845:

I support the general idea of breaking up zergs, especially map blob size ones. But your proposed solutions are a mixed bag at best.

“1. Remove Downed mechanics and Ressurect without skill use from WvW.”

Makes the ability of a blob to kill people easier.

“2. Remove “Max targets” from all skills, and introduce a diminishing return effect to avoid 10 meteor 1hitting everything (diminish return might not be needed).”

Lag will go up due to more calculations, condis will be even worse. Zergs will be even stronger in that they can focus damage even more, no more 5-man cap protecting the smaller force, even if you get diminishing returns in.

“3. Lower the time which Slowdown last when no in/out dmg is done to 1sec before norm speed”

Again, making the zergs able to kill things quicker and more effectively.

“4. Remove out of combat healing from WvW.”

Promotes zerging since a zerg can heal quicker where as the out of combat people clouding around will need more time to heal.

“5. Lowering the effectiveness/powerspiking of combo fields.”

None of the better fighting guilds/groups rely too heavily on blasting fields terribly often any more, far more of their boons and what not come from composition and various traits, especially revs, guards, mesmers. Change to zergs would be minimal.

“6. Allowing everyone to Flag up as “raid parties”, just give them another colour icon. (also consider removing commander bonus or make them map wide=highest bonus apply)”

Can’t you just already tag up as a five man party and do that?

“7. Bruiser builds vs. everything else rebalancing according to TTK principle’s. (might want to read the TTK part of the p1, first post. I think every gamer should know TTK base concept/idea as it is good for our understanding of balance and design reasoning).”

Gear sets that allow you to be extremely tanky while still retaining high damage output need to go. Particularly trailblazers. I should not be able to dive into a zerg on my full trailblazers necro and have enemies explode around me.

1. Just no, zergs run with guards with mercy runes, no small organized group does, stomping/ressing is only based on how many people you are, not how good you are (clicking e once isn’t very demanding).

2.

Zerg fights would be over quicker=less lag

Calculating what 5 people gets hit is in itself a calculation that is often more demanding than calculating damage dealt

Zergs would have to split up to avoid being 1-shot, meaning AoE might get less effective, meaning less lag

A 5 man group would take about 0% more damage, while a 50 man stacked blob would take about 1000% more damage if there were no AoE-caps (assuming 5 target cap skills, different numbers for 3 or 10 target skills), fairly certain the 5 man group is getting the advantage from this change.

About condis, should a zerg actually die to condis I just can’t even beign to imagine how terrible they must be with how good resistance skills/condi clears exists for groups from the 2 most common zerging professions revs and guards.

Fairly certain noone is advocating no-target caps on healing/buffs, that would lead to some very crazy situations

3. Personally don’t really think this matters much, but would hardly benefit zergs really

4. One of the few points where you might be right actually.

5. Agreed that the changes to zergs and to non-zergs would be basically non-relevant, combo fields are overrated

6. Being able to have a personal tag for groups that didn’t show up on map would be great, OP’s suggestion I barely get what the difference would be so no comment

7. Gear sets are hardly a problem, builds are. Full zerker warrior is way tankier than any trailblazer necro. The main problem with tankiness in this game is how much of it is tied to evades/invulns and also how it is rarely actually damage that kills but a stunlock.

To add something of my own to the thread

1. Add diminishing returns on hard CC (immob and fear are both hard CC)
2. Remove all target caps on offensive skills (but not on defensive/supportive, also if this is implemented rework retaliation to not mean death for the audacity to AoE a 50 man blob)
3. Nerf ressing speed by 50+% and remove ressing traits/mercy runes (they’re never ever ever gonna remove downstate so this would be a fix for the problem without making it unrealistic)
4. Player collision would be the dream, but I doubt they would ever do this.

Feanor.2358:

I fail to see the problem with zergs. Numbers win? Well surprise, surprise, they most often did in real life too! It is certainly possible to outsmart/outmaneuver a larger opposing force, but (again, just like in real life) it is hard to do so. Like it should be.

Do the bigger numbers in real life stack ontop of grenades to reduce the damage taken? Fairly certain that logic can’t be applied to a game, noone is saying bigger numbers shouldn’t have benefits, but an added benefit of being unkillable just by standing on each other is perhaps not the kind of advantage the bigger group should have, in addition to all their other benefits

For the record spiteful renewal also does not work in shroud. Making all of the necro traits work in shroud would be a very nice change.

Aktium.9506:

Cevni.2049:

it should be fixed

It’s an integral part of how the game engine works. If it was “fixed” a majority of all interactive things in the game would probably stop working.

Well I personally do not see it as a major issue, but I have a hard time seeing it as intended, it’s current state is broken, fixing it would be beneficial, I personally don’t think it should be a priority due to the very low impact of this bug, as such this thread is not about this bug, but rather about the one where epidemic doesn’t work on downed people.

Spectral wall currently fears people away from you, this means that if you use it infront of people running away from you, they just keep running, through the wall. I think the functionality should be changed so that the target is feared away from the wall, not from the necromancer casting it. This would keep it functioning identical when used to prevent foes from coming near you, by standing on the opposite side of it, while giving it the functionality of all other wall skills in the game.

TL;DR: Make people run away from the wall, not you

Aktium.9506:

Cevni.2049:

such as the actual sentry posts or supply depots

This has nothing to do with Epidemic. Most objects in the game that have animations tied to them, can change shape or are destructible in some way have hitboxes. It’s been this way since the game launched. As a Necro you should already be keenly aware of these things as you can use them to build life force by hitting them.

I am aware, and I listed it as one of the minor flaws this skill has, like many other necro skills (and other classes, anything that bounces, any offensive shout, probably more stuff), such as rise, your soul is mine and a few other, it should be fixed (as it is unintended) but rarely provides any major benefit or hindrance in any fight, I was simply using it as an example of how the skill in many ways doesn’t work as it should, then again the old version might also have hit these things just without it being as obvious.

Long time bug, typical necro “featute”, why would our traits work with our class mechanic?

Since the epidemic changes, the skill has been bugged beyond belief, starting out by often instakilling you and your allies. By now many of the bugs have been fixed, there are a few minor ones left (such as it hitting things that shouldn’t be hittable such as the actual sentry posts or supply depots). However there is one massive bug, that drastically lowers it’s usability, it does not work on downed people anymore, this was stated nowhere in the notes and as such shouldn’t be intended, this makes one of the most iconic skills of condi necro very unreliable in WvW. This is especially bad as epidemicing downed people was one of the few strategies that could be used to counter the extremely disgusting downstate meta that this game has.

Another thing which I am not sure is intended or not is that the conditions are not determined when you cast it but when it hits, so not only does the target need to have plenty of conditions on them, not cleanse them before the projectiles hit, not go down before the projectiles hit, actually not be downed to begin with and not have resistance, this is obviously a very rare situation and basically limits the skill to targeting health sponges with otherwise few defensive capabilities (basically only other Necros/Reapers).

TL;DR: Epidemic doesn’t work when cast on downed people, please fix

Explaination is in video

tl;dw: When you condi transfer right after using Epidemic, you get hit, if anyone else condi clears you right after they get hit.

Figured it out. If you condi transfer after epidemic you get hit. If anyone condi clears you after you cast it they get hit.

As someone who has been called an “underwater fetishist” after asking for the legendary helmet to extend to a legendary breather (or just remove this mess of a slot, you can breathe without one anyway) and requesting a swimming pool in the Guild Arena for Amphibious fights.

As such I have come here to offer my support, I believe your suggestions are great, especially about build changing when going into the water, perhaps not to the level of entire traitlines or armorsets, but at the very least traits within the traitline, so you’re not stuck with a trait that improves your scepter while being underwater and thus not having one.

I believe when I speak for the whole of the Underwater GvG community when I say that more builds options underwater would be welcome as well, in addition to this a few balance chagnes would be appreciated such as the ranger downstate 3 being a bit less broken. Also adding finishers underwater would be a very good step in the right direction.

Increasing movespeed overall underwater would also be nice. As a reaper main I suppose I do have access to weapons that do feel well designed and I have access to shroud so perhaps I like it more than most people cause of that, some classes have a lot worse designed underwater (elementalist comes to mind and revenant I guess, but at least they feel rather powerful underwater)

For once I managed to make some almost time-revelant content. So figured I’d upload some of the more outnumbered fights I had a few weeks ago. Enjoy.

Alienz.4593:

Underwater combat in the Guild arena, I like this idea!

It certainly would add some diversity

zealex.9410:

tbh the balance in the arena should be that of wvw or pvp. Since some classes are plain broken in player v player in the gh. And the arena was meants for group fights or duels so yeah pve balance working there is bad.

It should use WvW balance, sPvP already got their own arena in custom games

Cyninja.2954:

Massive problem with legendary armor - https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Massive-problem-with-legendary-armor/first#post6578112

Gargantuan issue with Guild Halls - https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Gargantuan-issue-with-Guild-Halls

What’s next?: “Huge imbalance in sPvP map rotation, lacking pure underwater map!”

I feel you, you are part of the very very very small community of underwater fetishists and the game has not delivered on this game type. Unfortunately I doubt it’s on arenanets radar.

Well, while you might have a point, adding a minor swimming pool to the Guild Arena (or perhaps as an Arena decoration maybe?) and giving the legendary armor a breather (can even use same model as legendary helmet) would hardly be gigantic amounts of effort.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

There’s plenty of reasons why there’ s no underwater dueling in guild halls: there’s been nearly zero work on underwater combat in the last 4.5 years, other than to remove it. Revenant lacks a weapon to swap to and an elite hero & plenty of profs lack appropriate traits or elites. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that GHs don’t have a provision for Underwater dueling.

In general, GH dueling uses PvE skills. If you want to use PvP skills (that lack Spectral Aid in the downstate), you need to go to Obsidian Sanctum or PvP arenas.

Except that it (underwater combat) does work fairly well at least in my opinion. It being there would not force anyone to use it, but would open up the option for those who do want it. Revenant being poorly designed for UW is indeed a shame (theyre still not that weak though UW) and they should imo get their second weapon and at least dwarf and dragon stance working properly UW (ventari UW sounds, awkward and hard to fix, but if they come up with a solution I am all for it).

WvW uses PvE-modes of abilities almost exclusively though with a few exceptions that I can’t recal right now (epidemic works on resistance is one of them though). Hence the arena is primarily for use by WvWers. It is also where most GvGs etc are done as otherwise you can only fight people whom are on current opposing servers. PvP arenas use kitten sPvP rules that are completely wack and not at all close to WvW ones.

The current guild hall arena has twi very glaring flaws.

First of all, the mastery “Spectral Aid” works there which it really shouldn’t as it makes the downstate even more broken than it already is and it also doesn’t work in any of the other gamemodes where there is player combat.

Secondly and most importantly, the guild arena doesn’t have an underwater part. This is truly heinous and should have been included from the start, there truly is no excuse for the lack of this. Fixing this would truly help the underwater GvG community flourish and also add new strategic options to duels in the arena.

Napo.1230:

Cevni.2049:

Amaimon.7823:

The last story even mocked us by saying “you’ll die if you touch the water” so I wouldn’t be too worried about the breather for the coming 25 years

As a dedicated underwater WvW roamer, having my breather be futureproof for any coming statcombos and/or balance changes would have been a massive boon, I already had to deal with no underwater in the guild arena, which was a complete spit in the face of the active underwater GvG community.

You sir have made me very happy haha

How so?

The “active underwater GvG community”? Were both of you very annoyed?

We might be a minority, but we all feel very strongly about this.

It’s long past time for ANet to eliminate breathers as part of gear — just make them a skin that appears (optionally) underwater and use the same stats (and rune) as in the helm.

Although I happen to like underwater combat, it’s clear that it’ incomplete. Revenants only have one weapon, many profs only have one usable elite, tons of runes don’t have any value underwater, and there’s all sorts of traits that break underwater. (And that’s without even addressing balance across profs.)

It’s also clear that ANet has no appetite for doing anything about it soon. They’ve removed underwater combat from PvP and WvW. They’ve reduced it in PvE and haven’t added any significant fights to the new zones.

tl;dr it’s not a massive problem with legendary armor — it’s a secondary problem due to underwater combat being incomplete.

Well the breather slot is indeed a bit superfluos, given that you don’t need a breather to breathe and it only replaces helm slot and has no other function. The recent addition of ascended breathers from fresh winterberries was good, as it finally added all statcombos to breathers.

Amaimon.7823:

The last story even mocked us by saying “you’ll die if you touch the water” so I wouldn’t be too worried about the breather for the coming 25 years

As a dedicated underwater WvW roamer, having my breather be futureproof for any coming statcombos and/or balance changes would have been a massive boon, I already had to deal with no underwater in the guild arena, which was a complete spit in the face of the active underwater GvG community.

I recently (patch day) acquired the full legendary armor, yet I was very disappointed as one of the crucial pieces of it was missing. The breather, there is currently no legendary breather in the game, something that should obviously have been part of the legendary armor, what’s the point of being able to stat- and runechange 6/7ths of my armor at will? As such I ask what the reason for this severe oversight is?

Seems reasonable, reaper is now a High Risk – High Reward class, whereas before it was more like High Risk – Medium Reward.

Tongku.5326:

Cevni.2049:

Tongku.5326:

had to cut for post size

snipped

Note that I was mainly meaning that I want ZvZ fights in general to be over faster, fights that I am not involved with but that are kittening me over just by happening on the same map (skilllag). Assuming that you were talking about relatively even numbers though, ie not more than twice your group size? Cause while your group might run an offensive setup and win, that’s good for you but most groups don’t. The clash of these groups on the other side of the map can give me several minutes of the game being completely unplayable which is rather frustrating.

My group mainly fights with 5 people or so and generally go for as many enemies as reasonably possible, it is just rather depressing that there is an artificial cap making groups of 15+ unkillable because they take 66% less damage just cause they can all stack inside our AoEs, I am obviously not saying that one should win every outnumbered fight but a reasonable fighting chance (ie if they’re actually dumb enough to stand inside all our AoEs they die). Even with such a change having the bigger numbers is obviously beneficial but at least it is to a reasonable degree.

The outnumbered buff shouldn’t be touched for several reasons. Main one being that more buffs that carry you in fights is just rather lame, I wanna win cause I outplay my enemy (either in the fight or cause I prepared better), not cause of some buff caused by the enemy having a zerg on the opposite side of the map.

Removing the downstate or at least nerfing it severely (50% slower ress and a cap of 1/2 people would be a good start, together with a nerf of the best downstate skills ele/thief ones mainly.) Putting a cooldown of 5 minutes on it would be another idea. The downstate has never really felt unique, it just feels like a very powerful passive defense (the same kind that everyone here likes to whine about).

Justine.6351:

Cevni.2049:

Justine.6351:

Cevni.2049:

Justine.6351:

morrolan.9608:

Justine.6351:

morrolan.9608:

Grant only mentions currency from PvP and Fractals. What about WvW?

There was some verbiage about expansion into other modes in the future. Likely an off suggestion that “its possible but I’m not going to get raked over the coals by the community if it doesn’t happen”.

If WvW isn’t included there will be a huge outcry from that community given the neglect over other rewards. Given that they are revamping the system it would be a huge mistake to not include all modes in the revamp, take a little more time to do it if thats requried.

WvW players crying on forums, ya that’s new…

Before spvp season 5 the easiest way to get ascended weapons and armor was WvW. All you have to do is play the mode and occasionally an ascended weapon or armor box will drop. It allows you to pick the weapon/armor piece with core stat of choice. Zero crafting involved. If you want to use HoT stats you can buy the crafting recipe and runes and sigils you just buy them from the provisioner. It really cannot get more carebear then that.

The droprates are rng and abysmal, WvW players also need a lot more ascended sets than just zerker+viper of each type. Do WvW til you have 2 ascended chests, please, then tell me how long it took and if that seems reasonable.

I have 5 full ascended characters…
and am looking to start a 6th because I have an ascended armor box rusting in storage.

How many of those ascended pieces were gotten in WvW?

For 5 characters I figure I have 45 pieces of ascended gear that matter (both weapon slots 2handed, 1handed & offhands and 6 pieces of armor x 5). I’d approximate I crafted 25 pieces, know I’ve bought 5 from spvp, gotten 1 leg box from fractals and so rest are wvw, 14. I am rank ~2000.

Then you’re without a doubt the luckiest person I know, I’ve gotten 1 box from WvW so far (rank 600 only, zerging is boring). Either way RNG is terrible

Justine.6351:

Cevni.2049:

Justine.6351:

morrolan.9608:

Justine.6351:

morrolan.9608:

Grant only mentions currency from PvP and Fractals. What about WvW?

There was some verbiage about expansion into other modes in the future. Likely an off suggestion that “its possible but I’m not going to get raked over the coals by the community if it doesn’t happen”.

If WvW isn’t included there will be a huge outcry from that community given the neglect over other rewards. Given that they are revamping the system it would be a huge mistake to not include all modes in the revamp, take a little more time to do it if thats requried.

WvW players crying on forums, ya that’s new…

Before spvp season 5 the easiest way to get ascended weapons and armor was WvW. All you have to do is play the mode and occasionally an ascended weapon or armor box will drop. It allows you to pick the weapon/armor piece with core stat of choice. Zero crafting involved. If you want to use HoT stats you can buy the crafting recipe and runes and sigils you just buy them from the provisioner. It really cannot get more carebear then that.

The droprates are rng and abysmal, WvW players also need a lot more ascended sets than just zerker+viper of each type. Do WvW til you have 2 ascended chests, please, then tell me how long it took and if that seems reasonable.

I have 5 full ascended characters…
and am looking to start a 6th because I have an ascended armor box rusting in storage.

How many of those ascended pieces were gotten in WvW?

Justine.6351:

morrolan.9608:

Justine.6351:

morrolan.9608:

Grant only mentions currency from PvP and Fractals. What about WvW?

There was some verbiage about expansion into other modes in the future. Likely an off suggestion that “its possible but I’m not going to get raked over the coals by the community if it doesn’t happen”.

If WvW isn’t included there will be a huge outcry from that community given the neglect over other rewards. Given that they are revamping the system it would be a huge mistake to not include all modes in the revamp, take a little more time to do it if thats requried.

WvW players crying on forums, ya that’s new…

Before spvp season 5 the easiest way to get ascended weapons and armor was WvW. All you have to do is play the mode and occasionally an ascended weapon or armor box will drop. It allows you to pick the weapon/armor piece with core stat of choice. Zero crafting involved. If you want to use HoT stats you can buy the crafting recipe and runes and sigils you just buy them from the provisioner. It really cannot get more carebear then that.

The droprates are rng and abysmal, WvW players also need a lot more ascended sets than just zerker+viper of each type. Do WvW til you have 2 ascended chests, please, then tell me how long it took and if that seems reasonable.

Baldrick.8967:

Unlimited aoe would destroy group fights, boon sharing, healing, etc and would lead to very selfish self sustain builds with max aoe output. Players would have to spread out so much it would become almost 1v1 – at which point burst builds picking off targets at range that are standing outside their aoe would become a thing.

I could literally stop an entire zerg from ever capping SM with ten eles. Bear in mind the aoe cap also works on a lot of skills that are positives so it might end up ball vs ball and who has higher sustain wins…. so we could stand in your red circles all day and because there is no longer a cap on boon shares or heals we’d outlast you and wipe you out. Then bigger ball wins…

Either scenario could come to pass, and sniping off people running back to the fight would be the best option, so we’d see even more macro thiefs.

So people would actually counter what the enemy does, how dreadful…

Note I have mentioned it a few times in this thread, but I think friendly effects should be capped. Even without a cap on it though it would still be slightly better (though not much).

Baldrick.8967:

Bigger problems for me are burst macro using thiefs (latest was 8 skills in under 0.25 seconds). They need some sort of cooldown between skills.

But by far the biggest issue I have is invuln and resistance (and block). None of these should totally mitigate damage, they should be toned down to say 75% and see how that works. It’s annoying as hell to have a skill that takes seconds to cast and has a 30 second + cooldown be completely wasted then in they come with their instant or 4-6 second cooldown burst skills…

I main ele and necro and I’d hate to see aoe caps removed- although an increase in targets hit would be nice, maybe 8 as a cap. Unlimited would just be very ugly.

Passive and actives defenses together form way too long fight downtimes of being unable to damage players at all yes (11 sec DH, up to 15 sec for warrior etc etc). This is an obvious problems especially the ones where they can attack your during their invuln.

How would no AoE cap be ugly? It would really make it so that skills means a lot more than it does now in comparison to numbers and the only groups that would be punished are the ones that stack in red circles.

Crinn.7864:

Cevni.2049:

Crinn.7864:

Cevni.2049:

xev.9476:

Some fanciful stories here. Damaging player AoE has been capped at 5 since beta; support/healing AoE originally had no cap, and was later capped at 5. Culling had nothing to do with any of this, and was still a problem for over a year after support/healing AoE was capped at 5.

Oh, well good that at least one of the players that did play back then is honest, thank you for pointing out that most of what they wrote is complete bs

There is still no evidence that unlocking hit caps is somehow less computationally expensive.

I cannot imagine how you could possibly set up a system where grabbing 5 players is more expensive than running damage calculations on a unrestricted number of players.

There is also no proof that it wouldn’t, I told several reasons why there is good cause to believe that it would indeed benefit the servers. Some of them I believe not even you can argue against, such as that no AoE caps would lead to shorter fights which in turn would lead to less lag.

No that would lead to a lot of lag for a short period of time, rather than minor lag for a long period of time.

Also WvW doesn’t need shorter fights, we already spend 90% of our time loitering as is.

You believe that it would lead to a lot of log for a short period of time, you have no proof that it wouldn’t fix lag . Either way when 2 zergs clash currently the whole server becomes unplayable, even if that would become worse (which I am convinced it wouldn’t), is there a difference between 2 and 5 second skill delay? Isn’t 5 sec skill delay during 20-30 seconds preferable to 2 sec skill delay during 5 minutes?

From what I’ve seen of zergs fights (I avoid them to the best of my ability, really only participate if it is within my EB home keep as I like having +10 and waypoint) which I try to avoid, they seem to last ages cause no damage is dealt cause everyone got a passive -75% damage taken due to AoE caps and if someone goess down they’re instantly ressed, I am generally all for longer fights, zerg fights however seem beyond disgusting due to caps/downstate..

In addition to this, healthy gameplay is a major benefit of no AoE caps, then the counter to stacking is AoE and the counter to AoE is spreading out and the counter to spreading out is to single target. Atm you counter a few people stacking by AoEing, then they counter AoE by stacking more people and then there is no more counterplay.

Crinn.7864:

Cevni.2049:

xev.9476:

Some fanciful stories here. Damaging player AoE has been capped at 5 since beta; support/healing AoE originally had no cap, and was later capped at 5. Culling had nothing to do with any of this, and was still a problem for over a year after support/healing AoE was capped at 5.

Oh, well good that at least one of the players that did play back then is honest, thank you for pointing out that most of what they wrote is complete bs

There is still no evidence that unlocking hit caps is somehow less computationally expensive.

I cannot imagine how you could possibly set up a system where grabbing 5 players is more expensive than running damage calculations on a unrestricted number of players.

There is also no proof that it wouldn’t, I told several reasons why there is good cause to believe that it would indeed benefit the servers. Some of them I believe not even you can argue against, such as that no AoE caps would lead to shorter fights which in turn would lead to less lag.

xev.9476:

Some fanciful stories here. Damaging player AoE has been capped at 5 since beta; support/healing AoE originally had no cap, and was later capped at 5. Culling had nothing to do with any of this, and was still a problem for over a year after support/healing AoE was capped at 5.

Oh, well good that at least one of the players that did play back then is honest, thank you for pointing out that most of what they wrote is complete bs

Stand The Wall.6987:

snipples

So what if people run strong builds? That is the charm of a game where you have a lot of options, to find a way to make your build truly broken by minmaxing every part of it. What makes WvW so much fun is the variety of players you can encounter, upscales, people who just put on whatever are gear they found, people who got exotics/ascended but in some fairly bad mix but that is exactly what they wanna play, people who just copied metabattle (note with an amulet system this group is the only group left) and people who finetuned their builds to be as strong as possible and everything in between these, it is variety that makes the gamemode interesting, in sPvP I can often guess from the class and if not the class then at least the first weaponskill exactly what traits and stats the person uses, in WvW this is genereally not possible.

Variety = Balance

Tongku.5326:

For starters you come across as rude and condescending, now the tone of our conversation will sadly be a bit less friendly than one would want.

This is the forums everyone is trying to push their own personal agenda here, I have several myself, I abhor brainless bursting, I abhor no-risk high-reward playstyles and I hate the downstate. In this particular debate I am trying to push the agenda that I wanna be able to melt people if they’re dumb enough to stack in AoE and you’re pushing the agenda that you wanna be able to safely 1111 with your lootstick. I have also seen the effect of AoE-caps, I have in other games (servers are still servers) seen people deliberately using an AoE-cap mechanic to crash a server.

Correlation does not imply causation, I could say that WvW population is currently lower than it was at the start of the game due to AoE caps, the lag problem might have been resolved by fewer people playing on each map perhaps. If no AoE caps would be such a problem, why are the servers not melting when a few people use arrowcarts on 30+ people (it even multihits and applies condis in a huge radius, no critchance though)? Should these also be capped?

While we’re on the topic of discussing this, should lag really be a factor in determining game balance (this is not me saying uncapped AoEs would lead to server lag)? You know what else would help with server lag, removing crit chance from the game, removing all attacks that multihits, etc.. Speaking of game mechanics, is AoE not supposed to be the counterplay to fighting several stacked people? If so why is the counterplay to AoE to stack more people inside the same skills?

Perhaps lowering map caps (and giving everyone 1 free transfer) would also be a good move right now, would also help with spreading out the poulation more across servers.

Now the one part of your post that I could agree with is the amount of procs could certainly be reduced and that should help (thinking mainly in the lines of 60% chance on crit or 30% chance on hit with an ICD aswell, feels a bit redundant also all the “if you crit on someone with X condition on them Y happens”.

That some people might quit is a risk taken with every decision one makes. I know noone that would quit over the decision to nerf playing stupidly. I know several people that would join the game if it didn’t have AoE caps.

Btw you never answered any of my points.
Would people still stack as much as they do right now?
Would the fights not be over a lot faster (last time we didn’t have AoE caps we also had several people rallying of one person so that would change a lot of things)?
If people were to spread out, wouldn’t that mean that AoE was not the only viable option anymore?

Straegen.2938:

Cevni.2049:

Why no AoE caps would help the servers is rather unintiuitive but basically there are a few reasons why.
1. Fights where people stack up will just end a lot faster (so shorter lag time)
2. People might not stack up as much (5 organized people can melt 30 stacking people then, note that I don’t believe defensive skills should be uncapped)
3. Prioritizing is a very heavy operation for a computer, this would not be needed without AoE caps.

There was a time when a 5 target AoE cap didn’t exist and Culling was required to handle it. Even with Culling back then the servers had far more lag than today.

Without a cap a server has to find ALL the players in range of an AoE. Then it has to compute damage on lets say the 30 people in range. Then it has to manage the chain effects from passive traits/abilities that trigger from damage which will also trigger more traits/abilities firing. After that the server has to broadcast all those updates to all the clients within the vicinity both friend and foe. A single AoE on a group could easily trigger thousands of server messages to clients. Hence the need for Culling.

With an AoE cap, the server uses the same calculation as without a cap only it stops when it reaches 5. That limits the number of secondary triggers and reduces the amount of messaging that goes out by an order of magnitude. More importantly far fewer calculations are required reducing server processing load.

Also AoE having a cap brings AoE DPS into an easier to balance range. Without a cap AoE DPS eclipses all other damage by a significant margin.

You make it sound as if it would be hundreds of times more calculations, in truth the increase would only be as big as the zerg size/5 and that is if you hit everyone with your AoEs which would most of the time not happen, once again if there is no cap would people really stack up like they do right now? Should AoE dps really not be a lot higher than single target if you’re fighting 20 people stacking inside the AoE?

No Caps>People stack less>AoE becomes less dominant and the lag ends
No Caps>People still stack>Idiots get melted in seconds and the lag ends

Stand The Wall.6987:

lol if you mess up at any time as a burst class vs another good burst class the fight is over. not so with tanky builds. thought that much was at least obvious.

stats too low lol? when would you ever need more then 3k armor or 29k hp? how is it less diverse. nothing is getting removed. caps don’t make something unplayable, they reduce the totals for all specs. certainly wouldn’t be clunky to me. cant tell you how many times the meta has changed and ive had to buy new armor or runes, only to have to do it again for a different guild. being able to change stats on the fly would be awesome.

About burst read trough my previous replay again.

In what you said the total stats would be 2.5k which is even lower than sPvP which is a ridiculous low point. I didn’t say anything about the current stats in WvW. What is clunky is a restriction on only changing stats 100/time instead of the current and restricting how much defensives/offensives one is allowed to pick.

Stand The Wall.6987:

I don’t understand how you think removing all aoe caps with out compensating for the increase in targets would not melt the servers. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work that way.

Why no AoE caps would help the servers is rather unintiuitive but basically there are a few reasons why.
1. Fights where people stack up will just end a lot faster (so shorter lag time)
2. People might not stack up as much (5 organized people can melt 30 stacking people then, note that I don’t believe defensive skills should be uncapped)
3. Prioritizing is a very heavy operation for a computer, this would not be needed without AoE caps.

Stand The Wall.6987:

snipped

I disagree with your comment about bursting being more rewarding of skillful play.

Bursting does in my opinion not encourage better play. In a fight between 2 bursty people it all comes down to a few seconds that matter a lot and the rest of the fight is rather inconsequential.

Between 2 tanky people it comes down to who overall played the best in every situation (or had the best build for the situation) not only a few seconds.

About your ideas for some more modular stat amulets, it is surely better than the sPvP system (stats are way too low in yours btw but the concept). However it just seems like a clunkier less diverse version of what we have right now.

Stand The Wall.6987:

snipped

The servers cant handle fights in their current form, making AAs single target wouldn’t change that, but it would make those fights last a lot longer meaning that the lag lasts a lot longer, further incentive stacking as there is less reason not to.

Speaking as the leader of a group who has to this day barely ever had more than 1 person get hit by the same AA, all gutting cleave would really achieve is make cleaving downed people even more of an uphill battle. Removing all AoE caps on damaging attacks would be the best solution, that way stacking has the very logical counter of using AoE and AoE has the logical counter of spreading out, instead of the current counter AoE by stacking tighter and counter stacking by ????.

Stand The Wall.6987:

snipples

I completely agree with you, if people wanted Siege vs Siege they’d probably move on yo World of Tanks or something similar

OT: I for once agree with you, that’s rare

Stand The Wall.6987:

snipplesnipple

It wouldn’t use much less simply because it still has to calculate that it shouldn’t be sending it to that specific person. If it had to take more complex criteria in such as how many stacks the person has, how long they’ve had it.

Why no AoE caps would help the servers is rather unintiuitive but basically there are a few reasons why.
1. Fights where people stack up will just end a lot faster (so shorter lag time)
2. People might not stack up as much (5 organized people can melt 30 stacking people then, note that I don’t believe defensive skills should be uncapped)
3. Prioritizing is a very heavy operation for a computer, this would not be needed without AoE caps.
4. Gutting cleave would further make stacking an even better strat which would mean more brainless stacking and smashing buttons.

Impulsive.8240:

snip

Well if you’ve ever fought me chances are I have indeed done that, but I personally just consider it a good counter to mindless mortaring,.That rev got bad condi clear is a fact, this is something they should probably address (counters are alright but rev not being able to survive even 1 condi burst is a bit lame).

I hardly see how standing in mortars to transfer it is mindless, you see an opportunity and seize it, that is playing well (this is the price you pay for stronger siege, this was never a problem with older mortars). Burnguards are currently over the top yes kinda like all other burst builds, a fix to class mechanics seems more appropriate than changing a core mechanic of the game, given how many other builds are more problematic especially (including some non-boon reliant power builds).

Stand The Wall.6987:

Cevni.2049:

snipples

snippling

Epidemic is already capped at 25 stacks, has a rather long cast time and needs a big setup. Personally I have never been on the wrong end of it, and I do play quite a bit WvW (though I avoid joining up with blobs, that kitten’s boring). As I said believe some conditions or the skills applying them needs changing. Resistance in itself is a completely broken boon, at least make it a buff (like superspeed) or make it not be 100% reduced.

Calculating a cap, when something can be reapplied etc can in many instances need more cpu power than just applying it. What would instantly fix the lag issues is no AoE-caps (on damaging skills, still 5 on supportive skills) and no downed state. No calculating who should get hit and the zerg fights would be over much much quicker.

What you said about removing invuln fram and free condi clear would be a good step in the right direction though.

Stand The Wall.6987:

snipplededed

I have personally never seen a 20k hit in WvW, I’ve seen hits going upwards 15k which is far too high imo. Removing defensive stats is part of what makes me absolutely hate the sPvP gamemode s1 for example (after chrononerfs, pre-nerf well of precog was just dumb) was actually alright (mained reaper so not one of the meta bunker builds even), you actually had fights, not just brainless bursting which imo is what s5 is.

Having to nerf a ton of modifiers wouldn’t hurt hybrid builds more than it would hurt pure condi/pure power builds nor would it be anymore work than remaking an entire system. With an amulet system there are more hybrid builds because there are no good condition damage amulets only bad ones and really bad ones. Same with the options for healer amulets, or boon-duration amulets.

Changing certain modifiers would help improve balance and perhaps make there be more viable builds. An amulet system would make the currently most common builds more common and all but kill any other builds.

As everyone else has said. Hard CC (excluding fear is not a condition) a lot of condi clear has built in stunbreaks, not all of it though.

Reducing the spam of CC in the game would be great. Perhaps an immunity equal period of time to the duration of the CC that was on you times two (fix it to work with skills like gravity well).

Not sure exactly how I would fix immob, maybe make it so that oen can’t be immobilized for more than 5 seconds in a row and after that a 5 second period of immunity to it or similar.

(all numbers can obviously be adjusted)

Stand The Wall.6987:

snippleded

However, the insane burst damage is even more insane in sPvP, s5 was just burst every fight, there was a grand total of 2 meta-builds not based around bursting the enemy, removing stat combos with defensives is what leads to this. Changing the modifiers on a lot of skills would be a good start for WvW (this would actually be a good solution, a bit more effort to implement but would be a healthier way of going about it in the long run)

I can agree to disagree and not even your snippling can make me change my mind.

Stand The Wall.6987:

snippled again

I disagree with you about this. Boons and condis as a concept are generally not a problem with a few specific exceptions (confusion/burn/torment and resistance). What really makes fights braindead is the one passive defense that every class has access to, the downed state. Also the AoE caps for sure doesn’t help. Changing boon/condi caps would just solidify a burst meta in small scale and make stacking even more beneficial for large scale, neither of which is preferable.

Off-topic: I am not disagreeing with you just to be disagreeable.

Stand The Wall.6987:

snippled

Problem with the obscenely hard hitting skills are a rather small number of skills (backstab, vault, coalescence of ruin and arc divider for example just of the top of my head).

Dire and trailblazer are hardly a problem outside of condimes which talks more about that build problematic than anything else (ghost thief would keep ghostthieving with basically any statcombo that had condidmg).

They could nerf these skills in WvW alone to a reasonable degree(they recently split balance between gamemodes). That way fewer of the uncommon builds would get nuked.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Cevni.2049:

snipples

Snippinging

I do think they can nerf every overpowered trait and skill, the builds we mentioned and many others would still be a thing with amulets as they are powerful due to their setting and not their stats (hammer Rev would still be amazing in zergs with amulets, condimes would still be broken in roaming etc), what really links all overpowered build together is a no/low-risk high-res arduous playstyle (massive range and damage and staying in zergs for Rev, stealth+evades+blink+more together with good damage for condimes). Hence giving them less stats would change little and the most “broken” builds would still stay while a lot of more “fair” builds would take big hits.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Cevni.2049:

You personally find it more balanced, I do not. Full zerk is already a thing in sPvP it is used by GS/Ma+Sh warrior. Dire/Settler/Nomad not existing in sPvP is one of the reasons I find the game mode a bore, it is far too centered around burst for my taste, though tanky builds are problematic in a game mode that revolves around standing in a little circle.

3.5k power 220% crit damage zerk or 2k condi 3k tough 24k hp dire is possible in wvw and not in pvp is not a personal opinion, its a fact. well that’s great, you love tanky builds, as do I sometimes, but theres a point where any stat combo becomes broken and unfun to play against. an amulet system would fix that. unless you ask for aa nerfs, builds like these wont go away with a few trait fixes. I hope everyone realizes this.

To be honest I see no stat-related-problems with the builds that you linked me, they seem like rather strong builds, I’d probably have to agree that both condition damage mesmer and hammer revenant could use some toning down (but not much mainly in the evades department on mesmer and in the low-risk-high-reward playstyle of hammer rev), it is hardly the stats that make these builds powerful.

Balance is a very subjective topic. Personally I am a big believer of “if everything is overpowered the game is balanced” though I currently think that too much power is currently in different forms of automatic defenses (mainly when you get stunned or drop below X% hp you get stability/CC the enemy back/evade/take no damage/invulnerability). Id personally want power shifted from that onto more active skills (how that would look is a topic for another thread). In my opinion the game is balanced when there isn’t a very small amount of builds dominating completely (sPvP has 0-2 comptetive builds for each class), WvW generally has about 3-4 distinct builds (ie not counting one trait/armor piece different as a different build) for each class that are all more or less viable in the right enviroment in WvW. I am curious how do you define that a game is balanced?

1. Remove downstate or heavily nerf it (people whine about passive defenses, well here you have the biggest offender, small groups have a better chance to beat larger groups with this)

2. Remove AoE-cap on offensive skills (why the kitten would stacking be a valid counter to AoE?? Small groups would actually have a much better chance)

3. Remove or nerf ACs (half of WvW atm might be playing with a lvl 2 upscaled character cause all they do atm is ACing anyway)

4. Incentivize people to play during more hours, neither me nor my group gives 2 kittens about the score for our server, but when the winner has already been determined on monday, finding anyone at all to fight is rather hard

5. Do something about the truly ridicilous amount of passive/active evades/invulns/blocks/similar effects in the game (the passive elixir S, 7 roll dodges in a row from thieves, passive endure pain, the entire mesmer sword/shield set, DH f3+Renewed Focus+f3). Having to wait 10 seconds before I can damage my enemy again is just, boring. While on the topic, passive stunbreaks/stabilities are also pretty dumb as they often save people without the person themself doing much.

BONUS: Nerf builds that are extremely low risk very high reward (basically anythhing that can get out of any position no matter how bad you kitten up)

EXTRA BONUS: Add some sort of dimnishing effects to all hard or semi-hard CC (stun/daze/immob/fear/whatever else and maybe a cap to how many times you can get launched/knockbacked/pushed within a certain period of time), no reason one should be able to get stuck in immob/stun chains for a good 5-10 seconds in a row.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Cevni.2049:

pvp is a lot more balanced then wvw, in case my statement of that fact eluded you. it is mostly due to gear. there are only 2 traits like that, on warrior and engineer. they are annoying and should be removed, like all passive procs, but that is not a good enough argument against full dire/zerk/settler/nomad.

You personally find it more balanced, I do not. Full zerk is already a thing in sPvP it is used by GS/Ma+Sh warrior. Dire/Settler/Nomad not existing in sPvP is one of the reasons I find the game mode a bore, it is far too centered around burst for my taste, though tanky builds are problematic in a game mode that revolves around standing in a little circle.

Crinn.7864:

Cevni.2049:

snip…

I have never gotten ascended drops from WvW of any type. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but the drop rate is not high enough to be practical.

Note I talked only about ascended trinkets which are buyable with the currency from Bitterfrost Frontier, Ember Bay and Bloodstone Fen reward tracks. I too think we should get more ascended from WvW somehow as it is a game mode where one wants it.

Crinn.7864:

When I was doing build experimentation for my necro in sPvP, I went through literally every condi amulet in a day of experimenting, without even going into how often I play with different runeset.
I could never afford to do that in WvW, Full regearing with exotics costs me a 4th of my average value, and WvW already costs me with it’s food requirement.

The amount of effort and gold required to do experimentation in WvW is prohibitive to the extreme. Compared to sPvP where I can use whatever I want whenever I want.

If anything this sounds like a problem with resourcemanagement, personally I never have any problems scramming together the gold for a full statchange or crafting a full set of exotic armor (except trailblazer/minstrel, these 2 stat combos should be cheapened a bit) and I get most of my wealth from just playing WvW (unless I want a legendary or something else really expensive then I farm) and doing the odd PvE when someone manages to force me to help them with it, I can highly reccommend https://gw2efficiency.com/ to help you manage your resources.

Stand The Wall.6987:

the same traits (for the most part) are available in pvp, and guess what, the balance there is way better. if you nerf gear, then guess what, traits that rely on them will get toned down as well. if you cannot understand this fundamental fact then I cant help you.

I’d disagree with sPvP being balanced, for starters there is currently only 8 out of the classes currently competive, you almost see anyone going for anything beyond the metabattle meta builds (on some rare occassions you see someone picking a build from the great category) at least where I play. Most of the problematic traits are 3-5 second long invulnerabilities or similar, hardly gear dependant.

JemL.3501:

i would like they let us choose the stats insteand of having a pool of prefix which cannot be modified

because 90% of the prefix are not used…the attribute system and customization in this game is terrible, so yes to let me pick what attributes i want insteand of being bound to the gear, the gear could give you the points for be used and for still have the gap between ascended and exotic, lets say exotic would give 10 points, while ascended 12 and etc

Letting us freely make our own stat combinations would indeed be a step forward, not exactly sure how this would be implemented but that would indeed be good for build diversity.

Crinn.7864:

Cevni.2049:

snip

Right because putting arbitrary crafting/gold gates on changing gear is obviously conducive to creativity.

As stated before being sarcastic and rude in all your replies is far from cunductive to a good debate.

Crinn.7864:

I keep wanting to play around with builds other than my zerk thief in WvW. But I can’t because I’d either have to waste gold and time on crafting, or waste gold on buying a set of gear, all for a build that I might not keep.

Changing gear atm is rather easy, earning enough gold to statchange shouldn’t be a challenge to anyone (especially with leather prices going more sane atm). Should it still be too expensive there is always exotic gear which I am sure works just fine for testing out a build, the 5% stat difference wont make or break if the concept of the build actually works and as such you can craft/statchange your ascended after testing the build out. Given that ascended trinkets (previously hardest slot and also where the majority of your stats come from) is now basically handed out for free to WvWers testing out builds shouldn’t be very hard, I know it isn’t for me.

Jeknar.6184:

snip…

Well it all depends on what your gaming background is and what you think is a good powerlevel, I only started playing a few months before HoT and come from a game where one could easily do 1v10 if the people fighting you were vastly worse than you due to a much higher power level (bit of OT but background is always useful and it highlights why some people might want different power levels etc), I personally prefer a high power level over a low, different opinions, I listed it as one of my points since that is one of the reasons I’d hate it.

Note: Power creep is something is currently being thrown around a lot, I’d agree that there has been a power creep in automatic defenses which I do think is bad as that deters from player skill rather than enhance player skill, I’d say scrap the vast majority of passive defenses especially auto stunbreaks/stabs, auto invulns and auto stealths but this is not the topic of the thread.

About everyone running metabattle builds. I personally got a lot of fully ascended characters that I play in roaming situations with builds that are not on metabattle (and some that are on metabattle, mainly to learn the builds to learn how to fight them), I’d even wager that none of the builds that anyone in my team runs (we’re 6 people atm) is findable currently on metabattle (my main build has actually appeared but like over half a year after I started using it so meh)-

A lot of people we fight as a team or that I fight when roaming solo or duo do run builds I’ve never seen before and I’ve looked trough all the metabattle builds. Note: A lot of people do run metabattle builds, if I were to guess id say half or so.

Swamurabi.7890:

Snip…

Note: being rude just makes you rude, it doesn’t actually help prove any points. Some builds won’t work obviously due class mechanic (or rather a lack of some class mechanics (such as decent healing or boonshare for necro) and is not at all related to stats). None of the combinations I listed were for anything else than how many different combinations of stats one could go with for any specific base idea (like condition damage there are trailblazer, dire, carrion, rabid, viper and sinister that have condition damage as major, any mix of them would lead to a condi builds, how much of each you might want differs from build to build and team to team).

Builds excel in different scenarios, some require support builds to really shine for example, some are support builds, this is something you can see in WvW, but almost never see in sPvP partly due to amulets. There are of course sub-optimal builds which is really good, otherwise there wouldnt be any optimal ones, allow me to make my own mistakes, don’t lock me in a padded room please.

I am saying that the fact that you can make creative builds and both succeed and fail is part of what makes WvW great, I’d rather not introduce more handholding and more restrictions on creativity.