Guild Wars 2

Tongku.5326:

morrolan.9608:

Tongku.5326:

Chaba.5410:

Stab was meant to be countered with boon stripping, boon corruption, and soft ccs, not hard ccs.

For WVW AOE boon strips are just too weak and too infrequent to accomplish this. In addition soft CCs do not work because they can also be removed by non stop AOE cleanse spam since they are mostly conditions, and in many cases you don’t even need that, jsut have enough -condi duration on you to bring duration of soft CC under 1 tick to be completely immune to it.

The 2 things above is what made stab in its original form stupid OP when added into any build.

if they buff stab, it will jsut be the other extreme, they need to rebalance the above in order to buff stab its somewhat in the middle.

I don’t recall there being too many complaints or problems with the old stab. Stab was applied, necros stripped or corrupted it, eles cc’d the enemy then the groups clashed. If you were co-ordinated well enough the boon stripping and corruption lasted long enough to do its job. And groups were evenly balanced.

Hmm, I recall GWEN meta and mad amount of nothing but hammertrains for the 1st year or year and a half of the game, I was a part of that meta running guard, necro, war purely and exactly because of the old stab. Being completely invulnreable and literally laughing at CCs and condis completely negating a vast majority of builds.

If you are new to the game, just hop on youtube, so many vids still around. There are even a couple going 5 vs map que. Personally I was never as good as those guys but I did manage to command 8 and 10 vs map que back in my day. In addition, to help you recall, please do a search on these very forum archives to see all the issues GWEN meta brought, stability and the lack of it by certain professions and the lack of counters to it as it was, will be right at the top. You just can’t miss it.

The 1st WVW exodus happened exactly and precisely because of this, because of so many classes / players being excluded from it. But at that time population was still strong enough to pick up the slack sort of speak. Now that there are too few new players coming in and couple with other issues.

Whatever the solution is it needs to be balanced and not go to those old ways, as that will just literally half of whatever you have left, CC and condi immune groups to me are worse then current ranged AOE spam groups.

There was no mass exodus due to GWEN meta.

There was however a mass exodus due to the stability changes.

If certain classes weren’t used much, then thats a balance issue, not a stability issue.

Stab needs an entire re-work. Currently, math says that CC’s are entirely way too strong in comparison to stability. IMO, stability should always be stronger than CCs anyways because I believe the game is significantly more fun when you can move. I think a well timed, well sequenced series of CCs or something of the sort should be the only way to CC players. A CC should be something that is sort of a game-changer in that if you are 15v15 and your team is able to stun 1 of those players, it should be very difficult or cooldown draining in order for the stunned person to not to go into down state.

See the difference? right now, we have a million “small” CCs (0.5s dazes, etc) that make gameplay choppy and annoying and large battles don’t reach conclusions until one group gets bored or pushes and dies. Currently as well, large groups have an amazing advantage to slightly smaller ones for all these reasons too.

Literally anything could be down to help the issue.. Although things like buffing ground targeting stab really wouldn’t help because its inherently stupid. Oh great, we can move finally… in a 300 radius… So pretty much, we can’t move at all anyways.. oh hello well bomb.

It surprises me every time that people just vehemently are against reverting to old stab. At least with old stab, people played WvW.

Stab must be buffed/reverted if ANET would like to see their game last a little longer.

Surely people are getting sick of PVE meta events. WvW is the reason to play this game… PVE stuff is nice sometimes to work towards say a build in WvW, but if WvW is gonna be this dead for much longer (or get worse) then the game won’t generate any more money.

The stab changes have wrecked WvW.. If you like them, I’m glad, but you are the tiniest of minorities and I would assume you would rather have to people to play with and against then have stab the way it is now.

zinkz.7045:

Dano.5298:

What happened to the days were commanders would call for fields and make damage chokes which would still wreck melee trains.

That didn’t exist unless they were scrubs, any competent guild or pug zerg with half decent players and a commander who wasn’t brain dead could go through chokes in the days of heavy melee trains, broken stab and hard CC being borderline useless (hence it was all about immobilize back then).

Take inner hills as an example, if you had a melee heavy blob attacking and a ranged heavy blob defending, it was kitten easy for the melee blob, hard CC was useless because of so much stab, so many covering boons, that stab was last to be stripped by well of corruption, etc, then you add all the guards / shout warriors / ele large water etc that cleansed condies, had silly AOE healing, etc, then the invurns.

So all that would happen unless the melee bob were terrible is the melee blob stab up, invurn, etc to get across the bridge, the ranged heavy blob would be forced inside the lords room, so then just wait till stab up, maybe invurn up, and same thing again into the lords room, chokes were a joke, the only way a ranged heavy blob actually beat a melee heavy blob (that wasn’t terrible) was to split / kite, and take out eles, then eventually wear the melee blob down, that required space, and took a long time.

Which is why at points in the game you had the vast majority of players in the blob as melee, it was faceroll, pushing was was beyond skilless with the way stab negated hard CC.

Stab isn’t the problem, decent commanders / guilds are able to push melee in that respect just fine (obviously scrubs have issues, but well…), what makes the combat dull these days is the endless sniping by baddies, the power creep on damage, the running away / avoiding fights unless outnumbering the opponent signifcantly (hello French/German/Spanish servers) etc.

… But all the good commanders and guilds left because of the stab changes.

erKo.9586:

So I use stand your ground and F3 for stability, instead of before they would give like 6-9 sec stability it gives me 2 stacks that some guy with CC can just remove? wtf whats the point with stability then?

Hey this guy gets it! C’mon old stab or stab buffs! We just gotta believe.

Together, we can make our dreams come true. Magic is real. Life, love and happiness are attainable.

#Stabilitymatters2016

Boreal.9826:

Chaba.5410:

Remember when mesmer confusion was nerfed and suddenly the ubiquitous WvW mesmer was hard to find for getting your golems ported because no one wanted to play mesmer much anymore? Melee is a bit like that now since the stability nerf.

We run melee heavy and we do just fine. Lots of great fights today.

I really don’t get all these stability complaints. It’s more difficult now, yes, but definitely doable.

Its clear then that you are running substantial numbers or the enemies you are facing are incompetent. Thats just the math speaking.

I remember when the stab changes came out, a blob guild was like, “oh hey I like the stab changes” and literally every other wvw guild was infuriated at anet for ruining this great game mode.

Junkpile.7439:

It’s mesmer job sneak in and make portal. Silly idea that blob should just run through cc. If you run through cc you are stupid and deserve lose.

See so how come it has to be CC though to deal with melee? What happened to the days were commanders would call for fields and make damage chokes which would still wreck melee trains.

There are several, several ways of blowing up hammer trains. But there is no way to run a hammer train, at all, whatsoever given a certain number of enemies.

I don’t understand the whole, “its too much work/effort” to have split between game modes.

I guess I just figure minor adjustments just wouldn’t be that hard to do on the fly. Take for instance the rough skills to deal with in WvW,

Venom wells – Could just nerf duration, or something minor to help a bit, then re-kitten
Hammer Rev 2 – Increase CD (like they just did)
Guard LB 5 – Make it 3 Rings instead of 5, even if you hit 5.. Or just make the rings not last as long…

It just would seem to me like ANET would benefit from a skill split.. and instead of having a talk show and make it a big friggen deal everytime a balance patch comes out.. try some minor adjustments too.

Stability remains a huge issue.. Why not just increase the stacks of all stab sources by a bit here and there? Maybe make stab the last boon to be stripped..

These minor changes won’t fix the game nor change the currently immensely unhappy player base. But it would show that they read players feedback and take steps to help.

3 months of playing a game with several broken things is just ridiculous.. its ridiculous they would think ppl would still play after that.

Tyler Bearce.3427:

We’ve avoided adding this feature because we don’t believe it would be healthy for WvW. While we can appreciate why some players would want a feature like this, lots of other players only engage in WvW when, upon entering a WvW map, immediately see a commander icon to follow. We try and avoid adding features that can be used to intentionally exclude other players.

This is a very sad response considering all guilds do anyways is just target the driver.

Xillllix.3485:

Dano.5298:

People just need to look at it honestly. How about instead of arguing against strips and perma stab, we also look at the effect it had on player participation which correlates to fun?

Before stab changes, wvw was packed, tons of fun, wasn’t frustrating.

After stab changes, 75% of the wvw population quit.

Even if you like the stab changes, Which for all the reasons stated here is simply just ugh IMO, can we not at least agree that it significantly damaged the game type? Other things damaged it too but the stab changes destroyed the wvw community. Saying that the wvw population needs to L2P is irrelevant. People. Do. Not. Like. The stab changes. Isn’t that enough?

I made a thread explaining why the stab changes favored larger groups as soon as they implemented this disastrous change.

Before the changes, if a large group has more ccs you could still rely on your stability to at least finish casting a few skills. It was something you could rely on and it gave a chance to smaller groups who played well to overcome larger groups. After the stability changes you can get even 8 stacks of stability removed during a single skill channeling. That is if you just don’t get cc-locked for 10 seconds while your skills are on infinite recharge.

It just makes the game less enjoyable, which is why we all miss the old days.

It makes total sense. IDK, perhaps if we all kinda come together to come up with a good proposal for ANET. Say a stability week? Sometimes its okay in competitive games to test things. In football, in preseason they tested making EP’s longer… They felt it was a good change, they got input, and its now in the game. In basketball, they tried changing the ball to like a non-leather type of ball… Everyone hated it and they switched back. Every year, competition committees come together and try to change rules for the health of the game. If something is being exploited, they try to make a rule.. Even with all of that, pro sports are still unbelievably frustrating to watch still (rules are still garbage) but it helps. I have never seen a game this unfair and this neglected that people still play.

Kirito.2195:

I’ve known Ev for a while now and I know his history and can vouche he knows his kitten. So his statements here are objective, before anyone goes and jumps on him for being a noob or whatever. Mind you this is his second time making a huge kitten thread regarding Stability issues. Anyways though I agree. When I first started WvW’ing 2 years ago on ET, whatever very low tier it was – there was still plenty to do, definitely quite the community. Which is interesting how I can’t replicate how amazing WvW seemed to me at that time no matter how many servers I go onto. Good times, ded gaem

Thanks man. Think I know about half what you know but yeah we def both play the game and have been big parts of the wvw community. Its definitely heading to ded game if it isn’t that already lol. Stab changes man… stab changes. I like how every guild I talk to, they all say the same thing, “We complain about the stab changes every raid”

but nooooo its a L2P issue. You have to learn to enjoy not having fun by getting stun locked all day.

And lol yeah this might be round 2 of stab whining but /shrug maybe it might help a game I really enjoy!

People just need to look at it honestly. How about instead of arguing against strips and perma stab, we also look at the effect it had on player participation which correlates to fun?

Before stab changes, wvw was packed, tons of fun, wasn’t frustrating.

After stab changes, 75% of the wvw population quit.

Even if you like the stab changes, Which for all the reasons stated here is simply just ugh IMO, can we not at least agree that it significantly damaged the game type? Other things damaged it too but the stab changes destroyed the wvw community. Saying that the wvw population needs to L2P is irrelevant. People. Do. Not. Like. The stab changes. Isn’t that enough?

Subversion.2580:

The problem with the stability discourse, as well as many other discussions regarding WvW lately, is that it is obscured by the misconceptions of stupid people. People who are completely unable to either look at the very simple mechanics behind the change and tally up the numbers or look into the context of how the stability change is the driving fault behind the “population imbalance” and general discouragement of content-enablers (like commanders, roamers, scouts etc). I have no better description for people who refuses to argue the points at hand or harp on about incontextual or peripheral issues.

There never was a “permastab” norm before the change. That is the misconception of stupid people who never understood how rips worked and simply wanted their spammable go-to buttons to be the end-all solution to some elitist guild, all-melee, permastab strawman. The changes to stability, making it part of a tit-for-tat cooldown trade, is in direct correlation to superiority of control effects, given how the game has more control effects on shorter cooldowns. It is an imbalance. That is the simple math.

By the same premise, it is in direct correlation to larger groups outperforming smaller groups [with fewer cooldowns to burn] (making transfering to higher populated servers more appealing) and pickup zone-blobs outperforming well-composed diverse groups (that tend to provide said pickup groups with commanders or other forms of leaders and content-enablers). They do not have sufficient counters to cover all the control or the uptime to match the reapplication of control effects. They simply run out of cooldowns.

That used to work well, with more control than counters but higher applied covers that had to be ripped from their players to impose control upon them. The current balance makes pinballing the norm and that is what makes range-to-range combat the norm. We had rips to boons, boons to conditions and conditions to cleanses rather than the breakbar-spam nonsense promoted in PvE now to create a simplistic version of that mechanical context. Tangent: Even in PvE it would probably had been more fun with bosses that corrupted boons to cleanse and reapply or stole boons to rip, steal or corrupt back.

All of this has created a transfer circus where players transfer to win, overpopulating already highly populated servers, followers transfering to find leaders, draining lower populated servers to the point where players have to transfer to even find players to fight and to participate in the basic premise of game mode – to have open world fights – and a dependence of more players upon fewer players, where old established commanders are expected to guide more, less experienced players. That is a terrible environment to command in, causing burn-out, limited tactics at one’s disposal and a general disinterest in the game mode, from the decreasing amount of players that an increasing amount of players depend upon. That’s the context.

Stability is at the heart of everything, from the personal enjoyment of getting to control your own character to the melee-range balance, finding fun friends to follow and exciting frenemies to fight. A game (mode) where restricted movement is the norm is simply garbage and completely counter-intuitively wasteful to the fantastic movement- and combat engine this game promises underneath the WvW scrapheap. That’s why many of us are so passionate about it too, because the WvW mode has so much potential in GW2. It stands to be the open-world market leader. The same can not be said for good stories, raids or esports, with cross-genre competition where our MMO is but a small contender.

I just want to say thank you for this post. I hope ANET reads this and takes it into consideration if they truly want people to keep playing their game.

MoonT.6845:

Why must stability be fixed? Why? The WvW community needs to learn to fight differently. Instead of all pushing in one huge mass, spread out and push, Push with different sub squads from different angles, both ways lessen the CC as it has to be more widely spread. Perhaps the days of Empower – Veil – Leap In – Wells Down – Drop the Bomb have gone.

You wouldn’t see a modern army in trench warfare because they have moved on. It’s all about fast mobile units in the real world. So why shouldn’t WvW adapt?

Every single class has multiple ways to escape CC and stun, if you choose not to carry a stun breaker or two, more fool you, adapt your build and stop running the so called “meta”.

Yes some HoT skill/class combinations are overpowered, but Anet will eventually balance that. But it all boils down to learning to adapt in both tactics and build. Use your brains rather than being a follower of the meta automaton.

So a couple of things I think you might have missed from the above posts:

1) Its about fun and health of game. 75% of commanders have quit this game, citing stab changes as a huge reason for it.

2) Its incredibly jarring and irritating to get knocked and pulled and stun locked all day. and I run as many stun breaks, stab, resistance, etc as possible.

3) Adjustments for stab still just lead to whoever pushes has disadvantage. Should be opposite or neutral advantage IMO since people don’t want to just stand there all day.

While I appreciate the L2P point you are making, most people’s complaint is that while it is true zerg busting is pretty much dead, its also just a fun issue. Most people, who play wvw, do not like the stab changes.

A wipe before stab changes:

“ah better luck next time, they got us.. good on them.. They sustained well (or whatever)”

A wipe after stab changes:

“Wha, what, stab 2, I’m fenced… gravity well! get ready to push… and stun locked.. haaalppp! I’m dead, all my abilities don’t work, can’t do anything.. can’t do anything.. and dead”

Junkpile.7439:

Need to remember that players weren’t lamers then like a nowadays.

I agree. I think part of it though is the stability nerf, causing 75%+ of commanders to quit the game.

DeWolfe.2174:

WvW is collapsing from the weight of malaise. The WvW community is suffering from depression and needs an injection of passion and life! Think of all the things that symbolize a flourishing life and that’s what’s needed in WVW. An arid desert is certainly not it

lol that is really true. Its almost like ANET knew WvW was gonna die with the new BL… no life, no activity… just a barren desert.

displayname.8315:

Sure when your facing more numbers its easier to get killed or stunlocked. Still it’s more of a learn to play issue than it is a broken mechanic.

If your commander is playing pirate ship so will the rest of the zerg… if you don’t have enough good melee in the zerg your push will fail… stability/invuns/endurance/dodges/evades/blocks/passives…. that all works well enogh

Its just simply not true. If you 1 push everything, it can almost be true but simple math tells you there just isn’t enough stability or anything to prevent you from getting knocked around. And my point is, why is getting stun locked and knocked around fun?

CC needs to work and all, but when battles reach a certain number of people, forget it. its pirateship, never ending fights or you push and kill your group. Its still that way, and its still really sad.

displayname.8315:

Stability is fine. I see zergs run right thru CC all the time. I go deep with warr or guard and come out without being stunlocked. Trick is you have to have skill and time you stabs/stunbreaks/evades/dodges/invuns.

I chase down mesmers, eles ect that don’t seem bothered by CC at all. Probably all the new passives but they ain’t getting caught no sir.

Question:

If half the players who play wvw left due to the stability change, is stability still fine?

Question 2:

Do you like being knocked around, pulled, thrown in the air all the time?

Question 3:

What benefit is there to tons and tons of CC on a gameplay and health of game aspect?

Question 4:

Why should stability’s effectiveness scale based on size of battle? Pvp its OP, wvw its literally useless.

Sadrien.3470:

Dano.5298:

Please consider fixing stability please ANET (at least in wvw)

It drives commanders insane and with the amount of CC you’ve added to the game and every other thing that the wvw community has beaten to death trying to explain, its just so obvious that it must be changed. It needs to either be duration, or have some neat cooldown on stab strips or something.

I can push 30man guild groups solo a d have no problem with Cc lol… don’t step in lines and run to back, no meleeing frontline enemies. If already done I’d say your probably fighting massive blobs in which case simple hammer #2 on rev to win.

My point stands unchanged.

Horrendous addition to the game. Adds nothing to the game except frustration

Please consider fixing stability please ANET (at least in wvw)

It drives commanders insane and with the amount of CC you’ve added to the game and every other thing that the wvw community has beaten to death trying to explain, its just so obvious that it must be changed. It needs to either be duration, or have some neat cooldown on stab strips or something.

1) Find camp, get supply
2) Find gate or wall, build ram or Cata
3) Repeat

Until ppl play the game again, ^ thats all you have to do. Hence why the fight guild comment is valid.

WvW isn’t original, but all and all, with gw2’s superior combat system and group dynamics, it could be so great. IMO, ANET’s primary focus should be rewarding and helping GvG and WvW as its esport well before 5v5 domination. Not to mention, THIS IS GUILD WARS!!! Does anet want guilds to be only 5 members?

Now that would be original!

WvW is just a far superior game type for ANET because guilds can come up with more than 1 strategy. Even if builds are unbalanced and broken, if they nerf Hammer Rev 2 and remove venom wells, guilds have flexibility to play multiple kinds of ways. Whereas pvp is pretty much who uses more cheese (and ANET cannot fix things quick enough), WvW and 15v15 gives enough room for different viable comps. Multiple games have a 5v5 game type. What other MMO has army versus army where you play as 1 person in the army?

Not to mention, all the time and effort generating the new pve maps is going to result in one thing… a re-playability crisis. WvW remains the best game type in gw2 for re-playability. When you play against people (and its not in a 5v5 format again, that is out of ANET’s league) each encounter feels different.

It continues to blow my mind that ANET neglects WvW. It is the only reason 3/4ths of its player base plays this game. Players might dip in pve or pvp but they are just waiting to play wvw again. Not to mention, WvW is a gold sink for a lot of people and more and more people are hating the idea of buying gems and supporting this company.

There has been some really interesting choices by ANET lately with effectively what they want their players to be doing. As far as I can tell they want their players to..

1) Do jumping Puzzles
2) Gathering
3) PvP in broken bunker meta (pvp being the best location for saltiness because it highlights bad game design and lack of balance)

I find this kinda lame considering the only reason I chose to play this game was to play WvW and avoided the top two completely. It just seems like out of all the things this game does well, Anet is choosing to highlight its poor designs by encouraging players to play in the worst current game modes. I don’t believe many people chose this specific game for the top 3 things. Esports and pvp is out of ANET’s league due to their slow response times and pretty much just their game design… and who wants to just do jumping puzzles and gather all the time?

Just wanted to add that the focus of these changes sound fantastic and have been sorely needed. The fact that ANET looks to want to increase the PVP aspect of the game is very exciting. Rally botting and mass reviving is truly terrible and rewards blobbing. And blobbing is good for noone!

We run some because they do a lot more than healing. They have a massive group wide dps buff along with condi clear, entangle and more. The moving water is also really strong and helps eles not have to be the only waters. Personally, I’m finding it very interesting to see how many groups aren’t running new specializations since pretty much all of them numbers wise are superior.

But then again, just run zerker backline hammer Rev. and when I say that please, please don’t. Try to enjoy the game and do what you think should be done.. Metabattle is often really inefficient and contains bad group synergy.

I have to say, I’ve been pretty bummed about the guild arenas. Not only is there no matchmaking or program to invite guilds into your guild hall (without joining your guild I think, but even if not its not well put together) but they are also too small, have poor line of sight, required upgrading in order to not get knocked off the arena, have no timer to start the match, etc.

I think part of why I am so frustrated with this guild arena is that on its face it just can’t be that difficult to fix the above problems. I mean maybe a matchmaking system would be tough, but making a reasonably sized arena? Does that take more programmer time or something?

Anyways, just giving my feedback if somehow Anet does read these and my guild and I can enjoy the game more.

There are so many things ANET could do, its really surprising that literally nothing the player base ever asks for has ever been delivered. They have developed the most phenomenal awesome game and they have the business/social skills of a kitten.

This idea sounds great.. they could also do literally any of the following ideas too:

1) Make ppt worth more in new bls for a time being
2) Make PPK a thing for new bls
3) Make rewards better in new bls
4) Create a participation type event that makes sense and doesn’t reward farming. (can use kill streaks combined with event completion versus movement across the map (DR) etc)
5) Give fighting guilds a purpose to be in WvW for more than cheap bags (PPK, specific boosts for winning fights, etc)6
6) Give participation points for havoc squads. If you try to take something with a small group, that gives more rewards than blobbing to victory.
7) Give great DR for blob caps
8) Limit rewards for when your server is significantly outnumbering the other ones
9) Merge bottom servers
10) Make ppt slightly more dynamic so that comebacks are possible but are hard
11) Reward and help bolster WvW communities.
12) Help encourage more tags by balancing the pop more
13) Change upgrade system to be a combination of auto upgrade and player run.
14) Fire the WvW development team
15) Understand that game modes are not distinct games. Even if WvW players play PvE, understand they wouldn’t be playing PvE if it wasn’t for wvw making them want to even play the game at all.
16) Realize how insulting it was to have to get to guild hall level 23 in order to not be knocked out of your own guild hall when trying to GvG.
17) Actually have a system worked out for guild match making as HoT dropped. As it is, it would be equivalent to not having gliders ready for the new maps.
18) Give distinct rewards in WvW that encourage certain play styles that keep people playing. For instance, havoc or zerg busting skins and make ppl who patrol keeps and sit on acs watch their stats slowly diminish over time until the can be one shotted by any skill.
19) Make it so if a defending server is outnumbering an attacking server and refusing to come out of a objective, make all their game clients crash for 10 minutes.

I could go on but anet just hasn’t shown any interest in trying to work for their customers. The fact that they thought a stealth fountain and an SMC nuke would help WvW’s population shows all of us how little they know about their customers and have seen direct proof now of how ineffective and poorly managed the WvW team has been since ever, but especially now for HoT.

HeliosTheTurnt.8439:

Well if you positioned yourself properly, you wouldn’t be having these problems.

yes Helios, ty my man.

Guild Arena is bugged I believe, you can’t seem to join another guilds hall in any manner that makes any sense at all. Once we entered the instance, we were either kicked out or put in an entirely different instance within the same guild’s hall. Eventually, we had to have 1 person from each party join the other guild in order to get in and once we did that, we ended up in different instances again within the other guild’s hall.

I believe there are other bugs as well, that being that you have to generate huge irritating walls that wreck your camera angle in order to not fall off the map. I am curious as to why this has to be a feature, all I want is an instanced OS.

I believe there is another bug as well, that being that WvW has no people in it.

I believe there is another bug as well, that being that being that there is significantly more PvE.

There are more bugs as well, that being that stability makes no sense.

Other bugs include having to ask your guildees to sit and defend a camp in order to get favor so that you can enjoy the first few bugs, that being that you can’t join another guild hall and enjoy the falling off bug or wall generation bug or get +5 so that you can enjoy an empty map with a bunch of PvE bug, without stability so falling off a much more vertical map with gusts of wind everywhere happens all the time.

Once we did get it set up though, the game crashed.

In other news, I can glide now, oh wait, not in WvW. Well ty for that anyways, I am able to glide as a quagga so not a total loss.

It’s a good point, I’d be in favor of that but luckily the new maps do have large inners making it possible to break down an outer gate and sorta set up shop in inner.

Hvaran.6327:

Ragnar.4257:

So they changed Stab so it was no longer a “binary” totally-immune or totally-not-immune.

But what they’ve introduced instead is a new binary which hard-codes into the game the number of enemies you can fight as melee.

You have 5 stacks of stab.

Lets say 1 in 4 enemies drop CC on a push (push every 10 seconds, CC cooldown average 40s, so fair assumption).

4 Enemies -> You pass through all CC -> might as well have been no change.
8 Enemies -> You pass through all CC -> might as well have been no change.
12 Enemies -> You pass through all CC -> might as well have been no change.
16 Enemies -> You pass through all CC -> might as well have been no change.
20 Enemies -> You pass through all CC -> might as well have been no change.
24 Enemies -> Even with stab, you still get CC’d -> might as well not use stab at all.
28 Enemies -> Even with stab, you still get CC’d -> might as well not use stab at all.
32 Enemies -> Even with stab, you still get CC’d -> might as well not use stab at all.
36……. etc.

You can nit-pick on my exact numbers if you want, but the conclusion is the same:

There is now hard-coded into the game a number above which stability is worthless, and below which stability is the same as it was before.

This simply encourages blobbing up.

There is a reason why the stability changes have hardly affected sPvP or GvG or roaming, but have had a huge impact on large-scale WvW. There is also a reason why “zerg-busting” has basically disappeared from WvW. The reason is what I have posted above.

this guy basically nailed it. It is how it affected wvw.
+1

I might add how could this possibly not make sense? Can anyone find issue with this post? Its just really silly lmao change it anet because ur game could be so fun!

X T D.6458:

Dano.5298:

TBH, I agree so far that WvW has been ruined but not at all by the new map. There is a lot of really neat things in the new map (like large inner and outer keep space) and I’m sure ppl can learn all that stuff about where to go soon enough.

ANET ruined wvw though by buffing condi’s again and again while also removing stability from the game. I think thats the main thing thats ruined wvw.

Yea the condi buffs/stab nerfs did hurt the quality of gameplay a lot. The stab nerfs, even the complete imbalance of the changes heck I could live with that, its the new pirateship meta that made things so terribly uneven for fights.

If one group has more players, all it means is they have more CCs and therefore a gigantic advantage. Anet is tremendously bad at balancing population so its a double whammy for sure. And yeah I can’t say I’ve heard of a single person who enjoys the pirate ship meta over the hammer train. Some people have said that stab was OP before but I don’t believe anyone prefers a “real” pirateshup battle which is just when two groups slap each other until they get bored and wonder off.

TBH, I agree so far that WvW has been ruined but not at all by the new map. There is a lot of really neat things in the new map (like large inner and outer keep space) and I’m sure ppl can learn all that stuff about where to go soon enough.

ANET ruined wvw though by buffing condi’s again and again while also removing stability from the game. I think thats the main thing thats ruined wvw.

Welp so a bit into HoT and not only is Revanent’s stab entirely useless, there are also way more hard CCs and way more soft CCs, especially since lemongrass was nerfed.

Why Anet? Why turn the game into a frustrating mess where you try to move and get either permanently stuck or pinball’d between knockmbacks. Well Hey, at least they made the guild arenas so that you can fall off the map.

Seriously, I cannot understand Anet. Brilliant game designers, horrific customer curtesy or people skills. The new map is fantastic. Personally I don’t hate either that lords take longer to kill. But why do they want their players to get knocked around and stuck nonstop. What an absolute waste.

coglin.1867:

Dano.5298:

Lol again though, I’m not asking for an easy button to run over huge groups. Just asking to be able to move a group in a large Zerg.. Especially when that’s all anyone does anymore.

That is not all anyone does anymore. So making assuptions. Ones that are inaccurate. Then “lol” when other disagree with your expectations. The thing is, you personal experience does not define everyone elses. What you see on your server does not define every server. Thus when you want changes based on your experience alone, you will get differing feedback.

all right I’m sorry, I meant the lol as more of a “hmmm” than a hahaha but not sure how you could have ascertained that one.

Assumptions aside, that is my experience and therefore is what matters to me. I also do not believe my complaint to be out of left field whatsoever, as many, many (and countless more people who have since quit because of stab) absolutely hate the stability changes.

Just not sure what we are gaining.. Especially since its just a scaling thing.. just at a certain point numbers wise, stability gets less and less good. Why insist on this lack of fluidity with the mechanics? It just is unbalanced and frankly stupidly so, considering its just numbers wise gets funky.

Lol again though, I’m not asking for an easy button to run over huge groups. Just asking to be able to move a group in a large Zerg.. Especially when that’s all anyone does anymore.

I was about to make a comment about ANET not necessarily making bad changes but doing them in a bad way. But then I thought about the changes they have made and realized that their changes are bad too.

^ what those people said.

coglin.1867:

Dano.5298:

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

coglin.1867:

Vornollo.5182:

Due to the Stability change, it’s simply impossible for small groups to be rewarded for skilled gameplay.
Everything is tipping in favour of the zerg, despite the claims of Anet to try and step away from that…

We’re they particularly that skilled, if they were that dependent on a single specific boon?

Not really, no. It makes me smile when I hear this “skilled play is dead” non-sense. It wasn’t anymore “skilled” to play the way we were than it is now. It is just a bit different depending on pop involved.

I’m all for a balance but reverting back to cc being useless is a huge no-no for me. If you are that skilled, you have found ways to deal with this like so many of us did and it is not only by pewpewing afar only. We do have plenty of clashes at close range. We are just a lot more cautious because now it’s possible to literally run into a wall as oppose to just ignore it.

I 100% disagree. with the way stab is working (essentially not at all) you don’t even have the opportunity to play skilled. You can’t fight zergs, you can kite them, but you can’t fight them. The game went from guild groups wanting to stay under 15 to apparently every guild tagging up, blobbing with necros and venoms.

I appreciate what your trying to say, but frankly, you lost me when you began to try to tell us what all the guilds are doing or thinking, because it isn’t true. That may be what you see in the guilds on your match up. That doesn’t make it true. I will not speak for most guilds, but my experience is different. So perhaps it is best if we speak for ourselves and our guilds, and not others in general. For one, my guild often has more then 15 on. Often we desire to run together.

Contrary to what your stating, we often have many guilds running 15 to 30 with thier own pins. Nothing about stability causes us to desire to run in larger groups. I generally see the same in our competitors. Because if they do not, then they are sending a blob after a smaller group, while the other groups take everythingg else.

The other issue iI see, is that it appears as if your suggesting it was different before. My experience suggest otherwise. As well, I have seen far to many videos of pre stab changes, from other servers with large blobs. There wouldn’t be thousands of videos of large blobs, pre stab changes, if it wasn’t equally as valuable to do so then. Thus, there is entirely too much video evidence to support this notion that stability being changed somehow made people start blobbing up. There is absolutely no evidence to support the idea that there are more blobs now then before.

Yeah our experiences are entirely different then. Thats okay, I mean I think there is a common ground here. Currently, Stab is entirely ineffective.. before, stab was a useful way to be able to navigate your group against a large zerg.

Perhaps a common ground would be to fix stability in a scaled fashion like whats been stated here several times. Would you be against that?

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Dano.5298:

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

coglin.1867:

Vornollo.5182:

Due to the Stability change, it’s simply impossible for small groups to be rewarded for skilled gameplay.
Everything is tipping in favour of the zerg, despite the claims of Anet to try and step away from that…

We’re they particularly that skilled, if they were that dependent on a single specific boon?

Not really, no. It makes me smile when I hear this “skilled play is dead” non-sense. It wasn’t anymore “skilled” to play the way we were than it is now. It is just a bit different depending on pop involved.

I’m all for a balance but reverting back to cc being useless is a huge no-no for me. If you are that skilled, you have found ways to deal with this like so many of us did and it is not only by pewpewing afar only. We do have plenty of clashes at close range. We are just a lot more cautious because now it’s possible to literally run into a wall as oppose to just ignore it.

I 100% disagree. with the way stab is working (essentially not at all) you don’t even have the opportunity to play skilled. You can’t fight zergs, you can kite them, but you can’t fight them. The game went from guild groups wanting to stay under 15 to apparently every guild tagging up, blobbing with necros and venoms.

It is your right to disagree but that doesn’t make it any more valid. What happened to baiting those static fields and using the stun breakers and stab really when needed rather than just be done with all cc for a ridiculously long time?

I have to deal with these rat wells too and believe me I also hate them a lot. That being said, having CC being useful for a change is well worth even rat wells to me. It let other kind of players a chance to feel more relevant while not preventing ppl from popping their stab at crucial moment.

I personally find immob a lot more problematic than hard CC are to be honest and warriors are way better equipped than many to deal with that since any movement skill just get rid of it.

I def appreciate that you want CCs to be a part of the game. Hey, I do too.

I just think right now they are unbelievably too strong. Or stability is way too weak. I bait stuff out all the time but theres nothing like baiting 4-5 statics just to get hit with 4-5 more statics on top of all kinds of other hard CC. Its just a blob thing.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

coglin.1867:

Vornollo.5182:

Due to the Stability change, it’s simply impossible for small groups to be rewarded for skilled gameplay.
Everything is tipping in favour of the zerg, despite the claims of Anet to try and step away from that…

We’re they particularly that skilled, if they were that dependent on a single specific boon?

Not really, no. It makes me smile when I hear this “skilled play is dead” non-sense. It wasn’t anymore “skilled” to play the way we were than it is now. It is just a bit different depending on pop involved.

I’m all for a balance but reverting back to cc being useless is a huge no-no for me. If you are that skilled, you have found ways to deal with this like so many of us did and it is not only by pewpewing afar only. We do have plenty of clashes at close range. We are just a lot more cautious because now it’s possible to literally run into a wall as oppose to just ignore it.

I 100% disagree. with the way stab is working (essentially not at all) you don’t even have the opportunity to play skilled. You can’t fight zergs, you can kite them, but you can’t fight them. The game went from guild groups wanting to stay under 15 to apparently every guild tagging up, blobbing with necros and venoms.

Dawdler.8521:

Dano.5298:

mexay.3902:

Okay okay okay, what if:

Static Field, Line of Warding, etc had a maximum of 5 targets. After hitting the target cap they disappear.

A well timed CC-bomb can still be quite effective, but now it takes into account the target cap and you can’t take down 25 stacks of stability on 80 people, just by having enough Guardians and Elementalists.

Thoughts?

While this is an interesting idea, I would not vote this to be the solution. Biggest reason is I feel as though all that would do is split ur zerg up awkwardly as some get hit by tons of CCs and some then won’t. I’d prefer a more static solution.

Uhm… isnt that how it supposed to work? Melee clear the cc by eating it, backline can move… Unless the backline is the target of course.

IMO that would be pretty decent way to reduce some of the infinite cc, but at the same time one need to rebalance cooldowns on these skills as well (lower cd but burn out fast).

No because your melee isn’t just 5 people. So like perhaps the first 5 clear the CC and so after the third or fourth push, one chunk of your melee doesn’t have stab while the rest does. Wouldn’t be the worst thing though, I just prefer groups to be able to move in a zerg.

Really thats my major complaint. I think people should be able to move in a zerg… and if that means two guardians, fine but even thats lame since its absolutely required to have at least 2.. Doesn’t spell diversity nor does that figure in well for trying out new specializations.

mexay.3902:

Okay okay okay, what if:

Static Field, Line of Warding, etc had a maximum of 5 targets. After hitting the target cap they disappear.

A well timed CC-bomb can still be quite effective, but now it takes into account the target cap and you can’t take down 25 stacks of stability on 80 people, just by having enough Guardians and Elementalists.

Thoughts?

While this is an interesting idea, I would not vote this to be the solution. Biggest reason is I feel as though all that would do is split ur zerg up awkwardly as some get hit by tons of CCs and some then won’t. I’d prefer a more static solution.

Definitely most important thing for wvw atm.

miriforst.1290:

Pardon me if im wrong, im more of a roaming person, but doesn’t a lot of this boil down to static field and similar unlimited target ccs?

Its a decent range aoe trap that can not be dodged through, the problem being that it can be very hard to avoid it when its spawned on top of you in large quantities.

What could be considered is making this (or other similarly problematic skills) into very fast projectiles, meaning their deployment is no longer unconditional and that a melee train can cover up their charge by maintaining aoe projectile blocks like the guardians shield (which you can now move when channeling if im not mistaken?). Lightning fields can then still be deployed but will have to be placed in front of the charge in order to halt it, allowing for the frontline to avoid it, putting emphasis on redirection and division.

A lot of the ranged combat in this game is projectile less, projectiles feeling almost like the exemption than the rule in some cases.

Yeah you have a real good point here. And that would definitely be a solution to at least some of my complaints here. If the frontline could use a skill for instance to block CCs other than using stability, that sounds like a good idea.

I will say though that statics weren’t the only problem, that was just one example.

Olli.9028:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Shouldn’t a group of players have to think twice before charging directly into another large group? Why should you be able to do that freely, again?

the main cc source in wvw are static/earth 4 from ele and staff 5 from guard + necro staff 5 and fearwall

all these skills have short cast time and 1,2k range.

Only way to avoid getting thee skills castet direktly 0,5 meter ahead your way or inside you is stealth.
in 40v40+ even than than is often enough cc to spam random all area.
And with the new kitten map there will be even more choke fights than right know where a monkey can play ranged and it´s impossible to push until 1 side fall asleep from fakepushing.
boring as hell for most people.

in fights bigger than 20vs20 stab is way to weak and yes many many people like thee 40v40 pugfights or 20vs40 zerbusting with a guild playing better than the other blob

zergbusting wa a big part of the fun in wvw and if one side play a lot better than the other it should be posible to beat them heavy outnumberd.

before it was possible after stab change bigger zerg nearly always win.

this meta + the cancer new pve/ppt/no space to fight map will maybe let me ragequit gw. only reason i´m still playing and many people i ask from my guild/ex guilds is the combat system and the mising alternatives on the mmo market atm

Thank you.. that is all. Could not have summed it up better.

Cogbyrn.7283:

I personally never thought it was fun having to deal with the Unstoppable Force blob charge that you couldn’t seem to do anything about, other than split around. I always wanted to watch GvGs, but they always looked so boring.

Shouldn’t a group of players have to think twice before charging directly into another large group? Why should you be able to do that freely, again?

More importantly, what other group strategies have been tried so far? Or are people still trying to just force this style because it worked in the past?

My experience has been a lot different than yours I think. Back before stability was nerfed so hard, the vast majority of mindless pug blobs still never pushed well in my experience. A lot weren’t on teamspeak and so there usually wasn’t like some big blob that moved super well together. On the occasion that a blob would be on teamspeak, if the commander pushed, a lot weren’t in raid builds and would rally bot against a smaller, organized and synergzied guild group. That provided balance in the sense that if you were against a server way, way above you in population, you could, theoretically still put up a great fight. Zerg busting to me is the game (I do a lot more GvGs now though because of stability) but I still really miss that side of the game.

Zerg busting is pretty dead now considering it literally doesn’t matter what you run when you are in a blob of 50 versus a group of 15. Condi’s are super strong, rangers have all kinds of stuff, go down the list it just doesn’t matter, there is like no room for being significantly better than a pug blob. The most egregious example of this kind of thing though is stability. Since stability is so weak now, even if you could be better than a pug blob, you literally can’t move into the blob and try. It becomes who has more wells cause RIP you obviously can’t projectile block those and set up a rotation on projectile destroyers or anything like that.

I believe you should be able to win outnumbered if you have better players and work together better as a team build wise and otherwise. Because this isn’t the case anymore, roaming is dead, havoc’ing is dead and almost everyone just blobs. I 100% think blobbing drastically increased with the stability nerf.

My two cents… Its not that I want a play style to be better than anything else.. I just would like to be able to try against blobs without not being able to move at all. I don’t expect to be able to 15v50 but if I could move my toon that would help a bit.

Chaba.5410:

IMHO Revenant will help usher in melee pushes again.

What makes you think this? Just wondering?

Seems to me, Rev stab is weak.

Think it would be a great idea to reward players with some gold for being able to hold objectives they helped upgrade (or something along those lines). it would be a sorta baseline “participation” reward that encourages not just blobbing and k-training.

Adding an economy portion to WvW would be really interesting I think.. If you hold your keep, your server gains gold! Or tally up the amount of camps you’ve flipped in 15 minutes and that nets you some silver as well.