Guild Wars 2

Nikkinella.8254:

guardians are easy badges. I’ve spent nearly 500 hours on my guardian, i know how they work. They arent that tough if you know how they work.

This is true for any profession in the game. The problem with Eles is that for some reason (perhaps 20 weapon skills?) many, MANY people refuse to learn how they work, continue to parrot disinformation about the profession, and then complain ad infinitum until the nerfbat hits Eles hard enough that they go sailing over the Green Monster.

Crappy players will have a tough time killing any profession, Eles just make these players LOOK really bad in YouTube videos, such as peoples’ comments pointing out that the 5 players who just took a CE in the face didn’t even try to interrupt.

I’ve always felt that the whinestorm regarding Ele’s OPness comes from terribad players, the fact that many also experience public humiliation from the exposure of their infantile gameplay abilities surely factors into it.

I guess my only options now are quit or roll Thief. Probably going to quit, an MMO that supposedly is gearing towards e-sports and competitive gameplay needs a stable base of well balanced classes, and should be resistant to handing out nerfs on the whims of the chaff players.

Its sad. For a while out of the gate, Eles were meh. Then D/D becomes popular, lots of people put the time in to get good at it, and the whinefest commences from players too lazy to bring the obvious counters.

I’ve seen people complain MIGHTILY that Eles are OP when these same players refuse or are too inept to interrupt a 3.5 second Churning Earth.

The nerfbat hitting Eles is the result of a lazy playerbase putting all their energy into trying to make a fun class a free kill again. The idea that Eles should be a jack of all trades, good at a lot but not the best is great, IF they’re actually good at everything. But these constant nerfs are relegating the Ele to a bottom tier character.

To be good as an Ele already requires a higher skill ceiling than most, requiring the player to master skill rotations, timing, spatial awareness, etc., etc. An Ele can’t sit still for a moment or be killed. The players that say Eles are OP are apparently just really terrible. And now ANet destroys Eles’ abilities in regards to mobility, healing and protection skills, and soon boon dropping via other class abilities.

So what exactly does ANet envision for the Ele? Are they supposed to be semi-mobile arrow carts in WvWvW, with an extra ridiculous helping of a 5 target AoE limit? The way things seem to be going, Eles will soon have no ability to even duel 1v1, much less the spectacular fights you see on YouTube from guys like daphoenix.

I’ve mained an Ele since I bought the game. Its, up to this point, been the only profession i can really get into, and especially the kinetic and frenetic combat style of D/D was a huge part of that. I am (was) moderately effective with it. But over the last few months, the constant whining from bads about how OP the Ele is (hint: it never was, an Ele had to use every tool available to approach auto-attack effectiveness of other professions), the constant nerfs handed down by ANet, and worst of all the nerfs from ANet apparently being motivated by a whiny and lazy playerbase has left me deeply questioning whether or not I will continue to play.

There ARE many games out there ANet. Consider that before you alienate a portion of your playerbase.

I can’t be the only one who’s noticed the armored boss holding a pair of flaming swordchucks.

Nice nod to 8-Bit Theater lol.

But seriously, which professions will be getting Nunchaku as an allowed weapon? I’d like to know in advance so I can save up for two pair. Wish I could make a fat, emerald green Asura, and macro catchphrases like “Cowabunga!”

To the original question of mobility being too strong… No.

As I’ve posted in other threads, the Elementalist needs every tool in the box just to survive against similarly skilled and geared opponents.

The class combines the lowest armor with the lowest health pool, on top of being locked into one range with no weapon swap.

It seems to me that all the people crying OP are simply noobs who got wasted by a particularly skilled Elementalist, and are whining because Eles aren’t free kills while in FULL BUNKER SPEC. Catch any non-bunker build Ele (most staff builds, various scepter builds, anything with a focus due to lack of mobility) out in the open, and its a free kill. So ONE spec allows the Elementalist to survive. ONE.

People who claim the whole profession is unbalanced because of one spec that’s doing what its supposed to do need to learn what a logical fallacy is. Where’s all the cry-sacking over Guardian bunker/retal builds? You know, the one where a thief unloads a burst and instagibs himself? That’s right Virginia, there isn’t any, because for some odd reason, a class/build doing what its supposed to do is okay for every other profession but Elementalist according to Forum Trolls Weekly.

Shadowflare.2759:

I definitely don’t want to be limited by weapons as proposed. I run S/D right now and have aeromancer’s alacrity, or w/e for the 20% cdr for air skills. Your idea would destroy the little synergy I had with 1/4 attunements. There are problems with attunement-specific traits, but this isn’t a solution.

How would it destroy it? With Aeromancer’s Alacrity as it is now, you’re getting with your build reduced CDs on only the air skills. Scepter Air is already quite fast recharge, of course its RTL and Updraft that need the CD reduction and with your current build you have it.

Now assume we change Aeromancer’s Alacrity as I proposed, with your current build instead of only reducing Air skills, you only reduce Dagger skills. So you’d STILL get reduced CDs on RTL and Updraft, as well as RoF, Fire Grab, Frost Aura, Cleansing Wave, Earthquake and Churning Earth. Are you really going to try and argue that 1 second off of Lightning Strike and 2 seconds off of Blinding Flash are more valuable than the skills I just mentioned having a reduced CD of 20%?

The way my proposal works already fits in with a lot of builds. Aggressive Staff builds usually take at least 20 in Fire, aggressive Dagger builds sometimes go 20 or even 25 in Air, etc. Focus should probably be a Water weapon, since its more defensive in nature, while Scepter becomes the Earth weapon with its emphasis on bleeds and conditions. If we ever get access to more weapons, they can just be added under the already existing traits, i.e. bladed weapons like swords would go under the Air trait, any type of bow could go to Fire, crushing weapons like maces or hammers under Earth, and other off-hands like warhorns to Water.

I just think its a shame that ANet designed such an interesting and fun mechanic into a caster class, than hamstrung its abilities, nerfed its skills and traits, and made the traits themselves not really have a lot of synergy with the class mechanic.

I chose a Human Male, sort of the “legacy” character from GW1. Initially, I had leveled a Sylvari Ele all the way to 80 until I realized that the VA of the Sylvari with constant attunement switching was too… whiny. And pleading. The Human VA is at least much more authoritative, and somewhat reminiscent of Avatar on occasion.

frostflare.6390:

I am against this gung-hoe. The way it is now is not great-But it certainly does not lock weapons into traits. You don’t have to be a FIRE ELE to weild a staff right now. If we go along the proposed ideal-That would mean that if I ever want to be Faster usesing a staff, I HAVE to be a fire ele, I have to take that power trait. That is wrong.

Then we get pushed back into 3-builds that everyone runs because everything else sucks.
Fire/Arcana Staff ele
Air/Arcana Dagger Ele
Earth/Arcana Scepter Ele.

That is way to limiting. Not to mention I have 2 alacrities, Hydro and Geo and combined with fast attunment swapping I actually USE all of those on cooldown. Yet in the middle of a dungeon if I need more survivability I can grab my focus and scepter and still work it. I am not locked into being a staff fire ele. It would just really harm the ele if anything.

Really? Too limiting? Exactly how many Ele players take ANY of the alacrity traits? Take your average 0/10/0/30/30 D/D bunker. Zephyr’s Speed is usually mandatory, the Water traits all deal with cantrips and condition cleanse, and the Arcane traits deal with boons, usually vigor, and almost always EA. No cooldown traits.

Other builds, such as 30/30 Fire and Air, also rarely if ever take alacrity traits because they’re not so useful. Even if you only stay in Fire and Air, with the occasional dip into Water for heals or Earth for a snare, you’d have to take two alacrity traits to get the 20% recharge on only half your available skills.

The point is, at any point in time, taking any of the current alacrity traits only applies to 1/4 of your available skills. If we’re talking balance, and we are, you have to compare it to other class traits in the same vein.

The alacrity traits WOULD make sense if Eles had an in-combat weapon swap, and I think this may have been how it was initially designed, and then never changed. A Staff user dropping a Meteor Storm and Lava Font, then switching to Daggers and Burning Speed-ing into a packed group would make total sense to take Pyromancer’s Alacrity.

But, we have to work with what we’ve got. As Ele builds go, there is the potential for a lot of variety, and if there are ever changes to Arcane to make it not so necessary to play the class competitively, then I can see spreading trait points around a lot more.

And as for being locked into a certain trait line if you’re using said weapon, why? As I said above, most Ele players get along perfectly well with no cooldown reduction, since we’re cycling through skills and attunements so quickly. I can play any weapon on Ele with no cooldown reductions and usually always have skills open in my rotations. But if I wanted to focus on Staff DPS, I’d have to take at least PA in Fire for damage, and AA in Air for CC and some additional damage. Seems hardly fair when the Guardian for example can take Two-Handed Mastery and have 20% CD reductions on 15 skills across three different weapons.

PistolWhip.2697:

But thats the issue, Bunker Ele’s can do too much. They can sustain and survive as good as guardians, are more mobile then thieves and harder to catch (many share this opinion, as many share the opposite) and do as much direct burst as a mid tier dps class thats specced more dps oriented. Anet understands that.

Me spamming buttons is playing perfectly? I don’t die on my D/D ele, ever. I’m a horrible ele.

You’re right, sort of. The Ele can do a lot, because it HAS TO just to survive. D/Ds must boon or die, can’t remember how many times I’ve seen an Ele go down to a Corrupt Boon. Eles MUST be mobile, to be caught without all three of stunbreaks, dodges and escapes usually means instagibbing. As for the mid tier direct burst, in my experience not really. Most Eles rely on attrition gameplay, because their skills, even when used perfectly don’t do enough damage in zerker gear, much less Knight’s or PVT.

If you’re spamming and never die, then I would assume you’re also never killing. The only way for bunker D/D Eles to take down opponents while surviving is usually perfect play. Note, this assessment does not include pwning upleveled scrubs in WvWvW.

Again, just to reiterate, to survive Eles must be at the top of their game, using all their skills at just the right time, with maximum efficiency, with very little margin for error. They have many tools, but all must be used just to reach the effectiveness of, say a Guardian or Ranger just spamming auto-attacks. Hardly overpowered.

PistolWhip.2697:

You mean a glass cannon spec shouldnt be able to do damage? Survivable thieves only do about 4-6k backstab crits. If you can’t deal with that then…

You mean a bunker spec shouldn’t be able to bunker? Eles in bunker spec do terrible damage, and only kill due to attrition and mistakes made by the other player(s).

For ANet to say that bunker D/D Eles are overpowered means they don’t even understand their own game. Why have Knight’s or Soldier’s gear if everyone wearing Zerker complains when they can’t get free kills on Eles anymore? The Ele is the absolute squishiest class in the game, and all those mechanics like lots of heals, escape mechanisms, mobility, etc. give the Ele the ability to baseline with other professions. An Ele who isn’t played perfectly dies. Which is why there are so many fail D/D players who are generally easy kills for other classes.

Seriously, its like ANet watches Excala on YouTube, reads a couple threads of “Eles need Nerf” and that’s all the evidence they need. Sad.

Iruwen.3164:

Kaleban.9834:

Iruwen.3164:

but it’s a server load problem. Like they would change the condition stack limit if they weren’t limited by server capacity.

I would love for someone, anyone to point to proof of this statement.

Until then, stop citing server load/capacity as a reason for terrible game mechanics. Unless there’s actual proof of such, then you’re just spreading disinformation and de-railing the argument from its merits.

There are FPS games that use hit location, some upwards of a decade old or more, that would require more resources at the server and client side than any MMO. If GW2’s balance problems and game mechanics are the result of a hardware bottleneck, then its definitely time to upgrade.

At least that’s what Colin said:

There’s a cap on condition stacks of 25. In a scenario where you have two thieves attacking a boss and one of them can achieve a stack of 25 by themselves, the other one essentially becomes useless because they’ve got nothing to stack on. Is anything being done to address that to make them less redundant?]

Colin: Currently no. Interesting statistic for you: every condition in the game costs server bandwidth. ‘Cause we have to track how often the condition is running, what the duration of that condition is and what the stack is. So the more stacks we allow, the more expensive it gets because we’re tracking every additional stack on there. And so we could say, you can have infinite stacks. Number one: that becomes really unbalanced. But number two: it’s actually extremely expensive for us, on a performance basis. That’s one of those weird, kind of back-end server issues that can help make game designer decisions regardless of what you want to do with it.

http://dragonseason.com/Front/tabid/124/EntryId/212/Lunch-with-Colin-Johanson-Part-III.aspx

I’m not trying to be obstinate here, but that’s not really proof. EVERY action that requires a client-server interaction requires server bandwidth. Keeping track of a condition stack should require much less bandwidth/processing power than player positioning or positioning and impact of AoE skills.

Second, if that is really the case, then they’re not thinking laterally about the problem, but linearly, which for programmers is odd. Rather than have, say bleed capable of reaching infinite stacks, simply allow a separate 25 bleed stack per player. Each player only sees the damage ticks from their own skills, so that’s not a problem. Communication via the UI might need some changing (i.e. a player’s unique condition stacks might need to be purple or green to differentiate) but nothing too demanding, and allows condition specced professions to play with each other.

Usually, in programming there’s always a KISS method available, the condition issue of excluding player builds obviously doesn’t follow it, and the AoE issue we’ve been rambling on and on for 8 pages now is again “solved” by an artificial solution that doesn’t make logical or even common sense to anyone, given the gameplay inherent in the rest of the game.

And I hate to say it, but the idea that tracking conditions involves some sort of geometric scale increase on server load sounds like a really flaky excuse for poor game design.

Iruwen.3164:

but it’s a server load problem. Like they would change the condition stack limit if they weren’t limited by server capacity.

I would love for someone, anyone to point to proof of this statement.

Until then, stop citing server load/capacity as a reason for terrible game mechanics. Unless there’s actual proof of such, then you’re just spreading disinformation and de-railing the argument from its merits.

There are FPS games that use hit location, some upwards of a decade old or more, that would require more resources at the server and client side than any MMO. If GW2’s balance problems and game mechanics are the result of a hardware bottleneck, then its definitely time to upgrade.

Probably obvious, but why do an Elementalist’s recharge traits work the way they do?

Take Pyromancer’s Alacrity for example. A Master trait (meaning 20 points into Fire, tough to justify for any competitive build atm) that reduces fire weapon skill recharge by 20%. MAYBE decent if you are a staff user and only stay in Fire, but that seems like it runs counter to ANet’s intent of the Ele as an attunement dancer.

The other thing is that any of the “Alacrity” traits (Water being the only Adept, probably due to low DPS) only affect 25% of our skills at any one time. With other professions, their recharge traits affect at least 50% of their available skills, and some, like the Guardian’s “Two-Handed Mastery” can affect 150% of their available skills (Greatsword, Hammer and Staff)!

Between the lower damage range on our skills (the rationale being that we have access to more and need to chain to deal damage, which of course doesn’t take into account casting times and the overall longer amount of time taking into consideration movement, dodging, etc.) and the lockout on weapon switching keeping us at a certain range, isn’t this all a little nerfy?

What I propose is a change to the Alacrity traits. Each weapon we have access to could be said to share a theme, such as a Staff identifying with Fire, Dagger with Air, etc. What I would have ANet do is identify that theme, and attach a weapon to it. For example:

Blaster’s Alacrity – replaces Pyromancer’s Alacrity, all Staff skills recharge 20% quicker.
Cutter’s Alacrity – replaces Aeromancer’s Alacrity, all Dagger skills recharge 20% quicker.

Focus could go to Earth and Scepter to Water. As the current crop of Eles tend to focus on D/D Water/Arcane, some sacrifice would be needed to move enough points to Air to take advantage of the Master trait there.

I think given that an Ele needs to output two to three times as many skills as the next class to do even close to comparable damage, that this is not out of the realm of reason. Not to mention that many of our skills are on prohibitively long cooldowns. Compare Churning Earth for example to Whirling Wrath or Hundred Blades (and in the Warrior’s case, his greatsword recharge reduction also comes with Might on crits).

Titan.3472:

AOE would have the cap limit increased if the overal damaged dealt per target scale DOWN. counterpart of larger effect is less damage on each target to keep balance.

Why?

Again, people have mentioned DAOC and WO and even WoW as benchmarks. GW2 has warning circles on all AoE, and the ability to actively dodge out of it, negating damage completely. You don’t need DR because one keystroke and you just negated all of the damage.

Heck most AoE is over time, the only way you receive full damage from a Barrage or Meteor Storm is to stand in it for the full duration.

The only reason I can think of as to why ANet is considering further nerfs to AoE is because they recognize that their player base is either too brainwashed by older MMOs to move out of red circles of death (even though the rest of the game teaches you this simple lesson) or too braindead to do so. Apparently, the braindead part of the playerbase still has enough juice to come on to forums and complain ad nauseum about how OP a class is because it wrecked them and they’re too lazy to find a counter.

Should a condition build be nerfed into the ground because people refuse to bring cleanse skills on their bar? Then why should AoE builds be nerfed because people refuse to dodge/move out of the AoE and/or not zerg into it in the first place?

Its so sad to see really. WvWvW feels so neutered and not really dangerous. The only way to find any excitement is to play a bunker and 1vX a bunch of invaders. But even that falls off as any bunker build would be hard pressed to kill multiple targets, unless you’re one of the top 1% of players.

Iruwen.3164:

I didn’t say anything about proximity. It just has to account for all players affected by the AE so the total damage doesn’t grow absurdly high with more players in range. Also few people shouldn’t be able to reject lots of of people from crossing an area. Total damage is what counts here, that’s what supposed to bring AE in line with direct damage. And they’re probably gonna reduce it further, at least that’s the last thing I heard on that topic:

AoE abilities balancing
- One of the issues brought up a lot in WvW./sPvP is AoE (Area of Effect). We feel like they are too strong at the moment and a lot of people in WvW are gaming the system using AoEs.
- Reducing AoE effectiveness to bring them in line with the single target damage skills.
- Major update coming to all the AoE skills – make classes that are good at single target damage stand out a bit more.

http://dulfy.net/2013/01/17/gw2-dev-livestream-jan-17-transcript/

Simply because it’s not balanced. Pretty much the opposite of what you claim is true.

Truth and fact are two different things. As regards Ele AoE specifically, people the world over complain that D/D is overpowered because of PBAoE, heals and mobility/escapes. The problem with that assessment is that while it may be somewhat true, the fact is that a D/D can rarely deliver a killing blow in the typical bunker spec. Yet, that build does what it is designed to do, stall, but people claim its some awesome massacring machine when it is mostly certainly not.

A few people watch Excala and cry OP. If that is the extent of the devs game knowledge (and looking at Engineers and Elementalists its apparently the case) then balance will never be achieved. Just the fact that they want to “Reducing AoE effectiveness to bring them in line with the single target damage skills” makes absolutely no sense. An AoE skill SHOULD be more powerful by simple virtue its AoE and should have a greater effect on the battlefield. The counter to its power is to simply move out of the AoE. Saying that AoE should be balanced in effect to single target skills is like saying a rifle should have the same effect as napalm on a battlefield.

The problem is the way the game is set up. If you make single target skills stronger and AoE weaker, then zergs will become stronger since they can focus fire targets down even faster, i.e. alpha strikes. It will also make burst gank professions like Thieves stronger too.

There is no way to purely balance AoE to single target skills, as the former depend on the player factor to remain in their effect. The reason AoE is strong is because people remain in the effect. If you increase the AoE damage to the point where players realize the dangers of standing in it, then you change the face of the meta, zergs become obsolete, and the game plays how ANet intended. Weakening AoE even further than it already is will only make the propensity to zerg even stronger.

Iruwen.3164:

The correct way of getting rid of the hard cap would be: make zerging less interesting, then introduce a diminishing returns based system.

Since everything is so obvious to you, I guess I don’t have to explain about how players naturally gravitate to the most efficient way of doing things. This applies not only to playstyle, but gearing as well. A zerg allows undergeared/leveled players to survive, as well as non-tank builds. Which means zerging is just easier for most.

Not sure how you would institute diminishing returns for proximity to other players, this seems like a lot more work for ANet in addition to more awareness paid to the UI, which is something ANet has stated it doesn’t want.

So what’s the obvious solution? Allow the players to be the (dis)incentive to zerging via intelligent, tactical skill use. As it stands now, zerging CANNOT be defeated by anything short of another similar sized group, or one extremely well coordinated group that usually still requires 10 or more players. Again, if players KNEW that the red circle on the ground meant they would be hit no matter how many others were in it, they are then de-incentivized to rush into it, kind of like every other part of the game.

Uncapped AoE opens up tactical options that are simply not available right now. And brings it in line with every other part of the game. As it stands, WvWvW already has a skill split via the cap, making AoE professions much less powerful than their single target counterparts. Melee professions for example can count on their skills doing the listed damage and taking down their targets. AoE professions are victims of the RNG gods when it comes to their skills hitting anything. This isn’t balanced.

Iruwen.3164:

That’s all neat and stuff, only problem is that your cute little theory simply doesn’t work out because people don’t think (and play) that way, which you know of course. Example: pretty much every MMO.
The only idea of the thread is to make AE more powerful than it already is by repeating the same feeble arguments over and over again. Same holds true for LordByron. Bad news for you: ANet alread said they’re gonna nerf AE to bring it in line with direct damage.

Feeble arguments? Such as making AoE dangerous enough that people don’t stand in it for giggles? Quite feeble.

Face it, the reason the zerg tactic works in AoE is because AoE is capped. When faced with multiple arrow carts, people SCATTER and spread out because of the increased amount of targets on arrow carts. Which of course means uncapped AoE is the direct counter to zerging.

The point is not to make AoE instagib capable, its to make it dangerous enough that people STOP STANDING IN IT. You wouldn’t voluntarily stand in a Warrior’s HB attack, why then should an attack like Meteor Shower or Wells be handicapped to the point that congregating inside it is a viable damage mitigation tactic?

If AoE was uncapped, people would stop zerging through it, which means very quickly that AoE would do about the same amount of damage it does now, just because fewer people are dumb enough to stand in it. Which causes people to spread out, smaller sized group engagements, and WvWvW finally looks like it was meant to.

But by all means, keep criticizing it so that WvWvW dies off because it stays as zerg-train for the next six months, people get bored and leave.

Iruwen.3164:

Now guess what class Kaleban is playing. Not really a surprise. Funny that suddenly Eles are “at a significant disadvantage” when it helps in arguing for removing the AE cap.

Wow, you’re so clever. Its almost like you missed the first sentence of my original post.

That cleverness must have made you miss the point of the thread, which is not to empower Eles, but to change how WvWvW plays out.

As to the comment about a 40+ necro zerg, yes they are nearly unstoppable. Why? because no smaller unit stands a chance against them, specifically because of the AoE limit. Five necros could take out the 40+ necro zerg with no AoE limit, thus discouraging zerging in the first place. Which is kind of the point of this whole thread.

Ruprect.7260:

Why does no one see that WvW will become staff/well necro zerg vs staff/well necro zerg lol. If they remove AoE caps I will start a guild with nothing but staff/well necroes and have a 60 man zerg of them, they will be unstoppable. There will be nothing but necroes in WvW. Also a huge zerg of confusion mesmers would also wreck WvW.

You have to think on the large scale, with no AoE limit the fights would be who can get the most marks/wells down the fastest.

Why do you and others not seem to understand the concept of a “shifting meta”? In GW1, skills were adjusted all the time, meaning certain classes had an advantage, while others did not.

Players adjusted, adapted and excelled. The imposition of an artificial cap removes the need to adapt tactics. If you start up your guild and run 60 man necro zergs, than other guilds will as well, and NO ONE WILL WIN. It will be a stalemate every time. So someone else runs a counter build, or a new tactic and makes your zerg mentality obsolete.

The point is, an AoE cap imposes a penalty to any other style of gameplay, or the advantages to longevity that a shifting meta can provide. Again, no one else has yet answered this question, why is it that in EVERY other area except WvWvW players are taught to avoid red circles, yet in WvWvW it is fine to stand in them? You honestly see nothing wrong with that?

As for the idea that AoE would need to have its damage nerfed to compensate the non-AoE classes, well that’s completely untrue and honestly seems to be pandering to a favorite class. Even uncapped, AoE in general does not have the “oomph” to instagib a target, meaning that an Elementalist is at a significant disadvantage against a Warrior or Thief. This is especially true when you consider that most AoE gives a glaring warning (red circle) along with the total damage being divided up into damage “packets.” The only way for a melee class to die to AoE like Meteor Storm is if several Eles were casting all on the same spot, and for some reason the Warrior was dumb enough to just stand in it.

Right now, the balance is completely tipped in favor against AoE classes because of this artificial restriction on their skills. A Warrior knows that if he hits with a certain skill, he will do a certain amount of damage, and can plan for contingencies if his attack chain fails to kill. An Elementalist on the other hand has no such guarantee, as most of the AoE, in addition to having the artificial cap, is also randomized (both by type of hits ala Meteor Storm and by player proximity randomly targeting five different players per pulse) as well as doing its damage over a significant period of time, rather than all at once in quick succession.

tl;dr version: AoE cap is there because ANet didn’t think out properly player number balancing. Except in VERY rare circumstances, throughout every other game mode, both players and NPCs never encounter opportunities to hit more than 5 targets at a time. Obviously, this is not true in WvWvW. Player behavior in WvWvW (zerging) is an emergent property of various factors, map design, player mobility, AoE cap, etc. If the AoE cap was not a significant factor, then you would also see “zerg” behavior in other game modes, which you don’t. Hence, the AoE cap is artificially stagnating and dumbing down the WvWvW environment, and needs to be removed (or at least doubled) to make AoE professions competitive with the burst, “dueling” professions like Thieves and Mesmers.

Zephyr.1683:

not having a cap and running into maybe 3 or 4 mesmers would pretty much ruin your day :P

shatter spec would hit for ~2.5k on a bad day 3 times, 4 if specced for it. 4 people doing 10k damage instantly to say 50 targets would just be silly and this is from pressing 2 buttons and is near unavoidable especially if you just see 50 friendly names swarm 4 red then instantly get shattered. Mesmers aren’t even the strongest aoeing classes either.

The cap seems to be a very strong addition to the quality of the game

So what you’re saying is, removing the AoE cap would be bad because in your example above, 50 players would get punished for standing close enough together for mesmer shatters to hit them all?

Maybe the solution is not to have training wheels allowing zerg gameplay to dominate, but to remove the AoE cap forcing players to choose to stand close and be a target, or spread out, removing the zerg as the dominant strategy and making WvWvW interesting and fun?

As in, the whole point of this thread and my initital question.

mjharrison.3209:

DAOC had no AOE caps, and it worked well. DAOC AOE however had falloff – targets closer to the geometric centre took 100% damage and targets at the extremities took around 50%.

WVW was directly copied from DAOC, and shares all of its characteristics, it’s certain that no AOE could also be made to work in WVW. No AOE cap didn’t eliminate zerging in DAOC because of the way /sticking and movement worked, but pure-balled-up zerging was a lot less successful in DAOC for sure.

In fact the more time goes on the more I come to appreciate the genius of game design in that game.

Now that’s something I could see working well. No limit to the number of targets, but have scaling damage by the proximity to the epicenter of the AoE.

Would also encourage people playing primarily AoE professions and builds to be more tactical with their attacks, as a Lava Font or Well edge would do much less damage than hitting the center.

If this change occurred (unlimited targets with scaling damage) then only a few things would need to be changed. First, the ground target circles would need to have their graphic adjusted to be similar to an archery target, perhaps with a bright red center (bullseye) and each concentric circle fading in hue. Certain skills (i.e. Meteor Storm, Barrage) would need the bulk of their projectiles to hit near the center, with fewer at the edges. The damage would need to be adjusted for each “ring” with 100% at the bullseye, decreasing incrementally per ring to 25% or 33% at the edge.

It also makes sense for boons and beneficial effects. The further away you are from the center of effect of a boon (either an AoE circle or a character, such as in the case of a Warrior shout), the shorter the duration. It could even work for skills like Shadow Refuge. Not sure how it would work with “line” skills like Temporal Curtain and Unsteady Ground, perhaps they should remain as is (making them stronger) since hitting with a line is generally harder than a circle.

But yes, in the event that ANet uncaps AoE (and I really think it would do the game, especially WvWvW a world of good) instituting proximity scaled damage/boon duration to AoE would be a good idea. It then feeds into the anti-zerg choice I’ve been harping on about, that yes groups could STILL clump on a commander for boons, but the opposing force is then presented with a very juicy target.

You can’t look at Ele skills in the vacuum of pure DPS. ESPECIALLY with Staff.

Why? Because from the outset, the Staff is built as a support weapon. Yes, some of our largest AoEs, but also most of our best combo fields.

As an example, playing with a Thief the other day, we were just bumming around in Gendarran Fields, doing a few random DEs. We decided to do the Tamini Mogul group event. He was a D/D and Shortbow, I was using Staff.

To put it bluntly, had I stayed in Fire, we both would have died, and quickly. By cycling attunements, using all my CC, rotating earth elementals, providing water combo fields for healing, kept burning up, etc., etc. we prevailed.

Was my damage as high as just spamming 1,2,3 in Fire? Probably not. But people asking that question make the incorrect assumption that a Staff Ele can sit back safely and nuke, never needing to dodge, or kite, or support teammates. Since the game does not work like WoW, you don’t have the luxury of sitting at max range casting arcane missiles or whatever.

Which is why I always laugh a bit when I read people asking about DPS charts, meters or builds, as if that’s the be-all, end-all of consideration. Every profession in the game needs to bring DPS, support, CC and rez ALL the time in every battle. To think otherwise is to miss the point of the combat system.

I can’t remember specifically, because its been so long, but initially Guild Wars 1 had locked attributes, or a limited number of times you could re-spec.

Later on, they introduced the “in town” on the fly respec system, which pretty much made it awesome.

Guild Wars 2 needs a LOT of things, from bug fixes to class balancing, but this is something so simple and obvious (especially since it was in the last game!) that i can’t believe it wasn’t in at release.

I get that ANet wants GW2 to have a viable gold sink, to avoid inflation and such once everyone reaches the level cap. But you should be able to respec your whole build while out of combat, perhaps not free, but at least make it so you can respec from the skills window (still paying a fee) and not have to travel back to a trainer.

What would be awesome too is allow, like WoW did, a dual spec system, where you can buy with gold a second spec slot that you can FREELY switch between while not in combat. Maybe include a wardrobe switch as well, so the Berserker Staff Ele can switch to a PVT D/D setup while on the move from castle defense/siege to roaming.

One of the longest played games in history is Diablo 2. In that game you could equip two unique rings, or as a Barbarian, two unique one hand weapons. “Unique” in this case meant rarity, not equippable or not with another of the same type.

Whether or not the onus is on ANet or the player is besides the point. This game has been out for many months now, and STILL tooltips, descriptions and documentation are extremely vague, in some cases intentionally. Players should not have to comb through wikis, online third party databases and strategy guides for basic gameplay information, and that is squarely on ANet’s side of responsibility.

Instead of saying “Unique” why not have a line in the tooltip that clearly says “May only equip one per character.” Bam, problem solved via clear, concise language. While they’re at it, fix all skill tooltips so that instead of, for example Signet of Earth saying “Improves Toughness” have it say Improves “Toughness by xxx” where xxx is the actual level appropriate amount! Seems obvious really.

Getting an item in a game should not require comparative shopping via Kelly Blue Book or the equivalent of hiring a home inspector to do a comprehensive walkthrough of a $200k home prior to signing a 40 page mortgage contract.

Really wish I could hear the dev’s “vision” for what WvWvW is supposed to be. Do they really want it to be the equivalent of playing a zergling assaulting protoss bases? And are there any ideas for improvements/fixes on the horizon that will make WvWvW not lamesauce?

While I like the idea of a new weapon, I’m not so sure about the sword. Personally, I would have ANet introduce a new weapon class, Flails, and let the Elementalist be the only one that can dual wield them.

Then you’ve got Eles, dual wielding giant morning stars, whips, chains, nunchakus, etc. in a whirling storm of destruction. Something in the range between daggers and scepter, with lots of AoE that focuses on reflects and blocks.

Sort of a mystic Dervish!

Wow, just wow. The massive number of posts that show responses from people who clearly can’t read is amazing. I’ve seen several responses along the lines of “removing caps makes AoE classes uber powerful.” Seriously? Is everyone high?

Removing the AoE caps introduces a choice, much like a Mesmer’s Confusion in sPvP. That choice is to ball up in a big zerg and be very vulnerable to AoE, or spread out into smaller spread out groups who by the nature of being spread out and small are less vulnerable to big AoEs.

It seems exceedingly simple to me, yet I can’t fathom how so many people seem to keep missing the point. Removing the AoE cap isn’t going to make AoE-centric professions super god awesome, its simply going to force everyone into the choice mentioned above, which means logically people will spread out to avoid AoE.

As to those who argue that removing the cap would mean AoE would have to be nerfed, why? A player who doesn’t stand in a Meteor Shower, Barrage or is dodging through Wells takes zero damage. Lava Font could do a gajillion damage, but effectively does zero if no players are dumb enough to stand in it.

And that’s the main problem with people arguing against cap removal. They don’t see the issue, they just see numbers on skills that in their arguments assumes an automatic hit. GW2 combat is much more mobile and twitchy than most MMOs, which means part of the game balance must be on player reaction time and skill, which ANet can account for but should not put training wheels on.

Ironically, unlimited AoE would make melee professions more powerful. Why you ask? Its simple, now the hard hitting single target professions become the hard counter to the AoE professions. A Meteor Storm can hurt a big group, but a Warrior can knockdown the Ele and crush him, eliminating the AoE threat entirely. Where melee becomes powerful is in their ability to quickly remove the threat. A small roving band of Thieves and Warriors can function as an assassin squad, taking out the artillery barrage being conducted by squishy casters.

In this way, removing the AoE cap gives professions a more defined role in WvWvW, makes the map and mode more interesting, and probably makes the whole thing a lot more fun. At the very least it would cut back on the mindless zerging. But it would require the players to re-think their roles, strategies and tactics, you would of course have the obligatory whining about needing to nerf AoE from players who kept standing in red circles expecting lame game mechanics to save their stupid hides, but they would probably be the minority as the rest of the playerbase would get used to the much more dynamic and challenging WvWvW combat.

Apparently, all the bazillion year DAOC veterans know everything about MMOs so we should all just be content with the zerg as the only viable tactic.

Do the people arguing against the AoE cap removal really not see a problem with this? Is it so difficult to see how allowing an unlimited number of players to group up, but limiting an opposing force’s options to disperse said group is unbalanced?

As it stands now, the only hard counter to a zerg is a larger zerg, OR an extremely well coordinated team whose AoE exactly matches the opposing force’s number. This is why you see guild teams of 10 people obliterating zergs of up to 40 or 50.

However, the skill and coordination required of the smaller team is disproportionately much larger than that of the larger zerg. This effect also hampers non organized teams, roamers, and casual players from ever being truly effective on the battlefield.

A zerg or “zergball” should basically be considered the training wheels noob tactic, where people fresh to WvWvW can cut their teeth on the game style and get used to the size of the maps, where things are located, etc. But it should not be the ultimate tactic that except for a very few exceptions wins every time.

As Rooster and others have been saying, removing the AoE cap makes congregating in a zerg very dangerous and risky, as it should be. This would force players to learn and adapt new tactics, which makes the game more interesting and rewarding. Thus extending the novelty and interest of WvWvW.

Again, to all those arguing against the AoE cap removal, in what sense, logical or gameplay-wise, does the notion of an artificially induced AoE cap make sense? If a bunch of players are dumb enough to stand in obvious AoE, then why should they not take the damage? It would be like raising the player/party cap in dungeons to 10, but making NPC and Boss AoE circles still have a 5 target cap. This could be terribly exploited by players, and probably not “working as intended” yet its the same thing as the AoE cap in WvWvW.

Atherakhia.4086:

It just feels like the people who suggest removing the AE cap don’t have a real grasp on just how many different AE’s there are, how they can be used, and how few classes actually have them.

Your arguments consistently ignore an important point. Both offense and defense have access to the same professions, skills and siege weapons. Sure, a bunch of elementalists can blanket a courtyard, at which point the hard counter would be the same number of rangers with Eagle Eye Barraging their position.

The AoE cap functions as a crutch for mindless play, the design of the keeps and WvWvW in general feeds into the problem.

While I admit that the need to address total AoE, including status effects, boons and damage altogether is a daunting prospect, I believe it is necessary to keep WvWvW viable for the long term. But to sit back and argue that a 5 target cap for AoE makes sense, and that clustering in red circles is the best and smartest tactic just seems stupid. To hear a commander or someone shout to sit in Meteor Storms to lessen the damage is crazy. Its counter-intuitive and from a gameplay perspective makes zero sense. Especially when you throw in the fact that players who play the PvE side are taught from level 1 to NOT stand in red circles, especially in harder content like dungeons and fractals.

A few changes that would help WvWvW, including removal of the AoE cap would be:

1. To break down a door or wall, siege must be used. Player skills can kill other players on top of walls, but do no damage against keep walls/doors. Rams now have a destructible/repairable roof that protect their operators from AoE damage but not melee attacks. This puts the focus of keep sieges on siege items, and makes protecting supply lines very important, and sending raiding parties to hit supply as part of a keep defense a valuable tactic. No more Wammos banging down gates with Twilight.

2. Siege weapons can be manned by anybody. So its no longer a good idea to leave a trebuchet sitting on a hill once you’ve smashed through a wall/gate, as the defenders could send out a small party to flank, take the weapon and siege the invaders with their own weapon!

3. As part of the above, siege weapons can now be broken down and partially recovered. The person who purchased the blueprint gets the blueprint placed back in their inventory, but the supply used is spent (unless a way can be figured to return a percentage, based on the total health of the siege weapon, of supply back to surrounding camps/players). This allows the use of a lot more siege, which is required as player skills can no longer effect a breach, apart from killing defenders.

I’m sure there are more ideas, but these are just a few I could think of in short order.

McDili.1549:

DeadlySynz.3471:

Great pic Chronometria.. perfectly illustrates why there should be no AoE limit.

Actually it doesn’t. It doesn’t do anything at all except show a picture of the ele standing in front of a huge zerg.

The AoE limit now is fine.

You people talking about removing the AoE limit are focusing on an individual basis.

Somewhere there was a mention of a 50 man zerg. Well, if you have 10 ele’s, then you get the AoE you’re looking for. 1 person with AoE can affect 5 people, that’s awesome.

There’s a bad illustration of AoE in zerg v zerg in this thread too.

If there is a 25 v 25, and group A has 5 ele’s, then you’ve got AoE for the entire group B.

Group A’s 5 ele’s could put up 5 static stun fields, and then boom, you’ve stunned the entire enemy zerg.

I see this happen all the time in WvW, especially on choke points. Just the other day a group of us around that 25 man size tried to approach an enemy group around the same size that was on our outer walls. We all had to go up some stairs to get to them. Ele’s placed static fields on the stairs and then our zerg wiped from AoE’s. We even tried a second time with stability and even though we got farther along we still wiped from AoE.

In that scenario we couldn’t attack and avoid the AoE at the same time. AoE is perfectly fine, in the open field people walk around AoE but when used in proper choke points it only takes a few ele’s to destroy or deny a small zerg.

But against a super zerg, you can’t ask for too much. If it’s 5 ele’s against 60 people, you should lose. I don’t care how skilled you are, there is a point where numbers have to have some measure of importance.

Note how the reason in every case as to why you believe removal of an AoE cap is a bad thing is due to the potential for one or a few players to smash and destroy an entire zerg?

How is that a bad thing? This isn’t about unfairness or class balance, it won’t make solo target melee attacks obsolete, etc. What its about is tactics. If a zerg can be busted up by a couple of players (here, “busted up” means scattering the zerg) then that means the propensity for players to form zergs in the first place becomes a bad idea.

With an AoE cap, the logical reaction is to charge around en masse. Without an AoE cap, the logical course is to fight in the smallest possible groups while still remaining viable to accomplish the objective. Which means that in the long run, players would be spread out all over the map in small strike groups and small defense units, taking or defending various objectives, and using positioning, tactics and strategy to mitigate damage, especially via AoE.

I really don’t understand the objections, unless the only basis for such is because people are lazy and would rather rely on a flawed game mechanic to save them instead of having to stroll out of a red circle. The idea that the meta will then be dominated by Eles for AoE is flawed too, because that assumes that players will actively refuse to switch tactics away from the zerg mentality. If players refuse to dodge out of a red circle, then why should they be given a free pass?

The other issue too, especially for AoE heavy classes (Necro, Ele, etc.) is that as it stands now in WvWvW, AoE is falsely advertised. The ground target indicator might show that 15 or 20 players will be hit by an AoE, but only five are. Its deceiving to the players, on both sides, and constitutes a poor crutch for design.

Phoenix.3416:

Did you really ask this?

Its incredibly simple, for the AOE limit not to exist AOE would have to be nerfed to the point of uselessness.
Not all classes, builds or skills are AOE, many are single target so because of this you have to balance AOE not to be overpowered against single target damage.

If you can do 500 damage to 5 targets the max damage a 1 target player can do is around 2500 to one target.

If you can do 500 damage to 50+ targets those one target players would have to be able to 1 hit kill everyone to have a balanced damage level.

It also messes up the balance, if I can do AOE damage at 1500 range and you need to be within 1000, If my 10 engineers all fire AOE into your group of 60 at 1500 range you will be dead before you can defend yourself since if we can kill one of you we can damage all of you if you are within that aoe.

Are you serious? So because a skill has the potential to hit 5 targets, its damage per target must not exceed 1/5 of a skill designed to hit one target?

So what happens when the AoE skill hits less than 5 targets, is that a nerf?

Damage potential and actual damage are not the same thing. If AoE is SOO dangerous with no AoE cap then here’s a thought, don’t stand under a meteor shower. Its even easier in GW2, you simply dodge out of it, in GW1 there was no increased move speed, no dodge, and meteor shower had a knockdown.

The argument that Eles would become OP is ridiculous. AoE is only good if it hits something. If players learn not to huddle together for warmth inside red rings of death, then that can only be a good thing.

Lastly, I keep seeing people say that no AoE cap would be unfair to zergs, etc., etc. Well, good! Zerg gameplay is idiotic, WvWvW should require tactics and strategy, not rolling around the map like a locust swarm. Seriously, its like the mentality of Wammo players from GW1 has found a home in WvWvW. The zerg strategy is the meta, and without significant changes will stay the meta as its the most efficient and survivable form of grouping. Without something to dissuade people from zerging (either out of fear of actual AoE that’s dangerous, not a tickle; or incentives throughout the map that require simultaneous smaller groups) WvWvW will always be just a matter of ZvZ, and that is pretty sad.

deracs.1762:

I see a lot of “remove AOE cap” using the excuse that it eliminates skill and zerg. Yet no one is willing to talk about “skill” to combat the AOE cap. The really good teams do use actual skill to combat the AOE cap and zergs. Opponents clump in a tight ball, use your “skill” and “strategy”. mesmers, guardians, warriors, etc all have knock backs, knock them out. Target different player in the zerg, spread out the 5 hit limit. necro wells on a clump is devastating for removing the boons etc. People want to remove AOE cap for the opposite reason of skill, they simply want small numbers to do insane damage with AOE. I have seen skilled groups mow through much larger groups, yet they have the same AOE cap

Kinda hard to knock out a zerg when the AoE cap on knock backs and knock outs are also 5.

Your assumption is wrong. No one wants an AoE cap removal to be “gods of WvWvW” as a few others have put it. People want an AoE cap removal to change the meta of WvWvW from zerging to smaller spread out engagements. Skilled players in a guild using Vent to coordinate attacks with a well built team have posted videos all over Youtube. Of course organization will beat zerg any day. Organized groups will probably win the day in most scenarios. That is not causal proof that the AoE cap is a good thing.

Its tiring to hear people talk about server lag, as if GW2 is somehow more affected than any other MMO. The game renders graphics client side, server side is mostly position data and number crunching, which is what servers are designed to do and games five to ten years ago can handle what GW2 does, just with less pretty graphics. So please stop propagating the “server load” urban myth.

Also, we’re not discussing a group of 20 Eles vs. 5 Guardians. Assuming a more or less equal distribution of professions and numbers possible tactical options allowed by the game itself would be available to either side. The best counter to AoE is as has been said to “group on me” which you actually hear in map chat. The larger the zerg, the more effective this tactic is. This is outright stupid, and anyone who can’t see that might as well be a brick wall.

Ghanto.9784:

Well, I’ll just point out the obvious, lol: there will still be zergs and if there’s a lot more people in those zergs able to aoe an unlimited number of people then they’re just going to mow you down even quicker. So I’m not sure how you think this would give a much smaller group any real advantage.

Not really obvious at all, nor is it correct. The point of the zerg is the same as a school of fish, survival by numbers.

Right now, if a small group of Eles all simultaneously meteor storm a huge zerg, very little damage is done, the zerg swarms over the Eles and they’re dead. The zerg stays together and continues on, much like a plague of locusts.

Now if there were a removal of the AoE cap, that same small group of Eles could use the same tactic to smash apart the zerg, scattering them because grouping together inside the red circles is no longer a means to spread out the damage. Leaving several smaller groups that can then be engaged by ally groups. Which means tactics, planning and positioning come into play, instead of just the herd mentality.

Again, ask yourselves, in what rational, logical way does the act of congregating inside AoE skills make any kind of sense? Even from just a gameplay perspective, in both PvE and sPvP, players try to avoid red circles because they know it means death. So why in WvWvW should it mean anything different? The hard cap on AoE is very counter-intuitive, and a stupid mechanic that equates to training wheels for adults.

To all those whining about their poor melee classes, remember that every single class has access to AoE, some are just better (i.e. Ele, Necro) at it than others. I didn’t choose to main an Ele because I wanted to slay people in melee combat, I did so because I naturally assumed that I would be more of an artillery piece, softening up many targets for my sturdier comrades to melee and finish off. Problem is, the AoE cap completely pulls the claws and fangs from any sort of long range support, and encourages the zerg mentality over actual tactics and strategy. Its a shame really.

Azylir.9137:

Maybe you haven’t heard this before, but in battle, in war, there is safety in numbers.

Unless those numbers purposely decide to stand in the path of a 2000lbs. fuel air explosive device.

The point is, and has been repeated by many, congregating en masse inside AoE circles as a tactic to limit the overall damage by manipulating the RNG is quite ridiculous.

As to the idea that the 5-cap still means a character does “enough damage” that’s obviously not true whekittenerg can quite easily sit under several meteor storms without taking too much damage. In a mode like WvWvW, the ability to use skills not just for pure damage but also as intimidation tactics, chokepoint holds, etc. would change the face of the game and make it vastly more interesting.

Obviously there is disagreement as to how it should be changed (uncapped or increase the cap) and several people have said its fine as is. The fine as is crowd I’m sure just love zerging around and barely have to think while collecting badges. This type of gameplay is not really sustainable, as the newness will eventually wear off, people will have their badge armors, then WvWvW will die. But if the gameplay itself is the attraction and reward, then the game will only get better.

RedStar.4218:

Kaleban.9834:

You don’t seem to understand a basic point. If the defending team has a couple of elementalists, then the attacking team can tote along a few. Mutually Assured Destruction. The game would be much better if there WAS an arms race of sorts, where builds could counter other builds via intelligent skill use, rather than just out-DPSing and sheer numbers.

The defending team has an advantage. It always does.

Basically, what will happen is this : stay hidden in the fort, wait to form a small little zerg, then portal bomb towards the siege.

While portal bombing is not uncommon, what it achieved was limited to destroying the siege and maybe killing a few persons. If the limit is removed, a portal bomb will be extremely deadly with a few elementalists (or anything that can throw one or two AoE).
“But you can spread out”, not that much though, go too far and they won’t even need a portal bomb to get you.

And what exactly is the advantage given to the attackers ?

But actually, for the hell of it, imagine 10 mesmers, playing ping pong with a zerg by using Illusionary Wave and Temporal Curtain.

The funny thing is, you’re coming up with all these imaginary scenarios that given the current state of WvWvW could never exist. BECAUSE of a removal of AoE limits, all players would be forced to think up multiple tactics and strategies, counters and counter-counters, ad infinitum.

Removal of AoE limits, combined with a change in how siege works (such as rams providing a roof that obstructs ranged AoE) could drastically improve WvWvW to a point where its not simply largest zerg wins.

And one point, defenders throughout history usually had the advantage, which was the whole point behind catapults, ballistae, cannons, etc. An army, no matter how well equipped with small arms (swords, maces, spears, etc.) could not hope to defeat a defending force taking refuge behind castle walls, which was the whole point of walls and castles in the first place. Defenders in this game should always have the advantage, forcing servers and commanders to make strategic decisions about how many troops to leave a sufficient defense while sallying forth the rest to take out the enemy camps or keeps.

Lastly, your 10 mesmer comment doesn’t really make sense, seeing as how a zerg is likely to have its own mesmers, as well as other professions that would counter such tactics. But as it stands now, no matter how much hypothetical strategizing is done, the simple fact remains that given how WvWvW is currently setup, the quickest and most efficient way to “win” is to zerg from point to point. If that’s ANet’s long term vision of WvWvW, its likely to die off sooner rather than later. A WvWvW that encourages lateral thinking and tactics may be more difficult at first, but has much greater long term potential.

Zenith.6403:

George Steel.1804:

Actually what the OP makes a lot of sense. I would prefer these AoE abilities to have an unlimited amount of targets in WvW (exclude PvE) to deter people from grouping and playing with a zerg.

- Where is the balance of couple of elementalists wiping several dozen melee attackers at the gate? Even hitting the maximum of 5 targets with AoE attacks makes them far more effective than single target options, and as such will deter greater force in numbers from pressing siege at full power.

You don’t seem to understand a basic point. If the defending team has a couple of elementalists, then the attacking team can tote along a few. Mutually Assured Destruction. The game would be much better if there WAS an arms race of sorts, where builds could counter other builds via intelligent skill use, rather than just out-DPSing and sheer numbers.

And from what I’ve seen in WvWvW, warriors tend to sit and hit gates with their Twilights and Sunrises. Makes as much sense as Lancelot slicing at a castle wall in Monty Python. And he was repelled by chickens and cows flung from catapults. Point is, a dumb player rushing into AoE SHOULD be crushed, rather than counting on a lame game mechanic to save them from their stupid decision.

And as I and others have said multiple times, the balance to AoE is to simply not stand in it. Meteors could do hundreds of thousands of damage, but if no one was dumb enough to sit under them, the skill would effectively do zero damage. Besides, as a couple others have noted, in what other game is rushing INTO AoE an effective tactic to cut down on total overall damage, much less the question of whether it makes any sense rationally.

I’m not suggesting an unlimited AoE cap (although I think it would fix WvWvW), I’m simply asking for an intelligent re-examination of it in WvWvW. And please, point me in the direction of the profession that only has access to single target damage. Even the Mesmer has a cleave aa chain on MH sword. If your gripe is that this would cement the Elementalist as the king of AoE, well duh, the profession since GW1 has been billed as such, even though in both games the balance team has screwed the pooch with the profession.

Lord Aargadon.4135:

……
Youre right, Aoe Should have no limit.
To compensate single target skills now do triple dmg to make them not completely worthless in comparison, since people are not happy with taking effort to owning nubz in large numbers. Also, we have removed all siege since one 100b warrior can elimate an entire zerg that attempts to rush build it.
/sarcasm

You should at least think about the nightmare of balancing multi-hit and single hit attacks before you post more worthless threads. If you claim your Aoe does nothing, does my single hit attack that deals equal dmg without the chance to hit more than one character do negative nothing?

The balance is quite simple: player proximity.

A melee profession charging down a squishy and owning him can be relatively easy due to roots and CC. You know what nearly all AoE in the game has? These big red warning signs on the ground. If a player doesn’t know enough to get out of it, why should a crutch mechanic especially in open world WvWvW ensure he takes no damage?

If there were no AoE limits, guess what would happen? Players would stop mindless mobbing, and have to actually think. Little impact in sPvP (not enough players on the map plus they’re not stupid), tough to round up enough mobs in PvE to really take advantage of no AoE cap, so the only real effect would be WvWvW.

I for one am sick of the giant zergs simply playing tag across giant maps. No limit AoE would force players to carefully consider team composition, and weigh whether they had enough damage/protection to cap points, kill supply yaks, etc.

Every profession has single target attacks, every profession has AoE. Some have MORE, but not to the exclusion of all else. The balance doesn’t have to be numerical, its simply player situational awareness. Perhaps before you criticize my “worthless threads” you should take a step back and examine the Wv3 meta and see just how lame it is and what potential it has.

In my experience with MMOs and RPGs in general (including games like Diablo 2/3) loading up with MF gear is never worth the trade offs.

The actual increase is multiplicative, not linear, and with most games high end stuff already having a miniscule drop rate, a slightly less miniscule rate will be barely noticeable by a human player.

Usually, its far more effective to kill quicker and survive. I forget the statistical math proof on the subject, but killing more mobs faster generates more chances at drops, rather than a slightly higher chance on fewer mobs. Over time, the fact that you can farm twice or even thrice as fast as a dedicated MF’er means you’ll end up with more wealth. Not to mention that you don’t need to shell out the extra money building up MF gear and consumables.

Thats another thing too, if you have a character who’s a chef. You can make decent money selling almost any level of MF consumables, while keeping the stuff that grants health on hit, extra power, etc. for yourself.

Thanks for the replies ya’all. From your input and a bit of experimentation, pretty sure I’m going to roll an Asura Mesmer and a Sylvari Engineer as alts. Or maybe Asura Engineer and Sylvari Mesmer, haven’t decided for sure yet.

Its something that occurred to me recently, and I can’t believe it didn’t sooner.

In a game where the long term intent MAY be to turn the PvP into an e-sport of some sort, or even just a QoL improvement for the players, there should be as much information communicated to the players as possible, especially when it comes to how they interact with the world, specifically the skills.

So obviously, all the skills and traits descriptions need to be more concise and informative, minus the RNG in the background. But that is just a side note.

The main idea is to have separate, but smaller skill bars on the screen, perhaps moveable as the UI was in GW1, that shows the background skillbar (i.e. a Warrior switches to greatsword from hammer, so the background skillbar shows the hammer) and its cooldowns. This would be especially important to professions like Elementalists and Engineers, who have to manage many more skills due to attunements and kits.

This would enable much more precise and time critical skill use, especially when again, in the example of the Elementalist, there is such a disparity among the cooldowns themselves (from 5 seconds to 45 seconds). I know that I would make great use of a UI improvement like this.

Don’t start with an Elementalist. I made that mistake, and now all the other professions seem so bland and slow in comparison.

Especially not a D/D Ele, its the GW2 equivalent of being on speed. Once you try anything else, you’ll start going through withdrawals. I do have an Engineer and Mesmer alt, low level, mainly as crafting/mules. I may one day level them up, but its like swimming in molasses.

The upside to the Engy is they can still get perma-swiftness without too much trouble, so they’re not as slow as the Mesmer out of combat. However, the Mesmer has a bunch of in combat mobility and teleports which makes them pretty fearsome and unpredictable, and the Focus #4 skill provides relatively decent swiftness uptime.

Zinwrath.2049:

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

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

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

Unlike my previous topic, this isn’t a lore question, but an aesthetics question.

Obviously, gear on Asura is smaller. Animations for the Engineer class are also pretty limited. And this is my dilemma.

I want a Human and an Asura. One will be an Engy, the other a Mesmer. I can pretty easily lore-wise justify either:

Asura: Engy has alchemy, Mesmer is magitech
Human: Engy disdains magic/gods, Mesmer is nobility and politics

Yes, that’s the short, short version. My problem in choosing though is this, the Asura has pretty cool animations with the various Mesmer weapons, but they’re so small. The Engineer animations are basically the same on any race, and the Human Mesmer while having “regular” animations with weapon skills, has larger and more visible gear. Although it must be said the Poison Dart Volley and the look on Asura faces is pretty hilarious.

So I need help in choosing which way to go. Thanks!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s an idea. Have Anet put a “always on” option for the Grenade Kit, where a range circle appears around your character. That way you always know where the 1200 range is (1500 if traited), especially given terrain elevations. And you can fastcast anywhere in the circle without fear of getting the out of range messages.

I will say that I have always been a bit surprised that the first four grenade skills aren’t all blast finishers, you’d think explosives would qualify as a “blast.” I’d probably change the first grenade attack to a 20% chance blast finisher, the second and third to always be blast finishers, and the fourth to lay down an Ice Combo Field akin to the Elementalist’s Frozen Ground skill.

I mainly play an Elementalist and am looking to branch out a bit. I’m hoping to roll an alt that is fun and varied.

My guildies are pretty split, as opinions go, on which professions are best for this. There’s fairly even votes it seems on Guardian, Thief and Mesmer.

The scuttlebutt on the aforementioned three professions goes something like this:

Guardian: solid but can be boring
Thief: high damage, fragile but very few viable builds
Mesmer: lots of variability but can be frustrating

Just looking to get some input. I play mainly PvE and Wv3, looking to branch into sPvP soon. Thanks!

Looking to roll an Adventurer, and with the downsides and bugs of Ranger, I’ve pretty much settled on one or the other of Thief or Engineer.

So, while I recognize that a lot of what I’m asking is based on subjective opinion, I’d still like to hear it.

As for the questions:

1. Which of the two is more valuable/viable/needed in end-game? Such as WvWvW, dungeons, fractals, etc.

2. Which of the two is better in sPvP (not as necessary, I don’t PvP all that much… yet)

3. Which of the two has more viable builds and variety?

4. Which of the two is just more fun overall? <- Yes I know its subjective, but looking for opinions here.

Thanks in advance for your help.

I want to make a female Charr alt, ankittenorn between these two professions.

Whichever I don’t choose will go on a human.

So, looking for input, from both a gameplay and aesthetic standpoint. Thanks in advance.

One thing that may sway me too is the apparent lack of animations on Asura engineers. Whereas the animations on, say a Human or Sylvari with various swords all are pretty generic, Asuras wielding greatswords, swords and other weapons have unique and sometimes hilarious animations. As far as I can tell Asura animations with all Engineer and Necromancer weapons (barring the scepter sway) are the same as their taller brethren.

So in the end, I’ll probably do an Asura Mesmer (over the shoulder greatsword, mid-air frenzy, one hand mindstab, etc.), and this will be keeping with the Asuran lore as magitech. Now I have to decide which races to use for Engineer and Necromancer. I’m thinking Human or Charr.

S/D is gaining popularity on Eles, as is S/F for more defensive and specialized builds (like keep defense).