Reducing overall damage in WvW is a bad decision.

■ smaller groups will get an even harder time killing the larger group.■ in 1v2 situation the solo player will have an even harder time killing a downed player.■ thieves or any glass canon builds will have an even harder time to kill the target while the target can still use mobility to run away or run toward an ally.■ even if heal get also a reduced effect, bus with protection and heal spam will be even more stronger.

edit:instead of reducing overall healing to compensate i would gladly see all main heal abilities for all class get a double CD increase.lets promote back blast in water fields and healing specs instead of everyone having enough healing for themselves.passive healing should be changed too. like instead of the elem signet of healing on spell spam, make it so you heal only when dealing damage to a target.same for war. give its healing signet passive healing ability only when hitting an enemy with F1 and buff the healing it gets.this overall healing CD nerf would also naturally nerf some very strong builds like core ranger boon spam since it usually share boons with pets via his healing ability without nerfing damage or whatever. this would also promote the less effective soulbeast boon spam.

Why should combat be balanced around uneven encounters?

How does someone run away from the most mobile class in the game?

Protection duration and heals also got nerfed.

@ledernierrempart.6871 said:■ smaller groups will get an even harder time killing the larger group.■ in 1v2 situation the solo player will have an even harder time killing a downed player.■ thieves or any glass canon builds will have an even harder time to kill the target while the target can still use mobility to run away or run toward an ally.■ even if heal get also a reduced effect, bus with protection and heal spam will be even more stronger.

Not being able to kill players in a few seconds is a bad idea? The game mode is about fighting, not dying.

@steki.1478 said:Why should combat be balanced around uneven encounters?

How does someone run away from the most mobile class in the game?

Protection duration and heals also got nerfed.

gameplay should reward skillfull players. the game will never be balanced around 1vX but the less ability you have to kill targets when you are outnumbered the stronger bigger groups will be. not every calss or build has an effective way to finish downed players while another enemy is targeting you.reducing the general damage output of all skills (in the stream they say about 10 or 20% overall damage reduction) will make the game easier for people who stick together and harder for small groups or solo players hunting.

you are thinking about thief right? if a thief can't kill you fast and you are not skillful enough or not confident enough with the build you are running you just have to run until you find friends to help you.

the nerf on protection duration isn't going to matter much when you face an organised bus with boon spam builds. unless you nerf them to the ground or give every class a good way to boon strip.

@Hannelore.8153 said:

@ledernierrempart.6871 said:■ smaller groups will get an even harder time killing the larger group.■ in 1v2 situation the solo player will have an even harder time killing a downed player.■ thieves or any glass canon builds will have an even harder time to kill the target while the target can still use mobility to run away or run toward an ally.■ even if heal get also a reduced effect, bus with protection and heal spam will be even more stronger.

lets be honest here, only glass canon builds get killed in few seconds. unless you are facing a mesmer that one shot you from nowhere despite your 3000 armor and 20k hp.

I feel like most of your complaints could be fixed by reducing downed hp a bit, or reducing res rate (this may be a controversial position, but imo if you want to style on someone 1v2 you should have some kind of ability left over to land your finisher).

Thief isn't a glass canon build.

@diomache.9246 said:Thief isn't a glass canon build.

thieves OR any glass canon builds...

@ASP.8093 said:I feel like most of your complaints could be fixed by reducing downed hp a bit, or reducing res rate (this may be a controversial position, but imo if you want to style on someone 1v2 you should have some kind of ability left over to land your finisher).

maybe, at least tfor the 1v2 or roaming part. but for bus fight it will still be a problem.

i agree with the overall point youre making. groups that used to be able to kite around a large zerg and slowly kill them 1 by 1 are way less effective now. with the damage reduction combined with increased cd's individual gankers/small groups of gank players are at a much larger disadvantage. i understand ofc that (arguably) the damage reduction stuff was needed but it really shifted the balance (in these specific wvw scenarios) away from skilled solo/small groups to build wars in larger groups.

i think it's pretty apparent you are correct by the (from what i can see ingame) pretty sizable reduction in groups/players doing this sort of thing.

/shouts from the back "BOON BALL!"

I wouldn't say my thief has been having a harder time killing stuff, it's just that my kills aren't as secure now from openers but not by much.

After you size up the larger group and have some kind of kill order in mind, treat each one like a break bar boss. You need some cc to chew through boons and other defense then a good pull or other control to lock down and shake them out of their team comp a little when you see there wont be stability or reflect or something up. I like to build to have more stuff going off from my control skills and utility to compound any cc I'm trying to dismantle them with. Once their layers are opened up, health bars deplete pretty fast, but make sure you can secure the stomp before their team rescues them.

@ledernierrempart.6871 said:■ smaller groups will get an even harder time killing the larger group.

This is the wrong way to think about it because what benefits the small group also benefits the large group; meaning that damage increases give large groups even more damage. So it becomes a wash. The large group will have an easier time killing the smaller group if damage is increased. Small vs. large group encounters aren't done through damage balance but strategy. Damage balance is reserved for groups of equal size.

■ in 1v2 situation the solo player will have an even harder time killing a downed player.

This is more a problem with downed state than damage since they had one time buffed downed state to give a small window of invulnerability and buffed the downed HP when damage was higher. They should undo those buffs.

@"ASP.8093" said:I feel like most of your complaints could be fixed by reducing downed hp a bit, or reducing res rate (this may be a controversial position, but imo if you want to style on someone 1v2 you should have some kind of ability left over to land your finisher).

So, not only do you have to win vs twice the HP, twice the DPS, twice the healing, twice the CC etc etc, and they also get the advantage of being able to be resed if that solo player downs one of the duo who have had a HUGE advantage over the duration of the whole fight, but you also have to pull an "extra" skill out of your ass to finish the down, or you are just a bad player? Yeah.....OK.

After dmg nerfs, the downstate HP is FAR to high, rally needs to be removed (this will also help people not be excluded from larger team play as well, because "rallybots" wont be a thing anymore), resing needs to either be only OOC like defeated, or slowed down in a massive way, if you start a stomp at the same time someone starts ressing, they should not be able to res faster than a stomp takes to finish, the pressure should be on the player RESING, not the one finishing, the one resing should need to use a CC etc to stop the stomp and go for the res. Add to that resing should also be 1:1 and invulnerable frames should be removed, learn not to get downed, learn how to play, add some sustain to your build. I love how the solo player vs the duo is always a L2P issue for the solo and they need to save skills to get a finish, but the person who got downed by the solo who was outnumbered, just gets a free pass, it's mind boggling. People want SKILL to be punished and poor play and ganking to be protected.

@Chaba.5410 said:

@ledernierrempart.6871 said:■ smaller groups will get an even harder time killing the larger group.

■ in 1v2 situation the solo player will have an even harder time killing a downed player.

the larger groupe will have enough damage overall no matter their dps to destroy the smaller group.also the larger group, if well organized will have access to alot of protection and cleanse. i would agree on nerfing overall damage IF we could hit more than 5 enemies (like maybe 15?) with one AOE and more than 2 with melee weapons.

downed state is a problem. simply decreasing damage increase that problem unless you use a specific skill to finish the downed easily.

@TinkTinkPOOF.9201 said:the pressure should be on the player RESING, not the one finishing, the one resing should need to use a CC etc to stop the stomp and go for the res.

Yes. I agree. Like I said, both res speed and downed hp seem excessive right now.

@TinkTinkPOOF.9201 said:So, not only do you have to win vs twice the HP, twice the DPS, twice the healing, twice the CC etc etc, and they also get the advantage of being able to be resed if that solo player downs one of the duo who have had a HUGE advantage over the duration of the whole fight, but you also have to pull an "extra" skill out of your kitten to finish the down, or you are just a bad player? Yeah.....OK.

The whole point of a finisher is that it's big, showboaty fun. That's what it means to style on someone in the first place.

@Hannelore.8153 said:

@ledernierrempart.6871 said:■ smaller groups will get an even harder time killing the larger group.■ in 1v2 situation the solo player will have an even harder time killing a downed player.■ thieves or any glass canon builds will have an even harder time to kill the target while the target can still use mobility to run away or run toward an ally.■ even if heal get also a reduced effect, bus with protection and heal spam will be even more stronger.

A big part of fighting is eventually dying genius, this game became trash tier when devs started to balance cattering noobs, making unkillable builds possible, and forgeting what a huge mess this would be as soon as veterans picked those hideous immortal builds.Now pvp it's all about endless fights waiting for somebody to +1 you, nobody dies in tourneys unless it's beeing focused by +2 players, and most builds have enough mobility or sustain to just facetank everything survive and reset, every kind of risk you took is gone, wvw is the same stupid story witth those retarded warclaws.

@kraai.7265 said:

@Hannelore.8153 said:

@ledernierrempart.6871 said:■ smaller groups will get an even harder time killing the larger group.■ in 1v2 situation the solo player will have an even harder time killing a downed player.■ thieves or any glass canon builds will have an even harder time to kill the target while the target can still use mobility to run away or run toward an ally.■ even if heal get also a reduced effect, bus with protection and heal spam will be even more stronger.

Meanwhile players carryed by powercreep gimmick start QQ cause they have no skill after all and cant outsmart targets due lack of being carried by high dmage.

Good players are still fine....When DH was released with daze on trap and huge pwoercreep i could solo 10 players, i must be TOP NOTCH player righ??? no.. was jsut being carried by damage.

Damage builkd still work but:U need to min max now.Need to play clever rather than expect to hit very high damage on target. (any noob can excell with that kinda of values lol).Some stats like ministrels were made do a diferente game damage values, reason somo bunky stats are powering up som classes damage reducers (reason i prepose a toughness stat to minstrels).

Damage still exists, people just need to outsmart targets and mix max stats , something that most were not used due the almost instatnt burst ttk.

@Aeolus.3615 said:

@kraai.7265 said:

@Hannelore.8153 said:

@ledernierrempart.6871 said:■ smaller groups will get an even harder time killing the larger group.■ in 1v2 situation the solo player will have an even harder time killing a downed player.■ thieves or any glass canon builds will have an even harder time to kill the target while the target can still use mobility to run away or run toward an ally.■ even if heal get also a reduced effect, bus with protection and heal spam will be even more stronger.

you fail to understand the point here. the game would be way more enjoyable and rewarding for skillful players if everyone can do 1v10.right now it is unbelievably hard to just 1v2. and not because of player skill, just because the game is designed like this.

@ledernierrempart.6871 said:

@Aeolus.3615 said:

@kraai.7265 said:

@Hannelore.8153 said:

@ledernierrempart.6871 said:■ smaller groups will get an even harder time killing the larger group.■ in 1v2 situation the solo player will have an even harder time killing a downed player.■ thieves or any glass canon builds will have an even harder time to kill the target while the target can still use mobility to run away or run toward an ally.■ even if heal get also a reduced effect, bus with protection and heal spam will be even more stronger.

In that part i agree, but there were alot of players being carried with the damage ouput, overperforming their real skill, even i under some builds noted that.

The issue IC now is that most players are back to a fully defensive boon ball on defensive stats, and theres really low quality in most roamersm they many vs 2 at best, or are players that were used to use overperfoming builds, very very few ive encountered can actually trick, bait, or even outsmart target, and i still find very good thiefs buts thats 1/500.

If one person can 1 vs 10 its never the players skill alone, but a huge gap between builds as well, 5 against 10 that would be more acceptable.

The current hit on skills, cc and damage, was an necessary evil.. cause ANet never cared about the classes design towards balance.

I hope we get damage back to some CC skill and/or with the same mechanics some cc skills had in Gw1 wich was part of what made gw1 a good pvp game.

@"ledernierrempart.6871" said:you fail to understand the point here. the game would be way more enjoyable and rewarding for skillful players if everyone can do 1v10.If everyone had the killing strength of 10 people, how "enjoyable" do you think the game would be to fight even the most basic organized groups with more players?

Just like with the old demands for unlimited AoE, people seem to forget that it goes both ways. Oh so your 10 man guild is now capable of fighting and even winning over an 80 man group? Well that 80 man group is capable of instakilling the 10 man guild, 10x over as soon as they get within 1200 range. All servers have to do is stack the best. If you think stacking and unbalanced populations are bad now... oh boy.

The only reason WvW is even playable is because everyone hover within 1v1-1v3 capabilities which mean that you can fight more skilled players if you only bring a few more friends.

The amount of players that want to see WvW die remains disheartening.

right now 10 organised people will get destroyed against 20 organized people.heck, even if not organized, outnumbered is impossible without the dumb boon ball meta.

unlimited AOE max player hit would actually be a good thing IF the lag wouldn't hide most AOE ability. right now you only see red circle without even knowing what AOE it is because the spell effects are not showing in bus fights.too many times do the boon ball spam heal like crazy and sicne only a handfull get struck it stay alive like crazy until the squishy ones stray away for the ball or all their cd are on CD. (works too if a sizable other ball impact them.) where is the skill when staying in a large groupe with support build keep you alive even inside AOE because you don't get hit?

unless the 2 people are newbies or highly unskilled, it is impossible to 1v2 and actually kill them both unless you have a very cheesy build and your opponent build sucks.

@"ledernierrempart.6871" said:■ smaller groups will get an even harder time killing the larger group.■ in 1v2 situation the solo player will have an even harder time killing a downed player.■ thieves or any glass canon builds will have an even harder time to kill the target while the target can still use mobility to run away or run toward an ally.■ even if heal get also a reduced effect, bus with protection and heal spam will be even more stronger.The interesting thing here is that all of those statements can be true and still not be a problem. That is the discussion at hand.

Obviously things should be somewhat balanced and going from one extreme to another does not make things better. So the question is whether things are too tanky now and you are best served in that discussion by looking at theoretical numbers or practical but direct examples.

Skills and classes:

As others have already noted, in this casual game of ours there's quite alot of people who overestimate their ability. They may think that things they do are skillful but in reality they are in a very favourable situation (glass/CC builds attacking someone without breaks, condi attacking someone without cleanses etc.). I'm not pointing fingers at anyone here, I'm simply pointing out that many of the high-burst areas of the game have long suffered class-class or player-target issues that are usually pretty simplistic. There's a folly with things that may feel "skilled" not being so.

So, in the same sense as Thieves just has more of abilities that let them avoid building tanks, classes like eg., Warriors traditionally had more stuns/stun-damage combos than most classes out there had means to break them etc. Completely deleting someone may have been as simple as pressing two buttons in succession where you had more buttons to press so you always had an advantage going into the context of dodges and cooldown management. Anytime your opponent made a mistake or simply ran out of cooldowns you could do your two-button tango and win. Now I'm not hating on Warriors and there are plenty more things that go into when a good Warrior plays well. I'm just saying that the perception of skillful play often has been that simple and marred by that folly of "skill". While less damage may introduce situations that involve more complexity and skillful execution than that even if it doesn't generate as explosive visuals still may involve more rewarding difficulty in execution.

Numbers and examples:

Moreover, if you look at damage now, for example, yesterday I was hit by a 10k+ vault. The damage was through 3500 AR. Now, this was in a large-scale fight (hence the AR) and it was a losing fight so I had likely attracted a whole bunch of vuln. However, it is still a practical direct example. In the pre-existing burst meta that vault may have been a single-button kill rather than being a 75% shave. I have also hit other people for 10k with other big damage abilities like Maul or Grenade barrage. They may have been against targets with much less AR but also not in a roll-over where they were debilitated. Now, I'm not necessarily saying that those are an issue either but they go to prove that damage isn't necessarily low. There are still abilities and situations out there where you can get hit for 66-75% of your HP rather than 100%. That sounds reasonable because it's still high damage that rewards skillful use of big attacks but it requires you to do more than land a single ability and it makes things like AR count for something. The biggest problem in the old burst meta was that it essentially rendered AR useless. There was little point building into toughness because it couldn't compete with ferocity or other forms of stacking damage. That is a big flaw if you have a system where you by design should be able to build a tank.

The disregard of inversion/adaption:

Also, you should consider what Chaba said a few posts up. That is one of my favourite arguments that often fall on deaf ears or swoosh above people's heads. It's absolutely possible to make something more difficult without making it impossible or negative for the context of gameplay. Some things should not be easy to do. However, the even more interesting argument is that things work on relativity and flipping things around. If damage is lower the relative tank of a smaller group also blooms so while they may not be able to use skillful plays to down alot of opponents, they are able to convert their ability into better staying alive and they are able to use superior access to teamplay to create kills, which leads to the following not being true:

right now 10 organised people will get destroyed against 20 organized people.heck, even if not organized, outnumbered is impossible without the dumb boon ball meta.

• It is still very possible for 10 better organized players to beat 20 somewhat organized players.
• It is still very possible for 10 organized players to beat 30 more or less unorganized players.
• It may not be easy, but it is certainly possible.
• It's just that rather than leveraging superior burst for 10 downs/cleaves you now have to leverage damage-coordination to generate downs.
• It's still possible to create down-cleave traps but if it's hard: maybe adapt into relearning golf-flash-stomps etc., which is also "skillful" play.
• Damage and coordinating it remains important though, because if no-one just implodes the coordination is what makes things "happen".
• -
• The same goes for individual damage. It may not be easy or even possible to oneshot people anymore.
• It may not be easy to two-shot people anymore but it is certainly entering the realm of possibility.
• I find that to be quite amicable, something that should reasonably have some consensus.
• If I am looking at builds that is also a pretty reasonable compromise, right? You can two-five shot people with the right build.
• Gone are the builds that were one-two shotting people left- right and center without necessarily dedicating into it or landing difficult things.

What game are we playing?

As always, this is an MMO it was not designed for, is balanced around or should be balanced around 1vX. It is fine and fair that people like to engage in that but if you look at the mechanics of the game they are mostly designed around the principle of a party, so, 5vX. If you find 5-man gameplay to be too large or blobby for you, that is fine, but for all intents and purposes of an MMO and a large-scale PvP mode like WvW, that is sort of where the scale starts. In any objective comparison 5 is small. That also makes current balance being rather okay in the 5-25 scale a success. That's the middle. If it can also be well balanced at even smaller or larger scale that is obviously a plus but perhaps not necessarily what's most important to keep track of given the mechanics at play or the genre of the game. There are online single-player games that dedicate into that. It's one of the most common modern genres. GW2 is not that.

Tying the damage/balance discussion to scale theory:

Interestingly enough, there is a reason why you begin to call things above that general guild-size a "zerg" (leveraging numbers) or a "blob" (uncountable numbers) because more players tend to be a more common and impactful factor than the right composition for the tactics you employ. That's why you begin to see filler builds and classes appear in those squads to a higher degree or why the tactics/meta is based more around simple things that work when driving larger mass. It ties into the discussion what "meta" actually is for large scale gameplay, it is much less about the most effective tactics but rather the most effective way to leverage numbers in uncomplicated ways. Effective for what you can expect to have on average. Not the most effective for what may be ideal to have. That efficiency though is what lets you leverage gameplay at larger scales or going cross-scale. 1vX is hardly ever cross-scale. If anything that is where you do not see the 1-2 beating the organized 5.

Anyway, I'm drifting off now. Time to close this brick of a post.

my post exist because of a podcast i saw recently with CMC saying that he may lower the overall damage of 10% to 20% while decreasing the heal effectiveness. of course that may be a temporary event to see how it goes.my post is to say why i find this idea a bad one.

your statement of winning 10 vs 20 with both party having a minimum organization is not possible unless the 10 player group are built to boon ball and surviovability to tank out the 20 player group until it gets eaten out little by little. (which is honestly boring).lowering overall damage have some benefit of decreasing one shot capability (which is good) but also increase bigger blob effectivness.ii would honestly prefer having more damage overall but harder toughness scaling.

remember TERA battleground? (before they added brawler, gunner and spearman class)i wont say it was perfectly balanced but very skilled players (and with good ping) could go in 1v10, kill someone and go out. while everyone else was fighting all over the place. no one could get oneshotted either. but the experience was better than gw2 WvW.

downed state also becomes a bigger problem. can't finish the player? well, now you have to hit him for a longer time until he dies. (unless healing while downed is longer too? but that again would promote bigger groups.)

you have a nice argumentation. but the fact still lays here, less overall damage means bigger groups are stronger (in current meta).

@ledernierrempart.6871 said:unless the 10 player group are built to boon ball and surviovability to tankSo, the meta for every guild in existance?