Winds of Disenchantment - 25/90

For those that don't understand the 25/90 part of the title, it's a reference to an old game called Guild Wars, which was subject to skill balances monthly.In this game there was a skill (Smiter's Boon), that was so broken, that it totally shifted the way the game was played in pvp. It was not the power of the skill, it could not be tweaked, it could not be nerfed to the point where it was usable but not game breaking - The entire nature of the skill was wrong, the dev team realised that, and they made the ultimate nerf - they made it so the skill could not be used again.

Now back to guild wars 2, we have this skill - Winds of Disenchantment.One could argue that the issue is it's synergy with Enchantment Collapse resulting on a instant strip of all boons to everyone inside the bubble.One could argue that the issue is the difficulty of differentiating enemy bubbles from friendly bubbles.Once could argue that the issue is that the class applying it is an avatar of invulnerability that cannot be stopped or interrupted.

All those arguments are right... but they are not the real issue - The real issue is that the entire nature of the skill is wrong. Since the game's protections, boosts, heals and condition management rotate around boons, having an effect that prevents any boon from being applied defeats the whole "rock scissor paper" game.Damage - Block or Boon;Condition - Clense or Boon;CC - Stunbreak or Boon;Boon - Corrupt or Strip;Winds of Disenchantment - Do not be there

"Do not be there" - That is the issue. You can't even leave it if you are fighting a competent group - you simply have to not be there. This skill dictates where you can and cannot fight. This skill, and this skill alone, dictates that you cannot push, and even worse, that when you finally push because you weakened the enemy lines, you will be able to do so without fear of a comeback BECAUSE you brought this skill.

I see guilds dancing around each other, throwing hammer bolts, CoR's and corrupting back and forward with their scourges. The amount of boons is disgusting. The power creep is disgusting. The amount of boonstrip is disgusting. This is because you balance damage with protection and protection with more damage. You balance boons with corrupts, corrupts with boons and boons with more corrupts on a cascade of overgrowing patches that don't fix the previously still existing problem. That CAN still be fixed. Stuff can still be tonned down. You can still make it so parties don't have 24/7 rotation of every boon, and you can still tone down classes so they don't apply 10 stacks of every condi every 5 seconds.All this disgusting things can be fixed with time. Winds of Disenchantment cannot.I am yet to fight a single guild or group that does not rely on this one skill to do whatever it is they do to win. Either a M-shower + cc bomb, a wellbomb, a corrupt bomb or a CoR spike, it all comes down to do it under a WoD bubble.

Winds of Disenchantment needs to be shut down. 25/90'd. Smiter's Booned. It cannot be fixed and has, for me, killed any joy from wvw medium to large fights.

Sometimes it's good to let it all out. Deep breaths. Though I disagree, Winds of Disenchantment is fine, it doesn't dictate movement any more than Plaguelands or any other concentration of red circles. It's just taller and shinier so it is garnering more attention. If you or your commander are continuing to push in the same spot a WoD is, or if the enemy pushes and you decided its ok to try to defend inside it...well...this seems very L2P.

I believe that this skill is vital in ensuring the incredibly stupid boon-share meta does not creep back up into us. Do you remember your enemies having 1m+ of both Quickness and Resistance? Yea lets not go back to that. I absolutely hate the condi-spam meta, but it pales in comparison to the anti-fun gameplay of boonshare.

Winds of Disenchantment is the best thing to happen to WvW fights since the devs mostly fixed the problems they caused with the big stability nerf. The boring, skill-less, boon-stacking, melee-ball meta that Winds of Disenchantment disrupts was absolutely awful. It also put Warriors back in the meta for group fights. A total win-win.

please remove from gaem. ktnxbye

much argument i know

@Oslaf Beinir.5842 said:please remove from gaem. ktnxbye

much argument i know

An honor to witness such a masterful wordsmith! :p

WOD decide a fight, it is no brainer. Good players already notice how powerful it is during beta test while most people are simple obsess with scourge because of a bug.Not able to cast stab within a second due to being inside a wod itself decide the fight, that second alone is enough to drop cc and break everybody down.This end up making fights situated around WOD and commanders counting the amount of WOD casted to determine enemies' possible strength.

Boon meta existed because of anet devs' thoughtlessness of adding stats and skills that boost boons duration. All this boonstripping is just a cheap fix on the things they added. To put it simple, anet devs do not seems to have any concrete framework for skills and traits.

It seems that some here think we are pushing through bubbles: we are not.My guild also does not engage in the 70 man monoblobs that are protected from Winds because...well... they are 70.Also, let's compare Winds of disenchantments with plaguelands:

10 ppl are in a spot. A sneaky necro comes in and drops plaguelands. You get the first hit because you weren't expecting that and dodge imediately - Result, 5 of you have 1 stack of bleeding.

10 ppl are in a spot. A sneaky warrior comes in and drops Winds of Disenchantment. The first hit will immediately strip 60 (!!!) boons because of Enchantment Collapse. Your dodge is still not enough because winds of disenchantment radius is larger than a dodge distance. Given that winds pops every half a second, let's assume half your 10 ppl will get hit by a 2nd pulse while the other half managed to get the 2nd dodge in the perfect timing. That's another 30 boons gone.Even if we assume the entire spellbreaker's team had a brain meltdown and decided not to drop any cc or damage on your group, you still lost 90 boons to a aoe you dodged immediately. To put it in prespective, that is the equivalent of a pair of parties getting hit by 18 pulses of nullfield.

You don't have to push into it. You don't even have to be in it. All it takes is for a group at 240 range from you to get hit by it once and you lose all your boons.

Like I said, I do not agree with the boon meta either... but this is not the answer. Show me a group with no WoD defeating a half brained group of similar size with WoD and I'll rest my case.

Though there was ppl happy with them venomshare pirateships, so it wouldn't surprise me there's ppl happy with this too.

@Turk.5460 said:Winds of Disenchantment is fine, it doesn't dictate movement any more than Plaguelands or any other concentration of red circles.

That's not correct at all. Against any other skill, you can react to somehow get away from it if you get caught. For WoD? you cannot get any stability, you just need to pray that you have enough stunbreaks to crawl out of all the cc spam that will follow WoD. You had static field/ring of warding/any similar skill dropped on you? You're not getting out.

@Turk.5460 said:If you or your commander are continuing to push in the same spot a WoD is

Come on, it's not about pushing into existing bubble, why would you do such a thing. It's about trying to push and getting a bubble on top of you + 2 more behind you...

Address the Enchantment Collapse interaction and Winds becomes one of the more positive additions to the game mode in a long time.

You can't simultaneously decry boon spam while calling for an end to a no-damage skill that hard counters boon spam. That it leaves people vulnerable to the insane lethality of condi spam just demonstrates that a similar hard counter for that is required too, or else some major balancing.

Why does it take you zerglings so long to adapt to changes? The same fanatic threads were created when stability was changed to a stacking 1-removal boon, rather than flat duration immunity. You seem to be doing just fine after those changes.

I wasn't talking about pushing into a bubble that was already there. If you continue to push into one that was dropped and don't play around it, or perhaps just drop your own? This is still 100% a L2P and adapt issue, but maybe this will finally be the thing that kills the "everyone stack on the dorito hurr durr, plz stack stay tight" mentality. Probably not, people with that kind of lemming mentality don't like change or new strategies.

The qualm here seems to be focused hard around CC and Stability. Almost 100% so! Instead of whining about something new that takes you out of your comfort zone, why not ask for less AOE CC. Boons shouldn't be strategy-defining, but merely a non-permanent aid. It's the same argument many people use towards conditions - it shouldn't be a source of main damage, but rather a supplement.

Less AoE CC will not fix anything related to WoD because you need exactly ONE to lock someone inside the bubble. I'm not expecting to push through the bubble, but I'd like to be able to react to one.

People were not fine after stability changes, not until we got the grace period during which you don't lose stacks. The current state of WoD is leading to similar kind uninteresting gameplay that was dominating back then.

OP I read your post twice, and you even claim to explain..But I still have no clue what 25/90 is.

Wiki is currently down, but once it comes back you can read the story behind https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Smiter%27sBoon(PvP)

The 25/90 was reference to energy cost/recharge time for that skill which rendered it unusable, practically removing it from the game.

Less AoE CC would fix everything you are complaining about with WoD. Locking down one person isn't going to make or break a push or defense. And if it does make or break your play and can't be addressed with stunbreaks/dodges/mobility skills/healing support etc, then your squad has bigger things to worry about...

I've personally been able to strip ~150 boons with one dome. No one likes the instant death game of dodging the spellbreaker dome spam.

@Turk.5460 said:Less AoE CC would fix everything you are complaining about with WoD. Locking down one person isn't going to make or break a push or defense. And if it does make or break your play and can't be addressed with stunbreaks/dodges/mobility skills/healing support etc, then your squad has bigger things to worry about...

I know it says in your signature, but just by saying that I could have guessed you main thief or warrior.Here's what: not all classes have a stunbreak with a teleport, or a magic button and/or trait that makes us immortal for 4 seconds. In most classes, you get caught in a single ring of warding or a static field or a gravity well inside winds of disenchantment, and you are dead. You can't stunbreak through it, you can't dodge through it. Your squad can't support you because you are inside it. End story.

@Turk.5460 said:Locking down one person

Last time I played this game, skills like ring of warding/static field had 10 target limit, which is half the size of my raid

@pejot.4806 said:

@Turk.5460 said:Locking down one person

Hi, yes, the specific discussion you and I were having moved in a direction regarding LESS AOE. Please re-read and re-evaluate your response.

I don't know what's that hard to understand.

• Less AoEs is not no AoEs, there's always going to be one - even if you limit them and put on longer cds
• this one AoE CC is able to lock 10 people inside WoD if placed right
• these 10 people have no way to counterplay it

Now, I'm not saying that the amount of CCs available in game is right. But, as mentioned in the OP, it's something that can be adjusted. At the same time, it's the nature of WoD that is wrong, simply because it allows no counterplay. Reducing the number of AoE CCs (while the right thing to do) does not change the core of the problem with that particular skill.

Less AOE includes reducing their potency, which includes reducing the amount of targets capable of being hit. I don't know how this is hard to understand.

Wow... dude... srsly, stop. It could be a 10 radius AOE that only caught your foot - fact of the matter is, once you are caught, because of the nature of the skill, there is absolutely nothing you can do other than stay there and die, regardless of how many times you stunbroke.

You seem to be greatly overestimating the amount of pulsing AoE stuns that are prevalent in WvW, that prohibit multiple uses of stunbreaks to escape. Or maybe not, please enlighten me - which ones do you encounter?

You act like the bubble itself is stun locking you in place.

i fight in the bubble the fuck i care for boons, i dont fight in any necro ring because it strips boons and poops out 100 conditions + does reasonable dmg...

but im just a roamer i dont need my boons to survive..bubble isnt the problem the insane amount of condi flying around makes boons highly needed which makes the bubble extremly OP cus without bubble ur just getting to be loaded with 100 stacks of every condition in a blink of a eye..

@Turk.5460 said:You seem to be greatly overestimating the amount of pulsing AoE stuns that are prevalent in WvW, that prohibit multiple uses of stunbreaks to escape. Or maybe not, please enlighten me - which ones do you encounter?

Static field, Line of warding, Ring of Warding, Gravity Well, the inevitable succession of Heated Rebukes, Unsteady Ground, Dragon's Maw, Hunter's Mark.Out of all these skills, under a WoD, you can only leave Line of Warding and Unsteady ground, but it forces you to take a different path.Game's a lot different when you aren't 1v1'ing or 2v2'ing... I roam too... I don't give a crap about WoD when I roam.