Crazy ideas for WvW

These ideas are radical and go beyond common "class/skill/trait is too weak/strong, buff/nerf it". I believe some big changes are needed on basic level or WvW will keep losing players every week. None of these are suppose to affect any PvE or PvP content, only WvW.

Ranged damage penalty

The game has became very much about ranged damage, and this makes fights boring as pushing into melee is difficult and dangerous, so most of the time everyone just keeps circling around enemy. You should be able to hurt enemy much more at close range.

• ALL the range damage will be calculated using new formula:ranged damage = base damage - base damage * current range / 2000

This means at melee range (below 300) every skill does current maximum damage. However, when range increases, all skills start to do less and less damage. At range 500, damage is reduced by 25%, at range 1000 it does only 50% of original damage.

This penalty affects both direct damage AND condi damage. Condi damage is calculated at the moment condi gets applied. For example strength of traps, wells and other pulsing AoE damage depends on how far the caster is when they activate.

Alternative Ranged damage penalty

Instead of reducing ranged damage by specific %, all the skills will have "chance" to miss calculation based on how far from target you are.

• At melee range your chance to hit is 100% (never miss). At 1200 range you have 50% chance to completely miss.

You can still spam your ranged skills, but now they could easily miss if you are far away. This affects even skills that do no damage, for example teleports or ground targeted traps or wells. Missing will put the skill on 50% shorter cooldown.

Reducing AoE damage spam

Currently everyone spams their AoE into enemy groups. Instead of redesigning every AoE skill, there is simple solution:

• Every player in WvW has permanent WvW RETALIATION buff that will always do 10% of damage also to the source.

This affects both direct damage and condi damage, retaliation damage is unblockable and you can not reduce or increase it. This means if you hurt single player for 5k damage, you will also lose 500 HP. However, if you hit 5 players for 5k each, you will hurt yourself for 2,5K too. More AoE = more damage you take too.

Locked class builds

Let's face it, balancing every class is not possible even if developers would attempt to rebuild all the classes based on WvW. Instead, let's try to reduce impact of those completely broken builds that ruin fun for everyone.

• For every matchup, each class has 3 possible random builds to select from. 1 base, 1 HoT, 1 PoF

The build includes: weapons randomly selected from all the available weapons plus randomly selected and locked traits and utility skills. HoT and PoF builds are available for players who own those expansions, these may (but are not quaranteed to) include elite specs, weapons and skills unlocked by expansion.

You can freely swap between those 3 builds (if you own HoT and PoF too) during the matchup week any time in WvW. Once you have selected one build, you can only equip specific weapons, your traits are locked and you can not change any utility skills.

You can still freely change armor and trinkets. There will be ability to change stats on any ascended item for small fee.

This will force everyone to learn their classes and adapt beyond those few OP builds everyone currently uses. Some week you may end up with traits and utilities you normally would not pick. There will be 9 * 3 = 27 builds available each week so everyone should be able to find at least one they are able to play. And if you don't, next week there will be 27 new builds.

Lmao no...

Nerfing range damage to push people go into melee vs scourge. No thanks... or everyone would play only scourge...

@"FogLeg.9354" said:Ranged damage penalty

The game has became very much about ranged damage, and this makes fights boring as pushing into melee is difficult and dangerous, so most of the time everyone just keeps circling around enemy. You should be able to hurt enemy much more at close range.

uhm stading with 100 people on one spot cuddling might be fun to you, not to me. range damage has to be strong to put any value in your movement. also melee does more damage but you can cast range skills from a safer spot so you can build more glass on range.Alternative Ranged damage penalty

Instead of reducing ranged damage by specific %, all the skills will have "chance" to miss calculation based on how far from target you are.

• At melee range your chance to hit is 100% (never miss). At 1200 range you have 50% chance to completely miss.

You can still spam your ranged skills, but now they could easily miss if you are far away. This affects even skills that do no damage, for example teleports or ground targeted traps or wells. Missing will put the skill on 50% shorter cooldown.

oh yeah cause RNG pvp is soo much fun!

both range penalties would hurt smalscale / roaming ALOT.

Reducing AoE damage spam

Currently everyone spams their AoE into enemy groups. Instead of redesigning every AoE skill, there is simple solution:

• Every player in WvW has permanent WvW RETALIATION buff that will always do 10% of damage also to the source.

This affects both direct damage and condi damage, retaliation damage is unblockable and you can not reduce or increase it. This means if you hurt single player for 5k damage, you will also lose 500 HP. However, if you hit 5 players for 5k each, you will hurt yourself for 2,5K too. More AoE = more damage you take too.

this will hurt your backline while it wont bother your melee at all. together with your anti ranged proposal you would get a nice meta of tanky melees dealing no damage waiting for the opponent to die of boredom, i think this could be exciting!.

Locked class builds

Let's face it, balancing every class is not possible even if developers would attempt to rebuild all the classes based on WvW. Instead, let's try to reduce impact of those completely broken builds that ruin fun for everyone.

• For every matchup, each class has 3 possible random builds to select from. 1 base, 1 HoT, 1 PoF

The build includes: weapons randomly selected from all the available weapons plus randomly selected and locked traits and utility skills. HoT and PoF builds are available for players who own those expansions, these may (but are not quaranteed to) include elite specs, weapons and skills unlocked by expansion.

You can freely swap between those 3 builds (if you own HoT and PoF too) during the matchup week any time in WvW. Once you have selected one build, you can only equip specific weapons, your traits are locked and you can not change any utility skills.

You can still freely change armor and trinkets. There will be ability to change stats on any ascended item for small fee.

This will force everyone to learn their classes and adapt beyond those few OP builds everyone currently uses. Some week you may end up with traits and utilities you normally would not pick. There will be 9 * 3 = 27 builds available each week so everyone should be able to find at least one they are able to play. And if you don't, next week there will be 27 new builds.

uhm ..no.

first of all i dont want the game to tell me in WvW how i am supposed to play while i can select it freely in the rest of the game, cause i like to play the style i like.secondly most people in WvW are rather casual they wont be able to adapt to a new meta every week especially with random traits and random weapons you often will have 27 trash builds a week. and some builds then will be stronger than the rest in some parts, just as it is now just less viable variation.

if you actually knew your classes you wouldnt see any other build as OP, every build hast strengths and weaknesses and some are the best in a certain thing for instance DPS against an afk enemy and so on but you can counter everything. this is build wars 2 after all.

AoE spam condition spam are the 2 real issues here. It is red circle after red circle that force players to go range option. Seriously we are now playing jump red circle jump in wvw.

Leave ranged damage alone, melee already stronger than ranged damage.