The central issue regarding boon corruption

It seems with the scourge and warrior that boon corruption/conversion/removal is becoming a central part of gameplay. I DO NOT WANT TO GET INTO A CLASS DISCUSSION. Instead, I want to focus on the mechanic in general and a core issue I have with it.

In order for some of these specs to be effective, they need the enemy to have boons. This means they will be primarily used for WvW and some for PvP. Why? because it is players that have lots of boons. PvE doesn't. Now, why is that? Because a lot of skills and traits apply boons. And that's the fundamental flaw. We, as players have no way to really control the boons we get. This is because GW2 is a game that has tried to simplify play to having 10 sills on our bar at a time. Many of these skills do things that other games would require 2 or 3 skills to accomplish. The same is true of traits which was made worse before HoTs release when many trait lines were condensed having things become baseline or doubled up in a trait.

What it boils down to is we have very little control over what boons we get. This is made even worse if there are other players around you, as we have no control over what they do. This is made even worse because if we have a condition, and lets say a guardian uses a shout to cleanse it, he's applying 2 boons while doing so. That's just one example out of dozens or hundereds. Same thing is true if we want to do damage. Many of our damaging abilities apply boons. Using the guardian again as an example, look at the hammer auto attack which generates a protection symbol. Again, just one of dozens of examples. How many traits just passively generate boons? Many.

In the past, boon corruption was rather rare. HoT introduced a little more, but still manageable. But the scourge and spellbreaker seems to be punishing us for something we can't control. It would be totally different if boons were decoupled from other types of abilities, like damage or cleansing, but they aren't. It would be different if we had 30 skill on our bar so we could risk applying a boon against a certain class, but we can't. These classes are taking advantage of the core game's design that was never intended for this type of damage and gameplay. I feel this is completely wrong.

I'm not sure I communicated my gripe well enough. I hope I have.

I think you communicated it correctly. I think it IS intentional, because of the heavy boon spam and boon sharing that pervades the meta.

Some of the boon application is chosen by traits in specific builds.

What will be interesting is how much builds change to reduce boom spam, or if it greatly increases to overlay the boon corrupt.

Don't think I've played a game that relied so heavily on boons and conditions, and even then those things were limited to classes. Anet went full in with this boon vs condition war for HoT when they revamped the traits and increased condition damage and stacks. I guess they though with the increase in damage across the board especially from conditions, that boon sharing and resistance would be the stop gate for it. They had also took out stats and merged traits, so I guess boons were also there to make up for that. Boon sharing and auto procing boons then became the new meta in fighting off all damage with high up times for regen protection and resistance, and more reliance on corruption. Once boon sharing took a slight nerf, we were left with corruption still obliterating groups to the point that had to get some changes.

But now they've gone even further into this by designing scourge around more corruption and spellbreakers to help wipe boons, so guess what the response to that will be? boon buffs in the future. They've totally went off course from original GW2 combat design, the system has become a bloated boons vs condition war, the only thing to fix that would be to go back into the traits and fix them so that they don't spit out so many auto boons, which I don't think anet will want to do anytime soon.

Even WoW revamped their combat and took out most of their group buffs eventually.

@Strider Pj.2193 said:What will be interesting is how much builds change to reduce boom spam, or if it greatly increases to overlay the boon corrupt.

There is still quite a lot of room to swap out skills and traits if enemy runs a lot of boon corruption. Eventually, it balances out, most groups will learn to rely less on boons and less scourges will be required to counter boons.

Fairly sure most builds must adapt, just like most builds changed after HoT.

@FogLeg.9354 said:

@"Strider Pj.2193" said:What will be interesting is how much builds change to reduce boom spam, or if it greatly increases to overlay the boon corrupt.

Corruption and damage from things like spellbreaker don't care about what your duration or stack count are. You could have 1 stack of might or 25, 5 seconds of swiftness or 1 minutes. It still gets converted to the same damage. So, even if you "opt out" of boon spamming, you're still going to be punished in the same fashion as there are so many boons that are generated naturally from regular combat or passive traits built into many classes. That is the base design of the game that we're all being punished for.

@Spurnshadow.3678 said:In order for some of these specs to be effective, they need the enemy to have boons. This means they will be primarily used for WvW and some for PvP. Why? because it is players that have lots of boons. PvE doesn't. Now, why is that? Because a lot of skills and traits apply boons. And that's the fundamental flaw. We, as players have no way to really control the boons we get. This is because GW2 is a game that has tried to simplify play to having 10 sills on our bar at a time. Many of these skills do things that other games would require 2 or 3 skills to accomplish. The same is true of traits which was made worse before HoTs release when many trait lines were condensed having things become baseline or doubled up in a trait.

You're wrong on that point. The reason why PvE doesn't is because devs can tweak the monster skills the way they want so that they actually don't need any improvement. Moreover, some PvE specific mobs have monster boons that can't be corrupted. The second reason is a simplification issue, but more of the removal of the enchantement system in favor of the boons system.

@Spurnshadow.3678 said:What it boils down to is we have very little control over what boons we get. This is made even worse if there are other players around you, as we have no control over what they do. This is made even worse because if we have a condition, and lets say a guardian uses a shout to cleanse it, he's applying 2 boons while doing so. That's just one example out of dozens or hundereds. Same thing is true if we want to do damage. Many of our damaging abilities apply boons. Using the guardian again as an example, look at the hammer auto attack which generates a protection symbol. Again, just one of dozens of examples. How many traits just passively generate boons? Many.

In the past, boon corruption was rather rare. HoT introduced a little more, but still manageable. But the scourge and spellbreaker seems to be punishing us for something we can't control. It would be totally different if boons were decoupled from other types of abilities, like damage or cleansing, but they aren't. It would be different if we had 30 skill on our bar so we could risk applying a boon against a certain class, but we can't. These classes are taking advantage of the core game's design that was never intended for this type of damage and gameplay. I feel this is completely wrong.

Bolded parts are pure absolute nonsense. So you're basically telling that a herald has no control on what boons he spams ? So you're actually seriously stating that all the engis, tempests and whatever heavy boon spamming that insta pop 25 boons when engaging fight and reapplying them when corrupted are not controling it, and almost not wanting it ? Please... Just be serious.

Maybe spellbreakers and scourges will be heavily punishing the boon spam, but I honestly don't think they'll push that hard against the clueless players that happen to get boons without really knowing how or why or what...

@ThomasC.1056 said:

@Spurnshadow.3678 said:In order for some of these specs to be effective, they need the enemy to have boons. This means they will be primarily used for WvW and some for PvP. Why? because it is players that have lots of boons. PvE doesn't. Now, why is that? Because a lot of skills and traits apply boons. And that's the fundamental flaw. We, as players have no way to really control the boons we get. This is because GW2 is a game that has tried to simplify play to having 10 sills on our bar at a time. Many of these skills do things that other games would require 2 or 3 skills to accomplish. The same is true of traits which was made worse before HoTs release when many trait lines were condensed having things become baseline or doubled up in a trait.

@Spurnshadow.3678 said:What it boils down to is

we have very little control over what boons we get.

This is made even worse if there are other players around you, as we have no control over what they do. This is made even worse because if we have a condition, and lets say a guardian uses a shout to cleanse it, he's applying 2 boons while doing so. That's just one example out of dozens or hundereds. Same thing is true if we want to do damage. Many of our damaging abilities apply boons. Using the guardian again as an example, look at the hammer auto attack which generates a protection symbol. Again, just one of dozens of examples. How many traits just passively generate boons? Many.

In the past, boon corruption was rather rare. HoT introduced a little more, but still manageable. But the scourge and spellbreaker seems to be

punishing us for something we can't control.

It would be totally different if boons were decoupled from other types of abilities, like damage or cleansing, but they aren't. It would be different if we had 30 skill on our bar so we could risk applying a boon against a certain class, but we can't. These classes are taking advantage of the core game's design that was never intended for this type of damage and gameplay. I feel this is completely wrong.

I am pretty sure what he means is Boons being applied to you by other players...and you cannot control this. This can then result in you being spammed with conditions after those boons are converted, which is understandably frustrating in fights.

@X T D.6458 said:

@ThomasC.1056 said:

@Spurnshadow.3678 said:In order for some of these specs to be effective, they need the enemy to have boons. This means they will be primarily used for WvW and some for PvP. Why? because it is players that have lots of boons. PvE doesn't. Now, why is that? Because a lot of skills and traits apply boons. And that's the fundamental flaw. We, as players have no way to really control the boons we get. This is because GW2 is a game that has tried to simplify play to having 10 sills on our bar at a time. Many of these skills do things that other games would require 2 or 3 skills to accomplish. The same is true of traits which was made worse before HoTs release when many trait lines were condensed having things become baseline or doubled up in a trait.

@Spurnshadow.3678 said:What it boils down to is

we have very little control over what boons we get.

This is made even worse if there are other players around you, as we have no control over what they do. This is made even worse because if we have a condition, and lets say a guardian uses a shout to cleanse it, he's applying 2 boons while doing so. That's just one example out of dozens or hundereds. Same thing is true if we want to do damage. Many of our damaging abilities apply boons. Using the guardian again as an example, look at the hammer auto attack which generates a protection symbol. Again, just one of dozens of examples. How many traits just passively generate boons? Many.

In the past, boon corruption was rather rare. HoT introduced a little more, but still manageable. But the scourge and spellbreaker seems to be

punishing us for something we can't control.

It would be totally different if boons were decoupled from other types of abilities, like damage or cleansing, but they aren't. It would be different if we had 30 skill on our bar so we could risk applying a boon against a certain class, but we can't. These classes are taking advantage of the core game's design that was never intended for this type of damage and gameplay. I feel this is completely wrong.

I undestood the vent... Should I now expect some salty threads opening soon and raging about trolls sabotaging teamplay by spamming boons on allies ? Because this is what we are heading towards.

And then again, who's the target of scourges and spellbreaker's design ? It's massive boon spamming builds, and big boonshare team compositions. Things will settle by themselves for those. Just don't discard the whole concept because some innocent people that will randomly get boons may see that as an annoyance. Especially when they'd gratefully get the boons when no scourge/spellbreaker is around.

To continue that thought, commanders and guild leaders will redo their guild builds to combat the boon corruption. Comps likely will change, and builds will as well.

People will evolve, or leave, or die more...

Just like after HoT.

You can boon spam all you want. It makes no difference. That was my point because boons are inherent in the game design. I'll try to make a list here of all COMMON things used to attack with or common traits which apply boons that we have no choice in the matter. For example, guardian's empower will be left out becuase that is a pure buff/heal skill and not used to damage enemies or defend with.

Guardian:GS auto attack applies might.GS 4 retaliationHammer Auto Attack, aoe protectionHammer 2 is a blast finisher which can cause aoe swiftness or mightStaff 3 aoe swiftnessMace 2, regenMace 3, protection and aegisShield 4, protection and aegisStand Your Ground, Stability (a must) but adds protection, no choice.If specced for shouts cleanse with soldier runes, then more shouts needed. Keep in mind that if one is also specced into PoV, then instead of a cleanse, it converts a condition into a boon, so, even more boons we have no control over in order to get rid of conditions:Retreat, aegis and swiftnessHold the Line, protection and regenIf specced into virtues, very common, thenMinor Adept Trait (ie, no choice) Also apply aoe might, regen, protection, aegis.Core to the Guardian are using it's virtues, so activating them will passively apply a boon, no choice.Virtue of Courage is constantly applying aoe aegisAll of these Virtues will apply even more uncontrollable boons under firebrand if people choose that spec.Honor Trait Line (common choice)Adept Trait: VigorProtective Reviver, Gain aegis, protection, and regen to 2 peopleValor Trait Line (Common choice)Adept Traits: aegis, mightCommunal Defences (common since two guards running SiN is redundant) aoe aegis

OK, I'm done with this. I'm not gonna go through every class. I hope I've made my point. And this has NOTHING TO DO WITH BOON SPAMMING. AGAIN, corruption doesn't care if you have 1 stack or 25, 1 minute of 1 second. Obviously, Eles, Mesmers, Revs, and Warriors apply lots of aoe boons passively or via their regular attacks. I think I'm making my point here with the guardian list. We have no control over what boons we can apply, especially in the normal course of wanting to do damage, or debuf ourselves

All the skills and utilities available from current Necro and Mesmer that removed/converted boons did nothing to stop the boon train.

Spellbreaker and Scourge will not have any affect on the train, stop worrying about your boons.

your gripe only makes sense if we are talking about boon corruption only, since that is the only one that really punishes you for having boons. boon spam from nearby allies helps to cover / mitigate boon removal so there is less impact.

I can sorta agree but not really. it seems to me that this is more about how boons are distributed and not about corruption. example: what if you could only apply boons to nearby party members and if no one was in range then you don't apply them to anyone (not counting yourself).

@Swamurabi.7890 said:Spellbreaker and Scourge will not have any affect on the train, stop worrying about your boons.lol yes they will. spellbreaker specifically, if winds of disenchantment isn't nerfed. its going to destroy unorganized blobs.

I'm hoping this allows larger groups a way to deal with dedicated tank heal kittens who jump on and instant rez their downs. With all the bubbling and projectile block and stablity and knockback and insane heal and on hit attacks/tank.....its just stupid, u can't kill their downs.i.e. a spellbreaker casts his yolo ultimate on the down and immediately it allows everyone to bomb the kitten out of the area in such a way that the damage rate is greater than the healing (it could happen....).

When you think about it though, that means you need aoe attacks that can actually land....and what are the most effective aoe attacks? Wel they are range...and they are ground targetting skills (not projectile lol). Well these are condi based by default generally. And new resistance and other stuff can't be proc'd while ur healing......and spellbreaker alllows continuous boonstrips.

So if you want ranged aoe that does the trick to bomb their downs....AKA The extra boon stripping is just going to make dire/TB builds more powerful. Condi clears aren't readily available enough in the game to balance things out.

There probably isn't going to be a reason not to go condition damage. I mean the new gear is zerker/condi....that should tell you something immediately, that even the zerkers are gonna need to do condi damage to stay in the game.

Expect the cost of lilies to go way up.

I've been running focused boon corruption in wvw for the past year. Idk how it isn't more pronounced although some days when people say it is condi meta I really wonder if it is in fact already a secret corruption meta and we are all too ignorant to see it.

I don't even know how to play anything else anymore during [sTRM] raid ;-(

If the enemy Spellbreaker strips your boons before the enemy Scourge casts his boon corrupts, you're golden...just reapply boons after the Scourge's wet noodle hits you...:)

Oh, control over the situation? Hah!

Well, in any case this is why I didn't buy PoF. I'm not helping alpha test this game anymore, but do tell me on what progress they have made.

PoF is going to alleviate the the corruption issues by providing buffs that aren't boons...notably barrier from scourges (irony is that class will corrupt boons). If the Soulbeast wasn't buggy at the demo I could say here that they would provide condi cc immunity alongside stability. But it was buggy...

Honestly this is all just accretion balancing. Meaning, a new layer of stuff to mask some of the effects of old, in some cases wiping out the old stuff. I mean, how many Original core classes are viable for blobbing around? For roaming? Like guardian for blobs and maybe core mesmer for roaming (chrono still better imo)? They really should have just stuck to raw boon rip, and NOT spamming boon conversion (since that favors conditional specs more than power).

It dawned on me that a major issue I have with scourge. Maybe some of you realized this long ago, but it lingered ambiguously in the back of my mind lacking definition. On top of the central issue of boon corruption which I outlined above, there's another issue with scourge and how it is completely abusing the base mechanics of GW2. Forget the fact that it has way too much boon corruption. Like way too much. In the past, when most skills corrupt a boon, it has a mirror condition it gets replaced with. For example,

• Aegis = Burning
• Fury = Blind
• Might = Weakness
• Protection = Vunerability
• Quickness = slow
• Regen = poison
• Resistance = Chilled
• Retaliation = Confusion
• Stability = Fear
• Swiftness = Cripple
• Vigor = Bleeding

This made sense. It also added another level to fighting. The scourge throws that all out the window, as every corruption, which is with almost every skill, some multiple, and some pulsing, turns any boon into torment (the second hardest hitting condi), and when traited increased torment damage ( a whopping 33%) AND burning. So now, the list looks like this:

• Aegis = torment+ & burning
• Fury = torment+ & burning
• Might = torment+ & burning
• Protection = torment+ & burning
• Quickness = torment+ & burning
• Regen = torment+ & burning
• Resistance = torment+ & burning
• Retaliation = torment+ & burning
• Stability = torment+ & burning
• Swiftness = torment+ & burning
• Vigor = torment+ & burning

There's something inherently wrong about that. And it's completely spammable. Not only is every boon, even swiftness ( I mean, what did swiftness ever do to you?) gets turned into very punishing conditions. It's a funnel of condi damage that, again, like in my original post, we have very little control over. Even the spellbreaker, while it does some added damage when removing a boon, I don't think it's as punishing as this, but still falls under this paradigm of creating damage, all be it, power, with every boon.

Seriously, Anet, how is this fair and balanced?

I don't see an issue with Boon Corruption.

It's been quite a progression if you've been playing since the first 6-months of WvW -> current state.

Right now, in the current state, it's about re-application more than it is duration. If you're stripped then you're fine because you have built your composition or play-style around knowing you're going to be stripped and that you need to compensate for that by means of reapplication and clearing conditions.

In other words, use the boons when you need them, not just to spam them.

Lol, whatever, keep reapplying boons that will instantly get corrupted. Get real.

people are afraid of change and want the ez pz W key meta HoT brought.

@Spurnshadow.3678 said:Lol, whatever, keep reapplying boons that will instantly get corrupted. Get real.

You'll just keep going in circles.

I made a note about using the boons when you need them most.

Reapplication doesn't mean spam, it means you're proactively anticipating you're going to get stripped. Let me walk you through an example!

In a 1v1, 5v5, 10v10, 15v15 or even a 50v50 there's always these phases:

1. Planning - You plan to take town a single target, move to an objective, fake-out, stealth, portal (or any combination of plans).
2. Prebuff - You roll might, swiftness, Fury (plan on these being corrupted to Blind, Cripple and Weakness); reapply as you begin to engage.
3. Engagement - You engage the enemy, they already wasted cooldowns on your pre-buff, use the boons required for sustain and pressure (Stability, Resistance, Protection, Aegis, Retaliation).
4. Execution - You execute your plan but now Stability, Resistance, Protection, Aegis, Retaliation are all corrupted.
5. Reactive Combat - You clear the conditions, maintain pressure and regroup for a few seconds; get some might, swiftness, and fury going again.
6. Planning - You plan to initiate a recovery phase then shove the enemy hard; you regenerate some swiftness, might and fury.
7. Engagement - You engage the enemy, their cool-downs are back to strip your boons. They strip your boons, you activate the boons again for sustain and pressure.
8. Execution - You execute your plan but now you've exhausted your 2nd round of rotations.
9. The fight is either in the favor of Team (A) or Team (B) at this point and you run thru phases until the fight is over.
10. Clean up or re-spawn.

Sure, your boons get corrupted. Sure when you re-apply them they get corrupted. But, you have so many different kits and tools to compensate and sustain thru corruptions and this isn't even considering strips. If you go all-in and show all your cards at once (boons in this case) then yeah, you're going to run to a corner and cry because you can't do anything anymore. Learn to anticipate and plan ahead of time, don't rely on just being re-active you have to also be pro-active.

Not sure how not to get into a class discussion when your yourself are limiting the problem to 2 classes.....

I find spellbreaker abilities fairly easy to dodge atm. Scourge though is alot more difficult....its like dodging reaper/necro strips...which is pretty hard at times. Like reaper mode where they lunge forward spinning their staff...thats easy to dodge. Their strip well, somehwat easy to dodge or get out of. Its all these automatic strips that you can't really see that are the problem.....scourge places aoe all over the place to the extent that an entire area becomes hot lava, very hard to dodge imo unless its solo fight on good terrain. Spellbreaker ult......really easy to dodge imo. Harder in group situations but its like the normal size of the old reaper aoe....so don't have much problem with it. I don't find the other spellbreaker strips much of a problem either, but that's mainly cause the spellbreaker itself isn't doing the condi damage in conjunction with the stripping (and if they are the attacks are easy to see and dodge/counter).

Spellbreaker is very much a tank/support right now. Scourge tho has the diversity of being anything....high damage, high tank, support, mobility, condi, zerk.....that's why I give the edge to scourge as the primary problem especially given the sheer number of strips it has access to, on a class that honestly doesn't even need strips to be good. Scourge is a bit of a loser in the mobility department tho, high tank at the expense of mobility generally means low survivability in wvsw (focus fire is real)....but the game has enough non-class-specific kitten to keep the scourge alive an unhealthy amount of time should this happen. Sheer hp is a horrible form of sustain in wvsw compared to pure dodges and pure invulnerabilities and stealth and ports and heal spam....you get the idea.

in terms of number of boons each class gets.....I think they have built-in counters for that tbh to compensate. I can't speak for all classes though, since I don't play all classes, but if you look hard enough I'm sure you'll find enough class specific options in a build.

The problem is glass cannons and offense versus bunkers and defense. Anet has trouble balancing so they want everything to counter defenses builds. Damage is needed to win and condis do that.