After passive nerfs, the time has come to nerf CC

There is such a large amount of CC in this game, that it became toxic for pvp gameplay. Nerfing passives was a good step by Anet, but I think we can go a little further by nerfing CC as well. With all the power creep since HoT we need nerfs across the board. There are too many CC skills in PvP because they are very powerful and can be chained so that you can lock targets down easily. I'm talking about all the hard CC and immobilize here. A Holosmith dmg output is almost solely based on CC, which is just an example of how bad it is for overall gameplay. Chronos use daze, taunt, float, etc to lock down their targets. It makes a lot of builds on every class useless, because Stability access is very unequally spread across classes and traitlines.

Example: DruidI play Druid regularly, and that class also has quite some hard-CC on meta-builds:

• Longbow #4
• Smokescale knockdown
• CA #3
• CA #5
• Traited heal skill through ''Soften the Fall''
• Staff #4
• ''Ancient seeds'' trait

That is 7 hard-CC skills in 1 build, while none of them are above a 20-sec cooldown. Although some might oppose that Immobilize is hard-CC as it doesn't intterupt anything, I consider it hard-CC given how powerful it is. Druid is just an example of a class/build that has too much CC in it while still being viable at higher levels of PVP. If you consider a teamfight where different players can combine CC-skills on 1 target while only one attacking player already has 7 of them available.... it just doesn't promote fun and healthy gameplay.

We can look at some suggestions to improve this situation:

• Increase the cooldown of CC-skills.
• Invent something that makes it impossible to get CC-chained. For example: if you are dazed/stunned/launched you can't be dazed/stunned/launched again in the next 3 seconds or something.
• Remove CC-skills from every weapon, and make them solely utility- or trait-based.
• Remove CC-skills from every utility and trait, and make them solely weapon-based.
• .......

Increasing access to stability won't be a good solution, as boon-ripping and boon corruption becomes even more valuable.

Allways though that getting stunlocked shouldnt be possible, getting perma immobile or just stunned over and over again should not be possible, I believe CC should have some kind of DR, could be something that happens with PvE bosses, after you get cc enough times you would get Defiant buff and would be immune to cc for a few secs to give you a fighinting chance

instead of nerfing cc into oblivion i rather have them buff counterplay.what happened to player break bars anyway?

Some Cc durations might be looked at aswell.Highly agree with this.

Damage needs a look as well.There are too many skills that do massive amounts of damage on every single build, and the only thing that balanced it out so far is the increase in skills that grant evasion, which just leads to evasion spamming to avoid the abundance of hard hitting skills.

That's a good idea, but it might turn into " nerf everything " . So far, those CC skills on druid( or to an other extent on some warrior builds) are really helpful to deal with scourges or thieves. You lock them off fight, or chain kd these, making them unable to cast skills or forcing them to use their stability.

I actually like these kind of CC since it brings in a bit of strategy, although the duration obviously needs to be looked at..

There is so much stability (even passive) around that i honestly don't see the problem with CC's.If you want to nerf cc's then nerf the stability gain of a lot of classes cough Mesmers, guardians cough. Also let's not forget that a lot of CC's are easily dodgeable and that there are a shit ton of "i got stunned, passive comes in play yay" traits (with not so long cd's).

There are very few really long Cc's, most of em are useful to interrupt long cast skill. If you are using a long cast skill without covering it then you are taking a huge bet and the enemy MUST have ways to counterplay you.

The only problem that i see effectively is that if you suddendly don't have an access to stability then you are stunlocked, but it's a problem that persists only in teamfight and honestly a teamfight in the state of pvp right now is just a spam fest. You have no way to see the skills that are being used cause visual clutter to its finest.That's why i only play side nodes dueler, teamfighting is boring and annoying.

Well, there are a duckton of stunbreaks too.

But there are also just as many CC breakers, passive defense, blocking, reflects etc so if you start nerfing dmg and CC duration you just help go back to a bunker meta. It's actually not that bad as it is right now.

Any nerf of CC at this point would result in CC being unusable in pvp.

@"polvere.2805" said:There is so much stability (even passive) around that i honestly don't see the problem with CC's.If you want to nerf cc's then nerf the stability gain of a lot of classes cough Mesmers, guardians cough. Also let's not forget that a lot of CC's are easily dodgeable and that there are a kitten ton of "i got stunned, passive comes in play yay" traits (with not so long cd's).

There are very few really long Cc's, most of em are useful to interrupt long cast skill. If you are using a long cast skill without covering it then you are taking a huge bet and the enemy MUST have ways to counterplay you.

The only problem that i see effectively is that if you suddendly don't have an access to stability then you are stunlocked, but it's a problem that persists only in teamfight and honestly a teamfight in the state of pvp right now is just a spam fest. You have no way to see the skills that are being used cause visual clutter to its finest.That's why i only play side nodes dueler, teamfighting is boring and annoying.

Do not nerf the stability access of Guardians. Nerf the Stability access of Firebrand. Core guard / DH has abysmal Stability uptime.All the Mesmer Stability comes from one trait alone. Making it only give Stability on F2 + F3 shatters might be the way to go.

Some Cc durations might be looked at aswell.

Look no further than Entangled. This is by far the rangers' biggest crutch skill because it can immobilize an opponent for 5 seconds. 5 SECONDS! The worst part is if your profession doesn't have a 'break movement impairing effects' skill, you're done for. And to add insult to injury it has a 60 seconds cooldown, 48 if traited.

I think sources of hard CC effects, stunbreaks as well as Stability should all be heavily revised.

If the game had fewer hard CC effects but with longer durations and less stunbreaks, combat would instantly feel less spammy and more meaningful.

I think they need to sort out what they intend skills to be used as:

If you intend a skill to disable your opponent then it should be a decent duration CC but likewise needs a cast time proportional to the effect duration.If you intend a skill to be used mainly for interrupting purposes then short casts but likewise short duration, headshot is a good example.

Ever since HoT a lot of newer skills and skill changes have reduced cool downs, some I think were needed as the skills were decent just not competitive to other core skills that have always been used but a large amount now seems to be under this doctrine of people like buffs over nerfs.

Cool downs should also be factored into all this where strong effects (those for disabling) are on moderate to long cool downs, while those for interrupts are on shorter to moderate cool downs.

@"apharma.3741" said:I think they need to sort out what they intend skills to be used as:

If you intend a skill to disable your opponent then it should be a decent duration CC but likewise needs a cast time proportional to the effect duration.If you intend a skill to be used mainly for interrupting purposes then short casts but likewise short duration, headshot is a good example.

Ever since HoT a lot of newer skills and skill changes have reduced cool downs, some I think were needed as the skills were decent just not competitive to other core skills that have always been used but a large amount now seems to be under this doctrine of people like buffs over nerfs.

Cool downs should also be factored into all this where strong effects (those for disabling) are on moderate to long cool downs, while those for interrupts are on shorter to moderate cool downs.

Right, I think we should look to vanilla CC design as a pretty good example. Most CCs had a cost associated with them -- be it self-knockback, long wind-ups, short effects, or long cooldowns.

@polvere.2805 said:There is so much stability (even passive) around that i honestly don't see the problem with CC's.

There are very few really long Cc's

People want to talk about counterplay and long CC's, what counterplay?If I am fighting a Holo, the short time it takes me to Lightning reflex and dodge away from a Holosmith CC, 3/4ths of my health is gone.I can't get away fast enough.Where is the counterplay in that?

Holo doesn't need a long CC to kill you.

All it takes is one more player of practically any skill level to use one of the plethora of CC's and I'm done and down'ed.

Not just CC, conditions overall shoud be nerf as well.

Nerfing CC would really mess up the balance. There are classes that are balanced entirely around CC. It would be a huge buff to slippery and facetank classes like thief and spellbreaker similar to how current Mirage and pre nerf chrono is/was practically immune to CC. Would also completely destroy some specs like DH which need CC to do anything. Would be fine if all classes were completely rebalanced around this but I don't have any faith in the balance team since POF launch.

Everything needs to be toned down, you have situations where enemies where untouchable for a large amount of time because of all blocks blinds blurr strealth immunity evades and so one and this should not be , builds should have 1 cc besides oits a cc build which get heavily downside - low dps pressure, low selfsustainmake stability be unique or add immunity to cc after you already get cced like in aion, so you dont get perma cc or stun chained

@Arkantos.7460 said:Everything needs to be toned down, you have situations where enemies where untouchable for a large amount of time because of all blocks blinds blurr strealth immunity evades and so one and this should not be , builds should have 1 cc besides oits a cc build which get heavily downside - low dps pressure, low selfsustainmake stability be unique or add immunity to cc after you already get cced like in aion, so you dont get perma cc or stun chained

Stun chaining has always been key, ever since the vanilla hammer warrior. Thing is though, that took skill and could be outplayed. This was so much fun.Comparing that to holosmiths for example is just insane though. The amount of power creep if insane.

So many bad ideas. No, we don't need diminishing returns on CC. No, we don't need player break bars (they existed when HoT first came out and didn't work well).

What you need to do is look at is the skill investment (cast time, cooldown, how hard it is to land) vs. the skill return (duration, damage - both immediate and in combo).

• Ancient seeds being a proc is absolutely ridiculous and should be removed or limited to 2sec at most.
• "Soften the fall" needs to be looked at, but isn't nearly as bad.
• Smokescale is mostly frustrating because it also does quite a bit of damage on top of CC for being a relatively tanky pet. Keep in mind that any canine pet can CC about as much.

They should "nerf everything", i agree. The Power Creep after HOT killed the game for me...

Every1 has a lot of acess to CC, StunBreaks, Boons, Condis, etc...

Simple decision: add diminishings

Being able to chain CC someone so they can't respond is ridiculous. Example Warr with their hammer stun locks, easy kill. No way out if they do this in the middle of a fight. However the absolute king of this is engi/holosmith with long duration knockdowns and launches. When Anet want to get serious they will introduce CC-type immunity so you've already been hit recently it has a different effect or no effect at all. This will get rid of the silly ping-pong effect.

Chain CC definitely needs DR or if you stun break a stun you should be granted 1s of immunity to stuns. This might slow down game play a bit, but that would just mean less facepalming keyboards and players needed to weave their CC as opposed to easily just chain CCing someone.

I agree 100% that CC needs diminishing returns, you shouldn't be able to stunlock anytime.