Only One AoE

Radical thought that I haven't fully considered yet: how about only allowing one AoE be active in one location per character? If for example a Marauder Staff ele casts Lava Font and Lightning Storm and their area of effect is overlapping, enemies standing in it should only experience the effects of one of those skills even though they're both active. People often complain about the spamminess of Conquest-based sPvP, this would help without nerfing any particular skill.

How about dodge?

This would obviously be too easy to use for griefing.Edit: Oh wait, you mean per character. I should probably learn to read.Still not a great idea, it would hurt diversity and combos.

@Airdive.2613 said:This would obviously be too easy to use for griefing.Edit: Oh wait, you mean per character. I should probably learn to read.Still not a great idea, it would hurt diversity and combos.

How would it affect either of those? Give an example or two. Keep in mind that if I use a finisher on top of two of my/my allies' fields, it will only combo with one of those fields.

In this particular example...why not stand in it?

@Huskyboy.1053 said:

@"Airdive.2613" said:This would obviously be too easy to use for griefing.Edit: Oh wait, you mean per character. I should probably learn to read.Still not a great idea, it would hurt diversity and combos.

It's hard to think of practical examples, but off the top of my head.

1. If you walk into several traps, you should be taking more damage than from just one of them.
2. Sometimes you want to maximize your hit frequency when continuously blinded.
3. How does this take into account purely supportive AoEs? "Mixed" ones, like null field?
4. Are guardian's symbols and tempest's overloads literally unplayable?

Generally, I guess nobody would use weaker AoEs and then people would still complain about stronger ones.

@Airdive.2613 said:

@Huskyboy.1053 said:

@Airdive.2613 said:This would obviously be too easy to use for griefing.Edit: Oh wait, you mean per character. I should probably learn to read.Still not a great idea, it would hurt diversity and combos.

1. If you walk into several traps, you should be taking more damage than from just one of them.
2. Sometimes you want to maximize your hit frequency when continuously blinded.
3. How does this take into account purely supportive AoEs? "Mixed" ones, like null field?
4. Are guardian's symbols and tempest's overloads literally unplayable?

1. Why? This is lazy gameplay. Why should we reward someone for laying 3 invisible traps on the ground and walking away?
2. If I'm understanding, you mean that if I'm getting blinded repeatedly then maybe I can lay down 2-3 AoEs and then I'll still get 1-2 hits per second from the AoEs. I think it's probably more logical to dodge/walk away from whatever is repeatedly blinding you, e.g. Well of Darkness. But you do you girl.
3. I think the same logic should apply for supportive ground-targeted AoEs.
4. Do you mean that this logic applies to an individual player's AoEs, I.e. a guardian that's spamming their symbols? If so my answer is yes. I used to play Symbolic DH before PoF came out, and I must say it was reasonably effective in Gold up to low Plat 1. That was not because I was good, I was getting carried by the mechanics of the build.

The reason I'm so anti-AoE is that the proliferation of AoEs delegitimizes coordinated single-target spikes. Sure, my team could time our spike carefully... or we can just layer the general area in which there are 2-3 opponents and hit all of them at once. That's pretty much the offensive strat that's used with 2 Scourges. It's the defensive strat used by the current Chrono build.

My question to you is, do you prefer to play a game where:

1. It's easy to kill via AoE spam/Support via AoE spam
2. It's nearly impossible to kill someone without significant single-target damage/Support someone without significant single-target healing

My completely subjective answer is that I prefer option 2, a game that rewards single-target-based combat much more than AoE-based combat. Right now that's not the game we're playing.

Let's not do that. It would kill off a lot of specs; primarily Scourge. Sure, people cry about Scourge a lot, they kind of have a reason, but you shouldn't punish every specialization for it-- let alone when one of them purely rely on the fact they can layer their AoEs. You would kill off Staff Elementalist in Raids (Rip Meteor Shower) and Wells for Chronomancer (Although they're less common.) And Wells on Necromancer. Sure it's pretty annoying that people can layer their AoEs-- but if they can trap you in them, they know how to do it right instead of just spamming.

If we're going to talk about anything to nerf, let's talk about how to reduce sustain on Mirage.

I would rather see an actual change to reduce the amount of AoE skills in the game period. Along with that, reduce the size or duration on a lot of the AoEs that are allowed to remain

@OriOri.8724 said:I would rather see an actual change to reduce the amount of AoE skills in the game period. Along with that, reduce the size or duration on a lot of the AoEs that are allowed to remain

Yeah that's fair. 180 is an appropriate size in general considering the size of capture points yet many are 240. Too large imo. My approach is only one way to approach the issue.

@Huskyboy.1053 said:

@Airdive.2613 said:

@Huskyboy.1053 said:

@Airdive.2613 said:This would obviously be too easy to use for griefing.Edit: Oh wait, you mean per character. I should probably learn to read.Still not a great idea, it would hurt diversity and combos.

1. If you walk into several traps, you should be taking more damage than from just one of them.
2. Sometimes you want to maximize your hit frequency when continuously blinded.
3. How does this take into account purely supportive AoEs? "Mixed" ones, like null field?
4. Are guardian's symbols and tempest's overloads literally unplayable?

1. Why? This is lazy gameplay. Why should we reward someone for laying 3 invisible traps on the ground and walking away?
2. If I'm understanding, you mean that if I'm getting blinded repeatedly then maybe I can lay down 2-3 AoEs and then I'll still get 1-2 hits per second from the AoEs. I think it's probably more logical to dodge/walk away from whatever is repeatedly blinding you, e.g. Well of Darkness. But you do you girl.
3. I think the same logic should apply for supportive ground-targeted AoEs.
4. Do you mean that this logic applies to an individual player's AoEs, I.e. a guardian that's spamming their symbols? If so my answer is yes. I used to play Symbolic DH before PoF came out, and I must say it was reasonably effective in Gold up to low Plat 1. That was not because I was good, I was getting carried by the mechanics of the build.

1. It's easy to kill via AoE spam/Support via AoE spam
2. It's nearly impossible to kill someone without significant single-target damage/Support someone without significant single-target healing

Well, it sounds like it could go well, but the game would need to be built from scratch under this new paradigm; no one really wants to do that. There's just too many things that would require a complete rework or a balance pass, it might as well be GW 3. If you apply the restriction here and now, the game will become a huge mess.As of right now, you can console yourself that when you dodge, you dodge (almost) all of the multiple fields at once.