Warning wall of text!

I am doing my very best to be concise, but there is a lot of things to discuss.I would appreciate if you do try to keep responses to this post factual and correctly quote the part you agree/disagree with and why.

The current state of WvW is atrocious. I will go through all (might miss some) of it's problems as someone who plays in a small very organized group of 2-5 people (depending on the day), while also touching problems with running solo and what is currently wrong with zerging.

I will also briefly discuss what would fix these issues. I will try to avoid singling one class out as the cause of all these problems and try to provide as general information as possible. I will try my very best to avoid class balance as this is a subject likely to derail the thread and this thread is not about specific issues but about global game-wide issues, even if some of these issues are partly or fully limited to a subset of the classes.

I will also be listing the main offending classes (sometimes specifying build) for each category, note this is not a call to nerf any particular class, just me pointing out that they are some of the main offenders for one or multiple parts of what makes WvW bad. These could be missing some classes/builds as I might forget them, but the examples are mainly there to illustrate a point.

1. Low-Risk/High-Reward gameplay

1.1 Builds with access to incredibly high mobility.Some builds have so much mobility that trying to kill them on most other classes is an excercise in futility, you can make them flee/reset, but you will never actually get the kill, this means that they will keep resetting the fight until they eventually win, be it the 3rd or the 33rd try. This is both frustrating and very poor gameplay as your best option becomes finding somewhere relative safe (generally water/a tower/somewhere with LoS) and wait for them to get bored. These issues are further compounded on by that they are generally the same ones with access to stealths which will be discussed in subsection (1.2) and very high burst (which will be discussed in subsection 1.3)My Solution: Make a lot more of the movement skills require a target so you can't use them to reset. Nerf ones where this is not applicable (1-2 movement options at most w/o a target seems reasonable/class)Main Offender(s): Thieves (all specs), Mirage, Soulbeast, Druid, Warrior (all specs), Revenant (Shiro)

1.2 Builds with good access to stealth.There is very little counterplay to stealth, you can try to guess where they go, but the odds of that are generally about as good as me picking 3 numbers between 1 and 18 and you trying to guess all 3 (360 degrees to go in, your margin of error is at best 20 degrees, they can change the direction hence the 3 times). Even if you do manage to predict where they go, the builds with access to stealth are generally not slow builds w/o any mobility skills.My Solution: Make stealth give you an unpurgeable version of cripple that prevents you from using movement skills. This would make actually finding the person in stealth rewarding while making it so that when you don't they have at least cleared a lot less distance.Main Offender(s): Thief (all specs), Mirage, Soulbeast, Druid

1.3 Builds with very high burst damage and strong "defenses".This point is basically a combination of subsection (1.1) and (1.2), but extended to include all active defenses (such as Endure Pain for example). When builds can go for their full burst on you (which can 1 shot you if you don't play counter accordingly (and sometimes even then depending on what build you're running and what build is bursting you). Now if you after surviving their full burst could properly retaliate this would be far less of a problem, but this burst is generally followed up by chaining several mobility skills together with using invulnerabilities (or stealth or similar). Meaning that the sequence goes something like Burst>You survive>Reset fight>10 sec later>Burst>You Survive>Reset Fight>Wait 10 sec>Repeat. This is less of an issue when you yourself play the kind of class/build that can do this, but for those of us who don't enjoy burst>reset gameplay there are very few viable options.My Solution: Implement my suggestions from subsection (1.1) and (1.2) and reduce the damage of the burstiest skills across the board (especially ones without a clear tell)Main Offender(s): Thieves (all specs), Mirages, Soulbeasts, Warriors, Holosmith, Fresh Air Ele variants

1.4 Builds that combine some previous points with long range.Once again the issue here is counterplay, the builds that can combine these things also generally do the bulk of their burst with unblockable, which removes yet another counterplay option, leaving LoS as the only real counterplay option. These builds are in my opinion not more of a problem in even numbered fights than similar builds w/o range but their range makes very oppressive when outnumbering the enemy.My Solution: Ranged attacks should never be unblockable (or unblockable shouldn't affect projectile destruction/reflection). Ranged attacks should either be similar to that of staff elementalist (slow and telegraphed) or do much lower damage, there should be no 15k unblockable attacks.Main Offender(s): Deadeyes, Soulbeasts, Revenant (Hammer+Shiro, so to a lesser degree than the others)

1.5 Overall Damage ProliferationThis point isn't targeted at any specific class or issue but rather at the fact that the game has seen overall damage go up, meaning fights become more burst, less attrition. In my opinion attrition based or "grindy" fights are more healthy for a game as they give each player more possibilities to play good/bad meaning that they measure "skill" in a better way.My Solution: This problem is often due to a lot of stacked +x% damage modifiers, reducing the number of these in the game would be a very good startMain Offender(s): Game-wide issue

2. Arbitrary benefits from zergingThere are several mechanics that currently benefit low skilled "blobs" more so than numbers simply should. I do believe that having more numbers should be an advantage, yet having mechanics that reward it beyond just that you have more "total hp" and more "total dps" etc is poor design. Mechanics that do this are typically mechanics where there is a very low amount of "skill" needed to perform the mechanic optimally, or close to optimally.

The mechanics that currently reward this is:2.1 The AoE cap on damaging skillsAoE skills are supposed to be the counterplay to multiple stacked enemies, yet the optimal counterplay to AoE effects is to stack more players in tighter blobs, which in turn makes single target effects all but useless (due to heals being AoE and "smart")(especially ones that can be bodyblocked). Outnumbering the enemy is it's own benefit, such a strategy does not also need a 60-90% blanket damage/cc reduction.My solution is simple, just remove the AoE cap from any offensive skills completely.Main Offender(s): Everyone

2.2 The way the downstate and ressing works vastly promotes bigger groups.Ressing is something which you can't do better (except for Mercy runes/ressing traits) except for just having more people do it, it is also in the current state way way too fast to ress 1 player, even without mercy runes/similar, but when there is several mercy runes using players the downstate becomes what you really fight against as everyone you down almost instantly gets ressed.My Solution: for this would be to cut ressing speed by 50-75%, remove ressing traits from the game and remove mercy runes from the game and in addition to this add a debuff on people currently getting stomped that reduced their "healing gained" by 100%. Several/all downstate skills should be nerfed to roughly the level of the Necromancer/Revenant ones (easily counterable, only 1 interrupt, can't interrupt people with stab or interrupt through blind) or completely remove all downstate skills beyond 1 and 4.Main Offender(s): Druids, Scrappers, Guardians, Mercy Runes

2.3 Builds with a large number of "double duty" skills.A great example here would be Scourge (there are other too), which prior to February 06th Patch was my favorite class and main. After multiple excessive nerfs scourge is still amazing at zerging, but is now terrible for anything else. The reasons they are great at zerging is because all of their skills are both offensive and defensive at the same time, while many of their skills have a target cap of 10. The dual nature of their skills means that there is never a "bad" time to use them, meaning that while the average person in a zerg might not use the skills optimally, they will be used "good enough" to be effective (Back when Scourge wasn't trash outside of a zerg, I considered playing one optimally outside of a zerg to be one of the harder classes to master, while being mediocre/good enough to be one of the easiest classes(ie a bad Scourge player was still a threat, but there was a lot of room for improvement)).My Solution: Make more of these skills have an option to be either supportive or damaging, for example picking up "Path of Corruption" on Scourge might make f2 corrupt 2 boons like it used to, but no longer convert any conditions (or only convert conditions on yourself). Basically more tradeoffs and less skills that are mediocre at a lot of stuff. This rewards good decision making.Main Offender(s): Scourge, Firebrand, Warrior, Herald

2.4 The exponential power growth of multiple players due to supportive non-supportsA lot of optimal single target "buffs" or "defensives" have an equally strong AoE part, for example, "Healing Turret", "Sand Cascade", "Leap of Resolve" just to name a few skills from various classes are all abilities you would use while playing their respective class solo, that makes them very difficult to tune correctly as they must be strong enough to use without any allies, but while doing 5x as much as "usual" they become overpowered. AoE healing and support builds are not at all in themselves a problem, I personally find that they are part of what makes WvW interesting, what is a problem is when every "offensive" build runs with several supportive skills by "accident", ie skills they would be using even if they only affected the caster.My Solution: The lines between support builds and non-support builds should be clearer, for example a nerf targeted at "Healing Turret" might include removing the personal heal on it (reducing it's self healing by 50%) or making the second part of the healing self-exclusive, now I am not saying "Healing Turret" in particular does or doesn't needs nerfing, it is just a good example of that kind of skill.Main Offender(s): Scourge, Firebrand, Guardian, Herald, Renegade, Scrapper

2.5 RetalationI originally while writing this did not include this point. Mainly because it did not cross my mind. But after reading several replies I realize that this deserves to make the list. This boon can sometimes be doing 60% of the damage you take (according to my damage meter's incoming damage)(or more in extreme examples). There is no counterplay beyond "don't attack".My Solution: Redesign the buff completely, don't even keep the concept.Main Offenders: Guards and Chronomancers are the ones that give the boon out the most, but the sources of it aren't the problem.

3. Various uncategorized issuesI will here write issues which I do not feel adequately fit into other categories

3.1 ResistanceThis boon is poor design. I assume it was intended as a way of countering conditions in a similar vein that protection counters power damage. It however does so far too well, if specced for it, you can have a ridiculous uptime on this boon, especially in a group, blanket immunity to one entire type of damage does not seem like good design.My Solution: Keep the immunity to impairing conditions and make it reduce condition damage by 33-50%, adjust availability accordingly.Main Offender(s): Firebrands, Mallyx Revenant

3.2 Access to condition cleansesA large majority of the condi clears in this game are AoE, this means that the larger the enemy force is, the worse condition builds become compared to power builds. I have long been of the opinion that group condition clears are too strong, while for most classes, personal condition clears are too weak (this used to be a bigger problem and now doesn't affect as many classes).My Solution: Nerf some of the more spammable AoE condi clears, while buffing personal condi clears.Main Offender(s): (Too much Group): Firebrand, Scourge, Heal Scrapper,Main Offender(s): (Too little personal). Necromancer (Mainly Power Variants), Revenant (Power Variants),

3.3 Excessive CC-spamThis is more evident when outnumbered, but can be seen in equal fights too. CC effects are generally needed for a game, however most games have some mechanic that prevents you from being CC-locked. Being CC-locked is a situation where you get caught in a loop of CC effects until you die, generally because your stunbreak is on cooldown, this is a bigger problem for some classes than others.My Solution: Introduce a diminishing returns effect on CC, ie everytime you get CCed you either get a few seconds of immunity, or CC-effects applied to you afterwards have a reduced duration, how to make this work with the various lengths of CC effects is the hard part, but something along the lines of the longer your previous CC-effects were and the more of them was applied to you, the more powerful the diminishing returns. Adding more stunbreaks/sources of stability for problem classes is also an option, but imo a more shortsighted and more band-aidy one.Main Offender(s): Spellbreakers, Holosmith, Chronomancer, Large Fights

4. TL;DRThis can be summarized to, do something about the burst+reset meta in smallscale and do something about the exponential power growth for bigger groups from low-effort classes.

This just sounds like you want us all on the same exact class with no differences between us. No offense but I do not. I like my different options even if it does mean I plod along without someone to speed me up. And if I'm by myself I like the option of a stealth class.

Well thought out though just. Not my thing.

@"Etria.3642" said:This just sounds like you want us all on the same exact class with no differences between us. No offense but I do not. I like my different options even if it does mean I plod along without someone to speed me up. And if I'm by myself I like the option of a stealth class.

Well thought out though just. Not my thing.

On the contrary, I want less builds that are mediocre at everything, and more specialized builds. I do however want the "meta" to be less burst>reset and more attrition, this does not equal to everyone being the same, in reality it equals the opposite as in attrition based fights what class/build you play has a bigger impact. In my opinion burst>reset builds have very little difference between each other except what color their animations have.

wants to avoid talking about class balance... goes on to talk about class balance problems... kay...

@"XenesisII.1540" said:wants to avoid talking about class balance... goes on to talk about class balance problems... kay..."Another derailing post. ^^" surprisingly accurate. But sure I will take the obvious bait, do point to where actual class balance is discussed in a non-generalized way that isn't applicable to multiple classes (beyond when used as examples).

The thread is about general game balance, game mechanics and good versus bad mechanics, if some classes have more or less of these, then that could speak about their balance but bad design does not necessarily mean imbalanced. It just means that the mechanics are poorly designed and leads to bad gameplay, when the builds that uses these kinda mechanics are stronger, the problems are more evident, but the bad design is bad no matter how the numbers are tweaked. There is no point in the first post where I point to a specific class or skill and say "nerf this" or "buff this"

Hold on I was actually typing a proper response but hit the back button on accident ~.~

Just because you don't call out a specific skill to nerf in a certain way and talk about the problems in general, specific skills will still need to be changed and classes will need to be balanced around those changes. There's no need to dance around the issue.

1.1 Movement skills require a target player, a target area, or you can turn off auto target and fire it off in the direction you're facing. What specifically are you looking to change here on what skills?

1.2 This solution will do little to stealth users. It's still a guessing game where they are, a good stealth user can already juke you without movement skills it's about direction, some can chain stealth and just wait out the debuff. There needs to be better stealth detection in the game, but that's not going to happen. Stealth is broken, it will always be broken, because an entire class was built around it.

1.3 Game definitely needs to move back to more tactical combat and not just run and gun or aoe bombing. I mean people should at least be allowed to fire off their heal in a fight. Without a doubt, burst needs to be toned down, especially from stealth.

1.4 Reason for more unblockables is because there's more reflect and blocks, just look at that new giant orange bubble plaguing the fields these days. So both areas about need to be toned down.

1.5 While I do think damage can be high in the game, I'm not sure toning down overall damage would do much, players would just try to stack more in their group to make up for loss damage. Burst does need to be taken down.

2.1 Believe they said once it's a technical hurdle to increase the cap. Also it would probably cause a major amount of lag in the game.

2.2 No down state.

2.3 I don't think a lot of double duty skills should exist either.

2.4 Nerf boons, the boons vs conditions combat has been a ridiculous direction to take combat into since june 23rd 2015, yes anet never going to let that go.

3.1 Should have worked like protection in the first place. 100% was ridiculous, but that just goes to show how damaging they wanted to make conditions.

3.2 Classes should have near equal access to cleanses, I always thought all personal heals in the game should have had a cleanse on it, and a utility cleanse skill, with less aoe cleanses in general on long enough timers so that they are not spammable in zerg fights and in fact made better use of in organized groups.

3.3 Diminishing returns, they have it on loot but not on control spells, go figure.

@"XenesisII.1540" said:Hold on I was actually typing a proper response but hit the back button on accident ~.~

Just because you don't call out a specific skill to nerf in a certain way and talk about the problems in general, specific skills will still need to be changed and classes will need to be balanced around those changes. There's no need to dance around the issue.

1.1 Movement skills require a target player, a target area, or you can turn off auto target and fire it off in the direction you're facing. What specifically are you looking to change here on what skills?

1.2 This solution will do little to stealth users. It's still a guessing game where they are, a good stealth user can already juke you without movement skills it's about direction, some can chain stealth and just wait out the debuff. There needs to be better stealth detection in the game, but that's not going to happen. Stealth is broken, it will always be broken, because an entire class was built around it.

1.3 Game definitely needs to move back to more tactical combat and not just run and gun or aoe bombing. I mean people should at least be allowed to fire off their heal in a fight. Without a doubt, burst needs to be toned down, especially from stealth.

1.4 Reason for more unblockables is because there's more reflect and blocks, just look at that new giant orange bubble plaguing the fields these days. So both areas about need to be toned down.

1.5 While I do think damage can be high in the game, I'm not sure toning down overall damage would do much, players would just try to stack more in their group to make up for loss damage. Burst does need to be taken down.

2.1 Believe they said once it's a technical hurdle to increase the cap. Also it would probably cause a major amount of lag in the game.

2.2 No down state.

2.3 I don't think a lot of double duty skills should exist either.

2.4 Nerf boons, the boons vs conditions combat has been a ridiculous direction to take combat into since june 23rd 2015, yes anet never going to let that go.

3.1 Should have worked like protection in the first place. 100% was ridiculous, but that just goes to show how damaging they wanted to make conditions.

3.2 Classes should have near equal access to cleanses, I always thought all personal heals in the game should have had a cleanse on it, and a utility cleanse skill, with less aoe cleanses in general on long enough timers so that they are not spammable in zerg fights and in fact made better use of in organized groups.

3.3 Diminishing returns, they have it on loot but not on control spells, go figure.

1.1 As in skills like warrior greatsword 5 should require a target so you can use it to get to your enemy, but not away from your enemy.

1.2 It would mean that you can at least keep up with them if you can guess, if someone where to suggest "remove stealth completely" I'd be all for it, but trying to keep the suggestions relatively realistic (imo thief isn't designed around stealth, they're designed aroun mobility)

1.3 So we agree

1.4 Some skills giving reflect/absorb are a bit overtoned yes, WeD and Firebrand bubble being the worst offenders, but in concept long range unreflectable/unabsorbable are a bad idea.

1.5 A lot of the burst are from very high stacked damage modifiers (deadeye malice, soulbeast has like 4-5 different +x% dmg modifiers at least)

2.1 That is an excuse, removing cap solves lagZergs fights are shorter > Lag is shorter durationGame needs to calculate what targets gets hit anyway, also takes performance

2.2 I wish lol, complete removal of downstate is something I doubt would ever happen, even if I would support it, once again trying for more "realistic" suggestions

2.3 Agreed

2.4 Well I don't have anything against boonshare mesmer for example as that is a build based around boons and very little else. I am bothered by specs like heralds who aren't actually supports, they just kinda randomly give out boons.

3.1 Yes

3.2 Some difference is okay, current state is not yes.

3.3 Agreed

2012 GW2 had literally 4 things that required fixing. Right now... it's PAGES.

I'd just disagree on stun locking. If you have more than 1 stack of stability you literally cant be stun locked at all. Considering that you don't have stability or that stability got stripped down, it can only mean one thing : you're not positioned properly, and that's not something that game needs to fix, it's on your (group's) end. If you get pulled out of zerg, you deserve to die if you dont react fast. If you get caught in winds of disenchantment, you deserve to get bombed/boon stripped/stun locked if you/your firebrand/chrono don't react fast. No amount of CC can lock you down if you're staying near commander on top of other 30+ people, stacked with 10+ FB's/chronos for boons and stab.

It's basic combat knowledge, you kill before you get killed and you use everything you can to get advantage. If you get caught, you blame your reflexes or your supports, not the game.

I don't think the game is really in that bad of a place balance wise I just think it's gotten boring because nothing much has changed in six years and there's not really much to work towards in game for anyone who has been playing a long time.

I do agree that generally speaking there aren't enough tradeoffs built into class design and I agree that downed state is a problem. I don't have any issue with resistance and I play condi exclusively but I can see why you might have more of an issue with it on scourge than i do on rev. I don't have any issue with the amount of condi cleanses or with the amount of cc in the game currently.

@Israel.7056 said:I don't think the game is really in that bad of a place balance wise I just think it's gotten boring because nothing much has changed in six years and there's not really much to work towards in game for anyone who has been playing a long time.

I do agree that generally speaking there aren't enough tradeoffs built into class design and I agree that downed state is a problem. I don't have any issue with resistance and I play condi exclusively but I can see why you might have more of an issue with it on scourge than i do on rev. I don't have any issue with the amount of condi cleanses or with the amount of cc in the game currently.

.. Try playing condi engi, condi revenant, condi ranger, or hell, condi anything that isn't scourge in any medium-large fight. You can't make any damage stick because the second you land your skills, it's instantly gone thanks to a single support player in the other blob. At least when you're playing power, you can throw those 10k ranged bombs into the blob and expect them to hit. On top of that, you generally have to get closer to land condi damage than power. More risk, less reward. The only exception here is scourge because they throw huge aoes at range and they stick around to pulse.

@"steki.1478" said:I'd just disagree on stun locking. If you have more than 1 stack of stability you literally cant be stun locked at all. Considering that you don't have stability or that stability got stripped down, it can only mean one thing : you're not positioned properly, and that's not something that game needs to fix, it's on your (group's) end. If you get pulled out of zerg, you deserve to die if you dont react fast. If you get caught in winds of disenchantment, you deserve to get bombed/boon stripped/stun locked if you/your firebrand/chrono don't react fast. No amount of CC can lock you down if you're staying near commander on top of other 30+ people, stacked with 10+ FB's/chronos for boons and stab.

My view on all games is that the more interaction there is, the better the the game is. Stunlock is per definition uninteractive.Note, not everyone is playing in a 30+ zerg, nor should everyone, I set the premises quite clearly for my viewpoint, it is from someone running in a group of 2-5 or solo. Zerging is generally so simple that how playing in one works can be guessed (this means there are no 10+FBs around to perma stab you, which is an issue on it's own)If you get pulled into 30+ people by yourself you die, it doesn't matter if they stun you, they could auto attack you to death quickly cause theyre 30 on 1, irrelevant scenario for stunlocking.When fighting outnumbered you will often get stunlocked, sometimes for 5+ seconds, this means that you basically sit there, waiting for 5+ seconds in an "action combat" game. That is very poor gameplay, I can usually avoid it to a certain degree, yet it is not always avoidable, this is the only MMO I've played where stunlocking w/o diminishing returns is a thing. Dying to damage is one thing, because at least you can respond to it and try to interact with it, if you get caught in a kind of stunlock, that's generally defined by that you can't respond, that's the whole idea.

It's basic combat knowledge, you kill before you get killed and you use everything you can to get advantage. If you get caught, you blame your reflexes or your supports, not the game.

Important to note, me saying these mechanics are bad =/= I can't deal with them or don't know the supposed counters to them, it is me saying that there are situations where you can't them or that they lead to bad gameplay. Beyond this idk what the point of this statement is beyond trying to say balance doesn't really matter just play whatever is there now and don't whine, in which case this might not be the thread for you.

@Israel.7056 said:I don't think the game is really in that bad of a place balance wise I just think it's gotten boring because nothing much has changed in six years and there's not really much to work towards in game for anyone who has been playing a long time.

I do agree that generally speaking there aren't enough tradeoffs built into class design and I agree that downed state is a problem. I don't have any issue with resistance and I play condi exclusively but I can see why you might have more of an issue with it on scourge than i do on rev. I don't have any issue with the amount of condi cleanses or with the amount of cc in the game currently.

Meta is far worse than it 8 months ago. 8 months ago I had grindy long fights that could go either way quite often (ie how I played mattered), now not so much.

Ye more tradeoffs would make it more interesting. Resistance is only really an issue when its pulsed in an AoE on a low cooldown from several people at once (such as when fighting 2-3 firebrands), 100% blanket immunity to a dmg type is poor design either way, making it more available but more like protection would be far better design. Group cleanse in a similar vein, it is per definition not an issue when you're not fighting 2-3 of the clearing classes, but once you do, you're basically doing 0 dmg, whilst you on power would be doing more or less the same. Condi Rev which I also play quite often is one of the builds with the least issues with resistances, but what if you aren't playing a class with an amazing boonstrip or if the enemy has multiple pulsing resistance fields? The stunlock in this game has been bugging me for several years tbh, one of the things that made me reconsider the game a few times, it vastly promotes outnumbering the enemy.

@coro.3176 said:

@Israel.7056 said:I don't think the game is really in that bad of a place balance wise I just think it's gotten boring because nothing much has changed in six years and there's not really much to work towards in game for anyone who has been playing a long time.

I do agree that generally speaking there aren't enough tradeoffs built into class design and I agree that downed state is a problem. I don't have any issue with resistance and I play condi exclusively but I can see why you might have more of an issue with it on scourge than i do on rev. I don't have any issue with the amount of condi cleanses or with the amount of cc in the game currently.

I do play condi rev.

Good post! Well thought out. I agree on most points particularly about CC. Pretty out-of-control atm. Happened in WoW around Cataclysm and the pvp scene all but died out until Blizzard fixed it.

WvW problem #1: The devs have it as their lowest priority.

The cc thing is also less of an issue on rev because it has a lot of stun breaks. I can see why it would be more of an issue for other classes.

Even in small scale, there's not many classes that could stun lock or they have quite telegraphed animations. Most stun breaks also provide either stability, evade or stealth, which can prevent stun locking and there's even passive procs for those on every class.

When fighting outnumbered you either win with skills or lose to numbers, there's not much philosophy. Playing builds with no stun breaks or not having a designated support in that situation doesnt make CC skills any stronger, it just means that your composition/build lacks basic pvp tools, which are mobility, damage mitigation, stun breaks and cleanses.

@steki.1478 said:Even in small scale, there's not many classes that could stun lock or they have quite telegraphed animations. Most stun breaks also provide either stability, evade or stealth, which can prevent stun locking and there's even passive procs for those on every class.

When fighting outnumbered you either win with skills or lose to numbers, there's not much philosophy. Playing builds with no stun breaks or not having a designated support in that situation doesnt make CC skills any stronger, it just means that your composition/build lacks basic pvp tools, which are mobility, damage mitigation, stun breaks and cleanses.

I agree I think it's pretty easy to build a comp that's tough to completely grey bar without a lot of spellbreakers.

@steki.1478 said:I'd just disagree on stun locking. If you have more than 1 stack of stability you literally cant be stun locked at all. Considering that you don't have stability or that stability got stripped down, it can only mean one thing : you're not positioned properly, and that's not something that game needs to fix, it's on your (group's) end. If you get pulled out of zerg, you deserve to die if you dont react fast. If you get caught in winds of disenchantment, you deserve to get bombed/boon stripped/stun locked if you/your firebrand/chrono don't react fast. No amount of CC can lock you down if you're staying near commander on top of other 30+ people, stacked with 10+ FB's/chronos for boons and stab.

It's basic combat knowledge, you kill before you get killed and you use everything you can to get advantage. If you get caught, you blame your reflexes or your supports, not the game.

I'll disagree with this. I get stunlocked and killed plenty, though I only run with about 20 at most generally, and the stabs are not that available. You get yanked out from the group and cc-bombed, there is literally nothing you can do to save yourself. Hit all the stunbreaks you want, there's lots of cc waiting to hit you instantly.

@BlueMelody.6398 said:

@steki.1478 said:I'd just disagree on stun locking. If you have more than 1 stack of stability you literally cant be stun locked at all. Considering that you don't have stability or that stability got stripped down, it can only mean one thing : you're not positioned properly, and that's not something that game needs to fix, it's on your (group's) end. If you get pulled out of zerg, you deserve to die if you dont react fast. If you get caught in winds of disenchantment, you deserve to get bombed/boon stripped/stun locked if you/your firebrand/chrono don't react fast. No amount of CC can lock you down if you're staying near commander on top of other 30+ people, stacked with 10+ FB's/chronos for boons and stab.

It's basic combat knowledge, you kill before you get killed and you use everything you can to get advantage. If you get caught, you blame your reflexes or your supports, not the game.

Class and build? Unless it's necro, it's quite trivial to escape CC fields/spam on any class.

@steki.1478 said:

@BlueMelody.6398 said:

@steki.1478 said:I'd just disagree on stun locking. If you have more than 1 stack of stability you literally cant be stun locked at all. Considering that you don't have stability or that stability got stripped down, it can only mean one thing : you're not positioned properly, and that's not something that game needs to fix, it's on your (group's) end. If you get pulled out of zerg, you deserve to die if you dont react fast. If you get caught in winds of disenchantment, you deserve to get bombed/boon stripped/stun locked if you/your firebrand/chrono don't react fast. No amount of CC can lock you down if you're staying near commander on top of other 30+ people, stacked with 10+ FB's/chronos for boons and stab.

It's basic combat knowledge, you kill before you get killed and you use everything you can to get advantage. If you get caught, you blame your reflexes or your supports, not the game.

Trivial to classes with access to blocks, stealth and invulnerability.

@BlueMelody.6398 said:

@steki.1478 said:I'd just disagree on stun locking. If you have more than 1 stack of stability you literally cant be stun locked at all. Considering that you don't have stability or that stability got stripped down, it can only mean one thing : you're not positioned properly, and that's not something that game needs to fix, it's on your (group's) end. If you get pulled out of zerg, you deserve to die if you dont react fast. If you get caught in winds of disenchantment, you deserve to get bombed/boon stripped/stun locked if you/your firebrand/chrono don't react fast. No amount of CC can lock you down if you're staying near commander on top of other 30+ people, stacked with 10+ FB's/chronos for boons and stab.

It's basic combat knowledge, you kill before you get killed and you use everything you can to get advantage. If you get caught, you blame your reflexes or your supports, not the game.

So I'm guessing necro or guard.

@"steki.1478" said:Even in small scale, there's not many classes that could stun lock or they have quite telegraphed animations. Most stun breaks also provide either stability, evade or stealth, which can prevent stun locking and there's even passive procs for those on every class.Telegraphed skills are well and good while you still have evades, and not all stuns are heavily telegraphed either, the problem with them is also that once you do get stunned, you can't evade the next one, or the one after that etc, CC in itself is not too strong or even that poorly designed. "Most stun breaks also provide either stability, evade or stealth" Make that most good stunbreaks provide stability, evade or stealth, which shows the problem with the CC system perfectly imo, if a stunbreak is just a stunbreak, it might aswell not be there when fighting multiple enemies. There's not passive procs for each class. Necromancer, Revenant and Mesmer just off the top of my head dont have proc that stunbreaks them.When fighting outnumbered you either win with skills or lose to numbers, there's not much philosophy. Playing builds with no stun breaks or not having a designated support in that situation doesnt make CC skills any stronger, it just means that your composition/build lacks basic pvp tools, which are mobility, damage mitigation, stun breaks and cleanses.What's up with making statements that don't even have a meaning at all (your first statement)?Anyway, I do not play w/o a stunbreak or as much stab as my class allows, I do play with good support players, I do not have major issues dealing with stunlock more frequently than could be expected in each given situation. Yet when it does happen, it shows just how flawed the system is. Can you honestly think of any way in which the combat system would be worse if CC had diminishing returns?

@"SkyshaAdbinderMoonshard.7026"

2.4 The exponential power growth of multiple players due to supportive non-supportsA lot of optimal single target "buffs" or "defensives" have an equally strong AoE part, for example, "Healing Turret", "Sand Cascade", "Leap of Resolve" just to name a few skills from various classes are all abilities you would use while playing their respective class solo, that makes them very difficult to tune correctly as they must be strong enough to use without any allies, but while doing 5x as much as "usual" they become overpowered. AoE healing and support builds are not at all in themselves a problem, I personally find that they are part of what makes WvW interesting, what is a problem is when every "offensive" build runs with several supportive skills by "accident", ie skills they would be using even if they only affected the caster.My Solution: The lines between support builds and non-support builds should be clearer, for example a nerf targeted at "Healing Turret" might include removing the personal heal on it (reducing it's self healing by 50%) or making the second part of the healing self-exclusive, now I am not saying "Healing Turret" in particular does or doesn't needs nerfing, it is just a good example of that kind of skill.Main Offender(s): Scourge, Firebrand, Guardian, Herald, Renegade, Scrapper

This whole point revolves around using the healing turret as an example, which is a core engie skill (both skill and all associated traits) and probably becomes the strongest on the holo due to its blasts.

Yet the scrapper spec is singled out as the main offender.

Whats the reasoning behind that? Just wondering.

good thread.

imo,

some servers are stacked and need forced destacking regularly. and we need some form of tournament where guilds can shine, even just the small ones.