Is there too much CC/ Stunbreak/ Stability in game?

As the title says. I'm curious about your opinions. With HoT and PoF all classes got access to lots and lots of CC, harder and softer. In time, game started to evolve around those mechanics and a lot of skills got their Stability count upped, etc.

I personally think that there's too much of this stuff along with damage, sustain and damage mitigation. A lot of PvP encounters are about landing that final stun and bursting your opponent when it's out of Stunbreaks, Stability or Evades. And while I think CC/Stunbreak mechanic is a very smart gameplay, there's just too much of it and to me CC lost its high impact.

Depends. This game has gotten a lot faster from its original design, and has also powercrept in ways that weren't originally intended.

So yeah, CC has increased, as have stunbreaks/stability in response. I don't think it's unreasonably balanced one way or the other though.

However, when you add systems (and counterplay to them), you need to make sure they scale well with the powercreep -- the condition damage system is a perfect example of where this went wrong. Condi cleansing is not equivalent to condi application, and vice versa.

@Vagrant.7206 said:Depends. This game has gotten a lot faster from its original design, and has also powercrept in ways that weren't originally intended.

So yeah, CC has increased, as have stunbreaks/stability in response. I don't think it's unreasonably balanced one way or the other though.

However, when you add systems (and counterplay to them), you need to make sure they scale well with the powercreep -- the condition damage system is a perfect example of where this went wrong. Condi cleansing is not equivalent to condi application, and vice versa.

True, this is a good point.

Condi however is a very weird thing in GW2. In my opinion, it should've stayed as it was back in 2012. Condis used to be a debuffs to the skills and potentially could be built around but nowhere close to what we have now. Now, we have builds that solely rely on Condi application and that's where it went very bad.Great example is pre and post-rework Revenant's Mallyx. It wasn't about condi application at all, rather condition management.

Do you think that, excepting toning everything down, there's a solution to all of this?

It might just be evades/block/aegis now tbh

There's too much of everything.

At this point I'm waiting for ANet to do the lazy fix, add 1k to everyone's base health. I'll leave at that point as the game keeps chugging down the power creep tracks to the point where even a lobotomised monkey mashing buttons on it's keyboard can be a threat going "WOOOO" when it gets a kill....

Meant to hit "other" on the vote.

At times I think there's too much crowd control and other times I think there's too little. I would be fine with the amount of CC that is floating around now if there was a big enough health pool already implemented. The thing is though, like Apharma stated, base health pool increases this late in the game would be a bad move. On top of that, any alter to CC, CC break, or Stability would really throw this game into a more downward spiral than before. My thoughts? Address damage output before dealing with anything correlating to CC. Someone running around with 17,000 health points should not be sideswiped by someone from stealth within two seconds. It's absurd and promotes unhealthy gameplay.

...in addition to boonspam, power- and defense creep.

I feel like its more some class's have the best tools of each (Warrior, Ele, Guardian) and others don't. I mean Thieves have stealth, lots of cc if in DD or perma stealth in DE and many other classes lack alot of it. I mean when you have a warrior ccing you, then turning around bursting and going invulnerable only to leap out of invulnerability and into a blocking stance? Only to rip into another guy without missing a step it sounds kind of broken, Especially when its not based on skill at all and has no High ceiling needing to be reached to gain this level of power. Its just click the buttons as they come off cooldown, roll face on keyboard? But then the game is not based around pvp and everything they do seems to be catered too the pve crowd as its primarily a pve game. When they lost the ability for E-sports they said screw it, lets just go wild and so as you see they have.

Coming from several other games where there is way too much CC, i feel like GW2 CC is in a good sweet spot. I never play GW2 with coms or coordinated teams though, so my opinion is just for soloQ.

Yes with a caveat.It's not that CC and anti-CC are too prevalent - it's that powerful abilities get overloaded with them. Originally abilities had CC or high damage (or an easily avoidable tell). Now you get damage and CC together which isn't realistically avoidable due to stealth or quickness. You used to have to choose between more CC or anti-CC and more damage. Now you take one ability and get both.

@Exedore.6320 said:Yes with a caveat.It's not that CC and anti-CC are too prevalent - it's that powerful abilities get overloaded with them. Originally abilities had CC or high damage (or an easily avoidable tell). Now you get damage and CC together which isn't realistically avoidable due to stealth or quickness. You used to have to choose between more CC or anti-CC and more damage. Now you take one ability and get both.

I see what you're saying. Surely, this is also the case - single skills doing too many things at one click. The fix would be spreading the usage of single skills on other, less used. This way all would have something youw might need.I feel like there's no trade-off for building solely damage. You also get a packet of unstoppable damage, CC and mobility. So having 17 HP means nothing. Imagine building Berserker's Amulet at this point.

@DonArkanio.6419 said:

I see what you're saying. Surely, this is also the case - single skills doing too many things at one click.

Cough Binding Shadow cough cough

i dont feel there is too much CC, but i feel there is too much soft CC, like daze and interruptions wich can be spammed and do much more than a single heavy 3 second CC wich can be stunbreaked.

@DonArkanio.6419 said:As the title says. I'm curious about your opinions. With HoT and PoF all classes got access to lots and lots of CC, harder and softer. In time, game started to evolve around those mechanics and a lot of skills got their Stability count upped, etc.

I personally think that there's too much of this stuff along with damage, sustain and damage mitigation. A lot of PvP encounters are about landing that final stun and bursting your opponent when it's out of Stunbreaks, Stability or Evades. And while I think CC/Stunbreak mechanic is a very smart gameplay, there's just too much of it and to me CC lost its high impact.

In some ways, yes. Others, no. Overall, no.

Hard CC like 2s stuns are generally a death sentence in PVP if not broken. A war can kill every dps with toss->leap->hundred blade combo.Mesmers and their daze spam is most certainly broken without ready access to stab.Holosmith have a bunch of easy to access CCs built into their kit and can easily get a bunch more via utilities. Most of them are quite significant (forge 5, ram, rifle 4, thump) on a class that has top teir level dps.

On the other side:Necro's fear has FIVE traits devoted to it and is barely used. Not only does the class have a very limited access to it (Staff 5, reaper shroud 3, scourge f5, ring), but the quantity of stab makes the few it does have kind of meaningless.

Thief has a bunch of effects on interrupt that are significantly less useful because of the quantity of stab being thrown around.

Hammer guard was largely built around the idea of heavy CC at the expensive of dps and reasonable cast times. RIP guard.

I don't think is solvable without multiple class reworks however. In the current system, you NEED stab and stun breaks to be viable. Imo, you have to drop the damage numbers before you can look at making CC more relevant.

@Zephoid.4263 said:

@DonArkanio.6419 said:As the title says. I'm curious about your opinions. With HoT and PoF all classes got access to lots and lots of CC, harder and softer. In time, game started to evolve around those mechanics and a lot of skills got their Stability count upped, etc.

I personally think that there's too much of this stuff along with damage, sustain and damage mitigation. A lot of PvP encounters are about landing that final stun and bursting your opponent when it's out of Stunbreaks, Stability or Evades. And while I think CC/Stunbreak mechanic is a very smart gameplay, there's just too much of it and to me CC lost its high impact.

Well, true. There's a lot of CC mitigation which makes CC very underwhelming in some situations. As someone earlier said - having high access to CC should be a trade-off for the DPS. So, having many stuns/CC in your build shouldn't allow for such a high damage output. All of it needs works, it's not just CC but many more. I just want to see/ show people's opinions about this particular issue.

I believe they should abandon the "anyone can be anything" model and force roles.... Currently with 9 classes, and 3 specializations (basic, hot and pof) (9x3 = 27), anything you enter for all classes will seem too much in any team based game mode.

If on one side there are things that "exist too much", on the other hand, there are dozens of over-nerfed mechanics reduced to mere niche like the fear condi.

@"ugrakarma.9416" said:I believe they should abandon the "anyone can be anything" model and force roles.... Currently with 9 classes, and 3 specializations (basic, hot and pof) (9x3 = 27), anything you enter for all classes will seem too much in any team based game mode.

Forcing a trinity would be the best approach IMO. At the moment anyone has access to everything and classes lose their identity because of that. GW2 already lets people play whatever race and class they want, without any bonus stats. But the class mechanic itself should stay pure.Let's give stealth as an example. This mechanic was exclusive to 3/ 8 classes in game, now there are 4 / 9 classes that don't have this mechanic. This "anyone can do anything" happened because of E-Specs. We might argue that they provide diversity to the class - but is that worth it in the end? Is it healthy for the game? - not really.

I'd say that ANet should redesign or rethink Specialization system. It's flexible, it's versatile, it's great in PvE for the build-crafting it provides. But the advantages it has in PvE is really unhealthy for PvP, and now it comes out.

They don't need to force a trinity, they need to force you to give up something for what you get with the elite specs.

Elite specs give:Usually new mechanics.A full set of heal, utilities and elite.A new weapon.Full access to combining with core lines.Are generally stronger than an equivalent core line/skills.

@DonArkanio.6419 said:

@"Vagrant.7206" said:Depends. This game has gotten a lot faster from its original design, and has also powercrept in ways that weren't originally intended.

So yeah, CC has increased, as have stunbreaks/stability in response. I don't think it's unreasonably balanced one way or the other though.

However, when you add systems (and counterplay to them), you need to make sure they scale well with the powercreep -- the condition damage system is a perfect example of where this went wrong. Condi cleansing is not equivalent to condi application, and vice versa.

Conditions in GW2 have never been anything other than just raw, untyped damage; completely identical to "zerker" damage. Cripple was the only true "utility debuff," and it was thrown (and has continued to be arbitrarily integrated) into random skills without any true afterthought despite the fact that, perma-cripple without any investment was considered "elite tier" by this game's predecessor (i.e. Crippling Shot).

"Oh, but Poison is a utility condition!"I hear them say. Here's the reality for that adorable, little debuff: Poison is a direct upgrade to the final iteration effect of a GW1 elite skill called Lingering Curse. Lingering Curse was strong in certain pressure builds and sometimes made it onto particular, balanced-composition teams, but there were still plenty of other very viable spell options outside of this one. To that effect, GW1 Lingering Curse was definitely a "utility" option: the player forewent other options in order to take this because of a build or team composition; it operated under a high opportunity cost paradigm.

Fast forward 250 years, and now half of the core classes vomit Lingering Curse onto anyone without batting an eye, and technically anyone can inflict it thanks to passive sigils; the opportunity cost associated with an ability's "utility" has been removed. Moreover, if poison were fundamentally so "utilitarian," then why does it only take 1 single stack in order to force the -33% healing debuff? If you only need 1 stack, and a single stack is incredibly easy to apply (this is before or after the condi stack patch), then is poison really about the "utility" or just the damage? This question is even more relevant now that poison stacks in intensity like bleeding. Did we get a stacking poison which debuffed healing totals based on a number of active stacks (up to a certain cap)? No? THEN I GUESS IT'S JUST A BASIC BOI DoT AND THE "UTILITY" ISN'T REALLY A DEFINING FACTOR AFTER ALL.

People who believe that GW2 conditions are anything other than a very poorly done obfuscation simply do not understand what makes this game's PvP paradigm so insufferable (and tangentially, why the PvE content can quickly go stale): everything in this game is just damage. There are no utility classes; everything just is a DPS. Even healers do DPS in this game, and the only reason that it's low in PvE is because healing is a whack-a-mole job with a lot of downtime. PvP healers can deal absolute metric tons of damage if someone stands nearby them. One would never play something like Team Fortress 2, and suddenly lose half of their HP because an nearby enemy medic was just healing an afk ally; yet FB more or less accomplishes this with its basic tome rotation. Druid has always been just a generic DPS with a free healer rotation strapped into its regular damage skills; no investment required. Even the straight-up, no-frills, "I'm going to slay people" DPS PvP builds (duelists, roamers, buzzword, buzzword, same thing, etc) often regenerate health passively (either by effectively healing with attack skills or by just freely gaining HP over time) while they negate incoming damage with regular rotation skills, thereby functioning as their own healers.

tl;drEveryone deals damage, negates incoming effects and heals themselves. Guild Wars 2 could have just had 1 class, and it would have accomplished the same meta as the one which it currently features. The only outstanding exception within this thick mire of homogeneity was boon/alacrity chrono, and that was basically removed because the GW2 playerbase and its developers dislike real class roles in a roleplaying MMO. If you ever want to change this, cull boon types, cull condition types, cull damage skills and restore "utility" to the forefront of build-creation: something team-centric; a class of abilities which a player must sacrifice either damage or other "utility" options in order to obtain.

@DonArkanio.6419 said:

@"ugrakarma.9416" said:I believe they should abandon the "anyone can be anything" model and force roles.... Currently with 9 classes, and 3 specializations (basic, hot and pof) (9x3 = 27), anything you enter for all classes will seem too much in any team based game mode.

And remembering that this is one of the games where it is cheapest to keep multiple toons with a wide range of account bound stuff. For those who only make pvp, it is even easier, they dont even need worry about sharing armor and weapons. so it makes no sense to take everything in a single class. those who likes plays multiples role, usually has 10+ characters in the account.