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Why increasing cooldowns does not reduce spam, and can even make spam worse.


Master Ketsu.4569

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Warning: This thread became slightly TL;DR. So for people who just want to skim read without going into the evidence or details I have broken it into three parts with a Tl;DR section in bold.

Before I even get into this thread I should add a disclaimer: Most of the patch is actually fine. Anet actually has taken a pretty big step in toning down some of the toxic gameplay that currently exists in the game. Reducing abilities that let you attack+defend at the same time. Reduction of stability spam. Reduction of burst damage. Toning down a lot of the silly condi passives. Overall this isn't bad. This thread is meant entirely for constructive criticism for a patch that for the most part seems to be a geniune attempt to make the game better.

However...

There is one flaw. A very big one, that could seriously harm this games direction due to the fact that it is based on a claim that is demonstrably false.

@"Cal Cohen.2358" said:

Cooldowns and Durations

We want cooldowns to be felt. Longer cooldowns promote more calculated usage of skills; if skills are used poorly it should create an opportunity for the enemy to push their advantage. Shorter durations of high impact buffs have a similar effect. Skillful timing is going to be rewarded, and poor usage is going to be exploitable by enemies. In some cases, it’s still going to make sense to have a longer duration attached to a longer cooldown, but most of the time we’re looking at shorter durations for things like stability, protection, quickness, high might stacks, among others.

The part in bold for that quote is incorrect, and dangerously so. The rest of it is actually true, just not the part about cooldowns. Increasing cooldowns does very little to reduce "spammy" gameplay. Nor does it promote more calculated skill usage in any meaningful way. This is not just my own opinion, but a truth that has been proven in the history of PvP gaming. In fact under some circumstances, increases to cooldowns can even increase spam and reduce the skill of the game. To understand why, well...get ready for a long one.

PART I: Street Fighter II, and why button mashing in well designed competitive games doesn't work.

One of the most competitive and highly skilled PvP games in existence, Street Fighter 2, has no cooldowns. So why does buttonmashing in this game not work? How can "calculated skill usage" exist in a game with no CDs at all?

The simplified explanation of that video, is that button mashing doesn't work in well made fighting games because they are balanced around attacks having different recovery time, speed, and power levels. If you randomly mash some special move against a decent player, you will likely miss and "whiff" giving that player a chance to punish the button mashing with a faster attack such as a jab in order to counterattack with their own combo. This way the game can have no cooldowns, but still be highly skill based.

Now for some hypothetical reasoning, lets mix things up in Street Fighter. Lets add a new character, called "Monkey man"

![](https://i.imgur.com/7NBqply.png "")Here comes a new Challenger!

Monkey man has a normal set of punches, jabs, kicks, but only has one special move: "Super Monkey Blast"

Super Monkey Blast has the following characteristics:

  1. Monkey Man screams "OOoOk oOOOk Ahh EEEEee! EEEE! EEEEE!" while using
  2. Has zero windup time
  3. Moves Monkey Man from one end of the screen to the other ( similar to Bisons P.Crusher )
  4. Is lighting fast ( less than 100ms for the whole move )
  5. Hits both high and low
  6. Has infinite super frames ( cannot be interrupted )
  7. Immune to damage while using
  8. Deals moderate damage
  9. Deals 50% block damage
  10. Has instant recovery time
  11. Is the highest priority move in the game

Think about those aspects of the Super Monkey Blast along with how fighting games are played, and you will start to notice the problem: Super Monkey Blast has no real counter, and is a defensive+offensive move at the same time that also gets you out of being corner locked. Your opponent still takes some damage if they block it, can't jump over it, can't punish it with a jab to interrupt it, and basically can't do jack to stop you. It is a jab, it is a powerful move, it has no recovery time and thus can't be punished if it whiffs. You can't counter it. You can't block it. You can't stop it from being immediately being used again. It effectively breaks the game. What all this means is that the best strategy to use when playing Monkey Man is to just spam Super Monkey Blast over and over and over.

Now lets "nerf" Monkey Man to have a cooldown on a generic special move... a 10 second cooldown. The resulting new Monkey Man playstyle is changed from using Super Monkey Blast at all times, to playing defensively for 10 seconds and then use Super Monkey Blast. Notice the problem here? Putting a Cooldown on Super Monkey Blast doesn't actually change the fact that the most efficient tactic available when playing Monkey Man is to use Super Monkey Blast. It doesn't fix the problem that the move is ridiculously overloaded. The cooldown does put Monkey Man slightly lower on the tier list, but it's more of a band-aid fix. SFII didn't even need cooldowns until we added Monkey Man to the roster. The game was perfectly fine because the abilities are all designed to have counterplay. It only needed a "cooldown increase" when an ability was added to the game that has absolutely no viable counter strategy whatsoever. If you tried to spam a move using any regular character against a skilled player, you will lose because they will just use jabs to interrupt you. Super Monkey Blast is exempt from this, and that's the real problem. The only thing increasing the cooldown for Super Monkey Blast REALLY does is eventually make Monkey Man unplayable. A better fix would be to remove the abilities defensive properties - No more damage immunity, add a recovery time, no more super frames, increase windup - so that it can actually be interrupted.

TL;DR Conclusion: Spam and lack of calculated skill usage is not caused by low cooldowns, but by abilities that are difficult to punish. Increasing the cooldown on a badly designed ability that does too many things does not fix the problem that it does too many things and is badly designed. An ability that is broken to the point where it is always worth using every 10 seconds will still be always worth using every 20s, 30s, and so on. Well designed abilities that have counterplay in mind can have no cooldown whatsoever and not be spammable because using them poorly can result in those skills being punished. The problem isn't cooldowns, the problem is when a move does everything at once and thus ends up with no strategy or skill behind it.

Part II: Translating Fighting game logic to MMORPG PvP - Guest starring Tera Rising.

A big reason I am making this thread is because I have seen what happens when you put overblown skills on high cooldowns. A lot of people don't realize that another MMO out there - Tera - has a very similar combat system to GW2. The only difference is Tera perpetually locks players to an action camera, however the skill use and soft-body style of physics the game uses makes for a good comparison.

Tera used to be a good game. Tera is now a rubbish game that I do not reccomend anyone download or try, lest you wish to waste your time on a dead MMO that is a hollow shell of its former self. How did this happen? Simple, they added a ton of broken abilities to the game that have high cooldowns. They added things like the brawler, which has a move that attacks everyone within a range of about 900 while blocking at the same time that also staggers everyone and then finally CCs them into a knockup that then is followed up by an air combo chain for tons of damage. It's a block, it's an interrupt, it does high damage, it's a CC chain, etc. With these new classes and apex skills, a lot of high CD abilities were added to the game that would Block+Attack+Evade+CC+Close gaps+Stagger+Area of effect+Wipe your arse for you+Unblockable... Gee, there is a pattern to this problem that is starting to sound familiar!

Yet, this is only half the story. Tera and GW2 are not fighting games, they are MMOs with action combat. The big key difference is you are in a 3D space with a team of players that are all helping each other. When these busted moves where added to Tera, it created an additional problem:

Since players were more dependent on strong long CD skills, the result is that as soon as another player came to help burst down a single target there was a much greater chance that target was out of CDs, allowing the +1 to happen much faster. The strategy of Tera thus became to stick together while brainlessly spamming area-of-effect abilities while zerging down single targets. This made the game boring, ridiculously lowered the skill cap, and ultimately killed the PvP of the game. Back when I played, you could Queue for PvP in Tera during off hours and it would pop in 10 minutes or so. Now, you can queue for a match during PRIME TIME hours and it could take HOURS.

This Zerg-meta can also happen with increasing CDs to defensive moves. In the above video we see a Berserker. Berserkers have a block that has no cooldown, but animation locks the player and only blocks what is in front. The match I posted is between Blacklist and Good-Fight, both teams know what they are doing. You will notice they change targets and swap strategies a lot, even if you have never played Tera.

Now lets say we slap a 10 second CD on the Berserkers block. What happens? Simple, without a way to punish people for focusing her by playing defensively, the best strategy becomes to just gang up and spam skills on the Berserker. Interrupts and jabs are not the only thing that punishes spammy gameplay, but defensive moves can also punish spam. ( PURELY defensive moves, not attack+defend+scream like a monkey+CC at same time nonsense ) Being able to play defensively for at least a little while is a good way to punish people for zerging and spamming. Take that away, and you have a "+1 meta", where it becomes way too easy to kill someone by simply overloading them with more than one player.

TL;DR Conclusion: having broken abilities on long cooldowns just leads to a "zerg meta", where it becomes insanely easy to kill someone by simply +1ing them since their best move is more likely to be on cooldown. In addition, slapping a long cooldown on abilities that are meant to punish the spam of other abilities will result in an adverse effect and increase the spam of the game.

Part III: Suggested changes to the patch

As I stated at the beginning of this thread, a lot of the patch is actually pretty decent. Removing damage from CCs, toning down invulnerability, lowering burst damage in general, reworking of some of the more overloaded skills, reducing the effectiveness of silly condi passives, reducing instant-cast skills, and then reducing sustain to ensure we don't get locked into a "bunker meta". All of those are good changes for the game that 100% should go through.

However, the problem comes with a long list of cooldown increases to most utility skills and weapon slot defenses. This change will, for reasons stated above, completely fail to achieve the stated goal of reducing spam and adding counterplay. Some of these changes actually risks causing the same braindead "Zerg meta" that killed Tera PvP. So I would actually revert most of them.

In addition to re-evaluation of the random cooldown increases, Some specific improvements as well as certain CDs come to mind:

  1. Elementalist-The CD increase on twist of fate especially is way overzealous. The problem with ToF is that it gained stability ( which is being removed ) and way too high sustain of Weaver in general ( which is also being toned down ). While some of the weapon slot evades could use a CD increase so weavers can't 90% evade uptime, hitting ToF this hard will just make it stupidly easy for a roamer to instantly +1 and down any Weaver build, thus making the spec unviable.

  2. Necromancer-Necromancers absolutely do not need a nerf to their movement abilities. Catching a Necro is already easy enough as it is.

  3. Mesmer-Mirage would be better off with a total rework than just slapping it with -50 endurance. This is very much tied to the problem I outlined above with slapping cooldowns on "Super Monkey Blast". Eventually, it just makes the class unplayable. I suspect that this final nerf will probably be the nail in the coffin, dooming Mirage to forever be remembered as a badly designed spec that got nerfed to oblivion. A rework of course takes more effort than removing a dodge, but could be better for the class as a whole. Something to consider for the future maybe.

  4. Thief-"Just increase the cost" is a very similar problem to "just increase the cooldown". It would be better to tone down some overperforming do-everything skills than to just add more initiative.-For instance, Staff thief will still have the best strategy being "Use mostly Staff 5" because staff 5 is both a long evade and high burst damage. A better fix would be to more significantly reduce the base damage on staff 5, and then increase the base damage of other staff skills such as staff 2. This would make thieves have to choose more between attacking or evading. Same logic applies to S/P, S/D, and DD. Increasing init costs just slows the class down, and fixes little.-Thieves will still be able to permastealth.

  5. Engineer-You actually missed quite a few instant casts here. Things like Surprise shot or Incendiary Ammo can add a lot of difficult-to-avoid damage.-Prime light beam is being overnerfed. In fact, all elite CCs sort of are. This is almost worth its own thread.

  6. Ranger-Greatsword 4 is one of the defensive moves that actually should get a CD increase due to currently being hilariously lower than every other block in the game. But a better change may be to nerf the CD to 20, and just reduce the duration to 1.5s instead. It's a counter attack, does it really need to be 3s long?

  7. RevenantSimilar problem to thief "Just increase the cost" is not a good way to nerf skills, especially since Revenants energy system is already quite self-punishing to mistakes.-Riposting shadows to 40 energy is a huge overnerf. 40 energy will leave you with 10 energy after a swap, which renders a stunbreak near pointless since the Rev still won't be able to do much. A better nerf would be to remove fury entirely ( This DEFENSIVE MOVE has no business granting an OFFENSIVE buff ) and remove the endurance gain entirely, replacing it with 6s of vigor. This would require the Rev to think more ahead of time for endurance regen/dodges by changing the endurance gain to a timegate from vigor instead of instant. 40 energy is just a bad idea.-The windup on staff 5 makes it unviable as an interrupt which is bad for the class as a whole as it will make rev the only class in the game without a quick way to punish skill spam with disruption. It's also unnecessary since the damage is already being gutted with every other CC skill.

  8. Warrior-Nerfs to sustain are needed to prevent the nerfs to damage resulting in Bunker-Meta, but Might Makes right is being overnerfed when you consider the fact that might generation is also heavily nerfed.-Absolutely no to the endure pain nerf/buff. We don't need longer duration OP skills on longer CDs. This is exactly the nonsense that this thread is talking about.

  9. Guardian-So one thing that is just as dangerous for spam as a skill that does too many things, is the ability to have a crap ton of skills that do too many things that can be cast very quickly. This is the main issue with Symbolbrand. Increasing CDs to symbolbrand will not change the fact that the best strategy is to stand on point and buttonmash symbols/mantras/tomes all over the place.-Similar to Necromancer, Guardian does not need nerfs to its movement skills it is already very easy to catch a Guardian.

TL;DR Conclusion: The patch is nice and all, but hopefully it will be getting another pass before being released. It needs a lot of work and randomly increasing cooldowns/energy costs of skills in its current iteration seriously risks causing an effect on the meta that is precisely the opposite of its intended effect. Rather than all-around nerfing CDs, it would be better to take another balance pass at skill that A] Do too many things, and B] are instant cast / low counterplay.

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Yup, all they are doing is slowing the game down.

Actual problems aren't being solved, they are just smashing things left and right in hopes that a new meta will appear.

Then proceed to smash that instead.

It has become increasingly clear that the current balance team isn't even interested about "balance"They just wanna throw as many wild changes and hope that something rises out of it, then repeat the process over and over to keep the game "fresh"

What they don't seem to see, is that they aren't putting things into the game as much as they are nerfing and removing.

It's literally gonna end up as a turn based game at this rate, because people will eye each other and drop all their cooldowns the moment an opening shows, then go back to circling each other.

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Guys if you would read what they wrote, you could see it isn't "the final super balance patch" it's a tune down of everything to get a baseline, from where you can balance.

But I get what you saying with the thread and it makes sense and maybe the devs listen to you, even when I do not agree with all of that

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Monkey man elite spec for next xpac :o

I agree with you and @Yasai.3549 though. It's really just slowing down the same thing.Being slow paced != more new user-friendly like they think it does. More slow paced = more boring.

I'll still give it a chance, but if it actually turns out this way, then I hope we have a backup of what's less boring by comparison to go back to. This is why I think a PTR would be amazing for this game.

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@Multicolorhipster.9751 said:Monkey man elite spec for next xpac :o

I agree with you and @Yasai.3549 though. It's really just slowing down the same thing.Being slow paced != more new user-friendly like they think it does. More slow paced = more boring.

I'll still give it a chance, but if it actually turns out this way, then I hope we have a backup of what's less boring by comparison to go back to. This is why I think a PTR would be amazing for this game.

A PTR would be ideal for getting these changes to a place for long term balancing and then a huge release after the fact. However that isn't the reality we've got here, they apparently aren't able to actually even do a Test Server so this is the route that needs to be traveled for actual change to happen.

Keep that in mind. This isn't the final product, and even when it releases it still is not done. That is very important to remember.

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You are probably right about the cooldown thing execept I don't think they really increased cooldowns all that much actually, with a few exceptions (certain stunbreak skills). To continue the comparision to street figther, how would that game be if characters had stunbreaks/combo.escapes every 15-30 seconds? In some cases they decreased the cooldown and nerfed the skill, such as gravity well, thereby following your philosophy.

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Did you even play the core game?Let me give you 2 examples:

  • Arcane Shield had a 75 sec cooldown
  • Battle Standard had a 240 sec cooldown

Nothing this patch touches comes even close to those cooldowns, with the exception of auto-proc skills which all have been out of meta at some point.

Was the game balanced and the combat good back then? Yeah it was alot better than it is today. We already have the proof that increasing cooldowns won't wreck balance, in fact coupled with the damage reduction all it does is bring us closer to the pre-expansion pack balance paradigm - but we get to keep bloated skills and elite spech advantages for those who are into that.

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Increasing cooldowns reduces the spam though. Wasting your cooldowns is only possible if misusing them actually has consequences. Waste an offensive cooldown? You should fail your burst. Waste a defensive one? You should be forced to flee or be defeated. The faster your skills recharge, the less meaning wasting cooldowns have.

By design the only thing you should be able to "spam" is your autoattack. If you can chain nonstop dodge+vault on staff thief, or mirage cloack attacks with your clones etc., that is something thats somehow needs fixing. Same with over the top area denial condition pressure on scourge, or how almost every F3 tome skill used to apply aegis on FB: you are not supposed to be able to do the same thing over and over and over again, unless it's your autoattack.

Spam is not necessarily caused by low cooldowns, however casuals(the overwhelming majority of players of this game) will spam if the design allows them to. Pair that with how PoF release FB/Scourge/Mirage/Holo spam was as effective as the top tier players calculated skill usage, something had to be done. Even after toning most of the utterly broken stuff down, the powerlevel is still too high. Just spamming fast can still be way too effective. So the general powerlevel of players is getting toned down.That's why I don't see the parable with Tera(never played it, I can only go with your description of it). Everything is getting weaker, we're not getting ultra high cooldown+insanely strong/loaded abilites.

Your fear would be reasonable if the higher cooldowns came with amplified effects. They don't. Whether people will stop spamming or not, the gap between a buttonsmasher and veteran with calculated gameplay can be much wider now.

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@"KryTiKaL.3125" said:A PTR would be ideal for getting these changes to a place for long term balancing and then a huge release after the fact. However that isn't the reality we've got here, they apparently aren't able to actually even do a Test Server so this is the route that needs to be traveled for actual change to happen.

Keep that in mind. This isn't the final product, and even when it releases it still is not done. That is very important to remember.

I think they're definitely capable. Before PoF came out(Which i'd say is the last super major shakeup balance-wise) they gave us a beta test exclusive for PvP modes.

And I get that's different because that was a preview to a new xpac, but if we had something like that to test balance updates across all modes we wouldn't get 2-3 month(or longer) periods of total misery where decidedly "over/underpowered" things don't get changes, and a lot of bugs like infinite warrior banners would get spotted and ironed out before they reach the live game servers.

I'll still give it a try, like I say. It's hard to be hyped for something when you didn't have all that many qualms; at least not enough to stop playing, and then suddenly it's being changed this drastically.In a way that is already assuredly broken on launch, and fixed later. I can't say i'm all that comforted by everyone saying: "Hey it's going to be broken at first, but it'l get better later." EA really likes that line too.

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@"Quadox.7834" said:You are probably right about the cooldown thing execept I don't think they really increased cooldowns all that much actually, with a few exceptions (certain stunbreak skills). To continue the comparision to street figther, how would that game be if characters had stunbreaks/combo.escapes every 15-30 seconds? In some cases they decreased the cooldown and nerfed the skill, such as gravity well, thereby following your philosophy.

That's why I'm not saying "cooldowns are bad" but that cooldowns aren't always correlated to good balance or promotion of non-buttonmashing gameplay. Rather, it's how the ability and the game that it's in works is what matters most. Deciding whether a skill is spammy or not is based on a far more complex model than "JuSt cHanGE tEh COoLDowNz AnD it WilL aLL bE FInE!"

For instance, say they leave Stability on stance gain on Weaver and reduce the count charge on twist of fate to 1 second. Well, of course that would be ridiculous because it would allow weaver to have perma evade+perma CC immunity with one skill. Such a thing would indeed increase the spam from Weaver, because it would have little to no risk involved for any skill usage. There would be very few ways to punish Weavers for making mistakes.

But on the flip side, say you nerfed the cooldown of every Warrior defensive skill to 10 minutes. The class would immediately become useless, because all you would have to do is pressure the Warrior until they ran out of their limited supply, and then you could just buttonmash whatever offense skill of your choice in their general direction until the warrior dies which wouldn't take long with 0 defenses. So in this case, increasing CDs increased the spam. There would be very few ways for Warriors to punish OTHER classes mistakes.

My point is more or less than counterplay and interaction is a much more complex issue. Globally increasing the CDs of random skills is basically a total crapshoot because when it comes down to it CDs have nothing to do with what the skill does while the skill is actually being activated. So CD increases may help. CD increases may do nothing. And CD increases can also make the problem worse.

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SF2 didnt have custom builds. No swapping out super monkey blast for the next aids skill. No conflicts with PvE design. Far less things to balance. No continuous balance either. Bad characters rarely die in those games because they were never alive to begin with and ofc nobody complains because nobody invests their time into playing a shit character. Not to mention, the fast paced reactionary gameplay styles of those games are highly dependent on very little delay or lag that isnt possible for a game like gw2. CRT TVs are common playing those games because the 10ms delay of modern panels are already deemed too much, let alone having 100ms network delay playing on the west coast.

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@Master Ketsu.4569 said:

@"Quadox.7834" said:You are probably right about the cooldown thing execept I don't think they really increased cooldowns all that much actually, with a few exceptions (certain stunbreak skills). To continue the comparision to street figther, how would that game be if characters had stunbreaks/combo.escapes every 15-30 seconds? In some cases they decreased the cooldown and nerfed the skill, such as gravity well, thereby following your philosophy.

That's why I'm not saying "cooldowns are bad" but that cooldowns aren't always correlated to good balance or promotion of non-buttonmashing gameplay. Rather, it's how the ability and the game that it's in works is what matters most. Deciding whether a skill is spammy or not is based on a far more complex model than "JuSt cHanGE tEh COoLDowNz AnD it WilL aLL bE FInE!"

For instance, say they leave Stability on stance gain on Weaver and reduce the count charge on twist of fate to 1 second. Well, of course that would be ridiculous because it would allow weaver to have perma evade+perma CC immunity with one skill. Such a thing would indeed increase the spam from Weaver, because it would have little to no risk involved for any skill usage. There would be very few ways to punish Weavers for making mistakes.

But on the flip side, say you nerfed the cooldown of every Warrior defensive skill to 10 minutes. The class would immediately become useless, because all you would have to do is pressure the Warrior until they ran out of their limited supply, and then you could just buttonmash whatever offense skill of your choice in their general direction until the warrior dies which wouldn't take long with 0 defenses. So in this case, increasing CDs increased the spam. There would be very few ways for Warriors to punish OTHER classes mistakes.

My point is more or less than counterplay and interaction is a much more complex issue. Globally increasing the CDs of random skills is basically a total crapshoot because when it comes down to it CDs have nothing to do with what the skill does while the skill is actually being activated. So CD increases may help. CD increases may do nothing. And CD increases can also make the problem worse.

Yes I can generally agree with that, but I don't think this patch really does increase cooldowns that much aside from stunbreaks. I.e. it's not that much of a problem (yet at least).

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Redesigning over-performing skills and traits is of course ideal, and im pretty sure the pvp devs know that, but they dont have that kind of control over the game. They have stated before that pvp specific changes need to be largely cd and coefficient based, and they cant redesign every skill they would like to. This is likely the best they can do with what they are given. Im guessing that the cd increase is supposed to make evenly matched fights end, instead of having 2 players duel it out for 5 minutes cycling through all their defensive abilities.

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All in all well put together thread but as already mentioned you cannot 100% compare between games. GW2 has an evade mechanic and therefore higher cds on skills with less counterplay and op effects (in dmg or cc) will still end up in making the class more punishable in between the usages of the overloaded skills make the braindead spammed/ wrong timed usage of the op skill more punishable for the player.

Staff Thief for example. It will be a big difference in how easy i can down a Thief using staff 5 that has higher cd/ ini costs only on cd without even looking to avoid my keyskills with it or landing the staff 5 dmg and therefore also not saving his other endurace for my big impact skills compared to a Thief using staff 5 more reactive to my actions. After he used Staff 5 when it has a longer time inbetween he can't use it means i have more time and opportunities to kill him before he even can use that skill again (or in case of Thief he can only spam it 2 times and than can do nothing else than autoattacks for a longer time). It clearly adds more skill cap to the staff Thief when he cannot just bait out all my defensive skills with staff 5 spam on low cd/ ini costs but needs to look to hit the dmg of the skill or to avoid something important from me to make the usage of the skill more rewarding. A higher cd/ ini cost to staff 5 adds also more counterplay, not to the skill itself but to the Thief build as a whole.That he also is dodging and for that not rly interruptable on a high dmg skill isn't even the big problem (not to mention that staff 5 compared to Bound has a little interrupt window. Bound is more of a problem actually, because it can't be punished at all and leads into a not interruptable way to often spammable stealth combo).Imaging how useless staff 5 would be with such a big animation and channeltime without the inherent dodge frame, even my grandma could interrupt each use while sleeping, turns the skill more into a self punishment for the Thief. In GW2 it makes sense to cover some big animations/ long cast times with invuln abilities (due to the overall amount of cc and the fast paced combat system) that doesn't make it op or low skill ceiling in general, only when it is additionally spammable on low cd and adds too many avoid potential or dmg potential to the class as a whole, then it becomes a problem (a Daredevil with already 3 dodges and a spammable dodge skill that also do dmg in additon? That is the problem, not the staff 5 design itself). In GW2 the balance art is to find an equilibrium between different combat mechanics (the overall amout of cc vs long cast times skills vs the need to cover some of these cast times with simultaneous defensive moves and all that without making any of it spammable). And this balance art got harder with adding elite specs with way more complex mechanics but also often in general higher skill ceiling/skill cap mechanics. And with the recent trade off wave they often destroy the equilibrium of elite specs more than adding skill cap to them.

Lets take Holo as example. Holo is all about getting additonal very powerful and well thought through skills (like a leap that is also a combo finisher with good synergy to the whole playstyle of Engi/ Holo for example). I like all Holoskills in terms of what they do and how fluid they feel to use. Now we need a trade off for that plus in power Holomode adds as the strongest and best kit Enig has access to, that doesn't even consume an utility slot.The creator of the Holospec was smart, he added a head mechanic that counters the more in power Holomode adds to Engi by a head penalty that adds skill ceiling. But you need to find a good equilibrium between the power and the penalty head. If you make the penalty droping too late or the penalty when coming is way too weak (so the player can just camp in Holomode forever without even thinking of the head effect or doesn't need to fear the too weak penalty at all) than Holo will be op as mechanic itself (not only a specific Holobuild that gets too strong because of the synergy with power creeped core traitlines) and all the skill ceiling that is supposed to be added by head penalty to Holo is in fact not there.On the other side when you make the head penalty dropping in too fast and then even with too high punishment then you make Holo too weak but even more important you make Holo too weak in a way that doesn't even add skill ceiling to the class, it even kills skill ceiling from Holo. A Holo that can only stay in Holomode for 2 seconds for example or head will dropping in and nearly kills him what will he do? Everytime he goes in Holomode he will just try to spam as much Holoskills as possible before he has to drop out again. Using Holoskills reactive and well timed will be impossible.

Though in case Anet would think Holo as mechanic is too strong compared to core Engi and for that needs not only a normal nerfs (like dmg reduction on Holoskills, deleting double or triple rewards from overloaded skills, bit higher cds) but needs a trade off that cuts the mechanic itself, then Anet needs to be very very careful to not destroy the balance/ the equilibrium from Holomode based on Holopower vs Head penalty. Anet also should not trade off Holo in a way that deletes skills and combos that are meant to be there and add skill ceiling (like using combofinisher into waterfields for healing with the Hololeap is for certain a more skillful and more punishable way to heal than only pressing button 6. At least as long as you don't give Enig defenive skills on low cd to 100% cover the combo healing every time Holo needs to heal). Or would you like to see a Holo trade off that reduces the Holo kit to 3 skills instead 5, deleting the Hololeap and one other skill from the kit? Or would you like to see a Holo trade off that makes the Holokit consume an utilityslot and delete f5 for that (and i mean rly delete f5, so that Holo only has 4 f skills like Chrono, not the pseudo f5 replacement as pseudo second trade off)? Sure not! Holo is fine as it is, it was from start well designed with an inherent trade off that can be adjusted by finding a good equilibrium between Holopower and Headpenalty and that adds skill ceiling without limiting the active gameplay options of the player. As you see cds in GW2 are an primary part of punishing player skillspam but also of higher skill ceiling by not limiting active gameplay options with too high cds, cds are a needed part due to all other mechanics that are in the game and due to its fast paced combat. Anet needs to care for not making cds that high that the game slows down too much and that the player will be too limited in his skillful and active gameplay options and that the +1 style you destribed will not take over (again we have a problem of finding an equilibrium). All that is needed for accdeptable balance and skillful gameplay is to find a good equilibrium between cds and skill design. 100% balance is impossible in GW2 anyway, it is all about not getting too far away from equilibria.

Now lets look at other specs trade offs compared to Holo, Holo who luckily wasn't "over trade offed" by not needed second or triple trade offs. Soulbeast has an inherent trade off right from start, just like Holo. But instead nerfing op Soulbeast builds they here for whatever reasons think, that Soulbeast as mechanic itself needs a shave. Anet seems to think that Soulbeast mechanic is too strong by itself and per se. So they didn't just give stat penalty, or balance the skill ensemble of Soulbeasts by adjusting cds and skill rewards (like higher cds on merged f skills and pets passive skills). Here they plain deleted skills and active combos by deleting pet swap. Comparable to deleting f5 on Holo and make Holomode an utility kit like every other kit or comparable to deleting 2 skills from Holomode and make it a 3 skill kit. We don't want such a trade off for Holo and i also don't want such a trade off for Soulbeast. Luckily that trade off is at least not completely contrary to the Soulbeats mechanic and a lot of trait synergies stay the same. Soulbeast will not be unplayable. But still it is an unneeded limitation in acitve gameplay. Soulbeats got easier to play over that, not harder. Less op for certain, but on lower skill cap and floor. And the less op you could have done by simple adjustments to skill rewards and cds instead. Less op on still same skill cap and floor.

Now look at Mirage and it gets even more crazy. What they do to Mirage is comparable to making a too hard hitting and too fast dropping penalty from head mechanics on Holo and that kills the inherent trade off of harder dodge management by making offensive dodges (and for that skillful and timed used of ambush attacks) impossible. IH will become a pure passive dmg side effect no player can actively work with. And that also for builds where IH were an active mechanic until now. Instead making Condimirage less passive, they push it more into the "only dodge defensive and hope your clones do something during that" playstyle and even force Powerbuilds with active IH gameplay into that passive gameplay too. They delete skill ceiling by replacing a skilled inherent trade off with an overkill trade off. They destroy the inherent equilibrium Mirage had before. And they do that after nerfing Mirages access to dodges remarkable on other ways already ( that was kind of ok, they just adjusted the head penalty more to a better equilibrium without making active usage of IH impossible). Instead they could just finally nerf condi clones normal autoattacks (what is a core problem not a Mirage problem btw, that condi clones do way more dmg on their normal autoattcks then power clones) and they could nerf condi clone ambush skills directly (make scepter clone ambush only hitting one time to prevent high bleeding stacks from the bleed trait and give it less confusion stacks by also reduce visual clutter as a positive side effect) and not indirectly by nerfing traits that also affect condi dmg from weapon skills or shatters (means from active ways of condi application).

So what happens to Soulbeats and Mirage is an overpunishment on cds what limits active and skilled gameplay. Here you are right with all what you say. These kind of overnerf by highering cds or deleting skills (and for that deleting their cds) completely should be avoided, it destroys equilibria, it destroys skill ceiling. It might make stuff less op but also way less skilled if not unplayable. And it is not even needed because there are other ways of making Soulbeast and Mirage less op and Mirage less passive without killing skill ceiling and active gameplay options.

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@Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

@"KryTiKaL.3125" said:A PTR would be ideal for getting these changes to a place for long term balancing and then a huge release after the fact. However that isn't the reality we've got here, they apparently aren't able to actually even do a Test Server so this is the route that needs to be traveled for actual change to happen.

Keep that in mind. This isn't the final product, and even when it releases it
still
is not done. That is very important to remember.

I think they're definitely capable. Before PoF came out(Which i'd say is the last super major shakeup balance-wise) they gave us a beta test exclusive for PvP modes.

And I get that's different because that was a preview to a new xpac, but if we had something like that to test balance updates across all modes we wouldn't get 2-3 month(or longer) periods of total misery where decidedly "over/underpowered" things don't get changes, and a lot of bugs like infinite warrior banners would get spotted and ironed out before they reach the live game servers.

I'll still give it a try, like I say. It's hard to be hyped for something when you didn't have all that many qualms; at least not enough to stop playing, and then suddenly it's being changed this drastically.In a way that is already assuredly broken on launch, and fixed later. I can't say i'm all that comforted by everyone saying: "Hey it's going to be broken at first, but it'l get better later." EA really likes that line too.

An important thing to remember about the update as well is in the very first post Cal does mention that they intend to go with a speedier release cadence. They are aiming for changes, fixes and updates to come every 4 to 6 weeks as opposed to the 3 to 4 months that we are used to. As well as looking to maybe get some in even sooner than that depending on circumstances. If this actually does end up being the case then that could alleviate problems persisting for too long. A release cadence of 4 to 6 weeks might still seem like a long time for people but its about on par with where GW1 was with its balance change schedule.

I get the worry, I get the concerns, I'm skeptical and concerned over how well they will be able to stick with these plans across the board as well but I cannot genuinely make a call on that until we see it or don't see it.

As for the beta test weekends I have thought of that as well. That seems like the way that it might be done but supposedly thats not in the cards or they haven't considered it or they can't split it in such a way that it won't affect the game at large rather than be an isolated area. Who knows. I was told by a dev a while ago that there are tech constraints that keep them from doing it. So if thats the case then this is how it needs to be handled as unfortunate as it might be.

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@"Master Ketsu.4569"I think they are solving some problems and not others as effectively.Ideally things like global pass for most ccs to not do big damage is a good change in a lot of other games cc skills dont do tons of damage because of the fact that they disable another character allowing them to be hit with something else that does big damage.Lowering damage mods. to a standard in competitive modes is nice change using the 2.0 modifier and based the number on how many things a skill does in relation to just damage is a good change.

Gw2 got way out of hand with kill potential after HoT bunker meta and i hate that to be honest. I was all for more damage but then it just kept going and kept going and kept goin and going to the point that half the professions in the game have the option to one shot someone regardless of their build in roughly a second. Boons also got so far out of hand that profession elites like scourge were designed with boon corrupts on every single utility including the heal which was just disgusting.

An example of a good but over the top change was
In weavers case twist of fate did not need a cooldown increase, the trait that gave it and other stances stability just needed to be changed so that it left some wiggle room and didnt allow them to pressure super safely all the time to everything but necro with boon corrupts when using stances. Which was accomplished by the change to the trait and making it give barrier instead. Now a well timed cc can shut them down if they just brainlessly use twist of fate or any other stance. This is one example of many others i saw in the whole list that i thought was over done. There was no need for the cd increase on ToF cause the issue was technically fixed by trait design.

An example of also solving a problem could be seen asWarriors who did need "some" might nerfs (because every one got them i consider it a bit more fair) and a trait like Might makes Right also needed a "fair" shave so that one line was not providing offensive power and decent sustain. Something players in the past have judged other professions for having and deemed such things be nerfed (which they usually were). This also prevents 1 build from excelling in both aspects of offensive and defense well enough to competitively fight most matchups in the game. Now warriors ideally need more or less to go back to defense for more proper sustain which leads to a damage or utility loss or going for damage which wont allow them to have hyper sustain at the same time. The have to make an active choice

An example of not solving any problem was just over killAs you pointed out was the warrior endure pain change i dont even agree with this and im not sure who thought it would be good idea to put on a 300s cooldown with no other effects. It was ok to do something like this to an extent to a trait like "Last Stand" (which im still not sure needs a 300s cd) but at least it provides another effect that can be used with active stances throughout an entire match. But with Endure pain that was not the case and this cd change is over kill.

The notes are full of good changes that are on point and ideally do solve a lot of problems and full of questionable ones like "Why though?"

@Multicolorhipster.9751 said:

I agree with you and @Yasai.3549 though. It's really just slowing down the same thing.Being slow paced != more new user-friendly like they think it does. More slow paced = more boring.Dont agree with this several times i have i seen new people going into pvp not understanding whats going on because something kills them and blinks away in less than 3 seconds and there was no tell or they dont understand how their own boon spamming can be punished by something like necromancer because all they know is go go go attack attack attack because the game allows that to work in the majority of situations (depending on the profession)

To be clear i dont want the game to slow down to before HoT days but the game could stand to slow down a tid bit from where it is now without killing it. I thought gw2 was fast action back then after all compared to most other games i had played and i think if it slows down from where it is now it will still be faster than most of the other modern or on going mmos you could play today.

This is why I think a PTR would be amazing for this game.I do agree with this however a PTR would save them a lot of trouble possibly but this is a double edged sword. The feedback of the community could ruin 1 or 2 professions long term. Rev was kind of a back and forth victim of this back when we had Public test characters to try out the new elites. Its also how low key strong professions that are not understood in the short testing time frame get over buffed due to feedback then end up over-performing in the long term.

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@Master Ketsu.4569 said:TL;DR Conclusion: Spam and lack of calculated skill usage is not caused by low cooldowns, but by abilities that are difficult to punish. Increasing the cooldown on a badly designed ability that does too many things does not fix the problem that it does too many things and is badly designed. An ability that is broken to the point where it is always worth using every 10 seconds will still be always worth using every 20s, 30s, and so on. Well designed abilities that have counterplay in mind can have no cooldown whatsoever and not be spammable because using them poorly can result in those skills being punished. The problem isn't cooldowns, the problem is when a move does everything at once and thus ends up with no strategy or skill behind it.

This conclusion is wrong. SF2 and GW2 has many things in common in terms of cooldown. SF2 has cooldowns, you're just not noticing them.

Certain skills, like Guile's Sonic Boom, has a cooldown and in order to put the skill in cooldown, you have to remain in a defensive position and wait for the cooldown to finish before using the skill again. Using the skill prematurely will interrupt the cooldown and result on a fizzled skill, meaning, no Sonic Boom.

In skills like Ryu's fireball, there is a cooldown, yet subtle, but it's there. Once he throws the fireball, he is frozen in that position for certain amount of time preventing him from throwing an infinite number of, or spamming, fireballs in sequence -- a.k.a. skill cooldown.

The dragon punch also have a cooldown. Ever notice how high they jump depending on how strong the dragon punch is? That's a cooldown for the skill. They can't use another dragon punch until they touch the ground. The stronger the skill, the higher they get, and the longer they have to wait before using it again.

The only difference that SF2 has that GW2 doesn't have is risk. For instance, using the strong dragon punch, if you missed it will leave you highly vulnerable to counter attack -- it's a high risk skill. The high risk keeps that skill in check thus it's not used often unless it's a guaranteed hit. In GW2, using a strong skill typically doesn't pose a risk instead it opens a window of opportunity and often times, that window is too short. So, increasing the cooldown keeps that window open for a long time and gives opportunity for counter play. This is the only way to make a strong skill to have a high risk similar to SF2 in GW2.

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While i think a lot of people are afraid of it breaking the cadence with too many cooldown increases and that the fear is justified, i don't think this particular post highlights why, in fact it feels like not making much meaningful points at all, and most of the comparisons being made here are broken or simply misleading. Wording for facts, then going into opinioin with only vague ideas does not equal any reliable conclusion.

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