General views on 5 or 10 target limits of skills/boons

[RUNICBLACK.7630]

I've thinking about this since the last balance patch and I was curious what some of the other players views on this are.In a nut shell we have various skills and traits that allow some classes the ability to target 10 instead of the normal limit of 5 , the most of these are for boons where they are helping squad mates but some abilities allow for the targeting of 10 enemies.As it stands it is very uneven across the classes as who can and can't do this, for honesty on this I generally main a guardian and they recently lower the ability of "Stand Your Ground" back down to 5 from 10 , which while from a players point of view I wasn't thrilled with but honestly from overall game play I could see there point considering Stability's impact in WvW and Raids.

What I'm curious about are other players views on this.

[Dadnir.5038]

Initially in 2013 all AoE skills were nerfed to 3-5 targets to balance WvW. Raid in PvE led the developpers to reintroduce 10 targets skills.The solution is simple, drop 10 targets skill to 5 targets in WvW alone since it's there that it create issue and it's "needed" (albeit no really) for PvE.

[Infusion.7149]

I'm assuming you're talking about WvW mainly, since 10 targets is irrelevant in PVP and if you have 5 people on one spot for AoE boons or conditions it means people aren't rotating off point anyway. (Stand Your Ground is still 10 targets in PVE, so I'm not sure what your point about PvE raids is.) Revenant stability is accrued over time in Inspiring Reinforcement and has a huge indicator so it is not nearly as reliable. Other options such as Defense Field and Mantra of Concentration have a smaller range as well ; if you ran soulbeast with stanceshare Dolyak Stance is 360 radius but soulbeast is typically used offensively.

If you look at other boons, herald revenant basically spits out boons (regen,swiftness, fury, might , protection sometimes) non stop to 10 people when traited with Draconic Echo , which is why unless the boon interval is changed boon rips have much decreased effectiveness unless it's a coordinated well of corruption or Winds of Disenchantment bomb. Alacrity isn't as potent in WvW because the duration is long so the boon can be ripped easily ; renegade loses a hefty amount of crit chance on dodge so it's a huge tradeoff.

I don't feel aegis is a huge problem in WvW due to two reasons: for one it doesn't stack and it doesn't have as much of an impact after damage nerfs (i.e. a blocked attack is less saved healing and health).

Regen stacks duration so it really isn't amazingly overpowered. It is not much different than having virtue of resolve passive or Soothing Mist.

The might durations across the board in competitive modes have been cut down to around 6s for the most part so it isn't a huge problem. Sure, Empower before a push puts out quite a bit of might (12 stacks) but so does Heat Sync on tempest warhorn , "Feel the Burn!" on tempest , and "For Great Justice!" on warrior.

In summary, I think you have more issue with boon from condi hot potato on scrappers (because even after nerfs , Purity of Purpose flips torment and weakness to 5s of 3 stacks of might). Other than might, most of the boon durations from Purity of Purpose have been cut down heavily to 1.5-3s. It was especially heinous when used with Rune of Altruism or Antitoxin, but both of those have been hit in some fashion (Altruism has a 10s CD now so you can't cycle mortar kit).

The biggest problem with the scourge before they fixed it is that it was basically killing server performance by the sheer amount of conditions it puts out at range, whether through shades , wells, or staff marks. Because the server has to maintain the durations and stacks of conditions on every player (unlike power damage which is instantaneous) it is deterimental to the performance of the server. The scaling back of shades to 3 targets and then down to 2 have alleviated this substantially along with the 1s base torment duration and 15s cooldown up from 8s. I have a feeling boons aren't as detrimental because there are only stacks for might and stability ; stability isn't typically a long duration boon and neither is aegis , resistance , quickness, etc.

Burn guardian never did stack many conditions, so it wasn't an issue ; revenants running condi primarily stacked burn and torment : the chill duration is generally negligible. However, revenants had the same problem as scourges and scrappers in that they could flip conditions back and forth if running Permeating Pestilence.

With the firebrand mantra of Lore retaining 2 conditions removed in WvW while being on 12 cooldown, as well as tempest and scrapper condi clears in bulk : long duration conditions aren't nearly as much of a problem now. This in sharp contrast to earlier days before scourges and firebrands when a Purging Flames was considered an acceptable condi clear (on 35 cooldown ; it used to remove all at once but now is per tick). If conditions were by far the dominant form of damage then we'd see people running Nature's Bounty instead of monk runes ; hoelbrak instead of strength or the fighter ; melandru instead of durabilty.

As far as skills go, most large AoE power damage skills have huge tells or downsides such as Hunter's Ward's cast / recharge, Barrage's cast / recharge , meteor shower's cast/ recharge/animation/reduced damage as it hits , CoR (Coalesence of Ruin) animation /pathing. In addition, it's a fact that most DoT (damage over time) skills result in quite a bit of retal damage even after retal was scaled back a bit.

PvE stuff:

When guardian FMW (Feel My Wrath!) was changed in PVE I felt that the quickness mantra (mantra of Potence) should have been increased in quickness duration as a result. A guardian using a utility has to invest in it at the cost of other skills, unlike someone putting in the trait for quickness on heal with nearly no downside.

Because guardian and mesmer are the only two classes that provide quickness in any appreciable amount, they will always be relevant in some fashion unless quickness is nerfed very heavily. It's always beneficial to have quickness over another DPS when you factor in a 5 man party , since one FB/mesmer is 20% of the party. Having played chrono for the longest time before switching to firebrand for quickness , I have to say that the mantra of solace aegis is much more forgiving than distortion off signets. When chrono was dominant it wasn't healthy for the game however, as most chrono players were not that great (plus mesme ris not as popular a class) which is why LFG was populated with LF chrono for so many times.

If you look at alacrity, mesmer has a far rougher time than renegade revenant , so you can pretty much call it a revenant boon. I don't feel 10 man alacrity is nearly as potent as quickness, so it probably does not need any changes. Alacrity doesn't increase the number of skills you can use, it just reduces cooldowns.

Aegis is a very potent boon, and guardian more or less has the most aegis. However because aegis doesn't stack and it requires careful timing on the 2-4 second range unless you use mace I wouldn't say it is overpowered.

Might has more or less been the domain of druids in a 10 man environment, but guardians do provide appreciable might when running staff or scepter (especially while running mantra of potence). In addition , tempests can output a large amount of might as well. The amount of might from scourges is low unless they run Abrasive Grit along with Desert Empowerment.

Fury is applicable from firebrands, dragonhunters, tempests (Zephyr's Boon), and druids so there isn't a monopoly on it by any means. If power herald was meta it would also provide perma fury as well to up to 10 people via Draconic Echo.

Generally protection is from druids or renegades. Aegis is probably supposed to be the main guardian defensive boon , but firebrands do have reasonable protection output especially if running shield or hammer (much less common).

[RUNICBLACK.7630]

@Infusion.7149 said:I'm assuming you're talking about WvW mainly, since 10 targets is irrelevant in PVP and if you have 5 people on one spot for AoE boons or conditions it means people aren't rotating off point anyway. (Stand Your Ground is still 10 targets in PVE, so I'm not sure what your point about PvE raids is.)Just for clarity:I didn't so much have an issue personally but the overall complaint was leveled against it with regard to the Raids in that some players argued that it along with the availability of group Quickness made the Guardian's overall representation in a 10 person Raid groups to high and left to many other classes unwanted and unable to get into raids or at least that was the general argument with regard to Raids. Since they made the modification to Feel My Wrath I haven't read much from the raiding players complaining against Stand Your Ground so it was either Straw Man argument or they aren't feeling as passed over now that Quickness isn't as much of an issue.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

@"RUNICBLACK.7630" said:In a nut shell we have various skills and traits that allow some classes the ability to target 10 instead of the normal limit of 5 , the most of these are for boons where they are helping squad mates but some abilities allow for the targeting of 10 enemies.As it stands it is very uneven across the classes as who can and can't do this, for honesty on this I generally main a guardian and they recently lower the ability of "Stand Your Ground" back down to 5 from 10 , which while from a players point of view I wasn't thrilled with but honestly from overall game play I could see there point considering Stability's impact in WvW and Raids.

What I'm curious about are other players views on this.

Classes which gained the 10-target blessing are ANet's meta recommendation. They want to see a certain group composition, so they boosted those classes further than others. Other classes got fake-boosts like increasing the effect radius while still having the 5 target limit. That is not really helping.

Should boon-applications and heals be limited to 5 or 10 targets?10 or no limit. We are stuck with the stack-meta since launch because of this mess. GW2 group-play in a nutshell: stack! Outside of competitive, playing long-range weapons is a joke. No boons and no heals.

Should attacks and damaging conditions be limited to 5 or 10 targets?5 worked well. If they want a loot-stick mechanic, half damage per additional target hit:

• 5 targets hit = 100 % damage as in the tooltip
• 6 targets hit = 50 % damage per target
• 7 targets hit = 25 % damage per target
• 8 targets hit = 12.5 % damage per target
• 9 targets = 6.25 % damage per target
• 10 targets = 3.125 % damage per target

Farmers would pick the option, which enables 10 targets. Everyone else would stick to 5.

While we are at it. Cleaving attack = 5 targets, not 2 or 3.

[Taril.8619]

In WvW, AoE spam is an issue so there should be stricter target caps. 3-5 caps ideally.

For Instanced PvE, 5 or 10 the cap only determines how many of "X imba class that provides Y boon" you bring with you to a Raid. As such, 10 target caps allows more inclusivity as you only need 1 of "X imba class that provides Y boon" instead of 2, allowing that extra spot to be taken by some pleb class that doesn't provide something important, like Necro.

PvP... It doesn't matter, there's not enough targets in the mode to actually have a difference between 5 and 10 (Though, there could be some impact if things were tuned similar to WvW with 3-5 caps with the former being less effective in a 5 player deathball scenario)

For Open World PvE... Boons should not have a target cap, so that the 1 person who actually is using a support build in OW can support everyone. Damage should be capped at 5 targets at most, possibly less due to the whole "I'mma spam AoE's so no-one else can get credit for the event" issue.

[Lord of the Fire.6870]

Okay AoE attacks already have been nerfed to 5 max on all classes with necro the last which is good.

What gives boons to 10 and which gives to 5 is often confusing e.g Tempests wateroverload gives condi clean , regen , vigor to 10 but heal goes to 5The ones who gives boon to 10 are mostly though the ones which are used in PvE raids e.g Druid, Chrono , Renegade ?Problem is often the tool tips are missing which says the number of targets

WvW:Firebrand has target cap of 5 because he is the backbone of wvw and it would actually hurt the position of supporters in general in it because many zergs would start run with only 5 Firebrands to be clear all other heal builds have something which goes to 10 targets but Firebrands has access to the most boons. Also it is actually meta in Wvw to have a second healer in the group if you had 10 targets on FB and 10 on 50 you would make them obsolete. Basically in Wvw your status and role as supporter/healer is the best in the whole game.

PvP:PvP on the hand has only Tempest as support build remaining which doesn't make much sense. The build has some OP stuff in it but not on the support side. It basically on the far other end which HnRkLnXqZ.1870 tell also I don't have anything against the 'stack meta' because it is not a meta of the game it a the meta of all team MMOs group together . Like I said in the other thread without you can run the whole game with bots because you eliminating team play from the game. So I want the opposite positive enforcement for people to stay together like giving extra 10+ precision on rangers spotter for each player in range up to 5

But range of those skills could be a bit farer because I also see that ranger and thief have problems to properly do team work because they stay a bit farer away or in thiefs case there is only the hit&run strategy it can use as base.

[Dadnir.5038]

@RUNICBLACK.7630 said:Just for clarity:I didn't so much have an issue personally but the overall complaint was leveled against it with regard to the Raids in that some players argued that it along with the availability of group Quickness made the Guardian's overall representation in a 10 person Raid groups to high and left to many other classes unwanted and unable to get into raids or at least that was the general argument with regard to Raids. Since they made the modification to Feel My Wrath I haven't read much from the raiding players complaining against Stand Your Ground so it was either Straw Man argument or they aren't feeling as passed over now that Quickness isn't as much of an issue.

Players in PvE raid just want quickness, if you reduce the aoe cap you'll just have people stack twice as many guardians or the next best in line quickness provider. Sure ANet can satisfy the conmplains and reduce the guardian's buff target cap but this won't make things better in raids.

[otto.5684]

I think reducing all boons to 5 targets works better for balance in all game modes. > @Dadnir.5038 said:

@RUNICBLACK.7630 said:Just for clarity:I didn't so much have an issue personally but the overall complaint was leveled against it with regard to the Raids in that some players argued that it along with the availability of group Quickness made the Guardian's overall representation in a 10 person Raid groups to high and left to many other classes unwanted and unable to get into raids or at least that was the general argument with regard to Raids. Since they made the modification to Feel My Wrath I haven't read much from the raiding players complaining against Stand Your Ground so it was either Straw Man argument or they aren't feeling as passed over now that Quickness isn't as much of an issue.

Players in PvE raid just want quickness, if you reduce the aoe cap you'll just have people stack twice as many guardians or the next best in line quickness provider. Sure ANet can satisfy the conmplains and reduce the guardian's buff target cap but this won't make things better in raids.

But that is mostly the case though. Most of FB quickness comes from mantras which are 180 aoe and 360 cone. However, I see your point. I hope next expansion adds quickness to another class for support. Cuz it is guardian and Mesmer for groups.

[Dadnir.5038]

@otto.5684 said:I think reducing all boons to 5 targets works better for balance in all game modes.

@Dadnir.5038 said:Players in PvE raid just want quickness, if you reduce the aoe cap you'll just have people stack twice as many guardians or the next best in line quickness provider. Sure ANet can satisfy the conmplains and reduce the guardian's buff target cap but this won't make things better in raids.

But that is mostly the case though. Most of FB quickness comes from mantras which are 180 aoe and 360 cone. However, I see your point. I hope next expansion adds quickness to another class for support. Cuz it is guardian and Mesmer for groups.

I think it would be more proper to have other forms of support compete with quickness in such a way that groups feel compelled to reduce their sources of quickness to the bare minimum. (I'm aware that it won't be an easy thing to do, though)

[Laila Lightness.8742]

@"Infusion.7149" said:I'm assuming you're talking about WvW mainly, since 10 targets is irrelevant in PVP and if you have 5 people on one spot for AoE boons or conditions it means people aren't rotating off point anyway. (Stand Your Ground is still 10 targets in PVE, so I'm not sure what your point about PvE raids is.) Revenant stability is accrued over time in Inspiring Reinforcement and has a huge indicator so it is not nearly as reliable. Other options such as Defense Field and Mantra of Concentration have a smaller range as well ; if you ran soulbeast with stanceshare Dolyak Stance is 360 radius but soulbeast is typically used offensively.

If you look at other boons, herald revenant basically spits out boons (regen,swiftness, fury, might , protection sometimes) non stop to 10 people when traited with Draconic Echo , which is why unless the boon interval is changed boon rips have much decreased effectiveness unless it's a coordinated well of corruption or Winds of Disenchantment bomb. Alacrity isn't as potent in WvW because the duration is long so the boon can be ripped easily ; renegade loses a hefty amount of crit chance on dodge so it's a huge tradeoff.

I don't feel aegis is a huge problem in WvW due to two reasons: for one it doesn't stack and it doesn't have as much of an impact after damage nerfs (i.e. a blocked attack is less saved healing and health).

Regen stacks duration so it really isn't amazingly overpowered. It is not much different than having virtue of resolve passive or Soothing Mist.

The might durations across the board in competitive modes have been cut down to around 6s for the most part so it isn't a huge problem. Sure, Empower before a push puts out quite a bit of might (12 stacks) but so does Heat Sync on tempest warhorn , "Feel the Burn!" on tempest , and "For Great Justice!" on warrior.

In summary, I think you have more issue with boon from condi hot potato on scrappers (because even after nerfs , Purity of Purpose flips torment and weakness to 5s of 3 stacks of might). Other than might, most of the boon durations from Purity of Purpose have been cut down heavily to 1.5-3s. It was especially heinous when used with Rune of Altruism or Antitoxin, but both of those have been hit in some fashion (Altruism has a 10s CD now so you can't cycle mortar kit).

The biggest problem with the scourge before they fixed it is that it was basically killing server performance by the sheer amount of conditions it puts out at range, whether through shades , wells, or staff marks. Because the server has to maintain the durations and stacks of conditions on every player (unlike power damage which is instantaneous) it is deterimental to the performance of the server. The scaling back of shades to 3 targets and then down to 2 have alleviated this substantially along with the 1s base torment duration and 15s cooldown up from 8s. I have a feeling boons aren't as detrimental because there are only stacks for might and stability ; stability isn't typically a long duration boon and neither is aegis , resistance , quickness, etc.

Burn guardian never did stack many conditions, so it wasn't an issue ; revenants running condi primarily stacked burn and torment : the chill duration is generally negligible. However, revenants had the same problem as scourges and scrappers in that they could flip conditions back and forth if running Permeating Pestilence.

With the firebrand mantra of Lore retaining 2 conditions removed in WvW while being on 12 cooldown, as well as tempest and scrapper condi clears in bulk : long duration conditions aren't nearly as much of a problem now. This in sharp contrast to earlier days before scourges and firebrands when a Purging Flames was considered an acceptable condi clear (on 35 cooldown ; it used to remove all at once but now is per tick). If conditions were by far the dominant form of damage then we'd see people running Nature's Bounty instead of monk runes ; hoelbrak instead of strength or the fighter ; melandru instead of durabilty.

As far as skills go, most large AoE power damage skills have huge tells or downsides such as Hunter's Ward's cast / recharge, Barrage's cast / recharge , meteor shower's cast/ recharge/animation/reduced damage as it hits , CoR (Coalesence of Ruin) animation /pathing. In addition, it's a fact that most DoT (damage over time) skills result in quite a bit of retal damage even after retal was scaled back a bit.

PvE stuff:

When guardian FMW (Feel My Wrath!) was changed in PVE I felt that the quickness mantra (mantra of Potence) should have been increased in quickness duration as a result. A guardian using a utility has to invest in it at the cost of other skills, unlike someone putting in the trait for quickness on heal with nearly no downside.

Because guardian and mesmer are the only two classes that provide quickness in any appreciable amount, they will always be relevant in some fashion unless quickness is nerfed very heavily. It's always beneficial to have quickness over another DPS when you factor in a 5 man party , since one FB/mesmer is 20% of the party. Having played chrono for the longest time before switching to firebrand for quickness , I have to say that the mantra of solace aegis is much more forgiving than distortion off signets. When chrono was dominant it wasn't healthy for the game however, as most chrono players were not that great (plus mesme ris not as popular a class) which is why LFG was populated with LF chrono for so many times.

If you look at alacrity, mesmer has a far rougher time than renegade revenant , so you can pretty much call it a revenant boon. I don't feel 10 man alacrity is nearly as potent as quickness, so it probably does not need any changes. Alacrity doesn't increase the number of skills you can use, it just reduces cooldowns.

Aegis is a very potent boon, and guardian more or less has the most aegis. However because aegis doesn't stack and it requires careful timing on the 2-4 second range unless you use mace I wouldn't say it is overpowered.

Might has more or less been the domain of druids in a 10 man environment, but guardians do provide appreciable might when running staff or scepter (especially while running mantra of potence). In addition , tempests can output a large amount of might as well. The amount of might from scourges is low unless they run Abrasive Grit along with Desert Empowerment.

Fury is applicable from firebrands, dragonhunters, tempests (Zephyr's Boon), and druids so there isn't a monopoly on it by any means. If power herald was meta it would also provide perma fury as well to up to 10 people via Draconic Echo.

Generally protection is from druids or renegades. Aegis is probably supposed to be the main guardian defensive boon , but firebrands do have reasonable protection output especially if running shield or hammer (much less common).

You forgot about druid gotl

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

@"Taril.8619" said:In WvW, AoE spam is an issue so there should be stricter target caps. 3-5 caps ideally.

If anything, offensive skills should be completely uncapped.

This is the only RvR game I've played with a hard target cap and its alot of why zergs are completely immune to small groups; they ball up on purpose and move in a straight line to exploit the target caps and minimise the damage any single player takes, while healing.

This is a standard part of organised squad tactics.

Target caps on support skills make sense; small groups of ~5-10 generally won't hit the cap that often in the effect area and zergs will be limited in how much they can support each other, but target caps on offensive skills do little more than prevent "zerg-busting".

The players upset with AoE spam are usually those who can't avoid or tank them and blame the game when there's little to fear from them outside of a zerg anyway. Most circles in small scale are easily side-stepped, let alone dodged, blocked and so on.

Grouping alot of players together in the same place should be a weakness, not invulnerability.

[Emberheart.8426]

@Hannelore.8153 said:

@"Taril.8619" said:In

WvW

, AoE spam is an issue so there should be stricter target caps. 3-5 caps ideally.

If anything, offensive skills should be completely uncapped.

This is the only RvR game I've played with a hard target cap and its alot of why zergs are completely immune to small groups; they ball up on purpose and move in a straight line to exploit the target caps and minimise the damage any single player takes, while healing.

This is a standard part of organised squad tactics.

Target caps on support skills make sense; small groups of ~5-10 generally won't hit the cap that often in the effect area and zergs will be limited in how much they can support each other, but target caps on offensive skills do little more than prevent "zerg-busting".

The players upset with AoE spam are usually those who can't avoid or tank them and blame the game when there's little to fear from them outside of a zerg anyway. Most circles in small scale are easily side-stepped, let alone dodged, blocked and so on.

Grouping alot of players together in the same place should be a weakness, not invulnerability.

No, they ball up because the boon system encourages it. It's not because of the AoE target cap.

[Laila Lightness.8742]

I rather change boons to personal that way every class can sustain themself

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

You have to understand why Anet implemented 10 target skills to begin with in order to understand why it was actually a good thing for the game.

Imagine you have a group of 10 people in WvW, and your guild leader comps it out with 2 guardians, four necromancers, two revs, and two Eles. Looking at this distribution you have to ask why are only 4 of the 9 classes represented in this distribution... and then ask how would you fix that problem.

Each group needs the buffs provided by 5 target skills like stability...auras, grace of the land...

So to what they did was make certain skills effect 10 people instead of 5. This way, you don’t Need 2 guardians for 10 people, you just need 1...likewise for Ele. And this frees up slots for others to join into the group of 10 that ARNT the classes mentioned above.

It was a very smart design decision and it made a lot of builds viable. It was a design specifically targeted at PVE, but we saw it had beneficial implementation in WvW as well.

Fundamentally there should be no target cap in general because it just further restricts who can and can not be in a group, and restricts what content your class can participate in. And the only problem with anets design decision was that it wasn’t fully realized...which they needed to do as the following

-Remove all target caps from all skills.-Introduce equilibrium mechanics that scales up the more targets become involved...

We saw this problem early in the games life cycle too...they had no target caps on many abilities, but the skills didn’t have proper equilibrium mechanics that keeps them in check...so we saw funny behavior (like unkillable zergs.)

[Dadnir.5038]

@Hannelore.8153 said:Grouping alot of players together in the same place should be a weakness, not invulnerability.

I like this sentence of yours, it's very true.

[Apokriphos.7042]

@Hannelore.8153 said:

@"Taril.8619" said:In

WvW

, AoE spam is an issue so there should be stricter target caps. 3-5 caps ideally.

If anything, offensive skills should be completely uncapped.

This is the only RvR game I've played with a hard target cap and its alot of why zergs are completely immune to small groups; they ball up on purpose and move in a straight line to exploit the target caps and minimise the damage any single player takes, while healing.

This is a standard part of organised squad tactics.

Target caps on support skills make sense; small groups of ~5-10 generally won't hit the cap that often in the effect area and zergs will be limited in how much they can support each other, but target caps on offensive skills do little more than prevent "zerg-busting".

The players upset with AoE spam are usually those who can't avoid or tank them and blame the game when there's little to fear from them outside of a zerg anyway. Most circles in small scale are easily side-stepped, let alone dodged, blocked and so on.

Grouping alot of players together in the same place should be a weakness, not invulnerability.

I completely agree with this statement. It is incredibly obvious that stacking is a mechanic breaking strategy that prevents smarter tactics by its existence. If AoE did not have a target cap zergs would be forced to play smarter and not ball.

[Laila Lightness.8742]

@Apokriphos.7042 said:

@Hannelore.8153 said:

@"Taril.8619" said:In

WvW

, AoE spam is an issue so there should be stricter target caps. 3-5 caps ideally.

If anything, offensive skills should be completely uncapped.

This is the only RvR game I've played with a hard target cap and its alot of why zergs are completely immune to small groups; they ball up on purpose and move in a straight line to exploit the target caps and minimise the damage any single player takes, while healing.

This is a standard part of organised squad tactics.

Target caps on support skills make sense; small groups of ~5-10 generally won't hit the cap that often in the effect area and zergs will be limited in how much they can support each other, but target caps on offensive skills do little more than prevent "zerg-busting".

The players upset with AoE spam are usually those who can't avoid or tank them and blame the game when there's little to fear from them outside of a zerg anyway. Most circles in small scale are easily side-stepped, let alone dodged, blocked and so on.

Grouping alot of players together in the same place should be a weakness, not invulnerability.

I completely agree with this statement. It is incredibly obvious that stacking is a mechanic breaking strategy that prevents smarter tactics by its existence. If AoE did not have a target cap zergs would be forced to play smarter and not ball.

Kinda wish boons were personal buffs

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@Hannelore.8153 said:Grouping alot of players together in the same place should be a weakness, not invulnerability.

I like this sentence of yours, it's very true.

Two words to solve this problem: Social Awkwardness.

GG Zerg balls go bye bye.

[Laila Lightness.8742]

@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@Hannelore.8153 said:Grouping alot of players together in the same place should be a weakness, not invulnerability.

I like this sentence of yours, it's very true.

Two words to solve this problem: Social Awkwardness.

GG Zerg balls go bye bye.

Another solution remove boon sharing . So ppl must become more self reliant

[MarzAttakz.9608]

@Laila Lightness.8742 said:

@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@Hannelore.8153 said:Grouping alot of players together in the same place should be a weakness, not invulnerability.

I like this sentence of yours, it's very true.

Two words to solve this problem: Social Awkwardness.

GG Zerg balls go bye bye.

Another solution remove boon sharing . So ppl must become more self reliant

If that was the case then every class would need access to every boon, which would be a balance nightmare. I mean they can't even equalise something as basic as might stacks across all classes. I'm not gonna lie, I do miss the old hammer train meta back when majority of boon stacking happened by blasting fields.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

@MarzAttakz.9608 said:

@Laila Lightness.8742 said:

@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@Hannelore.8153 said:Grouping alot of players together in the same place should be a weakness, not invulnerability.

I like this sentence of yours, it's very true.

Two words to solve this problem: Social Awkwardness.

GG Zerg balls go bye bye.

Another solution remove boon sharing . So ppl must become more self reliant

If that was the case then every class would need access to every boon, which would be a balance nightmare. I mean they can't even equalise something as basic as might stacks across all classes. I'm not gonna lie, I do miss the old hammer train meta back when majority of boon stacking happened by blasting fields.

No. Anet is adamant that certain classes don't get access or have extremely limited access to certain boons, see Necro+Stability. It is okay for a class to grant a small number of certain boons in an AoE, it is not okay for some classes to vomit aegis, protection, or stability in an AoE around them.

[MarzAttakz.9608]

@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

@MarzAttakz.9608 said:

@Laila Lightness.8742 said:

@Lan Deathrider.5910 said:

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@Hannelore.8153 said:Grouping alot of players together in the same place should be a weakness, not invulnerability.

I like this sentence of yours, it's very true.

Two words to solve this problem: Social Awkwardness.

GG Zerg balls go bye bye.

Another solution remove boon sharing . So ppl must become more self reliant

If that was the case then every class would need access to every boon, which would be a balance nightmare. I mean they can't even equalise something as basic as might stacks across all classes. I'm not gonna lie, I do miss the old hammer train meta back when majority of boon stacking happened by blasting fields.

No. Anet is adamant that certain classes don't get access or have extremely limited access to certain boons, see Necro+Stability. It is okay for a class to grant a small number of certain boons in an AoE, it is not okay for some classes to vomit aegis, protection, or stability in an AoE around them.

The vomiting bit I totally agree with, we're on the same page. Equal access to core boons is needed to be self-reliant though (addressing the person I was quoting's statement that boons shouldn't be shared) - Reaper's traits aren't structured too badly in my opinion - fairly limited access to stab and quickness in Shroud, compared to the Alchemy traitline in Engi being so over-the-top, whilst an Elementalist has to take Earth traitline (lol whut?) and make a big choice in Tempest to gain very small access to Stability. It's these types of inconsistencies that bother me.

Anyway - most of us are in agreement that something needs to be done. Just not sure exactly what can be done without reworking the entire system from scratch and/or blowing up the servers with too many calculations. If they even care.

[Shiyo.3578]

All AOE should split it's damage per target(so if you hit 2 targets, you do 50% per target, if 4, 25% err target, etc) in WvW and PvP.

All AOE boons should be 10 in PvE, 5 in WvW, and 3 in PvP.

[Wyrdern.4092]

if aoe damage was split between targets you would have to massively buff damage and massively nerf sustain across the board so that zerg battles in wvw don't turn into endless stalemates because everyone just stacks together to distribute the damage ... which would in turn destroy small scale balance entirely