ZTeamG.4603

What gamemode were you playing? Because it sure wasn't WvW unless your boonblob is one of the worst possible. For the past year, the tiniest modicum of effort on a boonball's part has been enough to win against outnumbered defenders. If you and your group are the type to throw down 8 catas in an exposed spot while all the keep's cannons and mortars are still up and then never use the bubble skill, you deserve to get easily repelled by 1-2 people.

Great change to make objectives feel better for attacking groups! The defenders' advantage behind their own walls and gates was previously too strong. This surely won't swing that advantage completely in favor of attacking groups, and it will encourage player interaction so that large portions of attacks against structures don't feel like a slog with little payoff. This will help to incentivize more player vs. player interactions while still allowing for defensive tactical gameplay, such as defenders simply leaving the map.

It was already extremely difficult to do anything while outnumbered, and Anet's determined to make it impossible. Wasn't this kind of karmatrain gameplay they're "balancing" towards what they nuked EotM for years ago?

Anyone want to guess at how long before they just remove gates altogether so as not to give defenders "too much of an advantage"? Seriously Anet, if you only want boonballers to play the mode with two giant zergs slowly circling each other at a snail's pace while skills take 10 seconds to activate, just say so. It'll save the rest of us time hoping that the game mode ever stops getting worse.

I hate how true this is. Anet's changes basically say "If you don't want the slow, boring gameplay of a boonball karma train taking undefended objectives then stop playing GW2"

This is a big reason why I think the "more rewards for winning" is a terrible idea. Server stacking (guilds transferring to a bigger server to make sure they're on the bigger, winning side) is already a big enough problem when there is barely any reason to transfer en masse, and because of it matchups will end up wildly imbalanced even if the matchmaking at the start of the links would have made them relatively balanced. On some links I've been on, a large, active guild transferring off it at the start of the links led to the server being pretty much dead and perpetually outnumbered for 90% of the day--which, of course, only served to make more people stop playing. If you start giving rewards for winning like in the WvW tournament from the old days, stacking will just get more ridiculous and you'll lose people whose experience it ruins. And, of course, one server having night coverage when the others don't will almost certainly make that one the winner due to the late night PPT trains that flip everything. The great thing about the participation system and skirmish chests is that you can (mostly, with the one exception being defense since they removed repair credit and defense credit is notoriously unreliable) play in the way that you find most fun in the mode without worrying about missing out on rewards. If something changed to incentivize defense instead of just attack (such as giving participation for destroying enemy siege or for driving off enemies from an objective even if they don't die), then I think the rewards system would be in a great spot and just be a matter of tuning the rewards.

>comes into the necro forum with a thief icon >says necro GS 5 should function like scorpion wire This has to be a troll, right? I don't know what kinda wild stuff got put into your Peppercorn-crusted Sous Vide Steak, but I want whatever you're on. Necro GS is not a dueling weapon, and it works great for both PvE and for group fights in WvW. GS 4 has pulsing blind, which is a defensive option of its own. GS 2 feels great even if it's a bit slow. GS 3 is fast and strong. GS 5 is amazing and so much better than the standard projectile pull.

In the balance change preview, willbender's elite (the rarely used Heaven's Palm) is getting some significant buffs like evade frames and the Glacial Heart trait is getting a rework to heal on chill application. I think the Heaven's Palm buffs are fine since it's competing against the powerful option of 3s invuln+virtue recharge. But... What's the over under on them forgetting to add an internal cooldown to Glacial Heart, and suddenly Willbender gets a full heal on every 20s cooldown elite usage with Relic of the Ice?

With the glacial heart change, what are the odds they forget to add an internal cooldown and it results in willbenders running around in WvW using the buffed Heaven's Palm + Relic of the Ice as a free full heal?

Greatly reduce boon duration so they're a temporary boost rather than an effectively permanent buff. Double, triple, or even quadruple all offensive target caps (heck, go ahead and remove them!) so that boonballs can't just stack in one place and outheal everything a smaller group throws at them. WvW has always been at its best when there are two relatively disorganized groups of 20 or less going at it over an objective--when individual player contribution matters, and individual players can swing a battle with skillful plays. WvW is consistently at its worst when you can just stack a comped group of 50 in one spot and be invincible to anything less than another comped group of 50. It's a shame that the latter is the only type of gameplay Anet encourages.

It has been around to a lesser extent since HoT, but in the past 4-5 years it has worsened to the point it's in today. Anet has incrementally buffed and expanded access to heals/boons while nerfing things that work as counterplay to stacking--ie reducing target caps, neutering boonrips/corrupts, reducing damage without reducing (and sometimes even increasing) heals, etc. The reason everyone except boonblobbers are so vocal nowadays is because there used to be viable counterplay to harass a bigger comped blob, and it wasn't unheard of for a skilled group of 20-30 to put a dent in or wipe a group of 40-50 with a well played spike. The aforementioned changes have made it nearly impossible to overcome a difference of even 10 people nowadays for two comped groups of similar skill, and if you only have 20-30 people you might as well not even bother trying to fight a boonblob of 50--they can just stand in one spot and outheal anything you throw at them. Edit: another great example to illustrate what changed is in the "Rise!" strat that was popped up sometime in the past few years before "Rise!" got a WvW nerf. Zergs would run 1 reaper in each subgroup with "Rise!" to summon several minions each when the zergs clashed. In the old days, having an extra 3-4 NPCs per 5 players wouldn't make much of a difference because they'd just die in the bombs (especially when there were a lot of offensive skills with higher target caps than healing/defensive skills). At the time this was popular, however, having all those extra bodies to soak up damage--at the cost of a single utility skill and while also giving damage reduction to the reapers using "Rise!"--meant that most of the enemies' skills wouldn't even hit your own players because their low target caps got filled by enemy NPCs.

You shouldn't fixate too hard on getting ascended gear, nor should you break the bank to get it. The only place it is required is higher level fractals (to use agony resistance infusions), and in all other content it just provides slightly higher stats than exotic. Even in T2 and T3 fractals, you only need enough ascended gear to have slots for the agony resistance you need. There are a lot of ways to get ascended gear for low or no cost through gameplay, such as the living world ascended trinkets (which make up a larger portion of the stat increase from exotic to ascended than armor does), strikes, raids, etc. Let me put it this way: when you go from full exotic to full ascended with everything else being the same, you can expect your damage and stats to increase by 5 to 10%. If you're a newer or less experienced player who has never used a DPS meter and has never set up a proper, meta DPS build, you'll likely get anywhere from 10x to 40x that increase by simply setting up a good DPS build and trying some raid DPS rotations. It's not uncommon for people to go from 5000 DPS (or significantly less) to 20,000 DPS when correctly putting together a raid build and learning rotations. Compared to that, ascended gear's 5 to 10% increase is negligible, especially when full exotic lvl 80 berserker's (the typical stat choice for a power build) is dirt cheap and there are a lot of ways to get cheap/easy stat selectable exotic gear for things like Viper's.

Me and a friend have been routing and optimizing this adventure since it's fun to run. According to the Lifetime leaderboards, there are 40 people above this. For optimizations to this route, we've got a few changes that theoretically should reduce it by 10-20 seconds (but they're insanely hard to pull off, especially all in one run, hence why this much more consistent route is what we've gone with) and we also have techs that we've tested that would, with outside interference, get to sub 1, but we'd rather keep our runs doable solo. Anyone got other ideas or anyone from the top 40 want to post their runs? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4M72imN4CU

If anything, things have been a lot better during this beta. Since the matchmaking broke up most of the big guilds, there've been a ton of fun pug-zerg fights instead of the usual boonball trash.

I came into this beta excited to be getting a little more mobility on necro with the sword leaps and liked the concept of a ranged sword, but, unfortunately, sword is a bit of a letdown in its current state. Some of my thoughts: Sword skills are too slow in general; between long cast times and annoying aftercasts, the weapon just feels clunky. Auto chain: I love the idea of a ranged wave, but It feels off to have just a projectile instead of slash+projectile, like Holo has when using the ranged trait. The ground-hover projectile doesn't work well with non-flat terrain, and what's the point of having a projectile that can't be fired upwards? It would be nice to have a little more opportunity for condi builds to use the swords instead of just power. Sword 3 (the leap): I was disappointed with the range being shorter than most leaps. When I look at something like Guardian GS3 or Warrior Sword2, as well as most other leaps, the range is 600+ instead of 450. In its current state, the leap distance just feels too low to be worth taking for mobility when sword as a whole is slow, clunky, and weak.

lowkey though, Anet pls add this as a bonus week gimmick

The only thing that stops a bad guy with an organized boonblob is a good guy with an organized boonblob.

throwback to when I posted bug reports for the trident giving 2 lifeforce instead of 2% and harbinger shroud 4 not existing underwater... The devs acknowledged it and said they were able to reproduce the bugs about a year ago, but it never got fixed :(

Pulls are one of the best things in the game mode, and players that find themselves repeatedly getting pulled need to up their situational awareness and game sense. Both good positioning and good use of stability/other defensive buffs will save you and prevent you from being pulled. TL;DR: get gud

In the same patch that they buffed boonballs, who would have guessed that they'd accidentally stumble upon the solution through a bug: unlimited boonstrip in both number and target cap. It's a shame they removed that feature so quickly. I've said it for a long time and I often repeat it: boonballs are the most boring part of WvW aside from it being empty. In this current meta, the main factor in which group wins a fight is which of the groups has more numbers. Target caps have been nerfed, damage has been nerfed, boonstrips have been nerfed, defense objectives/tactics/participation have been nerfed, heals and boons have been buffed...there's less and less skill involved in largescale WvW with every patch; a group of 30, let alone a disorganized group of 30, can't do much of anything against a half-conscious boonball of 50 in this meta. Smallscale (anything from roaming fights to 15ishv15ish) has always been the most fun part of WvW, but it has been steadily getting worse and less common with these changes. Anet needs to 25/90 boonballs before they've made everyone but the largest boonballers quit.

Had this happening to me in the dragon bash arena with harbinger. It seemed to be related to big boss hitboxes for me.

Same. People running cele will at least fight you head on in a 1v1, and whoever wins usually comes down to who catches the other making a mistake in the drawn out fight and capitalizes on it. Having a 10-30s back-and-forth before that happens is fun. Most one-shot roamers, on the other hand, tend to follow the following process: -Open with a one-shot burst, usually trying to attack without the target realizing you're there. -When the burst gets dodged/otherwise fails, turn around and run to safety. If your target chases you, run from the target until your cooldowns are back (unless they're a new player that can't pressure you back). -When cooldowns are back, turn around and try again. -Rinse and repeat. It's quite predictable every time and not very fun to play as or fight against, which does make it funny to me how those players are often the most vocal about celestial. Celestial does need a nerf to remove conc/expertise in WvW (or some 15ish% reduction in stats overall instead), but boons and stat bonuses in general need to be weakened or made much more difficult to get/upkeep. Without the easy access and upkeep of boons that we have nowadays, celestial wouldn't be anywhere near as strong as it seems now. And I certainly wouldn't want the bunker sets nerfed without a nerf also addressing the one-shot builds (or, worse yet, the bright ideas in this thread to just buff the already-strong power sets by 40%), because everyone running one-shots would be far less fun than everyone running celestial, and both situations would be worse than the mix of everything we have now. Of course, not all power builds are one-shot builds...but, the meta power builds tend to be one-shot builds, just like the meta condi builds tend to be celestial.

Cele never should have been buffed and they should at least partially undo the old cele buff in WvW, but I'm starting to think the real problem is boons. The way boons were back in the days of core was good--where they were just a temporary boost, and never as ubiquitous nor intended/as easy to be permanently upkept like they are now. Cele is a common gripe, but the other half of the roaming meta is oneshot builds, and imo those are even less fun to play and play against. Whereas cele fights might be a 30s back and forth exchange that ends with one side ending the fight by capitalizing on a misplay, fights involving oneshot builds either end in seconds or, if they don't, usually just involve the oneshot roamer running away until their cooldowns are back and they can turn around to try their burst again. But what do both have in common? Tons of might and other boons. For cele builds, this generally turns a tanky but otherwise wet-noodle build into a mildly hard hitting threat. For oneshot builds, it turns a hard hitting build into, well, a oneshot build.

The change to boonrips honestly feels so out of touch that you could tell me it's an attempt at accelerationism--intentionally pushing the meta towards a worst case endpoint in order to have an excuse to rework the whole thing--and I'd believe you. Boonballs are one of the least fun aspects of the game mode. Heck, the only thing less fun is when the map is empty. Playing in boonballs is either a snooze fest against lower number/less organized opponents or a lag fest against similar numbers, not to mention that being in such a large zerg usually means you can't see anything but red circles, you can't really take advantage of the movement that makes GW2 fun since you need to stay near the commander to get both boons and healing, and your individual contribution overall feels minimal. Fighting against boonballs, on the other hand, ranges from incredibly boring to impossible unless you have your own. With how much Anet has buffed boon application and healing over the years, it usually isn't even worth trying to fight a boonball unless you have similar numbers and organization--and given how unbalanced the population usually is, you rarely do. Multiple facets of this upcoming balance patch just make boonballs stronger, from buffing cooldowns and heals to removing boonrips. Reducing boons overall would be a welcome change, but what we really need to make WvW more fun is three things: -Reduced boon application so that boonballs don't have such high boon uptime. -Higher target caps on offensive abilities--much higher--while keeping defensive/support abilities at 5 targets. This way, groups can both actually get punished for braindead stacking and smaller groups and decentralized groups can actually stand a chance against the boonballs. Back before HoT, a skilled group of 15 could kill half of a group of 50 if they got the jump on them. With over-tuned support and pitiful target caps, that's impossible to do today. Is the vision for GW2's gameplay really "groups should be able to just stand in one spot and easily out-sustain anything and everything thrown at them by a smaller group"? Heck, maybe even do a bonus week (like no downstate week) where all offensive target caps are set at 50. That'd be fun, and that'd actually result in a much more interesting and decentralized meta than what we have today. -MORE boonrips. The current state of boonrips is already far too little. The sheer boon application most support classes have is ridiculous, and none of the current area boonrips even come close to outpacing boon application unless the enemy is standing still and alone in 5 different boonrip AoEs at once. Reducing boonrips is a terrible idea.

Please, please revisit the necromancer "Spectral" type skill cooldowns in this change. In PvP/WvW they're sitting at the cooldowns they had back when the Spectral Mastery recharge reduction trait was replaced by Soul Barbs without changing the skill cooldowns. Now, they stand out as still having relatively high non-resurrection/transformation utility skill cooldowns while nearly all of the other classes' longer recharge skills get their cooldowns reduced. Not a fan of this change to necro dagger 2 (life siphon). It feels great as a channel skill with a bunch of hits. Even though this is, on paper, a buff to the skill that seemingly will make it do the same damage/healing while letting you do other stuff at the same time, it makes it much more inconsistent in PvP/WvW (now the skill is all or nothing if it gets blocked/evaded) and takes away a skill that plays well into the necro class identity. I'd rather the autoattack get some buffs to be actually useful (seeing as necro dagger autoattack is currently garbage in pretty much every way--too slow, too weak, no range, no condis, mediocre life force) than dagger 2 get reworked. Not a fan of this change either. It homogenizes scourge into just another alac healer while leaving it without the other useful boons that other boon healers provide. Reducing the revive percentages a slight bit would make sense, but going from 7%->2% on ritual of life/well of blood is too much of a nerf.