Why is minstrels gear still in the game?

[subversiontwo.7501]

4 hours ago, Shiyo.3578 said:

Actually there's no such thing as boonballs in DAoC, Warhammer or Crowfall. It's a GW2 only thing.

Most RvR games are about 8 man groups beating entire zergs with 8 man mass CC groups.

This game has no zerg busters. It's why it's combat is trash.

Well, that too is just in your head and not in the game. There is zerg busting and there is some sense of balance between applying boons and taking them away (that's where the true and interesting balance discussion sits), your problem is that you are just not experienced enough or organised enough to do these things and complain about it.

It is equally true today as it was in vanilla that you can take boons away, that you can take on a considerably larger group or that there are guilds out there who can take on 2-3 other guilds at once by themselves. That still exists. It is just rather rare today since players have not been encouraged to organise (into guilds), fundamental issues with organisation or for organisers have been left rotting for years on end and the vast majority of players mainly just casually cloud and pug so they don't see it or push the game to find its quirks.

I'd recommend go look at some videos posted by some decently good guilds to get a grasp of how fast combat is or what is possible. The people complaining about "boonballs" tend to be some casual solo clouding players expecting to beat better-organised groups of more experienced players by just demanding that people should sit in their static field and meteor shower or let themselves be free-cast upon.

It is not the combat that is trash 😐

Edited December 13, 2021 by subversiontwo.7501

[Shiyo.3578]

1 hour ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

I'd recommend go look at some videos posted by some decently good guilds to get a grasp of how fast combat is or what is possible. The people complaining about "boonballs" tend to be some casual solo clouding players expecting to beat better-organised groups of more experienced players by just demanding that people should sit in their static field and meteor shower or let themselves be free-cast upon.

I've been farming pugs all weekend following organized commanders as a SWORD weaver.

This games combat is absolutely trash.

Edited December 13, 2021 by Shiyo.3578

[cobracommander.5861]

During vanilla, before pirate ship, the meta was hammer blob because of boons, soldiers, cc damage, etc. I used to 2vx with a buddy both on our support guards just to see how many we could tank. Not saying that wvw doesn’t have major issues, and cele definitely shouldn’t exist as it does, minstrels probably shouldn’t either, same goes with TB, totally agree about the proliferations of boons, condis, etc… blobs suck agreed…. But I think the game has always kinda suffered from this. Especially pre-stab change. 

[Shroud.2307]

16 hours ago, TrollingDemigod.3041 said:

I'm pretty sure, both of nike warrior and daredevil were pain in kitten to deal with, but atleast war couldn't just stealth away from all the attention.
Though, there's still a lot of these "funny kid builds" that work in very similar manner "tag keep and chase me" mentality, many if not all have some sort of access to stealth I wonder why.

When I was on EU many years ago, there was this Warrior in what I assume was full Soldier or something, with Sword/Shield + GS, Bull's Charge and Rampage, and he repped a guild called "Kill Me Or I Tag Your [KEEP]". This guy's entire existence was perma-contesting Waypoints, and there weren't many things short of a zerg that could stop him.

Because Swiftness and Superspeed affected leap distances, like I'd said, this meant he was covering something like 1k range with every Sword Leap. And of course this was also when Healing Signet healed for more, and passive Endure Pain was a thing. So you can imagine how difficult it would be to kill this guy.

Edited December 13, 2021 by Shroud.2307

[Psycoprophet.8107]

Or instead of asking to delete a build option in the game we could ask for alterations to the useless stat sets to make them a more viable pick. Seems like a better solution to me.

[nativity.3057]

21 hours ago, Shroud.2307 said:

I'm only going to correct you where you misunderstood.
I didn't say Daredevil was in vanilla, I was comparing Warrior to it because a full defense built Daredevil is the hardest thing to catch, and once upon a time Warrior was worse.

 

mm okay

 

but i do remembe nike warrior. horizontally, sure it was a fast class and a lot of WvW maps are big and flat. But vertically the class has no movement, so it's hard to compare it to DD (or thief's SB in general).

 

But in general, I do agree with your sentiment that not everything in the past was great, just nostalgia filter.

 

22 hours ago, Littlekenny.4196 said:

The stability difference was that before if you got hit by cc, either you or a guardian made a mistake unless you got single target corrupted. (Dodge out of wells and emergency stab a null)

 

Change was 16/3/2015

HoT was 23/10/2015

 

Yeah the game's been so far removed from the stability changes. The change was closer to GW2 release than it is to today. 

[Red Haired Savage.5430]

On 12/11/2021 at 12:55 PM, Shiyo.3578 said:

ZERO offensive stats gear has no place in GW2 and goes against it's entire design and combat system. 

It has no use in PvE and currently just ruins WvW. 

Fix your game, delete minstrels and other pure defensive stat types like it.

You've apparently never done any raids that have a tank...

This build comes to mind: https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/guardian/tank-heal-firebrand-r32/

Edited December 13, 2021 by Red Haired Savage.5430

[Teratus.2859]

On 12/12/2021 at 12:50 AM, Shiyo.3578 said:

I still think minstrels and ZERO offensive stat gear has no place in this game. 

Funny, some people say that about Raids, PvP and even WvW as well..
Imagine if Anet listened to those people.

[Mattmatt.4962]

45 minutes ago, Red Haired Savage.5430 said:

You've apparently never done any raids that have a tank...

This build comes to mind: https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/guardian/tank-heal-firebrand-r32/

I legit never saw a tank in pve raid running full ministrel lol. Check snowcrow and lets be a bit more realistic

[ishysquishy.4753]

2 hours ago, Mattmatt.4962 said:

I legit never saw a tank in pve raid running full ministrel lol. Check snowcrow and lets be a bit more realistic

 

Chrono tank on snowcrows in full Minstrel:

 

https://snowcrows.com/builds/mesmer/chronomancer/heal-quickness-chronomancer

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

kitten... Someone's first post on the forums was saucy.

[Tungsten Monarch.6058]

Why is it still in the game? ... for 2ndary armor sets that's why.

Does great as WvW healing for the following classes. Ele, Revenants, Guardians, Engineer's etc...

One mans' rubbish gear is another WvW Zerg's most treasured mascot.  ... like our guilds Engineer Healer in WvW. .. we call her our mascot, she does no damage, but she keeps the rest of us alive.

[Red Haired Savage.5430]

3 hours ago, Mattmatt.4962 said:

I legit never saw a tank in pve raid running full ministrel lol. Check snowcrow and lets be a bit more realistic

Then you've apparently never done any training or pug raids, also you know snowcrows isn't necessarily the be all end all for raids.  Most groups don't just throw on a +5 toughness infusion to become the tank, yes I know some bosses you can get away with that. Hardstuck builds typically make some builds/encounters easier and safer vs snowcrows would be doing what most speed clears do. I'd rather get my raid done in one go vs getting it done on the 2nd or 3rd try.

[Mattmatt.4962]

2 hours ago, ishysquishy.4753 said:

 

Chrono tank on snowcrows in full Minstrel:

 

https://snowcrows.com/builds/mesmer/chronomancer/heal-quickness-chronomancer

Guess thats my bad then

What the kitten is that build tho ... Where is the diviner stat (or more seriously: what about harrier ?)? 😭

Edit:

@Red Haired Savage.5430 sorry but if you re the healer, you dont need the toughness nor vitality in pve raid. Beeing the healer means you have basically infinite effectiv HP. Therefore ministrel is not the optimal way of carrying newcomers (btw i did that for a time with bloodmancer friend of mine)

Anyhow its getting off topic as OP is talking about WvW.

Im not really sure what to think on that matter. On one hand ministrel might be too forgiving (beeing a tanky support could be seen as OP) on the other hand my personnal experience have not placed me in a situation where i though "dang this is disgusting"

Edited December 13, 2021 by Mattmatt.4962

[Xenesis.6389]

On 12/12/2021 at 9:06 AM, Stand The Wall.6987 said:

bring back 50 man water field blasts

Well at least that encouraged groups to pull off coordinate their heal bombs, instead of standing in crap fully expecting to auto sustain with their 20 scrappers and firebrands.

--------

This meta has made commanders so lazy in sustaining their zerg, and when something goes wrong they blame everyone else but their terribad positioning lol. In any case removing minstrels won't do that much, there's plenty of sets and runes to make up for it.

[Red Haired Savage.5430]

45 minutes ago, Mattmatt.4962 said:

Guess thats my bad then

What the kitten is that build tho ... Where is the diviner stat ? 😭ttt

Edit:

@Red Haired Savage.5430 sorry but if you re the healer, you dont need the toughness nor vitality in pve raid. Beeing the healer means you have basically infinite effectiv HP. Therefore ministrel is not the optimal way of carrying newcomers (btw i did that for a time with bloodmancer friend of mine)

Anyhow its getting off topic as OP is talking about WvW.

Im not really sure what to think on that matter. On one hand ministrel might be too forgiving (beeing a tanky support could be seen as OP) on the other hand my personnal experience have not placed me in a situation where i though "dang this is disgusting"

Correct if you're just the healer you don't need the toughness or vitality but I didn't link a healer I linked a tank build that also heals, and provides boon support and is extremely tanky capable of living through things that of you were min-maxing you'd die to, which is what you want a tank to do.

But yes this post is about if purely defensive stats should be allowed in WvW. To me I think the boon ball meta is a bigger issue than defensive support stats. And as a couple of people pointed out support people should have to take a more active roll in the meta not just maintaining boons the entire fight and sustaining through that. Although there are some surprising counters to a boon ball that lots of people don't know.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

21 hours ago, subversiontwo.7501 said:

Well, that too is just in your head and not in the game. There is zerg busting and there is some sense of balance between applying boons and taking them away (that's where the true and interesting balance discussion sits), your problem is that you are just not experienced enough or organised enough to do these things and complain about it.

It is equally true today as it was in vanilla that you can take boons away, that you can take on a considerably larger group or that there are guilds out there who can take on 2-3 other guilds at once by themselves. That still exists. It is just rather rare today since players have not been encouraged to organise (into guilds), fundamental issues with organisation or for organisers have been left rotting for years on end and the vast majority of players mainly just casually cloud and pug so they don't see it or push the game to find its quirks.

I'd recommend go look at some videos posted by some decently good guilds to get a grasp of how fast combat is or what is possible. The people complaining about "boonballs" tend to be some casual solo clouding players expecting to beat better-organised groups of more experienced players by just demanding that people should sit in their static field and meteor shower or let themselves be free-cast upon.

It is not the combat that is trash 😐

oof i like some of your takes but this one is bad.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

1 hour ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

Well at least that encouraged groups to pull off coordinate their heal bombs, instead of standing in crap fully expecting to auto sustain with their 20 scrappers and firebrands.

--------

This meta has made commanders so lazy in sustaining their zerg, and when something goes wrong they blame everyone else but their terribad positioning lol. In any case removing minstrels won't do that much, there's plenty of sets and runes to make up for it.

if anet were to remove minstrels and nomads then those same people will complain about pirate ship meta. maybe thats what they want tho, idk.

[Shiyo.3578]

3 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

 In any case removing minstrels won't do that much, there's plenty of sets and runes to make up for it.

All of those sets need to be removed.

 

[Zephyrus.9680]

I don't know how some people are missing that if everyone is running 40-60% of the exact same minstrel support in the same team comp, something is off with support and stat balance.  Ideally, this should be one of many options but what other options work at scales above say 20 players?

There might be better options than completely removing minstrels from WvW. For example:

- Nerfing various boons, like reducing protection to 25%

- Cap stability at 2 or 3 stacks and/or increase cooldowns and/or reduce durations so there is low uptime no matter how many supports there are. Stability should not be a spammable buff and zergs should sometimes be required to fight with no stability in prolonged fights. 

- Swap Vitality and Toughness major/minor stats on minstrels so attrition is more a thing

- Add "ignore stability" to some weapon skills, particularly unused melee classes/weapons that are currently high risk with no reward. Or add boon stripping to them that are targeted at specific boons (that will not affect small scale fights much). 

Edit: am I biased from the first Guild Wars or other MMOs for thinking that having different viable options for team comps and radically different tactics are a good thing?

Edited December 14, 2021 by Zephyrus.9680

[Xenesis.6389]

13 minutes ago, Shiyo.3578 said:

All of those sets need to be removed.

 

I mean.. I guess that's one way to deal with boon balling without having to constantly dismantle parts of support specs.. there's still runes, sigils, food, oil, traits, to deal with tho.

 

Wvw balancing is just in a really bad spot with all the support now, you can't adjust any of it because players will just stack more, that's the solution to everything now, just stack more to cover more of the gaps and mistakes. They also made firebrand and scrapper too good to replace. And that's what happens when the game is built entirely around spamming aoe damage, aoe stability, aoe healing, and aoe boons.

[Za Shaloc.3908]

Considering the buff that happened to Cele I very highly doubt any set will ever get nerfed. I am at least grateful for the magnet and moa. Truly god's gift to WvW.

Edited December 14, 2021 by Za Shaloc.3908

[Mattmatt.4962]

Its funny how slowly the discussion tend to go to the same problem as every balance discussion :

FIreBrand is overpowered 😅

 

They gutted cataclyst, yet for some reason they cant do the same to FB ... weird 🙃

(I see you scrapper trying to hide in the corner)

Edited December 14, 2021 by Mattmatt.4962

[God.2708]

3 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

I mean.. I guess that's one way to deal with boon balling without having to constantly dismantle parts of support specs.. there's still runes, sigils, food, oil, traits, to deal with tho.

There's an interesting discussion to be had around the nature of what the mode should look like when played at full capacity and everyone trying to fulfill it's 'intent' (Controlling the most space/getting the most war score). I don't think anyone making topics like these is actually capable or interested in having that discussion.

You can't nerf boonballs out of existence. They exist because of what the mode itself expects. Not what any player or build produces, individually or together.

Edited December 14, 2021 by God.2708

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

4 hours ago, Zephyrus.9680 said:

I don't know how some people are missing that if everyone is running 60-80% minstrel support, that means something is way off with support and stat balance.  I can't imagine people actually want to run 60-80% support. They're running it because there are no other viable options. Ideally, this should be one of many options but what other options work at scales above say 20 players? 

 

There might be better options than completely removing minstrels from WvW. For example:

- Nerfing various boons, like reducing protection to 25%

- Cap stability at 2 or 3 stacks and/or increase cooldowns and/or reduce durations so there is low uptime no matter how many supports there are. Stability should not be a spammable buff and zergs should sometimes be required to fight with no stability in prolonged fights. 

- Swap Vitality and Toughness major/minor stats on minstrels so attrition is more a thing

- Add "ignore stability" to some weapon skills, particularly unused melee classes/weapons that are currently high risk with no reward. Or add boon stripping to them that are targeted at specific boons (that will not affect small scale fights much). 

 

Nothing wrong with minstrels as an option but if it's making everything else unviable, that's not player choice, it's just a game balance problem. 

I'm not sure what the actual numbers are, but I don't think it is 60-80%.  Most zergs I see break things into groups with these distinct formations:

Group 2 through x: Healbrand, Quick-Scrapper, Herald, Scourge, Extra Class

Group 1: Everyone who's unsorted or doesn't fit into a specific group.
In these groups, the only ones that might wear minstrel are either the Healbrand or the Scrapper.  Everyone else wears... whatever happens to work for their profession.  Usually it is Marauder, Berserker, Diviner, or Soldier, but you'll occasionally see Trailblazer, Dire, and Vipers in these zergs.  The reason why is pretty simple: the greater your offensive power, the easier and faster it is to get loot. My experience in DragonBrand isn't two immortal zergs fighting insomuch as it is one overpowering the other pretty quickly, usually from a strike of initiative or an ambush. 

A lot of people don't do the number, but the scales of damage can grow quite quickly.  For example, on my Marauder Staff Weaver that I use for zerging, if but one teammate is able to fill the small fury gap in my air line, I will be sitting at 9335 effective power when I go to cast Meteor Storm (2928 to start, 138% power damage modifiers, 231% scaled critical damage modifier).  That's before might stacks are involved.  Keeping most things the same, but swapping out to Minstrel Gear (and also Superior Sharpening Stone to Bountiful) will get me an effective power of 3240, which is a little more than a third of what Marauder can do.  What I would gain is enough boon duration to fill the small gap on my fury uptime (which is usually filled by an ally), healing power for the one healing skill I can use (Ether Renewal, which is 1408 health every 20 seconds), and a 38% reduction in damage.  It isn't worth the trade.  I'm better off doing 190% more damage than I am living 60% longer.  So long as I don't die in a rush, the healbrand and/or the heal scrapper are capable of getting me back to full very quickly.

 

That all said, you're coming head first into the boon dilemma that GW2 stumbled into.  The ability to double the length of boons causes a problem where a profession is either built around stacking boon duration, or it isn't.  If you make having boon duration necessary, then it means every profession is loaded with inefficient boons on their skills that ultimately amount to nothing.  If you make having boon duration unnecessary, then you get overly-buffed up boon balls.  Anet goes with the latter by default, since part of their design philosophy is for professions to be functional at base.  After all, every skill that purports to do something but doesn't work is badly designed.  

Your suggestions might have the opposite of the intended outcome.  I.E. if you cannot rely on stability as a form of defense, then you'll add more toughness gear to compensate, making the meta learn more and more towards bunkers.  The ability to self-buff to a meaningful degree is what permits players to  wear high-offense gear like Marauder or Berserker.  If you reduce all of their boons, you encourage people to wear minstrels to compensate for their losses.