With the death of 10 man boons, is it finally time to start extending application range to allow mid-range weapons?

[PixelHero.5849]

Guild Wars 2 has for some time been balanced around close-range boon application, as we all know.  Ranged options have suffered, to the point of being basically excluded from the latest round of elite specs.  (Sure, a few classes might have gotten a skill or two, but by and large... melee)

 

The thought process behind this made sense.  The ranged class has been out of boon range, and so it has to be self-sufficient.  Indeed, this self-sufficiency means it has to suffer a DPS loss, or be restricted in other ways, just so that in the event that it wandered into boon-spam range it doesn't instantly become the most overpowered thing on the field.  Boon range has typically been very close range as well (I've heard it referred to as "bum-sniff" ("boon-sniff" range), to limit application to the stack.

 

However, two things are coming that I think might change the dynamic:

 

1. With EOD we're finally entering an area where boons are designed around five-man groups, preventing overapplication and boon sharing to larger groups of players if the boon share range was increased beyond the current "boon-sniff" range.  I don't mean that *everything* should be expanded - there should still be reasons to be close to your team-, or that boons should extend out to the 1500 max range camping longbow ranger.  But if boon application range is increased to a degree, it is possible to balance ranged classes on the assumption that they ARE receiving party boons, rather than around them not (but you have to factor that they might).  In fact, I think expanding boon range would help teamwork in instanced-PvE, by allowing a greater range of party dynamics and player positioning during encounters, trading increased range for risk of projectile hate, reduced healing, combo field interaction, and player assistance, you know, the "non-boon" reasons to be close to your teammates.

 

           With properly restricted boon application to the party, the boon application range can be increased some and thus open additional playstyles without resulting in overtuned characters.  In fact, ranged characters would indeed still be weaker on their own, because now they could be designed for party-boons, rather than having to be designed for self-sufficiency.

 

        2. PVP Ranged counterplay options are being increased, with every new elite spec receiving some combination of gap-closer, evade, reflect, or additional ranged options themselves.  Ranged characters are already more prevalent in PvP than instanced PvE, but this change would not result in ranged options being overtuned.  By removing some of their self-sufficiency and moving that to team boons, the ranged option retains equivalent effectiveness around teammates but gets weaker when solo.

I don't propose a shift to ranged-dominate gameplay in all gamemodes, but I do think that the game is primed more than ever to be in a good place to begin adapting to 600 or even 900 ranged options being a viable, and even healthy, part of the GW2 meta, with healthy counterplay.  I don't know that we *have* to design for boon-stack "boon-sniff" in instanced PvE anymore.  Of course, I could be entirely wrong too.  

Edited February 19, 2022 by PixelHero.5849
bum-sniff->boon-sniff. It's just nicer that way.

[BobbyT.7192]

Its not just aoe boon applications and to this extent healing. but also reviving. Its much easier to pick someone up who is next to you than if they were off in a corner.

Damage also favors melee combat, as range doesn't and shouldn't do the same dps.

So those 3 factors is what causes this stack and attack meta for the last 10 years. At this point is so ingrained with playbase, that trying to break this will have a severe negative effect on the game.

[Puck.3697]

3 hours ago, BobbyT.7192 said:

Its not just aoe boon applications and to this extent healing. but also reviving. Its much easier to pick someone up who is next to you than if they were off in a corner.

Damage also favors melee combat, as range doesn't and shouldn't do the same dps.

So those 3 factors is what causes this stack and attack meta for the last 10 years. At this point is so ingrained with playbase, that trying to break this will have a severe negative effect on the game.

also ontop of this. The more popular way of making ranged DPS needed is mechanics forcing players out of melee distance to deal with. 

The problem here is simply due to how gw2 works, a melee build can carry a ranged weapon to deal with that. 

It would take a significant change to the design to get pure ranged DPS into use without making melee worthless in the process realistically. 

The most successful route they've seen to it is basically making them offensive / defensive support weapons.. 

Excluding renegade which is a gem among the rubble as far as ranged builds go, although as you use melee weapons also means in raids you would be exclusively stood in melee most likely. 

The only method forward I can see in regards of ranged to make it successful is

Make melee in PvE raid / fractal / strike enviroments extremely difficulty. Which would mean the average playerbase would get more DPS out of ranged builds while the pros would play melee for its advantage.. although this would defintly create problems. 

We can see where WoWs done this alot of players are outraged by it effectively. 

Ranged seems to get more success out of open world / PvP / WvWvW builds they do competitive PvE enviroments, and I think it'd take alot of changing around to change that really. 

The core of the problem regarding ranged tends to be more exclusive to proffessions without weapon swap, i.e elementalist because they can't use this ranged to melee hybridization the game provides and exclusively get stuck with one or the other 

So I'm unsure if the removing the boon radius would really change this. It's easier to AoE heal people together then it will ever be apart... And without a core focus point to demand ranged on and with hybridizations already existsnce it'd be a hard push 

Edited February 19, 2022 by Daddy.8125