Nerfing supports + removal of target limits.

[Jarwan.8263]

Spoiler

27 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

You are aware symbols and traps are 180 radius right along with lava font? People have to be stacking within <180 radius for that to be applicable. This means no moving targets more or less and why people like to stack traps on choke points.

If stacking that tight was the be all and end all people would not run CoR on hammer herald or any skill that applies only one hit. That doesn't even account for 24 hits of meteor.

An increase in target cap would mean in any engagement the higher numbers would win due to clouding as they have more damage sources regardless of target caps.

again... whats your argument? you are literally still stacking lava fonts that you need to be within 180..... the only difference is you are hitting more than 5... you sound like a baby formula player... whats your in game name, lets 1v1.. i wanna see how mechanically inclined you are... cause i'm not getting it from these baseless points. unless you wanna 6v1

 

Edited February 20, 2022 by Jarwan.8263

[Zyreva.1078]

30 minutes ago, Infusion.7149 said:

You are aware symbols and traps are 180 radius right along with lava font? People have to be stacking within <180 radius for that to be applicable. This means no moving targets more or less and why people like to stack traps on choke points.

Traps as well as many other aoe skills have a (dmg) radius of 240 or more. Plenty of space for players to stack within.

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If stacking that tight was the be all and end all people would not run CoR on hammer herald or any skill that applies only one hit. That doesn't even account for 24 hits of meteor.

What? Single hit aoe skills tend to be better at bursting down players within a zerg, because the full dmg is guaranteed to land all on the same target instead of getting spead out over many targets. And yes, meteor shower hits for up to 24 times, with a target cap of 3 per hit (and dmg reduction for successive hits). So what?

Quote

 

An increase in target cap would mean in any engagement the higher numbers would win due to clouding as they have more damage sources regardless of target caps.

Uhm? Yes more numbers means more dmg sources. But target caps means more mitigation for free on top of that. So how would removing that additional advantage suddenly favour larger numbers more? Does not make sense whatsoever.

Edited February 20, 2022 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[Infusion.7149]

4 minutes ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

Traps as well as many other aoe skills have a (dmg) radius of 240 or more. Plenty of space for players to stack within.

What? Single hit aoe skills tend to be better at bursting down players within a zerg, because the full dmg is guaranteed to land all on the same target instead of getting spead out over many targets. And yes, meteor shower hits for up to 24 times, with a target cap of 3 per hit (and dmg reduction for successive hits). So what?

Uhm? Yes more numbers means more dmg sources. But target caps means more mitigation for free on top of that. So how would removing that additional advantage suddenly favour larger numbers more? Does not make sense whatsoever.

DH traps are 180 trigger radius unlike wells. If you don't believe me you can check ingame. If the radius is that much of a problem then you can propose it be reduced to 130. They are PBAOEs so the current strategy with traps is to backpedal into them, trap when engaging, or pretrap much like in PVE.

So what? It's effectively a nerf to meteor if you increase target caps due to the current damage reduction and a buff to skills that do high damage in a single hit. If target cap is the only thing that matters you can just get on an arrowcart with 50 target cap.

Burst damage on one target is higher and that is the drawback of having a high damage skill that doesn't hit many times , it's also liable to be fully mitigated by aegis.

It also doesn't change the fact that more clouding players can effectively carpet bomb an area which doesn't change the fact that you would generate more downeds with more players , rendering the suggestion useless. A suggestion such as collision would make more sense but bring with a whole slew of other issues. It sounds to me like the topic creator just wants to tag more things honestly.

This suggestion is not new and it hasn't been enacted for a simple reason.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Please-Explain-the-Logic-of-the-AoE-Limit/page/1

[Jarwan.8263]

Then i guess it should never be brought up again.. just because that topic was brought up when? 2013.. anyone could have googled that.. even i did to see how many times it had been brought up.. you are arguing on the skills interaction.. i literally said no changes should be made to the skills, thats a different topic altogether that you arguing about.. increase or remove the target limits simple..  you clearly want blobs to have monopoly on maps cause you probably run with them constantly.

 

show me your gameplay infusion.

 

also question for you mate.. how do you feel about no downstate? would you rather it be perma? or scrap the event altogether?

Edited February 20, 2022 by Jarwan.8263

[Infusion.7149]

Downstate is fine, the health hasn't been reduced to match the damage nerfs which is the problem along with skills not prioritizing alive players unless downed are specifically targeted. What isn't fine is the rallying mechanic. Removing downstate means battle standard, illusion of life, signet of mercy, glyph of renewal are deleted and function gyro is meaningless most of the time.

It's also funny you think WVW is balanced around roaming I guess that is why your instinct is "1v1 me bro" (also you rank 69 in PVP I'm more than double that and close to double your WVW rank playing a support) which I can't since I'm not even EU. You're playing fresh air scepter focus which is not going to be viable in any group environment regardless of target cap due to the delays on all AoEs , any group with superspeed would just run right out of all of the damage.

Most people serious about WVW also run arcdps and that is probably why you don't see the issues presented by your proposal. You have no idea of damage past the single target you have on your screen.

Edited February 20, 2022 by Infusion.7149

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

I'll just say that offensive skills should have a target cap of 10 while defensive skills should have a target cap of 5. This worked really well in another game I played and allowed effective zerg busting, because defense always favors the smaller group while offensive always punishes the bigger group.

Edited February 21, 2022 by Hannelore.8153

[Swagger.1459]

@Jarwan.8263 “thats the problem.. the game encourages you to be around groups cause your safe with the target limits.. that should apply to pve. not competitive pvp modes where you can raise players from downstate?”

 

 

Ummm, well, one problem here is that you don’t understand what wvw is. Second problem is that upping the target caps still gives more advantage to a larger groups and we have already been told there are technical limitations to upping the target cap as well. 
 

Good luck! 

[Jarwan.8263]

10 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

It's also funny you think WVW is balanced around roaming I guess that is why your instinct is "1v1 me bro" (also you rank 69 in PVP I'm more than double that and close to double your WVW rank playing a support) which I can't since I'm not even EU. You're playing fresh air scepter focus which is not going to be viable in any group environment regardless of target cap due to the delays on all AoEs , any group with superspeed would just run right out of all of the damage.

wvw balanced around roaming? no... abilities, builds etc is a separate topic altogether.. this one is about the few vs the many.

from NA server? no wonder mate.. your good players leaving cause theres no challenge there apparently.

 

- joining a commander train capping stuff generates way more xp than if you roamed in search for only pvp. so i guess you are exactly the type of player i'm referring to in my original posts.. dashes 180 to avoid all engagements unless they outnumber 10 to 1.

your a support m8. no wonder you are bothered by this when you don't even damage much at all .. you just walk around booning people and healing.. you want to be the one who takes no damage when you go to res a target. it makes sense now

 

you have taken the stance that its fine a a necro can stand next to a fbd with minions surrounding them, and each of those minions acting as a "target".

with the limited abilities and cooldown durations you are given.  You Sir!  Think its fair that your aoe's thrown at them should hit minions first(which they do)and leave the fbd and necro unscathed.. whilst your also sustaining their attacks. 

gg man.

 

substitute that for any class, however many players... whether you are 1,2,3,4,5 against 10,15,20,25.. 

the game does not discourage you to dog pile on someone, they placed gates to make sure it should happen by telling you that you can't go against any players above 5. if its 2v6, yes theres still an extra.. but they still hitting 5..

if its 3v6... yes, theres still 3.. but they still hitting 5... you get me lad? what if that 6th player was chuck norris behind the keyboard and knew how to play his class, but the game allowed him to receive no damage cause he was stacked within his group against 3 enemies. who does it favour then? at that point 1 has a clear advantage regardless of skill. it essentially says all your hard work is pointless, give up.

most players shouldn't feel like they can't roam the bl's cause of it.. whereas i do... and mid week onwards its empty cause most daily players are gone.

- i refuse to believe that the reason for the limits is cause of performance. when all these target limits technically extends all fights right? which surely means more skills are being used. logic would assume. 

- PvP was ruined when cleansing sigil only removed 1 condition? and that mode is essentially bottlenecked by tanky/condi variants. but I can still guarantee i'm more effective in there than you are why would i torture myself in that game mode on a fa tempest. having said that i still got to taste legendary rank yesterday for 20 whole minutes in that 2v2 event.. 

i'm quick to ask for 1v1 cause it astounds me when players argue a huge flaw in the mechanics, so i usually want to see how they play using it. and if they can't turn the camera let alone land any attacks.. then their opinions are less to me cause clearly this limit benefits them, blobbers. anyone wanting to chase someone down cause they feel safe in a group. 

Edited February 21, 2022 by Jarwan.8263
grammar

[Dawdler.8521]

2 hours ago, Jarwan.8263 said:

if its 2v6, yes theres still an extra.. but they still hitting 5..

if its 3v6... yes, theres still 3.. but they still hitting 5... you get me lad?

Numbers that doesnt matter at all for the AoE limit because the odds of the outnumbered group being hindered by the cap is close to 0%.

At higher numbers there is a point, but heres the thing that people seem to forget: if 20 can hit 40, then 40 can also hit 20 with twice the numbers. The 20 loose anyway. 

WvW would just become an even more stealth one-push clown fiesta. Whoever stealth first wins. Because stealth in roaming isnt good enough, we need more when zerging.

Edited February 21, 2022 by Dawdler.8521

[Jarwan.8263]

1 hour ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Numbers that doesnt matter at all for the AoE limit because the odds of the outnumbered group being hindered by the cap is close to 0%.

At higher numbers there is a point, but heres the thing that people seem to forget: if 20 can hit 40, then 40 can also hit 20 with twice the numbers. The 20 loose anyway. 

WvW would just become an even more stealth one-push clown fiesta. Whoever stealth first wins. Because stealth in roaming isnt good enough, we need more when zerging.

the cap is exactly what perpetuates blobbing. read my previous posts cause you obviously didn't. going round in circles.

i don't care if a zerg wants to all drop their aoes on 1 poor dude doing dailies roaming the bl.. thats pretty much how most players play the game.. Question is WHY can't the one whos alone cripple/root/damage all them back... instead of just doing it to 5.. really think about that for longer than the 10 seconds you spent typing that. 

 

only sound argument made for it was performance and i think thats bull..

 

the game is designed for casuals to feel safe in huge numbers instead of testing their abilities to grasp the mechanics and excel. the game says no.. find a squad.. it'd get laughed out of E sports

Edited February 21, 2022 by Jarwan.8263

[Dawdler.8521]

58 minutes ago, Jarwan.8263 said:

only sound argument made for it was performance and i think thats bull..

Ah. Well you said you played from HoT. Anyone thats played from launch would know optimising for performance is not bull, WvW zerging used to be hell with culled players and lag fiestas every clash with skills not reacting for minutes at a time, rubberbanding etc. The WvW we have today run smooth in comparison to how it used to in the early years (despite the "worse" AWS that still lag at times).

Edited February 21, 2022 by Dawdler.8521

[The Boz.2038]

1 hour ago, Jarwan.8263 said:

the cap is exactly what perpetuates blobbing

No, what perpetuates blobbing is basic common sense. Safety in numbers, speed of obtaining objectives, minimizing chances of running into an enemy that outnumbers you. Target limits absolutely do nothing for this.

You seem... very abrasive and unwilling to take criticism for a bad idea.

[RisenHowl.2419]

18 hours ago, Jarwan.8263 said:

Then i guess it should never be brought up again.. just because that topic was brought up when? 2013.. anyone could have googled that.. even i did to see how many times it had been brought up.. you are arguing on the skills interaction.. i literally said no changes should be made to the skills, thats a different topic altogether that you arguing about.. increase or remove the target limits simple..  you clearly want blobs to have monopoly on maps cause you probably run with them constantly.

 

show me your gameplay infusion.

 

also question for you mate.. how do you feel about no downstate? would you rather it be perma? or scrap the event altogether?

 

Alright, so i've got a bit of time.

 

 

 

Hopefully this satisfies your 'i'm good and you're not so your facts aren't relevent' attitude.

 

Removing target caps is a terrible idea. As Infusion pointed out above you have no idea what kind of damage people are capable of putting out because you don't use the tracking tools available. From what I can gather in your posts you think removing the target cap will allow you to fight massively outnumbered.

 

Here's the thing, if targets caps are removed there's no incentive for people to group up in the first place while fighting. They'll spread out. You'll still be outnumbered 50 to 1, only now your skills will just hit 1-3 of them at a time because they're not going to stack up like morons. All 50 of them will still be able to focus on you though np.

 

If people were to continue stacking all it would take is 1s for any guardian to wipe an entire map queue via permeating wrath (with 1 button press you could apply max stacks, 1500 burning, >200k damage per target with 0 condition damage investment). 1 Berserker could engage with their LB burst followed by 2 arc dividers and boom 50 bags. You think necros summoning 6 minons is bad, wait until they can each summon 50. It'd take all of a week for the meta to shift entirely away from stacking to ranged damage + pulls only.

 

'Fights' wouldn't even be a thing, you'll have groups of 35 spawn camping in a cloud. You won't be able to leave the spawn as a single player with 30 people targeting each individual as they try to get out. If you try to group up, see above. Anyone who manages to stealth through will get hunted down by 10 people, good luck even taking a camp in those conditions. The single biggest advantage a solo player has against a blob is that the blob can't be everywhere on a map at any given time. A cloud can though.

Edited February 21, 2022 by RisenHowl.2419

[Zyreva.1078]

 

DH traps are 180 trigger radius unlike wells. If you don't believe me you can check ingame. If the radius is that much of a problem then you can propose it be reduced to 130. They are PBAOEs so the current strategy with traps is to backpedal into them, trap when engaging, or pretrap much like in PVE.

We are talking about aoe damage, trigger radius is irrelevant here. And i never said the radius is a problem. Reducing it wouldn't solve anything, just would make aoe skills worse.

 

So what? It's effectively a nerf to meteor if you increase target caps due to the current damage reduction and a buff to skills that do high damage in a single hit. If target cap is the only thing that matters you can just get on an arrowcart with 50 target cap.

How is it a nerf to any aoe skill if it is allowed to hit more targets? The dmg reduction on meteors is again irrelevant here, because hitting for 100% + 90% would still be a lot more dmg than hitting for 100% + 0%. I also never said target caps are the only thing that matters. But they can be relevant - sometimes quite a lot.

 

Burst damage on one target is higher and that is the drawback of having a high damage skill that doesn't hit many times , it's also liable to be fully mitigated by aegis

 

Higher burst dmg = drawback? Error 404: Logic not found.

 

It also doesn't change the fact that more clouding players can effectively carpet bomb an area which doesn't change the fact that you would generate more downeds with more players , rendering the suggestion useless.

More players = more dmg is already the case, nobody is denying that. But target caps shift the difference between potential outgoing and incoming damage even more into the favour of the larger side, much more than the number difference alone would do.

Now there is one concern that comes to my mind and and that are choke points that might become impassable for grps of any size and not just small ones, if there is a zerg large enough spamming all their stuff into one small area. However it still would hurt the larger zergs mostly and not the smaller ones, because the latter already don't benefit that much (if at all) from target caps.

So would removing any cap from all aoes without further changes instantly lead to ideal results? Likely not. But that doesn't mean that a removal or increase for certain skills with further adjustments if needed wouldn't be an improvement. Because again - target caps are NOT a fair mechanic. They grant additional advantages to an already favoured grp based on nothing but sheer numbers, which increases the impact of numerical imbalance in a game mode where fights are rarely even.

Edited February 21, 2022 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

The OP is right, I’ve written pretty much essays on how having target caps (at 5 instead of none at all) is one of the primary causes of this games balance issues at all scales…but it goes a bit deeper than that
 

I have a number of forum posts I’ll link in a moment to you and to other that describes this in better detail. Most people don’t understand the target system of the game, nor can see past the behavior of mechanics at these scales.

How Target Caps are part of the Balance Problem

How the Target System works (1)

How the Target System works (2)

In addition, there are some skills that can go over the 5 man target cap because of how the targeting system works. Most people don't actually utilize the behavior because people don't really know....but this is how it's possible for guilds to fight outnumbered and win against larger groups...is cause they simply are able to do more than you can since they are utilizing skills that can effect way more than the target cap, while most people are only utilizing 5 target capped abilities.

There's also another comment here people should read about optimal zerg configuration and why these configurations are actually so strong (it's due to target caps). 

Optimal Zerg Configuration

Edited February 21, 2022 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Infusion.7149]

32 minutes ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

We are talking about aoe damage, trigger radius is irrelevant here. And i never said the radius is a problem. Reducing it wouldn't solve anything, just would make aoe skills worse.

How is it a nerf to any aoe skill if it is allowed to hit more targets? The dmg reduction on meteors is again irrelevant here, because hitting for 100% + 90% would still be a lot more dmg than hitting for 100% + 0%. I also never said target caps are the only thing that matters. But they can be relevant - sometimes quite a lot.

Higher burst dmg = drawback? Error 404: Logic not found.

More players = more dmg is already the case, nobody is denying that. But target caps shift the difference between potential outgoing and incoming damage even more into the favour of the larger side, much more than the number difference alone would do.

Now there is one concern that comes to my mind and and that are choke points that might become impassable for grps of any size and not just small ones, if there is a zerg large enough spamming all their stuff into one small area. However it still would hurt the larger zergs mostly and not the smaller ones, because the latter already don't benefit that much (if at all) from target caps.

So would removing any cap from all aoes without further changes instantly lead to ideal results? Likely not. But that doesn't mean that a removal or increase for certain skills with further adjustments if needed wouldn't be an improvement. Because again - target caps are NOT a fair mechanic. They grant additional advantages to an already favoured grp based on nothing but sheer numbers, which increases the impact of numerical imbalance in a game mode where fights are rarely even.

It's a nerf to meteor because you are spending close to 2-3 seconds to cast it even under quickness , whereas you don't gain anything from it since you assume that people are going to stand in it. It greatly favors any AOE that is near instant (we are in a superspeed meta) and since everyone else is also not target capped it's essentially equivalent to everyone having arrowcarts. There are no skills mentioned here, just "remove target caps". If you look at historically what has happened, skills that do damage have had their target caps dropped not increased (see sand shades for example). It's kind of funny that the topic creator is a tempest since it would make tempest basically unplayable in overload ranges , have fun being a aurashare support...

One hit burst damage is a drawback if it is fully mitigated in one aegis which is why damage focused on point is what matters. Literally what I wrote. Unlike PVP where mantra of solace is not ran, nearly every firebrand runs mantra of solace at the expense of their own survival, heal scrapper is the main heal in any squad right now. Unless it's an extremely  tight stack then something with such huge radius such as Arc Divider (a 5 target skill with 3 enlarging hits to 480) can produce top tier damage when properly supported but DH symbols and traps are meta along with wells and hammer herald. Have you played when COR was a 2s cooldown and rev stacking was a thing because you were liable to be hit by multiple at a time for 15K each at 1200 range? You think removing target cap would not put us back to that era? The whole point of Feb 2020 balance patch was to reduce damage and healing.

Also I'd expect the predominant strategy to be superspeed stealth gyro portal bombs or similar if this change is enacted. It won't be "rain meteor on the enemy" like the topic creator is aiming for.

Edited February 21, 2022 by Infusion.7149

[ArchonWing.9480]

Hey remember when everyone loved 10 target shades? Let's make them 50.

I mean we already had a massive damage with stab and support being useless meta. That was the start of HoT  and that was the worst version of the pirate ship crap.
 

I dunno about anyone else, but we already have 10 minute staring contests already. People are so afraid of dying even  in their massive healer carry groups that we may as well just fight on the forums instead if that happens.

Why are people obsessed with these grandiose changes when all Anet needs to do is not troll the players by buffing things that already don't need buffs?

Edited February 21, 2022 by ArchonWing.9480

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

On 2/20/2022 at 11:12 AM, Dawdler.8521 said:

All skills have target limits. Even damage skills apply AoE boons. IE no target cap on boons.

Unless you are also implying no target cap on anything so that a 1200 range single target pull also would pull an infinite amount of people in front in a full 180 degree arc. If so then lol.

Tbf I would love to scorpion wire an entire zerg off a cliff lol

[Xenesis.6389]

3 minutes ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

Hey remember when everyone loved 10 target shades?

🙋‍♂️

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🤷‍♂️

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😁

 

[Zyreva.1078]

 

Removing target caps is a terrible idea. As Infusion pointed out above you have no idea what kind of damage people are capable of putting out because you don't use the tracking tools available. From what I can gather in your posts you think removing the target cap will allow you to fight massively outnumbered.

Anyone who commonly fights in small grps of 5 or less against larger numbers knows how much incoming dmg there can be without target caps - and how to deal with it (within limits ofc). No need for arc dps (which btw doesn't mean small scale players don't use it). Zerg players are used to facetanking, because that's what those small target caps allows them to do, which is why it is rather easy to generate big arc dps numbers vs zergs.

Contrary to what many seem to belive here, survivability is not the biggest issue when fighting as a small coordinated grp against larger numbers. Surviving for a while in like a 5vs10-20 players is often very much possible. But effective counter pressure - which btw would automatically reduce incoming dmg - is not and target caps are the main reason. Which allows those larger grps (especially when it is 15+) to completely disregard any defense and just spam their entire offensive kit while brainlessly charging right into our bomb. Few might go down, but it won't matter, because it is impossible to punish the zerg if they stack up on the downed to press F and and get them up nearly instantly while still sitting in our aoes.

 

 

Here's the thing, if targets caps are removed there's no incentive for people to group up in the first place while fighting. They'll spread out. You'll still be outnumbered 50 to 1, only now your skills will just hit 1-3 of them at a time because they're not going to stack up like morons. All 50 of them will still be able to focus on you though np.

Being able to effectively support each other (including taking advantage of the op rez mechanic) is no incentive? Idk about that. When i'm playing with guildies, we try to stay close to each other (and getting separated usually means things start to go bad) even tho we usually don't benefit from target caps at all. Do we want to stack on top of each other in the middle of the enemy bomb? Ofc not. But maybe the enemies also shouldn't be able to facetank out dmg like it is nothing?

 

 

If people were to continue stacking all it would take is 1s for any guardian to wipe an entire map queue via permeating wrath (with 1 button press you could apply max stacks, 1500 burning, >200k damage per target with 0 condition damage investment). 1 Berserker could engage with their LB burst followed by 2 arc dividers and boom 50 bags. You think necros summoning 6 minons is bad, wait until they can each summon 50. It'd take all of a week for the meta to shift entirely away from stacking to ranged damage + pulls only.

Because it would be totally impossible to change skills individually or adjust certain mechanics such as the escalating nature of permeating wrath. Absolutely a reason to not ever touch target caps at all, yep ...

 

 

'Fights' wouldn't even be a thing, you'll have groups of 35 spawn camping in a cloud. You won't be able to leave the spawn as a single player with 30 people targeting each individual as they try to get out. If you try to group up, see above. Anyone who manages to stealth through will get hunted down by 10 people, good luck even taking a camp in those conditions. The single biggest advantage a solo player has against a blob is that the blob can't be everywhere on a map at any given time. A cloud can though.

You are talking as if aoe caps are the sole and only reason for players to grp up and coordiante and support each other. That's just bs. Also if players want to spawn camp and zerg down solo players, clouding or not, they can do that just fine already. Changes to aoe caps wouldn't matter at all in that regard, except the zerglings would have to be a tiny little bit more wary about potential counter pressure.

Edited February 21, 2022 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[Zyreva.1078]

1 hour ago, Infusion.7149 said:

It's a nerf to meteor because you are spending close to 2-3 seconds to cast it even under quickness , whereas you don't gain anything from it since you assume that people are going to stand in it. It greatly favors any AOE that is near instant (we are in a superspeed meta) and since everyone else is also not target capped it's essentially equivalent to everyone having arrowcarts. There are no skills mentioned here, just "remove target caps".

I know there are reasons why meteor shower isn't the greatest skill, but those reasons have absolutely nothing to do with aoe caps. It is also not the only aoe skill staff ele has access to, in fact it has quite a few single hit burst skills. Ofc those also tend to suffer from being slow just like the entire weapon, and getting countered by the super speed meta, but again, that's an entire different topic. Completely irrelevant for this discussion.

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It's kind of funny that the topic creator is a tempest since it would make tempest basically unplayable in overload ranges , have fun being a aurashare support...

Tempest of all sorts - support, dps, hybrid -  is one of the better classes for outnumbered small scale fights. Fights where those players already have zero benefits and only disadvantages from target caps. Can't really get worse, especially for more offensive builds, because counter pressure can also provide some sort of defense. And support is arguably overpowered anyway.

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One hit burst damage is a drawback if it is fully mitigated in one aegis which is why damage focused on point is what matters. Literally what I wrote.

"Burst damage on one target is higher and that is the drawback of having a high damage skill that doesn't hit many times" is literally what you wrote. The part regarding aegis was a separate addition and is related to those skills being single hit, not the amount of dmg they deal.. And yes, aegis and blind counter those skills. So we have some benefits to single hit burst skills and some drawbacks - almost seems like balance to me. Where is the problem exactly, especially in regard to aoe caps?

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Have you played when COR was a 2s cooldown and rev stacking was a thing because you were liable to be hit by multiple at a time for 15K each at 1200 range?

Yes i did.

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You think removing target cap would not put us back to that era? The whole point of Feb 2020 balance patch was to reduce damage and healing.

No, i don't think so. Because the problem wasn't the amount of players that could be hit, the problem was the amount of dmg it could deal to those that did get hit, the short cd and the lack of telegraph/reaction window. Which all got changed.

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Also I'd expect the predominant strategy to be superspeed stealth gyro portal bombs or similar if this change is enacted. It won't be "rain meteor on the enemy" like the topic creator is aiming for.

Which can often be countered by situational awareness. It is like people think, without getting carried hard by aoe caps it suddenly becomes impossible to stay alive whenever there is more than 1 attacker. But as someone who almost exclusively plays in grps of 5 or less and usually outnumbered - and therefore with zero artificial dmg mitigation from aoe caps - i can assure you, it is not that bad. Except for bad players i guess. Which is where those "never ever touch aoe caps, can't stay alive without" notion might stem from.

Edited February 21, 2022 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[RisenHowl.2419]

1 hour ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

Anyone who commonly fights in small grps of 5 or less against larger numbers knows how much incoming dmg there can be without target caps - and how to deal with it (within limits ofc). No need for arc dps (which btw doesn't mean small scale players don't use it). Zerg players are used to facetanking, because that's what those small target caps allows them to do, which is why it is rather easy to generate big arc dps numbers vs zergs.

Contrary to what many seem to belive here, survivability is not the biggest issue when fighting as a small coordinated grp against larger numbers. Surviving for a while in like a 5vs10-20 players is often very much possible. But effective counter pressure - which btw would automatically reduce incoming dmg - is not and target caps are the main reason. Which allows those larger grps (especially when it is 15+) to completely disregard any defense and just spam their entire offensive kit while brainlessly charging right into our bomb. Few might go down, but it won't matter, because it is impossible to punish the zerg if they stack up on the downed to press F and and get them up nearly instantly while still sitting in our aoes.

Being able to effectively support each other (including taking advantage of the op rez mechanic) is no incentive? Idk about that. When i'm playing with guildies, we try to stay close to each other (and getting separated usually means things start to go bad) even tho we usually don't benefit from target caps at all. Do we want to stack on top of each other in the middle of the enemy bomb? Ofc not. But maybe the enemies also shouldn't be able to facetank out dmg like it is nothing?

Because it would be totally impossible to change skills individually or adjust certain mechanics such as the escalating nature of permeating wrath. Absolutely a reason to not ever touch target caps at all, yep ...

You are talking as if aoe caps are the sole and only reason for players to grp up and coordiante and support each other. That's just bs. Also if players want to spawn camp and zerg down solo players, clouding or not, they can do that just fine already. Changes to aoe caps wouldn't matter at all in that regard, except the zerglings would have to be a tiny little bit more wary about potential counter pressure.

People who are only fighting 5v10 have no idea what kind of numbers are possible. A DH in one of our runs last month pulled 16.8m damage over 2h. That's with a 5 person target cap. 168m damage with no target cap, conservatively, or 23k damage each second. Removing target caps would unhinge this game.

 

People running in zergs know that sometimes you'll get unlucky. You lose people on enemy bombs that there is simply no avoiding. They know how to maneuver to cover their downs, how much incoming damage is acceptable, and how long they have to recover before the other group can bomb again. There's a skill to it that's similar to what's needed in small scale outnumbered roaming, which is something you seem to play down only because (i'm assuming) you've never experienced it.

 

You need to spend so much time avoiding damage that you can't effectively finish the larger group's downed players before they can res them. I'm very familiar with this, i tagged with 45 vs 70 on friday and had a difficult time finishing the downs effectively despite us out-damaging the other server on almost every fight. This wouldn't matter in the slightest though if the target cap were removed because these scenarios would cease to exist. No one would stack, at all. You would still be outnumbered, but it would be a cloud that's focused on pulling you. That would be even more difficult to fight outnumbered than the current boon ball meta because it wouldn't matter how coordinated your small group is, you're not going to have an answer for being stripped and pulled into a cloud over and over. It's not like big guilds would go away and you could roam supreme, it'd just be your 5 getting harried across a map by a coordinated group of 30 in a cloud.

 

You talk about how it'd be easy to adjust any problematic traits too, but I don't think you understand the complexity of what you're suggesting. This kind of change would invalidate any data anet's collected over 9 years on how to balance things. Hundreds of millions of data points, worthless. Each skill would have to be assessed individually and they would still, for certain, miss things. We'd go through literally years of wildly unbalanced gameplay, hemorrhaging players the entire time.

 

As far as fighting goes, support aoe caps and enemy target caps are the only reason to group up tightly in a ball. Without aoe caps those same players would group up in a new configuration that'd adjust to the meta, it absolutely won't be one that's favorable for smaller groups to fight. The biggest advantage a smaller group has against a bigger group right now is that the bigger group likely won't single out individuals, instead relying on carpet bombing. That changes when the bigger group is a cloud. Right now the bigger groups stay tight, meaning you have room to maneuver around them. In a cloud they'd just surround you and pick you apart. Right now large groups are optimized to fight other large groups, with no target cap they'll be optimized to rip apart any small groups of 5 they come across. This is a lose-lose man lol

[Xenesis.6389]

Damage target caps of 5 have been in the game since like 2012, a few were still 10, but they weren't the reason the first 5-6 years of the game small organized groups of 20 use to be able to take on groups of 40-50, think about what has changed so that is not quite possible anymore, it wasn't target caps. Look at the root of the problem instead of suggestion something that will just stack on another set of problems.

[Zyreva.1078]

2 hours ago, RisenHowl.2419 said:

People who are only fighting 5v10 have no idea what kind of numbers are possible. A DH in one of our runs last month pulled 16.8m damage over 2h. That's with a 5 person target cap. 168m damage with no target cap, conservatively, or 23k damage each second. Removing target caps would unhinge this game.

Again, the main reason those numbers are so high, is that a lot of it is "ineffective" dmg that gets facetanked and outhealed . If players would actually die as fast as those numbers might suggest, total dmg done would be much lower. I've been there, farming easy top dmg with staff weaver while still relying on the mass of the zerg to actually confirm kills. Doesn't really mean anything.

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People running in zergs know that sometimes you'll get unlucky. You lose people on enemy bombs that there is simply no avoiding. They know how to maneuver to cover their downs, how much incoming damage is acceptable, and how long they have to recover before the other group can bomb again. There's a skill to it that's similar to what's needed in small scale outnumbered roaming, which is something you seem to play down only because (i'm assuming) you've never experienced it.

I haven't zerged much yes, but occasionally i did. Mostly as a new player, because it was the easiest way to feel useful despite being trash at the game. Later on i tried to join squads on some occasions, but always found it incredibly boring and unsatisfying. Being able to consistently get top dmg and surviving just fine (downstate carry ftw!) on a class i had less than 1 hour of gameplay experience, while at the same time having basically no impact on the outcome of the fight myself, no matter what i would do or play is not what i enjoy. Not saying there is absolutely no skill involved. It still matters. But the more players are involved on your side, the less impactful individual performance becomes and it is very easy to get carried.

Also a lot of the things that make gw2 combat interesting and skillful such as reading and reacting in different ways to skill animations (a lot of them are impossible to see in zerg fights due to ridiculous visual clutter), keeping track of your own as well as enemy cooldowns and all the little things that can differentiate an average player from a decent one and a top tier players from the good ones. Yes you can and should keep track of your enemies "main" bomb and maybe your own grps stab sources in a zerg, and probably not tank too many red circles if there is a lot of them, but many things just fall by the wayside. I mean, how often do you coun't enemy dodges, interrupt heal skills or any skill for that matter (deliberately, not accidentially!), cancel your burst because your enemy just used an defensive skill or to bait cds, intentionally used a certain combo finisher that wasn't pre fight smoke blasting, all while having to juggle between offense and defense every single second. And that's just a few examples. I feel like so many combat mechanics are either irrelevant or impossible to take advantage of in larger fights.

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You need to spend so much time avoiding damage that you can't effectively finish the larger group's downed players before they can res them.

Nope, once again, incoming dmg is not the main issue and it would be even less of a problem if zergs wouldn't be able to focus entirely on offense just because their numbers protect them.

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This wouldn't matter in the slightest though if the target cap were removed because these scenarios would cease to exist. No one would stack, at all. You would still be outnumbered, but it would be a cloud that's focused on pulling you. That would be even more difficult to fight outnumbered than the current boon ball meta because it wouldn't matter how coordinated your small group is, you're not going to have an answer for being stripped and pulled into a cloud over and over. It's not like big guilds would go away and you could roam supreme, it'd just be your 5 getting harried across a map by a coordinated group of 30 in a cloud.

We already mostly fight "clouds", at least when outnumbered more than 1:2, because trying to take on a somewhat coordinated boon ball with such a numbers disadvantage is pretty pointless. We already get boon stripped and pulled and focused down with single target skills. All those things happen already and they will continue to happen, yes. But they won't get harder to deal with, because aoe caps have no relevance in this regard. Also even clouds tend to stack for ressing or in choke points. Taking advantage of terrain is key when fighting larger numbers. We aren't sitting there open field, trying to win "poke wars" (or at least try to, ofc things don't always go as planned).

I also don't think players would stop entirely to grp up and coordinated guild grps would cease to exist. I have played a game with no aoe caps and certain aoe skills that would increase in dmg the more players were hit - without limit. Under the right circumstances and with the right build it was possible for a single player to blow up an entire zerg. Did it stop players from coordinating, stacking and zerging? Absolutely not. Because the advantages of superior numbers, support and coordination - which works best in close proximity - remain huge (and the same applies to GW2 - support is very powerful - and mostly close range). Having bigger numbers also makes players careless and more likely to overextend, even when they know there might be some risk involved. So all it did was giving smaller grps a fighting chance if they outplayed their opponents and meant, zergs weren't entirely untouchable just because the numbers disparity was big enough. But the most powerful grps (so called "ball grps") were still tightly stacked heavily organised grps with heavy focus on support. Kinda like those boon balls we have in GW2, except they had to rely less on numbers.

(Before anyone tells me to "play that game if you want no aoe caps", there are many good reasons why i don't, which have nothing to do with aoe caps. So don't bother)

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You talk about how it'd be easy to adjust any problematic traits too, but I don't think you understand the complexity of what you're suggesting. This kind of change would invalidate any data anet's collected over 9 years on how to balance things. Hundreds of millions of data points, worthless. Each skill would have to be assessed individually and they would still, for certain, miss things. We'd go through literally years of wildly unbalanced gameplay, hemorrhaging players the entire time.

I'm pretty sure 9 year old data is pretty useless at that point anyway. Also data needs correct interpretation in oder to be useful and that's something that requires getting into the fray here and now, not looking at some numbers from years ago.

I'm not saying it would be easy, but i also don't think it would be impossible. Huge outliers can be identified and adressed quickly and then there needs to be frequent follow up adjustmens with maybe some occasional  bigger shake up to prevent the meta from getting stale. That's how balance should be done regardless imo. No, i do not think anything like that is realistic.  I mean, when was the last big balance patch for WvW? 2 years ago? And no changes planned for the expansion release? Yea, i'm not that delusional to belive anything we discuss here is actually relevant.

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As far as fighting goes, support aoe caps and enemy target caps are the only reason to group up tightly in a ball. Without aoe caps those same players would group up in a new configuration that'd adjust to the meta, it absolutely won't be one that's favorable for smaller groups to fight. The biggest advantage a smaller group has against a bigger group right now is that the bigger group likely won't single out individuals, instead relying on carpet bombing. That changes when the bigger group is a cloud. Right now the bigger groups stay tight, meaning you have room to maneuver around them. In a cloud they'd just surround you and pick you apart. Right now large groups are optimized to fight other large groups, with no target cap they'll be optimized to rip apart any small groups of 5 they come across. This is a lose-lose man lol

See above.

Edited February 21, 2022 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[Zephyrus.9680]

It worked like this very early in the game and "skill lag" was the problem. We need target caps for technical reasons more than balance. There are cleaner solutions like adjusting certain boons in WvW mode and swapping certain stats on Minstrels set.