WvW Balance Patch May 10th

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

5 hours ago, DragonSlayer.1087 said:

I can’t help  but think this balance is heavily influenced by someone in the community that wants the WvW  meta to be solely focused on GvG Boon Ball. 😒 

So they don’t care if they alienate the people that like Pirate Ship or are in servers that rely on PUGs. 

 

should have stopped the sentece at "i cannot help" ...

 

bc the largescale fights are super tedious, its hard to cleave downed often, its a boring cc spam and praying that your supports and damage isn't full afk and rallybotting (which still happens enough due to lags everywhere or just slow players).

 

so the balance in that isn't good, it is more like throwing wet noodles at each other and the one with the less experienced players who cannot take the pressure from six minute long boring grind fights wins...

 

or the classy player bringing random classes to blob vs blob fights or doesn't come on voice for them etc etc

[God.2708]

I think my favorite part of the term boonball is that the 'balling' has almost nothing to do with boons. What do you call a holosmith running around with a bar maxed out on boons? A boonsolo?

There isn't anyone in the game who wants to see MORE boon spam. But this patch had nothing to do with that, and these changes did nothing to make boon balls 'stronger'. If anything they made them weaker because now a single rev in them can't one shot you when you're trying to cloud them, they actually have to coordinate their damage to kill randoms. And coordinating damage is hard, it's why you're complaining you can't kill them. But being able to solo kill multiple people by yourself easily is terrible for a mode where lots of people are running around en masse, regardless of how they run around.

[Abjurer.9302]

More damage helps smaller groups attack larger groups.  Why are people still trying to flip this argument around?  A solo player caught in a boon ball bomb is dead regardless of the damage coefficients.

For the person who reacted with confused:

Lets say a larger group can kill an entire smaller group with their bomb and the smaller group can only kill one person with their bomb against the larger group.  These groups are using the same builds.

Then a balance patch doubles the damage output.  The large group's bomb still kills the smaller group but now throws extra damage on top of their already dead bodies.  The risk for the smaller group has not changed because either case they are dead.

However the extra damage allows the smaller group to now kill two people with their bomb.  The smaller groups bomb has become twice as effective.

Edited May 14, 2022 by Abjurer.9302

[Kaenaydar.5631]

My class the Untamed gets another nerf yay lol.

[God.2708]

3 hours ago, Abjurer.9302 said:

More damage helps smaller groups attack larger groups.  Why are people still trying to flip this argument around?  A solo player caught in a boon ball bomb is dead regardless of the damage coefficients.

For the person who reacted with confused:

Lets say a larger group can kill an entire smaller group with their bomb and the smaller group can only kill one person with their bomb against the larger group.  These groups are using the same builds.

Then a balance patch doubles the damage output.  The large group's bomb still kills the smaller group but now throws extra damage on top of their already dead bodies.  The risk for the smaller group has not changed because either case they are dead.

However the extra damage allows the smaller group to now kill two people with their bomb.  The smaller groups bomb has become twice as effective.

The flaw here is, why are you using the same builds and same approach to a group that has more people than you. In most instances of competition that'd be called idiocy.

 

The other flaw is you've left out the other use case. What happens if both groups are the same size. With less damage the bomb leaves a group a chance to recover, and the fight continues on. With more damage one group just dies and had to run back from spawn and instead of interesting tactical fights the mode devolves into 'who can hit first' and that is what anet is trying to steer away from.

 

You can't skill balance a game under the assumption things with be imbalanced. You should make mode or mechanical changes to adjust for those factors. Players presented with an asymmetric fight should use asymmetric tactics. Not assume the same thing can and should work.

[Abjurer.9302]

18 minutes ago, God.2708 said:

The flaw here is, why are you using the same builds and same approach to a group that has more people than you. In most instances of competition that'd be called idiocy.

 

18 minutes ago, God.2708 said:

Players presented with an asymmetric fight should use asymmetric tactics. Not assume the same thing can and should work.

You should understand that I said they are using the same builds for the simplicity of the example.  Of course they would be using different builds.

 

18 minutes ago, God.2708 said:

With more damage one group just dies and had to run back from spawn and instead of interesting tactical fights the mode devolves into 'who can hit first' and that is what anet is trying to steer away from.

If you take away damage so that small groups can't compete there there is more dodging of fights because numbers become the main factor that determines the outcome.  Then the mode becomes a karma train.

Edited May 14, 2022 by Abjurer.9302

[Hotride.2187]

17 minutes ago, God.2708 said:

With more damage one group just dies and had to run back from spawn and instead of interesting tactical fights the mode devolves into 'who can hit first' and that is what anet is trying to steer away from.

We will see how many zerg fight players will want to play the wet noodle game.

[God.2708]

1 minute ago, Abjurer.9302 said:

 

You understand I said they are using the same builds for the simplicity of the example.  Of course they would be using different builds.

 

If you take away damage so that small groups can't compete there there is more dodging of fights because numbers become the main factor that determines the outcome.  Then the mode becomes a karma train.

Numbers are always the main factor in determining the outcome of a fight.

 

I want to emphasize my last point though because you glossed over it. Seeking to make smaller group play stronger/more effective is good, but it should be done through mechanical or mode goal changes. Doing it through skill balance is fruitless.

[Xenesis.6389]

There are no interesting tactical fights when you force everyone into playing one way, stack 12 boons, 50 players on meta classes, stealth ball into other group. There are no interesting counters, there's no other interesting way to approach a fight, everyone does it the same way. The only interesting part of the fights left is where they take place.

[Abjurer.9302]

If skills are balance where only equal sized groups can fight against each other that seems more like instance based guild vs guild.  Not an open world PVP sandbox.

[God.2708]

Small groups can fight against big groups. I run a 5 man that specifically builds to break 20-25 man groups with the help of pug clouds. With 10 people we could break 35ish to maybe 40. (assuming similar numbers are around, organization optional). It is a different playstyle. I've found a lot of different ways to make it work. It does require teamwork, there's no getting away from that.

It does require different tactics and use of game mechanics. That's a good thing. It is almost totally independent of skill balance because there is no way to make skill balance(read: power modifiers and other mode splittable components, not skill design) a factor in winning outnumbered fights. Designing skills so you can kamikaze into a group over and over isn't good design because it means everyone just plays defensively and no one ever leaves their keep.

 

All these skill change complaints are really complaints about WvW not getting attention and the player base dwindling, and people being mad over the wrong thing.

[Kozumi.5816]

13 hours ago, kamikharzeeh.8016 said:

doesn't come on voice for them

Shouldn't need voice to pvp in WvW.

[Kozumi.5816]

8 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

There are no interesting tactical fights when you force everyone into playing one way, stack 12 boons, 50 players on meta classes, stealth ball into other group. There are no interesting counters, there's no other interesting way to approach a fight, everyone does it the same way. The only interesting part of the fights left is where they take place.

This is Anets vision. The vast majority do not like it and yet Anet seems to not care that they're making an entire game mode for a population that never gains players to replace the ones they're constantly losing.

Edited May 15, 2022 by Kozumi.5816

[Gorem.8104]

23 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

What a great week of wvw.

More groups leaving maps after wipe or two.

More groups avoiding fights with bigger groups.

"Roamers" going around in packs, and willbenders are the new thieves.

Another friend gets fed up and leaves once again.

Go ahead anet give us the final blow in the june patch.

/slow clap

Tbh I can not wait for the June patch, cause I bet that will be the final straw for a lot of people as they seem to have hyped up that patch. 
But considering their current direction as they make the game worse and not fix the issues we have been telling them to fix... And in fact make the issues worse by reducing damage players can do and nerfing anti-boon ball abilities.... Not much hope really. Depending on the june update, wvw as a game mode might die like pvp. Cept for the die hard fans of course. 

[Xenesis.6389]

2 minutes ago, Gorem.8104 said:

Tbh I can not wait for the June patch, cause I bet that will be the final straw for a lot of people as they seem to have hyped up that patch. 
But considering their current direction as they make the game worse and not fix the issues we have been telling them to fix... And in fact make the issues worse by reducing damage players can do and nerfing anti-boon ball abilities.... Not much hope really. Depending on the june update, wvw as a game mode might die like pvp. Cept for the die hard fans of course. 

Well apparently they're reworking banners and spirits to give out more quickness and alacrity, giving dps specs more access to might and fury uptime. So not really much to look forward to, same direction, just more boon bloat. They don't play wvw so they don't care to know it's issues, and the idiot guilds they're taking advice from are looking out for themselves, not the overall health of wvw combat. It is what it is.

[RisenHowl.2419]

This patch actually opened up some dps positions, overall pretty good imo

[LetoII.3782]

3 hours ago, RisenHowl.2419 said:

This patch actually opened up some dps positions

... For more boonballing options.

Stack and spam gameplay itself  being the complaint, I don't see how expanding options in doing so would help.

[Gorem.8104]

4 hours ago, RisenHowl.2419 said:

This patch actually opened up some dps positions, overall pretty good imo

Nerfs reduce build diversity, and these nerfs to range (seriously WHY nerf range in wvw, its already crazy weak and yet they nerfed it? do they even play this game?) were things no one was asking for. I just love how I see people ask for things, and those things never happen, and the things that do happen are usually filled with many Question marks. 

[Abjurer.9302]

5 hours ago, RisenHowl.2419 said:

This patch actually opened up some dps positions, overall pretty good imo

If you take my damage example to extremes if there was an AOE that pulsed 1 billion times a second for 1 billion damage it would put a single player and a 50 man group on an even playing field.  Who ever got their damage down first would win.

 

If you keep taking away damage it will reach a point where only the 50 man group through a coordinated attack will be able to kill any one.  The damage sharing from stacking would make them invincible to anyone but an opposing group of the same size.

 

The game keeps getting balanced for the latter.  Eventually unarmored variants of all builds will be available for the large group to use because the game balance will be so heavily skewed in their favor.

[God.2708]

2 hours ago, Abjurer.9302 said:

If you take my damage example to extremes if there was an AOE that pulsed 1 billion times a second for 1 billion damage it would put a single player and a 50 man group on an even playing field.  Who ever got their damage down first would win.

 

If you keep taking away damage it will reach a point where only the 50 man group through a coordinated attack will be able to kill any one.  The damage sharing from stacking would make them invincible to anyone but an opposing group of the same size.

 

The game keeps getting balanced for the latter.  Eventually unarmored variants of all builds will be available for the large group to use because the game balance will be so heavily skewed in their favor.

The 50 man group spreads out and has 50x the chances of hitting the 1 person. The one person misses because the 1 in 50 they aimed at dodged.

None of your analogies are actually thought out you're stuck in an incomplete logic loop to prove your own bias.

[Timelord.8190]

Anet is just as good at balancing as they are at playing. I've watched them play, and it aint pretty. 

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

15 hours ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

Shouldn't need voice to pvp in WvW.

largescale direly needs voice.

 

even with voice, u have in many blobs like 20 people or more doing random things, despite there beeing calls.

 

and u need to give vocal cooldowns on largescale (and this starts at guildraids of 15-20) so ur lead knows when they can call for those...

 

 

[Mabi black.1824]

22 hours ago, Abjurer.9302 said:

If you keep taking away damage it will reach a point where only the 50 man group through a coordinated attack will be able to kill any one.  The damage sharing from stacking would make them invincible to anyone but an opposing group of the same size.

as I have already said it is normal that the classes that are resized will never stop complaining.

the corrections I have read have coefficients of 0.1 and some cases just above 0.2

you can find a lot of footage where you see players throwing their skills at a distance and damaging multiple players with 8k or 10k of damage and beyond.

I travel normally with a health of 22k, and you have to explain to me how your group of 15/20 is not able to generate down in a few seconds. 

they could do another 10 balances like this and you can rest assured that you will continue to do your downs in seconds if you know what to do with your 15/20 group.

[Abjurer.9302]

2 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

you can find a lot of footage where you see players throwing their skills at a distance and damaging multiple players with 8k or 10k of damage and beyond.

I travel normally with a health of 22k, and you have to explain to me how your group of 15/20 is not able to generate down in a few seconds. 

8k hits only occur against glassy targets with no defensive boons.  Against a boon ball group you will get 3k hits or less depending upon barrier and other defenses.

[Hotride.2187]

19 hours ago, Timelord.8190 said:

Anet is just as good at balancing as they are at playing. I've watched them play, and it aint pretty. 

They also balance as often as they play (competitive)?