Perma Boon + Stacking Meta and Why I'm not willing to participate in Endgame Group Content

[DeceiverX.8361]

12 minutes ago, Vidit.7108 said:

As someone who remembers when boon support was rare, I don't ever want to go back to that. Players were a lot less forgiving of mistakes, fights took a lot longer, and content was much harder. I know there are players that want to go back to that because hard content is fun to them, but it was a very unpleasant experience to pug with other players when boon support was rare or difficult. Groups used to fall apart quickly as a lot of players were pretty judgmental of other players' skill.
I don't have the luxury of time to go back to spending 30 minutes on one fractal boss without any might and fury. People have gotten older and have more going on in life, if the future of this game is take more time to fight bosses I won't be the only one to quit.

So then why not just create global difficulty settings for group content like people asked for years ago?  Other games do it - they'll let you progress through the story and get the skins but bar some of the achievements or whatever for hard mode.

These mechanics BREAK PvP.  Like to the point this game went from having a $250k PvP tourney reward to becoming an international meme and utter laughingstock in references to balanced gameplay within a year, with the most competitive players making money by wintrading and selling cosmetic titles and skins to PvE players.

There is no fixing PvP aside from denying the boon access.  There is no build diversity without removing the boon access.  There is no point in actually thinking about how you approach combat on a personal or group level without removing the boon access.  It's too much, too powerful, and simply invalidates the purpose and intent of the content in the first place.  Why even design mechanics when the only thing that matters if whether or not you deal X damage and absorb Y damage per unit of time?  Why waste the dev resources when it could all just be training dummies checking the stats?

[Acheron.1580]

Honestly with the new patch changes, most of the overall positive changes in it had nothing to do with what boons they provide, and everything else feels honestly quite terrible. So with that in mind, I can completely understand where OP is coming from. And where the absolute worst complaints are coming from always revolve around the same two: Quickness and Alacrity. When you have to balance each class by nerfing them to give them one of these 2 buffs (but how you adamantly have to have each class being able to provide them in one way or another), it says a lot about how negatively they impact the game. I Don't mind most of the other buffs because healers should have interesting buffs to provide since target healing isn't a thing. I don't mind dps builds have offensive buffs because it makes rotations more interesting than hit what's on cooldown.

 

The biggest problem comes with what a massive impact quickness and alacrity have on the flow of the game, and it is horribly reflected in this upcoming patch. Honestly how much concentration would you run with those 2 buffs gone? How much more build diversity would exist if you didn't need to suck up 2 out of every 5 slots for these 2 buffs? Even if you give it to every class, there will be classes that just do it phenomenally better than others and so you go back to the bring the class not the player problem you were trying to avoid in the first place. You wanted people to have the ability to bring shared buffs so that people could work together to keep them up but that's not what happens now, or ever will because that is a gearing nightmare.

 

If you want to make an impactful and positive effect on the game, it starts by reviewing how these 2 buffs affect every weapon and utility, balancing around how you want them to feel as a result and remove these 2 buffs from the game (they practically already do this with the differences between pvp and pve). Then you could make meaningful class balance at a very controlled and tuned level. If you can get rid of repair costs, and then repairing altogether because it didn't have a positive feel for the game, this should be your next big target.

Edited June 25, 2022 by Acheron.1580

[Vidit.7108]

4 minutes ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

These mechanics BREAK PvP. 

If you want to remove boons from PvP I couldn't care less, if all the skills worked differently in PvP no one playing PvE will care. I fully admit that there are PvE changes that hurt PvP, I was around when they happened. It was a mistake that they went so long without skill splitting when a lot of other games did, there have been a lot of builds lost to time only because they tried to keep the game modes the same. So go ahead and remove boons from PvP and leave PvE players out of that change. 

[Hotride.2187]

28 minutes ago, Vidit.7108 said:

As someone who remembers when boon support was rare, I don't ever want to go back to that.

What makes you think this is not in the future? When perma quickness, alac and protection, cleanses heals and reflects (+high stab uptime) are baseline for any instanced content, why would the encounters not be made with that in mind?

[JPUlisses.8756]

People not wanting Perma Boon + Stacking Meta

But then most people wanting perma quickness on warrior and perma boons on Herald and heal alac on tempest etc

[AliamRationem.5172]

1 hour ago, JPUlisses.8756 said:

People not wanting Perma Boon + Stacking Meta

But then most people wanting perma quickness on warrior and perma boons on Herald and heal alac on tempest etc

They only want it because you can't compete with classes like firebrand and mechanist without providing quickness or alacrity along with top notch healing, DPS, or every other boon in the book + additional utility.  When the bar is set so ridiculously high, it leaves no room for other classes.  So what else are they supposed to do if they want to see any play outside of filling a placeholder DPS role?

[itspomf.9523]

11 hours ago, Diktator.8927 said:

Instead of being buffs to your character, boons don't feel like buffs at all, rather as permanent stat increases, as you are expected to have them on you permanently. Having boons permanently becomes the norm, the normality. You only notice them when you DON'T have them up. Having boosted attack speed, reduced cooldowns, more damage and crit is just normal and expected to have. 

 

I say we take it a step further and remove boons from most non-support specializations.

 

Back at release (you remember 2012, right?) boons were the exception, not the rule.  A few could do them rather reliably, like mesmer, guardian, or even warrior, but they were rarely being shared.  In the instances that they were, they were tied to specific weapons, skills, or traits (in the pre-specialization days), that granted either the static bonuses which are going away on June 28th, or low to moderate-duration boons, like a burst of Protection, some Swiftness, or even a nice dose of Might and Fury.

 

Things that, used strategically, could save your party or get that extra burst of damage in, like using Shield of Absorption, Sanctuary, or Wall of Reflection in certain boss fights an encounters as a guardian.  In early fractals, some of these skills were almost mandatory in specific fights just to compensate for the nasty number of projectiles that could get unleashed.

 

With everyone doing everything -- and the admittedly absurd expectation that 100% uptime is normal -- the entire game has suffered because of a rare few groups who have exploited capabilities consistently.  We all remember the template swapping imbroglio, meant to curb this exact behavior to prevent raid teams (and similar) from spewing out boons on a high-uptime template, then switching to DPS to burn the boss down.

 

That begs the question:  why is Anet turning around and not only enabling this behavior, but emboldening it by making it standard?

 

I don't have an answer to that.  I'm not sure I want one.  All I know is that we're years past due of looking at the game as a whole, in all modes -- competitive, story, and "high-end" content like raids -- and asking ourselves whether the source of imbalance isn't simply that, with each new expansion, they've tried to make new specializations more attractive by giving them access to new boons.

 

Remember when chronomancer introduced Alacrity and upended Heart of Thorns?  I do.

[Lostgamer.7862]

The professions are so diverse that they could literally have a tank, healer, DPS for condi and power, and support build and then some.  I am not sure what their goal in the game is at this point.  At first it was great when 5 of any class could beat dungeons with some sort of knowledge about a build.  I also liked that you could do the story and wonder with almost any build (though some were not as good as other) but you could play how you wanted.  Now, if you want legendary anything it's a huge time sink and for end game raids you have to have complicated and ever-changing builds to fit updates. Not to mention the builds do not make sense from lore aspect.  Why would you have a chornomancer that is not the master of alacrity? Why Revenant? Why can't thieves have a dodge tank, scepter healer, condi dmg build, power build, and support build?  Just as an example.  Then you can just switch traits and armor to play in that style. It might lock a few weapons to those builds, but that's ok in my opinion as long as it makes sense.  In that respect those weapons skills can have skills that are deliberate for those specific tasks.  It doesn't mean that you cannot be what you want in the open world.  Also, with minor tweaks for PvP and WvW, I think it would help with making those parts of the game more fun.  A good tank build could help hold points longer, and decappers could have their skills for getting around.  I am just spit balling, but right now it almost seems like a job just to play end game, and guess what?  If it feels like work to play a game, it's not a game anymore.  I'm not saying make it easier, just make it less complicated.  I shouldn't need a master's degree in every profession's game mechanics to play end game with a viable party.

[Matt H.6142]

The game is now 4 games, open world, organized play, pvp, and wvw. And we all don’t like the other.

Where the devs thought giving quickness to core warrior and alacrity to ranger would be some nice bonuses to their kits, organized play has calculated the gear, the food, and the rotation needed to maximize these and found it worse than the current meta/impossible to provide 100% uptime, and has labelled this a fail, at least as long as firebrand and mechanist go untouched.  These two going untouched is the crime of the patch. 

What I don’t like about 100% boon uptime is it leaves me no room to contribute. Tempest Heat Sync becomes useless. And why does only ele have a trait that removes might stacks from themselves?  And EOD has these protocols that just give you all boons for free, which seems counterintuitive in metas calling for boon supports.

And yet, I can tell you if the group can’t keep up these boons, the gameplay drags on way too long.

I played virtuoso at maybe 300 range from the group in Dragon Arena and had no other boon but fury.  I can easily say the average open world player is not sharing boons in group content at least before the June 28th patch.

 

[Doggie.3184]

I hate the whole 'stacking' obsession this game pushes for all content~ as I've said in past one of the main 'breaths of fresh air' I get when I hop into a different MMORPG is not having to be suffocated in a stacked pile of players at all times.

Edited June 28, 2022 by Doggie.3184

[the krytan assassin.9235]

I fully agree with the OP but i'm afraid Anet is already too deep in the pile of kitten they created. The current system sort of works and suddenly changing 1-2 elements won't do necessarily much good. 

 

Boon uptime needs to be lowered drastically. Boons to allies should have a bigger range. Bosses should have more mechanics that require splitting up as a group. Bosses need to be redesigned to have an autoattack (that is able to target multiple players). Healing skills should be (ground) targetable. World Boss events shouldn't be primarily dps (timer) based. Plenty of current build design needs a rework since they need alac and quick to operate. Basically all professions need to be tweeked in their dmge output/utilities. 

[Hashberry.4510]

The game just stinks at small group instanced content. Thats what the game is not for, right from the start.

[Raknar.4735]

Agree.
Overreliance on boons just created something like the holy trinity, just generally more unrelatable than the generally accepted tank/healer/dps that is used in multiple other games.

While the lack/removal of the holy trinity was originally designed so you didn‘t have to wait for certain classes/builds before having fun and tackling content, the „trinity“ just came back in a less intuitive form for certain types of content.

[Curennos.9307]

What I find enjoyable is having to put in some amount of effort, thought, or organization in order to 'do' something. The easiest example of this is a DPS rotation, getting better at it and so having higher DPS. I am actively involved in the doing of and responsible for my DPS.

 

On the other hand, boons just feel like...something that happens, a lot of the time. I play my mechanist (and I played it before it was cool >_>) on the other hand, and alacrity almost feels like I have no input whatsoever. It all comes about as a result of things I'd be doing anyway, except maybe the mech f2 which I press just for the alac and other boon uptime. f3 is a defensive skill that I basically use off cooldown anyway as it gives some nice barrier. These are supplemented, if needed, by the mace AA (which does damage and gives barrier) and the defensive signet, which also gives AoE barrier.

 

All this compared to, say, the old chrono - where I had to hit allies with shield 5, make sure to proc shield 4 block to get the extra phantasm, use shatters appropriately and then use the signet to copy my boons. It felt like I was more directly responsible for generating **the boons**, though of course there was some overlap and I did damage at the same time.

 

Current boons feel like they just pop up out of nowhere and sometimes require attention just to make sure they're there. Old chrono felt like I was more directly involved in buffing my teammates and actively contributing, instead of passively generating them because they were attached to other things I was doing anyway. Best example: qharb. Spews out quickness just by staying in shroud. Slap on some conc and you're good.

 

That isn't to say I want 250 APM added just to generate swiftness, or fury, or something. There are some boons that shouldn't take a great deal of effort to require - another ex, regen. Don't care. Good boon, can be strong, but not all that interesting.

 

But alac and quickness are extremely strong boons - unfortunately, their application feels the same as regen or swiftness. There's a lesson in here somewhere but it's too early in the morning for me. Bleh.

 

I think the most interesting buff 'gameplay' in GW2 right now is Row Wallow Venom on specter. I was really, really hoping there would end up being some support specter barrier build that would get a significant chunk of its dps through RWV by applying barriers to allies. Oh well.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

On 6/25/2022 at 9:23 AM, Ragnar.4257 said:

Entirely agree. Boons should be short, powerful, buffs that you use strategically at the right moment. Not things that you just passively have up 100% of the time.

 

I don't think it's a problem that boons can be perma'd. The problem with boons, and not just boons but of all skills in this game, is that there is no tradeoffs to them...and when i say tradeoffs i mean good ones, not bad ones.

 

I always use this an example, but enchantments and effects in gw1 could easily be perma'd...but there was almost always a dynamic tradeoff to them that grounded them to reality. Frenzy being one such example...had a 5 second cooldown, 8 second duration, and made you attack 33% faster (the equivelent to this games quickness) but what Frenzy had that quickness didn't was a tradeoff: You would take double damage while the effect was active.

 

This lead to dynamic gameplay in which people would bring an attack stance and a defense stance, and players would swap between the two...it was a rich set of decisions the player had to make driven by player skill, and this kept these kind of skills very balanced. I don't think Frenzy ever changed...for14 years it was around in and out of the meta. It is one of the best examples of a perfectly balanced skill.

 

In gw2, the current tradeoffs are not good. reduction of a stat is not a real tradeoff because it's not dynamic, it's anchored in "what spec you chose" and this is deeply flawed.

 

Edited June 28, 2022 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Obtena.7952]

On 6/25/2022 at 8:53 AM, Einsof.1457 said:

Sounds like GW2 may not be for you. Good luck out there.

Considering that people can avoid endgame content and still experience the majority of what the game offers, sounds like GW2 still has massive gameplay value to someone that sits out of Endgame team content. 

I happen to agree with the OP but for me, it's just the way it is. There is still interesting team content people like him and myself can play that are less structured with 'teams roles' so I'm not too fussed by the endgame direction of Anet myself.  I just don't play it. 

Edited June 28, 2022 by Obtena.7952

[voltaicbore.8012]

1 hour ago, Obtena.7952 said:

so I'm not too fussed by the endgame direction of Anet myself.  I just don't play it. 

I think ANet is actually counting on this attitude being very widespread. I certainly share it, and I suspect the vast majority of the current active playerbase does too.

So long as they pivot away from the direction of the Dragon's End meta - which requirest groups to amass perma boons and even a flat damage increase unique to the meta - they can afford to continue down this path. Those of us who don't care for the permaboon situation can still do a huge amount of stuff without it, and the people who find joy in minmaxing/optimizing have a place to do so in their own special instances.