For the benefit of players and the game, at least half of the boons and conditions need to be removed from game itself.

[foxof.8752]

If Anet deemed it too complicated to balance, and huge impacts on the server performance on wvw zerg fight.

 

[TheQuickFox.3826]

You can remove them yourself with condition removal skills.

 

(Unless there is a Harbinger nearby who reapplies a full set of them .5 seconds later.)

[Mungrul.9358]

Maybe don't remove them completely, but how about limiting the number that can be applied to a player / target?

At the moment, you can have as many conditions/boons on you as exist, but limiting them could be interesting, with new applications over-writing the oldest one.

 

I mean, you could even tie the number you can have on you to stats if you want to increase complexity. Say something like more toughness means you can have less conditions applied to you, while more vitality increases the number of boons that can be applied to you.

[Astralporing.1957]

48 minutes ago, Mungrul.9358 said:

Maybe don't remove them completely, but how about limiting the number that can be applied to a player / target?

At the moment, you can have as many conditions/boons on you as exist, but limiting them could be interesting, with new applications over-writing the oldest one.

We've had that originally with conditions. There's a good reason why it was changed into what we have now.

[Mungrul.9358]

I took a break from 2013 to 2020, but I'm guessing that good reason was that condis were completely pointless before the rework?

I can see condi limits being a hard thing to balance, but I'm not sure removing the cap completely was the best solution given the current state of the game.

[Scoobaniec.9561]

How about make boons short lived boosts rather than something with 100% uptime in which case you might as well just give those stats to players by default? Current boons defeat the purpose of having them in the first place. I legit have hard time recalling a game where you have 100% uptime on buffs be it single player or another mmo. 

Condition damage is another issue that persisted for so long. The conditions should be just that, debuffs, opposite of boons (buffs). They should never have deal any sort of damage. 

But what about us folks who like DoT playstyle? Someone yelled in the background. - They can create skills which deals damage over time using POWER stat to do so. This is not an issue.

But hey, not my game, not my problem. They do what they want to do. If they wanna end up like Wildstar so be it

Edited June 28, 2022 by Scoobaniec.9561

[TheAgedGnome.7520]

55 minutes ago, Scoobaniec.9561 said:

How about make boons short lived boosts rather than something with 100% uptime in which case you might as well just give those stats to players by default? Current boons defeat the purpose of having them in the first place.

This. It would make boons situational, and tactically meaningful, while also reducing player dependence on them which hopefully would loosen up some group comp rigidity.

Making boons pervasive and ubiquitious simply becomes a way to stealthily implement power creep without overtly increasing level cap shown on the screen from 80 to (say) 84. 

[fenriswolfman.5486]

This is the only thread ive seen where people are talking about a "real" design issue and the reactions tell you all you need to know about the community.

[Astralporing.1957]

3 hours ago, Mungrul.9358 said:

I took a break from 2013 to 2020, but I'm guessing that good reason was that condis were completely pointless before the rework?

I can see condi limits being a hard thing to balance, but I'm not sure removing the cap completely was the best solution given the current state of the game.

Any cap makes it so only a limited number of condi classes can be present during any OW boss fight, and once that number is reached, any additional players are worse  than useless, because they do no damage, but still scale up the event. And, of course, incidental condis (like burns from dps power guardians) would also count against it.

In general, this idea causes way more problems than it could solve.

 

[Xerxez.7361]

6 hours ago, foxof.8752 said:

If Anet deemed it too complicated to balance, and huge impacts on the server performance on wvw zerg fight.

 

 

Pretty sure skill visuals have a bigger impact on server performance than icons on your bar with numbers.

[Astralporing.1957]

29 minutes ago, fenriswolfman.5486 said:

This is the only thread ive seen where people are talking about a "real" design issue and the reactions tell you all you need to know about the community.

That's because most such threads are either started in profession subforum, or get moved there very fast. I have seen a ton of those in the past, many of them very in-depth and well thought out.

[itspomf.9523]

I for one wouldn't mind seeing boons removed altogether, and replaced with unique skill effects.

 

An example would be taking Thief's "Unload" skill and revising it:  instead of providing up to 8 stacks of might (one per hit), it would instead grant the Unload boon effect for 8s, modified by Concentration.  This effect could grant a bonus to all physical and condition damage dealt with pistols during that time, while subsequent uses would refresh the cooldown.

 

Because frankly, there's no reason to spam a skill several times to generate 25 stacks of might (+750 Power, +750 Condition Damage), when not only do multiple other sources provide an equivalent increase to damage output, but extra stacks do nothing more than refresh a timer.

 

I'd much rather be able to rack up multiple, smaller, more meaningful buffs in the style of Guild Wars 1 than generic things which everyone can provide.  That's what made the game fun at launch, and what made combat in GW1 far more impactful, but which is now sorely lacking, particularly after the today's balance patch.

[angrymouse.2340]

12 hours ago, Scoobaniec.9561 said:

How about make boons short lived boosts rather than something with 100% uptime in which case you might as well just give those stats to players by default?

As a new player this is so strange to me, at least the buff thing is something that I miss from WoW, or you have some kind of perma buff to the party (one hour) or you do a strong buff in specific moments, and this is a thing that checks player knowledge of the fights.

[Kalocin.5982]

Only thing they need is to be resizable and moveable. Those icons are tiny on my monitor

[Silverpoopoo.1476]

Don't remove any of them. Just drastically nerf the classes' ability to apply them.

[Dawdler.8521]

Once upon a time skills usually did one thing. Maybe it was 5 stacks of might. Or maybe it was 5 stacks of bleeding. Or maybe it healed you. 

Then HoT came along and skills did five things at once and you could trait so that when those five things happened five more things was procced. Booncreep for everybody, yay.

Anet has only gone further down the rabbit hole since. Today we literally got skills that give you ALL the boons or ALL the condis. They clearly DO NOT want to go in the direction of less.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

That they exist isn't the problem. Its that there's a severe tilt in which classes can apply them and how many and for how long. For example, my Firebrand runs a build that gives literally every boon except Alacrity, with full uptime on all of them except Fury which is like 50% uptime only as a limitation of the Mantra build she runs.

 

That's right, one single character in the party gives all but a single boon, 24/7. On top of this she literally just dumps them, I press all my skills, they're instant cast and take no energy. No need to even use a rotation.

 

Meanwhile I get on my Ele and I have to do an absolute full rotation to give 2/3rds of those boons, give up half my heals to give Alacrity, or all healing entirely to bring Quickness, and I'm more squishy and do less damage since a good chunk of my skills have to be wasted just on creating boons instead of the action they were meant for.

 

And my Ele is still in a better state than classes like Warrior and Ranger in this regard.

 

This is the actual problem with the game right now, not "there are too many boons and conditions". There's significant classism going on in all game modes and has been for a long time.

Edited June 29, 2022 by Hannelore.8153

[Hotride.2187]

19 hours ago, Xerxez.7361 said:

Pretty sure skill visuals have a bigger impact on server performance than icons on your bar with numbers.

Huh? You'd think the visuals happen on the client side.

In fact the update that removed pre-buffing and swapping to another spec was justified with the boons degrading server performance due to unexpected spec/boons combination (or something like that).

Edited June 29, 2022 by Hotride.2187

[Kozumi.5816]

Superspeed, aegis, and stability need to be removed.

Protection / Resolution need to be nerfed to 10%.

 

[yavi.3105]

On 6/28/2022 at 2:49 PM, Scoobaniec.9561 said:

How about make boons short lived boosts rather than something with 100% uptime in which case you might as well just give those stats to players by default?

Because they force correct positioning and using some builds to provide them, they don't magically appear 100% of the time.

 

Quote

Current boons defeat the purpose of having them in the first place. I legit have hard time recalling a game where you have 100% uptime on buffs be it single player or another mmo. 

Here, I'll help you: raid buffs from classes in WoW before they got removed.
 

Quote

But what about us folks who like DoT playstyle? Someone yelled in the background. - They can create skills which deals damage

over time using POWER stat to do so. This is not an issue.

So your changes + the above changes = 1 power build for everything. What is even the point?

 

Quote

Meanwhile I get on my Ele and I have to do an absolute full rotation to give 2/3rds of those boons,

Ele is a joke for years now.

[Fwog.9387]

Hot Take


Make stealth a boon. 

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

On 6/28/2022 at 9:52 AM, TheAgedGnome.7520 said:

This. It would make boons situational, and tactically meaningful, while also reducing player dependence on them which hopefully would loosen up some group comp rigidity.

Making boons pervasive and ubiquitious simply becomes a way to stealthily implement power creep without overtly increasing level cap shown on the screen from 80 to (say) 84. 

 

The problem isn't that boons can be perma'd. The problem is there is no counter-play or dynamic trade-off to such effects. In Guild Wars 1 we had skills like Frenzy which was the equivalent to Guild Wars 2's Quickness boon: It lasted 8 seconds, had a cooldown of 4 seconds, and it buffed your attack speed by 33%. However it had a tradeoff where you would take double damage while it was active. This meant that players had to activly engage with the effect, putting emphasis on decision-making even though one could in effect perma it. Frenzy was not changed for 14 years, was constantly in and out of the meta and in my view remains one of the most ideal form of a balanced skills in the history of Guild Wars as a franchise.

 

2nd example, is enchantments, another guild wars 1 skill class, which are the equivalent to guild wars 1's boon-like effects. All buffs in guild wars 1 were removable by skills that stripped these enchantments. Many of these enchantments were easily perma'd, and a large majority of them had tradeoffs as well. For example Restful Breeze, was not particularly popular at all. But it's effect was not only permaable (could last double it's duration) but also provided the maximum amount of health regeneration in the game (+10 ticks). Why was it not Over powered? Because not only was it a strippable enchantment, it had a dynamical tradeoff that grounded it to reality: "Ends if target ally attacks or uses a skill."

 

The final point, is that you don't need to nerf things into uselessness in order for a skill to not be overpowered. Skills simply need proper mechanical design. In fact the problem we have faced in pvp for 3 years, was that skills and buffs have been constantly nerfed to the point where they are effectively inert. Skills that us-to last for 10 seconds or so now last close to 1-3 seconds...no where near enough time to even use skills that can capitalize on the effect. If they had simply made permanent effects strippable or with dynamic tradeoffs (like Frenzy), then we would be able to have the cake and eat it too. We would have dynamic thoughtful gameplay, and we would be able to keep longer durations (perma-ability) and be able to have our effects still be considered powerful (like Restful Breeze) without it being broken.

Edited June 29, 2022 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Ashen.2907]

15 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

 

The problem isn't that boons can be perma'd. The problem is there is no counter-play or trade-off to such effects. In Guild Wars 1 we had skills like Frenzy which was the equivalent to Guild Wars 2's Quickness boon: It lasted 8 seconds, had a cooldown of 5 seconds, and it buffed your attack speed by 33%. However it had a tradeoff where you would take double damage while it was active. This meant that players had to activly engage with the effect, putting emphasis on decision-making even though one could in effect perma it. Frenzy was not changed for 14 years, and in my view remains one of the most ideal form of a balanced skills in the history of Guild Wars as a franchise.

 

2nd example, is enchantments, another guild wars 1 skill class, which are the equivalent to guild wars 1's boon-like effects. All buffs in guild wars 1 were removable by skills that stripped these enchantments. Many of these enchantments were easily perma'd, and a large majority of them had tradeoffs as well. For example Restful Breeze, was not particularly popular at all. But it's effect was not only permaable (could last double it's duration) but also provided the maximum amount of health regeneration in the game (+10 ticks). Why was it not Over powered? Because not only was it a strippable enchantment, it had a tradeoff that grounded it to reality: "Ends if target ally attacks or uses a skill."

 

The final point, is that you don't need to nerf things into uselessness in order for a skill to not be overpowered. Skills simply need proper mechanical design. In fact the problem we have faced in pvp for 3 years, was that skills and buffs have been constantly nerfed to the point where they are effectively inert. Skills that us-to last for 10 seconds or so now last close to 1-3 seconds...no where near enough time to even use skills that can capitalize on the effect. If they had simply made permanent effects strippable or with dynamic tradeoffs (like Frenzy), then we would be able to have the cake and eat it too. We would have dynamic thoughtful gameplay, and we would be able to keep longer durations (perma-ability) and be able to have our effects still be considered powerful (like Restful Breeze) without it being broken.

Some excellent points, especially about how gw1 handled similar issues, but which boons in gw2 are not already strippable?

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

7 minutes ago, Ashen.2907 said:

Some excellent points, especially about how gw1 handled similar issues, but which boons in gw2 are not already strippable?

 

Sorry just a bit of misspeak. I was referring to unique personal effects, the thing that got rubbed out in favor of boons. Point being that unique personal effects could remain unique and powerful if they were strippable and had tradeoffs. Boons which are strippable, could also keep their ability to be perma'd, they just need dynamic tradeoffs.

 

The ability to strip is itself a tradeoff, but I'm talking more of in the vein of Frenzy...in which the effect has a dynamic price to pay to it instated by the user of the effect, and not one that relies on an outside force like an enemy player or NPC that has to bring a strip in order to ground that skills effect to reality. 

Edited June 29, 2022 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Arewn.2368]

The playstyle of consistently applying buffs is appreciable and should stay.

But this can be achieved through might and fury. Alacrity and quickness becoming a part of the meta was a mistake, one that I don't think arena net even intended. They just rolled with what the player base was making. They should remove alacrity and quickness as boons entirely.

Reintroduced them sparingly as short during, never shareable, unique buffs.

This would of course need to be followed by an across the board update to skill speed and cooldowns of all skills.

 

Alacrity and quickness, especially in combination,  significantly modify the pace of combat. This is not the type of effect that should be maintained with 100% uptime. For experienced players whi become accustomed tonhaving them, the game feels sluggish and bad in situations where they arent maitained  (e.g. solo play).

For new players who spend the majority of their play time without these buffs, it causes an unnecessary steepening of the learning curve. They learn the game, get accustomed to the timings and muscle memory while leveling and doing the story or open world events. Then When they enter end-game group play the pacing changes and everything feels frantic and fast. This is actually one of the sources of the accessibility issue for content like raids/strikes.

 

If they are expected to be maintained at 100% uptime then it's just a new baseline anyways. So get rid of them as boons and utilize them as personal short term effects.

You don't need them to be shareable as a group cool down for burst windows. You already have the exposed mechanic.

You don't need them as consistently applied buffs for a 'buffer' play-style. You already have might and fury.

You don't need them to attain the desired pace of combat. You can just balance skills that way in the first place.

 

Removing alacrity and quickness would also lower the far-too-large potential performance gap between experience and new players/groups.

It also makes players less dependant on staying 'on stack', which would be nice.

The current  implementation of alacrity and quickness is an active detriment to the game's balance with no notable advantages.