Problem of class stacking and one easy solution

[anbujackson.9564]

Okay so, Anet for years had problems (or well still has) with people stacking specific specs to cover quickness and alacrity. And yes being able to do is not good design. Honorable mentions: chronos, double renegade RR, catalysts and now bladesworns/firebrands (no1 is doing that though) I guess.

Since you obviously have design issues here, I would kindly suggest to bring back internal stacks to boon application.

In my opinion it was a big mistake to remove them. I would have even cut them down some more instead (especially alac which still had 9 stacks before the removal). A huge conplaint I see is that there is too much boon spam which makes it meaningless. Well its not surprising because it doesnt matter if you keep spamming a boon with 2 seconds uptime. If 10 people do it, you have 20 seconds uptime anyway. 

Lets take quickness for example. It had 5 stacks before the removal. I would have cut it down to 3. While you might disagree hardcore with me now I am sure, to me its the only solution to make people actually think about what and when they press something. Does this raise skill ceiling? Maybe. But that way you would have NEVER had the issue with catalyst and the backfire now in the first place.

Its probably too late for this now but I felt like saying it anyway. Multiple pulsing abilities could have been reworked in a way that you dont waste duration. Like less pulses with higher uptime on earth overload for example, which pulsed too many stacks and you reached the cap back then.

[SeTect.5918]

On 7/10/2022 at 8:06 PM, anbujackson.9564 said:

Okay so, Anet for years had problems (or well still has) with people stacking specific specs to cover quickness and alacrity. And yes being able to do is not good design. Honorable mentions: chronos, double renegade RR, catalysts and now bladesworns/firebrands (no1 is doing that though) I guess.

Since you obviously have design issues here, I would kindly suggest to bring back internal stacks to boon application.

In my opinion it was a big mistake to remove them. I would have even cut them down some more instead (especially alac which still had 9 stacks before the removal). A huge conplaint I see is that there is too much boon spam which makes it meaningless. Well its not surprising because it doesnt matter if you keep spamming a boon with 2 seconds uptime. If 10 people do it, you have 20 seconds uptime anyway. 

Lets take quickness for example. It had 5 stacks before the removal. I would have cut it down to 3. While you might disagree hardcore with me now I am sure, to me its the only solution to make people actually think about what and when they press something. Does this raise skill ceiling? Maybe. But that way you would have NEVER had the issue with catalyst and the backfire now in the first place.

Its probably too late for this now but I felt like saying it anyway. Multiple pulsing abilities could have been reworked in a way that you dont waste duration. Like less pulses with higher uptime on earth overload for example, which pulsed too many stacks and you reached the cap back then.

Just remove quickness and alacrity. 

Sure classes will lose a ton of dps, but its easy to buff them to the same amount of dps again. 

Edited July 12, 2022 by SeTect.5918

[Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497]

30 minutes ago, SeTect.5918 said:

Just remove quickness and alacrity. 

Sure classes with lose a ton of dps, but its easy to buff them to the same amount of dps again. 

That would lead to a whole mess of issues.

 

A better solution would br simply to remove the dependency of having constant uptime on all boons. And instead adjust the raids or PVE combat to force more pressure onto individual player responsibility.

 

Know the class.  Not the rotation.

[Chyro.1462]

Or just put a restriction on instanced endgame content (guess raids, strikes and maybe fractals?) that you can only enter if everyone in the party is on a different elite spec. So no duplicate specs.

[anbujackson.9564]

15 minutes ago, Chyro.1462 said:

Or just put a restriction on instanced endgame content (guess raids, strikes and maybe fractals?) that you can only enter if everyone in the party is on a different elite spec. So no duplicate specs.

I get what you mean but thats a bad idea. 

Building groups would take even longer. And its also very punishing to new players who dont have multiple characters/builds ready.

 

1 hour ago, Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497 said:

That would lead to a whole mess of issues.

 

A better solution would br simply to remove the dependency of having constant uptime on all boons. And instead adjust the raids or PVE combat to force more pressure onto individual player responsibility.

 

Know the class.  Not the rotation.

Adjusting all content so far would be too much effort with no gain sadly.

[AliamRationem.5172]

2 hours ago, SeTect.5918 said:

Just remove quickness and alacrity. 

Sure classes with lose a ton of dps, but its easy to buff them to the same amount of dps again. 

I think that would create a balance nightmare, honestly.  They can't even manage incremental change, let alone dropping a bomb like that on the meta.  Plus, I can't be the only one that thinks everything just flows better with quickness!  Maybe it's a weaver thing?

[Fueki.4753]

The proper solution would be to raise the target cap for boon applying abilities to 10 people.

That way, one person could cover Quickness for the whole squad, while another player covers Alacrity.

With that change, there would be no necessity to stack Alacrity and Quickness providers, leaving more slots for other roles.

Edited July 11, 2022 by Fueki.4753

[Kodama.6453]

5 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

I think that would create a balance nightmare, honestly.  They can't even manage incremental change, let alone dropping a bomb like that on the meta.  Plus, I can't be the only one that thinks everything just flows better with quickness!  Maybe it's a weaver thing?

Nah, that's reality for most players, I think.

Playing my holosmith with perma quickness and without is a whole world of a difference.

[Astralporing.1957]

7 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

I think that would create a balance nightmare, honestly.  They can't even manage incremental change, let alone dropping a bomb like that on the meta.  Plus, I can't be the only one that thinks everything just flows better with quickness!  Maybe it's a weaver thing?

They could just merge those effects into baseline.

[Monchichi.9301]

Stop requiring boon duration stats for 100% coverage of these must-have boons. Just reduce the damage of the boon giver in the traits like Catalyst. Although it was not very elegant, traits are the best way to lower boon-giver dps without encouraging stacking. Otherwise, you just use multiple classes to increase group boon duration rather than one character with boon duration gear.

Would that make boon duration gear worthless? No, you could still use it while learning, if you regularly do fights with a lot of movement like the new strikes and ED meta.

Would that make overcapping a problem? No, the boons have duration limits. And overcapping only seems to be considered an issue in the design of some classes which have very short boon duration or tricky mechanics for pulling them off. Other classes overcap quickness or alacrity with multiple or easy ways apply boons. 

Just let boon givers be boon givers, stop being stingy about it, and let the traits balance the dps/other role. 

[Kodama.6453]

15 hours ago, Monchichi.9301 said:

Stop requiring boon duration stats for 100% coverage of these must-have boons. Just reduce the damage of the boon giver in the traits like Catalyst. Although it was not very elegant, traits are the best way to lower boon-giver dps without encouraging stacking. Otherwise, you just use multiple classes to increase group boon duration rather than one character with boon duration gear.

Would that make boon duration gear worthless? No, you could still use it while learning, if you regularly do fights with a lot of movement like the new strikes and ED meta.

Would that make overcapping a problem? No, the boons have duration limits. And overcapping only seems to be considered an issue in the design of some classes which have very short boon duration or tricky mechanics for pulling them off. Other classes overcap quickness or alacrity with multiple or easy ways apply boons. 

Just let boon givers be boon givers, stop being stingy about it, and let the traits balance the dps/other role. 

Heavily disagree with this.

It definitely would make boon duration gear worthless. The only example you can provide where it could be used is as training wheels when you are still learning. But even in these cases, most players will most likely prefer to train with the actual equip used in high end, instead of learning it first with training wheels and then learning it anew when they enter the real encounters.

They just have to find a balance where taking a dedicated boon giver is more efficient than having 3 dps classes which give a little boons on the side, which then adds up to full duration.

Which means that, for once, they have to stop designing specs which have just a single skill as a source of this boon. Catalyst was hitting 100% boon uptime if you had 3 of them stacked, because their F5 was the only source of quickness. As the only source of quickness, it had to have a pretty high quickness uptime by default to enable the build to reach 100% uptime with boon duration. F5 had a base uptime of 33% to enable the 50% duration increase trait + 100% boon duration from gear to hit 100%.

Meanwhile a class like scrapper can't cause such problems, because it has to invest way more resources to give quickness. You need to take 1 adept trait, 1 grandmaster trait and then still need to take multiple wells (gyros) for the boon to stay up.

Harbinger currently has the same problem as catalyst. It can provide quickness while having complete damage focused gear, since it basically provides all it's quickness with one source, which is the grandmaster trait that gives quickness while in shroud. The uptime from this trait is really high, so harbinger doesn't have to invest alot to get the quickness for the team running.

Design more boon givers like scrapper, make them invest in multiple ways to give the boon. That will naturally drag their damage down and make it more efficient to just get a dedicated boon giver while the other team members focus entirely on damage. And this also keeps gear relevant in the game instead of everyone just using the same damage gear.

[The Boz.2038]

16 hours ago, Monchichi.9301 said:

Stop requiring boon duration stats for 100% coverage of these must-have boons. Just reduce the damage of the boon giver in the traits like Catalyst. Although it was not very elegant, traits are the best way to lower boon-giver dps without encouraging stacking. Otherwise, you just use multiple classes to increase group boon duration rather than one character with boon duration gear.

Would that make boon duration gear worthless? No, you could still use it while learning, if you regularly do fights with a lot of movement like the new strikes and ED meta.

Would that make overcapping a problem? No, the boons have duration limits. And overcapping only seems to be considered an issue in the design of some classes which have very short boon duration or tricky mechanics for pulling them off. Other classes overcap quickness or alacrity with multiple or easy ways apply boons. 

Just let boon givers be boon givers, stop being stingy about it, and let the traits balance the dps/other role. 

Absolute disagreement.

[Dadnir.5038]

The question is... Is this really a problem?

From my point of view, the more restriction you put, the more likely it is that you'll see something ugly coming out of it.

Edited July 12, 2022 by Dadnir.5038