How would you improve the small scale experience?

[Malus.2184]

Be aware this is for small scale only since any of the things in a large scale environment is largely irrelevant.

1. Halve the duration of all blocks, parries, reflects, and bullet destructions in PvP that are fire-and-forget. Using range, I've discovered how extremely destructive they are and how easy, especially the two latter completely shuts me down. Blocks that requires a channel that prevents you from doing anything else and if you do anything else they stop are fine.

2. Halve the distance of all instant movement abilities used without a target and away from the enemy. PvP is about facing the consequences of your actions instead of being able to run away from them without any difficulty.

3. Make a Grace period where it was impossible to benefit from certain things.

Stealth would be affected. Small duration Stealths are right now better in some ways that longer duration since chaining them together comes with no penalty due to them they last so shortly that you attack out of them when they end anyway. A 1-sec Stealth that can be done repeatedly is better than a 4-sec stealth that can be used repeatedly since doing that would apply Exposed.

The Exposed effect would be utterly removed. People affected by Target painter traps would still be able to use Stealth. Having one ability that everyone can use that utterly negates another ability because it's OP and game destroying  without counters is just as OP and game destroying, just in the other direction.

A Specter under the effect of the Grace period would be unable to use a Well Skill to teleport. IIf they used a Well Skill then they would be unable to Stealth while the Grace period lasted. Right now it's almost impossible to ever catch a Specter when roaming since they can Stealtg and Teleport while their DoTs just whittle you down.

Shatter. While under the effect of a Grace Period Shattering Mesmer Clones would be impossible, Shatering Mesmer Clones creates a Grace period as well.

This is the only general thing I would change. Improve the Reaper-specific abilities and traits in sPvP in exchange, Reaper Shroud should absorb at most 50% of the damage done. At 100% it's a disgustingly good ability that prevents the Reaper from ever being balanced since if they were they would be OP. That's how good having two health bars is. Reaper without a Shroud a reduced Shroud and what they have now would be an utter joke.

[Helly.2597]

Nah

[The Raven.1320]

48 minutes ago, Malus.2184 said:

Shatter. While under the effect of a Grace Period Shattering Mesmer Clones would be impossible, Shatering Mesmer Clones creates a Grace period as well.

Sounds like someone face tanked the 2012 mes oneshot build. 

[Malus.2184]

59 minutes ago, Afkbrbgtgftw.7904 said:

Sounds like someone face tanked the 2012 mes oneshot build. 

Sounds like someone fail to underhow that nothing another player do is a one-shot unlesss people are already on low health.

I just recognise that high burst damage that can easily be repeated is an issue, at the same time the individual damage of the  Mesmer abilites are okay, some of them can just be used too often.

Edited August 19, 2022 by Malus.2184

[Riba.3271]

It is actually simple, just fix the WvW infrastructure closer to the old one where you had strategic decisions available and were meaningful, small scalers also had more to do:

1. Watchtower shouldn't activate unless contested. Watchtower limits too much map from roamers passing to danelon and Rogues and stuff. Then they just get ganked by 5 people. Circumventing that usually also means multiple enemis. It also punishes new players from exploring WvW as learning watchtowers might take a while.
2. Dolyaks should carry less supply, escort buff should be lowered from 90%->50%,  and keeps/castles should require more dolyaks. Small scalers play around camps and should be able to overcome defenders and be more meaningful. Once keeps or castles are T3, there is no scene anymore since defenders don't care about dollies at that point.
3. Minstrel stat should be nerfed. You can see gods of the arena running around with 1 minstrel + 1 DPS. Only way to match them is bringing 1 minstrel player too and then neither side can kill another. Reduce concentration effectiveness in WvW. This will also fix blob fights.
4. Claim buff should be reduced considerably (+120 total max).You having +100 power, +100 precision + 100 vit, +100 toughness vs enemy having it is around 15% damage and 15% survivability difference. So 2 runesets. Roaming shouldn't be just defending and dueling should be fair again. Tense rivalries between similarly skilled players should be allowed to develop instead of owner of nearest location deciding who wins..
5. Shield generators should be reworked, siege vs siege damage buffed and wall/gate hp buffed. Shield gens blocking treb/cata fire makes most fight baiting or supply draining tactics obsolete. You can't even slow down enemy blob with siege anymore since siege vs siege damage was halved and wall/gate HP reduced in the past.

 

My solution to reviving roaming isn't balance changes but  simply giving you more things to do, more enemies and making everything you do meaningful while giving you possibility of tense rivalries to incite emotions. Note that all these things were already in the game years before being made obsolete by massive HoT changes that were never revisited.

Edited August 19, 2022 by Riba.3271

[Xunleashed.5271]

Fix the WvW infrastructure as already mentioned and...

 

Nerf downed state health and revive speed.

 

Nerf kitten mounts. Zergs can teleport around, defend and come back from respawn too fast.

Make it a real effort to move an entire map zerg to chase a smallscale team hitting towers/camps.

 

 

[Zyreva.1078]

You should rename the thread to "how to kill the small scale experience". Much more fitting to your post ... @Malus.2184

Edited August 19, 2022 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[Gorani.7205]

1 hour ago, Malus.2184 said:

Be aware this is for small scale only since any of the things in a large scale environment is largely irrelevant.

Stop messing with profession mechanics even more! That would be a horrible mess and requires even more skill splits.

@Riba.3271 is on a better path for making small scale activities better: small structures & especially supply on the map needs to take a bigger role again. Dollies passing enemy sentries will poison the supply, so when they reach the tower/keep, the amount of supply gets reduced. Traps that can do the same poison effect to dollies, when they walk over that, perhaps as a choice to pick up at sentries instead of the healing/speed kit.

[captrowdy.9561]

Lol what. Sounds like someone is having trouble playing the game and wants it to cater to them

[The Raven.1320]

1 hour ago, Malus.2184 said:

Sounds like someone fail to underhow that nothing another player do is a one-shot unlesss people are already on low health.

I just recognise that high burst damage that can easily be repeated is an issue, at the same time the individual damage of the  Mesmer abilites are okay, some of them can just be used too often.

Ah yes. Let's nerf power damage even more. This way WvW becomes nothing but boonballs dodging eachother to railroad pugs, and small scale devolves further into a condi bunker fiesta. 🤡

[Kozumi.5816]

Copy SPvP balance and gearing. No other way. SPvP is actually fun small scale while WvW is bad in every type of scale.

inb4 a mod bans me for having a different opinion 

Edited August 19, 2022 by Kozumi.5816

[Riba.3271]

20 minutes ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

Copy SPvP balance and gearing.

I don't know if the balance would mess up larger fights but I have been thinking about sPvP amulet system but with multiple amulets. For example 4 amulets, each contributing 25% to your total stats. So you could have mixture of stats, flexibility and build variety. 2 of the amulets would have all stat combinations available (minstrel, trailblazer, cele, marauder etc) whereas the other 2 would have at least 1 offensive 3-stat combinations available (Cleric, berserker, Apocathery, soldier etc).

 

So 50% of your total stats could be anything you want and rest 50% have to be 3-stat semi-offensive gear.

Of course the more amulets there would be, the better since you would have more build variety. 4 is just simplified example of how they could control people going too tanky.

Edited August 19, 2022 by Riba.3271

[yourexcellency.1458]

1 hour ago, Riba.3271 said:

It is actually simple, just fix the WvW infrastructure closer to the old one where you had strategic decisions available and were meaningful, small scalers also had more to do:

1. Watchtower shouldn't activate unless contested. Watchtower limits too much map from roamers passing to danelon and Rogues and stuff. Then they just get ganked by 5 people. Circumventing that usually also means multiple enemis. It also punishes new players from exploring WvW as learning watchtowers might take a while.
2. Dolyaks should carry less supply, escort buff should be lowered from 90%->50%,  and keeps/castles should require more dolyaks. Small scalers play around camps and should be able to overcome defenders and be more meaningful. Once keeps or castles are T3, there is no scene anymore since defenders don't care about dollies at that point.
3. Minstrel stat should be nerfed. You can see gods of the arena running around with 1 minstrel + 1 DPS. Only way to match them is bringing 1 minstrel player too and then neither side can kill another. Reduce concentration effectiveness in WvW. This will also fix blob fights.
4. Claim buff should be reduced considerably (+120 total max).You having +100 power, +100 precision + 100 vit, +100 toughness vs enemy having it is around 15% damage and 15% survivability difference. So 2 runesets. Roaming shouldn't be just defending and dueling should be fair again. Tense rivalries between similarly skilled players should be allowed to develop instead of owner of nearest location deciding who wins..
5. Shield generators should be reworked, siege vs siege damage buffed and wall/gate hp buffed. Shield gens blocking treb/cata fire makes most fight baiting or supply draining tactics obsolete. You can't even slow down enemy blob with siege anymore since siege vs siege damage was halved and wall/gate HP reduced in the past.

 

My solution to reviving roaming isn't balance changes but  simply giving you more things to do, more enemies and making everything you do meaningful while giving you possibility of tense rivalries to incite emotions. Note that all these things were already in the game years before being made obsolete by massive HoT changes that were never revisited.

I agree with all of this. One thing that used to hold value and was a fantastic way to learn or enjoy the game mode smaller scale was scouting. There is no real point to scout with the current blob meta as all the big groups just run around capping the same stuff or running over small groups of people. Most groups don't respond to call outs so objectives just freely flip teams. Defense has always been one of my favorite aspects but it doesn't seem to matter at all now. 

[Caliboom.3218]

2 hours ago, Xunleashed.5271 said:

Fix the WvW infrastructure as already mentioned and...

 

Nerf downed state health and revive speed.

 

Nerf kitten mounts. Zergs can teleport around, defend and come back from respawn too fast.

Make it a real effort to move an entire map zerg to chase a smallscale team hitting towers/camps.

 

 

Yes, let's nerf the warclaw despite the fact that it has already been nerfed several times and it's barely faster than walking. Hey, might as well remove it's legs so it can't run at all! Let's kitten it! Let's make it use a literal wheelchair!

[displayname.8315]

This is the World's vs World forum.  WvW is very much large scale.  Improving your "small-scale" situation is up to you.  I'd advise coming up with a better strategy if your getting the D

[TheGrimm.5624]

As far as small scale fights, mind you not talking map mechanics mounts structures or what not, only fight issues is a boon-ball havoc will have better odds against a non-boon-ball group. Now you might call this playing better if they build out planning on supporting their group which wouldn't be wrong but it also shows that even in a smaller setting boons are top dog currently and how many classes can push out so many at a time. Not certain if I would say that its the strip/conversions ratio versus application or if CC should have even more impact to be able to pull people out of a boon-ball which as we see is another balancing act of stability. But no if you change the way the game mechanic work when the number of people is a lower population I can't see how this wouldn't cause issues where when the numbers suddenly changes people won't claim it is a hack where as the game was suddenly using different rules to calculate, let alone people playing poorly as the game changes mechanics mid fight. So that leaves you with nerfing both scales and no, I don't think that makes sense. Melee versus range feel pretty good right now in both small and large fights, IMO. As far as individual balance changes, that's more for the profession pages.

[RlyOsim.2497]

up power damage by 20-30% and it'll solve a lot of issues with small scale.

- you can't kite/outrun/out heal a 20k burst

- you can actually threaten a zerg as a solo with said burst dps

- cele or these clown 'bruiser' builds wouldn't be an issue as you could just pop them

- condi tanks would be much less of an issue when you can just burst them down

 

it'd be twitch-y mobility based gameplay with a reliance on positioning and fight awareness but is that any worse than the state of small scale atm

Edited August 19, 2022 by RlyOsim.2497

[Malus.2184]

23 hours ago, Afkbrbgtgftw.7904 said:

Ah yes. Let's nerf power damage even more. This way WvW becomes nothing but boonballs dodging eachother to railroad pugs, and small scale devolves further into a condi bunker fiesta. 🤡

You do realise that when your counter is a generalisation to something specific then you're just arguing for the sake of arguing and looking right?

The initial post even implies that something needs to be done about Reaper, which is primarely a Power spec. Yet, here you making a counter argument that implies that I want all Power damage reduced when it's really just one of the worst offenders.

[Malus.2184]

On 8/19/2022 at 4:15 PM, Gorani.7205 said:

Stop messing with profession mechanics even more! That would be a horrible mess and requires even more skill splits.

@Riba.3271 is on a better path for making small scale activities better: small structures & especially supply on the map needs to take a bigger role again. Dollies passing enemy sentries will poison the supply, so when they reach the tower/keep, the amount of supply gets reduced. Traps that can do the same poison effect to dollies, when they walk over that, perhaps as a choice to pick up at sentries instead of the healing/speed kit.

That would only affect the PvE aspects of the WvW experience. Some of those changes would also lead to degerative gameplay where people are discouraged from capturing camps and/or killing dollies and will most likely be shouted at for doing so if a siege is planned.

It would be better if a Tactivator or something like it could be used on a camp and then it would send out a fake dolly that only the colour of the tower/keep it was headed to could  damage and which would massively lower enemy supply if it reached