Proposed idea for despamifying alac and quickness supports rotation

[Mungo Zen.9364]

32 minutes ago, Warscythes.9307 said:

I don't recall they gut personal quick and ala and replace it with only party buffs. They gutted unique buffs for party buffs such as AP, Druid spirit etc, unless you are talking about something else. 

It is very hard to show how much it changed as the Patch Notes don't always say they removed something.  There are a lot of 'this skill/trait has been removed now does this instead' or 'this was reworked, now it does this'.  Yet when you go to the page for Alacrity there were previously a lot more skills and traits listed GW2 Wiki Alacrity same thing applies for Quickness.

46 minutes ago, Warscythes.9307 said:

But I can at least assure you that people who lost quickness and alacrity in their build WILL be unhappy about it.

I know, I am unhappy about it, it already happened.  Perhaps having roots in Chrono and watching them take everything from that eSpec and give it to other professions left me jaded, but there were other professions using self-buffed Alac and Quick builds that are also gone after the June 28th 2022 patch.

 

[marmaladebacon.2064]

Back on the premise, teapot just released a new video explaining the problem much better than i could, tldr: support boon providers that need to use all their utility slots to provide max boon uptime and by mashing those utilities as they go off cooldown feels terrible because you don't get to use those same utilities to actually react to fights. And it feels doubly terrible because we do have a profession(mechanist) that is able to provide full alacrity using profession mechanics and traits and not utility skills, freeing them to choose utilities depending on the encounter.

 

[marmaladebacon.2064]

Finally
 

Quote

As for the balance update, here’s what we’re looking to address:

•   Improving the feeling of moment-to-moment gameplay for many boon support builds. We want these builds to have more flexibility in their utility skill choice, and not be required to press a particular utility type on cooldown to provide quickness or alacrity.
•   Introducing alternate playstyles for some specializations, including quickness-support deadeye and damage builds for druid and tempest.

 

[mizaru.1385]

I think 100% quickness is stupid.....this is the only game that has such buffs at 100% uptime.

Can we just make the quickness burst last just a few seconds like in other games (like how haste works as its such a powerful spell)?

This allows for more intuitive skill use e.g, during certain timed phases of the boss (impt DPS checks) where it needs to be burst through.

This means players are aware of what the boss is doing, the fights mechanics and when to use the skill to help buff the party.
here is no point on making it 100% achievable, then it becomes something mandatory to spam it so that quickness and alac is a "default" like what we currently have.

 

Edited May 4, 2023 by mizaru.1385

[Kalthea.4326]

3 hours ago, mizaru.1385 said:

I think 100% quickness is stupid.....this is the only game that has such buffs at 100% uptime.

Can we just make the quickness burst last just a few seconds like in other games (like how haste works as its such a powerful spell)?

This allows for more intuitive skill use e.g, during certain timed phases of the boss (impt DPS checks) where it needs to be burst through.

This means players are aware of what the boss is doing, the fights mechanics and when to use the skill to help buff the party.
here is no point on making it 100% achievable, then it becomes something mandatory to spam it so that quickness and alac is a "default" like what we currently have.

 

 

Honestly, even giving it a small burst window is a bad idea.  Quickness and Alacrity being in the game and being shareable with other players is the biggest issue. If you give it a small burst window with a shorter duration, people are just going to re-configure their builds around to the new up-time and just make it so the whole team has to rotate who pushes the buttons. This would curb builds even further, and serve to just restrict builds into a meta more focused on boon duration and less focused on the DPS, because Quickness and Alacrity are so powerful that no matter what DPS builds you're bringing into the fight, just having those be up 100% of the time will automatically triple the DPS output of everyone in the party, and the game will just shift its meta accordingly just to keep those boons up.

[Coldtart.4785]

You wouldn't have to spam aoe quick/alac if they didn't exist.

[mizaru.1385]

On 5/4/2023 at 8:43 PM, Kalthea.4326 said:

 

Honestly, even giving it a small burst window is a bad idea.  Quickness and Alacrity being in the game and being shareable with other players is the biggest issue. If you give it a small burst window with a shorter duration, people are just going to re-configure their builds around to the new up-time and just make it so the whole team has to rotate who pushes the buttons. This would curb builds even further, and serve to just restrict builds into a meta more focused on boon duration and less focused on the DPS, because Quickness and Alacrity are so powerful that no matter what DPS builds you're bringing into the fight, just having those be up 100% of the time will automatically triple the DPS output of everyone in the party, and the game will just shift its meta accordingly just to keep those boons up.

 

Treat it like how other MMOs e.g FF14 treats their haste spell. Shareable, but only certain class have it and only small burst with really long CD, so that its not worth really screwing ur team comp just to try to stack the rotations.

Not sure about Alac though, maybe removing it will be the best idea...

[Kalthea.4326]

On 5/6/2023 at 2:13 AM, mizaru.1385 said:

 

Treat it like how other MMOs e.g FF14 treats their haste spell. Shareable, but only certain class have it and only small burst with really long CD, so that its not worth really screwing ur team comp just to try to stack the rotations.

Not sure about Alac though, maybe removing it will be the best idea...

So long as concentration exists to extend boon duration, it won't matter how you shift around quickness or alacrity. People will try to keep them up 100% of the time, even if that means running the same class for an entire group and simply rotation the button presses. The boons are too strong, and are the central issue when it comes to balance. Ever since they removed the unique class buffs that allowed for spreading out what classes could join, it has all turned into boons which changed the game from "bring something fairly decent" to "this is necessary", though I wont doubt some of the previous class buffs were overtuned.