I have a weird squad buff idea

[Xenesis.6389]

I remember once we had a discussion about commanders adding more to a squad, so I have a weird idea about boons and squads, let's see if a discussion can be made about it. So I was thinking about the boon spam, and how anet is trying to get everyone covered in them, to make sure pve players are on the same base level with boons boosting damage, and in wvw it's on a level where everyone is covered with the defensive stuff, stability, protection etc.

So here's a wacky idea. What if we got rid of boons, or ok wait, maybe not that extreme, maybe heavily nerfed durations, in favor of adding optional permanent boons to a squad. Let's set out some guidelines.

- I would say only be able to pick one option, but maybe we can consider a maximum two of these permanent boons can be used for a squad for more variety.

- The choices available will be quickness, alacrity, stability, protection. We could probably add a couple more like fury, resistance, vigor, just to give more options for squad types. But most should be kept as player casted boon instead, especially for something like aegis, and there's plenty of cleanses around for groups so I wouldn't include resolution either. For the most part we know pve groups will take the best dps options like quickness and alacrity, while wvw will probably take stability and protection, but then havoc squads may take vigor or resistance, and roamers may take swiftness or vigor or protection, but really anything their spec doesn't have a lot of access to.

- This boon would always be auto applied to the squad, and applied to players of that squad no matter where they are.

- Boon strips can still be applied to the player and maybe there will be a very short 5sec period before the boon auto comes back on, while the player still has the option to cast their own boon to cover the gap. So you know, don't go throwing all your firebrands away because of this.

- Squads can be made from 1-50 players and don't need a commander, so everyone can have access to this.

Let's take an example of a squad having the option of using 2 maximum boon types for 100% uptime for the entire squad. For a huge squad, maybe they don't have enough guards or support around so they take stability and maybe protection or resistance. Or maybe they do have a lot of support and maybe take a chance to boost their dps with quickness or alacrity or fury. You could even make groups of like all range specs and maybe they have the stability and swiftness on. 

Some of the benefits of this change is anet can balance around the fact that certain boons will now always be on for groups, particularly quickness, alacrity, and stability, so maybe boost pve boss health, or adjust the amount of cc and boon strips available to compensate. It would also lessen the need and pressure to run certain meta specs for encounters, and would give players a little more freedom to run other non meta specs and get creative with group compositions.

Boons for the most part are always on for big groups, for the smaller ones not as much, and havoc and roamers and open world players this would be a bonus for sure. I'm sure there could be exploits with this like creating a squad of 20 catalyst or necros with full stability and protection on as the options(but hey when was the last time we saw themed groups running in wvw, very rare these days, almost every week in the old days). That would be a pain to face, maybe this could also be a reason to tone down celestial too.

What do you think? I'm looking for a serious discussion here, don't just wutface me over there(thank you my stalker) -->

Thank you.

Edited May 23, 2023 by Xenesis.6389

[joneirikb.7506]

I like the idea and think it sounds promising. I'd hate to see ANet hack it up to pieces and present the finished product.

But on more serious note: 

Guessing you're linking this together with the squad system to have a simple way to activate/disable it. So I can imagine it might be a bother for lots of people to constantly join and leave squads to get the boon. Might require some more functions to the Squad system, like having you always be a squad of 1 even if you've not joined a squad etc.

I can also imagine some very "fun" "discussions" about "no we need this boon, not that boon!" in squad chat. 

But on the whole, I'm mostly curious how much it would change up wvw to be able to have constantly pulsing stability for a whole squad no matter the size. What time would we be talking about here ? Every 3 seconds pulse 1 stack of stability with 3 seconds duration? Depending on the numbers this could range from completely useless to extremely strong. And I must admit that trying to imagine ANet balance that frightens me, especially as they'd balance it on PVE anyways.

[Xenesis.6389]

9 minutes ago, joneirikb.7506 said:

I like the idea and think it sounds promising. I'd hate to see ANet hack it up to pieces and present the finished product.

But on more serious note: 

Guessing you're linking this together with the squad system to have a simple way to activate/disable it. So I can imagine it might be a bother for lots of people to constantly join and leave squads to get the boon. Might require some more functions to the Squad system, like having you always be a squad of 1 even if you've not joined a squad etc.

I can also imagine some very "fun" "discussions" about "no we need this boon, not that boon!" in squad chat. 

But on the whole, I'm mostly curious how much it would change up wvw to be able to have constantly pulsing stability for a whole squad no matter the size. What time would we be talking about here ? Every 3 seconds pulse 1 stack of stability with 3 seconds duration? Depending on the numbers this could range from completely useless to extremely strong. And I must admit that trying to imagine ANet balance that frightens me, especially as they'd balance it on PVE anyways.

Squads can be the size of 1 and without a commander, so anyone will be able to have this bonus, you wouldn't need to hop squads.

That said I've been thinking of whether or not if we should be able to change the boons while in the squad or not, or only do it when in spawn areas only but that would be messy with squads with no commanders. Best way though would be on a one time activation, and if players want to change the boon they would have to create a new squad and the person who created would repick. Once you leave the squad the boons would fall off immediately.

Good point about stacks, I dunno why I thought about that on might as a reason to exclude it for activation, and not stability. I suppose instead of having a permanent boon that has no duration we could have the pulsing boon 1 stack every 3sec that lasts 3sec instead.

And again the tradeoff I suggested for this is to nerf boon durations, which are currently capped at 30s for wvw, I would maybe look at 10sec as the maximum, and lower the initial durations too, although I suppose it wouldn't matter with the maximum cap. Maybe even remove those boons (quickness and alacrity more specific) from players and only have it for the squad bonus, so we have a final place for them to activate them 100% and stop messing with players skills in trying to achieve that in various builds (which they are about to do yet again next patch).

Thanks for the reply.

[TheIceman.1039]

Next, we remove the weapons as well, we just give everyone a stick.

 

 

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stick

[Xenesis.6389]

1 hour ago, TheIceman.1039 said:

Next, we remove the weapons as well, we just give everyone a stick.

 

 

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stick

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Nevermore

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

2 hours ago, TheIceman.1039 said:

Next, we remove the weapons as well, we just give everyone a stick.

This is cornerstone. The Ugly Stick will do. 

10 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

What do you think? I'm looking for a serious discussion here, don't just wutface me over there(thank you my stalker)

I've been experimenting with this for a while now. When I ask for confused-reactions, I rarely get them. But if you say you do not want them, people will give them to you. Just for the sake of annoying you.

10 hours ago, Xenesis.6389 said:

- The choices available will be quickness, alacrity, stability, protection. We could probably add a couple more like fury, resistance, vigor, just to give more options for squad types. But most should be kept as player casted boon instead, especially for something like aegis, and there's plenty of cleanses around for groups so I wouldn't include resolution either. For the most part we know pve groups will take the best dps options like quickness and alacrity, while wvw will probably take stability and protection, but then havoc squads may take vigor or resistance, and roamers may take swiftness or vigor or protection, but really anything their spec doesn't have a lot of access to.

If you exclude Resolution, you also have to exclude Protection. The concept itself looks interesting, but I would completely exclude all damage blocking/reducing boons by default. If you leave Resolution and exclude Protection, you promote power-damage. Stability and Reistance on the other hand can work nicely. 

The idea looks good to me. Must have taken a while to figure it out and write it down 👍

[Ronin.4501]

I always liked the idea of having a max of...say...3 boons per players.  So say you already have stab, protection, and aegis up and someone pops alacrity...whelp now your stab is gone. Something that would actually require the players to give some thought behind which boons were applied (this would also require Anet to remove passive boon generation, but I'd be OK with that!).

[Dawdler.8521]

Well a buff system with passive squad buffs unique to classes would be nice if it wasnt for the fact Anet will probably hunt you down, tie you to the front of a truck and drive you off a cliff for even suggesting to nerf boons.

[joneirikb.7506]

That would have to be some really heavy nerfs on existing boons to make room for this. I'd almost say remove all boon sharing, and make boon generation a personal thing. In addition chopping down on all the boon durations with [Hundred Blades]

Since their announcement that they won't make more elite-spez, I've been thinking they might bring back PVE-skills from GW1, which would be a great way for them to further add power creep (that you got to grind for), without affecting/giving anything to pvp/wvw. So wouldn't be surprised if we soon get some skill that gives all boons for 30 sec  to party, with 35 sec CD.

But yeah, I think this idea could work, if ANet actually went in for it, and clubbed those boons like a bunch of baby seals. But I think they're too deep in the mire to dig themselves out at this point.

[Xenesis.6389]

10 hours ago, HnRkLnXqZ.1870 said:

I've been experimenting with this for a while now. When I ask for confused-reactions, I rarely get them. But if you say you do not want them, people will give them to you. Just for the sake of annoying you.

I usually have one or two that just automatically show up after I make a post. Sometimes I would look the notifications and the timing I would get like 5 reactions 5 mins ago type of thing, like someone just went through all my post in a thread and reacted to them all. It is what it is. 🤷‍♂️

10 hours ago, HnRkLnXqZ.1870 said:

If you exclude Resolution, you also have to exclude Protection. The concept itself looks interesting, but I would completely exclude all damage blocking/reducing boons by default. If you leave Resolution and exclude Protection, you promote power-damage. Stability and Reistance on the other hand can work nicely. 

The idea looks good to me. Must have taken a while to figure it out and write it down 👍

Hm but power damage is already the main meta, conditions practically have no place in zergs now. Smaller group stuff sure more effective, but big groups, conditions are constantly being wiped before full durations. I included resistance in the example because of immobilize which no one but the player using them likes. 😏 

I don't know if it's fair to straight compare resolution to protection, as conditions have another factor that completely wipes their damage with cleanses. For the example I figured I would just throw up two main dps and two main defense boons as examples, technically everything should be available(but not aegis I even hate that guards have an auto cast of this) so players just have more options for unusual comps with the specs and squad perma boons.

10 hours ago, Ronin.4501 said:

I always liked the idea of having a max of...say...3 boons per players.  So say you already have stab, protection, and aegis up and someone pops alacrity...whelp now your stab is gone. Something that would actually require the players to give some thought behind which boons were applied (this would also require Anet to remove passive boon generation, but I'd be OK with that!).

Yeah I wish the usage of boons were more tactical, shorter durations, more burst in nature and proper timing in usage, use them when you need them, and if you're in a group rotate timing when to use them. Instead we get a huge spam fest, which unfortunately was done to cater to the lowest dominator of players but becomes a massive advantage for big groups.

9 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Well a buff system with passive squad buffs unique to classes would be nice if it wasnt for the fact Anet will probably hunt you down, tie you to the front of a truck and drive you off a cliff for even suggesting to nerf boons.

Like WoW, buffs aren't the main game play, they're basically cast and leave as passives for the fight. For some whacky reason around HoT anet decided boon/condition looping ping pong game play was ground breaking new combat style. Until they decided everything a group does needs to revolve around boons and not so much in strips.

[Xenesis.6389]

26 minutes ago, joneirikb.7506 said:

That would have to be some really heavy nerfs on existing boons to make room for this. I'd almost say remove all boon sharing, and make boon generation a personal thing. In addition chopping down on all the boon durations with [Hundred Blades]

Since their announcement that they won't make more elite-spez, I've been thinking they might bring back PVE-skills from GW1, which would be a great way for them to further add power creep (that you got to grind for), without affecting/giving anything to pvp/wvw. So wouldn't be surprised if we soon get some skill that gives all boons for 30 sec  to party, with 35 sec CD.

But yeah, I think this idea could work, if ANet actually went in for it, and clubbed those boons like a bunch of baby seals. But I think they're too deep in the mire to dig themselves out at this point.

If they're going to dig deeper and remove boon sharing then the squad passives would probably need to be increased to maybe 4-5 instead of 1-2, although the more options you give players to run, more than likely a definitive meta will form because not all boons are alike in usefulness. Which might even look into making a separation of running 2 major boons to choose from quickness, alacrity, stability, protection, then running 3 minors which is everything else. I do like the idea of maybe toning down to more personal level of boon generation, although there's a lot of specs that don't have access to a lot of boons, but I guess that isn't a big deal when you may get to run up to 5 perma boons (ok might seem like too much to give to roamers lol).

Unfortunately yeah I don't think we can expect any sort of big reorganization of boons, would be too much work for them to do at this point, and I highly doubt they would want to put any effort even for the health of game and combat. But we're reaching 100% uptime on these things, might as well shift it to like squads perma bonuses instead of professions if their intention is to make sure everyone is covered.