Let's discuss Quickness and Alacrity.

[Batalix.2873]

13 hours ago, SponTen.1267 said:

Am I the only one who would love having Quickness and Alacrity as temporary boons? I love how it feels to have them now, and the contrast between not having them and then having them is stark and noticeable. The boost in power is fun, but it becomes meaningless when it's permanent. It's already like this in PvP, and sometimes when playing solo or in very small groups in PvE/WvW, and it's so much fun.

Why can't classes be designed so that they can provide these boons temporarily, but no individual build can provide either of them permanently, and there's quite an opportunity cost to doing so? It would create interesting hybrid roles, where someone in your group notes that they can provide some Quickness with their build, so they will apply in a burst window (eg. when breaking a Defiance Bar), but maybe they can't provide enough for the full burst phase, so you have to actually consider giving up some personal dps in order to provide more Quickness to your group.

Sure, roles would be less defined, but wasn't that the original design philosophy of GW2? Soft roles, hybrid builds, and diversity, instead of "dps or support, and quick or alac"? I don't want everything to be defined by these two boons either, but surely there's a middle ground between "permanent both" and "remove them from the game".

Eh then you would have a different problem, where players now insist on syncing up boon windows for burst phases. Then we would see a lot of auxiliary features removed or homogenized to make rotations all align in the same window.  GW2 would just become a 5-man DDR simulator like FFXIV.

There aren't many good solutions at this point. What this shows is that no matter what systems players are given, they will en masse trend toward insisting on optimization and the erosion of job identity.

And the sad thing is I admit to contributing. When I first joined the game after leaving FFXIV, I had insisted I would go against the grain, spurn boons and meta builds, and be part of the necessary pushback to keep GW2 from going down the same road. Now I have a ton of meta builds and am fine with this overall alac/quick paradigm because it has been equally frustrating to play most support builds that spam boons off slot skills cooldowns. We all succumb one way or another. We all will become Mechanists.

Edited June 13, 2023 by Batalix.2873

[Astralporing.1957]

9 minutes ago, Lily.1935 said:

GW2 pre-HoT was very elitist, a lot more so than it is now surprisingly enough. But that might be due to shifting demographics over the years and the audience maturing but that's hard to speculate on.

That's actually a myth based on seeing only a small part of the picture. Sure, people might have arrived at this idea seeing the requirements of the forming groups, and the attitude of players in those, because those groups were extremely loud and visible. Problem is, they were visible, because it usually took them quite some time to form - meanwhile casual groups for the same dungeons (with the possible exception of Arah) formed in seconds (and thus one might have though they do not exist). I was doing a lot of casual dungeon runnings then, and i have only rarely met any toxicity or elitism, or even just standards that were just tad too hardcore for my tastes - unlike nowadays, then it was so niche it was easily avoided.

[Lily.1935]

12 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

That's actually a myth based on seeing only a small part of the picture. Sure, people might have arrived at this idea seeing the requirements of the forming groups, and the attitude of players in those, because those groups were extremely loud and visible. Problem is, they were visible, because it usually took them quite some time to form - meanwhile casual groups for the same dungeons (with the possible exception of Arah) formed in seconds (and thus one might have though they do not exist). I was doing a lot of casual dungeon runnings then, and i have only rarely met any toxicity or elitism, or even just standards that were just tad too hardcore for my tastes - unlike nowadays, then it was so niche it was easily avoided.

I was playing a lot during that time and getting kicked for playing necromancer. There were 5-6 groups saying "Bring warrior, mesmer or guardian. Necro and rangers will be kicked." and maybe one group was not like that. This was per dungeon path mind you. It wasn't a myth, I was there.

Edit: There were groups who would auto Kick certain professions and not put it in their ad as well.

Edited June 13, 2023 by Lily.1935
Added note

[Astralporing.1957]

33 minutes ago, Lily.1935 said:

I was playing a lot during that time and getting kicked for playing necromancer. There were 5-6 groups saying "Bring warrior, mesmer or guardian. Necro and rangers will be kicked." and maybe one group was not like that. This was per dungeon path mind you. It wasn't a myth, I was there.

Edit: There were groups who would auto Kick certain professions and not put it in their ad as well.

Yes, there were. The groups you speak of were visible because they were so picky they were present for a loong time before filling - and they were advertising a lot, so people that didn;t know to avoid them could end up in your situation. It's just for each group like that there were several casual run ones, that filled much faster. All you had to do was to ask near entrance (that was before LFG, after all) "casual run, anyone?" and you'd be in a group inside dungeons in less than a minute.

I have seen those groups you speak of a lot too - i was just ignoring them, which was laughably easy. All that was required was the mere knowledge that they're better ignored, and you avoided 90% of the problems. Now, some people didn't know enough to stay away from speedrunners, and most of the bad stories comes from them.

Edited June 13, 2023 by Astralporing.1957

[Obtena.7952]

No one should create alternative histories to claim the selective teams that would auto-kick on class were a myth. Maybe they weren't the majority of teams and maybe they were limited to whatever LFG system was at the time but ...

... they DID provide a foundation to spread the absurd LIES that people should only play optimal builds. 

As for Alac and Quickness .. they aren't going anywhere. They started as fundamental buffs to high performance teams, embraced by Anet as a foundation for a 'roles'-based PVE game design strategy and now that specs are being assigned roles, these boons will be promoted to the highest level of balance focusing that Anet has ever implemented for classes in the history of the game. 

Edited June 13, 2023 by Obtena.7952

[Yasai.3549]

2 hours ago, Lily.1935 said:

I personally like quickness and alacrity builds. It gives us something to do. Guild Wars doesn't have interesting tank mechanics and CC skills are all pooled into the defiance mechanic for bosses so most cases without boon support we have DPS and Healers which doesn't provide enough diversity for a group in my opinion.

Ironic because Gw2 has been mentioned often to not heavily feature a solid "holy trinity" of classes which makes it one of the more unique MMO compared to others but now Anet is actively trying to homogenize and un-unique itself to form a weird unholy trinity of BoonDPS, BoonHealSupportTank and DPS. 

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I started skimming after awhile, so I apologize if this has been brought up.  I don't think Alacrity is much of an issue in PVE.

I'm coming at this from a more mechanical standpoint.  Aside from numerically doing better, the boons would impact gameplay in different ways.  Might and Fury have no change, with all gameplay remaining the same but with higher numbers.  Alacrity affects gameplay a bit more by making it easier to spam skills instead of filling time with auto attacks.  Quickness, however, is the boon that renders all learned timing useless when transitioning between high-end and low-end PVE.  Quickness makes the game mechanically harder to play, requiring much faster fingers and action time to accomplish the same goals.  It is Quickness that is overpowered IMO.

Alacrity doesn't seem that overpowered when compared to other boons, either.  80% recharge duration is good, because it is technically more of everything.  Consider that full might is around 30% increased damage (depending on build) and fury is around 20% increase in damage.  In long term impact, Alacrity is only a bit better.  In the short term, Alacrity has little value because it doesn't directly increase the damage that you do.  This makes it more balanced around long-term usage, whereas short-term (I.E. overworld mobs) can be largely ignored.  Thus, alacrity only has value when applied for long durations.  Quickness, however, is a full 50% speed increase that directly multiplies the effects of the other boon, while also directly increasing all auto-tied effects (including heals from some specs).  

The length of application isn't necessarily a problem.  Balancing around the presence of boons isn't much different from balancing anything else.  If boons are expected to be present in certain circumstances, then that is a testament to the value of buffers in this game.  What should be evaluated is what happens in the absence of the boons.  If might or fury falters in a fight, it will be sparsely felt.  If Alacrity falters in that same fight, the cooldowns of some skills will be slightly longer, but it just means more auto attack time.  The only one that is felt immediately and severely is the sudden lack of Quickness.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that the problems with the PVE boon meta largely circle around Quickness.  There was a point in this game where group might and fury management were still tactical considerations, yet those have been dropped in lieu of focusing on quickness and alacrity.  The game could've just as easily been focused around might and alacrity, with might being non-binary and non-obtrusive in playstyle  

Edited June 14, 2023 by Blood Red Arachnid.2493

[Astralporing.1957]

10 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

No one should create alternative histories to claim the selective teams that would auto-kick on class were a myth. Maybe they weren't the majority of teams and maybe they were limited to whatever LFG system was at the time but ...

... they DID provide a foundation to spread the absurd LIES that people should only play optimal builds.

I did not say that their existence was a myth. I said that the belief that pre-HoT was more elitist overall was a myth. It's much worse now, because not only the difficulty of instanced content is much higher, which makes it way more harder to just run whatever (something that was entirely possible for dungeons), but also the "meta" mentality that insist on running optimal (or close to optimal) builds is now much more widespread than it was before, to the point where it starts to overflow even to open world.

Notice, that it's not the dungeon speedrunners that caused this to happpen. It was Anet's push towards raids, and the appearance of dps meters that did this.

[Ilusenn.6420]

Hi !

On 6/11/2023 at 3:26 PM, Noodle Ant.1605 said:

i remember anet stating the whole issue with quick/alac is that not having them feels bad because they dramatically change how the game feels. its not like having 0 might/0 vuln/no fury - you just do less dmg/dont crit, but youre still going to press buttons exactly the same way as if you had might/vuln/fury.

I strongly agree with this. Yet, I like having a role that allows me to do less dps than others, and changes my priorities from "do dps first" to "give boons first". A compromise would be to give everyone the possibility to get some alac/quick by themselves for burst phases, with the boon giver role having to fill the gaps in squads. People who want to remain independant could sacrifice some raw dps to keep 100% uptime with diviner/ritualist stuff.

(I've read page 1 only, sorry if this has been said already.)

[xellink.7568]

3 hours ago, Belore.7902 said:

Hi !

I strongly agree with this. Yet, I like having a role that allows me to do less dps than others, and changes my priorities from "do dps first" to "give boons first". A compromise would be to give everyone the possibility to get some alac/quick by themselves for burst phases, with the boon giver role having to fill the gaps in squads. People who want to remain independant could sacrifice some raw dps to keep 100% uptime with diviner/ritualist stuff.

(I've read page 1 only, sorry if this has been said already.)

Then boons will be vomited out just like might stacks. 

[Omg Im Target.3095]

We all know big changes arent gonna happen because its too much work for anet and they are very conservative. But i like to throw ideas around.

I think quickness and alac shouldnt exist but instead there should be 1 or maybe 2 new stat type. One that increases your attackspeed and maybe one that increases your cdr. Other mmos do that and it works fine there. Obviously there needs to be a cap or better the value reduces after a certain number.  For example: Lets call that new stat Agility. 1000 Agility points gives you 50% attackspeed, but 2000 Agility points gives you only 75% attackspeed. Imo its better design. People dont need to worry that they overcap and lose few stat points for nothing. 

Edited June 14, 2023 by Omg Im Target.3095

[Xenesis.6389]

On 6/11/2023 at 12:39 PM, Greyrat.2378 said:

If the devs state that it feels bad to play without them, that should be indication that there is something wrong with your game and the way you design these encounters.
Making the boons almost mandatory to have is not the way to go tbh.

Solution? Time to move on I guess (at least in my case).

Overall they're not even really fixing the problem if solo or a certain profession/spec "feels bad man" without those two boons cause they're sticking them on certain specs. Sticking alacrity on Scourge doesn't help core, reaper, or harbinger, but it just forces you to play that one spec for those boons, which will still feel bad since they're also nerfing the dps side of scourge. 😏

If they wanted everyone to have access those boons so they don't feel bad it should have been stuck on core trait lines, much like fury is. All this balancing around two boons for 100% upkeep, while butchering specs to do so, is such a waste of time, and if the goal is 100% all the time then it might as well be baseline.

They either remove those boons, or baseline them and move on to other better aspects of combat to balance around. Should have never came to this point. Even WoW has haste(quickness) on a 5min cooldown and can't be reapplied in that time, their combat has been balanced around that for near 20 years. 🤷‍♂️

[Furball.1236]

On 6/11/2023 at 1:58 AM, Yasai.3549 said:

I think we've gotten to a stage in game balance right now where Quickness and Alacrity are treated like "essential boons" and if a class is unable to provide them, they are considered with less priority for content, at least that's the picture Anet is trying to paint when they decided to give every Profession the ability to provide Quick or Alac. I think this is a huge problem when specs and builds are giving up core identifying playstyles, traits or unique capabilities in order to fit the mold of an "Essential boon giver" 

I feel like there needs to be a serious discussion regarding how this affects the game overall. Personally, I feel that these two boons and the focus on revamping specs to provide them is a ridiculous and unhealthy obsession. 

 

I'll just kick off the discussion with a suggestion of mine: 

1. Quick and Alac are removed entirely as player given boons. 

2. Introduce a new 6 Rune set which will be the new "meta DPS set". Its 6 set effect is speed up all skill casting (quickness essentially). Stats will have a Condi variant and a Power variant. 

3. Introduce a new 6 Rune which will be the new  "meta Healer set". Its 6 set effect is Healing allies will reduce their cooldowns by 2seconds. 1second internal cooldown per player. Stats will feature Healing Power. 

 

I agree with the first option you suggested for PvE. I won't like the second and third options because I like diversity in the rune choices.

Some elite specs are very uncomfortable to play without quickness, and some builds completely fall apart without both quick and alac. Generating these boons is very brain-dead work where you press the same couple of skills in the same way in every fight without the need to react to your surroundings. Plus, once you hit 100% uptime, there's no room to improve. These aspects make roles to provide offensive boons very boring to me, and balancing elite specs or even the whole professions around them is sad.

Making boons more difficult to provide will unlikely solve the problem because people will just put more concentration stats untill they can do what they do now. If the role stays difficult even after that, most people will complain and ask for buffs. But in the end, what we will get is just a boring non-reactive gameplay that follows the exact same rotation as they do in the golem room.

Making boons being able to be generated passively like might is another way, but without dedicated people actively paying attention to boon generating, I assume very few people will put priority in those boon generating skills anr the uptime will just get bad. In the end, if the crucial boon is generated passively, they should just remove the boons and give the buff built in to all the skills anyway.

So to sum up, I like the idea of removing the offensive boons from PvE. I think the situation is different in PvP and I'm fine with leaving them there.

[Lily.1935]

On 6/13/2023 at 6:58 PM, Yasai.3549 said:

Ironic because Gw2 has been mentioned often to not heavily feature a solid "holy trinity" of classes which makes it one of the more unique MMO compared to others but now Anet is actively trying to homogenize and un-unique itself to form a weird unholy trinity of BoonDPS, BoonHealSupportTank and DPS. 

The original idea when anet was developing guild wars was that you'd be able to play many roles with each class and that you'd be able to bring any class or combination of them and form a coherent group that could complete all the content. I understand your perspective I do, and I agree with you on it but I also understand Arena net's perspective and agree with theirs. Making sure every class can preform the key roles the group needs is a good thing with a serious cost.

I don't quite agree that a BoonDPS or Boonhealer is homogenize with others that preform the same role. I don't feel that all power DPS feel the same compared to all other power DPS. I do think Arena net could diversify the Boon supports a bit more though, like we don't have a Quickness healer that also provides barrier for example. Although each professions' play patterns are still different.

I have issues outside of these builds though. And I think the diversity of builds isn't strong enough outside of it and I personally feel arena net is too safe with their builds. For me during the live stream something that really upset me was the fact Spirits design was changed in a similar manner to how Gyros and Spirit weapons were changed. Or that they're changing Necro Dagger's Life Siphon to no longer be a channel skill. These changes which change the play feel of these skills significantly for efficiency rather than allowing these skills to have their own unique quarks about them cheapens the experience of the game in my opinion. And I think these two concerns, your concern with boon supports and my concern with skill functionality come from the same place in our concerned and its stripping of class identity.

[Batalix.2873]

2 minutes ago, Lily.1935 said:

The original idea when anet was developing guild wars was that you'd be able to play many roles with each class and that you'd be able to bring any class or combination of them and form a coherent group that could complete all the content. I understand your perspective I do, and I agree with you on it but I also understand Arena net's perspective and agree with theirs. Making sure every class can preform the key roles the group needs is a good thing with a serious cost.

I don't quite agree that a BoonDPS or Boonhealer is homogenize with others that preform the same role. I don't feel that all power DPS feel the same compared to all other power DPS. I do think Arena net could diversify the Boon supports a bit more though, like we don't have a Quickness healer that also provides barrier for example. Although each professions' play patterns are still different.

I have issues outside of these builds though. And I think the diversity of builds isn't strong enough outside of it and I personally feel arena net is too safe with their builds. For me during the live stream something that really upset me was the fact Spirits design was changed in a similar manner to how Gyros and Spirit weapons were changed. Or that they're changing Necro Dagger's Life Siphon to no longer be a channel skill. These changes which change the play feel of these skills significantly for efficiency rather than allowing these skills to have their own unique quarks about them cheapens the experience of the game in my opinion. And I think these two concerns, your concern with boon supports and my concern with skill functionality come from the same place in our concerned and its stripping of class identity.

In all fairness, Spirits haven't been what they were intended to be for a while. I would not have minded pulsing alac on spirits that were given back their dawdling. Then you could take a more modular and hands-off approach to spirits, where for more static fights you would only need one spirit, but for more mobile fights you would want to bring two or three.

[Machineuzi.5604]

I feel like 0 thought is put behind most suggestions here.

Like lets take the 'make quick and alac baseline' suggestion. Let us assume that devs will be able to handle the MASSIVE increase in powercreep that follows, and also manages to not totally kill the previous specs/builds that gave these boons so they play as dps or something.

You would be reducing the number of non-dps roles in each sub by only 1, cuz healers in each subgroup will likely still be popular. You would not be helping comp diversity at all. By making these boons baseline, you also reduce gameplay complexity a fair bit as it is not a given that a boon support will be able to perfectly maintain their boons in actual scenarios. GG

 

If you don't like alac or quick roles in your squad, and feel others have the same sentiment, make your own group instead of trying to overhaul the game with no regard to feasibility and the dev effort required or making gw2 a copy of whatever game you migrated from.

 

 

[Greyrat.2378]

1 hour ago, Machineuzi.5604 said:

Like lets take the 'make quick and alac baseline' suggestion. Let us assume that devs will be able to handle the MASSIVE increase in powercreep that follows, and also manages to not totally kill the previous specs/builds that gave these boons so they play as dps or something.

Game has already considerable powercreep thanks to these boons. This is most noticeable in strikes or even some OW meta events (e.g. Dragon's Stand).
As boon dps you are already playing dps while providing boons off cooldown, the way this is implemented is also very often not exactly fun/interactive to play (e.g. alac specter that is thankfully being reworked, scrapper where you just push your gyros and toolbelt skills off cooldown etc.) - this is personal opinion tho.

1 hour ago, Machineuzi.5604 said:

You would be reducing the number of non-dps roles in each sub by only 1, cuz healers in each subgroup will likely still be popular. You would not be helping comp diversity at all. By making these boons baseline, you also reduce gameplay complexity a fair bit as it is not a given that a boon support will be able to perfectly maintain their boons in actual scenarios. GG

Again, boon dps is already dealing damage usually around 15-20k dps which is often same output as normal dps if played by person that can not properly do his rotation, perfectly fine for most of the content in this game.
Healers as you said will still be desired.
Most of the time 100% boon uptime is already a thing unless the encounter itself is designed specifically to prevent this, most of them are not, or just partially where it does not make a difference anyway.

1 hour ago, Machineuzi.5604 said:

If you don't like alac or quick roles in your squad, and feel others have the same sentiment, make your own group instead of trying to overhaul the game with no regard to feasibility and the dev effort required or making gw2 a copy of whatever game you migrated from.

People are already screeching in a bloody IBS strikes if you don't have quickness and alacrity covered.
This whole boon fiesta is also seeping into OW as well, very few people wants to organize group for Dragons End if the quick/alac is not covered at least partially, simply because of risk of failure.
If the devs literally state that game feels bad to play without these boons and they are actively balancing the professions around these two boons, your argument is ultimately invalid if the devs themselves wants us to play their content with these boons.

Boons themselves also promote this mindless stacking in order to effectively provide boons/heals for every person, certain mechanics can be pretty much ignored thanks to this and everyone just performs his perfect rotation.
This might sound fun to you, but I find it literally opposite of what GW2 combat is about.

The benefits quickness/alacrity provides are simply too much and needs adjustment regardless whether they would remain same, made baseline or applied in some different way.

Edited June 15, 2023 by Greyrat.2378
typo

[Machineuzi.5604]

>Game has already considerable powercreep thanks to these boons. This is most noticeable in strikes or even some OW meta events (e.g. Dragon's Stand).

Ok knowing that devs do not or cannot do much to handle current powercreep, your solution is to just give up and add more with baseline boons.

>As boon dps you are already playing dps while providing boons off cooldown, the way this is implemented is also very often not exactly fun/interactive to play

This is a matter of designing these specs to be more interactive - which they are making an active effort in the coming patch.

>Boons themselves also promote this mindless stacking in order to effectively provide boons/heals for every person, certain mechanics can be pretty much ignored thanks to this and everyone just performs his perfect rotation.
This might sound fun to you, but I find it literally opposite of what GW2 combat is about.

 

There has never been a time where gw2 was not about stacking. Even before quickness and alac were proper boons you stacked - cuz your heals are in aoe around you, you wanted to stack behind corners to LoS enemies and have them pile up nicely, melee weapons were designed to be stronger than ranged pre HoT in general, you would need to be near allies to rez them and you still had boons such as might and fury that was again shared aoe around you. But please tell me otherwise what gw2 combat was about before quick and alac.

 

>People are already screeching in a bloody IBS strikes if you don't have quickness and alacrity covered.
This whole boon fiesta is also seeping into OW as well, very few people wants to organize group for Dragons End if the quick/alac is not covered at least partially, simply because of risk of failure.
If the devs literally state that game feels bad to play without these boons and they are actively balancing the professions around these two boons, your argument is ultimately invalid if the devs themselves wants us to play their content with these boons.

I dont see anything surprising with people being accustomed to something and shaping their groups and gameplay around this. You really think if alac and quick was removed something else would not be demanded? People would not have things that they cant play without? People would not find anything else to complain? 

This is just an imagined problem imo.

[Leo G.4501]

So the root of all power creep is Mesmer?

[LucianTheAngelic.7054]

Quickness and alacrity are fine and spreading them to other e-specs to ensure every profession has access to both is fine. They just need to be balanced and applied in a smart way, which isn’t always happening when Anet gives the boons to a new e-spec/reworks specs. 

Edited June 15, 2023 by LucianTheAngelic.7054

[Flapjackson.1596]

Any better implementation of attack speed or CDR should be as consistent as possible. I like the ideas that fulfilling certain conditions in fights (ex. Breaking a CC bar) reward you, but it has to be extremely consistent and anticipated. The entire problem of attack speed and CDR as boons is that they lack consistency. Your muscle memory, gameplay, and overall enjoyment are at the mercy of other players. No one likes being thrown off their tempo or suddenly feeling sluggish because of someone else’s actions. It removes agency from the player.
 

These boons are a design disaster, and fixing them will require a lot of work to tune base attack speeds, cooldowns, enemy health, PvP consequences, rotations, etc. The scope of the problem shouldn’t rule out action though! We need patches that progressively tackle those concerns. Not patches that just surrender to the state of things.

[JTGuevara.9018]

What is there to discuss about alacrity? Delete it from the game.

Alacrity is the in-game equivalent of enchanted crack cocaine...

[xellink.7568]

12 hours ago, Machineuzi.5604 said:

>Game has already considerable powercreep thanks to these boons. This is most noticeable in strikes or even some OW meta events (e.g. Dragon's Stand).

Ok knowing that devs do not or cannot do much to handle current powercreep, your solution is to just give up and add more with baseline boons.

>As boon dps you are already playing dps while providing boons off cooldown, the way this is implemented is also very often not exactly fun/interactive to play

This is a matter of designing these specs to be more interactive - which they are making an active effort in the coming patch.

>Boons themselves also promote this mindless stacking in order to effectively provide boons/heals for every person, certain mechanics can be pretty much ignored thanks to this and everyone just performs his perfect rotation.
This might sound fun to you, but I find it literally opposite of what GW2 combat is about.

 

There has never been a time where gw2 was not about stacking. Even before quickness and alac were proper boons you stacked - cuz your heals are in aoe around you, you wanted to stack behind corners to LoS enemies and have them pile up nicely, melee weapons were designed to be stronger than ranged pre HoT in general, you would need to be near allies to rez them and you still had boons such as might and fury that was again shared aoe around you. But please tell me otherwise what gw2 combat was about before quick and alac.

 

>People are already screeching in a bloody IBS strikes if you don't have quickness and alacrity covered.
This whole boon fiesta is also seeping into OW as well, very few people wants to organize group for Dragons End if the quick/alac is not covered at least partially, simply because of risk of failure.
If the devs literally state that game feels bad to play without these boons and they are actively balancing the professions around these two boons, your argument is ultimately invalid if the devs themselves wants us to play their content with these boons.

I dont see anything surprising with people being accustomed to something and shaping their groups and gameplay around this. You really think if alac and quick was removed something else would not be demanded? People would not have things that they cant play without? People would not find anything else to complain? 

This is just an imagined problem imo.

we can't exactly take the cigarette from the smoker and lock them in jail cold turkey

[Astralporing.1957]

17 hours ago, Machineuzi.5604 said:

Like lets take the 'make quick and alac baseline' suggestion. Let us assume that devs will be able to handle the MASSIVE increase in powercreep that follows

What powercreep? The groups that push the envelope of dps have already been running with 100% upkeep of those for a long time. Sure, it would be a help to OW players, which most of the time have to do without those boons, but are you really worried about increase in power of players that currently are running 4k dps builds? If anything, it might make the massive gap between the average and top become a little bit smaller, which is not a bad thing.

17 hours ago, Machineuzi.5604 said:

and also manages to not totally kill the previous specs/builds that gave these boons so they play as dps or something.

Well, sure, the builds that are currently running alac or quick would need to be adjusted to pure dps/pure heal (or dps/heal with utility they already have). Some un-nerfing might be necessary here, but, apart from the future scourge, it would not be that much change - and future scourge is an abomination that has to go either way.

17 hours ago, Machineuzi.5604 said:

You would be reducing the number of non-dps roles in each sub by only 1, cuz healers in each subgroup will likely still be popular. You would not be helping comp diversity at all.

Quite the opposite. It would open much more variability for different roles - especially for healer, where since from the very beginning healing always was secondary to boons, which were the real limiting factor in deciding which healer was useful and which was not (see the extremely low popularity of the best healer of HoT era - Tempest healer - at the time of complete Druid domination of the meta)

17 hours ago, Machineuzi.5604 said:

By making these boons baseline, you also reduce gameplay complexity a fair bit as it is not a given that a boon support will be able to perfectly maintain their boons in actual scenarios. GG

You must have missed the memo. The current balance design direction is in making those two boons easy to perfectly mantain. Yes, in actual scenarios.

17 hours ago, Machineuzi.5604 said:

If you don't like alac or quick roles in your squad, and feel others have the same sentiment, make your own group instead of trying to overhaul the game with no regard to feasibility and the dev effort required or making gw2 a copy of whatever game you migrated from.

The issue with Alac and Quick is that the game is currently designed so they are absolutely obligatory in any high-end content. You might dislike them, but you cannot get away from them. You cannot get away from Anet warping balance design around those two boons to the detriment of other builds either - see the current case of scourge, that started this whole discussion (or rather brought it to the forefront from the sidelines where it existed before).

So, no, "make your own group" is not a solution to the issue.

[xellink.7568]

8 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

 

The issue with Alac and Quick is that the game is currently designed so they are absolutely obligatory in any high-end content. You might dislike them, but you cannot get away from them. You cannot get away from Anet warping balance design around those two boons to the detriment of other builds either - see the current case of scourge, that started this whole discussion (or rather brought it to the forefront from the sidelines where it existed before).

So, no, "make your own group" is not a solution to the issue.

That's not true. We just did a raid with all 10 thieves without the need of a quickness provider.