Boonball meta is bad

[RisingDawn.5796]

The current meta, if you don't have enough boon strips = major skill lag, even outside of reset night now..

Edited December 22, 2023 by CrimsonOneThree.5682

[XenesisII.1540]

Too many CCs in the game where it badly needs diminishing returns... but never enough to deal with boon balls. 🤷‍♂️

[Aeolus.3615]

On 12/21/2023 at 1:07 PM, CrimsonOneThree.5682 said:

The current meta, if you don't have enough boon strips = major skill lag, even outside of reset night now..

yeah but now players tend to be in perma auras spam due the amount of mesmers needed to try to counter a boonball comp, wich give more boon spam  with chaos aura.

when tigh to a group i am always in perma chaos  and frost auras .

Edited December 29, 2023 by Aeolus.3615

[Cuks.8241]

On 12/17/2023 at 4:43 PM, Aeolus.3615 said:

I think ur getting confused here due how much players are poking other players, the issue isn't players stack up  nor the players making game unplayable, but Anet mentality giving to much overperformance on minstrels stacking and the perma boons scheme while nerfed the counter to perma boons, situation like rip 14 stacks of stability from a target and the next second theres already 10 stacks of stability that  and many  other boons that  CARRY the zerg of boon ballers that is the issue... Balance and ANET lamerways of giving more low effort  to the big blob of minstrells.

Anet rewards way to much the boonnall that is the real problem and some players ending in bashing on the players rather the guys making the "balance".

 

IF Anet removes minstrell lameness from the game WvW balance will be much better that is the real issue behind the zergs.

Note: no matter how much Anet cut the support quoficientes the stats are still there and players will stack even more minstrells if needed, the problem are the stats themselves.

@ANET THE  PROBLEM IS YOU! NOT THE PLAYERS, at least remove toughness from minstrel and add something else, crit chance would be interesting tho.

I don't think removing/changing minstrel would really do that much. It would require the 2 supports per group that run minstrel to play better but the damage dealers are still mostly in berserker so yeah. It might even be detrimental for the meta diversity as the squishier supports might just fall out of meta.

Also if you have a 25-35 man squad which I see is what many guilds get together on their raid nights, you have at least 5-7 strippers in there (probably a few more). You can strip a lot with those 7. Yeah stab will most likely be reapplied immediately but the point is not to just strip. You have to immediately follow up with cc, dmg and more strips. I do think they overnerfed strips but the most cruicial is Wod in my opinion. Wod should be completely reverted (not the part when it was targeted to caster, that was just crazy). because Wod was that trap. The problem with Wod was only because you could stack SPBs and it got crazy at some point.

So instead of nerfing Wod which I think is a great ability, they should somehow discourage stacking multiple SPBs with Wods. For example if you get caught in Wod, after it ends you get an effect that lasts 15 secs during which you are immune to follow up Wods.

[Alsandar.7420]

One thing I’ll say, as boonstrip chrono I’m still topping charts. It’s a good feeling. Even if the number is dramatically lower. We all got nerfed into oblivion together. Homogenized gaming ftw 

[Aeolus.3615]

On 12/29/2023 at 11:34 AM, Cuks.8241 said:

I don't think removing/changing minstrel would really do that much. It would require the 2 supports per group that run minstrel to play better but the damage dealers are still mostly in berserker so yeah. It might even be detrimental for the meta diversity as the squishier supports might just fall out of meta.

Also if you have a 25-35 man squad which I see is what many guilds get together on their raid nights, you have at least 5-7 strippers in there (probably a few more). You can strip a lot with those 7. Yeah stab will most likely be reapplied immediately but the point is not to just strip. You have to immediately follow up with cc, dmg and more strips. I do think they overnerfed strips but the most cruicial is Wod in my opinion. Wod should be completely reverted (not the part when it was targeted to caster, that was just crazy). because Wod was that trap. The problem with Wod was only because you could stack SPBs and it got crazy at some point.

So instead of nerfing Wod which I think is a great ability, they should somehow discourage stacking multiple SPBs with Wods. For example if you get caught in Wod, after it ends you get an effect that lasts 15 secs during which you are immune to follow up Wods.

Perma alacrity will make alot of boons being reaplied and 7 Boon deniers wont do much when enemy palys the boon ball spam, that only works when u have more numbers...  note that on current  gameplay palyers  are  permanant inside chaos or frost auras, chaos aura gives boons.

Making  the boon ball squishier since they rely on perma boons would be a trade off, ence why removing or chaging minstrell stats could be a sanity check for the gameplay.

I have sugested to make some skills like WoD target specific boons like quickness in 1st place for example, but anything that is offensive to the zerg Anet gets pissed off .

 

Edited January 1 by Aeolus.3615

[bq pd.2148]

10 minutes ago, Aeolus.3615 said:

7 Boon deniers wont do much when enemy palys the boon ball spam, that only works when u have more numbers.

if you are fighting same/larger numbers it becomes more important to coordinate your strips/damage, you can't just spamm strips out like the boons then it wont do much besides looking good on the arc counter.

Edited January 1 by bq pd.2148
typo

[Aeolus.3615]

Just now, bq pd.2148 said:

if you are fighting same/larger numbers it becomes more important to coordinate your strips/damage, you can't just spamm strips out like the boons then it wont do much besides looking good on the arc counter.

with the current boon spam it does not really matter... unless theres a decent gap between groups  on numbers.

The only groups ic winning with strips are groups that almost outman my group  or theres a huge gap on numbers and vice versa, and both groups are permanent on auras lol..

Edited January 1 by Aeolus.3615

[bq pd.2148]

1 hour ago, Aeolus.3615 said:

The only groups ic winning with strips are groups that almost outman my group  or theres a huge gap on numbers and vice versa, and both groups are permanent on auras lol..

so what happens when you fight a similar sized group?

mine is on the smaller side of guild groups so i cant remember last time we wiped against even smaller numbers during guild raids, but we still often win against larger groups. tho that can be either an argument for strips working when coordinated or that they are not enough when larger numbers fail to strip us i suppose.

[Sansar.1302]

Boons should mainly be personal, only swiftness and the less impactfull boons should be shared.

[Aeolus.3615]

Just now, bq pd.2148 said:

so what happens when you fight a similar sized group?

mine is on the smaller side of guild groups so i cant remember last time we wiped against even smaller numbers during guild raids, but we still often win against larger groups. tho that can be either an argument for strips working when coordinated or that they are not enough when larger numbers fail to strip us i suppose.

the tendency is that we win most times even with 0 mesmers or 1 mesmer when group size is very similiar , i dont think i had similiar fight lost cause of enemy mesmers on similiar numbers for what i noticed,  when ic purple auras on enemy everywhere those group start to be only eficient when they are slight more than us with a larger core of minstrells than we tend to have.

Note that theres stability and resolution, both perma in most groups and boon denials are RNG deppending it's order on targets, "there isnt" specific skills targeting specific boons and the very very few one got nerfed to useless.

 

 

 

 

Edited January 1 by Aeolus.3615

[bq pd.2148]

19 minutes ago, Aeolus.3615 said:

the tendency is that we win most times even with 0 mesmers or 1 mesmer when group size is very similiar , i dont think i had similiar fight lost cause of enemy mesmers on similiar numbers for what i noticed,  when ic purple auras on enemy everywhere those group start to be only eficient when they are slight more than us with a larger core of minstrells than we tend to have.

mesmers might not always go for top strips.
we like the mesmers for their CC, the strips are nice but now we are rather replacing the firebrands with mesmers as they can keep up most boons solo.  and they will outperform firebrands even more when we get the rifle unless we get some decent chrono nerfs with it.
they sacrifice some strips to play like that. but open up more slots that we can fill with classes that offer other things besides strips to maximaize the value per squadslot: spb for more damage or scourge for more sustain.
 

27 minutes ago, Aeolus.3615 said:

Note that theres stability and resolution, both perma in most groups and boon denials are RNG deppending it's order on targets, there isnt specific skills targeting specific boons and the very very few one got nerfed to useless.

as we are on small numbers i can still run vault spammer when i dont fill in another missing role, that comes with boonrip on steal to take out a key player or 2 and this is one of very few strips with a decent priority list. but that is single target and wont work when the groups get bigger just like thief in general will lose value.

[XenesisII.1540]

Boon strips need to be highly coordinated now, while boons basically only need stability to be coordinated and everything else is vomit spammed to cover it....

That sounds balanced for pvp? Turn every group into a tank and only a nuclear strike can harm them? You get to pick off the stragglers only because they fell asleep at the wheel of the mindless train.

Boon balls does two things, makes people lazy relying on boons and support spam for defense and less on other important aspects of combat like positioning. Forces groups into strict metas and encourages larger numbers in order to be successful, you're not allowed to stray and get creative because there's a 30sec wall everywhere you look, and the tools aren't enough to rip it down anymore unless you bring more, the answer to everything in wvw just bring more, or you just pick on lesser organized/skilled that have holes on their borders because they couldn't hire enough firebrands. There's boon balls sitting in keeps running around lords for 20-30 mins farming pugs, absolute braindead garbage level of fighting.

Game mechanics wise everything should be near the same level no matter the amount of numbers involved, what should be the biggest difference is organization, and coordination through communication, not gathering 30-50 people to get the game to carry you with 12 perma boons for the entire fight. But the game is now designed to make every little ball into perfect little tanks running over everything until they run into another tank, they take a couple pot shots at each other, then turn and look for something else roll over. While I may think boon spam is too much, other aspects of combat have also grown too large, like spam cc especially daze, it's absolutely moronic that the game wasn't designed with diminishing returns for cc, instead just a catch all of stability boon which forces the entirety of combat and balance to revolve around it, while not every class even has equal access to it.

Now we have devs catering only to gvg, you know, the thing that goes away from what wvw was designed to operate as, trying to push everyone into these blobs to fight each other, it's not a wonder that the entire concept of wvw is dying and just boils down to mindlessly running around farming groups like world bosses. No one cares about their servers, no one cares about winning matches, no one cares about helping their allies, it's me me me me, me fight, me rewards, everyone else get off the map.

My last 2023 rant, can only hope 2024 will be better, but meh. 😏

Happy New Year 2024 WvW, and confused stalkers -->

[ArchonWing.9480]

14 minutes ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Now we have devs catering only to gvg, you know, the thing that goes away from what wvw was designed to operate as, trying to push everyone into these blobs to fight each other, it's not a wonder that the entire concept of wvw is dying and just boils down to mindlessly running around farming groups like world bosses. No one cares about their servers, no one cares about winning matches, no one cares about helping their allies, it's me me me me, me fight, me rewards, everyone else get off the map.

I thought of it, and actually I'm not very sure anymore.

Yes, the current state of any group fights is bad, but for the most part GvGers have actually been instrumental into making sure WvW does not devolve into a zergfest and are also the ones that create new WvW builds.

However, a lot of these people left the game due to issues including stagnancy. What you're seeing as "boon blobbing" are either guilds that were always massive in the past and have just found more meta builds, or the b-tier fight guilds that couldn't hack it in the past and come out to the forefront because no competition. They all run the same builds, never experiment, and even have the same brand of cringey insider humor. Just no individuality at all.

In the past, fight guilds would choose the most difficult fights, like deliberately attacking a defending garrison and try to win or last as long as possible. Your "modern" fight guild is the type to abuse lagging the servers with buggy skills and of course summon another guild group if they lose to pugs somehow. They are also extremely passive and pretty much idle until they can chase orange swords.

As some would say, these are the types that couldn't make it in any other game, so they will take anything they can get in a empty space (like sPvP!, just kidding!)

Edited January 1 by ArchonWing.9480

[XenesisII.1540]

9 minutes ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

I thought of it, and actually I'm not very sure anymore.

Yes, the current state of any group fights is bad, but for the most part GvGers have actually been instrumental into making sure WvW does not devolve into a zergfest and are also the ones that create new WvW builds.

However, a lot of these people left the game due to issues including stagnancy. What you're seeing as "boon blobbing" are either guilds that were always massive in the past and have just found more meta builds, or the b-tier fight guilds that couldn't hack it in the past and come out to the forefront because no competition.

In the past, fight guilds would choose the most difficult fights, like deliberately attacking a defending garrison and try to win or last as long as possible. Your "modern" fight guild is the type to abuse lagging the servers with buggy skills and of course summon another guild group if they lose to pugs somehow.

As some would say, these are the types that couldn't make it in any other game, so they will take anything they can get in a empty space (like sPvP!, just kidding!)

You are right.

I use the term gvg lightly, it's the label for pure fighters, it's still the group that drives balance these days. But the guilds today certainly aren't comparable to the old guilds and you're right a lot of them are the b and c tier guilds that just loaded up with more players running tighter meta builds. The old guilds ran 20-30, these current guilds need to run 40-50. 😏

Edited January 1 by XenesisII.1540

[bq pd.2148]

11 minutes ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Game mechanics wise everything should be near the same level no matter the amount of numbers involved, what should be the biggest difference is organization, and coordination through communication, not gathering 30-50 people to get the game to carry you with 12 perma boons for the entire fight.

12 minutes ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

There's boon balls sitting in keeps running around lords for 20-30 mins farming pugs, absolute braindead garbage level of fighting.

the boonballs still have more coordination than the random pugs being farmed, so if coordination is what should matter, nothing changes.

for the random pugs to be a threat to a badboonball, the damage has to be upped again a lot, strips alone are not enough. even when everything is stripped the damage of single burst skills alone wont down most people.
back in the day before damage nerfs the problem for clouds was often retaliation, a glassy ele could easily go downstate from a well placed meteor shower and a burnguard spiking a zerg with reflect might have skipped downed state. however we no longer have retaliation, thus if the damage is upped again clouds will be a much bigger threat. this would also change boonball vs boonball fights to be again much more ranged or stealthed onepush. for roaming it also should make 1 vs X easier again.


and on a smaller note: a single chrono in party (no firebrand needed) can keep up multiple stacks of stab permanently if they are not stripped. thus also not much coordination needed here.

[ArchonWing.9480]

20 minutes ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

The old guilds ran 20-30, these current guilds need to run 40-50

Now that might be a thing with game design. It is simply harder for a smaller group because the floor has increased by a lot since release. Even a individual player out of position isn't punished as much or as quickly since 60-80% of them will be in minstrel gear Plus damage nerfs!

And of course pvers coming in with uplevels and truly non fuctional builds (even more so than now) have largely been weeded out and no longer a thing for weaker guilds to farm until the next GoB complaint thread comes up. 😉  This means a lot of weak WvWers that could only prey on pvers are now the prey themselves. A lot of them will call themselves "veterans", since playing the game for 10 years is their only accomplishment. 🤣 And the population is lower too.

But jokes aside this also means people will be "hungrier" for kills.

Edited January 1 by ArchonWing.9480

[Burnfall.9573]

6 hours ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Boon strips need to be highly coordinated now, while boons basically only need stability to be coordinated and everything else is vomit spammed to cover it....

That sounds balanced for pvp? Turn every group into a tank and only a nuclear strike can harm them? You get to pick off the stragglers only because they fell asleep at the wheel of the mindless train.

Boon balls does two things, makes people lazy relying on boons and support spam for defense and less on other important aspects of combat like positioning. Forces groups into strict metas and encourages larger numbers in order to be successful, you're not allowed to stray and get creative because there's a 30sec wall everywhere you look, and the tools aren't enough to rip it down anymore unless you bring more, the answer to everything in wvw just bring more, or you just pick on lesser organized/skilled that have holes on their borders because they couldn't hire enough firebrands. There's boon balls sitting in keeps running around lords for 20-30 mins farming pugs, absolute braindead garbage level of fighting.

Game mechanics wise everything should be near the same level no matter the amount of numbers involved, what should be the biggest difference is organization, and coordination through communication, not gathering 30-50 people to get the game to carry you with 12 perma boons for the entire fight. But the game is now designed to make every little ball into perfect little tanks running over everything until they run into another tank, they take a couple pot shots at each other, then turn and look for something else roll over. While I may think boon spam is too much, other aspects of combat have also grown too large, like spam cc especially daze, it's absolutely moronic that the game wasn't designed with diminishing returns for cc, instead just a catch all of stability boon which forces the entirety of combat and balance to revolve around it, while not every class even has equal access to it.

Now we have devs catering only to gvg, you know, the thing that goes away from what wvw was designed to operate as, trying to push everyone into these blobs to fight each other, it's not a wonder that the entire concept of wvw is dying and just boils down to mindlessly running around farming groups like world bosses. No one cares about their servers, no one cares about winning matches, no one cares about helping their allies, it's me me me me, me fight, me rewards, everyone else get off the map.

My last 2023 rant, can only hope 2024 will be better, but meh. 😏

Happy New Year 2024 WvW, and confused stalkers -->

 

 I watched it happen so many times today for a few minutes. Players being frustracted and angry at other players including at Commanders for giving up keeps and camps due to the other server Boonball destroying instant killing everything on sight. 

It is Extremely Disgusted, Insulting and Disgrace for WvW to continue and to remain be at this low state of game mode this long especially when The WvW Community has exhausted every concerns on the forum to only have Anet reward Toxicity even more by removing the only way to combat Boonball, by taking it away from us.

Progress is impossible without change - What You Allow is What Will Continue

 

It is like Anet is working so hard against giving The Playerbase and The Community, any chance of having Fair Competition

 

What happens now is for The Community to exame what we have Tolerated for 12 years. What we put up with and what we ended up with. To Reaavalute our worth, time and effort with a game that is not in the best interest for our concerns, our experienes and for our enjoyment.

 

Happy New Year! 

Edited January 2 by Burnfall.9573

[Tovera.4039]

I think the forums need some more emotes. 

[Kranlor Greyhelm.8417]

Boonball is 40 one legged people roped together, telling themselves they're brilliant at kitten kicking. The only counter is another boonball.

Just make it so everyone has a debuff aura that reduces movement speed, damage and damage reduction by 1% for everyone around them. Make that stack to 50. So if you want to run a boonball, you will move slower, do less damage and take more damage than solo players or small groups.

That might level the playing field a bit, and create some varied gameplay. Suddenly a boonball is weak against half a dozen 5 man groups zipping around them.

 

[Mabi black.1824]

18 hours ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

No one cares about their servers, no one cares about winning matches, no one cares about helping their allies

This is the most interesting part that I read in these last pages of the post, and that deserves all the attention and work of the development of ANET. 

While for teams in formation as well as for sharing benefits, I would like to remember that when you apply a change you are applying it to the largest group in formation as well as to the smallest group. WVW is done this way. It's war. The army that is more organized and has more men at the front wins. I don't see a wrong game design.

The only real problem is to ''guarantee'' a similar number of players to the teams, always keeping in mind that we are talking about weekly matches, so differences will always be a thing in WVW. There must be differences in alternation, which at the end of the week are ''similar'' then everything works as planned.  Fun guaranteed.

If your border is under attack by an orgized group of 50+ players, do you know what you need to do? Bring 50+ players too. Or just do what you can. Demanding that your 15 clear 50+ won't make WVW any more fun for anyone.

And I don't agree that yesterday's guilds were first class while today's guilds are second class. Because in the meantime 10 years have passed and the average WVW player has greatly improved in many ways. What you did with 30 men yesterday you can't do today. Not because those 30 organized were better, but because their enemy today is much better.

[TheGrimm.5624]

6 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

If your border is under attack by an orgized group of 50+ players, do you know what you need to do? Bring 50+ players too. Or just do what you can. Demanding that your 15 clear 50+ won't make WVW any more fun for anyone.

I am not sure how much I would use organized here though. In the past 50 would jump on map, 20 would hit east keep, 20 would hit west keep, 5 would hit SET, 5 would hit SWT and then based on success the group might reform. Overtime we've moved to don't worry about being organized, just blob up and we will circle around together. The answer to the past in the tournament days in your example above was 50 just popped on map, take 20 and keep their heads down, the other 10 break into 5s and reverse any damage they get done or slow them till the 20 can get to them and start wearing at them or till we can get more responders on map to assist. The answer wasn't always get your 50. So the question is why was that?

6 hours ago, Mabi black.1824 said:

What you did with 30 men yesterday you can't do today. Not because those 30 organized were better, but because their enemy today is much better.

The question here is considering all the changes what are the factors that have changed that might play a role?

Off the top of my mind I think I would go with various factors (in no order here)

• No reason to win
• Laziness - various reasons
• People are more causal now
• Limited loot so more casual
• Less organized due to various reasons
• More boons
• Less strip and conversions
• Less damage
• Less siege impact
• Staleness of maps 
• Less challenge due to various above
• Passive ways to gain loot
• No new mechanics
• No reason for innovation or strategy changes
• Less goals to go for
• Continued reduction of any reason to gain WvW levels

Now granted again, Call of War draws people so that muddied the numbers, but just take the small addition of the events they have started but not finished and around the launch it seems like we got people in since there was something new to try and it did seem to attract players. I don't mean to down play whatever coding was done to launch events we have so far, but it was still part of what was already in place in game and that size of change brought more in. What else could be achieved with other changes?

People ran smaller groups in the past for various reasons and I may not use organized for what was done then either at times but sometimes it came down to the efficiency factor. How much could you do with as little as possible to reach the goal. Today's line of thought is the opposite and go with overkill is underrated since with more you don't need to think about it. So some of the above I would point to as why bother factors. In this case there are factors that detract from and some could add to. If the WR becomes an add to factor, that's good overall, but if not then addressing some of the above may be needed to be reviewed and changed to keep this sandbox running. As always, good hunting!

[Kaizz.7306]

On 6/30/2023 at 6:59 AM, Aeolus.3615 said:

 

It is impossible for Anet to balance boon spam vs boon strip and they will always favor the boon ball and the pve perma boon easygame, it is the direction of the "good game" they believe in.

A easy way fix would be Anet change skills that dont boon strip to focus con certain boons like we had on gw1 skill that targeted shouts, chants, boons, and others.

For example:

- Mesmer well that steals alacrity and quickness for the mesmer

-A necro wells that nullify Alacrity usage.

- WoD needs also to target quickness besides do what it does.

- Also wards from gw1 would be something interesting to add to the game that do direct effects w/o being boons (WoD kinda works like that), but a class with utils on wards would be nice, i would love DH would lose the traps into wards LOL.

Also for condis, wards and wells where players inside could not suffer from vulnerability, but lame as Anet is they even removed the elite olkd skill from Druid  not sure if they actually know what they are doing, i stoped trust Anet developers  quite along time.

They dont tend to promote CLEVER gameplay but enforce lamer and carry gameplay reason we reached the lamer ONLY BOONS meta.

I don't hate the current meta, but I wouldn't mind some changes, and the way things works in Guild Wars 1 would be very very good. Like remember when Mesmers built to shutdown playstyles? Wastrels and Mind Wrack, and cry of frustration type stuff. Everythings so "blanket cover your bases" now. Even the removal or the class specific boons, homogenizing everything so people wouldn't feel they couldn't play a class because it doesn't have Spotter is getting boring. 

[Mabi black.1824]

13 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

I am not sure how much I would use organized here though. In the past 50 would jump on map, 20 would hit east keep, 20 would hit west keep, 5 would hit SET, 5 would hit SWT and then based on success the group might reform. Overtime we've moved to don't worry about being organized, just blob up and we will circle around together. The answer to the past in the tournament days in your example above was 50 just popped on map, take 20 and keep their heads down, the other 10 break into 5s and reverse any damage they get done or slow them till the 20 can get to them and start wearing at them or till we can get more responders on map to assist. The answer wasn't always get your 50. So the question is why was that?

Wait a moment. In this post, we're not talking about how you can organize yourself or what strategy you want to pursue. This post is 10 pages of crying because you can't face a ball formation of 30 men or 40 or 50 use the number you prefer it makes no difference. And I'm telling you that's not true. 

[Mabi black.1824]

13 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

The question here is considering all the changes what are the factors that have changed that might play a role?

Off the top of my mind I think I would go with various factor

In my opinion you have listed a number of changes that, as I have already said, always affect all sides. When you reduce a damage you are reducing it to the team in formation than to the other non-team etc etc. while the changes you mentioned in terms of ''motivation'' deserve a separate post.

but, 

13 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

People are more causal now

This one in particular, I think is exactly the opposite. Today, there are many more players who know how to play better. Much better. whether they spin alone, when they spin in a small group of 5 players, or when they take on larger numbers.