Boonball meta is bad

[Chaba.5410]

3 hours ago, Burnfall.9573 said:

I look at Boonball as being Toxic Game Design-Bullying.

Seems like everything looks like toxic game design-bullying to you though.  Sounds like a clear sign to take a break.

Edited November 14, 2023 by Chaba.5410

[Auragen.4162]

3 hours ago, MysteryDude.1572 said:

Like ... what did you try to showcase with this video??
you literally proved tythans point, coordinating with suports gave advantage. Since its so ez,  you coudn't have done it with dpsers alone like you bragged?

That's....the point.....coordinating with supports gives TOO MUCH advantage.

THE WHOLE POINT IS IT IS FAR EASIER TO COORDINATE AS A BOONBALL THAN AS PURE ROAMING/DPS BUILDS.

I didn't even say nothing about the video gameplay lol it's not the best it's just what it is. They were able to generate downs because they had 3-5 thieves doing nothing but trying to one shot someone together.

>Any half decent 15s EU guild could stomp you judging from this footage.
Idc, I don't comp anymore because it is braindead. We were hardly a comp guild in the video even, so I really don't care if you think some tryhard sweaty fulltime 15 man comp group from EU is better lmao.

You talk kitten on SA and I don't like them either, but they played the game in a more fun way than all these cringe minstrel + celestial comp guilds running around now. I don't even know where you assumed that we're talking about only 10s-15s lol all this stuff applies all the way down to 5s and 3s even. Yes, those fights exist in WVW too even if zerglings don't want to see it. Go fight 5v5 power builds only vs minstrel + cele builds only and tell me how it goes.

Edited November 14, 2023 by Auragen.4162

[Chaba.5410]

33 minutes ago, Auragen.4162 said:

That's....the point.....coordinating with supports gives TOO MUCH advantage.

THE WHOLE POINT IS IT IS FAR EASIER TO COORDINATE AS A BOONBALL THAN AS PURE ROAMING/DPS BUILDS.

I didn't even say nothing about the video gameplay lol it's not the best it's just what it is. They were able to generate downs because they had 3-5 thieves doing nothing but trying to one shot someone together.

>Any half decent 15s EU guild could stomp you judging from this footage.
Idc, I don't comp anymore because it is braindead. We were hardly a comp guild in the video even, so I really don't care if you think some tryhard sweaty fulltime 15 man comp group from EU is better lmao.

You talk kitten on SA and I don't like them either, but they played the game in a more fun way than all these cringe minstrel + celestial comp guilds running around now. I don't even know where you assumed that we're talking about only 10s-15s lol all this stuff applies all the way down to 5s and 3s even. Yes, those fights exist in WVW too even if zerglings don't want to see it. Go fight 5v5 power builds only vs minstrel + cele builds only and tell me how it goes.

I'm so confused by what point both of you guys are trying to make.

It sounds like you're arguing against 1) teamwork, 2) being rewarded for teamwork and 3) a design pattern that occurs in practically every other MMO design where there's some sort of teamwork mechanic where you need tank, healer, dps, etc.  Next it'll be arguing against multiple players needing to stand on different buttons in order to open a door?

Edited November 14, 2023 by Chaba.5410

[XenesisII.1540]

Organization through voice coms, precise movement, combat tactics, heal sustain through blasting fields, were the only layers above pugs that needed to exist.

Boon and heal spam was another layer that didn't need to exist, there's a reason why we were given a self heal in this game, boon usage at appropriate times to get the burst boost you needed whether that's dps/movement/sustain is what it should have stayed at. But part of that problem is because they ramped up strips/corruption and aoe damage as well.

Now they've nerfed damage and strips down for the past three years, sustain is the dominant factor in all parts of wvw, to the point that groups, even the bad ones, feel they can stand in aoe fields and siege for more than 5-10sec than they should, or they have so much sustain they can ignore siege and just golem their way through t3 keeps with no problems. On top of which everyone stacks numbers in order to sustain over target caps, meta is just bring more meta.

The nerfs have only targeted the strengths of the pug or lesser organized players, strips and damage (you can say this affects the top players but it doesn't, they will still remain on top with better organization), all organized groups are more likely to use boon/heal/sustain way more effectively in their comp over those.

Balancing wvw to just zergs to sit next to each other until dead was a terribad mistake, killing counterplay is a terribad mistake, it was also a terribad mistake to just listen to gvg players. Not everyone wants to join a 50 squad to stand 2 feet from another group to flip poopoo until dead, especially not with this lag byproduct. 🤷‍♂️

P.S I don't even know why they even balance wvw to the groups that don't even want to play wvw for what it is, they would have been better off just making separate battlegrounds for them.

Edited November 15, 2023 by XenesisII.1540

[blp.3489]

17 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

I'm so confused by what point both of you guys are trying to make.

It sounds like you're arguing against 1) teamwork, 2) being rewarded for teamwork and 3) a design pattern that occurs in practically every other MMO design where there's some sort of teamwork mechanic where you need tank, healer, dps, etc.  Next it'll be arguing against multiple players needing to stand on different buttons in order to open a door?

I can't find it for some reason but someone posted a fairly succinct summary, basically, the reward for composition is far far too much.  A group that keeps all the boons up all the time gets an absolutely HUGE boost that isn't justified merely by getting together a particular set of classes.  Teamwork and coordination should be enough advantage in themselves, and right now teamwork and coordination are far outperformed by boonball group composition.

P.S. Arguably, the problem is not so much boons themselves as much as the proliferation of boon sharing, which oftentimes doesn't even come at significant tradeoff cost.

[Aeolus.3615]

21 hours ago, Auragen.4162 said:

That's....the point.....coordinating with supports gives TOO MUCH advantage.

THE WHOLE POINT IS IT IS FAR EASIER TO COORDINATE AS A BOONBALL THAN AS PURE ROAMING/DPS BUILDS.

 

It used to be harder, but the low effort boons farting left and right that Anet enforced on players that sentence is actually accurate, altough lacks the word "nowadays "IS FAR EASIER TO COORDINATE AS A BOONBALL THAN AS PURE ROAMING/DPS BUILDS, while theres gimmicks bursts builds for low effort roaming setups.

Boons should be harder to stack and maintain them as a group if u keep spamming there should be a momment u already spammed all boons now u got nothing to make players manage the boon usage rather than sspam and everything becomes perma soon or later, some boons should not even be that easy to make them perma as a group  like alacrity  and quickness, and maybe stability.

A easy way to balance (at least to make boons less  carry )this would be max stats cant reach would be 50% boon duration, after that players should require food, skills traits etc, and this SHOULD be across gamewide spvp, pve, and wvw.

Edited November 15, 2023 by Aeolus.3615

[Auragen.4162]

On 11/14/2023 at 3:40 PM, Chaba.5410 said:

I'm so confused by what point both of you guys are trying to make.

It sounds like you're arguing against 1) teamwork, 2) being rewarded for teamwork and 3) a design pattern that occurs in practically every other MMO design where there's some sort of teamwork mechanic where you need tank, healer, dps, etc. 

I am fully against support 'tEaMwOrK' because it is 0 effort. I said that from my first comment here that IMO 'Supports should have never existed, the trinity should never have existed in GW2.' Mained support FB for comp for a couple years, am familiar with support Tempest, they are completely braindead.

This was supposed to be the MMO that said 'no holy trinity' lol. But I guess the days of interesting game design are gone from here, only apeing whatever other MMOs do and if you disagree, you're just wrong because all the other MMOs are doing it!

https://www.vg247.com/guild-wars-2-combat-precludes-holy-trinity

And MMOs are such a popping genre these days and definitely not just a crowd of miserable gamers grinding through mediocre game after mediocre game trying to chase the high of their first MMO. Surely a genre to take game design cues from 🤪 look at all the sick MMOs we got in the last few years! /s

https://www.game.guide/is-lost-ark-pay-to-win

Edited November 15, 2023 by Auragen.4162

[Chaba.5410]

1 hour ago, Auragen.4162 said:

I am fully against support 'tEaMwOrK' because it is 0 effort. I said that from my first comment here that IMO 'Supports should have never existed, the trinity should never have existed in GW2.' Mained support FB for comp for a couple years, am familiar with support Tempest, they are completely braindead.

This was supposed to be the MMO that said 'no holy trinity' lol. But I guess the days of interesting game design are gone from here, only apeing whatever other MMOs do and if you disagree, you're just wrong because all the other MMOs are doing it!

https://www.vg247.com/guild-wars-2-combat-precludes-holy-trinity

And MMOs are such a popping genre these days and definitely not just a crowd of miserable gamers grinding through mediocre game after mediocre game trying to chase the high of their first MMO. Surely a genre to take game design cues from 🤪 look at all the sick MMOs we got in the last few years! /s

https://www.game.guide/is-lost-ark-pay-to-win

I'm well aware of the anti-trinity philosophy.  A trinity is just one variation of role differentiation in MMOs so it really doesn't matter what you think about whether this game is headed that way or not.  At launch we had HEALWAY GUARDIAN using cleric/magi gear!  *gasp* The development of different kinds of roles don't need a trinity design to happen.  GW2's design has always encouraged group coordination and role development.  Ever heard of combo fields and finishers?

The metas have changed over the years.  Roles are nothing new.

Edited November 15, 2023 by Chaba.5410

[ArchonWing.9480]

IMO, game balance should never overwhelmingly favor defense/sustain because it leads to degenerate gameplay where nobody wants to take initiative, because why? Just sit back and wear down people until they get bored to death.

The 2020 damage nerfs was supposed to be a stopgap as a response to the excessive power creep but it became a permanent fixture while they added even more power creep anyways, thus defeating the purpose. At the same time, downstate was kept the same (hence buffing it), causing fights to become even more drawn out with downstate management becoming even more important.

The solution became to give every class a boon support build, with varied results. At the very least while almost every class has an option now, a lot of it becomes the same braindead spam spam spam nonsense. Meanwhile the gap between boonballing and not boonballing becomes so wide that the later doesn't become an option barring a very wide skill gap.

And as XenesisII may have implied, balance seems to revolve around groups that have nothing to do with the average player or even typical WvW gameplay.

Though to be fair, I've seen worse. I remember when every gvg was about who could keep stealth up the longest. Man that was pretty sleep inducing. At least the current state is an endurance race but still horrible to watch. There's a reason why this game failed to be an espawrts.

A lot of people eschew parsers like Arcdps because of toxicity and crashes, but sometimes it is very helpful in really exposing problems with balance. Incidentally some games prohibit them because they know it'll expose the horrible imbalance.

In a certain log, I was on a guardian that ended up doing 1.3 million damage over the course of a very long fight. Now ignoring whatever meme build I was doing, About 10% of this damage comes from reflected attacks and this does not include the burns that guardians can do from reflected attacks. 2.8% of this damage comes from Long Range Shot (auto attack!)doing 28k damage to themselves over the course of a fight.

Now how much damage did I take from any longbow skill? 0. Scrolling across the squad, the results are similar. You literally have people doing negative damage and I am surprised there was no engi self killing themselves with mortar kit. And even if some damage was to get through it still has to go through barrier and protection and whatever. And then a lot of this would just be healed off even by very weak healing over time.

Although interestingly enough the biggest reflect damage came from Revenant hammer auto??? And also necro staff autos.

But anyhow, the gap between comp and uncomped is so ridiculous. And yes, this is a player skill issue, but there is adequate case that a lot of tags do not accept random people because they are pretty much just griefing their team. And that is going to lead to an awful experience for all.

 

Edited November 15, 2023 by ArchonWing.9480

[XenesisII.1540]

46 minutes ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

But anyhow, the gap between comp and uncomped is so ridiculous. And yes, this is a player skill issue, but there is adequate case that a lot of tags do not accept random people because they are pretty much just griefing their team. And that is going to lead to an awful experience for all.

Which I think has also contributed to the reduction of pug tags. Besides the usual heckling for losing a fight or doing some out of the norm, the increased pressure to run tight meta group to be successful.

[Widebody.5071]

One thing about boonballs is that they didn't kick into gear real heavy until the last round of siege and structure nerfs. They systematically quick nerfed this thing, this trait and that class over a like 10 month period while slipping in buffs that countered the nerf items. There was even shadow nerfs done that wasn't published but eventually leaked out over the forums in a spiteful manner. I agree with Burnfall... It seems like Toxic Game Design-Bullying. 

Who's behind it, that's a toss up, who's driving it, it's pretty obvious.

Edited November 16, 2023 by Widebody.5071

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

I said it before, I say it again: boons are not the problem. Barrier is.

Ever since PoF with its barrier popped, we got this unkillable blobs.

It is just stupid that some classes can basically put 50+% health on you. And you people lament about stability?

Stability means nothing, if the other player is at 20k hp (and meteor shower unnerfed). But he is not. Thanks to barrier generation he is running around with 30k and you JUST CAN NOT OUTDAMAGE THE BARRIER GENERATION. Well, that is not true. You can. But at that point half your cloud is dead and the blob is still at full hp.

So again: boons are not the problem. Barrier is. Stop arguing about the none issue and demand a fix for the real screwup: remove barrier from the game. 

[Sylvia.4870]

 (When one sees the enemy army has too many boons on themselves)

  Summons a squad of the Necromancers for converting their boons to conditions.

[killforbeers.7534]

2 hours ago, VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig. said:

I said it before, I say it again: boons are not the problem. Barrier is.

Ever since PoF with its barrier popped, we got this unkillable blobs.

It is just stupid that some classes can basically put 50+% health on you. And you people lament about stability?

Stability means nothing, if the other player is at 20k hp (and meteor shower unnerfed). But he is not. Thanks to barrier generation he is running around with 30k and you JUST CAN NOT OUTDAMAGE THE BARRIER GENERATION. Well, that is not true. You can. But at that point half your cloud is dead and the blob is still at full hp.

So again: boons are not the problem. Barrier is. Stop arguing about the none issue and demand a fix for the real screwup: remove barrier from the game. 

The issue not the barrier it is really all the boons and reflects as condi damage does very little while all boons up 100%.

Many times we dont even get barrier as necros slows down the run so we have Harbringers.

Since we get alot of boons which is no joke and we can easily spec full glass and not even worry about it - All you have to do is stay in the bubble. 

It's all nice on that side and really silly but when you face one - it's not fun at all.

When two boon bubbles fight the only ones that die are the ones that left the bubble and it is just a stalemate so we just move along to bother the other server.

I can imagine how silly it is the GvG fights when they both are running boon bubbles.

This thing is everywhere from WvW, PVE and I read via WvW chat even in PVP just stand in the circle with 2 players and you can't do nothing.

To be honest let them have the boon bubble but at lease let us have builds we can create an anti-boon bubble that will force all zergs to be more creative and have one that is a combo of both.

 

Edited November 16, 2023 by killforbeers.7534

[Dawdler.8521]

8 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

GW2's design has always encouraged group coordination and role development.  Ever heard of combo fields and finishers?

The “problem” with teamwork in GW2 is really only what it’s always been:

Power damage, boons and support is infinite exponential gain.

It’s never just +1. If you add a player to an zerg, you add his damage, but you also boost his damage and you apply support to him. And anything he do whether he be damage or support is probably 3-5 man AoE.
 

Any exponential gain breaks teamwork the more extreme it gets. And it’s gone pretty extreme over the years.

[TheGrimm.5624]

9 hours ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

IMO, game balance should never overwhelmingly favor defense/sustain because it leads to degenerate gameplay where nobody wants to take initiative, because why? Just sit back and wear down people until they get bored to death.

Did it though? I am not sure I agree here my friend.

Were the defense and sustain players calling for the 2020 Nerf Bat Patch? Or was it the glass cannons calling out that the last to strike were the first to die that lead to that.

I can't speak for others but this was one of those that seemed obvious that callouts were going to made against tanks and sustain when DPS/Condi were nerfed. Let alone the amount of mixed builds we had or didn't. And now its happening.

Again I can't speak for others but for one at the time on a slower connection tankier and sustain helped in addressing connection differences. 

Did it mean not attacking? lol, if you missed the action then we need more emotes for GETEM! I think of the 33 toons 0 are glass cannon personally and most are tanky and sustain since planning on solo or havoc play that might fight and intermix in zerg play is more the plan.

 

[geist.4126]

The "no-trinity idea" was great but needed a lot of fixing. Instead Anet went to "we need raids in GW2" and you can't have "no-trinity" in a serious raid environment. They could've known what raids mean for their class and balance system, because other mmorpg went down that same path.
WoW for example had a very basic trinity system with a small niché for support or hybrid classes which completely got destroyed when the designers decided to make raids a competition and not a funny time killer. With that change support and hybrid classes stopped existing and the trinity prevailed.

I really liked the beginning of GW2 with people running around in borderlands with weird but somehow working builds. Since PoF we go into full specialized builds which you need in your boonball meta and even more specialized roaming builds that basically counter 90% of everything else while "back in the day" you just ran into hard counters, soft counters and neverending 1v1.

[Chaba.5410]

1 hour ago, geist.4126 said:

while "back in the day" you just ran into hard counters, soft counters and neverending 1v1.

Not really.

"Back in the day" there also existed specialized roles:
Healway Guardian -> Support/Boons/Heals
Hammerstun Warrior -> CC bot/rez util
Glamour Mesmer -> Util/Boons/Condis
Elementalist -> DMG/support hybrid
Necro -> DMG

These roles are not dissimilar to what exists these days.  Some things just been shifted around.

Outside this meta were rangers, engineers, and thieves.

 

Edited November 16, 2023 by Chaba.5410

[Quirin.1076]

Imagine if every class could remove boons.  1 for 1,  if Player A can apply 5 boons, Player B can remove 5 boons,  Ying for Yang, a counter, or competition.

 

[Dawdler.8521]

1 hour ago, Quirin.1076 said:

if Player A can apply 5 boons, Player B can remove 5 boons

Then the simpler solution is having no boons. 

Less lag probably.

[Burnfall.9573]

1 minute ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Then the simpler solution is having no boons. 

Less lag probably.

 

Count me in

[Rezzet.3614]

there seems to be the crux of the problem ,  as engi main i have Throw mine as my  ONE and ONLY boonstrip , except they nerfed it from stripping 3 boons to only stripping one and it's a short range  slow velocity thrown projectile 

pair that with the fact that 98% of engineer's kit is projectiles  and yeah engineer is pretty much useless in WVW zerg fights  other than  doing Holo Beam hit and runs

  if they arent running hard bunker/support

so now sometimes i reluctantly play  necromancer  , a useless chronomancer in normal combat  boonstip build  since idk wth im doin (Mimic+Well of Snility+ Null Field)   or perma abti range bubble revenant ,   hate mesmer but boy those boonstips  destroyed popular guild zergs (wont name drop)  the 3 days total i have played it  , necro has been best for farming bags  and revenant is a 50/50  

1 hour ago, Quirin.1076 said:

Imagine if every class could remove boons.  1 for 1,  if Player A can apply 5 boons, Player B can remove 5 boons,  Ying for Yang, a counter, or competition.

 

 

[ArchonWing.9480]

11 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Did it though? I am not sure I agree here my friend.

Were the defense and sustain players calling for the 2020 Nerf Bat Patch? Or was it the glass cannons calling out that the last to strike were the first to die that lead to that.

I can't speak for others but this was one of those that seemed obvious that callouts were going to made against tanks and sustain when DPS/Condi were nerfed. Let alone the amount of mixed builds we had or didn't. And now its happening.

Again I can't speak for others but for one at the time on a slower connection tankier and sustain helped in addressing connection differences. 

Did it mean not attacking? lol, if you missed the action then we need more emotes for GETEM! I think of the 33 toons 0 are glass cannon personally and most are tanky and sustain since planning on solo or havoc play that might fight and intermix in zerg play is more the plan.

 

The complains were across the spectrum, but then again you can't nerf everything just because people complain about it, since people complain about everythin As you know, it is a bit hard to filter because some people still get farmed by everything, regardless of meta.

But there were definitely a lot of the one shot builds out there that were braindead, and some super bunkers that were also braindead. And this is all caused by about 5 years of power creep and stacking traits and whatever garbage. Instead of handling these outliers, they just did these wide swaths, like making all CC attacks do no damage, turning things like warrior hammer burst into a giant meme.

They also did nerf various forms of sustain, like making heal cooldowns longer. Incidentally, they mysteriously stopped short of nerfing some guardian stab skills because Firebrand was too big to fail. Eventually FB was nerfed but only to make it more annoying to play and outsourced some roles to EoD specs. Incidentally, a lot of EoD specs are considered highly annoying.

And now they're adding more and more relic effects, and took away the fun meme old ones, and feels kinda like more creep again.

Regardless, the current large scale meta is incredibly stale. It consists of a bunch of heal scourge, condi janitors (vindi, druid, trmpest)and firebrands babysitting their lone berserker dps while that one scorched earths people that fall asleep or bots that don;t break aggro. Then you use the insta res skills in the event someone actually goes down.

Against another organized group this is a snooz feast. Against pugs it is very boring because you are only winning because they can't get their stuff together, not because you are any good. It's more like they are losing more than you are winning.

Meanwhile your own pugs near you are probably doing 5% of the damage of the entire squad while a few people are responsible for 50%. And as I pointed out some are not even contributing at all. This is not a good atmosphere because it discourages pugmanding entirely, and new players aren't willing to put that kind of effort to learn this braindead vomit of a meta, and who could blame them?

To make matters worse, this also goes down to small scale, where people run the same party comp there and make cringe videos of their 5 vs 10-15 potatoes that can't even form any viable formation, much less hit dodge.

The real truth is that a lot of WvW essentially runs on MAD (mutually assured destruction). A lot of guilds  do not run full sweat because the result would be insanely boring and generate no content. Some of the few remaining commanders that actually desire fights actually limit their group size for these reasons because nobody wants to fight a full map queue of that. The current state of WvW could actually be much worse than it is.

If people were concerned about nothing but winning, you'd just have entire groups chasing orange swords, mass stealthing, and then running back into a keep once faced with any opposition. And yes, of course this happens a lot too, but servers that do that often get doubled teamed out because that's not fun to play against.

Same applies to that "Rise" bug that lagged the servers. A lot of guilds agreed to not use it, and also not give any guilds that abused it content.

It's also the same reason why roamers seemingly will fight outnumbered even if they'll die. In most cases, they could easily run away if they could, but that's boring too.  Unfortunately, nobody really appreciates this.

But yes, the community is the only real why this kitten is even playable.

Edited November 16, 2023 by ArchonWing.9480

[geist.4126]

That's why I always liked Burn Guard. It only works well against stupid players and it doesn't work so great now because the game got dumbed down into "one press gives you 10 boons, 4 cleanses, damage and a cookie for you and one for loved ones".

There is basically no punishing for bad gameplay if you are in a boonball.

[ArchonWing.9480]

8 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Not really.

"Back in the day" there also existed specialized roles:
Healway Guardian -> Support/Boons/Heals
Hammerstun Warrior -> CC bot/rez util
Glamour Mesmer -> Util/Boons/Condis
Elementalist -> DMG/support hybrid
Necro -> DMG

These roles are not dissimilar to what exists these days.  Some things just been shifted around.

Outside this meta were rangers, engineers, and thieves.

 

I don't think healway guardian was ever the meta; yes it was a thing, but it was more for roaming. The standard  zerg support guardian was typically AH/soldiers  and still did some damage even if it was tanky. Now it's minstrel  FB with 0 responsibility for damage at all.

Same was with CC warrior. They were still responsible for some damage and not just a healbot, and the 10 damage earthshaker. Berserker warriors lately have at least broken the montony but have their own problems.

Ele still exists in damage form, but with the 50 billion nerfs to staff, usually the support variant is preferred and meta.

Necros are more or less the same, I guess.

I guess rangers and engis can also join as healbots. Thieves too in theory, but still not widely accepted. That's overall  a plus I'd grudgingly say.

With meta in mind, most of these classes are just boon/healbots. And the amount of meta damage dealers has shrunk.

https://metabattle.com/wiki/WvW

There are only 2 damage builds. LB berserker, and Hammer vindicator. Everything else is minstrel on top of minstrel. And even if we go down to the "great" section, we have power herald which is just hanging on, and Power DH which is a complete waste of time atm thanks to the constant nerfs. Oh, there is staff backline there too.

Edited November 17, 2023 by ArchonWing.9480