The Causal Issue For Overpowered Specs

[Malus.2184]

So, this month it's Cata, once Cata is nerfed it'll be Weaver/Tempest, and round and round the merry-go-round goes. ANet keeps trying to whack-a-mole specific issues that crop up, this is just treating symptoms, and when they "treat" one symptom the disease goes away for a little while and then pops up later in another form. Nothing ever gets really solved this way and we just get the same thing in another form.

The only thing all the overpowered specs have had in common was that they could excessively boon themselves which would cause the modifier of X skill to be completely unhinged to deal with.

Boons expand the possible performance excessively. For example, a support DPS build with 25 Might and perma-Protection hits really hard and is nigh unkillable due to various interactions.

The only permanent solution as I see it is to change the Boon system in PvP environments.

Quickness and Alacrity: Removed completely in PvP. They both have an additive effect that makes the effects of the other Boons even higher. Things that supply Quickness or Alacrity should something else, possibly Vigor. IT would also reign in builds that can give themselves a short period of Quickness and then burst the face of the opponent.

Fury: Should give less Critical Hit.

Might: Should only give five Power per stack instead of ten.

Protection and Resolution: Should only reduce damage by 10%.

Regeneration, Resistance, and Swiftness: Should only refresh the duration instead of stacking the duration.

Stability: Should only ever stack to one at a time.

Vigor: Should only give +25% Endurance generation.

A reduction in the power of Boons would only affect the things people can put on themselves in a way so they hopefully are still useful without being overpowered while leaving the baseline intact. 

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

Get your butts ready for cc warrior meta on the 18th.

[iminxi.8514]

So nerf boons so your actual skills matter more

Pve will not like this 

[Flowki.7194]

Its not the boon system, its the fact that doing high damage in this game boils down to 5 buttons on most classes/specs. Take away the boons and the damage is still faceroll. Next to that, is condi that can be applied way quicker than anything can actually remove it. Ontop of that, if you check CD's, you will see defensive abilitys are very often on a higher CD than offensive abilitys. This all makes the game lean into fast paced dodge or die gameplay.

 

There are only 2 viable supports right now, temepst and gaurd. Healing is mostly a joke, its more about mitigation of damage though the likes of auras and stability, so people can dodge burst damage etc etc etc. Infact I would say that endurence regain is porbably more useful than healing.. becuase dodging a major burst will save you 10/20k hp.. their is no healing that can keep up with that.

[Dorsai.1458]

This.  Damage mitigation is king in GW2 ...not healing.  Who is the king of damage mitigation?  Friggin cloth classes......

 

[WhoWantsAHug.3186]

Outside of broken ele, the gamestate is great. If ele got deleted tomorrow, gw2 would be the best it's been in years. Boons are fine IMO

 

Edited July 11, 2023 by WhoWantsAHug.3186

[Kuma.1503]

Quickness and Alacrity need to be deleted from the game alltogether.  They canibalize any spec they're tacked onto. If the game feels bad without these boons active, tweak cast times and aftercasts appropriately so it feels fluid when these boons aren't present. 

Might getting toned down is good. It enables some of the more degenerate builds out there. Tanks that deal too much damage. Builds that one tap you out of stealth. It should still matter when you have a lot of stacks on you, but it shouldn't be as valuable as it is. 

Fury should stay as is. It adds consistency to power builds. Specifically builds gunning for that one big hit. It means you have a way to actively control your damage output instead of praying that the RNG gods bless you with a crit. 

Prot/Resolution are also in a good spot right now. Durations on these boons have been stripped way down. Reverting boon rip/corrupt nerfs will suffice in adding counterplay to these boons. 

Swiftness needs to be more accessible to Mesmers. They're a roaming class that's locked into Traveler/Lynx runes because they can't easily gain swiftness. Outside of that it's fine. 

Regen also isn't a problem. Toning down might will deal with bruiser specs that deal too much damage. Regen nerfs disproportionately nerf supports, which are sorely lacking in representaton right now. Corrupt/Strip buffs should suffice here as well. 

Stability... This one is tricky. No build should be able to maintain 100% stability or near 100% stability at all times. But brief large stacks of stab are fine, so long as they don't linger for too long. Nerf Stab too much, and there will be even more cries about oppressive CC than we have now. We could actually stand to see some stability increases on some specs where it is lacking. And definitely some tone downs on others (Catalyst). 

Vigor nerfs are sacrilidge. "Just Dodge" is literally a meme around these parts. Now we want people dodging LESS? Nah.

[WhoWantsAHug.3186]

3 minutes ago, Kuma.1503 said:

Quickness and Alacrity need to be deleted from the game alltogether.  They canibalize any spec they're tacked onto. If the game feels bad without these boons active, tweak cast times and aftercasts appropriately so it feels fluid when these boons aren't present. 

Quickness and alacrity aren't really issues in PvP. That's more so in PvE grouped content. 

Yes I know cata is busted, so don't bring up it's Quickness lol

Edited July 11, 2023 by WhoWantsAHug.3186

[Leonidrex.5649]

2 hours ago, WhoWantsAHug.3186 said:

Quickness and alacrity aren't really issues in PvP. That's more so in PvE grouped content. 

Yes I know cata is busted, so don't bring up it's Quickness lol

most quickness/alac has been nerfed so hard it doesnt really exist anymore thats why.
there used to be sigil giving quickness on weapon swap and it was omegabusted and got removed for that vey reason

[Malus.2184]

13 hours ago, demonbeetle.2387 said:

So nerf boons so your actual skills matter more

Pve will not like this 

There's this explicitly in my post, "The only permanent solution as I see it is to change the Boon system in PvP environments."

It's massive dishonesty that you make the implied argument that this would affect PvE.

[Malus.2184]

11 hours ago, WhoWantsAHug.3186 said:

Quickness and alacrity aren't really issues in PvP. That's more so in PvE grouped content. 

Yes I know cata is busted, so don't bring up it's Quickness lol

Even 1-second of Quickness is enough to cast two Skills that would normally take two seconds to cast. This creates a window where interrupting Skills is impossible and the DPS temporarily spikes. So, yes, Quickness is quite a big deal since the brief windows when it's applied it creates conditions for a spike that no one really can respond to.

[Malus.2184]

11 hours ago, Kuma.1503 said:

Prot/Resolution are also in a good spot right now. Durations on these boons have been stripped way down. Reverting boon rip/corrupt nerfs will suffice in adding counterplay to these boons. 

Boon Corruption is only a Necromancer thing. Boonrips have been limited to one Boon in PvP or are on really long cooldowns, longer cooldowns than skills that apply Resolution/Protection. This is also a matter of using one overpowered thing to counter another just makes the thing it counters even more overpowered due to it being allowed to persist as is and if you're without the thing that affects then you're SOL.

[iminxi.8514]

1 hour ago, Malus.2184 said:

There's this explicitly in my post, "The only permanent solution as I see it is to change the Boon system in PvP environments."

It's massive dishonesty that you make the implied argument that this would affect PvE.

Nah I just didnt read your entire post 😁 my first statement still remains though, that is what you are implying, correct?

[Burnfall.9573]

13 hours ago, WhoWantsAHug.3186 said:

Outside of broken ele, the gamestate is great. If ele got deleted tomorrow, gw2 would be the best it's been in years. Boons are fine IMO

 

Although Guild Wars 2 Elementalist Profession alongside with Mesmer Profession are the fake versions of Guild Wars (1)  Professions; they are not the reasons for Guild Wars 2 not being great....Thief Profession and Stealth Mechanic are the reason why Guild Wars 2 will never be good

One of the main reasons what made Guild Wars (1)-The Last True Guild Wars Great was...not having Stealth Mechanic and A Toxic Bad Design Rogue Profession like Guild Wars 2 Thief Profession.

Thief Profession and Stealth Mechanic are the true threat to Guild Wars name and history; they should have never existed.

If Thief Profession and Stealth Mechanic were to be deleted tomorrow, Guild War 2 population would increase 4 fold. 

--We can sit here and point fingers and blame Elementalist Profession all we want; but remember; Elementalist Profession has its place here...in Guild Wars 

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Elementalist

https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Mesmer

As long Thief Profession and Stealth Mechanic remain freely without  being taken as a threat... Guild Wars 2 will forever remain in its dead state

Edited July 12, 2023 by Burnfall.9573

[Malus.2184]

58 minutes ago, demonbeetle.2387 said:

Nah I just didnt read your entire post 😁 my first statement still remains though, that is what you are implying, correct?

What I expressed is that Boons are too important. A player character can perform to around 25% of the maximum performance value without Boons, so any Boon applied to the player character has a massive benefit on their performance, and that's what causes this perpetual whack-a-mole where it's one spec, then the next, repeat ad nauseum. This is an indicator that the real issue is somewhere else and the Spec is only a symptom. Treat the cause and every spec in the game will simultaneously have this issue solved.

[Dreams.3128]

16 hours ago, WhoWantsAHug.3186 said:

Outside of broken ele, the gamestate is great. If ele got deleted tomorrow, gw2 would be the best it's been in years. Boons are fine IMO

 

Boons are not fine. Bring back Boonbeast and then say that again confidently. Bring back Chrono when it could pass all of the boons in the game to the whole team and say that. Boons have been a problem for YEARS. It looks ugly on Ele because Ele, unfortunately, has relied on boons since Anet nerfed or put their defensive cooldowns on high cds. 

Put boons are Core Heal Guard and say the same thing. Put boons on thief and see if they won't oneshot you again. This has been an issue and the fact people can seriously say boons are fine are legit bonkers at this point.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

9 minutes ago, Dreams.3128 said:

Boons are not fine. Bring back Boonbeast and then say that again confidently. Bring back Chrono when it could pass all of the boons in the game to the whole team and say that. Boons have been a problem for YEARS. It looks ugly on Ele because Ele, unfortunately, has relied on boons since Anet nerfed or put their defensive cooldowns on high cds. 

Put boons are Core Heal Guard and say the same thing. Put boons on thief and see if they won't oneshot you again. This has been an issue and the fact people can seriously say boons are fine are legit bonkers at this point.

None of the classes that WOULD be issues if they had extreme boon access have extreme boon access currently. 

I believe the intended interpretation is "apart from ele, the current distribution of boons is fine", which is mostly true.  There are a couple of boon issues besides but nothing an uptime fix couldnt adjust.

Edited July 12, 2023 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Stand The Wall.6987]

you are trying to solve an underlying issue by highlighting another underlying issue: anets tendency to reinvent the wheel when they hit a wall. instead of changing the power level of boons themselves, it would not only be better but also easier to nerf boon duration itself by lowering the preexisting duration hard caps (most are 30sec). i was actually surprised they did this a while back, it was a good change

[Malus.2184]

On 7/12/2023 at 3:48 PM, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

None of the classes that WOULD be issues if they had extreme boon access have extreme boon access currently. 

I believe the intended interpretation is "apart from ele, the current distribution of boons is fine", which is mostly true.  There are a couple of boon issues besides but nothing an uptime fix couldnt adjust.

No, Boons objectively provides a massive increase in power which will ALWAYS make Boons a problem as even five stacks of Might is a large increase in performance even though it's only 50 Power. Especially if the person getting the Boon has an increase in the effects of it.

Edited July 18, 2023 by Malus.2184

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

8 minutes ago, Malus.2184 said:

No, Boons obj4ectively provides a massive increase in power which will ALWAYS make Boons a problem as even five stacks of Might is a large increase in performance even though it's only 50 Power. Especially if the person  getting the Boon has an increase in the effects of it.

I'm not a fan of the "boons are always bad" argument as that has a large chance of both never seeing a resolution (the game is built around boons) and falls neatly in the bin full of having hangups with core components of the game that would not be more trouble than they are worth to revamp, but I respect your right to have that opinion. 

Edited July 12, 2023 by Azure The Heartless.3261

[Malus.2184]

36 minutes ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

I'm not a fan of the "boons are always bad" argument as that has a large chance of both never seeing a resolution (the game is built around boons) and falls neatly in the bin full of having hangups with core components of the game that would not be more trouble than they are worth to revamp, but I respect your right to have that opinion. 

It's no opinion though, it's an objective reality that you explained well. Anet will need to change how an integral part of the game works and they've done so before PvP for PvP to ever work properly, and thus we get the constant whack-a-mole.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

3 minutes ago, Malus.2184 said:

It's no opinion though, it's an objective reality that you explained well. Anet will need to change how an integral part of the game works and they've done so before PvP for PvP to ever work properly, and thus we get the constant whack-a-mole.

I woulsn't hold my breath waiting for Anet to remove boons is all I'm saying

[Malus.2184]

11 minutes ago, Azure The Heartless.3261 said:

I woulsn't hold my breath waiting for Anet to remove boons is all I'm saying

I can hope since the current situation is untenable and will eventually completely kill PvP.

[AlPower.2476]

Im only agree with might, protection and stab changes. 

[Malus.2184]

I can live with that and I would add Resolution else Condi specs would be a lot better than Power since most teams only have one real condi removal. Also, Quick and Alac have to go since they make for some crazy burst windows even if the Quickness only lasts for 1-second.