Heck it-- Let's embrace 10-man boons

[BenaSPACE.6028]

I feel like trying to balance boon supports around doing just 5-man boons (especially alac + quickness) is just perpetuating an issue of balance that's plaguing the game lately. Quickness and Alacrity are both very strong boons, and it's nice to have them, but looking at how many professions need to offer these boons at present, maybe it's time we reconsider how we approach these "critical" boons. Let's stop pedestaling them, and let's just have people who give quickness as casually as they give might, or regen. Heck, we can even change them to be stacking boons like might is, if that makes them easier to balance. Why not?

And with relics coming out, we can make the boon applications of these even easier. Have runes that put alac on when you apply barrier, or put quickness on when you do a disable.

[Cyninja.2954]

We had 10-mann boons. The developers decided to go a different direction. At current boon levels, switching to 10-mann boons once again would merely mean even more busted dps on slots which are currently occupied by offensive supports which do more damage than many pure dps builds of the past.

There are some changes, which should be done:

- reduce might from 25 to 5 stacks, adjust the bonus accordingly. Should make this far easier to balance and distribute to classes.

- merge protection and resolution. the game has been normalized so much, might as well have 1 defensive boon for this

- merge swiftness and vigor. makes stripping this actually worthwhile. reduce swiftness availability across the board somewhat (by now it's not a mandatory traversal boon any longer)

Edited July 17, 2023 by Cyninja.2954

[Dawdler.8521]

8 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

- merge swiftness and vigor. makes stripping this actually worthwhile. reduce swiftness availability across the board somewhat (by now it's not a mandatory traversal boon any longer)

I would argue for the deletion of swiftness (plus superspeed and any speed traits) and instead baseline everyone at what is today +25%. You can be crippled/chilled as usual, but you cant go faster.

Speed has always been such a weird thing to put as a boon.

[Balsa.3951]

maybe if can do boons autofill no matter what subgroup u in. like subgroup 1 has 50 quickness so 25 automatically go to sub 2. it would make casual grouping easier perhaps.

but not sure at all

Edited July 17, 2023 by Balsa.3951

[Cuks.8241]

It was my opinion at the time that 5 man boons across the board are a mistake. 10 man at least for quick/alac would be much more fun and versatile imo. Especially on the heal support side everyone expects them to bring one of the two boons and all we see is harrier.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

8 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

I would argue for the deletion of swiftness (plus superspeed and any speed traits) and instead baseline everyone at what is today +25%. You can be crippled/chilled as usual, but you cant go faster.

Speed has always been such a weird thing to put as a boon.

Too many classes with ports / shadowsteps now to get rid of superspeed--need to even the gap somehow.  

They'd have to remove the ports from things like ranger, guardian, engineer, etc. which weren't created to do that in the first place, and then also undo a lot of the projectile hate so that long range classes can do the job they were meant for by countering the classes that still have port movement (i.e., thieves, eles, mesmer, etc.).  

If anything, I think a meet in the middle approach is fine with current balancing.  Basically, baseline the 25% move speed and remove swiftness since it serves little purpose other than procc'ing speed runes which are nearly as controversial as cele gear at this point.  

[rotten.9753]

10-man boons were (almost) removed for performance, not design, at least according to Grouch. He said the worst offenders were Tempest shouts, which I imagine is due to how they interact with both allies and enemies.

 

Edited July 18, 2023 by rotten.9753

[Sansar.1302]

14 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

I would argue for the deletion of swiftness (plus superspeed and any speed traits) and instead baseline everyone at what is today +25%. You can be crippled/chilled as usual, but you cant go faster.

Speed has always been such a weird thing to put as a boon.

Speed as boon makes much more sence to me than migth, alac and etc

[Kaizz.7306]

On 7/17/2023 at 10:36 AM, Cyninja.2954 said:

We had 10-mann boons. The developers decided to go a different direction. At current boon levels, switching to 10-mann boons once again would merely mean even more busted dps on slots which are currently occupied by offensive supports which do more damage than many pure dps builds of the past.

There are some changes, which should be done:

- reduce might from 25 to 5 stacks, adjust the bonus accordingly. Should make this far easier to balance and distribute to classes.

- merge protection and resolution. the game has been normalized so much, might as well have 1 defensive boon for this

- merge swiftness and vigor. makes stripping this actually worthwhile. reduce swiftness availability across the board somewhat (by now it's not a mandatory traversal boon any longer)

My god YES! I've been saying this for years. We have too many boons with too many applications, it's ridiculous. There needs to be massive downsizing, it's been past getting out of hand. 

[Echostorm.9143]

Lots of other games don't make boon application this terrible, it's an afterthought, something you do when you log in or before a raid.  I've found myself longing for the the old days in DAoC more and more.  The GW2 combat system just keeps getting worse. 

 

Also, healing didn't require everyone in a pile.  What's the point of ranged weapons if we have to stack for every second of every fight?  We're just macro balls now.

Edited July 18, 2023 by Echostorm.9143

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

its not that swiftness is bad per se,. its that like all boons the bonus is too high because it stacks in duration. if boons like alacrity, protection and swiftness stacked in intensity instead of duration, they'd be alot more balanced in every game mode.

 

i think every boon should be standardised to 25 stacks, while offering a 1% boost per stack.
 

i've always felt like the game needs to be slower, not faster. we need to move away from the skill spam fiesta, especially in pve where its become standard to get carpel tunnel just to bring a good dps to the group without playing a low intensity build because of apm being godly.

 

the very last thing we need to do is mainline anything else, because passive powercreep is awful.

Edited July 19, 2023 by SoftFootpaws.9134

[Astralporing.1957]

On 7/18/2023 at 6:49 AM, rotten.9753 said:

10-man boons were (almost) removed for performance, not design, at least according to Grouch. He said the worst offenders were Tempest shouts, which I imagine is due to how they interact with both allies and enemies.

Then perhaps it's the time to start working about engine performance so it can support (pun intended) 10 man boons.

[rotten.9753]

9 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Then perhaps it's the time to start working about engine performance so it can support (pun intended) 10 man boons.

It's also easier to just limit targets to 5 🙂

[Cyninja.2954]

6 hours ago, SoftFootpaws.9134 said:

its not that swiftness is bad per se,. its that like all boons the bonus is too high because it stacks in duration. if boons like alacrity, protection and swiftness stacked in intensity instead of duration, they'd be alot more balanced in every game mode.

i think every boon should be standardised to 25 stacks, while offering a 1% boost per stack.

That would lead back to one of the past problems which all of this normalization was set out to fix: unequal access to boons for classes.

The developers have shown they want to make the game more accessible to average players, not less. Anything beyond 5 stacks  becomes meaningless. Back when no 1 class was able to upkeep 25 stacks of might it might have made sense to add some leeway so that multiple players blasting fire fields can get more benefits. That is not the case any longer.

For all intents and purposes might could get reduced to 5 stacks, all sources of might divided by 5 and the bonus per stack of might multiplied by 5 (or less, great opportunity to reduce the power creep somewhat and make reliance a tad less). Net result is less hassle for balancing skills, a cleaner symbol and more meaning per might stack.

Suffice to say, giving every boon the stacking treatment goes in the other direction.

Quote

i've always felt like the game needs to be slower, not faster. we need to move away from the skill spam fiesta, especially in pve where its become standard to get carpel tunnel just to bring a good dps to the group without playing a low intensity build because of apm being godly.

This is unrelated to boons and has to do with the lacking global cooldown this game has.Without a global cooldown, triggering as many skills as possible as correctly as possible will always result in highest dps (with the governing factor being how correct and fast a player can execute the skills versus using simplified builds to make up for mistakes).

One way to address this, if so desired, is to increase the passive or "no input required" damage of builds (aka increase auto attack damage, decrease skill coefficients on skills which are more complex). Exactly what the developers have been doing in an attempt to reduce disparity:

- increase auto attack damage across the board

- reduce unique modifiers as well as skill interactions

- reduce coefficients on utility skills

- increase coefficients on "easy" to use skills

Edited July 19, 2023 by Cyninja.2954

[Astralporing.1957]

22 minutes ago, rotten.9753 said:

It's also easier to just limit targets to 5 🙂

Two wrongs don't make a right.

[Zephire.8049]

If 10-man boons cause the server to freak out, roll them in as default, do what other MMOs do and have them be a button that's pushed before an encounter, or increase their duration so the server isn't constantly being polled by 0.75s stacks of boons (and conditions) across 10 people where players aim to have 100% uptime anyway. Except it's not just constant polling for boons, it's polling for position and subgroup status as well so of course an engine from over 20 years ago (built to be a co-op RPG/GvG at most) would have issues when the balance design is to have it be polled dozens of times a second. 10-man boons would lessen that stress, if anything.

It may be "boring" but it's far more efficient and will free up the balance team into making gameplay fun rather than focusing on the ham-fisted attempts to make every profession able to put out every boon with fun being a distant second thought.

[Echostorm.9143]

7 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

One way to address this, if so desired, is to increase the passive or "no input required" damage of builds (aka increase auto attack damage, decrease skill coefficients on skills which are more complex). Exactly what the developers have been doing in an attempt to reduce disparity:

- increase auto attack damage across the board

- reduce unique modifiers as well as skill interactions

- reduce coefficients on utility skills

- increase coefficients on "easy" to use skills

If they're doing this on anything other than power mech (which they nerfed the kitten out of) I've missed it, everything keeps getting more spammy and complicated not less

Edited July 19, 2023 by Echostorm.9143

[Cyninja.2954]

53 minutes ago, Echostorm.9143 said:

If they're doing this on anything other than power mech (which they nerfed the kitten out of) I've missed it, everything keeps getting more spammy and complicated not less

The increased amount of low intesity builds which benchmark 30-35k while the disparity between li builds and full rotations has decreased explains this.

In large due to the recent increase of auto attack damage across the board for many classes (which resulted in the abovementioned).

As to more spammy, not sure what you are refering to because this might be a skill issue on your part (or rather familiarity/knowledge issue). We have multiple "press1 button" and have boons builds by now, often refered to the high amount of boon creep the game has experienced (which both referes to a wider availabilty of boons as well as easier access).

Even most rotations on non li builds have drastically been sinplified most often not requiring more than 10-20 skills on a loop, where some past rotations could break 30-40 steps before repeating.

Edited July 19, 2023 by Cyninja.2954

[Echostorm.9143]

12 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

The increased amount of low intesity builds which benchmark 30-35k while the disparity between li builds and full rotations has decreased explains this.

In large due to the recent increase of auto attack damage across the board for many classes (which resulted in the abovementioned).

As to more spammy, not sure what you are refering to because this might be a skill issue on your part (or rather familiarity/knowledge issue). We have multiple "press1 button" and have boons builds by now, often refered to the high amount of boon creep the game has experienced (which both referes to a wider availabilty of boons as well as easier access).

Even most rotations on non li builds have drastically been sinplified most often not requiring more than 10-20 skills on a loop, where some past rotations could break 30-40 steps before repeating.

I understand what you are saying.  I'm not a noob, mmos since late 90's, I have a weekly raid static, fractals etc.  What I'm asking is for examples of auto-attack builds that bench over 30k.  I just see no evidence of what you are describing.

[Cyninja.2954]

3 minutes ago, Echostorm.9143 said:

I understand what you are saying.  I'm not a noob, mmos since late 90's, I have a weekly raid static, fractals etc.  What I'm asking is for examples of auto-attack builds that bench over 30k.  I just see no evidence of what you are describing.

Being so familiar with MMOs and hopefully the internet, I'm sure you're more than able to search for "gw2 low intensity build" on google or youtube. Youtube alone has a ton of videos of and guides, which break 30-35k dps, and most of those where made before the recent buffs.

[Echostorm.9143]

12 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Being so familiar with MMOs and hopefully the internet, I'm sure you're more than able to search for "gw2 low intensity build" on google or youtube. Youtube alone has a ton of videos of and guides, which break 30-35k dps, and most of those where made before the recent buffs.

If you're going to be condescending and hostile we can stop now.  I'm familiar with all the builds on snowcrows, hardstruck, metabattle, hizen, nike, guildjen, etc.  Even a power mech doesn't bench 30k on AA. 

[Cyninja.2954]

2 minutes ago, Echostorm.9143 said:

If you're going to be condescending and hostile we can stop now.  I'm familiar with all the builds on snowcrows, hardstruck, metabattle, hizen, nike, guildjen, etc.  Even a power mech doesn't bench 30k on AA. 

I never said it does on aa (even if there are some aa builds which do). If you don't want hostile interactions, maybe actually respond to what people wrote?

Edited July 19, 2023 by Cyninja.2954

[Echostorm.9143]

3 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

I never said it does on aa (even if there are some aa builds which do). If you don't want hostile interactions, maybe actually respond to what people wrote?

You could have replied with examples but you chose spite and salt.  Not engaging anymore, hope you can find a better attitude.

[Cyninja.2954]

On 7/19/2023 at 6:06 PM, Echostorm.9143 said:

You could have replied with examples but you chose spite and salt.  Not engaging anymore, hope you can find a better attitude.

Power Mech - 29k LI

https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/engineer/power-mechanist/?v=low-intensity

Power Weaver - 40k LI

https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/elementalist/power-weaver/

Condi FB - 30k LI

https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/guardian/condition-firebrand/?v=low-intensity

Condi Virt - 34k LI

https://hardstuck.gg/gw2/builds/mesmer/condition-virtuoso/?v=low-intensity

and those are just the ones on Hardstuck.gg which you are supposedly familiar with. Not even getting into any of the other community ones like 33-34k LI vindi (which is not on hardstuck but easily found on yt) and others. Teapot even held multiple contests for LI builds, here the latest one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bWuAn3WOqk

I am just tired of players coming in, claiming they know so much about the game when it's clear they are completely out of touch with current builds.  All it would take to get up to speed is for them to just do 5 minutes of basic research. All of those builds are not even up to date with recent buffs, where even more insane stuff has been developed. For that you might have to look up specific build youtubers or follow specific discords or know people who do.

So once again: yes the game has been power crept to hell. Yes, there are multiple (pretty much every class has at least 1) LI builds which bench easy 30k - 35k LI builds with minimal input, some even higher but more situational. Yes, boon dps builds have also skyrocketed and most bench at 38-40k or more as offensive dps builds (less if you dumb them down). Yes, all of this is (or should be ) known to active and informed players of endgame content of this game and most of these builds can be found if players bother to look for them.

Edited July 20, 2023 by Cyninja.2954