Rosey interpretation of Pre-EoD and Boons.

[Mell.4873]

I'm mean first thing to get out of the way is there will always be Meta builds regardless of what happens in GW2. The problem up until EoD is the fact that boons were very exclusive only being able to be applied by certain Classes. (This is a little bias since it  re-enforces what I remember)
 

I will try focus on a particular class with a common theme, I have a couple of videos to kind of prove this thesis.

Warrior Meta
The reason Warrior was so strong early on was because of boons like Might, Fury, Regeneration, Passives from Banners and even self-Quickness all built into the Warrior kit.

 

The next is Chronomancer Post HoT (this is all I remember being strong from this time)

Chronomancer Meta
They could now provide the new Alacrity boon alongside the Quickness, Protection, Vigor. This also accompanied 2 Mantra traits which boosted the healing to a silly degree.

Next is Firebrand (HealBrand) Post PoF

Firebrand Meta
It really had access to it all except Alacrity. It had Might, Fury, Quickness, Protection, Healing and above all else on demand Aegis.

Edited July 18, 2023 by Mell.4873

[Dawdler.8521]

13 minutes ago, Mell.4873 said:

The problem up until EoD is the fact that boons were very exclusive only being able to be applied by certain Classes.

This is a problem in a class based MMO? 🤷‍♂️

[Zephire.8049]

Most people I've talked to don't have rose-tinted glasses about boons pre-EoD  and only think that the design was better than it is now, which doesn't mean it was good. It was bad then, it's worse now. Especially with how they're designing around alac and quickness at the expense of everything else... except only for some specs as other specs/classes fart out those all-but-required boons with a single button.

The whole boon system needs an overhaul and has needed one for years but who knows if or when we'll get one.

[Mell.4873]

1 hour ago, Zephire.8049 said:

Most people I've talked to don't have rose-tinted glasses about boons pre-EoD  and only think that the design was better than it is now, which doesn't mean it was good. It was bad then, it's worse now. Especially with how they're designing around alac and quickness at the expense of everything else... except only for some specs as other specs/classes fart out those all-but-required boons with a single button.

The whole boon system needs an overhaul and has needed one for years but who knows if or when we'll get one.

This was a 100% the case as soon as those boon were in the game, I mean Quickness was always here, it was just Alacrity that came though with HoT. 

The real problem before was certain classes especially something like Elementalist and Thief could not preform their rotation without these buffs. Now at the very least these classes can bring there own or swap to that Elite if it's not being provided to them.

This is a much better alternative to changing class. It means new player can feel confident when they go into end game content they can provide these buffs without having to level and learn a boon support. 

I doupt they will do anything with boons that have been here since launch like Quickness (it used to be 100% speed increase) 

Edited July 18, 2023 by Mell.4873

[SponTen.1267]

Thanks for posting these; they were very interesting. I only started playing in late 2021, so it's hard to understand what the game was like back in Core, HoT, and most of PoF.

It's funny, because for me, I really enjoy the boon system. I do think the game overall is becoming a bit too easy in OW, and the increasingly-easy application of boons is a big part of that. But then, ANet probably has data on a lot of players who still really struggle with all content, and they also want to make instanced group content more accessible, so I can see why they're balancing the way they are.

[Mell.4873]

14 minutes ago, SponTen.1267 said:

Thanks for posting these; they were very interesting. I only started playing in late 2021, so it's hard to understand what the game was like back in Core, HoT, and most of PoF.

It's funny, because for me, I really enjoy the boon system. I do think the game overall is becoming a bit too easy in OW, and the increasingly-easy application of boons is a big part of that. But then, ANet probably has data on a lot of players who still really struggle with all content, and they also want to make instanced group content more accessible, so I can see why they're balancing the way they are.

I would put it more down to numbers. Alot less people are playing Open World content so a little power creep is a good thing but yeah any solo content got alot easier if you know what you are doing. 

I think it does boil down to understanding, I mean the days of running 100% berserkers are behind us when Dragons got introduced in EoD. Some classes can even get away with almost all Dragons like Virtuoso and Revenant. With the new relic system it will probably increase the power creep. 

Damage might be king in end game PvE but surviving is king in Open World content. 

[Eekasqueak.7850]

I still think it was at its worst when Chrono could do everything. 

[SponTen.1267]

10 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

I would put it more down to numbers. Alot less people are playing Open World content so a little power creep is a good thing but yeah any solo content got alot easier if you know what you are doing.

Sorry, but what do you mean by this? I've always heard OW is the most popular content?

[Raarsi.6798]

3 hours ago, SponTen.1267 said:

Sorry, but what do you mean by this? I've always heard OW is the most popular content?

It still is since it's always been the most accessible endgame content to all players.  There might be less people running it in favor of instanced content like fractals and strikes because the rewards are better, but there will always be people running OW content.

[Mell.4873]

4 hours ago, SponTen.1267 said:

Sorry, but what do you mean by this? I've always heard OW is the most popular content?

It is but we have alot more content to explore than what we did back at the launch of let's say HoT or PoF. 

I mean most groups don't even post LFGs anymore they just group up while on the map with everyone else that is present. 

[DeceiverX.8361]

On 7/18/2023 at 7:23 AM, Mell.4873 said:

This was a 100% the case as soon as those boon were in the game, I mean Quickness was always here, it was just Alacrity that came though with HoT. 

The real problem before was certain classes especially something like Elementalist and Thief could not preform their rotation without these buffs. Now at the very least these classes can bring there own or swap to that Elite if it's not being provided to them.

This is a much better alternative to changing class. It means new player can feel confident when they go into end game content they can provide these buffs without having to level and learn a boon support. 

I doupt they will do anything with boons that have been here since launch like Quickness (it used to be 100% speed increase) 

Quickness only existed as a boon with the introduction of the Specializations patch a few months prior to HoT.

In the few years prior to that, it was a unique buff effect with very few sources.  Frenzy, Haste, and QZ were the "big three" and all had roughly 6 second durations and 60 second cooldowns.

And more critically, all of this existed without concentration/boon duration effects which snowball this all out of control.

Further, Thief did not need Quickness way back then.  5/6/0/0/3 out-damaged warrior so long as it flanked for stabs and generally ran zero quickness uptime.

[Matoro.9708]

I know what can save us... brink back the bunker turret build.

[Mell.4873]

2 hours ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

Quickness only existed as a boon with the introduction of the Specializations patch a few months prior to HoT.

In the few years prior to that, it was a unique buff effect with very few sources.  Frenzy, Haste, and QZ were the "big three" and all had roughly 6 second durations and 60 second cooldowns.

And more critically, all of this existed without concentration/boon duration effects which snowball this all out of control.

Further, Thief did not need Quickness way back then.  5/6/0/0/3 out-damaged warrior so long as it flanked for stabs and generally ran zero quickness uptime.

Those few sources where very strong. Which was why people stacked Warriors in dungeon groups. 

Even if it was on a 60 second cooldown your DPS increased by 100% so it was very strong especially on Greatsword Warrior. 

I remember doing some DPS numbers purely by counting animations and Warrior had some of the highest DPS in the game at this point. 

[DeceiverX.8361]

  

16 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

Those few sources where very strong. Which was why people stacked Warriors in dungeon groups. 

Even if it was on a 60 second cooldown your DPS increased by 100% so it was very strong especially on Greatsword Warrior. 

I remember doing some DPS numbers purely by counting animations and Warrior had some of the highest DPS in the game at this point. 

Quickness was only 100% for the first seven months of the game.

For the subsequent two and a half years until the specializations patch, it was still 50% and the 50-60s cooldowns with mostly 10% or less uptime, and was by far and large not used in PvE.

Frenzy in PvE was only really taken as a stunbreak if that, because it was still understood that BoS + FGJ were superior damage sources.  It was almost exclusively a PvP/WvW skill to combo with.

50% animation speed increase on a 10% uptime is at best a 5% bump in damage (due to cooldown availability) over that window.

At 3300 power from berserker/assassin exotics, banner, and 15-20 might, this translates to being eclipsed by 165 power.

Providing 180 passive power, Signet of Might's passive literally out-DPS'ed Frenzy in most groups when sustained over a boss encounter.

Back then, this would have only been eclipsed beyond 3600 power, which most builds were not achieving or were more or less capping at.

This is what I meant about DPS meters and why selfish Quickness back in core didn't matter.  Your anecdotes claiming knowledge about what was the best DPS are just not really that good nor mathematically based on the patches at the time.

Edited July 26, 2023 by DeceiverX.8361

[Mell.4873]

39 minutes ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

  

Quickness was only 100% for the first seven months of the game.

For the subsequent two and a half years until the specializations patch, it was still 50% and the 50-60s cooldowns with mostly 10% or less uptime, and was by far and large not used in PvE.

Frenzy in PvE was only really taken as a stunbreak if that, because it was still understood that BoS + FGJ were superior damage sources.  It was almost exclusively a PvP/WvW skill to combo with.

50% animation speed increase on a 10% uptime is at best a 5% bump in damage (due to cooldown availability) over that window.

At 3300 power from berserker/assassin exotics, banner, and 15-20 might, this translates to being eclipsed by 165 power.

Providing 180 passive power, Signet of Might's passive literally out-DPS'ed Frenzy in most groups when sustained over a boss encounter.

Back then, this would have only been eclipsed beyond 3600 power, which most builds were not achieving or were more or less capping at.

This is what I meant about DPS meters and why selfish Quickness back in core didn't matter.  Your anecdotes claiming knowledge about what was the best DPS are just not really that good nor mathematically based on the patches at the time.

Honestly the early GW2 is hard for me to remember. I think for the most part I only ever ran full Banners and I used Longbow/Rifle Warrior. 

Most of the Groups I ran with had no idea what stacking even was and I never touched Raids after HoT came out.  I do remember at the time of HoT Quickness and self Quickness was very strong. I remember having a very strong Daredevil build that could almost permanently up keep Quickness.

Im more trying to compare our standards of boons to back then. Like I said I pretty much only ran Banners in Fractals and Dungeons early on. I never even heard of the shout build with 4 Warriors to get 25 might and fury. 

 

To add to this early Guild Wars 2 had almost no Meta becouse there was no DPS meter. I remember watching peoples videos as they counted the animations on there screen for damage. I'm sure I did use for Frenzy even if I wasn't optimal and I remember not liking signet builds especially on Thief even if it was more DPS. I also remember slotting boon duration coins into jewellery for 40% boon duration or something. That probably wasn't optional too but hey. 

Edited July 26, 2023 by Mell.4873

[draxynnic.3719]

On 7/18/2023 at 6:27 PM, Dawdler.8521 said:

This is a problem in a class based MMO? 🤷‍♂️

It is when the mantra has been "bring the player, not the profession" throughout GW2's development. ArenaNet was trying hard from the beginning to make all of the roles available to all professions, with your profession choice being more about theme and playstyle than which role(s) you can fill in a group. The problem is that ArenaNet misidentified the roles, starting off with thinking they were damage, control, and support. While not strictly wrong, in practice control did not turn out to be a distinct role at all, while the concept of "every profession has support options, but they support in different ways led to mismatches like Chronomancer providing both quickness and alacrity being support, a banner warrior providing unique buffs being support, and a venom thief was also considered to be support. Nowadays, the roles have been defined by experience rather than theory, and ArenaNet has decided/recognised that quickness and alacrity are each too important to have one build able to provide both, unique buffs have been largely removed due to creating situations where you almost have to have that profession to provide those buffs, and venom thief is now considered to be a DPS that just happens to need allies around them as part of how they DPS.

Giving quickness and alacrity to everyone is part of attempting to realise their original vision - one where a group can clear content regardless of what professions people bring, as long as they bring suitable builds within those professions.

20 hours ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

Quickness only existed as a boon with the introduction of the Specializations patch a few months prior to HoT.

In the few years prior to that, it was a unique buff effect with very few sources.  Frenzy, Haste, and QZ were the "big three" and all had roughly 6 second durations and 60 second cooldowns.

And more critically, all of this existed without concentration/boon duration effects which snowball this all out of control.

Further, Thief did not need Quickness way back then.  5/6/0/0/3 out-damaged warrior so long as it flanked for stabs and generally ran zero quickness uptime.

As I recall, the meta early on was warriors with one or two mesmers to provide Time Warp. The result was being able to DPS the boss so hard that it was dead, nearly dead, or at least phased before the Quickness ran out. Feedback was an important part as well because a well-timed Feedback could cause Lupi to do a lot of damage to itself.

[DeceiverX.8361]

28 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

It is when the mantra has been "bring the player, not the profession" throughout GW2's development. ArenaNet was trying hard from the beginning to make all of the roles available to all professions, with your profession choice being more about theme and playstyle than which role(s) you can fill in a group. The problem is that ArenaNet misidentified the roles, starting off with thinking they were damage, control, and support. While not strictly wrong, in practice control did not turn out to be a distinct role at all, while the concept of "every profession has support options, but they support in different ways led to mismatches like Chronomancer providing both quickness and alacrity being support, a banner warrior providing unique buffs being support, and a venom thief was also considered to be support. Nowadays, the roles have been defined by experience rather than theory, and ArenaNet has decided/recognised that quickness and alacrity are each too important to have one build able to provide both, unique buffs have been largely removed due to creating situations where you almost have to have that profession to provide those buffs, and venom thief is now considered to be a DPS that just happens to need allies around them as part of how they DPS.

Giving quickness and alacrity to everyone is part of attempting to realise their original vision - one where a group can clear content regardless of what professions people bring, as long as they bring suitable builds within those professions.

As I recall, the meta early on was warriors with one or two mesmers to provide Time Warp. The result was being able to DPS the boss so hard that it was dead, nearly dead, or at least phased before the Quickness ran out. Feedback was an important part as well because a well-timed Feedback could cause Lupi to do a lot of damage to itself.

War was usually taken because it had good cleave to clear trash in dungeons and fractals for its otherwise high damage, which also made for safer play (things died before really getting to attack), but in raw DPS for bosses, it was eclipsed.

And mechanics like Arah, yeah, Lupi was designed to have several counters making most professions viable.  Guard and Mesmer being among the top tier with reflect options, but otherwise weren't raw damage dealers.

Which are both very significant parts of making classes perform well in various combat encounters rather than just giving everyone boon-stacking and the same raw DPS/role identity.

Bringing a breadth of players to a wide array of combat scenarios and preventing DPS meters makes for a lot less reliable results and a lot more willingness for people to take on non-optimal builds when the real power is in slight build adjustments before or during certain encounter types, like a mesmer taking feedback.

It's why I usually advocate these boons being removed; they don't serve much of a purpose and negatively impact the competitive modes; most of the actual build diversity in PvE is stripped because of the advent of the in-game/allowed DPS meter (which used to be against the rules to use back in the very early overwolf days and prior) paired with so much powercreep from boons wherein clever solutions and slight build adaptations on the fly are lost to reliability of pouring out damage while stacking, on top of simply non-dynamic encounters that don't really challenge the players, where you can fully prepare for every single facet of combat prior to starting.

Edited July 26, 2023 by DeceiverX.8361

[Mell.4873]

59 minutes ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

War was usually taken because it had good cleave to clear trash in dungeons and fractals for its otherwise high damage, which also made for safer play (things died before really getting to attack), but in raw DPS for bosses, it was eclipsed.

And mechanics like Arah, yeah, Lupi was designed to have several counters making most professions viable.  Guard and Mesmer being among the top tier with reflect options, but otherwise weren't raw damage dealers.

Which are both very significant parts of making classes perform well in various combat encounters rather than just giving everyone boon-stacking and the same raw DPS/role identity.

Bringing a breadth of players to a wide array of combat scenarios and preventing DPS meters makes for a lot less reliable results and a lot more willingness for people to take on non-optimal builds when the real power is in slight build adjustments before or during certain encounter types, like a mesmer taking feedback.

It's why I usually advocate these boons being removed; they don't serve much of a purpose and negatively impact the competitive modes; most of the actual build diversity in PvE is stripped because of the advent of the in-game/allowed DPS meter (which used to be against the rules to use back in the very early overwolf days and prior) paired with so much powercreep from boons wherein clever solutions and slight build adaptations on the fly are lost to reliability of pouring out damage while stacking, on top of simply non-dynamic encounters that don't really challenge the players, where you can fully prepare for every single facet of combat prior to starting.

My understanding of Warrior is it was used for stacking For Great Justice Shout with Banners which when traited provided Regeneration. I mean your suggestion would also remove the original Warriors greatest strength which was boons or at least one of its applications. 

I never played with Mesmers to provide Quickness but I did know about the bubble trick.

 

You know what GW2 needs. Roles, most people want to play a Support or DPS with Tank being a sort of pseudo Leader of the group. This is exactly what GW2 currently has and why the end game content is so fun at the moment. Numbers tell the true story, forums posts don't.

Edited July 26, 2023 by Mell.4873

[draxynnic.3719]

1 hour ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

War was usually taken because it had good cleave to clear trash in dungeons and fractals for its otherwise high damage, which also made for safer play (things died before really getting to attack), but in raw DPS for bosses, it was eclipsed.

And mechanics like Arah, yeah, Lupi was designed to have several counters making most professions viable.  Guard and Mesmer being among the top tier with reflect options, but otherwise weren't raw damage dealers.

Which are both very significant parts of making classes perform well in various combat encounters rather than just giving everyone boon-stacking and the same raw DPS/role identity.

Bringing a breadth of players to a wide array of combat scenarios and preventing DPS meters makes for a lot less reliable results and a lot more willingness for people to take on non-optimal builds when the real power is in slight build adjustments before or during certain encounter types, like a mesmer taking feedback.

It's why I usually advocate these boons being removed; they don't serve much of a purpose and negatively impact the competitive modes; most of the actual build diversity in PvE is stripped because of the advent of the in-game/allowed DPS meter (which used to be against the rules to use back in the very early overwolf days and prior) paired with so much powercreep from boons wherein clever solutions and slight build adaptations on the fly are lost to reliability of pouring out damage while stacking, on top of simply non-dynamic encounters that don't really challenge the players, where you can fully prepare for every single facet of combat prior to starting.

I think there's still a bit of that "professions bring different tools to the table" thing there, but the point is that the central roles are increasingly reaching that "bring the player, not the profession" goal. They're trying to avoid the situations where you almost have to have chrono+druid+bannerslave+2dps, or firebrand+renegade+bannerslave+2dps. There are a few encounter-specific roles where there are a limited range or professions that can do them, but there are still generally more than one, and most of those encounters are set up so that taking that approach is generally more about making it easier than making it possible in the first place. They're trying to avoid the situation where you have six players sitting around twiddling their thumbs waiting for two monks to show up.

Which is the problem with the "it's a class based MMO" argument that gets thrown around sometimes. Technically, yes, but it's emphatically not set up like WoW or Guild Wars 1 or FF14 or a typical "class based MMO" where your class determines which role(s) you can bring to the table.

Whether Quickness and Alacrity should be as important as they are is another question, but it does help prevent group composition from degenerating to "heal+4dps" or even "5dps". (There is a lot of endgame content where you can get away with two boondps and no healer if everyone knows what they're doing, although having a good healer does make it easier.)

[Dawdler.8521]

2 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

It is when the mantra has been "bring the player, not the profession" throughout GW2's development. ArenaNet was trying hard from the beginning to make all of the roles available to all professions, with your profession choice being more about theme and playstyle than which role(s) you can fill in a group. The problem is that ArenaNet misidentified the roles, starting off with thinking they were damage, control, and support. While not strictly wrong, in practice control did not turn out to be a distinct role at all, while the concept of "every profession has support options, but they support in different ways led to mismatches like Chronomancer providing both quickness and alacrity being support, a banner warrior providing unique buffs being support, and a venom thief was also considered to be support. Nowadays, the roles have been defined by experience rather than theory, and ArenaNet has decided/recognised that quickness and alacrity are each too important to have one build able to provide both, unique buffs have been largely removed due to creating situations where you almost have to have that profession to provide those buffs, and venom thief is now considered to be a DPS that just happens to need allies around them as part of how they DPS.

Giving quickness and alacrity to everyone is part of attempting to realise their original vision - one where a group can clear content regardless of what professions people bring, as long as they bring suitable builds within those professions.

As I recall, the meta early on was warriors with one or two mesmers to provide Time Warp. The result was being able to DPS the boss so hard that it was dead, nearly dead, or at least phased before the Quickness ran out. Feedback was an important part as well because a well-timed Feedback could cause Lupi to do a lot of damage to itself.

Well, at least you are making an extremely good argument to deleting alacrity/quickness as boons since there is no real point to their existance when everyone is supposed to have them all the time.

[rotten.9753]

3 hours ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

  

Quickness was only 100% for the first seven months of the game.

For the subsequent two and a half years until the specializations patch, it was still 50% and the 50-60s cooldowns with mostly 10% or less uptime, and was by far and large not used in PvE.

Frenzy in PvE was only really taken as a stunbreak if that, because it was still understood that BoS + FGJ were superior damage sources.  It was almost exclusively a PvP/WvW skill to combo with.

50% animation speed increase on a 10% uptime is at best a 5% bump in damage (due to cooldown availability) over that window.

At 3300 power from berserker/assassin exotics, banner, and 15-20 might, this translates to being eclipsed by 165 power.

Providing 180 passive power, Signet of Might's passive literally out-DPS'ed Frenzy in most groups when sustained over a boss encounter.

Back then, this would have only been eclipsed beyond 3600 power, which most builds were not achieving or were more or less capping at.

This is what I meant about DPS meters and why selfish Quickness back in core didn't matter.  Your anecdotes claiming knowledge about what was the best DPS are just not really that good nor mathematically based on the patches at the time.

10% uptime didn't matter that much because you were using it only at the start of a boss fight, everything else was running from a boss to another one. The mobility was actually really important for fast clears. And for quickness you had mesmer with TW, like you said, not many run Frenzy.

[rotten.9753]

10 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Well, at least you are making an extremely good argument to deleting alacrity/quickness as boons since there is no real point to their existance when everyone is supposed to have them all the time.

What about other boons then? Everyone can give them, and we're expected to have them 100% of the time.

[Chyro.1462]

I fondly remember HoT tempest when air overload was a mighty thunderstorm, hitting up to 5 targets and obliterating them (at least in OW). Now its a light e-stim therapy that tickles up to 3 enemies 😄

[draxynnic.3719]

1 hour ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Well, at least you are making an extremely good argument to deleting alacrity/quickness as boons since there is no real point to their existance when everyone is supposed to have them all the time.

Because the alternative is 1heal+4dps, or even 5dps

And one thing to keep in mind with such structures is that while they're aiming to make every profession viable at every role, there are going to be variations in just how efficient and/or easy to play they are. With the current system, there are still quite a few variations on what's most efficient in each role - quickdps, quickheal, alacdps, alacheal, various varieties of dps. So when you have multiple roles, even the most optimised group is probably still going to have at least three different professions, or at least three different builds. Reduce the number of roles, and optimised team setups are likely to coalesce into just one or two builds (with the build in question possibly changing depending on the boss being faced). Having more roles enforces having more builds doing different things overall. (One of the things that annoys me with the quickherald changes is that previously quickherald had a distinct playstyle, now it plays pretty much the same as power herald.)

For better or worse, it also serves as something of a limiter to what players can do solo rather than in groups: one way or another, nobody can do sustained 40k DPS solo. (I think reaper might come closest, but don't quote me on that.)