Nerf boonball!

[Dawdler.8521]

41 minutes ago, kiwituatara.6053 said:

Whatever happened to commanders calling out for fire fields or water fields or blast finishers.

I'm not sure any commander has called for fire fields. Stack might only means guard stacks. Or the zerg is already capped by accidentally farting out might anyway. And even if they did someone always put down the wrong field anyway.

Edited September 26, 2023 by Dawdler.8521

[XenesisII.1540]

11 hours ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

prepare for more delightful boon strip nerfs tomorrow. 🤭

Looks like I was wrong, full pve balance patch, dem 40k deeps is too much!

🤭

[Jski.6180]

Realy need more counter boon relic.

[XenesisII.1540]

Ok guys wvw balance is now perfect and complete, nothing else to change, put away the pitch forks and go home now. 🎉

[Dawdler.8521]

25 minutes ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Ok guys wvw balance is now perfect and complete, nothing else to change, put away the pitch forks and go home now. 🎉

Your refusal to pay Anet has resulted in PvE being nerfed! If we dont hear from you tomorrow we know what happened.

[XenesisII.1540]

4 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Your refusal to pay Anet has resulted in PvE being nerfed! If we dont hear from you tomorrow we know what happened.

They chose the wrong area to try and get any leverage on me... 🤭

Edited September 26, 2023 by XenesisII.1540

[Bigpapasmurf.5623]

2 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

I'm not sure any commander has called for fire fields. Stack might only means guard stacks. Or the zerg is already capped by accidentally farting out might anyway. And even if they did someone always put down the wrong field anyway.

In days of yore there were calls for fire fields...at least in the servers I was in anyway 😉

[Dawdler.8521]

57 minutes ago, Bigpapasmurf.5623 said:

In days of yore there were calls for fire fields...at least in the servers I was in anyway 😉

People didnt recognize my comment that WvW has been a beta for 11 years and stated 7 years instead for WR so I wont recognize the days of yore either!

[defenestration.9143]

Speaking as someone that plays with a 'mini boonball' group and has also fought these types of groups many times, the best thing to do as a pug/roamer is to get on a full-glass power spike ranged damage build that is not heavy on projectile and/or has access to unblockables. Trying to use your cele/condi/sustain roamer build to fight this is mostly just going to be a waste of time. Refuse to fight them in chokes and cloud them as much as possible from all directions. Boonrip can be very helpful of course, especially if you can rip stab and pull someone out of position, but power spike damage is a bit more important/valuable. These kinds of groups abuse disorganized pugs that don't coordinate their bomb, or pugs that group up without proper support and easily get pulled en masse into the condi bomb. Generally speaking the counter to this kind of condi tank comp in 5v5 GvG is power spike because of the massive amount of cleansing happening with an organized comp group - the condi tank group with heavy support is largely immune to condi, but so is a power spike group that has proper support. The condi tank group will not be able to indefinitely out-sustain constant power spike damage and their conditions don't last long enough to do much. This is the same reason the zerg meta has been power for a very long time now.

[ArchonWing.9480]

Well if you ask me, I think my main issue vs these groups is downstate, and no I'm not saying that should be removed-- I often have to deny them their downed kills. However, it is a fact that the 2020 damage nerfs ignored downstate and thus it became stronger relatively speaking.

Because I know you can pressure one of them hard enough, and knock them away when stab is weak and even get a downed. But this makes absolutely nothing because they will all just jump on them and mass res, sometimes with res utilities and there is nothing you can do because you cannot cleave them out faster than they can res. So you have to do this multiple times.

So solutions include bringing a warbanner (maybe gyro), launching the downed body far away, lots of poison damage uptime (yes, even something that blight sigil). But you need cover conditions; stop running mono condi builds that only kill npcs and pvers. This is all really specific though. Also they killed the absorption sigil for god knows what reason so I sometimes run dumb stuff like Sigil of Nullfication which is literally a drop in the water but it's not like the classes I play have any boon strip to begin with.

In general the weakest link is usually the firebrand due to their personal heal being weak so usually someone else does the main healing. However, a lot of this is because most don not firebrand well, because guardian in general has a high floor  If they're running a specifc brand of degenerate cele FB it becomes even worse to the point I'm not even telling people about it because you can't even focus them down and they still do damage. *cough* That's how most of them are still killable xD

In the end even if there is a counter that doesn't involve you running the same thing yourself, I would definitely suggest some obnoxious tanky Mesmer builds, especially traited signets with

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Domination

Strips 5 boons when traited.

and of course

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Humility

But moa can be blocked so you need to hit with something first. And it can also help them disengage which may acutally be bad depending on what your allies are. In general you should only moa people mid animation or if you load them up with condis beforehand.

Gravity well is also good, but I feel in less coordinated groups they cannot capitalize on it and if the guardian isn't afk it tends to not be as effective.,

And also I would run

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Illusion_of_Life

But the problem then becomes it's not fun because it ruins your own kill speed (and maybe you can't even damage these groups at all). However, if you slow down the fights to a crawl then you will destroy all the content and eventually your zerg will pass by.

All these things are of course nuclear options. I generally don't recommend it as it kills content. However, you know, if people choose to give you this kind of content to your front door, it's your way of rejecting it.

Edited September 26, 2023 by ArchonWing.9480

[Hesione.9412]

Illusion of life when in a small group against a boon blob? Warrior banner.

[ArchonWing.9480]

Yea I brought up warbanner earlier in the post. but I guess that was just mention finishing. I don't really play warrioir anymore.

[DeceiverX.8361]

21 hours ago, Zebulon.1850 said:

Yeah, this is exactly what Anet wants, unfortunately. Maybe if they reverted/updated spellbreaker winds, there might be a counter to nonsense like that.

With the current state of winds, you would probably need 2-3 stacked up to even make a dent in the boon spam I saw there.

For reference, I tested jumping into that group while they were sitting in a lord room with scourge, used GS 4, corrupt well, elite and cerus and didn't see that they really even lost any boons. And that's 4 skills ticking almost at once, so 4 boons removed per sec.

It only solves ZvZ.

Smallscale is arguably even more broken since most strip/corrupt sources are on such high cooldowns or are localized AoE's.

The real answer to boonball isn't strips/corrupts.  It's only removing/reducing its sources entirely.

[MalekithDG.6124]

On 9/25/2023 at 11:56 PM, XenesisII.1540 said:

🤏💳

🤏 https://www.guildwars2.com/en/secrets-of-the-obscure/

🤏https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Relic_of_Cerus

💳👉🎆🎉🎊

You know whats funny? If 30 people used this relic at the same time and they all pressed ulti at the same time at the moment engagement 2 things can happen:

1) Game crashes

2) Enemy blob will PROBABLY sustain all the boons thats being converted.  Thats how much boon puke we have on classes these days. Especially boons granted by traits, so easy to trigger.

[kiwituatara.6053]

13 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

I'm not sure any commander has called for fire fields. Stack might only means guard stacks. Or the zerg is already capped by accidentally farting out might anyway. And even if they did someone always put down the wrong field anyway.

Not anymore yeah. Vanilla and even HoT cmders would ask for Fire and Water. And that was the point, if someone puts down the wrong field then the team is at a disadvantage. There’s a bit more coordination required back then.

 

[Hesione.9412]

1 hour ago, MalekithDG.6124 said:

You know whats funny? If 30 people used this relic at the same time and they all pressed ulti at the same time at the moment engagement 2 things can happen:

1) Game crashes

2) Enemy blob will PROBABLY sustain all the boons thats being converted.  Thats how much boon puke we have on classes these days. Especially boons granted by traits, so easy to trigger.

Yep. It's almost like Anet doesn't want anyone but comp'd squads playing WvW. RIP WvW.

The boonball meta is the thing that is killing WvW. Why play if there is no comp'd guild group running at your time?

[lodjur.1284]

You can look at the videos from these guilds, in particular Srge got dps.reports and it becomes extremely clear, that calling it boonball is a misnomer, it's stab+resistance ball, with a few other boons that do something. They often run 1-2 people/party, just dedicated to these specific boons

 

The core problem of this game, for the last 10 years, is CC, the boonspam that has been introduced was to counter it, because if it didn't exist, the game would be utterly unplayable. I mean it gets pretty obvious if you fight any of these groups as a pug, you get hit by 10 pulls in a row, and stunlocked to death. Game would just devolve entirely into who has the bigger numbers and who attacks first, which is already the case to an extent.

 

Boon strips were then tuned up, compared to 10 years ago, or even like 5-6 years ago, there are much more. 

 

At this point, any boon skill on a long-ish cd, is basically useless, because you can just assume you'll get boonstripped a couple seconds after. 

 

The core issue I would say, is that as soon as stability is not on your bar (and to a degree resistance), you're no longer playing the game, in any engagement with more than like 3 enemies, you're just sitting and watching yourself get repeatedly stunned. 


Dealing with "boonball" would essentially require a rework of the game, to one where CC isn't the way that it is in gw2. 

Even then what should organized groups be playing? 5 solo roaming builds next to each other?

A further armsrace between strip vs boonspam, all to either avoid CC, or spam CC isn't really fixing the core problem.

Edited September 27, 2023 by lodjur.1284

[Hesione.9412]

The boonballs aren't being properly stripped. Remove a couple of boons and they pretty much instantly have them back.

We need the strips and corrupts to come back.

[DontPaniC.8740]

Yeah love getting pulled and insta killed into a blob just trying to do something anything to stop them.  Great system.

[Dawdler.8521]

21 hours ago, lodjur.1284 said:

You can look at the videos from these guilds, in particular Srge got dps.reports and it becomes extremely clear, that calling it boonball is a misnomer, it's stab+resistance ball, with a few other boons that do something. They often run 1-2 people/party, just dedicated to these specific boons

Thats literally a boonball.

Combine with auras and bubbles and they become exponentially stronger.

People keep bragging about stuff like outnumbered 8vs20, but in reality around 8 of those enemies are ineffective due to hanging too far back/being noobs that dont know how to cloud, another 8 are ineffective due to being either ranged that cant punch through defenses or they are too much melee oriented and cant commit unsupported, leaving about 4 half-decent effective randoms against a highly organized and optimized 8 man guild.

[Hesione.9412]

12 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Thats literally a boonball.

Combine with auras and bubbles and they become exponentially stronger.

People keep bragging about stuff like outnumbered 8vs20, but in reality around 8 of those enemies are ineffective due to hanging too far back/being noobs that dont know how to cloud, another 8 are ineffective due to being either ranged that cant punch through defenses or they are too much melee oriented and cant commit unsupported, leaving about 4 half-decent effective randoms against a highly organized and optimized 8 man guild.

And those 8-16 become rallybots for the other side.

[lodjur.1284]

4 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Thats literally a boonball.

Combine with auras and bubbles and they become exponentially stronger.

People keep bragging about stuff like outnumbered 8vs20, but in reality around 8 of those enemies are ineffective due to hanging too far back/being noobs that dont know how to cloud, another 8 are ineffective due to being either ranged that cant punch through defenses or they are too much melee oriented and cant commit unsupported, leaving about 4 half-decent effective randoms against a highly organized and optimized 8 man guild.

That really doesn't even remotely address the point I made. Nowhere did I say anything about it being impressive or not, nor does that group ever run  with 8. But given that part of the OP apparently started the thread after seeing it, felt relevant to post about the group in question.

 

Saying that largely outnumbered fights demand that the  enemies be worse at the game and/or less organized than the group is also not exactly news to anyone, that seems painfully obvious?

Boonball as a term even removes focus from the fact that it's just stability+resistance, the rest barely matters. In addition to that, without stab and resistance, the game is very close to unplayable, which gets really obvious when you fight these groups with pugs, you just get pull>immob>pull>pull>pull>stun>dead. The fact that the most organized groups have 2 players dedicated only to allowing them to play the game certainly highlights a pretty big issue, which is CC.

The game has over the years had a constant Stability vs Boonstrip/CC arms race. If you compare to 5 years ago the stability sources are much much stronger, but so is the boon corrupt. That is what leads to very spammy gameplay where skills like Stand Your Ground barely feel relevant, cause it does stability once every 24 sec, when what you need to be doing is doing stab every few seconds, ideally multiple times, just in order to not be chainstunned to death

[Ferus.3165]

On 9/27/2023 at 4:31 AM, DeceiverX.8361 said:

The real answer to boonball isn't strips/corrupts.  It's only removing/reducing its sources entirely.

that's the best idea imo. Just reduce boon sharing by a lot. Let everyone be responsible for their own boons.

[manu.7539]

On 9/27/2023 at 8:28 AM, lodjur.1284 said:

You can look at the videos from these guilds, in particular Srge got dps.reports and it becomes extremely clear, that calling it boonball is a misnomer, it's stab+resistance ball, with a few other boons that do something. They often run 1-2 people/party, just dedicated to these specific boons

 

The core problem of this game, for the last 10 years, is CC, the boonspam that has been introduced was to counter it, because if it didn't exist, the game would be utterly unplayable. I mean it gets pretty obvious if you fight any of these groups as a pug, you get hit by 10 pulls in a row, and stunlocked to death. Game would just devolve entirely into who has the bigger numbers and who attacks first, which is already the case to an extent.

 

Boon strips were then tuned up, compared to 10 years ago, or even like 5-6 years ago, there are much more. 

 

At this point, any boon skill on a long-ish cd, is basically useless, because you can just assume you'll get boonstripped a couple seconds after. 

 

The core issue I would say, is that as soon as stability is not on your bar (and to a degree resistance), you're no longer playing the game, in any engagement with more than like 3 enemies, you're just sitting and watching yourself get repeatedly stunned. 


Dealing with "boonball" would essentially require a rework of the game, to one where CC isn't the way that it is in gw2. 

Even then what should organized groups be playing? 5 solo roaming builds next to each other?

A further armsrace between strip vs boonspam, all to either avoid CC, or spam CC isn't really fixing the core problem.

I agree that CC's are a big issue and probably pushed many players to use that boonball play style but its not just about stab. Boonballers also run alac, quickness, resistance, might etc etc etc, kitten they run all the boon of the game and permanently!

On that fight I was talking about at some point we had 3 ac's hitting them, 5-6 other guys hitting from the wall and 3-4 trying to hit them from the ground and we were dying like ambiant creatures as they were taking nearly no damage. So to me its kind of obvious that something is wrong, even with bad pugs, we should have been able to kill them at least slowly one by one. And its good to mention that we were defending our keep so we had the keep buff and yet, the boonball was still ridiculously strong.

[TheIceman.1039]

On 9/25/2023 at 11:40 PM, manu.7539 said:

I just came back to work and wanted to have some wvw fun as usual but we had that little srge boonball on our ebg keep at wg. Got so disgusted to waste my time and fun I logged out. Is there anything normal to see 6-7 guys stalling 15 others with this kind of stupidly over tanky comp? Jesus Christ anet, wake up!

Lol srge, You can make a similar team and when you meet them you are stallmates 😀