Nerf boonball!

[joneirikb.7506]

Make Arrow Cart do +100% damage per extra target hit.

Would solve all issues/problems with zergs and boonballs.

[Ferus.3165]

18 hours ago, manu.7539 said:

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.

a big problem here is also that supports are ridiculously overpowered when in a group.

In games like League of Legends for example you have a healing support like Soraka and you have a long cd group heal for all your teammates, but the constant healing you can push out is just for one person only.

In this game everyone in your group is constantly getting the supports healing and boons, that's why you don't deal damage to those boonballs when you cloud around them. The chip damage you and your allies deal just gets healed up. That's not even a problem with the boons, though perma regen that heals for 500 hp per tick and perma protection even amplifiying the effective hp even more are ofc part of the problem. Without any coordination in your team you might aswell not do any damage at all and the outcome would not be different.

And as a bonus supports in this game are incredible durable and normally even a full glass cannon dps will take a minute to kill them if they were alone.

[ArchonWing.9480]

On 9/28/2023 at 1:39 PM, manu.7539 said:

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.

So basically you were fighting 3v6.

Dawdler was right when they said:

On 9/28/2023 at 3:04 AM, Dawdler.8521 said:

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.

But yea, ACs don't do anything. I don't even carry any AC blueprints at all. Build literally any other type of siege. While shield gens can't kill anyone, it can still keep them in place and save allies.  As for people on the wall, you should pretend those are NPC archers (but probably worse).

Of course, this is a function of how projectile hate scales infinitely (wall people are rendered useless with a single tablet), but it really doesn't help when people remove themselves from the fight to begin with.

 

Edited September 30, 2023 by ArchonWing.9480

[DanAlcedo.3281]

Gimme my bubble back. 

I loved my bubble. 

Others loved my bubble too. 

Many even didn't even wanna leave my bubble and just lay down. 

Bubble was life. Bubble was love. 

Signed, a Spellbreaker. 

[XenesisII.1540]

1 hour ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Gimme my bubble back. 

I loved my bubble. 

Others loved my bubble too. 

Many even didn't even wanna leave my bubble and just lay down. 

Bubble was life. Bubble was love. 

Signed, a Spellbreaker. 

Listen here mister, no more bubble baths for you, it's boon showers from now on.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

6 minutes ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Listen here mister, no more bubble baths for you, it's boon showers from now on.

Nooooooooo! 

 

[RisingDawn.5796]

I don't think it's bad if a well organized comped group, can farm a uncoordinated cloud and even flip  a T3 Stonemist during prime, but at the same time, post SoTO really needs a competitive balance patch soon. I mean it's better to have Bubble Spellbreakers, than these oneshot berserkers around.

Edited October 2, 2023 by CrimsonOneThree.5682

[DeceiverX.8361]

On 9/28/2023 at 10:37 AM, lodjur.1284 said:

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.

Both are wildly over-inflated.

Though I'm astonished you don't think Prot/Resist aren't huge problems by name, either.  Especially with reduced damage in WvW in general from the 2019 patch.

The prevalence of superspeed (though not a boon) and alacrity are also massive issues that all play into it all.

Support effects in this game are just overpowered, too common, and don't cost enough from a build stats POV.

Edited October 1, 2023 by DeceiverX.8361

[Alsandar.7420]

Cal nerfed boonstrip chrono in something like 6 consecutive patches. 
 

Boonball is Cal’s intention and it’s working as intended.

[lodjur.1284]

18 hours ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

Both are wildly over-inflated.

Though I'm astonished you don't think Prot/Resist aren't huge problems by name, either.  Especially with reduced damage in WvW in general from the 2019 patch.

The prevalence of superspeed (though not a boon) and alacrity are also massive issues that all play into it all.

Support effects in this game are just overpowered, too common, and don't cost enough from a build stats POV.

I mention resistance actually. If I were to mention a third boon, it would've been protection, but imo Stab/Resistance are unique in just how horrible the game feels to play without them. Soft and Hard CC are both extremely overtuned. 

 

Damage is extremely high in WvW, even with prot in toughenss gear, you can get chunked for 10k+ in single hits, and even 2-3 bursty people get you down in sub 2 sec. The fact that people run so much support, and still kill people, who often run a lot of support as well, just shows that damage overall is quite high. It went down in the february patch of course, but it's slowly been creeping upwards, Berserker stands out as a problematic class in this regard. No prot WvW would be an absolute 1-shot fest tbh.

 

Superspeed is definitively an issue, but as you said not a boon. Mobility has been an issue since I started playing back in very early-HoT though, so nothing new. Alacrity is about 20% lower CDs, which is fine, it's one of the "strong" boons that require you to bring one of rather few classes to actually get (like quickness). 

 

I mean it depends on what you mean by support effects, I would say dedicated supports, currently do give up everything else but their support capabilities, which is good. When we're talking the passive support provided by builds not brought for support, but that just happen to splash out boons on their group anyway, I'd be inclined to agree, that is to say when the support options are what you'd generally run on a damage builds.

 

Ultimately I would say wether Anet knows it or not, every single balance decision ends up revolving around the (imo) broken CC system in this game. They buff up stab to allow people to play, so they buff up boonrips to counter that, then that makes the game unplayable, so they backtrack, etc. The core problem is that you can get stunlocked for 10-15 seconds in this game, and that if you don't have resistance, you permanently have chill applied to you, basically preventing you from actually using any skills.

I certainly wouldn't mind a tuning down of CC, boons and boonstrip, to the point where it doesn't just feel like spam. But it requires backtracking 10 years of design decisions and reworking a core mechanic, so I wouldn't say I am very hopeful of it happening.

 

I would personally say the game is in it's most reasonable balance state since PoF (which was a huge turning point for gw2)

19 hours ago, CrimsonOneThree.5682 said:

I don't think it's bad if a well organized comped group, can farm a uncoordinated cloud and even flip  a T3 Stonemist during prime, but at the same time, post SoTO really needs a competitive balance patch soon.

Agreed, anything else and the game just becomes only about bringing more people (which I mean you can already win every single fight by doing). People who optimize their builds, plan their comp out, and coordinate their gameplay, should have a pretty large advantage over pugs showing up with "random" builds.

 

SotO has some pretty big outliers overall, not sure how many of them necessarily affect comp groups all that much, but a balance patch that does more than rework 1 very weak relic, into a slightly weaker state, would be appreciated.

[bigmouse.2163]

I think people are too hard on arrow carts in here. Enough super/guild arrow carts and even a boonball will melt, and someone on an arrow cart is gonna be doing more damage than someone just clouding.

[XenesisII.1540]

It's a bloated system of coveralls in order to allow you to stand in one spot and deal with randomness of cc's and damage, which are on the extreme because when they do get through they need to matter. They expect you to just throw boons around to fix the problems.

11 minutes ago, bigmouse.2163 said:

I think people are too hard on arrow carts in here. Enough super/guild arrow carts and even a boonball will melt, and someone on an arrow cart is gonna be doing more damage than someone just clouding.

You need like 3-4 acs for that to happen, 1 ac they're laughing at you, 2 ac you're tickling them, 3 ac they might start to move around, 4 acs their healers have to make an effort, ac's are good for keeping aegis off them, no point even using the other skills since it's condi's which get wiped easily. You might be doing more damage overall with 50 targets, but it means little since each hit the shots are low damage and spread out which is negated with heal support anyways, while players clouding can still spike damage and take out singles. If only they would put boon strips on one of the ac shots like they do for cannon1.

[ArchonWing.9480]

1 hour ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

You need like 3-4 acs for that to happen, 1 ac they're laughing at you, 2 ac you're tickling them, 3 ac they might start to move around, 4 acs their healers have to make an effort,

And in almost every scenario, you'd rather have multiple  ballistas. They do a lot of damage and concentrating fire can threaten bunkers, and also has the advantage of destroying any siege they put up should you want to defend the thing. Arrow carts do absolutely nothing against offensive siege.  If they can't take your whatever, you can just ignore them.

There have been many cases where there's a giant zerg outside and they cant build any siege because it gets destroyed and can't get in. If they're here just to farm bags, I'm fine with just ignoring them until they pvd the thing down. I have better things to do in the meantime.

It's also easier to aim and every few arrow carts you build is a treb not built. Like I've seen arrow carts take forever to take someone's afk mount out. People with functioning keys are not going to fall to that.

Like, even building a golem is more productive lol, because you need :"boots on the ground" or else you cannot secure any downs. Golem ressing/stompimg is kinda op!

In days past before the nerfs and the power creep, arrow carts may have had a role, but in the present game they only have the use of being able to hit 25 targets so you may sometimes separate a disorganized zerg with the cripple. But in most cases I usually see people waste all our supply on arrow carts and do nothing. Usually most of them get pulled off quickly anyways because they don't know how to place them. (and it is kinda hard). Instead they could just build trebs, the superior siege weapon.

Edited October 1, 2023 by ArchonWing.9480

[blp.3489]

17 hours ago, lodjur.1284 said:

Agreed, anything else and the game just becomes only about bringing more people (which I mean you can already win every single fight by doing). People who optimize their builds, plan their comp out, and coordinate their gameplay, should have a pretty large advantage over pugs showing up with "random" builds.

Personally I think there is too much benefit to "build wars" versus player combat skill and coordination.  Again in my personal opinion, GW2 has been tuned too much to composition that is better suited to raids at the expense of group combat like WvW where, imho, it ought to be a group of individuals working together in a coordinated fashion.  Making someone play, for example, firebrand to provide boons isn't something that needs to be as heavily rewarded as it is.  Specialized roles are reasonable but obtaining a huge advantage by putting together a group of specific builds, that can be looked up on the net, doesn't add to the fun of the game.  There are too many players that don't enjoy playing firebrand that are playing firebrand.  And passively spewing shared boons doesn't do anything good for WvW.  All IMHO.

[joneirikb.7506]

On 10/2/2023 at 2:32 PM, blp.3489 said:

Personally I think there is too much benefit to "build wars" versus player combat skill and coordination.  Again in my personal opinion, GW2 has been tuned too much to composition that is better suited to raids at the expense of group combat like WvW where, imho, it ought to be a group of individuals working together in a coordinated fashion.  Making someone play, for example, firebrand to provide boons isn't something that needs to be as heavily rewarded as it is.  Specialized roles are reasonable but obtaining a huge advantage by putting together a group of specific builds, that can be looked up on the net, doesn't add to the fun of the game.  There are too many players that don't enjoy playing firebrand that are playing firebrand.  And passively spewing shared boons doesn't do anything good for WvW.  All IMHO.

"Git out of my Combo-fields ya little whipper-boon-snappers!"

This was what the Combo system was meant for at launch, and how it worked the first 3 years (until HOT-pocalypse, etc). A seamless system for any class to work together in various ways, dynamically on the field. Rewarding both organisation as well as on the spur strategies, and almost more importantly, punishing spamming buttons. Some classes/weapons where better at some things than others, so if you have 5x staff eles you got all the combo fields you could imagine and barely any blasts to use them. Unfortunately, it's another system forgotten and ignored, and nowadays the only thing people use it for is perma-stealth on thief.

It "was" honestly one of the better designed systems I've seen in a coop game, and I'm saddened that it basically got trashed as seemingly the majority of players didn't like/use it, and just complained that they couldn't click buttons to give boons and healing to entire party.

Edited October 4, 2023 by joneirikb.7506

[Zepoolpe.9217]

1 hour ago, joneirikb.7506 said:

It "was" honestly one of the better designed systems I've seen in a coop game, and I'm saddened that it basically got trashed as seemingly the majority of players didn't like/use it, and just complained that they couldn't click buttons to give boons and healing to entire party.

indeed.. and then all the devs that designed this system either got canned or left and here we are 10y later...

[Hesione.9412]

9 hours ago, joneirikb.7506 said:

"Git out of my Combo-fields ya little whipper-boon-snappers!"

This was what the Combo system was meant for at launch, and how it worked the first 3 years (until HOT-pocalypse, etc). A seamless system for any class to work together in various ways, dynamically on the field. Rewarding both organisation as well as on the spur strategies, and almost mort importantly, punishing spamming buttons. Some classes/weapons where better at some things than others, so if you have 5x staff eles you got all the combo fields you could imagine and barely any blasts to use them. Unfortunately, it's another system forgotten and ignored, and nowadays the only thing people use it for is perma-stealth on thief.

It "was" honestly one of the better designed systems I've seen in a coop game, and I'm saddened that it basically got trashed as seemingly the majority of players didn't like/use it, and just complained that they couldn't click buttons to give boons and healing to entire party.

I had forgotten about this, and also the requirement for guardians to might up subs ahead of engagement. I also miss this gameplay. Might ran out if the wind changed and it wasn't a good time for the comm to engage. You could hear the other side mighting up and react to counter their behaviour, etc.

The current situation is worse than the pirate ship meta, and people loathed that one.