An idea on how to reduce the effectiveness of boon ball

[Auragen.4162]

3 hours ago, GIMSE.3095 said:

right, the boonball would simply teleport around the map while 5 different objectives are being captured, sure.
It's literally an objective fact that the servers with the most kills CLOUD instead of boonballing, and the servers in T1 have the least amount of boonballs pr active players, why are you even trying to argue against an objective fact anyone can check on gw2mists?

And everyone has mounts, how exactly is the boonball faster? what are you even saying.
You are valid in not enjoying playing against boonballs, that's entirely subjective, but it's literally misinformation to claim it's an effective way to get PPT or PPK

You can make outlandish "objective" claims all you want dude, I literally play the game and know what I see lol. You can try to gaslight all you want, but I literally see people boonball day in day out in this game, nearly invincible the entire time. If it's just SO ineffective and inefficient, why does every organized guild do it 🤪? LMAO

It's just SO simple to separate into 5 groups of 10 right? Then every WVW guild is doing that right? Splitting up instead of joining a boonball squad? Tell me what the gw2mists report is, I'm too blind to observe WVW in front of my eyes and need an API.

Edited December 2, 2023 by Auragen.4162

[Leger.3724]

4 hours ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Heh jokes on you, they've already been ignoring this section since 2018.

This certainly isn't the section they take balance advice from when most of the posts are to nerf boon balls and stop nerfing strips, yet boon balls continue to get buffed and strips continue to get nerfed. It's the pve section they're catering to, you know the one that does their rotation on a golem and then complains about professions doing more damage than the other, the one they're trying to spread all boons including alacrity and quickness to all classes so that everyone including pugs have it 100% on their raids/strikes. So don't worry your Willbender is safe.

Yes, because they can "balance" pve to paper over combat design problems. You can change the numbers on the E side of PvE for incoming, outgoing damage, health values and mechanics. At 75% boss does X, 50% does Y. Every 2 minutes boss does Z. Boss dying too fast? Add 1 million HP. Modify armor, add modifiers to damage types received so you can buff certain weapons and classes without changing those weapons or classes.

The reality is they ignore PvP back in 2009 when they were designing combat in this game. And they ignored PvP again from 2012-2014 as they developed Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire adding specializations to a combat system that was designed poorly thus putting the final nail in the coffin. 

There is a reason sPvP died almost immediately, WvW has been declining and end game PvE is niche and smaller than other MMOs proportionate to the playerbases involved. They took the MMO skillbar and memorized skill rotation... and threw a slightly underwhelming action combat system on top of it while also removing monks. Their system takes away impactful decision making from players in favor of spammable, memorized rotations. Why would anyone who played Guild Wars 1 or World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy or League of Legends move to Guild Wars 2 as it was launching? They hired a professional, well known streamer/caster to launch sPvP Guild Wars 2 in spring/summer 2012. They hosted a tournament. The game mode flopped almost immediately.

The most important parts of MMOs and PvP games is having a sizeable playerbase so people can compete or cooperate and experience content. Combat should have been designed with this in mind. Give people clear roles they learned playing while leveling. Give people a limited skill choice selection so they need to make choices before engaging in combat and when they are engaged in combat their skill choices are impactful, their decisions are impactful. Instead we have this joke of a combat system where you memorize a few rotations and your skills are spammable and very low impact unless you abuse people new to the mode or not geared for roaming. That might feel good to some... but that's why maybe a couple hundred people on NA regularly play sPvP each month while hundreds of millions play League of Legends, Fortnite and other games with simpler, more intuitive combat systems where decisions to use abilities are impactful.

I hope the developers have understood this over the years. I hope they understand there was no fixing this combat system once it launched. I hope they will review what worked in Guild Wars 1. What worked in other successful games and unsuccessful games that had hype behind them but squandered it. I hope Guild Wars 3 is in development and they don't stand on incredibly flawed ideas for how they perceive combat should be.

 

[GIMSE.3095]

On 12/2/2023 at 9:31 PM, Auragen.4162 said:

You can make outlandish "objective" claims all you want dude, I literally play the game and know what I see lol. You can try to gaslight all you want, but I literally see people boonball day in day out in this game, nearly invincible the entire time. If it's just SO ineffective and inefficient, why does every organized guild do it 🤪? LMAO

It's just SO simple to separate into 5 groups of 10 right? Then every WVW guild is doing that right? Splitting up instead of joining a boonball squad? Tell me what the gw2mists report is, I'm too blind to observe WVW in front of my eyes and need an API.

I Guilds boonball against other boonballs because they find it fun.

https://gyazo.com/c354a0b713a05f46cb2fdf58773d6f4f

Look at this picture and tell me which server boonballs and which clouds. Guilds literally coordinate to lose matchups for content.

Example: 

 

Edited December 3, 2023 by GIMSE.3095

[Megastorm.6219]

25 max, not 50 (but really 70+ if you count the tag-along pugly ones too) Change the limit of your big ole' zergs to 25 seriously, get over it, split them, groups, up at long last, you're ruining everything and looking for any option out there but the obvious answer.  You could even use squad markers and all be in the same squad, but on both sides of the map working together as two groups of 25 but you all keep refusing it daily.  You.  Are.  Too.  Big. Start figuring it out. 

[godofcows.2451]

Imo it's not just going be a reduction of something from another class. Something else is just to replace it eventually. I mean...ever since the first wvw, you've got guards and even until now you've got guards and probably 10 years from now in gw3, or alliance 2077, or gw5 the mobile game, you will have guards and it will never go away. If you gut another class mechanic for being so strong in a zerg whereareas that mechanic is considerably meh on individual or small scale situations, that would be terribly unfair. And arenanet has been doing that for years. Imo, you have to go down and tackle what anet hasn't touched since gw2's birth and even actively promotes it. The actual zerg concept. A lot of scenarios in this game is abusable in zergs. Pve runs in zergs. Event pve events run on massive zergs. I've even seen the zerg concept in play during a 5v5 in pvp. Supports stacking in each other. This isn't new nowadays but back then it was kinda funny. I believe this was the same year when that someone from the pvp tourney quit because sustain was out of hand? Sound familiar? Anyway, a lot of mechanics can be abused in this game with it. A class that hits like a wet noodle suddenly has perma 25 might stacks ez without effort or timing and can kill together with 49 other classes that hit like wet noodle simply because that's wet noodle x 50. Think of it like the next bowl of ramen you eat in your life. Wet. So wet. But can be spicy. But still wet. Ok that didn't make sense, but what i'm trying to say is...arenanet hasn't really laid down any hard drawbacks from zerging. A simple hard drawback that I can think of right here and now is maybe an active area of effect with no downstate. On a programming and design concept, this should actually be possible to implement. Majority of the triggers to identify a zerg should be a no brainer. Something like this though is...up to the developer. If this is the vision of gw2 that they have, so be it. But the more serious question is....will the steam deck get a price cut? 

[Sleepwalker.1398]

The new weapons are going to vomit more boons.
And Anet keeps nerfing removals. just makes boonballs immune.
eg. Null field.

Patch	[hide]Changes
November 28, 2023	Increased the cooldown from 35 seconds to 45 seconds in WvW only.
June 27, 2023	Reduced range from 1,200 to 900.
October 04, 2022	Increased cooldown from 25 seconds to 35 seconds in WvW only.

[MedievalThings.5417]

On 11/30/2023 at 10:14 PM, XenesisII.1540 said:

There have been multiple suggestions to change concentration stat to be less effective in wvw.

Good luck convincing anet, they don't see boon spam as a problem, they currently see counters to it being the problem, the current system is working as intended by them.

Quoted for truth, but I wish it wasn't.

[Curennos.9307]

16 minutes ago, MedievalThings.5417 said:

Quoted for truth, but I wish it wasn't.

It should be less effective across the entire game tbh. We have DPS-boon builds (i.e. DPS builds that provide one of the 'main' boons, alac or quick) that sacrifice little to no stats (or perhaps just some traits) for relatively easy 100% uptime. And healer builds running stuff like harriers blitz all their boons to the 30 second stack cap quickly and easily.

[SweetPotato.7456]

This is what happens when people who doesn't run with a squad is talking about it. Because when you change your build, you can win, we were fighting X server last week, we were able to bag them most of the time, this week I think they have changed their build, and how they play,  same enemy,  they simply Brought better bigger squad.

[MedievalThings.5417]

59 minutes ago, SweetPotato.7456 said:

This is what happens when people who doesn't run with a squad is talking about it. Because when you change your build, you can win, we were fighting X server last week, we were able to bag them most of the time, this week I think they have changed their build, and how they play,  same enemy,  they simply Brought better bigger squad.

And this is the reason comps do NOT fight each other, unless one knows they outnumber the other.  That should not be how wvw is played.  Giant comped blobs avoiding each other fighting pugs and doors because fighting another equal size comp is not profitable is just pve.  Anet is only 1 step away from putting offensive and defensive protocols at every spawn that way everyone can just have perma-every boon with no effort.  Skill should win fights.  Right now, we have Anet hard-carrying boonblobs with boon-sharing, boon duration and downstate.  Downstate existed because the game did not have dedicated healers, but we do now.  It really makes no sense to still have downstate AND healers, on top of perma-every boon.  Skill usage should matter.  You apply, I strip, when skills are used should matter, but it doesn't cause Anet is babysitting blobs by making it possible to apply every boon 10 times while there is only 1 strip during the same alotted time.

[Knighthonor.4061]

Here is an idea. 

A New Condition called Repentance 

When applied to you, all Boons become temporarily ignored for the duration. Only counter is Resistance, but Resistance has a reduced effect, nullifying the effect to half the boons 

[bq pd.2148]

1 hour ago, Knighthonor.4061 said:

Here is an idea. 

A New Condition called Repentance

have you ever payed attention to how long conditions stay on a decently comped group?

[SweetPotato.7456]

8 hours ago, MedievalThings.5417 said:

And this is the reason comps do NOT fight each other, unless one knows they outnumber the other.  That should not be how wvw is played.  Giant comped blobs avoiding each other fighting pugs and doors because fighting another equal size comp is not profitable is just pve.  Anet is only 1 step away from putting offensive and defensive protocols at every spawn that way everyone can just have perma-every boon with no effort.  Skill should win fights.  Right now, we have Anet hard-carrying boonblobs with boon-sharing, boon duration and downstate.  Downstate existed because the game did not have dedicated healers, but we do now.  It really makes no sense to still have downstate AND healers, on top of perma-every boon.  Skill usage should matter.  You apply, I strip, when skills are used should matter, but it doesn't cause Anet is babysitting blobs by making it possible to apply every boon 10 times while there is only 1 strip during the same alotted time.

How should WvW be played? Pray tell,

all my squad does, is fighting other squads, lately we have been fighting 3 sometimes 4 squads. When we are in low pop time zone my small squad have to fight big squads. Sometimes we win sometimes we don't. It's how WvW is. Unless you are suggesting to nerf everything to oblivion so no one can fight, than it would become the longest fight in the history of mmo because it will be stale mate to kingdom come.

Edited December 4, 2023 by SweetPotato.7456

[MedievalThings.5417]

6 hours ago, SweetPotato.7456 said:

How should WvW be played? Pray tell,

all my squad does, is fighting other squads, lately we have been fighting 3 sometimes 4 squads. When we are in low pop time zone my small squad have to fight big squads. Sometimes we win sometimes we don't. It's how WvW is. Unless you are suggesting to nerf everything to oblivion so no one can fight, than it would become the longest fight in the history of mmo because it will be stale mate to kingdom come.

Things need counters, that's how you create balance in a game.  This is what people are complaining about, Anet keeps removing all the counters to one thing - stacking a group of 50 players, with every boon, who mostly run around killing groups of 10, pugs, and doors.  When another equal size comped group appears, all of a sudden they need to leave the map.  When the equal size enemy comped group leaves, they come back.  Because all these perma-every boon comps do not like fighting other perma-every boon comps.  Anet has basically changed the game to encourage that behavior, they get rewarded by avoiding each other and carried by the fact boon strips have been all but removed from the game.  No one is complaining about organized play, people are complaining that Anet nerfs every single thing that lets players make a dent in organized groups.  We are literally just one step away from them removing the last 1 or 2 strips and adding offensive and defensive protocol buffs at spawn with hour long timers.  WvW is probably 75% PvE at this point.

[GIMSE.3095]

1 hour ago, MedievalThings.5417 said:

Because all these perma-every boon comps do not like fighting other perma-every boon comps

that's not true.

1 hour ago, MedievalThings.5417 said:

Things need counters, that's how you create balance in a game.

A group of organized players being countered by an equal amount of unorganized players isn't balanced in a teambased game. 

[MedievalThings.5417]

2 hours ago, GIMSE.3095 said:

that's not true.

A group of organized players being countered by an equal amount of unorganized players isn't balanced in a teambased game. 

Skill should win the fight.  If you have an organized group that sucks, and an equal size pug group that is very good, the skill should determine the outcome.  Right now, the outcome is determined by Anet, who is literally babysitting boonblobs, by giving them perma-every boon with no way to remove them and downstate.  The game has healers now, they need to do their jobs.  If they fail at healing, they shouldn't get a free pass because 49 other people are standing over them.  But, as it stands right now, you can apply a boon 10x over for every strip in the game because Anet doesn't want people to feel bad they have to walk back from spawn.  That's PvE, not a competitive game mode that is supposed to be mass pvp.

[GIMSE.3095]

redacted

Edited December 5, 2023 by GIMSE.3095

[SweetPotato.7456]

4 hours ago, MedievalThings.5417 said:

Things need counters, that's how you create balance in a game.  This is what people are complaining about, Anet keeps removing all the counters to one thing - stacking a group of 50 players, with every boon, who mostly run around killing groups of 10, pugs, and doors.  When another equal size comped group appears, all of a sudden they need to leave the map.  When the equal size enemy comped group leaves, they come back.  Because all these perma-every boon comps do not like fighting other perma-every boon comps.  Anet has basically changed the game to encourage that behavior, they get rewarded by avoiding each other and carried by the fact boon strips have been all but removed from the game.  No one is complaining about organized play, people are complaining that Anet nerfs every single thing that lets players make a dent in organized groups.  We are literally just one step away from them removing the last 1 or 2 strips and adding offensive and defensive protocol buffs at spawn with hour long timers.  WvW is probably 75% PvE at this point.

If there are no counter, how can we have 50/50 win lose? Part of the game, is to come up with good builds for the squad, there are people who are good with that. When something is nerf, another sets of build will take its place. I just feel bad for anyone who cannot see this and just enjoy the game. 

Edited December 4, 2023 by SweetPotato.7456

[Mistwraithe.3106]

2 hours ago, MedievalThings.5417 said:

Skill should win the fight.  If you have an organized group that sucks, and an equal size pug group that is very good, the skill should determine the outcome.  Right now, the outcome is determined by Anet, who is literally babysitting boonblobs, by giving them perma-every boon with no way to remove them and downstate.  The game has healers now, they need to do their jobs.  If they fail at healing, they shouldn't get a free pass because 49 other people are standing over them.  But, as it stands right now, you can apply a boon 10x over for every strip in the game because Anet doesn't want people to feel bad they have to walk back from spawn.  That's PvE, not a competitive game mode that is supposed to be mass pvp.

I maintain that a bad boon ball of 30 will generally lose trying to attack a keep being defended by a very good group of 30 pugs.

If the boon ball is very good and at the same game play level as the pugs then the boon ball has a very good chance of winning, but that's as it should be. There has to be a benefit to being organised into complementary parties and on discord. The boon ball players put more effort into being organised, they should win!

[AlCapwnd.7834]

On 11/30/2023 at 11:53 PM, ShadowStep.3640 said:

So I returned to GW2 a couple months back not having played since the initial release of HoT and reading over, and experiencing, the problem of boon ball I had an idea on maybe how to ease the pain without completely gutting anything or making radical changes. As to my knowledge boons themselves haven't been changed in terms of effectiveness much. Might has always granted its same numbers, Fury has always been a 20% boost, Swiftness etc etc. For me the problem is obviously boon duration and the excessive amount of boon application compared to ages past in this game. I don't believe increasing boon rips or boon corrupts is necessarily the answer as the sole thing to solve boon ball though there is a place for more of it. I think the problem is in boon duration. Its too easy to stack large amounts of boons endlessly. 

 

My proposal is that Anet implements a custom boon calculation for WvW when taking into account boon sharing so that if a player were to grant a boon, they would receive 100% of the duration as per the tooltip amount and taking into consideration boon duration BUT any other players receiving that same boon only receive 50% of the duration that the user received. So if I cast an ability that ends up granting me 10 seconds of swiftness and 5 seconds of protection and grants that effect to 5 other players those 5 players receive 5 seconds of swiftness and 2.5 seconds of protection. This should allow for ebb and flow of boon application reminiscent of the old need to stack empower or blast fields before a push but doesn't invalidate boon sharing builds nor nerf the actual user receiving the boons. 

Pros:

1. Keeps roamers untouched

2. Severely limits boon application in a blob

3. Boons are still powerful and supports still needed in zergs but boons aren't endless anymore. Still allows for strategic boon ball to exist but not be overwhelming.

4. Increases the power of existing boon rips and corrupts since boons become more "scarce"

Cons:

1. Supports may feel like they aren't as useful

2. Puts an even bigger emphasis on needing to stack Concentration to achieve previous boon duration levels

3. Low duration boons like Quickness and Alacrity would be negligible. (but could be excluded from the calculation taking into account their short duration).

 

Idk there may be others but this seems like low hanging fruit that could be easily implemented just to try (maybe) and easily reverted if it doesn't work. Anet already separates WvW and PVE balancing so its not unfamiliar to them. Lastly, It allows individual players to feel powerful (I still get the full effect of my own boons) while toning down the power of the sharing aspect that makes boon ball possible. 

If, consequently, it work but doesn't go far enough I think you can nerf the effectiveness of Concentration itself in WvW (make it less effective per point).

Bring back spell breakers bubble (Winds) moving with the caster and 100% strips of anyone that touches it. Problem solved. I know i know. BUT PIRATE SHIP,,, WAH! Bait them out. They are on a long CD. (Heck increase the CD of bubble idc). Thats my two cents. But i have 1 foot out the door.

[Yasai.3549]

My opinion is that Boonball is the epitome of good commandeering. It's beautiful when you see an unbeatable machine because of well oiled performance and excellent piloting. 
But man it's oppressive as heck and it's just a plain easy formula. It's boring and it's just unfun to go against. 

Honestly wish there's a trap or trick that strips boons. Thieves then will have a solid role of sneaking to the tail of the boonball and pop a trick to strip them of boons so that a small force can zergbust. Or even better, give Warclaw a new skill that lets them engage and remove some boons to a small number of players. 

Edited December 5, 2023 by Yasai.3549

[Auragen.4162]

6 hours ago, Yasai.3549 said:

Honestly wish there's a trap or trick that strips boons. Thieves then will have a solid role of sneaking to the tail of the boonball and pop a trick to strip them of boons so that a small force can zergbust.

They should just remove ability to heal or apply boons to other players when Marked. Let everyone else figure out how to play around it like the thieves have. It could be as simple as "OK we're marked, everyone swap to solo builds for a minute (because build/gear templates have existed for years at this point)", but that would be too hard and require people to swap off of minstrel builds 🤪.

Edited December 5, 2023 by Auragen.4162

[Caffynated.5713]

Quickest way to nerf boon balls is for boons and healing to not prioritize group/raid members. If boons go to the nearest allies instead of group members, then members around the edge of the swarm will get nothing and end up being picked off without stability. The boon ball will get whittled down and eventually just be a couple of supports standing there picking each other's noses while trying to crawl inside the tag's backdoor. 

Organized groups that stay tighter with each other than with the commander tag will still be able to benefit, but it will necessarily split the ball up and force more tactical gameplay. Small groups of players moving separately but working together.  

They can roll back this change when they eventually decide to make substantive nerfs to support and healing specs. 

[XenesisII.1540]

Nerf all aoes to 1 target, nerf siege target to 5, make all stun breakers 5 target aoes, self skill and sustain now required, communication and target calling more important, movement and positioning very important.

But ain't nothing gonna happen, pointless discussion. ☕

[urd.8306]

1. Give us a skill that does 1% more damage for every boon and stack on the target but the skill only works on single target damage.