Quickness and Alacrity in WvW

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

5 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Just look at either PvE or WvW at any point in time and it's still "bring the elite, not the class"...

Yes it’s a testament to the failure of this philosophy. Alacrity and quickness are “bandaids” that are holding up classes that have poor, broken design, lack of meaningful choices, unimaginative, streamlined and borderline useless skills.

it was an idea that came from the horde of PVE players that were to dense to see how bad of an idea it would be. it didn’t address fundamental problems it covered them up with the shiny toy.

it obviously worked to bring in class diversity (as I mentioned before alacrity and quickness are universally good which is what propped these builds and classes up) but it wasn’t like…a good way to do it. 

Edited February 17 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Triptaminas.4789]

12 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

100%, The idea came from PVE players. I should really go down the forum history and try to show how many people wanted it.

but the idea would eventually become the “bring the player, not the class” philosophy that Anet has now been running for past 2ish or so years.

Sorry sir i dont read forums or participate actively, just come here to vent once every blue moon. 

Im aware of "skill over class" mentality but...

With how easy is to go from fresh character to level cap i cant see how said "leet" players doesnt have all classes maxed and geared already so philosophy makes no sense whatsoever, especially in terms of class design decisions that endup uniforming all of classes.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

1 minute ago, Triptaminas.4789 said:

With how easy is to go from fresh character to level cap i cant see how said "leet" players doesnt have all classes maxed and geared already so philosophy makes no sense whatsoever, especially in terms of class design decisions that endup uniforming all of classes.

It doesn’t make sense. Read previous comment above.

[Triptaminas.4789]

11 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

It doesn’t make sense. Read previous comment above.

No i refuse to read, just like devs refuse to play the game they inherited from original team.

U cant make me read it sir

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

8 minutes ago, Triptaminas.4789 said:

No i refuse to read, just like devs refuse to play the game they inherited from original team.

U cant make me read it sir

Fair enough lol.

Side note, as much as I criticize devs, I’m not a fan of players either. I don’t think playing the game has anything to do with being able to design a good one. Mind that 2 of the 3 balance devs are esports players (Roy and CmC)

the brain child of “bring the player not the class” came from players…same with the 2020 nerf philosophy, Anet is just too noob at game design to realize how bad those ideas were.

Edited February 17 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[CafPow.1542]

54 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

That's not a counterpoint, it's pretty much the same point lol. We have 1-25 might stacks on a gazillion different skills and trait interactions, sigils, runes, food, god kitten everything. Why isnt it just... a might boon... if all you want it interaction between players? A player popping a skill that gives AoE might to his allies, to help in the fight and give the group a short burst of more damage.

Why do might have to be so god kitten complicated?

Yeah and i like the idea of empowerment by skills. It’s way cooler than the whole bufffood-stuff tbh.

no boon specifically is the problem, infact i think they are fun.

a 100% uptime of those boons however is silly and kitten and might as well just be a patch that changes the skills.

[Triptaminas.4789]

26 minutes ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

Fair enough lol.

Side note, as much as I criticize devs, I’m not a fan of players either. I don’t think playing the game has anything to do with being able to design a good one. Mind that 2 of the 3 balance devs are esports players (Roy and CmC)

the brain child of “bring the player not the class” came from players…same with the 2020 nerf philosophy, Anet is just too noob at game design to realize how bad those ideas were.

Agreed.

Vocal minority in forums is the reason i lost interest in pve, they kept pushing the nerfing difficulty curve, content is so trivial that its actually hilarious. I came here to vent about it, because achievements and intellectual gratification from lot of stuff that kept me and so many others hooked to this game was dissapearing.

....

I also think they do not understand some of the data they base their actions onto, like as example guardian is most played class in wvw, but its not because its fun to play, people dont want to play it, people HAD TO in order to keep every subs integrity, fb jail is what generates most of the surplus. Anet might think that people mostly play guardians so anet baby is born as they softest to class they assume most players play on actively and accumulate play hours.

Also lol, just noticed, their vocal minority is smallest, their guardian profession subforum thingy is smallest with least activity and posts. Its actually hilarious.

 

Anyways i have to blame someone for state of things, so i blame authorities. I sharpen the pitchforks, u get the torches 

Edited February 17 by Triptaminas.4789

[Stand The Wall.6987]

there are still plenty of ways to get alac and quick. i bet wb will be main alac and chrono stays on quick

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

19 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Alacrity is one of those things that should make you take a step back and ask:

Why does this even exist?!

The cooldowns are there for a reason. Why is there a boon that changes cooldown on skills? Anet already have arbitrary balancing of cooldowns. Why is there an ingame way to further unbalance Anets mediocre attempts at balancing? And it's an extra boon adding lag to the combat system, an extra boon that constantly has to be calculated for absolutely no reason. We understand why some boons are there, such as stability for example. A direct counter to CC. Resistance? A direct counter to condi bombs (on top of cleanse). But alacrity, as a concept? Just reducing the cooldown of a skill that has a cooldown for a reason? Quickness is another typical boon in the same line, skills have different activation times for a reason. That's what should be balanced. So once again:

Why are people even arguing?

Why does this even exist?!

Somehow all the answers to this got broiled into a debate, and I didn't find them really satisfactory.  So, I'll give a short explanation:  It is an axis of power.

No no, not WW2.  Think back to math class, with the coordinate system.  The X-axis, the Y-axis, the Z-axis, etc.  To provide depth to the interactions in a game, a player needs options to excel at different things.  That way they can have interesting strengths and weaknesses that need to be played around and use in conjunction with other players to overcome all sorts of different obstacles.  Buffs are an internal collaborative system where everyone gets enhanced by one player who's weaker otherwise, while debuffs are an external system where the enemy gets weaker for everyone by one player who's weaker otherwise.

Buffs are debated a lot, because it creates an all-or-nothing issue while playing in big groups like this.  In a single player game where there can be a proper power budget it is easy, but in a group setting where you want everyone to be useful you'll get this issue.  Either you balance around the presence of buffs and make everything too difficult otherwise, or you balance in the absence of buffs and make everything too weak anytime a buffer shows up.  It is difficult to create a system where buffs aren't either OP or UP, so most MMO's take the safe route and balance around their presence, thus ensuring the presence of the buffer role in content.

[XenesisII.1540]

Buffs should only be a temporary boost to whatever situation it's called for, not something that's up 100% of the time, otherwise it might as well be permanent. This is like the only game that has created a situation where you are forced to run them 100% of the time, because they made it possible for you to do so, especially when they decided to also allow huge stacking of it, and to top it off add recycling to it through stuff like purity of purpose.. Boon is a ridiculously bloated system that you are forced to run optimally because it makes such a huge difference. Their solution to boost underperforming players? double down on the spam to make sure everyone gets them!

Then you walk over to a game like WoW and the only big group boost you find is timewalk/bloodlust(haste), 5min cooldown but 10mins before you can get affected by it again. 🤷‍♂️

[CafPow.1542]

16 minutes ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Buffs should only be a temporary boost to whatever situation it's called for, not something that's up 100% of the time, otherwise it might as well be permanent. This is like the only game that has created a situation where you are forced to run them 100% of the time, because they made it possible for you to do so, especially when they decided to also allow huge stacking of it, and to top it off add recycling to it through stuff like purity of purpose.. Boon is a ridiculously bloated system that you are forced to run optimally because it makes such a huge difference. Their solution to boost underperforming players? double down on the spam to make sure everyone gets them!

Then you walk over to a game like WoW and the only big group boost you find is timewalk/bloodlust(haste), 5min cooldown but 10mins before you can get affected by it again. 🤷‍♂️

Yep.

i have no problem with 100% uptime buffs like vampiric aura or the old spotter buff.

but those are braindead anyways gameplaywise.

boons are meant to be temporary cause they have a duration time and still they are permanent.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

16 minutes ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Buffs should only be a temporary boost to whatever situation it's called for, not something that's up 100% of the time, otherwise it might as well be permanent. This is like the only game that has created a situation where you are forced to run them 100% of the time, because they made it possible for you to do so, especially when they decided to also allow huge stacking of it, and to top it off add recycling to it through stuff like purity of purpose.. Boon is a ridiculously bloated system that you are forced to run optimally because it makes such a huge difference. Their solution to boost underperforming players? double down on the spam to make sure everyone gets them!

Then you walk over to a game like WoW and the only big group boost you find is timewalk/bloodlust(haste), 5min cooldown but 10mins before you can get affected by it again. 🤷‍♂️

It is par for the course in my gaming history.  Ever since Phantasy Star Online, you needed to have the offensive buffs up at all times (Shifta + Deband), and this carried over into PSU.  Another game I played was City of Heroes, where there were so many different ways to buff a team up that it was mind-wracking.  Heck, even in Runescape the high-end fights expect you to be under the Overload Potion's buff for extended periods of time.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

4 hours ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Buffs should only be a temporary boost to whatever situation it's called for, not something that's up 100% of the time, otherwise it might as well be permanent. This is like the only game that has created a situation where you are forced to run them 100% of the time, because they made it possible for you to do so, especially when they decided to also allow huge stacking of it, and to top it off add recycling to it through stuff like purity of purpose.. Boon is a ridiculously bloated system that you are forced to run optimally because it makes such a huge difference. Their solution to boost underperforming players? double down on the spam to make sure everyone gets them!

Then you walk over to a game like WoW and the only big group boost you find is timewalk/bloodlust(haste), 5min cooldown but 10mins before you can get affected by it again. 🤷‍♂️

I’m gonna continue to play devils advocate here…but I don’t think messing with duration is the answer…not for guild wars 2. 
 

Cause for the most part…many buffs and effects already have a short duration. People just chain them together…so what your solution calls for is making buffs only last 1 - 2 seconds…at which point they will either not last long enough to even utilize with another skill, or they will just get stacked by other players if the buff is really that important…which leads to killing more build variety. By and large many buffs already sit between 1 - 8 seconds in WvW and pvp. 

we see this issue with might: any class that cant do  might gen than a competitor is just discarded  as a support character in groups. If nothing can stack the might the classes are doubled up. 

quickness and alacrity economy has made it a design tenet for the application of these boons to be permanent. It’s a problem. But the alternative is also a problem…nerfing the shiny toy isn’t going to make something pickable.

And this now goes full circle to what I said earlier. You don’t deal with the boon issue in this game by nerfing it into uselessness…you deal with it by adding unique and imaginative mechanics…introducing counter strategies…fixing broken interactions into useable ones…. boon strip and boon removal is one such mechanic that solves the problem of boon spam! It’s not that hard to see how that actually solves the problem.
 

Necromancers having boon strip made necromancers (and other boon removal classes) picked in WvW and it solves boon problem (in fact it gave the game interesting dynamics, and it creates a role for people to fill) …so now just do this procedure with other classes  and their builds until every strategy has at least one useable counter strategy. 

Edited February 18 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Salt Mode.3780]

Again the best solution is increase boon rips/corrupts simple as that but from he looks of it they are decreasing the boonrips and corrupts so again where is the logic to that...?

[mirage.8046]

They could nerf the durations of alacrity and quickness instead; permanent boon uptime anywhere is flat-out unhealthy, yes; however, how it is right now is that almost every boon needs to be permanently upkept so you can have DPS and sustain. Nerfs to boonstrips absolutely hurt necros, mesmers, and engineers, so how can we counter the hard counter of zergs???? Could concentration alternatively be nerfed in WvW? Maybe, maybe not. 🤷🏽‍♂️

[Aeolus.3615]

On 2/17/2024 at 5:43 AM, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

I'm wondering why out of all things to hit that Anet chose random bits of alacrity.  Alacrity as a boon is only good for long term fights when applied for long durations itself.  I.E. if a skill has a 30 second cooldown, under alacrity it will be 24 seconds, but that is only if you have 24 seconds worth of alacrity on you for that entire duration.  The boons that make the balls so strong are protection, regeneration, stability, fury, and might.  

That's exactly what alacrity is ment for where u can spam all that  protection, regeneration, stability, fury, and might more oftem in a zerg since the skills that apply those boons get their CD reduced.

Groups inside the blob tend to have permanent alacrity.

[CafPow.1542]

2 hours ago, Aeolus.3615 said:

That's exactly what alacrity is ment for where u can spam all that  protection, regeneration, stability, fury, and might more oftem in a zerg since the skills that apply those boons get their CD reduced.

Groups inside the blob tend to have permanent alacrity.

But is it tho?

let‘s stick to that example. U have a skill with 30 seconds cd vs 24 sec with alac.

the fight takes 1 minute and 5 seconds, then you destroyed the other zerg. How much more could you spam the skill with alac?

alac gets stronger the longer fights take. In wvw mist fights rarely last that long. It can occure but might, fury, prot, stab, vigor etc are way stronger compared to alac in pve imo.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

3 hours ago, CafPow.1542 said:

But is it tho?

let‘s stick to that example. U have a skill with 30 seconds cd vs 24 sec with alac.

the fight takes 1 minute and 5 seconds, then you destroyed the other zerg. How much more could you spam the skill with alac?

alac gets stronger the longer fights take.

yes its true. boons have impact on the strength of the zerg, but it's not the most important. Configuration (ball) and numbers matter the most by a significant margin, with the exception of stability which is absolutely necessary. Without stability, CC's render the zerg inert (unable to use skills) and death becomes an inevitability.

Every other boon is optional really and it becomes more of nash equilbrium type scenario where...if the other zerg has XYZ, you also want to have XYZ because otherwise you're at a disadvantage. So example, if their zerg has 25 might, their players are doing roughly 30% more damage than your zerg. Likewise, that goes for every mechanic, so with quickness, their zerg is 50% faster than yours, with alacrity their rotating cooldowns 20% faster than yours and so on.

All of that however is relative of course...because if zerg A has players doing 5k DPS on average unbuffed, and Zerg B does 15k DPS on average unbuffed, then 25 might will benefit Zerg A only by 1.5k DPS, which is still less DPS than Zerg B unbuffed. In other words, player skill is an important metric, in how useful the boons are, and whether they are actually being utilized.

Additionally, many people who put builds together, make them under the assumption that they won't receive boons from other players in an un-comped pug. Which is why you don't see everybody walking around in Diviners or Valkyrie Gear, under the assumption they would get fury from a party member. The only boon that people assume is taken by default in WvW is Stability. Even in a comped group, unless its a very sweaty guild, most guilds are pretty lax about what it is that you are playing (unless you are a Guardian) , so long as you follow calls, do the dps, keep people alive and win the fights etc...and won't badger you if you aren't hitting max regen or vigor uptime.

But anyway, If you asked me, and as my posts reflect in this thread, I think nerfing boons won't do much of anything other than just make the game worse, like making it harder to kill people that get their strengths from sources other than boons...like say minstrel gear, or just balling together. People often see changes in a singular biased way, don't realize that changing something doesn't effect just the enemies, those changes effect all players in the game, and how to combat the enemies. Folks are so blinded by the pitchfork, that they will reject any message to the mob's directive, even if its the stupidest idea ever.

Quote

In wvw mist fights rarely last that long. It can occure but might, fury, prot, stab, vigor etc are way stronger compared to alac in pve imo.

In PVE Alac is very strong, in contrast to Stability which is mostly useless there. Like stated previously Alac increases the speed in which you can cycle through rotations, for the purposes of builds that utilize burst sequences as their main source of damage. and in PVE, Damage is the primary currency. I'm sure that the confused emoji you got are due to this particular quote block because vigor, and stab are pretty much worthless there... dodging is considered a DPS loss, and 95% of the time, bosses don't CC. 

Edited February 23 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Aeolus.3615]

18 hours ago, CafPow.1542 said:

But is it tho?

let‘s stick to that example. U have a skill with 30 seconds cd vs 24 sec with alac.

the fight takes 1 minute and 5 seconds, then you destroyed the other zerg. How much more could you spam the skill with alac?

alac gets stronger the longer fights take. In wvw mist fights rarely last that long. It can occure but might, fury, prot, stab, vigor etc are way stronger compared to alac in pve imo.

That is the problem It is not 1 skill that gets reduced is ALL skills on the group and permanently, the gameplay with permanent CD reducing is way more offensive than w/o it it can make a totally diference especially on ammo skills that spam boons.

 

Sidenote: Btw regen isnt much an offender since its boon and its afected by poison, it is actually the most fragile healing type in the game, and the class that could put regen over 1k has been nerfed, it used to do 1.4k pert tik per players x10 alies.

Best usage of it is now only on Druid Avatar form and on healing  skill.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

22 hours ago, Aeolus.3615 said:

That is the problem It is not 1 skill that gets reduced is ALL skills on the group and permanently, the gameplay with permanent CD reducing is way more offensive than w/o it it can make a totally diference especially on ammo skills that spam boons.

 

Sidenote: Btw regen isnt much an offender since its boon and its afected by poison, it is actually the most fragile healing type in the game, and the class that could put regen over 1k has been nerfed, it used to do 1.4k pert tik per players x10 alies.

Best usage of it is now only on Druid Avatar form and on healing  skill.

That’s not catpow’s point bro. He’s saying that if zerg fights only last 20 seconds, then alacrity has less impact because the lower the duration of the fight, the less useful a cool-down reducer boon effect like alacrity has. For example if you have a skill CD that is 40s, and fights only last 20 seconds…then having the cool-down reduced by even something as high as 100% reduction (1/2) didn’t matter.
 

preferably, commanders don’t want long drawn out fights they want a one push that wipes the majority of the enemy force out as quick as possible. Therefor alacrity is antithetical to the end directive of a zerg (quickness; different story)
 

this is why catpow’s point is valid and true in the sense that no, alacrity isn’t that important in zergs. People just take it because as I explain above about maintaining a nash equilibrium. There’s no reason not to take alacrity, because other people take alacrity and in the event you can’t one push someone alacrity becomes very useful hence it’s role in zerg game is a countermeasure/redundancy.

Edited February 24 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Kuya.6495]

I know we're all complaining about boon balls lately, but why are we complaining about them removing alacrity and quickness from wvw then? I should think that if you don't like boon balls, the last thing you want is for them to have quickness and alacrity too. 

Edited February 24 by Kuya.6495

[Cyninja.2954]

Good summaries on how boons create diversity in builds and reduce diversity in class choice by @JusticeRetroHunter.7684 and @Blood Red Arachnid.2493.

Here is what is the main issue in my opinion:

We have seen more and more balance towards having specific boons present (aka as mentioned by BRA, the lack of boons makes you UP) in different areas. Most notably celestial gear gaining concentration for roaming (less relevant for blobs) and wider access to offensive boons overall (in part a carry over from PvE) for all classes.

At the same time, we are seeing continous removal of mechanics which deal with boons, starting with nerfing WoD, then necro, now mesmer, etc. THIS IS THE MAIN ISSUE.

It makes counterplay entirely dependant on numbers. Gone are the days where an organized group with proper timings, boon uptime and boon removal (let's ignore stealth bombing from engi gyros) was able to contest a larger force.

Thus the already present imbalance in player numbers becomes even worse.

I personally think there is flawed reasoning in place here on side of the developers. I get their approach to remove any player affected imbalance (in this case also player skill), but I fear they are not realizing the resulting staleness this produces.

TL;DR:

Making boons a necessity is fine. Not providing players a reasonable way to deal with boons is not.

I agree with JRH here, the best approach would be to increase the boon removal options across all classes (another variable to design builds around for more diversity), then different sized groups would at least stand somewhat of a chance to fight each other.

Edit: while at it  I still think another good change would be to reduce might from 25 to 5 stack, while increasing the benefit per stack. If desired, output could be reduced from 750 to 500 power while at it. This would effectively do 3 things:

1. Make balancing might generation easier, maybe moving away from this all or nothing design (unlikely, but at least now we are dealing with single digits, thus maybe essier combos are found like 1 class brings 3 stacks, another 2 versus "1 class brings 18 stacks another brings 10, oh we better buff the first class to give 25 stacks or it won't see play")

2. Reign in the powercreep the game has experienced over the last few years.

3. Make might easier understand able for new players

Edited February 25 by Cyninja.2954

[Aeolus.3615]

16 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

That’s not catpow’s point bro. He’s saying that if zerg fights only last 20 seconds, then alacrity has less impact because the lower the duration of the fight, the less useful a cool-down reducer boon effect like alacrity has. For example if you have a skill CD that is 40s, and fights only last 20 seconds…then having the cool-down reduced by even something as high as 100% reduction (1/2) didn’t matter.
 

 

That means the zerg is figthing much smaller numbers...

Guess what theres no fight there.... that's the same as say  alacrity is not strong cause a zerg kills 10 players under 10 seconds... kitten lol

Edited February 25 by Aeolus.3615

[Aeolus.3615]

I have a suggestion... crazy one that both Anet and zerg players will despise!

Alacrity = Players next skill recovers x% faster

Quickness = Stacks on intensity rather duration.

Protection = Stacks on intensity rather duration.

Domes = Range attacks are reduced by 50% damage rather 100% absorbed, targets inside domes cannot be crited (by range), and maybe pulse protection on Domes.

Block = becomes Aegis from gw1, stacks on intensity not duration min 20% miss at max 50% miss, still countered by unblocks.

Sanctuary from guardian would be far large dome and would be the only dome with absorption  from range skill, could be reworked.

New block becomes just a block a direct effect as your next skill used against you will fail,  still countered by unblocks, maybe some skills would punish players  on block system with a KD, Chill, Slow etc.

Add to all stats the same amount of stats that Celestial have extra so all stats have the same total.

Edited February 25 by Aeolus.3615

[Dawdler.8521]

36 minutes ago, Aeolus.3615 said:

Protection = Stacks on intensity rather duration.

Well on the upside at least zergs no longer have perma barriers because they're not taking any damage anyway.