when did boonball become THE meta for wvw?

[Tinker.6924]

I pop in and out of the game and the last time I popped in (2+ years ago in 2021/2022?) I don't remember people complaining about boonballs in wvw, although I'm fairly sure it was  the wvw meta looking back.  The earliest mention I can find of either "boonball" or "boon ball" on the gw2 forums is from Jun 25, 2020 (a few months before the EoD release)   

What actually enabled boonballs? Was there some game update that finally made bringing support builds more valuable than dps to a zerg?

Looking through my 2024 glasses at the history of gw2 it would seem that the boonball wvw tactic was blatantly obvious and either always been meta or should have been, because everything is "stack, stack, stack to share heals and boons" and if more support made your zerg less beatable, than adding more and more support would eventually make it unbeatable!  Tactically that would have been the smart thing to always do.

Either its always been meta and just not named or something Anet did finally made it possible to create an unkillable 40+ player squad.  Which was it?

Edited February 19 by Tinker.6924

[SleepyBat.9034]

EoD powercreep and the mass boonrip nerfs.

[Custodio.6134]

boons and stacking together have always been a major part of the meta. Even in core-game you used to stack tightly, especially since back then, blasting combo-fields for boons and heal was the norm. In fact: boons were EVEN STRONGER back in core, since boonstrip was even more limited (because stuff like Scourge, Chronomancer or Spellbreaker didn´t even exist back then). Stability was even more broken than it is today (as it literally made you CC-immune, without getting removed as well as stacking in duration without any additional mechanic). 

This also has absolutely nothing to do with EoD, the boons vs boonstrip goes WAY back to HoT and PoF. And even then, just for the "boonballs" this didn´t change much, as it only shifted more into the direction of "boon-application vs boonstrip" (since both, more access to boons got introduced especially with firebrand, and more boonstrip got introduced with Scourge, Chronomancer and Spellbreaker). In fact: going by introduced specializations, EoD had by far the least impact on the WvW-meta for a LONG time (the only EoD-specc that held itself in the WvW-zerg-meta is vindicator, and even vindi had its "on/off-relationship" on that front)

It´s just that, for whatever reason, people just start complaining more. that´s it

Edited February 19 by Custodio.6134

[Tinker.6924]

26 minutes ago, SleepyBat.9034 said:

EoD powercreep and the mass boonrip nerfs.

There are boon ball forum posts from 2020 and plenty of complaint posts in early 2021 and EoD came out in 2022.

The boonball meta predates EoD by at least 2 years.

 

[Dawdler.8521]

HoT started the arms race. All the skills doing 5+ things at once, all the traits adding more, boons galore. PvE “raid class” dps (well, there was no raids) was around like 20K before HoT. Now we are at above 40K and so much of it is boon buffed. 

[XenesisII.1540]

Hot started the boon and condition spam, where they dropped using field blasts as much.

PoF gave us firebrands and scourge to make this even worse.

Boon balls have always been a thing since then way before EoD, but boon strips kept them in balance, sorta. Not to mention there wasn't a 30s cap on boon duration yet (frankly that should be dropped to like 10s at this point).

Since the feb 2020 apocalypse patch they've been on this crusade to buff support and nerf strips.

[Nugatory.8920]

There's always been blob content in WvW. I enjoy blob fights. However, like all balance, large-scale fights exist on a spectrum. For instance during the pirates ship meta blobs had to keep a distance because strips and damage were so abundant that blobs would explode on contact. Now we are in a bunker meta where boons and heals are so abundant that blobs can stand still 600-900 units away from one another spamming skills waiting for the other side to run out of support. Just like the pirate ship meta was boring this current bunker meta is boring, in my opinion.

[ArchonWing.9480]

The zerg meta for the most part has always been stack in a tight ball to maximize heals and boons.

However I think it mostly got enforced with the advent of minstrel gear; meaning people could go full on healer/tank with little drawbacks. Before that boon duration was hard to get and you had people do weird kitten like doubloons lol. The game was at the time not designed for that kind of boon duration.

Before this most "supports" were some kind of hybrid wearing some pvt gear and then investing spare stats into damage. But now most roles are just that minstrel stuff.

You also had more ways of reducing damage and also the introduction of the resistance boon negating condis (later nerfed to only negate soft cc) so you had a case where it became harder and harder to pick off or separate the part of the zerg that falls behind.

Eventually supports became too effective in pve and wvw, and it became inefficient to play without them. And thus the game became balanced around them. And as sustain grew, all those insta res skills also became perferable since it could compensate for any mistake in positioning as long as you stayed close.

And then they just went insane with the projectile hate. Projectiles were already pretty weak against a zerg, but certain combinations gurantted practical immunity to projectiles so that many clouders were not only ineffective but actively griefing their team. A quick glimpse of arcdps, usually reveals a minstrel support has a good chunk of damage via reflect-- yes those useless pew pew players are doing negative damage. While that's been toned down a little so that firebrands cannot just spam reflects all day, it's still pretty annoying and tablet is also very popular.

Nowadays if you tab through an enemy zerg, you will find anywhere between 60-80% of them being some kind of minstrel support and thus there are very little targets to pick off, and those that do unless wildly out of position are practically instantly res'd. It doesn't help that boon strip is so gutted that like the boons instantly come back, and often just becomes a long war of attrition. Even organized groups will have trouble killing other organized groups of the same size, so people tend to find some dps builds with massive burst (typically holos and berserkers) and hope to catch people unaware. Unfortunately that usually just involves blindsliding an enemy already fighting a third enemy or just farming pugs. And because things tend to follow the path of least resistance, they usually do the later and only fight each other should they have some element of surprise/advantage.

I would say the main problem is that it is very boring because it encourages groups to avoid each other. I mean obviously an organized group will always have a massive advantage over people bringing random builds. So yes while it's always been meta to a degree, we shouldn't have to accept in its current state where it's haevily skewed without any real counterplay beyond your opponent falling asleep.

Of course some of you will say "git gud, and organize yourselves!". And yes, we should not listen to the walking bags on the forums that seem to be persecuted regardless of meta, it would be a bit foolish to assume that's all the complaints have been coming from. There's many people that do join the commander's discord and saw better results-- but it still comes across as unrewarding on the other side. It's like winning against people that are playing a different game from you, or in some case not playing the game at all.

Also I feel like things have gotten much worse over the last year. The direction since SotO has been very unclear.

Edited February 20 by ArchonWing.9480

[DanAlcedo.3281]

Since HoT I would say. 

 

[ZTeamG.4603]

It has been around to a lesser extent since HoT, but in the past 4-5 years it has worsened to the point it's in today. Anet has incrementally buffed and expanded access to heals/boons while nerfing things that work as counterplay to stacking--ie reducing target caps, neutering boonrips/corrupts, reducing damage without reducing (and sometimes even increasing) heals, etc. 

The reason everyone except boonblobbers are so vocal nowadays is because there used to be viable counterplay to harass a bigger comped blob, and it wasn't unheard of for a skilled group of 20-30 to put a dent in or wipe a group of 40-50 with a well played spike. The aforementioned changes have made it nearly impossible to overcome a difference of even 10 people nowadays for two comped groups of similar skill, and if you only have 20-30 people you might as well not even bother trying to fight a boonblob of 50--they can just stand in one spot and outheal anything you throw at them.

Edit: another great example to illustrate what changed is in the "Rise!" strat that was popped up sometime in the past few years before "Rise!" got a WvW nerf. Zergs would run 1 reaper in each subgroup with "Rise!" to summon several minions each when the zergs clashed. In the old days, having an extra 3-4 NPCs per 5 players wouldn't make much of a difference because they'd just die in the bombs (especially when there were a lot of offensive skills with higher target caps than healing/defensive skills). At the time this was popular, however, having all those extra bodies to soak up damage--at the cost of a single utility skill and while also giving damage reduction to the reapers using "Rise!"--meant that most of the enemies' skills wouldn't even hit your own players because their low target caps got filled by enemy NPCs.

Edited February 20 by ZTeamG.4603

[bq pd.2148]

8 hours ago, Tinker.6924 said:

 What actually enabled boonballs? Was there some game update that finally made bringing support builds more valuable than dps to a zerg?

"boonballs" have always been the meta. 
before 2020 we had damage in WvW, it doesnt matter if you have all the boons if you still die for eating too much damage. the main reason boonballs were not melting right away against clouds back then was retaliation, which was removed only in 2021 after all the damage was gone.

when we had damage it was easier for a cloud to punish bad movement of individuals in a ball because it didnt require a coordinated spike of multiple people to get one person down. damage dealers were usually ranged because one could deal enough from range, now its mostly melee so it will be difficult for a less coordinated group to punish bad positioning as you just wont get your damage dealer within range.

due to the overall low damage numbers on range, supports are valued more as you wont be able to kill a cloud but you have to tank it.if you look into arc logs in many of the more public balls on EU you will see that they are carried by a handful of people, but the numbers matter and with most being on minstrel even at 10% performance they are a good meatshield.

no a mount of boons vs strips will change the current situation as long as damage remains low. however increasing damage again has the side effect that 1 vs X also becomes easier and more complains about oneshots. personally i did prefer times of more damage.

Edited February 20 by bq pd.2148
fixed an unfinished sentence

[Chaba.5410]

I agree with you. Sometimes it feels like it is just a new name for the same old thing.

I think what really distinguishes now from then isn't the boons or their durations or accessibility or even gear (remember that the tanky soldiers was once used a lot), but it's the 5 target limit combined with party/squad priority (the way boons are distributed is more optimized with little overflow). These combine to make it a lot more difficult to fight when your group is outmanned by 5 to 10 players rather than larger disparities in the past.

Edited February 20 by Chaba.5410

[TheGrimm.5624]

10 hours ago, Tinker.6924 said:

I pop in and out of the game and the last time I popped in (2+ years ago in 2021/2022?) I don't remember people complaining about boonballs in wvw, although I'm fairly sure it was  the wvw meta looking back.  The earliest mention I can find of either "boonball" or "boon ball" on the gw2 forums is from Jun 25, 2020 (a few months before the EoD release)   

What actually enabled boonballs? Was there some game update that finally made bringing support builds more valuable than dps to a zerg?

Looking through my 2024 glasses at the history of gw2 it would seem that the boonball wvw tactic was blatantly obvious and either always been meta or should have been, because everything is "stack, stack, stack to share heals and boons" and if more support made your zerg less beatable, than adding more and more support would eventually make it unbeatable!  Tactically that would have been the smart thing to always do.

Either its always been meta and just not named or something Anet did finally made it possible to create an unkillable 40+ player squad.  Which was it?

Interesting question. Boons have always been a thing. To point at something though that accelerated it. The nerf Feb 2020 patch that tried to address the glass on glass TTK issues. Where everyone took a hit which both created boons having even more impact, and more differences in armor sets. Tanky and sustain became more so as was predicted and boons raised up  all the more. Which has been further augmented by nerfs to anti-boon versus an increase to power and condi damage. So full circle?

[Widebody.5071]

From what I noticed some melee classes received a decent update a little over a year ago about Nov./2022 to Feb 2023 and celestial armor became popular. If you look back in through the forums from that period you'll find that's when so many folks went berserk over the changes. It was a little while after this that warrior received the old [get back in your place hatchet]. 

Then other classes started utilizing cele and that's when all the roamers started complaining even though they were utilizing strong equipment also. Not sure about others but I was able to break up a zerg with my Bladesworn with a zerg covering for me and man.... It was fun!!! The boonballs went main stream then to counter the melee's ability to get in cause little havoc then skirt out. 

What they now do is stack up, buff up and rush through the opponets, (this is deadly in a cave entrance or corridor) then hit reverse to catch any stranglers. This stategy became popular after the Relic of Cerus hit the scene. This relic gave the welder the power to remove boons and disable the main mechanic of a boon ball(wish mortar fire could do that).

When that don't work they go to the old tried and true method of alt stacking to call out targets and to know when to hit super speed and rush an opponent. A nuisance but still kind of fun when you can maneuver through them. But Boon balls as been around for awhile, they just morphed since the pandemic.

Yes sir.... it's been an interesting past 18 months or so.

 

Edited February 20 by Widebody.5071

[Caid.4932]

7 hours ago, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Since HoT I would say. 

 

Yup, thats my memory

I feel like complaints about perma boons started with Herald and mesmer. Heralds F2 skill was a flat 2 sec extra duration to every boon and mesmer had a trait that ... did something weird with refreshing boons which i cant remember.

Stacking was always a thing mind

[DanAlcedo.3281]

43 minutes ago, Caid.4932 said:

Yup, thats my memory

I feel like complaints about perma boons started with Herald and mesmer. Heralds F2 skill was a flat 2 sec extra duration to every boon and mesmer had a trait that ... did something weird with refreshing boons which i cant remember.

Stacking was always a thing mind

People who didn't play back then or don't remember correctly have no idea about the INSANE powercreep HoT Was. 

4 stats gear like marauder, minstrel and trailblazer. 

Insane runes and sigil. Remember old sigil of concentration? 66% Boon Duration for 7 seconds after weapon swap? 

Even the food we used got powercreeped to high heaven. 

[Tinker.6924]

What I'm understanding is that boon ball started in HoT because of elite specs and new gear prefixes.  Elite specs added many new support-oriented builds which were very strong and the new HoT prefixes made those builds really click. There's always been support builds and support prefixes but Hot's changes made a lot of things more  accessible to the average player. 

 

[DanAlcedo.3281]

1 hour ago, Tinker.6924 said:

What I'm understanding is that boon ball started in HoT because of elite specs and new gear prefixes.  Elite specs added many new support-oriented builds which were very strong and the new HoT prefixes made those builds really click. There's always been support builds and support prefixes but Hot's changes made a lot of things more  accessible to the average player. 

 

Think about it this way. 

The meta gear for guardian Pre HoT was full soldier with some cleric pieces sprinkled in. 

The rune of choice was often Trooper and the meta sigil was energy. 

Boon Duration on gear was none existent. 

 

Now look what hot gave us. 

Minstrel gear. 

A sigil that gave free 66% Boon duration. 

Rune of durability.

Massiv amounts of Boon Duration. 

[Teknomancer.4895]

5 hours ago, Widebody.5071 said:

This relic gave the welder the power to remove boons and disable the main mechanic of a boon ball(wish mortar fire could do that).

I've always thought that most of the heavier siege should have CC baked-in. If you get hit with a Colossal Explosive Shot from a trebuchet for example, that kitten should not only do lethal (or nearly so) AoE damage to you, it should also send you flying and leave you dazed. At minimum it should knockdown; just because you are stable doesn't mean the ground is immune to having craters blasted into it.

A trebuchet was one of (if not THE) most powerful weapons in existence in its day, but in this game you can just stand there, soak up a hit capable of reducing massive stone walls to rubble and not even flinch a little.

That's just wrong.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

5 hours ago, Widebody.5071 said:

What they now do is stack up, buff up and rush through the opponets, (this is deadly in a cave entrance or corridor) then hit reverse to catch any stranglers. This stategy became popular after the Relic of Cerus hit the scene.

 

Bro this has been the strategy since the dawn of organized WvW not when relic of cerus hit lmao 🤣 

Edited February 20 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Stand The Wall.6987]

well classic zerging has always been around but the modern boonball thing didn't start until HoT when anet decided to abandon their design philosophy and made dedicated supports

[Aeolus.3615]

HOT was the start of the downfall plus tons of bad changes made favoring boon spam made it far  worse towards the stupidity level we are now.

Edited February 20 by Aeolus.3615

[Lord Trejgon.2809]

Cannot speak on the forum occurences, but I am quite sure I saw in-community talks of boonballs, forever since HoT released. Including but not limited to increase of both boon hate and boon spam, with PoF.

[Widebody.5071]

1 hour ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

Bro this has been the strategy since the dawn of organized WvW not when relic of cerus hit lmao 🤣 

It has, but's it"s been turned into something ugly. It was bad during HOT due to the nerfs at that time. About the same time all this alliance talk started to spread.

[Widebody.5071]

39 minutes ago, Widebody.5071 said:

It has, but's it"s been turned into something ugly. It was bad during HOT due to the nerfs at that time. About the same time all this alliance talk started to spread.

Also the other anwsers to the op's question does not address the question asked.

Which was [what changed in the last two years], not what happened ten years ago.

To be honest I think it's just spiteful behavior from some of the players that"s driving this phenomenon.