Stop making special action skills mandatory CC

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

Its awful design that has been appearing more and more since Icebrood. It devalues your actual build in favor of "give everyone a 1 button win skill". There is 0 reason for it. Every class has more than enough cc through weapon skills, utility, class skills, traits.

[Parasite.5389]

21 minutes ago, Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:

Its awful design that has been appearing more and more since Icebrood. It devalues your actual build in favor of "give everyone a 1 button win skill". There is 0 reason for it. Every class has more than enough cc through weapon skills, utility, class skills, traits.

except not all classes are created equal, Necromancer has 12 hard CC skills across all Specs, compared to 31 for Engineers, or 38 for Warriors

[Omega.6801]

Not all players know where to find their CC skills or have them equipped. By handing them SAK-CC skills ANet can design encounters with CC bars while kinda guaranteeing that there theoretically is enough CC. I know  "If they have to hand it to the players only so that they can design the encounter in a way that accounts for what is handed to the players, why design it that way at all?". Good question. But the alternative would be to teach players about CC skills and the game for sure won't do that. So we're stuck with SAK skills and players who after hundreds of hours still don't know what their skills do because the game doesn't tell them. It's just a thing now. Because it's the easier way.

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

4 minutes ago, Omega.6801 said:

Not all players know where to find their CC skills

There is a basic skill requirement to play games. And in any case if players cant figure out what a cc skill is do you really expect them to read what special action skills do?

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

34 minutes ago, Parasite.5389 said:

except not all classes are created equal, Necromancer has 12 hard CC skills across all Specs, compared to 31 for Engineers, or 38 for Warriors

Necro has an abundance of fear, chill. And it doesnt matter that war has 38 cc skills. You are never going to have more than like 5 on your build.

[IAmNotMatthew.1058]

1 hour ago, Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:

There is a basic skill requirement to play games. And in any case if players cant figure out what a cc skill is do you really expect them to read what special action skills do?

People complained about having to use combo fields in EoD's story, one person complained that they had to leave the mission, buy a Staff so they could do combos as Reaper. You expect everyone to know what skill CCs when things like that pop up?

[Sobx.1758]

1 hour ago, Omega.6801 said:

Not all players know where to find their CC skills or have them equipped. By handing them SAK-CC skills ANet can design encounters with CC bars while kinda guaranteeing that there theoretically is enough CC. I know  "If they have to hand it to the players only so that they can design the encounter in a way that accounts for what is handed to the players, why design it that way at all?". Good question. But the alternative would be to teach players about CC skills and the game for sure won't do that. So we're stuck with SAK skills and players who after hundreds of hours still don't know what their skills do because the game doesn't tell them. It's just a thing now. Because it's the easier way.

Bold of you to assume people who refuse to read their abilities will care about using SAK cc when needed. 😄 

I agree with OP, slapping that SAK "whenever needed" reduces the value of having builds that aren't simply made around "slotting anything with highest dps". But it's still better than allowing limited number of people -basically excluding new players- have substantial benefit over others. Sadly, I consider current "SAK cc" as the form of lesser evil in the game where waystation EMP already exists.

[Cuks.8241]

6 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Sadly, I consider current "SAK cc" as the form of lesser evil in the game where waystation EMP already exists.

Sadly I agree. Better an encounter specific design than emp.

But I agree its not the best design, diminishes builds. And when we came to a point that game needs to teach players? If a player is unable to grasp such simple mechanic he should not be able to beat the game.

[Batalix.2873]

4 hours ago, Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:

Necro has an abundance of fear, chill. And it doesnt matter that war has 38 cc skills. You are never going to have more than like 5 on your build.

I was about to make this counterpoint but I actually don't agree. The more cc that exists in the entire skillset, the more likely that any subset of those skills will have more CC.

And you do see less than 5 CC abilities equipped on some especs, depending on the build.

I do still concur with OP's main point. A LOT of important mechanics and features of the game have become trivialized due to the introduction of too many equivalencies. Jade protocols, second skyscale mastery, the continuous bleedover of espec functionality and niches in these "balance" patches.

IBS was clearly the start of this, where the devs were obviously struggling to come up with new horizontal progression paths that meaningfully impacted the rest of the game. Instead, what we got were four parasitic mastery paths that only interact with IBS content (the norn spirits), one that is kind of okay, if only for crafting ascended weapons (Dragon Slayer), and one that just haphazardly tacked on abilities to other masteries (United Legions). The norn spirits are especially disappointing, I don't know why we got this color-coded rock-paper-scissors nonsense, nor why Raven's skills couldn't have been made a little broader so as to be useful elsewhere in the world. IBS was disappointingly unfinished and unpolished.

Thing is, I still think the United Legions track was in theory a good idea, it just should have been developed *in tandem* with *new* mechanics instead of appropriating old mechanics, particularly the CC EMP skill. In my opinion, IBS, being the "industrial era" expac, should have introduced a separate CC bar for mechanical enemies that only EMP and certain other tools/kits could break. This could have been carried forward into EoD which also featured a lot of tech enemies, and would have fixed some of the balancing issues EoD presented with high CC bars and the proliferation of jade protocol stations.

This doesn't just extend to the EMP skill though. I think there was a missed opportunity to include Fire Legion and Blood Legion skills (maybe one could replace remote charges which no one uses), for a fully rounded United Legions track that doesn't feel so haphazardly cobbled together. I also think that squandering the concept of stealth mounts in a single mastery tier destroyed the potential for a new mount focused on stealth.

[Astralporing.1957]

7 hours ago, Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:

Its awful design that has been appearing more and more since Icebrood. It devalues your actual build in favor of "give everyone a 1 button win skill". There is 0 reason for it. Every class has more than enough cc through weapon skills, utility, class skills, traits.

In a way i agree, but for the exact opposite reason. Giving players an overall useful cc ability looks quite fine to me. What isn't fine is that Anet started to balance some cc bars around those SAK skills.. in addition to normal cc complement you're supposed to carry. CC bars are now bigger than before, and that is not good.

[Zebulous.2934]

Wasn't that EoD final Metta the one where players needed to know how to play actual builds?  From what I read most of the map needed to have specific roles, and be able to interact with combat mechanics.  Even without the initial bugs, the Metta was constantly failing because casual pve players just didn't have the skills nessassary.  Didn't Anet nerf that Metta repeatedly because the casual pve players just weren't capable enough?

The raid folks insisted it wasn't that bad, that the casuals just needed to learn how to use combat mechanics.  Folks really didn't like that suggestion.

[AliamRationem.5172]

1 hour ago, Zebulous.2934 said:

Wasn't that EoD final Metta the one where players needed to know how to play actual builds?  From what I read most of the map needed to have specific roles, and be able to interact with combat mechanics.  Even without the initial bugs, the Metta was constantly failing because casual pve players just didn't have the skills nessassary.  Didn't Anet nerf that Metta repeatedly because the casual pve players just weren't capable enough?

The raid folks insisted it wasn't that bad, that the casuals just needed to learn how to use combat mechanics.  Folks really didn't like that suggestion.

I don't recall them nerfing it repeatedly.   I think all they did was reduce the frequency of the tail attack so that Soo-Won isn't invulnerable as often and remove the requirement to complete the event for the seige turtle.  And in time players did learn the mechanics.

 

[DanAlcedo.3281]

You underestimate just how bad the majority of players is. 

They need the free cc. 

[Danikat.8537]

Why is it a problem? If you don't want to use the special skills and you're a good enough player that you know you've got something equally effective on your bar already why not use that?

Technically the entire game comes down to Anet giving you skills to use and then ensuring all encounters can be beaten with those skills, special action skills just allow them to be more specific. It's the same as other games making sure the type of weapon you'll need is in the room in case you don't have it with you.

The alternative is the approach GW1 had where you go in, fail but find out what you need then change your builds and try again (or more likely these days let someone else do that and look up a walkthrough before your first attempt) but that doesn't really work when the event is on a 2 hour timer and needs 50 people or whatever.

[Astralporing.1957]

7 hours ago, AliamRationem.5172 said:

I don't recall them nerfing it repeatedly.   I think all they did was reduce the frequency of the tail attack so that Soo-Won isn't invulnerable as often and remove the requirement to complete the event for the seige turtle.  And in time players did learn the mechanics.

 

They nerfed (wait, "bug fixed") it at least 3 times, every time reducing the mechanic spam and randomness of it. And most of the players did not learn the mechanics. Most of the players that kept failing just stopped trying to do that event, which indirectly increased the average skill of those remaining.

[Luthan.5236]

I just never really bothered to make a good keybinding setup (would want to get a gaming mouse maybe and map it there) - for the keyboard. And for regular use of that skill. Sure in the Celestial Challenge it can be annoying when you aim to compete - and be better as others. But that is seasonal (event) only. For other parts it is okay to press a harder to reach key and still not motivating me to think more thoroughly about my keybindings.

The CC from waystation can even be clicked - it is not spammed constantly. Has a cd and intended to be saved until a boss break bar is ready. The bundly stuff where you have to swap between weapon and special action key can be more annoying. Though in the new part of Nayos the spy event ... automatically seems to equip back your weapon already. After revealing a spy. (Which I actually dislike a bit. When soloing better to run around uncover 2-3 first. Then go back to fighting them.)

[Sobx.1758]

16 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

In a way i agree, but for the exact opposite reason. Giving players an overall useful cc ability looks quite fine to me. What isn't fine is that Anet started to balance some cc bars around those SAK skills.. in addition to normal cc complement you're supposed to carry. CC bars are now bigger than before, and that is not good.

If true then that actually is good, considering that's the element leveling out the playing field ("everyone has EMP now, not just the veteran players") while still leaving the space for meaningful skills being slotted into your build outside of "just picking the highest dps stuff".

If breakbars are balanced around SAK everyone gets+cc skill now (which I'm not sure about), OP's complaint is basically solved because it's no longer "one button CC wonder", isn't it?

Edited February 29 by Sobx.1758