A criticism of the current meta-game and my thoughts on the biggest issue that I want addressed

[Philalive.8654]

Hello!

I’d like to talk about the WvW meta and some balancing issues that I have with the game currently. I'm not the biggest expert on this game or in WvW, there are much more knowledgeable players than me around but none that'll waste their time writing a forum post (or even remember that the forums exist probably). But I do have some experience, I've been around Guild Wars 2 from release in 2012 and for the last couple of years been pretty deep into WvW. I've done a decent amount of blobbing in both open-field stuff as well as organized BvB in EotM. I've dabbled in GvG during the 20s hype last year among other things. Anyway,

The meta is 5-man sub-groups, generally you have a “Primary-” and a “Secondary-” support in every sub-group, they’ve been locked in for a long time. Most of the meta shifts have changed what we fill the rest of the 3 slots with.

The primary support (also known as “Firebrand”, xd) is in charge of keeping stability up on your sub-group as well as providing other boons like protection, swiftness, and so on.

The secondary support is the group's healer, they’re also responsible for the majority of the cleansing as well as some less important boons.

I think this is a strong base to build on, I don’t think there are any inherent issues with this and it’s almost as old as MMORPGs are themselves (Holy Trinity anyone?).

Recently however the meta has shifted towards squads running way more supports, not just having 2 per sub-group, but at least 3 and most of the time 4 supports per sub-group. There’s obviously nuance here but these days it looks something like this:

1 - Support Firebrand as primary support (Stability, boons, various utility).

2 - Heal Vindicator as secondary support (Excellent Healing, decent cleansing, good resistance).

3 - Support Scourge as tertiary support (Transfuse, Barrier, boons, strips).

4 - Support Renegade as quaternary support (ALACRITY, Stability, Damage reduction, utility). Commonly swapped out for Support Chronomancer in a few groups (ALACRITY, lots of utility and boons).

5 - DPS Holosmith (Damage). Potentially a Berserker instead for Banner-stomps.

Honorary shout-outs to Celestial Firebrand, Support Scrapper, Support Druid, DPS Dragonhunter, DPS Tempest/Catalyst/Weaver.

Now obviously there are discussions to be had about classes, specs and builds within roles that should also be had but I’m trying to focus more on the overarching ideas here.

I feel like a lot of the changes recently on their own make sense in context and have, for the most part, good justifications (sometimes you are for sure just rolling a dice though, right?). A prevalent theme has been to buff underperformers and be cautious with nerfs (which I disagree with but isn’t necessarily the problem with current balance in WvW and another discussion to be had).

However, when we look at the result of these many changes over time it’s played out pretty poorly. We’ve ended up in a very static boonball meta.

These days as a DPS player I basically expect my party to provide me with the same boon coverage that I expect from a competent PvE raid group. We have extremely good alacrity uptime from Renegades, resistance is basically permanent from just the heal Vindicator - but just in case the Renegade can also do permanent resistance, the Firebrand does a ton of resistance and Chronomancer can do some, stability is expected to permanently be applied by the Firebrand but when that fails you have redundancy on the heal Vindi and the Renegade that is spamming road on cooldown and the Chronomancer with F4, mantra, well, etc.

We’ve had so many small buffs here and there for most of the support builds but we rarely have any nerfs, so obviously boon coverage is going to trend upwards. However, the real issue is when you, on top of these very boon-favoured support buffs, also keep nerfing basically every boon-strip and corrupt in the game.

Here are some recent-ish examples (I’ve missed a lot I’m sure):

Banish Enchantment:

1 - Increased energy cost from 20 to 30 in WvW only.

2 - This skill now has a 5-second cooldown in WvW only.

Null Field:

1 - Increased cooldown from 25 seconds to 35 seconds in WvW only.

2 - Reduced range from 1,200 to 900.

3 - Increased the cooldown from 35 seconds to 45 seconds in WvW only.

4 - Reduced the field duration from 5 seconds to 2 seconds in WvW only. Reduced the number of pulses from 6 to 3 in WvW only.

Well of Corruption:

1 - Increased cooldown from 32 seconds to 40 seconds in WvW only.

2 - Reduced power coefficient per strike from 0.45 to 0.35 in WvW only.

3 - Reduced power coefficient per hit from 0.35 to 0.28 in WvW only.

Unholy Feast:

1 - Increased power coefficient from 0.88 to 1.0. Increased bonus damage health threshold from 25% to 50%. Reduced number of boons corrupted from 2 to 1.

2 - Reduced power coefficient from 1.3 to 1.0 in WvW only.

3 - This skill now removes boons instead of converting them into conditions.

Spiteful Spirit:

1 - Reduced power coefficient from 0.4 to 0.1. Reduced number of boons corrupted from 2 to 1. Reduced additional boons corrupted against foes under 50% health from 2 to 1.

2 - This trait now removes boons instead of converting them into conditions.

Devouring Darkness:

1 - Reduced the number of boons corrupted from 2 to 1 in WvW only.

2 - Increased cooldown from 10 seconds to 18 seconds in WvW only.

Enfeebling Blood:

1 - This skill no longer converts boons into conditions.

Lesser Enfeeble:

1 - This skill no longer converts boons into conditions.

Signet of the Locust:

1 - Reduced the number of boons removed from 2 to 1 in WvW only.

Break Enchantments

1 - Reduced the numbers of boons removed from 4 to 2 in WvW only.

1 - Reduced the number of boons removed from 2 to 1 in WvW only.

Winds of Disenchantment

1 - Reduced target cap from 10 to 5.

2 - Reduced incoming boon duration reduction from 100% to 33% in WvW only.

3 - Lowered the duration from 5 seconds to 4 seconds in WvW only.

kitten, we’ve basically taken every boon strip in the game out back and absolutely murdered them.

These massive and continuous nerfs to boon corruption and boon strip taken along with all the massive buffs to boon application (along with some realisation in the player base that boons/support are OP) have made the meta into squads with 4 supports per 1 DPS player where movement is detrimental, you’re just better off standing still, transfusing all your downs, proccing all your resurrect traits in the same place and bunkering down while letting your players do a golem rotation and praying the enemy cracks first.

It feels like moving your blob these days probably just kites you out of more beneficial AoEs than it does detrimental AoEs. There’s always been an issue that the more movement you do as a commander the more stragglers you’ll end up with, every movement risks having people off the safety of the stack dying. Inherently this makes the game bias less movement so we need skills to counter this. Unless you like standing still and doing a golem rotation but we have that already, at the golem, so let’s keep it there.

The game has shifted so strongly towards a static numbers and rotation game where it’s about you and your friends standing still and pressing buttons off cooldown (there’s some nuance, but less than there used to be) whilst praying that you win. It feels like we’re more reliant on squad composition; like finding 40 people that want to support 10 DPS, then the whole squad is relying on those 10 DPS to be competent.

A lot of the impact you could have as an individual player has been diminished. It’s shifted towards you “not screwing up” at your job instead of being able to shine with good gameplay. Newer players are heavily discouraged from playing DPS (in my experience the most popular role) since the whole squad is relying on just 10 people in a full 50 stack to do all offensive pressure on their own, if you’re not great at the game yet you have 4 people being upset because they feel like they’re 4 support players supporting someone who’s not performing their job. This used to be fine, you could get away with it much, much easier previously, which in my opinion was much healthier for everyone involved.

Fights often just break down to: shuffle slightly to the right, stand still and do a golem rotation for a few seconds, shuffle a bit again and wow we did it, they cracked. They didn’t die on a well coordinated burst (like a Well call), just cracked after x amount of time when one group started missing Illusions or lost a rally war. It feels bad when fights are just the two groups standing on top of each other pressing buttons and if either starts moving they’ll die instantly.

With Alliances actually releasing soon (I almost can’t believe it) it’s super sad that pretty much every single guildie, friend, associate, neighbour’s cat, random team chat player and even the rats all agree that the meta right now is terrible.

One of the biggest problems since the great butchering of Necromancer on July 27th has been the removal of the offensive strip/corrupt archetype (Power Reaper, Power Scourge). Virtuoso and Spellbreaker could also fill this role but never could quite live up to Necromancer's dominance in the space.

This was actually a very healthy part of the group composition meta-game, the only real issue was that it was too dominated by a single class: Necromancer. They’ve basically been replaced completely by boon stripping supports instead, which are, I think, very quite unhealthy since it very heavily promotes triple+ support sub-groups.

The choice for your boon stripping shouldn’t be between a Power Scourge that basically does strips and nothing else and a Support Scourge with transfuse and Barrier on top of the strips.

Blobs need to be less tanky and not as bunker-y as they are right now. Bringing back and promoting the offensive boon strip archetype will instead move the game back to a more reasonable state where we’re not just invincible boonballs and literally 80% of the squad is on Minstrel or Celestial.

For example I especially think it’s good if fields (wells, null field, etc) are fairly long in duration. It doesn’t really affect smaller scale stuff since they’re naturally way more mobile and will just move out of it. It only really punishes overly static and slow gameplay. Having long durations on things like Null Field, Wells, and other stuff is what used to make it so dangerous to just stand still for too long. It also promotes good strategy like cornering a group and, most importantly, discourages mindless boonballblob stacking.

Playing a boon class right now doesn’t even feel good now while they’re supposed to be all the rage, I look at my party window playing support Chronomancer and think, yup 30s resistance, yup 30s alacrity, 25 might, check that, 30s fury, 60s swiftness, 30s protection, 11 stacks of stability with 12 seconds left, 30s vigor and you think, wow, I’m really making an impact right now. Except you haven’t pressed a button yet and those boons are actually from the other 3 supports in your sub-group.

So for something more concrete instead of just a rant, here goes something.

Necromancer is the only class I haven’t played much so I’ll leave the specifics to someone more knowledgeable on the class but I feel like we need to buff the offensive traits and abilities on Necromancer, more damage, more boon strips/corrupts. Tying some extra boon corruption/boon strip to offensive traits that compete with powerful support abilities is a good start. I’d love for wells to be dangerous and impactful again but I also don’t want to just have Barrier Scourge be stronger and call it a day (although even that would be an improvement atm).

Virtuoso has a lot of potential to be an alternative to Necromancer, they’re already quite solid in terms of boon stripping. While I agree that Null Field is already a pretty loaded skill (since it cleanses as well), and I agree buffing that probably just makes Chronomancer better and not much else, I don’t think nerfing it and not providing any alternatives makes the game better. Boon strips are rare to come by so we need more alternatives and bigger commitment than just a single utility skill.

Thankfully, we already have great contenders on Virtuoso for buffs! Things like: Rain of Swords, Sword of Decimation and Thousand Cuts. They’re basically not used anywhere in the game right now (Thousand cuts on cVirt in PvE I guess) buffing them won’t mess with roaming content in any way since that type of skill is just too easy to dodge/move out of which makes them a good candidate in my eyes.

You could move Virtuoso towards more of a damage focused specialisation and actually make them worth using for the damage. This also has the added benefit of probably not touching Virtuoso’s power in GvGs as much as adding some boon strip to Sword of Decimation would for example.

I also feel like this would be healthy for Virtuoso in general, since mesmer already has very powerful utilities already, I feel it’s important to make them an actual trade-off instead of concentrating all the power to F1, F2 and traits. Having a DPS build being able to slot some utility for the squad is good, but it shouldn’t be free.

The 3rd obvious example here is Spellbreaker, it’s always been much stronger in smaller scale content compared to large scale content (not counting bubble shenanigans). My personal take on why this is the case is because the Warrior’s core weapons suffer badly from 2012-syndrome, none of them were designed for the type of combat and context that we have today in WvW. (Feels like most things that end up as good DPS in WvW are kind of by accident more than deliberate design).

Berserker works and feels much better in this context because most of your power and half your time is spent pressing F1.

I feel like a lot of why Spellbreaker struggles so much in large scale battles can be summarised quite well with looking at the Greatsword abilities:

1 - Standard auto-attack.

2 - Stationary skill with no range that only makes sense if your design perspective is from 2011.

3 - Actually good skill because it's movement with evade-frames but not very impactful as an offensive tool in this context.

4 - I… uh… Yeah just don’t press 4.

5 - I… uh… Yeah just don’t press 5. This is a rare example of making something that usually feels great to have (a movement skill) actually terrible and clunky to use.

Compare this to Vindicator Greatsword (that is well designed and feels great to use):

1 - Standard Auto, decent.

2 - Excellent AoE Damage with extra range, very usable

3 - Good dash, super responsive, very good AoE damage with some range.

4 - On-demand block, super useful. The follow-up doesn’t feel great though.

5 - Extremely good AoE damage with auto-aim to concentrate damage without you trying.

The rest of the weapons are good in their own context but have no place on an offensive Spellbreaker build in a blob. Longbow is a great example of a weapon completely carried by Zerker F1 that’s largely useless without it. But I’ll give Hammer some slack and say that it’s actually decent, getting CCd in the F1 leap is suffering incarnate though.

Anyway, I could talk for days about things I think should be looked at / changed but I’ll end it here and keep it at boon strips since I feel like that’s the most important change I’d like to see in the near future.

Let me know if I’m crazy or if you have better ideas, I’m all ears and hopefully the balance team will keep it in mind.

Edited May 26 by Philalive.8654
formatting

[roederich.2716]

black color text is inconvenient for peeps using dark mode on the forum.

[Dawdler.8521]

Yeah we can’t read a word of it.

[ZenDrake.8316]

Don't format your text with color. Black on dark background is kinda hard to read.

[Philalive.8654]

I wrote it in google docs (like a normal person) and copy-pasted it in here. Should be fixed now

[Codename T.2847]

Idk what you guys are on, I'm in white-mode, and it's perfectly legible, as you should be. (Except on discord) 

Edited May 26 by Codename T.2847

[ArchonWing.9480]

I would like to warn everyone that unlike 90% of forum posts, this OP actually knows what they're talking about. Take some time to read before typing

[Silinsar.6298]

You should've seen the old (one could call it historic by now) GvG / open field meta. 1 Support (mostly Guard), 1 "Worker" (melee bruiser with CC, often hammer War), 1 Boon Strip DPS (Nec), 1 DPS / water field provider (usually Staff Ele), 1 flexible / utility slot (something with smoke field, Mes for veils / portal or just whatever was needed most in the situation). And especially in GvGs a small, mostly self-reliant focus group to snipe / burst backliners and support dives with damage when needed, a role often done by medium armor classes. Really was a lot of fun managing and coordinating all those different aspects / capabilities of a squad.

[Philalive.8654]

4 minutes ago, Silinsar.6298 said:

You should've seen the old (one could call it historic by now) GvG / open field meta. 1 Support (mostly Guard), 1 "Worker" (melee bruiser with CC, often hammer War), 1 Boon Strip DPS (Nec), 1 DPS / water field provider (usually Staff Ele), 1 flexible / utility slot (something with smoke field, Mes for veils / portal or just whatever was needed most in the situation). And especially in GvGs a small, mostly self-reliant focus group to snipe / burst backliners and support dives with damage when needed, a role often done by medium armor classes. Really was a lot of fun managing and coordinating all those different aspects / capabilities of a squad.

I agree! I did dabble back in 2012-2013 or so and I remember the "BIG WATER" calls among other things.

It felt like you had so much more control and impact as an individual player back then. Although I was quite young and naive at the time so I might be romanticizing

[XenesisII.1540]

You're just repeating what we've been saying for years, nerfing just boon strips is bad for balance. Feels like they've been trying to baby proof the entirety of wvw for groups, make it so even the idiots can function with all the auto spamming or removing all the harmful counters.

With the increased boon spamming, nerfs to aoes damage and strips, they've made a situation where even a pure healer can still do damage, so you don't necessarily need to carry just two support per group. You could get away with 3-4 support 1 dps per group, and you super sustain your way through many situations. Now you get groups just standing next to each other absorbing damage until someone gets hit with enough lag to accidently die, wonderful combat system this has turned into.

There is one problem with this game introducing pure support specs like other games that run trinity classes, they allowed them to do damage on top of of their support roles, but in other trinity games like wow, if you run a support class it's basically low to no damage because you are there to heal not also do damage. But guess what happens when you can run 25 stacks of might and near 100% uptime on quickness and alacrity and fury, and all the nerfs to boon strips means less chances of those falling off in combat... so why wouldn't players use 4 support 1dps combinations. 🤷‍♂️

Anet has done a terrible job of spreading out boons but also controlling their distribution, particularly the important ones, just look at the more recent mishap of them trying to stick quickness on multiple support classes, only to rip them back off in wvw less than a year later. And why after 12 years is guard still the only main stability provider for every single group. They've turned their class system into the trinity one without actually bothering to balance for the trinity, it's all messed up hybrids spamming support.

Things that need to happen, any or all of it... Balance team/philosophy needs to change. Support damage needs to be nerfed. Boon spam need to be nerfed. Boon durations need to be nerfed. Revive skills need to be nerfed. Group F revive needs to be nerfed. If they are going to continue nerfing boon strips, then they might as well just get it over with, and convert those skills into boon spam skills.

[Philalive.8654]

1 minute ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

You're just repeating what we've been saying for years, nerfing just boon strips is bad for balance. Feels like they've been trying to baby proof the entirety of wvw for groups, make it so even the idiots can function with all the auto spamming or removing all the harmful counters.

With the increased boon spamming, nerfs to aoes damage and strips, they've made a situation where even a pure healer can still do damage, so you don't necessarily need to carry just two support per group. You could get away with 3-4 support 1 dps per group, and you super sustain your way through many situations. Now you get groups just standing next to each other absorbing damage until someone gets hit with enough lag to accidently die, wonderful combat system this has turned into.

There is one problem with this game introducing pure support specs like other games that run trinity classes, they allowed them to do damage on top of of their support roles, but in other trinity games like wow, if you run a support class it's basically low to no damage because you are there to heal not also do damage. But guess what happens when you can run 25 stacks of might and near 100% uptime on quickness and alacrity and fury, and all the nerfs to boon strips means less chances of those falling off in combat... so why wouldn't players use 4 support 1dps combinations. 🤷‍♂️

Anet has done a terrible job of spreading out boons but also controlling their distribution, particularly the important ones, just look at the more recent mishap of them trying to stick quickness on multiple support classes, only to rip them back off in wvw less than a year later. And why after 12 years is guard still the only main stability provider for every single group. They've turned their class system into the trinity one without actually bothering to balance for the trinity, it's all messed up hybrids spamming support.

Things that need to happen, any or all of it... Balance team/philosophy needs to change. Support damage needs to be nerfed. Boon spam need to be nerfed. Boon durations need to be nerfed. Revive skills need to be nerfed. Group F revive needs to be nerfed. If they are going to continue nerfing boon strips, then they might as well just get it over with, and convert those skills into boon spam skills.

 

Haha, I really like what you wrote here actually. Trust me I can vibe with the frustration on another day I've said the same and worse!

And yeah, what I've said here is basically (in my highly bias view) the general consensus from a lot of the more sweat .. I mean dedicated WvW players, not a revolutionary idea.

Although, I do also believe that many of the people that understand and think the same are mostly (as I've been) complaining a lot and giving way more convincing arguments for why changes are good and/or bad... in discords, where the balance team probably never read it. At least I'm hopeful that it's been a lack of communication. I think the popular thought amongst most of my circles is: "The Official Guild Wars 2 Forums? That still exists?".

I would also make the argument that the changes have not made the game better or more fun for casual, new or "bad" players. I think the overall direction we've headed in for the last year has been a lot of good intentions leading us down a, close to objectively worse road. It's not all bad though, we had the first alternative to Firebrand since, well, Firebrand for about 2 weeks just now! Crazy! /s

I think there's a long road ahead and lots of things that need to be changed/adjusted. This is just the tip of the iceberg, but I think it's the most glaring, obvious issue and a good start to take a look at.

I think most of the devs want to see the game be good at least as much as we do so I'm trying to remain hopeful!

[Sviel.7493]

As a non-zerg player, this was enlightening and horrifying.  I didn't realize it had gotten this bad.

[XenesisII.1540]

42 minutes ago, Philalive.8654 said:

Although, I do also believe that many of the people that understand and think the same are mostly (as I've been) complaining a lot and giving way more convincing arguments for why changes are good and/or bad... in discords, where the balance team probably never read it. At least I'm hopeful that it's been a lack of communication. I think the popular thought amongst most of my circles is: "The Official Guild Wars 2 Forums? That still exists?".

The discord echo chamber, which I'm sure most of those people are making an argument to make their own class/situations better(and we have the proof of this from last 3 years of balance patches for boon balls) biased players with biased devs, so not actually trying to make the game better for "everyone" in wvw. They don't care about proper balance, only the balance that suits them.

I'll tell you the road they've led us down to, ESO, the meta and lag are starting to match, and that's not good for wvw.

[Infusion.7149]

Did you write a wall of text to say that Arenanet keeps nerfing boon removal and damage? If so then you are pretty much spot on.

They are putting group protection on every tempest overload in the patch preview... so obviously they have not learned yet.

The real reason why stacking supports is a thing is due to the 2020 PvE damage split (protection and regen were not changed even if heals were) which was probably the worst thing for WvW since the numbers were not tuned... a good example is CoR (Coalescence of Ruin) which used to be 1.5 coefficient which is 0.91 now. With the scrapper meta people were rolling around with superspeed and stealth as well. Your assessment of spellbreaker is missing the fact that the 2020 patch removed all damage from CCs.

Celestial stats gaining concentration without a reduction in total stats in recent memory (2021) is also a part of the problem. If the goal was to make PvE DPS supports better then toughness could have been removed completely on it especially since some raids are toughness aggro.

If you recall 2012-2013 era people were blasting water fields to heal plus downed control (and random rallying) was not much of a problem due to damage output and low amounts of protection rolling around. Well of corruption was the largest piece of boon removal (along with null field but people rarely used mesmers in bulk). The way rallying works makes it so that multiple supports "wins" due to attrition and ressing over any less organized group.

Edited May 27 by Infusion.7149

[ArchonWing.9480]

2 hours ago, Sviel.7493 said:

As a non-zerg player, this was enlightening and horrifying.  I didn't realize it had gotten this bad.

Oh yea, it's important to know this stuff because it is necessary to understand that most players are being gatekept from squads if they don't play a support, because there are so little dps slots in a proper composition.

So when people are like jUST uSE  tEAMWORK , you will have a proper retort more than you just don't like zergs; that the game has degenerated to a certain level of where even said teamwork has broken down.

In addition you will also learn what better synergizes with large groups your team has, regardless of specific comps or not, namely by offering 1-4 in the list regardless of your build.

Regardless I think the game should not be balanced around people in minstrekl/celestial being too afraid to die even when surrounded by even more minstrel supports.

Edited May 27 by ArchonWing.9480

[Arete.7019]

All the recent nerfs to boonrips have been to the support builds you're complaining about. The rev and mesmer boonrip nerfs didn't do anything to any viable DPS zerg builds, they only hurt support. Half the necro nerfs you listed were added the same patch support scourge was buffed and all of them were to things support scourge not only had full access to, but still uses right now. DPS spellbreaker has never been used in large groups and was still the best DPS in the game for GvG sizes until recently when virt and condi builds stole its spot by being even more busted.

The four support meta you're talking about is already 2 metas behind. Groups swapped to Dagger/Axe + GS Berserker with Power Reaper after the last patch that nerfed null field (because chrono was utterly broken as a support). Then they swapped again to cele condi comps that stack literally every one of those nerfed boonrip classes except mesmer (which is only unplayed b/c cele FB is even better as a stab source when combined with renegade).

The only actual solution to this problem is nerfing power multipliers like boon application, not buffing strips. Until that happens the only result you can get from buffing strip DPS is replacing DPS that don't strip. You're not going to run more DPS when 1 DPS with 4 supports or hybrids is enough to kill enemy groups.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

I want my bubble back. 

Signed: A sad Spellbreaker. 

[Philalive.8654]

3 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Did you write a wall of text to say that Arenanet keeps nerfing boon removal and damage? If so then you are pretty much spot on.

They are putting group protection on every tempest overload in the patch preview... so obviously they have not learned yet.

The real reason why stacking supports is a thing is due to the 2020 PvE damage split (protection and regen were not changed even if heals were) which was probably the worst thing for WvW since the numbers were not tuned... a good example is CoR (Coalescence of Ruin) which used to be 1.5 coefficient which is 0.91 now. With the scrapper meta people were rolling around with superspeed and stealth as well. Your assessment of spellbreaker is missing the fact that the 2020 patch removed all damage from CCs.

Celestial stats gaining concentration without a reduction in total stats in recent memory (2021) is also a part of the problem. If the goal was to make PvE DPS supports better then toughness could have been removed completely on it especially since some raids are toughness aggro.

If you recall 2012-2013 era people were blasting water fields to heal plus downed control (and random rallying) was not much of a problem due to damage output and low amounts of protection rolling around. Well of corruption was the largest piece of boon removal (along with null field but people rarely used mesmers in bulk). The way rallying works makes it so that multiple supports "wins" due to attrition and ressing over any less organized group.

Pretty much just a long post saying they've overnerfed boon stripping, yeah! = )

I think damage balance is another discussion that should be had I just didn't want to dive into this as it got very long already and I felt the boon meta the lack of strips (along other things) caused, this was the more egregious.

"Your assessment of spellbreaker is missing the fact that the 2020 patch removed all damage from CCs."

My assessment of Spellbreaker is missing a lot of stuff, I just threw it in there as a possible class to look at for potential as an offensive boon strip build. There are many more problems with Spellbreaker specifically and I could talk for a long time about that but didn't want to get bogged down.

 

To touch on your last point, while I do agree up to a point, I'd say that, around a year ago we had a meta where it was more common (and pretty much the norm) to see 2 supports and sometimes a tertiary - like a Chronomancer for example, one Necromancer and a couple DPS. It's not an inherent flaw in design that can't be fixed with balance, in my opinion at least.

[Philalive.8654]

2 hours ago, Arete.7019 said:

All the recent nerfs to boonrips have been to the support builds you're complaining about. The rev and mesmer boonrip nerfs didn't do anything to any viable DPS zerg builds, they only hurt support. Half the necro nerfs you listed were added the same patch support scourge was buffed and all of them were to things support scourge not only had full access to, but still uses right now. DPS spellbreaker has never been used in large groups and was still the best DPS in the game for GvG sizes until recently when virt and condi builds stole its spot by being even more busted.

The four support meta you're talking about is already 2 metas behind. Groups swapped to Dagger/Axe + GS Berserker with Power Reaper after the last patch that nerfed null field (because chrono was utterly broken as a support). Then they swapped again to cele condi comps that stack literally every one of those nerfed boonrip classes except mesmer (which is only unplayed b/c cele FB is even better as a stab source when combined with renegade).

The only actual solution to this problem is nerfing power multipliers like boon application, not buffing strips. Until that happens the only result you can get from buffing strip DPS is replacing DPS that don't strip. You're not going to run more DPS when 1 DPS with 4 supports or hybrids is enough to kill enemy groups.

I feel like we've gotten lost somewhere in translation here.

 

"All the recent nerfs to boonrips have been to the support builds you're complaining about."

 

Yes you can clearly see that in my original post I very specifically say

"I’d love for wells to be dangerous and impactful again but I also don’t want to just have Barrier Scourge be stronger and call it a day",

"While I agree that Null Field is already a pretty loaded skill (since it cleanses as well), and I agree buffing that probably just makes Chronomancer better and not much else, I don’t think nerfing it and not providing any alternatives makes the game better."

and earlier on I explain that

"This [offensive boon strip builds] was actually a very healthy part of the group composition meta-game, the only real issue was that it was too dominated by a single class: Necromancer. They’ve basically been replaced completely by boon stripping supports instead, which are, I think, very quite unhealthy since it very heavily promotes triple+ support sub-groups. "

 

Like I said in my post and the argument I made: We should discourage boon support builds with boon stripping, and lean more towards offensive boon stripping builds as I believe that (and I think most would agree) the meta was at a healthier state when we had Power Scourge and Power Reaper and the 3rd slot in every party instead of Support Scourge.

 

"DPS spellbreaker has never been used in large groups and was still the best DPS in the game for GvG sizes until recently when virt and condi builds stole its spot by being even more busted."

I was very clear that I'm referring to Blob vs Blob. Not GvG or smaller scale stuff. I agree that Spellbreaker has been very strong in small-scale content, like I said in the original post: "... Spellbreaker, it’s always been much stronger in smaller scale content compared to large scale content"

And then I go on to explain that I think they should look at part of the Spellbreaker kit that wouldn't affect small-scale content as much and focus more on usability in large-scale content.

 

"The four support meta you're talking about is already 2 metas behind. Groups swapped to Dagger/Axe + GS Berserker with Power Reaper after the last patch that nerfed null field (because chrono was utterly broken as a support). Then they swapped again to cele condi comps that stack literally every one of those nerfed boonrip classes except mesmer (which is only unplayed b/c cele FB is even better as a stab source when combined with renegade)."

I would agree with you if we're talking about GvG, as in 15s, 20s, 25s. But like I detailed earlier and in my original post, I'm talking about Blob v Blob here. There is also the possibility that we have different views because we're on different servers? My perspective in from the EU servers and it may or may not be different in NA, I've no clue how things are over there. If you're also from EU however I'd love to hear where you've been playing in Blobs where you've seen Dagger/Axe zerkers and Power Reapers. And Condition Celestial groups without mesmers?

I know Celestial Firebrand is a big thing, as is Celestial Renegade (also mentioned both in my original post) but the majority of damage is still from the Holosmiths (and zerkers to a lesser degree).

 

"The only actual solution to this problem is nerfing power multipliers like boon application, not buffing strips. Until that happens the only result you can get from buffing strip DPS is replacing DPS that don't strip."

Here I think I might just be stupid and get confused, so just to clarify for me: nerfing "power multipliers" my brain thinks Power Coefficients but you say power multipliers like boon application, so you mean power multipliers as in boons themselves or power multipliers as in boon duration multipliers? I honestly can't tell exactly what you're referring to here, I assume you want Boon application to be nerfed? If so, I agree. Boons shouldn't be as plentiful as they are right now, I just decided to focus on boon strips for now as I think that's the more pressing issue.

If Barrier Scourge got nerfed and couldn't strip anymore and you buffed offensive boon stripping builds I feel like that slot in the sub-group would be replaced long before you remove the Holosmith (which is the only thing that can kill kitten these days). But I could be wrong, hard to say exactly and there are a lot of factors at play.

 

"You're not going to run more DPS when 1 DPS with 4 supports or hybrids is enough to kill enemy groups."

The argument I'm making is that you wouldn't really be able to kill groups with just 1 DPS and 4 supports if those 4 supports didn't provide any boon strips. And if we buff, let's say Reaper boon stripping, I'd love to hear the justification that Reapers will be able to chop through Minstrel and Celestial builds like a Holosmith can.

 

Hopefully I don't come across as too combative, I do appreciate the contrasting views and I hope we can encourage discussion on the topic.

[Zepoolpe.9217]

7 hours ago, Philalive.8654 said:

I agree! I did dabble back in 2012-2013 or so and I remember the "BIG WATER" calls among other things.

It felt like you had so much more control and impact as an individual player back then. Although I was quite young and naive at the time so I might be romanticizing

The original idea of combos was awesome, and apart from only a few boons (stab, might) that were share by only a few classes (mostly guardian), a group's best way of getting boons, heals or other cleanses was to blast water/light/fire fields and if you did not had a (voice) coordinated group you had a clear disadvantage.
Now everybody can pump up all boons, auras, and group heals or cleanses are so common that you do not need to blast fields anymore and it does not takes much brain power to play. And this tranformation is continuing patch after patch with the recent changes to sieges and defense.
What used to be a game mode that required skill and strategy has been turned into a brainless EotM-like ktrains
GG anet on ruining a good game.

[Dawdler.8521]

48 minutes ago, Zepoolpe.9217 said:

The original idea of combos was awesome, and apart from only a few boons (stab, might) that were share by only a few classes (mostly guardian), a group's best way of getting boons, heals or other cleanses was to blast water/light/fire fields and if you did not had a (voice) coordinated group you had a clear disadvantage.
Now everybody can pump up all boons, auras, and group heals or cleanses are so common that you do not need to blast fields anymore and it does not takes much brain power to play. And this tranformation is continuing patch after patch with the recent changes to sieges and defense.
What used to be a game mode that required skill and strategy has been turned into a brainless EotM-like ktrains
GG anet on ruining a good game.

Not to mention the introduction of barrier which has probably effectively doubled the HP for the boonballs.

[Philalive.8654]

15 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Not to mention the introduction of barrier which has probably effectively doubled the HP for the boonballs.

This is a very good point too, it hasn't really been a massive issue until the Barrier-heavy supports (like Scourge and Scrapper) became strong again. At least I didn't think it was a big issue a year ago.

[Zepoolpe.9217]

1 hour ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Not to mention the introduction of barrier which has probably effectively doubled the HP for the boonballs.

Yeah but i was depressed enough after listing the stuff in my post so i did not want to go further.

[Arheundel.6451]

12 hours ago, Philalive.8654 said:

Hello!

I’d like to talk about the WvW meta and some balancing issues that I have with the game currently. I'm not the biggest expert on this game or in WvW, there are much more knowledgeable players than me around but none that'll waste their time writing a forum post (or even remember that the forums exist probably). But I do have some experience, I've been around Guild Wars 2 from release in 2012 and for the last couple of years been pretty deep into WvW. I've done a decent amount of blobbing in both open-field stuff as well as organized BvB in EotM. I've dabbled in GvG during the 20s hype last year among other things. Anyway,

The meta is 5-man sub-groups, generally you have a “Primary-” and a “Secondary-” support in every sub-group, they’ve been locked in for a long time. Most of the meta shifts have changed what we fill the rest of the 3 slots with.

The primary support (also known as “Firebrand”, xd) is in charge of keeping stability up on your sub-group as well as providing other boons like protection, swiftness, and so on.

The secondary support is the group's healer, they’re also responsible for the majority of the cleansing as well as some less important boons.

I think this is a strong base to build on, I don’t think there are any inherent issues with this and it’s almost as old as MMORPGs are themselves (Holy Trinity anyone?).

Recently however the meta has shifted towards squads running way more supports, not just having 2 per sub-group, but at least 3 and most of the time 4 supports per sub-group. There’s obviously nuance here but these days it looks something like this:

1 - Support Firebrand as primary support (Stability, boons, various utility).

2 - Heal Vindicator as secondary support (Excellent Healing, decent cleansing, good resistance).

3 - Support Scourge as tertiary support (Transfuse, Barrier, boons, strips).

4 - Support Renegade as quaternary support (ALACRITY, Stability, Damage reduction, utility). Commonly swapped out for Support Chronomancer in a few groups (ALACRITY, lots of utility and boons).

5 - DPS Holosmith (Damage). Potentially a Berserker instead for Banner-stomps.

Honorary shout-outs to Celestial Firebrand, Support Scrapper, Support Druid, DPS Dragonhunter, DPS Tempest/Catalyst/Weaver.

Now obviously there are discussions to be had about classes, specs and builds within roles that should also be had but I’m trying to focus more on the overarching ideas here.

I feel like a lot of the changes recently on their own make sense in context and have, for the most part, good justifications (sometimes you are for sure just rolling a dice though, right?). A prevalent theme has been to buff underperformers and be cautious with nerfs (which I disagree with but isn’t necessarily the problem with current balance in WvW and another discussion to be had).

However, when we look at the result of these many changes over time it’s played out pretty poorly. We’ve ended up in a very static boonball meta.

These days as a DPS player I basically expect my party to provide me with the same boon coverage that I expect from a competent PvE raid group. We have extremely good alacrity uptime from Renegades, resistance is basically permanent from just the heal Vindicator - but just in case the Renegade can also do permanent resistance, the Firebrand does a ton of resistance and Chronomancer can do some, stability is expected to permanently be applied by the Firebrand but when that fails you have redundancy on the heal Vindi and the Renegade that is spamming road on cooldown and the Chronomancer with F4, mantra, well, etc.

We’ve had so many small buffs here and there for most of the support builds but we rarely have any nerfs, so obviously boon coverage is going to trend upwards. However, the real issue is when you, on top of these very boon-favoured support buffs, also keep nerfing basically every boon-strip and corrupt in the game.

Here are some recent-ish examples (I’ve missed a lot I’m sure):

Banish Enchantment:

1 - Increased energy cost from 20 to 30 in WvW only.

2 - This skill now has a 5-second cooldown in WvW only.

Null Field:

1 - Increased cooldown from 25 seconds to 35 seconds in WvW only.

2 - Reduced range from 1,200 to 900.

3 - Increased the cooldown from 35 seconds to 45 seconds in WvW only.

4 - Reduced the field duration from 5 seconds to 2 seconds in WvW only. Reduced the number of pulses from 6 to 3 in WvW only.

Well of Corruption:

1 - Increased cooldown from 32 seconds to 40 seconds in WvW only.

2 - Reduced power coefficient per strike from 0.45 to 0.35 in WvW only.

3 - Reduced power coefficient per hit from 0.35 to 0.28 in WvW only.

Unholy Feast:

1 - Increased power coefficient from 0.88 to 1.0. Increased bonus damage health threshold from 25% to 50%. Reduced number of boons corrupted from 2 to 1.

2 - Reduced power coefficient from 1.3 to 1.0 in WvW only.

3 - This skill now removes boons instead of converting them into conditions.

Spiteful Spirit:

1 - Reduced power coefficient from 0.4 to 0.1. Reduced number of boons corrupted from 2 to 1. Reduced additional boons corrupted against foes under 50% health from 2 to 1.

2 - This trait now removes boons instead of converting them into conditions.

Devouring Darkness:

1 - Reduced the number of boons corrupted from 2 to 1 in WvW only.

2 - Increased cooldown from 10 seconds to 18 seconds in WvW only.

Enfeebling Blood:

1 - This skill no longer converts boons into conditions.

Lesser Enfeeble:

1 - This skill no longer converts boons into conditions.

Signet of the Locust:

1 - Reduced the number of boons removed from 2 to 1 in WvW only.

Break Enchantments

1 - Reduced the numbers of boons removed from 4 to 2 in WvW only.

1 - Reduced the number of boons removed from 2 to 1 in WvW only.

Winds of Disenchantment

1 - Reduced target cap from 10 to 5.

2 - Reduced incoming boon duration reduction from 100% to 33% in WvW only.

3 - Lowered the duration from 5 seconds to 4 seconds in WvW only.

kitten, we’ve basically taken every boon strip in the game out back and absolutely murdered them.

These massive and continuous nerfs to boon corruption and boon strip taken along with all the massive buffs to boon application (along with some realisation in the player base that boons/support are OP) have made the meta into squads with 4 supports per 1 DPS player where movement is detrimental, you’re just better off standing still, transfusing all your downs, proccing all your resurrect traits in the same place and bunkering down while letting your players do a golem rotation and praying the enemy cracks first.

It feels like moving your blob these days probably just kites you out of more beneficial AoEs than it does detrimental AoEs. There’s always been an issue that the more movement you do as a commander the more stragglers you’ll end up with, every movement risks having people off the safety of the stack dying. Inherently this makes the game bias less movement so we need skills to counter this. Unless you like standing still and doing a golem rotation but we have that already, at the golem, so let’s keep it there.

The game has shifted so strongly towards a static numbers and rotation game where it’s about you and your friends standing still and pressing buttons off cooldown (there’s some nuance, but less than there used to be) whilst praying that you win. It feels like we’re more reliant on squad composition; like finding 40 people that want to support 10 DPS, then the whole squad is relying on those 10 DPS to be competent.

A lot of the impact you could have as an individual player has been diminished. It’s shifted towards you “not screwing up” at your job instead of being able to shine with good gameplay. Newer players are heavily discouraged from playing DPS (in my experience the most popular role) since the whole squad is relying on just 10 people in a full 50 stack to do all offensive pressure on their own, if you’re not great at the game yet you have 4 people being upset because they feel like they’re 4 support players supporting someone who’s not performing their job. This used to be fine, you could get away with it much, much easier previously, which in my opinion was much healthier for everyone involved.

Fights often just break down to: shuffle slightly to the right, stand still and do a golem rotation for a few seconds, shuffle a bit again and wow we did it, they cracked. They didn’t die on a well coordinated burst (like a Well call), just cracked after x amount of time when one group started missing Illusions or lost a rally war. It feels bad when fights are just the two groups standing on top of each other pressing buttons and if either starts moving they’ll die instantly.

With Alliances actually releasing soon (I almost can’t believe it) it’s super sad that pretty much every single guildie, friend, associate, neighbour’s cat, random team chat player and even the rats all agree that the meta right now is terrible.

One of the biggest problems since the great butchering of Necromancer on July 27th has been the removal of the offensive strip/corrupt archetype (Power Reaper, Power Scourge). Virtuoso and Spellbreaker could also fill this role but never could quite live up to Necromancer's dominance in the space.

This was actually a very healthy part of the group composition meta-game, the only real issue was that it was too dominated by a single class: Necromancer. They’ve basically been replaced completely by boon stripping supports instead, which are, I think, very quite unhealthy since it very heavily promotes triple+ support sub-groups.

The choice for your boon stripping shouldn’t be between a Power Scourge that basically does strips and nothing else and a Support Scourge with transfuse and Barrier on top of the strips.

Blobs need to be less tanky and not as bunker-y as they are right now. Bringing back and promoting the offensive boon strip archetype will instead move the game back to a more reasonable state where we’re not just invincible boonballs and literally 80% of the squad is on Minstrel or Celestial.

For example I especially think it’s good if fields (wells, null field, etc) are fairly long in duration. It doesn’t really affect smaller scale stuff since they’re naturally way more mobile and will just move out of it. It only really punishes overly static and slow gameplay. Having long durations on things like Null Field, Wells, and other stuff is what used to make it so dangerous to just stand still for too long. It also promotes good strategy like cornering a group and, most importantly, discourages mindless boonballblob stacking.

Playing a boon class right now doesn’t even feel good now while they’re supposed to be all the rage, I look at my party window playing support Chronomancer and think, yup 30s resistance, yup 30s alacrity, 25 might, check that, 30s fury, 60s swiftness, 30s protection, 11 stacks of stability with 12 seconds left, 30s vigor and you think, wow, I’m really making an impact right now. Except you haven’t pressed a button yet and those boons are actually from the other 3 supports in your sub-group.

So for something more concrete instead of just a rant, here goes something.

Necromancer is the only class I haven’t played much so I’ll leave the specifics to someone more knowledgeable on the class but I feel like we need to buff the offensive traits and abilities on Necromancer, more damage, more boon strips/corrupts. Tying some extra boon corruption/boon strip to offensive traits that compete with powerful support abilities is a good start. I’d love for wells to be dangerous and impactful again but I also don’t want to just have Barrier Scourge be stronger and call it a day (although even that would be an improvement atm).

Virtuoso has a lot of potential to be an alternative to Necromancer, they’re already quite solid in terms of boon stripping. While I agree that Null Field is already a pretty loaded skill (since it cleanses as well), and I agree buffing that probably just makes Chronomancer better and not much else, I don’t think nerfing it and not providing any alternatives makes the game better. Boon strips are rare to come by so we need more alternatives and bigger commitment than just a single utility skill.

Thankfully, we already have great contenders on Virtuoso for buffs! Things like: Rain of Swords, Sword of Decimation and Thousand Cuts. They’re basically not used anywhere in the game right now (Thousand cuts on cVirt in PvE I guess) buffing them won’t mess with roaming content in any way since that type of skill is just too easy to dodge/move out of which makes them a good candidate in my eyes.

You could move Virtuoso towards more of a damage focused specialisation and actually make them worth using for the damage. This also has the added benefit of probably not touching Virtuoso’s power in GvGs as much as adding some boon strip to Sword of Decimation would for example.

I also feel like this would be healthy for Virtuoso in general, since mesmer already has very powerful utilities already, I feel it’s important to make them an actual trade-off instead of concentrating all the power to F1, F2 and traits. Having a DPS build being able to slot some utility for the squad is good, but it shouldn’t be free.

The 3rd obvious example here is Spellbreaker, it’s always been much stronger in smaller scale content compared to large scale content (not counting bubble shenanigans). My personal take on why this is the case is because the Warrior’s core weapons suffer badly from 2012-syndrome, none of them were designed for the type of combat and context that we have today in WvW. (Feels like most things that end up as good DPS in WvW are kind of by accident more than deliberate design).

Berserker works and feels much better in this context because most of your power and half your time is spent pressing F1.

I feel like a lot of why Spellbreaker struggles so much in large scale battles can be summarised quite well with looking at the Greatsword abilities:

1 - Standard auto-attack.

2 - Stationary skill with no range that only makes sense if your design perspective is from 2011.

3 - Actually good skill because it's movement with evade-frames but not very impactful as an offensive tool in this context.

4 - I… uh… Yeah just don’t press 4.

5 - I… uh… Yeah just don’t press 5. This is a rare example of making something that usually feels great to have (a movement skill) actually terrible and clunky to use.

Compare this to Vindicator Greatsword (that is well designed and feels great to use):

1 - Standard Auto, decent.

2 - Excellent AoE Damage with extra range, very usable

3 - Good dash, super responsive, very good AoE damage with some range.

4 - On-demand block, super useful. The follow-up doesn’t feel great though.

5 - Extremely good AoE damage with auto-aim to concentrate damage without you trying.

The rest of the weapons are good in their own context but have no place on an offensive Spellbreaker build in a blob. Longbow is a great example of a weapon completely carried by Zerker F1 that’s largely useless without it. But I’ll give Hammer some slack and say that it’s actually decent, getting CCd in the F1 leap is suffering incarnate though.

Anyway, I could talk for days about things I think should be looked at / changed but I’ll end it here and keep it at boon strips since I feel like that’s the most important change I’d like to see in the near future.

Let me know if I’m crazy or if you have better ideas, I’m all ears and hopefully the balance team will keep it in mind.

Any class should be forced to sacrifice damage/defense for support and support specs/classes should have no access to boon strip and that how you change the meta. This is the reason why tempest support is dead in water, they nerfed everything that made tempest tank support...now there is only the support aka no more meta, on spellbreaker the same point more or less...to support/heal you lose dmg. You cannot go even cele tempest/spellbreaker then do dmg, support, heal and condi clear at the same time and this is why you see armies of vindicators, scrappers,chronomancers, scourges, firebrand pushing forward like an unstoppable force.

Problem is neither gear or boon application...it's a design issue, simply some professions do not sacrifice enough for what they get

[Mabi black.1824]

12 hours ago, Philalive.8654 said:

Let me know if I’m crazy or if you have better ideas, I’m all ears and hopefully the balance team will keep it in mind.

You're not crazy, it's a way (which I've read several times in the forum) to see how you can change group constructions. However all those abilities you listed, of reduced damage, you describe as if the group of 50 players in formation couldn't use them, or fart them continuously as they keep rolling on anything. If your initiative is to increase the damage to break that group of 50 players, you have to consider that the same 50 you want to break, will also be able to use them. 

If you really want to change things, you need to look at shared defenses and protections. We know that your damage is limited to 5 targets or even less than some even recent changes. But what about the defenses? All the walls or protective spheres that I see all the time secure that whole group of 50 players stacked on top of each other. Let's change that and you'll see how those 50 players will have to move their butts to survive.

If you think you can solve it through damage, then you should have the damage increased by x% when you hit an enemy when they are extremely close to an ally. If they are 2 allies, the % increases, up to a maximum accumulated damage of 10 allies. Then you'll see the formations split up to mitigate the damage and then regroup.  and so on.