[POLL] The Boon Ball Meta

[XenesisII.1540]

Do you like it or are you tired of it?

[gerberlyfe.9736]

80% of the squad being reduced to a boonb*tch upkeeping like 1-4 boons is such dogsh*t. I guess it's great for the tagalong wenches who don't want to actually fight. Not so great for actual players.

[MercurialKuroSludge.8974]

Id be fine with it if most boonballs weren't PvErs who simply wanted to farm other players, as if the opposition were npcs.

[Gop.8713]

I've grown so accustomed to being a special snowflake in your polls, and now you've created the third option just for me . . .

EDIT: Poster above nailed it tho, problem with group play in wvw is ppls won't fight, just farm . . .

Edited May 28 by Gop.8713

[Razi.6031]

Boonballs have actually become a massive crutch for players, with or without realising it. You find out just how bad these players are, or how extremely niche to boonball their builds are that if you manage to scatter them ever so slightly, they drop like flies.

Give me a group of 5-10 players with good roam builds that know what the H they're doing any day over a group of 30-50 that are basically just pressing their rotation as if they're fighting a world boss in a pve starter area.

[latlat.4516]

Ah yes, the boonball still being meta. 

 

Guys, we're slowly entering a time of celestial scourge meta. You will soon understand the reason old timers hate condi gameplay. Brace yourselves, the time of not even being able to play is coming. 

[ArchonWing.9480]

7 hours ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Do you like it

Noooo!

Fun fact, this line can trigger any Lost Ark player, because it's a often spammed NPC line that happens after a certain RNG gamble system-- especially grating when it screws you over.

Regardless, my answer is no, I don't.

Also if you've been reading the other thread, you will actually know that the meta's changing into some celestial condi burst abomination. While in theory this sounds better than a 4 healer 1 damage thing in that more players can play hybrid it's about as obnoxious because it's mostly melee oriented so there's even more of a stand in one place and wear down the opponent crap.

I've always warned people that the naturally high damage potential of guardians  thanks to the bursty nature of burns was gonna to create something even more annoying.

Edited May 28 by ArchonWing.9480

[DanAlcedo.3281]

I want my bubble back. 

Signed: A sad Spellbreaker. 

[Custodio.6134]

Boons in competitive are a delicate balance and you can't serve everyone.

 

However: as a primarily medium to large scale player (~15/20 -50) at certain sizes especially defensive boons become more important. Since with every player added, the ability to apply CC increases more than the ability to stun break/apply stability. 

The problem here is not necessarily the amount of boons or the lack of boon rip (ofc they play a big part in it) but the fact that most defensive boons can effectively be kept up permanently. 

So, while I certainly love to have my boons, it may be beneficial to go back to the initial idea ANet had for boons (temporary buffs that increase your strength). 

 

Boons getting drastically reduced in duration could potentially make more tactical gameplay possible, IF (important) all related skills and counterparts are adjusted as well. If you don't reduce boonstrip as well, boons become useless. If you don't adjust damage, everyone may end up as a paper-bag that dies immediately. If you don't reduce CC as well, it's going to be hell to play. 

 

Basically, it would require a massive reduce in "Skill Bloat"

Edited May 28 by Custodio.6134

[gerberlyfe.9736]

4 hours ago, latlat.4516 said:

Guys, we're slowly entering a time of celestial scourge meta. You will soon understand the reason old timers hate condi gameplay. Brace yourselves, the time of not even being able to play is coming. 

Like evolution turning everything into a crab, I have always suspected that power creep would eventually turn every class into a scourge. 

I find it really depressing that group content is going the same way, just a phalanx of boons doing a rotation without even looking at other players, just standing on the tag. It's not even fighting at that point.

[disForm.2837]

6 hours ago, Razi.6031 said:

Boonballs have actually become a massive crutch for players, with or without realising it. You find out just how bad these players are, or how extremely niche to boonball their builds are that if you manage to scatter them ever so slightly, they drop like flies.

Give me a group of 5-10 players with good roam builds that know what the H they're doing any day over a group of 30-50 that are basically just pressing their rotation as if they're fighting a world boss in a pve starter area.

I am sorry, are you saying you can take 30-50 organized squad with 10 guys in roamer builds?

[AlCapwnd.7834]

I enjoy the zerg v zerg fights from time to time.

But I also enjoy roaming and small scale fights.

[Razi.6031]

2 hours ago, disForm.2837 said:

I am sorry, are you saying you can take 30-50 organized squad with 10 guys in roamer builds?

Did i ever once mention that in my post. I'm not stupid. I understand the numbers game. Organised can be subjective though..

I prefer to be in a small squad of people that understand their builds, playstyles and environment rather than with 50 ppl that got their cookie-cutter boonball build from discord to fill in a slot, just to press rotations ala-pve bosses.

 

And to add, maybe no, you don't take on the full 50 as a 10man squad, but we do target them by isolating the tail and taking out stragglers.

 

Pull them out of their boonball safe space and they're just punching bags that drop loot

Edited May 28 by Razi.6031

[Jski.6180]

At least in boon meta you can get more classes use then say ranged meta witch is only a very few classes.

Now there is an argument about adding in more boon strip relics and add more boon strips to classes that dont have it.

[disForm.2837]

@Razi.6031 That's your personal preference, understandable. But you are putting all squads in the same "boonball, cookie cutter builds", which is wildly inaccurate. Hell, current meta is not even on any site yet.

Against truly organized squads your few roamers would do absolutely nothing, it's like trying to spit in a fire. The reason you can easily kill isolated players from an organized squad is because the builds are highly specialized, has nothing to do with player's individual skills. You can easily kill me on my Scourge Zerg build, not so much when I play roaming Cele bunker Harb (ik, blame Anet, not the player).

Not everyone has thousands of hours in WvW, your regular PUG boonball has a place in the game, where players can get a taste of WvW without being obliterated by veteran roamers.

 

 

[XenesisII.1540]

7 hours ago, ArchonWing.9480 said:

Also if you've been reading the other thread, you will actually know that the meta's changing into some celestial condi burst abomination. While in theory this sounds better than a 4 healer 1 damage thing in that more players can play hybrid it's about as obnoxious because it's mostly melee oriented so there's even more of a stand in one place and wear down the opponent crap.

I've always warned people that the naturally high damage potential of guardians  thanks to the bursty nature of burns was gonna to create something even more annoying.

Pretty funny cause back when the support were complaining about not getting bags before they upped the support participation levels, I told them to run celestial to do a little more damage for credit, but of course they didn't want to change their minstrel diapers back then. Meta is not really changing, they're just changing gear for support to do a little more damage. There's never going to be a point for the meta to shift away from the ball formation or support stacking ever again, unless they brick support from doing damage so they don't take up a damage spot. Celestial getting concentration and expertise for free was such a terribad change.

Anet in their brilliance decided that 9 specs are gonna be viable for 30-40 slots in a squad while the other 27 get to fight for the last 10-20 spots, while also giving these squads a free pass to only be challenged by groups of same size and format, simply brilliant, way to promote diversity.

[Stand The Wall.6987]

the poll to end all polls

[Verdict is Vengence.6912]

Boon balling is an interesting way that anet gave groups to fight against hordes of enemies.

That said, it's boring if you're up against it. It is funny when a boon ball group tries to find any hallway or narrow path to run to in order to get the best advantage. Not the most exciting gameplay and it gets tiresome quick.

I prefer a wild battle that spans over a large area where separate battles are taking place throughout. Not many likes going against health bars that don't drop below 80%, even when you're on a burst build, bursting a single target in the group for what is usually 8k to10k damage but instead getting 1k to 3k damage, then instant healed away.

It definitely doesn't feel the best but that's how anet likes it.

[Quench.7091]

Boons and conditions are a hot mess in general.

• They're powerful enough to require, so we can't separate from the group and many metabuilds involve spamming boons and conditions. Boon removal is always nerfed in WvW to accommodate the need for boons. They should probably do things like reduce damage in WvW but then change protection from 33% to  something more reasonable. Reducing damage to 2/3rds the value is kind of unreasonable as a defensive multiplier in large group combat. Poison is also just as intense, so condition cleanse is spammed as often as poison is. The demand for boon balling will never fade away if people are so prone to death the moment they are alone without support. Most games would place a several minute cooldown on something like an active 33% ability. We're spamming these things into a 100% upkeep time like they're no big deal!
• Healing, cleanse, and boons hit 5 players a lot of the time. Why are they willing to nerf our healing but not the number of people we heal? The number of people we heal or cleanse is a force multiplier. Why is my Throw Mine only removing 1 boon in WvW just because it removes boons from 5 people?! It should be removing 2 boons per person off of like 3 people or something. Increase potency of certain attacks and support, reduce the number of targets. This will allow smaller bodies to break off from larger bodies to an extent. The more targets hit per support ability, the more effective a boon ball is.
• Why is boon application melee range? I can't use ranged support weapons from a range if my other abilities are a 240 radius around me. It's not like I'll be able to give a boon to 6 people if the range is 500 or so, since I have a cap on how many people I can give a boon to.  Is it melee because boons are too powerful? If boons are too powerful then there's your problem.
• Projectile barriers. Why do these absorb an indefinite amount of projectiles until they expire? They should probably have a health bar or a number of projectiles they can absorb until they break. That is much easier to balance than going by duration all of the time.

Edited May 29 by Quench.7091

[ArchonWing.9480]

4 hours ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Pretty funny cause back when the support were complaining about not getting bags before they upped the support participation levels, I told them to run celestial to do a little more damage for credit, but of course they didn't want to change their minstrel diapers back then. Meta is not really changing, they're just changing gear for support to do a little more damage. There's never going to be a point for the meta to shift away from the ball formation or support stacking ever again, unless they brick support from doing damage so they don't take up a damage spot. Celestial getting concentration and expertise for free was such a terribad change.

Anet in their brilliance decided that 9 specs are gonna be viable for 30-40 slots in a squad while the other 27 get to fight for the last 10-20 spots, while also giving these squads a free pass to only be challenged by groups of same size and format, simply brilliant, way to promote diversity.

Well, I think the biggest culprit is free might and fury , meaning there is no real need to invest in offensive stats that much when you can cover the difference with might stacks. It is trivial in group scenarios even without a good comp.

So quickly using gw2 skills

Berserker ~ 2382 power, 50% crit, 214 crit dmg

Marauder ~ 2172 power, 60% crit, 192 crit damage

Cele ~ 1639, 35% crit, 192% crit damage, 639 condi damage

Dire ~ 1382 condi damage

Without boons, Marauder has 32% more power than cele, and crits 20% more.

And I'm sure at this point it becomes clear why full zerk is pretty whatever.

But add  15 stacks of might (450 power/condi) + fury

Marauder-- 2622 power, 80% crit

Cele-- 2089 power, 55% crit, 1089 condi damage

The difference has shrunk to 25%. And while the crit rate difference is the same, going to 55% crit from 35% crit is a bigger deal than 60 to 80. And now you have all this condi damage.

But what's telling Cele with boons is basically almost the same damage as both marauder and dire without those boons. And way tankier than marauder.

If you add the stats from runes and food and infusions and other crap, the difference in raw stats from other stats vs cele gets even worse.

Even in PvE, especially with not so great players, it is no longer a massive disadvantage to run cele as long as those defensive stats come in play because we have so much power creep.

So now the difference is down to 25% more damage

But people still wanna hug their minstrel gear. Kinda sad.

People will point out that "burst" damage is generally still better with marauder and zerker, and indeed if you kill your enemy in 3 seconds, dps doesn't matter as much. But with all these get out of jail cards and insta res'd, this is somewhat hard to do.

 

 

Edited May 28 by ArchonWing.9480

[Dawdler.8521]

12 hours ago, Custodio.6134 said:

However: as a primarily medium to large scale player (~15/20 -50) at certain sizes especially defensive boons become more important.

It begin far, faaaaar earlier. It’s like one is cele, two is a stunlock combo, three have room for a dps and four flip it on its head as the previous three regress to minstrels.

[Aeolus.3615]

On 5/28/2024 at 4:38 PM, Jski.6180 said:

At least in boon meta you can get more classes use then say ranged meta witch is only a very few classes.

Now there is an argument about adding in more boon strip relics and add more boon strips to classes that dont have it.

1 or 2 boon strip on 40cd whch leads to a gimmick or rotation every 40 sec even when 40 players trying to make use of it at the same time?

Won't solve anything just a placebo... it  sounds well and looks nice on papar but in game would make  a weak impact or barely nothing due how Anet keeps adding easier aways to keep perma boons and most with max duration and stacks, would just be a few milliseconds of w/o boons at max...

Edited May 30 by Aeolus.3615

[DemonSeed.3528]

On 5/28/2024 at 4:37 PM, Custodio.6134 said:

Boons in competitive are a delicate balance and you can't serve everyone.

 

However: as a primarily medium to large scale player (~15/20 -50) at certain sizes especially defensive boons become more important. Since with every player added, the ability to apply CC increases more than the ability to stun break/apply stability. 

The problem here is not necessarily the amount of boons or the lack of boon rip (ofc they play a big part in it) but the fact that most defensive boons can effectively be kept up permanently. 

So, while I certainly love to have my boons, it may be beneficial to go back to the initial idea ANet had for boons (temporary buffs that increase your strength). 

 

Boons getting drastically reduced in duration could potentially make more tactical gameplay possible, IF (important) all related skills and counterparts are adjusted as well. If you don't reduce boonstrip as well, boons become useless. If you don't adjust damage, everyone may end up as a paper-bag that dies immediately. If you don't reduce CC as well, it's going to be hell to play. 

 

Basically, it would require a massive reduce in "Skill Bloat"

Boons could have diminishing returns or penalty maybe *I can already hear the screams*

[Player.2475]

I have no idea how anyone thought it was a good idea that even against 3-5 players it's basically impossible to apply enough boon strips to disable them, even if several people use every boon removing trait and skill available to the few classes that have access to them.

It disrupts the balance to such a massive degree that it's basically like playing the game on training wheels, which is I guess the primary reason why Anet keeps buffing this toxic playstyle with every patch by reducing the impact boon strips can have.

[scerevisiae.1972]

it is what you get when you only solicit feedback from WVW commanders, who are frankly some of the lowest-skill players in the game -- that's _why_ they zerg.

 

WVW is supposed to be a competitive mode, so please balance around equal-sized groups of guild groups v random pugs having equal opportunity to roll each other.

 

right now the game mechanics heavily favour ultra low skill boonballing where success means pressing w and pressing 1-3 keys off cooldown with no regard for tactics, timing, teamwork or any other kind of skill.