There is no counter to boonball meta due to the nerf to boon removal skills.

[Cuks.8241]

9 hours ago, MedievalThings.5417 said:

1 player in a squad can put up 5 boons permanently (I'm being generous as a lot of builds can do a LOT more than that).  And, they can do that multiple times over during the cooldown of those skills.  Even if I play the most boon removing build I can, I will have only negated 2 of those boons for 5 of 30 seconds.

It's not about negating boons with strips 1 to 1. That would mean everyone is boonless 100% of the time. 

It's about coordinated strip burst combined with CC and dmg. My rene opening can strip 7 boons per target in ~ 4 secs (4 boons in 2 seconds) at 900 range. More if engage moves to melee. 

I'm not discussing if this is a fun meta or not. I'm just saying that a group that knows what is doing and can coordinate strips will strip you dry for enough time to get a kill window.

[Hesione.9412]

45 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

It's not about negating boons with strips 1 to 1. That would mean everyone is boonless 100% of the time. 

It's about coordinated strip burst combined with CC and dmg. My rene opening can strip 7 boons per target in ~ 4 secs (4 boons in 2 seconds) at 900 range. More if engage moves to melee. 

I'm not discussing if this is a fun meta or not. I'm just saying that a group that knows what is doing and can coordinate strips will strip you dry for enough time to get a kill window.

Which is what a bunch of us are saying. The only counter to a boonball is a coordinated blob, which may also be a boonball.

[Dawdler.8521]

1 hour ago, Cuks.8241 said:

 That would mean everyone is boonless 100% of the time. 

So the perfect WvW then?

[Cuks.8241]

39 minutes ago, Hesione.9412 said:

Which is what a bunch of us are saying. The only counter to a boonball is a coordinated blob, which may also be a boonball.

Everything is a boonball in this game and its been for a long time. Having all boons up pretty much all the time is like a baseline for all non solo content. You dont need a blob for that.

So this countering boonball  discussion is moot. Step 1, boon up all boons, step 2 start playing.

[Vegeta.2563]

Back on March 19th they changed alacrity on Scourge to vigor in WvW.  They had changed numerous of skill timers because of the addition to alacrity to make up for it.

Devouring Darkness is still 18s recast in WVW. With alacrity removed it should be put back to 10s recast so it's in line with Axe 3 recast.  Enfeebling Blood (dagger 5) had it's boon corrupts completely removed (this was a terrible idea), and should be brought back even if it's only boon removal instead.  Serpent Siphon was increased from 20 to 30 sec cooldown.  I think this should be dropped down to 25 sec.  Path of Corruption increases the cooldown of Nefarious Favor by 50% while using Scourge.  This was also changed to counter the addition to alacrity and should be removed.  Picking Scourge with Path of Corruption already corrupts 1 less boon than other specs anyway.

Maybe start with these changes and see how boonball can hold up.

[Voegelin.5642]

13 hours ago, senftube.6081 said:

Boonball and Celestial are the biggest Trash this game got. No Skill anymore only stand still and facetanking the dmg. Devs are still sleeping expecially CMC. Anet pls wake the kitten up!

Thats happening when you design a game without a holy trinity and with a dodge mechanic and then try to turn it into ESO. The Endresult is the same trashshit we had for over 20 years. But here even more worse because you can't kill kitten anymore.

Game turned completly into carebear wars 2 and autopilot.

Celestial has been around since the game began. 

[One more for the road.8950]

7 minutes ago, Voegelin.5642 said:

Celestial has been around since the game began. 

Yes it has.

It has also changed though.

I am on no side in the Celestial debate, but in 2021 it got expertise and concentration added, without decreasing any current stats.

[Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267]

4 hours ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Everything is a boonball in this game and its been for a long time. Having all boons up pretty much all the time is like a baseline for all non solo content. You dont need a blob for that.

So this countering boonball  discussion is moot. Step 1, boon up all boons, step 2 start playing.

But not in such extend that Smaller groups had to suffer. When this game first launch, sure there were boons, But they were in much shorter supply then it is now. Especially the defensive boons. Even a Blob are not going to keep boons up 100% of the time back then, and they had to time their boons for a bomb. there was even enough boonrip where small scale group could take on a big group, and win if they're skilled enough. It felt balanced there.

The Boons now are so saturated, so common nowadays that ripping though these boons is legit impossible or at the very least an exhausting process, especially with a small scale who nowadays stand no chance at taking them on. To think that this is healthy for wvw at all is pure delusion.

You have some gall to say the discussion is moot when your only solution to this issue is essentially brute forcing it with more numbers. That's not a good solution, you're circumventing it by adding more fuel to the fire.

 

[Deniara Devious.3948]

The best way to solve this problem is to seriously limit the application of boons, especially boons on team mates. There is something wrong with the game design when you see large amount of players having almost all the boons of the game on them most of the time. They can just stand in the damage circles and take very little damage. Combine this long range pulls, which work through walls and obstacles as well. 

This leads to game play where people are afraid to engage enemy blob, unless they enjoy numerical advantage. And the side with numerical advantage can just pull the smaller side players inside their blob from range, making even defense a pain. Defense was nerfed too much.

Excessive boons are also a problem in roaming. Just look at willbender and several thief builds. They have lots of boons on, while tons of mobility and burst, ability to engage and disegnage at will, yet being reasonable bursty. This is simply broken and not fun to play against. Toxic to this game mode. Some roaming builds have 20+ might stacks all the time giving balanced stats like celestial too power. Take way all that might generation and celestial will no longer deliver much any damage.



 

[Santo.2419]

or just up the target caps back from 5 to 10 🙂

[bq pd.2148]

personally i think the main reason balls are so strong these days are the increase to TTK, mostly from feb 2020 patch.

you still needed the defensive buffs to survive some stray damage,  but with all the boons you still couldn't face tank the opponent like you can do now. 
same thing as the celestial stuff in small scale, it was good for outnumbered as that would typically be against worse players, still enough damage to kill and enough sustain to survive terrible burst attempts. yet if you ate the burst of another more decent roamer, you could still die, fast.

in larger scale that means clouds could easier thin out a ball by free casting and not providing enough of a target by being spread out, so much so that retaliation was needed back then. ofc now we don't have retaliation anymore and thus cannot be given back the damage.

[Cuks.8241]

29 minutes ago, Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267 said:

You have some gall to say the discussion is moot when your only solution to this issue is essentially brute forcing it with more numbers. That's not a good solution, you're circumventing it by adding more fuel to the fire.

Actually this whole discussion is about brute forcing it with raw strip numbers. It offers imo bad sollution which is blanket strip spam vs boon spam. Both are a very spammy and/or needles rotation focus gameplay for pvp.

At least now strips require some coordination and targeting. I dont want to counter spam play with more spam play on top.

But for a meaningful solution to boons in general, not just in wvw, a different solution would be much better. Probably with removal of some boons in the first place (alacrity) and serious decrease in effectivness for others.

[disForm.2837]

The ratio boons/strips is horrendous, has been for a while. Chrono nerfs, Necro nerfs, etc. I'm fine with localized and tactical boonstrip, as long as Anet nerf the boon barrage.

But imo, and I may be wrong, it's not the only reason why current comped groups feel immortal. Current meta comp is very specialized, very hard to patch together with PUGS. So even with similar numbers, ultra comped groups just wipe everything that's not similarly organized. The gap between comps is too wide. Players, coordination, skills should make the difference, not the classes and specs we play. 

That's not healthy for the game mode. Not everyone wants or have the luxury to play with these kind of groups. 

[Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267]

37 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Actually this whole discussion is about brute forcing it with raw strip numbers

 

On 7/27/2024 at 9:16 PM, Joonmo.7523 said:

.Boonball was strong before, but not as much as it is now.
Because boon removal skills did their job properly.

Currently, boon removal skills are too limited in number and ineffective compared to boon sharing skills.
 

What are you talking about. This discussion isn't about "Brute forcing it." It's about how Boom removal skills are very lacking and need some buffs to make them relevant again. You're just making things up now.
 

39 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

At least now strips require some coordination and targeting. I dont want to counter spam play with more spam play on top.

Many folks have told and provided good explantion as to why this isn't the case, and you're blatantly ignoring, or dismiss them by encouraging these people to do the very thing folks are annoyed about. If this is the red tinted glasses you want to wear, more power to you, but don't mean it's reality.
 

[Chaba.5410]

6 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

So the perfect WvW then?

Haha!  No boons at all is definitely some subset of forum posters' ideal of a perfect WvW, yes.  Cynical too?  Yes.  Boons have gotten easier to apply over the years.  I'll reiterate that one of those changes was boon prioritization for squads/parties.  The boons don't just go to any random...

Edited July 30 by Chaba.5410

[Dawdler.8521]

1 hour ago, Deniara Devious.3948 said:

 This leads to game play where people are afraid to engage enemy blob, unless they enjoy numerical advantage. 

The community considers fighting 3x your numbers to be epitome of pro fighting skills.

Anet has created an environment where you require 3x+ the numbers to beat the meta  boonballs.

Anet has been completely unwilling to fix it while the community don’t want to loose the illusion of skill.

So of course people will fight any change with tooth and nails while nothing ever happens.

[Cuks.8241]

1 hour ago, Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267 said:

What are you talking about. This discussion isn't about "Brute forcing it." It's about how Boom removal skills are very lacking and need some buffs to make them relevant again. You're just making things up now.

Boon strips are only lacking if you cant focus targets and coordinate with your team mates.

What you want is enough strips to just blanket spam strips. Just more spam gameplay. 

[XenesisII.1540]

Spam boons... ok!

Spam strips... gtfoh!

Spam damage... gtfoh!

Would be nice if they were treated the same way. Strips need to be focused and coordinated to a very small window, but not boons!

Still funny to see boon ballers crumble when their precious boons are taken away and they're left on the level of pugs. Gotta keep them to a minimum tho or wvw will crumble too when they get unhappy.

😏

Edited July 30 by XenesisII.1540

[godfat.2604]

It required so much more coordination back when boons can't be easily maintained, and one misstep was an instant death.

I am kinda amazed that people can say it needs more coordination nowadays comparing to say, before the infamous Feb 2020 patch.

Balance, literally means finding the right balance between no boons and full boons. Not sure why we can't find something in the middle. It's never all or nothing.

[Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267]

45 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Boon strips are only lacking if you cant focus targets and coordinate with your team mates.

You know what, you have been proven why this is wrong before, I don't know why you're dying on that hill when other people have a good logical explanation as to why this is wrong, and I'm not going to keep wasting my time telling you why if you're not willing to look at the facts in front of you.

 

53 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

What you want is enough strips to just blanket spam strips. Just more spam gameplay.

This is what you think I want. In reality, I want boon stripping to be a viable option again. No one want this "Blanket spam strips." They just want more balance. this isn't a hard concept to understand.

[MedievalThings.5417]

11 hours ago, Cuks.8241 said:

It's not about negating boons with strips 1 to 1. That would mean everyone is boonless 100% of the time. 

It's about coordinated strip burst combined with CC and dmg. My rene opening can strip 7 boons per target in ~ 4 secs (4 boons in 2 seconds) at 900 range. More if engage moves to melee. 

I'm not discussing if this is a fun meta or not. I'm just saying that a group that knows what is doing and can coordinate strips will strip you dry for enough time to get a kill window.

Who got ressed .1 seconds later by his 49 friends and had every boon at max duration 1 second after that.  No one is saying it's impossible to kill anyone, I kill unstacked players from blobs (even comps) all the time, but I'm not going to stop them from taking anything.  I imagine Anet will just add offensive/defensive protocols at some point, because we are not far from that now.  The timing on skills, both boon application and removal, should matter, but it just doesn't.  For every boon that I can remove, it can be reapplied multiple times over during the cooldown of the strip and that's the problem.

 

Edit: 1. A player should need 100% boon duration on themselves to have 100% uptime on a boon, imo.  2. Food/utility buffs are far too strong.

Edited July 30 by MedievalThings.5417

[Kozumi.5816]

6 hours ago, Santo.2419 said:

or just up the target caps back from 5 to 10 🙂

Target caps make me turn my brain off and stop caring immediately. They are terrible design.

Target caps should be unlimited.

[Cuks.8241]

11 hours ago, Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267 said:

You know what, you have been proven why this is wrong before, I don't know why you're dying on that hill when other people have a good logical explanation as to why this is wrong, and I'm not going to keep wasting my time telling you why if you're not willing to look at the facts in front of you.

 

This is what you think I want. In reality, I want boon stripping to be a viable option again. No one want this "Blanket spam strips." They just want more balance. this isn't a hard concept to understand.

Proven wrong? Lol. There is almost nothing beyond some troll value in these threads. Its 90% people crying how they cant kill a team of people that actualy plays together.

Maybe instead of crying about their precious boonstrips (which wouldnt help them anyway) they counter teamplay with better teamplay.

[ChrisWhitey.9076]

As long as stability doesn't get removed I think boon strips winning is fine but the way cc works in game stability needs a whole rework before rips out perform boons.

[Cyninja.2954]

23 hours ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Boon strips are only lacking if you cant focus targets and coordinate with your team mates.

What you want is enough strips to just blanket spam strips. Just more spam gameplay. 

No, boon strips are lacking if:

1. you are not coordinating spike

2. you do not have enough boon strip capable classes

3. you are numerically disadvantaged so that your coordinated boon-strip gets mitigated by the opponents supports

Those are the issues at hand. Number 2 and number 3 were made significantly more relevant with boon nerf changes, the insane boon creep and the current meta of celestial and 2 supports per sub group.

That's the issue and what players mean when they are talking about boon denial being inadequate and that is only looking at blob fights and not even taking roaming into account where celestial perma boon is the current meta.

This is not only about coordinating spike. Boon strip always had to be coordinated for maximum effect against a good group (and a lot of boon strip would go unused or make sure boons are not reapplied or strait up denied with say WoD). Boon strip barely being able to dent boon uptime now is what is the primary issue and the reason for that is the developers misguided assumption that having every one boon-ed up permanently somehow evens the playing field and is thus fun.

Edited July 31 by Cyninja.2954