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

[Sheff.4851]

20 hours ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

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

Target caps should be unlimited.

Including support skills that give boons like Stand Your Ground, Orders From Above, and Mantra of Concentration? Also including stunbreaks like Mantra of Liberation? Also including stomps/rezzes like Transfuse, Battle Standard, and Tempest signets?

That could be interesting. I'd be fine with everybody in my squad getting hit by one Arc Divider if Battle Standard could stomp 20 people at a time. It would reduce group fights to whoever dodges better, and pretty much no other skill input besides reaction time.

[Chaos God.1639]

currently you can counter boons with boon strips abilities. and how should another group counter these coordinated boon strip attacks? if a team can always get destroyed with these coordinated boon strip attacks then how should they counter them? they teleport away? vanish?

you already need enough support to be able to survive and some even get kicked out of groups, because commanders think they aren't playing a "good" profession or for any other reason. you want even more support to be able to survive? if boons can't protect you then what will?

at least with the current boon protection there can be more variety in the group and everybody can play how they want.
 

[kash.9213]

13 minutes ago, Chaos God.1639 said:

currently you can counter boons with boon strips abilities. and how should another group counter these coordinated boon strip attacks? if a team can always get destroyed with these coordinated boon strip attacks then how should they counter them? they teleport away? vanish?

you already need enough support to be able to survive and some even get kicked out of groups, because commanders think they aren't playing a "good" profession or for any other reason. you want even more support to be able to survive? if boons can't protect you then what will?

at least with the current boon protection there can be more variety in the group and everybody can play how they want.
 

That could be fine in an open world pvp mode, even one with territory claim, but WvW is under a few time constraints that don't allow a lot of time to surgically dismantle a sustained boon composition. I would agree with you but right now, all of the advantage goes to that boon ball since the other side has to try desperate action to get anything through while their structure walls and gates are going down fast and the control point circle will go down even faster. 

There's also the dynamic where people or squads can build on a boon foundation rather than just fitting boons into the mix for the right times. With overlapping coverage for uptime and replacement, stat spreads can be more accommodating. 

Everyone can play how they want, but they'll need to be real about what they'll run into when the clock is running out. 

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

if you cant kill a boon ball just be a butt head and pinsnipe. theyll stop boon balling then

[XenesisII.1540]

16 minutes ago, Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

if you cant kill a boon ball just be a butt head and pinsnipe. theyll stop boon balling then

They'll just nerf whatever is being used for pinsnipe aka moa, although still surprised engie pull hasn't been nerfed yet. Still kinda useless anyways when there's 49 F buttons ready to go or a half dozen res skills. Commanders think they should be untouchable, even 5 ft alone ahead of their pack. 🤷‍♂️

[Cuks.8241]

2 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

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.

True. But the 3 points are solved by getting numbers, start coordinating and having the right comp. The way to win in large scale fights is to ensure those 3, boons or no boons. If you lack you will lose anyway. But yeah boons greatly increase the gap. Sure just reverting to old strips would help but it just does more of the same, more what at least I don't like with boons - spam. We have the same situation with condis and cleanses. In 5v5 there are still some tactics involved, when we go to large scale its basically condi spam vs cleanse spam. And everyone just spams cleanses to the point condis are mostly a non issue. And if cleanses are lacking we're in condi meta and if there is one thing people hate more than boonballs is condi meta.

WoD changes were bad. A boon denial field was fun. Was it overpowered relative to pretty much all other abilities? Yeah probably. Did it matter? Not really. Maybe some diminishing returns to WoD would be in order to prevent groups stacking it. But high impact, high CD, that makes combat interesting.

Remove alac completely (yeah also from pve but especially in wvw). They removed it almost completely. I don't know why they stopped at almost. One less boon to remove and less spam. And on top just a general boon nerf wouldn't hurt any mode either. 

[Kozumi.5816]

23 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

But the 3 points are solved by getting numbers, start coordinating and having the right comp.

None of those things are fun to deal with.

The game devs should be giving me even numbers via queueing/matchmaking systems.

if I want to tryhard in a PvP game, I'll play one that isn't the worst PvP game play gaming has to offer.

Edited July 31 by Kozumi.5816

[Hesione.9412]

23 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

True. But the 3 points are solved by getting numbers

 

And that is where the problem lies, the inability to get numbers. For those of us playing in low pop times, we can't magic up more players.

[Cael.3960]

Counters definitely exist. The problem is the need (real or imagined) for a group half, or even a quarter, of the boon ball's size to reliably beat it with a minimum of strategy, risk, and resources. At some point a question needs to be asked: should the number of people on a map, friendly or hostile, have any impact on the game at all? 

Because if the answer is no, then there's no actual player agency involved in the outcome of a match. If map population means nothing, than a single player's contributions also mean nothing. 

If the answer is yes, then there's an implicit understanding that more numbers mean a greater advantage. The question then becomes: should players be punished for seeking this advantage when the game allows it? 

This creates some very muddy waters. It makes sense, strategically, to mass one's strength where an enemy is weakest. You want a favorable matchup of advantages/disadvantages to increase the odds of success. The balance, and counterplay, to this strategy is to create a field of opportunity where equal gains can be found without contesting on your enemy's terms. This creates a moment of choice between attacker and defender: do I value this specific location and objective more than the collective distribution of reward across the entire map? And also a secondary choice: if I choose to fight, do I feel I can win with the distribution of resources at my disposal? 

 

I feel that rather than nerf the ability of a large groups of players there should be greater incentive for overwhelmed forces to seek equal gains elsewhere. The Outnumbered buff, for example, could reward significantly higher warscore and PPK for successful events and player kills. If flipping a t-0 camp rewards as much warscore as a t1 tower you begin to see a value in nibbling at the edges of a superior force's control of the map rather than face them directly. You also highly reward the rarer ninja-captures of tiered objectives, a situation which is much more likely when a map blob refuses to break apart to maintain what it's kept. I would also increase the supply cap for outnumbered teams across all friendly objectives and institute sabotage supply-depot as a standard tactic across all friendly objectives while outnumbered. This would improve an outnumbered teams ability to quickly supply up, build defensive siege/traps, and throw down siege on hostile objectives while forcing attacking groups to convoy between their objectives just to maintain momentum. 

 

For players who insist upon combat advantages to even the odds against significantly larger forces... I feel like a 'balanced' game mode probably isn't for you. That kind of out-sized single player impact really belongs in something like Dynasty Warriors or some kind of tower defense game where your opponents are trivialized as part of the power fantasy. . Significant personal challenges do exist in GW2, but they come with the caveat of specific, min/maxed builds and substantial player knowledge and ability. Soloing Raid bosses and dungeons, for example. Players who do this don't demand the devs nerf the content so they can clear it easier, they engage with it and find efficient (and sometimes bizarre) strategies for success. Maybe instead of asking for a bigger hammer to smash that blob, you think about how a different tool might do the job instead. 

[Kozumi.5816]

54 minutes ago, Cael.3960 said:

The Outnumbered buff, for example, could reward significantly higher warscore and PPK for successful events and player kills.

I think you're confused.

The outnumbered buff only exists to warn you that you are going to be farmed and can do nothing about it. Anet does not want to give "noobs" any advantage over their precious boon ball friends.

[Hesione.9412]

48 minutes ago, Cael.3960 said:

I feel that rather than nerf the ability of a large groups of players there should be greater incentive for overwhelmed forces to seek equal gains elsewhere. The Outnumbered buff, for example, could reward significantly higher warscore and PPK for successful events and player kills. If flipping a t-0 camp rewards as much warscore as a t1 tower you begin to see a value in nibbling at the edges of a superior force's control of the map rather than face them directly. You also highly reward the rarer ninja-captures of tiered objectives, a situation which is much more likely when a map blob refuses to break apart to maintain what it's kept. I would also increase the supply cap for outnumbered teams across all friendly objectives and institute sabotage supply-depot as a standard tactic across all friendly objectives while outnumbered. This would improve an outnumbered teams ability to quickly supply up, build defensive siege/traps, and throw down siege on hostile objectives while forcing attacking groups to convoy between their objectives just to maintain momentum.

We don't get defence credit or kill credit because we don't generate kills. If you don't kill an attacking player, then you don't get defence credit. All that happens is that camps near our spawn, and maybe the tower, are taken. That is why we stop playing.

Outnumbered sides are at a massive disadvantage when it comes to doing anything. We get run over and the enemy zergs go hunting us because we are their "content". I've had an enemy zerg jump on us because they hid inside a t1 tower before we got there.

A lot of this advice seems to be coming from people who don't routinely play as outnumbered. This is why I suggested invincibility of the outnumbered players - it would give us more time to nibble at the blob. Currently, we can't get near without being pulled and killed. We can't use defensive siege without being pulled and killed. Five people on arrow carts does nothing against an enemy zerg. You can't fight it. It's logoff for the night and do something else.

And the ones to blame are the players. If you create an alliance that blobs in off-hours, you are generating no content for yourself. You are also creating a downwards spiral effect because

1. no new players are going to stay in WvW if they enter via the low pop server

2. existing players on the low pop server are going to leave.

[Cael.3960]

27 minutes ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

I think you're confused.

The outnumbered buff only exists to warn you that you are going to be farmed and can do nothing about it. Anet does not want to give "noobs" any advantage over their precious boon ball friends.

... I shouldn't have to explain that this was a suggestion, but perhaps I'm mistaken and you're not making a serious statement at all. Sarcasm can be hard to recognize at times, even in a place like this. 

[Cael.3960]

27 minutes ago, Hesione.9412 said:

We don't get defence credit or kill credit because we don't generate kills. If you don't kill an attacking player, then you don't get defence credit. All that happens is that camps near our spawn, and maybe the tower, are taken. That is why we stop playing.

Outnumbered sides are at a massive disadvantage when it comes to doing anything. We get run over and the enemy zergs go hunting us because we are their "content". I've had an enemy zerg jump on us because they hid inside a t1 tower before we got there.

A lot of this advice seems to be coming from people who don't routinely play as outnumbered. This is why I suggested invincibility of the outnumbered players - it would give us more time to nibble at the blob. Currently, we can't get near without being pulled and killed. We can't use defensive siege without being pulled and killed. Five people on arrow carts does nothing against an enemy zerg. You can't fight it. It's logoff for the night and do something else.

And the ones to blame are the players. If you create an alliance that blobs in off-hours, you are generating no content for yourself. You are also creating a downwards spiral effect because

1. no new players are going to stay in WvW if they enter via the low pop server

2. existing players on the low pop server are going to leave.

If you're going to insist on fighting the blob head-on with vastly fewer players... yes, this is what you can expect. You're not going to kill the entire blob, and you're certainly not going to wipe them over and over to wrack up defender credits. Defense events are bugged badly enough right now that I wouldn't rely on them for participation even if I wasn't outnumbered on a map. Why is this the focus of your argument? Do you do anything else in WvW except look for blobs to lose to? Seriously, you're staring at a wall and complaining about how to get inside without realizing there might be a window or a door. Look for other avenues. 

Do you know hat also gets you participation? Killing guards. Killing yaks. Flipping camps. Ninja'ing towers or hiding thieves inside keeps to portal in a lord-room rush. You don't have to fight the blob to win, and when you're outnumbered there's very little reason to. Make a game of stripping them of their supply. Drop traps on their paths to camps. Get a pull-gank build off of metabattle and vulture the tail for stragglers with a few friends. You can build your own content without smashing your head against a wall, and you can do it and still maintain your pips if you think just a little more about what you're doing. Your success here creates additional success; when other folks see you're generating your own content they'll join in. It's a social game, make it a social occasion. 

I should also state, bluntly, that the blob isn't there to chase 5 people across the map for hours all because of the paltry bags they might offer up. It's not there to oppress you, shame you, ruin your day. They're there just to flip objectives, get their PPT rewards, and maybe fight something if it shows up. Or run; plenty of zergs do that too as soon as anything of equal size shows up. . 

I agree with you that blobs kill their own content. Mostly. Highly successful and overindulgent blobs kill their content, which is the kind of toxic ego-driven experience I imagine most people come here to complain about. Better managed groups don't tend to PPT any more than is necessary to attract the kind of content they DO want. They'll take time attacking a keep to summon a defense force, and they'll peel if the amount of siege-hate becomes unpalatable. It's not about  'winning' for them, it's about having fun. The moment a siege stops being fun the group goes somewhere else. If 'winning' matters, make the siege unpalatable for the boonball. If you don't have the resources to do that directly, you can do it by simply not being there or sabotaging supply. No opposition on a map can be just as unpalatable for a zerg as a fight where they never get to fight back. My point: there is more than one way to play the game outnumbered. Maintaining a defeatist attitude and demanding change that hand you wins rather than exploring alternate strategies takes a lot of the fun out of a competitive game. 

 

[coro.3176]

On 7/30/2024 at 11:34 AM, godfat.2604 said:

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.

Easy. BYOB

Bring Your Own Boons. No sharing!

[Hesione.9412]

19 minutes ago, Cael.3960 said:

If you're going to insist on fighting the blob head-on with vastly fewer players... yes, this is what you can expect. You're not going to kill the entire blob, and you're certainly not going to wipe them over and over to wrack up defender credits. Defense events are bugged badly enough right now that I wouldn't rely on them for participation even if I wasn't outnumbered on a map. Why is this the focus of your argument? Do you do anything else in WvW except look for blobs to lose to? Seriously, you're staring at a wall and complaining about how to get inside without realizing there might be a window or a door. Look for other avenues. 

Do you know hat also gets you participation? Killing guards. Killing yaks. Flipping camps. Ninja'ing towers or hiding thieves inside keeps to portal in a lord-room rush. You don't have to fight the blob to win, and when you're outnumbered there's very little reason to. Make a game of stripping them of their supply. Drop traps on their paths to camps. Get a pull-gank build off of metabattle and vulture the tail for stragglers with a few friends. You can build your own content without smashing your head against a wall, and you can do it and still maintain your pips if you think just a little more about what you're doing. Your success here creates additional success; when other folks see you're generating your own content they'll join in. It's a social game, make it a social occasion. 

I should also state, bluntly, that the blob isn't there to chase 5 people across the map for hours all because of the paltry bags they might offer up. It's not there to oppress you, shame you, ruin your day. They're there just to flip objectives, get their PPT rewards, and maybe fight something if it shows up. Or run; plenty of zergs do that too as soon as anything of equal size shows up. . 

I agree with you that blobs kill their own content. Mostly. Highly successful and overindulgent blobs kill their content, which is the kind of toxic ego-driven experience I imagine most people come here to complain about. Better managed groups don't tend to PPT any more than is necessary to attract the kind of content they DO want. They'll take time attacking a keep to summon a defense force, and they'll peel if the amount of siege-hate becomes unpalatable. It's not about  'winning' for them, it's about having fun. The moment a siege stops being fun the group goes somewhere else. If 'winning' matters, make the siege unpalatable for the boonball. If you don't have the resources to do that directly, you can do it by simply not being there or sabotaging supply. No opposition on a map can be just as unpalatable for a zerg as a fight where they never get to fight back. My point: there is more than one way to play the game outnumbered. Maintaining a defeatist attitude and demanding change that hand you wins rather than exploring alternate strategies takes a lot of the fun out of a competitive game. 

 

We try to flip things, the blob hunts us down and kills us because they want "content". I have, on multiple occasions, been in a small group that gets hunted by a blob. They have nothing else to do. They know where we are by what we flip. We can't leap from map to map because the easy flips are either already done, or the blob guesses where we are going next. We log off.

We look at flipping camps close to spawn. There is the lucky one or two players who get there and flip it before anyone else. We try to take a spawn tower. Participation dies. We log off.

PS traps and similar despawn when you leave a map.

 

That is our content.

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

As ive been saying before, if I had enough deadeyes to make a video, i would easily demonstrate how to kill a boon ball. it IS using single target kills/deaths to proc a trait that goes off on EVERY deadeye using it on the SAME target to get the AoE results. through this it also entirely rips the boons off (given enough deadeyes are on target and running the right setup) then its nigh unavoidable damage. sure you can aegis/invul before it goes off but as it generates MORE downs, just mark the downs and generate more downs around em....its got to be a coordinated spike. EcK worked with CC / CHZ alliance to do this and it worked exceedingly well, the only issue was that no one really knows/likes to play thief let alone deadeye. but when it worked it blew expectations out of the water.

so, its possible to eliminate but probable...no, not with the thief hate/disdain/unknowing.

 

[XenesisII.1540]

58 minutes ago, Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

As ive been saying before, if I had enough deadeyes to make a video, i would easily demonstrate how to kill a boon ball. it IS using single target kills/deaths to proc a trait that goes off on EVERY deadeye using it on the SAME target to get the AoE results. through this it also entirely rips the boons off (given enough deadeyes are on target and running the right setup) then its nigh unavoidable damage. sure you can aegis/invul before it goes off but as it generates MORE downs, just mark the downs and generate more downs around em....its got to be a coordinated spike. EcK worked with CC / CHZ alliance to do this and it worked exceedingly well, the only issue was that no one really knows/likes to play thief let alone deadeye. but when it worked it blew expectations out of the water.

so, its possible to eliminate but probable...no, not with the thief hate/disdain/unknowing.

Release the video and build.

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

29 minutes ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Release the video and build.

i dont need a video but i WANT one. you get me enough deadeyes and i can demonstrate how it works. been testing/tweaking the past 4 years. all youd have to do to SEE if it would work (it DOES work im just trying to geta point across) is slap on Collateral damage with a few buds. mark same target, on death the mobs around it will have taken more damage than with 1 person with Collateral Damage. so its kills through single target's death, via the multiple Collateral Damages going off same time. only aegis/inv/evades will get past it, the more you add on target doing marks and trying to kill, the better the results. furthermore if you all took Payback then spammy skills go pew pew pew.

 

Edited August 1 by Lithril Ashwalker.6230

[XenesisII.1540]

12 minutes ago, Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

i dont need a video but i WANT one. you get me enough deadeyes and i can demonstrate how it works. been testing/tweaking the past 4 years. all youd have to do to SEE if it would work is slap on Collateral damage with a few buds. mark same target, on death the mobs around it will have taken more damage than with 1 person with Collateral Damage. so its kills through single target's death, via the multiple Collateral Damages going off same time. only aegis/inv/evades will get past it, the more you add on target doing marks and trying to kill, the better the results. furthermore if you all took Payback then spammy skills go pew pew pew.

Post the build. It's not up to me to recruit for you. It's up to you to convince 10 people on your world to play deadeye against a zerg.

 

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

7 minutes ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

Post the build. It's not up to me to recruit for you. It's up to you to convince 10 people on your world to play deadeye against a zerg.

 

[&DQUUPiwnOhoMAQoBIBdVAeQWPgFYAFcBnwEOAQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAADBQAvAFUAAA==]
mailed in game :3

 Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos.

Edited August 1 by Lithril Ashwalker.6230

[godfat.2604]

6 hours ago, coro.3176 said:

Easy. BYOB

Bring Your Own Boons. No sharing!

I personally prefer we look at how it was working back then. Before engagement, put fire fields and blast it, cast Empower (guardian staff 4). Note that those mights don't last long, definitely cannot be maintained. Empower is also rooting the players, it's very risky or impossible to cast during the fights. Standing still = death.

Even for healing we need to call out small water or big water, and everyone blast them to heal.

Much more coordination than today. I think duration is the key. Back then concentration isn't a thing either.

Some suggest that we can reduce the cap of maximum duration for each boon. While it solves one side that the boons last for too long, it would be boring to cast a skill and then boons are capped as well. I still think we need to reduce the boon duration on the skills, so in order to cap the boons, everyone needs to cast their skills together at the same time, not just someone hit a button.

[hugeboss.5432]

Now that we have dmg back in wvw, i'm seeing+having much better success at fighting boonballs. Even with a bunch of assorted pugs you can take down guild boonballs if played right (you will likely still need a handful of veteran players with funky builds to be successful tho). It might take some time to wipe them fully, but it's definitely much much easier than it was a year ago!

[Chaos God.1639]

10 hours ago, Hesione.9412 said:

And that is where the problem lies, the inability to get numbers. For those of us playing in low pop times, we can't magic up more players.

and this is another benefit of "boonball" fights, now every team knows that they need more players to be able to defend properly. this will increase players count on wvw maps, otherwise the other team will just be a clear winner.

players talk about different issues here. you should try to fix the root causes and not just place all the blame on the boons. there is probably just one support class or defensive boon that is very op in wvw and some here are complaining about all boons...

they could maybe buff other abilities, like knowdown/stuns/daze that also could be used to counter boonballs. if there is no clear counter to boonstrip abilities, then whats the point of making these abilities stronger.

[Dawdler.8521]

3 hours ago, Chaos God.1639 said:

there is probably just one support class or defensive boon that is very op in wvw and some here are complaining about all boons...

I… am not sure you’ve ever played WvW after making such a statement.

[Teknomancer.4895]

On 7/30/2024 at 1:53 PM, XenesisII.1540 said:

Still funny to see boon ballers crumble when their precious boons are taken away and they're left on the level of pugs.

Addiction is harsh when you can't get your fix, man...