Some WvW-Centric Thoughts on the Oct. 1 Notes and Future Revision & Balance

[Virtuality.8351]

I'd like to start by quoting the developers in an earlier announcement relevant to the latest one:

@"Irenio CalmonHuang.2048" said:With these changes the objective is to bring the dominant builds and compositions into line and offer more build diversity to the existing meta.

Supposedly that the objective remains the same, let's see what the these changes could achieve.

1. Scrapped Proposals

Several items in the previous proposal announced by the developers on Sep. 13 has been scrapped off the table and not presented in the latest announcement. Notable ones include:

Guardian

• Stand Your Ground: Reduce the stacks of stability granted by this ability from 5 to 3 in WvW.

Necromancer

• Sand Cascade: Reduce the base barrier granted by this skill by 33% in WvW & PvP, increase the healing power contribution by 20%, as the healing coefficient is already pretty strong.
• Sand Flare: Reduce the base barrier granted by this skill by 25% in WvW, increase the healing power contribution by 33%.
• Desert Shroud: Increase the base barrier granted by this skill by 10%, increase the healing power contribution by 15% and reduce the damage inflicted by this ability by 20% in WvW.

So, at first the developers planned two things:

a. to reduce the Barrier by Power/Condition Scourge while still saving a spot for dedicated support Scourge, andb. to normalize the group Stability stacks 'Stand Your Ground!' provides, which has been above the curve as other professions typically provides ~3. 

Theoretically, these changes alone could make room for other professions, creating opportunities for other professions to take the Barrier/Stability support role, provided that alternatives (new skills and traits, in this case, e.g., Barrier provided by Warrior's Warhorn skills) are given.

In practice, however, things might not be the case. It has been clear over these years that players do not always go where the developers intend them to. For example, what if people consider the alternatives still not as effective and decide to just bring more Guardian to compensate for the change? Or, what if the alternatives are indeed effective, but people just would not change to something else out of path dependency or gear restriction?

And even in the best case scenario, where these changes and alternatives are implemented with success (that is, intended player response), there may still be a risk of professions losing each one's own identity, as everyone would be able to perform similar or even the same functions, just with a variety of 'flavors'. Diversity of professions could be achieved, though might not be in the right way.

2. Warrior as the Anti-Barrier Specialist

In the proposal for Oct. 1 release, we see a rather different approach. Scourge, geared up for it or not, will remain the major source of group Barrier, which corresponds to the Sand Shade theme, while Guardian will keep the most important skill that make it staple in WvW. Instead of addressing the unintended overabundance of Barrier by the dropping of the nerf hammer, the developers introduced a class with its newly revised specialization and assigned it the role to counter it.

Warrior

• Master:
  • Warrior's Cunning: This new trait increases damage by 25% against foes with health above 90%. Additionally, it increases damage by 50% against foes that have barrier. These bonuses do not stack.

Along with the other relevant items for Guardian and Necromancers, which are indeed nerfs, though trivial, we might be seeing the start of a trend here. If something's good at what it does, leave it or tweak it down only just reasonably. (Unless you intend it for something else; see Revenant's CoR nerf and support feature buffs.) Diversity is to be achieved by introducing new countermeasures against what is regarded overpowered or dominant.

And with a huge lot of old mechanics, specializations and skills long neglected and to be revised, there is plenty of room for new countermeasures, without the introduction of new specializations.

With such conclusion in mind, I can't help but wonder what might possibly be introduced to break the cycle of stacking, corruption and reapplication of Boons. A new mechanic that temporarily prevents corruption from taking its effect? Sounds like a good plan to revise Guardian's Consecration skills to me.

3. Ambivalence of Barrier and Potential Countermeasures

People have already been speculating possible application of Warrior's Cunning, and the potential coming back of Rifle Warrior with temporary Unblockable effect. The aim is to pack as much damage as possible in one single hit, to not only take down the Barrier, but hopefully also a good portion of Health altogether.

Barrier thus could become a double edged blade. (Imaging you have 1.5k Barrier on you and then get hit for 10k.) And the most problematic part is that, since Scourge, as the major source of group Barrier, is so dominant for Boon corruption it brings, there is no way to get rid of it.

How would people response to it? Revenant with Rite of the Great Dwarf at the end of Barrier stacks would probably be more applicable. Compared to alternatives, it is just more efficient (no attribute point investment required), more effective (50%), and most importantly, already being used and tested.

What about by stacking up even more group Barrier, with, say, Warrior and Scourge? To me this does not seem likely in regard to the how Barrier skills scale with Healing Power at the moment, and neither profession seem to provide as much as Firebrand or Scrapper. If the developers intend dedicated support Warrior or Scourge to be a thing, they must make them provide at least as much as what is prevalent.

The arms race does provide the possibility to snowball into a chain of response in which people bring up new stuffs and as a result increase diversity. However that requires practical alternatives that is at least worth its opportunity cost. With still a lot of obsolete design to be revised, hopefully we will get our alternatives done right, starting with Warrior's Tactics specialization.

EDIT:

To quote myself from comment #3 below:

while countermeasure as a mean to balance, to truly achieve diversity, players' decision-making based on opportunity cost must be taken into consideration. Providing attractive or even mandatory alternatives alone will not solve the problem; the developers must also reduce the opportunity cost by, in this case, making sure that no class can alone serve different roles effectively at the same time (i.e., Scourge must not be effective on both offense and defense/support at the same time).

For context, see previous comments.

[Dadnir.5038]

ANet took a balance direction that does not analyse fully the issue in WvW. In itself, neither barrier nor the coverage of the scourge are an issue. The issue is that a high level of support associated to an equaly high damage potential made stacking scourges a must. If ANet really wanted to open room for other professions in WvW zergs, they just had to remove the damages from the shades (because, obviously, since the core necromancer offer no other defensive option than the shroud, the shades have to offer defense to the scourge).

Neither druid nor ventari revenants were ever stacked for the good reason that they sacrifice their damage to be able to support, if you want scourge to not be stacked, scourge simply need to sacrifice it's damages as well. And it's not by modifying healing coefficient on barrier that it will ever be achieved.

[Virtuality.8351]

@Dadnir.5038 said:ANet took a balance direction that does not analyse fully the issue in WvW. In itself, neither barrier nor the coverage of the scourge are an issue. The issue is that a high level of support associated to an equaly high damage potential made stacking scourges a must. If ANet really wanted to open room for other professions in WvW zergs, they just had to remove the damages from the shades (because, obviously, since the core necromancer offer no other defensive option than the shroud, the shades have to offer defense to the scourge).

Neither druid nor ventari revenants were ever stacked for the good reason that they sacrifice their damage to be able to support, if you want scourge to not be stacked, scourge simply need to sacrifice it's damages as well. And it's not by modifying healing coefficient on barrier that it will ever be achieved.

I agree. Though until the release of the next lineup of elite specialization, I do not think we'd see its support aspect decoupling its offensive one.

Well, at least not per elite specialization. In practice, I do think there are means to make sure that, while packing both offense and defense, the specialization can only be good at either one, instead of both, at the same time.

One mean we had seen as the developers originally proposed, was to scale down the base value of all crucial functions that make Scourge fulfill its two different roles, only allowing them to shine if associated traits are selected or gears providing relevant attributes are equipped. In this case, we had reduction of the base value of its Barrier skills, at the same time increase in scaling on Healing Power (which was added in the later announcement after my suggestion <3; glad to know the developers do collect feedbacks), so that Power/Condition DPS Scourges can no longer provide as much Barrier support as before, while a spot is retained for dedicated Healer/Support Scourge.

And I believe the same approach is viable as well for other support features and even offensive features of this class. This is also probably the only way we get this issue properly addressed, before the release of next expansion and with it a new elite specialization that can maybe take one of Scourge's two major functions away from it.

[Virtuality.8351]

So, maybe we can conclude that:

while countermeasure as a mean to balance, to truly achieve diversity, players' decision-making based on opportunity cost must be taken into consideration. Providing attractive or even mandatory alternatives alone will not solve the problem; the developers must also reduce the opportunity cost by, in this case, making sure that no class can alone serve different roles effectively at the same time (i.e., Scourge must not be effective on both offense and defense/support at the same time).

[Dadnir.5038]

@Virtuality.8351 said:And I believe the same approach is viable as well for other support features and even offensive features of this class. This is also probably the only way we get this issue properly addressed, before the release of next expansion and with it a new elite specialization that can maybe take one of Scourge's two major functions away from it.

I don't think so.

You are considering barrier as a scourge's issue, it is not. The fondamental reason why WvW players have an issue with barrier is because barriers stack and zergs tend to cap barrier before engaging. If you want to balance barrier, the best way is to make them unable to stack. Only after that you can play with barrier healing coefficient and taking healing power will become worth it.

The second fonction of scourge is not damage but area denial. The main issue with that is that the core necromancer already own more than enough area denial tools that are available to the scourge. In short, Scourge was simply powercrept in area denial potential. This area denial attached to the shades simply need to go in order to balance scourge. From the very beginning it was a bad idea and led to a vast array of different kind of nerfs on the scourge and core necromancer. If this area denial powercreep hadn't been given to scourge, we wouldn't have the aggressive red circle that polute our eyes, there wouldn't have been any need for the specialization split for dhuumfire and path of corruption and shades skills wouldn't have lost so much support power... Even the new way shades work wouldn't have been implemented. The whole issue is due to an area denial powercreep and ANet just nerf around since PoF launch while stating firmly that they don't want to introduce powercreep.

Scourge just needed barrier to be fixed and it's area denial powercreep to be nerfed. Now with the mechanical damage it just took, there is even more work to be done on it just to make sure that it's playable in small scale and solo content.