Potential Future Balance Changes - WvW

[XenesisII.1540]

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/93089/game-update-notes-december-3-2019

[miguelsil.6324]

That's great. But what's not great is you trying to build up credibility of what you say by claiming you've played something to the point of "getting bored of it because it was too easy", when in reality you didn't even touch it (as shown by your admitted lack of knowledge about how to even gear the class/build in the first place). You're free to have your opinion, but I think that if you were actually sure about your claims you wouldn't need to lie about it. And yet here we are.

Just to clarify one lst time before I stop responding to your taunts, I do have a thief and have played it but due to lack of time I prefer to play my other 2 favorite classes instead of spending time on that one to get footage to prove a point that does not need proving.

drops the mic and leaves

[Sobx.1758]

@"miguelsil.6324" said:

That's great. But what's not great is you trying to build up credibility of what you say by claiming you've played something to the point of "getting bored of it because it was too easy", when in reality you didn't even touch it (as shown by your admitted lack of knowledge about how to even gear the class/build in the first place). You're free to have your opinion, but I think that if you were actually sure about your claims you wouldn't need to lie about it. And yet here we are.

Just to clarify one lst time before I stop responding to your taunts, I do have a thief and have played it but due to lack of time I prefer to play my other 2 favorite classes instead of spending time on that one to get footage to prove a point that does not need proving.

"taunts"? All I did was repeat what you said and why it looks like a bunch of lies. You literally said you don't know what to use thief.

drops the mic and leaves

lmao, what? As usual, you answered to nothing and somehow still feel like a winner. :D

[Sleepwalker.1398]

I wish Anet introduces this almost/close to 3 y/o pvp sigil to WvW.Sigil of Annulment (PvP)I know, i'll be happy if its introduced with a lesser cooldown....and i know many would not be :)

[cobbah.3102]

Just fix the broken game once and for all ,forget the "potential fixes"make it work !!!

[NaramSin.2693]

Instead of constantly nerf professions, having also different mechanic for the SAME skill in PVE, WvW, PvP etc why don't You give countermeasure to other professions so they will be "nerfed" by the players? and you do not have to change COSTANTLY everything,As a side note, thank for working on competitive game modes, btw try to do something about FULL status of the servers, they are not really full but people canìt join them, solve this or think about a new way to manage this, really, big issue, not nerfing scourge.

[The Holy Advenger.1758]

I'm really glad indefinitely dodging with mirage is still around after being here for years. Great mechanics.

[God.2708]

@Tao.5096 said:Or because nerf to it's Distortion made it no longer viable.

I'm going to be nice and assume that you meant CHRONO'S nerf to its SHATTERS are what made it no longer viable. To which you'd still be wrong, but it actually makes sense rather than make you look like an idiot. It also makes the rest of your arguments very poorly credible given they aren't actually based on anything except how you feel.

[lodjur.1284]

The only reason that scourge is overpowered (in zergs that is, outside of zergs the class has been nerfed to far beyond unplayable) is because the game systems incentivize stacking. Given that the class basically only has (ranged) AoE skills that also happen to corrupt boons.

The game does this in multiple ways, the biggest betting the AoE cap, if there was no AoE caps on any offensive skills, people wouldn't stack up so tightly (or at least this would be strategically incorrect to do). If people spread out more scourge (and AoE) wouldn't always be the best offensive option. But given that everyone in these kinds fights are always stacked up, you're always hitting the maximum amount of targets with every single skill you cast, meaning that in order for AoEs not to always vastly outperform single target skills they'd have to be nerfed into uselessness.

Until offensive AoE caps are removed scourge will get nerfed almost every patch and remain a problem in this specific environment. Which is a shame for those of us that absolutely hate zerging and fell in love with a class centered around Area denial and boon/condi control that hasn't been overpowered outside of zergs for a very very long time. Personally I don't really care that much anymore as I have accepted that scourge will never be playable again most likely, but it doesn't have to be this way. Except at the very start of PoF (and arguably not even then) the class was never overpowered in smaller scale such as 5v5 or similar fight sizes, because people would move.

Tl;dr AoE caps encourage AoE spam and stacking, scourge is just the best class at it.

[Emberheart.8426]

@lodjur.1284 said:The only reason that scourge is overpowered (in zergs that is, outside of zergs the class has been nerfed to far beyond unplayable) is because the game systems incentivize stacking. Given that the class basically only has (ranged) AoE skills that also happen to corrupt boons.

The game does this in multiple ways, the biggest betting the AoE cap, if there was no AoE caps on any offensive skills, people wouldn't stack up so tightly (or at least this would be strategically incorrect to do). If people spread out more scourge (and AoE) wouldn't always be the best offensive option. But given that everyone in these kinds fights are always stacked up, you're always hitting the maximum amount of targets with every single skill you cast, meaning that in order for AoEs not to always vastly outperform single target skills they'd have to be nerfed into uselessness.

Until offensive AoE caps are removed scourge will get nerfed almost every patch and remain a problem in this specific environment. Which is a shame for those of us that absolutely hate zerging and fell in love with a class centered around Area denial and boon/condi control that hasn't been overpowered outside of zergs for a very very long time. Personally I don't really care that much anymore as I have accepted that scourge will never be playable again most likely, but it doesn't have to be this way. Except at the very start of PoF (and arguably not even then) the class was never overpowered in smaller scale such as 5v5 or similar fight sizes, because people would move.

Tl;dr AoE caps encourage AoE spam and stacking, scourge is just the best class at it.

AoE caps will never be removed because it would cause massive skill lag and server issues. Also, one thing that is often forgotten about stacking is that there is a way bigger incentive to do it than the AoE target caps. The entire support role in GW2 is designed around AoE heals, cleanse and boon application, with its most common form being pbAoE. There are no support abilities that target specific players. Also boons must be constantly replenished, unlike in other MMOs where buffs last for about an hour.

What this does is that it forces players to stack to get the proper support they need. Especially boons, which happen to also be way stronger than buffs typically are in other MMOs.

[lodjur.1284]

@Ganathar.4956 said:

@"lodjur.1284" said:The only reason that scourge is overpowered (in zergs that is, outside of zergs the class has been nerfed to far beyond unplayable) is because the game systems incentivize stacking. Given that the class basically only has (ranged) AoE skills that also happen to corrupt boons.

The game does this in multiple ways, the biggest betting the AoE cap, if there was no AoE caps on any offensive skills, people wouldn't stack up so tightly (or at least this would be strategically incorrect to do). If people spread out more scourge (and AoE) wouldn't always be the best offensive option. But given that everyone in these kinds fights are always stacked up, you're always hitting the maximum amount of targets with every single skill you cast, meaning that in order for AoEs not to always vastly outperform single target skills they'd have to be nerfed into uselessness.

Until offensive AoE caps are removed scourge will get nerfed almost every patch and remain a problem in this specific environment. Which is a shame for those of us that absolutely hate zerging and fell in love with a class centered around Area denial and boon/condi control that hasn't been overpowered outside of zergs for a very very long time. Personally I don't really care that much anymore as I have accepted that scourge will never be playable again most likely, but it doesn't have to be this way. Except at the very start of PoF (and arguably not even then) the class was never overpowered in smaller scale such as 5v5 or similar fight sizes, because people would move.

Tl;dr AoE caps encourage AoE spam and stacking, scourge is just the best class at it.

AoE caps will never be removed because it would cause massive skill lag and server issues.

First part is mostly incorrect, even so there's a ton of things they could change to lower lag, the easiest one being to remove retaliation from the game (which also happens to be a great suggestion even disregarding lag) or changing how various damage over time things work in areas with multiple players (such as making many of the skills that do damage 5 times /sec do more dmg once /sec)

AoE caps force the game to do calculations about who takes dmg, which might or might not be more complex than simply calculating dmg more times.

Also no AoE caps means shorter fights, which means shorter duration of lag. Even now if 2 map blobs are fighting on the opposite end of the map that essentially means me and my group just has to afk into they're e done, which can take very long, so even if (which I very much doubt) the lag would get worse it would simply go from unplayable to unplayable for a shorter time.

Forcing people to spread out or die also lowers lag.

Also, one thing that is often forgotten about stacking is that there is a way bigger incentive to do it than the AoE target caps. The entire support role in GW2 is designed around AoE heals, cleanse and boon application, with its most common form being pbAoE.

Yet without AoE cap there's little reason to stack more than 5 players on each other and close to 0 reason to stack more than 10. The 50-90% (50% at 10 players, 90% at 50) complete AoE dmg reduction is the main reason to. Even at 10 players this is much much stronger than the protection boon which is often considered "too strong".

This would also remove a random arbitrary advantage that big groups have over smaller groups. That isn't because the big group can do more damage or heal more or one of the many legit benefits of being more players, but simply an advantage because they take less dmg.

Stacking inside enemy AoEs being the best strategy is as unintuitive as the fact that AoE caps encourage stacking. Making the game strategically deeper in that everyone attacking on the tag isn't the by far best strategy seems like a positive.

There are no support abilities that target specific players. Also boons must be constantly replenished, unlike in other MMOs where buffs last for about an hour.

Forcing players to spread out would definitively make it more complicated to keep full uptime on "all" boons. Is that a bad thing?

What this does is that it forces players to stack to get the proper support they need. Especially boons, which happen to also be way stronger than buffs typically are in other MMOs.

It forces stacking in groups of 5 (or 10 in some very stupid cases), not stacking in blobs of 15-50. Without offensive AoE caps I believe the on theory ideal strategy for bigger groups would be spreading out on groups of 5-10 in the same general area but not all inside the tag. This is however a lot more complicated than everyone stacking on the tag so that it's not very popular is fairly self explanatory, yet it would be very healthy.

[God.2708]

@lodjur.1284 said:

@Ganathar.4956 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:The only reason that scourge is overpowered (in zergs that is, outside of zergs the class has been nerfed to far beyond unplayable) is because the game systems incentivize stacking. Given that the class basically only has (ranged) AoE skills that also happen to corrupt boons.

The game does this in multiple ways, the biggest betting the AoE cap, if there was no AoE caps on any offensive skills, people wouldn't stack up so tightly (or at least this would be strategically incorrect to do). If people spread out more scourge (and AoE) wouldn't always be the best offensive option. But given that everyone in these kinds fights are always stacked up, you're always hitting the maximum amount of targets with every single skill you cast, meaning that in order for AoEs not to always vastly outperform single target skills they'd have to be nerfed into uselessness.

Until offensive AoE caps are removed scourge will get nerfed almost every patch and remain a problem in this specific environment. Which is a shame for those of us that absolutely hate zerging and fell in love with a class centered around Area denial and boon/condi control that hasn't been overpowered outside of zergs for a very very long time. Personally I don't really care that much anymore as I have accepted that scourge will never be playable again most likely, but it doesn't have to be this way. Except at the very start of PoF (and arguably not even then) the class was never overpowered in smaller scale such as 5v5 or similar fight sizes, because people would move.

Tl;dr AoE caps encourage AoE spam and stacking, scourge is just the best class at it.

AoE caps will never be removed because it would cause massive skill lag and server issues.

First part is mostly incorrect, even so there's a ton of things they could change to lower lag, the easiest one being to remove retaliation from the game (which also happens to be a great suggestion even disregarding lag) or changing how various damage over time things work in areas with multiple players (such as making many of the skills that do damage 5 times /sec do more dmg once /sec)

AoE caps force the game to do calculations about who takes dmg, which might or might not be more complex than simply calculating dmg more times.

Also no AoE caps means shorter fights, which means shorter duration of lag. Even now if 2 map blobs are fighting on the opposite end of the map that essentially means me and my group just has to afk into they're e done, which can take very long, so even if (which I very much doubt) the lag would get worse it would simply go from unplayable to unplayable for a shorter time.

Forcing people to spread out or die also lowers lag.

Also, one thing that is often forgotten about stacking is that there is a way bigger incentive to do it than the AoE target caps. The entire support role in GW2 is designed around AoE heals, cleanse and boon application, with its most common form being pbAoE.

Yet without AoE cap there's little reason to stack more than 5 players on each other and close to 0 reason to stack more than 10. The 50-90% (50% at 10 players, 90% at 50) complete AoE dmg reduction is the main reason to. Even at 10 players this is much much stronger than the protection boon which is often considered "too strong".

This would also remove a random arbitrary advantage that big groups have over smaller groups. That isn't because the big group can do more damage or heal more or one of the many legit benefits of being more players, but simply an advantage because they take less dmg.

Stacking inside enemy AoEs being the best strategy is as unintuitive as the fact that AoE caps encourage stacking. Making the game strategically deeper in that everyone attacking on the tag isn't the by far best strategy seems like a positive.

There are no support abilities that target specific players. Also boons must be constantly replenished, unlike in other MMOs where buffs last for about an hour.

Forcing players to spread out would definitively make it more complicated to keep full uptime on "all" boons. Is that a bad thing?

What this does is that it forces players to stack to get the proper support they need. Especially boons, which happen to also be way stronger than buffs typically are in other MMOs.

It forces stacking in groups of 5 (or 10 in some very stupid cases), not stacking in blobs of 15-50. Without offensive AoE caps I believe the on theory ideal strategy for bigger groups would be spreading out on groups of 5-10 in the same general area but not all inside the tag. This is however a lot more complicated than everyone stacking on the tag so that it's not very popular is fairly self explanatory, yet it would be very healthy.

Stacking in blobs of 50 is done due to ease of access and lack of leadership/interest. 10 organized 5 man groups deal the same damage as a 50 man group, but the 50 man group can only hit 5 people at a time whilst they are neatly stacked for the 10 groups of 5 to bomb on and deal much more overall damage. Removing AoE caps wouldn't incentivize spreading, it would just encourage solo play more.

[lodjur.1284]

@God.2708 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:

@Ganathar.4956 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:The only reason that scourge is overpowered (in zergs that is, outside of zergs the class has been nerfed to far beyond unplayable) is because the game systems incentivize stacking. Given that the class basically only has (ranged) AoE skills that also happen to corrupt boons.

The game does this in multiple ways, the biggest betting the AoE cap, if there was no AoE caps on any offensive skills, people wouldn't stack up so tightly (or at least this would be strategically incorrect to do). If people spread out more scourge (and AoE) wouldn't always be the best offensive option. But given that everyone in these kinds fights are always stacked up, you're always hitting the maximum amount of targets with every single skill you cast, meaning that in order for AoEs not to always vastly outperform single target skills they'd have to be nerfed into uselessness.

Until offensive AoE caps are removed scourge will get nerfed almost every patch and remain a problem in this specific environment. Which is a shame for those of us that absolutely hate zerging and fell in love with a class centered around Area denial and boon/condi control that hasn't been overpowered outside of zergs for a very very long time. Personally I don't really care that much anymore as I have accepted that scourge will never be playable again most likely, but it doesn't have to be this way. Except at the very start of PoF (and arguably not even then) the class was never overpowered in smaller scale such as 5v5 or similar fight sizes, because people would move.

Tl;dr AoE caps encourage AoE spam and stacking, scourge is just the best class at it.

AoE caps will never be removed because it would cause massive skill lag and server issues.

First part is mostly incorrect, even so there's a ton of things they could change to lower lag, the easiest one being to remove retaliation from the game (which also happens to be a great suggestion even disregarding lag) or changing how various damage over time things work in areas with multiple players (such as making many of the skills that do damage 5 times /sec do more dmg once /sec)

AoE caps force the game to do calculations about who takes dmg, which might or might not be more complex than simply calculating dmg more times.

Also no AoE caps means shorter fights, which means shorter duration of lag. Even now if 2 map blobs are fighting on the opposite end of the map that essentially means me and my group just has to afk into they're e done, which can take very long, so even if (which I very much doubt) the lag would get worse it would simply go from unplayable to unplayable for a shorter time.

Forcing people to spread out or die also lowers lag.

Also, one thing that is often forgotten about stacking is that there is a way bigger incentive to do it than the AoE target caps. The entire support role in GW2 is designed around AoE heals, cleanse and boon application, with its most common form being pbAoE.

Yet without AoE cap there's little reason to stack more than 5 players on each other and close to 0 reason to stack more than 10. The 50-90% (50% at 10 players, 90% at 50) complete AoE dmg reduction is the main reason to. Even at 10 players this is much much stronger than the protection boon which is often considered "too strong".

This would also remove a random arbitrary advantage that big groups have over smaller groups. That isn't because the big group can do more damage or heal more or one of the many legit benefits of being more players, but simply an advantage because they take less dmg.

Stacking inside enemy AoEs being the best strategy is as unintuitive as the fact that AoE caps encourage stacking. Making the game strategically deeper in that everyone attacking on the tag isn't the by far best strategy seems like a positive.

There are no support abilities that target specific players. Also boons must be constantly replenished, unlike in other MMOs where buffs last for about an hour.

Forcing players to spread out would definitively make it more complicated to keep full uptime on "all" boons. Is that a bad thing?

What this does is that it forces players to stack to get the proper support they need. Especially boons, which happen to also be way stronger than buffs typically are in other MMOs.

It forces stacking in groups of 5 (or 10 in some very stupid cases), not stacking in blobs of 15-50. Without offensive AoE caps I believe the on theory ideal strategy for bigger groups would be spreading out on groups of 5-10 in the same general area but not all inside the tag. This is however a lot more complicated than everyone stacking on the tag so that it's not very popular is fairly self explanatory, yet it would be very healthy.

Stacking in blobs of 50 is done due to ease of access and lack of leadership/interest. 10 organized 5 man groups deal the same damage as a 50 man group, but the 50 man group can only hit 5 people at a time whilst they are neatly stacked for the 10 groups of 5 to bomb on and deal much more overall damage. Removing AoE caps wouldn't incentivize spreading, it would just encourage solo play more.

In the current state the 10 groups of 5 would deal the same damage as the stacked group of 50, while requiring far more effort/communication/skill. In addition the 50 man group gets to benefit from less focused fire as the dmg gets "split evenly-ish", smart healing and faster/easier ressing.

Without AoE caps the 10 groups of 5 would be doing 10 times more damage than the stacked group of 50, while requiring far more effort/communication/skill.

Also during solo play its very rare that the AoE cap really matters.

[God.2708]

@lodjur.1284 said:

@God.2708 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:

@Ganathar.4956 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:The only reason that scourge is overpowered (in zergs that is, outside of zergs the class has been nerfed to far beyond unplayable) is because the game systems incentivize stacking. Given that the class basically only has (ranged) AoE skills that also happen to corrupt boons.

The game does this in multiple ways, the biggest betting the AoE cap, if there was no AoE caps on any offensive skills, people wouldn't stack up so tightly (or at least this would be strategically incorrect to do). If people spread out more scourge (and AoE) wouldn't always be the best offensive option. But given that everyone in these kinds fights are always stacked up, you're always hitting the maximum amount of targets with every single skill you cast, meaning that in order for AoEs not to always vastly outperform single target skills they'd have to be nerfed into uselessness.

Until offensive AoE caps are removed scourge will get nerfed almost every patch and remain a problem in this specific environment. Which is a shame for those of us that absolutely hate zerging and fell in love with a class centered around Area denial and boon/condi control that hasn't been overpowered outside of zergs for a very very long time. Personally I don't really care that much anymore as I have accepted that scourge will never be playable again most likely, but it doesn't have to be this way. Except at the very start of PoF (and arguably not even then) the class was never overpowered in smaller scale such as 5v5 or similar fight sizes, because people would move.

Tl;dr AoE caps encourage AoE spam and stacking, scourge is just the best class at it.

AoE caps will never be removed because it would cause massive skill lag and server issues.

First part is mostly incorrect, even so there's a ton of things they could change to lower lag, the easiest one being to remove retaliation from the game (which also happens to be a great suggestion even disregarding lag) or changing how various damage over time things work in areas with multiple players (such as making many of the skills that do damage 5 times /sec do more dmg once /sec)

AoE caps force the game to do calculations about who takes dmg, which might or might not be more complex than simply calculating dmg more times.

Also no AoE caps means shorter fights, which means shorter duration of lag. Even now if 2 map blobs are fighting on the opposite end of the map that essentially means me and my group just has to afk into they're e done, which can take very long, so even if (which I very much doubt) the lag would get worse it would simply go from unplayable to unplayable for a shorter time.

Forcing people to spread out or die also lowers lag.

Also, one thing that is often forgotten about stacking is that there is a way bigger incentive to do it than the AoE target caps. The entire support role in GW2 is designed around AoE heals, cleanse and boon application, with its most common form being pbAoE.

Yet without AoE cap there's little reason to stack more than 5 players on each other and close to 0 reason to stack more than 10. The 50-90% (50% at 10 players, 90% at 50) complete AoE dmg reduction is the main reason to. Even at 10 players this is much much stronger than the protection boon which is often considered "too strong".

This would also remove a random arbitrary advantage that big groups have over smaller groups. That isn't because the big group can do more damage or heal more or one of the many legit benefits of being more players, but simply an advantage because they take less dmg.

Stacking inside enemy AoEs being the best strategy is as unintuitive as the fact that AoE caps encourage stacking. Making the game strategically deeper in that everyone attacking on the tag isn't the by far best strategy seems like a positive.

There are no support abilities that target specific players. Also boons must be constantly replenished, unlike in other MMOs where buffs last for about an hour.

Forcing players to spread out would definitively make it more complicated to keep full uptime on "all" boons. Is that a bad thing?

What this does is that it forces players to stack to get the proper support they need. Especially boons, which happen to also be way stronger than buffs typically are in other MMOs.

It forces stacking in groups of 5 (or 10 in some very stupid cases), not stacking in blobs of 15-50. Without offensive AoE caps I believe the on theory ideal strategy for bigger groups would be spreading out on groups of 5-10 in the same general area but not all inside the tag. This is however a lot more complicated than everyone stacking on the tag so that it's not very popular is fairly self explanatory, yet it would be very healthy.

Stacking in blobs of 50 is done due to ease of access and lack of leadership/interest. 10 organized 5 man groups deal the same damage as a 50 man group, but the 50 man group can only hit 5 people at a time whilst they are neatly stacked for the 10 groups of 5 to bomb on and deal much more overall damage. Removing AoE caps wouldn't incentivize spreading, it would just encourage solo play more.

In the current state the 10 groups of 5 would deal the same damage as the stacked group of 50, while requiring far more effort/communication/skill. In addition the 50 man group gets to benefit from less focused fire as the dmg gets "split evenly-ish", smart healing and faster/easier ressing.

Without AoE caps the 10 groups of 5 would be doing 10 times more damage than the stacked group of 50, while requiring far more effort/communication/skill.

Also during solo play its very rare that the AoE cap really matters.

It'd be important to differentiate receiving/dealing damage in this discussion.In the current state 10 5 mans deal as much as a 50 man group deals. They receive less overall damage. The same is true of 50 individuals vs 50 man group but I used 10 groups of 5 to makes supports effective.In a no target cap state, 10 5 mans deal the same damage as a 50 man group deals, but now they receive vastly less overall damage. 50 Individuals will receive even less than the 10 groups of 5. The game state would become that of two, maybe 3 players being all that is needed to kill any number of players. It'd become a roaming swath of 1-3 players memeing about as grouping to take an objective simply would not ever work.

You could balance damage to make the above more healthy, but the end state would make it either unrecognizable going from PvE/PvP to WvW or kneecap PvE/PvP for WvW

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

i'd be appreciating a statement about the real problems of wvw; short list, the main issue imo is #2

• 1: there's a ranking, but no official leaderboard - why?

2: no rewards for performance. why?

• reward track and levelup rewards don't count, pvp has that too. but if servers win their matchups each weak but it doesn't feel rewarding at all, no wonder people may get tired of it.

  • 3 why have the tournaments been removed years ago?

• 4 why no new content; and i'm talking about maps. i play gw2 for 1,5 and wvw for about 1 year now, but it feels immensely left out, while this would be so incredibly easy to fix.

just make Edge of the Mists a countable map, set up a leaderboard and give us rewards for weekly performance on that freaking leaderboard. that cannot be more than some klicks, unless the coding makes issues there for some reason. tournaments would be fun, but a leaderboard-reward combo would be superior and should be technically easy to opt in, not?

... specifically adressing EotM here, because it's a incredibly beautiful map with mobs that exist only there and a pretty nice setting. whoever reads this and has never been there, take a walk in it! you likely will go unharmed because since it's not even giving teampoints, nobody literally plays it. and the mobs are not that weak, guess you'd need 3-4 good players to clear the tower-aequivalents on it.

• 5 the warclaw is fun and stuff, but it's rather made things worse. its just a mount for wvw, without much real use due to the heavy nerf it took yet - it is barely more than a trophy and carrier for speedblobs.

wvw is full of potential and good intentions, but totally not updated.

like have the stats and dps of keep lords been increased with any update? because by now some classes can solo keep lords , not to speak of tower lords. with the elite specs updates, these should have gotten updates as well i feel.

some classes can still permastealth inside keeps and create portals to just avoid outer and save tons of time for their zerg. if that was intended to happen, i'm not sure why it would be a seen as a good idea. why not nerfing mesmer etc portals wvw-only?

greetings,kami

[lodjur.1284]

@God.2708 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:

@God.2708 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:

@Ganathar.4956 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:The only reason that scourge is overpowered (in zergs that is, outside of zergs the class has been nerfed to far beyond unplayable) is because the game systems incentivize stacking. Given that the class basically only has (ranged) AoE skills that also happen to corrupt boons.

The game does this in multiple ways, the biggest betting the AoE cap, if there was no AoE caps on any offensive skills, people wouldn't stack up so tightly (or at least this would be strategically incorrect to do). If people spread out more scourge (and AoE) wouldn't always be the best offensive option. But given that everyone in these kinds fights are always stacked up, you're always hitting the maximum amount of targets with every single skill you cast, meaning that in order for AoEs not to always vastly outperform single target skills they'd have to be nerfed into uselessness.

Until offensive AoE caps are removed scourge will get nerfed almost every patch and remain a problem in this specific environment. Which is a shame for those of us that absolutely hate zerging and fell in love with a class centered around Area denial and boon/condi control that hasn't been overpowered outside of zergs for a very very long time. Personally I don't really care that much anymore as I have accepted that scourge will never be playable again most likely, but it doesn't have to be this way. Except at the very start of PoF (and arguably not even then) the class was never overpowered in smaller scale such as 5v5 or similar fight sizes, because people would move.

Tl;dr AoE caps encourage AoE spam and stacking, scourge is just the best class at it.

AoE caps will never be removed because it would cause massive skill lag and server issues.

First part is mostly incorrect, even so there's a ton of things they could change to lower lag, the easiest one being to remove retaliation from the game (which also happens to be a great suggestion even disregarding lag) or changing how various damage over time things work in areas with multiple players (such as making many of the skills that do damage 5 times /sec do more dmg once /sec)

AoE caps force the game to do calculations about who takes dmg, which might or might not be more complex than simply calculating dmg more times.

Also no AoE caps means shorter fights, which means shorter duration of lag. Even now if 2 map blobs are fighting on the opposite end of the map that essentially means me and my group just has to afk into they're e done, which can take very long, so even if (which I very much doubt) the lag would get worse it would simply go from unplayable to unplayable for a shorter time.

Forcing people to spread out or die also lowers lag.

Also, one thing that is often forgotten about stacking is that there is a way bigger incentive to do it than the AoE target caps. The entire support role in GW2 is designed around AoE heals, cleanse and boon application, with its most common form being pbAoE.

Yet without AoE cap there's little reason to stack more than 5 players on each other and close to 0 reason to stack more than 10. The 50-90% (50% at 10 players, 90% at 50) complete AoE dmg reduction is the main reason to. Even at 10 players this is much much stronger than the protection boon which is often considered "too strong".

This would also remove a random arbitrary advantage that big groups have over smaller groups. That isn't because the big group can do more damage or heal more or one of the many legit benefits of being more players, but simply an advantage because they take less dmg.

Stacking inside enemy AoEs being the best strategy is as unintuitive as the fact that AoE caps encourage stacking. Making the game strategically deeper in that everyone attacking on the tag isn't the by far best strategy seems like a positive.

There are no support abilities that target specific players. Also boons must be constantly replenished, unlike in other MMOs where buffs last for about an hour.

Forcing players to spread out would definitively make it more complicated to keep full uptime on "all" boons. Is that a bad thing?

What this does is that it forces players to stack to get the proper support they need. Especially boons, which happen to also be way stronger than buffs typically are in other MMOs.

It forces stacking in groups of 5 (or 10 in some very stupid cases), not stacking in blobs of 15-50. Without offensive AoE caps I believe the on theory ideal strategy for bigger groups would be spreading out on groups of 5-10 in the same general area but not all inside the tag. This is however a lot more complicated than everyone stacking on the tag so that it's not very popular is fairly self explanatory, yet it would be very healthy.

Stacking in blobs of 50 is done due to ease of access and lack of leadership/interest. 10 organized 5 man groups deal the same damage as a 50 man group, but the 50 man group can only hit 5 people at a time whilst they are neatly stacked for the 10 groups of 5 to bomb on and deal much more overall damage. Removing AoE caps wouldn't incentivize spreading, it would just encourage solo play more.

In the current state the 10 groups of 5 would deal the same damage as the stacked group of 50, while requiring far more effort/communication/skill. In addition the 50 man group gets to benefit from less focused fire as the dmg gets "split evenly-ish", smart healing and faster/easier ressing.

Without AoE caps the 10 groups of 5 would be doing 10 times more damage than the stacked group of 50, while requiring far more effort/communication/skill.

Also during solo play its very rare that the AoE cap really matters.

It'd be important to differentiate receiving/dealing damage in this discussion.In the current state 10 5 mans deal as much as a 50 man group deals. They receive less overall damage. The same is true of 50 individuals vs 50 man group but I used 10 groups of 5 to makes supports effective.In a no target cap state, 10 5 mans deal the same damage as a 50 man group deals, but now they receive vastly less overall damage. 50 Individuals will receive even less than the 10 groups of 5. The game state would become that of two, maybe 3 players being all that is needed to kill any number of players. It'd become a roaming swath of 1-3 players memeing about as grouping to take an objective simply would not ever work.

In the current state the 50 man blob would win 99/100 times considering anywhere even remotely near equal skill/comp, without aoe caps the split up groups would win if they played well enough to pull off the coordination.

Even with no target caps 3 players is "never" gonna beat a 50 man group... Much less so 1 player. Outside of extremely memey stuff like 3 stealthed players bombing afk players. If the 50 spread even slightly you could not hit all of them and would just like now melt from the pressure of 10+ times as many players.

It would however mean that 15 players could realistically lose to 5 if the skill gap was sufficient.

The fact that you believe that the AoE cap is the only thing preventing 3v50 makes it sound as is you've never actually tried doing outnumbered fights as 2-4 players.

You could balance damage to make the above more healthy, but the end state would make it either unrecognizable going from PvE/PvP to WvW or kneecap PvE/PvP for WvW

[Dawdler.8521]

@lodjur.1284 said:

@God.2708 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:

@God.2708 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:

@Ganathar.4956 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:The only reason that scourge is overpowered (in zergs that is, outside of zergs the class has been nerfed to far beyond unplayable) is because the game systems incentivize stacking. Given that the class basically only has (ranged) AoE skills that also happen to corrupt boons.

The game does this in multiple ways, the biggest betting the AoE cap, if there was no AoE caps on any offensive skills, people wouldn't stack up so tightly (or at least this would be strategically incorrect to do). If people spread out more scourge (and AoE) wouldn't always be the best offensive option. But given that everyone in these kinds fights are always stacked up, you're always hitting the maximum amount of targets with every single skill you cast, meaning that in order for AoEs not to always vastly outperform single target skills they'd have to be nerfed into uselessness.

Until offensive AoE caps are removed scourge will get nerfed almost every patch and remain a problem in this specific environment. Which is a shame for those of us that absolutely hate zerging and fell in love with a class centered around Area denial and boon/condi control that hasn't been overpowered outside of zergs for a very very long time. Personally I don't really care that much anymore as I have accepted that scourge will never be playable again most likely, but it doesn't have to be this way. Except at the very start of PoF (and arguably not even then) the class was never overpowered in smaller scale such as 5v5 or similar fight sizes, because people would move.

Tl;dr AoE caps encourage AoE spam and stacking, scourge is just the best class at it.

AoE caps will never be removed because it would cause massive skill lag and server issues.

First part is mostly incorrect, even so there's a ton of things they could change to lower lag, the easiest one being to remove retaliation from the game (which also happens to be a great suggestion even disregarding lag) or changing how various damage over time things work in areas with multiple players (such as making many of the skills that do damage 5 times /sec do more dmg once /sec)

AoE caps force the game to do calculations about who takes dmg, which might or might not be more complex than simply calculating dmg more times.

Also no AoE caps means shorter fights, which means shorter duration of lag. Even now if 2 map blobs are fighting on the opposite end of the map that essentially means me and my group just has to afk into they're e done, which can take very long, so even if (which I very much doubt) the lag would get worse it would simply go from unplayable to unplayable for a shorter time.

Forcing people to spread out or die also lowers lag.

Also, one thing that is often forgotten about stacking is that there is a way bigger incentive to do it than the AoE target caps. The entire support role in GW2 is designed around AoE heals, cleanse and boon application, with its most common form being pbAoE.

Yet without AoE cap there's little reason to stack more than 5 players on each other and close to 0 reason to stack more than 10. The 50-90% (50% at 10 players, 90% at 50) complete AoE dmg reduction is the main reason to. Even at 10 players this is much much stronger than the protection boon which is often considered "too strong".

This would also remove a random arbitrary advantage that big groups have over smaller groups. That isn't because the big group can do more damage or heal more or one of the many legit benefits of being more players, but simply an advantage because they take less dmg.

Stacking inside enemy AoEs being the best strategy is as unintuitive as the fact that AoE caps encourage stacking. Making the game strategically deeper in that everyone attacking on the tag isn't the by far best strategy seems like a positive.

There are no support abilities that target specific players. Also boons must be constantly replenished, unlike in other MMOs where buffs last for about an hour.

Forcing players to spread out would definitively make it more complicated to keep full uptime on "all" boons. Is that a bad thing?

What this does is that it forces players to stack to get the proper support they need. Especially boons, which happen to also be way stronger than buffs typically are in other MMOs.

It forces stacking in groups of 5 (or 10 in some very stupid cases), not stacking in blobs of 15-50. Without offensive AoE caps I believe the on theory ideal strategy for bigger groups would be spreading out on groups of 5-10 in the same general area but not all inside the tag. This is however a lot more complicated than everyone stacking on the tag so that it's not very popular is fairly self explanatory, yet it would be very healthy.

Stacking in blobs of 50 is done due to ease of access and lack of leadership/interest. 10 organized 5 man groups deal the same damage as a 50 man group, but the 50 man group can only hit 5 people at a time whilst they are neatly stacked for the 10 groups of 5 to bomb on and deal much more overall damage. Removing AoE caps wouldn't incentivize spreading, it would just encourage solo play more.

In the current state the 10 groups of 5 would deal the same damage as the stacked group of 50, while requiring far more effort/communication/skill. In addition the 50 man group gets to benefit from less focused fire as the dmg gets "split evenly-ish", smart healing and faster/easier ressing.

Without AoE caps the 10 groups of 5 would be doing 10 times more damage than the stacked group of 50, while requiring far more effort/communication/skill.

Also during solo play its very rare that the AoE cap really matters.

It'd be important to differentiate receiving/dealing damage in this discussion.In the current state 10 5 mans deal as much as a 50 man group deals. They receive less overall damage. The same is true of 50 individuals vs 50 man group but I used 10 groups of 5 to makes supports effective.In a no target cap state, 10 5 mans deal the same damage as a 50 man group deals, but now they receive vastly less overall damage. 50 Individuals will receive even less than the 10 groups of 5. The game state would become that of two, maybe 3 players being all that is needed to kill any number of players. It'd become a roaming swath of 1-3 players memeing about as grouping to take an objective simply would not ever work.

In the current state the 50 man blob would win 99/100 times considering anywhere even remotely near equal skill/comp, without aoe caps the split up groups would win if they played well enough to pull off the coordination.

Even with no target caps 3 players is "never" gonna beat a 50 man group... Much less so 1 player. Outside of extremely memey stuff like 3 stealthed players bombing afk players. If the 50 spread even slightly you could not hit all of them and would just like now melt from the pressure of 10+ times as many players.

It would however mean that 15 players could realistically lose to 5 if the skill gap was sufficient.

The fact that you believe that the AoE cap is the only thing preventing 3v50 makes it sound as is you've never actually tried doing outnumbered fights as 2-4 players.

You could balance damage to make the above more healthy, but the end state would make it either unrecognizable going from PvE/PvP to WvW or kneecap PvE/PvP for WvW

They'd still loose on PPT by running around chasing ghosts at 1 objective while 9 other objectives are under attack.There really isnt much point in arguing numbers.

[God.2708]

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:

@God.2708 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:

@God.2708 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:

@Ganathar.4956 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:The only reason that scourge is overpowered (in zergs that is, outside of zergs the class has been nerfed to far beyond unplayable) is because the game systems incentivize stacking. Given that the class basically only has (ranged) AoE skills that also happen to corrupt boons.

The game does this in multiple ways, the biggest betting the AoE cap, if there was no AoE caps on any offensive skills, people wouldn't stack up so tightly (or at least this would be strategically incorrect to do). If people spread out more scourge (and AoE) wouldn't always be the best offensive option. But given that everyone in these kinds fights are always stacked up, you're always hitting the maximum amount of targets with every single skill you cast, meaning that in order for AoEs not to always vastly outperform single target skills they'd have to be nerfed into uselessness.

Until offensive AoE caps are removed scourge will get nerfed almost every patch and remain a problem in this specific environment. Which is a shame for those of us that absolutely hate zerging and fell in love with a class centered around Area denial and boon/condi control that hasn't been overpowered outside of zergs for a very very long time. Personally I don't really care that much anymore as I have accepted that scourge will never be playable again most likely, but it doesn't have to be this way. Except at the very start of PoF (and arguably not even then) the class was never overpowered in smaller scale such as 5v5 or similar fight sizes, because people would move.

Tl;dr AoE caps encourage AoE spam and stacking, scourge is just the best class at it.

AoE caps will never be removed because it would cause massive skill lag and server issues.

First part is mostly incorrect, even so there's a ton of things they could change to lower lag, the easiest one being to remove retaliation from the game (which also happens to be a great suggestion even disregarding lag) or changing how various damage over time things work in areas with multiple players (such as making many of the skills that do damage 5 times /sec do more dmg once /sec)

AoE caps force the game to do calculations about who takes dmg, which might or might not be more complex than simply calculating dmg more times.

Also no AoE caps means shorter fights, which means shorter duration of lag. Even now if 2 map blobs are fighting on the opposite end of the map that essentially means me and my group just has to afk into they're e done, which can take very long, so even if (which I very much doubt) the lag would get worse it would simply go from unplayable to unplayable for a shorter time.

Forcing people to spread out or die also lowers lag.

Also, one thing that is often forgotten about stacking is that there is a way bigger incentive to do it than the AoE target caps. The entire support role in GW2 is designed around AoE heals, cleanse and boon application, with its most common form being pbAoE.

Yet without AoE cap there's little reason to stack more than 5 players on each other and close to 0 reason to stack more than 10. The 50-90% (50% at 10 players, 90% at 50) complete AoE dmg reduction is the main reason to. Even at 10 players this is much much stronger than the protection boon which is often considered "too strong".

This would also remove a random arbitrary advantage that big groups have over smaller groups. That isn't because the big group can do more damage or heal more or one of the many legit benefits of being more players, but simply an advantage because they take less dmg.

Stacking inside enemy AoEs being the best strategy is as unintuitive as the fact that AoE caps encourage stacking. Making the game strategically deeper in that everyone attacking on the tag isn't the by far best strategy seems like a positive.

There are no support abilities that target specific players. Also boons must be constantly replenished, unlike in other MMOs where buffs last for about an hour.

Forcing players to spread out would definitively make it more complicated to keep full uptime on "all" boons. Is that a bad thing?

What this does is that it forces players to stack to get the proper support they need. Especially boons, which happen to also be way stronger than buffs typically are in other MMOs.

It forces stacking in groups of 5 (or 10 in some very stupid cases), not stacking in blobs of 15-50. Without offensive AoE caps I believe the on theory ideal strategy for bigger groups would be spreading out on groups of 5-10 in the same general area but not all inside the tag. This is however a lot more complicated than everyone stacking on the tag so that it's not very popular is fairly self explanatory, yet it would be very healthy.

Stacking in blobs of 50 is done due to ease of access and lack of leadership/interest. 10 organized 5 man groups deal the same damage as a 50 man group, but the 50 man group can only hit 5 people at a time whilst they are neatly stacked for the 10 groups of 5 to bomb on and deal much more overall damage. Removing AoE caps wouldn't incentivize spreading, it would just encourage solo play more.

In the current state the 10 groups of 5 would deal the same damage as the stacked group of 50, while requiring far more effort/communication/skill. In addition the 50 man group gets to benefit from less focused fire as the dmg gets "split evenly-ish", smart healing and faster/easier ressing.

Without AoE caps the 10 groups of 5 would be doing 10 times more damage than the stacked group of 50, while requiring far more effort/communication/skill.

Also during solo play its very rare that the AoE cap really matters.

It'd be important to differentiate receiving/dealing damage in this discussion.In the current state 10 5 mans deal as much as a 50 man group deals. They receive less overall damage. The same is true of 50 individuals vs 50 man group but I used 10 groups of 5 to makes supports effective.In a no target cap state, 10 5 mans deal the same damage as a 50 man group deals, but now they receive vastly less overall damage. 50 Individuals will receive even less than the 10 groups of 5. The game state would become that of two, maybe 3 players being all that is needed to kill any number of players. It'd become a roaming swath of 1-3 players memeing about as grouping to take an objective simply would not ever work.

In the current state the 50 man blob would win 99/100 times considering anywhere even remotely near equal skill/comp, without aoe caps the split up groups would win if they played well enough to pull off the coordination.

Even with no target caps 3 players is "never" gonna beat a 50 man group... Much less so 1 player. Outside of extremely memey stuff like 3 stealthed players bombing afk players. If the 50 spread even slightly you could not hit all of them and would just like now melt from the pressure of 10+ times as many players.

It would however mean that 15 players could realistically lose to 5 if the skill gap was sufficient.

The fact that you believe that the AoE cap is the only thing preventing 3v50 makes it sound as is you've never actually tried doing outnumbered fights as 2-4 players.

They'd still loose on PPT by running around chasing ghosts at 1 objective while 9 other objectives are under attack.There really isnt much point in arguing numbers.

That is already true, just no one wants to PPT because it's pointless/unrewarding.

@lodjur.1284 said:

@God.2708 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:

@God.2708 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:

@Ganathar.4956 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:The only reason that scourge is overpowered (in zergs that is, outside of zergs the class has been nerfed to far beyond unplayable) is because the game systems incentivize stacking. Given that the class basically only has (ranged) AoE skills that also happen to corrupt boons.

The game does this in multiple ways, the biggest betting the AoE cap, if there was no AoE caps on any offensive skills, people wouldn't stack up so tightly (or at least this would be strategically incorrect to do). If people spread out more scourge (and AoE) wouldn't always be the best offensive option. But given that everyone in these kinds fights are always stacked up, you're always hitting the maximum amount of targets with every single skill you cast, meaning that in order for AoEs not to always vastly outperform single target skills they'd have to be nerfed into uselessness.

Until offensive AoE caps are removed scourge will get nerfed almost every patch and remain a problem in this specific environment. Which is a shame for those of us that absolutely hate zerging and fell in love with a class centered around Area denial and boon/condi control that hasn't been overpowered outside of zergs for a very very long time. Personally I don't really care that much anymore as I have accepted that scourge will never be playable again most likely, but it doesn't have to be this way. Except at the very start of PoF (and arguably not even then) the class was never overpowered in smaller scale such as 5v5 or similar fight sizes, because people would move.

Tl;dr AoE caps encourage AoE spam and stacking, scourge is just the best class at it.

AoE caps will never be removed because it would cause massive skill lag and server issues.

First part is mostly incorrect, even so there's a ton of things they could change to lower lag, the easiest one being to remove retaliation from the game (which also happens to be a great suggestion even disregarding lag) or changing how various damage over time things work in areas with multiple players (such as making many of the skills that do damage 5 times /sec do more dmg once /sec)

AoE caps force the game to do calculations about who takes dmg, which might or might not be more complex than simply calculating dmg more times.

Also no AoE caps means shorter fights, which means shorter duration of lag. Even now if 2 map blobs are fighting on the opposite end of the map that essentially means me and my group just has to afk into they're e done, which can take very long, so even if (which I very much doubt) the lag would get worse it would simply go from unplayable to unplayable for a shorter time.

Forcing people to spread out or die also lowers lag.

Also, one thing that is often forgotten about stacking is that there is a way bigger incentive to do it than the AoE target caps. The entire support role in GW2 is designed around AoE heals, cleanse and boon application, with its most common form being pbAoE.

Yet without AoE cap there's little reason to stack more than 5 players on each other and close to 0 reason to stack more than 10. The 50-90% (50% at 10 players, 90% at 50) complete AoE dmg reduction is the main reason to. Even at 10 players this is much much stronger than the protection boon which is often considered "too strong".

This would also remove a random arbitrary advantage that big groups have over smaller groups. That isn't because the big group can do more damage or heal more or one of the many legit benefits of being more players, but simply an advantage because they take less dmg.

Stacking inside enemy AoEs being the best strategy is as unintuitive as the fact that AoE caps encourage stacking. Making the game strategically deeper in that everyone attacking on the tag isn't the by far best strategy seems like a positive.

There are no support abilities that target specific players. Also boons must be constantly replenished, unlike in other MMOs where buffs last for about an hour.

Forcing players to spread out would definitively make it more complicated to keep full uptime on "all" boons. Is that a bad thing?

What this does is that it forces players to stack to get the proper support they need. Especially boons, which happen to also be way stronger than buffs typically are in other MMOs.

It forces stacking in groups of 5 (or 10 in some very stupid cases), not stacking in blobs of 15-50. Without offensive AoE caps I believe the on theory ideal strategy for bigger groups would be spreading out on groups of 5-10 in the same general area but not all inside the tag. This is however a lot more complicated than everyone stacking on the tag so that it's not very popular is fairly self explanatory, yet it would be very healthy.

Stacking in blobs of 50 is done due to ease of access and lack of leadership/interest. 10 organized 5 man groups deal the same damage as a 50 man group, but the 50 man group can only hit 5 people at a time whilst they are neatly stacked for the 10 groups of 5 to bomb on and deal much more overall damage. Removing AoE caps wouldn't incentivize spreading, it would just encourage solo play more.

In the current state the 10 groups of 5 would deal the same damage as the stacked group of 50, while requiring far more effort/communication/skill. In addition the 50 man group gets to benefit from less focused fire as the dmg gets "split evenly-ish", smart healing and faster/easier ressing.

Without AoE caps the 10 groups of 5 would be doing 10 times more damage than the stacked group of 50, while requiring far more effort/communication/skill.

Also during solo play its very rare that the AoE cap really matters.

It'd be important to differentiate receiving/dealing damage in this discussion.In the current state 10 5 mans deal as much as a 50 man group deals. They receive less overall damage. The same is true of 50 individuals vs 50 man group but I used 10 groups of 5 to makes supports effective.In a no target cap state, 10 5 mans deal the same damage as a 50 man group deals, but now they receive vastly less overall damage. 50 Individuals will receive even less than the 10 groups of 5. The game state would become that of two, maybe 3 players being all that is needed to kill any number of players. It'd become a roaming swath of 1-3 players memeing about as grouping to take an objective simply would not ever work.

In the current state the 50 man blob would win 99/100 times considering anywhere even remotely near equal skill/comp, without aoe caps the split up groups would win if they played well enough to pull off the coordination.

Even with no target caps 3 players is "never" gonna beat a 50 man group... Much less so 1 player. Outside of extremely memey stuff like 3 stealthed players bombing afk players. If the 50 spread even slightly you could not hit all of them and would just like now melt from the pressure of 10+ times as many players.

It would however mean that 15 players could realistically lose to 5 if the skill gap was sufficient.

The fact that you believe that the AoE cap is the only thing preventing 3v50 makes it sound as is you've never actually tried doing outnumbered fights as 2-4 players.

I watch and participate in outnumbered fights quite frequently. You can see CAKE do it on youtube on a semi frequent basis. Before Ice Bow got nerfed, using 5 players to kill 50 players through stealth was a humorous occurrence in EotM, and that was with target caps.

Multiple high skill small groups can tear apart a 50 man blob with ease, especially if the groups are same skill (though if we're being realistic the smaller groups likely have more skill than the larger one given the 50 man group is usually just a pugmander) I have no idea why you would think otherwise. It takes all of 3 peoples focused damage to down a player/players. The only recourse the 50 man group has is to utilize terrain to bunch the opponents up. Sure there's a higher level of communication needed. But 20 wells are 20 wells. 20 wells on 5 players kills 5 players. 20 wells on 50 players kills ~15 players. 20 wells on 50 players with no target cap kills 50 players. That is not healthy game design.

[lodjur.1284]

@God.2708 said:

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:

@God.2708 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:

@God.2708 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:

@Ganathar.4956 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:The only reason that scourge is overpowered (in zergs that is, outside of zergs the class has been nerfed to far beyond unplayable) is because the game systems incentivize stacking. Given that the class basically only has (ranged) AoE skills that also happen to corrupt boons.

The game does this in multiple ways, the biggest betting the AoE cap, if there was no AoE caps on any offensive skills, people wouldn't stack up so tightly (or at least this would be strategically incorrect to do). If people spread out more scourge (and AoE) wouldn't always be the best offensive option. But given that everyone in these kinds fights are always stacked up, you're always hitting the maximum amount of targets with every single skill you cast, meaning that in order for AoEs not to always vastly outperform single target skills they'd have to be nerfed into uselessness.

Until offensive AoE caps are removed scourge will get nerfed almost every patch and remain a problem in this specific environment. Which is a shame for those of us that absolutely hate zerging and fell in love with a class centered around Area denial and boon/condi control that hasn't been overpowered outside of zergs for a very very long time. Personally I don't really care that much anymore as I have accepted that scourge will never be playable again most likely, but it doesn't have to be this way. Except at the very start of PoF (and arguably not even then) the class was never overpowered in smaller scale such as 5v5 or similar fight sizes, because people would move.

Tl;dr AoE caps encourage AoE spam and stacking, scourge is just the best class at it.

AoE caps will never be removed because it would cause massive skill lag and server issues.

First part is mostly incorrect, even so there's a ton of things they could change to lower lag, the easiest one being to remove retaliation from the game (which also happens to be a great suggestion even disregarding lag) or changing how various damage over time things work in areas with multiple players (such as making many of the skills that do damage 5 times /sec do more dmg once /sec)

AoE caps force the game to do calculations about who takes dmg, which might or might not be more complex than simply calculating dmg more times.

Also no AoE caps means shorter fights, which means shorter duration of lag. Even now if 2 map blobs are fighting on the opposite end of the map that essentially means me and my group just has to afk into they're e done, which can take very long, so even if (which I very much doubt) the lag would get worse it would simply go from unplayable to unplayable for a shorter time.

Forcing people to spread out or die also lowers lag.

Also, one thing that is often forgotten about stacking is that there is a way bigger incentive to do it than the AoE target caps. The entire support role in GW2 is designed around AoE heals, cleanse and boon application, with its most common form being pbAoE.

Yet without AoE cap there's little reason to stack more than 5 players on each other and close to 0 reason to stack more than 10. The 50-90% (50% at 10 players, 90% at 50) complete AoE dmg reduction is the main reason to. Even at 10 players this is much much stronger than the protection boon which is often considered "too strong".

This would also remove a random arbitrary advantage that big groups have over smaller groups. That isn't because the big group can do more damage or heal more or one of the many legit benefits of being more players, but simply an advantage because they take less dmg.

Stacking inside enemy AoEs being the best strategy is as unintuitive as the fact that AoE caps encourage stacking. Making the game strategically deeper in that everyone attacking on the tag isn't the by far best strategy seems like a positive.

There are no support abilities that target specific players. Also boons must be constantly replenished, unlike in other MMOs where buffs last for about an hour.

Forcing players to spread out would definitively make it more complicated to keep full uptime on "all" boons. Is that a bad thing?

What this does is that it forces players to stack to get the proper support they need. Especially boons, which happen to also be way stronger than buffs typically are in other MMOs.

It forces stacking in groups of 5 (or 10 in some very stupid cases), not stacking in blobs of 15-50. Without offensive AoE caps I believe the on theory ideal strategy for bigger groups would be spreading out on groups of 5-10 in the same general area but not all inside the tag. This is however a lot more complicated than everyone stacking on the tag so that it's not very popular is fairly self explanatory, yet it would be very healthy.

Stacking in blobs of 50 is done due to ease of access and lack of leadership/interest. 10 organized 5 man groups deal the same damage as a 50 man group, but the 50 man group can only hit 5 people at a time whilst they are neatly stacked for the 10 groups of 5 to bomb on and deal much more overall damage. Removing AoE caps wouldn't incentivize spreading, it would just encourage solo play more.

In the current state the 10 groups of 5 would deal the same damage as the stacked group of 50, while requiring far more effort/communication/skill. In addition the 50 man group gets to benefit from less focused fire as the dmg gets "split evenly-ish", smart healing and faster/easier ressing.

Without AoE caps the 10 groups of 5 would be doing 10 times more damage than the stacked group of 50, while requiring far more effort/communication/skill.

Also during solo play its very rare that the AoE cap really matters.

It'd be important to differentiate receiving/dealing damage in this discussion.In the current state 10 5 mans deal as much as a 50 man group deals. They receive less overall damage. The same is true of 50 individuals vs 50 man group but I used 10 groups of 5 to makes supports effective.In a no target cap state, 10 5 mans deal the same damage as a 50 man group deals, but now they receive vastly less overall damage. 50 Individuals will receive even less than the 10 groups of 5. The game state would become that of two, maybe 3 players being all that is needed to kill any number of players. It'd become a roaming swath of 1-3 players memeing about as grouping to take an objective simply would not ever work.

In the current state the 50 man blob would win 99/100 times considering anywhere even remotely near equal skill/comp, without aoe caps the split up groups would win if they played well enough to pull off the coordination.

Even with no target caps 3 players is "never" gonna beat a 50 man group... Much less so 1 player. Outside of extremely memey stuff like 3 stealthed players bombing afk players. If the 50 spread even slightly you could not hit all of them and would just like now melt from the pressure of 10+ times as many players.

It would however mean that 15 players could realistically lose to 5 if the skill gap was sufficient.

The fact that you believe that the AoE cap is the only thing preventing 3v50 makes it sound as is you've never actually tried doing outnumbered fights as 2-4 players.

They'd still loose on PPT by running around chasing ghosts at 1 objective while 9 other objectives are under attack.There really isnt much point in arguing numbers.

That is already true, just no one wants to PPT because it's pointless/unrewarding.

@lodjur.1284 said:

@God.2708 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:

@God.2708 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:

@Ganathar.4956 said:

@lodjur.1284 said:The only reason that scourge is overpowered (in zergs that is, outside of zergs the class has been nerfed to far beyond unplayable) is because the game systems incentivize stacking. Given that the class basically only has (ranged) AoE skills that also happen to corrupt boons.

The game does this in multiple ways, the biggest betting the AoE cap, if there was no AoE caps on any offensive skills, people wouldn't stack up so tightly (or at least this would be strategically incorrect to do). If people spread out more scourge (and AoE) wouldn't always be the best offensive option. But given that everyone in these kinds fights are always stacked up, you're always hitting the maximum amount of targets with every single skill you cast, meaning that in order for AoEs not to always vastly outperform single target skills they'd have to be nerfed into uselessness.

Until offensive AoE caps are removed scourge will get nerfed almost every patch and remain a problem in this specific environment. Which is a shame for those of us that absolutely hate zerging and fell in love with a class centered around Area denial and boon/condi control that hasn't been overpowered outside of zergs for a very very long time. Personally I don't really care that much anymore as I have accepted that scourge will never be playable again most likely, but it doesn't have to be this way. Except at the very start of PoF (and arguably not even then) the class was never overpowered in smaller scale such as 5v5 or similar fight sizes, because people would move.

Tl;dr AoE caps encourage AoE spam and stacking, scourge is just the best class at it.

AoE caps will never be removed because it would cause massive skill lag and server issues.

First part is mostly incorrect, even so there's a ton of things they could change to lower lag, the easiest one being to remove retaliation from the game (which also happens to be a great suggestion even disregarding lag) or changing how various damage over time things work in areas with multiple players (such as making many of the skills that do damage 5 times /sec do more dmg once /sec)

AoE caps force the game to do calculations about who takes dmg, which might or might not be more complex than simply calculating dmg more times.

Also no AoE caps means shorter fights, which means shorter duration of lag. Even now if 2 map blobs are fighting on the opposite end of the map that essentially means me and my group just has to afk into they're e done, which can take very long, so even if (which I very much doubt) the lag would get worse it would simply go from unplayable to unplayable for a shorter time.

Forcing people to spread out or die also lowers lag.

Also, one thing that is often forgotten about stacking is that there is a way bigger incentive to do it than the AoE target caps. The entire support role in GW2 is designed around AoE heals, cleanse and boon application, with its most common form being pbAoE.

Yet without AoE cap there's little reason to stack more than 5 players on each other and close to 0 reason to stack more than 10. The 50-90% (50% at 10 players, 90% at 50) complete AoE dmg reduction is the main reason to. Even at 10 players this is much much stronger than the protection boon which is often considered "too strong".

This would also remove a random arbitrary advantage that big groups have over smaller groups. That isn't because the big group can do more damage or heal more or one of the many legit benefits of being more players, but simply an advantage because they take less dmg.

Stacking inside enemy AoEs being the best strategy is as unintuitive as the fact that AoE caps encourage stacking. Making the game strategically deeper in that everyone attacking on the tag isn't the by far best strategy seems like a positive.

There are no support abilities that target specific players. Also boons must be constantly replenished, unlike in other MMOs where buffs last for about an hour.

Forcing players to spread out would definitively make it more complicated to keep full uptime on "all" boons. Is that a bad thing?

What this does is that it forces players to stack to get the proper support they need. Especially boons, which happen to also be way stronger than buffs typically are in other MMOs.

It forces stacking in groups of 5 (or 10 in some very stupid cases), not stacking in blobs of 15-50. Without offensive AoE caps I believe the on theory ideal strategy for bigger groups would be spreading out on groups of 5-10 in the same general area but not all inside the tag. This is however a lot more complicated than everyone stacking on the tag so that it's not very popular is fairly self explanatory, yet it would be very healthy.

Stacking in blobs of 50 is done due to ease of access and lack of leadership/interest. 10 organized 5 man groups deal the same damage as a 50 man group, but the 50 man group can only hit 5 people at a time whilst they are neatly stacked for the 10 groups of 5 to bomb on and deal much more overall damage. Removing AoE caps wouldn't incentivize spreading, it would just encourage solo play more.

In the current state the 10 groups of 5 would deal the same damage as the stacked group of 50, while requiring far more effort/communication/skill. In addition the 50 man group gets to benefit from less focused fire as the dmg gets "split evenly-ish", smart healing and faster/easier ressing.

Without AoE caps the 10 groups of 5 would be doing 10 times more damage than the stacked group of 50, while requiring far more effort/communication/skill.

Also during solo play its very rare that the AoE cap really matters.

It'd be important to differentiate receiving/dealing damage in this discussion.In the current state 10 5 mans deal as much as a 50 man group deals. They receive less overall damage. The same is true of 50 individuals vs 50 man group but I used 10 groups of 5 to makes supports effective.In a no target cap state, 10 5 mans deal the same damage as a 50 man group deals, but now they receive vastly less overall damage. 50 Individuals will receive even less than the 10 groups of 5. The game state would become that of two, maybe 3 players being all that is needed to kill any number of players. It'd become a roaming swath of 1-3 players memeing about as grouping to take an objective simply would not ever work.

In the current state the 50 man blob would win 99/100 times considering anywhere even remotely near equal skill/comp, without aoe caps the split up groups would win if they played well enough to pull off the coordination.

Even with no target caps 3 players is "never" gonna beat a 50 man group... Much less so 1 player. Outside of extremely memey stuff like 3 stealthed players bombing afk players. If the 50 spread even slightly you could not hit all of them and would just like now melt from the pressure of 10+ times as many players.

It would however mean that 15 players could realistically lose to 5 if the skill gap was sufficient.

The fact that you believe that the AoE cap is the only thing preventing 3v50 makes it sound as is you've never actually tried doing outnumbered fights as 2-4 players.

I watch and participate in outnumbered fights quite frequently. You can see CAKE do it on youtube on a semi frequent basis. Before Ice Bow got nerfed, using 5 players to kill 50 players through stealth was a humorous occurrence in EotM, and that was with target caps.

Watching and fanboying mediocre gameplay doesn't really say much....

Multiple high skill small groups can tear apart a 50 man blob with ease, especially if the groups are same skill (though if we're being realistic the smaller groups likely have more skill than the larger one given the 50 man group is usually just a pugmander) I have no idea why you would think otherwise. It takes all of 3 peoples focused damage to down a player/players. The only recourse the 50 man group has is to utilize terrain to bunch the opponents up. Sure there's a higher level of communication needed. But 20 wells are 20 wells. 20 wells on 5 players kills 5 players. 20 wells on 50 players kills ~15 players. 20 wells on 50 players with no target cap kills 50 players. That is not healthy game design.

Indeed if there was no AoE caps the bigger groups would be forced to spread out, but if you enjoy circlejerking on a tag I get why this wouldn't be something you want. 20 wells spread out across a large area wouldn't kill 50 players, the bigger group will always have an advantage, it would just be less arbitrary. If the 50 man group stacks in 20 wells they all deserve to die.

[Slick.7164]

If you allow Blackgate to have 20 more peeps than others in map que, that might balance stuff

[kamikharzeeh.8016]

guys u're fighting here more fiercly than in wvw :P usually the bigger groups simply wins, adapting one class / reaper's condispam fields will not change much about it since every serious team has its scrappers and firebrands to laugh and walk through it.

reality is, sometimes three chars have to kill 15 to save a keep. happened to us at nighttime, desolation server some weeks ago. succeeded till they came back with 25 lol.

but the realistic numbers to fight are: 20 people with some good healers can beat up to three other zergs or one small blob (~40 people or maybe a slight bit more that aren't experienced)... but that was the end of the possibility then, and one necro change will not do anything there. acutally i don't even see that many of them, but the target nerf will make them likely less played. does matter not at all, the crazy areadps condispam is also very widespread with rangers and especially elementalists (their rangedps is imo far 2 high).

also your "20 wells" calc is fun, they only kill anybody if the sustain chain sleeps.and as said above, one 50 people blob (and thats quite big yet! rarely even have that around anywhere) would wipe the table with ten 5 people groups in 90% of the cases. at least considering the skill level is equal. otherwise, thats just "organized clouding", which our server for example does anyways always. but we could 40ish blobs with 20 people, takes about 3 runs and they either run or we pushed and destroyed them at last. that's how it works.

[cobbah.3102]

@Cal Cohen.2358 said:Hi Everyone,

We’ve done some work on the next balance update and wanted to share some of the potential changes for discussion and feedback. As a reminder, this update is intended to be smaller but more targeted to address major issues within the game mode as we work toward some major changes in a future update. This is also not the full list of changes for the update, just the ones targeted at WvW.

The goal of this update on the competitive side is not to nerf everything that deserves a nerf, but to bring overperforming builds back in line. There are aspects of every meta build (and even some non-meta builds) that could reasonably be nerfed, but since we’re already looking ahead to a major shakeup we’re more focused on balancing around the current power level for now.

In particular we’re looking at:

• Scourge

We’ve identified scourge as the major pain point in WvW right now, and more specifically Sand Savant’s big shade affecting 10 targets. This has pushed scourge far above other options in terms of damage, while also adding to its strong corrupts and solid barrier application. There are other aspects of scourge that we’re looking into for the future update, but in the short-term we feel that reducing their target cap back down to 5 is a significant change and we want to see how the meta adjusts before making any additional changes to shades. We do still have concerns about their corrupt potential, so we’re also making a slight adjustment to Devouring Darkness.

• Sand Savant: This trait no longer increases the target cap of shade skills in WvW only
• Devouring Darkness (from Lingering Curse): Reduced the number of boons corrupted from 2 to 1 in WvW only

Remember that these changes are not locked down and we still have time to iterate. We look forward to your thoughts and feedback.

-The Systems Team

As Well as Perma Stealth and AOE rings of death on walls and ranger shooting over walls and pets through gates , balance is also between offensive and defensive ,you nerfed siege made it so much easier for capture of objectives , because why? 7 years this game is getting worse and worse how about following through on statements that were made Alliances for instance , skip the gemstore for a bit and give some love to the WvW population who have pointed out so many faults ,throw in banning hackers as well ,so many support tickets and nothing changes .

[briggah.7910]

this did nothing. I laugh that anet made an entire thread about future changes and only changed one class thinking ok the fans of wvw will be happy, time to hibernate for another year till we change one other class and just forget about all the other issues that aren't classes in wvw

[Axl.8924]

Why can't we have:

I'm going to guess warriors or guards had some form of deflecting missile weapons, so warrs should be in charge of that, they also probably counter rangers.Mesmers are kinda odd I'm not sure what they are supposed to counter naturally. By all their illusions im going to guess probably warriors and rangers, since they are natural tricksters, and what better way of dealing with warrs than all that cc and illusions and trickery?seems only natural that eles should counter rangersand rangers should counter necros to keep them in checkWait who gained retal first? Warrs or guardians?

Also, I don't know about getting rid of all deflects because tempest has had magnetic aura since Hot which was 4 years now, but maybe have 2 possible classes for different things? I dunno.

[XenesisII.1540]

@"Axl.8924" said:Why can't we have:

I'm going to guess warriors or guards had some form of deflecting missile weapons, so warrs should be in charge of that, they also probably counter rangers.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Reflect

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bladestormhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shattering_Blowhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shield_Masterhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wall_of_Reflectionhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chapter_3:_Valiant_Bulwark

:)