Claim buff killed roaming and high-level gameplay

[Brujeria.7536]

Roaming is just pretty much dead because of the balance issues. Thiefs should be deleted from wvw in the current state, this class requires 0 skill to be decent due to all the mobility. They really should rework mobility skills as well as stealth in general. Stealth should have a maximum duration of 3 seconds, and after each time stealth runs out, no matter the situation, should induce a 3 second revealed debuff. Mobility skills should also be reworked so that they can only be used offensive. Ex. Thief SB 5 should only shadowstep, if it hits a target. There should be no "instant disengage" skills, like a 900 range stun breaking shadowstep requiring no risk or setup time. Taking necromancer as an example, all the mobility skills need to be set up, either by precasting, or by being used at the right time in between battles or beforehand. This logic should be applied to all mobility skills across the board. Smoke fields should be reworked to not grant stealth if blasted or if used with a leap finisher also. Stealth has no counterplay, and in terms of GvG its just something mandatory in the most cases. If something is mandatory it serves no tactical value and if it is removed from both sides there is no harm.

Another big factor is that healing and boons and condi clears are way too strong and in no comparision to their direct opposites (damage, corrupts/strips/condi causing skills). Often even the weakest players get accompanied by heal or buffbots, namely firebrands, eles, engineers. which limits a lot of roaming potential as people just wont die, especially in outnumbered scenarios. The overall balance tone should ALWAYS factor in that defensive skills, heals, condi cleanses, boons, are a no brainer to apply to friendly targets, these skills typically affect up to 5 targets with no risk or skill involved. Likewise, skills that cause damage, conditions, boon corrupts should be way more plentifull and potent compared to their direct opposites to account for these skills being harder to hit and typicly hitting fewer targets.

Healing should be toned down across the board, especially the healing given allies should get a flat reduction, the outgoing healing modifiers need to be greatly toned down as well as the bias against condi compared to power. Where is the boon that turns you invulnerable against power damage? Where is the food that reduces power damage by 20%? Where is the common skill that lets you remove power damage after it has been applied? Especially the sheer amount of stability and resistance is a problem, it has nothing to with a strategic use the frequency it can be applied by certain classes.

Same thing is for walls, bubbles and likewise skills. These skills should have a maximum number of projectiles blocked. Firstly its highly punishing for all projectiles - ine single person with a single wall can negate almost all missiles from whateversized group with 0 effort or skil. This is a typical case where defensive skills, albeit with 0 risk or skill involved using, cause way too much of an impact.

Skills that are defensive in nature, like evades, gapclosers, etc. should not deal damage. Skills like vault, rev sword 3, blurred frenzy, warrior gs 3 should deal no damage, its not their purpose. Likewise, very strong defensive skills, blocks, etc. should always come with a downside. Look at dragon hunter block, its done right, it only blocks from the front. Likewise things like engie / warrior shield block should only work from the front, or reduce the movementspeed by 50% while active. Mistform should apply 25% increased damage or something a few seconds after use.

Downstate needs to be reworked, either completly removed, or if thats not the case they really should make it matter. Things like "safestomps" should not exist, shadowstepping midst stomping should cancel the stomp, mist form stomp should not work, elixir s stomp should not work, distortion while stomping should cancel the stomp, etc. These defensive mechanics simply negate downstate as a whole, if you can so easily negate a very key mechanic of the game with a single skill, thats not available to all classes, its busted.

Lastly, blobbing is easy mode. For WvW its like what open world or world bosses are for PvE. It completly negates any meaningfull way to grow as a player and hone the skill on an individual basis in 95% of all cases. In the current meta it mostly boils down to which random lucky corrupt can strip stab / resistance first so you can single out targets, or kill the slackers that simply havent mastered the ability to move close to a tag yet.

Bonus: If you really wanna fix high end gameplay, and the WvW fights as a whole: Remove the target cap of offensive skills. Keep the target cap of healing skills. Blobbing will be dead and the game will be in a much better spot, no more zergblobs of doom, causing lagg winning only through numbers, instead a long battleline, action all around the place focusing the real skill of the individual way more then the current boring zerg gameplay ever could. If actually 10 players can take down a full blob like this, thats a sign of skill. If there are smaller battles all around, where the skill of the individual matters much more the game would be in a much better place. Especially the battlefields would be huge, siege being placed in different spots as its to dangerous to stack a zerg and 5 catapult next to each other. Instead more smaller groups fighting each other, slowly shifting the battlefield and pushing towards objectives.

Lastly there are of course a lot of class specific balance issues that needs to be adresses at a regular basis, frequent balance updates on a 2 weekly basis are certainly needed. They dont need to be huge, but they need to be done fast. This also creates room for more experimental changes, because if these changes dont work you can fix them in 2 weeks or rewoke them, instead of keeping things busted for 4 months straight.

And for the love of god, rework the "in combat" mechanic for waypoints. A structure should only be considered "in combar" for the purpose of blocking the waypoint if the inner walls / gates are damaged by siege, likewise, the inner gates and walls should be invulnerable untill at least one outer wall is broken. It adds nothing but wasted time to the game if a single player can hit the keep for 5 damage, essentially wasting precious lifetime of all other players by needing to port to the spawn instead. It serves no purpose other than allowing to troll, its not a tactic, its just a nuisance that should have been hotfixed the second day after release.

[Riba.3271]

@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

@Threather.9354 said:

@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Threather.9354 said:My personal opinion is that whichever team originally designed WvW obviously put a lot of thought into things like upgrade times, passive stat strength (BL bloodlust), siege damage/health, population status and objective sturdiness, than whoever completely oblirated all that.Hahaha no. Anet got literally everything of that wrong and didnt correct it until we complained. Bloodlust is the best example. Original bloodlust was a disaster that really did add far too much stats.

Just playing devil's advocate here, but given old bloodlust used to give 50 power per stack for a max of 150 extra power (if memory serves, do correct me if I'm wrong), if that was too much then I can kinda see where he is going when he says 200 power from keep buff is too strong. Never mind the other stats you get from it.

Edit; I do agree with what others have said tho, that while it is strong, the keep buffs don't really kill roaming. If you are building glassy you will die in seconds anyways, and I think it's foolish to make your build dependant on stats you might not have because a keep flipped under you. If the OP is trying to build his character assuming he will have these buffs as he has said, I can see why he thinks it's such a big deal, but it's actually him making these buffs have such a large effect by trying to build off them instead of seeing them as just icing on the cake.

It killed roaming by indirectly reducing activity roamers can do:

• They can't fight equally strong players at camps because those players will defeat you, the movement speed boost is especially noticeable (look at sPvP where everyone uses Speed/Lynx runes). I am sure you know from your experience that lot of good roamers are very toxic and don't take losing lightly.]

You are forgetting that there is already no parity between professions and builds; some classes have inherently better move speed and stat boosts through traits and boons than others do, your statement that the attacker would die simply because of the extra stats from the objective buff assumes that the stat differences between professions and whether you have the camp's guards on your side both have no effect on the outcome of the fight, which is obviously not true. Secondly, all players have access to runes that give 25% move speed, so the movement speed argument is a bit moot really.

• Dueling around SM died. Duelers were cream of the crop. Put any top sPvP or dueler against another, the one with 400 extra stats will always win. And no one is interested watching mediocre players duel.

See my point above. There is no parity between classes and builds, they have inherent differences in stats because of trait and build choices, so unless we are talking about mirror duels there is very likely an inequality between those roaming builds before the keep buffs are taken into account. A player running a three stat gear set like dire can easily kill a player running a four stat gear set like marauder, despite the 4 stat gear set giving that player a higher stat total. What do we say here, that stat buffs alone are responsible for the outcome of this fight?

Taking your logic at face value, the player with the largest boosts to stats will always win. You're making things waaaaay too simplistic here, and ignoring the fact that duellers were usually great players because of their ability to read and counter their opponents, not because of their build. I used to duel a DH guildmate in HoT and I don't think I ever beat him except when he was intentionally trolling me with hammer, because he read me like a book every time.

• No1 threatening attacks keeps thus no1 defends camps and keeps eye on supply routes actively. Same applies to dolyaks. Do note that keep scouts are same people who defend/Keep eye on camps, so they're almost full-time roamers.

There are plenty of people running dolyaks and guarding camps. That is more of a server issue than anything, some choose to K-train and some play to defend and scout, some servers have more of one type of player and less of the other.

• There is no being "the best" anymore. Most gankers and roamers these days are forced to run in small groups because claim buffs extra runeset already makes massive difference when hitting high gold levels in pvp, that is basically anyone that takes the game seriously.

Rank in WvW does not accurately reflect the skill of the opponent in small scale nor does your own rank determine the skill level of players you will meet on the border, claim buffs are applied regardless of rank in WvW and there are no claim buffs in PvP. This argument doesn't make a lot of sense, honestly.

Havok groups and 5 man roaming existed way before claim buffs were introduced, so to claim people are forced to run in groups because of claim buff is just plain wrong. People run in small groups more than they used to for reasons like these;

• The game was originally designed without healers, but then expansions introduced healers and supports. If you're outnumbered against 2 DPS players and a support player, you either kill the support and let the DPS players freecast or you try to kill the DPS players while the support keeps them alive, both situations do not favour the solo player.
• Warclaw makes respawn times faster, making it harder to win close to a waypoint while outnumbered. They also make it much harder to win outnumbered as for the most part you cannot outrun a group anymore: if two players attack you while a third stays mounted to keep you in combat, then when you get one guy low he swaps with the mounted player, goes OOC and mounts up, you are going to have a very hard time dealing with them.
• Down state changes since release make it much, much harder to secure kills when solo, and after the February patch it is harder to cleave while solo because of lower damage.
• Marked on sentries and towers mean you are passively scouted in certain areas even if nobody is on that part of the map, so fighting in certain areas solo is much more likely to get you swarmed by enemy players than it used to.
• If you are playing for PPT, ganking lone targets with 5+ players til they get so annoyed they choose to change maps is a valid strategy. A number of servers do this, I won't have to tell you their names.

Basically while soloroaming itself might exist in form of ganking. Other factors are that people aren't pretty much needed to upgrade anymore as it happens so fast and much more passively than before meaning less people care about objectives and camps surrounding them. Overall Soloroaming often resolves around camps/duels, and that scene is dead. And this reduces amount of groups also as groups often form by having friends online at same time.

I actually agree that the system was better when people had to manually upgrade stuff. That said, in vanilla I used to upgrade a camp on a border to T3 then defend it with ballista until the enemy grouped up to deal with me. I still do the same thing today, except now I can't get the camp to T3 without soloing a tower or getting help from allies. From a purely roaming perspective, not much really changed. I used to enjoy duelling, and you still can. A lot of players left because of balance issues, a lot of players will also have left because they plain got bored. 7 years is a long time to be playing the same game.

Creating a build depends, for example it is a waste going 100% crit chance in a build for WvW while often you can replace that precision with ferocity and deal like 1% less damage without claim buff while dealing 5-10% more near friendly objectives (that is active approx ~40% of the time). It is just math and claim buffs extend all the way to open field. So usually on classes like Rev and necro that can easily hit 100%, you often wanna cut back 130 precision (claim buff + borderlands bloodlust) for optimal dps.

If precision is the only thing from the camp buff you're choosing to build around, it's hardly a big deal now is it? With the way group play is now your survival in the boon ball is less determined by stat boosts and more determined by numbers and squad composition. This directly affect your incoming boons, cleanses and heals and your outgoing boon corrupts. In small scale stats do make a larger difference, but when roaming you either invest heavily in defensive stats and sustain or you don't bother and rely on other forms of damage mitigation. So if your opponent is heavily invested you will need to wear them down regardless of camp buffs, and if they aren't heavily invested they are relying on active defenses like stealth, dodges, blocks etc so you need to outplay them. Like I said earlier, there is no parity between builds and professions, so roaming has never been balanced around having the same stat access to all players.

My point is: Even moderate amounts of extra passive stats ruin any kind of PvP mode and WvW wasn't balanced around defender having extra passive stats. Instead they nerfed wall HP, tactivators and AC damage but we are still at same state of the game where little bit weaker defender wins always even without utilizing siege, lords, respawns, stealth, clouding and whatever. And no one who takes the game seriously wants to lose against worse players. Attemping to siege a keep one more time and possibly being repelled by enemy outbraining you with siege is much more tolerable than getting destroyed by weaklings that never activated their brain regarding defending.

Thing is, WvW wasn't balanced around everyone having equal stats, not is it balanced around who is the "better" player, it pretty much comes down to the group with greater numbers win. Frankly you SHOULDN'T expect to win against superior numbers as a matter of course, and if you do they likely played like a bunch of potatoes.

Yea, but 8% extra damage and ~10% extra survivability, in addition to movement speed. This is enough to make difference in high level duels.

So you were dueling higher skilled dragonhunter where stats didn't make much difference, not great argument either.

It doesn't have to guarantee the win, simply shifting winrate of one side from 50-50 to 65-35 by taking 1 step to friendly claim buff and 35-65 taking a step to enemy claim buff is a big difference.

I do understand Fireworks runes is the roaming meta, however the movement speed makes a big difference for people that don't run it. For example Mirages and Chronos (as they don't lose the passive when being hindered by movement slowing condis) get lot of benefit from it. it doesn't have to be more than 200 range of mobility within fight (often is more), to make a difference of life and death. Of course the difference is even more if person is running durability runes instead and wrecks everything with free movement speed.

You are tunnelvision too much on the precision argument, it was just example why players feel like claim buff doesn't feel as powerful for some people and it can be busted in some cases. Yes 100 precision isn't that big of a deal, but neither should be whole claim buff.

Overall you're looking it as 400 stats, which could be fine in total, but I am looking it as 800 or 1600 stat swing. Sometimes you have 800, sometimes enemy group has 800, of course this breaks the balance between sides. So you win a fight at friendly objectives decisively due to defenders advantages, right? Nope, you bruteforced them down with stats. Then you hit them in return because you observer yourself to be the stronger side, and boom, 800/1200/1600 stat swing. And enemy gets the defender advantages AND stats.

My point being that while one side have 8/17% extra damage and survivability could be fine, it swinging from side to side depending on location, isn't. Even a monkey will learn that putting a finger in a fire is a bad thing, so people simply have bad experiences fighting at enemy objectives due to much lower winrate so they don't do it.

So with your observed "only 400 stat difference" actually means claim buff should only be +25 each stat. As maximum difference then you can reach (between keeps) is +100 each stat.

Now to use your own logic; why does the claim buff even exist if the stats don't matter that much? It covers weaknesses of bad builds without movement speed, makes high level fights swing from location to location, affects sustain fights massively. Nerfing it isn't that big of a deal, while it might not affect your bursty dragonhunter block+burst style of gameplay, it affects classes like warriors, necros and holosmiths way more.

Now answer this: Do you think, you having 8% damage AND survivability at this camp/tower and enemy having those at other one, make up for good fights? Ultimately WvW is about the observed scenes and timezones staying consistant, so people know when to log in for activity, which both claimbuff actually swing massively

TLDR; You're ignoring the percentages, 400 permanent stats from 1 side might seem small, but it swinging from side to side is something one can't ignore. Precision was just an example why people don't feel DPS increase and you shouldn't tunnelvision on it.

Overall, just math it, don't look at it as 100 power, vitality, toughness and precision, look it as 8/17% damage+survivability increase and that it swings from side to side. Observe and you will eventually arrive to same conclusion that winrates swing hardly from one location to another. it might not affect the newbie scene too much, but believe me it affects the fights between skilled players a lot. Roaming scene trickles from top to bottom, some newbie ele finds amazing ele on youtube looking up to him and starts roaming as well. But this amazing ele doesn't exist at roaming scene anymore because there is no hierarchy between players to aim for the top due to claim buff swings. Before 90% of the map used to be locations for roamers to fight each other on equal ground, now it is like 5%.

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

@Threather.9354 said:

@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

@Threather.9354 said:

@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

@Dawdler.8521 said:

@Threather.9354 said:My personal opinion is that whichever team originally designed WvW obviously put a lot of thought into things like upgrade times, passive stat strength (BL bloodlust), siege damage/health, population status and objective sturdiness, than whoever completely oblirated all that.Hahaha no. Anet got literally everything of that wrong and didnt correct it until we complained. Bloodlust is the best example. Original bloodlust was a disaster that really did add far too much stats.

Just playing devil's advocate here, but given old bloodlust used to give 50 power per stack for a max of 150 extra power (if memory serves, do correct me if I'm wrong), if that was too much then I can kinda see where he is going when he says 200 power from keep buff is too strong. Never mind the other stats you get from it.

Edit; I do agree with what others have said tho, that while it is strong, the keep buffs don't really kill roaming. If you are building glassy you will die in seconds anyways, and I think it's foolish to make your build dependant on stats you might not have because a keep flipped under you. If the OP is trying to build his character assuming he will have these buffs as he has said, I can see why he thinks it's such a big deal, but it's actually him making these buffs have such a large effect by trying to build off them instead of seeing them as just icing on the cake.

It killed roaming by indirectly reducing activity roamers can do:

• They can't fight equally strong players at camps because those players will defeat you, the movement speed boost is especially noticeable (look at sPvP where everyone uses Speed/Lynx runes). I am sure you know from your experience that lot of good roamers are very toxic and don't take losing lightly.]

You are forgetting that there is already no parity between professions and builds; some classes have inherently better move speed and stat boosts through traits and boons than others do, your statement that the attacker would die simply because of the extra stats from the objective buff assumes that the stat differences between professions and whether you have the camp's guards on your side both have no effect on the outcome of the fight, which is obviously not true. Secondly, all players have access to runes that give 25% move speed, so the movement speed argument is a bit moot really.

• Dueling around SM died. Duelers were cream of the crop. Put any top sPvP or dueler against another, the one with 400 extra stats will always win. And no one is interested watching mediocre players duel.

See my point above. There is no parity between classes and builds, they have inherent differences in stats because of trait and build choices, so unless we are talking about mirror duels there is very likely an inequality between those roaming builds before the keep buffs are taken into account. A player running a three stat gear set like dire can easily kill a player running a four stat gear set like marauder, despite the 4 stat gear set giving that player a higher stat total. What do we say here, that stat buffs alone are responsible for the outcome of this fight?

Taking your logic at face value, the player with the largest boosts to stats will always win. You're making things waaaaay too simplistic here, and ignoring the fact that duellers were usually great players because of their ability to read and counter their opponents, not because of their build. I used to duel a DH guildmate in HoT and I don't think I ever beat him except when he was intentionally trolling me with hammer, because he read me like a book every time.

• No1 threatening attacks keeps thus no1 defends camps and keeps eye on supply routes actively. Same applies to dolyaks. Do note that keep scouts are same people who defend/Keep eye on camps, so they're almost full-time roamers.

There are plenty of people running dolyaks and guarding camps. That is more of a server issue than anything, some choose to K-train and some play to defend and scout, some servers have more of one type of player and less of the other.

• There is no being "the best" anymore. Most gankers and roamers these days are forced to run in small groups because claim buffs extra runeset already makes massive difference when hitting high gold levels in pvp, that is basically anyone that takes the game seriously.

Rank in WvW does not accurately reflect the skill of the opponent in small scale nor does your own rank determine the skill level of players you will meet on the border, claim buffs are applied regardless of rank in WvW and there are no claim buffs in PvP. This argument doesn't make a lot of sense, honestly.

Havok groups and 5 man roaming existed way before claim buffs were introduced, so to claim people are forced to run in groups because of claim buff is just plain wrong. People run in small groups more than they used to for reasons like these;

• The game was originally designed without healers, but then expansions introduced healers and supports. If you're outnumbered against 2 DPS players and a support player, you either kill the support and let the DPS players freecast or you try to kill the DPS players while the support keeps them alive, both situations do not favour the solo player.
• Warclaw makes respawn times faster, making it harder to win close to a waypoint while outnumbered. They also make it much harder to win outnumbered as for the most part you cannot outrun a group anymore: if two players attack you while a third stays mounted to keep you in combat, then when you get one guy low he swaps with the mounted player, goes OOC and mounts up, you are going to have a very hard time dealing with them.
• Down state changes since release make it much, much harder to secure kills when solo, and after the February patch it is harder to cleave while solo because of lower damage.
• Marked on sentries and towers mean you are passively scouted in certain areas even if nobody is on that part of the map, so fighting in certain areas solo is much more likely to get you swarmed by enemy players than it used to.
• If you are playing for PPT, ganking lone targets with 5+ players til they get so annoyed they choose to change maps is a valid strategy. A number of servers do this, I won't have to tell you their names.

Basically while soloroaming itself might exist in form of ganking. Other factors are that people aren't pretty much needed to upgrade anymore as it happens so fast and much more passively than before meaning less people care about objectives and camps surrounding them. Overall Soloroaming often resolves around camps/duels, and that scene is dead. And this reduces amount of groups also as groups often form by having friends online at same time.

I actually agree that the system was better when people had to manually upgrade stuff. That said, in vanilla I used to upgrade a camp on a border to T3 then defend it with ballista until the enemy grouped up to deal with me. I still do the same thing today, except now I can't get the camp to T3 without soloing a tower or getting help from allies. From a purely roaming perspective, not much really changed. I used to enjoy duelling, and you still can. A lot of players left because of balance issues, a lot of players will also have left because they plain got bored. 7 years is a long time to be playing the same game.

Creating a build depends, for example it is a waste going 100% crit chance in a build for WvW while often you can replace that precision with ferocity and deal like 1% less damage without claim buff while dealing 5-10% more near friendly objectives (that is active approx ~40% of the time). It is just math and claim buffs extend all the way to open field. So usually on classes like Rev and necro that can easily hit 100%, you often wanna cut back 130 precision (claim buff + borderlands bloodlust) for optimal dps.

If precision is the only thing from the camp buff you're choosing to build around, it's hardly a big deal now is it? With the way group play is now your survival in the boon ball is less determined by stat boosts and more determined by numbers and squad composition. This directly affect your incoming boons, cleanses and heals and your outgoing boon corrupts. In small scale stats do make a larger difference, but when roaming you either invest heavily in defensive stats and sustain or you don't bother and rely on other forms of damage mitigation. So if your opponent is heavily invested you will need to wear them down regardless of camp buffs, and if they aren't heavily invested they are relying on active defenses like stealth, dodges, blocks etc so you need to outplay them. Like I said earlier, there is no parity between builds and professions, so roaming has never been balanced around having the same stat access to all players.

My point is: Even moderate amounts of extra passive stats ruin any kind of PvP mode and WvW wasn't balanced around defender having extra passive stats. Instead they nerfed wall HP, tactivators and AC damage but we are still at same state of the game where little bit weaker defender wins always even without utilizing siege, lords, respawns, stealth, clouding and whatever. And no one who takes the game seriously wants to lose against worse players. Attemping to siege a keep one more time and possibly being repelled by enemy outbraining you with siege is much more tolerable than getting destroyed by weaklings that never activated their brain regarding defending.

Thing is, WvW wasn't balanced around everyone having equal stats, not is it balanced around who is the "better" player, it pretty much comes down to the group with greater numbers win. Frankly you SHOULDN'T expect to win against superior numbers as a matter of course, and if you do they likely played like a bunch of potatoes.

I feel like you're missing my point a little here, so I will try to reword it.

Yea, but 8% extra damage and ~10% extra survivability, in addition to movement speed. This is enough to make difference in high level duels.

A duelling build that doesn't bring at least 25% move speed will get kited to death by anyone with greater move speed, making it a bad build for duels. You generally either invest fully in a stat or not at all, so builds that invest fully will get the least increase due to diminishing returns, and builds that don't invest at all will have so little that it will hardly matter if they have the keep buff or not. This is ignoring the fact that armistice bastion is a thing, so if someone wants a duel they already have a space to do it where keep buffs will not matter.

So you were dueling higher skilled dragonhunter where stats didn't make much difference, not great argument either.

My point is that when roaming/duelling the ability to read an opponent and use active defenses like dodges or blocks is going to have a much bigger impact than the stats from keep buff, so saying things like the player that has the most stats will win is too simplistic. For example, I could build a daredevil with S/D and staff with the relevant weapon traits to get an additional 360 power that a deadeye would not have with the same gear, but if the deadeye dodges vault then kills me with one attack from stealth it's not going to do me much good.

It doesn't have to guarantee the win, simply shifting winrate of one side from 50-50 to 65-35 by taking 1 step to friendly claim buff and 35-65 taking a step to enemy claim buff is a big difference.

Where are you getting those numbers?

I do understand Fireworks runes is the roaming meta, however the movement speed makes a big difference for people that don't run it. For example Mirages and Chronos (as they don't lose the passive when being hindered by movement slowing condis) get lot of benefit from it. it doesn't have to be more than 200 range of mobility within fight (often is more), to make a difference of life and death. Of course the difference is even more if person is running durability runes instead and wrecks everything with free movement speed.

The vast majority of people who do not run any kind of move speed are on zerg builds, so in the group they will have swiftness and won't notice the 25% from keep buff, and outside the group they shouldn't be allowing themselves to get into a 1v1 fight on that build in the first place. You get 2 build templates for free, so it's not at all difficult to have one build for mobility/avoiding ganks and another for when you reach your group.

You are tunnelvision too much on the precision argument, it was just example why players feel like claim buff doesn't feel as powerful for some people and it can be busted in some cases. Yes 100 precision isn't that big of a deal, but neither should be whole claim buff.

I'm not getting tunnel vision, I just think the stat boost has a much smaller impact than you say it does.

Overall you're looking it as 400 stats, which could be fine in total, but I am looking it as 800 or 1600 stat swing. Sometimes you have 800, sometimes enemy group has 800, of course this breaks the balance between sides. So you win a fight at friendly objectives decisively due to defenders advantages, right? Nope, you bruteforced them down with stats. Then you hit them in return because you observer yourself to be the stronger side, and boom, 800/1200/1600 stat swing. And enemy gets the defender advantages AND stats.

I still really don't think it is as much of an issue as you make out, because the number of players and the squad composition is going to have a far, far larger effect than a stat boost from the keep. If you haven't got enough scourges to rip boons, your squad will likely get wiped by an enemy group who does bring enough scourges regardless of if you have the keep buff or not.

My point being that while one side have 8/17% extra damage and survivability could be fine, it swinging from side to side depending on location, isn't. Even a monkey will learn that putting a finger in a fire is a bad thing, so people simply have bad experiences fighting at enemy objectives due to much lower winrate so they don't do it.

It is supposed to be difficult to take an objective, but given that attacking is currently easier than defending, I still don't think the stat boost is an issue.

So with your observed "only 400 stat difference" actually means claim buff should only be +25 each stat. As maximum difference then you can reach (between keeps) is +100 each stat.

Now to use your own logic; why does the claim buff even exist if the stats don't matter that much? It covers weaknesses of bad builds without movement speed, makes high level fights swing from location to location, affects sustain fights massively. Nerfing it isn't that big of a deal, while it might not affect your bursty dragonhunter block+burst style of gameplay, it affects classes like warriors, necros and holosmiths way more.

Firstly, I don't play dragonhunter, if you read my signature you'd know what profession I main. Secondly, I don't always play high burst playstyles, I often play significantly tankier builds than the average thief alongside more traditional glass builds. Thirdly, the stat buffs do obviously have an effect, they would be pointless otherwise. My point is that player action will always have a far greater effect than stats from a keep buff, unless both sides just trade blows without bothering to use any kind of active defense. If the stat buff is the deciding factor in a group fight, your commander needs to up his game.

Now answer this: Do you think, you having 8% damage AND survivability at this camp/tower and enemy having those at other one, make up for good fights? Ultimately WvW is about the observed scenes and timezones staying consistant, so people know when to log in for activity, which both claimbuff actually swing massively

I think defender's advantage should be a thing, and I think if you lose the keep buff because the objective flips under you, you were clearly already losing the fight despite the fact you had extra stats. So I don't think it matters as much as you make out.

TLDR; You're ignoring the percentages, 400 permanent stats from 1 side might seem small, but it swinging from side to side is something one can't ignore. Precision was just an example why people don't feel DPS increase and you shouldn't tunnelvision on it.

Again, if the buff swings mid fight, the side that lost the buff was already losing the fight despite the extra stats, which strongly suggests that the buff was not the deciding factor in that fight.

Overall, just math it, don't look at it as 100 power, vitality, toughness and precision, look it as 8/17% damage+survivability increase and that it swings from side to side. Observe and you will eventually arrive to same conclusion that winrates swing hardly from one location to another. it might not affect the newbie scene too much, but believe me it affects the fights between skilled players a lot. Roaming scene trickles from top to bottom, some newbie ele finds amazing ele on youtube looking up to him and starts roaming as well. But this amazing ele doesn't exist at roaming scene anymore because there is no hierarchy between players to aim for the top due to claim buff swings. Before 90% of the map used to be locations for roamers to fight each other on equal ground, now it is like 5%.

If you can't deal with the stat buff in enemy territory, maybe you shouldn't be roaming in enemy territory in the first place. If the buff swing from side to side in a group fight, whoever gained the buff was already winning without the benefit of the extra stats. I don't care about a hierarchy of roamers, if I think I can take you I'll go for you no matter who or where you are. I think the best kind of victory is the kind you win before the other guy knew he was fighting, so finding myself in a fair fight means I screwed up. If you want to complain about fairness and fighting on equal ground, you're talking to the wrong guy honestly.

[ASP.8093]

Ah. Yes. The entire "hierarchy of players" is collapsing because a guy at the very top couldn't handle an enemy getting 1 extra auto-attack worth of stats.

[God.2708]

It is a strange world where people seem to not comprehend 400-800 stats (100power, prec, toughness, vit, doubled with presence of the keep) is not a huge difference. The stat gap between a player having exotic armor and ascended armor is less than 80 total. Simply being near your keep is giving you 5-10x the stat advantage to an entire armor set upgrade.

The difference between a full entire kit, weapon trinkets and armor going from exotic to ascended is just over 300. Being near your keep is a larger stat disparity than totally outgearing your opponent one level.

Someone with presence of the keep and in full greens has the same stats as someone in full ascended. Presence of the keep gives you enough stat bonuses to COMPLETELY SKIP THE GEAR SPECTRUM. Part of that rides on you being in a power build, but let's not lose the forest for the trees. Even if you think it doesn't factor in your active decision making process, it is not a stretch to state it would passively influence players decision making without them even thinking about it. They push out and lose more frequently in enemy territory, opt to play more defensive, see they win more when defending their structures, sit there and hide behind siege because it's an easier win, everyone is now staring at each other across the canyon.

You can overcome that with active decision making, but that doesn't change the underlying pressure that subtlety pushes players to play one way. A way, I would argue, is not particularly healthy for a mode that thrives on people fighting each other.

[TheGrimm.5624]

@God.2708 said:You can overcome that with active decision making, but that doesn't change the underlying pressure that subtlety pushes players to play one way. A way, I would argue, is not particularly healthy for a mode that thrives on people fighting each other.

As a defender let me take it a different route. As a defender facing more numbers on a normal basis (again attacker chooses time and place of fight) , Presence of the Keep affords a defender what walls really should be applying but don't. If you want fights and have meaning in holding objectives then things like this is what makes 5 people try and fight 20 even though they have no chance to hold. Removing it won't create fights, it will create KTrains. The best fights are ones that have time to build and defensive stats give people some chance to slow an attacker. The more you remove options for people to try and defend the less they will do so because it is already easier and less frustrating to just attack.

Now some of this might be your mileage will vary from server to server or from EU to NA so that could account for some of differences where people are coming at this from. Does PotK provide stat bonus, yes. Does it make it harder on the attacker if equal forces, yes. But it it often that an attacker is attacking somewhere with equal numbers, no. Did Warclaw get nerfed for speed gain in controlled territory, yes. Did defensive structures get their TTK dropped due to wall nerfs, yes. Can a larger force just power rez their people in their current location and not run back, yes. Will defenders that are dropped be out of the fight longer when they have to run back, yes.

So if we are talking some trade offs then I could see this removed. Add back in Warclaw speed in controlled territory, adjust downstate to not favor larger side, force defeated to have to respawn, either revive them while downed or both sides have to run back when defeated and potentially either remove nerf on siege or increase wall strength on higher tiers and then we might be in a spot to remove PotK.

[God.2708]

@TheGrimm.5624 said:(again attacker chooses time and place of fight) ,

I'd argue the argument falls apart here IN THEORY. The attacker doesn't get to choose time and place to fight in a healthy WvW where score is important and the mode isn't just about whatever fights you can find. One of the things BG was/is good at is taking their BL, then taking their side keep on other BLs and tiering it up and keeping it. If the attackers want to 'win' or even procure some level of a fight they have to attack into this tiered objective. The defenders have chosen the location, sure the attackers could pick one of like 5 keeps, but it isn't particularly hard to identify which they are going for and be there with an equitable force. People find out they're always fighting a ginormous stat fluffed hoard wherever they go. Get bored. Go AFK on weeks they fight BG.

Of course, this is not the state of WvW, so I agree with your assessment mostly. But I'm back and forth on how much changes should be directed at what WvW could/should be vs changes made that harm that because of what WvW is.

[Riba.3271]

@TheGrimm.5624 said:

@God.2708 said:You can overcome that with active decision making, but that doesn't change the underlying pressure that subtlety pushes players to play one way. A way, I would argue, is not particularly healthy for a mode that thrives on people fighting each other.

As a defender let me take it a different route. As a defender facing more numbers on a normal basis (again attacker chooses time and place of fight) , Presence of the Keep affords a defender what walls really should be applying but don't.

Walls don't because they nerfed all defensive siege, made it obsolete (shield gens), reduced wall HP, doubled siege health. Its just a joke, you can have a treb behind the gate and enemy can just alpha/guild golem it down in less than 40 seconds. There is currently absolutely 0 counterplay to attackers that have more numbers.

So instead defending is relying on overwhelming stats instead of defender actually having TIME to gather numbers and use siege to take down offensive siege, like pre-HoT. Passive stats are way more annoying for attacker when facing equal numbered groups thus they don't choose to do it, taking 5 to 15 minutes more to siege a keep was much more fun than running back from spawn + only being capable of farming much weaker players.

We have arrived to situation where:

• Attacking is boring because you won't get decent fights, it lasts max 2 minutes to breach the objectives (provided you use shield gens like normal beings) and you wipe to worse players very fast if they can gather numbers.

and

• Defending is hopeless outnumbered, none of the siege does nothing. Trebs/Acs/catas/ballistas don't work because shield gens, and even if they do, rams/catas only take half damage from them. Walls and gates have less HP.

But also

• Defenders almost always have some amount people online (~15-25) ready to def things instead of playing actively and as everything upgrades superfast, there is just not much for small attacking groups to do as even side keeps on borderlands are usually T3 due to boosted upgrade times.

All this arrived with HoT, while claim buff affects roamers and high level scene the most, upgrade times being boosted massively were another offender to reduce the amount of activity on maps. Tbf they tried to fix overpowered defending after HoT by buffing siege HP and reducing wall/gate HP, but in the end they didn't touch the real offenders, claim buff and upgrade times. We are literally at state where everyone stacks at servers that owns sm all daytime because attacking is terrible

Overall objectives are just too weak, siege counterplay is terrible and this all should be fixed. In return claim buff should be reduced to +25 stats instead of +100. This would especially affect roamers because it does not only affect ganking and small fights within objectives but also open field massively.

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

@Threather.9354 said:

@TheGrimm.5624 said:

@God.2708 said:You can overcome that with active decision making, but that doesn't change the underlying pressure that subtlety pushes players to play one way. A way, I would argue, is not particularly healthy for a mode that thrives on people fighting each other.

As a defender let me take it a different route. As a defender facing more numbers on a normal basis (again attacker chooses time and place of fight) , Presence of the Keep affords a defender what walls really should be applying but don't.

Walls don't because they nerfed all defensive siege, made it obsolete (shield gens), reduced wall HP, doubled siege health. Its just a joke, you can have a treb behind the gate and enemy can just alpha/guild golem it down in less than 40 seconds. There is currently absolutely 0 counterplay to attackers that have more numbers.

So instead defending is relying on overwhelming stats instead of defender actually having TIME to gather numbers and use siege to take down offensive siege, like pre-HoT. Passive stats are way more annoying for attacker

when facing equal numbered groups

thus they don't choose to do it, taking 5 to 15 minutes more to siege a keep was much more fun than running back from spawn + only being capable of farming much weaker players.

We have arrived to situation where:

• Attacking is boring because you won't get decent fights, it lasts max 2 minutes to breach the objectives (provided you use shield gens like normal beings) and you wipe to worse players very fast if they can gather numbers.

and

• Defending is hopeless outnumbered, none of the siege does nothing. Trebs/Acs/catas/ballistas don't work because shield gens, and even if they do, rams/catas only take half damage from them. Walls and gates have less HP.

But also

• Defenders almost always have some amount people online (~15-25) ready to def things instead of playing actively and as everything upgrades superfast, there is just not much for small attacking groups to do as even side keeps on borderlands are usually T3 due to boosted upgrade times.

All this arrived with

HoT

, while claim buff affects roamers and high level scene the most, upgrade times being boosted massively were another offender to reduce the amount of activity on maps. Tbf they tried to fix overpowered defending after HoT by buffing siege HP and reducing wall/gate HP, but in the end they didn't touch the real offenders, claim buff and upgrade times.

We are literally at state where everyone stacks at servers that owns sm all daytime because attacking is terrible

Overall objectives are just too weak, siege counterplay is terrible and this all should be fixed. In return claim buff should be reduced to +25 stats instead of +100. This would

especially

affect roamers because it does not only affect ganking and small fights within objectives but also open field massively.

This is a much stronger argument than the previous posts. I still think that the buffs make marginal difference to roaming, but if changes were made to siege, upgrades (I always thought auto upgrades were a bad change) and defending in the way you're talking about then yeah, get rid of the claim buff because it wouldn't be needed anyway.