New changes to retal hurting Support FB in WvW

[Leaa.2943]

19 hours ago, RisenHowl.2419 said:

retal was the main mechanic by which ALL supports got their loot, so this is a bigger issue than it's given credit for. Squads can't function without supports, but there's no longer a reason to play support classes in large scale fights from any individual player's perspective. Especially when you can literally just run dps elementalists for your entire map queue and win every fight by pulling to a choke or hiding in a structure.

 

bags are w/e but wxp, precursor drops, ascended gear drops, etc are all still valued by those players.

I played support ele for soon to be 9 years. I played it in groups, zergs, blobs, gvg's and everything inbetween. I always had less lootbags because i always focused on making sure my team was ok rather then aiming for lootbags and wxp. So when we brought this up during the years i could not see the outrage from Firebrands supporting our cause. But now this is suddenly a huge problem because it is them suffering?

[Sonja.3497]

So Leaa - this isn't Firebrand crying by any means.  I actually play all supports - it's what I prefer to play. I don't actually count bags and levels per se in any of those forms for the reason why you state there. I am not against any class - I think it would be fantastic to focus on the entire support genre for exactly what Risen points out, but the patch that just happened made a clear and obvious change to Firebrand, hence why we are collecting data.  It's pretty normal, and always has been, for DPS to outshine support. You want to bring up support ele. I am with you. I also love my support ele. And my support scrapper. See a trend? Just so happens that a friend of mine and I who both play Firebrand decided to try to dig into this particular scenario and ask anyone else who plays it to look for this. Why? Because no matter what people always ask for Firebrands  - it's a commonly played class, a meta class so commanders alaways want them and an obvious choice to find and collect data. 

[RisenHowl.2419]

3 hours ago, Leaa.2943 said:

I played support ele for soon to be 9 years. I played it in groups, zergs, blobs, gvg's and everything inbetween. I always had less lootbags because i always focused on making sure my team was ok rather then aiming for lootbags and wxp. So when we brought this up during the years i could not see the outrage from Firebrands supporting our cause. But now this is suddenly a huge problem because it is them suffering?

This has been an ongoing problem for years, but with retal supports got around 50% of the bags a dps got- not great.

 

retal applied by anyone on any support allowed those supports to get bags by dealing a small amount of damage to attackers. Now without retal, all supports are getting *maybe* 20% of the loot that a dps is getting, this isn't firebrand specific.

 

when they nerfed the lootstick i think the balance team was justified, there were a ton of people who didn't contribute to fights in the slightest, they just came to spam 1 and get their loot. That was a smart change, forcing people to play the game. This change is the exact opposite, it directly harms ALL support toons for playing as a support.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

8 hours ago, RisenHowl.2419 said:

I think if the wvw roamers were as good as they believe they are, they'd be in pvp trying to fight people that provide a challenge. Instead they choose to gank people running back to their zergs in wvw because it's the only way they can feel like they're good at the game.

You know there's more to rewards than bags right? wxp, ascended drops, precursors, black lion keys... all of these are just as desired by supports as dps. There's no gain in screwing over support players for playing support roles unless the intent is to deincentivize playing support, which is monumentally stupid as the entire game mode relies on them. No supports, no zergs, no one for you to pick off- the meta becomes stale as people sit in towers all day.

 

Do you know how many cleanses and stun breaks a zerg dps build runs? How does that compare to a roaming build? Scorpion wire and immob spam don't do kitten against competent roamers because their builds are meant to counter those tactics, when everyone is running a build that counters w/e cheese you run to roam your content dries up.

 

what do roamers do when they don't have people running zerg builds to pick off? If all you do is roam and you've been playing for 9 years you should definitely have gotten more than 500 ranks. tell me more about how zerglings sit in spawn afk

 

 

 

You don't roam do you? 

[Ronin.4501]

9 hours ago, RisenHowl.2419 said:

I think if the wvw roamers were as good as they believe they are, they'd be in pvp trying to fight people that provide a challenge. Instead they choose to gank people running back to their zergs in wvw because it's the only way they can feel like they're good at the game.

You know there's more to rewards than bags right? wxp, ascended drops, precursors, black lion keys... all of these are just as desired by supports as dps. There's no gain in screwing over support players for playing support roles unless the intent is to deincentivize playing support, which is monumentally stupid as the entire game mode relies on them. No supports, no zergs, no one for you to pick off- the meta becomes stale as people sit in towers all day.

 

Do you know how many cleanses and stun breaks a zerg dps build runs? How does that compare to a roaming build? Scorpion wire and immob spam don't do kitten against competent roamers because their builds are meant to counter those tactics, when everyone is running a build that counters w/e cheese you run to roam your content dries up.

 

what do roamers do when they don't have people running zerg builds to pick off? If all you do is roam and you've been playing for 9 years you should definitely have gotten more than 500 ranks. tell me more about how zerglings sit in spawn afk

 

 

1) There are quite a few roamers (myself included) who don't waste their time following zergs to gank the stragglers. 2) I'd say the talent level of WvW roamers is far greater than the garbage you encounter in SPvP.  You want to talk about cheese builds and Flavor-of-the-Month builds, go check out SPvP.  Well, the handful of players there who aren't bots.  Roaming nowadays (at least solo roaming) is about being able to sustain the glass cannon 1-shot builds that are usually worthless once they've unloaded everything in the first 5s of the fight and counter the permaboon builds that everyone runs.  All I have to do is strip their boons and watch 'em panic because 75% of players these days rely more on their boons than their skill.  Thanks for that Anet!!

[RisenHowl.2419]

2 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

 

You don't roam do you? 

Roaming and pvp was all I did for the first four years of the game. I still do on occasion, I generally include anything better than a 3v1 in my videos because roaming is a joke- the majority of people you find are either on a build meant to disengage eternally or people who have no idea how to fight. Real tough content.

 

1 hour ago, Ronin.4501 said:

1) There are quite a few roamers (myself included) who don't waste their time following zergs to gank the stragglers. 2) I'd say the talent level of WvW roamers is far greater than the garbage you encounter in SPvP.  You want to talk about cheese builds and Flavor-of-the-Month builds, go check out SPvP.  Well, the handful of players there who aren't bots.  Roaming nowadays (at least solo roaming) is about being able to sustain the glass cannon 1-shot builds that are usually worthless once they've unloaded everything in the first 5s of the fight and counter the permaboon builds that everyone runs.  All I have to do is strip their boons and watch 'em panic because 75% of players these days rely more on their boons than their skill.  Thanks for that Anet!!

1. Use the enter key

 

2. Wvw has wildly inflated stats and gear choices you can't get in pvp, that's why the cheese is so much stronger in wvw. That you don't know that is telling.

 

3. If boons are your biggest issue while roaming you aren't fighting competent roamers, you're ganking minstrel supports trying to get back to their zerg.

 

[Ronin.4501]

11 hours ago, RisenHowl.2419 said:

Roaming and pvp was all I did for the first four years of the game. I still do on occasion, I generally include anything better than a 3v1 in my videos because roaming is a joke- the majority of people you find are either on a build meant to disengage eternally or people who have no idea how to fight. Real tough content.

 

1. Use the enter key

 

2. Wvw has wildly inflated stats and gear choices you can't get in pvp, that's why the cheese is so much stronger in wvw. That you don't know that is telling.

 

3. If boons are your biggest issue while roaming you aren't fighting competent roamers, you're ganking minstrel supports trying to get back to their zerg.

 

You're big on projection aren't you?  I suppose I'll throw out a few projections of my own.

 

1) The fact that you think players in PvP are far more skilled than roamers in WvW tells me you probably tried roaming for a week or so in WvW, got repeatedly destroyed and went back to PvP with your tail tucked between your legs, where maybe 10% of the players are actually skilled, 40% of the players look like they just got the game last week and don't have the slightest clue as to what's going on, with the other 50% being bots.

 

2) It becomes even clearer that you've spent little to no time roaming as you seem to think the only classes that run heavy on boons are minstrel support classes.  Almost every ranger class, thief class, mesmer class, ele class, as well as condi herald/renegade, DH, and a few others can pop boons at will these days (or steal them from their opponents).  I guess I should stop going after those dang minstrel support thieves I keep encountering.

 

3) I spend 95% of my time roaming on desert BL, the map you're least likely to find zerglings and stragglers trying to get back to their zerg.  And when I do encounter a zerg, I'm far more interested in dropping supply traps and target traps just to trip them up than I am wasting my time chasing stragglers, as typically all their buddies come rushing back to save them.  If I do bother targeting a straggler, it's because I actually want to draw off as many "squirrels" as possible because it's giving my zerg more time to arrive to defend against the enemy zerg.

 

You strike me as the type of person who thinks they're an expert on medicine because you watched a medical drama on TV once but otherwise have absolutely no experience whatsoever to draw actual conclusions from.

[RisenHowl.2419]

24 minutes ago, Ronin.4501 said:

You're big on projection aren't you?  I suppose I'll throw out a few projections of my own.

 

1) The fact that you think players in PvP are far more skilled than roamers in WvW tells me you probably tried roaming for a week or so in WvW, got repeatedly destroyed and went back to PvP with your tail tucked between your legs, where maybe 10% of the players are actually skilled, 40% of the players look like they just got the game last week and don't have the slightest clue as to what's going on, with the other 50% being bots.

 

2) It becomes even clearer that you've spent little to no time roaming as you seem to think the only classes that run heavy on boons are minstrel support classes.  Almost every ranger class, thief class, mesmer class, ele class, as well as condi herald/renegade, DH, and a few others can pop boons at will these days (or steal them from their opponents).  I guess I should stop going after those dang minstrel support thieves I keep encountering.

 

3) I spend 95% of my time roaming on desert BL, the map you're least likely to find zerglings and stragglers trying to get back to their zerg.  And when I do encounter a zerg, I'm far more interested in dropping supply traps and target traps just to trip them up than I am wasting my time chasing stragglers, as typically all their buddies come rushing back to save them.  If I do bother targeting a straggler, it's because I actually want to draw off as many "squirrels" as possible because it's giving my zerg more time to arrive to defend against the enemy zerg.

 

You strike me as the type of person who thinks they're an expert on medicine because you watched a medical drama on TV once but otherwise have absolutely no experience whatsoever to draw actual conclusions from.

 

 

 

1. WvW has massively inflated stats, better customization of their gear, food, utilities, and a number of trait and skill splits that give them the same power as PvE compared to their nerfed counterparts in PvP. This is why the cheese is so much stronger in WvW. PvP puts everyone on equal ground as far as gear goes, which is kitten sight more even than WvW since the new players and players who may as well be bots are the same in both game modes. More bots in PvP, but tbh the average bot plays better than the average player does. I can guarantee you I've logged more hours in WvW than you've logged playing the game entirely.

 

2. Boonbeast, cele ele, condi rev, and to a lesser extent condi mes are the only roamers that rely heavily on boons and are countered by strips/corrupts. Literally every class has access to boons, but they don't always play a huge role in what makes them good. Idk where you think boon thief is a thing man but lol. Counter to condi rev is to kite, counter to any renegade is to spam CC, counter to condi mes is to run reflects. The strongest roaming builds right now are immob ranger, cele core necro, shiro herald, grenade engi, any variety of thief, condi mes, and cele ele. Cleansing sigil and/or antitoxin runes counter almost all the condi builds on their own. The defining feature of every good roaming build other than necro is the ability to disengage and run, either via movement skills or stealth.

 

3. Ahhh now things are making more sense! You roam on (lol) desert bl! Where literally no one that's competent roams because the map is too big. No wonder you think you're good, you spend all your time farming people who are brand new to WvW and like the map with the least amount of competition.

 

PS. I have a decade of surgical experience under my belt, i'm literally an expert in my field. Fight me.

[MrForz.1953]

13 hours ago, RisenHowl.2419 said:

3. If boons are your biggest issue while roaming you aren't fighting competent roamers, you're ganking minstrel supports trying to get back to their zerg.

 

 

You mean that all those rangers and thieves were using minstrel gear? Everything I knew was wrong. 😱

 

EDIT; At the risk of sounding condescending or something, I know where you're getting at, but the boons are kind of an issue too on a personal scale. I use Forge, press 3 a couple of times with general Alchemy usage and I've got enough might to allow myself to make up for the damage loss when switching to Celestial along with the usual rainbow of defensive boons that comes with the traitline and one Elixir. I'm not sure that at their creation people were meant to generate that many different boons on a whim.

 

When talking sPvP and WvW... There are good and horrible players on both ends and I'm pretty sure it comes down to what kind of objective you prefer to follow. A role in a node capturing/holding contest or something likely more vague in the battlegrounds.

Edited May 22, 2021 by MrForz.1953

[Vavume.8065]

On 5/21/2021 at 6:21 PM, RisenHowl.2419 said:

nah for real man, what's your plan when people don't/can't zerg anymore?

No need to plan, there will always be zergs.

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

On 5/21/2021 at 3:01 PM, lodjur.1284 said:

sPvP is far less skill intensive. I should know.

I rarely if ever gank/pick off people, it's boring. We as an organized group of 2-5 go for as outnumbered fight as possible. It's the only thing that really feel like it's a challenge (not necessarily saying me or my group is the best 5v5 guild in the game, but challenge means more than difficult, it means a chance for your skills to shine, 5v5's skill ceiling in this game just isn't high enough for that (still far higher than zerging ofc)) 

 

Yet me and my group don't run a particularly CC based strategy, it doesn't work well when you're outnumbered 3:1 and your enemies are 40% support.

Almost up at 3k rank, been averaging a few hours a day for 4 years maybe. (excluding the bad year balance wise (2019))

 

 

I completely agree that picking off stragglers to a zerg is only one step above zerging yourself in terms of the skill required to pull it off.

If pvp is so much less skill intensive and your group is amazing at 5v5 then why dont you go win the MaT and show the pvpers how its done?

[Shroud.2307]

On 5/19/2021 at 10:05 PM, RisenHowl.2419 said:

the bigger issue is that without retal there's no cost involved in running pure glass ranged classes. it doesn't matter how good your group's sustain is, you're not going to tank 60 meteor showers and 5 acs. There's no reason for people to leave their towers and keeps, which is going to kill this game mode.

 

we're already seeing it in NA both in t1 and t2, 50 people hole up in a structure and rain meteors and siege down with impunity. someone goes down, mist form back inside, repeat. Whoever thought this idea up needs to be fired for incompetence.

I'm not getting this argument. Being pure glass is the risk. Not only can you die to a stray AOE or CC, you lose half your health when dropping damage. 

Meanwhile, full supports can pick flowers while strolling through a field painted red and lose 5% of their health and still get loot just because people are attacking them.

Can't say I'm mourning the loss of Retal right now.

[Dawdler.8521]

2 hours ago, Shroud.2307 said:

I'm not getting this argument. Being pure glass is the risk. Not only can you die to a stray AOE or CC, you lose half your health when dropping damage. 

Meanwhile, full supports can pick flowers while strolling through a field painted red and lose 5% of their health and still get loot just because people are attacking them.

Can't say I'm mourning the loss of Retal right now.

The argument becomes even weirder when you realize that the most common complaint for years regarding objective walls has been that the attacker has the advantage hitting people on them due to how LoS, AoE and pulls work.

 

Yet now with the removal of retal the situation is suddenly completely reversed?

 

Hm.

[RisenHowl.2419]

3 hours ago, Shroud.2307 said:

I'm not getting this argument. Being pure glass is the risk. Not only can you die to a stray AOE or CC, you lose half your health when dropping damage. 

Meanwhile, full supports can pick flowers while strolling through a field painted red and lose 5% of their health and still get loot just because people are attacking them.

Can't say I'm mourning the loss of Retal right now.

You don't lose any of your health while dropping damage anymore, so there's no breaks in your dps rotation on an ele. It used to be that they had to pull off to manage the health loss from retal, which lowered their damage output potential.

 

It's not a huge issue when there's 2-3, but it becomes a big one when there's 20-30 eles in a tower/keep and a few res necros/scrappers/thieves. Then add siege into the mix. The attacking server plays whack-a-mole, maybe they get one ele who mist forms back in or gets stealth ressed, but while your team is trying to get pulls or w/e off you're sitting in full raid rotations and melting. Trying to hit any t3 structures in t1/t2 during prime time is an absolute joke right now.

 

45 minutes ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

The argument becomes even weirder when you realize that the most common complaint for years regarding objective walls has been that the attacker has the advantage hitting people on them due to how LoS, AoE and pulls work.

 

Yet now with the removal of retal the situation is suddenly completely reversed?

 

Hm.

see above =/

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

Just now, RisenHowl.2419 said:

You don't lose any of your health while dropping damage anymore, so there's no breaks in your dps rotation on an ele. It used to be that they had to pull off to manage the health loss from retal, which lowered their damage output potential.

 

It's not a huge issue when there's 2-3, but it becomes a big one when there's 20-30 eles in a tower/keep and a few res necros/scrappers/thieves. Then add siege into the mix. The attacking server plays whack-a-mole, maybe they get one ele who mist forms back in or gets stealth ressed, but while your team is trying to get pulls or w/e off you're sitting in full raid rotations and melting. Trying to hit any t3 structures in t1/t2 during prime time is an absolute joke right now.

 

see above =/

So people are saying staff ele is op now because they can actually use their skills without needing a personal healer?

[RisenHowl.2419]

16 minutes ago, Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:

So people are saying staff ele is op now because they can actually use their skills without needing a personal healer?

The change benefitted eles the most but it's equally applicable to barrage+quickdraw slb, nades/mortar engi, DH... every glass cannon back line essentially. This patch was a huge boost to dps because they don't have to stop at any point or break their rotation to heal up.

[Paradoxoglanis.1904]

Just now, RisenHowl.2419 said:

The change benefitted eles the most but it's equally applicable to barrage+quickdraw slb, nades/mortar engi, DH... every glass cannon back line essentially. This patch was a huge boost to dps because they don't have to stop at any point or break their rotation to heal up.

Is that really a bad thing though? I thought most people hated this tanky support meta. I can see why fighting clouds would be more annoying now, but i doubt that its a huge buff for wall defense.

[TrollingDemigod.3041]

1 hour ago, RisenHowl.2419 said:

You don't lose any of your health while dropping damage anymore, so there's no breaks in your dps rotation on an ele. It used to be that they had to pull off to manage the health loss from retal, which lowered their damage output potential.

 

It's not a huge issue when there's 2-3, but it becomes a big one when there's 20-30 eles in a tower/keep and a few res necros/scrappers/thieves. Then add siege into the mix. The attacking server plays whack-a-mole, maybe they get one ele who mist forms back in or gets stealth ressed, but while your team is trying to get pulls or w/e off you're sitting in full raid rotations and melting. Trying to hit any t3 structures in t1/t2 during prime time is an absolute joke right now.

 

see above =/

What? 20-30 eles in WvW? You mean these numbers are split between all borders including obsidian and eotm, right?
You still need to do breaks in your dps rotation as ele, because of random kitten damage, invisible aoes or other questionable things, you can't simply stand and cast your rotation, it's not pve raids. On top of that you still can get condies on yourself just by hitting enemies, like chill, burn, bleed, whatever else.
Damage that ele drops is still LOW, because of bunkers, boons, barrier and other kitten that works as sponge. Let's not forget about useless CCs which require other players to deal with enemy stability.
As an Ele, you still need a babysitter so you can be somehow "usable" for your group.

[RisenHowl.2419]

14 minutes ago, Paradoxoglanis.1904 said:

Is that really a bad thing though? I thought most people hated this tanky support meta. I can see why fighting clouds would be more annoying now, but i doubt that its a huge buff for wall defense.

Lets say you can get 60 people on a map, if you're the attacking force you run a split of 50/50 dps/supports. your 30 dps can't kill their 60 dps fast enough around structures because they can pull inside to res. Your 30 supports can't out-sustain 60 dps, especially if you're stuck in one spot defending the siege you need to get in.

 

So you move to another structure, they move in as well. Repeat all night

 

Open field isn't much better, you'll kill 5-10 of them with good pulls/immob. Meanwhile you're eating the damage from the other 50 surrounding you. If any of your dps breaks off to hunt them down they get singled out and chain pulled. Without retal, there's really nothing you can do to slow a cloud's dps down at all.

 

15 minutes ago, TrollingDemigod.3041 said:

What? 20-30 eles in WvW? You mean these numbers are split between all borders including obsidian and eotm, right?
You still need to do breaks in your dps rotation as ele, because of random kitten damage, invisible aoes or other questionable things, you can't simply stand and cast your rotation, it's not pve raids. On top of that you still can get condies on yourself just by hitting enemies, like chill, burn, bleed, whatever else.
Damage that ele drops is still LOW, because of bunkers, boons, barrier and other kitten that works as sponge. Let's not forget about useless CCs which require other players to deal with enemy stability.
As an Ele, you still need a babysitter so you can be somehow "usable" for your group.

The only thing stopping people from playing glass backline classes before was that they couldn't manage retal, positioning, and maintain a decent rotation at the same time. Without retal all they have to worry about is positioning themselves to freecast, making it much easier to play these classes.

 

We're only 2 weeks into the patch, give it another month for people to roll classes they previously couldn't play well.

 

Speaking of invisible aoes, meteor shower's first few strikes are often invisible when there's a lot of people involved. The aoe indicator doesn't show up, neither do the meteors themselves which is a problem when there's half a dozen eles casting it at the same time. The first thing you notice is 5 people exploding, then you go for a res because there's no aoe indicator, then the whole squad explodes. Or you decide to leave those people, pull back a little bit, and watch your siege disappear on a structure.

 

I don't know what you're talking about with staff ele damage being low, it's the best dps in wvw right now by a wide margin. You don't need a babysitter, you need a basic understanding of the class to cast burning retreat->meteor or meteor->lightning flash to freecast from outside 2k range where nothing can hit you back

[Zyreva.1078]

1 hour ago, RisenHowl.2419 said:

We're only 2 weeks into the patch, give it another month for people to roll classes they previously couldn't play well.[...]

 

So you want to say, the years old guard, necro, rev, scrapper boonball meta has finally come to an end and there is room for some long awaited fresh air? Sound like a great change. And if everyone rerolls dps specs anyway it also solves the "issue" of not getting loot for facetanking anymore. Looks like a win-win situation to me ...

Edited May 23, 2021 by UmbraNoctis.1907

[Abjurer.9302]

I think the retaliation change is good for WvW.  When outmanned and fighting a larger group with retaliation it was very oppressive where it was almost best to avoid fights and just back cap.  My prediction is that the retaliation change will lead to less karma trains and more fights.

[RisenHowl.2419]

2 hours ago, UmbraNoctis.1907 said:

So you want to say, the years old guard, necro, rev, scrapper boonball meta has finally come to an end and there is room for some long awaited fresh air? Sound like a great change. And if everyone rerolls dps specs anyway it also solves the "issue" of not getting loot for facetanking anymore. Looks like a win-win situation to me ...

I guess that depends on how much you enjoy clouding? personally i think it's boring as can be, someone gets pulled and singled then everyone backs away like chickens for a minute. Low bags, low skill. Just a ton of people running away from each other unless they can gank.

 

Think of it as if maguuma and yak's bend had a baby where all they do is cloud around structures they own and siege hump. That's trash content, but it's the content being forced by this patch

Edited May 23, 2021 by RisenHowl.2419

[Gotejjeken.1267]

On 5/22/2021 at 2:35 PM, RisenHowl.2419 said:

 

 

 

 

Please tell me you do not call these 'roaming'--if so, are you a Fastcar alt? 

[RisenHowl.2419]

14 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

 

Please tell me you do not call these 'roaming'--if so, are you a Fastcar alt? 

first clip in each 😮

 

Where's the skill involved in cheesing a bronze legend at a time or disengaging as soon as someone reaches half health? Where's your videos so we can see how 'skilled' you are? =D

 

edit, for the desired purely roaming clips:
 

 

Edited May 23, 2021 by RisenHowl.2419

[XenesisII.1540]

Well hey let's also look on the other side shall we?

Boon ball "blobs" is also "trash content" and forced on the rest of the cloud/pugs/small group/small guild/not in uber "fight" guild community, for YEARS. Fighting boon groups that get stronger with more numbers to the point of untouchable without an equal sized support and strip group to even challenge is boring as can be.

 

Low bags? welcome to the rest of wvw not rolling around in boon blobs taking advantage of pull bombs on the unorganized for YEARS.

 

If you step back for a moment, this all comes down to complaining about the easy low effect gravy train getting slowed in it's tracks, for a moment, because when you all decide to share your bags things won't really change, you'll still run heavy support, still get your bags, still get the comfort and safety of your boon ball and you'll still be farming "low skill pugs" because it's the easiest thing to do.

 

Do some actual damage if you want to tag something for loot.