God.2708

Honestly there are only three standout differences between then and now. 1. Quickness being readily available. A casualty of HoT raids and PvE. It has shrunk in availability a lot but is still in spades over how much you use to get. 2. Alacrity existing. I generally find this to be a net neutral though, since defensive and offensive both get CDs reduces. (unless you aren't bringing defensive along....) 3. Might being 25 stackable easily. This is usually where the big divide in solos and groups is too. Way back you'd blast fire fields to open a fight with 25 stacks and would basically never see that number of stacks again. Now they've applied duration reduction pretty hard across the board with the great pvp patch, which hit solos ability to stack and maintain it. But groups have no problem capping it every spike, and dps that can apply lots of little stacks to themselves (and/or others) are generally much more favored in group play. This is also where a lot of different Cele builds strength comes from as without being able to achieve 25 might easily they'd have near no kill potential and would be quite boring to play and quickly 'fall' out of the meta in roaming. --- Most other boons are at a similar level of application/duration. The frequency of which is easily offset by the massive increase in strips.

If you think there are more boons than PoF opening you'd be straight up wrong. Glory days of SoI with people so drowned in boons they'd just share them without even reapplying them because everything was laid on so thick. They are tougher to take off what's on now, sure.

I think a change like that would cause far reaching balances issues in small scale wvw and in pvp. My primary point was things are balanced when both sides have boons. At a small controlled level boon rip exists to create imbalance. The issue is these topics come up and talk about large groups/boonballs and complain about lack of boon rips as they assume what works at this small level should work at this large level without realizing the purpose behind the skills have changed. You aren't suppose to remove all the boons from a large group of people focused on supporting each other. That would make the game horrendous at all levels. That'd make their CCs on clouds even stronger than they already are cuz you bet they are going to take advantage of these new OP boon rips. People act like boon rip king scourge wasn't 50% of zergs at the start of PoF. The point of boon rip at that scale is meant to work with CCs to pull the group apart because the edge you are trying to get isn't about the number boons each player has, but rather the number of players itself. Targeted removal of stab already exists, it's called CC. Ironically (maybe?) this does beget the question of why resists doesn't have stacks and work like stab now that it only applies to soft CCs and not all condis.

Boon removal isn't the counter to boons Boon Removal Isn't The Counter To Boons BOON REMOVAL ISN'T THE COUNTER TO BOONS. Say it again. You have offensive boons, you have defensive boons. When playing pvp things are in a state of balance so long as boon applications are similar. Anet has stuffed every boon everywhere so really the only reason you shouldn't have boons up, and therefore can match your enemy, is because you're some edgelord main character syndrome solo player who wants to play on a team of 60+ other solo players. Which. Is. Weird. Seriously right click one of those Cele catalysts or something people are complaining about and stay near them. You have boons too. Don't even have to talk to them! Though I've heard that communication makes any team better. Boon rip exists, rather, to facilitate CC (hard and soft via removal of resist and stab) to pull apart groups to separate squishies from the support. Not because of the boons they provide (though that's a bonus, sure) but rather the green numbers and cleanses. People need to stop conflating boon balls and boon removal with the existence and 'brokenness' of boons, and recognize the balance issues and tug of war that lies in what their actual purpose is, CC application and chaining. People make topics all the time about CC needing diminishing returns. No doubt one of these 'boon balls' has CCed you for 10s and made it feel like you may as well take your hands off the keyboard and go make a cup of tea. Why would you think the fun solution to that is make sure no one gets to play if CC spam is thrown around. That doesn't sound fun at all. No playing thief or WB and stunbreaking then burning 3k range in dashes to reset isn't a solution or 'high skill' answer to that problem.

I can tell you Anet generally is looking at perfectly even mid-sized (15-25) fights for their 'diversity' and class balance approaches because its the most reproducible, most recorded, and eliminates the most external variables. Then they probably do a pass over of giant scale and roaming to see if there's anything dreadfully outlying. But your reply is ultimately the crux of the problem with most of these discussions. You've shoehorned a specific scenario onto the table and then ask 'Why are these things that are specifically good at this scenario still good at this scenario?' That and after re-reading your initial post I'm left with the feeling that things aren't changing fast enough, because if you looked at WvW vids from two years ago and WvW vids today the group composition is fairly drastically altered with the only consistency being FB and scourge to a lesser extent. To which I'd have to ask just how often do you want things to change? Keeping in mind that for new players changing builds is often a costly endeavor.

I mean. What is getting missed here beyond @subversiontwo.7501's comments and a few stray shots in others is ultimately a discussion of what classes are capable of is largely miniscule in comparison to what context those classes are placed in. If you were to tell me I need to defend a t3 stonemist castle from a single organized enemy server and I get to pick whatever 50 classes I want, my set up will look drastically different from if you told me I need to capture multiple t0 towers from an unorganized enemy. The big 50 'Stab/Heal/DPS/DPS/Misc' evolved to answer the question of: "What the hell are we doing tonight?" because the answer to that is: "Well it could be anything". It's a flexible composition that has a jack-of-all trades answer to most any situation that occurs in WvW. It's not the BEST answer to most situations, but if you find a situation that isn't favorable because another group is better situated for that particular one, it usually means you can fight them in a different context and come out on top. So people rage at how their class isn't useful in this catch-all composition because they lose a lot in context X, not realizing that their class could demolish that composition if they properly set up in context Y and had a means to require the enemy comp to enter said context Y. But that requires actual changes to the MODE of WvW and why things like alliances, rewards, and the like are important. Buffing or nerfing 'META' classes isn't going to actually diversify the META. It's just going to make it change clothes. Edit: Not that there is anything wrong with a change of clothes. It's nice to have a new style every so often. But it's important to recognize a dressed up pig is still a pig.

I would agree that time to take is in general a bit short. I would like to imagine we'd both agree that the place to fix that is not in lord fight complexity though. Beef the lord up a bit/improve its HP scaling, improve wall hp, or make a more responsive alert system (new tactic?). Honestly I'd like to see rams/catas/golems take down things half as fast, but take no siege on siege damage (except from ballistas and oil). Give defenders far more time to interact with a group sieging, but encourage that interaction to be player on player or siege on player. I also don't think any of the changes really affect time to take. No group that knew boss mechanics was struggling to kill them quickly. Air lord still leaps around and makes itself a pain to hit. The only change is instances where a group of defenders (of dangerous size) is around and now the enemy can choose to kill lord while fighting around the defenders instead of... not ever taking the objective.

You... fight for strong NPCs? Is this some weird AI version of "I fight for my friends"? There's already nothing to fight for in the mode, server identities are mostly in shambles, rewards are trash, and there's no real pride in the one up one down 'we're in t1' system. Those are things you fix if you want to effect player motivation in playing the mode. Not make NPCs do players jobs for them so you don't even have to show up, like what?

I didn't ignore them. I imagine I'm not the one tunnel visioning. And it wouldn't apply to PvP as PvP has different mode goals. The earth lords abilities present obstacles to attackers, but also are predictable (Giant leap animation) and can be helpful if you try to utilize them and the enemy doesn't (hide in inner ring and heal if enemy doesn't join you inside to maintain pressure) The air keeps ring is neither of those. There's minimal tell to it being cast, and even if you react to it being cast by trying to dodge it comes out so fast that you just get stuck in it anyway. On top of him blinking repeatedly so you can't even kite him to keep you/your group away from the cast. That's not interactive. It's just a giant kitten you. I've done everything to 5-50+ (I lead a 5ish man guild). Under dozens comms there isn't a single one that hasn't recognized at some point that fighting in the air keeps lord room meant you either GTFO out of the room to kill the enemy or you just die (assuming enemy hits some sort of critical mass, usually ~1/2-2/3rd your size). If the enemy does get that big it eventually gets realized that attacking air keep while bad people are on the map is completely pointless. Occasionally an effort to sneak it gets made, otherwise it is ignored. Which I personally find a shame because the terrain in air keep is some of the most fun to fight in. I suppose I'd want to clarify that I am talking about when you are fighting and there are defenders. None of these lords are an issue if you are just fighting them PvE with no interference. I don't think any lord really should be. If you've gotten into the room with no push back, there's no reason an NPC should do the defending for your team. Should be a big HP ball that may make Orange Swords pop as a last 'Hey, you might want to defend this'.

That's not a fighting style, that's a tactical blunder. Put it this way. You are trying to take air keep and find out there's another group of players that are of dangerous size (whatever # that is to you). Do you EVER engage lord with them present? Do you think that is a good idea? I would hope not, it is doing nothing but giving you disadvantages for zero gain. If you are engaged with lord, and discover enemies of a dangerous size are approaching (You have someone watching outside right, or do you like just letting people jump you by surprise?) do you stay engaged with lord or do you disengage it so it's no longer a threat factor? This is the whole crux of the problem. The lord is such a negative component to play that it boils down to "If I have to fight enemy players, I may as well be anywhere but here" and that's bad. The mode has to encourage player interaction or it dies. The mode has to favor the offense or everyone just bunkers up and nothing interesting ever happens.

What exactly was unique? What fighting style did it present? The earth keep lord with its roughly predictable barriers creates interesting and creative fighting styles. You can lure people in, try to bait them into getting split, time bombs with the slow moving AoE KDs that the enemy can jump if they so choose. The Air keep lord was none of that. Experienced players simply avoided it because there was no way to play around it for them, and new players would just get slaughtered. There's no creativity there just bullying.

The mode isn't about making objectives difficult to capture, remember? If that were the case, make the walls and gates permanently invuln, now you never lose the objective! That's not what anyone should want though. The point of the mode is to incite (Quoting Anets website): "an epic PvP experience full of cunning strategy, earthshaking sieges, and pitched battles between hundreds of players." It's not for you to hold your keep easily because no one wants to fight around a lord that would make for a better raid boss than most strikes. The moment PvE aspects of the mode run counter to encouraging people to interact with each other (and with the PvE aspects themselves especially when other players are present) you have a problem.

Why are you talking about the difficulty in beating the lord as a PvE object when you are playing a PvP mode? Everything that was changed was targeted at how the lord impacts a PvP experience when the lord is in the vicinity. The lords had such a negative impact that groups actively avoided each other and the only times they were interacted with was in a 'rush' sense where you'd try to take the keep and lord down with no enemies around as fighting people with the lord nearby was an absolutely drawl experience. People simply didn't. Something that actively discourages player interaction in a PvP mode is nothing short of dumb.

Stab already isn't permanent unless you are making no efforts to remove it from your opponents. The problem with stab is rather that it's not -reliable- so trying to use it to time things is a pointless venture. I can have my pet firebrand cast SYG but .5s later lady luck rolls the dice and the well of corruption I ran in (because I have to because there's 10 of them all over the place) in order to reach my opponent and hit them gets corrupted into a fear. There is no rhyme or reason as to why stab got targeted, corrupts are random. I can't 'cover' stab beyond apply as many boons as possible in hopes that the dice favor me more. It makes more sense for stab to get removed from that obnoxious cycle and then you could actually have proper skill management. Group sends in 10 people covered in stab so the squishies behind them can get in and follow up or other tactical niceties. Instead since it's impossible to actually manage the situation, you have the offense dumping as much RNG on the enemy as possible (which means get as many people on you in the first place) and likewise you counter that by making every party as vapidly similar as possible, as covered in boons as possible, and as many targets as possible so you can minimize the effects RNG actually has on you and when you actually make a tactical call/decision it actually goes through. The other plus to it being a unique modifier is that it longer get ruled by boon duration. It becomes feasible to balance stab access around how it exists as a buff on certain skills and not as it exists on certain builds. You could do something like give every class a 5 stack AoE stab skill but then make it so 5 of those could never be perma upkept (boring but fast: 5 stacks for 5s and every skill has a 40s CD). Instead we have it so two guardians could theoretically 'perma' upkeep stab, but only if they run full boon duration. Queue: minstrels or kitten off.

Basically everyone for a long time. Doesn't get a lot of forum attention because it's so old hat.