CC should NOT be the meta.

[SevlisBavles.3059]

In GW1, skill denial was the domain of the Mesmer. Interrupts, cooldown increases, energy drain. Hell, Echo + Blackout allowed you to pick one player and never let them use a skill, ever. Necros were a "best of the rest" in terms of skill denial, mostly focused on Monk denial, but with some general energy drain and interrupts. All other classes had some skill denial, but this was fringe stuff.

 

It should be (almost) the same way in GW2. A meta that revolves almost entirely around skill denial is in not so many words, fucking complete shit. Think about it. A game with 9 professions, all these mechanics like necro shroud, rangers and their pets, thief initiative, mesmer clones, over a dozen conditions, boons, profession trait effects and a dozen weapons, and all you end up with is 3/4 options: 1. Go with whatever, and just be unable to do anything as you're feared, dazed, stunned, interrupted, etc. 2. Stack up on CC yourself. 3. Bunker up on stability and stun breaks 4. A mix of 2 and 3

 

It's shit. It takes away from the entire game. I'm not just talking about competitiveness, but also immersion. Why have all these classes with all these mechanics when it all comes down to blotting out someone's skill bar, or sacrificing all your profession traits and utility skills for stability/stun break effects? It's no fun, not in terms of competitiveness, not in terms of variety, not in terms of immersion, not in terms of how Guild Wars has worked as a concept for 16 years.

 

PLEASE cut down on the CC meta, it's boring as fuck. (the same goes for WvW but I'm not going to post the same thread twice and it's more relevant here since WvW has much bigger issues)

[Avatar.3568]

Why you say in gw1 you could disable 1 player the whole game and say it should be the same in gw2

 

First yeah there are many cc's but you also have a lot stunbreaks, dodges, energy regeneration = more dodges, escapes (if you play a less stability class like necro) los and a big movement

 

You have a big variety of tools to avoid stuns and even stunlocks

[Broady.2358]

> @"Avatar.3568" said:

> Why you say in gw1 you could disable 1 player the whole game and say it should be the same in gw2

 

The OP was referring to the skill blackout which was a Mesmer Touch skill that could disable your opponents skills for 6 seconds while also disabling your own skills for 5 seconds. It also had a 12 second cooldown. So there was a big trade off for using this skill.

 

In regards to the "CC meta" as such, I think there is not decent incentive for timing interrupts or CC's. Players currently just spam CC's with no real skill which yield a high reward. A better system for example would be "if you interrupt a heal skill your opponent is Stunned for x seconds". This would the incentive players to time their CC skills to counter key skills on opponents.

This then creates counter play (similar to GW tactics to counter Mesmer), players would cancel cast to bait out key interrupts.

 

Obviously stun-breaks and dodging exists to counter stun-locked but adding another layer of mechanical skill in the way of rewarding players for interrupting key skills would be great from a game play perspective. That's my 2 cents on the matter.

[Psycoprophet.8107]

Neither should condi spam but here we are.

[Domino.1359]

I am running a CC engi (5 CC's to use with short refresh). It can be rather frustrating. I know. It's really low skill, high reward - but alas, there is so many low skill, high reward aspects of PvP. It is what it is.

[SevlisBavles.3059]

> @"Avatar.3568" said:

> Why you say in gw1 you could disable 1 player the whole game and say it should be the same in gw2

 

Maybe I should have elaborated. Blackout was a skill that put all your skills on cooldown for 5 seconds, and all the opponents skills on cooldown for 2-6 seconds (depending on how many points you put in its governed attribute). Echo was a skill that allowed you to duplicate the next skill you'd use after activating it, effectively allowing you to continuously use Blackout on someone, shutting them down entirely, but also yourself.

It was never a big issue in the game, it was a shitload of fun in Random Arenas since teams were almost entirely dependent on their Monks for survival and shutting down the enemy Monk while having one of your team was almost a guaranteed win. But it was never the meta in organized Arena games or Heroes Ascent (kind of like a mix between WvW and a continuous PvP tournament)

 

> First yeah there are many cc's but you also have a lot stunbreaks, dodges, energy regeneration = more dodges, escapes (if you play a less stability class like necro) los and a big movement

> You have a big variety of tools to avoid stuns and even stunlocks

 

I'm not complaining about a lack of CC counters. Please read my post. It's the fact that you have to almost entirely fill your build WITH CC counters, THAT'S the problem. It's too dominant and invalidates a host of potential playstyles.

 

> @"Broady.2358" said:

> In regards to the "CC meta" as such, I think there is not decent incentive for timing interrupts or CC's. Players currently just spam CC's with no real skill which yield a high reward. A better system for example would be "if you interrupt a heal skill your opponent is Stunned for x seconds". This would the incentive players to time their CC skills to counter key skills on opponents.

> This then creates counter play (similar to GW tactics to counter Mesmer), players would cancel cast to bait out key interrupts.

>

> Obviously stun-breaks and dodging exists to counter stun-locked but adding another layer of mechanical skill in the way of rewarding players for interrupting key skills would be great from a game play perspective. That's my 2 cents on the matter.

 

Man GW1 had so much more depth. I had completely forgotten about fake casts. I mained Necro but Mesmer was a close second and I remember my eyes being glued to the top of the screen being ready to insta-cast my interrupts, getting pissed when I wasted them on baited skills, or casting Shame on a Monk and timing that interrupt just right to get his 1/4s cast Contemplation of Purity, the other satisfying end of the stick. Ufffff.

 

> @"Psycoprophet.8107" said:

> Neither should condi spam but here we are.

 

I mean, they're both shit, this thread is not an argument for condi spam but against CC spam.

 

> @"Domino.1359" said:

> I am running a CC engi (5 CC's to use with short refresh). It can be rather frustrating. I know. It's really low skill, high reward - but alas, there is so many low skill, high reward aspects of PvP. It is what it is.

 

Yeah I'm running a fear machine Necro, it's pretty dumb just how much you can chain that shit and I'd much, much rather run other builds and experiment, but it's CC or die. I get a lot of hate (FEAR BOT FEAR BOT FEAR BOT), it's kind of funny but not in a satisfying way like Blackout Mesmer was in GW1, more in a sad way that the competitive scene is so one-dimensional.

[Kuma.1503]

Before, everyone was complaining that CC breaks and stability were too high. "Ele has too much stab and stunbreak access, Holo has too much stab, Guard pulses out too much stab, ect." Anet listened and nerfed stunbreaks and stab.

 

Now CC is too strong.

 

What did we think was going to happen?

[otto.5684]

> @"Kuma.1503" said:

> Before, everyone was complaining that CC and stability were too high. "Ele has too much stab and stunbreak access, Holo has too much stab, Guard pulses out too much stab, ect." Anet listened and nerfed stunbreaks and stab.

>

> Now CC is too strong.

>

> What did we think was going to happen?

 

I would argue that CC was already too high before the Feb patch. Right now it is stun wars. People complain about condi spam, but this is not the worst era of condi spam by any means. CC spam on the other hand...

[Kuma.1503]

The healthiest thing to do would be to do a second pass on crowd control. The February patch was rushed and incomplete.

 

Step 1: Establish which crowd control skills should be allowed to deal damage.

 

A few examples of CC skills which should hit for decent numbers include Prime Light Beam, Backbreaker, and Executioner's Scythe.

 

Step 2: Dial back on Stability and Stunbreak nerfs

 

Extend the stability duration on Elixir U. Lower the cooldown on utilities like Stand your ground and twist of fate. Stability and stunbreaks are the intended counter mechanics to crowd control. It's safe to say that the nerfs were too harsh given how oppressive crowd control is in its current state.

 

Step 3: Make immob more reactable.

 

There are a few skills with very little tell that inflict immobilize. These skills either have short cast times or very subtle animations. Consider reworking the animations on these skills to make them more recognizable.

 

For projectile immobilizes such as crippling shot. Consider slowing down the projectile speed and giving the projectile a more noticable animation.

 

Changes like that would most likely make dealing with CC much less oppressive, and it would bring flavor back to spells like Executioner's Scythe which feel like they should deal damage due to their long cooldown and/or long tell.

[Master Ketsu.4569]

We aren't actually in a CC meta. We are in a Train-and-AoE-spam meta. This is something I warned about in my thread about[ increasing cooldowns](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/97262/why-increasing-cooldowns-does-not-reduce-spam-and-can-even-make-spam-worse#latest).

 

People are simply catching on to the fact that the style of balancing that Anet has chosen to go with is highly favorable to zerging down single targets.

 

The root cause of the problem is that GW2 still has too many overloaded abilities that do VWXYZ with poor animation tells and under 1 second cast time. This has always been the root cause of most of GW2s PvP issues, and unfortunately will very likely continue to be the root cause for the foreseeable future.

 

 

That being said a lot of the AoE CC spam could be toned down if breaking stuns gave a small duration of stab as a default behavior. The big reason spam is so effective is because it currently goes unpunished.

[SevlisBavles.3059]

"Fuck, so much CC, I just want to play the game."

 

As heard on a stream, perfectly sums up my point.

[Svez Poizon XD.5268]

I think crowd control is very good now, you just need to know to save your stun break spell for situation. Also you need to learn to use instant cast spells more. Stun lock to you seems unfair but it can't happen if there aren't more players than one, so that fight is unfair anyway. In unfair fights it is up to you what you can do to make it worth "death". Good example is: you fight 2 players for 30 or more seconds, that means your teammates fight 4v3 somewhere else and they have advantage, so longer you hold more players fighting you, that is super good buying time for your team. If you die on contested node or get downed on it, you also hold the enemy longer but also node get very slowly caped. In example where you kill one guy and another chasing you, you need to reset fight or escape or either try to kill second one. Being able to kill 2 players is very hard but it happens if you master your class but also if enemy play poorly. Sometime you face enemies with power damage, some with condition damage. Try to find counter for both but also get stability boon/stunbreaks, some defensive stats/boons. If you like to fight multiple players, playing bunker class is not shame. Reason why bunker builds are so good is exactly because those allows you to make some mistakes but also survive under cc. However problem with bunkers is that if enemy is tanky too, it may take ages to decap their node and to kill them. That is why you need to play the map not just to know your class.

 

I have games where i am unkillable holding one node, but enemy hold other 2 nodes and they win. You are only strong if you can make your class good in everything. Being able to counter enemy cc, damage, pressure, weaknesses is the way to go.

[Tayga.3192]

> @"Master Ketsu.4569" said:

> People are simply catching on to the fact that the style of balancing that Anet has chosen to go with is highly favorable to zerging down single targets.

 

So... it's a good thing? Focusing target finally matters?

[Aktium.9506]

Nah. It's a pretty good balance philosophy to have CC be an integral part of the meta.

 

I personally am in favor of metagames in games where the TTK is high and securing a kill requires two or more players to coordinate CC to lock down a player to finish the player off. When it gets a point where a single player can do both alone, then you know the balance is bad.

[Shao.7236]

CC is meta because most faceroll, find yourself someone that manages well and you will notice how CC spamming doesn't get you anywhere against them.

[Leonidrex.5649]

> @"Shao.7236" said:

> CC is meta because most faceroll, find yourself someone that manages well and you will notice how CC spamming doesn't get you anywhere against them.

 

honest to got CC doesnt exist in 1v1 against most if not all classes, nobody has CC to get past all the ways classes remove/mitigate them let alone dodge.

you legit have to 1v2/1v3 for anyone to actually be CCed.

[aelska.4609]

Dunno what you are all complaining about

 

 

bois so focused doing CC they forget to deal damage ¯\_(ツ)_/¯