Should Stability be changed?

[Rauderi.8706]

With yet another Living Story and set of boss encounters that lean on hard-CC as punishment, there's a renewed wave of annoyed feedback.

Which has me thinking...

 

**Question: Would you change Stability?**

_And if so, how would you do it?_

 

I'm really curious to see what players from the various aspects of the game have to say about it. Every skill level, PvE/PvP/WvW, etc.

Are cooldowns too long? Is uptime too little?

Is Stability simply ineffective? Too effective?

Should ANet introduce some kind of immunity with stun-breaks? What would that do to the game modes?

What _should_ Stability be?

 

(Title edit. Sorry, Gaile!)

[Loosmaster.8263]

This has been brought up many times in WvW. Same with the over lapping application of conditions. There should be a short time of immunity for both.

 

Off topic 25 stacks of every Condi in the game is not healthy, lol.

[DeanBB.4268]

Uh... I see nine questions and a yes/no poll. So... uh... um... sure? :astonished:

[TexZero.7910]

Revert from stack to duration. Duration is reduced by x seconds per hard CC negated with a .5 Sec window of No CC effecting you after a duration decrease via eating CC.

 

 

 

[OriOri.8724]

Your poll isn't a question. I can't answer it because I don't really know what you are asking? Are you asking if I think stab is ok in its current state? Are you asking if I think it needs to be buffed in its current state? Are you asking if I want to see a CDI about stab by Anet? I really have no idea.

[Rauderi.8706]

> @DeanBB.4268 said:

> Uh... I see nine questions and a yes/no poll. So... uh... um... sure? :astonished:

 

You can just answer the part in bold. :P

[Rauderi.8706]

> @Loosmaster.8263 said:

> This has been brought up many times in WvW. Same with the over lapping application of conditions. There should be a short time of immunity for both.

>

> Off topic 25 stacks of every Condi in the game is not healthy, lol.

 

I would greatly be in favor of a .5 to 1-second immunity for conditions that have specifically been cleared. Getting stun-bombed by the zerg has never been a fun experience (though I can't be too mad for being out of position).

 

> @TexZero.7910 said:

> Revert from stack to duration. Duration is reduced by x seconds per hard CC negated with a .5 Sec window of No CC effecting you after a duration decrease via eating CC.

 

I'm also okay with this. It's entirely too easy for stacks of Stability to be shredded into worthlessness. Coordinated effort should matter, but not just zerg spam.

 

 

[Umut.5471]

Stability durations should be increased and CCs should have diminished returns.

I don't like to be CC spammed by mobs or a WvW zerg. It's a fun-killer for me.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

People are always annoyed by something. The first question isn't whether stability should be changed, but why are people annoyed? Is the problem the mechanic? With people misunderstanding how it works? With it being used too frequently? Without enough ways to practice using it?

 

For example, some people who are annoyed by social awkwardness say it punishes melee players, and want it be changed. However, it's not a fair criticism: it's entirely possible to melee with S/A; you just have to understand how to arrange five people. And sure, some people have trouble with that, but that (by itself) isn't enough to say the mechanic ought to change; there are other ways to address it.

 

tl;dr I'd rather see the OP ask first, "what's wrong with CC?" Then we can talk about how we would address those issues.

[PopeUrban.2578]

Revert it to the duration system it had previously.

 

Bump up the duration of all sources that currently grant less than a second to 1s

 

Do not allow it to stack. Make stability applications on targets who already have stability simply fail.

 

This prevents the problem the old system had with stability stacking extreme durations, and the problem the new system has with stability being completely useless in multitarget fights or against effects that pulse CC.

[Daffan.8924]

Stability in conquest is too cut and dry.

 

There is so many times when you are PLAYING the INTERFACE instead of the game, because stability/resist cross over when it comes to roots and soft-CC its a joke. Half the utility you cast, won't even do anything most of the time due to insane uptimes on resistance and stability in this game.

 

This is also, partly an interface problem. The current one is aesthetic perhaps, but horrible functionality.

[Rauderi.8706]

> @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

> "what's wrong with CC?"

 

I was waiting to gather some opinions first, but I'd be happy to address what, in my view, is wrong with CC. With the additional disclaimer that most of my experience is PvE and some WvW.

**Underlying problem: There is too little protection against hard CC.**

In WvW, everyone and their pet gets CC and spam-bombs it. At long range. It is impossible to dodge/boon enough to prevent it.

In PvE, there are enemies that have too much CC, especially as we go into Istan. Literally *every other attack* on some enemies, and many enemies are carrying them. Which means getting more than one proves to be infuriating, and again, there isn't enough Stability to make it worth carrying those skills. And because these are PvE enemies with typically slow attacks, encounter design feels justified in making the stun duration 3-5 seconds. Per enemy.

What's more, encounter design seems to think that Stun/KD is the only justifiable punishment for failure.

Stability skills themselves offer little protection. The boon typically doesn't last long enough against PvE enemies, and they typically have long cooldowns, so their uptime hovers around 20-25%, or less.

Stun breaks only help once, but in this era of chain CC and long-range mob aggro, that might only give enough time to dodge-roll before getting slapped with another one.

 

**tl;dr - The problem with hard CC in PvE is ANet.**

 

This kind of bleeds into the overall problem with condition spam in general. You can clear a condition, only to have the next PvE-mook or WvW-AoE smack you with the same one not even a second later. Not just hard-CC, but weakness, cripple, chill, piles of torment/poison...

So for PvE and competitive play, the health of the game might improve with brief immunity periods, but only for those conditions that were cleared.

 

Ex: Using Shake It Off! to clear Bleeding and Weakness while stunned gives a 1-second (2? 3?) immunity to Bleeding, Weakness, and Hard-CC.

This wouldn't stop the WvW zerg from poison-chill-tormenting the warrior to death, but at least there's a chance to get away.

Same goes for the CC-spam in PvE. *Stun-breaks would actually mean something.*

It doesn't even have to be the same duration between PvE and competitive.

 

And what would Stability look like in that scenario?

Gonna piggyback from @"PopeUrban.2578"'s suggestion:

Stability breaks hard-CC and provides immunity for duration. 3-5 seconds, probably. Durations don't stack, but instead apply the longest available duration. If Stability prevents a hard-CC, the standard immunity kicks in. I'd be tempted to say that corrupting Stability inflicts Daze, just so competitive modes have some kind of counter to it.

 

Or stemming from @"TexZero.7910"'s suggestion, more of a drastic change:

Players get their own variant of a Defiance bar. It starts empty, and when hard-CC'd, there is a brief immunity period. Continued hard-CC will push the bar down faster, so coordinated attacks still have impact. There's some temptation for this "orange" immunity state to have reduced defense (maybe +5% damage) to encourage active defense.

Stability then becomes a "blue" state that decays with application of hard-CC, possibly fading similar to Barrier. New applications of Stability merely raise the available value up to a cap. Corrupting Stability inflicts Daze and converts it to its "orange" immunity state and defense penalty.

My biggest reservation on a system like that would definitely be server performance, but it would be far more robust.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[OriOri.8724]

I think stab is fine. I would like to see the amount of hardCC being thrown around toned down a tad though, which would buff stab in its current state. After that happened, I would be willing to look at changing stab again, but I think for the moment its in a good spot, its hte hard CC that isn't.

[IndigoSundown.5419]

> @PopeUrban.2578 said:

> Revert it to the duration system it had previously.

>

> Bump up the duration of all sources that currently grant less than a second to 1s

>

> Do not allow it to stack. Make stability applications on targets who already have stability simply fail.

>

> This prevents the problem the old system had with stability stacking extreme durations, and the problem the new system has with stability being completely useless in multitarget fights or against effects that pulse CC.

 

This. If ANet is going to rely so heavily on CC to generate "challenge," then counter-play is essential. Mobs have too few moves, so they reuse them over and over. Add in large health pools and we see CC coming every few seconds. Losing control of one's character with the options to do anything about it being too few and too far between is not what I enjoy.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

Some of the criticism I see would be rephrased as

> some people feel like they are getting _knock-locked_ constantly & it makes things too frustrating for enjoyable gameplay

That can be true even if the design is "fair" and the mechanics are "reasonable."

 

That leads us to different questions than "should staiblity be changed", e.g.

* What's a reasonable amount of CC that NPCs should apply? (in terms of frequency and duration)

* How much stability uptime should one have access to? What sort of tradeoffs are reasonable to make in exchange for more uptime?

* What's a reasonable amount of CC that players should be able to apply to other players? (frequency/duration)

* Should players have access to more stability uptime in PvP/WvW relatively speaking? Should the tradeoffs be 'cheaper' or about the same as for PvE?

* How much should player skill matter? If it matters a lot, should the game provide ways for players to practice/get better? (for example, we can practice our flying skills in Griffon adventures; those are probably the best tutorials in the game at this point).

 

****

> > @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

> > "what's wrong with CC?"

 

> @Rauderi.8706 said:

> I was waiting to gather some opinions first,

Unfortunately, the original post is titled "Should Stability be changed?" That's not asking for opinions about what's wrong with CC, which has to be the first step before answering the question.

 

> @Rauderi.8706 said:

> **tl;dr - The problem with hard CC in PvE is ANet.**

"ANet" isn't a mechanic. That isn't something that we can change, even to make the game better. ANet is, in fact, the entity we would depend on to make changes to stability.

 

The other comments made were more helpful. I wish you hadn't mixed them up with condi hate (worthy of its own thread, of which there are already many).

 

> @Rauderi.8706 said:

> * In WvW, everyone and their pet gets CC and spam-bombs it. At long range. It is impossible to dodge/boon enough to prevent it.

Fair enough. It's not entirely accurate about the amount of CC or who is spamming it, but it's fair to say that in ZvZ there's all sorts of CC and it's harder to defend against because of visibility; human opponents are far less predictable than NPCs.

 

> * In PvE, there are enemies that have too much CC, especially as we go into Istan. Literally every other attack on some enemies, and many enemies are carrying them. Which means getting more than one proves to be infuriating, and again, there isn't enough Stability to make it worth carrying those skills. And because these are PvE enemies with typically slow attacks, encounter design feels justified in making the stun duration 3-5 seconds. Per enemy.

It's not literally every other attack. I brought a character with only one stability skill and only had trouble in specific encounters where I wasn't careful about my position.

 

> * What's more, encounter design seems to think that Stun/KD is the only justifiable punishment for failure.

I confess that I don't know what that means. What is one being punished for? What is a "justifiable punishment?"

 

> * Stability skills themselves offer little protection. The boon typically doesn't last long enough against PvE enemies, and they typically have long cooldowns, so their uptime hovers around 20-25%, or less.

That's the entire idea: choose carefully, because you can't rely on having stability at all times.

 

> * Stun breaks only help once, but in this era of chain CC and long-range mob aggro, that might only give enough time to dodge-roll before getting slapped with another one.

Again, yes, that's the idea: be careful.

 

 

[IndigoSundown.5419]

> @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

>

> > * What's more, encounter design seems to think that Stun/KD is the only justifiable punishment for failure.

> I confess that I don't know what that means. What is one being punished for? What is a "justifiable punishment?"

 

Challenge in a video game boils down to there being a possibility to lose an encounter. Losing a PvE encounter is usually the result of failure to play skillfully. A lot of GW2 mobs (taken singly, or sometimes in groups) are unlikely to defeat most players no matter how little skill the player applies. So, mob design where skill is used solely to avoid or remove hard CC would mean that the only consequence of failure is being controlled. Throw in that failure is often seen as punishment for actions taken, and there's your explanation.

[Rauderi.8706]

Keeping the requotes to a minimum:

 

> What's a reasonable amount of CC that NPCs should apply? (in terms of frequency and duration)

If I had to define it operationally?

_•No more than once per 10 seconds.•_

Hard CC should be, for any game mode, _no longer than 2-3 seconds._ Those 2-3 seconds is a *long* time in the thick of a fight.

 

> How much stability uptime should one have access to? What sort of tradeoffs are reasonable to make in exchange for more uptime? Should players have access to more stability uptime in PvP/WvW relatively speaking? Should the tradeoffs be 'cheaper' or about the same as for PvE?

 

This is reliant upon the first item being made real. Right now, Stability is underserved, so there is no tradeoff necessary. Taking a Stability skill or trait is tradeoff enough.

Then again, I speak mostly from PvE, so a PvP or WvW player may think differently.

 

> What's a reasonable amount of CC that players should be able to apply to other players? (frequency/duration)

 

PvP/WvW isn't my domain, so I can't confidently comment. Stunlocks ought not be a thing in competitive play, as my personal opinion. WoW figured this out a *long* time ago and instituted diminishing returns on CC, but GW2 just lets it happen ad nauseum.

 

> How much should player skill matter?

I imagine that the current state of Stability is the way it is because the short durations are intended as a "skillful" method to prevent CC. The problem is that GW2 is poor on conveyance and most of those Stability skills don't trigger fast enough to be used as counters. One has to be precognitive to use Stability that way.

Good combat intuition and planning *should* count for something, but in the current environment, unless a good plan ends a fight in under 5 seconds, no amount of Stability is going to stop the CC spam.

 

> Unfortunately, the original post is titled "Should Stability be changed?" That's not asking for opinions about what's wrong with CC, which has to be the first step before answering the question.

 

It's a writing prompt. I can't be the only one who's done one. :|

I'm also not inclined to try to anticipate every person's response beyond Yes|No:

No: Stability is fine as it is

No: The game needs to be harder

No: It's good in PvP right now (no mention of other game modes)

No: My [insert profession with easy access] gets huge Stability uptime

Yes: Stability is too hard to counter

Yes: Stability is too easy to counter

Yes: CC is too prevalent

Yes: Uptimes aren't sufficient

Yes: Cooldowns are too high for skilled use

Yes: My profession doesn't get enough of it

 

And it's a forum. I naturally expect people to answer with *something*. We're an opinionated bunch.

 

Also, Stability is part of the tangle that is Crowd Control, and possibly the easier thing to correct than "make all CC happen less". The former is an adjustment to durations, uptime, and how stacks code, the latter is touching on every profession and enemy AI. It's natural to choose a part that ANet would actually be willing to change, instead of revamping every critter from classic to PoF and making sweeping balance shifts to player-applied CC.

 

>> tl;dr - The problem with hard CC in PvE is ANet.

> "ANet" isn't a mechanic.

 

It doesn't have to be a mechanic for it to be a source of the problem.

 

If CC is too prevalent, it's because ANet put it there. No amount of mechanical fixes are going to repair that. As much as I would *love* for ANet to fix all of their broken-CC mobs, they won't. But it's still part of the problem.

 

>> In WvW, everyone and their pet gets CC and spam-bombs it.

> It's not entirely accurate about the amount of CC or who is spamming it

 

Kinda is accurate. I've been there in those "oh kitten my cowardly zerg is running away" and then being within range 1500 of the other zerg, promptly pulled/KD'd/chilltormentpoisonbleed before the melee zerg can even catch up to me. It's a personal perception, but valid.

 

> It's not literally every other attack.

 

Yeah, it is. Not every mob, of course, but this is a trend that's started in HoT, where a running charge as a critter's primary (or only) attack has had me railing against monster design for years. It continued with 4-1's wyvern, who's every other attack is a stun chain. Going into Istan, there is a melee awakened that is, *literally*, every second attack as a knockdown. On top of loyalists that are spamming kick at random, wyvern's support flunkies throwing their debuff that causes daze/stun.

So in some cases, yes, literally.

 

> ...Stun/KD is the only justifiable punishment for failure.

>> What is one being punished for? What is a "justifiable punishment?"

 

GW2 relies on skillful play. Cool. :+1:

When one 'fails' to engage combat skillfully, one gets punished (hit), taking on all the effects, such as: HP damage, damaging conditions, status debuffs, *and stun*. Too many failures (not dodging/countering enough, spending too long in combat), and the player is defeated, and the AI-enemy wins via attrition.

The problem seems to be in what ANet enemy designers see as an acceptable punishment for failure. GW2 has too many CCs and one-hit-KOs as punishments, which only serve to disenfranchise the player (because stuns prevent actual "playing") and at best, annoy the crap out of someone who survives it.

It makes it hard for me to recommend the game like this, especially when courting players from other MMOs that figured out gradiated effect on stuns has become the norm.

 

> That's the entire idea: choose carefully, because you can't rely on having stability at all times.

 

I wouldn't say I'm expecting 100% uptime, and even 50% uptime should be something only a dedicated build or coordinated team should reach. But that's not the point. But if encounters are being designed in a way that pushes huge Stability uptimes, what's that going to say about build variety? Either 1: Build for condi/stun clear, or 2: ignore it because those skills can't possibly compete with the number of condi/stuns that get thrown around.

 

Stability is being made worthless by the prevalence of the condition it's *supposed* to counter. If the state of CC spam isn't going to change, than Stability *needs to*.

 

 

[Ayrilana.1396]

Each LS and expansion has been leaning more and more on enemies that CC. How long you get CC’d also seems to be increasing as well. I have the feeling that the changes they made to stability a couple years ago were intentional for this reason.

[scherazade.2891]

I main Guardian and nothing is more frustrating than being unable to tank for my teammates just because my stability is on cooldown.

[Rauderi.8706]

> @scherazade.2891 said:

> I main Guardian and nothing is more frustrating than being unable to tank for my teammates just because my stability is on cooldown.

 

o_O

That's condemning. At one time, I was experimenting with making a Stability character for a theme. Guardian, funnily enough. I actually had difficulty keeping Stability up on its own. Fortunately, it's easier to build in Aegis as a part of the defenses, so between that and dodges, I usually didn't have issues.

But I wasn't applying him to raids or anything, just as a thought exercise, so I'm curious what your tanking experience is (raid/fractal, etc).

 

> @Ayrilana.1396 said:

> Each LS and expansion has been leaning more and more on enemies that CC. How long you get CC’d also seems to be increasing as well. I have the feeling that the changes they made to stability a couple years ago were intentional for this reason.

 

:+1: From a bird's-eye view, I'd say there isn't a problem with that. CC is part of the game, and players should have to deal with it, within reason and frustration thresholds. Stability is part of the game, so there should be reasons to use it. Much like we've been wanting non-player enemies to use boons so strip/corrupt would be meaningful.

I'm still not sure I agree with the change from Duration to Stacks, but I imagine that was for competitive purposes. (/shrug)

Devil's in the details though, and the ratio between CC frequency and Stability uptime is what some are calling into question. But we also have Dodge (roughly 1 per 10 seconds) and other block/movement skills to help mitigate it, so it's a tricky balance issue. Thing is, CC is probably the worst thing that can happen to a player short of a one-shot-kill, because it removes the player's control.