A word on crowd control conditions and more.

[juniterio.1245]

Hello. With the rising popularity of the freshly remade GW2 official forums I decided to post this thread also here, outside of reddit.

 

I already touched upon this topic a few times, but this time I'd like to go a bit more in depth into the almost invisible issue of conditions losing their uniqueness in combat. The introduction of breakbars broke a bunch of them, but [as seen in a recent patch](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/17996/game-release-notes-november-28-2017) it's not really an issue to bring back a condi effect to work despite breakbars being up. Now IF making some condi effects work only under certain circumstances like a specific skill being used was possible, this could lead to creation of really interesting encounters. But let's start with why this is even an issue.

 

* According to dev panels before GW2 release, GW1's effects had to be streamlined, and GW2's conditions and boons were an answer to that.

 

And it seems that Anet is slowly backing up from their HoT decisions, where they introduced a bunch of unique effects like GOTL that turned out to heavily influence PvE balance. If I had to guess, Alacrity would get a similar treatment as well if it wasn't the main pillar of Chrono. Unique effects shouldn't be widely avaliable, as that could lead to the same issue Anet had in GW1 and I bet they realise that.

 

So now might serves damage increasing, protection serves passive damage mitigation etc. GOTL stepped into the might field, so it was taken down.

 

* Streamline doesn't mean strip off

 

Now here is the issue. As much as some conditions have really interesting effects like reducing healing, incresing cast speed, increasing ability interval etc, it's not required to use them in game, unlike with other popular mechanics like reflects. And I think this is a mistake. But I see where the problem with introducing them is - forcing players to use them would need good telegraphing. And it just can't be done unless it's some kind of description / vague dialogue. But once players understand that there might be need to use certain conditions by hearing those, they wouldn't need that sort of telegraphing anymore. After all, there's only 8 of them, and a few are already used in raids. Cripple and Immob being the prime examples. But what about the others? Here are a few examples of how they could be used.

 

* Chill

 

Greatly increases cooldown. Imagine a boss that uses an attack that wipes your party every 2 minutes. But there's an object that you can interact with to save your party. It spawns every 2.5 minutes. You'd need to upkeep chill on the boss to increase the cooldown to stay alive.

 

This not only adds one mechanic that bases on the basics of GW2 combat, but also adds another role to be filled. Someone would need to upkeep chill on the boss, enabling some more interesting comps (or eles would have to rotate differently).

 

* Slow

 

Imagine Fractal Mossheart's spirit bomb attack (the one which has you run to corners of the arena and put the spirits back into clefts) but without a timer. The only timer would be the boss' ability casting animation which you could slow down with well, slow. Slowing down every single boss ability could a bit over powered, so just make it work only when breakbar is up. But if you break it, you wipe. This could probably be done by a single chrono, but that's still one more interesting role to fill.

 

* Taunt

 

A green circle spawns, one who stands in it gets a debuff. If he is attacked three times by a mob that spawns afterwards, the mob dies. But you need to force the mob to attack you while also not attacking others - it would deal horrendous damage whenever hitting more than one person.

 

These are just a few stupid ideas to prove a point - that there are possible scenarios where crowd control condis could become parts of core mechanics. There are interesting effects at the feet of GW2's combat system that are just left out of PvE, ultimately leading to repetetiveness of the same old stuff in all forms of organized instanced content.

 

Now comes the question (also serves as a **TL;DR**):

 

**We have reflects, we have aegis, how is forcing us to use them (Matthias, Deimos CM) different from making us use Chill, Slow or Taunt?** They'd be just as bad telegraphed, but we'd figure it out and enjoy it.

[Ardid.7203]

Fully agree. Anet needs to use more parts of their own system.

[BrokenGlass.9356]

Absolutely. I dream of a day when a dubuff build gets talked about as much as support builds do.

[Edelweiss.4261]

> @"BrokenGlass.9356" said:

> Absolutely. I dream of a day when a dubuff build gets talked about as much as support builds do.

I would love this as well, but I'd prefer debuff builds be effective in their own right rather than necessary for a specific enemy's gimmick. I'd ideally like to play a build that debuffs well enough to still be desirable with no/little damage.

[doogal.9368]

> @"juniterio.1245" said:

> Hello. With the rising popularity of the freshly remade GW2 official forums I decided to post this thread also here, outside of reddit.

>

> I already touched upon this topic a few times, but this time I'd like to go a bit more in depth into the almost invisible issue of conditions losing their uniqueness in combat. The introduction of breakbars broke a bunch of them, but [as seen in a recent patch](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/17996/game-release-notes-november-28-2017) it's not really an issue to bring back a condi effect to work despite breakbars being up. Now IF making some condi effects work only under certain circumstances like a specific skill being used was possible, this could lead to creation of really interesting encounters. But let's start with why this is even an issue.

>

> * According to dev panels before GW2 release, GW1's effects had to be streamlined, and GW2's conditions and boons were an answer to that.

>

> And it seems that Anet is slowly backing up from their HoT decisions, where they introduced a bunch of unique effects like GOTL that turned out to heavily influence PvE balance. If I had to guess, Alacrity would get a similar treatment as well if it wasn't the main pillar of Chrono. Unique effects shouldn't be widely avaliable, as that could lead to the same issue Anet had in GW1 and I bet they realise that.

>

> So now might serves damage increasing, protection serves passive damage mitigation etc. GOTL stepped into the might field, so it was taken down.

>

> * Streamline doesn't mean strip off

>

> Now here is the issue. As much as some conditions have really interesting effects like reducing healing, incresing cast speed, increasing ability interval etc, it's not required to use them in game, unlike with other popular mechanics like reflects. And I think this is a mistake. But I see where the problem with introducing them is - forcing players to use them would need good telegraphing. And it just can't be done unless it's some kind of description / vague dialogue. But once players understand that there might be need to use certain conditions by hearing those, they wouldn't need that sort of telegraphing anymore. After all, there's only 8 of them, and a few are already used in raids. Cripple and Immob being the prime examples. But what about the others? Here are a few examples of how they could be used.

>

> * Chill

>

> Greatly increases cooldown. Imagine a boss that uses an attack that wipes your party every 2 minutes. But there's an object that you can interact with to save your party. It spawns every 2.5 minutes. You'd need to upkeep chill on the boss to increase the cooldown to stay alive.

>

> This not only adds one mechanic that bases on the basics of GW2 combat, but also adds another role to be filled. Someone would need to upkeep chill on the boss, enabling some more interesting comps (or eles would have to rotate differently).

>

> * Slow

>

> Imagine Fractal Mossheart's spirit bomb attack (the one which has you run to corners of the arena and put the spirits back into clefts) but without a timer. The only timer would be the boss' ability casting animation which you could slow down with well, slow. Slowing down every single boss ability could a bit over powered, so just make it work only when breakbar is up. But if you break it, you wipe. This could probably be done by a single chrono, but that's still one more interesting role to fill.

>

> * Taunt

>

> A green circle spawns, one who stands in it gets a debuff. If he is attacked three times by a mob that spawns afterwards, the mob dies. But you need to force the mob to attack you while also not attacking others - it would deal horrendous damage whenever hitting more than one person.

>

> These are just a few stupid ideas to prove a point - that there are possible scenarios where crowd control condis could become parts of core mechanics. There are interesting effects at the feet of GW2's combat system that are just left out of PvE, ultimately leading to repetetiveness of the same old stuff in all forms of organized instanced content.

>

> Now comes the question (also serves as a **TL;DR**):

>

> **We have reflects, we have aegis, how is forcing us to use them (Matthias, Deimos CM) different from making us use Chill, Slow or Taunt?** They'd be just as bad telegraphed, but we'd figure it out and enjoy it.

 

I <3 ALL of this. Thank you for sharing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Westenev.5289]

I agree with this - the breakbar system is a band aid for lazy design, and it's been slapped into areas of the game where it doesn't make sense (The two lovers you're supposed to keep apart in AC story, for example). Worst of all, it largely punishes build planning outside of the accepted dps norm.

[Aeolus.3615]

And this is why dropped pve from gw2 in the 1st year... poor mechanics where all that matters is damage and damage gimmicks builds.

Even some mobs should have some boon and condi removals.

I think Anet did that move towards simplifications and not adopting certain mechanics to gw2 pve cause that would make game to harder for Anet real population target, and the reason its a power creep build and stack to get carried, players that were bad at others game can feel more carried here, and new players will like to feel powerfull towards damage output gameplay.

 

It is interesting, gw1 effects were need more skill to make them work, interrupting some almost insstant skills from bosses with mesmer and ranger was kewl.~

Imo it was a mistake to streamline/simplify for noobs, make classes started to being bad developed, since everythign is stackable with boons or condis, overhwelmed and killed the game in the first 4 years of it, due its bad balance since there was no other choice.

 

[Razor.6392]

1. because that takes effort from anet

2. because some classes spam chill for doing nothing. theres no strategy or timing involved.

3. because very few classes have access to slow or taunt, often in unviable trait lines that would compromise the holy dps.