Boons

[Yasi.9065]

Hi :)

 

With the current changes to chrono - which I believe were meant to give other supporters also a shot at being more than just barely viable - we are again faced with the big mess that boons are in gw2. All professions have some boons, but not 100%, not condensed - except chrono ofc.

 

Theres those boons that are just so strong you simply cannot forgo them. 25 might, fury, alacrity, quickness, vigor. Of those boons, fury and vigor are actually pretty rare. Especially, support builds that offer alacrity or quickness dont offer much vigor (fb around 30%, renegade none). Fury you can somewhat cheat with rune of altruism, or by forcing a holo to play sword and bring hardlight arena to fill up duration to 100%.

 

In addition, we have traits that rely on uptime of certain boons - guardian retaliation traits in radiance, warrior swiftness trait, weaver swiftness trait etc. So you want those boons as well for max dmg output, since those traits are so strong, theres really no alternative. You could ofc just not run with dh, ele, warrior... but... I dont like being a class nazi.

 

And then we have the biggest offenders, thieves, warriors and ele's %dmg per boon traits. Those make anything below 10 boons with 100% uptime a very noticable dps loss. Yes, you can live without them, but why would you? 2xChrono can provide them.

 

So, what imo has to change is mainly the boon-reliant traits. Make them into slightly lower but permanent values, split between gamemodes. And suddenly we have alternatives to 2x chrono in raids, and even to 1 chrono in fractals, without having to kick 3 builds out of the meta because of missing boons.

[Blocki.4931]

Don't most classes have Fury generation for themselves? Or am I spoiled for playing Warrior and Thief exclusively

[Yasi.9065]

Not 100% uptime, thats the problem.

[Sylli.3891]

Guardian can have 95 % fury uptime all u need is 3 burn on enemy + shout elite skill and if someone give u a little fury u have 100 % and 3 burning is easy to get on fb

[IllegalChocolate.6938]

Perma might, fury, quickness, alacrity was a mistake. It's seen as a natural part of a rotation that doesn't require any critical thinking or timing to make use of unlike aegis or proper distortion. It's literally all binary now.

[Sylli.3891]

> @"IllegalChocolate.6938" said:

> Perma might, fury, quickness, alacrity was a mistake. It's seen as a natural part of a rotation that doesn't require any critical thinking or timing to make use of unlike aegis or proper distortion. It's literally all binary now.

 

Ye i don't know why there made the the boons Quickness and alacrity. i use some kind of mix build on Celestial Firebrand and i use 2 Quickness skills and when i use them in dungeon i see the enemy die in no time its so strong. the build get 25 might stack and i can give all in my team 1 might just by a crit

[Yasi.9065]

It doesnt really matter what your personal preference is in regards to boons :) Problem is that raid and t4 fractal encounters (to be more precise, fractal instabilities) are balanced around status quo. Without those boons, its a huge battle uphill. You get it done - maybe. But it will be painful, unfun and very toxic towards casual players.

[Vordrax.5243]

> @"Yasi.9065" said:

> It doesnt really matter what your personal preference is in regards to boons :) Problem is that raid and t4 fractal encounters (to be more precise, fractal instabilities) are balanced around status quo. Without those boons, its a huge battle uphill. You get it done - maybe. But it will be painful, unfun and very toxic towards casual players.

 

Sounds like they might want to balance around not having those boons.

[Yasi.9065]

Well, thing is... re-balancing basically all... lets call them "elite areas" to accomodate boonless fights would be a ton of work I imagine.

 

And I mean, boons are part of the game, so imo they should be included.

 

Also I dont see the boons themselves as source of the problem. Rather those traits relying on specific - or all - boons uptime are the real reason for why alternatives to chronos are always a form of downtrading or limitation.

 

I mean, do we REALLY need 100% retaliation uptime? Or aegis? Or stability? Or swiftness? Or even vigor? No. They are nice boons, but especially aegis and stability are meant to be situational shorttime boons. Tieing dmg traits in PvE to those boons is just bad. Why cant it be traits that work like mirage's vigor? They buff the caster if he/she applies the boon to themselve? Then it would make sense, and we could finally "evolve" from the "get as many boons as possible 100% uptime" meta that we have been stuck in since... forever.

[rng.1024]

It's interesting, as in the core game boons where designed to be "bursts" of mitigation, healing, damage and recovery. Some professions were designed to exceed the base duration of different boons through traits, and everyone had the option to extend them somewhat with armor - at a steep cost to other stats.

 

It wasn't until HoT came along with Concentration we started capping out on 100% duration, while now being able to maintain most of the stats previously lost upon equipping boon duration gear.

 

So it went from "Use x boon right before the main attack", "Use y boon right before the zerg push" and the infamous waterfield blasting where everyone popped their restorative boons for a true burst of healing. Now it's simply "Keep those boons up permanently", if removed them you must reapply them.

 

The disparity however, does not lie in availability or longevity, as most professions have access to a good chunk of available boons and any class can get decent uptime now with proper gear (eliminating the need for traited durations). The problem lies in boon removal and how we currently have only 3 professions (spellbreaker, mesmer, necro) who can do this reliably. This caused a surge in the PoF meta where people realised frontloading tons of boons would give them great survivability against 6/9 professions, without them having a way to even the playingfield. Thus the holosmith roamer, core hammer guardian, the strength of thiefs Improvisation trait, tempest bunker, soulbeast roamer and revenant boonshare were discovered. And they became meta for a reason - the lack of counters and fairly easy access to boon uptime on defensive(!) boons, allowing them to deal top tier damage as well.

 

Then what can be done about this? Personally I love to run around on my spellbreaker, bait them to apply all their boons then I strip them all away and watch them run - because that's all they got. They don't play, they rely 100% on their boons to fight, which is incredibly sad. You can also kit your weapon with sigils that remove them, but this more often than not there are more valuable choices. You could also play warr/mes/nec once in a while, but for some this isn't an option either. This leaves us with only 2 viable options. Either play 1 of the 3 professions that can deal with boons - or join the boonstackers. These are the hands dealt to us by anet. Of course we can keep trying to do elsewise, but the fights will never be in our favour.

 

 

[Dante.1763]

> @"Yasi.9065" said:

> Well, thing is... re-balancing basically all... lets call them "elite areas" to accomodate boonless fights would be a ton of work I imagine.

>

> And I mean, boons are part of the game, so imo they should be included.

>

> Also I dont see the boons themselves as source of the problem. Rather those traits relying on specific - or all - boons uptime are the real reason for why alternatives to chronos are always a form of downtrading or limitation.

>

> I mean, do we REALLY need 100% retaliation uptime? Or aegis? Or stability? Or swiftness? Or even vigor? No. They are nice boons, but especially aegis and stability are meant to be situational shorttime boons. Tieing dmg traits in PvE to those boons is just bad. Why cant it be traits that work like mirage's vigor? They buff the caster if he/she applies the boon to themselve? Then it would make sense, and we could finally "evolve" from the "get as many boons as possible 100% uptime" meta that we have been stuck in since... forever.

 

Actually they really need to rebalance the game around *not* having boons period. Balancing around being in a group and thus having those boons is pretty damn unfair to the majority of the playerbase who *dont* run in groups all the time because they arent doing content that requires it.

[Sephylon.4938]

> @"Dante.1763" said:

> > @"Yasi.9065" said:

> > Well, thing is... re-balancing basically all... lets call them "elite areas" to accomodate boonless fights would be a ton of work I imagine.

> >

> > And I mean, boons are part of the game, so imo they should be included.

> >

> > Also I dont see the boons themselves as source of the problem. Rather those traits relying on specific - or all - boons uptime are the real reason for why alternatives to chronos are always a form of downtrading or limitation.

> >

> > I mean, do we REALLY need 100% retaliation uptime? Or aegis? Or stability? Or swiftness? Or even vigor? No. They are nice boons, but especially aegis and stability are meant to be situational shorttime boons. Tieing dmg traits in PvE to those boons is just bad. Why cant it be traits that work like mirage's vigor? They buff the caster if he/she applies the boon to themselve? Then it would make sense, and we could finally "evolve" from the "get as many boons as possible 100% uptime" meta that we have been stuck in since... forever.

>

> Actually they really need to rebalance the game around *not* having boons period. Balancing around being in a group and thus having those boons is pretty kitten unfair to the majority of the playerbase who *dont* run in groups all the time because they arent doing content that requires it.

 

Open world is already balanced as such. Most of the problems there lie in the inability to cc breakbars.

[Jski.6180]

No boon but say swiftness and reg should have 100% up time if it dose then there is a problem. Boon duration + was the WORST thing they added to this game and comply upended any type of real balancing. Chorn should give out all boons but its boons should be very short in there duration. Class who give out less boons should have longer duration but still not 100%.

[starlinvf.1358]

> @"Dante.1763" said:

> > @"Yasi.9065" said:

> > Well, thing is... re-balancing basically all... lets call them "elite areas" to accomodate boonless fights would be a ton of work I imagine.

> >

> > And I mean, boons are part of the game, so imo they should be included.

> >

> > Also I dont see the boons themselves as source of the problem. Rather those traits relying on specific - or all - boons uptime are the real reason for why alternatives to chronos are always a form of downtrading or limitation.

> >

> > I mean, do we REALLY need 100% retaliation uptime? Or aegis? Or stability? Or swiftness? Or even vigor? No. They are nice boons, but especially aegis and stability are meant to be situational shorttime boons. Tieing dmg traits in PvE to those boons is just bad. Why cant it be traits that work like mirage's vigor? They buff the caster if he/she applies the boon to themselve? Then it would make sense, and we could finally "evolve" from the "get as many boons as possible 100% uptime" meta that we have been stuck in since... forever.

>

> Actually they really need to rebalance the game around *not* having boons period. Balancing around being in a group and thus having those boons is pretty kitten unfair to the majority of the playerbase who *dont* run in groups all the time because they arent doing content that requires it.

 

But the only areas where this really matters IS "group content"..... raids and fractals are made to run by the max party size, and logically will be balanced around what most groups are capable of outputting.

 

Even in PvP and WvW, you're supposed to have a group composition containing a support build as a force multiplier. For the majority of the game's life, this aspect was actually broken as each class could bring most of its required self-support, and many of the group-based alternatives were slow or difficult to coordinate. POF added more group support, but didn't reduce the self-support capability of most builds.... thus the result was a massive net gain. The old self sustained builds are just as powerful as they've always been; but are now massively over shadowed by dedicated support specs in how much extra power it can add to a combat build.

 

 

If it isn't obvious yet, this is PRECISELY what a Trinity system does in terms of power scaling. But GW2 doesn't enforce arbitrary limitations on the classes, so its "all" Compounding power rather then slotting into a frame work that sort of self-regulates.

[ButcherofMalakir.4067]

Game without permanent boons would be extremly boring.

1) without quickness and alacrity game will be too slow

2) without permanent alacrity rotations doesnt exist because skills will not line up as if you had perma alacrity or non at all

3) without permanent acces to boons support classes would be either nonexistent or dps classes with ultility (like warrior).

I am playing druid and chrono because dps classes are boring to me. Without support classes i wouldnt be playing the game.

 

As for important boons. Might fury swiftness and regen are pretty easy to get yet still they are provided by only one class in raids. And there are classes that can provide 100% uptime on them without boon duration.

Reason why you dont see other boon bots in raids is that other classes are not the best. Either you remove boons or there will be best way to stack them and that will players do.

I guess chrono shouldnt upkeep perma resistance and aegis as it is now. But if you take away perma quickness and alacrity there is no reason to play chrono anymore

[yann.1946]

> @"ButcherofMalakir.4067" said:

> Game without permanent boons would be extremly boring.

> 1) without quickness and alacrity game will be too slow

> 2) without permanent alacrity rotations doesnt exist because skills will not line up as if you had perma alacrity or non at all

> 3) without permanent acces to boons support classes would be either nonexistent or dps classes with ultility (like warrior).

> I am playing druid and chrono because dps classes are boring to me. Without support classes i wouldnt be playing the game.

>

> As for important boons. Might fury swiftness and regen are pretty easy to get yet still they are provided by only one class in raids. And there are classes that can provide 100% uptime on them without boon duration.

> Reason why you dont see other boon bots in raids is that other classes are not the best. Either you remove boons or there will be best way to stack them and that will players do.

> I guess chrono shouldnt upkeep perma resistance and aegis as it is now. But if you take away perma quickness and alacrity there is no reason to play chrono anymore

 

1) game will only feel slow because we are used to it.

 

2) rotations can exist. It would just be a testament to how well you now you're class.

 

3) it doesn't have to be perma boons to be a noticeable difference. Depends how much and when the boon gets given

[Laila Lightness.8742]

Boons is the issue in meta we are to reliant on them think how much more fun if we had no boons

[ButcherofMalakir.4067]

> @"yann.1946" said:

> > @"ButcherofMalakir.4067" said:

> > Game without permanent boons would be extremly boring.

> > 1) without quickness and alacrity game will be too slow

> > 2) without permanent alacrity rotations doesnt exist because skills will not line up as if you had perma alacrity or non at all

> > 3) without permanent acces to boons support classes would be either nonexistent or dps classes with ultility (like warrior).

> > I am playing druid and chrono because dps classes are boring to me. Without support classes i wouldnt be playing the game.

> >

> > As for important boons. Might fury swiftness and regen are pretty easy to get yet still they are provided by only one class in raids. And there are classes that can provide 100% uptime on them without boon duration.

> > Reason why you dont see other boon bots in raids is that other classes are not the best. Either you remove boons or there will be best way to stack them and that will players do.

> > I guess chrono shouldnt upkeep perma resistance and aegis as it is now. But if you take away perma quickness and alacrity there is no reason to play chrono anymore

>

> 1) game will only feel slow because we are used to it.

>

> 2) rotations can exist. It would just be a testament to how well you now you're class.

>

> 3) it doesn't have to be perma boons to be a noticeable difference. Depends how much and when the boon gets given

 

Rotations with huge cds will not exist. It will either be priority based rotation or you cannot use randomly reduced cds.

 

Game would feel slow because it would be slower. Less button to press in same time. For me every class that have aa chain more then once in rotation is slow because i dont have to press anything

 

And what do you mean by not perma? In most pug squads you dont have perma boons. Are you talking about 70 percent or 30? With 30 there is no reason to play those classes. With 70 its not that bad but still it would be better to have lower impact but 100 uptime instead of more potent bursts.

 

As for boons, fury might regen and swiftnees can be made perma by multiple sources without boon duration. Might is 30+ percent dps increese. Dont know why quickness is a problem if it increse your dps by same/lower amount but you actualy have to do something (press faster)

[ButcherofMalakir.4067]

> @"Laila Lightness.8742" said:

> Boons is the issue in meta we are to reliant on them think how much more fun if we had no boons

 

We would have no fun. Brainlessly spaming keyboard. Basicaly 10*1 solo player since there is no teamplay required

[ButcherofMalakir.4067]

> @"Laila Lightness.8742" said:

> Boons is the issue in meta we are to reliant on them think how much more fun if we had no boons

 

We would have no fun. Brainlessly spaming keyboard. Basicaly 10*1 solo player since there is no teamplay required

[yann.1946]

> @"ButcherofMalakir.4067" said:

> > @"yann.1946" said:

> > > @"ButcherofMalakir.4067" said:

> > > Game without permanent boons would be extremly boring.

> > > 1) without quickness and alacrity game will be too slow

> > > 2) without permanent alacrity rotations doesnt exist because skills will not line up as if you had perma alacrity or non at all

> > > 3) without permanent acces to boons support classes would be either nonexistent or dps classes with ultility (like warrior).

> > > I am playing druid and chrono because dps classes are boring to me. Without support classes i wouldnt be playing the game.

> > >

> > > As for important boons. Might fury swiftness and regen are pretty easy to get yet still they are provided by only one class in raids. And there are classes that can provide 100% uptime on them without boon duration.

> > > Reason why you dont see other boon bots in raids is that other classes are not the best. Either you remove boons or there will be best way to stack them and that will players do.

> > > I guess chrono shouldnt upkeep perma resistance and aegis as it is now. But if you take away perma quickness and alacrity there is no reason to play chrono anymore

> >

> > 1) game will only feel slow because we are used to it.

> >

> > 2) rotations can exist. It would just be a testament to how well you now you're class.

> >

> > 3) it doesn't have to be perma boons to be a noticeable difference. Depends how much and when the boon gets given

>

> Rotations with huge cds will not exist. It will either be priority based rotation or you cannot use randomly reduced cds.

>

> Game would feel slow because it would be slower. Less button to press in same time. For me every class that have aa chain more then once in rotation is slow because i dont have to press anything

>

> And what do you mean by not perma? In most pug squads you dont have perma boons. Are you talking about 70 percent or 30? With 30 there is no reason to play those classes. With 70 its not that bad but still it would be better to have lower impact but 100 uptime instead of more potent bursts.

>

> As for boons, fury might regen and swiftnees can be made perma by multiple sources without boon duration. Might is 30+ percent dps increese. Dont know why quickness is a problem if it increse your dps by same/lower amount but you actualy have to do something (press faster)

 

I'm arguing against you're argument.

 

1) while it might be a little slower, it won't be that bad because the slowness is part adaptation.

 

2) their would be a rotation, just not one set in stone. But I guess our definition of rotation is different

 

3) this was only an argument against their wouldn't be support classes anymore if they can't give perma boons anymore.