this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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Guild Wars 2
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Alac and Quickness are not an easy design problem to solve imo. If they aren't powerful enough then nobody will use them, but if they are then people will want to stack boon supports until they get 100% uptime.
The only other options I see are having them only be worth it during certain phases in the fight, having a forced downtime like BL in WoW, or having the boon supports do virtually no damage so stacking them isn't worth it. The first makes fights harder to design as every encounter would need a burst phase, and the third is probably not fun to play, so I think WoW's BL design is the best solution. It also allows you to decide when you want the buff, so it adds a tactical element as well.
I would love the fights to be more tactical (and possibly slower paced), but I guess this ship has long sailed.
I mean, we have the Exposed phases after breaking the Defiance bar which kinda is GW2's equivalent of the moment where WoW players would use their Bloodlust (BL) abilities. But from my experience the timing (frequency and duration) of thoses phases is all over the place and generally too short for being a proper burn phase in which you would pop your (Quickness, Alacrity, ...) CDs, e.g . a 10..20 second buff/boon on a 1..2 minute cooldown (Utility Skill) which you would try to perfectly align with the Exposed phases of the boss.
This would require to remove other sources (weapon skills, traits, ...) which grant those boons as a side effect (pretty much accidently) which combined with enough boon duration currently allow them to become permanent. As I said, this ship has probably long sailed.
I don't think it will ever be too late to change things. Look at their current design direction: They changed a system of profession specific boons into a somewhat homogenized alac+quickness system over the course of 1-2 years. They could do something similar again if it doesn't work out the way they want.
But one other thing came to my mind. I think perma boons you have to spec into might fulfill the offensive support fantasy better than a time-limited boon. With perma boons you associate the boon with your party or the boon provider specifically, while a temporary boon feels more like a property/mechanic of the enounter you're fighting. With perma boons you have to stay close to your group for example, while a temporary boon would only requires you to stack on boon application, like many other boss mechanics. Maybe that's just me, but being the boon guy sounds more fun than being the one to press a certain button at some point, provided boon support gameplay is fun as well of course.
I feel a bit different about offensive boons like Might and Fury which most open world builds can maintain on themselves at a decent level anyway.
What I mostly dislike is the pretty much mandatory stacking of players so that they have good boon coverage. This also applies to defensive boons like Protection, Aegis, ... which are so strong that people may even stand in shit as long as they are covered by enough boons.
GW2 has so many ways of 100% damage mitigation (don't stand in shit, dodge, evasion, block) and a massive 33% Protection boon that armor/toughness almost does not matter. Not even for a raid tank (Mesmer) who just needs more toughness than other party members to taunt the boss.
I like to think back to GW1 where a clumped up team gets destroyed by an opposing Mesmer, Elementalist or Barrage Ranger. Those where the times... 🙂