Jade Quarry: NPC changes

I think it's safe to say the Jade Quarry is a fun PvP zone, that's still very active. However, there's some standard builds that seem to effective to me (easy mode). These are the well known builds like N/A bomber, Mo/P RoJ capper, Me/Any wastrel spammer. I would like to propose this to make the game more fun:

- up the HP of shrines, so a single RoJ does not cap anymore, a single signet of agony from a bomber should also not be enough to cap
- give the carriers a skill to counter wastrel's worry and demise, or make them immune to it

I think these two changes would already make JQ a loooot more fun.

There is a reason why the npcs are so close together and neatly arranged into a nice ball you quickly destroy....it is meant to be that way. With increased health, more monks would play jade quarry merely healing shrines and carriers.

Imagine a jade quarry where the only capping that gets done is in the very beginning. Certainly some builds are very easy to cap with, but that makes the jade quarry games faster and more fun. Well, as fun as assaulting a group of 6 npcs can be.

The NPCs would need some small armor and hp boost.
But not too much, because JQ would lose the aspect of capping.

Increasing the health won't make a difference, RoJ monks would just start running Wandering Eye, Cry of Frustration, Chaos Storm, or similar.

You've identified the clear troublemaker here, so why are you not asking for them to be punished? RoJ should be getting a nerf, not the shrines getting a buff. The bomber and Wastrel's bars are okay, because they devote most of their bar to just doing the damage they need to do, and capping/killing is all they can do. The RoJ bar has huge compression, being able to cap, kill, protect, and run carriers all in one.

Something like a low-cost, low-recharge Turtle Shell, perhaps?

I would rather see RoJ reverted to it's former use (100 ish aoe holy damage), but as this would never happen I felt there was no point in asking. Also, this particular situation is the only one in which I feel RoJ is too powerful, making it not worth nerfing it game-wide, or even pvp-wide.

Wastrel bars are usually okay indeed, it's just that carriers can't counter them, making them really high armor ignoring dps. Which leads to:

That's exactly what I was thinking of. A skill that doesn't actually change the carrier but is a skill anyway.

Then suddenly they are Mo/Me and lost their carrier speed buff, which is already a slight improvement.

people will still cap shrines even if it requires to press more than 1 (RoJ) or 2 (shadow walk + signet of agony) buttons.

Bomber is only dedicated to cap a shrine and die, whereas :
- monk job will be to solo shrines, make turtles go faster and provide some amount of healing/damage in addition..
- wastrel's mesmers are more likely the definition of " faceroll builds ".. it's dedicated to kill everything, but let's be honest, you can still get that result by spamming your bar randomly..

The best way to fix everything would be to make NPC's start using skills when they're targeted and thus it would stop those kind of builds soloing shrines without getting hit.. But as there's very small chance they do something on JQ especially, like you said, nerfing RoJ would be more doable ..

JQ is perfectly fine, everything can be countered. I never had any problems defending a quarry with YAA sin which would take out anything that comes close in no time.

If you don't like certain builds capping, I suggest you build a support build and devote yourself to killing them. I have a fire/ice ele build that can snare bombers(and carriers, for that matter), and kill them 100% of the time. She's also decent at capping, but needs to hit three spells to do so, which can be a long shot at times.

JQ requires more strategy the way it is. When one mesmer can ruin a carrier's return in just seconds, it becomes necessary to have someone devoted to killing that mesmer, or healing the carrier. Bombers can be intercepted, roj monks can be interrupted, and chances are someone on your team is doing the same to them. This is the strength of the JQ, it's not all about personal glory and who's the best at 1v1.