Feedback:User/Thalanor Thornhale/Balance the Incentives for Clustering and Spreading

Motivation
This is some food for consideration based on observed video footage. The developers have stated that positional play in GW2 will become more important. For this purpose, skills were introduced that not only target the player but can be targeted to an area. Area of affect spells often are circles or partial circles.

Considerations
From a more abstract point of view, most of the area of effect skills observed thus far were offensive skills. Offensive skills with an area of affect would encourage players of the opposing team to be generally spread out. It would be very one-sided and thus less skill dependent to just encourage spreading. To keep the game balanced and thus interesting, means should be devised that would encourage clustering.

Clustering can be induced in two ways:

1.) Certain defensive skills should require different forms of tighter formations to be particularly effective.

2.) Offensive skills could induce/encourage clustering.

Additionally, area of effect spells are often used. Several alternative shapes should be considered for both defensive and offensive skills.

Advantages
A balanced system that has both incentives and punishments for spreading or clustering increases the potential strategic depth without having to add more skills.