Guild Wars 2

Scenario: Condition Ranger and Condition Warrior in dungeon together. Ranger begins DPS on boss and sees burn, poison and bleed ticks for 750, 220 and 1500 lets say. Warrior begins DPS later and applies the same conditions and sees ticks for 800, 240, 2500(more stacks applied by himself). The ranger will now see zero DoT damage because he cannot apply bleeds as fast as the warrior and does not have enough condition damage to overpower the higher damage, and therefore higher priority, ticks from the warrior.

Why do condition builds compete for DPS in PVE? Why is it that whoever has the highest condition damage gets to see the numbers?

If I compose a dungeon group of nothing but power builds there is no interference of DPS between players and indeed this is how all PVE DPS should be treated. There is no reason for one player’s DPS to prevent, or even in most cases outright nullify, another player’s DPS so why do condition builds compete for DPS in PVE? I get why there should only be one burning, 25 bleeds, 25 torments and 1 poison in PVP, zergs would just blow people up otherwise(not like they still don’t but that is a matter for another time), but in PVE there is no reason for this constraint.

I have to assume it is some technical hold over from early development when the technology to split mechanics between PVP and PVE did not exist but now it does and there needs to be a change made as right now it is an incredible hindrance on group diversity.

Well, from what I understand.

It takes a lot to process each condition damage and duration when stacked up. When there’s 25 stacks of bleed ticking, that’s 25 different bleeds doing their own damage with their own duration. Now, imagine if there was no limit and if a zerg dropped a couple hundred stacks of bleeding. I can see it being justified in open world, but in a dungeon instance with only 5 players it’s a bit unnecessary.

Of course, it’s a lazy way to fix the problem. It effectively discourages people from using condition builds in PvE. There’s plenty of workarounds that have been thought up and ignored.

Wouldn’t it be best to fix these issues limiting build diversity rather than swinging the nerf hammer around?

Many games before GW2 have handled it somehow. Differentiating yourself by being worse from a technical standpoint is not productive.