Guild Wars 2

As pretty much everyone knows bleeding & burning cap very easily in PvE thus making additional applications of the condition a waste. This causes much of the damage done by elementalists, guardians & engineer’s to go to waste.

This means that you never really want more then one condition user in your group (if any)

I’ve been pondering the problem now for a while & believe I have come up with a solution (at least in the case of bleeding & burning)

Bleeding, if you look at abilities that apply it you will notice something. Abilities that apply bleeds generally tend to either apply multiple bleeds at once & or long duration bleeds.

A simple solution would be to look at each ability that applies bleeding then either reduce the duration of the bleed applied or reduce the number of bleeds applied.
Overall the reduction could be about 1/3 to 1/2.
After that simply increase the scaling of bleeding to compensate so that no overall damage is lost.

Burning was a bit trickier to come up with a solution for.
In the end I found it would be best to simply make it so all abilities that apply burning to have an addendum

“If the target is suffering from more then X (say between 8-12) seconds of burning you will instead apply Y (say 2-3) stacks of agony for the duration”

(makes sense right, if your on fire and someone dumps gas on you it would make it more agonizing)

That ^ would allow for multiple (2-3) people in a group to be condition spec without canceling each others damage out.

3rd time writing this text as my internet wont let me post this…

short: remove the hard cap and replace it with a soft cap.

numbers are only examples

after 100 bleed ticks every additional bleed tick reduces the total damage of the bleed stack by 1%. assuming the 100 bleed stacks have an average bleed damage of 100/s and the 101th only 87/s thats -100.87 damage/s because the damage of the new bleed stack is lower than the average. but if the new bleed stack ticks for 120/s (which is higher as the average) the damage loss is -101.2/s ((10000 + 120) / 100 = 1% = 101.2) and the effective damage gain is 18.8 (120-101.2).

this way all the bleed ticks will balance their damage by themselves. the damage will be capped at the point when the average bleed tick of the whole stack = max possible bleed damage/second in the game. because a higher tick cant be added anymore if it already is the max.

the same could be done for duration conditions with amount of seconds instead of amount of stacks. so for example, for every additional second after 100 seconds the damage gets reduced by 1%.

i hope its understandable as it may sound a bit theoretical and complicated.. but after 3 times writing the same text i dont really care anymore^^

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

A simple solution would be to look at each ability that applies bleeding then either reduce the duration of the bleed applied or reduce the number of bleeds applied.
Overall the reduction could be about 1/3 to 1/2.
After that simply increase the scaling of bleeding to compensate so that no overall damage is lost..

As much as I appreciate where you are coming from, and can get behind the idea of fixing conditions so that the caps do not hose players, I do nto believe it is as simple as you think.

For example the value of condition cleanses and removal changes exponentially when you have application rebalanced to give less stacks with a higher damage per tick.

I mean I think you heading in the right direction, we have had hundreds of threads on the matter. But what about skills with a 2s bleed or another low amount of total condition damage? How would you work that into your concept?

Would have to split all bleed/burning skill between PvE and PvP; classes that apply large amounts of bleed stacks quickly (especially though AA’s are already a problem in PvP.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Ragnar the Rock.3174:

A simple solution would be to look at each ability that applies bleeding then either reduce the duration of the bleed applied or reduce the number of bleeds applied.
Overall the reduction could be about 1/3 to 1/2.
After that simply increase the scaling of bleeding to compensate so that no overall damage is lost..

As much as I appreciate where you are coming from, and can get behind the idea of fixing conditions so that the caps do not hose players, I do nto believe it is as simple as you think.

For example the value of condition cleanses and removal changes exponentially when you have application rebalanced to give less stacks with a higher damage per tick.

I mean I think you heading in the right direction, we have had hundreds of threads on the matter. But what about skills with a 2s bleed or another low amount of total condition damage? How would you work that into your concept?

Completely understand where your coming from with cleanses becoming more of an issue if bleeds become stronger.

As for procs that cause low duration bleeds. Most of them rely on crits, I would change them to on hit and change the proc chance to balance them.

Jekkt.6045:

3rd time writing this text as my internet wont let me post this…

short: remove the hard cap and replace it with a soft cap.

numbers are only examples

after 100 bleed ticks every additional bleed tick reduces the total damage of the bleed stack by 1%. assuming the 100 bleed stacks have an average bleed damage of 100/s and the 101th only 87/s thats -100.87 damage/s because the damage of the new bleed stack is lower than the average. but if the new bleed stack ticks for 120/s (which is higher as the average) the damage loss is -101.2/s ((10000 + 120) / 100 = 1% = 101.2) and the effective damage gain is 18.8 (120-101.2).

this way all the bleed ticks will balance their damage by themselves. the damage will be capped at the point when the average bleed tick of the whole stack = max possible bleed damage/second in the game. because a higher tick cant be added anymore if it already is the max.

the same could be done for duration conditions with amount of seconds instead of amount of stacks. so for example, for every additional second after 100 seconds the damage gets reduced by 1%.

i hope its understandable as it may sound a bit theoretical and complicated.. but after 3 times writing the same text i dont really care anymore^^

From what I can understand of this it wouldn’t really solve any of the problems.

In the end people would still get hosed over if more then 1 person was bringing conditions. It would just take time to happen.

Neptune.2570:

Would have to split all bleed/burning skill between PvE and PvP; classes that apply large amounts of bleed stacks quickly (especially though AA’s are already a problem in PvP.

Don’t think you understand what I wrote.

Abilities that apply bleeds would be looked at individually, any ability that applies more then one stack of bleeding or applies bleeding for more then a couple seconds would have either the number of stacks reduced & or the duration of said stacks reduced.

The exchange would be that each stack would deal more per tick.

This means that

1: More people can bring bleeding to a fight without canceling each other out
&
2: While the ramp of time of condition specs would be slightly faster they would not do any more over all damage.

So yes it may make condition specs kill things a bit faster, but they already balance several abilities that apply bleeding differently in PVE then they do in SPvP.

I thought the problem with conditions was that the server couldnt handle all the calculations. Imagine a fight like Tequatl, 50 or more people all applying their conditions. And the server has to differentiate between them all, calculate the damage based on everyones stats and traits, and send feedback to everyone.

It could never have been a case of “mobs die to fast”. Abilities deal X amount of damage, either directly or over time. And it doesnt matter which it is as Conditions arent magically uber powerful (despite what some would have you believe).
So if it was a case of mobs dying to fast a more logical fix wouldve been not to neuter an entire type of damage, but to just make the mobs tankier or have more hp/scaling.

Terrahero.9358:

I thought the problem with conditions was that the server couldnt handle all the calculations. Imagine a fight like Tequatl, 50 or more people all applying their conditions. And the server has to differentiate between them all, calculate the damage based on everyones stats and traits, and send feedback to everyone.

It could never have been a case of “mobs die to fast”. Abilities deal X amount of damage, either directly or over time. And it doesnt matter which it is as Conditions arent magically uber powerful (despite what some would have you believe).
So if it was a case of mobs dying to fast a more logical fix wouldve been not to neuter an entire type of damage, but to just make the mobs tankier or have more hp/scaling.

Well that is more or less what they said.

Each time a condition ticks the server must check how much it ticks for & how long it has left.

So they said they will not raise the cap on condition stacks due to how much bandwidth it would take to handle it.

So in the end we & they are left with trying to fix condition caps without increasing the number of stacks that they cap at.

It really does limit the amount of ways the problem can be fixed. Hence my suggestion of increase the scaling but decrease the duration/number of stacks applied per ability for bleeds.
The unintended result of said fix however would be that condition specs that use bleeding would in turn have more or less the same maximum damage output but a faster ramp up time.

That ^ in turn could have adverse effects on Spvp if not balanced properly.

I’d rather not get an ICD on Sharper Images because it can stack up 25 bleeds.

This wouldn’t solve anything.. the PvE itself is structured around raw power (un-crittable objects, like gates in WvW, are a clear example of that) and conditions simply are not as fast as power at killing. The only way to make them viable (not optimal, though) would be to let ALL condi stack more than 25 stacks, but this is impossible due to technical limitations.

I’d prefer if hitting the max stack of bleed immediately removed the bleeding and caused an unblockable “burst” of damage. But how much and how it would be calculated would be a separate can of worms…maybe a set % of the target’s HP?

Frenk.5917:

This wouldn’t solve anything.. the PvE itself is structured around raw power (un-crittable objects, like gates in WvW, are a clear example of that) and conditions simply are not as fast as power at killing. The only way to make them viable (not optimal, though) would be to let ALL condi stack more than 25 stacks, but this is impossible due to technical limitations.

Technically, with the way cloud is going now, it’s definitely possible and within reach, it’s just not practical to be spending extra money for players to deal more damage which you then have to balance for. You’re basically paying more money to pay more money to please people, which hasn’t been done in the gaming industry for a while.

And increasing the 25 stacks is not a technical limitation, but having it have infinite/no limit, is. Eventually something will screw up when you have that much computing, even if you outsource it to cloud.. actually, especially if you outsource it to cloud.

While it is possible for them to increase the stacks, it would increase strain on their servers, particularly when there are lots of bosses up (see: Dry Tops). Additionally, they would have to rebalance (as stated before) because the game has kind of fallen into place with everything now. Arenanet is afraid of making big changes because they will disrupt the place where the game has fallen, although I believe it should be shaken around and causing dirt to get stirred up because the place it is could be better.

The problem lies in PvP, still, though. Imagine conditions with half the duration and twice the damage. Imagine how many ticks you find yourself getting off in PvP before your opponents can either react or their cooldowns are up. Now double that damage. Condi bomb would be utterly obscene.

DeceiverX.8361:

The problem lies in PvP, still, though. Imagine conditions with half the duration and twice the damage. Imagine how many ticks you find yourself getting off in PvP before your opponents can either react or their cooldowns are up. Now double that damage. Condi bomb would be utterly obscene.

Which is why what they need to do (and it’s the harder route to take), is to simply fix the stats of mobs so they take more damage from all condition ticks. It buffs the conditions in PvE without touching it in PvP.

Except then there’s no reason to run power builds.

See where this is going?

DeceiverX.8361:

Except then there’s no reason to run power builds.

See where this is going?

Not necessarily. They don’t have to tick for exactly the same as power builds do with direct damage. More like a 5-10% damage difference (not sure really how to work it to be such a difference). Power would still be seen as better, but conditions could keep up with it.

RyuDragnier.9476:

I’d prefer if hitting the max stack of bleed immediately removed the bleeding and caused an unblockable “burst” of damage. But how much and how it would be calculated would be a separate can of worms…maybe a set % of the target’s HP?

Set percentage wouldn’t work. Then PvE bosses would become REALLY trivial unless it was a comically small percentage. Instead, along with a “Bleed” application on a skill you have another skill part called say “hemorrhage” that only gets applied when there are 25 stacks of bleed on the target when the skill is cast. It would be a conditional either/or type thing.

Here’s an idea:

Bleeding automatically causes a new status call ‘Hemorrhaging’ and Hemorrhaging stacks up to 3 times under certain conditions against NPCs only.

Hemorrhaging : occurs after 10 stacks of bleeds are suffered and disappears when less than 10 stacks of bleeds are suffered. Hemorrhaging decreases the duration of all bleeds by 50% but increases the speed at which bleeds tic by 30%. This effect is applied to all current bleeds in effect when Hemorrhaging is applied and remains in effect on all bleed stacks applied while Hemorrhaging was in effect.

Severe Hemorrhaging : occurs after 20 stacks of bleed are suffered and disappears when less than 20 stacks of bleed are currently suffered. The 2nd stack of Hemorrhaging (or Severe Hemorrhaging) decreases the duration of all bleeds by an additional 25% (for a total of 75%) but increases the speed at which bleeds tic by an additional 15% (for a total of 45%).

Fatal Hemorrhaging : occurs when 25 stacks of bleed are suffered and disappears when less than the maximum stacks of bleed are currently suffered. The 3rd stack of Hemorrhaging (or Fatal Hemorrhaging) decreases the duration of all bleeds by an additional 10% (for a total of 85%) but increases the speed at which bleeds tic by an additional 15% (for a total of 60%).

The effect I foresee this having is several-fold:
1. Overall, this does have the effect of reducing the overall damage a bleed does….
*When a bleed that lasts 5sec and does 100 damage is applied normally, it does 500 dmg total over 5 sec for 100dmg/sec.
*When the same bleed is applied under Hemorrhaging (after 10 stacks), the same bleed lasts for 2.5sec but will tic 3 times before it expires (every 0.70sec). This results in 300 damage total but actually being 120dmg/sec…an overall increase.
*When the same bleed is applied under Severe Hemorrhaging (after 20 stacks), the same bleed lasts for 1.25sec but will tic 2 times before it expires (every 0.55sec) resulting in 200 dmg/sec.
*When the same bleed is applied under Fatal Hemorrhaging (when max bleeds are accomplished), will accomplish the same damage as it would under Severe Hemorrhaging, possibly even less.

2. This will improve the effect of Condition Duration and Bleed Duration to a point but ultimately rewarding a combination of both duration and damage, turning that 5sec bleed into a 10sec bleed means, under Fatal Hemorrhaging, it would last 1.5sec and tic 3 times but under Severe Hemorrhaging, lasts 2.5sec and tic 6 times.

3. The builds focusing on bleeds will have their bleeds floating to the top while shorter bleeds will disappear quickly. It will also reward a steam of bleeds since the longer the bleed stays on the higher likelyhood it will only last a very short while as more bleeds are applied.

That being said, I put about 15min of thought behind that idea. Likely the numbers are out of whack and it might shorten bleeds too much. The goal was to get the small bleeds to buff the harsh bleeds without being in the way of stacking more hash bleeds.

I don’t think it will help when fighting bosses in open-world though…

Replacing stacks with aggregate stacks will not be getting rid of the problem. Plus too many rules and particulars. I can’t see why the devs would choose to do that instead of something straight forward and simple.

Kinda Like Leo G’s ideas, though they are kind of complicated.

At least everyone admits there is a problem including Arena.net Hopefully at some point they come up with a solution to make bleeding, burning & poison work better when multiple people are using them.

Theres only 1 real and only solution to the Condition Cap Problem and that is called *Condition Tiers"

Imagine again a 50 Man Group fighting Tequatl.

These 50 people spam all their conditions against Teq.
What can you dow now, if the game is technically limited to a maximum amount of 25 Stacks, but you want that everyone, even after the 25th stack of a condition is still able to support all others with dealing conditions to teq, without that the game wastes them because they don’t get added to the stacks??

The Solution is, change a Condition that reaches 25 Stacks to a NEXT HIGHER TIER-CONDITION, what will break down the stacks again to 1.

Example.

1-25 Stacks Poison = Poison > Tier 1 Condition
26th Stack of Poison = Poison becomes Toxin > Tier 2 Condition
Every 25ths another Posion Stack, Tier 2 gets another Stack.
1-25 Stacks Toxin = Toxin > Tier 2 Condition
26 Stack of Toxin = Toxin becomes Neurotoxin

You see, that way it becomes harder and harder to reach the next Stack, so higher the Condition Tier becomes. Thats something that just only huge Zergs would be able to get to and even then mostly only, if all players of the zerg would be playing a Condition Build and spam all the same conditions together constantly without break/disrupts ect.

But thats a system, that stays within the realm of what is technically for the servers possible with a max stack of 25, without adding any more conditions, just replacing 1 condition with a next higher tier of the same condition that resets the current stack number to 1.

Example for how it could work:

Poison = Damage over Time, 33% Heal Reduction
Toxin = Same Damage over Time, 40% Heal Reduction
Neurotoxin = Increased Damage over Time that ticks a bit faster, 50% Heal Reduction.

To get Neurotoxin, you would need to get on an enemy first 25*25 Stacks of Poison = 625 Stacks of Poison which would have to be applied constantly.
So in theory realyl somethign that just a full 150 man zerg could do if at all. Naturally would require a bit finetuning, but thats for me the only system that is able to work under the limitation of a maximum 25 stack frame, while also not increasign the total amount of conditions that the game would have to calculate on enemy side.

But personally I’d find it also good in regard of game balance, if ANet would reduce the Max Cap for all conditions down from 25 to 20. under 20, it would require constant 400 stacks of poison to reach its Tier 3 Neurotoxin, whats directly a large chunk lesser and still more than enough to guarantee, that jiust only a huge Zerg could reach a Tier 3 Condition like Neurotoxin.
——
Other Condition Examples:

Weakness > Exhaustion > Fatique
Vulnerability > Fragility > Shell Shock
Burning > Inflammation >Heatstroke
Torment > Pain > Anguish
Confusion > Delusion > Hallucination
Slowness > Cripple > Obstruction
Chill > Freeze > Cold
Bleeding > Wound > Venesection

With a tiered condition system, people could fight with alot of condition builds in huge zerg fights in WvW and in PvP World Boss fights.
if the cap of a lower tier gets reached, the condition will change just simple over to to the next higher tier, which then increases alot slower for higher stacks and basically is able to reach those higher tiers only, in very long lastign battles against something, that has really alot of health and takes alot of players to beat…

However, my used numbers are are just a basic concept of how it could work, the exact best used numbers would have to find out anet self under balance tests.
I propose just only to reduce the maximum Condition Cap for easier balancing of this game in the future.

PS: a I see, I guess me and Leo had a very similar concept, haven’t read the thread completely to the end xD

Orpheal.8263:

Theres only 1 real and only solution to the Condition Cap Problem and that is called *Condition Tiers"

Imagine again a 50 Man Group fighting Tequatl.

These 50 people spam all their conditions against Teq.
What can you dow now, if the game is technically limited to a maximum amount of 25 Stacks, but you want that everyone, even after the 25th stack of a condition is still able to support all others with dealing conditions to teq, without that the game wastes them because they don’t get added to the stacks??

The Solution is, change a Condition that reaches 25 Stacks to a NEXT HIGHER TIER-CONDITION, what will break down the stacks again to 1.

Example.

1-25 Stacks Poison = Poison > Tier 1 Condition
26th Stack of Poison = Poison becomes Toxin > Tier 2 Condition
Every 25ths another Posion Stack, Tier 2 gets another Stack.
1-25 Stacks Toxin = Toxin > Tier 2 Condition
26 Stack of Toxin = Toxin becomes Neurotoxin

You see, that way it becomes harder and harder to reach the next Stack, so higher the Condition Tier becomes. Thats something that just only huge Zergs would be able to get to and even then mostly only, if all players of the zerg would be playing a Condition Build and spam all the same conditions together constantly without break/disrupts ect.

But thats a system, that stays within the realm of what is technically for the servers possible with a max stack of 25, without adding any more conditions, just replacing 1 condition with a next higher tier of the same condition that resets the current stack number to 1.

Example for how it could work:

Poison = Damage over Time, 33% Heal Reduction
Toxin = Same Damage over Time, 40% Heal Reduction
Neurotoxin = Increased Damage over Time that ticks a bit faster, 50% Heal Reduction.

To get Neurotoxin, you would need to get on an enemy first 25*25 Stacks of Poison = 625 Stacks of Poison which would have to be applied constantly.
So in theory realyl somethign that just a full 150 man zerg could do if at all. Naturally would require a bit finetuning, but thats for me the only system that is able to work under the limitation of a maximum 25 stack frame, while also not increasign the total amount of conditions that the game would have to calculate on enemy side.

But personally I’d find it also good in regard of game balance, if ANet would reduce the Max Cap for all conditions down from 25 to 20. under 20, it would require constant 400 stacks of poison to reach its Tier 3 Neurotoxin, whats directly a large chunk lesser and still more than enough to guarantee, that jiust only a huge Zerg could reach a Tier 3 Condition like Neurotoxin.
——
Other Condition Examples:

Weakness > Exhaustion > Fatique
Vulnerability > Fragility > Shell Shock
Burning > Inflammation >Heatstroke
Torment > Pain > Anguish
Confusion > Delusion > Hallucination
Slowness > Cripple > Obstruction
Chill > Freeze > Cold
Bleeding > Wound > Venesection

With a tiered condition system, people could fight with alot of condition builds in huge zerg fights in WvW and in PvP World Boss fights.
if the cap of a lower tier gets reached, the condition will change just simple over to to the next higher tier, which then increases alot slower for higher stacks and basically is able to reach those higher tiers only, in very long lastign battles against something, that has really alot of health and takes alot of players to beat…

However, my used numbers are are just a basic concept of how it could work, the exact best used numbers would have to find out anet self under balance tests.
I propose just only to reduce the maximum Condition Cap for easier balancing of this game in the future.

PS: a I see, I guess me and Leo had a very similar concept, haven’t read the thread completely to the end xD

That ^ could work.

Though I don’t believe weakness, vulnerability, cripple or chill should get stronger versions.

As is they are already very strong & creating stronger tiers could make even hard bosses trivial. (imagine having jungle wurm or Tequatal take more then +25% damage, or be chilled so much their CD’s take forever to recharge. Would just make it to easy)

Bleeds, confusion, burning, poison & torment however could definitely use something like this.

Orpheal.8263:

Theres only 1 real and only solution to the Condition Cap Problem and that is called *Condition Tiers"

Imagine again a 50 Man Group fighting Tequatl.

These 50 people spam all their conditions against Teq.
What can you dow now, if the game is technically limited to a maximum amount of 25 Stacks, but you want that everyone, even after the 25th stack of a condition is still able to support all others with dealing conditions to teq, without that the game wastes them because they don’t get added to the stacks??

The Solution is, change a Condition that reaches 25 Stacks to a NEXT HIGHER TIER-CONDITION, what will break down the stacks again to 1.

Example.

1-25 Stacks Poison = Poison > Tier 1 Condition
26th Stack of Poison = Poison becomes Toxin > Tier 2 Condition
Every 25ths another Posion Stack, Tier 2 gets another Stack.
1-25 Stacks Toxin = Toxin > Tier 2 Condition
26 Stack of Toxin = Toxin becomes Neurotoxin

You see, that way it becomes harder and harder to reach the next Stack, so higher the Condition Tier becomes. Thats something that just only huge Zergs would be able to get to and even then mostly only, if all players of the zerg would be playing a Condition Build and spam all the same conditions together constantly without break/disrupts ect.

But thats a system, that stays within the realm of what is technically for the servers possible with a max stack of 25, without adding any more conditions, just replacing 1 condition with a next higher tier of the same condition that resets the current stack number to 1.

Example for how it could work:

Poison = Damage over Time, 33% Heal Reduction
Toxin = Same Damage over Time, 40% Heal Reduction
Neurotoxin = Increased Damage over Time that ticks a bit faster, 50% Heal Reduction.

To get Neurotoxin, you would need to get on an enemy first 25*25 Stacks of Poison = 625 Stacks of Poison which would have to be applied constantly.
So in theory realyl somethign that just a full 150 man zerg could do if at all. Naturally would require a bit finetuning, but thats for me the only system that is able to work under the limitation of a maximum 25 stack frame, while also not increasign the total amount of conditions that the game would have to calculate on enemy side.

But personally I’d find it also good in regard of game balance, if ANet would reduce the Max Cap for all conditions down from 25 to 20. under 20, it would require constant 400 stacks of poison to reach its Tier 3 Neurotoxin, whats directly a large chunk lesser and still more than enough to guarantee, that jiust only a huge Zerg could reach a Tier 3 Condition like Neurotoxin.
——
Other Condition Examples:

Weakness > Exhaustion > Fatique
Vulnerability > Fragility > Shell Shock
Burning > Inflammation >Heatstroke
Torment > Pain > Anguish
Confusion > Delusion > Hallucination
Slowness > Cripple > Obstruction
Chill > Freeze > Cold
Bleeding > Wound > Venesection

With a tiered condition system, people could fight with alot of condition builds in huge zerg fights in WvW and in PvP World Boss fights.
if the cap of a lower tier gets reached, the condition will change just simple over to to the next higher tier, which then increases alot slower for higher stacks and basically is able to reach those higher tiers only, in very long lastign battles against something, that has really alot of health and takes alot of players to beat…

However, my used numbers are are just a basic concept of how it could work, the exact best used numbers would have to find out anet self under balance tests.
I propose just only to reduce the maximum Condition Cap for easier balancing of this game in the future.

PS: a I see, I guess me and Leo had a very similar concept, haven’t read the thread completely to the end xD

That is pretty much the concept behind my idea with Hemorrhaging. I was going to go on with burning, poison, etc, but I already wrote too much.

I’d say keep throwing ideas against a wall. Maybe one will stick or at least inspire Anet to come up with something unique. But there has always been a problem with condition stacking, to a point that there really isn’t a reason to make a condition focused build (except perhaps in PvP). Having decent condition effects seems only good as a secondary focus of a build.

We are talking about Bosses here, which are on one side also immune to many conditions or resistant so that alot of conditions expire alot faster on them, than normal.

Theres no problem with it with Conditions becomeing stronger, because Condition Tiers are clearly made for such large scale battles, because its they only type of battle, where your enemy will last long enough so that the huge player zerg can even reach at all those higher tiered conditions if they together spam constnatly one and the same conditions fast enough.
Condition Tiers are working like muscle expanders in a fitness studio. So stronger you push them, so harder it becomes to push them even further.
Thats why my concept works on an increasign required stacks of a weaker tiered condition, so higher the condition tier becomes.
As said, even under the point of reducing the condition cap for game balance reasons down to 20, it would require of a zerg to spam 400 times together a condition stack constantly after another, before that Condition would reach the Max Tier of that said Condition and after having reached it If the Enemy cleases his Conditions off, you would have to start again at Tier 1.

Also nobody can say, if ANet wouldn’t make also some changes to the Conditions self, if they expand the Condition system to a tiered system to rebalance the Conditions.
However ,the easiest instrument for game balance around Conditions that ANet has is improving first the A.I and Skills from all World Bosses to react better on Condition Spam with protective ands healing mechanics, which all World Bosses absoliutely are lacking in.
All World Bosses are currently sadly a minute long Condition Spamfest, because none of them has any skilsl and mechanics, with that they cure their conditions or anything how they react on certain conditions with stronger counterattacks or so.
You can spam a Shatterer for example full minutes long with all conditions and he does nothing to get rid of them.
That clearly shows even more, in what a dire need this game is, that all of their Bosses get some serious redesigns to make them better and challenging fights and not just some braindead 111111 spamfests of HP sponges with just millions of HP that you just need only to slash down without having to fear, that they do anythign agaisnt all our conditions or react somehow about it, if we set them on burning and so on ….

This could so easily be changed, that bosses do something special, if a certain condition reachs Max tier, that they react onto that and try to clean off those conditions, so that the condition has to start again at Tier 1…

I’m pretty sure the devs have shut down the idea of aggregate stacks as not really abating the server overload problem.

Lostwingman.5034:

I’m pretty sure the devs have shut down the idea of aggregate stacks as not really abating the server overload problem.

Bingo. The problem lies in that the server would have to do too many calculations and too much bookkeeping. Simply adding new “tiers” does nothing to resolve this problem and only adds even more calculations and bookkeeping since the damage still needs to get calculated out on a per-user basis and maintained.

Heavily prorated ‘burst’ for suppressed bleeds is probably the easiest and least game changing solution.

Each bleed does 20% (or whatever) of it’s calculated remaining damage (number varies as appropriate, reduced by toughness) and is never applied.

There are some problems with this, mainly in that I’t’s increasing total damage substantially in large fights, but it’s a clean fix to thee ‘stack’ problem, and makes at least 1 heavy condi applier welcome in pve as well (since every freakin’ person seems to apply bleeds, even faceroll zerk warriors will see their damage go up a little).

Only serious flaw I see in it is that it kind of jacks up WvW (or any mass pvp), but it would handily solve pve and wouldn’t be too bad in S.

DeceiverX.8361:

Lostwingman.5034:

I’m pretty sure the devs have shut down the idea of aggregate stacks as not really abating the server overload problem.

Bingo. The problem lies in that the server would have to do too many calculations and too much bookkeeping. Simply adding new “tiers” does nothing to resolve this problem and only adds even more calculations and bookkeeping since the damage still needs to get calculated out on a per-user basis and maintained.

That would depend on what the proposed stacks actually does. If the simple prospect of adding an additional conditional effect were too much, they wouldn’t have gone and added torment when they did.

Now, considering the problem is indeed, server resources used to calculate the damage of each tic in real time, making it so the idea will just allow more stacks doesn’t help…but my suggestion didn’t act like that. The idea is to introduce a triggering condition that comes into effect under a circumstance and then acts on the already existing stacks in a manner that somehow enhances the affected effect in exchange for decreasing its duration, effectively raising the requirement for maximum stacks/duration while shifting the current highest performance toward the mid-range. i.e. if you can do25,000 dps with 25stacks of bleed now, change it so you do that with 10-12 stacks and make it exceedingly hard or even counter to your cooldowns to stack higher than that by yourself yet reward multiples aiming at the same goal who can maintain that 25stacks. The trick is getting around the vestigial stacks added by teammembers that don’t have a portion of their build invested into conditions.

Along with my rough idea for bleeds above, I might post on an idea for Burns and Poison later, but have to think outside the box a bit more.

For burning, I had a different aggregated addition to this condition compared to my other idea for bleeds.

Burning will have the opportunity to cause 3 other statuses that are exclusive (one will over-write the other).

Agitated Flames: can occur as soon as the target is under the burning condition but only if they do not stay stationary for longer than 5 seconds. So to get rid of agitated flames, the target must stay stationary for more than 5 seconds.

• Agitated Flames occasionally causes 1 stack of burning to disappear after an attack by the victim, but that attack will not be enhanced by stats, buffs or boons, only the base power of that attack.
• Conditions lowering damage, such as glancing, will further hinder the damage as well as any other damage reductions on the target.
• The stack of burning removed via Agitated Flames subtracts is duration from the other burning stacks and will always remove the shortest duration stack first.

Immolation: can occur as soon as the target is under the burning condition but only if they stay stationary for longer than 5 seconds. So to get rid of Immolation, the target must keep moving for more than 5 seconds.

• Immolation can occasionally causes 1 stack of burning to disappear over time and cause a burning patch to be created at the target’s feet. The burning patch will pulse damage / 3sec, its damage calculated by the victim’s power. This patch can last from 2-3 pulses.
• Immolation also has a chance of summoning a Lava Font under the victim’s feet when burning is applied while the victim has the max of 9 stacks. The Lava Font’s damage is calculated by the power of the caster of the burning.
• Immolation has an internal cooldown of 10sec.

Smoulder: occurs when the victim cleanses themselves of burning and replaces the Burning effect. Its duration depends on how many stacks of burning was removed (1-3 stacks = 2sec of Smouldering; 4-6 = 4sec; 7-9 = 5sec).

• While the victim is under Smouldering, they cannot be burned.
• Instead, any attacks that cause burning will apply 2/3 of their calculated damage at once.

With this idea, consider the burning duration as ‘tokens’ that get spent over time while also causing damage while the target holds onto them. They basically are forced to spend their tokens, which result in hindered performance, to get rid of burning faster or they can dump all their tokens for a period of extreme vulnerability right after. Regardless, it’s less about ‘getting max duration’ and more about taxing the target for their gifted heat.

Why the need to make things so complicated? Simply make a skill effect on skills that apply conditions to do additional direct damage when the target is at max condi-stack.

Lostwingman.5034:

Why the need to make things so complicated? Simply make a skill effect on skills that apply conditions to do additional direct damage when the target is at max condi-stack.

Because that might not be the goal of the condition limits.

Also, it has been said before. I see no reason to repeat suggestions I (and others) have already made. But there’s still other points about that idea that could be discussed, like should mentioned direct damage be resistable by resistances and/or should the enhanced condition duration also apply to the calculated damage, because that could break parts of the game.

The suggestions I’m making are sort of alternatives if doing up-front damage is not an ideal solution. They can also make the gameplay of condi-strats more tactical besides simply stack until max. Who knows? With my idea for immolation strategies, perhaps rudimentary ‘tanking’ by certain builds could be possible.

The game isn’t hurting for simplicity, IMO…not that simplicity is a bad thing, tho

Lostwingman.5034:

Why the need to make things so complicated? Simply make a skill effect on skills that apply conditions to do additional direct damage when the target is at max condi-stack.

Also, the ideas I posted aren’t THAT complicated. I just explain them thoroughly.

For bleeds, hemorrhaging = the more stacks of bleeds, the faster it will bleed out but for less time. Common sense says, if you bleed faster, you’ll have less blood to bleed eventually.

For burning, agitating flames = you run around on fire, you’re feeding the flames with air and you might swat down some flames if your swing hard enough, but you’ll be less effective worrying about getting rid of the fire instead of the party of adventurers trying to kill you.

Immolation = stand in one place too long and the ground you stand on catches fire.

Smouldering = you can stop the fire (cleanse) but you’re still burnt…you have to cleanse your charred flesh too or else you’ll feel that next fireball.

Addign Tiers wouldn’t add anythign to the calculation, nor would it increase the bookkeeping I guess, because what I understand under Condition Tiers, would just replace 1 condition with an other one.
So the amount of conditions a target can suffer on stays in the best case the same.
Just the damage calculation gets changed then and with the change of the damage calculation gets the Condition Stack resetted from 25 back to 1, so that it becomes a cycling through conditions, so that more Condition Players can support each other in reachign quicker the higher tier conditions and aren’t just useless cause they add no more Condition Damage to the table, like currently now after a condition has reached already 25 Stacks and all what adding more conditions does currently is only upping the condition duration again.

My Suggestion solves the problem, that Condition players will become able to deal addtional condition damage, even when Condition X has reached under its Tier 1 already 25 Stacks, because adding after this more conditions X will lead to the point, that the Condition becomes Tier 2 and that Condition Player that came to the battle later is able to add more condition damage to the calculation.

Thats the whole point, why so many people want the condition system changed, due to the current 25 stack limitation.
Removing the limilation is no option for Anet due to technical limitations.
So what do you do, if removing a limit is no option??? You reset your limit by changing the condition after havign reached the limit and make reaching the next higher stack limit harder than before.
Thats exactly my suggestion with a 3 tiered condition system, what should be hard enough to reach, so that you basically will be seeing an enemy to suffe3r on a tier 3 condition only in world boss battles, as they are the only enemies, where enough people fight against them, that all condition players in that mass of players could be enough to reach tier 3 together.

An example will follow:

Part 2 with Calculation Example:

Here an Example of the Condition Damage Calculation for Bleeding > Wound > Venesection

Bleeding: (for a Lvl 80 Character, lets say our character has a condition damage of 500)
(0.05 * 500) + (0.5 * 80) + 2.5 per stack (62,5 at 25 Stacks of Tier 1) per second
Our character would do at Level 80 with 500 Condition Damage with 25 Stacks of Bleeding a Condition Damage of 65+62,5 = 127,5 Condition Damage per Damage with 25 Stacks of Bleeding.

Now lets see what happens, if we change this formula into a Wound Calculation for Bleeding’s Tier 2

Wound: (for a Lvl 80 Character, lets say our character has a condition damage of 500)
(0.15 * 500) + (1.5 * 80) + 3.5 per stack (3,5 at 1 Stack of Tier 2) per second
75+120+3,5 = 198,5 Condition Damage and that with just only 1 Stack of Tier 2 Bleeding > Wound

So the group can increase their Condition Damage in this case from Bleeding making it become a Wound, without that we had to add any more Conditions, the amount of Conditions on the foe stays exactly the same and without havign to remove for it the Condition Cap of 25 Stacks and all this by just exchanging the Calculation Foormular with a different setting of numbers once our Condition would reach after its first 25 Stacks an higher tier.

So to lead to this is only to program into the calculation the code, that the game should exchange the damage calculation formular with its next higher tier formula,r once the stacks of a condition would exceed 25 stacks. So basically this

(0.05 * 500) + (0.5 * 80) + (2.5 per stack>25(T1) = (0.15 * 500) + (1.5 * 80) + (3.5 per stack>25(T2) = (0.25 * 500) + (1.75 * 80) + (5 per stack(T3))

Just to mention, I’m no programming expert, so I don’t know if the formular would have to look exactly like this, but I guess it would look like this or similar at least, because there has somethign to be in it, that defines, when the calculation has to change to the next tier, thats what happens when a prior tier exceeds theoretically its 25 stack limit, so thats why the >25 are in it.
I’m sure, the code would be longer, because there has to be also something inside of it, that resets the current stack from 25 to 1.

But I want to keep my example as understandable as possible xD

Condition Tiers stay just in the frame of the same Damage Calculation, they add no additional Conditions what wouldn’t be good for the game performance, because adding more conditions would just really increase the amount of calculations that the game would need to do at the same time for its damage, effects and duration over time per tick and GW2 already has alot of conditions that a target can suffer on at the same time. We don’t need to increase that amount with additional sub conditions for burning like Leo suggest here, because that would make everything just only unneccesary more complicated.

We want to reach the goal together, that more condition players can play together, without erasing out each others usefulness as support. Whats the reason, why people want in their groups not more than 1 condition player mostly, because currently more than 1 condition player is a waste for better overall DPS.
But with Condition Tiers, this would get changed and you could easily have more than 1 condition player in the same group, with both easily exceedign the 25 stacks of a tier 1 condition like poison or bleeding and could continue to deal more condition damage together to increase the overall DPS of the group by letting a target suffer together on a tier 2 condition as long as possible.

Orpheal.8263:

…
So the group can increase their Condition Damage in this case from Bleeding making it become a Wound, without that we had to add any more Conditions, the amount of Conditions on the foe stays exactly the same and without havign to remove for it the Condition Cap of 25 Stacks and all this by just exchanging the Calculation Foormular with a different setting of numbers once our Condition would reach after its first 25 Stacks an higher tier.
…

You failed to explain several integral parts of your suggestion:

• What happens to the previous stacks of bleeding? You can’t just get to another tier of condition and just ignore how you got there.

• You try to explain the damage of this new tier of bleeding but the other important half of a condition is its duration. What’s stopping a condition player from reaching tier 3 by themselves? And what happens when tier 3 is accomplished? There is still a concrete ceiling on the performance of the proposed condition.

• What happens when you stop applying bleeds? Or if those bleeds are cleansed? Does the tier go down a step? Does it just start all over? It can’t just be permanent.

These are important questions regarding the balance of your idea, and the numbers (damage points) aren’t as important because those will likely be plugged in using an over-aching balancing formula used to calculate the damage capacity of skills and traits. It’s much harder to pinpoint where exactly the damage output should be at without that intel of the game’s balance engine…but simple things like “the tiers would maintain a short duration then start at the bottom if bleeds aren’t applied” is a basic step to getting your idea across.

As for the questions I asked, I’ll put my spin on the answers:

- Under tiered conditions: Upon reaching 25 stacks, a new tier is started. Any stacks applied under the new tier start to overwrite the old stacks. So the advancing of the condition’s effects only applies to these new stacks in the current higher tier.

- If tier 2 bleed stacks do equivalent damage to 25 stacks of bleeding, then whatever base duration used for each stack of bleed should be reduced by half or more…and any skills that apply multiple stacks of bleed should only apply 1…maybe add duration for each stack a skill would normally apply (like Churning Earth would apply 1 stack of bleed instead of 8 but also add onto the duration for the other 7 stacks it doesn’t apply).

- When bleeds are not being applied, the tier will reset from the bottom after the last bleed stack of that tier expires. Meaning if you just managed to hit tier 3 in your group, and the enemy goes into an invulnerable state, and those couple of tier 3 bleeds expire, the process will reset from the bottom tier.

Condition Tiers stay just in the frame of the same Damage Calculation, they add no additional Conditions … … We don’t need to increase that amount with additional sub conditions for burning like Leo suggest here, because that would make everything just only unneccesary more complicated.

Luckily, the same type of “no additional conditions” can be applied to the base conditional effect as well, meaning you don’t have to add extra conditions for my ideas, just add the effect to the main conditions (i.e. bleeds will bleed out faster with more stacks, burning will weaken attacks or cause the ground to burn under you, etc).

Also, it’s rather pretentious of you to infer “what we need”, because if you didn’t know, all your (and our) suggestions (a few rare exceptions) is comprised of guesswork (like how you guess the damage calc uses boolean data), blind hopes (extremely doubtful you’ll get one stack of tier 2 bleeding to do more damage than 25 stacks of regular bleeding) and repetition (have I mentioned these ideas have been made many times before?).

We want to reach the goal together, that more condition players can play together, without erasing out each others usefulness as support. Whats the reason, why people want in their groups not more than 1 condition player mostly, because currently more than 1 condition player is a waste for better overall DPS.
…

There’s many other aspects of conditions that could be addressed, not only the condition stack problems…because, no matter what, you’ll still reach a ceiling with stacks. Hell, I could even argue that basic DPS solutions will only exacerbate the problems of the game’s combat but that’s a whole other tangent. But yes, your solution would help so more than one non-specialized condition player could contribute to a team…now 2 non-specialized condition players could contribute to a team…unless that boss or mob has lots of cleanses.