Condition damage needs a rework.

Condition damage needs a rework.

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Posted by: Aegael.6938

Aegael.6938

Counterplay to conditions currently consists of a line – There’s no triangle, like rock-paper-scissors.

If you stack enough condition removal, you beat condition builds. If you don’t stack enough, you lose to them. That’s literally it. There’s no other counter to it.

Here’s why.


-“Kill them before they can stack enough conditions.” Because conditions can be removed before they deal significant damage, their theoretical DPS is higher. And because condition damage revolves around high-DPS DoT, you’d think one counter would be killing them before they can stack enough conditions on you. The game mechanics work against this. To maximize direct damage, you typically need 3 stats. Power, Precision, and Critical Damage. To maximize condition damage, you need only 1-2. Condition damage and a bit of precision if you want crit-procs. Condition builds can get very tanky with those extra stats.

-“Interrupt or prevent the key skills that apply dangerous conditions.” Many powerful condition damage abilities have extremely quick cast times or even none, such as Incendiary Powder, Pin Down, or Necromancer’s scepter autoattack. What are you gonna do, interrupt a passive trait? Feeling lucky enough to dodge a 1/4 cast time projectile? What about blocking an autoattack? Compare to Jump Shot, Eviscerate, or Life Blast, all of which have very large tells, cast times, and appropriate counterplay.

-“Outlast them until their DoT abilities are used up.” GW2 does not have an energy system, except on the thief. If you last long enough, they’ll just throw even more conditions onto you. Not to mention, many condition attacks are noticeably cheap in terms of cooldown. Drake’s Breath and Fan of Fire are two very low-cooldown attacks with high condition damage attachments. Compare to Fire Grab and Arcing Arrow. Condition damage builds will typically outlast you, rather than the other way around.

If you can’t prevent application, you can’t outlast application, and you can’t outdamage application, then…

The only counter to conditions is to remove them after they’re on you.


In other words:

-Condition damage is only countered by condition removal.

Right now, almost ANY build will lose to a condition build if it doesn’t take condition removal, due to how easy it is to apply conditions and how effective they are. I don’t think it’s balanced that tanky condi will beat any other build unless it’s specifically built against. You may say that “it’s your choice” to choose not to take condition removal, as most say about builds that have no stunbreakers. However, I’d say many specs can survive without a stunbreaker, but almost no spec is useful if it doesn’t have condition removal. If there is one, I’d really like to see it.

Now, about condition removal…that’s also broken.

-Condition removal is only countered by MORE CONDITIONS, or just outright NOT PLAYING condition damage.

Condition removal is a defensive option. It’s a counter to conditions. But there’s no counter counterplay. Blocking and evading are defensive options which do have counters. Unblockable abilities exist. Weakness stacking works wonders on evade-happy enemies. All a condition damage build can do against someone who’s taken condition removal is to literally just keep spamming attacks and hoping the next condition sticks without being removed. (A large part of this is due to the number of instant-cast condition removals which deny CC prevention.)

Clearly, both options need stronger counterplay.


Solution ideas:

-Add more tells and longer cooldowns to big condition damage attacks. This would make it so we could interrupt, block, and dodge them. Longer cooldowns would punish misuse.

-Tone down condition application, and instead make each condition application worth far more. In other words, you could remove bleeding from a lot of skills, and remove such high stacks on some others, but also make each bleed worth a lot more damage.

-Allow conditions to crit, but tone down base damage. This would somewhat lessen the tankiness of condition damage builds, and also mean that they would have to invest in roughly the same stats as direct damage builds in order to achieve such high damage.

In turn, we could:

-Lessen condition removal. If conditions are easier to prevent, it shouldn’t be as easy as it is now to remove them.

-Add more specific condition removal. More of “This skill removes X and Y condition,” rather than “Removes a condition.” This way we could build around what conditions we didn’t like and ignore the conditions that were less detrimental to our build. We’d have little niches like poison counter builds and bleed counter builds rather than some builds having nigh-immunity to condition damage. Instead, you’d be able to see which removals your enemy took, and consciously focus on using the conditions that they were weak to.

(edited by Aegael.6938)

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Posted by: Carighan.6758

Carighan.6758

I agree especially with the second point, however I’d expand it:

  • Make conditions less readily available, but far more dangerous individually. Getting bleeding should be a problem. Getting stacks and stacks of bleeding should kill you. In return, you can ~rely on this being a group effort to get you to 15+ stacks of bleeding. Poison should hamper your healing effort big time, in return it’s application should really not be readily available. Etc, etc.
  • Give boons a similar treatment. At 25 stacks of might I should feel like a walking bulldozer, but I should be incredibly lucky to see the day where I get up to that even in large encounters. Boons like Vigor should make me a nightmare of dodges, but last briefly and be rare enough.

At early levels in PvE, this actually works. For some boons like Protection, it still feels a bit like that. But both the boons and the conditions are too readily available, and the game feels too balanced around constant access to them.

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Posted by: Aegael.6938

Aegael.6938

I agree especially with the second point, however I’d expand it:

  • Make conditions less readily available, but far more dangerous individually. Getting bleeding should be a problem. Getting stacks and stacks of bleeding should kill you. In return, you can ~rely on this being a group effort to get you to 15+ stacks of bleeding. Poison should hamper your healing effort big time, in return it’s application should really not be readily available. Etc, etc.
  • Give boons a similar treatment. At 25 stacks of might I should feel like a walking bulldozer, but I should be incredibly lucky to see the day where I get up to that even in large encounters. Boons like Vigor should make me a nightmare of dodges, but last briefly and be rare enough.

At early levels in PvE, this actually works. For some boons like Protection, it still feels a bit like that. But both the boons and the conditions are too readily available, and the game feels too balanced around constant access to them.

I’d say I feel the same way, but about most combo finishers.

However that’s probably because conditions are so easy to get. If they made conditions harder to apply and stronger, finishers (most of which apply conditions) would become much more desirable.

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Posted by: Menzies The Heretic.3415

Menzies The Heretic.3415

Normal damage can be outmanouvered in almost all cases and are easier to see compared to condition stacking.

I think the only way conditions should be applied:

  • Projectiles
  • Hits direct on target
  • Fields

And not:

  • Magically trough thin air

Also stacks can sometimes > condition removal / healing, and kill you even when you outrange your enemy.

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Posted by: Aegael.6938

Aegael.6938

Normal damage can be outmanouvered in almost all cases and are easier to see compared to condition stacking.

I think the only way conditions should be applied:

  • Projectiles
  • Hits direct on target
  • Fields

And not:

  • Magically trough thin air

Also stacks can sometimes > condition removal / healing, and kill you even when you outrange your enemy.

Visibility is a big problem, yeah. Something like necromancer scepter autoattack is an extremely quick and tiny swipe at the air from 900 range. And it becomes very deadly very fast.

That would be compared to something like Kill Shot or Unload which are quite obviously skills that need to be dodged. Those also have larger risk/reward for dodging.

As far as magical condition damage, I’m hoping they either tone down crit-proc traits or make it so high-damage condition damage builds need to revolve around using them, so they’ll need to invest in precision for such high damage.

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Posted by: Nova Stiker.8396

Nova Stiker.8396

The biggest problem with conditions is simply you DON’T work with them.
You spam them, there is no thought and strategy, the more you spam the better.

It’s ArenaNets combat design shining failure of mechanic design, failing to expand mechanics from Guild Wars 1, in fact, it took a step back.

ArenaNet needs to step back, take a deep breath, be modest and ask themselves, “we need to make this better and we can make this better.” But no, they hug their precious mechanics like a starved indie developer, as a game designer myself this behavior frustrates me to no end.

For example, remember Disease? It spreads to an ally on contact. WHY IS THAT NOT TORMENT?! Torment is just another generic damaging condition, along with burning, bleeding, confusion.

The trait system only makes it worse, instead of changing a condition function, they just spam more! I know you can alter the function of a condition with a trait because of Terror.

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Posted by: Menzies The Heretic.3415

Menzies The Heretic.3415

Exactely, I like the fact that Torment punishes you my making a wrong decision.
But instead of modifying a condition they just add one. Which ultimately makes removing conditions even harder.

In GW1 you had hexes, you had to make the tactical decision where to put which hex on. But conditions in GW2 are so braindead, they are only worth spamming.

GW1:

  • Bleeding — While suffering from this injury, you lose Health over time.
  • Blind — While suffering from this ailment, your melee and missile attacks have 90% chance to “miss.” Your projectiles also have a greater chance to stray from their intended target.
  • Burning — While suffering from this Condition, you lose Health over time.
  • Cracked Armor — While suffering from this Condition, you have -20 armor (minimum 60).
  • Crippled — While suffering from this injury, you move 50% slower.
  • Dazed — While Dazed, you take twice as long to cast spells, and all your spells are easily interrupted
  • Deep Wound — While suffering from this injury, your maximum Health is reduced by 20% and you receive less benefit from healing.
  • Disease — While suffering from this ailment, you lose Health over time. Disease is contagious between creatures of the same kind.
  • Poison — While suffering from this injury, you lose Health over time.
  • Weakness — While suffering from this Condition, you deal less damage (66%) with attacks and all of your attributes are reduced by 1.

In GW1 conditions did not stack in damage.
The pressure was fun and the secondary profession skills allowed drawing conditions from allies.

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Posted by: Carighan.6758

Carighan.6758

It’s ArenaNets combat design shining failure of mechanic design, failing to expand mechanics from Guild Wars 1, in fact, it took a step back.

While I agree with your overall point, stop holding up GW1 as if it was a game which did everything so much better. It really didn’t. There’s a reason games aren’t all GW1 clones nowadays.

The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.

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Posted by: Menzies The Heretic.3415

Menzies The Heretic.3415

It’s ArenaNets combat design shining failure of mechanic design, failing to expand mechanics from Guild Wars 1, in fact, it took a step back.

While I agree with your overall point, stop holding up GW1 as if it was a game which did everything so much better. It really didn’t. There’s a reason games aren’t all GW1 clones nowadays.

I wonder why you think this, at least support your statement with an explaination. As GW1 had great PvP I think.

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Posted by: ArmageddonAsh.6430

ArmageddonAsh.6430

Conditions have been out of control for FAR to long. Unless you are specifically built to counter conditions you will never have enough condition removal to get rid of them. This game has FAR to much condition spamming.

Conditions should be a sort of pressure that if you don’t remove them they can kill you. The problem in this game is that the moment you have removed them you have them put right back on you.

I think the ONLY class that should be a strong condition class is Necro, even then it needs to be slightly adjusted, all other condition builds of other classes simply need to be either removed of nerfed so much that people use conditions as they were intended – for Pressure and NOT spam, spam, spam.

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Posted by: Carighan.6758

Carighan.6758

I wonder why you think this, at least support your statement with an explaination. As GW1 had great PvP I think.

Debatable.
It had quite ok group-PvP which however was bogged down by an insane amount of complexity for very little additional depth. Still a good system, but was better before expansions hit the game.

Plus, it had no other PvP format. You better like smallscale! And honestly, I think smallscale is pretty meh, if I play a MMORPG then the more players the better.

But more importantly, read your list of conditions above. It’s really close to how GW2 conditions work. There are small changes here and there, but mostly the difference is in the application.

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Posted by: lakdav.3694

lakdav.3694

The whole point of Condition damage is inflicting damage while you are othervise"invulnerable" via block, dodge or invulnerability. You can still avoid and block condition-inflicting skills and effects just as any other attacks. Conditions without heavy investment in them are easily removed or even ignored, rendering numerous skills countered by a single condi-removal skill or just generally large health-pool and overhealing.

There are traits specificly designed to counter conditions either by cleansing or not allowing them to be applied, armor runes that reduce their durations. There are ways to counter conditions, above the ways that counter the attacks these conditions are inflicted by.

The only problem starts when its overdone and turns into a meta that everybody uses or dies to it otherwise.

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Posted by: Mad Queen Malafide.7512

Mad Queen Malafide.7512

I think conditions should revolve more about positioning. They should be more effective against large groups of enemies, and less so when enemies are spread out. This would encourage players in PVE to group up enemies, so conditions can do their work (but for this they would actually need to be more useful than pure DPS).

It would also counter all of the stacking and zerg formations in both PVE and WvW. If you face an enemy that uses conditions, you’ll have a reason to spread out more. Add a few of such enemies in dungeons, and suddenly not every dungeon revolves around corner stacking anymore. However, to make this work, condition removal should also be looked at. It is currently way too easy to remove conditions from the whole party.

Conditions should hit harder when they do hit (so they are more important than just DPS), and they should be harder to remove. But on top of that, it should also be more important how and when you use them. It’s kind of like the old Spiteful Spirit in GW1. Useless when used against a single enemy, devastating if a lot of enemies are in a tight formation. Counter-play to conditions should not just be removal, but also positioning. Spread out more, and conditions should be much less effective.

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Posted by: Terrahero.9358

Terrahero.9358

Conditions shouldnt all be heaped on the same pile. Seperate conditions in 2 catagories, damaging and utility.

Damaging conditions would be:
-Bleeding
-Burning
-Confusion
-Poison (new: Only does damage)
-Torment

Utility:
-Cripple
-Chill
-Blind
-Weakness
-Vulnerability
-Immobilize
-Toxic (new: reduces healing received from all sources by 33%)

Abilities that now apply poison will apply poison + toxic. Here’s the thing, damaging conditions can no longer be removed.
Now that conditions are a reliable damage source, when the ability lands the damage will follow, it can be more closely balanced against direct damage. No more crazy outliers of “instant removal” vs “full duration!”.

More would have to happen ofcourse, in the fine tuning, to bring these two damage types in line with eachother. But this is the direction i’d want to see it go.

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Posted by: Carighan.6758

Carighan.6758

As a compromise, could it be that maybe we’re discussing the wrong thing, and what really needs to happen is the specialization needs to be less specialized?

That is to say, someone who’s fully into condition damage should be weaker with conditions than they are now, and better with power attacks? And vice versa?

Actually on a trait/skill/weapon level I already see this happening. Stat points from traits excepted. The issue is mostly gear / runes / sigils / food, which can provide a huge bonus, and ofc being smart players we stack these in the one area we want to spec into.

So maybe conditions would already feel more balanced (both in WvW and PvE but also in sPvP) if the difference between fully specced and not specced was brought down?

The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.

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Posted by: lakdav.3694

lakdav.3694

I was thinking something similar, but there is the thing. Condition damage is just one stat (+condi duration is rare in gear), and you get other stats with the gear with condi damage, mostly toughness. That is pretty much balanced as it would seem, and i say yay for that.

Specialisation brings out extremes, extremes bring out inbalance. Berserker is highly specialized on offense mostly because it boosts 3 of the 4 damage increasing stats and 3 of the 3 direct damage stats. Condition damage is just a single attribute however that needs to compete with the 3-stat direct damage capabilities. But being the lonely stat that governs conditions, it has the room to be together with defensive stats as well as the other damage stats while still keeping viability.

And having survivability stats together with it is most beneficial. You need to be alive for long enough for the condition durations to work their magic. So you have survivability with a single attribute-damage source that competes (because it has to) with the 3-attribute damage…

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Posted by: Aegael.6938

Aegael.6938

There are traits specificly designed to counter conditions either by cleansing or not allowing them to be applied, armor runes that reduce their durations. There are ways to counter conditions, above the ways that counter the attacks these conditions are inflicted by.

There are three points, though. One is that conditions are typically far easier to apply than direct damage, so “blocking and evading” is typically ineffective against a build stacked with conditions.

The second point is that, again, the only real “counter” is condition removal. This is a problem because condition removal is something you have to build for, rather than something you can perform in-combat. In other words, back to the problem of tanky condi beating any build that doesn’t take condition removal. That would be like a burst damage build beating any build that doesn’t take blind. People would say, “oh, it’s your fault you didn’t slot for blind,” but the point is that it’s simply not fun if the game revolves around Build Wars rather than engaging gameplay.

A third point is that condition removal itself has no counterplay. If you stack enough condition removal you are literally unkillable by condition-only builds. This isn’t engaging gameplay either. Some builds counter other builds, yes, but there should always be options. That’s my core point. Tanky condi is unbeatable unless you spec for condition removal. Condition removal is unbeatable unless you have even more conditions than they can remove, or if you’re flat out not playing condition damage. Direct damage rarely has this polarizing problem of “ridiculously OP / completely useless.”

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Posted by: scabrous.7835

scabrous.7835

Not the conditions itself is a problem, but the other thing OP mentioned – condition specs are extremely tanky, because they need only 1 stat to get maximum efficiency as compared to power specs (power, precision, crtdmg aka ferocity). I agree with the idea that conditions should matter once you get them – each of them should have more impact by itself. However, with this some really serious balancing will have to take place. Imagine P/X engineer 20/10/x/x/x with perplexity runes, upon using Poison Volley he has a chance to inflict poison, bleeding, poison and confusion. Each of those would be deadly individually after suggested revamp.

Another idea is to make cond dmg a secondary stat on all sets so as to make condies additional source of dmg and not the main one – tanky natue of those specs will have some sense then “outlast them with dots and tankiness”.

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Posted by: Tim.6450

Tim.6450

Counterplay to conditions currently consists of a line – There’s no triangle, like rock-paper-scissors.

If you stack enough condition removal, you beat condition builds. If you don’t stack enough, you lose to them. That’s literally it. There’s no other counter to it.

Actually there is counter play to most condition removal it’s either overloading or corrupt them. necromancers are good at them but people don’t like them.

-“Kill them before they can stack enough conditions.” Because conditions can be removed before they deal significant damage, their theoretical DPS is higher. And because condition damage revolves around high-DPS DoT, you’d think one counter would be killing them before they can stack enough conditions on you. The game mechanics work against this. To maximize direct damage, you typically need 3 stats. Power, Precision, and Critical Damage. To maximize condition damage, you need only 1-2. Condition damage and a bit of precision if you want crit-procs. Condition builds can get very tanky with those extra stats.

conditions have at least three stats prec/condi damage/condi duration. On top of that do we have to gear for defense so we can see the full damage of the attack happening. Also high dps power builds are better in terms of dps.

-“Interrupt or prevent the key skills that apply dangerous conditions.” Many powerful condition damage abilities have extremely quick cast times or even none, such as Incendiary Powder, Pin Down, or Necromancer’s scepter autoattack. What are you gonna do, interrupt a passive trait? Feeling lucky enough to dodge a 1/4 cast time projectile? What about blocking an autoattack? Compare to Jump Shot, Eviscerate, or Life Blast, all of which have very large tells, cast times, and appropriate counterplay.

really scepter auto attack, powerfull? look a this http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQJArIkQgeAAAAIG9gYAgkB-ToAAzCpIgRNjbGDMSfs+MCYuA .1071 or 1421 on hit in a best case/unviable scenario, that’s not powerfull, I’ve seen better auto attacks.

-“Outlast them until their DoT abilities are used up.” GW2 does not have an energy system, except on the thief. If you last long enough, they’ll just throw even more conditions onto you. Not to mention, many condition attacks are noticeably cheap in terms of cooldown. Drake’s Breath and Fan of Fire are two very low-cooldown attacks with high condition damage attachments. Compare to Fire Grab and Arcing Arrow. Condition damage builds will typically outlast you, rather than the other way around.

That’s the point of conditions. That’s why necro’s got conditions for their attrition playstyle aka as outlasting. Also you shouldn’t be able to evade all condition moves it’s like evading all power based moves.

Right now, almost ANY build will lose to a condition build if it doesn’t take condition removal, due to how easy it is to apply conditions and how effective they are. I don’t think it’s balanced that tanky condi will beat any other build unless it’s specifically built against. You may say that “it’s your choice” to choose not to take condition removal, as most say about builds that have no stunbreakers. However, I’d say many specs can survive without a stunbreaker, but almost no spec is useful if it doesn’t have condition removal. If there is one, I’d really like to see it.

Of course it does, it’s like expecting to beat someone without preparing, also about stuns what about hammer warriors they can chain cc you to death.

Condition removal itself currently has no hard counters either. Many condition removals are also instant cast, making counterplay a headache. Gameplay when playing condition damage literally becomes “Keep spamming conditions and hope the next one doesn’t get removed.” Compare this to blocking or dodging against direct damage builds, each of which comes with their own counters, such as unblockable abilities or weakness stacking.

isn’t that same to power builds “keep spamming attacks”?

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Posted by: Tim.6450

Tim.6450

Clearly, both options need stronger counterplay.

more counterplay? everything that is applicable to power moves is applicable to conditions. Conditions have to worry about diamond skin/automated response and condition removal on plus.

Add more tells and longer cooldowns to big condition damage attacks. This would make it so we could interrupt, block, and dodge them. Longer cooldowns would punish misuse.

combine this with condition removal, after finally placing your attack does it get removed befor it even ticks. 0 damage for such high skill fair,right?

Tone down condition application, and instead make each condition application worth far more. In other words, you could remove bleeding from a lot of skills, and remove such high stacks on some others, but also make each bleed worth a lot more damage.

Can we do the same to power attacks? make them all hit 200 damage and a few strong ones of 4000?

Allow conditions to crit, but tone down base damage. This would somewhat lessen the tankiness of condition damage builds, and also mean that they would have to invest in roughly the same stats as direct damage builds in order to achieve such high damage.

Power builds do generally more damage then condition builds so yeah they do deserve the right to be a bit more tanky. Also four stats for condition damage? not really fair.

-Lessen condition removal. If conditions are easier to prevent, it shouldn’t be as easy as it is now to remove them.

And people complain now that some classes have to few removal, good idea.

-Add more specific condition removal. More of “This skill removes X and Y condition,” rather than “Removes a condition.” This way we could build around what conditions we didn’t like and ignore the conditions that were less detrimental to our build. We’d have little niches like poison counter builds and bleed counter builds rather than some builds having nigh-immunity to condition damage. Instead, you’d be able to see which removals your enemy took, and consciously focus on using the conditions that they were weak to.

And hear the community whine so much because they can’t remove condition X? Also not every class has acces to lot’s of conditions necro has acces to bleed and poison but poison doesn’t really do much dps so yeah not a good idea of making such hard counter build.

By the way removing condition removal while adding condition removal???
Also what is the counterplay of condition removal in your suggestion?

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Posted by: Loco.4561

Loco.4561

To the OP what a really well written summary of condition damage and it’s problems, I agree with absolutely everything you have written and I hope aNet read this and some of the excellent follow up suggestions.

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Posted by: Drarnor Kunoram.5180

Drarnor Kunoram.5180

To the OP what a really well written summary of condition damage and it’s problems, I agree with absolutely everything you have written and I hope aNet read this and some of the excellent follow up suggestions.

Except it really isn’t a good summary of condition damage. He fails to even admit that he could treat condition attacks the same as he does power attacks and suddenly have no problems whatsoever.

The reason condition damage is getting so much hate right now is because people don’t pay attention. They stay in the fight, not bothering to avoid the conditions because no big number pops up from the attack they just took that applies them. A few seconds later, they realize they’re taking ~1500 damage from bleeds and poison and whine because they can’t go invulnerable/block/evade to stop it. The fact remains that they could have stopped it if they reacted at the proper moment.

You can’t prevent the direct damage from an attack after it’s landed. Why do people think the same shouldn’t be true for conditions (ignoring cleanses for the moment)? When you’re dying to a condition build, it’s because you failed to avoid attacks some seconds ago. The damage is only now being applied.

TLDR: Conditions are fine. You counter them in the same way you counter power builds. If you screw up with that, you also have the option of cleansing the conditions.

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Posted by: lakdav.3694

lakdav.3694

There are traits specificly designed to counter conditions either by cleansing or not allowing them to be applied, armor runes that reduce their durations. There are ways to counter conditions, above the ways that counter the attacks these conditions are inflicted by.

There are three points, though. One is that conditions are typically far easier to apply than direct damage, so “blocking and evading” is typically ineffective against a build stacked with conditions.

Im sorry but i have no idea what you mean by that. There are far more direct damage only skills and effects in game than condition only skills and effects. Most skills deal a good portion of direct damage and maybe apply some condition as an after-though, or are in the balanced area being hybrid, or on the rare occasion the skill or weapon is specificly built around conditions with a meager direct damage (necro scepter1&2, 3 is still pure direct damage). And unless a skill is unblockable, blocking works against it. Its less effective against condi pressure, sure, because thats what condi is about. Not burst damage from 3 warriors ganking on you with their 100blades at the same moment, but pressure for a prolonged time..

The second point is that, again, the only real “counter” is condition removal. This is a problem because condition removal is something you have to build for, rather than something you can perform in-combat. In other words, back to the problem of tanky condi beating any build that doesn’t take condition removal. That would be like a burst damage build beating any build that doesn’t take blind. People would say, “oh, it’s your fault you didn’t slot for blind,” but the point is that it’s simply not fun if the game revolves around Build Wars rather than engaging gameplay.

Condi removal is as much the only real counter for condis as general healing is for any damage, its just mitigation for actually getting injured/inflicted by condition. Difference is, general healing is hard-wired into everyones build on the 6th skill, so nobody is belly-aching about having to take it. Maybe make condi removal more available without traiting for it? Water-field blasts could cure one on every healed i guess. A general minor trait in every profession (like the falling damage reduction traits) could make the designated heal skill always remove +1 condition?

A third point is that condition removal itself has no counterplay. If you stack enough condition removal you are literally unkillable by condition-only builds. This isn’t engaging gameplay either. Some builds counter other builds, yes, but there should always be options. That’s my core point. Tanky condi is unbeatable unless you spec for condition removal. Condition removal is unbeatable unless you have even more conditions than they can remove, or if you’re flat out not playing condition damage. Direct damage rarely has this polarizing problem of “ridiculously OP / completely useless.”

Blocking and dodging cannot be countered either. You hope that the enemy runs out of blocks and endurance sooner than you run out of damage. Heals can be countered by poison or interrupting the heal.

I dont really see what you mean by “engaging gameplay”, while that seems to be your main arguement. Could you elaborate on that?

Condition damage needs a rework.

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Posted by: cheese.4739

cheese.4739

He fails to even admit that he could treat condition attacks the same as he does power attacks and suddenly have no problems whatsoever.

The reason condition damage is getting so much hate right now is because people don’t pay attention. […] The fact remains that they could have stopped it if they reacted at the proper moment.

You can’t prevent the direct damage from an attack after it’s landed. Why do people think the same shouldn’t be true for conditions (ignoring cleanses for the moment)? When you’re dying to a condition build, it’s because you failed to avoid attacks some seconds ago. The damage is only now being applied.

Actually this /has/ been covered already. In the OP:

-“Interrupt or prevent the key skills that apply dangerous conditions.” Many powerful condition damage abilities have extremely quick cast times or even none, such as Incendiary Powder, Pin Down, or Necromancer’s scepter autoattack. What are you gonna do, interrupt a passive trait? Feeling lucky enough to dodge a 1/4 cast time projectile? What about blocking an autoattack? Compare to Jump Shot, Eviscerate, or Life Blast, all of which have very large tells, cast times, and appropriate counterplay.

Condition-applying attacks don’t have nearly the same visibility/telegraphing as power attacks do, so are much easier to land – this becomes even more of a problem when you factor in all those random procs that apply conditions on top of the hard-to-dodge attacks. There is no build that can dodge every single attack so that these on-hit procs don’t affect them.

Condition damage needs a rework.

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Posted by: Vox Hollow.2736

Vox Hollow.2736

@ Mad Queen Malafide
/agree

Also, it can introduce movement as counter-play to conditions if the effects are capable of responding the victim’s proximity to other players over time and not wholly dependent on the initial cast.

Like; I think burning spreading like wildfire in a clump of people is compelling;, it does encourage people to do something other than clump up all the time, and it does encourage you to use aiming and timing to make sure you’re hitting the center of mass. It gives conditions purpose, and a skill ceiling.

But I also think it could be made more compelling if there was some kind of decision-making happening on the victim’s end as well. Like, every tick the burning reassessed how close the victim is to others and punished or rewarded them somehow.

(edited by Vox Hollow.2736)

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Posted by: Tim.6450

Tim.6450

Condition-applying attacks don’t have nearly the same visibility/telegraphing as power attacks do, so are much easier to land – this becomes even more of a problem when you factor in all those random procs that apply conditions on top of the hard-to-dodge attacks. There is no build that can dodge every single attack so that these on-hit procs don’t affect them.

Of course don’t they have the same telegraphing power like power attacks. It would be stupid since you can cleanse afterwards. Also the random procs are also an option for power attacks like sigil of air/fire/ice/frailty/… . Btw how are procs different from +X% damage? There is no build that can dodge every single attack so that this boost don’t affect them.

EverythingOP

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Posted by: insanemaniac.2456

insanemaniac.2456

delete pizza
delete lemongrass soup

condi balance 101

JQ: Rikkity
head here to discuss wvw without fear of infractions

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Posted by: unleashed.8679

unleashed.8679

delete condition cap as well
in pvp it is irrelevant, because if people will die to 25 bleeds, the will die to 40 as well
in pve it wont hurt condition players any more

Condition damage needs a rework.

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Posted by: Nova Stiker.8396

Nova Stiker.8396

delete pizza
delete lemongrass soup

condi balance 101

Yes and delete RNG.

Arcane Precision, I have a 3% chance to apply burning for 1 second?! Why the hell do you even exist?!

Do you know what I liked in RNG?

  • When Mesmer clones hit me with 10 seconds of weakness because they ALL applied weakness when they died.
  • Engineers 40 seconds of poison, 15 seconds of chill, 10 seconds of burning and 10 stacks of bleeding that lasts for 12 seconds with 2 get out of damage free buttons on low cooldowns.
  • Necromancers Chill of Death hitting 3.6k, I wish I had a trait that instantly does nearly 4k damage, removes 3 boons and applies 7 seconds of chill.
  • Minions sometimes protecting players from damage because of the AoE cap. I remember League of Legends removing dodge because randomly taking 0 damage IS NOT FUN.

Warriors OP? No, just Pin Down. Bleeding alone does 6k damage. Hell, revert the hammer nerfs and remove the 8 seconds of weakness from that one hammer attack.

ArenaNet still fails to realize how powerful Weakness is, but there will be a stupid update where some class can spam weakness while the “balance team” scratches their heads in confusion of why half damage is broken and everyone swapping to condi.

Watch, it’ll happen. I bet it will happen to Elementalists. Swapping to air applies weakness to nearby foes. GG.

Hey ArenaNet, as an Elementalist with thousands of hours under my belt, why BUFF 2 REALLY good dagger skills? Why not fix the bug with Magnetic Grasp or add some USEFUL traits to Fire, Air and Earth traitlines?

If I see Powerr running around on his Elementalist I’m going to stomp him on my own Elementalist to prove we don’t need buffs with daggers!

(edited by Nova Stiker.8396)

Condition damage needs a rework.

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Posted by: FLiP.7680

FLiP.7680

Out of 6 classes, i play in WvW with 4 of them: Warrior, Thief, Elementalist, Mesmer.
They all have traits to support condi removal: Dogged March/Cleansing Ire/Mobile Strikes, Shadows’s Embrace/Pain Response, Cleansing Wave/Cleansing Water, Cleansing Conflagration.

If you go to WvW or PvP without traits to remove conditions, believing that your utilities are enough you deserve to die.

Condition damage needs a rework.

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Posted by: Aegael.6938

Aegael.6938

I actually made several points in my original post, so it may have been easy to miss some key points. I’ll try to reiterate in simpler terms.

Condition damage specs currently get too much free stuff.

They are allowed to build much tankier while still outputting lots of damage.
Many of their powerful skills have limited tells.
Their stuff comes off cooldown very fast.
They deal much higher theoretical DPS.

A few of these are fine, perhaps. All of them combined are too much. I don’t believe “Their damage is removable” is justification for them to get so much free stuff.

As an example, let’s shift topic for a moment and talk about direct damage. Direct damage counters include block, blind, block, evade, invuln, and potentially killing them before they can output their damage. The reason why none of these defenses counter condition builds NEARLY as effectively as direct damage is because, as said, condition damage builds get so much free stuff. They’re tankier, their damage is easier to apply, their stuff ticks while you’re mitigating further damage, and their overall DPS is higher.

This means counterplay consists of a line. There’s no burst < condition damage < tanky dps. There’s just condition damage <> condition removal. There’s rarely a way to prevent their powerful attacks from landing on you. If you don’t have condition removal, you lose to them. If you have enough, you win against them.

Someone brought up CC-chaining as an example of another thing you need to build against. Most powerful disable CCs have big tells. Most of them have moderate to long cooldowns. This is why I don’t consider it a problem. Dodging CCs in this game typically has powerful effects, whereas condition damage builds typically have so much in their kits that they’re able to throw out another attack as soon as the last one has been dodged, cleansed, blocked, etc. As said, many condition damage attacks have incredibly low cooldowns and cast times.

Yes, there should be reasons to play a condition damage class. But right now it’s overtuned. You have extremes of very tanky condition damage dealers that need to be built against in order to have a chance of survival. I’d go out on a limb and say there’s stunbreaker-less builds that can beat CC chaining due to high tells, cast times, and cooldowns. There’s no build that can take zero condition removal yet still beat a tanky condition damage dealer.

Finally, onto condition removal itself: right now you have condition removal builds that are nigh-invincible to conditions, and offer no chance of counter-counterplay. You could compare this to CC and stability. CC is countered by stability. However, you can bring boon hate or boon removal in order to counter their counterplay.

(edited by Aegael.6938)

Condition damage needs a rework.

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Posted by: Rhyse.8179

Rhyse.8179

Conditions need to be thrown out and completely redesigned. The OP expertly explains why (I disagree with nothing)- but the problems go even further then that.

Everything is a condition. Hard CC, Soft CC, DPS, Debuffs. This means that every targeted effect in the entire game has a single counter.

Snared? Cure condition.
Weakened? Cure condition.
Healing debuffed (poison)? Cure condition.
DOTs? Cure condition.
Fear? Cure condition.
Stun? Cure condition.
Immobilize? Cure condition.

side note: the hard CC, like Fear, may require passive cures or cures from your teammates. But the counter still works.

As the OP said, there is no tactical choice, no skill triangle. Just an on/off switch, for every debuff in the entire game. Is it any wonder that condition specs are so favored, and condition removal so required?

Giving every ability in the game a single mechanic and a single counter is easily the second worst design decision I’ve ever seen in an MMO or RPG. (Actually, I say this a lot). That covers 15 years of gaming, BTW. Every buff or nerf to the system affects the entire system. This means that conditions as a whole are either OP or UP- the same goes for condition removal. There is no room for true balance, or for tactical gameplay.

The Condition mechanics need to be thrown away and re-designed. It can’t be fixed. GW2 combat cannot be balanced, in PVE or PVP, until this happens.

IOW, GW2 will never balanced. This is why I never PVP.


ps. If anyone’s wondering what the worst is, it’s the curved experience gain and group sharing from Everquest. Different classes had different curves, and exp was shared with a group proportionately to your own curve. Meaning that a hybrid class (ex: ranger) actually penalized everyone else in his group. The amount of elitism, classism, and exclusionary attitude this promoted resulted in some of the most toxic community behavior I’ve ever seen.

“I care nothing for a festering industry that wantonly refuses to
provide a service that I’m willing to purchase.” – Fortuna.7259

(edited by Rhyse.8179)

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Posted by: Roe.3679

Roe.3679

I agree with OP, and I would like to add that I think boon removal should be improved should boons stay in their current state.

But either way, those little red and yellow thumbnails around my UI should be more meaningful.

Condition damage needs a rework.

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Posted by: gesho.9468

gesho.9468

Because conditions can be removed before they deal significant damage, their theoretical DPS is higher.

what facts do you have to make this claim?

backstab? rapid fire? blumberbass?
2k dps on warrior ham just for auto?

Condition damage needs a rework.

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Posted by: Drarnor Kunoram.5180

Drarnor Kunoram.5180

  • Necromancers Chill of Death hitting 3.6k, I wish I had a trait that instantly does nearly 4k damage, removes 3 boons and applies 7 seconds of chill.

No RNG involved there. You were hit while below the health threshold.

Dragonbrand |Drarnor Kunoram: Charr Necro
http://www.twitch.tv/reverse830
I’m a Geeleiver

Condition damage needs a rework.

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Posted by: Nesro.3654

Nesro.3654

conditions are one of the main reasons why the gw2 classes are not able to being balanced.
it’s nothing more then spamming. hmm, how about making removing conditions easier?
great. someone is spamming conditions, the other one is spamming condi removal. sounds like fun XD

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Posted by: gesho.9468

gesho.9468

conditions are one of the main reasons why the gw2 classes are not able to being balanced.
it’s nothing more then spamming. hmm, how about making removing conditions easier?
great. someone is spamming conditions, the other one is spamming condi removal. sounds like fun XD

are condis peculiarly available for spamming? I’ve seen heartseeker spamming, warrior hammer spamming, and what’s spammier then ranger longbow #1?

spamming might be a problem, but it has little to do with condi.

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Posted by: Rhyse.8179

Rhyse.8179

are condis peculiarly available for spamming? I’ve seen heartseeker spamming, warrior hammer spamming, and what’s spammier then ranger longbow #1?

spamming might be a problem, but it has little to do with condi.

The problem is conditions are available on autoattacks, not to mention other low cooldown skills. You can’t NOT spam them.

Conditions should be a Move / Counter type of mechanic. All of the CC effects are conditions; as someone mentioned above with stability, this creates a Move / Counter / CounterCounter dynamic between CC, Stability, and boon stripping. This is depth of gameplay and it is good.

Unfortunately Anet made the execrable decision to make everything a condition. This means that spammable DPS conditions and long-cooldown fight controllers share the same counter. This eliminates the Move / Countermove dynamic completely.

Anet can’t fix it either. Lets say they take all spammable conditions away, redirect these DPS sources to other skills with longer cooldowns and more specialized counters. That’s a complete nerf, complete destruction of all condition DPS builds. Everyone will swap to power, or hybrid at best.

Wait, I should be more specific. It’s a complete removal of DOT builds. Because that’s what this is about. The Condition / Cleanse system is designed to be an interaction between significant moves- a battle of wits and good gameplay. By lumping raw DPS under the same mechanic, both types of gameplay are destroyed. You can’t make counters to the DPS condi spam without also making CC obsolete. Cleansing is either UP or OP- if it’s strong enough to deal with DPS conditions, then it makes CC useless. If it’s balanced to counter CC, it’s too weak to deal with DOTs. If you make DOTs unspammable, then you destroy entire builds, gameplay styles, and gear balance. The entire system is a steaming pile of… uh, fragrant materials, mashed together like the buttons we mash to play with it.

Bottom line: DPS and DOT’s have to be separated from the condition mechanic. This is what I meant by scrapping the system and rebuilding it from the ground up in my earlier post. No aspect of gameplay can achieve it’s potential otherwise.

“I care nothing for a festering industry that wantonly refuses to
provide a service that I’m willing to purchase.” – Fortuna.7259

Condition damage needs a rework.

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Posted by: Monoman.2068

Monoman.2068

Condition spam easily outputs the most practical dps in this game imo which is plain wrong with the readability of most condition skills considered. It doesn’t help that there isn’t any stat to decrease condition damage and condition classes only really need one stat to output moderate damage, two if they want to see the world burn. Some classes are actually unplayable against conditions if you don’t plan to hug large cleansing groups because your ability to combat conditions is dependent on your class and not your play style.

There really needs to be some sort of stat to decrease condition damage that super tanky characters won’t have easy access to. Then they should allow conditions to crit to counter it and we might be able to get rid of a large chunk of this condi spam and removals.

Laviere – Hybrid Wellomancer
Makonne – Hybrid Regen Ranger

(edited by Monoman.2068)

Condition damage needs a rework.

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Posted by: Aberrant.6749

Aberrant.6749

The problem is conditions are available on autoattacks

To balance this power based aa’s would also need to not inflict direct damage. It’ll simply cause an animation.

Tarnished Coast
Salvage 4 Profit + MF Guide – http://tinyurl.com/l8ff6pa

Condition damage needs a rework.

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Posted by: Rhyse.8179

Rhyse.8179

The problem is conditions are available on autoattacks

To balance this power based aa’s would also need to not inflict direct damage. It’ll simply cause an animation.

Are you literate?

“I care nothing for a festering industry that wantonly refuses to
provide a service that I’m willing to purchase.” – Fortuna.7259

Condition damage needs a rework.

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Posted by: Drarnor Kunoram.5180

Drarnor Kunoram.5180

The problem is conditions are available on autoattacks

To balance this power based aa’s would also need to not inflict direct damage. It’ll simply cause an animation.

Are you literate?

Are you? Damage is damage. Condition damage is just dealt after the attack connects. If conditions should be removed from auto-attacks, then so should direct damage. There’s no reason why one should be fine, but not the other.

Dragonbrand |Drarnor Kunoram: Charr Necro
http://www.twitch.tv/reverse830
I’m a Geeleiver

Condition damage needs a rework.

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Posted by: Rhyse.8179

Rhyse.8179

The problem is conditions are available on autoattacks

To balance this power based aa’s would also need to not inflict direct damage. It’ll simply cause an animation.

Are you literate?

Are you? Damage is damage. Condition damage is just dealt after the attack connects. If conditions should be removed from auto-attacks, then so should direct damage. There’s no reason why one should be fine, but not the other.

The problem is conditions are available on autoattacks

To balance this power based aa’s would also need to not inflict direct damage. It’ll simply cause an animation.

Anet can’t fix it either. Lets say they take all spammable conditions away, redirect these DPS sources to other skills with longer cooldowns and more specialized counters. That’s a complete nerf, complete destruction of all condition DPS builds.

Bottom line: DPS and DOT’s have to be separated from the condition mechanic. This is what I meant by scrapping the system and rebuilding it from the ground up in my earlier post. No aspect of gameplay can achieve it’s potential otherwise.

The post. Read it. I even included a tl:dr for your enjoyment and you didn’t even bother with that.

This is the last I’ll mention it. Not looking to start an argument. Just trying to make sure people are representing my words accurately.

“I care nothing for a festering industry that wantonly refuses to
provide a service that I’m willing to purchase.” – Fortuna.7259

(edited by Rhyse.8179)

Condition damage needs a rework.

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Posted by: Aegael.6938

Aegael.6938

Condition spam easily outputs the most practical dps in this game imo which is plain wrong with the readability of most condition skills considered. It doesn’t help that there isn’t any stat to decrease condition damage and condition classes only really need one stat to output moderate damage, two if they want to see the world burn. Some classes are actually unplayable against conditions if you don’t plan to hug large cleansing groups because your ability to combat conditions is dependent on your class and not your play style.

There really needs to be some sort of stat to decrease condition damage that super tanky characters won’t have easy access to. Then they should allow conditions to crit to counter it and we might be able to get rid of a large chunk of this condi spam and removals.

I do like the idea of a base stat that decreased the amount of condition damage taken. It would offer further counterbuilding opportunities, and by introducing it you would have more room to make changes to the condition system.

Condition damage needs a rework.

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Posted by: Andele.1306

Andele.1306

  • Necromancers Chill of Death hitting 3.6k, I wish I had a trait that instantly does nearly 4k damage, removes 3 boons and applies 7 seconds of chill.

No RNG involved there. You were hit while below the health threshold.

Also if it hit you for 3-4k, you got boons on you (cod does more the more boons on the enemy), your problem that you were playing with unfair grounds (and yes against a power necro having boons is unfair since they only got around/to 10 might stacks and some fury uptime, where are my 5s vigor, my 10s retal and stability? Pretty much non existent by comparison to any other profession.

BIG BTW to topic: How about we remove the base 916 precision which does nothing ( since it turns to 4% crit chance somehow which is 84 precision) and the crit damage from trait trees and add condition resistance (aka on self negative condition duration)? It would actually nerf zerker builds, allow universal setup (300 power/-30% cond on self, 300 prec/300 cond damage, 300toughness/300 heal power, 300 vit/30%boon dur and 30 of profession+30% cond duration?

When life gives you lemon, ask if its from a anime or manga.

(edited by Andele.1306)

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Posted by: Aberrant.6749

Aberrant.6749

The problem is conditions are available on autoattacks

To balance this power based aa’s would also need to not inflict direct damage. It’ll simply cause an animation.

Are you literate?

Are you? Damage is damage. Condition damage is just dealt after the attack connects. If conditions should be removed from auto-attacks, then so should direct damage. There’s no reason why one should be fine, but not the other.

The problem is conditions are available on autoattacks

To balance this power based aa’s would also need to not inflict direct damage. It’ll simply cause an animation.

Anet can’t fix it either. Lets say they take all spammable conditions away, redirect these DPS sources to other skills with longer cooldowns and more specialized counters. That’s a complete nerf, complete destruction of all condition DPS builds.

Bottom line: DPS and DOT’s have to be separated from the condition mechanic. This is what I meant by scrapping the system and rebuilding it from the ground up in my earlier post. No aspect of gameplay can achieve it’s potential otherwise.

The post. Read it. I even included a tl:dr for your enjoyment and you didn’t even bother with that.

This is the last I’ll mention it. Not looking to start an argument. Just trying to make sure people are representing my words accurately.

Lol-ed.

Tarnished Coast
Salvage 4 Profit + MF Guide – http://tinyurl.com/l8ff6pa

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Posted by: Tim.6450

Tim.6450

They are allowed to build much tankier while still outputting lots of damage.

Do you have any proof of that statement? Because both side claim the other does more dps while in damage/toughness/vitality gear.

Many of their powerful skills have limited tells.

That’s because a player has two chances to migitate a condition attack while power has one. So it’s fair that conditions have less tells.

Their stuff comes off cooldown very fast.

what about might blow? smite?

They deal much higher theoretical DPS.

Unless I misunderstand the meaning of theoritical dps, is it very well known that power builds have the highest build by default. There is a reason why speedruns don’t have conditions in them.

As an example, let’s shift topic for a moment and talk about direct damage. Direct damage counters include block, blind, block, evade, invuln, and potentially killing them before they can output their damage.

It may come as a surprise to you but those are all applicable to condition attacks as well.

They’re tankier, their damage is easier to apply, their stuff ticks while you’re mitigating further damage, and their overall DPS is higher.

The first one depends on the build, the second one is true and the fourth depends on the build. The third one is true but let’s put it in perspective:
So if you use a invulnerable you get the right to negate the attacks at you now and a part of the previous 6 attacks that have hit you? Compared to power builds that does not sound fair.

Yes, there should be reasons to play a condition damage class. But right now it’s overtuned. You have extremes of very tanky condition damage dealers that need to be built against in order to have a chance of survival. I’d go out on a limb and say there’s stunbreaker-less builds that can beat CC chaining due to high tells, cast times, and cooldowns. There’s no build that can take zero condition removal yet still beat a tanky condition damage dealer.

That’s just an assumption.

Condition spam easily outputs the most practical dps in this game imo which is plain wrong with the readability of most condition skills considered.

Where is the proof in that statement?

It doesn’t help that there isn’t any stat to decrease condition damage and condition classes only really need one stat to output moderate damage, two if they want to see the world burn.

So runes of melandru doesn’t exist? Nor do runes of hoelbrak?

Some classes are actually unplayable against conditions if you don’t plan to hug large cleansing groups because your ability to combat conditions is dependent on your class and not your play style.

The same can be said bout CC and mobility. Some classes can deal with them others not.

There really needs to be some sort of stat to decrease condition damage that super tanky characters won’t have easy access to. Then they should allow conditions to crit to counter it and we might be able to get rid of a large chunk of this condi spam and removals.

So wait now do conditions have to rely on four stats (condi damage/crit/prec/duration)? On top of that do they have to find a way to survive against the other player so that their damage can tick, not fair.

EverythingOP

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Posted by: lakdav.3694

lakdav.3694

Condition spam easily outputs the most practical dps in this game imo which is plain wrong with the readability of most condition skills considered. It doesn’t help that there isn’t any stat to decrease condition damage and condition classes only really need one stat to output moderate damage, two if they want to see the world burn. Some classes are actually unplayable against conditions if you don’t plan to hug large cleansing groups because your ability to combat conditions is dependent on your class and not your play style.

There really needs to be some sort of stat to decrease condition damage that super tanky characters won’t have easy access to. Then they should allow conditions to crit to counter it and we might be able to get rid of a large chunk of this condi spam and removals.

I do like the idea of a base stat that decreased the amount of condition damage taken. It would offer further counterbuilding opportunities, and by introducing it you would have more room to make changes to the condition system.

There is a base stat that reduce the effectiveness of condition damage, it is called Vitality. The more health you have, the more time it takes for conditions to kill you. The reason why nobody seems to realize this is that Vitality is good against all kinds of damage. Its just toughness thats useless against condi damage.

I dont get the logic here. Damage is damage, you mitigate it the same way. Avoid getting hit, or if you get hit, you heal the injury. Condition damage needs to be built up to be dangerous, prolonged effort for prolonged DoT effect. Prolonged time to take effect needs survivability, or you just going to watch your condi stacks diminish from the defeated-cam. Direct damage needs to be burst out in one go with little time allowed to react (dodge or block), thus these active defenses seem more important and much more effective.

So you can completely avoid burst with a perfectly timed block/dodge/invulnerability, making THAT damage type useless. You cannot avoid all condition damage with these defenses, because you run out of blocks and evades before the conditioner finishes their build-up of their condi stacks. You reduce its effectiveness for the time being. On the other hand you are given an extra mitigation chance against what came through(atop the designated healing skill), namely condi-removal.

The main difference between burst direct damage and sustained condition pressure is pace. Conditioners are slower, countering them is not a matter of reflexes and well timed “avoid all damage” buttons, but endurance and survival through healing and cleansing. In an ideal situation, they need a good 7-10 seconds to build up their conditions to deadly levels. For balance’s sake, they need to survive longer themselves, because they will take damage for sure in these 7-10 seconds.

Berserkers are the fastest, and you either avoid their bursts, or you wont even know what hit you. Countering them is not a matter of endurance and healing, but reflexes and FPS. An effective burst takes little more than 3 seconds. The victim either blocks or evades all this, or dies. The general cooldowns are the same between the two, but the zerker has to sit on their behinds for longer, waiting for their cooldowns (because they spent their burst in one unsuccessful rush) but the conditioner just gets the cycle going almost immedietly. In an ideal situation though, the DPSvvictim dies in 3 seconds or less. Zerkers dont need survivability if they do their jobs well.

And thats the problem. These two extremes competing against each other, and every ability and trait and skill is being balanced with these two in mind, while the more balanced configurations are made weaker and weaker, because they share portions of the extremes with half their potentials.

Condition damage needs a rework.

in Profession Balance

Posted by: Carighan.6758

Carighan.6758

I agree with lakdav on this, we’re too quick to jump to end-of-the-scale conclusions. It’s not just “Power builds” vs “Condition builds”. Few power builds cause no conditions. No condition build attacks without having power-based attacks.

Balance starts at a much more basic level, at making sure that independent of gear setup and trait setup, all your combat aspects are viable.

  • If you are built for direct damage, your conditions should still be significant, and they should still hurt.
  • If you are build for condition damage, you still should have ample direct damage, and most importantly tools with which to cause a burst of direct damage.

This to me seems the only truly viable way to balance PvP in this regard, by blurring the lines and making the definition of what a “spec” is in regards to power vs condition difficult.
This ties in with what I posted before, specialization is currently too extreme. If I am built for power, my direct attacks are too strong and my conditions too weak. And vice versa.

The strength of heart to face oneself has been made manifest. The persona Carighan has appeared.

Condition damage needs a rework.

in Profession Balance

Posted by: sanestar.8731

sanestar.8731

I have two issues with condi’s at this point:

1)Too many condi’s flying around everywhere. Seems like most skills apply some kind of condi.

2)The priority of condi cleanse.

I can’t tell you how many times immobilize is the last condi to clear. And also chill. Why? Who knows. I can tell you those are the two condi’s that kill me the most, not bleed and burning.

I don’t so much mind bleeding burning and such, but I hate immobilize. The fact it can stack to 6 or even 10s is just stupid. You can’t dodge, some times you can’t even use skills. How is that even fair? It’s basically gg at that point. That’s not to mention how much immobilize is in the game. There’s literally no condi that can’t be spammed these days. Either that, or make all movement skills break it. Why are warriors the only class that can do this?

Make movement hindering condi’s more of a priority and I’d have less of an issue. Sure I can trait it so the duration is reduced by 33%, but no thanks. I have better traits to use. It’s clear condi’s are out of control, especially with them adding in yet another one: torment. I’m not saying there needs to be an overhaul on them, but something done so that it’s not ‘condi or nothing’. Cheers~