Guild Wars 2

(typeing this when not sober so it might not make alot of sense right now but my brain is full of ideas)

Right now conditions are extremly strong, both for power specs(the cc conditions) and damage condition specced classes.

A few big problems with conditions:
1. They usually provide both defense and damage through same abilities, like cripple+bleed, burn and something etc etc,Which is the biggest problem
1. Easy to apply many different conditions and they are usually clumped up with both cc and damage.
2. Conditions can be countered in the same way as power damage; as in it can be dodged, blocked, blinded, invuled, immunity tratis, cleansed. The application of them that is.
2. There are ALOT of condition application on power weapons which help their condition speced friends to cover their conditions
3. There are also ALOT of condition cleanses.
4. Conditions need overall more time to kill someone than a zerker class which forces them to be tanky, if a condi specced class had the same defense as a zerker there would be zero reasons to play condition as main source of damage.

If you just nerf condition application as it is , then it’s going to go back how it was during the double/tripple elementalist meta where playing a necro was just as bad or worse than playing a ele right now(in terms of getting your damage off and survive)
If you add more ways to counter condis like protection/retal, then conditions have more counters than power damage. Cleanse in stronger than protection since it remove all the future damage of it.

My suggestion how to make it easier to balance would require alot of work from the devs.
Here are some of my ideas:
Make weapons more distinctive in their role. Lless both power and condition in one weapon sets, like grenades for example.

My personal favorite way of dealing with it would be: reduce damage of condition specs and completely change the view of condition speced from being a damage spec to a more supportive spec through soft cc(blinds chill cripple weakness immobilize) but also make the soft cc abilities stronger, this would however mean that the Devs would have to nerf the conditions a power/bunker specs have access to and also in general rework ALOT of the classes defense, but the game oculd need more roles, especially support roles beside healing/tanking.
Or make condition specs more about damage and less about control, like improve condition damage but reduce the amount of chills/cripples/weakness etc they have access to.

But in general i think weapons need a more clear role for all the classes, warrior weapons do this job pretty good though.
Would also make it easier for newer players to get into the game if say for example as mesmer: scepter+torch(just an example mind you) being the clear choice for a condition support set, while sword+sword being the obvious single target melee power spec and staff being the supportive condition wepaon of choice.
The game would probably need more weapons across all classes though..

I’ll type more and probably reread what i wrote a couple of times once the morfin is out of my body(dropped a 35lb kettlebell on my foot with no protection yey)

What i’m trying to say is, make weapon sets more specialized to make it easier to balance and give people a more role options and less jack of all trades(always balance nightmares):
High damage burst
Pure damage condition
Sort of tanky Control condition.(basicly a debuffer class in DnD or something similar)
Bunker/tankish hard cc control
sort of tanky support healing(less self, more friendly)

I’m not sure if cc + condi-damage is really a problem: a lot of weapons are multi-purpose. example:
warrior greatsword: damage+mobility+minor debuff
warrior hammer: damage+cc
warrior mace offhand: debuff+cc
ranger sword: damage+mobility+evades
…
The reason why condition weapons do that sometimes on the same ability is because they have a slot reserved for a bit more power based move. example:
necromancer scepter: feast of corruption
necromancer staff: necrotic grasp
warrior sword: final thrust
mesmer staff: phantasmal warloc
…
This filled weapon slot with power moves allows the for a hybrid playstyle.

Tim.6450:

I’m not sure if cc + condi-damage is really a problem: a lot of weapons are multi-purpose. example:
warrior greatsword: damage+mobility+minor debuff
warrior hammer: damage+cc
warrior mace offhand: debuff+cc
ranger sword: damage+mobility+evades
…
The reason why condition weapons do that sometimes on the same ability is because they have a slot reserved for a bit more power based move. example:
necromancer scepter: feast of corruption
necromancer staff: necrotic grasp
warrior sword: final thrust
mesmer staff: phantasmal warloc
…
This filled weapon slot with power moves allows the for a hybrid playstyle.

And hybrid playstyles are the curse of balanceing problems.
Especially when it comes to 2 different damageing types, i’m all fine with weapon sets being say mobility+damage, or control damage(alth othe damage should be lower then)
or hybrid damagehealing like in some other games which makes it really hard to balance propperly

Vuh.1328:

Tim.6450:

I’m not sure if cc + condi-damage is really a problem: a lot of weapons are multi-purpose. example:
warrior greatsword: damage+mobility+minor debuff
warrior hammer: damage+cc
warrior mace offhand: debuff+cc
ranger sword: damage+mobility+evades
…
The reason why condition weapons do that sometimes on the same ability is because they have a slot reserved for a bit more power based move. example:
necromancer scepter: feast of corruption
necromancer staff: necrotic grasp
warrior sword: final thrust
mesmer staff: phantasmal warloc
…
This filled weapon slot with power moves allows the for a hybrid playstyle.

And hybrid playstyles are the curse of balanceing problems.
Especially when it comes to 2 different damageing types, i’m all fine with weapon sets being say mobility+damage, or control damage(alth othe damage should be lower then)
or hybrid damagehealing like in some other games which makes it really hard to balance propperly

Indeed hybrid playstyles are more difficult to handle but they give the game more depth. But that was not my point with my previous post: you can not say that hybrid abilities are condition specific if every weapon in this game is multi purpose.

Tim.6450:

Vuh.1328:

Tim.6450:

I’m not sure if cc + condi-damage is really a problem: a lot of weapons are multi-purpose. example:
warrior greatsword: damage+mobility+minor debuff
warrior hammer: damage+cc
warrior mace offhand: debuff+cc
ranger sword: damage+mobility+evades
…
The reason why condition weapons do that sometimes on the same ability is because they have a slot reserved for a bit more power based move. example:
necromancer scepter: feast of corruption
necromancer staff: necrotic grasp
warrior sword: final thrust
mesmer staff: phantasmal warloc
…
This filled weapon slot with power moves allows the for a hybrid playstyle.

And hybrid playstyles are the curse of balanceing problems.
Especially when it comes to 2 different damageing types, i’m all fine with weapon sets being say mobility+damage, or control damage(alth othe damage should be lower then)
or hybrid damagehealing like in some other games which makes it really hard to balance propperly

Indeed hybrid playstyles are more difficult to handle but they give the game more depth. But that was not my point with my previous post: you can not say that hybrid abilities are condition specific if every weapon in this game is multi purpose.

I don’t think i said hybrid abilities are condition specific as they can be either or with abit flavor from the other side, which sometimes tend to be too much flavor
look at grenade kit, how many nerfs didn’t it get because it was and still is trying to be both condition and power which leads to alot of problems?
Or thief something d/d which seem to try to be a conditon weapon set at the same time as a power set which leaves a few of the abilities on said weapon set quite useless for either condi or power and rarely useful as hybrid.

Weapons shouldn’t have such identity crisis as they currently have. They should be designed/balanced around a certain role.

It’s just too much work trying to have so many weapon try to fulfill many different jobs and just causes unnecessary balance issues

Hey,

just wanted to let you know, that i think you figured out some core problems conditions have. Your solutions would help too, but would require the game to change drastically. I think, if someone would like to design the game this way (conditions are meant for soft CC, support classes have to remove these debuffs), it should have been there from the beginning.
It would be great imho, if there wouldn’t be things like damage condies, as it would promote support roles, which this games lacks. But it would require a different game design at all and as i look back to past balance updates, balance will more focus on number adjustments, than complete gameplay/weapon overhauls. Which is ok, since everything else is a lot of work and needs further balancing. Again something a new released game could have done. I’m not sure if discussing these things really helps, since i don’t see practical/easily made changes to these mechanics, as one, for example, can’t remove bleeds at this point.

You said this:
“A few big problems with conditions:
1. They usually provide both defense and damage through same abilities, like cripple+bleed, burn and something etc etc,Which is the biggest problem”

Together with this:
“My personal favorite way of dealing with it would be: reduce damage of condition specs and completely change the view of condition speced from being a damage spec to a more supportive spec through soft cc(blinds chill cripple weakness immobilize) but also make the soft cc abilities stronger, this would however mean that the Devs would have to nerf the conditions a power/bunker specs have access to and also in general rework ALOT of the classes defense, but the game oculd need more roles, especially support roles beside healing/tanking.
Or make condition specs more about damage and less about control, like improve condition damage but reduce the amount of chills/cripples/weakness etc they have access to.”

It is quite unfair to say this while power weapons like the warrior axe, warrior greatsword, warrior mace offhand, warrior hammer,ranger sword… are all multi-purpose weapons. You put the blame on conditions while power weapons are equally guilty on what you accuse to be a problem.

KickBitBeatBorg.7941:

It would be great imho, if there wouldn’t be things like damage condies, as it would promote support roles, which this games lacks. But it would require a different game design at all and as i look back to past balance updates, balance will more focus on number adjustments, than complete gameplay/weapon overhauls. Which is ok, since everything else is a lot of work and needs further balancing. Again something a new released game could have done. I’m not sure if discussing these things really helps, since i don’t see practical/easily made changes to these mechanics, as one, for example, can’t remove bleeds at this point.

damaging conditions are needed, because they are a counter to tanks (ignore toughness). With out them and the other changes you have the trinity back (tank dps support)

The lack of viable build for Support and control in PvE comes from the bad enemy design. You cant control your opponent, because a) he dies to fast or b) has 10+ stacks defiant and unshakable.
In PvP there are builds, that can do so, well at least the control part (kiting) the support is most of the time useless, because everyone has access to it. It doesn’t matter if the might comes from a zerker warrior or a full support guardian. You will get the same benefit out of it. And because you have easy access to boons, boon duration is useless as well. The difference between those two player is, that the zerker will deal 3 time the supports damage.

@TO: you forgot to mention the condition cap, that makes condition builds totally useless in PvE (when more then 2 are hitting the dame enemy)

All i wanted to say is, that i think the game would be better, if there wouldn’t be a need for massive DOTs melting down Tanks (and everything else atm). Instead they should be used for precise soft CCing high priority targets.
If Condies would not deal massive dmg, there would have never been the need to buff Warries to become immune to them, for a set time frame. But the game developed for over a year in this direction and i think it’s to late for massive changes, like these.
You (unleashed) also mentioned a lot of other problems, which are at minimum half true, but i think their not entirely topic related and would produce a wall of text to deal with

Tim.6450:

You said this:
It is quite unfair to say this while power weapons like the warrior axe, warrior greatsword, warrior mace offhand, warrior hammer,ranger sword… are all multi-purpose weapons. You put the blame on conditions while power weapons are equally guilty on what you accuse to be a problem.

I think you’re right. But it’s also generally accepted, that GS offers to much mobility and Hammer to much CC and/or dmg. Well … i think ranger sword is not a good example since its dealing low dmg. Maybe it all sums up to: theres just to much dmg.

KickBitBeatBorg.7941:

All i wanted to say is, that i think the game would be better, if there wouldn’t be a need for massive DOTs melting down Tanks (and everything else atm). Instead they should be used for precise soft CCing high priority targets.
If Condies would not deal massive dmg, there would have never been the need to buff Warries to become immune to them, for a set time frame.

You can do both with conditions, there are Dots and CC.
Anet probably should have split those two a bit more in the beginning of the game. (different Symbols)

The game should be made like rock. paper, scissors. Everything has its pros and cons (it’s nemesis).

• Support counter cDPS,
• tank counter dDPS
• cDPS counter tanks
• dDPS counters support
• dont know where wo move the control part here

Ok it is not as easy as rock paper scissors, because beeing a tank should not mean, i will 100% die to conditions and a dDPS should also be able to kill a tank, … But i hope someone understands, what I want to say.

With this in mind, removing codnition damage, would lead to unkillable tanks, where sour only tactic will be: “Is one player can’t burst them down, take two!”

The warroir thing was the stupidest decision ever made, he was designed to have a bad time with conditions and now, after a lot of QQ, he has one of the best cleanses and in addition a long immunity. Great job.

KickBitBeatBorg.7941:

But the game developed for over a year in this direction and i think it’s to late for massive changes, like these.

The problem is, massive changes are needed!
- You wont fix conditions in PvE by tweaking some numbers, In PvP I think their damage is fine by the way (probably a bit to weak with all those cleanses now).
- You wont fix some classes (i.e. Ranger) with number tweaking, the pet is stupid and dies to fast, while in PvP has a to high damage in condition builds.
- …
Think this is enough off-topic now

KickBitBeatBorg.7941:

You (unleashed) also mentioned a lot of other problems, which are at minimum half true, but i think their not entirely topic related and would produce a wall of text to deal with

feel welcome and write your wall of text:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/All-Before-balancing-classes/first#post3579556

KickBitBeatBorg.7941:

I think you’re right. But it’s also generally accepted, that GS offers to much mobility and Hammer to much CC and/or dmg. Well … i think ranger sword is not a good example since its dealing low dmg. Maybe it all sums up to: theres just to much dmg.

Strangely is it said that the sword is the ranger highest dps weapon. That aside I can find many more examples of multi purpose weapons (I even think that every weapon is a multi purpose weapon) and if al those examples are too much dmg well then I think there is a problem with your reasoning.

On condi balance:

1. Condis do too little damage in PvE and are ineffective vs structures / objects unlike white dmg types.
2. Condi builds can be overpowering in very small scale PvP combat both in SPVP and WvW, especially to new or casual players that have no clue how to defend against them and run wrong builds, wrong skills, and ignore team comp build synergy.
3. Condi dmg is negligible in larger scale organized combat where power based dmg shines.

To balance condis, I would rework the PvE side so they are more effective there and especially on champs / dungeon bosses, etc.

In WvW / sPVP I would rework condi cleansing, NOT conditions. Make group cleansing far less effective and remove so many passive anti-condition mechanics, but impliment far more individual and active condi cleansing mechanisms.

By buffing individual active condi cleansing a bit and nerfing group / aoe condi cleansing, this would distribute and even out condi damage between small scale / large scale combat and make fights more interesting.

I would also remove passive condi immunities achievable via trait/armor/rune/food combos.

IF condi builds were to be made as squishy as zerk builds, then their respective damage output needs to be buffed to remain on par with the zerk builds as they will no longer be attrition.

Current condi builds except warrior (the god class), already have a fraction of escape mechanisms, stability uptime / access etc. that other builds have. This will also need to be balanced should their survivability come into question.

I’m fine with single target condi damage. I think that AOE condi damage is just skill-less play though. Same goes for regular AOE damage. It needs to be nerfed.

As far as condis go, there needs to be better defense against them. In particular, I think every class should have a way to spec into transferring condis back to the attacker. Think of it as retal for condi.

Tongku.5326:

3. Condi dmg is negligible in larger scale organized combat where power based dmg shines.

Wrong. It is the exact opposite. Large groups are forced into specing for AOE condi cleanse. The power specs are much less of a threat with all of the protection, stability, dodges, and blasting water fields to heal back up quickly.

style.6173:

I’m fine with single target condi damage. I think that AOE condi damage is just skill-less play though. Same goes for regular AOE damage. It needs to be nerfed.

As far as condis go, there needs to be better defense against them. In particular, I think every class should have a way to spec into transferring condis back to the attacker. Think of it as retal for condi.

style.6173:

I’m fine with single target condi damage. I think that AOE condi damage is just skill-less play though. Same goes for regular AOE damage. It needs to be nerfed.

As far as condis go, there needs to be better defense against them. In particular, I think every class should have a way to spec into transferring condis back to the attacker. Think of it as retal for condi.

I honestly think that is way overkill.
Condition damage isn’t much different from power damage, conditions already have harsher counters than power, sure power got toughness and protection to deal with but you cannot cleanse power damage.

If you add a retal like boon for condis or everyoine getting a transfer there would be ZERO reason to even bother going condition damage.

Condition damage is quite fine actully atleast in SPVP where you can’t have stupid amount of durations through food and gear.

Doing 10k power damage over 10sec(quite low actully) is EXACTLY the same as adding condis equal to 10k damage over 10secs(people tend to forget this).
Altho condtion damage could perhaps be affected by a third stat, like crit damage but for condis somehow.. So stuff like DIRE/settlers etc become less useful for offensive.
Perhaps lower the damage across the board for conditions but allow them to crit to achieve about same overall dps now if running say rabid, but way lower dps if running dire/settlers

style.6173:

Tongku.5326:

3. Condi dmg is negligible in larger scale organized combat where power based dmg shines.

Wrong. It is the exact opposite. Large groups are forced into specing for AOE condi cleanse. The power specs are much less of a threat with all of the protection, stability, dodges, and blasting water fields to heal back up quickly.

Stability, dodges, heals counter conditions just aswell as power damage, i guess the issue is that people run alot of kitten like settler/dire etc in wvwvw so only way to deal with the insane toughness would be condition damage?

Kinda seems like the toughness in this game through gear have gotten way to far to allow more offensive power builds viable, especially swith gear like dire which is just insane for condition specs

Vuh.1328:

Altho condtion damage could perhaps be affected by a third stat, like crit damage but for condis somehow.. So stuff like DIRE/settlers etc become less useful for offensive.
Perhaps lower the damage across the board for conditions but allow them to crit to achieve about same overall dps now if running say rabid, but way lower dps if running dire/settlers

Well conditions are “affected by a third stat”. You could call that stat survivability. Since conditions are damage over time we need to survive longer to make sure our conditions tick.

Tim.6450:

Vuh.1328:

Altho condtion damage could perhaps be affected by a third stat, like crit damage but for condis somehow.. So stuff like DIRE/settlers etc become less useful for offensive.
Perhaps lower the damage across the board for conditions but allow them to crit to achieve about same overall dps now if running say rabid, but way lower dps if running dire/settlers

Well conditions are “affected by a third stat”. You could call that stat survivability. Since conditions are damage over time we need to survive longer to make sure our conditions tick.

I know that, but to please the general stupidity of the community. But gear like Dire/settlers is quite kitten ed overpowered for conditions in wvwvw with duration food/perplexity etc.
But having a third stat could maybe work as way to create glass condition builds which can compete with zerkers. Tho that i guess would just make people cry even more..

condition duration should have been added as stat for a gear. As an equivalent to crit damage. Then there could also be a condition glass set: condi dmg, duration and precision or one with toughness instead of precision.
But unfortunately with the current system (stack limit and high amount of cleans) every point in condition duration is most of the time just wasted.
And with this change conditions would “rely” on 4 stats (condi duration, damage, precision and defense)

I already told that weakness could decrease condition damage in 50%.

if they do that, conditions have to scale with all those other damage multipliers as well, to be fair.

And 50%?

Vuh.1328:

I know that, but to please the general stupidity of the community. But gear like Dire/settlers is quite kitten ed overpowered for conditions in wvwvw with duration food/perplexity etc. But having a third stat could maybe work as way to create glass condition builds which can compete with zerkers. Tho that i guess would just make people cry even more..

I can not speak about dire or perplexity since I never tried or encountered those though it would be handy if I ever saw a comparison between dire and soldier or a comparison between dire and knight.

The food issue is a point I can speak about. We can decrease the food to 10~20% but increase the bleed/confusion/… duration on runes by 5% to 20%. It would bring conditions on par with boons in terms of runes.

On the adding of a third stat I will say you this to create a zerkerish condition build. This kind of build has been created by necromancers and the result has been a nerf to all it’s condition type builds in pvp/pve.

whyme.3281:

if they do that, conditions have to scale with all those other damage multipliers as well, to be fair.

And 50%?

It’s like glancing to raw damage

About multipliers…
- Precision also affect DoT conditions.
- DoT conditions do critical at the moment of application, when this occurs all ticks deals 50% more damage, like raw damage.
- Critical DoT conditions could have their damage bonuses affected by upcoming status Ferocity with same power that affects raw critical damage.
- The actual application, stack amount and duration of all classes could need be balanced to do not become more powerful that are now.

Obs: An other option are critical conditions affects the duration of conditions, and the status condition duration act as bonus to critical conditions.
The problem are that in this way all conditions will be affected by precision

I don’t like the status condition duration. I think that could be replaced for another status that increase movement and actions (includes attack) speed, and increase condition duration. In this case, not percentage amount (as actual condition duration), but point amount that increase percentage amount (as precision)

This is the great problem with actual trait system, the classes traits still locked at some status, isn’t possible increase a new effect to some status without benefits more one class that other.