Guild Wars 2

Get rid of all incidential condition damage minor traits. Do that, and there’s always room in a party for at least one condition damage build.

You know what I’m talking about – all those unavoidable minor traits that you wind up having to take in power builds:

Warrior – Precise Strikes
Elementalist – Arcane Precision & Flame Barrier
Necromancer – Barbed Precision
Thief – Serpent’s Touch
Engineer – Sharpshooter
Mesmer – Sharper Images

Make them major traits, which would allow people to avoid dealing incidential condition damage. Voila, there’s a huge leap forward for condition damage builds in dungeons, fractals, and WvW small group content.

I know Virtue of Justice presents a unique problem for Guardians, so how about a major trait that disables the burning effect in exchange for a small buff to power?

It’s actually really hard to think how they could do this, but I fully support it the direction you are going with this.

Don’t you realise that condition builds use these traits too? You’re basically suggesting a fix to something already weak by nerfing it.

While I can’t even begin to imagine the indirect balance issues this’d cause, yeah, I support it. I want condition builds to stand on my condition skills. Not some procs I have to force.

In small group content (everything but the world boss zerg), the problem with condi builds is (a) the limit on stacks and (b) overwriting good condis with bad condis.

My proposal effectively lets people chose when they are going to deal what I term “incidential condition damage.” Right now, those traits that proc condis are mandatory. I propose to keep them in the game, but make them optional, ie, as one of the selectable traits (major), and put something more neutral in the unselectable spot (minor). That way if you want to keep your condi procs, you can. But people who don’t build for condis arent forced to take skills that interfere with condi builds.

I don’t think it would be hard to implement nor hard to balance.

I wouldn’t mind seeing al these traits being REMOVED from game altogether and buffing the condition weapons/utility skills instead. Then a warrior wanting to run +10% dmg on a bleeding target would actually need a condi player in the group instead of just traiting a few points in a build that actually doesn’t need bleeding (most DPS specs will run the 5 in precision just because there will -always- be bleeds, not just with condition users present)

It would be a good thing to make DPS builds only have acces to dazes/stuns, weakness, vulnerability, cripples, fear and chills
And It would be good to make condition builds have acces to bleeds, poison, fire, confusion, terror and torment additionally

It might actually be wiser even to make condition builds scale fully on condition dmg, making sure 0 condition dmg does 0 damage and therefore do no ticks… and the curve a bit steeper.

But now I’m getting carried away….

Or they could, you know, do what most MMOs do and make it so multiple different sources for each condition can exist in PvE (preferably 5 man instances only). Meaning if 5 people all put bleed on a target, it’ll show 5 bleeding icons (not a single bleeding icon with a 5 in it). That fixes the problems with conditions in PvE instantly since you could easily have 5 different people stacking maybe 8 stacks of bleeding each, meaning 40 stacks of bleeding which most likely would tick like they were being directly damaged. It’d make it more powerful in PvE dungeons and fractals (where it needs a boost), but good luck trying to figure out how to make it work only then.

^^^ That’s called getting rid of the condition cap. I think that’s already well off the table at this point in the game’s development.

my fix: if the new application of a condition is stronger, overwrite the current application. if it’s weaker, don’t overwrite.

in the case of intensity stacks (bleeding and torment), it would only overwrite if there was no room for the new stack. overwriting can be based on time left rather than damage per tick (i.e. a 5 second bleed overwrites a 1 second bleed, but a 1 second bleed can’t overwrite a 5 second bleed, regardless of condi damage).

balance-wise, this would have the least effect on the game, but i understand it would require some reworking of the calculations of condi application.

Mckeone.9804:

^^^ That’s called getting rid of the condition cap. I think that’s already well off the table at this point in the game’s development.

yep. if i recall, it’s something to do with server-side problems, as well as letting condis go out of whack and become too effective.

There is no easy solution, otherwise it would have been fixed by now.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

There is no easy solution, otherwise it would have been fixed by now.

Well, there’s no easy solution to the condition cap. I just wonder if they’ve ever considered a trait-based solution. It doesn’t solve all of the problems, but at least it would give condi builds a solid place in the game.

No it wouldn’t. Builds are already tight on trait choices, what would end up happening is condition builds miss out on something to make their build stronger because they have to take a passive on-crit trait instead of something else, and then direct damage builds either don’t change in the slightest or they move a couple points around.

Here’s the problem – condition damage builds are able to perform a solid 6 – 6,500 DPS, but direct damage builds do 10 – 15,000 DPS. You are never going to be able to bridge that gap.

Heavy power should lack condition.

maha.7902:

No it wouldn’t. Builds are already tight on trait choices, what would end up happening is condition builds miss out on something to make their build stronger because they have to take a passive on-crit trait instead of something else, and then direct damage builds either don’t change in the slightest or they move a couple points around.

Here’s the problem – condition damage builds are able to perform a solid 6 – 6,500 DPS, but direct damage builds do 10 – 15,000 DPS. You are never going to be able to bridge that gap.

Your complaint can be fixed with simple balancing; tweak some damage here, improve the effect of certain traits there. Right now, for systemic reasons, there’s zero place for condis in small group content because they’re effectively neutered. Un-neutering them would be a huge leap forward.

fake edit: to be 100% clear, you’re talking about whether condi builds will have a place in the dps meta. Of course what I propose isn’t going to fix that, but the proposal isn’t meant to fix that either. I’m advocating that a condi user not be rendered effectively worthless in semi-organized content because guardians can’t turn off VOJ, etc…

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

It would be a good thing to make DPS builds only have acces to dazes/stuns, weakness, vulnerability, cripples, fear and chills
And It would be good to make condition builds have acces to bleeds, poison, fire, confusion, terror and torment additionally

I support this suggestion.

While I can see the benefit of removing DoT conditions from non-condition builds, it will only reduce the problem a little, not fix it. You have to think about what happens the moment Anet makes condition builds better in groups. If Anet improves things using what has been suggested here, more players will start to use condi builds again, which in turn will make things worse again, as the hard hitting condition builds will be competing with each other once again.

The big problem is, that it only takes 2 condition builds present for each player’s condition damage output to be negatively effected. For example, I can achieve 25 stackes on my thief, on my own. So ANY additional bleeds will reduce my damage output. Two thieves using similar builds will cut each others damage in half. Yes, the small DoTs from non-condition builds makes it worse, but removing them is not a fix.

All the while there is a stack limit and the ability for 1 player to reach that limit, condi builds will fail in groups. The only way condition builds will be fully effective in groups is if they remove the stack cap completely, or at least make the cap per person rather than per mob (which I do not think will happen) or rework conditions in a major way (which would take a long time).

Personally, I think Anet shot themselves in the foot with this system. They designed skills to allow players to build a lot of stacks but forced a relatively small stack limit. The stack limit is perfectly fine for 1 player, 2 at a push, so the fact we have a limit only suitable for 1-2 players, in a game that encourages large zergs to work together, seems very poor design IMO. Sorry to say it, Anet, but thats how it looks to me.

Condition builds are essentially solo builds, because any other player can reduce your effectiveness. I run one in sPvP and WvW occasionally, but I use my berserker build far more often, because it simply isn’t negatively impacted on by others.