Guild Wars 2

Sykper.6583:

I have no problems with conditions as they stand now, they are mechanically sound.

My problem is how easy it is to reapply the same conditions without any true downsides, the ease of going condition-spam (meaning tossing out the same damaging condition well before the enemy’s only mitigations against it are up) is too high.

Even slightly nerfing the cooldowns of certain commonly spammed skills by condition-based classes so that actual counter-play can exist outside of running Immunities or Cleanses would drastically improve GW2 for the better.

You have to clarify. Give examples of what you mean. Because as of now it sounds you wish to completely nullify condition damage. That might be a misconception on my part, but you don’t give much to work with.

Sykper.6583:

My problem is how easy it is to reapply the same conditions without any true downsides, the ease of going condition-spam (meaning tossing out the same damaging condition well before the enemy’s only mitigations against it are up) is too high.

You mean similarly to how easy it is to reconnect a direct damage attack after I dodged the previous one?

There is no difference. A dodged skill that applies a condition goes on cool down just like a heavier hitting direct damage attack, and cannot be reused until it is off CD. If a condi user blows thier CDs and applies several condition and you cleanse some or all of them, they are not magically reapplied at no cost. Those skills still have to cycle out of CD to reapply.

This entire concept of falsely crying spam, or complaining about reapplication is comparatively irrational, as the landing of a blow to apply conditions is required equivalently to the landing of a blow to do direct damage. Each condition skill has a set duration and/or stack associated with it. If you cleanse a stack of bleeds from one or two skills, and a player applies more bleeds from entirely different skills, it is no different from avoiding another players direct damage attack, just to have them swing with an entirely different direct damage attack and land it. Every condition applying attack has a limited max amount of damage it can cause, exactly like direct damage do.

To complain that a player used an entirely different skill to apply a condition that you just cleansed, makes no more sense then to complain that you avoided a hard hitting direct damage attack, and got hit by an entirely different direct damage attack after that. Your complaint in that regard makes no logical sense what so ever.

Perplexity demand may have shot up because necros can now make use of them, since Fear finally counts as an interrupt like it was supposed to from launch.

Not saying that is all of the reason why, but it is certainly a contributing factor.

I will ask again, between these two: Bursts and Conditions.

1. Which one of them do more damage?

2. Which one of them do you die more to?

3. Which one of them do you have more chances of surviving?

2 Years while maining a lesser ranger class, i can easily answer all them with both eyes closed.

1. Bursts.
2. Bursts
3. Bursts

There!!

Solutiion:

Remove all conditions from all classes excluding Necromancer, Engineer and Ranger.

End conditions free cards to undeserving classes.

End of complaints.!

Cogbyrn.7283:

If you block after taking direct damage, you still take the direct damage as well.

He’s talking about blocking the application of the condition.

You’re being obtuse.

Quit that, you know what he was saying. He wasn’t talking about application. If you really want it to be ~fair~ allow blocking to stop us from taking damage from active conditions (not including an active aegis application)

TyPin.9860:

Sykper.6583:

I have no problems with conditions as they stand now, they are mechanically sound.

My problem is how easy it is to reapply the same conditions without any true downsides, the ease of going condition-spam (meaning tossing out the same damaging condition well before the enemy’s only mitigations against it are up) is too high.

Even slightly nerfing the cooldowns of certain commonly spammed skills by condition-based classes so that actual counter-play can exist outside of running Immunities or Cleanses would drastically improve GW2 for the better.

You have to clarify. Give examples of what you mean. Because as of now it sounds you wish to completely nullify condition damage. That might be a misconception on my part, but you don’t give much to work with.

Certainly. I’ll point at the elephant in the room, Condi-Nade.

Whether people like it or not, Condition-Nade Engineer is probably the prime example of a build whose purpose is to dismantle someone with constant AoE bleeding and burning, amid other cooldowns that can invoke blinding, freezing and even poison. Of course, Poison Grenade was nerfed for the pulse level due to being able to literally stack a minute of poison on someone, but skipping that for now the condition nade build has the following pay-offs:

- Strong AoE Pressure, mostly UNAVOIDABLE AoE pressure. You can mitigate / dodge out of the freeze, the poison, the tool belt skill burst. Whatever you decide it scarcely matters since pending on what the condiengineer is running, the basic nades can inflict bleeding, vulnerability, and/or burning at the same time.

Three different conditions from what is considered an auto-attack, not just any auto-attack but an AoE ground-targetted attack at melee or range. Which goes on to my next point….

- Layers of conditions. Most people here can figure out how to deal with one or two damaging conditions, but once you start applying more conditions than what can be mitigated or cleansed, the roller coaster descends into a cesspool. This is why pre-update Burning Guardians and even older, Confusion Mesmers were rather impotent, their single condition for nuking condition damage was nullified by a single cleanse.

Whereas a Necromancer with a staff utilitizes the full bar to inflict potentially the book of conditions onto someone, and epidemic and all hell breaks loose under ideal circumstances. Fortunately ideal circumstances don’t quite apply all the time which is why I am not complaining about them, but what Necromancers have is rather balanced, long cooldowns for abilities that can literally turn a fight around if they land.

On the other hand, we have CondiNade ravaging someone without a single break. There is no moment where said engineer can only get one condition on you to cleanse and then attempt to counter, it is CONSTANT, non-stop conditions, each effect rending you apart. Where is the opening? Do you rush down the engineer? Oh right, that won’t work since the ground-targetted AoE of the attack will nail you with every hit, invoking duration/intensity stacking of untold levels! It is literally in the CondiNade engineer’s favor for you to get close to him. So that takes care of every melee build…I guess we can range him down- Magnet. Oh right, A nade engineer isn’t just about the kit, its the entire profession bent on utility.

To be fair, I am not just ranting about Nadegineers, they are just the best illustration of what spammable conditions entails. PU Mesmers, the still existing Condi-Hambow (Seriously…), a certain necro build…I could probably name some more, but I think you catch my drift.

My point is that conditions are fine as they are now, many other professions and builds have conditions that synergize well with what they are doing. There has just got to be more weaknesses, or even difficulties in playing a build that invokes some passive power.

There is a difference in counter-play when you dodge a killshot and when you dodge grenade barrage at close proximity. The killshot took a lot to set-up, likely would have downed you if it hit but it takes a LOT to land correctly. The grenade barrage would have made you cry with intense bleeds and a long burn, but you wouldn’t die yet. Not to mention you have wasted a dodge, your opponent still has Poison Grenade, Blinding Nade, Shrapnel Grenade, and normal nades to pepper you with, and you do not have NEARLY enough anti-condition.

The issue with grenades is not so much the conditions. You have to remember that they scale extremely well with power. You could remove every bit of damage from grenades (which is weird that players feel they are such a strong condition weapon since only 2/5 grenades do condition damage) and engineers will destroy just as well or faster with direct damage builds.

It is funny because for the first year or more of this game all everyone complained about was the direct damage of grenades. Then when players shifted to the “condition meta” (even though no direct damage was nerfed and no conditions were buffed) for some reason, a lot of grenade engineers did also. Yet grenades have a higher direct damage out put capability then a condition damage out put capability. And in the last update 1 of only 2 damaging condition of grenades took a very large nerf of 40%.

If you truly think grenades are such a threat based on condition damage, then you truly do not know enough about the kit at all if you ask me.

TyPin.9860:

lazycalm.5186:

I also don’t get why they can’t make balance changes more often. If it’s broken, if players give accurate feedback regarding balance, why not fix it and release it in at least a week?

The problem is, players don’t give accurate feedback. I mean take this forum as an example. Many players show, that they do not correctly understand mechanics. And ANet is supposed to listen to this?

No, they have to do their own tests. And this takes time. Condition damage is prevalent these days, because many players don’t know how to counter them and/or run selfish builds (Not all of them, but many).

Or how about, ya know, the developers do the job that they are paid to do…

Swagger.1459:

Or how about, ya know, the developers do their job that that are paid to do…

I thought that is precisely what they were doing by ignoring all of the irrational complaining about condition damage. They see almost every poster here makes some unfounded general complaint without offering a shred of evidence or reasonable argument for their opinion. As well they read all of the rude comments making implications as Anet employees, after they specifically stated that they ignore feedback from those who make such comments.

Thus, by ignoring your comments based on those perimeters, they are very specifically doing their jobs.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Swagger.1459:

Or how about, ya know, the developers do their job that that are paid to do…

I thought that is precisely what they were doing by ignoring all of the irrational complaining about condition damage. They see almost every poster here makes some unfounded general complaint without offering a shred of evidence or reasonable argument for their opinion. As well they read all of the rude comments making implications as Anet employees, after they specifically stated that they ignore feedback from those who make such comments.

Thus, by ignoring your comments based on those perimeters, they are very specifically doing their jobs.

It’s not the players job to reevaluate, fix, maintain and improve this game. Those responsibilities fall on the shoulders of the ones who get paid to do it.

dancingmonkey.4902:

The issue with grenades is not so much the conditions. You have to remember that they scale extremely well with power. You could remove every bit of damage from grenades (which is weird that players feel they are such a strong condition weapon since only 2/5 grenades do condition damage) and engineers will destroy just as well or faster with direct damage builds.

It is funny because for the first year or more of this game all everyone complained about was the direct damage of grenades. Then when players shifted to the “condition meta” (even though no direct damage was nerfed and no conditions were buffed) for some reason, a lot of grenade engineers did also. Yet grenades have a higher direct damage out put capability then a condition damage out put capability. And in the last update 1 of only 2 damaging condition of grenades took a very large nerf of 40%.

If you truly think grenades are such a threat based on condition damage, then you truly do not know enough about the kit at all if you ask me.

I didn’t mention the power aspect because I know all too well how effective Berserker Nades were. There were quite a few videos, I have friendly memories of 100 nades….

That said, I agree that the power aspect of each nade does tack on quite a bit of damage in very small chunks, and I could even argue power nades are still viable even with the new changes.

But you can at least influence power nades with toughness and protection, there are no such options with condition nades. And remember my other point? Layers. There are so many conditions an engineer can output in a short amount of time, with little warning (I suppose different grenades shine or glow differently, but they are flying AT you while the attack is going off, bit late eh?). Poison, Blind, Bleeding, Burning, Vulnerability, Chill….

Of course if you want to play it smart and run something like Lyssa and cleanse all those if in the ‘oh crap’ instance you are nailed with all of them, you are given at most 25 seconds before the LAST cooldown of the nade kit is off-CD. But again think about how kitten ing the condition Chill is to a fight, go ahead ask ANY elementalist how much they love being chilled.

@Swagger.1459
Dude, you have lost perspective. Nobody said that players need to balance the game. The developer offered the possibility to give well argued feedback and they might take it into consideration. In this context clouded and insulting comments will be ignored, that is only natural.

@Sykper.6583
I actually have never really played engineer. I had lately some problems against engineer condition builds in WvW. However, I have, after asking the engineer community for advice, adapted my play style and it works way better now.

Agreed, that you never know, which of the red circles is the dangerous one, and which can be ignored. However, best is to avoid them all. Not always possible with every profession.

However, I have made myself a Shattered Conditions Build with Power Mesmer. And it is awesome, I am practically immune to conditions, if I play it out right. It also helps against immobilize, cripple and chill very well

But even without this admittedly superb condition remove, I have fought condition builds with null field and Mender’s Purity only and it was fine, when you know when to cleanse. I see people panic, when they are “condition spammed” and waste their condition cleanse. However, what happened in most of those cases was the simple fact, that the condition loading had just begun and wasn’t dangerous at this moment. But the amount of low stack conditions seem so threatening, that people cleanse them too early and then wait through the cool down, while the actual peak loading is still to come.