Full disclosure, I main a condition Necro and play mostly WvW
Below are my observations on what problems exist with conditions as well as on the my beliefs about them and the beliefs people have about them.
There is a tl:dr; at the end if you want to skip my pontificating
Fire and Forget
One of the most frequently aired concerns about condition damage is that it encourages passive play. The most cited example is necro scepter autoattack This fully-specced build (same survivability as a zerker spec with knights) puts out a meager 1.2k per autoattack on a ten second countdown. Not only does this nowhere compete with other DPS specs, but it exactly encourages, not discourages, active counterplay by being aware of how many conditions bleed stacks you have on you for optimum cleanse and whether to dodge the poison at the end of the chain.
So what’s the problem?
For many people who think (for some classes rightly so) that condi specs have an unfair advantage on them, the problem lies in the actual passive play. Conditions that trigger on crit or on something that you would be doing anyways (in that build, the major offenders are Terror and Dhuumfire with an honorable mention to Mark of Evasion. These are high-damage skills that force attrition playstyles into dps/spike roles. Every condi class has them and without them they barely merit mentioning as viable builds.
What else?
Conditions are the most counterable mechanic in the game
Every class has access to at least two good condition clears with little investment. While some of these could do to have their effectiveness boosted, many are quite fair. But over half the classes have access to passive condition clears, which are explicitly the passive play which conditions themselves are accused of being. Two classes even have passive condition immunity, which make it impossible for full condition builds to damage them at all without team support.
What is the root of the problem?
There are two types of conditions in the game. Control and Damage
All condition counterplay treats these the same for fundamentally different pressures. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to simultaneously balance conditions intended to do the bulk of build’s damage with conditions intended to supply the bulk of a build’s control. Some builds are indifferent to control, but very weak to condition damage. Giving them the tools to mitigate the damage well make control obsolete. The converse can also be the case. As concrete examples: elementalists before Diamond Skin were very weak to condition pressure but had no problem escaping CC. Taking Diamond Skin gives them a hard counter to condition pressure, but also makes it impossible for pure condition specs to put the sorts of control effects (chill, cripple, fear, weakness) on them that they need to get them out of Diamond Skin.
tl:dr;
How would I fix it?
*Make two catagories of condition for the purposes of condition removal (much like how the thief healing skills currently work). For example: make berserker’s stance a resistance to damaging conditions only.
*Remove passive resistance to conditions (DS ele and AR engi).
*Remove all passive damaging condition application from the existing conditions builds.
*Worry about balancing once these root problems of passive play are corrected, though I suspect that this would go a long way towards solving most people’s issues with how conditions currently function.