Guild Wars 2

Hi all!

As it stands, I feel condition damage is over the top. You either spec heavily into condi-removal, or die easily against a condi-heavy class. Even still, a half decent engineer or necromancer can often put so much repeated pressure on you, cleansing may not be enough.

Yet, on the other hand, in PvE condition damage is the ugly duckling compared to direct damage. PvE often revolves around killing quickly, which a direct damage dealer does best.

Something that always struck me as ‘unfair’ is that a condition player can spec heavily into passive sustain through base stats while retaining incredible damage potential through condition damage. You need just that one stat to do high-very high damage, albeit over time.

Now, compare this to a player that uses PVT (power toughness vitality) gear. This player will do very low damage, as he lacks the other two stats that are fundamental to a direct damage build. One can argue that he was not speccing for damage in the first place, hence the choice for PVT. But the player that uses Dire gear (condi toughness vitality) will inflict very high damage.

Stick with me.

We need other stats to be way more important to you as a condition player, just as critical damage and precision are to a direct damage dealer. Don’t even start about precision for condi builds as it is now, because you can easily forgo the stat entirely and still do incredible condition damage (just not as much, but still more then enough).

In an ideal world, PVT gear would do a little less damage over time then CVT gear, while having better burst potential (as far as you can talk about burst on a PVT player). Right now, both are highly in favor of CVT.

It actually goes the other way around as well. Rampager gear should be the condition damage equivalent of Berserker gear (because you sacrifice the same survivability), with the same difference as I mentioned with PVT/CVT (lower spike damage, higher sustained). To accomplish this, condition damage needs a big nerf, where power and precision need buffs (to condition damage based builds).

Which brings me to the suggestion.

Make condition damage less potent the more stacks your opponent has, where power grows stronger regarding conditions. For example (I did not invest time into numbercrunching, as I’m no good with that), if you just spec condi damage and get 2k base, your first bleed will tick 130, second 120, third 110, etc. Now, if you spec into Power as well, that number will decrease more slowly, and in the case of Rampager remain almost constant. Precision can be used in a similar way as it is now, to obtain a slight condition burst and more ways to apply stacks (proc on crit).

If it worked this way, in PvP, condition specs would have to make a choice between being tanky with mediocre damage (like PVT users) or being incredibly dangerous while being in incredible danger (like berserkers).
Whereas in PvE, condition dealers would add good DPS to the group, just like a direct damage dealer does, without becoming as cheesy as condition tanks are in PvP right now. Hell, your group would even lose out on DPS potential not taking a rampager with you.

Again, I did not crunch numbers on this. Overall, condition damage needs a slight nerf IMO, just as direct damage is getting in March. But a Rampager should be able to deal as much damage over a longer period of time as a Berserker, the Berserker just has greater spikes (and lower sustained DPS).

If this has been suggested already, /ignore. Otherwise, feedback?

Please do the math and you will see, that you are wrong, with your assumptions.

Unfortunately, conditions do nowhere near the sustained DPS berserkers do. As you said at the end of your post, you haven’t crunched numbers, please do, and you’ll see some frankly remarkable differences. Granted, zerkers don’t often get apply this DPS due to either keeling over themselves, or flattening the opponent, either one in a few seconds.

As a I main a necro, I whole understand your argument about ramapagers being tankyish – more so than the average zerker anyway, but then again they also do way less damage, and the tank is usually an inherent point of the class or the trait points. Additionally, rampagers gear is quite squishy in the grand scheme of things, they perhaps feel harder to kill because they apply damage from range and, usually if they can kite you all day long with cripple applied, they will.

With the way things currently stand, if conditions get nerfed, all you’ll see are direct damage builds, at which point everyone will run zerker and it’ll become a boring game of who can spike the most damage out in WvW and PvP, just as the meta currently is in PvE. Which is a depressing prospect at best…

Demaciaa.2380:

Unfortunately, conditions do nowhere near the sustained DPS berserkers do.

Not really relevant when battles are won/lost in a matter of seconds in PvP situations, in which condition builds often have the advantage due to being able to attain maximum condition damage and bunker-like stats simultaneously (more-so in WvW via dire gear). On top of that, numbers aren’t everything when considering the invaluable utility that a lot of conditions grant. How much superior is a power build’s DPS when they have a high uptime of weakness on them? Or are blinded during their burst? Or have trouble actually hitting their target due to long durations of cripple and/or chill?

There is a very noticeable imbalance between the two types of build in PvP, whereas PvE is the opposite, as it actually does center more around DPS (bosses, etc).

Conidtion damage MAKE ME RAGE. It should not be I WIN, who ever made conidtion damge this way really ruined this game. and the guy who thought DIRE set was good idea needs fireing.,

You can remove condition damage and take far less.
Power based damage is going to hurt you period.

Condition damage SHOULD have the highest POTENTIAL for damage but be at much greater risk of being cleansed leaving you with lower damage. It is as it should be (with minor tweaking).

The problem with conditions is not dmg itself, but the facts that:
- conditions usually have some controll effects while direct dmg doesn’t
- conditions are usually applied by spammable AA, aoe that stays there for a while etc. while direct dmg can be dodged
- conditions require only 1 stat in many cases to be already effective where for direct dmg you need 2 stats at least
- condition is not affected by toughness/protection

i made a thread a while ago proposing to change condition system itself which would be a buff to condis in pve and slight nerf to condis in pvp because it would require condi classes to run 2 stats but i got flamed by condi users so w/e

looking at the recent changes it seems like Anet wants us to play condi tanks… i guess it is quit game or join them heh

So I take it you never played a condition build in PVE? Especially those big events.

Your proposal is bad. What you need is a streamlining of conditions and condition removal, as well as a readjustment of condition duration buffs. Dont call for just nerfing an entire playstyle you struggle with.

Bombsaway.7198:

You can remove condition damage and take far less.
Power based damage is going to hurt you period.

Condition damage SHOULD have the highest POTENTIAL for damage but be at much greater risk of being cleansed leaving you with lower damage. It is as it should be (with minor tweaking).

Conditions should be split in two catagories, damage and utility. Utility conditions should be removable.
Condition damage shouldnt be removable, if it lands its going to guarentee damage. Just like the guarenteed damage of a direct-damage hit. Now you are free to far more closely balance DD vs cond. without having to account for crazy extremes.

And condition removal isnt a counter to taking damage, but a counter to healing debuffs, performance debuffs and movement impairing effects.

More would have to be done, rebalancing condition removal now that there is a smaller pool of conditions (no bleeds protecting cripples f.e.). Tweaking conditions to be affected by protection properly. Changes to how Condition Duration works and scales. Gear appropriate.
But conditions will keep doing more damage simply because its more predictable damage, and far less burst potential.
Allowing players to account, and take action agains the damage. Not to mention the limited stacking of DPS (more burn on top of a burn is more damage, but not more dps, the extra damage is only added after the first burn)

i think necro problem is confused with condi problem

This is the third thread that has the exact same point, they should be merged. Also, The title says PVX and conditions are certainly worse in both PVE and WvW then direct damage. PVE zerkers is obviously better, and in WvW a zerg has too many condition clears for conditions to matter.

Condition damage is bad in PvE, it is not even close to good.

The reason for this is largely because of the creatures themselves. They have enormous HP pools and lower Toughness, which makes them resilient to condition damage and more vulnerable to direct damage. Furthermore, the ease with which players can stack up 25 stacks of vulnerability exacerbates the situation significantly. Meanwhile in PvP scenarios this isn’t the case, and condition damage is actually hyper overpowered insofar as the ease with which it can be applied, the difficulty with which it can be removed, and the overall vitality/toughness ratios of a vast majority of builds.

It’s sticky, for sure, and something needs to be done, but it seems like a major overhaul is too expensive a task for ANet at this juncture. We may just have to endure it for awhile longer.

The poor Necromancer class is plagued by this issue, for instance. It is overpowered in PvP and underpowered in PvE, which prevents it from being changed for the better in either place because the balance team doesn’t want to split it if they can possibly avoid it due to player accessibility.

what if condition damage in traits was moved to the last trait? i.e. necro soul reaping is ds life pool + condition damage, guardian is virtue recharge rate + condition damage, etc..

that way, in order to still keep precision for the on crit procs some traits/sigils offer, they would need to sacrifice some condition damage to do so.

The idea of not being able to remove conditions but having them be toned down works but it would be a game altering event that would require numerous complex balances.

I just see no simple solution that doesn’t break the game. The issue is when you get ALL the conditions on you at one point in time in very large battles. But is that really different than getting everyone to focus fire you?