Guild Wars 2

Hi all.
Condition damage seems to be the meta in PvP. It’s modified by condition damage and condition duration. The way stat combinations are, it’s far more likely to come with defensive stats like toughness, vitality, healing. Condition damage also bypasses all armor.

Another important characteristic of conditions is that ‘control’ conditions is also modified by condition duration. Thus, boosting expertise, aka condition duration, also enables the condition specced character to kite melee attackers around, wearing them down with long lasting damaging conditions at the same time. This leads to situations like 20s chill, perma cripple, 15s immobilise.

Contrast this with the power user. For maximum damage, one needs Power, Crit chance, and the recently nerfed crit damage. All these come conveniently bundled in the Berserker’s and Assassin’s stat combinations, but leave a lot to be desired in terms of defensive capability. The straight damage player will also need to withstand kiting, and the swath of damaging conditions that the condition user will be applying.

Another interesting characteristic of damaging conditions is as such: fractional ticks of damaging conditions do zero damage. 1.5s of burn, for instance, does the same amount of damage as 1s of burn. Stack 2 stacks of 1.5s burn, however, and you get a total of 3s of burn. This is all well and good, but this makes building a character turn into a series of condition damage breakpoints. Terrormancers, for example, may find the need to adjust their fear duration just to get the final tick of damage in. This makes certain builds sacrifice all in the pursuit of the ‘just right’ amount of condition duration, sometimes at the rest of the builds detriment.

Finally, conditions are just bad in pve when there are up to a certain amount of players. This is due to the 25 stack cap for the stackable damaging conditions, and the duration stacking conditions such as burn will do pitiful dps when divided amongst a group of even modest size.

Therefore, I would like to raise the following suggestions to balance conditions in PvP and PvE.

1. Condition duration increases no longer modify the duration of ‘control’ conditions. This does not include sigils and runes. This includes Cripple, Chill, Blind, Immobilize, Fear, Weakness. Effects which reduce condition duration, however, like food and runes, still work. This would reduce the amount of control pure condition specs have, and largely buff food in WvW, without reducing damage. Vulnerability should remain modified by condition duration; while it doesn’t do damage per se, neither does it apply a control effect on its target.

2. Fractions of ticks for condition damage apply when the effect expires. 1s burn for 900 dmg? 1.5s burn for 900 dmg on the first second, and 450 dmg when burn expires.

3. Conditions in PvE have been discussed to death, and I feel that giving players unique conditions on PvE mobs will be great. It may be difficult to code, but maybe doing it in phases will be good. Maybe individual poison stacks first to try out the code. Then experiment with bleed, a stacking condition. Then maybe burn. And so on and so forth.

In conclusion, I feel that these above suggestions will positively affect the game balance in all aspects: by nerfing control conditions, by slightly buffing condition duration to compensate (fractional ticks), and by increasing PvE viability of condition using specs.

Thoughts?

TL,DR: Suggestions to nerf control conditions, making fractional damage ticks of conditions count, and to start rolling out tech to allow individual stacking of damaging conditions in PvE.

I see a bunch of condi and direct dmg in PvP. I don’t think there is much balance needed there? Keep in mind that in sPvP is completely different that PvE. For exemple, sPvP crit dmg wasn’t affected by the crit nerf.

Now if you talk about PvE, then ya some balance need to be done.

I’m proposing balancing control conditions to not benefit from +condition duration, as high condition duration stat both increases a condi build’s control and damage

Catharsis.8571:

I’m proposing balancing control conditions to not benefit from +condition duration, as high condition duration stat both increases a condi build’s control and damage

But then you run into class design issues. For example for Mesmers, the spec lined giving +duration is based on binary effects, not damaging conditions.

How would you handle that? Resort it so the duration effect is always on the condition damage line?

Also, there’s the compound issue that PvP is already a direct-damage game. Conditions only “dominate” at low-levels of play: casual sPvP and solo roaming WvW.

You seem to forget that not all conditions are used by conditions build. If you prevent control condition to be affected by conditions duration power and crit build can be affected as well because some do use those conditions to their advantage especially weakness and vulnerability.

Condition is not meta in pvp but I do love seeing people who think they’re good enough for no cleansing or just don’t know about them. In pve removing the cap for intensity stacking conditions would improve gameplay but duration stacking ones are a bit tricky since the highest burn is form guardian, highest poison from ranger and fear only does damage on necro other ones would be useless.

Carighan.6758:

Catharsis.8571:

I’m proposing balancing control conditions to not benefit from +condition duration, as high condition duration stat both increases a condi build’s control and damage

But then you run into class design issues. For example for Mesmers, the spec lined giving +duration is based on binary effects, not damaging conditions.

How would you handle that? Resort it so the duration effect is always on the condition damage line?

Also, there’s the compound issue that PvP is already a direct-damage game. Conditions only “dominate” at low-levels of play: casual sPvP and solo roaming WvW.

I’d say it depends if you are passive or not and your jewel. The build I use on my condition guardian counter dps builds allowing me to be more aggresive and a rabid war is pretty common in PvP.

In order to make conditions viable in PvE:

1. Make condition damage scale with vulnerability
2. Make it possible to burst enormous amounts of conditions right off the bat to reach their cap of damage (berserker builds maxed on might can apply 20+ vuln in basically a second in a decent group and then you reach your optimal DPS right then and there)
3. Remove the cap

And there you go, conditions work.

However, while 1. is probably possible, 3. is highly unlikely because of technical issues with calculating condition damage and 2. just sounds insane (start a fight then go hey look 25 bleeds, burn, torment gogo).

Thaddeus.4891:

I see a bunch of condi and direct dmg in PvP. I don’t think there is much balance needed there? Keep in mind that in sPvP is completely different that PvE. For exemple, sPvP crit dmg wasn’t affected by the crit nerf.

Now if you talk about PvE, then ya some balance need to be done.

Not directly, but since 300 ferocity from traits no longer equaled 30% critical damage, they pumped the zerker amulet with more. It actually buffed critical damage in pvp, since there was less of a reason to trait for it, and the fact that strength runes are broken compared to other dps rune sets.

I thought the goal of the feature pack was to open up more viable rune sets, instead they seemed to of only added a few new choices and nerfed some others. I’d be willing to bet atleast 50% of the runes/sigils are still never taken.

Carighan.6758:

Catharsis.8571:

I’m proposing balancing control conditions to not benefit from +condition duration, as high condition duration stat both increases a condi build’s control and damage

But then you run into class design issues. For example for Mesmers, the spec lined giving +duration is based on binary effects, not damaging conditions.

How would you handle that? Resort it so the duration effect is always on the condition damage line?

Also, there’s the compound issue that PvP is already a direct-damage game. Conditions only “dominate” at low-levels of play: casual sPvP and solo roaming WvW.

I should explain. I am suggesting that if you get 30% condi duration from the power trait line, all damaging conditions get the full 30% condi duration boost, while the control conditions stay at 100% duration. I do not suggest moving the condi duration bonus to traits to any other traitline.

Catharsis.8571:

I should explain. I am suggesting that if you get 30% condi duration from the power trait line, all damaging conditions get the full 30% condi duration boost, while the control conditions stay at 100% duration. I do not suggest moving the condi duration bonus to traits to any other traitline.

But exactly that would be a problem. How do you handle it for classes where the line giving the +duration stat is the one dealing with control conditions?