Guild Wars 2

I just had an idea that might solve the issue of boon and condition stacking as well as condition cleanse problems on builds AND perhaps server tracking and issues. The idea came to mind regarding the numerous complaints about the condition meta and it hit me…

“Might giveth strength, Weakness taketh away…. holy skritt those two should cancel eachother out.”

And that is exactly what my idea is. For almost every boon/condition there is a boon/condition that will overwrite or nullify it. But whats even better is that with this idea you can make everything stack in intensity which is more balanced in my eyes. I’ll describe what I am talking about.

In a recent thread I offer a cleaned version of a condition that reduced boon duration. I figured that if each condition and boon worked that way, that some of the more overly effective ones via constant application or stacking would get “humbled” by chopping some into 25 bits while allowing their full effect to be exceeded well before the stacks hit 25 and blah blah blah. ONTO THE REVAMPED CONDITIONS AND THE REST OF THE THREAD! And just so everyone is clear here….

What this thread is meant to accomplish.

• Break the condition and boon wall meta into a more malleable form.
• Address certain condition issues that prevent the meta from budging.
• Allow boon spam to continue while providing enough counterplay to make tweaks non-impacting and available.
• Spur creativity to get some more condition/boon ideas into this game.

Revamps

• Might – +2% damage and condition damage per stack. (instead of stat increases)
• Protection – +1.5% incoming damage per stack. (instead of a flat 30%)
• Regen – Regenerate a tiny amount of health per stack per second. (Amount healed = 0.02 x Healing Power x # of stacks)
• Fury – +1% chance to critical hit per stack. Fury emits Ire after 15 or more stacks. (20% from the getgo is a bit much)
• Vigor – +4% stamina regeneration per stack. (instead of a flat 100%)
• Stability – Is removed if affected by a control effect. Stability stacks can only be applied once. Stability can not stack further until Stability is removed. (basically Defiant for players)

• Blind – +3% chance to deal only 66% of your attack’s damage and +1.5% chance to Miss per stack. (instead of the miss but remove on hit)
• Chilled – -2% movement speed and skill recharge per stack. (-66% is just shutdown material and severely limits its use in this game)
• Confusion – +2% chance to deal 33% of your skill’s damage to yourself or a friendly. (the confusion in this game is crazy lol)
• Fear – -1% chance to deal a critical hit. Fear becomes Terror and causes Involuntary Retreat for 3 seconds when stack hits 25.
• Vulnerability – +1.5% incoming damage per stack.
• Weakness – -2% outgoing damage and +3% chance outgoing conditions are not applied. (again glancing blows hold this back)

So now that we’ve established the changes I will provide you with the interactions with a craptastic MSPaint picture I put together to show what happens between them. Enjoy and feel free to give your ideas and critique. TL;DR is bolded.

If anyone wants to know my reasoning behind a few of these…

Retaliation against retaliation is a standoff, therefore negation.

If you are confused and someone hits you, it might take a second but you realize “Hey! You were the enemy that was hitting me earlier! Prepare to die again!” therefore override. Likewise, “Stop booping me! OW!… What was I doing again?” therefore also override.

Lvl 5 Fury = “Stop moving, midget!” Lvl 10 = “I am going to eat your soul!!!” Lvl 15 = (red hot, also foaming at mouth) therefore melting ice. :P Hatred is such a strong emotion.

Burning <~> Chilled Because pokemon said so.

Aegis?
Poison?
Torment?

Interesting proposal.

I’m curious as to what the potential performance enhancement/lag this system would cause. If this did cause an increase in performance, how much can the AoE cap be raised and still have same/better performance than what is current?

I think one thing to look at is that in PvE boon stacking is meta, conditions are not desired. Of course boss mechanics could change. I would hate to have boss mechanics change so that only certain classes are preferred in a particular dungeon.

WvW has boons dominating zerg play and conditions dominating roaming.

Poison wouldnprob be the opposte of healing like -.02% healing plus damage. Aegis i think would give % chance to block and should be reomved on hit.. I like this idea hetter then the current system hut it would take alot of time to rebalance every single class skill becauae some of them migh be to strong or weak

It’s definitely worth trying out by the devs, although it seems a bit complicated right now (maybe its just the fact that I just woke up and am having trouble thinking) it’s a cool and creative idea.

For instance if u have 25 stacks of might thats 50% damage so it would have to be like .8% per stack or something

Hmmm i’m not too sure putting more RNG into the combat scene is a good idea. % chances to block, and % chances of to miss on blind really either makes it useless, or impractical to utilize skillfully, which doesn’t reward skillful use of blinds, and blocks. Also every class will need to have some major changes on utility, traits, weapon skills to accommodate the new stacking boons and conditions. The idea is pretty cool though for boons and conditions to cancel each other out, but it’s going to complicate balance, and make some professions much much weaker than intended.

Still trying to wrap my head around the idea.

I’ll come of and just say this seems overly complicated. There are also other mechanics I don’t see touched on such as boon stripping and cleansing that might have altered application under these changes. Also, poison, aegis and other things aren’t touched on at all. Vigor seems to have no place on your chat too. I also agreed with the % chance thing being too prominent in your suggestion. It’s not bad to have a few chance occurrences but you have quite a few.

Don’t get me wrong, not trashing you idea, but more collaboration and discussion is always fun with stuff like this.

Mystogan.4157:

For instance if u have 25 stacks of might thats 50% damage so it would have to be like .8% per stack or something

The reason why I did it the way I did is because I expect the meta to get pushed more into the boon/condition spam meta. If you have craploads flying off at once, +50% damage is going to go away quickly.

Another thing is it helps with a supportive role. If you keep applying boons, you are essentially helping cleanse conditions.

Swamurabi.7890:

stuff

I left them because Aegis and Poison really don’t need much of a change for this to work. Torment I am clueless about but you can definitely add stuff. For example I wanted to put an interaction related to Stealth in but it was too late for me to stay awake. It worked out like this:

Perception – Stealthed targets become tranlucent.

Perception <~~~ Negates ~~~> Blind

This would require so much rebalancing of … like, everything.

I think this is a very bad idea. For multiple reasons. To start, the back end processing to keep up with what is canceling what, particularly with multiple opponent fights would increase from where it is now.

Cleaned up the thread a little bit. Please refrain from personal attacks and stay on topic. Thanks! =)

You nerf all boons and conditions suggested, but buffs might? Currently 25 stacks of might improve dps by 20~30% on (low and high power builds) and this suggestion would increase it to a flat 50% dps increase on all builds. Protection, fury, vigor nerfed into nothing. The 4% increase on stamina is one each dodge every 20 dodges and that is with permanent vigor. Fights do not long enough to see any benefit from that. A majority of the boons/condition stack suggested are not spammable. This suggestion does not take into account condition removals. You have to understand why the current system works this way before you try to change it.

I do understand how the current system works. Just because it works does not mean it doesn’t have issues.

For example, most of the really powerful conditions like Chilled and Weakness are placed on such a short duration or long cooldowns that their presence is only impactful when it is covering other conditions to block their removal. Application also feels pointless which removes utility from the skill that gives it. That completely defeats the original purpose of those conditions which makes it a good example of bad design.

But the short durations are justified because they are good. 66% reduction in speed and increase in cooldowns is shutdown material, like I said. 50% reduced damage on a single condition is big. Immunity to anything is big.

And as for easily applied boons and conditions like might and bleeding, allowing weakness to be applied as much as might with this system in place will balance the might stacking meta out, make weakness more accessable by nerfing it enough to allow room for growth and giving weakness another purpose instead of being a brick in the condition wall.

Necro and every other condition spec gains a much more supportive role in everything by stripping the boon walls away. Guards become more supportive by keeping seas of conditions from drowning players. But more importantly, the can move on like it is supposed to and builds can open up because everyone doesn’t have to rely on heavy condition removal. They already got kittenloads.

yolo swaggins.2570:

• Stability – Is removed if affected by a control effect. Stability stacks can only be applied once. Stability can not stack further until Stability is removed. (basically Defiant for players)

Really? Do you want more stun fest? No thanks. My Necro is annoying enough with lack of stability/invisibility/invul/blocks, I don’t want this to my other characters as well.

Also, I don’t liked the idea overall, this will change the game play too much. What the game needs is fixes, not a full revamp. And they should begin with the traits there are useless for all classes. Then utility and weapons. This will open a lot of variety to builds and new viable options to use, making the game a lot more fun.

I like this idea A LOT.

I made nearly the exact same suggestion quite a while ago. Added in new boons and conditions to make sure the system was durationXduration and stackXstack and so that no boons or conditions would be left out of the system. Though I never figured out what to do with bleeding, or the more recently added torment, but I’ve worked on it since then.

Might = Now only increases power damage, still stacking
Quickness = Is now considered a boon and found somewhat more commonly.
Confusion = Still stacking, but now the stacks ‘pop’ in a similar way to blind, dealing damage and removing themselves when you use an ability. So mechanically they are equivalent to a duration condition like blind.
Volatile = Duration, pops when you are first hit while it is active, dealing a burst of condition damage.
Ward = Stacking, deals light pow damage around you per stack, max 3 targets.
Fury = Still flatly increases critical chance by 20%, but is also stacking, increasing critical damage by 1% per stack.
Unerring = Stacks in duration, but pops on attack like blind, your next attack is unblockable.

Might x Vulnerability
Quickness x Chilled
Protection x Burning
Regeneration x Poison
Retaliation x Confusion
Stability x Immobilize
Swiftness x Cripple
Vigor x Weakness
Aegis x Volatile
Ward x Bleeding
Fury x Torment
Unerring x Blind

Fear would be the only condition to remain the same

Additionally, while not necessary changes to implement the system I’ve always thought protection should work at 25% in PvP, or possibly at all times. And that Chilled should only affect skill use, not movement speed as that makes it overlap with two other conditions which only affect movement speed.

Also, as per this system, because might no longer affects condition damage, conditions would no longer need to update their damage every second, saving a crapton of server resources and helping with conditions technical problems. Though condition damage in general would probably need a buff, in PvE especially, but certainly in PvP in the case of some classes.

Some of these ideas show such bias that you can always tell the main, because the suggestion clearly hamstring other professions. No one desires a boon/antiboon or debuff/antidebuff system. A system in which boons and condition work independently, is both more dynamic and less system intensive. As well, I prefer to avoid the bad design suggestions that clearly benefit a specific profession or two,

coglin.1867:

Some of these ideas show such bias that you can always tell the main, because the suggestion clearly hamstring other professions. No one desires a boon/antiboon or debuff/antidebuff system. A system in which boons and condition work independently, is both more dynamic and less system intensive. As well, I prefer to avoid the bad design suggestions that clearly benefit a specific profession or two,

There’s no way of showing that to be true, and I know it isn’t at least in my case. My suggestion for example pretty heavily favors power builds, what with three new sources of power damage and the removal of might affecting conditions.

But I play condition damage almost exclusively, of all five of my eighties, I have power builds on two, and multiple boon/condition builds on every single one. I just spent nearly forty gold last week finally getting a power build for my Ele that I thought I would like, and then salvaged every piece of it two days later, because it just wasn’t any fun compared to my condi and boon builds.

There are play differences and technical constraints between stats that you can’t ignore, regardless of how you want to play.

The idea is cool, but the application seems super tough. There are a million and one ways to grant might, but weakness is nowhere near as prolific. Suddenly, the might stack player can shrug off my weakness because I can only apply 1 instance of it to him/her while they are blasting away to renew might. The same type of trouble exists with the Protection <—> Vulnerability interaction.

This would also make the mesmer and necro skills that interact with boons/conditions some combination of worthless (PU now grants almost nothing, Phantasmal Warlock becomes a dice roll) and way OP (Putrid Mark lands and your well-booned opponent is made harmless, 25s CD vs Corrupt Boon’s 40s or Well of Corruption’s 40s, and the Mark doesn’t need to wait for pulses). How would Null Field even work?

The amount of rebalancing (heck, remaking in the case of some skills) that this would require makes me really, really not like the idea overall.

Right now there are a million and 1 ways to grant might. Since the current design of the system allows it to run rampant, weakness being as scarce as it is would not really impact the might meta. Maybe shave it but not really affect it.

But then people would start seeing use in s/x – SB thieves and mace warriors as well as complain about the lack of access to weakness to counteract the might spam. Even if this would be an implementation hell both sides will eventually settle to the point where all it requires is a few tweaks and polishing.

And yes, I am one of those few who still has full faith that anet will get it right (even if it takes a few tries).

But does it make any sense to you? That’s all I care about.

The basic premise of your suggestion is sound, but completely remaking a boon or condition (like fear) is very very bad.

Stand The Wall.6987:

The basic premise of your suggestion is sound, but completely remaking a boon or condition (like fear) is very very bad.

Then how would you suggest to fix that issue?