Guild Wars 2

Even though I main a crit dmg build in pve I mostly agree with the nerf to crit dmg as it seems anet is trying to make other builds more viable. However, one problem I’ve noticed in PvE is the way conditions are applied to an enemy. A pure condition build character gets screwed out of much of their DPS due to overwrites from other non-condi build players. Both duration and stacks. Because of the way conditions are applied in a group setting it makes the individual’s condition build FAR less effective as direct damage. You want to make other builds more viable PvE? Start with a condition overhaul. I understand that it would require a massive reworking in how the game keeps track of the individual’s damage output and duration numbers, but it’s desperately needed. Even if the game registers the highest duration as the set duration for all of a certain condition and/or the highest condition damage taking precedence for all the other stacks of a certain condition, no matter when or who is applying. Doing this would make condition builds more valued in pve as it would enhance other’s conditions that are “accidentally” applied through their basic rotations. Or just keeping track of everyone’s conditions separately. I’m just tossing ideas out there, I’m sure other people have much better suggestions.

Honestly I think every class should have been given their own specific type of condition from the start that would register completely independent of other classes. That might cut down on a lot of the overwrites at least in a small group setting with no double classes present.

I’ve considered giving each class individual conditions to stack up. But, doubling classes isn’t the only issue with this suggestion.

The response Anet has for condition damage has always been the same: “bandwidth”. Anet hasn’t raised or removed the condi cap due to bandwidth issues. Adding additional, class based conditions, bandwidth wise, is just a more complicated means of raising the cap. Likewise, personal conditions per player runs into the same bandwidth issue.

Having a superior condition replace an inferior one is also an interesting idea, but it runs into the bandwidth issue again. You see, to have a “superior” condition take precedence, it has to calculate this superiority against every stack of conditions present. So, every time a bleed is applied it must be compared to 25 different stacks of bleeding. Put multiple players causing bleeding in the same spot, and things can get crazy really quickly.

So far, the best idea I’ve come up with is to change how conditions are handled as a whole. Currently, every condition does a series of complex calculations every second, treating each “tick” as an individualized new attack. This means that, at each tick, the game has to re-acquire your player identity, re-acquire stats, re-calculate the damage that would be done with that condition, re-check the duration of each condition, re-check the stacking number of each condition, and perform an operation on the stacking number and duration, and then actually inflict the damage against the target. That is a whole lot of calculations each second.

What I would ideally like to see is each condition acquire its damage and player identity only once. If conditions were a self contained, simple operation that just subtracted HP each second instead of some kind of personal attack each second, then the amount of bandwidth required to process this info is a whole lot smaller. The changes to the nature of conditions would be slight, but IMO preferable to how conditions run now.

There are, however, two caveats with my own “best idea”. First is assigning credit and participation to events. That is easily done: just take some percentage of the tooltip’s listed condition damage, and apply that as credit via direction damage in events. The second caveat is that, to make this suggestion work, a whole lot of the game code would have to be rewritten. Once again, my ideas fall into the practicality hole: they’ll work, but they ain’t easy.

I think conditions – and boons – are simply much too common. I’d propose an overall change to both:

1. Less common. Much less common.
2. Much more powerful.

If I get crippled, it should be, well, crippling. Not something I circumvent with a teleport, a charge, simple swiftness or a cleanse.
If I get poisoned, my healing should falter.
If I bleed, I should be in immediate danger of dying.

However, if I work around the condition, I should have some assurance that it won’t immediately get reapplied.

Imagine for a moment if Bleed – a stacking condition – did the damage it currently deals at 25 stacks, per stack. However in turn, ~95% of applications are removed, especially all crit-procs (crit-proc or procced conditions are removed, period). Specific medium/long CD abilities would apply 1-3 stacks of bleeding for 4-6 seconds.

Oh, boon/condition duration/reduction food is ofc nerfed to ~5% then, and the traitline reduced to 15% total.

But in turn, everything is much much stronger. Swiftness should be a very brief but very noticeable burst of speed, Protection should be -50% or -66% damage, Might should be something like +5% or +10% damage per stack, etc etc. Fury should guarantee crits.

Carighan.6758:

I think conditions – and boons – are simply much too common. I’d propose an overall change to both:

1. Less common. Much less common.
2. Much more powerful.

If I get crippled, it should be, well, crippling. Not something I circumvent with a teleport, a charge, simple swiftness or a cleanse.
If I get poisoned, my healing should falter.
If I bleed, I should be in immediate danger of dying.

However, if I work around the condition, I should have some assurance that it won’t immediately get reapplied.

Imagine for a moment if Bleed – a stacking condition – did the damage it currently deals at 25 stacks, per stack. However in turn, ~95% of applications are removed, especially all crit-procs (crit-proc or procced conditions are removed, period). Specific medium/long CD abilities would apply 1-3 stacks of bleeding for 4-6 seconds.

Oh, boon/condition duration/reduction food is ofc nerfed to ~5% then, and the traitline reduced to 15% total.

But in turn, everything is much much stronger. Swiftness should be a very brief but very noticeable burst of speed, Protection should be -50% or -66% damage, Might should be something like +5% or +10% damage per stack, etc etc. Fury should guarantee crits.

Boons:
It sounds like a great idea but it would make support type builds nearly impossible to execute let alone in a unorganized group. The timing required would hard to achieve.

Conditions:
Cleansing ruins this idea since cleansing works after the condition is applied, so if you finally manage to place your single stack of bleed you’ve lost since it was cleansed afterwards. Also the more stacks you can place at the same time the more you gear towards a power/burst type of damage.

25 bleed stacks could turn into a “strong bleed” condition with the damage of the 25 stacks, so another 25 normal bleeds can be added (strong bleeds stack to 25 as well I guess :p)

Maybe applying burning to something already burning would cause a little power damage rather than extending the burn. Would lead to some interesting burst timings.

The control conditions are fine though, when they hit you at the wrong time it’s pretty devastating, especially when they cover up another condition.

Tim.6450:

Conditions:
Cleansing ruins this idea since cleansing works after the condition is applied, so if you finally manage to place your single stack of bleed you’ve lost since it was cleansed afterwards. Also the more stacks you can place at the same time the more you gear towards a power/burst type of damage.

Well obviously cleansing would largely be a thing of the past under such a system.
It exists, but in one dedicated ability/weapon per character (as in, either takes a utility/healing/elite slot, or an offhand weapon has two skills focused entirely around the idea and deals no other damage).

Non-self cleansing would exist only as a class-centric perk, say Guardians could do it but they’d have it as a Virtue so it uses up one of their three class mechanics slots.

Damaging conditions should be made unremoveable, and calculate their damage and duration when applied.
After that, it will simply run its inevitable course.

Just imagine how much easier damage balancing is going to be when not having to factor in such absurd extremes. And it would save the server on calculations.

But making conditions rare just kills the idea of a condition spec. Where you build on stacking conditions on your opponent, and then watching a bunch of numbers work their magic. Just like how a big crit number looks cool, even if it took a long channel, it just feels and looks cool. Thats part of the fun right there, the feedback on your attacks.
If i’d get just 1 bleed, even if its strong to compensate, itll just be far less interesting to play.

The problem is that each bleed in a 25 stack counts the same as 25 separate conditions in terms of pr second calculations.

And no other game do their DOT calculations as GW2 does, iirc. Most simply use stack size as a multiplier on the on application damage calc, and then apply said calculated damage each second no matter what changes on the part of the target or the attacker.

On GW2 however, every change in might on the attacker and so on is taken into account each second. When they say bandwidth they are likely not talking client to server as much as memory to CPU.

Honestly, the more i look at it the more GW2 feels like it was crafted by artists while GW1 was crafted by engineers. Meaning that GW2 looks and acts esthetically pleasing, but never seems to have taken computing constraints into account when designing core mechanics.

@Blood Red Arachnid, there’s a third caveat. You’d lose the mechanic of applying a condition and then boosting its damage via Might stacks. Worth can also be debated and etc. etc.

digiowl.9620:

And no other game do their DOT calculations as GW2 does, iirc. Most simply use stack size as a multiplier on the on application damage calc, and then apply said calculated damage each second no matter what changes on the part of the target or the attacker.

On GW2 however, every change in might on the attacker and so on is taken into account each second. When they say bandwidth they are likely not talking client to server as much as memory to CPU.

Not really.
WoW uses the same approach. Or rather, initially it didn’t (way way back in vanilla), and since then has steadily increased the number of effects which calculate in real-time. At one point they fully disabled DoT-snapshotting, but then returned it shortly after due to balance considerations.

It is once again heading out the door in WoD, so WoW will use fully-realtime stats on DoTs/HoTs, too.

Which… makes sense. It prevents stacking of proc effects for maximum DoT burst, though luckily GW2 has no mechanic to artificially extend DoT-duration like Unholy DKs have in WoW.

Proven.2854:

@Blood Red Arachnid, there’s a third caveat. You’d lose the mechanic of applying a condition and then boosting its damage via Might stacks. Worth can also be debated and etc. etc.

I wouldn’t call this a caveat, but a feature. As far as I can tell, making conditions depend on might only during their application will improve the game.

Carighan.6758:

digiowl.9620:

And no other game do their DOT calculations as GW2 does, iirc. Most simply use stack size as a multiplier on the on application damage calc, and then apply said calculated damage each second no matter what changes on the part of the target or the attacker.

On GW2 however, every change in might on the attacker and so on is taken into account each second. When they say bandwidth they are likely not talking client to server as much as memory to CPU.

Not really.
WoW uses the same approach. Or rather, initially it didn’t (way way back in vanilla), and since then has steadily increased the number of effects which calculate in real-time. At one point they fully disabled DoT-snapshotting, but then returned it shortly after due to balance considerations.

It is once again heading out the door in WoD, so WoW will use fully-realtime stats on DoTs/HoTs, too.

Which… makes sense. It prevents stacking of proc effects for maximum DoT burst, though luckily GW2 has no mechanic to artificially extend DoT-duration like Unholy DKs have in WoW.

That was the fundamental diffirence. WoW condition scaled on a power or spellpower stat. Additionally, without the snapshot, it would just keep extending the condition as it was.
So you needed to land the big condition once, with full procs, and then just make sure it didnt fall of. And it would keep benefiting from the big procs the whole fight.

Because even if it just took a snapshot and scaled for the duration, i dont see the problem. Hit for 10k instead of 8k due to procs instantly, or do 10k over 20sec instead of 8k due to procs. Same thing.

So id be a strong supporter of having conditions take a snapshot. Provided we dont have the problems WoW had where extending condition durations kept extending the damage.

Terrahero.9358:

That was the fundamental diffirence. WoW condition scaled on a power or spellpower stat. Additionally, without the snapshot, it would just keep extending the condition as it was.
So you needed to land the big condition once, with full procs, and then just make sure it didnt fall of. And it would keep benefiting from the big procs the whole fight.

Because even if it just took a snapshot and scaled for the duration, i dont see the problem. Hit for 10k instead of 8k due to procs instantly, or do 10k over 20sec instead of 8k due to procs. Same thing.

So id be a strong supporter of having conditions take a snapshot. Provided we dont have the problems WoW had where extending condition durations kept extending the damage.

You can get around that though by taking a snapshot of the total damage the condition would do (Damage X Time) when it is cast, then just dole it out of the course of the duration (Debit the snapshot each time damage is applied). If another condition gets applied that extends the time, you just add that snapshot to the remaining balance of the first and keep right on rolling. I actually had a post describing how this could work a while ago, but it got ignored. Here it is:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Condition-Damage-Getting-Rid-of-Stacks/first#post3506676

I’m not 100% aware of the details behind conditions, but…wouldnt it be possible to keep track of just ONe condition and only have it overwrite when the ONe condition is outbeaten in damage/duration (or some other similar precedence system)?

You could add effects that make conditions deal a moderate amount of direct damage (condition scaling ofc) when the cap is exceeded. I don’t see it changing PvP, but it would certainly make PvE conditions better.

The more i think about it the more i want to see ANet change mob scaling from health to toughness. This would decrease the effectiveness of individual contributions to a fight equally between direct damage and conditions as long as the hard cap on condition stacks remain.

digiowl.9620:

The more i think about it the more i want to see ANet change mob scaling from health to toughness. This would decrease the effectiveness of individual contributions to a fight equally between direct damage and conditions as long as the hard cap on condition stacks remain.

Interesting idea. As a further thought, boss enemies could be inherently “blocking” while not attacking themselves (like bosses work in many many games where you have to wait for an opening).

Idea for Condition Damage
- Ensures that damage overtime stays damage over time. (seriously, you really want me to deal a 10,000 damage all at once burst with Throw torch to someone? I’m not even going to mention the bleeds that many profession have access to in a conditoon build!)
- Doesn’t mess with crit procs, which is an essential part to many condition builds (and would just be stupid to remove that without also just getting rid of precision and just applying critical damage to power by default)

For Bleeding

• Let it stack like Normal on Veteran and below enemies, but on Elite, Champion, etc…..once it reaches 25 stacks, All 25 stacks are removed, and a new condition is applied called Deep Wound
• Deep Wound does a flat 2500 damage per second for 5 seconds, equalling 12500 damage. No calculations necessary in order to reduce server load, and the damage tick should show for everyone who contributed a stack of bleeding, though no one gets credit for that damage in their combat log.
• Deep Wound itself can stack 25 times(which is crazy if you can wrap your head around stacking 625 bleeds, even in a large zerg.)
• While a single stack of Deep wound wont deal as much damage as a bleed stacking profession, I think it is fair, because it allows more bleeds to be stacked, which is sorely needed.

For Burning and Poison

• Stacks normally on Veteran and below. Stacks in duration like normal.
• On Elites and Above, after 5 stacks of Burning Duration is applied (or whatever the maximum is), a new condition Searing is applied. For Poison, a new condition Venom is applied.
• Deals a flat 500 damage per second for both, and duration lasts until the respective weaker condition is removed or expires all its stacks in duration.
• Each additional stack of Burning and Poison increase the damage of their respective upleveled conditions by 1% up to a maximum of 1000% (max of 5500 additional damage per second). No calculations necessary in order to reduce server load (except for when the stronger condition gets additional stacks added on, and when the weaker condition ends, but since the damage flatly increases, there should be no additonal calculations, besides adding 5 damage each time anew stack of burning or poison is applied), and the damage tick should show for everyone who contributed a stack of burning or poison, though no one gets credit for that damage in their combat log.

Confusion

• If 25 stacks of Confusion are applied to Veterans and Above, then, like Bleeding, a new condition called Mind Shatter is applied.
• Mind Shatter deals a constant 2500 damage whenever enemy attacks for 5 seconds. No calculations necessary in order to reduce server load, and the damage tick should show for everyone who contributed a stack of confusion, though no one gets credit for that damage in their combat log.
• Mind shatter itself can stack 25 times, though its unlikely that even the largest of zergs can apply 625 stacks of confusion.
• Like Deep wound, it wont deal as much damage as 25 stacks of confusion, but it opens up the ability to deal more damage because more stacks of confusion can be applied.

Torment

• Same as Bleeding in every way. New stronger condition named Agony (why not?)
• Like Deep Wound, deals less damage than 25 stacks of torment (lets say 2000 per second, 4000 when moving), but gives the chance to apply more stacks. No calculations are really necessary like what would be needed to track 625 seperate stacks of the condition.

That idea seems interesting at first, though it would be highly confusing and add a lot of unnecessary effects.

Rather, one could simple remove all scaling and updates from the older bleeding stacks. Etc etc. Same effect, but less conditions to learn for newcomers and less arbitrary condition-changes happening in the bar.

How is it confusing? If you’re group reaches 25 stacks of bleeding, and a more powerful version of bleeding gets applied. You don’t even need to get confused or overwhelmed by that fact beyond “Bonus damage! Yay! I can apply more bleeds now instead of scratching my head wondering why I’m not seeing any of my bleeds dealing damage!”

Confusing in that a newcomer to the game will see a host of conditions on say the Shadow Behemoth. Just barely wrapping their head around the existent “normal” conditions.

It just feels like an unnecessary complexity when the same “removal of server-side updating” can be done on the existent stack.

By your half insulting logic, I sure hope Anet doesn’t introduce any more normal conditions or boons. Newcomers might become confused while playing a very complex MMO they are picking up for the very first time ever, because that totally doesn’t happen to someone who tries something new!

Chrispy.5641:

By your half insulting logic, I sure hope Anet doesn’t introduce any more normal conditions or boons. Newcomers might become confused while playing a very complex MMO they are picking up for the very first time ever, because that totally doesn’t happen to someone who tries something new!

While newcomers will grasp the concept eventually, I think that the “Deep Wound” type of bleed stack is needlessly complicated and causes all sorts of other issues (loss of DPS due to lack of Condition Damage calculation, etc). I don’t think any “new system” needs to be implemented to fix the condition damage issue, but rather that the current way of tracking conditions needs to be revised to be more technically efficient while retaining the current system’s simplicity.