Guild Wars 2

I’ve been reading a lot of condition related forums and i’ve noticed that a bunch of people were frustrated by the fact that condition is something you cannot respond (or prepare) to as easily as raw damage.

When stacks of condition are applied you have no way to find out how much the bleed or burning will eat away your hp bar.

In the heat of dueling, and i think most of us will agree, we are forced to bet our condi-remove or heal (in higher lvl pvp, it does becomes your second nature to estimate the condition damage but its still very hard) against the x stacks of x condition damage depending on their type..

This uncertainty, (very detrimental in especially pvp setting) does throw people off their feet and leave them feel manipulated and powerless.

And I do agree with people that condition is something that is very easily abused to people who are just entering into the system

And here are my two suggestion.

1. Bringing up the awareness of how condition mechanism gains its power overtime at the early stage of entering gw2. This will help people to be prepared to react to it in more competitive setting later on.

As a person who exclusively play pvp and some of dungeons, i may be wrong, but i have to say that, in early level of pve, people do not get to experience as much conditions as they do later on.

And of course yes it has to do with learning curve. However, with the pvp available at any level, people are thrown into this vicious system of battle with full of cc, conditions etc. and no wonder they feel abused. And its not only the enemy, their teammates are yelling at them, calling them noobs n.. Anyway, ive been there so i know how it feels.

Introducing conditions at earlier stage of pve and educating them how to counter it will definitely lessen the outcry from the community.

2. Remove the uncertainty.

Simply show in the hp gage, how much hp you will lose if you don’t counter the condition either by removing them or use heal earlier in the course of the battle. Inform them beforehand they find themselves with 20hp with 5 stacks of torment. In this way, players no longer have to guess before using heal or condi remove. or find themselves with no hp and a necro running after you (although they are pretty easy to run away from)

Simply informing the player how much health the conditions will eat away will lessen the power of conditions, thus satisfying the community without necessarily nurfing the conditions.

Chill effect on skill bars are great. Why can’t we carry this idea further with poison(green tint on heal skill), bleed, burning, confusion(purple tint on the skill bar) and torment?

Sorry if there are few grammar mistakes. I am on my iphone and i have no mental power to go back to proofread and correct my writing.

I am interested to hear other peoples idea to couter condi meta without nurfing the condi damage, considering it will affect most all of the classes big time.

What do you guys think?

They need to be extremely toned down in sPvP. Either that or some of them need to be removed from the game. There’s no need to have 6 different conditions on you at the same time. Why make it so complicated. I’m sorry but I really don’t think that by letting people be more aware of conditions earlier in the game in “PvE” that it will fix anything at all. Conditions in PvE are useless as is and thus generally ignored even in endgame PvE.

Condition may be neglected in pve, but it is not in pvp. 7 out of 8 classes except guardian (they just have a lot of burning. Hmm) have condition build, and i would say they are as important and potent as dps builds.
If so why is there this huge condition gap between pve and pvp? Why cant we bring this system into the pve and in return maybe tone down dps a little or increase the reward?
And the fact that there are a lot of different type of conditions give each class its character. It should be celebrated that there are many conditions in the game.
Imagine gw2 with just bleed condition. Not only it will stack up instantly from 0 to 25 because everyone will be stacking the bleed onto each other, the game will be Boring

Your second idea is pretty neat, having a more visual indication of how much HP you stand to lose what the conditions of you.

In any case, I think most of the problem lies with sPvP as a game mode, rather than with specific builds. PvP completely encourages and rewards a bunker + area control/denial playstyle, which is exactly what most condition builds do. Its not really anything to do with the conditions themselves being OP, just that in that game mode that playstyle is OP.

Noone runs around shouting direct damage is OP because its the only thing worth using in PvE, because its not OP, its just that gamemode is broken to only reward one playstyle which is best fullfilled by direct damage.

When I roam in WvW I find a delightful mix of everything. Thieves and warriors usually (but not always) are direct damage, engis are usually condition based, mesmer can be either, guardians tend to bunker or go full DPS, rangers can be either, eles are usually direct damage… I feel the game works well in WvW roaming because most things can work and no one playstyle dominates.

So personally I would prefer ANet fixes PvE and PvP (or adds new game modes) to allow more playstyles to work, rather than going around breaking things which are not actually broken.

I think your post is very intuitive that it recognizes problem outside the class build and try to balance pvp indirectly by giving diverse class builds their true chance to shine.

We as a player should embrace the build diversity. Not go around and pick one build and beat them to the point where it is unable to stand again. Thats what happened to elementalists and now i see its slowly working against necros. And once its over with necros, who know what class is next.

The point is we should not try to solve problems one way. Nurfing that is.

Balance through game mode hmm. Although i am still puzzled how this will counter the condi meta at the time. I think it will counter other build harder than the condi build. Such as bunk classes. But i maybe imagining something else.

It would help more if game mode examples were given to us.
What game mode do you envision to solve current outcry from the community?

Out of the box idea:

A heavy support class that projects 600 range fields/shields that can, depending on alighnemnt, protect allies from condis, cc, (some) direct damage, etc. Obviously limited and one at a time. This would encourage zerging, so the class would also have skills to combat other and disrupt said fields.

Bunda.2691:

Out of the box idea:

A heavy support class that projects 600 range fields/shields that can, depending on alighnemnt, protect allies from condis, cc, (some) direct damage, etc. Obviously limited and one at a time. This would encourage zerging, so the class would also have skills to combat other and disrupt said fields.

Look at the consacretion skills of the guardian. Maybe this is what you want??

My problem is not how much dmg condi does (it is high but so is direct dmg). The issues with condis is:

- condis often are applied via AA or some aoe, so dodging it is often impossible
- condi spells usually have pretty bad readable animations
- condis have controll effects, direct dmg has pressure only usually
- condis ignore toughness
- condis stay on you even if your enemy is dead
- for condis to work you need only 1 stats so you can invest into other, for direct dmg builds to do comparable dmg you need to invest all 3 stats for dmg leaving no room for survival stats
- condi duration is stackable so you have stupid crap like 15 sec immobs or very long fears that usually end up with death of the target…. stuns and dazes (usually come with direct dmg spells) don’t stack though.

But tbh, making suggestions is pointless. There been suggestions for many issues in this game and it was completely ignored. Devs keep add stuff that nobody wants so w/e.

@poster after me: can’t use it in pvp. Nice try.

think inside the box

Cynz.9437:

My problem is not how much dmg condi does (it is high but so is direct dmg). The issues with condis is:

- condis often are applied via AA or some aoe, so dodging it is often impossible No. Do I have to write more?
- condi spells usually have pretty bad readable animations those spells with lots of conditions have good animations (signed of spite, epedemic, …), for the rest you can use cleanses
- condis have controll effects, direct dmg has pressure only usually Warrior GS #4 (+ gap closer), Hammer (lots of CC), Thief Dagger #4, Guard GS #3, #5 … Condition weapons usually don’t have more
- condis ignore toughness and they ignore damage multipliers as well
- condis stay on you even if your enemy is dead Direct damage would have been allready applied before the enemy is dead
- for condis to work you need only 1 stats so you can invest into other, for direct dmg builds to do comparable dmg you need to invest all 3 stats for dmg leaving no room for survival stats Most Condi builds need 3 stats for their damage (some don’t need precision for extra procs). And Most of the time you need some defense, because you deal your damage slower. The only thing that is missing is a zerker equivalent for condi builds
- condi duration is stackable so you have stupid crap like 15 sec immobs or very long fears that usually end up with death of the target…. stuns and dazes (usually come with direct dmg spells) don’t stack though. Is this the fault of conditions in general?

But tbh, making suggestions is pointless. There been suggestions for many issues in this game and it was completely ignored. Devs keep add stuff that nobody wants so w/e.

@poster after me: can’t use it in pvp. Nice try. But there you don’t have pizza either

comments are edited above

Cynz does have few points.. The readability of the some of the condition spell do have terrible animations. Personally i am a fan of how the developer tried to improve this with sound, especially with necros. Many of their skills have eerie sounds when they cast it. One time i think it scared my dog. And me! Haha

But visually, they do have some room to improve. For example, necro staff skills. Thank goodness we can dodgeroll it. But seriously, all the marks look exactly the same no? And oh man, dont get me started with warrior bow skills. Engineer bomb skills. And i cnat think of anymore but you get the picture.

And it got me thinking, is this intentional? Or just a poor design?
What do you guys think?

Condition damage will continue to be over the top until weapon auto attacks are no longer able to apply conditions.

Including:
Ele scepter
Warrior sword
Necro scepter

Basically, anything where 66% or more of the chain applies a condition. ranger shortbow is fine because it is situation (behind/sides) and mesmer staff is fine because it’s so slow and the conditions have a short duration.

If a warrior didn’t apply bleeds on almost every hit with sword, you wouldn’t be melting from 25 stacks of bleeding as often. If necro scepter atk chain only applied a condition on 1/3 attacks but with higher stacks OR longer duration, it would be much better. other than that, the application of conditions is not really that bad.

tldr: remove conditions or greatly reduce/rework conditions on auto attacks

I disagree with the offered opinion that condition damage is unbalanced when compared to direct damage. I play against both styles and with both styles. I think far too many people argue based upon the style THEY prefer to play and the fact they might have been killed by a person playing the other style.

This argument not much different then the old ones about backstabs, Eviscerates and kill shots being “overpowered”.

One of the problems is that while the damage from conditions and direct damage goes UP as people refine their builds to inflict the maximum damage that is possible , the vitality pool has remained relatively flat along with healing power being unable to keep up with that escalation.

This is made evident by all the concern over the Warrior and healing signet along with their other heals. They can better keep up with this damage escalation so become seen as overpowered.

Cutting Vigor and thus dodges available to all classes makes it even worse as while that same damage keeps going up , defenses against the same are not. Death comes faster and people immediately blame it on conditions being too strong when it more a matter of there too much damage of EVERY type versus defenses and heals available. (See the talk on CCs and AOE damage as well)

I do think the suggestion that a player being able to tell how much damage a set of conditions on them will do if not cleansed would be helpful. I do think part of the issue as has been pointed out from others is that if I take a 10k hit in one strike I get the heck out of there and know right away I am in trouble. If it conditions slowly bleeding me away, the same sense of urgency and concern is not there.

Just an anecdote from the game and while it most certainly a l2p issue on the target it does speak to the false comfort so many take when dealing with a condition build.

I stand on a rock plunking away at a warrior with a pistol. This stacks bleeds on him but his heals keep him at full health. He can not get at me with his melee weapons so decides to dance and laugh as the damage shrugged off. I build the bleed stacks up. I load poison. I jump down and lay down torment. I dodge his attacks. I steal to him , switch weapons and chill with a hydromancy and then death blossom twice. He now in big trouble and starts to run. A heartseeker and he dead.

I did not use stealth once or a backstab once but I suggest had i started with the same and was a direct damage build, that warrior would have responded much more quickly to the threat even were he a relatively inexperienced opponent.

People are much more complacent when it comes to conditions.

Spicyhash.7605:

Condition damage will continue to be over the top until weapon auto attacks are no longer able to apply conditions.

Including:
Ele scepter
Warrior sword
Necro scepter

Basically, anything where 66% or more of the chain applies a condition. ranger shortbow is fine because it is situation (behind/sides) and mesmer staff is fine because it’s so slow and the conditions have a short duration.

If a warrior didn’t apply bleeds on almost every hit with sword, you wouldn’t be melting from 25 stacks of bleeding as often. If necro scepter atk chain only applied a condition on 1/3 attacks but with higher stacks OR longer duration, it would be much better. other than that, the application of conditions is not really that bad.

tldr: remove conditions or greatly reduce/rework conditions on auto attacks

Hmm, i think we are entering in the realm of nerfing which is not what this posts is about..
But i do agree with you spicyhash with the fact that condition builds may be concentrated and limited to certain weapon set. Condi necromancers are forced to take a scepter and a staff. Condi warriors are limited to their swords and bows.
And conditions were crammed into these limited weapon sets.
But then again, we will have to be very cautious in overturning the weapon sets. Its may sound exciting but at the same time, done too hastily, it could ruin the game.

Spicyhash.7605:

Condition damage will continue to be over the top until weapon auto attacks are no longer able to apply conditions.

Including:
Ele scepter
Warrior sword
Necro scepter

Basically, anything where 66% or more of the chain applies a condition. ranger shortbow is fine because it is situation (behind/sides) and mesmer staff is fine because it’s so slow and the conditions have a short duration.

If a warrior didn’t apply bleeds on almost every hit with sword, you wouldn’t be melting from 25 stacks of bleeding as often. If necro scepter atk chain only applied a condition on 1/3 attacks but with higher stacks OR longer duration, it would be much better. other than that, the application of conditions is not really that bad.

tldr: remove conditions or greatly reduce/rework conditions on auto attacks

Wouldn’t that be unbalanced? Direct damage autos will still deal high damage and they will still scale with their power/crits. So why nerf conditions only here?

Some times I think people just don’t get, that condition damage is just an other form of damage. Nothing more and nothing less.

insanemaniac.2456:

think inside the box

It’s not really a valid counter though, as this counter is countered by Rare Veggie Pizza.

Are we talking about pvp? Because, if so, condition meta is over from months now.

sorrow.2364:

Are we talking about pvp? Because, if so, condition meta is over from months now.

Honest question, but was there ever actually a “condition meta” in PvP? Last I checked, there has never been more than 1 condition damage build on a team for upper level PvP.

No, you just have warriors with asburd burning dmg, immobs, blinds + stuns, you have condi/terrormancers with load of condis on AA, grenade spamming engis with butt load of conditions, spirit rangers with sun spirit granting burning dmg and oh the surprise guards that add to that burning dmg….

So, the answer is “no, I just don’t like that people use debuffs now?”

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Condition-Damage-has-2-problems/first#post3707134

My best shot at leveling out the condi game for both sides is my wall of text here.

Flissy.4093:

insanemaniac.2456:

think inside the box

It’s not really a valid counter though, as this counter is countered by Rare Veggie Pizza.

pizza is the only reason we need lemongrass soup. conditions are pretty well balanced when you exclude pizza (with the exceptions of condi nades, maybe perplexity, dumbfire, and impale).

therefore, i conclude these 2 foods are singularly warping the meta. “not a valid counter”, my kitten .

A visual hint like changing the portion of your red bar (bubble) that will disappear to gray (or green or whatever), showing where you would stand at the end of the ticks would actually be a great feature imo.

I like the idea.

muscarine.5136:

A visual hint like changing the portion of your red bar (bubble) that will disappear to gray (or green or whatever), showing where you would stand at the end of the ticks would actually be a great feature imo.

I like the idea.

+1

Supposedly we are getting a counter to condi meta—new ele changes

MELANDRU RUNES? they are universally available and help against cc.
Also maybe getting 1-3 condi removals on your trait/utility setup.

Btw Cond time reduction>cond duration.

Also a thing which exists is cc and damage, if you do the two against a necro they tend to die because well kitten no stability on utilities and even if loaded with 3 stun breaks they got only 2 dodges in comparison to 3 (or the 5 for thief) and utterly no skills which block/evade/invul.

The problem is this…

PvP: Condi damage OP
WvW: Condi damage OP
PvE: Condi damage way underpowered

style.6173:

The problem is this…

PvP: Condi damage OP
WvW: Condi damage OP
PvE: Condi damage way underpowered

So what you are saying is… humans are too stupid to cleanse condis?

maybe i am stretching a bit here but I think the point he is making is that, people who enters pvp from the perspective of pve finds the condition so much more stronger than the actuality, since they had not felt the need to deal with conditions as much as they had to in pvp.

I do agree with style that there is a big gap between pve and pvp and it is definitely something that has not been mentioned a lot before.

Andele.1306:

style.6173:

The problem is this…

PvP: Condi damage OP
WvW: Condi damage OP
PvE: Condi damage way underpowered

So what you are saying is… humans are too stupid to cleanse condis?

More like bosses have 100000x amount of HP of a player and are often immune to condis/controlls…

I never understood why there are 4 different degeration conditions (bleeding, burning, poison, and torment). I know that they all have different effects, but really?

Architecture.7524:

maybe i am stretching a bit here but I think the point he is making is that, people who enters pvp from the perspective of pve finds the condition so much more stronger than the actuality, since they had not felt the need to deal with conditions as much as they had to in pvp.

I do agree with style that there is a big gap between pve and pvp and it is definitely something that has not been mentioned a lot before.

This is closer to the mark than most would be comfortable admitting. PvE mobs tend to not have alot of reliable condi application or cleansing when compared to a human opponents so there is likely a bit of culture shock going into SPvP or WvW roaming.

So suddenly they are facing an opponent that often will not dumbly stand there and take the power damage spike that served so well in PvE and are loading them up in return with conditions tuned high enough to actually hurt.

Screaming of course then ensues.

I would love a visual indicator. Simply recoloring the portion of the health pool which would be lost by the current DoTs if nothing changes would be awesome. Likewise, show part which will heal while a heal is casting.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

So, the answer is “no, I just don’t like that people use debuffs now?”

yup

Carighan.6758:

I would love a visual indicator. Simply recoloring the portion of the health pool which would be lost by the current DoTs if nothing changes would be awesome. Likewise, show part which will heal while a heal is casting.

There is no indicator that tells you how many damage a direct damage burst will deal to you, before the hit lands. There are probably some skill animations that tell you that there will be a huge burst, but that counts for conditions as well. For conditions there is, in addition to the animations, a bar full of debuffs that show how many conditions are applied to you. If there is a huge amount of conditions stacked on you, it is very certain that they will kill you if you do not cleanse them. Do you really need more information?

No one is crying about this “problem” with direct damage even if they are capable of (nearly) one shot you. But if the topic is condition related people just get crazy and want some sort of easy mode.

For me it was more interesting because of PvE, I would be able to see whether I loaded up a mob enough to switch. :P

When I saw the title I thought “great, another condi qq”. Glad to find out this isn’t a qq at all.
I really like your perspective and ideas and I agree with you 100%.

Cynz.9437:

No, you just have warriors with asburd burning dmg, immobs, blinds + stuns, you have condi/terrormancers with load of condis on AA, grenade spamming engis with butt load of conditions, spirit rangers with sun spirit granting burning dmg and oh the surprise guards that add to that burning dmg….

Most team comps don’t run more than 2 condition builds (one of those is more a bunker than a condi build), on top of 2 direct damage builds.

Condi warriors have never been the meta, terrormancers are slowly disappearing from meta eaten alive by PW thieves and warriors, condition engis are a rare sight, spirit ranger is the only meta build but mainly because of the suppor rather than conditions.

So no, there aren’t loads of conditions at all, unless your idea of an healthy meta is a meta with no conditions at all and white damage is the only viable form of dps.

sorrow.2364:

Cynz.9437:

No, you just have warriors with asburd burning dmg, immobs, blinds + stuns, you have condi/terrormancers with load of condis on AA, grenade spamming engis with butt load of conditions, spirit rangers with sun spirit granting burning dmg and oh the surprise guards that add to that burning dmg….

Most team comps don’t run more than 2 condition builds (one of those is more a bunker than a condi build), on top of 2 direct damage builds.

Condi warriors have never been the meta, terrormancers are slowly disappearing from meta eaten alive by PW thieves and warriors, condition engis are a rare sight, spirit ranger is the only meta build but mainly because of the suppor rather than conditions.

So no, there aren’t loads of conditions at all, unless your idea of an healthy meta is a meta with no conditions at all and white damage is the only viable form of dps.

in WvW condi builds are extremely more powerful. using koi cakes, perplexity, torment sigil… the condi output becomes extremely high.

in WvW roaming, because people run their standard Zerk tank build, which gets eaten by condition builds.

In zerg fights, there is too much condi cleanse, to deal damage as a condi build. And direct damage burst is more powerfull, because you kill the enemies faster.

Architecture.7524:

maybe i am stretching a bit here but I think the point he is making is that, people who enters pvp from the perspective of pve finds the condition so much more stronger than the actuality, since they had not felt the need to deal with conditions as much as they had to in pvp.

I do agree with style that there is a big gap between pve and pvp and it is definitely something that has not been mentioned a lot before.

after 1200~ ranked games i am still the opinion condi spam atm is stupid, not because of condi dmg itself but because of secondary effects and how easy those are applied eliminating any way to dodge it… while i think suggestion is decent i doubt it will really actually fix the issue with condis

DanSH.6143:

in WvW condi builds are extremely more powerful. using koi cakes, perplexity, torment sigil… the condi output becomes extremely high.

In WvW, balance is a mess anyway and the problem is not about conditions.