Guild Wars 2

Hello Profession Balancing! I am here to talk about the condition meta, its design issues, potential solutions, issues with said solutions, etc. Please note that if I go into any hard-issue I tend to elaborate a lot, meaning this is a length read. If you want a TL;DR, just look for italicized points in the thread or some bold in paragraphs, they might have an interesting prospect.

Anyways, away we go!

So I imagine that people are aware of the several issues that come with Conditions in GW2. As a reminder here is a small general list:

The Cap in PvE: Conditions hit a cap against single mobs, making professions running in PvE groups using said conditions hit a cap in their damage early and throughout the fight. Power builds are the powerful ones.

Their Power in PvP: Condition damage is an easy stat to gear towards in PvP, especially classes that can go bunker as well and outlast many foes through a mix of their tankiness and mitigation. Mitigation is any amount of tools you have that can make the enemy do no damage to you, Stealth is the most situational mitigation since they can still damage you in stealth but ‘have to keep swinging’.

Incredible power in WvW solo, roam and small-scale groups: The previous notion carries over to WvW even more so where stats can be more freely picked. Up until the enemy force can actually start mass-cleansing the conditions you rotated your bar for conditions tick for a nice bit while you use every defensive tool in your kit to make sure you can avoid damage and wait for cooldowns, or continue to pressure with more of a certain bleed (Yes I am criticizing warrior bleed pressure, its nice that we have a condition build for once, but it has its own broken playstyle that is similar to what I see in other professions.)

So now that I listed some of the issues we are aware of with conditions, let’s get down to business.

How do we fix these issues? How can we bring Conditions in line with other builds without making them obsolete? There are already some methods to deal with conditions what changes could be made that won’t cause future problems?

…Well if you looked at the thread title, you might have an idea of what I am getting at. However I am not simply going to ask for a new type of stat, I am also going to try providing a solution to deal with conditions universally.

Here are the three concurrent changes I would make:

• Create a stat like toughness that mitigates condition damage.
• Conditions can crit, create new balancing traits that encourage critting with conditions.
• Nerf AoE condition cleansing and further self-condition cleanse with skillful play.

….Going to let that absorb for a bit. Alright time’s up, explanation time.

(Note: The following arguments here are for PvP, will likely reference PvE and WvW soon.)

First and foremost, there is currently no source of dealing with conditions without cleansing them. Some builds actually specialize towards cleansing conditions, but unforgivingly give up other perks that make them really awful.

Actually, not going to present the argument like that, let’s try this. Everyone loves the argument that builds play a game of paper, rock, scissors assuming equal skill on both players (Hardly ever happens but let’s roll with it.) Build A beats B but loses to C. Build B beats C but loses to A, and so forth. Thing is, the game is more like paper rock scissors knife paper-clip hair-comb….alright whatever you get my point.

How builds SHOULD work is that they should have a nice amount of positives with an equilivalent amount of negatives, they can have an impressive advantage against a certain kind of damage, but have an pretty bad time against another kind of damage. You specialize into power and bunker, outlasting other power builds? You might have less condition cleanse than the rest, you get owned by raw condition damage.

However, there are some builds that catagorically have way too many advantages with very few flaws, very few specialized builds that will beat them one to one, or even two to one. I think you know the builds I refer to, and I know for a fact they are already being talked about. (Although it should be worth noting Minion Necro tends to have his minions or himself get melted in large-scale fighting. Oh I miss the days where you couldn’t tab-target the necro…)

With the above said, the entire Condition meta can be considered part of that group. Condition is greater than power in many a PvP environment, and actually holds some decency in large-scale fighting (Freeze nade engis op, personal opinion, probably not true but man I hate chill with a passion).

But it would not be fair if there was just a blantant nerf to condition across the board, power builds really are not that far behind in viability, and although I would love to discuss the broken stat that is crit-damage versus toughness that is for another time.

(Note: This is where I start blending my argument across the board)

So let’s make Condition damage come in two varities. Raw Condition versus Condition Criticals.

Condition Crit builds are my band-aid solution to PvE. The problem is that it still does not address the cap at high amounts of condition-based builds out there since there can only be so many stacks on an enemy.

…Wait! Idea just now. What if after full-stacks of condition damage are achieved on a PvE mob, the next condition applied of the same type does full damage according to what it would do during the duration? That might take a bit to code though, and seems complicated. Not a bad idea though since condition-based classes do not have a lot of damage from their base-line abilities unlike power-builds, I reckon it might equal out somewhere.

Back to topic, and still relevant Conditions being able to crit would be a solution countering ‘Condition Resistance’ in some manner yet create a dilemma in that the person taking precision to do so loses another stat they could be taking. If you go condition damage and precision in PvP, you are very low on options for a defensive stat and have a pretty strong weakness.

Whereas Raw condition damage builds do fare well like before offensively and defensively, doing the same damage they are doing now. But wait, what’s this this guardian is taking less damage per tick by a considerable amount, he’s outsustaining my damage! That guardian in particular took some Condition Resistance, a new stat to pop down in the pool! He has given up an offensive stat for another defensive one! (Depending on what A-Net might decide for stat allocation in PvP for Condition Resistance, the guardian might be full bunker or have no vitality or power or something.)

Regardless, the condition meta in PvP suddenly has a soft counter in a stat, not necessarily encouraging all condition classes to have crit % but leaving that option open. Though those truly in love with condition damage might like the higher-ticks that critically hitting with conditions offers.

Let me just say this: I am not going to throw out numbers like ‘How much Condition Resistance would mitigate at each value’, that is way too much work for me, I am presently an overview of what could be a solution. Condition criticals I am stuck between being calculated per tick or maybe the type of condition crits all together or none at all. I think the former might be best for the condition-wielder.

…Time for my ZvZ talk.

Now that I have suggested some balancing suggestions for conditions in anything but a ZvZ environment…what about a ZvZ environment? One can assume that with my changes in place, conditions are still going to be ripped off faster than children opening their christmas presents eager to see if they got a new game or toy. There is a reason why people are doing hammer trains (Again, an issue with crit damage too easy to get and how it is calculated… I think I talked about this before in a different thread.) regardless of how good or bad they are.

Frankly, in the overall scheme of things there are way too many AoE cleanses and actually not enough self-cleansing in general. Soldier’s Runes are a problem in that regard…

And… I do not know how to fix this. After seeing a steady stream of group-AoE cleanses (I think Mesmer was the last profession to get a buff in that catagory), Arenanet might be taking a balancing stance to encourage AoE cleansing. If that is the case, than damaging conditions won’t see strength in ZvZ at all, without enough spamming. Utility and Movement conditions seem like the only conditions that can actually stick and do their effect, but damaging conditions might not see the light of day.

If and only if AoE cleansing were nerfed with self-cleansing being buffed would conditions have a considerable impact in ZvZ. That’s probably not going to happen though.

I also admit there is a slight issue with my solution. Right now there is some balance in Trait trees in that there are two kinds of stats to each tree. Condition Resistance would make any given tree unbalanced and a must-have.

Some potential inquiries you might have:

“But don’t we have something called Condition Duration Reduction? Isn’t that the same?”

Not quite, and actually there is not a stat in the trait-lines that gives that unique attribute. Not to mention it is counter-balanced against a trait stat that is in the line called condition duration increase, isn’t that surprising? If there is any wonder why conditions are doing so well it might be because of that issue. This also might be a reason why A-Net has been giving out buffs to Zerker Stance and Diamond Skin. Interesting thought experiment.

“What if you have Vitality, Toughness and Condition Resistance, that’s way too bunker for anyone to take out, points would be impossible to take in regards to PvP!”

One: There is no healing power in that stat-allocation. That means they are not sustained enough, condition resistance makes it harder for conditions to hit hard, but they will still go through. Conditions critting means that person is going down faster, and lastly that person is never going to kill you.

Two: If you thought no-damage bunkers were not hurting before, try having no power or condition damage at all. These kinds of bunkers would never get focused and thus would end up in a specific role of holding a point and supporting only. Not to mention that stat allocation might not make it live if A-Net actually likes my proposal.

Congrats! You made it or skimmed! Horrah! Please feel free to give feedback, I will try to get back to this later after some food.