Guild Wars 2

Proposed solution and Addendum in second post.

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Its no secret that condition builds have been less than desirable for the entirety of GW2 in PvE. This is true for a few reasons.

One major point being the limited functionality in group events and the inability to contribute damage after a certain point. ie 25 stacks of bleeds and whatnot.

The marionette event is fantastic in alleviating this issue by spreading people out and mitigating ‘zerg’ behavior altogether. If this is the direction the developers are heading with group events then this is fantastic! So we won’t worry about this issue for this thread.

The other major hindrance is object damage and their insurmountable nature when running a condition build.

When I talk about objects, for anyone confused, I mean any yellow highlighted objects like turrets, walls, doors, generators and other miscellaneous things used for events, dungeon triggers and abilities.

It may seem like a bit of a misnomer when I say it is one of the main things holding back condition builds but let me give you a short hypothetical situation. I think anyone reading it should be able to sympathize in one form or another.

You are fighting the Twisted Marionette and it is your lanes turn to jump on the platforms!
You rush in ready to take on this round’s boss.
You and your comrades obliterate the boss with ease!

You take a moment to catch your breath and look around to see how the other platforms are faring.
You look to the left, everyone appears to be complete. You look to the right and the far platform is also done, but all attention turns to the platform immediately beside you…

All but one player has died and the boss’ health is just a sliver!
The boss drops and there are 18 seconds on the clock!
Everyone cheers as the player rushes to take down the Powergenerator!
…
Then everyone stops cheering as, to their dismay, they discover that said hero was running a condition build and has no way to even dent the generator…
The chain event fails with little more than a 10th of the generators health missing.

Now… I may have lied when I said this was hypothetical… as this is exactly what happened to me yesterday… twice.
The odds of this exact scenario happening twice aren’t that great but the situation does bring to light a situation that I KNOW most players have run into before if not with the Marionette then in a dungeon or elsewhere.

Furthermore, it’s entirely plausible that you are placed with one or more people running condition builds in an event like the marionette where groups are randomly dispersed. It’s not a good place to be for the person running conditions or the people playing with them, thus discouraging their involvement or running their build in the first place.

In any situation where an object has to be destroyed, condition builds are absolutely useless. I’m not sure if object health scales but if it does then players running condition builds can even drag their group down when an object’s destruction is paramount.

I used to run a condi build in PvE for the longest time. I enjoyed the utility skills that ran with it and was a very effective build for soloing for a long time. In doing so I’ve come across similar situations many times as the guy who couldn’t take down an object to save my life [or, more importantly, my teams].

My proposed solution to this is pretty simple.

Don’t give destructible objects health like mobs and, instead, use a hit counter so that every strike against the object is of equal value.

This way, objects can be better balanced to their value and can be given simple hit counters like 50 or 100 or 200 – whatever was necessary for balance.

The easiest way I can think to do this using systems already inherent in the game is to make objects only take one hit but give it x number of invulnerability counters, each one reduced per hit against it. Granted, I don’t think this would be ideal because it helps to see just how much health is left as the bar drops but it is one way to implement it that popped into my head right off the bat.

Every class has a way of dealing out hits rapid fire or relatively quickly regardless of what build is being run, whether it is condi or zerker or heal or whatever.
Some classes will excel in this but that isn’t any different from the way it is now realistically.

By making this change our hero[s] in the Marionette event may have had a chance to take down their power generator and save the day! Instead they feel like they let everyone down, were robbed of a glorious moment and embarrassed in the process.

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This issue only adds greater support to the Zerker paradigm that Arena.Net is currently working away from and by changing how Objects take damage along with the new focus of creating content that forces zergs to split up to be effective it may just be enough to start percolating more diverse builds into the meta, slowly but surely, as yet one more barrier inherent in exploring different ways of playing will be alleviated.

TL:DR – Change object damage so they use a hit counter instead of having health so that each strike against an object, no matter its strength, is of equal value.

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Questions:
What are your thoughts on a change like this?
What concerns come to mind?
What experiences have you had in this vein either running a Condition build or playing with someone who runs Conditions?
If you have another solution for this issue, what is it?

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Also, for those wondering, I included this in the Living Story: Origins of Madness forum because I felt it was directly relevant to the Marionette event as a bit of dual feedback [if read between the lines] for both the event and the ongoing struggles of condition built characters and inanimate objects, their most heinous enemy!

If a dev feels it is better suited somewhere else I won’t be offended and take solace in the fact that the feedback hopefully gets to where it needs to for the sake of internal discussion… hopefully.

You know, I came here expecting a rant about how condi builds take too long to kill stuff on timers, but in stead found one of the most reasonable and easy to implement solutions to the object problem that plagues the whole game.

This is a pretty good idea!

This happened to me tonight, Mondo..and I was so ashamed. There were upset players at my feet and at other platforms, but there was nothing I could do.

I logged in my level 45 elementalist for the rest of the night (my necro is level 80) and guess what? My ele rocked it out way better than my necro did, and that my friend, is just sad.

Your suggestion would do much in the way of making my poor necromancer feel proud once more.

This is actually a really good solution. I can’t think of why this shouldn’t be implemented. My literal only concern is for people who use “slow” weapons. Necro staff comes to mind. But even then, a staff user is has a secondary weapon, I don’t know what Necro users use as their secondary, but it’s still faster than a staff.

I changed my condi build to a power build after yet another AC p1 failed burrows phase.

I’m not sure if “number of hits” is the optimal solution. I’d suggest hardcoding condition damage conversion into instant hit points. So say, if you inflict 3 stacks of bleeding for 3 seconds with 100 damage per tick per stack, you just deal extra 900 damage straight away transparently. Or at least a part of it, 2/3 or 1/2… Weakness and other things with side effects will be hard to calculate, but still.

Yes, that makes little to no sense from the logical point of view, but as long as no condition-only and completely immune to damage objects or mobs exist in the world, something should be done here.

Another option I could suggest is introducing a conversion of all conditions into a stack of corrosion or degradation with no stacking cap. This might be even trickier to implement, but that makes perfect sense: the “magic” nature of conditions applied affects inanimate objects in a way that causes them to corrode and degrade over time, thus draining objects’ HP similar to bleeding. When paired with the upcoming nerf of zerk builds, this concept would really do a lot to diversify builds.

As a full condi necro I completely applaud this suggestion! Really great solution, love it.

This is a brilliant approach for a solution to something that was always bothering me and actively keeping people from condi-builds. I just never had the right words to adress it.
Big applause for mondo!

ViralVarda.2739:

This is actually a really good solution. I can’t think of why this shouldn’t be implemented. My literal only concern is for people who use “slow” weapons. Necro staff comes to mind. But even then, a staff user is has a secondary weapon, I don’t know what Necro users use as their secondary, but it’s still faster than a staff.

Conversely rapidly attacking weapons would be absolutely devastating to objects, weapons like the engineer flamethrower.

The problem with the proposed solution is that high attack speed will now have the advantage.

I think it would work well if only the base weapon damage affected objects. That way, regardless of builds (condition or otherwise), your effectiveness will be relatively even.
Or they could make it so that your condi dmg stat contributes to your direct damage when attacking objects.

Or they could hardcode condition damage conversion into instant hit points.
Or they could just have objects suffer form condition damage.
They could keep the conditions (having an object suffer from Burning or “Bleed” would not break the immersion for me) or find new names for them.
(Some effects might be difficult to translate, but it might be better then right now)

digiowl.9620:

ViralVarda.2739:

This is actually a really good solution. I can’t think of why this shouldn’t be implemented. My literal only concern is for people who use “slow” weapons. Necro staff comes to mind. But even then, a staff user is has a secondary weapon, I don’t know what Necro users use as their secondary, but it’s still faster than a staff.

Conversely rapidly attacking weapons would be absolutely devastating to objects, weapons like the engineer flamethrower.

This did come to mind as a potential hitch, but I don’t feel it is enough to negate its exploration.

My thoughts on this are that it shouldn’t be too different from what we have now with glassy zerker builds being able to drop objects quickly. Keep in mind zerker and power builds are the only ones able to efficiently drop objects, which is currently fine because its all anyone ever really runs.

Instead it would shift the effectiveness to classes with rapid fire abilities – the engi’s flamethrower being the strongest of the bunch by far.
Other abilities like hundred blades on a greatsword warrior, rapid fire on a longbow ranger, zealots defense on sword guardians etc… would be more the focus of object destruction instead of just straight damage.

One added bonus of this that I see looking at this again is this aspect would then factor into build construction and party structure for certain scenarios. Not a bad thing in my book as it’s a minor, manageable increase in complexity.

Also, lots of classes have ‘fan’ attacks that would be incredibly useful, despite their low damage normally, or just overall fast attack rates that would work well which means that the hit counters could be kept relatively high and balanced based on how many people were expected to focus on it.

The big bonus I see with the change is it levels the playing field for any and every build type when it comes to objects and it shouldn’t be difficult to implement. A little tedious mind you, given that they’d have to go back and re-balance all the objects in the game, so it would take time, but systematically straight forward code wise.

TamTiTam.9574:

Or they could hardcode condition damage conversion into instant hit points.
Or they could just have objects suffer form condition damage.
They could keep the conditions (having an object suffer from Burning or “Bleed” would not break the immersion for me) or find new names for them.
(Some effects might be difficult to translate, but it might be better then right now)

I think having objects suffer from conditions would be the easiest way to buff condition builds vs objects on their end. It would undoubtedly be the simplest solution to code.

Hardcoding condition damage conversion to straight damage would be a bit of a pickle though. At least that’s my feeling. Less tedious than my suggestion in the long run I think, but lots of places to go wrong and muck things up elsewhere as my impression is it’d be overly complicated code wise.

Overall I think either of these would work just as well but I don’t think they’d be as effective in removing the barrier for build diversification.

I know the thread is primarily about condition builds but my thoughts immediately run to heal and support specs that might not excel in either condition damage or raw power, which would be addressed using a hit counter method.

A few other things occurred to me over the last day about the relationship of objects, more dynamic content and build diversification.

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I think the Marionette is a fantastic event that touches on what engaging, dynamic, multi-layered group content should be in GW2 moving forward and I hope Arena.net continue to explore this vein of group content.

With that said, when objects are utilized in these events in any capacity they only further cement the necessity for pure damage builds and will continue to do so unless this issue is dealt with in some reasonable capacity. With that, assuming PvE build diversity is still on the developer’s radar, we are left with three options in dealing with this conundrum;

1. Leave objects and condition damage as they are.
2. Don’t use objects in group related content.
3. Change how damage is dealt to objects to level the playing field.

Option 1 is the worst case scenario in my opinion given the topic of discussion, but may simply be the most practical. It allows the development team to focus on other, more important things on their agenda and can be assessed and dealt with later.

Option 2 is the second worst as I feel including objects in these kinds of dynamic events present fantastic opportunities for new experiences and diverse content!

Option 3 would take a fair amount of work, regardless of the method chosen. With that said the potential benefits far outweigh the negatives concerning the work required to implement.

Objects could be given an added layer of complexity combining both damage methods in phases. An object with a shield that requires direct damage and a hit counter bar when the shield is down on a timer or for a certain fraction of overall health, for example. This sort of brings us back to our original issue but could be worked around for the sake of more interesting encounters.

WvW gates could be better balanced so Ascended stats weren’t a consideration.
Players of any level or gear type would contribute equally to taking down a door or piece of siege equipment. Siege equipment could deal multiple ticks of object health to compensate.

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I also thought that there might be an better way to get around the tediousness of re-balancing all the objects in the game to implement a test version of this for the devs that might not be too much of a headache… although I can’t say for sure because I’m not sure how destructibles have been coded into the game.

I figure it should be possible to reduce the health of large amounts of objects to a very small fraction of their current health [something reasonable for a hit counter method], rounding to the nearest factor of 25, 50 or 100, using an object function algorithm. Assuming it’s written in C++, my understanding of object coding is relatively sound and destructible objects are grouped and accessible this should be a tad bit easier than I previously thought.

I’m having trouble thinking of other positives or negatives at the moment. My thoughts are in a million places, but I thought I’d post this while I had some semblance of clarity of thought… although I don’t think it made its way onto my post very well.

I may come back and edit this post for clarity later.

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I’d be curious to know what the dev’s thought or if this is an issue they’re looking into in some form or another.

Also, if anyone has any suggestions as to where I might post this so it has a better chance of reaching the devs that would be nice. This sub-forum sees a lot of activity and it’s not the kind of suggestion I think community managers would be tuned in for.

I couldn’t find the suggestion thread anymore, and wonder if it would even be a good place to post if it is still actively perused by the developers given how much community outreach they’ve been doing with regard to game development over the last while.

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Thanks for the constructive feedback/criticism and the positive words guys.
It feels great to be a part of this awesome community.

Arewn.2368:

The problem with the proposed solution is that high attack speed will now have the advantage.

I think it would work well if only the base weapon damage affected objects. That way, regardless of builds (condition or otherwise), your effectiveness will be relatively even.
Or they could make it so that your condi dmg stat contributes to your direct damage when attacking objects.

This is absolutely genius!!!!!

It solves all the issues surrounding object damage. Everyone is on an equal playing field wether they run a power, crit, condition, or bunker build. Everyone contributes equally, and there is no impact on pvp. Further, it addresses the different speeds of weapons.

Anet just needs to rebalance all objects around the damage output from base stats.

Aquatic.3408:

Arewn.2368:

The problem with the proposed solution is that high attack speed will now have the advantage.

I think it would work well if only the base weapon damage affected objects. That way, regardless of builds (condition or otherwise), your effectiveness will be relatively even.
Or they could make it so that your condi dmg stat contributes to your direct damage when attacking objects.

This is absolutely genius!!!!!

It solves all the issues surrounding object damage. Everyone is on an equal playing field wether they run a power, crit, condition, or bunker build. Everyone contributes equally, and there is no impact on pvp. Further, it addresses the different speeds of weapons.

Anet just needs to rebalance all objects around the damage output from base stats.

Thinking about it a bit more, this might work a bit better than the hit counter method.

One advantage I see with it straight away is it doesn’t necessarily need to be explained to the user that this has changed at all. The objects will still die relatively quickly and none of the mechanics will really change besides other builds being equally effective for once.

Health could be lowered using the method I describe above, universally scaling all object health to a reasonable fraction of their current health and changing how damage is calculated against them. So, in theory, it might even be the one of the easiest methods to implement as well given the relative simplicity of the numbers involved.

It occurred to me that both the hit counter method and the base weapon damage method have one shared drawback being that there’s no scaling involved in either case, which means lower level characters will be just as effective against objects in much higher level areas where the player character isn’t scaled up.

This is so rarely an issue that I don’t think it would be a problem. I can’t think of anywhere off the top of my head that this would even be exploited.

I think both methods have merit and should be explored. I hope a dev see’s this and passes it on to where it needs to go.