Guild Wars 2

Currently condition dmg viability is in a rough spot due to the stack limit in PvE. This is a hard problem to fix because swapping the stacks to be individual to the players instead of the mob would force the server to calculate a unique condition stack applied by each player per mob. To make things simple to understand, this would blow up the server resources in large zergs.

So what do we do? Condition builds suffer in zergs and events due to the stack limit. Trying to fix the stack limit blows up the server.

Luckily, I have an idea!

Condition Evolution: Afterstack Effects

In this idea, in PvE, applying conditons beyond the stack limit will now have additional effects. Each effect has an ICD.

Bleeding: Applying a bleed past 25 now has a deep wound effect. Deep wound deals direct damage based on a player’s condition dmg. 10 sec ICD.

Burning: Every 15 seconds of burning enemies now combust, dealing aoe dmg and spreading burning to nearby enemies.

Poison: Every 15 seconds of poison, the poison becomes virulent, causing damaging conditons to tick 33% faster for 5 seconds.

Confusion: At 25 stacks of confusion the next application of confusion drives the enemy into panic. Panicked enemies pulse for 5 seconds, damaging themselves and nearby allies for 5 seconds. 20s ICD.

Torment: No change, fine as is.

I like this concept.

It’s a good concept, except they’re breaking poison and burning next patch. All duration stacking boons and conditions will only stack up to 5 times. I have no idea how that is supposed to work, and it sounds incredibly stupid to me, but that seems to be the case.

It definitely seems cool though. I would love to see this sort of thing have an effect in WvW, but one player can’t stand up to that amount of conditions for more than a couple seconds, if that.