Guild Wars 2

Remove the 25 stack condition cap for bleeds/poisons/burning. The only thing this does is injure the game play and atmosphere you’re trying to cultivate here.

First, in a 1v1 situation, it doesn’t affect too much. All classes cannot hit and maintain that 25 stack limit. So removing it would do nothing to alter the current game.

Second, in a 2v1 situation, you find two people fighting over conditions in order to deal damage. In the case of the two people both being condition built, you have them only hitting as much damage as the 1v1 situation since each can only maintain half their conditions on the enemy at once due to this cap. It in effect, makes them half as strong as a DD counterpart. A punishment for playing in a group.

Third, as the X in Xv1 increases, each condition built character progressively deals less and less damage until they are essentially contributing nothing due to more sources for bleeds and more quickly reaching the 25 stack cap. DD doesn’t have this problem; if you have 100 warriors use 100B on a monster or player, the monster/player doesn’t cap out on the DD it can take per second…Why should you punish condition builds by capping out the damage they can do per second? All this accomplishes is the cultivation of a kill-steal mindset where condition builds rush to be the first one to apply conditions so theirs are the ones doing damage.

Furthermore, it’s not like removing this cap would drastically alter champion fights (where prolonged beating on by multiple people frequently happens). If the game is balanced, then the damage a condition build can put out in a certain amount of time shouldn’t be that different than the damage a DD build could do. The only difference would be whether this damage is front-loaded or back-loaded. In this situation, having 10 people with DD builds wouldn’t kill it any faster or slower than 10 people with condition builds.

I agree. This needs fixing!

The thing is, a lot of builds can make a pretty hefty stack if you just give them a minute or two.

And by removing the stack cap totally, you would be pretty much multiplying the damage that a boss takes by a significant factor.

The reason for that is simple. It takes more than 1 person to maintain the 25 bleed cap. However, it’s pretty much a given that if you looked at each of the bleeders individually, you would see that the total amount of bleeds they, as individuals, could apply is going to be much, much more than the 25. Depending on the exact details, the overall boost that the team would get might be ridiculous.

In fact, so ridiculous that if they removed the cap on bleeds, you would be guaranteed to get a massive nerf on each individual bleed at the very same time. Whether it would come in the form of reduced duration or reduced damage to bleeds, I don’t know.

Either way, you would end up changing nothing in a team setting. The nerf would make it so that you would still take as long to kill the boss as you did before. Just that now people who got condition builds would get contribution better. On an individual level, however, you would pretty much see no one going for conditions anymore because they’ve gone from decent to crap. And the overall result? You would see most condition builds rerolled to straight damage.

Take the cap away and increase every bosses HP Pool to compensate. This way conditions build, especially Conditionmancers, wouldn’t be kittened up in fights against Event Bosses where they tend to get not so good rewards cause they can’t maintain their 8-10 Bleeds.

Most MMOs learned very quick that a cap on debuffs is a bad idea, GW2 will learn it too.

If PvP or WvW is the concern for the cap, why not just remove it for PvE exclusively? Fighting over huge group events is where this complaint seems to stem from, IMO.

nachtnebel.9168:

Take the cap away and increase every bosses HP Pool to compensate. This way conditions build, especially Conditionmancers, wouldn’t be kittened up in fights against Event Bosses where they tend to get not so good rewards cause they can’t maintain their 8-10 Bleeds.

Most MMOs learned very quick that a cap on debuffs is a bad idea, GW2 will learn it too.

If you raise the HP pool, then you’ll just be making every non-condition build less effective, as their contribution will be directly proportional to the HP of the boss. After all, by allowing more stacks, you’re giving a lot of the damage potential to the condition builds.

And then you’ll see everyone asking for more damage on all non-condition skills. Or a nerf on condition damage.

It’s a neverending cycle. Fact is, it’s a kitten good idea to have a handful of condition damage dealers. Condition damage is also a pretty safe build because you can just apply conditions and then kite until they’re over.

One thing that you might be able to make work somehow is to introduce a reduction once the conditions get over 25. Of course, you should never remove the cap on things like Vulnerability. Just bleed and confusion.

This is why I said just remove the cap from burning, poison, & bleeding (forgot about confusion, but that should be removed as well). Things like fear, vulnerability, blindness, etc. don’t need nor should they have their cap removed. They work just fine the way they are now and are not drastically hurting the playstyle of those who inflict them.

Also, if you’re arguing in favor of the condition cap as a way to slow down boss fights, then your argument is fundamentally flawed. The problem is that DD builds don’t suffer from a DPS cap they can output, yet condition builds do. If you want a boss to take a certain amount of time, then give it enough hp to tank through a certain amount of damage without a condition cap. Yes, the percent contribution of each DD character will be less, but the percent contribution of each condition build will be exponentially higher. Furthermore, the length each boss would take to kill would not be changed in any way and DD builds would not get bronze medals despite trying their hardest like is the current situation with condition built characters.

Why should you punish some builds with less contribution simply because of build choice? You’re funneling all choices into a 100B warrior instead of a sword/sword warrior. You’re forcing backstab thieves instead of unicorn thieves. You’re making necromancers incredibly unpopular due to their primary build choice being not viable in PvE.

In other games, the highest of a certain spell took effect. With everyone giving one of a few conditions, I would say separate certain conditions into player specific.

Currently, Burning and Poison stack in duration. It generally takes the highest from one player and COMPLETELY ignores the rest of them. As a Guardian, there is no point in me popping Justice unless I want a tiny AoE Might bonus. The +Burn to next attack for me and nearby allies is useless as the burn is likely already there.

Using this system, if ElementalistA and GuardianB both attack a target, one of them has their burn cancelled out. If both could apply Burn (but only able to see their own debuff), then each could equally damage the mob. Yes the damage output from players in large number would increase, but it really NEEDS to happen. Bleeds/Vulnerability/Confusion work somewhat more friendly towards groups than Burning/Poison.

tl;dr – Poison and Burning get player specific debuff slots.

-Hate

EDIT: I also highly agree that direct damage sees no punishment from having it in large numbers. Maybe a change like this would allow necromancers to work together instead of against each other. :-P

Oh, yeah. That would work too. Keep the caps in place, but make the stacks on damaging conditions limited to 25 for each specific player, instead of one giant pool that all conditions have to fight over. That would require more coding that simply removing the cap, but I do agree it would be greatly beneficial to poison/burning users. I wasn’t quite sure how burning/poison mechanics worked.

Simplicity.7208:

Oh, yeah. That would work too. Keep the caps in place, but make the stacks on damaging conditions limited to 25 for each specific player, instead of one giant pool that all conditions have to fight over. That would require more coding that simply removing the cap, but I do agree it would be greatly beneficial to poison/burning users. I wasn’t quite sure how burning/poison mechanics worked.

Not quite, keep the “communal” Bleed/Vulnerability/Confusion stack in place. Allow Burning and Poison per character. That is all. :-)

-Hate

Not sure how this should be done, but as a condition applier i do feel underpowered in larger bossfights, and want the cap if not removed atleast increased.

I think they should have a cap but have it PER character. Each character can only apply so much at once, instead of everyone. Maybe it would be lower than 25 stacks, but per character but still be a HUGE improvement. Frankly I can’t imagine why they designed it how it is right now, knowing that some professions would be stacking lots of conditions.

/shrug

Hateborne.7942:

Simplicity.7208:

Oh, yeah. That would work too. Keep the caps in place, but make the stacks on damaging conditions limited to 25 for each specific player, instead of one giant pool that all conditions have to fight over. That would require more coding that simply removing the cap, but I do agree it would be greatly beneficial to poison/burning users. I wasn’t quite sure how burning/poison mechanics worked.

Not quite, keep the “communal” Bleed/Vulnerability/Confusion stack in place. Allow Burning and Poison per character. That is all. :-)

-Hate

I agree with these suggestions; people dealing primarily in condition damage do tend to receive less credit for kills and events. Additionally, sometimes players who haven’t put anything into condition damage will accidentally take spots that condition-damage players are really counting on (for example, my some of my direct-damage engineer’s most powerful bombs or grenades will also inflict burning or other conditions).

Yeah, it’s really what’s puzzling me when I think about what to do in PvE. I love conditions and I destroy with them in PvP, 1v1, or even groups without other condition users…but it’s very annoying to have to always be wary of other condition users that might wander into my group and take away from my contribution level. Don’t even get me started on world bosses…That right there is an automatic bronze medal.

I guess an equally acceptable system would be to make it so contribution for champions and world bosses is based on the potential for damage you would’ve done in the absence of a condition cap, and not damage. I say potential for damage over “number of attacks” because it prevents things like really under-leveled characters getting full contribution just because they tagged a mob enough times to get gold, then power-leveling. It also takes into consideration the fact that attacks like cantrips for thieves probably wouldn’t work too well in a “per hit” situation.

Clearly the current damage based contribution calculation situation isn’t working. I think this damage potential system would be better, albeit difficult to implement. Any objections?

I play a Guardian, so the only thing I apply regularly is burning. I really think thought needs to be put into bleedcap at 25x and burning stack method. TBH, having more than one person doing any type of burning on a huge world boss is completely redundant.. who cares about the duration of the burn. Same with bleeds; if more than 2-3 people are straight up bleed spec the usefulness goes way down. I don’t know if the answer is to up the stack amount, or create an individual bleed stack cap amount, but some work needs to be done here.

Simplicity.7208:

This is why I said just remove the cap from burning, poison, & bleeding (forgot about confusion, but that should be removed as well). Things like fear, vulnerability, blindness, etc. don’t need nor should they have their cap removed. They work just fine the way they are now and are not drastically hurting the playstyle of those who inflict them.

Burning and Poison stack duration rather than intensity.

Also, if you’re arguing in favor of the condition cap as a way to slow down boss fights, then your argument is fundamentally flawed. The problem is that DD builds don’t suffer from a DPS cap they can output, yet condition builds do. If you want a boss to take a certain amount of time, then give it enough hp to tank through a certain amount of damage without a condition cap. Yes, the percent contribution of each DD character will be less, but the percent contribution of each condition build will be exponentially higher. Furthermore, the length each boss would take to kill would not be changed in any way and DD builds would not get bronze medals despite trying their hardest like is the current situation with condition built characters.

You’re clearly not seeing what you’re saying.

Contribution is based on the damage you deal. So, by increasing the damage of the condition builders, you’re taking it away from the non-conditioners. Also, by removing the cap, you’re allowing the bleeders to basically increase their damage indefinitely, thus taking away indefinite amounts of contribution from the non-conditioners.

And no, adding HP is not the solution. Adding HP is your solution to the increased damage from conditions. But the damage of the non-conditioners has not increased, so by increasing the HP, you would be handing out free contribution to the condition builds. And you would effectively switch the situation to a point where condition damage is supremely effective and non-condition builds struggle to get contribution in longer boss fights.

Why should you punish some builds with less contribution simply because of build choice? You’re funneling all choices into a 100B warrior instead of a sword/sword warrior. You’re forcing backstab thieves instead of unicorn thieves. You’re making necromancers incredibly unpopular due to their primary build choice being not viable in PvE.

Oh please. Hundred Blades and Backstab are mostly overly popular in PvP.

I can foresee two ways to solve it. Either you remove the cap and add a notable reduction in conditions once they get over 25 stacks. That or you make the game keep a count of the bleeds that your character potentially applied to the boss. So for example, if you use a Flurry on a boss with 25 stacks on it, you still gain the contribution of having applied all the bleeds. Since you’re not dealing any more damage, you’re not taking it away from the non-condition builders and you’re not making the bosses themselves require tweaking in terms of HP.

Olba.5376:

Burning and Poison stack duration rather than intensity.

I know. But if they hit their cap, then no other burning/poison users will be able to use those conditions as a source of damage either. Although burning/poison have more problems than bleeds apparently, I was not aware of this and alternative action should be taken.

Olba.5376:

Contribution is based on the damage you deal. So, by increasing the damage of the condition builders, you’re taking it away from the non-conditioners. Also, by removing the cap, you’re allowing the bleeders to basically increase their damage indefinitely, thus taking away indefinite amounts of contribution from the non-conditioners.

By increasing the damage of condition built characters, you are taking away some from non-condition built characters. However, the loss from the non-condition characters isn’t enough to affect their contribution level, so why should they care? While at the same time, condition users will finally be able to fight a boss without getting a bronze every single time because their conditions were nullified. As for bleeders increasing their damage indefinitely…You realize bleeds expire after a certain amount of time, right? This means that each person can only maintain so many stacks of bleeding. There is no indefinite about it. Eventually it will cap. It should cap when the players do though, not when the game decides to shut off the ability of certain builds to do damage.

Olba.5376:

And no, adding HP is not the solution. Adding HP is your solution to the increased damage from conditions. But the damage of the non-conditioners has not increased, so by increasing the HP, you would be handing out free contribution to the condition builds. And you would effectively switch the situation to a point where condition damage is supremely effective and non-condition builds struggle to get contribution in longer boss fights.

No, right now contribution is split like 80% for DD and 20% for condition. If you increased HP and removed the cap, you could balance it at 50%/50%. Yes, DD loses 30% but they still have enough to get golds fairly easily. And condition built characters won’t have to struggle with their 20% to get a silver. Any non-condition build has nothing to lose from this. In fact, they stand to gain considering their condition friends (such as necromancers) would actually be helping to kill the boss instead of just standing there pretending to help. (Note: that 80:20 split was an arbitrary number pulled out of my kitten for the sake of an example. In reality, it’s affected by the number of people attacking a boss and their builds. For most world bosses, it’s much, much worse than an 80:20 split)

Olba.5376:

Oh please. Hundred Blades and Backstab are mostly overly popular in PvP.

I took the first DD builds I could think of to use as an example. I just so happened to have been playing PvP before I wrote that post. If you would prefer, I could go back and list every single DD build in the game, but I feel like using specific examples would save everyone’s time.

Olba.5376:

I can foresee two ways to solve it. Either you remove the cap and add a notable reduction in conditions once they get over 25 stacks. That or you make the game keep a count of the bleeds that your character potentially applied to the boss. So for example, if you use a Flurry on a boss with 25 stacks on it, you still gain the contribution of having applied all the bleeds. Since you’re not dealing any more damage, you’re not taking it away from the non-condition builders and you’re not making the bosses themselves require tweaking in terms of HP.

About 20 minutes before you made your post, I said this. I’ll quote it for you;

Simplicity.7208:

I guess an equally acceptable system would be to make it so contribution for champions and world bosses is based on the potential for damage you would’ve done in the absence of a condition cap, and not damage. I say potential for damage over “number of attacks” because it prevents things like really under-leveled characters getting full contribution just because they tagged a mob enough times to get gold, then power-leveling. It also takes into consideration the fact that attacks like cantrips for thieves probably wouldn’t work too well in a “per hit” situation.

You should read the entire thread before jumping in blindly mate >.>

I don’t know about you but condition stacking in this game is what makes a diverse and competitive gameplay.

I like it the way it is, but that’s just my opinion.

Simplicity.7208:

By increasing the damage of condition built characters, you are taking away some from non-condition built characters. However, the loss from the non-condition characters isn’t enough to affect their contribution level, so why should they care? While at the same time, condition users will finally be able to fight a boss without getting a bronze every single time because their conditions were nullified. As for bleeders increasing their damage indefinitely…You realize bleeds expire after a certain amount of time, right? This means that each person can only maintain so many stacks of bleeding. There is no indefinite about it. Eventually it will cap. It should cap when the players do though, not when the game decides to shut off the ability of certain builds to do damage.

On what grounds do you say that the damage increase for the bleeders will not have any effect on the non-condition damagers? All that you know is that right now the majority of the damage is dealt by them. You don’t know by how much. You also don’t know by how much removing the cap would change this balance.

And you say there’s nothing indefinite about it, but I see that a Rifle Warrior has an untraited 6s bleed with 0.75 cast. That’s a consistent 8 stacks of bleed. Trait that Warrior and the bleed lasts 10.8s, giving the warrior a consistent stack of 14 bleeds. Put in a squad of those warriors and it’s 70 bleeds. And it would take that 11s for them to get there. And most of these bosses that cap to 25 bleeds tend to last a bit more than 11s. And 70 bleeds is already 180% more damage from bleeds.

No, right now contribution is split like 80% for DD and 20% for condition. If you increased HP and removed the cap, you could balance it at 50%/50%. Yes, DD loses 30% but they still have enough to get golds fairly easily. And condition built characters won’t have to struggle with their 20% to get a silver. Any non-condition build has nothing to lose from this. In fact, they stand to gain considering their condition friends (such as necromancers) would actually be helping to kill the boss instead of just standing there pretending to help. (Note: that 80:20 split was an arbitrary number pulled out of my kitten for the sake of an example. In reality, it’s affected by the number of people attacking a boss and their builds. For most world bosses, it’s much, much worse than an 80:20 split)

That’s a highly idealized scenario. The fact is, the ratio is never a constant. It changes naturally based on the players, but it can also be manipulated by the players by artificially changing it, such as having their friends with specific builds porting in. And since you’re boosting condition damage, you can put all of your Gold on those reinforcements being mostly condition builds.

Of course, we’re currently experiencing the opposite effect. It’s the non-condition builders that change the balance and deal out most of the damage. And with that in mind, it’s just not going to work out. Basically it would require that ANet rebalances every single Champion, Event and Group Event boss out there. And that rebalancing wouldn’t really be any different from what we have right now. So it’d be a massive waste of resources.

About 20 minutes before you made your post, I said this. I’ll quote it for you;
You should read the entire thread before jumping in blindly mate >.>

Nothing jumpy. I did read most of it. Guess you missed that I was the second person to reply to this thread? See what I did there?

For those saying it would hurt DD’s, well if it would hurt them too much, the simply solution would be to lower the toughness of the bosses etc if needed

/Signed

This needs to be fixed – as a condition mesmer I have little chances to actually score a gold medal if more than 2 people are participating in an event with a boss. Same goes for dungeons… so many classes can stack conditions that with just 2 people build for it the cap is easily reached.

Fix nooooow!

Olba.5376:

You’re clearly not seeing what you’re saying.

Contribution is based on the damage you deal. So, by increasing the damage of the condition builders, you’re taking it away from the non-conditioners. Also, by removing the cap, you’re allowing the bleeders to basically increase their damage indefinitely, thus taking away indefinite amounts of contribution from the non-conditioners.

And no, adding HP is not the solution. Adding HP is your solution to the increased damage from conditions. But the damage of the non-conditioners has not increased, so by increasing the HP, you would be handing out free contribution to the condition builds. And you would effectively switch the situation to a point where condition damage is supremely effective and non-condition builds struggle to get contribution in longer boss fights.

Bleeders cant increase damage indefinitely… are you nuts? Our bleeds expire rather quickly. I can max out around 20-22 bleeds on my ranger before it goes back down, and once quickening zephyr is on CD i stay between 5 and 15. The damage stays constant and averages out, it doesn’t keep increasing.

By removing the cap, you are making it fair. Allowing all the bleeders to do the maximum damage their build was made for. With a cap, it’s being split many ways.

TL;DR bleeds expire rather quickly

Just wanted to throw this out there, but some bosses (such as the dragons and Nightmare Tree) are immune to condition damage (not the conditions, just condition damage). Was a hell of a nasty wake-up for me (and my party) in TA explorable when my condition-damage necro was useless in the final fight.

This needs to change at bare minimum.

This kind of thread comes up over and over again, and I find myself having to educate all the misinformed theorycrafters.

To Olba and the others, I’ll clarify:

• In GW2, DoTs don’t get refreshed.
  They don’t keep adding and stacking and refreshing duration indefinitely (more on that below).
  So when Olba says “Also, by removing the cap, you’re allowing the bleeders to basically increase their damage indefinitely, thus taking away indefinite amounts of contribution from the non-conditioners.”, he has no idea what he’s talking about.
  Each stack is an individual DoT (damage over time effect) – It has its own damage and its own duration.
  If you put 5 stacks for 100 dmg over 10 seconds and 5 seconds later you put 3 more stacks for 60 dmg over 10 seconds, here’s the numbers you’ll see:
  10 – 10 – 10 – 10 – 10 – 16 – 16 – 16 – 16 – 16 – 6 – 6 – 6 – 6 – 6
  Essentially, The first stack of 5 has a 10 second duration that will NOT change, and so those 5 stacks will fall off after 10 seconds, leaving whatever is left.
• Damage over time (DoT) can be prevented in every way that direct damage (DD) – can be blocked and blind will make you miss. However, unlike DD, DoTs take time to deal their damage, and can be outhealed or removed before dealing their full damage.
• A DoTer isn’t stronger than a DDer, wich completely invalidates all that bullkitten about condition damage becoming out of control if the cap is removed.

Now, to the OP:

• The cap can’t be removed just like that. It would cause server issues, due to the fact stacks are handled individually.
• The real sollution is presented in this thread:
  https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Sollution-Condition-Stacking/first#post656275

I agree the cap is silly. Otherwise they need to make it so bleeds have a secondary function like doing direct damage to the target if they are cleansed. You don’t see a cap on the amount of burst/direct damage you can take do you? Conditions already kill you slower then burst, and every class gets multiple condition removers/transfers. Heck you can already tell Condition damage builds were an after thought in the devs eyes, when Orbs in wvwvw only effected burst damage and not condition