Guild Wars 2

Condition builds work well against other players in PvP and WvW but they are weak in PvE where direct damage dominates in group fights against major mobs.

Here’s two suggestions for making condition damage builds more viable in PvE:

1. Give priority to higher +cond dmg applications in condition stacks and sequencing

Situation: The current condition stacking system does not reward investment in +cond damage for group fights. Many class skills applying conditions automatically. This means that in group fights the condition stacks on major mobs can be dominated by low +cond damage condition applications, while higher value condition stacks fail to be applied, get push off the stack, or their effects are deferred.

Suggested implementation:

• Condition stacks consist of the highest active +cond dmg applications only.
• Higher +cond dmg automatically pushes lower +cond dmg down/off the stack.
• Lower +cond dmg can only join a stack when there is a space (e.g duration has not reached cap).
• For conditions that stack in duration, the highest +cond dmg applications on the stack are applied first.

Effect of the change: Builds that invest in higher condition damage will be more likely to have their condition damage applied, and applied sooner, in group fights. Builds with low or no investment in +cond damage will be more likely to have their condition damage ignored or deferred in group fights. (There is a natural logic to the mob being more likely to be affected, and affected sooner, by the large gash across its torso than the small nick on its finger.)

2. Increase the caps for stacking conditions on major mobs
[Edit] It sounds like this isn’t viable due to sever constraints (thanks teacup)[/edit]

Situation: Condition damage is capped in PvE while direct damage is uncapped. This heavily favours direct damage builds in PvE as direct damage always works regardless of how much is applied, whereas once a condition cap is reached (a common scenario in fights against major PvE mobs) additional cond dmg of that type is effectively wasted.

Effect of the change: Condition damage builds will be less likely to have their investment in condition damage ignored when fighting major mobs.

It was already explained that they can’t change the condition damage cap because of a server issue. What bothers me is that if there are more than one condition damage person in the party – one of them is essentially wasting time.
I would boost the hard damage output of condition damage classes or have some kind of synergy happen where if a stack of a certain condition is made – it starts to add hard damage instead of just dots.

The way bleeding works, it really might stress the server. Changing it is not necessary (imo).
With the next bigger patch they’ll separate PvE and WvW. Maybe they’ll then start buffing conditions (esp Confusion) in PvE.

And I still hope they’ll add “on crit” effects on world bosses. It doesn’t matter if there’s no damage increase, but I have three classes with high “on crit” builds.

While your suggestion would maximize the condition damage potential of a group, it would completely nullify the conditions of all but the top 2-3 condition dealers. If you’re in a 15-man DE zerg train and you have a really good chance of dealing next to no condition damage by getting overridden by the top 2-3 in that stat. Which would lead to 1) lots of silver medals and 2) a general trend for the community to stack +cond dmg over anything else just so they can ensure getting gold credit in DEs. This might even lead to a general decrease in damage output from less +power & +cond duration stats being taken.

I was under the impression that conditions that stack duration already work like this.
To quote the wiki:

The effect from the source with the greatest intensity will be used for calculations for the duration of the effect. If there are two unique sources of Burning, the effect with the greater condition damage value will be used until that source ends, at which point, the intensity from the second source is used for the remaining duration.

I’ve seen a number of other people bring this point up when they talk about the fact that condition duration is often useless, since other with higher condition damage may be present and your condition might not even ‘tick’ in that case.

Some things I think would help Condition Damage alot are..

Conditions are now effected by damage boosts, like the Warrior’s +12% with full adrenaline

Vulnerability now increases condition damage as well.

Conditions are now effected by Quickness

Increased cap on Bleed