Guild Wars 2

one more thing to add, in trying to figure out my damage output when I experiment with different builds….the target dummies in LA dont even register condition dmg, so I can’t even do an accurate accessment of condition damage vs power.

Please someone of the moderators/developers/whoever in charge keep us posted on this matter, any (even vague) information is better than no information. As it is at the moment people (with right) feel as the topic of condition damage is neglected, could we pretty please get any update on the situation, and any information on when we may expect any change regarding that ingame?

My condi engi has the following baselines:
- power+condition as the main stats
- crit traits + dipping into the toughness/vit traitlines (shield cooldown)
- flamethrower against inanimate, it rules
- flamethrower shoots 10 times in 2 seconds, that’s a lot of chance for critical hits
- jewelry can spec more into survival

There’s currently no min-max build for condition damage. On the other hand, condition builds by default are extremely flexible. You have to work with an all round character that functions under all circumstances. That’s power in and of itself, even if the raw numbers aren’t there.

My main issues with conditions are:
- They are not properly counted towards event participation. Pop a signet of fire on an enemy and take 50% of their with burning, and you may not get exp at all from it when someone comes along and deals a finishing blow.
And if an enemy has already many stacks of a condition, or its max duration, yours many not be counted.
They should be counted properly.

- Objects are simply immune to them.
Damaging conditions should be turned into a generic ‘erosion/degradation/corrosion/whatchamacallit’ condition on objects, or simply make them as any other creature, allowing certain conditions on them:
→ “Burning” on any object that looks like it could burn.
→ “Acid” when using poison on anything that could be affected by acid.
→ “Degradation/Erosion/Etc” for any object when using bleeding.
→ Vulnerability should work on them too.

- They do not trigger the Weapon Master achievements, making even harder to get kills counted for certain offhand weapons, and forcing you to stick with those weapons and change your style of playing to deal finishing blows of very little damage. That or go to a place filled with critters and grind the title pointlessly.
Achievements may be something secondary, but they should encourage playing the game to get them, not doing weird, grindy things.
How these achievements are counted should change so doing them it’s natural, without forcing you to change how you play too much. With one or more changes like these:

• Properly count deaths generated by that weapon, including pushing the enemy into environmental damage, conditions, and summoned creatures like illusions. To put it simply, if they die right after being target of one of your skills or under one of your conditions or effects generated by that weapon(including being target of one of your illusions or shattering illusions made by that weapon), that weapon should get the kill.
• Give all off-hand only skills some damage, even if it’s just a little, so at least they can be used on critters.
• Rework some of the off-hand only skills to be better finishers.
• Make it so no weapon is offhand-only, by giving them to some professions as main hand weapons (their prices would also get balanced, of course).
  • Shield – Engineer. With skills inspired by Tron’s disks and Captain America.
  • Horn – Engineer. With sound-engineering based skills, with names like “Up To Eleven”,.
  • Torch – Elementalist. With skills with names like Obsidian Flame, Rodgort’s Invocation, Mark of Rodgort, Flame Djinn’s Haste, Rust, Storm Djinn’s Haste and Crystal wave.
  • Torch – Thief. For main hand and offhand. They have acrobatics, why not throwing some juggling with torches in there? The dual Torch-torch skill would be a juggle and all.
  • Focus – It’s really hard to come up with one theme for these since they can have practically any shape. But it should be done still. Maybe mostly PBAoE skills and direct hit skills, no projectiles.
• Or just simply change those achievements to could any kill done while the the weapon equipped, even if it wasn’t directly caused by any of the skills from that weapon.

Some good points Mithran. I didnt even get around to seeing the some of the other issues with CD.

@ Marnick, yes I have done the same…experimented with several different point distributions. My issue is that points in the condition damage trait field become irrelevant in different circumstances.
Main problems are:
-condition damage in groups cancels/overwrites damage
-condition damage against objects doesnt register period (u wont even see the effects on a target dummy)

So right now, If you want to maximize your damage in groups or against objects…you are practically forced to distribute points into the power field. Personally, I don’t want to be forced to focus on my burst damage, I’d rather focus on Crits/conditions and vitality. This game is supposed to have versatility and customization of skills…where is the uniqueness if every class needs to follow the same pattern of putting power into their build if they want to maximize on their damage.

Eitherway, it sounded above when Jon Peters (administrator) posted that arenanet does recognize this as a problem. Yay! that is step one…but that was three months or so ago…so what I’m looking for now is an update of some sort. Hopefully, now that the holidays are over…we might hear something now.

I dunno if it was already said here, too many posts, but the issue I have with enjoying my condition build in pvp is how effective cond removal is. It isn’t too bad in PVE except Veteran Karka which transfer conditions on basic attacks but in pvp, Elementalists simply make condition builds roll over and respawn. Same for guardian, condition removal is way to effective currently. Something along the lines of removing stacks and intensity rather than the entire condition should be looked into so condition builds don’t suffer so deeply. Would take a ton of testing I imagine so condition builds don’t suddenly become TOO good but it does need attention.

JonPeters.5630:

3+ heavy bleeders, but yeah…

actually 2 without even trying very hard. my husband and I hit it all the time duoing.

Its actually kind of freaking easy for a Ranger to hit 25 stacks of bleeding by themselves. I’m pretty sure that other classes woud have no problem doing it too. You don’t even need 2 or more people to do this either.

Chrispy.5641:

Its actually kind of freaking easy for a Ranger to hit 25 stacks of bleeding by themselves. I’m pretty sure that other classes woud have no problem doing it too. You don’t even need 2 or more people to do this either.

Yes, but you can’t maintain this very well, even if you build towards it. Not that this is a complaint; I was stoked enough with my build that I could even reach that point, but a high amount of bleeds still gets maintained. I could be happy with ~10.

But I’ll take my shot at a solution: Increase intensity stack cap with Defiant. I was thinking an additional ~3-5 stacks per max defiant tab beyond the initial 3 (I’m of the impression I do okay against some champs with the normal cap).

Since Champs are the mob type of issue here, and condition damage would definitely be OP without some sort of cap, just scale the cap with the amount of players involved.

What champ ability scales with player involvement, yet would still keep the condition intensity cap?