Guild Wars 2

Right now we face a world where condition builds work in PvP or solo, but not in parties. In parties it’s Power and crit damage or bust as stacking limits nullify your effectiveness in the party. While I’m guessing that stacking may prioritize condition/level value over others when applied, I just simply see no balance concerns of having no cap on conditions. There is no limit on how many people can walk up and smack him for 3k+ damage each – why can’t the same number of people walk up and do their condition damage? A condition removal will take every single one of those stacks off. Having 3 condition builds in your party is now no longer a problem – they are just as valid as any other member.

If any ‘limit’ is placed, it should be 25 stacks from a single character (which I actually do think is needed). Ticks and duration is already individually tracked – just take the cap from the global and place it on the individual.

This change is the biggest help I feel condition damage needs in this game

This. This so much. +1

Their game engine can’t handle it. I recall a dev saying it isn’t there for gameplay balance, but technical limitations.

ideally they’d find ways to allow more than 25 stacks of damaging conditions that wouldn’t break the game (other games had similiar issues to begin with but over time solved it) or find ways to prevent multiple condition dealers from effecting each others.

Heck I wonder if one of the bigger issues isn’t that they keep each stack dealing an individual tick (so 25 stacks is 25 individual ticks of damage a second) while they could stack em into a single big number…

So if someone applies 25 stacks of bleeds that do 100 damage each, instead of 25 hits of 100 every second, they get hit for 1 2500 hit every second, if thats whats causing the issue they could then have 25 individual stacks of bleeds for example for the same effect…

Of course the problem is probably deeper than too many numbers ticking at the same time but still really wish they could come up with a fix.

everyone doesn’t do the same damage per tick tho.

which is why you’d have individual stacks for a single tick of personal numbers added up rather than having weaker conditions replacing stronger ones just because their newer.

Of course the main issue is still big world bosses which don’t see to take condition damage anyway (some do, some dont it seems) but since they are basically items anyway that don’t get critted..

If they can’t increase the number of stacks that the game engine can handle, then perhaps they could reduce the number of stacks each condition-related skill applies, but make those stacks do a higher amount of damage to equalize it. That would allow more people to apply more of the condition without needing to change the limit of 25.

Just a thought for an alternate solution to the same goal.

I guess this would be dictated by what the engine struggles with. Is it drawing the damage numbers? But that would be client side more, and easily solved by simply adding the numbers together before ticking. If it’s calculations, they could simplify the calculation to each stack being a multiple rather than individually decided. This would work for any intensity stacking, and would be more true than any normalized converted buff that wouldn’t be able to handle 12 different peoples condition (thus once again negating the purpose of going condition). Vulns is a flat 1% period, so there is no calculation complexity added by lifting the cap.

The only complex zone I see is duration stacking damaging conditions (non damaging can be set to simple adds to a time stamp) – Burn and Poison (and fear if traited necros). It currently has duration stacked with priority given to the stronger stacks. Having to track the duration string with each player’s value and duration I do see as getting a bit bloated. If the system can’t handle that, I’m fine with this still being limited to 25 stacks global – these are set in such a way the condition builds already get their damage in over others and durations already can hit long enough that you can reapply without losing real damage.

TL;DR – I don’t accept a meager number of 25 set as a technical limitation and washing hands of it. I would want that limit tackled. More basic draws, simplified calculations, taking a deeper look at sources. Admittedly not knowing their coding limits my providing more direct suggestions, but I hope to see this done. This reason alone is why none of my characters are condition builds in PvE.