Guild Wars 2

Did not see a post on this on these forums and I’m quite surprised tbh.
The Afflicted instability if you don’t know, applys a random damaging condition on enemy attacks.
Obvious goal: pushing condition cleansing into the meta.

Why is this bad then? Ever wondered why the 4 necros meta was a thing? Because they don’t care about conditions, they transfer them back for more of their own damage.
But for every other class, this instability alone adds Matthias levels of condition pressure.

Theoretically you just bring condition cleansing and you’re set. Effectively you throw dodge management out the window, because every attack of every trash mob will do so much damage to you. And if you think about healing think again because 20% of the time it will be poison!

This instability is so bad that any group that goes to do T4s and has the appropriate AR for all levels, and can choose between Lv91-100 without Affliced, vs Lv81-90 with Afflicted for ANY FRACTAL, will choose 91-100. ALWAYS.

So what is my suggestion? Add a cooldown to the instability. Simillar to boon thieves (which thankfully is gone) this instability is out of control only because it has NO COOLDOWN.

A note to be made : pushing condition clenasing into the meta is not a bad thing! But do it through the encounter mechanics. Previously, guardians would bring Pure of Voice with shouts to Mai Trin lv 50 before HoT, because the encounter required it (Mai Trin stacks a lot of bleeds). This is fine. But when you add a global modifier, it cannot be this strong!

I tend to agree, an internal CD on afflicted would likely be a good idea. Currently, it has a pretty disproportionate impact, depending on which fractal you’re in.

I don’t do T4 fractals but this instability sure sounds extremely painful in some fractals. Seeing an ICD of 3-5 sec would be nice on it

My group choose 91+ over 81-90 for other reasons, in particular, to avoid Toxic Trails (apparently, either they are running the game on potatoes instead of PCs or they just can’t see the green sludge).

So I don’t think it’s “bad”, ok?

Still, the fractals would be a lot more fun if there was a cooldown on the instability.

Lets be honest afflicted, toxic trails and social akwardness are all awful.

Social is just awful because most people seem to think they need to be bouncing balls on speed.

Social is fine you can simply stop moving and dps at max aa range if you are using some meta food like seaweed salad just move back and forth facing the boss so you dont hit your allies or if you can stay ranged do that / poison fall in the same category if you cant keep the boss stacked somewhere just focus on being at max range for aa and you will be fine me as a mesmer i actually like toxic trail it help on clone generation and sirvivability.
About aflicted like your idea op for the icd

zealex.9410:

Social is fine you can simply stop moving and dps at max aa range if you are using some meta food like seaweed salad just move back and forth facing the boss so you dont hit your allies or if you can stay ranged do that

‘sigh’ Now go and preach that to all those randumbs out there.

CptAurellian.9537:

zealex.9410:

Social is fine you can simply stop moving and dps at max aa range if you are using some meta food like seaweed salad just move back and forth facing the boss so you dont hit your allies or if you can stay ranged do that

‘sigh’ Now go and preach that to all those randumbs out there.

Solution really is to stop carrying bad players or calling them out on their mistakes. Sounds a bit toxic, but it’s end game content and if someone is literally killing your squad you should be able to tell them.

Two days ago I had a engie that literally akitten for everything technical like switches, wisp, and so on. During combat his rotations was near just straight autos and I saw him constantly going down. That probably deserved a kick, but pug squad stayed quiet because they didn’t want to add to the drama. Groups need to be more stricter in their T4 runs honestly.

However, some mistakes can be fixed with just a few lines. I just ping the social awkwardness instability and ask them to stop killing me. Usually every time I do that, they seem to be significantly more aware of their positioning.