Guild Wars 2

In PvE dungeon terms anyway, all I hear from people is go zerker and just dont even look at condi builds at all. Never really understood why.

I don’t have any maths behind why Power is > Condition damage in general, however there are instances where condition damage is literally useless. This includes events such as killing burrows in AC, and killing the crystalline champions in Arah P1. There’s probably more but I’m not doing a good job of recalling them.

There is a fixed limit on the number of bleeds, vulnerability etc on a mob and it is 25. If you join a group as a condition based character and see the bleed counter already running high then most of your bleeding damage will hit those caps and be wasted. Burning and poison stack duration so if those are already applied most of the time then adding more does nothing. If you go into a group with direct damage then you know your damage will be applied whatever the rest of your group is doing.

Adding to what people have already said, a lot of bosses cleanse conditions, subject alpha, CoF P3 boss, and Simins on top of my head. Whereas I have never seen a boss use endure pain or something like that.

They work, crit damage is just better. Crit damage was poorly through out and results in breaking the game to the point where groups are killing bosses before they ever have to dodge. Crit damage builds also interact with the plethora of % damage increase traits, whereas afaik condition damage does not.

The combat system was designed around sPvP. In PvE is incredibly imbalanced to favour crit damage builds.

Wukunlin.8461:

Adding to what people have already said, a lot of bosses cleanse conditions, subject alpha, CoF P3 boss, and Simins on top of my head. Whereas I have never seen a boss use endure pain or something like that.

Canach … could be killed with conditions but not direct damage

I am far far away in an other galaxy.

Also to add to what the others said before, conditions build kill over TIME, while direct damage killed at the time you hit. If you take only condition damage => fights are long. If you take only direct damage => fights are short.

The only thing I like as a condition is vulnerability, a few bleed and a bit of burning since there are some combos for warriors / elems when the mobs have these.

But no need to have more than one condi build player in a dungeon group.

Direct damage just … does more damage. Conditions are great in pvp because players don’t have giant, bloated HP pools, but in PVE they’re pretty bad.

Wukunlin.8461:

Adding to what people have already said, a lot of bosses cleanse conditions, subject alpha, CoF P3 boss, and Simins on top of my head. Whereas I have never seen a boss use endure pain or something like that.

You forgot the Dredge Mining Suit and the Elemental. Unless they changed the fights since the last time I did fotm, last I recall, conditions don’t do more damage (or at least, not noticeably more) when these boss are debuffed by the lava traps and set on fire while direct damage is amplified like crazy.

Condition damage doesn’t have anything close to what direct damage can do in terms of amplification between vulnerability, crit damage, crit chance, % damage multipliers traits etc. And ofc condition cap pretty fast so if you pug you really don’t want to play a pure rabid cond build. At worst something like Rampager is decent because it’ll do damage on things like AC burrows etc.

boldswords.6943:

In PvE dungeon terms anyway, all I hear from people is go zerker and just dont even look at condi builds at all. Never really understood why.

Condition Damage is limited to a certian damage per second, but that’s not the worst limit… As an example use this calc:

http://gw2.hazno.net/

A lvl 80 player with (example) 1800 condition damage with 25 bleed stacks + burning + poison 100% uptime can maintain up to 4363 damage per second LIMIT (from those conditions only) – also the player must keep 25 stack uptime permanently or the damage lowers (so if by any means the bleed stacks drop to 18 the damage per seconds drops to 3432)

The only boon that can inscrease condition damage is Might (fury… yes… but only for 20% more chance of applying conditions stacs/uptime per traits/sigils) granting by 25 stacs additional 875 condition damage = by uptiming 25 bleed + poison + burning we have a damage of 5863 wich is… poor, really poor comparing to some pure power (zerker) builds also the “burst” type damage is way more effective on trash and bosses than the “sustain” (condition) damage, becouse there must be some time wasted to apply all those bleed stacs etc. So having “bursting” type damage the teams kill faster = mobs have less time to do damage to the players.

Next thing are the bleed “slots” limit.

If you have a party applying bleed other than you the take your bleed slots… so for ex a 5 man team. Warrior 5 minor trait in arms (33% bleed chance if crit – even if they have no condi damage gear they apply bleed) same goes for many other minor traits… power Necros (5 curses) Mesmers (15 dueling) Engi (5 Firearms) even if they are specd power/precision/crit damage they still apply bleed.

So, if any other class tekes bleed slots they do a poor ~44-50 damage per tick (full condi can do 160+) but you have only a % slots left. And from 25 you are limited to 18 or 15 or even less… = your overall damage is even lower.

The worst scenario is having multiple condition damage only spec’d classes, than you reach the 25 stack limit fast but you don’t do any direct damage becouse (your gear has no power/crit damage) every one takes 1/3 1/4 or (my god) 1/5 of the 25 total bleed stacs and all the party reach fast the 25 limit cap doing 4363 max (example) damage per scond from conditions only as a whole party.

There are also some bosses that clears their conditions very often or it’s hard to even keep up conditions on them. CoF p3 last boss… clears conditions every 10 (? can’t remember didn’t do it for too long) seconds.

Last thing are "dead’ objects like walls/doors/burrows – you cannot apply any conditions to them, so if you have to take down something fast (like http://gw2dungeons.net/?SNOW Elemental Source) you will take much much more time than a power spec’d team.

So comparing all those limitations in condition damage to pure power builds the damage is really really poor.

The only boss I can think of was the last boss on Aetherblade Retreat dungeon, when You damaged her “100% immune to damage” boon by 1 stack, direct damage did 10% but condition damage did 100% becouse it bypasses all toughness and direct damage limitations. So if by any chance we will get some interesting bosses than having 1-2 condition damage ppl could be not bad, as for now condition damage is way way behind pure power damage.

Hope I helped You a bit.

Wesnoth.1705:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QwiTyE5vqw

Whirling axe > this
Whirling wrath > this.

Wesnoth.1705:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QwiTyE5vqw

Yeah, but direct damage is still better. It’s not a hard concept to understand.

Because seeing big hits is more popular than multiple small hits.

Bambu.4270:

Because seeing big hits is more popular than multiple small hits.

And when you have multiple people in the same group all trying to go for the multiple small hits, all of the multiple small hits get spread out and you become even more useless

Bambu.4270:

Because seeing big hits is more popular than multiple small hits.

It isn’t even about seeing big hits. It’s about actually attributing something useful to the group.

But guys, play how you want.

Here’s why condition builds are lesser than regular damage builds.

Person A uses a condition build, person B uses a damage build. For simple maths, the A will do 100 damage with bleeds, and 600 with burning. B will do 3K damage per auto-attack swing

If person A could keep up 25 bleeds and perma-burning, he would do 3.1K every second (not counting attack damage) while B does 3K every half second. Conditions are usually more single target too unless you’re a Necromancer with Epidemic

Bambu.4270:

Because seeing big hits is more popular than multiple small hits.

No, it’s because seeing small clear times is better than seeing big clear times.

colesy.8490:

But guys, play how you want.

seriously star ace, keep your garbage in the gw2 sub section…

wait what?

Wesnoth.1705:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QwiTyE5vqw

This is why he made the hybrid build because it’s a mix of direct damage and conditions…

VitalSuit.1980:

Wesnoth.1705:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QwiTyE5vqw

This is why he made the hybrid build because it’s a mix of direct damage and conditions…

But thats only worth it in fractals because of the large amounts of trash. Burst aoe on a zerker necro doesnt last long enough and has high cooldowns so condi aoe is the only option when theres no cleave in fractals. Hybrid build single target damage falls off quite a bit though.

Condi doesn’t benefit from vulnerability or % damage boosts. Mobs don’t have much in terms of armor to make condis shine over power specs. Mobs rarely have high protetion uptime or require that the group disengage constantly (where condis shine because they continue to do damage regardless).

Because most attacks from mobs are one shots or take out over half your health regardless of toughness, you need to focus on dodging and killing as fast as possible before you go down.

If the game had more sources of pulsing damage and conditions and ways to mitigate people just sitting on top of a mob with aegis or a reflection wall, you’d see the meta change.

You know, less kittened lethal shot mechanics and more attrition built in so support and condi specs become more desirable.

Wesnoth.1705:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QwiTyE5vqw

It’s mildly embarrassing that is being offered as good advice. Maybe the next video should be a guide on how to LOS trash mobs, since its clearly very needed.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Wesnoth.1705:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QwiTyE5vqw

It’s mildly embarrassing that is being offered as good advice. Maybe the next video should be a guide on how to LOS trash mobs, since its clearly very needed.

I shared it to show other people who maybe have never played condi builds and never seen how they work , that theyre viable and shouldnt be too underestimated. That said im not quite fan of condi builds either for dungeons. Spare me :P

Wesnoth.1705:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Wesnoth.1705:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QwiTyE5vqw

It’s mildly embarrassing that is being offered as good advice. Maybe the next video should be a guide on how to LOS trash mobs, since its clearly very needed.

I shared it to show other people who maybe have never played condi builds and never seen how they work , that theyre viable and shouldnt be too underestimated. That said im not quite fan of condi builds either for dungeons. Spare me :P

You didn’t do a very good job of demonstrating that at all.

Viable = finishing a marathon in 12 hours as opposed to 3.

Congratulations for crossing the finish line.

Wesnoth.1705:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QwiTyE5vqw

His mesmer guide is incredibly entertaining. thank you for providing me some lolz with that youtube channel.

spoj.9672:

VitalSuit.1980:

Wesnoth.1705:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QwiTyE5vqw

This is why he made the hybrid build because it’s a mix of direct damage and conditions…

But thats only worth it in fractals because of the large amounts of trash. Burst aoe on a zerker necro doesnt last long enough and has high cooldowns so condi aoe is the only option when theres no cleave in fractals. Hybrid build single target damage falls off quite a bit though.

The larger number of trash mobs means condi builds will just take that much longer to kill it all.
Burst AoE on a necro is terrible true, this is probably why they aren’t used in most if any organized groups. Which would eliminate the concern for cleave since necro just isn’t viable sadly.
A hybrid condi/direct damage build shouldn’t fall off on single target. As the build should actually have some direct damage to it, in this guys build he takes none.
Regardless of what armor or traits he has he only ever uses scepter or staff which aren’t direct damage weapons at all. If he where to remain true to the self proclaimed build name, a staff with a dagger/WH on swap with a mix of berserker and rampager armor would be miles better for a “hybrid” build.
Also if you want to learn about condition damage the wiki would be a better place. At least I believe the wiki knows the cap duration on conditions is 100%…

It would be inherently unfair for Condition Builds to be as effective as Direct Damage builds.

The reason is that Condition Damage, by its nature, only requires one or two stats to be effective: Condition Damage to raise your damaging condition’s effectiveness, and Precision to proc on-crit Conditions that many classes seem to have.

By contrast, a Direct Damage build is only effective if it dedicates all three stats to damage: Power, Precision, Critical Damage.

Understand that in the PvP world, this is actually a huge problem. Condition Damage is the meta because those with Condition Damage are able to still deal effective damage while retaining one or two survivability stats.

Berserker characters sacrifice everything to deal damage while condition characters can give up only 1 or 2 stats to still deal damage.

The meta for dungeons and stats is completely fair and people need to stop kittening about it. People that want to play Condition builds all just want to get around the no-survivability stats of a Berserker build while doing Berserker level damage. That’s pretty dumb, in my opinion. Condition Damage’s inherent upside is that it lets you build a character that is notably sturdier than a Berserker build. To me, you should have to pay a price for such survivability, and doing much less damage seems like a fair tradeoff.

Neko.9021:

It would be inherently unfair for Condition Builds to be as effective as Direct Damage builds.

The reason is that Condition Damage, by its nature, only requires one or two stats to be effective: Condition Damage to raise your damaging condition’s effectiveness, and Precision to proc on-crit Conditions that many classes seem to have.

By contrast, a Direct Damage build is only effective if it dedicates all three stats to damage: Power, Precision, Critical Damage.

Understand that in the PvP world, this is actually a huge problem. Condition Damage is the meta because those with Condition Damage are able to still deal effective damage while retaining one or two survivability stats.

Berserker characters sacrifice everything to deal damage while condition characters can give up only 1 or 2 stats to still deal damage.

The meta for dungeons and stats is completely fair and people need to stop kittening about it. People that want to play Condition builds all just want to get around the no-survivability stats of a Berserker build while doing Berserker level damage. That’s pretty dumb, in my opinion. Condition Damage’s inherent upside is that it lets you build a character that is notably sturdier than a Berserker build. To me, you should have to pay a price for such survivability, and doing much less damage seems like a fair tradeoff.

No, berserker builds don’t give up anything because aegis and prot and blinds and reflection walls exist, nullifying the damage you would take extra for not having defensive stats in case you were too dumb to dodge or unable to.

What people like you don’t seem to understand is that a surplus of survival is never good. You only need to bring enough survival/utility to not die and kill the boss before it kills you. You want to keep survival stat stacking to a minimum, since it has diminishing returns while offensive stats are never too much.

Zenith.7301:

Neko.9021:

It would be inherently unfair for Condition Builds to be as effective as Direct Damage builds.

The reason is that Condition Damage, by its nature, only requires one or two stats to be effective: Condition Damage to raise your damaging condition’s effectiveness, and Precision to proc on-crit Conditions that many classes seem to have.

By contrast, a Direct Damage build is only effective if it dedicates all three stats to damage: Power, Precision, Critical Damage.

Understand that in the PvP world, this is actually a huge problem. Condition Damage is the meta because those with Condition Damage are able to still deal effective damage while retaining one or two survivability stats.

Berserker characters sacrifice everything to deal damage while condition characters can give up only 1 or 2 stats to still deal damage.

The meta for dungeons and stats is completely fair and people need to stop kittening about it. People that want to play Condition builds all just want to get around the no-survivability stats of a Berserker build while doing Berserker level damage. That’s pretty dumb, in my opinion. Condition Damage’s inherent upside is that it lets you build a character that is notably sturdier than a Berserker build. To me, you should have to pay a price for such survivability, and doing much less damage seems like a fair tradeoff.

No, berserker builds don’t give up anything because aegis and prot and blinds and reflection walls exist, nullifying the damage you would take extra for not having defensive stats in case you were too dumb to dodge or unable to.

What people like you don’t seem to understand is that a surplus of survival is never good. You only need to bring enough survival/utility to not die and kill the boss before it kills you. You want to keep survival stat stacking to a minimum, since it has diminishing returns while offensive stats are never too much.

He said PvP…

No, he brought PvP as an example. This is a PvE thread. And the reason condis are a problem in pvp is because you see few high vitality builds or few classes/builds with condi cleanse.

They want all the team fight utilities that are usually run, and refuse to change their meta to counter condition teams.

They are whining about the ranger spirit elite in spvp when the spirit elite has existed in that fashion since the very beginning of the game. Spirit builds still take 30 points in NM, and what they gained at best was spirits activating their abilities on death becoming available since they condensed a trait for it to fit into the repertoire.

Berserker builds do give up damage mitigation, whereas condition builds have 1 defensive stat (due to stat allocation on gears) even if you go full offensive. In addition to utilities (prots, wall, blind, etc) condition builds are inherently sturdier. As neko said, it wouldn’t be fair for condition builds to do as much damage while retaining 1 defensive stat. Of course, they can replace that 1 defensive stat into offense and make condition builds do as much damage.

No. Rampager is still far behind berserker in output.

Yenn.9185:

Berserker builds do give up damage mitigation, whereas condition builds have 1 defensive stat (due to stat allocation on gears) even if you go full offensive. In addition to utilities (prots, wall, blind, etc) condition builds are inherently sturdier. As neko said, it wouldn’t be fair for condition builds to do as much damage while retaining 1 defensive stat.

What the hell are you talking about… defensive stats ? This is not WoW where you stand like a punching bag and get hit while the stats do everything for you… even if you go full defensive stat you will sill get hit like hell in hard boss fights if you don’t learn how not to take damage.

This is not PvP the bosses have defiant and give @&#^% about any cc you have and they will focus you so hard until they kill the crap out of you and no one will be able to help you. In full berserker gear the boss hit you for 13k every single hit full ptv 7-9k ? how many hits will you handle until you die – not to mention your damage is crap in full defence so the fight take longer so more hits you take.

Zenith.7301:

No. Rampager is still far behind berserker in output.

It would be great if condition damage wasn’t so far behind critical damage.

Neko.9021:

It would be inherently unfair for Condition Builds to be as effective as Direct Damage builds.

The reason is that Condition Damage, by its nature, only requires one or two stats to be effective: Condition Damage to raise your damaging condition’s effectiveness, and Precision to proc on-crit Conditions that many classes seem to have.

By contrast, a Direct Damage build is only effective if it dedicates all three stats to damage: Power, Precision, Critical Damage.

Understand that in the PvP world, this is actually a huge problem. Condition Damage is the meta because those with Condition Damage are able to still deal effective damage while retaining one or two survivability stats.

Berserker characters sacrifice everything to deal damage while condition characters can give up only 1 or 2 stats to still deal damage.

The meta for dungeons and stats is completely fair and people need to stop kittening about it. People that want to play Condition builds all just want to get around the no-survivability stats of a Berserker build while doing Berserker level damage. That’s pretty dumb, in my opinion. Condition Damage’s inherent upside is that it lets you build a character that is notably sturdier than a Berserker build. To me, you should have to pay a price for such survivability, and doing much less damage seems like a fair tradeoff.

Direct damage and condition damage are equally viable in PvP. I would say direct damage has an advantage in certain situations where you need to burst someone down. Condition/survival specs are more for controlling points or just flat out trolling people; it’s the kind of thing condition thieves do. It takes a while to kill someone with such a spec. Now a condition/power spec would kill a lot faster but you won’t survive long enough for that to matter. There’s risk and reward to consider.

So let’s talk about this fairness in PvE. Traditional MMORPGs, which I’ve heavily criticized for their archaic systems, have at least gotten one thing right. Enemies with high hit points favor sustained damage whereas enemies with relatively low HP favor burst damage. Now the difference is that condition durations in GW2 are incredibly short, most likely due to the the 25 stack limit. This isn’t a design flaw as much as it is a technical limitation as admitted by a developer. I agree that if you have survivability you should do less damage. Now consider that many conditions are actually applied through direct damage. There’s no reason why a condition/power spec should be lagging behind a direct damage power/precision spec, technical limitations not withstanding.

Actually enemies with high HP favour burst too.

Case in point, the slave driver in COF p1 which can die in one warrior rotation.

Conditions would only be better than direct damage for mobs with very high toughness and low hp.

In no particular order:

• structures don’t take con dmg so, so they aren’t ideal for dungeons like ac.
• limit to con dps per target, while there is no limit from zerker.
• poor single target dmg. AoE is nice, but usually run are faster with single target DMG bc boss fights r faster.
• condition removal
• con necs have low lf gains compared to zerker.
• if at 25bleeds, party buffs, such as time warp, have little effect.
• vulnerability has little effect, while on zerker u can apply to benefit your team and urself.

colesy.8490:

Actually enemies with high HP favour burst too.

Case in point, the slave driver in COF p1 which can die in one warrior rotation.

I think the counter argument would be that if you can kill it in a single rotation, it doesn’t have high HP.

Granted, that means practically nothing in the PvE game has high HP when you take full-damage teams into account, but… Well, that’s hardly a surprise, now is it?