Guild Wars 2

Hey there everyone, I’m a tabletop card/board game designer/producer who tackles video game design problems as a hobby (and for the experience!)

I’m going to be doing a few posts here about the most troublesome topics in GW2 in order to stimulate good discussion and hopefully reduce improve clarity. Today’s focus is on Conditions, namely how condition caps can be avoided and the challenges associated with it.

First off, let’s quote the wiki on the major difference between condition damage and normal damage:

That’s a pretty big difference. Heavy Armor, Toughness, Protection, Frost Armor. None of it matters to conditions. Even scarier, most classes have to go out of their way to get good condition removal (or at least pass up a more synergistic skill in the same slot), and even that is usually limited by cooldowns. Kind of a rough world for PvP eh? Let’s see what happens in PvE though...

...oh dear. It appears that multiple people with condition builds don’t really play nicely together. Unlike a party of direct damage builds, where everyone does the majority of their damage regardless of the actions of other players, a single condition caster is vulnerable to disruption by the rest of the party (since all classes apply incidental conditions even when geared for direct damage). It gets more complicated when multiple condition users are in the party, as having 2 Burning based characters is no more effective than having one.

So, what can we do about it?

That’s a pretty complicated situation, with no clear cut answer.
With our previous observations though, we make a few guidelines for an improved version of condition stacking mechanics.

Players should not prevent each other from functioning. Knockdown warriors do not stop bow rangers from shooting people. Why should an elementalist prevent the guardian from burning?

Conditions should be satisfying to keep applied. The burst warrior has to dodge, kite, and find/create an opening for his combo. The condition necro has to continuously keep reapplying conditions. Both are hectic, but the warrior gets a payoff from a perfectly executed combo, but the condition user...gets a slightly higher number on the DoT ticks.

So, what does this mean for our current conditions?

It means conditions need to either stop interfering with each other somehow, or have enough synergy to overcome that interference.

Non-Interference is VERY hard to accomplish in this situation, so I’ll be focusing on synergy bonuses instead:

• Damaging conditions scale in intensity as stacks are maintained. This means that all contributing casters to the damage stack are getting increased damage for coordinating and reliably applying the condition. This is also a one-sided buff for PvE condition users since players regularly attempt to remove conditions, while monsters generally don’t.

Next Up: Megaservers

…Ok, so bleeding should be able to stack from multiple sources to the point it can kill you in 2 seconds?

New meta 5 sword warriors applying 125 bleed stacks then running around and wait for mobs to die. Repeat.

soapingwet.4810:

…Ok, so bleeding should be able to stack from multiple sources to the point it can kill you in 2 seconds?

Sort of like how direct damage from multiple sources stacks and can kill you in two seconds…

so… yes? I’m not sure what you are implying….

robertul.3679:

New meta 5 sword warriors applying 125 bleed stacks then running around and wait for mobs to die. Repeat.

Sort of like how 5 GS warriors stack on each other and do 500k dmg and don’t even need to run around for something to die?

Again… not seeing your point…

So If I read that correctly, as say bleed, stacks, everyone who adds to the stack deals damage as if they applied the full stack? Of course based on their own condition damage modifier.

So lets say if 1 stack of bleed ticks for 10 damage/sec, than 25 stacks would tick for 250 damage/sec. Sor for 5 people in a dungeon, each one applies bleed, than each person would deal bleed damage of 250 dam/sec for a total 1250 dam/sec. Now if everyone was using a condition build the bleed dam/sec increases to say 200 per tick for a party total of 25000 dam/sec. Which is faster than the current beserk meta dps builds, and thats JUST bleed damage in a 5 person group. Bosses would melt faster than a snow ball in hell. Add that to a world boss, and they quickly become puddles of goo without even trying, as bleed damage would be in the hundreds of thousands per tick. It would be a disaster.

To Fix the current problem with caps would either to raise/remove them and have a personal stack limit so one person couldn’t have moor than 25 stacks, or figure out a way to only have the conditions of the highest condition damage apply. So if you are running a power build asked do incidental bleed, your bleeds wouldn’t apply unless you were geared/traited for condition and/or bleed damage.

Easiest solution in my mind would be:

When bleeding hits 25 stacks, it becomes a new condition “hemorrhaging”. This wipes the bleed stack down to 0, but taking the total damage of the 25 stacks and timing it out over 10 seconds. This is a good solution for two reasons. Individual bleed counters don’t need to be calculated lessening the burden on the system. Second, not all bleeds are equal. Some may be 2 seconds with 0 condition power, some may be 8 seconds with 1200 condition power. With this, you’re only outputting the intended damage of your group’s builds. No different than how a group of berserkers stack their damage.

This is a great way to promote build diversity in PvE. And I don’t think it would effect WvW or PvP at all. Firstly, it’s easy enough to have a split and leave the player cap to 25 stacks of bleeding. But besides that, even if the second stack was started it’s on long enough timer to be cleansed. And you’re probably going to be dead anyways if a group got 25 stacks of bleeding on you and other conditions covering it.

It’s a start and I think it’s been said many times before but each time the solution is shot down. First thing that needs to change would be how condition is stacked between PvE, WvW, and PvP before we move onto the mechanics itself. After that in PvE you need to adjust condition damage based on total output of damage. Your inadvertent Condition damage still stack ontop of your direct damage, and while its true that condition appliers also deal some sort of direct damage (not 100%) a full serker warrior still has a good condition output compared to a full condition warrior doing direct damage. However I think currently it’s a game engine issue with tracking ticks and the lag it cause when you have stacks on top of stacks on top of stacks of condition damage. The calculations for each slows the game down too much.

pdavis.8031:

Which is faster than the current beserk meta dps builds, and thats JUST bleed damage in a 5 person group.

All that means is that conditions will need to be rebalanced to account for the OPs change.

The problem with using a warrior as an example is that they’ve got extremely high damage skill compared to a class who’s able to use an entire skill loadout is suited for condi, such as a necro.

The cap is so nibble to death by cats (thank you Londo) isn’t a viable way to defeat a boss.

I have levelled three characters to 80 in the past month. Since then I have been trawling the forum for suitable builds for my preferred playstyles. Indeed everytime I read anything about condition builds, there were always suggestions to play a berserker power build instead.

I originally wanted to start a thread but since the OP sums up the problem rather well, I will just carry on in here. Condition cap hinder the effectiveness of a condition build. The only limit to a power build is how often a player can score a successful direct hit; the limits to a condition build (considering only bleeding, torment, confusion, buring and poison) are not only how often a player can score a successful direct hit (which is limited by either 25 for and/or 9 at a time) but also other players frequency in doing so (which then becomes collectively limited by either 25 and/or 9). The damage potential of a team of power build players is the summation of the damage potential of all of them; the same cannot be said of condition players.

I have therefore been thinking and have come up with similar suggestions as the above posts. For conditions that stack in intensity can stay as is but a new machanism after reaching that cap is needed. I have thought of two ways of doing it. First, the whole 25-stack turns into 1 stack of mega condition, which intensity and duration are arbitarily fixed – probably an average of a normal 25 stack, which can be worked out by some data-mining. A mega condition can be stack too if a second stack of 25 is applied fast enough. So essentially the aim of the game of a condition build is to stack mega condition. Depending on the outcome of some experimentations, if stacks of mega condition reach their stacking cap, the whole full stack can then turns into a superior stack of such condition.

The second way is to release all the damge of that current 25-stack once the 25th stack is applied. So the aim is to have the previous 24 stacks last long enough and the 25th stack is essentially a burst with the summation of the full 25 stacks at once. Or to look at it this way: power build deals front-loaded burst damage; condition build deals rear-loaded burst damage. That said, sometimes a full stack of certain conditions can easily be achieved, which makes the intervals between the rear-loaded burst often, which in turn makes certain condition build far too damging. Depending on some experimentations, it may be that in that cases a higher than 25 stacks may be needed in order to acheive some balance.

For conditions that stack in duration, the first idea of converting a full stacks of “standard-to-mega-to-superior” can also be applied in here. But for poison, since it has a secondary role of reducing healing potency by 33%, the second idea of “rear-burst-after-the-final-stack” may not be suitable.

These are by no mean a quick and easy solutions. Fine-tuning and adjusting are still need to be made in order to prevent being imbalanced. Nevertheless since the current stacking cap has presented the players with some annoying problems, some improvement is certainly needed.

Behellagh.1468:

The cap is so nibble to death by cats (thank you Londo) isn’t a viable way to defeat a boss.

Why is that a problem anyway!?

Given the hp and other things a boss has, even a full berserker build will have to “nibble it to death”. How often a berserker build can one- two- or three-shot a boss to death?

I think you can go all the way with condition damage with decent survivablity whilst if you go all the way with power – that is power and precision and ferocity – you will sacrifice on survivability. That means you have to dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge, and heal relatively frequently in between damage dealing. That means you are still nibbling the boss anyway little by little over a period of time.

Both power and condition builds are viable in solo boss fight. The imbalance is when you starting to add more of each into the scene.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

pdavis.8031:

Which is faster than the current beserk meta dps builds, and thats JUST bleed damage in a 5 person group.

All that means is that conditions will need to be rebalanced to account for the OPs change.

So in essence you’re saying a nerf to condition damage in general? Even if it was nerfed, with enough players on a world boss, the bleed damge/sec would still be Insanely High. While I agree the way conditions currently work in a group needs desperately to be worked as a whole, I just dont see the OPs solution as actually being viable. Its not a bad idea, but its built on the premis of conditions operating as they do now. We actually need a whole new system for condition builds to be useful in a group setting. Right now they are great solo. But as soon as you add at least 2 more people they become almost useless.

Oh My God.8423:

For conditions that stack in duration, the first idea of converting a full stacks of “standard-to-mega-to-superior” can also be applied in here. But for poison, since it has a secondary role of reducing healing potency by 33%, the second idea of “rear-burst-after-the-final-stack” may not be suitable.

These are by no mean a quick and easy solutions. Fine-tuning and adjusting are still needt to be made in order to prevent being imbalanced. Nevertheless since the current stacking cap has presented the players with some annoying problems, some improvement is certainly needed.

I thought that duration conditions (poison, burning, etc.) Already just increased the duration further with each application? At what point would you make it a mega stack? After a 2 min duration has been reached? I feel that those Types are fine as is. Maybe if you made all conditions as duration instead of stacking? But then how is damage calculated? Also how is poison damage determined anyway if multiple people are applying poison?

I think we just need a complete overhaul of the whole system. I wouldn’t say they are broken, just dont work well with others. Just some thoughts

pdavis.8031:

Oh My God.8423:

For conditions that stack in duration, the first idea of converting a full stacks of “standard-to-mega-to-superior” can also be applied in here. But for poison, since it has a secondary role of reducing healing potency by 33%, the second idea of “rear-burst-after-the-final-stack” may not be suitable.

These are by no mean a quick and easy solutions. Fine-tuning and adjusting are still needt to be made in order to prevent being imbalanced. Nevertheless since the current stacking cap has presented the players with some annoying problems, some improvement is certainly needed.

I thought that duration conditions (poison, burning, etc.) Already just increased the duration further with each application? At what point would you make it a mega stack? After a 2 min duration has been reached? I feel that those Types are fine as is. Maybe if you made all conditions as duration instead of stacking? But then how is damage calculated? Also how is poison damage determined anyway if multiple people are applying poison?

I think we just need a complete overhaul of the whole system. I wouldn’t say they are broken, just dont work well with others. Just some thoughts

I do not entirely understand your first paragraph. But anyway…

I think buring and poison are capped at 9 stacks; further application will be ignored. So for example if a burn-centric build can stack that 9 stacks within, hypothetically say, 9 seconds, any more burn after that point will be ignored.

My suggestion is to convert the first 9 stacks at the 9th second into, for the time being lets call it, a mega burn, which has the property of an average 9 stacks of burn that lasts x amont of time. Any more standard burn applied after that point will start as a new standard stack. That is if the fight is still going and burning is still being applied, at 10th second, there will be 1 mega burn plus any additional standard burn applied (that is still less than 9 stack).

If you manage to apply another 9 stacks before the first mega burn expires, you get another mega burn; that makes two mega burns, and so on. In this way, if there are more than one burn-centric characters around, they collective damage output will not be capped below the totality of their individual damage potential.

That is the crux of my standard-to-mega-to-superior condition stack suggestion.

pdavis.8031:

So If I read that correctly, as say bleed, stacks, everyone who adds to the stack deals damage as if they applied the full stack? Of course based on their own condition damage modifier.

So lets say if 1 stack of bleed ticks for 10 damage/sec, than 25 stacks would tick for 250 damage/sec. Sor for 5 people in a dungeon, each one applies bleed, than each person would deal bleed damage of 250 dam/sec for a total 1250 dam/sec. Now if everyone was using a condition build the bleed dam/sec increases to say 200 per tick for a party total of 25000 dam/sec. Which is faster than the current beserk meta dps builds, and thats JUST bleed damage in a 5 person group. Bosses would melt faster than a snow ball in hell. Add that to a world boss, and they quickly become puddles of goo without even trying, as bleed damage would be in the hundreds of thousands per tick. It would be a disaster.

To Fix the current problem with caps would either to raise/remove them and have a personal stack limit so one person couldn’t have moor than 25 stacks, or figure out a way to only have the conditions of the highest condition damage apply. So if you are running a power build asked do incidental bleed, your bleeds wouldn’t apply unless you were geared/traited for condition and/or bleed damage.

I don’t think that’s where the OP was going with this. His idea was that if there was a full stack (25 bleeds) that each one after would increase it’s intensity. But really, it’s far too roundabout and taxing on the system.

And I think your math is quite off. For starters, the bleeds don’t tick for 10 damage a second, ever. Maybe in queensdale when you’re just starting. Also, each person more than likely will not be sustaining 25 stacks of bleeding themselves. And I’m really not seeing how you got to 25k dmg/s from a party of 5. That sounds more like 25 stacks of 25 stacks of bleeding.

It will only do as much damage as the build can put out. It’s not different than a berserker doing it’s damage. The reason why there is a cap on bleeding is not because it’s overpowered in PvE, but that it’s a lot of calculations to make. There’s duration and condition power mixed in from multiple sources.

Something needs to be done that’s for sure if conditions are to be usefull in PvE.

If nothing else give everyone his own personal 25 stack limit for conditions that afflict damage.

Oh My God.8423:

Behellagh.1468:

The cap is so nibble to death by cats (thank you Londo) isn’t a viable way to defeat a boss.

Why is that a problem anyway!?

Given the hp and other things a boss has, even a full berserker build will have to “nibble it to death”. How often a berserker build can one- two- or three-shot a boss to death?

You do understand the capacity for damage that Condi builds are able to achieve, right? When geared correctly at “endgame”, a necro that is able to consistantly, and solo, maintain a 25 stacks of bleeding on a target will inflict over 280,000 damage over a single minute. And that’s just from bleeds alone. Combined with Parasitic Contagion (Close to Death does kitten-all for Condi Damage), that’s self-healing of 14,000 without touching a heal skill. Adding in direct damage and other incidental conditions, you’re looking at minimum of 50,000 damage.

And that’s one necro. Imagine 5-10 of them if conditions were not affected by a duration/stack cap.

Edit: Lulz. I forgot about the disgusting damage spread caused by epidemic.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Oh My God.8423:

Behellagh.1468:

The cap is so nibble to death by cats (thank you Londo) isn’t a viable way to defeat a boss.

Why is that a problem anyway!?

Given the hp and other things a boss has, even a full berserker build will have to “nibble it to death”. How often a berserker build can one- two- or three-shot a boss to death?

You do understand the capacity for damage that Condi builds are able to achieve, right? When geared correctly at “endgame”, a necro that is able to consistantly, and solo, maintain a 25 stacks of bleeding on a target will inflict over 280,000 damage over a single minute. And that’s just from bleeds alone. Combined with Parasitic Contagion (Close to Death does kitten-all for Condi Damage), that’s self-healing of 14,000 without touching a heal skill. Adding in direct damage and other incidental conditions, you’re looking at minimum of 50,000 damage.

And that’s one necro. Imagine 5-10 of them if conditions were not affected by a duration/stack cap.

Yes, indeed: tell me what 5 or 10 of the same kind of necro can do with their easily achievable 25 stacks of bleeding on a same target?

Then tell what one fully build berserker glasscannon can do? Then what 5 or 10 of those berserker glasscannons can do on a same target?

Now you see it is counterproductive to have that many that sort of necros all stuck under the glass ceiling of 25 bleedings. Yes, there may be a few more nearby foes affected by epidemic if there are enough of them happen to be there within the radius; and yes, there may be a few extra direct damage going around, which are normally not traited or geared to do more than basic damage. But when comparing to ounce-for-ounce damage each additional berserker can bring, the cap is indeed hindering.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Oh My God.8423:

Behellagh.1468:

The cap is so nibble to death by cats (thank you Londo) isn’t a viable way to defeat a boss.

Why is that a problem anyway!?

Given the hp and other things a boss has, even a full berserker build will have to “nibble it to death”. How often a berserker build can one- two- or three-shot a boss to death?

You do understand the capacity for damage that Condi builds are able to achieve, right? When geared correctly at “endgame”, a necro that is able to consistantly, and solo, maintain a 25 stacks of bleeding on a target will inflict over 280,000 damage over a single minute. And that’s just from bleeds alone. Combined with Parasitic Contagion (Close to Death does kitten-all for Condi Damage), that’s self-healing of 14,000 without touching a heal skill. Adding in direct damage and other incidental conditions, you’re looking at minimum of 50,000 damage.

And that’s one necro. Imagine 5-10 of them if conditions were not affected by a duration/stack cap.

Edit: Lulz. I forgot about the disgusting damage spread caused by epidemic.

Did you even see what a few “end game” warriors can do with 100b? Why do you think there’s so many zerker war melee speedrun groups in LFG tool.

I have also thought about how to deal with the hard-cap on bleeds, specifically (because I am a weird guy who plays condiwarrior. I am not kidding).

In my view, a mechanic that ignores defenses like bleeds obviously requires a ceiling, since it is a supplement to the reduced direct damage that condi characters can do already. However, applying said supplement should feel great for the player. After all, that condimancer is working really hard to keep up that bleed stack. Furthermore, the mechanic should reward multiple players for using the same build. If a group of Direct Damage builds work together, things die faster. If a group of Condi Builds work together, things…don’t.

Like OP said, conditions should be synergistic and promote cooperation. And here is my idea (warning: long post incoming):

All bleeds should contribute to percent health damage per second…

Wait, wait. Don’t touch the pitchforks yet. Let me finish.

But with an asymptote and a deceleration factor.

Say what?

I am saying bleed stacking should be a race-of-time mechanic. An application (not stack) of bleed by a skill should do a small percent health damage over time, determined by Condition Damage. Additional stacks of bleed increases that percentage, to a maximum (the asymptote I mentioned earlier).

So how is that different from what it is now?

It isn’t, yet. Here is where the deceleration factor (let’s call it Staunching for now) comes in. Instead of duration for each bleed, the intensity (percent health per second) of the bleed decreases over time, and the rate at which the intensity decreases will increase as intensity goes up. In other words, it is harder to reach the max percent health damage the more bleeds you apply. To keep up the bleed damage, then, requires applying more bleeds to maintain the intensity and fight the Staunching.

So it takes multiple characters to work together and constantly apply bleeds in order to bleed enemies at the fastest possible rate. The maximum percent health per second is now an asymptote (something you can get really, really close), and bleeding is now a synergistic race against time.

For example, if a group of condiwarriors walked up to a champion, they would:
1) Begin building bleed intensity with #1 Skill chain
2) Cap out on the bleed intensity due to staunching
3) Build up their adrenaline
4) Presse F1 all at the same time (Sever Artery everywhere),
5) Bleed the poor champ at the, let’s say, max rate for a brief moment,
6) Lose bleed intensity because they can’t apply bleeds as fast
7) Maintain initial bleed intensity

So what percentage health damage per second should be the max? 1? 2? 3? 5?

Well, depends. Let’s have a hypothetical example (all numbers are made up):

Here we have a champion monster.
It’s been mobbed by 10 Direct Damage warriors.
Same gear, same trait, same stat. For Direct Damage.
It dies in 180 seconds.

And here we have the same champion monster.
It’s been mobbed by 10 Condition Damage warriors.
Same gear, same trait, same stat. For Condition Damage.
Oh no. the game’s bugged. No one can apply any bleeds (like I said, hypothetical).
How much health did the champion lose in 180 seconds?
80%
That means Condition Damage Build is dealing 20% less Direct Damage in 180 seconds.
Which means bleed have to make up at least:
20% of health / 180 seconds = 0.111% of health per second
Then, the maximum cap for bleed intensity can be a little higher, like 0.15% of health per second, to reward good coordination in bleed application among multiple players.

Remember all numbers are hypothetical

This structure opens up balancing options for different situations too, as the amount of bleeds faced by World Bosses, Dungeon champions, Personal Story champions, etc. are all different. The number can be tweaked accordingly.

Since Condition Damage will affect the intensity increase by each application of bleed, investing in said stats will feel powerful and effective. The deceleration factor will make applying bleeds feel exciting and synergistic. Having multiple people applying bleeds will now work together, instead of getting into each other’s way.

What do you think? Am I full of bull? Do I have something going here?

I read recently, and some other have pointed out, that one of the reason that a stack-cap is in place is to ease computation. If one player can do one type of condition, it is a lot easier to manage. But when 5, 10 or even 30 players fighting a world boss or in a www zerg and all of whom has different condition damage and condition duration, and behind those characters are players who choose to use different condition power at a different time, to tally all those variables will be so taxing to maintain a smooth mmo fight. So 25 and 9 are the arbitary caps that our computer and the server can safely handled.

Of course, that is not without its problem as most of us have pointed out. Some people may find it uncomfortable or unthinkable to see each condition builds unleashing their full potential much like their power builds counterpart do already. Having been so long fighting with one hand tied behind one’s back has made it into a norm.

The cap is hindering. We however also have to considering the limitation of the current computation problem. So in the above I suggested to either tally the stack differently by converting them according to tiers (much like converting copper to silver to gold, really) or use up a full stack (the rear-end burst suggestion) and reset the tally periodically. I must confess that I am not computer expert but I think that should work. But if that is to happen, I think some of the bosses may have to scale up a bit just to compensate the increase in the collective damage output of the player base.

Oh My God.8423:

snip

I had a similar idea just before reading yours

Basicly i imagined it as so:
Bleeds reach 25 stack. The 26th stack transforms the previous 25 into a single stack of a new, unique condition, lets call it Hemorrhage. Lets say that Hemorrhage is a fixed damage with fixed duration: Deals (scaling dependent on the number of sources of the bleeds) % damage of the victim’s total health in over 15 seconds. The bleed stacks start over again from 1 until they reach 25 again and turn into another stack of Hemorrhage.

Poison and Burning are not much trickier. With a similar system, i would give their overload/mega-condition unique effect as well. If Poison’s duration reaches a certain treshold (minutes probably, as there are some long duration poison skills available), the new applied condition -lets call it Taint- would further reduce the effectiveness of healing, say 5% per stack for as long as there is poison is on the victim.

Burning. Reaching and going over 10 seconds of burning would transform it into Bistered Skin, increasing the damage of all Burning applied afterward by 20% per stack. Blistered skin has a duration of 10 seconds.

All these mega-conditions are removable as any other conditions. Since the number of conditions increases by 3, i would also give every condition removal skill in the game +2 removed condition. Dont know if the mega-conditions should be of higher priority for the cleanses, or if their removal would be according to the standard priority.

Im specificly against the burst damage ideas because if i wanted to play burst damage, i would build for power. Conditions are about withering the opponent down, not bursting with a ridiculous amount of damage that was designed and meant to be removable and thus fully avoidable.

As an additional improvement for PvP specificly (but implemented in the entire game), the players’ health-bar must indicate how much health will they lose in the next second tick of condition damage. Many games have such when after a hostile skill connects, a portion of their HP pool is discolored, then in the next second they lose the discolored HP. This wont save them if they dont pay attention and/or didnt bring a cleanse, but it can at least give a chance and a bigger tell of how serious the conditions on them really are. (Discoloring the damage dealt by the full duration instead of the next second only would quickly discolor the entire health bar which is not much of a help i think, as five stacks of long bleeds can do that sometimes.)

Oh My God.8423:

Aidan Savage.2078:

Oh My God.8423:

Behellagh.1468:

The cap is so nibble to death by cats (thank you Londo) isn’t a viable way to defeat a boss.

Why is that a problem anyway!?

Given the hp and other things a boss has, even a full berserker build will have to “nibble it to death”. How often a berserker build can one- two- or three-shot a boss to death?

You do understand the capacity for damage that Condi builds are able to achieve, right? When geared correctly at “endgame”, a necro that is able to consistantly, and solo, maintain a 25 stacks of bleeding on a target will inflict over 280,000 damage over a single minute. And that’s just from bleeds alone. Combined with Parasitic Contagion (Close to Death does kitten-all for Condi Damage), that’s self-healing of 14,000 without touching a heal skill. Adding in direct damage and other incidental conditions, you’re looking at minimum of 50,000 damage.

And that’s one necro. Imagine 5-10 of them if conditions were not affected by a duration/stack cap.

Yes, indeed: tell me what 5 or 10 of the same kind of necro can do with their easily achievable 25 stacks of bleeding on a same target?

Then tell what one fully build berserker glasscannon can do? Then what 5 or 10 of those berserker glasscannons can do on a same target?

Now you see it is counterproductive to have that many that sort of necros all stuck under the glass ceiling of 25 bleedings. Yes, there may be a few more nearby foes affected by epidemic if there are enough of them happen to be there within the radius; and yes, there may be a few extra direct damage going around, which are normally not traited or geared to do more than basic damage. But when comparing to ounce-for-ounce damage each additional berserker can bring, the cap is indeed hindering.

yeah but the glasscannon berserker will die cause s/he needs to be upclose and personal and thus incuring damage while dealing damage. The necro does not. s/he can can focus on interrupting/dodging/fearing etc and still do maximum damage.

Ofcourse they also work well as a team if whatever boss is busy smashing the face of the berserker then the necro doesnt have to keep him/herself alive and can thus help out the glass cannon berserker survive the onslot a bit more while still maintaining damage.

Then there is epidemic which can help deal maximum damage to a bunch of mobs rather then one better then berserker glass cannon can again without having to now suffer 5x the damage the berserker glass cannon would have to in order to do the same thing.

Galen Grey.4709:

Oh My God.8423:

Aidan Savage.2078:

Oh My God.8423:

Behellagh.1468:

The cap is so nibble to death by cats (thank you Londo) isn’t a viable way to defeat a boss.

Why is that a problem anyway!?

Given the hp and other things a boss has, even a full berserker build will have to “nibble it to death”. How often a berserker build can one- two- or three-shot a boss to death?

You do understand the capacity for damage that Condi builds are able to achieve, right? When geared correctly at “endgame”, a necro that is able to consistantly, and solo, maintain a 25 stacks of bleeding on a target will inflict over 280,000 damage over a single minute. And that’s just from bleeds alone. Combined with Parasitic Contagion (Close to Death does kitten-all for Condi Damage), that’s self-healing of 14,000 without touching a heal skill. Adding in direct damage and other incidental conditions, you’re looking at minimum of 50,000 damage.

And that’s one necro. Imagine 5-10 of them if conditions were not affected by a duration/stack cap.

Yes, indeed: tell me what 5 or 10 of the same kind of necro can do with their easily achievable 25 stacks of bleeding on a same target?

Then tell what one fully build berserker glasscannon can do? Then what 5 or 10 of those berserker glasscannons can do on a same target?

Now you see it is counterproductive to have that many that sort of necros all stuck under the glass ceiling of 25 bleedings. Yes, there may be a few more nearby foes affected by epidemic if there are enough of them happen to be there within the radius; and yes, there may be a few extra direct damage going around, which are normally not traited or geared to do more than basic damage. But when comparing to ounce-for-ounce damage each additional berserker can bring, the cap is indeed hindering.

yeah but the glasscannon berserker will die cause s/he needs to be upclose and personal and thus incuring damage while dealing damage. The necro does not. s/he can can focus on interrupting/dodging/fearing etc and still do maximum damage.

Ofcourse they also work well as a team if whatever boss is busy smashing the face of the berserker then the necro doesnt have to keep him/herself alive and can thus help out the glass cannon berserker survive the onslot a bit more while still maintaining damage.

Then there is epidemic which can help deal maximum damage to a bunch of mobs rather then one better then berserker glass cannon can again without having to now suffer 5x the damage the berserker glass cannon would have to in order to do the same thing.

No. You are considering the problem with ONE berserker, ONE condimancer, and a team of ONE berserker with ONE condimancer.

The problem with stack cap is when there are multiple of each around. The damage potential scales upwards with the numbers of power builds around; whereas the same stops for condition build once the stack cap glass ceiling is reached, which turns out to be not that high a ceiling.

Shanks.2907:

pdavis.8031:

So If I read that correctly, as say bleed, stacks, everyone who adds to the stack deals damage as if they applied the full stack? Of course based on their own condition damage modifier.

So lets say if 1 stack of bleed ticks for 10 damage/sec, than 25 stacks would tick for 250 damage/sec. Sor for 5 people in a dungeon, each one applies bleed, than each person would deal bleed damage of 250 dam/sec for a total 1250 dam/sec. Now if everyone was using a condition build the bleed dam/sec increases to say 200 per tick for a party total of 25000 dam/sec. Which is faster than the current beserk meta dps builds, and thats JUST bleed damage in a 5 person group. Bosses would melt faster than a snow ball in hell. Add that to a world boss, and they quickly become puddles of goo without even trying, as bleed damage would be in the hundreds of thousands per tick. It would be a disaster.

To Fix the current problem with caps would either to raise/remove them and have a personal stack limit so one person couldn’t have moor than 25 stacks, or figure out a way to only have the conditions of the highest condition damage apply. So if you are running a power build asked do incidental bleed, your bleeds wouldn’t apply unless you were geared/traited for condition and/or bleed damage.

I don’t think that’s where the OP was going with this. His idea was that if there was a full stack (25 bleeds) that each one after would increase it’s intensity. But really, it’s far too roundabout and taxing on the system.

And I think your math is quite off. For starters, the bleeds don’t tick for 10 damage a second, ever. Maybe in queensdale when you’re just starting. Also, each person more than likely will not be sustaining 25 stacks of bleeding themselves. And I’m really not seeing how you got to 25k dmg/s from a party of 5. That sounds more like 25 stacks of 25 stacks of bleeding.

It will only do as much damage as the build can put out. It’s not different than a berserker doing it’s damage. The reason why there is a cap on bleeding is not because it’s overpowered in PvE, but that it’s a lot of calculations to make. There’s duration and condition power mixed in from multiple sources.

Ok I used 10 as an arbitrary number. Something to make the math easier. So using 10 as a random base number, 25 stacks of bleed would be 250 dam/sec. (10*25)Now they way I understood the OP was that everyone who applied bleed would essentially be doing damage as if they had applied 25 stacks of bleeding. (250*5=1250 dam/sec). Now on a full condition build one can do say 200 dam/sec(again random number to make the math easier) than a full stack would do 5000 dam/sec (200*25=5000). A party of 5, in full condition, EACH doing 5000 damg/sec would be 25000 dam/sec (5000*5). That’s not considering each individuals condition damage modifier, OR duration. That’s how I understood the OPs suggestion. I could be wrong.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Oh My God.8423:

Behellagh.1468:

The cap is so nibble to death by cats (thank you Londo) isn’t a viable way to defeat a boss.

Why is that a problem anyway!?

Given the hp and other things a boss has, even a full berserker build will have to “nibble it to death”. How often a berserker build can one- two- or three-shot a boss to death?

You do understand the capacity for damage that Condi builds are able to achieve, right? When geared correctly at “endgame”, a necro that is able to consistantly, and solo, maintain a 25 stacks of bleeding on a target will inflict over 280,000 damage over a single minute. And that’s just from bleeds alone. Combined with Parasitic Contagion (Close to Death does kitten-all for Condi Damage), that’s self-healing of 14,000 without touching a heal skill. Adding in direct damage and other incidental conditions, you’re looking at minimum of 50,000 damage.

And that’s one necro. Imagine 5-10 of them if conditions were not affected by a duration/stack cap.

Edit: Lulz. I forgot about the disgusting damage spread caused by epidemic.

Why is this a problem?

A single zerker GS warrior can do 10k+ DPS under perfect conditions, on a heavy target. That’s 600k+ over a minute, putting your necro in the dust, and warriors aren’t even the top power DPS class.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Why is this a problem?

A single zerker GS warrior can do 10k+ DPS under perfect conditions, on a heavy target. That’s 600k+ over a minute, putting your necro in the dust, and warriors aren’t even the top power DPS class.

Until whatever is being fought drops you to the dirt because you’re in melee range bringing your damage down to “nonexistent”. Even if a condi necro gets downed, they’re still dealing damage.

Now then, take your zerker garbage back to the class forums so we can bring the thread back to the discussion of how the game is crippling a perfectly viable playstyle because of arbitrary limits based on “processing” limits.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Why is this a problem?

A single zerker GS warrior can do 10k+ DPS under perfect conditions, on a heavy target. That’s 600k+ over a minute, putting your necro in the dust, and warriors aren’t even the top power DPS class.

Until whatever is being fought drops you to the dirt because you’re in melee range bringing your damage down to “nonexistent”. Even if a condi necro gets downed, they’re still dealing damage.

Now then, take your zerker garbage back to the class forums so we can bring the thread back to the discussion of how the game is crippling a perfectly viable playstyle because of arbitrary limits based on “processing” limits.

You aren’t. Your bleeds will wear off and then you stop doing damage.

Now if you can stop using insults as the basis of your arguments for a second, what do you plan to do then? Just leave conditions as it is and basically remove half the combat mechanics from high-end PvE?

The problems that condi builds face directly stem from the arbitrary limits anet put in place. Unlike direct damage builds, who are unaffected by another class’s trait inflicted incidental direct damage, condi builds are directly harmed by other classes inflicting incidental conditions onto enemies. Take warriors for example, they could be build completely for a power/crit build, but the moment they take more than a single point into Arms, they’re impacting the damage of anyone who’s a condi build in their party. The problem is compounded by the fact that, since they arent specced for condi, every stack of bleeding they apply is going to do pitiful damage.

Perhaps something as simple as changing the stack limits based on enemy rank? Regular, veteran, and elite enemies will retain the current stacking/duration limits in open world. Champions will have 2x the limits, and Legendaries will have 3x the limits. Vulnerability is the only exception I can see to this, as vulnerability has no discernable impact on condi damage in the first place. Yes, this still means that having more than 2 or 3 condi appliers will cause problems, yet you’ll at least have up to triple the uptime on the condi stacks you do apply.

In dungeons all stack/duration limits (including the above) could be doubled, as the amount of conditions being applied will be limited to just those 5 players, and enemies below the rank of veteran are very rarely seen aside from the lower level dungeons.

Additionally, the ability to deactivate minor traits, such as the aforementioned bleed on crit trait that the warrior has, if they’re going to be a detriment. I’d be surprised if there’s a class that doesnt have a single minor trait that can be a detriment in some way.

I like where this is going. and Yes i would have to agree, although not with the tone, of good master Savage. Discuss the Condition Caps and possible solutions, Bringing the Power meta numbers in here is not going to end well.

that being said.

I personally like the idea of the “mega condition”?? I know the cap limit is where it is because yes it is extensive amount of computing going on to be able to keep track of just what is already happening. Either NcSoft needs to buy Arena net faster machines. or we make do with what we have.

Idea, (playing of what is already suggested. )

Bleeding is stacked, At 25 the stack becomes one stack of hemorrhaging1, doing X amount of damage over the course of X seconds. each time the bleed cap is reached a new stack of hemorrhaging is tacked on. maximum 25 stacks. for simplicity sake, cap it at that and leave it there till someday someone finds a build that will cap 25 hemorrhaging. which I don’t see happening any time soon.

I am no computer programmer, I work with food. But those of you that DO how would you feel that would play out? Could it be as simple as that as adding a new condition that is created by the stacking of existing ones? How does the processing handle something like that? Would it mis-balance PvP as it could cause a heavy shift into condition maxing for “mega” stacks…. or even though we are talking about some pretty hefty numbers are they really that attainable?

What about changing all conditions to “stack-able” ? stacks of burning and poison. and when an arbitrary stack limit is reached it becomes a “mega” condition. Poison becomes Plague. Burning becomes Hellfire, etc.

meh,

Aidan Savage.2078:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Why is this a problem?

A single zerker GS warrior can do 10k+ DPS under perfect conditions, on a heavy target. That’s 600k+ over a minute, putting your necro in the dust, and warriors aren’t even the top power DPS class.

Until whatever is being fought drops you to the dirt because you’re in melee range bringing your damage down to “nonexistent”. Even if a condi necro gets downed, they’re still dealing damage.

Now then, take your zerker garbage back to the class forums so we can bring the thread back to the discussion of how the game is crippling a perfectly viable playstyle because of arbitrary limits based on “processing” limits.

You do know that people solo Lupi in melee range in full zerker gear, right? Once you get good enough, enemies don’t drop you in melee range anymore.

Anyway, as I understand the OP’s suggestion, it would just make condi damage scale much higher per each individual stack once the cap is reached. This… might have issues of exponential growth in damage. Personally, I’d prefer the simpler approach.

The biggest problem with conditions in the game is computation. That is the only reason Anet has offered for the condition cap. With strict computational limits, you would think that Anet would design their conditions around this, but that is not what happened. Currently, for every tick of a condition, the game needs to do the following:

-identify the stack order of the condition
-identify the duration of that condition
-acquire the identity of the user of that condition
-acquire the stats of the user of that condition
-preform a calculation to get the damage of that condition
-subtract the damage of that condition from an enemy
-subtract from the duration of that condition
-calculate if the stack order of that condition has changed, and subtract from that order

And it has to perform these calculations anywhere from every quarter second for duration and intensity, to every second for each tick of the attack. Combine this with every condition a player can possibly be applying, and you get a monstrous amount of growth. A single necro can maintain 25 bleeds, 1 stack of burning, 3 to 4 stacks of poison, 5 stacks of torment, and combining this all means that there has to be 32 damage calculations every second, and 140 duration calculations every second.

Whereas whacking something in zerker gear does one to two damage calculations per second.

Now, there is a very large amount of this processing that seems just arbitrarily large. In particular, the part where the condition damage has to be recalculated for each tick. My idea is to change how the conditions are handled, so that instead of constantly re-acquiring player data to calculate damage, the damage of a condition is set once it is applied. This will change the new calculation to:

-Identify stack order
-Identify duration
-Subtract preset damage from enemy HP
-Subtract duration from that condition
-Calculate stack order

This takes out the largest processes of condi damage, which were acquiring player information and recalculating damage dynamically. If this change cuts the server load of conditions by half, then you could easily double the stack limit for these conditions. If it is cut by a third, then triple the stack limit. Then, the only real limit on conditions in regular play would be something like world bosses, where you get 30 players all attacking at once. But for the majority of dungeons and smaller scale content, the condition problem goes away.

Just gotta figure out something for the world bosses then.

would perhaps changing the way the numbers work to calculate condition damage to function similar to that of ferocity and critical?

such as instead of condition damage, you now have condition power. and for x amount of condition power you have x condition damage.

base line damage so it is equal across the board and have say.. (totaly made up number…) 2000 condition power is equal to 100 percent condition damage, and 100 condition damage is equal to 5000 damage per second. ( again totaly made up number)

i go here in the idea that would that “simplify” the computation? allowing for more space to compute a higher stack limit? as Blood Red suggested?

or would that cause such a rework in the structure that would cause all sorts of issues. and perhaps just adding the new conditions. via mega conditions more streamline?

Actually, most of the processing for condi damage you listed would only have to be done every time the last condition stack that player applied falls off.

• Source <-every time, but easy information to log as a binary/hex byte
• Duration <- every time, duration remaining is calculated by as simple as N— (perl abbreviation for N = N-1) every time the damage ticks, once N=0, the stack protocol (or whatever it’s called) would run
• Stack level <- For stacking conditions, every time stack level equals 26, the hash/array/whatever is shifted down by 1, with stack level 1 being “forgotten” and stack level 26 being undefined. Repeats every time stack level 26 is defined
• Duration level <- For non-stacking conditions (burning/poison/etc), if duration level equals 9, those conditions are ignored (according to wiki). Personally I find the duration stacking algorithm funky
• Damage <- calculated once and for per tick damage, then subsequent stacks pull this information from existing stacks on a “incoming source = existing source” basis. If there’s a state change of the source, gaining/losing might, gaining/losing corruption stacks, etc, etc, damage is then recalculated

And that’s basically the extent of it. Open world content, as it exists now, is not conducive in any fashion outside limited exceptions, to condi builds in group play. Dungeons, on the other, do not have the same excuse. So I truly question why the limits are not changed in dungeons to be more conducive to multiple condi builds in the same party.

edit: kitten ed out and posted without finishing it.

Ropechef.6192:

would perhaps changing the way the numbers work to calculate condition damage to function similar to that of ferocity and critical?

such as instead of condition damage, you now have condition power. and for x amount of condition power you have x condition damage.

base line damage so it is equal across the board and have say.. (totaly made up number…) 2000 condition power is equal to 100 percent condition damage, and 100 condition damage is equal to 5000 damage per second. ( again totaly made up number)

i go here in the idea that would that “simplify” the computation? allowing for more space to compute a higher stack limit? as Blood Red suggested?

or would that cause such a rework in the structure that would cause all sorts of issues. and perhaps just adding the new conditions. via mega conditions more streamline?

Wont work in the first place. Condi damage is functionally equivalent to Power and Healing Power. Just as skills have a coefficient for Power to determine damage and for Healing Power to determine the healing, so too do conditions have coefficients for condi damage. For example, Bleeding has a stat coefficient of 0.05%, which means at level 80, it deals 42.5/s base damage, while with 3000 condi damage, that damage is increased to nearly 200/s damage.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

You do know that people solo Lupi in melee range in full zerker gear, right? Once you get good enough, enemies don’t drop you in melee range anymore.

And? You can also solo bosses as a condi spec. The fact that if you are good you can dodge, does not alter the fact that condi specs have distinct advantages in certain aspects (survive), advantages that would become OP should the condi cap be removed and groups able to apply insane damage whilst spaming condis with impunity.

There is a clear difference between sitting in melee range on a full glass cannon spec and using a condi build which is able to a) output very large damage, b) apply that damage from a point of greater safety than a melee zerk and c) use gear that allows for greater “tank” than the zerk.

Condi in no way needs a buff (if anything if you factor in pvp, it could be argued it needs nerfing) and the cap is in place for obvious reasons.

A lot of people’s rejections of this suggestion are coming from a position of assuming no other changes are made to the system. That a lone mesmer can still stack 20+ bleeds by accident for example.

Obviously, with a change in condition mechanics, you’d go back and change how conditions are applied, so that it wouldn’t create any ridiculously unbalanced new metas.

OP’s post is interesting, however, I doubt it’ll do any good, people have been telling them PvE condition handling must change since beta, and not once has anet addressed our concerns. Not once

How about reduce the number of stacks to, say, 20 and start converting to mega condition (e.g. Hemorrhage, etc.) sooner? At least it will be reducing some of the calculation load.

Fenrir.3609:

Condi in no way needs a buff (if anything if you factor in pvp, it could be argued it needs nerfing) and the cap is in place for obvious reasons.

Dont call it a buff then. Call it a change of management or something. Unfortunately, you’re still glossing over the glaring issue that is present even in dungeon parties. Something needs to be done so that if you’re a power warrior, your pitiful 0 condi damage bleed stacks do not override the bleed stacks applied by, for example, a necro with over 3k condi damage. Every stack of bleed you apply has a high chance of removing one of the necro’s stacks and reducing their damage. That is the inherent flaw with the arbitrary limits on conditions.

And for obvious reasons? Unfortunately, outside of pvp, I so no obvious reason for condi caps. Processing power? Bullkitten. If the game can process the damage done, skill recharges, and healing done by 140 players stacked on Teq during a burn phase, the game can process higher stack limits in at the least dungeons. Because condi builds dont need a buff? Bullkitten. The moment another condi build shows up, or ANYONE that can constantly apply condis, the effectiveness of both condi builds is effectively halved, or worse.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Dont call it a buff then. Call it a change of management or something.

Call it a smoking chicken if you like, a buff is still a buff.

Unfortunately, you’re still glossing over the glaring issue that is present even in dungeon parties. Something needs to be done so that if you’re a power warrior, your pitiful 0 condi damage bleed stacks do not override the bleed stacks applied by, for example, a necro with over 3k condi damage. Every stack of bleed you apply has a high chance of removing one of the necro’s stacks and reducing their damage. That is the inherent flaw with the arbitrary limits on conditions.

I’m not glossing over the issue at all. An issue such as that could be resolved by altering application hierarchy without needing to remove the cap.

And for obvious reasons? Unfortunately, outside of pvp, I so no obvious reason for condi caps. Processing power? Bullkitten. If the game can process the damage done, skill recharges, and healing done by 140 players stacked on Teq during a burn phase, the game can process higher stack limits in at the least dungeons. Because condi builds dont need a buff? Bullkitten. The moment another condi build shows up, or ANYONE that can constantly apply condis, the effectiveness of both condi builds is effectively halved, or worse.

Yes obvious reasons.

1. Processing power.
2. There is no split between pve and wvw, removing the cap would be loltastic.
3. The OP power issues I cited before. Condi can already do massive damage from a position of more survive than melee zerk. Now if you give a group of higher survive condi users significantly more dps via the removal of the condi cap, then content becomes even more of a joke than it is now.

There is clearly an issue with redundancy when using multiple condi users in pve, but it is also clear why the condi cap is in place. If you are going to attempt to overcome the redundancy issue, you have to do it in such a way which is not a base condi cap removal.

Oh My God.8423:

Galen Grey.4709:

Oh My God.8423:

Aidan Savage.2078:

Oh My God.8423:

Behellagh.1468:

The cap is so nibble to death by cats (thank you Londo) isn’t a viable way to defeat a boss.

Why is that a problem anyway!?

Given the hp and other things a boss has, even a full berserker build will have to “nibble it to death”. How often a berserker build can one- two- or three-shot a boss to death?

You do understand the capacity for damage that Condi builds are able to achieve, right? When geared correctly at “endgame”, a necro that is able to consistantly, and solo, maintain a 25 stacks of bleeding on a target will inflict over 280,000 damage over a single minute. And that’s just from bleeds alone. Combined with Parasitic Contagion (Close to Death does kitten-all for Condi Damage), that’s self-healing of 14,000 without touching a heal skill. Adding in direct damage and other incidental conditions, you’re looking at minimum of 50,000 damage.

And that’s one necro. Imagine 5-10 of them if conditions were not affected by a duration/stack cap.

Yes, indeed: tell me what 5 or 10 of the same kind of necro can do with their easily achievable 25 stacks of bleeding on a same target?

Then tell what one fully build berserker glasscannon can do? Then what 5 or 10 of those berserker glasscannons can do on a same target?

Now you see it is counterproductive to have that many that sort of necros all stuck under the glass ceiling of 25 bleedings. Yes, there may be a few more nearby foes affected by epidemic if there are enough of them happen to be there within the radius; and yes, there may be a few extra direct damage going around, which are normally not traited or geared to do more than basic damage. But when comparing to ounce-for-ounce damage each additional berserker can bring, the cap is indeed hindering.

yeah but the glasscannon berserker will die cause s/he needs to be upclose and personal and thus incuring damage while dealing damage. The necro does not. s/he can can focus on interrupting/dodging/fearing etc and still do maximum damage.

Ofcourse they also work well as a team if whatever boss is busy smashing the face of the berserker then the necro doesnt have to keep him/herself alive and can thus help out the glass cannon berserker survive the onslot a bit more while still maintaining damage.

Then there is epidemic which can help deal maximum damage to a bunch of mobs rather then one better then berserker glass cannon can again without having to now suffer 5x the damage the berserker glass cannon would have to in order to do the same thing.

No. You are considering the problem with ONE berserker, ONE condimancer, and a team of ONE berserker with ONE condimancer.

The problem with stack cap is when there are multiple of each around. The damage potential scales upwards with the numbers of power builds around; whereas the same stops for condition build once the stack cap glass ceiling is reached, which turns out to be not that high a ceiling.

the number doesnt matter much because no matter how many berserkers there are they’ll likely be in melee range hence all equally affected. As for condimancers multiple can still help by making it less hectic to maintain conditions while supporting and spreading conditions around through epidemic. Also important to consider is condimancers dont do just condition damage part of it is also direct damage. With co-ordination they can also take diverse support roles that can further be useful for the group.

At the end having just condimancers is as bad as having just berserkers. a Gw2 group in my opinion is most affective when you have a healthy mix. Lets not forget there are quite a few conditions which is part of the problem. having 50 stacks of bleed might be okey. but imagine a situation where you get 50 stacks of bleed and confusion as well as torment together with burning and poison. and then spread all around using epidemic thats a lot of damage

I know this kinda goes against what a DoT is about, but why not reduce the up time and increase the damage. You wont solve the sacks maxing out in a zerg but if balanced right it would mean having 3 condi builds in a party is viable.

soapingwet.4810:

…Ok, so bleeding should be able to stack from multiple sources to the point it can kill you in 2 seconds?

No but they could increase the amount of bleeds to 50, just like they could increase the stacks of burning, poison, for those classes that use those heavily. Say 5 stacks of burn or poison. Such a minor change wouldn’t crash the servers and would ensure that the condition damage builds would work properly.

They also need to look into the amount of damage some of these conditions do because they really aren’t consistent. For example, many of the initial damage bursts on some classes (like necro runes) are nothing like say the application of poison from engineer grenade poison fields.

I’d personally also suggest that they remove the standard system of conditions from every skill and make them tied to the traits so that players who have power or crit builds don’t produce conditions at all which would eliminate their natural automatic application of unnecessary condition application on their attacks (which aren’t increased by burst damage build like Zerker for example) so that those with pure condi or condi/healy builds are the only ones applying conditions to the enemies which would reduce some of the interference that we see with condition stacking on larger events.

Galen Grey.4709:

the number doesnt matter much because no matter how many berserkers there are they’ll likely be in melee range hence all equally affected. As for condimancers multiple can still help by making it less hectic to maintain conditions while supporting and spreading conditions around through epidemic. Also important to consider is condimancers dont do just condition damage part of it is also direct damage. With co-ordination they can also take diverse support roles that can further be useful for the group.

At the end having just condimancers is as bad as having just berserkers. a Gw2 group in my opinion is most affective when you have a healthy mix. Lets not forget there are quite a few conditions which is part of the problem. having 50 stacks of bleed might be okey. but imagine a situation where you get 50 stacks of bleed and confusion as well as torment together with burning and poison. and then spread all around using epidemic thats a lot of damage

I think the number DOES matter here, simply because there is an arbitrary cap on condition users that can be hit when there are multiple of them around. Having any number of berzerkers in any group is not an issue because more berzerkers means things die faster. Yet, having more than 2 condimancers is already punished. You can’t say the condimancers can “support the group.” Any one can do that in Guild Wars 2, just ask that zerker warrior to drop a banner and he’s “supporting.”

If it’s an issue of “a class should be better at something than other classes, and condimancers are good at spreading conditions while zerker warriors are good a single-target (or rather fewer-target) DPS,” then that’s valid. But condimancers shouldn’t feel hamstrung or limited when they are forced outside of them comfort zone. necros and other condi builds want to feel effective and powerful when they are helping to burn down that lone, million-health champion on the map too.

At the end of the day, I guess that’s the biggest issue of it: it doesn’t feel good enough

soapingwet.4810:

…Ok, so bleeding should be able to stack from multiple sources to the point it can kill you in 2 seconds?

Yes. If people can stack that many bleeds, the same amount of people could kill you in 2 seconds if they were full DPS.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Actually, most of the processing for condi damage you listed would only have to be done every time the last condition stack that player applied falls off.

• Source <-every time, but easy information to log as a binary/hex byte
• Duration <- every time, duration remaining is calculated by as simple as N— (perl abbreviation for N = N-1) every time the damage ticks, once N=0, the stack protocol (or whatever it’s called) would run
• Stack level <- For stacking conditions, every time stack level equals 26, the hash/array/whatever is shifted down by 1, with stack level 1 being “forgotten” and stack level 26 being undefined. Repeats every time stack level 26 is defined
• Duration level <- For non-stacking conditions (burning/poison/etc), if duration level equals 9, those conditions are ignored (according to wiki). Personally I find the duration stacking algorithm funky
• Damage <- calculated once and for per tick damage, then subsequent stacks pull this information from existing stacks on a “incoming source = existing source” basis. If there’s a state change of the source, gaining/losing might, gaining/losing corruption stacks, etc, etc, damage is then recalculated

And that’s basically the extent of it. Open world content, as it exists now, is not conducive in any fashion outside limited exceptions, to condi builds in group play. Dungeons, on the other, do not have the same excuse. So I truly question why the limits are not changed in dungeons to be more conducive to multiple condi builds in the same party.

edit: kitten ed out and posted without finishing it.

There’s a bit more to the source/damage than that. Existing conditions are dynamic to might and corruption, changing their damage in real time to changes in malice, so we know that the servers constantly pulls relevant player information in order to recalculate damage. The source is obviously stored as a hex value on the condition. But, it still has to process an operation to acquire relevant information from the source.

Likewise, multiple players applying conditions gives multiple sources, so if there is a source duplication system for condis, then it is largely ineffective at reducing any load.

But if conditions didn’t have to recalculate damage (and likewise, re-evaluate their source to do so), and instead had a static damage set on application that never changed, then this would reduce the processing needed. No more code to try and watch for changes from the source, no more code to calculate damage on the fly from these changes.

The only drawback I can think of is that event contribution via conditions would have to be reformed, but that seems like a minor point in the realm of balance.

Morsus.5106:

soapingwet.4810:

…Ok, so bleeding should be able to stack from multiple sources to the point it can kill you in 2 seconds?

Yes. If people can stack that many bleeds, the same amount of people could kill you in 2 seconds if they were full DPS.

Except you can apply those conditions whilst having more survive and being in a less precarious position than those going full glass melee.

People are going to have a far harder time landing melee dps on you than people dropping condi bombs on you from distance.

I’m not entirely sure quite how people think a situation in which we could regularly see 50 odd stacks of bleed, burn, poison and torment would be a good idea.

Fenrir.3609:

Morsus.5106:

soapingwet.4810:

…Ok, so bleeding should be able to stack from multiple sources to the point it can kill you in 2 seconds?

Yes. If people can stack that many bleeds, the same amount of people could kill you in 2 seconds if they were full DPS.

Except you can apply those conditions whilst having more survive and being in a less precarious position than those going full glass melee.

People are going to have a far harder time landing melee dps on you than people dropping condi bombs on you from distance.

I’m not entirely sure quite how people think a situation in which we could regularly see 50 odd stacks of bleed, burn, poison and torment would be a good idea.

As I detailed in my analysis, the problem is that there 3 stats for direct DPS, 2 stats for condi DPS, and even less for other roles.
The solution is to add more stats to the game so a full condi user has to use the same amount of stats as a direct damage user to achieve the same level of effectiveness, balanced by range.
Melee condi is a thing now.

DoT needs time. Its in the name Damage over TIME. They cannot be expected to even bother going DoT if it means that they wont survive for long enough to use their skills. To build up massively damaging condition stacks, you need time, you need survival.

A build designed to deal as much massive damage as quickly as possible needs to concern itself less with survival, because in an ideal situation they win fast enough so that the fight doesnt tire them. Its a juggling of HP. Its the essence of zerk.

Another build designed to deal massive damage in a much longer time scale needs to concern itself with enough survival to actually last as long as it takes to pump out those DoT skills and for those skills to deal the desired effect.

Any arguement debating the better survivability of condition builds is moot. It is as it should be. Its called balance in variety.

Galen Grey.4709:

yeah but the glasscannon berserker will die cause s/he needs to be upclose and personal and thus incuring damage while dealing damage. The necro does not. s/he can can focus on interrupting/dodging/fearing etc and still do maximum damage.

This is what attrition play-styles are supposed to be like. In theory, the ability to apply and kite should be balanced by lesser damage. The play-style provides greater safety but means longer time-to-kill.

In other games, the ability to apply DoT’s is also balanced to a greater or lesser degree by CD’s on skills that apply those DoT’s. Not so GW2, where condi application is often tied to auto-attack, which is happening all the time. This is unlikely to change, as it would require a major overhaul of combat.

The anti-condition complaints in PvP modes center around two things: “lack of counter-play” and “does too much damage.” While I don’t hold with the idea that there is no counter-play, I do believe that counter-play does require a build commitment that ensures one cannot have max anti-condi along with max anything else one wants. You can’t divorce damage done from counter-play, and I’ll leave the PvP pundits to decide if condi counter-play is balanced versus condi damage.

However, in PvE, mobs use condi counter-play somewhere between “very seldom” and “not at all.” In such a mode, too much damage can be measured against what direct builds can provide and be adjusted. If condi damage is considered to be “in a good place in PvP,” such an adjustment might be inadvisable — to avoid mode split. If that’s the case, Defiance could be given some ability to reduce the damage from condition stacks. Alternatively, a different boss buff could do so. There are often many ways to arrive at a desired sum via different equations.

In other words, “Does too much damage.” should not be countered by poor mechanics that mean, “You don’t get to do damage at all.”