Guild Wars 2

The devs addressed this topic multiple times.

Jon Peters addressed it here

Colin then talked about it during a four part Q&A.
The relevant quote comes from part IV

Comment and question about how conditions only stack to 25 and if you have more than one condition stacker that it becomes useless and if anything is being done to address it.

Colin: Currently, no. Interesting statistic for you – every condition in the game costs server bandwidth. We have to track how often the condition is running, what the duration of that condition is, and what the stack is at. So the more stacks we allow, the more expensive it gets because we’re tracking every additional stack on there. So, we could say that you could have infinite stacks. Number one, that becomes really imbalanced. But number two, it’s really expensive for us on a performance basis. That’s one of those weird, kind of backend server issues that can help make game design decisions regardless of what you want to do with it.

Comment and question on how if everyone has their own individual stack on a mob instead.

Colin: Yeah, it’s tough. It’s certainly something that we can look at. It does drastically change the way the professions play. It does say that you can no longer stack all of one type of condition. It might change the skills on each weapons if we were to do that. It would encourage more group play to a certain extent. It’s not really something that we’re talking about, but it’s an interesting idea.

Jon Peters posted again and then again and also brought how condition damage doesn’t affect objects

Granted those posts are a bit old now, but the point is Anet is aware that the current way conditions and condition capping works is not ideal but a technical limitation.

So long story short, they are aware that the current method is not the best.
How long it takes them to find a solution, and an individuals reaction to that amount of time, is up to them I guess.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Some angry ranting.

1. Surviability becomes an issue when you are talking about similar kill speeds. Some people have been suggesting condi kill speed should be brought in line with zerk kill speed. Ergo yes, the “mean kill” speed would be comparable and the survive would be higher.

It doesn’t really matter which way you look at it “but.. but zerkers can solo lupi” is simply a terrible argument.

Again, banging on about PVT still makes no sense. At all.

3. At the elite level, yes condi would still be nigh on useless within the speedrun remit. Changing the condi cap would not change that, it would however greatly increase the damage and ease outside of that remit (i.e for most of the playerbase) . I don’t think that is neccessarily a good idea.

Oh btw, removing the cap would clearly increase damage. That you think otherwise is somewhat odd.

The rest of your post is an overly aggressive mess frankly, i’m all for altering the condi system to make them more viable in pve groups but don’t think just removing the cap is the way to do it, so if that is the best you are going to come up with then perhaps this little back and forth is best being brought to an end.

haviz.1340:

Example of the boss fight with condition warrior where you can easily avoid most if not all of the damage: https://youtu.be/zyanxgG4bX4

This fight takes about 3 minutes as full dps build as well. Another example would be lupi. Fastest necro solo was achieved with condition build, not direct damage. Condition dealers lose their potential in group setting not only because of cap but also because direct damage dealers have more offensive buffs like vulnerability. It’s counter balanced by armour ignoring mechanics of conditions but only in pvp – mobs rarely use protection or have increased armour.

To reiterate, in solo settings or average team settings, one condition damage dealer isn’t far behind direct damage dealers. But if their potential was increased, pvp would be completely destroyed.

There’s a bit more than offensive buffs. Precision and ferocity act as a multiplier to power, making each point of power more efficient for damage overall. Malice has no such benefit, so it can never scale in any way but linearly. This is important when factoring in might: at max might, 875 malice is a static buff, whereas 875 power turns in to (at 55% crit chance and 210% crit rate) 1404 power, or about 60% more of an increase point per point.

Though conditions have a roughly the same doubling ratio (except burn, at 1312 malice) as power, the additional stats cause things to grow more out of proportion.

Anyway, I hear people saying that conditions would become OP in PVP if there was no cap, but I have yet to see any evidence of this. Back when I played in the dreaded condi meta as an engineer (only cleanse was healing turret), I rarely hit the cap of conditions. There are several reasons why, too:

#1: My CC would halt their attacks and combos, preventing them from landing.
#2: My blocks and evades would dodge many of their bursts, keeping condis low.
#3: I did have a cleanse that would help out in many occasions.
#4: Even in death, the accumulation of damage from multiple condi users would kill me before the cap was reached.
#5: I had teammates with group cleanses that would reduce the damage.

Unless I am getting epically trained, or hit the exact wrong spot with epidemic, the cap wasn’t an issue. Even when I played a terrormancer in sPVP, I think I capped someone once, and that was through condi transfer.

Point is, other players aren’t gigantic bags of HP like PVE enemies are. We are rather frail bags that have a lot of active defense, which causes the cap to rarely be an issue in play. If we remove the cap, there will still only be a handful of events that would ever cause us to hit more than 25 bleeds, and never an event that’ll cap out confusion or torment.

The same goes for WvW, too. The only time I ever hit the cap is when I get separated and condi bombed by several necros/engis. There, it wasn’t much of a difference between being separated out and DD bombed by warriors/guards/eles/thieves. I was dead in seconds with no hope of survival. Of course, playing an engi or necro, unless I was in a small group my condis just fell off of zergs, so the cap never came into play there, either.

Apparently, there’s a thought that speedrun dungeons is where the condition stack problem is.

Hahahaha, false. If you’re getting 25 bleed stacks on a speedrun, you’re doing it wrong.
Stay on task.

The condition cap is most relevant in large-scale PvE and similar parts of WvW, when territory claims are involved. It’s not so relevant with player v player, since getting 25 stacks with no condition clearing is a death sentence anyway.

Still, conditions relative to skill speed is an important topic. Should we have fewer stacks capable per player but make them significantly more potent? Get rid of condition duration entirely in favor of potency? What stat would we put in its place if we did?

Honestly, the main problem with condition damage is that bleeding is the primary method of it. Torment happens a little, burning does bigger damage but is harder to stack, and confusion is almost solely the domain of mesmers and doesn’t usually last long enough to stack to 25.

So, when we grouse about condition damage stacks, we mostly mean Bleeding. I’m sure burning and poison duration caps are an issue as well, but continuing to extend the time on an already full queue doesn’t mean as much, though it’s still a DPS loss for the individual player.

Honestly, the cleanest way I’m seeing this work with respect to server load is to grant automatic damage if the stack is full. It’s a quick calculation and it respects the originator of the damage.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

There’s a bit more than offensive buffs. Precision and ferocity act as a multiplier to power, making each point of power more efficient for damage overall. Malice has no such benefit, so it can never scale in any way but linearly. This is important when factoring in might: at max might, 875 malice is a static buff, whereas 875 power turns in to (at 55% crit chance and 210% crit rate) 1404 power, or about 60% more of an increase point per point.

Though conditions have a roughly the same doubling ratio (except burn, at 1312 malice) as power, the additional stats cause things to grow more out of proportion.

Anyway, I hear people saying that conditions would become OP in PVP if there was no cap, but I have yet to see any evidence of this. Back when I played in the dreaded condi meta as an engineer (only cleanse was healing turret), I rarely hit the cap of conditions. There are several reasons why, too:

#1: My CC would halt their attacks and combos, preventing them from landing.
#2: My blocks and evades would dodge many of their bursts, keeping condis low.
#3: I did have a cleanse that would help out in many occasions.
#4: Even in death, the accumulation of damage from multiple condi users would kill me before the cap was reached.
#5: I had teammates with group cleanses that would reduce the damage.

Unless I am getting epically trained, or hit the exact wrong spot with epidemic, the cap wasn’t an issue. Even when I played a terrormancer in sPVP, I think I capped someone once, and that was through condi transfer.

Point is, other players aren’t gigantic bags of HP like PVE enemies are. We are rather frail bags that have a lot of active defense, which causes the cap to rarely be an issue in play. If we remove the cap, there will still only be a handful of events that would ever cause us to hit more than 25 bleeds, and never an event that’ll cap out confusion or torment.

The same goes for WvW, too. The only time I ever hit the cap is when I get separated and condi bombed by several necros/engis. There, it wasn’t much of a difference between being separated out and DD bombed by warriors/guards/eles/thieves. I was dead in seconds with no hope of survival. Of course, playing an engi or necro, unless I was in a small group my condis just fell off of zergs, so the cap never came into play there, either.

What would happen with few epidemic necros chaining them in succession in wvw? Burst one target with condition bomb, then spread epidemic, then again and again.

Also, it’s not the issue whether they can remove the cap because they can’t. It’s only the issue of alternatives.

i know that a cap is really annoying and see the reason why it’s there in the first place, the way we should look at this is not how we can make conditions work better or how we can prevent it to hit the cap to fast but we should look to how the conditions them self work.
let’s take bleeding as a reference since it’s the most used condition AFAIK, how can it work better then it does right now?

let’s break it down:
“http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bleed
(0.05 * Condition Damage) + 42.5 per stack per second at level 80 "
so the damage is done per second

“Bleeding can stack in intensity up to 25 times”
it can only go as far as 25 times

all that tells us that the condition it self is there and works on it’s own, no one can really take advantage.
but what if bleed gives us the ability to evolve in to a different condition like crippling or deep wound, making it easier to take down your enemy while making conditions useful in DPS level.

let’s make a simple example:
a DPS build does about 1500 DPS while the current condi build only does about 800DPS, when a condition can hurt the enemy deeper (only in PvE for balance reasons) then a DPS of 1500 would be allot easier since you don’t need direct damage.

ofcouse they should limit this only when it’s in max stack, now you have condi spammers able to do the DPS a DPS-only player does.

ps. i would rather see a way to lower the DPS on direct damage to make conditions more useful but that’s never gonna happen.

sorudo.9054:

i know that a cap is really annoying and see the reason why it’s there in the first place, the way we should look at this is not how we can make conditions work better or how we can prevent it to hit the cap to fast but we should look to how the conditions them self work.
let’s take bleeding as a reference since it’s the most used condition AFAIK, how can it work better then it does right now?

let’s break it down:
“http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bleed
(0.05 * Condition Damage) + 42.5 per stack per second at level 80 "
so the damage is done per second

“Bleeding can stack in intensity up to 25 times”
it can only go as far as 25 times

all that tells us that the condition it self is there and works on it’s own, no one can really take advantage.
but what if bleed gives us the ability to evolve in to a different condition like crippling or deep wound, making it easier to take down your enemy while making conditions useful in DPS level.

let’s make a simple example:
a DPS build does about 1500 DPS while the current condi build only does about 800DPS, when a condition can hurt the enemy deeper (only in PvE for balance reasons) then a DPS of 1500 would be allot easier since you don’t need direct damage.

ofcouse they should limit this only when it’s in max stack, now you have condi spammers able to do the DPS a DPS-only player does.

ps. i would rather see a way to lower the DPS on direct damage to make conditions more useful but that’s never gonna happen.

A deeper conversion would certainly work say 5 bleeds = 1 deep wounds I like that for bleeding. I also suggested they increase the max bleed stack to 50 and the max burn/poison stack to 5 but conversion would work better because if it converts than it become a new type of condition and won’t interfere. For example, if burn was converted into charring (no pun intended) than it would no longer interfere with other people’s stacking of basic burns. If they made that so that condition builds did this under the hood it would be great!

I also like the ability for conditions to be removed from all of the skills and rebalanced so that the only time conditions are applied are when condition builds are in place in grandmaster traits. This would eliminate people using condi to offset their power builds and it would remove much of the unnecessary stacking we’re seeing from builds that don’t rely as much on that type of damage.

Basically Zerker would never apply a condition again under this suggestion which would eliminate much of the problem.

haviz.1340:

What would happen with few epidemic necros chaining them in succession in wvw? Burst one target with condition bomb, then spread epidemic, then again and again.

Also, it’s not the issue whether they can remove the cap because they can’t. It’s only the issue of alternatives.

Pure awesomeness would happen. Just… pure awesomeness.

Seriously though, while epidemic makes for a good condi bomb, the fact is that in a zerg environment, condi cleanses and duration reduction are quite high. I run a terrormancer in WvW a lot, and it is rare for me to fire off a meaningful epidemic. If I pick out one sheep from the herd and try to pile on him, one of three things usually happens:

#1: This person dies before I can pull off a really potent epidemic. The more conditions that are on this person, the faster they die, after all.
#2: This person keeps cleansing my conditions, so I never really get to use epidemic.
#3: After I use epidemic, a warrior/guardian/ele/mesmer cleanses all of those conditions anyway.

Because of this, what I end up spreading around is usually a staff combo (staff 234). If I get in closer to use weakening shroud and grasping dead, I’ll get pulled, trained, or focused. If my enemy gets too close, they’ll get pulled or focused themselves, pushing the player away from the pack making epi moot.

Though if I have a coordinated team of necros, this might be easier to pull off. Epidemic is arguably the best argument for the cap, after all, since it is the only technique in the game that is a force multiplier. Of course, epidemic could be balanced in a capless environment to only move 25 stacks of conditions or something like that.

Alternative conditions might have the same issues, though. If epidemic can spread hemorrhaging, you’ll face the same beast with a different name.

There’s a pretty simple fix to the issue that Anet refueses to do:
Seperate players and monsters cap for condition.
The players stay the same as previous, but now monsters have higher cap such as 75 layers of bleeding, 3 layers of poison and 3 layers of burning,
This will greatly improve the damage proportion of condition spec so they wouldn’t collide each other.

Also, monsters should take like 50% more damage from condition damage to compensate the damage vs zerker issue.

#3: I am not understating the windup. Here’s a fine example particularly 1:26 in, where the team drops the boss in 11 seconds. This isn’t even a particularly good speed run group. When you are in a team where regular mobs die instantly, vets and silvers die in 5 seconds, and legendary mobs live for 20 seconds (or 12 with time warp), there is nothing more useless than a condi build. You get 4 attacks before an enemy is dead, and you can’t unload a full set of 25 bleeds + burn + poison + torment +confusion in 4 attacks.

Nice, a video with myself in it got linked.

And I don’t understand why you’re using old world record attempts as an example of condition being bad, even though our group composition was weak, our rotations and gear were still leagues better than your average berserker player. I’ve pugged a lot of that path and I’ve literally never had a kill that fast in a pug setting.

Aidan Savage.2078:

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.

In a single minute, the bleeds of a necro get to do kitten because the other 4 zerker warriors have obliterated everything around before the 10 second mark. And this is completely true. I stopped using epidemic in dungeons the moment everyone rolled a warrior. Before I can build, say, 15 stacks on the first target to cast epidemic, the target and everyone around are dead. Even if I casted epidemic with 10 stacks, it would mean nothing since the other targets are going to die before the bleeds do full damage.