Guild Wars 2

This isn’t a rant, but more of a constructive analysis of the condition cap and condition builds in general. Right now, condition builds are getting hurt pretty badly in PvE because of the quickly reached condition cap. Basically, a five-man party has room for 1 condition build, and even then, most parties would much prefer another berserker wearing dps class. Condition damage shouldn’t be as good as direct damage dps, as it’s usually applied at range or while evading (like death blossom), but it should at least be more viable than it is right now. It should also be something the group really wants, like 100% increased damage from lots of vulnerability stacks.

Bleed: Why shouldn’t a dungeon gold be able to have 80 stacks of bleed on it? Right now, berserker warriors can do 25K hundred blades on them every 6 seconds. Heck, even properly specced rifle warriors can put up 20K crits with volley and kill shot.

Vulnerability: A mesmer can cap this out in one shatter with the right build, but what’s the harm in having 100 stacks of this on a mob? Double damage isn’t that crazy given the sheer amount of HP these mobs have.

Confusion: Duration for PvE is too low, period. For PvE this should be doubled, simply because enemies in this game take so long in between attacks that there is little to no room for error in timing confusion if you want more than 1 proc.

Poison: Seems to be working as intended, good against healing mobs.

Burning: Seems to be working as intended, but doesn’t seem to serve that much of a purpose as it seems to be a pretty low damage / tick.

I’m not trying to whine about the game, but rather would love to see someone from ANet explain why this mechanic exists in the first place for PvE, or hopefully announce an intention to change it up. It certainly wouldn’t be overpowered if the cap were raised or even lifted, and it would give more legitimacy to playstyles other than zerker crit builds.

I would love to hear what other players have to add too, and if they have any creative solutions to this issue.