Guild Wars 2

As we all know, the current condition system is irrevocably broken due to the condition cap limit. As raids will require more people, this problem is only going to be magnified with their introduction.

Is Anet seriously moving forward on this, forever cementing the zerk-only meta? I’m personally getting extremely bored with being pigeonholed into 1-2 “usable” builds for each class, with absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear anything except full zerks. Why on earth do different stat sets exist in PvE, when they are all inferior to zerk? Healing power is useless (and scales terribly), toughness just makes you an aggro magnet (fine if you have proper mitigation, but that doesn’t exist in this game either), and condi damage is just a way to make dungeons take longer, because everyone is stacking bleeding unintentionally while wearing zerks, eating up the stack cap that could be put to use by that condi necro, for instance.

I’m a little irritated that they’re pushing ahead with new game systems when there are systems in place that have been 100% broken since launch. Maybe for the next feature patch, they can spare us the ugly backpacks they made 6 months ago for China, and actually focus on fixing the systems we’ve been begging for for over 2 years.

Condition cap isn’t the problem at all in dungeons. The problem is ramp up time. If a boss fight is 20 seconds and your build doesn’t hit it’s condition limit until 13 seconds in, that is a big problem. If you could instantly start the fight with your conditions already applied to the boss there would be no reason not to bring a condition damage character, but thats not going to happen.

So yeah, the problem of ramp up time isn’t going to go away and removing the condition cap won’t change anything.

I agree with you 100%. It would seem that as far as priorities fixing condi damage would have trumped a lot of the other projects they have undergone.

It really is an important matter and it is baffling how it’s gone on so long without a fix.

Before Condition fix:

Better mob designs first, if mobs are highly vulnerable to direct dmg to the point where DPS builds just melt mobs in 1-3 seconds, Conditions, Support and Control builds will never get a chance to deal damage and affect combat flow…

By giving more targets to players, this could fix the condition issue in PvE. (If you have enough targets to use conditions on, you’re doing damage, instead of waiting for the boss monsters who don’t die in 1-3 seconds under berserker DPS builds)

Variety to Stats, abilities, attack speed and use more active defenses…

Nobody stated there’ll be nothing before raids CDI.

This please. Its tiring that the only optimal set is berserkers, give the condition users some love! Raids should not be added if its just another mindless zergfest like dungeons are. If thats the case just play EOTM and call it raiding.

Fixing condition damage is just one piece of the puzzle here and it will be interesting to see the discussions to follow.

Condition fix? Needs a mechanic fix…

Conditions are useless, bosses are immune to critical hits, CC skills are useless. Boons AND conditions are easily spammable making it impossible to have legit massive battle without adding some mechanic inhibators.

Guild Wars 2 PvE combat is HALF done, lets face it.

ArenaNet needs to revamp combat design and mechanics if they even want to consider raids. Changing combat itself is more of a daunting task than adding raids.

I bet nothing changes and you will be required to be a zerker build in order to enter raids (by other players).

Conditions are a complex issue.

I have little doubt that the idea of stacking bleeds was used to create play/counter-play in PvP modes. The fact that we see so many complaints about people wanting to counter conditions without building to do so lends credence to that belief. So, you’ve got a mechanic that works well for play/counter-play in small group combats. However, mobs don’t have that counter-play going for them, so conditions in PvE if you’re soloare just direct damage that takes time to ramp up.

Unfortunately, we’ve also got a PvE game that is primarily focused on large-scale events with many dozens of players and many skills/attacks that apply conditions whether the player cares to do so or not. We also have under-the-counter infrastructure that cannot handle enough condition stacks to accommodate all the players present at such events. What this is is a massive fail in game mechanic design.

So, no. ANet will not be fixing conditions. Why? They’d either have to change the infrastructure of the game; or they’d have to redesign conditions to move away from stacks. The latter would also require revamp of an awful lot of the skills that apply conditions. Even if ANet were to have the desire and will to make such a redesign, much of the forum-going player base would implode if content were again delayed to fix basic systems — and introducing more content that might later have to be fixed before making basic changes is not a good idea.

So, it’s my belief that there will be no condition fix — probably ever. PvE condition players are probably going to be forever impacted by ANe’t lack of foresight when designing the game.

I don’t think they will fix condition but we have a hope. Take, for example, the Husks with Triple Trouble Wurm. There is perfectly showed how maybe a new worldboss/dungeon boss should be.

Neve.7134:

I don’t think they will fix condition but we have a hope. Take, for example, the Husks with Triple Trouble Wurm. There is perfectly showed how maybe a new worldboss/dungeon boss should be.

Even the husks are flawed design. 1 good condition engineer can do exactly as much damage as 3 condition players due to condition caps.

Conditions have many problem in PvE due to the way they stack on enemies. In addition to the obvious problem with the 25 stack limit on common conditions like bleeding, other, less talked about, condition stacking rules have just as much impact on the effectiveness of conditions.

Conditions with a 1 stack limit have duration stacking limitations. For instance, if 5 effects that apply 5 seconds of burning are applied, the only way to apply more burning is to use an effect which has a greater duration than one of those stacks. This means low duration conditions, such as bonfire which ticks 1 second of burning 9 times, is not able to apply burning in many situations.

Damage conditions with 1 stack are ineffective damage in group settings. A single condition ranger can permanently maintain burning and poison on at least 3 targets, reducing the DPS of fellow condition dealers who aren’t able to apply their burning or poison damage.

Furthermore, because many physical damage groups already apply burning and poison passively, the effective DPS of condition damage roles is greatly cut. 2 guardians can easily maintain burning on an enemy, meaning your effective DPS is cut by the base condition damage of other party members. This means your ~1,000 damage from burning and poison will really be ~500 effective damage.

An easy way to address conditions is create effects which take place after condition stacking limits are met. For instance, if condition stacking limits are met on any condition, the monster would take direct damage based on the intensity and duration of that condition. Other non-damaging conditions like frost and cripple need the duration stacks removed if they are present, the limit instead being a max total duration. Immobilize should be converted to daze when it reaches the duration stack limit.

This could be heavily mitigated by having mobs periodically remove 25 stacks of Bleeding on themselves and replacing with a single-stack condition of equal damage, that way you can stack up to 25 players on a single mob/boss.

For example: 25 Bleeding -> 1 Heavy Bleeding

It’s not a true fix, but it woudln’t exactly be hard to implement either, as it works on the same principle as all conversion skills in the game (e.g Well of Power).

Poison and Burning could additionally stack in intensity in PvE:
- 1 stack on normal mobs
- 5 stacks on Veterans, 10 stacks on Elites
- 15 stacks on Champions, 20 stacks on Legendary
- 25 stacks on Epic

Do not forget: Epic bosses like Teq are immune to crit, meaning that berserker is a total waste of two stats (precision, ferocity). Best is to go with PTV since conditions are still broken in this game.

Now, IF they introduce bosses in Raids like Teq then we will see a shift of gear meta. But I highly doubt that. I rather think it will be a mixture of both – meaning there are i.e. smaller legendary or champion bosses which can be critted.

Either way, they have to streamline everything. It won’t be easy. But there is one argument I always hear: a raid would be a zergfest. That’s wrong, if you see the machanics of Teq, Wurm and Marionette coordination is needed, and no mindless zerg can down them.

The problem isn’t just the cap, the damage is subpar no matter how you slice it.

A zerker warrior/ele/thief/guard can put out ~11k dps at level 80 if properly specced and following a good rotation.

At max stacks of everything (nor even theoretically possible currently) a condi necro (highest condi profession) can only put out ~8000 dps.

So even if caps are just straight up removed a condi player will still take a lot longer to kill things. The situation can be improved by some hybrid builds where you can reach higher dps in certain situations (see hybrid ranger kill videos) but for most condi players you will still be at a disadvantage.

The compensation is supposed to come in the form of extra control through weakness, chill, etc. but bosses are mostly immune to those effects so they have no practical purpose.

It is a CDI on raids, it means that arenanet won’t make raids.

Management said Living Story is their decision, so it’ll be that way even if all players quit GW2 and the servers catch fire. They are a tunnel-vision train careless of their community (e.g. SAB will return Q4 2019, new weapons will never be introduced, a new profession will be talked about but never done, new weapon skills ditched, Holidays to worsen grinding, new races to play scratched, depth to lore to remain juvenile, “kill grawl” on one side of the hill quests and “help grawl” on other side of the hill quests, dye issues on same armor type, new dungeons never considered, so many etc………).

Why do you think you are gona be heard? Have you any idea how many good threads on burning issues I’ve seen being “sweet-talked” by reps into uselessness now long forgotten? Can you guess how many times I’ve read “amazing idea! – we’ll pass this on to the team” being written on good subjects 0 was done about?

The game is a static as-is. Like it like its now? good. Want anything other than management’s tunnel-vision direction? forget it.

Cherry on top: Representatives will never answer a non-complimentary thread. Goes to show something about hypocrisy.

This is a long standing issue that is apparently caused by technical issues related to server performance.

That said, I would like to see condition builds made more viable. I don’t like that 5 zerkers is viable but 5 condis is not.

One issue that will come up though, is that bosses (and pretty much everything else) already die too fast in the game. If they make this change (and they should), they will need to either beef bosses (and regular mobs) up or tone down damage across the board. Legendary enemies with the power to instill fear across Tyria shouldnt be killable in 30 seconds (with any build or party makeup).

To the issue of condition damage – they need to go the route most other MMOs take – condition stacking needs to be individual to the players, not the targets (each necro could put up to 8 bleed stacks on the target for example). Unfortunately, this would require a TON of balance work and skill redos (not to mention the issue of server performance).

It still needs to be addressed though. Condition builds (and support builds) should be more viable in the game than they are now.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The problem isn’t just the cap, the damage is subpar no matter how you slice it.

A zerker warrior/ele/thief/guard can put out ~11k dps at level 80 if properly specced and following a good rotation.

At max stacks of everything (nor even theoretically possible currently) a condi necro (highest condi profession) can only put out ~8000 dps.

Highest condi profession is warrior or Engineer. But the point I’d like to make is that the 8k DPS is only counting the condition damage. You’re not counting the direct damage. In the same scenario you show for the berserker (25 Might, banners etc) the direct damage of a Rabid engineer/warrior is not negligible. they are basically the same DPS as the berserker.

The difference, like I said earlier is ramp up time. A condition damage Engineer caps out at about 18 bleeds, but it takes around 13 seconds to get that high. A berserker thief is outputting 15k DPS from the first second of the fight and suffers no ramp up time.

I’m just going to throw this out there laugh at me all you like, but could this all be due to the fact of not having a dedicated heal/protection class, in addition the mobs can’t resurrect there fallen comrades either (and even if they could, it would be a waste of time because…it…takes…so…long…to…do) by the time they’d knelt down we’d have zerg blasted the idea before the mob had even +1 on the fallen comrade.

But to point out the obvious if we are just going to zerg everything what would be the point of a better AI to begin with, it doesn’t matter how smart a mob might be if its facing overwhelming odds it has no chance.

Why would you scratch a stone to dust, when you have a perfectly good sledgehammer that can do it in a single swing? that is how I view condi .

they have to redesign the game to fix conditions… while they can’t even release a map every 6 months.

good luck!

Conditions are broken for ONE aspect of the game (that is used in 2 modes of play). Not saying it’s not important, just that some perspective should be used when “demanding” it be “fixed” and exaggerating just how much the inability to condition down a Boss really effects the overall game (not very much).

The REAL issue here is that there is NO way to fix this for BOSS encounters (many vs 1) and balance it for PvP (x vs y) with the current mechanics. Overhauling that mechanic is NOT a trivial thing.