Guild Wars 2

I wonder if ANet could get away from some grief by dropping the idea that might affects condition damage retroactively. This because that means they have to track every condition someone applies to make sure that the might change is applied to “old” conditions. Never mind that we also have the damage change retroactively if we swap weapon set after application.

If this was not the case they could calculate the damage once pr attack and add them to x number of pr second variables relevant to that condition. Then on the next second the oldest variable is read, the sum stored applied as condition damage, zeroed and put at the back of the line to be filled again.

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

Conditions work wonders in PvP and for PvE well… we’ll stick with 4 direct damage team members and one conditioner.
If it can’t be fixed without blowing up the servers I don’t think there is much we can do.

Illustrating once more that the game is likely built around small PVP skirmishes, not massive open world PVE boss battles.

If we go by Anet’s words, a group of anything should be able to do anything. So I challenge Anet to make a video of 5 condi specced necros doing Arah p4

Just kidding. But for fairness sake, if they limit the amount of damage a target can take from certain condition /second, they should also limit how much direct damage a target can take /second. There’s absolutely no reason why 5 condi necros (around 3,3k dps) should do SO much less DPS than a group of 5 direct damagers (5 * (one person’s DPS) = x).

If they want to remain in their DPS race style PvE and keep their conditions capped they should at least revamp the dungeons and fractals so that the ideal group consisted of two hybrid bleeders (condi ranger, necro…), a burner (guardian, engi, ranger…) , a poisoner DD (ranger, thief, necro…) and 2 support DDs (this is the 2 spots any class can fill). Then add tons of thoughness and blocks to bosses but lower their HP and voila, you have a game where not only 3 of 8 professions are concidered good for PvE. With these changes the PvE groups would go from 3 warriors/guardian/mesmer to necro for bleeds and epidemic + ranger/engi for burning + ranger/thief for poison + 2 of w.e dps/support builds. This would also bring some roles to PvE without bringing back trinity.

This is so incredibly disappointing.

I know very little about the technical side of design, and I can neither criticize nor defend any issue on that front. But I do know a bit about the interactive and aesthetic ends of design, and technical problems are no excuse for writing off a severely flawed mechanic as ‘unsolvable’ and hoping your audience will forget about it.

That is just insulting to your audience, shows a lack pride in your work, and a complete absence of artistic integrity.

If they had said, ’It’s because of a technical issue that we haven’t figured out how to solve yet.‘, that would have been great, we know you’re working on it. But instead, you tell us that you’re writing it off, and you don’t care about the members of your audience it disappoints enough to even try.

Failure isn’t the lowest point in the design world, giving up is. Up to this point I had never been disappointed in ANet, they always showed us they were trying even when they made mistakes; I’m not one to blame people for mistakes they are sincerely sorry for, honestly admit, and attempt to make up for. But they have blatantly stated they aren’t even trying on this one, they don’t care enough. I thought better of them as designers and artists. Perhaps I was mistaken.

EDIT: Woohoo red response! Colin was mistaken, they ARE currently working on this issue, page four just short of halfway down, JonPeters post.

The post below has Jon Peter’s acknowledgement that this is an issue…
From the official forums five months ago!!!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/No-love-for-condition-builds/page/2#

JonPeters.5630:

Might as well chime in and say big crowd events where condies are stack capped is also a problem we are investigating.

Jon

Players told them it was broken in beta… and in October… and in December…
Again and again.
They agreed it was an issue in October.
And now they say they can not fix it and are not looking at it?!?!?!

Ulari

digiowl.9620:

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

Conditions work wonders in PvP and for PvE well… we’ll stick with 4 direct damage team members and one conditioner.
If it can’t be fixed without blowing up the servers I don’t think there is much we can do.

Illustrating once more that the game is likely built around small PVP skirmishes, not massive open world PVE boss battles.

It also illustrates incredibly poor design when a major build cannot be used for all content in the game. That is what makes the difference between a good design and a bad one. If they knew they were limited on stacks then they should have made conditions more powerful but harder to stack. Perhaps not putting bleeds, poisons, and burns on every other attack would have been the far better option. Making certain attacks apply a condition almost sounds like a good trait for say a condition based trait line…

There are a lot of issues with condition builds. If I had my time back, I would have chosen a warrior since the game is obviously designed specifically to cater to melee classes.

You know what would help condition builds in group play?
Is if when a stack cap is reached, a threshold effect is created that is very helpful to the group.

I don’t understand… are the developers really that closed minded and limited that they claim they can’t do anything because of technical reasons? Just sitting here in the time it took to read this thread I have solved their technical issues via 2 different methods.

1. Addition of a stacking bleed debuff that increases damage % of bleeds after the bleed cap is hit. A flat % that isn’t individual and can stack to whatever number you need without using much bandwidth

2. double bleed damage and reduce bleed stacks in half so twice as many people can contribute. (arbitrary number obviously)

On top of this it is just insulting that the devs just come out and say… well it isn’t fair for condition damage specs to all do full damage on a target when a group of 5 warriors can do that exact same thing and a single warrior can already do 5x the damage of a condition spec just on his own.

Distaste.4801:

It also illustrates incredibly poor design when a major build cannot be used for all content in the game. That is what makes the difference between a good design and a bad one. If they knew they were limited on stacks then they should have made conditions more powerful but harder to stack. Perhaps not putting bleeds, poisons, and burns on every other attack would have been the far better option. Making certain attacks apply a condition almost sounds like a good trait for say a condition based trait line…

Agreed. One would assume that if you developed a mechanic like stacking conditions that you would consult the backend team whether or not this is possible. It somehow feels as if the left hand doesn’t know that the right hand is doing.

Since we won’t see a solution from ANet as it appears … are we really left with only 3 of 8 classes viable for (high-end) PvE?

Play the game the way you want – if you play the right class

Like Ford supposedly said, you can have the Model T in any color as long as it’s black…

And yea, the company is starting to look like it is high on designers but low on engineers.

I have a question. Condition damage bypasses defense rating?
If so then some boss mobs can have their defense upped and health dropped. That way condition damage is an attractive option in those situations.

Remove condition stacking. Allow condition crits. Adjust some numbers, end of misery.
And yeah save your bandwidth.

The issue in a bubble is a plausible one. Out of the bubble, one might think it’s their first foray into an MMO.

One more issue that’s been bugging me is, devs, seldom read the forums. Someone would gather what he/she thought is worth escalating then the devs become aware.

Do these ‘escalators’ actually play GW2 hur hur hur.

Redfeather.6401:

I have a question. Condition damage bypasses defense rating?
If so then some boss mobs can have their defense upped and health dropped. That way condition damage is an attractive option in those situations.

Do not fix the issue, because condition is hard capped. You can only have 25 units of bleed going at once, while you can (at least in over world events) have any number of zerker warriors (or their equivalent) beating on the same target. Meaning that 5 or 500 people delivering bleeds will do the exact same damage once the stack is maxed out, but 500 zerkers will do 100 times the damage of 5 zerkers.

Oh yeah digiowl. I see what numbers we talking about now.

What’s funny is that condition builds are not only worthless now, if they don’t change the system they will get even worse when the transition to full ascended is completed.

wintermute.4096:

What’s funny is that condition builds are not only worthless now, if they don’t change the system they will get even worse when the transition to full ascended is completed.

I hadn’t thought of that, but it’s true. Any buff to condition duration will only cause condition players to cap out sooner, and prevent more of each others damage.

If all your doing for a pt is just dmg your doing it wrong. This game is not about overspecialization that what the 3 way mmorpgs are about not GW2 because it dose not have it in this game (tank dps support). Please stop trying to make the game something that its not.

bluewanders.5297:

I agree that something needs to be done about condition damage. I think direct damage needs to be brought into line… and burst damage needs to have a hard serious look, because it is way out of line.

Since there ARE technical limitations in different forms of damage, then thats the bar that other sorts of damage need to be balanced around.

However now we are very much off topic from the hyperbole of the original post.

Sorry, but that’s not the bar damage needs to be balanced around. The bar should be that sustained damage should be comparable across different forms of damage. From there, you implement technical solutions to achieve the design goal. If Anet has implemented a technical design that doesn’t meet a game design goal they simply need to go back to the drawing board. These are the kinds of core issues that should be consuming developer resources rather than monthly events.

Jski.6180:

If all your doing for a pt is just dmg your doing it wrong. This game is not about overspecialization that what the 3 way mmorpgs are about not GW2 because it dose not have it in this game (tank dps support). Please stop trying to make the game something that its not.

It is.

Don’t bring up the trinity. It was a good idea to make people look up, but it’s more than a can of worms they opened up with it.

It’s workable, but don’t be expecting a final product for at least another year.

Uncle Salty.6342:

Jski.6180:

If all your doing for a pt is just dmg your doing it wrong. This game is not about overspecialization that what the 3 way mmorpgs are about not GW2 because it dose not have it in this game (tank dps support). Please stop trying to make the game something that its not.

It is.

No you want it to be that way and are trying to forces your view points on something you cant changes. You must be able to think for your self at one point in your life this is a good start. Try to not think on the lines of tank support and dps like you have been TOLD to do on other mmorpgs.

Jski.6180:

Uncle Salty.6342:

Jski.6180:

If all your doing for a pt is just dmg your doing it wrong. This game is not about overspecialization that what the 3 way mmorpgs are about not GW2 because it dose not have it in this game (tank dps support). Please stop trying to make the game something that its not.

It is.

No you want it to be that way and are trying to forces your view points on something you cant changes. You must be able to think for your self at one point in your life this is a good start. Try to not think on the lines of tank support and dps like you have been TOLD to do on other mmorpgs.

If you’re trying to be a mind reader, I’d suggest another hobby. Don’t assume to know what I think.

COF P1 farm anyone?

Jski.6180:

If all your doing for a pt is just dmg your doing it wrong. This game is not about overspecialization that what the 3 way mmorpgs are about not GW2 because it dose not have it in this game (tank dps support). Please stop trying to make the game something that its not.

I’ve being thinking that this is the problem all along you are not just one thing in a group dynamic you are all things, until players get out of the “its all about DPS” attitude these problem with continue to seem bigger than they actually are. But of course we are now 6 months in and into the realm of speed running content, so 30 sec’s shaved off of a run is paramount, so what is it, 4 Warriors and Mesmer are FOTM for ironically FOTM.

Idea.
Instead of applying an additional 25 stacks that would cause server load issue, we only apply one single additional condition that includes all the damage from conditions that were overwritten.
That condition would only tick once every 3s for all the extra damage so it wouldn’t create a lot of numbers.

You could also do like every other MMOs where conditions tick for all the damage of all conditions instead of a million of number spam.
I.E. if I apply 20 conditions for 100 damage each, the mob takes 2000 damage per tick.
Not sure why it was complicated this way…

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

Idea.
Instead of applying an additional 25 stacks that would cause server load issue, we only apply one single additional condition that includes all the damage from conditions that were overwritten.
That condition would only tick once every 3s for all the extra damage so it wouldn’t create a lot of numbers.

You could also do like every other MMOs where conditions tick for all the damage of all conditions instead of a million of number spam.
I.E. if I apply 20 conditions for 100 damage each, the mob takes 2000 damage per tick.
Not sure why it was complicated this way…

You can’t delay ticks. Creates bigger issues.

When groups clear squishy mobs, they’re dead before reasonable damage sinks in from conditions if you say, delay the interval. I don’t pvp, but i can imagine bigger problems there with delayed intervals.

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

Idea.
Instead of applying an additional 25 stacks that would cause server load issue, we only apply one single additional condition that includes all the damage from conditions that were overwritten.
That condition would only tick once every 3s for all the extra damage so it wouldn’t create a lot of numbers.

You could also do like every other MMOs where conditions tick for all the damage of all conditions instead of a million of number spam.
I.E. if I apply 20 conditions for 100 damage each, the mob takes 2000 damage per tick.
Not sure why it was complicated this way…

This isn’t a bad idea actually, in simpler terms using bleed as an example; on your first attack you apply bleed to an opponent, applying bleed again will overwrite it with a new bleed but add the damage of the previous bleed to the new one and reset the time to the highest interval among the two.

So there will be one stack where the time and damage continually gets bigger and the server only has to track a single damage and time tick at a regular interval. Plus, this would actually reward players for using conditions en masse. I likey.

So I did some thinking on this overnight, and I figure the problem as described may have possible solution, though whether these will work are dependent on it being possible to change the implementation.

First issue: Bleed stacks would theoretically take up huge amounts of server bandwidth if they were allowed to go infinite

a) Bleeds only need to tick once per second. Change their duration to a simple count of ticks, which only needs to update once per second. Have all bleeds tick at the same time, so the server only needs to notify clients once per second.
b) Player clients only need a few pieces of information about the entire stack – the total count of bleeds (number on condition), the duration of the longest bleed (timer bar on condition), and the total damage output of their own bleeds.
c) The total damage of a player’s own bleeds can be simulated on the client from the player’s stats, as well as the number and duration of those same bleeds. If the server can calculate them, it shouldn’t need to communicate that data back.
d) This could reduce the entire upload bandwidth from the server for bleeds to a grand total of… once per second, a flag to say “this is the total bleed stack” and two numbers. Possibly just a single byte each. For the entire stack, up to 255 bleeds. 2 bytes on one of those if we want to go nuts and have 65535 bleeds. Obviously the server already handles being notified of 123684 new bleed stacks every second in group events (by discarding older bleeds for newer ones…), so client upload isn’t an issue.

So bleeds as a bandwidth issue… can probably be solved, though it may need a re-code of how the condition works. You might argue that it would eat into server processing, but then we could have every single player at one of these events stacking 25 bleeds on separate mobs and that works fine, so I doubt it.

With bleeds out of the way, that leaves:

Confusion – Confusion will rarely reach 25 stacks even in a dungeon party as far as I’m aware, so I’m not sure it’s even necessary to solve this one. Maybe huge events would need more.
Poison and Burning – Doesn’t stack, but if we’ve freed up 24 “slots” from getting rid of the bleed overhead, we could easily give poison/burning 5-10 of those each for individual players (to have one burn/poison per player). 5 would be the minimum for dungeons and pvp, though large events would want more.

So, uh, if that solution would work ANet – do it, condition builds will love you.

Nah, easier just to say, “That’s an interesting idea” and continue to leave things like condition Necromancers with the same garbage limitations as before.

This is amazingly disappointing. I was hoping for some sort of minor improvement, at least, during this next patch. Guess I really shouldn’t be surprised though. This will go well hand-in-hand with them destroying the viability of my D/D Ele, I’m sure.

This is what I got from this post.

“There’s a cap on condition stacks of 25. In a scenario where you have two thieves attacking a boss and one of them can achieve a stack of 25 by themselves, the other one essentially becomes useless because they’ve got nothing to stack on. Is anything being done to address that to make them less redundant?
Colin: Currently no.”

Which means that if you have two Condition based professions and one is slightly quicker than the other (gets to the boss sooner) and can apply their bleeds, poisons, etc before the second player and will ultimately have a better chance at better loot.

How do I know this?

Colin said this in another thread.

" Please note, it is still possible to kill a creature and not do enough damage to qualify for loot "
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Update-on-Loot-Drops-Investigation/first#post1462956

So we have a stack limit on conditions and depending upon how many player 1 has versus player 2, one of these players will get better drops simply because they were able to apply more conditions quicker or they are more powerful. So if you’re a level 80 Condition-Necro for example in full Exotics versus a level 80 Mesmer (Power build) in Exotics, the Necro will get worse drops because of of the condition based stack limit, despite both having started the event at the same time.
So same amount of time on a boss but less or no drops based upon how much damage is done overall which is limited by the current system.

This is very wrong.

I think the best option if the devs want to save on the amount of processing the server does is to change condition damage so that when the stack has reached its cap then any additional applications of conditions that would have caused the stack to increase if the stack could increase will instead a certain amount of direct damage to the mob proportional the amount of damage the mob would have taken if the condition had been placed on the stack.

I doubt changing this will have any effect on pvp balance seeing as players have much more condition cleansing that removes the entire stack, and a hard limit of 5 conditions builds can be in play at any time.

Dev 1: Hey I got a brillant idea lets make drops damage based! If you don’t do enough you don’t get loot!!

Dev 2: Won’t that be a problem for condition’s though since some professions will likely use conditions for main damage?

Dev 1: Nah if they want loot they have to do a power/precision/crit % build they can get loot if they want!

Dev 2: But I thought we weren’t going to force people to play a certain…… oh kitten it nvm. Lets just do it that way then.

Anyone feel like Anet added a bunch of rules but didn’t think about the repercussions of the rules on different play styles?

I think in pve if your group is at a 25 stack for conditions that every condition after counts as direct damage.

So if your do 150 damage per tick for instance and you throw up a bleed that last 5 seconds but the bleed is capped already you should get a direct damage of 750, if your bleeds last 9 seconds that would be 1350.

That way condition builds aren’t getting screwed damage wise when everyone is laying down conditions especially in world events.

If your doing a dragon event and the dragon is at 25 stacks of bleed and you slap on a skill that say does 3 bleed and you have 150 dmg per tick and your ticks last 5 seconds you should get a hit for 2250 on the boss.

There are many ways they could make condition damage that is over cap count, they are just being lazy imo.

bluewanders.5297:

Jzaku.9765:

There’s a cap on condition stacks of 25. In a scenario where you have two thieves attacking a boss and one of them can achieve a stack of 25 by themselves, the other one essentially becomes useless because they’ve got nothing to stack on. Is anything being done to address that to make them less redundant?

So we can derive at least 2 things from this:

*Colin himself doesn’t actually understand his own game and doesn’t realize that 5 condition builds in a party without a condition cap would be outputting equivalent damage as 5 direct damage builds because on an individual level they are equal

*He seems to think it’s perfectly okay to leave it as terrible as it is because fixing it would make hosting more expensive. I.E., it’s okay to leave things completely unbalanced.

To your first point:
I don’t know where you derive that Colin doesn’t understand his own game at all… no where in there does he say anything at all about class performance as far as condition builds versus anything else.

To your second point:
There is such a thing as business overhead. And this game has been running with overhead for 5 years before it was even released… and continues to rack up overhead in costs. There is no monthly sub. So box sales and what gems are bought have to both bring the game out of the red from what was spent in 5 years of development, but also must cover salaries, server maintenance and costs… so on and so forth. It is a pretty well known fact that one of the greatest limiting factors as far as cost goes is server bandwitdth… which is the amount of information your servers can transmit and recieve during a given period of time. The vast majority of his response talks about the technical limitations they are facing in this department and admits that the cost of bandwidth is WHY they chose to place a cap.

The second part of his response is in answer to the original question… I bolded it for you, but I will copy and paste it here, again…

Is anything being done to address that to make them (conditions) less redundant?

And before you respond telling him to pay for more bandwidth… how much have you spent in the gem store lately? If you want them to be able to overcome limitations derived from the income of the game… support it by spending a small amount of money. 5 or 10 dollars a month isn’t much to you, but it would add up for them and allow them to do more with the resources they have. If it isn’t worth that cost to you… then continue to enjoy the game and hope they continue to release new content, pay their people, maintain their servers, and turn enough of a profit to both keep it online and improve it… I’m certain you have already gotten your moneys worth and then some…

I really think your last paragraph needs to be addressed, so here goes. The devs chased a great many people away from this game and from the gem store.The implementation of new stat gear, diminishing rewarards and the haloween fiasco are examples.

People were dropping big money in the gem store. I too would have supported them with the occasional purchase, but it was not to be. I just think that chasing away your player base and then crying broke is a bit odd.

After 4 months of not playing they sent me an email advertising 30% on the game. The whole thing just seems backwards to me. I mean, I went to the mat for them, I prepurchased, played through the betas and gave my feedback. At this point, crying broke is not going to get a lot of sympathy out of me.

As others said, if they cant increase cap due to server issues then reduce amount of stacking happening.
My necro needs atleast space for 15 stacks personally to be doing its normal damage. 25 is cap and you have 5 people its obviously a flaw in the game and its sad to hear they wont change anything anytime soon.

Remove useless bleeds from class / move them to higher traits to make them a optional not automatically taken.

For example warriors and mesmers, remove their useless bleed stacking from non-condi damage builds. Most non condition builds are applying many bleeds still.

They could go over alot of attacks aswell. And remove multiple applications of bleed, maybe shorten times overall and increase potency this would help bridge the gap between condi and power builds aswell.
Example – Warrior 1hand sword burst will add 20 stacks aoe bleed. why not make it 5-10 with higher damage then it would be useful in a group.

I hope they balance some of the power builds of classes better if they dont intend to make condi builds more viable. People consider anything other than GS war/guardian/mesmer as just deadweight.

I would start slowly removing small and useless condition damage from traits and abilities on every profession. Let the complex ones require a complete redesign and remove condition damage from the game.

If stacking conditions are such a tax on bandwith……why does almost every weapon in the game have some form of god kitten condition on it?

The devs are way off the mark if they dont see the condition system as a must fix now priority.

Very few classes have more than 2-3 viable builds. If you remove condition builds form that small pool….I guess every class can then have 1 viable build?

While your at it, fix conditions doing full damage to yellow named objects. Im tired of being unable to break my team out of aplha’s prisons in CoE, im tired of being unable to take out a fire breathing gargoyle head or breeding mound in AC and im tired of being unable to break down gates and trebuchets in sPvP because i have high condition damage and low power.

Yeah, thats right, the only ascended condition gear is Rabid (pre/tou/cond)

I made a suggestion here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Possible-Change-for-Condition-Handling/first#post1501110

The idea of the change is to reduce the amount of bandwidth consumed from condition stacking through some tricks while keeping the damage from conditions relatively the same… Check it out.

Conditions are actually not that bad, except that they should also apply to objects. Things like the burrows in Ascalon Catacombs are a pain to destroy with a condition based build – on my warrior, I have to switch from dual sword bleed based to greatsword for doing that part of the dungeon.

If condition is at cap then apply direct damage: cond duration * condition damage per tick = Direct damage.

Duration: 5 seconds
Condition damage per tick: 144
Damage output = 720

720 damage for every bleed you do when theres already 25 stacks on a boss. Simple enough right? Keeps condition damage builds doing damage even when its at 25 stacks and keeps bandwidth limitations the same…. win win imo.

This could also be carried over to structures convert that condition damage to direct damage so that condition builds aren’t gimp when killing burrows or other structures.

I think the 25 stacks is good enough, I mean, how many more arteries are you gonna be able to cut?

Flamenco.3894:

I think the 25 stacks is good enough, I mean, how many more arteries are you gonna be able to cut?

I think that the Claw of Jormag probably has a lot of arteries to cut.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Flamenco.3894:

I think the 25 stacks is good enough, I mean, how many more arteries are you gonna be able to cut?

I think that the Claw of Jormag probably has a lot of arteries to cut.

I think it has exactly as many major arteries as a rock made of ice. I don’t think it bleeds blood, which is weird when you think about it. I can “bleed” an Earth Elemental somehow. (Oil? Dirt? What the heck is bleeding? And HOW CAN I POISON IT?!).

Conditions are so abstract in this game. Remember when you couldn’t bleed/poison undead or elementals?

If I can bleed a rock element/ or ice why the hell cant a mound of dirt be bled!

Namu.5712:

If I can bleed a rock element/ or ice why the hell cant a mound of dirt be bled!

I’m more worried about how you’d poison it, as the more I think on it the worse it gets.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Flamenco.3894:

I think the 25 stacks is good enough, I mean, how many more arteries are you gonna be able to cut?

I think that the Claw of Jormag probably has a lot of arteries to cut.

I think it has exactly as many major arteries as a rock made of ice. I don’t think it bleeds blood, which is weird when you think about it. I can “bleed” an Earth Elemental somehow. (Oil? Dirt? What the heck is bleeding? And HOW CAN I POISON IT?!).

Conditions are so abstract in this game. Remember when you couldn’t bleed/poison undead or elementals?

Fine, let me change my answer:
I think that a giant has a lot of arteries to cut. And a lot of blood to bleed.

And yes I remember that, which is also why I’m glad they had enough sense to at least allow most things to be affected by the short list of conditions they put in, since they apparently realized how it would be even MORE broken for condition builds to have random enemies be immune to your conditions (though not entirely, since Destroyers and Embers are still immune to burning which completely kittens a condition spec guardian or to a lesser extent a condition elementalist).

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Flamenco.3894:

I think the 25 stacks is good enough, I mean, how many more arteries are you gonna be able to cut?

I think that the Claw of Jormag probably has a lot of arteries to cut.

I think it has exactly as many major arteries as a rock made of ice. I don’t think it bleeds blood, which is weird when you think about it. I can “bleed” an Earth Elemental somehow. (Oil? Dirt? What the heck is bleeding? And HOW CAN I POISON IT?!).

Conditions are so abstract in this game. Remember when you couldn’t bleed/poison undead or elementals?

Fine, let me change my answer:
I think that a giant has a lot of arteries to cut. And a lot of blood to bleed.

And yes I remember that, which is also why I’m glad they had enough sense to at least allow most things to be affected by the short list of conditions they put in, since they apparently realized how it would be even MORE broken for condition builds to have random enemies be immune to your conditions (though not entirely, since Destroyers and Embers are still immune to burning which completely kittens a condition spec guardian or to a lesser extent a condition elementalist).

My reply was made partly in sarcastic jest anyway. I could explain why it’d be harder to actually bleed a giant but that gets into fuzzy science, the cube-square-law and lots of research I’m not even sure would actually apply anyway in Tyria.

Also you forget – earth elementals have permanent Stability too. And sometimes can turn on a reflection field. My ranger weeps when confronting them, because I really only have one melee weapon and I rarely have a need to pull it out.

I must say the more i read these Dev responses to serious questions that need fixing, the less faith i have in Guildwars 2 future.

But i guess it makes sense now why after 6 months Rangers and Engineers etc are still terrible classes..

I just realized that per Colin’s response to how loot drops work in this game there is now an explanation as to why many players have been getting crappy or no drops, despite the amount of time they spent on a boss or DE. If loot is determined by how much damage is done to an NPC, where does that leave Tanky specced Guardians/Warriors, Engineers and condition based professions like Necros and some Mesmers/Elemetalists, etc. The higher the damage the better the chance of getting a good drop. The lower the damage though specced for toughness, vitality, etc the less chance a player has for good drops or any at all.

So basically if you want good drops, create a glass cannon build or re-roll into a high dps profession, because there is no love for those who don’t play those professions and no immediate plans to change this system.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Update-on-Loot-Drops-Investigation/first#post1462956

To everyone bringing up loot drops: please stop. While it is a legitimate issue related to the topic at hand, it is still a tangent to the main issue being discussed in this threopad and opens up the option for any developer to simply address the tangent while ignoring the main subject entirely, like “damage done does not influence loot drops as long a you qualify for loot.”, thread closed.
This is a tactic they have successfully applied a number of times, such as addressing loot QUANTITY in a loot QUALITY thread then closing it.