Guild Wars 2

Edge.4180:

BurnedToast.3781:

Advantage? That’s… actually a disadvantage.

Power does all it’s damage up front, condition damage does it over time which gives the target time to heal, cleanse, or just die which means much of your damage just falls off and is wasted.

Condition damage actually needs to be stronger not weaker then power damage to balance out the fact it’s dealt over time.

I disagree. Your example of damage being wasted can apply to direct damage as well. If my next attack hits a mob for 2000 damage and it only had 100 health left, 1900 damage from my DD attack was “wasted” according to your example.

Where as when I play my Ranger character (using condition weapons), I can disengage one mob well before it dies and start my attacks on another mob confident that the conditions I left on the first mob will kill it off without any more assistance needed from me. That’s not something you can do with direct damage; there are no fire-and-forget attacks outside of conditions.

I’m guess you’re new to MMO’s.

DoT damage needs to do more damage for a variety of reasons. One of the biggest reasons is because they are at a huge disadvantage during trash pulls. Burst damage will clear trash faster. This includes but is not limited to hard hitting mini bosses or elite mobs with low health. Direct damage will kill these mobs quicker while DoT damage has a significant ramp up time.

Condition damage also pales in comparison whenever you need burst during specific events, like when the boss spawns adds or objects (crystals) which needs to be killed quickly. Condition or DoT damage users will fall behind considerably.

There is no “fire and forget” DoT in the game. You have to keep refreshing your DoT or your DoT will fall off within seconds. The damage is also balanced with the assumption that the player keeps refreshing the DoT during the encounter.

There are many other variables to take into account as well. Condition damage is a lose/lose/lose/loser in the game as it stands.

Extremely low damage/Damage becomes obsolete when other condition damage players are in your party/Cannot kill objects/No burst.

BurnedToast.3781:

You’re right that direct damage is wasted too, but the most the can be wasted is 1 hit minus 1 damage (if the mob had one HP left). Condition damage can waste significantly more, especially in groups. How many times do you see a mob die with 10+ bleeds? that’s a considerable amount of damage lost.

Meanwhile, your ranger example makes my point perfectly. Your ranger loads mob #1 up with conditions and switched to mob #2, meanwhile a direct damage char doing the same (or more) dps would already have killed mob #1 since his damage is all frontloaded.

How is it better to have mob #1 still attacking you while you start on mob #2?

My longbow’s auto-attack (“Long Range Shot”, a direct damage attack) at maximum range (which yields maximum damage) does less damage than my shortbow’s auto-attack (“Crossfire”, condition bleed) over time. If anything it’s already killing mobs faster than my direct-damage alternative, not slower. I tear up with Crossfire, where as I struggle to stay awake with Long Range Shot, so I’m not experiencing the dilemma you’re painting.

For me, the only time it becomes an issue is when there are several people placing bleed stacks on the same mob. But there’s nothing wrong or wimpy about condition attacks when hunting alone or in a normal party.

Jasher.6580:

I’m guess you’re new to MMO’s.

DoT damage needs to do more damage for a variety of reasons. One of the biggest reasons is because they are at a huge disadvantage during trash pulls. Burst damage will clear trash faster. This includes but is not limited to hard hitting mini bosses or elite mobs with low health. Direct damage will kill these mobs quicker while DoT damage has a significant ramp up time

Condition damage also pales in comparison whenever you need burst during specific events, like when the boss spawns adds or objects (crystals) which needs to be killed quickly. Condition or DoT damage users will fall behind considerably.

There is no “fire and forget” DoT in the game. You have to keep refreshing your DoT or your DoT will fall off within seconds. The damage is also balanced with the assumption that the player keeps refreshing the DoT during the encounter.

There are many other variables to take into account as well. Condition damage is a lose/lose/lose/loser in the game as it stands.

Extremely low damage/Damage becomes obsolete when other condition damage players are in your party/Cannot kill objects/No burst.

Farther from new than I care to admit. But are you new to this game?

I only ask that because you’re not going to see me trying to force the square peg through a round hole, where as you’re implying that’s the only way to play. You have the ability to switch to different weapons to cover different situations.. I suggest making use of that. If I run into a situation where my condition weapons are at a disadvantage I just swap to a different weapon. Most of the time I’m fine using condition abilities when I want to and they generally outperform my direct damage attacks in the right situations.

As for the “fire and forget” comment, my point was that I can continue doing damage to a mob through conditions when I’m forced to evade or heal. The same can not be said for direct damage attacks that are waiting idle in a queue. Pretty sure I already explained that earlier.

I came out from the start saying that condition mechanics in fights involving many players is problematic. But if you’re trying to convince me that condition attacks are always worse than direct damage attacks regardless of the scenario, I’m going to disagree.

As an engineer who plays a thief and a ranger I’ve noticed the desparaty between bleed, poison, and burn damage. Bleed and poison are definitely on the short end of the stick because most abilities don’t do an initial damage like they do on Necros and it’s why so many necros come onto these forums and tell us how wrong we are about what we’re saying.

It’s the same for heals. Not all support classes are created equal.

This is the same balance issues any game has at it’s beginning, I just hope they are listening to our reports so they can adjust these things properly.

Edge.4180:

As for the “fire and forget” comment, my point was that I can continue doing damage to a mob through conditions when I’m forced to evade or heal. The same can not be said for direct damage attacks that are waiting idle in a queue. Pretty sure I already explained that earlier.

Okay… maybe I need explain a little more. The values with a condition build are all balanced with the assumption that there is constant activity. This also includes the base auto attack or (white hits)… when a condition damage player stops to evade or heal… they are losing out on damage just as much as the direct damage player… even more so if the condition falls off. If the condition doesn’t fall off, the time they took to do “the other stuff” would be less than a second or so, which would make the damage contribution on a comparative level between condition and direct damage infinitesimal.

In other words when I say there is no fire and forget… there will never be a scenario when you just throw up conditions, and you get the option to dodge out of stuff and heal up while your conditions are just “ticking away at the boss”… not without severe damage consequence. No white hits are being done and those conditions last a very short time without the player refreshing them. All that damage and all those variables are taken into consideration when proper balance is done.

I would love to hear Anet’s stand point on Condition damage. The current limitations on condition damage, as presented by the original poster, is why I have avoided playing certain classes/specs.

Agree with th OP. I can understand why a stack limit was set for condi damage. Which i don’t understand is why burning/posion working different from bleeding. As a sword/sword bleeding warrior, i can easily build 20 stacks of bleeding only by myself. It’s fine when i solo but it’s really limit the damage output for a team with two or more bleed build classes.

The most fun part of GW1&2 for me is i can play my style for most situation. I wish Anet put some thoughts for us bleeding build players

tassadarpaladin.9610:

Agree with th OP. I can understand why a stack limit was set for condi damage. Which i don’t understand is why burning/posion working different from bleeding. As a sword/sword bleeding warrior, i can easily build 20 stacks of bleeding only by myself. It’s fine when i solo but it’s really limit the damage output for a team with two or more bleed build classes.

The most fun part of GW1&2 for me is i can play my style for most situation. I wish Anet put some thoughts for us bleeding build players

Yes, the fact that each condition works differently is troublesome. A step in the right direction however is to have each player but up their own separate stack of the condition.

I’m curious, has anyone tried to calculate what condition damage would be if critical hits were also part of the system?

Assuming there is a technical reason for the max number of stacks, which there probably is, I see three possible adjustments to bring Condition Damage more in line with Direct Damage for these kinds of fights:

1.) Once the stack reaches 25, put additional applications in a queue.

The problem with this approach is that you would still reach a saturation point where the mob would have a continual 25 stacks until they die, with applications still in the queue wasted.

2.) When the stack cap is in effect, have additional applications deal a portion of the total DoT damage as Direct Damage instead.

Much more satisfying for those with Condition Damage builds. Care would have to be taken in determining the percentage of DoT applied instead as Direct Damage, or the damage equation may skew too much in favor of the CD builds.

3.) When a character tries to apply condition damage to a mob with a maxed out stack, the character receives a boon to increase direct damage. Number of stacks and duration based on the strength of the Condition Damage skill.

This may offer the most balanced solution. Most, if not all, condition damage builds still rely on weapon sets that possess at least a few Direct Damage skills. Applying stacks of Might to, say, match the number of bleeding stacks “wasted”, with the same duration, would provide a proper “compensation” for a CD attack being “bounced” due to the stack limit.

There are other ideas that may make sense, but I just wanted to toss in three possible solutions that may make sense, just to show that this can be addressed from the design side, even if the 25 stack cap can’t be removed or increased.

How relevant is DPS as a measurement of damage output when comparing direct damage and conditional damage?

Are we assuming the direct damage player is constantly hitting the opponent? Is that a correct assumption?

Would conditional damage win in a fight where the enemy moves/teleports a lot, making melee players damage less? Or a boss where projectiles are reflected a lot? A boss where armor is extremely high?

Maybe the problem is with the variety of enemy tactics in this game.

tassadarpaladin.9610:

Agree with th OP. I can understand why a stack limit was set for condi damage. Which i don’t understand is why burning/posion working different from bleeding. As a sword/sword bleeding warrior, i can easily build 20 stacks of bleeding only by myself. It’s fine when i solo but it’s really limit the damage output for a team with two or more bleed build classes.

The most fun part of GW1&2 for me is i can play my style for most situation. I wish Anet put some thoughts for us bleeding build players

The stacking of duration for burning/poison is a result of the toning down of healing and Heal over Time skills in GW2 vs. GW1. Regeneration now also stacks duration, rather than intensity.

In GW1, the counter for multiple stacks of DoTs was multiple stacks of HoTs. We just don’t have that dynamic in GW2, due to the move away from dedicated healers and reliance on a balanced self healing system.

daemon.1387:

Would conditional damage win in a fight where the enemy moves/teleports a lot, making melee players damage less?

Probably not, because direct damage doesn’t necessarily mean melee – my greatsword mesmer has a range of 1200 units.

Iruwen.3164:

daemon.1387:

Would conditional damage win in a fight where the enemy moves/teleports a lot, making melee players damage less?

Probably not, because direct damage doesn’t necessarily mean melee – my greatsword mesmer has a range of 1200 units.

Also there are melee condition damage specs in the game as well.

Jasher.6580:

Iruwen.3164:

daemon.1387:

Would conditional damage win in a fight where the enemy moves/teleports a lot, making melee players damage less?

Probably not, because direct damage doesn’t necessarily mean melee – my greatsword mesmer has a range of 1200 units.

Also there are melee condition damage specs in the game as well.

Also consider the bosses who teleport to do abilities outside the arena (like Lornarr in the fractal)… I basically wasted all that time to put up debuffs only for him to basically not take damage while he’s up there. Usually, I (as a necro) can get up 20 stacks or more of bleed + a poison duration which is some really substantial damage if you let those conditions just ride out. But no, it’s 0 damage. I’d rather just have 1k dmg a swing than 300 dmg a swing + 400 damage over 3-4 seconds that won’t actually be realized.

It’s in the game because of PVP. It wouldn’t be fun to get stacked with 50 stacks of bleed and then be dead without condition removal in ~3 seconds. It isn’t fundamentally different from getting insta-gibbed but it feels different to the player because they’re basically dead but just haven’t realized it yet.

I am not really sure why it carries over to PVE, though.

Edge.4180:

My longbow’s auto-attack (“Long Range Shot”, a direct damage attack) at maximum range (which yields maximum damage) does less damage than my shortbow’s auto-attack (“Crossfire”, condition bleed) over time. If anything it’s already killing mobs faster than my direct-damage alternative, not slower. I tear up with Crossfire, where as I struggle to stay awake with Long Range Shot, so I’m not experiencing the dilemma you’re painting.

For me, the only time it becomes an issue is when there are several people placing bleed stacks on the same mob. But there’s nothing wrong or wimpy about condition attacks when hunting alone or in a normal party.

I don’t know anything about ranger, but there’s also other factors in play besides straight damage on the autoattack. For example, longbow has better range (I think?) which might mean it needs less damage as balance. The other skills might also be better (or maybe not, I honestly don’t know what skills either one has) to even it out. Or maybe the longbow traits are better. You can’t just look at one autoattack in a vacuum and say condition is fine.

On top of that, I think you will find while the tooltip damage might be better on the condition weapon, in reality if you make a damage build (not necessarily berserkers glass cannon though it shows the gap the most) the overall damage after you factor in crits is probably better on the power weapon. With just 50% crit rate and no +crit damage (not hard to get at all) you’re looking at a 25% increase in overall damage that’s not reflected on the tooltip at all.

Finally, yes condition damage is viable solo – anything is viable solo (you could probably hit 80 with no traits spent and just the default weapon/armor you start the game with). It might not even amazingly worse then power damage especially at lower levels before you get 3 stat armor (for berserkers or some other hybrid survive/dps stat setup) but the fact is, mathematically it’s worse and in practice in any sort of group content it’s severely nerfed for no reason and that needs to change.

BurnedToast.3781:

Edge.4180:

My longbow’s auto-attack (“Long Range Shot”, a direct damage attack) at maximum range (which yields maximum damage) does less damage than my shortbow’s auto-attack (“Crossfire”, condition bleed) over time. If anything it’s already killing mobs faster than my direct-damage alternative, not slower. I tear up with Crossfire, where as I struggle to stay awake with Long Range Shot, so I’m not experiencing the dilemma you’re painting.

For me, the only time it becomes an issue is when there are several people placing bleed stacks on the same mob. But there’s nothing wrong or wimpy about condition attacks when hunting alone or in a normal party.

I don’t know anything about ranger, but there’s also other factors in play besides straight damage on the autoattack. For example, longbow has better range (I think?) which might mean it needs less damage as balance. The other skills might also be better (or maybe not, I honestly don’t know what skills either one has) to even it out. Or maybe the longbow traits are better. You can’t just look at one autoattack in a vacuum and say condition is fine.

Well, this isn’t WoW where we have a dozen different damage dealing attack, where the whole trick is to juggle cooldowns in order to apply a constant stream of damage. In GW2 the longbow’s and shortbow’s default auto-attack are those weapons main source of damage, with most of the other abilities on the bar being situational. So, yes, you can compare those two abilities and easily see which is generally going to come out on top: “crossfire” and “long range shot” deal comparable damage over time, and then on top of that crossfire applies a decent stack of bleeds for additional condition damage. And that’s even assuming long range shot’s direct damage is being applied at maximum range, because when it isn’t the damage drops off considerably.

The outcome can obviously change as the scenario changes and more of those situational attacks come into play. But that just goes back to what I said earlier – use the right tool for the job. I don’t gripe about the loss of condition damage when I’m on my guardian fighting monsters that are immune to burning. I don’t gripe when my direct damage suffers against a target that’s pumped up on toughness and armor. I just switch to a weapon more suited to the job because that’s going to resolve the temporary dilemma a lot faster than the developers are, and I have a hunch that’s actually the solution they’re assuming we’ll use.

People are going for these pure condition builds when they know full well that every weapon is situational, and thus the effectiveness of their build is going to be situational at best. We can say the same about players who ignore condition damage – they are not going to be the best in every situation either. I’m not really understanding the confusion here. If you want to talk about conditions capping on targets that are being attacked by dozens of players, I agree that’s a problem. But people suggesting conditions are just broken and that they don’t have their place in the game compared to direct damage.. I disagree strongly.

Not sure if this means one way or the other but as per the wiki “Any condition damage that is currently affecting a target, will update per tick according to the source’s stats.”. I want to say it sounds like the conditional damage updates to the highest possible, given by someone applying, and updates the damage accordingly. If you apply 10 stacks of bleed, but have horrible condition damage, but another player built around condition damage applies 3 stacks, the new damage output will be 13 stacks, but with the benefit of the player built around it. If again, you apply 3 more stacks of bleed, it’ll go to 16, but continue doing the highest possible damage based off the highest damage source, until it wears off or the target dies.

If not, that’s atrocious…but I could be wrong. I really want to construct a condition-based mesmer spec, but it doesn’t do as well as a GS/Staff Zerk build.

@ acidicore- you’re partially right. If you stack 10 bleeds on a target and someone else adds another 3 (but has higher cond dmg than you) then the target gets 13 stacks at the 2nd user’s cond dmg; if you then add another 3 stacks, the target has 16 stacks but the cond dmg reverts back to yours, as you are now ‘the source’. I think that’s how it works anyway, would need to test a bit on my necro.

We have one type of DoT in gw2. Poison is more like pvp “anti heal” condition, damage is too low to do something special to any boss, mob, whatever in game and bosses which use heal are quite rare or uses different mechanic.
Burn is high damage condition but on pvp, where ppl can have max 30k (or something similar) but normaly have around 17k. Because of it I can tell that burn is burst DoT on pvp but on pve it’s like 5 more bleeds.
Confusion is great but for me it’s mesmer only condition and because mesmer does not have great tools for bleed stacking it’s his “bleed”.
Bleed damage isn’t high, my necro in rabid + coral gear has ticks around 130 without food. Bleed in gw2 isn’t similar to WoW type where it’s more around apply dot → cd on skill (quite long sometimes) → forget about DoT→do something else. Bleed in gw2 is made around constant refreshing and so it can’t be used as DoT burst in pvp where for me burst DoT = apply some quite high damaging dot to target and have free hands to do something different.

IMO also anet don’t want builds “100%” condition damage and always though about condition damage as some additional feature, there isn’t pure 100% only condition damage weapon in game. Mostly some high damaging skill is direct one.

In pvp condition removal “kills” bleeds but here it can be countered by adding some other conditions. Constant bleed, criple, poison etc refreshing makes it really hard to get rid of all them because most of condition removal skills and trait works on one condition.
In pve it’s hard to say. But imo condition damage isn’t that great.
On champions and bosses it’s imo on par with direct. Those fights are longer, bleed have time to deal damage, thoughness isn’t any problem. Still on some bosses (as I remember on dredge in dredge fractal and golem in coe) condition damage is worse (on dredge bleed does not have this “big” damage buff, on golem one turret cure conditions)
On silver mobs direct is better. In most cases you want to burst them as fast as possible in matter of seconds.
Trash doesn’t matter, they just die fast.
Condition damage has problem with destroying items and walls etc.
There is one type of situation where condition damage + necro shine. Fights where boss spawn some adds or there are waves of adds with different type of mobs. In those situations epidemic is great. In fractals it’s fight with first dredge boss (after gate event) and jellyfish fight.

Edge.4180:

BurnedToast.3781:

You’re right that direct damage is wasted too, but the most the can be wasted is 1 hit minus 1 damage (if the mob had one HP left). Condition damage can waste significantly more, especially in groups. How many times do you see a mob die with 10+ bleeds? that’s a considerable amount of damage lost.

Meanwhile, your ranger example makes my point perfectly. Your ranger loads mob #1 up with conditions and switched to mob #2, meanwhile a direct damage char doing the same (or more) dps would already have killed mob #1 since his damage is all frontloaded.

How is it better to have mob #1 still attacking you while you start on mob #2?

My longbow’s auto-attack (“Long Range Shot”, a direct damage attack) at maximum range (which yields maximum damage) does less damage than my shortbow’s auto-attack (“Crossfire”, condition bleed) over time. If anything it’s already killing mobs faster than my direct-damage alternative, not slower. I tear up with Crossfire, where as I struggle to stay awake with Long Range Shot, so I’m not experiencing the dilemma you’re painting.

For me, the only time it becomes an issue is when there are several people placing bleed stacks on the same mob. But there’s nothing wrong or wimpy about condition attacks when hunting alone or in a normal party.

That’s a Ranger specific issue relating to weapon balance, not a general Burst vs. Conditions issue. Shortbow does more damage than Longbow, even with Pow/Pre/Crit Dmg gear (or it did, last time I played my Ranger. It might not be the case now that they slowed down the animation speed). In any case, as previously stated, being able to load up conditions on a second mob while the first bleeds out is a moot point; in the same time, a burst spec would have killed Mob#1 and be halfway through Mob#2 by the time you applied those conditions.

I agree with everyone else that Conditions need looking at, at least in PvE. If you have 5 burst specs, everything is fine. If you have 5 condition specs, 2-4 of them will end up doing no damage.

I think the best solution is to let people stack damaging conditions in separate stacks for each player, but otherwise keep the current functionality. So if A and B both apply Burning for 5s, the target has two stacks of Burning ticking at the same time. If A then further applies 3s of Burning, their stack duration is increased, so that the enemy has two stacks of Burning for 5s, then one stack for a further 3s, and so on.

UI-wise, it’d be best if they displayed your stacks, and then the total number of stacks (including yours) on the target. Whether it would be better to have your stacks displayed with larger icons, or a different colour, or whatever else, would be up to ArenaNet to decide.

Overall, I really enjoy the condition playstyle, but it feels rather useless at the moment. It’s irritating that I feel forced to retrait if a group already contains other people running conditions.

Doomsayer.8250:

I think the best solution is to let people stack damaging conditions in separate stacks for each player, but otherwise keep the current functionality. So if A and B both apply Burning for 5s, the target has two stacks of Burning ticking at the same time. If A then further applies 3s of Burning, their stack duration is increased, so that the enemy has two stacks of Burning for 5s, then one stack for a further 3s, and so on.

UI-wise, it’d be best if they displayed your stacks, and then the total number of stacks (including yours) on the target. Whether it would be better to have your stacks displayed with larger icons, or a different colour, or whatever else, would be up to ArenaNet to decide.

Overall, I really enjoy the condition playstyle, but it feels rather useless at the moment. It’s irritating that I feel forced to retrait if a group already contains other people running conditions.

Or they could… as you mentioned display the players personal stack as they currently do so you can see yourself refreshing it… and then have a tiny icon next to the boss icon like a flame showing that there are other burns on the target as well. They could put a little number inside showing how many player stacks of burn it has… so the flame icon would have a number inside it: 1, 2, 3… 99… have it stop at 2 digits… after 99 they could put —. Nobody really cares after that point.

The more i think about the subject the more i suspect this is a carryover from PVP tuning, where they didn’t want to see someone get a ton of conditions dumped on him quickly and melt before he could respond.

but champions and worldbosses are a different story. Thanks to how crit heavy the game can be, and that direct damage scales with the number of people without any hard cap present, i suggest borrowing a page from their anti-CC feature for champs.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unshakable

This scales with the number of people present, so that the more people there are, the more CCs are needed for one of them to bite.

What i am suggesting is the inverse of this. That with large groups, given that the overall encounter scales with the numbers present, the bleed cap (the major issue here) is raised.

As it stands, at 25 the bleed is likely to do as much DPS as perhaps 2-3 people doing direct damage, depending on the latter’s crit chance and damage multiplier.

So once we start to see 10+ people the cap can readily be raised to match, especially as the mob will be scaled to the group anyways.

digiowl.9620:

As it stands, at 25 the bleed is likely to do as much DPS as perhaps 2-3 people doing direct damage, depending on the latter’s crit chance and damage multiplier.

This statement is false. Condition damage does significantly less damage than direct damage as it stands. Significantly.

digiowl.9620:

The more i think about the subject the more i suspect this is a carryover from PVP tuning, where they didn’t want to see someone get a ton of conditions dumped on him quickly and melt before he could respond.

But it’s OK for a warrior to 1-hit KO killshot people from 1400 range? Yes, it does happen (if both the warrior and the target are glass cannon build).

If you got enough stacks of conditions on you to instantly melt, direct damage would have killed you too. Why is it ok for power damage to instantly melt people but not condition?

BurnedToast.3781:

digiowl.9620:

The more i think about the subject the more i suspect this is a carryover from PVP tuning, where they didn’t want to see someone get a ton of conditions dumped on him quickly and melt before he could respond.

But it’s OK for a warrior to 1-hit KO killshot people from 1400 range? Yes, it does happen (if both the warrior and the target are glass cannon build).

If you got enough stacks of conditions on you to instantly melt, direct damage would have killed you too. Why is it ok for power damage to instantly melt people but not condition?

Two wrongs don’t make a right. I think they can keep conditions how they are in PvP and just separate how it works in PvE. They already have the technology to do this.

More specifically, separate how they work from Champs and other mobs likely to gather a crowd. They already have a special case for them in the Unshakeable code.

OP: Are you nuts? Asking for bosses to have more HP? They already have too much HP as it is. Very, very, very few boss fights in the game would be made more challenging by increasing boss HP, but I can assure you that it would succeed in making most boss fights more boring.

People have said what needed to be said. Im just bumping this because this is important.

Bottom line is, the condition limit(for burn/poison/bleed) is hurting conditions builds who play together.

Damage over time is always more situational and strangely tuned in comparison to direct damage. It’s more something that’s added because people like the play style.

In the case of the stack limits it probably has to do with spells like these:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Epidemic
Without stack limits the amount of damage that could be done in a PvP situation (or a PvE one that depended heavily on adds) would be absolutely out of control with 2-3 Necros timing it in synch.

pixelrevision.5192:

Damage over time is always more situational and strangely tuned in comparison to direct damage. It’s more something that’s added because people like the play style.

In the case of the stack limits it probably has to do with spells like these:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Epidemic
Without stack limits the amount of damage that could be done in a PvP situation (or a PvE one that depended heavily on adds) would be absolutely out of control with 2-3 Necros timing it in synch.

Then simply put a limitation on that particular spell. No need to butcher condition damage for everyone else.

pixelrevision.5192:

Damage over time is always more situational and strangely tuned in comparison to direct damage. It’s more something that’s added because people like the play style.

In the case of the stack limits it probably has to do with spells like these:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Epidemic
Without stack limits the amount of damage that could be done in a PvP situation (or a PvE one that depended heavily on adds) would be absolutely out of control with 2-3 Necros timing it in synch.

Unlimited stacks wouldn’t impact PvP at all. Currently it’s already hard to land 25 bleeds on someone and if you do get 25 on them they die in seconds(2k-3k a second not including direct damage). Then you also have the absurd amount of condition removal that was handed out to all classes that make this happening even rarer. You don’t hear people complaining about dieing to 25 stacks of bleeds and epidemic currently, so the chances of someone getting 40 stacks(4k+ a second) is beyond rare. It would seriously take a concerted effort between 2-3 people to time everything right and in those cases they simply deserve to land it.

On another topic, the Dredge fractal just once again proves how condition damage is worthless. The end bosses(ice elemental, mining suit) require lava be dumped on them so you do bonus damage. However condition damage is not included in that. Nothing like doing a 30k hit and bleeds ticking for 45…

pixelrevision.5192:

Damage over time is always more situational and strangely tuned in comparison to direct damage. It’s more something that’s added because people like the play style.

In the case of the stack limits it probably has to do with spells like these:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Epidemic
Without stack limits the amount of damage that could be done in a PvP situation (or a PvE one that depended heavily on adds) would be absolutely out of control with 2-3 Necros timing it in synch.

And how is that different from being FF’d by 2-3 burst specs?

The main problem I see with stack limit is that if there are 2-3 condition specc’ed players in a group, the stack limit would pretty much limit the damage output of that particular group as opposed to a group with 2-3 burst builds.

Most of us aren’t asking to completely remove the stack limit, we know that doing that would seriously break condition builds. Others have already given some good suggestions that I hope Anet would consider.

Exactly agree with post above me …
I love playing conditions, but I was somehow forced to respec to pure damage. Why you ask ? Because of stack limit : if there’s 1 or maybe even 2 other condition specced guys, we just kill nothing, one of us is useful, the others are completely useless ….
I also like the example of the final boss of Dredge fractal : it really shows how condition damage is not well considered in the game.

As a mesmer, when I spec into condition, here’s the problem : other players put bleedings, ok, 1/3 of my staff attacks is useless.
There’s an elementalist who plays well and keep refreshing burning on the targets … ok now 2/3 useless …
That leaves me with …. vulnerability … wow ! wonderful ! so much efficiency >_<
Don’t take it as a QQ but it’s true that it does not encourage build diversity unfortunately as 5 players with full power rock but 5 players with full condition damage sucks …

KratosAngel.7289:

5 players with full power rock but 5 players with full condition damage sucks …

This is actually the crux of the matter. They probably need to hire more people on to their balance team. People who take into consideration ALL facets of gameplay and profession mechanics.

That way, we see less things like this in the live game.

Happyfool.8951:

And how is that different from being FF’d by 2-3 burst specs?

Sorry if it came off as me defending the condition debuff limits. I’m not. They will need to make a ton of changes to get it in line I guess is all I’m saying.

For this spell in particular:
1) It’s based off single target damage (conditions) which is usually higher than typical AoE spells.
2) It is multiplied by the fact that if 3 players focus on bringing up stacks they then multiply all that damage by 3. So instead of 3 people’s individual AoE damage kicking you spread all 3 of their single target damage 3 times.
3) It’s pretty close to instant and I don’t think there is a red circle to indicate you can dodge it.

On top of that they basically have left in all the core components of damage over time stuff that WoW has been ironing out for years.
1. In vanilla raids there was a global debuff limit. It took until just before Burning Crusade for them to remove this. We have debuff limits here again for some reason.
2. Gear that modified spell duration did not account for tick times. What this led to was dropoff in dps for anything that used off amounts. This was not changed until Wrath. They have this in with their condition duration where if you increase it wrong you will loose the last tick of damage and end up spending allocation points on a useless stat.
3. DoTs didn’t give critical bonuses and so they were very hard to balance against direct damage players who were stacking crit. Again not changed until wrath. Given that it’s pretty easy to get crit percentage up to 50% in this game the baseline damage for conditions would have to be nutzo high to really keep in line.

TL:DR
I agree debuff limits should be removed and damage potentially increased. I just would expect to be waiting a while as they used a lot of the mechanics that a game that is OBSESSED with balance took years to thin down.

Distaste.4801:

On another topic, the Dredge fractal just once again proves how condition damage is worthless. The end bosses(ice elemental, mining suit) require lava be dumped on them so you do bonus damage. However condition damage is not included in that. Nothing like doing a 30k hit and bleeds ticking for 45…

This is the stuff I really wish they would work on. There really is no excuse to treat condition damage so “conditionally”. They talked about a fix for the inanimate objects in a post well over a month or two ago. Still waiting on that one.

KratosAngel.7289:

5 players with full power rock but 5 players with full condition damage sucks …

It doesn’t even have to be players with full condition stacks!
There’s so much condition generation out out there anyway that any decent sized group generates enough conditions in the normal course of play to nerf condition focussed characters. I’ve a condition based L80 Eng, but the nerfing in groups means that l’m looking at having to completely re-equip, re-build and re-master the character so that it can truly pull it’s weight. I’m sure that’s not what AreaNet intended.

Solution #1: Give priority to the condition stacks that do the most damage.

+condition damage is designed to really hurt. But does +999 condtion damage make the slightest difference when characters with +0 condition damage are pushing the 25 stack limit?
Does +999 cond damage even get onto the stack if there are 25 stacks of +0 cond damage there already? Does +999 cond damage get pushed off the stack whenever some new +0 cond damage arrives?
Prioritizing the highest damage stacks (higher +cond damage wins every time) would resolve this problem and make condition focussed builds useful again in groups.

Solution #2: Cap the number of stacks removed by condition clearing effects.

This will balance condition clearing against condition generation and resolve the automatic condition immunity of large group. (Need to keep track of more than 25 stacks in case the extra stacks apply after clearing.)

fourpoundburrito.1698:

OP: Are you nuts? Asking for bosses to have more HP? They already have too much HP as it is. Very, very, very few boss fights in the game would be made more challenging by increasing boss HP, but I can assure you that it would succeed in making most boss fights more boring.

If they got rid of bleed stacks or increased the amount of bleed stacks, I am all in favor of them adding hp to the boss to scale with the stack limit changes. Boss would be killed in about the same amount of time if they scaled it correctly, only difference would be “I” actually contributed more than I previously could have.

It probably should be increased in pve

but leave pvp alone

removing the stack cap on bleeding or buffing poison/burn in some way would make them too strong in pvp

Did they ever fix this?? it has been awhile since I played due to these problems. I legit would play again if anyone can let me know the state of Necormancer viability for Condi damage. thank you!

Jason Segel.2908:

Did they ever fix this?? it has been awhile since I played due to these problems. I legit would play again if anyone can let me know the state of Necormancer viability for Condi damage. thank you!

Nope, if anything it has gotten worse since direct damage scales much faster than condition damage. The introduction of ascended gear widened the gap even further and no changes have been made to conditions.

I think GW2 is closer to a traditional MMO than anet lets on. The old magic vs phys attack split exists in GW2 if you consider condi damage as magic damage. In traditional MMOs the casters are weaker at PVE and stronger at PVP and this holds true in its own way for GW2.

In light of the upcoming changes it’s REALLY important they address this question soon.

They’re nerfing power based damage in the next patch to encourage people to experiment and branch out; but this will not happen, and this is why:

As I understand it they’re not just nerfing zerker, they’re nerfing power/crit. This means that “lesser” power or crit based sets, such as soldiers, knights, cavaliers, valkyrie – will now do less damage too, so optimum power based DPS is still going to be zerker/assasins (Without significantly changing combat mechanics to better reward defence, we’re not going to see a shift towards soldiers or knights in PvE)

However, we still have to contend with the condition cap – which means conditions are still not a viable option for DPS in PvE – if you have more than 1 person in your team specced for conditions, almost all the second guy’s DPS is going to go out the window.

If anet wants people to “branch out” and “experiment” they have GOT to get rid of the condition cap on champions and bosses, it’s not simply a case of “power being the best option”, power is the only option.

Not only is it better to start a new thread and link old ones, you’re also not understanding the change to critical damage (which is ONLY affecting critical damage). The change to critical damage hits sets that rely on critical damage MORE than power. That isnt zerker sets, which have high enough power that lower crit damage isnt that big of a loss. Sets like assassin’s and celestial are impacted the most because they rely on the critical hit damage modifier. Power based sets such as soldier’s is 100% unaffected by this change.

digiowl.9620:

The more i think about the subject the more i suspect this is a carryover from PVP tuning, where they didn’t want to see someone get a ton of conditions dumped on him quickly and melt before he could respond.

Nope, it’s a ‘carryover’ from actual technical limitations, namely bandwidth and processing. Conditions produce a relatively large amount of additional information that has to be broadcasted, this very quickly causes immense traffic when having large-scale encounters with lots of players. This is not a problem unique to GW2, nearly every MMO has some kind of hard cap on buffs/debuffs on entities. It’s also a problem that is not at all trivial to solve, which is why we’re still seeing it in MMOs today despite developers trying to find solutions for it for more than 10 years.

digiowl.9620:

but champions and worldbosses are a different story. Thanks to how crit heavy the game can be, and that direct damage scales with the number of people without any hard cap present, i suggest borrowing a page from their anti-CC feature for champs.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unshakable

This scales with the number of people present, so that the more people there are, the more CCs are needed for one of them to bite.

What i am suggesting is the inverse of this. That with large groups, given that the overall encounter scales with the numbers present, the bleed cap (the major issue here) is raised.

As it stands, at 25 the bleed is likely to do as much DPS as perhaps 2-3 people doing direct damage, depending on the latter’s crit chance and damage multiplier.

So once we start to see 10+ people the cap can readily be raised to match, especially as the mob will be scaled to the group anyways.

For champs , maybe. World bosses are considered ‘objects’ and cannot be critically hit, so most of this doesn’t apply to them.

Naqaj, the posts you’re quoting are from almost a year ago. I highly doubt the person you quoted cares anymore. This is a case of bumping a thread too old to have (mostly) relevant discussion as the game stands now.

I’ve always thought that if removing the stack cap was out of the question then why not just have conditions based on damage

say for example if Im in a event of 30 people and I am the only condition spec then since my conditions are doing the most damage my stacks would be more dominant over others

what really gimps the conditions spec is how a fully condition based Necro can be completely nullified by a power spec warrior with a sword

My super powerful Bleed stacks get completely replaced by other players who have no condition damage at all.. how is that fair

I won’t complain if Anet want a cap on stacks but at least make it so that condition spec characters are not being screwed over by other players

a stack of bleed that deals 300 dps should not be getting replaced by one that does 25 dps
that is the problem with condition specs in Pve and why most of us who play them run Hybrid builds or just prefer to solo champion level mobs

Damage Priority is greatly needed for condition builds
the more damage your conditions do then the better chance you have of being in the stack
meanwhile other characters with low Condi stat will not be replacing our superior damage with their weak bleeds etc

Bleeding and other conditions have a cap because uncapped conditions would make Anet’s servers explode. That’s the reason why conditions is poor in pve but god tier in Spvp and roaming WvW.