Ranger//Necro
Condition Cap in PvE
It’s a technical limitation. Colin has stated that they are keeping conditions in mind, but I don’t know that anything has been determined on what to do about them. They certainly haven’t said what they are going to do.
It’s one of the many things that’s in Colin’s “radar”.
It’s one of the many things that’s in Colin’s “radar”.
Wasn’t that mentioned months ago, and there’s still nothing on it?
Is it better to out-monster the monster or to be quietly devoured?
Dragonbrand – Level 80 – Human Ranger
Dragonbrand – Level 80 – Human Ranger
Ah ok, that makes sense.
Does anyone actually agree with the condition cap/ think it’s a good thing?
Ranger//Necro
They initially played the “I’m sorry the computer can’t do that” card when people noted the obvious problem of maintaining damage by stacks on a mob instead of by player. After it was fully processed (as in how come it works fine by player in other games) Anet acknowledged the problem and said they are working on fixing it. No ETA was given.
Ah ok, that makes sense.
Does anyone actually agree with the condition cap/ think it’s a good thing?
Around here you are likely to get someone who thinks it’s great. However, it’s not. If you were to add 5 more condition builds to a group you would not be significantly increasing the damage output of the group. Compare that to adding 5 more zerker warriors. There’s the problem. Damage, being done, is not appropriately accounted for in the game.
Wonder if instead of increasing the condition cap they could add that damage to one of the bleed stacks
Example being if you have 25 bleeds doing 100 damage, and stack another bleed tha does, say, 75 damage. That one the bleeds ticking would do 175 damage. Probably too complicated to implement though
Grok Walking Amongst Mere Mortals
It’s one of the many things that’s in Colin’s “radar”.
Wasn’t that mentioned months ago, and there’s still nothing on it?
5 months to be exact.
I think it’s more of a limitation because 50 players hitting a single boss would stack up well over 100 stacks of bleed. Maybe 200. That would kill it outright far faster than the regular damage by all the players.
It’s a gameplay decision. I also don’t agree with it because we should be able to stack as much damage on as we can, but I suppose I understand why they did it.
I don’t believe for a second it’s a “technical” limitation. The smallest of WvW zerg fights have far more conditions flying to far more targets than any 50v1 fight against a world boss. They’re tracking hundreds of stacks of bleeds and other condition in those cases. I hardly think they “technically” can’t handle more than 25 on one mob in PvE.
(edited by Hickeroar.9734)
I think it’s more of a limitation because 50 players hitting a single boss would stack up well over 100 stacks of bleed. Maybe 200. That would kill it outright far faster than the regular damage by all the players.
It’s a gameplay decision. I also don’t agree with it because we should be able to stack as much damage on as we can, but I suppose I understand why they did it.
I don’t believe for a second it’s a “technical” limitation. The smallest of WvW zerg fights have far more conditions flying to far more targets than any 50v1 fight against a world boss. They’re tracking hundreds of stacks of bleeds and other condition in those cases. I hardly think they “technically” can’t handle more than 25 on one mob in PvE.
I know what you mean, but why should vanilla damage based builds be more effective against bosses than condition based builds? It doesn’t make sense
Ranger//Necro
It’s one of the many things that’s in Colin’s “radar”.
Wasn’t that mentioned months ago, and there’s still nothing on it?
5 months to be exact.
Sounds about right. Been about 5 months since I played and it looks like they haven’t changed a kitten thing. Not surprising.
Is it better to out-monster the monster or to be quietly devoured?
Dragonbrand – Level 80 – Human Ranger
Dragonbrand – Level 80 – Human Ranger
The cap is just the beginning. Even with no cap, condition scaling is much worse than power scaling for a variety of reasons. Condition damage needs a serious overhaul to become viable, unfortunately arenanet makes more money off temp content so they’ve let condition builds rot for a year (1.5 yrs if you count the BWE’s). Pretty infuriating but hey they are a business which means they care more about earning money than whether or not their game is high quality.
I think it’s more of a limitation because 50 players hitting a single boss would stack up well over 100 stacks of bleed. Maybe 200. That would kill it outright far faster than the regular damage by all the players.
It’s a gameplay decision. I also don’t agree with it because we should be able to stack as much damage on as we can, but I suppose I understand why they did it.
I don’t believe for a second it’s a “technical” limitation. The smallest of WvW zerg fights have far more conditions flying to far more targets than any 50v1 fight against a world boss. They’re tracking hundreds of stacks of bleeds and other condition in those cases. I hardly think they “technically” can’t handle more than 25 on one mob in PvE.
I know what you mean, but why should vanilla damage based builds be more effective against bosses than condition based builds? It doesn’t make sense
I totally agree with you. No argument at all. It doesn’t make sense the way they’ve set it up. In a five man group, it’s not really a problem. In world events, condition builds get the shaft bigtime.
In a five man group, it’s not really a problem.
Uh, no. In a five man group it’s a huge problem the minute you’ve got more than 1 condition build present. Several builds can maintain 20+ stacks of bleeds indefinitely.
And then there’s the whole condition damage is way less dps than power damage problem.
In a five man group, it’s not really a problem.
Uh, no. In a five man group it’s a huge problem the minute you’ve got more than 1 condition build present. Several builds can maintain 20+ stacks of bleeds indefinitely.
And then there’s the whole condition damage is way less dps than power damage problem.
If you happen to have that sort of group, you’re correct. I’ve rarely seen that kind of thing happen though.
Rampagers gear is great though. Lots of Power/Prec AND Cond. Best of both worlds, if you are skilled enough to not die.
On a ranger I can easily stack 25 bleeds on a golem in PvP without food, meaning that if I was to run this build in a dungeon with other people also running condition builds we would completely cancel each other out.
If anet removed the cap, or made it say, 100 stacks, it would instantly make condition builds far more viable in dungeons.
Ranger//Necro
In a five man group, it’s not really a problem.
Uh, no. In a five man group it’s a huge problem the minute you’ve got more than 1 condition build present. Several builds can maintain 20+ stacks of bleeds indefinitely.
And then there’s the whole condition damage is way less dps than power damage problem.
If you happen to have that sort of group, you’re correct. I’ve rarely seen that kind of thing happen though.
Rampagers gear is great though. Lots of Power/Prec AND Cond. Best of both worlds, if you are skilled enough to not die.
The reason why you rarely see a dungeon group with multiple condi builds is precisely because of the hard cap on conditions, everyone runs vanilla zerker builds so that there is no damage cap
Ranger//Necro
In a five man group, it’s not really a problem.
Uh, no. In a five man group it’s a huge problem the minute you’ve got more than 1 condition build present. Several builds can maintain 20+ stacks of bleeds indefinitely.
And then there’s the whole condition damage is way less dps than power damage problem.
If you happen to have that sort of group, you’re correct. I’ve rarely seen that kind of thing happen though.
Rampagers gear is great though. Lots of Power/Prec AND Cond. Best of both worlds, if you are skilled enough to not die.
The reason why you rarely see a dungeon group with multiple condi builds is precisely because of the hard cap on conditions, everyone runs vanilla zerker builds so that there is no damage cap
For me it’s because playing conditions isn’t as fun. Yeah, I can run ranger shortbow and stack bleeds like crazy…but that’s boring. There’s no variance to it. Autoattack and avoid damage.
Condition builds, however, are extremely viable in all PvP/WvW.
Ah ok, that makes sense.
Does anyone actually agree with the condition cap/ think it’s a good thing?
It’s great!
…In sPvP.
I think one of the reasons why the condition cap has not been changed is due to how it would require technical changes to a single aspect of the game. sPvP players are already complaining that conditions are too strong as they are right now; increasing the condition cap there would be a very bad move. Increasing the condition cap in WvW also wouldn’t be a good idea, considering the zergs there would literally melt people with conditions in a second.
We have, then, a situation in which ArenaNet would need to make a somewhat difficult technical change due to PvE only, and nothing else. While I’m sure they are working on it, I think it’s comprehensible that it has not been their priority.
“I think that players are starting to mature past the point of wanting to be on that
treadmill, of being in that obvious pattern of every time I catch up you are going to
put another carrot in front of me” – Mike O’Brien right before Ascended weapons
treadmill, of being in that obvious pattern of every time I catch up you are going to
put another carrot in front of me” – Mike O’Brien right before Ascended weapons
What they need to do is give each player his / her own individual Bleed & Poison Stack. Just like some other games with their DoT effects.
Take WoW for example: Each Warlock player had their own Corruption, Immolate and Unstable Affliction slot on the boss, as well as other classes. Each Hunter had their own Serpent Sting, etc.
It really is nuts how restrictive it is for a Condition-Based spec. Especially for me, as I’ve put a TON of time and effort to getting my Necromancer geared with Ascended items and whatnot. even moreso when you break down the time needed to do optimal damage in Dungeons and Fractals.
It’ll take about 7-10 seconds to get my Bleeds rolling, I can score 25 stacks in about 10-15 seconds on my own. Imagine what damage a Warrior or even an Engineer can do in that time. THEN you have to take away from your overall damage based on other players and their bleeds: Warriors & Engineers bleed-on-crit, Rangers, Mesmers, etc…So I’d be cut down to maybe 15-18 stacks of bleed, which is pretty terrible damage when you’re decked out in BiS items and the Zerk’ Warrior in your group does over 12.000 damage with Hundred Blades in a fraction of that time.
It’s just insane, frankly. But with Anet, I’m not expecting anything special for quite some time.
(edited by Faction.4013)
Ah ok, that makes sense.
Does anyone actually agree with the condition cap/ think it’s a good thing?
It’s great!
…In sPvP.
I think one of the reasons why the condition cap has not been changed is due to how it would require technical changes to a single aspect of the game. sPvP players are already complaining that conditions are too strong as they are right now; increasing the condition cap there would be a very bad move. Increasing the condition cap in WvW also wouldn’t be a good idea, considering the zergs there would literally melt people with conditions in a second.
We have, then, a situation in which ArenaNet would need to make a somewhat difficult technical change due to PvE only, and nothing else. While I’m sure they are working on it, I think it’s comprehensible that it has not been their priority.
I actually tend to disagree, I don’t see a need for a condition cap in PvP either. If you have 25 stacks of bleeds on you, chances are you are out of condition cleanses and are going to die anyway. In fact, I could probably count the number of times I’ve suffered from a full stack of bleed in pvp on one hand. The current complaint about the PvP meta is how easily engineers and necros can hit people with a number of different conditions, not just bleed or torment.
Again in WvW, I don’t see a need for the cap on conditions. Why put conditions at a disadvantage especially when they already do not deal damage as fast as vanilla attacks.
Ranger//Necro
What they need to do is give each player his / her own individual Bleed & Poison Stack. Just like some other games with their DoT effects.
Take WoW for example: Each Warlock player had their own Corruption, Immolate and Unstable Affliction slot on the boss, as well as other classes. Each Hunter had their own Serpent Sting, etc.
It really is nuts how restrictive it is for a Condition-Based spec. Especially for me, as I’ve put a TON of time and effort to getting my Necromancer geared with Ascended items and whatnot. even moreso when you break down the time needed to do optimal damage in Dungeons and Fractals.
It’ll take about 7-10 seconds to get my Bleeds rolling, I can score 25 stacks in about 10-15 seconds on my own. Imagine what damage a Warrior or even an Engineer can do in that time. THEN you have to take away from your overall damage based on other players and their bleeds: Warriors & Engineers bleed-on-crit, Rangers, Mesmers, etc…So I’d be cut down to maybe 15-18 stacks of bleed, which is pretty terrible damage when you’re decked out in BiS items and the Zerk’ Warrior in your group does over 12.000 damage with Hundred Blades in a fraction of that time.
It’s just insane, frankly. But with Anet, I’m not expecting anything special for quite some time.
The personal slot idea definitely could be a good fix if Anet implemented it properly. And yep, the condition cap is one of the main reasons warriors continue to dominate PvE DPS
Ranger//Necro
I would love to see a system wherein the act of applying a condition to a mob who already has max stacks of that condition causes the character applying the condition to receive a buff of some sort.
It could be the same buff for all conditions, but would be more interesting (IMO) if the buff was different for each condition.
There are multiple valid suggestions in the … suggestion section. At least Cpt. Obvious said so.
All you guys said “increase the cap”, “make everyone to deal their own stacks” and “the cap is a bad design”. The cap is not a design choice but a technical. Increasing it is not possible without changes.
And I guess this already answers the topic.
There are multiple valid suggestions in the … suggestion section. At least Cpt. Obvious said so.
All you guys said “increase the cap”, “make everyone to deal their own stacks” and “the cap is a bad design”. The cap is not a design choice but a technical. Increasing it is not possible without changes.
And I guess this already answers the topic.
25 stacks is an arbitrary number and therefore it could be increased or decreased if Anet chose to do so. The cap, as well as how weak 25 stacks of bleeding is on a boss, is clearly a design choice. Also the fact that games like WoW handled conditions differently and didn’t penalize condition builds while using less developed technology points to the fact that this is design choice.
Ranger//Necro
I would love to see a system wherein the act of applying a condition to a mob who already has max stacks of that condition causes the character applying the condition to receive a buff of some sort.
It could be the same buff for all conditions, but would be more interesting (IMO) if the buff was different for each condition.
That could be interesting, but I think the idea is too complex for where Anet wants to go with boons/conditions.
Ranger//Necro
There are multiple valid suggestions in the … suggestion section. At least Cpt. Obvious said so.
All you guys said “increase the cap”, “make everyone to deal their own stacks” and “the cap is a bad design”. The cap is not a design choice but a technical. Increasing it is not possible without changes.
And I guess this already answers the topic.
25 stacks is an arbitrary number and therefore it could be increased or decreased if Anet chose to do so. The cap, as well as how weak 25 stacks of bleeding is on a boss, is clearly a design choice. Also the fact that games like WoW handled conditions differently and didn’t penalize condition builds while using less developed technology points to the fact that this is design choice.
You don’t know whether 25 is an arbitrary number or not. Unless you happen to be a developer. And those developers have said that it’s not an arbitrary limitation.
You are right about the damage though. However, I think that your perspective is a big misguided. You look at how conditions fare in open world PvE or organized dungeons and conclude that they’re crap. Well, those are extreme circumstances, not the average setting.
You also completely ignore the good sides of conditions. Since they’re damage over time, there’s tons of scenarios where conditions deal damage where direct damage fails to do so. For example, a condition build is basically guaranteed to keep dealing damage even if they’re CC’ed. Similarly, condition builds allow for much better kiting due to being damage-over-time.
Also, I don’t think that making comparisons with any other game is a valid argument unless you bother to explain how that game dealt with things. All you’re gonna get out of that is a tag that says “I like this other game but I also like this one so why can’t they be similar?”
The developers responded to this issue and condition builds doing damage to objects within one month of launch. Since then, they’ve paid the issues some slight lip service with no progress to show for it.
Whether it is an arbitrary limit or not, the current system is broken as it means that direct damage characters will always be able to contribute 100% where condition damage characters will not. Until both types of damage are able to contribute 100% then the system will be broken.
I am not a developer but that does not mean that I cannot say “this thing is broken, it really needs to be fixed” and trust that the Devs are sufficiently competent at their jobs to be able to find their own solutions to the issue.
Glad to be [Grey] – http://thegrey.enjin.com/home
Piken Square
Piken Square
You are right about the damage though. However, I think that your perspective is a big misguided. You look at how conditions fare in open world PvE or organized dungeons and conclude that they’re crap. Well, those are extreme circumstances, not the average setting.
So, how exactly are both open world pve and dungeons/fractals “extreme situations”? What exactly would a normal situation look like then?
You also completely ignore the good sides of conditions. Since they’re damage over time, there’s tons of scenarios where conditions deal damage where direct damage fails to do so. For example, a condition build is basically guaranteed to keep dealing damage even if they’re CC’ed. Similarly, condition builds allow for much better kiting due to being damage-over-time.
Nope. Over a longer time period it doesn’t really matter whether your pause applying fresh bleed stacks or you pause doing direct damage; the dps loss will be the same. Unless you assume that the direct damage build would deal it’s damage only from auto attacks while the bleed build only builds from high cooldown, short activation utility skills and doesn’t need to do anything inbetween, but that doesn’t really look realistic to me at least.
On the other hand, there are numerous downsides inherent to condition mechanics (no vulnerability, no bonus from crits, no +x% traits/sigils, worse party buffs etc.) even if you ignore the cap for a moment.
Anet have kept quiet about the issue for so long that it’s probably feasible to assume that at some point they probably went through their options to adress the issue, figured it was not worth the effort and decided to sweep it under the rug as good as possible.
It’s a technical limitation for more stacks….
….So they made a new condi instead.
I still don’t get that.
It’s a technical limitation for more stacks….
….So they made a new condi instead.
I still don’t get that.
ANet’s actions inconsistent with ANet’s words? I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you!
There is a balance issue coming across from PvP. Players will cure conditions applied to them so conditions are expected not to provide full effect. In PvE the mobs do not use cures and players expect conditions to have full effect, which might make them overpowered. Defiant and the condition limit are still clumsy ways of dealing with the problems.
I don’t believe for a second it’s a “technical” limitation. The smallest of WvW zerg fights have far more conditions flying to far more targets than any 50v1 fight against a world boss. They’re tracking hundreds of stacks of bleeds and other condition in those cases. I hardly think they “technically” can’t handle more than 25 on one mob in PvE.
And each individual player, pet and NPC have a given amount of bandwidth in which to affect the game world. Since bleed stacks are set by the stacker’s condition damage, and each bleed stack can be stacked by a different player, you could have 25 bleed stacks all ticking for different damage as determined by the 25 individual players and their condition damage. Imagine if it were possible for 50 individuals with different amounts of condition damage to need to be tracked? Or 100?
Now add on top of that that the damage of bleed is kept track of in real-time, meaning if a player stacked 1 stack of bleed on a target while having 25 stacks of might, the damage for that stack of bleed is high…then 10 might stacks expire and you drop to 15 stacks of might, that bleed stack’s damage drops without having to reapply or anything…then you get 10 more might stacks and that bleed goes back up….then someone strips all your might so that bleed drops in damage again….and now have 25 people stack their 1 bleed stack on someone and let them gain/lose might and keep up with it…then imagine if the limit were 50 or 100 bleed stacks with 100 individuals with different condition damage that’s jumping around….blah blah blah, you get the idea.
IMO, I think the devs just choose a poor means of implementing the conditions. They might be able to alleviate some of their bandwidth load if they made condition damage a hard stat (i.e. like Condition Duration…the duration of a condition is hard counted up by the attacker’s +duration and the defender’s -duration. if either gain or lose their duration modifiers after the condition is applied, it doesn’t change the duration of already existing conditions). Make it so Might doesn’t boost Condition Damage, boost the base damage of damaging conditions a little and modify how much condition damage boosts such conditions. Bleeds will have a set amount of damage for a set amount of time once applied and no longer must check the attacker’s damage rating for its duration.
But there’s still no excuse for poison/burn…I guess it’s understandable for poison as it’s not that type of offensive condition….but there’s got to be a better solution for applying burn. It’s not very effective in a group environment.
You are right about the damage though. However, I think that your perspective is a big misguided. You look at how conditions fare in open world PvE or organized dungeons and conclude that they’re crap. Well, those are extreme circumstances, not the average setting.
So, how exactly are both open world pve and dungeons/fractals “extreme situations”? What exactly would a normal situation look like then?
You also completely ignore the good sides of conditions. Since they’re damage over time, there’s tons of scenarios where conditions deal damage where direct damage fails to do so. For example, a condition build is basically guaranteed to keep dealing damage even if they’re CC’ed. Similarly, condition builds allow for much better kiting due to being damage-over-time.
Nope. Over a longer time period it doesn’t really matter whether your pause applying fresh bleed stacks or you pause doing direct damage; the dps loss will be the same. Unless you assume that the direct damage build would deal it’s damage only from auto attacks while the bleed build only builds from high cooldown, short activation utility skills and doesn’t need to do anything inbetween, but that doesn’t really look realistic to me at least.
On the other hand, there are numerous downsides inherent to condition mechanics (no vulnerability, no bonus from crits, no +x% traits/sigils, worse party buffs etc.) even if you ignore the cap for a moment.
Anet have kept quiet about the issue for so long that it’s probably feasible to assume that at some point they probably went through their options to adress the issue, figured it was not worth the effort and decided to sweep it under the rug as good as possible.
^
My response would be the same as wintermute’s.
Ranger//Necro
There is a balance issue coming across from PvP. Players will cure conditions applied to them so conditions are expected not to provide full effect. In PvE the mobs do not use cures and players expect conditions to have full effect, which might make them overpowered. Defiant and the condition limit are still clumsy ways of dealing with the problems.
You have a point that players have access to condition removal and bosses do not. However, a hard cap at 25 on a boss makes bleed and torment both very weak for any group larger than 3 people. I mean, plenty of warriors deal 40k damage on their hundred blades attack in CoF. That’s the equivalent of 100 stacks of bleeds for 3 seconds. If Anet wanted damage conditions to be purely complimentary to vanilla damage, I don’t believe they would design weapons like scepter for necromancer that relies so heavily on condition application.
Ranger//Necro
The core issue is this, each unit in a condition stack has its own timer to track how long that unit lasts.
Additionally there is a timer that applies damage. The number you see flying off the mob is just for show, the real damage is applies once pr second, when the hidden timer triggers, calculates all the different damages (complete with changes to might and whatsnot since the last time) and applies them.
This happens for each mob and character in the entire game that happens to have a condition on them, each second.
A full stack of bleed in GW2 is the equivalent of 25 warlocks in WOW applying one DOT each. And i am not even sure if WOW accounts for buffs and debuffs applies to the warlock after the DOT was placed on the mob.
Stacking DOTs in other games usually just use a single timer to remove the whole stack, with the timer refreshing each time the stack is increased. They do not track individual units within the stack.
From a esthetics point of view, GW2 conditions are a marvel to behold. From a computer engineering standpoint, they are a monstrosity. And this seems to sum up the game in general. As a work of art it is impressive, as anything else it is a house of cards.
I’ve been playing a bleed warrior for a while now. There’s no denying that anet does in fact need to look into the current problems with the condition system and either completely change it or somehow fix it. Focusing on bleeds is just more fun for me, and lately with these events involving huge zergs of people, I’m just not doing any damage.
I think it’s more of a limitation because 50 players hitting a single boss would stack up well over 100 stacks of bleed. Maybe 200. That would kill it outright far faster than the regular damage by all the players.
It’s a gameplay decision. I also don’t agree with it because we should be able to stack as much damage on as we can, but I suppose I understand why they did it.
I don’t believe for a second it’s a “technical” limitation. The smallest of WvW zerg fights have far more conditions flying to far more targets than any 50v1 fight against a world boss. They’re tracking hundreds of stacks of bleeds and other condition in those cases. I hardly think they “technically” can’t handle more than 25 on one mob in PvE.
The point needs to be made that some people seem to not be able to do math properly. Removing the condition cap will not somehow make bleeds do outrageous amounts of damage to a boss relative to normal zerker models.
So, a boss has a stack of 200 bleeds. If each bleed does 150 damage (I can’t do that much, but lets say that we have a group of super geared bleeders), That means
(150) x (200) = 30,000 damage per second.
If I just use an axe with my gear, the damage I do per swing ranges from 800 to 3000 depending on crits and whatnot. But lets just use 800, and I don’t even have berserker gear. In the above quote, we had 50 people. So,
(800) X (50) = 40, 000 dps
From this, you can see how wrong the assumption that the condition cap[Sorry, the forum censored these letters] is somehow in the game for balance.
But, even the numbers above aren’t really accurate. Lets say we have a group of 25 bleeders on one boss and 25 zerkers hitting another. Pretend they are all warriors, because I’m not sure what other classes are capable of really.
Bleeders: 130 damage per bleed with extra dps from direct damage which we will round to 1000. Each person can get an average of 18 stacks on the target.
[(18) x (25) x (130)] + [(1000) x (25)] = 83,500 dps
I don’t know the average dps of a berserker build, but I assume its at least 4000 since I’ve heard people bragging of 15k bursts. According to these numbers, the berserker group would only need to pull about 3300 dps each to keep up with the bleeders.
With the bleed cap currently, well the first group only does a third of the berserker group’s dps.
So from this it is undeniable that the condition cap is not in place for game balance. Something NEEDS to be done about this, whether it be that anet engineers around the bandwidth limitation, gets better hardware to handle the problem, or create an entirely new system that completely eliminates the hardware problem.
PVP/WVW = conditions , PVE = power/crit
Pretty straight forward
Zerkers ftw ?
[WM]give us in game ladder
The one thing I don’t get is why they couldn’t at least let bleed cap prioritize based off damage and maybe duration. It makes no sense that a power build can take up precious bleed stack slots over a condition necromancer who applies bleeds that are twice as strong.