Guild Wars 2

not only condition but also crit builds

sadly not every class works well with ptv armor nor has enjoyable playstyle with those stats

i honestly think they should make dot dmg like in wow, where every player has his own stack so to say and CC conditions (confusion for example) have diminishing returns so you can’t perma CC something to death

Crit builds should be fixed on objects, but I don’t think the problem is really comparable. A berserker build loses roughly 50 percent of its damage on an object. A condition build loses 90 to 95 percent, depending on the weapon’s power coefficient.

Plus, most condition builds rely on crits for procs.

Like I’ve said in the original thread, I understand there’s a technical problem with bandwidth. But then the technical limitation should be designed around, not completely ignored. It’s not even like the problem is small right now; literally two condition builds can cap a boss and effectively ruin an encounter for dozens of people.

Slither Shade.4782:

Idk but the title sounds like a cool elite.

I agree with this. Maybe use the original thread’s title:
Please stop neglecting conditions in PVE

THIS! I’ve been sad about this since day 1. I absolutely love gw2, but I’d love to have true build diversity and a real fix for this. It’s really disappointing that it’s been like this for more than a year. Removing the trinity was cool, until you realized it was the most viable to run 5x zerkers and zerg stuff fast enough that healing isn’t necessary. I know this concept doesn’t apply universally, and I’m glad they are addressing support playstyles in the oct 15th patch, but they still haven’t even commented on conditions other than saying that it doesn’t work well because of bandwidth. Pretty lame. This would be the glaring issue that would make me give GW2 4/5 stars rather than 5.

I am so sick of this issue… Anet, I know it’s not going to get fixed right away, but update us on how it’s going.

I wouldn’t say Conditions are a catastrphe given their dominance in PvP. But with the introduction of a challenging Boss encounter it was only natural that this issue was going to resurface.

It is no doubt a problem and one that ANet should have predicted.

Having a huge portion of build be largely ineffective during boss encounters isn’t an acceptable solution.

More than one condition build in any group of any size is redundant in the game. It is a major design flaw to not attribute damage to the player producing it. They have attempted to excuse it by blaming a bad technical architecture that can’t handle the bandwidth of tracking damage by player. Other games (cf. WoW) have no problem with this.

It’s not a new problem or one related to Teq. It does need to be fixed, but I don’t think we will see it done any time soon. It is good to keep the issue in front of Anet though.

Tequatl kind of throws the issue to the spotlight because it’s a fight in which any kind of DPS matters.

binidj.5734:

The thread in the Tequatl Rising forum on conditions will disappear soon but as it raises issues pertinent to the rest of the game I felt it worthwhile linking to it (and possibly continuing the discussion) here.

In short, the way in which conditions are treated within the game mean that condition builds become less desirable the more characters are present. In boss fights (or fights against structures) condition builds become largely redundant. Isn’t it time that this shortcoming was moved to the top of the “things we need to fix” list?

ArenaNet is fully aware of this and other condition related issues.

In PvP, conditions dominate the meta. If you are out necromancer’d in solo queue you might as well give up.

Give it time, there will be a condition buff in PvE and nerf for PvP.

This thread is about conditions in PvE and bleed cap, an issue that only affects PvE. Balance in PvP is irrelevant.

Nova Stiker.8396:

binidj.5734:

The thread in the Tequatl Rising forum on conditions will disappear soon but as it raises issues pertinent to the rest of the game I felt it worthwhile linking to it (and possibly continuing the discussion) here.

In short, the way in which conditions are treated within the game mean that condition builds become less desirable the more characters are present. In boss fights (or fights against structures) condition builds become largely redundant. Isn’t it time that this shortcoming was moved to the top of the “things we need to fix” list?

ArenaNet is fully aware of this and other condition related issues.

In PvP, conditions dominate the meta. If you are out necromancer’d in solo queue you might as well give up.

Give it time, there will be a condition buff in PvE and nerf for PvP.

Necromancers dominate PvP. Condition mesmers, engineers, and thieves can hold their own; condition Eles, Warriors, Rangers, and Guardians are laughable.

One dominant condition class and a few that get by, with half being completely worthless, is not a ‘condition dominant meta’.

This is another problem with Anet’s lazy balancing. They don’t want to have to balance skills differently for pvp/pve, so they are trying to find a middle ground. End result is conditions are weak in pve and absolute god mode in pvp.

Slither Shade.4782:

Idk but the title sounds like a cool elite.

Condition Catastrophe
Cooldown 60s, Thief, Trick
For 10s, inflict a 1s stack of a random condition upon targets you hit for each point of missing initiative. When this effect ends, lose all initative, and reduce the cooldown of steal by 1% for each point of initiative lost this way.

This has popped up so many times now. I main a condi necro and I don’t PvP (haven’t the patience), yet I hardly get a chance to play as my main because conditions are considered worthless when you’re speed clearing dungeons.

The sad part is this should never have found it’s way into the game, and I don’t really buy the whole “technical issues limit what we can do with conditions”, that just seems like a bull excuse. How can hundreds of other MMO’s, including GW1, manage to do it and yet GW2 can’t?

This is nothing new. In temples and boss events we have dealt with this all year. Most that realized the mechanic then, have long since adapted. I carry multiple sets of gear, dress fashionable for such various social engagements. I don’t see a problem.

This is also a big problem in dungeons as 25 bleed cap is not even enough for 2 condition users.

Just wait one more year. Be patient.

There’s at least 3 good ways to fix this in WvW and PVE without impacting performance

1/ divide condition durations by 3 across the board. Triple the damage per tick.
2/ create overflow stacks which stack to 100.
3/ have the stack explode at 25, doing half the intended damage at once.

As far as I know we still haven’t had an official answer to the idea of not having condition stacks constantly re-updating themselves depending on the source’s condition damage stat and how much it could help performance. Somehow, I feel like a 100 conditions stack just doing their thing on their own would hurt performance much less than the 25 stacks constantly requiring data from the players that we have now, but I’m by no mean an expert on the subject.

I know it would induce some change to the way we play the game, making condition bursts more predictable, but also involving a bit more thought in the execution of a build (rather than the “fire everything !” method we tend to have now) and bringing back a certain gw1-like feeling, would that be so bad ? Also, since you can’t update direct damage after it’s been dealt, I wonder if this would not simply add consistency accross the board. Plus, I’m having a hard time imagining the logic behind making a guy bleed more by shouting “for great justice” or blowing my ranger’s warhorn…

While this would require gameplay testing and balancing from Anet I feel like this solution (which isn’t mine, I’m just bringing it up) would be a more simple one in that it wouldn’t add new mechanics (hence more complexity to the rules of the game) like full stacks dealing direct damage or other work-around solutions that are about adding mechanics on top of already existing mechanics instead of modifying and re-arranging those existing mechanics. And I think the effect on gameplay would be interesting.

Tauril.8504:

As far as I know we still haven’t had an official answer to the idea of not having condition stacks constantly re-updating themselves depending on the source’s condition damage stat and how much it could help performance. Somehow, I feel like a 100 conditions stack just doing their thing on their own would hurt performance much less than the 25 stacks constantly requiring data from the players that we have now, but I’m by no mean an expert on the subject.

I know it would induce some change to the way we play the game, making condition bursts more predictable, but also involving a bit more thought in the execution of a build (rather than the “fire everything !” method we tend to have now) and bringing back a certain gw1-like feeling, would that be so bad ? Also, since you can’t update direct damage after it’s been dealt, I wonder if this would not simply add consistency accross the board. Plus, I’m having a hard time imagining the logic behind making a guy bleed more by shouting “for great justice” or blowing my ranger’s warhorn…

While this would require gameplay testing and balancing from Anet I feel like this solution (which isn’t mine, I’m just bringing it up) would be a more simple one in that it wouldn’t add new mechanics (hence more complexity to the rules of the game) like full stacks dealing direct damage or other work-around solutions that are about adding mechanics on top of already existing mechanics instead of modifying and re-arranging those existing mechanics. And I think the effect on gameplay would be interesting.

As a condition user, I would take this over being unable to stack my full bleeds in a heartbeat.

When conditions hit a full stack, say 25 bleeds, I don’t see why they just don’t make one new condition stack, let’s call it in this case “mega bleed” and each mega bleed ticks as 25 regular bleeds.

Adding one new condition can’t be that taxing on the servers because they’ve already added a new one recently in Torment.

Pendragon.8735:

When conditions hit a full stack, say 25 bleeds, I don’t see why they just don’t make one new condition stack, let’s call it in this case “mega bleed” and each mega bleed ticks as 25 regular bleeds.

Adding one new condition can’t be that taxing on the servers because they’ve already added a new one recently in Torment.

oh boy! imagine a 25 mega bleed stack, that would be hilarious

also, why cant we have named conditions? like korelg’s bleed, korelg’s poison, etcetera

that other solution that someone wrote before, making conditions “explode” at 25 stacks could make a really fun mechanic, say you stack 25 bleeds, adding 1 more will make the stack explode for 1/2 the total damage as direct damage that can also crit so you get to decide, should i keep those bleeds up or just blow it? it would also bring a new set of builds

Make conditions fire and forget. In other words, make the damage it does independent of stat changes of the condition giver (e.g. getting might after applying the condition).

This should reduce the amount of computations (and data retrievals) necessary to determine condition damage and allow more conditions to be applied.

TheAgedGnome.7520:

Based on ideas presented in the original thread, I suggest:

• Condition damage stacks inflicted beyond the maxstacklimit (usually 25) is converted to direct damage.

• On structures, set the maxstacklimit to 0.

There could be scaling factor(s) involved in the conversion of condition dmg to direct dmg so that, for example, a big 30-sec bleed doesn’t convert into a massive instant damage burst.

This is an amazing idea. Very simple to implement and it shouldn’t produce any unbalance issue (probably they’ll need to redo their math) as long as it is only applied for objects and world bosses.

WvW doors should be left untouched.

First, let me clarify for everyone how broken the system is. The Conditions are capped at a max of 25. That’s not 25 of each, that’s just a flat, cumulative 25.

Now that we’ve clarified that, don’t believe the garbage about technical limitations within the bandwidth. As an app developer, that’s their biggest load of horse **** since the “play your way” lie was coined.

The game is already sending and receiving condition information to and from the client – you can clearly see this when you are attacking a champ with a zerg and see all the conditions stacking up (even though most aren’t even applying). The data is already flowing, so bandwidth has nothing to do with it.

The issue lies in the incompetency of the developers. DoT is an age old mechanic, and no other MMO has failed so miserably in its implementation as GW2 does. The developers at GW2 just haven’t figured out the model of how to properly calculate consistent DoT in larger numbers. I would sooner believe it was an issue with CPU resources before I believed it was bandwidth limitations, but the system isn’t even that complicated, either; it’s type, intensity, duration, and stack. With a cap on 25 per type (the way it’s supposed to be), and only accounting for the top 25 highest intensity/duration, only a fraction of the input will even be processed as the DoT builds will take precedence over low DoT input. So, in a Zerg, a very small amount of condition data will even need to be processed.

They need to fix this, and it needs to be at the top of their list. It is an utter joke it has even gone on this long.

I’m starting to come around to that. I honestly don’t understand how bleeds can really be that taxing to bandwidth.

Becoming “Redundant” would actually be an Upgrage for them /w regards to structures
(which are currently immune to all conditions).
There’s also some entire SPECIES of mobs that are immune to certain conditions/CC’s

…Which Anet originally promised us they wouldn’t do back on Guru & in some Q/A’s prior to Beta over the topic of conditions & specific types of damage being heavily resisted like they were in Gw1. …their quote was something along the lines of “We don’t want anyone to feel like their build is made useless by certain kinds of content”

Lord Kuru.3685:

Make conditions fire and forget. In other words, make the damage it does independent of stat changes of the condition giver (e.g. getting might after applying the condition).

This should reduce the amount of computations (and data retrievals) necessary to determine condition damage and allow more conditions to be applied.

This should be how they implemented it…… as a software dev, I would never, NEVER, want to constantly check for updates to mod the dmg on a DoT. They should be fire and forget. No wonder they are having bandwidth problems. Imagine. 25s of bleed @ 25 stacks. That’s 25 checks per second, over 25 seconds, 625 extra operations, not to mention all the underlying mechanics to retrieve a players stats. Imagine if they let it stack to 100. 2500 extra operations. To say the least: ‘Ew’.

I hope they don’t ignore this topic like they did on the teq thread :/

Anet employees explained a few months ago that there is an hard-limit for this.
They can’t make everyone apply their own stack of conditions since it would take a lot of server workload and make the game unstable, while having only 1 bar of conditions per char is a lot less hardware-intensive.

This situation might change with the new update where bleed stacks are combined into one big bleed stack, but for now it’s as far as limits go.

Didn’t Anet say that they are working on this problem like 9-10 months ago?

Sorry, but it cracks me up to see people make all kinds of suggestions on how to fix this problem. There have been numerous threads about the condition damage problem — just like this one — but no comment from ANet, other than, “We’re working on it” and “Oops, we’re not working on it.” Don’t count on any fix anytime soon, and certainly not any fix suggested by players.

It’s hard not to assume they either 1) don’t know how to fix their game, or 2) don’t care to fix their game.

Does it really even matter?

If they “fix” this, it just means that they will also multiply the boss health so it still takes the same amount of time to kill.

Same with crits. If contstructs would be crittable, they would also have 2x health.

Breaking Bad.6241:

Didn’t Anet say that they are working on this problem like 9-10 months ago?

They discovered it couldn’t be used to sell gem store items and got sent to the Valve/Blizzard themed Soon™ Box.

Expect it somewhere between the next build and when the sun burns out.

Ameepa.6793:

Does it really even matter?

If they “fix” this, it just means that they will also multiply the boss health so it still takes the same amount of time to kill.

Same with crits. If contstructs would be crittable, they would also have 2x health.

Yes, it matters for all condition builds, and also crit builds, and for players that don’t want to have to kitten their builds, redo their traits, change their armor set and basically have to become melee class in order to register damage on a boss.

No, it doesn’t matter if your toon is a PVT warrior or guardian spamming 1 against the object.

If they want to have build diversity it needs fixing.

Victory.2879:

Ameepa.6793:

Does it really even matter?

If they “fix” this, it just means that they will also multiply the boss health so it still takes the same amount of time to kill.

Same with crits. If contstructs would be crittable, they would also have 2x health.

Yes, it matters for all condition builds, and also crit builds, and for players that don’t want to have to kitten their builds, redo their traits, change their armor set and basically have to become melee class in order to register damage on a boss.

No, it doesn’t matter if your toon is a PVT warrior or guardian spamming 1 against the object.

If they want to have build diversity it needs fixing.

I’m not against the fix in any way, but my point was that would it after all be nothing more than a cosmetic change? Sure, numbers would be bigger and there would be a lot more of them, but the boss would still take the same amount of time to kill.

For example, conditions and crits are not working now, so Mark 2 golem now takes 10 minutes to kill.

If they fix the Golem in a way that all conditions and crits are working and everyone gets 100% dps out of their characters, they also would have to buff the golem’s health so it would still take 10 minutes to kill.

Of course it would feel nice to get to blast away at full power.

Breaking Bad.6241:

Didn’t Anet say that they are working on this problem like 9-10 months ago?

No, they just cited Server architecture “reasons” as an excuse….

It’s kinda like that whole Culling problem they couldn’t fix either … until they fixed it.
But that problem they were actually WILLING to fix b/c it made less work for them in the long run. This….. on the other hand, will only make more work for them (any spreadsheeter knows it)

Ameepa.6793:

Victory.2879:

Ameepa.6793:

Does it really even matter?

If they “fix” this, it just means that they will also multiply the boss health so it still takes the same amount of time to kill.

Same with crits. If contstructs would be crittable, they would also have 2x health.

Yes, it matters for all condition builds, and also crit builds, and for players that don’t want to have to kitten their builds, redo their traits, change their armor set and basically have to become melee class in order to register damage on a boss.

No, it doesn’t matter if your toon is a PVT warrior or guardian spamming 1 against the object.

If they want to have build diversity it needs fixing.

I’m not against the fix in any way, but my point was that would it after all be nothing more than a cosmetic change? Sure, numbers would be bigger and there would be a lot more of them, but the boss would still take the same amount of time to kill.

For example, conditions and crits are not working now, so Mark 2 golem now takes 10 minutes to kill.

If they fix the Golem in a way that all conditions and crits are working and everyone gets 100% dps out of their characters, they also would have to buff the golem’s health so it would still take 10 minutes to kill.

Of course it would feel nice to get to blast away at full power.

It would fix a lot of things:

People not willing to take more than one CDmg character in a dungeon group.
CDmg characters being useless and unwanted in Teq fights.
CDmg characters being a pain to level because of “destroy ten baskets” Hearts and DEs.
CDmg characters not receiving credit for kills during large DEs.
CDmg being the “kitten choice” in PvE, because direct damage is always as good and often better.

Note that all of these (especially the last one) are huge balance issues that make half of the game’s builds bad in PvE.

Crits are a problem, too, but direct damage is fine, anyway. Enabling crits on world bosses would mostly help CDmg characters that have feats like Barbed Precision.

dekou.6012:

Note that all of these (especially the last one) are huge balance issues that make half of the game’s builds bad in PvE.

It is exactly that, a balance issue. Now pretty much every build is “bad” if talking about only dps. Direct damagers lose their crits, condition damagers lose most of their dots and tanky/healy builds are not doing much damage anyway compared to pure dps builds.

They are all bad, but they are just as bad as every other possible build. People can actually play the builds they like to play anywhere else in the game and not feel more useless than the others.

Guess what happens the moment they allow for example critical hits on bosses, and do the necessary HP increase. How many different builds will then be “accepted” to these fights? What happens to all of those builds that are not pure dps.

“Berserker only please.”

Same thing with conditions if they turn out to be more effective than berserkers.

A simple change like allowing unlimited amount of dots and/or critical hits would not encourage people to use lots of different builds. It would be the exact opposite. It would encourage people even more to use only pure berserker or pure condition damager, nothing else.

It’s something they are “actively looking at”. Just looking, no touching.

srsly, this supposed to be top of the list problem existed for a year. They didn’t fix it in a year, I don’t expect it to be fixed in anytime soon.

Funny ppl don’t really realize the issue until Taco because it’s making the whole server failing the event. Before, they just ask to change if there are more than 1 in group or just boot if elitist.

I didn’t mind the issue so much when I could set up my parties to avoid extra condition builds. That’s obviously not possible with Tequatl.

Ameepa.6793:

dekou.6012:

Note that all of these (especially the last one) are huge balance issues that make half of the game’s builds bad in PvE.

It is exactly that, a balance issue. Now pretty much every build is “bad” if talking about only dps. Direct damagers lose their crits, condition damagers lose most of their dots and tanky/healy builds are not doing much damage anyway compared to pure dps builds.

They are all bad, but they are just as bad as every other possible build. People can actually play the builds they like to play anywhere else in the game and not feel more useless than the others.

…what? It wouldn’t be a balance issue if all builds were as bad. The point is that CDmg builds are inherently WORSE than direct damage builds because of the broken mechanics.

As for the rest of your post, are you saying we should just forget about balance because one option will always be the best mathematically?

Most people don’t even want condition builds in their groups and I don’t blame them. My necro is full condition dmg and it feels like a joke compared to my warrior. I actually feel more like access weight on any group I join with my necro over my warrior, which is probably why I do dungeons with my warrior and not with my necro, cuz I don’t want to upset people who know how to play the game.

Kinda sad.

Conditions need to be buffed drastically. Every time I see other necros or condition builds while I’m playing my zerk warrior I just want to kick them from the group cuz I know they’re freaking useless… It’s depressing, and I feel bad for those classes/people.

Well, condition DPS isn’t that bad. It’s only a problem when considering the bleed cap.

Condition DPS isn’t THAT bad in casual. I still use my rabid necro with my casual friends which some may have full soldier, or healing stats. I know my DPS will still be a large part in the group.

But when teamed with zerker teammate, especially in stack and spank tactics, you really see the difference.

Afya.5842:

Condition DPS isn’t THAT bad in casual. I still use my rabid necro with my casual friends which some may have full soldier, or healing stats. I know my DPS will still be a large part in the group.

But when teamed with zerker teammate, especially in stack and spank tactics, you really see the difference.

is IS that bad in dungeons. It doesn’t even compare to zerk dps at all. I play a zerk warrior and a condition necro and I can tell you from first hand experience that conditions are a joke….

I don’t see why they even need to bother with stacks, especially if it’s a bandwidth issue.

If I was totally overhauling conditions the way they did MF, I would just give each condition skill a condition “damage” rating, which would be comparable in size to normal damage numbers. Every time you hit someone with a condition, it would add the “damage” to an “energy” pool for that condition, up until it reaches a cap which is somewhat proportional to max health (such that you can stack a lot more condition on a Legendary than a normal mob). Every time the condition ticks or triggers, it would remove some condition “energy” and (for some conditions) do some damage.

DOT and triggered damage would be a function (differing for each condition type) of the amount of energy in the pool, with the net impact being that stacking is basically simulated, and there would be a much higher actual and max-possible rate on someone getting zerged by 40 people than on a veteran being solo’d.

Duration would just be a question of when the energy ran out, and UI info should be more of an advisory.

I can see a couple of issues arising:
1) You can’t feasibly distinguish between condition damage and condition duration, since each is an automatic function of condition energy.
2) Condition removal gets a little murkier, or possibly too powerful.
3) Without stacks, it is hard to convey how much condition is present on yourself or your target.

With regard to the first two, I think the best solution is to merge the offensive condition attributes into a single Condition Power attribute, and then add a Condition Resistance attribute. Condition Resistance would passively increase a condition’s energy loss with each tick or trigger (reducing duration) and would also boost the effect of Condition Removal skills. Conditional Removal would, in turn, be reworked to also have a “damage” rating rather than a yes/no. The “damage” could either hit a random condition or be spread out, as balance dictates, and would reduce the energy pool of each condition accordingly.

As for the UI, using parallel health bars might make more sense, especially if condition power is scaled to max health.