Guild Wars 2

From what I understand, bleeds are limited to 25 stacks because of bandwidth issues and keeping track of hundreds of bleeds from dozens of players is too much. This is of course a massive issue in PvE, with some professions more than others, creating an imbalance.

What if each bleed beyond the stack cap applied its damage instantly and directly?

There wouldn’t be more to keep track of, just additional direct damage. Since many players already shy away from condition builds for PvE because of the cap (myself included), it shouldn’t result in many more numbers flying around. Nor should it be overpowered in any way, since it would only really apply to long-lived PvE targets and the total damage dealt should (in a perfect world) be close to that of direct damage dealers.

I also don’t think this would be an issue in PvP because when removing a bleed, all the stacks are removed at once and, well, if you have 25 stacks and can’t remove them you’re pretty much dead anyway.

If this is something that could be implemented, I wonder if it could also work in some way with other condition (and maybe buff) caps.

Is this not a good idea? Or has it been discussed before? Would appreciate some feedback. ^^

I highly doubt this will be ever implemented, bleeding is one of the most easy to apply condition and a direct damag would make it excessively powerful compared to the others conditions. On top of that this would lead to a drammatically umbalanced gameplay both on pvp where condition based players like thieves or mesmers would vaporize everyone both on pve where due to the huge amount of players spreading conditions the bosses would simply blow up

Might be a little op. The thing about direct damage, is you need three stats to do decent damage with it. With condition damage, you only need one stat. That’s why you do it over time. Really, the best option would be to just remove to condition cap, but that’s not gonna happen anytime soon.

Maybe with diminished returns.
1st 100%
2nd 80%
Or whatever DR factor you want.

TheCheater.5190:

I highly doubt this will be ever implemented, bleeding is one of the most easy to apply condition and a direct damag would make it excessively powerful compared to the others conditions. On top of that this would lead to a drammatically umbalanced gameplay both on pvp where condition based players like thieves or mesmers would vaporize everyone both on pve where due to the huge amount of players spreading conditions the bosses would simply blow up

Just how is allowing a condition based build to do as much damage as the build allows for unbalanced? If a build is OP, you nerf the damage amounts, you don’t deny the build the opportunity to do damage at all. That’s not balance, that’s bad design.

IndigoSundown.5419:

TheCheater.5190:

I highly doubt this will be ever implemented, bleeding is one of the most easy to apply condition and a direct damag would make it excessively powerful compared to the others conditions. On top of that this would lead to a drammatically umbalanced gameplay both on pvp where condition based players like thieves or mesmers would vaporize everyone both on pve where due to the huge amount of players spreading conditions the bosses would simply blow up

Just how is allowing a condition based build to do as much damage as the build allows for unbalanced? If a build is OP, you nerf the damage amounts, you don’t deny the build the opportunity to do damage at all. That’s not balance, that’s bad design.

Ok let’s make an example, a thief with just 2 skills and a trait can make 15 aoe bleeding in less than 3 seconds dodging almost every attack using death blossom, if anet removes the cap or make the damage delt over cap direct damage a thief has just to spam a skill to be virtually un-hittable and doing tons of damage. In my opinion this would imbalance PvP a lot.

TheCheater.5190:

IndigoSundown.5419:

TheCheater.5190:

I highly doubt this will be ever implemented, bleeding is one of the most easy to apply condition and a direct damag would make it excessively powerful compared to the others conditions. On top of that this would lead to a drammatically umbalanced gameplay both on pvp where condition based players like thieves or mesmers would vaporize everyone both on pve where due to the huge amount of players spreading conditions the bosses would simply blow up

Just how is allowing a condition based build to do as much damage as the build allows for unbalanced? If a build is OP, you nerf the damage amounts, you don’t deny the build the opportunity to do damage at all. That’s not balance, that’s bad design.

Ok let’s make an example, a thief with just 2 skills and a trait can make 15 aoe bleeding in less than 3 seconds dodging almost every attack using death blossom, if anet removes the cap or make the damage delt over cap direct damage a thief has just to spam a skill to be virtually un-hittable and doing tons of damage. In my opinion this would imbalance PvP a lot.

How is that different than 13K+ Backstab burst from stealth? Oh, wait, I can dodge Death Blossom but dodging Backstab is much harder and involves some luck. Point stands. Fix the skills, don’t nerf the build by making it useless in PvE. Besides, in the OP’s suggestion 15 stacks of bleed would function exactly as it does now. If you’re allowing a thief to land 25 stacks of bleed on you you’re dead anyway.

Tulzscha.4231:

Is this not a good idea? Or has it been discussed before? Would appreciate some feedback. ^^

It’s been discussed before. At length. ANet assured us that they were continuing to work on it. That was years ago. They haven’t said lately if that’s still the case. Or anything else about the condition cap.

Part of the problem might be that ANet seem to be reluctant to balance PvE, and while the cap is completely undermining a bunch of professions/builds in that mode, the cap is probably a good thing for PvP/WvW.

If they could de-couple the condition stack cap from PvE only by using, say, a modified version of this solution* (or one of the dozens of actually pretty good ones mentioned over the years) I know a bunch of people would be very happy and I don’t know anyone who would be upset.

• Your solution is kind of ok. Can’t do all the damage because that negates the Time aspect and breaks the mechanics a little, but I think some of the damage done right away is a fair compromise that works better than the current system.

What were some of the good suggestions put forward? If bandwidth is the issue they can’t do anything that would increase how much stuff the game has to keep track of, like increasing the cap or giving each player their own individual cap.

For those saying this suggestion is OP, it does not remove or change the cap and no direct damage would be dealt from conditions until after the cap is reached. It’s primarily to make condition builds viable in PvE – particularly against large mobs that already take some time to kill where a full stack of 25 is reached very quickly.