Guild Wars 2

The basic thought that I’m trying to convey is that the scaling and use cases for conditions, particularly damage over time conditions, isn’t consistent in actual use across multiple play types (burning is strong in sPvP and pretty awful in PvE for example) because of the issues with condition caps and the poor granularity available for tuning these conditions.

What is right with the current system:
Each damage over time condition has a specific purpose and feel that makes each one work to fill a specific niche. They seem to actually fill these roles in sPvP currently, but my interpretation of the intended use for each is as follows:

Burning – Burst condition damage;
Poison – Healing reduction and somewhat incidental damage;
Bleeding – Steady sustained damage over time.

What is wrong with the current system:

The problem you end up with, outside of a few situations (tPvP, soloing), is that burning and poison are completely saturated on almost all targets, and they no longer serve the purpose they were designed for. Bleeding when fully stacked, (which can be done by numerous single characters or easily accomplished with 2+ condition damage characters) does quite a bit more damage than burning, and the limited scaling of burning basically drops it down to around 5-6 stacks worth of bleeding at high condition damage values.

Some people would suggest that burning just be made more powerful, but that makes the packet size available for burning damage difficult to balance. A single burning tick at max levels of condition damage is roughly 1000 damage. Going from 1 tick to 2 ticks potentially adds a full 1000 damage to a skill, and if you increase the scaling even more, you’ll make that granularity of tuning even worse.

Additionally, condition damage specs need to apply multiple stacks of numerous conditions in order to be really effective. This works reasonably well in solo play and sPvP, where most of the fights are very small group encounters. However, this system breaks down for several builds in many PvE and WvW environments due to the 25 stack condition caps. Once you hit the 25 instance limit for each condition, you start completely losing damage for your conditions as new conditions are applied replacing old ones. (There seems to be a misconception that the highest damage conditions are the ones that get priority, but this doesn’t appear to be the case in testing). So you’re basically just giving up damage any time you have 2 or more condition specced players hitting a target for a sustained period of time. It has been implied that this cap on conditions is a technical limitation around the management of all the condition stacks rather than a design decision, and I hope that this solution would help to eliminate this limit or make it much harder to reach.

A quick example that is probably at the far end of the ‘bad’ part of the design currently in place:

Elementalists with a dagger mainhand gets a Drake’s Breath skill with a 5 second cooldown that causes 12 seconds of burning without any traits at all. If you add a dagger offhand, you get another 5 second burn on a 15 second cooldown using Ring of Fire. Put those two together, and you’re sitting on 29 seconds worth of burning applied over a 15 second period. This is before you add in condition duration from traits and food, which would take it up to 48s of burning applied in 15s. If you have any of the additional burn procs that you can spec into in the fire tree, it gets even worse. I assume the intent of those skills wasn’t “stack up a ton of burning and then come back in a minute to refresh it.” This is obviously even more of a problem when you get in a group that has burning from other sources. Nobody can actually effectively play this mythical Fire Ele as a spec because so much of the damage is burning based that you’ll never actually see any of it tick after the first few seconds of a fight.

What I think would be a cleaner implementation, and more universally applicable across the multiple game types is something like this:

Each condition should have a fixed duration (my rough starting thoughts based on relative GW1 scaling are Bleed – 10s, Poison – 7s, Burning – 4s) these values would be universal for all instances of these conditions. The conditions would be applied as a raw damage number (1200 bleeding damage for example as opposed to 12 ticks @ 100 damage each), and they would get spread across the time window for that condition. If a new instance of a condition is applied, you’d take whatever damage remained from the previous iteration and roll it into the new application, and re-spread that number across the same fixed time window. Each person would have their own instance of those conditions, but only 1 ‘stack’ to manage per person. Condition cleanses would have to remove all instances of that specific condition (burning from all sources at once for example).
From a math and tracking standpoint, you’ll basically need to keep track of 2 numbers per condition: Damage = D and Remaining Time =T

When adding new condition damage C to the current stack or creating a first stack from 0:

D1 = D0 + D
T1 = Tmax for the condition type
Ticks = D1/T1
Every second on the tick:

D1 = D0 – D0/T0
T1 = T0 – 1

So in this case, the conditions all stack in both intensity and duration to some extent because of the rolling nature of the damage.

This would completely do away with the concept of ticks and stacks for dealing the damage, and replace it with a raw damage number. Instead of a skill like blunderbuss dealing 5 stacks of 4 second bleeds @ 100 damage per tick, you would just apply 2000 bleeding damage and let it tick out over the next few seconds. The reality would probably more like applying some (coefficient x Condition Damage) bleeding damage.

Each player would have 1 ‘stack’ per unique condition represented by those 2 numbers as opposed to 25 unique stacks per condition on each target. The potential exists for additional stacks to be managed due to additional damage dealers in large fights, but I doubt that would be more than the reduction in stacks required to track for the majority of the content.

You’d control the ‘burst’ of the different conditions by adjusting the durations for each one, and then the balance for the damaging conditions is independent of what type of condition it is. You’d be able to just set a coefficient for each attack and pick a condition type that works either thematically or from a damage throttling standpoint.

At that point, you’d be able to just assign some coefficient number for the amount of damage you want an ability to do, and let the rolling mechanics take care of the rest. Things like Virtue of Justice becomes a question of do I want to deal a fairly large burst of burning damage over the next 4 seconds, or am I better served by sitting on this and keeping steady damage over time for the next 30 seconds. This also makes things like poison more useful as a skill based tool. By applying a fixed tick duration, you’d need to apply it within the correct time window for the healing reduction effects to matter, rather than just stacking up 30 seconds worth of it up front every 25 seconds or so.

The end result would be better granularity for balance of damage, allow more cooperative play with condition damage dealers, and clean up some of the goofy things like 30 second long bleeds that (with +condition duration) will keep ticking for up to a minute.

Your condition damage would take slightly longer to ramp up to full speed (roughly 4x the full duration for it to level off), although the number gets pretty close to the average relatively quickly. You’ll only ever lose the last few seconds worth of damage from a condition attack when the target dies, and condition cleanses become much more powerful tools because you wipe out the ramped up value and force the rolling total to start all over again.

The long term average would end up at 480 (1200*2/5) using those numbers, but eventually, all of the applied damage will tick through, or the target will die. At the 40 second mark, damage per tick would be up to 479 in this example, as an idea of what the ramp up time would look like. I think the ramping effect and somewhat implied additional value in condition removal will also help to clean up some of the condition spam that is going on in sPvP areas currently. Ultimately, you’ll be capable of taking more total condition damage than you are today, but it will always be spread out over time, and removable, as opposed to direct damage, which has no caps at all.

Some additional considerations:
The +condition duration stat would probably have to become something like +condition effectiveness, to allow for duration scaling for things like cripple, chill, vulnerability, etc, while still allowing the damaging conditions to scale up in damage.

Assuming you used the same basic scaling values for condition damage that you have for direct damage, you’d be able to total up what you thought the damage on a skill should be as a function of ‘offensive stats points’ and then just split some ratio of condition vs. direct damage.

The glaring differences between this and the current system are the fact that you could potentially have 20k DPS worth of bleeding ticking on you. That is clearly the biggest change from today’s system, but in order to get to that level, a group would have to stack up 200,000 worth of bleeding damage, which would obviously completely destroy if it was direct damage.

Burning and poison will also stack in intensity given enough applications. Burning would become the burst condition that it was in GW1, and also basically what it is in sPvP today, but it won’t be completely useless in PvE / WvW.

By removing the “ticks x damage per tick” mechanic, it becomes fairly simple to create a slow simmer type of burning damage if you desire since you’re no longer constrained by the packet size of 1000/tick burns. You would be able to design skills so that you can constantly reapply burns that would build up to your sustained burning DPS over several seconds. (I’m looking at you Virtue of Justice).

This management of condition damage as a raw number also allows more flexibility in trait design. Traits like Shrapnel (Explosions have a 15% chance to cause bleeding for 12s) which is really tough to balance between the bomb kit and the grenade kit can become something along the lines of "explosions do an additional 10% of their damage as bleeding, which both rewards people with additional damage for investing in offensive stats, and also cleans up some of the balance issues between the two kits.

It also allows you to fine tune the numbers for damage, particularly for skills that apply burning today since you can use essentially any damage number you like on the abilities. Skills like the Flamethrower Auto Attack can do small levels of burning on every hit without making the damage uncontrollably powerful.

One other side effect is poison damage can be managed relatively independently of the healing reduction effects. If you feel like a dagger thief should be able to apply poison for the utility it provides, you can put a small damage poison on the attack, and let the fixed duration keep poison up without trying to balance the damage numbers around some fixed value per tick. This will allow potentially more skillful use of poison skills since the condition won’t basically always be up.

At the end of the day, you’ll be basically guaranteeing that condition damage gets dealt at the right amount, without ever allowing uncontrollable burst damage unless multiple people converge on a target. Even in that scenario, the damage will be spread out over some period of time as opposed to the instant death you’d get from multiple 100 blades hitting you at once.

The reality is, if 25 people want to hit you, you should melt quickly, rather than taking 1000 damage per second over the next 25 seconds.

Some additional examples of new gameplay that this change might open up:
The current setup for Guardian’s Virtue of Justice allows a guardian with a 1h sword to keep burning up at 50% uptime per target by using just the sword Auto Attack and the VoJ passive proc. The active VoJ is basically 20s of burning every 30s adjusted by virtue recharge rate. This means that just by having a guardian in your group, you will nearly cap out on burning duration without any effort on the part of the group.

In the proposed system, you have more flexibility to modify the numbers for the active ability, since you don’t specifically have to balance it against the uptime on the passive version. Using the skill can become a choice of “do I want to give up some overall DPS in exchange for some additional burst damage” which is a much more interesting decision than “do I want to apply this damage every other second for the next 30 seconds, or 20 out of the next 30”

The same basic principles also apply to poison, but the other side of the coin shows up for those skills. Instead of stacking up 50 seconds of poison with a single toss of poison grenades, you’ll be able to do the same damage, but the poison will only tick for a few seconds. If you want to prevent healing with the skill, you’ll have to actually time the application of the poison to reduce the healing on the target. At any given point in time, you’d never have more than [max poison duration] additional seconds in the future covered with poison. If you wanted to keep a target poisoned, you’d have to keep reapplying the condition.

I love how our condition system is so broken that you didn’t even have to mention Confusion.

I know it’s rubbish after the WvW nerf, and it has always been weak in PvE, but… but… :’(

What if they just designed a system of collapsing stacks? Add four new conditions:
Hemorrhage
Necrotic
Engulfed
Delirum

How do you apply these and what are they for? You would apply them by essentially maxing out the existing stacks, reaching your 26th bleed/confusion, or your 30th second of burn/poison. Here’s how I could see this working:

If you get your 26th bleed stack, it instead collapses the entire stack, leaving you with 1 stack of bleed and 1 stack of Hemorrhage, with further bleeds adding back up to the stack, potentially generating another Hemorrhage stack before the first wears off in a big enough battle. The Hemo stack would have the same duration as the average of the bleed stacks that went into it, and would deal 20 times the damage per tick as a average bleed, essentially dealing as much damage as a full stack, but then allowing you to make a new stack next to it, without having to track 50 different stacks at once.

Similarly, when you hit your 31st second of Poison, it would 30 seconds off that stack’s duration, but apply a Necrotic stack that would deal twice the normal damage per tick, over 15 seconds (ie, same damage, just delivered twice as fast). As you continue to stack poison, every time you hit another 30 seconds it would create another stack of Necrotic, which would stack for damage, not duration, so basically if a ton of condi builds were dealt a minute and a quarter’s worth of Poison in ten seconds, the result would be two 15 second stacks of Necrotic and one 15 second stack of poison, for a total of 5 times normal poison damage per tick over the following 15 seconds.

The problem with “overflow conditions” is that you’re just making additional stacks for the servers to handle. Yes they’d be higher density, and less likely to cap, but they’ll likely make the issue of loading worse than it already is.

I left out confusion because it is a different kind of animal completely. It acts as a deterrent to skill use, and punishes skill spamming. It isn’t really the same as the dots.

I also ignored Torment, but it’s basically bleed 2.0 with a twist.

Personally I find on of the most annoying things is that non-condition team member can actually reduce my DPS by applying conditions. Power specs that occasionally apply bleeds either through traits, weapon procs, etc, can push out some of my ticks and replace them with their extremely weak ticks, reducing overall DPS.

The saddest part of all of this is that Anet still hasn’t fixed it after 10 months… This isn’t a problem for any other MMO on the market… why can’t Anet do what even cheap F2P MMO’s can do?

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The saddest part of all of this is that Anet still hasn’t fixed it after 10 months… This isn’t a problem for any other MMO on the market… why can’t Anet do what even cheap F2P MMO’s can do?

I’ve played cheap F2P MMOs and almost every MMO starts out with ridiculously low debuff stacks. Even very rich B2P MMOs fall in that trap, most notoriously WoW itself. It took years for WoW to fix the debuff cap.
- 8 debuffs at launch, making warlocks useless and disallowing rogues to use their best weapon (barman’s shanker)
- after about a year this was doubled to 16 debuffs. Shawoop.
- another six months to have it raised to 40 debuffs. Moar dots nao…
- it was only at WotLK that the debuff cap was removed entirely.

As for Aion, I believe they’re still stuck with universal debuff caps because otherwise spiritmasters would be overpowered if they’d actually do damage. Perfect logic.

Apparently this issue is universal and relatively difficult to solve. On the other hand, balance is impossible because such arbitrary limits effectively destroy many builds and often whole professions.

I just did some calculations. I’m not a math wiz so correct me if I’m wrong, lol. According to the formulas on the wiki and the stats I get from armor using http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/ the highest conceivable base condi dmg is about 1600. With 25 corruption stacks you get about 1900, and then 25 might stacks you get over 2700. Plugging this in to the formulas, I get 181 dmg bleed ticks and 1015 burning ticks. 25 stacks of bleeds at 181 is almost 5k damage per second, which is really effing high. Now these are overly ideal stats, but I think this is why Anet has the cap in place. If there was no cap in pve, those bleeds would shoot through the roof and balancing the scaling of dynamic event bosses would become a nightmare.

It would be interesting to compare this to raw power dps. For example take the average damage of a warrior’s greatsword per second. It would take some measuring since the damage of non-condi attacks is inconsistent by nature (damage ticks occur anywhere from .2 seconds to 3 seconds apart and cooldowns must be accounted for, etc).

That theoretical 5k DPS is still the damage of two characters. No single build can maintain 25 bleed stacks for more than 3 seconds. So when you compare stuff, make sure you compare the 25 stacks of bleed to the autoattack damage of at least two characters.
Also, by just clicking hundred blades, a single greatsword warrior outdoes 5k DPS in an equally ideal build for a short time, and maintains a total of 3.5k when chaining might and fury just right.

We know they’re looking to remove the magic find stat. Replace it with your condition/boon duration increase stat. Or better yet, reduce condition damage by 30%, but allow them to crit and change crit damage stat to increase condition duration.

Reduce burn down to 2 bleeds instead of 6 so people stop complaining about the damage and change burn to also keep a target from stealthing. If they’re already stealthed when burn is put on them, the next revealed debuff they get will have its duration doubled.

There, now burn is more utility than damage, people stop complaining about sPvP necros, WvW people can stop crying about thieves, condi classes will no longer be the top tier bunkers they currently are, etc.

You can get right around 3000 condition damage if you go all in with consumables and runes etc.

A fully ramped up rampager geared grenade engineer can keep up 100% uptime on burning, bleeding, and poison, and will do right around 8,000 dps with maxed might, vulnerability, and fury.

A guardian or warrior specced in full zerker gear will do almost the exact same damage in those same circumstances.

This isn’t an issue of conditions do too much damage. They’re not really stronger than direct damage setups even before you factor in the condition cap. The cap makes condition damage users absolutely less useful than their direct damage counterparts.

The Boz.2038:

That theoretical 5k DPS is still the damage of two characters. No single build can maintain 25 bleed stacks for more than 3 seconds. So when you compare stuff, make sure you compare the 25 stacks of bleed to the autoattack damage of at least two characters.
Also, by just clicking hundred blades, a single greatsword warrior outdoes 5k DPS in an equally ideal build for a short time, and maintains a total of 3.5k when chaining might and fury just right.

Well the calculation I was making was mostly to figure out how much damage a PvE mob could take from conditions. Considering during a fight like Jormag where there’s a whole zerg of players to easily maintain the caps, the boss will be taking 5k damage from the bleed stack, 1k from the burn stack, and 354 from the poison stack. So under these circumstances the boss will be taking a sustained 6.3k damage per second for the entire fight just from the condi ticks. This is twice the sustained average dps you mention for normal power damage output, and equal to the burst.

Now those full condi stacks are representative of two people (basically). So between two people (in a dynamic event) you’ve got a 100% uptime packet of damage that is equal to a single burst (of 100 blades for example). Imagine if the cap was lifted to allow more of the zerg’s condi through. What I’m getting at is basically it would be like allowing warriors to channel 100 blades 100% of the time.

Keep in mind what I’m talking about is how much damage the boss is taking per second from the zerg, not the personal performance of individual players. I’m just playing devil’s advocate for a moment on PvE balance.

…you honestly believe that the raw condition DPS of A SINGLE CHARACTER outdoes the raw damage of anyone that has power and precision as their main stats?

Knox.8962:

You can get right around 3000 condition damage if you go all in with consumables and runes etc.

A fully ramped up rampager geared grenade engineer can keep up 100% uptime on burning, bleeding, and poison, and will do right around 8,000 dps with maxed might, vulnerability, and fury.

A guardian or warrior specced in full zerker gear will do almost the exact same damage in those same circumstances.

This isn’t an issue of conditions do too much damage. They’re not really stronger than direct damage setups even before you factor in the condition cap. The cap makes condition damage users absolutely less useful than their direct damage counterparts.

This may be true from an individual’s point of view, but I think conditions (when optimized) pull equal numbers to full burst, without the drawback of cooldowns. Consider that a zerg can maintain 25 stacks of bleed 100% of the time, but burst builds in the zerg can only ever execute their burst when it’s available.

Could someone give me the ideal final damage of 100 blades? I’m talking about the number you see on the final hit, something like 15k? If so, that’s 15k divided by 3 seconds for 5k per second, which is roughly equal to full condi stacks, but the 100 blades is only executed every 8 seconds, whereas the condi stacks are affecting the boss 100% of the time.

The Boz.2038:

…you honestly believe that the raw condition DPS of A SINGLE CHARACTER outdoes the raw damage of anyone that has power and precision as their main stats?

Not at all. Again I’m considering the damage that the target is feeling. If the target feels 6k damage per second from condi and 6k damage per second from a 100 blades, what’s the difference to them?

By the way I’m just trying to explore the things Anet has to consider for balance reasons. I’m sure they had no cap at one point in development and implemented it because boss fights were being trivialized. Heck, I remember when they first announced the different conditions. Burning was going to stack in intensity initially.

The difference? Really?
Conditions can be cleansed AND healed.
Conditions can not go above 6k DPS.
Conditions still provide lower DPS/player.

The Boz.2038:

The difference? Really?
Conditions can be cleansed AND healed.
Conditions can not go above 6k DPS.
Conditions still provide lower DPS/player.

I think you’re thinking from a pvp point of view which is a valid concern, but conditions and pvp work very differently from a pve world boss (or dungeon boss), which is what I’ve been talking about. If you want to argue pvp though, yeah conditions can be cleansed easily, but burst can be dodged or blocked just as easily. It’s all relative. I don’t think it’s realistically a problem in pvp though because the only time that bleed stack cap will be reached is when the target is truly and royally screwed anyway.

Overall I think the cap is just there to make pve encounters easier to balance. As we all know, the power dps is much more impressive because it’s all front-end, but I think some would also agree that pve encounters are too easy because of this.

Xenon.4537:

The Boz.2038:

That theoretical 5k DPS is still the damage of two characters. No single build can maintain 25 bleed stacks for more than 3 seconds. So when you compare stuff, make sure you compare the 25 stacks of bleed to the autoattack damage of at least two characters.
Also, by just clicking hundred blades, a single greatsword warrior outdoes 5k DPS in an equally ideal build for a short time, and maintains a total of 3.5k when chaining might and fury just right.

Well the calculation I was making was mostly to figure out how much damage a PvE mob could take from conditions. Considering during a fight like Jormag where there’s a whole zerg of players to easily maintain the caps, the boss will be taking 5k damage from the bleed stack, 1k from the burn stack, and 354 from the poison stack. So under these circumstances the boss will be taking a sustained 6.3k damage per second for the entire fight just from the condi ticks. This is twice the sustained average dps you mention for normal power damage output, and equal to the burst.

Now those full condi stacks are representative of two people (basically). So between two people (in a dynamic event) you’ve got a 100% uptime packet of damage that is equal to a single burst (of 100 blades for example). Imagine if the cap was lifted to allow more of the zerg’s condi through. What I’m getting at is basically it would be like allowing warriors to channel 100 blades 100% of the time.

Keep in mind what I’m talking about is how much damage the boss is taking per second from the zerg, not the personal performance of individual players. I’m just playing devil’s advocate for a moment on PvE balance.

Except that’s not at all what it’s like. If you have 2 necros attacking jormag they do 6k dps. If you have 4 necros attacking jormag they do 6k dps. If you have 1234678503857398573 necros attacking jormag they do 6k dps…

if you have 2 warriors attacking jormag they do 10k dps. If you have 4 warriors attacking jormag they do 20k dps. If you have 132305847505406 warriors attacking jormag they do 1498245093453578358037453 dps.

You say it’d be like adding warriors… so why is it ok for adding a warrior to the zerg to do more damage but adding a necro means you don’t get to do more dmg?

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Except that’s not at all what it’s like. If you have 2 necros attacking jormag they do 6k dps. If you have 4 necros attacking jormag they do 6k dps. If you have 1234678503857398573 necros attacking jormag they do 6k dps…

if you have 2 warriors attacking jormag they do 10k dps. If you have 4 warriors attacking jormag they do 20k dps. If you have 132305847505406 warriors attacking jormag they do 1498245093453578358037453 dps.

You say it’d be like adding warriors… so why is it ok for adding a warrior to the zerg to do more damage but adding a necro means you don’t get to do more dmg?

This is very true… Hurumph…

I still say the cap is there to balance pve encounters, and lifting it or removing it would only serve to further trivialize the content. They would need to further alter the scaling of the bosses health to account for the extra damage, and you would end up with the same results. I mean the boss shouldn’t die any faster than X number of minutes, otherwise where’s the satisfaction? The only difference being that Anet’s job would be a little harder, and necromancers would get to feel better about themselves.

It wouldn’t trivialize content, it would make condition builds more viable.
What mythic extra damage are you talking about? Conditions deal less damage than zerkers. So if you replace a zerker with a condition build… where’s the added damage?
Also, satisfaction derived from length of the boring DPS encounter? Seriously?

Also also, there are A LOT of bosses that are immune to conditions, or transfer them, or cleanse them, or convert them. Removing conditions isn’t just a PvP issue.

The Boz.2038:

It wouldn’t trivialize content, it would make condition builds more viable.
What mythic extra damage are you talking about? Conditions deal less damage than zerkers. So if you replace a zerker with a condition build… where’s the added damage?
Also, satisfaction derived from length of the boring DPS encounter? Seriously?

Also also, there are A LOT of bosses that are immune to conditions, or transfer them, or cleanse them, or convert them. Removing conditions isn’t just a PvP issue.

You keep missing my point about the amount of damage the boss is feeling. Right now it’s capped at 25 stacks of bleeding. Remove that and who the hell knows what it will be? 100 stacks? 500 stacks? I wouldn’t be surprised. That’s extra damage the boss is taking. The faster you can kill the boss, the more trivial it is. The more trivial, the more boring. That’s why they would need to increase the HP to compensate, or else trivialize the content. Do I wish condi builds were more viable in pve? Hell yes, condi builds are my favorite. But I don’t want to see Jormag die the way the jungle worm does. That’s just silly. I would like to see the fight go longer, but be based around tactics and mechanics (the way Anet originally advertised) but that’s a whole other issue.

Condition builds in PvE are a minority.
They’re a minority because they kill stuff slowly, and are not only comparatively outdone by damage builds, but their own effectiveness suffers as well. Oh look, that full zerker warrior is packing double swords. There goes my 120/tick bleed damage, so that he can get his 30/tick ego stroke on top of his 2k sustained DPS.
Would that be an increase in overall DPS? Maybe. But only because condition builds would finally get to DO SOME DAMAGE.
Also, you can’t further trivialize this content. The PvE content is almost entirely lacking in skill. Making a boring fight last shorter would not make it more boring, and I have no idea what mental acrobatics you had to pull off to get to that conclusion.

Another band-aid fix would be to override bleed ticks and give higher priority to the highest condition dmg. At least that way you only have to compete with other condition specs and not power specs as well.

Xenon.4537:

You keep missing my point about the amount of damage the boss is feeling. Right now it’s capped at 25 stacks of bleeding. Remove that and who the hell knows what it will be? 100 stacks? 500 stacks? I wouldn’t be surprised. That’s extra damage the boss is taking. The faster you can kill the boss, the more trivial it is. The more trivial, the more boring. That’s why they would need to increase the HP to compensate, or else trivialize the content. Do I wish condi builds were more viable in pve? Hell yes, condi builds are my favorite. But I don’t want to see Jormag die the way the jungle worm does. That’s just silly. I would like to see the fight go longer, but be based around tactics and mechanics (the way Anet originally advertised) but that’s a whole other issue.

So rather than just doubling the HP of the boss to make a fight go longer, and allowing conditions to work on them, you’d prefer that conditions are broken, but the boss has the same HP pool? This doesn’t make any sense. Adding an additional direct damage dealer will reduce the bosses time to live by roughly the same amount (1/# of people). Adding a condition damage spec does this for the first one, maybe even the second, but after that, you’re only adding fractions of a person’s worth of damage.

I have an earlier post on this, see that one if you want detail, but in a nutshell:
I do mostly PvP, and feel like condition damage is waaay less effective than direct damage. I play a staff Ele and couldn’t burn and bleed someone to death if my life depended on it. I would point to my original post, but actually have a NOVEL idea that would make all condition builds immediately more effective without actually touching them. GET READY FOR THIS.

Get rid of walking backwards. Boom. Done. If a character just turned and walked towards the screen instead of walking incredibly slowly backwards when you press the ‘S’ key, it would change everything for the better. Think about it…

DoT builds could ‘poke and run’ much more often, making that DoT more important. Unless you ran forward again, your back would be turned to the opponent, so Thief/Ranger/(do you crit automatically from behind?) type stuff where you receive bonuses for that would still be effective, if not more so. Speed buffs like Swiftness and debuffs like Cripple and Chill would also be finally be much more relevant in combat because battles would become a little more linear and less distributed on one spot like they are now.

Fact is now, I can start running in one direction, turn the camera with the right mouse button, and boom, I’m running looking backwards, but it takes too long. Allowing me to run backwards would still expose my back, which makes it fair for the attacker(i’m the retreater here), but allow me take a step back on occasion without having to use up a roll to do so.

What do you think?

I do also like OP’s thoughts though btw.

shimmerless.4560:

to be honest i’ve always had the impression — it’s just a hunch, i have nothing solid to base it on so don’t crucify me pls — that anet originally expected players to use conditions as ‘supplementary’ damage and not as a full-blown substitute for direct damage.

it seems plausible when you consider how DoTs worked in gw1 and it explains a lot of the issues they’ve had with balancing conditions in gw2.

That would make sense, if not for, you know, necros, engineers, etc.

…so why do condition SETS (entire weapon sets, not just one or two skills) even exist, then?

Xenon.4537:

Could someone give me the ideal final damage of 100 blades? I’m talking about the number you see on the final hit, something like 15k? If so, that’s 15k divided by 3 seconds for 5k per second, which is roughly equal to full condi stacks, but the 100 blades is only executed every 8 seconds, whereas the condi stacks are affecting the boss 100% of the time.

Buffed completely up and hitting a 2600 armor target with 25 stacks of vulnerability, using a build designed pretty much to do nothing but crank out damage a warrior’s 100 blades will Average 46849 damage over 3.6 seconds for a total of 13,014 DPS. If the warrior is very lucky and all of the hits were to crit, they’d get 49,669 damage for a total of 13797 DPS. In the meantime, you can always swap back to the axes and auto attack for 9084 DPS.

That’s kinda a lot more than 5000.