Guild Wars 2

Hi,
I’ve posted this in the Tequatl forum, so sorry if this is not allowed, but it does concern the rest of the game too!

I play a Necro, one of the many powerful condition damage classes in the game. As you all know, the bleed stacks on any enemy in the game is capped at 25, which at decent condition damage is around 4000dps. This is a reasonable amount of damage for one player to inflict on a PVE boss, but it is not a reasonable amount of damage for 10 players to inflict on a PVE boss, or, indeed, 100 players. Poison does not stack intensity, nor does burning.
Let’s assume that a reasonable proportion of all the people fighting the boss use condition damage. Perhaps this is how Arenanet have balanced this fight. What if every player there uses condition damage? Most of them will be doing almost zero damage to the boss. Their bleeds won’t actually work, their burning and poison will be useless.
I heard that the reason for the 25 stack limit is because of technical limitations – something about having to tell every client the damage of every tick of every bleed they do. This sounds like an issue, but there has to be a workaround.
Surely all that the client has to know is their current condition damage plus how many stacks of bleed they have on the boss? They don’t have to be told by the server how much each bleed ticks for, because there is no condition damage mitigation in the game. I’m no coder so perhaps this wouldn’t work, but predicting (incredibly accurately) the bleed damage on the client seems to be a good solution to this problem, because this is not fair to condition damage players. You cannot just balance a PVE boss fight in this game around only having a certain number of condition damage users. Most of them are not doing any significant damage to the boss, and yet the boss presumably gains an equal amount of scaled health because of those players doing the event.
This is also the issue of which bleeds overwrite which, what if a warrior’s sword auto-attack is hitting the boss without much condition damage, what happens to the existing bleeds from someone with max CD gear?
Thoughts, anyone else, or with any luck someone from Arenanet?

Good post, deserves a proper reply. Even suggests a sensible solution for PVE cases.
This is especially important since I can easily get 10-20 bleeds on an enemy on my own so even in a 5 man dungeon we can often max out the bleeds at 25…

Agreed. In my opinion a rework of the condition cap should be a priority in terms of PvE balance.

I think this is a general miss conception… prove me wrong but with my warrior (putting an example with this case because I put special attention regarding this issue) I have 0 condition damage. Fighting Claw of Jornag the other day I realized he had 25 bleeding stack obviously. Just to test it, I switched to bow and use the 5th skill which applies bleeding and even though his health bar showed 25 stacks and in Source: it says another players name, I could still see me few stacks ticking. So IMO, conditions do damage even though the max number of stacks was reached and its just a matter of graphical interface.

Again, I can be terribly wrong here, but this was my experiment.

PS. I tested this in that particular location with my warrior because I saw the same behavior on my flamethrower engineer which relies completely on condition damage. I always see my damage tick but with this char I have all the condition damage I can get.

Your bleeds were overriding the bleeds of another player.

Toothy.8640:

Your bleeds were overriding the bleeds of another player.

with 0 condition damage?

Even though the interface clearly said those 25 stacks belong to another player?

Even though it had 25 stacks and I was only seeing a bunch of bleeds (cant remember how many bleedings the 5th bow warrior skill puts).

I hardly think my poor 0 condition warrior will override probably 150 players where many of them might be built for condition damage constantly updating their stacks

For some reason ANet opted for a over complicated system for tracking boons and conditions, in particularly the kind that stacks…

Mesket.5728:

Toothy.8640:

Your bleeds were overriding the bleeds of another player.

with 0 condition damage?

Even though the interface clearly said those 25 stacks belong to another player?

Even though it had 25 stacks and I was only seeing a bunch of bleeds (cant remember how many bleedings the 5th bow warrior skill puts).

I hardly think my poor 0 condition warrior will override probably 150 players where many of them might be built for condition damage constantly updating their stacks

Yep, I don’t know how things are overwritten, but they are. Because I should be normally stacking 18+ bleeds, yet I only ever see 2-3 tics of my own bleeds during world boss battles. Happened in my full MF gear, happens now with my condition damage trinkets. Made the choice of turning MF ascended gear into Rabid a harder bullet to bite.

Ty for the input. I’m sorry for the guy whom I steal a few stacks of bleeding. It makes me feel sorry for the guy who built for it.

You still do condition damage with zero condition damage, hover over your tooltip.
The ‘source’ only shows one player, presumably the last person to inflict it.

I agree with Toothy. They should raise the bleed cap to at least 99 or more for PvE only. It is also one of the two reasons people don’t take condition geared players into a dungeon.

Reason one: Even with full condition damage gear and extended duration traits/sigils/runes, no one can maintain 25 bleed stacks by himself. And because condition damage is not so great they don’t come near the damage of a zerg geared character, and are therefore a dps loss to a group. So there is no reason to take one.

Reason two: Even if “lets say in theory” they would come near the dps of a zerk geared character, you still wouldn’t take 2 or 3 condition geared players into a dungeon. Because they would be overwriting each others bleeds, which would again lead to a dps loss, giving you again no reason to take them.

But here comes the trick! :
The bleeds mainly come from all sorts of ranged based weapons. I said mainly!
So it (bleed damage) is mainly considered to be a ranged type of damage. With that in mind we can now take a look on bleed damage from a different perspective. In other words we compare zerg range damage to bleed damage and find out that they are roughly the same, meaning that bleed damage is well balanced as a ranged type of damage compared to zerg ranged damage.

But what about bleed damage as melee type? And here is where the dilemma starts to happen. If we take a warrior with a sword and full condition gear/traits/sigils for example, we will see that he is not doing as much damage as with zerg gear with an axe or GS and we all know that. So what can Anet do in this case? If they increase the condition damage so that melee con. dmg can compare to zerg, they tip the range balance off. They could add more condition procs to melee weapons or extend their duration. But that wouldn’t change anything, because others could/would overwrite them and Anet would basically need to extend the bleed cap in order to prevent the overwriting to happen. But they have technical limitations which prevents them to do that?

My solution to the problem:
If Anet has no technical limitations to extend the cap, then they should do so. It would prevent the occurrence of overwriting bleeds of happening in dungeons at least. On top of that they should also add some more bleed procs to melee weapons, or at least extend their duration, or a mixture of both in order to add some dps so that they can keep up with a melee zerg weapons. All this would prevent any kind of dps loss in a dungeon, leaving you a free option to really take any class with you.

If however Anet has technical limitations to extend the cap, than that is fine, don’t extend it. What they should do is revamp the bleed damage and all bleed weapon skills on their current existing model. How? Here is how from a PvE perspective: Reduce the duration of all bleed skills and increase the bleed damage by the same factor, so that the dps will stay the same.

Example: 1 bleed that with 6 ticks of 100 dmg equals 600dmg and is the same as 1 bleed with 3 ticks of 200 dmg and is the same as 1 bleed with 2 ticks of 300 dmg and is the same as 1 bleed with 1 tick of 600 dmg.

As you can see from the example, there is no dps loss in shortening the bleeds and increasing their damage by the same factor. The only difference is that, since they are shorter, there is room for more bleeds, meaning the end of overwriting your party members bleeds and the end of dps loss. This also adds room to add more bleed procs for melee bleed weapons to keep up with zerg melee dmg.

As said before it’s only my own suggestion which would work in PvE but i have no clue if it would work for PvP, because i don’t have Anets damage and balance spreadsheets which run the numbers.

The answer is not to rework the cap—in any way. Every game that has tried something similar has abandoned it (cf. WoW). The answer is simple. All damage, whether direct or over time, needs to be managed by player. Anet has played the technical limitations card. They have been reminded that other games do this as a matter of course. They have acknowledged the problem and said they are working on it. They simply need to fix an issue that has already been fixed by other games.

I still think it wouldn’t be as much of a technical issue if the bleed cap was removed, and all bleed stacks just showed one big number. Appearing on the player’s screen who has the highest condition damage. If the condition damage is equal then I guess it would show on the person’s screen who applied the bleed last for a few sconds

An example, if you had 100 players apply 1 bleed each on a target, and their bleeds did 100 damage (except player A, who does 105 damage) it would show on player A’s screen as 10,500 damage. Everyone is still doing their damage but it’s one big number.

As for other conditions like burning and poison, I don’t know

Mesket.5728:

Toothy.8640:

Your bleeds were overriding the bleeds of another player.

with 0 condition damage?

Even though the interface clearly said those 25 stacks belong to another player?

Even though it had 25 stacks and I was only seeing a bunch of bleeds (cant remember how many bleedings the 5th bow warrior skill puts).

I hardly think my poor 0 condition warrior will override probably 150 players where many of them might be built for condition damage constantly updating their stacks

0 is the additional damage conditions inflict, not the total.

Raine.1394:

The answer is not to rework the cap—in any way. Every game that has tried something similar has abandoned it (cf. WoW). The answer is simple. All damage, whether direct or over time, needs to be managed by player. Anet has played the technical limitations card. They have been reminded that other games do this as a matter of course. They have acknowledged the problem and said they are working on it. They simply need to fix an issue that has already been fixed by other games.

Correct!

I said it this way in another condition damage thread:

There is no ‘balance reason’ for conditions to be capped on the target
A limit to the condition stacks a single character can apply is fine and necessary for balance. But, a limit to the number of conditions a target can have from multiple attackers is not ok.

From a balance perspective:
If it is ok for one character to stack 15 stacks of bleeding (or 1 stack of burning)…
Then it is ok for 100 characters to stack 1,500 stacks of bleeding (or 100 stacks of burning).
It is the exact same as…
If one character can hit 1,000 DPS of direct damage
Then it is ok for 100 characters to hit 100,000 DPS of direct damage.

There may be technical reasons why the stacks of conditions are capped on the target, but that is what we want the developers to fix/address, and A-net has acknowledged since October 2012 that this is an issue.

And here is ANet’s acknowledgement that this is an issue they are looking into:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/No-love-for-condition-builds/page/2#
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Comfirmed-Nothing-being-done-re-conditions/page/4

Note that these posts are from October 2012 and February 2013.

John Peters in October (2012): “Condition damage is an issue we are looking into.”
John Peters in February (2013): “Condition damage is an issue we are looking into.”

Sorry if my frustration is showing, but this has been an issue for a full year now… and I have seen no discussion from ANet on how/when they will address it.

Ulari

I keep seeing these threads. Be careful what you ask for because part of the solution, as I see it, is to give bosses access to condition removal.

nopoet.2960:

I keep seeing these threads. Be careful what you ask for because part of the solution, as I see it, is to give bosses access to condition removal.

That’s fine. I do not want Condition damage to be ‘better’ than Direct damage.
The amount of damage Conditions do can be different than Direct damage
The time it takes to do damage can be different
The way it is mitigated can be different

I have no problem with some fights favoring Condition damage (mobs with high toughness)… and some fights favoring Direct damage (mobs with condition removal). I think that would be awesome, good for build diversity, and good for the game.

But…
If one Direct damage character can sustain 1500 DPS for a ‘boss’ fight.
And one Condition damage character can sustain 1500 dps for a ‘boss’ fight
Then 10 of either characters should be able to sustain 15,000 DPS for the ‘boss’ fight.
Currently this is true only for Direct damage characters.

Ulari

Bosses just shouldn’t be a huge amount of damage and life. They need to be smart and resourceful. Condition removal and damage reflection or negation would be a good start. Better mobility and tactics would be even better. Warriors would be swinging into a vacuum. 100 Blades times zero equals zero. Zerker would suddenly be hit-or-miss. Support skills would be important again.

Sorry, I’m just dreaming, it will almost certainly never happen.

nopoet.2960:

I keep seeing these threads. Be careful what you ask for because part of the solution, as I see it, is to give bosses access to condition removal.

Some bosses already wipe all conditions from themselves every couple of seconds. The consequence of this is a small dps loss and another reason not to take a condition geared player with you. Bosses should not remove direct condition damage of any kind (bleed, burn, poison, confusion, torment), only the conditions which CC’s or weakens them (vulnerability, cripple, weakness …) they can shake off as they do now. The only exception to this should be the blind condition. It is a too powerful CC for bosses and should not get applied to them, but should count towards the Defiant buff reduction. Once all Defiant stacks are gone, the next stun or blind applies normally and Defiant stacks reset as normal. Bosses should therefore get some boost to their Defiant stacks to correspond to this change.

Ulari.9547:

That’s fine. I do not want Condition damage to be ‘better’ than Direct damage.
The amount of damage Conditions do can be different than Direct damage

That is not fine. It is one of the many, if not the main reason itself, that players don’t take condition gear players, because of the dps loss. Condition dps should do the same damage (not less, not better) from ranged as zerg dmg from range and the same damage from melee as zerg from melee, for the same profesion in PvE.

example: A warrior rifle zerg geared/trait/sigil/rune should deal the same DPS as a condition warrior rifle geared/trait/sigil/rune.
A warrior axe zerg geared/trait/sigil/rune should deal the same DPS as a condition warrior sword geared/trait/sigil/rune.

Even if they increase or do anything you guys above suggested with the cap, condition damage in its current state, even if there would be no overwriting, does not come close to a dps of a zerg geared character.

They need to address the whole balance of the condition dps (the cap as well as the damage), or they won’t change a darn thing. That is the core problem of condition dps and unless the whole thing doesn’t change i and many other players refuse to take a condition geared player in my party to a dungeon, just because of the dps loss and no cap revamp can ever change that, only the whole revamp will do the trick. That is why you constantly see condition geared players getting kicked out of parties, and i totally agree with them, anyone who chooses a silly condition geared player, in this current system, over a zerg geared player, must be out of his mind.

But is it our fault? No! Anet forces us to kick players. I would gladly have a condition geared warrior with a sword in my party if he would only do as much dmg as with an axe for example. That is the bottom line of the bleed condition dmg/dps problem.
There are some ways i would consider taking a condition geared player. One of them is listed just below.

Henri Blanche.8276:

Bosses just shouldn’t be a huge amount of damage and life. They need to be smart and resourceful.

Henri Blanche.8276:

…damage reflection or negation would be a good start. Better mobility and tactics would be even better. Warriors would be swinging into a vacuum. 100 Blades times zero equals zero. Zerker would suddenly be hit-or-miss. Support skills would be important again.

Totally agree. If bosses would have a higher base, non removable armor rate to the point where zerg dmg would do the same dmg as condition dmg (which ignores any armor), if they would be smart so that you couldn’t 100b them all the time or stay at melee range all the time, and other things, then i would totally take condition geared players with me. I would even reconsider making a gear for myself.

The sad truth however is that all bosses have more or less the same armor rate as normal creeps. They are stupid and have weak abilities. That is true for the vanilla bosses. But Anet is lately doing a darn good job and ramping the bosses up, with each patch and soon they will figure them out and hopefully revamp the old onse as well. And then, if they will be harder to do, i’ll consider taking a condition geared player.