Guild Wars 2

Raine.1394:

WEXXES.2378:

You guys miss the point: I’m not trying to fix the issue. I’m trying to turn the issue into something new and unique for DoT mechanics in GW2. Of course the simple solution would be to somehow make each condition per player and not grouped up into an enemy: but that’s not going to happen anytime soon. I repeat this 398538641 times but no one seems to listen. If you know your suggestion is already attempting to break technical limits, why do you persist on it?

My idea utilizes the cap limit and turns it into its own unique mechanic while greatly boosting group condition damage where it doesn’t exist without changing individual small group play or PvP at all.

So, if you know your solution is going to break technical limits….

What technical limits are those? Are they the technical limits that prevent WoW from accounting for damage over time by player? No, that’s how they do it—they are somehow breaking GW2’s technical limits. My position is that there is no technical reason for NOT accounting for all damage by player. And, since accounting for all damage by player is the only thing that will ‘fix’ condition damage, this is significant.

There are no technical limits here. I do believe that A-net has painted themselves into a technical corner, but they simply need to fix it. ’I’m sorry but the computer can’t do that’ worked well in the 1960’s, but it’s not going to fly in 2015.

My solution doesn’t break technical limits. It’s a single calculation for damage, like you said, is just damage. It converts incoming condition damage without a need to store anything because its immediate, like regular damage.

World of Warcraft usually has a max of 5-8 debuffs per player. In a 25 man raid, we are looking at less than 255 debuffs tops.

GW2 needs to track more than 93 per player if what you are suggesting does go through. Right now, its per enemy.

It also destroys PvP because of burning and poison. Do you not realize if they are managed by player it actually multiplies their potential damage? Merely having 2 people apply burning now has 2 instances of burn that keeps ticking. Burn would have to be nerfed to account for multiple scenarios which doesn’t help PvE and doesn’t help PvP either due to WvW battles ranging from 1 to 40 people.

The reason why WoW isn’t destroyed by this is because you have active, useful mitigation stats and active healing which can counter their effects. In GW2, you can hardly argue that regeneration is the answer. Should regeneration stack too? That’s more things to track, and makes PvE way much easier even with 1 regeneration from a healing power build.

Also, WoW’s combat system doesn’t use aim assist, which is way less taxing on servers than GW2 that uses collision based projectiles which can interact with objects and AoE based things (Wall of Reflection is an example).

Dadnir.5038:

What i was pointing out is that bleeds have 25 stack that will temper how it will fare in any party play.
Burns have only 1 stack and way better individual damages then bleed which mean this proposition will advantage a lot classes that burn a lot (Guardian, ele and Engi). Burn will become a burst condition with stack ready in second.

Yes and No. You’re right that burns have better individual damage, in fact, its the best condition to deal damage without any other gimmick to it (confusion).

Burns, which was stated in my post and on the wiki, actually have 9 stacks, but only stack in duration. They are still stacks, mind you. Any burns applied by the 9th stack are ignored, which tells me they keep track of it.

Burns also have less availability to them and are often found on skills with CD’s, usually from 6 to 15 seconds. Bleeds are found on many auto attacks. There’s also the fact that bleeds can be applied in multiple stacks with their duration on a single skill (Pin Down, Blunderbuss), further increasing their damage potential. In the end, 25 v 9 stacks based on their availability is already a fair enough gap between both.

hybrid.5027:

I like the suggestion, I think there is something to it. It’s the one suggestion thus far I’ve read that wouldn’t be a huge problem in PvP. So kudos there.

This debate with Raine is fairly infuriating because you guys are arguing two different things but using the same words.

Raine: ramp up time is the trade off for dots
Wexxe: ramp up time is still a problem

So the issue here is that condition damage is inherently backloaded and direct damage is inherently frontloaded. That’s a given. In almost every other game with viable DoT pve DoT specs, the DoT has a higher top end. You give up a fast start for greater max damage. The problem, as Wexxe points out, is that in GW2 you have the drawback of ramp up time but the max damage is ALSO lower so its objectively worse.

Raine’s point is valid and correct so long as they buff condition damage to the point where a fully min/maxed condition toon with the full time needed to hit his ramp up has higher DPS than a berserker. This is a big change to the current system and hardly a given.

The problem is, as Wexxe described, two-fold. You need to buff condition damage so that a fully min maxed character has greater dps with condition after his ramp up time, and you need to account for groups that have multiple condition classes.

If you want my opinion, I would suggest that the easiest way to buff condition damage is a pve/pvp split where Might stacks granted 30 power (as it is now) and 45 condition damage in PvE. This would be better, in my opinion, than a straight buff to condition damage itself.

Condition Damage can never exceed berserker because it relies most on 1 gear stat: condition damage. A dire set would become overpowered. Thus condition damage, as much as it does now, is fine. Taking PvP into consideration, condition damage is on the verge of doing too much damage. Changing numbers right now isn’t such a good idea.

You also have to account for the raw damage that hybrid builds can dish out, and then it becomes a choice of how to deal damage: do you want high critical damage or high constant damage?

What my suggestion does allows what Raine wants: damage tracked by player. It’s just that its done differently in a way that works with the current system. What his does requires a ton of work re-coding many things and rebalancing condition damage values and could possibly screw up PvP balance and probably won’t help condition damage become just as good as the other setups because its a change and not an addition.

There’s still the trade off of ramp-up-time: in a condition damage group of 5, you still can’t immediately pull out the high ends of damage in condition, but it won’t be as slow as hybrid described.

There’s also the fluctuation of stacks: You cannot have a constant flow of 25 stacks going without dropping once. Once this system is in place, as soon as it hits 25 stacks the conditions will stop replacing older stacks, allowing it to tick down. So if you burst 5 seconds of 25 stacks of bleeding at once, you’ll have 5 seconds to do bleeding overflow damage before stacks are going to be consumed again.

All this system does is take LOST condition damage and allows the player to use it: as a result, condition damage in PvE is useful and in PvP it hardly affects it because there are such little cases of lost condition damage that isn’t cleanses or dodged.

It’s also a lot easier to balance as well because overflow damage is separate from the main system and can be adjusted by multiplying it by a decimal to reduce the damage totals.

If you separate the conditions to be tracked and managed by player, you also lose that sense of teamwork you can pull out. You, the player, are the only one who can mess with your conditions: that’s boring to a certain extent. Even power builds require some team effort of might / vulnerability stacking. And so, condition built groups would need team effort to apply and maintain their conditions to the maximum without it dropping.