Guild Wars 2

I think everyone knows why regular damage is favored over condition damage.
There are 2 problems that cause this:

1) There is no condition build gear equivalent to Berserker gear.
I know there is gear that increases condition damage as a primary attribute.
But there is no gear that increases condition duration apart from Givers weapons. However Givers weapons do not increase condition damage instead. So there should be a gear set which increases condition damage as a primary attribute and condition duration as a secondary.
Full ascended Berserker gear increases critical damage by 71% (excluding runes, sigils and traits). So if such gear increased condition duration at the same rate it would be possible to naturally double the duration of all conditions without the need of consumables.

2) This problem is more obvious – condition stack cap.
Removing the cap would be a simple solution to this problem obviously. However I don’t think it would be fun once certain enemies throw on us +50 stacks of bleeding or even worse confusion.
Instead there could be a 3rd condition attribute which would allow going over the 25 stack cap. It could be called “condition intensity.” How it would work is that for every certain amount of it the player has he/she can go over the 25 cap by 1 more stack.
These stacks would also add up for each player that can go over the cap.
To be more precise I’ll give a few examples:
If player A can gain 5 additional stacks it makes his personal cap 30. And if he is the only player in a party of 5 that can surpass the cap of 25 then the maximum cap is 30 and player A is the only one that can add the additional 5 stacks. While the rest can still only reach 25 stacks without his help.
While if there are 2 players that can add 5 additional stacks each then they can increase the cap to 35. Thus a full party of 5 players in which each can go over the cap by 5 stacks would have a cap of 50. However only if all 5 players attack the same enemy. So if 3 attack enemy A while the other 2 enemy B then the cap for A would be 40 while for B 35.
This would also solve the problem with conditions in huge events like Tequatl. As all condition players could add to the damage pool rather than being considered useless.

Gear with such stats could be crafted using the Pristine Toxic Spore Samples to make the insignias and inscriptions. And the new prefix could fittingly be be called “Toxic.”

Something I wished they had worked on as well. Perhaps remove the cap but also buff condi removal? This could make such a player vital to the team success.

I would like to add a 3rd point:

Most Condition attacks are very poorly telegraphed and have indistinguishable animations.

I agree there should be a condition equivalent to zerker, however your solution to the cap is not all that effective.

Unver your current solution a party of 5 condition players would only have a cap of 50, yet as a necro I can stack 20+ bleeds just by myself as that is >90% of my damage. That means you just change the problem from 1 condition user reaching the cap to a problem of 2 condition users reaching the cap. The whole idea of a cap needs to just go. If they need to rebalance certain skills because of this then that is fine, but just change the problem skills not add in all sorts of convoluted systems to try to get around a problem that shouldn’t exist in the first place.

Something tells me it would be difficult to balance condition damage and duration. As an engineer, I can already lock someone down for a fair amount of time. If I could get even more lockdown time + deliver my range of conditions with maximum damage, I think that would be pretty powerful, especially with my grenades which are both power + condi dealers. I would practically have an infinite source of confusion, immo, burn, poison + blinds and lengthy chills every now and then.

However, I do agree that condition damage as it stands is lacking. For me, the biggest problem is that the user with the most condition damage gets the hit registration while others do not. Anet balanced conditions for 1v1 battles, not group fights. If my friend has just 1 more point in condition damage, then all I get out of the battle is my weak physical hit, or if I’m lucky and there’s some stacks left for me to register. IMO, I think that’s the bigger issue to tackle. They need to remove global stacks for damaging conditions and allow individual user stacks. Each user should have their own application of bleed, burn, poison, confusion, and torment. Duration based conditions like immobilize, chill, and blinds can remain on the global stack.

For me, that’s the only thing holding me back from going condition based. As it stands, it’s just not worth having to compete with other people to get the condi registration.

Saint.5647:

Something I wished they had worked on as well. Perhaps remove the cap but also buff condi removal? This could make such a player vital to the team success.

I think condition removal needs a serious rework. As of right now we have long cooldown, powerful purge, single proc condi removals. I think it would be better for both power and condi based if cleanses worked over time, removing a couple stacks or duration, based on what condition is on the player.
For example:

Joe has 10 stacks of bleed, 5 seconds of chill, 6 seconds of poison, and 4 stacks of torment.

Joe uses Hold the Line, with both Pure of Voice and a full soldier rune set.

Instead of the bleeds and chill being completely removed, each condition is affected by a set percentage which either removes stacks or lessens duration over time (depending on if the skill says to remove the condi or convert it, also the strength of the condition. confusion is not as easy to access as bleeds).

For each second over 5 seconds, Joe has all of his current (assuming Joe has no -40% food or -33% traits) bleeds reduced by 10%, chill by 5%, poison by 7%, torment by 5%.

So after 5 seconds Joe now has (assuming he has no other conditions come his way for the sake of the explanation) 5 stacks of bleed, 3 1/4 seconds chill, 3 3/4 seconds poison, and 3 stacks of torment.

Imo it would be best if the same skill didnt stack, but condi removal skills from a different profession could stack on one player. So Hold the Line, For Great Justice, and Cleansing Wave would stack, and any time one of these same skills are used then the duration is simply reset. I would guess that there would also need to be a cap on how many condition removals skills (and power of each, my Hold the Line just a poor example) could be active on any one player, so to prevent any condi immunity and at the same time give them enough power to be useful in small team or 1v1.

I think a system like this would be the best for both sides because it would level out the damage burst of conditions while still giving them play. Cleanses are at the same time too weak and too powerful, in that they can remove 25 stacks of bleed, only to have it come back again after a bit.

In theory this would hopefully be better, but it probably prove to be too much for the servers.

Dee Jay.2460:

I would like to add a 3rd point:

Most Condition attacks are very poorly telegraphed and have indistinguishable animations.

They have poor cues because they have poor initial damage.

Conditions should be rather nerfed.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I agree there should be a condition equivalent to zerker, however your solution to the cap is not all that effective.

Unver your current solution a party of 5 condition players would only have a cap of 50, yet as a necro I can stack 20+ bleeds just by myself as that is >90% of my damage. That means you just change the problem from 1 condition user reaching the cap to a problem of 2 condition users reaching the cap. The whole idea of a cap needs to just go. If they need to rebalance certain skills because of this then that is fine, but just change the problem skills not add in all sorts of convoluted systems to try to get around a problem that shouldn’t exist in the first place.

You misunderstand I didn’t say the maximum can only be 5 I only used that number to make the explanation more simple. If such a feature was added it would be up to the developers on how high we can go over the cap.
What I ment was that such a new attribute would work like Precision. However instead of increasing critical chance every certain amount it would increase the maximum condition cap.

Conditions ignore armor and are for melting heavy armor stuff,if it have same damage as direct damage it would be way to OP.

You missed the biggest problem: Balancing pvp and pve.

The perfect solution for pve wouldn’t work for pvp. The perfect solution for pvp wouldn’t work for pve.

As long as Anet doesn’t realize that gw2 is getting massive problems of balance because of it, they won’t probably change it. Sadly i’m one of the guys that never plays pvp and i notice how much useful the cap for pve would need to be removed, but i also understand how dangerous could be for pvp if it was removed

Elrey.5472:

You missed the biggest problem: Balancing pvp and pve.

The perfect solution for pve wouldn’t work for pvp. The perfect solution for pvp wouldn’t work for pve.

As long as Anet doesn’t realize that gw2 is getting massive problems of balance because of it, they won’t probably change it. Sadly i’m one of the guys that never plays pvp and i notice how much useful the cap for pve would need to be removed, but i also understand how dangerous could be for pvp if it was removed

leave the cap for pvp then?