Guild Wars 2

Traits that boost direct damage by a fixed percentage (10% damage boost vs Bleeding Foes) increase condition damage by the same percentage. This would mean the meta condition build for a warrior would get a +5% condition damage boost from Dual Wielding and a 10% boost from Attack of Opportunity in addition to boosting the direct damage by the same percentage. Additionally, it would make Slaying Potions or Slaying Sigils meaningful to condition builds, since those would grant increases that are quite beneficial. This would bring condition damage builds nearly into line with direct damage builds. I do not feel that this would cause problems in PvP since most PvP builds tend not to use the DPS boosting traits for direct damage builds and would likely ignore them for condition damage as well.

Another option would be to make Vulnerability stacks increase the damage a mob takes from conditions. This would increase the dps of condition damage builds to near equality with direct damage builds. Both of these ideas together would make condition damage builds, once they have ramped up, have superior dps to direct damage builds which actually be desirable. I don’t see this as causing any particular problem in pvp since it’s rare outside of fighting a mesmer to get loads of vulnerability stacks.

Have priority for the conditions of the party member with highest condition damage. If I have 24 bleeds on a boss and I have 2000 condition damage and a warrior with 900 condition damage inflicts 5 bleeds, it should be prioritized so my 24 stacks remain and only one of his are applied. Along the same vein, the burning or poison damage should be determined by the highest condition damage of any party member who contributed to the current application of that condition. I recognize these are changes that would have to be done at the engine level, but it is pretty important, and most likely easier to effect than changing the cap.

The last option would be a straight buff to the coefficients of conditions and a buff to how their damage scales with an increase in condition damage. This could be tweaked to give the same DPS results as the above two suggestions, however it would cause a significant imbalance issue in PvP and WvW and I don’t see it as feasible. It would allow a full Dire WvW build to output significantly higher DPS and that is not something most would agree is desirable. I think it is more reasonable for the first two options since they encourage you to play builds with glassier gear and trait choices in order to increase your DPS and would maintain the risk/reward functionality.

The second issue is ramp up time. It may, infact, be better to ignore the problem of ramp up time altogether. If condition damage was buffed to a large enough extent (using both of my above viable options) it would have better dps than direct damage builds once it ramps up. This could create a risk/reward concept in team building where you decide whether you would prefer the quick burst front loaded dps of direct damage or the long term top DPS of condi for your group’s warrior. In most cases it would come down to the encounter. In a dungeon where bosses die quickly you would prefer the direct damage build, but if you were doing a fractal 50 where boss fight tend to take minutes rather than seconds a condition build would output better dps. This may be a solution. So let’s look at ramp up solutions.

continued…

Ignore it. I just discussed that a generous buff to the DPS capabilities of condition builds may create particular instances where one condition class is optimal even without tweaking ramp up time. This would definitely be the easiest solution. But it may not be best. It would create specialization where groups say “LF condi warrior, direct damage = kick” or vice versa. This would segment the community and force people into defined roles which Anet seems somewhat opposed to, and I personally look at as undesirable.. I view the “buff damage significantly ignore ramp up time” solution as the easiest but likely the least effective.

Reduce the duration of the stackable conditions like bleeding and torment that are inflicted by skills but increase the amount of stacks each skill iteration inflicts. Each Sword auto-attack swing will inflict 4 stacks of bleed instead of 1, but the duration will be 4 times less, for example. This will keep the same maximum damage output but allow you to hit the ramp up time much faster. The downsides to this might be pvp balance. It would allow condition damage builds to “burst” in pvp but hurt their sustain since most people in pvp aren’t going to let you hit them with your sword auto attack a whole bunch of times. Additionally, skills like Flurry for warrior might have to be revamped since 24 stacks of bleed that lasts 1 second would have weak pve applications, and might be too strong a burst in pvp.

In all likelihood, the best solution is a mix where condition damage is buffed to the point where at it’s peak it is decently better than direct damage but not hugely, and ramp up time is diminished to the extent that it still exists but the ramp up time is closer to 5-10 seconds than the current 15-20 seconds. A solution of that nature would likely lead to condition damage, for one sinister geared warrior or engineer at least becoming equally optimal in speed run groups to a direct damage counterpart of the same profession. In level 80 dungeons the condition damage character might be slightly preferred, in lower level zones the direct damage character might be slightly preferred.

Once we strike the balance I suggest and a condition damage character is able to output similar dps even in relatively short fights we would then run into the issue of multiple condition players in pug groups and condition cap issues. This would indeed be a problem, but no bigger problem than already exists now in disorganized pugs when two condition damage characters join. Currently, with two condition players both would do very little dps. With the changes I suggest they would still do suboptimal damage but it would be slightly better than before. I presume a major engine revision to change the cap is most off the table we should boil the “condi cap issue” down to: if you care about doing optimal dps, don’t pug. If you pug you take the risk of doing suboptimal dps, which is the case no matter what build you play anyway. From that point of view, the cap is mostly irrelevant.

I hope this helps clarify the actual issues facing condition damage builds in instanced PvE and also presents some realistic solutions that the developers can consider to make condition damage more viable.

Video for the people off put by wall o’ text.

http://youtu.be/2mpIYDZlRO4

Pretty much covered everything. Im in favour of ignoring ramp up time and implementing the first 3 suggestions personally. But maybe rebalancing some skills and weapons to reduce ramp up in PvE. I would imagine this would be a PvP/PvE split.

Im sure people will mention that it doesnt solve the issue in open world. However I dont think thats possible to solve in any realistic manner. Balancing zergs is futile. The best solution is just to make sure future open world stuff keeps encouraging the splitting of zergs. Then condition builds would be fine even in open world once some of these suggestions are implemented.

clap clap clap

Totally agree with you. Please devs read this.

spoj.9672:

Pretty much covered everything. Im in favour of ignoring ramp up time and implementing the first 3 suggestions personally. But maybe rebalancing some skills and weapons to reduce ramp up in PvE. I would imagine this would be a PvP/PvE split.

Im sure people will mention that it doesnt solve the issue in open world. However I dont think thats possible to solve in any realistic manner. Balancing zergs is futile. The best solution is just to make sure future open world stuff keeps encouraging the splitting of zergs. Then condition builds would be fine even in open world once some of these suggestions are implemented.

I also don’t see any change to ramp-up time affecting PvP in a way that doesn’t completely tip the scales to condi or nothing. Condi builds always seemed to be (at least philosophically) pressure builds and ramp up time, in my mind lends itself to that.

In my mind, open world speccing is an odd strength that is rarely touted for GW2. Most everyone understands and accepts their dungeon/wvwvw/pvp builds for what they require, but open world boss zerg builds are yet another point of build diversity people can build around. While some people hate gear grinds, I’m personally fond of making a set for boss zergs, dungeons, wvwvw, etc. etc. Adds to the longevity and variety of the character and the game.

Shinki.8045:

spoj.9672:

Pretty much covered everything. Im in favour of ignoring ramp up time and implementing the first 3 suggestions personally. But maybe rebalancing some skills and weapons to reduce ramp up in PvE. I would imagine this would be a PvP/PvE split.

Im sure people will mention that it doesnt solve the issue in open world. However I dont think thats possible to solve in any realistic manner. Balancing zergs is futile. The best solution is just to make sure future open world stuff keeps encouraging the splitting of zergs. Then condition builds would be fine even in open world once some of these suggestions are implemented.

I also don’t see any change to ramp-up time affecting PvP in a way that doesn’t completely tip the scales to condi or nothing. Condi builds always seemed to be (at least philosophically) pressure builds and ramp up time, in my mind lends itself to that.

In my mind, open world speccing is an odd strength that is rarely touted for GW2. Most everyone understands and accepts their dungeon/wvwvw/pvp builds for what they require, but open world boss zerg builds are yet another point of build diversity people can build around. While some people hate gear grinds, I’m personally fond of making a set for boss zergs, dungeons, wvwvw, etc. etc. Adds to the longevity and variety of the character and the game.

Totally agree.

Very well written and thoughtful post. I definitely agree with prioritizing condis from those who have higher condi damage. Having vulnerability affect condis is an interesting idea, too, that probably wouldn’t hurt PvP much (if at all).

The most obvious solution in my mind is to revise the dungeons so that they’re more challenging. If bosses live longer than ~20 seconds, then the “front-loading” and “ramp-up” factors become negligible. A.net could give bosses more access to skills like endure pain, protection boons, high armor ratings, etc. that would significantly increase their lifespan vs pure power teams and favor a more balanced mix of power and condi.

Also, improving the ramp-up of condi damage across all game modes would probably destroy PvP balance:

(1) Traits that boost direct damage by a fixed percentage also affecting condi damage

A lot of PvP power and hybrid builds take dmg traits. Some celestial D/D eles run stone splinters (10% damage when you’re within 600 range of target, which is pretty much always) instead of elemental shielding. This works out to a 10% damage on their perma burning and high poison uptime (most builds take sigil of doom). Double-ranged shatter mesmers take compounding power (3% damage per clone up) and frequently apply confusion from shatters and other condis from staff AA. Meditation guardians take a ton of +damage passives and also maintain high burning uptime. A typical 2/6/0/0/6 thief would get something like a +45% damage increase to poison ticks.

(2) Buff to coefficients for condi skills

This just works out to a straight buff to hybrid and condi classes. Celestial D/D ele and rifle engie, which are already considered to be very strong, would become even stronger. Celestial rifle engie in particular would become a beast (they can maintain high bleeding/burning/poison uptime and decent confusion uptime).

(3) Reduce the duration of the stackable conditions like bleeding and torment that are inflicted by skills but increase the amount of stacks each skill iteration inflicts

This would make condi builds incredibly OP because it would reduce the window in which damaging condis could be cleansed and effectively increases the burst DPS of all condi builds. The reason why condi amulets in PvP give relatively high survivability compared to zerker amulet is because condi builds are supposed to have a ramp-up time on their damage.

“Too much work.”

I think the best bet is probably a moderate increase in ramp up time and a moderate increase in damage.

To visualize it..

now

Direct DPS 10
Condi DPS: 8
Condi ramp up time: 10 seconds

balanced

Direct DPS: 10
Condi DPS: 12
Condi ramp up time: 8 seconds

Right now you’re ramping up all the way to… garbage tier DPS. They should make the ramp up a bit less and make reward to the ramp up superior tier DPS so there is some efficiency trade off. It should be like acceleration vs top speed. The direct builds have vastly faster acceleration (they start at their top speed) AND they have a higher top end. Condition builds should be rewarded for their slower acceleration with a higher top end.

Just wanted to say thanks for sharing this. I’ve always viewed the cap as the leading obstacle to condition viability, but you raise some interesting points that I hadn’t considered.

I’ll be hoping (against all odds) to see a meaningful discussion with the reds happen about solving the PvE condition problem. fingers crossed

Kudos.

Also, conditions need to work on objects.

I think using a diminished returns type of attack would be good. This would be good with the prioritized damage. Numbers would need worth but to demonstrate every 10 stacks would result in half effectiveness. So the most powerful would be doing full damage then the next would do 95% the next 90% down to 50% then it would start from 50% doing 95% of 50% then 90% of 50% etc… This would mean all conditions are still effective but would only be effective to a point without hard capping them. As well as not being the dps of a condition build because the zerker warrior hit with his bleeds first. Also burning should work on the majority of items and gates!!!

Great post, its nice to see more people highlighting this issue and really hope they do eventually bring everything in line as they have already changed crits once by implementing the ferocity system which shows they are at some degree willing to bring builds in line, but anyway i’d like to contribute to this discussion with a few comments and idea’s so here we go ^^’

I think a consideration should also be what conditions do to targets not just the damage as bleeding and fire may only do damage things like poison, cripple, immobilise , chill and vulnerability will be applied at higher durations than normal with a condi build, though this makes no difference when stacking on a boss it makes a huge difference to those you will be fighting in open combat (arch diviner, imbued fore shaman, mossman etc) as they can be brought to a halt relatively easily with such conditions and to make the source of that also the highest damage may tip the scale too much making condi’s a must in things like fractals.

So maybe a start would be a viable way of sorting out the condition cap (for things like world bosses i dont even wanna go there), why not introduce a more potent version of the condition for condi builds to apply that removes the lesser version and can only be over written by another potent version?
You could have a 50% heal reduction poison,
an increase to vulnerability like 1.25% per stack (2% would be a tad too much),
a slight increase to bleed and burn damage with the ability to burn structures at 2x damage
Cripple giving a 10% change at applying a knockdown every second,
Weakness and blind are 50% or 100% effective against defiant (maybe 50% as this is there for a reason)
Chill giving 10% freeze chance etc, I feel that this would give conditions a role without having to make it all about damage.

But yeah, great points people are making and i really hope the devs take a look at everyone’s thoughts and idea’s on this.
Any constructive criticism to my idea’s is much appreciated

hybrid.5027:

One of the most common things I hear from people is “conditions will never be part of the meta until the condition cap is raised.” This is false, but I’ll explain that later.

The problem with the cap is that a single condition user can max out the condition stacks. While all your suggestions make conditions competetive, there’s still only need for one condition user. Even if condi users become part of the meta (one party slot reserved for conditions) they cannot fully replace direct damage dealers if nothing changes about the cap.

I just want to point out that (1) conditions should be part of the meta and (2) conditions should be an equal alternative to direct damage are two different goals. imo, this discussion should focus on (1) because the answer to (2) is accomplish (1) and change the cap

The proposed solutions are mostly targeted toward solo playstyle. To address condi builds in a group:

REMOVE THE CAP for instanced content (dungeons) .

Open world can have condis cap to 25 stacks due to the amount of people doing open world content and server load however dungeons, incidentally the place where “dps” and PvE “meta” are the most obvious and important, will be much less harsh on the servers because I do believe that the amount of people who run dungeons is tiny fraction compared to the players in the open world.

Why such a complicated mess, that needs a PvP/PvE split? The advantage of conditions is that they ignore armor, that’s also why vulnerability shouldn’t work for them. Simplest solution would be to increase enemies armor and decrease enemies health. That’s why conditions work better in PvP.
Then there’s still the problem of weakness, poison and chill not having all effects on monsters that they have on other players, but that’s not about damage.

I think you’re approaching it in a reasonable way, but I’m not sure changing Vulnerability and traits would be enough to bring condis up to a level that they could compete with power builds in PvE.

There’s also the unfortunate impact all these changes would have on WvW/PvP where condition builds are already seen as a plague to the game and have been pretty dominant for the past 2 years.

Until power builds and condition builds require similar investments stat wise, it doesn’t seem reasonable to expect them to be competetive DPS wise.

phoenix.3465:

Simplest solution would be to increase enemies armor and decrease enemies health.

No one wants conditions to be viable more than me, but if the “solution” is a brute force idiotic nerf to direct damage builds I will pass on it.

Well written, thank you. I agree with you. The devs should definately do something about this.

That being said, I don’t think that A-net has any intention whatsoever to make any changes to conditions, or on any other substantial system or game feature. If, and that is a big if, A-net was to do something about conditions, they would make a Black Lion Trading Post item that costs 800 gems and lets you have 30 stacks of bleeding. For 1 hour.

hybrid.5027:

phoenix.3465:

Simplest solution would be to increase enemies armor and decrease enemies health.

No one wants conditions to be viable more than me, but if the “solution” is a brute force idiotic nerf to direct damage builds I will pass on it.

Exactly, There needs to be a focus on what the conditions are doing imo as high damage along with the sundering effects they give will be too much.

I read all the comments above, and I think a lot of Hybrids solutions would definitely improve things. I love condi builds and am really annoyed by how they interact with the PvE meta. Hybrid’s points seem more focused on dungeoneering, but my play is more focused on open world events, so in addition to what he suggests, I would like to add a couple:

1. Tagging. In situations where you have to deal a certain amount of damage to get kill/loot credit on an enemy, Condis seem at a bit of a disadvantage, because if a large pack of enemies die almost instantly and a lot of players are attacking it, the Condi won’t get much credit. Even when the enemy takes a while to die, Condis can be hurt by the fact that their damage stacks tend to get rapidly over-written. My solution is to make it so that strictly for the purposes of tagging, all potential damage is counted, rather than just applied damage. This means that if a Condi applies a DoT that would deal 10K damage over ten seconds, and the enemy dies or has the effect overwritten in three, instead of only counting 3K damage or less, the attack is counted as having dealt 10K damage for tagging purposes.

2. Caps need to be fixed. There’s just no way around it. Tweaking the other stuff can help, but when you have dozens of players hitting the same mob, those caps are going to get hit, both the hard 25 cap on bleeds, and the softer “30s+” cap on things like Poison. There needs to be a solution that would mean that if one Condi build does equal damage to one DD build, then fifteen of those Condi builds would deal the same combined damage as fifteen of the DD builds.

My solution has always been stack overflow damage. That is, the 26th stack should just be applied as instant damage. This could be calculated in one of two ways:

Method 1:
A boss mob has 25 stacks of bleed on him, of varying damage and remaining durations. A new attack applies 3 stacks of 5K damage over ten seconds. This causes 15K damage to be applied instantly and the remaining bleed stacks play out their natural duration.

Method 2:
A boss mob has 25 stacks of bleed on him, of varying damage and remaining durations. A new attack applies 3 stacks of 5K damage over ten seconds. The three stacks with the least remaining impact are removed instantly, for the purpose of this example they would be one stack of 3K damage with one second remaining, and two stacks of 500 damage with five seconds remaining. These stacks are instantly burned off, dealing their remaining 4K damage in a burst, and then the three incoming bleed stacks take their place in the queue.

In either case, ALL the damage is, and must be, applied.

And as I hinted at earlier, I feel that duration stacks need to consider this too, either by having the effect stack for damage rather than duration once the duration exceeds about 30s, or by making it so that if the enemy cleanses the effect then it is only partially effective, perhaps only cleansing 30s or so per cleanse spent, OR make it so that when a cleanse is applied while the effect is stacked to over 30 seconds, then some portion of the remaining duration is applied as direct damage (so if the stack is 500dps over kitten , and gets cleansed, the DoT is cancelled but deals 7.5K instant damage).

I think something along these lines, or equivalent, is strictly necessary.

phoenix.3465:

Why such a complicated mess, that needs a PvP/PvE split? The advantage of conditions is that they ignore armor, that’s also why vulnerability shouldn’t work for them. Simplest solution would be to increase enemies armor and decrease enemies health. That’s why conditions work better in PvP.
Then there’s still the problem of weakness, poison and chill not having all effects on monsters that they have on other players, but that’s not about damage.

Thanks to hybrid for putting some new and in-depth thought to the condition issue.

Seeing a few simple issues that can be resolved would actually make a big difference for PvE.

I can agree with having fewer, stronger stacks, especially for bleeding, which is where most condition damage happens. Seeing a greater shift toward more Torment on some weapons has eased the burden on bleed stacking, but it’s still too easy to net 10-20 stacks from one condition-oriented character.
It raises the question that if they can create a new condition without their system falling apart, could they make a parallel to bleeding that does the same thing (low damage, longer durations) and still have their system be stable?

As phoenix pointed out, a simple balance pass for PvE mobs could do wonders for bringing condition builds up without touching the overall game balance. It won’t solve the condition cap issue, and it may not be optimal, but a blanket statement of “you, intern-minion, go raise the armor values on all the monsters by 20% and lower their HP by 15%” is relatively low cost to execute.

The problems with conditions are 3:

- In PvP, mindless unskilled condition spam works too well and too often.
- In greater scale battles, it’s wasted as only a small portion of it is actually applied on enemies, and not the ones with he highest values.
- In smaler scalle battles, it’s usually way slower than direct damage.

These three problems are not easy to solve, but there’s some steps that can help:

- Reintroduce condition DPS caps. This is measure that only affects extreme “All on 1” cases. Much like the degen ‘pips’ in GW1, something similar would be added for GW2. For example, a delay effect on the damage. If the DPS cap is hit, the damage will keep going and be fully applied, but it’ll be delayed. This would be seen as a chunk health bar going down in a different color. When the conditions are over, that chunk will keep going down as fast as the DPS cap allows.

- Factor creature rank in condition calculations. The higher the creature rank, the higher both condition stack and condition DPS caps. A normal creature would have caps smaller than players, veterans and PvP map NPCs same as players, and as the rank gets higher, both the stacks and the DPS cap is higher, until epic bosses have stacks of 250 and much, much greater DPS caps than players have.

- Conditions are slower by design. They are meant to deal damage over time. Too often the problem isn’t conditions being slow as much as direct damage being too fast. Conditions do not work everywhere, but direct damage does, with very few exceptions. New content is being designed with this in mind, but new content is not enough. You can just make things right with newly introduced stuff and leave old stuff with old bad designs. We NEED consistency. If a new design decision is made because a new mechanic proves to work better, old content MUST be revisited to apply that decision, and so what we need to solve conditions not being used for being slower is reworking creatures and content to make it viable, not just by making direct damage worse, but by making condition damage something that makes things easier. Too many champions have condition resistances that make conditions just go away too fast, while there’s very few enemies with very high armor against which some condition damage would help, even without full condition gear. Introduce additional enemies that make the fight harder, which die very fast against conditions but attacking them can be a waste of time without them, make some enemies immune to anything else other than conditions, but also put some environmental weapon that deals conditions just in case no one had conditions.

- Conditions also not work against too many things. Objects are directly immune to conditions. Yes, they are also immune to criticals, but If you attack an object with Soldier gear, you’ll do WAY more damage than with Dire or Rabid. That should be addressed too, by having something similar to Structural vulnerability that is applied on the object every time a condition is applied on it, that makes the object susceptible to conditions in some way.

Too much text to me, not reading sorry :^)

My solution: Add new condition that add additional damage over time when 5 players or more are applying the same condition to the target. That new condition could be really powerful, and with stacks up to 100.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Also, conditions need to work on objects.

Crits as well.

The best way to solve this problem without destroying WvW and PvP balance is to simply make some mobs die faster from condi damage than direct damage. How do we do that? Raise toughness, lower vitality. So that if Condi damage does 9k dps average, direct damage does 5k dps average. Why make combat more one-dimensional instead of expanding it?

Also, Condi caps are a big problem. Another condi player should not be interfering with my DPS. 5 Condi players should have the damage of 5 Condi players, 100 Condi players should have the damage of 100 Condi players, it should not have the DPS of 1 or 2 players. For that, I have a solution for that, but that is for another topic.

NeHoMaR.9812:

-snip- That new condition could be really powerful, and with stacks up to 100.

There can be no more stacks, because it adds to server costs.

Libertine.1047:

NeHoMaR.9812:

-snip- That new condition could be really powerful, and with stacks up to 100.

There can be no more stacks, because it adds to server costs.

Server costs? it is just another Bleed. If you want to see “server costs” go to WvW T1 after reset, a chaos of 240 players all on bleed. And I am talking about just one PvE enemy with one new condition.

Sorry, well written post but you aren’t making the right assumptions.

1 – You can’t balance based on speed running dungeons. That is the extreme even if it seems common place for regular dungeon runners. Speed runners will always find an extreme and maximize it. Speed runners could wear any armor and tickle monsters to death with feathers and still get the dungeon done.

2- The condition cap is the problem. Whatever else you do to conditions will fail when we get the obvious problem of three condition users in a dungeon group, let alone 30 condition users against an open world boss.

3- Conditions shouldn’t be broken in PvP just to ‘change the meta’ in PvE. Conditions need a long enough duration to makes condition cures important. Condition damage is strong in PvP already which suggests it would be strong in PvE too if it wasn’t held back by stacking duration, the condition cap, etc. Fixing the condition cap is the basic change to PvE that will not break PvP.

hybrid.5027:

phoenix.3465:

Simplest solution would be to increase enemies armor and decrease enemies health.

No one wants conditions to be viable more than me, but if the “solution” is a brute force idiotic nerf to direct damage builds I will pass on it.

Bringing PvE mobs more in line with player or WvW NPCs is going to be an essential ingredient in fixing PvE problems without imbalancing PvP, short of a split. This is especially true for veterans, which should roughly be equivalent to players in power.

Stooperdale.3560:

Sorry, well written post but you aren’t making the right assumptions.

1 – You can’t balance based on speed running dungeons. That is the extreme even if it seems common place for regular dungeon runners. Speed runners will always find an extreme and maximize it. Speed runners could wear any armor and tickle monsters to death with feathers and still get the dungeon done.

What else do you balance on? The suggestions I made impact pvp and wvw the least since it would be easy to make condis OP. there is no balance in open world PvE since there is no challenge. Instanced pve is the only pve worth balancing on.

2- The condition cap is the problem. Whatever else you do to conditions will fail when we get the obvious problem of three condition users in a dungeon group, let alone 30 condition users against an open world boss.

My goal isn’t to make 3 condition users in a group good. That’s a dumb goal that is likely impossible to do with the server technology. My goal is to make one condition user good. The current number is 0, so increasing it to 1 seems like a huge gain. If you pug and get 3 condi users in your group it sucks, but pugging sucks.

3- Conditions shouldn’t be broken in PvP just to ‘change the meta’ in PvE. Conditions need a long enough duration to makes condition cures important. Condition damage is strong in PvP already which suggests it would be strong in PvE too if it wasn’t held back by stacking duration, the condition cap, etc. Fixing the condition cap is the basic change to PvE that will not break PvP.

If you are ignorant of a topic, please inform yourself before comment. A maxed out full sinister build with perfect group buffs will make about 9k DPS for a warrior. A maxed out berserker build with perfect group buffs. will make about 12k. This invalidates the part I bolded. The condition cap will not change these numbers. Even if you removed the cap these numbers would still be true. Condition damage would still suck. Sinister warrior Condition damage builds need to do AT LEAST 12k dps to be worth using in PvE groups. The simple fact is 2576 condition damage, 25 bleeds, burning and 5 torment plus direct damage = 9k dps. Something has to make that 9k = 12k before we can talk about it being viable in pve.

I’d love to talk about conditions balance overall (not only in PvE) so my post will be 50/50 about PvP and PvE, It’s because changing how they work in PvE will affect PvP, and Im sure they NEED changes.

For me, there are more problems with conditions than just low damage:

• stack cap – not as noticable during pvp or dunegons, but surely can feel awkward during large boss battles;
• randomness of condition removal – when you have a skill which removes 1 random condition, it may remove not the one you wanted which is super annoying.

Those two facts makes me lose any interest in conditions overall, and i hope you will agree with that it’s not how it should be. Sadly i dont think we can solve those problems without any major overhaul of conditions.

Also, as for those damaging conditions (those without damage component seems mostly fine for me) – they lack purpose. When i first saw condition mechanics in GW2 i felt it was cool. Take confusion for example: when an enemy applies it to you, you are given a choice – to fight back and take some damage in the process, or to fall back and wait (cleanse) for confusion to end. In reality you have no choice. During fight with condition mesmer you will have constant confusion on you. You can continue fight like that, or wait for the enemy to finish you. Without any condition cleanse you have no way do deal with increasing amount of condition stack. This leads to conclusion that there are TOO MANY conditions skills in the game. When you are under constant pressure of condition damage, you have no real choice to make.

Same goes for buffs. Why does we have full dmg berserk meta in pve? Because there is no need for any tank (it’s even hard to be a tank without any aggro mechanism or ability to distract enemy bosses thanks to defiance) nor there is need for supports, when a team of 5 berserks can do just fine with some fire fields and blast finishers. There are TOO MANY boons available to certain professions and builds, that shouldnt be there.

gemboj.6203:

Same goes for buffs. Why does we have full dmg berserk meta in pve? Because there is no need for any tank (it’s even hard to be a tank without any aggro mechanism or ability to distract enemy bosses thanks to defiance) nor there is need for supports, when a team of 5 berserks can do just fine with some fire fields and blast finishers. There are TOO MANY boons available to certain professions and builds, that shouldnt be there.

Going to save you from getting lambasted on this one.
The reason why there’s a zerker meta is because of the number of boons. Active defense, vigor, aegis, in some cases protection, they all contribute to survivability. It’s a skill/synergy play that works for high risk/high reward strategies.

But, to get back on track, a fair portion of the game’s anti-condition bias can be resolved on the enemy’s side. More armor, less HP. It won’t affect PvP, where conditions do just fine.
Theoretically, if enemies attacked faster, that could increase the effectiveness of confusion and give players more reasons to mitigate damage. The latter portion’s for a different thread, of course.

I’m glad to see Torment in the condition rotation, though. It forces a strategic choice on the target to move or not move, similarly how confusion forces a choice between acting or not acting, and it encourages ranged tormentors to stay on the move so their target follows. Taking the damage load off of bleeding helps a ton as well.

Still, that doesn’t really answer the condition cap issue. I’ve been idly working on modeling something that might be a solution for it, but I don’t quite have realistic numbers to display it.

There is an issue with just giving priority to conditions caused by condi users: You’re still overlapping and leeching DPS away from the rest of the team. The fact is that pure direct damage builds still stack of lot of condis, and these condis still do damage (quite a bit with 25 stacks of might). For example, lets take the guardian’s burning (non-condi build) alongside of engineer burning (full condi). With 25 might, the guardian’s automatic burn hits for 546 DPS, and a condi engineer hits for about 900 DPS. If you have both members on the team, the condi engineer would be stealing 546 DPS from the guard to do their own burning.

That is why the removal of the cap and personalized conditions are such an attractive solution: There is no more overlap. Granted, prioritized malice is better than the FILO system we have now, but it is still a bandaid and not a true solution.

hybrid.5027:

What else do you balance on? The suggestions I made impact pvp and wvw the least since it would be easy to make condis OP. there is no balance in open world PvE since there is no challenge. Instanced pve is the only pve worth balancing on.

Instanced PvE is fine to balance with. Speed running is not. These forums are full of speed runners. The real game has a wider variety of players who a variety of different things.

Stooperdale.3560:

hybrid.5027:

What else do you balance on? The suggestions I made impact pvp and wvw the least since it would be easy to make condis OP. there is no balance in open world PvE since there is no challenge. Instanced pve is the only pve worth balancing on.

Instanced PvE is fine to balance with. Speed running is not. These forums are full of speed runners. The real game has a wider variety of players who a variety of different things.

Balancing with speed runners in mind helps all condi-build players. It’s limiting to think in terms of “the one token condi guy” on a speed-clear team, but that has more to do with condition caps than other issues with condition builds. But that condition cap isn’t going anyway anytime soon without a major technical overhaul, so it’s better to find ways to work around it.

Based on what I’ve seen of opinions from the speed-run subpopulation, an optimized condition build character doesn’t turn out as much damage as a full-zerk power character. Even in concept that just seems wrong to me, since the point of a DoT build is to do more damage but require time to execute it. So it’s not terribly incorrect to account for meta-level play.

hybrid.5027:

phoenix.3465:

Simplest solution would be to increase enemies armor and decrease enemies health.

No one wants conditions to be viable more than me, but if the “solution” is a brute force idiotic nerf to direct damage builds I will pass on it.

Ya but higher enemy toughness and lower enemy vitality could “buff” condi damage without affecting power builds if the numbers were calculated correctly so that the additional toughness only makes up for the vitality lost (i.e. a power build is doing 40 DPS to a 800 Hp enemy as opposed to 50 DPS to a 1000 HP enemy while a condi build does 45 DPS in both cases or something).

While I’ll agree your other solutions are better thought out, keep in mind any implementation of them would also cross into PvP and WvW and Anet would be worried about buffing conditions in that environment (from what I gather conditions are in a good place there though people still complain about PU Mesmers).

Adjusting monster toughness and vitality would isolate this balance change to PvE and having high monster toughness is something Anet is already experimenting with (see husks).

I do want to see some of these other thing on this list though…. how do the potions not affect condi-damage anyways.

Because ANets refuses to do separate balancing, some of these changes just aren’t realistic. If we were to go ahead with the realistic ones, condition damage would still have issues primarily because of the stacking rules which agree with it or not, is a larger issue than the other points you brought up, even if they are valid.

For instance, if condition damage is changed so the highest damage application always takes priority, we still run into the following problems:

• You can only have 1 effective condition damage member in your party, while any more than that deal no damage with some of their condition such as burning and poison.
• Many power based groups can maintain poison, burning, and a good amount of bleeding. Because of this, the effective DPS of the condition damage player is reduced by the strength of whatever condition they are overriding.

If condition damage is to be truly addressed, the condition stacking rules must also be changed.

Have to say, the OP really seems to have a solid grasp of the problems with condition damage in GW2.

Ashen.2907:

Have to say, the OP really seems to have a solid grasp of the problems with condition damage in GW2.

Sarcasm?
I do hope so, because he obviously doesn’t.

@hybrid
Sorry if this sounds harsh, we all appreciate that (again) somebody is trying to tackle the problem (never worked in the past, but maybe this time) – however, most of what you say is either wrong or very short-sighted.

The most important thing that you don’t seem to understand is how toughness works. Calling PvE enemy health reduction and toughness increase “idiotic” because it is a “nerf” to physical damage builds and calling someone that tells you that conditions are viable in PvP “ignorant” proves that.

So let me try to explain: Toughness decreases incoming physical damage (maths here).
Increasing toughness and reducing vitality therefore is equivalent to increasing condition damage because less damage overall is necessary to kill the mob, but more physical damage is absorbed.
The same applies to PvP. You can’t compare PvE and PvP DPS directly because players can have a lot of armor, therefore mitigating more physical damage than PvE mobs. Also, defensive conditions are a lot stronger in PvP.

Most of your points would completely break sPvP and WvW, so what can be done instead?
I’m happy to say that ArenaNet already started doing something in the new area, Silverwastes.

• Husk Smashers have a lot of armor, which makes condition damage more viable against them.
• Some other enemies (Teragriffs for example) have more mobility, decreasing the time that pure melee physical damage can be applied and increasing the viability of defensive conditions (chill, cripple and immobilize).
• There are healers that increase the viability of poison.

Sadly, we will most likely never see such changes in dungeons.
What remains is the condition cap. I didn’t write the engine, but if increasing the cap is more complex than your suggestions (not considering server load), then their software design is seriously screwed up.
Have fun,

Addi!

I really do like your suggestions, you’ve put a lot of thought into them while considering the possible downsides (which most people don’t).

However I do agree with djaddi in that PVP/WvW would likely see some issues with this. Conditions in PVP/WVW aren’t really a problem, but I have to say making those changes exclusive to PVE (Perhaps making Mob dependant changes) would be a fantastic idea.

There is however still the issue of condi damage being greatly limited on large fights such as Tequatl etc.

I do hope Anet take what you’ve said into consideration, because condi in PvE is laughable, and it has very limited uses.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Also, conditions need to work on objects.

for the love of god yes.

I also feel like it would be nice for condition cleansing skills to not COMPLETELY remove an entire condition that stacks, you could take 15-20 seconds getting stacks up to see it all go away in an instant. I feel like a condition cure skill should only remove a certain number of stacks depending on the skill, like 5 stacks 10 stacks, or 15 stacks. not all 25!

I wish I could say all this is very interesting, but I can’t help but wonder what folks have to do that demands they be in such a hurry to finish something that they’re micro-managing stats in a game like this.

I did stat management similar to this while playing Battlefield 2 in league competition, not in regular server play. In league competition, especially in CAL (where money was involved) making sure you were getting bang for the buck was more than reasonable.

Saving two minutes or even five minutes in clearing a “dungeon” in GW2? What do you have on your agenda, dinner with the Prime Minister? I think it’s a shame stat monkeys create the impression “there’s only one way to go, and the others suck” in a game like this. After all, as ArenaNet likes to say, we’re here to have fun, not measure our *****s.

Oh well. Maybe you can take this level of mathematical precision somewhere and get paid doing something significant with it. It’s charming here, in a way, but it’s hardly necessary. After all, this isn’t The Belmont Stakes, and you aren’t Secretariat.

PvP? Yeah. It’s all gear, right? If you want to PvP, try an FPS. Things are “even” there.

Lithuen.9067:

I wish I could say all this is very interesting, but I can’t help but wonder what folks have to do that demands they be in such a hurry to finish something that they’re micro-managing stats in a game like this.

I did stat management similar to this while playing Battlefield 2 in league competition, not in regular server play. In league competition, especially in CAL (where money was involved) making sure you were getting bang for the buck was more than reasonable.

Saving two minutes or even five minutes in clearing a “dungeon” in GW2? What do you have on your agenda, dinner with the Prime Minister? I think it’s a shame stat monkeys create the impression “there’s only one way to go, and the others suck” in a game like this. After all, as ArenaNet likes to say, we’re here to have fun, not measure our *****s.

Oh well. Maybe you can take this level of mathematical precision somewhere and get paid doing something significant with it. It’s charming here, in a way, but it’s hardly necessary. After all, this isn’t The Belmont Stakes, and you aren’t Secretariat.

PvP? Yeah. It’s all gear, right? If you want to PvP, try an FPS. Things are “even” there.

A dungeon taking 5 minute compare to 6 minute your completely right. I do Speed clears but I dont do the crazy portal tactics and I still want to goof around with my friends. But I dont want to spend 15-20min in one that I know I can do in 7min.

I dont have anywhere to go no, But I want to do Many dungeons, I want to fotm and do pvp, there isnt enough time for everything at all times, so If we can speed them up, we save time for other things.

PS: Also its (After 7k hours and 4k of them in dungeons) More fun to speed things up, try new tactics, get better and even set records.

Im a type of person that will always want to play the best way, nothing is wrong witht hat, I dont play with ppl that want to RP walk it lol, My team is full zerk/BIS skills/gear.

Oh and about your FPS.. there are still “Best” set ups and crappy ones, I can make a full forum post about how there needs to be more balance between guns and perks.

NeHoMaR.9812:

Libertine.1047:

NeHoMaR.9812:

-snip- That new condition could be really powerful, and with stacks up to 100.

There can be no more stacks, because it adds to server costs.

Server costs? it is just another Bleed. If you want to see “server costs” go to WvW T1 after reset, a chaos of 240 players all on bleed. And I am talking about just one PvE enemy with one new condition.

I’m just saying that that’s what A-net has told us. Can’t be bothered to find the quote from 2012, sorry.

I am not saying that their explanation would make any sense or be coherent with other things they do.

Another thing about that 4 bleeds on 1 hit but 4 times less duration,

When concerning condition cleanses in PvP and such, the condition cleanse also becomes that much stronger. Even when conditions are in its ramp up time, it still does damage, and to get a condition cleanse off to make it the most efficient, you’d want to use it when you reach a certain stack of bleeds, etc, but that also gives the enemy a lot more time to mess around with conditions (place more conditions, place random weakness/cripple/immobilize, etc).

Sure it would do a lot more damage to you, the victim, but if you cleanse it sooner, you negate more damage than you would have.

Also, in PvE, it would severely help as well with said durations being much shorter. If they were short enough, multiple condition damage users would be able to actually make use of their damage, maybe even a full party perhaps, because its easy to stack 25 bleeds when they all last like 10 seconds+.

Edit: Not saying that it would solve problems. Just sayin.

I agree with Hybrid and have been advocating binning of conditions on PvE bosses with Unshakable according to the player’s condition damage stat to prioritize them. Players that do not build their character for condition damage should expect their conditions be knocked off the stack by players who do build for conditions but that is only part of it.

There are many non-damaging conditions like blind and chill. The odds of having them stick to an Unshakable mob should also be dependent upon the players’ condition damage statistic.

In PvP, the same should hold true as well but the intricacies are daunting. Every profession has access to conditions, some more than others, so it is possible, though admittedly difficult, to implement an additional modifier to condition/boon calculation somewhat like condition resistance.

Similarly, the ability to strip boons, and resistance to boon stripping, should also be affected by players’ investments in either boons or conditions. The modifiers do not need to be large and may incorporate random variations but it would be nice to see and additional aspect to a character’s build have a real effect.

The last point I wish to make is that I would like to see Chill, Crippled, Poison, and Weakness stack in intensity and also depend upon condition damage beginning with a smaller effect for one stack and increasing with both the number of applications and the condition damage statistic.

Again, boons can work the same way. Protection’s damage reduction could be modified by the player’s boon-related traits and may stack for further reduction. Stability may resist hard CC from PvE mobs without Unshakable but against bosses that do, it may have a chance to fail if the appropriate stat’s are not adequately invested in, or if the boon is not stacked for greater resistance. Even the number of Might generated by a skill could be modified to incorporate both boon investment and environmental factors.

Increasing stack sizes only goes so far. Adding new factors to the equation for conditions and boons will add a new dimension to game play and, I think, broaden the player experience.