Guild Wars 2

Your post is misleading if you think this wouldn’t destroy condition balance in WvW/PvP. Conditions are in a good spot in PvP and absolutely dominant in small-scale WvW. A single small buff could push them over the top — never mind the numerous buffs you’re proposing here.

I agree that conditions need a buff in PvE, but for the sake of PvP/WvW, these buffs should remain PvE only.

I am fully aware of the scope of effort involved in implementing changes beyond PvE boss mechanics and doubt it would ever be seriously considered by Arenanet management. I threw it out there to get people thinking outside of the box. A lot of players have grown comfortable with the current boon/condition mechanics and meta builds. Something like my suggestions for PvP and WvW would take an enormous amount of balancing but it may also open a vast new dimension to character build viability where the number of points in any particular trait line have more tangible effects on both boon and condition results.

condition prioritizisation will not happen. Here are three reasons why:
- might and corruption stacks: an increase in might or corruption will make the damage of your stacks unpredictable, so you can’t prioritize them.

-intensity vs duration: which do you prioritze the one that does more dps or the one that lasts longer. Both have situation where the one is more favored then the other so yeah.

-sever load: we have a condition cap because of how taxing it is on the server and you want to increase the work load the server has to do for damage comming from conditions even more? Not a good idea.

Some people seem to be missing the point that even at its peak the condition build is doing significantly less damage than the direct damage build, but that’s fine the information is there for the devs to look into if they want to.

Condition prioritization is going to be necessary for the damage to be brought up to what it should be for PvE. As long as the rest of the group can override the conditions you’re still losing too much DPS. One thing that could help with the work load is to not have conditions do damage according to your current Might but the Might you had when they are applied, that alone is a huge tax on available resources.

The straight damage boost traits would need to be split from PvP/WvW if they are allowed to affect condition damage in PvE. I doubt that will happen but you never know.

I think we will just see more enemies like the husks that have more toughness. Its a start at least.

And for those of you saying why balance it around speedclear capabilities, as someone who used to create content you ALWAYS balance around min/maxers. They are the ones who find ways to break skills that aren’t balanced right, which means every Tom, kitten, and Harry will imitate them once it gets out. There is ZERO hope of balancing it for open world, that just isn’t going to happen, if we already have a 25 stack cap due to server resources there is no way you’re going to redo it to allow everyone running a condition build to get their damage in. Leave open world alone and focus on the instanced content where the difficulty is there and the difference matters.

Conditions need to be able to crit and should be affected by precision and ferocity. Landing conditions should not be guaranteed. A character with no condition damage stat should have a very hard time of landing ANY conditions, while a character focused on condition damage will land every time the skill allows.

Your post is misleading if you think this wouldn’t destroy condition balance in WvW/PvP. Conditions are in a good spot in PvP and absolutely dominant in small-scale WvW. A single small buff could push them over the top — never mind the numerous buffs you’re proposing here.

Do – not – care.

I think the OPs recommendations are solid and would not unbalance the game in any way.

I agree that the biggest issue with changing the way condition damage works isnt the cap. IMO, its that the current game is balanced around the stack limits. Imagine what would happen to Lupicus or Tequatl with 100 bleed stacks. It would pretty much invalidate the fight.

Every boss – and other opponent- in in the game would have to be looked at and adjusted if the cap were deleted. It would make the gear power creep issue look like a wet noodle sitting next to an ICBM.

While the OPs recommendation would work, I have an alternate idea – albeit one that would probably require more back end work from the devs.

First, there has to be a condition cap. There really is no way around it. It is a technical limitation that, if compromised, would probably negatively impact most players.

The change I would make would be to change how conditions stack. First, every condition should stack the same – in duration versus intensity. To compensate, they would need to adjust the base damage of some conditions based on this premise.

I would then make every player’s conditions unique. In other words, if 25 players apply bleeds, then the boss would have exactly 25 stacks of bleeds – with each stack being unique to the player that applied it. If only 10 players are applying bleeds, then there would never be more than 10 bleed stacks. Those bleeds would then increase in duration based on the bleeds applied by the individual player. The same would be true of burning, poison, etc (pretty much every damaging condition).

Then they would need to balance every condition weapon, sigil and trait around this premise. Make the autoattack apply a basic condition (probably bleeds in most cases, but they could add flavor by giving thieves bleeds, necros poisons, mesmers confusion, engis burning etc) and abilities with cooldowns stronger conditions.

The primary place this would make a difference would be in dungeons. It would completely eliminate the condition cap in 5-player situations (and any other content with fewer than 25 players).

The only downside would be in open world and WvW content where you have more than 25 players (primarily in open world – condition cleanses usually kick in before 25 stacks in WvW). That is really the only situation where hybrid’s idea of prioritizing the highest damage conditions would be needed.

Again, this would require rebalancing most condition applying weapons, traits and sigils, but it would deal with the big issue. Once you do away with stacking, it is simple to bring condition damage up to par with direct damage (or, more realistically, near to – conditions should be less powerful than direct damage since you they allow you to move out of line of site and still be doing damage).

Ohoni.6057:

Your post is misleading if you think this wouldn’t destroy condition balance in WvW/PvP. Conditions are in a good spot in PvP and absolutely dominant in small-scale WvW. A single small buff could push them over the top — never mind the numerous buffs you’re proposing here.

Do – not – care.

A lot of people do care, since many people play more than one game mode. And Anet certainly cares because they tend to balance around PvP, as opposed to WvW/PvE.

I reiterate that these ideas are good for PvE only, and if implemented, should remain PvE only. It would completely unbalance PvP/WvW.

Nice OP!
I want to share my idea for a possible solution for both main question you arise: the ramp up time and lower dps.
My ides is to add another mechanic on top of what is now that works like direct damage, but not affected by any direct damage modifiers (can’t crit, not influenced by vulnerability etc.).

Now, base direct damage is calculated this way:

bdd= weapon strength * power * skill coefficient / armor

where armor is: thoughness + defense

I will add this dirty and rough idea, let’s call it condition damage initiator:

cdi= weapon strength * condition damage * skill coefficient / sturdiness

where sturdiness is: vitality + healing power

This cdi should be calculated everytime conditions are landed not taking into account stacks, if codition are not applied because of cap use stacks as multiplier. For example: if you apply 3 stacks of bleeding → cdi*1; if this 3 stacks or bleeding are not applied because of cap → cdi*3

I throw in cdi calculation weapon strength and skill coefficient just because they are in the direct damage formula, but those factors should be thought more accurately in order to prevent non-condition builds to gain to much from this mechanic (maybe factor in condition duration? or specific condition coefficient? add another stat to the weapon?)

Anyhow, this way ramp up time (time needed to reach the maximum damage potential) will not be lower simply because we are not applying condition faster and we’ve raised both the max and the average dps. But at the end of the rump up (reached the 25 stacks) your damage is boosted considerably.
Now to prove all this is worthwhile I should need some numbers, but I don’t have… maybe in future :p

Balancing between game mode will still be an issue.

To be effective Direct DD I need what? Zerk gear. What gives me Zerker? Power, Precision and Ferocity - 3 stats what significantly affects my damage output. Does this stats affects Condi? Not.
So what affect Condi? Condition damage only. So, all DOTers have 2 free stats and basically everyone prefer TOU and VIT - defensive stats!
Basically, DOTers have lower DPS but much more survivability and this is fair.

Also, all DOTs already ignoring any kind of armor.

SilverWF.4789:

To be effective Direct DD I need what? Zerk gear. What gives me Zerker? Power, Precision and Ferocity – 3 stats what significantly affects my damage output. Does this stats affects Condi? Not.
So what affect Condi? Condition damage only. So, all DOTers have 2 free stats and basically everyone prefer TOU and VIT – defensive stats!
Basically, DOTers have lower DPS but much more survivability and this is fair.

Also, all DOTs already ignoring any kind of armor.

Or… You could get Power, Precision, and/or Ferocity. DOT skills still have a direct damage component, it’s just not as high as a direct damage build.

And the problem with PvE encounters is that they are frequently low in armor and high on HP, which dramatically reduces the effectiveness of having a condition build.

Anyway, they need to remake stacking system for conditions
If player have more than 1400+ condition damage - his conditions must have highest priority.
For example, Bleed. If target already have 25 bleed stacks and recieving new stack: if from true conditioner - it will be placed instead of stack from another player. If player not conditioner - his new bleed stack will be ignored and no placed.
Burning. New stack of Burning from high condi player will be placed at first place in the burning ticks queue and will tick 1st. New stacks of burning from low condi players will be placed in to the end of queue

SilverWF.4789:

To be effective Direct DD I need what? Zerk gear. What gives me Zerker? Power, Precision and Ferocity – 3 stats what significantly affects my damage output. Does this stats affects Condi? Not.
So what affect Condi? Condition damage only. So, all DOTers have 2 free stats and basically everyone prefer TOU and VIT – defensive stats!
Basically, DOTers have lower DPS but much more survivability and this is fair.

Also, all DOTs already ignoring any kind of armor.

Condition builds usually also depend on a significant amount of their damage from conditions applied by critical hits, so precision actually does matter. They also aren’t balanced around the condition damage alone, so the power stat is still important. If things were properly balanced Sinister gear would roughly equal Berserker gear in potential damage.

I’m amazed you can write so much and still say so little. You ignore one of the most conveniently observed tactics from the latest Living Story encounters that enforce ranged DPS and DoT. The dungeons, as they sit, don’t legitimize a critical need of condition damage buffs since it’s so kitten easy that you can use condition damage without holding your party back.

Newer content is being designed though to give condition damage and ranged damage a place, where the lower damage output is forgiven by the continuous damage output. The Mordrem Teragriff battle is the most obvious/most inclusive example.

There’s no need to buff condition damage to make it optimal (unless you want to directly focus on content released between Vanilla and Living Story 2), enemy design is easily the biggest factor in whether or not DoT works…rather than your “ramp up time” philosophy.

i’m gonna explain it to you real easely, this game’s balance is based around PvP, where condition damage is on a very good spot almost over the top compared to zerkers, so this will either A) never happen cause would screw over pvp & wvw small group roaming B ) only be done in PvE so PvP & WvW would stay unaffected by these changes but knowing Anet this will likely not be done.

DemonforLife.8546:

i’m gonna explain it to you real easely, this game’s balance is based around PvP, where condition damage is on a very good spot

Yeah, condition damage is good in this game. I think the OP is just way off the mark. It’s not about condition damage, it’s about the enemies that we fight in PvE that makes condition damage bad. Change the enemy mechanics, and you’ll improve the functionality of condition damage – because it’s good enough, there’s no need to buff condition damage on the sole needs of PvE when a more ideal solution is improving encounters.

Cuddy.6247:

DemonforLife.8546:

i’m gonna explain it to you real easely, this game’s balance is based around PvP, where condition damage is on a very good spot

Yeah, condition damage is good in this game. I think the OP is just way off the mark. It’s not about condition damage, it’s about the enemies that we fight in PvE that makes condition damage bad. Change the enemy mechanics, and you’ll improve the functionality of condition damage – because it’s good enough, there’s no need to buff condition damage on the sole needs of PvE when a more ideal solution is improving encounters.

i’m like all around player, i do WvW PvP and PvE(mostly speed runs dung), but 1 thing i always thought of a good idea in PvE only was, some condition should do more damage versus a specific monster likes weakness in Pokémon, example against mordrem burn would do 25% more damage ( cuz plants) and versus humans varrying armor & size bleeding would do X% more damage

DemonforLife.8546:

Cuddy.6247:

DemonforLife.8546:

i’m gonna explain it to you real easely, this game’s balance is based around PvP, where condition damage is on a very good spot

Yeah, condition damage is good in this game. I think the OP is just way off the mark. It’s not about condition damage, it’s about the enemies that we fight in PvE that makes condition damage bad. Change the enemy mechanics, and you’ll improve the functionality of condition damage – because it’s good enough, there’s no need to buff condition damage on the sole needs of PvE when a more ideal solution is improving encounters.

i’m like all around player, i do WvW PvP and PvE(mostly speed runs dung), but 1 thing i always thought of a good idea in PvE only was, some condition should do more damage versus a specific monster likes weakness in Pokémon, example against mordrem burn would do 25% more damage ( cuz plants) and versus humans varrying armor & size bleeding would do X% more damage

Yeah, that existed in GW1 and I’m amazed it didn’t carry over. Ghosts would be immune to poison/bleeding effects since they aren’t fleshy, but take double…maybe even triple damage from burning? I don’t see why not. It would completely change the way you approach the game if every ele camped fire scepter to do TA or something due to the enemy encounters.

It’s such a common strengths/weaknesses concept found in other games too I hardly think that ANet would be alienating any significant chunk of a playerbase by giving enemy types strengths or weaknesses.

Likewise a skale could have burning duration reduced by half, but take more damage to bleeds. Something like Centaur or Inquest would be pretty normal and not have any changes. It would just, in general, change the way some content is approached which is a good step forward. Enemy composition and encounter design are going to effect the way the game is played much, much, much, much more than just skill effects.

Reminds me slightly of Sever Artery in GW1. A good skill, but any warrior taking it into SoO should change it or be kicked. It’d really be nice to have combat options like that where you can think about what dungeon you’re running and switch your traits and weapons to match.

Also condition builds need condition duration which might inpact choice of weapon and runes/sigils. Least the PvE ones.

pretty good summary OP, it’s well thought out – the point about the ramp up time sounds about right too.

I would argue the importance of the cap though. the cap stops condition damage players from working well as a group, and while I understand that a balanced mix is always nice, no other builds suffer this issue. as a condition damage builder, I stop contributing much once there’s one or two other condition characters around, which is a mild pain in dungeons, and a constant headache in group events.

I feel like condition damage is only good in a very narrow space:

Weak Monsters – about as effective as pure damage, but slower (ramp up time etc)
Medium Monsters – relatively decent, but still not as quick or effective as pure damage.
Strong Monsters – assuming there are other condition users about (and there usually are) you might as well be throwing rocks.

the only place I’ve heard of Conditions winning out is against high toughness monsters, and they don’t seem to be widespread enough to balance it all out.

Well done, hybrid.

Dramen Maidria.1034:

Condition builds usually also depend on a significant amount of their damage from conditions applied by critical hits, so precision actually does matter.

Not all classes or specs. I.e. thieves doesn’t care of power or precision in condi builds.

SilverWF.4789:

Anyway, they need to remake stacking system for conditions
If player have more than 1400+ condition damage – his conditions must have highest priority.
For example, Bleed. If target already have 25 bleed stacks and recieving new stack: if from true conditioner – it will be placed instead of stack from another player. If player not conditioner – his new bleed stack will be ignored and no placed.
Burning. New stack of Burning from high condi player will be placed at first place in the burning ticks queue and will tick 1st. New stacks of burning from low condi players will be placed to the end of queue

Just to remember my suggestion. I think it will be the best way to fix condi specs in PvE.
Cos now it’s pretty stupid, now it’s like the “every monster can receive only 25 hits of direct damage per second”

I have to say one thing I would like as far as conditions go is the ability to further “specialize” into each classes specific condition. We have two cases of this already. With the ranger and guardian being able to buff there poison and burning respectively. Not to mention the ever popular terror for necros

Id like to see these things spread to other classes and even become amplified for class specific conditions.

For example a specialized poison rangers poison no longer being able to be fully cleared. If each condi cleanse applied to it merely cut it in half or took a flat 5-10 seconds off its overall duration.

So a ranger relying on poison primarily would be able to maintain it against his opponents. Or if a burn guardians burning stripped a boon whenever it was cleansed. Or a mesmer who used a potential new trait to spec heavily into confusion no longer had a duration on his specific confusion stacks. With them only dissapearing when consumed by an attack or cleansed off. Or a warriors bleed having a unique effect when the warrior attacked such as applying a stack of vuln or might when the warrior hit a target with his bleed active.

I feel giving each specialization of conditions a unique effect and role would go quite a ways to making them more versatile and useable.

Were already heading that way. A Hybrid guards burning will almost always be the one with priority. Same with a poison ranger. I’d like to see that take its full effect in this game at some point.

Faux.1937:

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.

This unreasonable expectation is the reason there is even a meta for this game. Faux’s attitude isn’t even extreme by this game’s standards, but as a long-time WoW player I’m amazed that it’s so prevalent. In WoW a 5 minute queue just to get into an instance was amazing. After that, with a decent group you could expect a quick 20 minute run. 45 minutes to an hour wasn’t entirely unexpected. When Cataclysm first dropped, completing a dungeon at all without swapping out members every fight was considered an accomplishment. Under the LFR system, a 45 minute run is considered pretty efficient. I remember spending 4 hours at a time in LFR trying to grind out gear when new raids dropped.

The fact that players still find a situation in which non-optimal pugs can complete runs in about 20 minutes to be unacceptable is astounding. Back in the day, I remember a MMO fan who facetiously created a browser-based game in which your character was granted gear for simply repeatedly clicking a single button as fast as possible. I’m beginning to think that even this wouldn’t satisfy some players.

This is honestly why I think that vertical gear progression is so bad for the game. In GW1 we ascended through the storyline and were instantly awarded our ultimate end-game gear. After that we could enjoy new skins and/or achievements to our hearts’ content. I spent many an hour in the Underworld and/or the deeps just happy to participate in content that required serious coordination and/or know-how simply to complete. I don’t remember anyone ever complaining that class X simply wasn’t putting out enough damage to take down boss Y in 30 seconds. We were just glad to get the horsemen down without a full wipe. On the other hand, those who were simply in it for the phat lootz had the option to spec smite monk and repeatedly solo the first portion of underworld for their ludicrous greens. They could live in their elite world of loot while the rest of us enjoyed our slow-paced albeit challenging content without being ostracized for failing to kill all bosses in under a minute. The game felt like an adventure rather than like a box to tick off the to-do list before the night’s end.

To the op: well thought and put, but i have some issues with this:

Direct damage requires 3stats to work: power, ferocity and crit rate. Meanwhile, condition requires only condi damage or damage plus duration.

So pure condition builds can get a defensive stat, with no tradeoff (well, right now there is the trade off of poor damage and zero damage against objects)

Pure condition should never output the same damage as a glass cannon. They should, at best, be able to sustain a decent damage whereas a glass cannon should worry about surviving and stop damage. The problem with that scenario, is that fights end so quickly that theres no need to avoid damage, so no use for condis in pve.

Hybrid builds are another beast. They are glass cannons, and dont have damage comparable to direct damage builds. I think it’s hybrids that need to be balanced against zerker, and some of the things you propose, like shorter duration of condis, put hybrids in an even tougher position.

@Bernie

The speedrunning attitude has become widespread and common simply because content has stagnated. And nothing new has come along. GW1 did have speedruns and so on but it also had huge expansions which included new elite areas, hard mode, new missions and dungeons. So the majority of players had plenty of new things to do and never made the switch to turning into speedrunners.

If anet actually released new fractals, new dungeons and elite zones like underworld and FoW every now and again we probably wouldnt have such a huge amount of players demanding specific requirements in dungeons. The speedrunning community would of remained small and relatively low profile. People get bored when no new major endgame content is introduced. So unfortunately, or fortunately, they find new ways to make the old content fun. That often leads to speedrunning or soloing. Contrary to belief most speedrunners dont speedrun for loot, they do it for fun. But obviously loot incentivises them further.

Bernie.8674:

Faux.1937:

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.

This unreasonable expectation is the reason there is even a meta for this game. Faux’s attitude isn’t even extreme by this game’s standards, but as a long-time WoW player I’m amazed that it’s so prevalent. In WoW a 5 minute queue just to get into an instance was amazing. After that, with a decent group you could expect a quick 20 minute run. 45 minutes to an hour wasn’t entirely unexpected. When Cataclysm first dropped, completing a dungeon at all without swapping out members every fight was considered an accomplishment. Under the LFR system, a 45 minute run is considered pretty efficient. I remember spending 4 hours at a time in LFR trying to grind out gear when new raids dropped.

The fact that players still find a situation in which non-optimal pugs can complete runs in about 20 minutes to be unacceptable is astounding. Back in the day, I remember a MMO fan who facetiously created a browser-based game in which your character was granted gear for simply repeatedly clicking a single button as fast as possible. I’m beginning to think that even this wouldn’t satisfy some players.

This is honestly why I think that vertical gear progression is so bad for the game. In GW1 we ascended through the storyline and were instantly awarded our ultimate end-game gear. After that we could enjoy new skins and/or achievements to our hearts’ content. I spent many an hour in the Underworld and/or the deeps just happy to participate in content that required serious coordination and/or know-how simply to complete. I don’t remember anyone ever complaining that class X simply wasn’t putting out enough damage to take down boss Y in 30 seconds. We were just glad to get the horsemen down without a full wipe. On the other hand, those who were simply in it for the phat lootz had the option to spec smite monk and repeatedly solo the first portion of underworld for their ludicrous greens. They could live in their elite world of loot while the rest of us enjoyed our slow-paced albeit challenging content without being ostracized for failing to kill all bosses in under a minute. The game felt like an adventure rather than like a box to tick off the to-do list before the night’s end.

Because once players “get good” and learn to get rewards fast and manage to do it there’s really no coming back. There’s no “off” switch once you realize how easy you can make things for yourself.

I remember GW1 – the first time i ran FOW it was a magical adventure that took about 3 hours to complete with a full party of guildies. We had a tough time came close to wiping a few times, we got decent loot and ultimately it did feel like a good run.

Then I started to do FOWSC. Those 3 hours became 22-25 minutes. Same rewards, same completion and a huge time difference.

I could never go back to doing FOW the normal way again. Because it simply didn’t feel great doing it like that again.

I remember GW2’s dungeons in the early months. A run without wipes was considered great. In time I got better, others got better and overall the runs got better.

I can’t accept wiping on the COF P1 1st champion. Simply can’t go back to that.

The norm changes as each player gets better and as the players around him get better.

What was considered good 2 years ago is something people don’t even want to see anymore today. And that’s normal.
I don’t see anybody wanting to have a phone that was as good as the ones that came out 2 years ago. Nobody wants an old car, nobody wants a PC that’s not top notch.

People live in there here and now and will always, always want more.

If this game offered a “loot mode” for dungeons perhaps the people who are feeling “pressured” to perform wouldn’t feel such a strain from the community but they would also flood the forums with QQ going " that guy is making so much more cash than I am".

Aenesthesia.1697:

To the op: well thought and put, but i have some issues with this:

Direct damage requires 3stats to work: power, ferocity and crit rate. Meanwhile, condition requires only condi damage or damage plus duration.

So pure condition builds can get a defensive stat, with no tradeoff (well, right now there is the trade off of poor damage and zero damage against objects)

Pure condition should never output the same damage as a glass cannon. They should, at best, be able to sustain a decent damage whereas a glass cannon should worry about surviving and stop damage. The problem with that scenario, is that fights end so quickly that theres no need to avoid damage, so no use for condis in pve.

Hybrid builds are another beast. They are glass cannons, and dont have damage comparable to direct damage builds. I think it’s hybrids that need to be balanced against zerker, and some of the things you propose, like shorter duration of condis, put hybrids in an even tougher position.

The op isnt really saying rabid, carrion or dire builds should do the same or more as glass builds. Hes saying that glass condi builds should do more or the same. So that means sinister and rampager. Which in a way you could say they are hybrid sets. But for a class like necro the condi weapon does not do both good direct damage and condi damage even with sinister. So its not a true hybrid. There is no such thing as a pure condi build when you consider this. Because there are no builds which do condition damage without doing direct damage.

tl;dr
All condition builds are techniquely hybrids. The op is only suggesting glass condi builds should do more damage than glass power builds. Not that defensive condi builds should do more (they should obviously do less as they have passive defence).

spoj.9672:

So the majority of players had plenty of new things to do and never made the switch to turning into speedrunners.

This is actually true.

I started playing GW1 way after EOTN came out. I got about 4 years of GW1 before GW2 came out.
I had so much content to do and so many things ahead of me it wasn’t really until the end of all this content ( 2+ years in) that I had actually started caring about making money fast in order to get stuff.

The first 2 years I spent just exploring and taking in the world – but there was such a wealth of content to be played that I honestly felt like every single day would bring something new – and it did.

There was so much stuff to do that when they first announced there would be a GW2 I feared I wouldn’t have time to experience all there was to experience in GW1.

The problem with GW2 is that there’s very little content and a lot of it has very little replay value.
People end up having to grind because there’s nothing else to do really. You go for the high-end cosmetics ( and need lots of cash) or just have nothing to do.

Given how things are now, I would suggest the single most important move to be made is to rethink the vitality/toughness of all PvE mobs. Like its been mentioned countless times, this causes them to behave more like Players in terms of damage mitigation.

For direct damage this eventually has a zero sum impact, since the basic damage formula is still damage\armor. This change doesn’t change the effective HP of mobs for direct damage, but now allows DoT/DPS of conditions to actually mean something.

However, I see a different flaw in the concept of condition damage as a personal stat, and how its the root of stack limit being a problem.

With the Linear stat system, I’m heavily reconsidering the old degen system in GW1 as a way to approach the condition problems in GW2. Refocus them as pressure attacks, and redesign the skills and traits to use conditions as setups for other effects or damage. In short, ditch Condition damage as a stat. This would uniformly solve 2 massive problems..

1. Stack overrides no longer matter since the damage rates are fixed, or instead scaled against the target. Also better leverages toughness as a mob theme.

2. Condition builds won’t be forced to do tall AND wide stacks of conditions to meet a design target DPS.

Condition builds use a wider range of conditions that can synergize off each other, achieving its DPS horizontally while setting up for focused damage builds. It also makes hybrid condition/direct builds more sensible for solo work, and pure condition spam becomes an offensive team support role (easier to design around as well).

Focused damage builds capitalize on specific conditions as a trigger for traits or skills. The idea is a flat conditional for some kind of bonus effect or damage, including the ability to increase intensity for conditions they don’t normally use.

General Support’s role doesn’t change at all.

*To help facilitate this, a very simple rework of conditions stacking would need to be done. *

- 1 Stack, per condition, per source, and applications stack or refresh duration for that source. It may help to have generally short durations, or add a hard cap to a max duration (per stack) for damage focused conditions.

- Multiple sources results in increased intensity. Because of this, kicking stacks doesn’t reduce the effectiveness of the condition, and large targets can reasonably handle more stacks from many sources.

- As an added benefit to the new source/stack setup, you can also set a universal concept of “Deep Wounds” when Bleed reaches its stack cap. This gives small bonus damage to new bleed attacks rather then FIFO the bleed stacks.

- Conditions that stack duration continue to do so, but can use intensity to lead into a hard control. This idea is still fuzzy, but the gist that if enough of a duration condition is piled up on a target, it triggers a control condition. Chilled = Frozen, Immobilized = Stun, Weakness = Dazed, Cripple = Knock down, etc. Its mainly geared toward dealing with defiance stacks, alongside another idea of making defiance more champ specific to expose weakness when striped.

If my brain isn’t fried from it being so early, the net result from this is that most conditions, condition builds, and mob stats can be rebalanced around small group. For large groups and open world, where stack capping will be common, we convert excessive condition stacks into raw damage, and redo defiance so they are specific to each type Champ. It doesn’t disrupt the current flow in direct damage builds, improves small group dynamics, adds viability to the condition builds in PvE, and make champs slightly more interesting with a weak spot.

The only upset would be how sPvP likes to see condition builds. On one hand, condition builds become more hybrid by nature, on the other it also means most builds will be using them effectively.

Its simple, some enemies have higher toughness + low vitality, some enemies have high vitality + low toughness.

There is no nerf to berserker. This just gives condi builds a purpose, to kill enemies quickly with high toughness + low vitality. Zerker kills enemies with high vitality + low toughness more quickly than condi builds can.

That, or we ignore fixing condi builds altogether. Because either Condi builds be useless or become the new meta. Or we can stop thinking up complex features that won’t work and go with the high toughness + low vitality, which will let zerker and condi builds stand side by side as equals.

With regards to Boss fights and the suggestion that conditions be uncapped on them, instead of just a flat no cap limit perhaps a “cap release” mechanism could serve as an alternative.

Open world bosses already have defiance which scale with the number of players. At the moment, all that stops is the boss being chain CC’d, which is fine, but otherwise all it is, is an inconvenience because CC skills aren’t much use in open world PVE anyway.

However, if it were made such that every stack of defiance removed increased the condition cap by, say, 5 stacks this quickly opens up a new avenue for cooperation in large group content. Of course, that leads to the problem that defiance stacks tick back up when a CC is used. That would result in the boss fight being just a battle of how fast players can use their CC’s off cool down and the condition stacks being reset all the time. Not to mention the load on the servers when 70-odd players remove the 70 stacks of defiance and the boss can now eat +350 stacks of conditions. This hasn’t even considered the server load, which would be enormous.

To balance that out, Defiance could be reworked into a regenerating stack. By which I mean, the boss starts off with a certain number of stacks dependent on the number of players in the fight. This stack regenerates at a fixed which players have to remove much like Tequatl’s hardened scales buff. Each stack requires a CC to remove as now and grants an extra 5 stacks of conditions. To prevent condition overload on the servers, the regen could be made fast enough to limit the additional condition stacks to, say, +15 stacks (to begin with).

The reason why I think about it this way is that a large majority of bosses cannot be knocked down, knocked back, stunned, petrified or immobilised even when their defiance is removed so there is no real need to remove those stacks.

I think even with the suggested changes there needs to be a wider selection of conditions for people to use. And Arena Net is going to have to split PvP and PvE further eventually. Look at GW1? The AI had far more similarities to players then the AI in GW2 does. And it proved to be too detrimental to the game for arena net not to do major splits in skills. Ever single Binding Ritual for example all had different cast times between them. Usually 3-5 seconds for PvP and 3/4-1 seconds for PvE. Fighting a player in GW2 is worlds different then fighting an NPC. While in GW1 I’ve fought NPCs with fewer skills and less health that were harder then some players.

Lily.1935:

I think even with the suggested changes there needs to be a wider selection of conditions for people to use. And Arena Net is going to have to split PvP and PvE further eventually. Look at GW1? The AI had far more similarities to players then the AI in GW2 does. And it proved to be too detrimental to the game for arena net not to do major splits in skills. Ever single Binding Ritual for example all had different cast times between them. Usually 3-5 seconds for PvP and 3/4-1 seconds for PvE. Fighting a player in GW2 is worlds different then fighting an NPC. While in GW1 I’ve fought NPCs with fewer skills and less health that were harder then some players.

Splitting pvp and pve is impossible without destructively removing content. It wont happen.

And the condition cap issue can be solved far more easily than people realize. First of all, front-load the damage calculation instead of doing it “live.” If I’ve got 25 might and stacks of corruption, each stack of bleed I do is going to inflict 500 damage a second after I apply them, whether or not I get downed the second after applying them or lose might. The other end is that if I apply bleeds and THEN gain might, the damage does not increase for existing stacks. The disparity in damage is negligible barring evidence from Anet in favor of reducing server load by as much as 98% (if my tired brain math is right) for skills like Blood is Power.

Second, dont blithely overwrite stacks.

• If there’s less than X condition stacks, apply the condition.
• If any condition stacks are at less than 10% duration (or 1 second minimum), overwrite THAT stack with the incoming condition.
• If any condition stacks are at greater than 10%/1 sec duration, overwrite that stack with the incoming condition ONLY if the incoming condition has greater damage..
  *IE 24 stacks of bleed allows you to apply stack 25. 25 stacks of bleed allows you to apply a stack of bleed and replace any stack under 10% duration or 1 second remaining (1 second left on stack A, incoming stack B has 2+ second duration). It also allows you to apply a stack of bleed and replace the lowest value stack of bleed if your inflicted damage has a greater damage value (stack A has 5 seconds @100 left, incoming stack B has 20 seconds @500).

First of all- thumps up for your effort. I brought that topic up the table about a year ago myself with some ideas for improving cond.dmg in PvE without touching PvP balance and I really do think that with the new sinister stat combo the discussion should live up again!
Since I still think my old suggestion (give PvE mobs a permanent “buff” like Defiance, making them more vulnerable to cond.dmg) would solve some of the current issues, I want to add something about the recent changes in PvE mob design and how it affects the cond.dmg issue:
Silverwaste brought up some new enemies with new abilities and behaviour, including the before mentioned Husks. The idea behind those Husks apparently was to give players with a cond.dmg build&equipment a task to shine at.
So I took my beloved Necromancer (yepp, I still consider him my main, though I rarely take him out into dungeons/fotm), traited him for cnd.dmg and put on my fancy cond.dmg gear (weapons scepter+dagger/ staff) and started hunting Husks. So, let’s see what happened:
- Husks went down really nice
- could survive quite well since most mobs are silver or below, making them susceptible to CC
- support other players dealing with big groups by picking out one target (preferably with some conditions on it already), ramping up some conditions and then spreading them with epidemic
But still I ran in the old “the more players, the more conditions, the less damage your conditions do”, often ending up having my bleeds tick for hilarious ~1k, when they could hit for 4k if only all my bleeds would be counted. Adding other conditions and the pitty direct dmg my dps was still laughable.
So I went to the changing room, re-speced to a direct dmg build (DS build, 62006), put my fancy zerker gear on and got back to the fighting. And what can I say? Everything died faster (and such being less a threat to our forts and caravans) than it did with my cond. dmg spec. Everything? Unfortunatly- yes, everything. Even the Husks. Pack some vuln on them and then crit the kitten out of them and they still die faster than they do from cnd. dmg.

So no matter if one (fully or partially) agrees with OP’s statement and suggestions or not- there is something dead wrong regarding cond.dmg in PvE and A.Net really should take care of it.

Nash.2681:

First of all- thumps up for your effort. I brought that topic up the table about a year ago myself with some ideas for improving cond.dmg in PvE without touching PvP balance and I really do think that with the new sinister stat combo the discussion should live up again!
Since I still think my old suggestion (give PvE mobs a permanent “buff” like Defiance, making them more vulnerable to cond.dmg) would solve some of the current issues, I want to add something about the recent changes in PvE mob design and how it affects the cond.dmg issue:
Silverwaste brought up some new enemies with new abilities and behaviour, including the before mentioned Husks. The idea behind those Husks apparently was to give players with a cond.dmg build&equipment a task to shine at.
So I took my beloved Necromancer (yepp, I still consider him my main, though I rarely take him out into dungeons/fotm), traited him for cnd.dmg and put on my fancy cond.dmg gear (weapons scepter+dagger/ staff) and started hunting Husks. So, let’s see what happened:
- Husks went down really nice
- could survive quite well since most mobs are silver or below, making them susceptible to CC
- support other players dealing with big groups by picking out one target (preferably with some conditions on it already), ramping up some conditions and then spreading them with epidemic
But still I ran in the old “the more players, the more conditions, the less damage your conditions do”, often ending up having my bleeds tick for hilarious ~1k, when they could hit for 4k if only all my bleeds would be counted. Adding other conditions and the pitty direct dmg my dps was still laughable.
So I went to the changing room, re-speced to a direct dmg build (DS build, 62006), put my fancy zerker gear on and got back to the fighting. And what can I say? Everything died faster (and such being less a threat to our forts and caravans) than it did with my cond. dmg spec. Everything? Unfortunatly- yes, everything. Even the Husks. Pack some vuln on them and then crit the kitten out of them and they still die faster than they do from cnd. dmg.

So no matter if one (fully or partially) agrees with OP’s statement and suggestions or not- there is something dead wrong regarding cond.dmg in PvE and A.Net really should take care of it.

Well they tend to die fairly fast with fire, bleeds and torment. faster then with most GS slashers. And you can disengage ewhen there is only 40% life left as the condi’s will eat them allowing you to run to the next (unless there’s menders swarming around)

Exp: SS/LB Sinister warrior, (rampagers weapon/back) 2/6/0/4/2
(66% crit base, 86% with fury 96% on S/S, 96%/100% on burst. 1380 condi dmg, 2200 power, 50% conidtion duration from food (veggie piza and toxic sharp) with 25 might, empower allies and banner, 2400 condition damage, 3400 power) direct damage attacks S#3/#4, LB #3 to keep up might. (generally 2000+ condition dmg, 3000+ power from ~10-15 (max 21) selfstack)

Problem remains: if you have full buff and you are hitting a husk and 2 GS warriors come , your dmg is gone, no 5000 dmg /tick worth of conditions but 1500 maybe.
All lovely empty or low end conditions. Mostly ~600 condition damage. From 10 might from GS and FGJ, no duration as well, overwriting my 24 second bleeds with 2 or 3 second bleeds.

Also nice things are: people stealing my Strength banner… 0.0

Should really hear anet’s idea on fixing condition damage in pve now that an expansion to the game is coming, this isn’t something i think masteries is going to fix now. Or is it?

I really like this post, I’m a huge advocate of build diversity (which pve lacks in nearly every regard). And as for people saying that changes to condition damage for pve might ruin pvp, you should go back and read the last patch. Confusion now does 33% more damage IN PVE ONLY. Obviously they can make changes exclusively to pve, so why not go the rest of the way and make these condi changes for pve only?

Bumping for red post hopefully. Would love to hear something about this?

so short and sweet

condition dmg = SPVP / TPVP / WvWvW

direct dmg = PVE

problem has been solved good day everyone

krixis.9538:

Condition damage = SPVP / TPVP / WvWvW

Direct damage = PVE

Problem has been solved described. Good day, everyone.

FTFY
A lot.

Rauderi.8706:

krixis.9538:

Condition damage = SPVP / TPVP / WvWvW

Direct damage = PVE

Problem has been solved described. Good day, everyone.

FTFY
A lot.

lol, exactly :P there’s a problem with the fact that condi damage is useless in pve, let’s not try to overlook that.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Also, conditions need to work on objects.

While I do agree that conditions need to be made useful somehow against objects, I have it isn’t a case where they just make them work as they do against enemies. Seems silly if I can make a door bleed.

Well i do not care about a door not being able to bleed, but I could make it weak or on fire. (vulnerable, wait that would be DPS as well)
All adding to dps of the few weaker DPS skills…. left to condi builds.

I’m not saying it’s a 100% balancer, but one thing to remember about condition damage is that it isn’t interrupted from moving and dodging.

The thing with condition damage is that it’s very situational. In most situations it’s weaker than direct damage, but there are occasions when it shines – typically when you are alone and fighting groups or when you are fighting something particularly tough in PvE.

They definitely need to work on it so that it can be more useful in more situations, for sure.

Capitol City.4856:

Rauderi.8706:

krixis.9538:

Condition damage = SPVP / TPVP / WvWvW

Direct damage = PVE

Problem has been solved described. Good day, everyone.

FTFY
A lot.

lol, exactly :P there’s a problem with the fact that condi damage is useless in pve, let’s not try to overlook that.

Problem is the condition dmg in PvE is not implemented with more then 3-5 ppl in mind and we see zergs of 100 ppl hitting on bosses. Condition damage could and should be better only the implementation as is is just…… mèèèeeeh….

generally DOT build should outperform DPS build after 10-15 seconds in raw damage. this cannot be achieved: showing DOT is much to weak in the first place in GW2.

generally DOT builds are an important factor in game mechanics. I’d be able to do a 40 second bleed on mai- trin before a wipe, we could respawn and reenter the boss room and continue….

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Problem is the condition dmg in PvE is not implemented with more then 3-5 ppl in mind and we see zergs of 100 ppl hitting on bosses. Condition damage could and should be better only the implementation as is is just…… mèèèeeeh….

generally DOT build should outperform DPS build after 10-15 seconds in raw damage. this cannot be achieved: showing DOT is much to weak in the first place in GW2.

generally DOT builds are an important factor in game mechanics. I’d be able to do a 40 second bleed on mai- trin before a wipe, we could respawn and reenter the boss room and continue….

Fully agree that conditions need a huge overhaul. Out of some of the theory-crafting from other players, they also seem to think the actual output is lower than Pow/Crit stacking. Could be that Condition Damage needs to be tuned up, and most importantly, condition stacks being handled in a way that doesn’t penalize multiple condition-build users.

Conditions are in essence tuned towards melting SPVP bunkers without overloading the pr instance server cpu budget. End result is that they break badly when faced with the walking health walls that are PVE bosses (or anything aimed at taking on several characters at once). Basically, PVE mobs do not play by PVP rules. And thus the PVP balanced combat mechanics are thrown out of alignment.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Capitol City.4856:

Rauderi.8706:

krixis.9538:

Condition damage = SPVP / TPVP / WvWvW

Direct damage = PVE

Problem has been solved described. Good day, everyone.

FTFY
A lot.

lol, exactly :P there’s a problem with the fact that condi damage is useless in pve, let’s not try to overlook that.

Problem is the condition dmg in PvE is not implemented with more then 3-5 ppl in mind and we see zergs of 100 ppl hitting on bosses. Condition damage could and should be better only the implementation as is is just…… mèèèeeeh….

generally DOT build should outperform DPS build after 10-15 seconds in raw damage. this cannot be achieved: showing DOT is much to weak in the first place in GW2.

generally DOT builds are an important factor in game mechanics. I’d be able to do a 40 second bleed on mai- trin before a wipe, we could respawn and reenter the boss room and continue….

(Note the bolded above)

Honestly not even that many. The fact that I can stack well over half the possible bleed stacks with my power based Engi and Mesmer just really screws over anyone actually trying to build for condi. If i were to go full condi, then yeah I can cap bleeds on mesmer, as can other professions.

When 1 person can cap out a condition… it’s a problem.