Guild Wars 2

GW2- Arenanet looking into condition caps FEB 25th
http://dulfy.net/2013/02/25/gw2-arenanet-looking-into-condition-caps/

Is this still being looked into? Way back we had some replies on this issue but since then no change has been made; this makes a lot of builds if not whole classes (yes I am looking at you my beloved necro main) completely worthless in PvE especially in dungeons.

(please don’t tell me that a power necro is viable; 1. it’s nowhere near mesmers/warriors and I am not just talking about dps even though that seems to be the only thing that matters to anyone nowadays 2. I have been kicked from groups just for being a necro thankfully I can do dungeons with my guild even though I kinda feel behind all the warrior dps and guardian support/utility)

Also this isn’t a thread about buffing necro or nerfing anyone else it is about an old problem with condition stacks and when I last checked every class uses conditions in one way or the other so don’t be hostile, there is already enough hate, rot and bile on these forums.

/I am not a native English speaker so please pardon any mistakes I may have made/

I don’t think this is a quick fix issue. Its a technical issue – something to do with bandwidth? Sorry tech stuff lost on me utterly. There’s ongoing work I believe on optimising and improvements. I guess when that technical stuff is done, that will pave the way for a future fix..maybe.

That is why I revisited this issue four months after it has been said that it’s being looked into hoping it could get enough attention to attract a dev.

On other note since the so called end-game pve content according to this forum seems to be about "Are you mesmer/warr/guardian? … No? … Then get out! " shouldn’t there be some changes in PvE class balance. I am constantly reading about this new trinity and calling the rest the low-tier classes.

Are there people like me who don’t like this? I know that it is a discrimination from players but I am pretty sure that the hardcore dungeon crawlers would use other classes if they were comparable by design.

I don’t remember the sequence but they’ve also mentioned that it is likely to stay. Possibly in one of the SotG. They might increase the cap. Although in that case they are likely to lower the damage per stack but your potential damage should still be higher. Similar example of this is when they lowered grenade damage when kits were made to be able to work with sigils.

I think bringing back the Deep Wound(decrease max HP by 20%, reduce healing by 20%) condition from GW1 might be more interesting. Something like if applying a theorectical 26th stack of bleed it applies a stack of Deep Wound instead.

Now for the flamey part I guess. So from my reading of your two posts, the necromancer class has absolutely NOTHING to offer besides dealing damage? I certainly don’t think that is true but the problem is that PvE content provides very few(almost none) opportunities for this. Then there are the stupid things like not being able to interact/res people in DS(haven’t tried in a while, maybe different now). Those sort of things do not require doing anything with condition caps but they are also harder to implement/balance. They also make things more interesting beyond “MOAR DDDDPPPSSS!!!!!”.

Yep I have read something about deep wound here on the forums, sounds cool but it comes down to the fact that every condition is tracked to a player, is modified by traits and stats and of course he gets credit for it with deep wound that would be difficult but I think that in dungeons that would generally work.

I’m no expert on this, but couldn’t you just increase the duration to compensate after 25 stacks?

Deep Wound should be similar to Vulnerability. There isn’t any need to track per player, it would be something that stacks in duration. Pretty much the same as how burning/vulnerability/poison work. In fact half the effect is shared with poison already. Certain encounters would need tweaking like Lupicus’ phase 1.

Doomdesire.9365:

I’m no expert on this, but couldn’t you just increase the duration to compensate after 25 stacks?

Duration of which condition?

Khisanth.2948:

Now for the flamey part I guess. So from my reading of your two posts, the necromancer class has absolutely NOTHING to offer besides dealing damage? I certainly don’t think that is true but the problem is that PvE content provides very few(almost none) opportunities for this. Then there are the stupid things like not being able to interact/res people in DS(haven’t tried in a while, maybe different now). Those sort of things do not require doing anything with condition caps but they are also harder to implement/balance. They also make things more interesting beyond “MOAR DDDDPPPSSS!!!!!”.

If it sounded like I was just asking for more dmg I worded it wrong. What I meant is that there is not much use for necro and probably other classes since either most bosses are effectively immune to some effects (fear, knockdown, knockback or other means of moving the boss, and so on, due to how defiance works, this prevents stunlocking, but also greatly hinders control of some classes when reflecting projectiles and block work much better as control or dmg mitigation abilities, which is why mesmers and guardians are very popular, then there is the survivability, dps and banner support from warriors. It’s noteworthy that some encounters have a lot of adds and AoE is needed this is where ele and necro shine, ele being the more popular, but there is great utility in necro’s AoE fear and blindness from plague form, but none of that is actually really needed because in most add encounters (that you can’t skip) high AoE dps is enough and greatswords on both warrior and guardian are great for that. I would say that the main problem probably is in the design of the encounters (for example a lot of bosses have slow high dmging attacks which are perfectly countered by block, but if they were fast low dmg, block would be useless and weakness with chilled conditions would be great). Put simply in most situations in GW2 PvE offense is the best defense and bringing down the boss fast is better than controlling him.

I’m not saying" give my necro dps similar to warriors " I am saying make me a worthy class in dungeons by class or boss encounter mechanics.

(no you still can’t ress while in DS but that is probably intended to make you vulnerable while reviving)
BTW there is a pretty cool necro dungeon build revolving around supporting with wells, which I might try with some guildies

Still this thread was about condition stacks which would help with some of these problems.

Doomdesire.9365:

I’m no expert on this, but couldn’t you just increase the duration to compensate after 25 stacks?

Unfortunately that wouldn’t solve much since often if there is even more than 1 person with condition based build there are 25 stacks of bleed 95% of the boss fight this change would make that 100% but a lot of that dmg would still go to waste, meaning that those two people would dwarf each others dps quite a bit, some people may not see the problem there but consider if 2 melee warriors would deal about two thirds of their potential dmg when they attack the same target. And the more people inflict condition the more dmg they steal from each other making them contributing less to the group.

Zelothe.9234:

Still this thread was about condition stacks which would help with some of these problems.

I can pretty much agree with the rest but increasing condition stacks is a bandaid solution to the design problems. That just increases damage. That doesn’t address things like mobs being immune to some/all conditions. Are there equivalent mobs which are also immune to direct damage? Yes but most if not all are also immune to conditions(or application of conditions) at the same time. Condition caps are irrelevant when your target is completely immune to conditions.

Edit: The other problems is that there are almost non-existent PvE content which makes use of things like boon removal/corruption. It seems they are moved a bit towards that with Southsun but on the other hand they have gone a bit overboard with giving them too many boons at the same time and somewhat trivialize boon removal when the enemy can spam the boons anyway. Then there is the problem with adding new “conditions” to the game which doesn’t count as conditions such as the karka hatchlings being attached to you. No way to convert those pseudo conditions on your allies.

My point is that while condition cap is a problem there are even bigger problems and in my opinion addressing those would bring greater improvements to the game.

I still think adding in (if, then) effects for condition builds would add alot more play with conditions in pve. As for spvp and WvW condition dmg is king.

No mob, be it a boss, a mob, a world boss or anything else should be immune to whatever damage is generated by whatever type of build you have decided to go with. Its like offering a soldier a gun and not giving him any bullets. Its why zerker gear is worth something and no other type of armor is. Its why it is largely irrelevant what build you make…and its at least 60% of the reason the game is so kitten boring.

If I want a condition build I should be able to target 4 out of a group of 5 mobs, inflict conditions on them and watch them die…just as quickly as I take out number 4 with direct damage. Quicker in fact.

This is just not possible. Condition damage is an annoyance (at best) in PvP…and in PVE it is almost totally useless.

pricer.5091:

No mob, be it a boss, a mob, a world boss or anything else should be immune to whatever damage is generated by whatever type of build you have decided to go with.

Adaptive mob properties is something that hasn’t been done in MMOs for a long time, if ever. If the game would analyze and tailor content – especially mobs – to what classes are doing it with what kind of gear, skills and traits players have equipped, the experience would improve tremendously. It would also drastically increase the replayability, especially if there is some hidden algorithm that can be changed every now and then to slightly modify AI composition and behaviour.

Oh well, maybe the next big MMO in 2018 will be able to do that.

Jski.6180:

I still think adding in (if, then) effects for condition builds would add alot more play with conditions in pve. As for spvp and WvW condition dmg is king.

I am not exactly sure what you mean if you mean more skill synergy as in if target is chilled then you also gain 5 stacks of might for 10 seconds. Then I can assure you that there are skills that work around a similar concept, e.g. necro sceptre 3 skill does dmg based on the number of conditions on target, you have a lot of moving conditions around from your allies to you then to the enemy and so on, the biggest problem in my eyes and probably the easiest to remedy without reworking a lot of skills / then balancing other skills and so on, is the condition cap in PvE, that is mainly dungeons and world group events that require some active participation (not just a big dragon who is basically a loot piñata that takes 5 minutes to smash…no pun on the current event)

pricer.5091:

…and in PVE it is almost totally useless.

I wouldn’t say totally useless (in dungeons), condition based builds(even warrior, thief or mesmer) can be awesome even in dungeons, but due to the cap they absolutely require everyone else not to use many conditions just to do the same dmg as anyone with direct dmg which makes direct dmg the safe choice(and almost always better) in every situation(even though some enemies who should be invulnerable can take dmg from conditions, e.g. story mode Canach who was easy anyway…and I haven’t heard of an exploit/feature which would use this fact in any major way)

pricer.5091:

If I want a condition build I should be able to target 4 out of a group of 5 mobs, inflict conditions on them and watch them die…just as quickly as I take out number 4 with direct damage. Quicker in fact.

Melting huge packs of monsters/adds in dungeon/players in WvW with Epidemic is strangely satisfying (more so than the same dmg in a straight up direct dmg AoE). Which is one of the reasons I love condition based dmg.

In response to ASB.4295 Guild Wars’s and just about any MMO’s AI is unfortunately hugely limited and I wish that one day there will be MMO AI comparable to what is in 2-4 player coop games (borderlands 1/2, diablo 3, torchlight, magicka, L4D, …) at least in dungeon encounters if not in general open world PvE and World Boss encounters (I don’t know but "aggro → attack → different attack → die or kill the player " seems kinda boring, I want to see dodging, inflicting weakness or blind or blocking when I am about to do a high dmg attack(not when it is off cooldown), but no, AI seems to react only to the players location and if he is alive or dead (and sometimes aggro switching because of toughness/ proximity / maybe dmg inflicted?)

@ Zelothe.9234
Some what like that but i was more thinking on the lines of if your target has a bleed on it then you do an aoe heal for your pt have the heal effected mainly by your condition dmg and stacks of bleed on your target. Kind of a true blood magic why would you need to only use your own why not use the blood of the thing your fighting hehe. But ya you can have it buff ppl that a realty good idea.

imo the pve in this game is just plain broken until they fix conditions. Bandwidth my kitten .

Due to the time needed to fix an actual non exploitable but gameplay hindering bug I am somewhat sceptic as to when and if ever will we see big design changes like this even though after careful changes and a lot of testing and tweaking it might restore balance outside of PvP
(Just as a sidenote have you ever seen this armour set outside of PvP? http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Masquerade_armor Well, of course you didn’t since it has been PvP only since launch…why? Nobody knows. There are several threads about it on the forums with no response from the devs(unless I am terrible at searching. How hard would it be to put that skin on the WvW armour skin vendor? So it is at least obtainable if not in PvE directly)

Zelothe.9234:

Khisanth.2948:

Now for the flamey part I guess. So from my reading of your two posts, the necromancer class has absolutely NOTHING to offer besides dealing damage? I certainly don’t think that is true but the problem is that PvE content provides very few(almost none) opportunities for this. Then there are the stupid things like not being able to interact/res people in DS(haven’t tried in a while, maybe different now). Those sort of things do not require doing anything with condition caps but they are also harder to implement/balance. They also make things more interesting beyond “MOAR DDDDPPPSSS!!!!!”.

If it sounded like I was just asking for more dmg I worded it wrong. What I meant is that there is not much use for necro and probably other classes since either most bosses are effectively immune to some effects (fear, knockdown, knockback or other means of moving the boss, and so on, due to how defiance works, this prevents stunlocking, but also greatly hinders control of some classes when reflecting projectiles and block work much better as control or dmg mitigation abilities, which is why mesmers and guardians are very popular, then there is the survivability, dps and banner support from warriors. It’s noteworthy that some encounters have a lot of adds and AoE is needed this is where ele and necro shine, ele being the more popular, but there is great utility in necro’s AoE fear and blindness from plague form, but none of that is actually really needed because in most add encounters (that you can’t skip) high AoE dps is enough and greatswords on both warrior and guardian are great for that. I would say that the main problem probably is in the design of the encounters (for example a lot of bosses have slow high dmging attacks which are perfectly countered by block, but if they were fast low dmg, block would be useless and weakness with chilled conditions would be great). Put simply in most situations in GW2 PvE offense is the best defense and bringing down the boss fast is better than controlling him.

I’m not saying" give my necro dps similar to warriors " I am saying make me a worthy class in dungeons by class or boss encounter mechanics.

(no you still can’t ress while in DS but that is probably intended to make you vulnerable while reviving)
BTW there is a pretty cool necro dungeon build revolving around supporting with wells, which I might try with some guildies

Still this thread was about condition stacks which would help with some of these problems.

Doomdesire.9365:

I’m no expert on this, but couldn’t you just increase the duration to compensate after 25 stacks?

Unfortunately that wouldn’t solve much since often if there is even more than 1 person with condition based build there are 25 stacks of bleed 95% of the boss fight this change would make that 100% but a lot of that dmg would still go to waste, meaning that those two people would dwarf each others dps quite a bit, some people may not see the problem there but consider if 2 melee warriors would deal about two thirds of their potential dmg when they attack the same target. And the more people inflict condition the more dmg they steal from each other making them contributing less to the group.

Ahh, I see what you mean there. Did not think of that.

Zelothe.9234:

Jski.6180:

I still think adding in (if, then) effects for condition builds would add alot more play with conditions in pve. As for spvp and WvW condition dmg is king.

I am not exactly sure what you mean if you mean more skill synergy as in if target is chilled then you also gain 5 stacks of might for 10 seconds. Then I can assure you that there are skills that work around a similar concept, e.g. necro sceptre 3 skill does dmg based on the number of conditions on target, you have a lot of moving conditions around from your allies to you then to the enemy and so on, the biggest problem in my eyes and probably the easiest to remedy without reworking a lot of skills / then balancing other skills and so on, is the condition cap in PvE, that is mainly dungeons and world group events that require some active participation (not just a big dragon who is basically a loot piñata that takes 5 minutes to smash…no pun on the current event)

Could be something like Searing Flames in GW1. http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Searing_Flames

There were quite a few more skills like that. I can’t really think of something similar in GW2.

I want my condition damage character to deal the same damage in a group combat (world event, PVP, dungeon, or WvWvW) that they deal when playing solo.

The condition cap ensures that if more than one condition damage character is attacking the same target, all characters see the amount of damage they do from conditions go down (because some characters conditions will not fit under the stack limit).

This has been an issue since beta. Jon Peters has twice acknowledged on these forums that it is an issue:
— --————————————————
John Peters in October: Condition damage is an issue we are looking into.
John Peters in February: Condition damage is an issue we are looking into.
Original Posts:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/No-love-for-condition-builds/page/2#
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Comfirmed-Nothing-being-done-re-conditions/page/4
— —-———————————————————————-

Nothing has been done, no plan has been announced, no timetable has been hinted at.
Nearly 11 months since launch and 1/2 of all builds have issues in group combat. Really?!?!

Sorry for the rage, but this is a core issue that affects many professions and builds, reduces build diversity, and hurts the game (assuming you like building characters within the rule set the developers have provided).

Ulari

The real point is, once again, that the manifesto statement is not accurate.

“Play your own way”. Unless that way is condition based spec in which case you better hope you aren’t in a group that is also largely condition based damage….because we limited this as yu can only have so much bandwidth.

Accuracy is important.