Guild Wars 2

First off, I get it. I’m the direct damage dealer that’s completely unaffected by this issue that leaves many players envious of the fact that I get to play the game the way I desire while being an effective group member.

This doesn’t make it O.K, and it doesn’t mean I’m O.K with it.

I want to:

• Have class diversity in my groups
• Have build diversity in my groups
• Have a group of people playing the way they want to play, and being good at it.

I don’t like being the guy who says “LF 1 Mesmer + 3 Berserker Warriors”.

Arena Net is doing little (nothing) in the way to correct this problem, and players are turning against players. Listen, I get that you’re frustrated with your class being less efficient than some others in PvE speed runs, but please don’t take this out on each other. The root cause needs to be fixed, and only Arena Net can do it.

I don’t want to be the warrior that steals the bleed slot from a condition based class.. I get your frustration and I apologize. Everyone needs to collaborate and make sure this issue is of top priority to the developers to be corrected.

Just because I myself am not directly affected, does not mean that I don’t have friends who aren’t. In addition, it’s clearly visible I am indirectly affected based on how I choose to compose my groups for maximum efficiency and seamless play.

I will continue to play my warrior and love him for the time being. However, until fundamental issues like this are corrected and there are steps taken to ensure condition (and any other!) based classes can thrive with the rest of us, I will be unable to trust the developer for helping out the community.

What are the chances that ArenaNet puts out an expansion prior to fixing this fundamental flaw? Based on the recent postings of their stance on the issue, this seems quite likely.

What are the chances that people who love their classes being based on conditions will return and make such a purchase? What are the chances that people who care about balance and diversity will?

I can’t speak for the former, but as a member of the latter I would be extremely unlikely to buy any expansions until core issues like this are resolved. I want to support your company, I want to expand the community in your game, but you have to show the community that you’re willing to return the favor.

The bottom line is, I want this game to be fun, fair and balanced for the range of classes and talents offered.

- Madawc (Gate of Madness)

That’s a lot of typing before I determined your issue was with bleed stacks.

It’s a shame this is still an issue. I can’t believe for an instant that it’s a systems/latency issue (this was ANet’s excuse) forcing them to ignore this issue. I understand it can be excessive given the scope of this game, but if it’s legitimately a technical issue, why did you make these classes to begin with?

In the short term, just give each class their own bleed. this way multiples of the same class will still have issues, but if you only bring 1 of each class, no one is stepping on anyone’s toes.

Warriors get lascerate instead of bleed.
Rogues get rupture instead of bleed.
Rangers get pierce instead of bleed.
etc etc.

Atherakhia.4086:

That’s a lot of typing before I determined your issue was with bleed stacks.

Ah yes heh, I probably should have prefaced the post with RE: Conditions or something of that nature.

While for me in particular it is bleed stacks, I’m also trying to bring awareness to the fact that even those of us who don’t play condition based classes and specs are also frustrated by this implementation and want to see it fixed before any other major commitments are made (In my example, an expansion).

This is something that a lot of people take issue with, and ANet would be fools to not recognize as an issue given the magnitude of feedback about it. That said, I’m willing to bet that there’s just no tech to support it yet, and it’s a larger time investment than just switching a number in the back-end (likely related to storage stack issues if you’re a programmer). This all said, there’s a balance issue to be taken into account if this limit were to be lifted or increased, which means the balance team needs to be involved and run a bajillion tests to make sure they don’t fry the state of the game.

This all said, I agree that this is something they need to fix. As a Necromancer player whose stacks are constantly getting lost to the limit in pretty much every dungeon run I do, I understand well and good the problem here.

How do other MMOs deal with this?

On of the major problems with this whole situation (imho) is accidental bleed/burn/poison stacks by power builds.

On my ranger, mesmer (need those clones on dodge so stuff bleeds), and thief it doesn’t matter how I gear myself I’m putting out bleeds here and there. They might be crappy 40 damage bleeds but they are going up. Unfortunately this means that whether I like it or not I’m hurting real condition build’s dps potential.

Since so many power/crit builds can throw up conditions at ~50% effectiveness compared to a full condition build without actually trying while still putting out full power/crit damage levels it means that condition builds bring even less to the party.

There’s pretty much a guaranteed net dps loss by having a condition build double the damage of your groups allotted conditions but bringing less than 50% of the dps of a power/crit build.

StevesDad.8213:

How do other MMOs deal with this?

That’s a very good question.

I know how EverQuest dealt with it back in the day. No conditions, just Damage-over-time effects which wouldn’t stack if they were of the same “spell line”. Which meant if you wanted to know what stacked you had to do a lot of research to figure out what would work.

I know Ultima Online only had poison, which would last X seconds and do X damage per tick. Most poisons past the fourth level of severity would kill you if you couldn’t insta-cure. Most monsters they needed challenging would inflict sixth level poison somehow, or do more base damage than players could have health.

Other than that, don’t know about how other MMOs would handle it. I hadn’t played enough of more recent offerings.

I run 3 characters with condition builds and I don’t have an issue with the caps.

It’s only a downside when playing in a zerg and the game isn’t(and shouldn’t) be balanced around zerg play.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

I run 3 characters with condition builds and I don’t have an issue with the caps.

It’s only a downside when playing in a zerg and the game isn’t(and shouldn’t) be balanced around zerg play.

So if it’s only a downside for one certain thing, that means that it doesn’t affect other things, right?
So what’s wrong with changing it so that one certain downside isn’t there any more, when the downside isn’t intentional?

GrandmaFunk.3052:

I run 3 characters with condition builds and I don’t have an issue with the caps.

It’s only a downside when playing in a zerg and the game isn’t(and shouldn’t) be balanced around zerg play.

I have a few characters that too deal in condi damage and, as you, they have no problem usually with the caps. However, if you run with say 4 necros and 1 mesmer your party is BADLY gimping itself over say 4 warriors and the same mesmer. Because of the simple fact that there is a cap on condi damage and NOT on direct damage there IS a fundamental flaw in using condi within this game.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

StevesDad.8213:

How do other MMOs deal with this?

That’s a very good question.

I know how EverQuest dealt with it back in the day. No conditions, just Damage-over-time effects which wouldn’t stack if they were of the same “spell line”. Which meant if you wanted to know what stacked you had to do a lot of research to figure out what would work.

I know Ultima Online only had poison, which would last X seconds and do X damage per tick. Most poisons past the fourth level of severity would kill you if you couldn’t insta-cure. Most monsters they needed challenging would inflict sixth level poison somehow, or do more base damage than players could have health.

Other than that, don’t know about how other MMOs would handle it. I hadn’t played enough of more recent offerings.

Hmm good info, any other MMO experiences people want to share with regards to how conditions are handled?

Tommyknocker.6089:

Because of the simple fact that there is a cap on condi damage and NOT on direct damage there IS a fundamental flaw in using condi within this game.

It could be viewed as a limitation, not a flaw.

Another limitation in the comparison between condition damage and direct damage is that direct damage need to successfully hit each time it wants to apply damage, whereas a condition only needs to be applied once to trigger several instances of damage over time.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

I run 3 characters with condition builds and I don’t have an issue with the caps.

It’s only a downside when playing in a zerg and the game isn’t(and shouldn’t) be balanced around zerg play.

I stack 20-something bleeds on my Necromancer on entire groups of enemies in PvE, and trust you in me, I hit the cap repeatedly in groups where there is even one other person using bleeds to even a minor extent.

Atherakhia.4086:

Warriors get lascerate instead of bleed.
Rogues get rupture instead of bleed.
Rangers get pierce instead of bleed.
etc etc.

Just like that, you invalidated any idea you might have had.

Best bet in my opinion would to still be able to deal the damage of the bleeds if a target can no longer receive any bleeds. Of course there would have to be much thought and formulaic expressions for this to ever work and show some semblance of balance.

StevesDad.8213:

How do other MMOs deal with this?

All MMO’s are a balancing act for system resources… or perhaps a juggling act would be more apropos.

I imagine one of the reasons this is an issue is because the game is “more” twitchy than most MMO’s… there’s a reason why a lot of them don’t allow you to move while casting skills and don’t have a dodge function. There is a LOT more communication back and forth between client and server when you add in skill based dodge versus stat based “mathematically derived” dodges…. and then there’s calculations for range during skill activation and avoidance (ie player movement during the action)… etc and so forth…. and those are just 2 things that are happening during the combat. Now add in boons, passive trait effects, crit calculations, skill actuation, conditions… and who knows what else I’m not even thinking of (which im sure there is a lot)…

The bandwidth that one game has to juggle is not always comparable to another… and the solutions that work for one are infrequently a good solution for another.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Tommyknocker.6089:

Because of the simple fact that there is a cap on condi damage and NOT on direct damage there IS a fundamental flaw in using condi within this game.

It could be viewed as a limitation, not a flaw.

Another limitation in the comparison between condition damage and direct damage is that direct damage need to successfully hit each time it wants to apply damage, whereas a condition only needs to be applied once to trigger several instances of damage over time.

Ah but try removing the greatsword from your head in the same way that STACKS of conditions can and do get removed EASILY by both PvE mobs and other players in a PvP environment. Also if your missing a great deal with a melee weapon then your just plain doing it wrong in this game.

I can see your point though and I believe it will involve more testing than a quick fix can achieve.

Judge Banks.9018:

Best bet in my opinion would to still be able to deal the damage of the bleeds if a target can no longer receive any bleeds. Of course there would have to be much thought and formulaic expressions for this to ever work and show some semblance of balance.

This was basically what I was just thinking about.

If there are 25 bleeds on the target and a new bleed is applied just take the damage the bleed would have done over time and apply it as burst (maybe X% of the damage if needed).

E.G. If a target with 25 bleeds gets hit with a new bleed that would do 100 damage per tick for 6 seconds that’s a 600 damage burst instead.

This way condition builds don’t lose their damage to the nether realms and they also don’t care about incidental bleeds from things like ranger shortbow/felines and mesmer clones/phantasms.

Shouldn’t be much of a problem for the bandwidth and it honestly shouldn’t be much of a balance issue.

Unspecified.9142:

On of the major problems with this whole situation (imho) is accidental bleed/burn/poison stacks by power builds.

On my ranger, mesmer (need those clones on dodge so stuff bleeds), and thief it doesn’t matter how I gear myself I’m putting out bleeds here and there. They might be crappy 40 damage bleeds but they are going up. Unfortunately this means that whether I like it or not I’m hurting real condition build’s dps potential.

Since so many power/crit builds can throw up conditions at ~50% effectiveness compared to a full condition build without actually trying while still putting out full power/crit damage levels it means that condition builds bring even less to the party.

There’s pretty much a guaranteed net dps loss by having a condition build double the damage of your groups allotted conditions but bringing less than 50% of the dps of a power/crit build.

As far as I understand it, you aren’t hurting anyone else because it’s your stacks that are going to get dropped, not their’s. If they are running a dedicated condition build, their damage per stack will be higher, which will override yours. Your condition damage will only register if no one better is also stacking their’s.

It’s still useful if you’re on your own or with a small group because your stacks will still be registered. In big group events though, it’s guaranteed that the little extra DPS you’re bringing to the table is never even going to land on an enemy, because condition dedicated characters will be monopolizing those 25 stack slots. The really sad thing though is that those dedicated characters will also be nullifying each other’s damage by competing for the same 25 stacks. Meanwhile, pure power-crit builds can wail away unhindered by stupid, arbitrary mechanics.

Just imaging the outcry if suddenly, there was a limit on the number of melee blows a mob can register per second and Warriors had to start competing with each other for the chance that their attacks are actually registered or whether they are simply ignored. When Warriors start seeing silver medals for participation, the rage might well throw the world off its axis

But hey, there might be a silver lining to that: no more dungeon groups consisting of four Warriors and a Mes.

Judge Banks.9018:

Atherakhia.4086:

Warriors get lascerate instead of bleed.
Rogues get rupture instead of bleed.
Rangers get pierce instead of bleed.
etc etc.

Just like that, you invalidated any idea you might have had.

Best bet in my opinion would to still be able to deal the damage of the bleeds if a target can no longer receive any bleeds. Of course there would have to be much thought and formulaic expressions for this to ever work and show some semblance of balance.

I fail to take your meaning on it invalidating my idea. And converting it to burst is sketchy as some classes can get to the stack limit quickly and overflow damage could become an issue in PvP. Especialy with AE bleeds and the smallest amount of effort.

Atherakhia.4086:

Judge Banks.9018:

Atherakhia.4086:

Warriors get lascerate instead of bleed.
Rogues get rupture instead of bleed.
Rangers get pierce instead of bleed.
etc etc.

Just like that, you invalidated any idea you might have had.

Best bet in my opinion would to still be able to deal the damage of the bleeds if a target can no longer receive any bleeds. Of course there would have to be much thought and formulaic expressions for this to ever work and show some semblance of balance.

I fail to take your meaning on it invalidating my idea. And converting it to burst is sketchy as some classes can get to the stack limit quickly and overflow damage could become an issue in PvP. Especialy with AE bleeds and the smallest amount of effort.

he’s pointing out that you said rogues and rupture in the same sentence, and therefore implying that you play WoW and should be ignored.

in other words, he’s trolling, it’s actually a very good idea, although it still will cause problems if there is more than one class in the group

StevesDad.8213:

How do other MMOs deal with this?

In WoW each class has its own unique DoT (damage over time) spells. This way the DoT spell of one class do not interfere with DoT spell of another class. For example even if both the priest’s Shadow Word: Pain and the warlock’s Corruption spells work very similar they both have their own ID and are tracked separately.

Also in WoW DoTs rarely stack. Most DoTs work like poision or burning. Applying a DoTs in WoW typically resets the timer. And in many cases a DoT consist of an initial direct damage component and the damage over time component, like 100 initial damage followed by 400 damage over 10 seconds.

Since DoTs do rarely stack in WoW multiple players of the same class can “stack” the same DoT on a mob, e.g. ten priests can put up to ten Shadow Word: Pain DoTs on a mob.

This is a good post OP as it ties the cultural effects to their cause. Condition damage, or perhaps better, condition builds are broken in several ways. Perhaps of biggest concern is that sustained damage in a condition build is not on par with direct damage. In another thread Colin attempts to use the technical limitations (server bandwidth) get out of jail free card to explain why this is so. I’m sorry but you implement technology to achieve design goals you don’t simply use it to justify broken-ness. It may very well be so but the solution is to fix the design or technical implementation.

Too many people are willing to go to “human nature” when it comes to game culture, not realizing the effects game design has on game culture. This is one of those negative effects that we can tie directly back to game design.

That all said, I wouldn’t have a problem with this if they weren’t ignoring it. I realize they have a monthly schedule built around events and that makes core game issues a “nice to have” level priority. I’m sorry but the current prioritization of developer resources is askew, to put it mildly.

Even though I cannot speak for ANet or NCSoft management I know what is like to be in a software development team. Trying to “sell” tuning, bugfixing or even “refactoring” (rewriting code based on lessons learned) to managers is a daunting task. Managers want to see new shiny features which they can sell. Bugfixes on the other hand are hard to sell from a marketing PoV.

Would it be feasible if after the stack is capped, all conditions applied after were merely damage multipliers? The multiplier would be based upon the player’s condition dmg/duration stats. Or is that just as server processor intensive as what they are already trying to do?

StevesDad.8213:

How do other MMOs deal with this?

That’s a great question.

I ask myself that question every time I see ArenaNet stumble into historical MMO traps.

The problem I have is that ArenaNet doesn’t seem to have a deep grasp of MMO history.

They seem to make mistakes which other MMO’s have already made, rather than benefitting from their hard learned lessons, avoiding classic errors, and incorporating the solutions into the game.

There was a post in the condition damage thread which provided some perspective by comparing to the same problem faced in 2 other MMO’s.

The takeaway is that other MMO’s have historically faced this problem as well, and were later forced to find solutions.

It simply looks like ArenaNet is going to have to re-invent the wheel as well.

What makes this wheel re-invention confusing is that Game Director Colin Johansen says they have no current plans to address condition stacking, but Game Designer Jon Peters says they are currently actively looking at several solutions and will implement the best one as soon as possible.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Comfirmed-Nothing-being-done-re-conditions/first

Durian.5419:

I’m going to do something I hate.

I’m going to compare this game to other games.

Back in the good old days that everyone wants to return to, there was a game called Everquest and a class called the (interestingly to this discussion) Necromancer. Necromancers were the masters of debuffing and Damage over Time abilities (sounds kind of familiar). Guess how many Necromancers you wanted in a 72-man raid group?

One. (Maybe two since they could turn their life into mana for the healers).

One Necromancer could, by themselves, easily slap down 9-10 DoTs and debuffs. Add in the other classes wanting their DoTs to work and you might as well forget an extra damage Necro. Why? Because there was a debuff/DoT cap of 32. “Engine limitations!” the developers cried! In a game where you needed 72 people to beat on things, only 32 of their debuffs and DoTs could count.

Eventually, the developers figured out how to get more debuffs in there, though. It took several years….

On to the more modern age. World of Warcraft. How many Affliction Warlocks did it take to fight a boss? Hopefully not many, because until the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, you could only have 40 debuffs/DoT effects on a target. But the developers figured it out.

And now, Guild Wars. How many debuffs can you stack?

Answer: 25 bleeds (all tracked seperately)
That one sword bleed from Warrior’s sword offhand that isn’t a bleed but works like one (Impale?)
25 confusion
Poison
Burning
25 Vulnerability
Weakness
Blind
Chill
Cripple
Fear
Immobilize

For a grand total of 84. And that’s only the ones that have visible icons (that I remember). So, at launch, we have DOUBLE the number of things being tracked to WoW being launched. This is PROGRESS.

Will the developers make it better? They have in other games, why believe they can’t (or won’t) do it here? Keep up the complaints, but don’t be sassy about it.

But wouldn’t removing the limit on conditions severely throw off the balance between conditions v. direct damage? The way I see it is if that the limit gets lifted, than why would you ever need to bring a direct damage spec? Condition based specs usually only need to invest into one damage stat to bring good dps, while direct damage need at least two stats to be viable, thus allowing for more survivability. There wouldn’t be any trade off there. The only way that would work is if they completely rebalanced condition specs damage lower than direct damage to account for the increase in survivability that berzerker warriors don’t have.

Way back when a ranger was my only character, I was pretty content with running a trap build. Stacking over 1100 condition damage, groups of trash mobs would melt under my traps/torch/shortbow. But after playing a guardian to 80 -and seeing what direct damage builds did in comparison- it quickly replaced my ranger as my main character. So recently I respecced my ranger from traps, to a power build focused on marksmanship and skirmishing, with a longbow and greatsword filling my weapon slots. Replaced all my condition damage gear, and now I’m pushing higher numbers than my guardian, and I like it.

I’m still a tad squishy, despite building knight’s armor with emerald orbs, and valkyrie trinkets, but I think a bit of lifesteal food would help me along nicely.

So even if anet does fix all the problems with condition damage, I feel like my ranger is in a good spot right now, and I don’t want to change that. It might convince me to finally roll a necromancer though.

People are still going on about the limits on conditions? Seriously, this is only an issue if you make it one. Learning group diversity? Gaining group synergy? F that! I wanna make it bleed.

As for the proposed “fix” of different conditions per class. Um, no. Why turn one condition in to eight? The only time conditions can be problematic is in larger numbers, the “zergs”. So you want to make the inflicted have to remove a possible eight conditions per type? There are few skills that remove “all” conditions. Do you also propose we all have our skills changed too? Maybe give us more utility skill slots so we can remove each condition by “type”?

Remove the cap on stacks? Again, no. The damage dealt could get out of hand and result in “just stack the bleed and keep running” fights. That’s no fun. I could see maybe them upping say bleed to 30-35 stacks, but nothing too high.

OP didnt explain what the issue was.
so can somebody explain the original issue?

StevesDad.8213:

How do other MMOs deal with this?

They balance direct dmg & condition dmg, it’s pretty simple, you just need to calculate the DPS from both sides and balance it towards a certain standard. As there are almost no skills in the game and there are no roles for classes (no tanks, no heal, only DPS) it’s super super super easy to balance it. Still anet… i don’t know what they are doing.

Pennry.9215:

Remove the cap on stacks? Again, no. The damage dealt could get out of hand and result in “just stack the bleed and keep running” fights. That’s no fun. I could see maybe them upping say bleed to 30-35 stacks, but nothing too high.

Not if they balance condition dmg =/

The funny thing is, the builds are balanced pretty well, they just don’t work when there are too many bleeding/poisoning/burning heros in the same place. That is literally the only problem.

Condition stats: Condition damage, condition duration
Damage stats: Power, Precision, Crit damage

Direct damage may always be better because of that three stat synergy, but right now it is significantly better, and made worse by the loss of condition damage when too many people are applying bleeds at the same time.

Rennoko.5731:

The funny thing is, the builds are balanced pretty well, they just don’t work when there are too many bleeding/poisoning/burning heros in the same place. That is literally the only problem.

That’s not the only problem. Conditions can’t affect destructible objects, or meta event bosses like the dragons/fire elemental/shadow behemoth etc. Condition builds are at an extreme disadvantage in this area.

Quarktastic.1027:

Rennoko.5731:

The funny thing is, the builds are balanced pretty well, they just don’t work when there are too many bleeding/poisoning/burning heros in the same place. That is literally the only problem.

That’s not the only problem. Conditions can’t affect destructible objects, or meta event bosses like the dragons/fire elemental/shadow behemoth etc. Condition builds are at an extreme disadvantage in this area.

A while back, I dropped a condition build in favor of a power build for all of those reasons and more. I didn’t like the idea that my abilities wouldn’t always contribute to a fight.

Finding out that it would end up being too expensive to keep track of my conditions in a crowd has me wondering why they didn’t realize this fact sooner and adapt their design accordingly.

It’s just confusing why they would risk alienating their gamers with these unfair limitations (stacks & structures), then decide to properly fix it later rather than properly addressing it in the design phase.

Regardless, it turns out that ArenaNet is going down the history agnostic route of re-inventing the wheel after all.

ArenaNet’s Colin Johanson and Jon Peters confirmed they will be working on condition fixes:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Comfirmed-Nothing-being-done-re-conditions/page/7#post1508485

• Jon Peters on Work to Addess Condition Stack Limitations
  “Actually this is not true and is something we are actively looking at. We have a number of solutions that we are talking about and when we are able to figure out which one will have the least impact on balance, performance, and testing we will put that solution in place as soon as possible.
  Jon”

• Jon Peters on Conditions Also Affecting Structures Someday
  “Xsorus.2507:
  I’d be happy if you’d let some of my conditions work on Objects, like Burning for Example….I can understand bleed/poisoning..but if hitting something wooden, I’d think my Burn would do damage.
  
  This is a second problem as well that we are also addressing. Thanks for bringing it up here.”

• Colin Johanson Confirming Design Team Addressing Condition Stacks
  “Yeah that one is my fault, I’m out of the office doing a tour meeting with press and fans across Europe to discuss the game. While gone, this was something a team started designing a solution for, no one told me that while in Europe, so I said only what I knew at the time. The joys of no one being awake at the same hours.
  
  Sorry about the confusing information, I had this on my list to bring up after the trip, but the good news is it’s already being covered and all of this could have easily been avoided with that answer. In the future, I’ll try and avoid trips this long, this is the joy of game development, feature work can begin very quickly! =)"

woeye.2753:

Also in WoW DoTs rarely stack. Most DoTs work like poision or burning. Applying a DoTs in WoW typically resets the timer. And in many cases a DoT consist of an initial direct damage component and the damage over time component, like 100 initial damage followed by 400 damage over 10 seconds.

Since DoTs do rarely stack in WoW multiple players of the same class can “stack” the same DoT on a mob, e.g. ten priests can put up to ten Shadow Word: Pain DoTs on a mob.

Actually, some burning effects (e.g. ignite) did stack, and they did so very poorly. It was the bane of the mage class, because fire mages had an undocumented, random damage nerf due to flaky ignite mechanics.

The way it was supposed to work was that 40% of a critical strike’s damage from a fire spell would be added to a single stack of Ignite on the target, which ticked away over a few seconds. Subsequent critical strikes would increase the intensity of the ignite stack for the duration of overlap.

For example,. 400 ignite damage ticking for 100/sec over 4 seconds would jump to 200/sec if another 1k damage critical occurred. If the first one had already been ticking for 2 seconds when the second was applied, the damage would tick away as follows: 100, 100, 200, 200, 100, 100. This was casually referred to as rolling ignites.

What actually happened is that a critical could reset the dot timer. It would cause a small delay as to when the ticks would fire, but it would not properly extend the expiration timer on the existing ignite stacks, depriving the caster of ignite damage ticks. Sometimes it meant that ignites ticking away for large damage would be reset for much smaller ticks.

So, an example scenario could be that a 10k damage crit occurs at time 0 and starts ticking for 1k a second for 4 seconds, then a 100 damage crit occurs 2.25 seconds later. The damage would then tick as follows: 1k (1s), 1k (2s), 1010 (3.25s), 10 (4.25s), 10 (5.25s), 10 (6.25s). In that case, you just lost 1k damage because of the timer reset.

DoTs are notoriously badly handled in MMOs in general, and I’m sure they are a synchronization nightmare. Sometime in the (hopefully not-to-distant) future, memory will be available in large enough quantities that they can simply be stacked without bound and the problems mostly go away.

“Memory” is not the the problem – not everything just needs more RAM bro, this is pure TPS multiplied up by characters, by target, by stack…

EvE deals with them resonably well, but doesn’t scale well. Most others scale them better but result in odd bugs/behaviours such as ATMAvatar details (and I was playing arcane spec back at 70 until sunwell forced all mages into fire – there’s an example of build diversity failing).

The reason I mentioned RAM is because that’s the stated reason many MMO devs gave for the stack limits – it’s an attempt to save on resources, because you have to allocate memory for every DoT stack on every boss fight in every instance going on in a given moment. If resources were not a limiting factor, you could have each DoT stack behave independently, which is extremely simple to do.

Haha true true – they do mention memory… you are correct, and it does make it easier to explain to the average user… my local computer store is selling “eight gig machines” with last gen CPU/GPU and would happily sell “another eight gig” to anyone who wants more Memory – has nothing to do with performance levels for most though.

But no – its not just a byte of RAM for each DoT and there isn’t enough RAM slots in a server chassis… but I digress, and the point is they have an “EvE like” system – doesn’t scale.

I agree, my only lvl 80 right now is a beserker warrior and i still feel bad about this. Especially when i know other classes are figting each other for there kill credit while i can run in to boss buff myself up hundred blades once run out and get gold in most events.

Im actually in the process of building a poison based thief build and i just spent the last few hours of my gametime respecing him to a damage/critical build because obviousl the devs of this game have no clue what they are doing so im not counting on this getting fixed.

I mean how can you take these guys seriously when they admit there is a issues months ago and post it in the forums and say they are working on it then come out now and say its not being worked on.

This is a game breaking issue dont kid yourselves, you run a dungeon with 2 necro’s and one is going to get screwed for both drops and exp because whoever has the faster trigger finger is going to be doing all the damage while the other is nothing more than a pylon having to be carried the whole time because he cant get his stacks on the mobs.

The tech excuse is just that, a sad excuse. There is no reason you coudlnt fix this many ways that would not increase server loads.

1. Convert oldest stack to direct damage when adding new stock

2. When stack hits 25 combine it into one newly named super bleed/poison/daze/etc stack only doing damage of whole 25 stack was before and then let new stacks be added as per usual

3. limit skills/traits etc to adding one stack per use and have them do more damage(so instead of one ability adding 10hp per tick bleeds but 5 of them it adds one bleed doing 50hp per tick)

There are so many ways to fix this that would not use aditional resources that its so obvious this isnt the real reason they are ignoring the issue.