Guild Wars 2

Before we start this is only for discussion purpose and if possible to sate my curiousity regarding this(Only if Anet will be kind enough to share some of their info with us)

So with the announcement of the expansion and the blog posts of some of the things to come including the revenant and its 2 known legends, I have only 1 question:

Will conditions finally be viable in PvE?

The current known and most spoken issues of conditions are as follows(goes by priority):
1) It takes time for the conditions to deal their intended damage. This is probably the most problematic problem to fix considering how conditions work(as DoT’s), when players prefer the front loaded damage of just bursting a target instead. On that note it also takes a lot of time to build enough stacks of conditions on a mob for it to start dealing appropriate damage when going solo, especially when in the time it took a player to build enough stacks of bleeding on a mob for the conditions to kill it fast enough, another player using a burst build has aleady killed that kind of mob.

2) Conditions Cap, 25 Stacks of bleed is easily reached in almost any group. In world events some are lucky to be able to put a stack of bleed without getting it written off by another stack from a fellow player.

*There are most likely more issues with conditions, I’ve just written the most obvious reasons why they’re almost not used in PvE most of the time.

Don’t get me wrong, I know that in some cases and areas conditions are superior(I’m looking at you husks). What I’m asking will conditions be able to join the meta of PvE(In PvP and WvW they’re already a part of the meta somewhat to my understanding) of the currently mostly used Zerker?(And I mean 99.9% of PvE meta)

For instance one of the known Revenant legends is a conditions oriented legend(Mallyx- the big kitten monkey from GW1), Will it be viable as a dps option in PvE?(Considering the most likely fact that there will be a direct damage oriented legend as well)

If indeed there are changes coming to conditions and how they will fit PvE once the expansion comes out, will we get a blog post about these kinds of changes?

If, for some reason, there is not yet a solution regarding conditions and their use in PvE, How would you change the way conditions work so they will be able to fit PvE(PvE meta if you need certain direction) all the while not destroy their use in PvP?

Will any Anet employee please enlighten us with some kind of info about this?

Also if changes are indeed coming to conditions, let us speculate on what they are, until we get more info about it.

*To clarify, I meant in no way for conditions to replace the current meta of zerker, only to be compete with it. i.e. groups won’t look for zerkers only anymore(In that regard i wonder if support and control builds will also be viable with the upcoming expansion?)

As to your #1, that’s pretty much only solved by fights being longer or by making it more difficult to sustain non-condition damage. (For example when fight mechanics force non-condition dps roles to stop attacking and do something else, or get killed, while conditions keep ticking steadily.)

I think Anet is trying to go in exactly that direction based on certain big fights, but I’m not convinced it’s going to happen overall. The reason for this is that while big boss fights can use those sustain mechanics, a lot of PvE content seems to be going in the direction of zone-wide events and boss fights that are broken up and contained in multiple lanes or areas with lots and lots of trash mobs. Those will continue to favor burst dps.

As to your #2, that’s solved by either giving each player a separate set of conditions with caps (WoW did this at one point for two conditions that were preventing one class/build combo from being viable for more than one person per raid, for example), giving each class a totally separate set of conditions (Anet seemed like they were starting to go in this direction at one point when they added a condition, but didn’t) or by lifting the cap entirely while balancing with some form of periodic cleansing.

I’m very curious to know if Anet is going to go any of those routes. I hope so- I tend not to play DoT classes, but games are always richer when multiple dps strategies work. It’s very hard to do though, because DoT builds can become incredibly easy if you’re not careful- DoT classes could lay on conditions, then pay more attention to raid mechanics and defense before laying them back on again. You see this in games with dps meters where often in simple raid fights DD classes are all at the top of the charts, while in more complicated fights DoT classes can shine. It’s ok in those games because a given raid is a multi-hour affair with numerous different fights, so everyone gets their shot at being awesome. GW2, at least so far, isn’t really like that so it might not be as acceptable here.

TL;DR: I am also very curious to know what direction Anet is going with DoT mechanics, but at the same time their newest content seems to suggest that DD will still shine in a lot of situations even if conditions are rebalanced.

Your solutions for the problems that I’ve posted either break the current PvE meta(to kill as fast as possible) in some way or another for the former solution.
For the latter it is kind of a compromise considering the options that other players posted during the time that they discussed options to make conditions better way before HoT was even announced.(those topics are pretty old so it will be pretty hard to find)

The solution to the second problem that was discussed before was introducing a new stacking condition that will be applied to a mob once the cap has been reached and will reset cap of the used condition. i.e. once a mob has 25 stacks of bleed it will turn into 1 stack of deep wound which will be equivalent to 25 stacks of bleed and the stack of bleed will reset to 0, so that when it is reached again it will just add another stack of deep wound. I don’t know how this kind of thing will load the servers seeing that Anet stated that this is the main reason why stacks are capped at 25 but certainly it is better then just removing the cap completely.

For the first issue i thought of a low duration stacking conditions that deal the same amount of damage it would take with longer duration. i.e. making them more burst like but still keeping the DoT thing. But as you can see it will make conditions way too overpowered in the other formats even though it makes them super in PvE. Another option would be making conditions just do a flat % of damage and change the cap number as to not make them overpowered. i.e. bleeding will do 1% and will cap at 3 stacks while burning will do 3% and will stack duration as before, and poison will do 2% and same as burning will stack duration all the while keeping its 33% healing reduction. But this solution brings us back to the 2nd issue.

Overall the 2nd issue can be solved as long as the conditions won’t overload the servers. The 1st issue though is much more complex and therefore much harder to solve

Mor The Thief.9135:

Will conditions finally be viable in PvE?

Nope, of course not.

Next question?

What ArenaNet appears to be trying to do is make enemies with very high armor, so condition damage would in theory work better than direct damage against them (see the copper boss at the Silverwastes as an example, or the hushs). The thing is, this is hastily and lazily done, because the real issues with condition damage (the things you mentioned in your post) haven’t been fixed, and probably won’t be fixed any time soon. The result is that people still try to use direct damage to kill the enemies that were meant to be killed through condition damage.

I really don’t have a problem with #1. I think it does take a long time for damage to ramp up on my condition thief but I find that to be a secondary problem. I think #2 is the biggest problem right now. I would be extremely happy if we had our own stack. It’s been a while since I played wow but I remember my hunter being in a raid with several other hunters and I had the ability to see just my debuffs so I knew when to refresh. That is the biggest change I have been hoping for. Anyway thanks for making this thread, changes to conditions in PvE has been a long time coming.

Test.8734:

Mor The Thief.9135:

Will conditions finally be viable in PvE?

Nope, of course not.

Next question?

What ArenaNet appears to be trying to do is make enemies with very high armor, so condition damage would in theory work better than direct damage against them (see the copper boss at the Silverwastes as an example, or the hushs). The thing is, this is hastily and lazily done, because the real issues with condition damage (the things you mentioned in your post) haven’t been fixed, and probably won’t be fixed any time soon. The result is that people still try to use direct damage to kill the enemies and succeeding that were meant to be killed through condition damage.

FTFY