Guild Wars 2

This question goes out to all you fellow condition users.
First let me say that it’s mostly about the feeling, not the actual damage output, which (in PvE atm) seems to be quite alright but still a tad weaker than direct damage builds.

For the last couple of days I’ve been making a ful ascended sinister set on my warrior to try out a full condi build with s/s and longbow. Unbuffed I have ~2k power and 1,5k condidtion damage with a near constant 100% crit against bleeding targets.
It’s a lot of fun, certainly more so than camping GS all day.
However there’s one thing that’s bugging me and I assume it’s the same for all condition builds, which is why I’m posting here; to get some opinions from other players.

PvE in general is so flashy that the damage numbers of my conditions just seem to disappear amidst all the shiny effects. Power builds get big splashy/bloody crit number and it feels nice, it feels as if I’m doing actual damage and the feedback the game is giving me through those big numbers (actual size, not how high they are) is appropriate to the actual damage I’m doing.

I’d really like an option to scale the size of condition damage numbers and direct damage.
It’s not only beneficial to people like me, who like the big ‘in ya face’ but also for others who maybe feel the direct damage numbers are too big and would like to scale them down.
Being able to get more feedback on how much damage I’m doing through appropriate display would increase my personal enjoyment of condi builds and therefore the game as a whole immensely.

Thoughts?

Off-topic
It would be best if all classes had a way to convert player inflicted conditions into burst. Say you put on 10 bleeds as a warrior there should be ability to remove those but cause decent burst in the process. I think some classes might have the ability but should be expanded.

E: Thread is about the GUI and seeing the condition damage you do, not about balancing condi or condi vs zerker.

Like I said. The damage itself is fine and converting condis into direct damage would take away the distinction between the two. It’s more about how the damage you do is presented to you and how that makes it look weak/underwhleming the way it is now.

As a mesmer condi still feels very underwhelming. Mainly because our “theme” conditions are simply inefficient in PvE and the numbers balanced around PvP. Ramp-up also is a major issue, getting 3 phantasms up for max crit bleeds takes forever, and staff feels even worse with the painfully slow projectiles.

Flamethrower engi also feels fairly underwhelming in terms of literally melting faces off. I feel most of my damage comes from 25might+Bunker Down, with burn an afterthought. On grenades you just mash buttons and stuff dies, zerk or condi doesn’t matter that much.

In terms of visuals, I would merely like the old damage floats to be enhanced with colors+icons, you can switch to the compound display for dps tests and otherwise enjoy your enemies leaking their hp all over the place :P

Crovax.7854:

Like I said. The damage itself is fine and converting condis into direct damage would take away the distinction between the two. It’s more about how the damage you do is presented to you and how that makes it look weak/underwhleming the way it is now.

Yeah thats my fault, being tired and glancing the post.

I do agree GUI could use a lot more customization than what it has. Even direct damage I rarely see on some fights especially those with large hitboxes. So in regards to condi damage, I rarely see them.

So sure.

The overall problem is Condi, as a damage source, is made for pressure and sustain. However, our active defenses are geared toward working in burst setups. Thats where direct damage builds tend to win out, as it allows players to unload damage and then switch to defensive, reposition, then execute another burst attack.

Condi skills all require the player to continually attack a target to keep the damage going, forcing them to stop if they want to dodge, heal, or activate utilities that have cast times. Combine that with ramp up time condi builds need to produce respectable damage, and its pretty easy understand why they “feel” so goofy in practice.

You’ll notice Condi setups are most effective on back line builds; as that position has enough breathing room to continuously attack and rotate modes. (Ele, Engi, etc)

starlinvf.1358:

The overall problem is Condi, as a damage source, is made for pressure and sustain. However, our active defenses are geared toward working in burst setups. Thats where direct damage builds tend to win out, as it allows players to unload damage and then switch to defensive, reposition, then execute another burst attack.

Condi skills all require the player to continually attack a target to keep the damage going, forcing them to stop if they want to dodge, heal, or activate utilities that have cast times. Combine that with ramp up time condi builds need to produce respectable damage, and its pretty easy understand why they “feel” so goofy in practice.

You’ll notice Condi setups are most effective on back line builds; as that position has enough breathing room to continuously attack and rotate modes. (Ele, Engi, etc)

Not really true, several zerk dps setups rely primarily on constant autoattack use for their dps. Necro dagger, mesmers have nothing else to do once 3 phantasms are up, engi needs to keep using some grenades all the time to stack vulnerability, hammer/1hand guard has several autoattacks in their rotation…

And then there’s condi burst skills like mesmer shatters, engi blowtorch, guard F1+"Ima spam torch skillz", ranger Sharpening Stone+Quickness, the list goes on.

starlinvf.1358:

The overall problem is Condi, as a damage source, is made for pressure and sustain. However, our active defenses are geared toward working in burst setups. Thats where direct damage builds tend to win out, as it allows players to unload damage and then switch to defensive, reposition, then execute another burst attack.

Condi skills all require the player to continually attack a target to keep the damage going, forcing them to stop if they want to dodge, heal, or activate utilities that have cast times. Combine that with ramp up time condi builds need to produce respectable damage, and its pretty easy understand why they “feel” so goofy in practice.

You’ll notice Condi setups are most effective on back line builds; as that position has enough breathing room to continuously attack and rotate modes. (Ele, Engi, etc)

There seems to be a theme here of people not really understanding my post :P
It’s entirely about the presentation of the damage done which is in no way appropriate.
Damage or flow of battle is not an issue. Just did a bit of silverwaste events in small groups of 3-4 as well as the big bosses.
Keeping condis up is easy enough and 6k bleeds together with ~1-2k+ burns and ~300-500 torment plus ~1k damage per sword hit, which are incredibly fast make for a ton of damage.

It just feels wrong that a 6k bleed tick is displayed in the same way as a 100 bleed tick.
Maybe the size of the damage numbers can be scaled from <100 to maybe 5k+ and depending on the damage a tick does, the visual representation changes, giving you the same sense of damage a big bloody crit from a direct damage attack does.

I think how satisfying a specc is plays a big part in how willing people are to try it out. If condis are weaker than direct damage and feel undewhelming, why would people even bother to play something that makes them feel weak, even when condis were as good as direct damage.

Err, have you tried out the “old-fashioned” damage floats? The new ones compound all stacks into a single 1-per-second ticker, previously each stack would tick independently on its own timer. You won’t see big numbers because you aren’t dealing big numbers, but seeing 20 different damage ticks float out from the enemy every second is pretty satisfying in my book.
Unless they removed that option with the patch, it’s called “use simple condition floats” or something.

Photoloss.4817:

Err, have you tried out the “old-fashioned” damage floats? The new ones compound all stacks into a single 1-per-second ticker, previously each stack would tick independently on its own timer. You won’t see big numbers because you aren’t dealing big numbers, but seeing 20 different damage ticks float out from the enemy every second is pretty satisfying in my book.
Unless they removed that option with the patch, it’s called “use simple condition floats” or something.

The simple floaters just remove the icons displayed next to numbers, e.g. the little flame for burning or the green skull for poison.

Crovax.7854:

The simple floaters just remove the icons displayed next to numbers, e.g. the little flame for burning or the green skull for poison.

Nope, just tested it to make sure. Each condition stack will show its own individual damage ticker, which produces a nice, constant cloud once you reach 20+ bleeds. Wouldn’t mind colors+icons as I already said, but it’s satisfying enough imo.

Photoloss.4817:

Crovax.7854:

The simple floaters just remove the icons displayed next to numbers, e.g. the little flame for burning or the green skull for poison.

Nope, just tested it to make sure. Each condition stack will show its own individual damage ticker, which produces a nice, constant cloud once you reach 20+ bleeds. Wouldn’t mind colors+icons as I already said, but it’s satisfying enough imo.

My bad then. Really strange that they would name it ‘simple’ floaters when it’s actually more, with the standard option being the ‘simpler’ one.
Thanks for the tip, although I still think the individual ticks just get buried under all the other effects and with those optional floaters you kinda loose a ‘sense’ of how much damage you are doing.

Meh, I lose track anyway since half my damage comes from phantasms I don’t really keep an eye on, and the continuous stacking on channeled attacks like mesmer GS or flamethrower auto is total garbage.

With the “new” condition indicators I can at least see how much damage I’m doing per second, every second.

I “feel” that necro seems stronger than before. Especially now that vulnerability affects conditions. I’ve had veritable clouds of numbers tickets from a single target but when other players add their conditions and I trigger an epidemic bomb the result blizzard of numbers is quite impressive. I’ve found that with the new corruption trait necros have access to a lot more conditions to transfer.

For laughts and something different I made a sinister trappers ranger and am actually surprised by how good she is. Sharpen blades plus short bow#2 or mainhand axe #2 are really good combinations to drop bursts of bleed/poison or double the bleed in a shotgun effect.
main hand axe also allows increasing might to be achieved easily. Especially in areas like SW. Overall I kinda find Condi builds being stronger rather than weaker.

I’ve played many condi builds on different classes, never really thought about the presentation of the damage display being underwhelming. Thinking about it though, it could be prettied up a bit. I was always anticipating every tick seeing how much it’s ramping up, seeing 2k, 3k, 4k was always pretty cool to me.

I suppose a cool idea would be the display number getting progressively bigger and ‘bloodier’ like the crit display each tick as the tick damage goes up. Would be neat, but unfortunately that’s probably no where on ANet’s ‘things to do’ list =/

Dude… Run condi on a Guardian and run Burn. That stuff is so op and broken. It needs to be nerfed yet nothing has happened. Necromancers need to be buffed for the conditions tthough… Guardians are the most broken thing T.T

Problem in PvE: Mobs.

Since we all know what kind of foes are in Cursed Shore and everywhere else. None have attacks that can kill the player, force player to dodge or use other builds, than just Berserker DPS builds.

Of course, Southsun Cove, Dry Top and Silverwastes are exceptions (Fractals are not, the foes there are the same old, higher difficulty lvls just adds enviromental effects to make it harder, than provide more capable foes), with foes that don’t let you just DPS them to death, instead force you to use other abilities, while in 1vs1.

FrostSpectre.4198:

Problem in PvE: Mobs.

Since we all know what kind of foes are in Cursed Shore and everywhere else. None have attacks that can kill the player, force player to dodge or use other builds, than just Berserker DPS builds.

Of course, Southsun Cove, Dry Top and Silverwastes are exceptions (Fractals are not, the foes there are the same old, higher difficulty lvls just adds enviromental effects to make it harder, than provide more capable foes), with foes that don’t let you just DPS them to death, instead force you to use other abilities, while in 1vs1.

That’s kind of a tradition with RPGs though, single equal-level mobs are fodder. 2-3 Risen can, in fact, kill you if you only attack in zerk gear without using active defenses. SW mobs are just as “easy” 1v1, merely more annoying, as they don’t actually harm you much while in their “anti-dps” phase. Veterans and above range from total jokes to outright lethal in all maps, heavily dependent on your skill level.

Sadly all of this affects condi vs. zerk in the wrong direction. The goal is to kill the enemy before they kill you. Defensive stats (rabid/dire condi) only multiply each other in terms of “effective hp”. Direct damage has 3 stats to multiply instead of 2, and all those + %dmg modifiers on top.
Hence, even if a rabid/dire condi build could reach its full dps as quickly as a zerker, the numerical combat effectiveness would, in fact, be lower. After the ramp-up this might be different for a “full condi” spec using condition damage + precision + condi duration gear, but alas that doesn’t exist.

I recently swapped from tanky/dps spec to Condi sins every warrior plays hammer gs in WvW these days. I just simply don’t want to be part of the hype. And I have to say; yes the fights are longer, but it seems I can destroy more builds then I did before. I do have a weakness and that is full dps builds but hey, every build has a counter build. I accept this and I’m happy with it. I have use simple floaters active (just for the feeling you know) and I’m happy with this roaming setup. (being cheesy doest exist in this unbalanced game anyway) so hail to the Condi gods

I recently created two characters to try out condition builds for the ranger and guardian, and while I’m still tweaking the builds I don’t feel like they’re noticeably underpowered compared to my zerker characters. Note that I haven’t tested either build in dungeon paths yet (I’m not going to saddle others with experimental builds), so this impression comes mostly from charging blindly into swarms of karkas in Southsun’s events (when there’s no KQ, so no other players about to skew the outcome).

Even in pvp condies kind of suck. For all the complaints condies get in WvW for being too strong for example, is it really worth being hardcountered by a bunch of classes, like DS Eles, Necros, and certain Warrior/Mesmer specs?

Ok guys. I know condis could use a buff but would you kindly read the OP before replying with ‘omg zerk op, condi need buff!’ ? Damage is not the issue here. It says so right in the second sentence.

YOUNGaz.5690:

I’ve played many condi builds on different classes, never really thought about the presentation of the damage display being underwhelming. Thinking about it though, it could be prettied up a bit. I was always anticipating every tick seeing how much it’s ramping up, seeing 2k, 3k, 4k was always pretty cool to me.

I suppose a cool idea would be the display number getting progressively bigger and ‘bloodier’ like the crit display each tick as the tick damage goes up. Would be neat, but unfortunately that’s probably no where on ANet’s ‘things to do’ list =/

For me the problem is that the individual ticks are too small in terms of font size and being able to rescale them would already go a long way. Displaying the simple floaters on the other hand completely removes the sense of damage from my condis. Sure, seeing little numbers spring all over the place makes it at least visible but also takes away the satisfaction of seeing your numbers ramping up.

Your suggestion with ‘bloodier’ ticks is exactly what I meant.
Maybe start with one size for <200 and make them bigger in 300 increments up to a maximum of maybe 5k.