Currently, any attempt to be a front line player in World versus World is beyond a joke. The ease of application for condition stacks, especially against the Necromancer and Guardian heavy meta that most people are used to, leads to extraordinarily high condition damage. Previously power was still dealing incredibly high damage, however being able to dodge Area of Effect, utilise Protection for mitigation and have a high Toughness allowed you to at least damage opponents back (Note that you still dropped like it was quite hot if you did not dodge well/pressure the enemies well).
Due to the many sources of poison from all the condition based builds, you now cannot even heal the damage you are taking as fast. For Guardians and Warriors who are constantly healing with Healing Signet and Atruistic Healing this is a 33% direct hit to their survivability.
I have 2 proposals which hopefully players and devs would find reasonable as well as allowing for new play without just REVERT ALL CHANGES I HATE THEM :’(, because some of this stuff is really great and creates new gameplay, just is a little too strong.
1:
Toughness and Protection now effect condition damage. Previously this would have been a laughable change, as trying to stack bleeding alone to the point where it out DPSed a full zerker warrior auto attacking was either impossible or impractical for combat.
Now however in WvW the stacks can go SIGNIFICANTLY higher, and this is causing damage unseen in the game previously. While this effects other areas of the game currently, the NPCs you are speed clearing with 5 venom thieves are not nearly as upset by the guardians being 1 shot and who now have had a whole style of game play removed are feeling the hurt. I play across many classes and I understand the appeal, however I do not want it to ruin the experience for so many players.
In PvP this effect should be reduced so that Toughness and Protection are 1/3 as effective against conditions. Whilst this might seem like a nerf to 1v1 conditions, it is still a buff from the previous instances of the game as there are MANY more conditions to be stacked, accumulating in a higher overall damage even with this (just not AS high)
Keep in mind, Vulnerability now effects condition damage, and so even with this mitigation from protection you can reduce its effectiveness to 8% down from 33% with a condition that is easy to apply and available to all classes.
2:
Re introduce the condition stack for PvP and WvW. (This change was not intended to be AS WELL AS conditions being effected by toughness, it was an ‘either or’ approach.) I believe that stacking to 25 in PvP will still destroy almost every player.
This is because Burning + Poison now stacking increases the damage incredibly on its own. It also encourages game play where you try to get as many conditions as you can, rather than just bleeding a target on repeat (which is still incredibly effective).
WvW players with 25 condition stacks alongside all the other damage sources they are taking still drop incredibly fast. 100->0 occurs for even the tankiest characters in 1 or 2 seconds if they are not avoiding damage. 25 stacks of Bleed, Burning and Poison will kill you, absolutely no questions asked. There are simply not enough condition cleanses in the game that you can run to survive extended engages against such heavy pressure (remember that in this scenario this damage penetrates your toughness)
I understand people will think I am just salty about conditions, but if you look objectively at these proposals you will see they BOTH still allow for new uses of conditions and still allow you to 100-0 enemies in seconds with just conditions. Our condition builds will still be more than TWICE as effective, and that is saying something! I believe these changes can make for a good middle ground where all players can enjoy playing the way they want to.